The Bible- and how we read it 2- my answers!

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OK- I’m a sucker for a smart-ass challenge, but Jeffrey reckoned I should have answered the questions I asked here…

So, I’ll have a go.

But I have to say that these are working notes, not complete answers. If you want complex theology- go elsewhere…

Question 1- ‘Disputable matters’ (From Romans 14) can we agree to disagree, or is truth more important?

Strange beginning I suppose- it is just one small verse in the middle of one of Paul’s longest letters. But this letter is the one in which he repeatedly circles around the issue of reconciling the legalism of the Jewish people (and his own background as a legalist-in-chief) with the New Kingdom, and life amongst the gentile believers. But I had missed this verse until recently, and I it suggests a tolerance and respect for different views and emphases does it not?

So for may answer to this one- narrow understandings of anything should always be subordinate to LOVE.

Question 2- How did people manage in the pre-modern era, when the Bible as we know it either did not exist, or was not available?

Well who knows? They seemed to have their fair share of sects and heretical groups I think? Perhaps too theological power was very centralised- Rome and the rise of Christendom…

But it seems clear that faith was the meaningful centre of lives and communities WITHOUT universal or even widespread access to the Bible. Was faith less real, or less true? I do not think so- it just existed in a different time and place.

That is not to say that reform was unnecessary, or that the medieval world is what we want to get back to!

Question 3- Can you be a Christian and never have read the Bible?

Clearly you can. It does not say in the Bible that you need to read it to be a Christian does it? Even Paul talks about scripture being ‘useful’ for teaching and instruction- not necessary.

But why would you not read and study the Bible if you could, and you had any interest in God?

Question 4- Who decides/rules on interpretation of scripture? Do we look to history, and God’s revelation to Christians before us? Do we allow particular theological experts to make executive decisions in relation to Christian history? Or should the emphasis be on our own engagement with the text- and it’s life in our lives?

I think I kind of implied my answer in the way I framed the question! I feel skewed towards small theologies, worked out in community, according to the leading of the Holy Spirit, and in the respectful shadow of those people of faith who went before us.

Question 5- Is there a FINAL version of biblical truth? Did modernity almost get us there, with perhaps a bit of tinkering required, or is there a need to start again with some basics? Does every generation need to wrestle anew?

Again, I think you could guess where I am going. I do not think that we have any right to claim a final version of truth- any more than Calvin, or Luther could have done- or for that matter, Augustine. How about Paul then? Did he have everything sorted? (Sorry, not meaning to ask yet more questions…)

Question 6- Systematic theology- good or bad?

I am not really qualified to answer this- I am no expert. I suppose it depends on the system, and on the theologian. But most systems are sooner or later tested to destruction, unless they are adaptive and responsive. Does that make the syncretic, and thus heretical? I do not think so- again, if we read the modernist reforming fathers like Calvin and Luther- do we agree with everything they said?

Question 7- Truth- what did Jesus mean by this? Lessons from the Pharisees?

I do not think I can do justice to this one. He clearly had no time for the way the Pharisees did the truth thing- and what they did has always looked a lot like highly elaborate systematic theology to me. But he did say that ‘They shall know the truth and the truth shall set them free’. I can only ask more questions again…

Question 8- Scripture- ‘God breathed’? Does this mean the Bible, or something else, that we have TAKEN to mean just the Bible?

Paul was obviously not speaking about the Bible as we know it today, as this collection of books simply did not exist- it took another 1700 years to sort this out, more or less.

He was clearly talking about the OT- but this too appears to have had a variable canon. He may well have been talking about other books now lost to us, and others soon appeared to regard his letters as Scripture.

The view that God ordained the Canon of Scripture as a complete, harmonious and unified whole, without error or contradiction, sent down from heaven on golden cushions (like the Mormon golden plates) simply has never made sense to me. This is partly because the Bible is shot through with contradiction and mystery- it is this that often makes it so compelling, and what theologian have spent millions of hours trying to resolve.

