GBShaw Blog

1. READ THE BIBLE. LISTEN (ATTEND) TO IT. Think about what it says, how it says it, and what it means. Keep on getting to know it better. Read parts you might not automatically turn to.
2. BE OPEN TO THE HOLY SPIRIT. Prayerfully listen to the one who brings the scriptures to life.
3. READ IT WITH OTHER PEOPLE TOO. Discuss what you read. Other people see things we don’t.
4. NOTE THE TYPE OF WRITING. The style of writing needs to be considered when interpreting any scripture. Parables, poetry, proverbs, prophecy, letters, laws, apocalyptic literature etc are all written with different assumptions in mind.
5. RESPECT IT. Even when the words are tedious, challenging, confusing or reveal ancient prejudice. Maybe reflect on why the passage or sentiment is in the Bible at all.  Ask what prejudice you (and we in our culture) bring to the topic. And accept that often we don’t understand. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways …” says the Lord (from a great chapter about God’s word: Isaiah 55).
6. READ LARGER CHUNKS WHEN POSSIBLE. Chapters and verses are not ‘original’. Reading a whole letter or story, as originally written, may communicate much more to us than a few verses at a time.
7. DON’T ASSUME! Don’t assume that the passage you are reading is the only thing the Bible says on the subject. It might be strongly stated. Feel the force of what you read but do look wider before you make hasty conclusions.
8. GET SOME STUDY HELPS – e.g. Bible notes, a study bible, commentaries, a concordance, a Bible dictionary etc. Remember you’re reading one translation from Hebrew or Greek, not the original text – so it’s always good to look at other translations if possible! And the historical and cultural setting is always important. Don’t assume that a prophetic word to 8^th century Israel, or an instruction about farming or how to build a house, can be lifted out and applied in another time and culture. It might be applicable, or it might not. But there is probably something to be learned from it.

I have to say also: don’t trust the commentary, or even the church leader!! It is rare for scholars to come without an agenda (me included!) but keep your own brain in gear and ask what they are not saying and stick with your questions if they are not satisfactorily answered.

9. BEWARE THE SCISSORS JOB. Be careful when you or others snip a verse or two out of Scripture to make your point. a) Is it true to the writer’s intention? b) Is it fair to what else the Bible says on this subject?

10. HONOUR THE BIG THEMES OF THE BIBLE. After reading the scripture in its original context, and seeing what else the Bible has to say on the subject, are there any broader biblical teachings which may apply? For Old Testament passages, the life and teaching of Jesus, and the New Testament will normally give new perspective. If you do this, you’re doing Biblical Theology!

11. MAINTAIN YOUR INTEGRITY. Be honest about what you don’t understand. Use your common sense. Engage your brain. Be open to new ideas and challenging teaching, but don’t accept these, even from respected leaders, without question. Questions and doubts help us grow. It’s surprisingly easy to create an unreal world, an alternative culture, where answers to complex questions are simplistic, inadequate or plain wrong. Doubt is part of faith. God can meet us anywhere but much more so in the real world, amidst our struggles and doubts.

AND FINALLY: LOOK BEYOND THE BIBLE

A) There are key Christian beliefs that come from the Bible but are not explicitly taught therein. Most notably two:

i) THE TRINITY: the Christian belief that God has made himself known as Father, Son and Holy Spirit: one God in three persons.

ii) THE TWO NATURES OF JESUS CHRIST: the CHURCH holds to the belief that Jesus is BOTH fully human and fully divine.  How this is possible is beyond our limited understanding – but that shouldn’t take us by surprise! We are dealing with God, and with questions we cannot expect to understand. So, in both instances Christians make the best sense we can of them.

B) There are practices which are acceptable, and even promoted, in the Bible which the CHURCH has reflected on and cannot accept as truly Christian. Slavery is a good example. Slavery was a fact of life and accepted in both OT and NT writings. Yet over time (far too long!) the Church came to believe that all slavery is abhorrent and against the major themes of biblical teaching although it is not specifically condemned in the Bible.

C) The Bible is not an expert in every subject. Its aims are promoting faith. It does not have a Science degree, nor one in Astronomy, not even a 2,500 year old one! It gets its Cosmology ‘wrong’. Hardly a surprise for something written in, say, 500 BC! Most obviously, the messages of Genesis chapter 1 are about God, human beings and the world around us, and not a scientific account of how God created the universe in 6 days out of nothing.

D) Use your common sense. Apply the wisdom you already have. The Bible is ‘holy’, different and precious, and yet it invites us to bring our experience, wisdom and skills to understanding its meaning.

E) There is, of course, a danger in looking beyond the Bible. There are numerous practices which have grown up in the early Church and later with at most a questionable basis in the Bible. To some extent this is natural. The Church must ‘fill in the blanks’ because there is no blueprint for worship or other necessary activities.

