So What?

Lent 21: Charles Wesley

Long my imprisoned spirit lay

Fast bound in sin and nature's night;

Thine eye defused a quickening ray -

I woke, the dungeon flamed with light,

My chains fell off, my heart was free,

I rose, went forth, and followed thee.

(From: And can it be, 216 verse 4 in Hymns and Psalms)

About one fifth of the hymns in Hymns and Psalms are by Charles Wesley.  John and Charles understood people would learn their theology through singing; Methodism was born in song.  I've been singing these hymns for over 30 years, and I am probably unaware of how they have formed my beliefs.  Although John Wesley  is thought of as a theologian, it is Charles' theology which is better known because Methodists still sing his hymns most weeks.  As a preacher, I usually find I've included at least one of his hymns in my services, usually without making a particular effort.  This hymn, best sung to Sagina or Abingdon, is probably the best known.  I've chosen this verse because it speaks (or sings) of the experience of liberation the Christian experiences.  We do not go forth to be enslaved to some ideology, particularly any ideology with the label 'Christian'.

Methodism was a movement of the people.  The clergy were not always happy with this idea but the nature of the movement was always a radical opportunity for the most marginalised to build their own faith as a community.  We need to remember liberation is not only from something but to something new.  What does it mean to be one follower amongst others?

Lent 15: Walter Wink

The idea that God has appointed an angel or god over each of the pagan nations finds its most notable development in Daniel 10.  According to the book of Daniel, in the third year of Cyrus, king of Persia, an angel appears to Daniel, delayed for twenty-one days because "the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me."  But Michael, "one of the chief princes (archonton)," came to the angel's aid.  "So I left him there with the prince (archon) of the kingdom of Persia and came. ..."  Hastily he finishes the message, then: "But now I will return to fight (polemesai) against the prince (archontos) of Persia; and when I am through with him, lo, the prince (archon) of Greece will come. ...  There is none who contends by my side against these except Michael, your prince (archon)" (Dan 10:13, 20, 21).  (Naming the Powers: The language of power in the New Testament , page 27)

In this, the first of his three volumes about the Powers , Wink explains what he means by the angels of the nations.  His aim is to map the first century Palestinian understanding of cosmology.  The conflicts between nations on earth are played out in heaven by the angels of the nations.  What are the angels of the nations?  They represent the interests of the people of their own nation.  Wink attempts to demonstrate the powers are the contemporary equivalent of our own sociological analysis.  This gripped me when I first read it during the nineties and it seems to make sense of much that is in the New Testament.  The main difficulty I have had is to find a short passage which conveys something of Wink's analysis to the reader.

Our lives are still controlled by the powers, even though we don't think of them as angels.  The spirit of our nations, our churches or our political organisations still dominate us.  Too often we think of ourselves as free agents, when in fact we are enslaved by forces deep seated in our own imagination.  We need to pray to be delivered from these illusions which can destroy our lives and the lives of others.

Idolatry 22: Does Father Christmas Matter?

In this post I want to return to the figure of Father Christmas and to ask whether our idolatry matters. 

Who believes in Father Christmas?

Father Christmas is the god of consumerism.  This god is deeply rooted in Christian and pagan imagery.  Although it cut loose a long time ago, it still retains those associations, especially in the image of Santa Claus.

Not all people who believe in consumerism are obvious worshipers of this god.  People from non-Christian religious traditions, who don't celebrate Christmas, are probably not influenced so much.  Consumerism is an ideology which presumably influences a far wider group of people than Western Americans and Europeans.  However, this is the culture that has generated both consumerism and the image of Father Christmas and at some level image and practice reinforce each other.

My guess is the United States and UK are the most excessive users of the Father Christmas cult.  Other countries in Europe seem to be less excessive in their observance perhaps because in some countries traditional observances have withstood the consumerist onslaught better than Britain and America.

It is perhaps not too surprising that the last two states to be world powers, now in decline, feel the strongest need to have an annual season of excess. 

What drives the cult?

I have already pointed out it is the market.  A bad Christmas (by which they mean the weeks leading up to Christmas) can be very damaging for retailers and the economy.  When did we last have a bad Christmas? 

