Sometimes it's hard to recognise that you are in a cult. That you are part of a group that dogmaticly holds to a set of beliefs no matter what the evidence around you is. My family, friends and extended community are all part of this cult so, when I stick my hand up and say I don't think the UFO is coming to rescue us, people stare at me like I'm an idiot.
The cult I'm in so pervasive that I don't even know what it's called. As far as I'm concerned this is how everybody lives and I'm starting to doubt some of our most foundational doctrines.
I no longer believe the following...
1) I no longer believe I gain pleasure or satisfaction through consumption. I no longer believe that a brown fizzy liquid will make my life better or that a shiny white phone will make me more connected with my friends and family. I longer believe that buying anything will make me happy. The most rewarding thing I did all year was give away a whole bunch of my stuff.
2) I no longer believe in eternal growth: I no longer believe that we can continue to use more and more of our infinite resources with no consequence least of all consequence that they might run out.
3) I no longer believe in moral progress: I'm no longer believe that we are morally superior to our fore-fathers. We may not have slaves serving us coffee and biscuits. Instead we slaves picking our coffee and chocolate for our biscuits. We haven't removed slavery or slave like conditions we have just removed it from our immediate view.
Then there's this certain level of unease that so many things I have learnt are only useful in the cult. For example: I can name twenty American Brand names but not one edible plant in my local area. I spent hours learning how to do quadratic equations as a teenager but i had no idea how to do an oil change on a car. It was like I was educated to live somewhere other than the reality I find myself in.
I am an apostate and a renegade in this cult. I want to run away but I don't even know where the door to the compound is located.
In the Christmas narrative Mary and Joseph are without a home. When they wander back to the place that Joseph grew up (presumably his home until he was kicked out by the current Roman occupiers) things have been so utterly changed by the Roman Empire that there isn't even a set of relatives or old friends that he and his pregnant wife can seek lodging with. It looks like this is not an unfamiliar story either because all the lodging is taken all except a barn full of animals. Later to save Jesus life Joseph and Mary seek refuge in Egypt. Probably something they'd be reluctant to do given the history between their people and the Egyptians. Every Christmas we remember the family who fled from persecution, unable to stay in their hometown or surrounding country, seeking refuge in a strange place. It's perhaps fitting that the place in Australia where many people are doing that exact same thing all through the year is called Christmas Island.
Since the tragic suicide of the nurse involved in the 2day FM prank call media outlets, fuelled by regular readers and viewers, have been baying for blood. The prime targets have of course been the two DJs who made the prank call in the first place. As much the call was juvenile and intended to humiliate someone and the decision to air the call without permission is appalling (a decision I doubt the DJs in question would have personally made) their is a wider responsibility than just the two DJs.
Ever since the story emerged I have wondered how the nurses workplace superiors responded to the situation. I think most people have been in enough workplaces to know that some work superiors would take empathy with you and go into bat for you and others would blame you completely including possibly dismissing you from your job. It has been recently revealed that a suicide note is critical of the way that hospital staff responded to the prank call. Exactly what this criticism is, of course, I don't know
Then there is the culture around celebrity (including the royal family) that on the one hand we (collectively) demand that their private lives be private and on the other hand that we should know every detail about their private lives. Hence we send in the paparazzi to chase down celebrity to get every detail doing the dirty work for us being our scapegoat so we can enjoy the results of what they do whilst simultaneously being disgusted by them. Really, all the DJs were was paparazzi in disguise. Instead of hanging of window ledges and taking photos or tapping phones, they just got the information in a far more novel way. What drove the paparazzi to chase down Princess Diana is what drove 2Day FM to not only make the phone call put broadcast it without permission.
We need to take responsibility. This tragedy is not just the result of the sin of two DJs. There are greater systemic problems at play. The first of which we need to address is our desire to simplicity scapegoat someone. Whether that's a workplace scapegoating a single employee, media consumers scapegoating paparazzi, our scapegoating the two DJs, Or even more tragically a single person scapegoating themselves for something that was not their fault..
