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Now I – and this may surprise you – was not lithe and athletic. If they were like gazelles I was more like an enthusiastic loris. And to make matters worse I was a loris wearing a bright yellow t-shirt and so as they disappeared into the dark night, I remember just looking down at the ground and saying out loud “ahhhhh crap”. I would have said something cruder, but, you know, it was church camp. And so I started sprinting as fast as I could, but my sprint was more of a lumbering stampede, but without the stampede. I was waiting for the “flight” response to kick in to give me some kind of superhuman speed and agility, but alas it did not arrive.

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Fears about globalism, the United Nations and New World Order are directly influenced by the religious belief in a rising Antichrist who will rule the world through a one-world-government. In this context, any Christian who stands against this rising globalism is being faithful to Jesus and will ultimately be rewarded. Americans, in particular, have shaped for themselves a unique role within this eschatological framework. Their priority for the nation of Israel as well as their antipathy for Russia and Iran are both impacted by specific interpretations of ancient apocalyptic texts, and many American Evangelicals see themselves as uniquely ushering in the end of days, as well as taking a stand for Jesus in the midst of a world that is going the way of the Antichrist.

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Because God is seen as masculine, the human man is intuited as superior to woman and as being somehow closer to what God is like. This has had devastating historical consequences and its impact is still felt in modern society. Patriarchal control, hyper-masculinity masquerading as religion, violence against and suppression of women and repeated demeaning of women in churches and in homes. The man is the head of the home, they said. Only men should be leaders. Only men can be priests. This kind of heretical masculinised Christianity stems from a male obsession with power over women, as well as an overly masculinised God that elevates misguided notions of maleness as worthy of divine status. (And of course you layer God’s apparent ‘whiteness’ on to this conception of God and you get the double whammy!)

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Some people go through life trying to live up to the version of themselves that they have presented to the world but live in fear of being exposed. Living each day anxious that everyone will inevitably realise that you’re out of your depth and don’t belong. And that was me.

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This idea of the incarnation of God as the human Jesus, is not about some old man’s grown son, eternally stuck in his mid-20’s, who decides to jump into the body of a baby. In fact, if God is the one present in and through all things as the source of life, then all of reality is incarnation. This is not God coming from out there somewhere far away and distant, who we have to convince to come and be present by performing the proper rites and rituals. In Jesus, it is more like this incarnation of God in all of reality becomes particularly known to us; we can see it and name it and explore what it looks like when God is known to us as self-giving, non-violent, liberating love.

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Some people want to take a very literal approach and so when Adam and Eve are in the garden talking to a snake, this is obviously a time when snakes could talk (or at least this particular snake could talk). Then other people look at a story like this and think, what a ridiculous idea; a talking snake, whoever thought of such a thing?! These are just silly old ancient myths and the bible is clearly a ridiculous piece of literature; anyone who believes those silly tales are stupid and primitive idiots. But are these the only two options?

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What do we do when the heroes of our stories turn out to be violent people, using violent means to accomplish violent ends? And what do we do when it seems that God is on their side helping them do so? We could of course go further and explore those texts in which it is God who does the violence. It is God who kills and wounds and curses. And it is God who gives people the strength to kill their enemies in huge numbers. What do Christians do with this when seeking to follow the way of Jesus who told people to love their enemies, to forgive those who have sinned against them, to not take an eye for an eye but turn the other cheek?

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The energies that are grounded in conspiratorial theologies end up self-centred and narcissistic, lacking in empathy and wisdom. Everything becomes about “our rights” and an imagined persecution, and when the focus of the church becomes primarily on its own self-interest it is no longer following Christ.

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If this is all part of God’s plan, if God is in control of Covid-19, then God is a monster. Is it really reassuring to say that we don’t have to worry because God is just working out a master plan that involves hundreds of thousands of people dying and millions of people suffering?

What kind of plan is that? And if that’s the plan, then what kind of God is that?

