Blobs of faith

Last night in Zac's we considered levels of faith as illustrated by this Pip Wilson cartoon of players on a football pitch.

I quickly identified myself as a mixture of the one chasing butterflies (centre left), sometimes going the wrong way and easily distracted, and the goalkeeper, terrified someone is going to kick a ball at me.

After that I spent a lot of the study wondering why the man on the left had an ice cream on his head. (You see? Easily distracted.)

Turns out he's in the shower. 

I blame my stupidity on lack of familiarity with the inside of football changing-rooms.

A very good study though. I would think most of us experience different levels of faith at various times in our life, or even day.

At first glance we might think the goal-scorer is demonstrating the most faith but I find that when I do something well I tend to take the praise myself and forget God; the man on the stretcher though must have huge faith, obviously seriously injured but still on the pitch. 'I might be damaged but I can still do my bit - even if it's only getting in the way of the opposition.'

How's your faith today? Can you identify with any of the players/spectators?

Global Day of Prayer

There were probably, I don't know, 300 or so people gathered in the centre of Swansea yesterday as part of the Global Day of Prayer. The initiative started in South Africa a few years ago with one church and now it's estimated that 250 million people from across the world take some part in it. Part of the focus was on praying for the world - hence the flags in the photo - in general and Burma and Zimbabwe in particular.

Later one of the local leaders shared some inspiring stories about what happens when ordinary people pray and then got the crowd to pray for people who were sick or in pain. That's something I have a problem with. Is it my lack of faith that stops things happening or is the lack of results that impedes my faith?

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Making it up

Last week Chris, one of Linden's leaders, came into the office. He'd been to a seminar with a Jewish rabbi and he he told Alun and me some of the things the rabbi had said. This, of course, will be what I remember Chris saying and that he remembered the rabbi saying. So allow for interpretation!

The rabbi said that Christians like things to tie up, to be neat, while Jews much prefer it when they don't. 'Jews love to argue and discuss.' He also explained that the first five books of the Bible were written - I can't recall if there was a word for it - without spaces between words so there is a lot of room for discussion and arguing over what is actually meant. (I think I have that right; no doubt someone will correct me if I'm wrong!) He talked about midrash. I just looked that up and here is what was said:
Midrash minimizes the authority of the wording of the text as communication, normal language. It places the focus on the reader and the personal struggle of the reader to reach an acceptable moral application of the text. While it is always governed by the wording of the text, it allows for the reader to project his or her inner struggle into the text. This allows for some very powerful and moving interpretations which, to the ordinary user of language, seem to have very little connection with the text. The great weakness of this method is that it always threatens to replace the text with an outpouring of personal reflection. At its best it requires the presence of mystical insight not given to all readers.

Alun has been researching for the series of Sunday morning talks he's been doing and yesterday he said to me, 'I don't know where my faith is right now.'

The Bible isn't one book. It's a collection of books, written at different times by different authors. It's history; it's songs; it's love poetry; it's advice; it's stories. Matthew's gospel was written after Mark's and is based on Mark's. Matthew adds to it from his own memory and, in places, extrapolates from it, using what had happened previously and what was likely to have happened. In other words, he makes it up. It's the Jewish way.

But this was what had been causing Alun the problem. Until he realised something. 'It doesn't matter. I love God. That is what my faith is based upon.'

The Bible is a pointer, a guide, a help. It's not infallible; there are inaccuracies and inconsistencies. It may help someone to come to know God but if faith is built on facts then it's not faith and at some point it will crash.

In Zac's last night we heard about the man who'd been a disabled beggar for 38 years. Jesus healed him and the man got into trouble with the authorities for carrying his bed roll on the Sabbath. That led to a short discussion about what day is - or should be - the sabbath. One participant in the discussion was very concerned that the Sabbath had somehow been hi-jacked. It wasn't the time to say, 'It doesn't really matter.' She'll get there, in God's time.
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In which I meet the devil

As I intimated in a previous post, I am a simple soul, and my faith is a simple one. Not for me the intellectual arguments and discussions that take place on other blogs and in other places. I am not worried about the contradictions of scripture; I am happy to not understand everything. That doesn't mean I am happy about everything or that I don't have doubts: I'm not and I do. But they don't cause my faith to stumble. Or at least they haven't yet.

I was christened as a baby. When I was about 10 or 11, my mum sent me to confirmation classes and I was confirmed as a member of the Church in Wales. I was brought up in that sort of background - not that my family was particularly religious: they were anything but! My mother went to church sometimes and it was my habit too. When my mum died, I turned to the church. I also tried yoga. I was looking for something.

Life went on, I got married and we moved to Southampton. I met and began to meet up with a group of Christian women. They had something i didn't have and I wanted it. I 'said the prayer', the 'I'm sorry and I want you in my life, God' prayer, and I 'became' a Christian.

Life didn't change dramatically: I don't think it does for most people. Paul (the apostle formerly known as Saul) had an unusual and dramatic conversion on the road to Damascus; other people talk of encountering God in a powerful way. That didn't happen for me.

What did happen, a few weeks after my 'conversion', was that I was assailed by doubt. Not just a little bit of doubt but a massive, throwing-it-all-at-me doubt. How could there possibly be a God? How could there be anyone big enough to be outside the universe, beyond infinity and eternity? And how or why would such a being care for me, know me by name even knowing the number of hairs on my head? It was just complete and utter nonsense that I was being taken in by. Everything that I'd always believed in one sense or another was total rubbish and utterly impossible. It wasn't God I was encountering but the devil.

These thoughts battled in my head, disturbing my nights and draining my days. I couldn't resolve it. My head felt it would burst. I remember throwing myself on the bed, crying out.

At the time I was attending on an occasional basis a church that was shared by Anglicans, Baptists and - I don't recall the other denomination - but they all took it in turns to lead the Sunday service and as far as I know everyone attended whatever denomination they were and whoever was running the service. (An example that hasn't been taken up even these years later.) Anyway, this particular Sunday the Baptist minister was preaching. He was an ex-policeman who was training and he was very down-to-earth. I spoke to him after the service and told him of my battle. He said simply, 'When I am overwhelmed by the enormity of it, I bring God down to size: I think of Jesus, the man, on the cross.'

Suddenly it all seemed simple.

If I believed that story then everything else - the minutiae - was unimportant. I could choose to believe or choose to disbelieve. I chose to believe.

That's why the contradictions don't bother me, why the errors, the factual inaccuracies, don't make an atheist of me. I have made my choice.

No-one forces us. It's simply a choice we're all offered.

The fact - as I see it - that it is accompanied with the offer of unconditional love is a bonus.

When Husband had cancer, he had to spend a week at a time in hospital having chemotherapy. One night, while Husband was away having his treatment, God held me in his hand. I couldn't have felt safer or more loved and secure if he had materialised before me.

I am a crappy Christian. I sin in thought, word and deed in spite of my best intentions. And very often my intentions aren't even good let alone best. I really hope people don't judge God by what they see in me. I am very aware of my faults, as is God. Yet if I say sorry, we can start again.

Those instances of meeting God or facing the devil so intensely haven't happened since. Sometimes I feel a very long way from God; other times I look at the sky - for it's easier to imagine Him up there somewhere - and smile and whisper, 'I love you.'

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