The news that Charlie Kirk had been shot, and the subsequent update that the injury was fatal, cast a gloom over much of the western world on Wednesday night. Like many, I prayed that he would survive, but it was not to be.
So, did the God in whom he so unswervingly believed fail Charlie? That is what the crowing mobs – and, sickeningly, yes, there are such people – would tell you. They are always there, in every disappointment, every terminal diagnosis, every loss, every bereavement, jabbing their fingers and asking, ‘where is your God now’?
He is closer to the broken hearted than any atheist would believe. Indeed, closer than any Christian who has not yet been broken can comprehend. The late Queen, quoting indirectly from Dr Colin Murray Parkes, famously said that ‘grief is the price we pay for love , but I would add – from my own experience, no less – that God’s comfort is the dividend of faith. I have no doubt that the believing family and friends of Charlie Kirk are experiencing that God, and that comfort more viscerally now than ever in their lives before.
‘Pain’, said CS Lewis, ‘is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world’, and so maybe this personal, human tragedy for Charlie’s family should be regarded as a wake-up call to the rest of us. The political responses have been predictable: hunt down the person responsible and deal with him as punitively as the law allows; suppress the far left: in short, meet violence and lack of understanding with more violence and lack of understanding.
This is not the way. Any hopelessness that I feel in the face of this tragedy does not stem from a questioning of God, but of the depressingly unchanging way in which people are responding. Yes, it may be possible to locate the gunman . . . and then what? Does dealing with what may be an act of unwarranted inhumanity from someone ideologically opposed to Charlie Kirk end the problem? Of course it does not. The world’s way, as we are seeing daily, is to meet brutality with brutality. We talk more than ever before about understanding, about kindness, and about walking a mile in the other guy’s shoes – but I don’t think this world has ever contained less comprehension of love than it does at this moment.
There is, of course, a way through; there is always a way through if we are prepared to humble ourselves. Therein lies the rub, however. We have made gods of ourselves, of our desires, of our feelings. Nothing must be allowed to hurt me, or even contradict me. If you doubt my word, or dare to pose a counterargument, you are not merely disagreeing, but hating. In their populist stupidity, successive governments have tried to legislate for petted lips, for offended sensibilities, and now stand amidst the wreckage, wondering who to blame.
Blame us, then, the creatures who have tried in vain to usurp our Creator. We did this. Our relentless pursuit of power and glory has wreaked interminable havoc. Ultimately, we tried to run this world on a rogue operating system, having tried every which way to disable the pre-installed software. And we have catastrophically failed.
That, atheists, is why people die in pointless wars and human conflict, and why every day is peppered with innumerable acts of cruelty and depravity, inflicted on one set of human beings by another. It is the reason why, no matter how well-intentioned we think we are, nothing goes to plan. And when – if – the person whose bullet killed Charlie Kirk is found, we still won’t be satisfied. Don’t look for justice in a world that no longer recognises truth, that no longer cares whether a person or an act is good or evil, as long as it aligns with their own world view. We, each of us, think of ourselves as the plumbline for everything: does it sit true against my ideology? No? Ah well, it must be wrong.
This is no nihilistic assessment of world affairs. It is a call, not to arms, but to peace. I was so moved by the words of Pope Leo (yes, Proddies, him again) earlier in the week in describing the role of tears in situations such as this one. Weeping is not a sign of weakness, but of strength; Christ cried out on the cross to his Father, and that type of anguished plea can be understood, the Pontiff said, ‘as an extreme form of prayer’.
Sometimes, love has no other outlet than to shed tears. I think we have now reached that point as a world. Cry, then, from the depth of your hearts, to the God of all comfort, because he understand us – better, even, I think – without words.
prayer
Cymbals, symbols . . .
The coronation service for King Charles III was exactly like a typical Free Church service. Okay, there was a bit more cloth of gold, a few extra nods to pomp and circumstance, and an awful lot more women in evidence, but otherwise it was just like being in any Wee Free emporium throughout the land.
The other way in which it was like the Free Church was the way in which sung praise ran like a golden thread through the entire proceeding. Yes, there was a choir, and what psalm 98 calls ‘jubilant song with music . . . music to the Lord with the harp, with the harp and the sound of singing, with trumpets and the blast of the ram’s horn’. It may not be the exact same tradition as ours, but really, what do mere traditions matter if the purpose behind all the clamour is the whole Earth singing to the Lord?
