On the right track

The film Railway Man is out on DVD this week. I missed it at the cinema, and having read the autobiography by Eric Lomax on which the movie is based, I’m looking forward to catching up with it.

Lomax (1919-2012) was brought up near Edinburgh, and developed a passion for railway engines as a teenager. With the outbreak of war in 1939, he joined the Army as a Signals Officer. Taken prisoner when the Japanese captured Singapore, he was compelled (with cruel irony) to service the rolling stock used in building the ‘Death railway’ between Thailand and Burma, a brutal project leading to the deaths of 12,399 prisoners of war.

Having been caught building a radio receiver in the POW camp, Lomax and others were mercilessly beaten, waterboarded, held captive in coffin-sized cages, subjected to gruelling interrogations (‘You will be killed shortly,’said the interpreter, mercilessly) and finally imprisoned in ‘a place in which the living were turned into ghosts.’ Lomax survived the years of anguish, and returned post-war to an uncomprehending world. 

As a young man, he had come to Christian faith, joined an evangelical church in Edinburgh, attracted by their ‘fellowship and certainty’, and believed as they believed. He left for war engaged to a young woman in the church, Nan (who isn’t named in the book.) His faith and evangelical certainties sustained him during his time in captivity.

Returning from war, carrying profound psychic wounds, he married his fiancée to discover that neither she, nor the church, nor anyone else understood what he had been through or appreciated the nightmares and daylight agonies he was enduring. He tried to talk, was not heard, and clammed up for many years.

Lomax is very critical of the church, over-critical, I think in describing them as, for example, ‘certainly above compassion.’ But there are lessons for us. Lomax criticises ‘Petty divisions, petty anger, small minds.’ Does that ring true to our church experience? Are we inward-focussed, trivial, while the world aches for compassion?

How good are we at hearing people in pain, providing safe spaces when they can be open? How good are we at travelling with those whose circumstances have prompted deep questions about faith which we may never have asked? And how do we handle the questions which rise up in our own minds about, for example suffering, God, justice, the reliability of the Bible? Do we, as it seems the folk in Eric Lomax’s church did, bury them, rather than working through them? Is exploring, questioning, journeying actively encouraged in our church?

After many years, Lomax’s marriage finally disintegrated. Not just he, but his wife and daughters were victims of what had happened in Thailand. And then (on a train!) he met Patti who became his wife in 1983. Understanding of post-traumatic stress was growing, and Patti saw the pain he was bearing. 

In time found a measure of healing through counselling. But he retained a deep hatred of Japanese people. His future was still a ‘nursery of revenge.’ Then he discovered that the interpreter on whom his hatred was particularly focussed had a name – Nagase Takashi -  was still alive, had devoted his life to charity in an attempt to atone for his part in war-time atrocities, and had written a book in which he recalled, and deplored how Lomax had been treated. A Buddhist, he described a spiritual experience in which he had a sense of being ‘pardoned.’ Patti felt that he had found pardon too easily.

In the end, Lomax and Nagase met in the mid-1990s, the former still simmering with revenge. But he realised that ‘It was surely worth salvaging as much as we could from the damage to both our lives’ and so forgave Nagase. ‘Sometime the hating has to stop.’

Lomax doesn’t describe his spiritual beliefs at this time, but in offering forgiveness he demonstrates profoundly the very heart of Christian faith. The conviction that none of us is beyond redemption, that if we are humble, repentant, open to change we receive God’s forgiveness as a free gift made possible by the willing death of Jesus.

All this prompts deep questions. Is there someone I should be exploring the possibility of forgiving? Do I need to learn to accept another’s forgiveness, to forgive myself? Have I, in self-revulsion been repelling God’s freely-offered forgiveness?

Briefly in Kashmir en route to Singapore, Lomax described it as ‘the most beautiful place in the world.’ This vision he said later ‘went some way to keeping me whole. If I had had no idea of perfection, I don’t know if I would have come through.’ 

It seems to me that Christians are given glimpses of the perfection of God’s coming kingdom, glimpses which keep us on track through our dark days.

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 8th May 2014)

Radical equality

It seems to me there are some things Christians need to get seriously angry about. Three new books have focussed my thinking on one of these issues – attitudes to women.

In Equals, Jenny Baker describes the transformational effect of genuine equality between women and men, but highlights the many issues still to be addressed – for example, women on average still earn less than their male counterparts, women are in a minority in leadership positions in business and politics, one in four women will experience domestic violence in their lifetime.

Former US President Jimmy Carter’s A call to action: women, religion, violence and power is a devastating chronicle of injustices to women world-wide. Honor killings, genital mutilation, rape, the forced marriage of young girls. Domestic violence – against which there is no legislation in a third of countries.

Trafficking – at least 480,000 girls and women are trafficked annually across international borders and sold into the sex trade. The genocide of girls by abortion, neglect and murder – statistical calculations suggest that 160 million women are ‘missing’ as a result of this breathtaking holocaust.

