The Lord is here; his kingdom has come

Part 8: Our experience of God is of someone else, and God is wonderful beyond measure

It would be a nice, easy way out of many a dilemma if God was only an experience in my own mind. However, throughout this piece we have tried to be true to how people actually experience God. We have accepted the paradoxes and the unanswerable questions, rather than “tidying up loose ends” to make the whole thing easy to accept. So, Christians simply do not experience God as fully encompassed by themselves. Put simply, God is “out there”. He is an independent person over whom I have no control whatsoever. The crucial dimension is expressed in the experience of “meeting with God” or having “an encounter” with him. God is not me! I am nothing like God. To suggest that God is some sort of extrapolation of my best self or my fondest hopes is ridiculous when one considers the futile weakness of humankind compared to the awesome and glorious grace of God. God is someone else, and the experience of the presence of God is that of meeting with another person.

So, there is a table and chairs and a window looking onto the garden. In this setting, in which I might easily be engrossed in entirely secular matters such as reading the news or doing the ironing, from time to time I become aware that the Lord is with me. I have learnt over the years that the Lord is always with me, but I am not always aware of him. However, the moment I turn my attention to him then I become aware of “an additional presence” that was not there (to my attention) until I thought about him. I don’t mean to imply that I can “switch God on and off” whenever I wish – God is not me; he is someone else. So, sometimes I long to feel God’s presence but to me he appears to be absent – even though my firm faith conviction is that I am not alone. What I mean is that, very often, when I lift my attention from the mundane, I become aware of a sacredness that embraces me.

The expression of this presence varies according to what God wants to share with me, which will vary according to my need. However, there are common strands to what this presence feels like. Although there is just a table, chairs and a window, all of which are inanimate objects expressing nothing but their physical presence, as I become aware of God’s presence, I become aware that I am being held in an embrace of intense love. (If this is somehow a creation of my own mind, it is a simply astonishing achievement which I wish I could bottle and sell to others). I know that I love being alive, but the moment I think of God’s presence I am overwhelmed with the wonder of life. I feel blessed beyond measure. I am conscious that there is a forgiving, redeeming, healing, renewing person who is “my friend”, who is completely on my side, and who is constantly at work with all the power and love of God to make me whole.

Now if you say, “Aha, so what you really value is life, love, forgiveness, healing etc” and you are simply using God as a psychological vehicle to deliver these good things to yourself, then I reply that you do not understand at all. Perhaps an analogy is of being in love. When someone is in love it is not the sense of floating on air or bursting with joy that they love, it is the person that they love. If I try to “extract” “God’s good gifts” from the person of God, so that I can enjoy the gifts without “the baggage” of believing in the person of God, then I discover that all the gifts crumble into dust. I do not love, love; I love God, and as I become aware of his presence and of his love for me, then my response is to love him. The emphasis is on loving him as the person who fills my heart. Not simply loving him as the vehicle of the gifts that I really value.

The Lord is here; his kingdom has come

Part 7: Starting to examine precisely what we mean by “The Lord is here”

I have gone quite a long way round in explaining how much I don’t know about God, and in trying to lay out a broad framework for how I experience God’s presence. I will try once more to focus in on what I mean by, “The Lord is here”. What I will try and describe has been experienced by countless people, but there are many different ways to experience God, so, while what I will describe is common, I am outlining my own experience.

In this wonderful world, in this vale of tears, in the material universe created by the Big Bang, and human society shaped by evolution and the history of civilisation, we can meet with God and experience his presence. Sitting in the room now, with table and chairs, and a window looking out into the garden, and other people as they come in and out, the Lord is also here. Of course, I cannot see him or hear him, and so it is quite a puzzle to clarify what do I mean by saying the Lord is here? In some ways, I put it as though God is an additional item in the room. There is a table and chairs and a window and sometimes other people – oh, and also God. I don’t think there is any escaping this way of thinking – or, at least, this way of talking. An atheist sees the table and chairs but denies that God is also present.

