God on the Dance Floor

31 12 2010

Ballroom dancing must be the western culture’s last bastion of patriarchy. A few months ago Nikki (my wife) and I ticked off our to-do-list by taking up dancing.  Like most modern couples, we struggle to find time together. Dance was meant to solve all that: intimacy, music, and romance.  But it’s all gone strangely awry. You see, Carol—my female instructor—turned out to be a chauvinist. “Males always lead; the woman’s role is to follow,” she informed. The guy next to me nervously looked at his partner. I snickered. Sexist men of the world, your safe haven is in a dance hall near you!  Then again, perhaps another bastion of patriarchy remains …

How about the church? In the eyes of many, Christianity is as patriarchal as it gets, where men dominate and women are subordinate.  How backward!  How countercultural!  “How could it be otherwise?” some wonder, as from the top down, Christianity is a family business: a Heavenly Dad calls the shots, and directs his Son to save the world in the power of some mysterious Spirit!  So not only do Christians hold to this bizarre notion of a three-in-one God, but this Trinity appears patriarchal, hierarchical, and monarchical right to the core.  No wonder so many feminists have preferred to walk out the door.  In the words of one woman, “Christianity is a masculinist religion and irreformable.… The question for many women is whether they can be Christians.”[1]

The church certainly has a lot to answer for when it comes to (mis)treatment of women.  But my dance experience has got me wondering if such critiques have made a mis-step when it comes to this Triune God.  Watch a novice like me, and you’ll see some ugly leading.  Skill is short, and so are cues, so I push and pull and occasionally step on Nik’s feet.  But when I watch Carol and her partner, it’s so fluid.  There’s rhythm and poise, and I can’t tell where the leading ends and the following begins.  “Subordination” is never a word I’d use to describe their dancing.  Instead, “grace” comes to mind.  Each works to make the other look good; each moves in beat to a higher rhythm.  Thinking on the Trinity, then, what word best describes the motions of Father, Son, and Spirit across time?  How about an old Greek word, “perichoresis.”

When Basil and his Cappadocian brothers framed the Trinity way back in the fourth century, they chose this word.  Meaning?  It means to dance around. Perichoresis means that three distinct persons are in such an interpenetrating dance that three become one: echad—to borrow a Hebrew noun—a composite unity, where each blends into the other with no beginning or end.  (Think of when the multiple members of your favourite sports team work as one.) Each member moves to glorify the others—to highlight their true beauty and prowess. And what is the higher rhythm of this dance?  It’s mutual submission to the beat of love.

Look around.  Western culture is fixated on freedom. But we want it without strings attached. I, Me, My, Mine. We seize power, and seek independence—so screw anyone who gets in the way or holds me back.  In this mindset, feminists like Betty Friedan have painted any type of submission—such as a female dancer to her lead—as dehumanizing.  Women like Carol who dance to these rhythms are not “fully human.”[2]

The Trinity, however, suggests another way. It reveals that at the heart of the universe is a relationship.  We are built for community. Radical independence only leaves us lonely. But mutual submission—of men to women, and women to men—is the path to life. And far from oppressing, this triune God has suffered on our behalf through Jesus, to throw open this divine dance for all to participate. And this God, who is essentially Spirit, transcends all gendered metaphors, longing to embrace us as a mother does her children.  If we are willing, that is.

Freedom always comes in a form.  And what is the form in which we are most free? It’s love. To quote Jürgen Moltmann, “God is love.  That means God is self-giving.  It means he exists for us: on the cross… Through the concept of perichoresis, all subordinationism is avoided… Here the three Persons are equal; they live and are manifested in one another and through one another.”[3]

So, this coming Wednesday you’ll find me back in the dance hall. And this coming Sunday, you’ll find me worshipping this three-in-one God. Why? Because the longer I dance, and the longer I sing, the more convinced I am that God’s dancing around in love is the only foundation for what we all want: a truly humane community of men and women moving together in inter-dependent freedom.

Dave Benson

[1] Daphne Hampson, The Independent, 13th Nov. 1992, cited by Rosie Nixson in Liberating the Gospel for Women, Grove Evangelism Series No. 28 (Bramcote, Nottingham: Grove Books Ltd, 1994), p3.

[2] Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: Bantam, 1972), 77.

[3] Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom of God, trans. Margaret Kohl (London: SCM), 83, 176.


