Listening and loving

As a child, I was afraid of dogs. I told people I hated them. I didn't like looking at their pictures. I moved as far away as possible from anyone walking a dog. I didn't want to go into a house where I knew there was a dog living.

Why?

Apparently, when I was a toddler, a large and probably over-friendly dog jumped at me and terrified me. It took years for me to learn to like dogs again.

Others have more painful experiences: perhaps they were knocked over, or bitten by a dog. Perhaps they knew someone who was ravaged by a dog. Perhaps they had early experience of highly-trained guard dogs who would attack strangers. Some of them may never really come to accept dogs as (mostly) friendly, tame pets.

Fear or distrust of dogs is so common that when we hear someone insisting they hate dogs, we assume they've had a bad experience with them in the past. We're sympathetic, on the whole. We might make gentle enquiries about why they feel that way. We might share our own similar experiences. We might show them photos of soft and cuddly dogs that could hardly fail to make them smile. Or we might just leave the topic alone.

What we don't do is to start heavy arguments about why dogs are wonderful, or tell them they should come with us to the local stray dogs' home. We don't give them heavy books about why a dog is man's best friend, or try to convince them of the pointlessness of having gerbils or hamsters as pets.

So.... why do so many Christians take a heavy line with people who attack the church, or their personal beliefs? Chances are that someone who is suspicious of Christianity has been injured in some way in the past by Christians. Perhaps they had a rigid and dogmatic upbringing, heavily disciplined for any infringement of Christian values. Perhaps they were spurned at a church they visited for dressing in scruffy jeans. Perhaps they've come across hypocritical Christians who say one thing and do another.

John Piper says:

Let us learn to discern whether the words spoken against us or against God or against the truth are merely for the wind--spoken not from the soul, but from the sore. If they are for the wind, let us wait in silence and not reprove. Restoring the soul, not reproving the sore, is the aim of our love.

(from "A Godward Life")


How right he is. When other people attack us, or our faith, or the church, or even God, it does no good at all to argue. Yes, we need to be sure what we believe and be prepared to explain it. But we need to do so from the perspective of the person we're talking to. Jesus told us that the entire law is summed up in the commands to love God, and to love our neighbours as ourselves. Loving our neighbour doesn't just involve doing practical things for them. It can mean listening to them at a deep level, hearing where they're coming from, understanding why they've formed the views they have. Maybe at some point we can introduce them to Jesus, but we're unlikely to to have any effect until we've shown them honest friendship and shown that we take them seriously.

Literal vs Metaphorical

I do not take every word of the Bible literally.

Before anyone brands me a heretic, let me explain. There's a lot of confusion about the word 'literally' these days. I've read and heard people say things such as:

My heart was literally in my mouth!

This book was so exciting, the pages literally turned themselves!

I can only assume that some people don't know what literally means. Because in fact what they mean is 'metaphorically'. Someone's heart remains literally where it's always been. Book pages do not literally turn themselves.

Why use the word 'literally' at all, though?

Recently in studying and discussing differences of personality type and temperament, one of the issues that cropped up was that of abstract vs concrete language. About 75% of the US population (and perhaps other populations too) tend to use mostly concrete language. The rest - and I'm among them - who prefer the abstract tend to use metaphors as a matter of course.

Now some metaphors have made it into everyday speech and are widely used by all. I used the phrase 'cropped up' and indeed 'concrete language' - hoping that anyone reading this will understand the meaning I'm giving to the words. And because a high percentage of fiction writers use metaphorical language, such phrases have crept into common usage too. If I say my heart was in my mouth, most English-speaker would know that I meant I was very tense and frightened.

But perhaps those who prefer the concrete style are actually uncomfortable with metaphor. So when they use such phrases, they have to add an extra word - and, bizarrely, choose 'literally' because they like the literal use of language and perhaps it truly felt as if their heart really was in their mouth.

Back to the Bible.

When people say they take every word literally, they usually mean they believe what's written in the Gospels about Jesus - including the miracles - and they believe in Creation as outlined in Genesis, and they take seriously things they perceive as commands to the church.

Well, so do I. But on the other hand, there are plenty of metaphors too: Jesus used them frequently. When he said he was the light of the world, or a gate to a sheepfold, or the bread of life, we know he meant them metaphorically. Sometimes he explained what he meant, but not always. So how do we know? Because of our own cultural experience, and what we've been taught.

