The Frustrated Photographer

22 02 2012

I have a love–hate relationship with photography. Ever since I was a kid, my recollection of events and places is tied to particular images either mum or I captured. My earliest memory is as a two year old, on a family holiday to New Zealand: we’re dressed in bright yellow plastic ponchos and I’m clinging to dad’s leg as this little tour boat cruises into the spray of a majestic waterfall. Flicking through mum’s extensive photo collection as a teen, I discovered this precise photo, detail for detail. Which came first: the experience or the image? I still don’t know.

Colloquially, my condition is known as ‘snap happy’. Once I possessed my first camera around ten, the world was mine. Any experience could be reproduced with an image. And there was no better experience to capture than a hike. Atop gusty Mt. Kinabalu in Malaysia; besides the still reflections of the Rockies on Lake Moraine; traversing craggy peaks at Cradle Mountain in Tasmania—wherever it may be, my trusty camera is by my side, ready to re-present the glories of God’s creation in a negative. So when we returned to New Zealand this last holiday—a haven for happy snappers—it was no surprise (or joy) to my wife Nikki that my camera came too.

On my good days, I love photography. The image is a marker stone celebrating where we’ve been. It reminds me of this impalpable beauty, this sense of wonder standing like a toddler before a world too big to fathom. Take the photo below. The day after a dump of fresh snow, Nik and I are tramping up to 1800 metres at Mueller Hut. We’re opposite New Zealand’s most famous peak, Aoraki, the cloud piercer—better known as Mt. Cook. I didn’t want to forget this! Simply stunning. I wielded my camera like a priest swinging his thurible as smoke fills the temple: click, click, click—my spirit sang something too deep for words as pixel met pixel in a panorama of praise. It didn’t seem to matter how many shots I snapped, I could never do this justice.


But herein lies my ‘hate’ relationship with photography, for I am a frustrated photographer. How much the flat image leaves out! Looking at this image, you just don’t get it! You can’t see the peaks past the white-space of the photo’s border. You aren’t chewing on fresh snow as it revives your energy following the tiring climb. You can’t sense the sun beating on your shoulders, or hear the song of the Kia as it swoops from God-knows where to steal your lunch! And that’s not even to mention the groan of the glacier and the thunderous crack of the occasional avalanche, all in the company of my beautiful and athletic wife! You see an image; I recall an experience. Two dimensions cannot do Mueller Hut justice! How irreducible is the grandeur of a mountain!

And yet, I do try. I persist in taking image after image, reducing the wonder to a digital reproduction viewable on my 5cm2 preview screen. But why? My frustration rises, though it’s no longer about the view. It’s about me.

It’s so subtle. The shift from praise to power is subconscious. Unlike my wife, content to swim in the ineffable experience—a small part of the whole, taking beauty into herself—I desire to ‘capture’ the moment. What is bigger than me must be reduced, made manageable—it’s to be controlled and brought out to impress friends. “Wow, you take great photos; where was that?” Yes, forget the scenery and notice my grandeur. My camera has become a mirror, celebrating my skill and reflecting my ego. One photo is never enough: I squat in the snow seeking just the right angle, and for good measure take another photo of my wife’s back—the frustrated photographer’s wife—as she treks on to greater vistas.

I and It, or I and Thou … how do we engage the world? Perhaps you’re familiar with this classic distinction made by Martin Buber way back in 1923. On that magnificent hike, seeing everything as through a lens, I managed to reduce creation, the Creator, and even my wife to an It. It is merely an object detached from myself, waiting to be managed, captured and controlled for my own purposes—a flat image to induce excitement over past experiences or adulation from impressed onlookers. Like a scientist staring only through a microscope, I was killing the specimen to keep it still. When the world reduced to an It, wonder gave way to frustration.

The same temptation presents in all manner of fields: the frustrated teacher, frustrated theologian, frustrated husband, frustrated son, the frustrated human. In trying to ‘capture’ something—whether a panorama or a potentate—we inevitably reduce it to something less than it is in order to bring it under our control. But creation and the Creator defies reduction. At the heart of our existence is relationship with an unbounded other, Thou. Approach with wonder; engage with delight—my best attempts to understand the other and re-present the experience are but a humble invitation to live beyond myself: my power, and my control.

The frustrated photographer in me is still learning to let go. I can’t capture a mountain; how much less can I capture the eternal Thou in whom we all live, move and have our being. Without meaning to sound cliché, I am so thankful to God who has already offered us the perfect image in His Son.[1] I don’t yet perceive or relate as I ought, but by His humble self disclosure and ineffable light, I’m beginning to see everything else clearly.

