'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.

Finding a church/life balance. Or how to leave your pastor a good eulogy.

Church is great. I love it so much that I work for one. And the people there, they are great too. But just like black forest trifle or binge watching the Fast and Furious movies, you can overdo great things.

Something which I became aware of early on as a pastor is the need to find a church/life balance. I am not talking here about pastors taking a sabbatical or having hobbies and interests to keep them sane. I am talking about the regular person in the pews. And there was an event a few years ago which really brought this home to me.

I was asked to officiate at a funeral for a member of my congregation who had passed away. She was in her nineties and had lived out her final years in a nursing home, because of that I had only met her a handful of times when I first joined the church. I wasn't in a position to write a eulogy since she left the church within weeks of my induction due to diminishing health, I didn't know her well enough and sadly I had to treat her funeral similarly to most other funerals I officiate at. I asked her family what she was like.

N was a special case. Both her husband and her son had passed away decades before, her brothers and sisters too, she had suffered with dementia for years, and the only family she had remaining were her nephews. This can either be seen as a testimony to her longevity or a sign of increasing loneliness in old age. Her nephews spoke fondly of aunty N. They weren't exactly close enough to suffer the deepest throws of grief, but close enough to recall her fondly and want the best funeral possible. And at ninety something, they were prepared for the inevitable.

I sat with them and, after the usual discussion of sympathy and other arrangements, I begin to ask questions regarding her eulogy. 'What did your aunty enjoy?' 'Did she have any favourite books or music that she might want read or played?' 'Where was her favourite holiday?' 'What shows did she listen to on the wireless or watch on TV?'

Their answer to every question was 'Church'. N lived for the church. She had never been on holiday, as far as they knew. They could only ever remember her watching Songs of Praise and listening to religious services. Her sole social outlet was the church. The only book they remember seeing her read was her Bible.

No one else in her family had any interest in church so they were not paying attention to her dalliances into hymns and readings. My Christian friends could tell you a number of my favourite verses (maybe Ecclesiastes 5:2 tonight, but that will change by tomorrow), and they will know about my love for Wesley hymns, or how I often sing Dyma Gariad fel y Moroedd to myself (Here Is Love Vast As The Ocean for those of you who haven't learned Welsh yet).

But when no one else in your family is interested in God or church stuff, it's all just the Bible and hymns to them.

And worse than that. For her entire life, N had been secreted away from her family every Sunday and three nights a week to a whole life they weren't part of. The greatest Christian witness that family could have ever seen was hidden from them, cloistered within the walls of a small valley chapel.

N's funeral broke my heart. It made me realise that I was part of the very organisation which had offered her hope and fellowship, but at the expense of her own family truly knowing her.

I have spoken with other church goers about this too. There's an unspoken pressure in church to attend and to partake in so many activities that they find their home lives lacking. One church member said how he had slipped behind with bill payments because the time he usually spent arranging his finances had been taken up with Bible study and prayer meetings. I meet people who are a wreck, their health affected through exhaustion because it fell it to them to run the soup kitchen and the street walks through the night. I have spoken with children who resent that other church members saw their parents more than they did growing up. And each time I realise how church monopolises lives, and those who pay the greatest cost are our loved ones.

So I took a decision. My church is open for coffee on a Sunday morning, a twenty minute meditation on a Sunday night, and two hours on a Monday for Bible study. Our meditation is swapped once a month for bi-lingual Sunday School. And we close down for most of August.

I want people to have time to spend with their families for Sunday lunch. I want them to be able to join social clubs and to see friends. I want the people who come to church to be with those who love them.

Of course, none of my plans ever work. They have decided that once a fortnight they want to meet for tea and toast on a Thursday morning, or go for a pub lunch, and I am not going to stop them. Church can offer a lot of social activities for those who need it, and my tea and toast group are all retired or unemployed who want somewhere to hang out in the week. It keeps them off the streets and out of trouble, those troublesome geriatrics.

I visit a lot of churches, mostly as a preacher, but occasionally because I love the architecture of cathedrals. I have seen some amazing stained glass windows, some beautiful pulpits, gorgeous alcoves and ceilings. But the single most beautiful thing I have ever found in churches are the congregations. You are beautiful. You, when you share the love that Jesus has for creation, are the most wonderful example of a God who has kissed this world in love. And if you really want to make a difference in the world, please go and live. Spend time with those who love you, spend time with yourself. Church can manage without you for a few nights a week, because one day your pastor will be asking the same questions to your family I asked N's. Please leave them with wonderful memories, and me a good eulogy.

