Is English Christianity Reaching Out to People?

In our own hearts, we often know when something is right, when something is true, even when we are told fervently that a particular thing is false or that something is true, when we feel that it isn’t.  To coin a phrase, and not to be foul, we might say that most of us have inbuilt bullsh*t detectors!  There seems to be amongst some Christians a kind of idea that once you become a Christian you have to lose all your common sense, you have to become mysterious, and ‘holy’ and go around castigating everyone for being a ‘terrible sinner’!  I am certain we have, even once, known someone or seen someone like that; but is that what God wants from us, to castigate people?  Perhaps the first person we need to castigate is the person we see in the mirror!  I have enough sin of my own without worrying about someone else’s.  And do we have to lose our common sense?  Perhaps we don’t: ‘Look, I am sending you out as sheep among wolves; so be cunning as snakes and yet innocent as doves.’  (Matthew 10:16 NJB)  This doesn’t sound to me like we have to abandon our wits or common sense, in fact in modern parlance it suggests that Christians should be ‘streetwise’ and ‘hip’ to the way the world is.

 

I have been a Christian, more or less, for over thirty years now, but I have never been to a church to worship in my life; some people reading this might think that slightly strange.  But I still try to serve God each day with a whole heart; I have my struggles in life like everybody else though.  I actually feel uncomfortable around crowds and I am a very private and even shy person, sometimes behind the wise-cracking, city-boy image I like to hide behind.  The question I pose is English Christianity reaching out to people?  I’ve always felt, perhaps unfairly, that much of what seems to pass for Christianity in England, is aimed at a nice brigade,  for people who already having it all together, then go on to confirm it all by being Christians; but is that the way it works?  I’m not a nice person, I have oodles of sin to be forgiven, I don’t feel fine sometimes and I wonder if God sees through my act, the shoddiness of my life, the pathetic nature of my fallen self?  If God only wants nice people, fine people, people who’ve got it all together and are on a one-way trip to Heaven because they’re so perfect, then frankly I’ve had it!  Didn’t Jesus come for the lost, the lonely, the sinful, the self-destructive, the losers and their ilk after all?  I hope so. 

 

Is Christianity Relevant?

I think the answer to that is yes.  But the Christian faith as a whole seems less important to people than it did even fifty years ago; is there a reason for this, and is it diminishing?  I think that much that passed for Christianity like going to church , singing hymns, knowing the vicar and even being part of a community of believers is just something people feel less comfortable with; also traditional Christianity like this I feel appears less dynamic, less interesting and less relevant to the general population than a real living faith should.  I think traditional Christianity is dying out, that often uninspiring version of Christianity, but I believe a real living faith, a faith that is, or should be reaching out to all kinds of people is actually growing.  I think many people have a hunger and thirst for God, a hunger for meaning to their lives but feel that traditional Christianity is just not that relevant, and perhaps there is an assumption amongst people that traditional Christianity, where you go to church and sing hymns one day a week, is all there is to Christian faith.  I digress and add that we all need to be a part of a community of believers; I certainly do.

 

The Good News

I have news for you, good news in fact; the best news for anyone looking for a real living and dynamic faith that will make a difference in your life!  Christianity is a whole lot more than you might think and God is a whole lot more than you might think as well.  We put Him in a box, expect Him to be something far less than He really is, then we wonder why our faith is at best one-dimensional and sorely lacking in something.  Christianity isn’t a game, it isn’t something we do while looking for something else, it isn’t even religion, it is in fact beyond all these things and beyond what we can really comprehend.  To really understand the depth and breadth of God isn’t really possible for a human to do, but we can understand that God is something far bigger than traditional Christianity seems to make of Him; He is really beyond our comprehension and we diminish Him only at our error.  If God created everything you see and created the whole universe and everything in it, isn’t He then a whole lot bigger than we credit Him for?  The good news is that God is in charge, He is the force holding everything together and He is only a prayer away.  The good news is that God isn’t just about a nice comfy eternity in Heaven, He is about peace, contentment and even abundance in the here and now.  The good news is that God is to be found in the midst of all our experiences, all our troubles, all our wanderings and all our wondering; He’s less about religion and tradition and much more about a real lived experience.  Get a Bible, open it, read it, and see for yourself; oh, and a prayer or two might help as well.

 

Is Hierarchy Needed?

