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...

When I first started work many decades ago, I remember working with a young engineer (who was older than me at the time) who was constantly being barracked by our MD. I remember the MD’s name as we soon became good friends as I climbed both the managerial and social ladder at the company where I worked, and Jim (I won’t share his surname) and I both practiced the same martial art. But early in my time at the company I asked one of the managers why it was that Jim would often come out of his office shout at this young engineer, then reassured by something they said, return to his office. The manager, ‘Dickie’ Bird (not the Yorkshire cricketer, but one with the same name and nickname as that famous gentleman), said “It’s because he always tells him what he wants to hear” and went on to explain that if something was going bad they would tell Jim that it wasn’t, or offer some bogus account just to get him off the hook, then Jim would find out, and things would escalate, and again the young...

Driving past a local church the other day I noticed a banner outside inviting people to a “Prayer Café” held at the church, the banner headlined “Prayer Changes Things”. This bold statement got me to wondering; Does prayer change things? And if it does, in what way? My first thought was that if you were reading that poster as someone who did not believe in God or some benevolent deity or deities you were probably were drawn to the secular idea of prayer where one asks for things, such as the delivery of a loved one from a serious illness, or help finding that perfect job, or even a big win on a lottery. My understanding of prayer is not even close to that, and the comment on prayer in Matthew 6:7-8 speaks volumes, here Jesus says, “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”  The most poignant statement in these verses be...

I'm still making my way slowly through the Old Testament, savouring the content and seriously reflecting on it. A question I ask myself, particularly when reading some of the more mundane chapters, is “why is that included?” Sometimes I am perplexed, as I have been reading Chapters 34 and 35 of Genesis. Reflecting over a few days on this I realised something; I am constantly looking for the deep spiritual meaning when I should be looking from perhaps a more secular perspective. This realisation has been a breath of fresh air. I have come to understand that some of this content is there to show what the real life was like behind Bible heavyweights such as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and also where it fitted in to the world at that time. The fact that we read of these people having children with their servants or servants of their wives, or we read of the ‘rape’ of Dinah and Rueben sleeping with Jacob’s concubine, or the fact that Jacob’s even had concubines we see real life; messy, ...

How many times have you heard in folklore, read in a book, seen in a movie, or even witnessed in your own life someone trying to make a contract with God? It normally takes the form of "God if you get me out of this situation, I will never do wrong for the rest of my life" or something like that. I find it interesting that people in fiction or in real life acknowledge that they knew there might be a God around but have refrained from testing that knowledge, in a sense ignored God, until they find themselves in a sticky situation. The other scenario we might find is when someone needs something or needs guidance making a plea to God like, “God, if you make this happen for me then I will go to church for the rest of my days.” One might be forgiven to think that this kind of contracting with God is found in the latter verses of Genesis 28 where following a dream Jacob makes this vow, “If God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat an...