Comments : 21 Comments »
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories : The Heart of Faith

Batter My Heart

29 12 2010

Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you

As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;

That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend

Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

I, like an usurp’d town to another due,

Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;

Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,

But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue.

Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov’d fain,

But am betroth’d unto your enemy;

Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,

Take me to you, imprison me, for I,

Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,

Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

John Donne was a major 17th-century poet, a dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London and a member of the British Paliarment.

 


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , , ,
Categories : The Heart of Faith

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

24 12 2010

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas is a well-known song since the 1944 romantic musical film “Meet Me in St. Louis”. This is how the song begins (I considered adding the link to a YouTube video in which you could listen to me singing this song; but since I don’t want to cause any distress or agony to anyone, I’ll simply write the lyrics) :

Have yourself a merry little Christmas,
Let your heart be light
From now on,
Our troubles will be out of sight…

This last line caught my attention. Though the intent behind the words is surely commendable, I have the impression it’s not realistic for some people. Christmas, for many, is precisely when their troubles will become most evident; the absence of a beloved one, the pain of an unreconciled relationship, the weight of a personal financial crisis or the presence of a terminal illness are normally accentuated in a season such as Christmas.

But rather than avoid the Christmas moment, I consider the best thing those of us who suffer most at this season could do is precisely remember what Christmas is. The recovery of the true meaning of Christmas can be of enormous help for those who, unsurprisingly, face these days accompanied by sorrow and hurt.

Speaking of the birth of Jesus approx. 700 years before it happened, Isaiah affirmed:

“The virgin will conceive a child!
She will give birth to a son,
and they will call him Immanuel,
which means ‘God with us.”[1]

These words summarize what Christians believe to be the essence of Christmas. God came. God incarnated. The invisible was made visible. God is among us. God is with us.

A playet called “The Long Silence” illustrates this truth creatively:

“At the end of time, billions of people were scattered on a great plain before God’s throne. Most shrank back from the brilliant light before them. But some groups near the front talked heatedly.

‘Can God judge us? How can he know about suffering?’ snapped a pert young brunette. She ripped open a sleeve to reveal a tattooed number from a Nazi concentration camp. ‘We endured terror, beatings,  torture, death!’

In another group a black boy lowered his collar. ‘What about this?’ he demanded, showing an ugly rope burn. ‘Lynched, for no crime but being black!’

In another crowd, a pregnant schoolgirl with sullen eyes. ‘Why should I suffer’ she murmured, ‘It wasn’t my fault.’

Far out a cross the plain there were hundreds of such groups. Each had a complaint against God for the evil and suffering he permitted in his world. How lucky God was to live in heaven where all was sweetness and light, where there was no weeping or fear, no hunger or hatred. What did God know of all that human beings had been forced to endure in this world?

So each of these groups sent forth their leader, chosen because he had suffered the most. In the centre of the plain they consulted with each other. At last they were ready to present their case.

Before God could be qualified to be their judge, he must endure what they had endured. Their decision was that God should be sentenced to live on earth – as a human being!

‘Let him be born a Jew. Let the legitimacy of his birth be doubted. Give him a work so difficult that even his family will think him out of his mind when he tries to do it. Let him be betrayed by his closest friends. Let him face false charges, be tried by a prejudiced jury and convicted by a cowardly judge. Let him be tortured. ‘At last, let him see what it means to be terribly alone. Then let him die. Let him die so that there can be no doubt that he died. Let there be a great host of witnesses to verify it.’

And when the last had finished pronouncing sentence, there was a long silence. No-one uttered another word. No-one moved. For suddenly all knew that God had already served his sentence.”

We must be honest and recognize that Christmas can be a particularly difficult occasion for many of us. At the same time, this could also be the season when we genuinely seek and experience the reality that Jesus’ name is also Immanuel, “God with us”.

Hélder Favarin

[1] Isaiah 7:14


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , ,
Categories : The Heart of Faith

Public Sphere Faith

22 12 2010

For us the activity of worship has become a private affair. Even some agnostics don’t seem to mind that people go about their Sunday mornings engaged in acts of worship, as it occurs comfortably behind closed doors. Occasionally religion spills out into the public space as, in the example of some Christians who fight to keep public monuments of religious significance (the ten commandments, or statues of the cross) in the public space (a courthouse, city center, etc.) in America, or Muslims women who strive to wear the burqa in France. We tend to agree with this relegation of the religious to the private sphere, and often acknowledge it in practice, going about our daily work with only perhaps a furtive prayer or generic expression of virtue, but nothing so peculiar as to strike a secular co-worker as an explicitly religious expression.

