God as the voice in our heads. (Part 2)

God as the voice in our heads

Part 2: The importance of the framework of understanding

I am very keen on analysing this, because I believe that it is vital for making sense of anything and everything. However, although everyone has a framework of understanding – this is inescapable – I think it’s likely that a very large proportion of people have never considered the matter, precisely because we usually take our framework for granted. It consists of ways of looking at the world and understanding reality, using absolutely core ways of thinking, principles and values that are so basic to our way of thinking, and which we adopted so long ago and have used ever since, that we simply have no awareness that we are using them. They are our classic assumptions that we have taken for granted. We regard them as so obvious, such basic building blocks of our thinking, that we do not think about them, find it hard to believe that anyone else could possibly see things differently, and are horrified when we find people who disagree with us because we literally cannot understand how anyone could possibly see things differently. How can they possibly be so stupid and/or biased? We find it offensive to be challenged in this way, for it seems to us that other people are saying “up” is “down” and “right” is “wrong”.

This is not simply about people disagreeing with each other. People have always done that, and very angrily and passionately too. It’s a more fundamental issue about how we see things, about the way we look at the world. Perhaps an example from politics will help. I think this is a readily understandable example because we don’t have to dig very deep to uncover the framework ideas, and for those who are politically astute, they may be well aware of the theoretical background in which their political policies are set. However, I hope a simple example will help us to see the point – and then we can appreciate that there are basic assumptions hidden more and more deeply.

So right-wingers and left-wingers always disagree about how high taxes and government spending should be, with right-wingers saying both need to be low to encourage business and although they’d like to spend more on the poor we can’t afford it, while left wingers want them both to be high because their focus is on helping the poor and they believe there’s lots of money to spend if only the rich paid the right amount of tax. Both sides may be unaware that these political arguments are supported by “hidden” framework ideas. So, right-wingers will have picked up from experience that government interference in the economy often makes things worse and so government needs to be kept small to allow the power of free markets to generate wealth to flourish – especially as government spending is often inefficient. In contrast, left-wingers see free markets as either bad, or, at least, a necessary evil to generate wealth, but they see government intervention as good – governments intervene to put right the injustices that free markets produce; government spending might be wasteful but all spending is good because you’re giving poor people money they wouldn’t otherwise have.

The idea of our framework of understanding goes even deeper than this, and we can bring in Wittgenstein’s idea of “language games” to help us. This is the crucial idea that words (and the ideas that they represent) get their meaning from the way in which they are used – Wittgenstein called this “the game” in which they are used. So, for example, a football team which had 5 “tries” but only scored 2 “goals” will lose against a team that had 3 tries and scored 3 goals. However, a rugby union team that had 5 tries and scored 2 goals has got 31 points, and has beaten the side who had 2 tries and 5 goals because they have only got 25 points. This is because the words “try” and “goal” have different meanings in football and rugby. This rather easy example alerts us to the fundamental point that the things we say get their meaning from the mental framework in which we use them.

If we turn to the world of religion and its utter contrast to the secular way of looking at the world, we can see why the two parties are simply arguing at cross-purposes. And this is why I try to argue from within the secular mental framework, trying to use ideas that they accept as valid ideas – even if initially they don’t agree with the religious points that I am promoting.

So, as a religious person, I believe that reality is made up of two parts: the physical universe, but also the metaphysical realm. In the metaphysical realm we might find entities like God, the soul and heaven. This is my basic framework of understanding – I walk through life with this point of view, and so I take it as a simple truth that I might have an encounter with God; I might not, but it is a possibility. You might think that this all sounds rather dry and theoretical, but not a bit of it, for the practical upshot of having this outlook is utterly transformative. So, when I wake up in the morning, as soon as I turn my attention to the fact that I believe that God is a reality and that he loves me, then I may well – and this often happens – experience a sense of God’s love enfolding me. It is, as it were, that the moment I remind myself of my basic understanding of my life, that I am opened up to the experience of all the good things that I believe about God and about my relationship with him. I don’t consider that this is wish-fulfilment or mind over matter. I am not conjuring out of nothing something that does not exist. Rather, because of my beliefs in what constitutes the sum total of reality, which includes the person of God, so meeting with him becomes a possibility. As I’ve said before, I cannot control this, because, in my view, God is not a creation of my own mind, he is an independent person. However, my framework of understanding sets out the parameters of what is and isn’t possible. In a most wonderful way, the very act of turning my attention to God, generates or “sparks into life” the very reality that I believe in.

Hence, we immediately see that the secularist’s dismissal of the reality of God closes down the possibility of meeting with God. As a believer, I consider that God does have the ability to “break into” a secularist’s consciousness, but, generally speaking, except in emergencies as it were, God does not force himself onto us, but “hovers” waiting to be invited in. Very often, secularists will have experiences that put them “on the brink” of meeting with God – circumstances have led them to a point where the gulf that usually separates them has grown thin, and then God and the person might “bump into each other” on the boundary between secular and religious ways of understanding the world. And then conversion, or a journey potentially leading to conversion might begin. However, very often, events and experiences that would have me dropping to my knees in adoration, because I quickly perceive the presence of God in this moment, are simply missed by the secularist, because the experience does not fit into any of their ways of interpreting the experience.

