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    How Then Shall We Live
    How Then Shall We Live
    How Then Shall We Live
    Ebook243 pages4 hours

    How Then Shall We Live

    By Samuel Wells

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    About this ebook

    The world constantly presents new challenges about what it means to be Christian and live a distinctively Christian lifestyle. The priest, broadcaster, writer and ethicist, Sam Wells considers some of the biggest contemporary challenges and grapples with them in the light of Christian hope and wisdom
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCanterbury Press
    Release dateJun 3, 2016
    ISBN9781848258648
    How Then Shall We Live
    Author

    Samuel Wells

    Samuel Wells is Vicar of St Martin in the Fields, London and a renowned public theologian. He is well-known for his broadcasting and writing, and is the author of more than thirty books.

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    • 4/5
      The Episcopal Hymnal 1940. In this book can be found most of the hymns that American Folk Guitarist John Fahey recorded. In addition, this contains many folk hymns from Annabel Morris Buchanan's "Folk Hymns of America." Altogether a very nicely done compilation. But obsolete now, I guess. Still, if you want a good representation of the best American hymnody had to offer circa 1940, you could hardly go wrong by obtaining a copy (mine came from a thrift store in San Francisco, circa 1988). There are also many good English hymns in this collection ('Bishopthorpe,' 'Rendez a Dieu,' Gibbon's 'Song 67,' etc.).

    Book preview

    How Then Shall We Live - Samuel Wells

    Preface

    Without a great deal of forward planning I seem to have become a pastor, theologian, preacher, author, institutional leader and broadcaster. This book is a place where these six identities meet. It discusses around 25 issues on which I believe the church should have a view – a view that doesn’t simply say, ‘Things should be how they used to be’, ‘The government should do more’, or ‘We should get back to what the Bible really says’. Rather than wait for ‘the church’ to speak on such issues, I thought it might show more initiative to offer my own halfpennyworth.

    I’m grateful to a good many friends who’ve corrected my false assumptions and stimulated my reflections in writing these short pieces. Among them are Anna Rowlands, Ellen Davis, Michael Goldman, Luke Bretherton, Robert Pfeiffer, Stanley Hauerwas, Fiona MacMillan, Ali Lyon, Jerome Berryman, John Kiess, Ana Kiess, Jo Bailey Wells, Caroline Worsfold, Mindy Makant, Rebekah Eklund, Clare Herbert, Charis Geoghegan, David Warbrick, John Inge and David Trelawny-Ross. I’m grateful also for my ministerial and musical colleagues Richard Carter, Katherine Hedderly, Jonathan Evens, Will Morris, Alastair McKay, Andrew Earis and Tom Williams for creating the pastoral and liturgical context in which many of these reflections came to light.

    The reflection entitled ‘Retirement’ appeared in largely similar form as ‘Time to Go: Ascension’ in Martyn Percy’s The Bright Field: Meditations and Reflections for Ordinary Time.¹ A much shorter version, entitled ‘Bereavement’, appeared as ‘All Souls’ in the same volume (pp. 238−40).

    One night in Dakar, 25 years ago, I had an argument with a friend. It was, I think, the best argument I ever had; not because I won it (probably still disputed), or because it was lucid or articulate (it was neither), but because, looking back, I’m glad we both cared so much to fight so loud and long. It was, on the surface, about faith and preaching, and when not to say what you were really thinking. But over four hours into the night in a sweaty Senegalese hostel it was of course about more than that. It was about two young men sparring with each other like two lion cubs. And it was about two lives that were being tugged in different directions. Mine became the sentence that began this Preface. His emerged into the calling of a Benedictine monk. In many ways we’re still having the same argument. I suspect we always shall. This book is dedicated to him, in trust that friendship is the closest we get to finding out what the heart of God is made of.

    1 Martyn Percy (ed.), 2014, The Bright Field: Meditations and Reflections for Ordinary Time, Norwich: Canterbury Press, pp. 190−4.

    Introduction

    You’re at your brother’s. You’re in the kitchen. Everyone else is out somewhere. The house is quiet. You’re sitting together at the table, each holding a cup of coffee. Your brother has offered you biscuits, cake, sugar – anything to keep the façade of hospitality going and delay the conversation you know is coming. In the end you put your hand on his shoulder, just for a moment, as you don’t really do tenderness, and you say, as gently and patiently as you can, ‘What is it?’