This division of life into two spheres: public and private, and the further relegation of the religious life to the private sphere has roots in various thinkers and writers across the modern period, but this is a division that is ultimately incompatible from a Christian point of view. Christian worship is, as one theologian (Bernd Wannenwetsch of Oxford University) has recently put it, a Political act: to acknowledge God as the one creator and ruler over everything relativizes every human form of government, and has profound ethical implications in every sphere of life. This fact was perhaps more obvious in the early church as there was a well-worn precedent for “private” religious worship. Rome was relatively (though not always) tolerant of religious diversity in its empire, provided that worship was relegated to the private space. As long as one’s personal religion remained private, the public space was open for some occasional deference to imperial religion and the state gods which was required for citizenship.

What was remarkable about early Christians is that they refused what was an otherwise comfortable settlement for many other cults of the day. They recognized that the sort of worship that their relationship with the Creator invited them to participate in was wholly encompassing, and as a result, as Wannenwesch puts it, “martyrdom was inevitable, since the ekklesia [church or 'Christian community'] was bound from the beginning to celebrate ‘political worship’. (148)” Their worship of Jesus blocked their worship of the emperor and the gods, and martyred they were.

There is a sense in which contemporary Christian worship today does not always express the fullness of this reality, but at some point it becomes inevitable. The God we celebrate in this advent season as being incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ, does not desire a convenient sort of settled relationship, the sort of tepid hug you share with a distant acquaintance. Rather, we are invited into a relationship best represented by a full-on embrace. We are given the gift of life with all its fullness, and this gift is best affirmed by a whole-hearted worship which does not fail to shape all the other dimensions of our lives, private and public. Christian faith transgresses and subverts these boundaries, and invites us away from lifestyles of fragmentation (themselves inherently characterized by brokenness)  but rather to a daily experience of wholeness.

Jeremy Kidwell

 

Note: For a more detailed version of this account, check out Bernd’s book: Political Worship. I’ve drawn here on content from chapter 6, “the surmounting of political antinomies.” Fair warning, this is a challenging (but rewarding) read!


Comments : 1 Comment »
Tags: , , ,
Categories : Making a Difference

Christmas Truce

20 12 2010

A 2005 movie called Joyeux Noël portrays maybe the most memorable Christmas scene of the 20th-century. World War I had started in 1914, involving European powers in the largest conflict up to that time. Technological inventions such as the machine gun made the war bloody and protracted, as armies could no longer engage in Napoleon-style creative strategies but had to battle from trenches, and sometimes thousands of lives would get lost to advance the frontline a 100 yards.

When Christmas Eve arrives, soldiers overhear Christmas carols being sung in the enemies’ trenches, and soon the spirit of Christmas triumphs over the spirit of war. Scottish, German and French soldiers call a temporary truce for Christmas Eve and Christmas day. They come to look at each other, and see foreign faces differently than the faces seen far away from behind a rifle. They exchange chocolate, champagne, show one another pictures of loved ones, and on Christmas day they bury corpses and play soccer. For some hours, the celebration of Christmas unites what was seemingly irreconcilable, and they remember life at its best.

Christmas has a beautiful, mysterious power. Enchanting songs and commonly held traditions explain some of its magnetism, but they are not sufficient. To elucidate the clout of goodness that brings together soldiers filled with rage, anger, guilt and fear, only the significance of Christmas can do. Only by remembering the story of Christmas, the narrative of God entering our human war-filled history to offer salvation, can we understand the irresistible spirit of Christmas. It is a message of peace, as Luke narrates that the choir of angels sang from up above in the first Christmas Eve:

“Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”[1]

With Jesus’ arrival, God came to us and offered a truce. He declares peace and favour for our divided, fragmented, self-hating hearts. He breathes love into old resentments and tense family meals. He offers forgiveness for our sins and reconciliation with himself. This week we need not war with ourselves, with one another, or with God. We can come to eat chocolate, see old fond photographs, and play soccer, for with God’s arrival, with his breeze of peace to interrupt our frenzy, with the climax of history around a serene manger, a season of peace has arrived, and we can enjoy life at its best.

René Breuel

[1] Luke 2:14


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , , , , , ,
Categories : The Heart of Faith

Ordinary People

15 12 2010

I admit: I’m a dreamer. At times I find myself sitting on the couch at home, and I watch the saxophone my father played 40 years ago and which renders the living room even nicer, and I dream.

