ASPECTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITHFULNESS:
Meditations on Christian Responses to God’s Faithfulnes
5 Talks for a Franciscan Retreat
Iain McKillop
1 INTRODUCTION:
I feel rather daunted in being asked to lead a retreat on faithfulness, for a groups of committed Third Order Franciscans, as I recognise that I’m with brothers and sisters who are already committed to sincere vows of faithfulness & are probably far more saturated in Christian spirituality and experience than myself. I hope that these 5 reflections on faithfulness may be helpful to you personally, as they’ve challenged me in writing them. But they are also reflections on how we might encourage more sincere Christian faithfulness in the church communities where we live and serve. So if what I say seems a bit simplistic or obvious to you at times, please forgive me, and I hope that some of the material might be useful to help you to consider how you might apply my thoughts to encourage or challenge greater faithfulness in your church communities.
As I wrote in the leaflet introduction to our theme, in much of the western world the Christian Church is declining in numbers, influence & effectiveness, not just due to the Covid pandemic. Church-going is not as valued as in the past. Churches can sometime seem alternatively wishy-washy, arrogant, comfortable, self-content, insular, bigoted or socially inactive. Most of our churches are not yet what Jesus & St Paul founded the Church to be - actively living out God’s Kingdom in our lives, spreading Christ’s life-giving message, practically modelling Christ in society & encouraging the principles of God’s Kingdom in the world around. I firmly believe that if we were more faithfully following Christ & the Spirit’s way, & representing the God Jesus represented more authentically, the Church would be more universally attractive because people would see truth in us.
This retreat’s theme of ‘Faithfulness’ seems particularly relevant to contemporary society and the Church. We live in a world where many have rightly lost trust in the faithfulness of politicians, business leaders and the recent fashion for ‘influencers’ in society. How many of our present leaders could you call ‘honourable’, ‘the great & the good’, ‘honestly working for truth & the good of society’? Sadly, many feel similar lack of trust in the Church, sometimes for understandable reasons - reports of abuse, cover-ups, arrogant leaders showing lack of Christ-like humility, unwise stewardship of finances & legacies, factions squabbling for influence or not recognising those of different traditions as truly Christian. People outside the Church hear of theologians questioning scripture & significant aspects of Christian doctrine and wonder: “If thinking Christians don’t believe their faith why should we?” That’s often because we don’t explain clearly enough how we can feel sure that there is truth in God & Christ’s teaching, while at the same time recognising that we can’t prove faith empirically. We recognise that some Church traditions have been exaggerated over time, and superstitions have always infiltrated faith. But we also recognise that Christ’s teachings are full of truths.
If we look at many preoccupations, priorities and aims of today’s worldwide Church, it seems clear that, as in St. Francis’ day, some have moved far from Jesus’ priorities. I sometimes wonder if Jesus or St. Paul walked into my church or looked at some Christian organisations, institutions and resources whether they would recognise us as the faithful God-centred community with Christ’s priorities that they sought to found with the aims that Jesus taught us to follow.
Rather than being Christ’s unified body, many otherwise faithful people are disunited over theology, ways of worship, internal politics & rivalries for power. Most churches have hierarchies that are very different from Jesus’ teaching that he who leads should be willing to be “servant to all” [Matt.20:26; Mk.9:35; 10:44], “consider others better than yourselves” [Phil.2:3], or “the last shall be first” [Matt.20:16]. When the disciples squabbled over importance and had worldly and heavenly ambitions as some church leaders show today, Jesus told them: “It should not be so ‘with you!” [Matt.20:26; Mk.10:43]. We are told to “seek first the Kingdom of God and God’s righteousness” [Matt.6:33], not position, power. Possessions or even reputation.
We can’t just reproduce the New Testament Church authentically, as some churches have tried or claimed to do. Society has changed enormously & churches need to communicate a faith that is true and works in the contemporary context, As the Church grew and increasingly formalised and settled over two millennia, it couldn’t remain mendicant & dependent on small gifts for support like Jesus and his disciples, or Francis & his first followers. But many elements of Christianity have diverged rather too far from the clarity of Jesus’ teaching and example and no longer see God’s Kingdom and righteousness as priorities.
I love cathedral architecture & great church art, but though partly designed to glorify God, it went too far , diverted the Church from the priorities of mission & saddled us with centuries of financial burdens. We don’t need the trinkets, huge popular Christian music industry, self-publicising of shallow spiritual autobiographies by ‘celebrity’ Christians, rich American-style tele-evangelism, expensive vanity projects that make churches look like corporate venues. We could do without many of the expensive resources that many Christian organisations promote today. As well as being a financial drain, they often deflect us from out-giving charity & stewardship. We don’t need to ape the commercial world to communicate faith effectively, though some churches and church-members try. Some think that we’ll appeal & evangelise by showing that we are modern & successful, but it’s authenticity to Christ’s teaching that communicates true faith, not seeming successful & contemporary. In a sermon recently a vicar encouraged his congregation to give generously to charities that would steward their gifts wisely, but not to leave money to the Church of England because he claimed ‘it would waste it.’ (That makes me as a minister uncomfortable but I recognise his point!)
We need to be seen to be “faithful in all things” [1Tim.3:11].
If I didn’t believe so strongly that Jesus has the words & ways of eternal life, I’m not sure that I would want to be part of some churches or that St. Francis would too. If we’re not seen to follow Christ’s perfect example, and live with integrity, what will attract people to church? Jesus taught & exemplified the ways by which human beings can best flourish & find the most abundant life: He is “The Way, the Truth & the Life” [Jn.14:6]. To achieve Christ’s abundance, we need to root ourselves in truth & follow Christ’s selfless ways. My first handout gives a list of just some of the ways in which Christ’s faithfulness should be our model. It opens with that famous passage from Philippians 2 reminding us that Jesus emptied himself of self-centred ambition to teach truth, to give us the example of how to live & humbly to achieve salvation and restore creation to God.. Theologians use the term ‘kenosis’ to describe Christ’s self-denial & emptying himself. The Greek verb ‘kenóō’ in Phil.2:6-7 literally means “to make empty”. In the text ‘eautòn ekénōsen’ - “he emptied himself” - implies that Jesus didn’t ‘negate’ his personality or reject his nature in becoming human but laid aside any rights, powers and obligations that might be expected as due to him, in order to serve the needs of others and achieve Salvation for God. Our faithfulness to following God’s way and continuing God’s mission requires similar humility.
I don’t want to further bemoan weaknesses contemporary Christian faithfulness, since I’m as weak in truly following Christ as many. Rather, during this retreat I’d like us to think positively about what true Christian faithfulness means, since faithfulness, truth & love are at the heart of authentic Christian discipleship. Faithfulness is a very Franciscan theme. Francis aimed to reform the Church of his time to more faithfully follow Christ. I’d like us this weekend to consider how we too can contribute positively to that reform in our lives and among the Christian circles in which we move.
We talk a lot about God being ‘love’. Yet the essence of our Christian idea of God is also that God is true and faithful. Jesus’ self-giving on the cross was part of that faithfulness, working to restore the world to God. The Resurrection stories also reflect the faithfulness of God in Christ. Jesus did not leave his followers desolate after his death. He returned to strengthen them. The Resurrection appearances enabled this gradual strengthening and building of confidence, leading to Pentecost, when Christ's followers were given the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives to lead us into further truth, so that we can more confidently help build God’s Kingdom and do God’s will on earth as in heaven today.
However, we live in a world where understandably, many doubt the Christian message. We do not have the evidence to counter many doubts, since faith is based mostly on trust rather than sight or unquestionable proofs. In our Christian lives many believers will have evidence and experiences that prove to them that they have placed their trust in something that is real. The most powerful evidence that we can present to the world is through faithfully putting into practice what we believe, and thus demonstrating to the world that Jesus actually did show the way, the truth, and the path to abundant life. It is my hope that meditating on this theme of 'Christian Faithfulness' may help us all follow the ways taught by Jesus more authentically and find that doing so brings us closer to God and more effective in representing spiritual truths within our society.
HANDOUT A
FAITHFULLY MODELLING CHRIST IN OUR WORLD
: “Let the same mind be in you as was in Christ Jesus who though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form he humbled himself & became obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross.” [Phil.2:6-8]. Many today don’t believe in God & don’t value Church, but accept Jesus as historical & regard his teachings as good, true & useful. If his followers are seen to live faithfully by his words & example, people may recognise that God’s truth is with us & may be attracted to faith. We do not understand Christ’s nature but should follow his example & faithfulness:
Despite his value & importance, he showed humility in the way he lived on earth.
He was our example of purity of life & taught ‘the Way, the Truth & the Life.
He was committedly dedicated in close relationship with God, his Father & Lord.
His worship of God was in Spirit and in Truth.
His regular, committed prayer life, guided & empowered his ministry.
He was valued & regarded by the poor & laity as teaching greater truth than leaders. He mixed freely in society identifying with & supporting the needy.
His holy life was an example of love, faith, truth, simplicity and authenticity.
He was selfless in prioritising his service to God & his ministry to others.
He did not covet personal security [‘nowhere to lay his head’ Lk.9:58; Matt.8:20].
He was a wise steward of resources [the common purse gave gifts to the poor].
He witnessed faithfully to God in active mission, preaching, teaching & healing.
He wasn’t motivated by greed, money, fame or power, aiming to advance truth & righteousness & point us to God. [He taught us to only desire our daily bread].
He was reliant on God for guidance, claiming to speak what the Father gave him.
He was reliant on the support & generosity of others, but did not demanding it.
He was one with the people, nature and creation around him.
He looked for good qualities in people & brought out the best in companions.
He aimed to build a community that was true to God’s ways.
He used & built people’s individual gifts & valued their individual characters.
His followers weren’t advanced by nepotism, as sometimes in church & society. He wasn’t afraid to challenge the hierarchy or draw attention to situations of sin,
He loved people with God’s love and forgave with God’s grace.
He understood people’s motivations and treated them accordingly with grace.
He enthused others, like himself, for mission & promoted discipleship.
He was willing to suffer, even to give his life for others.
He aimed to reform contemporary religion ‘in Spirit & in Truth’ [Jn.4:23-24]
1 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIAN FAITHFULNESS
We may want to be faithful to Christ and his principles, but if you’re anything like me, I fail far too often. St Paul, the great hero of the Christian faith, admitted his own challenges in Rom.7:14-25:
“We know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, enslaved to sin. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very things I hate... sin dwells in me. I recognise that nothing good dwells in my fleshly self. I can will what is right but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. I find this law in me that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”
That should sound discouraging but I personally find it encouraging that a strong Christian like Paul, who was writing about faith SO confidently in this Epistle to the Romans, had the same struggles as most of us! Those who know the passage well will recognise that I missed out the most important verse in the whole of that chapter, which follows - verse 25: ‘Who will rescue me from this body of death?’ “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Paul recognised that he could not rescue himself, but he trusted Jesus Christ that his salvation had already overcome Paul’s failings and ours. He had faith that Christ’s faithfulness was working for him, and it encouraged his own faithfulness.
We can’t be totally faithful ourselves: St. Paul regarded faithfulness as a spiritual gift as well as a ‘fruit of the Spirit’ [Gal. 5:22-23]. Alongside Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Gentleness and Self-Control, God’s Spirit gifts & strengthens our faithfulness, as part of the power of God’s Spirit transforming & working in us, if we let God do it.
Jesus said: “When the Spirit of truth comes he will guide you into all the truth...” [Jn.16:12]. Being brought to greater truth isn’t necessarily, about going deeper into understanding the mysteries of God, which is the aim of some mystics, some practices of prayer & some study retreats. Any knowledge of God we develop comes through God revealing truths to us. Finding “the Way, the Truth and the Light” may develop into spiritual enlightenment, but essentially Christian truth is about how we practise being as faithful as possible to the model of faithfulness & truth that Jesus taught, demonstrated, and showed to be possible for us. True Christian faithfulness is ‘praxis’ - living out what we believe in practice.
In some ironic way I hope that the Covid pandemic may eventually prove to have been good for the development of true faith. It’s been bad for churches in many ways, particularly financially. People have not been attending or giving to churches as before. Some met on Zoom thought this hasn’t been available to all. Many with faith have been forced to use their inner resources & explore in personal ways what they believe, finding what is important to them in their faith. You may have found that yourselves, as I have, though I’ve missed seeing people. Sadly, some have found that church attendance was not as important to them as they once thought - more about meeting people than meeting God. Hopefully church attendance will begin to recover; but we need to try to turn people’s dissatisfaction with what they had in the past to reform what we’re doing in churches to be closer to Jesus & St. Paul’s intentions
.
We need to try to end the malaise in faithfulness & encourage more authentic faith, worship, faithfulness & discipleship. I dislike the shallow political rhetorical phrase ‘Build Back Better’ but if we follow Christ’s Spirit, we have the opportunity of rebuilding & enhancing Christian faith & faithfulness.
St. Francis encouraged Christians to follow the example of Christ as faithfully as possible. He believed that aiming to model Christ was the best way to influence society for good, building an effective, missional Church, & getting rid of the aberrations that had crept into church hierarchy & practice. Today, even people outside the church often admire Francis for his authenticity in aiming to be an example of Christ, just as they admire Jesus, even if they haven’t developed faith or consider that Jesus and St. Francis could have been over-idealistic. Christ’s aims don’t fit many contemporaries’ life-style aspirations. One our big challenges, which I’d encourage you to consider this weekend is: ‘Could you say, as St Paul encouraged: “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.” [1Cor.11:1], “Be imitators of us as we are of the Lord” [1Thes.1:6] or with the writer of Ephesians: “Be imitators of God as God’s beloved children” [Eph.5:1]? That were among St Francis’s aims.
If we are to be truly faithful & if the Church is to grow & attract people to faith, the Church must reform so that we are recognised as imitators of Jesus in ways that make sense in the enlightened modern world.
So, what does ‘Faithfulness’ mean in the Christian context? Often the meanings of words get watered-down: To many today, having ‘faith’ means holding light, hesitant hopefulness for an uncertain future or a non-specific set of beliefs. ‘Faithfulness’ is similarly seen as a light personal loyalty to someone or a cause; - not necessarily expecting real depth of commitment. Some strict Christians expect faithfulness to be unthinking loyalty, like a dog committed to its master. If you express doubt they might question your integrity as a Christian, whereas I consider doubt to be a quality in our minds that encourages us to work through our questions to build stronger faith & understanding. Any truly thinking person inevitably develops doubts. It’s how we work to resolve doubts that strengthens faith. Since the ‘Enlightenment’ the word ‘Faith’ seldom has been able to mean having full assurance that what you believe in is true & trustworthy. Similarly today, ‘faithfulness’ seldom implies the depth of thought-out security & assurance of commitment that it did in biblical use of the term. We need to accept that many thinking people question, challenge & doubt faith. As thinking believers we probably all at times question whether faith is true. As in John of the Cross’s ‘Dark Night of the Soul’, doubt can be useful. If we thoughtfully work-through our questions & doubts, study to resolve our questions & discuss problem issues together, we can become stronger in faith & develop more convincing explanations when we share our beliefs with others.
In the New Testament ‘Faithfulness’ [the Greek word ‘pistis’] doesn’t just refer to us feeling loyal devotion to God, commitment to relationships, or the amount of Christian doctrinal beliefs we accept. Nor is it primarily about faithfulness in church attendance, worshipping God, intercession or supporting others. ‘Faithfulness’ in the Bible is far deeper than ‘loyalty’. It implies intense, devoted, true covenant commitment. ‘Faithfulness’ / ‘pistis’ is used to describe God’s actions & feelings towards us & to the cosmos, as well as the quality that is expected from God’s followers.
Faithfulness is as much a quality of God as Love, Truth & Justice.
Being ‘faithful’ to God’s intentions for us, calls for all our qualities of character, our actions, our beliefs & worship to have Christian integrity & authenticity. From baptism on all Christians have made covenant commitments to develop our relationship with God, our commitment to truth, & to faithfully follow ways taught by Christ. Our vows at every stage of faith reinforce that.
The Greek word ‘pistis’ is also translated in the New Testament in several other ways than ‘faithfulness’. It also carries the meaning: ‘faith’, ‘trust’ & ‘trustworthiness’. They’re all part of each other: we develop ‘faith’ in something when we ‘trust’ that it seems to be true. As we increase in ‘trust’ that something is true we become increasingly ‘faithful’ to it. Active ‘faith’ develops when we are confident that we are following something that is true, trustworthy, practical & worth following and putting into practice. Christians become faithful when we believe that God is ‘true’, that Christ & the promise of salvation are ‘true’ & that Jesus’ teachings are ‘the Way, the Truth & the Life’ [Jn.14:6].
In secular Greek literature ‘pistis’ primarily meant ‘firmly persuaded’, ‘assured’, ‘convinced of something or someone being true & trustworthy’. It is not a light word, but expresses strong conviction. One of our aims in becoming faithful followers of God & helping others to be faithful, ought to be to try to firm-up our beliefs, so we are as ‘convinced’ & ‘assured’ as we can be of the truth of our faith. Many Christians never bother to study their faith, though it’s one of our commitments at Baptism. So they easily turn away when they encounter questions, or a better offer seems to come along. That is less likely to happen if we were assured that what we have is true. For centuries churches have been notoriously bad at teaching substantial faith through progressive Christian education. Assurance would strengthen us when we encounter problems & give us greater confidence in our witness with more convincing evidence (or ‘apologetic’) for what we believe. Faithfulness should lead us to face whatever inevitable challenges, questions and doubts arise, as they will in most of us, and work through them because we believe that there is truth at heart of faith.
If we are faithful we accept that we are committed to a covenant with God. As Jesus said to his disciples: “No one puts their hands to the plough & looks back” [Lk.9:62]. Scripture assures us that our invisible, perfect God is even more faithfully committed to us than we in our imperfection are able be to God. This is a big challenge: we should live in such ways that our faithfulness will be recognised by our all-seeing God. As challenging is to live in such ways that we are recognised as true followers of God by those around us who know us thoroughly. We need to be seen to be living by Christ-like integrity, righteousness, love, peace, forgiveness, unity, holiness & displaying all the fruit of the Spirit.
Unlike the man who ‘built his house on the sand’ [Matt.7:26], or those who are ‘blown about by every wind of doctrine’ [Eph. 4:14], a strong faith can ‘withstand the storms that might threaten us or others’ [Matt.7:24]. Paul told Timothy “fan into flame the gifts of God within you’ [2Tim.1:6]. The better we try to strengthen our relationship with God, (despite all the mysteries this entails) the more faithfulness should increase. Though we know from our own experience that’s not always the case. And the more faithful we are, the more we’ll accept complex mysteries of God that we don’t understand. The more we try to trust God, the better we may be able to faithfully fulfil whatever ministry God still has for us to accomplish. Jesus said “Let your light so shine before all, that they may see your good works and give thanks to your Father in heaven.” [Matt.5:16]. Our faithfulness is part of that light.
In the Synoptic Gospels the terms ‘faith’ & ‘trust’ are used almost synonymously & often translate the same word. Of course no-one can prove God empirically, yet you’ve probably found, like me, that trust grows with experience. After the verse: “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the knowledge of things unseen” [Heb.11:1]. Hebrews 11 lists a long line of Biblical figures who followed God by faith and made important contributions to the world: Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac & Jacob, Moses etc. They all moved forward in trust, though we’re told of their many failings in living faithfully. It’s encouraging to know that their frequently failures in faithfulness, like those of St. Paul, didn’t stop them becoming heroes of faith, or making essential steps in the history of the development towards salvation that Christ eventually fulfilled. We too, in following Christ, are stepping out in faith that what we believe in is true. We hope that God will use us despite our failings and weaknesses, to spread salvation & God’s Kingdom.
I trust that the God & way of life that Jesus taught about are true & reliable. But questions will always arise: We can’t prove God, like we can’t prove God’s always answers prayer in ways that are right & best for all. Sometimes God may seems not to answer. It is a huge challenge to any faith when we pray for healing & all-but impossible situations, like our prayers for peace & protection in Ukraine or the growth of the Church in an unbelieving world. Believing with firm assurance is hard in this enlightened world: So many questions, alternatives to faith & alternative lifestyles are on offer. Faithfulness keeps praying when we lack answers & seem surrounded by problems or mysteries. But our continues faithfulness can itself be a witness to those who find belief hard: They may recognise in us a confidence that something in our faith is grounded in truth and has been strengthened by experience. After all, following Jesus’ teachings are the most fruitful way to live in the world.
It’s important that faith isn’t just based on our own limited experiences & understanding, but is strengthened and taught by the experiences & beliefs of others both those in our churches & in the traditions & teachings of the past. You have each other as a group to strengthen one another. We encourage multi-age, multi-cultural churches so we learn by sharing. We should teach & communicate doctrine more effectively& we learn a stronger faith if it has developed over centuries through applying scripture & learning from the corporate experience of thinking Christians. One of the difficulties of the post-pandemic church is that some may have managed to develop their individual faith & spiritual practice, but many have not kept sufficient links to other believers with whom they share teaching and ideas of faith. We need to be together to encourage each other in faith and Christian practice.
The New Testament Church recognised the dangers of developing individual Christianity. “Do not fail to meet together, as is the practice of some” says Heb.10:25. Heresies and wrong-thinking often develop through individualism. Meeting with others can encourage us, broaden our beliefs and keep us doctrinally sound, rather than going off on our own tangent or being blown about by every wind of doctrine [Eph. 4:14].
By sharing and learning faith together, our diversity of experiences enables us to expand our understanding & relationship with God & others. It also strengthens us both as individual disciples and as a body.
I’d encourage us to start our reflective contemplation this weekend by really looking into the various parts of our lives & ask God’s Spirit to reveal to you what areas of your life & faith need to be more authentically faithful to all that God expects of us.
HANDOUT 1
SESSION 1 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIAN FAITHFULNESS
SUGGESTIONS FOR CONTEMPLATION & PRAYER:
SUGGESTED VERSES FOR LECTIO DIVINA:
[Don’t choose your favourite, but one that seems challenging.]
2 GOD IN CHRIST: OUR MODEL OF FAITHFULNESS:
FAITHFULNESS TO A GOD WE CANNOT SEE, PROVE OR KNOW
“God is faithful, by him you were called into the fellowship of his son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” [1Cor.1:13]
“The Lord is faithful; he will strengthen and guard you... and we have confidence in the Lord concerning you...” [2Thess.3:3]
So many scriptures in both Testaments assure us of God’s faithfulness to us. I guess that you, like me may have personal examples of where faith has felt true. But how do we assure others of the faithfulness of a God we cannot see, and how can we remain assured ourselves when we face problems, pressures & doubts that shake us?
We live in an understandably sceptical world, since so many things that were once believed unquestioningly cannot be proved to be universally true. That’s not just in areas of faith: Einstein expanded the understandings of Newtonian Physics yet we know now that Einstein’s theories have had to be expanded. Science often no longer claims that its laws are definitively true, just provisional, because knowledge is expanding all the time. Many past superstitions have been proved to be untrue. Medieval ideas of heaven as above the clouds, hell as a literal place beneath the earth and God sitting on a throne controlling everything have changed with scientific and philosophical advance and space exploration. From the C18th onward, the Enlightenment advanced the growth of scepticism & increased a move away from religious belief. Today those with beliefs are often regarded as naïve. But of course none of this means that Christian faith isn’t true; it just shows that we face extra challenges.
When people say they “ believe in God”, that ‘faith’ can mean different things like: “I believe that there is something out there, greater than us.” “I believe that there is a mysterious power somehow involved in what goes on in the world,” or even “I’m not sure about God but I want to believe that my loved ones are at peace & that I’ll be OK when I die.” It is a long step from these to be able to state with conviction a Christian creed: “I believe in God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.... etc.” Even those first word: ‘God’, ‘Father’, ‘Almighty’, ‘Maker’, ‘Son’, ‘Lord’ can awaken loads of questions. Often even Christians find assurance of faith difficult amid the hardships of the world. Modern theologians often question traditions of belief that were once never challenged but now seem over- simplistic to some. “Faith” / ‘pistis’ suggests that we ‘trust’ more fully, and are ‘convinced’ & ‘assured’ that God is true, active & committed to us, despite all these questions.
If “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen” [Heb.11:1], ‘faithfulness’ is trust in the God, who we ‘hope’ is ‘true’, ‘faithful’ and ‘trustworthy’ amid so many theological questions. Christian faith trusts that God is true, perfect, trustworthy, all-powerful, all knowing and eternal; powerful enough to achieve anything, faithful to promises, and related to everything that is true. The greatest evidence of that faithfulness is the gift of Jesus Christ, who represented the reality of God to us. He is described in scripture as the faithful witness for the Father [Rev.1:5], living by the Father’s faithfulness, representing God faithfully, securing our redemption [Heb.2:17], interceding for us in heaven as a faithful ‘high Priest’ and remaining faithful by living with and in us by his Spirit, [Jn.14 & 16].
Though we may not be able to prove any of that, Jesus gives us an aim in life to: “Be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect” [Matt.5:48]. We sometimes talk of God having a bias towards the poor, the innocent, the child, towards Israel, his ‘Chosen People’, & a special love towards Christians & the Church. But actually that seems rather inconsistent with the idea that God is perfect & loves all that has been made. A perfect God must surely love the poor & the rich equally, the believer & the unbeliever equally. Probably God has different expectations of the stewardship of the rich or influential, & expects much of all who have been given spiritual gifts, knowledge and enlightenment [Lk.12:48]. If we are to reflect our perfect God, in love & faithfulness as Jesus asked, we too should try, as Jesus aimed, to treat all with the same love, care, tolerance & justice & use what we have been given with faithful stewardship.
We see that in St. Francis’ attitude towards all in Creation in the ‘Canticle of the Sun’ where every aspect of the cosmos is spoken of as our brother & sister: loved children of our Creator. How different the world might be if we maintained such an attitude towards all others, rather than having bias & loyalty towards some with whom we share common interests or characteristics, & neglecting others. Two of the popular political promises of the last couple of years have been ‘levelling up society’ & ‘having a ‘Green’ agenda. If meant, those are very Christian, indeed very Franciscan principles. Yet it has become increasingly obvious that these promises by politicians, industrialists & businesses are shallow rhetoric without much true intention behind them. We need to show those outside the Church that our commitment has more integrity, not hypocritical; that we mean our inclusive love & that our words are not just meaningless rhetoric. Part of our covenant calling is to reflect God’s faithfulness & perfection to the world.
The most intimate things we have come to know about God come through the revelation of Jesus. As Jesus was God’s visible representation to the world, we as Jesus ’followers, should in many ways also be the visible signs of the truth of the invisible God to the world. We don’t reflect God in precisely the same way as Christ did, since we do not share God’s nature in the same way. But as the Body of Christ we have the responsibility to represent God faithfully and truthfully at all times. Remember that special quote of Teresa of Avilla: “Christ has no body now but yours, No hands or feet on earth but yours, Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.” I’m not sure Teresa was totally correct theologically there, because surely our idea of God’s power includes the potential miracle that, if almighty God so decided, God can work in many ways without using us. But in practice we are most often intended to be God’s hands, feet, eyes, mouth, minds, etc. to support our world.
Christ declared that he is one with us & prayed that we might be one & share with him oneness with the Father [Jn.17:21-23]. Our unity with Christ and his Spirit’s guidance within us expects similar commitment & integrity in our lives to that which Jesus put into his own witness. He commended all God’s servants to be as ‘trustworthy’ & ‘faithful’ as he had been [Matt.25:21-23; Lk.19:17].
Revelation 1:5 calls him “the faithful witness”. Of course Christ’s faithfulness is greater than most of us are willing to put into our religious faith & activity. Yet Paul commended: “Let the same mind be in you as was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form he humbled himself & became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” [Phil.1:5-11] When we are preparing Christians for baptism or evangelising we rarely explain the extent of this commitment & the challenge to be humble, Christ-like & totally faithful. Are we afraid it won’t attract people to the Gospel? Churches rarely teach or expect such commitment from their congregations, but that is what Christ’s teaching on discipleship expects. I’ve not met many church leaders who live by it either, as has been the case in church leadership throughout Church history. Our personal challenge is: are you committed to be as faithful to God as the Trinity have been to you? That’s covenant commitment and it is the essence of faithfulness! If church-members ignore or aren’t aware of this expectation, it is understandable why wishy-washy faith develops, or believers fall away when challenges come.
