How CS Lewis taught us to be better readers.

There was a time in the early 20^th Century when Liberal Theology was popular, and by that I don't mean Liberal as Left Wing, I mean Liberal as not exactly orthodox. People were asking questions and challenging conventions, and not least of these was how do we read the Bible. From people like Von Harnack onwards, many seminaries focussed on higher criticism of the Bible; to read and dissect it as we would any other book, to look at narrative motifs and themes, to try an understand miracles in light of other classical world phenomena, and of course to discuss genre.

This is where Lewis wades in. He delivered a talk in Cambridge in 1951 on how so many illustrious Bible scholars just don't understand literature enough to really pass comment, and a lot of it comes down to one work discussing the genre of the Gospel of John.

Now the Gospels are interesting from a higher criticism view, because the first three (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) seem to define their own genre. When we read them in light of other First Century writings they don't quite fit into Bios, Memoir, or Teachings, they in instead their own genre which we now call Gospel. They share similarities with the others, but we still can't quite classify them.

But the fourth Gospel, the Gospel of John, now that is a weird book, and that is why Lewis needed to clarify something regarding genre.

You see, there was a train of thought that says the Gospel of John is romance.

That's right folks, some authors believed that John was the Mills and Boone of his day. Now Lewis took umbrage at this, and he took a shot at the whole of Biblical higher criticism with it. In his now famous talk (since published as Fern Seeds and Elephants) Lewis questions whether these scholars have read enough romance to call John a romantic. To put this in perspective, and to keep this a pop-theology blog, here is the professor of literature at Cambridge dropping the mic on over a hundred years of theological studies saying that they haven't read enough to form an opinion. He isn't questioning their ability to theologise, rather that they were talking out of their rear ends when it comes to literature. Also his dad was Welsh so he is already half perfect. Boom, headshot.

And to give him his credit, Lewis does have his academic chops when it comes to this stuff, the guy is practically a genius, and between him and Tolkien they were probably the worlds leading experts in this next field: Mythology.

Lewis studied a whole boat load of classical Greek texts, and he taught a hella lot of this stuff at one of the most prestigious universities in the world. This guy has chops when it comes to mythology, and that is kind of what he says the Bible is. Of course, he goes into far more depth than I am here, he is a genius and I do pop-theology, go read more since I am only going to skim the surface.

Now Lewis means something different when he talks myth than when we do. We tend to think of myths as something which just upright isn't true, but that's not what it means at all. Myth is how people make sense of the world around them, and they make that into stories. Maybe everything doesn't happen exactly as it plays out in those stories, but that doesn't make them any less true.

To really simplify this (and I know that I am doing Lewis a disservice here), think to the story of the Boy Who Cried Wolf, fact or fiction? Actually I am asking the wrong question there, a better one would be true of false? You see, something doesn't have to be 'fact' to be 'true', and if we were to dismiss the Boy Who Cried Wolf because we cannot place the exact village and the exact breed of wolf, then we lose a most valuable lesson.

And Lewis was fighting poor higher criticism on two fronts. Firstly there were the people who robbed the Bible of it's mythology, its truthiness. And then there were those who straight up took it too far the other way and tried to make it all too facty (If I make up enough words does that make me as clever as Tolkien?). They were getting hung up on author intention, so when Peter wrote something, what exactly was happening in his world to influence him, what exactly did he mean?

I love the anecdote Lewis gives to this. Apparently one day he read a review of his own work where the critic discusses Lewis' motivation and themes, and all that stuff we were taught in English class. And Lewis noted that he didn't recognise any of it. People had read him and reflected themselves in his writings, and that had completely changed the message he was trying to get across.

And I am so guilty of this, contextualising Bible stuff is what I do more than anything else, and it is really important folks. We cannot pretend that Paul or James or John would understand our world, any more than we fully understand theirs. And I don't think that Lewis is fully signed up to La Mort D'Author philosophy either. I think he just saw some people going too far in not giving the mythology of the Bible enough respect to speak for itself. Of course this is somewhat easier for him since he taught a lot of classical philosophy, so he probably didn't have to think about context as much as we do.

People were getting so hung up on finding the authentic intention of the Bible authors that Lewis gave them this great rebuttal: Mark is dead, and when we meet St Peter we will have more pressing matters to discuss.

And myth is so important to the Christianity of Lewis. There is a great story where Lewis, a die hard atheist at this point, is considering Christianity. The story goes that he and Tolkien are discussing the Bible and mythology and they come to this conclusion: The Bible is myth, and Jesus is myth made real.

Lewis was famously not an Evangelical, he wasn't hung up on issues like six day creation or fish swallowing people whole and spitting them out, he did try to see the truth in the stories of the Bible however, and even told his own explaining what Jesus meant to him. What exactly he and Tolkien meant by 'myth made real' I will leave to you to decide, after all, they are both dead now so we can't ask them.

I hope you have enjoyed this, and had something to think about. Please remember that this is a pop-theology blog, I am not your university lecturer and this is not an academic work, it's just a short piece to make you think about how you read the Bible. God Bless.

That time God went crazy and killed all those children with a bear... only didn't.

One passage of the Bible people struggle with is that time when God went crazy and killed all those poor innocent children with bears just because they were mean, or at least that is how some people would like it to interpreted. It is found in 2^nd Kings 2, right after the bit about flaming chariots. And we do like to misinterpret this passage. If you have ever heard it described as it is above, then I am sorry to say but you have heard a poor interpretation and have probably come to some very strange ideas about God.

So let us take a look at a few things which might help us to understand what is going on here:

Gods people are under threat. Their culture is being threatened, this time from within. Usually we see threats to a way of life from without, an invading force is laying siege to a city. At the time of Elijah and Elisha that threat is coming from within; the rulers of Israel are pulling away from worshipping God and keeping their statutes to becoming a more pluralistic society. God's ways are being pushed to the side and the King is worshipping Baal, as are many of the religious leaders. Many of God's followers have abandoned their homes and are hiding in caves, fearing for their lives.

Elijah is bringing a message that Israel needs to return to worshipping God. As you can imagine, this doesn't go down very well. Remember we had little troubles like the War of Religion where a whole bunch of people killed each other because they had a difference of opinion over the Bible? Heard of anything about the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre or The Thirty Year War? Christianity can turn ugly and violent in the name of God. Of course there are other aspects to all this bloodshed, and we are okay allowing that when we discuss Christianity because we see ourselves as civilised. And yet when it comes to Ancient Israel we prefer to see things in barbaric black and white. More on this later.

There is a religious civil war going on in Ancient Israel one of the most revered characters on the God side, Elijah, has just died.

