How do we deal with imperfections and failure? It seems to be that there are various different methods but they can be classed in one of two camps grace and ungrace.
When we encounter failure we can take over. We can give the message it is okay, I'm here, I'll make sure it is okay. I know what I am doing. The problem is that rather than helping others to discover their potential we instead paralyse them into believing that they cannot get it right. I have worked for bosses who believed that everything I did was wrong, after a while you end up paralysed and doing silly things because it undermines your self worth and your confidence in making a decision. You refuse to ask a perfectly sensible question because you know that it will just receive that sigh and that look, and therefore because you did not ask the perfectly sensible question you flail and fail because you cannot read minds. One person's view of perfection can be incredibly subjective.
I am conscious as I write this that I am writing about other people and other situations and circumstances, and in some ways it can be good to look at other people's faults - if and only if - we realise that we have faults that we are as unconscious of as them. We can be blind to our own faults. Have I made other people feel like a failure because they have not lived up to my standards? I am very conscious that in the past I have. There was no choice of another path, they did not go "God's way*" (*as defined by me) and therefore they went the wrong way - and there is probably some truth in that, but making a big issue out of it probably does not really help, and from based on the evidence it does not seem to have helped.
This can lead to another approach to failure a kind of dejected acceptance. I fail, you fail, we all fail, and we forget to look up at the sky and we forget to believe that God can actually change lives because we all fail. Failure does not have to be the whole story. We do have choices, choices that we can make for good or for evil.
I have been through that phase. Well I fail, I am imperfect, look at the Bible, we all fail and you focus on the failure. It is the response of disillusionment. Things should be better, things could be better, but in reality (we say) we are always going to fail. Maybe we have tried hard and still failed.
Jeff Lucas comments in today's (26 July) Lucas on Life, "To err is human but not to learn from the errors of our ways and so continue in destructive patterns is madness."
We are not perfect, but that is the message of the cross. We fail, but Jesus can save us, and that is why He died. He died not because He believed that we were perfect, and nor did He believe that we would become perfect in these earthly days. He was not just the Son of God, but He had walked this earth for his 3 and 30 years (give or take a year or two) and He had spent three year's travelling with a group of men who were far from perfect and one of which was to betray Him. Jesus was not blinded by Peter, and yet to the man who was going to deny Him, the guy who would continue to make mistakes, He said, "You are Peter and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it."
There is grace for sinners, and grace is not simply a sticking plaster for sin, or some divine blotting paper, it is about power to change.
God does not come to us and say you have failed against you snivelling little humans, God does not come to us and say you've failed again accept it you are a failure, God does not come and say, let me do it all. God comes with grace.
The issue of Christianity is not that we can believe in God, but that God believes in us. Despite the failures and the difficulties, despite the apparent reasons for throwing in the towel, God has not given up on humanity. He still believes, He still hopes, because
1Co 13:7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
1Co 13:8a Love never fails.
The issue is not that we believe in God, but that God still believes in us.
God does not come with a big stick, or a to nullify us and to take over, God comes with the open arms of love, because in the end it is love that changes people not big sticks or big change.
Grace gives us the chance to work it through, to deal with the issues, to start again, and we want it for us, but the challenge is we need to give it to others as well. We want a chance, but we need to be people who give others a chance.
Grace tells me that I do not have to live in the never never land of sin and guilt, grace tells me that tomorrow can be different, that I can be different. Grace tells me that because Jesus died I live in a world of endless possibilities, Grace tells me that I am free. I can make the choices, the chains are broken, I can leave the prison. I can taste the sunlight.
The challenge is that we need to believe that this is true not just for us, but for everyone who lives in darkness who needs to see the light.
This summer it seems that it has been raining and pouring, we have seen the floods, and we have seen little of the sun. We have been living in darkness but we believe that the sun can shine.
We live in a people walking in darkness, and yet the Son of God has shone upon us. We need to accept the Son into our lives for He can drive the darkness away. The light has dawned, and the new age of grace has dawned, free and abundant and available to all that will come, but we need to take hold of the fact that it is not just for us, it needs to be for the world.
Thursday 26 July 2007
Sunday 15 July 2007
Understanding why we do church as we do church
Years ago people lived in communities (some of which were probably quite dysfunctional) but the masses were not educated. Therefore church had quite an educational feel and tended to be driven from the front.
Today people are educated (though whether mass education today challenges people to think for themselves enough is another question) but most people do not live in communities. Therefore churches today have house groups, and often the stopping for a coffee is seen as important as the service itself.
Our environments effects how we do church, and that is an advantage rather than a reason for concern. Just like the Sabbath was created for man not man for the Sabbath so church was created for man not man for church.
Life is different and therefore people's needs are different, and therefore how we do church will be different. Church must meet people where they are, and church must reflect the environment that it is in.
The problem is that often we try to reflect the world in matters that really only scratch the surface (music style etc.) rather than understanding the drivers and the deeper issues. For instance we live in a more emotional age and therefore you might say that we should be more emotional to follow the style of the age. However, we need to ask deeper questions. An over emphasis on the emotions and on feelings is dangerous in all walks of life. The approach to marriage that says it's all over because I don't feel anything any more is worrying and applied to Christianity as dangerous as it is as applied to the rest of life. We need to exercise discernment in our interaction with our culture.