There was the familiar benediction, of course. Our fellows might not wave their hands about quite so much, but the words, the meaning – the intention – is surely the same. It was a service of worship, not of the newly crowned monarch, but his God. Many scoff at the sheer scale and expense of such ceremonies, but it is an unparalleled opportunity to place before the world this timely reminder: God, and he only, is sovereign. Earthly kings may rule, but by his grace alone, and not by anything in themselves, however exalted the family
God is the subject of our worship, whether we are the highest of High Anglican, or plainest of Free Church and all the offshoots thereof. The beautiful sounds that filled Westminster Abbey on Coronation Day testify to that fact. With my personal knowledge of the Lord, I’m inclined to believe that he’s more occupied with the origin of praise than the look of the thing. He’s an inside dealer, pleased – I am given to understand – by the intention of the human heart to glorify him. That being said, he’s almost certainly as pleased with Hubert Parry’s work, or Wesley’s, or Gobha na Hearadh’s as that of King David.
Yes, the psalms are extraordinarily beautiful and wise, speaking into every aspect of the human condition. It is hardly surprising that so many later works, those we consider ‘hymns’, are reworkings of, or meditations on, the work of the shepherd composer.
But David – mercifully – did not have a monopoly on praising God. All his creatures are called on to do likewise. Possessing zero musical aptitude, and almost no creative impulse, I am unlikely ever to write a hymn of praise for him myself. I can (barely) croak those composed by others, however, and depending on the content, and the state of my heart at the time, I can mean every word.
Nonetheless, some people are gifted in that way, and CAN compose beautiful hymns to God. Their words can articulate what the likes of me could never hope to do on our own. They don’t take anything away from the psalms of David; God’s glory, surely, is so great that we will never run out of praise. Indeed, the spiritually mute such as I am search in vain for ways to articulate our love, our gratitude, our imperfect recognition of all he is.
The book of psalms is not big enough. Those who love God want to say so in their own words. They want to sing the psalms, and they want to uplift their voices and their instruments in a myriad of ways to heaven.
When Lewis was blessed with spiritual revival, the people were loathe to part. They met late into the night, and they walked each other home, over and over. There were prayers, of course – ex tempore, not read – and there were readings of scripture. Psalms were sung, but so were hymns, old and new.
If revival is the outpouring of God’s grace on an undeserving people, then their worship is surely a paean of praise to him, wherever it takes place. And if that praise was good enough on the hillsides, and by the roadsides, why would it not be deemed fit for formal worship?
What, even, is ‘formal worship’? Please don’t write in – I actually know the answer. Organised, public worship has to follow some kind of form, even an unreasonable harridan like me sees this.
But if the structure is more important than the subject, if the formality trumps the authenticity, it is not worship. However much we may grow attached to traditions, they are not more important than liberty of spirit; however much we may love the brethren, their preferences do not come before the free and honest worship of God.
Psalm 100 says, ‘Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs’. The psalmist’s vision does not prescribe the songs, but the spirit. Joy, love, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control come from there, not from blindly clinging to traditions that serve only to keep us comfortable.
How can I hand you over?
Christina Rossetti’s poem, ‘Remember’ has a particular resonance for me. It asks that she be remembered after her death, when ‘you can no more hold me by the hand, nor I half turn to go, yet turning, stay’. These lines came back to me when my husband was dying, because they reminded me of a particular weekend when he had to leave home on Sunday instead of Monday, in order to attend some work training. We had been having such a lovely weekend, and both of us were sad that it needed to end that much sooner. I was trying to put a brave face on it, when he suddenly took off his jacket, chucked his bag back into the wardrobe and decided not to go after all till the following morning.
I remembered this so many times as I sat by his bedside in the hospice. And I remembered Rossetti’s sentiment – that death revokes the option to remain. How I wished he could hug me as he had that Sunday, and tell me he was staying.
It came back powerfully to me again this morning in church.
God restrained his own hand many times against the Israelites, never permitting them quite to suffer the fate they deserved. In the prophecy of Hosea, he asked himself, ‘How can I hand you over, Israel’? Yet, in the preceding verses, we see countless reasons for him to do just that, given the unfaithfulness of those who called him ‘God Most High’. Even though their words were not matched by their deeds, still God resisted giving them over to destruction. Such was his love for his own people that he was not willing that any should perish, and he has repeatedly held us away from death since.
But not his own Son. Jesus was not spared any of our punishment. The guilt was ours, yet the suffering was all on him.
