Buffy and God – The Blog

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What to do when God doesn’t answer prayer?

Actually, that’s a trick question. God answers every prayer, just sometimes the answer is ‘no’. All because God didn’t do what you asked him to, doesn’t mean he didn’t hear you or do anything.

God answers every prayer with one of four answers:

1. Yes, thank you for asking.

This answer is pretty awesome. You pray for something, and suddenly (or over time) it happens. Though, it’s not always exactly what you thought it was going to be, but this is not always a bad thing.

Some people recommend being as specific with God as possible, outlining exactly what you want down to the last detail. Sometimes this is a good thing to do, because it knocks your socks off when he does it. But at other times I find this a bit insulting (and bordering on ‘the Secret’ type stuff, that if you visualise it enough God will send it your way).

You are much better off asking God to give you the image of exactly what to pray for, because you get the benefit of being impressed when he turns it up, but without the risk of insulting God. God has given me exact images of what to pray for, sometimes even when I didn’t ask. A simple example was when I was at Bible college (and very tight for money). I prayed for a chair for my room which I could comfortably pray in. While I was praying, I saw the exact type of chair, even though it was not a style I was particularly familiar with or would have thought of,  but it looked comfortable. A few weeks later, a friend was chucking out some stuff and there was my chair! Nifty, huh?

Most of the time, I just want God to give me the best he’s got, which might be a whole lot better than anything I could imagine.

2. Yes, and here’s even more!

Okay, so this is the best answer you can get. You pray for something, and suddenly you are inundated with blessings. More often than not, in my experience, this usually comes after you having been praying for something else. When you finally work out that’s not what God wants to give you, you get back on track, and you are showered.

Always give God the chance to give you more than you ask for, because you can’t even guess how much he wants to bless his people.

Now we are onto the tricky ones.

3. Not yet.

This is not exactly a no, but it often looks like that. You pray and pray and nothing happens. It can be quite confusing because often you know that this is something important, something you need to complete your mission or something God has promised you, and yet it sounds like God is not answering you. But he is, he’s saying to wait, or that something needs to happen first.

The Bible does says you don’t have because you haven’t asked, but that also requires that you ask the right questions. The best thing you can do in this situation is to ask ‘why?’, or ‘is there anything I need to do before this can happen?’ Sometimes it’s not you, it’s outside circumstances, but often you might find it is because you haven’t done something God has already asked you to do, or you need to focus on something else first. Always worth asking if you aren’t getting anywhere.

Now for the heartbreaker:

4. No, I love you too much to give you that.

No good parent would give a child everything they ask for, even if they promise to provide for their every need. God has promised to provide for us, and when we are in line with his will, to give us all that we can need or want. But he’s not going to give us everything we ask for, no matter how hard we try. He’s just too good for that.

Paul prayed three times for God to take away the thorn in his side (some problem which he doesn’t give exact details about). And in the end God said to him that he wasn’t going to, because he wanted Paul to rely on him, that his strength and power is only visible through our weaknesses.

So, if even one of the apostles didn’t get everything they asked (and it seemed to be a perfectly reasonable request), then we can’t expect to either. But that doesn’t mean God doesn’t care.

If you find yourself in a situation where it seems you aren’t getting an answer, I recommend this one simple step:

1. Ask God to give you a vision of what you need right now.

If it is the same thing you have been praying for, then keep praying!

If it is something different, don’t waste your efforts praying for something God doesn’t want to give you. You might get to come back to it later, but after you have gotten the stuff you need right now.

You can make your prayers much more effective by remembering two things:

1. God is abundantly generous and loves to give.

2. But God cares more about your personal spiritual development than anything else in the world.

Keeping those two things in mind, you should be able to hit upon what he wants you to ask for, and asking for what God has already decided to give you makes life a whole lot easier.

It is funny how God works in our lives. Often I think he is very slow at teaching me something, and occasionally I realise that it’s really just me that is slow.