The Bible also makes no such claims for itself.

Don’t get me wrong- I do not mean to devalue the Bible, just value it honestly and completely, not by creating a mystical distance that leads to placing it in a glass case, not your back pocket.

Question 9- CONTEXT- where you start from- does this affect what you see, even (or particularly) in the Bible? Are there contextual ways of understanding the words- for example in relation to divorce, or women covering their heads, or homosexuality- or is this a slippery slope to heresy?

Oh dear- the danger of Syncretism again…

I think though, I have come to a view that it is impossible not to read the Bible contextually- in both obvious and more subtle ways. The critique made of Christianity arising from modernity and the enlightenment is a powerful one- the suggestion that we needed the Bible to be a blueprint, measurable and dissectable- because this was the only way to contextualise it.

The question that is gaining so much air time is whether or not the new post modern context demands a new reading- a new understanding, or whether this should be resisted and defended against as accommodation to the spirit of the age.

I think we need both new and old readings- and the freedom to pursue both.

Question 10- AUTHORITY- what does this mean in terms of the Bible? Is the authority given to us, to interpret and understand in the light of the Spirit, or to the words themselves?

I am clear that the words have authority only as given to them by the Spirit of God. We revere the words in as much as they bring God closer to our understanding, and ope ourselves to letting him speak to us through them.

Jesus promised that he would send the Holy Spirit- he did not promise to send us a rule book that would be our guide for all things, for all time, did he? Was the promise of the Holy Spirit as a comforter and a guide just a temporary one until the Bible Canon was agreed? (There I go again with the questions….)

Question 11- When the Bible talks about the ‘Word of God’- what does it mean? Jesus, or the written words themselves?

I think it is clear that one of the names given to Jesus in the Bible is ‘Word of God’. The Bible never claims to be that- although some of its words are accredited directly to God. Some are clearly the words of men, in worship of God, or even questioning of God. Much is written in the forms and convention of Hebrew poetry, and the meanings conveyed by these forms, and the imagery intended, has not been passed into our understanding.

Using the term ‘God’s word’ to describe the Bible is a modernist thing. When it is called this thunderously by preachers wishing to imbue their own words with a heavenly authority, I am afraid I find myself wincing.

So- these are may working notes in answer to the questions. If you disagree- then you are right to. I am not suggesting that I have these things sorted out. I am engaged on a journey towards the origin of all things. How could I ever have grasped everything that is to be known about him- or even written about him in the Bible?

The Bible- and how we read it…

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Within what has been termed the ’emerging church conversation’, one of the central debates has concerned the way we understand Biblical truth and authority- I suppose this is kind of stating the blindingly obvious! But if you say this- it will get you in lots of trouble! So I tentatively stick my head above the parapet again…

Because I do not think that anything NEW will emerge unless we can open up these discussions. There are too many entrenched positions, with whole industries set up to defend them.

The Bible is an amazing thing- a collection of words spanning thousands of years of history, telling the story of an ancient Hebrew nomadic people, and their engagement with a God who appears in burning bushes, and clouds, and for a while camps with them in an elaborate tent.

And the words of the book are suffused with longing and laughing and yearning… and also with weird and puzzling accounts of a vengeful, spiteful God, who orders mass murder or slays the innocent first born sons of a whole nation. Here we encounter something that we wrestle with, and struggle to reconcile with the beautiful words of Jesus, the ultimate encounter of man with their living breathing God.

And it seems that through the history of the existence of these written words, they have been used as truth tools, even power tools, to propagate particular ways of seeing, ways of being- From the Pharisees to Jerry Falwell, and many others in between.

Some of the questions that I have come to ask again are these;

‘Disputable matters’ (From Romans 14) can we agree to disagree, or is truth more important?

How did people manage in the pre-modern era, when the Bible as we know it either did not exist, or was not available.

Can you be a Christian and never have read the Bible?

