Tag: Ratzinger

I’ve Become a Catholic

Earlier this year, after a lifetime in charismatic Evangelical churches, including 13 years helping to lead a Baptist church, I became a Roman Catholic. 

Earlier this year, after a lifetime in charismatic Evangelical churches, including 13 years helping to lead a Baptist church, I became a Roman Catholic. 

For the last 6 months I have not written or talked about this change publicly both because I wanted to give a chance for my family to adjust to our new lives and because I do not consider myself qualified to be an internet apologist for Catholicism. However, I have just begun a new academic year as a Catholic University Chaplain (you can follow me here and here) and, since posts have begun to appear that look conspicuously Catholic, I thought I had better say something for those who are confused or bewildered.

Catholicism is Great

First, I really like being a Catholic. I don’t want to come across as a triumphalist convert. I am acutely aware of all the foibles, failures and frustrations of the reality as well as the theory of the Catholic Church. But notwithstanding all of that; I love her. Catholic Christianity is saturated with grace, makes coherent sense of Scripture, invites me to participate in the single greatest intellectual and spiritual tradition in the history of humanity, provides me with beauty and wonder, enfolds me in the most diverse organisation in the world, and, most significantly, offers me the substantial body and blood of my Saviour. I go to Mass often; I would go every day if I could.

My wonderful, intuitive and succinct wife pointed out to me a while ago that we used to speak often of being hungry and thirsty for Christ. Now I feed on him each week in the sacrament. When my priest hears my confession and speaks the words of forgiveness and cleansing over me it does not merely communicate a spiritual reality, it brings that reality into existence in my soul. The liturgy in my local parish is not as much fun as a really well constructed and executed worship set. But it brings me the voice of Scripture and prays in return everything that needs to be said in a way that is both concise and beautiful.

Moreover, to become Catholic is to join oneself to the whole communion of the Saints throughout the ages in a way that is real and powerful. My experience of the history of the church and her great heroes as a Protestant was similar to the way I might think of great Spurs players of the past; I can look at them and learn from them but not play with them. Indeed, I am being generous here; as a Protestant I could only really publicly learn from or acknowledge a few – principally Augustine and the Reformers. Aquinas, Bonaventure, Therese of Liseaux and so on were, to say the least, suspect. Were they great heroes for us or suspect? Now I not only learn from the saints, I pray with them and they with and for me. My whole understanding and appreciation of the truth of the resurrection of the dead and the communion of saints has been transformed by the knowledge that those who go before us still stand with us, pray for us and do so powerfully.

Being a Catholic is great.

I Still Love Protestants

I still love Protestants.

Becoming Catholic is obviously a huge decision. It has meant changing job, moving house and has put strain on relationships I had previously thought strong. There are obviously some profound theological differences between the evangelical and Catholic understandings of Christianity. I don’t want to diminish those differences. Some are relatively trivial. Others are more profound. But for all this I do believe that my brothers and sisters in Protestantism are just that: brothers and sisters and I have nothing but love for them. 

My own reception into Catholicism is not, from my perspective at least, a repudiation of the evangelical charismatic world or a denial of God’s work within it. I remain grateful for all God did in me and my family through the work of bodies like New Frontiers and the brothers and sisters we worshipped with and pastored at HBC. I believe the Spirit is really at work in and through them, changing lives, saving souls and healing bodies. The work those churches do is extraordinary and profound as is their love for Scripture and the Spirit. I would not be who I am without them; I love them and continue to pray for them.

This is, no doubt, hard for some to hear. Inevitably there is a sense of loss when someone becomes Catholic, especially if, like me, they have worked and pastored in a Protestant context. For those who hear of my conversion and feel some sense of pain at it, I hope it will be reassuring to know that I became Catholic because I positively believe the Catholic understanding of Christianity to be a true and good fulfilment of everything I experienced in my Protestant faith. It is not, in this sense, a rejection of anyone but rather a continuation of the same pursuit of Christ that characterises evangelical piety. Indeed, a crucial part of my own emotional journey towards Catholicism was reading the works of Joseph Ratzinger and deeply desiring the knowledge of Christ and the joy in his beauty that I discovered there.

So, how did it happen?

