Spectating is Good for your Soul

Sport is ancient, online videos are modern, but both have millions of people watching them.

It's easy to find negative things to say about spectators (the word itself even used as a negative description at times) because there are so many things where you could say that more people should be helping out with the work required in the world.

However there is a positive side to spectating the achievements of others.

C. S. Lewis once wrote in my favourite book 'The Screwtape Letters' that God wants human to able to celebrate their own achievements as much (but no more than) as if the same thing had been achieved by somebody else. If an architect looks at an impressively constructed monument, he should celebrate it's beauty the same regardless or whether it was designed by himself or a different architect.

Lewis wrote this as an explanation for how God wants our hearts to move away from pride, but his imagary also highlights for me the benefit of spectating. When you watch sports, you are practising the simple yet important action of celebrating others achievements. The more practised we become at that, the easier it should be for us to balance our humility in the way God intends.

There's nothing wrong with joy in your own success, and spectating is healthy because it keeps you well practised at taking joy in the success of others.

Forgettable Influence

An annoying thing I've spotted is that the times you are most likely to deeply influence someone are also ones that you are likely to forget.

I'm talking about the times that you give a piece of advice, teach someone something that you know, demonstrate something. The person you do this for, or in front of, feels that this is a huge revelation and they remember that moment for years. But if they speak to you about it years later, talking about "the time that you taught me..." whatever, you have no recollection of that moment, because for you it was a fairly ordinary one.

I've had this happen to me, and I've done it to others too.

I think the reason this happens is because the forgetful (or ordinary) moments are the ones most likely to have that big impact in the first place. If you are consciously trying to impart some deep wisdom, people pick up on the fact that you are trying. They know that it's coming from your head, not your heart. But if you say something succinct or take an extreme action with actually thinking about it too hard, then a person listening to or watching you will realize that this is something you genuinely believe, that it shapes your behaviour. That enables the feeling of big impact they get. They realize that this isn't just some pretty words, it's something you can live your life by.

Ian, Why does God allow suffering?

I was recently given this question in an "Ask the leaders anything" session at a youth event, and thought my answer worth sharing here. As always, this is just my thoughts and understanding in life so far.

Part 1: Pain is Painful

I want to begin by saying that it isn't possible for me to give you an answer that will suddenly make whatever suffering you are going through bearable. Words and understanding won't change the fact that pain is painful. So check yourself; you may be appearing to ask for an explanation, but maybe you are actually demanding a solution. If so, you will be disappointed by any explanation given, and you were asking the wrong question.

If you are reading this because you want to find an answer for someone who has asked you about God allowing suffering, pay attention to whether they are asking because of their head or their heart. Are they asking because they are searching for truth, and are interested discussing philosophy? Or, (more likely,) are they asking because some suffering in their past or present is making them emotionally angry at your belief in a perfect, loving God. One requires facts and references, the other needs emotional help, and the biggest mistake you can make is to get them the wrong way around.

Part 2: The Big Picture, or People and Nature

The cause of a lot of suffering in this world is free will. God wanted to create beings that could freely choose to love Him, so He gave humans free will. Unfortunately that same ability allows others to make choices that can cause you pain, either on purpose or by accident. That risk has to be a part of having free will, because if God intervened in all of our bad choices then it wouldn't be free will at all.

But some suffering, such as earthquakes and floods, is not caused by human free will. In these cases, the cause is that the current world is "fallen", broken compared to what God originally intended. This again was technically caused by (Adam's) human free will, but such a long time ago that it doesn't really compare.

So in the grand scheme of things, why would God allow suffering to exist in the world?  Because his highest priority is not our comfort. A great summary of the book of Job I heard recently was "We live in an amazing, beautiful, complicated world that is designed to show us how awesome God is, but it is not designed to prevent suffering."

Part 3: But what about Me and my Darkness?

Everything so far has been about the general, all-over-the-world scale of suffering that happens. I have given some answers to that. But if you want to ask me why your particular problem is happening, then I'm afraid I don't know. Even if you tell me all the details, and I think of all the possibilities, I still can't ever really know why an individual thing has happened. God knows, and my daily faith includes deciding to trust His plans. But it's not all just plans, God has something important He does in these situations...

I heard a story once of a man who wanted to show God's love to his community by helping them in basic, practical ways. A poor woman said to him "Give me money, I don't have any to pay my electricity bills," but being quite poor himself at the time, he said "I'm sorry, but I can't give you any money." He saw that this response angered her and she was about to respond, but he felt God's spirit prompt him to quickly add "...but I will come and sit in the dark with you after they've turned your lights off." It wasn't the answer she was expecting, but it also achieved something she hadn't hoped for.

God isn't detached from our pain. He experienced pain Himself when Jesus came down to earth in human flesh, and today He is with us through the Holy Spirit. In this period of time when the world is still broken and people are selfish, God won't wave a magic wand to make you comfortable, but He will be with you, He wants to be beside you, even in the darkness.