Both writers are deeply concerned Christians convinced that a key element of our faith is the equality of men and women. I believe we must say ‘Amen!’ to Jimmy Carter’s ‘call to action’, energetically and prayerfully supporting agencies working to ensure men and women are given equal opportunities of fulfilling their God-given potential.

We must speak out in condemnation of the scandalous injustices to women. We must confront attitudes in our own communities and in our own hearts which spring from stereotyped views of the roles of men and women. We must, in love, get seriously angry.

But there’s another problem. The third book I’ve been reading is Women in waiting: prejudice at the heart of the Church by Julia Ogilvy. It’s a series of powerful interviews with marvellous Christian women (largely in the Church of England, although the first woman Moderator of the Church of Scotland, Alison Elliot, is included.) They are women of strong faith, certain of their call to the ministry, bringing a distinctive female perspective to their work.

There have been women deacons in the Church of England since 1986, priests since 1992, but women are still barred from becoming bishops. Many of the interviews mention how difficult the speaker found it to be accepted in ministry as a woman, and the prejudices they encountered.

The Roman Catholic Church has no women priests, although Pope Francis acknowledges ‘It is necessary to widen the space for a more inclusive feminine presence in the Church.’

Despite the fact that there have been women Church of Scotland ministers for over 40 years, there are still many churches of different denominations across Scotland where ministry and leadership is not open to women: women are sometimes seen as simply supporting men, undertaking traditional women’s roles.

So the problem is this: how can Christians speak our convincingly about injustices to women when our own house is not in order, even part of the problem?

There is much to suggest that the church across the centuries has got it horribly wrong, and that male-dominated approaches to building society are a symptom of our human sinfulness, which the liberating power of Jesus Christ conquers, setting men and women free to flourish together as equals.

Jesus’ attitude to women was, for his time, revolutionary. He treated men and women as equals, rejecting all implications of the inferiority of women. ‘There is no longer male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus,’ wrote St Paul. A third of the names in one of Paul’s list of leading Christians were women.

I respect the views of those, women among them, who argue from other passages of Scripture that, though equal in status, men and women have different, complementary roles. But I believe this view obscures the Bible’s powerful vision of men and women equal in worth, equal in the variety of gifts God has given them, equal in the roles God entrusts to them. It’s tragic if the attitude of some Christians hinders the flourishing of women.

Some look back over 50 years of feminism in society and say ‘we must not let culture shape our thinking.’ But what if a mistaken, generations-old church culture is blinding us to  reality? What if God is speaking to us through our culture, showing us in the convictions of our neighbours what we have been so slow to learn?

I believe we are called to express in our world the revolutionary culture of Jesus, which includes the radical equality of men and women. It is the culture of God’s kingdom, and only when this kingdom is fully come will the equalities which my reading this week has highlighted be gone forever.

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 1st May 2014)

Let him Easter in us

You might get the impression that Easter is festival of child-friendly cuteness – bunnies, painted eggs, chocolate and the obligatory daffodils. It’s true that Easter culminates with a focus on joy and rebirth, but that’s by no means the whole story.

For Easter is a journey through the most horrendous darkness into amazing light.

Day 1: Jesus, a good, innocent man is executed. Evil, it seems, has triumphed. Within a few hours the hopes which had inspired his followers have crumbled to dust. This messiah, they must have been thinking, was no different from all the others who made promises, and shared visions they were unable to fulfil. Jesus’ followers had forgotten, if indeed they had ever truly understood, his counterintuitive words about dying and rising again.

Day 2: 24 hours of utter despair. Jesus has been placed in his tomb, a great stone rolled across the cave-mouth. His followers face the utter despair of shattered dreams. There is no comfort other than the sharing of tears, and the stirring of life around them as Jerusalem shakes itself awake for a new week mocks their pain.

Day 3: Early morning. Some women visit the tomb. He is there! He is alive! It’s not a ghost! It’s Jesus, the same yet somehow changed. Wonder and joy! A deeper magic than the power of evil has overcome death. Jesus followers realise that the dream is in fact only beginning, and that it’s a bigger dream than they had ever imagined, embracing the whole of humanity, the whole world, the whole universe.

We’re familiar with journeys through darkness into light. It’s spring again, and we are living through the annual rebirth of nature after the long death of a wild, wet winter.

Most of us have personally experienced times of difficulty, struggle and pain, when we have felt, perhaps, that things would never improve. But then one day we’ve sensed the tiniest ray of hope breaking through.

This journey is central to Christian belief too. Christian visionaries sense that, for all its wonder, there is something amiss with the whole universe, as though a spell had been cast over it, and we believe, whatever the language means, that the spell will be broken, and the whole cosmos rebirthed into something new, the same, yet different.

And for Christians death itself, followed by an Easter resurrection into that re-born cosmos is another key journey through darkness into light.

This all seems very theoretical and speculative. The key point is that what happened to Jesus the first Easter is not simply another example of the journey through darkness into light, not simply an encouraging indication that what happened to Jesus can happen to us all, but the key act which makes it possible for us to break into light at the end of our journeys. Somehow, in travelling through death into life Jesus took the whole cosmos with him, and we await the results of this at the end of time as we know it.