Conversion is Both a Process and a Punctuation Point

Coming to the Catholic Church was very like getting engaged. I can tell you the time and place I became engaged to Heather. It was a Sunday evening in late August in my parents’ living room. I know what we ate just before it (lasagne) and how it happened (I wrapped a ring in a series of boxes like Russian dolls before going down on one knee). I asked her to marry me, she promised to do so and we were engaged. In the same way I can tell you the day and the time I became a Catholic. On 20 March 2025 at about 1845 I stood before Fr Con Foley at Christ the Prince of Peace in Weybridge, promised to receive all that the Catholic Church teaches as revealed by God. He laid his hand on my head and prayed for the Spirit to fill me and use me. I was filled with joy and then received my first Eucharist. It was, like our engagement, one of the most important days of my life.

It is important that both our engagement and my reception into the Church were definite moments. Before I asked Heather to marry me, she had made no promise to do so. We were not pledged to one another. Something changed in that moment as we went from one state to another. In the words we exchanged and the physical pledges we offered, our status was altered. Before that service on 20 March I was not a Catholic. I had not promised to obey the Church’s teaching, had not acknowledged it as revealed by God, and could not receive the Eucharist. When people ask me when I became a Catholic, therefore, I tell them that I can name the day and time just as I know the moment I became a fiancée (and later, even more so, a husband).

At the same time, conversion, like engagement, is the culmination of a process that takes time, sometimes years, proceeding on occasions dramatically and at others imperceptibly. My engagement to Heather was the fruit of a year of friendship and love between us. Going back further, it flowed from the work of God in both of our lives shaping our desires for a partner and a life lived for God. Over time it became increasingly clear where that process would likely be leading until Heather was sat at a dining table with a ring on her finger and a crying man at her feet. We were not engaged until that moment, but that moment came because of everything that had gone before.

My coming to the Church was similarly a process that, viewed in retrospect began many years ago. It proceeded through a thousand questions, prayers and experiences that led to it. It came through my wrestling with Scripture, with prayer, with pastoral work and with history. It came through moments of grace and joy, tears and frustrations, through pain and through the providence of God.

I mention this to reassure those who find themselves on a spiritual journey of whose destination they are as yet unsure. I did not believe my journey would lead to the Church until it was nearly over. Christ led me through all my preaching, friendships, prayer and pain to a place I did not anticipate. It was a hard journey. And yet, from this side I can see his grace and love in it.

For me my conversion is a process and a punctuation point. Prior to 20 March I never preached or taught anything that was distinctively Catholic. My theological arguments proceeded using Protestant sources and logic. Nor did I receive communion in a Catholic Church. I was not a Catholic until that time.  And yet from the perspective of my being a Catholic I can see how that evangelical work, the love of Scripture, of the Church, of God’s people and work, led me to find my home in Rome. I hope it will lead me deeper and deeper into God’s love and his Church.

Where To from Here?

If you are still reading this post, I imagine you may be interested in what I am going to do next and what has come of my wonderful wife and her ministry. I am at present working on finishing my PhD examining Baptist doctrines of the Church in conversation with Joseph Ratzinger. While I am doing that, I am the Catholic chaplain at Royal Holloway University and about to begin teaching RS at a local secondary school. I have no idea what God’s plan is for me in the future save that I would love for it to involve bringing as many people to know Jesus, to find love in his Church and to receive his grace as I can.

Heather’s story is her own to tell. For the moment I can say that she, too, has experienced a great joy in becoming Catholic and has found particular peace and fulfilment in the Eucharist and in a deepening relationship with the Saints of the Church. She is currently working in a prison as a chaplain. I have never seen anyone more obviously used by God to bring light into darkness.

If you would like to know more about how this all happened, please feel free to reach out to me privately. We value and covet your prayers above all.

Hope, Life and Death

To have faith in Jesus is to have hope. This hope sets us free to know love and purpose, to live and to die, and to look to eternity.
Deep and profound reflections from Heather Fellows.

To have faith in Jesus is to have hope. This hope sets us free to know love and purpose, to live and to die, and to look to eternity.

Here’s a brilliant guest post from Heather Fellows.

