God is bigger than Christianity

I remember being asked quite a few years ago in a small group setting what we hoped we would achieve in our Christian walks with God.

My answer was that I hoped I could show that God was bigger than Christianity. I remembering writing that and feeling so comforted by the vision of God it gave me. It made so much sense that the richness and depth of our God couldn't even been expressed or realised in the vast variety of Humanity, let alone closing definitions of Christianity.

Now I'm finding that those closing definitions of my Protestant upbringing more and more are slowly falling off, whether that's defining in God by what he isn't, or learning that the sacraments are mysteries and not rituals, or that Heaven and Hell are in the same realm.

Many Christians may struggle with the idea that God is bigger than Christianity and believe that His Truth is only found in our definitions. But what I'm struggling with more now, is the idea that God might not be bigger than myself. I'm finding the limitations I put on God are more dangerous than Christianity's limitations on him. Now I pray I can live a life that shows that God is bigger than me - this doesn't comfort me nearly as much!

Right now it feels like I'm looking into water and seeing myself rather than the lake - maybe I need to lift my head...

Connect the dots

A way of thinking that has helped me a lot, is an idea of connecting things even if they seem to be polar opposites.

(Modern) Protestant  thinking (though Catholics and Orthodox can be just as much to blame) would always  try to divide. "I think white, you think black sorry but we're different".  By connecting the dots or tying things together you might say "well what if one side of the coin is black and the other is white?" What is not helpful when using this method (most of the time) is to say "lets find a grey".

Christianity is full of these sort of Paradoxes (Trinity, Nature of Christ, Marriage) You have to hold that the trinity is three Persons but one God - you can't split it. Bringing things together means you create space for  unity, understanding, and love - I mean this conceptually and in reality.

What's great is that you can apply this to so many concepts and theologies and it has helped me makes sense of so many arguments that seem to tear stuff apart.

Another benefit is that it also balances you out. When a group decide specifically "this is our side of the coin" then it shades the rest of your theology in an unhealthy way. For example if you take a Calvinistic view of salvation in that God has chosen you, then you end up believing the God hasn't chosen others, which then leads you to believe that Christians are better than others. Likewise if you just believe that you chose God, the you can end up resting in your decision about God rather than actually in him, and you are in a danger of 'un-choosing' him if it doesn't work out. Connect the dots and you would say that it is more like a dance or a relationship where you embrace each other and respond and move with each other, and neither is dominated.

This all encompassing view of things has broadened my view of God, Truth is not found whether something is black or white, it's how these shades apply to the painting.

The Story Of Our Giants Family

The great scientist Isaac Newton famously said “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants”.

It’s a humbling place to wake up, and find yourself sitting on the shoulders of giants, looking out, and realising that the story of life you live, actually stretches from before time and to beyond it, and that your story is not your years existing as a person, but actually God’s story; the story of your family and how they found their Abba Father.

It changes your whole mind set to think that within this family we are the generations of sons & daughters that have inherited what was worked for by the Israelites, The Apostles, The Celtic Church, The Coptic Church, The Catholic Church, of Martyrs, Dreamers, Wrestlers, Thinkers, Game-Changers, of Jews, Arabs, Greeks, Africans, Europeans. All of whom were doing what we attain to, to find a way of living the story, that continues the work that Jesus began, in Glorifying the Father, through the Holy Spirit.

For many of these giants the process of growing in their story was painful. Isaiah spoke that ‘The bed is too short to stretch out on, the blanket too narrow to wrap around you.’ – These giants had to deal with real areas of struggle in progress, this came from their own self-doubt but also their contemporary’s objection. Particularly where no president had been set before - the Jewish ‘bed’ was too small for the uncircumcised Gentiles until Paul brought his message of circumcision of the heart. These paradigm shifts have continued throughout the history of our story, when our old wineskins cannot take the new fruit that God is bringing forth.

Over the past months in Turkey I’ve been brought closer to our family in two ways - time and place. In Selcuk you literally live among history, it loses its textbook and becomes part of your town. Our Paul and John also did life here, you look out at the same views, at the same clouds which rained on them, and feel the same sun that shone. It’s made it easier to value how the story went on from this place, touching a certain green & pleasant land that gave birth to our side of family. 

To call all these great saints family is a privilege and inspiring, to look back at what they achieved, the people they encouraged, and their legacies in the places they made home. We look at the way in which they made sense of God, the ways they did family, the cultures they were born into, the way they struggled in their story, the theological angles they wrestled with, the sacrifices they made, the new heights they took our perspective of God to, and the depths to which God restored and provided for them. 

Like Mr Newton we stand on the shoulders of these giants, who have walked in this story so far and we look to how we can keep telling and inspiring the story to our own kids. To see how God can be more fully revealed in our own chapter - in the time and place we live. To the people that can’t tell a story of a God who sought after them, who fought for them, who died for them and who brought them back to a place of belonging to a family whose rich story we are a part of.

Spirituality is dead

For some people it's not about what music you're playing - It's that they don't believe there IS music...

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/01/2013181262030173.html

Holistic Worship

In the 1970’s something old re-appeared on the medical scene. It was an idea that a person’s health may be a result of more than their physical condition and symptoms. Holistic health was a concept that dated back to at least 5000 years previous, which believed that all potential factors that contributed to a person’s life, might affect their wellbeing.

This approached a person’s health from an angle that was different to how western medicine had been providing health care. The Age of Enlightenment (when, roughly speaking, science replaced spirituality, reason replaced emotion and logic replaced mysticism) brought about a very scientific and biological way of viewing healthcare. Holistic health recognized that merely treating a person’s physical symptoms might not tackle the underlying cause of someone’s ailments. A person should be seen as a whole when considering their overall health.

For a while I’ve been thinking about how maybe the church has lost this ‘Holistic’ view of humans and how this has particularly affected our worship of God. At the centre of Jewish prayer is the Shema (Yisrael) the second line of which comes from Deuteronomy 6:5 “Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” The Psalmist echoes this “My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the LORD; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God” Psalm 84:2 Finally Jesus recites this as the most important commandment “`Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. ³⁰ Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’” Mark 12:29-30.

The Jews were well aware that in Worship and service to God their entire ‘Holistic’ lives were for him. Worship was partly a spiritual act but it was something that required and evoked the heart, mind and body also. With an holistic view point suddenly it makes sense why it’s difficult to feel proud when you are on your knees, why meditating on the glory of God stirs the spirit, and why outstretched hands are the outward expression of us being desperate for a glimpse of our God. 

I think this has further implications than just our corporate Worship on a Sunday; can we in our daily lives commit the entirety of ourselves to God? Whether showing love and hospitality, wrestling to unpack and understand scripture, or falling under a rhythm of prayer.

I think perhaps we have lost some of the depth to our Worship in treating ourselves a spiritually simple beings, the truth may be that we are a complex interrelation of mind, body and spirit, and that there comes a strength in aligning all three of these under God’s authority.