The Cure of Souls

In one of his books, J.B. Phillips, author of the popular translation of the New Testament that bears his name, quotes the American essayist David Grayson. Following a stay in hospital, Grayson reflected on the experience in a little book called Adventures in Solitude. Here's the quotation:

As I thought during those long days, it seemed to me that the hospital cherishes a spirit, or an attitude, that the Church sadly lacks. I felt in it a respect for the human body and for the human life beyond that in the Church, as it stands today, for the spirit of man.

The hospital diagnoses before it prescribes; the Church prescribes before it diagnoses. The physician stands humble before the human body, studies it, doubts about it, wonders at it; labors to fit his remedies to the exact disease. Is there in any church an equivalent humility in the presence of the spirit of man? Is the priest willing to inquire and doubt and wonder? Does he know before he tries to cure?

Obviously, Grayson wrote before the small matter of insurance had come to dominate health-care; and he'd clearly never seen an episode of House, where the tormented physician treats just about everyone like dirt. Nevertheless, it's easy to see what he means. Phillips writes that the phrase "the Church prescribes before it it diagnoses" haunts him. It haunts me, too. There is a world of difference between proclaiming the simple Gospel and spouting simplistic dogma. The witness of the Church is harmed by those who fail to listen, who are too ready to tell all and sundry exactly what is wrong without even the courtesy of allowing the other to speak.

Of course, in terms of the sickness unto death that afflicts us all, there can only be one prescription. Eternal death, the result of our rebellion, can only be countered by eternal life, the gift of God through the sacrifice of Christ, appropriated by faith. However, there are many ailments beyond that basic disease. There are different words for different conditions. Just bawling "Jesus saves" doesn't really help when the ailment looms large. A soul tortured by remorse needs a quite different approach than the blustering bully who must learn to bow before the majesty of God.

What do we learn? That the privilege of sharing Christ must be preceded by the building of relationship, and especially by a readiness to listen. And having listened we will be careful to seek God's guidance. There are many tools available in the Word, but they must be selected with care and used with skill. As Phillips says, "the souls of men are delicate and complex affairs and their spiritual needs are never going to be met by mass prescription."

From Darkness Deliver Us

I remember Justin Webb as a fresh-faced young reporter with a slight lisp. An interesting, well-educated, and articulate man, Webb is employed as a special correspondent by that most venerable of institutions, the British Broadcasting Corporation.

For the last eight years, Justin Webb has been the BBC's North America editor, based in Washington, D.C. Over the summer he is due to return to the United Kingdom to take up a new appointment. Last weekend, on Radio 4, Webb reflected upon his time in the United States, and upon his imminent return to South London, in a broadcast entitled "Checking out of 'Hotel America.'" His words were subsequently posted on the BBC's website (see below).

It's clear that Webb has developed a great affection for the United States, (even though he has to pretend that no one ever lived in his home in order to sell it, and even though many Americans don't understand his humor). Webb admires the unbounded optimism of the American people, and the ability to change one's circumstances. It's not true that America is the only place in the world where a young girl in a Bronx housing project can dream of a career in the Law and end up on the Supreme Court, but that kind of transformation does seem more likely in the US. There is still a 'can do' attitude in America that is, frankly, refreshing to those of us who grew up with the social stratification of Old Europe. Webb admires that attitude. So do I. Webb's young daughter has already announced that, when she is old enough, she's moving back!

Social mobility, though, according to Webb, needs the dark underside of American culture because people need something from which to escape. Without the stark awfulness of some aspects of American life the dream would cease to exist. Webb witnessed the dark side on a trip to South Carolina, to an area be-devilled by tattoo parlors and pawn shops, gun stores and the Piggly-Wiggly (which, he says, "smells almost as odd as it sounds.") For Webb the downside of America is its ugliness - Doric columns made of cheap concrete, "encroaching into palm forests with no hint of apology." It is also to be seen in the hypocritical, small-minded, intellectual ugliness of American religion.

While in South Carolina, Webb met Governor Mark Sanford, with whom he was singularly unimpressed.

According to Webb, Sanford is "another quintessentially American phenomenon. A politician mired in Bible-laced hypocricy." Sanford, a conservative Republican who lived in some sort of Christian felowship house in Washington, disappeared earlier this year. He was in Argentina conducting an affair with a young lady while pretending to be hiking in Appalachia. Some of his trips to that country were, allegedly, paid for by the tax payers of South Carolina.

Exhibit two for Justin Webb is Kara Neumann from Wisconsin, an eleven year old girl suffering from type-one diabetes who, when she was diagnosed with an auto-immune condition, was not taken to the dosctor but to the preacher. Instead of medicine the little girl received prayer. She died. Quite rightly, Webb deplores the unnecessary suffering and loss of life. However, his conclusion extends well beyond a single case. He declares that he also deplores "the Stone Age superstition that stalks the richest and most technologically advanced nation on earth."

It's a shame that Webb's journalistic objectivity (trumpeted by the BBC but so little in evidence in recent years) does not allow him to see the vast amount of social welfare undertaken by the church, the millions of volunteer hours, or the generosity in response to disaster that regularly dwarfs the efforts of the Federal government. Webb plays the old trick - he picks up on isolated incidents and draws conclusions out of all proportion to the evidence. Sanford is a hypocrite, therefore all Christians are hypocrites. Kara Neumann's family does not understand that modern medicine is a gift from God, and that science and faith are not incompatible alternatives, therefore all Christians are mired in ignorance, only one step above the dark ages.

Of course it is nonsense. It is cultural arrogance. It is also poor journalism. Could it not possibly be that there is a link between the social mobility of American society at its best, and a theology that understands us all to have been made in the image of God? And could it not be, also, that as Justin Webb returns to secular England he will encounter a darkness far greater than that to be found in the salt marshes of South Carolina?

Justin Webb's article can be found at:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/8176448.stm

Taking Care of Business

I have been moved, this weekend, by a quotation from Brother Roger of Taize.

This morning during the common prayer I suddenly became aware of the quality of my brothers and am moved to the depths of my heart. They give their life - all their life. They pay dearly for the price of their commitment. I know that better than any. Then I can no longer say if my admiration is for my brothers or for Christ who has set His mark on them.

One of the side effects of the current recession is a certain harshness that has crept into relationships, especially in business settings. Talking to people in the community, I find that self-preservation has become the highest good for many people. Management has become so besotted with a drive towards efficiency (or the need to raise capital to stave off bancruptcy) that the human cost of redundancy has been forgotten. To an extent, this is understandable. If businesses are to survive they must make a profit, of course. But I do wish that managers would learn not to say that they are "trimming the fat" when they are laying people off. From what I understand, these decisions are often arbitrary. More importantly, they deny the dignity to their fellow-workers that we all deserve as creatures made in the image of God. I have heard horror stories of redundancies caused, not by economic necessity, but as a result of petty vendettas.

