Genuine Unity — How to focus it

A bishop is called to be a focus of unity. But how?

Unity matters. Here’s the theory, according to St Paul. The whole created order is emerging into Unity through Christ whose death has reconciled everything and triggered a viral process of reconciliation that takes in every human dimension. the Church is a new people, the firsfruits of the whole creation. Nobody is left out. It takes a whole world to know Christ.

Disunity is all in the mind. Some Christians believe gayness is within the purpose of creation; some against it. Much of our official history has taken the anti-gay line, and much of our unoffcial practice has behaved differently. Some believe in women’s senior leadership, some not. According to the last Archbishop, bishops could only be a focus of unity by resisting change in order to reassure traditionalists, in public anyway. The price of unity was rejecting gay people, largely paid by gay people. Ditto with women. They were to calm down and accept being diminished in ministry, as the price of unity.

This policy has failed, on every level.

The dwindling number of Traditionalists were not reassured and gay people continued to be diminished, patronised, bullied, and rejected. Meanwhile the Church became the only UK public body left allowed to discriminate against women in its senior leadership. What seemed even-handed was actually taking sides and has kludged up real dialogue, parking the issues in a siding, but guaranteeing an increasingly guilty and untenable paralysis. Meanwhile society got on with sorting both issues without the Church.

Bishops sat on the fence for the sake of unity in the name of even handedness, trying to slow everything down and keep order. The result was disunity, frustration and chaos.

In reality there was no fence to sit on. In effect, doing nothing was siding with the decreasing majority who believe gay people are wicked, stunted, sick or disabled, or the one that believed women were made by God for non-leadership roles.

As the numbers who believe gay people are just people and women are equal grew and became a majority in England, even the Church of England, the game was up.

You can't build unity in a family by excluding any members of it. If your children fall out it is not even handed to ignore the one who's stepping out of line, to build fellow feeling between the others who aren't, sacrificing the black female, or gay member “for the sake of family unity.” Doing that actually destroys the family, not unites it. You can only parent a family on the supposition that all its members are equally valid. Thus Bishops, by trying to be nice to gays whilst siding with anti-gays have not been a focus of unity, but have actually stoked a bigger crisis over gay people in the church than was experienced in education, politics, the military, the law, commerce, or any other area of life.

If bishops want to be real focuses of unity they have to stop trying to be nice, in effect siding with anti-gays. Both sides act out of conviction. Good. It's time to stop trying to calm everybody down and synthesize them. A working model is actually in the New Testament, and we need to wake up and follow it.

Romans 14 deals with Meat sacrificed to idols. This mattered to early Christians not as animal lovers, but because meat came from pagan temples. Eating it was either subsidizing idolatrous cults or defying them by proving Christians were immune to their products. Eat or refuse, you couldn't do both simultaneously. The issue was black and white. If St Paul ate meat he sided with those who think their faith is strong because they eat meat. If he refuses he sides against them with those who refuse, on grounds of conscience. There is no middle ground.

At this point St Paul could come running on, saying "Calm down, dear! Nobody eat anything because that will upset the vegetarians! Let's all discuss what we all have to do before we can do anything! And then when we're ready to move, we must all move together!"

What St Paul recommends is the exact opposite. He tells every Christian

• to be convinced in their own mind, each one personally.
• to get on with doing whatever they do, meaty or veggie, 100%, but to do it for faith reasons, for Christ, not fear reasons. What comes from faith is faith.
• When doing this produces passionate disagreement, to view it as an opportunity to accept the other as is and love them, not an opportunity to tribalise
• To judge nobody else before the time
• When people see you doing this, they will be amazed, and God will be glorified. Nobody has to pretend. Every particularity praises God's works, not its own, in its own language. Nothing is judged or synthesized before the time.

Fake Unity is basically about what's going on among the officers on the bridge. Its aim is keeping everyone as happy as possible. Driven by fear of everything falling apart, the captain becomes what Walt Disney called Mickey Mouse, "a little guy trying his best."  Its aim is a world tamed and homogenised, where everybody calms down, and each particularity curbs its enthusiasms whilst every anomaly is synthesised out.