Very early on, we are told prospects are gloomy. Then, as Christmas approaches, at some point everything turns around.  At some point the magic of Father Christmas kicks in and everyone realises that (a) we might as well go into debt to have a good Christmas, and (b) if we don't get out there soon everything will be gone from the shops.

So, the economy gets an annual jump start and people are encouraged to continue spending whether or not they have money to spend for another year.

Does any of this matter?

As I write, the Copenhagen climate change talks are happening.  Where is the leadership?  I have never known any time when there has been a political will to reduce sales.  The idea we might have to reduce our consumption and make do with less is unthinkable. 

It is a disaster that this summit took place during the Christmas season.  There is no way the interests in consumerism are likely to loosen their grip on the world's resources at the best of times.  To choose the time of year when their spirituality is celebrated and strongest is a bad omen.

It seems we have created a world for ourselves we cannot escape from.  It is impossible to imagine a world with shortages.  (With the exception of course of much of the past and most of what we call the developing world.)

The waste, the pollution, the exploitation of the planet are all consequences of our inability to stop consuming.  We bolster this with whimsical stories and false bonhomie.  The problem is we do not know how to stop.

Idolatry 21: On the Advantages of Not Being Organised

In my last post , I suggested a materialist approach to the Christian faith; how we need to learn to read scripture and the world together, so that we can see the ways in which institutions dominate our consciousness through our uncritical acceptance of images or idols.

The problem atheists seem to have with religion is the wars it has fought and the evil it has done.  I can't help thinking that if atheists were organised they could show us how to run things properly.  I am quite sure the atheist no-church would never go to war, never torture, maim, unjustly imprison or dominate people who don't agree with them.

However, atheists are not organised and so we are invited to compare the atrocities and excesses of organised religion with the gentle benevolence of armchair critics. 

Let us remember times and places where atheists have been in charge.  The French Revolution, based upon the writings of Voltaire and others, shocked by the evils they saw God perpetrate through the Lisbon earthquake, led to the Reign of Terror.  Can we forget the excesses of the Soviet Gulag, China in Tibet or Pol Pot in Cambodia?  It seems being led by atheists is not always an entirely positive experience for those who disagree with them.

The point is all human institutions are potentially violent; it is institutions which cause the problem, whether or not they are religious.  This is why all religions can be accused of violence alongside atheist states.  So, why the sniping at religion?  There isn't shred of evidence that religions lead to more violence than non-religious organisations. 

I've never been sure whether Hitler was atheist or some sort of religious sectarian.  Let's assume his regime was atheist.  Now we have to face up to the collusion of the Protestant Churches in Germany and the Vatican.  This is well attested.  So, is the witness of the Confessing Church in Germany . 

Christian collusion with the Nazis was shameful and still is where Christians continue to pursue racism and oppress others.  But we need to ask ourselves what is the alternative?  If there is one thing we have learned from this survey of idolatry, I hope it is that people will believe almost everything.  Belief is something spiritual and almost always corrosive.

The mainstream churches all have disciplinary procedures for their ordained and lay members.  These provide a degree of accountability for their members, which would be missing if Christians simply believed and were not organised.  Discipline is a never ending task for the churches and doesn't always work; witness what has come to light about the Catholic Church in ireland recently.

But are we really saying that no accountability whatsoever is better than some accountability?  Of course, political authorities could send the police round but how soon before that seeped into totalitarianism? 

Atheists might be intelligent but in spreading their views they don't seem to think particularly strategically.  We all have to share our world with people who seem to us to act like idiots.  But most traditions have the means to restrain the worst excesses and should be encouraged to do so fairly.

So, my message to atheists is back off and credit religious people with some intelligence.  We're not all idiots just because you disagree with us.

Idolatry 20: Is the Universe Conscious?

How do you genuinely not know God?  The knack apparently is to set aside everything we know about God, except for God.  This is the teaching to be found in The Cloud of Unknowing , which is an example of the insights Christian mystics have made.  Here is a passage quoted in the Wikipedia article at the end of the above link.

Our intense need to understand will always be a powerful stumbling block to our attempts to reach God in simple love [...] and must always be overcome. For if you do not overcome this need to understand, it will undermine your quest. It will replace the darkness which you have pierced to reach God with clear images of something which, however good, however beautiful, however Godlike, is not God.

