Lessons I have Learned: 1. The Importance of the Bible (Part 3)
I am determined to do better at posting than I have in the past so here is the next in the series about lessons I have learned and specifically lessons about the Bible!
We are getting ready for Remembrance Sunday here at the moment. I always find sermons hard for this particular Sunday. I don't want to do the usual platitudes and I do want to respect the dead. I am just going to do what I normally try to do and stick to the set readings.
Liturgical Churches have some advantages!
Have a good Sunday.
Lessons I have Learned: 1. The Importance of the Bible (Part 3)
From the 1970s onwards, evangelical scholarship went from seeing its role as defending the status of the Bible as the Word of God against the attacks of liberals to interpreting and explaining the original meaning of the Bible in its historical and social context.
I personally have found much that has emerged as a result extremely helpful. I have many Biblical commentaries written by evangelicals that I particularly value. Indeed the resources that specifically evangelical scholarship has made available to the preacher and the wider church are invaluable. Furthermore, those scholars who have been prepared to combine scholarship with a wider ministry in the church have performed an invaluable service in helping Christians become more knowledgeable and informed about the Bible and their faith.
There are problems, however, and I would like to have a go here in explaining what I think they are.
Alongside the stress on the need for the Bible to be understood in its original context, seeing, that is, that it was originally written, not for us now, but for them then, has gone an increasing emphasis on the difficulties of taking a text from the past and applying it to today. The old approach was that once you had understood what a passage originally meant, you then just applied it directly to today without too much bother. Once you understood its meaning, everything else would follow.
Increasingly, the realisation of how different life was then has called into question the extent to which it can be applied to today. So even if you were able to grasp what it was, for example, that Paul was saying to the Romans doesn’t mean that you would know what he would have said had he been writing today or what God is saying to us through it today. Simply because that was what was said then, doesn’t mean it would be what God want said now. And this before you even begin to get into the whole issue of the philosophy of hermeneutics where even the possibility of understanding what an ancient text meant is called in to question.
The problem is made all the worse by the way even evangelical scholars cannot agree on what the text originally meant in the first place so that there are, for example, multiple versions of the ‘historical’ Jesus and many different interpretations of Paul. I don’t think there is any need for me to spell them out! If you cannot apply the Bible today unless you have understood what it meant then, our failure to be able to agree what it meant then, despite all the resources at our disposal, has severely called in to question any attempt to apply it now.
Ironically, evangelicals have achieved what the liberals failed to do. Liberal scholarship for much of the twentieth century called into question the authority of the Bible. This was defended by evangelicals, who used their scholarship to refute such charges. Evangelicals came to engage in academic scholarship because they believed in the Bible as the Word of God and wanted to use all the tools of scholarship to understand it. However, because they have been unable to understand it, or at least agree on an understanding of it, they have unwittingly undermined the authority of the Bible on a practical level. How can a text be authoritative if you do not know what it meant?
Theoretically, we may still believe the Bible to be the Word of God, but we have become so confused in our understanding of it that it is no longer possible for us to hear it as the Word of God.
At the root of the problem, I would suggest, is the way much academic Biblical interpretation takes place in the context of an academic environment rather than a worshipping Church. Bible Study is being done, not to build up believers, but to impress other scholars. This puts pressure on the scholar to be novel, original, and clever. Furthermore, the emphasis on getting PhDs with their requirement for originality, awarded as they are by the scholarly community, imposes an alien set of criteria on the Biblical interpreter.
Might it be that these words of St Paul are of some relevance here:
‘Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. And we speak of these things in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual things to those who are spiritual. Those who are unspiritual do not receive the gifts of God’s Spirit, for they are foolishness to them, and they are unable to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.’ (1 Corinthians 2:12-14)
Not only is much Biblical scholarship being undertaken away from the praying, worshipping life of the Church, it is being conducted in academic communities within secular universities whose values and beliefs are not only different to those of Christians, but are diametrically opposed to them.
Studying and interpreting the Bible is, or should be, a spiritual exercise, which is not about the gaining of a PhD, impressing other academics, or getting published, but about understanding the gifts of God and serving the Church. If along the way we get our degrees, impress other academics, or get published - all well and good, but surely this should not be the motivation for what we are doing?