The New Testament, for example, knows nothing of Christian priests except the priesthood of all believers – Christians together are a holy priesthood The only ‘individual’ priest is Christ, the high priest (according to the Book of Hebrews). There are simply church leaders (in Greek ‘episkopoi’ or ‘presbuteroi’) who are overseers assisted by deacons (‘diakonoi’). But the Church from early days developed bishops and then began to speak of priests and priesthood. Quite informal gatherings where Christians broke bread and recalled the Last Supper, became formal services of Holy Communion. An increasingly detailed ritual presided over by a bishop or a priest. Whether these and other doctrines and practices are good is still the cause of debate and division, but we need to recognise that different Christian groupings can legitimately have different practices.

For me, the reality has too often been the Church retreating into a self-propagating and self-serving institution which fails to develop the God-given talents of its members and loses sight of its mission to make Christ known. 

Much more could be said but this is probably not the place!

1. INTRODUCTION AND PLAN

Like many Christians, I have read and pondered and studied the Bible almost daily for more than 40 years. But no matter how much study any of us do, Christians come to different conclusions about how to interpret these scriptures. How to interpret the Bible is a major issue, probably THE major issue, for Christians across the world today. So we must keep the conversations going…

THE BIBLE is the main authority we turn to when we ask questions about how we should live. Many Christians think of the Bible as the ONLY authority. Certainly, without it we would be lost, not least because we’d know very little about Jesus’ life and teaching.

The Bible doesn’t exist in isolation, though. There is already a long history of interpretation which can help (and which may also need challenging). This is sometimes called TRADITION.

And we do this work of interpretation together, not as individuals (though of course individuals contribute), but as THE CHURCH, challenging and encouraging one another and trying to come to a common mind. THE CHURCH is ultimately Christ’s Church, all believers. So, while CHURCH will start with our local fellowship, it includes the Church everywhere: those nearby from different denominations, and Christians across the world. The potential for challenging one another and enriching one another is brilliant. But so is the potential for misunderstanding, disagreement and division.

Crucially, we do our exploration of every issue prayerfully listening, trusting God to guide us by his Spirit, THE HOLY SPIRIT, the source of all inspiration for Scripture and the unseen one who is alongside us always. Jesus is recorded as saying that the Holy Spirit would lead his followers into all truth.

These four sources of authority (THE HOLY SPIRIT, THE BIBLE, THE CHURCH and TRADITION) are all intertwined and inseparable.

The Bible as we know it didn’t drop from heaven. The contents of both Old and New Testaments were eventually agreed at Church councils in the 4^th Century, although disagreement between Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Churches continues to this day about which books to include in the Old Testament (OT). And a few passages in the New Testament (NT) are thought to be later additions and are usually included in our Bibles with a note to say this.

The 27 documents which comprise the New Testament were chosen because they were regularly used and trusted for teaching the faith. Thus, they were the product of TRADITION, and then agreed on by THE CHURCH, in the belief that they were acting under the guidance of THE HOLY SPIRIT.  Most of the writings included in the Bible were well accepted and non-controversial but several were strongly contested, and some still are.

In the next few posts, I’ll try to record some of the key issues which help me interpret the Bible today. They are waymarks on my journey of ‘faith seeking understanding’ (to use the simple and wonderfully helpful words of St Anselm who was a theologian and Archbishop of Canterbury in the 12^th century).

The posts will (hopefully) run as below. There is some logic to the order, but feel free to pick and choose!

1. Introduction to Understanding and Interpreting the Bible (this one!)
2. Some Pointers which help us handle Scripture wisely.
3. Our Relationship with God has Priority over Obedience to the Law
4. Using the phrase ‘God’s Word’
5. A selective Introduction to the Old Testament
6. A selective Introduction to the New Testament
7. A Spectrum of Truth (1)
8. A Spectrum of Truth (2)
9. The Bible is an Inclusive Book
10. The Bible is a very Human Book (1)
11. The Bible is a very Human Book (2)
12. The Bible as a Window on God
13. Our Insecurity can Blind us
14. A Canon within the Canon
15. The ‘Ten Words’ or Ten Commandments
16. Some Concluding Thoughts about Interpreting the Bible Today

I’ve just been listening to a selection of songs on Youtube which included John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’. The words of the song make inspiring and uncomfortable listening.

Imagination is a vital human resource. It is creative activity, drawing pictures, playing out scenes in your mind, a drama of the possible. Imagination has more ‘flesh’, more grounding, than mere thoughts. We enter into the situation imagined. It’s like dreaming, but we can shape the dream.

IMAGINATION OFFERS A BETTER PRESENT

Imagination can be ‘workaday’, useful in the present, in our everyday life. It can be a tool to understand why someone has reacted in a way we find inexplicable or difficult. We try to put ourselves in their situation, stand in their shoes, and imagine what could have caused the response we find difficult. Then understanding, empathy even, becomes possible.

We can find ourselves overstretched and struggling with the pressures of life, longing for a bit more space in our week. It’s often helpful to be asked “What would that better week look like?” And then our imagination can get to work. It’s not necessarily an easy question to answer, (and some things we won’t be able to change) but it may be what’s needed to create a better way of living.

