The Anglican Church…. What a mess. – part 1

Warning… This post is probably full of errors in the detail of things. I don’t have time to know details so forgive me. I’m happy to be corrected, but please don’t accuse me of trying to intentionally misrepresent anything.

We go to an Anglican church, we are members of the Church of England. The Anglican church (pretty much) used to be a part of the Roman Catholic church, then two things happened at pretty much the same time:

1. Our king (Henry VIII) wanted to get divorced (and married again).
2. People actually started reading the bible and discovered that the teaching of the Roman Catholic church was way off.

So Henry declared himself to be head of the church as opposed to the Pope, and Anglicanism begun. Then it stopped after his son Edward died and (bloody) Mary, who was a Roman Catholic became queen. Then she died and her sister Elizabeth (a protestant) became queen. She did a lot to try and get people to stop burning each other and try and get along. And that’s the flavour with which the Anglican church has bounced along for the last 400ish years. The general theology has been Protestant, but the philosophy has been to try and avoid burning each other when we disagree. When the British Empire grew, lots of Anglican churches got placed in countries around the world. Put them all together and you have the Anglican Communion.

I’d rather you just do what you’re told!

That sounds quite strong, but pretty much the words that came out of my mouth a couple of days ago whilst receiving a hug from our Daughter, as she attempted to distract me from my anger at her refusal to put her pajamas under her pillow.

Now I’m a big fan of hugs, but not when I’ve asked her to do something else.

Thinking about it later though, I can’t help be reminded of 1 Samuel 15:22, where Samuel explains that God doesn’t delight in burnt offerings or sacrifices as much as obedience.

And not only that, but in John 14:15 Jesus says ‘If you love me, Obey my commands.’

It was interesting to have something of God’s view on what it’s like when people come to you with religious offerings whilst ignoring your instruction as to how they should live.

Reformation Day party

Not really, but wouldn’t it be nice to celebrate the other thing that the 31st October is notable for!

Our church is having a ‘not halloween’ party on Saturday evening, and I’ve been called upon to say a few words. In lieu of an actual blog post, here’s what I think I’ll be saying:

 

This is a time of year when some people like to think about scary things, like ghosts or play tricks on each other. It gets dark early at this time of year, so I’m going to tell you about the darkest place that I’ve ever been to, and it was a bit scary….

When I was 11 years old, I went with a school trip down a mine. Who knows what a mine is?

It’s like a cave, where precious metals or rocks are dug up. All sorts of things are dug up in mines around the world, like Gold, Silver, Diamonds and even salt!

We were in a coal mine, and we were deep underground. We each had to wear helmets, and our helmets had torches on them, so we could see quite a lot.

But when we had walked quite a long way through this mine, the man showing us round told us all to switch our torches off!

It was so black that you couldn’t see your hand in-front of your face, having your eyes shut made no difference, it was just so, so, so, so, dark, there was no light at all.

Everyone went quiet, and we were told not to walk around, because we would bump into each other, or trip up, and hurt ourselves. Without any light, the bottom of the mine was a very dangerous place.

Now, can you imagine being in a situation like that, where it’s completely dark and you don’t know the way out? What would you do? Well, you’d need someone to come and help you. Now just imagine that there was someone far off in the mine, who shouted ‘come this way’ would that be any use?

You wouldn’t be able to follow even a voice that’s telling you the way, because you wouldn’t know where the voice is coming from, and you’d trip or fall on the way.

Well did you know that the bible says life is sometimes a bit like being in the bottom of a mine with no light! The bible says that we’re a bit like people who are stuck at the bottom of a mine, not able to see where we should be going, or what we should be doing, and worst of all, not able to see how we can get out.

The good news though, is that the bible also says that Jesus is like a person who does rescues people who are trapped in a dark place. Jesus said ‘I am the light of the world; whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.’

Then we’ll all have some fun with glow-sticks.

God’s promises are not performance related

Our Explorers session yesterday was great fun, we looked at Genesis 25:19 – 28:18 ish, Isaac, Rebekah, Esau and Jacob.

What a horrible family!

• Isaac and Rebekah each choose a favorite son.
• Esau cares more about filling his stomach than God’s Promises.
• Jacob won’t share his food, without making obscene demands.
• Rebekah eavesdrops, then deceives her husband.
• Jacob lies to his dad.
• Esau decides he wants to kill his brother.

What we learnt:

Characters in the old testament are not role models for us. We should be very careful about wanting to be like anyone other than Jesus.

Looking at God’s response to Jacob was really great. Jacob is on the run, having just duped his father and brother. God forgives Jacob and reasserts his promise originally made to Abraham, that God would give Jacob descendants, land, and that his family would be a blessing to the whole world.

God’s promise to Abraham, and his plan for humanity cannot be derailed by us letting God down through our behaviour. God will keep his promises.

That’s where I expected the session to stop, but there was unrest…. Howls of ‘That’s unfair, Jacob doesn’t deserve to be forgiven, God should punish him!’

How could God just forgive Jacob and give him this fantastic promise?

It’s not often that an Explorers session gives the opportunity where the kids are asking you to explain the Gospel, in fact I don’t think I’ve ever had it happen before, and I probably didn’t do a very good job of it.

