Category Archives: Apologetics

Saint George and the Dragon Age: Hic Sunt Dracones

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CS Lewis

C.S. Lewis, famous for ‘The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe’, stated in one of his non-fictional works,  ‘Mere Christianity’,

‘The moment you wake up, all your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists in listening to that other voice, that point of view, letting that other stronger, quieter life come flowing in.’

In other words, our path toward being fully human involves a recognition each day that we are not the centre of the universe. The trouble is we live in a culture that tells us that we are and that we should always get what we want. We are all consumers now relating to everything in terms of consumption – not just shopping, but education, health care, and religion. But being a consumer is not the height of what it means to be human.

animal-1861504_1280I am reminded of this on Saint George’s Day – 23rd April – the day dedicated to the patron saint of England.  We probably know the story about the knightly George and the dragon. But what do we know about the real George?

All we know is that George, or Georgios, was born around 270 BCE, probably in Cappadocia (now Eastern Turkey), not England. At the age of 17 he entered the service of the Emperor Diocletian as a Roman soldier.

Diocletian was for most of his reign tolerant of religious minorities, but around the turn of the century public opinion blamed the refusal of Christians to participate in pagan sacrifices for a series of unfavourable events and omens, and the Emperor ordered all Christians to conform to the Roman sacrificial system or else lose their positions. Those opposed to Christianity pressed for punishment, and an Oracle from Apollo at Didyma was widely interpreted as calling for the suppression of Christians. So on 24th February 303 BCE Diocletian’s ‘Edict against the Christians’ was published. A spate of persecutions followed, and many Christians died including George the Roman soldier and Christian martyr.

The Roman historian Eusebius, writing twenty years later, spoke of a soldier who was executed on 23rd April 303 BCE for this act. George was identified with Eusebius’s soldier, which is why Saint George is remembered on 23rd April to this day.

There are numerous theories of why Saint George is depicted with a dragon in Christian iconography. One theory suggests that the Roman soldier, George, refused to kneel before an image of a dragon or a serpent – possibly on a Roman Standard – and that this is where the story of ‘Saint George and the Dragon’ originates.

But even stories possess truth and allow us to explore the truth within ourselves. C.S. Lewis knew this, exploring the truth of his Christian faith through ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’ as much as he did through any of his theological writings or radio broadcasts. Lewis’s friend J.R.R.Tolkien held to a similar principle in his writings that revolved around his famous trilogy ‘The Lord of the Rings’.
Role playing games such as ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ and digital versions such as ‘Dragon Age’ have built upon these stories and developed them for our own age. All of them in some ways look back to earlier stories such as ‘Saint George and the Dragon’. And in that story George had to face a question. Was he the centre of his own universe or was their something more worth defending? A dragon that needed defeating? The real George faced the dragon by refusing to renounce his Christian faith.

George would probably have remained a saint principally revered in the Mediterranean, Middle East, and Asia had it not been for the Crusades. The crusaders journeys introduced them to the icons of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, and they were impressed by the depictions of the courageous soldier-saint slaying a dragon and rescuing a damsel in distress.

They simply did not understand how the symbolism of iconography works, and that George’s dragon stood for evil, or perhaps Diocletian, and the beautiful princess for Christianity, or the Blessed Virgin Mary, or for the Church itself. Not knowing how to interpret what they saw, they produced their own interpretations.

Sadly, this expressed itself in the crusades with acts of violence under the guise of ‘knightly valour’ and today Saint George is hijacked by extreme English nationalistic tendencies in some quarters. If only they knew who the real George, or Giorgios, was.

But if we can strip away the layers of legend we are still left with a little pinch of truth. George, the Christian who stood up to something terrifying and was able to do so not because he thought he was at the centre of the universe but because he knew he was not. Realising we are not the centre of the universe is a good thing as the history of map making can illustrate to us.

map-595790_1920.png500 years ago people believed the Earth was flat. We know this from the history of making maps. Anyone who has been a scout knows not only that Saint George is their patron saint but something about map reading and map making.

