seethrough

i recently watched For the Bible tells me so - a documentary which follows the stories of five christian families, coming to terms with having a gay or lesbian son or daughter.  I found it so moving and helpful that i invited members of the community of faith, of which i am a part, to view it during Holy Week (just before Easter).

About 50 people came to watch and I prefaced the movie by saying that I am tired of (and by) the debate about homosexuality in the church.  It has almost never engaged gay and lesbian christians.  they voice has been marginalised or ignored in favour of a debate about an issue, allowing the debate to remain impersonal.  This movie transcends the debate by allowing the debate to move into the context of family and parenting.  How should a good and faithful christian parent respond when their son or daughter comes out about their same-sex oreintation?

The movie focuses on people’s lives and asks what the bible has to say to people in very real life circumstances.

I recommend the movie to you.  I rate it as the best catalyst for helpful conversation on this issue that i hace found.  Mostly because it allows gay and lesbian people into the “debate”.  While gay and lesbian members of churches may not feel safe or ready to speak out, the movie allows their voice to be heard in a empowering way.

And then the moment of transformation - when i sense all the frustration and sturggle is worth it…

A few hard-liners attended the movie.  People from my community who have been fairly outspoken about the biblical position (i.e. that homosexuality is an abomination etc…)  I wondered how they would respond.

And then after the movie, i was standing by my car in the parking lot.  and one of the people who have tended to be quite conservative wound down his car window and surprised me.  He said: “I was so arrogant to judge them.”  A powerful moment of confession.  I resonated with his words, but I responded: “Not arrogant, just ignorant.”

I think that growing awareness is causing a revolution of love and acceptance that no power of rejection and hatred will be able to stand against…

i went out for a paddle today in fairly rough waters.  A few very large waves came through and I was washed out the boat.  That in itself isn’t a big problem.  I let the boat get washed to the shore.  Then I thought I’d  swim in with my paddle.

Strong current made that hard.  Along with some very big waves which meant I was regularly being dumped and having to swim hard to keep my had above water.

Fortunately there were two surfers nearby and I quickly called to one to help me.  He came over quickly and I was able to hold onto his board.  He and I struggled to make any headway but he kept calm and seemed confident we were ok.  We allowed the current to wash us in, recovering after each big wave by hanging onto the board.

Finally we made it in.

I misjudged the waves.  Should have been wearing a life-jacket.  Gave the family (all watching from the beach) a huge fright.

I’m just hugely grateful to Quintin for the help!

how can you see what you’re not seeing?

how can you hear what you’re not hearing?

we know that we naturally resist change.  we also know that we see (and hear) the world through the”glasses” that are our assumptions.  what this means in practice is that we will find it very difficult to “hear” something new.  To even give it a chance.

an example.  the Pope - with access to some of the most knowledgeable scholars in the world at that time - told Galileo with absolute certainty that his observations about the earth being round were not only against scripture but also scientifically and logically ridiculous.

Of course we can laugh at the Pope and his advisers.  How stupid they were.  But how do we know that we aren’t doing the very same thing in our own little cosmos.  Someone’s asking us to look at God’s world with new eyes.  Someone’s speaking with a new voice that we’re not familiar with.  How will we respond?

Will we also condemn everything that is not within our current boundary of understanding?

And if so…  how will we learn anything?  Learning (discipleship) requires a certain kind of humility.  It’s called uncertainty.  Certainty likes to dominate and convince.  but it also has a track record of ignoring and condemning helpful and (in retrospect) quite plainly truthful new discoveries…

There are those who value certainty so highly that they have closed themselves up in a cocoon.  It might feel warm and safe in the little cocoon, but the staying in the cocoon represents a desire to ignore and deny that God is real and alive in all of creation.  New ideas are not really new ideas.  They are discoveries.  Why are we so slow to learn from the painful lessons of the disciples who walked before us?

as Steve Turner puts it:

The only thing we learn from history
is that we don’t
learn from history…

so there’s this hectic story in the Hebrew scriptures about the monster and the little boy - the underdog. And everyone’s screeming from the cheap seats…

“Come on David!!!” (even though they’re convinced he’s gonna get crunched by the muscular villian)

Ok, so most people know the outcome - a giant with one smooth stone right between the eyes.

