Books & Theses - Part 3
JONATHAN`S BOOK
A PERSONAL JOURNEY
15: IT STARTED WITH A KISS
I was one of the 'safest and best' type of Christians until I left school at seventeen. Involvement in a holiday play scheme for poor youngsters introduced me to Marjorie, a lovely young woman actively involved in the local church youth club.
She arranged my induction into prayer breakfasts and the strange new world of being a 'committed Christian'. Instead of reading law at university I changed to theology and set my heart on becoming a priest.
I was caught up with Bible believing Christianity and the idea that there were simple answers to guide me through the great unknown adult world was certainly attractive. At university I was drawn to a charismatic church which was all the rage at the time. Its spontaneity and belief in present day miracles were music to the student mind convinced that everything was possible. The fact that with young fervour and utter dedication, significant things were achieved over these years, only lent force to the conviction that God was working powerfully.
THE GHASTLY TRUTH
One thing troubled me, though. I couldn't understand how Christians could live extravagantly and speak about the gospel of love while the poor were starving. I became the college 'prophet' decrying the waste and wantonness of the bar, discos and the great yearly ball. You can imagine just how popular I was!
I became consumed with the desire to ensure that my life expressed my beliefs and so everything unnecessary to life was discarded. I slept on the floor, ate simply and washed in cold water! Any surplus money I had was given to charity.
As well as these personal rigours, I also moved bureaucratic mountains in setting up a shop, marketing goods from the poorer countries, which still trades from the college. Having graduated, I felt compelled to travel out to Calcutta to work with Mother Theresa's Missionaries of Charity.
This was to have a profound influence upon me. After working with a group smuggling Bibles, medicines and other materials into eastern Europe in false bottom suitcases and specially adapted cars, I hitch hiked my way to India.
I was picked up by car thieves in Turkey, tear gassed in Iran in the riots which preceded the revolution, ended up being taken to my accommodation in Afghanistan at gun point! Nothing, though, prepared me for Calcutta. The squalor and horrific poverty I found there shocked me.
For most of that year I worked in the slums of the city, washing, cooking and living beside the people in their struggle for survival. I saw appalling sites of self inflicted deformity, beggars with large parts of their bodies openly rotting. I saw murder and violence in the pursuit of food and money and the darkness and ugliness of poverty.
Through all of this I realised that the fundamentalist approach to Christianity and to faith generally was severely lacking and that I needed to move on.
POINTLESS PRAYERS, PRAYERFUL PRACTICE.
Calcutta has a cathedral where each Sunday the rich and the well to do file in to say their prayers and talk with the sun making their elaborate saris sparkle, , while outside their chauffeurs watched their cars.
I was shocked at how easy it was to take any set of words, even Jesus's unequivocal words about wealth, and manage to twist them so they lost their meaning. I was shocked when I arranged for a poor man from the slums to be given Bible lessons at a biblical study centre and he was thrown out because his clothes were shabby.
In the end I had less and less to do with the churches and their services and poured all my energy into trying to help those in need. My happiest moments were being able to save the lives of a young woman and an eight year old boy who were dying on the streets. When I left I was able to invest £14,000 which I had raised in England, so that the interest could help fund a hospital for women suffering from tuberculosis.
SAGE AND GRASSES
Over the next five years my thinking changed dramatically, not least through a chance opportunity I took to meet with hundreds of people from other faiths at a great assembly in Kenya organised by the World Conference on Religion and Peace. There were American Indians burning grasses, Buddhist monks who had been 'given' to the temple as children and Jain followers who wouldn't walk on country parks for fear of treading on an insect.
I was voted on to the executive committee and travelled widely to their subsequent meetings. It was a new world where there were nearly as many different approaches to faith as their were faces present.
Yet there were common factors also. I would hear a Moslem, a Christian, a Baha'i, a Brahma Kumari and a Jew all say with confidence and sincerity that their truth was the 'real truth', their way the 'right way', the words of the holy book or prophet or whatever was the 'correct revelation'. They were like children saying with conviction, 'But mine is best', or like parents speaking proudly of their children, villages of their village, citizens of their country, teachers of their school or employees of their company.
At its most innocent, it was the rather lovely loyalty we all show to what is ours. At its worst it was the bigotry which causes wars and justifies terrorism.
LOVE VERSUS BELIEF
Having served as a Church of England minister for three years I then took up a job in the south working with a priest called Brian. He was a chaotic and complicated man who needed to feel he was loved, but out of his insecurities came a deep love for others. He had little time for religion, philosophical argument, church routine or the stuffed shirts of the hierarchy. People always came first.
