The picture above shows the Schoenstatt Shrine in Greater Manchester. I visited it a few months ago and enjoyed the experience and the welcome of the few people who happened to be there at the time, whose holy hour of prayer I disrupted. All the pictures in this post were taken at the shrine. If you're ever passing that way go and see it and spend some time sitting in the gardens. They're for everyone, not just for local Catholics.
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I became a Christian in 1990. In February of that year I knelt on the floor of a bedroom in a hall of residence in Bradford and prayed a prayer that set the course for most of my adult life. In that time I've been a worship leader, youth group leader, deacon, and a preacher too. I've been a part of lots of different types of church in the places I've lived and prayed in a wide variety of Christian ways.
In 2011 things started to change for me. In a moment of total rebellion against what I believed to be right I read a book I believed to be heretical. I had been taught the author was a false teacher. I firmly believed that his views were not in line with the true meaning of Scripture. The blame for the downfall of a Christian church movement in the UK was placed at his door because his so-called errors led to people sinning. And yet I read the book. The book in question was Original Blessing by Rev. Matthew Fox. I believe reading it was a crucial part of my development and my finding of a greater freedom. I also believe that had I not read it I would not have reached the point of accepting myself as transgender and autistic. Original Blessing was like a light shining from heaven - I believed in a literal heaven then. In the years following there were many more lights both from within and without Christianity.
In 2016 I gave up a few things that I had held as central to my life for 25 years:
- Church attendance
- Any belief in a supreme deity we call God
- The title of "Christian"
And yet I am still pretty obsessed by the subjects of Jesus, spirituality, and Christian teachers. I can't quite seem to let it go. Not yet. I'm autistic - I need a special interest! Even if it's one I no longer believe in.
This blog is part of what it means to me to not let go, to continue to struggle with this man called Jesus. I have decided to take another look at the Gospels as recorded in the New Testament and see if they still can be meaningful to me in the life I now choose to live. And even if they can be meaningful, is there anything there that is both meaningful and which can't be found in many other places.
In short, I want to know whether there is anything left for me in Jesus that is worthy of offering some part of my life.
In the past I could have written lots of expository thoughts on the Gospels and presented them to you in much the manner of a Bishop J. C. Ryle or a William Barclay and added to the piles of soundly evangelical clever volumes. I used to be able to write sermons very easily and they would be extremely sound doctrinally, full of content and I was frequently told that I was a pretty good preacher. It would have been no challenge at all to write something sound, based on what I thought I knew, and bolstered by the wisdom of a dozen different commentaries most of which happened to agree with me.
It's harder now. I do not have the certainty of doctrines and dogmas. I do not have an orthodox Christian theology at the core of my life. I don't have all those commentaries to refer to because I cleared them out. I don't even have theism and, it must be admitted, there is apparently a lot of theism in the Gospel stories. How can I even approach them honestly when I don't even believe in God?
Nevertheless, I want to attempt this. These are the godless Gospels. What I write, I hope, isn't going to be some angry rant against Christianity and its sins and perceived sins. I'm not one of the bitter fundamentalist new-atheists slamming all theists for their stupidity. I recognise that there is much hidden away in Christian spirituality that is of merit. It just often got swamped by dogma and especially by those twin evil doctrines of original sin and exclusivism. Those two siblings conspired together to create a picture of a human race deserving eternal damnation and a hopelessness apart from correct belief and surrender to Jesus. I also happen to believe that moving past the traditional doctrines of theism would be a good idea. I'm just not going to tell you you're insane or an idiot if you happen to disagree with me.
I still read Christian writers sometimes. Online and in print. It's just that I don't choose to consider those who preach the twin evils as worthy of my time. I spent decades believing them and I believe it's a 'miracle' that I reject them now.
The authors I now read or would consider reading range from bishops to outcasts.
- Matthew Fox and the followers of creation spiritualities. Matthew Fox was the first writer I read who led me away from original sin and into a much more beautiful life.
- Bishop John Shelby Spong, John Dominic Crossan, Marcus Borg, Brian McLaren and those more aligned with Progressive Christianity.
