“Give me books, French wine, fruit, fine weather and a little music played out of doors by somebody I do not know.” – John Keats Wine, arguably the most important choice to be made on a fine-dining night. Far beyond “give me white with seafood and poultry, red with everything else”, the decision could […]
“In Greece he spent a year in silence just to better understand the sound of a whisper.” – Geoffrey Caucher, A Knights Tale.
A few years ago, the BBC made a 6 hour documentary series called The Big Silence (http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/big-silence/). The documentary showed 5 people who agreed to remain in complete silence for 8 days in a monastery. Not all of the participants were Christian or spiritual in any way. What was so interesting though, was that over those 8 days all of them had some sort of spiritual experience, which- even if they never called it “God”- somehow transformed their lives. Jon Treanor (http://www.jontreanor.com/), who had his life completely transformed by the experience, had this to say:
What is it about silence and meditation that is so powerful? What is it about silence and meditation that we find so uncomfortable, so intimidating, so scary? In silence we are confronted by ourselves and by God. This idea is not unique to Christianity, almost all spiritual belief systems promote being silent as a way of becoming alive in a fuller sense, as we become more aware of ourselves and of our surroundings. We become aware of both the variety and difference in reality, and the fact that all this difference and variety seems to be united and ordered. Some people call that rationality and unity Nature (or Mother Nature), Qi, Chi and Chukwu, Law, the Big Other, God etc.
In silence we are confronted with ourselves. We have no-one else to talk to, no noise, no distractions, no opportunity to escape meeting with our own thoughts and emotions and spirit. And it’s usually super awkward. As we confront ourselves our own thoughts and feelings become louder and more real, as if we are just learning to recognize our own voice and to actually listen to ourselves. Somehow the person talking can seem like a stranger. We go in for the hug, expecting our thoughts and feelings to be welcoming and friendly, and they greet us with a handshake. And that’s always awkward. This may seem weird, even contradictory. Can I, by being alone, make me realize I’m not who I perceive I am? In Proverbs it is written that “The purposes of a man’s heart are deep waters, but the man of understanding draws them out.” (Proverbs 20:5).
In silence we meet with God. We have no-one else to talk to except ourselves (which may have gotten awkward), no opportunity to escape the reality of our own existence, our inherent goodness, the sense that that goodness is not what it should/could be, and our desire for purpose. This naturally draws us to God. I’m not saying this is the only way to meet with God, of course, but it is a way, so why wouldn’t we do it? We probably all know the story of Elijah, how he heard God in the silent whisper, not in the earthquake, fire or storm (1 Kings 19). St. John of the Cross, a Spanish mystical priest in the 16th century, drew a map of the soul’s journey called The Ascent of Mt. Carmel [Mt. Carmel is where Elijah called down fire from Heaven and defeated the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18)]. The path up the mountain was marked with the words “nada nada nada nada”. “Nada” here has the same meaning we assign to it today- nothing. By embracing nada – nothing – the soul released its attachments to all things so that, unencumbered, it could climb to its divine source and sustainer of all things. Paul writes “For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man’s spirit within him?” (1 Corinthians 2:11). In silence are you more aware of your spirit? Are you more aware of the Holy Spirit?
You might raise some objections to this. You could think that there is no worship or praise in silence, or that getting rid of all our attachments is a form of self-centeredness, and self-centered people are just so darn irritating. But self-centeredness is not actually focussed on the self, but on the external desires of the self. The self-centered man asks “What am I and what do I want?” and the self-reflective man asks “Who am I and who do I want to be?”. As to worship, the Quakers (the Quakers are a Christian denomination) worship by sitting quietly in a room- no music, no noise, meditating on Scripture and life. Occasionally one of them stands up and shares something that God has said to them, and then sits down, and the silence continues. This is an authentic type of worship, like the quiet and steady love of an elderly couple, as sincere, perhaps more so, than our passionate, noisy and energetic worship. (I am not saying our way of worshipping is bad, just that if you are reliant only on the passion the music stirs up in you then your worship is more like the hare than the tortoise- likely to fall asleep).
