Being small

Being small.

I have pondered the challenge of very small breakthroughs being the way of "the kingdom of God". I was reminded of a belief I held more strongly before, lying dormant perhaps during some terribly-low times, that all glory (and "crowns" etc) are to be returned to the Source. 

But WHAT a challenge for someone if their sense of self-confidence has hit all time lows? If they are shown gratitude or some small honour, can they give up that scrap when they are dying of self-esteem starvation? Maybe that is the point, Jesus doesn’t want us to think in terms of scraps of food. Or keep us in a posture of a beggar: please appreciate the thing I did and make me feel special for a few seconds!

From the perspective of how our sense of self-confidence and our security within relationships, giving back the scrap of honour to God and others might actually constitute a more satisfying and enduring internal meal. It really might be worth, then, not taking full credit! 

Mark 4:30 is the famous mustard seed metaphorical story, it speaks to me in fresh ways about being small and a deeper, more fulfilling and longer-term sense of being visible and useful. It takes a lot of time. I'm not there yet. Each time I try to jump at the getting-recognised thing it just has me whooshing back to the start-line, like a giant game of snakes and ladders!

Give credit, my soul, and be well.

Image: https://stevesbiblemeditations.com/2013/12/12/casting-crowns-revelation-49-11/

Aligning My Purpose

In a powerful series of reflections embedded within meditation and prayer, I have encountered the challenge of asking myself: what is my purpose?

This is perhaps an opportunity to really highlight the wisdom of the Bible and how it came to be so sacred and inspiring for so many generations. It contains truth that can guide us at such a deep level and away from scary messages from society that unremittingly indicate that our worth and values are tied up with a purpose to survive and receive praise. My purpose was wrapped up in my unquenching thirst to be loved. It remains a struggle.

So not always knowing quite where to begin, I was reminded of a passage we studied in Bible school almost twenty years ago (at King's School of Theology, run at that time by Salt & Light ministries). It's from the prophetic book of Habakkuk in the Old Testament. In the NIV it reads: "For the Earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea." Sounds pretty awesome still, but first let's check out the English translation a little.

Our Bible studies "teach" us theological facts like "God is love", "God gives us his peace if we submit to his ways." But that kind of knowledge leaves the part it's supposed to impact the most specifically, our heart, almost completely untouched, on the edge, unaffected. The worries and fears of my mind are unaffected by this kind of "knowledge." What might help these mindsets - of which I am a direct descendant - are words like 'understanding' or 'awareness'. We could consider colliding them all somehow, Amplified Bible-style:

Knowledge

Understanding

Awareness

"...filled with a knowing and understanding awareness of ..."?

I think we can do better than that. Let's look at some of these words' traits.

Knowledge (stable but not pervasive, sensory or experiential)

Understanding (embracing)

Awareness (now, experiential, but temporal)

Let us attempt a return to 'awareness' and see how we might overcome its temporal limitations:

" ...filled with awareness of...". Without the article there is a greater feel of stability and transcendence to this quality of awareness. I also recall that sentences such as these in Hebrew can be understood in a progressive sense, i.e. the Earth shall be increasingly filled (until completion), which also plays against any worry of a "flash-in-the-pan" kind of awareness.

Moving onto "Lord" - we have long discussed on this blog how to better go about translating the Tetragrammaton in English and the deep-seated problems for Bible translation in maintaining allegiance to this medieval word. This was one of the pillars also for my presentation at the Bible Translation conference last October. The best option we found according to the dynamic method and the grammatical translation history was Eugene Peterson's "GOD". 

"Glory" is another interesting word. It is a bit religious sometimes, and I am not sure Christians always quite know what to do with it, but I feel it sometimes lacks the human response intended by the word, of awe and wonder at its beauty, light and power. I am using "glorious presence". I would also like to go further than waters simply "covering the sea". It sounds kinda cranky, and we can do bigger than "sea" as well. So I am choosing "engulfs the oceans." So here is my biblical purpose, embodied in my translation of Habbakuk 2:14:

For the Earth will be filled with awareness of GOD's glorious presence as the waters engulf the oceans.

I think that's a great common purpose. And it is in nature and it is in us. So deep, so good, breath, life. It makes a nonsense of my mental constraints on 'love'. And it breathes life into my values too. 

Firstly: Let life breathe. Express. Listen. Voice. 

Secondly: Rejoice. Flood.

Ethics of thankfulness

Why might it be a good idea to be thankful and humble? When we imagine the perfect self we do not imagine a proud, boastful person who only has themselves to thank for their achievements. For a Christian, we usually imagine Jesus as the perfect archetype of this mode of being.

Here's a couple of ideas on that from someone who is convinced of the legitimacy of religious story and expression to narrate our ethical landscape.

Firstly, it is simply false to assert that our accomplishments are not built on the shoulders of the contributions of others. Most would agree that that which is false is usually synonymous with bad. Further affirmation of the inherent goodness of truth can be sourced through the theory of biological evolution: a species operating with erroneous ideas of reality cannot adapt well to it, and its members that attempt to do so may harm their chances of survival. (This is a broad brushstroke on the goodness of truth - there are some notable exceptions).

Secondly, a profound realisation of one's dependence on others should cause social beings like humans to draw from and recognise the social resource. There is thus a harmonisation that occurs when a member of a profoundly social group is able to operate in a balanced dynamic of drawing from and contributing to the larger group.

Thirdly, when faced with a problem, a thankful person may feel less overwhelmed. Previous such challenges were overcome because the social resource was effective and found to be near limitless if engaged via sustainable social transactions.

The spiritual practice of prayer to God develops the gratitude of a person. That's great for a spiritual person, but what about for a non-spiritual person? Perhaps they should simply realise that some form of spirituality could be considered in their process of developing their own humanity. If the person has had a negative introduction into the institutions of abusive religion, then perhaps the process can look something like this.

Look at the good memories. Smile at them. Recognise their beauty, their colour, the privilege of owning them.
Imagine the people we value most. Smile at them. Recognise the beauty of their character and what we value in them.

That word 'privilege' is powerful. Just mulling that is good. Using it in conversation once mulled completes the fermentation of the gratitude and allows it to be served as the quality beverage that it most certainly is! Cheers :)

ps apologies about the promise of the previous post - I still would like to enter the fray of "lies and contradictions" in Christianity and what anti-religious types might mean by such language.

God is Good

Probably the oldest song I can remember singing in the evangelical church I grew up in is "God Is Good". The chorus continues with further proclamation: "I sing and shout", "we celebrate", "we know it's true": every time interspersed with, God is good.

The purpose of today's post is to propose a new model for belief in God in order to diminish religious mistrust and foster a broader understanding of faith.

