Category Archives: Faith

Why I am a (straight) pro-gay Christian 

So, let’s start with some definitions:

  • Straight. In this context this means heterosexual. Which I definitely am. And married. But straight could also mean normal, conforming to society. I’m not sure I’m that.
  • Pro-gay. I struggle with generalising about groups of people. But I am definitely pro the gay people I’ve known. And the ones I know about from the media and those I will get to know.
  • And Christian. In some ways the hardest thing to define. It’s a word with a great deal of baggage. Maybe it’s easier to say I’m a follower of Jesus and a member of a church. The two go together and one feeds into the other but they are not exactly the same.

In some ways I wish I didn’t need to write this blog. It will upset some people I know and I’m sorry for that. But the stakes are very high. There is a battle going on for the very soul of the church in the UK. At the moment it could be lost because we are simply too polite to have an argument.

Before I answer the question I would like to clarify what seems to be the orthodox Christian position on homosexuality. Recently I had a long conversation with a well known Pastor and this was his position. It certainly won’t be every Christian’s opinion and I think it is at the extreme end of Christian thought but here it is:

  • Sex between two men or two women is always wrong under all circumstances. 
  • Gay marriage is not marriage at all. Marriage must always be between a man and a woman.
  • Homosexual sex is such a serious sin that any gay man wanting to become a Christian must either be ‘cured’ of the condition or agree first to to complete celibacy.

Our conversation went on for a long time and involved a lot of complicated theology. But as it went on I became more and more convinced that all the anti-gay arguments didn’t add up to anything. A quick google search will find them for you if you’re interested. So, why am I a pro-gay Christian?

Firstly, because God made us and He made us sexual beings. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be careful, considerate and faithful sexual beings. I’m a great believer in marriage. But he made us gay and straight and all shades in between. As Christians we should be helping people be the best they can be, whatever that is, not turning them away.

Secondly, because I know what it is to grow up feeling very different and out of place. I used to look at the popular pretty girls and think ‘How do they do that?’  Because I wasn’t popular and pretty. I was awkward, clever, plain and argumentative. It’s really hard not to fit in, especially when you are young and for that reason those who grow up gay, who often find themselves in a hostile world that they don’t fit into get my compassion not my condemnation. Jesus didn’t give many commands. He taught more using stories and also by example. But, less than 24 hours before he hung on a cross, He gave this command: Love one another as I have loved you. He loved without barriers, even thieves and prostitutes. There is no record of Jesus meeting a gay person or talking about homosexuality but I don’t know of any reason why he wouldn’t have loved them too.

And thirdly because it is simply not our place to judge. This Jesus talking again, from the Message version which is very vivid but all translations have the same sense.

““Don’t pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults— unless, of course, you want the same treatment. That critical spirit has a way of boomeranging. It’s easy to see a smudge on your neighbor’s face and be oblivious to the ugly sneer on your own. Do you have the nerve to say, ‘Let me wash your face for you,’ when your own face is distorted by contempt? It’s this whole traveling road-show mentality all over again, playing a holier-than-thou part instead of just living your part. Wipe that ugly sneer off your own face, and you might be fit to offer a washcloth to your neighbor.”

‭‭Matthew‬ ‭7:1-5‬ ‭MSG‬‬

This isn’t easy ‘liberal’ theology. This is hard Jesus theology because we love to judge. Gay people are easy to identify, easy to see but that doesn’t mean we should judge them either.

I want to end with a little thought experiment. Imagine one Sunday all the people coming to church had all their sins for the week written in brightly coloured letters hovering over their heads. Here is a selection:

  • I shouted at my kids because I’d had a stressful day at work.
  • I had a minor accident with a parked car and drove away without leaving a note.
  • I had sex with my long term boyfriend even though we are not married.
  • I spent £300 on a treat for myself and didn’t give anything to the church.

