Some Awkward Questions

I first started questioning the Christian religion more than 60 years ago.  I had been treasurer of an Anglican parish church for 8 years in the 1960′s.  I was always asking questions. I cannot remember a time when I didn’t believe in the existence of God but my views have continued to change enormously after having been outside the walls of traditional Christianity for some 40 years.

Heaven and Hell

This story came from my friend Dave:

A holy man said to God, “Lord, I want to see heaven and hell.” The Lord ushered him into a room. There on a long dining table was a bowl of stew that smelled so good it made the man’s mouth water. Around the table we people, obviously in need of nourishment. Each one had a spoon. However, the spoon was so long that when each one scooped a bite the spoon was too long to fit into their mouths, and they could not get the nourishment they so desperately needed. After looking upon the table, the Lord ushered the man into another room. There was an identical table with the same mouth-watering bowl of stew in it’s center. Around the table were many happy, obviously well nourished people. The man turned to the Lord and said, “I don’t understand. It is the same table, the same people, the same spoon.” The Lord said, “It is obvious… they have learned to feed each other.”

 

From Christian to Atheist

I have been involved with many discussions over the years with people who have walked away from Christianity.  I do find far more empathy with some atheists than with some evangelical Christians (especially those who seem to have all the answers).  There was one particular discussion that seems to sum up so much of why people sometimes reject the Christian religion.  What follows is my review of some of our discussions (the original author has seen this review but has chosen not to reply).

He had at one time been in full-time ministry.  At the beginning of 2006 he was still saying, “I truly know that God loves me and nothing anyone can do to me can take that away – although he had had limited contact with other Christians for some 10 years.  He had seen that the church he had been attending had a warped sense of community and was not reaching out to people.  He was suggesting that he should have less fear of being open about his faith (he had been criticised for questioning), and he was considering the place of para-church organisations and the opportunities to mix with other Christians.  He finally stopped attending church in October 2007.

One day he realised that he no longer believed that there was a need for a God in order for him to exist or life itself to be worthwhile.  The main question he could not answer from his Christian beliefs was, “Who created God?”.  He was obviously influenced by the origins of life – if the Bible is wrong about human history only being 6000 years it must be wrong about all sorts of other things!  He then said that if Adam did not exist and did not sin then there is no need for a second Adam.  And if atonement was necessary, how could the death of one man actually make God change his mind, especially if the man dying was actually God?  It all started to unravel when he looked at the logic of the whole scheme of Christianity.  The universal advice he got from his Christian friends was variations on “just believe” – in other words, just pretend to believe!  Their response was to argue in favour of God’s existence either from Creation or by trying to prove the historical accuracy of scripture.  He came to the conclusion that there is just not enough evidence for the existence of God or for the need for a God in order for things to be the way they are.

The end result is that he has no contact with any of his friends from church – it has been very painful to realise that these were ‘conditional friendships’.  He suggests that he must be a bit like someone coming out of a cult and having a bereavement process to go through!

He now says that there are no quick fixes or miracle cures and that only he can help himself.  He is no longer bound by the guilt of having to seek professional help in order to improve his wellbeing.  He has developed a great interest in nature.  He now knows what he is here for.  “The world is being built on the actions that I and all the other people living today are taking every day.  Human progress is actually an accumulation of what everyone from every previous generation has done.  We all build on what has gone before, so I really believe that I am actually worth something rather than being a soul who may or may not end up in a lake of fire”.

He has some interesting thoughts about church – they don’t like people asking questions.  Many people had drifted through the church over the years so they were used to people leaving.  His suggestion is that if their lives were changed for the better they stuck in the filter and this created the group of people who made up the church.  He recognises that the community feeling of being in a church with like minded people is very comforting especially in a society which is lacking in community – a social network that works – provided you don’t ask questions!

He describes himself as a soundly converted, born again, bible believing, spirit filled Christian who was attending a Pentecostal church when all this happened.  He was not lacking in any aspect of his experience of God.  He was looking for facts to back up experience and found the facts to be extremely lacking once the surface was scratched.

