Can you kind of give us a short summary of what you’re arguing in the book?
None of this is about affirming that I believe God exists or that I
believe that X Y and Z. What I’m arguing is that Christianity is an
invitation into a different form of life—a life in which you find
meaning in your neighbor, in political action, in real transformation of
the world. This means you can have doubts, you can question things, you
can think it’s all hogwash at times in terms of your beliefs, but still
be caught up in the form of life we’re invited into.
I’m trying to argue that Christianity is not simply being able to
take the right answers to something but it’s also not simply about
expanding our lives into eternity. If I could say a prayer and you would
live forever but you couldn’t enjoy the depth of your life, I wouldn’t
be blessing you, I’d be cursing you. Heaven would just be millions of
people screaming for death. What I’m arguing is that Christianity is
first and foremost not about continuing life into eternity but
transforming the way in which we live here and now in the world where we
find beauty in the material world itself.
You talk about how so much of this Scriptural conversation
about death is not just physical death, but it is a spiritual death, a
death in life.
"What I’m
arguing is that Christianity is first and foremost not about continuing
life into eternity but transforming the way in which we live here and
now in the world."
Absolutely, it’s constant in the Bible whenever Jesus says, “I’ve
come to bring life and life in all its fullness.” He’s not speaking to
people who are dead, He’s not in the graveyards. And when Paul talks
about being buried with Christ and rising with new life, he’s not
talking about something over the horizon, he’s talking about a way of
participating in that new life here and now. For me, Christianity is
about transforming the very way we live.
You offer an unconventional view of Paul’s words in 1
Corinthians 13:12: “For now we see through a glass darkly, but then face
to face now I know in part but the shall I know even as also I am
known.” Can you talk about that a little bit?
Ultimately, I’m arguing that we imagine that when we see through the
glass darkly, which means when we get this Christian insight into what
lies at the other side of the glass, we see something full and complete
and wonderful that will fulfill us.
My argument is actually, that’s what everybody in the world is
promising. Everyone in every magazine you read, every film you watch,
every TV show is promising there’s something out there that will be
whole and complete. It’s like the world is a huge vending machine and
everyone has their products in, the products that say they will make you
whole and complete. The Church has come along and has also put its
product in the machine.
But Christianity, at its most radical, is not about putting some
product in a machine that says, “If you can get this everything will be
wonderful.” It’s about taking a sledgehammer to that machine, breaking
it so that we see clearly that there is nothing in this world—whether
it’s religion, whether it’s sex, a job, consumerism—that will complete
us. Instead, what we have to do, is learn to live with that kind of
lack, that sense of brokenness, that sense that things aren’t complete.
And in learning to live with it we actually find a true joy and a true
happiness. Instead of trying to run for our suffering, instead of trying
to run from our brokenness, we have to carry with it and make peace
with it.
Christianity invites us to look at our ghosts, look at our
brokenness, face up to the things that we find difficult in our lives
and although that’s traumatic at first, that actually leads to a full
and healthy type of life.
You write that in using rituals to uphold our beliefs, we’re
often just protecting ourselves from facing the fact that none of those
products in the machine can complete us. Can you explain that?
"I’m trying to
encourage people to not run from their suffering because when we do that
I think it just causes more suffering, deeper suffering."
That’s a part where I’m wrestling with how we can have rituals and
forms of life which help us escape our suffering for a moment. If you’ve
gone through a breakup and you just want to forget your suffering, you
go out and get drunk and listen to rubbish pop music. You forget about
everything for a few hours, but then it comes back the next day. So you
have to go out and get drunk again.
Contrast
that with the type of Irish pub you get where I’m from back home, where
you’ve gone through some sort of difficult time and you go to the pub
not to get drunk but to have a drink and talk about your suffering, to
talk about what happened. There’s a singer-songwriter in the corner who
is singing some tragic song about lost love. But in that tragic song you
see a little bit of yourself and somehow that music helps you look at
the things you’d rather want to avoid. And in that experience you start
to feel the weight of your suffering lift.
For me, the Church can be one of those two things. The Church can be
either the place where you go get drunk and it provides these rituals
that help you momentarily escape your suffering and make you feel
everything is great, but then that just means you have to go back again
and again and get drunk on the worship another time. Or the Church can
create a liturgical space in which, through the prayers and the sermon
and the music, the full range of human emotions are expressed and your
brought to look at your struggles, look at your fears, look at the
things inside you that you’d rather avoid. Not so that you’re destroyed
by them but so that you’re able to bring them into the light of day and
be freed from their oppressive sting.
What is your hope for this book? What steps do you hope readers take after reading it?
It’s limited what a book can do, but I’m trying to encourage people
to not run from their suffering because when we do that I think it just
causes more suffering, deeper suffering. We put it on to other people.
In this book, I want to say to people, what are the things you might be
running from in your life? What are the things in your individual life,
in your family life, in your relationships that you’re hiding from? And
instead of running away from those things, can you find people who will
help you bring that stuff to the surface? Can you help your friends with
that process? And can we reform Christian community in such a way that
we are able to, like AA, we are able to talk about the difficult things
in a community of grace that just accepts who we are. Because In being
able to bring that stuff to the surface we will find life, and life in
all its fullness.
Colorado Springs-based youth worship group, Desperation Band, raises the banner of worship with their latest album, Banner. Credited most notably for their songs “I Am Free”, “Counting on God” and “Strong God”, the band aims to create a soundtrack for the beautiful, compelling things God has been doing today.