It might also be worth reading the following post in my other blog , which covers several others saying similar things.

We lack the language to express these things and even words we think of as certain can loop around with unexpected meanings.  Take the word materialism.  This can be used in two ways that are relevant to our interests.

It is used by atheists who believe the universe is made of matter, and spirit does not exist.  I have discussed this in my other blog, starting here .  Just one example of what I mean.  Belief in a material universe includes belief in nothing.  Is it possible to imagine nothing?  I don't mean the number zero, or what we say is in a box after we've emptied it but absolutely nothing.  Have a go, imagine it if you can.  There would be no space and no time.  Just about possible; the problem is we are conscious beings and our consciousness is always present.  What if there is no such thing as nothing?  What if there is always consciousness?  Atheists don't believe in God; why can't theists not believe in nothing?  Come on, there is no evidence whatsover for the existence of nothing, how could there be?  The materialist atheist has to concede ultimately there is no more a priori reason for the atheist position as there is for the theist.

The recent atheist campaigns have drawn Christians' attention to their a priori assumptions.  I welcome this and have claimed atheists are angels .  But is it not reasonable to ask atheists to do the same and re-examine theirs?

We all create our own realities.  Everything we perceive has been filtered by our senses and our brains.  We cannot conceive of nothing without using our conscious minds.  We cannot conceive of anything at all without our conscious minds.  We are saved from solipsism because at some point we encounter other minds.  We might fall in love with one or more of them or we might hate or fear them.  All this is in our minds.  Somehow, our institutions are created by our minds together and so we collectively create our institutions.

This is the other meaning of materialism.  It means to understand the spiritual entities described in our religious stories as creations of our collective consciousnesses.  We lose control because we cannot know all the contributions made by all who are involved.  All of this fully engages our attention from an early age, it is formed by the stories we are told, eg of Father Christmas. 

And God?  Somehow God is the reality beyond all this, a reality that enables us to see clearly.  Perhaps all things are held in God's consciousness.  We encounter God, on the interface between the material world and consciousness.  Consciousness is as fundamental as the material universe, it is only through consciousness we know the material world at all. 

Idolatry 18: Christianity, an Atheist Faith?

Last time I mentioned Bertrand Russell's essay 'Why I am Not a Christian' and his claim that Christians must believe in God and immortality.  Today I will show it is not essential to believe in God if you are a Christian. 

First, to say all Christians must believe in God, ignores what is meant by 'believe in'.  Many Christians would argue they believe in God, in the sense that we believe in a friend upon whom we rely for something which is not in their own interest.  I see nothing wrong with this but would respectfully point out we have a perfectly good word for this, namely faith, and it is better to use it than 'believe in' which has too many ambiguities.  I should add that I know faith is more than this, but this definition will do for now.

Second, we need to be clear that if we mean by 'belief in God' that we believe God exists, then we have a problem.  What do we mean when we say God exists?  I believe Russell is perfectly right when he says there is no way of proving God's existence using reason.  The problem is we have a category error here.

If we imagine the set of all things that exist in the universe (leaving aside the possibility of other parallel universes - but do include everything they contain too if you must) then how can God be a member of that set?  God is not someone who exists like Gordon Brown exists.  If God were something in the universe God would by definition not be the creator of all things.

So, why are Christians not atheists?  Well, curiously it might be a very good idea for Christians to reclaim the name atheist.  The incarnation is mind boggling because Christians claim this inconceivable God, a God who is not something in the universe, became human.  If we believe God exists like everything else in the universe, the incarnation becomes far less of an impossibility.

The God in whom atheists allege Christians believe, is a false God.  It is a projection of self-interest by both atheists and some Christians.  For some Christians, their faith story is a journey into darkness as they lose the faith of their childhood and only in time find a way back, through a rejection of their false images of God.  They return at length to the old stories but this time understand them in a new light.  As you would expect some people get stuck in false consciousness but all at least set out on the journey and return as atheists, atheists who have faith in a God they know they cannot ever know.