Dave Benson

[1] John 14:9; Colossians 1:15-20; Hebrews 1:3.


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Categories : On Anything and Everything, Spirituality for the Rest of Us, The Heart of Faith

The Fellowship of Runners

20 02 2012

When Rolling Stones magazine interviewed U2 singer Bono, and asked which kind of music turns him on, Bono answered in a surprising and self-revealing way. “The music that really turns me on is either running toward God or away from God. Both recognize the pivot, that God is at the center of the jaunt.”[1]

Music that runs toward or away from God. I would imagine Bono would choose songs by their rhythm, by their catchy chorus, by their ability to move a stadium with its melody. Maybe he would be attracted to romantic lyrics, peppered with sensuality and longing, or maybe to music that resounds in people’s hearts and influences a generation. Yet Bono goes for our existential core: our gut reaction before ultimate reality, our instinctive surrender to God’s presence or haunted flight from his face.

I, for one, am more of a surrender type of guy, but I’m fascinated by the fellowship of runners. You know, by that anguished avoidance of God, stubborn and defiant, which tries to outrun infinity and outsmart omniscience. I admire this kind of persistence – it feels almost like a little dwarf’s rebellion – and, if I may confess some sadistic impulses, I enjoy seeing people avoid the inevitable and fight until the last breadth against God. It is entertaining. It is like children kicking and struggling against a spoonful of chocolate, only to enjoy it the minute it enters their mouth. I’m not quite sure why I enjoy this final struggle, maybe because I see it s the final tantrum of sin before the flood of grace, but when I see someone running away from God, I smile, and try to stay around long enough to see God catching up.

Can I share some scenes of my sadistic voyeurism? Let’s start with red meat, you know, a good sinner of old, a mighty oak falling down. Augustine narrates in his Confessions how he tried to run from God, and revels in the foolishness of it: “I would only hide thee from myself, not myself from thee.”[2] Augustine’s is a fascinating journey, elaborated by a great soul-physician in the Confessions, until he comes to the decisive moment: “Thou didst call and cry aloud, and didst force open by deafness. Thou didst gleam and shine, and didst chase away my blindness. Thou didst breathe fragrant odors and I drew in my breath; and now I pant for thee. I tasted, and now I hunger and thirst. Thou didst touch me, and I burned for thy peace.”[3]

Good stuff, eh? I like C. S. Lewis’ final struggles too, and the silent resistance he tried to muster to the last, even against a palpable sense of God’s presence. Lewis narrates in his autobiography:

“You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him who I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps the most defected and reluctant convert in all England.”[4]

But let me acknowledge it too. Maybe I enjoy seeing these moments in others not much for the agony’s sake – though that is fun, I admit – but maybe, if I may face my own resistance, because I enjoy the moments when God finally wins me over, and overflows my opposition, and reluctantly I let myself kneel and pray. I like seeing it in others because I see that this reluctance is not only my own, and even a stubborn like myself is within the reach of grace. I see David trying to make his bed in the depths, and feel I’m not down there by myself – there’s God, and there’s David hiding too, who tells me to shush and go hide somewhere else. If these dwarves dared to resist God, my own short arms and legs don’t seem to so foolish either. I can rest, and open myself, and let God arrive, and thank him for seeking such a small-minded fool as I.

René Breuel

[2]     Augustine, The Confessions of St. Augustine, ed. and trans. Albert Cook Outler (Mineola, New York: Dover, 2002), X.II.2.

[3]     Ibid., X.XXVII.38.

[4] C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of my Early Life (Orlando: Harcourt, 1955), 228-229.


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Categories : Spirituality for the Rest of Us

The Epic Story, Part II

3 02 2012

WhichStory.jpg In my previous post, I suggested that in order to make sense of our little and everyday stories, we need a view from above. Like a cosmic director, God has revealed the broad contours of an ongoing script, and invites us to make sense of our lives from His perspective.[1] Scenes one and two are past: God designed us for good, but we’ve each rebelled and sought a script we prefer, and in the process have been damaged by evil. Now we turn to scene three for a paradoxical twist as God sorts out the mess we’ve made. …

