attack mode

I happen to have been going through a pretty stressful few weeks. I've just been pushing myself very hard with my studies, so I am always sleep-deprived and tired. Then the whole start of the university year - there's all these things to organise and get sorted. I'm working ten hours a week tutoring, which actually takes up quite a lot of time and effort and I'm beginning to wonder how I'm going to get through the whole semester.

The thing I've found the hardest is this: I am doing two English literature papers, on Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Drama and on the Twentieth Century Novel. Just about every second class the main topic of discussion is "what is silly about Christianity" or "what is hypocritical about Christians". So it's not phrased like that, quite. And I'm probably exaggerating the problem. And the lecturers are actually quite fair-minded and we're only critiquing the religion featured in the books, ostensibly. But - it does always turn into a discussion about religion in general, by students in the class, and basically I feel like every day I am under attack. I don't want to be melodramatic but I'm actually finding it really, really hard. This constant attack on the mind. Essentially I can't defend myself or I'll be told I take things too seriously, I need to be more tolerant, etc etc. The only times I have tried to join in the discussion people look at me like I'm mad. Examples:

Drama lecturer: "Where does the saying 'the truth will set you free' come from?"
Me: "The Bible."
Lecturer: "I don't know if Karl Marx would agree with you about that."
Me: "No, it's an actual verse in the Bible. 'You will know the truth and the truth will set you free'. Jesus said it."
Lecturer: "Oh. Well, I was meaning the Enlightenment." Continues.

Novel lecturer: "Why is it bad when religion and politics mix?"
Random girl, oh-so-originally: "Well, look at all the wars religion has caused, throughout history."
Me: "But if you look at Nazi Germany, it was the Church's refusal to get involved in politics that laid it open to criticism later."
Everyone looks at me strangely and then continues without a response.
[Actually I agree that religion and politics shouldn't mix but this conversation had been going on for about twenty minutes and it was irritating me!]

I am just having trouble getting out of my defensive mode. I don't know when to let things go and when to stand up for what I believe. It's very confusing.

if it's allowed...

Here is a list of some of the people I would like to meet in heaven. Assuming it's possible to meet other people in heaven, and leaving out the obvious choices of family and friends, I make this list without passing any judgement on who has gotten there; this is simply a list of dead people I would like to meet, who are not Bible characters, and since I feel half-confident most of the time that I'm going to heaven, it seems a likely place to meet them.

1) Of course, Jane Austen tops the list. This is the one person who I really, really hope that I'll get to meet one day. When I read her books I feel like I'm reading something a friend has written. She is always there, hidden behind the words, with a little smile on her face. I know that sounds very, very weird - it just is that way.

2) C. S. Lewis. This is probably not a very original choice. All I know is that I love the Narnia Chronicles and one of my most vivid ideas of heaven itself comes from the last in the series, The Last Battle. The things he has written have helped me so much, and I think he would be a very interesting person to have a chat and a beer with. Besides that, the writing group I am a member of is named after his!





3) Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. Usually known as Mendelssohn. I have no idea what Mendelssohn's religious leanings were, but when I play or listen to music of his such as 'Hear My Prayer' - especially 'Hear My Prayer' - I am absolutely certain that he understands the call of the human heart for God. It is quite possibly my favourite piece of classical music, and definitely my favourite vocal classical music. I would like to talk to him and tell him how much his music means to me. In this category, special mention goes to Handel. His Messiah has also influenced me very much, and I would love to discuss it with him.


4) Charlotte Brontë. Jane Eyre is one of my very favourite novels, and I will always feel indebted to Charlotte Brontë for creating characters so compelling despite being unattractive physically. I think it's taught me a lot about writing well. Also, I am very curious as to why she disliked Jane Austen's writing and if she ever changed her mind about that! Special mention in this category goes to William Thackeray, whom I would like to meet, and discuss Vanity Fair with.




5) Oscar Wilde. He strikes me as one of the cleverest, funniest people that have ever graced the English language with their wit. I think he must have been an electric person to be around but at the same time I don't see him as a self-obsessed or selfish man. Not that I would have any fair judgment of the case at all, but that's just the feeling one gets. I also have a lot of sympathy for him, and what became of him. I see it as very sad that someone so talented and clever became so unacceptable to other human beings.