I remember writing a highly controversial article about the local workers at the armaments factory having 'blood on their hands'. Brian agreed with the arguments I presented but his overriding concern was for Sid who worked at the factory. He had to earn a crust for his family and the article wasn't going to change anything other than make Sid's already difficult life more difficult.
THE WORLD ON A BUS
During my time with Brian I arranged for 50 young people from different countries, faiths and philosophies to travel together on a journey from London to Moscow. As well as seeking to forge links between east and west, the itinerary included visits to Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen and other sites of significance across Europe.
As I spent more time with people from such widely different backgrounds it was apparent that love created a true and safe community.
THE AMAZINGLY WONDERFUL GIFT OF YOU AND ME
There is nothing more wonderful in this world than people. They are an exquisite combination of everything that has been given to them and everything that has happened to them, how they have responded and what is ingeniously, creatively, uniquely theirs.
I became aware that if I was to be allowed to journey through the defences into people's inner world than I had to want to and be willing to love them from start to finish. I had to accept them, treasure them and cherish them, never pointing the finger and never judging, but understanding and reverencing the holiness of the other person's world.
I realised, too, that such love is very rare.
DON'T CALL ME VICAR!
By the time I became a vicar I was well and truly down the path of thinking that our ideas, values and beliefs are as arbitrary as the families and countries we were born into. There is no mystery to it, just an international lottery of chance as to where we emerge and what we end up thinking.
It becomes rather frustrating then to be surrounded by people who think that the only place to live in is England, the only colour scheme to have is white, the only faith to have is Christian, the only denomination to be is Church of England and the only approach to faith is their own.
In fact, what being Church of England, Christian, white and British mean was as irrelevant as being bothered to find out the name of the new priest.
'Morning vicar' 'Morning vicar' 'Morning vicar'…... I could have been a cardboard cut out, I don't think they would have noticed. 'Don't call me vicar', I used to say. 'My name is Jonathan'.
NOT QUITE THE TRADITIONAL
My approach was very much that faith was to be fun and the church was for everyone, not just the cliquey members; power and jobs should be shared round.
This ruffled feathers! It had been a world where the vicar did everything, where his word was a command, where a tight system of rule and precedent operated and where all knew the pecking order.
We had to move from a dying, irrelevant community to being a vibrant and modern place buzzing with energy and life.
16 NOTHING'S IMPOSSIBLE
There was so much that needed to be done and the only realistic mandate for change would come from the people. As the die-hards held power on the church council I arranged a series of monthly new committees to which anyone could come, new or old, to voice their opinions.
These became the power houses for change. New ideas flowed rich and fast. Decisions that might have taken years ordinarily, were made in months; new services, music, groups, outings were set up, children were welcomed, chairs cleared, carpet laid and toys provided in the church for toddlers during the services as well as nappies and creche facilities. A stranglehold that the select few had exercised over the church for decades was broken. Everyone was involved in the revolution that took place and as the church became a more friendly, outward looking place so people began to flow in.
When I arrived, ten people came to the main morning service, 75 overall on a Sunday, and the church incomewas £21,000. During my five years there as vicar, at its height they were on average 254 attending, the income having risen to £77,000. Christmas, harvest and other special services saw the church overflowing, with on one occasion nearly 500 people coming.
THE BUILDING WAS FALLING DOWN
For nearly 20 years the congregation had watched as the church slowly subsided, they despaired and offered each other gloomy predictions that nothing could be done.
They hoped that I would help repair the building but instead I helped them to see the problem as a marvellous opportunity to transform an old-fashioned church into a multipurpose building serving the community.
We raised nearly a quarter of a million pounds and today the church is equipped with facilities which are the envy of most parishes around.
ZEST AND ZING
I love taking services in a meaningful way and I can't stand the pompous, stiff and churchy way that most vicars meander through the words. I wanted Sundays to sparkle and so they did.
Adults and children enjoyed coming. I gave the children and adults communion if they wanted it whether they were confirmed or not. I could never understand how Christians could share a meal together and leave some people out.
At Easter a local donkey helped in the worship and at another time we packed our animal service with creatures of all kinds! Easter Sunday was great fun, with eggs hidden all round the church and pandemonium breaking out when the signal was given for the search.
On Whit Sunday we released hundreds of orange, red and yellow helium filled balloons as a sign of the fire of the Holy Spirit carrying messages of love across the world. At Christmas the whole church would be a blaze with hundreds of candles as we sang Silent Night.