Some Christians talk confidently of ‘knowing God’: Jim Packer wrote a best-seller on the subject, which was foundational in helping me focus my understanding early in my study of my faith. But one cause of problems in the Church over many centuries has been that less humble Christians have often imagined that they know everything that is important about God. This can lead to arrogant self-assurance, abstract theology, insensitive doctrinal over-confidence & dismissal of those with different understanding. The dimension of God is so different from our limited perspective that over-confidence in the certainty of our doctrines can sometimes be dangerous. It can close our minds to other aspects which might be revealed to us. Doctrines are meant to unite us: that’s why we have the Creeds. But Creeds are intentionally general in their claims about God. They don’t try to explain how Jesus was God’s Son, how his death achieved salvation, what his resurrection body was like; how God’s Spirit works in us, etc. Over-arrogance about specifics can damage relationships with people of different Christian traditions, or those who interpret scripture or faith differently. They may have valuable insights which might help to expand our own understanding of faith. I’m sure that sometimes Christians find ourselves worshipping a false God in an image that fits our personal ideas. The Reformed Evangelical God, the Charismatic God, the Liturgical Catholic God, the Liberal God, the environmental green God all contain truths and thrilling & useful insights. But keeping to one tradition or image of God limits and narrows the enormity of the true God, who Jesus faithfully represented.
God must be even greater, more complex & mysterious than humans can perceive. Imagery of God in the Bible includes over 1000 metaphors like ‘Father’, ‘Protector’, ‘Shepherd’, ‘Guide’, ‘Rock’, ‘Fortress’. There are many less comfortable aspects of God that we sometimes play down: ‘judge’, ‘avenger’, ‘righteous commander’ etc. All imagery of God used earth-based analogies for spiritual truths, which must surely be far greater, and more transcendent in reality, but help us to approach understanding our invisible, intangible God.
When we teach about God or imagine God in our own prayer and worship we need to be careful not to over-emphasise a few selective, favourite characteristics without relating them to the broader, holistic teaching about God in scripture. But we should also remember, as John Chrysostom [347-407].said: “Let us evoke him as the inexpressible God, incomprehensible and unknowable. Let us affirm that he surpasses all power of human speech, that he eludes the grasp of every mortal intelligence, that the angels cannot penetrate him, that the cherubim cannot fully understand him. For he is invisible to the principalities and powers, the virtues and all creatures. Only the Son and the Holy Spirit know him
Thomas Merton further reminds us: “We should live as if we are seeing God face to face, but we should not conceive an image of God. On the contrary, it is a matter of adoring him as invisible and infinitely beyond our comprehension and realizing him in all.” [Thomas Merton Hidden Ground of Love p.63-64].
When we approach God we should always keep in mind, humbly that though our access to God and knowledge of faith are true and significant, what we understand must only be a fragment of the whole of spiritual truth. As true disciples we need to be faithful to a God who we will never fully comprehend. One of my favourite passages in the Wisdom Books of the Bible is from Ecclesiastes. It is variously translated, but perhaps the clearest translation is: “I have seen all the activity that God has given to human beings. He has made everything meaningful in its time, and has set the search for eternity in the human heart, yet we cannot fathom God from beginning to end.”. [Eccles.3:10-11]. The constant search for further & deeper understanding of most things in creation, including spiritual things, has been the source of human progress through millennia in the sciences, arts, social development, technology, philosophy sociology, history, religion and all other areas of enlightenment. Within our human psychology seems to be a drive to search into things we do not sufficiently comprehend & advance our minds & skills. It leads us to think further and more deeply into issues that advance humankind. There was a mediaeval idea common in Francis’s time that humans were created perfect yet not complete, so like children we have to discover meaning in life and faith by developing to maturity. Yet despite our yearnings to find out truths, God remains unfathomable in so many ways.
The search to comprehend more about our God is one reason why I believe Christians should take notice of advances in world knowledge. To remain simple in our thoughts can be naïve and restrict us from developing as God intends: Discoveries in the sciences, arts & humanities, advances in psychological, social & moral thinking, etc. may all lead us into greater understanding of the complexity of divine truth. No one can keep up with all of these, but it is important to keep aware of how understandings are developing around us. If St. Paul is right that aspects of God are expressed in and can be found in what God has created [Rom.1:20], the more we develop understanding of the cosmos and the human character and mind, the closer we might come to God’s truth. The narrow-minded Christians who persecuted Galileo & other intellectuals, who threaten those who teach evolution, or have closed minds about other faiths and philosophies or alternative ethical and gender issues etc. are examples of how dangerous it is to close one’s mind.
In another quotation that resonates with me the theologian Helen Oppenheim wrote of the Church and our aim in sharing faith with others: “We are not trying to pronounce about what God can or cannot be, but about how God can be found in our world… God’s people have the hopeful responsibility of being the presence, the findability of God upon earth…Our diversity should enable God to be found in all areas of life in the world… The word multi-faceted comes to mind… the church may be a prism breaking up the white light of God’s dazzling majesty.” (Theology 93: 1990 p 133-141). A vital aim of the Church is to find truths about God within life in the world, and help others find God and insight into spiritual truths & mysteries. Through our variety as people in the church, with our different experiences, personalities, inspirations & gifts, we should be able to find ways to open the mystery of God to the huge variety of other people in the world, to help shine God’s light and reality into their lives.
God made human beings diverse: we’re obviously designed to respond to God & find God in a variety of ways. There is no one best way of being a Christian or believing. Different individuals & traditions have varied approaches to spirituality. That’s why it’s so dangerous when an Evangelical, a High Church Catholic, a Pentecostal or a liberal Christian tries to force all to think & worship like them. Our diversity as humans should allow more of God to be understood than if we were all clones, or all felt, reacted, believed & lived spiritually in the same way. As Helen Oppenheim claimed: “Our diversity should enable God to be found in all areas of life in the world”. By communally sharing our varied spiritual experiences, we can help each other & the world understand more about God than one individual or one way of thinking could ever know on their own. That is one reason for the need for us to be part of a broad church, as well as valuing the stranger or other religious pathways, or the secular discoveries of others, to see if we can learn more through their insight or experience. Different approaches to faith shouldn’t pose any threat to the mature Christian mind: If anyone has found anything that it is true, they might further enlighten us, even though their way to God may not be ours.
In his book “All Truth is God’s Truth” the Evangelical philosopher Arthur Holmes compared the reality of God to the metaphor of a huge planet. He imagined different religions, philosophies and human minds and ways of life as mines tunnelling into the planet, delving for truth and uncovering treasures, ores, precious stones, base metals etc. that provide aspects of the truth of what the whole planet (God) is. Some may find more rich, precious veins than others. (He believes Christianity to be about the fullest of such revelations.) Some tunnels & mines may cross one another and find similar seams and strata. By combining all the most truthful aspects of their discoveries they may be able to expand their knowledge and dispel mistaken ideas, assumptions and theories that have developed in individual sects or through-processes. But they are all still only mining part of the reality of the planet. The more they mine, the more they may discover, which is why we continue to tunnel and explore faith.
This enormous God of all truth, who is within whatever is the True in the world, is the God who has a covenant relationship with us. As a thinking Christian believer, I find it hard to define God. But I believe that God can be within whatever is true about the forces that formed and sustain the cosmos and whatever encourages true, abundant life... God is in whatever the truth of who Jesus of Nazareth and the Holy Spirit are... God is part of the truth of whatever human beings are meant to be and how we are meant to live... God is in whatever is within and behind nature, creation & whatever is true. We may not find God in it, but God helps people towards the truth. We develop our relationship with God when we faithfully open ourselves to truth, and we judge what is true by whether it corresponds to the revelations about God given by Jesus
Jesus represented God and God’s truth to the world. We, as believers and followers are commissioned to truthfully represent what we know of God and have learned through Jesus. We have a responsibility to keep exploring & living by the truth, in the knowledge that it draws us close to God, sand in the hope that we can influence others to also find God’s truth.
In meditating on or contemplating this session, perhaps try sitting in the presence of ‘the Truth about everything’ and see where that might take your contemplation.
Perhaps also consider the covenant commitments that God has made with you through Christ, and how your commitment and vows to God respond to that covenant.
HANDOUT 2
SESSION 2 GOD IN CHRIST: OUR MODEL OF FAITHFULNESS
SUGGESTIONS FOR CONTEMPLATION & PRAYER
Try sitting quietly in the presence of God, contemplating God as being in ‘the Truth about everything...’ See where your thoughts take you.
SUGGESTED VERSES FOR LECTIO DIVINA
[Don’t choose your favourite, but one that seems challenging:]
“God is faithful, by him you were called into the fellowship of his son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” [1Cor.1:13]
“The Lord is faithful; he will strengthen and guard you... and we have confidence in the Lord concerning you...” [2Thess.3:3]
“I have seen all the activity that God has given to human beings. He has made everything meaningful in its time, and has set the search for eternity in the human heart, yet we cannot fathom God from beginning to end.” [Eccles.3:10-11]
“Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the knowledge of things unseen.” [Heb.11:1] “We live by faith and not by sight” [2Cor.5:7]
QUOTATIONS TO CONSIDER:
“Let us evoke him as the inexpressible God, incomprehensible and unknowable. Let us affirm that he surpasses all power of human speech, that he eludes the grasp of every mortal intelligence, that the angels cannot penetrate him, that the cherubim cannot fully understand him. For he is invisible to the principalities and powers, the virtues and all creatures. Only the Son and the Holy Spirit know him.” [John Chrysostom 347-407].
“We should live as if we are seeing God face to face, but we should not conceive an image of God. On the contrary, it is a matter of adoring him as invisible and infinitely beyond our comprehension and realizing him in all.” [Thomas Merton Hidden Ground of Love p.63-64].
“We are not trying to pronounce about what God can or cannot be, but about how God can be found in our world… God’s people have the hopeful responsibility of being the presence, the findability of God upon earth…Our diversity should enable God to be found in all areas of life in the world…The word multi-faceted comes to mind… the church may be a prism breaking up the white light of God’s dazzling majesty.”[Helen Oppenheim, Theology 93:1990 p133-141]
3 FAITHFULNESS TO ONESELF AS A CHRISTIAN BELIEVER
“Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” [Matt.5:48], “Be faithful in all things” [1Tim.3:11]. “Faith without works is dead” [Jas.2:14-26],
There can sometimes seem to be a contradiction in Christian practice. We seek spiritual fulfilment & aim to live abundant lives in our relationship with God. But we are also taught to live self- sacrificially for others rather than being self-centred. Both are aims in scripture.
Jesus is recorded as saying: “If anyone would be my disciple, let them deny themselves, take up their cross and follow me” [Matt.16:24; Mk.8:34; Lk.9:23]. But he also said that he had come to bring us life in all its abundance. In Church history, self-denial has sometimes been mistakenly interpreted as deliberate self-neglect, as though we don’t matter as individuals in the broader context of God’s mission... Or that we should endure (or even seek) suffering here, because what matters will be the life of heaven beyond. Both attitudes, I believe are wrong interpretations of what Jesus was saying: If we don’t matter personally as much as the promotion of the Gospel & if life here on earth is unimportant beside the life of heaven, why has God spent so much energy on creation & redeeming, healing, loving & developing us. Why have we been given so many good things & gifts in human life & why has this world been made with so many beautiful things for us to appreciate and develop? Those who neglect themselves aren’t necessarily being holy and humble. They may actually be going against God’s will & intention in making a complex creation that God declared to be “good” [Gen.1:31]. Our God-formed individuality is one of the ways by which God develops us and can reach out to others through us. The variety of ways in which God enhances our lives is at the heart of the quotation from Helen Oppenheim that we considered earlier and will explore a bit later.
Jesus is the perfect example of someone who humbled himself and thought primarily of the good of others, yet lived fulfilled. He subdued his ambitions under temptation in the wilderness and gave his life for others through his Passion. Yet throughout his mission he still seems to have lived the fulfilled life that he was born to exercise. He was criticised for enjoying life too much by drinking with his friends [Mk.11:18-19; Lk.5:33-4, 7:33-35], mixing with tax-collectors and sinners and not keeping strictly to restrictive pharisaic rules. He wasn’t ‘dead to the world’, as some puritans & ascetics encourage Christians to be. His use of examples from the contemporary world, show how much he observed &valued nature & society around him.
Nearly 40 years ago I spent the two most depressing and damaging years of my life at a very narrow Bible College. Thankfully I later I got the opportunity to study Theology more broadly & thoroughly. The impression was given by the narrow Calvinist theology of the Bible College & the Free Evangelical church that I then attended, that to be truly Christian all should aim to believe exactly the same things in the same way, worship, pray, act, evangelise & study to understand scripture etc. in similar ways. That must be wrong if you think about it logically: our varied minds work differently. God has made human beings diverse, like most things in creation. But desire for uniformity of belief & practice is the aim you receive from some churches, some church leaders & believers, who patronise or dismiss those who have different interpretations from themselves as ‘unchristian’, ‘unsound’. Some are so sure of the accuracy of their faith that they arrogantly consider others to have failed to reached the level of enlightenment with which God has blessed themselves. Narrowness or exclusivity is found in several religious traditions. Believing one’s own perspective to be exclusively right is one reason for so much disunity in what should be the unified ‘Body of Christ’. By contrast St. Francis encouraged us to treat all as though we are all kin!
We ought to be thankful that we are made different, with huge variations in the ways our minds, character and spiritualities develop. Some think visually, some through listening or reading, some think logically, reasoning progressively through an issue, some think intuitively. Some develop faith through feelings; some through hunches that something is true. Some build up multiple ideas from different viewpoints then draw a conclusion. Some wait patiently for a realisation to come upon them, some impetuously need to know ‘now’. Some just believe what they have been taught or beliefs their family have followed, sometimes for generations. Most of us are a combination of some or many of these & other things. So we shouldn’t expect homogeneity or uniformity in any Christian community or in the ways we think and practice spiritually? It would be unnatural. God reveals and develops faith in so many different ways.
Our diversity reflects the enormity and breadth of the truth of God, and the huge variety of ways that God is involved in the Cosmos. . The theologian Helen Oppenheim sees the role of the church and individual Christians as finding God’s truth and revealing God to the world through our diversity and the different ways that all individual Christians and Christian groups come to understand & relate to God: Here’s a reminder of the quote:
“We are not trying to pronounce about what God can or cannot be, but about how God can be found in our world… God’s people have the hopeful responsibility of being the presence, the findability of God upon earth…Our diversity should enable God to be found in all areas of life in the world… The word multi-faceted comes to mind… the church may be a prism breaking up the white light of God’s dazzling majesty.” (Theology 93: 1990 p 133-141).
The ways we live out the life of faith & witness often change as our circumstances alter & at different stages of our lives. As we age we may think of what we can’t do now that we could in the past. But more positively, balance that by considering how better you may be able to now approach other things! Perhaps you have become more sensitive and broad in your understanding or tolerance. Similarly, our understanding of faith & relationship with God change and modify with new experiences, thoughts, situations and developing abilities. I guess that you, like me have found different ways of worshipping and praying as your spirituality or potential has changed. Consider how your spirituality has modified over your life as a Christian. A good church should be able to nurture and build up different Christians as they change & develop. It’s wrong to try to make everyone the same. Sometimes leaders hold back some in their congregations because they are unable to feed and nurture spiritualities that differ from their own experience or tradition. I know of one church where the minister tries to make everyone in the congregation believe like themselves. They encourage every house-group to study the same material, despite many members having a maturity of faith & experience that requires richer food. Being given simplistic teaching can be frustrating and restrict people’s growth. There’s nothing wrong in revisiting the foundations of faith, but some ministers and churches through Christian history try to keep congregations at a limited level of belief in order to assert leadership control. That feels more like the indoctrination and restriction of people in Communist or totalitarian regimes, or the way that the mediaeval Church and Inquisition aimed to keep all in submission. It is NOT Christian nurture, which should develop ALL to the fullest level of our abilities. Mature faith helps strengthen church-members, so that they are more confident to extend the Kingdom by their witness.
One of St. Francis’s encouragements was to find God through simple things and there is an aspect of Christianity which encourages us to live simpler lives than most of us do at present. But simplicity isn’t sufficient for every modern situation. In fact, to deliberately keep ourselves in a ‘simple life’ can sometimes possibly be sinful itself, since we might shy away from accepting mature responsibilities, like a child not wanting to grow up. The nature of God, Christ and the meaning of Jesus’ teaching for today is being revealed as increasingly complex. Over-simplistic ideas of God and truth can lead to many mistakes in life. If we seem naïve our contemporaries in the modern world may be alienated from regarding the Gospel as relevant to them and intellectually defensible. We are called by St. Paul to maturity of faith & to put that maturity of faith into practice. [1Cor.2:6; 14:20; Heb.15:14; Phil.3:15; Col.1:28].
We’re fallible, so few of us keep faithfully to our covenant promises:- we’re all dependent on God’s grace. Thankfully even failure can be used for good, because it can show others that they don’t need to be prefect before they become Christians. But it give us all something to aspire to. Remember St. Paul’s confession of the war between the flesh and the Spirit, in which he recognised he regularly failed, but he still kept up the struggle..
Faithfulness in keeping our side of the covenant with God is more than loyalty or allegiance, it’s about finding how we relate to God in this moment; how we respond to God’s ways of truth and how we shine for God in the world in whatever particular situation we are. Paul commended Timothy to be “faithful in all things” [1Tim.3:11].
Our faithfulness is an essential response to God’s faithfulness to us [1Cor.1:9]. We can never match the amount that God has done for us, but we can reciprocate by trusting God and acting for God in the place where we are. We are faithful witnesses when the real person that is us reflects the nature of Jesus, the “faithful witness” to God [Rev.1:5] in the different situations in which we find ourselves.
People looking at us can often recognise when we are being inauthentic. Jesus said to the disciples when they were squabbling for importance, that worldly priorities should “not be so with us” [Mk.10:43; Matt.20:25-28]. Sadly we still often see worldly ambitions: self-promotion & self-centred jostling for position, power or influence when you look discerningly at the ministry or manner of some in churches. “By their fruit you shall know them” [Matt.7:16] is a wise saying. Jesus said he has “appointed us to bear good fruit: fruit that will last.” [Jn.15:16]. We should try to allow God’s Spirit to grow that fruit in all situations of our lives and wherever we journey with God.
We’re given the Holy Spirit’s guidance and power to draw on & live by. One of Jesus’ covenant promises is that “the Spirit will guide us into all the truth...” [Jn.16:12; cf. Lk.12:12; Jn.14:25]. Do we trust God enough to feel confident to draw on and be guided by the Spirit’s power rather than just relying on ourselves? Spiritual guidance can be notoriously difficult to confirm. I’ve been led down several false paths in my life of faith, which I thought were so correct at the time. Discernment often comes with maturity and experience, but we can still make mistakes. But even realising we have made mistakes can make us stronger, more sensitive or cause wiser, truer decisions in future situations.
Faithfulness to spiritual guidance needs take into account our maturity of faith & our understanding of scripture & the world, as well as being spiritually attuned and alert. Faithfulness also needs to be in every part of our lives, not selected areas, and grows from a sincere & authentic relationship with God. Just as “Faith without works is dead” [Jas.2:14-26], ‘faithfulness’ is not true ‘Christian faithfulness’ unless it is active, trusting, trustworthy, loving, worthy of God’s love, directed to God and towards all God’s creation, alive in our hearts and minds and all our actions. That’s a huge commitment, but it should not daunt us. Like Christ’s command to “be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” [Matt.5:48], Paul's call to faithfulness is an ambitious aim to work towards. Of course we’ll fail, but we can trust God’s forgiveness, accept we are forgiven, then allow ourselves to be picked up and pushed forward by God’s Spirit working within us on each part of our journey
This all seems very idealistic, and we know we are all imperfect. Yet God made & cherishes each one of us as we are: Consider Ps. 139:
“It was you who formed my inmost parts;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you that I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depth of the earth.
Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written all the days that were formed for me,
when none of them as yet existed.” [Ps.139:13-16]
Those verses don’t just relate to the person we were created to be as children. God continues to form us through each stage of development.
In this world so many people are damaged by not being able to recognise that they are wonderfully made. I include myself. Among the biggest psychological problems for many Christians, especially Evangelicals, Pentecostals and strict Catholics, has been struggling to be holy, when so many of our inner drives & external influences pull us in less than holy ways.. The media and advertising create psychological problems by promoting models that are more beautiful, fit, clever, or successful than most of us will ever achieve. Sadly some churches promote unreal ideas of the successful Christian that are equally unreachable. To find fulfilment in life, we have to find ways of being content with the selves we can’t change, while striving to improve what it is right & possible to change. Christians have been taught so much about sin and have spiritual ideals set up for us in the models of the saints. But there comes a point in all our lives when we need to be able to be satisfied enough with who we are to not be disabled by our difficulties & be able to live abundant lives. We need to be able to get on with finding the fulfilment, joy and peace in our lives that God intends, and helping others towards that same peace.
Our churches’ teaching should aim to bring people to Christ’s peace, not cause damage by encouraging believers to long for unreachable ideals. None of us can live up to unrealistic ideals of perfection. No one person can fulfil all physical or Christian qualities. That’s why we’re part of a body, where my weaknesses may be supported by your strengths and vice versa. That shouldn’t stop us aiming to “be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect”, which can be an ideal that helps us move forward when we fail. Nevertheless we need to accept many limitations and recognise that our Father can forgive and even love our imperfections. If I, with all my imperfections find I forgive & love deeply friends whose weaknesses and failings I recognise, how much more must the perfect God love us!
To be fulfilled, we need to be the real ‘us’, achieving the best we can with the potential and gifts that we have at this moment, not longing to be what we can never be. How many of us can truly say to our inner selves and mean it: “God made me as I am, therefore I am truly precious.”? Try to say it and mean it:... “God made me as I am, therefore I am truly precious.” That is the essence of what Psalm 139 is emphasising, and is the way in which Christians should regard both their lives and the lives of all others. We are made to find a relationship with God & peace within the real selves that we are: As Augustine said: “God made us for himself and our hearts are restless until we find our rest in him.” If we are inauthentic or trying to be something we are not, perhaps we won’t find God in the ways that we are intended to do. I have met many Christians who feel they need to ‘pretend’ to have peace in their faith, & to know that God loves them, but scratch the surface and you find spiritual insecurity.
There is much talk today of the importance of self-fulfilment, self-affirmation, self-awareness & self-assertion. I have a Christian friend who took several self-assertion courses to overcome her personal insecurities and became a monster for a while. Too much emphasis on satisfying ourselves can give us a distorted and incorrect perspective on the world. Like children, ore even many leaders and 'social influnecers', some Christians want the world to revolve around themselves. Maturity as Christians should help us become more orientated towards the good of others: It’s supporting others not demanding or expecting to receive, that can make society and individuals thrive.
For me there doesn’t need to be a conflict in Christians between ‘living for Christ’ and living for the fulfilment of ourselves. Self-abnegation isn’t what Christ intended when he called us to “deny ourselves and follow him” or what Paul meant by “dying to self”, God gave us lives to enjoy and fulfil and in this life we are meant to find a satisfying relationship with God now, not just wait for heaven. We’re made with psychological needs for a level of self-fulfilment, which are not sinful. In fact, if we subjugate or neglect ourselves, as some ascetic or puritanical Christians try, it can lead to psychological and physical problems. We have been given searching minds, physical and creative abilities to advance the human race and to develop the resources of the world. We seem to ‘programmed’ in our brains, to reach as far as we can towards human fulfilment. And we’ve got physical bodies to use and enjoy. Too much asceticism can miss so much of the potential of life. I’ve often felt an element of sadness for some Christian ascetics and puritanical believers, who deny themselves beautiful, meaningful and morally good pleasures, in the belief that self-denial will automatically lead them to greater holiness. Members of religious orders have sometimes been disadvantaged by this mind-set: You read of nuns starving themselves, remaining simple and in a child-like state of dependence and simplicity, early Christians deliberately seeking martyrdom, ascetics or flagellant torturing their bodies in personal penitence or vicarious penance for the sins of others in the world. Personal suffering can sometimes lead to mental or spiritual strengthening and advancement, as with St. John of the Cross’s ‘Dark Night of the Soul’ or the eventual emotional strengthening of someone after trauma. But we’re not meant to bring suffering on ourselves! Sadly many of us still metaphorically self-flagellate mentally through holding onto guilt for too long, when, after sincere confession, we are assured of God’s forgiveness.
St. Paul criticised the failure to mature in spiritual discernment when he encouraged his readers to ‘Take sold food, not remain on a diet of baby-milk’ [1Cor.3:2; Heb.5:12-13]. We are not to remain childish in our thinking or in our feelings about ourselves, but become adult and give up ‘childish things’ [1Cor,13:11]. Yet, of course that’s often not easy, due to the complex ways that our minds develop & pressures from our environment. St. Francis encouraged a certain amount of simplicity. but he was far from as naïve as he is sometimes represented. His love for the world around him aimed to enhance the lives of others and make us faithful to the example and teaching of Christ, which is far from naïve or childish. Sadly, we recognise today that Francis wasn’t faithful enough to his own health, and suffered physically as a result because he was following contemporary false mediaeval ideas that equated self-neglect with spirituality. Today we have greater understanding of physical, psychological emotional, social and personal needs. We recognise that, as with the environment, it is true to Christian faithfulness to nurture ourselves as well as others with care.
In being faithful to who we are, with the gifts that we have, I don’t think God created us with something specific for us to do as some Christians teach. I can’t believe that God formed and programmed us like robots to perform specific tasks; to marry particular partners designed especially for us; to believe specific doctrines or develop specific personalities, etc. That doesn’t seem to accord with the idea that God created us as free beings with the freedom and capacity to develop autonomously. We can choose to follow or reject divine precepts. God is described in scripture as longing for us to develop our full potential in relationship with our Creator, but I do not think that God has our future planned out for us. It is for us to find ourselves, develop our different interests, abilities and relationships, and use them for the best, to reach our fullest potential, even at this late stage in many of our lives. The huge diversity in every aspect of Creation implies that God revels in diversity and loves watching the different ways in which created beings develop. Variety is part of God’s plan and design in Creation. I expect that God enjoys watching & interacting with us as we work through challenges and sometimes struggle to make right decisions & take right paths.
We are faithful to God by being true to the person we are at this moment, trying to live by Christ’s righteousness and displaying the fruit of the Spirit and whatever spiritual and physical gifts that are entrusted to us at each moment. Our gifts & abilities change at each stage of our lives. In age we cannot live the same Christian lives, we might have led in our youth (thank goodness!... I was very naïve in my Evangelical youth! ,,, I’m still, at 68, making stupid mistakes and not feeling mature!). Nor should we be expecting to engage always in the same sort of ministries as we were formerly able to do: We have different potentials at different times of life and are given different stages of life on earth to enjoy, to be fulfilled in now, and in the present to relate to God in fulfilling ways, while we wait for whatever the abundant life of the Kingdom of Heaven might be.
However, we must be careful to ensure that in living as free people, we are emulating the God about whom Jesus taught and who he reflected in his whole life. By our faithfulness to the true ways shown by Christ, we may not reflect God as perfectly as Jesus revealed him, but like St. Francis, our Christian witness is intended to show consistently that the God in our lives is real and as available to all others as to us. I’m sure God must want to enhance the lives of all, not just Christians. That’s partly why we aim to help to build God’s Kingdom, to extend God’s blessing to all creation.
HANDOUT 3
SESSION 3 FAITHFULNESS TO ONESELF AS A CHRISTIAN BELIEVER
SUGGESTIONS FOR CONTEMPLATION & PRAYER
Read Psalm 139 :1-18 especially vs. 13-16 & contemplate its relevance to you.
SUGGESTED VERSES FOR LECTIO DIVINA.
[Don’t choose your favourite, but one that seems challenging.]
