Christianity

The Fourth Person in the Fire

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I took the Otherworld on a road-trip this week. Concerned that the folk of north Lewis didn’t have enough eccentricity in their lives, I loaded the Ford Kuga up with fairies, ghosts and witches, and headed for Galson. My brief was to give a talk on the relationship between the Gaelic community and the supernatural, which is the kind of gig my job gets me into. Well, my job, and the scary people I know.

Although I talked about a whole spectrum of supernatural beings, the overarching theme of my talk was probably threat. Our forefathers lived in fear of the fairies, always making offerings to them and speaking highly of them, for fear of incurring their displeasure. And then there was the evil eye, so if a neighbour complimented you, the proper response was rebuttal. That way, the power of their envy could not harm you. Yet, even if you managed to prevent the fairies stealing your baby, and repel the power of the eye, how could you be sure that a witch wasn’t cooking up a storm (literally, in the case of Lewis witches – a dab hand at making a gale) to drown you? There was latent danger Lurking everywhere.

That danger was deemed most overwhelming whenever the continuity of time was broken – at birth, and at the transition of the year in particular. Fairies, ghosts and witches were reckoned to be capable of drawing near at such moments, and of inflicting great harm. Many protections were invoked against their power: iron, oatmeal, and the Bible. But also fire. It was thought that fire had cleansing and protective properties – cattle would be driven between two fires, mother and child would be circled by torch-bearers, and young men would carry fire around the whole village to keep ill-fortune at bay.

God shone a light into this darkness. Eventually, there was no need to rely on fire for protection and, eventually, our people stopped using the Bible as a mere talisman against evil. They opened it and read His Word instead.

This did not keep the powers of evil away completely. God, for inscrutable reasons of His own, allows them some latitude. Just as in the old, Gaelic world, shadows draw near and try to take possession of that which is ours. We probably feel much as our forefathers did when something we can’t understand reaches into our lives and bewilders, or even hurts us. And we know, like they did, the power of fire. But not the superstitious setting of Druidical pyres, encircling and walking between them, or raising them aloft as torches.

No, for the bewildered Christian, there is only one thing to do with fire: go through it. We have to go through it, trusting that this fire will indeed behave as Isaiah says and refine us, ‘in the furnace of affliction’. It isn’t easy to endure the heat but, like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, if we keep our faith and fix hearts and minds upon God, we will come through the testing and emerge from the furnace, refined and strengthened, like silver.

It used to be that silver was heated until it was ready. The one doing the purifying knew it was complete when he could see his own image in it. Only then would he withdraw it from the flames.

We do not understand everything today any more than our ancestors did. In many ways, we are still worried about what lurks on the edge of darkness and whether it means us harm. Sometimes, we can be buffeted by change, by disappointment, by disillusion. But we do not have to be afraid. Collective grief can be collective strength. Those grieving together, tested in the fire together, cling to one another, and to the God in whom they put their trust. Whoever else deserts us, He never will.

Remember, even Nebuchadnezzar could see the fourth person in the midst of the flames.

Don’t count the empty pews

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When Reverend Alexander Macleod arrived in Uig, in 1824, he found that practically everyone in the district was a communicant member in his church.This may sound like a sign of great spiritual life, but was in fact a sign of the times, as MacLeod was soon to discover. Early in his ministry, he witnessed two elders of the church at prayer – one beseeching the Almighty to send a shipwreck to their shore, and another lamenting the death of Christ as a dark day for mankind. They were victims of moderatism, the same kind of outward observance that causes some to believe – even today – that if you lead a good and decent existence, harming no one, then you have as much right to call yourself a Christian as the next man.

While MacLeod’s communion table was full to capacity, new research suggests that the pews of the Western Isles are no longer exactly bursting at the seams. 44.3% of the local population regularly attends the means of grace which, if you’re the pessimistic kind, means that 55.7% prefer doing something else with their Sunday. And if you’re the atheistic kind, you probably think that this is a welcome sign of Calvinism having to relinquish its cold grip at long last.

Well, you say cold grip; I say warm handshake. In a country where those going to church account for only 7.2% of the population, forgive me for thinking that the statistic for our islands is not cause for distress. Nor – sorry, unbelievers – is it the silencing of a strong voice in this community. It is, rather, a call to arms. Or, at least, a summons to the field. Ploughshares are what we need now, not swords.

The Free Church has been mission-minded since its inception, sharing the gospel of Christ with people all over the globe. Statistics like these simply demonstrate an exciting challenge by reminding us that the field has narrowed, and labourers are required on the very thresholds of our churches.