There was always something happening. For Comic Relief we had a special comic service in memory of Saint Rudolph the red nose reindeer; on April fool's day one year, I arranged for local fire officers to interrupt the service and emptied the church for a fire drill practise supposedly ordered by the council; on another I distributed green communion wine instead of red.
THE CENTRAL MESSAGE
I was always careful to preach a message of love and acceptance. A community could only survive if there was a basic understanding that everyone was struggling to make sense of their lives. One person's way may not be another's, but the family of the church was there to offer support, care and unconditional love and never to point the finger.
If mistakes were made or things went wrong, the simple truth of the Christian faith assured us that there was nothing love couldn't face and that with forgiveness and understanding a way could be found through everything.
No one was to be rejected. No one's views were to be ignored. No one was ever to be pushed away. It didn't matter what they believed, thought or did. People were to have a sense that they were accepted unconditionally into the heart of the church and nothing would ever change that acceptance of them.
LIKE BEES TO A HONEY POT.
As the message spread, so the church family grew to accommodate all sorts of people. There were lots of your 'ordinaries', but there were also many who you wouldn't normally find in the church. A woman with a serious weight problem, a man whose children had been taken away, people from a local residential unit who used to call out unpredictably in the services, alcoholics…..
Whenever anyone came who had special needs I would try and ensure that we provided whatever was necessary. A loop system for the hard of hearing, Braille books for the partially sighted, wheelchair ramps and toilets for the differently abled.
If poor people came to the church we would help. Accommodation was arranged, clothes given, transport provided, visits set up. Everyone was regarded as special, unique, to be loved and cherished. If it was possible, I tried to give jobs to and involve those who perhaps otherwise would have been sidelined.
AWARE
We certainly did not have our heads in the sand. During the ambulance strike I arranged for the bishop to come and we stood with the strikers around their makeshift fire. The ambulance station was virtually next to the church.
I was shocked during the Gulf war when I heard that the bishops had approved the heavy bombing of the Iraqi conscripts. I decided I was called to imitate the biblical story, in the book of Daniel, of the divine finger that wrote a warning on the king's wall.
I planned to be arrested and to try and catch the media's interest in the strength of opposition to the random bombing. In the end I took the case on appeal up to the High Court and was commended by the judges for my sincerity and integrity.
Each October we tried to draw attention to the plight of the poor and homeless and built a shanty town outside the church. We lived in it over the weekend and on the Sunday, instead of wearing the normal embroidered priests robes, I would wear some sacking and give communion with, washed weathered hands.
However, middle-class suburban Barnehurst was not used to it's vicar being arrested or offering communion as a down and out lookalike!
THE BLOSSOMING
People were encouraged to have ideas and follow them through. Banners were made, a music group began, songs were written, people were trained in pastoral care, a marriage preparation course began. We hosted an international conference of world peace makers, sent a member of the congregation out to India, donated thousands to good causes. Everyone's talents were welcomed and used.
THE BACKLASH
But while this amazing and wonderful growth was happening, there were the mutterers and the murmurers. These people were of the old school and their noses had been put out a joint by the influx of new faces and the loss of their power, as well as by my fresh approach to faith and life as a Christian.
What I wasn't expecting, which I realise now was naïve, was the way that people could be unaware of the real reason for their difficult feelings and hide them behind an apparently more worthy cause.
For instance, someone whom I had appointed to a post of responsibility became resentful when I spoke with him about a personal problem with which he was struggling. On the surface he remained sweetness and light while behind the scenes he wrote letters to the bishop complaining about my preaching.
IN THE FIRING LINE
As a figurehead and leader I became, as any vicar, the focus for many people's private thoughts and fantasies. When people came to me, it was hard to decode whether they were being genuine or devious and whether even they themselves understood what was going on inside than.
I remember being mystified as to why one woman had become so angry with me over a period of months. When I asked her she came up with a list of criticisms justifying her anger. However weeks later she admitted that she was having sexual fantasies about me and would I please go to bed with her. I declined the offer.
There was the woman who related to me as the son she had never had, a man the lover he had always craved, another the father for whom she had longed. I was none of these things but trying to dodge the mistakenly felt emotions that then came my way from these people was very hard.
SUFFOCATING
From the start I had resisted all the pressure upon me to become a 'puppet vicar', doing and saying all the things that were expected of me. However, with time this became increasingly hard.
With conspiracies hatching fast between one of the church wardens and the church readers about my faith, my writing and my preaching, I felt that there was a desire to muzzle me. I was loved as long as I kept my views to myself.
