Posted 1 month, 3 weeks ago at 9:40 pm. 0 comments
It’s been 5 months since I last blogged here. I feel bad about not having blogged about alot of stuff I’ve thought over that time, but one of the things I’m learning is that most things are temporary, especially when you have a baby!
It was around 5 months ago that I had a bit of an identity crisis. The root of this clearly stem from losing my daughter Amy over 2 years ago, and coincided with my son Toby being born. His birth threw up a few things for me including who I am. I’m now Toby’s Dad, and I’m Amy’s grieving Dad. The joy and delight I have in Toby has left little emotional time to dwell on my grief and the tension between a grieving and joyful Dad has left me a bit confused.
It was around this time that I realised that I didn’t feel I belonged to the group of Christians I’ve known for the last 8 years. This was because after losing Amy, the dawning realisation that I had new and unique needs met a dawning realisation that these needs were not being met by this community of Christians I was part of. This group is fairly homogeneous since we all met at University and are of similar ages. Since we are all still young, and nobody had lost a child, we didn’t have any experience to know how to care for Mary-Lou and myself so we were were not able to be carried by the group. This wasn’t helped by not knowing myself how I could be helped. The pain and confusion of not having been carried by our Christian community left me feeling I didn’t belong.
So I began getting busy, not knowing at the time that I was searching for an identity, something I could point to and say “This is what Ben is about, this is what he does”. I started Guerrilla Gardening in Moss Side. I started helping a project collecting fruit from Manchester gardens to distribute to the poor and hungry. I got funding for a High Definition Camcorder to record Asylum Seekers telling their stories. I started a podcast exploring the implications of Shane Claiborne’s book “The Irresistible Revolution”. I became co-ordinator of my street’s Home Watch. I started planning the Parliament Protest. I got pretty busy all of a sudden and had less and less time for Mary-Lou and Toby.
In the end I gave some of that up, cut back on others, and finished the rest. I’m not as busy as I was (outside of work) and I’m looking forward to discovering routines and patterns (temporary of course) of time and activity with Mary-Lou and Toby.
I’ve not discovered my identity, I’m sure I’ll be figuring it out the rest of my life. But for now it feels good and proper that I rest and invest in the place I have as Mary-Lou’s husband and Amy and Toby’s Dad.
Posted 9 months, 2 weeks ago at 11:25 pm. 3 comments
I have now finished reading the book Where Is God When It Hurts and it has been very thought provoking. Although it deals largely with physical pain and things like terminal illness, it still helped me think through the pain of my grief in different ways.
The last section of the book is about what Christianity uniquely offers to those in pain. One of the things it talks about is how the concept of the Body Of Christ points to how Christians need to share and carry each others pain and suffering. Philip Yancey quotes a doctor called Paul Brand who says this about the human body:
Individual cells had to give up their autonomy and learn to suffer with one another before effective multicellular organisms could be produced and survive.
He suggests that the way in which cells in the body work should be the same way we humans work. The key to successful relationships lies in the sensation of pain.
In human society we are suffering because we do not suffer enough.
So much of the sorrow in the world is due to the selfishness of one living organism that simply doesn’t care when the next one suffers. In the body if one cell or group of cells grows and flourishes at the expense of the rest, we call it cancer and know that if it is allowed to spread the body is doomed And yet, the only alternative to the cancer is absolute loyalty of every cell to the body, the head.
I am struck that the image of the Body Of Christ is one which means we need to know and share each others pain for it to be healthy. Before reading this, I thought that it just meant we Christians ought to just get along and work together, but now I see a deeper and more meaningful application.
In my grief I have not felt that many share my pain. I know that many of my friends grieved the loss of Amy and have suffered because she is not here. And sometimes I don’t want to spend time grieving with my friends, I’d rather have fun! I know that they haven’t a clue how I feel, and that they couldn’t know how I feel unless they lost their daughter. But I also know that I would feel carried and less isolated if friends asked more often and gave me time and space to answer honestly and to grieve in their presence.
Philip Yancey goes on to point out the we Christians are Christ in this suffering world and should respond to those suffering or in pain with love, tenderness, and by sharing their pain and sorrows. He says his response to the question “Where is God when it hurts?” would be another question: “Where is the Church when it hurts?”
Often the Church is looking the other way, focussing on the personal gain of the Gospel, avoiding the questions surrounding pain and suffering and therefore avoiding those who hurt and struggle.
Posted 10 months, 2 weeks ago at 12:07 am. 4 comments
I am currently watching my way through the top 25 documentaries, one of which is a film called Hell House.
I already knew what this documentary was about because I had seen something on a TV show where one of the presenters went to go and see it. What I understood from that TV show was that Hell House is a show put on by a Christian group in America to try to convert people. It is basically a house you walk through and in each room something is realistically dramatised like a school shooting, or an abortion, or a rape and suicide. Towards the end you find whether those who died went to Heaven or Hell and why. Then you are given a chance to become a Christian.
