Wednesday 28 December 2011

Reviewing -2

This year has been one in which I have realised that there are (at least) two opposing movements in my faith life.
One is that I  look back and realise that some of my basic conceptions about God are just vain imaginings and wishful thinking...and most of us are like this.
We imagine we know what God is like, what God is doing and what God wants to do in my life and the life of others.
One consequence is about the way we pray....how  we basically tell God that "John should stop being naughty and start being good!" . We seldomly put it that crudely....but it sounds like ( and I heard an American priest say something like this during the year) "That Obama should change his economic policy" or we critque people's addictions without any understanding that there is more to addiction than just stopping doing the wrong thing.
Or we stand up and make public prayers about the environment, jobs, even the treatment of animals ....all of these I have heard during the year...without any understanding that it doesn't in any way address the complexity, and sounds remarkably like the pray-ers one particular biases.
I, of course, am guilty of this too.

So I am trying not to tell God what to do.
I also think I have had, and been encouraged to have, a very passive view of my relationship with God....Moral Therapeutic deism....is what one person I heard speaking called it   ...Do it right and repent of doing it wrong, then you might be healed and God will love you...  
It would be laughable if it wasn't true

Amidst all this the second movement is that although my old faith is more and more called into question. I feel my faith in God to get ever stronger. This may seem contradictory, but I choose rather to see it as a sign of maturity. Choosing to believe i what is true rather than what I want to be true.

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