If you go to an archive and look at any maps from 500 years ago you will see that maps of Europe were fine, but the further away from Europe they got, the less accurate they became. In uncharted places a Latin phrase can often be found:

‘Hic Sunt Dracones’ or ‘Here be dragons.’

So in the history of map making, dragons represented the fear of the unknown. As we know it took explorers to go into the unknown and to face these fears. That is why we have accurate maps today. To me, Saint George’s Day is about facing fear – facing the dragon. For the real Saint George it mean’t facing the fear of being persecuted for what he believed in as a Christian.

What might facing the dragon look like in our own age?

george-and-the-dragon-2406524_1920

‘Hic Sunt Dracones.’

We will all encounter these words, and not just on historical maps. Remembering the real Saint George may help us face those words wherever we may encounter them. I remember a hymn I used to sing at school, ‘When a Knight won his Spurs’, which in one of the verses says the following:

“Let faith be my shield and let joy be my steed

‘gainst the dragons of anger, the ogres of greed;

and let me set free, with the sword of my youth,

from the castle of darkness the power of the truth.”

Living these words where ‘there be dragons’ lies the path to true chivalry.

Cylons with Soul

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In the wake of the success of ‘Star Wars’ in the late 1970’s another science fiction franchise that made an impression on me as a young boy was ‘Battlestar Galactica’.

Drawing upon theories of lost civilisations and humans on Earth being descendants of space travellers, the original story of ‘Battlestar Galactica’ was essentially a reinterpretation of ‘Frankenstein’. The mechanised creations of humanity known as Cylons, turn upon their makers whose surviving remnants then seek a new home known only in myth – Earth.

In the late 1970’s life was quite simple for me as a child and this was reflected in ‘Battlestar Galactica’ – the humans were the goodies and the Cylons were the baddies.

But we all grow up.

Life becomes more complex and so did ‘Battlestar Galactica’ when it was relaunched in 2004. The Cylons now looked like humans, they believed in God, they varied in their opinion as to whether humanity should be wiped out or not – they had soul!

The Cylons became much more of a reflection of humanity with differing shades of virtue, belief, and morality. It became harder to tell who were the goodies or the baddies and civil war in space never felt so real.

I grew up going to a church with bullet holes in the walls.

long divisionWhat I should explain is I grew up going to a church with bullet holes in the walls that originate from the English Civil War (1642-1651), the time of the Cavaliers and the Roundheads. It is well known to local historians and Civil War re-enactors alike as being of strategic importance during that period of British history. All I can say is that it was something of a surreal experience as a child to sing hymns of peace and love while surrounded by these historic reminders of divided humanity!

Would you be a Cavalier or a Roundhead, I wonder?

Although we can toy with that idea in our imaginations now, it was a real, stark question for the generations before us in England. Families divided over loyalties, brother against brother, daughter against mother – each having to make a choice in their religious and political allegiances. Some of these divisions have reverberated well into the 21st century, for example in Ireland where Oliver Cromwell’s suppressive policies enacted by his New Model Army inflicted lasting social divisions.

I think of that when I come to the gospel passage Luke 12:49-53, when Jesus says:

“I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! But I have a baptism to undergo, and what constraint I am under until it is completed!  Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division.  From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three.  They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”

I think it is one of the most disturbing passages for any Christian to deal with. One reason being that it may not fit well with our ideas of Church or God at all.

But there it is.

So apart from ignoring it – how can we respond to Jesus’ words today? Perhaps we need to begin by reminding ourselves of some important things in the language that Jesus was using.

  1. The ‘fire’ that Jesus came to cast is best understood as a purifying and refining fire.  The prophet Malachi spoke of the Lord being “like a refiner’s fire and like a fullers’ soap” (Malachi 3:2) that separates the good from the bad.  This fire is cast upon the earth to refine and purify everyone and everything – it is God’s act and not the act of a group of human beings to be the ‘refiner’s fire’. What I mean by this is that caution should always intervene when the words ‘God is on our side’ are used as history can teach us.
  2. The baptism spoken of here must not to be confused with the water baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist (Matthew 3:16).  The baptism Jesus speaks of in Luke 12 is a baptism that had not yet occurred.  This baptism is his death, burial, and resurrection.  The result of this baptism is the kindling of the refiner’s fire that is cast upon the whole earth.