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
(TS Eliot Little Gidding)

The thing atheists miss is that Jesus was an atheist too.  On the cross tortured and killed for no other reason than that his tormentors had the power, abandoned by his friends, Jesus experienced, so we are told, atheism, the loss of God.  His early disciples tell how he gave up everything and became a human being, a slave and then was put to death on the cross (see Philippians 2).  At that moment he lost everything, including his faith.  That moment has sustained many Christians as they too weather loss of faith.

Idolatry 17: The Cross

Bertrand Russell in his famous essay, 'Why I am Not a Christian' contends there are two beliefs that are essential for those who call themselves Christian.  He does not appear to have asked the churches what they think constitute sufficient beliefs, which I would have thought to be a fairly minimal requirement.  He also does not seem to understand that belief and faith are not the same thing.  However, we will leave that thought to one side. 

Apparently Christians are supposed to believe in God and immortality.  I will leave these to my next post.  The second belief is 'Christ, if not divine, was at least the best and wisest of men'. 

First, throughout the essay Russell refers to Jesus as Christ.  Christ was not his name; during his lifetime he was known as Jesus of Nazareth.  Christ was an honorific title given to him by the early Christians.  He was a real person, in a real place at a real time.  This is called incarnation.  Christians believe that God lived as a real human being in a real time and place.

It seems incarnation has in the view of many, although not all, Christians removed the ban on graven images (or perhaps on all images as the Orthodox Churches would argue their icons are not graven). The logic of this is that if God were human we cannot be mistaken in visualising him as a human being.  This seems to help a lot of people, although it's not really my cup of tea.  Methodism uses such images rarely.

The problem for me is largely the way in which these images are presented.  Many seem to be sentimental depictions of an idealised man.  He is often seen with children or small animals as we are told he was gentle and mild and meek.  Worse he is too often a fair haired Caucasian man.  It is interesting that every culture seems to depict Jesus as one of their kind.  If you see these images together, it can be very powerful.  However, there is a tendency for the images from dominant cultures to predominate.

Russell spends a lot of time demonstrating Jesus (or Christ as he would have it) was not the best and wisest of men.  He overlooks one fact.  Jesus was murdered.  He was murdered by the political and religious authorities of his day.  Just like millions of people since have been murdered by political and religious authorities.  They have also been enslaved, exploited and generally suppressed and dominated.

Why don't fundamentalist Christians walk around their communities wearing not crosses, but images of lethal injections?  That is what the cross was, it was an instrument of judicial murder and torture.  Lots of people have difficulty believing God was murdered.  It is what Christians believe. 

Surely, no-one could turn the cross into an idol?  Of course they can.  It should be seen for what it is, it is a raw image, not something to make jewelery out of.  But it is also possible to take it too far in the other direction.

Mel Gibson's 'The Passion of the Christ' was in my view a gross misrepresentation of the faith.  It turned a story about the struggle of people for liberation into a sentimental film of the horror genre.  The mixture of gratuitous horror and sentimental scenes of Jesus' nicer than nice friends was hardly edifying.

Worse was the film's misogyny.  Satan was played by a woman and certain scenes, eg where the two Marys wipe up Jesus' blood using towels provided by Pilate's wife for the purpose, were degrading. 

Throughout history people have dwelled upon the pain of Christ's suffering and less frequently on the injustice of his suffering.  This trend became sharper about 900 years ago when the idea that God killed Jesus through the atonement was first formulated.  And of course the idea that Jesus was murdered by the Jews has been an ineradicable stain on Christian history. 

The image of Jesus on the cross is an indictment of all concentrations of power in the hands of unaccountable authorities.  It seems this can be understood most easily by those who suffer at the hands of the powerful.  If we want to know God, this image is the one we need.  Not the image of God the killer of his son, but the image of God tortured and killed by unaccountable humans.

Idolatry 16: The Trinity

When I trained as a local preacher in the early eighties, we were warned against preaching about the Trinity because it is too difficult.  My experience over the years, has been to find it is an inspired doctrine, even if it is not really scriptural.  I will answer two questions, pointing out some ways in which Christians can create idols out of misunderstandings of the Trinity.  What do we mean by persons?  Why are there three persons?

What do we mean by persons?