In a world of feelings then our worship may be more emotional, because that is where we are. However we need to be careful about the dangers that brings about and steer clear of emotionalism. We also need to look at why we are becoming more emotional and address that. Are people looking for something more, are people dissatisfied with cold science and longing for something more - of course they are. We need to recognise we were created to be more than just rational machines! I also think that there are tensions within society that cause cracks and these are shown by a greater amount of emotional expression.
Princess Diana died and the reaction was worrying, but that was ten years ago, and there is a greater awareness today that perhaps we got a little carried away, there is a move towards greater conservatism (though that could prove to be temporary - the exuberant Blair has been replaced by the dour Brown). In the church we too often respond to what has happened, rather than what is happening, we need to be prophetic rather than just historic.
The church needs to meet people where they are, and meet the needs of the contemporary world remembering that the greatest need we have is for God.
Today people are educated (though whether mass education today challenges people to think for themselves enough is another question) but most people do not live in communities. Therefore churches today have house groups, and often the stopping for a coffee is seen as important as the service itself.
Our environments effects how we do church, and that is an advantage rather than a reason for concern. Just like the Sabbath was created for man not man for the Sabbath so church was created for man not man for church.
Life is different and therefore people's needs are different, and therefore how we do church will be different. Church must meet people where they are, and church must reflect the environment that it is in.
The problem is that often we try to reflect the world in matters that really only scratch the surface (music style etc.) rather than understanding the drivers and the deeper issues. For instance we live in a more emotional age and therefore you might say that we should be more emotional to follow the style of the age. However, we need to ask deeper questions. An over emphasis on the emotions and on feelings is dangerous in all walks of life. The approach to marriage that says it's all over because I don't feel anything any more is worrying and applied to Christianity as dangerous as it is as applied to the rest of life. We need to exercise discernment in our interaction with our culture.
In a world of feelings then our worship may be more emotional, because that is where we are. However we need to be careful about the dangers that brings about and steer clear of emotionalism. We also need to look at why we are becoming more emotional and address that. Are people looking for something more, are people dissatisfied with cold science and longing for something more - of course they are. We need to recognise we were created to be more than just rational machines! I also think that there are tensions within society that cause cracks and these are shown by a greater amount of emotional expression.
Princess Diana died and the reaction was worrying, but that was ten years ago, and there is a greater awareness today that perhaps we got a little carried away, there is a move towards greater conservatism (though that could prove to be temporary - the exuberant Blair has been replaced by the dour Brown). In the church we too often respond to what has happened, rather than what is happening, we need to be prophetic rather than just historic.
The church needs to meet people where they are, and meet the needs of the contemporary world remembering that the greatest need we have is for God.
Thursday 12 July 2007
The Paradox Machine
Okay so this is getting worryingly dominated by Doctor Who at the moment.
At the end of the last series of Doctor Who the Master returned and turned the TARDIS into a paradox machine. The Paradox is that it brings people back to interfere with their own past which means that they should cease to exist. It is therefore a paradox, they should not be there, it should not exist.
By the end of the final episode the earth was practically destroyed millions killed, the whole of Japan wiped out and the Master about to start galactic war. However the people chant the name of the Doctor and he gains the strength to reverse the paradox and therefore time reverses to just before the time the aliens invaded and the future, the destruction, the murder, and all that pain did not happen. Of course the Doctor and the others with him know what has happened but for everyone else it literally did not happen.
It struck me that sometimes we are paradox machines. We do things which we know we should not do. We know that what we are doing is wrong. We know that certain things are wrong, and by like the Pandora's box we open it and taste the forbidden fruit. The problem is that once we do so it brings in it's wake destruction.
The problem is in real life you cannot just reverse the paradox, in real life you cannot turn back the clock and undo the destruction. However much we may want to, however much we may hope and pray that we could. In the media there is something unsatisfying about it as a literary device, because in real life it does not happen.
In real life we are "paradox machines," praising God and doing all the right things, and then yet at times we blow it all. The religious parallels were striking, the Master was smooth talking and convincing, as these baddies often are - and yet he carried with him death and destruction.
Sin is subtle and attractive but deadly. Jesus came to heal a broken world, but the damage sin causes cannot simple be reversed. We and the rest of the world still have to live with the consequences.
At the end of the last series of Doctor Who the Master returned and turned the TARDIS into a paradox machine. The Paradox is that it brings people back to interfere with their own past which means that they should cease to exist. It is therefore a paradox, they should not be there, it should not exist.
By the end of the final episode the earth was practically destroyed millions killed, the whole of Japan wiped out and the Master about to start galactic war. However the people chant the name of the Doctor and he gains the strength to reverse the paradox and therefore time reverses to just before the time the aliens invaded and the future, the destruction, the murder, and all that pain did not happen. Of course the Doctor and the others with him know what has happened but for everyone else it literally did not happen.
It struck me that sometimes we are paradox machines. We do things which we know we should not do. We know that what we are doing is wrong. We know that certain things are wrong, and by like the Pandora's box we open it and taste the forbidden fruit. The problem is that once we do so it brings in it's wake destruction.
The problem is in real life you cannot just reverse the paradox, in real life you cannot turn back the clock and undo the destruction. However much we may want to, however much we may hope and pray that we could. In the media there is something unsatisfying about it as a literary device, because in real life it does not happen.
In real life we are "paradox machines," praising God and doing all the right things, and then yet at times we blow it all. The religious parallels were striking, the Master was smooth talking and convincing, as these baddies often are - and yet he carried with him death and destruction.
Sin is subtle and attractive but deadly. Jesus came to heal a broken world, but the damage sin causes cannot simple be reversed. We and the rest of the world still have to live with the consequences.
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