So, there is no point talking to secularists about God’s love for them, because in my framework, what I mean is that a person – God, who is different to and external to me, and who dwells in a metaphysical world of the spirit, which world also overlaps with our physical world, is reaching out to me to bestow his love upon me. However, the secular person simply “cannot compute” this because for them there is no God, no spiritual world, no spiritual entity who loves them.

I must just say that I don’t deny for a moment that secular atheists fall in love, are moved to tears by the beauty of nature and music, that they love their friends, their country and their football team. All these qualities of personhood can rightly be called “metaphysical” because they are intangible qualities. However, secular people will understand these things to be aspects of the physical world in that they are outcomes of the ways our mind works. However, they do not believe in the metaphysical realm that I believe in as a religious person.

God as the voice in our heads. (Part 1)

(A theological reflection in 5 parts. Sections are somewhat longer than usual as there is quite a lot to say, and I hope it may be easier to grasp if I give a considerable chunk at one time, where readers can take on a coherent argument in one go. Please bear with me on part 4, as this is very long, but it is my core idea. There are a few key issues to deal with in preparation for the main argument, and I regard this article as expressing what I think is the very heart of my blog. I will finish by adding an analogy using Philip Pullman’s idea of daemons, which may possibly illuminate my point, but it is not essential to the argument and so please ignore it if it gets in the way)

God as the voice in our heads

Part 1: Moving onto the secular side of the argument

My personal journey of faith has led me to move onto the secular side of the argument. I became a Christian in my early teens under the influence of the very strong religious experiences I had, by which I came to be in relationship with God. My faith has brought me immense joy, insight and comfort. However, like many Christians, there have been periods of doubt, sufficiently severe that I could easily have given up my belief in God. However, I battled through these periods, and by the time of my 50s I found myself in a position where I understood my faith to be invulnerable to attack. This was because I could not imagine anyone saying anything that might threaten or undermine my faith that I had not already considered myself. Thus, as I entered into retirement, I found myself completely happy in my faith. I can only imagine that I will continue in this contentment, and that I will find a church to attend until the day I die. Therefore, “I am alright”. I need do nothing except to enjoy my faith – this wonderful relationship that God has graciously entered into with me.

However, as my faith is so important to me, I dearly want to share it with others, so that they can gain this same satisfaction. Yet I cannot help noticing that Britain has voted with its feet and we are now an overwhelmingly secular country. So, what am I to do? I realise that if I try to promote faith from within my religious understanding of life I will probably get nowhere, because secular atheists have completely rejected my world view. (I don’t take this personally: I have rejected theirs). However, I am intensely interested in the battle for hearts and minds, and it is clear that Christians in the UK are losing, and I would like to try and do something to redress the balance while I am still around to do anything. So, while I am entirely happy with the religious interpretation of the world, and could quite happily inhabit that world for the rest of my days, I have decided to leave religious people happily living their religious lives while I go in search of winning over some secularists to faith in God. To do this, I have moved my reasoning into the secular sphere, and attempt to explain my faith in terms that secularists understand and accept. This is because – for most secularists – there is no point appealing to them in religious terms – for they have rejected the entire package of religious understanding. So, if I appeal to them that, “God loves them”, and “Jesus has died to take away their sins”, it is all simply water of a duck’s back – it makes no connection whatsoever. If they have rejected God and believe that he simply does not exist, then God does not love them – because there is no God. They may accept that there was a man called Jesus; they may conclude that he was a very nice man – kind and loving, a good role model even – but they cannot accept Jesus’ status as having anything to do with God – who is not real – and so whatever Jesus did in his life it can have no effect on them – whether to redeem them from sin or anything else. As there is no metaphysical world – only the material universe – then there can be no religious transactions of any significance.

So, religious appeals tend to be at cross purposes with secularists’ way of understanding and looking at the world. Therefore, I am attempting to “translate” what religious ideas mean in the religious sphere into what they might mean in the secular sphere. In this way, my hope is that secular people will be able to make sense of these ideas and appreciate their appeal. If these ideas actually mean something in the secular sphere, then there is opportunity for secularists to value them, adopt them into their own lives, and then this might lead to them “transferring” their own worldview into the religious sphere. They would not have to completely “convert” to the religious world – as people still do do today, when an atheist turns to God and comes to faith. Instead, they would be adopting a new form of religion, that is thoroughly, genuinely religious, but which operates effectively in the secular sphere. It is my firm conviction that this “new form” of Christianity is completely in tune with traditional Christian faith. Of course, I would be perfectly happy if a secular person does do “the whole conversion” and find themselves in the religious sphere as traditionally understood. However, my particular aim is to see if I can clear the ground so that those with a secular understanding of reality can adopt a religious way of life that will bring them complete fulfilment – along with all joy, peace and love, meaning and fulfilment. Though language and concepts may vary a little from traditional faith, it will be immediately clear that this adoption of faith is real faith, and that those who adopt it are now in relationship with God.