Servant-leadership, as modelled by Brother Roger, is a far more attractive option. As Christians, it is not our business to "lord it over one another" (Matthew 20:25 ) but to follow the example of the One who came not to be served but to serve, and to lay down His life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45).

So, my prayer is that I will see the dedication of those who give themselves so freely and generously for the work of the church, as precious gifts upon whom Christ Himself has set His mark. It's far too easy for the culture of the business world to seep over into the administration of the church. I think we need to be diligent and business-like in our organization, but I also think that we need to remember that we are a community, not a company. We need to be intentional about building a culture of respect.

On August 16 2005, Brother Roger was fatally stabbed by a mentally ill woman during the evening prayer service in Taizé.

Dachau

There are some things we need to remember, and there are some things we need to forget.

There are some things we need to forgive, and there are many things for which we need to be forgiven.

Art Katz in his testimony-book Ben Israel writes of his visit to the concentration camp at Dachau:

I was totally unprepared for what greeted me at this museum of death ... the gas rooms with the jets still in the ceiling. Here my brother-Jews had been herded like cattle into cars. Women and children. Stripped naked. Old men and young boys. Why was the ear of God silent to the shrieks and prayer of these helpless, innocent ones who were slaughtered like cattle? My stomach turned sick and my eyes blurred with tears ... Outside were the conveyor belts where the bodies were dispatched to the giant ovens ... the mutilated bodies were slowly and systematically fed into the flames. The huge smokestacks never ceased their ugly belching - twenty-four hours a day as the ovens were stoked with the House of Israel.

And later, on the train that took him on his way ...

In an instant the truth dawned: Katz, except for the accident of birth, the caprice of time and place, you might have been born a German Aryan. It could have been you stoking bodies into the ovens. He shuddered and looked long into the blue eyes of the German man opposite. "I have been to Dachau," he said quietly.

A photograph of Dachau, which was posted with this article, has been removed. My apologies; I did not realize that the photograph was under copyright.

Smoke and Mirrors

Where does religion come from? Sigmund Freud thinks he knows. His theory, entitled "the psychogenesis of religion" is to be found in Totem and Taboo (1913). According to Freud, every major religion venerates a father-figure. The reason for this involves "the Oedipal complex." This is what Freud means:

At some prehistoric time human beings lived in a tribe ruled by a chief. This chief was, literally, a father, having exclusive sexual rights over the women of his tribe. However, as the chief aged, and as his sons matured, conflict, fuelled by sexual frustration, grew in intensity. Eventually, the sons rebelled, overthrew their father, and killed him. Almost immediately the sons were overcome by remorse at what they had done. They created rituals in order to assuage their grief and guilt, and so religion was born.

Freud goes on to interpret individual religious experience on the basis of the Oedipal complex. For Freud, veneration of a father-figure is a childish response to a dominant human parent. Fear of punishment forces the child to subject his will to his father's, and then to project the characteristics of the father into an illusory spiritual realm. In effect, therefore, religion is simply the perpetuation of infantile behavior. The frightened child trusts that his father will protect him from the ogres under the bed. The timid adult trusts that his heavenly father will protect him from the very real ogres who inhabit our world. But this is little more than wishful thinking. A confident young adult moves away from his father's control and gains his independence. As he leaves behind the phobias of childhood, so he should also reject the delusion that is religion. He should grow up and deal with the real world, not hide away in a realm created by his own wishes.

For me, the most telling response to Freud's theories of the origin of religion is simply to point out that he is creating an hypothesis, not stating a fact. Freud has absolutely no evidence to support the theory of a prehistoric patricide; the Oedipal complex has no foundation. He has merely invented the event in order to give credibility to his theories, which in turn support his prejudices. This is eisegesis of the worst kind. Freud massages the evidence until it appears to support his conclusions. But it is all a game with smoke and mirrors. Freud is the illusionist, not the Christian.

And yet, how many atheists continue to use this argument? Belief is still condemned as infantile. Obsessional neuroses are blamed for being the hidden persuaders behind religious ritual. Believers are told that they are foolish children, reacting to trauma by repressing their instincts and their emotions. Christians continue to fool themselves by creating castles in the sky.

In truth, though, these criticisms tell us more about the repressed spiritual urges of those who reject Christianity than they do about the origins of religion. Atheists have created their own myth. There is no evidence for its truth, but they continue to advocate for the illusion because they cannot bear to think that they might be wrong. Sound familiar? Freud's psychoanalytical atheism is an hypothesis, nothing more. Christians have no reason to fear an illusion.

Wishing Doesn't Make It True

Is our desire for God anything more than wishing Him into existence? It's an old argument that has been going the rounds since Ludwig Feuerbach. I recently came across the debate still festering on http://www.opposingviews.com/

In a way, I'm surprised that the debate is ongoing. Over a hundred years ago, Eduard von Hartmann pointed out the logical fallacy in Feuerbach's argument, but that doesn't stop the anti-God lobby from using it. Alister McGrath quotes von Hartmann in one of his books, "It is perfectly true that nothing exists merely because we wish it, but it is not true that something cannot exist if we wish it." Things do not exist simply because we desire them. But it does not follow that, because we desire something, it does not exist. Feuerbach's argument is a logical fallacy. What's the argument about?

Feuerbach wrote that religion is simply a projection of our wishes. We would like the world to be ordered, for the good to go to heaven and the evil to go to the other place, and so we wish it, and convince ourselves that it is true. In The Essence of Christianity (1841) Feuerbach argues that the idea of God arises from human experience. Human beings long for something beyond themselves, for immortality, for justice, for love. And so we translate our experience of longing onto an illusory plane and create the idea of God. In a sense, as Sigmund Freud was to argue, religion is a childish response to our dependence upon our parents. When we continue the culture of dependence into our adult lives, we substitute God for our earthly father. If only we would grow up we would realize that our search for spiritual reality is a study of our own experience. There is no external reality to be discovered.

Feuerbach has been very influential, though few remember his name today. Karl Marx adopted his critique of religion. Freud promoted it; in his The Future of Illusion (1927) Freud said that religious ideas are "illusions, fulfillments of the oldest, strongest, and most urgent wishes of mankind." It's an argument that is still rolled out with great regularity today.

You can't really argue with Feuerbach, or his disciples. He simply states his hypothesis as gospel, and that's the end of the argument. Religion is wish-fulfillment. Nothing more. With a condescending smile the popular psychologist encourages us to grow up and grow out of the delusion. Only then will we be free.