Isn’t hierarchy ultimately divisive?  Don’t we have enough division in the world and in England without it being in the church?  Shouldn’t churches be preaching and practising equality?  This is another reason why I feel many ‘ordinary’ people don’t want to go to church; perhaps they think it’s cliquey, a social club for the ‘better sort’ and rather exclusive and not for the likes of you and me.  If the world is divisive, divided and often about people who are wealthy, important and have the ‘correct’ social standing, shouldn’t the church, or churches, be countering this by reaching out to everybody not just a select few?  Yes, there is a dichotomy in Christianity; God is open to all, but He calls a select few to serve Him.  But it is God’s part to do this, and not humans making distinctions on the basis of class, race, gender, ethnicity or any other thing which makes one person seem different from another person.  Is hierarchy needed?  I don’t think divisions serve any purpose other than to create animosities between people and foster division.  Perhaps we need to get back to the Christianity Paul preached and Jesus came to earth for.

 

What is ‘English’ Christianity? 

Can we talk of ‘English’ Christianity or ‘American’ Christianity?  Perhaps we can.  I have often felt that that brand of English Christianity is more about traditional worship and slightly socially exclusive and not that appealing to that many people.  On the other hand, if we can talk about American Christianity, then this is a different thing altogether.  American Christianity seems more about a dynamic faith, something that is open to all, and that is about a person moving forward in life, progressing and having a real living faith.  Of course, there are plenty of Christians in both Britain and America who have an intimate relationship with Jesus on a 24/7 basis.  As well as this, there is a kind of liberalism in Britain and so British Christianity that is appealing to many people and there is a kind of hard-edged conservative and Right-wing edge to some American Christianity that is not so appealing; wouldn’t it be nice if through the fog of denominations, different versions of Christianity, and the often totally opposing views of people supposed to be singing from the same hymn sheet, we could find a viable living faith that is what God has always intended for us to live?

 

 

The Battle of the Sexes

Like many young people in the UK, I used to go out on a Friday night with my mates, to drink a few beers, have a few laughs and sometimes occasionally meet a few women as well.  For me now, this is a thing of the past; of course it would be nice to meet someone to fall in love with but I think trying to meet someone in a dark, sweaty, loud club full of strangers is probably not the best way to rekindle romance in anyone’s life.  But you may disagree!

One of the things I remember plainly about such evenings is that women, not always but sometimes, could be really unpleasant and offensive just because you might have tried to talk to them; I never understood this, why someone should get aggressive or angry merely because you spoke to them in a pub or nightclub; to me this was just a natural way of getting to know people; or so I thought.  You learn a lot about people when you encounter them in situations like this; you learn that people can be very superficial, very false and completely different than if you met them on other occasions outside the often false environments of loud pubs and nightclubs.

There is in Britain a definite battle of the sexes, a constant kind of tug of war, and I don’t fully comprehend why but it is there.  You see it manifested on a Friday and Saturday night in aforementioned pubs and nightclubs, and you see it in all kinds of ways, usually downplayed and with perhaps a humorous element attached to it; but it’s still there.  British women seem to hate British men, and would rather go abroad and find a continental lothario than have anything to do with a British man, and British men would rather meet a Thai or Russian bride, preferably in their twenties, to marry and sweep off their feet, so to speak.  Underpinning much of this is hatred and that cynicism that human beings have to something or someone they find too familiar; familiar can become boring and old hat, and new and different is refreshing and exciting.  Until reality bites, perhaps.

Unfortunately, I found myself on the end of such hatred and such treatment many times, in a way that was somehow to be expected, that we were all playing some vast game where people could be cruel to each other for no particular reason, but which was accepted by all involved.  It doesn’t help the fact that many young British men and women are half drunk when they encounter each other, meaning that they aren’t really being themselves but are hiding behind a mask or a false persona.

As you can gather, this battle of the sexes upset me on a number of occasions and I still feel resentment towards some women even now, though by the grace and mercy of God I have many female friends, both online and in the real world, who I both love and respect.  It is easy in situations like this to develop a siege mentality, to assume that all women, or all men, or whoever you see as the enemy, are only out to upset you or be cruel to you or to harm you, emotionally or otherwise, in some way.  When we do this, we can go down a false path, and then because we hate, we become part of the problem ourselves.  I still struggle with these issues but I pray that God puts me right basically, and teaches me to understand that there are good, bad and even indifferent people in every walk of life, whether men or women, Black or White, rich or poor, from North, East, South or West, people are always going to be people in all their diverse variety; if you’re lucky, you meet nice people, if you’re unlucky you might meet a not-so-nice person.  The secret is not to take it to heart or to assume that everyone you might deem the enemy is going to be unpleasant or hostile; the dangers of thinking like this are obvious. 