For the past few months I have felt like I’ve been swimming in a rip. I’ve been putting in all this work, but nothing is getting anywhere. As you may know, I’m now a full time writer. I gave up my job at the beginning of July, and thought that I would be able to get so much more done than before, and that I would have started making it by Christmas. Well, it’s now November and I don’t seem to be getting anywhere.

I thought a few weeks/months that God said I could sit down and get five books out by Christmas (note that a few of these were already written, and only one needed to be completely from scratch, which was a theology book I had promised God about four years ago). I worked out a timeline which allowed me to get all of them out. I was pretty excited.

With just under two months to go, how much I actually published? That’s right, nothing. I finished one book, but then got told by a proof-reader that the middle section was too academic (not something I’m usually troubled with!). Another one I thought was almost done, but the editing took weeks instead of the days I had planned. Another I only had 10,000 words more to write. While I was working I had times when I was doing that much in a single day. But now I was crawling along at 1-2,000 words a day, and ended up deleting so many scenes that it took me two extra weeks.

For the past week or two I’ve been close to despairing that anything would come out this year, and that I would have to give it all up and go back and get a job, and let my soul be sucked out of me inch by inch.

And it wasn’t like I was in any big rebellion. I was doing everything God had said; I was getting up at 7 am every morning and writing for 2+ hours (which used to turn out 5,000+ words), I was spending an hour listening to my Bible everyday, I was praying about what to do and what to focus on. So why wasn’t it working?

A few days ago God pointed out that he had asked me to memorise parts of the Bible as well each night. Opps. So I did it one or two nights, and hoped that this would be the answer to my problems. Strangely it wasn’t. I continued to drag on. Then last night I thought about reading from my favourite parts, such as Proverbs or Psalms, or maybe some of the epistles. But instead God said to randomly open it and I ended up at the beginning of Haggai. At first I couldn’t even remember exactly when Haggai was or what he was about. But then I started reading and memorising:

Now the Lord Almighty says: ‘Give careful thought to your ways. You plant much, but harvest little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it.’

 
This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘Give careful thought to your ways. Go up into the mountains and bring down timber and build the house, so I may take pleasure in it and be honoured. You expected much, but see it has turned out to be little. What you brought home, I blew away. Why?’ declares the Lord, ‘Because my house remains a ruin while each of you is busy with his own house. Therefore, because of you the heavens have withheld their dew and the earth its crops. I called for a drought on the fields and the mountains, on the grain, the new wine, the oil and whatever the ground produces, on men and cattle, and on the labour of your hands.’ (Haggai 1: 5-11).

 
A drought on the labour of my hands? Yup, that’s pretty much what it felt like.

The problem hadn’t been not memorising my Bible, God was just using that to remind me of a greater problem.
Maybe you spotted it before. Years ago I had promised God I would write a book on theology, but I never got around to it. Now, I knew that it was meant to be one of the five for this year, and that it was the only one I hadn’t done substantial work on. But did I start on it straight away? No. Instead I had worked on my YA Christian novel, my non-fiction on how to write a strong internet dating profile, my 1920’s historical romance, the next book in my writing series and just yesterday started working on a novel written by my great-grandfather which I’m editing. I had left the one book that God had asked for until very last. If I had continued on my path, it would have been the last to be finished, and first to be abandoned.

So this morning I have faithfully sat down and started writing the theology book. I don’t know if this will now allow God to bless the rest of my projects, but I feel good that I’m working on it. Give me a few weeks, and maybe by the end of the year there will be the first theology by Buffy book available. (Just a heads up, it’s on the liberal/conservative divide in theological scholarship for the layperson. Obviously need a more snappy title than that, though!).

Therefore, if you feel like you are swimming against the tide, or that you are earning wages only to put them in a purse with holes in it, why not sit down and see if there is anything God asked you to do which you haven’t gotten around to yet. You might be surprised.