However, our understanding may well be limited or even wrong. For many years I thought the gate to the sheepfold was something wooden with hinges. Then an elderly minister in a school assembly I was visiting told the relevant story to the children. He got some children up front to be a sort of hedge with a gap in it, and others to be the sheep. Then he himself got down on the floor, and lay across the gap. That, he told us, was what the 'gate' was like in ancient Israel. The shepherd really did - literally! - form the gate which both kept the sheep in, and kept any wolves or thieves out.

So some of the Bible may be more literal than we realise. Other parts may be less so. People come up with all kinds of explanations for some of the more confusing statements, and sometimes it's impossible to tell exactly what was meant, although usually we have a good idea.

We will never fully comprehend everything in the Bible while we're on earth. Jesus said that the Holy Spirit would help us remember his words, and understand them. As we read the Bible, and listen for the voice of God, we may well begin to understand better. It's also important to learn about the culture of the times, to read books written about the Bible, and to discuss our ideas and questions with our Christian brothers and sisters. But let's not be rigid. Too many battles and divisions within the Church have arisen because of verses taken out of context, or different interpretations. Jesus said that the first commandment was to love God, and the second was to love our neighbour. If we differ from our neighbour (or indeed our brother at the church on the other side of town) in some doctrinal issue, let's go with the principle of love and let the Holy Spirit work in us both.

Education: what is it?

"Don't let schooling interfere with
your education."
~ Mark Twain ~

This quotation from Twain is often used by home educators, to point out the obvious (but frequently ignored) truism that education and schooling are not the same. Mass schooling really only began in the late 19th century. Before that, the majority of people learned all they needed from their extended family, friends, acquaintances, and life experiences. 'Schooling' was sporadic for most, and consisted of learning particular skills such as basic reading and writing, arithmetic, and perhaps the recital of historical facts.

When we started home education - just for a year, so we thought, when we moved to Cyprus - I had not really understood the difference. I thought, vaguely, that 'education' consisted of learning, from experts, certain subjects such as history, French, biology, etc, up to what we call GCSE level, and then specialising in a few subjects for a couple more years. 'Further education', I thought, consisted of taking just one or two of those subjects and studying them in much greater depth, to degree level.

Since my own specialist sixth-form subjects were maths and ancient Greek, and I had forgotten almost everything I learned in school by the time we started home education, I was sure I could not 'teach' anything beyond primary school level. My sons were 11 and 9 when we started, and I was quite convinced they would have to go to secondary school to get 'an education'. Even at 11, my older son knew more about science than I did. So I bought books, got copies of their UK primary school's monthly and weekly curriculum plans, and tried to organise our days as similarly as possible to those in their school.

Right?

Nope. That is NOT education. I was trying to 'school' the boys, based on our prior experience. Thankfully the Internet led me to forums and lists which discussed home education in all its possible forms, and we quickly realised that at home there was no reason at all to follow the pattern of schools. The boys realised this almost immediately; it was me who needed to re-learn what 'education' means. UK law (which we were following) requires children to be educated 'at school or otherwise'. Not 'schooled' but educated. If it's not at school, then it's 'otherwise'. The law goes on to say that it must be according to age, ability and aptitude. Something that schools try hard to follow, but with 30 children and one teacher per class, it's impossible for every child to be treated fully individually.

Undoubtedly some children and teenagers do enjoy school, and gain a great deal from it, including some education. But there are many different personality types, and many different styles of learning. Neither of my two has the 'Guardian' temperament which fits best into a structured school day. So, although I really did NOT want to move to Cyprus, I soon became very thankful that God brought us here, and essentially pushed us into home education, since it's an option I would probably not have considered if we had remained in the UK.

Within a year we knew this was the right path for our family. The boys blossomed. I blossomed. I realised (and how obvious it seemed when I did) that since I had forgotten the majority of what I learned in school, it probably wasn't very important. My husband, who was not at all keen on the idea of home education at first, acknowledged that nearly everything of significance which he had learned had been outside school, or - at best - in after-school clubs.

My older son is now nearly 20 and travelling the world on the MV Doulos. When I spoke to him on the phone recently, he said how much he's enjoying the process of learning so many new skills - deckhand work, carpentry, metal-work, teaching drama, water-testing, jazz dancing, and much more. We never did much chemistry at home, but it hasn't held him back. Perhaps the main thing he learned in his years at home was that there's no limit to education. If he wants to learn something new, he can. His only worry is that there's too little time for all the activities he wants to do, and the things he wants to learn in depth.