I realise that just by saying this I am treading on some deep held beliefs, but it is what the Bible is pointing towards. The idea of being 'taken up to Heaven' is found in other Ancient Near Eastern texts, and I am thinking specifically here of Adapa, son of Ea, who is taken up into Heaven looking for eternal life but ultimately is returned to earth, quite mortal. Then there's the flaming chariot itself. These are associated with the sun-god Shamash and the storm-god Hadad, and these two are hugely significant references.

Let us look at Hadad first; he is the storm-god who rides before his chosen king and does stuff like send fire down from heaven (quite a bit like the story of Elijah). Then there is Shamash, who when Gilgamesh is looking to cross the Sea Of Death was told that only Shamash had the power to cross that water, so there is a link to 'crossing over' into death.

Now none of this is conclusive, of course, but a lot of the imagery used indicates that, in Ancient Near Eastern speak, Elijah has died.

Oh yeah, and then his student Elisha goes and tears his cloak and possibly shaves his head, two common signs of mourning.

And now, with Elijah the leader of God's prophets dead, Elisha takes up the mantle. He still isn't popular, and people are out for his blood. Remember folks, there is a religious civil war going on here. And almost immediately he encounters these darling little children who are innocently minding their own business and only calling him names. Except that it's what the Bible says at all.

Most translations say that Elisha encounters 'small boys'. ū·nə·‘ā·rîm in Hebrew. This isn't exactly a wrong translation, only it doesn't give us the full scope of the word. The same word (according to some interpretors) is used in 1^st Kings to describe the 'young' men at court with Rehoboam, those who aren't elders but have 'grown up with' Rehoboam and whose advice he seeks. It is estimated that these men are up to forty years old, so when we encounter them in the story of Elisha we can assume that they are a group of young men, possibly in their late or early teens. Again this might not seem like much to us, a bunch of teenagers causing trouble, only these are socially men, they would have endured their rights of passage into manhood by this age, they are old enough to be conscripted into an army.

And then there is what these young men say to Elisha: Go up, Go up. This is the same words used to describe the death of Elijah. The initial goad goes something like this: Where your leader has gone, you should go the same way, just go die.

There is an obvious implication here of violence.

Then there is the 'bald head' side of it. Now we all have that one friend who has a five head not a forehead, and maybe they are okay with the occasional teasing, surely we don't deserve to be killed just for that. Again, that isn't the implication here. There are two possible interpretations of the 'bald head' reading. Either they were mocking Elisha's mourning and reinforcing the idea that she should die (i.e. be killed) or there is something else just as sinister here.

One reason people went bald back in the Ancient Near East was leprosy. To be a leper meant that you were to be shunned from society, you had no voice, you were to leave your family, with a little luck you would die sooner rather than later. We find evidence of this form of baldness in Leviticus 13, so none of this is without precedence, and had we been alive at the time of Elisha, we would understand better the language being used and its implication.

So at a time of civil war, the leader of God's side has died, his successor has taken over, and group of over forty young men are issuing him death threats. What does God do to protect the new leader of Team Yahweh? Send bears to kill them of course.

Even by the first century, many rabbis were discussing this as just symbolic, that God was commanding even nature to protect the chosen prophet. And it does sound fanciful, two bears against forty two men, it sounds like something the History Channel would do a sensationalised reconstruction of. And it is exactly because this story sounds fanciful that even way back then, God's followers saw it as metaphor. Was it bears or was it the followers of Elisha in this religious civil war period? The story does say bears, and that is hella cool, that Elisha was the Ursine Aquaman of the Ancient Near East. I am just going to leave you to decide on which side you land in that discussion.

Something we cannot avoid is the implication that God perpetuated violence against an oppressor in a time of war. Poor God, can't cut a break. When we see people oppressed and shipped off to death camps today we rail at God for not intervening, when we read the Bible and see that God does intervene we accuse God of being bloodthirsty and murderous and condemning enemy soldiers to Hell.

Some will say that God can do whatever God wants, feel like killing an army? No problem, that's God's will. Call it Manifest Destiny if killing innocents in the name of God makes it easier to swallow. Or just say that God did it directly.

It is wonderful to me that these passages are held in such disdain. It opens the conversation on a Just War Theory, that sometimes it is okay to kill others. Maybe the more people who are revolted by the idea of killing as a means of self defence will spark a debate around gun ownership, or do we only dislike killing when God does it? Is it okay for people to claim to love God and yet possess the means to kill others?

Of course, in the Ancient Near East, God would be killing people, that is just what gods did. Part of having a god was having a celestial force to fight while you fought. In our Bibles when Daniel is praying to God in exile an Angel comes and says about how they are fighting the opposing forces and that is why God couldn't answer his prayer sooner, God was a little busy getting in a fight.

These ideas seem odd to us, and that isn't a bad thing. The ancient world understood itself, and understood God as an integral part of that world. By the time we reach the Classical World, the one Jesus knew, we see far less of that idea of God, we see something far more Greek in influence which fitted that world.

And here is the big thing, if God can fit in those two very different times, maybe it is okay for us to find God in our own, not being a bastion of a bygone age. Jesus recognised that, and now maybe the call is for us to do the same.

It is not my story to tell. On privilege, power, and speaking for other with humility.

Sometimes doing pop-theology gets awkward. I only have a thousand words to address a subject and that means I often can not give that topic enough attention to really do it justice.

Then there are times when it gets awkward because of the subject matter I have to address, and I need to address it because it plays a big role in Christianity, the Bible, theology, and our lives.

Recently I have written on feminism, gender equality, LBG+ issues, immigration, and racism. And the reason this gets awkward is that I am on the wrong side of those discussions.

I am a middle aged, white, married, straight, university educated, man. I have never known what it is like to face the prejudices many of the groups I write about encounter daily. No one has ever spat at me or poured a drink over me because I hold hands with my wife, something friends of mine who are gay have experienced. I have never been overlooked for a job because my name 'sounds foreign'. I can walk down a street without fear of harassment, or catcalling, or any slur due to skin colour. And I can ride the train home after an evening out without the threat of unwanted sexual advances. It would appear as though I have it made.

I benefit from all kinds of privilege; white privilege, male privilege, and cis privilege. And that is why some people say that I can not write on the subjects I cover. It just isn't my story to tell.

There is an element of truth to that of course. I am an observer, what is happening to others is not happening to me, or not directly at least. That does not detract from my humanity and my ability to feel the pain of others. I may not have first hand experience, but I am not apart from suffering. And no, I am not going to say that many of my close friends are women/gay/black/immigrants, that seems to be the get out of jail free card for inexcusable behaviour. Instead, I am owning my privilege. I acknowledge that I have it better than many. And in doing so, I have to make a choice. Society has given me power, what I do with that power, and you too, will decide how our society will be formed.