Courtesy of Jess Lis at stock.xchng

In 2001 Britney Spears signed a two year contract to promote the drink company Pepsi. However, when she was spotted out in public drinking Coca-Cola, her deal came to an end. Everyone understood that to drink a competing company’s soda while being paid to promote Pepsi was a no-go.

Similarly, in 2009 a sex scandal caused Tiger Woods to be dropped as the brand ambassador for a number of companies such as Accenture, as he no longer portrayed the type of image they wanted connected to their product/services.

And yet people are surprised that God also has expectations of his brand ambassadors? Or that he might not want to include people who promote rival companies or try to tarnish his image?

It has long been realised in Old Testament scholarship that the structure of the book of Deuteronomy is similar to a common international treaty at the time, the Hittite suzerain-vassal treaty. The suzerain was the more powerful party in the discussion, while the vassals were the ones agreeing to offer something in return for protection. It is remarkably like a branding contract, where one party promises to support and pay the other party, as long as they go around saying how great and marvelous the first one is.

The basic structure of the treaties included a preamble which names the powerful king making the treaty. Next is the historical prologue, which lists out everything that powerful king has already done for the less powerful nation (this could be conquering them, or protecting them). Once that has been established, the treaty lists out the stipulations: what the powerful nation expects the smaller nation to do in order to keep the treaty (eg. only drink my brand of soda). Then comes the curses and blessings: what will happen if the vassal nation keeps the treaty (blessings) and what happens if they don’t (curses). The treaty is then ratified, succession arrangements are made and then it is confirmed.

Now isn’t that a nice bit of history?

Wake up and smell the roses – God was making a contract with Israel to be his band ambassadors. Just as Pepsi paid Britney Spears a lot of money and supported her tours, God was saying he would support Israel, provide for them, get them gigs etc. However, the flip side which everyone in the modern world, and presumably in the ancient world as well, realised is that you then had to be a good ambassador!

Two particular things are important for being a brand ambassador, as Britney and Tiger show us.

First, you need to promote the product that you are paid to! If Pepsi is sponsoring you, you drink Pepsi not Coke. This seems quite reasonable, right? Well, if God is sponsoring you, you don’t go and worship other gods! If Pepsi, or any big company, has the right to say that their ambassadors must present their product as the best at all times, why is it unreasonable for God to expect the same thing?

Second, you need to present a suitable image overall because you are now linked to that brand. Tiger Woods didn’t go to a rival company and use their products. But he had been hired as the face of the brand, and so had to project an image similar to how the company wanted the brand to be perceived. So when it came out that he was not a nice family man, the companies were within their rights to drop him. This is just the same as God telling the Israelites that they had to be holy because he is holy. What he was saying is ‘this is my brand – righteousness and holiness. If you want to be my ambassadors, with all the perks attached, you have to promote this image.’ And then, when they did not promote this image, he was well within his rights to dump them. The only difference is that he was kind enough to give them chance after chance after chance!

This is most clearly laid out in the Old Testament, but doesn’t it make sense that it still applies today?

If you call yourself a Christian, you are taking on and representing God’s brand. So you should know what that entails before you go signing any contracts.

So, what are you signing up to?

1. Whenever you sign a contract with any company to represent them, it is expected that you only represent them, and not their rivals. This is not seen as ‘intolerant’ in the market place, but acting with integrity. You can’t equally represent two competing brands. You are always saying that one is better than the other by the one you focus on. As the Bible says, you can’t serve two masters, you also can’t promote two competing brands.

Therefore, I get very angry especially at priests that spend more time promoting other religions than they do Christianity! They are being paid by someone and using that time, money and platform to promote someone else! How awful is that? What do you think the world’s companies would do to them? Why should God be dishonoured when Pepsi wouldn’t stand for it?