Be thankful. Beloved. A song of incarnation.

Be thankful. Beloved. A song of incarnation.

Why should I feel loved? Why be thankful to be alive?

Religious people always go on about the love of God – but what if you have never experienced this, or don’t believe in God? I believe we can find joy and peace and love within our experience, just because we are human.

To be able to be.

This is the beginning of thankfulness.

I have the space within myself to be quiet.

In my inmost reflections I discover a capability to think deeply, to weigh up and to value.

When I do not allow the turmoil of distractions to rush at me from the external world and occupy my mind and unsettle my heart, I discover tranquillity, a pool of stillness, that is simply there. It is the greatest discovery of life – a reservoir of calm refreshment, unfathomably deep. Even the terrible anxiety of my frail and fearful humanity cannot taint the purity of the profound truth that wells up from this pool – I do not know what to call it. Names come with baggage and baggage that is unhelpful simply needs to be discarded – heaved off by an effort of faith and will. Is it my soul? Or God? I will let you decide. Perhaps something else. I really do not think it matters what we call it; it is there.

Perhaps you have not yet found this pool, in which case such words of mine can infuriate and hurt, though they are intended to point forward with hope. What I am trying to do is suggest that there is cause for great joy and peace – and hope, regardless of what you believe, or have experienced in life, simply because of how things are. That is, because of how you are. If you have not found this pool yet, or not realised how precious it is, that does not mean it is not there. It is always there; it cannot not be there – because this is who we are and how we are.

It is our very ability to look inwardly and reflect that is the guarantee that this reservoir of goodness is there – rather, that it is here at the very heart of you. Perhaps this again rouses anger: “How can you know what I have experienced in life in order for you to declare that there is something so positive and good and hopeful at the very centre of me?”.

It’s because our inner judgement is not simply a balance – think of those old-fashioned scales held by a figure of justice. So, we are not completely dependent on our experience – as though only if we are healthy and wealthy and have enjoyed a good life, or if we have a natural propensity to feel the presence of God, can we expect to find a pool of goodness at our heart – while those whose lives are blighted by war and poverty and hate must inexorably be led to drink from a pool of bitterness that has come to fill their heart.  It is not like this. We do have a balance within us to judge fairly what to do in the world, and that is vitally important. But with our inner judgement on ourselves, our balance has been tipped to the positive in the act of creation. For, within us, we have the ability to choose. We are not prisoners of our circumstances or our experience. Even though it is our ability to choose that is so often the cause of our despair, when we have chosen badly, yet the ability to choose is supremely beneficial. It is what gives us freedom and power. And when we choose to use those gifts to sit quietly with ourselves, we discover that the material of which we are made has a grain within it – like the grain of a piece of wood – and our grain tends towards the good.

Of course, this inner goodness is not invincible or incorruptible – many people are corrupt. But our natural goodness has to be distorted before corruption becomes our settled state. Perhaps if a person experienced nothing but suffering and injustice, we must expect it is likely that their inner nature will be atrociously damaged, but I think corruption does not take charge of a person’s life unless they willingly take it on board. Otherwise, the resilience of our goodness is truly a wonder to behold.

So, we sit quietly with ourselves, and we discover the freedom to choose, and so this raises the question, “What do I want?”. Immediately, our sense of direction bursts into life, and we realise we have a goal, and so a mission. There is something important for each one of us to do. And we have the freedom and power to decide what that is. Yes, it is true that so many of us find ourselves in terribly constrained situations where the desire of our heart is to all practical concerns hopelessly out of reach. Yet we still have a desire in our heart. Even if we are always frustrated in our aims, we are never impoverished, for we have this most precious desire within us. And this fuels our hope and our energy and our actions. We are never powerless because we always have this inner freedom. And nearly everyone of us finds some ways to express our desires. We use our freedom and power to create something good.

As we consider ourselves, we cannot escape the reality of others. To have desires and goals, to seek to act, inevitably brings us into contact with the other. So, the other dimension of our thankfulness is that we are not alone. Counter-intuitively, though our core inner experience is of the profound stillness of being alone at our deep pool, where only we can visit, and which gives us our essential view of ourselves, it is not aloneness that governs our lives. The supreme task of our existence is to meet the other, and to love them. All our desires, our goals, our striving, cause us to reach out beyond ourselves to encounter others and to learn to treat them as people like ourselves. To realise that each one has their own pool, ineffably precious to them. A pool where all their hurts and wounds are washed clean, just like we wash our own. A pool where treasures glitter to delight the heart and mind, which they pull up to show to us, as we seek to find something precious within ourselves to share with them.