What if Paula, not Paul, had written to Corinth?

'But the Bible clearly says...' I hear this a lot, far too often to be comfortable with it. It has been my experience that the Bible 'clearly' says whatever the opinion of the person making such a claim says. This is problematic.

I need to start by justifying myself, unfortunately. I am still an evangelical. A lot of people doubt this because I don't agree with their opinion of how the Bible should be read, but I really am. The Bible is the most wonderful, and most reliable picture of God we have, so it is incredibly important to me. What I won't say, however, is that it's the final word on God. I like the Celtic idea of God's big book and God's small book, the small one being the Bible, and the big one being the whole of creation... which incidentally the Bible tells me God created. This is how I can indulge my childhood love for dinosaurs without having to say that the Devil buried dinosaur bones just to test the faith of believers. It also means I don't have to live in the same culture as the people who wrote the Bible. It's called a Living Word for a reason.

The men who wrote the Bible, and they were predominantly men, saw the world in their own particular way. They had their own sensibilities, and their own frame of reference. They understood the world they inhabit in much the same way we understand ours. So that influenced how they thought, and what they wrote. It's usually at this point that some Christians get their knickers in a twist saying that even though they were men of their age (and they were almost all men), that God transcends that and told them everything exactly as it should be written down and so it's perfect... and stop with all this Celtic stuff.

I disagree, respectfully. And I think that the Bible will agree with me on this one. We don't have four Gospels of God, instead we have the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John. The Bible has no issue in ascribing human authorship to its books, so why should we?

And it's a really easy issue to think about. Let's pretend for a minute that I am God and I want you to understand something I am telling you. You're reading this article so I know that you speak English to some extent. How effective would I be at communication if I said to you Ein Tad, yr hwn wyt yn y nefoedd? That's Welsh by the way, you'd do well to learn it since that's all we'll be speaking in Heaven. But were I to convey this message in Welsh, you wouldn't understand it (well, most of you anyway), so it makes sense that I write in English. Now if I am smart enough to do this, I am sure that God is too. So God communicated with people in a familiar language, and to a culture they are familiar with. Those authors (I need to remind you that they're all men, I think) went on and found ways to communicate what God had told them to a public who also understood their own world.

Now to most of you, this makes perfect sense. But here's the thing folks, we ain't in Kansas any more, and neither are we Middle Eastern men living in the Ancient World and Antiquity. Maybe the way God was explained things back shouldn't be the way God is explained today.

Please don't think that I am saying that we need six billion different Bibles, one for every person on the planet, or that I am saying that I want a Bible just for me. That isn't my intention at all. What I want us to do is to look at God's big book, look at God's small book, and try to figure out what one says to the other.

I have a great example of this. I have a friend, he is very dear to me, and he and I cannot come to a middle ground on the gay issue. I have no issue with gays and Christianity, he tells me that the Bible clearly says that God does. Maybe he's right, I don't think so, but I am big enough to say that I might be wrong. In his mind, the Bible clearly says that being gay is wrong, and we should not allow gay marriage. Fine, if that's the stance you want to take, then please do. So what about polygamy and slavery? It's quite rife in the Bible, it's condoned and even encouraged. Whenever I ask about the planned march for my right to own people, to buy them and treat them as property, Christians get their knickers in a twist (great business opportunity there, Christians are always needing knickers). Apparently Christians don't like that stuff, even though it's in the Bible, because that's from an older time and we just don't do that any more.

I'm confused.

We can accept that some parts of the Bible, the parts that we don't like, should be left in the past. But we want to implement laws which keep other parts of the Bible in the present.

And then there's men. Those dastardly moustache twirling baddies. So the whole of the Bible is written by men, and I think this shows. Let us imagine for a second that a woman wrote Genesis, would she have the same opinion of Sarah throwing Hagar under the metaphorical bus just so her husband can get ahead? I'd like to think not. Then there's the whole issue of Paul and women, how would Paula had communicated all that stuff? Do you think maybe she would have had a slightly different view if she was writing to 21^st Century Cardiff rather than 1^st Century Corinth?

I am not even advocating for a wildly different outcome, I am just wondering if women would have phrased things differently, chosen different words, because of their perspective.

As it stands, we only have the one Bible. What I would ask of you when you read it, is to always keep in mind when it was written and by who. Think of how many ways your lives are different to that of a Middle Eastern man living thousands of years ago, and just pause. Ask yourself what the real message here is, and what parts of the past God really wants us to keep in the present.