2. What is God’s brand? Well, people go wrong by focusing on either the Old Testament or the New Testament, rather than seeing that God is both. In the Old Testament, there was a stronger focus on God’s righteousness and holiness. God says very clearly that he wants his people to be holy and display righteousness, because this is what his brand is. I’ve heard people argue that God was really nasty and unforgiving because he broke the contract if they didn’t do this. But why should he have been forgiving? They were taking the payment, and yet flatly refusing to live up to his brand? Do you expect all the companies to continue paying Tiger Woods, regardless of what he does to destroy their brand image?

In the New Testament, however, Jesus gets annoyed at the Pharisees who are all for the external representations of holiness, but make God’s requirements appear so heavy and burdensome that no one would want to follow a God like that. It’s like if you only drank Pepsi, but made such a sour face doing it that no one else would ever want to drink it. Jesus highlighted the forgiveness and sweetness that should come from following God. You need to enjoy the product, because it is an awesome product.

But you can’t just focus on the sweetness, and think that God doesn’t also care about holiness, because he is both: holiness and forgiving.

So, that’s what you’ve signed up for, if you’ve been baptised and call yourself a Christian. You get the blessings of the contract – on going support and inclusion in the end of year VIPs only party. However, you have your side of the deal which is to be a proper brand ambassador. You have chosen to be part of God’s brand, so you don’t get to promote rivals or present an image which is in conflict to God’s overall brand image of righteousness and forgiveness.

If you are not prepared to do this, that’s fine, but then don’t be surprised that God drops you as his representative. You might not notice at first, but when you rock up to the party at the end, you can bet your name is not going to be on the list. And really, who can blame God for that?

It has now been three weeks since I gave up my cute little one bedroom apartment in trendy South Yarra to start a season of being a nomad. This has been a huge change for me, and I’m still coming to grips with it.

First of all, I hate packing. Seriously. Hate it.

Second, I’m now moving every few weeks, accepting places where people offer them to me. For the first two weeks I stayed with my aunt in her spare bedroom, then moved to my parents’ to house sit while they were away on holidays for five weeks. Right now I’m in Philip Island enjoying a three day holiday with family friends. I go back tomorrow and then fly up to Brisbane for about five days to attend a Christian writers’ conference and to see my brother. When my parents come back in early November, I think I’ll be staying with my other brother for a while, and then I’m hopefully house sitting for another friend for a few weeks.

So, why have I done this?

Okay, so that’s sort of the million dollar question. What sensible 30 year old, who has already done their travel the world period and was hoping to settle down, give up their apartment, give away all their stuff (except for a few things I’ve put into storage at my brothers, and I’ve kept one suitcase (and a little bit) to live from) without any grand plans of travel? I mean, if I was backpacking around Europe that would be one thing. But bouncing around relatives is not exactly the same, now is it?

There was, of course, the monetary incentive. Since I gave up my job to become a full time writer/self-publishing consultant, I knew I would have to make sacrifices. Keeping my apartment was my biggest expense, and it would have been very difficult to keep writing without taking on a part-time job.

But in reality, I did it because I felt God said to, and I still have no exact idea why. Yes, the ability to save money and therefore keep writing for a bit longer is one nice side effect. But I was listening to a sermon by Tim Keller (I’m terribly behind, so it wasn’t a recent one), and he was talking about mission and calling. The thing that really stood out for me was his argument that God often asks us to move outside of our comfort zone (not having a home is definitely that for me!) so that he can send us somewhere new or show us our mission.

So I’m sort of excited about where he might be sending me, and what he has in store next. As of yet, I don’t have much of a clue. A lot of things keep turning up, and then falling through. I keep thinking ‘oh, that’s it!’ and then a few days/weeks later, ‘nope, back to the drawing board.’ So for now, I’m trying not to question too much, and just focus on the work that he has given me to do now: produce books for a few family members, and try and get a number of my own books out by the end of the year.

I’ll try to keep you updated in the Buffy and God journey.

Praise points:

– I’ve had the opportunity to have a great little holiday down at Philip Island.