    You can see he’s fighting his emotions, not used to being so intimate with you. He can’t open his mouth lest words give way to convulsive sobs and bellows of distress. So he holds a fist to his cheek, until he’s steady enough to let a handful of words slip out. ‘I just keep asking myself, why?’ And suddenly you can see it all. Everything he’s been struggling with, these last ten years. Waves of anger, when you know to keep out of his way. Strains of guilt, when he wonders if he somehow brought it all on himself. Struggles for faith, when he can’t find any purpose in the course of events. Depression that induces him to lose all sense of meaning in anything. And a creeping paralysis, a feeling of powerlessness in which he sees himself as victim with no ability to make a plan or pull himself together.

    There’s nothing you can say. All you can tell him is, ‘I’m here. I’m with you. This will end. And even if it doesn’t, I’m not going away.’ Inside you’re desperately scratching around for words of consolation. And then, searching the ceiling for hope, your eyes settle curiously on a pile of papers on top of the kitchen cupboard. You ask, not wanting to change the subject, but needing to know, ‘What are those papers?’ Your brother, glad of the lightening of the mood and the momentary shift of attention away from his troubles, replies, ‘I think it’s some kind of manuscript for a book. I’ve never got round to reading it. It’s all in old-fashioned handwriting.’ You climb on a stool and fetch down the papers. And together you begin to make out a story – a story about your ancestors.

    You’re mesmerized. This ancient story puts your brother’s misery in perspective. But it’s not just that: the two narratives have a lot of similar features. This old manuscript tells of a family that thought they’d escaped from persecution, and believed they were on their way to freedom, but got waylaid. They felt just the kinds of things your brother was feeling. They felt angry and guilty. They asked, ‘Why?’ They got terribly depressed. They were full of doubts. They had the same creeping paralysis and powerlessness. A lot of the manuscript wasn’t about the oppression they’d left behind or the freedom they were looking forward to – it was about the conversations they had and the discoveries they made when they got waylaid.

    And then you have an idea. You say, ‘Why don’t we spend the next month or two turning this manuscript into a book? It seems to be three or four different stories, but we can try to weave it into one narrative. I’ve got a gut feeling that if you find a way to sort out this story, our ancient story, you might find the key to sorting out your own story.’

    What I’ve been describing is how the Bible came to be written. Israel was in Babylon, in exile, captured and deported by the Chaldeans, dragged a thousand miles due east. It was angry, guilty, depressed, despairing, doubtful, paralysed, powerless. Just like your brother in the kitchen. And what Israel did, like your brother with the manuscript, was to piece together the half-remembered stories of its people from a thousand years before, stories of slavery, escape and freedom. But most crucial of all were the stories at the heart of the narrative, stories of the time in the wilderness, when slavery was a memory but true freedom was still out of reach. These stories were crucial because that’s how Israel was feeling in a new wilderness called Babylon, in a desolate season called exile. We recognize the feeling: it’s like refugees who’ve escaped the theatre of war but not found a place to call home. The exiles in Babylon wrote down their people’s wilderness history, because it had important lessons for their own present and future. Like your brother in the kitchen, they said, ‘Why?’ But behind the ‘why’ was a mixture of grief, bewilderment and an urgent need to make a plan. What emerged was the bedrock of what today we call the Old Testament.

    In Numbers 11 we find the children of Israel, lost in the wilderness, have given in to nostalgia for bygone days and craving for tasty food. God has given them a daily supply of manna to meet them in their hunger. But they’re bored of manna. ‘Remember Egypt!’ they say, forgetting the slavery and cruelty and fear. ‘We had meat, fish, cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic.’ In other words, meat, vegetables, seasoning, starters, dessert – you name it. They’re gripped by bodily craving, self-pity and greed: the kinds of things that overcome you on a journey where you’ve lost sight of where you’re going. God gets angry. Craving, self-pity and greed indicate forgetfulness of where they’d come from, ingratitude for what God had done for them, and small-mindedness about what their calling was to be.

    Moses is also cross, but for a different reason. Moses is snapping under the pressure. He’s overwhelmed by responsibility, unpopularity, disappointment, failure, overwork and lack of encouragement. You could say he’s in a mini-exile all of his own. The people are being highly demanding – but he doesn’t blame them, he blames God. He’s quite the prima donna, saying to God, ‘I’m about done with the whole Israel-covenant-and-wilderness deal, and you should just kill me right now.’ You can see the flouncing out and hear the slamming door.