Who decides/rules on interpretation of scripture? Do we look to history, and God’s revelation to Christians before us? Do we allow particular theological experts to make executive decisions in relation to Christian history? Or should the emphasis be on our own engagement with the text- and it’s life in our lives?

Is there a FINAL version of biblical truth? Did modernity almost get us there, with perhaps a bit of tinkering required, or is there a need to start again with some basics? Does every generation need to wrestle anew?

Systematic theology- good or bad?

Truth- what did Jesus mean by this? Lessons from the Pharisees?

Scripture- ‘God breathed’? Does this mean the Bible, or something else, that we have TAKEN to mean just the Bible?

CONTEXT- where you start from- does this affect what you see, even (or particularly) in the Bible? Are there contextual ways of understanding the words- for example in relation to divorce, or women covering their heads, or homosexuality- or is this a slippery slope to heresy?

AUTHORITY- what does this mean in terms of the Bible? Is the authority given to us, to interpret and understand in the light of the Spirit, or to the words themselves?

When the Bible talks about the ‘Word of God’- what does it mean? Jesus, or the written words themselves?

It seems to me that there are huge areas within the way we read the Bible that are NOT clear. It depends on where you begin… and what QUALITIES and CHARACTERISTICS of God resonate with your heart. This may be no bad thing- after all, God seems to like variety in his Creation. Our variations of EMPHASIS might always have been in his thinking.

There are however bit of the Bible that appear unequivocal. Do this, do NOT do that. But I wonder if most of these really distinguish us as a people set apart. Do you know any humanists who think that murder is OK, or that materialism is the route to happiness?

It is the less concrete and perhaps more important stuff to do with how we live our daily lives- how we respond to those in need around us, and how we refuse to follow the false idols that are all around us. The Bible is indeed our guide for this, but only if we bring our hearts and minds to it in a humble and gentle way, and pray for the guidance of the Spirit. And perhaps if we refuse to use the words as bullets aimed at others.

But let us be careful that we do not become the worshippers of a book, then spend all out time arguing over what the pages mean, when it is at least possible that, to a lesser or greater degree, all of us are wrong, and both the writer and the Inspirer had a whole different lesson in mind- which involved living a life full of wonder and service…

Ornithology meets Les Dawson

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All along the banks of our part of the Clyde there are clusters of these shy ducks around this time of the year. The females in particular will group together almost like gossiping schoolgirls out for a trip to the shops…

They also have this other endearing trait. As you walk along the sea shore, they tend to make this noise that always reminds me of the late great Sir Les Dawson. It goes something like this (imagine a rising and lowering pitch);

ooooOOOOoooooo!

These sounds often make me chuckle, as the sound can imbue any thought, or any sentence with a kind of camp gravitas that lifts the spirits… particularly if the ducks get their comic timing right.

It occurs to me that many of you will never have heard of Les Dawson. He was a kind of Yorkshire comedian-laureate, who had many different comedic skills- such as playing the piano brilliantly badly, or the inevitable mother-in-law jokes. In fact he managed to survive long enough in the business for his mother-in-law jokes to be ironic nods at a past genre, but still funny.

But it was one particular character he did that always remind me of the eider ducks and their oooing- it is this one. Enjoy.

On our anniversary…

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Today Michaela and I have been married 18 years.

18 years! Where did the time go?

But I am blessed.

Michaela- you formed the best part of me, and I love you more now, than ever…

Michaela avoids cameras- but here are a few recent photo’s…

And here is a poem- old romantic that I am.

Evolution

There’s a billion years of history
That starts in oozing slime
But it makes no sense to me
It has no human rhyme

The vastness of the universe
The emptiness of space
This has no part of me
It has no human face

If I knew the time when
All time will meet its end
All would still be meaningless
Without you my friend

For as you wake
The morning mists your eyes
And in the afternoon
The sunshine shows your smile
And as the evening slips into the night
Your hair is dancing in starlight

For Michaela 2002.