At times I mix dreams and memories, and when I think with a music in the background the dreams, images and emotions unite to make peaceable an afternoon already pleasant. This is what happened last weekend: sitting on the couch I thought about the words of John Legend in his splendid “Ordinary People”.(1)

Often we forget that we are ordinary people, people with merits and also with shortcomings, with our talents and our limitations. With our emotions and with our tears… Ordinary people.

At times the will, almost the need to be special floods our days, actions and thoughts, and we wake up searching for the idea that will change our life or the lottery ticket that will replace our lack fulfillment. The stress and the speed of our lives slowly decenter us, and with lost time we lose the emotions, the looks, the caresses and the hugs that characterize who we are: ordinary people.

When Paul wrote a letter to Timothy he reminded him that a contented spirit is a great gain. When one reaches the conscience that we cannot be special by ourselves, there is peace, hope and love, there is gratitude, consolation, the awareness that Jesus has given his extraordinary life to make us ordinary people with extraordinary hearts.

John Legend advises us to walk slow. I think he’s right. How many times we’ve lost something because we had something else to do. How many times we haven’t had the time to greet someone well or to make a phone call that expresses between the lines, “I care about you.”

A popular saying tells us that we know the value of something only when we don’t have it anymore. It’s true. We spend a lifetime searching for something that will render us special and lose bit by bit all that helps us be who we are. That’s why it is important to live slower. To think more. To listen more. To talk more. To live more… like ordinary people.

I sit on my couch, look at the saxophone and dream. I dream of being an ordinary person but with an extraordinary heart, changed, renewed, transformed by Christ.

Enzo Bifano lives in Rome, Italy, and works as an analytical programmer at a large communications company.


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , , ,
Categories : Bar Conversations and Cheap Advice

A Song of Transition

13 12 2010

I’ve always been intrigued at some movies’ capacity to take us along a character’s journey. A man encounters a woman and they mock and despise one another, until at a mysterious moment they fall in love, and we buy it. Or a talentless character receives a word of encouragement from a stranger, and after some practice, he is revealed a concealed genius. How are we convinced that someone has really changed?

There maybe be several cinematic techniques going on, but one that has caught my eye is the use of music to communicate passage of time. The couple may be shouting at one another, but after a song plays, and several little scenes portray them talking and walking and dancing and laughing, we are ready for a believable kiss scene to seal the romance. Or we maybe be convinced that Rocky Balboa is a drunk loser, but after we see him practicing in the gym and trotting up the city hall stairs, with that tan-tan-tan-taaan song in the background, we know a champion is in the making. Music communicates the passage of time. Further still; it communicates the emotional enlargement necessary for a character’s inner transformation, and it takes us along with him.

This may be one of the reasons why the Christmas narratives – if we may transition to them as the season approaches – constantly erupt in song. Zechariah bursts into singing when he learns his aged wife is pregnant with John the Baptist; a choir of angels chants from the sky when Jesus is born; aged Simeon sings when he gets to hold the baby in the temple. Almost no story passes without a song to crown the transition of a new era, and, most famously, an unsure teenage girl emerges exultant as the mother of the Messiah by articulating into melody the full range of her joy: “My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.”[1]

Yet what sets Mary’s song apart from an expected Christmas tone is its almost Marxist revolutionary vision. After her emotional reaction, Mary moves on to words worthy of a Lenin speech at Bolshevik headquarters (minus the God-part):

[God] has brought down rulers from their thrones
but has lifted up the humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things
but has sent the rich away empty.[2]

Mary does not dwell on motherhood sentimentalities; she knows that the stake of the world order depends on the person growing in her belly. So she is not afraid to direct her song with rhetoric so world-shattering as to be later censored by dictatorships such as (how ironic!) the late Soviet union. Mary knew that her son would change the course of history, and who knows if it ever crossed her mind that he would also change the personal trajectory of those who would let him grow and move and develop in them too, and provide the decisive ingredient for inner transformation worthy of a rousing song.

René Breuel

[1] Luke 1:46-47

[2] Luke 1:52-53


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories : The Heart of Faith

Christmas Nostalgia

10 12 2010

I’ll let you in on a little family secret: my wife is one of those people. You know, the people who would listen to Christmas music all year round, set up the Christmas decorations in October and leave them up until March. In the interest of familial harmony, however, she restrains herself to celebrate Christmas between late November and early January. I won’t lie, I also love the so-called “Christmas Season.” I like the cold weather, bundling up and going to parties with friends, spending time with family, decorating the house and the various Advent and Carol services held at church.

