According to “a major Queensland study of 21-year olds”:

Young men who held non-traditional religious views were at twice the risk of being more anxious and depressed than those with traditional beliefs.

I wonder whether my “religious views” (*cringe*) are non-traditional?

It seems to me that a black-and-white faith which puts people in boxes and condemns them to hell, isn’t a particularly productive platform for someone who claims to have a Christ-like worldview. Interestingly enough, being black-and-white is one of the hallmarks of adolescent logic. It opens up some interesting questions surrounding what faith is, what faith isn’t, who has it, who doesn’t have it, who thinks they have it, and the range of other permutations combining those options.

Have a read of the articles linked below. They sparked the original thought process.

http://www.slate.com/id/2175640/?gt1=10538

http://www.salon.com/mwt/col/tenn/2007/10/04/christianity/?source=whitelist

Usually I very much like to have lots of things to think about, lots of ideas to play with and lots of potential for new little projects. At the moment though, big ideas about my identity and my vision for life are bubbling away under the surface.

The result is a state that I can perhaps best describe as weary. I was just reading this post by Bec which I just completely don’t have room to process right now. I long for a chance to start getting back into a place where I can consider themes like those ones without feeling like they’re going to turn the unsettled questions into impossibly chaotic and almost distressing accusations.

I’m in a bit of a tired patch. Have you ever been there and what was the catalyst to finding yourself walking on solid ground again?

I expected to be participating in a run of the mill church service. Stand up, sit down, sing this, listen to that, nibble this, drink that, have a chat, go home. And I’m sure I could have been that nonchalant about it if I’d tried hard enough. Fortunately for me, God had other plans.

The time that I spent there was nothing short of exactly-what-I-needed. The music was phenomenal. Acoustic rock all the way with at least one vocalist who I could have listened to all day. There was no sign of a crass performance mentality from the musicians. They were there to lead us, indeed, to draw us in to meeting with God. I’ve missed seeing that happen so much in recent times. The song choices were rich with meaningful words that embodied the theological concepts that I’ve been learning and meditating on over the past year and before. There were no fairy floss one-liners. This was about God. Come as you are. Be engulfed in who He is. Know God, even though everything hurts.

The sermon was fantastic and again hit the nail right on the head as we were led through content on the illusive connection between suffering, faith and healing. I’ve spent a lot of time learning about the first two of those in the last two years. I wanted to go forward for prayer afterwards but didn’t have the strength to step forward. Unfortunately I allow that to happen all too regularly.

After/during the service, I got the chance to catch up with some other Vineyardians who I’ve run into over the years. I think that really added to the atmosphere because I didn’t feel like I was there on my own. My housemate’s sister and her fiance were there, along with some people I’ve led on camps with. In fact, I think I got the best welcome I’ve had to a church service in years when Laura spotted me in the carpark and escorted me into the building, preventing the need for plodding in awkwardly and trying to work out where to go.

I had lunch with Bec and Geoff after the service, at the traditional eatery of anyone who’s just been to a church service - La Porchetta. We had a great chat and I even got the chance to unpack some of the things that have been happening in my church’s youth ministry that have been weighing on me over time. It was good fun and big encouragement to me. Thanks guys!

I took a reasonably significant detour on the way home to visit a place that I spotted in the Melways - Silvan Reservoir Park. I spent a good hour or so there reading through lots of different bible passages and praying heaps before driving back home.

And so for reasons I have shared… and also for reasons that I haven’t… I am seeing the Holy Spirit moving in and around me more and more. Through these experiences and many others, He is showing me that soon He’s going to bring me up out of this valley. He is teaching me how to walk in His strength and not my own. He has even given me a slightly amusing sense of hope that runs deeper than I usually allow anything to go.
Hope is a wonderful thing. And I’m glad that, after all that’s happened, I started to feel that extra bit alive, on a Sunday.

It was the new fortnightly Wednesday night gathering at West Preston Baptist Church. Mark, the pastor, had set it up around the communion table. There were only about six of us there and the content of the service was almost entirely responsive readings and prayer. Thanks to Ridley, I’ve developed a healthy appreciation for such things.

What I liked about it was its simplicity. Mark spoke to us briefly about how the communion table can be inappropriately sidelined, particularly by western protestant churches. I see his point. So often, communion is a tack-on to a church service where the sermon is a highlight. Sometimes I think the time is used in church services to allow people to reflect on the speaker and how that person’s words have impacted their emotions - rather than being a meal that symbolically enters us into a spiritual connectedness with our God. In the process, I think communion can become ritualistic.