As some of you may know or remember I've got a band together. I like playing music and I like Ye Olde Gospel type music so out came The Filthy Jesus Experiment. I've posted an introduction to the idea of the band here. I'm envisaging the band playing in pubs and like a ye olde revival meetings preaching a mini sermon or two during the songs. It's been a challenge to think of what I might say. The audience would be a regular pub going people probably expecting to be some kind of punk burlesque take on ye olde Christianity.
Here is what I came up with for a Christmas sermon.
As we move in to the craziness of the Christmas season. Many of us will not be celebrating happy families, content lives and rich presents. So, this season the The Filthy Jesus Experiment will not be celebrating that Christianity offers us some kind of tonic to make us happy, content and rich. Instead we will be celebrating that God has come to earth via an illegitimate family, amongst the poverty of an oppressed people and in the filth of an animal stable. No God did not give us a cleansing tonic to cure our ills, instead God gave us a Filthy Jesus.
Ask me if Jesus is the centre of my faith and I’ll say a resounding “yes!” If you observe my life you’ll see a different reality. In reality the Bible is often the centre of my faith. The Bible is what sermons get preached from, it’s what gets quoted to substantiate a position on almost everything apart which footy team I should to follow. If you come out of a more evangelical tradition like me, as long as someone could pull out a Bible verse or two to substantiate their position then there was no need to ask further questions. If, on the other hand, we ever heard someone say ‘Jesus was nice, so let’s do something that’s nice,’ we would recoil at what we perceived as a very wishy-washy theological basis for any idea or activity.
Of course things weren’t always as simple as quoting one proof text. Older texts could always be ‘trumped’ by newer ones. For example, if anyone ever suggested that we should adopt Old Testament purity laws. Then we could deliver an avalanche of counter ‘proof texts’ particularly from Paul. Not that this ever happened, but we were ready in case it did.
Now, my theology is far less evangelical than it used to be. If anyone asks me why I believe in gender equality, why I’m gay affirming, or why I believe that we should not repeat Ezra’s ethnic cleansing I can explain and, like a good evangelical, explain from the Bible. It might sometimes mean a bit of a theological workout, looking at the meaning of original Greek words and the context of the original passage, but we could get there.
On the other hand if anyone was to ask my wife these same questions she'd probably shrug her shoulders and say ‘ask Chris’. I suspect she just can’t be bothered with all my pharisaic like theological gymnastics just to get to a position to which she already knows in her heart to be true. She knows it to be true because she’s spent a life time trying to be like Jesus, rather than me who has spent a life time trying to wrestle with scripture. If we walk in the city she takes the cash. If I get asked by a homeless person for some money I need ten minutes to work out what the best thing to do is. She’ll just hand over the cash. She just has a more natural ability to embody Jesus than me. She spent the first twenty five years of her life listening to sermons on why it was important to submit to your husband and spent them single because she refused to date anyone who believed that. Despite what everyone else said she just knew that sort of dominate/subordinate relationship didn't line up with who Jesus was.
Recently, I heard a great talk explaining how the feeding of the 4000 parallels with Joshua’s conquest of Jericho. (It’s not as far-fetched as it sounds). Anyway, just as I was about to tell my wife about it, I realised she didn't need some convoluted explanation about why we shouldn’t kill thousands of innocent people and take their land from them. Of course, she wouldn’t even think that could ever be justified. All it took was for her to once read Jesus saying ‘you’ve heard it said, but I say...’ for her to know the right answer, the Jesus answer, is always the compassionate answer. As exciting as my theological discovery was I couldn't help but think maybe I should make Jesus the centre of my faith and not the Bible. Maybe I should stop wasting my time and be more like my wife.
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This is article first appeared in the Anabaptist Association of Australia & New Zealand Journal "On The Road" (December 2012 Issue 54). Which I have to say I feel quite honoured about :-).