4 BEING FAITHFUL TO SCRIPTURAL TRUTH IN AN AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT
In this session I aim to explore how the thinking Christian can keep faithful to scripture & truths it contains for the development of a realistic faith and a relationship with God amid contemporary understanding of the Bible. The Bible is of foundational importance to our understanding of faith & how we should act faithfully. So it is sad that the majority of Christians don’t read it regularly, other than when they hear selected passages read in Church. Some disregard scripture as a selection of ancient texts, largely irrelevant to a contemporary world, while others imagine it was dictated by God, so must be believed & followed word for word because it must my inerrant. It’s easy to misinterpret scripture, as has happened many times in Church history. It is also easy to make verses say what you want them to say. So we need to be careful how we interpret our bibles,
There are many different genres or types of literature in the Bible. We wouldn’t read a modern novel, poetry, a political manifesto, a letter or predictions about the future in the same way as an historical book. Some biblical books are stories, legends, and ancient play (Job), moral literature, musical songs, social & political prophecy, future prophecy using metaphorical imagery. So we shouldn’t read all the books of the Bible in the same way.
The books of the Bible are composed of material circulated, written down and compiled over many centuries & edited several times though Jewish history. The Pentateuch, first 5 books of the Bible, on which so many hang their understanding of the foundations of faith and God’s laws, seem to contain many textual additions or alteration, showing that they were probably being edited at verious times in Hebrew history, particularly in the years after return from Exile in Babylon & the rebuilding of the Temple. They evidently weren’t ‘dictated by God to Moses’ as some fundamentalists still claim, to emphasise the authenticity of their contents. Names, dates & places in historical books like Joshua, Kings & Chronicles don’t always correspond to records in the annals of Babylon and Assyria, which are thought to be to more reliable records of similar events.
Changing literary styles & Hebrew words in the biblical texts from different historical periods, like the different words used for God, possibly deriving from different Hebrew traditions, show where the Hebrew Scriptures seem to have been amended by religious scribes in later periods. Editors added propaganda that made certain secular national leaders seem worse than they were & others better. (Think of the number of Kings who are described as bad and going against the will of the Lord in Chronicles.) In order to emphasise the political priority of religious leaders over kings, priestly scribes seem to have aimed to emphasise that the priests were more important & reliable national leaders than the political leaders. Other propaganda was included to books like Joshua to stress the rights of ‘God’s People’ over land that had been ‘annexed’ by force from their neighbours. (Israel similarly rewrites history today to justify occupation of Palestinian land, just as Putin has rewritten the history of Ukraine.)
Biblical claims of the superiority of Israel & Judah over other nations were emphasised to make God’s Covenant seem exclusively with the Jews. But if you read the story of Abraham’s original covenant and otehr covenant agreements made by God in scripture, the message repeatedly emphasises that God intended divine blessing and truth to spread to all nations, though God’s relationship with the Jews. “Through you, all nations of the world will find blessing” is repeated [Gen.12:3b; 18:18; 22:18; 26:4; Gal.3:8; Acts 2:39; 3:25; Rom.9:8]. In many ways you could call some Hebrew Scripture as much ‘political propaganda’ as ‘religious’ literature.
I was taught in my Evangelical youth that the commands in Joshua & some of the prophets to destroy all from non-believing tribes including all animals & goods, were to cleanse the land of anything from pagan culture that might corrupt the Jewish nation or assimilate beliefs, corrupt practices or unclean materials from other nations. But the early books of the Bible contain many ideas about God derived from earlier cultures. Most biblical historians now recognise that passages like these were inserted or edited to justify Israel’s position over other tribes. God doesn’t change, so surely if war, murder, stealing & destruction are fundamentally wrong now, as Jesus taught, they would have been wrong at the time of these events, though perhaps in rare circumstances, as today, ‘just-war’ is occasionally justified.
Though the Bible has limitations like these, nevertheless it is still essential for our faith. Studying scripture has led to great advances in faith. Re-discovering scripture after Exile in Babylon & Assyria led to the Jewish Temple reforms of Josiah. Luther’s re-interpretation of Ephesians led to important Reformation thought, through recognising that we are ‘saved by faith & not by works’ [Eph.2:8-9]. The way we read, interpret & act in response to the Bible is crucial to our understanding of God, our relationship with God & how we live our lives. Those who insist that the Bible is to be interpreted & followed literally, from the early legendary stories of Genesis to the metaphorical imagery of the Book of Revelation, may be actually going against God’s truth as Jesus interpreted it.
Mistaken reading of scripture through Church History has led to many horrors. The Inquisition believed it was better to torture & destroy the body to save people’s souls. Crusaders believed that God had given Israel exclusive rights to Palestine, so decimated others who had settled there as well as fighting against Muslim expansion. They & others over centuries persecuted Jews as Christ-killers & heretics, because to them, Christians, not Jews were God’s ‘Chosen People’. Some contemporary American churches support Israel because they believe that the land that Israel has annexed & the Temple need to be restored before Christ can return. But modern Israel is a secular nation, not the religious foundation of the Abrahamic Covenant. Some African bishops & pastors still support the murder of adulterers & homosexuals for contaminating society. Some still subjugate women because Hebrew tradition regarded them as subservient & unclean, and Paul’s letters didn’t allow them to teach to show leadership. Sadly some ‘Christians’ throughout the world would still like to kill or permanently exile offenders or the diseased today, as some Muslim fundamentalists also do. But those are not the aims of the Bible or its holistic understanding of God’s truth. We have to be SO careful and interpret our scriptures, according to context & intention, not the letter of the Law.
All the Bible is still relevant, as any truth is relevant through time. But as the Bible is written in various different genres of literature the truth is contained in different forms. Many of its contents are not primarily historical facts but intended to convey religious meaning. We need read all scripture in the light of what Jesus taught us about God. Paul insisted that “all scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, reproof, correcting and training in righteousness so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.” [2Tim.3:16].
Jesus insisted that he had not come to change scripture: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but fulfil. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter will pass from the law until all is accomplished.” [Matt.5:17-18].
But both Jesus & Paul were not afraid of altering the interpretation of scripture to a truer one that was relevant to each situation: Jesus reinterpreted biblical laws & stories to show that the exact words of scripture were not always God’s literal intention. It was the spirit behind them that was important. Scribes, Sadducees & Pharisees applied each verse of scripture literally, making faith legalistic, unchangeable and not flexible according to differing circumstances. The Pharisees’ interpretations made God seem unloving & narrow. Jesus taught that the scriptures need to be interpreted flexibly in the light of knowing that God is pure, loving, caring & full of grace. He showed that we need to widen our perspective on truth & recognise that scripture was designed for the good of human beings, not to subjugate us under a set of inflexible proscriptions [Mk.2:27]. Women were considered subordinate in the contemporary culture of Jesus’ time, yet he showed that we are all of equal importance, & gave spiritual teaching to the Marys at Bethany and the Samaritan Woman at the Well [Jn.4]. He opposed the mandatory death penalty, stopping the stoning of the woman taken in adultery (though he did encourage her to “go and sin no more” [Jn.8:11]). Gentiles were considered outside God’s Covenant, but Jesus began the mission to the Gentiles in his work in the Decapolis [Mk.5:20; 7:31] and in the Parable of the Good Samaritan commended faithfulness found in a Gentile more than in the Jews [Lk.10:25-37].
In this new light, St Paul, a Pharisee & expert in biblical laws, altered his former literal interpretation of Hebrew Scriptures & recognised that they needed to be reconsidered through the more gracious understanding of God that Jesus had given. He challenged the over-literal application of religious laws by faith-authorities, recognising that his former rigour as a Pharisee had been mistaken. He reversed his requirement for circumcision of early converts and realised that though God’s revelation came through the Jews, Gentiles were just as important to God and included in God’s promises. This realisation runs right through the Epistle to the Romans. While insisting on the importance of scripture [2Tim.3:16], Paul reapplied it, expanded the mission to the Gentiles [Acts 13-19], loosened the rules about eating kosher foods [Rom.14:14; 1Tim.4:1-5], and came to regard true circumcision as the dedication of the believer’s heart and mind to God, not as the physical operation [Rom.2:28; Gal.6:15; Phil.3:3].
Jesus’ reinterpretation of scripture doesn’t always make things easier for his followers. He claimed: “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” [Matt.5: 20]. Keeping to the spirit not the letter of the commandments and religious laws can be demanding. Retributively demanding ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’,[Matt.5:38; x.21:24;Deut.19:21], stoning people for adultery or blasphemy & expelling the unclean or those who break dietary, moral or religious laws, are inhumane, but sometimes easier than forgiving someone whose wronged you, as Jesus asked. If we are aiming to be righteous, Jesus claimed that anger is as bad as murder [Matt.5:22]. He called lustful looks as bad as adultery [Matt.5:28]. He showed that what is in the heart can be as damaging as our actions. Jesus taught by example that scripture needs to be interpreted in context, recognising the covenant love of God. We’re not mean to just apply one Bible verse or law, but attempt to know God and the whole of Bible teaching well enough to discern what God’s Spirit requires in the particular situations, in which we find ourselves. One challenge of the Church is to help people who largely don’t read their Bibles, to develop such holistic understanding of what scripture says, so that they don’t take commandments, laws or verses out of context.
The Bible contains so much truth, but if we imagine it to have been spoken directly by God or breathed out by God’s Spirit directly to the writers, you wouldn’t expect the mistakes or alterations in historical facts that present in some of the history books of the Bible. God wouldn’t make mistakes & God is concerned with truth.
Theological ideas altered throughout the many centuries over which the biblical books were composed and edited. For example: belief in what comes after death changes through the Bible from ideas in the Pentateuch that we just die and there is nothing beyond the grave, to belief in Sheol, a place of the dead from which there was no escape, to belief at the time of the Maccabean Revolt that there would be heavenly rewards for those who remain faithful under persecution or martyrdom. Belief in a hell of punishment for sin developed around the same time. The Pharisees then Jesus and Paul expanded the idea of rewards to create present beliefs in the dimension of heaven. The Pharisees, and those of the Rabbinic tradition which grew from them were particularly called to find how scriptural teachings should be interpreted in their paticular time and situations. These varied ideas show how scripture reflects human understanding of truth developing over the centuries. Rather than God dictating scripture, it seems more that God’s Spirit influenced and inspired human thought and the growth of knowledge. The Biblical books reflect that historical development in spiritual thought on many subjects.
Rather than the misinterpretable term ‘The Word of God’, it feels more precise to describe the Bible in the equally biblical phrase: ‘the revealed word of truth’ [Jn.17:17; Eph.1:13; Col.1:5; 2Tim.2:15; Jas.1:18] or “the Word of Life”. a term used of Christ himself [1Jn.1:1]. These phrases include the possibility that the different writings which make up the Bible, show a developing human understanding as further aspects of truth were revealed or experienced.
People’s ideas on faith & God altered during the centuries in which the different books of the Bible were written and edited. What was relevant in the legendary stories of Genesis, Exodus, Joshua or Judges & true to the social situations to which the laws of Deuteronomy & Leviticus applied, had been amended & expanded by the time that those who wrote Isaiah or Malachi were applying faith. Malachi emphasised that sacrifices weren’t what God most required. They weren’t intended as a way out when we sin or unfaithful, but an incentive to faithfulness & not to sin. Hebrew religious reformers like Josiah, the reestablishment of the Temple after the Babylonian Exile, then Jesus’ teaching, St. Paul, & the New Testament Epistles refined understanding further and opened up broader perspectives on God, truth, religious rules and how the Hebrew Scriptures applied to their day. God’s Spirit is still increasing human understanding up to us today. That’s why we need to apply new knowledge about history, science & psychology to our understanding of what the Bible is saying.
Mature biblical knowledge is essential for an active Christian faith, balanced Christian understanding, and spiritual discernment and guidance. In the Gospels Jesus so often quoted scripture to show what God was communicating to people. Yet various Christians throughout the world have very different concepts of what the Bible is. An increasingly small number regard the biblical books as verbatim dictations by God, inerrant and to be believed and obeyed literally in every word, but that is still taught in some churches. At the other extreme many Christians largely ignore the Bible, other than when hearing scripture read and expounded in church. Some regard it as teachings that may have been relevant or applicable in past culture, but may be largely irrelevant today and superseded by the norms of modern culture. Other Christians treat their Bible almost superstitiously, like a magic book to be venerated. Some slip into scripture for a favourite selected verse or phrase a day, rather like reading one’s horoscope, rather than considering the whole of scripture for its holistic message and meaning. Both the Evangelical idea of a ‘Quiet Time’ and Catholic contemplative use of Lectio Divina can sometimes be over-selective, choosing to meditate on passages out of context, rather than relating them to the whole of scriptural teaching. An important part of a true Christian interpretation of scripture should always be to get to know the intention of a passage when it was written, and considering it in the context of the rest of the Bible. That’s how we find how to apply it to contemporary situations.
Throughout Church history misinterpretation, false reading, or lack of biblical knowledge have taken many in false or deluded directions. It’s easy to take verses out of context to make them agree with your aim and mean what you want. Putin quoted “Greater love has no-one than this, that they give up their life for their friends” to encourage Russians soldiers to sacrifice their lives in Ukraine. Sadly many today regard their own cultural assumptions and norms as ‘the Christian way’, which is not always true. God may love us, but God isn’t a middle-class Surrey executive justifying their materialistic lifestyle, or an African legalistic church leader justifying tribal cultural practices and condemning the western church as liberal. Some politically justify their ideas by misinterpreting the Bible unconsciously or knowingly. I was astounded in one of Justin Welby's Lent discussions on faith on Radio 4 to hear Tony Blair, in discussing his beliefs, state that “Christianity is essentially about enlightened self-interest”. Surprisingly, the Archbishop of Canterbury didn’t seem to feel the need to challenge it as not Jesus’ teaching.
Christian leaders, institutions, churches & their members often pay lip-service to the importance of scripture, but in practice seem very selective in how they apply its teaching. I’ve encountered many instances of moral and financial dishonesty in churches, justified for reasons of Church politics or ‘because the church needs the money’. We have many traditions, rules, ecclesiastical laws and practices adopted over time, that are far from Jesus’ teaching or biblical principles. Our hierarchies with the Pope or Archbishops at the top of a pyramid of importance reverse Jesus’ words.
He said that “the last should first”[Matt.20:16] & “those who would lead should be the servants of all” [Mk.9:35; cf.1Cor.19:19] or “consider others as better than yourself” [Phil.2:3]. Some Church leaders still dominate by bullying, abuse of power, coercive control, covering up abuse or swell in position while neglecting their flock’s needs and not being humble servants. The most important ones in the Church are those outside who haven’t been introduced to Christ’s gospel, & the needy in the congregation. Ministers, bishops & archbishops are of far lesser importance; they’re supposed to be servants who enable & oversee the spread of faith & discipleship
We need to apply the principles of our Bibles faithfully. Jesus showed that we can’t just pick a verse that seems relevant & apply it. Nor should we rely largely on conscience or intuition for our lifestyle decisions & attitudes, since ‘the heart can be deceitful above all things’ [Jer.17:9]. We make mistakes through personal bias.
Careful discernment through having a holistic knowledge of faith & scripture helps us work out essence of truth behind the words of the Bible. It’s not sufficient to just try to directly apply Hebrew laws & stories written several thousand years ago & the New Testament just under two thousand years ago. Human understandings of life, philosophy, psychology, human needs & social practices, have moved forward greatly since scripture was written. Essential truths in the Bible may be universal, but they often apply slightly differently today, as Jesus applied them differently in his time.
We no longer automatically regard mental health problems as demon possession. Disease and physical disabilities are not assumed to be God’s curse on people for their sins. Same sex relationships and gender dysphasia are more generally accepted because we recognise that people naturally, genetically and psychologically develop in different ways. Rather than regarding lives that vary from traditional norms as sinful or against nature, perhaps God is involved in the formation of varied psychological developments. We know from nature that God relishes variety. Women are generally now recognised as equal & able to lead in church communities, though still not everywhere. We use different rules about lending and borrowing from those in the Pentateuch. Many of the Bible’s rules about the cleanliness of what we eat or do were adopted for health reasons in ancient communities without the access to fridges, freezers, antiseptics, antibiotics, and healthier human and animal health standards. So regulations such as these appear unnecessary today. Or perhaps they need to be applied and interpreted differently to our different culture, and may have possible parallels with contemporary issues about food and society, like sustainability, protection of the environment, animal rights, genetically modified crops and creatures, exploitation of natural resources, vegetarian and vegan ideas etc... Thankfully many churches, but not all, now include people who might in the past have been regarded as sinners or unclean. We must still call out true sin, but we need to be discerning over whether something is sin or just culturally different.
One of our central motives should be God-like ‘agapé’ - outgoing love of all and being willing to overcome personal biases. Here’s the full quote that Putin misquoted for his own ends: Jesus said: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing, but I have called you friends because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me, but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. I am giving you these commandments so that you may love one another” [Jn.15:12-17]. Until recently I had always interpreted “you are my friends if you do what I command you” as though he was demanding legalistically: ‘Keep all God’s laws and all the rules for life that I and scripture have given you’. But thinking through the passage I realise that Jesus’ tone isn’t that of the commanding God of the Hebrew Scriptures & Mosaic Covenant. He was asking us lovingly & gently as friends to follow his ways.
Jesus wasn’t taking away a jot of what their scriptures were saying [Matt.5:17-20]. So all the Bible is still relevant. But we need discernment to apply it. In Jn.15:12-17 Jesus ‘commanded’ us as one might morally request a friend to show the same self-giving love as himself. He showed that God is a holy friend and Father if we are following truth.. The word ‘command’ for us is about following a loving friend who will lead us in the right ways. Christians are not intended to be unthinkingly obeying a dictator God. Our righteousness is not based on obeying strict Laws, but on loving & discerning truth in our friendship relationship with God through Christ. God is still a God of awe & power, but we don’t follow the written Law literally as slaves of God or slaves to written word, like the Pharisees. We’re friends and loved children of God, to whom Jesus showed that his law of love supersedes many religious traditions & regulations. We need to interpret scripture according to Jesus’ revelations about God, love, grace and truth. Living by Christ’s rule of love is the way to abundant life, since Christ said: “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.” [Jn.14:6].
From prison Paul’s prayed for the Church Philippi: “This is my prayer, that your love may abound [or overflow] more and more in knowledge and all discernment [or depth of insight], that you may approve what is excellent and may be pure and faithful for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness, which come through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.” [Phil.1:9-11]. We need to teach believers to know their bibles better, but also to pray for honest discernment in order to apply the teachings of the Hebrew & New Testament Scriptures today. Loving with Christ-like love opens us up & shines light to help discernment of what scripture really means.
In thinking about this session perhaps consider what scripture means to you, and how it has helped in your development of faith.
HANDOUT 4
SESSION 4 FAITHFULNESS TO SCRIPTURAL TRUTH
SUGGESTIONS FOR CONTEMPLATION & PRAYER
There are many complex issues in today’s world, on many of which there is no specific biblical teaching; others we need to interpret sensitively to help people recognise that God loves all. Contemporary thinking & psychological understanding have changed so much since biblical times that there are few simplistic answers to complex issues. How might you approach applying Christian biblical precepts sensitively, with loving understanding of people to: Someone suffering from an incurable, agonising illness & considering euthanasia / Same sex marriage / Abortion / Genetic engineering / Gender reassignment / What might justify war? / How to stop a dangerous dictator destroying life & peace / Economic migration / Inter-faith & inter-cultural relationships & assessing what may be true in a non-Christian religion / ‘Levelling up’ inequity in society / Politicians who lie & use false rhetoric / Issues in contemporary society that are personal to you... etc.
SUGGESTED VERSES FOR LECTIO DIVINA.
[Don’t choose your favourite, but one that seems challenging.]
5 FAITHFULNESS TOWARDS GOD’S PEOPLE, GOD’S CREATION
& CHRIST'S GREAT COMMISSION
If we are truly to be Christ’s followers it is impossible for us to ignore God’s commission to spread faith in God through the world, as in Christ’s Great Commission towards the end of Matthew and repeated in slightly different words in the other Gospels: [Mk.16:15; Lk.24:48; Jn.17:18]: “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you” [Matt.28:19-20]. This is usually interpreted as a commitment to evangelism towards those who don’t believe. But it also encourages us to be committed to deepening the faith & discipleship of fellow believers & protecting the entire world. The World Council of Churches focused the Church’s mission into
‘5 Marks of Mission’:
The Church of England adopted these in 2008 but sadly we haven’t succeeded very well at any, and several don’t seem to be priorities of some churches.
In St. Francis’s imagery in the ‘Canticle of the Sun’, all creatures and objects in the created Cosmos are described as our brothers and sisters. We are intended to protect and enhance all and not to exploit any. Francis’ idea that we are of one family with every other creature or object in creation gives us a sense of oneness with and responsibility towards everything and everyone around us. Our sense of oneness with others is not 'consorting with the world' as some Christian sects discouraged, advocating separatism. Like Jesus we mix with others to enjoy their company , which can in itself witness to our care for them and God's love for them.
“Witnessing” is a far wider activity than talking about our faith to others, though very few churchgoers are prepared or willing to do that. Sometimes because they don’t feel confident enough to explain faith or don’t want to stand exposed, but most often we just want to be comfortable! Witnessing is in a sense being willing to face ‘martyrdom’ for our faith and in support of the earth. In the context of Christianity, ‘Martýrion’, translated ‘witness’, is broader in meaning than ‘death by martyrdom’, though we should be willing to stand up for faith and truth. It entails living the whole of our Christian lives as a picture to the world of our commitment to God and the truth of what life should be and who God is. Other meanings of ‘martýrion’ in scripture are ‘giving testimony’, ‘proof’, ‘confirming’, ‘affirming’. In many ways this biblical idea of ‘Martýrion’ / 'witnessing' is allied to the meaning of 'pistis' / 'faithfulness'. What Christians do should give proof that we belong to God and that God is true.
During the Covid pandemic, many in communities that may have not previously been particularly united supported one another and developed a greater sense of responsibility towards their neighbours. The increase of people going for countryside walks, gardening and taking on responsibility for pets, brought many closer to nature and increased a sense of responsibility towards the environment nationally & internationally. I hope this sense of responsibility and practical responses to it will continue now society is opening up, but decline has already begun, and isolation and self-sufficiency are returning in many communities. Christians should be at the forefront of taking responsibility for the good of all in our world.
Such responsibility has sometimes been lacking in the Christians response towards all creation. The world’s resources were once regarded as given to us to exploit rather than to cherish and use with careful stewardship. Rather than feeling kinship with everything in creation Christians have sometimes been patronising or superior towards nature. The Creative Mandate in Genesis “fill the earth and subdue it” & “have dominion over all its creatures” [Gen.1:26-30] was interpreted as an excuse to exploit nature. Superiority & ‘dominion’ over creation & the specialness of God’s people above all else is a misinterpretation. Our ‘authority’ and ‘dominion’ is more about being entrusted with responsibility for all rather than superiority over any. That’s how we should treat ministry too: the ‘authority’ of a church leader is about their responsibility for those who are entrusted to them, not about being in a superior position of power, influence or demanding or expecting more respect than others. (Remember Phil.2:5ff.. “Let the same humble mind be in you as was in Christ Jesus...” We are intended to look after all in the created cosmos with humility and sensitivity as wise, caring, responsible stewards.
Despite well-advertised environmental and social problems some who call themselves Christians still feel no responsibility to make changes in their practices to benefit the world. A Christian Donald Trump supporter, interviewed on the radio during his presidency claimed: “I don’t care if Donald Trump does start a nuclear war: it will help Jesus’ victory at Armageddon and bring this world to an end... I don’t care if we destroy the environment and bring about the earth’s destruction. I’m safe with God... I know where I’ll be!” What arrogant self-centredness about their place in God’s Kingdom & lack of education! Christ’s Beatitudes encourage a far different attitude and far greater humility, [Matt.5:1-11].
Christ’s parables calls us to be ‘Salt and Light to the world’ [Matt.5:13-16]; Good Shepherds [Matt.18; Mk.14; Jn10], Wise Stewards & Faithful Managers [Lk.12:42-48], not exploiters like the Unforgiving Steward [Matt.18:23-34], the Dishonest Manager [Lk.16:1-11] or the Pharisee who regarded himself as superior to the Tax-collector [Lk.18:9-14]. God should be able to say of us “Well done, good and faithful steward!” not “I trusted you with much but you have abused my trust!”
The best way to be faithful stewards of God’s world & responsible supporters of our ‘brothers’, ‘sisters’, fellow creatures and the physical materials of the cosmos is to live as good examples, as Christ was and St. Francis sought to be. Francis’ idea of living in harmony with the world around him is increasingly relevant. We may not be able to follow his life of ‘poverty’ in the same ways as him. Living mendicantly and relying on charity would damage our health and give Christians bad reputations in today’s society. There is little intrinsically wrong with possessions if used rightly to benefit others as well as ourselves. We should use all that we have responsibly, not be wasteful or encourage waste. We are to enhance the life of others by being ‘light’ & ‘salt’ [Matt.5:13-16]. Christ set the example and taught that our spiritual gifts and physical possessions should benefit & advance others especially the needy; they’re not just for ourselves.
We also have a responsibility to ensure that what we give will be used rightly. Churches have often been wasteful, not wisely using gifts covenanted to them, sometimes sacrificially. What we do with our gifts has real importance to those whose lives we can affect.
We’ll never persuade some political, business and religious leaders to be less ‘capitalistic’: greed has become a common motivation. Look how money and power over people have corrupted ‘Communism’ in Russia and China! There’s no need of capitalism in God’s Kingdom but unfortunately churches can be greedy too and exploit people. That would not happen if we treated all as our equal kin, for whom we are responsible. Some early churches apparently aimed to be equitable and 'level-up', holding possessions in common and sharing as any had need [Acts 4:32]. But that doesn’t appear to have lasted long as different people treat possessions differently. Greed, self-preservation and desire for dominance are powerful instincts. Today’s political rhetoric about ‘levelling up society’ won’t work – especially when those who propose levelling up do not live equitable lives themselves. Developing & living-out a sense of kinship with all people & creation seems an only way to build equity.
Christ exemplified & taught us humble service, but some see their “call” to “service” as giving them superiority over others. Too often in church committees, factions & institutions one-upmanship, authoritarianism and insistence on personal ideas cause divisions. Too few ‘consider others better than themselves’[Phil.2:3] or acts as the ‘servants of the Church’ or ‘servants of God’ that they claim to be. The Church is here to support people’s faith and facilitate mission and ministry, not to be a self-orientated, self-preoccupied organisation, with people jostling for position. Christ taught: “I came to serve, not to be served.” [Matt.20:28; Mk. 10:45].
Following Jesus encouragement of his disciples to ‘carry no purse, bag or spare sandals, & whatever house welcomes them to pray peace on it’ [Lk.10:4ff.; 22:35f], Francis intended his followers to move among ordinary people unencumbered by the buildings and institutional organisation that today often restrict our churches. I'm sure he would be embarrassed by contemporary Assis, beautiful as its basilica is. Your Third Order Franciscans have his aim: to live out our Christian lives authentically as a practical witness within society. “Let your lives so shine before all that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven” [Matt.5:16].
If people recognise authenticity & abundance in us, they are more likely to be attracted to join us recognising something true that might inspire them to develop their own life-giving relationships with God. An exciting prophecy in Zechariah shows how faith spreads best: “... people from nations of every language shall take hold of a believer, grasping his garment & saying: “Let us go with you for we have heard & see that God is with you” [Zech.8:23].
Our faith is more likely ot be recognised as true when others see it makes lives vibrant and truthful & gives us respect for all others around. We may feel small, aging or weak, but we can still live abundant lives in Christ’s light, showing hope & the Spirit’s fruit. In a dark & troubled world we can shine out as beacons, radiate God’s love & truth and stand and work for justice.
Abundant life doesn’t mean wealth, possessions or success – that’s too worldly a concept, too close to the false ‘prosperity gospel’ that claims that if you are good to God he will give you wealth, That’s against Christ’s teaching. Abundant Christian life comes through following Christ’s ways, expressing our full humanity humbly & righteously. We are to use the gifts and resources entrusted to us to fulfil others. A side-benefit will be fulfilment of ourselves.
