T Childs Christianity Blog

Sunday, 28 July 2013

In From the Storm

It sometimes seems as if all of my life I have been running from something, but if you asked me what exactly, I really couldn’t tell you. At many times I have felt troubled, disappointed, let down by so many people and constantly experiencing inevitably depressing things. I mean that I have been so used to failing at things that it has become almost part of my character sadly. There have been things in my past that have affected me, perhaps more than I realise, and yet I had a pretty happy and peaceful childhood for the most part.

Alongside all of this, I have a calling on my life from God and at times I have heeded that call and at many other times I just haven’t, it is as simple as that. I have never lived as a regular Christian because I was not churched and nor do I come from a Christian background or community and have never been to a church as a part of a believing group so it has just been me and God.

Sometimes, and at the moment, it seems I have been on the end of emotional distress that isn’t helped by other negative things in my life. I pray, and it feels like I am not heard. So I sulk at God, and won’t talk to Him because He seems not to answer me. Then I feel abandoned, storm tossed, and thoroughly miserable. Not a great place to be, to be honest.

Compared to some people, I haven’t had a terrible life, and perhaps compared to others I have suffered badly at times. There are issues in my life that need dealing with, anger issues, issues of low self-worth and issues from the past that keep coming up to haunt me. I said things to people that I now bitterly regret and did things, few of real evil intent, that I now regret also. However, there are no human beings out there who I harmed in any real way, no one who would bear me ill will for anything I have done, just want to make that clear. It’s mostly an accumulation of things from the past that trouble me.

"In From The Storm" (by Jimi Hendrix)

Well i, I just came back today...
I just came back from the storm.
Yeah!
I said: "i just came back, baby...
I just came back from the storm.
Yeah, from the storm.
Well, I didn't know it then,
But I was sufferin', sufferin'
For my love to keep me warm.
It was so cold and lonely, yeah.
The wind 'n' cryin' blue rain
Were tearing me up.
It was so cold and lonely.
The crying blue rain was tearing me up.
Oh, tearing me up.
I wanna thank you my sweet darling
For digging in the mud and picking me up.
Thank you so much!

It was a terrible rain that was burning my eyes.
......
It was you my love who brought me in.
I love you so much,
I'll never stray from you again.
Hey!

I just came back baby.
I just came back to get my baby on her way.
Yeah, yeah.

‘On your own day of ordeal God will remember you: like frost in sunshine, your sins will melt away.’ (Ecclesiasticus / Sirach 3:15 NJB)

Saturday, 20 July 2013

The Whole System is Inherently Unjust

It’s obvious that ordinary people all over the world are now saying that the extreme system of capitalism we live under is not working for the many but actually the few. I’m not being provocative here nor trying to stir up trouble or attack individuals either, just being honest and nothing more. It is as if we are entering a new age, a Neo-Feudalism where a relative few own and control everything and everyone else has to put up and shut up; and it is not working and will cause problems now and in the near future and in the future to come.

Let’s look at the problems of overt capitalism without any concern for other people and without some form of social justice or even just some common sense. Firstly, it is solely about profit, large profit, and nothing else really matters other than that. Secondly, it is often harshly exploitative of everyone involved, except a few at the top and a slightly bigger minority in the middle. Thirdly, it encourages through the profit motive the practise of paying low wages at the bottom and trying to get as much for products as possible. Fourthly, often the very wealthiest people and the global corporations, the one who could afford to pay the most, are actually paying the least in tax. That alone should be enough for people to think about. This is just on a simple human greed level.

We then come to the moral issue, the one that often seems to be ignored or brushed under the carpet. When people are utterly selfish and completely obsessed by greed and being wealthy at all and any cost, it often almost always impacts on everyone else, in some way or other. People see that justice and compassion, consideration and fairplay are for losers and nice people, and that being aggressive, selfish, arrogant, ruthlessly ambitious, cavalier about other people and overly greedy benefits a person far more in the end. Being greedy means that wealth is concentrated more and more in fewer and fewer hands and gives less and less people a chance to benefit from that wealth. It also creates more and more people who think that the only way to get on is to be as ruthless as those who are rich, so creating more inequity and more reasons to exploit other people. ‘We brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it; but as long as we have food and clothing, we shall be content with that. People who long to be rich are a prey to trial; they get trapped into all sorts of foolish and harmful ambitions which plunge people into ruin and destruction. The love of money is the root of all evils' and there are some who, pursuing it, have wandered away from the faith and so given their souls any number of fatal wounds.’ (1 Timothy 6:7-10 NJB)