Santa Claus is the modern day successor of St Nick. But to be honest saying Santa Claus is just like St Nicholas is like saying Snoop Dogg is just like Martin Luther King because they're both black and talk about race and money. On the one hand we have big fat well fed Santa who visits all of the world all of the rich developed world and gives presents and well, the richer you are the more extravagant your presents are going to be. St Nicholas on the other hand used his entire inheritance to help the poor, sick, and children in need. He gave in secret, expecting nothing in return. He saved young women from slavery, protected sailors, spared innocents from execution, provided grain in a famine and rescued a kidnapped boy. Unlike fat jolly Santa, St Nicholas often looked as grumpy as all get out.
I'm going to guess that in a life given that was given to serving the poor, he didn't suffer fools gladly. Most famously at the council of Nicea he got so irritated by Arius rambling on about how he didn't like the idea of the trinity St Nicholas slapped him in the face. Tell Nicholas his memory had been usurped by a fat man handing out presents to the wealthiest quarter of the world and I reckon there'd be fireworks. So if you want honour the legend of St Nicholas find yourself a Santa and slap them in the face or buy something from TEAR's gift catalogue.
This post was inspired by / stolen from this post by Peter Enns
This Review first appeared in the October Edition of The Uniting Church Newspaper Revive. I forgot to post it the Blog until now.
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If you’ve ever wondered what it might sound like if Sufan Stevens (hipster singer song writer) took over the music at church and reinterpreted some old hymns, then this album is worth checking out. The title is a nod to the laid back acoustic style of musicians like Stevens, Iron and Wine or Angus and Julia Stone (so, despite the name “Indie” it’s the kind of music a grandmother would be happy to hear).
The album is sumptuously recorded almost exclusively with acoustic instruments. There are no drums or percussion, adding to the soft relaxed feel. If you’re a church musician, Indie Hymnal is a great resource.
As a listening album, however, it’s probably not one I will be returning to regularly. The vocal and musical performance is just a bit too clinical. There are no guitars strummed louder than they should be and the vocals communicate a sense of reverence for the material but lack the sense of conviction or struggle you might hear in a David Bazan rendition.
The usual retelling of the Genesis 3 story goes something like this... God made the world, told Adam and Eve not to eat from the tree of knowledge and they did. God banishes them forever because... well we don't get an exact answer why but often the subtext I hear, when the story is retold, is that Adam and Eve are kicked out because God (like a horrible headmaster) likes to have petty rules and if you break just one then that's it, busted for life. Nadia Bolz-Weber asks what if Adam and Eve went to God and said we've stuffed up and we're sorry. Would God have still said that's it, you're out forever? I can't help but think that just doesn't sit right. Maybe the break with God was not because of Adam and Eve's inability to keep a somewhat arbitrary rule but because they were unable to be honest with God and take responsibility about what happened. Like a five year old with chocolate all over their face they insisted someone else did it. Relationships survive mistakes, stuff ups and broken promises all the time. What they do not survive is dishonesty. We have all felt that sense of shame that stops us telling the whole truth. There can be overwhelming urge to lie about a situation rather than tell the truth so we can appear to be (like God) perfect. But when we do lie, no matter how well we do it we feel some sense of shame. Maybe this is why Adam and Eve felt exposed (naked) and ashamed.
I was listening to John Cleary's Sunday night religious radio show today, and there was a discussion about religion and sex, following the (UK)Anglican churches decision on women bishops. Lots was being said about various issues then Dr. Michael Horsburgh said this...
"If you want to understand a rule you have to look for the evil that it is expected to redress. So, people see something wrong, they say we need a law against it, so we are to create a rule and you can understand a law, whether we agree with it or not, you can understand the law in the context of the evil it seeks to redress. But, laws and rules last longer than the evils. So some reach their use by date that's why that's why it's actually very important that we understand what the context were originally behind the kinds of rules that we've inherited the because in a new context those rules may not be particularly useful." Dr. Michael Horsburgh
I thought it was genius, could easily be applied to so many church / Xn rules so I had to repost it.
