The only way is forward

Dear Lord, we have made mistakes, which we cannot undo. We have made poor choices, and, in failing to resist pressure, we have not stood by our convictions. We have slipped into temptation, or gladly chosen wrong-doing, only to regret it afterwards.

Dear Lord, if we could go back and change those decisions, we would do so, for in the light of your presence we see that anything that is not true to you is a lie, and deeply damaging, for us and for those around us.

We ask you to forgive us, restore us, heal us. Help us to embrace the way forward that you show us in the graceful loving kindness of Jesus.

Lord, many of us already suffer from too much guilt, so – rather than seeking to change by taking on yet more guilt – instead, help us to look clearly and calmly at the gift of new life that you offer, to understand better the challenges that we face, and to accept the guidance and strength of your Spirit, that we may, indeed, perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your holy name.

Amen.

It’s time to talk about sin. Part 1

(This week’s article is about Sin and Freedom – coming in 4 parts)

It’s time to talk about sin

Part 1

Secular critics bemoan the way Christians are “obsessed” with sin. “It’s so negative, so pessimistic, so based on guilt”, they say, “time to leave it all behind”. However, my only interest in sin is to be free of it. My faith has given me a wonderful vision of what life would be like if it wasn’t blighted by this thing we call “sin”. The astonishing thing is not that Christians labour under a guilty load of sin, but that they have an inkling of what life is like without it.

We must accept that human beings (in our sinful frailty?) have indeed often messed up in our thinking about sin, and Christians have tortured themselves and imposed burdens on others through our lack of understanding and spiritual maturity. Another reason we’ve messed up is because of the extraordinary power of sin. Evil is so very evil that it has the ability to corrupt even those things that are in themselves  good. So, it’s not as though – if Christians stopped banging on about sin – it would all just go away, and we would live in a guilt-free, happy and altruistic world. All that would happen is that sin would continue to run riot, but no-one would even be attempting to frustrate it. Sin is like a force that apparently has a life of its own (though in reality, it’s simply parasitic upon our own human actions), and, in practical terms, it is as though it assails us and malevolently erodes the foundations of justice, goodness and truth in society, and in individual lives. It is an extraordinary reality. I wish it didn’t exist – not so that I would be free from having to talk about it, but so that we could all be free from its cruel influence. We all know that it can take a moment to destroy what took years to create, and this asymmetry explains some of the power of sin. We all know that even if each person just does one small act of selfishness now and then, somehow, when everyone does the same, it adds up to the nightmare of grinding poverty, of children collecting drinking water from muddy puddles and dying from preventable diseases. Each person just felt a bit afraid and threatened, and before we know it, we are at war, or demonising those who are different. So, let’s not feel bad about talking about sin.

Tip towards hopefulness

Dear Lord,

We pray that our measure of strength will outweigh our burdens so that the balance of our spirit tips towards hopefulness,

That our determination to do good will be greater than the frustrations which threaten to wear us down,

That we will not be indifferent to the needs of others, but will continue to listen to the call to justice and compassion.

Do not let us give in to fear, prejudice or despair, but instead live grace-filled lives, and fulfil your calling to us.

Amen

Encountering God Part 5

Encountering God

Part 5

We have to wait. This can be so painful. Some people may be able to say, “Bloody hell! I’ve been waiting all my life and the bastard’s still not turned up”. Let’s say it how it is and be honest with our feelings. God can take it. Can we? What on earth is going on here? Again, I don’t really know. All I can say is: don’t try to force it; don’t give up; don’t despair; don’t think that you have failed, or done something wrong; certainly don’t think that God doesn’t want you, that he’s not interested in you, that he doesn’t care about you, that you’re not good enough. You want to believe in God. Then start believing. Start acting as though God is real in your life. This may seem strange, like a charade, dishonest, wrong. But all believing in God is an act of faith. All you’re doing is extending this to before you encountered God as well as after encountering him. Abandon all expectations of what meeting with God should be like. When it happens – if it happens – and, yes, somehow, we have to put that “if” in the sentence, it might not happen – you will know that it’s happened. But remember, when it happens it could be the dramatic revelation of a conversion experience, or it could be the unnoticed welling up of truth till you surprise yourself with the sudden revelation: “Gosh. I believe!”. Let’s go back to that “if”: this is really important: if the encounter with God is real, then we must allow ourselves the possibility that it might not happen. Meeting with God is not something that we are socially constructing for ourselves; it is meeting a real person. He “might not show up”, but then, when we do meet him, we know that this is a real encounter. In the same way that we cannot force someone to love us – but when they do it is truly wonderful, so we cannot force God to appear at our command – but when he does appear, it is overwhelming, and wonderful beyond measure. Somehow, we have to believe that he does love us – and then try and spot the signs that this is so – remembering that the signs might not be the ones we were expecting.