Some people have abandoned any moral or decent behaviour, even Christians who put greed and selfish ruthless ambition, lose sight of anything that is real and get caught up in what is worldly and also get caught up in competition with other people to have the most money, the biggest business, the biggest and most expensive house, the most expensive car, the holiday home, all the most expensive things and the trappings that comes with having lots of money. Then what? Once you have millions, once money becomes in a sense immaterial, where do you go then, what do you do and what can actually add anything to your life when you have everything you want? Then it just becomes a monopoly game where a person just has and wants more and more for no good reason, and all the double standards and unfairness meted out to poor people that there is no money for fair wages, no money in some wealthy countries for even basic health care, no decent chances for promotion and constant attempts to belittle anyone who in any way who tries to make things better for poorer people at the bottom, with words like ‘Communist’ or ‘Socialist’ or ‘not realistic’ or anything else which simply closes the debate and continues to justify greed and injustice in the very economic system that underpins the West and now most of the world. Let’s all stop hiding behind political ideology, let’s stop using religion to justify somehow selfishness or the Prosperity Gospel or anything which is supposed to be about love for other people and twisting it into a false gospel that has no real value when examined and is lacking in any truth.

I know that anyone who reads this who is poor and struggling, or who is finding it hard to get a reasonable paying job or paying their mortgage or just finding that bills and the cost of living seem to keep rising whilst wages and any kind of income seems to get less and less will probably agree with all I’ve said, whereas those who are rich, especially those who make their money not to help other people or even partially for some altruistic reason, but merely to be as rich as can be regardless of how they get it, will probably dismiss all I’ve said. However, if God has a calling on your life, or you have any ounce of conscience, especially the former, injustice has a way of coming back on you one way or the other. And abandoning God for greed may have very serious, if unforeseen, consequences.

What is the answer? For all of us to stop being greedy! To stop buying into the culture that constantly bombards us with the newest phone, or the newest TV, or the newest trainers (sneakers) or the newest home entertainment system and so on. To stop living on credit and beyond our means. To accept that as you and I have a right to be ambitious for better lives, that also everybody else does too and so we should not endeavour to walk over other people or dismiss their rights to a better life while we get ours. For people to pay their taxes like good citizens. For Christians and good people everywhere to learn to be content with what they have and stop worrying about what they haven’t got, if basic needs are met. ‘I do not say this because I have lacked anything; I have learnt to manage with whatever I have. I know how to live modestly, and I know how to live luxuriously too: in every way now I have mastered the secret of all conditions: full stomach and empty stomach, plenty and poverty.’ (Philippians 4:11-12 NJB)

Sunday, 7 July 2013

What’s It All About?

For the last few years I have struggled against so many things, and usually nothing I do has turned out right. I try to do something, and somehow I always fall flat on my face. Whatever it is I want to do, find time to write my books, work on my dissertation, find a church, be a more pro-active Christian, find someone to fall in love with, with the exception of giving up drinking alcohol, has failed disastrously. It has on many occasions left me feeling down and even depressed, even though within myself I am generally an optimistic sort of bloke. That seems like a contradiction I know, and it is strange to have two sides to my character but I think many people are the same as well. We cannot wallow in misery, it doesn’t do any real good but sometimes we have to accept that life doesn’t always go to plan, or in my case it rarely if ever goes to plan.

So, what’s it all about? It all must amount to something, right, or what’s the point of anything if nothing means anything after all? It’s all just pissing against the wind, and no matter what we do good or bad has any real meaning anyway. We are told in the Bible that God wants us to have peace, joy, happiness, contentment and abundant living among many other good things, and yet life, all life is suffering, all life is pain and all life is sadness, or seems to be at times. We are born innocent and free into the world, and somehow we are stained from the world and all its evil and vices, all its temptations and complications, by all its contradictions and angriness. When all the stories we are told as kids are about being kind and respectful, being considerate and caring, and that when we are, nice things will happen to us, we grow up and realise it was a load of crap quite frankly. We see plainly in the world that greed, selfishness, corruption and a lack of morals and compassion takes a person far further than a nice person with all these qualities, and that nice people get walked over and are often side-lined and ignored. And of course when we are sometimes angry, confused and even not happy from time to time, we have to pretend otherwise don’t we, I know I do all the time. Someone asks ‘how are you’ even just in politeness, and we repeat almost by default ‘oh fine’ even when we might be anything but. But who wants to put their condition or suffering on someone else, or get someone offering well-meaning but often trite and unhelpful advice. And we don’t to upset even our families or close friends do we, no matter what hell or suffering we might be going through?