My daughter used to claim that almost any meat was "chicken". Sometimes she was correct, it really was chicken, and sometimes it was something else, maybe pork. Correct or incorrect, right? For Fiona, she was working with the set of categories at her disposal, which featured different labels to most of us. She thus could be said to be identifying each piece of "chicken-like" substance "correctly". When provided new categories, she revised her definitions. Today those meat categories are rapidly coming into line with where most of us are at.

"God" is an interesting one though. The word relates to a being or beings that no-one can usually see. Despite the great coming of the incarnated Word in Jesus Christ, first century Christians still affirmed with conviction that God is invisible and immortal. My translation of 1 Timothy 6:16 reads as adapted from the NIV:

To the only one who is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see - to him be honor and might forever. Amen.

Jesus was astonishingly the physical way in which that perfection would be glimpsed - eventually leading to an extraordinary idea of him joining the father in his divine coeternal status, despite some fairly clear distinctions made in earlier times. The point, however, is twofold. Firstly, that we humans desire in earnest to gaze upon the perfectly good. Our souls drink it up. That is what Jesus enabled (see Colossians 1:15). Secondly, to return to that classic hymn, God is Good. God defines goodness. It's actually a bit like saying: goodness is goodness. It's reflected in other mystical statements like God is Love. For Christians, Jews and Muslims he necessarily defines that which is perfect.

This might sound unacceptably vague or ambiguous, but actually, there is a beautiful simplicity on offer here to which we can all have access and from which I feel sure we can all benefit. If in fact God is goodness, defining goodness and love itself, then there can literally be no squabbles about his goodness, any more than we could complain that a sandwich is not a sandwich.

The dividing line is not whether God is good or not - almost everyone has a category for "good" and almost everyone knows instinctively that that perfect measure lies outside of themselves.

Where Christianity might be said to differ from Buddhism or Humanism, for instance, might be the notion that perfect goodness should be personified (as opposed to could be personified). I don't know Buddhist thought well enough to assert this for sure, but I assume that there is healthy accommodation for the personification of Goodness, whom we might refer to as "God". Of course, Christian doctrine actually muddies the water a little in staking the claim that perfect goodness is the Godhead, but not personified as only one person, since Father, Son and Holy Spirit each are persons possessing and personifying the divine Goodness. 

Indeed, it seems to me like there is a lot of common ground here between the current human perspectives. Here is another logical step for humanity: many people would like to benefit from greater Goodness in their life, even though they don't come close to defining it or personifying it. The ancient way we have interacted for millennia to invoke such Goodness is through meditative prayer and spiritual request. Doing so collectively enhances a sense of connection, community and belonging.

What I find so appealing in this realisation of the natural appeal to pray more is that there is a natural "fit" between our human needs for 1) goodness and 2) community. 

There is a third human need concerned by the recognition of a universal Good. We need to experience gratitude. Research shows not only that regular meditation provides powerful and sustained improvement to our brain states but also that it develops our brain structures, developing our physiological capacity to be compassionate. That level of benefit runs so deep we can describe it as a need to be grateful. What religious belief provides is something precious: someone to be grateful *toward*. However, I want to be really, really careful here not to be heard to say that humans need to thank a personified Goodness (a.k.a. God) in order to develop neurologically. That's clearly false since many traditions achieve this effect simply by practising a sense of gratitude and expressing it frequently around others. What I am saying however is that the personified/personal way is a great way to tick three boxes in a way we can agree is beneficial:

Enhancing our own goodness and love

Enhancing our sense of community

Enhancing and channelling our gratitude

God really is Good, unfalsifiably so. *He* defines it. In the next post, let's think more about the next steps of relating to God: how this appeal to his perfection requires we keep our requests broad and sensitive to what our senses are telling us. Of course, to do this we will necessarily be opening the ugly can of worms that is suffering.

What To Do When We Score A Blank

WHAT SHOULD WE do when we feel devoid of purpose? Empty not just of belief but also of disbelief? We should certainly not despair. Here's why (if my experience is anything to go by):

We need to be here. Christian origins, theology, the church... anything that isn't directly about the here and now can be an escape, and I'm glad to report there is a wonderful feature about all life. Well, it's got good and bad bits - I'm trying to focus on the good bits! It's called "homeostasis". It's about a universal force that draws everything back to a state of equilibrium, and I have encountered it at work in my own life time and time and time again.

At some point, equilibrium pulls me back to here. The escapism - even if it is true that it is an escape of purpose and meaning - cannot prevail, and even a crisis of belief becomes empty. This is an interesting and stabilising point for someone who perceives life as chaotic. As Tim Keller points out in his great little book, The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness, what I believe ceases to seem to be of such drastic importance. If my own belief or disbelief are at the centre, then I am at the centre, precisely what the wounded and inflated ego demands. But too much of that too often and homeostasis exerts its own demands. Our souls were not built to withstand that kind of imbalance indefinitely.

Right now, I feel like my own belief about metaphysical reality to draw me toward superficiality, something to which I have been consistently allergic (partly because I am). My new "ground zero" is not "Help, Father God" - invoking simultaneously a whole host of uncertain definitions and investigations.

Instead, it is simply to breathe. In. And out. And I'm here and I'm OK and I'm back quicker to a place of social availability.

Saying "Lord" In Church

"Windermere Christian centre x 142 on 12.08.2018. plus many more during a time of personal prayer..."

On a chilly Sunday morning during our "summer" holiday in the Lake District, northern England, I attended the Windermere Christian Centre for their weekly service. The venue was fairly full, although a strong contingent of visitors helped swell the ranks - Windermere is something of a tourist Mecca in the beautiful Lake District area, filled with beautiful scenery... and unpredictable weather.

I went in, curious as ever, to discover how yet another Christian church expressed and celebrated their faith together. At the same time, I am abrim, as followers of the blog will realise, with the revelation that "Lord" language is firmly anchored in an old-fashioned form of English Christianity that derrives its precious translation underpinning "Lord" (Kyrios) so far back that it is pretty much a sacred word in its own right, despite its ambiguity. So I decided it might be of some value to see how different expressions of church use the "sacred" word, Lord. Why not start here?

I downloaded a simple counter app on my phone and happily proceeded to count every time someone said the word "Lord" from the front, prayed it in collective prayer from a pew or we sang it in worship. By the end, my total count was 142. "The Lord" seemed to permeate every aspect of the meeting, even more than the name "Jesus" itself. Interesting. The style of the meeting also seemed a bit old fashioned - while still "Charismatic evangelical" (there was even a word spoken "in tongues" and interpreted), I think it would not have shocked me too much to have sung the exact same songs and been exhorted with the same language 20 years ago in my parents' church. Copy-Paste!

At the end of the meeting, things went from interesting to almost comical. A prophetic word had been given by the pastor of the church that I decided might well concern me and so at the end of the service (the time designated to respond to this prophetic message), I made my way forward to the front.

The pastor had been chatting to a small, stout lady in her 50s, with frizzy auburn coloured hair and a ruddy complexion. In fact, while bodily appearance varied, the age of most of the stage personalities could be similarly described, folks in their 50s.