Imagine if someone's grandparents stole a Stradivarius violin off my grandparents. They then became a famous musician, partly because of the unique sound of the stolen violin. Then imagine that each time they played a concert with that violin they thanked me, because I was the "traditional owner" of the violin.
If that happened to me I'd feel ripped off, patronised and pretty friggin' angry. Particularly if they were living a life of rock star luxury and I was living in poverty.
The church I'm
hanging out with is doing a series where we get to think about what our "frontline"
is? That is where we might already be "missionaries"? Or, who we can tell the gospel too? To
be honest I'm always nervous about these sorts of things as they can often
water down Xy to some kind of religious pyramid selling scheme. Where sermons
become rallying cries for sales teams.
None the less, I have a faith that has transformed my life for the better and one that I believe is worth sharing with the people I know and love. I
reflected about the people I connect with on a regular basis in particular my
closest friends. Serendipitously two of them (both not Xn) and I had a long conversation
about Xy. During the conversation it became brutally obvious that they will
never come to church. (This is probably also true of many of the other people I
know).
Thinking about this I remembered an
old friend becoming Xn, at the time she only knew me and one other Xn person. She started going to church and about four weeks later chucked church in
and later after moving to a different part of the state everything else kind of faded away. Jesus was great but she couldn't
square Jesus with the way church folk did life and the values they lived. Church was and still is the only way I knew
to give some sort of form to Xn discipleship.
I cannot help but
feel that Church has become an albatross to mission. Unless I abandon church and
work out some other way of being Xn, some way of living and growing as a person
of faith rooted in the long history of the faith that I can then hand on to others, then my friends and many others I
know will never consider becoming Xn.
To be honest right now I have no idea why I even go to
church. I get nothing out of it and I give nothing to
it.
Yet another A Churchless Faith post addressing topical issues way too long after they have happened. I have a family that comes first blog comes way down the list. Sorry. Anyway...
A couple of weeks ago the Sydney Anglican Arch Bishop was in the news speaking out against the playing of Frank Sinatra's "My Way" at funerals and the way he felt that it embodied a culture of individualism. My first thought was that I don't think he understands why people would want to play this song at a funeral. I was further surprised when I heard a large panel of people on Radio National discussion generally agree with Peter Jensen's sentiments.
I do not think playing "My Way" at a funeral comes about as either a celebration of or a cause of individualism. Rather, it is a symptom of the loneliness and isolation that people experience.
For better or worse gone are the days of extended family support, inheriting a trade from your father, a high school or university qualification guaranteeing long term stable employment, marriage as a life long commitment, your neighbours not only people who lived beside you but also worked played and went to school with you.
Certainly all of the above has a dark side. But theses things have gone leaving many people isolated and lonely. I believe many people play "My Way" simply because there was not a community with whom they could do it "Our Way". I suspect that for many "My Way" is more of a celebration of survival rather than individualism.
This week I heard a
church talk where it was suggested that we should “wipe the dust off our feet”
or forget about or ignore those neighbours who don't like you. The idea comes
from Luke 9:5 (and similar passages) “Wherever they do not welcome you, as you
are leaving that town shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them”
I've got two kinds
of neighbours those who hide behind their roller doors (I could sit next to
them on the train and never know) and those whose kids play at my house. This second group of neighbours are hard
drinking footy loving pot smoking folk with “F*** off we're full” stickers on
their car. That's not to say they are not nice people but we don't have any
natural points of connection. I’m pretty sure they like having us as
neighbours, appreciate the occasional free carton of eggs but that's it. We're
never going to be drinking bourbon together listening to ACDC and talking cars
and footy.