My younger son, nearly 18, is about to embark on an open theology degree. He's also about to become the main organist at the local Anglican church. He gives guitar lessons to a friend's son. He has helped many people with computer problems, since he has a highly technical mind and quick intuitive grasp of what has gone wrong.

Has their education been balanced, as it would have been in school? No. I admit it freely. They did use an American correspondence course to get diplomas, just in case they ever want to go to university, but the vast majority of their education was informal, self-motivated, and done without any formal teaching or structure. They read, they researched, they asked questions. And they still continue to do so.

So I'm very thankful that for the past eight years we have absolutely not allowed schooling of any kind to interfere with our sons' education!

So... WHY would Brits be healthier than Americans?

I'm not entirely sure why they did this research, but it's apparently been shown that Americans are less healthy than their British counterparts.

"Americans aged 55 to 64 are up to twice as likely to suffer from diabetes, lung cancer and high blood pressure as English people of the same age"

Or so the report starts.

t wasn't even a study by Brits, this comes from the US itself - from the Journal of the American Medical Association. Nor is it related to something obvious like income levels, because the groups were carefully divided by income, so they compared wealthy Americans with similarly wealthy Brits, and so on. In both countries, the wealthier people were more healthy than the least wealthy, which is probably not surprising. People with more money are more likely to be well educated and aware of the benefits of healthy lifestyles. They can afford good quality food and relaxing holidays, and are less likely to live in cramped houses.

But

"The healthiest Americans had similar disease rates to the least healthy English."

That's pretty scary. And they don't seem to know why. Cigarette smoking habits were very similar between the two countries. Alcohol drinking levels were higher in the UK. Obviously for the lower income people in the USA, there's not much access to health care, but the wealthiest groups in American probably have good insurance, or can pay for medical treatment. And the illnesses they're talking about aren't really related to health care anyway. They're not talking about how many people die from these diseases, but how many develop them in the first place.

The report also takes into account the obesity levels in the USA which are generally higher than in the UK - but that, apparently, doesn't help explain the difference either.

What surprises me is that they don't mention nutrition. When we lived in the USA for a couple of years in the early 1990s, we were appalled at how few people seemed to cook 'proper' food. Of course, it's going that way in the UK too, with fast foods becoming cheaper, and packaged mixes in the supermarkets. But when I was growing up in the UK, in the 1960s and 1970s, all cooking was done 'from scratch' as they call it in the USA - ie using ingredients. That's what I still consider ordinary cooking. But our friends in the USA seemed to use cake mixes and pudding mixes and other 'instant' foods which were packed with preservatives and colourants and other such junk. They told me such things had been around for a long time, so perhaps people of 55-64 in the USA grew up with them in their diet.

By contrast, people of that age in the UK were children during or just after World War II when there was still food rationing. No white flour, very little sugar, and of course absolutely no imported or instant rubbish. There wasn't much meat, and people often filled up with bread and dripping, but there were vegetables and some fruit, locally grown, and many people kept eggs. It's often been said by health-food faddists that it's better to be a bit hungry than too eat too much, and that a simple diet is the healthiest. Perhaps we're finally seeing that this is the case...

What is 'church' anyway?

I'm enthusing everywhere about Jake Colsen's book (available from his site as an e-book, free to download) ' So you don't want to go to church anymore?'

It's not preachy, and it doesn't tell us what to do. Instead it uses a fictional setting to guide someone through what church really is. Or rather, what it could be, what it was intended to be, and what it means. We all know the Church is not a building, or even an individual congregation, but the Body of Christ worldwide. We know that the local church really consists of all believers in a neighbourhood. And we know that the most important part of the church is each individual's relationship with Jesus.

Of course we know that, deep down.

So why are so many congregations all over the world struggling with building programmes, hearing long and boring sermons that inspire few if any, singing trite songs, or - at the other extreme - following ancient rituals that most of them don't understand? Why do so many Christians spend time worrying about minor ethical issues (drinking, smoking, dancing, eating, what to wear, what to see, what to read.... ) and judging those who think differently? Why are there so many doctrinal differences and arguments, leading to splitting congregations and gossip and strife?

What did Jesus say?

Love God with all your heart, soul and mind. That's the greatest commandment.

Love your neighbour. All the law is summed up in that phrase.