This is love. It is incomprehensible to our small minds but my word, it should leave a colossal mark on our hearts. God couldn’t bear to punish his sinful, disloyal people for their own dark deeds; but he willingly gave up his Son to that death on the cross, to the stark moment when he cried out, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me’?
We cannot know the mind of God, but it’s incredible to imagine the Father doing to Jesus what he would not do to us. And it is equally astonishing to think of Jesus, walking to Calvary and to death . . . and not turning back from it as any one of us would, given the chance.
Today’s sermon ended with the minister reading some testimony from a Pakistani Christian who – like many of his countrymen – has been disowned by family for converting away from their faith. Yet, he said, the empty home and the silent telephone are not reasons to pity him, because he knows that God has something far better for him, and there is no loneliness in Christ.
I can put my ‘amen’ to that, except in one respect. The awe I feel at this man’s sacrifice, is because it reflects God. Neither God the Father, nor the Son, spared himself in redeeming us. Painful, soul-searing sacrifice was willingly made. Ditto this Christian whose profession made such a moving end to today’s sermon.
Any losses I have sustained were not sacrifices willingly given. I don’t think I would have had the strength, or the faith. But, there again, God’s infinite love didn’t ask me to give what I could not: in the light of Christian understanding, therefore, even his taking away is kindness itself.
That’s the heart of God.
A House Divided
There is an amusing scene in the Scottish film, ‘The Bridal Path’, when the naive protagonist goes to withdraw some money from his bank account, and is asked ‘what denomination’? He replies – of course – ‘Church of Scotland’.
In my own part of Scotland, denomination has been all too important, time out of mind. I wonder how many of us feel that we belong to the Church of Scotland, or the Free Church, or the Free Presbyterian Church before we belong to the church of Christ. And I equally wonder how Christ, the head of the one church there is, feels about denomination.
How have we come, in a town like Stornoway, for example, to have two Free Church congregations, three Churches of Scotland, a Free Presbyterian Church, a Free Church (Continuing), an Associated Presbyterian Church, a Reformed Presbyterian Church, and sundry other congregations? It would be nice if the answer to that was that no one building could contain all the worshippers. That, after all, is the only acceptable justification to have the saints of God distributed across a multitude of churches.
I know this is an awkward topic, and some people don’t approve of it being aired – but we are bound to review our own conduct in light of God’s presence. And like the adulterous woman at the well, we don’t need to hear any accusing words from Him to be convicted of this sin.
Because that’s what this is. It’s pride. Resentfulness. Self-righteousness. It’s putting ourselves and our traditions first.
Now, I’m as guilty of this as the next person. I like the plain worship style of the island Free Churches, with no accompaniment to our Psalms-only liturgy. Heck, I even like the pews. But, if the necessity and blessing of online church has taught us anything (as I believe it was meant to), it’s that the building isn’t the church. And if the building isn’t the church, the denomination with all its committees and rules and manmade fol-de-rols sure as fate is not the church either.
Yet, we cling to these divisions as though they might be important or worthy. With no outward embarrassment, with no attempt at unity of even the most superficial kind, we have our own separate rule books, our own General Assemblies, our own identities.
As if the identity conferred by belonging to God is somehow less than that of some combination of the words ‘church’, ‘Presbyterian’, ‘Reformed’ and ‘Free’. We declare ourselves freed in Christ – free indeed – and yet, still, we entrench ourselves, not for Him, but invariably for some ‘principle’ that has us standing on our dignity. And while we bicker amongst ourselves (the children of God, mind you) about how to worship, He not only goes unworshipped, but the banner of His beautiful cause sags into the mud. The unsaved watch, open-mouthed, as those of us who profess Christ act like we have never even heard His name.
You think I exaggerate, perhaps – that I’m being harsh and judgemental?
There are four seats on Comhairle nan Eilean Sitar’s Education Committee, which are allocated to faith representatives. One, by statute, is occupied by the Church of Scotland and two, by custom, by the Roman Catholic and Free Churches as being together representative of the islands’ faith profile. The fourth has in the past been filled by the Free Presbyterian Church, but the Chief Executive of the council this week told members that he’d had representations from another denomination, suggesting that they should provide the fourth representative instead because – and I quote – they have a larger membership.
Let that sink in: Christians – Reformed Evangelicals between whose confessional positions you could not slide one page of the KJV – trying to best one another for a seat on the Education Committee.
Thanks to their unlovely one-upmanship, it looks like that seat will be shared with other faith groups, including some that are non-Christian.
