Fulfilment

I’ve been thinking about fulfilment recently. Below is a short stream of conciousness on it.

I’ve been enjoying volunteering as a first aider with St John Ambulance. I feel fulfilled through helping people: I feel I’ve maybe found a place to be, found my gifting.

But… is it wrong to get my purpose from that?

Only if it becomes the sole centre of my purpose.

How do I stop it becoming the sole centre of my purpose, my fulfilment?

By giving the glory to God. By being thankful for the gifting He has given me. By not taking for granted these new skills I have learned and am using. By remaining humble, not becoming prideful.

I’m off out again tomorrow. I have the week off work (what bliss it was to wake up on a Monday morning and not have to get up!) and have chosen to spend one of those days doing first aid. Or at least sitting around waiting for people to injure themselves!

Oh, and there’s a guy… I know, there’s always a guy. But I’m saying no more in case I jinx it. Not that I believe in that,  it’s more I don’t want to obsess TOO much, and if I put it down in black and white it becomes ‘out there’. This one I’m keeping to myself.

For now…

Lent

Aphra posted about Lent yesterday, with a link to this prayer guide (it’s a pdf). I thought it interesting and it has got me thinking.

I had already planned to look at the issues of grace, guilt, forgiveness and repentance (just a few little things!), to try and see how we as Christians can let go of unnecessaryguilt. So many of us are wracked with guilt that I think the Humanist Society has half a point with their athiest bus campaign.

Some Christians worry so much no wonder those who don’t believe can’t see what the benefit of Jesus in their life would be. After all, when most Christians they know have more hangups than then, why are they going to believe that Jesus makes life so much better?

I also thought about giving something up, but in a time of recession, I’m already cutting back. So I’ve decided to give up something that isn’t material or financial (though I might fast on luncthime a week to focus on the study, and give the money somewhere): I’m going to give up talking so much and take up listening; give up focussing on me so much (don’t laugh!) and take up focussing on others.

Deconstructing

tr.v. de·con·struct·ed, de·con·struct·ing, de·con·structs

1. To break down into components; dismantle.

2. To write about or analyze (a literary text, for example), following the tenets of deconstruction.

Interesting – I started this post back in April, when I decided I needed to deconstruct church. It’s taken me a while to get to a place I think is OK.

The point of deconstructing church was that it just wasn’t ‘doing it’ for me any more. I don’t mean that in a selfish, individualistic sense, but in the sense I wasn’t meeting God there, it wasn’t enabling me or equiping me for my week ahead. Or even the rest of my Sunday. And I cracked, which you’ll know if you’ve been reading for a while.

But in the last month or two I’ve finally set church free from my expectations. Which makes it easier for me to go. And also less burdensome – I also feel less guilty when I miss services too.

Church has now become that place where I do community. I go, I chat, I talk to people afterwards. I maintain and build friendships.

It’s also where I take part in communal worship.

But it’s not where I get my support from. It’s not the place that ’sends me out’ into my week. I’m not entirely sure where that is yet, but I’m working on that. I have friends I can call on, pray with, or who pray for me. I plan to join a homegroup, but that’s a few months ahead because of other commitment.

• St John Ambulance. After all, the church can only do what it has the resources – money, people, skills, time – to do, and at the moment, there’s little for me to get involved in. St John Ambulance is practical and is community-based. It’s not overtly Christian, but why should everything we do be? There shouldn’t be this sacred-secular divided that puts everything we do into one of two camps. We are called to live lives of workship daily, diong what we do to show love to others.
• Street Pastors. I hope to speak to some people in a month or so once it’s up and running locally and get on the training that starts in March.
• Refugee centre. Although all I do is sit on the sub-committee, I’ve asked if I could ’sponsor a student’ and am thinking of other ideas for raising money and awareness of the work they’re doing there.

It’s still work-in-progress, but that’s a life-long process! I think it’s going well so far, and it feels much better to have freed myself from the expectations of myself and of others! That said, yesterday I did Sunday School for the 3 & 4-year-olds. Little terrors – they are rather cute!

Questioning

For the last few years I’ve been involved in a Christian studies course called Workshop. I(n fact, if you live in the UK and are anywhere near London, Leeds, Manchester, Bristol or Birmingham, and you’re interested in exploring and questioning faith more, do check it out.)

We had a team prep/social day today, and we were discussing why more people aren’t interested in Workshop at the moment. Whether it’s a credit crunch thing, whether people don’t want to explore their faith more, whether they’re going to more ‘mainstream’ courses or colleges. Or, as I proposed: maybe they’re too scared to step outside their Christian bubble and risk their whole faith falling apart when something they’ve steadfastly believed in for years comes crashing down around them.