It’s no good trying to attract people to church if they come and find what they see of the Christian life as boring, patronising, irrelevant, self-conscious or self-congratulatory. On ‘Back to Church Sunday’ we sometimes pull out the stops for a day but in my experience, the following weeks tend to revert to past form. God deserves our best in worship; so do those we want to join our Christian communities.
Services don’t need to be energetic, multi-media, beautiful music and stimulating environment events, which sometimes distract from true inner worship. I like the silent quiet of Quaker meetings but enjoy many expressive traditions of Christian worship as long as I recognise meaning & truth in them. Authentic worship, as Christ told the Samaritan woman at the well is ‘in Spirit and in truth’ [Jn.4:23]. In order for us to grow as churches & reflect God’s Kingdom, relationships within the Christian community need to be seen to be equally ‘in Spirit and truth’- loving, unified and supportive.
Our mission is to find the ways that feed the spirituality and other needs of the particular community in which we live and serve. That will vary in almost every situation, because of individual and social diversity. Trying to plant one type of church or spirituality in a situation where it doesn’t communicate to the needs of the society around it doesn’t work. Where ‘successful’ churches have tried to ‘church-plant’, the congregation often becomes a ghetto for the group that planted it rather than attracting those from the neighbourhood outside. We need to be humble and perhaps alter our own preferred methods of expressing our spirituality to meet the needs of others among whom we live. The strong Christian can always find personal ways of fulfilling their relationship with God beyond main church services.
The variety of people’s characters, spiritualities & physical & spiritual needs is one reason why it is wrong (perhaps even sinful) to try to create homogenous churches with all trying to present the same type of spirituality & ways of understanding God. Bishops who aim to make every church in their diocese think & confirm to their ways are failing in their role as stewards of the wide variety of people, churches and communities in their diocese, To aim to homogenise the Church also betrays the nature of God's creation and Christ’s teaching, which surely longs to opens up all people to God by affirming and encouraging all forms of true spirituality. Remember that quote from Helen Oppenheim: “Our diversity should enable God to be found in all areas of life in the world… The word multi-faceted comes to mind… the church may be a prism breaking up the white light of God’s dazzling majesty.”
The Covid pandemic forced many churchgoers to find new personal, non-congregational ways to nourish and express their spirituality. It has also forced churches to reconsider the priorities of the Church since donations to churches have decreased enormously. We need to be faithful stewards, cutting our coat according to the cloth! Institutions need to reconsider their Christian priorities and cut expenditure on non-necessities and ‘vanity projects’ to concentrate on developing true Christianity and discipleship in churches. Many Christian administrative institutions & diocesan bodies are now far too large for the limited finances coming in from decreasing church numbers or lack of support from those who have become disillusioned with church for varieties of reasons.
The increasing numbers of administrators and spurious ‘advisors’ employed by many dioceses are far less important than employing more active ministers working at the coal-face in parishes to raise people’s faith. Where diocesan cuts have been made often important advisors like those on Christian education & spirituality, or Education resource centres and teachers of faith who have been lost. The Church doesn’t grow through financial advisors or those who teach narrow evangelistic styles that no longer communicate. It grows by building true faith. Where church-goers perceive waste, squandering of gifts or wrong priorities their giving rightly decreases, which is why churches are often in bad financial states.
By contrast to the institutionalisation of some modern church organisations, Jesus and St. Francis are admired by many beyond the Church for the authenticity of their faith, even if people aren’t attracted to make quite as many sacrifices as them. It is their authenticity in living faithfully which is noticeable & attractive, & their lack of self-importance. We need new St. Francises to encourage the Church worldwide or locally to rethink its priorities and form a new ‘reformation’ to return us closer to Christ’s ideal. But many leaders, church structures and institutions may regard themselves as having too much to lose to reform or change. It's easy to become self-protective and want to preserve your position rather than submit one's own position to the priorities of Christ's actual mission. We see that self-protection in the attitudes and actions of the religious authorities who opposed both Jesus and St. Francis. The status quo keeps people in comfortable posts while ‘reform’ can be uncomfortable. Yet throughout Biblical and Church History God’s people have primarily advanced spiritually during times of challenge reform, and declined in times of self-satisfaction.
More important to reform, mission & church-growth than church ministers, advisors or committees are our congregation members, who churches should be training better and encouraging to work, share and live-out faith effectively. Our congregational members are the ones at the real coal-face of society who are in the most natural position to show what authentic faith is to the people around them. The most important people to consider aren’t any who are in the church at all. Jesus said: “I have come to seek and save the lost” [Lk.19:10; 15:6; Matt.15:24]. Far more important than having an ‘in’ with Church hierarchy or have an important role the church, is to be effective witnesses to all outside the church who we want to attract to find belief, a relationship with God, and Christ’s promised abundant life. The church will only grow if we attract new people to true faith. But we shouldn’t aim to engage in mission as a pretext to finance our churches: I've heard in so many churches: "We need to attract more people to join us because we need their money!" That attitude makes me angry and frustrated. It also implies that those who can't afford to give to the church because they are in dire financial positions, aren't the sort of people we want. What would Christ, St. Francis or St. Lawrence say to that, with their love for the poor and needy?! That attitude is like Tony Blair's statement that "Christianity is essentially about enlightened self-interest"! We should engage in mission to enhance the lives of those who do not yet have life-giving relationships with God, with no thought of anything we might get out of it, other than the delight of widening our own experience through new relationships.
Today, if we use Jesus’ term ‘the lost’ of those outside our form of belief seems disparaging & judgemental. A more useful term might be those who are “missing out”, but that too sounds patronising, especially as many outside churches will be living relatively more fulfilled lives than some Christians. What we try to do by introducing others to Christianity is to help them find how their present life can be enhanced & sometimes transformed by a relationship with God through Christ and through following the way that Jesus showed, taught and achieved. We who believe have to make sure that we are living that abundance of life ourselves, not lives of spiritual mediocrity, so that, as in Zechariah’s prophecy, people recognise that we’ve found truth and are attracted to join us.
Abundance does not depend on wealth, having a big church, exciting experiences or easy circumstances. I have known several disabled friends, others living on the breadline, with severe problems or near the end of their lives, who nevertheless live vibrant spiritual lives, with joy and inner peace, that make me ashamed if I compare my faith, peace and relationship with God to theirs.
Paul wrote of giving great respect to the “less honourable & less respectable members of the body”... “clothing them with greater honour”... “and treating them with greater respect” [1Cor.12:23]. St. Lawrence presented the poor, the sick & disabled as “the Treasures of the Church.” That seems to have been St. Francis’s attitude too. Following Christ’s example, he treated the poor, the leper, the needy & the child with honour, respect & love, & nourished them. That’s true “levelling up”, since as Christ said: the good & self-righteous often already have their reward [Matt.6:2. 16].
The Church is meant to be the ‘body of Christ’ [1Cor.12:12-30] in which all work together & are valued. Our churches will more resemble the Kingdom of God when we show everyone that we value them and use and enhance their gifts. Churches shouldn’t just look for the spiritually or physically highly gifted and raise their profile in the congregation. We need to make sure that everyone feels that they have a valued place in the body and are contributing something useful. The old or less able who may feel they are a burden to look after, need to be valued without patronising, & helped to recognise that they are considered to be of equal value to the active, vibrant, wealthy and able. All are our kin and all have gifts to contribute. In the Church ‘Body’, the position of the cleaner or maker of teas is as significant as the service of a minister. Those who pray at home faithfully & support friends on the phone can be of even more practical service than the minister themselves. The most Kingdom-like church of which I was ever a member was one where half the congregation came from a home for the mentally handicapped. All were involved & all were treated with honour & respect as treasures of the church. I felt I could take anybody into that church, from my dope-smoking neighbour to a secular Muslim friend. They all found it a spiritually meaningful and worshipful experience & came again. It felt like being close to God’s Kingdom, with no sense of the hierarchy, superiority or cliqueyness that sometimes spoils churches. Christ gave us his example: “He did not count equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant” [Phil.2:6-7].
‘Loving one’s neighbour as oneself’ and spreading Christ’s teaching go together. Agapé love of others is a primary requirement for all effective mission & evangelism. If we are just sharing faith because we feel constrained to do so, it comes over as false and will never convince people that spiritual truths can be life-changing. If people consider they are regarded and treated as friends and equals, they are more likely to listen to loving witness.
The New Testament calls believers to ‘always be ready to give a reasonable defence to anyone for the hope that is within us’ [1Pet.3:15]. Yet not many in churches are confident that they know their faith sufficiently to give a reasoned explanation or apologetic for what they believe. Our limitations are not altogether bad, because they make us rely on God’s Spirit to guide us & give us courage & discernment about how to communicate faith most effectively. It is not enough for a Christian to just answer “I don’t know” to spiritual questions directed at us. Even with mysteries of faith which cannot be explained, we need to be able to explain that it is still possible to believe in the unprovable, invisible God and faithfully witness to the truths of faith which drive us. Christianity is not primarily about knowing or being able to recite a set of beliefs. It involves living in an authentic relationship with God and loving people and God’s world with an outgoing love. That’s a practical truth that people will be able to recognise.
True ‘agapé’ love is hard work; it doesn’t come easily. I must admit that there have been several Church people over the years, who at times I have not ‘loved: – Not so much those who are painful personalities, or who demand most in ministry, but those who neglect their responsibilities, bullies who abuse power, or arrogant leaders who lie or are hypocrites. It takes supreme effort to acknowledge the values in some people, but there is too much opportunity today for negative criticism in society and less opportunity to get alongside people and help them towards a better way. It’s easier to influence someone who is a friend, or who you try to love, than someone with whom we are distant.
Christians have not always been sensitive in how we share our faith & not put people off. Standing on our soapbox & proclaiming that people are sinners; that Christ died for them & they should come to him and repent, is NOT the way to effectively stir faith & persuade people to do good in the contemporary world. It probably never was, nor was frightening people with hellfire & damnation as the Church did for centuries. Effective communication of faith entails truly getting to know diverse people, discovering their ways of thinking & needs, & trying to discern how the gospel & teachings of Christ might apply to those needs. If someone is our friend we won’t use insensitive words or ideas. Few learn faith just by being around Christians, even though we hope they might recognise a certain Christian ‘distinctiveness’ in us. We can’t expect faith just to rub off on anyone: we need to move beyond our comfort-zone and speak because the Christian faith needs to be explained & taught. Even Jesus taught; he did not just evangelise by example.
Perhaps Jesus’ greatest commandment (even more important than the Great Commission at the end of Matthew was for us to do as he did - to follow his example & teach as he did: “Do what you see me doing”. This is not meant to be burdensome, though it is hard: In Matt.11:29-30 he taught his followers: “learn from me”...“Take my yoke upon you and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for you souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light,” In the context of washing his disciples’ feet like a servant he pointed to himself as their model; “I have set you an example, that you should do as I have done for you.” [Jn.13:15]. Jesus encourages all Christians to follow his example. Paul also encouraged others to follow the way that he himself applied faith:: “Brothers and sisters, join in imitating me, and observe those who live according to the example that you have in us” [Phil.3:17].
Would that we all could be as confident that the righteousness of our lives might shine as a sufficient example to others! Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could say of ourselves and of our Church, as we should be able to do: “If you want to know whether Christianity is true and what God is like look at me!” What false image of God would people get from just looking at today’s Church worldwide? God has given us responsibility to be his representatives, ambassadors and stewards, to look after his world, teach Christ’s ways and spread the Kingdom. It worked when St. Francis was faithful & awakened true faith: We follow in his and Christ’s responsible footprints!
So perhaps the best challenge to leave us with at the end of this retreat is ... Go forth faithfully following the example of Jesus and St. Francis, and let’s work and pray to continue to reform our churches so that we all faithfully represent God and God’s Kingdom truthfully to those among whom we live.
HANDOUT 5
SESSION 5 FAITHFULNESS TOWARDS GOD’S PEOPLE, GOD’S CREATION
& CHRIST'S GREAT COMMISSION
Matt.28:19-20 ‘ “Go, make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, Son & Holy Spirit... & teach them to obey all I have commanded you.”
SUGGESTIONS FOR CONTEMPLATION & PRAYER
How faithful are you in the 5 Marks of Mission?...
SUGGESTED VERSES FOR LECTIO DIVINA:
ADDENDUM - Ideas for which there was no time in the sessions
COVENANT COMMITMENT TO FAITHFULNESS
Faithfulness grows from feeling committed to our covenant commitments to God. God’s covenant promise to be faithful to human beings was made in legend first with Adam and Eve, then with Noah, then confirmed in a more personal way in the covenants to the Hebrew people with Abraham, Jacob, Moses then, after the exiles in Assyria and Babylon, reaffirmed in the religious and social covenant reforms like those of Josiah, reaffirmed after the rebuilding of the Temple in Ezra and Nehemiah.
Christ expanded that covenant to include the whole world by in-grafting Gentiles into God’s promises [Heb.8&9; Eph.2:12 and Gal.3:17; Matt.8:10; Lk.7:9; Jn.12:20]. Most of today’s churches comprise believers from Gentile roots incorporated into the body the Church]. The original covenant with Abraham was intended to include the whole world, not just to Jews. The promise was that many, from every tribe and nation of the world should find blessing through the Jewish relationship with God: “Through you, all the nations of the world will find blessing” [Gen.12:3b; 18:18; 22:18; 26:4; Gal.3:8; Acts 2:39; 3:25; Rom.9:8].
For centuries following Israel largely neglected that side of their covenant commitment and came to regarded themselves as the exclusive, special ‘People of God’. The wording of the Covenant made with Abraham, didn’t intend them to be exclusive. Jews were intended to share their relationship with God and the blessings it brought them with the world in which they moved. The fulfilment of the original covenant promise and Christ’s inclusion of the Gentiles is found in the imagery of Rev.7: Symbolic numbers of thousands from the 12 tribes of Israel are accompanied by “a great number that no one could count, from every nation; from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the Lamb...” [Rev.7:9].
Unfortunately the Christian attitude to religion has sometimes been just as exclusive as the Hebrew one. We’ve found faith for ourselves, but sometimes fail to recognise that God’s love and faithfulness is supposed to be shared with all. St. Francis’ seems to have felt so secure as a member of the Body of Christ that he could reach out and regard everyone in society as his brother and sister. . I feel certain that there will be many people in God’s Kingdom, (whatever heaven eventually turns out to be) who surprise some Christians by their presence among the ‘multitude that no-one could number from every tribe and nation’ in Rev.7:9. Christianity is not an exclusive religion; it should reach out God’s love and care to include a multitude of people who have often been excluded from faith. Being ‘Faithful’ suggests that God’s people should feel and act with the same sort of responsibility to the world that our Creator displays and which Christ showed to us.
Jesus himself started the mission to the Gentiles & continued by the disciples. While Peter was with Jesus on earth, the concentration ws on the mission to the Jews, thought Jesus took the mission into Gentile areas like the Decapolis and the mixed area of Samaria. may not have taught Peter’s vision of the cloth coming down from heaven in Acts10:9-16, helped him to change his attitude to Gentiles & traditionally unclean foods. Peter recognised that “what God has declared clean should no longer be regarded as traditionally unclean.” Peter realised that the mission to which Jesus’ followers were commissioned must be opened up to people of all cultures. That necessarily entails applying Jesus’ teaching to different cultures with different cultural norms from those of the Jews and Hebrew religious laws
In following faith we have made a covenant agreement to follow God’s ways from baptism onward. As our life experiences and understanding of faith develop, we often renew covenant commitments to God in different ways at different stages of life. We make commitments at conversion, baptism, confirmation or ordination, at times of personal repentance and renewal, in Lent or Advent, making vows as members of religious Orders, renewing commitments on retreats, or when some new enlightenment comes along. Our vows or decisions to be faithful are committed covenant agreements, sealed by our promises and by God’s commitment to us.
Faithfulness to God involves all Christians living in the ways that are true to them, finding God’s truth in the world in which they live, and helping to build God’s Kingdom with the individual gifts and insights they receive & discover. We expand Christ’s message, spread the knowledge of salvation & show God’s relevance to people by living authentic lives. Quite a challenge! Jesus’ ‘Great Commission’ to his followers before leaving earth was for all to actively follow his mission: “Go be my witnesses to the ends of the earth...” [Matt.28:19-20; Mk.16:15; Lk.24:48; Jn.17:18]. But we all witness in different ways by living out the individual lives we’ve been given, with the gifts we have, among the people and communities in which we are placed or with which we have contact.
THE REQUIREMENTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITHFULNESS
St. Paul’s epistles, & the Letters to the Seven Churches in Rev. 2 & 3 criticised members of different Christian groups for displaying hypocrisy before the world. We live in a fairly untrusting society, amid many untrustworthy situations and untrustworthy institutions, so it is inevitable that others will scrutinise us. We should be able to say: ‘If you want to know what God and God’s Kingdom are like, look at the Church!’ (Sadly that would too often give many people worldwide a false impression of the Christian God!) We should be presenting a far more holy, loving, unified, righteous and committed image of Christ to the whole world, showing that we love & value all as God does.
Unfortunately the Church, its members, leaders and institutions have too often moved away from the priorities that Christ promoted & developed. Sadly I’ve seen more false ambition in churches than I ever experienced in my career in education. Inter-church politics can unfortunately be as devious as secular politics. What outsiders often see in churches too often puts them off belief & commitment, rather than attracting them.
Christ commended faithfulness in his followers: - the faithful steward [Lk.12:42; 16:10], the rich young man [Matt:19:16ff.], the one leper of the ten who had been healed and returned to thank Jesus [Lk.17:11-19].
We need to develop a trusting faith: that God’s Spirit is a trustworthy guide; that Christ’s ways can lead to the most human fulfilment and the best ways for the world; and that the power of God is as trustworthy as a perfect Father working for our good. Jesus assured us that God would continue to keep working for us, in Jn.14:19, but in a sceptical, complex world of problems building that assurance and trust in guidance and protection can be difficult & challenging.
The world is still in dire need of the peace & assurance that faith & trust in God can bring. Worldly fulfilment is rarely enough to satisfy the spiritual & inner needs of human beings. It is tragic that so many wealthy, successful or famous people commit suicide or feel depressed, unsatisfied or unfulfilled. Christians aren’t immune from this either. Fulfilment is not about being the best, getting to the top ourselves or gaining all we can at the expense of others. Fulfilment is often found in recognising that we have helped to raise others, and recognising that others are as valuable as or better than ourselves. We are important to God. The compiler of Ecclesiastes attempted personal advance, yet recognised in the early chapters that such material & personal fulfilment was like ‘chasing the wind’ After possessing all & being everything one might want. he still found himself spiritually, intellectually or emotionally unsatisfied.
WAYS OF BEING FAITHFUL DEVELOP & CHANGE OVER TIME
The Bible encourages us to find and live by the truth of what God is asking us to do. Calling the Bible “the Word of God” can in itself lead to misleading interpretation. It makes some believe that God dictated every word, phrase & law in scripture. If that were the case every word must be inerrant & must apply literally for all time & in every situation & culture. That wasn’t Jesus’ attitude to scripture. Although he stated firmly that did not intend to take away any detail of scripture, he taught that it needed to be interpreted differently according to context.
In working out how we should act faithfully as Christians in individual circumstances, a fashionable question in some church circles is: “What would Jesus do?” This can be useful in beginning to make choices, but it can also lead to over-simplistic answers. Jesus of Nazareth taught and was active in a very different culture from ours. Even he applied the Hebrew scripture of the Law and Prophets to his contemporaries in different ways to their meanings when they were written several centuries before him. We need to think deeply, with thorough spiritual discernment about how the whole of scripture might apply in our world today.
How we follow the example of Christ depends a lot on how we imagine and interpret Jesus. Some of his contemporaries criticised him for being a wine bibber and consorting with the morally and physically unclean. [Lk.5:30; 15:2]. Jesus countered the criticism with the parable of the Lost Sheep. We, like him are meant to go out into the world to seek all who God loves and help them become part of God’s fold. Like God’s faithfulness, Christ’s incarnation and St. Francis’s mission, we mix with the world because we are representing God’s love to all. Francis embraced the leper; we should be willing to embrace all those who are considered social lepers today.
Jesus called legalistic forms of religion, among other things “whitewashed tombs” [Matt.23:27-32] ‘hypocrisy’ [Matt.6:2, 5, 16; 15:7; 22:18; 23:13-29], and putting obstacles in the way of God’s children [Matt:18:6; Lk.17:1-2; 1Cor.9:12; 2Cor.6:3]. St. Paul described the deadening effect of the Law throughout Romans. Jesus by contrast, brought freedom and life... “The truth will set you free” [Jn.8:32]... “For freedom Christ has set us free from the present evil age” [Gal.1:5]. Jesus brought us freedom from slavery to what had been regarded as the dictates of God, by showing that the Law was given in love and was to be interpreted through love. We are to “live as free people, yet without using our freedom as a pretext for evil.” [1Pet.2:16]. In other words, in our freedom we’re living out the Kingdom of God on earth.
Based on scripture, Christians have often been very quick to judge, as were the religious leaders of Jesus’ day. Complex subjects deserve considered thought, discernment & depth of knowledge of the individual situations involved. People are complex beings and their situations are often very complicated and intertwined. God loves us all equally and personally. Christ did not quickly condemn; he loved people and engaged with their issues. All life is sacred.
Scripture developed as a means whereby people might come to recognise the truths by which they could understand the complexity of the physical and spiritual world and find the ways to abundance of life. In applying scripture faithfully and holistically we are trying to see how the truths contained within it can make life more abundant and maximise our fruitfulness. Biblical books may contain many practical warnings, but its stories are about real people finding, often through complex situations, the best ways to spiritual, physical and cultural fulfilment. Immersing ourselves in an understanding of the essence of scripture, can enable us to apply it faithfully, and spread fulfilment not just in our lives, but to enhance the lives of those around us.
CHANGE IN FRANCISCAN PRACTICE
Christ’s ideals, almost inevitable became modified as the Church settled and became formalised. In Franciscan history, the leader’s simple peripatetic ideal didn’t last for long before later followers began to institutionalise the movement, and brought disunity between the ‘Conventuals’ and the ‘Observants’. The same happened with the Dominicans who were also founded at about the same time as a mendicant order. The Conventuals followed a rule that they amended over time to allow them a more comfortable, settled and less challenging mission. They built religious houses without demanding strict poverty and developed wealth and possessions. But this settlement inevitably created greater distance between the friars and the people to whom they were meant to minister. Many have claimed that St Francis would have been embarrassed by the Basilica in Assisi, wonderful though its fabulous artworks are. I’m an art-historian who really admires Cimabue, Giotto and the other artists who contributed to churches throughout time. I am also an artist who paints artworks for display in churches and cathedrals. So I find this concept challenging. Though images and buildings attempt to glorify God and provide space for enhancing worship, prayer and teaching the faith, we need to remember that maintaining our church is not the heart of Christianity or our mission.
The more fundamental Franciscan ‘Observants’, who, like St. Bernardino of Siena, followed more closely Francis’s original ascetic and peripatetic aims for the Order, remaining closer to their founder’s ideal. Christianity needs to be ‘contemplative-active’, as some describe Francis’ approach. In practice this means achieving a right balance between contemplation, activity, mission, worship and living abundant life. Francis would have missed out the ‘abundant life’ bit, I think, as he felt that service necessarily entailed accepting hardship.
PERSONAL
I’ve attended study courses & led-retreats where some participants appeared to be longing for new ways of being spiritual, wanting to experiment with new practices of prayer and contemplation. Exploring and discovering new ways of expressing your relationship with God are helpful if we are approaching God ‘in Spirit and in Truth’ [Jn.4:23-24]. But sometimes exploring new practices or ideas can seem to be more important to people than seeking to be true to one’s relationship with God. Often our spirituality develops beyond the tradition in which we have found God, and it is not unusual to move towards a different tradition. I myself have moved from Free Evangelical to a High-Church expression of faith before now settling into a more contemplative spirituality. My spirituality has become more thinking & catholic since my youth, but I’m glad that in my late teens and 20s as a keen young Evangelical I studied the Bible committedly. I still don’t know it well enough, (few of us do,) but knowing its teaching, stories, laws, histories, precepts and what it says about God are foundations on which we build a practical and sound faith and Christian practice. Thankfully my understanding of faith has burdened since those early days when I made many mistakes & was insensitive in some of my witnessing. But though I cringe at some of my early ideas and practices, I’m grateful for the grounding in teaching, even though I might interpret many scriptures differently. It’s important to be open to change in discerning ways.
Most of us change in our ways of thinking & believing over the years of our lives. It’s part of our spiritual growth. But St Paul warned against running around chasing new spiritual experiences [1Tim.1:4; 2Tim.4:4], possibly because he was aware that so many pagan spiritual and philosophical ideas were beginning to alter the emphasis of Christ’s teachings in the early Church. We always need to test the spirits to see if they are led by God’s Spirit, faithful to Christ’s teachings and whether they are relevant for us [1Jn.4:1].
We may all find God or be aware of the presence of spiritual truth in different ways. A scientist might find aspects of God in delving into intricate things, enormous powers and the finesse of natural laws. A poet or artist might reach truth more through intuitively finding something meaningful or beautiful. A manual worker might reach truth in working with the earth’s materials and finding satisfaction and meaning in them: We all might encounter truth in the ways that we interact in society. That’s a far too generalised assessment: all types of people are complex, with interwoven ways of thinking. As we have complicated minds, we’ll all find aspects of truth through a combination of ways. What matters is to be open and keep our minds attuned to truth wherever we find it. This may be anywhere, if God’s Spirit is present everywhere.
But it is not enough to know the truth. True, faithful Christianity is not about having spiritual experiences or knowledge. It entails ‘praxis’: acting upon the teaching and knowledge we have to help build God’s Kingdom as Christ taught & exemplified.
Meditations on Christian Responses to God’s Faithfulnes
5 Talks for a Franciscan Retreat
Iain McKillop
1 INTRODUCTION:
I feel rather daunted in being asked to lead a retreat on faithfulness, for a groups of committed Third Order Franciscans, as I recognise that I’m with brothers and sisters who are already committed to sincere vows of faithfulness & are probably far more saturated in Christian spirituality and experience than myself. I hope that these 5 reflections on faithfulness may be helpful to you personally, as they’ve challenged me in writing them. But they are also reflections on how we might encourage more sincere Christian faithfulness in the church communities where we live and serve. So if what I say seems a bit simplistic or obvious to you at times, please forgive me, and I hope that some of the material might be useful to help you to consider how you might apply my thoughts to encourage or challenge greater faithfulness in your church communities.
As I wrote in the leaflet introduction to our theme, in much of the western world the Christian Church is declining in numbers, influence & effectiveness, not just due to the Covid pandemic. Church-going is not as valued as in the past. Churches can sometime seem alternatively wishy-washy, arrogant, comfortable, self-content, insular, bigoted or socially inactive. Most of our churches are not yet what Jesus & St Paul founded the Church to be - actively living out God’s Kingdom in our lives, spreading Christ’s life-giving message, practically modelling Christ in society & encouraging the principles of God’s Kingdom in the world around. I firmly believe that if we were more faithfully following Christ & the Spirit’s way, & representing the God Jesus represented more authentically, the Church would be more universally attractive because people would see truth in us.
This retreat’s theme of ‘Faithfulness’ seems particularly relevant to contemporary society and the Church. We live in a world where many have rightly lost trust in the faithfulness of politicians, business leaders and the recent fashion for ‘influencers’ in society. How many of our present leaders could you call ‘honourable’, ‘the great & the good’, ‘honestly working for truth & the good of society’? Sadly, many feel similar lack of trust in the Church, sometimes for understandable reasons - reports of abuse, cover-ups, arrogant leaders showing lack of Christ-like humility, unwise stewardship of finances & legacies, factions squabbling for influence or not recognising those of different traditions as truly Christian. People outside the Church hear of theologians questioning scripture & significant aspects of Christian doctrine and wonder: “If thinking Christians don’t believe their faith why should we?” That’s often because we don’t explain clearly enough how we can feel sure that there is truth in God & Christ’s teaching, while at the same time recognising that we can’t prove faith empirically. We recognise that some Church traditions have been exaggerated over time, and superstitions have always infiltrated faith. But we also recognise that Christ’s teachings are full of truths.