That, folks, is an object lesson in what denominations do for the cause. The sad truth is that we show no intention of dwelling together in unity, and actually pour more energy into preserving superficial difference than pursuing the one thing needful: togetherness in the Church of Christ.
What a witness we are for the Saviour; what an example to the unsaved. My advice to the council would be not to let any of us near an Education Committee until we grow up.
‘Daddy, paste it’.
In what would undoubtedly be considered revealing by any psychologist – especially the cod variety – I had an unfortunate childhood habit of removing my dolls’ heads. My father would then be called upon to reattach the noggin, which he did over and over again, without much complaint. I had an unshakeable belief that he could fix anything, therefore – an attitude also displayed in the film, ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’, when Zuzu’s flower sheds a petal and she demands, ‘Daddy, paste it’.
This morning, I echoed Zuzu’s request. Our world – handed to us in perfect working order by our heavenly Father – has been broken and broken again. Today, the people of Ukraine are suffering the consequences of that, as their country is torn apart around them, and many are forced to flee for refuge elsewhere. As Putin’s relentless display of ‘strength’ continues, the collateral damage is immense. Homes are destroyed, families separated, loved ones killed in the midst of terrifying chaos. Other world leaders wring their hands hopelessly and look at each other, wondering how – short of military action – they can stop the despot in his merciless tracks.
Political leaders fear the might of Russia, and despair at the idea of China rallying to Putin’s side. These presidents and prime ministers do not know where to turn because what they see with their eyes is bigger than all their forces put together. The media invokes the imagery of World War II, when Europe and America last found themselves in a pickle to equal this.
But there is a vast difference between then and now. Then, you had leadership that, instead of wringing its hands in despair, might have clasped them in petition to the Lord; then, you had some people of faith, who knew that the mightiest army of all was fighting at their shoulder.
The helplessness we are witnessing in our leaders is the consequence of believing that you are the ultimate power, and that there is nothing beyond yourself to which you might look for guidance, for wisdom, or for strength. When you are strong, Biden, when you are strong, Johnson, then are you weak.
Yes, the church elders are praying, and calling upon their people to do likewise. But it isn’t at the moment of crisis, this witness is needed most. As a Christian community, we are doing what the Ukrainian leader is doing in his desperation: chucking weapons into the hands of civilians who have no idea how to deploy them. We ought to be testifying unceasingly to our political masters, interceding on their behalf with God and begging that they would see their own need of him – in all situations. Glancing through the March issue of the Free Church ‘Record’, I saw something incredibly wise in the prayer diary. It was a request to pray for people whose lives are so great that they see no need of God. No one is wishing them pain or suffering; but we do wish them the sincere yearning for the Lord that seems so absent in easy situations. I think we need to be in prayer, likewise, for our political leaders, that they would lean on God’s wisdom and strength in times of peace, so that it’s familiar and instinctive to do so when trouble comes.
Even now, though, as the tyrant batters down the gates of what we were pleased to call ‘peace’, it is not too late. Those of us who pray must put our shoulders to the wheel, and ask God to turn our helpless leaders into praying people also. I don’t know how many more messages we can expect him to send, signalling his displeasure, before we turn to him again in earnest. And those among us who do not pray, are you reading this? We have seen that people being the ultimate power does not work – it wrecks lives and it destroys this beautiful world. Ego always tries to triumph over humanity, imposing its will in a show of destructive strength, not caring who it tramples along the way.
The capriciousness you attribute to God is not his, but ours. Putin is a product of the way in which we have chosen to steward creation, with hardly a passing thought for the Author of all things. No wonder that men become drunk with power and blinded by self-importance when they think that they have actually taken God’s place.
Luckily for us, humanity is not the ultimate authority. When we look around us at the harm believing the contrary has done, however, surely we can admit that there is only one course of action left to us. We have got to humble ourselves, hold up this broken world to heaven and beg:
‘Daddy, paste it’.
And I bought a field
‘Faith is not a leap in the dark’, the minister told us on Sunday and, if we were not buttoned-up Calvinists, that whole congregation would have been on its feet, yelling ‘amen’, ‘hallelujah’, and punching the air. The tiny dancer in my heart was certainly giving it yee-hah, as it does every time my soul recognises fellow feeling and fellow experience among the brethren. Our man at the lectern was voicing, surely, what we would all wish the unbelievers to understand. This is not some fairy story, a pleasant fiction to comfort the bereaved, or to anchor those cast adrift from all reason.
