When writing about spirituality, how do you put into words perceptions that cannot be fully expressed? Perhaps they are incomplete, part of an ongoing story or cannot be expressed in words. But it is possible to trace back your spiritual roots.
Too often religion comes across in the media (and religious meeting places) as a done deal. “You are one of us and so this is what you believe”. The same can be said of political views.
For example, I’m 61 years old and if someone interviewed me they might define my economic beliefs but I hesitate to say I’m a Keynesian or a Marxist or anything else because I am still exploring. I am not satisfied with most economic models on offer. There’s a lot of good stuff around but I don’t see why I need to adopt some particular view.
The same is true of religion. I became a Methodist in May 1978, when I was 24 years old and before that I wasn’t anything in particular. I went to see my Methodist Minister and asked him what I had to believe. His reply has been immensely influential over the last forty years. “Nothing”.
Stories
Religious faith is ultimately stories. Some will forcefully argue you must believe these stories are true. I have two problems with this. First, I’m called as a practicing Christian not to believe but to tell these stories. Of course, I believe they are worth telling.
My second problem is what do we mean by true? Fundamentalists usually mean stories are true if they really happened. One day Jesus healed a demoniac by casting demons into a herd of pigs. How many demoniacs were there? Mark’s Gospel tells me there was one but Matthew’s version has two. Which is true in a historic sense? It’s not likely Jesus on separate occasions sent two herds of pigs over cliffs and Mark records one and Matthew the other.
The Gospel writers were not concerned about literal truth. I know why Matthew has two demoniacs. But even if we all agree there was originally one, it does not follow that a herd of pigs was ever stampeded by Jesus.
You know what? It really doesn’t matter whether it really happened. When I tell the story I never ask whether it really happened. It doesn’t matter. What matters is the meaning of the story.
But even that is not the full truth. You see there is not one single plain meaning of scripture. Whatever meaning you favour is your interpretation of the story. There are other interpretations. How many? They are uncountable, effectively infinite. You can always find another.
So, as Pilate asked, what is truth? I’ll return to this question in my next post.
Radical Methodism
So, how would I describe my spiritual roots? The way I see it is you need to be something because you need something to argue with. It is about wrestling with the tradition, not swallowing a party line.
So, I would describe myself as a radical Methodist. Methodism is the body of teaching I wrestle with, my aim is to go deeper into the roots of Methodism. Radical means literally to go to the roots. One thing about the roots of any plant is you find it increasingly difficult, as you look closely, to see where the roots end and soil begins. Radical is not about pulling up the plant but understanding how the plant grows and thrives. I shall return to this in a couple of weeks.