Other special mention goes to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Joan of Arc, Martin Luther, Grieg, Bach, Agatha Christie, Georgette Heyer, Wycliffe, Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Corrie ten Boom, Gandhi, and probably many more that I cannot think of right now.

gossip

The other day I met up with a friend from church, JP, for coffee, and, as you do, we got talking. Sooner or later, she started telling me what someone #1 had told her what someone #2 had told them. A certain man at our church is rather disliked by someone #1 for saying something slightly unkind about their father, and someone #1 told my friend that this man was getting an African mail order bride who was somewhere between the ages of 12 and 20, who couldn't speak English, whom he'd never met before, and who was being paid for in cattle and sheep. I found this almost unbelievable and shocking, and just a little bit disgusting, and listened in awe.

But when I went away, I started feeling really guilty for letting JP tell me this. It was absolutely none of my business and I shouldn't have listened. Someone #1 has a bit of a knack for exaggeration and I shouldn't have even considered it to be reliable until I heard anything about this that wasn't gossip.

Well, tonight I heard from the man himself, and I came away feeling even more guilty. The woman this man might become engaged to is African, but apart from that, nothing JP told me was true. She speaks good English, she and this man met in Africa, she's definitely over 20, and she is most definitely not a mail order bride. I can't believe that the gossip I heard was so far removed from the truth. Usually gossip has some element of truth in it, but this - definitely not. It's really taught me a lesson. I guess one of the things I dislike the most about gossip is that it leaves you unable to form your own impression of a person; your first acquaintance with them will always be marred by someone else's negative words. In this case, there wasn't even an ounce of truth in what I heard. I can really see why God hates gossip so much now. From now on, I want to really try never to gossip myself, or to allow anyone to gossip to me.

persecution western-style

Okay, so last night on the news, or rather, the discussion show that follows the news, they featured an Englishman who has been writing a few articles about the racism issue raised by the famous Celebrity Big Brother scandal in Britain. One of the things he said struck me quite a lot. He said that a lot of people say that making fun of Christians on comedy shows, etc etc, is actually disguised racism. Why are we allowed to do this when we're not allowed to make fun of Muslims, Hindus, etc? His answer was that the context is different; Christians are already in a position of power and don't need to be protected. However, when Muslims or different races are attacked by the media or by popular entertainment, we need to think about the effect this might have on the way, for example, schoolkids treat children from other cultures.

To some extent, I think he makes a very good point. It is very true that Christians are seen as more normal, and living in pseudo-Christian cultures, us in the west get off quite lightly when all is said and done. That's why it's worse to lightly mock people who don't have anyone to defend them, or don't have the political or social strength to ride through such attacks with ease. Personally, I quite enjoy the satires done of Christians. Christian authors themselves have done this extremely well, such as Adrian Plass, and I don't mind non-Christians mocking us as well. Satire is an extremely good tool to expose hypocrisy in the Church, which surely we should be trying to rid ourselves off. In my opinion, we should take such mockery as a spur to make us rid ourselves of all the things they are accusing us of. Only then can we complain of persecution.

All the same, there's a point where mockery goes too far. I hate, hate, hate it when someone mocks Christ himself. I often hear non-Christians saying, it's only a joke, don't be so wound up, etc etc. It's just that they are mocking someone who doesn't deserve to be mocked. Allright, so I have to accept mockery of myself because I am not perfect. But mocking Jesus is like mocking the ideal. How can one do that successfully? Anyway, most of the satire people create about Jesus just displays their glaring ignorance of the man himself. I can't explain the way I feel about this fully. But whatever the context is - whether the Church is powerful or not - I don't like it when people mock Christ himself.

me, myself and I

[spoken by John the Baptist] The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom's voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete. He must become greater; I must become less.
The one who comes from above is above all; the one who is from the earth belongs to the earth, and speaks as one from the earth. The one who comes from heaven is above all. John 3vv29-31 NIV.

Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our "God is a consuming fire". Hebrews 12vv28-29 NIV.

Lately I've started writing down my prayers to God in what you could probably call a prayer diary. I've never been great at praying because I get distracted so easily but this is a really helpful and important step for me and I hope it lasts.

The point is, however, that I've had the unavoidable problem of seeing the sort of things I write and the sort of things I ask God. Me, me, me. Despite being so exhausted today that I had to take strong black coffee to church in a thermos, the service today reminded me of the sort of God my God is. A consuming fire who doesn't exist merely to placate me from my worries about the future and to give a big tick to the things I've already chosen to do. I don't want to be the sort of Christian anymore who is always thinking about myself. So I've had a few problems. It's not original. God hears it every day. I want to have a real, exciting, consuming relationship with God, and yet I don't want to enter into it lightly because I know what being consumed by God entails - thinking about others first. Right now I have to think out and decide what my priorities are. I have to pray and find guidance from God that doesn't, as I already mentioned, simply verify the things I want to do already. I have a few plans for the next decade or so that I haven't really run past God, and I don't want to enter so far into them that I can't extricate myself when I realise I'm not where I'm supposed to be.