I would like to say that the ultimate satisfaction is to invite an other to meet us at our own pool – but I don’t think that is possible. There is something about the way we are made which means that only we have access to that private place where we speak to ourselves beyond the veil. Yet this does not diminish, but enhances, the wonder that when hands touch in the world, so also hearts touch, and a draught of the other’s pool is poured into our own, and ours into theirs. This is the glory of being alive, to be able to share with others our unique self, and to treasure more than our own life what others have shared with us.

There is one exception. No-one can stand beside us at the pool where we are most truly ourselves, except for the one who was there at the very beginning of existence, and who is responsible for our existence, and, most of all, who is responsible for the grain within us that points to goodness. Perhaps you feel that I am suddenly cheating: I said that I would try and explain why we should feel loved and be thankful just from the facts of our existence, without bringing in any other thoughts. And now I have sneaked in God as though that were my aim all along. But remember, we are not bothering about names and ideas, only what we experience. I do not care whether it is God or something else, I am only trying to describe what we can discover within our own experience. The self is there – here within us.  We have been using the image of a pool to try and help us to think about it. I claim – and I think your own experience declares that it is true – that this pool has a character, a nature – one that is supremely personal to the individual that each one of us is, but with a nature that is ingrained with goodness – it is simply how we are. Or if you are still sceptical or even too pessimistic, it is simply that we choose – or at least that we have the capability to choose – goodness. This is the basis of our freedom, our power, our hope, our satisfaction and our achievement.

So, the greatest – nearly – gift in life is to discover our own pool, and to learn to visit it, and to delight in what we find in it. But when we sit quietly, all alone, discovering what we might find within, there is something even more, for we also discover the presence of the other. Not the other as when we were thinking about meeting other people – people whom we experience within the material world. There is “another other” whom we experience within the intimate privacy of ourselves. I claimed that no-one else could visit us there, and now I contradict myself. But not quite. Perhaps there is still no-one there, and we are still alone within the utterly private confines of our own person. Except that, like an echo in a cavern, we hear our own words coming back at us, but now no longer simply our words, but the words of this other other, who now speaks to us in what could – and perhaps we thought, should – be entirely our own domain. What would otherwise be entirely private has been entered by this other – except that it seems to us that this other was there before we were. Either way, the most profound discovery is that we are not alone – not even when to all observation we are. And this other loves us. The echo of our words is transformed into something entirely pure and good, and truthful and lovely. And we enter into a relationship with the other who is translating our words, whether good or bad, into an impetus to goodness and compassion.

Personally, I think that there is enough in the first part of what we have been thinking about to justify our thankfulness. But when we also consider the reality of what is there to be discovered: that there is a love at the heart of us that has no dependence on what is happening in the outside world, then truly there is cause for joy beyond measure.

So, I call this a song of incarnation. We are alive! And because we are alive we are thankful, and joyful and we know a profound love, here at the very centre of us, where no-one can come except ourselves – except ourselves and this other. So, if we are willing, our life is a communion of love between ourselves and the other.

Sin, grace and freedom : Romans 7 – 8. (Part 7)

Sin, grace and freedom : Romans 7 and 8

Part 7: Jesus is Lord. Despite everything, he is Lord and he is our Lord

I think that sin is a challenge to the lordship of Christ – and in my own understanding, I see increasingly clearly that his lordship is the be all and end all. If Jesus is Lord – and he is, if we Christians are utterly devoted to him – and we are, then surely, surely that should empower us to overcome the power of sin within us. Hence Paul’s deep distress: “How unhappy I am, for the good that I want to do, I don’t do, but the very thing that I don’t want to do, the thing that I hate – that is exactly what I do”. Counter-intuitively perhaps, I am going to see a glimmer of hope in the fact that Paul wrote this after being a Christian for many years, and he was as inducted into the ways of the Holy Spirit as any Christian can be. Yet he is still wrestling. His lament might have, perhaps, made sense as a new Christian still learning the ropes, or as someone who had faith, but not the Holy Spirit – but this is not the case with Paul. So, what we have confirmed – at least for Paul, and I am never going to claim that I am a stronger Christian than him – is that even as a fully mature, dedicated follower of Christ, who has devoted his life to spreading the gospel, and having achieved more, probably, than any other Christian who has ever followed Christ, it is still not possible for us to be completely free from the power of sin. Paul sees sin as an alien, outside power that is oppressing him; I see it as a spiritual and moral failure to exercise our will power sufficiently to choose the path that we approve of, and so fall prey to our divided mind. Either way, the answer is to rely on the grace of God, shown to us in Jesus, and to continually pick ourselves up and recommit to following the way of Christ. In our inmost being, we are whole-heartedly devoted to him, and we continue to struggle to live that out in practice. That is the Christian way of life. It is a life of grace and faith and progress – for no fall is ever sufficient to erase the assurance of our salvation, because God’s action in Christ is sovereign: when we could not help ourselves, God acted to save us. Step by step, we do grow in grace, we develop our relationship with God until we are lost in adoration – and one day that adoration will be complete – and we, we who are so prone to weakness and failure, to betraying our Lord and lying subject to the power of sin, we play our part in building God’s kingdom, on earth as it is in heaven.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ deals effectively, once and for all, and always, continually, to deal with the power and effect of sin within us, to set us free from our old way of life, and to introduce us to, and then continually encourage us on, in our new way of life, in which the freedom of the Spirit creates a new arena in which we can rejoice in the presence of God, and love and serve him. We, while retaining our standard human nature, and each one of us continuing to be ourselves – the person God created us to be, loves, and in Christ died to save – acquire a new freedom to live in communion with God, follow Christ and keep in step with the Spirit. Yes, we continue to trip up and fall, but we are not fallen. We are redeemed and set free to live with God.

