Monday, March 30, 2015

On not going to church


On Sunday mornings as I take a leisurely drive to the library, usually, or perhaps to the supermarket in Warkworth, I see all these people towing their boats or otherwise enjoying themselves who, I think by some ancient reflex, should really be at church.  The church carparks around here are still reasonably full but not overflowing except at very popular funerals.  Weddings don’t seem to happen in church any more – they have to be at a beach or a winery with marquees, wind and rain, purple wedding decor and endless sentimental kitsch. 

I at least have honourable reasons for not being at church.  I went, for more than half a lifetime.  I led it, studied for it, was ordained to do it, planned its events, officiated at it, administrated it, celebrated it, defended it, thought it through, prayed for it, even loved it.  Then I stopped.  The “Why?” is another story.  Quite suddenly, not going to church seemed the right course to follow.

Absenting oneself thoughtfully from church eventually lends you perspective.  You look back on it all, having discovered that there is indeed life beyond.  It is not the life of those who have never been to church or cared for any of it.  It is the life of someone who has departed from the church, but never for an instant from Christ, his teachings, his presence.  In my case at any rate, taking leave of the church has been a vital enhancement to faith and to life.

Then why, sometimes, do I revisit briefly?  I show up at the local Anglican church at Christmas and Easter, drawn by the meanings of these high seasons – at their 8 am Eucharist, because I think I will be spared noise and chatter and identification… and a sermon.  But it turns out, I am denied all that.  Chatter reigns at 8 am.  And what passes for a sermon these days… ye gods.  Good people, no doubt, no pretensions, telling it as they see it.  I understand all that.  And I also realise that I sound elitist… but what I am looking for isn’t happening in the local parish church, and perhaps I shouldn’t expect it.

What is it?  A depth, a thoughtfulness, a silence.  An affinity with pain and with truth and love.  An absence of fear.  A scholarly and honest approach to the Bible.  An ability by teachers to approximate to the simplicity Jesus showed in teaching, yet without superstition and credulity.  I think it is entirely too much to hope for. 

So I don’t go.  If I do go, I come home wishing I hadn’t – yet always appreciating those who are still immersed in all this, doing their best, continuing to believe in it, thinking it only has to be reformed… somehow.

The usual route of reform seems to be via doing what the church does best, better.  Food, for instance.  In my day we had policies about providing simple food at parish eating occasions including Sunday morning teas.  That meant biscuits and tea and (execrable) coffee.  On high festivals or when some had a 90th birthday we might have muffins or Easter buns.  People had homes to eat in.

Now the local church has committees planning the food.  There are grand food occasions, and orders of the day go out – who brings what, savouries, strawberries, salads… ye gods.  I don’t find much of this in the Sermon on the Mount.  This kind of church is hospitable, it is mildly (but not greatly) outgoing, it includes good people – and it is utterly not for me.  It is a worthy community with a list of good works, and the country and the suburbs would certainly be poorer without these local churches.  They have invented something called Messy Church which brings in children and their mums to hear and enact Bible truths. 

Writing it thus far has made me realise that I do have some personal guilt about having departed the church.  But the next thought always is that I know I couldn’t bear it any more. 

The local churches that are thriving are the ones with cringe-making music and doctrine, where nothing must ever be “boring”, where there is a clear and simple moral and doctrinal code to follow based on naïve biblicism.  They have “pastors” who have never had serious or rigorous biblical or theological training, who confuse leadership with power, drama and loud-mouthedness with honest teaching, in whom humility is either absent or scarcely believable.  Bluntly, I do not know how anyone with intelligence can survive such a context for worship and growth in faith.

Then there is the question whether I should still pitch in with one of the sensible local causes, of whatever denomination, and try to lend whatever I might have to offer…  Oh, no…!  I wouldn’t last three weeks.  I find myself wondering how many of us there are, here and there, who simply have no church they can cordially attend, look forward to each week, take part in, grow within…  How many?