These two factors pose us with a choice.

In verses 52-53, Jesus shows that this division will affect family loyalties. This is perhaps the hardest verse to listen to, but we know it is true and that it happens. For the listeners of Luke’s Gospel the choice was stark because Christians were a persecuted minority. Choosing to be a Christian was a costly decision. Sadly, that is still true in some parts of the world to this day.

But having said that and apart from the English Civil War, families in this country until relatively recently, have suffered as a result of divisions over religious affiliation. Granted most of the people I talk to on this subject are in their 80’s or 90’s but occasionally I still hear a story like:

“Uncle Bert married Aunt Bertha and because she was a Catholic nobody in the family had anything to do with them ever again.”

I do not think those are the divisions Jesus was referring to. Instead some of us probably know that we have to be prepared as Christians to make choices when it comes to our love of God and love of family – because sadly in some cases – the two may not go together.

We may never have to make the dramatic choices made by those Christians who first listened to Luke’s Gospel and lived under the oppressive regime of the Roman Empire. We may never have to make the choices of allegiance made by our predecessors in the English Civil War or by Christians persecuted around the world to this day. But even now we will have to make choices and some of those choices may be uncomfortably close to home.

My simple rule in such situations is always to be open to another point of view, even within my own family, but that does not necessarily mean it is my track. And sometimes that can be hard – that cannot be denied and Jesus even tells us that to follow him is not always the easy path.

The second half of this gospel reading portrays Jesus chastising the crowds for not recognising the signs he bares. Like dark clouds or a stormy wind, the teaching and acts of mercy he performs indicate what will come. Jesus is born for one thing: to herald the coming kingdom of God, and to establish this kingdom he will raise neither banner nor sword but instead hang on the cross, the vulnerable insignia of God’s new reign.

Those who recognise the signs and choose to follow him will not only need to forsake the trappings of power that adorn the lords of the present kingdom, but can also expect resistance, even opposition. But if Jesus’ call to a new way of relating to each other — via forgiveness, courage, and humility — stirred up division during his time and that of the early church, what does it bring today?

Christians in the western world are asked to give up very little for the sake of faith in the 21st century. How, then, do we hear Jesus? To answer this question, we must engage in our own weather forecasting by discerning the signs of the times:

  • What elements of our lives hinder our service to God?
  • The God of the lowly and powerless?
  • The marginalised and the forgotten?
  • The God who challenges the status quo?

Hard questions.

But if we fear undergoing Jesus’ baptism by fire, we might take comfort in the simple yet stark fact that Christ who comes to baptise us with fire and the Holy Spirit first embraced his own baptism — experiencing harm that we might know healing, undergoing judgment that we might know pardon, suffering death that we might know life.

Thus, looking backward to Jesus we may find the courage to look forward to discern the signs and challenges of our own times. To run the right way – but also understanding this may not be the same way all the time as others. In the letter to the Hebrews 12:1-2 we are encouraged to choose to live by faith because:

“…we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

040820-F-5019K-010Photo via Good Free Photos

And when I still question myself I am reminded of one simple fact from the church where I grew up – the bullet holes in the walls are man made.

God’s fire is a refining fire that comes in love – not anger, or hatred, or fear, or greed – or any of the other factors that make up the division and war of human history, religious or otherwise.

  • How do we choose to run toward that love rather than away from it?
  • How do we express that love to those that might oppose it?

Therein lies not only our history but our story – yet to be finished. Like athletes I am sure the answer to our story lies in our daily training. Hopefully NOT lead bullet holes but gold medals will be the inheritance we pass on.

But time will tell if Cylons with soul will be our final legacy…

Feeding the Two Wolves

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2 wolves

There is a Cherokee story of a grandfather teaching his grandson about life.

“A fight is going on inside me,” said the grandfather to the boy.

“It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.”

The grandfather then added, “The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”

The grandson thought about this and then asked his grandfather,

“Which wolf will win?”

The grandfather replied,

“The one you feed.”

