If you google “reading the Bible with others” it’s not until the 9th result where you find anything about how to read the Bible in a community of people.
Are we so individualistic in our thinking that it’s just not that common for people to read the Bible together?
Is google broken? Continue reading
So I moved from Belfast, Northern Ireland last week to Detroit, Michigan, USA. Two cities that have actually got a lot in common. Two cities that have a rich musical history and two cities that have seen riots and trouble over the years and are in the process of rebuilding their great names. Naturally then I have been regularly checking out the bbc news website keeping uptodate with the goings on back home.
One thing that caught my eye this week was the reaction from the Health minister Edwin Poots when taking part in a debate with Sinn Fein at Stormont, on the banning of blood donated from gay men. Continue reading
A couple of weeks ago I ran my second marathon. It was a much more enjoyable experience than my first one last year. Probably due to not eating chocolate every day, not hoping I could get through it by downing 15 energy gels and not holding my pee in for much longer than is acceptable for the average human bladder while running 26.2 miles.
A couple of weeks before it though I hit the training wall. This is the moment when you are fed up of running for months and months. When you are sick of timing yourself, for running the same routes, for having to run not out of enjoyment but because of some stupid promise you made yourself and then told other people about.
So I tweeted this
“Bloody marathon. I can’t wait to get my life back.” Continue reading
I just picked up my copy of Rob Bell’s new book “What we talk about when we talk about God”.
I have read 3 pages so far.
I know already I am g
oing to love it. In fact even before I read a word I knew I was going to love it. It’s because Rob Bell wrote it and I love his ideas about God and can hand on my heart say that his book “Velvet Elvis” changed everything for me in regards to thinking about God, Jesus, faith, Christianity, life. Everything.
I am unashamedly as people on the internet like to call us a “fanboy”.
After his previous book “Love Wins” was released he came under a lot of criticism for his ideas in it about God. Some even saw fit to declare that he was now sitting outside of a ‘normal’ Christian faith.
After Love Wins finally found my bookcase, after weeks of reading and re reading it, I decided that the idea of God that Rob Bell portrayed was the right one and his ‘fundamentalist’ critics who tweeted and blogged their disapproval were missing out.
Then I read this tweet from Michael Gungor last night,
My definition of “fundamentalist”: A person of any belief system that holds his belief in a destructively arrogant and rigid way.
There in 140 characters was the truth that I had denied about myself but really deep down knew was true all along. I am a fundamentalist.
Think about it. I have a belief system that says so much of what some theologians or writers say about God is old fashioned, anarchic and depressing. I have decided to not read some of their stuff because my own thoughts are more reliable about God’s character. This has prevented me from understanding God better and ultimately led me to lose out.
I’m right and they are wrong.
Which means I am not open to the reality that I may be wrong.
That so much of the time I am wrong.
If I truly believe like I do that so much of what Christian tradition has revealed to us about God, isn’t even close to what He is like; and if I believe that the good news that we think we understand is so much more better and beautiful than we can grasp, then I have to be open to the idea that my ideas about God are smaller than He actually is.
This is why I am excited to read Rob’s new book.
Not because Rob Bell wrote it and he doesn’t get anything wrong, but because he is inviting us into looking at what we really mean when we talk about God and how we may have got it so wrong in the past.
In the present.
And inevitably will do in the future.
To see past our prejudices against other Christians and sometimes to God himself.
Now you may be thinking, well what if some people get it so wrong that it is harmful?
Do you mean harmful in the way we tell gay people that they are going to Hell?
Or Harmful in the way we tell women that they aren’t good enough to lead our churches?
Or how about this, harmful in how we used to kill people if they didn’t believe that the Earth was flat, because it is ‘biblical?’
Which harmful?
Those ones? Because I can’t see how we can do more damage than we already have.
One way we can change that is by starting with ourselves, with admitting we are mostly wrong about who God is anyway. That if you are wrong then I am wrong.
Then we may start liking each other more. We may start being open to each other more. This could have massive implications for church and for family (actually the same thing), and for life. Then when people look at Christians they don’t see bickering and hatred to each other. They will see love even when we disagree (not if we disagree but when)
And that is hopeful. That is a God and a faith that most people can be interested in.
