From Church to Gallery: what art teaches us about faith

Here's my August article:

The Crucifixion by Jacopo di Cione

The school holidays, and holidays in general, can often involved trips to museums or other places of cultural heritage. This year I went for the first time to the National Gallery in London, and spent a very pleasant couple of hours looking round it. I started in the “Medieval and Early Renaissance” section, where the majority of pictures are paintings on religious themes, usually commissioned for churches and chapels.

As I looked at the pictures, I thought about how they ended up in a gallery rather than being in their original setting. Some would have been moved so that they wouldn't be destroyed during the Reformation. Others came from countries like Italy where this wouldn't have been a danger. However, there was little on the descriptions of the artworks which told you about their journey. But whatever their history, the result is that these artworks, created for sacred spaces and to be used in the context of Christian worship and devotion, are now displayed in a London building to be looked at by thousands of people from all across the world.

This led me to ponder something else: what are all these people thinking about when they look at these artworks? Do they know the biblical stories that are depicted? Do they think of those stories as being true or as being like the Greek myths that other pictures show? Are they inspired to worship or do they just admire the aesthetic or technical qualities?

Although we may not visit art galleries every day, it seems to me that many people live their lives with a similar attitude; they admire the fruits of Christianity but they rip them from their context. As historian Tom Holland showed in his book “Dominion”, the values of Western civilisation derive from the Christian worldview. Values such as equality and compassion, and even our esteem for science are rooted in the Christian faith. Yet our society wants to hold on to these values but reject the Christian narrative and devotion that gave rise to them. Like religious artworks in a gallery, these values might be admired, but they make little sense outside of their original setting.

As Nietzsche famously wrote “When one gives up Christian belief one thereby deprives oneself of the right to Christian morality”.   An example of this is human rights; as Yuval Noah Harari points out, a secular worldview means that “Human rights...are just a story that we’ve invented. They are not an objective reality; they are not some biological effect about homo sapiens.” Whereas Christianity grounds human rights in the doctrine that God made humans in his image and likeness.

So we have a choice: either try to hold on to Christian values without the Christian faith which underpins them; or come to know the God who makes sense of our most beautiful and cherished values.

Poppins and prayer

Here's my article for July:

@broughton_primary

This year's summer production at Broughton Primary Academy is Mary Poppins, the story of a magical nanny who comes to look after two unruly children who are trying to gain the attention and love of their strict father and pre-oocupied mother. The story starts with Mr and Mr Banks advertising for a new nanny, with help from Jane and Michael, their children. However there is a big difference between what Mr Banks is looking for and what the children are wanting.

Mr Banks thinks that a British home should be run with precision: “Tradition, discipline and rules must be the tools / Without them, disorder, catastrophe, anarchy / In short you have a ghastly mess.” Jane and Michael, however want someone who will play games, is kind and witty, and who will “Take us on outings / Give us treats / Sing songs, bring sweets. / Never be cross or cruel / Never give us castor oil or gruel / Love us as a son and daughter.” Mary Poppins arrives and responds to the children's advert, to the bemusement of Mr Banks, although she doesn't fulfil their wishes in quite the way they expect. Her first game for them is to tidy their nursery, though she finds the fun in it by animating the toys and clothes so they tidy themselves. Later on one of their outings is with their father to his workplace.

These unexpected fulfilments of wishes make me think about the topic of prayer. Often people think of prayer as being like a divine vending machine: you request something and you get it. Therefore they get disillusioned when their prayers are not answered that way and consequently doubt that God exists. Prayer, however, is much more relational than that: God hears and answers our prayers, though the answer can be 'Yes', 'No' or 'Wait' and even when the answer is 'Yes', it's not always in the way we imagined.

We see this in the prayer attributed to the late fourth century Bishop of Constantinople and famed preacher, John Chrysostom, that includes the phrase “Fulfil now, O Lord, the desires and petitions of your servants, as may be most expedient for them.” This asks God to answer our prayers but in the way that is best for us, which is not necessarily by giving us what we ask for nor by giving us what we want in the the way we want. And the prayer then focuses us on what is most important for us; asking God to grant us “in this world knowledge of your truth, and in the world to come, everlasting life.” Our deepest need is to know God, both intellectually and personally, which in turn is the way to everlasting life.

