John's blog

It is now winter. We are experiencing the coldest and most prolonged winter for 50 years. Snow blankets everything. It is cold - very cold. During this season growth comes to a halt, travel comes to a halt, it is hard to keep warm, wildlife struggles to survive, it is easy to run out of fuel and illness is purged as viruses freeze to death. Christmas is a recent and yet somehow distant memory: we sang ‘In the bleak mid-winter’ and remembered Christ’s birth, forgetting perhaps that he was born in a season when the world was experiencing a long spiritual winter - 400 years since the last prophet had spoken.

Life - as my drummer friend Terl Bryant often reminds us - consists of rhythms, of cycles, of seasons. The human body is ruled by rhythm - every day we sleep and wake, breathe to the pulse of a fragile heart. The planets and stars have their cycles, music is rhythmical, as are the sounds that make up music. But in this modern world of central heating and petrol it is easy to ignore the basic rhythms of life. Instead of sleeping, we party; instead of eating regular meals, we snack. Insulated from the seasons by double-glazing and heated cars, we have become deaf to their rhythm and the fundamental pulse of life.

Winter is not the time to be chopping wood, or checking that the boiler is functional; it is not the time to plant fragile seeds or raise young. It is a time to reflect, to prepare, to live from stored memories and provisions, to look ahead to the coming year and plan for what lies ahead, to look up to the heavers and consider our destiny. Winter teaches us to rest and ponder how fragile we are, and what life means. Winter teaches us that sometimes it is prudent to submit rather than strive.

We also live in a winter of thought - of spirituality. Yes, there are many voices raised in a clamour of brash secularism, or ardent fundamentalism - promising that God is about to move in ways as yet unimagined. Yet these ring hollow and carry little weight. Although recent years have seen awakenings and renewals, the season now, at least on the surface, is a dormant one - as in the days of Eli: ‘the word of the Lord is rare; there are not many visions.’ Does this mean God has abandoned us? I think not. It is rather a time to reflect on the future and decide whether faith is for life, or just for Christmas - whether love is a feeling or a covenant.

In this season you may feel you are not travelling far, or growing much. Your heart may feel cold as if your internal central heating has run dry. You may even, like the birds struggling outside in these freezing temperatures, wonder whether you will survive this season of bitterness and cold east wind.

In this winter, then, reflect on this: that it takes cold weather to kill the viruses that plague us, and that winter - if we submit to his embrace - reminds us that we are not the lords of our own destiny as we would like to believe, but that our times and seasons are in the hands of the one who holds the seasons of the earth in his hands. So let us embrace this winter season knowing that even now the snowdrops are pushing with stubborn life beneath the snow.

One of my all-time heroes is the Victorian author, theologian and poet, George MacDonald. He was described by C.S. Lewis as one of his inspirations, and a man ‘closest to the spirit of Christ.’ I’ve certainly been inspired by his writings, particularly Diary of an Old Soul which has a sonnet for every day of the year.

I’m in the middle of reading his biography, and have been struck how so many of the issues he faced in the 1850’s are very similar to the ones we are facing today. In particular he often challenges the Calvinistic notion of God as a pale-faced judge who delights in retribution and torture, instead bringing us constantly back to the idea that God is a loving Father. The former notions of God resulted in many preachers promoting a hellfire and damnation gospel where only the elect few would make it through to eternal bliss. He was also scathing of workers who ministered to the poor with ‘a loaf of bread in one hand and a bunch of tracts in the other’. I heard it said recently that ‘where there is much law, there is little love, but where there is much love there is little law.’ MacDonald felt keenly the presence of law in the church of his day, and longed for love.

MacDonald’s strict Scottish Calvinistic upbringing, which included regular and sadistic beatings from the local schoolmaster (said to have permanently crippled one student), led to bouts of severe depression in his university days, and he grew up with the idea that God, the aweful judge, constantly held a whip at the ready. Underlying theologies of judgement, retribution, and the dreadful consequences of breaking God’s laws, resulted in a church full of poe-faced legalists unable to enjoy life, and quick to judge others for their many sins. This was in stark contrast to the poets of the day, such as Coleridge, who viewed the whole of creation as God’s handiwork, expressing his evident beauty and love. It was through MacDonald’s connections with Lady Byron, Ruskin and other Victorian intellectuals that he finally discovered that God was kind, and not the dreadful schoolmaster he had been raised to fear.

It is ironic that connection with the likes of Ruskin - a man who had decided he was an atheist because he could not cope with the cold contemporary images of God - resulted in MacDonald finding new-found faith and life. He says, for example, in a letter to his father:

‘One of my greatest difficulties in consenting to think of religion was that I thought that I should have to give up my beautiful thoughts and love for the things God has made... I love my bible more - I am always finding out something new in it - I seem to have everything to learn over again from the beginning - All the teaching of my youth is useless to me - I must get it all from the bible again.’

In our age I believe we must also revisit the bible. The problem is, we so often read it with preconceived ideas formed from dogma rather than truth - ideas that came to birth in the darkness of alienation, rather than the light of the spirit: poisonous ideas that have seeped through the bedrock of culture to infect our drinking water. So I believe the challenge faced by George MacDonald - which he so admirable faced - is that faced by us here at the beginning of the 21st century, and it is two-fold. Firstly we must re-read our bibles and ask some serious questions about what we believe, and secondly we need to get involved in contemporary culture instead of simply judging the game from the sidelines.

Well, I hope these thought have been useful. I am thinking about these things as we prepare for our 10th - yes 10th! - Summer Worship Retreat in the Czech Republic, and hope to develop them more during the week. It would be nice to hear from you if you have insight on these matters.

Peace,

John.