The Hidden God

Mark 5:43 Jesus commanded them not to tell anyone what had happened...

This command comes right after the miracle of raising Jairus' daughter from the dead. Talking about this, someone said "So God conspires to keep himself hidden - how do you feel about that?" And I realized that what I feel is ANGRY! People need God, people need grace and love and forgiveness - how can He hide from them? People are genuinely searching, genuinely trying to believe, seeking him or lost in the multiplicity of religions - how can God possible justify hiding from them?

Looking further back in the story, even before Jesus goes in to heal the girl, he says to everyone outside "She is only sleeping" (Mark 5:39). I cynically thought at the time that this is so that they have an "out" not to believe if they choose not to. Jesus himself gives them an excuse, which they can choose to use so as not to believe. It reminds me a little of the story in John 12:29, where a voice speaks from heaven but people can't decide if it is the voice of an angel or just a bit of thunder. Finding this open option to believe or not in John's gospel in particular, strikes me as strange. John is the disciple who is the most emphatic about the love of God for people, his gospel the one which most emphasizes grace and forgiveness and love - why should this cruel dilemma appear here and not in any of the other gospels? Sounds more like Luke to be including every little detail!

Then I started to wonder - perhaps it is more of the grace and love of God after all? God gave me a choice to believe in Him or not, surely He must be equally gracious to everyone else! Perhaps God does not want to overwhelm us with His Presence, as must surely happen if we come face to face with God! Perhaps the Hidden God is the only one it is possible to "find". A God who is controlling everything, forcing everyone to His will, who is ever-present and makes His Presence continually felt, it would be hard to deny such a God but equally hard to have faith in or love such a God. If God truly desired to hide Himself completely, who could ever find Him? Perhaps it is only in that moment - when we have enough evidence to believe, but not quite enough to know - only then can we truly have free will, and only then can we truly be said to choose to love, to choose faith.

Saying No.

Today at Solace we discussed setting healthy boundaries and saying "no", after Jesus' teaching "let your yes be yes, and your no, no." The story of the pigeon who wanted to drive the bus was a great illustration of setting sensible limits and responsibly saying no.

The first exercise was to write on the bus what not so good things might be driving us - things which we should maybe be saying no to, or at least questioning. I realized how much I am driven by the need to be right, and to be seen to be right. Sometimes I just about burst trying to hold in self-justifications and self-defenses, even when I know I am in the wrong, and it seems like it should be easier to just say "You're right" or "I made a mistake". More taming of the tongue required here!

The second exercise was to rehearse difficult situations in advance, and to think of ways to say no. After all, we prepare for any other kind of difficult speech or situation. I was surprised to find that I couldn't think of very many ways to say no at all! I think I must hide behind excuses such as "My husband won't let me" or "I'm working that day" rather than just saying straight out no. I think this why I get myself overcommitted and stressed out. Just last week I was offered three fantastic opportunities to do things I really like and want to participate in, so I said yes to all of them. Now of course this week I am stressed and anxious and taking it out on those around me. Not good.

The third exercise was to think about why we find it hard to say no, and in what circumstances. I realized that I take on an excess of responsibility, and that I don't like to delegate or let things go. I think this is encouraged in doctors generally, and probably other kinds of professionals as well. This leads me to feel that I have to "step into the breach" and do things, when in fact others could certainly do some of them, and it might be worth considering if they are worth doing in the first place!

Homosexuality - an issue for our age?

I wonder if homosexuality will in future be seen as an old-fashioned issue, much as living together before marriage is today? Some people will have convictions about it, but that will not bother society at large, and it will not be seen as a reason to exclude someone from the congregation nor to question their faith. The homophobia of our age will perhaps become like the witch-hunts of the past – something people did with the best of intentions, but we know better today and would not repeat their mistakes. I hope that grace will so permeate the church that homophobia will become like racism - unthinkable within the church, and something which Christians will feel bound to fight wherever it occurs.

I feel that sexuality is not truly the heart of Christianity, and will eventually take up the marginal position it deserves (in terms of major theological issues). Of course, how we live is integral to our faith and sexuality is a part of that, but homosexuality should not in my opinion be ranked as a faith issue alongside the divinity of Christ. Rather, it should take up a secondary position on which Christians of good conscience can agree to disagree, more like the creation/evolution debate which is hot and passionate for some.

