Where Everybody's Crazy

Dark Night of the Soul is an amazing book, one of the classics of Christian mysticism. Sometimes when I think about my own life and spirituality, I wonder whether those of us of the more earthy and laid-back persuasion are just products of our culture and that the early church was full of people more like the younger, more fired-up Christians we sometimes see around us.

AS these beginners feel themselves to be very fervent and diligent in spiritual things and devout exercises, from this prosperity (although it is true that holy things of their own nature cause humility) there often comes to them, through their imperfections, a certain kind of secret pride, whence they come to have some degree of satisfaction with their works and with themselves. And hence there comes to them likewise a certain desire, which is somewhat vain, and at times very vain, to speak of spiritual things in the presence of others, and sometimes even to teach such things rather than to learn them...
Sometimes, too, when their spiritual masters, such as confessors and superiors, do not approve of their spirit and behavior (for they are anxious that all they do shall be esteemed and praised), they consider that they do not understand them, or that, because they do not approve of this and comply with that, their confessors are themselves not spiritual. And so they immediately desire and contrive to find some one else who will fit in with their tastes; for as a rule they desire to speak of spiritual matters with those who they think will praise and esteem what they do, and they flee, as they would from death, from those who disabuse them in order to lead them into a safe road—sometimes they even harbour ill-will against them.

Plus ça change...

When you're in the UK, you don't really have to think about the question of other religions in any great detail. Most people are either Christians or atheists, apart from a few who follow strange and exotic belief systems. It suffices just to write these people off; they are wrong, we are right, and we need not think anything more about it.

When you're on the field, and most people are, say, Shintoist-Buddhists or atheists, and you are the one bringing the strange and exotic belief system, such a simple and dismissive way of thinking (or not thinking) is a luxury that fails the test of doing unto others what you would have them do to you.

Now some people will read that and assume I am being pluralist. I am not. I honestly believe that the God of Israel is the sole creator of heaven and earth, and solely through the work of Jesus, we have the privilege of being part of his Kingdom. My concern is how we, who believe these things, handle in a loving and neighbourly way those who do not believe such things.

For instance, I often hear people talk about how the Japanese are "trapped in bondage" to Shintoism or Buddhism. I do not consider this a particularly loving way to talk about people. To be fair, it's usually people who've never lived here who say things like that. Now there are some people groups who follow their religions out of fear. I'm told that the Burmese and their offerings to nat spirits are in this category. But the Japanese generally go to worship when they want something, whether it's to pass an exam or to have something to do over New Year. This is the opposite of being trapped in bondage; if anything, the Shinto gods are at the beck and call of their worshippers.

Ah, but it's a spiritual bondage. The "darkness" of Buddhism over the country. Would we appreciate Christianity being called a darkness? Why do we do it to others? Anyway, I'm getting a bit off the point here.

I used to think that Buddhism was a "dark" religion too. All those dimly lit temples, the scary-looking statues, and all that monotonous chanting. That was before I knew the first thing about it. Now when I do visit a Buddhist temple, the "spiritual atmosphere" is quite different from before. It used to feel "oppressive"; now it does not. All that has changed is that I used to be afraid of Buddhism and now I am not. Perhaps I should not trust my ability to evaluate the "spiritual atmosphere" of a place when there are so often much simpler explanations for things.

And the "gods" of Shintoism? You see, another bizarre tendency I've noticed is for some Christian commentators to take the claims of other religions at face value. For instance, when the present emperor was being enthroned, the JEB wrote a concerned prayer letter, asking people to pray about one of the ceremonies in particular, because

In this ritual, the sun goddess (maker of the Japanese islands and people) imparts the status of divinity to the new emperor.

Aha. OK. Next up, George Otis, commenting on this ceremony, wrote that:

By repackaging the ancient rites of spirit welcome and appeasement as popular, seemingly more benign, festivals and pilgrimages, the tenant rights of demonic powers are thereby reaffirmed by successive generations.

Wait, we suddenly believe in the spiritual power of the sun goddess now? I missed the memo. Even recently, I heard a WEC missionary teach about demonology, taking his examples from the Koran. I knew that the Scriptures were meant to be authoritative for doctrine, but I also missed the memo that said that any Scriptures will do. (He was also the one telling me I didn't believe the Bible, so I really had to make an effort to keep my mouth shut at that point.)

If you want a Biblical view, go to Jeremiah: the fact that someone takes a bit of wood or a stone and calls it a god does not make it one. It doesn't make it a demon either. The view that simply believing in it gives "tenant rights" to "demonic powers" is a common one, but one which owes much more to animism than Christian thought.

If you want another Biblical view, go back to Exodus. Members of God's community are strictly forbidden to serve other gods. This does not legitimize the claims of other gods; as Jeremiah puts it, they are not really gods at all. God has no rivals. When God forbids his people to serve other gods, it is not because He is worried about their "power"; it is because He is worried about our betrayal.

This is not to say that we are not in a spiritual battle. The Christian worldview definitely includes that dynamic. But we should not let our fear and our credulity magnify the size of that battle, and we absolutely should not let it impact the way we speak about or relate to those we are trying to reach. To them, we should do as we would have them do to us.