The contrast on Wednesday night was marvellous. There were no little pansy 15mm squares of bread to place on your tongue and swallow whole. Similarly we had glasses of grapejuice (wine) that had a bit of volume to them, instead of those little ones that you could possibly use to give a child a dose of demazin.

The effect wasn’t lost on me. John 6:53-57 …

Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me.

If I was reading that for the first time, without a fair idea of the whole picture in the book of John, those metaphors would be extremely confusing… so if that’s you, don’t stress. It certainly hit me in a new way. As my jaw moved, tearing away at the big chunk of bread roll and as I gulped down the large cup of grapejuice, it actually required some physical effort. I couldn’t just slide communion down my throat. And in those moments I reflected on Jesus’ actions on the cross in a new way.

I came away from the service feeling refreshed. I felt like I’d been part of something alive and real. I didn’t feel the emptiness that comes with a stage-produced church service. I felt more like we were cutting to the chase. No one cared that I didn’t have the music for the one song we could have sung. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t about that.

I long for the day when I’m part of a community that is willing to put “what we do” aside and, instead, asks “why are we here?” When worship - when church - is just another churchy song, why do I feel so disconnected from it on the inside? Where’s God?

Have you experienced anything like this?

Are churches right to say ‘Jesus loves Osama’?

Out of the 185,000 odd clicks that the poll had received when I last looked, I was unsurprised but at the same time kind of intrigued, to find that about 82% of respondents voted “No.” (If you’re a uni student, that’s a HD… so “No” did pretty well for itself.)

You wouldn’t have thought that something like this would surprise me. But it did. Maybe it’s the church kid in me. See, I’ve grown up in an environment where, even if people did an absolutely pathetic job of practicing what they preach, the essence of the Christian message - the Gospel of grace and forgiveness - was always something that I’ve been hearing about. It actually hadn’t occurred to me that most people actually don’t have the same experience. After 23 years as a church participant, I’m very accustomed to the idea of forgiving the undeserving and the guilty. In fact, if Jesus doesn’t love Osama, then he isn’t who Christians think he is. That’s how deep it goes.

C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity says:

Christianity does not want us to reduce by one atom the hatred we feel for cruelty and treachery. We ought to hate them. Not one word of what we have said about them needs to be unsaid. But it does want us to hate them in the same way in which we hate things in ourselves: being sorry that the man should have done such things, and hoping, if it is anyway possible, that somehow, sometime, somewhere he can be cured and made human again.

I’m only just beginning to feel like I understand what it really means to “Love your neighbour as yourself”. I guess I expected more from everyone else. I guess I expected people to see that, as humans, we really stand to benefit far more from hating actions rather than hating other people.

Wednesday night marked the third time that my favourite band, Third Day, have toured Australia. I first heard them in 2001 when they came to Sonfest in Ballarat. They were fantastic then and they just keep on getting better. Last time they toured, in 2005, I organised a small army of friends to go along and see them. I even drove out and bought tickets in advance for everyone. This time around, I was thoroughly disappointed that no one wanted to go with me. However, undeterred, I bought my ticket anyway. I wasn’t going to miss it. And I’m glad that happened because it was a key factor in what came next. Keep reading whilst I build the suspense.

See, as everyone knows, when you go to some sort of concert, people all sit with their friends. In a packed out venue, due to people’s somewhat impractical ideas of personal space, this generally means that there are lots of single good seats in really good spots where two groups have allowed a ’spacer’. After a quick chat with a very nice mum, who’s 12 year old son quite obviously didn’t want to sit next to a stranger until I made an effort to befriend him, I snaffled myself a seat in the third row on the aisle.

The support act, although their name currently escapes me, we’re pretty entertaining… but I was hanging out for Third Day. It’s been a couple of days since the concert so I don’t have a hope of remembering the set list. I like all of their songs. I’m a bit of an all-round Third Day fan. So there I am. At a Third Day concert. How cool is that! I’ve gotta say, their music really stirs me up and touches me. I’ve been doing the church musician thing for quite a while now… and in recent times, particularly in the last two years where a lot of us have sacrificed our own personal spiritual interaction in worship services, to run a church that has no permanent pastors, I’ve really felt numb to the music and words of songs with Christian spiritual themes.