I am completely convinced of the independent, objective reality of God as a person. The alternative to this is to understand God as a dimension of my mind. He is a part of what I do. We might say that God, or my sense of the presence of God, is an aspect of my way of looking at the world. In this sense, God did not create me; I created God. God is an idea or a set of values which I have adopted and I impose these criteria onto what actually exists – that is, onto material reality – and in doing so “I see God”, because God is the lens through which I look at the world. This would be a pretty satisfying way of understanding God, and it would certainly make more sense, or, at least, be easier to believe in, than believing in an independent, spiritual agent who is the person of God. There would be no difficult questions to answer in such an understanding of God, and anyone and everyone could immediately opt into it (if it suited their preferences) because “faith in God” could be understood in an entirely secular way. “God” is the way some people choose to look at the world. If you do, you see God everywhere; if you don’t he is invisible – or, rather, he is non-existent.

The Lord is here; his kingdom has come

Part 6: The mystery of the Holy Spirit

I find the Holy Spirit an unusual idea – in some ways superfluous. If we begin with God the Father, it is an awesome development to come to believe that he “has sent his one and only Son”. The language immediately becomes confusing and unhelpful, in that “sending his Son” implies that God, the Father, sent someone else – albeit closely related – to do a job for him. The correct way to put it is that God, the Father, himself came to us in the person of Jesus. Thus, we enter into the endless joys of the Trinity, whereby Christians have tried to square the circle of saying that there is only one God, but he exists in 3 forms, each of them fully God, fully united with each other, yet distinct persons. Trinitarian theology is a masterclass in reasoning, but we have to keep returning to the central point that it was not developed as some sort of academic discipline. Christian theology evolves out of Christians’ experience of the presence of God. Christians are well aware that the various things they say about God sound contradictory, inconsistent and simply impossible to equate. However, they have refused to take the easy way out by ditching some elements that are hardest to fit into the whole. This is because they are absolutely committed to being true to the variety of ways in which they experience God. And if that produces paradoxes – to put it politely – then they would rather live with the paradoxes than iron them out by cutting out the jarring clashes.

I described the Holy Spirit as somewhat superfluous because the obvious thing for the early Christians to say is that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus. And in practical effect, he is. After the resurrection appearances, the risen Christ was not seen again, but his disciples didn’t mind because they had the Holy Spirit in Jesus’ place. Except that this is not quite right either, because Christians do not believe that they have “lost touch” with Jesus, now that he is incorporated into heaven “at the Father’s right hand side”. So, in order to maintain the identity of who Jesus is, when Christians experience the Holy Spirit this must be some different and new dimension of God. Hence we end up with the trinity: one God in three persons. So, I am completely wrong in saying the Spirit is superfluous, and this is one of the many instances where we try and marry what we believe is correct theology with a true and genuine interpretation of spiritual experience. So, for me, with my close connection with God the Father, and my theological commitment to the saving work of Jesus, I “don’t need” the Holy Spirit as a separate person of God. It would be completely adequate for me to understand that God – who is spirit – should “come to me” through his spirit, for he is no longer available through his incarnate form in Jesus, so instead I experience “the spirit of God” – the Father. And, of course, the Holy Spirit is the spirit of God the Father, but not in the sense of a message from God, or a sense of the presence of the Father. Instead, the Holy Spirit – who is God – presents himself to Christians as a new and distinct person of God.

It is this personhood of the Holy Spirit that I know so little about. I have some intimations, but, unlike some Christians, notably Pentecostalists, I have insufficient familiarity with this person of God to talk with much confidence. In contrast, I understand a great deal about the person of Jesus, and am developing some connection with him, while God the Father is “an old friend” – apologies for that appalling assumption of familiarity with the awesome God who is beyond all our imaginings. Remember, we are exploring our experience of the presence of God, and spirituality and theology do not always sit easily together.

