A huge thank you to my very dear friend Melbs for
another fascinating post. I was going to leave a relatively lengthy comment but it got far too long, so here it is as a post instead.
I will, resist, with some difficulty, the temptation to launch in on another round of ranting about Richard Dawkins, who is, at the end of the day, a very intelligent guy who will now doubt achieve great things if he ever gets over his debilitating obsession with teapots.
For those who miss those ranty good times, you can relive them
here.
The thing is that, despite MG's very tempting invitation to pull out my best Pat Benetar impression, whilst I'm happy to take a 'best shot' approach to politics, social justice, sport and film reviewing, I just don't think it works for matters of faith.
Why? Because it's really hard to find anyone who will tell you that they embraced any particular faith solely on the basis that someone sat them down and talked them into it through a blindingly compelling intellectual argument.
Before diving too far into this, I want to make it clear that I am all for trying to get intelligence and faith to work as a team. I have been bugging my fellow Christians about this for years. When it comes to working out what one's faith means and how it works in the real world, we each owe it to ourselves, and to the people we cross paths with in our lives, to apply to highest level of intellectual rigour and brutally honest self reflection as we try to figure it out. Having said that, it doesn't follow that that is how we got there in the first place.
I can probably express that a little more clearly by analogy. When it comes to being a good parent, I need to be as smart as possible, and as deliberate as possible, in how I go about it, so I can provide the sort of loving, supportive, structured environment that my children need. To do anything other than to work as hard as I possibly can, and to be as smart as I possibly can, is to give my kids less than they deserve from their father.
However, this does not mean that I needed someone to sit me down and explain to me why I should love them to distraction.
I don't love my boys because someone talked me into it, I love them because I took one look at them and it was impossible not to.
So, should I try and convince you all that God exists and heaven is there? Whilst I am about it, I may as well try to explain why the four right chords can make me cry. Or why the view from the battlements of Carlisle castle once caused me to break into spontaneous applause. Or why it is that we fall in love. I have little interest in trying to reduce the mysteries of the universe to a series of logical propositions, each more fiendishly clever than the last, and I'm not going to try.
Instead, let me share a little bit of my own journey, and perhaps a little of what I love about this Christian faith that I embrace, and which I try to put into action in my own life.
Quite simply, it's when I am connected to the beliefs I cherish and the spirituality that I pursue that life seems to make the most sense. The colours are brighter, the edges are clearer, and the path ahead looks well lit and inviting.
Then there are those other times which, quite frankly, include almost all of this freakishly bad year called 2008, when I get too tired, stressed and pissed off to focus on those things that matter most to me. Whilst the good things in life are still there, and I still feel endlessly thankful to be sharing the journey with those nearest and dearest to me, living day to day starts to feel like a slow, exhausting slog, through what can best be described as the Swamp of Stupidness.
So, however disconnected and flat out lousy I may feel right now, I go on believing, because I remember those times when it works, and because one of the few things I have learned in my 35 years on this planet is that the bleak times never feel like they will end, but they always do. Yes, that requires some faith, but not a faith that is blind. It's a faith built on a solid foundation, not of someone else's beliefs, but on my own experiences.
So if that's a small insight into why I believe in something, why is it that Christianity is the something that I choose to believe in? Here's a few of the reasons.
I love that God is portrayed as the father whose son demands half his inheritance then leaves town, blows the lot on wine and hookers, and comes skulking back penniless and humiliated, bringing endless disgrace to the family. When the father sees the son coming, he abandons all dignity and runs down the road to meet him, throws his arms around him and celebrates his return with a huge party.
I love the idea that there will come a time when people will stop wanting to kill each other and there actually will be peace on earth.
I love any faith where the rules can be reduced down to the simply propositon that if we all love each other enough, it will work just fine.
I love that one of the biggest criticisms levelled at Jesus was that he ate too much, drank too much, and spent too much time with the most marginalised people in his society.
Most of all, and since it's nearly Christmas, I love the idea of a God who cares so much for his children that he would choose to become one of them, and to share the experience of living on this earth.
In doing so, in being the only person in history to be able to plan every detail of his life in advance, did not opt for a life of luxury, but chose to be born in a dirty stable to a mother who was pregnant before she got married. By the age of two he was a refugee in Egypt. He grew up in a town that can best be described as the first century equivalent of Moe. When he reached the age of 30, he took to travelling around, permanently broke, and bringing a message that caused his family to suggest he was mentally ill, the residents of his home town to try to thrown him off a cliff the first time he taught in their synagogue, and the religious leaders of his community to accuse him of being possessed by demons. Eventually, people who had celebrated his arrival in Jerusalem only a week earlier called for him to be killed and the authorities put him to death in the most painful way they could devise.
Quite simply, if the universe is to have a creator, if it is to be here for a reason and to make some sort of sense, I know that, even if I will never be smart enough to understand it, there is great comfort in knowing that that creator understands the pain and joy of being human. Some would say it's arrogant to imagine that a higher being would care about our day to day existence. I don't think so. I think it's almost inconceivable, but it's simply marvellous.
Just in case I forget to say it later, a very merry Christmas to you all.