This sort of silence needs to be paired with meditation. Before you think meditation is some mystic Eastern thing meant for Buddhists and the Beatles, note that Christianity is also an Eastern religion, and that Jesus often left the big crowds and his disciples to spend long periods of time in silence and meditation (Matthew 14:22-23). When you are being silent it doesn’t help to have no audible noise only to replace it with mind-noise. Here are some tips to help you meditate:
Now be shut up, be still, and know God (Psalm 46:10).
God.”God.”
Now be shut up, be still, and know God (Psalm 46:10).
Attatched are the slides and MP4 of a talk I gave at TGIF recently on the foundations of mathematics. I looked at a brief history of the most important developments in the base understanding of mathematics, ending with Godel’s incompleteness theorems. Mathematics is built on axioms, self-evident truths that can be described abstractly (using mathematical notation), from which the rest of mathematics derives its meaning and trustworthiness. Can we trust these self-evident truths if they are still based on human intuition?And if Galileo was right when he said “Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe”, then what does the axiomatic structure underlying this language tell us about the speaker? Why can we assign apparently man-made symbols to the universe around us? How can we find consistent relationships and often very surprising results, often using ideas seemingly beyond the reach of our interaction with the natural order of things?
All these questions are, at least, posed, and I hope that if you take the time to listen to the talk you will at least leave with something awesome to think about.
TGIF presentation- foundations of maths
http://www.dropbox.com/s/erg8o1jboqbqo3l/Axioms_Manicom.m4a?dl=0
We’ve been doing a 40 Day Journey, covering the theme SHAPE and asking the question, “What SHAPE has God made me to be? And why?”. We looked at Spiritual gifts, Heart, Abilities, Personality, and now we shall consider the experiences that God lets us go through which change our SHAPE, perhaps smoothing out the rough edges or sharpening the outstanding features.
Experiences happen, we don’t have a choice in that. We might not like the experiences, but they happen. Sometimes they are the consequences of our choices, and sometimes they are the result of other people’s choices, but the one thing that is entirely our own is that we choose how we react, how we behave and where/to whom we turn.
It seems to me that we have 3 broad categories of experiences, the good, the bad, and the boring. God lets all of them happen. God doesn’t want them all to happen, but He lets them happen, and there is good reason for that.
Let’s start with the good. Those times where you wake up with a smile, with energy for the day, with a skip in your step that sometimes you just can’t help and with a real, rich, living joy in your heart. The times where laughter comes easy and spontaneously, where you go for drives just to see the world. The times when all your rooms are without roofs. And where you sing too loudly. All the time.
It’s no mistake you have all this energy, Nehemiah 8:10 says “The joy of the Lord is our strength“. In these times you are living Eden. You are living with the joy of salvation, and that’s fantastic! Rejoice and thank God for that. But be disciplined. Adam and Eve lost their way and lost their joy, and you can too. First, be disciplined in giving God thanks for the good times, Isaiah 12 is probably my favourite chapter in the Word, verse 5-6 says
“Sing to the Lord, for he has done glorious things;
let this be known to all the world.
Shout aloud and sing for joy, people of Zion,
for great is the Holy One of Israel among you.”
God is letting you have joy, not because you deserve it, but because He has done glorious things and He is great. To lose sight of that is to start falling into the second trap. Pride (cue dramatic music). CS Lewis dubbed it the great sin. Why is it so dangerous? Because in pride we become complacent with grace. It is NOT about us. And when we let the good times take us in their current and let our eyes turn from God to look at the beautiful scenery we soon find that we are in deep waters with only sand to cling to.
Jesus said “Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” – Matthew 19:23-24
Good times, like wealth, are great blessings from God, but can become our gods. If you are going through good times ask yourself, are you giving God praise for it, and if the good times had to end now, would you walking close enough to God that He could catch you before you fall.
