seethrough

how often do you install software on your pc?  just today a bubble popped up to tell me that Windows had downloaded “critical updates”.  Naturally i clicked the button to install the updates, only to be confronted by that regular (and for me, awkward) screen entitled “User agreement”.  Along with all the other Windows users around the world I was asked to read 93 pages of legally binding agreement, before installing the updates…

i want to know

• who reads all that legal stuff?
• do the people who write it expect us to?
• if not, is it binding?
• why do “critical updates” for software you already paid for and legally own (along with clicking on “AGREE” when you first installed it) require further legal contract?
• do i really have a choice to NOT AGREE?
• can i click AGREE and argue later that I did so in order to gain access to the software, but not with any intention of entering into legal contract because it’s unreasonable to ask a person to read 93 pages every time their pc (automatically) downloads updates…

the more interesting thing than the challenges of living ethically in a digital and internet age is the issue of trust.  we who like to think of ourselves as highly rational, never entering into a situation without consideration of the facts, display a lot of willingness to trust - perhaps not in traditional ways, like trusting a partner or trusting the divine…  and yet it’s still trust.

what if we were to discover that less of our life (our choices, our circumstances, etc.) is determined by “facts” than we like to think… and much more of our life than we recognise is actually determined by trust?

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…

having faith seems to be a little bit like having Soul. what it Soul? it’s hard to define - but cool people who have Soul will quickly tell you if someone has it, or not.

having faith seems to be similar for many people I talk to. they aren’t able to easily define what Faith is, but they want to have it, and it’s assumed having more of it is always a good thing. so i’m wondering what is the substance of faith?

recently i did some reflections on the Fruit of the Spirit (the bible: letter to the galatians 5:22) - the author (paul?) uses the analogy of fruit to describe the qualities or values of the good life. faithfulness is on the list, and as I reflected on that i began to wonder about the relationship between having faith and being faithful. at first (mostly because of how I have been trained to think about faith) i assumed they were different things. but I am beginning to think that they are precisely the same. having faith will be quickly seen in a person that is faithful. a faithful person expresses faith in Ways or Values that they are faithful to - even when the results don’t seem to be going the way they would prefer…

Last week news broke about Mother Teresa. A book is being published - a collection of correspondence spanning her whole life which reflects that she “felt abandoned by God“. TIME’s article describes the contrast between the cheery face she portrayed to the world and the personal anguish she experienced in her own spirit. She is quoted in a letter as saying “Jesus has a very special love for you. [But] as for me–The silence and the emptiness is so great–that I look and do not see,–Listen and do not hear.”(1979)

this raises some very interesting questions for the church about the nature of spiritual experience, whether we can expect joy in the journey, etc. Also it raises questions about sainthood and what it means to be a saint. Did Teresa lack integrity by hiding her anguish and presenting a mask of happiness and contentment? Or does this revelation about her personal experience of God further emphasise her piety?

I have never been offended by the discovery that a saintly person has darkness in their life.  In fact, i appreciate the discovery for the way in which is confirms that there is no easy way to God.  All of us who are human are going to have to walk through the mist, and sometimes through the mud.  But more than that, this new insight into Teresa’s life sheds light on my earlier questions about Faith and faithfulness. I was brought up to believe that having faith involved believing certain things - heaven knows what you were (or are) supposed to do if you honestly and truthfully DON’T believe those certain things… The most common problem with this understanding though is that Faith becomes like having Soul - we believe it exists, but how to nail it down? how to get some of this stuff?

Teresa offers us a simpler and more accessible understanding of Faith - having faith is expressed in being faithful.  “Do I have faith?” can be rephrased with “Have I been faithful?”  What this means - for me - is that believing (mental agreement) is of lesser importance.  I’m convinced about some things… some things I just can’t bring myself to believe… but Keeping the Faith is - more and more for me - not so much about trying to convince my head to believe things I don’t believe, but rather about being faithful to Values - a Way - that I trust (no matter how I feel) is the way I want to go…

you could summarise it this way: whether God exists or not - i want to be faithful to the ways of gentleness and peace and compassion…  and faithfulness to these ways will not be determined by how close i feel to God, but rather by the conviction that these are the Values I want to define my life.

a friend of mine recently read a book by Richard Dawkins - The God Delusion - which has unsettled her. i think (she can correct me if i’m presenting her wrongly) it’s a good unsettledness but nevertheless, an unsettledness which is usually challenging.Dawkins is “anti-theist” - he’s not just a non-believer - he’s opposed to religion. I haven’t read the book but from various reviews and articles I gather that he includes an Appendix for those “needing support in escaping religion”. I think it’s enough to say he has an agenda. just as the Bible and other “authoritative” texts will be scrutinised for signs of personal and societal prejudices presented as “from God”, so Dawkins work - if it is to offer itself as a help to those “imprisoned in religion” - will surely be treated with the same scrutiny.