By the logic of
the talk these are the sorts of people I should be "wiping the dust of my
feet off" at because, as the speaker said, they aren't "people of
peace". That just doesn't seem right to me. It’d mean wiping my feet of my
entire suburb. Each night I thank God that despite what I do, how much I scream
“God where are you? And, why don’t you do something” that God has not wiped the
dust off God’s sandals and decided to walk away from me. If God does that for
me and God asks me to be God’s ambassador I’m not sure I can leave these people
and metaphorically shake the dust off my feet as a testimony against them.
I recentlyhad a conversation with
an old friend on Facebook about wifely submission. I was trying to ask him how
would explain wifely submission to a non Xn person or what the intrinsic
benefits of being a submissive wife are. He kept going back to "this is
what I think Ephesians 5 is saying". The exchange probably says more about
my inability to communicate via social networks than it does about my friends
ability to understand what I was trying to ask. Which was what are the benefits
to following this idea aside from "it's in the Bible".
None the less, it
got me think about how "The Authority Of Scripture" functions. For
more evangelically minded people this means once you've decided to follow Jesus
you decide to follow everything in the Bible too. For more liberally minded
people reason and tradition may play a bigger role and you kind of get a two
against one get out of jail free card if they both go against something they
believe is being said in the Bible.
I'm wondering if, for me, the
Bible has authority because of what it says rather than because of what it is.
That is the Bible, for me, is more like Martin Luther King rather than the
Pope. If you don't like what the Pope says, and you have a "what the Pope
says goes" kind of Catholicism, you're just stuck with what ever has been
decreed. MLK on the other hand only maintained authority when what he said continued to ring true in some
sense.
If I
found something MLK said that sounded offensive or uncharacteristic. I
would neither believe it nor dismiss that one thing or everything that he ever
said. I'd ask
1) Is this really what he said?
Was it transcribed incorrectly?
2) What was the context he was
talking in? Was he talking metaphorically or sarcastically rather than
literally?
3) Is it something he later went
on to regret saying?
4) If I don't get a satisfactory
answer I'll mentally file it away in the don't quite understand what's going on
here corner of my brain.
If I'm honest with
myself I suspect this
is exactly how I've treated the Bible. I believe God is loving, Jesus is God's
demonstration to us of what God is like, and the Bible is our window to
understanding that more fully.
If I find something in the Bible
that seems to go against this I have to ask. Do I change my idea of what or who Godis
or do I wrestle with the text until I understand it differently. I tend to ask these
questions of myself.
1) Is this really what was said
in the original text? Is how I understand this today how the original hearers /
reader would have understood it?
2) What was the context the
author was writing in? Was the author talking in some other form rather than
literally?
3) Is it something (particularly
if it's something from the Hebrew Bible) something that the prophets, Jesus or a New Testament writer would
challenge?
4) If I don't get a satisfactory
answer I'll mentally file it away in the don't quite understand what's going on
here corner of my brain.
Over my life at
different times I have filed away the issues of gender roles, sexuality and
Joshua's conquest (to name but a few) and then revisited them when I found a
satisfactory understanding of them. There are still things filed away in the
doesn't make sense yet compartment in my brain. Maybe I'll get to then maybe I
won't.
Either way I won't
be throwing away the bible or submitting to any one's particular understanding
of what the Bible means.
The dudes at Homebrewed Christianity are about to do a podcast on John 14:6. The "I am the way the truth and the life" text. This passage often gets used against more peace love and mung bean Xns when they are doing their "God love everyone man" thing. Kind of like a trump card to discount of God being overly inclusive. When someone pulls this trump card what they usually mean is not "Jesus is the way the truth and the life" but, if you haven't said a prayer to invite Jesus into your heart and then followed that up by attending a church whose theology roughly coincides with that big selling books at that persons favourite cheesy Xn bookshop, then you are not in with God.
Here are my thoughts on this verse. Following Jesus would have been theologically confusing for the disciples. Tax collectors and prostitutes were in but the Pharisees were out. The first were made last and the last, first. In Jesus' Sheep an Goats parable even those who call Jesus lord don't even get in.