And do you know why? Because people suffering that depth of anguish cannot be placated with soft words and pretty lies. It takes a life-changing God to be sufficient in a life-changing situation. Whether it’s illness, or grief, the breakdown of a relationship, or the loss of a job – whatever it is, only a fool would suggest that a fable might meet our needs. I know that some of my atheist friends thought that’s what had happened to me; that I had reached out for my nursery God when I found myself in the valley of the shadow of death.
Aside from the inherent blasphemy, it was an insult to my grief to suggest it is so small a thing that I could tell myself a story to make it all better. That is what you get with the myriad creeds and cults that try to fill the spiritual void in the heart of every human being, but that is not what you get with Christ. And I don’t write these things because I want you to see that I’m right, that I’m not some kind of gullible dupe. In fact, I write about it because I really, earnestly wish that you would want it too.
The particular act of faith under discussion on Sunday was that of Jeremiah who, despite the unpromising circumstances, did as he was bidden by the Lord, and bought a field. Those acres were his testament of trust in God, that the exile would end and that better days were indeed coming.
I have also bought a field. The living God has contended with me all my life, and never washed his hands of me , despite the myriad reasons I give him every day. He would not let me perish, determined though I was to have my own way. And so, when grief came into my experience, he was not arbitrarily hurting me. Of course I don’t understand why the plan had to unfold like that – but I do know that it was necessary, and done to perfection. Faith has taught me that acceptance of this is easier when we trust in God’s purpose; and it is impossible not to trust in his purpose once we know himself.
Going forward in faith is not groping blindly, it is being led by someone in whom you can have complete confidence. Indeed, someone who wants better for you than you ever sought on your own behalf.
The time of pandemic has been a test of many things, but for God’s people, I think it has spoken necessary truths. I hear often that it has fostered a spirit of backsliding in some, which is desperately sad. For me, I feel it has renewed my faith. Throughout lockdown I spent many hours alone. During that first glorious spring and summer, I walked every day, witnessing the Creator’s work, and hearing his voice in everything that surrounded me. On Sundays, through the miracle of technology – which we have by his grace – it was possible for those who are united in the Spirit to share worship. Even more astounding, he added to our number as those who could not join previously began to listen, hungry for the word of God.
These are days in which I do not despise the small things: the tang of the sea, the lilting cry of a distant curlew, the quiet morning time of prayer, and the evening peace for writing in my journal. God is here with me – he fills my mind, because I have sufficient stillness to be able to think of him, to talk to him throughout the day. And I have faith, here in this field of mine, that the renewal I am experiencing is not mine alone. It witnesses to the fact that God is active in the lives of those who belong to him, and that those who are his but do not yet realise aren’t being forgotten.
In the perfection of his own will, and in his own time, he is bringing them in, He is persuading them to purchase their fields.
Life does not look as it did in 2019, and I think it never will again. That doesn’t matter, however. If we are founding our lives on the rock that is Christ, and if the Spirit unites us in worship and a desire to witness for the Kingdom, who are we to question the means by which this is achieved? My life and my home were changed beyond all recognition in God’s providence. But he has turned this humble, grief-blighted building into a place where I can experience the fulness of his love as long as I trust in him, and accept his will for me.
I am only one Christian, but I am a microcosm of the church. In all of this, we are not taking a leap in the dark; we are purchasing fields in the sure and certain knowledge that one day, our exile will end.
But it will be accomplished his way, and in his time.
Tempered Temper in the Temple
The account of Jesus turning the merchants and money-lenders out of the temple is a famous one, well-known even to those who would claim no regular acquaintance with the Bible. I suppose it seems to be at odds with our idea of him. In popular imagination he is either the Christ-child, gentle and meek, or he is the God-man, giving himself up uncomplainingly to the horrors of death. Those are both facets of his character, certainly, but they are not the whole person. His tour de force dealing with the agents of commerce in his Father’s house reveal an aspect of Christ that helps us understand him better.
There is a small incident in John’s telling of this story that drew my attention this week. Having taken a whip and driven the livestock out, along with their retailers, he commands the sellers of pigeons to remove the birds from the temple.
Picture the scene: he has scattered the coins, overturned the tables and personally expelled the merchants with their sheep and oxen. But the pigeon-sellers must take themselves and their wares out with no help from Jesus. What prevented him from sweeping their cages to the floor, or throwing them outside? Of course I don’t know, but I am inclined to believe that it was compassion. To rough-handle these gentle creatures would have been cruel and capricious – and, whatever people who don’t know him say, that is not in his nature. This is someone, in fact, so wholly consistent, so reliably in control of his responses, that he can direct and channel his wrath where it is deserved, and turn on a sixpence to show gentle consideration in the same moment.