Sin, grace and freedom : Romans 7 – 8. (Part 6)

Sin, grace and freedom : Romans 7 and 8

Part 6: We have switched allegiance – from sin to Christ, and so are now on a new path

Our Christian faith does bring us freedom in the Holy Spirit. The whole point of God’s saving work – and where we began our exploration – was that we should be set free from the dominion of sin. Paul saw sin as a power, external to who he is, which had seized control of essential elements of his person, to trap his will into actions that denied the goodness of God and which over-ruled his central convictions of how it is right to live. Human action – the action of the human will – had proved insufficient to overcome this oppression. Therefore, God had acted in the person of Jesus (I think we will have to leave a close consideration of the method by which God achieved this to another time) to set us free. God’s grace has nullified the deadweight of sin within us and lifted us back up to be fully in his presence, forgiven all the effects of our failures, and extracted the insurgent force so that we are free to accept the redeeming presence of the risen Christ – which is Christianity’s way of expressing in particular form the general point of accepting the presence of God, so that we are now enfolded in God’s presence, both surrounded by him and suffused by him. In Paul’s language, we “are in Christ”. Trying to express the completeness of our union with God, Paul uses ideas that God is in us, and we are in God. This is the antidote to the problem of “sin being in us”.

Now, in my understanding of what happens next, we still have our everyday, common or garden, human nature – the very nature that had proved inadequate in the first place. The difference now is that we no longer give our allegiance to the power of sin within us, we are giving our allegiance to God. His grace has expelled the oppressive power and effects of sin within us, and made our hearts, minds and spirits the arena in which the will of God rules supreme. Empowered by the gifts of the Holy Spirit – those true gifts, rather than my one-time false hankering after an easy way out of temptation – we acquire a new ability to remain true to God, live in the way of Christ, and build his kingdom. As I have already admitted, we are not immune to the power of sin to “reinfect us”, but we always have the antidote to this in the grace of God. The Spirit is the medicine of our soul, and by him we are made well. In practical terms, the Spirit gives us wonderful new freedom to say no to sin because now we can clearly identify it as only superficially good – rather than the all-important good we previously desired – or to identify it as not good at all but bad, and so we do have a new ability to resist temptation. The Holy Spirit gives us freedom from the power of sin, because in his company we have found a strength stronger than even the monstrous power of sin, so that we are no longer slaves to do whatever sin tells us to do; instead we are free – because we have acquired the power, and ability, and will to do what the Spirit tells us to do. However the Spirit does not over-rule our will to take away our responsibility for choosing to keep in step with the Spirit and follow the way of Christ. Paul speaks very movingly of how he longs for perfect freedom – not that he would ever dare to claim that he had attained it. But the one thing he does is to forget what has gone before, and strive forwards to take hold of the prize for which Christ took hold of him.  Life in the Spirit is perfect freedom – but only while we remain in step with the Spirit. We are never free from the danger of tripping up, but we are free to carry on, for whenever we trip up, God graciously picks us up and restores our freedom to live in communion with him. Sin is no longer a barrier between us and God, because his grace is always able to overcome the power and effects of sin.

Sin, grace and freedom : Romans 7 – 8. (Part 5)

Sin, grace and freedom : Romans 7 and 8

Part 5: The Holy Spirit is our guide and strength, but is the comforter who stands by us, not the one who takes over from us

We must therefore now turn to our relationship with the Holy Spirit. There have certainly been a few times in my life when I’ve wished that the Holy Spirit would “zap” me – now I hope that he never will, though, of course, the Spirit reserves the right to do whatever he wishes. What did I have in mind? I wondered if it was possible to be so filled with the Holy Spirit that it became – in practice – impossible to sin. The bible talks about being given “a new heart and a new spirit”, and perhaps if this happened, the human will, which keeps failing (and also often succeeding, but never succeeding in everything, always) would suddenly find that it always succeeds. For this to be a good thing, it could not be an inner voice that simply commands and over-rules the voice in our mind that is ready to give in to temptation – that would be a restraining of sin, through the power of God that would be over-ruling what it is that, “I really want to do”. But would it be possible for the Holy Spirit to give me a new invincible will? When I feel closely enfolded in the presence of God, I do have the power – because I have the desire – to only do what pleases God. Yet that experience is not long-lasting; it “fades away”, so that I feel I am now relying on my own resources (even though I freely acknowledge that God is still with me, because he is always with me), and, left to my own devices, at some point my will power will crack and I will give in to the call of the divided mind.

