Early in my retirement I wrote the following piece of fiction. I am still exploring these issues.
WARNING-----THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION
A SPIRITED CONVERSATION …….. AT A REUNION OF SCRIPTURE UNION CAMP LEADERS 40 YEARS ON !
Alan: Hi, Jim. Are you still serving the Lord in a lively church? I’ve heard some terrible things about the way some of our old friends have been seduced by the culture. They tell me that Horace is divorced and remarried to a non-Christian and that one of his kids has gone off the rails and become a lesbian.
Jim: Hello, Alan. Wow, where do I begin? I’ve been through some deep waters over the years and I’m afraid I don’t see the world so clearly in black and white as I used to.
Alan: Sorry to hear that , Jim. I’ll pray for you that the Lord will bring you back to the truth. Come to think of it, you were always a bit lukewarm about witnessing, weren’t you?
Jim: Yes, you’re right. I never enjoyed going out and telling people that without Christ in their life they had no hope or meaning. So often the people we were ‘witnessing to” seemed to have it more together than we did.
AT THIS POINT ALAN SPOTTED ANOTHER OLD FRIEND FROM THE PAST AND STRODE OFF, LEAVING JIM TO PONDER THEIR CONVERSATION.
ANOTHER OLD CAMP LEADER, GEOFF, CAME UP TO JIM AND BEGAN TO TALK.
Geoff: Couldn’t help hearing some of that! I’m with you. I’m glad we’re not still trapped in that Christian triumphalism that knows it has all the answers and writes everyone else off. They remind me of a verse that used to be on a billboard at the North Melbourne railway station . It was an obscure text that used to puzzle me. Something about Jesus speaking this parable to those who trusted in themselves that they were righteous but despised others.
Jim: Thanks for the encouragement, Geoff. I couldn’t go back to where we were in the 1950’s but I do from time to time think that it’s the Alans of this world, the people of conviction, who actually make a difference. We’re so reasonable, so rational, so much shaped by the Enlightenment, that we seem to have lost our passion. It was so much simpler when we were younger. And our own boys , now in their 30’s, are not involved with the church. I struggle with this, and I wonder what we did wrong.
Geoff: What makes you think it’s something you’ve done wrong? Don’t you think they’re still loved and cared for by God?
Jim: Sure! Indeed I think our experiences of our children’s lives has shaped our thinking quite a lot. Not least the way their studies have given them a different way at looking at the world. I used to think that everyone at least believed that there was such a thing as Truth, even if we disagreed about what Truth was, but in the way they talk now there is even doubt about the whole idea of universal truth or truths and they’re much more into questions of power and sorting out where the power relationships are and what flows from that. And that ties in with what I read the other day in a book called “The post evangelicals” where a Christian writer argues that people these days are not as interested in the meta-narratives like Christianity and Communism which provided a whole framework of thought that you could embrace with some sense of security. They’re more interested now in issues than in meta-narratives.
Geoff: We seem to have a lot in common, Jim. Let’s go and sit down and catch up with Helen and Jan. Do you remember when they did the cooking for us at Toolangi in 1962? I’ve caught up with them a bit in our local ecumenical Council and I think they’ve both done a lot of fresh thinking since then. Jan is now an Anglican minister working with the Turkish people in Brunswick, and Helen has been involved with the asylum seekers as well as doing some theological studies since Des died.. They might have something we can learn from.
Helen: Hi, Jim. Gooday, Geoff. Come and join us .We’re just trying to work through some of these multi-faith questions for the group next month.
Jim: The way I see it is that we’re all looking to the same God , even if we have different understandings….a bit like the idea of people climbing a mountain from different directions. The closer you get to the top, the closer you get to God and also to one another. If we could only sit down and discuss what we have in common we’d soon realise that we are on about the same things. The problem is we concentrate too much on our differences.