Feuerbach's arguments are predicated upon the assumption that all religious experience is actually human experience. Specifically, as Schliermacher wrote, religion is based upon the human experience of being dependent. This was a popular idea at the time but, as many have pointed out, Feuerbach ignores the doctrine of revelation. As Christians we don't have to rely upon our subjective interpretations; God confronts us through His Word. He is prior to and independent of our experience. We aren't just listening to ourselves. God speaks. More to the point He often says things that we probably we would not wish to hear, especially when He calls us to repentance, to turn from sin and to turn to Christ. How can it be wish-fulfillment when it would be easier all around if God did not exist, if there was no judgment to fear?

Most of the time, though, Feuerbach doesn't depend upon arguments. He just insists that he is right. Curiously, it's like arguing with a charismatic who claims a direct line to God. There can be no argument when all opposing viewpoints have been eliminated, a priori, as nonsense. Even the glib, self-satisfied smile is the same, "Of course you wouldn't understand."

What we understand is that just because an argument keeps being repeated, that doesn't make it right. When I was at Birmingham University a young girl, who used to attend the meetings of the Christian Union, suddenly stopped coming. Eventually we found out why. She was dating an undergraduate from the Department of Psychology. This genius had read a little Freud and decided that he had no further need of "the god hypothesis." And, because he wanted her to do away with her "bourgeois, oppressive, Victorian morality," he persuaded her that her religion had been a projection of her insecurity. She responded, not by slugging him, but by agreeing. Rejecting the moral code of her childhood she was free to debate philosophy between the sheets. I don't know what became of her. I pray that she woke up.

Of course, the irony is that she created a new reality on the basis of her wishes. She wanted to be found attractive to this young Lothario, (and for her brain not just for her looks), so she wished for a world in which her constraints evaporated. And they did. She mistook anthropology for theology. She thought that she had argued herself out of a need for God. But God is not dependent upon her needs, neither is He perturbed by her denials of His existence. She may wish for a world without God, but wishing does not make it true!

Why should we be expected to abandon the Christian faith just because Ludwig Feuerbach tells us that we are projecting our wishes instead of experiencing God? It's still a very unconvincing argument, no matter who tells you otherwise.

Dead Men Rise Up Never

Proserpine - by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Jack London has a tale, from his youth, of going to sea on the Sophie Sutherland, a three-topmast schooner, seal hunting off the coast of Japan. London tells of a fellow-sailor, an unpleasant man known only as "The Bricklayer" who died and was buried at sea, with "a gunnysack, half full of galley coal... fastened to his feet." Against naval tradition, the seventeen year-old Jack London took over his recently-departed colleague's bunk. His other shipmates warned him that the Bricklayer would not be pleased. He would come back to haunt the lad.

Then, on an ugly night, Jack was startled to see an ominous shape on deck, near the spot where the Bricklayer had been tipped over the side. Intellectually, he could not fathom what he was seeing. Was it a spectre, risen from the deep? Surely, "dead men rise up never." Finally, after an agony of self-doubt, Jack plucked up the courage to confront the ghoul, only to find himself face to face with an equally terrified Newfoundland dog.

The title of Jack London's short story (later purloined by others) comes from Swinburne:

From too much love of living,

From hope and fear set free,

We thank with brief thanksgiving

Whatever gods may be

That no man lives forever

That dead men rise up never

That even the weariest river

Winds somewhere safe to sea.

The Garden of Proserpine: A.G.Swinburne 1866

Is it true, though, that "dead men rise up never'? Ernst Troelsch, the German sociologist, had an unsophisticated answer to this question. His response is typical of many today. Troelsch argued that, since dead men do not rise, Jesus Christ could not have risen from the dead. And that's the end of that. The central pillar of Christianity is swept away, by fiat. Troelsch simply declares, like David Hume before him, that resurrection just does not happen. Since there is no evidence of dead men rising in our experience, it follows that no dead men have ever risen, or ever shall.

What are we to make of this argument, given that, as Paul says, "if Christ is not risen we are, of all men, most to be pitied" (I Corinthians 15:19)? Wolfhart Pannenberg points out that Troelsch takes a very dogmatic approach to the question of resurrection. Based upon his presuppositions, Troelsch dictates what can and cannot happen. According to Troelsch, and a horde of modern disciples, the question of resurrection is non-sensical. It does not happen today and it did not happen 2,000 years ago.

Troelsch's argument is based upon inductive reasoning, moving from a particular example to a general rule. The particular example he chooses is his own experience. He then proceeds to draw his conclusion based upon his chosen premise. This is obviously unsatisfactory. Observation cannot eliminate the possibility of resurrection, it can only establish probability.

If "dead men rise up never," how do we account for the witness of the New Testament? It cannot be wish-fulfillment, given that the devastated disciples were in no fit state to create the fiction. Neither would they have been prepared to suffer so cruelly for an obvious untruth. Could it not be that the bodily resurrection of Jesus provides the best explanation of the events? Often, it seems, our response to the empty tomb tells us more about ourselves than we imagine. Secular people give a secular response. But Christians tend not to be so concerned. We judge matters of life and death on the basis of what we know about Jesus, not the other way round, and certainly not on the basis of Troelsch's dogmatic metaphysical presuppositions.

We don't need to apologize for our faith. When our opponents dismiss the resurrection of Christ out of hand, they merely display secular fundamentalism. Swinburne's vision of the underworld was of a grey place without fear but also without hope. Is it wrong to hope for something better?

Tea and the Slippery Slope

I happen to like tea. I prefer black tea - a blend of orange pekoe and broken orange pekoe that most Americans would call "English Breakfast Tea." I like it piping hot. In fact, the hotter the better otherwise the tea will not infuse properly and the leaves will rise in the cup. Yes, I brew it in the cup, mainly because that's how I like it. I just have to remember not to drain the cup! In my humble opinion tea should have milk in it, and it should not be flavored. Blackcurrant, mango, and mint may be wonderful flavors for soft drinks, but they should not be allowed to contaminate tea. It goes without saying that the words "iced" and "tea" should not be used in the same sentence, sweetened or unsweetened.

Does that make me a tea-snob, or (as someone once called me) a tea-afficianado? No, it just means that I prefer my tea the way I have been drinking it since I was a small boy. I'm not going to judge your preferences, but neither am I going to apologize for mine. I just happen to like my tea good and strong and very hot!

Other people take their tea differently. In China, Gaiwan Tea has full green leaves floating in the cup. In Japan, Sencha is green tea that remains unfermented. Other traditions predominate in other areas. Millions of people enjoy their favorite drink in many different ways. And that's fine. To accept this, we have to have a basic understanding of cultural relativism. Different cultures have different ways of doing things. It's good to know that we are not all the same. Who knows, I might try iced pomegranate tea one day and like it. It's not very probable, but it might happen.

The problem comes when cultural relativism becomes ethical relativism. Let's imagine that, in order to produce their favorite type of tea, the citizens of Pomerania require that all of their left-handed children be taken from their parents, trained to climb to the tops of the trees to gather the youngest, most succulent leaves. Ethical relativism says that, since different cultures have different moral beliefs, we should not judge the Pomeranians. They have their method of producing tea and we have ours. That's just the way it is.

