In this week’s episode, Joe and I – helped by some great feedback – talk about what we gain from belonging to a church, and also what we gain by not belonging. The topic was inspired by a talk I heard a friend of mine give. She was born and raised in Nepal, but moved back to Scotland, and so never felt that she really belonged in either place. But now she has come to see that not-belonging gives her a unique and valuable perspective.
Yes, in this episode, Joe and I return – for a bit, anyway – to the Bible, this time discussing how the Bible was compiled and what is meant by inspiration. 2 Timothy 3:16 is usually translated as ‘All scripture is inspired by God’, but the Greek is para graphē theopneustos which means ‘all [the] writings are god-breathed’. First, there’s the issue of what ‘scriptures’ Paul is talking about. The Bible as we have it didn’t exist in Paul’s day.
This week Joe raised the topic of Christian outrage over the Olympics. One of the joys about not really being on social media means that this storm completely passed me by. It was only a couple of days later when I saw a news article about the organisers apologising for it that I realised anyone had got angry. The idea of people being outraged because of a lampoon of an historically inaccurate painting of the last supper seems odd to me.
I’ve been reading a lot of Edward Thomas recently. He is so, so good.
Tall Nettles by Edward Thomas
Tall nettles cover up, as they have done
These many springs, the rusty harrow, the plough
Long worn out, and the roller made of stone:
Only the elm butt tops the nettles now.
This corner of the farmyard I like most:
As well as any bloom upon a flower
I like the dust on the nettles, never lost
Except to prove the sweetness of a shower.
In this weeks podcast Joe and I talk about the wrathful God of the Old Testament, you know, the one who is so bloodthirsty that the only way of appeasing him is to slaughter sheep, cows, oxen, some enemy tribes and… er… his son. Yes, we start back in the world of ‘PSA’: penal substitutionary atonement. I don’t want to go into that much on this blog post. Suffice it to say, it’s not a view that ever made much sense to me, even while I was dutifully forcing myself to believe in it.
We’re back! And after a long break there is a lot of catching up to do. In this rather rambling episode, Joe and I catch up with what’s been happening in the month or so since we last recorded. After reading Rolf Dobelli’s book Stop Reading the News I’m on a bit of a newscast. I haven’t watched the TV news much, have stopped my daily doomscrolling of the websites and feel a lot better as a result.
I have been baking bread. And it has been coming out both very tasty and, amazingly, looking like actual bread. Not, as so often happened when I tried sourdough, resembling fossilised dinosaur dung. The recipe I have alighted on came out of reading an article on a teenage baker called Kitty Tait whose mental health was transformed when she discovered baking. I read her story in Positive News, which is a journal, as the name implies, about good and positive happenings and events.
This week, Joe and I talk a lot about Sabbath. Well, I talk a lot about Sabbath, to be honest, because it’s been something I’ve been thinking a lot about recently. Two things have inspired me. First, I heard a great sermon on the subject a couple of weeks ago. And following up on that I read Abraham Heschel’s book, The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man. I am ashamed to say I’d never come across Heschel before.
I came across this terrific post about a talk Rowan Williams gave on ‘Mental health, mysticism and spirituality’. So many profound things to ponder. But I was particularly struck by his insistence that mysticism and spirituality should not be viewed as an escape route from reality or community. A couple of quotes: A lot of talk about mysticism and spirituality can be heard as giving you an escape route. Life is difficult but let’s take our glasses off so things look a bit more vague.
In this week’s episode, Joe and I talk more about the nature of church. In particular we talk about the physical location of churches - does a church need to be visible? Does it need an identifiable location, times to meet, etc.? Personally I think churches need a place and not only for practical reasons. Over the last few years my ideas about sacred places have changed entirely. I used to think that the church – as in the building – didn’t matter much.