Jan: Jim, that’s what I used to think when I began to grapple with this question, but now I’m right on the other side. I’ve started to realise that it’s terribly patronizing to say to our Moslem and Jewish friends that we really don’t have much that divides us….they want me to talk about those things that we see differently and one of them put to me the view that we are more likely to encounter God and find genuine reconciliation when we focus on our distinctive doctrines and differences and look for some new light together that might transcend our current understanding.
Helen: I guess it depends on how concerned we are to maintain our own position. I’ve raised this at the Theological Hall and I found that most of the staff and students were trying to be sympathetic to what I was saying but they seemed unwilling to let go of their basic conviction that we must stand firm to our creeds and confessions. One of the lecturers suggested that if the best minds of the last two millenia had grappled with these matters, I was being a trifle presumptuous in knocking the conclusions they’d come to….. and I felt well and truly squashed!! I seethed for a couple of hours, but on the long drive home I cooled down a little and acknowledged that I was a fairly ignorant theological student [and a woman as well!] and that I needed to become a bit more humble.
Geoff: Nonsense. You’ve as much right as your professors to be pursuing these things. If only they could get out from their ivory towers they might become a bit more sensitive to the questions you’re asking! It seems to me that it’s the laity who are freer to ask the questions because we’re not burdened so much with a sense of loyalty to the institution. Is it just possible that it might therefore be a bit easier for us to hear some new answers, to perceive what God might be doing in the world and even in the church?
Jim: That makes sense to me. I worry that I’m being unfaithful to Christ when I entertain these sorts of thoughts, but I’ve tried to be honest in my thinking and I’ve come to the view that it is my attempt to be obedient to Jesus’ teaching which compels me to not only reach out to the Other, but to see in them the face of Christ and to allow that He may well have things for me to learn from them.
Jan : That resonates with me and my work among the Turkish people. And I’m interested the way you mention the Other. [You do seem to be talking about the Other with a capital O.] I’ve been struck with how much of Jesus’ ministry is with the Outsider, the people on the edge, and also how the Old Testament has so much to say about our attitude to the stranger in our midst. I think when I began this work I saw it as an opportunity to witness and to perhaps see them converted to my faith.
While this has sometimes occurred, I’m not nearly as clear now that this is necessarily a sign of success.
Geoff: Our son is at University and he is talking a lot about some of the post-modern theory that refers to the Other. He has been looking at Australian history and doing a thesis on the way in which we have been so successful in defining our national identity in a way which excludes so many…. the indigenous people, the Chinese, women, gays and lesbians and now of course the people from the Middle East and Afghanistan
Helen: Yes, and this business about the children overboard and the Tampa just reminds us of how close to the surface these attitudes still are. Do you remember the comment “We decide who comes into this country.” I was really sickened by that comment and I wondered how my son’s aboriginal friends would have felt about it.
Jim: To get back to matters of multi faith…… I’m sure that we are called by Jesus to be open to the Other whether it’s another skin colour, another nationality, another religion….but I still stumble over how to reconcile this openness to the Other with verses like “I am the Way, the Truth, The Life. No one comes to the Father but by me.” Or Peter’s claim : “there is no other name under Heaven by which you must be saved.” Is Jesus the only way to God? Am I simply rationalizing my antipathy to witnessing by softening my attitudes and becoming a bit wishy-washy in my beliefs? Have I been so conformed to the world that I can no longer hear the transforming word of God? There’s no way I could ever be like Alan with his certainty and insensitivity, but there must be some gracious people around who haven’t given up on the uniqueness of Christ for salvation.
Jan: I’m not trying to be smart, Jim, but what do we mean by salvation these days? I’m not sure that we quite understand the idea it seeks to convey? Do we mean something to do with our eternal destiny? Do we mean something about quality of life here and now? Do we mean a person’s relationship with God?
AT THIS POINT THEYWERE JOINED BY BRIAN,WHO HAD SPENT A NUMBER OF YEARS OVERSEAS AS A CHURCH HISTORIAN.