Perhaps the most concise film introduction to a fictional political thriller that I have seen is ‘The Kingdom’ directed by Peter Berg and released in 2007. The film explores the complex relationship of the United States and Saudi Arabia through the 20th century and post 9/11. Although the film had mixed reviews I think the introductory titles are worth watching. But even before the discovery of oil Western culture has always had a fascination with the Middle East.

Earlier in the 20th century the controversial figure ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ captured the popular imagination in the West via his exploits in the Arabian desert, dramatised through newspapers, books, and films. Michael Asher, a former SAS soldier, once retraced Lawrence’s epic journeys in his book ‘Lawrence: The Uncrowned King of Arabia’. At one point Asher writes in appreciation but also critically of Lawrence:

“Although Lawrence genuinely tried to see things from an Arab point of view, and did so more successfully than most, his technique of ’empathy’ remained a method of control. He believed the traditional Arabs morally superior to Europeans because they were ‘primitive’ and therefore ‘innocent,’ but not intellectually so. The reality of his privileged position was stated frankly when he wrote: ‘Really this country, for the foreigner, is too glorious for words: one is really the baron in the feudal system.'”

ships of the desert

Trying to comprehend the turbulent relationship that the West has had with the Middle East may help us to understand how this influences the relationship of Christianity with Islam. Thoughts may quickly race to the period in history known as the Crusades. This will often be a starting point for many people, but it does not have to be the end. For example, amid the strife of the Fifth Crusade a little-known true story of hope can be found.

If you were asked to think of Saint Francis of Assisi you would probably picture a medieval saint, dressed as a monk in a brown habit, and surrounded by animals. Unfortunately this caricature does not reveal the depth of character of this revolutionary Christian who had a profound interfaith encounter with a Muslim during the time of the Fifth Crusade:

“In 1219 an encounter took place between a Christian from Italy, Francis of Assisi, and the Islamic Sultan of Egypt, al-Malik-al-Kamil. This meeting took place at Damietta in northern Egypt during the progress of the Fifth Crusade. Over a period of perhaps three weeks, religious dialogue took place between Francis and Al-Kamil, after which time the Sultan had Francis escorted safely back to the Christian camp. It is possible to discern from the writings of Francis after his return from Egypt that the meeting had a deep religious impact upon him in the latter years of his life. It can be said that both Francis and al-Kamil experienced through their encounter what the Christian theologian Bernard Lonergan has spoken of as a conversion into a new horizon. The historical encounter between Francis and the Sultan witnesses to the fact that through religious conversion, it is possible for members of different religious faiths to arrive at a common vision of universal peace and reconciliation.”

Dr Paul Rout OFM Heythrop College, University of London

St Francis and Sultan

Which is the wolf we are feeding?

The story of St. Francis and the Sultan is a salutary reminder not to demonise whole peoples due to the terrible acts of individuals or groups driven to violence. Even before the recent and tragic events in France and Germany in the past week or so, social media has empowered us to provide immediate responses in the public domain to such acts, including those denouncing religion as a ‘primary motivation for violence’ from which we need to be freed.

Although this is an understandable reaction the truth is that motivations often tend to be far more complex and involve a number of factors. This is something I have briefly tried to illustrate in the examples provided in the relationship between the West and the Middle East. And although the British scientist and atheist, Richard Dawkins, has publicly denounced religion, there is evidence that suggests that only 7% of all wars in history have truly been caused by religion.

Totalitarian regimes such as the Soviet Union under Josef Stalin in the 20th century have been far more lethal in the eradication of human life for the sake of political ideology. It is generally agreed that Stalin was responsible for the deaths of 20 million people. It seems we will always find a reason to kill one another, with or without God.

Stalin

I accept it is easy for me in the comfort of my home and cocooned within the security of a western-liberal democracy to make these statements. I also appreciate that political and religious extremism of whatever kind not only exists but demands our attention in the 21st century. But extremism is simply that – most people in the world want to live an ordinary life. That is important to remember and to communicate to one another too.

I believe we are all ‘fearfully and wonderfully made’ (Psalm 139:14). Whether that is your belief or not we still have a mutual responsibility to engage with that which appears to be in juxtaposition to all that we are. Whatever our creed, ethnicity, or culture, we have the ability to communicate and potentially co-operate with one another like never before.

