Mulled Vine

Reports have been coming in from all over the world about sudden, mass disappearances of individuals. Mrs Agatha Krone from Eadlepug, Tennessee, said she was in the middle of a conversation with her neighbour, Tabatha Widget and her daughter Frieda, when “they just plain vanished.” Early analysis from the Global Statistics Bureau of the missing people has revealed a very strong correlation with belief in the Judeo-Christian God. Professor Richard Dawkins author of the best-selling “The God Delusion” has been quoted as saying “Good riddance. Now we can stop debating the non-existence of God and get on with our lives.” Representatives from other faith groups have declined to comment.

I lay on my back in the water, floating serenely underneath the cotton wooled blue sky. On my stomach lay the remnants of a delicious fresh water crab I had had just crushed with a stone and eaten on the spot. I considered brushing it off but really couldn’t be bothered – the moment was too perfect.

A harsh cry broke the stillness, “Heeeeenry!!!”

It was her, the otter woman, the woman I’d left my faithful wife for, the one I’d eloped with, the one I’d married, and now the one I was enslaved to.

“Heeeeeenry, why the hell haven’t you taken out the garbage again??”

I have a low patience threshold at the best of times but today was the limit.

Blah, blah, blah … vision statement … blah, blah, blah, … synergistic thinking …. blah, blah, blah … I haven’t really achieved anything but look at my wonderful blue sky thinking … blah, blah, blah … look I can do Powerpointless presentations with transitions and dull text … blah, blah, blah.

And all this when I should have been catching one of my rare evening trains home.

So afterwards I strode to the station, fuming, muttering as I do about the self-inflated oxygen wasters in that meeting, when lo and behold a direct train to my home town had been delayed 15 minutes by some missing driver and was waiting just for me.

I say lo and behold because it felt vaguely Biblical. “And lo God did provide a train for his faithful servant.”

Of course I don’t really believe God did that just for me, particularly as my muttering was not full of blessing, but it was nice to have a train anyway, so thank you Lord for the way it worked out.

This blog is a bit devoid of spiritual content at the moment, because that’s the way I feel, but that’s for another time. My train is almost home.

I remember the day God decided to smash our lives against the great anvil of suffering.

It all began benignly enough I suppose, the late nights, the racing thoughts, the endless scribbling in her diary, the midnight awakenings full of burdened questions, but then came the awful imaginings, the voices and the suspicion, leading finally to deep paranoia and hospitalisation.

I left her there, my beloved wife, for a time, desperate, guilt-ridden at not coping better, my mind full of black images of padded cells, manic laughter, rapist male nurses, and my heart broke like never before. I looked up at the sky, seeking meaning and comfort from the God that did this to us, but found just the stars, magnificent in their random splendour.

Now things are calmer, and the anvil rings less loudly in our lives, dulled by the sedation of medication, the hardening of my heart, the unbelievable resilience of our children, and I wonder if it was all worth it, whether there was any purpose in it all.

I’ll ask Him that, one day, perhaps, assuming of course I still have faith.

Faithfulness. God is faithful, a husband is faithful, a dog is faithful. What does it mean?

Full of faith.

I bet you’re glad you’ve stopped by. Riveting intellectual stuff this.

Faithful to me (which means I don’t have a dictionary to hand) means dependable, trustworthy, loyal, and here’s the thing – its got nothing to do with you the receiver. It acts irrespective of your behaviour, at least in its pure form. So for example God is faithful even though we screw up time and time again.

However, in the hands of the imperfect, faithfulness becomes conditional to a degree. You kick a dog enough times, eventually he runs away, or a husband leaves because he’s not happy for some reason, perhaps to do with the spouse, perhaps not.

What motivates someone to be faithful? I can’t speak for dogs, but I can for speak me as a husband. Part of it is love for my wife, but love is such a big word and includes things like faithfulness, so that’s not really helping. A big part of it for me is commitment, another overused word. I made a promise oh so many years ago to be faithful for better or for worse. I made that promise to my wife, to myself, and to God. So if my wife lets me down I try to be forgiving but failing that I try to honour my personal integrity, but if that fails then I do it because God tells me to, like it or not.

But sometimes it feels a bit like a dog being kicked. I don’t like suffering. I know I promised but this is too much. God will forgive I’m sure. He didn’t mean this sort of hardship. I have rights you know. A right to be happily married, to have my needs met and so on.

Nope. You have the right to be faithful.

I went out with some mates last night, our occasional lads’ night out away from the responsibilities of life. We went to the pub for a quick pint and then to the cinema to watch “The Day the Earth Stood Still”.

What a load of complete rubbish. I can’t recall the last time I hated a film this much. Dull, dull, dull. The only redeeming feature was that I had a bag of Minstrels to munch on. I think I even dozed off in the middle, something I never do. Keanu Reeves is wooden at the best of times, but its wearing a bit thin now.

Score out of 10?

Don’t bother.

Some of my regular readers will be wondering what deep, meaningful spiritual significance will be concluded from all of this. Well, fear not, faithful reader, here it is.

Always take chocolate to the movies.

In other words, always be prepared. Parable of the 10 virgins. Get it?

Not one of my better posts, let’s be honest, but its the first day of my holiday – I’m off until 5th of January. How superb is that? So you have lots of inane frivolity to look forward to on this blog. I have no reason to be miserable or moody or pensive, just irritatingly happy!