Brian: Forgive me for intruding, but I couldn’t help hearing your discussion. I can understand how you’re thinking , and I’ve seen those views expressed a lot. Samuel Angus, a NSW Presbyterian, was saying that sort of thing in the 20’s and attracted quite a following but the Presbyterians launched proceedings against him for heresy.
Not long after, scholars began to get excited about the way Karl Barth was drawing a distinction between The Word and the other religions. What you need to do is to recognize that we have a revealed faith . Once you accept the fact of Revelation you can put Reason in its proper place and see the supremacy of our Faith. You don’t seem to realise just how much the Western world has been shaped by its faith in Reason.
Jim: Yes, I actually have been thinking about that, but I have a strong sense that our reason is a gift of the Creator God, and it’s my reason that is leading me to ask these questions because they seem to follow from what I know of Jesus’ life and teaching.
AT THIS POINT THE CONVERSATION WAS INTERRUPTED BY THE MASTER OF CEREMONIES, WHO THANKED EVERYONE FOR COMING AND SAID HOW HAPPY HE WAS THAT SO MANY OF THE THOSE GATHERED WERE HOLDING FAST TO THE FAITH !!!
THE GROUP WE’VE BEEN LISTENING TO EXCHANGED NAMES AND ADDRESSES AND, CONTRARY TO SOME EXPECTATIONS, IT DID MEET AGAIN ………….
NEXT TIME, BRIAN, HELEN, JIM, JAN AND GEOFF MET, TOGETHER WITH JAN’S HUSBAND DEREK AND JIM’S WIFE ANGELA.
THEY COVERED MUCH OF THE SAME TERRITORY, BUT ADDED SOME MORE QUESTIONS.
Derek: As you know, I’ve spent years as a psychiatrist, and a lot of my clients have been Christians, with not a few casualties fleeing from the church. I’m wondering now whether we take enough notice of how a person’s faith is shaped by her personality. Dogmatic types tend to stay dogmatic even when they totally change their religious beliefs. I had one client who threw over his conservative evangelicalism, which he had espoused with great enthusiasm for years. Now he is a convinced secular humanist and he’s pushing those ideas just as dogmatically as he used to present his fundamentalist Christianity.
Jim: Yeah, I’ve sometimes wondered about that…. It’s the way we sometimes imply “I have an open mind and you must have an open mind like I do!!!” Someone said to me that the cult of the open mind is the most dangerous cliché of all. I stand convicted.
Angela: I’m concerned about what Brian was saying about reason and revelation. I’m increasingly liberal in my theological outlook, but I sometimes wonder whether we’re all simply fallible humans reaching out for meaning and whether God is simply a sort of projection of our highest hopes and ideals. I don’t really want to believe that, because I think I’ve had some genuine encounters with the Living One, but I know how easy it is to fool ourselves.
Helen: With all our talk about building bridges with people of other faiths , I’m in total agreement. But I’ve been thinking about something Des said to me not long before he died last year. We were looking back over the things we’d put our energy into over the years, and we got talking about our enthusiasm for the ecumenical movement and the World Council of Churches. Des said, “ I wish we had put less time into those interminable meetings trying to sort out our theological and ecclesiological differences. Somehow I think we’d have been more use to God and to one another if we had focused more on engaging with the problems of the world and building closer relationships with other churches in the context of shared action for the healing of the world. ”
I wonder whether the same principle might apply to our links with our Moslem and Hindu and Buddhist brothers and sisters.
USING THE CONVERSATIONS ABOVE, YOU MIGHT FIND IT HELPFUL TO MAKE A LIST OF THE ISSUES AND QUESTIONS THAT HAVE APPEARED, EITHER STATED OR IMPLIED, IN THE MIDST OF THOSE CONVERSATIONS.
IT SHOULD BE NOTED THAT THE CHARACTERS ARE NOT LIVING PEOPLE BUT I WOULD ACKNOWLEDGE THAT THERE ARE PARTS OF ME IN ALL OF THEM!
Mac Nicoll March 2002