For many people, myself included, Christmas is a time of deep nostalgia. Many of us have fond memories of Christmas as children. We relish old Christmas music/movies, our tattered old stockings, handmade Christmas-tree ornaments and a big Christmas feast shared with family. Oddly enough, these actual memories are supplemented by a sort of collective nostalgia as propagated in images of snowy cottages, warm fires (even though many these days did not grow up with fireplaces), church bells and many other stock images. At times our nostalgia overrides other ordinary judgments, like aesthetics. How else can we explain some of the horrendous songs or arrangements played at this time of year, beloved by all and counted as classics, which we would never be caught dead listening to in another context?

Strikingly, nostalgia can even occur in memories of terrible events, like the state of East Germany behind the Iron Curtain and the events of the cultural revolution in China. Collective nostalgia such as this (but also in less extreme cases) is a reaction against the fast-paced, complex, progress-oriented nature of daily life in which we long for a simpler time. This feeling results in a kind of distorted memory of our past (or some collective past) in which the good is emphasized and the difficult downplayed. [1]

At its root, nostalgia is intimately tied to memory and the types of stories we tell ourselves about who we are. It is here that my concern with nostalgia meets up with the concern of the many who rail against the commercialization of Christmas. I think the stories that we tell ourselves through our personal and cultural nostalgia tend, in practice, to override the story of what Christmas is actually about: the creator God divesting himself of glory and coming to earth in the person of Jesus as a baby to rescue us and reunite us with him. Telling this story and relating who we are to this story creates a very different atmosphere than one of telling fictionalized and commercialized stories from our collective past. This is not to say that decorations and beloved music are bad in themselves, but it is rather to encourage reflection on what is really the dominant story for our “Christmas Season.” We celebrate the person of Christ, not idealized Christmases of yesteryear.  In the words of St. Augustine:

“Awake, mankind! For your sake God has become man. Awake, you who sleep, rise up from the dead, and Christ will enlighten you.  I tell you again: for your sake, God became man…Let us then joyfully celebrate the coming of our salvation and redemption. Let us celebrate the festive day on which he who is the great and eternal day came from the great and endless day of eternity into our own short day of time.” [2]

Ben Edsall

_____________________________
[1]  For a fascinating account of this, see Janelle L. Wilson’s Nostalgia: Sanctuary of Meaning (Rosemont Publishing, 2005), 21-29.

[2] St. Augustine, Sermon 185: PL 38, 997-999.


Comments : 1 Comment »
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Categories : On Anything and Everything

Water

8 12 2010

I recently discovered some of the astonishing photos from the 2010 National Geographic Photo Contest, including this one to the right.  I’ve been staring now-and-then at this photo, taken underneath a breaking wave, for the last few days. At times, I’ve felt like I’m in it, engulfed by the heavy weightlessness of the water, feeling the immense tug of the wave as it forms.

There’s just one thing. I’m aquaphobic – I have a totally intoxicating, incapacitating fear of swimming in water. I’ll paddle, as long as it is shallow enough that I can stand up. Any deeper than that, I panic uncontrollably. Last year, on a trip to Hawaii, I nearly drowned, because I’d drifted two metres away from safety. I looked down to see what felt like oblivion. Absolute terror.

So the more I’ve looked at this photo, the more I’ve noticed its endless immensity. Then I panic and look away.

The thing is, this is the Christian life. This is what the Christian practice of baptism is meant to represent. The word “baptise” comes from the Greek baptizo, which originally simply meant “immerse, saturate”. The Bible frequently refers to us being immersed (baptizo) into God (especially His Spirit), and Him filling us (again with His Spirit). Taken to its fullest point, this has been understood as like being in deep water, ever getting deeper, with no bottom in sight, and feeling the water fill your mouth, your throat, your lungs, everything, until you become somehow distinct and yet intrinsically entwined within the water. To drown, and yet somehow live.

It never ceases to amaze me that some people – whether athiests or Christians – think that Christianity is shallow, for the ignorant, stupid, or gullible. While it is certainly true that Christ takes in any people, no matter how smart they are, I would say Christianity is certainly not shallow. But that also means it’s not safe, on one level. The Bible actually describes the process of becoming a Christian as meaning that part of you dies – it’s the part that is confused, lost, aching, but it is still a part you are familiar with. Perhaps a lot of the reasons we give for not becoming a Christian have little to do with reason, and more to do with fear of the part that needs to die.