The second category is the bad. God lets bad things happen to us, and I’m not talking about having too much chilli in a mild samoosa (‘mild’ samoosas are never to be trusted), but about the traumas in life that change us. Why? Bad experiences allow us to learn humility, maturity, hope, compassion and forgiveness.
Humility is taught when we lose something we thought was ours. Friends, girlfriends and boyfriends, parents, possessions, all of them are gifts from God. We treasure them and care for them but in a moment they can be gone. It’s only when they’re gone that you truly realize that they were never yours in the first place, they were God’s. King David exemplifies humility in 1 Chronicles 29:14, where as he dedicates huge amounts of wealth to the temple he says, “Everything comes from you, and we have given you only what comes from your hand.”
Maturity is taught through perseverance with God through the tough times. James 1:2-4 says, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters,whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” (The Greek word for trials refers to all types of experiences, not just the bad ones) Tough times test our faith, they make us question whether God is there, if He is loving, if He is listening, whether He is indeed ours and whether we are his. As we cling to our faith, like a man clings to a rope while hanging over a cliff (think Batman Begins) and persevere, our faith grows like the muscles in our arms and our hands so when God does finally pull us back onto the cliff (whether he uses Batman or not) we are stronger, more mature, and more complete in character.
Our lesson doesn’t end there, but grows into hope. We will know that if we ever are hanging from a cliff again that there is someone there, someone strong, someone who cares, who loves. (This is a good time to forget Batman, cause the guy he saved he later left in a train choo-chooing off a bridge). Romans 5:3-5 says “…we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.” As long as our hope is in God’s love we will never be disappointed. What a freaking incredible truth!
Bad experiences teach us compassion. Compassion means to suffer with someone, which is tricky business if you have not suffered yourself. I am always amused by how much waiters and waitresses appreciate being served at restaurants. Their sufferings in service have taught them how to suffer with those serving them. And it’s the same with the bigger sufferings in life. 2 Corinthians 1:3-7 says “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort.“
Bad experiences teach us to forgive. I’ve never heard of someone having to forgive kindness, or a good birthday present, but when people cause you suffering and pain, that’s when you learn to forgive them. It can be tough (and it deserves its own sermon) but once done you appreciate God’s forgiveness for us so much more, and his grace, for whatever has been done to you you’ve done to God, and more often, but He calls us back anyway.
So, if you are going through a bad experience, what should we be doing and looking out for?
We need to look out for growing in our insecurities instead of in God. Our experiences will either feed our insecurities or feed our character. The opposite of being insecure is being true to yourself and your personality. Insecurities give fear and guilt strongholds in our lives that should belong to God.
We need to persevere with God. Perseverance is at the root of most of the growth we looked at. Your rough time does not give you permission to find comfort in ungodly things or to abandon love for your enemies and to live in unforgiveness. Persevere in love, so that your hope will not lead to disappointment. Sometimes when we are going through a traumatic experience we feel undefined, we don’t know who we are or how we relate to people and to God, but it’s not that we are undefined but that we are being redefined. The choices that we make will most likely determine whether we are redefined more like Christ by persevering with Him or less like Christ by seeking our own comforts and not forgiving.We are learning, maturing, growing into our SHAPE and having our character become Christlike. Hear what Elihu says to Job in Job 35:10
“People cry out under a load of opression … but no one says, ‘Where is God my Maker, who gives songs in the night…'”.
God gives us songs in the night. He gives us a reason to glorify him always (look again at the whole of Isaiah 12). Have you ever stood outside in nature in the middle of the night, with no one around. In that darkness and isolation there’s a strange uneasy fear, but that silence, only sometimes disturbed by the hoot of an owl or rustle of grass, sounds like the music of Heaven. It is so beautiful. And as you listen to the music of the night that fear leaves you, and the song of the owl is a melody far more beautiful that the song of all the birds who sing in the day because the owl chooses to sing in the evening and not in the day, as you should do.