Imagination can help us relate to all sorts of situations that are beyond our experience. We might pause and imagine what it is like to be in prison or to be a prison officer when we next read or hear about prisons on the news. Or what it’s like to be a young person struggling with their anger, or powerlessness. Imagination rescues us from rushing to judgement. Judging before we understand is pre-judging – in other words: prejudice. Overcoming our prejudice requires humility, because we have to acknowledge that we don’t yet understand and therefore have no right to judge. Imagination may not be enough on its own, but it’s the place to start. More listening and research will probably be needed.

IMAGINATION OFFERS A BETTER FUTURE

Perhaps a more usual way of thinking about imagination is opening up future possibilities – developing an idea, often about how to do things differently or better in our home or workplace or community.

On a wider front, our national politics for example, maybe our first thought should not be to criticize (a big ask for me!) but to take time (with others) to imagine what could make it better. Imagination allows us to create different scenarios, in our heads and hearts, of what might be possible. Imagination is not limited by reality, and can certainly be unrealistic (“you may say I’m a dreamer”), but dreaming dreams can end up reshaping reality. Keeping our feet on the ground, we ask: how can we begin to get to the place we imagine, the place we want to be? I think that’s the practical implication of Lennon’s “Join us”. He’s not saying ‘join us’ in our utopia but share the dream, let it begin to work its magic and do what we can to journey there together.

Of course, Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ takes us beyond any one nation to the dream: the world will live as one. This outcome seems as far removed as ever in our day, despite the world being so much ‘smaller’ and with such great resources to do good together.

AND NO RELIGION TOO?

To Lennon, as to many, religion is part of the problem, spreading division and hatred. And in his book believing in heaven and hell needs to be rejected.

But there’s another book, at the heart of which is pretty much the same vision as Lennon’s. We know this book as the Bible and the vision contained therein is ‘the kingdom of God’ – what life looks like when God is in control. Such as the prophecy we read at Christmas, with images of the lion lying down with the lamb, and instruments of war (swords) being beaten into farming tools (ploughshares).

For many, this is old news. The Church, which drew together the biblical writings in the 3^rd and 4^th centuries, has had a very chequered history, not least in recent times. In one form or another, it’s regularly been guilty of abuse, professionalising its power-hungry, arrogant sense of entitlement. An all-too-human institution, too often losing connection with its founder, its head and its example – Jesus. There is another side, of course, of countless individuals and communities of faith who have followed in the footsteps of Jesus, radiating the love of God, and giving up their lives to serve and reshape the world around for good.

The Bible is affirming of this world, celebrating the wonder, the beauty and order of the world God has created (and is creating). But from the beginning it is not only very good (all beauty and order), but also bedevilled by chaos and darkness. The basic premise of the Bible is that human beings, left to themselves, cannot bring about a united world and live peaceably together, sharing the good things provided. And herein lies the basic conflict with Lennon’s form of humanism.

John Lennon would have us take God out of the equation. The Judeo-Christian story, Old Testament and New Testament, says that has always been the problem. Far from getting rid of God and faith, as Lennon would have us do, it is only God’s intervention and shaping of history that makes a kingdom of love and justice possible. And every human heart, as well the whole of creation, is the battlefield of good and evil. Humanism says we have the resources to make a better world by ourselves. Faith says God made the world, and us, and we can only hope to do this with God.

For me, the genius of the Bible is that it keeps looking ahead with hope. When everything goes wrong, when what you have trusted fails, a new vision emerges. The message is that often we’re left ‘hanging on by a thread’, but God never lets us go.

PRAYER AND THE HOLY SPIRIT

Imagination is a key part of prayer. Imagining ourselves into the lives of people we pray for. Growing compassion and empathy. Fuelling our contemplation. We open our hearts and minds to allow God to lead our imagination, giving us ideas, visions and prompting us into action.

According to the book of Acts, on the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit came in power on Jesus’ disciples in Jerusalem. Fulfilling an Old Testament promise that the days will come when men and women will prophesy and see visions and dream dreams. An openness to the Spirit is at the heart of the Christian community, and in my experience imagination is at the heart of how God’s Spirit continues to speak and give visions dreams to his people.

A BAPTISM PRAYER

As a vicar, I loved holding a child I’d just baptised, and praying an awesome prayer for him or her:

May God, who has received you by baptism into his Church,

pour upon you the riches of his grace,

that within the company of Christ’s pilgrim people

you may be daily anointed by his anointing Spirit

and come at last to the inheritance of the saints in glory.

Amen.

I especially love the “..and come at last to the inheritance of the saints in glory (heaven).” Lennon would get rid of heaven. And maybe he has cause to do so. Heaven can be an excuse to avoid challenging injustice here and now. Or an excuse for not looking after creation: “It’ll be alright in the end”. But heaven, like love, is all around. Here and now.  And heaven is also future – we know that only with God’s ‘final’ intervention will the kingdom of the world become the kingdom of God, with no more darkness or chaos.