There was a small but vociferous group who did not like the children in services, who thought it was wrong to hold social events on a Sunday or have alcohol at church functions, who thought the Bible should be taught as though it were fact.
I became very unhappy. I loved my work and was proud of building a community where people felt loved and included, but I hated the hypocrisy of those who were more than happy for me to accept them, but who were not willing to accept me unless I conformed.
I felt I was slowly dying. The person I was and the things that I believed were bursting to come out, but I wasn't allowed to be honest or real. I shared this openly with my staff team, but the schemers merely saw it as another chance to reinforce their criticism of me. For them I was losing or had lost my faith. A suggestion was put forward that I be sent to a theological library to try and correct my thinking!
The explanation is the key to unlocking the treasures of the stories. If a child can go away thinking that God is the sort of God who would wipe out thousands as a punishment or would send great monsters to swallow us, this is to make the stories frightening and strange, and yet that is what happens in most Sunday schools, even from most pulpits, week by week.
LET'S TRAP GOD.
But the conundrum is that those who claim to be most faithful in believing in God often do so out of insecurity and fear. Their ideas about God end up by being so frightening to them that they have to gain control in some way.
The Bible becomes a type of cage in which they think God is caught. 'This is God's word' they say, 'We can understand everything about God's will for us, all we have to do is obey!' What they are in fact saying is that if we can reduce God's words to be the text in a book and if we can hold that book in our hands and speak about it and explain it, we achieve a useful shift of power and focus away from God to ourselves.
They really mean, 'it's us you must listen to, be taught by, follow and obey. Our interpretation, explanation and way of doing things is right.'
They end up being in the place of God!
SURPRISE! SURPRISE!
The God of the Bible is a God found everywhere and not exclusively anywhere. So the adventure to create a clearer picture of God involves a humility which is constantly being surprised at where God pops up next.
Devout Christians shouldn't be surprised if atheists know God better than they do, or drug addicts better than the archbishop, or a Muslim better than their priest. Do not be shocked when God speaks to you more powerfully through the Sun than the Bible or through Eastenders rather than Songs of Praise or through walking over mountains rather than a church service.
That is why those Christians who think that the main way they will grow in their knowledge of God is by sitting in church are very much mistaken. It is one of the last places that you are likely to discover God.
Go out into the world. Read widely, including the Bible and other spiritual works, but also anything and everything. Live fully, have open arms towards those you meet, listen to their opinions, ideas and insights, don't be afraid of life and what it offers and within the energetic nature of all this rich and varied experience, if you are looking and if you desire to see, will grow a spiritual awareness and a sense of God.
God's word is a living conversation spoken in the inter-weaving of all our lives.
12: BELIEFS THAT MAKE SENSE
The approach I have taken towards the Bible should be our approach too towards what the church teaches.
Throughout the world people remain bowed down under mountains of guilt and live in fear of God's anger. They worry in case their actions offend God and hope they are carving out a safe niche in heaven. Jokes abound about the gates of heaven and the fires of hell and people build their whole lives around trying to do 'what's right'.
One cruel teaching has been the Roman Catholic crusade against condoms and contraception, but it does not end there. You only have to listen to a judgemental Thought for the Day on the radio or visit a local church to cringe at some of the views being expressed. My heart goes out to all those who I can feel being crushed by judgement and condemnation, whose sense of identity is being ridiculed and who are being quite clearly put on the scrap heap by the church.
Whenever you come across a church teaching that makes no sense and is crippling your life then have the confidence to distance yourself from it.
VAMPIRES AND CANNIBALS
One of the beliefs that has bedevilled the church up to this day involves the bread and wine of communion.
In many church services they share out some bread and wine. It's a simple and lovely symbol of a family sharing a meal together while they remember loved one's past and present, especially Jesus who started the idea.
But then the religious language takes over and contaminate this lovely act with intricate theories and philosophies. In what sense is the bread and the wine actually Jesus' flesh and his blood? The arguments that ensue mess up the beauty of what the meal was meant to achieve. Instead of it encouraging love and understanding it has created some of the ugliest arguments throughout church history and has separated husband from wife and set communities at war with each other. It's an example of belief running wild with terrible consequences. Here's to those who hold their own communion services or who take communion whether they are baptised or not, whether they are Catholic, Anglican or whatever. Here's to those who break through the barricades erected by the church and by religious language and sit down happily to eat together.
THE SACRAMENT OF PIE AND MASH
What people do not realise is that beliefs are not valuable or real in themselves, but find their value in directing our attention to the importance of something which is real and every day.