The third types of experiences are the boring ones. When people ask you how things are going and, apart from not wanting to tell them, you can’t think of anything to tell. Our culture and even economy are driven by boredom. Facebook, Twitter, TV, Pinterest, Youtube, all of them only dominate our environments because we are bored unless we are doing something.
The danger with being a bored Christian is that very often our relationship with Jesus becomes boring; we lose the power of the Holy Spirit and the fear of God in our lives. We start to sin because we are bored and want something to do. Hear what the writer of Hebrews says in Hebrews 12:1-4 “And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith. Because of the joy awaiting him, he endured the cross, disregarding its shame. Now he is seated in the place of honour beside God’s throne. Think of all the hostility he endured from sinful people; then you won’t become weary and give up.” Again we come back to perseverance, don’t give up because we know Jesus didn’t, through the good, the bad and the boring. It’s always in the boring that it’s hardest to be disciplined and look to God. In the good times we step into His presence easily, in the hard times He is our rock, in the boring times He is still our friend, father and Lord. Be disciplined in pushing deeper into God. So often in my life when things are going well my devotional times become less and less authentic, more and more habitual (religious, if you like), and soon I’ve unawares started reading a book and saying things out loud instead of actually spending time talking and listening to God and stepping into His presence.
It is in our boring times that our predisposition is formed. Our predisposition is those decisions that we make from within ourselves. We need to decide beforehand what our decisions in different situations will be, that is predisposition. Our character and predisposition is not formed in the hardcore moments, when someone throws a hand grenade into a crowd. There is no time to think then. Our predisposition is formed in the 1000 little decisions that we make in the boring times leading up the hand grenade being thrown, so that jumping on it to save lives is not a decision based on the moment but based on our second nature.
Hear what Gandalf has to say about it:
Now hear what God has to say about it in Jeremiah 6:16
“This is what the Lord says:
“Stand at the crossroads and look;
ask for the ancient paths,
ask where the good way is, and walk in it,
and you will find rest for your souls.”
This is not something for the good times, the bad times, but for all the times. In the boring times find “everyday acts of kindness” and little goodnesses to do, ask for the good way, and walk in it.
There is something we should note about experiences in general, they entirely belong to the one experiencing them. I think it’s easy to look at someone else and say, “They aren’t going through such a tough time, first world problems hey!”, without realising that their problem is as big and as serious as they feel it, not how you think they should. The same goes with happiness. I have a KFC double crunch next to me, and I don’t think any woman in the world can understand the happiness that brings me.
Now with all these experiences bubbling around, we find that God is the one thing we must push in to. That’s because He is the one thing that is always good, regardless of our experiences. In the good, the bad, and the boring, God is still God and He is still good. He is the one who will work in all our experiences for our good (Romans 8:28). Jeremiah 17:12 says “A glorious throne, exalted from the beginning, is the place of our sanctuary.” When we step into God’s presence we do not step into some fragile environment with a schizophrenic God, we step into a glorious throne of sanctuary, of safety, one that has been since the beginning and will be until the end. The experience is out of your control. The choice of a glorious and eternal throne as sanctuary or the pitiful ever-changing you as the place to which you turn is yours.
I’ll keep this short because if you’re gonna get bored get bored reading the much longer posts about to arrive.
“What longer posts?” you ask, squinting at the screen as if long post might actually pop out.
“The sermons I’m writing” I reply. “You see, I’m preaching a lot more recently, and shall continue to do so, and my notebook (Typo: smiley, headphones) is now finished. And when I squeezed my notebook into an overcrowded bookshelf I got a bit sad because, well, it seems like the thoughts, doodles, boredom, pains, joys and sermons I had put into the notebook become lost in that crowd. Also, I am very good at losing things and have realized that I have lost at least one of my sermons, which is silly. So it makes sense to put them online for everyone to see.”