So if you've been put off prayer because God hasn't seemed to answer them, I encourage you to try praying again. (For help go to www.trypraying.org). But this time be open to God granting your requests in the way he knows is best for you.

(P.S. As ever, their production was fantastic - well done to the staff and children!!)

True Fatherhood

Here's my June article:

This month there is what Bert the chimney sweep from Mary Poppins might call a “fortuitious circumstance”: Father's Day falls on Trinity Sunday. Even if you believe that Father's Day is a made-up cynical ploy to get us to spend more money, perhaps it's good to be reminded to be grateful to people who have a positive impact on our lives.

Of course not all fathers do have a positive impact on their children's lives; tragically for far too many people their fathers (whether by their presence or their absence) cause mental, physical and emotional damage.   And so we need to be aware, as we do on Mothering Sunday, that Father's Day is not a day of celebration for everyone – many people do not want to celebrate their fathers, and other men may have had children who died or may have never been able to have children despite wanting them.

Trinity Sunday is the day that Christians remember that throughout the Bible God reveals himself to be 'Trinity', i.e. One God yet Three Persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Each Person is distinct from the others (unlike water/ice/steam that can only be in one state at a time) but there are not three parts of one God (unlike a three-leaf clover). The doctrine of the Trinity is more fully expressed in the Athanasian Creed, which you can read either in its traditional form or in a modern version, you can also watch the teaching on the Trinity here from our current Discipleship Service series looking at the Apostles Creed.  This is a complicated doctrine to get our heads around, though we shouldn't expect the infinite God to be easily understood by our finite minds! The important thing to remember about the doctrine of the Trinity is that it wasn't a result of philosophical thinking about God, but instead was the fruit of experiencing the divinity of the Father, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, alongside the revelation in the Bible of their divinity and also the one-ness of God.

The relevance of this for Father's Day is that some would argue that because some people experience earthly fathers as destructive and abusive, and emblematic of an 'oppressive patriarchy', then we should not refer to God as Father. In other words, for some the Trinity is 'triggering'.  However, it is precisely because our earthly fathers (and we ourselves if we are fathers) are fallible that we need to hold on to the Fatherhood of God.

The doctrine of the Trinity reminds us that God the Father is eternally Father - he is the original prototype of fatherhood. He didn't look around for metaphor to describe himself and choose 'father', instead he shaped human society so that earthly fathers might give us a glimpse of him. So our experience of earthly fathers, whether positive or negative, should propel us to seek out our perfect heavenly Father.

So however Father's Day makes you feel, seek out the Father who loves you with a perfect love. To do that, come to the Son, Jesus, who said “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).

The 'Phoney Peace' and the now-and-not-yet Kingdom

Here's my article for May:

This month we commemorate the 80th anniversary of VE Day, which is viewed by many as the end of the Second World War. But of course it only marked Victory in Europe; the end of hostilities between the European powers, it wouldn't be until VJ Day in August 1945 that the Second World War would end, with Victory over Japan. Just as the start of the war was dubbed 'the Phoney War' because of a lack of fighting, so we could call the period between VE Day and VJ Day, 'the Phoney Peace'. Peace had started and was more-or-less guaranteed but the war was not yet over.

This sense of 'now-and-not-yet' is also characteristic of the Christian faith. Last month we celebrated Jesus' death and resurrection and at the end of this month we'll be celebrating his ascension. Behind these historical events lie spiritual events. The apostle Paul tells us that on the cross Jesus triumphed over the rulers and authorities in the spiritual realm, taking away their power (Colossians 2:15) and that after his ascension Jesus was given the position of ultimate authority, ruling over all forces, authorities, powers, and rulers (Ephesians 1:20-21). However, we still see evil forces active in the world and we still pray to God “your kingdom come: your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” so where is the triumph and rule of Jesus?