Just for this week it’s the job of the stewards to decide who gets in and who is too sinful even to enter the church. Of course it would be horrible both for the judges and the judged. When I think of our lovely stewards I think they would just let everyone in and, after reading the first few lists, would refuse to even look. And that would be the right Christian response.  It is simply not up to us to refuse entry to God’s kingdom on the basis of any sin.

I know there are a lot of Christians who share my views. I’m sure to get a lot criticism for writing this but if you agree with me please let me know.

Creating a better image?

By faith, we see the world called into existence by God’s word, what we see created by what we don’t see.

Hebrews ch. 11 v3 (Message translation)

From time to time I spend a weekend in Oxford learning theology from some of the best teachers on the planet. The last time I did this we had a session on creation. This was good and helpful but during the Q&A my mind wandered and I noticed a huge tree in the window behind the teacher. In early spring there were no leaves yet and I began to look at the way it was put together, the patterns of twigs and branches, the light behind it.

“How” I asked, “Did God make that tree? Had he created it like a sculptor, twig by twig. Or is there some sort of beech tree template? Or is it just the result of blind evolution?”

To give them their due they took the question seriously. But it soon became clear that there was no theology that explains how the natural world is put together, no theology of beauty. Maybe we’ve just never needed one before. Until recently, it was just incredibly hard to reproduce an image. To reach more than a few people took huge amounts of time and money. But now we are bombarded with images and almost all of these are photos. Photos seem to accurately reflect what we see but they hardly ever do. Mostly, they present us with a flat, frozen version of reality.

Recently, me and my son visited an exhibition of modern portraits. One of the things that really struck me was how little colour was in most of them. Although they were painted with incredible skill they had the same look as most photos, a bit flat and colourless. A few of them looked like real paintings and it was one of these that won the competition.

And it seems to me we do need a theology of beauty, of what it means to see the world. But I’m not sure this needs to be written down. Maybe it just needs to be painted. As the writer of Hebrews says – what we see created by what we don’t see.

We need to create better image.

More quiet time at the pond…

It’s been a hard week, with plenty of pressure at work so today I went back to the pond to find some peace. I wasn’t the only one. There were plenty of people around enjoying the afternoon sunshine. 

Painting on the iPad is very different from real painting and it could take a while to find a style, but I’m enjoying the experimentation.

Finding quiet time…

One of the things we are looking at in our church is ‘quiet time’. Traditionally this means reading the Bible, with a study guide for a period each day. With my new iPad I found my own quiet time sitting by the pond in Priory Park. There was a lot going on in the park, a lot of people coming and going for a community fair, but it all melted away as I looked at the light on the pond and trees. 

In this period of uncertainty it’s more important than ever to find some quiet time, however we do it. I’m all in favour of Bible study but I may just be going back to the pond to do another painting.

Painting and the missing soul

Alice 0316

Two quite significant things have happened to me in the last two weeks. The first was that I finished this painting. Its difficult to be completely happy with any portrait, there is always something more that can be done. But I feel I have turned a corner and, finally, I’ve found a style that makes sense.

The second thing is that I spent a long weekend in Oxford studying Christian Apologetics (which is just a fancy way of saying modern theology) and I came away with a new book by Alister McGrath – ‘Inventing the Universe’. Its rather a grand title and I’m not sure that the book entirely lives up to its promise. But it had some really interesting thoughts about the soul. He says:

Modern neuroscience has no place for the idea of a ‘soul’, understood as some immaterial part of the body. Neither does the Christian Bible. The ‘soul-body’ dualism lives on in popular culture, both secular and Christian. Yet the best view – found in both contemporary neuroscience and Christian Theology – is to think of humanity as a physical unity: a single body, not a ‘body and soul’

I had always suspected that this was the case and I quite like the idea that the soul may have gone missing. It makes a lot more sense of the world we actually live in.

Lent Diary: Gnosticism and Valentine’s day.