What’s the answer, if there is any that is? ‘Wisely I have applied myself to investigation and exploration of everything that happens under heaven. What a wearisome task God has given humanity to keep us busy! I have seen everything that is done under the sun: how futile it all is, mere chasing after the wind!’ (Ecclesiastes 1:13-14 NJB) Even the writer here, whoever he (or she) was, seems to be fed up with everything, fed up with anything and if not in outright despair is just questioning everything and dismissing all human activity as somehow pointless. Obviously, whoever wrote this was feeling down or extremely cynical at the same, but it has to be said that it is at least radically honest, which is refreshing when so many people, even many Christians, seem to think that the Bible is filled with folk tales and well-meaning platitudes of all kinds. Hasn’t everyone felt like this at some point? I seem to feel like it about ten times a day, but there you go.

This society that teaches us through various means to be ambitious, individualistic, achieving and always striving may in fact be the very reason why so many of us, often in the midst of plenty, are unhappy or deeply frustrated in some way. Are these desires, these ambitions, things we really want, or are they brainwashed into us, to make us slaves to power, wealth, social status, having the ‘best’ of everything or at least slaves to the attainment of these things? And because we are slaves, or can be, to these and many other things, we can be controlled, manipulated, told that if we work hard or plan or scheme we too can join the beautiful people and live in a mansion with a swimming pool and the expensive car in the drive and the millions in the bank; if only we accept hardship and struggle and low wages for the time being. It’s all a trap, an illusion, and although I am not saying that we shouldn’t better ourselves and be ambitious for better lives, we should really think about what we do want rather than buying into something simply because it’s expected of us or just because someone else has got what we think we should want or have. It is a big mistake to covet what other people have, simply because we don’t know how they got their wealth and success and also because just because someone is wealthy and successful and has all the trappings of a materially successful life, it is no guarantee at all of being happy. Of course they could be happy as well! Don’t people like that piss you off?!

Solomon had everything in terms of worldly wealth, or it’s reputed that he did anyway, and when asked by God what he wanted, he asked for wisdom, quite wisely, and God made him the wisest man on earth and blessed him with power and vast riches too. He also had seven hundred wives and three hundred mistresses as well, so if he staggered home from the pub and was feeling, shall we say, frisky, there was always someone he could turn to for some fun! But, some men might say that one wife is enough and I am certain that many women would say the same too. I mean having one wife nagging at you would be enough for most people, but having seven hundred on your case complaining you hadn’t washed the dishes again when you’d promised to, or to not go down the pub with your mates and come home singing again and pee on the front door, or because you hadn’t put the cat out before going to bed; sheesh, any benefits of having one thousand women would soon disappear then wouldn’t they?! And as for what program to watch on the TV?! Well, I certainly think that old Solomon must have had a shed near his palace where he could get away from them all and just get some peace.

When we are going through severe emotional distress, we should ask God into the situation and spend some time looking at scripture and spend some time asking God in prayer for help. That’s all I can do at the moment anyway.

Saturday, 29 June 2013

Forgiveness, Redemption & Reconciliation

There has been so much suffering in the world, for many thousands of years and for many reasons. Some of it was because families, tribes, nations and even empires clashed with the resulting horror, bloodshed and brutality that always usually ensued. Some of it was, sadly, ‘religious’ in nature, people using religions to gain power over other people, gain wealth, land, resources, justify oppression and ruthless exploitation, slavery and the conquests of other countries, even ‘holy’ wars and crusades, and many other things lost or basically forgotten in the mists of time. I think we need as Christians especially to accept that European empires used the notion of being godly, to conquer other vast territories all over the world, and rather ironically do very ungodly things to achieve worldly ambitions. Was the conquest of New Spain or the conquests of the British Empire really done for the glory of God, or was it about greed, selfish ambition, a desire for land, gold, slaves and women and to make vast profits along the way? Do I really need to have that answered? There are very specific arguments in Britain about the nature of empire; those whose ancestors were crushed in some way or ruthlessly exploited have one story to tell, and those whose ancestors profited or who made good in the British Empire have another story to tell, quite understandably perhaps. Not all people from Britain who went out to the far flung corners of the empire were going specifically to exploit people and many people were actually going to escape living in poverty in Britain and for better opportunities in another country, but those who made vast profits in the slave trade, the plantation system all over the empire and later the factory system in the Industrial Revolution in late 18^th century, and throughout the 19^th century, England were making vast profits through the ruthless exploitation of people who were generally paid so little and worked so hard that many of them had very short and very brutish lives, and if they lived they were worked very hard and paid generally a pittance.

Of course, as well as harsh realities, there seemed to be a necessity, especially throughout the 19^th century, of ‘justifying’ the ruthless exploitation of people and the grabbing of land and wealth and resources, so there developed the idea that white Europeans, of a certain class at least, were superior to the poorer classes of Europeans and were certainly superior to Africans and Indians and other peoples around the world, particularly those with darker skin. In effect, adding insult to injury. Our whole modern world, and indeed global culture and trade and ideas of all kinds, come out of the ideas and practises of Europeans and European ambitions and global colonialism for the last five centuries and certainly for the last two hundred and fifty years at least. Some British people, Americans, South Africans, Australians and others are very reluctant to hear this, and some even get bitterly angry that anyone should even mention it, but it has to be mentioned and it has to be talked about, like so many other things that have been, sometimes very carefully and purposefully, brushed under the carpet. When we talk about these things we come to terms with them, and through talking about them we can seek forgiveness, redemption and reconciliation.

