STILL PONDERING

Today I discovered a couple of pages that I wrote sometime about 2005 or 2006.Have you ever wondered about these things?

Today is July 8th, 2005, and I am planning to begin part three of the series I began some years ago on my spiritual pilgrimage.

Do I begin with God or do I begin with myself?

I concluded my second document of this series with a quotation from Ruth Etchells in her book,’Unafraid to be.’ This was a way of summarising my discussion of Worldliness in which I described the relief at finding Christian writers who were life-affirming and who saw poetry and literature as a way of encountering the truth about life, even if the authors and poets were not card-carrying Christians. This book was a major encouragement to my emerging sense of self, marking a willingness to take risks in my thinking and in my living.

So where am I now, in the second half of 2005, now over five years since I retired from paid employment?

The God I have met in the second half of my life is no less great, but somehow more mysterious and less predictable than I had thought.

God is the One who has created the world and all that is in it and God is intimately involved in the lives of all people. However, God does not make things happen in ways that are inconsistent with God’s character.

The common idea that God causes everything to happen is anathema to me. I believe that, having created the world, God invites us to freely participate in building the Kingdom of God, but God has given to humankind the gift of freedom and we are able if we choose to act against God . I believe that God is always open to helping people who turn to God.and always working to draw all people into God’s care and love.

Being a disciple of God in Christ is no guarantee of safety or freedom from death and pain. These things occur because we are humans living in an imperfect world. However, those who trust God find that God is present with them in the midst of pain and distress and failure and God redeems these situations because they are also tranformed into moments of grace, albeit in the midst of great pain.

I question that God is omnipotent. Or, to put it another way, I believe that God always acts consistently with God’s character and therefore there are times when God cannot act because action would require God to be acting inconsistently with God’s character.

The idea of God intervening in human life to solve problems, to give people their heart’s desire, is a problem for me.

I am much impressed with the thought that God is sometimes powerless and helpless. I see the crucifixion of Jesus as being one of those times. I believe that God was in Christ reconciling the world to God, but I do not believe that God punishes the Son in order to exact some transaction with a third party.

I do not agree with the claim that God has to punish sin therefore Jesus had to die. It seems to me that we cannot say that God has to do anything..

I am much attracted with the thought that there were times when Jesus was in the dark, times when he did not know what to do and when he gained insight as the result of what others said to him. I imagine there were times when Jesus said, or thought, ‘This is a problem. What do we do now.’

Likewise, is it just possible that God also does not always know what to do, and when God says, as it were, ‘This is a problem. ‘What do we do now?’

A HELPFUL CRICKETER

After meeting David Sheppard, I followed his cricket career with interest. Even more importantly, we had a couple of years of correspondence when the subject matter was as much about living a life for Christ as it was about cricket.

I left school, went to University and met with fellow students who took seriously matters of faith and life. I kept reading and thinking and following the advice that David had given about discipleship. Over the years I also read books that he had written and realised that his experiences in ministry were significantly shaping his theology, as mine was being shaped by an emerging emphasis on the connection between faith and justice here in my own church circles.

The years passed, I read more of David's writings as well as his wife Grace's book on her frightening time of mental illness, called AN ASPECT OF FEAR. By now, the corrrespondence of earlier years had ceased but I continued at a distance to note what David was doing. It was now no longer a matter of hero-worship but simply gratitude, admiration and respect for a faithful disciple who was still learning and sharing his experiences with others.

After my retirement in 2000, , I wrote a long letter to David, outlining my own journey of faith in the 50 years since we had met and acknowledging his help through his writings and example.

Among other things, I wrote

'I guess my early correspondence with you was at least partly a form of hero-worship, which has long since faded! However, as I look back on my life, I can see the way in which that brief contact was a shaping force in my Christian journey.
The encouragement of your example;
your emphasis on those great verses "casting all your care upon Him, for He careth for you"; and "In all your ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct your paths."';the reading of Grace's book Aspect of Fear; the reading of the Hewitts' book on George Burton [which was very helpful to me in seeking to understand a creative and fragile colleague]; these have all been a source of challenge and encouragement to me and for that I want to assure you of my appreciation. The time you spent in penning an occasional letter to a youngster from th colonies was not wasted !
I may be quite wrong , but I can imagine that the understanding and faith that you now have of the living God is somehow less certain [in the propositional sense] and more grounded in paradox and mystery than it was in 1951. But perhaps I'm projecting too much of my own experience!'

In his reply, David wrote
'Yes, you sensed rightly that I have moved on from that Party Evangelical base--though I owe much to it. Being plunged into the East End of London was the biggest single education of my life. My becoming a bishop, where I had to relate to all of the parishes in a very mixed English diocese like Soutwark, made me learn from different traditions.
Then Liverpool and the partnership with Roman Catholics and Derek Worlock in particular has been another key part of the journey. We were taken out of our depth in momentous years there, facing mass unemployment, closure after closure of companies, conflicts between the Black community and the police, then between the Militant leadership of Midlands City Council and Margaret Thatcher's government.'

I received that letter in March 2001, ten years ago next month. In the years that have passed since then David has died after a long battle with cancer and Grace died last November, also from cancer.