But will we?

Which is the wolf we are feeding?

Whatever we say –

our children will live with the answer…

where are we going

Personally I do not believe in fate but in free will.

Choice lies in our hands…

palm trees

 

What’s in a Name?

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forbiddenfruit_Fotor

Steve Jobs was once asked where the name for Apple Incorporated came from. In Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs written in 2011, Jobs is quoted to have said:

“I was on one of my fruitarian diets…I had just come back from the apple farm. It sounded fun, spirited, and not intimidating. Apple took the edge off the word ‘computer.’ Plus, it would get us ahead of Atari in the phonebook.”

Earlier in the book the author deflates one of the myths associated with the Apple name:

“At one point I emailed to ask if it was true, as my daughter had told me, that the Apple logo was an homage to Alan Turing, the British computer pioneer who broke the German wartime codes and then committed suicide by biting into a cyanide-laced apple. He [Steve Jobs] replied that he wished he had thought of that, but hadn’t.”

What’s in a name?

A great deal as the above stories illustrate. From the baptisms I have conducted I know that parents sometimes go to great lengths to choose a name for their child and according to the Bible the first job given to the first human being, Adam, was to name the animals. (Genesis 2:20) Even Jesus was not averse to giving his followers nicknames such as ‘Peter the Rock’. (Matthew 16:18)

Names therefore have the ability to be creative, inclusive, affirming. But names used negatively have the ability to do the complete opposite and become destructive, exclusive, undermining. Names have power to build up and break down. From pet names, to nick names, to rude names – we learn the power of names from the playground upwards.

legion

In the Bible names were also understood to have power and to know someone’s name was in some way to have power over them. This may sound strange but if we think of how acutely aware we all are in our own age of ‘identity theft’ then perhaps this idea may not seem quite so unusual after all. Names existed not only in the physical but in the spiritual realm. And it is with that idea in mind that we come to a story often called ‘The Gerasene Demoniac’. (Mark 5:1-20 & Luke 8:26-39)

Significantly this story doesn’t ever tell us what the man’s real name was. I’m sure the Gerasenes had some names for him. Like ‘that crazy guy who lives in the cemetary.’, or ‘demon possessed.’ Such possession is part of common experience still in some parts of the world, but in the West it is more difficult for people to accept. However, I find that more people believe in the supernatural, whether they are religious or not, than may admit – it’s just that it is generally one of those things we don’t talk about. Behind that probably lies the fear that we may be made fun of, illustrated by such comedies as ‘Rev’.

So let’s picture the story of the ‘Gerasene Demoniac’.

Like some horror movie the story begins with the disciples crossing a stormy sea and nearly drowning. They reach Gentile territory, that is non-Jewish, (ie) people not like them but instead to be avoided, even feared. A passage possibly referred to is from Isaiah 65:2-5. Here are characterised the outcast of God as living in tombs and eating pig’s flesh, so it is interesting to wonder whether the gospels want us to draw conclusions as to what sort of person the demoniac is. ‘Beyond the Pale’, might be a more modern phrase?

This is a foreign and dangerous place, where the demoniac lives howling among the tombs.  Jesus commands the demons to come out, and sends them into a herd of pigs that stampede over a cliff. For the man they were possibly a visible sign of his exorcism. All stuff that even if it does not sound scary by today’s horror standards – does at least sound strange.

Quite rightly, people struggle with this story. Some have said there might be political undertones relating to the occupation of Israel by the Romans. We should take note of the demons being named “Legion” (a legion being a Roman term for 6,000 soldiers), suggesting a symbolic defeat by Jesus in the stampeding pigs who run off the edge of a cliff? If you wish to explore the political overtones of this story an excellent starting place is ‘Binding the Strong Man’ by Ched Myers’.

cyberhal

But of course we may have other names for the ‘Gerasene Demoniac’ today. Names like ‘Paranoid Schizophrenic’. And that in some ways may be even more difficult to address than the supernatural. Mental illness is one of the last social taboos in this country – which is ironic because at least one in four of us in the United Kingdom will suffer a mental health issue in our lifetime.

