Philip Pullman’s Godman Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ is no crude atheist rant, but a perceptive and thoughtful storyteller’s retelling of the Gospels.
This book is not, in any sense, history. It assumes quaint 19th century demythologising, like Rénan and Co — ‘When the crowd realised how wise Jesus was they all got out the sandwiches they’d forgotten they’d brought, and shared them’ = ‘the feeding of the 5,000.’ No it doesn’t. Therefore this book is historically, er, light as air, but a fascinating contemporary myth about Jesus, a genre that has been spun around him ever since those primitive gnostic infancy miracle stories right up to Kazantzakis Last Temptation.You have to remember when watching the Life of Brian that actually there wasn’t a man called Brian born in the next stable. Therefore you have to remember this book is storytelling for its own sake, not history. Pullman draws a rigid distinction between history and truth — “Jesus” embodies one, and “Christ” the other, and never the twain shall meet.deserve serious attention from anyone trying to write a mystery play for today. His lines are models of conciseness, clarity and power. Pullman’s way of framing the perennial “why did Judas do it?” question is especially suggestive. Occasionally he penetrates the heart of the teaching in a really direct way, as when Jesus says:Marriage is a serious business. So is hell. And that’s where you’ll go if you think that as long as you avoid the big sins, you can get away with the little onesI hope it won’t spoil the plot for readers to give away its second great twist, a creative touch that is implicit but unmistakeable — ISTJ “Christ” turns out, in fact, to be Judas. Judas/Jesus: what the hell’s the difference? Like Iran and Iraq. However, this Judas is no simple baddie, but a complicated, high-minded and conflicted pragmatist:
‘I love my brother. He has a great task, and I wish I could serve him better than I do. If I sound downcast, it’s perhaps because I’m conscious of the depth of my faiure to be like him.’
‘Do you want to be like him?’
‘More than anything. He does things out of passion, and I do them out of calculation. I can see further than he can; I can see the consequences of things he doesn’t think twice about. But he acts with the whole of himself at every moment, and I’m always holding something back out of caution, or prudence, or because I want to watch and record rather than participate.’
‘If you let go of your caution, you might get carried away by your passion as he is.’
‘No,’ said Christ. ‘There are some who live by every rule and cling tightly to their rectitude because they fear being swept away by a tempest of passion, and there are others who cling to the rules because they fear that there is no passion there at all, and that if they let go they would simply remain where they are, foolish and unmoved; and they could bear that least of all. Living a life of iron control lets them pretend to themselves that only by the mightiest effort of will can they hold great passions at bay. I am one of those. I know it, and I can do nothing about it.’
‘It’s something to know it at least.’
As s/he reads this book and reflects, any good Christian should ask, “Is it I, Lord?” Pullman’s great Bogeyman is his auld enemy — “the Magisterium,” understood as a body of power and control. For the Scoundrel Christ, such an organisation is a cultural necessity without which Jesus’ simple message would be dead in the water. Indeed one can capture the thought by a variant of Winston Churchill’s quip about democracy being an awful form of government, but the alternatives being even worse. ENFP Jesus, the good man, does see the need for something, though. In a garden soliloquy he says:
Amen! This is, culturally, a rather “C of E” style of ecclesology; The Church is anything but perfect, but always in need of necessary reformation. This comes from its interaction with the society it serves, not some infallible magisterium. Its teaching is found to be authoritative insofar as it is authentic and recognizably transmits the story and values of Jesus as fully as possible. The Church is authentic insofar as it allows its every activity to be judged by the Carpenter of Nazareth. Infallibilism, along with other fundamentalisms, neutralizes this discipline to vanishing point, weakens accountability, and thus becomes compelling but dangerous fantasy — a mere playing at Church-by-numbers.Such a church’s greatest weakness, its provisionality and porous boundaries, are, in fact its greatest strengths. It does not claim always to have been right, but the fact that it is as possible, after two thousand years of this process of transmission, to weed out the golden thread of good news from its accompanying circumstatial dross in such a way that sincere personal response is possible, says something for the activity of the Holy Spirit within it.So there is much moving material for reflection in this book. Of course history and truth do in the end, relate to ach other. The fact is and was only ever, in fact, one Jesus. The power, richness and complexity of the gospel narrative is such that that pretty much all the dark materials for this book, the ISTJ and the ENFP, could both be quarried sincerely from the same New Testament.Theologically speaking, this book will especially irritate those whose Jesus is somehow more than fully human for various reasons — Nestorians, Sabellians, and Monophysites — to use geeky terms. It will also annoy Docetists, that is people who absolutize an ideal Christ at the expense of the historical Jesus. It will not appeal to Pelagians, for whom “faith” is actually the only work that matters. It must also mildly annoy historians because it is so shamelessly unhistorical, not only in its central conceit, but also in its willingness to sunder history radically from truth.This is, however, a thoughtful storyteller’s second take on the gospel story he would have liked. “Going through the gospels carefully and filleting out the bits that work for me” is, indeed, a discipline that could make any discple more self-aware, as long as we don't kid ourselves that just because it we did the filleting, the result is somehow the whole truth.