Some people walk away starry eyed from communion saying they have met with their lord, yet would never invite anyone to their homes to eat with them, certainly not a stranger or someone in need.
If people really wanted to experience communion they should want to invite their neighbours round for a meal, then the local street dwellers, the Jews from the synagogue, ex offenders from the rehab unit, even their enemies. This is communion.
The most intense experiences of communion I have experienced were receiving Prasad in a Sikh temple, sharing food at a Jewish Passover meal, being given biscuits on a train by a Czech family, being invited to share a ball of lentil paste with a beggar in Calcutta and eating a Macdonalds with a tramp in Croydon!
PASSING THE BUCK
Prayer is another example. If you have ever listened to the prayers in church or on radio you will perhaps have had the same sinking feeling. Every week it is, 'Dear God, we pray for the poor that they may have food, for those whose legs have been blown apart by landmines that they make be healed, for the unemployed that they may find work, for prisoners that they may be helped.
It is a shopping list of doom and woes. Those who prepare the prayers and some Christians seem to gain a satisfaction from naming the suffering, as though in some way they are proving that however ghastly things are, nothing will knock their faith and trust.
The people who have prayed in this way so often have done a comprehensive scapegoating job. . 'Hear our problems God, now you sort them out!' When they leave church they may have no intention of giving their money to the poor or challenging unjust trading practices. Campaigns against landmines are not for them. The local unemployed project is written off as the work of loony lefties and they probably wouldn't go near a prison if you paid them!
MEANINGLESS
Prayer like this loses so much of its meaning and it falls so short of its aspiration. That is not to say that prayer, when properly practised, isn't helpful.
Prayer at best is a means of focussing on areas of concern both personally and in the world generally. It's a means of growing in empathy, identifying potential for change and for progress. It is understanding if we have a part to play in affecting the issue, mustering and unlocking inner resources for action and feeding upon the reserves of hope and beauty and healing which lie beyond us. As such it is an energising, enthusing and enabling experience, very different from the great opt out clause in most church services.
HEAVEN AND HELL
No one knows exactly what happens when we die. So when there is talk about heaven and hell and life after death we are not moving in the corridors of science.
However, if someone you love dies it is impossible for you to believe that they have gone, the sheer stupidity and cruelty of death makes us angry. How dare God or anyone take our beloved away. It's an outrage.
It is not surprising that we fill the dark loneliness with words and images that bring comfort, answer questions and heal the pain. Heaven is a good pain killer.
But just as so many commit suicide using painkillers, so the heaven solution can be deadly. You often hear people express the hope that they are going to heaven, and the church has often chided people to behave well to make sure that the pass through the pearly gates.
But the result, as with much of religion, is to deaden the conscience and produce moral light weights. It is the consumer society all over. Play your cards right, save up enough spiritual points and what a bonanza, heaven awaits you! The incentive for keeping to the straight and narrow is a reward, like the system of loyalty cards which their major supermarket stores have issued.
The most devastating result of this can be heard when Christians smugly say to one another, 'Well this life isn't what it is all about, I am banking on what is to come!' What a tragedy to miss out on the life that God has given to us because our mind is taken up with heaven.
BRINGING HEAVEN TO EARTH
So let us make sense of the language. People, unless they had been born with some disorder or have been damaged along life's way, have a sense of right and wrong. They are also aware that doing wrong messes you up, whereas trying to do good leads to fulfilment and happiness.
Around the world, in our own neighbourhoods and in our lives , there are endless examples of heavenly and hellish situations brought about by the people involved or by circumstances out of their control.
Our job is to push back the frontiers of hell and to spread the experience of heaven. We want to create a world where wars do not rage, where people can eat, where disease is overcome, where happiness is widespread, where people are understood, accepted and loved.
SO WHAT ABOUT THE HEAVEN UPSTAIRS?
We need the language of poetry and pictures to help us express the bonds of love which forever tie us to those we love. Even beyond death they remain alive for us in our hearts and in spirit. We dream of them, feel them and smell them. They influence our thinking and our choosing and we are never free of their presence. The language of heaven gives us a home in which they can live, a place of beauty, warmer and more true to their involvement with us than the soil of the grave.
What we should not do is press the pictures or demand that they hold specific scientific truths for us, that Sue or Brian are actually walking around there, then we create more problems than we can solve and we reduce the impressionist's art to ridicule.