It’s the archetype story of spiritual growth - the moment of realisation, when the truth hits you and all your “strength” and assumptions and the confidence that has propped you up is gone and you find yourself flat on your back…

It was like that the other day for me. I was in a workshop on the Enneagram (see my previous post below) and the group was being introduced to the “1″ type. Their big thing is being right. I commented that I am frustrated with 1’s in my church who are always taking a fundamentalist “right-is-right” stance. The leader of the workshop defended the 1’s a little, but as we progressed it began to dawn on me that all the 1’s in the room didn’t resemble the fundamentalists I have an issue with at all! They were all quiet, nice, cautious and respectful woman…

i went home and continued reading about the “6″ type - hoping to understand myself better - and stumbled across a statement that was my smooth stone: 6’s are the most likely to associate with fundamentalist causes.

In addition to that, the book suggested that the most common defense mechanism of the 6 type is projection. Blow me down… Here I was blaming 1’s - and their need to be “right” - of being at the root of fundamentalist conflicts in the church… and all the time I’m the fundamentalist. I think i have to own that there is a certain fundamentalist flavour to my rejection of fundamentalism…

It’s not pretty. (another reason I connect with Goliath in the story…) but at least it’s a bit more honest…

[by the way - while 1’s are deeply committed to being right - they usually internalise that need to be right, becoming very critical and harsh task-masters of themselves. They are not likely to force their standards on others. Understanding the 1 better helps me to understand the deeply difficult relationship some people have with perfection.]

there are a few moments of insight when time really stops and you feel the masks falling away. and then there’s just you and you.  in a certain sense, the naked self.

the insight is a scary thing, and yet at the same, a welcome relief and a comfortable re-discovery - like when you find an old pair of shoes hidden at the back of the cupboard, and slipping them on is accompanied by a profound sense of recognition: “we know each other - where have you been all this time…?”

It was like that a few weeks back when I attended an enneagram workshop. I went with limited knowledge, thinking that I was a certain type (a “3″) because so much of my life has been about the quest for achievement and the need for affirmation and the recognition of others. But the retreat leader quickly suggested I should reconsider. She suggested that I had focussed too much on the behaviour of a type, when the heart of the enneagram is really the core energy that is at the centre of our lives. This was the moment of realisation - when i found that at the core of my life is not the energy of achievement but rather fear. Wierd - because I’m the one who ridicules my wife over her fear of spiders. It seems that every person is familiar with fear. The thing about a “6″ is, they are afraid of fear itself. Fear is such a scary thing that 6’s will do anything to eliminate it. They suss out danger (or potential threats) a mile off and put strategies in place to avoid the threat. Of course a common response to fear would be to flee. Not many people have witnessed me fleeing :)  That’s because I can’t let fear get on top of me. I am so afraid of fear that I confront it head on. For me, it must be overcome and disempowered, else it may threaten my entire existence.  This may seem courageous or stupid (yes, i have been known to jump off cliffs into the sea in the middle of the night) but these displays of courage are a sign of my ongoing struggle with fear.

As I’ve spoken about this moment of recognition with others, they don’t always immediately make the connection. I may not seem like a person motivated my fear. But inside my body the recognition is increasingly obvious. I’m often anxious. I have little ways - instinctive ways - to handle and manage the many fears that I live with. The drivenness to achieve and succeed is much better understood through the eyes of fear - fear of failure, insignificance, fear of the church closing it’s doors. This fear of “the end” motivates much of my challenges to the church to transform and find a more relevant and engaging way to be.

More important than categorising myself and knowing “what i am” the ennegram workshop has helped me to grasp something about myself that has always been but not so well appreciated. An important value of the workshop was awareness and acceptance. Knowing your type is not about changing or mastering yourself as much as it about becoming more aware of yourself and learning to accept the way you (and others) interact and manage daily life.