In the future as family stability continues to erode it would not surprise me at all if homosexuality as an issue were to fade away, to be replaced with an increased emphasis on adultery. As the gay lobby correctly points out, adultery is far more socially destabilizing and damaging to the family, especially children. If there is to be a sexual sin for which people are called to account in their church community (not that I think this is ideal either) I would vote for adultery over homosexuality every day of the week and twice on Sundays.

As for homosexuality itself, I am glad this is not an issue with which I have to contend personally – I have quite enough issues of my own! Everyone has his/her own issues to bear, and I have no intention of commenting on that which does not concern me - that would be gossip which is also a sin. When too much free exchange of opinion occurs between people who are not personally involved in an issue, surely that is gossip and food for temptation into pride and voyeurism? Watching and commenting on other people's sins can be as interesting as committing them oneself, without any risk of adverse consequences. Unfortunately the consequences to the mind and heart are often not factored in, and if I indulge in my taste for gossip I am tempted away from charity and prayer and into mere speculation or worse.

As it is, I hear Jesus saying to me “What is that to you? You follow me.”

ChIPS camp

Last weekend was the ChIPS (Chronic Illness Peer Support) camp. I was initially worried about going as the doctor for a bunch a young adults (12-25) with a bewildering variety of chronic illnesses. As it turns out I was worried about the wrong things completely!

The weekend was a great event for all the participants. It was really touching to hear them reflect on what it meant to them to get away and have a weekend doing normal stuff. This is probably the only time some of them get to do camp activities, for others it is the only time they get away from their parents. I loved what they had to say about it:

"It's great to go away and not have people fussing over you all the time, asking
if you're OK and having to pretend that everything is super-duper. You can just
be normal."

"ChIPS is about more than just chronic illness. It's about being a teenager and getting on with life." (The ChIPS mission statement as quoted from memory by a member.)

"ChIPS isn't just a program, ChIPS is us!"

"It got to the stage I didn't need to ask for help - when something came up, they were just there for me. I loved that."

"Before I came on ChIPS I knew I had a lot of things wrong with me. ChIPS has opened doors for me, but it has also closed doors - bad doors! Without ChIPS I wouldn't be the person I am today."

Over and over people said how the program, the leadership training, the friends had influenced them to reach out, to try something new, to stretch themselves. One of the camp activities was to make a 2 minute advertisement for ChIPS, and in the preceeding discussion I was amazed and inspired by the genuine enthusiasm they all had for the program. They were determined to convince everyone to join! If they had their own way, the advertisement would have gone for 10 minutes in praise of all the wonderful things ChIPS does for them all. The script was eventually edited to less than half its length to meet the stipulated time.

I was amazed how supportive they all were of each other. Even those with the most significant disabilities were encouraged by their peers to do everything, try everything, get involved in everything. I was impressed with how sensitive they all were to each other's abilities, as well as disabilities. I think I was inclined to underestimate them at first, but they never underestimated each other.

I can't remember the last time I had so much good, clean fun! Playing musical chairs, duck and goose, musical statues, group karaoke, dancing, swimming, rafting, building towers - it was like a trip back to the best parts of my own teenage years. The crowning event was to be in the winning team: Funky Fish forever! It doesn't get any better than that.

The worst thing was being too tired to keep going, too old to keep up and too sore the next morning! Today I could hardly walk down the stairs! I am sadly conscious of being past my physical peak - at the ripe old age of 30 years. But I am reminded of my good health in a way I was never aware of before. If those kids can get on with it with all their disadvantages, how much more should I get off my tail and do something with the life, the health, the energy God has given me? I was so glad that this weekend I could give a little back.

Solace Prayer

I went to the Solace prayer session on Thursday, and had some thoughts about what it means for our little community to be moving out into the wider world, and some hopes for what it might mean.

I hope that we remember our beginnings and continue to define ourselves as “church” as “people” and not a “place”, even when we have a place. This is easy when we are only a people with no place, but we must not let a place make us want to set relationship boundaries. When we have a building and a space to make our own, and we set ourselves up to use the space, I hope that does not make us "closed" to other people. I don't want us to get to the point that "Solace" means the building and not the people in it. Even worse, I hope it never happens that people feel unwelcome to drop in or to join us because we have let the fixed place also fix our self-image in a way that excludes people or is not open to change.

