The Wardman Wire

This week Gene Robinson, the gay US Bishop at the heart of current Church of England soul-searching, has been touring the UK promoting his new book. Having already missed out on an invitation, Robinson let it be known that Rowan Williams, the AB of C himself, doesn’t want him to speak publicly or lead worship during the Lambeth Conference. Lambeth 08 is the latest in a 10-yearly gathering of Anglican Bishops from around the world. Sadly one issue has dominated the pre-conference chatter, and it’s not Zimbabwe.

Williams himself notes that the national media has two narratives for stories about the church: split and decline. The local media can be much more positive and balanced, as they operate at the level where the church is most active and effective, and report news as news rather than grist to the editorial mill. But it’s not as if there’s no dispute, and no struggle, about church life at the moment. So why do we God-botherers bother?

Who’s There?

Christian thinker Francis Schaeffer argued that there were two basic questions:

• Does God exist?
• Has God spoken?

If you are Dawkins, Hitchens et al you’ve answered ‘no’ to question 1, and needn’t pass Go or collect £200. However if you answer ‘yes’, it starts to get interesting. Because then we’re at question 2.

Has God spoken? If the answer is no, then all religion is informed guesswork, following the clues we think the divine being has left in creation, human personality, the cosmos and whatever else we think points towards God. The trouble is, if we don’t know what God is like, we don’t know what points in his direction. If you don’t know where London is, then you have no idea whether any signs which say ‘London’ are pointing to London, or to Nempnett Thrubwell. So either you bet on all the religions at once (Bahai), or you have to stay neutral about all of them. As Homer Simpson puts it “what if we’ve chosen the wrong religion? Every week we’re just making God madder and madder.”

A silent God also suggests one who is more a force than a person, a capitalised name given to the powers and processes of the cosmos, life, death and creation. Because a personal God will communicate.

Twitter as Evidence for God’s Existence

So has God spoken? Has God given us some clues? The human drive to communicate (of which this blog is one of billions of items of evidence) is at the core of who we are. A Christian would say it’s part of the image of God in us, and points to a God who communicates. (An atheist would retort that this is just making God in our own image). The story of several of the main world religions is of a God who not only created the human species, but has revealed himself to us. He’s spoken. Faith therefore needn’t be guesswork.

If the love of my life rings me and arranges to meet at the local chippy at 8pm, I’ll go there and expect to meet her. I don’t have to wander the streets wondering where she is. If God communicates and explains how we can get to know him, meet him, and live a life which harmonises with the way he’s put the cosmos together, then faith doesn’t have to wander the interminable streets of vague spirituality, it has a basis, a place to connect.

Aren’t All Religions The Same?

Judaism, Islam and Christianity all answer ‘yes’ to Schaeffers two questions. God is there, and he has spoken. From that point they diverge. Whilst the great world faiths have plenty in common, they also have plenty of differences. To pretend otherwise is intellectual laziness - the best explanation of this comes from Timothy Spalls character in BBC drama Mr Harvey Lights a Candle . It’s like saying that curry and chocolate are the same because they are both food. And just as we pore over a love letter, or an important document, God’s words are so vital that these words (Torah, Bible, Koran) are guarded, pored over, thrashed out, prayed out and lived out on a daily basis. They provide a plumb-line against which any other claim to be divine, any other claim to absolute authority, power and rights, can be measured. Prophets are the people who remind us of the plumb-line.

Because of this, it’s impossible for all 3 to be equal, one is plumber than the others, and finds the others wanting. For a Muslim, it’s inconceivable that God could become human and die for the sins of the world - the Allah of Islam is one who does not associate with his creation. For a Christian, Mohammed is not a prophet: Jesus is God’s ultimate messenger, being God himself, and the Koran is wrong about him and about God. It’s the same logic as any other area of philosophy and worldviews - conservatism and socialism can’t both be right. Even though they both cover the same topics, one must be the standard against which the other is judged.

Who Cares?

But most Christians didn’t become Christians from sifting every argument. To paraphrase St. John, we bother God because he first bothered us. God is constantly interfering - in slavery, injustice, complacency, greed, exploitation, false worship, bad leadership - and we are a race who occasionally need someone to bother on our behalf. At another level, ‘is anyone bothered about me?’ is a basic existential question that most people ask at some time or another. According to physician Dr. Paul Tournier, “No one can develop freely in the world without feeling understood by at least one person.” God says ‘yes’, even when everything else is a deafening silence. In one Psalm, reassuring his people of his care, God speaks of watching over them whilst they were being formed in the womb, knowing their every thought. God knows us at a level of detail that quantum scientists haven’t even begun to imagine, and is bothered about us. Loves us.

And we bother God because he enjoys it. Or at least we hope he does. My little son enjoys using me as a climbing frame, but has trouble working out when Daddy doesn’t want to be climbed on any more. It doesn’t make sense: Daddy started it, but now he’s saying it hurts his arms. God started it, but sometimes the enthusiasm of his children becomes something more hurtful, when we lose sight of God himself, and the reason why the game started.

As a Christian of nearly 25 years (I was converted on a Sheffield bus in my teens, in the days of the Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire - the idea of a LibDems council in Sheffield is an amazing achievement), I’ve become convinced that God is there, that he has spoken, and he has spoken most fully in Jesus. And because God has bothered with me, I bother with him, and I bother to strive to become more loving, generous, forgiving, just and kind, because that’s what He wants.

Things Worth Bothering About

Any life worth living is a life spent bothering about something important: our families, apartheid, justice, politics, community, the environment, the vulnerable. That’s the reason (we hope) why people want to get elected. The reason we campaign, argue, work, study, pray, organise, battle against injustice, and put up with criticism without quitting is because we care. It’s when we bother only about trivial things that we lose our humanity. A core Christian motivation is the conviction that God is there, and that he too is bothered.

David Keen is bothered about his waistline, and blogs at St Aidan to Abbey Manor