does it really make a difference?
I am reading a fascinating book. In ‘The Year of Living Biblically’, A J Jacobs decides as a literary project to take the Bible literally for a year. This involves all sorts of dramatic changes for this New York writer and journalist. He goes to listen to all sorts of different people’s ideas on what it means to take the Bible literally. One of the most obvious changes is his appearance – as his beard grows and his clothes make him look more and more like a younger Moses (interestingly he is mistaken for a member of ZZ Top at one point…)
I haven’t finished the book yet, but it is certainly provoking a lot of thought and it appears to have provoked thought for a lot of others as well. Is it enough to live by a set of rules? Does living by a set of rules have an effect on your live …an effect that is more than external? When does self-help take over and subsume relationship with God? And prayer …does it just make us feel good …or does it make a difference? Would it be any different to pray to Apollo for example?
Before you get worried I haven’t thrown in the Christian towel …but I do find that A J (his writing style makes me feel like we are almost on first name terms) is connecting with a lot of real questions.
christianity doesn’t really fit me…
One of most formative periods of my life was my teenage years in Guildford. And much of this was through the great opportunities to explore God questions at church and in the school Christian Union. And important foundations were laid with a group of wonderful people who wanted to live the great adventure of life with God. Many of these men are still friends, some of us have renewed acquaintance again 25 years later. A lot has changed – several live in different countries, most are married and have kids (thankfully no divorces yet), most of us have put on a bit of weight, several are wealthy, some have achieved their goals for life, a few are actively living as Christ followers, but others are not (including some of those who were the most zealous Christians as teenagers). Broadly speaking, a lot of people our age are saying that they believe in God but Christianity doesn’t really fit them.
One friend who is now a successful banker has been put off by the hypocrisy he has come across in church, and the way in which ritual blocks real relationship with God. A married couple (who were previously at an evangelical Bible college) found it very important to explore questions and doubts that they had, but this didn’t fit into the Bible study programme of the home group that they were in …after a long time they finally gave up, and now call themselves atheists. Another friend fell in love with a girl who is not a Christ follower and his church involvement soon tailed off.
renewing acquaintance, or meeting up for the first time…
friends reunited, my space, facebook, netvibe, bebo, wayn.com, Renewing acquaintance is a popular pastime which has spawned a veritable industry of new ways of keeping up with more and more people. I’m not sure how success should be measured in this department, I’ve even heard that there are people talking about quantity and quality measures of a person’s relationality.
Others are getting concerned that we live in too many ‘relational worlds’ to have ‘real relationship’. And so there is a move from ‘fast food’ to ’slow food’, from ‘catching up’ to ‘quality time’. And there is the question about what changes and what doesn’t change, about what you keep and what is disposable.
At school and university, I had the ‘Christian’ tag. Later this month I will go to a 20th anniversary dinner at my old college in Cambridge. It seems like only yesterday that we had a 10th anniversary dinner …and at that event lots of people wanted to ask ‘big questions’ about their lives. The ‘Christian’ tag has not always been a popular one, but it does mean that some people feel free to talk about these things. Achieving success, getting married, having children, meeting someone whose life just seems to work because they are a Christ follower, saying ‘goodbye’ and moving on, depression, the death of a friend or family member, suffering failure, living the humdrum workaday world, having cause to celebrate and wanting to thank someone ‘out there’… These are among many reasons that come up in many of these conversations which are often not just about renewing acquaintance with each other, but have an element of considering renewing acquaintance with God or becoming a friend of God for the first time.
irrelevant?
Having the ‘Christian’ tag can make aspects of my life seem irrelevant to others. Why would anyone want to go to church? Over the last few months in our services we have looked first at Genesis and now at Exodus. I am very much among the many others who have found that even these very old bits of the Bible have an uncanny way of speaking into the world of facebook and mobile phones. The lived experiences of our lives are actually not that different than the lives of Bible characters – making life work and keeping going, enjoying and celebrating, as well as suffering and commiserating … It is not always easy to trust in God when situations seem tough …just as the experiences of the Israelites in the desert when they ran out of food and water …faith is sometimes little more than gritting your teeth and choosing to trust …and then life gets better in some way or other.
For months, we have been talking about little baby brother …and those last two months did seem to be very long!