But of course I could be wrong and you may disagree. And that’s fine. I still love you. Because maybe words like love, hope and compassion will become what we are associated with.
And then maybe, just maybe if that happens,
That’s what people will talk about when they talk about God.
When you find yourself stuck in a pattern of behavior that is clearly damaging to yourself and possibly others it is difficult to get out of.
There are self help books and speakers galore who can help you find peace in just 5 days or freedom in an hour. Some of these may even be very helpful. But talk to someone who has tried and failed to give up smoking or is stuck in a porn addiction that is shattering their self esteem, you will see a person who knows that it takes a lot more than a few days to change behviour.
I heard Saju Mathews from IJM give a talk a few weeks ago about how our identity can produce change. If we see ourselves as children of God then we won’t want to stay where we are, rather we will work at becoming free. We don’t need to continue where we are because that’s not really where we are. We are not slaves any more. Let’s live like it.
Which for a long time I have really loved despite it not really working for me. Why do I continue doing that which is killing me when I know I am free? Is it because I am wrong about Jesus? Or because I use grace as a reason to keep on sinning, as Paul suggests?
Or is it because I don’t really believe I am forgiven?
Take porn.
When you are stuck in an addiction like that and you are constantly battling to be pure but returning again and again into the arms of your computer, it can be very difficult to forgive yourself. No matter how much you know God loves you and has forgiven you.
But am I really forgiven? How does that work? Is it an abstract idea that is true but in reality doesn’t really have any impact on how I live?
When God is not present and when you don’t experience Him, forgiveness can seem like a nice idea but ultimately redundant.
But I believe in it wholeheartedly and I believe it works.
But for forgiveness to change you then I need to see obvious tangible workings of it. Sometimes God just doesn’t provide that.
At least not in the way I think.
Like a lot of things in life we can’t experience God unless we see it, or touch it. We need our senses to make it real for us. Hope or a nice feeling isn’t good enough.
So what is more tangible than other people?
To ensure forgiveness actually changes us we need other people.
Which means that we need to confess to other people.
Bonhoeffer, got it right when he wrote,
Why is it often easier for us to acknowledge our sins before God than before another believer? God is holy and without sin, a just judge of evil, an an enemy of all disobedience. But another Christian is sinful, as we are, knowing from personal experience the night of secret sin. Should we not find it easier to go to one another than to the holy God? But if that is not the case, we must ask ourselves whether we often have not been deluding ourselves about our confession of sin to God–whether we have not instead been confessing our sins to ourselves and also forgiving ourselves. And is not the reason for our innumerable relapses and for the feebleness of our Christian obedience to be found precisely in the fact that we are living from self-forgiveness and not from real forgiveness of our sins? Self-forgiveness can never lead to the break with sin. This can only be accomplished by God’s own judging and pardoning Word (Life Together, 112-13, emphasis added).
Confession is scary because we don’t want people to see us as we really are. It is also scary because perhaps we don’t really want to change.
We should be comfortable telling others our deepest darkest secrets because they are as bad as us. In this case, going to God is the safe option. Should we confess to God? Yes. But if we want to feel the full effect of God’s forgiveness we need to confess to others too.
Then we can experience His forgiveness in a tangible way through the prayers and love of others. Confessing to others is not an instead of God option. It is the way that forgiveness from God works within us.
So we experience God’s grace through our friend who prays for us and walks through every step of recovery with us.
We feel hope from God through the people who have been where we are and have come through the other end.
And we feel joy in God even when we don’t feel joyous, as we sit and listen to our friends telling us how God is working in their lives right now.
It seems like so much of how God works in our lives it requires other, broken, imperfect, porn watching people to be how he speaks to and changes us.
If that’s not grace I don’t know what is.
Three things have been shaping my view of worship in the last while. Corporate worship, the music of Gungor and the death of a close friend. This may not seem like a list that easily connects to each other and perhaps they don’t, but let me explain.