If we look at many preoccupations, priorities and aims of today’s worldwide Church, it seems clear that, as in St. Francis’ day, some have moved far from Jesus’ priorities. I sometimes wonder if Jesus or St. Paul walked into my church or looked at some Christian organisations, institutions and resources whether they would recognise us as the faithful God-centred community with Christ’s priorities that they sought to found with the aims that Jesus taught us to follow.
Rather than being Christ’s unified body, many otherwise faithful people are disunited over theology, ways of worship, internal politics & rivalries for power. Most churches have hierarchies that are very different from Jesus’ teaching that he who leads should be willing to be “servant to all” [Matt.20:26; Mk.9:35; 10:44], “consider others better than yourselves” [Phil.2:3], or “the last shall be first” [Matt.20:16]. When the disciples squabbled over importance and had worldly and heavenly ambitions as some church leaders show today, Jesus told them: “It should not be so ‘with you!” [Matt.20:26; Mk.10:43]. We are told to “seek first the Kingdom of God and God’s righteousness” [Matt.6:33], not position, power. Possessions or even reputation.
We can’t just reproduce the New Testament Church authentically, as some churches have tried or claimed to do. Society has changed enormously & churches need to communicate a faith that is true and works in the contemporary context, As the Church grew and increasingly formalised and settled over two millennia, it couldn’t remain mendicant & dependent on small gifts for support like Jesus and his disciples, or Francis & his first followers. But many elements of Christianity have diverged rather too far from the clarity of Jesus’ teaching and example and no longer see God’s Kingdom and righteousness as priorities.
I love cathedral architecture & great church art, but though partly designed to glorify God, it went too far , diverted the Church from the priorities of mission & saddled us with centuries of financial burdens. We don’t need the trinkets, huge popular Christian music industry, self-publicising of shallow spiritual autobiographies by ‘celebrity’ Christians, rich American-style tele-evangelism, expensive vanity projects that make churches look like corporate venues. We could do without many of the expensive resources that many Christian organisations promote today. As well as being a financial drain, they often deflect us from out-giving charity & stewardship. We don’t need to ape the commercial world to communicate faith effectively, though some churches and church-members try. Some think that we’ll appeal & evangelise by showing that we are modern & successful, but it’s authenticity to Christ’s teaching that communicates true faith, not seeming successful & contemporary. In a sermon recently a vicar encouraged his congregation to give generously to charities that would steward their gifts wisely, but not to leave money to the Church of England because he claimed ‘it would waste it.’ (That makes me as a minister uncomfortable but I recognise his point!)
We need to be seen to be “faithful in all things” [1Tim.3:11].
If I didn’t believe so strongly that Jesus has the words & ways of eternal life, I’m not sure that I would want to be part of some churches or that St. Francis would too. If we’re not seen to follow Christ’s perfect example, and live with integrity, what will attract people to church? Jesus taught & exemplified the ways by which human beings can best flourish & find the most abundant life: He is “The Way, the Truth & the Life” [Jn.14:6]. To achieve Christ’s abundance, we need to root ourselves in truth & follow Christ’s selfless ways. My first handout gives a list of just some of the ways in which Christ’s faithfulness should be our model. It opens with that famous passage from Philippians 2 reminding us that Jesus emptied himself of self-centred ambition to teach truth, to give us the example of how to live & humbly to achieve salvation and restore creation to God.. Theologians use the term ‘kenosis’ to describe Christ’s self-denial & emptying himself. The Greek verb ‘kenóō’ in Phil.2:6-7 literally means “to make empty”. In the text ‘eautòn ekénōsen’ - “he emptied himself” - implies that Jesus didn’t ‘negate’ his personality or reject his nature in becoming human but laid aside any rights, powers and obligations that might be expected as due to him, in order to serve the needs of others and achieve Salvation for God. Our faithfulness to following God’s way and continuing God’s mission requires similar humility.
I don’t want to further bemoan weaknesses contemporary Christian faithfulness, since I’m as weak in truly following Christ as many. Rather, during this retreat I’d like us to think positively about what true Christian faithfulness means, since faithfulness, truth & love are at the heart of authentic Christian discipleship. Faithfulness is a very Franciscan theme. Francis aimed to reform the Church of his time to more faithfully follow Christ. I’d like us this weekend to consider how we too can contribute positively to that reform in our lives and among the Christian circles in which we move.
We talk a lot about God being ‘love’. Yet the essence of our Christian idea of God is also that God is true and faithful. Jesus’ self-giving on the cross was part of that faithfulness, working to restore the world to God. The Resurrection stories also reflect the faithfulness of God in Christ. Jesus did not leave his followers desolate after his death. He returned to strengthen them. The Resurrection appearances enabled this gradual strengthening and building of confidence, leading to Pentecost, when Christ's followers were given the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives to lead us into further truth, so that we can more confidently help build God’s Kingdom and do God’s will on earth as in heaven today.
However, we live in a world where understandably, many doubt the Christian message. We do not have the evidence to counter many doubts, since faith is based mostly on trust rather than sight or unquestionable proofs. In our Christian lives many believers will have evidence and experiences that prove to them that they have placed their trust in something that is real. The most powerful evidence that we can present to the world is through faithfully putting into practice what we believe, and thus demonstrating to the world that Jesus actually did show the way, the truth, and the path to abundant life. It is my hope that meditating on this theme of 'Christian Faithfulness' may help us all follow the ways taught by Jesus more authentically and find that doing so brings us closer to God and more effective in representing spiritual truths within our society.
HANDOUT A
FAITHFULLY MODELLING CHRIST IN OUR WORLD
: “Let the same mind be in you as was in Christ Jesus who though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form he humbled himself & became obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross.” [Phil.2:6-8]. Many today don’t believe in God & don’t value Church, but accept Jesus as historical & regard his teachings as good, true & useful. If his followers are seen to live faithfully by his words & example, people may recognise that God’s truth is with us & may be attracted to faith. We do not understand Christ’s nature but should follow his example & faithfulness:
Despite his value & importance, he showed humility in the way he lived on earth.
He was our example of purity of life & taught ‘the Way, the Truth & the Life.
He was committedly dedicated in close relationship with God, his Father & Lord.
His worship of God was in Spirit and in Truth.
His regular, committed prayer life, guided & empowered his ministry.
He was valued & regarded by the poor & laity as teaching greater truth than leaders. He mixed freely in society identifying with & supporting the needy.
His holy life was an example of love, faith, truth, simplicity and authenticity.
He was selfless in prioritising his service to God & his ministry to others.
He did not covet personal security [‘nowhere to lay his head’ Lk.9:58; Matt.8:20].
He was a wise steward of resources [the common purse gave gifts to the poor].
He witnessed faithfully to God in active mission, preaching, teaching & healing.
He wasn’t motivated by greed, money, fame or power, aiming to advance truth & righteousness & point us to God. [He taught us to only desire our daily bread].
He was reliant on God for guidance, claiming to speak what the Father gave him.
He was reliant on the support & generosity of others, but did not demanding it.
He was one with the people, nature and creation around him.
He looked for good qualities in people & brought out the best in companions.
He aimed to build a community that was true to God’s ways.
He used & built people’s individual gifts & valued their individual characters.
His followers weren’t advanced by nepotism, as sometimes in church & society. He wasn’t afraid to challenge the hierarchy or draw attention to situations of sin,
He loved people with God’s love and forgave with God’s grace.
He understood people’s motivations and treated them accordingly with grace.
He enthused others, like himself, for mission & promoted discipleship.
He was willing to suffer, even to give his life for others.
He aimed to reform contemporary religion ‘in Spirit & in Truth’ [Jn.4:23-24]
1 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIAN FAITHFULNESS
We may want to be faithful to Christ and his principles, but if you’re anything like me, I fail far too often. St Paul, the great hero of the Christian faith, admitted his own challenges in Rom.7:14-25:
“We know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, enslaved to sin. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very things I hate... sin dwells in me. I recognise that nothing good dwells in my fleshly self. I can will what is right but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. I find this law in me that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”
That should sound discouraging but I personally find it encouraging that a strong Christian like Paul, who was writing about faith SO confidently in this Epistle to the Romans, had the same struggles as most of us! Those who know the passage well will recognise that I missed out the most important verse in the whole of that chapter, which follows - verse 25: ‘Who will rescue me from this body of death?’ “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Paul recognised that he could not rescue himself, but he trusted Jesus Christ that his salvation had already overcome Paul’s failings and ours. He had faith that Christ’s faithfulness was working for him, and it encouraged his own faithfulness.
We can’t be totally faithful ourselves: St. Paul regarded faithfulness as a spiritual gift as well as a ‘fruit of the Spirit’ [Gal. 5:22-23]. Alongside Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Gentleness and Self-Control, God’s Spirit gifts & strengthens our faithfulness, as part of the power of God’s Spirit transforming & working in us, if we let God do it.
Jesus said: “When the Spirit of truth comes he will guide you into all the truth...” [Jn.16:12]. Being brought to greater truth isn’t necessarily, about going deeper into understanding the mysteries of God, which is the aim of some mystics, some practices of prayer & some study retreats. Any knowledge of God we develop comes through God revealing truths to us. Finding “the Way, the Truth and the Light” may develop into spiritual enlightenment, but essentially Christian truth is about how we practise being as faithful as possible to the model of faithfulness & truth that Jesus taught, demonstrated, and showed to be possible for us. True Christian faithfulness is ‘praxis’ - living out what we believe in practice.
In some ironic way I hope that the Covid pandemic may eventually prove to have been good for the development of true faith. It’s been bad for churches in many ways, particularly financially. People have not been attending or giving to churches as before. Some met on Zoom thought this hasn’t been available to all. Many with faith have been forced to use their inner resources & explore in personal ways what they believe, finding what is important to them in their faith. You may have found that yourselves, as I have, though I’ve missed seeing people. Sadly, some have found that church attendance was not as important to them as they once thought - more about meeting people than meeting God. Hopefully church attendance will begin to recover; but we need to try to turn people’s dissatisfaction with what they had in the past to reform what we’re doing in churches to be closer to Jesus & St. Paul’s intentions
.
We need to try to end the malaise in faithfulness & encourage more authentic faith, worship, faithfulness & discipleship. I dislike the shallow political rhetorical phrase ‘Build Back Better’ but if we follow Christ’s Spirit, we have the opportunity of rebuilding & enhancing Christian faith & faithfulness.
St. Francis encouraged Christians to follow the example of Christ as faithfully as possible. He believed that aiming to model Christ was the best way to influence society for good, building an effective, missional Church, & getting rid of the aberrations that had crept into church hierarchy & practice. Today, even people outside the church often admire Francis for his authenticity in aiming to be an example of Christ, just as they admire Jesus, even if they haven’t developed faith or consider that Jesus and St. Francis could have been over-idealistic. Christ’s aims don’t fit many contemporaries’ life-style aspirations. One our big challenges, which I’d encourage you to consider this weekend is: ‘Could you say, as St Paul encouraged: “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.” [1Cor.11:1], “Be imitators of us as we are of the Lord” [1Thes.1:6] or with the writer of Ephesians: “Be imitators of God as God’s beloved children” [Eph.5:1]? That were among St Francis’s aims.
If we are to be truly faithful & if the Church is to grow & attract people to faith, the Church must reform so that we are recognised as imitators of Jesus in ways that make sense in the enlightened modern world.
So, what does ‘Faithfulness’ mean in the Christian context? Often the meanings of words get watered-down: To many today, having ‘faith’ means holding light, hesitant hopefulness for an uncertain future or a non-specific set of beliefs. ‘Faithfulness’ is similarly seen as a light personal loyalty to someone or a cause; - not necessarily expecting real depth of commitment. Some strict Christians expect faithfulness to be unthinking loyalty, like a dog committed to its master. If you express doubt they might question your integrity as a Christian, whereas I consider doubt to be a quality in our minds that encourages us to work through our questions to build stronger faith & understanding. Any truly thinking person inevitably develops doubts. It’s how we work to resolve doubts that strengthens faith. Since the ‘Enlightenment’ the word ‘Faith’ seldom has been able to mean having full assurance that what you believe in is true & trustworthy. Similarly today, ‘faithfulness’ seldom implies the depth of thought-out security & assurance of commitment that it did in biblical use of the term. We need to accept that many thinking people question, challenge & doubt faith. As thinking believers we probably all at times question whether faith is true. As in John of the Cross’s ‘Dark Night of the Soul’, doubt can be useful. If we thoughtfully work-through our questions & doubts, study to resolve our questions & discuss problem issues together, we can become stronger in faith & develop more convincing explanations when we share our beliefs with others.
In the New Testament ‘Faithfulness’ [the Greek word ‘pistis’] doesn’t just refer to us feeling loyal devotion to God, commitment to relationships, or the amount of Christian doctrinal beliefs we accept. Nor is it primarily about faithfulness in church attendance, worshipping God, intercession or supporting others. ‘Faithfulness’ in the Bible is far deeper than ‘loyalty’. It implies intense, devoted, true covenant commitment. ‘Faithfulness’ / ‘pistis’ is used to describe God’s actions & feelings towards us & to the cosmos, as well as the quality that is expected from God’s followers.
Faithfulness is as much a quality of God as Love, Truth & Justice.
Being ‘faithful’ to God’s intentions for us, calls for all our qualities of character, our actions, our beliefs & worship to have Christian integrity & authenticity. From baptism on all Christians have made covenant commitments to develop our relationship with God, our commitment to truth, & to faithfully follow ways taught by Christ. Our vows at every stage of faith reinforce that.
The Greek word ‘pistis’ is also translated in the New Testament in several other ways than ‘faithfulness’. It also carries the meaning: ‘faith’, ‘trust’ & ‘trustworthiness’. They’re all part of each other: we develop ‘faith’ in something when we ‘trust’ that it seems to be true. As we increase in ‘trust’ that something is true we become increasingly ‘faithful’ to it. Active ‘faith’ develops when we are confident that we are following something that is true, trustworthy, practical & worth following and putting into practice. Christians become faithful when we believe that God is ‘true’, that Christ & the promise of salvation are ‘true’ & that Jesus’ teachings are ‘the Way, the Truth & the Life’ [Jn.14:6].
In secular Greek literature ‘pistis’ primarily meant ‘firmly persuaded’, ‘assured’, ‘convinced of something or someone being true & trustworthy’. It is not a light word, but expresses strong conviction. One of our aims in becoming faithful followers of God & helping others to be faithful, ought to be to try to firm-up our beliefs, so we are as ‘convinced’ & ‘assured’ as we can be of the truth of our faith. Many Christians never bother to study their faith, though it’s one of our commitments at Baptism. So they easily turn away when they encounter questions, or a better offer seems to come along. That is less likely to happen if we were assured that what we have is true. For centuries churches have been notoriously bad at teaching substantial faith through progressive Christian education. Assurance would strengthen us when we encounter problems & give us greater confidence in our witness with more convincing evidence (or ‘apologetic’) for what we believe. Faithfulness should lead us to face whatever inevitable challenges, questions and doubts arise, as they will in most of us, and work through them because we believe that there is truth at heart of faith.
If we are faithful we accept that we are committed to a covenant with God. As Jesus said to his disciples: “No one puts their hands to the plough & looks back” [Lk.9:62]. Scripture assures us that our invisible, perfect God is even more faithfully committed to us than we in our imperfection are able be to God. This is a big challenge: we should live in such ways that our faithfulness will be recognised by our all-seeing God. As challenging is to live in such ways that we are recognised as true followers of God by those around us who know us thoroughly. We need to be seen to be living by Christ-like integrity, righteousness, love, peace, forgiveness, unity, holiness & displaying all the fruit of the Spirit.
Unlike the man who ‘built his house on the sand’ [Matt.7:26], or those who are ‘blown about by every wind of doctrine’ [Eph. 4:14], a strong faith can ‘withstand the storms that might threaten us or others’ [Matt.7:24]. Paul told Timothy “fan into flame the gifts of God within you’ [2Tim.1:6]. The better we try to strengthen our relationship with God, (despite all the mysteries this entails) the more faithfulness should increase. Though we know from our own experience that’s not always the case. And the more faithful we are, the more we’ll accept complex mysteries of God that we don’t understand. The more we try to trust God, the better we may be able to faithfully fulfil whatever ministry God still has for us to accomplish. Jesus said “Let your light so shine before all, that they may see your good works and give thanks to your Father in heaven.” [Matt.5:16]. Our faithfulness is part of that light.
In the Synoptic Gospels the terms ‘faith’ & ‘trust’ are used almost synonymously & often translate the same word. Of course no-one can prove God empirically, yet you’ve probably found, like me, that trust grows with experience. After the verse: “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the knowledge of things unseen” [Heb.11:1]. Hebrews 11 lists a long line of Biblical figures who followed God by faith and made important contributions to the world: Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac & Jacob, Moses etc. They all moved forward in trust, though we’re told of their many failings in living faithfully. It’s encouraging to know that their frequently failures in faithfulness, like those of St. Paul, didn’t stop them becoming heroes of faith, or making essential steps in the history of the development towards salvation that Christ eventually fulfilled. We too, in following Christ, are stepping out in faith that what we believe in is true. We hope that God will use us despite our failings and weaknesses, to spread salvation & God’s Kingdom.
I trust that the God & way of life that Jesus taught about are true & reliable. But questions will always arise: We can’t prove God, like we can’t prove God’s always answers prayer in ways that are right & best for all. Sometimes God may seems not to answer. It is a huge challenge to any faith when we pray for healing & all-but impossible situations, like our prayers for peace & protection in Ukraine or the growth of the Church in an unbelieving world. Believing with firm assurance is hard in this enlightened world: So many questions, alternatives to faith & alternative lifestyles are on offer. Faithfulness keeps praying when we lack answers & seem surrounded by problems or mysteries. But our continues faithfulness can itself be a witness to those who find belief hard: They may recognise in us a confidence that something in our faith is grounded in truth and has been strengthened by experience. After all, following Jesus’ teachings are the most fruitful way to live in the world.
It’s important that faith isn’t just based on our own limited experiences & understanding, but is strengthened and taught by the experiences & beliefs of others both those in our churches & in the traditions & teachings of the past. You have each other as a group to strengthen one another. We encourage multi-age, multi-cultural churches so we learn by sharing. We should teach & communicate doctrine more effectively& we learn a stronger faith if it has developed over centuries through applying scripture & learning from the corporate experience of thinking Christians. One of the difficulties of the post-pandemic church is that some may have managed to develop their individual faith & spiritual practice, but many have not kept sufficient links to other believers with whom they share teaching and ideas of faith. We need to be together to encourage each other in faith and Christian practice.
The New Testament Church recognised the dangers of developing individual Christianity. “Do not fail to meet together, as is the practice of some” says Heb.10:25. Heresies and wrong-thinking often develop through individualism. Meeting with others can encourage us, broaden our beliefs and keep us doctrinally sound, rather than going off on our own tangent or being blown about by every wind of doctrine [Eph. 4:14].
By sharing and learning faith together, our diversity of experiences enables us to expand our understanding & relationship with God & others. It also strengthens us both as individual disciples and as a body.
I’d encourage us to start our reflective contemplation this weekend by really looking into the various parts of our lives & ask God’s Spirit to reveal to you what areas of your life & faith need to be more authentically faithful to all that God expects of us.
- Also, consider what you learn from fellowship with other people, or have learned from the experience of others that can expand your comprehension of God and your trust in God.
- Keep asking: ‘Can God trust your faithfulness?
- ‘Where do your faithfulness and practice of discipleship need to expand?’
- Can you and I truly say with St. Paul: “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.”? [1Cor.11:1] “Be imitators of us as we are of the Lord” [1Thes.1:6] [also 1Cor.4:16; 2Thes.3:7; -9; Phil.3:17]?
HANDOUT 1
SESSION 1 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIAN FAITHFULNESS
SUGGESTIONS FOR CONTEMPLATION & PRAYER:
- Consider various meanings of the Greek word ‘pistis’: translated ‘faithfulness’ & ‘intense devoted covenant commitment’, ‘faith’, ‘trust’, ‘trustworthiness’, ‘firmly persuaded’, ‘assured’, ‘convinced of something or someone as true & trustworthy’. It is used to describe God’s actions & feelings towards us & to the cosmos, as well as the quality that is expected from God’s followers.
- Could you say with St. Paul: “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ”? [1Cor.11:1; 4:16; 1Thes.1:6; 2Thes.3:7; -9; Phil.3:17]
- Can God trust your faithfulness? In what areas do you need to be more faithful?
- How trusting are you of God and how much do you trust that the ways taught by Christ are true and work practically in the contemporary world?
- How has isolation during the Covid pandemic affected your relationship with God? What can you learn from this?
SUGGESTED VERSES FOR LECTIO DIVINA:
[Don’t choose your favourite, but one that seems challenging.]
- “We know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, enslaved to sin. I do not understand my actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very things I hate... I recognise that nothing good dwells in my fleshly self. I can will what is right but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want I do... When I want to do what is good, evil lies close... For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” [Rom.7:14-25]
- “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the knowledge of things unseen” [Heb.11:1].
- “When the Spirit of truth comes he will guide you into all the truth...” [Jn.16:12].
- “Rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them... It should not be so ‘with you! Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant.” [Matt.20:26]
- “Seek first the Kingdom of God and God’s righteousness” [Matt.6:33]
- “I am The Way, the Truth & the Life” [Jn.14:6].
2 GOD IN CHRIST: OUR MODEL OF FAITHFULNESS:
FAITHFULNESS TO A GOD WE CANNOT SEE, PROVE OR KNOW
“God is faithful, by him you were called into the fellowship of his son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” [1Cor.1:13]
“The Lord is faithful; he will strengthen and guard you... and we have confidence in the Lord concerning you...” [2Thess.3:3]
So many scriptures in both Testaments assure us of God’s faithfulness to us. I guess that you, like me may have personal examples of where faith has felt true. But how do we assure others of the faithfulness of a God we cannot see, and how can we remain assured ourselves when we face problems, pressures & doubts that shake us?
We live in an understandably sceptical world, since so many things that were once believed unquestioningly cannot be proved to be universally true. That’s not just in areas of faith: Einstein expanded the understandings of Newtonian Physics yet we know now that Einstein’s theories have had to be expanded. Science often no longer claims that its laws are definitively true, just provisional, because knowledge is expanding all the time. Many past superstitions have been proved to be untrue. Medieval ideas of heaven as above the clouds, hell as a literal place beneath the earth and God sitting on a throne controlling everything have changed with scientific and philosophical advance and space exploration. From the C18th onward, the Enlightenment advanced the growth of scepticism & increased a move away from religious belief. Today those with beliefs are often regarded as naïve. But of course none of this means that Christian faith isn’t true; it just shows that we face extra challenges.
When people say they “ believe in God”, that ‘faith’ can mean different things like: “I believe that there is something out there, greater than us.” “I believe that there is a mysterious power somehow involved in what goes on in the world,” or even “I’m not sure about God but I want to believe that my loved ones are at peace & that I’ll be OK when I die.” It is a long step from these to be able to state with conviction a Christian creed: “I believe in God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.... etc.” Even those first word: ‘God’, ‘Father’, ‘Almighty’, ‘Maker’, ‘Son’, ‘Lord’ can awaken loads of questions. Often even Christians find assurance of faith difficult amid the hardships of the world. Modern theologians often question traditions of belief that were once never challenged but now seem over- simplistic to some. “Faith” / ‘pistis’ suggests that we ‘trust’ more fully, and are ‘convinced’ & ‘assured’ that God is true, active & committed to us, despite all these questions.
If “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen” [Heb.11:1], ‘faithfulness’ is trust in the God, who we ‘hope’ is ‘true’, ‘faithful’ and ‘trustworthy’ amid so many theological questions. Christian faith trusts that God is true, perfect, trustworthy, all-powerful, all knowing and eternal; powerful enough to achieve anything, faithful to promises, and related to everything that is true. The greatest evidence of that faithfulness is the gift of Jesus Christ, who represented the reality of God to us. He is described in scripture as the faithful witness for the Father [Rev.1:5], living by the Father’s faithfulness, representing God faithfully, securing our redemption [Heb.2:17], interceding for us in heaven as a faithful ‘high Priest’ and remaining faithful by living with and in us by his Spirit, [Jn.14 & 16].
Though we may not be able to prove any of that, Jesus gives us an aim in life to: “Be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect” [Matt.5:48]. We sometimes talk of God having a bias towards the poor, the innocent, the child, towards Israel, his ‘Chosen People’, & a special love towards Christians & the Church. But actually that seems rather inconsistent with the idea that God is perfect & loves all that has been made. A perfect God must surely love the poor & the rich equally, the believer & the unbeliever equally. Probably God has different expectations of the stewardship of the rich or influential, & expects much of all who have been given spiritual gifts, knowledge and enlightenment [Lk.12:48]. If we are to reflect our perfect God, in love & faithfulness as Jesus asked, we too should try, as Jesus aimed, to treat all with the same love, care, tolerance & justice & use what we have been given with faithful stewardship.
We see that in St. Francis’ attitude towards all in Creation in the ‘Canticle of the Sun’ where every aspect of the cosmos is spoken of as our brother & sister: loved children of our Creator. How different the world might be if we maintained such an attitude towards all others, rather than having bias & loyalty towards some with whom we share common interests or characteristics, & neglecting others. Two of the popular political promises of the last couple of years have been ‘levelling up society’ & ‘having a ‘Green’ agenda. If meant, those are very Christian, indeed very Franciscan principles. Yet it has become increasingly obvious that these promises by politicians, industrialists & businesses are shallow rhetoric without much true intention behind them. We need to show those outside the Church that our commitment has more integrity, not hypocritical; that we mean our inclusive love & that our words are not just meaningless rhetoric. Part of our covenant calling is to reflect God’s faithfulness & perfection to the world.
The most intimate things we have come to know about God come through the revelation of Jesus. As Jesus was God’s visible representation to the world, we as Jesus ’followers, should in many ways also be the visible signs of the truth of the invisible God to the world. We don’t reflect God in precisely the same way as Christ did, since we do not share God’s nature in the same way. But as the Body of Christ we have the responsibility to represent God faithfully and truthfully at all times. Remember that special quote of Teresa of Avilla: “Christ has no body now but yours, No hands or feet on earth but yours, Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.” I’m not sure Teresa was totally correct theologically there, because surely our idea of God’s power includes the potential miracle that, if almighty God so decided, God can work in many ways without using us. But in practice we are most often intended to be God’s hands, feet, eyes, mouth, minds, etc. to support our world.
Christ declared that he is one with us & prayed that we might be one & share with him oneness with the Father [Jn.17:21-23]. Our unity with Christ and his Spirit’s guidance within us expects similar commitment & integrity in our lives to that which Jesus put into his own witness. He commended all God’s servants to be as ‘trustworthy’ & ‘faithful’ as he had been [Matt.25:21-23; Lk.19:17].
Revelation 1:5 calls him “the faithful witness”. Of course Christ’s faithfulness is greater than most of us are willing to put into our religious faith & activity. Yet Paul commended: “Let the same mind be in you as was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form he humbled himself & became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” [Phil.1:5-11] When we are preparing Christians for baptism or evangelising we rarely explain the extent of this commitment & the challenge to be humble, Christ-like & totally faithful. Are we afraid it won’t attract people to the Gospel? Churches rarely teach or expect such commitment from their congregations, but that is what Christ’s teaching on discipleship expects. I’ve not met many church leaders who live by it either, as has been the case in church leadership throughout Church history. Our personal challenge is: are you committed to be as faithful to God as the Trinity have been to you? That’s covenant commitment and it is the essence of faithfulness! If church-members ignore or aren’t aware of this expectation, it is understandable why wishy-washy faith develops, or believers fall away when challenges come.