It is unfortunate, but it is still true, a man saying something has far more gravitas than a woman saying the same thing. Apparently we respond better to the deeper tones of a man's voice, it gives an air of respectability, wisdom, and knowledge. And this is true even in print. Mary Beard has written on this subject (please do read Women and Power, it is only short but it's a great read), here is a quote on it:

“For a start it doesn’t much matter what line you take as a woman, if you venture into traditional male territory, the abuse comes anyway. It is not what you say that prompts it, it’s simply the fact that you’re saying it.”

And that does come from experience. This will change, thankfully, but we aren't there yet. What it does mean is that I have a privilege, a power. And as we all know from Spiderman, with power comes responsibility.

To argue that those with privilege are not to use to it for those without is to go against the Bible, although you would be hard pressed to find this in many modern churches. I have heard people say that white, middle class, Christians are the most oppressed people in society right now. To them I say: please stop talking, you are only making the rest of us look ignorant. Christianity has been the most heard voice in so many government policies in recent years that even the election of Donald Trump in the USA has been attributed mainly to middle class evangelical protestants. If you have the power to decide who is in government, you really aren't oppressed. What they mean is that some of their right wing views are distasteful and they aren't allowed to suppress the basic human rights of certain groups any more. There is a world of difference in not being allowed to discriminate and being oppressed. Is it oppression of the wealthy that they can no longer employ slave labour? I don't think so.

But to not use privilege for the benefit of the marginalised does go against the Bible. Take a quick look at the minor prophets. They were repeatedly calling on the kings and priests to care for the poor, reminding them that their privilege was only given by God for them to tend to the needs of others.

And then there is Jesus, an olive skinned, Middle Eastern Jew. What does any of that have to do with most of us? Should we ignore His teachings saying that he isn't one of us, that He shouldn't represent us in any way? And setting aside the humanity of Jesus, He is still God. What does a perfect, Holy God have to do with a wayward and selfish society? Should we also silence silence God for not being as like us?

Jesus is the answer to this folks. All of humanity is created by Him and in His image. Every woman, man, black, gay, Asian. Everything which is human possesses the image of God. So even though these may not be my stories, at the same time they are all our stories. As we see another person oppressed and not cared for, so we do to ourselves, and so we do to Jesus. It is only when we restore that image of God in creation that we will realise it's none of our stories to tell, it's always been about the one who created us.

The Gay Bible question doesn't have an easy answer, and here's why.

In case you've been living under a rock for the past thirty years, there is an ongoing discussion about gays and the Bible. One side is saying that Paul clearly states that being gay is the worst sin imaginable, the side is saying that Paul is sort of okay with it, but he is against certain homosexual practices.

Now while I usually use this space for pop-theology, I am actually a proper theologian, sort of. I have a degree in this stuff. And unfortunately, neither side can really claim an emphatic victory on this stance, but neither is either side wrong.

So let us take a look at the big issue.

Paul writes in 1^st Corinthians 6:9 about sexual immorality, idolatry, adultery, thieves, revellers, drunkards and swindlers. And he mentions men who partake in homosexual activity. None of these can enter heaven. Or at least that's how the passage has been read. But there is a problem with this reading, Paul may not have said homosexuality at all. And that's where we meet a sticky wicket.

In Greek, the language Paul was writing, he uses two words: malakoi and arsenokoitai. Then in the 1500s, a good time after Paul has dies, the struggle to translate them began. And the words chosen were buggerer or sodomite.

This has set the tone for much Christian thinking on the subject of male homosexuality since that time. And this is problematic because it may not be a fair translation of those words.

There is something we have to understand about translations, they aren't straight forward. Words fall out of use or change their meaning. And when we are dealing with words from ancient times, they are even more problematic. An example in Hebrew, and so in our Bibles, is the word vav, or wow. It appears a lot, and we have no idea what it means.We can't just go and look in a dictionary to figure out what a word means, we have to look at what makes up a word, its context, and where else it's used.

That's where we hit a brick wall with Paul: arsenokoitai isn't used much, if at all, outside of Paul's writings. When Greek writers mention homosexuality they use a word like paiderasste which is more common to describe gay men at the time. Had Paul chosen this word instead of his own then the 'Bible says it's bad' brigade would have a much stronger point.

The problem the other side has, the 'Bible doesn't mention homosexuality' brigade, is that it sort of does. Arsenokoitai is literally made up of two parts, man and coitus, or 'to bed'. And this is where all the fun starts for those of us who are Bible scholars, and oh boy does this word open a huge can of worms. And this is why I have been focussing on Paul so far.

Paul is significant in the New Testament because he alone mentions homosexual activity of any kind. And yes, arsenokoitai does imply some form of homosexual activity, there is no getting around that.

That these writings are in the New Testament mean that we can not write them off as being a peculiarity to Judaism, or that they are somehow part of an older, obsolete law. That it is mentioned in the New Testament means this is a message to the Greek world (in Bible terms, our world) and not an ethnoreligious issue like Kosher and circumcision. But...

But there is a link in this word to the Jewish scriptures, mainly Leviticus 18:22. This is where our issue of translating arsenokoitai really gets interesting.

Paul is writing in Greek. He speaks Greek, most people in the Roman Empire spoke Greek. And even though Leviticus was originally written in Hebrew, the version which is most often quoted in the New Testament is the Greek version, the Septuagint. There the word arsenokoitai starts to be used, but again, not exactly to mean homosexual, in a way.

You see, the actual quote is problematic: You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It seems self explanatory, only trust me, as with everything else we do in theology, it's a nightmare.

There is a caveat present in this verse which is uncommon. Other parts of the Bible deal with sexual sins, there are commands against sleeping with animals for instance, and they don't include the phrase 'as with a woman'. And that isn't because those were unisex commandments, there are separate ones for men and women. So it would appear that a man shall not lie with a goat in any manner, but shall not lie with a man as he would a woman. And this is fascinating.

Women and men were viewed differently in ancient times, they possessed vastly different social status. Not like today, we aren't talking about a gender income gap or representation in business. I mean women were property, akin to cattle for the most part.

Men on the other hand, well they had status, they had rights.

So to make a man into a woman was to reduce him from human to something akin to a beast. To treat a man 'as a woman' was to strip him of all dignity, all place in society, to deny him any vestige of self-esteem.

It is no wonder that even today we hear about stories of male rape from Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay. It is still seen that for a man to be treated 'as a woman' that they are no longer human. Once we dehumanise people, it is much easier to commit atrocities against them.

Had Leviticus left out that simple phrase 'as with a woman', exactly as it does with other sexual sins, then a lot of this confusion would be cleared up. As it stands, since the passage Paul is referring to is ambiguous, we cannot use that to clear up ambiguity.

So what does this little technicality in language have to do with Paul and the gay men? More than we first think.

We've already looked at one Greek word which would be far more applicable to describe homosexuality than arenokoitai, and that was paiderasste, or even lakkoproktoi if we really want to just describe the act. Neither of those accepted words were used by Paul.