– I’m still amazed that I’ve got this opportunity to give writing a serious try, and can support myself (somewhat) helping others self-publish (mostly family at the moment, but I’m working on that) and when desperate, can get paid to help build houses for my brother. (very biblical, building houses.)

Prayer Points:

– My Christian Young Adults manuscript is a finalist in Christian writing competition, and I find out on Friday whether I’ve won. Though, to be honest, I’m really happy either way, so just pray that God shows me whether he wants me to go the traditional publishing route, or self-publish it.

– my finances to hold together.

– Help sticking to my writing (and blogging!) routine while moving around so much. It’s much harder than you would think! (specially when you are living with new and different people, and have to fit in around them.)

(image courtesy of Fran Priestley at stock.xchng)

Once a upon a time, in a small country town, there was a beautiful cheerleader. Not only was she beautiful, but she was smart, talented, kind and caring. She would help the younger students with their homework, and coached a differently-abled baseball squad. Basically, she was the bees-knees and everyone loved her.

It was coming up to that time of year again, Prom Night. However, there was confusion throughout the town. Three boys had all announced they were taking the beautiful cheerleader to the prom. But which one was she really going with?

The first date announced that she was definitely going with him, because he had dedicated his spare time to getting to know all about her.  He knew her favourite lunch menu, and how she wore her hair when she thought she had a pimple. He could answer any question asked about her without hesitation, even stating what her opinions on different issues would be. He had spent hours compiling notes on her, sometimes even going through her locker to read her journal. Anything that could be found out about her, he knew – he thought.  The only thing that confused everyone was that he had never actually spoken to her.

The second date was a football jock. He wasn’t captain of the team, but he was a star quarterback (okay, full disclosure here, I’m Australian and I have no idea about positions on the team, but I watch TV, quaterbacks are good, right? If not, fill in appropriate role… KThnx). He had told everyone about how they were going out. He was very loud in letting everyone know that he was going out with the cheerleader.  And everyday he would go over to her house after school to spend time with her. And look how much she loved him, he would sit on the couch and ask her to bring him a soda, and she would, so obviously they had a relationship. He would tell her all about his day, and give her step by step run downs of his plays in the game. They were totally a thing. Surely she would be going to the Prom with him, right? They just spent so much time together! Everyone else wondered a bit about this because he just didn’t seem nice enough to go out with a girl like that.

The third date hadn’t actually planned to tell anyone he was going to the Prom with the girl, it was just because the other two started spreading it around that he felt compelled to do something. He knew the cheerleader, they had met in the library one day when they were both looking for the same book. It had started with just meeting up at lunch to chat about suttf, but it continued to grow. Soon they hung out after school, talking and laughing (football jock hadn’t even noticed when she didn’t turn up). She helped him with his Maths, and he kept an eye out for her favourite cookies which couldn’t always be found. He listened to her day, and he even took up dance classes just because she loved dancing. When he stood up, he blushed and stammered a bit, but the town could see that he was really in love with the girl.

So, if you were the Cheerleader, which guy would you be interested in?

The third date might not know as much as the first date about her every move, or tell everyone else as continuously about how they were going out as the second date, but he does have one advantage. He was the only one the Cheerleader had actually agreed to go to the Prom with.

One of the big temptations when you are sick at home with a cold (not even a proper flu, just a little head cold) is to whinge at anyone who will listen. However, I’m going to resist that temptation for your sake.

So, as my own words are limited and meager today, let me give you the words of someone else who has proven to be a lot more quotable than me.

Enjoy.

If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own
good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I
submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no
part of the Christian faith.

Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak.

We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in the a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant to the offer of a holiday at the sea.

We are far too easily pleased.

(Clive Staples) C. S. Lewis

God always seemed rather big into fasting. I don’t think it’s specifically stated anywhere in the Bible that we should fast a certain number of days per year etc. However, all throughout the Bible God’s people fasted. The only time it’s noted that people  weren’t meant to fast was when Jesus was with them.