Basically, that's it. Christianity isn't an ethical system. It shouldn't be boring or trite. Nor should it be incomprehensible or mindless. It's an exciting way of life, following a radical Saviour. We have no need for three-point sermons or five-purpose churches or seven laws for success. Oh, there may be some value in reading such books, but they all miss the point. God loves us more than we can possibly imagine, and Jesus wants us to live for and with him in every way, every moment of every day.

Nothing else matters. When we are following Godly principles, by the leading of the Holy Spirit, then the ethics will fall into place.

Does that make it wrong to belong to a local congregation? Of course not. So long as it doesn't come between us and God. So long as we don't spend so much time and energy keeping the programmes and buildings going that we lose sight of what really matters. So long as we remember that we're only a small part of the worldwide Body of Christ, and that God is a great deal bigger than any one denomination or doctrinal standpoint.

Some people find a church service a good place to worship God corporately, and that's great. Whether it's in ancient chanting, a capella psalms, charismatic choruses or organ-led hymns, God loves our praise, and many people draw closer to him through such times. Worship is about giving God his worth, about offering ourselves to him in our entirety, in adoring him for who and what he is.

But at the same time, worship needs to be an attitude of life. A church service isn't for getting a spiritual high to keep us going during the week. If we can't praise God on our own, and give him his worth in every aspect of our lives, then even the most thrilling and moving church service becomes a distraction, not a bonus.

Some find sermons inspiring, and learn more of the Bible through teaching in church services. But not everyone is created to be an auditory learner, and unless a congregation is small and not at all diverse, it's impossible for any one sermon to teach - or minister in any way - to everyone. Or even the majority. Short testimonies may be more encouraging, if they're genuine. But it's all too easy for the same people to share, week by week, without specifics, and without empathy towards those who don't feel so blessed.

Besides, if a sermon is the only teaching and inspiration someone is receiving, then there's something wrong. There are a wealth of Christian books available, or (for those who don't read much) tapes, CDs and DVDs of teaching. Not to mention the Internet. We live in a multi-media world. God is proclaimed and the Bible explained in a multitude of ways. If we think we can gain all we need from a weekly sermon, then that too has become a distraction - an excuse. If the things of God are important, we need to consider them daily, moment by moment.

Church can also be a good place for networking: for meeting new people, for chatting with friends. It's important to get together with other believers, to talk of the things of God. For many, the coffee-and-biscuits after the church service is more important than the service itself. For someone new to the area, a church is an obvious place to find other believers.

But once again, if the coffee time after a service is our only contact with other believers, if we don't meet any of them through the week, then it's another thing that becomes a distraction. Or a sop to our guilty feelings that we 'ought' to be spending more time with other Christians.

What of outreach programmes? Children's ministry? Youth groups? Soup kitchens? Mother-and-toddler groups? Day Centres? House groups?

All can be valuable, of course. They are tools, which may be used or may be misused. If the leaders are enthusiastic, sure that they are doing what God wants them to do, and if those attending are doing so because they want to be there, then that's great. But if the leaders are over-stretched, under-funded, constantly stressed and never appreciated, then something is going awry. If people are turning up out of a sense of obligation, and thankful when they've finished, then there's little point their being there at all.

Perhaps more significantly, it's quite possible to be involved in some of these ministries without attending the Sunday morning services.

Where does that leave us?

If someone is happy in his or her local congregation, with a positive reason for being there, and with their relationship to Jesus taking first place, then there's no reason to leave unless God clearly tells them to do so. Local churches can be wonderful, with a sense of real community. If people really love each other, then they'll choose to see each other mid-week and help each other out when necessary. They'll pray for each other, and care for each other, and there won't be any hint of judgementalism or gossip, because Jesus is put first. Not politics, or ethics, or preconceived ideas of what Christians are like, but the Son of God who loved us and died for our sins.

But if - as is happening with so many people in the 21st century - the local church is making you feel jaded, or depressed, or if you find it boring or incomprehensible, or even if it's the high focal point of your week (thus potentially an idol) maybe God is calling you out of it, at least for a while. Not to find another congregation immediately, or to start a new one, but to reconsider your relationship with him. To find how to worship without church services. To find sources of teaching that aren't sermons. To meet with other believers without structure or obligation.

If this all sounds wacky, even heretical, I encourage you to read Jake Colsen's book and consider the implications. You might not agree - but then he doesn't tell us what to do, or how to live. His fictional guide just asks some questions, and points out places where many Christians have lost sight of what really matters.