In that process, where the music has still been happening every Sunday, I haven’t really had a pathway to deal with some stuff that’s really been bugging me for a long time. I have felt like I’ve been continually living in the fragments - the debris - of a church family that once worked well, that once wrapped its arms around me and embraced me… that once loved me. I’ve been a bit resentful since things became unsettled those few years ago. I think that’s normal to an extent. Close relationships change dramatically, in ways were people disconnect from each other, and we ask ourselves the question “Who is going to love me now?”. I’ve been waiting for someone to answer that question for me. I’ve been waiting for someone to be the answer to that question for me. It hasn’t happened. But the answer was right in front of my eyes the whole time.

“When you think your life is shattered and there’s no way to be fixed again, love heals your heart.” - from “Love Heals Your Heart” by Third Day

Third Day opened the floodgates for me again. The words to their songs and the absolutely fantastic musical arrangements broke through the walls that I’ve had up for a long time. It’s been such a long time since music was something that I let speak to me. And then, the absolutely unthinkable happened. Mac Powell, the lead singer, got the band to do something unrehearsed. “Who would like to sing for some Third Day Karaoke?” (thick southern American accent that is much cooler than Dr Phil’s). My hand was in the air before I could really think about it. I’ve actually imagined many times, what it would be like to sing with Third Day in concert. I’ve got their CDs, so in some senses I feel like I sing with Third Day all the time… but yeah… Mac picked me out of the crowd along with three others.

I’d been on the stage for about 2 seconds when he asked me my name, asked the audience to “give it up for Paul” and told me I was about to sing one of my favourite songs… “Love Song”. So there I am on the stage at Richmond AOG with Third Day, in front of 2000 people who I could see all looking at me. My legs were shaking like absolute jelly and I was worried that I was going to fall over. I couldn’t look. I shut my eyes. I didn’t even have to think about when to come in. It was one of the freakiest things listening to my voice boom out from the lead singer’s microphone. It was intense. And it was an absolutely beautiful experience. I even got a little bit of a cheer after the first line. I knew the words by heart but I would have gone completely blank, if it wasn’t for Mac saying the next line into my ear as each one passed.

“I’ve heard it said that a man would climb a mountain
Just to be with the one he loves
How many times has he broken that promise
It has never been done”

The rest of the verse which the next guy sang, goes like this:
“Well I never climbed the highest mountain
But I walked the hill of Calvary”

It was, of course, the chorus of that song, that answered the question I walked into the concert with… and the question that I’ve been wrestling with for these last few years… “Who is going to love me now?”. The whole, complete and all-consuming love of Christ, claims to be more powerful than anything that other people can offer us. That’s not to say that the love of others isn’t necessary. I’m still interested in having happy, healthy, loving relationships. But this - this is something more.

“And just to be with you, I would do anything
There is no price I would not pay
And just to be with you, I would give anything
Yes, I would give my life away”

-From “Love Song” by Third Day

So I’m back on the road again.  No more trains to work.  No more scabbing lifts.  I can successfully spend this entire weekend bouncing between the eastern and north western suburbs of Melbourne.

What I found most interesting about the new car experience, was how much I actually tried to spiritualise it.  You might get the wrong end of the stick with this comment if you’re not all that familiar first-hand with Christian teaching… so leave a comment if you have any questions.  Here’s the story…

After a reasonable degree of whinging and indecisiveness about my old car, I stopped and realised… ‘I haven’t prayed about this one’.  Now that’s not a legalistic faith requirement.  I don’t have to pray about anything.  But if you want something and you believe in a supernatural, all-powerful creator of the universe… it seems logical to ask for stuff that you need.  So I did.  And two weeks later I have a car, not because a magic pixie appeared on my doorstep… because I went to a caryard and bought one.  Nonetheless, I did the same thing a month ago and found no suitable cars in about 10 different yards.  Divine intervention?  You tell me.  I’m open to suggestions.

Now, I’m really thankful for the car.  It will make my life a lot easier.  I’m thankful for the provision of a job that I love and for the finances that seem to have accrued themselves without that much careful accounting on my part.  And yes, I said ‘thankyou’ to God for the car.

At the same time, part of me felt like an idiot.  See, if I’m really tuned in to this whole God thing, even though God is definitely going to be interested in the mundane details of my life, I felt like a bit of a hypocrite for making such a faith ‘thing’ out of this car.  I don’t want to appear self-righteous, like the americans in one of those Amazing Race teams that go out of their way to call themselves Christians and keep asking God out aloud for divine intervention to help them win the million dollar prize (at the expense of all the other teams).