Some of the stigma that surrounds mental health issues is probably connected to the fact that behaviour is often altered and no visible physical signs can usually be seen, such as in the case of a broken leg or someone who is blind. This may disturb us deeply because we may associate this with a loss of ‘self’. Personally I have found the slow disintegration of Hal’s mind, the computer in the classic film ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’, far more moving than perhaps it was originally intended to be.

The relationship between mental health issues and the new challenges presented to us due to technological change is worth noting at this point. ‘iDisorder’ is the title of a book and a theory by research psychologist, Dr. Larry Rosen. Rosen explores the common desire for many people to constantly remain ‘connected’ through their smartphones and other communication devices. In the final chapter of ‘iDisorder’, Rosen says:

“…many of us are on the verge of an iDisorder as our daily interactions with media technologies may be imbuing us with signs and symptoms of one of many psychological disorders… Luckily for us, our brains are constantly changing. Neuroscientists call this ‘neuroplasticity,’ which is basically a constant process of strengthening and weakening neural (nerve cell) connections in the brain as a function of our experiences…. Given that our brains are inundated with stimuli all day long and that the digital content currently available in our world is the equivalent to everyone in the world tweeting or blogging constantly for a century, neuroplasticity is a brain-saver.”

Are we in a healthy place?

The ‘Gerasene Demoniac’ is not some arcane story from the past, indeed it may have much to say to us today. Let us remember that instead of calling this poor man names, Jesus asks, “What is your name?” Let’s think about that for a moment. Everyone was spending a lot of time calling the man in this story names. Yet they didn’t bother trying to name his problem. Jesus was able to see past the labels, name the real problem, then help the man.

The uniqueness of Jesus was in his understanding and practice of healing as revealing and releasing God’s creative and loving Spirit to act upon the moral, mental and physical illnesses of the people and the community around him. Even today, we spend a lot of time labelling people. We name people all the time, whether we admit it or not. But it is good to remember the first thing that Jesus asks is, “What is your name?”

So just what is in a name?

When dealing with demons it’s everything. Those who have dealt with demons of every kind, including addictions will tell you that admitting and naming the problem is half the solution. Naming the demon is the first step in controlling it and being freed from it. Too often we cannot name our own demons – we need help. Naming demons means recognising we are not in control, that we are not as strong and self sufficient as we wish to portray we are – or feel we are expected to be.

What’s in a name?

I don’t fully know – but I need to think about it the next time I’m tempted to label someone. The name of the illness does not become their name. ‘Legion’ may not have remained as the man’s name. And just think what a significant thing it is to change your name. How often do we do that? Usually when something life-changing has happened. Healing then becomes more than the restoration of mental or physical health. It is nothing less than a new dignity and identity. A reconciliation within the self and often with God, that acts as a sign of hope.

What’s in a name? New life – potentially.

What’s your answer?

Name it.

The Age of ‘Global-Gnosis’

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globes2go

“Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.”   (Edmund Burke 1729-1797)

I have always loved history. I was fortunate enough to be inspired by a very good history teacher at school and perhaps that is where the spark of interest began. In many ways I am struck by how the history of early Christianity is being mirrored in our own technologically driven world today.

Take Gnosticism for example. Perhaps the best way to describe Gnosticism would be as a ‘religious philosophy’ that could integrate into various religious traditions and did so in Christianity in the first centuries of its existence. The essential tenets of Gnosticism could be summed up briefly as follows; the material world is under the control of evil. A ‘divine spark’ is trapped within human beings and that alone is capable of being rescued. This rescuing, or salvation, comes through a secret knowledge, ‘gnosis’, which is part information but also part experiential. ‘Gnosis’ is not only truth propositions but also self-knowledge.

In the ancient world Gnosticism was so pervasive that it led to the early Christian bishops drawing up our present canon of scripture in the Bible, excluding texts for example, from the more recently discovered Nag-Hammadi library, such as the Gospel of Thomas. They also formulated the Christian creeds, such as the Nicaean Creed, which are repeated every week in churches around the world to this day. It is hard to generalise but Christian Gnosticism led to certain moral abuses and had more in common with pagan mystery religions than the historical Jesus. For these and other reasons the response of the early Christians to Gnosticism was reasoned information, which it can be argued, still pervades traditional Christian liturgical worship and theology.