    God responds in a very practical way. Why, one wonders, does Moses think everything good in the world has to come through him? Moses can’t have it both ways. If you regard yourself as indispensable, you don’t get to complain of burnout. God appoints 70 elders and fills them with the Holy Spirit like Moses. And then, in the final scene, we see Moses has learnt his lesson. Joshua comes complaining that there are two people operating as elders when they weren’t among the 70 on whom the Spirit descended. Moses recognizes that God, not he, is sovereign, that God can work through these other people just as well as through the official elders, and that he, Moses, needs all the help he can get. He makes quite a journey of humility in this chapter and comes out with a much more sustainable, collaborative kind of leadership.

    It’s a wonderfully vivid story of humanity, humour, hubris and humility. But it’s teaching Israel in exile some straightforward and unmistakable lessons. Lesson One is play the long game – foster good memories lest your urgent bodily cravings and self-absorption make you lose sight of gratitude, faith and hope towards God. Lesson Two is keep a sense of perspective – don’t get so caught up with your own indispensability and self-importance that you assume you have to do everything yourself and salvation can only come through you. Lesson Three is let God make you part of a team – recognize the gift of colleagues, friends and partners and enjoy the fellowship of sharing God’s service. Lesson Four is don’t turn your faith and your faith community into you own empire. It’s not about you. God will advance God’s work as God chooses. It’s not up to you how God speaks and who God speaks through. Those are the four wilderness lessons Israel learns in this chapter. Those are four of the lessons that eventually Israel held dear on its return from exile some years later.

    And those are four lessons at the heart of the Christian faith. Lesson One, the bigger story, we call scripture. Lesson Two, the true centre of the story, we call Jesus. Lesson Three, the sense that we’re not alone in all this, we call church. And Lesson Four, the way God continues to surprise us, we call kingdom. We read the book of Numbers today because it shows us the heart of our faith.

    Let’s go back to you sitting beside your brother in his kitchen. He’s in exile – angry, regretful, bewildered, powerless. Maybe he begins to recall a time he was in a similar wilderness long ago, and what lessons he learned then. Maybe you talk about what the Israelites learned in their own wilderness. It could be that he can identify with the people, craving, longing, yearning for bodily satisfaction; or with Moses, overwhelmed and self-absorbed, only able to see his own stress-levels. Maybe what your brother needs is to know he’s not in this alone, that God has sent the Holy Spirit on others, maybe as many as 70, to share the burden with him and walk together till the wilderness time is over. And it could be your brother will perceive that what he really needs to receive is coming to him from a source he never took seriously or even noticed.

    This book is written for those who find themselves in the wilderness today – a wilderness of living in a complex world, a wilderness of coping with a challenging life, a wilderness of facing the prospect of their own mortality. It’s written for people who are sitting in that kitchen, hardly able to get the words out for fear once they start they won’t be able to quell the tears. It tells a story of the many blessings God has given, the friends and companions God is sending, and the way God can bring salvation through people that generally go unnoticed. It’s written out of a conviction that in exile Israel looked back to times God had been present in the wilderness, perhaps even more tangibly than ever in the Promised Land. It’s saying, don’t lose sight of the glory God has prepared for you, however hard it may be to see right now. Find your story in God’s story. And discover who the Bible was written for. It was written for you.

    The book comes in three parts, each written in a different tone of voice. Part 1, Engaging the World, offers approaches to come to terms with some of the biggest global issues of today: issues such as Islamist terrorism, global warming and migration. In this section the tone of voice is probing and exploratory, undaunted by the breadth of the questions, but seeking places within them where Christians can find identity, hope and conviction.

    Part 2, Being Human, considers several areas where Christians need to think carefully beyond the conventional labels and party policies and polarized commitments. Some of the areas such as family and LGBT issues get a lot of – perhaps too much – attention in contemporary debate; some, such as obesity and domestic violence, don’t get nearly enough. In this section the tone of voice is more pastoral – one that arises from many years of addressing such questions from the pastor’s sofa and amid the heart-searching of trusted confidences.

    Part 3, Facing Mortality, has a more passionate texture, addressing as it does the existential fears around dementia, shame, bereavement and death. If Part 2 is located in the pastor’s study, Part 3 is set at the hospital bedside. One could say the book starts in the head, proceeds to the heart, and ends in the gut. The sequence is intentional: a person whose trust is gained in Part 1, and whose sentiments are engaged in Part 2, may be willing to allow their whole being to be arrested by the third part.