A little bit about the enneagram: The enneagram is an ancient map of the inner life - which idenitifies 9 basic perspectives of the world. Each number represents a group of people who tend to operate within themselves in characteristic ways. The internal map is complex, not binary and the “types” have an internal relationship which is best understood in spiritual - even mystical - terms. The number or “type” is not so much a category that describes your behaviour as much as it is a way of understanding the passion or energy that motivates a person inwardly.

a friend and I have been working on a devotional reading project.  My hope is that we can offer something of substance in a time when most devotional writing lacks depth.  We have used the writings of Thomas a Kempis, who wrote more than 500 years ago.  And we have tried to make these meditations available in a variety of formats including printed notes, a website, CD’s and mp3 downloads for people with iPods.

The idea is that we will focus on a short reading for the 40 days of Lent.

If you are interested to join us in the Lenten discipline/journey…  visit the web-site:  Seeds Devotional Reading Project

with institutional religion taking on such an awful, authoratative tone in the past century, i think that people have come to resist being told what to do

and then there’s the common resistance amongst protestants to anything Catholic - because of historical fears of unhealthy (and it did sometimes get unhealthy) asceticism. When resistance to attachments leads to all-out rejection of body and pleasure, it has lost the thread of a healthy celebration of creation - balance.

but either way, much of the “christian” spirituality i have experienced spends very little energy inviting people to adopt a learning discipline. discipline has a bad name for the reasons given above, and probably for a whole bunch of other reasons including a simple misunderstanding. when “discipline” is associated with punishment, i believe it has no helpful contribution to a better understanding of God or of the spiritual journey. in fact, talk of punishment (in my not so humble opinion) makes NO helpful contribution to our relationship with God.

but when the word “discipline” is associated with training and learning (the root word disciple means learner or trainee) then I think we can use this word helpfully to guide our way toward better relationship with God. So when the Bible, or some religious person suggests that God is inclined to discipline his children… i believe it is referring to this second kind of discipline - they kind that has to do with training and learning - a restraint or a constraint not for the purpose of punishment but quite the opposite - for the purpose of growth.

freedom is not having no limitations. freedom is found through discipline. e.g. i may be free to run a marathon (unlikely in my case!!!) if i have committed to the discipline of regular training and exercise.

it is in this atmosphere of learning and training that i would introduce the practice of spiritual disciplines. Dallas Willard in The spirit of the disciplines identifies disciplines of abstinence and disciplines of engagement. What can you give up or stop doing that might help you to learn the way of Jesus? and what can you do that will help you learn the way of Jesus?

I was talking to someone this week who struggles with insecurity and a low self-esteem even though she has achieved great things in her life. I suggested some spiritual disciplines. for abstinence i suggested the discipline of rest. in the bible this is called “sabbath” - it simply means in between times for working there needs to be time for not working. but in our driven economy we find it difficult to rest. so a discipline can help us challenge that inner voice that seems to want to drive us to death through endless striving.

for engagement i suggest the discipline of being kind to herself. usually spiritual disciplines are associated with difficulty and removing comforts, but I believe that when people are driven and struggle to receive God’s love and grace - radical kindness is required, and that may start with ourselves (for some of us)!!!

does this approach to spiritual discipline appeal to you or help you in any way?

what happens when you listen to the voice of the outsider?

well, many things actually. lately we have been listening to the “outside voice” at my church. rather than creating a “special” meeting to do this, i put pressure on to have the voices in our regular evening service of worship. my view is that if we can’t speak about stuff in a worship service, then there’s something wrong.

we asked some questions (in an interview style) of a gay man who is in a same-sex relationship and is engaged to be married. We also interviewed two people who are living with disability. we listened to (via video interview) the voice of a social activisit who doesn’t have an easy relationship with the church (Bono of the band U2). and finally, we watched a clip of Richard Dawkins speaking (of The God Delusion fame) and considered how we might respond to the voice of Science, and particularly the voice of those who are opposed to religion.

so, what happened . interesting! Some people struggled with the concept I think. I got emails asking me why we would ask an “atheist” to speak at our church. Some people boy-cotted the evening, meaning that they are not able to speak about the evening from personal experience of the conversation. Listening to the Gay man produced mised results. Some previously “homophobic” (in their own words) people came away from the interview with new openness. Others expressed a struggle with what the Bible says about the issue. I believe (”people are saying”) there are a group of people who are disconcerted about the topics we have convered, but have not spoken to me directly about that. I really appreciate those who spoke to me or emailed me their concerns.