One interesting document of which I hadn’t heard fell out of an interfaith learning day at St Philip’s Centre Leicester, yesterday. The UK Christian Muslim Forum has produced Ethical guidelines for Christian Muslim Witness in Britain. Both faiths teach firm friendship with those outside the faith, but (here comes the twist) are, inherently, missionary faiths — Christian Evangelism parallels Muslim Da’wah. People respond to this fact variously, of which Alan Race, Vicar of St Philip’s Leicester logged three characteristic pragmatic ways, mirrored among both Christians and Muslims:
Simple competition/ slugging it out: As Annie Oakeley put it “anything you can do I can do better.” English people, Christian and Muslim, have a strong cultural resistance to being strident and competitive about anything, least of all religion.
Acceptance that it is God’s providence that both faith communities exist — a theology of “people of the book” or providence, in which believers feel secure enough about their faith to leave it to God to sort things out in the end.
Acceptance of (2), supplemented by feeling OK about conversions (either way). This raises the stakes on (2) and feels edgier.The Christian Muslim Forum offers the following suggestions that, we hope, will equip Christians and Muslims (and others) to share their faith with integrity and compassion for those they meet.
1) We bear witness to, and proclaim our faith not only through words but through our attitudes, actions and lifestyles.
2) We cannot convert people, only God can do that. In our language and methods we should recognise that people’s choice of faith is primarily a matter between themselves and God.
3) Sharing our faith should never be coercive; this is especially important when working with children, young people and vulnerable adults. Everyone should have the choice to accept or reject the message we proclaim and we will accept people’s choices without resentment.
4) Whilst we might care for people in need or who are facing personal crises, we should never manipulate these situations in order to gain a convert.
5) An invitation to convert should never be linked with financial, material or other inducements. It should be a decision of the heart and mind alone.
6) We will speak of our faith without demeaning or ridiculing the faiths of others.
7) We will speak clearly and honestly about our faith, even when that is uncomfortable or controversial.
8) We will be honest about our motivations for activities and we will inform people when events will include the sharing of faith.
9) Whilst recognising that either community will naturally rejoice with and support those who have chosen to join them, we will be sensitive to the loss that others may feel.
10) Whilst we may feel hurt when someone we know and love chooses to leave our faith, we will respect their decision and will not force them to stay or harass them afterwards.
Many thanks to Jonny Baker’s excellent Blog for news about this project by Improv Everywhere — possibly more of a set-up job than appears at first sight, but the gift to a random couple of an off-the-peg wedding reception for nothing, celebrated with enthusiastic strangers. It’s an interesting way of spreading Joy. To go out and enact what we believe it’s all about is surely the heart of mission? If we want to have a real impact on people’s lives in places like Milton Keynes, I wonder if this is the sort of thing we need to be doing, rather than sticking in buildings, flogging dead horses, or conventional “Come and get it” Evangelism?
Challenging sermon this morning at the Kirchentag closing service. Looking forward to dong a proper write up of it in the next day or so. For now the Peacher, Dr Danielle Garrone, a Waldensian from Rome, called us to hope in Christ, not Christendom, or ourselves. He suggested that a Church losing the script comes off the message of the gospel, and starts banging on about collateral moral issues that it thinks will engage people outside, but never seem to:I fear ethics has become the area that we hope will attract people's interest, because we do not have enough hope to expect such interest in the gospel itself. Protestants tend to prefer to do social ethics, and Evangelicals to concentrate on sexual ethics, whilst Catholics engage in both. All of us are open to the temptation to use ethics as a way to gloss over our own lack of giving account of the hope that is in us...
I thought Uncle Ben was a goodie — Spiderman’s uncle, all that. Nutritionally, his Long Grain Rice has helped generations of kids flourish, both sides of the pond.Dig, if you’re willing, this picture: a tiny town with a tight-knit community. The people share joys and concerns, woes and gossip. They keep a close and often affectionate watch on one another’s business. They talk and talk and talk.