A few weeks ago Brittany’s ‘wife’ Sarah was killed in an accident on the road in Michigan. The details aren’t too important to this but it’s safe to say it was completely unexpected and shocking. Now when something like this happens when you lose your best friend, your sister or your daughter it is hard to see what the point is. There are no words that can change the situation or make it bearable. It is simply painful.
Getting past that point is extremely difficult. To see exactly why God would allow the life of a creative filled, kind and joyous person to end so abruptly doesn’t make sense. Maybe it never will.
We want to find ways to ignore pain or make it disappear so sometimes we use words and actions to try and block it out. But often they do more harm than good.
To experience the sort of pain that we felt and still do, we need to have faith in a God that doesn’t hide away from our tears or our angry questions, but welcomes them. God is in the pain, we don’t need to suppress it to feel close to Him.
Which is why I have a problem with a lot of ‘worship music’. How does one come to worship God when life makes us feel like there is nothing to worship? Does our worship music help us grieve for example or does it simply strive to make us feel good in a moment.
And this is one reason why worship music will never satisfy us. Why a lot of peope feel uncomfortable standing amongst people who have their eyes closed and hands raised. If you are not in that place where you feel you can do that, and are made to feel like this is what worship looks like, it will leave you feeling lonely and far from God. It will demand that you question what you are doing wrong and will ultimately cause you to try and feel God through actions.
I am not saying that all corporate music is unhelpful or misguided. Amongst the most intimate moments I have ever had with God have been in a setting where I have indeed had my eyes closed and arms raised. Even very recently.
The loneliest I have felt and far from God, have also occurred in these places though.
Our definitions of worship have left us with a God who is in a tiny box that we are constantly trying to squeeze into. A box that blocks out the world and it’s darkness. A world where pain is present, right in our face and unbearable.
I don’t blame anyone for wanting to squeeze in.
God is in the box, but the box is only so big and eventually the world will put so much pressure on the walls that we will die inside it.
And we are left with confusion at where God went.
But when we look at worship, simply as living on this Earth acknowledging the presence of God already there, then we don’t need to be frightened of pain and despair. It’s there that we actually find joy.
Not a joy that makes us feel happy or warm, but transcends how we feel in particular moments. There is joy at the funeral of your best friend. You do not feel it maybe but it is there and our sin and our doubts don’t change that fact. This is what Grace is about. Not simply a way to get us out of the pain, but which allows us to dwell in it.
Let’s sing and praise God. Let’s be over joyous and ecstatic. Let us let our inhibitions fall away and welcome God in. I want to smile and be happy in corporate worship.
But let’s not forget this is not the only place where God is.
He is in the pain.
He was there before we knew it.
And He will be there when we leave it.
Because no matter how we feel about corporate worship, no matter how good we feel when we partake in it or how shitty we feel,
This is not the end.
When we think of God we think of a Him. We also think of a being who created the world and who loves us unconditionally. We also think the opposite. We think that God is angry with us most of the time and that he is holding out on us. He has time for us but more in a teacher- class setting. He wants to teach us things but he’s too busy to engage in one on one tutoring.
With so many conflicting ideas about God, no wonder we don’t get him.
We also think God is far up in the sk
y, in some other dimension.
Which creates feelings of distance from God. Which then lead to hopelessness and guilt and shame.
A lot of the time we are waiting for that huge ‘eureka’ moment where God speaks to us.
But there could be another way God wants to speak to us that we often miss. Continue reading
God is not a hipster. He’s not into bands that only you and He have heard of. He doesn’t shop exclusively in Top Man. He loves Coldplay and New York Pony Club in equal measure.
A friend, who thinks like us, looks like us and who cares for the same things that we do will naturally support us when someone questions or challenges our beliefs. But when we view God through those lenses (Hipster thick clear lenses) it’s pretty easy to fall into the trap of thinking God is on one side or the other. We fit God into our perceived ideas of what is right or wrong.
But when I hear that “God so loved the world”, my thoughts don’t directly go to being about how we are saved but rather that God is for everyone. Sometimes this is hard to swallow. Sometimes it would be so much easier if this was not true. But it is. And I am glad it is. Continue reading
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