I can understand that’s scary. But surely living in a little bubble, never questioning, never doubting, not allowing ourselves to ask God “Why?” is scarier. To me that seems so much less real.

Even though I wonder about my faith at the moment, because I’m not in that happy clappy evangelical high all the time, I’d rather be where I am now than where I was, when I was a happy clappy evangelical clone who believed everything they were told.

One of the things I loved about The Shack (S, you were right, it’s great – I should have got it when you started raving about it and been ahead of the curve), was that God accepted, felt and heard Mac’s questioning and pain. God didn’t dismiss Mac for the pain he’d been through; didn’t disown him for his anger and drifting away. Despite – or because of? – that, God wanted to get closer to Mac. God didn’t have pat answers. In a way it reminded me of Job, when God tells Job about the bigger picture. God acknowledged Mac’s pain, grieved with him: but reminded him that a mere human could not see the bigger picture.

I think we forget that. Sure life hurts. Sometimes it’s an absolute tragedy. In the grand scheme of things, despite all my moaning, I have it pretty easy. I am grateful I have it as easy as I do. Others have more reason to shake an angry fist at God and shout “WHY?!” But we can’t see the bigger picture. And sometimes we’re too quick to put the blame on God for things. He gave us free will and we choose to abuse it. And often others suffer the consequences of that. Which seems so much more unfair. (Update: Interesting ‘toon from ASBO Jesus on this very topic.)

But the more I spend time with people, the more I get to know them, the more I realise that we can have peace. I have 2 friends I know through Workshop who have cancer. And they both have a strength and peace about it that comes from a stronger faith and relationship with God than what I have. I admire them. And I just hope I can develop that kind of faith they have, so when I face a similar difficult time I will have that trust in God.

Moving off on a slight tangent now. The other thing I loved about The Shack was that Jesus was just how I picture Him in my mind!

A Story of Gifts – loosely based on Matthew 8

A Story of Gifts – loosely based on Matthew 8.

“Let me put it to you this way…each of those events, demands, people, expectations…each exposes a window into your inner world revealing areas that need healing and restoration. You still believe the lie that experiencing life and being in relationship with me is about your performance. Even the person who wrongs you, or the one who places an unjust burden on you, or the one who makes you feel in their debt…any of these are a gift to you, if for no other reason than they expose what you work so hard to hide.”

So, what is it about myself that I am trying to hide, that certain people stimulate anger and irritation in me?

What is it about my ever-optimistic, loud, ‘Happy Clappy’ housemate that niggles parts of me I’ve kept hidden? Is it because I don’t have that supreme confidence in God he has? Is it because I am envious he always sees the silver lining? Though I don’t think it’s all that. He is oblivous to others in some way: the volume of his singing, the way he treats our home as a hotel for his friends on occasion shows a certain amount of disrespect for those of us he is living with. His insistence that things be done HIS way, that I adjust to him: I responded with a stubborness I didn’t realise I had. Maybe that’s it as well. He brings to the fore my own selfishness, my own desire to have things done my way. Which depresses me, because I’d really like to live on my own, but can’t afford it. Or else, with others but with certain rules. Whereas here, we have to figure things out among ourselves: and he seems to ride roughshod over what I think are basic considerations for those you live with.

There’s obviously things I need to work through and perhaps I need to start praying thankfullness for him, that he is a gift that will reveal the parts of me that need changing, the selfish, stubborn parts of me.

Or maybe he’ll just move out!

How do you want your religion, sir?

There appears to be an interesting discussion going on in the comments of my post on religion at the moment. Pop along and have a look. Feel free to join in the discussion.

Jim Wallis in London

Jim Wallis was over here in the UK, and I’m very grateful a friend let me know he would be talking a church.co.uk about his new book Seven Ways to Change the World.

A few nuggets. He didn’t tell us the 7 ways, and although I bought the book, I’ve not got that far, having found a bunch of friends there too, so went to the pub after.

• When asked what had been the things that had got him most into trouble: Going the places you’re not supposed to go, particularly as a white, middle class Christian. Walking past those invisible ‘No Trespassing!’ signs.
• The 2 big hungers in this world are for spirituality and social action. And the movement that combines both of this will set the world on fire.
• People will get excited about this different kind of faith.
• We’re not to just ignore bad news. Revival is the good news for bad news.
• Politics is broken.
• The most effective social movements – Great Awakenings – have happened when politics has failed to address a major social injustice, and have always had a spiritual foundation.
• Faith is what moves the mountains that are the seemingly impossible social injustices: poverty, trafficking, climate change, racial injustice, and so on.
• Social change requires commitment from each one of us. We need to start in our own lives, lead in our communities and that will make a difference on a bigger scale.
• It takes time. Wilberforce put his first Bill forward 9 times, and it took another 30 years before the slave trade itself was made illegal.
• Charles Finney ‘invented’ the altar call; and got each new Christian to sign up to the anti-slavery movement there and then.
• God needs to be real and personal to sustain the commitment and faith that moves mountains.
• Hope is a choice. Cynicism comes from unsuccessful attempts to bring about a change, but instead of persisting, cynicism gives up and declares nothing can ever change.
• Hope means believing in spite of the evidence. Then watching the evidence change.
• Bad religion calls out of us our bad stuff. We’ve seen a lot of bad religion. We want to see more good religion, which calls out of us our good stuff: compassion, action and so on..