For the Christian, there is of course an added element to this old story; we are not meant to live in a world of hostility and resentment, nor are we to partake in what the world partakes in, which is anger, jealousy, revenge, hatred, animosities, racism or prejudices of any kind no matter what we’ve suffered in our lives.  We are meant very much to be in the world but not be a part of it, quite simply.  Instead of the battle of the sexes, I could have talked about racism or class prejudice, hostilities between the Catholic and Protestant communities in Northern Ireland, or the Palestinians and Israelis in Israel, the problems between any two or more groups of people in fact anywhere in the world where each group might not see eye to eye, for whatever reason, and however serious or even trivial the conflict or resentment might be.    

If we want to make headway in the world and we want to end the battle of the sexes, or any other conflict big or small, we have to be the change, we are the ones who have not to partake of it; in the end for the Christian, the buck stops with you.  Whatever other people do, or don’t do, we have a duty to live as Christians and serve a God who is utterly fair and utterly impartial; He won’t take sides against our ‘enemies’ but He will uphold us and show us mercy if we have been wronged.  If you have been wronged, then turn the other cheek.  So, the battle of the sexes will very probably continue but our place as Christians is merely to follow the Golden Rule, to treat other people as we would like to be treated ourselves; in this small way, we don’t add to the misery and chaos of the world.

The Sound of The City

This is a eulogy about living in a city; its good and bad aspects.  The city can be an oasis and the city can be a desert, a desert being a place to think.  It can be an oasis because everything for living is there; supermarkets, all kinds of shops, places to visit, restaurants, cafes, museums, art galleries, oh and people; yes, lots of people!  The city can be a desert, especially if you have no friends and rarely see your family.  It can be a place where you are surrounded by people but where they all seem indifferent to you because they don’t know you; whole cities full of people all doing their own thing and trying to make something of themselves, all competing with each other and you, and all needing to be fed and watered, all needing diversions and all needing love; yes, even love.

When I go to bed at nights I sometimes like to hear the sound of the city, that indefinable and really indescribable sound that is quiet and needs to be noticed but tends to be heard in the silence of the early morning; it could be static or it could be something else but I think all large cities have it.  It’s comforting somehow to know that other people are nearby and yet it can be alienating too; most people seem not to know their neighbours in cities anymore, let alone get on with them; it’s a sign of the times.  Many city people dream of rural living, and I’m certain that some rural people dream of cities.

I think that many of us who live in big cities love and hate the city at the same time; we love it because everything’s at hand and close by, and perhaps we hate it because sometimes we feel we haven’t any real space, we feel boxed in and we’re just another faceless person in a grey urban environment.

Isolation

Of course, many of us feel we live in isolation; yes even in big cities we can feel isolated, cut off from our fellow human beings and all alone.  In a curious way, living in a big city can be a very lonely experience.  In the old days, perhaps up until the early 60’s, there seemed to be a community spirit, certainly among working class people, where people would watch out for each other and lend and borrow money and help out in different ways.  The problem was that people could also be busy bodies and nosey neighbours, more concerned with gossiping about you than being concerned with you.  Unfortunately, the community spirit seems to have gone the way of all things now, and people tend to keep themselves to themselves in general.  We’ve all become more ambitious, we all want what we haven’t got, and I think most people want to get on and better themselves.  In the not-so-distant past, many people from ordinary backgrounds made do, had a job for life and accepted it whatever it was.  Now, in one sense all the security has gone but in another way there are more opportunities, of a kind, if we are prepared to look for them.  It’s still an unfair world of course, and sometimes people prosper not because of their talent or drive, but because they have connections or wealth behind them.

For some people, isolation is bearable, even preferable to having too many friends and acquaintances; in isolation we can sometimes find God, and hear that distant, still small voice that often talks to our heart, the voice that is often drowned out when we are with other people or too busy or just distracted by life.  For another person, isolation is something they’ve experienced and don’t want to experience any more.  The life of a writer, or perhaps anyone dedicated to something they really want to do and achieve in, is partly isolation; frankly if I ever have any success, or win the lottery, I would be happy to live in a remote valley in North Wales somewhere and have all the isolation to my heart’s content.