He says that there are two separate parts of his deconversion – his loss of belief in God, and the collapse of the logic of the Christian faith.
“If God does exist he has not had any involvement with the world since he started the creative process.  His role can only be that of scientist, starting off an experiment and observing it.  This is not the supreme being who will intervene and cure us of illness, forgive our sins or whisk us off to a better hereafter”.  Also, there is no evidence of the creation of matter from nothing!
The realisation that his own religion, Christianity, didn’t make logical sense was a real problem.  He had after all been a preacher, trained for ministry by very eminent scholars of the liberal Christian tradition, and his personal faith was a large part of his own personality for a very long time.  He had been attracted to Christianity by the person and teachings of Jesus, and felt that if more people behaved like him the world would be a better place.  He goes on to suggest that Jesus may never have existed and that the gospels read more like mythology than history.

He then says that there are all sorts of logical problems.  People sin; God cannot accept them in a sinful state so there has to be a sacrifice of blood.  God then sacrifices his own son, who is also God so that he can forgive us anyway; therefore there was no need for the sacrifice at all – and he says that he could expand on this for hours!

He wants to encourage Christians to think for themselves and question things that they are taught – suggesting that if they start looking they will find all sorts of holes in the scheme of Christianity!

“Understanding the purpose of life and our role in the universe is a work in progress for all of us.  If it turned out that God did exist then I would be surprised and somewhat disappointed that he had not made himself known or helped us out from time to time.  We live in a world of scientific investigation and discovery.  It is not unreasonable to ask ‘Why?’ so I shall go on asking the hard questions!”.

Some people have said things like, “If you had experienced God like I have experienced God then you would believe too”.  He says that he has experienced similar things but has interpreted them differently.  Rather than looking for unlikely supernatural explanations he has tended to look for more obvious explanations based on reason and knowledge of how the world works.  He feels that the argument for the existence of God based on experience falls down because the whole thing is subjective and cannot be tested objectively.

If he tells his story to Christians he says that the normal response is one of these three:

• You were never a proper Christian
• If you had experienced God like I have experienced God you would believe
• Just believe and let God do the rest (i.e. lie).

He has an interesting description of what he thinks most Christians mean by the “word of God”:

• What the pastor told me I had to believe,
• because of what he was taught that something in the bible means,
• that was translated by someone, from their selection of possible texts,
• of books chosen by one particular group in the fourth century,
• based on the translators particular theological background,
• using modern understandings of word usage in ancient times,
• from a text copied and recopied over hundreds of years,
• which was written by a human being,
• who was usually claiming to be someone else,
• writing about things that he had not directly witnessed,
• quoting conversations verbatim that he could not have heard,
• claiming that this was inspired by God.

Christendom

One of the major influences on my thinking several years ago was an article entitled, “The Rise and Fall of Christendom” by Stuart Murray who is involved with the Anabaptist Network. In it he gives a controversial definition of ‘Christendom’ that seems to give plenty of food for thought.(The history of the Anabaptists is an interesting story – bearing in mind that at the time of the Reformation they were persecuted by both Protestants and Catholics).   What Christendom meant:

• the adoption of Christianity as the official religion of city, state or empire
• the assumption that all citizens (except for the Jews) were Christian by birth
• the development of a ‘sacral society’, where there was no effective distinction between sacred and secular, where religion and politics were intertwined
• the definition of ‘orthodoxy’ as the common belief, determined by socially powerful clerics supported by the state
• the imposition of supposedly ‘Christian morality’ on the entire population (although normally Old Testament moral standards were applied)
• a political and religious division of the world into ‘Christendom’ and ‘heathendom’
• the defence of Christianity by legal sanctions to restrain heresy, immorality and schism, and by warfare to protect or extend Christendom
• a hierarchical ecclesiastical system, based on a diocesan and parish arrangement, which was analogous to the state hierarchy and was buttressed by state support
• a generic distinction between clergy and laity and relegation of laity to a largely passive role
• obligatory church attendance, with penalties for non-compliance
• infant baptism as the symbol of obligatory incorporation into this Christian society
• the imposition of obligatory tithes to fund this system.