Real unity is concerned with where the ship is going as well as how the ship is running. Its comes from the Cross, powered from within by a shedding of blood that bridges every contradiction in heaven and earth, even life and death. Its aim is a world reconciled, not homogenised, where every particularity believes and does what it does to the utmost and so becomes fully itself in a new, emergent, diverse, chorus of praise to God.

The coming days, for the General Synod, could be make up your mind time between these two visions of unity, cheesy or real. At last.

New Decade: Bearing up, Pressing on

Driving back from lunch with friends on new year’s eve, I can hardly believe ten years have now passed since the Millennium.

The bells rang it in at Sandhurst, accompanied by a bottle or two and various crashing whizz-bangs, the most amazing of them from old Army stocks in the various MOD establishments around Surrey Heath. Little did we know what lay ahead!

As the world spins on into an uncertain future, we need a little faith. Creation may be essentially good, but it is surely not complete. The Incarnation has happened in Christ, but the work of incarnation continues in us. As the world pulses forwards through the end of another decade and into a new year of grace, all human activity at every level, the lot, can be seen as in some way necessary to complete the work of God in Christ.

This thought brought to mind a rather telling couple of paragraphs by Teilhard de Chardin. He believed everything was somehow brewing together towards an “Omega point” at which all things would be gathered together in Christ — the goal of evolution, the final victory of Love in and through the universe.
He radically extends the logic of Philippians 1:29 throughout the Universe...

Closer and closer, stage by stage, everything increasingly links itself to the ultimate Centre, in whom everything holds together. The streams flowing out from this Centre do not only operate in the sublime heights of this world, where human activities take distinctly supernatural and worthy form. In order to redeem and pull together these sublime powers, the power of the incarnate Word irradiates the least eergies, to the most hidden depth. And the work of Incarnation will not be finished until the special matter locked up in every created thing, spiritualised originally in our souls, then again a second time with our souls in Jesus, has actually been reconnected to its definitive Centre of fulfillment. “Who is it who ascended, but he who first descended, in order to fulfill all things.” (Ephesians 4:10)

By our collaboration, which Christ stimulates, he is consummated and attains his fulness, starting from within all created things. That’s what St Paul himself tells us. We might think perhaps that the work of creation was completed long ago. Wrong! It continues ever more beautifully, and extends itself to the most sublime levels of the world. “All Creation, still groans and travails.” (Romans 8:22) And it is to complete this process that we labour, by even the most basic works of our hands. Such, ultimately, is the meaning and value of the things we do. Thanks to the interrelationship of matter, the soul and Christ, in the things that we do we bring back to God a small part of the being He loves. By each of the things we do, we labour — one by one but genuinely — to make up the fulness of everything, in other words to bring to Christ a small additional measure of fulfillment.

C’est à dire (original):

De proche en proche, de relais en relais, tout finit par se raccorder au Centre suprême “in quo omnia constant.” Les effleuves émanés de ce Centre n’agissent pas seulement dans les zones supérieures du monde, là où s’excercent les activités humaines sous une forme distinctement surnaturelle et méritoire. Pour sauver et constituer ces énergies sublimes, la puissance du Verbe incarné s’irradie jusq’au fond le plus obscur des puissances inférieures. Et l’Incarnation ne sera achevée que lorsque la part de substance élue que renferme tout objet, — spiritualisée une première fois dans nos âmes, et une seconde fois avec nos âmes en Jésus, — aura rejoint le Centre définitif de sa complétion. “Quid est quod ascendit, nisi quod prius descendit, ut repleret omnia.”

Par notre collaboration qu’il suscite, le Christ se consomme, atteint sa plénitude, à partir de toute créature.. C’est Saint Paul qui nous le dit. Nous nous imaginons puet-être que la Création est depuis longtemps finie. Erreur, elle se poursuit de plus belle, et dans les zones les plus élevées du Monde. “Omnis creatura adhuc ingemescit et parturit.” Et c’est à l’achever que nous servons, même par le travail le plus humble de nos mains. Tels sont, en définitive, le sense et le prix de nos actes. En vertu de l’interliaison Matière-Ame-Christ, quoi que nous fassons, nous ramenons à Dieu une parcelle de l’être qu’il désire. Par chacune de nos oevres, nous travaillons, atomiquement mais réelement, à construire le Plérôme, c’est-à-dire à apporter au Christ un peu d’achèvement.