His anger is not an emotion in the way that mine or yours might be. Sometimes we are controlled and directed by our feelings to a degree which can be destructive. Indeed, our forefathers believed that envy, for one, could be so powerful as to cause physical harm to the object of our desire, without us even knowing what we had done. That phenomenon – usually referred to as ‘the evil eye’ – is mentioned in a lengthy list in the Bible, alongside a whole host of other evils which are not external, but which actually emanate from within ourselves.
That’s quite a bitter pill for us to swallow – that we are not always the poor dupes of Satan, but more often than not, the willing perpetrators of badness ourselves. Our anger, our mean-spiritedness, our jealousy, our greed, our lust, our self-righteousness, our unconcern for others – that’s all on us. Satan just seeks to exploit the way we’re already inclined by nature.
What I like about this aspect of Christ is its realness. It demonstrates even further how completely I can trust him with my life. I have often been unjust to others, judging them harshly, expecting more of them than I should, and then feeling angry towards them when they fall short of my unrealistic demands. But he never has ‘a bad day’. When I go to him in prayer, he never casts up at me that I forgot him the day before when everything was going fine; he never grumbles that I do nothing for him, or retreats because he wants a little ‘me time’.
He is not a two-dimensional nursery god – Christ is multi-faceted, but not mercurial; he displays feeling, but is wholly consistent.
This is why people read Scripture: it is a means of seeing a little more clearly the beauty of Jesus Christ. And it is why, in a way, I prefer John for advent reading. The baby Jesus, whose life was in danger from the moment he was conceived, and the circumstances whose birth has become so culturally iconic as to be almost Disneyfied in the eyes of the world, he is easy to love. All babies are easy to love and none more so than the manger-child who gave us Christmas.
John presents us with something more challenging, though – he brings us Christ, who doesn’t lie helpless in a manger. He walks abroad and challenges those he meets with his very presence; and when it is necessary, he shows his wrath. Wrath to the defilers of his Father’s house, and gentleness to the helpless creatures who are guiltless of any wrong. I wish I had the wisdom to know the difference, and the self-control to treat them accordingly.
But, more than anything, this Advent, I’m grateful to know him a little better than I did last year. What an unparalleled feeling it is to be assured that there will never be any unpleasant surprises with Christ – that even his displays of anger are wholly justified, and trained precisely on the target.
Keeping the Snail’s March
For me, Kate Forbes epitomises the challenge and the triumph of what it means to be a Christian with a public profile. The church rejoiced openly as she rose through the ranks of her party, trusted with increasingly heavy responsibilities. In our more reasonable moments we remembered to give thanks for her witness.
Sadly, our reasonable moments are all too rare and the reality is that Kate is much more likely to be attacked on questions of faith by fellow Christians than she ever is by the atheist community. For the most part, unbelievers think her faith is irrelevant and would sooner take issue with her nationalism or her fiscal policy. Or the fact that she’s a Teuch. But the brethren, oh, we don’t hold back in our carping. Although the complaints against her take many forms, they can be grouped together under the broad accusation – a perennial favourite of mine – ‘no Christian should support the SNP’.
Leaving aside the fact that no Christian should be so flipping judgemental, let’s consider what might be behind this opinion. Because the Nationalists are in power and have been for so long, their policies are subject to prolonged public and media scrutiny. So, the opposition parties lurk in the shadows and let the ruling party take all the heat. Amongst all the finger pointing, few remember that those who stayed silent are complicit in wrongdoing as much as those who designed and built it.
A person would have to be either naïve or partisan to believe that the SNP is alone in its stance on the big ‘moral issues’ (which, bizarrely, never seem to include child poverty or homelessness). Let’s be honest, all mainstream parties have a broadly similar policy on gender, on marriage, on abortion, and on euthanasia.
Why is that, though? Simply because they are the elected representatives of an unregenerate world. They do their secular best to create an environment of justice and social equality, quite divorced from the instruction manual. A Christian like Kate Forbes is all too well aware how doomed to failure such an endeavour is. No politician can save souls, not even if they imposed Biblical law on the nation entire. Obedience to God’s law cannot be the starting point for redemption because it grows from it – it is like expecting the flower without first supplying a seed.