Scene #3: Restored for Better. The Director could have fired the cast for a do-over. But instead, He entered the story through His Son. When? The Roman Empire, Israel, when BC became AD. How? Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus uniquely claimed to be God in the flesh, the long awaited and predicted Saviour (Messiah/Christ) of the world. He gave us a model of how life was meant to be lived, under his Father’s rule in a KingRestoredforBetter.jpg dom of peace and love. He called us to switch scripts, and align with God’s form to be forgiven and free. As the perfect character, Jesus stood in for our failures. He took the blame, and absorbed evil in love, crucified to cover our sin. He took the worst the world could throw at him, but after it all, rose from the dead—a real historical event worth checking out. This demonstrated that death was defeated, and the story would go on. …

Scene #4: Sent Together to Heal. The heart of the human problem is the problem of the human heart. When we admit our fSenttoHeal.jpg ailure to God, turning from our way to trust the Director’s solution in Jesus, then a new act begins. God starts the process of healing us from the inside out—revealing the part only I can play—so we can go together in the power of His Spirit to help heal a hurting world. We partner with God to restore relationships and a broken planet. No waiting until the story’s happy ending, we have a mission right now to give the world a preview of the play’s final scene. Until we exit the stage, our role is to follow Jesus by absorbing evil in love, and reconnecting everyone with a good God who designed us to be free.

Scene #5: God Sets Everything Right. For all our best efforts, we’re still broken. By ourselves, the world will never fully heal. The Director is patient, and wants everyone to freely choose the role for which we were made. But, the day is comiSetEverythingRight.jpg ng when Jesus will return, judge the world, and set everything right. We’ve all fallen short, so we need God’s mercy. As the curtain closes, every actor is brought back to give account for their actions. If you’ve accepted God’s forgiveness, your real story is just starting: a restored earth with no hate, pollution, poverty, or war. God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—will be the centre of it all, and we’ll be free in this love. But what should God do with those of us who reject Him? Everything good, true, and beautiful comes from God, so apart from Him, all that’s left is Hell. Hell is when we exclude ourselves from the Director’s plans for a do-over.

You, in short, are an actor in an epic story. But the Director has given you unprecedented freedom to choose your own adventure. All our stories, however, hinge on the lead role. So how will you respond to Jesus? If you see your story in this script, and God has grabbed your heart, then tell Him. Life can begin again right now …

“God, you designed me for good, but I’m made my own way. I’ve rejected you, hurt others, and damaged your world. I’m sorry. Thanks for entering the story in Jesus, to restore me for better. Forgive me for my sins, and fill me with your Spirit. I want to follow you now, bringing healing where there’s hurt. Help me love like you do, as a preview of how the whole world will be when you set everything right. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”


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Categories : On Anything and Everything, Spirituality for the Rest of Us, The Heart of Faith

The Grand, Multi-Color Story

30 01 2012

“Why is mythology everywhere the same?”  This may sound like a simplistic judgment – there are so many myths across history, from the Hindu Vedas to the Nordic tales and the Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic. But the person who raises the question is Joseph Campbell, a Columbia University expert in comparative mythology and, according to Campbell, no matter which folk traditions are surveyed, from the peoples of Congo to the legends of the Eskimos, “it will always be the one, shape-shifting yet marvellously constant story that we find…” [1]

Campbell’s major book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, plots these common themes in the universal figure of the hero, whose adventures follows similar steps even in the most varied cultural settings: he receives a call to adventure, and after initial reluctance, he crosses the threshold to his journey. Here he faces numerous trials and meets forms of gods or goddesses, who mentor him and help he understand his mission, until he returns to reality with a message to proclaim or a mission to fulfill, and saves the community from its perils. (When George Lucas crafted the story for Star Wars and its hero Luke Skywalker, he leaned heavily on Campbell’s reconstructed hero’s journey).

So why is mythology everywhere the same? To explain our common stories, Campbell uses the theories of psychoanalysis, especially the views of Carl Jung, to explain the common source of our kaleidoscopic but similar myths and stories. Myths are reflections of our social mind, of archetypal urges deep beneath our psyches. In Campbell’s words, “They are spontaneous productions of the psyche, and each bears within it, undamaged, the germ power of its source.”[2]

Ok, these stories originate in our minds… but the question still begs itself: why? Why does the human mind keep producing these stories? Why are myths everywhere, and why are they so similar? What do these archetypes point to?