Tertullian  was the first theologian to develop the idea of the Trinity.  He used the word person, which is derived from the Latin per sonar, which means 'through sound'.  This derived from the ancient Greek theatre, where the actors used large masks.  One actor might play several roles using different masks.  The mouths of the masks acted as amplifiers, and so for those in the audience seated on the back row their primary experience of the theatre was through sound, something like a radio play. 

So, the three persons of the Trinity are like masks worn by God.  We cannot know the God behind these masks just as we would not recognise an actor behind the Greek masks.  Each mask, however, is a valid way of knowing God.

For some people this explanation might take the paradox out of the Trinity.  People love to ask how one person can be three.  (The divine unity behind the three persons is not a person and so there is no way we can know it.)  They use analogies of ice, water and steam, or the egg shell. white and yolk.  These things are willful confusion.  I don't find any paradox in the image of an actor behind three different masks so long as we understand we cannot walk around the back of the mask and meet the actor.

Take a look at the first photo.  Who is it?  Is it David Tennant or is it The Doctor?  There is a story that early in his time playing The Doctor in Dr Who, someone approached David and greeted him.  David didn't know who it was and she eventually realised she had met Christopher Ecclestone, David's predecessor in the same role.  She was seeing the character and not the actor.  This is how we see the persons of the Trinity.  Those who see David Tennant in the photo are seeing the actor behind the character.  I suspect few people will recognise the actor in the second photo.  His name is Norman Painting.  No?  He played, until he died a few weeks ago, Phil Archer in the BBC Radio soap, The Archers.  He played that role for about 60 years.  I suspect some readers might know his name but have no idea what he looks like.  Many more would recognise the voice of Phil Archer. 

We know Phil Archer through sound and there is no way we would confuse him with Norman Painting.  So, we know God directly through the Trinity, and not some other God behind these three persons.  We can only know God through the three persons. 

Why are there three persons?

If there were only one person rather than three, there would be no issue.  The person and the God behind the person would be one and the same.  The problem here is the tendency to absolutise God, according to our own standards of power.  So, God is immortal, omnipotent, omnipresent, all knowing, etc.  Is this what God is like or how we would like God to be, someone immense and powerful but perhaps more favourably disposed to us than the local despot?  This is an image of God which appeals to those who believe kings have divine rights and that wielding of political power is all important.  Many Christians are believers in this single god, a god who bears no resemblance whatsoever to the Christian God.

Other Christians are dualists.  This is a very comfortable and stable belief that there are two equal gods.  One is usually seen as good and the other as evil.  Satan is of course the name of this other god.  What people don't understand is that Satan diminishes God, God is no longer all in all if part of him has been taken away and called evil.  Satan is an idol and it is shameful so many Christians believe in this character, created entirely to apportion blame to enemies and away from oneself.  A dualist worldview pervades modern politics as well as Christian fundamentalism.  Both divide the world into good and evil and project the evil onto their enemies 

Another dimension to this is the tendency of some atheists to project evil onto religion.  OK, so you don't believe in Satan, good.  No one should; Satan is a lie.  But you do believe religion is an unmitigated evil?  So, how exactly does that distinguish you from the Christian fundamentalists?  Don't tell me its because they hate atheism.  Fundamentalists hate my variety of religion just as much as you do.  The difference between atheism and fundamentalism seems a bit academic from where I'm sitting.

Three persons work because they upend dualisms.  A Trinity will always be off-balance, stepping on one another's heels.  They have to learn to anticipate each other's moves, to dance around each other.  The Trinity incorporates and absorbs the evil depicted by believers in Satan.  I will explain what I mean in my next post.

Idolatry 15: Scripture

This is the first of three posts exploring how Christians substitute false gods for God.  I should emphasise from the outset that I will not be covering every instance of this kind of spiritual sleight of hand.  Neither am I asserting all Christians believe these things. 

I should add that many of these beliefs are normal for Christians to hold during their faith journey.  For many Christians, extreme beliefs held at one stage mellow as experience leads them into deeper reflection on the beliefs they hold to be absolute.  It is a common experience over a lifetime of faith, to return to certain beliefs in new ways, as faith develops.