Finally, I am very worried about the trend only to employ professional academics in theological colleges training people for the ministry. This may seem an unfair criticism, but the job descriptions I have seen call for people with PhDs, who have published academically, rather than people who have been engaged in interpreting and applying the Bible in the context of mission and ministry. It is worth remembering that Paul wrote Romans, not while a teacher in a college as an article for the Journal of New Testament Studies, but while as a missionary in order to teach other Christians.
My contention is simple. By concentrating on the historical study of the Bible and doing that in the context of the academy, we have lost sight of the Bible as a spiritual gift to the Church. The goal of all Bible Study should be to understand the Bible, and to do that we do indeed need to study the Bible in its original context, but the reason we do that is so we can hear God speak to us today. If we fail to hear God as a result of our study, we have failed in our study.
It is time to reclaim the Bible as a gift to the church so that we can have a Gospel to proclaim to the world.
Showing posts with label Lessons I have Learned. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lessons I have Learned. Show all posts
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
Lessons I have Learned: 1. The Importance of the Bible (Part 2)
As I sit here, I have a group of workmen above me drilling and digging up part of the roof of the Vicarage. The roofs were redone a few years ago. During the rainy season some leaks appeared. Fortunately they are not serious and we still have a warranty for them. Now that the dry season has begun, they are being repaired. It is noisy, though. So if today's blog is not as clear as it should be, please blame the workmen.
The weather here is lovely at the moment. Not too humid, sunny, and warm without being hot. Someone said to me when I first came to Hong Kong that every summer they decided they could not take the heat any more and would leave. Then the 'winter' came and they decided it was worth staying another year - especially when they saw what the weather was like back in the UK! I know what they meant - at least about the heat. I do not like hot weather. The climate in Aberdeen in Scotland was perfect for me, even in winter, and I battle with the heat and humidity here. Sometimes, in the summer months, I feel that all energy has deserted me!
Now that the temperatures are in the low twenties rather than the high thirties, I feel human again! I just hope my work rate improves accordingly! This week, I have the Diocesan Synod to attend, which just goes to show that every silver lining has a cloud!
I hope your week is not too cloudy or too cold.
Lessons I have Learned: 1. The Importance of the Bible (Part 2)
London Bible College, where I went to study after sixth form, was committed to evangelical scholarship and to engaging with modern theologians. I don’t think I am being unfair in saying that much evangelical scholarship at this time was defensive, that is, much time was spent in showing why liberal scholarship was wrong and why the Bible could be trusted. This is not necessarily a criticism. Some scholarship did seem more about trying to show why the Bible could not be trusted than about a serious engagement with the text.
The trouble was that it was about two sides attacking and defending positions, which had been taken on theological grounds. It did not always lead to a greater understanding of what the Bible actually said.
There was, though, a discernible shift taking place. Evangelicals were beginning to use the tools that scholarship gave us to understand the Bible in its own historical context. They were studying the Bible and engaging in academic research, not simply to be able to refute the liberals, but to interpret the Bible on its own terms. At London Bible College, this approach was best typified for me by Max Turner, Douglas de Lacey, and Tony Lane. Attending their lectures and listening to them, I came out of the defensive camp, and saw the value of studying the Bible historically. I found my study stimulating, liberating, and exciting. I have written in previous blogs about the effect this all had on me so I will not repeat myself here!
Suffice it to say that by the time I had completed my degree, I was convinced of the need to read and understand the Bible in context, asking what the original writers meant and intended by what they wrote, and how it would have been understood by the first readers. This sort of approach seemed so natural and obvious. It involved work, hard work, but it was work that was required by the nature of the Bible itself. This was how God had chosen to communicate his word: through people who lived and wrote at a particular time in a particular place.
The only way then to hear the Word of God now, to know what the text means for us now, was by understanding what it meant then.
This point is vital. Academic study of the Bible wasn’t academic. We – I – wasn’t doing this just out of historical interest, but because we believed that this was the way to hear God speaking now. This was what God wanted us to do. Studying to learn about the background to a passage, to put it in context, was a prerequisite for applying the text today. Such study was important for all Christians, it was of even greater importance for those who interpreted the text Sunday by Sunday in the pulpit.
Consequently, when I left Bible College, there could be no question of leaving studying the Bible behind, and I went on to study for a masters degree in Biblical Studies. Again, the motivation wasn’t simply to get another degree, but to understand the Word of God and so be better at applying it and preaching it. I know that I was not alone in feeling like this. There was a real flowering of evangelical scholarship at this time. Out of this desire to understand the Word of God as God had given it and out of this period came evangelical scholars such as N T Wright, Don Carson, Ben Witherington, and many more, whose writings have been very influential both within evangelicalism and outside of it.