Some people of my acquaintance have labelled themselves Progressive Christians.  They have websites and blogs, and teachers who have written some great stuff which I have read.   Am I a Progressive Christian?  I don’t know what that expression means.  These people are often greatly preoccupied with what they can’t believe.  They have a need to reinterpret resurrection and just about everything else mysterious.  No, I am not a Progressive Christian.  I am content with the apostolic faith and the creeds and the bible, receiving it all as a wonderful and mysterious vehicle of love and grace.  I am content to be the recipient of love, and the bearer of unanswered questions, and the child of grace.  Is that a lazy mind?  Perhaps.  But it sure beats puzzling and cogitating, battling and bloody arguing. 

No, I don’t go to church.  It is at the same time a loss and a gain, and a puzzle.  I am 80 years old.  At that age you can do what you choose.

(30.03.2015)

 

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

A bit of biffo


Where does one start, about violence?  With a rhetorical question like that, I guess.  I will be told that violence is a primeval, necessary, ineradicable part of the human condition and vital for survival.  And indeed I have to admit that living intentionally and mindfully without violence, as I try to do, is rather the exception.  It is seen as a curiosity.

In my octogenarian years I have come to the view that human society reels and staggers from the effects of testosterone.  We can start with contact sport – although I immediately interpose that I have just read an article about chess, in the Guardian, in which the writer, who is preparing a book about championship chess, not a team sport, admits that the object of chess is bloody, to destroy your opponent.  The aim in a friendly game down at the pub is the same, to defeat someone else. 

The language in which sports are now reported reflects all this.  Opponents were smashed, destroyed, annihilated, cut down…  There is much more by way of example, but I can’t bring myself to read sports reports to garner more examples of the violent speech which now seems standard.

Knowing nothing as I do about the rules and practice of team sports such as rugby, league, netball, hockey, even cricket, it seems to me that aggression and violence, proscribed by gentlemanly rules in my youth, are now not only winked at but expected and enjoyed.  Violence in contact sports now regularly spills over into the off-field misbehaviour of sporting icons and role-models, fuelled by alcohol and drugs, resulting in drunken brawls and attacks on women.  Much of it is routinely excused one way or another.  “Letting off steam” covers a multitude of sins.

The world looks on in dismay and disgust as hordes of travelling team supporters from the UK or Australia typically, foul-mouthed and ignorant, stalk the streets and football venues in other lands, hurling abuse and urinating their contempt for decency. 

Most of this however is child’s play compared to what I view with horror each day on Al Jazeera, BBC or CNN.  How many tens of thousands of young men, testosterone flowing freely, are currently rampaging around Egypt, Libya, Nigeria, Chad, Mali, Tunisia, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon… Ukraine… to name a few places?   What you need are battle fatigues, a Toyota ute with some kind of ordnance mounted on the back, and an assault weapon in your hand which you brandish while you shout what in a politer age we called epithets. 

Presumably all these blokes believe they are in some righteous cause.  Whatever their problems, violence is apparently the way to fix it.  They shoot you.  They believe Allah is pleased.  Some of them commit atrocities – I forced myself to watch the unedited video of the beheading of 20 Coptic Christians on a beach in Libya.  I have no words to compass my disgust.  Violence was bringing its own deep satisfactions for these people.  Testosterone and power on one side, humiliation and pain on the other. 

Now the victims of male violence include vast camps of hopelessness, women and children rendered homeless, terrorised, sent wandering and starving. 

Back at home, here where I live in this peaceful land, there are still children and babies brought to hospital with smashed heads or broken arms or ribs.  Women still get attacked at home, injured and raped.  Testosterone rules, along with beer and sport and the mate culture.  One aspect of all this less often told is the violence of the Pacific Island culture.  The ranks will close to conceal women who have been thrashed.  It is considered normal and necessary for children to be whipped.

I have no solutions, except personally to forswear violence in action and speech.   If violent attitudes at least are an addiction, then help may be needed.  But it can be done.  I think we can live without violence.