Jesus

Two shirts at Christmas?

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Friends on Facebook know that I often share posts highlighting injustice.  And I have written blog posts prompted by claims that ‘austerity’  is working.  But in the face of injustice, with a government that shows no sign of compassion, and with years to the next general election, doesn’t this just breed despair and helplessness: “It’s too big a problem, and what can a single human being do to change things?” So why do I speak out about injustice?

  • To grumble and whinge?  No
  • To cry out for change? Yes
  • To educate that it is indeed injustice? Yes
  • To encourage readers to ask “what can I do?” Definitely.

Many years ago a wise man said “If you have two shirts, give one to the poor. If you have food, share it with those who are hungry.”   He was speaking in a time of great injustice, under a government that brooked no dissent.  There was no changing the system, but he was calling every person to make a difference.  He was challenging the culture of the day.  That is what I hope to achieve.

I choose not to follow the culture of self-interest and greed endemic today, where we are expected to make all decisions on the basis of maximising our personal income. I try to make life decisions on what is good and right, and that includes recognising that I have “two shirts”.  I long for the wealthy to recognise the same.

But where does the strength come from to be counter-culture?  It does not come from the media, or from political leadership.  It comes from the one that the wise man served.

Do you want to make a difference?  Then begin.  Choose goodness.  Choose love.  Transfer your allegiance from the culture of selfishness to the one who is supreme goodness; the one whose birthday the world is celebrating.

Have a great Christmas!

two shirts

“Christianity – Why Bother?” … out now

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Belief in God is claimed to be on the decline, and many cannot see a reason to question whether God might exist. What would be the point? Why make the effort? That is why “Christianity, Why Bother?” deserves a read. It answers the question that its title asks.

The book discusses some of the misconceptions of Christianity, and then moves on to examine the basis for belief and explains some of the practical and day-to-day benefits of being a Christian. The author shares some of his experiences since he became a Christian at the age of forty. The aim is simply to address the question, “why bother?”

Christianity why bother cover

Click here to buy on Amazon.

Work and Pay

/ Minimalist Christian / 9 Comments

I think the world has become confused about work.

Instead of thinking that work is something to be endured to bring in the money we need to live, or a means of making us rich we should think of our work as our contribution to fulfilling the needs of society. We need to start thinking of it as ‘what can I give’ instead of ‘what do I get’.

And in a similar manner, society needs to think more clearly about the needs of the individual. All of us need to eat, sleep and live somewhere that we can call home. And the reciprocal side of the exchange is that when someone contributes to society, then society has a duty of love to meet the needs of that person.

Jesus told a parable of a man who hired workers for his vineyard. Some he hired in the morning, some in the afternoon, and some just before closing time. But he paid them all the same. He paid them what they needed to live. But of course, those who worked all day felt that this was not just and grumbled. Yet the vineyard owner pointed out that they were happy to work for their agreed wages, and they had received them. All the workers were willing to work. They were willing to make their contribution to society, even if there was no immediate work required. And they all had the same needs. The vineyard owner met their needs. Why can’t we follow this example?

Similarly, how do we decide how much someone should be paid? Is it according to the contribution that the job makes to society? How valuable is it to society when a person sits at a desk and manages our money? How valuable is it to society when a person removes the rubbish that we create during the week? How valuable is it to society when a person serves us a meal in a café or restaurant? I have to say that the most valued workman I’ve encountered is the one who came to clear our blocked drains when the raw sewerage was overflowing! Yet he is paid less than I am, when I spend much of my time sitting at a computer terminal.

It is not my aim to claim that job A is X times as valuable as job B, but to add into our thinking and actions that we need to be willing to pay each person sufficient to meet their needs.

Unfortunately the recent trend is that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. I don’t have a problem with unequal pay, and with pay that reflects the value to society of the work. But I do take issue with a system that ignores the ‘need’ part of the equation.

Can you and I do anything? Yes we can. Even if it is only being willing to pay a fair price instead of the lowest price for goods and services.

But also, the reward for our work is more than just money. We all value the respect of our fellow human beings. One thing that we can all do is to treat everyone, in whatever job, with respect and with appreciation.

And similarly, when we are working, we can consider our work as more than just a job but as a contribution to society. The bricklayer can choose to be building a home instead of laying some bricks.

And we also need to respect those who are seeking work but unable to find it. Not only do they receive no wages, our benefit system disrespects them and prevents them making their contribution to the good of us all. Can’t we treat them like those in Jesus’ parable who were looking for work , and who at the end of the day were then paid what they needed to live.

Let’s think on these things as we go about or daily life of working, waiting, shopping and ‘consuming’.  Let’s change our attitudes.

“You can’t support them all can you?”