The great 19th Century preacher, Charles Spurgeon, wrote:

There is something exceedingly improving to the mind in a contemplation of the Divinity. It is a subject so vast, that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity; so deep, that our pride is drowned in its infinity. Other subjects we can compass and grapple with… But when we come to this master-science, finding that our plumb-line cannot sound its depth… we turn away… and with solemn exclamation say, ‘I am but of yesterday, and know nothing.’[1]

As near as I can see, the only way someone, like an atheist, might say that Christianity is intellectually shallow, is if they haven’t looked hard enough. If they did the research, they would find that great Christian minds, like Augustine or Aquinas, learned that we will always have questions, and there will always be answers… that invite more questions, because there is always more to learn about God. The atheists I respect have done the research, and they do not think Christianity is too shallow. They think it too deep. They have realised that behind every answer is more questions, but they don’t want more questions. They want the answer. They want the pool to have boundaries, so they can stand up in
 the water. Christianity does not and cannot offer them that. Our infinite God won’t let us. In this sense, there will never be a “satisfactory” final answer with Him. You either stay in the shallows, or you dive in and go deeper and deeper, with no end in sight.

Spiritually, Christian mystics throughout history, again including Augustine and Aquinas,  would tell you that this exquisite immersion is also an experience. They have experienced moments of being terrified by God’s immensity but intoxicated by it at the same time. See, God will let people think He’s small enough to fit in a building, or in ignorant folks with tiny minds and tiny ideas – that’s their choice. But He invites us all into something so much larger, if we have the courage to dive in. He invites us into Him, to be baptised into Him, to dive, to drown, to live.

Matt Gray 

[1] CH Spurgeon, Sermon 1, Volume 1, originally preached January 7th, 1855, when he was twenty years old. The full text of this remarkable sermon is available at http://www.ccel.org/ccel/spurgeon/sermons01.i.html


Comments : 2 Comments »
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories : Tough Questions

Dinner Party Grace

3 12 2010

The last time I wrote, I mentioned ‘the three things’ one should never bring up at a dinner party: sex, religion, and politics. Sex was on the menu last time. Religion is today’s special.

Far from being ‘dead’, as Nietzsche once quipped, it seems that God is very much alive when it comes to the media, the web, and yes, even our dinner party conversation. Whether or not people believe in God, they usually have something to say on the subject of religion. But sadly, what people say—in particular, what they have to say about Christians and Christianity—is not always positive. In a recent sermon, I asked the congregation to reflect on the surrounding culture’s perception of Christians. At best, I suspect that most of us can amass mixed reviews; at worse, largely poor ones. I don’t think this has much to do with the hugely positive contributions Christianity has made to society through the ages.

If anything, it probably has more to do with what individual Christians say and do on a daily basis. And, of course, what they’re quoted as saying and doing in the media. All it takes is one extremist to make many people suspicious of all Muslims. And all it takes is one loveless Christian to make many people suspicious of the entire Christian faith. Whether we like it or not, what we say and do as individual believers has a major impact on what people think Christians are like collectively and what they think Christianity is like as a religion. This includes what we say when we talk about things other than religion, what we say when we talk about art, and film, and sport and music, and other subjects in the usually acceptable dinner party repartee.

Perhaps the reason why religion has been nominally banished from the dinner party is because religious discussion can so easily become heated and divisive. Ignorance is misinterpreted as opposition, and proponents of different views either attack or go on the defensive. Yet Jesus dined in a variety of places: private homes, brothels, public squares. For someone who was extremely forthright when it came to ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ in matters of religion, I wonder how he amassed so many friends among ‘sinners.’ Could it be because he was just as engaging when he chatted about the day’s fishing as he was when talking about spiritual things? Perhaps he also knew when to stop talking and just listen?

So how does one hold and profess religious faith and keep the peace at a dinner party? At some level it must be because our speech and actions positively reflect the deeper religious truths we believe in. On another level, it must also be because we speak well about film and football. And on yet another level, it must be because our ears are as sensitive as our mouths. We should pray and love and help others as Jesus did, for sure, but maybe we could also learn to dine as he did, and be as gracious as he was over wine, candles and warm food.

Madi Simpson


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , , , , , ,
Categories : Making a Difference

« Previous Entries


Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 635 other followers