I am very fortunate here to have a tutor who acts as an academic instructor, personal pastor, theological mentor and spiritual guide. I came to him the other day and talked about problems I was having with Bible reading - daily Bible readings, the Evangelical "quiet time", had become a chore to me and wasn't giving me the spiritual "connection" I was always told it should. In fact, I was even despairing of the suggestion that this kind of Bible reading ought to be a part of spirituality. The idea that the Bible was "personal", "written for me" and that I should try to find out "what God was saying to me" just seemed to be another expression of selfish Western individualism - if not a ritual with such spiritual expectation that it bordered on magic. The Bible wasn't written for me; it was written for the Church. If I accept this (and I do), how then should I actually relate to it?

I further despaired of the facile, mass-produced "devotional" literature, which tended to impose a huge amount of theology onto the Scriptures. If I believe that the Bible wasn't written for me, I have to believe it certainly wasn't written for Selwyn Hughes or Jonathan Bagster either. And probably not for Charles Spurgeon. (I'm unsure about Oswald Chambers. It might, actually, have been written for him.)

However, my tutor, a wise man, suggested that the problem was more that I had separated my spirituality from the rest of my life - the classical modernist dualism position. Oh, the irony. Why was I looking to the daily "quiet time" for spiritual input without engaging my theological brain, and why was I using my theological brain in lectures without expecting it to build me up spiritually as well? In technical terms, I had split off a devotional from an exegetical view of Scripture.

As for the devotional notes, he understood the problem with them. "The problem is that you've not been reading the right ones!" So saying, he opened the secret devotional cupboard, with all the books they don't tell you about in church; like More Light On The Path, which has a one-line devotional illustrated by passages in Hebrew and Greek (no translation and no exegesis - you do that yourself), Kasemann's commentary on Romans, Barth's Church Dogmatics... "No, wait," I said, realising that he'd gone too far, "That's theology, not devotional."

You could see the pity in his eyes. "No, Simon, that's worship". Suddenly I realised - if I'm going to be serious about this whole Scripture and Tradition thing, I have to realise that Tradition is still being compiled. Not only that, but that theology, as a discipline offered before the Church, was part of Tradition. Church Dogmatics is Tradition.

So, with a fresh enthusiasm for Bible reading and other people's exegesis, I checked out Church I/i and started reading it. I'm not cringing much but to be honest that's because I don't understand most of it. But I like it. I'm really looking forward to getting to the exegesis bits.

I tend to pray a lot on Tuesdays; I mean, I don't pray a lot in general, so having one day to pray a lot is a good start. But today I found I just couldn't concentrate on prayer. Hmm, I thought; I wonder if anyone's had this problem before. And of course, they have. So I thought I'd give their solution a try. I nipped up to the craft room and grabbed a bunch of beads and a bit of string, and then filed down one of the beads to have flat sides so it feels different as it's going past. It's not a very complex one, with weeks and cruciforms and all that kind of thing - more like a rope, really - but it gets me to a hundred and it does the job. That's surely the important thing, isn't it?

Real Live Preacher got his a few months ago, and now he ain't the only one.

Well, today has been quiet day, so I have been - mainly - quiet. I always feel a little uneasy talking about the quiet days we have here each term, because they're all bound up in spirituality, and all along I feel like I've presented a rigorously intellectual Christianity; and then I want to talk about spirituality and blow it all out of the window.

As with all things, you need a balance. A purely intellectual Christianity, with no tangible experience of God, is more of a philosophy than a faith. In the sophisticated middle-class West, this has been traditionally seen in the conservative evangelical wing of the Church as being the right way to reach out to people: present Christ logically and rationally, and don't get carried away with your feelings, or else they'll think you're a religious nutter and stop listening. At the same time, the same conservative evangelicals watch the rise of the New Age - which goes to completely the other extreme, and encourages spirituality above and without a rational framework of belief - with equal amounts of horror and perplexity.

I've been thinking recently, possibly as a result of Sociology of Religion, that man has some basic religious needs. He will go somewhere to fulfil those. Typical Japanese will feel a cultural and religious need to venerate their ancestors. We don't need to go into the reasons why they do, or why they shouldn't, but they do. The church in Japan gets upset about this, because new Japanese converts come to church on Sunday and worship/venerate (Hello to my Roman Catholic audience!) at the butsudan every other day. Why? Because they have a religious need, and the church hasn't fulfilled it, so they go elsewhere.

The same goes for spirituality. The rise of the New Age (although it's pretty much the Old Age by now) demonstrates that man has a need for a contact with the numinous, as Otto put it. Presenting an intellectual Gospel can actually mean doing a disservice to those people - most people - who need more than that from a faith. Christians in Japan are often criticised, according to Spae, as being "intellectual" and "unfeeling"; where for the Westerner, head-knowledge is "ultimate truth", the Easterner puts more emphasis on feeling and intuition. A head-knowledge gospel in the East is only half the story, and the reason why you often end up with only half a Christian.

So I hope I've established that spirituality isn't merely some pie-in-the-sky thing; well, if it is, it's still necessary even in this benighted Age of Reason. Now, what have I actually been doing?

I went for a walk - after all, you can hardly see God with your eyes closed. I took some photos. I read some Psalms; majoring on Psalm 86, verse 10: David's statement of the peerlessness of God. I wrote a song based on it, and finished off a couple of other bits of music.

Then, of course, it all went wrong, and I had to go and buy beer, and debug a broken network. It turned out to be some nastiness in the firewall producing huge logs filling up the disk of the DHCP server, so taking out two important network functions for the price of one. Still not supposed to be doing this rubbish.