How do you love an unknowable God?

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In Matthew 22, Jesus is under siege by clever people who are trying to trap him using questions that will get him into trouble. They seemed to do this quite a lot- and we all love the way that he always saw it coming, but gave answers that were far more than they expected.

This time, they were asking him about what was the most important commandment. Quite what they were trying to trap him with, who knows, but Jesus was clear that the most important commandment was to love God.

Love him with everything you are, and will be.

Love him with your heart, your head, and your wallet.

Then he said that the next commandment was to love other people as you love yourself. This loving others bit almost reads like an after-thought because if you did really love this God of ours, then it would be impossible not to get into what HE is into. It would be be a natural thing to love the things he loves. And perhaps above all things, it seems that he loves…us.

What does this mean in your life and experience? Because, if I am honest- I am not always sure what loving God means. How do you love someone who is essentially unknowable? Because no matter how big our thoughts towards God are, he is always bigger, he is always MORE.

One of the aspirations that modern Christianity has given us is the possibility of a ‘personal relationship’ with God. I suspect this would have been a startling concept for our church fathers. It is an idea that seems to domesticate God, and recast him in a role that is of our own making. Is this what it means to love God? Do we need to make his shape fit our lives- invite him into our little boxes?

I think if we did, he would come. He loves us after all. But I also think that he wants to invite us OUT into something else. It is an adventure into a kind of purple mystery. There are moments of almost painful clarity, but on the whole, it seems that what most of us experience in this search after our version of the Universe Maker is uncertainty.

Don’t get me wrong. I know people of faith who never seem to experience doubt or any weakening of their unshakable faith – sometimes in spite of huge life challenges. I can not claim to this certainty myself

But we people of faith, I think that when we say we ‘love God,’ we do so as a statement of faith and intent.

And then it begins. Two steps together, then many when we might loose rhythm. But as we continue walking- he is still there.

And the business he sets us on – I think this is the consummation of love. But it is not conditional, it is inspirational.

So may you and I catch glimpses of the love of God.

May we see him in the wonder of the sunrise,

And in the mystery of the night sky.

May we see him in the vulnerability of a small child,

And in the broken waste of a drunk down on his luck

May we learn to love

The things that he loves

And live to walk

In his shadow.

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Unitarianism and the emerging church?

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Blogs are good places for controversy- I think.

But not controversy just for the sake of controversy. So forgive me if I open up the issue that appears to be the nightmare of any fundamentalist (and many liberal) Christian- the spectre of Univeralist belief systems.

I have a reason for doing this. The idea of univeralism has crossed my path a few times recently. There was Fred Hammond’s response to this blog post. Fred is a Unitarian Minister in the America’s deep south- and has an interesting blog here.

I am also back from my brother-in-laws wedding. He and Emma chose to get married in a Unitarian Chapel in their home town of Belper in Derbyshire. It was a wonderful wedding, created by Chris and Emma as a highly individual celebration of their decision to live and love together. I picked up some leaflets about the chapel, first established in 1680, and about Unitarianism itself, which left me thinking…

Then there is our local hymn-writing hero, George Matheson, the Blind Preacher of Innellan, Argyll. He is perhaps most famous for writing the wonderful hymn ‘O love that wilt not let me go’, but in his time, thousands flocked to hear his oratory power. I came across one of his other hymns recently when attending a lecture at his former church in Innellan. It gives a whole different perspective on the theological melting pot that was Victorian religion in Britain.

Gather us in, Thou Love that fillest all;
Gather our rival faiths within Thy fold;
Rend each man’s temple veil, and bid it fall,
That we may know that Thou hast been of old.

Gather us in—we worship only Thee;
In varied names we stretch a common hand;
In diverse forms a common soul we see;
In many ships we seek one spirit land.

Each sees one color of Thy rainbow light,
Each looks upon one tint and calls it heaven;
Thou art the fullness of our partial sight;
We are not perfect till we find the seven.