Life is hard.  Some days and for some people it may be so hard that they question if it can be endured much longer.  And yet, by and large, our desire to live wins through.  What is it that makes us want to live, even when life is hard?  What keeps us going?  Hope.

Christianity is all about hope.    Our faith is tied to hope.  We are a people of hope.

The letter to the Hebrews explains faith in this way:

‘Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.’1

To have faith – to trust in God and in Jesus – is to be a man or woman of hope.

As St Paul wrote, ‘in hope we were saved.’2

And it is by trusting in that hope – in Jesus, in his life and the life he has won for us – that we can face our present. 

Even though that present may be hard, it leads towards a goal that we can be sure of and which is great enough to justify the effort of the journey. 

But that leaves us with the questions: what kind of hope is this that saves us?

What kind of hope transforms lives, families, and societies?

What kind of hope can make our present pain and struggle worthwhile?

What kind of hope leads beyond the valleys of this life into the light of eternity?

These are the questions we are thinking about this morning.

Before I go any further I want to acknowledge my debt to Pope Benedict XVI’s letter to the church, Spe Salvi, Saved in Hope. It is a brilliant and rich document that I can barely scratch the surface of but has something very important to say to us.

Living Without Hope

To begin to understand the hope we have in Jesus, we need to start with where we were before he came.

When St Paul wrote to one of the earliest Christian churches in Ephesus, he reminded them that before they came to know Jesus, they were ‘without hope and without God in the world’ (Eph 2:12).  They had had other ‘gods’ that emerged from the different and conflicting myths they talked about. But those ‘gods’ provided little or no hope for their future or light for their present.  They found themselves in a dark world, facing a dark future. 

A dark present, facing a dark future. Does this sound familiar? 

Why don’t we pause for a moment and consider who the ‘gods’ of our age are.  Let’s start with money.  How often are we tempted to say: ‘If I could just have more money, then I would be happy.  I need to earn more money to buy more stuff.  I need stuff to give meaning to my life.’

Jim Carey, the famous actor & comedian once said,

‘I wish that everyone could get rich and famous and have everything they ever dreamed of so that they would know that’s not the answer.’3

Or what about the gods of power and success?  “If I could reach that position or get that promotion, then my life would be good.” 

Freddie Mercury, the lead singer of the rock band Queen put it this way,

‘You can have everything in the world and still be the loneliest man.  And that’s the most bitter type of loneliness.  Success has brought me world idolization and millions of pounds, but it’s prevented me from having the one thing we all need.  A loving, ongoing relationship.’4

Hope, Love and Purpose

There are lots of ‘gods’ in the world, but only one God. 

The thing that sets Christianity apart from the ‘gods’ of Ephesus, or of our time, is that Jesus promises a future. Wealth is lost or dies with us. Power and success are fleeting. But we have the hope of a life which will not end in emptiness.  Paul said in his letter to the Thessalonians, ‘do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope.’ 5

As Christians we don’t know all the details of what our future holds whether in this life or beyond. But do know for sure that we have a future and this makes it possible to live in the present well. 

This is because the Christian message doesn’t only tell us something about the world; it does  something in us.  When we receive Jesus’ hope, we live differently.  We are given new life and it begins as soon as we accept Jesus. 

Benedict tells the story of an African slave girl, Josephine Bakhita, who was born around 1869 in Sudan. 

She was kidnapped by slave traders at the age of 9, beaten till she bled and sold in slave markets.  She worked as a slave for the wife of a general who flogged her daily.  She bore 144 scars on her body.  Finally in 1882, she was bought by an Italian merchant for the Italian consul who took her back to Italy. 

After her master had taken her back to Italy, he made the mistake of leaving Josephine at a convent while he went back to Sudan to conduct more business. As she listened to the Nuns, she came to know a new kind of master, Jesus Christ.   She heard there was a master above all masters, the Lord of Lords and that he is goodness in person.  She came to know that she was known, created and loved by this supreme master.  What’s more this master had himself been flogged and now he was waiting for her at the Father’s right hand.  Now she had hope.  No longer simply the modest hope of finding masters who would be less cruel, but the great hope that she was definitively loved and whatever happens to her, she is awaited by this Love.  She said, ‘my life is so good.’ 

