Reuben's Confirmation

I'm really looking forward to Reuben being confirmed tonight, partly because it's a good thing in itself, partly because it's a (biological and church) family celebration - I don't have enough parties - and partly because it's a parenting thing.

A while ago when I was looking at the atheist bus stuff I browsed to the justgiving page for Alpha Course bus ads. Someone there had written "£2 to encourage you to target your indoctrination at consenting adults instead of undiscriminating children. It's good to talk." Having grown up with a faith that worked really well until I started asking questions in my late teens, then given up on faith entirely and gone away from God, and having had to think hard about what I believe and why, and needing a faith of which I can ask searching questions, I sincerely hope that we've been able to bring up our children to know about God, but also to have a faith that is flexible enough to grow with them. I think that the fact that Daniel has rejected Christianity altogether is at least encouraging that we've not just "indoctrinated" our children. Unless, of course, we're really not very good at indoctrination.

I probably feel just as frustrated with non-Christians who reject Christianity because it's "organized religion" or "just a myth" as I do with Christians who have a "simple faith", by which they mean they never ask questions. I know that I'm guilty of deciding that I'm not going to be a Muslim or a Buddhist without fully investigating the claims that Islam or Buddhism make, but at least I make that decision because I've made a thought-through decision for Christ, and it would be hypocritical to then consider other religions. (This doesn't mean that I shouldn't try to learn about other religions and belief systems, so that I can understand and respect those who practice them.) I also know that there are a lot of Christians who put people off Christianity through bigotry and intolerance or answering every honest question with a quotation from the (King James) Bible. But I remain convinced that Jesus is who he says he is and that an adult Christian faith, which Reuben will be confirming he has tonight, should be both flexible and robust enough to stand up to whatever questions and doubts and objections are thrown at it.

So I'll be very proud of Reuben tonight, not only because he has chosen to confirm publicly that he is a Christian, but also because he is a young man who knows how to think, and and has made an individual and thoughtful choice.

Which is pretty much all you could ask in a son.

Atheist bus advert

I shared this the other day, and I was going to write something about it at the time, but you know how it is, busy, busy, busy, lazy, etc; anyway I've still been thinking about it and wondering what it is about this that particularly made me pause. I suspect that it's because although I'm a Christian, I absolutely sympathize with Ariane Sherine: I think that bus adverts that threaten eternal damnation are bad news, not Good News. I was initially all for starting a campaign to have bus adverts saying "There is a God: he wants you to stop worrying and enjoy your life (Luke 12:22, John 16:24) - actually I still think that this might be a good idea - but more importantly I think that we Christians need to think carefully about the way that we present Jesus to the world. Despite Richard Dawkins - whose work I used to quite like - saying idiotic things like "thinking is anathema to religion" (ah yes, Professor Dawkins, the complete lack of Christian and other religious writers and academics for the last 1000 years is convincing evidence for this statement), I'm sure that there is a good case for engaging people with the Good News that Jesus makes a positive difference, here and now in this life, rather than suggesting that he's waiting around until the end of time to get you back for every little thing you ever did wrong. The British Humanist Association wants people to ask questions, to think for themselves and to enjoy life. If the Church doesn't want the same things, we're all in trouble.

Conversation

I have kind of mixed feelings about last night's Conversation. On the one hand, having Celia provide a focus for it - and giving notices about this - meant we had a lot more people come than have attended recently. On the other hand, those who attended were also quite a bit older than our usual demographic, which meant that we had to lose the background music, which I guess I always saw as part of the "cafe-style" atmosphere we were trying for.

But... people were very willing to move around, there was a lot of very animated conversation going on, including (from what I observed) some really thoughtful stuff about how we as a church may appear to others who are different in some way from us. I suppose we'll have to see what kind of feedback we get over the next week or so. I can't even really pin down what I imagined Conversation would look like if it really took off, but I know last night was different from whatever that mental picture might be.

The other interesting thing, from my point of view, was that I invited in a couple of lads who were playing football outside when I arrived. They didn't last long in the main room with everyone else - though it did make me wonder if that might have been different with the usual smaller and younger crowd - but did stay and chat for a bit with me and James in the Welcome Area. It made me realise that I've missed that kind of conversation, where you can be talking about the Atonement and someone else just talks over you with some violent/gross anecdote, so you stop and then backtrack again. It also reminded me that actually I'm quite happy to talk to people about Jesus/Christianity/the Bible (why doesn't it have a blurb on the back, wondered one of the girls who came in), and I feel quite happy talking about that and answering questions like "Are you a Jew? You been circumcised?", "Why do good things happen to bad people?" or "When God wanted to kill everyone, why didn't he just snap his fingers and kill them straightaway instead of sending a flood so that they died slowly and horribly?" Hmmm. Slightly sad that I can't do talking to young people about Jesus for a job, but glad that I had a chance to do it last night.

So, remind me what this 'blogging' thing is...

I haven't posted anything here for ages, I know; I've been so short of inspiration that it's taken me weeks to think of an excuse for not posting. However, my lovely Zude home page has disappeared, to be replaced with a piece of ugliness that wants me to sign up to Google Sites - which I tried, and it took me less than ten minutes to be severely unimpressed. So I shall now use this as my home page, and see if I can do a bit of tweaking with the template.