Belief

What does it mean to believe in something and how does belief differ from faith? Well, I don't know exactly. People seem to make this dichotomy over and over but I'm increasingly coming to the opinion that belief is lived out in our actions. If we say that we "believe" something but we live our life in a way that is inconsistent with our purported belief, then we don't really believe it.

I often think of "those daring young (wo)men on the flying trapeze" when I think of belief. If you believe in your ability to make safe contact with your partner, you don't need guide-wires. If you want to believe in your ability to make safe contact with your partner but don't dare go without the guide-wires, then you don't believe. Although you may want to believe. As a side comment, this photo on the left of one trapeze artist catching another in mid-flight without guide-wires was in the minority on my first search page. If you do an image search for "trapeze artist", you get a lot more options like the one on the right: people using guide wires.

I think we all use guide wires at some point in our faith lives. As a culture, for instance, we say "In God we Trust" but what what we really trust in is the stuff on which that slogan is written: The almighty dollar. We say that we believe that Jesus is our Savior but we live our lives as if our accomplishments are our Savior or our children are our Saviors or our lifestyle is our Savior. Most of us are practical atheists although many of us want to believe.

Of course, owning up to our unbelief is difficult. Particularly if you're a Christian. And even moreso if you're a Christian minister.

I write all this by way of asking questions and in the hope that there is something valuable in being transparent and truthful and open. I hope that God is gracious enough to deal with my own unbelief and I have an intuition that this is where the heart of God's grace lies.

But I think we Christians need to own up to the fact that our deeds don't match what we say we believe and that is why we are wide open to the accusation of hypocrisy from those outside the Church. And we are even more hypocritical when we declare that we believe in Jesus but we just can't live as if we believe. That's the dissembling that most folk but us see through in a heartbeat.

Lord, I believe. Help thou mine unbelief.

The Believer

Church Growth?

A short post, open to your projections and comments. :-)

Once upon a time, the general culture was amenable to church-going for a lot of reasons that didn't have anything to do with God or to a commitment to being a disciple.

Now, the general culture is less amenable to church-going.

Instead of focusing on trying to get people into the door, churches should focus even more on faithful worship, faithful teaching and committed discipleship. If this results in declining church membership, so be it.

Whatever the format is of the above commitments, I don't care. I expect that different formats will appeal to different disciples and I think that's fine. Just let's stop trying to make ourselves attractive to people who are not primarily interested in worshiping or learning about God. All we're doing is watering down the Gospel.

Comments?

The Emperor has no clothes

Over on my friend David's blog, Big Circumstance, I managed to blurt out an idea that's been in my head for awhile but which never came out in quite the same way before.

The idea is this: lots of people who want to follow Jesus hate Sunday morning services. They find them energy-sapping and exhausting, like a terrible meeting at work that you really don't want to attend but have to. Only the thing about church is that you don't have to attend if you don't feel like it.

I think that this is actually the real challenge to the Church today and no amount of contemporary worship, no amount of praise songs and no amount of "modern worship" is going to "fix" the problem. Trying to make existing Sunday services attractive to people who would rather go to the dentist is just a no-win game and I think that's what we're trying to do. US congregations, not having yet declined in the way that the Church has done in the UK, seem even more stuck in the mode of thinking that if Sunday services just get more "modern" that more people will come.

Now, my only problem is that I don't really know what to "do" about this. I do think that small groups may be part of an "answer" and I suspect that this is part of where the Emerging Church movement is at. But I think that small groups are going to have to be places where individuals can share of themselves and be real and contribute to the growth of others in the group so that everyone can go out from the meeting into the world. They can't be just another meeting. And they can't be primarily led by one person week after week or they just turn into mini-Sunday services.

Any other thoughts?

Sermon Blogging

Catching up again on sermon blogging:

• Sunday 15 June 2008 - A Dangerous Gospel
• Sunday 22 June 2008 - Superior Gifts?
  

A Sermon and a Story

I've posted this week's sermon on my sermon blog: Take Up Your Cross

This was another difficult Gospel reading and, I think, a good argument for preaching from the lectionary. I'm not sure whether Luke 14:25-33 would have been my own choice of a text to preach on!