13. PANCAKES AND PASSION
Another regular hassle is Lent, when everyone is told by the church to give up something. Chocolate, beer, sex, all come a cropper in the desire of the faithful to please God by their sacrifice!
My fear is that it is a cosmetic job and it misses the point. The story of Jesus struggling in the desert is not anything to do with chocolate, bed clothes or Hammer House of Horror devils trying to trick him into a pyrotechnic display of miraculous magic. Nor is it an American style drama featuring the latest hero as Jesus, the underdog, caught in a titanic struggle between good and evil and managing to come home all flags waving having championed the world.
It is about the ordinary and every day struggles that you and I face throughout our lives. It's about whether to queue jump, be held back in our job by helping a colleague, make vulgar signs to the next driver, support a campaign working with the poor or spread bad word about someone. It is about whether to go on and on buying more things for ourselves, do voluntary work, spend all our time in the pub or golf club, bear a grudge against people, or deliberately cause harm to someone.
It is about whether to gazump someone, take drugs, sell your story, stab someone in the back, help an enemy need, have an abortion, take someone to court, divorce, sell a dodgy car.
TURNING UP THE HEAT
All of us face thousands of choices throughout our lives. The fanatics would want us believe that it is all a straight forward battle between God and the devil, that the Bible gives us all the answers and that choosing is simple.
These same people often come a cropper, because life is not like that and such an approach produces either artificial puppets or a nervous breakdown. The frightening truth with which we are faced is that there are not easy right and wrong pathways. While there may be common factors and trends, nearly every decision is unique and every set of factors different.
The image of the 40 days Jesus spent in the desert trying to make up his mind is about the heat he experienced, the endless time and the loneliness involved in choice.
The whole charade of giving up petty things sells us very short indeed. In fact when I hear Christians joking about what they're going to give up this year, I realise that for them it is an easier option to keep Lent at the sweet shop level than to enter the desert of personal choice.
TONGUES
Perhaps you have had experience of those churches that use a different sort of spiritual language sometimes in worship. At first sight people speaking an unknown language, called 'tongues', may be rather intriguing to the newcomer. It may also be frightening!
Such groups regularly claim that God is more fully present in their church than in other churches, that his spirit is available to fill the lives of those who ask and that once filled they will be able to experience all sorts of things. For instance, they should be able to speak in tongues, or speak a message directly from God, or perform miracles.
SAFE IN THE RIGHT HANDS
Believers are told that God will give them a whole new language, that strange sounds will come out of their mouths, that they only have to try and their language will flow. It all sounds rather worrying and odd. In fact it is a perfectly normal earthly process and nothing to be afraid about at all.
Language is made up of different sounds. Some sounds form words, others sighs or tones. If you experiment, anyone can enjoy the fun of making different sounds with their mouths and vocal cords and begin to produce a pattern which takes the shape of a new language.
I remember as a child developing a wonderful array of sounds which I would speak to the other foreign children on holiday as though I was speaking another language. It was great fun. In the end the sounds became familiar and, as with any language, could sound beautiful or rough.
WHY NOT JUST TALK ENGLISH
The idea of using tongues is that words require thought and thought often gets in the way of being able to relax or express the feelings inside you. Perhaps you are really angry, distressed out of your mind, worried sick, or on Cloud Nine; we are not all poets or writers and our words can let us down, but sound can say it all.
In the same way that listening to a song can grate because the words may not fit our mood, listening to some instrumental or classical music can carry our emotions and give vent to our longings. Tongues give us an orchestra to play out our innermost senses.
Tongues can be beautiful when used privately and when they are used with others, either spoken or sung, but when one person uses them in a church it brings us to the next gift.
PROPHET
No sooner has the tongue finished than the prophet appears, the one whose gift it is to interpret the sounds that have been heard. Someone in the church will stand up and begin speaking as though they were God or Jesus. ' I am pleased with my people………' The rest listen and receive God's message. Many are overawed with the idea that God is actually speaking to them.
God uses a person as prophet who perhaps has the sort of personality, intellect, creative mind or imagination to be able to capture the mood of the community, express its feeling or be perceptive about what will be the next challenge it might have to face.
Sometimes what the prophet says is very apt, sometimes not so. Those who hear it must discern whether or what parts constitute God's word.
THE ART
Tongues and prophecy used like this can be very beautiful. Learning about using tongues may be as helpful to Edith as Yoga is to Bob. Growing in confidence to be able to speak a word from God may be as fulfilling for Andy as painting a picture is for Charlotte.