I just counted and there are twenty-seven "I"s or "me"s in those last two paragraphs, not including the one at the start of this sentence. Let me rephrase it into one short sentence. I have to decide how much I want my life to be about me. In some ways it's very tempting. In other ways I already know it doesn't fulfil me or make me any happier. I will make no promises to God because he takes them very seriously but from now on I want to change.

Christmas + death

Okay, so I grant you that it's a little late to be talking about Christmas. By this time of year, everyone is heartily sick of Christmas. (And then Easter eggs creep into the shops.)

It's just that Christmas has been a little different for my family this year. My mother died two days after Christmas last year, so memories of last Christmas, which was not like Christmas at all, were bound to crop up. Around the same time last year a few people from my church died. This year, some people at church also lost family members, including a tiny newborn baby, and one of my good friends lost her father just two days before Christmas.

It always seems to shock people when things like that happen around Christmas. It just seems such a bad time. As one of the only annual, major celebrations we have, if something happens then, it sticks with us every time we celebrate in years to come. Heck, my mum's death has stuck with me every single day over the past year.

All the same, as much as I was expecting the Christmas of 2006 to be pretty bad, it just didn't turn out that way. It probably helped that we were away from home. But at the same time, there's something about so much death suddenly coming at Christmas, for myself and the people I know, that makes me see so much more clearly why it was that Jesus needed to be here. Which isn't a bad thing, when you come to think of it.

Death is not the opposite of Christmas. It is the reason for it. When I'm getting sick of corny Christmas jingles and materialism, death is the wake-up call that makes me see through to something more raw, more essential, about Christmas.

the power of Jesus

The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life - only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. - John 10vv17-18.

One day as he was teaching, Pharisees and teachers of the law, who had come from every village of Galilee and from Judea and Jerusalem, were sitting there. And the power of the Lord was present for him to heal the sick. Some men came carrying a paralytic on a mat and tried to take him into the house to lay him before Jesus. When they could not find a way to do this because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered him on his mat through the tiles into the middle of the crowd, right in front of Jesus.
When Jesus saw their faith, he said, "Friend, your sins are forgiven."
The Pharisees and the teachers of the law began thinking to themselves, "Who is this fellow who speaks blasphemy? Who can forgive sins but God alone?"
Jesus knew what they were thinking and asked, "Why are you thinking these things in your hearts? Which is easier: to say, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Get up and walk'? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins...." He said to the paralyzed man, "I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home." Immediately he stood up in front of them, took what he had been lying on and went home praising God. Everyone was amazed and gave praise to God. They were filled with awe and said, "We have seen remarkable things today." - Luke 5vv17-26

In thinking about these passages, and about other ones like the raising of Lazarus from the dead, I can't help thinking about my own response to the power of Christ. If Christ can raise dead men and cure paralytics and rise from the dead himself - how then can I question my own saved-ness? (Okay, so that's not a word!) So often I find myself doing or thinking something disgusting and wrong and I can't see how I am possibly allowed to get away with it if I ask for forgiveness. But as Christ said in the second passage quoted above, he has proved his authority, his enormous power to forgive sins, so if he says he has forgiven me, who am I to doubt it?

Not so easy to get into my head sometimes, but it helps me when I really sit down and think about it. Being forgiven goes against almost everything you learn in life in this world. It is sometimes very hard to accept a gift like it; a crucial part of the accepting of the gift is your acknowledgement of your own unworthiness. But I have a feeling if there comes a time when I never doubt my own acceptance into God's family, the power of Christ will be able to flow so much more fully that I could really do some amazing things.

My brother-in-law was telling me once about a girl he was talking to at his work. She said, "I could never be a Christian because I hate all the don't-do-this stuff." He replied (and he thinks that the Holy Spirit really must have been talking through him as he couldn't come up with this sort of stuff on his own) that it's not so much about what you don't do, it's more about what you can do when you have God in your life. I really like that story.

truth

I have been three weeks in a summer English course at uni, on New Zealand Literature. The thing that is starting to annoy me a little (or sometimes a lot) about it is that the lecturer seems to have very strong opinions on the nature of truth and to always read the poetry and prose we read in a way that affirms his ideas. It's like on one hand he's saying, there is no such thing as truth, and a whole lot of external factors influence what we think we see. Truth is relative and unknowable. On the other, the way he says things makes you feel like an anti-intellectual if you don't agree with him. Which cancels out all his ideas to begin with.