We could weep and wail and bemoan the loss of those days when some referred to Lewis as ‘the last stronghold of the pure gospel’; or we could work and pray for refreshing. This is not a numbers game and God did not promise this island that Christians would always be in the majority; but we were promised that, where two or three gather in His name, the Lord will be present. Two or three – and we’ve got twelve thousand.

Last November, worshippers from all over Lewis packed into a meeting at Stornoway Free Church, as part of the denominational Day of Prayer. It closed with five minutes of silent prayer, during which the power in that building was almost palpable.And that particular gathering represented a mere fraction of those who belong to the church of Christ in the Western Isles.

But there’s one more fraction I should mention here – the 24% of worshippers who ‘disappeared’ between 1984 and 2016. Where are they now? Well, I am inclined to think that they’re in God’s storehouse, safely gathered in. He isn’t willing that any should perish; percentages don’t come into it.

When you look at it in its real context, 55.7% isn’t a defeat at all: it’s a latent harvest.

The Widow and the Devil

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In folklore, the widow was often a witch. I’m unsure whether the assumption was that, without a husband’s restraining influence, a woman was bound to fall into bad ways, or whether there is just something unsettling about a woman who is isolated from the mainstream. Despite living in the reputed witchcraft capital of Lewis, and being a youngish widow, however, I have somehow managed to resist the lure of the darkness thus far.

Gaelic tradition records an unspeakable ritual for summoning the Devil, used by such wicked people – in the taghairm, an unspecified, though considerable, quantity of cats would be roasted alive over a fire. Eventually, their howls would cause the great cat himself to appear to the one foolish enough to have requested his presence in the first place.

And we’ve all seen the Hammer Horror films, dancing women, chalk circles, blood and candles. Awkward, in a good Calvinist community, I’d have thought, buying tapers in bulk. However, the truth is more mundane and, simultaneously, a lot more terrifying. You need not draw a circle, strike a match, nor yet kidnap next-door’s tom. It suits Satan’s ego and his guile for you to believe that bringing him out is such a complex affair. It’s not, though, because he’s already here.

He is interested in everyone and prowls about, seeking whom he may devour. When I, not quite a year into my widowhood, professed faith publicly, I was told, ‘it’s now he’ll really be interested in you’. And this was true, though I already had experience of his torments. The Devil hates Christ and he hates His followers, and tries his utmost to do the impossible – pluck them back out of their Saviour’s grasp. Stealing their peace is his aim. His methods are varied, and sometimes quite surprising in their ingenuity.

One of the ways in which I sought comfort for my loss was in reading CS Lewis’ ‘A Grief Observed‘, adapted from the journal he had kept following the death of his own wife, Joy Gresham. It went well at first and Lewis’ description of grief as being ‘so much like fear’ spoke to me. The death of a spouse leaves you feeling exposed and vulnerable. Just the way the Devil likes it. And then, I read this:

‘How do I know that all her anguish is past? I never believed before – I thought it immensely improbable – that the faithfulest soul could leap straight into perfection and peace the moment death has rattled in the throat.It would be wishful thinking with a vengeance to take up that belief now. H. was a splendid thing . . . But not a perfected saint. A sinful woman married to a sinful man; two of God’s patients, not yet cured. I know there are not only tears to be dried but stains to be scoured.’

I was horrified. Donnie had gone through so much pain and suffering – was Lewis right to suggest that somehow there was more refining and scouring to be done after death? Instead of thinking that he was out of pain, at rest, his cancer finally gone, I was now imagining him still being tested and tried. It tormented me, this idea that he still had no peace. Somehow, all these months of needles and blood tests, of tubes and scans, of endless waiting in rooms packed with white-faced patients and their terrified families, of bleak diagnoses and grim-voiced doctors, had not ended.

Grief IS like fear, Lewis was right about that. The same horrible ideas now took me over once again, just as they had with his illness. What processes, what tests would he be subjected to? How would these ‘stains’ be scoured? Would he be treated gently? Would he be frightened? And would he come through it?

Fortunately, this anguish didn’t last, and all because of one simple, wonderful fact: Christ’s promise to the thief on the cross, ‘today you will be with me in Paradise‘. I remembered that God, who cannot behold sin, would admit no one who was unsanctified; and Christ would not make a promise that He did not keep.

When you lose someone close to you, people are wary about mentioning death. In church particularly, people were very solicitous if a sermon even touched on the subject. I love them for it, but I want them to know that it’s not necessary. CS Lewis’ idea about death made me sick with fear. Every human being who has loved another human being knows that emotion. What we hear about in church, though, that’s different: that’s the death of death; death defeated by a death – THE death. So defeated that after THE death came life again.

And that thing which CS Lewis could not believe: the leap straight into perfection and peace? Oh yes, that too. Only the Devil will tell you any different.