Ethical relativism tends to degenerate, over time, into ethical scepticism, which proposes that there are no absolute moral rules. If the citizens of Pomerania decide to kidnap children from our country and to force them into slavery, we still can't judge them, because absolute moral rules are impossible to prove. All that we can do it to prevent their capture, or rescue them. We will do this, not because we judge the Pomeranian tea-manufacturing process to be immoral, but because we value our children. With regard to ethical norms, we remain sceptical.

Ethical scepticism tends to degenerate, over time, into ethical nihilism, in which there are thought to be no moral rules at all. The Pomeranians may not only steal our children, they may also sacrifice them to the tea-gods after the harvest, adding their blood to the brew! As nihilists we will be unable to do anything, other than exert a superior military force. Morally, we could not challenge the Pomeranians. We could not describe them as "evil," since evil does not exist. We could not judge them, since there would be no standard we could bring to bear. No universal principle would guide us. No holy book would determine right from wrong.

* * * * * * * *

Of course this is all a bad dream. Cultural relativism does not need to become ethical relativism, which does not need to become ethical scepticism, which does not need to become ethical nihilism. And this conversation is not about tea.

Encompassing Prayer

I can't resist adding one, brief stanza to show how much I appreciate George Herbert. It's taken from a collection of poems known as The Temple, which was entrusted to his old friend Nicholas Ferrar (the founder of the Little Gidding community) as Herbert was on his deathbed. It was subsequently published and became a firm favorite, influencing later poets such as Vaughan and Coleridge. Here's the stanza in question.

Enrich, Lord, heart,
hands, mouth in me
with faith, with hope
and charity,

that I may run, rise,

rest in Thee.

I picked up my copy of The Temple in Cambridge, when I was at college. In fact I believe I bought it in a second hand store on Trinity Street, which is rather appropriate given that Herbert was at Trinity College. He secured a fellowship there in 1614. He was well known for his classical scholarship and his musical abilities (he played the lute and the viol). A few years later he became the Public Orator of the university and would probably have ended up at the Court of King James, except for the monarch's untimely death.

Herbert ended up being ordained. Unlike many of his contemporaries, however, he took his work seriously. He published A Priest in the Temple in 1652, which gives a sober and balanced account of the responsibilities of a clergyman. It has been very influential.

St. Peter's Church, Fugglestone.

Herbert spent all of his ministry in the same place. In 1630 he was persuaded, by Archbishop Laud, to accept the living of Fugglestone with Bemerton, near Salisbury, in the South of England. He spent the remainder of his short life devoted to his flock and to prayer.

It's commonplace nowadays to sneer at the Parish model of Church governance. Under this system the country is divided up into parishes and the clergy have responsibility for everyone who lives within a given geographic area. The plan assumes, of course, that just about everyone is Christian. There are obvious problems. It can degenerate into Erastianism, in which the church becomes the lackey of the state. Even if this doesn't happen, it can lead to too close an association between church and state. The prophetic function of the church can suffer. Resentments against secular leaders can be translated into anti-clericalism. But there is also something attractive about the parish model. It speaks of the all-encompassing nature of God, and the need for the church to reach out to all. At its best it is a genuine attempt to influence the whole of society with the Gospel. And perhaps it would work: if we were all gifted with the gentle spirit of George Herbert.

Making Drudgery Divine

George Herbert (1593-1633), whose sweet spirit still shines through his verse, once wrote:

A servant with this clause
Makes drudgery divine;
Who sweeps a room, as for Thy laws,
Makes that and th' action fine.

Herbert's point was that even the most menial, repetitive of tasks can be a source of personal satisfaction if we regard our work as being done "as for the Lord." The first stanza of the poem expresses the same thought:

Teach me, my God and King,
In all things Thee to see,
And what I do in anything
To do it as for Thee.

Someone once called this attitude "the sanctification of the commonplace"; it is the perfect antidote to boredom.


Don't you get tired of hearing how bored people are? My sainted Grandmother Taylor used to say,"Those who are bored have usually done nothing to deserve it!" Then she would grin and go back to cleaning her tiny home. Her attitude was decidedly Victorian (which is what she was, since she was born in 1900 when Victoria still reigned). Grandma had a very high view of the value of work. I don't think she was ever bored. At twelve years of age she went to work in the weaving shed at her local cotton mill in Blackburn, Lancashire. She was a 'piecer,' crawling beneath the flying shuttles, perilously close to the unguarded machinery, reaching through the moving threads to 'piece' together those that had broken. It must have been terrifying for a child. Maybe it was the elements of risk that kept it from being tedious.
On the other hand, perhaps Grandma realized that she had a job to do, and that she might as well do it to the best of her ability. She would say, "You can't be busy and bored." I think she was right. No job needs to be boring if it is well done.
Our society is in danger of regarding work as a necessary evil that must be endured. Increasingly, we are defining ourselves by our leisure, not by our emloyment, nor by our relationship to God. We no longer live to work; neither do we work to live; we live to play. As Neil Postman put it, we are "amusing ourselves to death."
To be fair, changes in employment practice have probably contributed to this change in attitude. For example, in our community, in Texas, it used to be the case that a job in the chemical industry was a job for life. It was not unusual for those employed by a chemical company to stay there for forty years or more. Not so today. A changing world economy has led to some changes, but others have arisen as a result of a different management culture. The perception is that workers are more expendable nowadays. Older employees are sometimes sacrificed because they cost more, or because a provision in their pension plan is about to be triggered. Camaraderie and satisfaction in a shared enterprise seem to have disappeared. Work has become a struggle to survive. We are, as Falconer put it, captives "fettered to the oar of gain."
What can be done? Are we condemned to live in misery, equally fearful of both unemployment and work? There are two things that can help us, I believe. They are: a recovery of pride and purpose in our work; and, the imagination. It may sound terribly naive, but wouldn't it help if we were able to regard our work as our vocation? If we believe that we have been given certain talents and abilities, and if we are able to employ these, to some degree, at work, then should we not regard that work as God-given? This is what George Herbert was getting at. In the same way, Paul urged his readers to be "not slothful in business... serving the Lord," (Romans 12:11) which implies that the performance of every day duties is serving the Lord and earning His approval. My boss may not appreciate me; my supervisor may not remember my name; but God sees my labor, and smiles. If nothing else, this attitude shoul help me to recover a sense of personal dignity. Yes, I am worth something! I may not make much difference, but the difference I do make can be a powerful witness for good. There are enough cynics out there - the world does not need another one. I should work hard, do my best, and if I can help to make someone's day just a little better, then I should do it!