Through the knowledge of this hope she was redeemed, no longer a slave, but a free child of God.  She was baptised, and confirmed in Venice, fought for and won her freedom in an Italian court and spent the rest of her life telling others about this great master in whom she has found hope.

Christianity brought for Josephine Bakhita an encounter with the living God and therefore an encounter with a hope stronger that the sufferings of slavery, a hope which transformed her life from within and thus world around her.  Through baptism she was joined to the Church as a sister, not a slave.  She was filled with the same Spirit and received from the same body of Christ together with those who were her ‘masters’ in her working life.  Even though the circumstances around us may remain unchanged when we come to know Jesus, we are changed from within and, through us, others are changed too.

Many early Christians were from the lower social classes and so were very open to the experience of a new hope.  But so too were those from higher social classes.  They were all living without hope and without God.  The shallow state religion of Rome offered them lots of ceremonies, but Christianity offered them God to whom they could pray and enjoy a relationship with. 

A friend who grew up in a Muslim culture once said to me that it was the most precious thing to discover that she could pray to God for herself; that she could tell Him what was on her heart; that she could ask Him for what she needed and that to do so was not selfish or unholy, but rather that God desired this intimate relationship with her.  Sometimes if we have been Christians for a long time, we can forget the preciousness of this gift.  Jesus invites us into a personal relationship with God the Father.  That’s awesome. 

Knowing the God who made all things and whose Son loves us and is redeeming all things sets us free. We are not at the mercy of life, of its trials, of chance or the world around us. The future is not written in our stars but in the loving will of our Father.

Benedict puts it this way in Spe Salvi,

‘It is not the laws of matter which ultimately govern the world and mankind, but a personal God governs the universe.  It is not the laws of matter or evolution which have the final say, but a person.  And if we know this Person and he knows us, then truly we are no longer slaves of the universe and its laws, we are free.  Heaven is not empty.  Life is not a simple product of laws and the randomness of matter, but within everything and at the same time above everything, there is a personal will, there is a Spirit who in Jesus revealed himself as Love.’

So our hope in Jesus sets us free. But it also changes how we face life and death.

Hope, Life and Death

When archaeologists dig up ancient Christian graves they find Jesus portrayed in two different ways on them.

The first shows Jesus as a philosopher; the second as a shepherd.

In the ancient world, the philosopher was someone who knew how to live and how to die.  They would teach this art to anyone who could pay them for it. Many so-called philosophers were found to just be charlatans making money through their words who had nothing to say about real life. 

I don’t know about you, but this rings true for a lot of ‘philosophies’ about life that are circling around today. 

How often are we told to ‘Be true to yourself’ and anything less is a fake life?  Or that we need to break free of the traditions that enslave us, follow our own path and think your own thoughts.  This philosophy is everywhere from social media to Disney movies.  But does it help us to live authentically as a human?  Can I really have my ‘own’ truth rather than there being something external which is objectively true?   I don’t know about you, but I find it terrifying to think I am supposed to find ‘the truth’ within myself.  I am fairly sure there is a lot of rubbish deep inside of me and it is a huge comfort to know that I am not the source of truth, but that that is to be found in another, far greater than me.

But when we come to Jesus we find the true philosopher. He is one who can tell us who we are and what we must do to be truly human.  He shows us, in his own words, the way, the truth and the life.  He also shows us the path beyond death.  And only someone who is able to do this can be a true teacher of life. 

The second image was that of a shepherd.

This is most beautifully described in Psalm 23.  The true shepherd is the one who knows even the path that passes through the valley of death, the one who walks with me even on the path of final solitude where no one else can follow.  He has already walked this path, descended to death, conquered it and has returned to accompany us on that same journey and give us the certainty that, together with him, we can find a way through.

The realisation that there is one who even in death accompanies me was the new hope which arose over the life of the early church. It is what the world still desperately needs to hear today. 

Life is hard, suffering happens, death is real and we all need hope to sustain us. 

Hope and Eternity

Hebrews 10:34 the writer notes the counter-intuitive freedom of a group of persecuted early Christians,

‘You suffered along with those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property, because you knew that you yourselves had better and lasting possessions.’