The Lord is here; his kingdom has come

Part 5: The centrality of accepting that Jesus is Lord

The Holy Spirit is almost a complete mystery! I find it almost comical to think that after being a Christian for 50 years I have almost no understanding of God. However, I take comfort in the thought that this is not entirely a bad thing. Partly we can claim that it’s inevitable because God is so far beyond our understanding, and though this is, theoretically, true, my defence does not rest on this point. Rather I see more clearly that Christian faith is based on our individual experience of our experience of the presence of God and this should rightly be focussed through an experience of what God has done in Christ – and it is this that I am developing a deeper understanding of. Christianity is not a carefully worked out faith, honed on theoretical or academic principles until all the pieces fit together in a coherent and consistent whole. Rather, in a spiritual equivalent of the Big Bang, it exploded into life through the experience of the person, Jesus. What the first disciples were most aware of is that, “Jesus is Lord!”. They were acutely aware that, in Jesus, they had seen God. Remember that for Jews in particular, this was an absolutely scandalous belief. However, they were constrained by the power of their experience to come to this conclusion. The bedrock of their faith is that in the person of Jesus, God has come to us; he has offered himself to us in all the fullness of God – that is, God the Father. And, in Jesus, God has saved us. This was all part of the first disciples current experience. To them, it was mind-blowing; something that they could not fully understand. And their experience is the experience of Christians ever since. However, the first Christians didn’t sit around for several generations thinking, “We must mull this over carefully, and one day we will have a humdinger of a new religion to launch into the world”. Instead, they worked out from their present experience of the presence of God in Jesus, and rejoiced in that revelation, while trying to work out what all this means in some sort of coherent intellectual sense. It took Christians over 300 years just to get the basics of our theology sorted out – but, again, I do not see this as a weakness of Christianity, but a strength. For what it is testament to is that our faith rests in, and is developed from, the unique experience of God’s presence in Jesus – and not in any carefully thought-out religious theory. This experience of the presence of God in Jesus was, most of all, focussed on the experience of the risen Christ.

This, of course, is precisely where my own faith is at its weakest, but I will do my best to return to explore this. For now, the interesting point is that, though the resurrection appearances of Jesus were absolutely crucial – it is unthinkable that Christianity could have begun without them – they were few in number and short lived. Christianity does not rest on experiencing appearances of the risen Christ – nor, in fact, on visions of him. It is extremely significant that when the appearances of the risen Christ stopped – in the event known as the ascension of Christ – the first Christians were not at all sad or disappointed. This is because they were overwhelmed with their new way of experiencing God – God the Holy Spirit.

The Lord is here; his kingdom has come

Part 4: Our personal experience of what it means to experience God’s presence can be very distinctive

Let us try now to home in more closely on this experience that “the Lord is here”. I will be considering this within my understanding of Christianity, though I don’t deny for a moment that other faiths also enable an encounter with God. So, within Christianity, we have to consider the particular issue of Jesus. I will have to bring in some of my own experience of Christian faith, which I hope will help to cast light on the issue, though I am well aware of how particular my experience is, and there will be multiple other ways for Christians to understand this. I hope that I will be able to work out from my own experience to say something that is of general use.

So, I begin with my own experiences of God. A very strong feature of my faith is that I have felt from an early age a strong affinity with God the Father – certainly from the age of 15. When I say that I experience God’s presence, or say that, “the Lord is here”, I generally am referring to a sense of encountering God the Father. I have no problem at all in embracing the gospel of Jesus Christ, and my theology completely rests on the central Christian conviction that in Jesus we have seen God, and in Christ we are saved. However, in my personal experience of God’s presence, Jesus is an almost absent figure – except perhaps in the last few years, as I’ve considered the matter more closely and as my spiritual experience has shifted a little.

This was always a particular problem on Easter Sunday, when I was called to celebrate the resurrection. I have never had any problem with declaring and believing in the Christian conviction in the resurrection of Jesus – but I didn’t feel anything. Given the awesome, joyful significance of the occasion, I felt that I ought to feel more than this, but I was not able to “make contact” with God in the way that I do when I am experiencing the presence of God – God the Father. The reason for my recent shift is that I recognise more clearly the absolutely vital role of Jesus as incarnate, crucified and risen Lord. In crude terms, having had the wonderful privilege of feeling united with God the Father at such an early age, what need did I have for Jesus? Just to repeat, this in no way denies Christian theology, but I am trying to dissect what it was that I was experiencing when I claim that I am experiencing the presence of God. It is as my understanding of the role of Jesus deepens that I experience him more deeply as a spiritual reality in my life. This isn’t quite correct – my understanding of Jesus’ role has not “improved”, as though I could not see clearly before, or did not accept the full truth of it; my faith has always been completely orthodox in that respect. However, my sense of connection with what Jesus has done has deepened. I feel a greater or more personal reliance on the saving work of Christ, and this has allowed an increased resonance in my prayers, so that, when directing my attention to Jesus, I experience a spiritual power of connection to the person of Jesus that is more akin with my sense of connection to God the Father.