It’s in isolation that we might begin to know ourselves, know who we are, know what we are about, understand where we are going, and perhaps most importantly begin to understand who God is.  Experiencing God for yourself is a lot more than someone telling you about Him, a whole lot more.  God can bring peace, He can bring contentment, He can bring meaning into your life.  It might be that in some way, loneliness or isolation might be the catalyst to bring you closer to God.  I must say that in many respects I like isolation and I feel I can hear God’s voice this way; it may be the same for you.

The Call of Abraham

Abraham is a key figure in the Bible; we don’t really know a great deal about him other than God commands him to leave behind all he knows and venture off into the wilderness with his wife Sarah and his servants and livestock and everything else.  According to the Old Testament Abraham left the Ur of the Chaldees , a Sumerian city of importance.  So, although Abraham was a city dweller and by all accounts moderately prosperous, God wanted him to up sticks and go into the unknown.  The cities by all accounts although relatively new were hotbeds of vice, corruption, crime and irreligious people; some might say what’s new?!  So Abraham leaves, to go who knows where by a God he puts his faith in.  The cities represent corruption and God calls Abraham out of the city and so corruption, so that Abraham can be the father of many nations and the spiritual father of religious Jews and Christians.  It always seems that where human beings screw up, God straightens us out.  For the Christian, Abraham’s story is important.  God enters into his life and nothing is ever the same again; He calls and Abraham simply answers. 

Perhaps Abraham was a simple man, but who can really say?  It is certain that as with many other people, God is ‘starting again’ with Abraham, shooing him out of the city to a better place, a Promised Land for a Chosen People, a people who in the end would live by faith in God’s promises.  If you are a Christian and you are obedient, you are an heir to that promise.  And it is Abraham’s faithfulness to God, God’s call and God’s promises that really counts as his uprightness; nothing more than that.   

Perhaps Abraham had twinges of doubt, and perhaps he left behind people he loved, and for all we know maybe he really was a cityboy at heart, who then becomes a great wanderer, a nomad in search of new things, bigger horizons and better pastures.  Whatever the case, God looks after him and watches over him and brings his story to a happy conclusion, even though Abraham never sees many of the promises fulfilled.  How different he appears from those of us today, who want to see results yesterday and have every whim fulfilled straight away!  Abraham can teach us many lessons. 

The First Cities; the Start of Civilisation

People will conjecture all day about the origins of mankind, and perhaps also the origins of the beginnings of the civilisation of mankind too.  Some people say that man was created no earlier than about ten thousand years ago, and other people will say that man evolved from apes over millions of years; it’s all second hand because not one person knows for absolute certainty, simply because they weren’t there!  And not to be trite, but I believe mankind was created specially and specifically by God!  So there!

I’ve read a number of interesting books about the beginnings of civilisation, and I’m reading one now, called ‘Legacy: A Search for the Origins of Civilization’; it’s a very interesting book so far.  I am particularly interested in the Fertile Crescent, which was partially situated where Iraq is now.  As a Christian and an amateur Biblical scholar, this part of the world is interesting to me because it’s mentioned in the Genesis section of the Bible; the Tigris and the Euphrates, both important rivers of this region, are both mentioned in the Bible.  According to some scholars, the Garden of Eden can be traced to this area, and certainly educated opinion is that the first cities in the world originated in the Sumerian plain/Fertile Crescent-people simply started living en masse here in cities about 3000BC or thereabouts, although I have read that it was 4000BC before today.  It’s certain that before people started living in cities, they were congregating together to grow crops and build small houses and live near each other for community and protection and so on.  Then something happened; people started to get civilised; they wanted big organised cities; they started to specialise; class divisions arose; kings arose and then of course kingdoms and city-states.

It’s curious to note that man’s creation, supposedly about six thousand years ago, mirrors almost exactly the supposed beginnings of mankind’s civilisation, or thereabouts.  I wonder whether the writers who first wrote down the early books of the Bible, the Old Testament, were mixing up the two things, i.e. man’s creation and the beginnings of civilisation.  I may also add that man’s fall from grace and his disobedience to God leads then to being ‘civilised’, to mankind eschewing God and His laws, and deciding for himself what was good.  As man came out of the Garden of Eden, fallen from grace, did he tumble into the city life, the life of civilisation?  There are deeper questions to be pondered here.

Is being civilised, cultured and urbane more important than having a childlike trust in God?  Do all the things we aspire to be, all our ambitions for being civilised take us away from God?  It seems that the Fall of man coincides exactly with man’s ascent to civilisation.  What does this mean for mankind?  What does it mean for Christians?  And, what does it mean for God?