What an outsider would notice within minutes of listening in on conversations are constant and slightly self-conscious references to “Uncle Ben.” A beautiful sunset prompts a townsperson to say “Isn’t Uncle Ben awesome?” Good news brings out how thankful and overjoyed they feel toward Uncle Ben. Even in tragedy, a local might say, in a slightly nervous fashion, “You know, it just goes to show how much we all need Uncle Ben. I know — we all know — that Uncle Ben is good.”
Uncle Ben is always on their minds.Even when the magnificence of Uncle Ben isn’t spoken of aloud, he’s somehow present in facial expressions and actions. It’s the look of stopping a train of thought before it goes too far, of letting an uncompleted sentence trail off into awkward silence, of swiftly changing the subject. It’s as if a conversation can go only so far. People hardly ever look one another in the eye for long.
At the beginning of each week there’s a meeting in the largest house in town. Upon arriving, people get caught up in good fellowship and animated discussion of the week’s events, with conversations straining in the direction of Uncle Ben. When a bell sounds, talk ceases. Everyone moves to the staircase and descends into the basement. Each person sits facing an enormous rumbling furnace. Seated close to the furnace door, as if he were a part of the furnace itself, is a giant man in black overalls. His back is turned on them.
They wait in silence. In time the man turns around. His face is angry, contorted. He fixes a threatening stare of barely contained rage on each person, then roars, “Am I Good?” To which they respond in unison, “Yes, Uncle Ben, you are good.” “Am I worthy of praise?” “You alone are worthy of our praise.” “Do you love Me more than anything? More than anyone?” “We love you and you alone, Uncle ben.” “You better love me, or I’m going to put you... in here” — he opens the furnace door to reveal a gaping darkness — “forever.” Out of the darkness can be heard sounds of anguish and lament. Then he closes the furnace door and turns his back to them. They sit in silence.Finally, feeling reasonably assured that Uncle Ben has finished saying what he has to say, they leave. They live gtheir lives as best they can. They try to think and speak truthfully and do well by one another. They resume their talk of the wonders of Uncle Ben’s love in anticipation of the next week’s meeting.
But they’re limited, in myriad ways, by fear. Fear causes them to censor their own thoughts and words. Fear prevents them from telling anyone of their inner anguish and fright. Fear keeps them from recognizing in one another’s eyes their common desperation. This fear is interwoven, subtly and sometimes not so subtly, in all of their relationships.
End of story.
Finally, siblings, to mull over additonally, David starts his book with a quote from Jon Stewart:Remember to love your neighbour as you love yourself. And if you hate yourself, then please — just leave your neighbour alone.
David Dark is one of the most engaging, perceptive and passionate young Evangelical writers around. David comes from Nashville, TN. He reads big literature as well as angry paperbacks, and he writes beautifully.
In it he noted an increasingly complacent but angry “Gott mit uns” tendency among fellow Evangelicals. The god in whom we say we trust is Great Uber-Politzist in the sky, who just happens to agree with us about all our hot button issues. We then hive off into angry little knots of the likeminded and flame lesser beings from our self-righteous stand on the top of the hill. This “god” starts out as the One to whom we were introduced at Sunday School, but as our focus hardens, his focus softens. It becomes increasingly difficult to recognise the God and Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ in him — his religion can easily appear to others a form of licensed insanity. Is it I, O Lord? By their fruit ye shall know them, as the man said.
One chapter called “A Song of Ourselves: narcissism and its Discontents in a Bipolar Nation” pretty much conveys the heart of the thesis. We are so damn right, there is no room left for God, who is bigger than any mental image. If we fix too closely on what we think we know, we become intoxicated by the sound of our own constant angry talk, and crowd out the space in which the real living God could change us. Whilst obsessionally defending the notion of Scripture, we haven’t time listen to its still small voice. What should we do?We can refuse knee-jerk defensiveness and opt for silence... Silence might sober us long enough that we’ll repent of the ways our tough talk presumes omniscience. It might deliver us from the death-grin of self-satisfied self-confidence. We might begin to see the ways the Gospel intersects with the news of the day and th ways the word of the Lord will make us see and speak differently. We won’t have to know all the details of salvation, redemption, and the end of history, but we will know that Jesus is never a separate issue. His story and the community he gathers around himself are political, a sacred community whose power is somehow louder than bombs. A radical remembrance belongs to these people, because they believe that Jesus’ career was the radical breakthrough of God’s kingdom. Any authority that tries to reduce this community to a “spiritual” zone is speaking with a false objectivity, because the kingdom to which this community tries to bear witness encompasses reality. And repentance is the word for the speech and action that acknowledges the distance between our proud little kingdoms and God’s larger order, power and glory, which are forever. It cannot be controlled, bought off, or ultimately silenced. And within it, our delusions are being subsumed. The Lord is risen.