***

The Rise of Christendom- as described by Stuart Murray:
In the early years of the fourth century the Roman Empire was in turmoil. After centuries of dominance, the empire was showing signs of age – the bureaucracy was creaking, moral standards were low, the old forms of religion seemed empty, and barbarians were attacking the frontiers.Despite almost three hundred years of marginality and intermittent persecution, and despite still being an illegal society, the church was one of the few remaining stabilizing and civilising influences. Their sacrificial care for victims during a recent outbreak of plague had won them many admirers, even if their convictions still seemed strange.In 312, there were two claimants to the imperial throne. Maxentius held the capital city, Rome, and most of Italy, but Constantine held most of the Western empire, had the support of most of the army and had marched on Rome. In October 312, he was camped north of the city preparing for what would be the show-down with his rival, but worried because he did not have the resources to sustain a long siege.Then something unusual happened. According to Christian writers of the time, Constantine had a vision, in which he saw the sign of the cross with the sun rising behind it, and saw or heard the words in hoc signo vince (“In this sign conquer”). Constantine, who came from a family of sun-worshippers, had the sign of the cross painted on his soldiers’ equipment.Shortly after this, to everyone’s surprise, Maxentius decided to risk a battle outside the city walls and Constantine’s army won a decisive victory, forcing their opponents back across the Milvian Bridge into the city. Constantine took the city and became emperor, apparently convinced that the God of the Christians had given him victory.Historians have argued for centuries about whether Constantine was genuinely converted, but what is certain is that he saw Christianity as a force that could unite and revive his crumbling empire. Within a year the persecution ended, as Constantine issued an edict of toleration, Christianity became a legal religion and Constantine invited church leaders to assist him in making the Roman Empire a Christian society.In the following decades it seemed like revival – massive church growth, wonderful new church buildings, changes in laws and customs, church leaders taking on political and social roles, Constantine ruling as a Christian emperor. By the end of the fourth century, Christianity had become the state religion, the only legal religion, and it was pagans who were being persecuted.The system known as christianitas (Christendom) was coming into being, an alliance between church and state that would dominate Europe for over a thousand years and that still impacts the way Christians think and act.

The Christendom Shift 
Two opposite assessments have been made of what happened in the fourth century:

·  That this was a God-given opportunity which the church rightly seized and which ensured the triumph of the church and of Christianity in Europe;

·  That this was a disaster that perverted the church, compromised its calling and hindered its mission, achieving through infiltration what 300 years of persecution had failed to achieve. That this was not the triumph of the church over the empire but the triumph of the empire over the church.

[I now believe that there is another important aspect to consider - to what extent did God recognise that something like this would happen?  Perhaps God gave people what they wanted, just as he had previously given Israel the king that they asked for!].

The basis of the Constantinian system was a close partnership between the church and the state.  The form of this partnership might vary, with either partner dominant, or with a balance of power existing between them.  There are examples from the 4^th century onwards of emperors presiding over church councils and of emperors doing penance imposed by bishops.  Throughout the medieval period, power struggles between popes and emperors resulted in one or the other holding sway for a time.  But the Christendom system assumed that the church was associated with the Christian status quo and had vested interests in its maintenance.  The church provided religious legitimisation for state activities, and the state provided secular force to back up ecclesiastical decisions.

Christendom seems to have no place for elements of a New Testament vision such as:

• believers’ churches comprised only of voluntary members
• believers’ baptism as the means of incorporation into the church
• a clear distinction between ‘church’ and ‘world’
• evangelism and mission (except by military conquest or missions to heathen nations)
• the supranational vision of the new Christian ‘nation’
• faith in Christ as the exercise of choice in a pluralistic environment where other choices are possible without penalty.

Other elements of New Testament Christianity appear to be redefined within Christendom:

• ‘church’ is defined territorially and membership in it is compulsory
• the voluntary communities called ‘churches’ in the New Testament are now called ‘sects’
• a preoccupation with the immortality of the soul replaces the expectation of the kingdom of God, and the concept of the kingdom of God is either reduced to a purely historical entity, coterminous with the state church, or relegated to a future realm
• the church abandons its prophetic role for a primarily priestly role, providing spiritual support for groups and individuals, sanctifying social occasions and state policies
• discipleship is interpreted in terms of good citizenship, rather than commitment to the ways of the kingdom of God
• the church becomes primarily concerned about social order rather than social justice
• persecution is imposed by those claiming to be Christian rather than upon them.