Over the years I’ve done many different types of fasts. Generally I do a liquid fast 1 day a week, which I assumed was to keep things in perspective and keep me focused on spiritual things.

I’ve also done a Ramadan type fast, only eating when it’s dark for a month.

I’ve done a Daniel type fast where I only ate vegetables for 40 days. (Those were some seriously boring days…).

Then there is Lent where I’ve given up specific things, like fasting on Chocolate or Refined sugar.

I had assumed that the purposes of most of these fasts was to teach me self-control and reliance upon God. As the bigger fasts generally were followed by some rather large spiritual battle that I had to be completely sure I was right with God to get through, it made some sense (though it also has made me start to fear when God asks me to do a big fast… what trouble am I going to get into this time?).

However, I’ve just been doing research into intermittent fasting for my fitness blog: PersonalFitnessBaseCamp.com. I’m currently testing out and reviewing the 5:2 diet, where you eat normally for 5 days and then have a severely calorie restricted diet for 2 (non-consecutive) days. A friend is also concurrently testing out the 8 Hour Diet, where you restrict all your calorie intake to an 8 hour window each day.

Did you know that there is growing research that intermittent fasting as well as longer periods of fasting is really good for you? Not just for weightloss, developing self-control etc., but for your physical health?

Evidence is growing that it reduces the risk of various diseases including some types of cancers, protects cognitive function as you age, and reduces your blood sugar and cholesterol levels.

It just once again amazes me that God would make something that is spiritually good for us be also physically good.

Though, now I’m dedicated to doing 2 fasts a week for a month for the review for the blog, I do wonder if God has some other plan for me which I’m yet to find out about!

This post is for all the people in da house that have been Christians for a while. Hold your hands in the air and say ‘Hey’!

(Okay, so there’s a reason I’m not a rapper).

The fact that God is a completely different type of being to us humans becomes pretty apparent after you spend some time in relationship with him, though I still tend to forget.

One of the most obvious examples of this is God’s idea of ‘soon’. Word to the wise, while it will be perfectly timed, I really wouldn’t hold your breath on it.

The Bible talks about a day being like a thousand years and a thousand years being like a day. No, that doesn’t meant that when God said he created the world in 6 days it actually took 6000 years (because the whole point of saying it both ways is that we just cannot equate one with the other).

In fact, God appears to be not concerned with time at all, not in the way we are.

Think about poor Isaiah. Back in the Old Testament, he gets this great prophecy about the coming Messiah who’s going to save Israel and renew the world. It was, like, one of THE big prophecies in the history of the Universe. He must have been pretty special to God in order to get to be the mouthpiece for that baby.

And when did that prophecy actually come true? Only about 400 years later.

Totally feel for Isaiah, wouldn’t want to put my reputation on the line with the bigwigs of the day for that one!

And then there was Jesus’ promise that he was coming back again ‘soon’. How soon? Well, we’re at two millenia so far and counting.

Does that mean God is always ambiguous when it comes to time? Nope.

Take Jericho. He said walk around it for 7 days, they walked around it for 7 days and on that day the walls collapsed (okay, lacking a bit of detail there, but you get the point).

Jesus said he would rebuild the temple (aka his body) in 3 days, and there he was on the third day shiny and new.

So, the big message from this that you sort of need to understand when dealing with God is that he generally doesn’t like to be tied down to a timeline. If he gives you one, great. If he doesn’t… I really don’t recommend asking because you are just opening yourself up to being deceived.

As someone who might possible have pushed God a few (just a few) times on when they might expect to be married, I can vouch for this.

In the last post I said you couldn’t trust anyone completely.

But that raises the question: So how can I know, for sure, about God?

It would be so much easier if he just came down and said ‘hey, I’m God’… um, again.

So, basically, what we all want is God to prove himself to each of us individually. Obviously me saying ‘I’ve had this amazing experience with God’ doesn’t cut it for other people.