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Fortunately, once I had been freed from the gym and was finally on my way home, at least I could comfort myself with the fact that it was only two 13 year old boys and a caretaker who knew about my ridiculous situation. Except that I turned up to school the next morning and it turned out that everybody knew. The news of my imprisonment and eventual rescue had spread like wildfire, and I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me right then and there. We’re odd creatures aren’t we? Because on one level, what had happened was completely understandable, yet on another level, I felt like the world had caved in. And although I’ve grown out some of those acutely self-conscious teenage anxieties, there are still logically innocuous occurrences in life that leave me feeling embarrassed, under threat, at risk, or alone.

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Our starting point need not be a deep dive into depravity, nor the soaring idealism of a naïve human innocence, but the difficult acknowledgement that we are capable of both good and harm in profound ways. We need some way to deal with both the light and the shadow, the self-giving and the self-aggrandising. And I think this is what meaningful spirituality can help us to navigate. 

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This story tells us that you probably won’t find God in the comfortable places. If you want to bump into the divine you’ll probably have to wade through some shit to get there. If I’m honest, I think while churches all over the world sing about mother Mary and little baby Jesus at Christmas time, neither Mary nor Jesus would be welcome in most of them; they’d be way too much trouble. They wouldn’t shut up and behave. They’d be the kind of church members you’d want to quietly side-line and push out while you get on with building an efficient and effective organisation that can get on with the important business of being more Christian.

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I’m a peacemaker by nature. I love to keep people happy, for everyone to think that I’m one of them so that I’ll fit in. Some of this is by way of natural personality, but some of it stems from deep insecurities that are soothed by a sense of belonging and approval. So I’ve learned to manage my language, to watch my words, to nod and smile, to accommodate and listen and make room.

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I know that some people can’t hear the music, and sometimes I can’t hear it either. I don’t know if it comes and goes, or if it’s that I listen more carefully sometimes, or if it’s just that on some days the wind is carrying it in my direction. Sometimes I strain to hear it and find myself exasperated. But I know that when I do hear it, even if it’s just a few bars, the music somehow feels more real than everything else, although not in a way that makes everything else less real. Instead, it somehow makes everything else feel more alive, more electric with possibility and hope. Like the music is that which makes everything what it is. 

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When we are too quick to see the world in terms of those bad people ‘out there’, and the good people ‘in here’, we simultaneously demonise the other while cultivating a creeping worry that we’re really not as good as that which we claim to be. We start to subconsciously hate the parts of ourselves that don’t live up to the good we want to be, and then we project that hatred out onto others. Or we spend our time suspiciously evaluating everyone on our side to make sure they maintain the purity of our group, our views and our rightness. We can become fundamentalists no matter where we sit on the spectrum of views.

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Is it true that Christians are persecuted for their faith in some parts of the world? Yes, undoubtedly. But this is not the situation in the West. In the West, Christians are simply experiencing what it means to no longer be at the centre, and even then that’s not entirely accurate. Some are just experiencing the feelings that arise when their place at the centre is being questioned.

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It’s possible to feel alone in a crowd. I’ve felt it many times. Occasionally the feeling has been so strong that it seemed like I was in a different dimension from those around me. Like I was an outsider in an alternative reality; close enough to see everyone, but stuck in a dislocated trance, watching others glide by laughing at each other’s jokes. I think about this sometimes, this feeling of being on the outside. Because although I don’t sense it this viscerally all of the time, it feels like a metaphor for the way many of us are engaging in the world.

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In some traditions, the body is seen as something to punish. And in many conservative churches dancing was seen - until quite recently - as the highway to hell, or to sex at least. Which aren’t the same thing although in much of the church they may as well be.

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I’ve learned that others are typically just as gripped by their own insecurities and fears as I am. I’ve learned that when I hide myself away, I diminish both myself and others, because I do not offer them the dignity of knowing me as I am. I’ve learned that we all wrestle with our demons, and I’m not unusual for doing the same. I’ve learned that I don’t have to dissolve into the background because I have much to offer the world.

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