There’s nothing wrong with me being thankful to my God for the small stuff.  There’s nothing wrong with the idea that God cares about the small stuff.
But there is something wrong when our big investments in spiritual connection with God come at a time when it suits us… when we have a material gain in focus… or when a relative is in hospital or something.  From a biblical perspective, God is going to accept you no matter when you decide to turn to Him.  So I’m not saying that we have to try and make ourselves adequate before God.  What I am talking about, is avoiding a personal hypocrisy, which comes closer to being religious than having faith.

From my personal perspective, if I’m only interested in God as an extension of being interested in myself, I may as well cut down on active expressions of faith altogether and embrace an illusion. I could just be toddling along to a random church for Easter and Christmas, comfortably calling myself a Christian and completely missing the point at the same time.

This, I think, is one of the big reasons why people don’t want to pay attention to God.  It’s because they know it will cost them something.  Usually they think that the cost will be church attendance - but it doesn’t have to be about an institutional church if you don’t want it to be.  That’s between you and God.  Church participation is not the cost.

The cost is that you can’t have your spiritual cake and eat it too.

Go here.

Not-that-quick-connection hint: quickly play/pause the other ads so that they load while you’re watching the first one

I’ve been part of the same church community for a long time. At one stage, about three years ago, it felt like the community was firing on all cylinders. I was growing spiritually. I was maturing personally. I was enjoying life. I felt as though I had meaning and purpose to life. At the cynical old age of 22, I have come to realise that feeling as though life is meaningful and purposeful is pretty emotionally driven.

At the time, what I craved and needed the most was probably what everybody craves and needs the most: to feel loved and accepted by a community. I can honesty say, that for a period of time, that need was met by my church community. I was lucky enough to be a part of a small group of guys, all around the same age, who hung out regularly and talked about issues of life, faith and future. We became great mates and I am privileged to be able to count those guys as close friends to this day.

We were also part of a broader social group of young adults, all connected through the church. There were always people who I knew well who I could hang around with. I’d walk into church on Sunday mornings and Sunday nights seeing a sea of familiar faces. People I knew. People I loved. People who encouraged me. The whole experience made me feel wonderful about myself.

In amongst this, our church was undergoing rapid change for a community organisation with about 200-250 members. We had moved to a temporary premises with a view to building on the site. We had a great pastor who was well liked, who spoke well and encouraged many of us in our faith. Simultaneously, the youth pastor who’d arrived at our church 3 years earlier was at the height of his ministry. We were running some great youth programs and we were kicking goals. People were growing in the knowledge that they are loved. The community was working. Ultimately, of course, the reason I felt this way was because my deepest need at the time - for friendship, encouragement, love and acceptance - was being met by the peer group around me on a continual basis.

I am whole-heartedly grateful for the positive things that I took away from these experiences. I believe that the fond memories forged during this time are the gift of a loving God.

Fast forward to now. Things have changed. They always do. While the friendships have endured the test of time, the group of mates that gave me the acceptance I was looking for is seldom together as a group. The church still hasn’t finished its building, although things are not far off. Both of the pastors have left. I don’t always feel accepted or understood by the peer group I have today. At least not in the way that I once did.

So what’s my deepest need now? I think I’ll keep that one to myself. What I will tell you is that it often doesn’t feel as though it’s being met. So what do I do with that? Experience subconsciously tells me that something isn’t right - that I should be lavished with the support of a loving community. I look at the activities that happen at my church and I don’t see the vibrant buzz of activity that I once felt was there. I don’t have long standing, cultivated relationships with the pastors. We don’t even have a youth pastor. That’s where I usually stop.

“The church is broken”, I complain.
“It has no direction”, I moan.
“The church should be doing more about the youth programs”, I proclaim.

But it’s more than that. Sure it’s easy to look on the surface level and see the glaring administrative problems and the gaping holes in the ideal of what I used to think the church was. That’s not the point though.
It’s about the community. It’s about the family. It’s about being a part of it all. It’s about acknowledging that I have some unfulfilled hopes and ideas that haven’t come to fruition. It’s about not feeling loved or understood sometimes. Whenever I’m in a situation where my deepest need isn’t being met, it is at this point when I need the community the most. Ironically, it’s when I’m not feeling great that I blame the community for not doing its job and start to withdraw.

Your thoughts please, insightful observers.