Older, Wider, Wiser…

 

Several  years  back  I  began  to  investigate  the possibility  of changing  my  image  of  God. It had occurred  to me that this might  be a  good place  to lodge  for awhile.  I had recognised that  whilst God remained frowning and disapproving towards me,  I was  always  going to be  crippled  and  unable  to travel very   far  before  being   hustled  back  into  the  fold.  Was it possible that God had a different view of me from the view that I had been taught?

 

Over time I began to see that God might just be on my side and rather than wanting (or even needing) to blame and punish me for my ‘predicament', was actually wanting to walk sympathetically with me on my own ‘Emmaus road'.  Perhaps God knew the pain of creation and its longings as beings created in the image of God to grow into the likeness of God – flawed as our attempts might be.  Perhaps God understood.  It was an important realisation and one that left me free to explore all sorts of previously unthinkable avenues.

 

I have recently read Richard Holloway's wonderful book, Looking in the Distance and discovered this sentence.

 

‘But once we abandon the salvation scheme that sees Jesus as a divine figure sent to rescue us from God's wrath at our God-inflicted sinfulness, we get him back …'

 

Ah, yes!  A simple articulation of what I had been struggling with for some years.

 

I had been finding it so difficult to discard the many tenets that my previous history in church life had taught me – they clung to me as a limpet.  But suddenly those individual and separate belief items were resolved when I realised that what I have actually done is to leave behind a theology of anxiety (about the present and the continual blight of ‘sin') and a theology of fear (about the eternal consequences of believing the ‘right' thing) and have adopted a theology of the ‘now', of the Micah 6:8 persuasion.

 

‘So what does God require of you?  To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God'.

 

And Hilliel's version of Matthew 7:12 – ‘ don't do to others what you would not like them to do to you'.

 

It is a positive ‘theology' of life rather than the old theology of death.  So now, issues such as biblical inspiration (for which often read inerrancy), original sin, the divinity of Jesus, the literal physical resurrection, the trinity and a thousand others, become side issues.

 

They might be true, they might not – it doesn't matter anymore, because God is no longer angry with me.  They don't need to be true and are no longer issues to trouble or debate.  They are yesterday's (albeit perfectly legitimate) expressions of faith – today I express my understanding of, and relationship with, the transcendent with different words and in different ways.

 

However, as always, I reserve the right to change my mind by tomorrow lunchtime.