Four Viewpoints

The Venerable Sheila Watson led the Three Hour Meditation this year at St Pauls. It was wonderful. The archdeacon did some very illuminating close readings of the four gospels and highlighted some interesting differences in the 'Four Viewpoints', which was the subtitle of the meditation. I was not surprised that the silences were brief because our society abhors silence. The music was gorgeous, but I am not there for the centuries' old music. I am there for the now. What does my religion bring to me now… and in this day: I was not disappointed as twentieth and twenty-first century Didcot and Glasgow featured heavily in the words from the pulpit. For me, if my religion cannot improve me in the here and now, there is no point to it. Archdeacon Watson reminded me of the resonance that Christianity can still have in the modern world when handled with in-depth knowledge and loving intension.

Good Friday is the one day that Christians put aside their relentless celebration of Christ's victory over death and the immortality that it has allegedly gained for me. I just cannot relate to all of this gloating over a gift that I do not understand. At the risk of appearing ungrateful, I never asked for immortality. Based on my experience, immortality is the absolutely last thing I would ever ask for… and I still don't want it. There is already too much suffering to bear in this short life. I fret about the future of the world and the fate of the ones I love within it. I watch the stunned families who dare to show up at my workplace and contemplate the majority of families who hide elsewhere unable to face what cruel fate has dealt them. This notion of an all encompassing, all powerful victory over all suffering that was supposedly resolved for me 2000 years ago is so foreign to my actual experience that it just rings up empty. As empty as the absence of the omnipotent god at the injustice on the cross 2000 years ago or any injustice before or since. We have all witnessed injustices. I relate much more to the Jesus who cries forsaken than I do to this king in some heaven that I cannot fathom. And my life is one blessing after another.

Frankly, there are many places in our society where I can live in a fantasy land of never-ending victory. The cinema is abound with the good triumphing over evil, often accompanied by gratifying violence and/or sex. Well, in church, the major difference is that the token gratifier is apparently immortality. These outward tokens devalue the inherent worth of the intrinsic values or actions that they overshadow. In other words, the addition of immortality as a token reward implies that Jesus' teachings and actions of humanising the 'other' hold no value on their own. The immortality trumps everything else. That is not the way I see it. This is where I become an outcast within my own religion.

For me, the value in religion isn't in victory at all because in the end victory is all about holding yourself as superior to others. For me, religion is about humility, loss, and how we find dignity in all humanity, all life, so that our purpose is more than just caring about ourselves and our families. Looking after those we love is easy. Even despots and tyrants manage that. Caring about people we disagree with, who make us uncomfortable, or might cause us harm, now there is a challenge worthy of defining humanity. There may be value in acting as if everything is right with the world, but for me, I must be able to act in the midst of a broken world. Personally, I find that the suffering god helps me much more than the triumphant one. Religion for me is a place that consistently brings me out of my own selfish tendencies. Others may find motivations in other forms.

Prayer is just one form of hope. And so I pray with one of the many gifts that the archdeacon shared with the hundreds at St Pauls on Good Friday, knowing full well the irony of finding modern meaning in a 400 year old prayer steeped in a 2000 year old religion. My 'heaven' may be limited to the day when all humanity will not abide any injustice. When I and my human brothers and sisters will not just turn our attention to our personal dilemmas and instead take time to fix the broken world by having compassion for all humans, all life. My dreams may fall short of Drake's eternity, but they are far from securing the futures of just me and my family, which is what my dream was only the day before. That is the biggest dream I can imagine. It will have to be enough for now.

Disturb us, Lord, when

We are too well pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we have dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when
With the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wider seas
Where storms will show your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.
We ask You to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push into the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.

Photo Credits
Archdeacon: CaterburyChristChurchUniversity
StPauls: VisitBritainSuperBlog
Didcot: Wikipedia
Dali: Arts-Wallpapers
Banksy: SeattlePi
Drake: Wikipedia

Religion in the UK

For a long time, I have found religions fascinating. If I had infinite time on my hands, the first thing I would learn is about the intricacies and details of every religious belief on the planet. As a mortal, I instead find myself studying for the Life in the United Kingdom test, where I discovered a shocking piece of information about religion in the UK. Well, shocking to me anyway. My UK test book says that in a 2009 citizenship survey (not cited), 70% of people identify themselves as Christian (9% all other religions, and 21% no religion). I imagine my living in and around London the whole time has biased my view…or maybe it's the company I keep, but it certainly 'feels' like the ratio of Christians to 'Nones' is much less. I immediately took to Wikipedia to see what these numbers look like in the United States. According to a 2012 Pew Research Center poll, they look like this: 73% Christian, 7% all other religions, and 20% no religion. I am not sure what was more shocking, the huge silent Christian majority in the UK or how similar the two countries are. I suppose I shouldn't be shocked by the similarities because the US and UK are certainly more similar than different, but religion seems so much more in-your-face in the US so I was not prepared for the numbers to be so similar. OK, I promise not to do this for every country by I just looked at France: a 2011 Ipsos MORI survey (not cited) looks like this: 45% Christian, 10% all other religions, and 31% no religion (with 10% not reporting). Now that, that is a difference!  Hmm, now wait a minute.  I never looked at the Wikipedia UK numbers, which is reportedly based on a 2011 census: 59% Christian, 8% all other religions, 26% no religion (with 7% not reporting).  Now that seems a little more believable.

Photo Credit
Faravahar: Wikipedia