What is Church?

I found the following note written by a former Anglican, that sums up many of my thoughts:
The vast majority, who belong to a church seldom if ever, reflect on what it is they belong to, and have little or no awareness of the deep historical roots which lie beneath the façades of everyday church life.  The first Christians were Hebrews – disciples of the long-awaited Messiah.  The origins were found in the Hebrew Scriptures – a process consolidated by Paul within two decades of the death of Jesus.  But by the fourth century the church had become the official religion of the declining Roman Empire. There were claims to absolute truth and invincibility but the church is a human organisation, the result of human choice and subject to death and decay like any other organisation!
Members have acted in ways that cannot be reconciled to the Jesus of history.
There was a move away from an inspirational interpretation of the origins of the church towards a sociological understanding.
There was persecution of those who didn’t conform – the threat of excommunication (and hell).
Did Jesus really say, “go and make disciples …”  Consider that the results of missionary work in comparatively simple cultures was profoundly polluting.
Other religions at best, were seen to be misguided.  Worldly wisdom had to be suppressed when it clashed with the seen will of God (e.g. birth control).

Truth is something that shifts and changes according to human perceptions and understanding.  It is never absolute.  The church in the West is in steep decline.  Will a new tree rise from the ancient roots or must a new seed be planted?  If the roots are diseased …

The church as an organisation is dying.  Leaders can only lead with the consent of those whom they lead – but the church still retains structures, rules and procedures better fitted to a long gone social model.  The church is losing touch with the world around it!
Some are trying to preserve the traditional essence of the orthodox faith at all costs, while exiles maintain the need to strip away the baggage of religion!

The practice of Churchianity as we know it – all the gruelling, unfruitful self-effort to change has very little transformative power!
The truth of the gospel (Christ in us as our life) is little understood.
There is some authentic spirituality in those passion filled churches that have better things to do than make converts, collect tithes and build membership roles.
Few people seem to have authentic transformative experiences – the rest just hear stories and believe them.  How much harm do the majority of belief systems create?
There is a lot of deconstruction but little seems to be replaced!

***

It was early in 2003 that I had an email from an Internet friend pointing me to A Churchless Faith  – an article by Alan Jamieson written in 1999.  This was the second of three articles in a series.  The others were “Ten Myths about Church Leavers” and “In search of Turangawaewae“.

This was the beginning of a long journey through the emergent / emerging / house church scene where I shared with many others travelling in a wilderness.  It was during this time that I wrote about my understanding of the different “Stages of Faith“.It was at some point in 2003 that I was reading a number of booklets about the church or the ‘ecclesia‘ that had a big impact.  It raised so many questions.  Tyndale was a Greek scholar who produced the first English New Testament from the original Greek.  Among other things he used elder instead of priest; congregation instead of church; repentance instead of penance.  Tyndale was martyred in 1547 and all but two of his Bibles were destroyed.  Why?
Who authorised the Authorised Version and why?  Why were there significant differences between the Authorised Version and the Geneva Bible (that did not promote the divine right of Kings and ruling bishops, but instead recognised the priesthood of all believers)?  How much influence did King James have on the translation (and why?) – he was an absolute monarch who believed in the divine right of Kings – he dissolved Parliament and ruled for ten years without it.

It is also worth considering the British Feudal System.  The land was owned by the King or his lords.  Inheritance was to eldest sons.  Younger sons often sought power, influence and identity through offices in the church.  It’s hard to imagine how anyone would dare to question them!
Consider how cathedrals dominated the skylines while the serfs lived in very primitive surroundings.  I Corinthians 3 surely makes it clear that God does not dwell in temples made with hands – we are temples of God’s Spirit (1Cor 3.16) – so why the ongoing emphasis on buildings?
The true church is a living organism, but by the time of Constantine the old temple order was being reinstated, and is I would suggest, still well entrenched!

There were many more questions but I think that’s where it all started.