So, what if, once you are filled with the Holy Spirit – in this special but false sense – you are now given an invincible will power? The joy, strength, clarity of purpose, good judgement and glad commitment to God’s goodness, truth and love – that you sometimes felt before – would now be your constant experience and outlook on all that you do. I do find this a very attractive possibility – but it’s never happened to me, and in my experience, I haven’t found anyone else who has it. You do occasionally meet someone who strikes you as a truly holy person, though I strongly suspect that they would never dream of describing themselves as having reached this state of perfection. The difference now is that – based on my understanding of correct theology – I hope that it never will happen to me (even if it is somehow possible). The reason is that I do not want God to do this for me; I don’t want him to make it easy for me; I don’t want God to take away my responsibility for using my faith to follow the way of Christ. Please note: I am not striving after my own righteousness. I agree entirely with Paul that this is not possible. What I want to do is rely on the grace of Christ and trust in him for my redemption. And in my response to God’s saving grace, although I long to do better (in fact, I long to be perfect), and I am genuinely trying to do better, I want to fully accept my human nature, and I would rather try and fail, and rely on God’s grace to forgive me, than for God to intervene and somehow make it easy for me to be righteous through some sort of spiritual gifts that “replace” – if this is the right word – who I am, and which take on the job of responding to God for me. As a Christian, I do want to receive spiritual gifts to help me, and I do want to do better, but I think this process only has true value if it is me who is doing it. It’s a difficult point to be clear about, and I need to beware the vanity of “wanting to do it myself” – but I have already freely admitted that I cannot do it by myself – I am, and always will be, a debtor to grace. But if the redemption achieved by Christ is to truly mean what we believe it does, and if God’s creation of us remains valid rather than being over-ruled by him as a mistake, then I think I am correct in believing that God must not give me an invincible spirit to be true to him. I must reach out to him as I am – poor wretched sinner that I am, but gloriously redeemed wretched sinner that I am – and take hold of my faith, and seek gifts of the Spirit, and rely on the grace of God, and step forward as I try to follow Christ.

Sin, grace and freedom : Romans 7 – 8. (Part 4)

Sin, grace and freedom : Romans 7 and 8

Part 4: We are always debtors to grace – because Christ affirms our human nature and becomes the channel of grace whereby we find freedom

However, Paul does see the correct solution to this dilemma -though it remains a painful situation. The key thing is not to reintroduce the righteousness that comes from keeping the Law by the back door. Paul has already wrestled with the problem: surely if we truly love and believe in God, and if we try really hard, then we will be able to stay right with God? “No!” is Paul’s sombre but honest and correct answer.  So, don’t now fall into the trap of thinking, “Surely, now that I am saved by God in Christ and empowered by the gifts of the Spirit, surely now I will succeed?”. The answer is still, “No!” – and it is painful, but Paul’s correct answer is to keep directing us back to the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Keep coming back to this spring of healing and forgiveness. We are always debtors to grace. We must keep relying on the free gift of God’s love shown to us in Jesus. This is so painful. Paul, and we too, who see the glorious transformation that God works in us through Christ, truly do feel that now perfection is within our reach. My own view is that, in principle, it now is, yet in practice, it remains just out of reach (sometimes very far out of reach!).

Does this mean that in some way Jesus has failed? That God’s plan of salvation in Christ has not quite worked out? No, I don’t think this is the case -though there is an irreducible tension in the Christian life. The key to understanding is to keep looking clearly at God’s method of salvation. This also has a powerfully affirming message for our creation -that is, of God’s creation of us, that he has not thought better of his initial attempts at making us in his own image and has replaced that with a better idea. So, God redeemed us through a gift of grace. This does have a powerful transforming effect on us, but it does not erase the fundamentals of our human nature. It is not as though humanity was having difficulty passing a test, so God did the test for us and gave us the pass certificate, saying “Now you’re ready to get this right by yourself”. We are, both at the start of our Christian lives, and throughout them to the very end, dependent on the grace shown to us in Jesus. Christians are always called to strive for righteousness, but our ability to stand before God at peace will never rest on our own righteousness, but on the gift that God has given us in Christ. We must always pay more attention to God’s power and willingness to forgive us than to our own sinfulness. Our failure is so painful, but it is not destructive to our joy, because always, always, the grace of God comes through to lift us up. Our redemption is always complete, our salvation secure, even though we will continue to sin. Paul corrected a possible wrong turning in his letter to the church at Corinth. There, some disciples were so delighted by the power of God to free them from sin that they had the idea that they were now free to sin as much as they wanted, because God’s grace would always simply wipe it away – in that way, they could enjoy even more grace. Paul gave that idea short shrift. Our faith must be genuine, and our commitment to Christ complete; we cannot deliberately commit ourselves to “colluding” with the divided will, even if, in practice we still sometimes find ourselves unwillingly subject to it. The whole point of Christ’s grace is to transfer us from the dominion of sin into God’s kingdom. In God’s kingdom we are called to live in God’s way, and so we cannot casually resort to our old way of life, not even trying to overcome the weaknesses of human nature, and think that that is somehow compatible with living in communion with God.