Some Christians talk confidently of ‘knowing God’: Jim Packer wrote a best-seller on the subject, which was foundational in helping me focus my understanding early in my study of my faith. But one cause of problems in the Church over many centuries has been that less humble Christians have often imagined that they know everything that is important about God. This can lead to arrogant self-assurance, abstract theology, insensitive doctrinal over-confidence & dismissal of those with different understanding. The dimension of God is so different from our limited perspective that over-confidence in the certainty of our doctrines can sometimes be dangerous. It can close our minds to other aspects which might be revealed to us. Doctrines are meant to unite us: that’s why we have the Creeds. But Creeds are intentionally general in their claims about God. They don’t try to explain how Jesus was God’s Son, how his death achieved salvation, what his resurrection body was like; how God’s Spirit works in us, etc. Over-arrogance about specifics can damage relationships with people of different Christian traditions, or those who interpret scripture or faith differently. They may have valuable insights which might help to expand our own understanding of faith. I’m sure that sometimes Christians find ourselves worshipping a false God in an image that fits our personal ideas. The Reformed Evangelical God, the Charismatic God, the Liturgical Catholic God, the Liberal God, the environmental green God all contain truths and thrilling & useful insights. But keeping to one tradition or image of God limits and narrows the enormity of the true God, who Jesus faithfully represented.
God must be even greater, more complex & mysterious than humans can perceive. Imagery of God in the Bible includes over 1000 metaphors like ‘Father’, ‘Protector’, ‘Shepherd’, ‘Guide’, ‘Rock’, ‘Fortress’. There are many less comfortable aspects of God that we sometimes play down: ‘judge’, ‘avenger’, ‘righteous commander’ etc. All imagery of God used earth-based analogies for spiritual truths, which must surely be far greater, and more transcendent in reality, but help us to approach understanding our invisible, intangible God.
When we teach about God or imagine God in our own prayer and worship we need to be careful not to over-emphasise a few selective, favourite characteristics without relating them to the broader, holistic teaching about God in scripture. But we should also remember, as John Chrysostom [347-407].said: “Let us evoke him as the inexpressible God, incomprehensible and unknowable. Let us affirm that he surpasses all power of human speech, that he eludes the grasp of every mortal intelligence, that the angels cannot penetrate him, that the cherubim cannot fully understand him. For he is invisible to the principalities and powers, the virtues and all creatures. Only the Son and the Holy Spirit know him
Thomas Merton further reminds us: “We should live as if we are seeing God face to face, but we should not conceive an image of God. On the contrary, it is a matter of adoring him as invisible and infinitely beyond our comprehension and realizing him in all.” [Thomas Merton Hidden Ground of Love p.63-64].
When we approach God we should always keep in mind, humbly that though our access to God and knowledge of faith are true and significant, what we understand must only be a fragment of the whole of spiritual truth. As true disciples we need to be faithful to a God who we will never fully comprehend. One of my favourite passages in the Wisdom Books of the Bible is from Ecclesiastes. It is variously translated, but perhaps the clearest translation is: “I have seen all the activity that God has given to human beings. He has made everything meaningful in its time, and has set the search for eternity in the human heart, yet we cannot fathom God from beginning to end.”. [Eccles.3:10-11]. The constant search for further & deeper understanding of most things in creation, including spiritual things, has been the source of human progress through millennia in the sciences, arts, social development, technology, philosophy sociology, history, religion and all other areas of enlightenment. Within our human psychology seems to be a drive to search into things we do not sufficiently comprehend & advance our minds & skills. It leads us to think further and more deeply into issues that advance humankind. There was a mediaeval idea common in Francis’s time that humans were created perfect yet not complete, so like children we have to discover meaning in life and faith by developing to maturity. Yet despite our yearnings to find out truths, God remains unfathomable in so many ways.
The search to comprehend more about our God is one reason why I believe Christians should take notice of advances in world knowledge. To remain simple in our thoughts can be naïve and restrict us from developing as God intends: Discoveries in the sciences, arts & humanities, advances in psychological, social & moral thinking, etc. may all lead us into greater understanding of the complexity of divine truth. No one can keep up with all of these, but it is important to keep aware of how understandings are developing around us. If St. Paul is right that aspects of God are expressed in and can be found in what God has created [Rom.1:20], the more we develop understanding of the cosmos and the human character and mind, the closer we might come to God’s truth. The narrow-minded Christians who persecuted Galileo & other intellectuals, who threaten those who teach evolution, or have closed minds about other faiths and philosophies or alternative ethical and gender issues etc. are examples of how dangerous it is to close one’s mind.
In another quotation that resonates with me the theologian Helen Oppenheim wrote of the Church and our aim in sharing faith with others: “We are not trying to pronounce about what God can or cannot be, but about how God can be found in our world… God’s people have the hopeful responsibility of being the presence, the findability of God upon earth…Our diversity should enable God to be found in all areas of life in the world… The word multi-faceted comes to mind… the church may be a prism breaking up the white light of God’s dazzling majesty.” (Theology 93: 1990 p 133-141). A vital aim of the Church is to find truths about God within life in the world, and help others find God and insight into spiritual truths & mysteries. Through our variety as people in the church, with our different experiences, personalities, inspirations & gifts, we should be able to find ways to open the mystery of God to the huge variety of other people in the world, to help shine God’s light and reality into their lives.
God made human beings diverse: we’re obviously designed to respond to God & find God in a variety of ways. There is no one best way of being a Christian or believing. Different individuals & traditions have varied approaches to spirituality. That’s why it’s so dangerous when an Evangelical, a High Church Catholic, a Pentecostal or a liberal Christian tries to force all to think & worship like them. Our diversity as humans should allow more of God to be understood than if we were all clones, or all felt, reacted, believed & lived spiritually in the same way. As Helen Oppenheim claimed: “Our diversity should enable God to be found in all areas of life in the world”. By communally sharing our varied spiritual experiences, we can help each other & the world understand more about God than one individual or one way of thinking could ever know on their own. That is one reason for the need for us to be part of a broad church, as well as valuing the stranger or other religious pathways, or the secular discoveries of others, to see if we can learn more through their insight or experience. Different approaches to faith shouldn’t pose any threat to the mature Christian mind: If anyone has found anything that it is true, they might further enlighten us, even though their way to God may not be ours.
In his book “All Truth is God’s Truth” the Evangelical philosopher Arthur Holmes compared the reality of God to the metaphor of a huge planet. He imagined different religions, philosophies and human minds and ways of life as mines tunnelling into the planet, delving for truth and uncovering treasures, ores, precious stones, base metals etc. that provide aspects of the truth of what the whole planet (God) is. Some may find more rich, precious veins than others. (He believes Christianity to be about the fullest of such revelations.) Some tunnels & mines may cross one another and find similar seams and strata. By combining all the most truthful aspects of their discoveries they may be able to expand their knowledge and dispel mistaken ideas, assumptions and theories that have developed in individual sects or through-processes. But they are all still only mining part of the reality of the planet. The more they mine, the more they may discover, which is why we continue to tunnel and explore faith.
This enormous God of all truth, who is within whatever is the True in the world, is the God who has a covenant relationship with us. As a thinking Christian believer, I find it hard to define God. But I believe that God can be within whatever is true about the forces that formed and sustain the cosmos and whatever encourages true, abundant life... God is in whatever the truth of who Jesus of Nazareth and the Holy Spirit are... God is part of the truth of whatever human beings are meant to be and how we are meant to live... God is in whatever is within and behind nature, creation & whatever is true. We may not find God in it, but God helps people towards the truth. We develop our relationship with God when we faithfully open ourselves to truth, and we judge what is true by whether it corresponds to the revelations about God given by Jesus
Jesus represented God and God’s truth to the world. We, as believers and followers are commissioned to truthfully represent what we know of God and have learned through Jesus. We have a responsibility to keep exploring & living by the truth, in the knowledge that it draws us close to God, sand in the hope that we can influence others to also find God’s truth.
In meditating on or contemplating this session, perhaps try sitting in the presence of ‘the Truth about everything’ and see where that might take your contemplation.
Perhaps also consider the covenant commitments that God has made with you through Christ, and how your commitment and vows to God respond to that covenant.
HANDOUT 2
SESSION 2 GOD IN CHRIST: OUR MODEL OF FAITHFULNESS
SUGGESTIONS FOR CONTEMPLATION & PRAYER
Try sitting quietly in the presence of God, contemplating God as being in ‘the Truth about everything...’ See where your thoughts take you.
SUGGESTED VERSES FOR LECTIO DIVINA
[Don’t choose your favourite, but one that seems challenging:]
“God is faithful, by him you were called into the fellowship of his son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” [1Cor.1:13]
“The Lord is faithful; he will strengthen and guard you... and we have confidence in the Lord concerning you...” [2Thess.3:3]
“I have seen all the activity that God has given to human beings. He has made everything meaningful in its time, and has set the search for eternity in the human heart, yet we cannot fathom God from beginning to end.” [Eccles.3:10-11]
“Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the knowledge of things unseen.” [Heb.11:1] “We live by faith and not by sight” [2Cor.5:7]
QUOTATIONS TO CONSIDER:
“Let us evoke him as the inexpressible God, incomprehensible and unknowable. Let us affirm that he surpasses all power of human speech, that he eludes the grasp of every mortal intelligence, that the angels cannot penetrate him, that the cherubim cannot fully understand him. For he is invisible to the principalities and powers, the virtues and all creatures. Only the Son and the Holy Spirit know him.” [John Chrysostom 347-407].
“We should live as if we are seeing God face to face, but we should not conceive an image of God. On the contrary, it is a matter of adoring him as invisible and infinitely beyond our comprehension and realizing him in all.” [Thomas Merton Hidden Ground of Love p.63-64].
“We are not trying to pronounce about what God can or cannot be, but about how God can be found in our world… God’s people have the hopeful responsibility of being the presence, the findability of God upon earth…Our diversity should enable God to be found in all areas of life in the world…The word multi-faceted comes to mind… the church may be a prism breaking up the white light of God’s dazzling majesty.”[Helen Oppenheim, Theology 93:1990 p133-141]
3 FAITHFULNESS TO ONESELF AS A CHRISTIAN BELIEVER
“Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” [Matt.5:48], “Be faithful in all things” [1Tim.3:11]. “Faith without works is dead” [Jas.2:14-26],
There can sometimes seem to be a contradiction in Christian practice. We seek spiritual fulfilment & aim to live abundant lives in our relationship with God. But we are also taught to live self- sacrificially for others rather than being self-centred. Both are aims in scripture.
Jesus is recorded as saying: “If anyone would be my disciple, let them deny themselves, take up their cross and follow me” [Matt.16:24; Mk.8:34; Lk.9:23]. But he also said that he had come to bring us life in all its abundance. In Church history, self-denial has sometimes been mistakenly interpreted as deliberate self-neglect, as though we don’t matter as individuals in the broader context of God’s mission... Or that we should endure (or even seek) suffering here, because what matters will be the life of heaven beyond. Both attitudes, I believe are wrong interpretations of what Jesus was saying: If we don’t matter personally as much as the promotion of the Gospel & if life here on earth is unimportant beside the life of heaven, why has God spent so much energy on creation & redeeming, healing, loving & developing us. Why have we been given so many good things & gifts in human life & why has this world been made with so many beautiful things for us to appreciate and develop? Those who neglect themselves aren’t necessarily being holy and humble. They may actually be going against God’s will & intention in making a complex creation that God declared to be “good” [Gen.1:31]. Our God-formed individuality is one of the ways by which God develops us and can reach out to others through us. The variety of ways in which God enhances our lives is at the heart of the quotation from Helen Oppenheim that we considered earlier and will explore a bit later.
Jesus is the perfect example of someone who humbled himself and thought primarily of the good of others, yet lived fulfilled. He subdued his ambitions under temptation in the wilderness and gave his life for others through his Passion. Yet throughout his mission he still seems to have lived the fulfilled life that he was born to exercise. He was criticised for enjoying life too much by drinking with his friends [Mk.11:18-19; Lk.5:33-4, 7:33-35], mixing with tax-collectors and sinners and not keeping strictly to restrictive pharisaic rules. He wasn’t ‘dead to the world’, as some puritans & ascetics encourage Christians to be. His use of examples from the contemporary world, show how much he observed &valued nature & society around him.
Nearly 40 years ago I spent the two most depressing and damaging years of my life at a very narrow Bible College. Thankfully I later I got the opportunity to study Theology more broadly & thoroughly. The impression was given by the narrow Calvinist theology of the Bible College & the Free Evangelical church that I then attended, that to be truly Christian all should aim to believe exactly the same things in the same way, worship, pray, act, evangelise & study to understand scripture etc. in similar ways. That must be wrong if you think about it logically: our varied minds work differently. God has made human beings diverse, like most things in creation. But desire for uniformity of belief & practice is the aim you receive from some churches, some church leaders & believers, who patronise or dismiss those who have different interpretations from themselves as ‘unchristian’, ‘unsound’. Some are so sure of the accuracy of their faith that they arrogantly consider others to have failed to reached the level of enlightenment with which God has blessed themselves. Narrowness or exclusivity is found in several religious traditions. Believing one’s own perspective to be exclusively right is one reason for so much disunity in what should be the unified ‘Body of Christ’. By contrast St. Francis encouraged us to treat all as though we are all kin!
We ought to be thankful that we are made different, with huge variations in the ways our minds, character and spiritualities develop. Some think visually, some through listening or reading, some think logically, reasoning progressively through an issue, some think intuitively. Some develop faith through feelings; some through hunches that something is true. Some build up multiple ideas from different viewpoints then draw a conclusion. Some wait patiently for a realisation to come upon them, some impetuously need to know ‘now’. Some just believe what they have been taught or beliefs their family have followed, sometimes for generations. Most of us are a combination of some or many of these & other things. So we shouldn’t expect homogeneity or uniformity in any Christian community or in the ways we think and practice spiritually? It would be unnatural. God reveals and develops faith in so many different ways.
Our diversity reflects the enormity and breadth of the truth of God, and the huge variety of ways that God is involved in the Cosmos. . The theologian Helen Oppenheim sees the role of the church and individual Christians as finding God’s truth and revealing God to the world through our diversity and the different ways that all individual Christians and Christian groups come to understand & relate to God: Here’s a reminder of the quote:
“We are not trying to pronounce about what God can or cannot be, but about how God can be found in our world… God’s people have the hopeful responsibility of being the presence, the findability of God upon earth…Our diversity should enable God to be found in all areas of life in the world… The word multi-faceted comes to mind… the church may be a prism breaking up the white light of God’s dazzling majesty.” (Theology 93: 1990 p 133-141).
The ways we live out the life of faith & witness often change as our circumstances alter & at different stages of our lives. As we age we may think of what we can’t do now that we could in the past. But more positively, balance that by considering how better you may be able to now approach other things! Perhaps you have become more sensitive and broad in your understanding or tolerance. Similarly, our understanding of faith & relationship with God change and modify with new experiences, thoughts, situations and developing abilities. I guess that you, like me have found different ways of worshipping and praying as your spirituality or potential has changed. Consider how your spirituality has modified over your life as a Christian. A good church should be able to nurture and build up different Christians as they change & develop. It’s wrong to try to make everyone the same. Sometimes leaders hold back some in their congregations because they are unable to feed and nurture spiritualities that differ from their own experience or tradition. I know of one church where the minister tries to make everyone in the congregation believe like themselves. They encourage every house-group to study the same material, despite many members having a maturity of faith & experience that requires richer food. Being given simplistic teaching can be frustrating and restrict people’s growth. There’s nothing wrong in revisiting the foundations of faith, but some ministers and churches through Christian history try to keep congregations at a limited level of belief in order to assert leadership control. That feels more like the indoctrination and restriction of people in Communist or totalitarian regimes, or the way that the mediaeval Church and Inquisition aimed to keep all in submission. It is NOT Christian nurture, which should develop ALL to the fullest level of our abilities. Mature faith helps strengthen church-members, so that they are more confident to extend the Kingdom by their witness.
One of St. Francis’s encouragements was to find God through simple things and there is an aspect of Christianity which encourages us to live simpler lives than most of us do at present. But simplicity isn’t sufficient for every modern situation. In fact, to deliberately keep ourselves in a ‘simple life’ can sometimes possibly be sinful itself, since we might shy away from accepting mature responsibilities, like a child not wanting to grow up. The nature of God, Christ and the meaning of Jesus’ teaching for today is being revealed as increasingly complex. Over-simplistic ideas of God and truth can lead to many mistakes in life. If we seem naïve our contemporaries in the modern world may be alienated from regarding the Gospel as relevant to them and intellectually defensible. We are called by St. Paul to maturity of faith & to put that maturity of faith into practice. [1Cor.2:6; 14:20; Heb.15:14; Phil.3:15; Col.1:28].
We’re fallible, so few of us keep faithfully to our covenant promises:- we’re all dependent on God’s grace. Thankfully even failure can be used for good, because it can show others that they don’t need to be prefect before they become Christians. But it give us all something to aspire to. Remember St. Paul’s confession of the war between the flesh and the Spirit, in which he recognised he regularly failed, but he still kept up the struggle..
Faithfulness in keeping our side of the covenant with God is more than loyalty or allegiance, it’s about finding how we relate to God in this moment; how we respond to God’s ways of truth and how we shine for God in the world in whatever particular situation we are. Paul commended Timothy to be “faithful in all things” [1Tim.3:11].
Our faithfulness is an essential response to God’s faithfulness to us [1Cor.1:9]. We can never match the amount that God has done for us, but we can reciprocate by trusting God and acting for God in the place where we are. We are faithful witnesses when the real person that is us reflects the nature of Jesus, the “faithful witness” to God [Rev.1:5] in the different situations in which we find ourselves.
People looking at us can often recognise when we are being inauthentic. Jesus said to the disciples when they were squabbling for importance, that worldly priorities should “not be so with us” [Mk.10:43; Matt.20:25-28]. Sadly we still often see worldly ambitions: self-promotion & self-centred jostling for position, power or influence when you look discerningly at the ministry or manner of some in churches. “By their fruit you shall know them” [Matt.7:16] is a wise saying. Jesus said he has “appointed us to bear good fruit: fruit that will last.” [Jn.15:16]. We should try to allow God’s Spirit to grow that fruit in all situations of our lives and wherever we journey with God.
We’re given the Holy Spirit’s guidance and power to draw on & live by. One of Jesus’ covenant promises is that “the Spirit will guide us into all the truth...” [Jn.16:12; cf. Lk.12:12; Jn.14:25]. Do we trust God enough to feel confident to draw on and be guided by the Spirit’s power rather than just relying on ourselves? Spiritual guidance can be notoriously difficult to confirm. I’ve been led down several false paths in my life of faith, which I thought were so correct at the time. Discernment often comes with maturity and experience, but we can still make mistakes. But even realising we have made mistakes can make us stronger, more sensitive or cause wiser, truer decisions in future situations.
Faithfulness to spiritual guidance needs take into account our maturity of faith & our understanding of scripture & the world, as well as being spiritually attuned and alert. Faithfulness also needs to be in every part of our lives, not selected areas, and grows from a sincere & authentic relationship with God. Just as “Faith without works is dead” [Jas.2:14-26], ‘faithfulness’ is not true ‘Christian faithfulness’ unless it is active, trusting, trustworthy, loving, worthy of God’s love, directed to God and towards all God’s creation, alive in our hearts and minds and all our actions. That’s a huge commitment, but it should not daunt us. Like Christ’s command to “be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” [Matt.5:48], Paul's call to faithfulness is an ambitious aim to work towards. Of course we’ll fail, but we can trust God’s forgiveness, accept we are forgiven, then allow ourselves to be picked up and pushed forward by God’s Spirit working within us on each part of our journey
This all seems very idealistic, and we know we are all imperfect. Yet God made & cherishes each one of us as we are: Consider Ps. 139:
“It was you who formed my inmost parts;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you that I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depth of the earth.
Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written all the days that were formed for me,
when none of them as yet existed.” [Ps.139:13-16]
Those verses don’t just relate to the person we were created to be as children. God continues to form us through each stage of development.
In this world so many people are damaged by not being able to recognise that they are wonderfully made. I include myself. Among the biggest psychological problems for many Christians, especially Evangelicals, Pentecostals and strict Catholics, has been struggling to be holy, when so many of our inner drives & external influences pull us in less than holy ways.. The media and advertising create psychological problems by promoting models that are more beautiful, fit, clever, or successful than most of us will ever achieve. Sadly some churches promote unreal ideas of the successful Christian that are equally unreachable. To find fulfilment in life, we have to find ways of being content with the selves we can’t change, while striving to improve what it is right & possible to change. Christians have been taught so much about sin and have spiritual ideals set up for us in the models of the saints. But there comes a point in all our lives when we need to be able to be satisfied enough with who we are to not be disabled by our difficulties & be able to live abundant lives. We need to be able to get on with finding the fulfilment, joy and peace in our lives that God intends, and helping others towards that same peace.
Our churches’ teaching should aim to bring people to Christ’s peace, not cause damage by encouraging believers to long for unreachable ideals. None of us can live up to unrealistic ideals of perfection. No one person can fulfil all physical or Christian qualities. That’s why we’re part of a body, where my weaknesses may be supported by your strengths and vice versa. That shouldn’t stop us aiming to “be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect”, which can be an ideal that helps us move forward when we fail. Nevertheless we need to accept many limitations and recognise that our Father can forgive and even love our imperfections. If I, with all my imperfections find I forgive & love deeply friends whose weaknesses and failings I recognise, how much more must the perfect God love us!
To be fulfilled, we need to be the real ‘us’, achieving the best we can with the potential and gifts that we have at this moment, not longing to be what we can never be. How many of us can truly say to our inner selves and mean it: “God made me as I am, therefore I am truly precious.”? Try to say it and mean it:... “God made me as I am, therefore I am truly precious.” That is the essence of what Psalm 139 is emphasising, and is the way in which Christians should regard both their lives and the lives of all others. We are made to find a relationship with God & peace within the real selves that we are: As Augustine said: “God made us for himself and our hearts are restless until we find our rest in him.” If we are inauthentic or trying to be something we are not, perhaps we won’t find God in the ways that we are intended to do. I have met many Christians who feel they need to ‘pretend’ to have peace in their faith, & to know that God loves them, but scratch the surface and you find spiritual insecurity.
There is much talk today of the importance of self-fulfilment, self-affirmation, self-awareness & self-assertion. I have a Christian friend who took several self-assertion courses to overcome her personal insecurities and became a monster for a while. Too much emphasis on satisfying ourselves can give us a distorted and incorrect perspective on the world. Like children, ore even many leaders and 'social influnecers', some Christians want the world to revolve around themselves. Maturity as Christians should help us become more orientated towards the good of others: It’s supporting others not demanding or expecting to receive, that can make society and individuals thrive.
For me there doesn’t need to be a conflict in Christians between ‘living for Christ’ and living for the fulfilment of ourselves. Self-abnegation isn’t what Christ intended when he called us to “deny ourselves and follow him” or what Paul meant by “dying to self”, God gave us lives to enjoy and fulfil and in this life we are meant to find a satisfying relationship with God now, not just wait for heaven. We’re made with psychological needs for a level of self-fulfilment, which are not sinful. In fact, if we subjugate or neglect ourselves, as some ascetic or puritanical Christians try, it can lead to psychological and physical problems. We have been given searching minds, physical and creative abilities to advance the human race and to develop the resources of the world. We seem to ‘programmed’ in our brains, to reach as far as we can towards human fulfilment. And we’ve got physical bodies to use and enjoy. Too much asceticism can miss so much of the potential of life. I’ve often felt an element of sadness for some Christian ascetics and puritanical believers, who deny themselves beautiful, meaningful and morally good pleasures, in the belief that self-denial will automatically lead them to greater holiness. Members of religious orders have sometimes been disadvantaged by this mind-set: You read of nuns starving themselves, remaining simple and in a child-like state of dependence and simplicity, early Christians deliberately seeking martyrdom, ascetics or flagellant torturing their bodies in personal penitence or vicarious penance for the sins of others in the world. Personal suffering can sometimes lead to mental or spiritual strengthening and advancement, as with St. John of the Cross’s ‘Dark Night of the Soul’ or the eventual emotional strengthening of someone after trauma. But we’re not meant to bring suffering on ourselves! Sadly many of us still metaphorically self-flagellate mentally through holding onto guilt for too long, when, after sincere confession, we are assured of God’s forgiveness.
St. Paul criticised the failure to mature in spiritual discernment when he encouraged his readers to ‘Take sold food, not remain on a diet of baby-milk’ [1Cor.3:2; Heb.5:12-13]. We are not to remain childish in our thinking or in our feelings about ourselves, but become adult and give up ‘childish things’ [1Cor,13:11]. Yet, of course that’s often not easy, due to the complex ways that our minds develop & pressures from our environment. St. Francis encouraged a certain amount of simplicity. but he was far from as naïve as he is sometimes represented. His love for the world around him aimed to enhance the lives of others and make us faithful to the example and teaching of Christ, which is far from naïve or childish. Sadly, we recognise today that Francis wasn’t faithful enough to his own health, and suffered physically as a result because he was following contemporary false mediaeval ideas that equated self-neglect with spirituality. Today we have greater understanding of physical, psychological emotional, social and personal needs. We recognise that, as with the environment, it is true to Christian faithfulness to nurture ourselves as well as others with care.
In being faithful to who we are, with the gifts that we have, I don’t think God created us with something specific for us to do as some Christians teach. I can’t believe that God formed and programmed us like robots to perform specific tasks; to marry particular partners designed especially for us; to believe specific doctrines or develop specific personalities, etc. That doesn’t seem to accord with the idea that God created us as free beings with the freedom and capacity to develop autonomously. We can choose to follow or reject divine precepts. God is described in scripture as longing for us to develop our full potential in relationship with our Creator, but I do not think that God has our future planned out for us. It is for us to find ourselves, develop our different interests, abilities and relationships, and use them for the best, to reach our fullest potential, even at this late stage in many of our lives. The huge diversity in every aspect of Creation implies that God revels in diversity and loves watching the different ways in which created beings develop. Variety is part of God’s plan and design in Creation. I expect that God enjoys watching & interacting with us as we work through challenges and sometimes struggle to make right decisions & take right paths.
We are faithful to God by being true to the person we are at this moment, trying to live by Christ’s righteousness and displaying the fruit of the Spirit and whatever spiritual and physical gifts that are entrusted to us at each moment. Our gifts & abilities change at each stage of our lives. In age we cannot live the same Christian lives, we might have led in our youth (thank goodness!... I was very naïve in my Evangelical youth! ,,, I’m still, at 68, making stupid mistakes and not feeling mature!). Nor should we be expecting to engage always in the same sort of ministries as we were formerly able to do: We have different potentials at different times of life and are given different stages of life on earth to enjoy, to be fulfilled in now, and in the present to relate to God in fulfilling ways, while we wait for whatever the abundant life of the Kingdom of Heaven might be.
However, we must be careful to ensure that in living as free people, we are emulating the God about whom Jesus taught and who he reflected in his whole life. By our faithfulness to the true ways shown by Christ, we may not reflect God as perfectly as Jesus revealed him, but like St. Francis, our Christian witness is intended to show consistently that the God in our lives is real and as available to all others as to us. I’m sure God must want to enhance the lives of all, not just Christians. That’s partly why we aim to help to build God’s Kingdom, to extend God’s blessing to all creation.
HANDOUT 3
SESSION 3 FAITHFULNESS TO ONESELF AS A CHRISTIAN BELIEVER
SUGGESTIONS FOR CONTEMPLATION & PRAYER
Read Psalm 139 :1-18 especially vs. 13-16 & contemplate its relevance to you.
- Can you say truly with the Psalmist: “God loves me, and made me as I am”?
- What might help you to be more fully true to yourself as a faithful Christian?
- In what areas would it be right for you to look for more personal fulfilment?
SUGGESTED VERSES FOR LECTIO DIVINA.
[Don’t choose your favourite, but one that seems challenging.]
- “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” [Matt.5:48],
- “Faith without works is dead” [Jas.2:14-26],
- “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you... “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” “You are my friends if you do what I command you.” “I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing, but I have called you friends because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.” “You did not choose me, but I chose you.” “I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last.” [Jn.15:12-16]
- “No one puts their hands to the plough & looks back” [Lk.9:62].
- “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.” [Jn.14:6]
- “The truth will set you free” [Jn.8:32]
- “Live as free people, yet without using our freedom as a pretext for evil.” [1Pet.2:16]
- “Let him who is without guilt hurl the first stone!”...“Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more,” [Jn.8:7,11]
- Take my yoke upon you and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for you souls.” “For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” [Matt.11:29-30]
- “I have set you an example, that you should do as I have done for you.” [Jn.13:15]
- “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus who though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross.” [Phil.2:6-8].