The Lord is here; his kingdom has come

Part 3: Our experience of the sacred

Crucial aspects of being human show us to be intrinsically religious. We just do have the ability to be aware of the sacred. We have a deep desire to make contact with the sacred – to feel that, within this turbulent, transient life, in which suffering can be so severe, and our lives so mundane and blighted by poverty and powerlessness, and by our own inadequacies and mistakes, to feel that we can make contact with something that is utterly precious, pure and good. We form the word, “holy” to try and express the intense otherness of this experience – so completely different to everything else that we experience – including other experiences that we readily call good and beneficial. We recognise the sacred when we experience it – and we do experience it. I suspect that just about everyone does at some point in their life, though a committed secular life will constrict the opportunities for such experiences, and may well induce the person to not understand or value the experience when it does happen, but instead to simply “put it to one side”, not to be thought about lest it prove too troubling to their world view. In contrast, those who have committed to a religious way of life are open to the sacred; they consciously seek opportunities when they might encounter God; and when they do, they hold the experience as supremely precious, and they incorporate it into the very heart of their lives.

We simply do have the capacity to experience the transcendent. This, and all terms that we use, can be examined in more detail to clarify what we mean, but we just do have the ability to have experiences which seem to transcend all our normal experiences and to give us a sense of unity with the absolute and eternal, an experience of pure bliss, where, caught up in what strikes us as the ultimate experience of peace and joy, we feel that if we died in that moment we would die content for we have experienced all the fullness of what life can offer, and that experience, which we often describe as “communion with the divine” is worth more than all the rest of life put together. It is completion.

There is no doubt that this experience exists. I am happy to debate just what it is. I consider that it is best explained as making contact with God, but if someone insists on excluding God as an impossibility, then it would need to be explained as a faculty of the human mind. Either way, it is astonishing that secular society regards this experience as not worth bothering about. After all, freedom from a religious world view leaves you free to do so many other interesting and enjoyable things. Why spend Sunday in worship when you can spend it shopping?

The Lord is here; his kingdom has come

Part 2: The false secular dismissal of God

An experience of the presence of God is the bedrock of faith. Without it, religion becomes simply a code to live by, a set of social conventions to guide society. Such a foundation is not sufficient to make religion robust, and we see in our own secular society how quickly a majority of people cast off the outward conventions of a religious society, because there was no heart for most people to make it vibrant and personally relevant.

This is tragic, because the entire history of humanity suggests that there are fundamental aspects of our nature that make us intrinsically religious. A secular view has become dominant, that this was simply a mistake, based on our scientific ignorance of the material world and our superstitious, and therefore unworthy, tendency to see enchantment – both good and evil – in every tree and brook. The idea is that, in our primitive state we were extremely vulnerable to the powerful forces of nature, and to the whims of human rulers, and so we created belief in God as a sort of comfort blanket to make us feel better. We felt less vulnerable if we believed that an omnipotent figure was somehow “on our side”. Religion is understood as pathetic and futile attempts to manipulate the divine into giving us favours. We try and make a deal with God whereby we sacrifice some things that we value, and God will repay us ten-fold. In this secular understanding, the progress of science in understanding the material world, and the progress of society in creating enough wealth and security to enable most of us to have the opportunity of a reasonably pleasant life, simply make religion redundant. Thus, a majority of people in Britain have voted with their feet and have little or nothing to do with faith. They see this as a liberation and a discovery of truth. Religious people have to recognise that many of the criticisms of religion in this secular analysis have a large element of truth to them. However, there are better ways to understand religion, and once we adopt a deeper understanding, we immediately see that religion is as vital as ever.

In taking, what I would term as this superficial and easy secular analysis, it immediately gives people, in their minds, the freedom to just ignore religion and so commit to activities that are perceived as more enjoyable and conducive to human well-being. Thus our secular society has thrown out the supremely precious dimension of a religious life of which they have no inkling, along with the trivial detritus of religion of which they are aware.