For me, the two realities of both man’s creation and then fall from grace with God and man first living in large urban centres, have become intertwined and even confused with each other by those early writers and scholars who were trying to make sense of mankind’s origins.  How could they have known any better, not having vast libraries or the Internet like we do now?  It is something we need to look at, especially those Christians who believe that the earth and mankind are only thousands of years old.  Equally, it seems that man becoming sophisticated and falling from grace could be one and the same thing.  The rise of civilisation has led to class divisions, wars, nations at odds with each other and a world which, as it gets ever more cultured and technologically advanced, seems less and less to be concerned with God or being concerned with our fellow human beings.

Why did man become civilised?  Why did man rebel against God?  Well, He gave us free will to choose the way we would live; His way or our way.  His way means being obedient to Him.  Our way means chaos because everyone then chooses to do whatever they want to do without regard to God and usually always without regard to other people.  When people disregard God they abandon all concern for everyone and everything but themselves.  It’s clear to see where this has lead mankind and the world in general.

Perhaps instead of being so obsessed with success, making money, being seen by others as important and being concerned about high social status, we should first ask God what He wants from us and what life He wants us to live.  Through Adam and Eve we are all fallen, but through Jesus we can be reconciled to God. 

Rohl, D. 1999. Legend: The Genesis of Civilisation. United Kingdom. Century.

Roux, G. 1992. Ancient Iraq. 3^rd Ed. England. Penguin.

Wood, M. 1992. Legacy: A Search for the Origins of Civilization. Great Britain. Network Books.

Life

The sadness of life is that everyone and everything passes away, to be forgotten, to be replaced by someone else; the young replace the old; new ways of doing things replace old ways of doing things; soon, we are living lives we never dreamed of.

We look for tradition, we hold onto it; we look for what is constant, but the only thing constant in life is change.  One minute we’re new, the next we’re teenagers, the next we’re adults; life moves on whether we want it to or not.

We all complain too much in the West, the rich countries; maybe this ‘credit-crunch’ is a time to take stock of what is really important in life; family and friends, faith, God, a roof over our heads and just a full fridge of food; maybe if we all counted our blessings now and again and were just grateful for the small comforts and small mercies in life, we would all stop clamouring and yearning for what we haven’t got.

Part of Christian living is to be content with what you have and not be carping and complaining about what you don’t have.  Of course, I’m not suggesting you accept wretched poverty or anything like that, no one should live in any kind of poverty, even if some people in the West sadly do.  No, I’m saying that most of us, neither rich nor wretchedly poor, should first count our blessings before we do anything else.  It’s not a cop-out to say that if a person is suffering serious poverty, the first thing they should do as a Christian is to pray for help and guidance.

The goodness of life is that we can all play our part, whoever we are.  And just because society can be hard and unyielding and can be tough on ‘failures’ and ‘losers’, someone like me in fact, God is ultimately merciful; He will hear you out and He will give you a second chance.

To say you fully understand life and all it means is to make yourself a liar because no one I think fully understands life and all its complications, but surely one of the most important things in life is to be happy.  I have struggled against depression, unhappiness, unemployment, disappointments and toxic friendships for chunks of my life; if anyone can talk about happiness and its value, then surely I can!

We need each other!  There, I’ve said it, the bloke who’s a Christian but doesn’t go to church!  If life is a big puzzle, and making sense of it certainly isn’t easy, then we all have a piece of that puzzle; together we can put the puzzle together and make sense of it all.

Years seem to fly by when you’re an adult; why is that?  Are we always expecting something that never comes?  When we were kids summer holidays seemed to go on forever; is this the eternity God promises us, not worrying about anything, but having childlike trust?  Is believing in God believing in a kind of magic, magic that for some of us we lose as we get older?  Maybe we need to look again at what we believe.

‘Remember the deeds performed by our ancestors, each in his generation, and you will win great honour and everlasting renown.

Was not Abraham tested and found faithful, was that not considered as justifying him?

Joseph in the time of his distress maintained the Law, and so became lord of Egypt.

Phinehas, our father, in return for his burning zeal, received the covenant of everlasting priesthood.

Joshua, for carrying out his task, became judge of Israel.

Caleb, for his testimony before the assembled people, received an inheritance in the land.

David for his generous heart inherited the throne of an everlasting kingdom.

Elijah for his consuming fervour for the Law was caught up to heaven itself.