But we have a problem. The human experience of God requires more than reason. This is not to downplay reason, indeed within Anglican theology it is said to form part of a ‘three legged stool’ which consists of ‘Scripture – Tradition – Reason’, classically defined by the 16th century English theologian Richard Hooker.  Later the Age of Reason was an eighteenth-century movement which was a reaction to the mystical religion of the Middle Ages and affirmed the scientific disciplines of the Enlightenment. But those who study history will know that historical trends often go back and forth like a pendulum. The Age of Reason and the Enlightenment provided many great things and personal liberties but faith is more than a set of rational propositions about God.

In part I believe we can frame these historic movements as ‘successors’ of the early Christians to define Christianity into a set of propositions that could be contained within an institutional faith that could sit easily with the governance framework of the Roman Empire under the Emperor Constantine and his successors. But reasoned argument about God cannot satisfy the human thirst and experience for the numinous of God. Putting it simply, creeds and the formal liturgies they are placed within cannot guarantee a spiritual encounter of the divine, they can only define what is believed, or more negatively, who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out’. But this is nothing more than ‘club membership’ and fails to meet the needs of the majority, something that cannot be ignored in this country as the inherited ‘Christendom’ model of Christianity continues to unravel and decline.

New statistics confirm the continuing spiral of decline of church attendance or even acknowledgement of membership to the traditional Christian denominations of the United Kingdom. People are voting with their feet and do not want to be considered as even nominally ‘in’. This is a sea change. Or perhaps it can be said that Gnosticism never really went away? It’s attraction remains within the Christian Church even though those who may profess something of it in their understanding of God may never have heard of the word. The debate will continue and not only within theological circles about the human desire for ‘experiential’ knowledge. For example, in a recent article ‘The Information Age is over; welcome to the Experience Age’, commenting on the changing use of social media, Mike Wadhera has written:

“Facebook is an Information Age native. Along with other social networks of its generation, Facebook was built on a principle of the desktop era —  accumulation. Accumulation manifests in a digital profile where my identity is the sum of all the information I’ve saved —  text, photos, videos, web pages….. In the Information Age we represented ourselves with this digital profile. But mobile has changed how we view digital identity. With a connected camera televising our life in-the-moment, accumulated information takes a back seat to continual self-expression. The “virtual self” is becoming less evident. I may be the result of everything I’ve done, but I’m not the accumulation of it. Snapchat is native to this new reality. Many people think Snapchat is all about secrecy, but the real innovation of Snapchat’s ephemeral messages isn’t that they self-destruct. It’s that they force us to break the accumulation habit we brought over from desktop computing. The result is that the profile is no longer the centre of the social universe. In the Experience Age you are not a profile. You are simply you.”

Wadhera argues that we are moving from an Age of Information to an Age of Experience, I would dare to take this further and say an Age of ‘Global-Gnosis’. This is a time of mass information as never before but the irony is that something more is craved, and that ‘something’ is experiential knowledge. I believe we can see this in many ways, from the changing trends in holidays to cater for ‘extreme or adventurous’ experiences to the growth in popularity of meditation practices such as mindfulness, which seek to place us directly in the present moment or the ‘now’.

In 21st century Britain the continuing rejection by the general population, not only via church attendance but membership of traditional Christianity, underlines that people do not want church liturgies to inform them about God but to provide them with an experience of God. And it is more complex than merely suggesting that Charismatic or Catholic liturgical practices fulfil this experiential need. Information, which may include modern translations in worship, are not enough. The human soul in the 21st century still hungers for the numinous that liturgies coming from the era of rationalism cannot seem to fulfil as people continue to vote with their feet and walk away.

