This blog post first came about after a conversation (quite some months ago now) with a very good friend for whom I have a huge amount of respect.
She does good things in the world. She cares about humanity. She does not have a faith.
I am not entirely sure how we got on to the topic of religion but somewhere in the mix was what I took to be a very genuine question, which went something along the lines of "what is the point of religion and do we really need God?" It is not the first time I have faced such a question: from someone else or at times even from myself.
I had no immediately coherent answer to offer. And not only because it was late in the evening and I was tired.
She is just as capable as me of doing good in the world. According to my theology, her chances of finding herself in heaven (if it exists) are just as high as mine. I am not somehow her superior ... there is nothing about me that is better than her because I have a faith and she doesn't. I have friends of many faiths and of none who have just as much to offer to the world as I do.
And to be honest I can find much to criticise about the role of religion in our lives, communities, world. Over the years I have cried many tears over the church and its (as I perceive them) failings.
And yet it is no secret that my faith remains important to me. I wanted to be able to try and explain why.
I guess I started writing this as my attempt to do so: to myself, to her, and to the world. Many weeks later, more recent conversations with another friend prompted me to try and draw my scattered thoughts together. I have struggled to do so, because the mystery I call God defies explanation and eludes description in mere words, but this is my best attempt.
It comes with multiple disclaimers. My faith and my theology have changed significantly over time so if this stands as a (slightly blurry) reflection of where I am right now; it may not sum up where I was yesterday, nor where I will be tomorrow. Nor does it reflect a set of beliefs of anyone else or any institution: my faith has been shaped by my experiences of several Christian denominations but has also been worked out through reflection, conversation and encounter so doesn't sit easily in any of the pre-designed boxes different churches present to us and I like to hope that I would be seen as mildly heretical by at least most models of church. And just in case anyone is in any doubt, my explanation or defence of my own faith does not hold within it any criticism of anyone else's journey along this very winding road we call life.
* * *
Undoubtedly, part of my reason for being an adult with Christian faith is that it was the faith I was introduced to as a child. I have no recollection of a time before church was part of my life. I do, though, have fairly clear recollections of the first times church was an active choice.
At some point as a (probably slightly precocious) primary school child, I decided I would rather go to church than to Sunday school: I have no idea, now, what drew me to sit through the probably fairly dull church services instead of doing colouring in ... these days, I much prefer Sunday School! More significantly, when I was in my early teens, my parents stopped going to church. It was no longer something we were expected to do as part of our weekly routine as a family. If I wanted to be part of this thing, it became my own responsibility. I sometimes joke that going to church was my teenage rebellion. As my faith has developed and I have understood more about who I believe Jesus to be, I have realised maybe it wasn't as much of a joke as I thought.
My faith today is unrecognisable from the nascent faith I had then: my journey has taken me far from what I would probably describe as "dull, bog-standard Anglicanism" and the church which was such a haven for my fourteen-year-old-self would undoubtedly now be a place which I would find intensely frustrating ... but the essence of perhaps the most significant aspect of why my faith still matters does seemingly date to those days, though I certainly wouldn't have articulated it thus at the time.
I was an unhappy teenager. At home, though I never questioned the love of my family, I carried a deep resentment about being moved away from a place where I had convinced myself I'd have been happier; and school was a fairly miserable experience where I was torn between the desperate desire to fit in and the desperate desire to be true to the person I was who didn't. And then there were hormones and the general unease that probably afflicts all teenagers as they grow out of being children long before they grow into being adults.
Church gave me the incredibly precious gift of being a place where I didn't have to "fit in" in order to belong and a place where somewhere deep within I felt like I had inherent value, just as I was. I associated church, and therefore God, as a place of safety and acceptance. I have changed a lot since those days, as has my faith, but I still deeply believe that, at its best, an experience of God is an experience of learning that you can belong and have value and be loved, just the way you are.
* * *
The world can be a very dark place. Throughout history, and in the world we now inhabit, we can scarcely fail to notice the destructive capacity of humanity: the myriad ways in which people can commit acts of utter evil against each other, and even against ourselves. All too often there can seem to be so much to make us angry and so little in the world that inspires hope.
We have put our planet on a collision course for climate catastrophe. Dictatorial regimes and human rights abuses abound. Conflicts are proliferating. Far-right ideologies are increasingly unchecked and accepted in the mainstream. The rich and powerful continue their love affair with an economic system which thrives on an ever widening divide between the haves and have nots.
Many of the core messages which surround us, both the explicit and the implied are ones which want us to believe that the only thing that matters is looking out for ourselves and our own interests, or, potentially, by extension, those perceived as belonging to our group or sharing our identity. They are messages which tell us the pursuit of material wealth is the route to happiness, that we will find our worth in what we possess. They are messages which tell us the weakest and most vulnerable are at best, not our problem or responsibility, and at worst to be cast as scapegoats, blamed for a variety of social ills and subjected to further suffering. They are messages seeking to divide, telling us to fear or to hate those who are in any way different to ourselves.
Social pressure of this sort is insidious and, whatever we tell ourselves, nigh on impossible to entirely resist. We are products of the societies that form us.
I do not want to believe this is all there is to the world. And for me it is God and the message of the gospels that allows me to hope in an alternative. I fear that without that sense of the divine, that sense of something beyond ourselves, I might just lose hope.
Faith is what makes me trust that, even when it doesn't feel like it, "the arc of the universe bends towards justice" (MLK)
Faith is what constantly reminds me that no human has any less worth or value than any other, that reminds me to stretch out a hand in warmth and welcome to the "other", because they are, as I am, loved and worthy of love.
Faith is that which which ensures and assures me that good is possible.
* * *
For many years my life has involved a routine of prayer and specifically, times of silence integrated into my day. I struggle to articulate how or why but I remain completely convinced my life would look different without it. It is my space to be reminded, or to remind myself of the possibility of joy, hope, goodness and unconditional love even when they seem so far from the reality every time we switch on the news. I believe those reminders come from somewhere beyond myself.
The essence of my faith remains that God is and only can be love and nothing we do, nothing we are can exclude us from that unconditional love. The essence of my faith remains that, created in the image of God, we are called into the experience of love and called to offer it onwards and outwards to others. The essence of my faith is that we exist to love and to be loved.
Others perhaps have a different explanation, but for me, my way of making sense of the world and holding on to the possibility of hope, is the existence of a mystery I choose to call God; a God who is and only can be love, a God who ensures there is always a force for good in the world, a God who flares or who flickers in the darkest of places. A God from whom I acknowledge religions, as much as the wider world, have ofttimes turned away.
I don't think having a faith in God has made my life any easier: nor should it: there is plenty of challenge inherent in the gospels. But I think it has been one of the ways in which I have discovered a deep joy that exists despite, beyond and in the midst of the world with all its broken beauty.
So back to those conversations with friends that inspired me to write this ...
Does she need God? Does he? I don't know and it is not for me to say.
But do I need God? ... Yes, I think I do.
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