There is another word which some have argued should be in Corinthians: paiderastes or paiderastïs, boy lover. Paul avoids this word too, and that throws a fly in the ointment of the 'Bible only hates boy lovers, not gays' brigade. See, this stuff isn't easy.

And why does Paul use the passage from Leviticus at all? Surely he must know that it's ambiguous, that it too can be dismissed as a heirloom, a holdover from a different time. It is unlikely that any Greek speaker in Chloe's gathering in Corinth would be well versed enough in Septuagint Torah teachings to assume Paul meant 'gay', so it's a peculiar word for Paul to use if his message was an outright 'don't be gay'.

Placing Paul in context, he doesn't use the word arsenokoitai in isolation, he pairs it with malakoi. While this isn't a simple word to translate, it is a bit easier since this word does appear in places outside of the Pauline corpus. This could be the 'classical' gay man, the fop or dandy who spends a long time on his appearance, and is maybe a little effeminate with it. Placing these two words together gives us a different idea, and that is why some people think that it has far more to do with 'effeminising' a man, lowering his status to a woman, than our translations currently allow for.

There seems to be more an issue with power and status than with relationship here. It is even possible that these two phrases together are only discussing the use of forced male prostitution where one party is playing the role of the submissive. So not a transvestite who chooses to wear women's clothing, or someone with gender identity issues, rather it hints at a transaction of power where one party dominates another for his own needs, while stripping the other of dignity or playing upon the submissive nature of another. The idea that these two words convey a consenting adult relationship just isn't obvious.

At the same time, there is a chance that Paul meant exactly what we've translated him to say. Leviticus might have no ambiguity. The problem is that I cannot commit to that as a Bible scholar living in the 20^th Century. To the best of my learning, these phrases are far from cut and dried on either side.

And that is where I would like to end this blog, it is longer than usual, and it is quite different to what I usually write. Hopefully this will give you some idea as to why just using the Bible alone as a reason to base all social and theological thought is problematic. The Bible is problematic.

Of course we have not covered patterns of inclusion and any later development of thought, that would take much longer to cover and brings up huge questions on Biblical interpretation and inerrancy. I also hope that I have not offended any of you, I do value you all as readers. I just wanted to give you a little insight to why the questions I am asked on the Bible are rarely straight forward, on either side of an argument.

Thank you for your time.

Why only one set of Footprints? I can do all things through God who strengthens me.

We all know that blessed 151^st Psalm, the one about the two footprints in the sand (what do you mean it hasn't been added to the Bible yet?), where we turn around and there is only one set of footprints because that's where God carried us. But how do we know that God was carrying us then? How do we know that we weren't just better at handling life than we give ourselves credit for?

Or do we not deserve any credit? I know that we thank God when we eat together, but do we thank God for making our breakfast cereal? That without the great guiding power from on high we wouldn't be able to use a knife to spread butter on our toast? Can I actually tie my own shoe laces or is that, too, an act of divine provenance?

I remember being a teenager and wanting to play guitar like Slash from Guns And Roses. I would pray every night that God would change my hands from these fat sausage fingers I have to slim, svelte, long fingers that knew exactly where to go on the fretboard.

I would try to pull off that awesome solo from Knocking on Heavens Door (surely God would grant my wish if I was playing a song with Heaven in it), and I would fail. Then I would pray about it and the next morning get my guitar amped up and try again. Remember kids, attempt great things for God, expect great things from God. And guess what happened after a night of prayer?

A morning of frustration. I was still as terrible at guitar as I had been the night previous.

Maybe this was God sending me a message, or so my tiny teenage mind reasoned. Maybe God knew that if I become awesome at shredding guitar licks, then maybe I would go off to LA and live an amoral life of sleeping with groupies and snorting cocaine with lingerie models. I promised God that I would never do that stuff, although yeah, truth be told I would have loved that lifestyle.

Pray as I might, I didn't manage to pull off that sweet, face melting solo for a good few months... and a lot of practice.

Practice helped me more than anything else. I would get it wrong so many times, and I would get so frustrated at myself, at my guitar, at everything which conspired against me. If only I had a top of the line Les Paul sunburst like Slash then I could pull off those licks easy. At the end of weeks of practice I could pull it off with the second hand no brand guitar I had picked up at the local music shop.

So who learned to play that solo, me or God? And who taught me to play it, did I teach and train myself or did God magic my fingers to be able to do that stuff? And here's the thing folks, did God magic Slash's fingers to do the same? Why is it when a Christian does something it's because of God, yet when a non-Christian does something it's because they studied hard, or practised, or are simply good at something?

I know that I am oversimplifying this to make a point, but there is a point here. God motivates us, the Spirit of God reveals to us needs and empowers us to meet them. We could argue that God compels us to attempt great things and expect great things. But Noah still had to build that ark. He still had to get up every morning and go fer wood (geddit?), he still had get callouses on his hands from hammering those nails. God did not magic the ark.

And this, for me, is the inherent danger of the Footprints movement, that we assume God has carried us through the hardest trials of life. Maybe God believes in you more than you realise, and maybe God knows that you're good and you can handle this. This isn't to say that God isn't there with you, but we all have a responsibility to do what we can to get through this.

Let me give you an example here. Over half of all Evangelicals believe that they can pray away mental illness. That's shocking to me. I can attest that the help I received during a bout of depression a few years ago has stayed with me, the coping techniques still help me, and I am in a better position to recognise when the black wave is surrounding me.

Then there are those people I meet who have tremendous potential.  Maybe they are promising preachers or half decent students.  I don't know if it is just pride which prevents them from taking advice but they will often say that God will equip them for whatever is to come.  Well maybe God has equipped others to teach and guide you, God does that.

God can and does work with us to overcome these hurdles, but we do have to be like Noah and do something about it.

I don't like Footprints. It absolves us of too much responsibility. Were I to rewrite it there would always be at least two sets of prints in the sand. God and me, together, with me often leaning on God for help when I need it. Not expecting to be carried, but facing the world alongside a strength I don't possess myself.

You're only a feminist because it's cool...

'You're only a feminist because it's cool'. That's what a friend recently told me over a coffee. I am not exactly sure what his definition of cool is though, I haven't seen many youths on street corners discussing equality, or heard of them passing around the works of Mary Beard or Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza. Is being a feminist now a symbol of coolness, like a twirly moustache or those awesome neon selfies which pop up on Instagram?

Trust me, I am not cool. I write a pop-theology blog which places my level of coolness at about the same level as MC Hammer pants and wearing socks with sandals (Okay, I am too cool for those things). The reason I am a feminist is because I think it is the best example of Christianity we currently have. And here's why:

Often people, usually men, get out of shape over feminism. They don't like it and the reason they give is that it focusses on women. Their argument goes that how can something bring equality if it focuses exclusively on the needs of one party? I mean, the clue is there in the name, it's not meninism, or peopleinism. It's female.