What was emcouraging was that there were some incredible responses. One man who has really struggled with the church because he is a philosophical thinker and finds many of the ways that the church speaks very simplisitic (i think - i shouldt speak for him!) - anyway - he said that the evening on science and religion was one of the most amazing experiences of church he has ever had! Another person complimented the service in this way: “You manage to take a huge subject and not simplify it yet give understanding of it. Simultaneously you manage to encourage and challenge people to be open, to let go of fear and even trust a little more. You have amazing ability to get to the crux of the matter and you communicate with great clarity!”

to sum up:  what happens when a community of faith listens to outside voices… a lot happens!  There’s vigorous debate both in the earshot of the “pastor” and amongst ordinary members of the church… people get talking.  there’s conversation - lively interaction.  disagreement happens and people clarify and confirm what it is they believe - and more importantly - what is important and what is not so important.  the community is challenged to reflect on what they are “for” as well as what they are “against”…

i’d say, what happens is that a community of faith comes alive!  one thing i can assure you is that over the past month, if you checked the pulse of the St John’s community, you’d find that we’re alive!!!

not really, but i thought I’d get the attention of some of my nerd-theologian friends… (or used-to-be-friends…)

a few days ago I wrote about my understanding of theology (here). Wessel offered some helpful responses! one of the things i said in passing was that “Systematic Theology” may have adopted that adjective (systematic) at a very rationalistic period in history. in that sense we may need to critique the theological endeavour done in such an overly rationalistic context. But I’m sure that the word “systematic” doesn’t properly refer so much to the rational form of the Theology as it does to it’s overall coherence and consistency.

I was lying on the bed this afternoon, resting after a morning of preaching. I was thinking about my sermon of this morning, and wondering whether people realise that this morning’s sermon is for me just a piece of a larger puzzle. I work hard to ensure that the things I said this morning are consistent and compatible with the things I said last week and last year. I see myself slowly building a comprehensive picture of Life as God (in Jesus) calls me into it. I’m not saying you won’t be able to pick holes in my consistency. In fact, the most clear problem with this desire for consistency is when I realise I was wrong and have had to change my perspective or understanding… that means that things I said today may indeed be inconsistent with things I said last year - i would put that down to learning and growth…

But i wonder if some people go to church each week and expect a piece of something (pie?). one week they hear sermon on gratitude, the next on forgiveness. each sermon may be like a puzzle piece, but does it seem like the pieces are part of different puzzles or is it clear that each sermon is a part of a greater message that makes up a consistent and coherent whole?

what’s my concern? one example… a colleague serving a (racially) uniting congregation in the United States of America recently wrote about a question of theological consistency that he encountered in that context. he asks: why is it that the very same people who oppose abortion - using the argument that the Bible teaches all life is sacred - are the very same people who support and even advocate FOR the death penalty?

in this sense, seeking out a systematic theology - a theology (talk about God) that hangs together and has a general consistency and coherence - is certainly something I would support. Actually, more than support - every sermon, week after week, is my piece-by-piece contribution to a “systematic theology”. I really do think that my sermons will best be grasped in that light!

p.s. 2 obvious consequences of that then:

1. to really “get” my sermons, one would need to listen regularly, in order to see the bigger picture that all the puzzle pieces are part of… (and obviously that picture is not my own, but very hopefully the gospel picture!) The point is that my sermons are not primarily “single episodes” teaching moral lessons - get one when you need a boost kind of devotional messages. rather, they are a slow journey toward a new way of seeing, feeling, touching, being…
2. this kind of approach to listening and participating in “God-talk” means that it is primarily done in the context of regular worship - and a regular worshipping community. going to church is not so much about pleasing God but rather an active participation in a learning, growing, expanding, seeing community! (which i’m sure pleases God!)

it was a moving moment today when my past Bishop, Bill Meaker, who is retiring this year, passed a candle to the youngest minister who is to be ordained tomorrow, Rev Englebrecht.

those who are sitting down passing the light to those who are just beginning…