The prayer for the child, like the baptism, has a whole life context. The vision in my heart as I pray is of the child starting and continuing their life in confident security of human and divine love along the way. And knowing that life is not primarily about what they can fit into it or achieve in it. Not about income or social prestige or a bucket list of must-do things. It is ultimately a journey into divine love, into the kingdom of heaven for all eternity where the things of this age will pale in comparison with what lies ahead.

Living in the security of divine and human love, with forgiveness at the heart of it (because we’re forever getting it wrong!), we know we are valued and ‘worth it’ without the need to prove it by worldly success, status or retail therapy. The way of love is the way of loving service of God, other people and ourselves. Imagine what that looks like.

IMAGINE

Imagine there’s no heaven, it’s easy if you try:
no hell below us above us, only sky.

Imagine all the people living for today (ah – ah)

Imagine there’s no countries, it isn’t hard to do:
nothing to kill or die for- and no religion, too.

Imagine all the people living life in peace (you – ou)

You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one:
I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will be as one.

Imagine no possessions – I wonder if you can:
No need for greed or hunger – a brotherhood of man.

Imagine all the people sharing all the world (you – ou)

You may say I’m a dreamer but I’m not the only one:
I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will live as one.

Lyrics by John Lennon

© BMG Rights Management, Capitol CMG Publishing, Royalty Network, Songtrust Ave, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

Victor Frankl (d.1997) was a professor of Neurology and Psychiatry, survivor of three years in concentration camps and author of many books. In 1946, he wrote, in his awesome, challenging short book Man’s Search for Meaning:

“No-one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him.”

As I read in today’s papers of yet another person whose crimes earn them the title “Monster”, I feel deeply uncomfortable with this labelling. The crimes committed in this and many cases are indeed monstrous and I would have no argument with a headline identifying the perpetrator as guilty of “monstrous crimes”.

But I hate our tendency to label people, including defining them by their crimes. In our own petty way we all do this. We define people by some action, or lack of, that has hurt us. When we’re asked about someone, we come up with the same story of betrayal or example of their arrogance or something about the way they look.

Of course, it works the other way too – sometimes! We define someone by the way they have blessed us. And we won’t hear a word against them.

While the second instance is less damaging usually, both ways of labelling are superficial and not the way of love. They are both ‘easy’ and allow us to categorise a person without engaging at any depth. The way of love seeks to know. Love listens, remains open, learns. Labelling people makes us blind to the reality of who they are. Enables us to hate because we have refused to see their humanity and all that connects us to them.

Labelling people is also ‘easy’ because it often allows us to avoid the question – why is so-and-so like that? What’s the history that led to such cruelty? Why do some nations/peoples/religions hate us or hate our way of life? What did I do or say to provoke that reaction?

We can learn from how other people see us. In fact, we NEED to learn from how other people see us. They might be prejudiced and mistaken, but we might be just as prejudiced and mistaken. Seeing through their eyes, like walking in their shoes, will give us new perspective.

The Irish comedian Dave Allen once said on TV that people referred to him as the man with half a finger. Then he lifted up his hands to show the audience and said – I am not the man with ½ a finger, I am the man with 9 ½ fingers!

We might think of an iceberg which has only about 10% of it visible above water.

There is so much more to us than any label.

In the Jewish/Christian tradition (and probably in every mainstream faith) we are called to love our neighbours. And Jesus highlighted, in the parable of the Good Samaritan, that we are especially called to love those who are different from us and/or our enemies. It’s a tall order. But it surely begins with a refusal to label and a willingness to get to know, to learn, to understand other people better.

Actually, it probably begins with ourselves. The command, from Jesus, was to love our neighbour as ourselves. An even taller order! But maybe the first labelling we need to avoid is self-labelling. “I’m just ____.” “I’m always _____.” “I could never ____.” “I’m not good enough/clever enough ..” Many of the things we say to ourselves are not true. But even when they are, they do not define us now, or chain us to the present. We can learn, move on, change.

In the Old Testament, and in Jewish understanding, there is so much more to knowing than what is stored in our brains. Knowledge and understanding are virtual synonyms and both need to be, in some sense, experienced to be true. To the Christian, knowing God is eternal life. It is a relationship, a journey of growing to know. And growing to love and discover we are loved.

Loving and knowing are two sides of the same coin. Uncomfortable, costly, essential. A matter of life or death.

One of my favourite songs from the musical Les Miserables is Empty Chairs and Empty Tables. Marius sings it as he remembers his friends and revolutionary colleagues who are dead and gone. It never fails to move me deeply.

Christmas is a time when we’re especially aware of those empty places round the table. I’m thinking especially of loved ones who have died. But the empty places also evoke those alive but no longer with us at home, those in residential care or family members we’ve fallen out with or with whom we have too little contact.