A new apologetics is required. One comfortable in the digital age of ‘Global-Gnosis’. Traditional orthodox engagement may not be enough to meet this new millennium of creativity and dialogue that is typified in the memes of social media. As the gulf widens between the Christian Church and the social-milieu within which church communities find themselves, there is a growing need for boldness in creativity and inculturation of the Christian Gospel as there once was in the early centuries of the Church and its missionary movements, such as Celtic Christianity within these isles.

Such an engagement may possess risks but may also provide an impetus to help discover a different dimension of the creative Spirit of God for the new millennium. Otherwise the alternative currently developing for the traditional Christian churches in the United Kingdom is to sadly acknowledge that they may inevitably become ‘history’.

The Meme is the Message

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Meme – a noun

  1. an element of a culture or system of behaviour passed from one individual to another by imitation or other non-genetic means.
  2. an image, video, piece of text, etc., typically humorous in nature, that is copied and spread rapidly by internet users, often with slight variations.

In 1964 Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase,”The medium is the message”, meaning that the form of a communication medium embeds itself in the message, creating a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived. I believe digital media is shaping our consciousness in a way as revolutionary as the printing press half a millennia ago. That particular medium changed the world in a way that the mindset of handwritten manuscripts and oral wisdom could not foresee. Now as printed newspapers and books continue to decline in circulation are we experiencing another symbiotic revolution?

In its simplest terms we can say that books, radio, television, and film medium, are a collection of communication devices in which the reader, listener, or viewer, are normally assumed to be passive recipients. The internet however, often encourages the recipients to be active participants, interacting via the medium of the internet with the message.

The medium of print changed the world and inevitably changed the Christian Church. What are the implications of the current transition from print to digital medium for the Christian Church in the 21st century? In 1996 Mark Dery wrote a prophetic book called “Escape Velocity: Cyberculture at the end of the Century.” At the beginning of the book Dery says this:

“Escape velocity is the speed at which a body – a spacecraft, for instance – overcomes the gravitational pull of another body, such as the Earth.” More and more, computer culture, or cyberculture, seems as if it is on the verge of attaining escape velocity. Marshall McLuhan’s 1967 pronouncement that electronic media have spun us into a blurred, breathless “world of allatonceness” where information “pours upon us, instantaneously and continuously,” sometimes overwhelming us, is truer than ever.”

Digital media is not merely replacing books but shaping our pedagogies, our world views, and possibly our consciousness. We live in the age of the ‘meme’, a phrase first coined by Richard Dawkins in 1976 to describe small pieces of culture that spread from person to person by imitation but with the possibility heightened in the digital age for more rapid distribution and adaptation. The digital meme defines our post-modern condition filled with irony, interaction, and anxiety. Thanks to the explosion in social media the meme is now becoming the message communicating our current existential condition – but is it enough? I would say, “Virtually…”

What is required is nothing less than a new theology, even a ‘cybertheology’. Encouraging signs of such a Christian theological framework in the digital age can be seen in research centres such as CODEC at Durham University. Biblical literacy and discipleship are two key areas of exploration there. I would also argue that national ministerial training to provide a basic understanding on the subject of evolving social media and the world wide web should be as integral as preaching and pastoral care in the Church of the future. To neglect this would be to neglect the context of the ‘marketplace’ we are now in as Christians.

If we are tempted to berate such ideas then we would do well to remember the language that the Christian Gospels were originally composed in, Koine Greek, ‘ἡ κοινὴ διάλεκτος’, or “the common dialect.” They was the everyday language of the ordinary citizens of the Roman Empire.

  • If ‘the medium is the message’ then we have to ask ourselves what is the common dialect in the context of evolving social media in the 21st century?
  • How can it convey the Good News told by a 1st century itinerant preacher from Nazareth who first used the medium of parables, or stories, to proclaim the Kingdom of God?

However Jesus of Nazareth is understood it is clear that he was an effective, popular teacher and preacher who communicated in the way he did at least in part because the ordinary people felt alienated from the religious institutions of their own day. Reflecting on this I am reminded of the words to a hymn, “There’s a Spirit in the air…”, and I believe it is time to leave the ‘house’ once more, as happened on the day that is sometimes described as the ‘birthday’ of the Christian Church – Pentecost. (Acts 2: 1-11)