- Jim Palmer. I love Jim Palmer. A man who rejected his Christianity. A man who rejected Jesus. A man who now writes about and talks about Jesus all the time and has found a Jesus who is, for him at least, worth following.
- Michael Benedikt and those who teach Theopraxy.
- Those who look to a more gnostic Jesus such as Timothy Freke and others who would quote the Nag Hammadi library and other texts.
- Non-theist or atheist Christians such as Rev. Gretta Vosper.
- Various of the mystical teachers of Christianity - Julian of Norwich, Hildegard of Bingen, Meister Eckhart and others of today or the past.
- Christian meditation teachers such as John Main and Laurence Freeman.
- Bede Griffiths and others who find the light of Spirit in many places.
- The wisdom that comes from the Quaker movement, especially seen in modern British writings and in the wonderful book of Quaker Faith and Practice.
The list isn't exclusive. I have other authors of Christian books on my shelves still. I cleared out most of their works but still have enough to fill a tall bookcase. Since rejecting the exclusivity of Jesus and walking further away from Christianity I've also been gathering books on other spiritual paths too - Buddhism, Hinduism, Sufism and so on, alongside more esoteric works.
So much to read, so little time and concentration! Maybe it doesn't matter. Whatever God is or isn't, whatever Spirit is and Love is and Light is you can be pretty sure that they are not a book and that their essence isn't to be contained in clever words on a page. The Taoist teaching is correct I believe that God or reality or truth is unnameable. Maybe any positive words about the infinite ground of being place too many limits and we can only say for certain what God is not. "No name is sufficient, and all names together still fall short," as Islam teaches us. In Islam there are ninety-nine names for God. Maybe one day I'll consider them from a non-theist perspective.
You will spot that I still use the word God. However, I am not a theist. I am not talking about a person and I have no supreme being to pray to. Try not to be confused!
So this blog will present, when I have the inclination to add to it, my views on the four Gospels. It's not going to be an academic treatise. It's not going to have any weight of scholarship to it at all. At least I don't think it is.
What it's more likely to be primarily is something arising both from my own thoughts and from a process akin to Lectio Divina - that particularly prayerful method of reading the Scriptures and listening to see what Spirit says about it. Lectio Divina isn't a systematic theology. It doesn't need to know minor textual variants or what a famous saint or preacher or theologian had to say. Lectio is ideally the deep speaking with the deep and in that place finding life.
As I sit with the words I'll be using various translations - I think very often I'll sit with the Catholic Comparative New Testament which contains eight different translations side by side. I may also refer to the cross references in the Thompson Chain Reference and maybe even in Torrey's Treasury of Scripture Knowledge if I feel that way inclined. For a fundamentalist comparison I still own a Dake Annotated Study Bible. And if I get too confused about things I'm sure I can find something on my shelves or a word of wisdom.
But my main guide will be the words in front of me, together with some of the thoughts that arise from sitting with those words so many times before and now sitting with them in a different way, and together too with the process of sitting and listening. I want my teacher to be the revelation that comes through silence.
One other thing you need to know is that I don't believe that I have to agree with the Bible. I believe it contains textual errors and propaganda. I believe it contains views from the past that might have been useful once but which would be very unwise to adhere to today. And I believe wholeheartedly that the people who wrote the book, while seeking after truth, got it wrong.
When we read in the Old Testament how people said God called for genocide the only wise course of action is to say that no supreme being ever called for genocide and that people, in their religious and nationalistic zeal and sometimes in their desperation to survive, got it very wrong. And we can leave it like that. They were people. Fallible. Sometimes screwing up completely. And they wrote their scrolls for their own reasons.
God did not write a book for us. That's my dogmatic statement right there: God didn't write the Bible. Whatever I may write in this blog arises at least in part from that one belief. Be warned. If you believe he wrote it so we have to believe it, if you believe he called for genocide and other evils, then we're going to disagree. I don't mind disagreement. Philosophy - the love of wisdom - is at least in part built on disagreement.
I hope that this process is rewarding and revealing and is profitable to my life. And I hope, since I'm going to be typing about it all - unless I get fed up with the project or it still hurts too much - that somewhere along the line you will find something rewarding and revealing too.
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