This past Christmas, I was invited to join a group of gay and bisexual men who were on their own over the festive period. There were about 30 to 35 of us, of all ages, who came along on Zoom. Most were struggling with depression or recovering from alcohol and/or drug use, a few simply lonely and one or two were logging in from a medical institution having been recently sectioned. The meeting lasted for about 90 minutes – a chance to share and get support from one another. It was one of the best Christmas afternoons I have ever experienced. There were a lot of laments and a few stories of how individuals had overcome their habits, but, for most, simple pleasure at seeing others on this day of days. Since Christmas Day, I have joined the group again on a couple of occasions.
What I have noticed most about the group is how resilient they are and how much they see their world in terms of the concept of self-improvement. It reminds me of the words of Charles Taylor in his big book, A Secular Age, which was published in 2007, in portraying our present western society as focussed on self-improvement or in his words, self-flourishing at all costs. Although the book is a mighty tome, there are ideas about how our society with its myriad of choices mean people can pick and mix. Meaning that would once have been embedded in the external world and the community now withdraws into the individual self. What price Christianity when there is so much choice?
It is not an easy read as Taylor, a Roman Catholic philosopher, attempts to identify what happens ‘when a society in which it is virtually impossible not to believe in God becomes one in which faith…is only one human possibility among others.’ He claims we have lost the idea of enchantment and I think by that he means ‘transcendent’. Traditionally, Christianity has found meaning in what is outside of ourselves – in nature and in human interrelatedness, taking us out of ourselves; but now the focus is more on how the world seems to us as individuals, and of being self-reliant. But while seeing everything through our eyes, humans increasingly long for what we have lost, in what is outside ourselves.
The Gospels seem to see Jesus as both Son of God and also Son of Man – Jesus as both of heaven and of earth. In Reformed thinking, it is often said Christians have one foot on earth, the other in Heaven. Of course heaven is a rather slippery concept and we use words like ‘mystery’ and ‘spiritual’ to try to unpick its meaning. In some of the great Cathedrals the cross is placed between heaven and earth, between the roof and the floor; this might signify how the Cross bridges and holds in tension the two states. If you have witnessed a birth or been present at a death, there is an almost incomprehensible something that is at once emotional and yet ‘spiritual’, binding child with parent, letting go of someone we’ve loved into the unknown, and the ‘arms of God’.
I wonder when we talk of ‘church’ we don’t get bogged down in bricks and mortar, the things of earth, and forget that church is a route to heaven and what gives life meaning and makes life bigger than our earthly experience. Maybe as the western world talks of putting oneself first, in self-flourishing, Jesus might be suggesting the way to fullness in life is by putting others first and sacrificing ourselves for the greater good.