The 'spiritual gifts' as they are called, are available to anyone. They do not require any special status, any miraculous experience, any special prayer or extraordinary happenings. They are as miraculous as learning to walk, talk, right, draw, sing, act, swim or any of life's array of opportunities for self expression.
AND THE SECOND TIME AROUND.
So what is all this second coming business with Jesus coming back for the great day of judgement and bringing the world to an end as we know it?
Its 'Independence Day' stuff, the bread and butter of sci-fi fans and the like, but it is confusing if you take it at face value.
By now perhaps you are getting into the swing of my lateral approach and can do your own interpretation. Let's look for the heart and thrust of the story.
All of us are capable of constructive interpretation, but to get you started, the belief is meant to make us feel as though we had just heard that a very special and dear friend would be coming to visit after a long time away. It makes us remember past experiences, take stock of what news there is to share, make practical preparations, wonder what the friend will make of us and think of us now, indeed everything begins to be taken up with the knowledge and awareness of the possible visit.
In the case of knowing that Jesus is the friend, the feelings might take on a sharper focus, as the visitor is also our teacher and moral guardian all rolled into one. As though in a way the visitor is our own conscience.
Believing in the second coming is not really about some 'end of the world' drama. It is about whether we live our lives and make our choices in such a way that should a good and holy conscience and a living God pay us a surprise visit, then our hearts would not go-a-racing because of what we had to hide.
14: MADAME TUSSAUDS
I am not sure whether people assess their level of fame by whether they have been immortalised in wax. Some say it is hard to tell who is false and who is real in Madame Tussaud's. People begin to strike up a conversation with their pop idol or revered politician and find them particularly dumb!
The church is brimming over with wax. Not only are so many of the people wax look-alikes, posing and posturing as Goody Two Shoes, but also the way they believe has turned what is true and what is false upside down.
Prayer meetings, holy communion, church services, Christmas, Easter and Whit Sunday, these things are not in themselves real. At best they are rather lovely festivals that we enjoy, works of art that we love or plays that we perform together. The task of a painting or a poem is to present life while not itself being life and that is the task of religion too.
The danger, however, is that church goers become so caught up with their religion that it is as though they had become obsessed with art and are unable to leave the art gallery. For them the real world is an unwelcome distraction. They adore an impressionist landscape but despise the real countryside. They see Phantom of the Opera 20 times but have no time for the disabled. They become consumed in Mills and Boon but cannot make a relationship work. They say that they love God but have not the time of day to give to anyone around them.
MELTDOWN
Sometimes it is necessary to turn the heating up and light the fires until the dummies have slowly gone.
I used to infuriate certain members of my church by suggesting that they regarded themselves as devout and faithful believers but that they had not a clue what their beliefs meant and that their believing was thus perhaps a waste of time.
They would go red in the face and their hearts would race as they declared, ' But I believe in the crucifixion and resurrection and that Jesus was the son of God and that he healed the blind, cured the lame and in the end that he ascended into heaven in front of everyone.'
These were the same people who could not work with difficult situations, seemed unable to offer forgiveness to others, were unaware of how to find hope in despair. They were uninterested in helping people see their way through problems or getting someone back on their feet. Their beliefs were all words and talk, convenient cushions with which to buttress the invading world, a pleasure park of contrived forms of speech which provide a thrill here and there but sent them out into the world empty handed.
UNPACKING WORSHIP
Church services can be either horrifically dull or top entertainment but whichever form they take they are meaningless unless you understand what is going on.
For a start let us cut God out of the picture. Although the people involved may want to boost their own egos by thinking they're putting on a dazzling circus spectacular for God, the truth is that the experience has little if anything to do with God at all.
A church service is a group of people choosing to put together a programme of words, music and actions which carry meaning for them. The question someone attending should ask is, what is the meaning?
It can be fun to sing together, it is special to enjoy beautiful words being read, particularly if those words are wise or instructive, it can also help us to think together of common concerns. All these things happen naturally in worship. There is nothing mysterious about it. You find similar ingredients in concert halls, theatres or poetry evenings.
Then there are other more intriguing parts of the service. We are invited to confess our sins, to seek forgiveness, to offer praise to God, to declare our beliefs and to receive bread and wine. These appear rather religious but on closer inspection they too are very ordinary.
The idea is to encourage people to be self critical, to desire improvement, to learn to be grateful, to express what makes them tick and be willing to sit down and eat together with friend and enemy alike.
They are the raw ingredients for happy, healthy living together and in a church service they take this stylised form.
