THOUGHTS TO PONDER

REFLECTIONS ON “DIFFICULT QUESTIONS” – THE SIGN JUNE 2005

I was very much struck by both the honesty and the content of R’s article –‘Difficult Questions: Am I a Flawed Christian?’ in the June edition of the Sign.  It took courage to articulate questions about aspects of the faith which have probably been well-embedded in most of us since childhood.  But what R. said has, I know, resonated with others in our community.  It therefore seems to me to be important that we ‘hear’ what he’s saying and include his perspective in the wider spectrum.  That way we’re all enriched…

Perhaps the biggest difficulty for a twenty-first century Christian lies in the fact that we have inherited a set of statements about faith from earlier centuries – statements which reflect the experience and understanding of God at that time, recorded through the filter of pre-scientific minds..  However, language can never encapsulate that experience for all time – it can only point to it using tools available within a given time and culture.  We’re all bound by time and culture – shaped by it and to some extent limited by it. So a literal interpretation of early creedal statements does, I believe, get us into difficulties.  The theologian Paul Tillich spoke of the Greek word for truth being about ‘making manifest the hidden’. Our search then is surely an on-going challenge – for all of us, since nothing that really matters is too profound for anyone. Aren’t the big things the simplest?  Tillich felt we shy away from truth not because it is too profound, or too difficult, but because it is too uncomfortable…

I mention Tillich because he helps to steer us away from the anthropomorphic view of God - i.e. the attributing of human form to the mystery of the divine. He speaks of ‘the Ground of Being’ in whom we live and move and have our being, that which holds us and draws us forth to fullness of life. In the life and teachings of Jesus we glimpse the most focussed example of a life lived in relationship with God.

A recent book which has been helpful for many is Marcus Borg’s ‘The Heart of Christianity – Rediscovering a Life of Faith’. He makes what I find to be a workable distinction between two views of Christianity – the ‘earlier’ and the ‘emergent’. The ‘earlier’ he defines as a view which takes the Bible literally and as the ultimate authority for faith and morals.  Faith means believing now for salvation later.  The ‘emergent’ view sees the Bible as a human product, capable of mediating the sacred, but set in a particular time of history, and more concerned with discovering the meaning of the stories than their factual recordings - metaphorical rather than literal. Christian life is about a relationship with God which transforms life in the present. Sin is the recognition that we are all in bondage (because of our upbringing, our cultural limitations, our choices or whatever) and salvation liberation from everything that denies fullness of life.

For Borg, faith is above all expressed in how we live. It is a way, a path, more than adherence to a set of beliefs. It is the way of the heart, rather than of the head. - the heart being the deepest place within the self, deeper than thinking, feeling or willing, the place where all three may be integrated.  It is the place which is most alive.

The function of the Church, the gathered community, then, must surely be to point us to experiences of transcendence, mystery, beauty and love, to make real the Celtic idea of ‘thin places’, where we encounter the Ground of our Being who is forever breaking into our lives if only we had eyes to see and ears to hear. The sacraments enable it to happen, so does music, so can the sermon, so (for some of us!) can silence… - so do the great festivals of Advent and Easter. Those are times when another reality breaks through and the moment is transformed.

It would, I think, be a pity if the ‘earlier’ and the ‘emergent’ views of faith were seen as hostile or opposed to each other. They’re not. Each part of the spectrum needs to honour and accept the others. The hunger for meaning, for understanding and for depth is common to everyone.  It would be sad if those who (usually with pain and struggle, but with integrity) felt that not to be able to use the language and thought-forms of first –century faith meant their only option was to define themselves as ‘flawed Christians’.  Their voices may be more prophetic than any of them would want to claim. Prophets have had a hard time throughout history, but they have often wakened us to new dimensions of reality. We do well to listen. I believe it’s possible that the Church’s future survival may depend on it.

Mary McMahon