I believe a person’s journey will illuminate us here. C. S. Lewis was another expert in comparative mythology, and as he started to read the New Testament as an atheist, he was at once startled at how different and yet how similar the Gospels were to ancient myths. At first he was struck by how unlike they were to the metaphysical and fantastic shapes of myths: they smelled like real events, taking place in a specific place and a specific time, not like the pre-time, allegorical epochs of myths. “I have been reading poems, romances, vision literature, legends, myths all my life. I know what they are like. I know that none of them is like this [the New Testament record].”[3]

Yet even as Lewis noted that the Gospels smelled like real history, he could not miss the common themes it shared with the great myths. Especially, he could not miss the central plot of “the Dying and Reviving God” common to so many folk traditions. Lewis’ initial reaction was dismiss the story of Jesus as another myth, but as the historicity of the Gospels bogged him, he was further disturbed by a comment he once heard. “The real clue had been put in my hand by that hard-boiled Atheist when he said, ‘Rum thing, all that about the Dying God. Seems to have really happened once’.”[4]

I agree. That hard-boiled atheist is just right. How else would you explain variations of same stories cropping up again and again everywhere? They must be reflections, fragments of the Great Story the human psyche captures and different peoples emphasize differently. They are echoes, daydreams that emerge in fantastic forms from the unconscious, but which articulate the central themes of the human drama – our ideals, perils and longings for our Savior –, packaged with the infinite creativity of the human genius and its multiform cultural riches.

For an expert in mythology like Lewis, the multitude of human myths were not contradictions, but preparations for the true story. They were early echoes of God’s thunderous arrival on the planet in the person of Jesus Christ. “In my mind,” wrote Lewis, “the perplexing multiplicity of ‘religions’ began to sort itself out… The question was no longer to find the one simply true religion among a thousand religions simply false. It was rather, ‘Where has religion reached its true maturity? Where, if anywhere, have the hints of all Paganism been fulfilled?’” And as Lewis surveyed the ages, and found a historical event that culminated all the best of human aspirations and longings, his conclusion could not have been different. “If ever a myth had become fact, had been incarnated, it would be just like this… Here and here only in all time the myth must have become fact; the Word, flesh; God, Man.” [5]

So why are myths so similar? Because they resemble the history of the universe, the drama of our creation, fall, and God coming to rescue us. They sprout little curious buds, small insinuations in delicate poetry, that came to full bloom when eternity entered time, when God became man, and the grandiosity of the myths met the ordinariness of history, and the Dying and Reviving God really did die on a cross in a Friday afternoon in Jerusalem in the first century, and revived on the early hours of the following Sunday. The grand plot of myth took place in history, and our stories cannot help but echo the universe’s defining moment.

René Breuel

[1] Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces (Novato, Calif.: New World Library, 2008), 1-2.

[2] Ibid., 330, 2.

[3]  C. S. Lewis, “Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism”, in Christian Reflections (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1967), 155.

[4]  C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of my Early Life (New York: Hancourt, 1955), 235.

[5]  Ibid.


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Categories : The Heart of Faith, Tough Questions

Social Justice

27 01 2012

I was taking a walk at a park when I saw Claudio from the distance. I walked toward him to begin a conversation. He was clearly a ragamuffin and seemed to have some level of mental disorder. I greeted him and asked his name. I remember asking: “Do you have any food to eat?” “I knock at people’s door and eat what they give me” Claudio calmly replied. His eyes seemed distant and his answers were concise. We spoke briefly and I offered help.  He refused any assistance and soon decided to walk away.

A few days later my heart sank once again. My brother told me he had given a pair of shoes he no longer wore to the man who watches over the cars parked on the streets near a university campus. The man’s reaction was one of overwhelmed joy and gratitude (perhaps the same as the one most of us would have if somebody gave us us  us a Ferrari).

You and I live in a world marked by profound social injustice.

According to a study commissioned by the United Nations food agency, about one third of all food produced for human consumption in the world today is wasted or lost. At the same time, according to the World Health Organization, hunger is the single most serious threat to the world’s public health. Around 25000 people die of hunger or hunger-related causes every day, including 6 million children every year.

How does this make you feel? I guess one of the most common reactions in people who genuinely consider or face social injustice is a sense of revolt and revulsion. We want to rightly shout: “This is not fair!” Don’t you agree?

But why is it not fair? Who are we to say this condition is unjust? Though it may seem cruel to even ask these questions, I do it for the sole purpose of reminding us that an absolute outside pattern is necessary for any situation to be considered just or unjust.

As C. S. Lewis expressed: “My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?”[1]

The reality of God, therefore, is what offers humanity a criterion to live by and enables us to determine what is and what is not just. This includes social issues. If the global social injustice breaks our heart, it is because first and foremost it breaks God’s heart. When we cry: “it’s not right!” We are but echoing the cry of God.