The second antidote to terminal weariness is the imagination. When my imagination is crushed, when the child in me no longer wonders what lies around the next corner, then of course I am bored. In a sense, I am bored when I become too self-satisfied. The self-centered person often falls prey to self-pity. The windows of the imagination become shuttered and the soul shrivels up. When I cease to treat life as a great adventure, when there are no more mysteries to be explored, then my life becomes sordid and dull.
But if my imagination is allowed to flower and flourish then, even in the dullest of places, I can still find something new. I will not be an observer of the drama of life, I will be a participant, and I shall play my part with gusto, and my days will be richer as a result.


Robert Louis Stevenson (a man who lived every moment of life) concluded his morning prayer with these words:
"When the day returns, return to us as our sun and comforter, and call us up with morning faces and morning hearts, eager to labour, eager to be happy if happiness shall be our portion, and if the day be marked for sorrow, strong to endure."
With a sense of pride and purpose, and a quickened imagination, even drudgery can be made divine.

This is the famous stone
That turneth all to gold;
For that which God doth touch and own
Cannot for less be told.

Dragonflies and Death

If you are in need of a good laugh let me recommend the Agnes Browne Trilogy by Brendan O'Carroll. It's been described as Angela's Ashes without the misery. The books are set in working class Dublin, beginning in the 1960's. Raw and earthy, with the kind of humor I remember so well from my own upbringing in the North of England, O'Carroll's tales are both evocative and skilfully wrought. The author weaves together such disparate themes as abuse and alcoholism, adolescent angst and adult alienation. Hidden within the humor lies one of the tenderest love stories you will read anywhere. The Irish seem to have a knack for moving seamlessly between pain and laughter, tragedy and comedy. If you can get beyond some of the foul language, the books are well worth reading.

Many things in the books delighted me; some made me laugh out loud; but several things surprised me. First, there is very little sectarianism in the story. One of the incidental characters is a Jewish businessman who has fallen upon hard times. His generosity is in sharp contrast to the callous violence of his son. But, in the narrative of the Browne clan, that son is just a villain, not a Jewish villain. I have no idea whether or not this is an accurate representation of working-class Dublin in the late twentieth century. Given the other prejudices that are given expression in the books, particularly the small-minded hatemongering of the skinheads, this comes as a surprise. O'Carroll makes his characters generally sympathetic to a family member who turns out to be homosexual (Agnes wonders when he is going to come out of the wardrobe...) but it is still a member of the family who almost kills him when he goes 'queer bashing.' There's a certain tension here. Sectarian violence is largely controlled in the Browne Trilogy, presumably for the sake of the story. The streets are, by and large, safe. In a society in which alcohol abuse is such a way of life, I'm not sure how authentic this really is.

Secondly, in the same way, there are no anti-British themes explored. The young men go to England to find work. One of them dies there, the victim of both the avarice of others and his own appetite for heroin. A mere fifty years after the Easter Uprising I would have expected more antipathy toward the old enemy. The 'Troubles' are only mentioned once, in passing. Yet this was the period during which the green of the South and the orange of the six counties of the North were both stained with blood.

Finally, there is no anti-clericalism either. One very serious nun is mocked. Her false teeth are knocked out with a convenient cucumber, which is no less than she deserves for her harsh treatment of the brood of children entrusted to her care. But a priest, working with the St. Vincent de Paul Society, is praised. Most of the major events of Agnes' life, and those of her children, are marked by the church. And yet the story contains scarcely any mention of the Christian faith. Whatever Catholicism remains hardly influences the Brownes. They lie, steal, cheat and fornicate without reference to a distinctly Christian moral code. They are hard-working and generous, and they are loyal to one another (although they also fight incessantly), but their virtues are not specifically Christian. As the story unfolds, we watch them adopting the values of a godless world. At first, for example, Agnes is wounded when Simon decides to co-habit and not to marry; later, she has no problems taking her over-sexed French lover to her bed. Perhaps the all-pervasive public religion of Agnes' youth has lost so much influence that, by the end of her life, the Roman Catholic Church is simply irrelevant and is therefore ignored.

An illustration of this is the attitude to death displayed by members of the Browne family. An assumption is made that beyond death there is a place of pure happiness, call it heaven if you will, that has no relation to morality, or to God. When Agnes suffers an aneurism and slips into a coma she has a vivid dream of her old friend Marion, dead for 25 years. In her dream, hanging between life and death, Marion tells her that in this secular heaven the bingo halls are open all day and she can drink as much cider as she likes. The only rule is that one cannot see from one realm to the next. Marion thinks that it is a stupid rule, and says so. Apparently one can also swear in heaven.

Earlier in the final book, The Granny, Dermot Browne explains death to his son, Cormac, by means of a parable. He tells the child that death is like a grub, rising through the water of a pond to become a dragonfly. All the grubs in the pond wonder what lies beyond the surface. Eventually, one brave grub volunteers to climb a blade of grass to see what is there, and then to come back to tell the rest of them. He climbs until he feels the sun upon his back and then, a wondrous thing happens, he turns into a magnificent dragonfly, decked out in yellow, green and blue. He cannot go back to tell the others so, instead, he flaps his four wings and flies away into the sunshine with a big smile on his face. "So you see, Cormac," says Dermot, "that's what 'died' is. Your mammy has become a dragonfly." (The Granny p.140)

It's a pretty story to tell a six year old, but it is also nonsense. Without the assurance of faith and the knowledge of the resurrection we have absolutely no reason to tell our children that there is a happy land, far, far away. And what exactly does it mean to say, as O'Carroll does on at least two occasions, that at death we become dragonflies? Don't dragonflies die too? Aren't thousands of them snapped up as soon as they emerge from the water, long before they can fly, smiling, into a welcoming sky?

Hope, without Christ, is empty. It is not much more than wishful thinking. It cannot comfort the dying, it cannot relieve the pain of those who are left behind. Sentiment can never be a substitute for a living faith.

I'm not sure I want to be a dragonfly when I die, but I do want to be with Christ. Wherever He is will be heaven indeed.

* * * * * * * * * *

The Agnes Browne Trilogy consists of The Mammy; The Chisellers; and, The Granny. All are published by Plume, a member of the Penguin Putnam Group.

Mud and Glory

I've been reading Paul Reed's study of the struggle for control of the village of Combles, France, during the battle of the Somme. "Combles" makes for grim reading. By 1916, the village had been under German occupation for two years. The German Army, steamrollering across Picardy, had finally been halted by the French on the Somme. Stalemate ensued. The front lines were handed over to the British in the Fall of 1915 and the war of attrition began in earnest.

Many of the British soldiers who contested this tiny, bloody patch of rural France were from the London Regiment. When war was declared, in 1914, the British Army could muster only 250,000 men, compared to approximately five million in the German Army. Volunteer or Territorial units were swiftly formed in Britain. Some of them volunteered to serve overseas. Like many other geographically based regiments, the "London" had a distinctly local flavor. Men from the same street, factory, school, club, or church often joined up together. Many of them served together, and died together.