At the beginning of John 14 Jesus announces that he will be leaving the disciples and they want some assurance. In John 14:6 Jesus tells them that he is the gate keeper it is he who decides who is in and out. There is no magic prayer to get Jesus in your heart. There is no ritual or sacrifice to be made to make sure that you are in with God, just the assurance that Jesus is the way and that he will continue to declare the tax collector, the prostitute and people like the sheep in the sheep and goats parable who don't even know Jesus as part of the kingdom of God.
So, yes I fully embrace John 14:6. But, any theological ideas that come from what we think John 14:6 means must concur with Matthew 25:31-46 (the sheep and the goats parable) and not from our own desire to be the gatekeepers of who is in and out with God. That we are not that gate keep is precisely what we learn in both passages.
This week I read a post by theologian Tony Jones where he expresses a profound lack of experiencing or hearing from God. I also heard the story of someone on their death bed who had a profound experience of God. I feel an urge to embrace and affirm both experiences. I know you are supposed to fall down on one side or the other as to what should be the "normal" Xn experience but right now I'm trying to formulate something that embraces both experiences. Something that does not say that one is correct and the other means either you're not really a Xn or you are somewhat delusional.
Personally I can relate most with the silent nothing (Tony Jones) experience of God. Perhaps other people have a different make up. An imaginative (not imaginary) make up where they are able to experience the reality of God through a far more imaginative or mystical experience. This is not to say the experience is not real just because it might not be able to be recorded on a video camera. Like the often very visceral experience of falling in love the revelation of God may also be very real. But for those of us with a different make up, it doesn't make our experience less real (perhaps like the love of a couple who've stuck at loving each other decades after the giddy excitement of first meeting has died down). For people like me it only seems less real or less "normal" if I have enough people telling me this is not the normal Xn experience or that I'm missing out. For people who experience God differently perhaps it's all about what sort of a person they are and how they experience the world rather than that God has arbitrarily chosen to speak to some people in one way and other people in another.
To be honest I love how I experience life, love and God in all it's complex vagueness and I wouldn't change it for the world.
I've just listened to the NPR interview with Alain De Botton and it struck me how important Alain and his brand of atheism might be for Xns.
More popular atheists like Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris tend to have grown up in explicitly Xn environments. Whether that be home, school or community. They have had Xy foisted upon them and unsurprisingly they have aggressively rejected it.
De Botton is different. Raised in an athiest household he grew up outside of any Xn influences (much like many under 30s are doing today) and, approaches Xy with sense of curiosity rather than any sense of certainty and conviction. He has no interest in debating Xns but would rather just pick and choose the bits he likes from Xy. The way he treats Xy is much like the way most of us treat political parties or indigenous spiritualities. We rarely agree with the whole package a political presents to us, we pick the bits we like from each and then, because we have to, we vote on one. Similarly we might have a great quote from an American Indian cheif on our wall or a beautiful Aboriginal dot painting but, we have no interest in signing up for all their respective religous practices.
I predict this is exactly how the vast majority of Australians will treat Xy (if they are not quietly doing this already). They might like our weddings and funerals, or like our stance on looking after the homeless, or like the schools we run and it will rarely cross their mind that someone should completely commit to the faith or be completely against the faith. They could believe in a God or not (like De Botton) but that will have little bearing how much of the Xn faith and it's practices that they pick and choose from.
This will be a great challenge to Xns. We generally think in terms of people who either sign up for everything or reject everything. How will we respond to people who are happy just to pick and choose? (Trying to convince them they can't pick and choose will be like trying to convince someone they can't vote for a particular political part without becoming a signed up member) And, how do we coherently show the interconnectedness of all the various aspects our faith?
This will be a far tougher and more important challenge than how could we "beat" someone who's just read "The God Delusion" in a debate will ever be.