(A theological reflection in a great many parts – 16 in all. Don’t worry; it will end eventually)

The Lord is here; his kingdom has come

Part 1: Summary

This is the essence of the Christian faith. It is not primarily a set of principles, a philosophy by which to understand the world or find moral guidance to live your life by. It is not a political programme of action, nor a way of life that brings personal satisfaction. It is not carefully, systematically worked out so that all its elements fit together smoothly in a coherent and consistent package. It is not a faith that makes perfect theoretical sense.

Christianity is primarily an experience of Jesus. Of what God has and is doing in and through the person of Jesus. It is a response to this person. Believers begin with their experience of God in Christ and then try and work out what this means in terms of how they should live their lives. Our faith is based on our beliefs in who Jesus is and what he has done.

In simple terms, this boils down to the belief that in Jesus we have seen God in all his fullness and the belief that in Jesus God has saved us. These beliefs are an intrinsic part of the other fundamental dimension of Christianity, which is a commitment to follow Christ. This basically equates to following his way of life, accepting and living out his teachings, and being true to who he is in terms of living in tune with the love of God that Christ has taught us. However, this is not about extracting a code to live by from the person of Jesus, as though that code can be disembodied. Christianity is an acceptance of Jesus as Lord and Saviour.

All of this is held within the grace of God, for Christian faith is not primarily concerned with what human beings do, but with what God has done, and what he continues to do in the lives of his children.

Why do I believe I am surrounded by God’s grace?

Part 7: A return to grace and so to fullness of life

Through turning briefly to the problem of evil, we have taken something of an emotional downturn, when we had been talking about the wonderful grace of God. However, it’s important not to hide from difficult questions, and I hope you can see that there is a way forward to embrace a belief in God’s surrounding grace while being completely clear-headed in accepting all of the reality of living in the world as we know it. In fact, it is the desire to accept all of reality which drives me to consider grace, for this is the key reality of life that I and so many others experience.

So, let us finish by returning to add just a little more, for, although it may seem as though I have gone on and on about grace, my feeling is that I am just tinkering around the edges, saying a few worthwhile snippets, but still failing to express adequately the heart of God’s grace – as will always be the case.

I will begin by combining the ideas of suffering with trust in grace, by stating that an essential part of living by grace is optimism. This aspect of grace allows that complete clarity about existence to lead us to live, not fearfully, not downcast, not in dread of the disasters that can so easily befall us, but full of hope and optimism. Dame Julian of Norwich’s great watchword was, “All will be well”, which is ludicrous, for all is not well. Yet, when we allow our faith to bring us into a sense of being surrounded by the grace of God then all IS well. It makes no sense but is true. Such a comment is not blind faith or self-delusion – my entire faith (and blog) is based on trying to reason about our faith. So, it is not so much a contradiction, though certainly a paradox, but most of all it is testament to the amazingly powerful grace of God which has the ability to make all things well, to fill us with a sense of perfect fulfilment, and to bring us to a sense of being completely at home – and all this, no matter what happens to us in the world.

The other aspect of grace to touch on is humility. I feel that this is a key spiritual grace. To large degree, the problem is that those who suffer from its opposite – arrogance – are likely to commend themselves for their abilities in making progress in the world, while the humble person is aware of their dependence on God. In giving him the credit, somehow all the goodness of the situation we are in, and which we are creating, is redoubled upon us. In contrast, the arrogant person is simply left with their brittle self-satisfaction, which has all the refreshing qualities of dust. Humble people do need to work hard not to be weak, so self-effacing that they are no use in the world, or resigned to sitting on the sidelines. Part of the work of grace is to call us to mission and action, and then to empower us to achieve those tasks that God has laid upon us.

So, here we believers are. Humbly trusting in God’s grace, full of hope and joy as we set out to work for God’s kingdom. As we experience ourselves to be surrounded by grace, it is so much easier to work gracefully for the extension of more grace in the world, for we are simply taking hold of what is self-evidently to us all around us and using it to produce more of the same.