The pastor smiled at me and gestured that the lady he had been talking to should stay for this time of prayer. It seemed fitting to give a few words of why I requested this prayer and as I did so this lady seemed to have an idea deposited in her evangelical mind: just make him say Jesus is Lord.

Despite the seriousness of the time of prayer I almost gave away a smile at the irony of this situation, but I felt that there was a way through without giving up my new convictions ("Lord" cannot be our staple in a culture and language that no longer has any use for it). So I said yes, he is king of kings, reigning over the heavens and the earth: is that good enough? And that was very acceptable to the pastor who seemed keen not to ruffle the feathers of this visiting Christian and generally extend to me his trust.  However, I suspected a bit of puzzlement from the lady as to why I didn't want to repeat her special formula when she repeated the confessional requirements.

But why not just go with the flow for goodness' sake?  Am I a spiritual rebel? Do I have a problem with the authority of Jesus in my life? I don't think I have a huge personal problem here as I don't reject Jesus' kyrios-ship, but no-one says kyrios-ship. The point is that my work on the redundancy of "Lord" as an adequate one-size-fits-all translation for Kyrios, it needs trailblazers for it to fly. I don't feel like a trailblazer, but I just know I need to start applying more meaningful language to the Kyrios-ship of Jesus and God in and around me, while of course also finding ways to be faithful to my roots.

So for the sake of that lady, I could have readily said "Jesus is Lord". However, she was ministering to me, to my soul. So, yes, since I have glimpsed both culturally and textually how Lord is no longer a good translation for these ancient words, I simply can't hide that information from other more intimate parts of me like my "soul".

One week later and I found myself in a more modern yet less charismatic Evangelical Church based in Swansea known as the Cornerstone Church. It was slightly warmer, but slightly wetter than the week  before.

Once in the warm and dry and having enjoyed friendly conversation with two folk I didn't know, I sat down to an almost movie-like spectacle introduction. The tone quickly became very friendly, however, but I noticed here that the leadership were really into fasting and, as someone who struggles with being underweight myself, I was concerned even by some of the weakened demeanors that resulted from this leadership decision and emphasis. In particular, thinking of fasting in Daniel, I see a sharp contrast in that Daniel and his friends were in great physical shape as they fasted.

Anyway, that's not really the point. I decided to measure in a similar way as I had measured in the Lake District, the dependency of the meeting on Lord language.

All of the songs were new to me. One or two contained a reference to it and it was mentioned a few times during the service too but people in this church want the name of Jesus itself to resonate in people's hearts. As a result I think of this I only noted around 30 currencies throughout.

142 against 30, that's one heck of a difference and not reducible to any particular choice of songs or even leader personality. With the Message translation in hand, modern culturally adapted churches are steadily releasing themselves from old fashioned, retired language including, incredibly, "the Lord" in favour of "Jesus".

This sociological observation should be deeply significant for the church and for Bible translators Who also have a responsibility to maintain accurate translations of the Bible that actually function within the context of Modern Church.

I am encouraged because it feels like this only adds extra purpose and worth to my endeavours with the Obstacles series we are navigating, as I imagine a world of Lord-free translations that accurately represent the Kyrios themes in today's terminology.

NO CONDEMNATION FOR YOU

ROMANS 7:25-8:1 reads (NET translation):

Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.  

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

What brings this passage of Scripture to my mind this morning? After 8 years of intensifying suffering in my gut, increasing allergies and intolerances, I seem to be experiencing some miraculous release in reaching out and trusting in Jesus. I was so disappointed with God's results, I had begun to see prayer as really God's powerful way of uniting us and working through us without any real agency held back for himself (see fascinating Unbelievable episode, Do we need to rethink petitionary prayer? Mark Karris & Steve Jeffery). Any further trust in the wrong theology, would simply leave me more disillusioned and mistrustful and I had long stopped praying for this. Even now, I still find God's agency and suffering an utter mystery, maybe more so than ever! It's utterly "unfair" if it does exist.

So I'm on a positive faith high, which is pretty wonderful to be honest. This verse came me to as I considered another burden I have shouldered for a shorter time, depression, and pondering its roots as I see the vulnerability from within my side of the family. An old pointing finger got itself ready to point accusingly from within my mind. That's when the verse came.

I've always read this passage in the sense that we don't need to feel guilty about failing to keep the standard. God's standards are even higher, but Jesus met it for us, so there is no condemnation left over us. But today I'm excited to see it and apply it a stage further: we have no part in condemnation, we have been separated from the very principles of condemning people. The freedom I have received I reciprocate. I wonder how many people struggling under feelings of insecurity, fear, guilt or shame also struggle with condemning other people? Perhaps if we see this coin as the double-sided one I think Paul may in fact have discovered it to be (at least I think the text is not being abused too much to say so!), then maybe we can see even greater transformative power contained in it. Unleash it!

Blessings :)

How My Relationship to Christian Scripture is Changing

The title of this blog if the last three and a half years has been a good summary of its purpose: faith and scripture.

It is the connection between these two that make each of them so interesting and sustainable as a conduit for the faith community to frame their action and thought.

However, over this period I have traversed a number of physical and psychological changes that have taken me out of the mainstream church action and into a different kind of theological reflection. I only think it is fair to be honest with blog readers on an important shift I can sense occurring within me and despite my efforts to the contrary: these biblical texts that I find so fascinating I no longer approach from the faith perspective primarily. When I read them, I am asking historical questions first and foremost. It just seems to be how my brain has reprogrammed itself to process these texts for various reasons. Let's guess at why:

As I already mentioned, the first of these is probably human suffering. My issue is not the classic one of the existence of suffering, I think that would be far too tedious and unreliable a fallback strategy. But rather it is the way in which Christian scripture itself is interpreted on the painful area of suffering that is creating distance between me and God. It is supposed to be short-lived, God is supposed to alleviate it or be felt closer somehow through it and have a greater purpose at work through it, like maybe my sanctification or something. So I have gotten tired of placing my confidence in inspiring texts like Isaiah 58:8

Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard.

Or James 1:2-3

My brothers and sisters, consider it nothing but joy when you fall into all sorts of trials, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance.

Or Romans 5:3-4

... we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.

"No," life experience is saying to me, "not necessarily."

Secondly, I think I got tired a while back as I exposed time after time how impartial apologetic exegesis of texts put a strain on a more reasonable and defensible Christianity. Over time this insatiable drive for truth and intolerance of undisclosed bias I think had a negative impact on my faith experience.

Thirdly, in addition to the experiential deficit, I don't know how to trust the Scriptures as an accessible window to the heart of God, on controversial areas of ethics (contradictions between contexts) and conflicting details between multiple accounts of the same historical event (internal contradictions). Here my defense mechanism is the same as ever: stop worrying too much about what I think about this, and try to unpack how this event was understood and integrated into the early faith community experience of God. On this point I will soon be asking blog readers in particular to honestly engage with this thought process as you, with me, try to understand the New Testament villain of Judas Iscariot according to its contrasting accounts.