There are literally hundreds of references in the bible to God’s concern for social justice. Among them are: “Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.”[2] “For I, the LORD, love justice”[3]. “This is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another.”[4]

God not only speaks against social injustice, he also chose to immerse himself in this reality through the incarnation of Jesus, the God-Son. And moreover, through the death and resurrection of Jesus he inaugurated an injustice-free kingdom which will be fully established after Christ’s second coming. When this happens, the bible affirms, there “…will be no more death, or mourning or crying or pain.”[5]

Undoubtedly we must do whatever we can, wherever we can and whenever we can do to eliminate any form of social injustice in the world. But we are not alone on this mission. There’s a God through whom we know what social justice should look like, who has spoken so clearly regarding it and who is establishing a fully just kingdom for those who belong to him.

Hélder Favarin

[1] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.

[2] Isaiah 1:17

[3] Isaiah 61:8

[4] Zechariah 7:9

[5] Rev. 21:4


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Categories : Making a Difference

An Young Father

2 01 2012

Oscar Wilde’s first and only novel narrates the chilling story of a man called Dorian Gray. [1]  Dorian was handsome, splendidly handsome (not quite like Jeremy Kidwell or Dave Benson but getting close), to such an extent that a painter depicts a portrait of Dorian. When Dorian sees his own beauty on display, he expresses the wish to remain young, and to woo the world with his handsomeness forever.

Sometime later Dorian gets to know a girl, a Shakespearean actress, and proposes to her. She is ecstatic – what a gorgeous groom! – but when Dorian finds out that she lost her acting skills because of her consuming passion for Dorian, he rejects her, and she commits suicide. When Dorian arrives home, there is a change in his portrait – his face now displays a cynical smile – and Dorian realizes that his wish came true: from now on his portrait will wrinkle and age, and he will maintain the eternal freshness of youth.

Free from the visual consequences of time, Dorian succumbs to a life of pleasure and vices, and at one point kills the man who painted his portrait. His portrait grows ever uglier, grimmer, more disgusting, like an unsettling mirror of his soul. At one point Dorian is so scared of his disfigured face hovering over the living room, and of the hopeless odor of his life, that he decides to kill his portrait, in a last attempt to find some form of redemption. But when he stabs the portrait with a knife, Wilde narrates that the servants of the house hear a cry, and when they arrive, they see the portrait back in its original form, and the body of an old man on the floor with a knife stuck in his chest, wrinkled, dreadful, deformed.

It is a chilling story, yet Wilde makes us see graphically a curious observation: sin ages us. At every vice Dorian experimented, his portrait grew older and uglier. He saw his acts result in a sunken face, withered hair, eyes screaming with dread. His sin aged him, like it ages every one of us, weakening our minds, darkening our spirits, turning us in on ourselves. Sin makes us bitter and cynical, and I think that’s why we feel so old, even those of us who are quite young.

Yet, if that is the case, well, it may be that our Father is younger than we. G. K. Chesterton observed once how children like to play the same games over and other: you throw a girl into the air, and she asks, “Do it again!” You throw her another time, and she begs, “Do it again!” You throw her again still and she shouts, “Do it again!. So what about God, who created galaxy after galaxy, who did not tire of creating cell after cell or leaf after leaf? “It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun;” inferred Chesterton, “and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon… It may be that he has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.” [2]

I’ve always imagined God as an elderly man, weakened by the endless seasons of eternity. Yet he may be younger than we think; vigorous, fresh, spirited. We may worry to approach a cranky senior yet find a presence of joy instead, we may we muster a serious prayer yet be interrupted by jokes – “finally, my dear Lord…”- “Hold on, what did the duck say to Vladimir Putin?”. The hours are longer on his clock, and his memories may stretch way back, yet his heart is younger than ours. We mature and wise up as we approach him, but we are refreshed and enlivened too, hearing not the sigh of a face tired of seeing us come in repentance one more time, but the vigor of a young father who shouts, “Yes, do it again!”

René Breuel

[1] Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray and Three Stories, (New York: Tribeca Books, 2010).

[2] G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 2007), 54.


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Categories : Spirituality for the Rest of Us

New Year Resolutions?

28 12 2011

New Year’s resolutions: to make them or not to make them? The dilemma of this annual ritual, at least for me, remembers the glories and follies of hope. New Year is a moment of looking forward, of imagining things anew, of committing ourselves to a grander vision of life. It is also a time of weariness and cynicism, at least for those of us who made resolutions in the past and forgot or failed them. “A New Year’s resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other,” quips Oscar Wilde. Mark Twain adds, “New Year’s is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, friendly calls and humbug resolutions.”