Evangelicals were no longer a small group defending the Bible in private; they had won the right to be heard within the scholarly community itself. Their scholarship stood up to critical scrutiny, and they were able to set the agenda as well as follow it and react to it.
Evangelicals now take all this for granted. Of course, we must engage in academic and scholarly study of the Bible. Of course, we must read the Bible historically and in context. It wasn’t taken for granted 30 or so years ago and those evangelicals who engaged in scholarly study were often accused of selling out!
So when I entered the ministry thanks to my background in the House Church Movement and evangelicalism and out of my time at Bible College, I was convinced:
1. that the Bible is the Word of God and is as relevant today as the day God inspired it.
2. that to understand that Word and to be able to preach and apply it, it must first be understood and interpreted in its original and historical context.
These two convictions have stayed with me, even when I have failed to live up to them. I am as convinced of them today as ever I have been. It is because of them that I try to continue my study, keep abreast of scholarship, and invest in a personal library as a resource for preaching. There have been great gains as a result of our engagement in scholarly study.
However, as I will try to explain next time, I also believe there have been losses and that in stressing the second, we have come in danger of losing sight of the first.
As I sit here, I have a group of workmen above me drilling and digging up part of the roof of the Vicarage. The roofs were redone a few years ago. During the rainy season some leaks appeared. Fortunately they are not serious and we still have a warranty for them. Now that the dry season has begun, they are being repaired. It is noisy, though. So if today's blog is not as clear as it should be, please blame the workmen.
The weather here is lovely at the moment. Not too humid, sunny, and warm without being hot. Someone said to me when I first came to Hong Kong that every summer they decided they could not take the heat any more and would leave. Then the 'winter' came and they decided it was worth staying another year - especially when they saw what the weather was like back in the UK! I know what they meant - at least about the heat. I do not like hot weather. The climate in Aberdeen in Scotland was perfect for me, even in winter, and I battle with the heat and humidity here. Sometimes, in the summer months, I feel that all energy has deserted me!
Now that the temperatures are in the low twenties rather than the high thirties, I feel human again! I just hope my work rate improves accordingly! This week, I have the Diocesan Synod to attend, which just goes to show that every silver lining has a cloud!
I hope your week is not too cloudy or too cold.
Lessons I have Learned: 1. The Importance of the Bible (Part 2)
London Bible College, where I went to study after sixth form, was committed to evangelical scholarship and to engaging with modern theologians. I don’t think I am being unfair in saying that much evangelical scholarship at this time was defensive, that is, much time was spent in showing why liberal scholarship was wrong and why the Bible could be trusted. This is not necessarily a criticism. Some scholarship did seem more about trying to show why the Bible could not be trusted than about a serious engagement with the text.
The trouble was that it was about two sides attacking and defending positions, which had been taken on theological grounds. It did not always lead to a greater understanding of what the Bible actually said.
There was, though, a discernible shift taking place. Evangelicals were beginning to use the tools that scholarship gave us to understand the Bible in its own historical context. They were studying the Bible and engaging in academic research, not simply to be able to refute the liberals, but to interpret the Bible on its own terms. At London Bible College, this approach was best typified for me by Max Turner, Douglas de Lacey, and Tony Lane. Attending their lectures and listening to them, I came out of the defensive camp, and saw the value of studying the Bible historically. I found my study stimulating, liberating, and exciting. I have written in previous blogs about the effect this all had on me so I will not repeat myself here!
Suffice it to say that by the time I had completed my degree, I was convinced of the need to read and understand the Bible in context, asking what the original writers meant and intended by what they wrote, and how it would have been understood by the first readers. This sort of approach seemed so natural and obvious. It involved work, hard work, but it was work that was required by the nature of the Bible itself. This was how God had chosen to communicate his word: through people who lived and wrote at a particular time in a particular place.
The only way then to hear the Word of God now, to know what the text means for us now, was by understanding what it meant then.
This point is vital. Academic study of the Bible wasn’t academic. We – I – wasn’t doing this just out of historical interest, but because we believed that this was the way to hear God speaking now. This was what God wanted us to do. Studying to learn about the background to a passage, to put it in context, was a prerequisite for applying the text today. Such study was important for all Christians, it was of even greater importance for those who interpreted the text Sunday by Sunday in the pulpit.