Grace makes us so much more than we naturally are. It does not obliterate or over-ride our natural personality and gifts – that would be to deny the worth of God’s creation. Instead, God takes hold of who we are, and through imparting spiritual gifts – and a much better way to express this is: through his indwelling Spirit – shapes and builds and directs and enables our growing spirit or personality so that we grow up according to the potential that God placed in us through his unique creation of each person. A crucial aspect is that he continually heals and redeems our developing personality from the wounds that our failures (sins) inflict upon ourselves, and the damage from the wounds that others inflict on us. A clear analogy is of a plant, which when well-watered and nourished and protected has the ability to grow to a certain height and pattern and produce the appropriate fruit, but if denied all these good things might become a withered and twisted version of that plant and produce nothing of worth. By grace, we rejoice in the way God is nurturing us, protected by humility and hope, robustly dealing with the trials and tribulations of life. We become the best person we could possibly be. God is not forcing a template onto us to produce clones of some religious ideal. Part of his grace is the unique creativity and unfailing love that gives freedom to countless people to live their lives as they wish, but by his calling of us, enables each person to produce the unique creativity that God sees we have in us.

Thus, we find ourselves whole, healed, forgiven, resting in the loving care of God, actively and joyfully striving to stay in step with God’s Spirit. We are reconciled with one another, in the fellowship of God’s people, to build his kingdom here on earth, enfolded in the peace of God. This is what it means to be surrounded by God’s grace.

Why do I believe I am surrounded by God’s grace?

Part 6: The problem of evil is always lurking at our elbow and must be addressed

Of course, I must face the challenge of those who suffer terribly, whose lives are filled with disappointment, who are oppressed and brutalised. My initial answer is to point us again to the remarkable fact that so many people whose lives are – to my mind- agonisingly painful with the wounds of life, manage to live with a faith that puts mine to shame. To explore this further, we need to delve into the problem of evil and why it is that a good God does not end evil. I have considered this in other articles, but very briefly now I will point us to the two key points:-

• In a changing material world, it is not possible to have a world without evil.
• Freedom is not possible without the possibility of evil

Perhaps I need to go into more detail in another article soon, but briefly (and so sounding somewhat callous to those who suffer terribly) the points are:-

Imagine God created a perfect world in which he had eliminated all possible harms. Think of an idyllic scene – I am imagining a couple enjoying a lovely summer’s day, sitting under a spreading oak tree, by a bubbling stream. There are no possible causes of harm in this world. Then time passes. The stream erodes a little valley with a cliff edge along its banks – now there is something to fall over. The oak tree becomes old, and as it reaches the end of its natural life, a massive branch becomes decayed and falls on one of the descendants of the original couple.

In a changing material world, it is not possible to guarantee that there are no causes of harm.

And the problem of freedom is familiar to most of us. We all love freedom, and we probably would not thank God for preventing us from doing something that we’ve decided we’d really like to do. If any of those actions are foolish or selfish we are extremely likely to harm others. So, for all who complain to God – and a complaint is certainly understandable – the thing to do is to consider in very practical, concrete terms: “What is it that you want God to do for you?”. The answer is usually a desire that God would intervene in how events turned out in order to stop harm coming to a loved one. However, once God intervenes to change events we lose our freedom because God is over-ruling our will and diminishing the value of our decisions by only allowing a limited range of consequences from the actions we took.

Thus, we are left in the world as we know and love it. A world of wondrous beauty – and great danger. Where heartbreak is always following at our heels and all that we love can be taken away from us. A world which we love viscerally and which produces in nearly all of us (subject to that question about those who have only ever suffered) a sense of the wonder of being alive, and which those who believe encounter as a sense of God’s grace. Strangely – and this does not comment well on our society – as we grow richer and have lives more at ease, we neglect, reject or despise God, while those who struggle with difficult lives, often in comparative poverty, remain attuned to this awareness of God’s grace that we have been exploring.

With my religious hat on, I cannot help thinking that human beings often become shallower in spirit as they pay more and more attention to material well-being, while those without these distractions are somehow more alive, or at least, retain the ability to value the whole range of human experience in a well-judged way. I should just note that some may complain that I am ignoring the struggles of many British people when I seem to assume that life is pretty good for most of us. Yet I believe it is, and a simple recalibration of our perspective confirms this. Many people today have no conception of how comfortable their lives are compared to people in Britain a few generations ago, or compared to those living today in abject poverty in other countries.