If statistics tell us that 97 percent of New Year’s resolutions are never fulfilled, my cynical side tells me not to bother with them.[1] I’ve made resolutions in years past already, earnestly and thoughtfully, but by mid-January I had forgotten them already. The grander plans and hoped-for breakthroughs felt distant in the trenches of routine life. Pressing urges got my attention, even if I now don’t remember those either, and I lost sight of my year-long vision.

There is just one single element that prompts me to return to the notepad with something for 2011. I know there is someone who will keep his resolutions this year. Remarkably, and without fail. Right on target. Right on time. All of it. He has not failed for a long time. He was there when I needed to open my heart and receive hope. He was there to hear my confession of sin. He was there also with the party cake ready when a good friend embraced grace for the first time. He kept his resolutions, down from last January and indeed from the beginning of time, and I have all certainty that in 2012 he will do the same.

So, even though I may forget any good intention or plan, and may be tempted not to bother, God’s resolutions give me hope. I will forget and mess up and get lost and despair this year, and surely January expectations will not carry me through. But if God will be faithful by April 4th and will remain so on August 29th, and also on the late hours of December 2nd,  and if I will be a recipient of this steady faithfulness, maybe this year can be better than the last, and my resolutions may amount to something. Maybe I can grow a bit kinder, a bit holier, a bit steadier. Maybe I can be lifted up when at the point of despair, when I see God marching forward with the vigour of January optimism. Maybe when I remember God I can be refreshed like by a New Year party, full of fireworks and friends and countdowns, for God will be ever fresh, ever youthful and hopeful, and I get a chance to start anew, even late on in the year.

René Breuel


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Categories : Bar Conversations and Cheap Advice

How Much Redemption?

7 12 2011

Let me start with a confession: I’m an unapologetic cat-lover. For several years two Norwegian forest cats (Sam and Luna) were part of our family. We deeply enjoyed their company, but this enjoyment always existed under something of a shadow: both had genetic heart conditions that led eventually to their premature death.

In the time since then, living without feline companionship, I’ve found myself reflecting on their “personhood,” if I may use this term. There are plenty of (in)famous accounts of animals that are reductive; among these Descartes suggested that they couldn’t feel pain. In contrast, I found that Sam and Luna each had unique personalities:  one cat was a morning “person,” the other wasn’t. They could be cheerful or cranky. They enjoyed play and humor and when we lost Luna, Sam visibly grieved her absence for his remaining months. Far from the machines that Descartes imagined animals to be, these two displayed an astonishing range of uniqueness.

I was recently reminded of a sermon by John Wesley when he reflects on the place of animals in the kingdom to come:

The whole brute creation will then, undoubtedly, be restored, not only to the vigour, strength, and swiftness which they had at their creation, but to a far higher degree of each than they ever enjoyed. They will be restored, not only to that measure of understanding which they had in paradise, but to a degree of it as much higher than that, as the understanding of an elephant is beyond that of a worm. And whatever affections they had in the garden of God, will be restored with vast increase; being exalted and refined in a manner which we ourselves are not now able to comprehend.[1]

Wesley isn’t alone in his conviction that God’s redemptive activity includes not only humans, but also a broad range of what he first created – George MacDonald and C.S. Lewis suggest similar things – and his sermon doesn’t arise out of mere sentimentality. John Wesley was, as Thomas Jay Oord puts it, “a theologian deeply interested in science,” who “kept abreast of the scientific developments of his day by reading the works of leading scientists and philosophers.” [2] Having beheld the intricate interrelation of all the various creatures in God’s creation, a new creation that consisted only of humans seemed unnecessary and nonsensical to Wesley; it would not account both the witness of the created order and that of Christian scripture. As Denis Edwards observes, there are a number of passages in the bible which include non-human creatures in the final state, including Revelation 5:13-14, which contains “a remarkable vision of all the creatures of Earth united in a great song of praise of the lamb, the symbol of the crucified and risen Christ.” [3]

I realise that my suggestion here opens up a huge variety of challenging questions. What about people who are allergic to cats, and who imagine heaven without them? Where would God possibly fit all the insects that have come and gone since the creation of the earth? Yet I think that the kingdom to come is better regarded as an object of hope and wonder than one which we can anticipate in too-concrete ways. I for one, look with hope not only to meet my grandpa again, but also to an expansive vision of the new creation, filled with lions, lambs and bugs alike.

Jeremy Kidwell

[1]  John Wesley, reflecting on Romans 8:19-22 and Isaiah 11:6 in his sermon, “The General Deliverence” – read the rest here: http://new.gbgm-umc.org/umhistory/wesley/sermons/60/)

[2] Thomas Jay Oord, Divine Grace and Emerging Creation, p. ix.