God could forgive Jacob for the same reason that God can forgive us: Because Jesus paid the price for Jacob’s sin and our sin. God punished Jesus instead of punishing Jacob, just like God punished Jesus instead of us, and Jesus was prepared to take that punishment because Jesus loves us.

But I can’t hear the tune because of all the singing!

That was Eldest Son’s response when I tried to encourage him to remove his hands from his ears during the first hymn at church one sunday. He’s not a fan of congregational singing… yet.

He’s recently moved up to the Climbers group (for 5 to 7 year olds), which means that, for the first time, he’s having to get used to sitting in a pew for the first 10 minutes or so of church.

It’s not an easy thing for him get used to, but he is gradually learning what to expect, and the boundries that such a situation presents.

The highlight last Sunday though, was when I showed him 2 Timothy 1:7, which he knows off by heart already, thanks to the magnificent Colin Buchanan. There are few things better than seeing your son excited about opening a bible!

What do we do with ‘Baddies’?

There are a few superheroes in our family, excluding myself, here is a rundown of the top 5.

1. Buzz Lightyear
2. LarryBoy
3. Lightning Mcqueen
4. Mrs. Hamilton
5. Peter Pan

Super-heroes are generally great for displaying many heroic qualities that it’d be nice if our children emulate, but the way in which they deal with ‘baddies’ is something that I’d like to overcome.

It seems to be generally expected that the baddies are just plain bad, and need to be either put in prison or killed, and that’s that. This is natural, to a certain extent. We all have a built-in concept of right-and-wrong, and we all know that wrong things need to be accounted for and punished, otherwise it’s just not fair.

What we’ve been trying to remind the kids though, is how amazing Jesus is, because only Jesus can turn baddies into goodies. It’s a hard sell though, and I suppose it will be until you look close enough to realise that we’re all baddies on the inside.

And the winner is….. Mrs Hamilton

Fantastic mis-hearing:

Whilst watching Lewis Hamilton become F1 world champion, Eldest Son would only hear ‘Mrs Hamilton‘. It has stuck and we shall ever refer to him as such.

Sorry Lewis.

The portrayal of family relationships in Star Trek

If I were to do a Media Studies degree, this would be my dissertation (so I would probably fail).

I’m a big fan of Star Trek. As a Kid, watching The Next Generation (TNG) was brilliant. As a husband and father though, I can also see that Star Trek presents us with a future where almost every family is either damaged or dysfunctional.

It seems like every family involves one of the following:

• One (or both) parents absent children are young (Riker, Sisko, Crusher, Worf, Troy (possily),LaForge, O’Brien)
• Child resents parent(s) (Riker (again), Bashir,Picard, Paris, Torres)

That’s by no means every character, but it is almost every character where an episode looks in to their background, as well as those which we see. Nothing much is said about the others.

In fact, the only family which seems to have held together is that of Quark, Rom, and their parents. This is particularly frustrating as, being Ferengi, they are portrayed as being misogynistic, backward, materialistic,  and used for comic effect.

It seems to me that Star Trek has a very low opinion of families, which contrasts quite strongly with an artificially lofty view of humans as individuals. I suppose it may also be the case that writing a character who has a stable, happy, and loving family background doesn’t make for good entertainment, but it would be nice to see every now and then.

Make a popup Wall-e

On Saturday Mum was out at the London Women’s Convention and so I had the exhausting pleasure of looking after our three kids for the day on my own. This is a new experience, since our youngest is only 8 months old, and quite a test for our youngest as he had to cope without the white stuff from morning until bed-time. We all made it reasonably well, and the house was actually quite tidy when the family was finally reunited.

Our wall-e popup card

The highlight of the day though, was making a Pop-up wall-e card with our eldest son. Things which do things are the best thing.

Why ask a question when you already know the answer?

With children pottering about the house, getting their fingers in to all sorts of places they shouldn’t it is never long before the long arm of the law needs to get involved, and my wife or I are required to intervene. The circumstances vary (though we thankfully never get any malice between the kids) but on arrival at the scene of an incident we naturally have to start gathering evidence, particularly witness statements.

A big difference between us and the boys in blue of course, is that 99% of the time we know exactly what’s happened, and it’s mostly a matter of choosing which corner the perpetrator needs to sit in, and for how many minutes. But still we always ask what happened. It seems like an instinctive reaction, but why do we do it?

The answer, as I see it, is that we’re interested in more than blind justice. We have a relationship with the defendant which is more important than who did what. We also want them to have an opportunity to reflect on what they’ve done, think about the consequences of their actions, and understand that next time they should behave differently.

This has noticeable similarities with the way God behaves towards Adam and Eve in the moments after they’ve broken the only rule given to them. ‘Eat any fruit except this one.’ Is their instruction, but they seemingly can’t help themselves.

What happens following that, though, is interesting. God comes looking for Adam and Eve, calling their names and, when they come out of hiding he asks them questions:

“Why were you hiding”

“What have you done”

It seems unlikely that Adam and Eve have developed some impenetrable field of secrecy that hides them from God’s sight, in fact the bible is clear that God knows our thoughts and desires before we do. It seems that God, who could just ditch the whole of creation and start again in the twinkling of an eye, is actually more concerned with the same things that we, as parents are. God’s relationship with Adam and Eve is what’s been damaged, and it’s important that they ‘fess up’ to what they’ve done. God is asking questions when He already knows the answer, because the process of answering the question is a valuable one.