For me, feminism is a great work of equality. It helps me as a man as much as it helps my wife. And it teaches me to understand Jesus' message a whole lot better.

Jesus asks His followers to focus on the poor, the marginalised, the dispossessed. He talks about people who only care for those just like themselves, those of equal social standing or above, and Jesus isn't a big fan of this. If we are to believe, as I think we should, that all power, all authority, everything we are and have is from God, then I think that all that is given to us for us to show God to those who don't have it.

Jesus says that unless we care for the poor, the hungry, the unclothed, the marginalised, unless we focus on those without then we aren't focussing on God. The upshot of Jesus' teaching is that unless we love those who don't have what we have, then God simply doesn't know us.

Was Jesus a poorist? Did Jesus actually know what He was saying when he showed us God's preference for the poor and dispossessed? I think He did, and it's just a continuation of a theme which began hundreds of years before him with the prophets calling those in authority to do the same. The whole point to the minor prophets is that a society which doesn't focus on the needs of the poor, but rather focusses on the wants of the rich, is a doomed society which God wants no part of.

Then there's the other great issue which men raise and rarely understand. That women are already equal and don't need special treatment. To you I can say nothing, I am sorry about that. Maybe you'll never see it. Gender income inequality is there, men still dominate business and politics, they still get promoted over women. Then there's the greater threat of violence. Yes there's a chance that I will get jumped on my way home from the pub, but I never really feel unsafe in town on a Friday night. That isn't a sentiment my lady friends can echo. Their experience of harassment is horrific and it does control them. Unfortunately there is no way to explain this, like faith it has to be received.

So we have Jesus, who tells us to focus on those without power. And we have feminism, which invites us to focus on those without power. It is difficult in my opinion to be the former without also being the latter.

Feminism isn't the last word though. Womanism has a tremendous place in the world today, it looks at power in a different way and may even be a closer image to what Jesus was talking about... in some ways at least.

Maybe feminism is too Western, too middle class. Maybe, but it affects the world around most of us since most people reading this will be Western. And let us not kid ourselves, one reason so many people are threatened by feminism is that it challenges them to be different. Again just like Jesus did.

I do wish that it was true, that feminism was cool. Maybe then people would integrate it into their church services the way they have mood lighting and PowerPoint presentations. Maybe if feminism were cool we wouldn't see so few women leading churches, or barred from leadership positions. Maybe the church would be chasing to encourage people to attend because of how truly inclusive they are.

And then maybe church could look a little more like Jesus.

Heal thyself. The problem of ministry, mental health, and suicide

It has been in the news recently about a high profile American pastor who has committed suicide. Andrew Stoecklein of Inland Hills Church, California was younger than I am when he took his own life. Many of my friends in ministry have been sharing his story on social media and it has provoked discussion online. Without venturing into the specifics of his families loss, it reminded me of other ministers I know who have been suspected of committing suicide, or attempting to. And I would like to address that issue.

It is a difficult thing to find figures on. Most families don't want the world to know what has happened to a loved one. As one minister told me recently: if you say someone has died of cancer the next question is never 'how' or 'why'? When you say someone has committed suicide...

It just places the family in an uncomfortable situation, often news will be released to others as a heart attack or another ailment which delivers sympathy rather than questions.

What we do know is that men are far more likely to die by suicide than women, somewhere in the region of three or four to one. Ministry is still male dominated, by a far higher margin (although that is changing according to more recent figures). And then there is what ministers have to do.

People who counsel others are rarely unaffected. It is estimated that almost sixty percent of counsellors will themselves struggle with mental illness personally. One recent study has shown that approximately a quarter of all clergy have mental health issues.

And this is where things becomes different for clergy than for counsellors. For a start, we are not counsellors. We have a different skill set and a different agenda. We are here to equip and encourage you spiritually. Yes there is crossover, if someone is struggling with a big issue in life it is hard to get to a place of spiritual calm and reflection, and sometimes people might think that they are in a dark place spiritually when really they need to see a mental health professional.

But as clergy, we don't have access to the same services counsellors do, we don't have that chain of accountability, we aren't compelled to meet with someone else monthly or quarterly to discuss how we feel.

Ministry is also lonely. It is lonely in a way few people realise. We spend hours in prayer, in reading, writing homilies and studies. We don't have that work place camaraderie that others do, our offices are usually at home or in an empty church. The only time we see others at work is when they need to see us, or we are performing a service.

The loneliness of ministry has been long recorded, take a read of the Dark Night of the Soul, the longing to be with a God who is often just out of reach. All bar one minister I have spoken with about this has experienced this severe separation from God at some point in their lives. God is there, we just sometimes can't feel that, the same way you sometimes can't. And this can last for years in some cases.

I recount one meeting with a young minister who admitted that he was tempted to pay a woman for an hour just so that he could have some company. He wasn't interested in sex (and I believe him), he just wanted to be held and not have to face the realities of ministry for a short while.

So we support others, and our support is said to come from on high, and that often isn't the case. While it is true that we are sometimes afforded a sabbatical, trying to find the time, or the finances to take one is an uphill struggle.

We put a brave face on things, we carry on, and we do it because we love you.

We often aren't just lonely, we are isolated. I have friends who work in city churches and they have regular coffee shop meetings. I have friends who work in churches in rural communities where the next nearest minister is a good ten miles away. Add to that our lack of supervision and accountability, add to that our ability to recycle sermons and studies from two years ago (it happens) or that we can just download talks from the internet... It becomes very easy for a minister to 'go missing' for months at a time without the church ever noticing. I've had months where I have been too busy to prepare new material so I have just grabbed a book from my shelf and 'borrowed' a sermon, no one noticed.

Even when we set aside our role as ministers, the job is depressing. Church attendance is down. You may not notice this if you're part of a large church, but trust me, when you leave the cities you find many fellowships with single digit membership. Even those with healthy numbers are faced with an ageing population and diminishing financed. We have to keep churches open while living often on or beneath the poverty line, because we genuinely love the people and communities we minister to. Finances are huge cause for concern. None of us enter ministry to get rich, but when you have to give up a job, study for a degree, sell your house to move to a church on the other side of the country, and then be told that there is no money in the pension scheme, that's a huge burden you've placed on your family. And that is a sad reality of ministry.

None of this is to say that we would change what we do. Ministry is a calling and we would do it all again. We love people with the love of God, there is no greater calling than that, and it is everything that we are.

The great grief comes when we feel the same stigma Jesus did, Physician heal yourself. We help others through some real tough times in life, and yet we rarely get adequate help ourselves. Partly through stubbornness, we need a certain level of self confidence in order to present publicly every week, but also because the nature of ministry is to be professionally detached. We deal with all sorts, issues you don't want to think about, the families behind the headlines in your paper.