Consequently, when I left Bible College, there could be no question of leaving studying the Bible behind, and I went on to study for a masters degree in Biblical Studies. Again, the motivation wasn’t simply to get another degree, but to understand the Word of God and so be better at applying it and preaching it. I know that I was not alone in feeling like this. There was a real flowering of evangelical scholarship at this time. Out of this desire to understand the Word of God as God had given it and out of this period came evangelical scholars such as N T Wright, Don Carson, Ben Witherington, and many more, whose writings have been very influential both within evangelicalism and outside of it.
Evangelicals were no longer a small group defending the Bible in private; they had won the right to be heard within the scholarly community itself. Their scholarship stood up to critical scrutiny, and they were able to set the agenda as well as follow it and react to it.
Evangelicals now take all this for granted. Of course, we must engage in academic and scholarly study of the Bible. Of course, we must read the Bible historically and in context. It wasn’t taken for granted 30 or so years ago and those evangelicals who engaged in scholarly study were often accused of selling out!
So when I entered the ministry thanks to my background in the House Church Movement and evangelicalism and out of my time at Bible College, I was convinced:
1. that the Bible is the Word of God and is as relevant today as the day God inspired it.
2. that to understand that Word and to be able to preach and apply it, it must first be understood and interpreted in its original and historical context.
These two convictions have stayed with me, even when I have failed to live up to them. I am as convinced of them today as ever I have been. It is because of them that I try to continue my study, keep abreast of scholarship, and invest in a personal library as a resource for preaching. There have been great gains as a result of our engagement in scholarly study.
However, as I will try to explain next time, I also believe there have been losses and that in stressing the second, we have come in danger of losing sight of the first.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Lessons I have Learned: 1. The Importance of the Bible (Part 1)
Well, I didn't quite make it by the end of last week with the first post in this new series, itself a part of my Personal Journey Series. Part of the reason is that I wanted to finish reading the Summing Up by Somerset Maugham. In his own way he does in that book what I am trying to do in this series of blogs, although he writes much better than I do! He went on to live for the best part of thirty years after he wrote the Summing Up and I have to confess that I hope I do too. He spends a great deal of time talking about his life as a writer and his approach to writing. Not unreasonably given his career as a writer.
What I found particularly fascinating was that his attitude to being a writer was very similar to my own attitude to being a preacher and there is still a great deal of helpful advice in what he writes that I think a preacher could use today. Advice about getting out among people and living life so that you know your readership, for example. But I digress.
I have been thinking about this blog series, though, and preached on the Bible last Sunday. It's on the web-site for those motivated enough to listen to it. I will be preaching on the Bible again this coming week. How could I not with 2 Timothy 3:16 as part of the readings? I also have a confirmation class to lead tonight. You've guessed it. It's on the Bible!
Anyway, I certainly can't say all I want to say about the Bible in one blog, so I am afraid the account of this first lesson I have learned is going to be in several parts. How many parts I really don't know!
Lessons I have Learned: The Importance of the Bible (Part 1)
When I became a Christian one of the things that was most stressed to me was the importance and authority of the Bible. The Bible was the Word of God. It was without contradiction and could be relied on completely. It was infallible and inerrant. Indeed, so great was the emphasis on its divine inspiration and divine character that the role of the individual writers was rather lost sight of. The great enemies were those who failed to take the Bible seriously, that is, those who did not see the Bible in this way. They included liberal Christians, on the one hand, and Roman Catholics, on the other.
This view of Biblical authority was the position of both my friends in the House Church movement and of my Anglican Church on the Wirral. It was the view of my friends and of most of the people I mixed with.
Now before anyone smiles smugly and says that such people are naïve and misguided, it is worth saying that this conviction at least led us to read the Bible. In fact, we read it regularly, thoroughly, and enthusiastically. I still have my Bible from those days. It has no paragraph headings, drawings, or notes. It is just page after page of dense text, all in Shakespearean English, that is to say, it was the King James Version translation of the Bible.
None of this bothered us precisely because we were convinced that the Bible was the Word of God, and, if it was the Word of God, why would it bother us? If this was a communication from God, what mattered was to get on and read it, understand it, and obey it.
Things have moved on since those days, and we all have modern translations that are clearly laid out with headings and paragraphs, and every conceivable aid to help us understand it. Of course, we place far more emphasis on the humanity of Scripture and the problems of interpretation now, so that even if – and it is a big if – we think we know what a passage says, we still have trouble working what it means today and even more of a problem obeying it.