The answer is in the now-and-not-yet nature of the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God has been inaugurated by Jesus' death and resurrection but it won't be fully consummated until Jesus returns to judge the living and the dead. As John Piper says

The decisive battle against sin and Satan and sickness and death has been fought and won by the King in his death and resurrection, but the war is not over. Sin must be fought, Satan must be resisted, sickness must be prayed over and groaned under (Romans 8:23), and death must be endured until the second coming of the King and the consummation of the kingdom.

So we can see signs of the Kingdom even now: as people come to a personal relationship with God through Jesus; as people are healed or find in God the courage to cope with tragedy; as those whose lives were dominated by sin or addiction are freed through repentance and the work of the Holy Spirit within them. Yet we also see the continuing effects of a world broken by sin.

As we live in this 'in-between' time we can both rejoice as we see the signs of the Kingdom coming as well as long for the certain future when “There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Revelation 21:4). And on a personal level those who have Jesus as their King can be certain that, although they won't be perfected until Jesus comes again, as the Spirit works in their lives they will become more and more like Jesus, battle by battle, because the war has been won.

Becoming a New Creation

Here's my April article:

This year we've been having some work done on the Vicarage including having a new kitchen fitted. Anyone who has had work done on their house will know how disruptive it can be, but hopefully the end results make all the trouble worth it, because after all the chaos there's something new - a new creation.

Easter is all about new life and new creation: chicks hatching out of eggs; spring flowers growing from dormant bulbs; new-born lambs gamboling in the fields; and chocolate… well I'm not quite sure how that fits in! These are symbols and God-given signposts of how Jesus' resurrection ushers in a new creation: that is the new heavens and new earth that will fully come when Jesus returns (Revelation 21) but can be seen in part here and now. But this new creation is not just about the world being redeemed, renewed and put right, it is also about us as individuals being redeemed, renewed and put right. In both cases, this new creation comes through disruption.

This sounds very similar to countless self-help books and motivational talks. Phrases like "No pain, no gain" are applied not just to physical transformation but also to personal, mental, professional and even spiritual transformation. The message from the transformation gurus and influencers is that you need to kill your old self in order that your new self can emerge, and this transformation is hard work, disruptive and painful, but worth it in the end.

But this is not the message of Easter. It might seem like the new creation of Easter only comes after the hard self-discipline of Lent and the self-sacrifice exemplified by Good Friday, but that would be a misunderstanding of the Christian message. Jesus is not a transformation guru who coaches us from the side, encouraging us to work harder. Instead he tells us that we cannot transform ourselves, no matter how hard we try: we don't need a trainer, we need a Saviour.

Just like I would not be able to fully fit a new kitchen but need someone else to do it for me, so I cannot transform myself. That's why God says "I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you…[and] I will put my Spirit within you" (Ezekiel 36:26-27). It's God who transforms us; we do not create a new heart within ourselves because we cannot. We need something from outside of ourselves to redeem, renew and put us right. We don't just need a better version of ourselves, we need God's Spirit to transform us and re-create us. The pain and disruption we need to go through is not the pain of self-correction and trying harder to be good, it is the pain of admitting we cannot redeem ourselves no matter how hard we try; it is the pain of swallowing our pride and admitting we need help. This is the message of Easter: God offers us the new creation we long for and that we cannot achieve by ourselves.

Faithful or Traitor?

Here's my article for March:

Photo by Lance Reis on Unsplash

“Are you a Faithful or are you a Traitor?” This question reverberated around the heads of many people who watched the latest series of 'The Traitors' which bills itself as being “the ultimate reality game of trust and treachery.” IMDB summarises the show as “Twenty-two strangers compete in a series of missions for a chance to win £120k. However, amongst the players lie the 'Traitors', who meet in secret and decide who to eliminate from their fellow players known as 'Faithfuls'.” The Faithfuls have to try to guess who amongst them is a Traitor and vote them to be banished. It's basically an elaborate game of wink murder!