[3] Denis Edwards, Creaturely Theology, 81. Other instances include 1 Cor. 8:6, Rom 8:18-25, Col 1:15-20, Eph 1:9-23, Heb 1:2-3, 2 Peter 3:13, John 1:1-4, and Rev 21:1-22:13.


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Categories : Tough Questions

Why Jesus Won’t Heal ‘Disabilities’

19 10 2011

“Dude, you severed my finger.” Sadly it was true. Anthony and I were moving heavy logs, in preparation for a youth camp—kumbuyah round the camp-fire. “1-2-and … STOP!”—and like that his arm locked, I dropped, and the finger lopped. Doh. First came the shock. Then came the accusations: “What about my music career?” Anthony was a talented saxophonist, headed for the music conservatorium. I’m not into brass, but I gather missing a digit makes it difficult to dance over the spatula keys reciting John Coltrane’s ‘Round Midnight’. Anthony was now ‘disabled’.

Jesus’ promises came to mind: “Believe and you’ll receive; ask and it will be given; nothing is impossible.”[1] So like faithful disciples, we drew close, joined hands, and squeezed our eyes shut like Dorothy hoping for Kansas. We prayed, and … well, suffice to say, minutes later we were groping around the dirt for the missing member, carting Anthony and his detached bit off to hospital.

Marshall Brain, the author of whywontgodhealamputees.com, wouldn’t be surprised. His argument is simple. God’s powerful, right? And we know God through Jesus, the guy who supposedly cared for the hurting and went around healing the sick. Jesus then promises us these same powers, in response to prayer. And yet … form a prayer chain of millions and the disability remains. This loving God never regenerates lost limbs—the one non-ambiguous, empirical case of healing which couldn’t be psycho-somatic or coincidental. Two binary conclusions are offered: 1) God has a grudge against amputees; or 2) God is imaginary and therefore doesn’t heal anyone: amputees are no different.

For all his brains, I’m confused how Michael moved from “Jesus healed everyone except amputees” to “Jesus never healed anyone—past or present—as God doesn’t exist.” And a skim of the Scriptures highlights that Jesus did heal amputees, i.e., lepers and the ‘maimed’. Scour the web and you’ll find countless responses to his second contention.[2] But what of the first contention? What of Anthony?

Healing amputees is a subset of any regeneration, so let’s broaden the accusation to God’s grudge against anyone with a physical disability. As Brain notes, “if someone is born with a congenital defect … no amount of prayer is going to fix the problem.” Yet ‘disability’ is a knotty and complex issue. Do all ‘disabilities’ need to be healed? Perhaps Jesus had good reasons for not healing Anthony?

Humour me. Take a few minutes and read John 9. Granted, Jesus heals this guy. But perhaps you’ll see here a subtext for why Jesus won’t heal disabilities.

You may know this story well. It’s the one about the man blind from birth—let’s call him Ben—who Jesus unconventionally heals by rubbing spit and clay into his eyes! And then there’s a saga before the empirical doubters—in this case religious rulers—who refuse to believe Ben was really healed. They interrogate this man, his parents, and then the man again before excommunicating him from their club. It’s worth a fresh look if our spiritual eyes are to regenerate and see the deepest disability of all.

A few quick observations: First, Jesus ‘saw’ the man who was blind, not for his disability, but for his personhood (v1). Ben wasn’t a data point in a sceptic’s set, nor was he a theological conundrum for religious apologists. Jesus truly saw Ben, and loved Him. The imago Dei isn’t an ability or function, but an identity as a child of God, created and loved by the Father, thus worthy of respect. Contra-Descartes, “I love (and am loved) therefore I am.”

Second, Ben’s blindness definitely was a disability, as he lacked the love of community to offer friendship and meaningful activity that might otherwise make his life ‘normal’. As theologian Amos Yong points out, “disability is … the experience of discrimination, marginalization, and exclusion from the social, cultural, political, and economic domains of human life.”[3] Not surprisingly, then, Jesus embraces Ben after he is excluded from the Temple, and draws him into community (vv34-38).

Third, Jesus redefines ‘disability’ at a deeper level. In verses 39-41, he exposes the pride of the empiricists: “I came to give sight to the blind and to show those who think they see that they are blind.” What is ‘blindness’ or ‘disability’? Perhaps what we call ‘ability’ is actually our pride magnifying “some able-bodied ideal of perfection”?[4] Perhaps what we call ‘disability’ is actually the glory of God in veiled form.[5] Do we have eyes to see that every ‘disability’—whether congenital blindness or an amputated limb—is less a challenge to our faith and God’s existence, and more an opportunity allowed by God in this fallen world for us to become family, where each member loves and is loved?