Given a simple choice between the attitude we had back then of seeing the Bible as the divine Word of God and the contemporary view which, while seeing it as a divinely inspired text, sees so many problems with interpreting it that you are exhausted even before you have begun, I know which I would choose.
For all the advances we have made in understanding the Bible, do we now read the Bible more? I don’t think so? And even when we do read it, do we have a clue what to do with it? I am reading a book on the Bible by a leading evangelical at the moment. While helpful in many ways, it focuses on the problems in reading and understanding the Bible. This I suggest is how many preachers and teachers approach it. It’s hardly any wonder, then, that people are discouraged before they begin.
I am glad then, for all its problems, I began my Christian life with the view that the Bible is the Word of God to be listened to and obeyed. Simplistic maybe, but at least it meant I read the Bible, went to discussions about the Bible, attended conferences about the Bible, memorized the Bible, enjoyed sermons about the Bible, and bought books explaining the Bible. It was also why when the time came to decide what to do after sixth form, I decided to study for a degree, not at a University, but at a Bible College.
The College I decided to go to was London Bible College, now renamed as London Theological College. But what’s in a name? Quite a lot, I think.
Well, I didn't quite make it by the end of last week with the first post in this new series, itself a part of my Personal Journey Series. Part of the reason is that I wanted to finish reading the Summing Up by Somerset Maugham. In his own way he does in that book what I am trying to do in this series of blogs, although he writes much better than I do! He went on to live for the best part of thirty years after he wrote the Summing Up and I have to confess that I hope I do too. He spends a great deal of time talking about his life as a writer and his approach to writing. Not unreasonably given his career as a writer.
What I found particularly fascinating was that his attitude to being a writer was very similar to my own attitude to being a preacher and there is still a great deal of helpful advice in what he writes that I think a preacher could use today. Advice about getting out among people and living life so that you know your readership, for example. But I digress.
I have been thinking about this blog series, though, and preached on the Bible last Sunday. It's on the web-site for those motivated enough to listen to it. I will be preaching on the Bible again this coming week. How could I not with 2 Timothy 3:16 as part of the readings? I also have a confirmation class to lead tonight. You've guessed it. It's on the Bible!
Anyway, I certainly can't say all I want to say about the Bible in one blog, so I am afraid the account of this first lesson I have learned is going to be in several parts. How many parts I really don't know!
Lessons I have Learned: The Importance of the Bible (Part 1)
When I became a Christian one of the things that was most stressed to me was the importance and authority of the Bible. The Bible was the Word of God. It was without contradiction and could be relied on completely. It was infallible and inerrant. Indeed, so great was the emphasis on its divine inspiration and divine character that the role of the individual writers was rather lost sight of. The great enemies were those who failed to take the Bible seriously, that is, those who did not see the Bible in this way. They included liberal Christians, on the one hand, and Roman Catholics, on the other.
This view of Biblical authority was the position of both my friends in the House Church movement and of my Anglican Church on the Wirral. It was the view of my friends and of most of the people I mixed with.
Now before anyone smiles smugly and says that such people are naïve and misguided, it is worth saying that this conviction at least led us to read the Bible. In fact, we read it regularly, thoroughly, and enthusiastically. I still have my Bible from those days. It has no paragraph headings, drawings, or notes. It is just page after page of dense text, all in Shakespearean English, that is to say, it was the King James Version translation of the Bible.
None of this bothered us precisely because we were convinced that the Bible was the Word of God, and, if it was the Word of God, why would it bother us? If this was a communication from God, what mattered was to get on and read it, understand it, and obey it.
Things have moved on since those days, and we all have modern translations that are clearly laid out with headings and paragraphs, and every conceivable aid to help us understand it. Of course, we place far more emphasis on the humanity of Scripture and the problems of interpretation now, so that even if – and it is a big if – we think we know what a passage says, we still have trouble working what it means today and even more of a problem obeying it.
Given a simple choice between the attitude we had back then of seeing the Bible as the divine Word of God and the contemporary view which, while seeing it as a divinely inspired text, sees so many problems with interpreting it that you are exhausted even before you have begun, I know which I would choose.
For all the advances we have made in understanding the Bible, do we now read the Bible more? I don’t think so? And even when we do read it, do we have a clue what to do with it? I am reading a book on the Bible by a leading evangelical at the moment. While helpful in many ways, it focuses on the problems in reading and understanding the Bible. This I suggest is how many preachers and teachers approach it. It’s hardly any wonder, then, that people are discouraged before they begin.