The London Regiment, though never at full strength, was supposed to have 28 battalions bearing such evocative names as: the London Rifle Brigade (5th), the Post Office Rifles (8th), the London Scottish (14th), and the Artist's Rifles (28th). Class distinctions differentiated the battalions at first, but these distinctions tended to disappear as units were decimated, merged, and re-formed.

Near Combles, two small areas of woodland were fought over inch by inch. Leuze Wood ("Lousy Wood") and Bouleaux Wood ("Bully Wood") soon could not boast a standing tree between them. The land was taken, lost, and retaken. Bodies were buried in the mud, only to be exhumed by subsequent bombardments. Young men in their prime were subjected to appalling conditions, then sent to their deaths. Hundreds of lives were lost seeking control of twenty yards of dirt. When the Kensingtons and the London Scottish moved up to take over from the Royal Irish Fusiliers, they saw that the whole battlefield was covered by the remains of the dead.

"The ground just over the ridge of Death Valley was scattered with the Irish dead, mainly young fellows who appeared to have been killed by concussion, tiny streaks of blood having from their ears and noses. Others had been killed by machine gun and shrapnel fire... One middle aged Irishman was sitting upright in a shell hole, one side of his head shining pink, where half his scalp had been torn off... at Wedge Wood... this trench was full of German dead, Prussian Guards. For some particular reason they were minus their tunics, wearing new white vests. The bodies were lying several deep, and we had to walk over them in order to proceed along the trench."

After several weeks of fighting the British unleashed their secret weapon, the tanks of the Heavy Branch Machine Gun Corps. This was the first time that the lumbering behemoths would be used in military history. Although, initially, they spread panic among the Germans, they were not an unqualified success. As with just about everything else, the tanks became stuck in the mud.

"The field of battle was a field of mud; the resting area of the division was a field of mud; the roads and tracks were rivers of mud; anyone can paint a picture of the Battle of the Somme provided that he can paint miles of mud. And the Army had simply blasted its way forward so that the shell holes cut one another in the mud."

On September 26, 1916 Combles fell to men of the 56th (London) Division. It would be more accurate to say that was was left of the village fell into British hands. Almost every building had been destroyed. The church had been flattened, the town hall had disappeared, the railway station ceased to exist. Only the catacombs, stretching beneath the buildings, providing refuge for its defenders, remained relatively unscathed.

One young private, Stuart Dolden of the London Scottish, was glad to get out of the place where so many of his comrades had died. His abiding memory was of the mud.

"We were all filled with unbounding joy when we realised that at last our backs had been turned on the Somme, and all its horrors and miseries. The one outstanding feature of the Somme was the mud. Living with it around one, day and night, seemed to tap one's vitality. We had already experienced severe shelling, trenches and all the incidences of warfare on other sectors of the line, and so it became more a question of degree, but after our trip to the Somme I realised what a truly demoralising affect mere mud could have."

The village was retaken, briefly, by the Germans in March of 1918, but returned to Allied hands later that same year.

* * * * * * *

There is an immediacy to the story of Combles that transcends the years. The absolute horror that is war is not shown on maps with colored arrows for the movement of troops. War must be studied through the experience of those who struggled through the mud. There are lessons to be learned, even from a Lousy Wood, somewhere in France.

Survivor or Servant?

I enjoy "Survivor." It's getting a little long in the tooth as far as TV programs go, but it's still entertaining. If you have been on a different planet for the last few years and haven't seen it - here's how it works: twenty or so people, of various ages and from varied backgrounds, are brought together in some obscure, exotic place. They are pitted against one another in a series of challenges, competing for the million dollar prize that is awarded to the sole survivor. Although they begin the game in "tribes," the contestants must learn to form their own alliances if they are to advance. As the game progresses, they must endure physical hardships, including hunger. They must use their physical and mental strength, and their relational skills, in order to outwit, outplay and outlast the other contestants. Frequently, in the pressure-cooker environment of reality TV, they display the worst of human nature. The show is notorious for secret alliances and double-crossing. Len Sweet comments that, ultimately, "the most self-directed, self-motivated, self-absorbed, self-important individual becomes the final Survivor."

In an article in "Youth Culture," Walt Mueller writes about some of the lessons of "Survivor":

"1. Survivors look out for themselves. When you cooperate, it's to advance your interests. Not because it is helpful to others, but because it helps you. Forget those who can't help you. Don't bother with them. They are not a good investment of your time.

2. Survivors sleep with one eye open. Since everyone is out for himself/herself, no one can be trusted. Surviving the harshness of the environment is the true challenge.

3. Survivors must get used to being lonely. If you can't trust others, you can't be real or true or share true intimacy with them. It's a world ruled by the Miranda rule: You have the right to remain silent, for what you say can and will be used against you.

4. A survivor world is win-lose. Only one can win, the others are cast-offs. There is no common good. No common ground other than self-interest."

Now, it's only a TV show, and most people are capable of suspending judgment in such cases, but what worries me is that at least some viewers may be adopting these principles to their own lives. Especially in a world experiencing the worst recession in decades, it must be tempting to adopt a survivalist attitude. This isn't all bad. There are good lessons to be learned in terms of rising to meet the challenge, not giving up, and working with others to achieve some common goal. But at the same time, clearly "Survivor" teaches that our primary responsibility must always be fundamentally self-focussed.

That's very different to the Gospel. As we gather as God's people, we are to learn and to employ the principles of servanthood. Living as a Christian means rejecting the dictatorship of the ego; it means following the example of the One who came, "not to be served but to serve, and to lay down His life as a ransom for many" (Mark 10:45).

"Survivor" is fun, but it does make me wonder what we are teaching our children and young people. Where are they getting their values and their worldview, from Jeff Probst, or Jesus?

Doubting Doubt

A few weeks ago I read A.N.Wilson's splendid little book London: A Short History. This is really an architectural history of the capital city; I highly recommend it. I thought, at the time, that the author was not as scathing about London's spiritual heritage as I had expected. In fact, in places I found a wistful longing for the age of faith.

I had expected a tirade. Perhaps, like Ingersoll, Wilson would have lamented the ignorance displayed by a forest of steeples; or, like Cowper there would have been some oblique reference to "dark, satanic mills," that is, the non-conformist chapels of the early Victorian age. Instead I found Wilson praising Wren's efforts to rebuild London's churches following the Great Fire of 1666, or lamenting their loss during the Blitz. And this surprised me. Surely, this was the same A.N.Wilson who poured scorn on the Christian faith in God's Funeral, or ridiculed anti-intellectualism in Jesus: A Life?

