The Heart of Things

Charles Bradlaugh, an avowed athiest, once challenged the Rev. H.P. Hughes to a debate. The preacher, who was head of a mission to the homeless in London, accepted the challenge on the condition that he could bring with him 5 men or women who would tell what had happened in their lives since trusting Christ as their Saviour. They would be people who once lived in deep darkness, some having come from poverty-stricken homes usually caused by the vices of their parents. Hughes said they would not only tell of their conversion, but would submit to cross-examination by any who doubted their stories. Furthermore, the minister invited his opponent to bring a group of non-believers who could tell how they had been helped by their secular worldview.

For some reason, Bradlaugh, the famous atheist, withdrew from the debate.

Empty Inside

Lily Allen is a British pop singer who recently visited Brisbane and played at the big day out and various other venues. She’s often in the headlines for her off stage behaviour and eccentricities. A number of social commentators have suggested (and I agree) that she has a rare gift of being able to express western society’s zeitgeist – the collective mood, the spirit of the age. Listen to these words:

I want to be rich and I want lots of money
I don't care about clever I don't care about funny
I want loads of clothes and f**kloads of diamonds
I heard people die while they are trying to find them
I'll take my clothes off and it will be shameless
'Cause everyone knows that's how you get famous
I'll look at the sun and I'll look in the mirror
I'm on the right track yeah I'm on to a winner

Life's about film stars and less about mothers
It's all about fast cars and passing each other
But it doesn't matter cause I'm packing plastic
and that's what makes my life so f**king fantastic
And I am a weapon of massive consumption
and its not my fault it's how I'm program to function
I'll look at the sun and I'll look in the mirror
I'm on the right track yeah I'm on to a winner

Forget about guns and forget ammunition
Cause I'm killing them all on my own little mission
Now I'm not a saint but I'm not a sinner
Now everything is cool as long as I'm getting thinner
I don't know what's right and what's real anymore
I don't know how I'm meant to feel anymore
When we think it will all become clear
'Cause I'm being taken over by fear

Too many people in our society are chasing those sorts of things: self-interest, money, becoming famous, fast cars, packing plastic – a weapon of massive consumption – but it’s all OK as long as we’re getting thinner. For so many people who live in the units and houses of Toowong – those things are all they have in their lives. They’re trying to make sense out of life using hopelessly inadequate tools and values.

Have you ever had the experience of needing to hammer a nail into a wall and you don’t have a hammer? What can I use? Spoon (not heavy enough), slip off your shoe (nail just digs straight into the heel), mobile phone (no). It’s torture. The tools our society has placed in people’s hands and with which people are trying to live will never allow them to successfully find meaning and value and worth.

David Tacey is a professor at Latrobe University and a recognised commentator on Australian spirituality. I quote: “There's a massive spiritual hunger in the Australian community that's grown out of disillusionment with the Christian churches. So many people are walking around saying 'There's a hole in my life. You know, there's just something missing.'"

Despite living in one of the most defined religious societies in history, people in Jesus day were starving for spiritual reality. They desperately wanted to connect with the living God in living ways. And in Jesus' teaching and in his person, they saw the chance to do this.

In the fourth century, Augustine said, “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee.” Blaise Pascal, the brilliant 17th century French mathematician whilst working on the theoretical mathematics associated with the concept of a vacuum, made the spiritual proposition that perhaps we all have within us a God-shaped vacuum or void. And we are never satisfied until God is filling that void. We try to fill it with all sorts of other things: Lily Allen named many of them in her song – we even try to fill it with religious practice – but none of those things fit because it is a God-shaped void and only God will fit into a God-shaped void!

When people listened to Jesus’ teaching and related to his person, they found their God-shaped void being authentically filled for the first time ever. That’s why such large crowds flocked to him. It's probably still why people come to him today.

Love: Feelings and Choices

The second law of thermodynamic implies (with apologies to scientists for a crude layman’s definition): that any closed system left to itself tends towards greater randomness. That is, it tends to break down, unless energy is inserted into the system to create order. Whilst this law was intended to describe physical systems such as a chemical reaction in a test tube, I believe it applies to other realities. Our garden at home illustrates it well. If we leave our garden to its own devices, there’s no way it will remain ordered. In no time, the leaves fall, the plants wither, the weeds grow, the edges of the garden bed disappear. A beautiful thing is spoilt through neglect. To maintain the order of our garden energy has to be spent.

This applies to human systems as well. I get the sense that a lot of people assume that as long as they do nothing destructive or detrimental, that their friendships and relationships will simply look after themselves.

That’s just not the case!

I often say to couples when I conduct weddings, as they look dreamily into one another’s eyes, I have no doubt that during and after their honeymoon, the two of them will have no problems communicating and relating to one another. But to remember that becoming immersed once again in mundane life, as the days roll into weeks and the weeks become years and decades, loving one another may become something that needs to work at in a disciplined and systematic way.

And that shocks them. 'Surely if we’re in love,' they think, 'things will always just happen naturally, it will be spontaneous.' Well some couples are blessed with a natural inclination to relate easily, but not all. Good communication, caring action, attentive understanding are skills, like any others, which develop with time and practice. Some couples need to learn to garden, some need to learn to budget, some couples need to learn to communicate, others need to learn to love one another. It requires work and effort.

A man who had been happily married for 40 years once said, "It's easy to look for love outside your marriage and think that the grass is always greener of the other side of the fence. Actually, the grass is greenest where you water it."

All this implies that love is not so much a feeling as a choice. Bearing one another in agape (one of the words translated 'love' from the New Testament). William Barclay defines that type of love in these terms: it means that nothing another person can do will make us seek anything but their highest good. That of course means that Christian love, agape, is not a feeling. If Christian love means loving those who are not lovely, then it must be more than a feeling. It is a resolution, a decision. Don Francisco penned it well:

“Jesus didn’t die for you because it was fun.
He hung there for love because it had to be done.
And in spite of the anguish, his word was fulfilled.
For love is not a feeling it is an act of your will.”

Prejudice

When The Danish Philosopher Soren Kierkegard was a boy, a circus visited the village where he lived. Because there was no room for the big top tent within the village itself, the circus set up several kilometres beyond the village in a green field.

Preparations were made for the opening, which in the early 1800’s was a big deal for the people of a rural village.

But on opening night, a tragedy struck. Two hours before the curtains rose, someone knocked over a bucket of hot coals and the big top itself caught on fire. The circus people gathered and watched helplessly as their beloved tent was engulfed in flames and realised that soon the fire would spread to other tents nearby.

Most of the performers were only half dressed, but the clown had readied himself before the others and was fully dressed in his costume, so it was decided that he should run into the town to get some help.

He set off at a dead run and on the outskirts of the village, he encountered a group of people. Slightly puffed from the run, he franticly tried to explain what was happening as he gesticulated wildly to draw their attention to the crisis.

Observing his dress and actions, the villagers assumed this was a promotional gesture for the evening’s performance. Quite a crowd gathered to applaud and laugh at the clown’s strange behaviour. The clown, realising that people were completely misunderstanding his intentions, eventually fell quiet. And it was only then that the villagers noticed a column of smoke rising from the nearby field.

The word prejudice means to pre-judge. It means, like the crowd with the clown, to make a judgement of someone based on their outward appearance, their manner of speech or your assumptions about them rather than on accurate and first-hand knowledge of the person and their circumstances. How different could the world be if we resisted our natural inclinations toward prejudice? We do it so easily. Keep an eye out for where it may be lurking in your thinking today!