Is Happiness the Meaning of Life?

Agnostics are people who are generally undecided on what they believe in. Or at least, they are people who would not say they have committed themselves to one of the major world beliefs. In western culture this indecision seems to result in them inventing their own belief system, but in a vague kind of way.

One of the most common things I hear agnostics say or imply, if they are ever talking about belief, is that life is all about happiness. This may be dressed in phrases like "follow your heart" or "be true to yourself". The core thing that decisions come down to, says this belief, is that I should be happy.

Unfortunately, there are issues with this belief.

Social Media and Intimacy

Talking with people face-to-face is a rarity today. As more of our friendships and relationships are maintained online, there are understandable questions about whether being "friends" means what it used to mean only a generation ago.

One of the interesting phenomenon that our culture became aware of quite quickly in social media was the apparent contradiction that a person with hundreds of "friends" online could feel extremely lonely. This has generally been explained by saying that our friendships on the internet are more superficial, or shallower, and that a person who only invests themselves in online friendships will miss the depth of those found in real life.

Gift or Passion?

This is a bit of a chicken and egg question... If I'm gifted at something, how has that become the case?

Was I born gifted in an area, my natural talent lead me to be skilled, my skill enabled me to enjoy putting my gift into practice and my enjoyment makes me passionate about this?

Or, was I born with no more or less skill than anyone else. Instead of being born with a natural gift, maybe I was born or given early in life a passion for an area. That passion would have fueled my interest, my interest would have lead to learning and practicing, my skill level would have increased, and I could be perceived by others or myself as gifted in that area.

Music, Memory and Marketing

When you sing a song, you are combining the sound of a melody with the meaning of words. The words by themselves, without a tune, would just be a quote. This shows that our minds are born tuned to remember things associated with a musical tune, because we all remember far more song lyrics than we do other quotes.

This is a powerful combination, and many parts of culture have already used this to their advantage. You have been influenced by the songs you know.

By songs, I'm not even beginning by thinking of the pop music industry. No, the time that this was recently brought to my attention was when watching scenes of celebration for the royal family on television.

Religious Duality

Duality is where a person behaves differently around different people. I've gotten the impression that most of us notice ourselves using it while growing up- you learn to behave differently around your teachers than you do around your friends, for example. It can appear common sense in some situations, but in others it may cause us to question whether we are being genuine.

Of all the relationships a person can have, perhaps the most far detached categories are people and God. We relate to people every day, and can choose to relate to God as well, but should we behave differently around the creator of the universe because we cannot see or touch Him?

I am not referring to whether we should respect God or not. That is a question for beliefs and relationship, not for duality. I am instead asking whether we should be behaving very differently to God during our conversations with Him compared to when talking with friends on the street.

Rage Inside the Machine

In an average week, where are you most likely to get angry at other people? You may first think of the workplace, or home. What about, where you are most likely to get angry, and then convince yourself that it was another person's fault? You might still think of the same place. But what about where you are most likely to get angry, convince yourself it was the other person's fault, and then get increasingly angry as you make more mistakes yourself? Maybe your answer has changed now. For me, I think this is a typcial routine for drivers.

In the sealed metal body which we use to transport ourselves from A to B, no-one can hear you scream. Which is a good thing when you are furiously insulting the idiot who just swerved in front of you at that junction where they should have given way and let you go first. Most people won't stop, get out of their car and try to converse with someone who has done them wrong on a journey, so we are forced to sit in our seats and simmer in our own hatred.

Emotions Apart

How many people on the far side of planet earth are you close friends with? In the age of the internet, where conversation cares nothing for physical distance, how many people do you know really well that have never been geographically close to you?

What if Emotions are like Distance?

Our emotions, both big and small, appear to define a part of our relationships with other people. Namely, how close or far we feel from each of them.

How, after a social activity, do you measure if you have spent good quality time with another person? It is possible to do the same activity, and do it together, but not feel that you have really "connected" with your friend?

Grades of the Sexes

Boys and girls each have a different way of judging, from first impressions, whether a member of the opposite sex is worth chasing. In fact they are not just different ways, they are the complete opposite.

Imagine that everyone has an imaginary score they give the opposite sex when they first meet them, and maybe get to know them a bit. Let's say it starts from zero at the bottom and goes to the highest and sexiest mark of 100. If you're in the market, you want to find a high scorer.

So both the male and female species have the same target so far. What's opposite about them? The way they work out the marking...

Pessimistic Faith

Picture a monk in your mind. Make his facial expression quite clear in your thoughts, because I am about to ask you a question about what he looks like.

My question is, is he smiling?

Mine wasn't. My stereotypical image of a monk was a medieval man in a brown robe, with a mostly bald head and a serious face. Historical Christianity has an image of sombre, serious people. Some images could even be said to be of people weighed down by their belief. Maybe God is a kill-joy.