Indeed, it was. An apologist for a post-Christian worldview, Wilson had moved from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism to scepticism. His views were widely read and very influential. So, why didn't he take any potshots at Christians in London?

The answer may be that A.N.Wilson was in the process of returning to the Christian faith. According to an interesting article in the New Statesman, Wilson has now turned 180 degrees, and has decided that Christ is risen. He atrributes this to "the confidence I have gained with age."

Good for him. It takes courage to admit that you have been wrong. It was courageous of him, in the first place, to renounce the faith in which he had been raised, and to concentrate upon his doubts. Too many people do this as an excuse for their behavior. In Bertrand Russell's autobiography he admits that one of the reasons he rejected the Christian faith, as a student, was that it was easier for him to get girls that way (and, presumably, to ditch the guilt). I've come across any number of people who have suddenly had doubts at exactly the time that they are tempted to abandon Christian morality. It's strange that they often speak so fervently of intellectual struggles, whereas in reality the struggle usually had more to do with another part of their anatomy. The sadness is, of course, that once renounced it's hard to return. Hard, but not impossible, as A.N.Wilson has now proven.

Often, those who really do doubt the central tenets of the Christian faith (as opposed to those who say that they do for ulterior motives), grow tired of living within a system that seems to be made up, entirely, of negations. There may be something exhilerating about saying, "I think Christ died on the cross, and his bones are buried somewhere in Palestine!" But with what is the resurrection faith to be replaced? Like those Victorian secularists who returned to the faith of their youth, A.N.Wilson has grown tired of nihilistic atheism. Now he says that those who doubt God are like "people who have no ear for music or who have never been in love."

I hope that Wilson will write a book about his return to faith, and that he will take the time and trouble to counter the arguments he used in some of his earlier works. Now it's time for the Holy Spirit to work on a few others - like Bart Ehrman and Richard Dawkins. Could it be that the tide is beginning to turn, and that Dover Beach will soon be covered once again?

See New Statesman article http://www.newstatesman.com/religion/2009/04/conversion-experience-atheism

Also, more popular article in Britain's Daily Mail http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1169145/Religion-hatred-Why-longer-cowed-secular-zealots.html

And, for those who need it: Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/arnold/writings/doverbeach.html

Seeking Empty Space

Today's reading from the Aidan cycle, in the Northumbria Community's Book of Celtic Daily Prayer, is taken from Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh. Anne writes about needing to try to find balance in life, no matter what forces tend to pull one off center. She finds no easy answers, but she shares a clue - shells from the sea.

There has always been a temptation, in the Christian life, to renounce the world and to retreat into isolation. It's an understandable reaction to what can be a godless and uncaring world. During the so-called Dark Ages, following the fall of Rome, many Christians scattered to the fringes of society. Some found safety and security in monasteries, others escaped to live in hermitages. Modern Evangelicals have tended to speak disparagingly of this flight from the world as an evasion of responsibility, but we have not been immune from it ourselves.

On the other hand, some Christians become so involved in the world that they have no time left, no space available, within which to seek the still small voice. Often, they become activists, running from one good cause to another, while their spirits are starved within them. Eventually, when prayer is crowded out, they become indistinguishable from the world in which they are called to be salt and light.

How can we maintain balance between Christian activism, which is in the world, and Christian pietism, which is not? How can we prevent ourselves from lurching between extremes? Must retreat and engagement always be mutually exclusive?

Anne's answer lies in the simplification of life - cutting out some of the distractions. "The answer," she writes, "is neither in total renunciation of the world, nor in total acceptance of it." We must seek the balance between solitude and communion, between experiencing God on the mountaintop and serving Him in the valley.

At least part of the answer lies in the deliberate simplification of our lives. We have too few blank pages on our calendars. We are becoming slaves to the electronic organization of our days. We feel guilty if we have even half-an-hour during which nothing is scheduled. We are too busy, too over-committed. Are we afraid of silence? Have we devalued prayer?

A walk on the beach will prove that there are many pretty sea-shells. When we are young, we try to collect them all, but we are soon overcome by the volume. There aren't enough window sills upon which to display them all. They end up, quietly festering, in a plastic bag at the bottom of a closet. But when we are older we discover that one need not collect them all. They are more beautiful, more precious, and more significant if they are few. Our lives can become cluttered far too easily, even with goodness and beauty, if we have too much. Maturity consists in learning that limits are good.

Perhaps we would have less difficulty balancing the pendulum between retreat from the world and return to it, if we had more empty spaces in which to seek God's will. "My life at home, I begin to realize, " writes Anne, "lacks this quality of signifcance, and therefore of beauty, because there is so little empty space."

Shame

Some absolutely horrifying news is beginning to emerge from Dublin. An inquiry into conditions in Catholic residential facilities in Ireland has found that church leaders knew that sexual abuse was "endemic," but that they did nothing to prevent it. The 'Child Abuse Commission' has determined that physical and emotional abuse and neglect were features of such institutions. About 35,000 Irish children were placed in religious care during a period of 60 years. Some of the children were orphans, others were illegitimate, many were subjected to systematic abuse.

One man reports that he was sexually abused from the age of three, either by the Christian Brothers who ran the establishment, or by older boys. A girl reports that she spent her days doing laundry, getting up at 6.00 a.m. to attend mass. She was locked into her room at night with a bucket and an iron bed; the window was barred, almost like she was incarcerated. Her only 'crime,' was to be the child of an unwed mother. Incidentally, that mother died while her daughter was 'in care.' The authorities did not think it necessary to inform her.

"I have absolutely no faith in the Catholic Church. I am a Christian but I am not a Catholic. I left my Catholic religion at the industrial school gates," said one victim. His reaction to the trauma of abuse is not untypical. How much damage has been done to the Church by this appalling behavior? How many more will leave when the full story is revealed?

Strong words are coming from some Catholic leaders. The Most Reverend Vincent Nichols, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, said that those who perpetrated violence and abuse should be held to account, "no matter how long ago it happened." He continued, "Every time there is a single incident of abuse in the Catholic Church, it is a scandal." The leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland, Cardinal Sean Brady, said he was "profoundly sorry and deeply ashamed that children suffered in such awful ways in these institutions." At least somebody is showing some integrity.

There can be no excuse for the abuse, and there can be no excuse for protecting those who perpetrated it. Justice must be done, and be seen to be done.