I hope that we remember our beginning, and that we chose to become a separate people in order to preserve all of the people entire, and to keep relationships intact. We chose to keep people, to keep doing what we are doing, to keep growing and to keep being accepting. We chose actual people over abstract principles – we will need to remember this in the future, when we grow into something more defined we don’t want to let that make us define some of us as “in” and some of us as “out”. Brian McLaren says: declaring who we are usually also means declaring who we are not. I hope that we can stay a flexible, accepting, people-orientated community.

Looked at in a certain way, this is quite a promising beginning for a community!

Simplicity-Complexity

I always think of a spiral, the top half on a white background, the bottom half on a black background. As we go around the spiral we go through stages of simplicity, then into complexity, then back into simplicity, around and around with each spiral being bigger than the last. (Should I be encouraged that I am now confused at a higher level than before?)

Through the changes in the church situation with Solace, it feels like being tipped into a phase of complexity again - issues, struggles, uncertainty, doubt, unclear waters - this is a very "grey" phase! It is hard not to feel angry, resentful or regretful that the turmoil currently taking place in Solace is overflowing into other areas of faith: questions are arising with issues of women in authority, homosexuality, defining the church, etc. All difficult questions which may not have answers at all, certainly not easily.

It is hard not to resent being spilled suddenly out of my place in the sun, out of basking in simplicity, and being precipitated into another phase of complexity. Complexity means searching, questioning – work. Simplicity was about resting in faith, letting be, trusting God to work it all out. Complexity is a time of intellectual searching out, of testing and weighing, evaluating and sorting. I feel like I am learning more, but probably because this is my usual way of learning. Simplicity is learning through emotions, about trust, about leaning on God rather than on my own understanding. It can be easy in the sense of less work, but it can be frustrating from a sense of not being in control and not knowing what to do. I can only take so much simplicity before becoming frustrated. In contrast, an excess of complexity makes me tired and despairing. I don’t think I control the interface of simplicity-complexity, though I can see it when it occurs. That's probably for the best, since I don't think I would ever choose the seasons of complexity or the growth that comes with them!

How I came to be unequally yoked

This is a question I get asked often, and I have had a lot of trouble answering, but here is the story so far.

When I became a Christian I was already deeply involved with and committed to Dean. In my initial struggles with what it meant to be a Christian, I agonized over our relationship and sought advice from many people and received many opinions. I realize now I may have been asking the wrong question. I asked my minister at the time "Is it forbidden by God to marry a non-Christian?" He showed me a variety of verses which I summed up to mean "God advises against it. It has happened in the past and will happen again." (This is still what I believe to be the biblical comment on the issue.)

Being a young, immature Christian, all I wanted was to know where the "line" was and if I wasn't crossing it, then everything must be OK. I thought that since I lived with non-Christian parents I knew what it was to be a Christian on my own. So we went ahead and the minister mentioned above married us.

I was deeply shocked some time later to hear this same minister preaching on this exact topic, and saying that it was bad for a Christian to choose to marry a non-Christian. I did some research on the issue, and discovered that he was right. I was very angry with him, and it took quite some time to get over it (if I have).

Still more Bible study and prayer later, I have come to understand several things.

1) It is not God's best for a Christian to marry a non-Christian. If I had been asking what is the *wise* thing to do, clearly it would not have been to marry a non-Christian. If I had been a more mature Christian, I might have understood this. Since I was only concerned about the bottom line, I ignored the advice of God. I don't deny that ignoring the advice of God is sin. I have been told that I married in sin, and to this extent it is true. I do deny that other people have the right to call me to account on this. (I probably sound defensive - in my experiences to date I have found this to be sadly necessary.)

2) A marriage partner is quite different from parents or any other family members. I can tolerate differences from my parents in areas in quite a wide range of opinions. Disagreeing with my husband is another kind of fish altogether. Being on different pages spiritually in marriage is (I hope) the deepest wound my soul will ever have to endure. It is a little death every day to think that he won't be there for eternity with God and with me. It is a cut to the heart to know that some of the most important things I am learning in my life he doesn't know about, and doesn't care about. The most important Person and my most important person aren't on speaking terms.

3) A Christian wife is called to love and help her husband. In a marriage between two Christians there is a call to mutual submission and to desire God's best for one another. Dean and I do this to the best of our ability, but there is a kind of imbalance. I am aware that in everything I am the voice and actions of Jesus, every word is potentially my witness - so the calling to love and forgive and serve takes on even larger proportions. When I first realized the level of submission required from me, I was shocked and overwhelmed (yes, and angry - How could God put this kind of responsibility on me? How could he require this much self-sacrifice of me?) I have since realized that I am not responsible for Dean's salvation. (Whew!) The call to minister to him remains, but without the crushing burden of responsibility for his soul. For this reason I believe that a Christian wife with a non-Christian husband has a higher call to submission than a Christian wife. A Christian wife can expect her husband to understand, to forgive, to do his best for her. A non-Christian husband cannot be held to any such expectations.