For Irish people, Jewish people and Black people, these notions of European superiority and European global ambitions have had very bitter, poignant and real consequences, of which for the most part I don’t have to go over here. My own story alone, as I wrote about in a recent post, is of having Irish blood, and Welsh blood too, even a little Scots for good measure, and of course after that, goodness knows what! But we as a family grew up in poverty very probably because my ancestors on one side of the family at least also grew up in poverty too. It can sometimes be a long chain of poverty that is very hard to break, which is why I try never to judge someone who is struggling in some way, or who has issues with drink or drugs or even if they are in and out of jail for that matter. We never know what someone else is going through, or has gone through, so we should never judge for that reason alone. Suffice to say, many Jews, black people and Irish people feel angry at the way their ancestors were treated in the past; we all know about the Holocaust, we all know about the Slave Trade and most people are aware of the Irish Famine and perhaps the English establishment encouraging colonies in Ireland and violently suppressing rebellions against this, for many centuries. These stories of course are just the tip of the iceberg in the story of European empires and European ambition and expansion. I will also add something else too; I notice that in America and Britain especially, there is a sense to all these stories that one story is worse than the other, that our people suffered worse than yours, and so on. Please do not ever go down that path, because it is one of self-pity, it is judgemental, it is comparing different experiences and it is playing off your suffering against someone else’s suffering when you may know nothing at all about that person, their suffering or their history. It’s all bad in effect. And above the horrors and sadness and tragedy we know about, there is so much heartache and sadness in the past that is forgotten simply because the people who were oppressed or abused or harshly mistreated had no one to speak about it to or anyone to turn to, and perhaps lived sad lives of poverty and struggle and hardship as well. All these things enter our collective history someway and we are aware that not so long ago people’s lives were for the most part very hard for all kinds of reasons and most people’s ancestors lives even in the recent past were hard, or at least unremarkable except for a boring low paid job and little in the way of plenty many of us have today.

But, notwithstanding all of this, getting angry and upset is acceptable and understandable, but it won’t change things one iota. We all have to forgive the oppressors and exploiters of long ago, we have to seek redemption for the hatred we have for other people for any reason, and above all perhaps we have to seek reconciliation, because in the end we are all hurting for one reason or another, perhaps for a number of reasons. We also have to live the lives many of our ancestors couldn’t, the lives of peace and freedom, the chance to prosper and live decently, that so many people in the past couldn’t even begin to have because they were poor or black or Jewish, because they were women, because they were Irish or for any reason whatsoever. Forgiveness, Redemption and Reconciliation are bigger words than hatred, self-righteousness and revenge anyway.

Here’s a few links to photographs of times gone by, and some of them also have galleries of other photographs too and articles attached to them.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2165262/Rogues-gallery-Fagins-children-Mugshots-Victorian-criminals-shows-thieves-young-11-jailed-stealing-clothes-cash-metal.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/02/28/victorian-mugshots-police-portraits-bonhams_n_1306045.html

http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/lifestyle/nostalgia/flashback-secrets-of-merseysides-workhouses-4750558

Monday, 24 June 2013

On My Travels

I haven’t travelled anywhere this year, for one reason or another, but do love to travel, usually local places or places a little further afield. For me, it isn’t just getting to a destination that I really enjoy but it’s also the actual travel, the getting to the bus or train station, seeing people doing the same thing, and then of course getting on the bus, knowing that I can relax for a few hours, have a sleep if I want, have a snack and drink of coke and most importantly for me, watching all the towns and cities and fields and all kinds of places and houses and businesses pass by and trying to take it all in; it gets too much trying to see it all, but to me it’s very pleasurable and of course the cherry on top is that you are going to somewhere nice, for just a day, or perhaps a couple of days.

When I go, wherever I go, I always take my camera, always and I love to take photographs to remind me of the nice places I’ve been, even though when I go to the same places again I take more photographs anyway. I like to take pictures of beaches, sunsets, castles, little towns and villages, places off the beaten track and just places that are peaceful and, dare-I-say-it, quaint. Just wanted to add, these two towns, Llandudno and Conwy, are both in North Wales. You can google them and see them both on google maps too.

Been a bit busy this week, with one thing and another, so I’ll cut it short and leave you with a few photographs of my travels. I hope to write some more about my travels, with plenty more pix, very soon. I hope you like them?! If you want to see more detail, just click on a pic.