Le Milieu Divin, 1957, I.iii.c, p 41-2

I haven’t got an English text. Corrections to the transation are very welcome!

Would you adam and eve it?

Limbering up for a John Milton 400th anniversary celebration, I came across an excellent article about Milton and Sex , by Theo Hobson, in Saturday’s Guardian. A mystery commenter calling themselves “FromMe2U,” responded with a total gem that may be worthy of wider reflection:

a friend tells me if Adam and Eve had been Chinese they would have eaten the snake, not the apple, so stayed in Eden forever.

Discuss?

Wildlife update: fantastic Mrs Fox

After yesterday’s animal magic, in which, may I say, beginner’s luck won through and I was most triumphant, now every wild animal in Bucks is calling round for a blessing. I am, in principle, a man of peace, but if this behaviour carries on will end up applying a water pistol, if not a shotgun, to our furry cousins. This morning Lucy and I were woken at 5·10 (5·10!) by a fox and a muntjac deer. I applied a camera not water (or other) pistol to the situation. This once. Preaching to the animals is a new line for me, and this morning’s message was: “Go away you little blighters. Haven’t you got homes to go to?” This splash comes with a Hello Magazine exclusive on our latest phasmid baby. Thus on to weightier matters than wildlife...
The legendary Mrs Trellis of North Wales points out to me that in Matthew 8:20, Jesus says that foxes do, in fact, have homes to go to. It’s good to know that. If tomorrow the foxes would care to follow Jesus’ instructions in this matter, this county will have a less grumpy bishop on Tuesday. Thank you very much.

Blessing Animals at Hulcott

Everybody does one of these services during their ministry, said a friend pointedly. Actually, after an afternoon blessing animals on the green at Hulcott, I'd cheerfully do one a week. Eat your heart out, Dr Doolittle. The sun shone (fitfully and improbably). None of the congregation ate any of the others, which always helps on these occasions. Kudos to Mark Ackford (Team Vicar) and Peter Boulton (Churchwarden) for getting everything together so beautifully on the green. Also council workers who cut the grass specially this week to make it all possible. Above all, thanks also to Rosie the Corn Snake and Arthur the Badger, and their owners...


Hulcott Church, now part of the Aylesbury Team, is small but great fun — thirteenth century, with some very nice glass, a chamber organ and a carved altar added by one particularly keen Victorian Rector. In 1535 the manor was held by Benedict Lee, great great (+ some) grand pappy of Robert. E Lee. Just to set things in a true bucolic context, my favourite animal skit of all time, courtesy of Mr Chinnery, the well meaning but profoundly incompetent vetinarian on the League of Gentlemen:

Embryo Wars — five critical questions

What did I do in the great embryo war? — stay out of it is one possible answer, but if twentieth century science was driven by physics (leading to us going nuclear) the twenty-first is set fair to be driven by life sciences. Towards what? Hard to say, but it’s a vital question. I am very much an ordinary Joe, Historian not life scientist, but people have asked me for a view, so here are some preliminary critical questions (in ascending order of importance):