His latest book has just come out in the UK — The Sacredness of Questioning Everything. I have been reading this as an e-Book, and find myself marking pretty much every page for a quote or thought-provoking idea. His big point about God is similar to Karl Barth’s in the face of the growing Nazi certainties and confidence of 1931 — “Eternal Light requires neither fuel nor candlestick.”
There’s a lot of bad religion about, and every religion should bear a health warning, like they put on chainsaws (Excellent for cutting down trees, dangerous for juggling, lethal for carving turkey). It’s easy to understand why some people invent their own religion of no or anti religion. The answer to a bad haircut is a good haircut, not baldness, which, when all is said and done, is just another haircut. However all religion needs redeeming — valuing with self-awareness from within, and openness to that beyond itself. Questioning is the classic way this is done. Thus questioning his elders in the temple was a sign of Jesus’ wisdom not his awkwardness or vanity.That’s enough quotes for today, but I find David’s work well worth a read. It’s a prophetic protest against idolatry, that should become a classic. God’s well able to look after himself, if only we will stand back, shut up, listen and let him...It’s tempting to characterise my grandfather’s advice to my father as a safety clause, an escape route from rleigious ideology, as if the only hope for the religious is the possibility that they might just get over it. But I don’t think I’d bedoing justice to my grandfather’s story if I tried to suggest that his advice was somehow separate from his religion. Like many people, my grandfather tried to be faithful to a particular story. He told it and retold it. He tried to make it add up rationally. He wanted to bend his will towards a life of obedience to it. And — this is where it gets compliated — he tried to persuade people that much of what they thought was acceptable to God wasn’t. He tried to call them, and himself, to repent. he felt compelled by the story as he understood it.
Most redemptively, he felt compelled to remember, as he told the story, that his own testimony wasn’t the whole story. he sought God but knew he would never have God in the way one holds a copyright or a piece of property. God would never be the object of his search because God, whatever God is, refuses to be objectified. My grandfather knew he was not a knower but only another pilgrim — a practitioner — of religious awe. Perhaps, in some fashion, this describes everyone...Jesus spoke of old wineskins that couldn’t contain new wine and about losing your life to find it. The apostle Paul talked about Christ-followers as having died to the old self. In this sense, we should take advantage of every opportunity we have to lose our religion. As wonderful as our religion might feel, it’s never so fresh that we should settlefor it. A living religiosity will be sustained by questions, revelations, and a determination to be trasformed by the renewing of our mninds.
Southern writer Flannery O’Connor once remarked that people talk about religious faith as if it’s an electric blanket, cozy and available for quick and easy reassurance, an ever-present resource for avoiding the truth of the matter. In response to religion-as-sentimentality, she argued that a Christian faith is always more like a cross, a costly engagement with the world. The bearer of faith enters into the crisis of what’s wrong with the world rather than glossing over it. In this sense, O’Connor’s faith made her more, not less, determined to see things as they are, not as we’d prefer them to be.O’Connor insisted that it was her Christian faith that kept her skeptical. She says that the cultivation of skepticism is a sacred obligation because skepticism keeps us asking questions. Against whatever flavor of brainwash is popular, skepticism “will keep you free — not free to do anything you please. but free to be formed by something larger than your own intellect or the intellects of those around you.” This redemptive skepticism is a religious commitment to avoid being swept up by bad ideas, especially ones that wear a godly guise and demand absolute, unquestioning allegiance. Sometimes you have to lose your religion to find it.
Outsiders often love Church buildings, where insiders often feel more of a love/hate thing about them. Insiders know all the pitfalls and challenges, as well as appreciating their place in the local skyline. It's been fascinating to spend two days with the Ecclesiastical Law Society, contemplating buildings as mission opportunities.
Sir Roy Strong sees no future for parish churches as mere museums or clubhouses, bottled up in formaldehyde. They have to engage everyone who relates to them to have a future; and if this means toilets, then so be it. He is interested in the long-term history of Churches before our eighteenth and nineteenth century forbears turned them into one day a week places. We need to recover a longer perspective; and be slightly careful about amenity societies and others, if they ever exercise power to comment without responsibility.