4 BEING FAITHFUL TO SCRIPTURAL TRUTH IN AN AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT
In this session I aim to explore how the thinking Christian can keep faithful to scripture & truths it contains for the development of a realistic faith and a relationship with God amid contemporary understanding of the Bible. The Bible is of foundational importance to our understanding of faith & how we should act faithfully. So it is sad that the majority of Christians don’t read it regularly, other than when they hear selected passages read in Church. Some disregard scripture as a selection of ancient texts, largely irrelevant to a contemporary world, while others imagine it was dictated by God, so must be believed & followed word for word because it must my inerrant. It’s easy to misinterpret scripture, as has happened many times in Church history. It is also easy to make verses say what you want them to say. So we need to be careful how we interpret our bibles,
There are many different genres or types of literature in the Bible. We wouldn’t read a modern novel, poetry, a political manifesto, a letter or predictions about the future in the same way as an historical book. Some biblical books are stories, legends, and ancient play (Job), moral literature, musical songs, social & political prophecy, future prophecy using metaphorical imagery. So we shouldn’t read all the books of the Bible in the same way.
The books of the Bible are composed of material circulated, written down and compiled over many centuries & edited several times though Jewish history. The Pentateuch, first 5 books of the Bible, on which so many hang their understanding of the foundations of faith and God’s laws, seem to contain many textual additions or alteration, showing that they were probably being edited at verious times in Hebrew history, particularly in the years after return from Exile in Babylon & the rebuilding of the Temple. They evidently weren’t ‘dictated by God to Moses’ as some fundamentalists still claim, to emphasise the authenticity of their contents. Names, dates & places in historical books like Joshua, Kings & Chronicles don’t always correspond to records in the annals of Babylon and Assyria, which are thought to be to more reliable records of similar events.
Changing literary styles & Hebrew words in the biblical texts from different historical periods, like the different words used for God, possibly deriving from different Hebrew traditions, show where the Hebrew Scriptures seem to have been amended by religious scribes in later periods. Editors added propaganda that made certain secular national leaders seem worse than they were & others better. (Think of the number of Kings who are described as bad and going against the will of the Lord in Chronicles.) In order to emphasise the political priority of religious leaders over kings, priestly scribes seem to have aimed to emphasise that the priests were more important & reliable national leaders than the political leaders. Other propaganda was included to books like Joshua to stress the rights of ‘God’s People’ over land that had been ‘annexed’ by force from their neighbours. (Israel similarly rewrites history today to justify occupation of Palestinian land, just as Putin has rewritten the history of Ukraine.)
Biblical claims of the superiority of Israel & Judah over other nations were emphasised to make God’s Covenant seem exclusively with the Jews. But if you read the story of Abraham’s original covenant and otehr covenant agreements made by God in scripture, the message repeatedly emphasises that God intended divine blessing and truth to spread to all nations, though God’s relationship with the Jews. “Through you, all nations of the world will find blessing” is repeated [Gen.12:3b; 18:18; 22:18; 26:4; Gal.3:8; Acts 2:39; 3:25; Rom.9:8]. In many ways you could call some Hebrew Scripture as much ‘political propaganda’ as ‘religious’ literature.
I was taught in my Evangelical youth that the commands in Joshua & some of the prophets to destroy all from non-believing tribes including all animals & goods, were to cleanse the land of anything from pagan culture that might corrupt the Jewish nation or assimilate beliefs, corrupt practices or unclean materials from other nations. But the early books of the Bible contain many ideas about God derived from earlier cultures. Most biblical historians now recognise that passages like these were inserted or edited to justify Israel’s position over other tribes. God doesn’t change, so surely if war, murder, stealing & destruction are fundamentally wrong now, as Jesus taught, they would have been wrong at the time of these events, though perhaps in rare circumstances, as today, ‘just-war’ is occasionally justified.
Though the Bible has limitations like these, nevertheless it is still essential for our faith. Studying scripture has led to great advances in faith. Re-discovering scripture after Exile in Babylon & Assyria led to the Jewish Temple reforms of Josiah. Luther’s re-interpretation of Ephesians led to important Reformation thought, through recognising that we are ‘saved by faith & not by works’ [Eph.2:8-9]. The way we read, interpret & act in response to the Bible is crucial to our understanding of God, our relationship with God & how we live our lives. Those who insist that the Bible is to be interpreted & followed literally, from the early legendary stories of Genesis to the metaphorical imagery of the Book of Revelation, may be actually going against God’s truth as Jesus interpreted it.
Mistaken reading of scripture through Church History has led to many horrors. The Inquisition believed it was better to torture & destroy the body to save people’s souls. Crusaders believed that God had given Israel exclusive rights to Palestine, so decimated others who had settled there as well as fighting against Muslim expansion. They & others over centuries persecuted Jews as Christ-killers & heretics, because to them, Christians, not Jews were God’s ‘Chosen People’. Some contemporary American churches support Israel because they believe that the land that Israel has annexed & the Temple need to be restored before Christ can return. But modern Israel is a secular nation, not the religious foundation of the Abrahamic Covenant. Some African bishops & pastors still support the murder of adulterers & homosexuals for contaminating society. Some still subjugate women because Hebrew tradition regarded them as subservient & unclean, and Paul’s letters didn’t allow them to teach to show leadership. Sadly some ‘Christians’ throughout the world would still like to kill or permanently exile offenders or the diseased today, as some Muslim fundamentalists also do. But those are not the aims of the Bible or its holistic understanding of God’s truth. We have to be SO careful and interpret our scriptures, according to context & intention, not the letter of the Law.
All the Bible is still relevant, as any truth is relevant through time. But as the Bible is written in various different genres of literature the truth is contained in different forms. Many of its contents are not primarily historical facts but intended to convey religious meaning. We need read all scripture in the light of what Jesus taught us about God. Paul insisted that “all scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, reproof, correcting and training in righteousness so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.” [2Tim.3:16].
Jesus insisted that he had not come to change scripture: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but fulfil. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter will pass from the law until all is accomplished.” [Matt.5:17-18].
But both Jesus & Paul were not afraid of altering the interpretation of scripture to a truer one that was relevant to each situation: Jesus reinterpreted biblical laws & stories to show that the exact words of scripture were not always God’s literal intention. It was the spirit behind them that was important. Scribes, Sadducees & Pharisees applied each verse of scripture literally, making faith legalistic, unchangeable and not flexible according to differing circumstances. The Pharisees’ interpretations made God seem unloving & narrow. Jesus taught that the scriptures need to be interpreted flexibly in the light of knowing that God is pure, loving, caring & full of grace. He showed that we need to widen our perspective on truth & recognise that scripture was designed for the good of human beings, not to subjugate us under a set of inflexible proscriptions [Mk.2:27]. Women were considered subordinate in the contemporary culture of Jesus’ time, yet he showed that we are all of equal importance, & gave spiritual teaching to the Marys at Bethany and the Samaritan Woman at the Well [Jn.4]. He opposed the mandatory death penalty, stopping the stoning of the woman taken in adultery (though he did encourage her to “go and sin no more” [Jn.8:11]). Gentiles were considered outside God’s Covenant, but Jesus began the mission to the Gentiles in his work in the Decapolis [Mk.5:20; 7:31] and in the Parable of the Good Samaritan commended faithfulness found in a Gentile more than in the Jews [Lk.10:25-37].
In this new light, St Paul, a Pharisee & expert in biblical laws, altered his former literal interpretation of Hebrew Scriptures & recognised that they needed to be reconsidered through the more gracious understanding of God that Jesus had given. He challenged the over-literal application of religious laws by faith-authorities, recognising that his former rigour as a Pharisee had been mistaken. He reversed his requirement for circumcision of early converts and realised that though God’s revelation came through the Jews, Gentiles were just as important to God and included in God’s promises. This realisation runs right through the Epistle to the Romans. While insisting on the importance of scripture [2Tim.3:16], Paul reapplied it, expanded the mission to the Gentiles [Acts 13-19], loosened the rules about eating kosher foods [Rom.14:14; 1Tim.4:1-5], and came to regard true circumcision as the dedication of the believer’s heart and mind to God, not as the physical operation [Rom.2:28; Gal.6:15; Phil.3:3].
Jesus’ reinterpretation of scripture doesn’t always make things easier for his followers. He claimed: “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” [Matt.5: 20]. Keeping to the spirit not the letter of the commandments and religious laws can be demanding. Retributively demanding ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’,[Matt.5:38; x.21:24;Deut.19:21], stoning people for adultery or blasphemy & expelling the unclean or those who break dietary, moral or religious laws, are inhumane, but sometimes easier than forgiving someone whose wronged you, as Jesus asked. If we are aiming to be righteous, Jesus claimed that anger is as bad as murder [Matt.5:22]. He called lustful looks as bad as adultery [Matt.5:28]. He showed that what is in the heart can be as damaging as our actions. Jesus taught by example that scripture needs to be interpreted in context, recognising the covenant love of God. We’re not mean to just apply one Bible verse or law, but attempt to know God and the whole of Bible teaching well enough to discern what God’s Spirit requires in the particular situations, in which we find ourselves. One challenge of the Church is to help people who largely don’t read their Bibles, to develop such holistic understanding of what scripture says, so that they don’t take commandments, laws or verses out of context.
The Bible contains so much truth, but if we imagine it to have been spoken directly by God or breathed out by God’s Spirit directly to the writers, you wouldn’t expect the mistakes or alterations in historical facts that present in some of the history books of the Bible. God wouldn’t make mistakes & God is concerned with truth.
Theological ideas altered throughout the many centuries over which the biblical books were composed and edited. For example: belief in what comes after death changes through the Bible from ideas in the Pentateuch that we just die and there is nothing beyond the grave, to belief in Sheol, a place of the dead from which there was no escape, to belief at the time of the Maccabean Revolt that there would be heavenly rewards for those who remain faithful under persecution or martyrdom. Belief in a hell of punishment for sin developed around the same time. The Pharisees then Jesus and Paul expanded the idea of rewards to create present beliefs in the dimension of heaven. The Pharisees, and those of the Rabbinic tradition which grew from them were particularly called to find how scriptural teachings should be interpreted in their paticular time and situations. These varied ideas show how scripture reflects human understanding of truth developing over the centuries. Rather than God dictating scripture, it seems more that God’s Spirit influenced and inspired human thought and the growth of knowledge. The Biblical books reflect that historical development in spiritual thought on many subjects.
Rather than the misinterpretable term ‘The Word of God’, it feels more precise to describe the Bible in the equally biblical phrase: ‘the revealed word of truth’ [Jn.17:17; Eph.1:13; Col.1:5; 2Tim.2:15; Jas.1:18] or “the Word of Life”. a term used of Christ himself [1Jn.1:1]. These phrases include the possibility that the different writings which make up the Bible, show a developing human understanding as further aspects of truth were revealed or experienced.
People’s ideas on faith & God altered during the centuries in which the different books of the Bible were written and edited. What was relevant in the legendary stories of Genesis, Exodus, Joshua or Judges & true to the social situations to which the laws of Deuteronomy & Leviticus applied, had been amended & expanded by the time that those who wrote Isaiah or Malachi were applying faith. Malachi emphasised that sacrifices weren’t what God most required. They weren’t intended as a way out when we sin or unfaithful, but an incentive to faithfulness & not to sin. Hebrew religious reformers like Josiah, the reestablishment of the Temple after the Babylonian Exile, then Jesus’ teaching, St. Paul, & the New Testament Epistles refined understanding further and opened up broader perspectives on God, truth, religious rules and how the Hebrew Scriptures applied to their day. God’s Spirit is still increasing human understanding up to us today. That’s why we need to apply new knowledge about history, science & psychology to our understanding of what the Bible is saying.
Mature biblical knowledge is essential for an active Christian faith, balanced Christian understanding, and spiritual discernment and guidance. In the Gospels Jesus so often quoted scripture to show what God was communicating to people. Yet various Christians throughout the world have very different concepts of what the Bible is. An increasingly small number regard the biblical books as verbatim dictations by God, inerrant and to be believed and obeyed literally in every word, but that is still taught in some churches. At the other extreme many Christians largely ignore the Bible, other than when hearing scripture read and expounded in church. Some regard it as teachings that may have been relevant or applicable in past culture, but may be largely irrelevant today and superseded by the norms of modern culture. Other Christians treat their Bible almost superstitiously, like a magic book to be venerated. Some slip into scripture for a favourite selected verse or phrase a day, rather like reading one’s horoscope, rather than considering the whole of scripture for its holistic message and meaning. Both the Evangelical idea of a ‘Quiet Time’ and Catholic contemplative use of Lectio Divina can sometimes be over-selective, choosing to meditate on passages out of context, rather than relating them to the whole of scriptural teaching. An important part of a true Christian interpretation of scripture should always be to get to know the intention of a passage when it was written, and considering it in the context of the rest of the Bible. That’s how we find how to apply it to contemporary situations.
Throughout Church history misinterpretation, false reading, or lack of biblical knowledge have taken many in false or deluded directions. It’s easy to take verses out of context to make them agree with your aim and mean what you want. Putin quoted “Greater love has no-one than this, that they give up their life for their friends” to encourage Russians soldiers to sacrifice their lives in Ukraine. Sadly many today regard their own cultural assumptions and norms as ‘the Christian way’, which is not always true. God may love us, but God isn’t a middle-class Surrey executive justifying their materialistic lifestyle, or an African legalistic church leader justifying tribal cultural practices and condemning the western church as liberal. Some politically justify their ideas by misinterpreting the Bible unconsciously or knowingly. I was astounded in one of Justin Welby's Lent discussions on faith on Radio 4 to hear Tony Blair, in discussing his beliefs, state that “Christianity is essentially about enlightened self-interest”. Surprisingly, the Archbishop of Canterbury didn’t seem to feel the need to challenge it as not Jesus’ teaching.
Christian leaders, institutions, churches & their members often pay lip-service to the importance of scripture, but in practice seem very selective in how they apply its teaching. I’ve encountered many instances of moral and financial dishonesty in churches, justified for reasons of Church politics or ‘because the church needs the money’. We have many traditions, rules, ecclesiastical laws and practices adopted over time, that are far from Jesus’ teaching or biblical principles. Our hierarchies with the Pope or Archbishops at the top of a pyramid of importance reverse Jesus’ words.
He said that “the last should first”[Matt.20:16] & “those who would lead should be the servants of all” [Mk.9:35; cf.1Cor.19:19] or “consider others as better than yourself” [Phil.2:3]. Some Church leaders still dominate by bullying, abuse of power, coercive control, covering up abuse or swell in position while neglecting their flock’s needs and not being humble servants. The most important ones in the Church are those outside who haven’t been introduced to Christ’s gospel, & the needy in the congregation. Ministers, bishops & archbishops are of far lesser importance; they’re supposed to be servants who enable & oversee the spread of faith & discipleship
We need to apply the principles of our Bibles faithfully. Jesus showed that we can’t just pick a verse that seems relevant & apply it. Nor should we rely largely on conscience or intuition for our lifestyle decisions & attitudes, since ‘the heart can be deceitful above all things’ [Jer.17:9]. We make mistakes through personal bias.
Careful discernment through having a holistic knowledge of faith & scripture helps us work out essence of truth behind the words of the Bible. It’s not sufficient to just try to directly apply Hebrew laws & stories written several thousand years ago & the New Testament just under two thousand years ago. Human understandings of life, philosophy, psychology, human needs & social practices, have moved forward greatly since scripture was written. Essential truths in the Bible may be universal, but they often apply slightly differently today, as Jesus applied them differently in his time.
We no longer automatically regard mental health problems as demon possession. Disease and physical disabilities are not assumed to be God’s curse on people for their sins. Same sex relationships and gender dysphasia are more generally accepted because we recognise that people naturally, genetically and psychologically develop in different ways. Rather than regarding lives that vary from traditional norms as sinful or against nature, perhaps God is involved in the formation of varied psychological developments. We know from nature that God relishes variety. Women are generally now recognised as equal & able to lead in church communities, though still not everywhere. We use different rules about lending and borrowing from those in the Pentateuch. Many of the Bible’s rules about the cleanliness of what we eat or do were adopted for health reasons in ancient communities without the access to fridges, freezers, antiseptics, antibiotics, and healthier human and animal health standards. So regulations such as these appear unnecessary today. Or perhaps they need to be applied and interpreted differently to our different culture, and may have possible parallels with contemporary issues about food and society, like sustainability, protection of the environment, animal rights, genetically modified crops and creatures, exploitation of natural resources, vegetarian and vegan ideas etc... Thankfully many churches, but not all, now include people who might in the past have been regarded as sinners or unclean. We must still call out true sin, but we need to be discerning over whether something is sin or just culturally different.
One of our central motives should be God-like ‘agapé’ - outgoing love of all and being willing to overcome personal biases. Here’s the full quote that Putin misquoted for his own ends: Jesus said: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing, but I have called you friends because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me, but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. I am giving you these commandments so that you may love one another” [Jn.15:12-17]. Until recently I had always interpreted “you are my friends if you do what I command you” as though he was demanding legalistically: ‘Keep all God’s laws and all the rules for life that I and scripture have given you’. But thinking through the passage I realise that Jesus’ tone isn’t that of the commanding God of the Hebrew Scriptures & Mosaic Covenant. He was asking us lovingly & gently as friends to follow his ways.
Jesus wasn’t taking away a jot of what their scriptures were saying [Matt.5:17-20]. So all the Bible is still relevant. But we need discernment to apply it. In Jn.15:12-17 Jesus ‘commanded’ us as one might morally request a friend to show the same self-giving love as himself. He showed that God is a holy friend and Father if we are following truth.. The word ‘command’ for us is about following a loving friend who will lead us in the right ways. Christians are not intended to be unthinkingly obeying a dictator God. Our righteousness is not based on obeying strict Laws, but on loving & discerning truth in our friendship relationship with God through Christ. God is still a God of awe & power, but we don’t follow the written Law literally as slaves of God or slaves to written word, like the Pharisees. We’re friends and loved children of God, to whom Jesus showed that his law of love supersedes many religious traditions & regulations. We need to interpret scripture according to Jesus’ revelations about God, love, grace and truth. Living by Christ’s rule of love is the way to abundant life, since Christ said: “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.” [Jn.14:6].
From prison Paul’s prayed for the Church Philippi: “This is my prayer, that your love may abound [or overflow] more and more in knowledge and all discernment [or depth of insight], that you may approve what is excellent and may be pure and faithful for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness, which come through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.” [Phil.1:9-11]. We need to teach believers to know their bibles better, but also to pray for honest discernment in order to apply the teachings of the Hebrew & New Testament Scriptures today. Loving with Christ-like love opens us up & shines light to help discernment of what scripture really means.
In thinking about this session perhaps consider what scripture means to you, and how it has helped in your development of faith.
HANDOUT 4
SESSION 4 FAITHFULNESS TO SCRIPTURAL TRUTH
SUGGESTIONS FOR CONTEMPLATION & PRAYER
- How well do you know your Bible? Do you know it well enough to find parts that apply to situations around you & interpret them in Christ’s perspective? Do you regularly consider scripture’s application to your life & situations around?
- How well do your Church members know scripture? What might help them use, value & understand the Bible better?
There are many complex issues in today’s world, on many of which there is no specific biblical teaching; others we need to interpret sensitively to help people recognise that God loves all. Contemporary thinking & psychological understanding have changed so much since biblical times that there are few simplistic answers to complex issues. How might you approach applying Christian biblical precepts sensitively, with loving understanding of people to: Someone suffering from an incurable, agonising illness & considering euthanasia / Same sex marriage / Abortion / Genetic engineering / Gender reassignment / What might justify war? / How to stop a dangerous dictator destroying life & peace / Economic migration / Inter-faith & inter-cultural relationships & assessing what may be true in a non-Christian religion / ‘Levelling up’ inequity in society / Politicians who lie & use false rhetoric / Issues in contemporary society that are personal to you... etc.
SUGGESTED VERSES FOR LECTIO DIVINA.
[Don’t choose your favourite, but one that seems challenging.]
- “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, reproof, correcting and training in righteousness so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.” [2Tim.3:16].
- “Do not think I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but fulfil. I tell you truly, until heaven & earth pass away, not one letter or stroke of a letter will pass from the law until all is accomplished.”[Matt.5:17-18]
- “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” [Matt.5: 20].
- “This is my prayer, that your love may abound more & more in knowledge & all discernment; that you may approve what is excellent & may be pure & faithful for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness, which come through Jesus Christ for the glory & praise of God.” [Phil.1:9-11].
5 FAITHFULNESS TOWARDS GOD’S PEOPLE, GOD’S CREATION
& CHRIST'S GREAT COMMISSION
If we are truly to be Christ’s followers it is impossible for us to ignore God’s commission to spread faith in God through the world, as in Christ’s Great Commission towards the end of Matthew and repeated in slightly different words in the other Gospels: [Mk.16:15; Lk.24:48; Jn.17:18]: “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you” [Matt.28:19-20]. This is usually interpreted as a commitment to evangelism towards those who don’t believe. But it also encourages us to be committed to deepening the faith & discipleship of fellow believers & protecting the entire world. The World Council of Churches focused the Church’s mission into
‘5 Marks of Mission’:
- To Proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom
- To teach, baptise and nurture new believers,
- To respond to human need by loving service
- To seek to transform unjust structures of society, [to challenge violence of every kind and to pursue peace and reconciliation (was added in 2012)]
- To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth.
The Church of England adopted these in 2008 but sadly we haven’t succeeded very well at any, and several don’t seem to be priorities of some churches.
In St. Francis’s imagery in the ‘Canticle of the Sun’, all creatures and objects in the created Cosmos are described as our brothers and sisters. We are intended to protect and enhance all and not to exploit any. Francis’ idea that we are of one family with every other creature or object in creation gives us a sense of oneness with and responsibility towards everything and everyone around us. Our sense of oneness with others is not 'consorting with the world' as some Christian sects discouraged, advocating separatism. Like Jesus we mix with others to enjoy their company , which can in itself witness to our care for them and God's love for them.
“Witnessing” is a far wider activity than talking about our faith to others, though very few churchgoers are prepared or willing to do that. Sometimes because they don’t feel confident enough to explain faith or don’t want to stand exposed, but most often we just want to be comfortable! Witnessing is in a sense being willing to face ‘martyrdom’ for our faith and in support of the earth. In the context of Christianity, ‘Martýrion’, translated ‘witness’, is broader in meaning than ‘death by martyrdom’, though we should be willing to stand up for faith and truth. It entails living the whole of our Christian lives as a picture to the world of our commitment to God and the truth of what life should be and who God is. Other meanings of ‘martýrion’ in scripture are ‘giving testimony’, ‘proof’, ‘confirming’, ‘affirming’. In many ways this biblical idea of ‘Martýrion’ / 'witnessing' is allied to the meaning of 'pistis' / 'faithfulness'. What Christians do should give proof that we belong to God and that God is true.
During the Covid pandemic, many in communities that may have not previously been particularly united supported one another and developed a greater sense of responsibility towards their neighbours. The increase of people going for countryside walks, gardening and taking on responsibility for pets, brought many closer to nature and increased a sense of responsibility towards the environment nationally & internationally. I hope this sense of responsibility and practical responses to it will continue now society is opening up, but decline has already begun, and isolation and self-sufficiency are returning in many communities. Christians should be at the forefront of taking responsibility for the good of all in our world.
Such responsibility has sometimes been lacking in the Christians response towards all creation. The world’s resources were once regarded as given to us to exploit rather than to cherish and use with careful stewardship. Rather than feeling kinship with everything in creation Christians have sometimes been patronising or superior towards nature. The Creative Mandate in Genesis “fill the earth and subdue it” & “have dominion over all its creatures” [Gen.1:26-30] was interpreted as an excuse to exploit nature. Superiority & ‘dominion’ over creation & the specialness of God’s people above all else is a misinterpretation. Our ‘authority’ and ‘dominion’ is more about being entrusted with responsibility for all rather than superiority over any. That’s how we should treat ministry too: the ‘authority’ of a church leader is about their responsibility for those who are entrusted to them, not about being in a superior position of power, influence or demanding or expecting more respect than others. (Remember Phil.2:5ff.. “Let the same humble mind be in you as was in Christ Jesus...” We are intended to look after all in the created cosmos with humility and sensitivity as wise, caring, responsible stewards.
Despite well-advertised environmental and social problems some who call themselves Christians still feel no responsibility to make changes in their practices to benefit the world. A Christian Donald Trump supporter, interviewed on the radio during his presidency claimed: “I don’t care if Donald Trump does start a nuclear war: it will help Jesus’ victory at Armageddon and bring this world to an end... I don’t care if we destroy the environment and bring about the earth’s destruction. I’m safe with God... I know where I’ll be!” What arrogant self-centredness about their place in God’s Kingdom & lack of education! Christ’s Beatitudes encourage a far different attitude and far greater humility, [Matt.5:1-11].
Christ’s parables calls us to be ‘Salt and Light to the world’ [Matt.5:13-16]; Good Shepherds [Matt.18; Mk.14; Jn10], Wise Stewards & Faithful Managers [Lk.12:42-48], not exploiters like the Unforgiving Steward [Matt.18:23-34], the Dishonest Manager [Lk.16:1-11] or the Pharisee who regarded himself as superior to the Tax-collector [Lk.18:9-14]. God should be able to say of us “Well done, good and faithful steward!” not “I trusted you with much but you have abused my trust!”
The best way to be faithful stewards of God’s world & responsible supporters of our ‘brothers’, ‘sisters’, fellow creatures and the physical materials of the cosmos is to live as good examples, as Christ was and St. Francis sought to be. Francis’ idea of living in harmony with the world around him is increasingly relevant. We may not be able to follow his life of ‘poverty’ in the same ways as him. Living mendicantly and relying on charity would damage our health and give Christians bad reputations in today’s society. There is little intrinsically wrong with possessions if used rightly to benefit others as well as ourselves. We should use all that we have responsibly, not be wasteful or encourage waste. We are to enhance the life of others by being ‘light’ & ‘salt’ [Matt.5:13-16]. Christ set the example and taught that our spiritual gifts and physical possessions should benefit & advance others especially the needy; they’re not just for ourselves.
We also have a responsibility to ensure that what we give will be used rightly. Churches have often been wasteful, not wisely using gifts covenanted to them, sometimes sacrificially. What we do with our gifts has real importance to those whose lives we can affect.
We’ll never persuade some political, business and religious leaders to be less ‘capitalistic’: greed has become a common motivation. Look how money and power over people have corrupted ‘Communism’ in Russia and China! There’s no need of capitalism in God’s Kingdom but unfortunately churches can be greedy too and exploit people. That would not happen if we treated all as our equal kin, for whom we are responsible. Some early churches apparently aimed to be equitable and 'level-up', holding possessions in common and sharing as any had need [Acts 4:32]. But that doesn’t appear to have lasted long as different people treat possessions differently. Greed, self-preservation and desire for dominance are powerful instincts. Today’s political rhetoric about ‘levelling up society’ won’t work – especially when those who propose levelling up do not live equitable lives themselves. Developing & living-out a sense of kinship with all people & creation seems an only way to build equity.
Christ exemplified & taught us humble service, but some see their “call” to “service” as giving them superiority over others. Too often in church committees, factions & institutions one-upmanship, authoritarianism and insistence on personal ideas cause divisions. Too few ‘consider others better than themselves’[Phil.2:3] or acts as the ‘servants of the Church’ or ‘servants of God’ that they claim to be. The Church is here to support people’s faith and facilitate mission and ministry, not to be a self-orientated, self-preoccupied organisation, with people jostling for position. Christ taught: “I came to serve, not to be served.” [Matt.20:28; Mk. 10:45].