Isn’t this God’s way? Jesus Christ is the ‘disabled God’. It was through the deformities of his body, paralysed on the cross, that he brought peace and salvation for the whole world. And even in his ‘resurrection body’, sceptical Thomas can still probe Jesus’ scars. In the mystery of God, the non-disabled are dependent on the disabled, whom God has chosen to be a means of saving grace. In this light I see why, many times, Jesus won’t heal disabilities. God made us to be one. And many times ‘disability’ dissolves when we recognise “their central roles both in the communion of saints and in the divine scheme of things.”[6]

So, while Jesus regenerated Ben’s eyes, my mate’s finger went begging. Granted, I wanted him to recreate Anthony’s pointer like Malchus’s severed ear.[7] But Jesus has good reasons why he won’t heal disability, and it’s not because God doesn’t exist. Ultimately, God will set everything right, and this new creation rushes forward to greet us when least expected. But right now, in the miracle of loving community, together we’ve discovered that “God’s grace is all we need; His power works best in weakness.”[8] And for all of us, including Anthony, that is the most soul-full song there is.

Dave Benson

[1] Matthew 7:7; 17:20; 18:19; 21:21; Mark 11:24; John 14:14.

[2] See here for further responses. Concerning ‘miracles’ see here.

[3] Theology and Down Syndrome (Baylor, 2007), 162.

[4] Ibid., 282.

[5] 2 Corinthians 4:3-12.

[6] Yong, 188, 282.

[7] Luke 22:50-51.

[8] 2 Corinthians 12:5-10.


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Categories : Making a Difference, On Anything and Everything, Spirituality for the Rest of Us, The Heart of Faith, Tough Questions

Rules of Life

23 09 2011

Usain Bolt was recently disqualified from the Men’s 100m final at the World Athletics Championships in South Korea. His crime? One false start. Previously, athletes had been allowed a single false start, with disqualification following a second, but a recent change in the rules denied the world’s fastest man a second attempt.

Was that right? Was it fair? I’m sure athletics committees round the world are puzzling over these questions. But it’s useful for us to puzzle this over too: what is the point of having rules and what is the point of playing by them?

I’ve often heard it said of the Bible, “It’s just a book of rules,” and indeed the Bible does contain rules. A cursory glance at the Pentateuch—the first five books in the Bible—reveals all kinds of rules and regulations ranging from the obvious (e.g. “You shall not murder,” Deut. 5:17) to the obscure (e.g. “Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk,” Deut. 14:21b). What are they there for?

Many of these rules are spiritual disciplines and ethical instructions which, if observed, would mark Israel out as God’s people among neighbouring nations, some of whom engaged in profoundly malevolent religious practices. But there’s another purpose to biblical rules and regulations, expounded more fully in the New Testament: the rules promote life.

Even athletics rules exist not to constrain the athletes or make life tough for them, but to help them race well and to the best of their ability.

That said, rules can be used and abused in a different way. At secondary school I learned to play the clarinet and classical guitar. Year in, year out, I practised scales, arpeggios, learned pieces for music exams, and performed in school concerts. Yet in fourteen years (gulp) since leaving high school, I’ve barely touched either instrument. The reason? Simple: year in, year out, I practised scales, arpeggios, and learned music for exams but never learned to love the music for the music itself. It was all about ‘getting it right,’ playing by the rules and playing perfectly. Surely music is about more than that?

Lots of people in Jesus’ day got into confusion about rules. They either broke them in rebellion against a God they perceived to be a harsh taskmaster, or gave up trying to keep them, perceiving that they were too far gone for God to care, or they lived by the rules to the letter but without love in their hearts. Jesus encounters people from each of these camps, breaks a number of ‘rules,’ and teaches us all a valuable lesson: that God’s rules are made for the flourishing of people, not people for the upkeep of God’s rules (cf. Mark 2:27).

Some years after I left secondary school, I picked up my guitar and started to play a piece that I’d struggled to play at school. I had found it technically difficult and my palms used to sweat when playing under pressure (which felt like most of the time), making it all but impossible. Yet with no ‘taskmaster’ present to rebuke me, no examiner to tell me my playing was substandard, and with no other motive to play than to enjoy the music, my fingers got round the notes with ease. I found I could play by the rules but not for the rules and it felt marvellous.

Madi Simpson


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