truth

What’s it all mean?

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I unashamedly quote the following that was written perhaps 3000 years ago.  If you’re having a stressful time, perhaps at work, this puts it into perspective:

“Everything is meaningless,” says the Teacher, “completely meaningless!”

What do people get for all their hard work under the sun? Generations come and generations go, but the earth never changes.  The sun rises and the sun sets, then hurries around to rise again.  The wind blows south, and then turns north. Around and around it goes, blowing in circles.  Rivers run into the sea, but the sea is never full. Then the water returns again to the rivers and flows out again to the sea.  Everything is wearisome beyond description. No matter how much we see, we are never satisfied. No matter how much we hear, we are not content.

 History merely repeats itself. It has all been done before. Nothing under the sun is truly new.  Sometimes people say, “Here is something new!” But actually it is old; nothing is ever truly new. We don’t remember what happened in the past, and in future generations, no one will remember what we are doing now.…….

So I decided there is nothing better than to enjoy food and drink and to find satisfaction in work. Then I realized that these pleasures are from the hand of God……

.... remember your Creator now while you are young, before the silver cord of life snaps and the golden bowl is broken. Don’t wait until the water jar is smashed at the spring and the pulley is broken at the well.  For then the dust will return to the earth, and the spirit will return to God who gave it.

…taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Time to come alive!

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As you walk round this weekend, look at the faces of those you pass.  Look perhaps at the men pushing the trolleys in Aldi, Asda or Sainsbury’s.  How many of them are lifeless, pursuing the daily trudge?  Then look in the mirror – are we the same?

Life is not meant to be like that.  We are made for life in abundance, life in all its fullness.  A great man once said “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”

What does life in abundance mean?  Perhaps we should see what the man said.  When asked he answered: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.'”

It’s not so much what you do as how you live that brings life in abundance.  It’s not so much climbing the mountain or sailing the seas – although I recommend both – it’s about choosing to love, every moment of every day, even in the aisles in Asda.

It’s been said “Find out what makes you come alive, and go and do it.” If you are not alive today, you need to follow that advice.  Perhaps you feel you don’t have the energy to love at the moment, perhaps your work is just so draining that it deadens you.  If so then it is worth looking for a change.  Perhaps there’s an addiction that you need to break; it’s possible, you can break it!

But the key to coming alive is love; positive, hardworking, determined expending of ourselves for the benefit of others.

Does injustice make you angry?  Don’t just grumble, go and do something about it. Come alive fighting it.

Does poverty make you angry? Don’t just grumble, go and do something about it. Come alive fighting it.

Does child abuse make you angry? Don’t just grumble, go and do something about it. Come alive fighting it.

Does the sex trade make you angry? Don’t just grumble, go and do something about it. Come alive fighting it.

Does human trafficking make you angry? Don’t just grumble, go and do something about it. Come alive fighting it.

Does the hopeless plight of teenagers make you angry? Don’t just grumble, go and do something about it. Come alive fighting it.

The list goes on.

St. Irenaeus said that “Man Fully Alive is the Glory of God”

It is time to come alive.

 

Things that a Minimalist Christian does not have to believe – The Bible is the complete and perfect truth

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I struggled to phrase the title of this post, but I’m talking about the attitude that because something is written in the Bible it must be taken as absolutely accurate and true. The Bible is often called the ‘Word of God’, and Christians are encouraged to study God’s Word, but the basis for such assertions is seldom presented.  St Paul referred to scriptures being ‘God breathed’, but if we think about it, what isn’t ‘God breathed’?  Can anything exist without God?

Bible study often takes the form of taking each sentence and trying to interpret it. This can lead to lengthy discussions about the translation of a particular word. It is trying to understand by dissection, but then risks missing the whole. It is similar perhaps to trying to understand the human being by examining each molecule, or ‘The Scream’ by examining a single brush stroke.

If we view the Bible as a collection of documents that were written by human beings describing their journey with God then we can understand why, for instance, different accounts of the same event may differ. We can understand that the meaning of any part must be discerned in the context of the day. We can understand that the writers might simply have got some things wrong. It was men who decided what the best books were to put in the Bible, and they made their decision based on sober judgement. But we should not now view the book as somehow having a magic spell on it that says that ‘this is God’s complete and unchallengeable word’.

There is immense value in the Bible, but I fear that modern Christians have been led to worship the Bible rather than God. It contains wisdom and encouragement, and is correctly used to support our growth rather than constrain it.

Oswald Chambers

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If you’ve never come across him, I recommend Oswald Chambers.  I feel he has great insight into so much of life.  See http://utmost.org/ for daily thoughts.  From this morning:

“The golden rule to follow to obtain spiritual understanding is not one of intellectual pursuit, but one of obedience. If a person wants scientific knowledge, then intellectual curiosity must be his guide. But if he desires knowledge and insight into the teachings of Jesus Christ, he can only obtain it through obedience. If spiritual things seem dark and hidden to me, then I can be sure that there is a point of disobedience somewhere in my life. Intellectual darkness is the result of ignorance, but spiritual darkness is the result of something that I do not intend to obey.”

Awesome life!

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As we age, we find that we can’t do all the things we used to.  I can’t hear as well as I could, and my eyes have reached the stage of needing vari-focal lenses. On the plus side though, we learn a lot too, and one thing we learn is that we don’t know as much as we thought we might when we were younger.  We learn to look more deeply at questions, perhaps because unlike a child who keeps asking ‘why’ we have learnt not to take answers on complete trust.

But when bits of our body stop working we begin to remember how amazing it is when they do, and to wonder if we really do understand all that’s going on in the universe.

Our bodies have incredible and almost unbelievable systems and components.  If someone were to describe how our bodies operate, I doubt that we would believe them but for the fact that we have seen them and we live in them …. and take them for granted!  There was a time when there was no life, and now there is ‘us’.  So my mind wandered:

  • Was there a time when our ancestors didn’t have all of the components and systems that we now have as humans?
  • Was there a time when they had all but one?
  • Was there a time when they had all but two?
  • Was there a time when our ancestors didn’t have blood?
  • When they didn’t have an immune system?
  • When they didn’t have nerve cells?
  • When they didn’t have joints in the skeleton?
  • When they didn’t have a heart?
  • When they didn’t have a blood clotting mechanism?
  • When they didn’t have a bone restructuring system?
  • When they didn’t have lungs?
  • When they didn’t have the little hairs in the lungs that clear out the mucus?
  • When they didn’t have mucus?

I don’t doubt that the answer is ‘yes’, but that further magnifies the amazing fact of our existence.

Not only do our present bodies have to grow in just the right sequence from the very first cell, but the process of developing to our present state must also have occurred in a sensibly ordered sequence. There would be no point in having a blood clotting mechanism without blood but an animal which has blood but no clotting mechanism would be rather fragile. Both mechanisms and components must have developed in parallel.  But the blood itself would be of little benefit without veins and arteries, and the veins and arteries would be of little benefit without the heart, and the heart would be of little benefit if it didn’t respond to the ‘operational needs’ of the body.

So we have a body that constructs itself in a way that at each stage of development it is fully operational (albeit in the controlled environment of the womb), and we have a generation to generation development process that ensures that each entity at each stage of its own development is operational in its own right.

I don’t doubt that this happens, and has happened over millennia.  I don’t have a problem with the principles that Darwin proposed.  But I do wonder if all this can happen just as a result of the properties of matter and the laws of physics.

Of course “the truth is out there” … but whether we can ever find out is another question….