IMG_0748

People don’t usually give me books. This is a shame because, when they do, I usually read them. So, with a box of chocolates out of the question this Valentines, I was pleased to see a couple of book shaped presents on the table this morning. One of them was ‘Creation, Power and Truth’ by Tom Wright, subtitled ‘The Gospel in a world of cultural confusion’. I’m sure I will come back to this in future posts but for now I’m going to focus on one word: Gnosticism.

So, what is Gnosticism? The root of this word is the Greek word for knowledge, gnosis. Gnosticism is the idea that there is a secret knowledge, that, once known will bring wisdom and enlightenment. Inherent in this idea is also that the physical world we live in, including our own bodies, is somehow inferior to the pure life of the intellect. Tom Wright puts this very well:

This leaves you with what the ancient Gnostics were offering: a religion of self-discovery in which one acquires the ‘knowledge’ or gnosis, that one is already a spark of light, and thereby escape from the wicked world of space, time and matter, and enjoy a private and detached spirituality in the present and an escapist heaven hereafter, relating not the wicked creator God, the God of Israel, but to some quite different and higher deity.

I think this is what most people think they want. In our modern age the high priests are often scientists. There is an unspoken idea that people such as Stephen Hawking ‘know the truth’. The real truth is, of course, that most of us know something that other people don’t (and I’m never going to understand modern physics) but it doesn’t make us better or happier or wiser. Jesus in contrast offers us ‘Shalom’. This word is often translated as ‘peace’ which is not wrong but it also means wholeness and health, not just for the individual but for the community and for the world of trees, hills and houses. Which brings me back to our Valentine’s dinner.

Every now and then our Church Hall becomes a ‘Pop up restaurant’. On Saturday night it was transformed by candles and roses. Some members of the congregation were diners, like ourselves and others were waiters or cooks. One family took on the onerous task of creating and serving cocktails (the ‘St Mary’s Sunrise’ was both full of sugar and very alcoholic!). Although we were sitting as a couple our romantic evening was full of other people stopping to talk to us, and we got up and wandered as well. We brought our own wine and then poured a glass for some of the ‘staff’.

There was an air of joyful play acting about the whole evening but, just to put it in context, the same hall had been used at lunchtime to feed homeless and disadvantaged people and earlier for a men’s breakfast. This wasn’t clever or knowing. It certainly wasn’t ‘cool’ but it was real and warm and full of ‘Shalom’.

 

 

Pilgrimage reflection – Boxes, mindfulness and what Jesus can give to the world.

First a bit of background for those who don’t know. Last week a group of us from our church spent 5 days walking from Reigate to Winchester (about 75 miles). Before you ask (everyone has) this was pilgrimage for softies. We stayed in hotels and had our luggage taken for us. But, as I hadn’t done nearly as much training as last year it was physically a lot tougher.

One of the great things about a pilgrimage is it re-connects the spiritual and physical in a very real way. It also gives some space to consider and reflect. On the fourth evening we stayed in a retreat centre owned by the diocese of Winchester. This meant we had lots of room and also access to a quiet chapel. On this evening we were asked to take some paper and draw boxes on it. In each box we had to draw or write something which represented a part of our life. We then put these papers on the altar and offered them to God. The drawings I did are below:

Boxes

But drawing these pictures, with the definite lines between them, made me start thinking about the way I live my life. If I were to draw this as an accurate representation it would be a mess. The lines would be blurred; each box would seep into the other. Some boxes would be superimposed apon another one like an old ‘double exposed’ film. So, for instance, while I’m watching TV I’m thinking I ought to be cooking. While I’m praying I think how I’d like to be reading a novel. While I’m writing a blog post I’m thinking how I ought to be doing the housework. And I don’t think God wants me to live like this, not anymore.