• Q1: Why whip people’s consciences?
  There is a political dimension, because politics is where laws come from. I like the idea of free votes, because it requires people to make out cases that persuade others rather than coerce them using the party machine. This is all the more true of a conscience question — Using whips looks like you know you really can't persuade them, and maybe you can’t.
• Q2: Is Every sperm sacred?
  It’s a simple modern idea that conception defines the logical top of the slippery slope. It’s one easy and obvious place to draw lines. Christian tradition, however, has taken a rather more “farmer Giles” view of these things. Augustine talked about embryo inanimatus, not yet endowed with a soul. Medieval Christians dated ensouled life from “Quickening.” Trying not be be too gross, Lucy and I once lost an early pregnancy and turned up to our surgery with what our doctor tactfully referred to as “matter of conception,” wrapped in a hanky. Was it within the purpose of God, whatever its precise status? Yes. Did I want to rush out and give it a Christian funeral? No. Ten weeks later I would have, and it would have mattered very much to me. Call me illogical. I’m with Saint Augustine on this one. A Blastocyst has the potential to become a baby. The vast majority don’t make it, within the purpose of God, including that one.
• Q3: What about Species bending?
  Well, producing Chimeras sounds much more frightening than breeding mules. We’ve been doing some degree of this since the Bronze age. But what about altering what it means to be human or animal? Genesis teaches a sacred ordering of nature. God asked the man to name what was already there — to order and steward all pragmatic possibilities. We have many more possibilities before us than Adam. How do we fulfil the charge and avoid the curse that was laid on us all in him? If I have a pig's valve put in my heart, does that make me a hybrid? technically, yes. Practically, even within the Jewish/ Christian view that you are a body rather than have a body, such hybrids obviously retain their full humanity. Cytoplasmic embryos are emphatically not the same thing as true (mixed gamete) hybrids. We already use transgenic embryos for medical purposes, but on the “One step at a time, and learn from it” principle I would oppose any proposal to put animal genes into human embryos. As to the matter under discussion, if we should be reluctant to monkey about with this stuff (and I feel we should be) use of Cytoplasmic embryos actually reduces the requirement for human embryos. There are thus pro-life arguments for allowing it. Radically different research options are coming up in the outside lanes, too, but we need to take every proposal very much on its own merits.
• Q4: We can do all sorts of things — does that make them right?
  No. Life is God-given. The Warnock report gave limited special protection to human embryos, and this is surely right, to honour the concept of humanity. I don’t buy the idea that something becomes right merely because we can do it. Lots of things we can do are emphatically wrong, and this lies at the heart of the classic nuclear dilemma. Far better if nukes had never been invented, but you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube. Saint Paul pointed out that Instrumentalism is not enough — something isn’t right merely because it can be done. If I have to err, I would do so on the conservative side of this argument. It’s easy to mock slippery slope arguments, but one thing does lead to another. We should keep in place strong legislative protection against, for example, the implantation of research lab embryos in a woman, or culture beyond the current 14 day limit. What we actually need far more is a map for the country around us as research proceeds — a major agreed framework within which to understand the implications. I can’t see we’ve yet quite got that, though Warnock was a start. Our lack of this worries me more than than anything proposed in the current bill, and I think serious ethics committee work needs to be done at a more theoretical level.
  
• Q5: What is our Moral duty here?
  Cherishing life is a plain moral duty, but part of cherishing life is to relieve suffering and help people, and this often involves radical intervention in natural processes. Dr Frankenstein and Nazi mad science are very different from what is being proposed and why. God gave us brains to use, and there is a clear moral and social objective in enhancing our capacity to understand and promote healing. Of course there is the principle of Double effect (no good should rest on a bad); but you can only know Cytoplasmic embryo research is inherently bad if you take the “every sperm is sacred” line, which, with Saint Augustine, I don’t.

Whatever we do is within the mercy of God. These are very much preliminary musings. I’d like to hear very much more from morally aware Christians within the research community — like you?

The Rudiments of Wisdom

I was at the toddler service at Buckingham Parish Church this Wednesday. Claire Wood was doing a wonderful storytelling job on the tale behind the famous icon you see everywhere (Left), explaining how Sarah really wanted a baby and couldn't seem to get one. She used this excellent Russian Doll (Right) for Sarah. And when the baby came, asked Claire, what kind of baby do you think it was? (boy? girl?) Quick as a flash young Eva replied, “One a lot less decorated than that one!”

Creation and Creativity 2

Here, as the UN Secretary General has warned about global warning, is a piece of real creativity! h/t Martin Everitt for emailing me the original...

Creation and Creativity 1

Along the lines of someone who did the warmup slot at Willow Creek last year, Ilana Yahav, Sand Artist

At home in the real world?