/ Minimalist Christian / 13 Comments

Let me start by start by confessing that I am writing this to myself as much as to anyone else, and particularly to those of us who call ourselves Christians. It covers the challenging topic of giving money. Often we say, or hear others say something like, “I won’t give to that charity. You can’t support them all, can you?”  It sounds reasonable, but is it correct? Christians believe that Jesus Christ gave everything for us. He gave his life that we might have a rich and satisfying life. We believe that there is guidance in the Bible on how to live such a life. Here are some passages:

“Give to those who ask, and don’t turn away from those who want to borrow.” “If you have two shirts, give one to the poor. If you have food, share it with those who are hungry.” “When you give to someone in need, don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. Give your gifts in private, and your Father, who sees everything, will reward you. Looking at the man, Jesus felt genuine love for him. “There is still one thing you haven’t done,” he told him. “Go and sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

The message appears to be that yes, we can support them all. I was discussing this with my wife after looking at the distribution of income on an earlier post. When would it be OK to say no, we are giving enough? I suggested that perhaps it was OK when our income net of giving was that of the lowest on the curve – the bottom 10%. If we expect people on the bottom 10% to live full and satisfying lives on their income, shouldn’t we be willing to do the same? Elsewhere in the bible is states that:  “Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.”  So how does that fit with “sell all you have and give the money to the poor”? Perhaps it means that if we are unable to give cheerfully to anyone who asks then we need to work on our heart. Maybe we need to teach ourselves to love more. As well as listening to the advice on how to maximise our income, invest in schemes to give high interest and avoid paying tax, we need to be hearing that we can manage on less. We can still maximise our income, but to give more away instead of saving it for ourselves.  See also my post “The Wealthy are Redeemable” Yes, I am sure I am being hypocritical in writing this. But that does not make what I have written wrong. Let’s all ponder this in our hearts and see what we decide to do.

………………………………………………………………………

If you want some ideas, try these links:

http://5quidforlife.org.uk/

Home

feel free to add your own in the comments.  I’ll add them here when I get time.

The Man Born to be King

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Good guidance from a fellow blogger (and wife).

The Man Born to be King.

A robust intellectual basis for Christianity is not enough.

/ Minimalist Christian / 5 Comments

I like to understand why things are like they are. As a child I was taught that science provides the answers that I needed.

When in later life I became a Christian I thought that there was a conflict between science and God, but for a while reconciled this with the idea that ‘God can do anything’. A simple idea, but science and faith was not an area that I really wanted to explore.

We are given the impression that ‘science knows’, but we just haven’t been told yet. About five years ago I decided to find out. What does science know? What does it still not know? Are there things it can never know? Taking everything into account, what story best fits all the facts, a godless universe or one with a God?

I adopted an analytical approach, but avoided the temptation to dig too deeply into details of each field. I just tried to understand the underlying principles sufficiently to see what they contribute to the big picture. I found that most people feel uncomfortable outside of their specialist field, that few seem willing to take the necessary overview.

Having read a couple of books like ‘The Edge of Evolution” by the Intelligent Design proponents I began thinking that it may be possible to prove God exists. But then I read secular books on the origins of life and realised that everyone accepts the remarkable unlikelihood of life but that it doesn’t provide irrefutable proof – there are alternative explanations such as the multiverse theory.

I needed to find out where the Bible came from; could I trust it, and if so, why? I researched the source of the NT documents in particular, and some of the gospel accounts that are excluded from the Bible (the Da Vinci code stuff). I realised that the gospel accounts are not trying to prove who Jesus was and what he did, but that they wouldn’t have been written if he hadn’t done some amazing things. The accounts are simply people trying to capture what happened for future generations. The Bible is not a spells book: “Do this and God will do that for you”.

I reached a number of conclusions about how to understand and respond to the big picture of what’s going on. Realising that everything requires a level of faith (including science of course), I suggest a response which recognises that many religious and scientific dogmas are unproven and unprovable – but unnecessary. I call the response “Minimalist Christianity”. I wrote up what I found in “The Big Picture”, found a publisher and then set about marketing my masterpiece.

There is a robust intellectual basis for Christianity, and I would commend it to others, but I recently realised that in exploring it I was falling into a bit of a trap. Because I have necessarily spent several years testing and probing, viewing things sceptically, I let my personal spiritual life become analytical too. My reasoning has shown that God exists, and that he must have a ‘personality’ and want to interact with each of us, but I have not really been responding to the real God – just developing an intellectual one.

We need to ‘get to know God’ as more than an idea; I need to follow my own advice! It is from the integrity of that relationship that the power to fulfil our purpose will flow. We need analysis to know that we can trust, but then we need to act on that trust to complete the experience. Having determined that the rock exists, we need to actively build the house of our life on it!

“Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock. Though the rain comes in torrents and the floodwaters rise and the winds beat against that house, it won’t collapse because it is built on bedrock.” Jesus circa 30AD

“Here, there be dragons”

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Centuries ago many people used to live their entire lives within a few miles of where they were born. Occasionally travellers would pass through with tales of far-away places which held wonders, treasures and maybe ‘dragons’. But few would dare cross the borders surrounding their small world of familiarity.

Dragon-Linda_BlackWin24_JanssonNowadays many people again live their entire lives within a relatively small environment. Maybe it is not physical, since modern transportation puts the whole world within reach, but I’m speaking of relationships, culture and spirituality.

Our sphere of friends is gathered through encounters where we like to pass our time: work, the sports club, the toddler group or school, the pub. We meet like-minded people in comfortable environments and put down roots there. Occasional travellers pass through with tales of other lifestyles: we get peeps at them on the TV reality shows, a foreigner might join our band, or a tragedy might move us out of our comfortable world. But “few dare cross the borders of their small world of familiarity”, and most will lobby to maintain their personal utopia.

We understand how the world works through what we have learned through personal experience, the media and common sense.  With our Western worldview glasses we know such things as: the economy has to be healthy, everyone should be educated and democracy is the only system that works. And of course we should all have rights, to health, happiness and freedom, particularly freedom of speech. We seldom stop to question the basis on which we have decided that all of these ‘truths’ are correct. When we hear tales of other cultures we are fearful that they will invade our territory and bring unimaginable horrors and suffering.

But perhaps we are most fearful of uncharted spiritual seas. England used to be a Christian nation, although deeply divided between Protestant and Catholic, but has largely come to believe in Scientism; the religion that science can explain everything. It can be comforting to think that science can tell us why Grandma died, and to hope that in the future cancer will be conquered. Occasionally we will hear tales of a spiritual realm, something that is not simply made of ‘stuff’, and strangers will speak of God and tell us that we have a ‘soul’. A frequent response is to ignore such ramblings, or to accept that such things may be ‘okay’ for them, but I’m quite happy in my own ideas thank you very much.

Secretly, if we are bold enough to ask ourselves, we will admit that our small-world outlook is largely driven by fear. We are afraid that we will lose our basis for life, even if it doesn’t seem to be working too well for us at the moment. We would love to befriend those in different circles, experience different cultures, and reach a satisfying understanding of who we are spiritually; we yearn to find our soul and our purpose.

It is the beginning of a new year: 2015. Two thousand and fifteen years after a special baby was born. Who as a man spoke strange tales of a spiritual realm and a God. A man whose words gave us a rock to build our lives on. A man who willingly allowed himself to be crucified to show that death could not hold him – or us. A man who Christians call God. Perhaps it is time to take our courage in our hands and explore this strange new land? Many have gone there before, but few have returned with tales of dragons! Instead, they come back with stories of hope and fulfilled purpose; the promised land. Shall we go?

Do we worship the same God?

/ Minimalist Christian / 14 Comments

There is and can only be one God.

I am not going to defend that statement but to take it as read and see where it leads in the context of different religions.  If you don’t want to accept the statement, this post is not for you so please don’t waste your time and energy reading further.

There is and can only be one God.

That one God is love.  Without God there can be no love.  And so each and every act of love is an act of God.  If a Christian loves, that is God within them.  If a Moslem loves then that is God within them.  If an atheist loves that is God within them.

That one God created and sustained the universe. He sends the rain on the good and the bad.  His laws of science knit us together in our mother’s womb, allow us to experience the world, and present us with the alternatives of love or hate, good or evil.

That one God has made each of us as an individual.  Each of us is a ‘me’.  He has given us freedom to choose to love or hate, to be good or evil.  As individuals we choose.  If we choose to love we choose God whether we know it or not, whether we are Christian, Moslem, Hindu, atheist, agnostic or Jedi.

If someone prays to the single God, creator and sustainer of the universe, to the God who is love, the God who is goodness and power, does it matter what religion they are in?

If someone chooses love and goodness, does it matter what religion they are in?

What is religion? According to the Oxford dictionary it is:

“The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods”

and

“A particular system of faith and worship”

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/religion

A follower of one religion can challenge whether the “system of faith and worship” of another religion is accurate.  A Christian can reasonably challenge whether what Islam teaches about what is right and wrong is right – but can a Christian challenge which God a Moslem is praying to? Or vice versa?

Can a Christian say that a Moslem worships a different God?  Or can the Christian only say to the Moslem that “you don’t know God like I do”?

I don’t need to use Christians and Moslems for the example.  I could have used Evangelical and Liberal Christians, Protestants and Catholics.