    This is not theology that expects simply to turn to a passage of the Bible and find immediately applicable answers to pressing contemporary questions. Instead, it comes from a scripturally formed imagination, which seeks faithful improvisations where conversations have come to a halt and expects God to be disclosed in times of struggle and dismay. It seeks not to offer the last word on any subject, but perhaps a new word in a sometimes discouraged conversation. If there’s a consistent theme, it is that God is invariably closer to us in our times of struggle than in our seasons of plenty. It’s a book that seeks to renew faith, offer insight, and stir to thoughtful action. It’s designed to be read with others: for none of the issues it discusses can any of us face alone.

    PART 1

    Engaging the World

    Islam and Islamist Extremism

    When talking about Islam and Christianity, we have to start by recognizing the backdrop to our conversation. There’s a historical backdrop: a longstanding fear that Islam was on the brink of overrunning Europe, having swept through North Africa and the Middle East in the seventh and eighth centuries, and that it had global ambitions, having expanded into sub-Saharan Africa and South East Asia much later. On the other side is a problematic legacy of the Crusades, of Spanish reconquest, of European colonial expansion and the West’s complex role in the Middle East today. There’s a mixture of caricature, prejudice and ignorance: a tendency to regard Western modernity and Christianity as interchangeable, an inclination to line up intolerance, backwardness, legalism and militancy on the Islamic side and assign peace, progress, freedom and enlightenment to the Christian side, and a habit of seeing Christianity as complex and nuanced while regarding Islam as monolithic and fanatical. And then, like a long-running domestic dispute, there’s a large list of grievances: on the one side colonialism, corrosive Western values, and the State of Israel, culminating in the duplicitous invasion of Iraq; on the other side intolerance, regressive social policy, the nightmarish phenomenon of Islamist extremists, ISIS and, most of all, 9/11.

    That’s quite a family argument to walk into. So why do so? First, because Christians want to deepen and grow in their faith and learn from anyone who has a lot to teach them. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been relaxing as a tourist or at a social event and I’ve more or less tripped over a Muslim in a quiet space kneeling to pray. Every time it’s made me wonder if my faith has the unwavering faithfulness I see in Islam. It humbles me. Second, because Christians are called to repent of our many historic and current failures in relation to people of other faiths and to grow in understanding so as not to repeat them. Third, because intercultural and interfaith conflict is one of the greatest threats to the world right now and we are duty-bound to seek a better way.

    Islam is a thrilling religion. It’s thrilling because of its straight-forwardness. Islam sees the problem with most cultures and religions as having so much clutter. It sees Hinduism as festooned with different gods, tribal societies as subsuming the individual entirely within the group or clan, and Christianity as obsessed with mediators – sacraments, in the case of Catholicism, priests and pastors, for most denominations, endless adornments of clothing and buildings, and most obviously, for all believers, Jesus. By contrast Islam is unmediated: we have a direct relationship with God and everything depends on that. This simplicity is the heart of Islam. But Islam is also deeply appealing because it’s so practical. Despite many assumptions, only about 1%−2% of the Qur’an is about law; but it’s certainly concerned with ethics – particularly how wives, children, dependants, slaves and orphans are treated, and three troublesome subjects – violent clashes, business relations and intoxicating substances. It’s hard to get more practical than that. Humility, gratitude and comradeship characterize a religious outlook on life. The key notion is submission: in letting God direct your will, you find a freedom the world cannot give. And Islam is easily summarized: the five pillars refer to believing in God and God’s messenger, daily prayer, concern for the poor, fasting and pilgrimage. Once you grasp the simplicity, practicality and comprehensiveness of Islam you can see why it spread so quickly in the early centuries and has so many adherents today. You could say Islam combines the direct intensity of Protestantism with the tangible humanity of Catholicism. For 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide, it’s a winning combination.

    In its statement Nostra Aetate, the Second Vatican Council grasped the significance of Islam and the potential for dialogue. It said that Muslims

    adore the one God, living and subsisting in Himself; merciful and all-powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth, who has spoken to [humans]; they take pains to submit wholeheartedly to even His inscrutable decrees, just as Abraham, with whom the faith of Islam takes pleasure in linking itself, submitted to God. Though they do not acknowledge Jesus as God, they revere Him as a prophet. They also honour Mary, His virgin Mother; at times they even call on her

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