People come to us for answers and expect us to have them. We can't heal ourselves, and it does at times feel like God can't either. We are people, human just like you.

Our lives sometimes get ahead of us. We also need help.

I have encountered other stories of ministers committing suicide, ones that don't make the news. One possible reason this most recent one is newsworthy is because the minster was seen as successful, that somehow having a large church shelters us from the reality of our own humanity. I know that some people attend these types of churches because it grants them a level of anonymity they don't find at a smaller fellowships. Even in a large gathering, we are still people, and we still have to deal with issues. Without taking anything away from the grief the Stoecklein family are feeling right now, theirs is not the only ministry family with these issues. My heart goes out to them right now.

So please, do go see your pastor when you need to, we really love that. Go see them even if you aren't sure you need to. But just remember there's a person wearing that dog collar. Look out for your pastor. We can be a-holes at times, often actually. But we deal with things you will never know about. And encourage us to get help, we need it.

We are not Messiahs, so relax.

John the Baptist, that crazy fella with hella hair, eating bugs and dunking people in rivers. An odd sense of fashion. You all know him, he's in the Bible. Cousin of Jesus.

John was one of those preachers who was so popular that people kept asking him if he was the Messiah, the chosen one who would save God's people from oppression and usher in a new age.

I love John's answer: I am not the Messiah, but there is a Messiah to come. And there's a lesson here for all of us. We are not Messiahs, we are not going to save everyone, but that doesn't mean that we sit around and do nothing. And just to get it out of my system, Brian is not the Messiah either, man I love Monty Python.

The way that I find helpful to understand what John did, and what we are to do, is with art. There's a famous work called The Treachery of Images, by Magritte. Most people know it as 'This is not a pipe'.

Now if I were one of those artsy types I would undoubtedly say something about meta messages and paralanguage and some of us would understand what I was saying. But I am a pop-theologian, and I just want us to think about how this image looks a lot like a pipe, but it isn't one. And how John the Dunker looks a lot like a Messiah, but isn't one.

I mean, just look at the picture, it sure does look like a pipe doesn't it. But what can you do with a pipe that you can't do with this picture? You can't stuff it with tobacco for a start, and once you set light to it, it's gone forever. I can no more smoke this painting than I can walk to the moon. So for all intent and purpose, this really isn't a pipe. But it sure does look like one.

Just seeing this painting reminds me of my grandfather, an avid pipe smoker. I remember him falling asleep in his armchair, pipe hanging out of his mouth, a dummy/pacifier for senior citizens. He would only wake up when his lips lost their grip and hot ash would tip onto his shirt, much to the chagrin of my grandmother who eventually gave up trying to stitch the holes in his cardigans where the burn marks were.

For you, you might get a whole load of different memories and emotions from seeing this painting. Maybe you're imagining yourselves as Sherlock Holmes, solving some case of a missing diamond. Maybe you're thinking that if you smoked a pipe you would affect the wisdom of Gandalf and dash off on some mad adventure to save Middle-Earth. Images are important, they speak to us in so many ways, and those ways are as individual as we are.

But no matter how much Magritte evokes feelings of pipedom (is that even a word?), this is not a pipe. It doesn't do the very thing pipes are intended to do.

And so it is with John the Baptist, and us too. Jesus saved the world, He's even better than Gandalf in that respect. He ushered in a new way of living, a kingdom of peace and love and all that stuff, and that is His alone, we cannot do that. What we can do though is what Magritte is doing here, we should be the best example of what a Messiah looks like. People should see and hear us, people should live among us, and have every sensation that they are with the Messiah.

I am not the Messiah, I'm a very naughty boy. And that takes all the pressure off me. I don't have to save the world, I don't have to break new ground in the Kingdom of God, that stuff has already been done. And you don't have to do any of that stuff either. The only thing we have to do is point the way to One who has. Simples.

That was all that John the Baptist was doing, he was a herald, a signpost.

There's a Greek phrase for all this that theologians use: Kerygma. It means exactly that, a herald or a signpost. John didn't have to change the world, just point the way to One who would.

So kick your sandals off and relax. Stop thinking of yourselves as Messiahs and just enjoy casual conversations with people where you can drop in that Jesus has made a way for a different type of living. A life of love and peace and reconciliation. You can't do it yourself.

And like a signpost, just be aware that some people will ignore you. Maybe they think there's a shortcut down some country lane with single file traffic. That's not on you, trust me, relax. As long as you're giving a fair representation of a pipe, or a Messiah, you're doing enough.

And who knows, maybe more very naughty boys will be mistaken for Messiahs. And maybe crazy hair and eating bugs will come back into vogue.

'We don't do theology, we just do the Bible.'

Continuing our conversation on spiritual growth, I wanted to show an example of how fear and/or ignorance can really hinder our spirituality.

Theology has a bad reputation, and probably deservedly. Theologians spend hours talking about stuff no one cares about, like could God create a rock too heavy for God to lift, and how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? We ruin your favourite Bible verses by explaining them in terms of historical and cultural criticism. And we love to use big words which, honestly, even we don't understand. When people ask what I am working on and my answer is: 'How 17^th Century Dutch art and it's subsequent revival offers fresh understanding on Near Eastern Bronze Age pseudo-graphical literature and the meaning of meaning'... well let's just say that I don't get invited to many parties.

It is little wonder then that I meet so many people who say: 'We don't do theology, we just do the Bible'.

Let us keep it simple: God says it, I believe it, that settles it. Simples, right?

Well not really. And as a pastor, I think that this mentality is holding a lot of people back from the spiritual life they could be living. You see, even saying something like 'We don't do theology, just the Bible' is a theological statement. The Bible is a work of theology, and Christianity is the ultimate theological statement.

Start by looking at the very word: Theology. It is made up of two parts: Theo meaning God, and Logos, meaning Word. So to read the Bible, the Word of God, which explains Jesus, the Word of God, is to do theology. There is no way around this.

And then there are your beliefs, they are all theology. Take a look through the Bible and tell me where you find the word Trinity and its explanation. Go on, I'll wait... actually I can't, it's not there, I'll be here forever if I wait for you to find it. There are hints that God is one and more than one in this strange, difficult to explain concept, but the way we understand the trinity today comes from Christian thinkers, theologians.

You may be thinking that this is still all academic and you've just sort of accepted it because that's what your church teaches. You might also think that it doesn't really affect anything.

You'd be wrong to think that your theology doesn't affect anything. Do you believe that God should have any influence in politics, or in humanitarian matters? Well that's a theology.

Then there's the Bible itself: is it literature or literal? As far back as Augustine the church has held that it's literature, current Evangelicals would dispute that.