All this has some very practical implications. It prompts us to ask what it means to follow Christ on his journey through death to life. We find ourselves called to be active participants with Christ on the journey. There are things we need to put to death – by which I mean acknowledging them, owning them, and relinquishing them – things like pride and greed, and ways of living which must change.

But there are also things in us which we need to call out into the sunshine of a resurrection morning – parts of me I’ve buried, my hopes and dreams, the real ‘me’ I have hidden for so long. As we journey through darkness into light a joyful Jesus summons from the cave our true identity.

And Jesus’ Easter journey brings hope for us in our despair. Some of us may be Easter Saturday Christians. We feel surrounded by darkness. The dreams we once had of the difference Jesus could make have crumbled. We are disappointed with God, disappointed with Jesus, disappointed with ourselves, and angry.

Some of us may be people of no religious faith, with whom the Easter Saturday story nevertheless resonates. We’re despairing because our lives have lost their purpose: there seems to be no ultimate meaning and we wonder if we have the courage to walk through the darkness alone.

The good news of Easter is that Jesus brings hope in our despair, whoever we are, however weak or non-existent our faith. The living Jesus invites us to reach out in the darkness, and promises that in some way we will recognise as authentic, his hand will grasp ours, and lead us forward, sunshine piercing the darkness and mist, towards the glory of the Easter Sunday garden. ‘Let him easter in us.’

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 17th April 2014)

A bite out of the Big Apple

I’m just back from a family holiday to New York. We climbed the Empire State Building, strolled in Central Park, saw both Wicked and Phantom, took the Staten Island Ferry past the Statue of Liberty and much else.

But what I want to share is how hard I found it just to get there. I am prone to anxiety – it seems to be deeply embedded in my DNA. Though I cope reasonably well with the help of medication, particular challenges can ramp up the worry level.

I was deeply anxious at the prospect not just of the long flight but of being what seemed so very far from home. In addition the health scare I had in November, a mini-stroke, made getting travel insurance more complicated, and left me feeling fragile and fearful.

Many people – 3 million in the UK according to 2007 figures – experience abnormal anxiety disorders. We are helped in part by talking therapies, medication, positive visualisation of achieving the things our fear attaches itself to – and all these means of addressing the problems are I believe God-given gifts.

My doctor slightly increased my medication prior to our New York trip. I thought positively, and reminded myself ‘God will be with you.’ I was encouraged by my wife’s assurance of her our daughters’ love and support. But I remained fearful.

I had been attending a lunch-time discussion group at St Andrews Cathedral, Inverness, on the Wednesdays of Lent led by the Provost, Alex Gordon. Two days before our holiday, the group was discussing the giving of ‘the peace’ – the moment in Anglican and Roman Catholic liturgies when members of the congregation greet each other, saying ‘Peace be with you.’

I said I appreciated this – it makes me feel included, part of the group. Alex gently deepened my understanding, telling me that what we are conveying to one another is the fact that God gives peace to each of us. Almost immediately, I had a deep sense that God was giving, and would give me peace.

The unexpected ‘givenness’ of this brought calm, joy, trust and a lightness of spirit about the forthcoming journey which my own attempts at positive thinking had failed to deliver. The memory of this gift from beyond me sustained me during our time away.

I didn’t sleep well on the Thursday night, and woke fearful on the day we were leaving. I didn’t know if I could do it. I had a mental picture of a circle on a map of Scotland, centred on Inverness. My comfort zone. It seemed so small, New York so very distant.

And another picture came to mind, not with quite the same sense of givenness as the assurance of peace on Wednesday. It showed two hands, the tips of thumbs and forefingers touching to form the shape of a heart, and within it, green and blue and brown and white spun our planet. I realised that the whole world is in God’s infinite comfort zone. God is at home in New York – or perhaps New York is at home in God. Certainly, I am at home in God.

This thought helped me face the day. That evening at 9.30pm we are crossing the Kingston Bridge in Glasgow on the shuttle bus to the airport. I find my heart alive with praise and gratitude to God.

Eight days later, we are waiting outside our hotel in Times Square for the transport we’d booked to take us back to JFK Airport to arrive. Would the minibus come? I reflected that it’s one thing to go forward through life, entrusting each step to God. It is quite another thing to still your anxiety when all you can do is wait, wondering if the minibus will come. Because faith in God doesn’t guarantee the absence of problems.

Then I realised that security in that situation is found in remembering that no matter what happens – if your plans fall apart, if the worst imaginable scenario unfolds you remain secure because your indestructible self is sustained by God.

We arrived back in Inverness the Sunday before Easter. I have been encouraged and have grown in confidence and faith through the experience. I am so glad I went.

Each of us who struggle with abnormal anxieties has our own story. I know some people, worried sick with the anxiety of making ends meet will feel I am fortunate that I had a trip to the Big Apple to worry about, and I take their point.

But each of us will be helped by the love of friends and family and by appropriate therapies but also, despite dark and agonisingly difficult days, by the moments of spiritual strengthening which Christians believe are the tender, personalised gifts of a loving Father.

(Chreistian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 24th April 2014)