God is real. It’s quite easy to accept that as a proposition that may well be true, and, personally, I am inclined to believe it. Just as it is easy to weigh up evidence to the contrary and conclude that this is a false proposition. But to know that God is real – to know this for yourself, requires an encounter with the living God. If you have not had this encounter yet, then reach out. Don’t wait for an encounter and only then decide to give your life to loving God. Start loving him now. Act out a life of faith in him. This sounds so strange: “So, it’s only an act; it’s not real”. But the acting out is both: yes, it is just an act because you are starting to live in tune with a truth that you have not yet encountered, but your actions are also deeply real because you are acting on faith. And what is more faithful than to show faith before you truly, actually have faith?  One of the ideas about the resurrection of Jesus that I love is, “You will meet him on the way”. The resurrection of Jesus has just been announced, but most of the disciples have not met him yet. They are told to go to Galilee and they will meet him there. They have to set off believing that they will meet him before they have encountered for themselves that he is risen. I think this is a good illustration for the life of faith in God. God must be encountered as a real presence in your life. Reach out and give him a chance. I understand that this is still infuriating for those who really want to meet God and feel that he just is not there. I am simply trying to explore as well as I can what the experience of meeting God is like. I wish you well with your search.

Once we have met God, we will love him. Love him with all our hearts. What we need is to encounter him for ourselves. He is real. He is near at hand. He is calling us. He is reaching out his hand now, as he has been all our lives. Reach out in faith and put your hand in his.

Encountering God Part 4

Encountering God

Part 4

So, some people are lucky. They say that God, in his grace, always makes the first move, and they have encountered God: he is a reality in their lives, and they love him. What about those others who want to know God and God just isn’t playing his part? If you are saying to yourself, “I want to believe in God”, then, by definition you have made a move towards him. If God is supposed to always make the first move, then he should certainly make a move toward you now that you have declared an interest. God just needs to get a move on!

This is why I say we need to reach out to him before we know that he is there. Consider the gap between knowing about God and knowing God. Everybody knows something about God – even if they then totally reject those ideas. But knowing God requires some sort of encounter and relationship. We may say, “I used to just know what others said about God, but now I know him for myself”. This sort of knowledge of God very naturally overflows into having faith in him. However, we are considering the situation in which we don’t at the moment believe in God. We understand what belief in God is, but we don’t actually have that belief, so we have neither knowledge of God nor belief in him. So, it is an act of faith to reach out our hand before we have either knowledge or belief that he is there. It’s so counter-intuitive. But if we wait until we have faith before we reach out our hand, then we will never reach out, for reaching out is what faith is. When we reach out, we already have faith, because we are showing our faith, even before God takes our hand. Now that is faith!

So, you reach out your hand. What happens next? What should happen is that you experience your hand being taken into another’s hand, an experience of someone leaning into you in an embrace, of a whisper in your ear, which should say, “Hello. Welcome” but instead audaciously says, as the very first words you hear, “I love you”. Of course, I am speaking in analogies; please don’t expect sensory experiences with your external senses; this is all going on in our minds and hearts, but this is the closest I can come to in explaining what an encounter with God is like, and so, if you have reached out your hand, this is what you should experience.

And you might.

Or you might not. God, of course, has no physical hands, so if you literally reach out your hand – which is a lovely gesture and very helpful once you have got to know and love God – you will not actually feel anything. The voice in your ear, which is, of course, the inner ear of your mind, and the feeling of close intimacy are easier to come to terms with, but cannot be forced, and are in no way guaranteed. You just have to take the risk that you reach out your hand, give yourself, and you get nothing back. I can’t explain this. Except perhaps to say that God is a personal agent in charge of his actions, whom we cannot control. He is not like electricity and if we plug in our plug then our device will power up.

Renewal

Teach us to trust the sureness of your forgiveness.

Your grace opens up to us the way of salvation.

And even while we still strive for fullness of life

You fill us with peace,

We neither deserve, nor can we understand.

So, we praise you for the new life you give us.

Tender to our weaknesses, you soothe away our sorrows.

Your love aches within you,

As you long for us to be made whole.