It sounds horrendous, twisted and manipulative. And it is.
But the people aren’t.
I had put off watching the documentary because I thought I’d just get wound up with the hypocrisy and condemnation of the Hell House. But the film is put together so well. It is not judgemental or one-sided. It simply documents the preparations and opening night for the 10th year of the Hell House.
One of the people involved particularly touched me. It was a man with 4 kids. You first meet him one morning in his house as he is making breakfast for his children and getting them ready for school. After calling to his teenage daughter to hurry up, he walks into the kitchen to find his youngest having a fit. He calls out to everyone that “We’ve got a fit, yes a real one.” and carries his son into his bedroom and lies him on his bed so he can fit safely. As he phones 911 he says a quick prayer for his son who immediately relaxes his muscles and begins looking around, still in shock and recovering, but no longer fitting. The man tells the 911 operator that his son is OK now but an ambulance crew turn up anyway to check his son out. His son has multiple sclerosis which causes the fits. Later on we find out that his wife had left after an affair leaving him with their children.
Throughout this scene, I saw the gentleness of this man, his unassuming nature and his devotion and love for his children. It was wonderful and touched me deeply.
The film later shows his teenage daughter auditioning for the role of the abortion girl which moves him to tears. During the opening night of Hell House he escorts a group through the Hell House and during the domestic abuse scene where the wife is caught having an afai and is then killed, he looks very awkward. During the last room when a man asks people to become christians, he looks very uncomfortable and actually goes into the ministry room with the people who want to become christians. The film then shows him explaining that he feels he still hasn’t forgiven his wife and her other man, then he gets some prayer.
There are many scenes in the film which made me feel very uncomfortable. There are scenes where people are speaking in tongues, singing Christian songs and laying hands on each other in prayer. I’ve been to plenty of meetings like these in my past, but to see it on screen, especially this side of Amy dying, was unnerving.
The man I’ve mentioned above isn’t the only person the film focusses on, but the documentary shows how human the people who put on Hell House are. I was taken aback at how undisgusted I was after finishing the film.
They are clearly right-wing, evangelical christians and part of the Assemblies Of God Church. Hell House is obviously a gross presentation of Christianity. It assumes that the purpose of being a Christian is to get into Heaven rather than Hell when you die. I disagree. Surely Jesus’ message was more about bringing Heaven to earth, to those around you, particularly the poor and marginalised. Hell House also attempts to scare people into a relationship with Jesus, something Jesus himself never did!
At the end of the film, it says that 15,000 people have committed themselves to Jesus through Hell House over the 10 previous years. I truly wonder how many of those 15,000 are still following Jesus. I’m sure many are still going to Church most Sunday’s because many churches make it easy to be apathetic to one’s walk with Jesus yet still a member of the Church. But a relationship based on the fear of Hell can’t last because that fear will fade, there are too many distractions in the world. You might accidently stumble across Jesus through that fear, but it must be rare.
Sure, they have a twisted understanding of Jesus’s message and a horrible way of showing it to people. But for me, the film showed the humanity of the cast and production team and for that, it was beautiful.
Posted 11 months, 2 weeks ago at 12:41 pm. 0 comments
When I read God’s Politics by Jim Wallis I became hopeful that there were American Christians who thought and spoke sense. It was great to read this challenge to the Church and to have it explained so intelligently and passionately. So I enjoyed this video of him on the fabulous Daily Show:
Christianity and Politics obviously conflict alot in America, but much less so in Britain. I have long rued the lack of voice the Church has in both Politics and the Media in Britain. By “Church” I don’t mean the institutional leaders, but the people themselves. The Church has not been speaking out loudly enough over the last 50 - 60 years about social and political issues for many reasons. One might be the rise of the individualistic gospel making faith more of a personal gain and private matter. Another might be the rise of the less needy middle class in the Church which does not have an understanding or proximity to the poor.
Whatever the reason, the Church has become more and more irrelevant to the general public and the number of Christians has declined drastically over the last few decades. Meanwhile, Politics has become more and more capitalist, keeping the poor poor and the rich richer.
But I have seen a rise in young Christians become more socially and politically engaged in this country and this makes me hopeful - both that this nation’s social ills can be corrected and that the Church could become more like who she was created to be.
Please Church, stop naval gazing!
It was around this time that I realised that I didn’t feel I belonged to the group of Christians I’ve known for the last 8 years. This was because after losing Amy, the dawning realisation that I had new and unique needs met a dawning realisation that these needs were not being met by this community of Christians I was part of. This group is fairly homogeneous since we all met at University and are of similar ages. Since we are all still young, and nobody had lost a child, we didn’t have any experience to know how to care for Mary-Lou and myself so we were were not able to be carried by the group. This wasn’t helped by not knowing myself how I could be helped. The pain and confusion of not having been carried by our Christian community left me feeling I didn’t belong. 