Nevertheless, perfection remains our calling. It appears to be tantalizingly within reach, though, in practice it always remains beyond us.

Sin, grace and freedom : Romans 7 – 8. (Part 3)

Sin, grace and freedom : Romans 7 and 8

Part 3: We do not earn our salvation, it is given as a gift – but what happens next?

Fundamentally, sin is a challenge to the lordship of Christ. In the first part of Paul’s letter to the Romans, he wrestles with a crucial problem: “How on earth did we Jews manage to miss the salvation that God has offered?”. This represents the essential failure of human nature, for Paul sees very clearly that the Law (that is, the Jewish religious law that God has gifted to the Jewish people and which is recorded in the Christian Old Testament) IS the word of God. It is complete, perfect righteousness; follow it and you will be saved. There is nothing inadequate about the Law. It should have brought complete salvation to those who follow it, and those who follow it would be able to present themselves before God: “We are the righteous ones”. Yet Paul came to realise, once he became a Christian, that the Law could not bring salvation because no-one is able to follow it. You can strive mightily and achieve enormous progress – and this is a perennially popular appeal for religious movements to become “the pure ones” and prove that you have what it takes to please God. Yet all fall short. If there was someone who did not fall short then he or she would deserve salvation, and God would be in the wrong to deny them it.

In Christ, Paul realised that God has provided a new solution to the problem of human sin and so unattained salvation. Instead of calling, urging us, to immense effort to earn our salvation, God will give it to us as a gift. This is the essence of what we call “the grace of God”. God grants us salvation as a freely-given, undeserved gift, given not because we have earned it but because God loves us; he knows that we need this gift, and it is his nature to love. This is the Christian message: that God in Christ has acted to give us what we could not achieve in any other way. This is why Jesus is Lord and Saviour and why Christians continually look to him, the person of Christ, rather than to any code, values, principles or teaching (even though these are also important). Paul was absolutely over-whelmed by the grace of God, that reached out to include even him. This is why Paul’s message was always, “We preach Christ crucified and risen!”. This is the method by which God redeems humankind.

But what happens next? There is a strong argument – and Christian groups have sometimes taken this wrong turning – to adopt a new righteousness. And, indeed, Christians are called to adopt a new righteousness, but it always has to be founded on the grace of God, otherwise it becomes self-righteousness. However, we understand the appeal. You are so delighted that, in Christ, at last you have discovered the spiritual power to forgive you and set you free from your sins. At last you are opened up to an intimate closeness to God that is astonishing in comparison to your previous relationship. You experience God’s presence in enormously powerful ways. What is the most natural human response but to say, “Thank you Lord! I respond to you by complete repentance; from now on, I will live only to love and serve you”. Empowered by God’s gifts, especially by the new Christian experience of the Holy Spirit, this joy, hope and commitment to living a new life is entirely genuine. However, it raises a new problem for Christians. The simple truth is that, enfolded in the grace of God, Christians should not sin. Jesus is Lord; we are set free from the dominion of sin; the Lord is with us. We should not sin. And, hopefully, we do a lot better than before, and some people do very well indeed – but we do not succeed in becoming perfect. However, we feel that we should. Before, we were relying on our own efforts – as Jewish people were in trying to keep the Law – but now we Christians are relying on the grace of God and the gifts of the Spirit. If we still fail, then it implies that not even grace and the Spirit are sufficient to redeem us.

Sin, grace and freedom : Romans 7 – 8. (Part 2)

Sin, grace and freedom : Romans 7 and 8

Part 2: Who is in charge of me – I don’t think it’s me?

Paul’s answer was insightful, but I’m not sure that I will support it. He decided that, as he did what he truly didn’t want to do, then, in an important way, it wasn’t him responsible for the action, and he instead saw it as the action of sin within him. This needs unpacking, but initially I will see this as Paul considering that sin is a power that has taken control of him, and to which he is subject. Therefore, it is not him who has gone astray, it is the power of sin within him which has made the wrong decision. I don’t really like this idea because I think simple honesty requires us to own up and take responsibility: “Yes, it was me who failed”. Perhaps, when we have investigated Paul’s theology a little more, we will be able to bridge the gap, but this is my starting point.