Besides, party politics is a numbers game. It is all about being in the majority – that’s how you get your views heard at branch level, and nationally. That’s how your party gets elected into power. Strategy, predicated on what the people want will bring you to the place where decisions are made. Remember, though, these are unregenerate people, for the most part, voting in a well-meaning way to get a better society for themselves, their children, and maybe even for those they see as downtrodden and exploited. They do not see Jesus as the way, far less the truth and the life; he, and his irksome followers actually stand between Scotland and progress.
And we prove them wrong . . . how? By turning on our own. We tell Christians in public life that they are falling short. Instead of giving genuine thanks to God that there are a few righteous among us prepared to be bruised and bloodied in the fray, we attack them for being part of a system that actually we all helped to create from the moment we fell. Kate Forbes can’t be a real Christian because she holds membership of a party that condones things that are unbiblical.
This is an object lesson in shortening the arm of God. It presupposes any number of things – including that a politician cannot be called in the same way that ministers of religion are – and it seems to deny the possibility that human government is not the ultimate authority.
People who never do anything make the mistake of thinking that they will never, therefore, do anything wrong. But, belonging – as we do – to a body whose mission statement begins with the imperative, ‘go’, stasis and torpor might actually be a greater affront than the occasional misstep.
I have often avoided asking God his will for me, entirely because I fear his answer. He has had his way of inconveniencing me in the past, and I tremble to let him have that opportunity again. However, that is probably true in the experience of every believer – which is exactly why we should be more mindful of those who have answered his call. By ‘answered’ I don’t mean those who assume the mere appearance of vocation, but people who get their nose bloodied and their knees worn in the journey of obedience.
You pray for your minister and elders, I am sure. Such people report feeling a heightened awareness of God’s protection because of the prayer that surrounds them.
But there are other Christians who have been called and, because they don’t serve the institution we like to think of as ‘The Church’, we not only neglect to pray for them, but actually turn on them when – in our flawed opinion – they ‘fall short’. Spurgeon was well aware that some Christians were jealous of those who appeared to have done more for the cause than themselves; instead of redoubling their own efforts, they sought to drag the champions of faith back. Let’s not hold Kate accountable for the sinful ignorance of others, but let us uphold her in prayer for all the battles she has to fight.
Ultimately, they are our battles too.
Now Only Three
On Sunday morning, I was driving through the neighbouring village of Gress. To my left, the carpark was already starting to fill up, and people were unloading an assortment of beach toys, dogs and children. Over to the right, the cemetery lay quietly, an eloquent reminder that even in the midst of life, we are in death. As I continued onwards, I fell to pondering what visitors make of our cemeteries, plentiful and prominent as they are.
In fact, like our primary schools and churches, the burial grounds are a testament to the way in which Lewis was grown. Each village was a world entire for the people who belonged to it. And note my use of language- it’s something those from outside of the islands would do well to take on board: we make no claim of ownership on these communities, but they have a claim on us. That’s why, to a degree, the concept of community ownership in the literal sense is a bit alien. Traditionally, our relationship with land has not been proprietorial.
Indeed, our relationships were always described in terms of claims on, and not by, us. Where do you belong to? Who do you belong to?
Thus, the villages had their churches to nurture the spiritual lives of the people, and schools to educate. Land was tenanted, not possessed, and the whole patchwork stitched together by fellow feeling, common experience and mutual understanding.
The cemeteries are a part of it. One of the first things I did as a grown-up, married woman was to pay the lair fees for myself, my husband and my mother in-law. I began life in Tolsta paying nine pounds, then six . . . and now only three. It is an annual memento mori, a gentle pecuniary reminder nach e seo baile a mhaireas. Unlike many other townships, Tolsta’s cemetery is less prominent and so far removed from the village that you could go your whole life without glimpsing it. That’s a shame, I think, because when burial grounds are at the centre of a village, they do serve as a normaliser of death as something natural. For most villages, too, until very recently, burial itself occupied a central role in community life: everyone turned out to local funerals.
Lewis funerals were the ultimate act of community – a public solidarity with the grieving family, and a respectful acknowledgement of the deceased person’s place in the tapestry of their lives. We understand better than most how someone you barely knew, or knew only by sight or who was just a name to you, still touched your life in some way, however small. They existed, they shared your heritage, they were a part of the same things you are. And thanks to our very civilised and healthy relationship with death, we are able to give them that dignified place at the end of life. The patronymic system ensures that their memory lives on, a chain linking those of us still in life to the relations and neighbours gone ahead into eternity. It connects us, across the continents and oceans also, to the emigrated loved ones, keeping them a part of our community in life and in death, just the same.