There are two radically different concepts of “world” in the NT. There’s (often) ‘this world’ that by wisdom did not know God (I Corinthians 1:21) — Everything that drifts along regardless of, or even in opposition to God. More often there’s ‘the world’ which God loved so much (John 3:16), and which God has reconciled to himself = the created world.

Organised religion can, if religious people let it, create for them their own private self-referential little world, outside of which nothing else matters, or even sometimes registers on the consciousness. That’s how passion slides over into the licensed insanity of fundamentalism. Jesus told his followers they could know the real spiritual value of things not by their origins, or how tightly they measure up to some abstract written standard, but by their fruit — in the real world.

For a reality check, this movie can be used together with the Global Rich List income calculator.

Is this the Truth? Could things really turn around?

Stick with the possibilities of this — There's a twist in it!

Kudos to Eric Bramlett, Creative Arts monkey @ Community Christian Church of Chicago.

Friends, enemies and neighbours — Seeing everything as it is?

We took Nick & Anna to the Living Rainforest, which turns out to be near Newbury.
— a lot of greenery, some fascinating critters and a very handsome chameleon.

Over in the Pupa cabinet I saw something I'd never before — a butterfly being born. It said something powerful about how everything hangs together in one seamless whole, and the fragility of it all.

In the Ken Robinson creative thinking talk I posted from TED, he quoted Jonas Salk (the Polio Vaccine pioneer) as saying:

"If all the insects were to disappear from the earth, within fifty years all life on earth would end. If all human beings were to disappear from the earth, within fifty years all forms of life on earth would flourish."

What is this factor about people, this radical rejection of Genesis 2:15, that makes us narrow, unwittingly destructive and toxic? In the bookshop was a book of eco-pioneering voices including, surprisingly perhaps, an artcile on G. K. Chesterton. He was quoted as saying "We make our friends. We make our enemies. But God makes our Neighbours."

Jesus has powerful things to say to his followers about their "neighbours." Your neighbour is not the person you choose, or the person with whom you have affinity. It is any person who is cast into your path in any need. How you respond to the challenge of encountering them is the Test of Discipleship, not your ortho-anything defined by some abstract standard.

In how we do Church, In our interaction with the real world, we need to go figure. We will be known for what we really are, friends of God (or not), by our fruits not our intentions.

How can we learn to Think Different?

Thanks to Steve Whitmore for reminding me about the talk that alerted him to TED, which I looked up after he told me about it at Willow Creek.

In it Sir Ken Robinson talks about the effect of schooling systems around the world on Creativity, Do Schools kill Creativity? Sir Ken draws attention to the inherently multidisciplinary way the learning brain works, thriving on Diversity, Dynamically interactive and aware of acute Distinctions between sometimes incompatible things. He defines Creativity as the process of having original ideas that have value, and, boy, do we need some if we are to survive, let alone flourish in future.

An uncertain and increasingly complex world demands real liberation for the mind, possibility thinking and creativity, embracing paradox. We need to grow out of the kind of wooden Eagle Comic scientism of the modern age we're being peddled by some of today's secularists and the battened down cramming of the National Curiculum, or all we will end up doing is "strip-mining the earth" to destruction.

Whether you're a teacher, a thinker, a leader, or, actually a theologian, If you have an interest in survival you have an interest in Education and you need to drop what you're doing for the next 20 minutes and watch this!

Biovisions — Rich, beautiful Diversity in a single Cell

David Bolinsky is a medical illustrator, whose company, Xvivo, has been working to illustrate creatively the dynamics of life to Harvard students for a programme called Biovisions. Thanks to Patrick Mayfield and Steve Whitmore, as another spin off of this year's Leadership Summit I've been exploring TED Talks, creative ideas from some of the world's greatest thinkers sponsored by BMW. David's work (which he introduces in this video) is just incredible. A single cell contains all manner of diversity of form and activity within it. Christians can hold at the back of their mind the biological pictures of the Church in the NT. Static institutional images and models are pathetically inadequate, given the beautiful dynamic diversity and relatedness of everything God called 'good' because that's the way he wanted it, through and through!