In some ways I agree with him. Humans are so blinkered by various things about us; our culture, our time period, our genetic makeup, our experiences, our emotions... We cannot trust ourselves to come up with an absolute and all-encompassing truth.

However, what he refuses to acknowledge, or allow the possibility of, is the existence of a being or beings who could reveal truth to us. This is what Christians believe. Sometimes we are accused of being blinded or hiding away from reality or being brainwashed, because we are prepared to accept some things on authority. It seems to me, however, that people, like my lecturer, who advance opinions like this are blatantly contradicting themselves. To explain: My lecturer says a) that human beings cannot possibly come up with an objective truth; but he also says b) that if we consider accepting truth from someone who can, we are not being reasonable or logical. If it's impossible, how can you discern truth at all except on authority? How can you "logically" come up with an argument against God if you have already admitted yourself incapable of seeing things properly?

I have a very high regard for logic and for reason. I do think, however, that they can only take you so far. No one is objective all the time. At some point, you have to accept someone else's judgement, or lose your mind in a morass of contradictory arguments.

Ahhh, postmodernism. What lengths we could go to in discussing it. But it is time for me to go to bed. Goodnight.

bad words

Here's a quote from Tony Campolo that got me thinking - how compassionate am I really?

"The United Nations reports that over ten thousand people starve to death each day, and most of you don't give a shit. However, what is even more tragic is that most of you are more concerned about the fact that I just said a bad word than you are about the fact that ten thousand people are going to die today."

I am a very idealistic person and I would like to think that I have compassion for the starving and attempt to do practical things to help them.

This really made me think about myself, however, because what stood out for me about the first sentence of this was not that ten thousand people die of starvation every day.

the future

One verse has been sticking in my head the last few weeks:

Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. - 1 John 3:2

1) We're going to be like him. Hooray! No more fighting, fighting, fighting against myself. No more battling myself to be the person I want to be. When I think about heaven like that I can almost start to catch a glimpse of what it perhaps means, in part, to be there, to feel that my sinful nature has no hold over me anymore, and the fighting is done with.

2) But even more interesting to me is that we are going to be like him, because we will see him as he really is. When I think about this, it makes me wonder... just setting eyes on Christ (figuratively speaking as I have no idea whether we have eyes or not in heaven) is apparently enough to stop us even considering sin ever again. In the past I've sometimes had an experience that has made me think, "Phew. I am never doing that again." But it's never been enough to stop me. The sight of Christ has got to be pretty amazing to make me become like him. The mind boggles. Also, what sort of scales are over my eyes now so that I can't see Jesus as he really is? What's stopping me?

Panic

I'm a firm believer in being absolutely honest when it comes to spiritual matters - although I may fall short on my own principle many times. So it embarrasses me to admit it, but sometimes I feel very, very scared about the future. Not just my future on this world, but I start thinking, what if I'm wrong about what happens after death? What if? What if?

Somewhere in Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis talks about this, and what he said helped me a lot. I've just been looking for the quote but can't find it, so I will paraphrase it as best I can: Everyone has moments of panic or disbelief, or a feeling of abandonment. This does not change the fact that you have made a choice and a decision to follow Christ. The moments of disbelief are a matter of moods; but the choice is a choice with a foundation.

In fact, Lewis also writes, in The Screwtape Letters:
Merely to override a human will (as His felt presence in any but the most faint and mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. ... He is prepared to do a little overriding at the beginning. He will set them off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation. But He never allows this state of affairs to last long. Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs - to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best. ... He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there, He is pleased even with their stumbles. Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks around upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.

I find these particular quotes very empowering. They are part of the reason I don't want to tell lies about my spiritual state. Sometimes it can feel, when you are with other Christians, that everyone else is a spiritual giant, in hourly communion with God, while you are a weak miserable little imposter who needs to pretend to be like them. If, however, we are more honest about our feelings, perhaps we will intimidate less people, and be able to personally face up to our feelings, and as Lewis says, still obey.

Besides, the fact that someone like C. S. Lewis, one of the most famous Christians of the twentieth century, felt like this at numerous times makes me feel a lot more relaxed about my own spiritual state.