I believe that the teaching of Christ is the best description of what God intends for each of us, and that Jesus life and death are the greatest demonstration of how God loves each and every one of us.  I can guide others to the same source of love and goodness that I have found, but am I to criticise and judge them if they do not understand the Bible in the same way that I do?  Isn’t my job to love, and aren’t I supposed to leave the judgement up to God?

Isn’t religions job to help me do my job?  Surely religion is not there to put obstacles in the way of me loving others?

What does God think of all the conflict that is caused by religious dogmatism about what he is like?  Does he simply want us to get on with loving Him, and loving our neighbour as ourselves?

Grace and love to you all.

War, religion, God, and why I write

/ Minimalist Christian / 3 Comments

I remember a discussion soon after I became a Christian where I was asked “so what about all the other religions?”  My reply was that they were simply mistaken.  I think the remark was taken to be rather arrogant.

I read the news today. I see the conflict, anger and fear; fighting between Moslems of different sects.  I see forced imposition of religious dogma; conversion to another religion punishable by death.  We all know that this is not as it should be. And I am reminded of my reply.

Reason and evidence tells me there is a God, and my whole being tells me that love is our ultimate purpose.  And when I find that love underpins and is at the heart of Jesus teaching I begin to see how it all fits together; how we are meant to be.

If I were God and someone from another religion was praying to me, I would not ignore them because they think I have a different name, I would not condemn them because they don’t understand my intentions for them.  I would be saddened that they are misled, I would try to teach them, and I would restrain some of their actions, but I would still love them.

As a mere human trying to follow God’s purpose, I don’t hate the Muslims, or even the Westborough Baptists, but I believe they are misled and mistaken.  I hate what they do, and I want them to stop.  I want them to understand the truth, and find their real purpose.  I want that for everyone.

If we all really understood Christ’s teaching, if we really loved God with all our heart, and loved our neighbour as ourselves, if we really were ready to forgive others and restore broken relationships we know that the world would be a better place.

That is why I write.  That is why I follow Christ.  That is my purpose.

What is yours?

Painful lessons on worship, thanks to Bach

/ Minimalist Christian / 1 Comment

It had been a busy period approaching Easter, but Good Friday had arrived with the promise of a short break.  We decided to start the weekend with a treat – to listen to St Matthew’s Passion by Bach in Coventry Cathedral.  An amazing piece of music that has formed an act of worship for many people over hundreds of years, we were looking forward to it.  We shared a lift with friends, one of whom was performing in the choir.

I knew nothing of the piece, but was a little alarmed to hear that it lasted three hours – I know what cathedral chairs can be like, and I was feeling somewhat worn down by some stressful meetings at work.  We had well placed seats, although the gentleman who sat next to me wore ‘fragrance of smoker’, and I noticed when the music began that his breathing was rather loud.  I prepared myself to be ‘wowed’ by the wonderful music.

Fifteen minutes into the performance I realised that the music and I spoke different languages of worship.

Thirty minutes in and I prepared myself for the ordeal as I do for the discomfort of a long flight in cramped uncomfortable airline seats; try not to wriggle too much so as not to disturb others,  focus on trying to doze and calm oneself to patiently endure the flight, listen to some nice music through headphones – not something I could do here of course.

It was not an un-spiritual experience.  It reminded me that Christ had suffered intently on the cross, that it had gone dark for three hours, that he’d willingly submitted himself to the pain, but that it would not have been an enjoyable experience.  And finally, thank God, it was finished.

The friends that I went with loved it, talking excitedly about different parts of the performance and how moved they were by it.  I was emotionally exhausted and felt excluded from the party – there was nothing positive I could think of to say, and I didn’t want to spoil their enjoyment of the evening so I was silent.  It was working until over dinner one of them mentioned I’d been quiet and asked what I’d thought of it.  After a few moments silence someone else spared me with ‘not your cup of tea then’, and the evening moved on.

Having had time to reflect a little, there are some lessons to learn from the experience.

  • Even the most brilliant worship music will not appeal to everyone, and will drive some people away.  If you want to help everyone ‘worship’, then you need a variety of approaches (not all musical!)
  • It feels very lonely and friendless being in an environment where others are enthusing about a method of worship that leaves you cold.  You can be left feeling ‘what’s wrong with me?’, and spiritually drained.  Don’t ‘demand’ that everyone enthuses about what you find uplifting, and don’t judge them if they don’t ‘connect’.
  • If you are feeling low, then a worship event may not be the best remedy.  You may end up worse that when you began.
  • Even if you are experiencing something painful, there are lessons to learn from it.

I don’t regret going, but I don’t suppose I will quickly repeat the experience.  Nobody wants to be the spectre at the feast.