For seven years or so I've been trying to work out how to connect with the people in my suburb. There are no parks that anyone actually goes to. We have a supermarket, a chemist and a bottle shop and soon we will have another bottle shop. I get on fine with the neighbours but we don't have much in common. And I can't fake a passion for footy, cars, ACDC and rum. We have a local public school and we've chosen not to send our kids there. See this post for exactly why.
Anyway, right now there are eight kids from four different houses in my backyard. Playing with our chickens, cubby house and home made swing set. I haven't seen this in any "thinking missionally" books. I have no idea where all this might go.
My Father in law runs a men's get together. There's warm food a fire on a back patio and there's always a wise man who share's something honest and encouraging. Last month my father in law asked me if I could be that man who did the sharing. I said yes and after acknowledging to the men who had gathered that I couldn't come up with something honest and encouraging I shared something honest. This is what I said...
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Welcome to AA.
My name is Chris and I'm an agnostic. This is agnostics anonymous and it's been 3 weeks since my last doubt.
Now I know what you're thinking... C’mon, it's ok to have the odd doubt every so often. Maybe you could have one with dinner. Or go out with friends after work and have one. But me, I'm more of a binge doubter, once I get started it's hard to stop.
Now I know that usually these kind of talks are supposed to start with me telling you about how I used to have all these doubts but then God did something miraculous and now I'm certain that God exists and that God has some grand plan for my life. That I no longer believe that my life is a series of random crappy events but that there is a great plan and I now know exactly what it is. Well, I’m sorry. It doesn’t.
In the past I suspect that people have thought that I don’t think God has some sort of plan for my life. That I thought my life was a series of random crappy events, and they have put arms around me and said “Chris, God has a plan for your life” and I've smiled and thought well it's a pretty friggin’ crappy plan so far.
Now, I should say, for your sake I hope you disagree with me. I think it’s probably easier going with “God has a plan for my life, and I can see God working things out to make this plan happen”. To be honest, thinking that way will probably just make your life easier all round.
So you might ask why would I think that my life is just a series of meaningless random events? Why would I think that God has no grand plan for my life?
Well here's a quick sketch…
At this point in the talk I gave a short overview of my life focusing on all the crappy things that have happened to me. About ten different main events. Some of which I'd rather not publish on a public forum like this blog. So you'll just have to imagine.
So that is why I think that life is just a series of meaningless random events. Now, by giving you this quick sketch I’m not trying to show that I’m exceptional or deserving of extra sympathy. In fact quite the opposite I suspect that many of you could sketch out your life in similarly depressing terms.
Now whilst most of the time I remain convinced that my life is just a series of random meaningless events every so often something happens. Something that makes me think "hang on, maybe God does have a grand plan for my life"
One example was about 4 or 5 years ago.
We as a family felt called to leave our suburb. We couldn't find a church, couldn't connect with our rum drinking footy loving rev head neighbours. Our kids didn't get into the local schools we wanted and, the church we found, my wife's job and the school our kids were going to were all right near my wife's family who we were increasingly relying on after my son's autism diagnosis. It felt like God was clearly telling us leave the suburb.
The other example was a couple of weeks ago.
We had chosen to take our kids out of the school they were in (mainstream education was starting to clash with my daughter) and put them in a school closer to where we lived, the bank had rejected our loan application (so we could move house and live closer to my wife's family), quite a few of the local kids had started playing in our back yard (there are no decent parks walking distance from our house and we've got some fun things in the backyard). It felt like God was clearly telling us to stay in the suburb.
When these things happen I get this warm fuzzy feeling and I wonder is this God showing me the plan for my life? Am I experiencing the divine? But then I also wonder maybe, maybe it was just the dodgy left over pizza I ate last night. I just don’t know.