And what does the Bible talk about? I have not read anything in it on drug use, or slut shaming. There are maybe a half dozen verses on homosexuality and even then we aren't sure because Paul avoids using the accepted Greek terms arrenomanes or paiderasste, preferring instead the most ambiguous malakoi and arsenokoitai. Although if you spoke to many Christians you would imagine that the whole Bible was about hetero monogamy (hint: there is very little monogamy in the Bible). There are over two thousand entries on giving to the poor mind.

Then there's the whole thing about killing children. It's there, it's uncomfortable, and Christians by and large write it off as 'something people did years ago so we can move on from that'. The same attitude we take to slavery; again the Bible is pro slavery even giving instructions on how hard you can beat you slaves. As a pastor I have never had someone ask me what a good price is to sell their pre-teen daughter, again that's something we used to do years ago.

But who gets to decide what's a relic of the past and what should be applied to modern Christianity? And these are issues which affect you.

Spirituality is holistic. It is far easier to make quiet time with God when you're at peace that when you're being persecuted and told how much you're hated, so how we treat others will affect their spirituality.

You are all little theologians, in your own way. The worry is that because theology has become such a dirty word in church a lot of your theology is being given to you rather than you being encouraged to get and find out for yourself.

Is there an easy answer to this? Not really. Some of us take time to write pop-theology blogs where we try to explain things in really easy to understand terms. Then we get told that we're wrong because, in trying to simplify something, we have had to gloss over a big important subtlety. Or we can try to write academic works which you'll all ignore because, let's be honest, academic works are bloody boring. I struggle to understand them and I have been trained to read them, allegedly. They are also about weird subjects like 17^th Century Dutch art and weird Bronze Age stuff.

You're better than you think at all this theology stuff. You make decisions every day based on words about the Word of God. You might not know all the terms, the same way very few of us know how our mobile phones work really, that doesn't stop us from using them. I have no idea how Wi-Fi works but it magics videos to my telly, I still use it.

So please be encouraged. It's okay to talk theology, it's okay to read a book which deals with a tricky subject. Own it, discuss it, and maybe realise that you don't already have all the answers.

Star Trek is a blueprint for all great sermons.

Is Star Trek still cool? Was it ever or am I just remembering things from my youth with rose tinted glasses? Either way, Star Trek gives us a wonderful blueprint for all sermons, and if you have ever heard a good sermon you might be able to associate with what I am going to say. Also, if you're ever at church bored on a Sunday morning (like that would ever happen), it is a good indicator that your preacher doesn't understand Star Trek.

While it is mainly remembered today for its hammy acting and stories of a philandering captain, boldly going into relations with various green skinned hot aliens, Star Trek does have a wonderful formula played out between its three main protagonists. And when I was once asked to explain what is a sermon, as opposed to a study or a seminar, Star Trek provides the perfect answer.

A sermon is the interplay between Pathos, Logos, and Ethos. Those are cool Greek words which you can now use to impress your friends the next time you're watching Star Trek like all the cool kids do, or just drop them into conversation to sound smart. They are easy to understand too.

Pathos is passion, it's pain and grief, it's that moving speech the coach gives in the underdog movie when the team needs to win this final game so Little Timmy can have his operation. And Pathos is Captain Kirk. He inspires his crew to take on the odds and achieve more than they ever thought possible. Pathos is when your blood runs hot and your heart rules your head. There's a reason hot alien chicks fancy the pants off him

Sermons handle Pathos in a number of ways. One is to ignore it entirely and you end up with someone droning on for twenty minutes, and no matter how good the subject is you aren't really listening because it's all so dry and boring.

The other side of Pathos is the rampant hysteria that is whipped up at conventions, you're fully on board and then you get home and realise that you were just caught up in a moment. Yes the second is far more enjoyable, but we all know really that it's nothing more than an appeal to our emotions.

Incidentally, have you noticed how modern worship revolves around purple uplights and that weird swirly haunting sound in the background? That's Pathos, and it works in setting a mood.

Then there's Logos. Which is wisdom or knowledge. Mr Spock, the forerunner of Sheldon and sub-geniuses everywhere is a great example of this. Spock would never say something cool like 'don't tell me the odds', he already knows the odds, and the permutations.

Logos is all the learning stuffed into one place.

We need this in a sermon. We come to church to learn stuff about God, and maybe about ourselves. But we need more than Logos because we aren't students at university getting empty heads filled. If all your sermons are just teaching the history of a subject, that's not a sermon, that's a seminar. Please don't do this.

A lot of my time is spent looking at this stuff. I have books and commentaries and essays on Bible times and ancient languages, it is vital that I know this stuff, but I am not going to stand in front of a church and recite Wenham and Walton on the Historical Jesus stuff. I am going to make it interesting.

Finally there's Ethos. Represented in Trek by Bones McCoy, my favourite character from the original series. You will probably understand Ethos from ethics. You see, it is all well and good knowing stuff and being entertained, but what is the point? That's a question I wish more people would ask when listening to a sermon. Yes we know that the Good Samaritan has a message about uptight religious people being too heavenly minded to actually help people, but why leave the message there? What's wrong with taking that next step and offering some practical grounds to get involved in actually helping people?

Ethos appeals to our sense of right, and can help shape it. It is the 'why' of a sermon. Why we should care for the poor and marginalised.

Star Trek didn't invent all this stuff, Aristotle wrote about these three archetypes years ago, it is the basis of good story telling and of conveying a great message.

Often churches focus on the first two, just sticking information into someone's brain while entertaining them. Some times they fail in either or both of them.

Churches are so focussed on 'the truth' that they miss out the Ethos of a message: What is true and what to do.

I find this fascinating. Because we have left the application out of preaching we have churches full of people who just do nothing. They hear a message every week but it either doesn't sink in or the relevancy to how we live is never told. Obviously not every church, but I find this enough to comment on.

And this is where you come in. You have a responsibility to yourselves to hold your preachers accountable. If they aren't challenging you the way Jesus challenged His followers to live a different kind of life, one of mercy and compassion, of love and reconciliation, please go and talk with them. Your time is too precious to spend listening to dull, ineffective sermons which don't speak to you. Vote with your feet if you need to. Go seek out new churches and new sermons, and boldly go where no one has gone before.

Jesus versus Paul: How to grow as a Christian.

I remember once having a conversation with some denominational types about ministry, I rarely agree with church types and while they were discussing issues of church governance, I kept banging on about reaching the poor and the marginalised.
I have been told before now that reaching the poor and marginalised is not ministry, that ministry is maintaining order in church and looking for small growth in numbers.
At this one meeting however I heard the most amazing statement for why churches act the way they do. A minister I respect turned to me and said: 'You don't like Paul much do you?' He was referring to Paul from the New Testament, he who travelled around the Roman Empire planting churches and writing letters to tell everyone how wrong they were about things. Paul seems to have become the poster boy for organised religion.
'I prefer Jesus.' I replied.
The retort I heard next simultaneously astounded me and solidified my position as someone who just doesn't fit in to a regular church structure.
'Well Jesus never had to run a church. Paul did.'