And those who damaged so many lives would do well to heed the grim warning of Scripture. "It would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around his neck than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin. So watch yourselves." Luke 17:2-3. Whether or not the Irish authorities manage to track down and prosectute those who are responsible, the perpetrators will still have to face the righteous anger of the One who said "Let the children come to me. Don't prevent them, for of such is the Kingdom of God." Luke 18:16

Report at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8059826.stm

Or http://itn.co.uk/e41a5e1febbbd9096a4cba0baeacea4a.html

Ill Met By Moonlight

William Stanley Moss' account of his exploits in Crete during World War II makes fitting reading for Memorial Day. Operating in occupied territory, with the help of local anadartes, Moss, and a small team of special operations commandos, managed to kidnap a German General and, somehow, spirit him off the island. What ismost interesting about the story is that almost all of it is taken from a journal written by the author as events unfolded. There is a startling immediacy about the language. Several times the author relates that he has to stop writing because the light is failing, or because a local shepherd has just brought the band something to eat.

Two things struck me:

First, I was appalled by the senseless violence of some among the occupying force. In one incident, a Gestapo officer has to swerve his car on a country road and stop in order to avoid hitting a shepherd boy crossing the road with his sheep. Seeing that his car has sustained a slight scratch, the officer beckons for the shy child to come to him. When he does as he is told, the officer promptly breaks the boys arm across his knee as punishment.

Second, and in contrast, the story contains a remarkable sense of shared humanity between combatants. The General, although obviously shamed by his capture, only rarely demonstrates the haughtiness of his office. A classical scholar, the son of a pastor, he is able to exchange Greek aphorisms with his captors. He shares the same bottle of raki, and pulls at the same blankets to escape the cold. He may be a patriot, but he is not an idealist. He serves his country, not the Party.

This is the sadness of war. Often, the only thing that separates the soldiers of opposing armies is the color of their uniforms. In one, telling, incident, Moss and his villanous band of Cretan resistance fighters celebrate Easter Day in the mountains, singing songs of resurrection in several languages (and, one suspects, several keys). Surely this is a foretaste of the Kingdom of Heaven, where every tongue sings praise to the Lamb, and war shall be no more.

Angels in the Gloom

Anne Perry's book, bearing this title, is the third in her series following the Reavley family during the First World War. The main character is Captain Joseph Reavley, a chaplain who has received the Military Cross for bravery in rescuing the wounded at Ypres. He is sent home to recouperate, following an injury, and there becomes embroiled in scullduggery concerning a secret naval weapon that could turn the tide of war. Perry's presentation of the characters is largely sympathetic. It makes a pleasant change to come across a representation of a 'man of the cloth' which is not horribly caricatured. Unfortunately, she reverts to type in her description of Kerr, the village vicar, who is a sorry excuse for a clergyman - weak, bumbling, and totally ineffectual. It's easy to see, also, that Perry has a horror of warfare. She does not glorify bloodshed, as do so many others. Neither does she minimise the courage of the common soldier.

What suprises me about the story is the theological hinge concerning the existence of God. Kerr, who has never been anywhere near the Front, cracks under the strain of comforting those who have lost loved ones. He finds himself with nothing to say, beyond inappropriate platitudes about King, Country, and Glory. Reavely, on the other hand, goes as far to accept, on at least two occasions, that he is not sure about the existence of God. But then he goes on to state his rationale: It is not about us. When we bring comfort to the bereaved we are not to think about our doubts, but their needs.

In the end, though he may entertain reservations about whether or not God is there, or interested in the affairs of men, Reavley contends that he is absolutely sure of this: that the things for which Christ stood, like honor and truth and love, are true for all times.

I've never actually heard anyone expound this doctrine; perhaps it was more prevalent in an age which actually knew what Christ stood for. It sounds a little like the religionless Christianity that gained some adherents in the 1960's when, building on the works of Friedrich Neitzsche, Thomas Altizer and others wrote about "Christian Atheism." Altizer taught that it is no longer possible to believe in a transcendent god, but that the spirit of Christ is immanent wherever his people gather. In this way, we may continue to revere Christ, even without God.

(By the way, don't you just love the duct tape holding this guy's raincoat together?)

Here's the problem - and not just for Captain Reavley - Christ believed in God, indeed He understood Himself to be the only begotten Son of the Father. When the disciples came asking who He was He accepted Peter's belief, that He was the Christ, the son of the living God; neither did He rebuke Thomas who greeted his risen Savior as "My Lord and my God."

Maybe Anne Perry does not accept the divinity of Christ; apparently she is a Mormon. But even this does not solve the problem. Even if Christ was not "the image of the invisible God," that same God was still His primary point of reference. Jesus of Nazareth was who He was because of how He understood His relationship with His Heavenly Father. So, to take concepts like honor and truth and love, and to ascribe them to a godless Jesus, is do strip them of meaning. What does 'love' mean without the narrative of redemption? We can give the word any meaning we choose, but we cannot force our interpretation upon Jesus. And if we attempt to divorce elements of His teaching from His understanding of the nature of God, we do violence to the Gospel.

Is there a warning there for today's church? When our understanding of the Christian faith is more anthropological then theological, then it is fundamentally flawed.

Men of War

Patrick O'Brian's little book on Nelson's Navy allows us to grasp something of what it was like to serve at sea, two hundred years ago. O'Brian explains the bewildering terminology of dog watches and carronades, of mizenmasts and studding sails. It's all very confusing to a land lubber, but essential to an understanding of an incredibly efficient maritime war machine.

One side of my wife's family hails from South West England, from Devon and Cornwall. Many of her ancestors served at sea. Lesley's great-grandfather died at the Battle of Coronel, off Brazil, in 1916, the Royal Navy's first serious set-back in over 150 years.

Life at sea was far from easy. The hours were brutal. The food was worse. The joke in O'Brian's 'Master and Commander,' made into a movie a few years ago, is based on how things really were. Jack Aubrey, the post-captain, asks his friend, the surgeon, to choose between two weevils (grubs) that have fallen from a ship's biscuit. Maturin, as a scientist, answers that there would be more nutrition in the larger of the two. Aubrey replies (of course) that one should always choose the lesser of two weevils.

Sailors just ate them. They also ate the larger white grubs, called bargemen, that appeared when the biscuits had deteriorated further. Rats, known as 'millers' because of their dusty coats, were caught, skinned, and laid out for sale. Everything was washed down with copious quantities of grog (rum mixed with water and lemon juice). It was a hard life with little sleep and less pay, until a 'prize' was taken. Unless claimed by the Crown, the value of enemy ships captured by the Royal Navy was divided among the crew. Naturally, the officers took the lion's share, but nevertheless, in a morning's work a sailor could earn the equivalent of 100 years pay. This didn't happen often. Unfortunately, poverty and privation were much more likely outcomes of life in the 'senior service.'

There's something very attractive about the thought of a close-knit, well-trained group of men, serving together over an extended period, whose lives were regulated by the rhythm of the sea. It's interesting to know how one's ancestors lived.

One of the oldest metaphors for the Christian Church is the ship. What does this teach us?

- there are tasks to be done;

- we all have talents to share;

- we must work together to achieve anything of value;

- the voyage need not always be easy;

- depend on the Pilot;

- be careful what you eat...