Hananiah, Azariah and Mishael, for their fidelity, were saved from the flame.

Daniel for his singleness of heart was rescued from the lion’s jaws.

Know then that, generation after generation, no one who hopes in him will be overcome.

Do not fear the threats of the sinner, all his brave show must come to the dunghill and the worms.

Exalted today, tomorrow he is nowhere to be found, for he has returned to the dust he came from and his scheming is brought to nothing.’  (1 Maccabees 2: 51-63 NJB)

Jimi Hendrix and the 60’s

I’m a BIG Hendrix fan and have been for many years.  As a Christian I believe God allows me to have normal interests as long as I put Him, God, first; I try to do this every day.  I don’t think Hendrix was a Christian, in fact I’m certain that he wasn’t, but  his talent was God-given; all our attributes are God-given, all our talents are God-given whatever they are, whether we acknowledge God or not or whether we believe in God or not.

I am a BIG 60’s fan too; there is something about that decade that I love; how do I square this with being a dyed-in-the-wool Christian?  I think that because I am honest with God, He allows me, as with many other people, to be an individual and to have likes and dislikes like anyone else.  The 60’s was, by all accounts, a magical time, a kind of dreamtime, when there was a flourishing of creativity, a flourishing of new ideas, a belief in change, a sense of positivity and the idea that if you had talent or a dream or drive anyone could get on.  Looking back, it seems that there was optimism and a belief that youth could change things just because they wanted to and because things simply needed changing.  This optimism didn’t last, but the 60’s casts a long shadow on Western culture, certainly British and American culture.  It was the British and Americans that rocked the world musically, and to a certain extent British and American youth culture that everyone wanted to copy and be part of.  Those heady and exciting days are gone now, part of history in fact, so where does that leave us?  What does the 60’s mean for Christians?

There is a kind of yearning among human beings for nostalgia, and certainly there is a yearning for something we may never have personally experienced.  I was born in the 60’s but I was only a nipper so don’t remember a thing about it one way or the other.

In Rock and Roll, Elvis, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and others were like Old Testament prophets, and the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and The Doors and others were like the New Testament apostles.  Elvis’ impact on popular 20^th century culture is incalculable, the Beatles amazingly even more so.  Early Rock and Roll was earthy, revolutionary and unsophisticated while 60’s Rock and Roll was sophisticated, complex and more thoughtful; the audience had changed and were demanding more from performers and ‘pop music.’  Rock and Roll was honesty and truth, telling it ‘like it is’ and certainly the main topic of popular music is on the theme of love, much like Christianity itself.  Rock and Roll was also asking big questions, questions about life, love, art, what moves us and perhaps even questions about God Himself.

Rock and Roll is so important to many of us because it speaks to that often hidden part of us, a part of us that can’t be completely understood, that private part we rarely show to other people, the part of us that God often speaks to, in one way and another.

The 60’s, and magic times and moments in life, seem so brief and fleeting; is it why we yearn for such times?  I think we all need mundane moments and normality in life, lots of it in fact, life being found in many of those mundane moments, but we also need at times those magic moments and to feel that we are a part of something bigger, something beyond and above us, that makes us question, that fills us with awe and wonder and that lets us understand that life, although it can be mundane, is underpinned by something wondrous and miraculous; that it does all mean something and there is a purpose to it all.

So, when I listen to Hendrix at his most improvisational best, I am taken to places that little else can do, I am excited, thrilled, happy and taken out of myself; it’s almost a religious experience in fact.  So should a Christian be really interested in something so secular?  And why are Christians only supposed to like hymns anyway, or ‘Christian’ rock music?  Is God bigger than churches and organised Christianity?  Can we not see God in everything around us, like nature, or a rainbow, or a violent out-of-control storm or the purring of a kitten; even in a Hendrix solo?  Who can say?

The 60’s was a time of wonder, of excitement, of the new challenging the old, the old giving way to the young, and a decade where seemingly anything could happen, where outworn ways of living where being challenged on all sides, class and race barriers where giving way to more liberal ways of living and equality was coming into the fore; it seems a marvellous time all told.  Some people say that it was the beginning of all that is bad in life, too much freedom, too much too soon, and others see in it the renaissance of modern popular Western culture and the beginnings of fairness and justice for the ordinary person.  Whatever your opinion, the 60’s casts a long shadow over the world and its reverberations can still be felt in our culture today.