Where I would begin is with the paradox: “No, I really didn’t want to do this action”, but neither is it true to say that, “I really didn’t want to do this. I hate it”. The fact is that we really did want to do it – that’s why we did it, and so, we don’t actually hate the action – we love it – but we also disapprove of it. This understanding accurately reflects the idea of having a divided mind. The action is a contradiction of our principles but accurately reflects our core drives, both conscious and unconscious, or it correctly expresses part of our essential personality – even though we may wish we were different.

I begin with trying to take responsibility for my own actions, being honest with myself, not trying to fool myself, or others, or wriggling out of responsibility by claiming, “It wasn’t really me”. It was. But where is Paul coming from? I think that his theology is making an extremely serious point, so that – although we may think differently, or at least express ourselves differently – it is not the case that Paul is trying to wriggle out of taking responsibility. If anything, his accusation against himself is even more serious than my accusation against myself. In my understanding, I am acknowledging that I do not have complete control or direction even of my own mind. I accept that my sins are down to my choices, though I see those choices as a failure of my will-power. I knew what I “really” wanted, but I didn’t have the strength to stick to that when confronted with the temptation to do what I “really did want” – or at least what a part of my own mind really did want. The seriousness of Paul’s complaint against himself is that he has been, as it were, “taken over by a foreign power”. He appears to see sin, not as a poor, or mistaken or destructive choice that he has made, but as a power that has taken possession of him. This is an appalling situation to be in, and Paul is making astounding admissions in seeing things as he does.

Sin, grace and freedom : Romans 7 – 8. (Part 1)

This theological reflection – in 7 parts – explores key ideas that Paul raises in his letter to the Romans in chapters 7 and 8, and, in particular to a key passage in chapter 7, verses 15 – 20, which are worth quoting, so that we have them present in mind. I will add verses 24- 25.

“I do not even acknowledge my own actions as mine, for what I do is not what I want to do, but what I detest. But if what I do is against my will, then clearly I agree with the law and hold it to be admirable. This means that it is no longer I who perform the action, but sin that dwells in me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me – my unspiritual self I mean – for though the will to do good is there, the ability to effect it is not. The good that I want to do, I fail to do; but what I do is the wrong which is against my will; and if what I do is against my will, clearly it is no longer I who am the agent, but sin that has its dwelling in me.

Wretched creature that I am, who is there to rescue me from this state of death? Who but God? Thanks be to him through Jesus Christ our Lord”.

Sin, grace and freedom : Romans 7 and 8

Part 1: What we want and what we really want: the divided mind

Paul is clearly in great distress, and facing a severe dilemma. He is trying to make sense of his own weakness – that is, of human weakness. He is clear in his own mind that he really does want to do the right thing. He is devoted to God and can completely see what he should do, and that the course of action that he instead takes is wrong. He is truly committed to God, and truly wants to do what is right and what honours God. Instead, he finds himself doing the very thing that he has set himself against, that fills him with dismay, and leaves him feeling a failure who has betrayed God and deserted his faith. He was put to the test and failed. He is aware that this has happened over and over again. He has made his most solemn promises to God, that this time he will not let his Lord down – and then he’s gone and done it again.

What are we to make of this? From our modern perspective, we have some advantages. We are indebted to Augustine and his idea of the divided mind, and we can make sense of this through our understanding of evolution. Human beings just are equipped with minds that have at least two layers. We have the will that arises from our values, principles and reasoning. This leads us to make decisions of which we approve, and we are fully aware of how we came to this decision. However, we also have our more ancient mind – sometimes referred to as “the reptilian mind” which is completely selfish. To our mind now, it is immoral, because it makes decisions of which we do not approve, but, strictly speaking, it is amoral, because it simply doesn’t take moral value judgements into account. This will simply says, “I want this!”. We are conscious of these desires, though this element of our mind can also work unconsciously.

What often happens in practice – and I think this is what Paul is lamenting – is that we are absolutely firm on sticking to the action that we approve of. Our will is saying, “Do this!”, and we say, “Yes, yes, yes” – until, all of a sudden we find that we have switched allegiance to the other part of our will, and have done precisely the action of which we don’t approve. Immediately, we are remorseful: “Why on earth did I do that? I really didn’t want to do it”. Yet we find that we have done exactly that.

While our modern understanding of our mind is helpful, it still doesn’t allow us to abdicate responsibility for the failure of will represented in the switch to doing what we don’t want to do. Paul understood it as a spiritual failure – a failure to show sufficient will power and sufficient devotion to God, and I think we should honour this point of view, for it is still true – even if we can now use our understanding of how our minds work, hopefully, to help us in additional ways that Paul wasn’t aware of. How then can we make progress on this issue?