In my job as a vicar, I’ve done many many funerals over the years. Very often people do something very different for the first Christmas after the death of their loved one. Deliberately avoiding the familiar pattern of a family Christmas because of the pain of the one who isn’t there and is so deeply missed. Other anniversaries may be equally difficult. I’ve known some people who used to come regularly to Church at Christmas stop coming because the funeral of the loved one was held there and the memories are too strong.

I try to help grieving folk see that it is Christmas which brings them hope in their mourning. Yes, Christmas will be different, and hard, especially in the first years. But the love we celebrate at Christmas, God’s love revealed in the baby Jesus, is the promise that love is stronger than death. That we’re all part of a bigger story which promises healing and restoration. We will be with our loved one again.

The baby Jesus grew up and the time came when Jesus’ disciples gathered round a feast for their ‘last communion’. When he was arrested and crucified, how empty his place must have seemed to them! Then he was suddenly with them again having risen from the dead. His resurrection is a promise and a call for all of us to trust him in the face of the harsh mystery of death, believing with Mother Julian of Norwich that somehow “All Shall be Well”.

Our Christmas pattern may change but we can face the reality of loss with hope, and raise a glass to our absent loved ones, with whom we are in ‘mystical communion’, and celebrate the feast of Christ more truly and deeply. And sing the carols which capture the true essence of Christmas with hopeful promises including this from Once in Royal David’s City:

For that child so dear and gentle,

is our Lord in heaven above;

and he leads his children on

to the place where he is gone.

How often I’ve heard something like: “If I knew what I was getting myself into, I never would have started / volunteered / signed up… ”

There’s an advert shouting up at me from the back page of the i newspaper – promising a great deal if I get their Broadband and TV. £23.49 per month is the headline price with freebies included. A little smaller is the cost after 6 months – £46.99.

Perhaps it is a good deal. It draws you in with the immediate gratification, but the cost will go up! And the even smaller writing at the bottom of the page tells you that the price will further increase from March every year.

It’s not an unusual marketing ploy. What interests me today is that I think it reflects the way life often works. Perhaps we’re hard-wired to count the benefits not the costs and to be attracted by what we see or get ‘up front’. It’s a form of optimism. So definitely not always a bad thing.

When I prepared people for marriage, one of the things I always did was to ask them to count the cost of the wonderful vows they make to each other: to love each other and to stick together come what may. To imagine good times and bad, wealth and poverty, sickness and health. And to ask how they might get through the hard times: times of poverty when they couldn’t afford the lifestyle they expected or times of debilitating sickness. Strategies to get them through certainly would include perseverance, but mainly focused on nurturing and growing their love and never taking it for granted.

Getting hitched, having a baby or fostering a child are all great acts of faith (‘trust’ is an equally good or better word). So are ‘lesser’ decisions like taking on a new job. Or signing up for anything new at all! Trust, and counting the cost, are both essential.

Jesus tells his listeners (Luke 14) that they should count the cost of following him and not be like a person who starts a building but doesn’t have the resources to complete it and thus makes a fool of themselves. Like all scripture this needs sensitive interpretation and application. Many people, probably most people, come to committed faith in Christ by a series of small steps which may involve ‘belonging’ in a Christian community on the way to ‘believing’. But Jesus’ words remain challenging for folk at every stage of faith.

The Christmas story is attractive and optimistic. It promises great things. Sure, the story is riddled with reminders of poverty, vulnerability and exile but it draws us in. Especially through the eyes of children – not least the child in each of us. It lifts our eyes with the shepherds to witness a vital moment of all human history, and to celebrate the glory of God.

The Church’s Bible readings leading up to Christmas, before and through Advent, paint a big picture of history, full of very messy hope and struggle and the promise of final healing, judgement and vindication. In a sense it is counting the cost. And so maybe it allows us ‘time out’ from the struggle to focus on one small scene at the heart of the great painting, a place of peace and joy as a child is born.

Not for the first time, and not for the last time, our (God’s) world appears in the grip of evil powers and principalities at home and worldwide. Meanwhile the same world is also riddled with light – with beauty and truth and love and hope.

I remember a line from a recent school Nativity play that one young sheep spoke to another sheep: “would you ever stop eating and look up.”

We will all need our strategies for maintaining the joy and peace through the coming year. But for now, sign up for Christmas, and may your looking up bring joy to you and all around you.

This is the text of a letter I sent to the i today. The government’s announcement that it would ease restrictions (de-regulate) the Finance sector makes me so cross. It’s a classic example of this government legislating in the interests of a privileged and ‘entitled’ elite, claiming and half-believing it is serving the great god: THE ECONOMY. And it seems to me that it is flying in the face of public opinion too. Of course, there are many good and thoughtful people working in this sector (and they will be a key way in which God’s Spirit is at work) but the overall culture is shamelessly driven by profit.

I believe that Nicholas Shaxton, in his book The Finance Curse is right when he informs us how the Finance sector, which is necessary to the good functioning of the economy, has become vastly overblown and is milking the economy for the benefit of the powerful and wealthy. It hides the vast damage behind its manipulative and threatening trumpeting of the large amount of tax and employment it creates. But that’s maybe another article!