I’ve started a book called “Velvet Elvis – Repainting the Christian Faith”. I’m not really in the mood for a Christian book at the moment but since I’ve got nothing else on my bookshelf at present it’ll do.

The author goes on about trampolines and how being a Christian is like jumping, and that our doctrinal thoughts should be like flexible springs, not hard, unyielding, and exclusive bricks.

Springs enable jumping. Bricks make walls. We are made to jump.

I like that.

A man dies and mets St. Peter at the Pearly Gates. Peter says to the man, “Here’s how it works. You need to have one hundred points to get into heaven. You tell me about all the good things you’ve done. They are all worth a certain number of points. If your total is one hundred or more, you can come in.”

“Well,” says the man. “I was happily married to the same woman for 52 years. I never looked at another woman. I was attentive and loved her dearly.”

“That’s great,” says St. Peter. “That’ll be two points.”

“Hmmm,” says the man. “This is going to be harder than I thought. Well, I attended church regularly, volunteered my time and tithed faithfully.”

“Wonderful,” says St. Peter, “That’s worth another point.”

“One point!” says the man. “Okay, okay. I was involved with a prison ministry for twenty-five years. I went into the prison, at least monthly, and shared Jesus with them.”

“Wow!” says St. Peter. “That’s another two points!”

“Only two points!” says the man. “At this rate, it’ll be by the grace of God that’ll I’ll ever get into this place.”

“Bingo!” says St. Peter. “That’s one hundred points! Come on in.”

I’ve not seen any buses with this slogan yet, but its proposal was in the news a little while back.

I mention this because I happened upon a blog, similarly named, that is a collection atheist testimonies.

My immediate reaction to these sorts of things is sadness. Then I want to wade in and say something. Then I think “So much has already been said, by smarter people than I, so what can I add to the debate?” Paul speaks of “demolish[ing] arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and tak[ing] captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” Jesus told his disciples not to worry about what to say because the Holy Spirit would give them words at the time.

Well I’m not sure I fit either of those categories, but here’s my punt.

There are three elements to this slogan. First, that there is probably no God, then that we should stop worrying, and finally that we should enjoy life.

Starting with the easier ones.

The last phrase smacks of hedonism to me. Drink and be merry for tomorrow we die. Christianity has filled my life with meaning, purpose, growth and joy. Granted its also brought questions and challenges and sorrows, but I have without a doubt enjoyed it for 18 years. It is because it has been so life changing to me that I hold fast to what I believe are the “Words of Life”.

As for worrying, I don’t see many believers worrying about the question. Agnostics can’t know, so they aren’t worrying. So I guess its the atheists who are worrying, no?

The first one is the toughest. The statement that there is probably no god is largely based on the view that there is insufficient evidence for a God. Insufficient in what sense? For faith? No obviously not, billions of people believe in god. For rational faith? No, lots of scientists believe in God. For a faith that is without ambiguity? You’re assuming that its supposed to work like that.

Is God improbable? Take a look at the vast, and I mean vast, odds against us existing. Don’t let them kid you. The odds are so immense against us being here that they may as well be zero. Add to that the fact that in our universe, empirically everything has a cause. What do you get? A big question that needs answering. What was the prime cause? And don’t give me no quantum meta-physical mumbo jumbo. Give me the same empiricism atheists demand.

God is the most probable and most widely accepted explanation to date for our existence. There is a ton of circumstancial evidence for god, enough to make one seriously wonder why the concept even exists, and certainly enough for most people – people who get through their lives knowing lots of things that are not scientifically proven.

I have never been comfortable with the intelligent designer argument for God, that is, something that appears to be designed must have a designer.

For example, take a rock painting.

I look at the painting, I think “painter”, but when I look at the rock, I think “rock”.

Yet this is one of THE arguments for believing in God, to the extent that its supposed to be undeniable.

“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.” (Romans 1:20)

Then in my reading this morning I found this:

“Did you see the movie Contact?”

“Sure,” I said. “It was based on Carl Sagan’s book.”

“That’s right” he replied. “In the movie, scientists are scanning the skies for signs of intelligent life in space.

Their radiotelescopes just receive static – random sounds from space. It’s reasonable to assume there’s no intelligence behind that. Then one day they begin receiving a transmission of prime numbers, which are numbers divisible only by themselves and one. The scientists reason that it’s too improbable that there would be a natural cause behind a string of numbers like that. This wasn’t merely unorganized static; it was information, a message with content. From that, they concluded there was an intelligent cause behind it.

As Sagan once himself said, ‘The receipt of a single message from space would be enough to know there’s an intelligence out there.’ That’s reasoning by analogy – we know that where there’s intelligent communication, there’s an intelligent cause.”
…
“And if a single message from space is enough for us to conclude there’s an intelligence behind it, then what about the vast amounts of information contained in the DNA of every living plant and animal?”
…
“Each cell in the human body contains more information than in all thirty volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica. It’s certainly reasonable to make the inference that this isn’t the random product of misguided nature, but it’s the unmistakable sign of an Intelligent Designer.”

and

More than thirty years of experimentation on the origin of life in the fields of chemical and molecular evolution have led to a better perception of the immensity of the problem of the origin of life on Earth rather than to its solution. At present all discussions on principle theories and experiments in the field end in stalemate or in a confession of ignorance. (Klause Dose, “The Origin of Life: More Questions than Answers,” Interdisciplinary Science Review 13 (1998), 348.)

So I think its safe to say that I have been an idiot.