Some Christians make an idol out of Scripture, by claiming it is inerrant.  There are many ways of reading and interpreting scripture and some are better than others.  Inerrant beliefs are not the only way to interpret scripture, they are one way amongst many.  The problem is those who believe their interpretations are inerrant, believe they are the only way of understanding scripture.  They will speak of the plain meaning of scripture and find it hard to believe what seems plain to them might not be at all plain to others.  Of course, the belief that scripture has  plain meaning, itself needs examination.

Karen Armstrong in her recent book, The Case for God , makes a distinction between logos and mythos.  The former are those beliefs, like science, which can be derived from observation of the world.  Mythos is revealed beliefs.  These are derived from the interpretation of scripture.  To confuse the two is an error in logical typing.  Fundamentalism treats scripture as logos and believes it is true in the way scientific observations are true.  In Christian history, this approach to interpretation is unique to fundamentalism and began during the last century.  Atheists also treat scripture as logos and deny the reality of mythos. 

So, what is scripture about?  It is a witness by many people to their experience of God.  That's all it is.  However, there is more to add.  It is worth looking at Walter Wink's trilogy of books  about the powers.  What follows is derived from his work.

Scripture may appear to be about all manner of things spiritual and we easily forget the witnesses to God were writing about things both real and spiritual.  Usually we have no problem agreeing about the reality of the everyday material world.  There is also a spiritual world and it is equally real.  Some witnesses write in terms of angels and demons.  These stand for the more difficult reality the witness describes.

That reality is human institutions.  At the time of the New Testament, people believed every institution, eg a nation or a church, had an angel.  When the institution ceases to exist, so does its angel.  What they meant was interactions between people can take on a life of their own.  These interactions might be relatively healthy or relatively unhealthy.  Broadly, a demon is an angel that is unhealthy.  These institutions then exert real influences over us, and mostly we are not aware of them. 

Sometimes people talk of institutional sin, and some are quick to deny it exists or to play down its influence.  Actually, there is no other type of sin, our behaviour is influenced at all times by institutions.  We read scripture and pray to help us see these influences and find actions we can take to be free of them.

Idols are the images we make of these real institutional powers.  So, we depict consumerism as Father Christmas , for example.  These idols are seductive because they lead us to something we perceive to be real.  However, they also lead us to false conciousness of these things.  The role of faith is to help us to become aware of our idols and to substitute healthier images for them.

Idolatry 14: Where Atheism Might Have a Point

In an attempt to simultaneously wind up both atheists and Christians, I have on occasion referred to atheists as angels.  The word 'angel' comes from a Greek word which means 'messenger'.  Angels are messengers from God.  To be visited by an angel is as close as anyone is likely to get to a direct conversation with God.  There is a minor tradition of seeing people who play a part in someone's faith journey as messengers from God.

So, to describe atheists as angels means Christians should listen carefully to what they say.  It is also mischievous.  We should listen carefully to people telling us there is no God because they are messengers from God.

Atheists are right because they see through Christian false consciousness of God.  In the next 3 posts, I will explore how Christians are prone to a false consciousness of God.  If we are not prepared to listen to each other or to God, then God sends us other messengers.

Where I get impatient with atheists is when they tell me that fundamentalist beliefs are the true Christian faith and that I collude with fundamentalism by being a liberal Christian. 

Fundamentalism is profoundly influential within the Christian faith.  Even those of us who do not believe in this way find ourselves struggling to escape its influence.  As a Christian I feel my own faith undermined far more by Christian fundamentalists than by atheists. 

Atheists expose the ways fundamentalism substitutes idols for God.  The mistake they make is to believe that having disposed of fundamentalism they have disposed of Christianity.  I have challenged fundamentalism all my life and see it as a corrosive and profoundly misleading approach to faith.  To be told by atheists, late to the debate, that I believe the same as fundamentalists believe is frustrating.  It effectively locks me into an argument I can't win.

It also locks atheists into an argument they cannot lose.  Their belief that fundamentalism is the only authentic Christian faith is so total, they believe they have won the argument.  In truth, they have hardly touched the surface of it.  One thing at a time.  In the next 3 posts I am going to take three instances of Christian belief and show how idols are substituted for sound teaching.  Then I will return to atheism and show where I think they are mistaken.