This afternoon I was chatting with my daughter and she said that she was struggling with one of her skating moves. ‘I can’t do it full-heartedly,’ she said. Of course it was the wrong word. But I like it. I want to live full-heartedly. Each day on the pilgrimage came with joys and difficulties. On two days I was navigating which meant I also had to make sure everyone was keeping up and going in the right direction. Also, because I wasn’t very fit it was tiring at times. But there was great joy both in the beautiful landscape, being with my fellow pilgrims and walking with God. Living in the moment I felt I was really walking with God.

Towards the beginning of the walk we stopped at St Martha’s church. This is a small, ancient church set high on the downs. After spending some time inside the church we had some time to explore the churchyard before we set off again. So I got my paints out and painted this quick sketch over the valley:

From St Martha's Hill

And I didn’t ask permission. I didn’t worry about what other people were doing and while I was doing this I was completely lost in the moment. Enjoying the beauty of the view and being able to put it into paint.

Two themes kept on coming up during the conversations on the pilgrimage – mindfulness and evangelism. Mindfulness is much in fashion at the moment. For non-Christians it means filling your mind wholly with your immediate experience and letting worry and anxiety slip away. This could be your own breathing, a beautiful tree or some great wise saying. This is not a bad thing and, in this sense, both walking and painting are great mindful experiences. The rhythm of walking, especially day after day, soothes the mind. Moving gradually through a changing landscape fills the mind with interesting things at a pace it can cope with. Painting a scene in front of you is wholly absorbing, there is simply no room for anything else while you are doing it.

But, for a Christian, mindfulness has a much deeper purpose. By calming the mind and filling it with good things we are allowing God to speak to us. We may sometimes hear God’s voice directly but often it is the good things themselves, the beauty of the landscape, the conversation of friends, which will speak just as clearly. I am reminded of Jesus’ story about the seed:

“A farmer went out to sow his seed. Some of it fell on the road; it was tramped down and the birds ate it. Other seed fell in the gravel; it sprouted, but withered because it didn’t have good roots. Other seed fell in the weeds; the weeds grew with it and strangled it. Other seed fell in rich earth and produced a bumper crop”

Our minds are rich earth indeed. But if they are full of the weeds of worry then nothing will grow in them. But if we are growing and walking with God then we can do what we like. Day by day, minute by minute we can choose what we do and it will be the right thing.

So there are many gifts Jesus can offer to the world and to us. Kindness, justice and compassion are just some of them. But, and it seems to me that the world needs this more than anything, the greatest gift is peace. Peace in the world must start with peace in our hearts.  In the slow tramp of feet, the landscape opening up and closing in, the ever changing conversations and the moments of stillness I began to find that peace. It still seems like a fragile thing but, even so, I pass on the timeless greeting:

Peace be with you

 

Spring cleaning, Roses and our wonderful brains

Roses

Inspired by my new toy, A Steam Cleaner, I did some spring cleaning yesterday. These roses looked wonderful in the sunlight and steam.

But back to my books…

I’ve finished reading ‘Chaos’. It ends with some thoughts on the most wonderful natural system of all: our own bodies. Most of the focus at the time this book was published (1987) was on the functioning of the heart. It was known even then that a jolt of electricity could reset the rhythm of the heart when it was running out of control. This kind of rough treatment has also been tried on the brain and sometimes even seems to work, but can also result in damage.

One of the difficulties of thinking about the mind in a Christian context is our tendency to split it into several separate entities. First there is the ‘mind’: A complex computing engine designed to figure out logical stuff. Then there is the ‘soul’ which deals with emotions and spiritual stuff. Both of these are somehow superimposed, but not quite part of, the ‘brain’ which is a wobbling mass of nerves and chemicals.

But Chaos theory gives us another way of understanding the mind. Experiments in artificial intelligence created:

… points of stability mixed with instability, and regions with changeable boundaries. Their fractal structure offered the kind of infinitely self-referential structure that seems so central to the mind’s ability to bloom with ideas, decisions, emotions and all the other artifacts of consciousness.