We are losing our hold on what has kept these communities through the centuries. The church building may be where it was placed, at the centre of our villages, but the actual church is rarely at the heart of community life. And because of this, our relationship with death is also changing, turning into something sour and unhealthy.
It is darkly ironic that the unbelievers who call Christianity ‘a death cult’ are so prepared to argue against the sanctity of life themselves. If an unborn life is inconvenient, terminate it in the bud; if a person’s health is deteriorating or their quality of life poor, remove the burden now. Don’t wait on God’s providence, don’t trust him: push his hand away and do it for yourself. Somehow, we think that a life untrammelled by difficulty or pain is our birthright, and if it isn’t provided for us we must take it for ourselves. That justifies breaking the commandment to protect life. What does God know of our suffering?
The people who placed their churches and their cemeteries at the heart of community life knew better than to turn their faces from him. In accepting his seasons of providence, they showed great wisdom. ‘Fatalistic’, some have called it, but I don’t see it that way. They trusted him with all the moments of their lives. We are linked to them, through that patronymic chain, through all the words of prayer uttered by parents for children, by sisters for their brothers and vice-versa, and by pastors for their flocks.
Let us find our way back to a place where God is permitted to be God, and we accept that it is both in and to him we belong.
Are you ready, boots?
Everybody has their ‘thing’ and for me it’s shoes. I love them in their infinite variety and yes, that includes boring shoes as well as more unusual styles. There are glittery unicorn flats and lightning bolt-heeled boots, but on the very next shelf is a pair of brown brogues (and blue ones and red ones and silver . . .). Even my wellies are yellow and covered with bees. Aye, okay, the boring, functional shoes are very much in the minority.
Really, however, I could manage with fewer pairs. In fact, being strictly accurate, I could get by with one. This is especially true at the moment when slippers are what I mostly reach for.
The Bible talks about shoes too. Yes, it repeatedly mentions sandals but I’ve never really got on with them (and I’m sure they’d say the same about me). What I’m referring to is the verse in Ephesians, in the ‘whole armour of God’ passage: ‘as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace.
Go looking for commentaries or sermons on this and they will undoubtedly talk about the soldiers, who needed footwear that enabled them to go into battle, secure in the knowledge that it would also permit them to stand their ground when that was necessary. It’s a good analogy for the Christian life, which seems to involve a perplexing mixture of being sent, and of remaining still. I have a whole wardrobe – okay, who am I kidding, room – full of shoes for every different occasion. There are walking boots, wellies and trainers for those times when I have to haul the dog over some bumpy Lewissian terrain; I have any amount of what you might term ‘smart’ (also ‘wacky’ if you’re rude and lacking in taste) shoes for work or socialising; and I have slippers (multiple pairs) for staying still.
But spiritually speaking, there is only one thing your feet need – the one-size fits all, suited to any occasion word of God.
Since curtailment of my outgoing ways became a necessity, I find myself speaking to God more frequently. Indeed, I read his word more assiduously.
‘Weird’, you might think. After all, I’m not going anywhere; I’m not going out and meeting people much (or at all, officer). Apart from councillors appearing at my window with drams from time to time, and the odd plumber or electrician, no one comes to my home. So, why the increased contact with God?
‘Ah’, the sceptics will say, ‘it’s to assuage the loneliness. Faith is a crutch, a comfort blanket – she just can’t face the fact that she is completely on her own’.
No, that isn’t it. I am putting on the readiness, (as opposed to the agony or the style). You see, living our lives differently isn’t an absence of anything. This is God’s will for me now. For the moment, I don’t have to rush between work and church and meetings and home, with no white space at all in the diary, but plenty white noise.
That was the crutch, that was the comfort blanket. Rush, rush, rush. Barely coming to rest in one place before flying off to another. Always in fabulous shoes, of course.
Now I have time. I am not fitting God in around other commitments. Instead of exhaustedly going through the motions, showing up at church and Sunday School with black circles under my eyes and a short fuse under the bonnet (it’s a car metaphor; I have long since eschewed hats), I am spending quality hours in worship.
Circumstances will change eventually, of course but that is the wonder of God’s word: the same gospel that is today like slippers for my feet can become boots in which to march, to climb or to fight. The readiness is not in me, but in him.
I can rest on that, knowing his word prepares me for all that he has planned.
Post tenebras lux 