The strange thing that really gets me is that God seems to agree!

Throughout the Bible what does he say?

‘Taste and see that the Lord is good.’

Taste? Seriously? What’s that all about? Taste is a personal experience. It is something only you can do. God wants you, personally, individually, to experience him. He wants you to know him with every sense.

So I’m not going to tell you to believe in God here on this blog. I want you to go and have your own personal experience, and then I’ll tell you the facts and reality of living with a God that is a personal being, because that’s the hard bit.

Want a personal experience of God? Why not just ask him?

Though, keep in mind, it’s sort of like trying to date the most popular girl in school. If you go up and demand a kiss, you’ll be lucky if you walk away without being slapped. However, if you get to know her, make her mix CD’s and believe in her, she’ll definitely be kissing you on prom night.

If you are in a relationship with God, but feel you have no personal experience of him, you had better see if you are totally ignoring his advances. But if you have made no attempt to get to know him and just demand he does miracles for you, don’t be surprised if nothing happens.

And you wonder why you’re single?

Okay, so in the movies when the main character is told not to trust anyone, it’s usually the person saying it that is most dodgy (I’m thinking of first season/book of Game of Thrones). And maybe that is true here, too. But I’ll leave that up to you to decide.

It took me a long while to realise that some people are much more informed and knowledgeable about God, but because of a lot of reasons like culture, upbringing and personal weaknesses, everyone is going to be wrong about something.

When I was growing up, there were people I trusted about theology, such as my parents, and people I didn’t. Simple, right? Then when I went to Bible college, I had a lecturer that I really respected. Everything he was saying was in line with what I knew, and so I would obediently write down all the things he said that I didn’t know.

Then one day he said something. And to be honest, I can’t even remember what it was. However, I knew I didn’t agree. It wasn’t a major thing, it wasn’t earth shattering to think someone might actually believe X. But it made me think ‘well, if he’s wrong about this, what else might he be wrong about?’

And I suddenly felt very annoyed. It meant I would actually have to do the thinking myself! He couldn’t just tell me the answers, which just seemed so unfair. And now I had to go back through everything he had told me, and actually decide if I believed it! Pah!

But that is the reality of theology. You need to take responsibility for your own relationship with God. This results in few things:

1. You can’t just follow one person dogmatically when it comes to your beliefs. Even your friends and family. You need to do the research yourself. Sorry, but it’s true. And since it affects every aspect of your life (from why you get up in the morning, through how you treat people during the day, to how secure you feel when you lie down to sleep) I believe that every member of society has a responsibility to develop their own spiritual beliefs.

2. Institutions, while they have severe problems looking after the individual, do have the advantage of not swaying with every blowing wind of thought. They also collect knowledge from a very large source, which can get rid of some of the weird bits… over time. We’ve fallen for some pretty bad heresies over the ages, and are probably in one or two right now, but while they seem ‘behind the times’, institutions are still the distillation of millennia of learning. That’s mostly why I’m an Anglican, I love the 39 articles. It’s not to do with the current hierarchy, or in support of the crimes that the church has done. I fully condemn all institutional damage against an individual (started a PhD on that, so you will probably hear more on that later). But I can’t go past the 39 articles for the standards of my theology.

3. Similarly, in your own study, you have to, have to, read across the ages. You might read the Church Fathers and laugh at how silly they were about some things. Just remember, you are just as silly, or more, about other things. And, then again, how do you know they weren’t right and you are the one that is wrong?

4. But that doesn’t mean read everything. There is a lot of damaging works out there. You have to protect your mind and you spirit. So how do you know what to read or study? I stick with the Bible’s suggestion: you will know them by their fruit. The guys that started revivals and lived godly lives? Probably on to things. Men that ended up cursing and spitting with no show of love or kindness? Possibly not something you want to let into your mind.

The final way, and most important way… well, I’ll cover in the next post! Stay tuned 😀