Oh, and I didn’t realise he was married to the REAL Vicar of Dibley, one of the first women to be ordained in the UK, who went on to advise Richard Curtis and Dawn French on the show.

Identity

When you comment on Blogger it asks you to ‘choose and identity’.

Well tonight Matthew I’m going to be smart and sassy, confident yet understanding and empathetic. Tomorrow I might be a little tired and grumpy.

But where is our identity?

Is it in our appearance? Is it in our job? Will you find it in family and friends? In social activities? In philanthropic undertakings?

Is it in our own strength?

is it in the smile you get from a guy/gal? Being star of the week at work?

Or is it in Jesus?

And if it does, what exactly does that mean?

What kind of religion do you want?

Is was talking about religion over lunch with a colleague. I don’t do this often and I don’t jump in there, evangelistic guns a-blazing. Rather, I listen, try to get where they’re coming from, then pray for them. And for me in my relationship with them. Sounds like a cop-out, I know. But we’re not all born evangelists and apologists.

But the discussion -well, not really a discussion, more a diatribe (have I used that correctly?) of what he thought. Which was along the lines of if he was to follow a religion, it would probably be Islam, because at least their book was written by one guy, and they at least have rules which make sense and are good to live by. And has a huge focus on family and community.

Which made me think… the rules are what I find deeply UNattractive about Islam (well that and the suicide-bombing jihadists and the women-suppressing male leaders. But let’s not talk about the Crusades, that’s not what this post is about). The same with Judaism. But Islam has been hijacked too much for his liking – the true, original Islam is what he’d like. And he’s right. It has. In many areas, Islam has been hijacked by the prevailng culture. So much greatness came out of the early Islamic/Ottoman Empire: culture, science, the works.

Of course, Christianity’s not been hijacked, has it?! I (gently) put that point across. The incorporation of pagan/Roman/Greek ideals – the fact that in the West we celebrate Easter on a pagan feast day, not around Passover, which is when it actually happened. Christmas is another hijacked pagan feast day. Has it assimilated so much of other rituals and superstitions that Christianity has lost its own saltiness?

But there’s often an inner resistance to Christianity in the West. Apparently it’s downfall was the incorporation of materialism, individualism and capitalism, according to my colleague. You don’t say?! That and excommunication – I can’t believe people actually had the gall to do that! Because only a few centuries ago, to excommunicate someone was to say they no longer belonged to society; because society was Christendom, was the church, and to be no longer part of the church meant you had no place. You became a non-person in the eyes of society. I’m glad we’ve moved on from that.

But getting back to my point about rules: we have 2 as Christians.

1. Love God
2. Love others

Everything we do is a part of that (even though we f**k it up so often). It’s about the heart of what believe, the motivation. Not because we’re told to do so. And that’s what makes Christianity so freeing. But also, I guess, makes it look so woolly and wishy-washy. There’re no hard and fast do’s and don’t’s (other than the 10 Commandments, and we all get hung up over our neighbours ass when we talk about them) that you see in Islam. There’s been a certain amount of rhetoric over the last few years about why young men become attracted to Islam, become fundamentalistic suicide bombers. And there’s a lot to be said for an element of certainty in a world that can appear rootless, drifting and excluding to young men of a certain age and race. It can offer that family support in an age of broken families. It can offer a set of rules and codes of behaviour in a society that looks out only for Number One, and that thinks as long as you feel good about it, it’s OK.

But then there are my friends who believe in God. But that’s it. Jesus? Probably not, because He’s harder to get your head – and heart – around.

I don’t really know where I’m going with this. There’s a ‘why?’, I guess. Why do you or I believe? And a ‘what?’: what do we believe?

What & Why. What a merry pair of bedfellows they make. I think they snuggle up with Faith, because without her, they don’t make sense on her own. And that’s what people so often miss or haven’t experience.

It’s all about Jesus

But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
Isaiah 53:5

Warning: this post shares a bit too much. Particularly for boys.