A fourth factor takes us back a couple of years - I guess I am going in reverse order - a realisation that I was in a small minority of persons who rejected (and continue to reject) a modalistic view of Christ in which the centre was basically Christ, with the Holy Spirit and the Father really just emanations of Him. By rejecting a first century triune God, I found this new model that seemed to have dumped itself on my lap (the "Triune Hub" Jewish mutation) placed me in an even tinier minority, one so small that I was no longer in close relationship with anyone else who shared this perspective or these concerns.

So how do I go on? I continue to be highly motivated to dig around the texts (and their translations) historically, seek to bless the faith community with the greatest degree of honesty I am capable of offering, and continue to experience a degree of hope and gratitude in the church tradition that I am glad to be a part of. It is interesting to  me that although personal faith has taken a real knock, I still pray, sometimes even spontaneously worship. If someone wanted to pray with me, I'd love that, especially if it brings the deep level connection prayer can give and not intercessory. Praying for healing is trickier and my disillusionments and alienation are readily awakened. I may take the time to reflect on the blog soon about this sensitive issue.

Back soon!
John

Psalm 42 and restoring the idea of "countenance"

AS THE DEER pants for streams of water,

so my soul pants for you, my God.

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.

When can I go and see the countenance of God?

My tears have been my food

day and night,

while people say to me all day long,

“Where is your God?”

These things I remember

as I pour out my soul:

how I used to go to the house of God

under the protection of the Mighty One

with shouts of joy and praise

among the festive throng.

Why, my soul, are you downcast?

Why so disturbed within me?

Put your hope in God,

for I will yet praise him,

the saving health of my countenance and my God.

My soul is downcast within me;

therefore I will remember you

…. Deep calls to deep

in the roar of your waterfalls;

all your waves and breakers

have swept over me.

By day Yahweh directs his love,

at night his song is with me—

a prayer to the God of my life.

I say to God my Rock,

“Why have you forgotten me?

Why must I go about mourning,

oppressed by the enemy?”

My bones suffer mortal agony

as my foes taunt me,

saying to me all day long,

“Where is your God?”

Why, my soul, are you downcast?

Why so disturbed within me?

Put your hope in God,

for I will yet praise him,

the saving health of my countenance and my God.

Restoring the KJV's "countenance", as explored by David Martyn Lloyd-Jones in Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Its Cure, I have found beneficial. Blessings!

Figures who have impacted my journey: Bart Ehrman

Proposition de Prière

Le saviez-vous, qu’il est possible que quelqu’un d’autre que Jésus soit à l’origine du « Notre Père » ? Dans la version trouvée en Luc 11, nous lisons une version plus courte de ce qu’on associe à cette prière dans sa version plénière. Le contexte est important :

Jésus priait un jour en un certain lieu. Lorsqu’il eut achevé, un de ses disciples lui dit : Seigneur, enseigne-nous à prier, comme Jean l’a enseigné à ses disciples. Il leur dit : Quand vous priez, dites : « Père ! Que ton nom soit sanctifié ; que ton règne vienne. Donne-nous chaque jour notre pain quotidien ; pardonne-nous nos péchés, car nous aussi nous pardonnons à quiconque nous offense ; et ne nous induis pas en tentation ». Il leur dit encore : Si l’un de vous a un ami, et qu’il aille le trouver au milieu de la nuit pour lui dire : Ami, prête-moi trois pains, car un de mes amis est arrivé de voyage chez moi, et je n’ai rien à lui offrir, et si, de l’intérieur de sa maison cet ami lui répond : ne m’importune pas, la porte est déjà fermée, mes enfants et moi sommes au lit, je ne puis me lever pour te donner des pains, je vous le dis, même s’il ne se levait pas pour les lui donner parce que c’est son ami, il se lèverait à cause de son importunité et lui donnerait tout ce dont il a besoin. Et moi, je vous dis : demandez, et l’on vous donnera ; cherchez, et vous trouverez ; frappez, et l’on vous ouvrira. Car quiconque demande reçoit, celui qui cherche trouve, et l’on ouvre à celui qui frappe. Quel est parmi vous le père qui donnera une pierre à son fils, s’il lui demande du pain ? Ou, s’il demande un poisson, lui donnera-t-il un serpent au lieu d’un poisson ? Ou, s’il demande un œuf, lui donnera-t-il un scorpion ? Si donc, méchants comme vous l’êtes, vous savez donner de bonnes choses à vos enfants, à combien plus forte raison le Père céleste donnera-t-il le Saint-Esprit à ceux qui le lui demandent.

Jean le Baptiste était, je pense, à l’initiative d’une forme primitive de cette prière, mais Jésus va la réinterpréter et fera introduire l’Esprit Saint comme une notion de don qui répond aux besoins les plus fondamentaux de l’homme, plus fondamental encore que le pain, qu’on peut toujours trouver ou demander. Notons bien, il ne dit pas ne pas être reconnaissant envers Dieu pour toute chose, bien sûr, il n’est pas un père méchant comme ça. Mais Jésus veut pour ses disciples, pour nous, le meilleur. Il veut changer l’objectif final de la prière, l’Esprit Saint en nous.

D’un point de vue chrétien, puisque nous comprenons bien que le Christ après sa résurrection était exalté à un point tellement haut qu’il siège maintenant à la droite de Dieu le Père, je propose cette prière trinitaire :

Notre père et notre frère, que votre nom soit sanctifié ; que votre règne vienne.

Père, comme ton fils bien-aimé, Jésus, nous a instruit de faire, donnes-nous aujourd'hui donc l’Esprit Saint pour qu’il ‘fasse le ménage’ chez nous, qu’il ôte toute amertume, méfiance, crainte de rejet et orgueil qu’il est sûr d’y trouver, pour que nous puissions être remplis et assurés de notre identité de fils et filles bien aimés de toi, pour être équipés pour porter le Royaume en nous, pour être une source de bénédiction pour les autres. Donnes-nous aussi ton Esprit pour nous guider sur les chemins à prendre et à éviter, pour percéverer dans la prière et dans l'adoration.

Jésus, c’est à toi maintenant que nous pouvons adresser notre louange, car tu as hérité le Nom qui est au-dessus de tout nom, que chaque langue te confesse comme Seigneur et chaque genou se plie devant toi, à la gloire du Père, tout par l’action de l’Esprit agissant puissamment en nous.

Amen J

Blog update: what on Earth has John been up to?

HELLO EVERYONE! It seems like a good moment to pause and give readers some insight into this blog and its author’s occupations, hopes.

As the blog description suggests at the top of every post, I have been on quite a theological journey. It has taken me from committed evangelical Trinitarian, via atheism, agnosticism, Biblical Unitarianism, and now back to a form of trinitarianism that I hope resembles something of the first century focus. This has also led me to a lot more tolerance for fourth century squabbles than I had before.