Some Thoughts on Theology

George Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury had some interesting things to say about ways of thinking about God in a book entitled ‘Canterbury Letters’:
As a young and committed enquirer Carey had endless books – the first group retold the simple faith, but seemed to ignore or deny questions – for Carey there was a need to transition from simple belief to a profound doctrinal understanding!
The second group dealing with questions and competing claims didn’t have the same excitement and commitment to faith.
Faith was said to be shaped in four ways – anchored in the Bible – taught by the church – probing of every human culture – always relevant to the way we should live – something that has to be articulated and owned by each generation (the Wesleyan Quadrilateral?).
Carey suggests that it is not possible for a serious Biblical student to ignore the scholarship and the rigorous and detailed analysis and fruits of some 200 years of research!  The essential need to think about our faith theologically!  The absolute importance of tradition!
At one point Carey suggests that truth and error have been difficult, if not impossible to distinguish, and that the ‘authority‘ of the church’s history has to be seen as to some extent ambiguous!

How difficult is it for those who have been taught at Bible colleges to distinguish between sound and misguided theology?  I have seen it suggested that when properly used theology can serve the church by combating heresies or false teachings.  This is no doubt true to some extent, but where did the majority of heresies and false teaching come from originally but from misguided theology!

It is surely when we allow Jesus to live his life in and through us (the miracle of a new creation) that we can begin to love and relate to others as God loves us! (Gal 2.20)

We all have our own theology – the way we think about and understand God, grace and salvation.  Is that theology dynamic and relational – where we know Father and Jesus in an active and real way that seasons all our relationships with mercy, patience, kindness and peace – or is the theology static – a religion of legalism, spiritual stagnation, and judgment of those who fail to meet our carefully defined standards of godliness?

Human beings are not capable of reasoning out who God is and what he must be like!  Scripture tells us that God has chosen to reveal himself in Jesus, as being the God who loves us!  In Jesus we are free, as God’s new creation, to learn to love as God loves – in freedom!

Consider the following scriptures:
Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, Jesus explained to them everything in the scriptures that referred to himself (Luke 24.27)
If you really believed Moses you would be bound to believe me, for it was about me that he wrote (John 5.46)
God, who gave to our forefathers many different glimpses of the truth in the words of the prophets, has now, at the end of the present age, given us the truth in the Son (Heb 1.1)
This is my dearly loved Son.  Listen to him (Mark 9.7)

Who do we listen to?  Who is our teacher?

Should we be listening to the words of men (theology) or the Word of God (Jesus living His life in and through us)?

Where is the miracle of an open mind?

Stages of Faith

I am very conscious of the need to recognise that only some committed Christians are being called outside the walls of traditional Christianity at this time.  The journey is often referred to as a time of detox or a wilderness experience.  You will have seen in “What is ‘Church’?” that I was really influenced by the work of Alan Jamieson who had himself been influenced by Fowler’s “Stages of Faith“.Many people have attempted to describe how faith changes, matures and develops through life.  Fowler uses ‘Stages of Faith’ (that tends to suggest a logical hierarchical approach), others have referred to styles or zones of faith (less rigid and allowing for overlap).
For many people their experience of faith changes with adulthood – sometimes radically and unalterably transformed as they move into new ‘phases’ of faith.

The great majority who attend church regularly could probably be described as in a ‘conformist stage’ where they are acutely tuned to the expectations and judgments of significant others and where there is the security of being part of a like-minded community.  I see this as a valid position for many church-going Christians that should not be disturbed.
Many are committed workers with strong loyalty to their church community, often with deep but unexamined convictions.  They often focus on relationships with God and the important people in their lives – a strong sense of the church as an extended family – there to support each other.
Because of this, they tend to find conflict and controversy threatening to them.
They tend to see opposites such as good and bad; sacred and secular; Christian and non-Christian; saved and unsaved.  They don’t have an independent perspective.

(This seems to be a reasonable starting point although it is certainly open to discussion – perhaps it is particularly true of some Evangelical, Pentecostal and Charismatic churches).