Here’s the letter:

Dear Sir,

It is not enough to reform the House of Lords (though it does desperately need reform). Our whole system of democracy needs reforming, to end the immense power of the very few who control government policy and decision-making.

Public rating of democratic processes is at an all-time low since universal suffrage, and it’s now commonplace to characterise the system as broken.

From our elected politicians we need mature, informed debate, not populist one-liners and dishonest use of statistics. A commitment to the common good not kow-towing to powerful interest groups. Long-term stability, not see-sawing to radically different agendas from different parties or the perceived moods of public opinion. Respect for, and development of, the expertise of the Civil Service not ill-qualified politicians bullying through their pet policies.

Every form of parliamentary democracy is flawed, but we have a responsibility to find the one which best reflects the broad make-up and views of the people it represents.  Some form of Proportional Representation is urgently required.

Yours sincerely

Graham Buttanshaw

One of the things I find most irritating about myself is that songs get stuck in my head and keep repeating. Something triggers a song, a word or a thought, and round and round it goes! To make it worse, I don’t even have to know more than a few words of the song. It just keeps on going round and round its little circle!

The song going round my head for the last couple of days is ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’. A Rolling Stones classic I remember well, particularly from the dance floor of teenage discos. I don’t think I’ve ever known the lyrics except of the chorus which doesn’t really expand on the title. Looking through the lyrics now, I see they’re not about sexual satisfaction which was what was in my mind when I sang along with everyone else at those dances!

The word satisfaction derives from the Latin satis (enough). So being satisfied is about having enough, about someone doing enough for you. Like St Paul I hope I can be, or learn to be, content in every circumstance whether in need or having plenty – having less than or more than enough (Philippians chapter 4). And mostly I have plenty, so no cause at all to be dissatisfied.

AND YET. The thought that preoccupies me, a bit like the song, is that Advent is a time to be dissatisfied, to acknowledge just how far short of satisfactory the world is. To confess, and to proclaim and to complain, that life is often crap and is unbearable for many here and, even more so, world-wide.

Perhaps that is so obvious it barely needs remarking upon.

Advent is certainly a time to be dissatisfied with myself. Is what I do satisfying others? Satisfying God? A time for repentance. I’m pretty good at acknowledging my failings but not so good at turning from them to better ways! If repentance is a change of attitude and heart, I’ve plenty of work to do.

A time of penance, such as we have in Advent and Lent, is traditionally a time to stop satisfying our own wants/desires and especially the desires of our bodies. The purpose being to learn to be in control of the desires of the flesh, rather than being controlled by them. So, fasting from certain choice foods, or going without for an extended period, is not unusual. Thus our bodies may well cry out ‘I can’t get no satisfaction’ in a way that’s strangely satisfying to us.

But I don’t want to get sucked into an obsession with personal piety (fat chance say you who know me!!). Certainly not one that focuses on this at the expense of the bigger issues of justice and healing in a broken world: the command to love my neighbour as myself.

The Old Testament prophet Isaiah points us to the deeper fasting God requires of us:

“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice .. to share your food with the hungry …to provide the poor wanderer with shelter .. to spend yourselves on behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness ..” (Isaiah chapter 58)

I think the rubber hits the road in the difficulty of holding together hope and positive thinking (thus Philippians 4 – “whatever is noble … right … pure … lovely … admirable – think about such things”) alongside how life is experienced by so many. We are the people who shine as lights in the darkness, who proclaim that the world is good, that God is good, while so much is not yet right.

I think the only answer, and it’s frequently the only answer, is to hold the opposing poles in tension – in this case to be satisfied and dissatisfied!

Today my daily New Testament reading points me to the Gospel of John chapter 12 which records Jesus as saying:

Those who love their life will lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

Jesus uses “hate” in a particular Semitic way, but there can be few stronger expressions of dissatisfaction than someone saying “I hate my life”. It’s often said that the Church is there to comfort the disturbed and to disturb the comfortable. That’s surely at least as true now as ever. But for all of us, however disturbed we are, the ‘comfort’ the Gospel gives is more about giving strength than promising slippers by the fireside. And, crucially, to know God the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, walking alongside us. God with us.

One of the geniuses (genii?) of the Church of England (and other churches) is that it channels the Gospel into seasons (around Christmas and Easter) which can help us focus on certain key themes in rotation and not everything at once. So, like the writer of Ecclesiastes (chapter 3) we find there is a time for everything including:

a time to weep and a time to laugh,

a time to mourn and a time to dance.”

At the risk of going on a bit (!) ‘satisfaction’ has a key role in the evolution of theology – summed up in Anselm’s thesis ‘Cur Deus Homo?’ In an 11^th century feudal setting (while Otley Parish Church was being built) Anselm, a Benedictine Monk from Italy who became Archbishop of Canterbury, writes about why it took someone who was both God and human to atone for our sins and open the way to eternal life.