Quick Recap

Quite a big chunk of this journey can be accessed simply by looking back in this blog, as I started in the Autumn (Fall) of 2014 fairly fresh into that scary journey. Over the three years, posts have gotten longer, but I remain proud of my shortest post of all, comprising just nine characters!

In 2015 I wrote a paper to my Christian employer to express that I no longer felt I could sign off on parts of our Faith Statement that were described as crucial when they could be better expressed as interpretative. So I handed over this fairly unsophisticated but lengthy paper. And I wasn’t fired. And the Faith Statement changed. It was mind-blowing.

In 2016, the urgency of the question of the Trinity seem to simmer down with the surprisingly positive outcome of 2015 and I became increasingly curious about the Greek term Kyrios (Lord) used as a translation for the Hebrew name for God, “Yahweh”. I was particularly keen to see if there were differences in the way it was used in the Old Testament to translate Yahweh and how Kyrios was used with Jesus. 

However, for some reason, probably to do with my whole deconstruction-reconstruction faith process, and an overlap with the Septuagint Kyrios project, I fell deeply in love with the Psalms (e.g. here and here). I began to produce a proposed set of meditations based purely on selections from the Psalms ordered according to themes I found running through the Psalter, which I hope to produce in English, French and Arabic (I haven't shared any of this on the blog). There is hidden away inside of me, a real desire to make my theology useful to other people, and this may be one way, especially for people who struggle with their identity, with authenticity, wholeness and presence. For me, what the Psalms were able to help me with that year, was to fight back against what they call in French psychology, morcellement – like a sense of fractured identity, which we can also see nurtured in our society.

Later that year, however, the simmering Trinity continued to develop inside of me. I can remember two key aspects. One of the elders or our church was interested in seeing a copy of my manuscript (that I had already changed quite a bit since 2015), and the second was my developing friendship with Barney Aspray, a Cambridge PhD student who is passionate about a French philosopher, Paul Ricoeur (I first mentioned Barney on the blog in October 2015 - I'm surprised it was that early). In the end, I sent a copy of my much re-worked and honed and proofed chapter 1 of my manuscript to my elder, but I’m not sure if he ever read it.  And with Barney we shared a good number of exchanges about hermeneutics, mainly via email and occasional Skype, which were to have a significant impact on my journey.

Other things were happening in parallel. I had a growing interest in the book of Matthew (which I plan to blog out at some point under a title of Love, Hate & Late). I realised that this gospel contained some crucial components of an earlier trinitarianism that could be traced back to first century Jewish Christianity, especially when placed alongside other early non-canonical sources known as the Didache and the “gnostic” pseudepigraphal Gospel of Thomas. This is not at all the vision I had learned from my Unitarian influences, for the majority of whom the Trinity is a late fourth century fabrication and corruption of the truth in the Scriptures.

Yet I still knew that it was this Jewish Christianity that could assert that God and Jesus needed an “and” to separate them, and whose depiction of the Holy Spirit only very rarely hinted at a distinct person, certainly a country mile from the social Trinitarian sense (see my guest post on Dr Tuggy's blog here). So I was left with nowhere to park my theological vehicle. So I made a choice. To park my faith car faaaaaar away from the theological debates and disagreements.

Personally, I have made it a point to spiritually practice trinitarian devotion as part of my own faith journey, and I tend to avoid words like “Lord” unless I add the clarification of “the Lord Jesus”, and I even avoid “God” mostly. I follow a trinitarian liturgical devotional, Common Prayer: A Liturgy For Ordinary Radicals, which was an amazing gift from my friend Dean (available here on line though for free).

And so my work became increasingly historical and less theological. It became quite clear to me, that like the “Synoptic Problem”, there was also a Trinitarian problem. Nowhere in the Bible is there explicit talk of a tri-personal God. Yet that is what you get from the church before the close of the fourth century. How? Why? Via which intermediary stage(s)? Under the influence of which factors?Unitarians say it was just a late corruption, and those willing to wade in from the Trinitarian side like to say things like "it was always there but they hadn’t got the right linguistic tools to express it yet" – not really a “problem” per se for anyone. Neither of those explanations satisfied me. There definitely was a problem.

At some point, wow, only as recently as May 2017, I first blogged about a Triune Hub in a post entitled Jewish Roots of the Trinity. This is the model that I’m still working on to this day, which I have named the Triune Hub (it’s kinda unlucky, I think, that the extra H needed for “Hypothesis” doesn’t leave you with some cool acronym – oh yeah, the “THH”). Central to this hypothesis was to extend the vocabulary introduced by leading biblical scholars Larry Hurtado, Tom Wright and John Dominic Crossan of “mutation” to the trinity itself, which meant that all the later, less-Jewish stuff, despite its bravado ontological attire, was indeed interpretative of this earlier trinitarian mutation of the religious hub (I’d simply gotten lucky on that point in my 2015 paper).

So while I felt like the nuts and bolts were ready for a book on the subject to tell this story, I began fresh research – firstly on Tom Wright’s use of “mutation” with respect to the Resurrection. That is a definite series to come, but it will not be in the same depth and scope as the current Hurtado series. Secondly then, in Larry Hurtado's Lord Jesus Christ, I really found some firm ground that I felt the Triune Hub could benefit from via deeper analysis, and so I wrote a first series of posts on Hurtado's introduction and first chapter, accessible here, which included the hugely-inspiring recommendation from Hurtado himself here. Interactions with blog readers increased around this time, and I am very grateful for them as they often seem to know a lot more than me! A third series will also be necessary on Crossan, although rather than on a whole book, it will focus on the key chapter he wrote about Jesus' understanding of the Kingdom of God shifted and prepared for the sending of the Holy Spirit - a monumental mutation from the interventionist God to the collaborative God.

Other Bits & Pieces

Following further encouragement from Barney, I did a few posts on the hermeneutic circle and Ricoeur – but I think I eventually got a bit out of my depth and besides felt like I had gotten what I needed for now from Ricoeur anyway (although my French is pretty good, I think maybe reading the French version alone was maybe not the best idea).

Most recently, there have been a small string of book publisher rejections, which were disappointing, but have led me to focus more on the blog for now.

Since I used to lead worship in my local church for about ten years, I have a keen sense of the spiritual and theological formation that takes place during the vulnerable and sacred space of worship. As a result, I have at various points attempted to appraise the good, bad and ugly doing the rounds out there (see here for examples, scroll down past the first two Hurtado posts).

Approximately 3% of my posts are in French (click here for the seven posts in French), which mainly reflects my desire to remain open to a French public, some of whom are my friends and have expressed their wish to understand what on Earth I am going on about. The reality, however, is that my hits tend to go down when I do this.