Problems are thought to arise when some (possibly prompted by the Holy Spirit) become dissatisfied or disillusioned.  Because of the ‘walled in’ secure feeling, it often takes a major upset for any transition beyond this stage to take place.  Alan Jamieson identified four such groups of people (plus some who have transitioned to a different faith):

• Displaced followers – those who are hurt or angry – they have what he calls a dependent faith based on external authority – they have an unexamined faith – a bold faith – often using scripture to justify their position.
• Reflective exiles – who have feelings of unease and irrelevance – questioning deep rooted foundations. They are seen as counter dependent – engaged in a ‘deconstruction’ of their previous faith. There is an ongoing reflective process that involves re-evaluation of each component of their faith – they have a hesitant and tentative faith – which they may have ‘put down’ for a time
• Transitional explorers – who have an emerging sense of ownership of faith – moving from deconstruction of the received faith to an appropriation of some elements that have been tested and found to be valid and worthy of being retained – plausible beyond reasonable doubt (but what is plausible varies considerably from one individual to another)
• Integrated way finders – where the reconstruction work has basically been completed – but still open to refinement – a more rounded faith that seeks to integrate all aspects of life – aware of some of the deeper issues that lie within.

Jamieson later suggested that the crucial adult faith-shifts involve a move from conventional faith into a period of faith dislocation, exploration, self ownership and expression and on into a new embracing of faith and life as intimately entwined and inseparable, a desire for mystery, ritual and symbolism and a relishing of the paradoxical nature of truth (the move from pre-critical faith through a period of hyper-critical reflection to a post-critical faith).

The earlier boundaries become less fixed – a greater awareness of paradox and better able to accept it – allowing different perspectives to co-exist – more open to ambiguity, mystery, wonder, and apparent irrationalities.  People at this stage become less dogmatic, more willing to listen and less inclined to label those who disagree with them.

The changes that are occurring in global culture encourage a shift from conventional to post-conventional faith – but there is also an opposite response into religious, political and ideological fundamentalism!

The following table seems to be a good summary of the differing perspectives:

Conventional faith expression	Transitioning	Post-conventional faith expression
Focus on a black and white, right and wrong faith	Focus on the greys of faith and life	Focus on all shades of faith and life
Dependence	Independence	Interdependence
Answers accepted	Searching and questioning, doubt and critique	Understanding and relishing of mystery, paradox and wonder
Primary sense of relationship with God is hierarchical e.g. God’s servant	Primary sense of relationship with God is relational e.g. God’s friend (John 15)	Primary sense of relationship with God is intimate e.g. God’s lover (Song of Songs)
Socially constructed identity and roles	Formation of self identity and roles	Giving of self for others
Want someone to lean on – e.g. a mentor or discipler	Want someone to encourage and legitimise their personal exploration – e.g. a facilitator or sponsor.	Want a co-discerner of God’s will and leading – e.g. a spiritual director
Focus on external authority of leaders, the Bible and my community of faith	Focus on internal authority of self-understanding, experience and self-truth.	Focus on an integration of internal and external authorities of faith
The Bible, faith community or leaders are the authors of my faith and life. A need to listen to the external voice(s)	I am the author of my faith and life. A need to listen to the internal voice(s)	The Spirit of God within me is the author of my faith and life. A need to integrate external and internal voices.
Status quo confirmed	Status quo challenged	Status quo integrated into larger canvas
What and how	Why	What is my contribution?
Specific personal examples	Hearing and telling our own stories	Working with metaphor, art and poetry

Those with a post-conventional faith will be able to be open to people who think differently.

The nature of pastoral care needs change over time – the need to understand the differing perspectives – we can all be vulnerable at times – the need for patience!  There seems to be a need for Safe Havens – especially for older people?.  A need for ministry at many levels – beware of the risk of concentrating only on those in the earlier stages.

 ***

For many people faith or belief is something you either have or you don’t have (faith and belief are often seen as synonymous).  Others see faith as a dynamic, changing, evolving process which sometimes means changing or abandoning previously held beliefs and commitments – part of a less radical maturing process!  Such people have:

• The ability to hold together several unmistakable polar tensions
• The ability to cherish paradox and apparent contradictions of perspectives on truth – living with ambiguity, mystery and wonder
• A post critical receptivity and a readiness for participation in a reality brought to expression in symbol and myth
• A genuine openness – knowing that a grasp on ultimate truth needs continual correction and challenge.