If we think of the brain as only a sophisticated computer then we have to see the spiritual side of ourselves as separate and non-physical. But if we see it as an almost infinitely complex system, like the weather, then all of who we are can be incorporated into our real, physical brains.

Once we think like this we can have a much more holistic approach to spiritual, mental and physical health. We can see the rhythm of a walk as a way of bringing us closer to the rhythm of God’s creation. We can see intense experiences of the Holy Spirit as being a way of resetting our minds into a better track – like defibrillating a heart. Every action, even spring cleaning, and every sight, like a bunch of roses, becomes part of the pattern of our minds.

 

Sensitive Dependence on Initial conditions – How I started being a Christian.

Chaos Book

Evangelism seems a thankless task. All those books written to convince us that God is real and Jesus is important. All those talks. Then a book comes along which seems to have nothing to do with God and it flicks a switch and makes it possible to believe in God after all. The picture here is of that actual book (Chaos, by James Gleick). It’s a bit mouldy and bent out of shape. It’s a great book and I would recommend it but, unless you are also a computer geek with an art degree it probably won’t change your life.

So what is Chaos? What it is not is complete disorder. As Gleick says:

Truly random data remains spread out in an undefined mess. But Chaos – deterministic and patterned – pulls the data into visible shapes. Of all the possible pathways of disorder, nature favours just a few.

But it is not straight lines and geometric shapes either. Go for a walk and look at the clouds. They are all different yet we know they form a pattern. That pattern can be modelled or represented using mathematics and so can the trees and the grass. This is how modern animators make their films look so real, using ‘fractal geometry’. This kind of geometry can be very complex but the principle is fairly simple. You take a function (often including an ‘imaginary’ number like the square root of minus 1) and run it over and over again for each spot on the graph, each time feeding back the result of the previous calculation. Do this thousands of times and, depending on where the result ends up, colour your spot a different colour.

mandlebrot set
This image is the output of such a process called a Mandlebrot set. One of the interesting things about this kind of maths is that, even if you do exactly the same maths, if you change your starting point very slightly (say by 0.00001) the results can be very different. This has become known as the ‘Butterfly Effect’ (because a butterfly flapping its wings in China can cause a hurricane in the USA) or ‘Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions’.

For me, that was the switch. I had been struggling to see what role God could have in the world. Then I had the idea that God was nudging the world subtly by changing the Initial Conditions, setting it off in a different direction every now and then. It was a very small role for God indeed and my conception of God’s role in the natural world has grown and grown until I feel we are literally surrounded and kept alive by the wonder of His ever changing world, but that is how I started being a Christian.

Is God playing with our world?

 

When I was a girl I loved to do pottery. At school we had a large pottery studio and one project we were given was to create a ‘Noah’s Ark’. I built the Ark and the people then lots of animals. There were elephants, mice (all more of less the same size!), pigs and even snakes. I was very proud of my ark. The animals could line up, go inside or sit on top. I coloured and glazed the Ark and the animals. Then it was finished. For a while it was displayed on a shelf in the house and then put in a cupboard. After about 40 years I’m sure someone has thrown it away but it could still be sitting in a cupboard, exactly the same,  just a bit dusty.

I’m telling this story because it seems this is how people think God has created the world. A set of objects: some big, some small that sit around much the same for ever and ever. But, when we look closely, this isn’t the case. Everything is in movement and changing. I took this little video of a fire: there are patterns and ripples within the flames. And the fire has a life, a beginning and end.

Hawthorn Bush

Our perception of time is quite fast so many things, like plants and mountains seem still to us. But if you were to take a frame a day of this hawthorn bush you would be able to see it moving and changing. There would be a cycle of leaves and fruit but also a slower cycle of twigs growing and the wind on the downs changing its shape.
So, in answer to my question: God is playing with our world. Sometimes you can almost feel the joy of His play from the clouds forming to the mountains creaking through geological time. In the next few weeks I would like to share some of my thoughts on what He might be doing. I hope you will stay with me.