A few years ago I started thinking where did the whole idea of “God has a plan for your life” come from? I’d heard many people argue that in Romans 8:29 Paul describes us as predestined and therefore that means it was God’s plan for me to marry my wife, it was God’s plan for me to have two kids, it was God’s plan for me to be a stay at home Dad. But, yet this is what that verse in Romans says. “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son” God’s plan is not for what I would do but what I would be like. That I would become more and more like Christ. And that is all. I might thank God every day that I met my wife and somehow convinced her to marry me, that I have beautiful kids and get to stay at home with them. I just don’t think it was part of a grand plan.
Further more, a life littered with crappy random events is exactly what many of our Biblical heroes experienced.
• Moses: After meeting God on the mountain came down to see the golden calf
• John Baptist: After baptising Jesus ends up in prison, as his disciples recount all the things that Jesus is doing, all in line with his original calling, I can just imagine John thinking the one thing that is missing is the captives being set free. Then he is beheaded
• Paul: After preaching the gospel discovers that the razor gang has been following behind him corrupting all his work telling people they had to be circumcised.
• And Jesus famously cries “My God My God why have you forsaken me” I've heard many people downplay this as just a wink to Psalm 22, Jesus saying everything will be cool. I think it's left in Aramaic and not Hebrew or even Greek deliberately to show it is a very human cry for help. All the nightmares that he worried would happen as he prayed and sweated profusely in the Garden Of Gethsamne are coming true
Random crappy events and painful disappointment is the standard experience of our biblical heroes.
And if I'm honest with myself, my plan of a comfortable life in say Fremantle with a six figure income doing a job where I can be creative and independent and a family who unconditionally adored me. That kind of life probably would not have made me more like Christ. It would not have helped me identify with the poor, unemployed, divorced, disabled and all the people who Jesus identifies with.
Now, you may wonder given this rather depressing sounding perspective on life what keeps me going? Simply this. The more I try to live and love as Jesus did the more I feel human. The more I try to be like Jesus (failing as I often do) the more I feel like this is who I am supposed to be. Despite prayers to the contrary God has not spared me from the storms of life instead he has taught me how to dance in the rain. God does not have a plan for my life which I can relax into and know it’s all under control. God is shaping me to become more like Christ and that does not exclude me from experiencing the painful, disappointing random events that everyone else does.
A few years ago Mother Teresa’s journals were published and it was revealed that she had doubts. To me that seemed completely unsurprising. As the levels of poverty around her, that she felt called to alleviate, would have seen insurmountable. I bet she had doubts when all the second hand shoes for her order arrived and I bet she had doubts while she we waited for everyone else to take shoes and she squeezed her feet in to the last ill-fitting remaining pair. But, I also bet as she put the ideal of last first and first last in her bones she felt like this is what it means to be like Jesus, to be fully human. I’m not the sort of person who can argue evidence that demands a verdict and convince you of the Christian faith that way. But I can tell you that there is something in my bones tells me this is what it means to be human and to live life abundantly.
The big thing I have learnt in my life is that God's plan for my life is simply to be more and more like Christ. To be like Christ means that like Moses, John and Paul to be faithful is often to follow God to a place where I too will be screaming "My God My God why have you forsaken me." Where things are random, painful and make no sense.
In my best moments I try not ask God please give me a child without autism, a better salary, a house in a suburb without a methamphetamine lab across the street and without a school with a bullying problem. Instead I try to pray “Lord fix my soul” make me more like Jesus “Lord fix my soul”.
Now, because Mike usually asks me “did you bring your guitar” we’re going to finish singing a song called “Lord fix my Soul” Would you be up for that? I love this song as it’s not a cry for God to fix everything else and make it more like my image of heaven but a confession that I am the one who needs fixing to become more like Christ. Ok, now this song comes with a warning. It’s very theologically correct. In Philippians 3:8 Paul describes the things we usually value as excrement. The message describes translates the word as “dog dung” but in the original Greek the word is the roughest colloquial term for poo? Can anyone guess what that might be?
(Then we sang this song together)
Now when you go home and your wife asks "what did you do" you can say someone told us God no plan for your life, sang a gospel song with lots of swearing and everyone was smiling by the end.