“Mkay.”
If you take the time to read them, and I would be honoured if you do, then I pray that God would bless you through them, either through a thought provoking statement, a cool/tweetable quote, or a challenge to take your relationship with Him seriously.
His hands were shaking before she walked in. I watched from behind the keyboard in the chapel where my own hands had shakily played the Bridal March moments earlier. I would have preferred a piano, but at least you can shift keyboards to protect yourself from the ring-bearing cheetah. His hands were steady as he held hers and they said their vows to each other, his in Afrikaans and hers in English. They covenanted themselves to each other, across language and across culture. And as they did neither of them looked away from the other, not even for a moment.
There is something so beautiful about a wedding. That man was her man. That woman was his woman. Unity in faithfulness.
Their arms were shaking as they lifted the bulging plastic case. I watched from the window of a Greyhound bus in Pretoria Station. They couldn’t lift it all the way so she swan-stooped her head underneath before shifting her weight so stand with the parcel perched precariously on her head, yet she straightened her neck and all that weight seemed to become a part of her. She bent at the knees to pick up another parcel but her friend got it for her, and handed to her. She turned and smoothly swayed into inner-city Pretoria, bag in arm, case on head, baby on back- strong.
There is something so beautiful about African mama’s.That child was her child. That child was her friend’s child. Unity in motherhood.
Her legs were shaking as she prayed. I watched from the other side of the prayer circle, enjoying that if I had closed my eyes then I wouldn’t have seen the beauty that God saw. I knew she was praying from her heart because my legs shake when I pray from mine, not violently like I have a fever but as if my whole body is reacting to the quickening heartbeat of the Spirit inside me. I prayed for her. I prayed with her.
There is something so beautiful about a woman praying passionately. That prayer was my prayer. That prayer was His prayer. Unity in Spirit.
“Jesus is ideal and wonderful, but you Christians – you are not like him.”- Gandhi.
Whenever I’ve heard an apologetic defense of the Christian faith, the most common and most reasonable attack on the Christian faith are the Christians who represent that faith. The Crusades are the prime example of brutality, murder, and power seeking in the name of Christ, though really you can probably look around the coffee shop you are sitting in and see Christian judge-mentality, gossip and self-centeredness all around you. Who would want to follow such a Christ? A very standard answer to that is to say that not everyone puts their beliefs into action. There will be Christians who live contrary to the beliefs they profess, and thus not only misrepresent Christianity on occasion, but constantly disregard who or what they say they are. Clearly this is the case, not just of Christianity but of all belief systems. We grow up, at some point when we are young someone asks “Are you a Christian?” or “Are you Muslim or Hindu?” or “Do you believe in God?” and we say the answer we know they want to hear and that becomes a part of our identity. We then live and grow with that in our minds until we reach the late teens and suddenly we have an identity crisis because we never knew what our identity was when we first claimed it.
Cool, so then everyone and all beliefs are on the same page, right? Wrong. There’s a fundamental problem unique to Christianity when someone calls themselves a Christian and don’t show change for the better. As a Christian if I am having this conversation with you it’s more than likely that you aren’t what I call “saved” or “born again”. In essence, I am telling you that there is a God, that this God is Holy, that this God designed and created the universe and mankind with a purpose, that mankind has gone against that design and sinned, that this separates us from God because his Holiness in incompatible with our unholiness and that this means that you are spiritually dead, but God really loved you and so there’s this whole Bible thing about God trying to get us back into relationship with Him, and that culminates in Him sending his son Jesus, and that by believing and accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and saviour you will be saved from sin and born again into new life through Him, and best of all, with Him. I am telling you that Christ makes you a new person, adopted into God’s family. I am telling you that you are walking a journey of transformation as your mind get’s renewed. And then I am also telling you that some Christians haven’t changed or are perhaps even worse than when they became Christian. There is clear contradiction between placid or perverse Christianity and the Christian gospel that brings new life, the gospel I just told you. Those who call themselves Christian yet don’t at least attempt to follow Christ nullify a gospel of life transformation and make it appear fraudulent. Those who subscribe to other belief sets don’t have such a clear contradiction, because they don’t claim to be born again, made Holy- set apart. Other theistic religions claim that there is reward for being moral and improving your current life and that’s why you should do it, not that accepting their beliefs would instill such change by the very core of those beliefs.