You stretch out your hand to caress us.

Your fierce passion for us burns up our offences

Before they can reach your heart to sour it against us.

You remember that, alone, we become afraid,

And left to our own devices we hurt one another.

So, you come to us, to lift us up,

And reconcile us to one another.

Surely, you shall set us upon your shoulder

And carry us home

Rejoicing.

Encountering God. Part 3

Encountering God

Part 3

Some of us are lucky and we have a religious upbringing. This means that we are introduced to ideas about God and to the normality of believing him before we have met him for ourselves. As we are children, we just go along with what our parents say. They – and all the others worshipping – seem to believe in God; they are talking about him as though he exists, in as natural a way as talking about anyone else who exists. And, more than this, they are praying to him, worshipping him, and expressing love as though they are deeply grateful for what this person called, “God” has done for them. Then, at some point it all becomes real for you. This might happen gradually: the reality of God sort of creeps up on you. Perhaps like a mist rolling in from the sea, you suddenly discover that you are enveloped, and what seemed far away, or something that you just knew about, you now know for yourself, because you are experiencing the presence of God – the presence of God which you’ve heard about for so long; had seen no reason to object to by rejecting your religious upbringing, but had not known for yourself – and now you do. Others with a religious upbringing can point to a moment of conversion: “It was about 7.30pm on 3rd March; I was just thinking quietly when, wham! all of a sudden God was there in the room with me. I was overwhelmed and fell to my knees”.

Both these avenues for meeting God can happen to people without a religious upbringing. I think it’s just easier if you have had a religious upbringing because you are giving yourself opportunities in your life to encounter God. You are making time and space when God might speak to you, and you have equipped yourself with the ideas and images that would make talking about God easier, and easier to comprehend what you are experiencing. Many people today do not give God much of a chance to get a word in with them – but he still manages quite often. When he does, it may well strike you as a revelation out of the blue – and indeed it may be, but perhaps also, it will be, as we were thinking above, a slow unfolding of a dance where we hadn’t heard the music start, but unwittingly we had taken the first steps towards a hovering truth, still barely at the corner of our eyes, until it stands right before us, and, suddenly shifting our focus from far off to near at hand, we discover that we have been staring at the one we love all along, but now we can see him.

Adoration and thanksgiving

Gentle and compassionate Lord,

Whose joy in living pervades creation,

Our laughter catches the echo of your mirth

When friends celebrate their well-being together.

We adore you in our thankfulness

For the goodness we enjoy,

And bless you for your silent strength

Beside us in times of trouble.

You have poured out your compassion upon us,

Healing our twisted personalities.

Your abundant mercy shames our petty thoughts and deeds.

Your constant love gives us the security to confess our guilt.

The over-flowing life found in you gives us fresh hope

And in you we find healing and wholeness.

Encountering God Part 2

Encountering God

Part 2

So, many people wait, wanting to believe, but not quite able to let themselves go – to give themselves to the life of faith, until they know for sure. There is this strange tension between knowledge and faith. People who have met with God are so overwhelmed by the reality and wonder of God that they want to say, “I know that God is real”. However, strictly speaking, they do not “know”; they simply “believe” that God is real. And in our society, knowledge ranks above faith in the hierarchy. Kierkegaard gives a very good reasonable explanation as to why it makes sense to invert that hierarchy, but it is not the natural way for people to think before they have come to faith. And that is exactly the dilemma they find themselves in, because they don’t have faith yet.

Of course, some people seem to be very lucky, and God just comes to meet them! This is so unfair for those who want to meet God, who feel, perhaps, that they are open and trying, and God just doesn’t turn up. On a theological point, I need to point out that much of what I’ve said so far is wrong, in that I am focussing on the need for us to reach out in order to meet God. Actually, the truth is that God always reaches out to us before we reach out to him. This is what we call grace and is the very essence of God. So, what’s going on here?

It’s not that easy to classify, because everyone is different. When people fall in love and look back on how it happened, who can say who made the first move? We may well be able to remember the first moment when that spark leapt into life, but did that happen because of the smile she gave me – was that the first act of our love – or did she smile because of the way I had looked at her – perhaps a look before I even knew myself that I loved her? But with God, he always makes the first move – but it’s not easy to discern exactly what it was or how it happened. As with human relationships, all we know is that we now love each other, so it is with God, we know that we love him, but we can’t quite see far enough back to notice when it happened. We weren’t watching at the time; we didn’t realise that God was drawing him to us with cords of love.