Following Jesus encouragement of his disciples to ‘carry no purse, bag or spare sandals, & whatever house welcomes them to pray peace on it’ [Lk.10:4ff.; 22:35f], Francis intended his followers to move among ordinary people unencumbered by the buildings and institutional organisation that today often restrict our churches. I'm sure he would be embarrassed by contemporary Assis, beautiful as its basilica is. Your Third Order Franciscans have his aim: to live out our Christian lives authentically as a practical witness within society. “Let your lives so shine before all that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven” [Matt.5:16].
If people recognise authenticity & abundance in us, they are more likely to be attracted to join us recognising something true that might inspire them to develop their own life-giving relationships with God. An exciting prophecy in Zechariah shows how faith spreads best: “... people from nations of every language shall take hold of a believer, grasping his garment & saying: “Let us go with you for we have heard & see that God is with you” [Zech.8:23].
Our faith is more likely ot be recognised as true when others see it makes lives vibrant and truthful & gives us respect for all others around. We may feel small, aging or weak, but we can still live abundant lives in Christ’s light, showing hope & the Spirit’s fruit. In a dark & troubled world we can shine out as beacons, radiate God’s love & truth and stand and work for justice.
Abundant life doesn’t mean wealth, possessions or success – that’s too worldly a concept, too close to the false ‘prosperity gospel’ that claims that if you are good to God he will give you wealth, That’s against Christ’s teaching. Abundant Christian life comes through following Christ’s ways, expressing our full humanity humbly & righteously. We are to use the gifts and resources entrusted to us to fulfil others. A side-benefit will be fulfilment of ourselves.
It’s no good trying to attract people to church if they come and find what they see of the Christian life as boring, patronising, irrelevant, self-conscious or self-congratulatory. On ‘Back to Church Sunday’ we sometimes pull out the stops for a day but in my experience, the following weeks tend to revert to past form. God deserves our best in worship; so do those we want to join our Christian communities.
Services don’t need to be energetic, multi-media, beautiful music and stimulating environment events, which sometimes distract from true inner worship. I like the silent quiet of Quaker meetings but enjoy many expressive traditions of Christian worship as long as I recognise meaning & truth in them. Authentic worship, as Christ told the Samaritan woman at the well is ‘in Spirit and in truth’ [Jn.4:23]. In order for us to grow as churches & reflect God’s Kingdom, relationships within the Christian community need to be seen to be equally ‘in Spirit and truth’- loving, unified and supportive.
Our mission is to find the ways that feed the spirituality and other needs of the particular community in which we live and serve. That will vary in almost every situation, because of individual and social diversity. Trying to plant one type of church or spirituality in a situation where it doesn’t communicate to the needs of the society around it doesn’t work. Where ‘successful’ churches have tried to ‘church-plant’, the congregation often becomes a ghetto for the group that planted it rather than attracting those from the neighbourhood outside. We need to be humble and perhaps alter our own preferred methods of expressing our spirituality to meet the needs of others among whom we live. The strong Christian can always find personal ways of fulfilling their relationship with God beyond main church services.
The variety of people’s characters, spiritualities & physical & spiritual needs is one reason why it is wrong (perhaps even sinful) to try to create homogenous churches with all trying to present the same type of spirituality & ways of understanding God. Bishops who aim to make every church in their diocese think & confirm to their ways are failing in their role as stewards of the wide variety of people, churches and communities in their diocese, To aim to homogenise the Church also betrays the nature of God's creation and Christ’s teaching, which surely longs to opens up all people to God by affirming and encouraging all forms of true spirituality. Remember that quote from Helen Oppenheim: “Our diversity should enable God to be found in all areas of life in the world… The word multi-faceted comes to mind… the church may be a prism breaking up the white light of God’s dazzling majesty.”
The Covid pandemic forced many churchgoers to find new personal, non-congregational ways to nourish and express their spirituality. It has also forced churches to reconsider the priorities of the Church since donations to churches have decreased enormously. We need to be faithful stewards, cutting our coat according to the cloth! Institutions need to reconsider their Christian priorities and cut expenditure on non-necessities and ‘vanity projects’ to concentrate on developing true Christianity and discipleship in churches. Many Christian administrative institutions & diocesan bodies are now far too large for the limited finances coming in from decreasing church numbers or lack of support from those who have become disillusioned with church for varieties of reasons.
The increasing numbers of administrators and spurious ‘advisors’ employed by many dioceses are far less important than employing more active ministers working at the coal-face in parishes to raise people’s faith. Where diocesan cuts have been made often important advisors like those on Christian education & spirituality, or Education resource centres and teachers of faith who have been lost. The Church doesn’t grow through financial advisors or those who teach narrow evangelistic styles that no longer communicate. It grows by building true faith. Where church-goers perceive waste, squandering of gifts or wrong priorities their giving rightly decreases, which is why churches are often in bad financial states.
By contrast to the institutionalisation of some modern church organisations, Jesus and St. Francis are admired by many beyond the Church for the authenticity of their faith, even if people aren’t attracted to make quite as many sacrifices as them. It is their authenticity in living faithfully which is noticeable & attractive, & their lack of self-importance. We need new St. Francises to encourage the Church worldwide or locally to rethink its priorities and form a new ‘reformation’ to return us closer to Christ’s ideal. But many leaders, church structures and institutions may regard themselves as having too much to lose to reform or change. It's easy to become self-protective and want to preserve your position rather than submit one's own position to the priorities of Christ's actual mission. We see that self-protection in the attitudes and actions of the religious authorities who opposed both Jesus and St. Francis. The status quo keeps people in comfortable posts while ‘reform’ can be uncomfortable. Yet throughout Biblical and Church History God’s people have primarily advanced spiritually during times of challenge reform, and declined in times of self-satisfaction.
More important to reform, mission & church-growth than church ministers, advisors or committees are our congregation members, who churches should be training better and encouraging to work, share and live-out faith effectively. Our congregational members are the ones at the real coal-face of society who are in the most natural position to show what authentic faith is to the people around them. The most important people to consider aren’t any who are in the church at all. Jesus said: “I have come to seek and save the lost” [Lk.19:10; 15:6; Matt.15:24]. Far more important than having an ‘in’ with Church hierarchy or have an important role the church, is to be effective witnesses to all outside the church who we want to attract to find belief, a relationship with God, and Christ’s promised abundant life. The church will only grow if we attract new people to true faith. But we shouldn’t aim to engage in mission as a pretext to finance our churches: I've heard in so many churches: "We need to attract more people to join us because we need their money!" That attitude makes me angry and frustrated. It also implies that those who can't afford to give to the church because they are in dire financial positions, aren't the sort of people we want. What would Christ, St. Francis or St. Lawrence say to that, with their love for the poor and needy?! That attitude is like Tony Blair's statement that "Christianity is essentially about enlightened self-interest"! We should engage in mission to enhance the lives of those who do not yet have life-giving relationships with God, with no thought of anything we might get out of it, other than the delight of widening our own experience through new relationships.
Today, if we use Jesus’ term ‘the lost’ of those outside our form of belief seems disparaging & judgemental. A more useful term might be those who are “missing out”, but that too sounds patronising, especially as many outside churches will be living relatively more fulfilled lives than some Christians. What we try to do by introducing others to Christianity is to help them find how their present life can be enhanced & sometimes transformed by a relationship with God through Christ and through following the way that Jesus showed, taught and achieved. We who believe have to make sure that we are living that abundance of life ourselves, not lives of spiritual mediocrity, so that, as in Zechariah’s prophecy, people recognise that we’ve found truth and are attracted to join us.
Abundance does not depend on wealth, having a big church, exciting experiences or easy circumstances. I have known several disabled friends, others living on the breadline, with severe problems or near the end of their lives, who nevertheless live vibrant spiritual lives, with joy and inner peace, that make me ashamed if I compare my faith, peace and relationship with God to theirs.
Paul wrote of giving great respect to the “less honourable & less respectable members of the body”... “clothing them with greater honour”... “and treating them with greater respect” [1Cor.12:23]. St. Lawrence presented the poor, the sick & disabled as “the Treasures of the Church.” That seems to have been St. Francis’s attitude too. Following Christ’s example, he treated the poor, the leper, the needy & the child with honour, respect & love, & nourished them. That’s true “levelling up”, since as Christ said: the good & self-righteous often already have their reward [Matt.6:2. 16].
The Church is meant to be the ‘body of Christ’ [1Cor.12:12-30] in which all work together & are valued. Our churches will more resemble the Kingdom of God when we show everyone that we value them and use and enhance their gifts. Churches shouldn’t just look for the spiritually or physically highly gifted and raise their profile in the congregation. We need to make sure that everyone feels that they have a valued place in the body and are contributing something useful. The old or less able who may feel they are a burden to look after, need to be valued without patronising, & helped to recognise that they are considered to be of equal value to the active, vibrant, wealthy and able. All are our kin and all have gifts to contribute. In the Church ‘Body’, the position of the cleaner or maker of teas is as significant as the service of a minister. Those who pray at home faithfully & support friends on the phone can be of even more practical service than the minister themselves. The most Kingdom-like church of which I was ever a member was one where half the congregation came from a home for the mentally handicapped. All were involved & all were treated with honour & respect as treasures of the church. I felt I could take anybody into that church, from my dope-smoking neighbour to a secular Muslim friend. They all found it a spiritually meaningful and worshipful experience & came again. It felt like being close to God’s Kingdom, with no sense of the hierarchy, superiority or cliqueyness that sometimes spoils churches. Christ gave us his example: “He did not count equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant” [Phil.2:6-7].
‘Loving one’s neighbour as oneself’ and spreading Christ’s teaching go together. Agapé love of others is a primary requirement for all effective mission & evangelism. If we are just sharing faith because we feel constrained to do so, it comes over as false and will never convince people that spiritual truths can be life-changing. If people consider they are regarded and treated as friends and equals, they are more likely to listen to loving witness.
The New Testament calls believers to ‘always be ready to give a reasonable defence to anyone for the hope that is within us’ [1Pet.3:15]. Yet not many in churches are confident that they know their faith sufficiently to give a reasoned explanation or apologetic for what they believe. Our limitations are not altogether bad, because they make us rely on God’s Spirit to guide us & give us courage & discernment about how to communicate faith most effectively. It is not enough for a Christian to just answer “I don’t know” to spiritual questions directed at us. Even with mysteries of faith which cannot be explained, we need to be able to explain that it is still possible to believe in the unprovable, invisible God and faithfully witness to the truths of faith which drive us. Christianity is not primarily about knowing or being able to recite a set of beliefs. It involves living in an authentic relationship with God and loving people and God’s world with an outgoing love. That’s a practical truth that people will be able to recognise.
True ‘agapé’ love is hard work; it doesn’t come easily. I must admit that there have been several Church people over the years, who at times I have not ‘loved: – Not so much those who are painful personalities, or who demand most in ministry, but those who neglect their responsibilities, bullies who abuse power, or arrogant leaders who lie or are hypocrites. It takes supreme effort to acknowledge the values in some people, but there is too much opportunity today for negative criticism in society and less opportunity to get alongside people and help them towards a better way. It’s easier to influence someone who is a friend, or who you try to love, than someone with whom we are distant.
Christians have not always been sensitive in how we share our faith & not put people off. Standing on our soapbox & proclaiming that people are sinners; that Christ died for them & they should come to him and repent, is NOT the way to effectively stir faith & persuade people to do good in the contemporary world. It probably never was, nor was frightening people with hellfire & damnation as the Church did for centuries. Effective communication of faith entails truly getting to know diverse people, discovering their ways of thinking & needs, & trying to discern how the gospel & teachings of Christ might apply to those needs. If someone is our friend we won’t use insensitive words or ideas. Few learn faith just by being around Christians, even though we hope they might recognise a certain Christian ‘distinctiveness’ in us. We can’t expect faith just to rub off on anyone: we need to move beyond our comfort-zone and speak because the Christian faith needs to be explained & taught. Even Jesus taught; he did not just evangelise by example.
Perhaps Jesus’ greatest commandment (even more important than the Great Commission at the end of Matthew was for us to do as he did - to follow his example & teach as he did: “Do what you see me doing”. This is not meant to be burdensome, though it is hard: In Matt.11:29-30 he taught his followers: “learn from me”...“Take my yoke upon you and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for you souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light,” In the context of washing his disciples’ feet like a servant he pointed to himself as their model; “I have set you an example, that you should do as I have done for you.” [Jn.13:15]. Jesus encourages all Christians to follow his example. Paul also encouraged others to follow the way that he himself applied faith:: “Brothers and sisters, join in imitating me, and observe those who live according to the example that you have in us” [Phil.3:17].
Would that we all could be as confident that the righteousness of our lives might shine as a sufficient example to others! Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could say of ourselves and of our Church, as we should be able to do: “If you want to know whether Christianity is true and what God is like look at me!” What false image of God would people get from just looking at today’s Church worldwide? God has given us responsibility to be his representatives, ambassadors and stewards, to look after his world, teach Christ’s ways and spread the Kingdom. It worked when St. Francis was faithful & awakened true faith: We follow in his and Christ’s responsible footprints!
So perhaps the best challenge to leave us with at the end of this retreat is ... Go forth faithfully following the example of Jesus and St. Francis, and let’s work and pray to continue to reform our churches so that we all faithfully represent God and God’s Kingdom truthfully to those among whom we live.
HANDOUT 5
SESSION 5 FAITHFULNESS TOWARDS GOD’S PEOPLE, GOD’S CREATION
& CHRIST'S GREAT COMMISSION
Matt.28:19-20 ‘ “Go, make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, Son & Holy Spirit... & teach them to obey all I have commanded you.”
SUGGESTIONS FOR CONTEMPLATION & PRAYER
How faithful are you in the 5 Marks of Mission?...
- To Proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom
- To teach, baptise and nurture new believers,
- To respond to human need by loving service
- To seek to transform unjust structures of society, [to challenge violence of every kind and to pursue peace and reconciliation (added in 2012)]
- To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth.
SUGGESTED VERSES FOR LECTIO DIVINA:
- “Let your light so shine before all that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven” [Matt.5:16].
- “... people from nations of every language shall take hold of a believer, grasping his garment & saying: “Let us go with you for we have heard & see that God is with you” [Zech.8:23].
- “You are the salt and light to the earth, but if the salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored?... You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden.., Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven,” [Matt.5:13-16];
- “Well done, good & faithful steward; you have been trustworthy in a few things; I will entrust you with many things. Enter into your master’s joy!” [Matt.25:23]
- “...learn from me”...“Take my yoke upon you and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for you souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light,” [Matt.11:29-30]
- “Members of the body that seem to weaker are indispensable & those members of the body that we think less honourable we clothe with greater honour, & our less respectable members are treated with greater respect” [1Cor.12:22-24].
- ‘Always be ready to give a reasonable defence to anyone for the hope that is within you.’ [1Pet.3:15].
ADDENDUM - Ideas for which there was no time in the sessions
COVENANT COMMITMENT TO FAITHFULNESS
Faithfulness grows from feeling committed to our covenant commitments to God. God’s covenant promise to be faithful to human beings was made in legend first with Adam and Eve, then with Noah, then confirmed in a more personal way in the covenants to the Hebrew people with Abraham, Jacob, Moses then, after the exiles in Assyria and Babylon, reaffirmed in the religious and social covenant reforms like those of Josiah, reaffirmed after the rebuilding of the Temple in Ezra and Nehemiah.
Christ expanded that covenant to include the whole world by in-grafting Gentiles into God’s promises [Heb.8&9; Eph.2:12 and Gal.3:17; Matt.8:10; Lk.7:9; Jn.12:20]. Most of today’s churches comprise believers from Gentile roots incorporated into the body the Church]. The original covenant with Abraham was intended to include the whole world, not just to Jews. The promise was that many, from every tribe and nation of the world should find blessing through the Jewish relationship with God: “Through you, all the nations of the world will find blessing” [Gen.12:3b; 18:18; 22:18; 26:4; Gal.3:8; Acts 2:39; 3:25; Rom.9:8].
For centuries following Israel largely neglected that side of their covenant commitment and came to regarded themselves as the exclusive, special ‘People of God’. The wording of the Covenant made with Abraham, didn’t intend them to be exclusive. Jews were intended to share their relationship with God and the blessings it brought them with the world in which they moved. The fulfilment of the original covenant promise and Christ’s inclusion of the Gentiles is found in the imagery of Rev.7: Symbolic numbers of thousands from the 12 tribes of Israel are accompanied by “a great number that no one could count, from every nation; from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the Lamb...” [Rev.7:9].
Unfortunately the Christian attitude to religion has sometimes been just as exclusive as the Hebrew one. We’ve found faith for ourselves, but sometimes fail to recognise that God’s love and faithfulness is supposed to be shared with all. St. Francis’ seems to have felt so secure as a member of the Body of Christ that he could reach out and regard everyone in society as his brother and sister. . I feel certain that there will be many people in God’s Kingdom, (whatever heaven eventually turns out to be) who surprise some Christians by their presence among the ‘multitude that no-one could number from every tribe and nation’ in Rev.7:9. Christianity is not an exclusive religion; it should reach out God’s love and care to include a multitude of people who have often been excluded from faith. Being ‘Faithful’ suggests that God’s people should feel and act with the same sort of responsibility to the world that our Creator displays and which Christ showed to us.
Jesus himself started the mission to the Gentiles & continued by the disciples. While Peter was with Jesus on earth, the concentration ws on the mission to the Jews, thought Jesus took the mission into Gentile areas like the Decapolis and the mixed area of Samaria. may not have taught Peter’s vision of the cloth coming down from heaven in Acts10:9-16, helped him to change his attitude to Gentiles & traditionally unclean foods. Peter recognised that “what God has declared clean should no longer be regarded as traditionally unclean.” Peter realised that the mission to which Jesus’ followers were commissioned must be opened up to people of all cultures. That necessarily entails applying Jesus’ teaching to different cultures with different cultural norms from those of the Jews and Hebrew religious laws
In following faith we have made a covenant agreement to follow God’s ways from baptism onward. As our life experiences and understanding of faith develop, we often renew covenant commitments to God in different ways at different stages of life. We make commitments at conversion, baptism, confirmation or ordination, at times of personal repentance and renewal, in Lent or Advent, making vows as members of religious Orders, renewing commitments on retreats, or when some new enlightenment comes along. Our vows or decisions to be faithful are committed covenant agreements, sealed by our promises and by God’s commitment to us.
Faithfulness to God involves all Christians living in the ways that are true to them, finding God’s truth in the world in which they live, and helping to build God’s Kingdom with the individual gifts and insights they receive & discover. We expand Christ’s message, spread the knowledge of salvation & show God’s relevance to people by living authentic lives. Quite a challenge! Jesus’ ‘Great Commission’ to his followers before leaving earth was for all to actively follow his mission: “Go be my witnesses to the ends of the earth...” [Matt.28:19-20; Mk.16:15; Lk.24:48; Jn.17:18]. But we all witness in different ways by living out the individual lives we’ve been given, with the gifts we have, among the people and communities in which we are placed or with which we have contact.
THE REQUIREMENTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITHFULNESS
St. Paul’s epistles, & the Letters to the Seven Churches in Rev. 2 & 3 criticised members of different Christian groups for displaying hypocrisy before the world. We live in a fairly untrusting society, amid many untrustworthy situations and untrustworthy institutions, so it is inevitable that others will scrutinise us. We should be able to say: ‘If you want to know what God and God’s Kingdom are like, look at the Church!’ (Sadly that would too often give many people worldwide a false impression of the Christian God!) We should be presenting a far more holy, loving, unified, righteous and committed image of Christ to the whole world, showing that we love & value all as God does.
Unfortunately the Church, its members, leaders and institutions have too often moved away from the priorities that Christ promoted & developed. Sadly I’ve seen more false ambition in churches than I ever experienced in my career in education. Inter-church politics can unfortunately be as devious as secular politics. What outsiders often see in churches too often puts them off belief & commitment, rather than attracting them.
Christ commended faithfulness in his followers: - the faithful steward [Lk.12:42; 16:10], the rich young man [Matt:19:16ff.], the one leper of the ten who had been healed and returned to thank Jesus [Lk.17:11-19].
We need to develop a trusting faith: that God’s Spirit is a trustworthy guide; that Christ’s ways can lead to the most human fulfilment and the best ways for the world; and that the power of God is as trustworthy as a perfect Father working for our good. Jesus assured us that God would continue to keep working for us, in Jn.14:19, but in a sceptical, complex world of problems building that assurance and trust in guidance and protection can be difficult & challenging.
The world is still in dire need of the peace & assurance that faith & trust in God can bring. Worldly fulfilment is rarely enough to satisfy the spiritual & inner needs of human beings. It is tragic that so many wealthy, successful or famous people commit suicide or feel depressed, unsatisfied or unfulfilled. Christians aren’t immune from this either. Fulfilment is not about being the best, getting to the top ourselves or gaining all we can at the expense of others. Fulfilment is often found in recognising that we have helped to raise others, and recognising that others are as valuable as or better than ourselves. We are important to God. The compiler of Ecclesiastes attempted personal advance, yet recognised in the early chapters that such material & personal fulfilment was like ‘chasing the wind’ After possessing all & being everything one might want. he still found himself spiritually, intellectually or emotionally unsatisfied.
WAYS OF BEING FAITHFUL DEVELOP & CHANGE OVER TIME
The Bible encourages us to find and live by the truth of what God is asking us to do. Calling the Bible “the Word of God” can in itself lead to misleading interpretation. It makes some believe that God dictated every word, phrase & law in scripture. If that were the case every word must be inerrant & must apply literally for all time & in every situation & culture. That wasn’t Jesus’ attitude to scripture. Although he stated firmly that did not intend to take away any detail of scripture, he taught that it needed to be interpreted differently according to context.
In working out how we should act faithfully as Christians in individual circumstances, a fashionable question in some church circles is: “What would Jesus do?” This can be useful in beginning to make choices, but it can also lead to over-simplistic answers. Jesus of Nazareth taught and was active in a very different culture from ours. Even he applied the Hebrew scripture of the Law and Prophets to his contemporaries in different ways to their meanings when they were written several centuries before him. We need to think deeply, with thorough spiritual discernment about how the whole of scripture might apply in our world today.
How we follow the example of Christ depends a lot on how we imagine and interpret Jesus. Some of his contemporaries criticised him for being a wine bibber and consorting with the morally and physically unclean. [Lk.5:30; 15:2]. Jesus countered the criticism with the parable of the Lost Sheep. We, like him are meant to go out into the world to seek all who God loves and help them become part of God’s fold. Like God’s faithfulness, Christ’s incarnation and St. Francis’s mission, we mix with the world because we are representing God’s love to all. Francis embraced the leper; we should be willing to embrace all those who are considered social lepers today.
Jesus called legalistic forms of religion, among other things “whitewashed tombs” [Matt.23:27-32] ‘hypocrisy’ [Matt.6:2, 5, 16; 15:7; 22:18; 23:13-29], and putting obstacles in the way of God’s children [Matt:18:6; Lk.17:1-2; 1Cor.9:12; 2Cor.6:3]. St. Paul described the deadening effect of the Law throughout Romans. Jesus by contrast, brought freedom and life... “The truth will set you free” [Jn.8:32]... “For freedom Christ has set us free from the present evil age” [Gal.1:5]. Jesus brought us freedom from slavery to what had been regarded as the dictates of God, by showing that the Law was given in love and was to be interpreted through love. We are to “live as free people, yet without using our freedom as a pretext for evil.” [1Pet.2:16]. In other words, in our freedom we’re living out the Kingdom of God on earth.
Based on scripture, Christians have often been very quick to judge, as were the religious leaders of Jesus’ day. Complex subjects deserve considered thought, discernment & depth of knowledge of the individual situations involved. People are complex beings and their situations are often very complicated and intertwined. God loves us all equally and personally. Christ did not quickly condemn; he loved people and engaged with their issues. All life is sacred.
Scripture developed as a means whereby people might come to recognise the truths by which they could understand the complexity of the physical and spiritual world and find the ways to abundance of life. In applying scripture faithfully and holistically we are trying to see how the truths contained within it can make life more abundant and maximise our fruitfulness. Biblical books may contain many practical warnings, but its stories are about real people finding, often through complex situations, the best ways to spiritual, physical and cultural fulfilment. Immersing ourselves in an understanding of the essence of scripture, can enable us to apply it faithfully, and spread fulfilment not just in our lives, but to enhance the lives of those around us.
CHANGE IN FRANCISCAN PRACTICE
Christ’s ideals, almost inevitable became modified as the Church settled and became formalised. In Franciscan history, the leader’s simple peripatetic ideal didn’t last for long before later followers began to institutionalise the movement, and brought disunity between the ‘Conventuals’ and the ‘Observants’. The same happened with the Dominicans who were also founded at about the same time as a mendicant order. The Conventuals followed a rule that they amended over time to allow them a more comfortable, settled and less challenging mission. They built religious houses without demanding strict poverty and developed wealth and possessions. But this settlement inevitably created greater distance between the friars and the people to whom they were meant to minister. Many have claimed that St Francis would have been embarrassed by the Basilica in Assisi, wonderful though its fabulous artworks are. I’m an art-historian who really admires Cimabue, Giotto and the other artists who contributed to churches throughout time. I am also an artist who paints artworks for display in churches and cathedrals. So I find this concept challenging. Though images and buildings attempt to glorify God and provide space for enhancing worship, prayer and teaching the faith, we need to remember that maintaining our church is not the heart of Christianity or our mission.
The more fundamental Franciscan ‘Observants’, who, like St. Bernardino of Siena, followed more closely Francis’s original ascetic and peripatetic aims for the Order, remaining closer to their founder’s ideal. Christianity needs to be ‘contemplative-active’, as some describe Francis’ approach. In practice this means achieving a right balance between contemplation, activity, mission, worship and living abundant life. Francis would have missed out the ‘abundant life’ bit, I think, as he felt that service necessarily entailed accepting hardship.
PERSONAL
I’ve attended study courses & led-retreats where some participants appeared to be longing for new ways of being spiritual, wanting to experiment with new practices of prayer and contemplation. Exploring and discovering new ways of expressing your relationship with God are helpful if we are approaching God ‘in Spirit and in Truth’ [Jn.4:23-24]. But sometimes exploring new practices or ideas can seem to be more important to people than seeking to be true to one’s relationship with God. Often our spirituality develops beyond the tradition in which we have found God, and it is not unusual to move towards a different tradition. I myself have moved from Free Evangelical to a High-Church expression of faith before now settling into a more contemplative spirituality. My spirituality has become more thinking & catholic since my youth, but I’m glad that in my late teens and 20s as a keen young Evangelical I studied the Bible committedly. I still don’t know it well enough, (few of us do,) but knowing its teaching, stories, laws, histories, precepts and what it says about God are foundations on which we build a practical and sound faith and Christian practice. Thankfully my understanding of faith has burdened since those early days when I made many mistakes & was insensitive in some of my witnessing. But though I cringe at some of my early ideas and practices, I’m grateful for the grounding in teaching, even though I might interpret many scriptures differently. It’s important to be open to change in discerning ways.
Most of us change in our ways of thinking & believing over the years of our lives. It’s part of our spiritual growth. But St Paul warned against running around chasing new spiritual experiences [1Tim.1:4; 2Tim.4:4], possibly because he was aware that so many pagan spiritual and philosophical ideas were beginning to alter the emphasis of Christ’s teachings in the early Church. We always need to test the spirits to see if they are led by God’s Spirit, faithful to Christ’s teachings and whether they are relevant for us [1Jn.4:1].
We may all find God or be aware of the presence of spiritual truth in different ways. A scientist might find aspects of God in delving into intricate things, enormous powers and the finesse of natural laws. A poet or artist might reach truth more through intuitively finding something meaningful or beautiful. A manual worker might reach truth in working with the earth’s materials and finding satisfaction and meaning in them: We all might encounter truth in the ways that we interact in society. That’s a far too generalised assessment: all types of people are complex, with interwoven ways of thinking. As we have complicated minds, we’ll all find aspects of truth through a combination of ways. What matters is to be open and keep our minds attuned to truth wherever we find it. This may be anywhere, if God’s Spirit is present everywhere.
But it is not enough to know the truth. True, faithful Christianity is not about having spiritual experiences or knowledge. It entails ‘praxis’: acting upon the teaching and knowledge we have to help build God’s Kingdom as Christ taught & exemplified.