God is like a feudal landlord whom human beings constantly offend by their sins. As with any feudal landlord, God’s honour requires ‘satisfaction’ for the offences which dishonour him. But that debt to God is infinite, reflecting his status and perfect character. A human being living a perfect life is only rendering due honour to God, even by offering his or her life in payment. But if God the infinite becomes a human being, and offers himself or herself, then that sacrifice has infinite value and will (and does) satisfy God’s honour.

The model, like every model of salvation, is flawed, but it highlights the fact that our lives can never fulfil our duty to God. In this sense our lives are always unsatisfactory. But the good news is that he does come to us, he is born as a human being, and does for us what we cannot do for ourselves.

So God invites us to walk the road of satisfaction and dissatisfaction with him. Feeling deeply our need for him, and the world’s desperate need for him. Focusing on this in Advent, and then celebrating in an unfettered way his arrival at Christmas. Not just on Christmas day but in the whole long Christmas celebration up to the sixth of January, which then morphs into the season of Epiphany, which celebrates Christ being made known. After which a new cycle starts on 2^nd February as we approach Lent and prepare for the wonder and mystery of his death and resurrection. Hallelujah!

I’ve been re-watching The Hobbit films. The sort of thing I can do now as I enjoy early ‘retirement’. I know the films don’t do justice to Tolkien’s book but I just love them!

And I particularly love the way Martin Freeman plays Bilbo Baggins on his epic journey of self-discovery, from the comic early scenes as the dwarves arrive at his home, to his becoming a fully-fledged and crucial member of the company of 14 on their mission to restore the dwarves to their ancient home in Mount Erebor.

Gandalf has chosen Bilbo for a key role but Bilbo has no idea. Gandalf visits him at his home in the Shire, and laments that he has become so stuffy, so dull, so caught up in his humdrum home comforts and so averse to adventure. Gandalf cannot reconcile the Bilbo he knew as a child with this adult who is preoccupied with his dinners and his fireside. The young Bilbo went on long hikes, itching to see life beyond the borders of the Shire; the adult Bilbo is frightened of the world outside the Shire and is intent on staying safely inside. (Perhaps all of us grow more risk averse as we grow older.)

Gandalf, of course, knows there is much more to Bilbo Baggins. Not only has he known Bilbo from his youth, but he knows his genes. Bilbo focuses on his Baggins forebears as examples of his safe way of life, but Gandalf points out that Bilbo is also a Took (through his mother) and the Tooks were famed for their exploits and adventures.

Tolkien’s story is a fantasy, but of course it’s full of insight into real life – on the big scale in the playing out of the battle between good and evil, and in the challenges and decisions facing every individual involved.

I found Bilbo’s predicament strangely moving. That may be because I face similar issues! Having recently retired early, I have great opportunities for adventure. But I feel the pull of playing safe and doing very little. And of our new wood-burning stove. And of food and cooking. And I am content with my own company! Oh dear …

Actually, like Bilbo I have also been invited on a journey. In my case by Sudanese friends to northern Uganda and perhaps into South Sudan, where my wife Janet and I met and spent several years. When we were young and adventurous!  So possibly next year …

The dwarves are a riotous lot, rough, presumptuous, rude, full of banter and fun. They bring chaos to Bilbo’s nicely ordered life, and ravage his well-stocked larder. Their appetite for food is matched by their appetite for life. Gandalf and the party of dwarves invite Bilbo to join their mission, but he will not sign up. They stay the night, and when Bilbo awakes, they are gone and the house is once more quiet but suddenly very empty. Something clicks and Bilbo senses what he is missing. He quickly gathers a few things and runs after them to share the adventure.

The dwarves are not the sort of company Bilbo would naturally seek out – quite the opposite. The experiences ahead will test Bilbo and bring out the best in him, and the part he plays will be crucial to everyone else. Again and again, he will have the choice to abandon the risky adventure and return home but he keeps choosing to press on and not turn back.

There are many stories and a lot of teaching that involve journeys in the Bible, but the thought that comes to my mind in relation to the above is about Jesus’ promise to give us fullness of life. He is recorded in John’s gospel as saying “I came that they might have life and have it abundantly” (10:10).  The abundant life which Jesus offers is not an easy untroubled life, but one which embraces the whole of life with its joys and sorrows, its hardships and comforts.

John’s Gospel later records Jesus telling his disciples that God will come to them as the Holy Spirit, the ‘Parakletos’ (14:25) to help them. Literally the Greek ‘Parakletos’ means the one ‘called alongside’. God will be alongside them on their life’s journey – their helper, their guide. A bit like Jesus on the Emmaus road: walking with his followers, sometimes seen and heard, but usually only in hindsight (which is never there when you need it).

Abundant life for Bilbo was not, at that time at least, to be found by his fireside but by responding to the call to risky adventure. We too are encouraged to step out of our comfort zone into reliance on God. We will discover hidden depths in ourselves and a deeper experience of ‘God with us’.

