The Incongruent Believer

  What we read in the closing chapters of Deuteronomy is both amazing and terrifying; God knew that in spite of all he had done and was about to do for Israel, that the people would still go ahead and rebel. He knew that they would, they knew that they would, and they knew that he knew they would, but they still did it. For me this speaks volumes about two things:  One is that we have complete and total free will before God, I utterly reject the doctrine of predestination because I believe that no matter how you package it, or what intellectual gymnastics you do with it, this cannot allow for free will. For the Old and New testaments and Gods message therein to be relevant then free will has to stand unadulterated.  Secondly, the wilfulness of the human condition; like Cypher in the matrix movie who, even though he knew that the matrix was an illusion, chose that illusion over the reality of freedom (you can watch it here ). We are presented with an excellent  analog...

  This Sunday, after encouragement from my old pastor, I decided to try a different path to find a spiritual. Being the second Sunday of the month my village Anglican church was holding a Sunday service so I went along. The church is a beautiful, ancient, and somewhat raggedy building and when you enter you sense the prayers of the saints that have been laid down for over a century in that place, like one of those "thin places" that Andy Freeman and Peter Grieg talk about in their excellent book Punk monk : new monasticism and the ancient art of breathing. I sat in the pews (said it was an old church) not a little apprehensive about what was about to happen then looked towards the 'altar' at the front of the church and there emblazoned on the wall was the passage I Know that my redeemer liveth, taken from Job 19:25. If you are a regular reader of my blog or know me a little you will know that this is my favourite passage from scripture and one I turn to often for sola...

  In Mark 2:18-22 Jesus's speaks of putting new wine in old wineskin, but what about old wine into new wineskins? What happens? Nothing? And that was the impression I got when I visited a church last Sunday whilst looking for a new spiritual home. The church gave the impression via its social media that it was upbeat, modern, and progressive and that impression stayed with me when I entered and took my place in the pews. That impression evaporated as soon as the service began: everyone, apart from the visiting speaker but including the pastor, mumbled to the point they might as well have spoken Klingon; there were numerous sound issues and the words of songs projected onto a screen were left behind by the actual singing in spite of having 3 people behind a well appointed AV desk; the worship group itself was extremely well appointed and was replete with backing singers yet they played a monotonous dirge whilst the drummer tap, tap, tapped on the edge of a  drum, and the worshi...