Russell’s Monthly Newsletter
Dear Friends,
The Manse, over Easter, was the focus of intensive revision. Cam was revising for his university finals and Ross for his A levels. I, too, was in the business of revision – but not in the same sense as Cam and Ross who were swatting for exams. But their revision helped shape my revision. Let me explain.
A university website gives advice to students about how to revise. It says: “Revising effectively means much more than simply trying to memorise information to regurgitate in the exam: it involves practise in recalling information in a flexible and ‘useable’ way; it involves practise in understanding and answering exam questions in an appropriate manner; it involves practise in assessing the quality of an answer. As such, revision needs to be an active and varied process that addresses the above three elements.”
Cam and Ross were busy revising ancient Greek and modern Arabic, drama, history and religious studies. My time was more accurately described as re-visioning. This was sparked by two books I had read recently. The first was Stephen Fry’s ‘Mythos’ where he retells the myths of ancient Greece as only Stephen Fry can. He does so with great humour and with all the craft of great story tellers down the centuries. Throughout I sensed the impact these great and ancient stories had had on story tellers ever since, including those who were telling the story of God’s activity as understood in the Jewish and Christian traditions. Our faith did not develop in a vacuum. It was deeply entrenched in the culture of its day and there was unquestionably an inevitable and profitable dialogue between what had gone before and what was new. Faith has always been going through a process of ‘re-formation’ in order for it to be ‘flexible’ and ‘useable’.
The second book which helped me ‘re-vision’ faith was Richard Holloway’s ‘A Short History of Religion’. His brief but stimulating journey through the story of all the great faiths asks as many questions as it answers. Not least: ‘why so many different faiths?’ One important answer to that question is that at different times and different places, people were asking different questions. For Jesus the basic question he seems to answer is not the one Christian tradition has suggested. For many faith is about where you go when you die: are you destined for heaven or hell? or, if we are being honest, the question is: why am I going to heaven and people who don’t agree with me going to eternal damnation?’ For Jesus, and presumably for those who seek to follow him’ the question is actually: ‘what would life on earth look like if people followed God’s way rather than their own way or the way the rulers of the world tell us we must follow?’ After all, his stories were all about the reign (or Kingdom) of God and he taught his followers to pray: thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
I believe we get an important re-visioning of our world this month as we celebrate Christian Aid Week. This gives us a vision of God’s world where our time and energy are spent in helping the most vulnerable and needy. Our wealth is re-distributed – even if only in a very minor way – from those who have to support those who have virtually nothing. People in need are given the resources and support to help lift themselves out of poverty. All because, like Christian Aid, God believes in life before death, rather than worrying about life after death.
Good luck to all those who are sitting exams. I hope your revision has gone well and reaps its own reward. May God be with all of us in our re-visioning. May it be active and varied in producing understanding which is appropriate for our world today. We owe it to God and to our world.
With love and prayers, Russell.