We may, like Bilbo, need to learn to see the good in people we would not normally choose as companions! Like Bilbo, we will probably find fellowship with a rag bag of fellow travellers who will be brave and foolish and prejudiced, but who will learn with us and come to love us as we love them. It starts with opening the door of our hearts, and waiting to see who or what God sends our way.

What little or great adventure might God be calling you or me to next?

PERSONAL

When you’re finding it difficult to look forward with hope, and times seem dark, try looking back. Not in anger, but with a deliberate aim to discern the good things. For most of us this can work on a personal level (though some who suffer from severe depression or traumatic memories may struggle to do this).

We can start by looking for good things in our own experience and giving thanks for them to God. I’m sure it’s possible to be thankful for people and experiences without believing in God, but I want to speak from my experience and out of the big picture which is the canvas on which I think our lives are being painted.

Many of our good experiences will come with a sense of loss also. As in remembering people we love who have died, or situations that made us happy and we grieve that we have had to leave them behind and move on. Or times and relationships that were simply a mixture of good and bad and you can’t have one without the other. So, on this occasion at least, we’ll make a conscious choice to celebrate the good stuff. And, hopefully, much of it will still be part of our lives today and so we are already beginning to be thankful for the things that are good today. And we allow significant time to reflect on those positives, counting our blessings, mixed though they may be. And thanking God for them.

So often I meet older people who are sustained by memories. Remembering, and recalling past times, are not just ‘living in the past’ but help us find a way of living in the present. Just as we can dwell in, and feed on, bitter memories, with obvious negative effects, so we may nurture our spirits by replaying ‘happy thoughts’ and so find contentment, be less self-centred, less ‘needy’ and more open to love our neighbour.

I think we often learn from remembering. Perhaps we see what we didn’t before. As in any story being re-told or re-read, we may see new angles.

The meaning of life is not only determined by ‘going out and doing’ but just as much by ‘being’. St Paul wrote from prison that he had learned to be content whatever his circumstances (Philippians 4: 11-13) and that is surely the aim for us all.

LOOKING WIDER

Obviously, we do not live in a bubble, and we find ourselves in multiple relationships with the world around us: people near and far and the whole of creation. For people like me, who live in relative affluence and security, looking beyond ourselves can be a guilt-inducing task. To be honest, there may well be a place for guilt, and thus for seeking forgiveness and restitution, but that’s not where I want us to go now.

I hope we can follow the same process as for our ‘personal’ life. To spend some time looking back for the things that have given hope and encouragement to people in our communities, in our nation and across the world. And to give thanks for them. And to recognise those things that are still making a positive difference today, including when the picture is more mixed and promising beginnings have not been (fully) realised. We can go back as far as we like, and (inevitably!) be as selective as we like.

HOPE FOR TODAY

The main purpose of all this is really very simple – to give us hope for today and for the future. Realistic hope that doesn’t dodge the hard questions of why bad things happen, but which refuses to allow them to shut out the light that threads its way through everything and especially through the darkness. And allows us to believe in, to trust and even to celebrate the God who takes responsibility for the big picture, mysteriously shaping history and his (I could also say ‘her’) creation towards the fulfilment of his good purposes – the coming of his kingdom in all its fulness.

The thrust of this blog is to ‘discern the work of the Spirit in the midst of chaos’. What I have already suggested aims to do just that, but I want to focus on looking forward using what we learn from looking back. We know that things which are happening today will change the future. Some may already be bearing fruit, seen or unseen, others are still at too early a stage. And new ideas, new actions, new movements, are springing up all the time. And we can get involved. We might even start one.

A good starting point for our own involvement is to ask: what am I most concerned about? What have I to offer from my resources of time, talents and money? Remember that it’s a great mistake to do nothing because you can only do a little! Like Jesus in the feeding of the 5,000, we offer to him what we have, and the result is down to him. Many situations are daunting, but we mustn’t belittle our own small contribution.

History teaches us that all great positive movements of the past had small beginnings: mass movements for resistance and independence, for equality and justice, national and international health services, access to education, the welfare state and pensions for all, innumerable organisations and charities both small and large and so on. So when something starts, only God knows what it will grow to become. And when we offer ourselves to God, only he knows what we will become  (and there are no guarantees it will be easy!).

Thus, ultimately, and intimately, the wider task and our own contribution, are in good hands – God’s! But his thoughts are not our thoughts, neither are our ways his ways (Isaiah chapter 55). So, like children, we have to trust where we do not understand. And that’s a lot of trust needed! The deeper we go in knowing God, the more we will trust him and his good purposes, for us and the whole of creation.

One final vital thought. The Church has a crucial and unique part to play, but all people are God’s people, made in his image and God is at work in and through us all. As the prayer from Evening Prayer recognises:

O God, from whom all holy desires, all good counsels,

and all just works do proceed: …

The good work and the good people I see around, from every walk of life, give me hope, and I discern the work of God’s Spirit in them. All of us imperfect people expressing love, making sacrifices and listening to an inner voice which sends us out to make the world a better place.