Recent Reading

• I recently read “The Day the Revolution Began”, by NT Wright, which I don't have specific plans to blog about, but I can definitely recommend.
• I have very recently made a start on Robert MacEwen's Matthean Posteriority, (yep, it gets the really cool “MPH” acronym). Since it is relevant to my model, I will probably need to do some posts on it later. Strangely, the cheapest way by far to get this was on Google Books, not Amazon.
• The Unseen Realm has left an indelible mark on my biblical worldview, written by Michael Heiser. For those who appreciate Old Testament theology in particular, I can really recommend not only this book, but also Heiser's The Naked Bible podcast. 
• During my Kyrios research phase, I read the accessible When God Spoke Greek by Timothy Michael Law, and part way through Invitation to the Septuagint, by Karen H. Jobes  & Moisés Silva
• Finally, as regular blog readers will know, I also recently read Dale Tuggy’s recent book, What is the Trinity? Following that, he and I began a blog exchange, which so far goes me, him, me. More than once he has assured me that he will get round to his next response, but he has a lot going on right now so I’m not hassling him for it.

On the more inspirational side I have recently read:

• Mike McHargue’s Finding God in the Waves, which is a great book (with whose journey I also sense some resonance),
• Rob Bell’s Here To Be Here, which helped me at one stage take some pro-active steps on my journey,
• The Subtle Art of Not Giving aF**K, by Mark Manson. Despite its offensive title, I'm glad I followed my Christian friend’s recommendation. However, for Christian readers, you might have to put your cultural filters up to really get the core message of this book which covers some important life topics. If that’s not for you, then there is a short Christian book that The Subtle Art kept on reminding me of by author Timothy Keller, The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness, which I think I read in 2012. By the way, a not well-known fact: in a former life, I enjoyed composing some alternative music, and you can enjoy this song which is on this same theme of breaking out of self-centredness, recorded back in 2002. It’s called Looking Straight Through the Eternal Mirror. Even lesser-known fact: it contains a recording of a whale! 
 If you like my alternative music style, then you might also appreciate a mini-album entitled Integrity, available freely here since 2010. 
• Naked Marriage: Uncovering Who You Are And Who You Can Be Together, by Corey Allen. Really good.
• The Pressure's Off: Breaking Free from Rules and Performance, by Larry Crabb. Basic but very necessary for me to hear afresh.

How's the blog doing?

So how am I doing in terms of blog visibility? Hmm, not great to be honest. When there is interaction with a more well-known scholar like a Hurtado or a Tuggy, I can just about break into triple figures. Mostly though, I’m typically around the 15-25 visits. In Blogdom, that’s like a virtual non-starter, especially after nearly three years of posting. So I’m curious – can you recommend this blog to anyone? Do you have any recommendations or advice to give me to increase its popularity and access? Is the style too academic? Too informal? I’m working on shorter sentences (my Mum’s repeated request, although even she isn’t a regular reader)…

What next?

Loads!

• I don’t know how far I will continue into my coverage of Hurtado’s Lord Jesus Christ. I feel like there is so much common ground with THH that I have plenty to say on the content of this great book, even if our paths are already set to diverge on certain points, like around his “Q” chapter, which maybe when I bring in MacEwen. It is just possible that if I do go “the full hog”, that I have another stab with the publishers, editing the posts as a response book to Lord Jesus Christ.

• I haven't painted for decades. But I have inspiration to do a reconfiguration of the reunion described in Jesus parable of the Prodigal Son. I want to capture the moment of reconciliation, but not just with the prodigal and his Father, but also with the Elder Son, who is neither jealous nor resentful, but shares in his Father's joy.
• I would like to test-run the Psalms meditation proposal with some friends, blog readers, maybe my local church if the leadership accepted.
• “Love, Hate & Late Matthew”
• I have begun writing a brief commentary on the Old Testament book of Joel, which has relevance for my overall work on the Trinity. Rather than piecemeal it into this blog, when it is ready, I plan to provide a link on the blog to my space on https://www.academia.edu/ where folks can access it and download it if they would like.
• I may pick up the book project at some point and look at self-publishing if I receive fresh inspiration.
• I would like to approach Pastor Sean Finnegan to see if he’d be interested in interviewing me on his podcast, Restitutio to tell this story, which I think may be interesting to his show listeners. That may also lead at some point to an invitation from Dale onto the trinities podcast, only time will tell. My problem with Sean is that I simply don’t know how to contact him (can anyone help?)
   Anyway, if either work out, then it could be helpful to promote this blog.
• I would love to do a simplified animation of how I see Christianity got its Trinity and put it up on Youtube. That’d be a big job for me and a steep learning curve technologically.
• I want to re-visit each New Testament book to see how well the THH fares there. I know that systematic theology is always an approximation. We’re always working with “best-fit” models, and so I shouldn’t have been surprised when I recently re-read 1 John, that neither Triune God nor Triune Hub hypotheses seem to thrive there. A more thorough NT survey is definitely required (in my rejected book proposal, this section was going to be entitled “Taking the Triune Hub For A Test-drive”;).
• I also need to survey all references to John the Baptist, who for me is a key player in the rise of early trinitarianism.
• I have come to realise that I am more excited about tracing first century developments than second-fourth century stuff, but I guess at some point I’ll also have to dredge through the ancient sources (to which I have good access) and try to trace the formalisation of the TH within the institutionalising church toward the Triune God. What I do look forward to in that project, is to see that it is frequently when the triune hub principle is upset that the church feels the need to respond, correct and clarify as one “unsuccessful mutation” is stamped out after another (even Galatians, in my view, could be an early example of that).
• If there’s a worship song someone would like my opinion about, I’m always happy to have a listen to it and a good think about the lyrics.
• If there's a dodgy Christian apologetic argument out there, then I'll happily continue to try blowing it respectfully to pieces!

Thanks very much for stopping by, your presence and participation is shaping my journey and I hope you also continue to travel through your own storms with anchors and harbors of refuge that will see you through when you need it most. Remember, friends are worth far more than the greatest of "insights".

Talking to my Mum

Me and my beautiful Mum (on a separate occasion)

Over a couple of glasses of wine yesterday I had a fantastic opportunity I think we should all consider: explaining our theological passions in ways that make sense to folk who don't focus so much of their energy on theological matters. I am really not good at switching gears in this way, finding good images and illustrations - I really wish I was. But my Mum's interest galvanised me, and I had a go at explaining the Triune Hub hypothesis that I have been working on. She asked me a fantastic, albeit somewhat deflating question, what difference does that Triune Hub view really make?

That is the key question. What difference does our theology really make to believers' lives? What underpins our passion?