Thine is the mystic life great India craves;
Thine is the Parsee’s sin-destroying beam;
Thine is the Buddhist’s rest from tossing waves;
Thine is the empire of vast China’s dream.

Thine is the Roman’s strength without his pride;
Thine is the Greek’s glad world without its graves;
Thine is Judea’s law with love beside,
The truth that censures and the grace that saves.

Some seek a Father in the heav’ns above;
Some ask a human image to adore;
Some crave a spirit vast as life and love;
Within Thy mansions we have all and more.

So- Unitarianism. What do they believe? The good old BBC has a summary (see here for more.) A couple of lines stood out…

everyone has the right to seek truth and meaning for themselves, using: their intellect; their conscience and their own experience of life

the best setting for finding religious truth and meaning is a community that welcomes each individual for themselves, complete with their beliefs, doubts and questions.

It occurs to me that many of the critics of the ’emerging church’ (whatever this is, or whatever we call it now!) categorise it’s followers as essentially liberal, and sliding towards a universalist position on faith and truth. That is to say, the suggestion is that we have bought into a post-modern way of thinking that sees everything as relative to your own individual perspective- and truth itself as multi-faceted and undefinable.

And, if I am honest, there seems to be much of the Unitarian tradition that I feel in sympathy with- the point above for example.

But I remain a follower of Jesus, and things that he said and is doing through us, his faulty followers. I have reminded myself that I am not universalist in my beliefs. I may be uninterested in labeling anyone else a heretic, but when it comes down to it, I do not believe that all routes lead to God, nor that all faiths bring equal but complimentary truth.

There may yet be a point at which the Emerging Church has emerged, into something with its own unifying doctrinal statements. I hope the two above will be there, more or less complete…

Margaret Thatcher and Elvis Costello

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Margaret Thatcher’s daughter Carol has recently written movingly about her mother’s advancing Alzheimers Disease. THere was an interesting debate on the radio this evening concerning whether Carol should have revealed these intimate details of her mothers dementia, as her mother now lacks the ability to give her consent to this.

The spectre of old age infirmity and loss of faculties hangs over all of us. Author Terry Pratchett has been outspoken about his own dementia, and it seems to me that any publicity that raises the profile of the experience of this growing group of people is a good thing. Even better if this results in increased funding for research and development in treatment and care of older folks.

Anyone who has to visit the back wards of the oldest parts of our hospitals (where the ‘elderly acute’ wards are almost always to be found) will be aware that such places often appear to be nothing more than warehouses for amateur cadavers. Despite some wonderful staff, for most of the people who end their days there- after a referral of last resort- dignity has long gone.

But- Margaret Thatcher- vulnerable, human, just like the rest of us…

I grew up in Thatcher’s Britain. Communities I lived in where split apart by her calculated battle with the National Union of Miners, and now almost all the pits are gone. I write this sat in a car driving through Sheffield on out way down to Derbyshire to attend a family wedding. All the steel works are gone. The old industrial sites are covered with scrub, or been cleared back to make shrines to the great patron of retail parks, Margaret herself…

Were all those broken communities and broken lives necessary? Did economic reality make them inevitable, as Margaret always said? Did the Free Market really know best? History will decide, I suppose. But her status as an iconic epoch shifter is already cast in bronze.

But in the 1980’s, we knew who our enemy was. She was Satan in a twin-set. She personified everything that we rejected. It all came back to ideology- and hers was based on a selfish individualism, and an elevation of greed as an engine for social change. Or that is the way half of Britain saw it.

She inspired incredible idolatry from her followers. And generated genuine loathing from the other side of the spectrum, perhaps like no other democratic politician before or since. It is possible to understand the divisive effect she had more fully by remembering a song by Elvis Costello called ‘Tramp the dirt down.’ It included these lines;

I saw a newspaper picture from the political campaign
A woman was kissing a child, who was obviously in pain
She spills with compassion, as that young child’s
face in her hands she grips
Can you imagine all that greed and avarice
coming down on that child’s lips

Well I hope I don’t die too soon
I pray the Lord my soul to save
Oh I’ll be a good boy, I’m trying so hard to behave
Because there’s one thing I know, I’d like to live
long enough to savour
The day they finally put you in the ground

I’ll stand on your grave and tramp the dirt down

Words by Elvis Costello, from the album ‘Spike’, 1989.