I only started watching it halfway through the previous series, but it has an addictive quality akin to morbid curiosity, and I'm not quite sure what to make of my interest in it. There is something about the premise of the show which revolves around lies and deception that makes me uncomfortable, and although “it's only a gameshow” it involves real people trusting other people and often being really betrayed. And I'm not sure whether it makes it worse that these are 'good' people pretending to be bad, but doing actual bad things in order to win a game. In some ways I'd rather it were 'bad' people doing bad things because ironically at least they would be being 'faithful' to their nature.

But perhaps what really makes me uncomfortable about the programme is the mirror it holds up to me. In reality I am like the 'Traitors' – projecting a 'good' persona to hide my inner self-interest. Jesus was the first to use the word 'hypocrite' in the way we use it today (before that it simply meant an actor), and he once said to the religious leaders of his day “You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness” (Matthew 23:27-28.)

The temptation is to blame our surroundings for the way we behave; just as the contestants justify their behaviour because 'it's the game', so we say we have to be self-centred because the world and everyone else is fallen. However, the Christian doctrine of Original Sin exposes that as simply an excuse. There are many jobs that we say we will do 'when we get around to it', but the COVID lockdown proved that many of those jobs don't get done not because of lack of time and opportunity (there was plenty of that in lockdown!) but instead because of a lack of will and motivation. According to Douglas Murray, Original Sin teaches us that “we are this very, very contorted being which is capable of incredible greatness and beauty and kindness and forgiveness and also capable of their opposites and that it's not that you are one and other people are the other but all of us all of us are both all the time.” In the perfection of the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve chose disobedience and self-centredness, and demonstrated that the problem is not our environment, but ourselves. As is often said “the heart of the human problem is the problem of the human heart.”

Jesus likened himself to a doctor (Luke 5:31) who both diagnoses the problem but also offers the remedy. In Lent we are encouraged to face squarely our hypocrisy, not to crush us with guilt but to direct us to Jesus who took on that guilt, our guilt, on the cross. We are all 'Traitors' but the one we betrayed died taking our punishment – that is a priceless prize!

Unconquerable

Here's my article for February:

This February, the seventh Invictus Games will be held in Vancouver and Whistler. The Invictus Games were founded by Prince Harry as an international multi-sport event for wounded, injured and sick servicemen and women, both serving and veterans. They were first held in London in 2014 and speaking at the launch, Prince Harry said that the Games would "demonstrate the power of sport to inspire recovery, support rehabilitation and demonstrate life beyond disability."

The word 'invictus' is Latin for 'unconquered' and according to the Invictus Games website “The term embodies the fighting spirit of the participating men and women, as well as their motivation to move on with their lives, to gain a new place in life, and to not let themselves be defined by the trauma they have suffered.”

'Invictus' is also the title of a poem by the Victorian poet William Ernest Henley that is closely linked with the Games – the 2016 hosts Orlando said “the 16 short lines of the poem encapsulate the indefatigable human spirit, which is at the heart of the Invictus Games.” The poem is an example of stoicism in the face of the author's medical difficulties, including the amputation of his leg as a teenager due to complications from tuberculosis. He talks of his “unconquerable soul” and that despite his circumstances he has not “winced nor cried aloud,” his head “is bloody, but unbowed.” It ends with the famous defiant cry “I am the master of my fate / I am the captain of my soul.”

This is not just stoicism but it is a belligerent declaration of individualism and self-determination. The 'fighting spirit' that motivates the competitors to move on and demonstrate life beyond disability is very commendable, but in this poem it takes a dangerous turn into arrogance and hubris. Henley disregards “whatever gods may be,” only thanking them for making his unconquerable soul, and also disregards any consequences of his actions either in this world or the next.

This is partly because he doesn't believe in God and therefore this life is just a “place of wrath and tears” and after death is only “the Horror of the shade.” Contrast that with the view of the Apostle Paul: “We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself...But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead” (2 Corinthians 1:8-9. Paul lists the things he suffered in 2 Corinthians 6:4-10 and 11:23-27.) Suffering and adverse circumstances will make us either rely on ourselves or turn to God for help. Paul says that God is the one who can raise the dead, who can bring something good out of something bad and that because eternal life exists, this life as meaning and purpose. What good is it to be captain of your own soul if you don't believe there is a destination to sail to?