As I went to bed last night I felt a fresh passion to make the Trinity meaningful, central and important for regular Christians. The earliest Christians had a mutated religious hub that now included God, the risen and exalted Christ and the individuated eschatological-era-inaugurating-and-people-of-God-empowering Holy Spirit held in new natural balance. Three centuries of debate and an institutionalising church meant a stable structure that would keep these three in balance was needed and produced the Triune God. But ever since the first century, the church has had a reconfigured core of Three. A saddening realisation dawned on me as I had explained to my Mum how intertwined religious belief in Yahweh for Jews was with their social lives, eating, their calendars, relationships and society, and how that continued in its new threefold form in Christianity: modern "privatised" Christianity, whatever its religious hub, be it unitarian, trinitarian or whatever, is simply a lot smaller by virtue of its privatisation. In fact, an increasing number of westerners don't even feel a need for a relationship with a transcendental or divine being - they just get on with life and human relationships.

As I have developed my trinitarian views, I can honestly say that my Christian faith has at last stabilised considerably, and I integrate my belief in Father, Son and Spirit personally into my prayer life daily. I've felt a deep sense of responsibility that if this approach is to be adopted and used to contribute a return to more trinitarian church and faith in individual believers' lives, then I have to model it. I can't just write about it (as much as I enjoy doing that).

I recently shared a link to an important article by Fred Santers (my post here, the article here) whose title continues to challenge me: We Actually Don’t Need a Trinitarian Revival. What I think he is driving at though is not so much that we don't need to be articulating our religious, spiritual, and worldviews around the Father, Son and Spirit in a fresh or renewed way or with greater vigour. He's saying we don't need to do it in some radically redefined way. I believe what this article and my chat with my Mum, combined with my own walk of faith, have helped me realise is that there are some psychological obstacles in believers' paths preventing us from allowing the radical first-century shake-up in which our Christian faith originated to be accessible in a non-specialised context.

Very few modern Christian worship songs integrate the Trinity (and when they do, they sometimes try and do something weird, like squash it into Jesus). It is hardly ever preached as a subject (which may be fine), but still, with a disproportionately low reference rate to Father, Son and Holy Spirit, despite New Testament strong insistence to the contrary, the discrepancy remains flagrant. Although I am now far more sympathetic and understanding of fourth-century "Triune-God Advocacy" than I used to be, I still bear this grudge: that some of the complex notions introduced in order to keep the Father, Son and Holy Spirit co-essential and co-central to the faith in the great ecumenical councils may have contributed to making believers, including leaders, wary about a more natural integration of trinitarian thinking into their prayer lives, their worship and their social engagement.

So that's why I think the Triune Hub matters. Thanks Mum!

Block, technical issues, faith kick [+ mise à jour]

[MISE A JOUR 26/06/17 - Un commentaire important en français en bas de cet article ajouté, suite à une question d'un lecteur français]

Hi. Apologies for the slow-down on the journey into Hurtado first century Christian binitarian worship territory. I felt like I was on a real charge doing a post every day or every other day, then a few things happened.

Like anyone, I sometimes experience "block": just that inability to engage my mind with the same clarity I enjoy at other times. I am also going through a period in my life when my mind actually totally saturates as well, which increases this effect when it occurs. This effect was either caused or worsened by learning that although SPCK found my book proposal interesting (it definitely sounded from their personalised response that it had been discussed between several members of their editorial staff), they weren't going to be able to pursue it further. So that was a downer.

Then, I had this really weird technical issue with Kindle notes. I don't know if you have tried it, but kindle notes and highlights are a great way of interacting with a book. Kindle have recently decided to revamp their online interface and call this new area simply "notebook", with a nice thumbnail of the cover of each book to hit to see your highlights and notes. For some devilish reason, all my Hurtado notes and highlights on which I was relying for this first century blog cruise we're on are present on their old system and totally absent on the new one. With my wife we probably have a couple of hundred of books on Kindle, and Hurtado's Lord Jesus Christ is the only book that this glitch is affecting. And to make matters worse, the old site where all the content is intact will die on July 3rd. Oh, and I'm getting nowhere with Amazon.

Urggh. This all leads to feeling a bit down about it to be honest, and in a world and market which frankly is just not as interested in trinitarian theology as I have been, I'm beginning to wonder if it's worth carrying on.

Sorry for such a depressing post - I'll also share one more thing about faith. From time to time I read or hear something that makes me really question my faith. I'm delighted about that because it means I am engaging with the criticisms out there and have usually bounced back. My research into first century expressions of proto-trinitarianism led me at various points to the Gospel according to Matthew, which time and again seemed late to me, by which I mean late first century. This actually is another small series of blog posts I need to write, and very important with respect to Matthew's relationship to baptism and John the Baptist in particular. Suffice it to say that there are others that share this view, and that Matthew had access to Luke (it's sometimes called the Matthean posteriority hypothesis, MPH) - one of these proponents made some analyses on this basis about the synoptic burial narratives that stung me. So that hasn't helped either.

Looking forward to a more upbeat post soon, and especially a solution to resume the Hurtado cruise.

Allegory of a Triune model

Is this a poem? I'll let you judge, but I have a feeling it might be... :)

God makes everything excellently.

God decides to share ownership of his people with his Son.

They want to transform the world back to where love and justice are the authoritative principles in all matters.

Their tools for the job, the owned people, are ineffective, running on empty and they know it. They want and need sharpening to be their agents of love and justice.

The Father sends his Son and makes of his dearly beloved the greatest agent - where the Son is, there the Father is also by the constant partnership through the Love-Justicer Spirit.

Finally, the beloved Son aligns his will to that of his Father and abandons himself to him, in desperate trust, in the face of the greatest horror, intended for the greatest victory of God's love-justice Rule.

The Son dies. The Father weeps. The people weep.

The Father powerfully raises the Son back to life in the power of the Spirit, gives him his own Name and all his own authority - an authority so great, the Son is even permitted to further grant that authority to his people, and all that great goal of restoring his cosmos starts to become a reality through an incredible partnership. But the people need the love-justicer.

So the Son sends his Father's love-justicer to his people, those who pledge their allegience to him and his kingdom, and the people are truly loved and "justiced" in and through the Holy Spirit Love-Justicer, so the exact same love and justice can be advanced in the people's spheres of life to the glory of their owners. 

Although he is at the heart of the whole operation, the Son still operates in loving obedience to his Dad, and guarantees him final glory when we get to the last of the first hurrahs.

Beauty and science

Everyone doubts, I think. The strength for me is learning to doubt our doubts, or at least some of them, because they can be fuelled by new information from folk who are, just like us, searching for meaning and truth without having any perfect access to it all.

For a few years, I have also recognised what I often call a couple of "pillars" to help support my faith in times of doubt. The first is the incredible experience for me of the beauty in the world around us. The first words both my children heard as they were born were Welcome to God's world, or something like that. It's breathtakingly beautiful in places, really close up, medium range, and fully zoomed out too. My second pillar has been the experience of God's grace in my life through people who treat me much better than my behaviour or attitude merit. This "Agape" love is pretty indescribable when you experience it. But as much as I still value my two "pillars", we need to be careful, I think, to avoid theologies that go along the lines of "I can't explain something positive, so it's God", the famous God of the gaps problem.