With the benefit of a few years family-raising and Brodski-quartet-consorting, the angry man of pop might regret these words now, but the point is, some of us sang along to these words with relish at the time.

So Margaret, may your end be kind.

And may those whose fate was once in your hands not wish upon your head the pain of poverty and powerlessness.

And may each one of us be worth so much more than a distant decimal point in an economist’s prediction…

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What is God doing 4- The eternal perspective, free will and Mystery…

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This is a continuation of excerpts of an article on how we understand pain and suffering- which were begun following watching the film ‘God on Trial‘- see here and here and here for the others.

Free will


Following on from the point above, many would point to the fact that most of the worst disasters on the planet could never be thought of as ‘acts of God’. Wars are fought over many things, sometimes even religion, but we can not blame God for our refusal to live in peace with our brothers and sisters. War is rarely, if ever, ‘just’, and innocents always suffer.

As for famine and starvation, we tend to blame droughts and pestilence, and mass movements of people to escape disasters. But there seems little doubt that there is enough food in the world to feed everyone. It is just that we eat most of it in the rich west. Many would point out that the poor are poorer and more vulnerable following on from imperialist history and the capitalist system that perpetuates the inequality in the present day. Starvation and vulnerability to flood and many other so called natural disasters could be seen as economic problems, not natural ones. Men and women were given free will. This is the world that we made. And we blame God.

But there are still many dreadful things that happen to good people, for no apparent reason, except what sometimes seems like some kind of life lottery. Some have, some have not. Some suffer, others prosper. In the words of the writer of Ecclesiastes, “…all is meaningless…”

The eternal perspective


Many have emphasised the temporal nature of our stay on this earth- the one certainty about being born is that we are all going to die. My faith in God reminds me that whatever this life holds for me, there is more. It also teaches me that I can choose how to live my life- what I do with it, and how I use the talents, great or small, that he gave me. One day I will have to account for how I helped those suffering, sick, hungry and dirty whom God placed in front of me. Jesus said that if you do this for the least of these, then you do it for him.

There is a rich legacy of spiritual songs left behind by black slaves taken to America to work the plantations and mills of the New World. Most seem to focus on the eventual end of suffering brought on by death, and the blessing of the hereafter. Critical voices have been raised against a religion that promises good things in the by and by, whilst tolerating dreadful injustice in this world – even justifying them and giving them the sheen of respectability. This seems to be very like the ‘opium of the people’ that Marx referred to so disparagingly. We should remember, however, that the great anti-slavery reformers like Wilberforce, were also motivated by their faith in God.

Mystery
‘God works in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform’, or so says the old hymn. We still hear this quoted, as if to excuse all the bad things that happen in this world.

Could it be, however, that there is a hidden purpose, yet to be revealed? Perhaps there are complex webs of circumstances that might have a final wonderful outcome, and God, like a master strategist, has a great cosmic war game laid out before him, and he will have his Waterloo.

Again, there seems to be some truth in these words. Life has a way of moving on. Difficult circumstances often forge wonderful solutions, and give birth to new and beautiful things.

After a blazing forest fire there comes fresh and clean new growth. Out of war came peace and the United Nations. Out of grief and loss comes a woman giving her life to supporting others in similar circumstances. After brokenness and humility come eternal life.

We are fearfully and wonderfully made, and our capacity for resilience and adaptation is seemingly endless – particularly in situations of adversity.

We search for meaning, but “My ways are not your ways, and neither are my thoughts your thoughts, declares the Lord.” (Isaiah 55: 8).