Unity in Christ

I have a hunch that one of the ways churches are changing is in becoming more open to members holding a range of different views.

One Inverness church hosts group sessions for discussion of controversial issues such as the relationship between science and the Bible’s creation stories, attitudes to folk who are gay and Christian perspectives on crime and punishment. It seems to me that diversity of opinion is expected, even encouraged.

Flashback to early June 1980. I’ve finished my final day working as a Bookshop Manager with Scripture Union in Glasgow, and I’ve made my last use of staff discount to buy a huge pile of books. I struggle out, laden with two bags packed with theology.

I thought, in my youthful naivety that theology, at least in the evangelical tradition was all wrapped up and finalised. I figured that in my hands I carried all the theology I would ever need.

I was dimly aware of other theologies besides the evangelical, but regarded them as deeply suspect. When someone heard a sermon, the question was often asked ‘Was he sound?’ (it was always a ‘he’ of course) meaning ‘did he not deviate from evangelical truth?’ I’m sure similar attitudes towards evangelicals were held in churches of a more liberal persuasion.

The keepers of truth in the churches I knew were elders and  ministers, and respected writers and speakers – fine men such as Martyn Lloyd-Jones, John Stott, Jim Packer and the American Billy Graham (men who in fact had themselves differed over some pretty fundamental issues.)

Over the years, I grew increasingly uncomfortable because I sensed, rightly or wrongly, that conformity in belief was expected – indeed that conformity in belief was one of the things church was about – but found it increasingly difficult to conscientiously conform.

There are still, no doubt, some churches where conformity of this sort is expected, but I keep hearing of others, new and old, which are much more relaxed about diversity of belief.

The other Sunday I heard someone in church outline a deeply-felt and well-argued case against the Assisted Suicide Bill, currently before the Scottish Parliament. He said ‘I know some people will disagree with me, and I respect that.’

‘I respect that.’ I like it! Perhaps there were churches like that when I was young, churches where you were given permission to disagree, to argue a case based on your understanding of the Bible and Christian tradition, and the convictions of your own heart. But not many.

And so I rejoice in today’s openness to diversity. I have learned that theology is not a science, not a clinical analysis of biblical data. A personal theology is a living thing, growing as a result of encounter with God in the context of living. I love the poet Christian Wiman’s comment that ‘if you believe at 50 what you believed at fifteen, then you have not lived – or have denied the reality of your life.’

And all theology is a living, growing thing as over the centuries the Church encounters God in the context of history.

Asking a friend about diversity of belief in his Inverness house church, I said ‘What holds your church together?’ ‘The fact that Jesus Christ is Lord,’ he replied.

And this, it seems to me, is what lies at the centre of any church, a conviction that Jesus Christ is Lord (different people will understand this in different ways) - and not just a conviction, but an encounter, be it ever so fragile, with the living Jesus, so that his love flows through us.

For all his intellectual gifts, St Paul did not say ‘I know what I have believed’ (though of course he did know this) but ‘I know whom I have believed.’

It is engagement with Jesus, resulting in love, which builds the church, not conformity to certain beliefs. And I believe Jesus was will say to us not ‘How right were your beliefs as you struggled to understand what ultimately lies beyond understanding,’ but ‘How well did you love, how graciously did you express your views, how merciful were you?’ and the most searching question ‘Did you love me? For whoever loves and follows me is my true child.’

Many of us at some point in our lives, and some of us throughout our lives feel comfortable in accepting the beliefs we have drawn from our parents or learned from others, and that’s fine, but for the many of us who struggle and question we need a church which performs the function which A.S.J Tessimond describes in his poem Not love perhaps. He highlights ‘a need for inns on roads, islands in seas. Halts for discoveries to be shared. Maps checked, notes compared.’ Blessed are they who find such churches.

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 3rd April 2014)