An atheist wrote an article a while ago in which he commended the relatively pessimistic view of religion. He was comparing this view with what he considered the unrealistic optimism of his current culture. He didn't mean that a pessimistic person was moody all day long- he made a point to say that when good things do happen, a pessimist can be as happy as an optimist. The difference is that only the pessimist will also be surprised.

I have faith in God. But am I a pessimist?

Greedy Optimism

Many people who would describe themselves as "not religious" appear to have an optimistic view that the world generally turns out OK. This view has possibly been influenced by seeing too many movies or reading too many books with shiny happy endings, but the optimism isn't founded on anything more solid that a vague idea that things just turn out that way.

Some of the most visible examples of this for me have been brief updates that people write online. I see people I know writing that they are currently going through a bad time, but that there is hope. Not hope in anything in particular. Just hope! These individuals sometimes quote the kind of happy mantras you might find in a birthday card or on a car bumper sticker, as if these small and cheap products are enough evidence to conclude that life can, and should, be nice all of the time. Strangely, the people who share these ideas about how nice life should always be are among the most frequent to complain that thing's are going badly.

All of this self-enforced happiness about life has recently reminded me of something else in the world- Economics. The way that the world has currently decided Economics works seems to echo some of this same unfounded optimism that I frequently see.

This Blog is Not Relevant

This blog is not relevant to current events. But it is applicable to them.

That, at least, is my aim. While many blogs provide commentary on recent events in the news or within their own communities, I haven't considered myself to be a voice for this. Instead, I have decided to take my time to write out my own thoughts on any topic, detached from the emotion that a currently relevant situation might create.

My aim has been to write pieces on a topic that are general enough to be useful when any event in that category occurs. If I write about suffering, I aim to write something useful and applicable to both the woman whose pet cat has died, the man who has just stubbed his toe on a door, and maybe even the teenager living in a war zone.

Fake Fun

It seems that people can claim they have experienced fun in one of two ways- past and present.

The people who say they are having fun in the present are aware that they are enjoying their current experience. It sounds simple, but a surprising amount of "fun" things don't fit into this category!

The people who say they have Had Fun- past tense- have sometimes decided that "fun" is the acceptable label for whatever torment they just went through. I think that this post-trauma-override thing is a bit of self-deceipt mixed in with a knowledge of culturally accepted "fun" activities.

You don't want Heaven

Most people in the world claim they want to go to heaven. I think that most of these people are wrong- either because they don't understand heaven, or they don't understand themselves.

If there is an afterlife, it consists of Heaven and Hell. Out of the two, everyone says that they would prefer to go to Heaven, and most of the time they assume that they are heading in the right direction. But have you ever stopped to wonder what it is you are looking towards? If you haven't, why are you so sure you want to get there?

Trust and Power

- An action hero, before an explosive scene in a movie
- A parent, teaching their child to ride a bike
- Every politician, when the elections come around again
- Jesus, in the Bible
- Your friend, passing a suspicious drink to you
- A woman trying to convince a man to buy something
- A man trying to convince a woman to loose something
- A spiritual medium, who needs to pay the bills
- The leader of an army, before taking them into war
- A con man, assuring you of a secure investment
- A doctor, calming your nerves before an operation
- A blog writer, telling you what your life is missing...

These are all examples of people who say, in one form or another: "Trust me."

Picking your News

Most weekdays I check the BBC News website, to keep myself vaguely in the loop with what's happening outside of my bubble. I learned this habit by choice- I did not learn it from my parents, because my parents got their news from the TV.

Have you ever wondered at the differences between the two mediums, and what difference they make to each of our two generations, when it comes to our knowledge of the world?

Newspapers are a third gateway to this knowledge, but they seem to be increasingly replaced by the other two. A paper did not dictate what you got or when you got it like the television did, but the internet has provided the same freedom more effectively.

Giving: Africa vs. UK

In African church services, giving money is done very differently to how it's done in English church services.

The African churches I have visited have involved everyone getting off their seats, and dancing joyfully in a line to the front, where they drop their donation into the box or bowl. Music sets the pace, and you really get the sense of joyful giving that the Bible says God wants.

Switch over to a sunday morning in England- and I'm even talking about charismatic churches here- and it's a very different scene. The sung worship in some british services may be similar in style, but instead of the time of giving being a focussed and celebrated event, baskets or boxes are passed covertly along the rows of seats, so that people are distracted as little as possible from their singing.

Passions per Heart

The charities I have regularly given to have included Oxfam, Children in Need and Christians Against Poverty [CAP]. Of those, I've only recently been passionate about Oxfam and CAP. Children in Need was one of those instances of being caught in the high street by someone with a clipboard, and after one year I stopped the money going out from my bank account.

I will buy Fairtrade products if they are available, and I was going to buy one of the items anyway. I don't often drop spare change in the plastic collection containers next to shop tills, and I have almost never given spare change to charity reps or homeless people in the street.

There are definately some conflicting items on this list, but I'm thinking here about what I'm passionate about, because that is what usually fuels my decision to act on the variety of good causes available.