We should remember that so much of what we see God do he chooses to do, according to the Bible, indirectly. Even in my agape love experience, it is unlikely that I could fathom how God loves me in this way without experiencing this same kind of love through others. And let's certainly not go down the "there is no such thing as coincidence" fallacy! But that's probably a post for another day.

For now, I need to think a bit more about the notion of beauty (it's been on my mind for quite some time), because it is obviously unthinkable that the scientific world have no explanation for why we might have evolved to perceive things as desirable even if the pleasure they elicit in us today is of no basic physiological benefit. This neuro-scientist, Anjan Chatterjee, has a good crack at it, and maybe sometime I'll get round to reading his book. I have now removed the embedded video as it was stuck on autoplay. Please enjoy it here.

Retreating pointers

My experience last week was so rich, I still want to encourage people to take spiritual retreats, myself included. In the past, there have been some retreat-style experiences for me, but they were in groups and at other people's initiative. Here I want to share some of the things that helped this be a success in case any of these ideas could also help you prepare for a time out.

Firstly, sniff out an opportunity. If you struggle to continue the journey of knowing yourself and relish the thought of journeying forward with God and experiencing a fresh wave of release in your identity and purpose, then this should help you get sniffing, and, if a believer, praying for it too.

Secondly, when an opportunity arises - ask for advice on a good place and environment to go to (or maybe you know somewhere already). I have always been inspired by mountains (more so than the sea), because there is still something of a mountain-runner inside of me that just can't contain how incredibly beautiful these landscapes are when moving through them and interacting with them. I initially thought of camping, but the friend I consulted dissuaded me from that option. It's good to be comfortable but not in the lap of luxury either. I found a place on airbnb for 15 euro per night (I was particularly blessed here because the owners were away on holiday so I actually had full access to the living room, kitchen and garden too).

Thirdly, anticipate the departure. For a week or so I could sense my spirit within me slowly poise with anticipation about encounter. Some Christians talk about retreat as a time to meet with God. It is certainly that, but it is also about more fully becoming who you are, in order for meeting with Him to be a success. He has no problem with integrity. You, however, might do, and to be fully present for that encounter he will help you prepare and also experience it during. As someone who is at times obsessed by theology, I became aware that I would have to attempt to do as little of that as possible during the retreat to enhance the encounter experience. I warned my family to expect little contact during this time, and set up an automatic response email.

Fourthly, prepare practically for departure. It should be minimal. At one point, thinking that a personal retreat should be close to my previous group experiences, I thought I should prepare an organised programme, with timings etc. That is not necessary. This was my kit list more or less:

• My physical Bible
• My guitar and some worship music
• My knees
• Some verses to colour in and my kids' colouring pens
• An audiobook to listen to in the car on the way there. I had a credit on www.Audible.com, and spent it on God Is the Gospel: Meditations on God's Love as the Gift of Himself. It's pretty good; I may critique it at some point in the blog, but is more theological than I had been hoping.
• A gospel movie (2014 Gospel of John) and some worship music
• My readiness to be silent
• My trainers/walking shoes
• A journal and pen (essential)
• Candles, candle-holders and matches
• Some basic food for the time (shopping is a distraction)
• A great prayer book (semi-essential!). I have had a book for many years that I re-discovered on my shelves by James Houston, a Scottish Christian writer (I think). Man, I thought it was excellent:

Fifthly, enjoy! My advice would be to punctuate activities with pauses, prayers, etc. all the way along. Examine the inner thoughts and worries, the evil inside of you (or "evil" if you are not a believer), the pride, the competitivity, destructive temperament or ideas, recognise them as they begrudgingly submit to your authority of identifying themselves, own them, take full responsibility for them. I did this, and then tried writing the word "sorry" to God really slowly. Try to imagine the perfect Christ-like you. It is too vague for a Christian to simply pray or strive to be "christlike". What would you be like in a perfectly christlike way? For that, I think we need to pray, having taken responsibility for who we are for receiving God's great love and grace in our hearts.

I can also say I really took my time entering into the day, only when I felt fully rested did I get up. One day I thought I was rested started to get ready and realised my eyes felt heavy, so I went back to bed! It's all part of cultivating the inner-listening process.

There were a couple of discouraging moments. On one day I got more distracted and even a bit bored while trying to colour a verse, I also sent some SMS messages and had a little too much contact with the outside world. What helped here was the prayer book especially, the one by Houston. He brought me back to the deeper level quickly. Another thing is to be listening for when it is time (weather permitting) to go outside, to change environments. This works the other way too - after a walk, start longing to go back indoors (lodgings or a café) at the right time. I had some great moments actually just sat in the middle of nowhere with the journal.

One of the things I really appreciated in the prayer book was accepting to become a pilgrim. There is nothing magic about a retreat. You don't come back transformed into the all-new-you, but there can be breakthroughs and a shift in thinking as you embrace being on a journey, as clichéd as that has become, it needs to be a reality in all our lives.

I still have a sixth and a seventh point, concerning prayer for others and coming home, but I'll save those two for a separate post.

Retreat and meet yourself

When was the last time that you took some time out?
When did you last ask yourself "what do I really believe"?
How do you feel when there is a gap between what you feel inside and what you try to communicate to the person you are meeting? Is there a tension there? What is the effect of your superficiality on someone else's attempt at being authentic, that is to say, being who they are?
Is being "me" such a modern challenge, or have we humans always been pre-occupied by this difficulty?

I am in re-entry mode. For three nights this week I have had the incredible opportunity to go away for remarkably low cost into the stunning French Alps with the unique purpose of reflection and prayer. I honestly don't know when that will happen again. But on day 1 of re-entry, (i.e. I am back home) I can already safely say that I have sensed a covering over of improper internal machinations. And it's uncomfortable.

Any non-Christians reading this please understand something. Christians do not believe that we are sorted (at least the sane ones don't). There is a lot of falsehood, anxiety, disappointment, and unclear motives in the church (as well as lots of great things too). But the Bible, especially the New Testament, teaches us that God, through his resurrected Christ and his Holy Spirit, is drawing his church to a different kind of humanity. It's the humanity we were destined to experience, and every atom in our being yearns for. Three nights away somewhere will let you glimpse that. Using airbnb I found a place for 15 euro/night. If I know you personally then please if you need a contribution to help you achieve some time out like this in order to help you be truer to yourself to yourself (I love this expression!), to others and (if you believe) to God, then let me know, I'd love to help. If you can organise this yourself then it's better still. Own your retreat. Own your thoughts. Own your thoughts. Establish who you are. Take responsibility for your weaknesses and failings. Take responsibility. Appreciate the beauty of your surroundings for yourself. Share them with God, if you believe in him. Listen. Pray. Think. Be dissatisfied. Be satisfied. Aim for the perfect you in a strength that cannot come from you.

Time out. Become.