I have to admit, that is true. Jesus was, as far as we know, a travelling rabbi. He would go from town to town spreading good news to the poor and the marginalised. Paul did establish churches, and told those churches the proper way of doing things.

I reminded those good denomination types how Jesus didn't run a church, He changed the world, and that's exactly what I want to do.
Needless to say I no longer get invited to denominational events and receive no support. I had the last word, but it cost me greatly.

There has been a rise recently in Red Letter Christianity, those who say that we only need the words of Jesus (in some Bibles, Jesus' words were printed in red ink to show just how important Jesus is). And I do admire that. The thing is, Jesus and Paul aren't at odds, although it does seem that way.
Paul is often used to suppress women, he does not give women permission to preach. Jesus doesn't seem to mind that the very first Gospel preachers were the women who saw Him on Easter Sunday, instead Jesus tells them to go and tell others.

And then there's the issue which I have been thinking about today. One of those seemingly great dichotomies between Jesus and Paul, that of spiritual growth.
Jesus is talking one day, and His way of explaining following God is to bring a small child to stand before those gathered and say: Unless you become like a child, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
Thus we have the claim of so many Christians that theirs is a childlike faith. After all, Jesus taught this.

Then we have Paul who is frustrated at the Church at Corinth and asks them to grow up. He says that he's fed up with feeding them milk as he would a child and he wants them to move on to solid food, spiritually speaking.

So which should we do, have this childlike faith we have attributed to Jesus or have a robust adult faith that Paul encourages? This is one of those places where Jesus and Paul are in agreement, although it may not seem like it on the surface.
Faith, spiritually, Christianity, it's a process. Jesus is right in that we have to start off as a child. But Jesus doesn't encourage us to stay there. Immediately after this He talks about huge spiritual issues like unforgivingness and our responsibility in how we deal with temptation, these are not things children deal with very well.
So we must start off like a child, but not even Jesus is suggesting that we stay there.

People are expected to grow.

You've probably heard it said that the average driver thinks they are better than the average driver. The same is true spiritually. People assume that they have a robust, mature faith. That they are growing spiritually, and growing with God. The reality is that we don't know what to compare our faith to and so we assume that ours is the benchmark.

I have spoken before about my own journey of deconstruction and reconstruction, and it is an ongoing process. So I'd like to use the next few blog entries to look at some various examples of growing in faith, and examples of people who haven't. Please think of this as encouragement. You might be wondering if the Christianity you're currently experiencing is all there is. You might have an inclination that there's something else, something more, something better in spiritually. Let us take some time together soon and explore this. And please do give it a try. Just start by sitting quietly for twenty minutes. Don't speak, not even silently and to God. Just wait for one word to come to you and allow the depths of God to speak to the depths of you, and let that one word be a centre. It's only twenty minutes, and God might just show you a new way of growing.

How women and men read the Bible differently.

Women and men see things differently. This is difficult to explain, or rather it is difficult to explain to men. There is even a term for this: The Male Gaze. The world is designed around this male gaze. Everything, believe it or not, is male oriented. Women understand this a lot better, and a lot sooner, than men do. Trying to explain the male gaze to men is like trying to explain water to a fish, it's just always been there and that's the way things are.

The male gaze also affects how we read and understand the Bible. And I have a great example to show just how this works, and it comes from the art world.

There is a scene which has been depicted frequently in art, and it's from the Bible (sort of, if you count the Apocrypha as the Bible, look I am just trying to make a point here.

It is the scene of Judith beheading Holofernes.

In the story, Holofernes is the leader of the invading army, looking to kill a whole load of God's chosen people. And the men are afraid of him, and they aren't trusting in God for help. Then there's Judith. She does trust God, she' realised that the men are next to useless (not much has changed here), so she gains the trust of the camp guards, gets Holofernes drunk, and lops his head off.

Judith is one of the original sisters doing it for themselves. She is a widow who has already lost enough and has had enough of men just taking her stuff. She puts her foot down and decides how history is going to play out. And good on her.

Of course, with a great story like this Judith is going to be depicted in art. And this is where we can see how women and men view things differently. Let's take two examples, just for convenience.

Caravaggio, depicts a most serene, almost unsure Judith. She is clothed in white, pure and untouched. Even the blood gushing from Holofernes throat has the decency to leave her unspoiled. Caravaggio's Judith holds both knife and foe at arms length. Her face is innocent and childlike even in this decisive moment. She is depicted as genteel, set apart from the world around her, a vision of beauty in an otherwise ugly world. It is a beautiful painting.

And then there's Artemisia Gentileschi. She painted the same scene maybe forty years later. And a women depicting the act is quite different.

Gentileschi's Judith is involved. She is draped in the same darkness that occupies her victim. Her hands are bloody, she is confident, she is decisive. There is no way Holofernes is coming out of this painting alive. Gentileschi's Judith is unafraid. She is bloodied, she is committed to the act, she becomes vengeance itself. There's a job to be done and she is the right woman for it.

This Judith doesn't appear to take any pleasure from the act, rather it is a formality, just another duty to perform.

One is depicted as pure and separate, the other as willing and active. And it is no surprise that we have two such stark depictions of the same scene. Women and men see things differently.

Maybe Caravaggio relates with Holofernes more than Judith and that is why she is distant and other, the focus and yet set apart. And who knows, maybe at another time the bad boy of Rome would have painted the whole thing very different.

So what does any of this have to do with Bible reading? Well women and men can read the same passage and understand it differently. I don't mean in the same way that people from different Christian traditions will read a passage with a different emphasis, but I do mean that women and men bring a different perspective, we have different experiences and expectations. The male gaze has, until recently, been the only eyes through which we can read the Bible.

Men still dominate published commentaries. Women are catching up but unfortunately they are still mainly reduced to writing women's commentaries. It is as if the women's view is separate to the 'normal' view, another example of the male gaze. If you need evidence of this just Google 'Bible commentaries by men': You'll get a whole list of commentaries which are used in churches and universities. Google 'Bible commentaries by women' and you'll get a link to some very specific works dealing exclusively with women in the Bible. Are we to say that women cannot contribute to the church as a whole? I don't know if you've checked recently, but women still make up the majority of congregations. And they do see things differently.

Now this is only a blog. I am not an arch bishop or a pope, and this isn't a great academic work. This is just a conversation that you and I are having. And it's a good conversation to have. Hopefully this will give people a chance to talk about how we read the Bible differently, and maybe what the church teaches can start to change the male gaze and listen to the women who have always been at the forefront.