Charles Mynors and Richard Giles led us through legal and structural possibilities for buildings. I came away from Richard’s talk in particular feeling that where things sometimes go wrong is when congregations themselves lose the script about their worship. It’s a trap to engage architects before you know what you’re trying to achieve and why — results can be disappointingly muddled and incoherent.
Andrew Mottram and Paul Bayes then led us through the concept of buildings for mission. It’s mad to start with design, before you know what you’re trying to design. This comes back to the need for clear thinking from the outset. All sorts of people way beyond our conventional constituency are seeking out special, holy places in their lives. Look at those shrines you increasingly see lovingly kept see by the roadside, where people have died. When people oppose change, it’s easy to grumble about them — but what is God saying to us through them about where we need to be? People can be very positive about their parish churches, but not if they are only fitted for gathered communities with high exclusion thresholds various. he gave various examples of different groups relating to buildings in surprising ways, sometimes very positively and creatively.
A wonderful post, required reading for all Christians, by Joe the Peacock, on How to actually talk to Atheists. Major h/t to David Keen. From his side of the counter, Joe offers some pointers as to why most “Evangelism” is so futile. He is not taking the Mickey. He is sharing honest experience, and telling the truth:Alternatively?Using the traditional, human-spam model of witnessing, you use interruption-marketing techniques to spread the word about your faith. Because you are Christian, and because you are employing techniques that are unwelcome and unwanted, you communicate the following through your actions:
- Christians would rather be correct than listen to differing opinion.
- Christians do not respect the personal space (mentally and physically) of non-believers.
- Christians feel they are superior to non-believers because they have salvation.
- Christians would rather rely on faith as evidence than rely on fact.
Even if the conversation never ensues, it's a universal truth that action speaks louder than words. People DO take notice of those who act in accordance with a respect and love based lifestyle. They feel good when they see a person helping another person - and in fact, it makes them want to help out themselves. One need only look at the total figures of collected donations for the victims of Hurricane Katrina and the World Trade Center attacks to see this in action. Deed follows deed. Tell a person what to do, and you may get them to do it... Make them want to do it, and it'll get done, no matter what.
Ultimately, salvation has very little to do with saying the words "I believe Jesus Christ is the son of God and died for my sins." There are many, many people - some of whom hold the highest offices in the American government - who say this, and then go on to live lives that, by any account, are not at all Christ-like. How many people in your church have spent a week engaging in debauchery and other 'sinful' behaviors, only to appear in church on Sunday, ready to ask forgiveness for what they've done? And how many go right back out and do it again? How are these people better than those who live good lives and help their neighbor and further advance brotherhood and unity... But don't believe in God?
Which of these two types of people would you rather point to and say, "I taught them that?"
This is beginning to sound exactly like Matthew 21:28-31. Because it is. The human spam model, as well as being counterproductive, induces guilt in Christians who feel they ought to do it but don’t quite have the brass neck. All Christians actually have to do is be themselves and walk with an honest heart. It’s easier to reduce discipleship to checkboxes and slogans and be pushy, than to live the life. The fruits of the first approach are frustration, resentment, dissension. The fruits of the second are curiousity, acceptance and joy.
There’s a good English tradition that translations are for wusses. If talking at a non-English speaker who doesn’t understand you, all you do is speak louder. Joe points out that this is not, in fact, the case. All I would want to add is a rider that as well as applying to attempts to convert people to Evangelical Christianity, this applies to communication among Christians. Given a band of enthusiasts, you need to discern their methods, attitudes to community and processes, not just their ideas. The acid test remains that set by Jesus himself: By their fruits ye shall know them...
A rather glorious time yesterday at Eton Wick C of E Primary School, celebrating their 120th anniversary. This school is actually in the Windsor and Maidenhead LEA area, and, to continue the Dickensian theme, is emerging now from some hard times. Schools that are sandwiched between the various education systems around Slough (selective/ non-selective, 2-tier/ 3-tier) 
tend to experience life as a roller coaster ride, as successive waves of children take different paths going through. Lucy Holt, the local Vicar, has really committed herself to this school as chair of governors, and everybody is working hard in partnership to make it really fly. Yesterday there was plenty to celebrate, looking forwards as well as back over 120 years.
EW had a discouraging Ofsted a few years ago, but have used it constructively and are now doing some really excellent work, especially in reception and KS1, where I noticed the Ruth MiskinRead/Write method — a creati
ve, inclusive “synthetic” phonics-based scheme that really engages childrens’ imagimations around shapes as well as sounds. There’s some fabulous learning going on at Eton Wick, with a bold and imaginative programme of building development, including a new family centre next year on its extensive, but discrete, site.