I am glad then, for all its problems, I began my Christian life with the view that the Bible is the Word of God to be listened to and obeyed. Simplistic maybe, but at least it meant I read the Bible, went to discussions about the Bible, attended conferences about the Bible, memorized the Bible, enjoyed sermons about the Bible, and bought books explaining the Bible. It was also why when the time came to decide what to do after sixth form, I decided to study for a degree, not at a University, but at a Bible College.
The College I decided to go to was London Bible College, now renamed as London Theological College. But what’s in a name? Quite a lot, I think.
Monday, October 08, 2007
Back to the Journey
I have written at length on this blog about my Personal Journey (see posts under the label, Personal Journey) from my time as a teenager in Liverpool to that as an Anglican priest here in Hong Kong. Before the summer, I wrote of Present Challenges, that is, of the challenges that I find facing me here. They were:
1. Baptism
2. The Schools
3. The Congregation
4. The Buildings
5. The Challenge of Inclusivity
Over the summer, the problems that I wrote about under the Challenge of the Schools were graphically illustrated when one of our teachers was arrested for alleged corruption. The Challenge of the Buildings has also been reinforced by the need and surprise of having scaffolding up inside the Church over Harvest!
After writing about these challenges, I wrote about Where I am Now and focused specifically on three areas:
1. Mission
2. Theologically Orthodox
3. Liturgy and the Eucharist
I also reflected a little on my 25 years as a priest under the post, Disappointed. This one did not go down too well. People either thought I was clinically depressed, in the wrong position, or more kindly, just getting old!
There is probably a bit of truth in all three. Getting older brings a realisation of dreams that have not come true, mistakes that have been made, and expectations that have not been fulfilled. This does lead to sadness, if not exactly depression, but hopefully there is hope as well. I do find my present job leaves little time and opportunity for what I believe to be my main strengths, assuming I have them, even if I still believe I am in the right place. In other words, there is the paradox that all Christians are called to live with in this world and which we feel more at sometimes than others.
With the arrival of summer, I thought it would be good to have a break from reflecting on my Personal Journey, but have also felt that it is incomplete as a reflection of the journey so far. So now with the arrival of autumn and the passing of another birthday, and at the risk of boring you, I am going to resume. This time I want to write about the Lessons I have Learned trying to relate them to what I have written about my life so far.
It is going to take a little time in writing the posts in this series, but I am looking forward to it. The first will be on the Bible. I have started work on it and hope it will be posted before the week ends.
I have written at length on this blog about my Personal Journey (see posts under the label, Personal Journey) from my time as a teenager in Liverpool to that as an Anglican priest here in Hong Kong. Before the summer, I wrote of Present Challenges, that is, of the challenges that I find facing me here. They were:
1. Baptism
2. The Schools
3. The Congregation
4. The Buildings
5. The Challenge of Inclusivity
Over the summer, the problems that I wrote about under the Challenge of the Schools were graphically illustrated when one of our teachers was arrested for alleged corruption. The Challenge of the Buildings has also been reinforced by the need and surprise of having scaffolding up inside the Church over Harvest!
After writing about these challenges, I wrote about Where I am Now and focused specifically on three areas:
1. Mission
2. Theologically Orthodox
3. Liturgy and the Eucharist
I also reflected a little on my 25 years as a priest under the post, Disappointed. This one did not go down too well. People either thought I was clinically depressed, in the wrong position, or more kindly, just getting old!
There is probably a bit of truth in all three. Getting older brings a realisation of dreams that have not come true, mistakes that have been made, and expectations that have not been fulfilled. This does lead to sadness, if not exactly depression, but hopefully there is hope as well. I do find my present job leaves little time and opportunity for what I believe to be my main strengths, assuming I have them, even if I still believe I am in the right place. In other words, there is the paradox that all Christians are called to live with in this world and which we feel more at sometimes than others.
With the arrival of summer, I thought it would be good to have a break from reflecting on my Personal Journey, but have also felt that it is incomplete as a reflection of the journey so far. So now with the arrival of autumn and the passing of another birthday, and at the risk of boring you, I am going to resume. This time I want to write about the Lessons I have Learned trying to relate them to what I have written about my life so far.
It is going to take a little time in writing the posts in this series, but I am looking forward to it. The first will be on the Bible. I have started work on it and hope it will be posted before the week ends.
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