Religion, Shit it

I heard on radio 2 today some guys talking about God and his existence and all that. Basically they were discussing the morality of religion, and its place in society. Apparently God obviously doesn’t exist because religion has a negative impact on the world. Obviously God doesn’t exist because religion has, and continues to, fuel wars, prejudice, stereotypes, disputes and segregation. God can’t exist because its not only religious people who ‘do good’. God obviously can’t exist because a lot of religious people are hoping for the end of the world (even via nuclear warfare) believing that God will then intervene and all will be well.  

I think what annoys me most about this is the fact that religion lets God down. That people’s perception of God comes from religion. 

I don’t like religion. 

I like God. 

I accept that everyone does good. That God isn’t confined to religion. 

I’m not waiting for Armageddon, but believe ‘religious’ people should be ‘cleaning’ up the world. Seeking God’s kingdom. 

I acknowledge that religion isn’t God. That it is human, full of failure, tradition, history and dogma. 

I believe religion, although does some good, does fuel war, and prejudice. I don’t believe these are assets of God.

I don’t believe that because religion is wrong God doesn’t exist.  

I like God, but as Stephen Fry said, ‘religion, shit it’

Night Terror

(Having written this I think it all sounds a bit cheesy, but at the time I thought it was a really useful illustration of the situation we often find ourselves in, it being that, an illustration)  

Yesterday I heard a story about a child or suffered from ‘Night Terrors’. 

Night terror or pavor nocturnus is a sleep disorder among small children, where the child is often described to sweat profusely, breathe rapidly, bolt upright and let out blood-curdling screams.

 The father who told this story described of how distressing and scary it was for him the first time he heard the screaming of his son from up stairs. He was told that the best thing to do wasn’t to cry out and wake the child, but to sit at the end of the bed and just comfort the child with soft words, of how ‘he was here’ and ‘it was all right’. He portrayed this feeling of how he seemed utterly helpless to help his child, sitting there, but at the same time, he new this was best.  

Night Terrors can last for 5 –30minutes.  

30 minutes of sitting there watching your first born sweating and screaming in terror, as if possessed, and you just have to sit their whispering ‘everything is going to be alright’. But you know that that’s best for them. 

Imagine that situation.

I reckon it would be heart breaking for the parent. Feeling helpless. But knowing your doing all you can. The best you can.  

Sometimes I think this is the position God finds himself in. Doing the right thing, but it doesn’t seem to do us much good.  

We want to be woken up, shaken up. We want the big impact. But God realises this isn’t best, but the soft whisper is what’s needed.

We often think God isn’t there because he won’t shout at us, slap us and wake us up, out of our miseries.  

But God has to sit there at the end of our beds, watching, heart broken, just whispering ‘I’m hear, everything is all right, even if you don’t know it’   

Exciting Times

A lot of people say that the church is dying. I think this might be a good thing.

Perhaps the Church (the body of Christ) isn’t dying, but the church (congregations) are.

Isn’t that exciting?

“After a period of fifteen hundred years or so we can just about begin to say that at last no man is now a Christian because of government compulsion, or because it is the way to produce favour at court, or because it is necessary to qualify for public office, or because public opinion demand conformity, or because he would lose customers if he did not go to church, or even because habit and intellectual indolence keep the mind in the appointed groove. This fact makes the present day the most important and the most exhilarating period in the history of Christianity for fifteen hundred years.” Herbert Butterfield, Christianity and history