But I think the source of the unsettledness for my friend is that Dawkins makes such a strong and convincing argument for the Theory of Evolution . Christians have taken the question of “the Source of things” so for granted that this presentation of how things came to be seriously challenges old paradigms and begs the question - is there a place for faith in God in a Reality shaped by Evolutionary Progress.

so is there? it’s a challenging question! I hope to speak with my friend again and will report how she’s living with the question. but one thing that is becoming clear to me is that faith in God shouldn’t require a rejection of scientific knowledge. If we have placed our faith in something that is believed (by reasonably tested and commonly accepted scientific opinion) to be false - then we should consider the real possibility that we placed our faith in something that was not reliable (sure?) enough to be termed “God”… the faithful person (i would like to suggest the biblically faithful person) can pursue the questions of science (observation and rational inquiry) without fear of ultimately losing Faith. but - i suspect - we must expect some deep challenges to old taken-for-granted “knowledges” that prove to be no longer helpful.

i recently was challenged by a comment made by Rob Bell in a talk i have on cd - he said (something like) “if someone is searching for truth don’t stop them - even if they are searching in weird places. If they keep digging, at some point they are going to reach bed-rock, and then they’ll know they truth”. and as scripture says - the truth will set you free. He is also quoted as saying that “I affirm the truth anywhere in any religious system, in any world-view. If it’s true, it belongs to God.” [ref]

if it’s true - it belongs to God. yeah!

i’ve been taking some strain lately for wanting to live and speak from the heart.

all ministers in the denomination that I belong to have been trained in theology and biblical studies. being able to do theology (which I define as talk about God) and interpret scripture are basic skills of a pastor and teacher. the approach to these skills is not legislated. there are a variety of different perspectives that emerge from our training programme. it isn’t a sausage-machine producing exact replicas of the trainers…

But one thing I assume is that the process of education has encouraged us all to think and wrestle with theological and biblical issues. To some extent, I expect a colleague to be able to engage with the complex and sometimes difficult issues surrounding a pastoral concern that they might face. on the whole, I would say that my colleagues seems to reflect this. I feel safe to speak about my theological questions and struggles with most colleagues and i don’t expect them to answer “oh, but that’s an easy one - in mark 9v7 it says…”

why, oh why then do we as pastors and teachers not share these views of theology and scripture with our congregations? why do I find ordinary members of congregations SO soaked in a foreign legalistic theology and literalistic approach to scripture? It seems that the proponents of such views have been far more dedicated to communicating their views and also more effective in convincing people that they are the authority.

We now find ourselves in a situation where the spirituality of many ordinary members of churches is defined not primarily by their local pastor, but by the writings and on-screen persona of some “higher” authority. I don’t expect to hear anyone on CTV or TBN proposing that we encourage faithful same-sex couples to enter the bonds of covenant relationship out of devotion to Christ. It seems that the conservative theological agenda perspective has spoken often and loudly and now dominates the church - even churches like my own that do not have a conservative theological or literalistic scriptural tradition!

This week I had breakfast with three people. I was encouraged by the conversation. I know them all as people who seek to love God and grow toward wholeness their lives. The conversation focussed on how the church can continue to offer nourishment to those who are looking for thoughtfulness and depth alongside passion and experience. I think that integrity was also a value that featured highly in the conversation. It was very encouraging for me to be a participant in the conversation and I found it strengthening my confidence that there is another story of faith that is quieter and more gentle, but no less devoted to God and no less serious about scripture - just perhaps a little more cautious about certainty and more devoted to wholeness and freedom from fear.

one of the big challenges for people of faith in a postmodern era is responding meaningfully to the relativistic claims that there is no “absolute truth”. my experience is that people of faith become quite defensive about this aspect of postmodern thought.

one thing that I would like to add to this conversation is the following:

i’m not sure that postmoderns are actually claiming that there is not absolute truth.

(I think that this is one of those claims that are made to discredit the “other side” and write them off as uncredible. Rather than write anyone off, let’s trust that anyone who is trying to engage us in a respectful manner actually may have something of worth to listen to and consider!)

I think that postmoderns are drawing attention to the fact that we cannot CLAIM to know any absolute truth. This is a slightly but significantly different claim altogether. There may of course be absolute truth (the favourite retort is to say “the claim that there is no absolute truth is an absolute claim, thus proving that there are absolutes…”) but can we know such absolute truth. All knowledge of the world around us is subject to a number of interpretations which mean that even this paragraph may not be understood quite in the way that I intended it to be understood. That is the risk I take in writing it - the risk of all conversation and realtionship - that intentions are subject to the interpretation of the hearer/reader/observer.

postmoderns are responding to the difficulty that exists (and this is a simple observation) in the world due to significant differences of opinion on issues that affect people’s lives. Wars have been fought between people who believe they are right and are bound to resist the evil efforts of the other side. closer to home, communities bear the pain of conflict and disagreement when people disagree on emotive and controversial issues like religion and homosexuality. The problem is not that either side has given up on “absolute truth”. I would suggest that everyone in the debate believes they are right - else, why would they be arguing? The problem is that try as we might, we just can’t get others to come round to our side and see that WE have the grasp on the absolute truth.

And the problem is not that intelligent and wise people haven’t tried… this is not a new problem in the history of human relationships. Rather than continuing to appeal to some form of Authority and Absolute Truth - which has painfully and repeatedly failed to bring unity and peace in human conflict - let us consider other alternatives for a way forward.

postmoderns are pleading that we consider alternatives for finding a way of being human together in the face of diagreement and conflict. We ahve tried and failed to convince each other that WE are right… What other alternatives are there?