4) For better or worse, I am married to Dean. There is no point going back, second guessing that decision. It is made and I have to go on from here. Yes, I would and do advise young Christian women to choose above all else a Christian to marry. There is inherent conflict in doing anything else. For myself, I am to witness and minister where I am. For this reason, I use term "unequally yoked". This is a little bilingual joke, because the Greek word for "marry" is "yoke". Truly, we are yoked together and sometimes it feels like we are pulling in opposite directions! I dislike the term "unbeliever" - everyone believes something, and it seems particularly disrespectful to apply to those of other religions. I also use the term "non-Christian" rather than agnostic or atheist, because it is much more factual and less perjorative. Also, I can not really be sure where another person stands, so it is much safer and avoids any pre-judgment on my part.

5) I truly despise the term "spiritually single". I am married! I am not single in any sense, and it is dangerous to even think otherwise. I recognize in myself, and I have seen in other unequally yoked women, a tendency to feel more comforted, more understood, more spiritually at home with Christian men, especially leaders. Danger! Danger! I guard my heart very carefully in these waters - I know I will idolize and fall half in love with any man I see as a strong Christian leader and role model. I am lucky enough to have a woman minister, so this avoids the strongest temptation. In other situations I am careful to make friends with the wives of the Christian men I know - this both takes the idealization out of the picture (their wives soon take the polish off any attempt to idolize on my part!) and creates a backstop for any emotional intimacy - I am much more likely to confide in a woman than in a man I know equally well.

6) I realize every day that God has blessed me: generously, abundantly, joyfully! He has blessed my marriage and brought me much good and spiritual growth out of it. I don't have to be repenting in sackcloth and ashes every day to redeem my situation, and I don't have to feel guilty because I am often happy with my husband. I don't have to wait for him to come to know God in order to be a joyful Christian myself: God's peace surpasses my understanding and is not dependent on my circumstances. This is my latest, most precious revelation from God. Sometimes I can't believe how grace-ful and generous He is!

As the woman who has been forgiven much, it is incumbent on me to be forgiving and generous to others. As I hope not to be judged, so I must not judge others. As I wish to be prayed for, so I pray. As I wish my husband understood, loved and served me, so I seek to understand, love and serve. These lessons have taught me at a heart level what it is to live the Christian life, and I so I see and once again marvel at how God is able to work all things for our good and His glory!

Beginning my story...

I have just read Brian McLaren's books "A new kind of Christian" and "The story we find ourselves in". Amazing stuff! The thing which struck me most was how what we believe and what we think inevitably shows in our actions and our priorities. Truly, actions speak louder than words, and they show what we really think, regardless of what we say.

Ever since becoming a Christian (about ten years ago now) I have noticed this in a subliminal way. The first university student Christian group I joined, I was (more or less) kicked out of for not behaving correctly. It was not really a question of belief, since at that time I believed the correct things, but I wasn't able to conform completely and so there was no place for me. At the time I accepted this and moved on, but now I wonder about a group which taught so much about grace and acceptance of people where they are, yet was so strict about going through the program and giving the "right answers" to everything.

I think my current church is much better at this. We have a whole range of people at Solace, and we don't require conformity but everyone can still be a member. This is getting us into trouble with our larger church, which is very sad. I thought there was more grace, more forgiveness, more understanding in the larger church, and I am sorrowful and disillusioned to find that this is not the case. On the other hand, I can of course understand the need to stand firm on points which are perceived to be "non-negotiable". I certainly would not want anyone to compromise what they see as essential, nor to water down their own faith - that would be deception and not of benefit to anyone in the long run.

So as we move on, I hope that we will continue to be open and forgiving to our future members as we are now. I pray that we will remember this, our beginning, was precipitated by our acceptance of difference within our body. I hope this will continue to be our characteristic feature, and that we will not in some future time become the very rigidity we are leaving behind. I hope and pray that God will give us more grace, as much as we need to continue to be his love, his peace, his acceptance to those around and within us, wherever we are.