The great question remained whether I should arrange to see the bishop and ask for an appointment with the Church of England. The thought made me claustrophobic. I had escaped a system which had been slowly strangling the life out of me, it would be sheer madness to go back into it. Here was a chance for me to create a new pattern of priestly work in this country working independently of any denomination. My friends were enthralled by the idea, if a little apprehensive, and encouraged me to go for it.
YOU CAN'T MAKE IT ALONE
It is hard to throw off the sense of inner fear. The explorer and pioneer have no idea whether the expedition or project is going to work. It was a high risk situation. The new career had to be created from scratch, but I knew that it was right.
I spent chunks of time alone, thinking and planning. Times beside the river under the vast sky, soaring sea birds and endless stretches of water were particularly inspiring. Using traditional Christian language, I would say that I knew God was calling me to this new work and that he would use me in it to spread a message of love and acceptance. But such words so often get in the way. What I did, anyone can do. If you create space for yourself, dare to be alone, open yourself to the creative powers of nature, then your thoughts will galvanise themselves and decisions flow. This is the real meaning of prayer and God guiding you.
THE BROCHURE
The most important part of my launching a new career was how I was going to describe myself and my work. All of this had to form part of a brochure in which I gave a description of myself.
This was so important. It was the chance for me to stand up to all my anonymous critics who had whispered and muttered about me behind my back and to reject the smear campaign carried out by the Church of England. The real Jonathan Blake could stand forward and introduce himself.
I launched the brochure on my birthday in the October of 1994. Although I knew it would be of interest to the media, I had not quite been expecting the reaction it caused. For the next few weeks chaos truly reigned. There were articles in most of the nationals, endless radio interviews, appearances on television news and current affairs programmes, the phone was hot!
It proved to be a wonderful launch. The initial flurry of activity gave way to more serious appraisal and articles appeared in The Guardian and a full page feature in The Independent describing me as Britain's first freelance vicar. I rather liked that, I knew the Church of England wouldn't.
CUTTING THE TIES
I was a priest within the Church of England. The greatest amount of soul searching I had to do was whether I should sever my links with this one denomination in order to be truly independent.
It was a frightening prospect, like cutting an umbilical chord, but if I believed that I was on the right road, I had to believe it would work out.
It was a significant and symbolic moment when I chose to affect my Deed of relinquishment and gave up my office as a minister within the Church of England. In my own mind I had signed away the chains of a compromised earthly system of religion which had for so long restricted my ministry. I had taken myself out of its jurisdiction and control.
I no longer needed to gain a dubious authority from an institution which I believed was corrupt. A calling to the priesthood comes from God in and is recognised by the church. When a person has had his calling recognised and has been ordained as a priest, he retains the character of his priesthood for ever. The law makes it clear that no one on earth can remove it.
This is true even if a cleric has been defrocked. However, I had not been defrocked, nor removed from office, nor had my licence being taken from me. I was a priest within the Church of England who was having time out to restore his life after the breakdown of his marriage. Now restored, I had made a choice not to exercise my priesthood within that denomination any more.
I was free at last to be fully God's priest and to show the true love of God to every person, whatever they believed, whoever they were, wherever they came from, the love which is about acceptance, forgiveness and respect.
The Church of England has taken by surprise.
KNEE JERK
The first reaction of the Church of England was to phone up their lawyers to see how they could stop me. After all, I was going to make Christian ministry available once again to the everyday person. That was not allowed. The new system operating today is that vicars will only help the select view who jump through various hoops or who are regular church goers.
The Church of England wants to force people into its buildings to maintain its power base in each community and to continue to gain its revenue. My new ministry would cut right across that form of protectionism. And what if I was just the first?
It was not long before they discovered that I had pulled the rug from under their feet. I was no longer within their system nor under their authority. I was a free spirit, a bit like Jesus and the disciples, answerable to the people and to God. There was nothing above board that they could do, only put more energy into their dirty tricks campaign to make things difficult for me.
BACKLASH
I was not surprised when it came, but it was distressing nonetheless. The most ugly action was taken by a group of clergy who anonymously contacted a tabloid Sunday paper and the local paper to dish the dirt. 'Did you know that he had affairs?' they asked. The journalist who emerged from the shadows one Friday night to interview me seemed to have more sympathy with me than with them, but the expose was inevitably uncomfortable.
I knew I had to take the rough with the smooth and so I became resigned to the reality that journalists often misrepresent and distort the truth for their own ends. However, once the cycle of crucifixion and resurrection is in the soul and the bloodstream, you can cope with any thing.
professional SEO services by White Hat Media