There is a kind of yearning in humanity, a yearning for peace in the midst of war, a yearning for knowledge in the midst of ignorance, a yearning for fair play in the midst of a deeply unfair world, a yearning for love in an often loveless world and a deep yearning for meaning in a world that often seems totally without meaning; we yearn because we are human.  The 60’s for me sums up all these sentiments and many more; even if it petered out to nothing, for a time people dreamt, and hoped for a better world; isn’t that what we all want?

...And Now For Something Completely Different...

I was going to put up a post today, as I often do. Normally, I tend to write posts weeks in advance so I always have something to post, but today I feel like just being spontaneous and writing something off the cuff so to speak.

I've just returned from a very nice short break to North Wales, where I stayed in Llandudno and travelled to places like Llanrwst and Conwy, which are all beautiful little towns; I've never been to Llanrwst before and it was a pleasant surprise alltold.  All three places have lovely views and all have nice places to eat, nice pubs and things to see and do. Here's a picture of Llanrwst I took:

It really is a lovely place and like so many towns and villages in North Wales, as you can see, it's not that far from beautiful countryside, hills and small mountains, farms and rural settings.  Llanrwst is particularly like this as if you look on google map, there's nothing else much around it, just farms and countryside and perhaps the odd little village tucked away somewhere well off the beaten track. It was my first time in Llanrwst, but definitely not my last.

I stayed in a Bed and Breakfast in Llandudno for the duration of my stay which I always do, as it's very good value for money and the breakfasts are really good.  Then I travel by a pretty good transport system, always the bus, to places here and there. There's so much to do in Llandudno itself that you could easily just spend three days there without going anywhere else.  But as it's my umpteenth visit I tend to want to go to other places.  There is a place in Llandudno called the Great Orme, which is a big hill which rises up above the town which I always pay a visit to at least once while I am there.  Here's a picture taken on the Great Orme:

There's a few nice pubs in Llandudno, one called the King's Head and another called the Queen Victoria, amongst many others.  I went in both for my visit.  Here's a picture of the bar in the King's Head:

I also visited a town called Conwy, which is probably my favourite town in the whole of the British Isles; it's got a castle, old Mediaeval walls, reputedly the smallest town in Britain, a few really good pubs especially the George & Dragon, loads of places to eat and is so quaint and picturesque that you might just marvel at how wonderful such a place can be.  There is also a church with a churchyard there, with a very unusual 'gravestone' with the mysterious legend 'We Are Seven' painted on it.  Here is a picture of it:

In Llandudno, there is a long pier and there is a long promenade, both of which are enjoyable to walk along whatever the weather.  I was fortunate on my little mini break as the weather was good while I was there even though just before it was cold and rain-swept and afterwards it's been cold and rain-swept too.  I always walk along the promenade at least once while I am there.  Here is a picture of the promenade and beach:

Well that's my little tale of adventure.  I wrote this because I think sometimes we all need to spend some time doing something fun and spontaneous, and not just worrying all the time about where we are going or how we are going to make it, or how we are going to plan for our futures, and so on.  Sometimes we might need merely to have faith in God that He knows all the answers and He knows where we are going and what kind of wonderful future we all have if we are Christians.  God is about fun, good times, peace, enjoyment and the simple things in life, simple things which might after all give us the most real pleasure.

Dreams of Greatness

For many years, possibly because of coming from a poor background, I have had dreams of greatness.   For a long time I wanted to be a successful rock musician, and become wildly rich and famous; now, I want to be a successful published author, but I don’t care so much about the rich and famous bit, although of course I want to earn a decent living.  For much of my wild dreams of wealth and success, I never really included God; I neglected my faith, in fact I was completely faithless.  Now I’m a Christian who just wants to serve the Lord on a daily and on-going basis.

What does this all mean for my dreams of greatness, my dreams of being a published author and my dreams of success?  I still believe I, like anyone else, have the right to dream of a better life and to be doing very much in life what I want to do, and what I want to achieve, but now it’s a God-centred dream rather than a self-centred dream.  How does that work out you may ask?  I think in the first instance that God is in actual fact the shaper of our dreams, goals and any vision of a better life we might have; in fact I pray regularly for a better life.  “What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31 NIV)  So God is a source we can call on and rely on.  Secondly, being God-centred and not self-centred, I can do things for the right reason rather than purely selfish reasons.  That means that I am motivated for honest reasons and that at the same time I don’t do anything that goes against God, other people and my Christian faith.  It’s possible to be a Christian and want to be successful after all.  Thirdly, I come from a poor background, and like anyone who comes from such a background, I need to get on and make money and put bread on the table.  It seems that even in democratic and modern Britain, there is an often unspoken assumption or emphasis that only those already wealthy and privileged have a right to get on; when ordinary people aspire to better things and dream of better lives, we challenge this unfair assumption.