I've also posted a story I wrote based on Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52 entitled The Magical Seed Bush.

Rowan Williams on Christian Marriage

I recently purchased a copy of Open to Judgement, a book of Rowan Williams' sermons published in 1994.


I was quite interested in his sermon - given to a university audience - on the subject of 'Is There a Christian Sexual Ethic?' Like many people, I've been unimpressed with the usual arguments for marriage and monogamy that are made by Christians, even though I agree that monogamous, faithful, lifetime partnerships are the best way to work out Christian discipleship in the sexual arena.

Below is my personal attempt to briefly outline the ideas in this sermon.


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For many in our culture, it won't do to simply try to assert 'simple, traditional, biblical' teaching in the area of sexual ethics. Ours is a culture that prizes individuality and experimentation. People believe their circumstances are more varied than tradition allows and they believe that they need the ability to develop by trial and error.

Many individuals, including Christians, operate a sexual ethic on the basis of whether or not a relationship is hurtful or threatening to anyone: me, my partner, or anyone else. Some Christians may feel a little bit guilty at ignoring traditional teaching but they feel that they can't take it seriously.

Both the traditional approach and the 'new approach' (my term) have some Christian principles. The first talks of sacrificing one's own immediate gratification for the sake of discipline. The second talks of honesty, care, and taking responsibility for one's own choices.

Both approaches show an awareness that sexuality is a place of powerful emotion but both also suggest that people can 'get it right' once we understand the correct principles.

The problem is that the Christian Gospel is sceptical about me getting it right. It's sceptical about the usefulness of rules in getting it right and it's sceptical about using 'inner conviction and sincerity' to get it right. If the scepticism is correct then neither legalism nor good intentions will deliver a properly Christian sexual ethic.

However, the Gospel addresses itself to the 'deepest strata of injuredness and self-dividedness.' The Gospel says that 'pain, powerlessness, injury, despair, bewilderment, are laid open to a God who does not condemn or desert, but works tirelessly in the middle of our very betrayls and evasions to bring life.'

If life can communicate the meanings of God, then one's sexuality can be sacramental and speak of mercy, faithfulness, transfiguration and hope. The writer of the letter to the Ephesians tells us that married love is an image of the love between Christ and the Church. Christ gives himself up for the sake of his people and becomes dispossesed for the sake of another's life. In marriage, the husband's sacrifice is mirrored by the wife's obedience and both become dispossesed for the sake of the other. 1 Corinthians 7:3ff talks of mutual rights and belonging whether neither partner owns or governs their own body but makes it over to the other.

Married love is sacramental because it involves a lasting, not just momentary, resignation of control. It is a yielding to the other, a putting your own body at the disposal of another for that other's life or joy. What God has done for our life and joy we learn to do for God's joy: the joy in heaven over the return of the lost.

Within the Christian tradition, this surrender normally take place within marriage. Why? Partly because instinct warns us of the destructive energy that is the shadow side of sexual passion. 'Making oneself over' to another is always risky, especially if it is not a mutual exercise but an asymmetric one; I may give myself over to someone's greed or egoism.

Our yielding to God would be terrifyingly uncertain if we did not take it for granted that God was 'faithful', bound to us by covenant and by solemn self-commitment. This is why Christian tradition wants to talk about fidelity as the thing that makes sexuality meaningful in relation to God.

The grace that is to be discovered in nakedness and yielding can be itself when we give up the self-protection of non-commitment, experiment and gratification, when we go down the dangerous route of promising to be there for another person without having a 'get out clause'. A commitment without limits set in advance means that we have a lifetime to 'create each other' together. Without commitment, a relationship is in danger of one person turning themself over to another who manipulates them.

Williams says that our main question with regard to Christian marriage should not be 'Am I keeping the rules?' nor should it be 'Am I being sincere and non-hurtful?', it should be 'How much am I prepared for this relationship to signify?'

Sermon - Greed

Last Sunday's sermon which is simply entitled Greed, can be found here.

Sermon - Forgiven Sinners, God Believes in You

Tomorrow's sermon is: Forgiven Sinners, God Believes in You.