Now there are many reasons for this. Of course, Christians still sin, and although they may be actively journeying into Christ-likeness anyone on the receiving end of their sin will see only the mismatch between word and deed. Also, many people claim to be Christians for the reason I gave earlier- they accepted that identity without ever knowing what it means- and so have never been born again, have never felt the conviction of the Holy Spirit or experienced Him as Counselour, and so discredit the name of Christ by simple misunderstanding of what they are saying. Further, you get those who use Christ as an easy way of obtaining followers, money and power, by promoting themselves into one of the roles of the trinity (this is where the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition and centuries of Catholic-Protestant strife come in).
So what now? How do I tell someone that being adopted into God’s family, that having Christ renew them, is the best thing for their eternities when all around us are Christians whose lives haven’t changed. It is really a tragic situation, but there is some solace. Those Christians who have misrepresented Christ over the years have done exactly that, misrepresented Him. Their lifestyles are in conflict to their stated beliefs. The Crusades were not a logical result of Christ’s teachings, nor were the Catholic-Protestant killings, nor the Spanish Inquisition. In all those cases the Bible in it’s wholeness was disregarded and restricted and only small sections misused to try justify the actions of those in power. I don’t think this is a case of some people interpreting it differently, so much as people going out of their way to find the results they are looking for. However, those same events can be seen as the logical conclusion of materialism and evolution by natural selection. The murder of thousands of innocent people by the USSR can be justified logically within the framework of materialism and natural selection. On the other hand, the immense good work the church has done over the centuries, the Mother Teresa’s, the charities and the moral code of Western law is built on are the logical results of what it means to be born again, while I really can’t see logical reasons for many atheists to be charitable at all. Furthermore, Christ tells us that this contradiction would occur, most notably in the parables of Matthew 13.
The challenge then is this- if you call yourself a Christian, know what that means. If you know what it means, then live it, be holy because He is Holy.
I said, “Father, I submit to your will.”
He said, “Gray, I want you to die.”
I said, “Father I submit to your will.”
He said, “Gray I want you, to die.”
I said, “Father, I submit, to Your Will.”
He said, “Gray, I have taken you screaming out of Earth-womb but you are so scared of this new blood-covered, uncovered, undiscovered life that you cling to your Earth-root umbilical chord and refuse to let me cut.”
i said, “Father… i am scared.”
He said, “I know. Let go. I will nourish you with life.”
i said, “but Father i’m afraid.”
He said, “I know. Let me help you, one finger at a time.”
i said, “but Father i don’t want to die!”
He said, “I know. Neither did I.”
People say that Christianity is a crutch. But that implies that people are weak and cannot walk by themselves. Then you may as well try these crutches with me.
If Christianity is false then we will put the weight of our burdens on false crutches and they will break and we will stumble and fall and hurt ourselves and never trust those crutches again and join those who don’t see the need for crutches.
If we put our weight on true crutches then we will be healed from our spiritual death and in God the Spirit will lift us like Ezekiel and empower us to run like Elijah. We will walk, stumble, climb, crawl, sprint, bruise, cry, laugh, trip, rest, and piggy-back-ride on the road of sanctification.
Billions have tried the crutches. Billions have kept them and learnt to walk with them. The great fear is holding the crutches in our hands but never putting any weight on them, because then we will never walk at all.
GRAYMANI.COM 