Far from believing that God wants His followers to somehow be justified by living in some kind of want or poverty, I have come to the understanding that God is the perfect source for nurturing all our dreams, adding that much needed touch of reality certainly, but that with God in our lives we might very well see our dreams realised and He can take us to places we never even dreamed of or imagined.

But, what of dreams of greatness?  Well, that’s another story entirely.  There is a danger in certain kinds of feelings of greatness that can be distorted into very selfish aims that are all about ego and self and little to do with God’s greatness; the danger even for Christians is that we can confuse the two and mix the two and start to get self-important and think that we are super-special and that our destiny is to be great and important; sometimes that thinking can be totally wrong and take people out on a tangent, really into a wilderness of their own making.  Being a Christian should make us genuinely humble, not seeking greatness or importance, usually self-importance, but seeking God’s will for our lives, whatever that may mean.  Within this reality we can and certainly should pray about our ambitions and goals and shouldn’t think that we can’t have dreams and ambition as Christians; on the contrary, God is the very person who we can build our whole lives on, not just our spiritual lives.

So many people I think do have dreams of greatness; their lives are ordinary, mundane, everyday and even perhaps boring.  Nothing out of the usual happens, we have the same food week in week out, we don’t expect anything really out-of-the-ordinary to happen to us and guess what it doesn’t, and the only real drama in our lives at times seems to be that on the soap opera we just can’t stop watching; what’s the answer?  Sometimes we have to live in the ordinary, no matter who we are.  Life is found in the ordinary; getting out of bed in the morning, doing what we have to do, eating our tea, having a routine if possible, and then going to bed till the next morning when we probably do it all over again. 

Is there an exciting life to be had, and does it involve money?  I think faith and living the Christian life is exciting, even if we find our present circumstances seem anything but exciting.  There are many questions to be asked here, and I can’t promise answers because I seek them myself.  The first question is what do we want out of life.  Do we want to do something with it?  Do we want to accept that life isn’t always wonderful but still after that can we make our lives better?  Is God in fact the provider of a better life?  I believe He is; it starts with trusting Him and having faith in Him, even when our lives might be humdrum, miserable and even in some unfortunate cases dangerous.  For many people in fact, even if they are not living in wretched poverty or a violent rundown area or city, life can be a stream of negative experiences punctuated by one kind of unpleasant reality after another in seeming regular succession; life is hard, we can’t get on, we don’t know how to get on, we can’t find a job, we have no money, we can’t do anything without money and so life is hard; it can be a vicious circle if we let it be just that.

So what’s the answer?  The answer is surprisingly to first of all count our blessings and be grateful for what good things we already have in life, whatever that might be; a roof over our heads, good family and friends, enough money to provide for our general well-being and so on.  Secondly, if you really do have a dream or ambition that you want to achieve then first of all a prayer or two might not go amiss; but I stress you should be honest about what you want out of life and be certain it’s what you really want, what you really really want!  I have found to my bitter experience that if you merely want something because someone else has it or wants it, you might regret wasting time on something that you didn’t really want in the first place; so a degree of honesty is vital here.  Thirdly, I think you must be realistic; if you have no connections, no wealth behind you, no particular expertise in the field you are trying to make it in, the chances are it will be a lengthy struggle to achieve your aim and ambition; it’s as simple as that.  Fourthly, make time for whatever it is you want to achieve; a writer who doesn’t write will hardly succeed, a sportsperson who doesn’t train will not likely achieve anything, a person who doesn’t put in the time is almost certainly not going to accomplish their dreams.  This is just food for thought and stuff that I have thought about and written about before.  There’s no reason why a person from a council estate or poor upbringing can’t succeed any more than a person from an affluent background, if they put their mind to it.  And us Christians?  Well we can pray about matters too, usually a matter people leave till last, but my belief is that God can nurture our dreams and bring them to fruition.  He is the shaper of our goals and dreams in my belief.  And of course, get all the help and advice you can, read up as much as you can on the field you are hoping to achieve in; there’s nothing like timely advice from someone who knows.  Lastly, I repeat if you are Christian, then merely have faith; a better life is for you if you really want it.