Truth is Like a Skeleton
‘Truth! Truth! You can’t handle the truth!’ [1] You remember the film A Few Good Men, where Tom Cruise is passionately demanding that Jack Nicholson tell the truth, and back comes the classic line. ‘You can’t handle the truth.’ In our current social climate where critical thinking is part of our education system, very much a result of the Post Structuralist movement of the mid-twentieth Century, truth as a concept has become abstract and experiential, and to a large degree, unknowable. The deconstruction of past ideals and philosophies has left us with a very shaky foundation. In some cases, no foundation. Conservative Christians, on the whole, reject the idea that Christian doctrine and theology needs to be deconstructed, and hold fast to ideals that have been...
Organising Jesus – Part 2
Let me tell you how it was that I came to start writing novels (you know those stories that aren’t true). Back when I was newly married, my husband and I worked in youth ministry. In the 1980s, church leaders were encouraged to phone up their parishioners and try to help them out of any trouble they may be facing. Following this model closely, I was often aware of drama that was going on in different people’s lives. I was quite young and not as mature as I thought I was. When I would learn of a certain situation, I would think about it all day, but I wasn’t actually aware I was thinking about it. As I would work around the house—vacuuming, ironing, washing dishes, whatever—I would start imagining how the pastoral situation was going to work out. I would imagine...
Organising Jesus – part 1
Come February each year, many churches around the country encourage their people to take the month to pray and fast (albeit a partial fast). One year, when we came to this time, I’d had a bit of a tough few months and was set to get into the prayer and fasting, almost as if I was going to sort God out. It was like he’d lost focus and I was about to get him back on track. Needless to say, I had a bit of a revelation about this, and hence this chapter came into being. Organising Jesus isn’t a new concept One particular day, as I was reading along in John 6, I wasn’t thinking too deeply when a couple of verses jumped out at me and began to confirm some things I’d been hearing. In this passage was the story where Jesus had just performed the miracle of feeding...
Alrighty Then – Part 2
Following on from part 1, let’s look further at how our addiction to being right affects our life and how we live it. How then, are we supposed to worship? What becomes even more troubling than ordinary folks contesting positions on certain social justice and political issues, is when Christians enter into similar arguments concerning how different Christian groups and denominations express their faith in worship. I find it sad and disturbing when I read one Christian group criticising or even denouncing another Christian group for something in the way they operate. I’ve heard criticisms that come from a place of superiority, that other Christian groups are not as enlightened or advanced in the way they understand God or how they should worship. I’ve heard...
Alrighty Then – Part 1
I like to be right. In fact it would be fair to say, I’m obsessed with being right. I certainly don’t like to be wrong, and just quietly, I have worked hard to make sure I don’t find myself in that place where I might appear to be without all the answers. And that is all well and good until some bright spark pops up with a truly deep and disturbing question, the answer to which I have not a clue. Are you like that? When I do come to the awareness that I might be wrong, apart from feeling vastly uncomfortable, I like to be the one who comes up with the apology, as if it was my idea in the first place. I really dislike finding myself in a place where someone is taking the opportunity to let me know I am wrong, how I am wrong, and what I should do to fix it. This is...