As Christians, we can give up material possessions, gladly, because we have found a better basis for our existence, one that does not depend on money or power or status.  We have a real hope.

This enables Christians to live for eternity, not for the here and now.

Because we hope for eternal life, we can give generously, even recklessly, for the sake of the gospel and in order to bring others to faith. 

If I told my non-Christians friends how much money I have given away, they would thing I was absolutely bonkers.  At the time we gave up our flourishing careers as barristers to come and work for the church they thought we were mad enough.  I don’t have a lot of money, but I feel compelled to give it away whenever I can anyway.  And do you know what?  That is incredibly freeing.  When you stop believing that earning money and getting a promotion is the goal of life and that serving Jesus is instead, it turns out he takes care of you anyway. 

Lots of you know our story.  God has provided houses, school places, ballet classes, music lessons, holidays, pushchairs and much for us when we could not afford them.  Some through miraculous gifts in the post and some through the generosity of others as God has moved their hearts.  The future has broken into the present.

But what does that future look like?  Do we really want to live for eternity?  If eternity looked like this life carrying on forever, many of us would say, no thanks, 70 odd years is enough for me!

So if on the one hand we don’t want to die, and those who love us don’t want us to die, and on the other hand neither do we want to live like this indefinitely, what do we really want? 

St Paul says that ‘We do not know what we ought to pray for’ we just know that it is not this life.6 

This eternity is not an unending number of days on a calendar, but rather it is like plunging into the ocean of love, a moment in which time no longer exists.  Jesus says it like this, ‘I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy.’ 7

Or again,

‘Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.’ 8

And again, ‘Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.’9 

On and on and on and on it goes: Eternal life, our only ultimate hope, is centred on a relationship with One who does not die, who is life and love itself.  We are in him. 

Whenever we are moved by his love, we experience true life.

Every day we experience many greater or lesser hopes.  Sometimes they can appear totally satisfying – the hope of a great love, a new job or other success.  But when they are fulfilled it becomes clear that they were not the whole.  We need a hope which goes further. 

Only God can give us this hope.  And the very fact that it comes as a gift is part of the hope.  God is the foundation of hope.  Not any god, but the God who has a human face and who has loved us to the end, each one of us and humanity in its entirety.  His kingdom is not some imaginary hereafter that will never arrive, but it is present wherever he is loved and whenever his love reaches us.  His love alone gives us the possibility of persevering day by day, spurred on by hope in a world which by its very nature is imperfect.

This is hope and we all need it.

What Does It Mean?

So are these just pious thoughts or do they have a practical consequence for the way we live now? How can we know this hope in a way that is personally and socially transformative? 

Firstly, if you are currently living without hope, come and know Jesus.  Put your trust in him and get baptised.

He is our hope.  He shows us the path through life and beyond it to eternity with God in heaven.  He enables us to bear the present and to taste life now.

For those who are already walking this path, thought, I think we can grow in hope in three ways.

  1. Prayer – when no-one listens to me anymore, God still listens to me.  When I can no longer talk to anyone or call upon anyone, I can always talk to God.  When there is no longer anyone to help me deal with a need or expectation that goes beyond the human capacity for hope, he can help me.  Benedict puts it beautifully: when I have been plunged into complete solitude, if I pray I am never totally alone.

In his sermon on First John, Saint Augustine describes beautifully the intimate relationship between prayer and hope.  He defines prayer as an exercise of desire.  Human beings were created for greatness – for God himself; we were created to be filled by God.  But his heart is too small for the greatness to which it is destined.  It must be stretched.  By delaying his gift, God strengthens our desire; through desire he enlarges our soul and by expanding it he increases our capacity for receiving him.10 

If you are barely hanging on to hope, pray.  Pray anyway, but especially in the darkness of life, pray.  Through prayer we draw near to God and he to us and he strengthens our grasp on his great hope.

  • Action – We cannot earn heaven through by what we do, it is a gift. But at the same time, our behaviour is not indifferent before God and the infolding of history.  What we do does matter.  We can open ourselves to truth, to love and to what is good. We are called to be ‘God’s co-workers,’ contributing to the world’s salvation.11 

We must do all we can to reduce human suffering when we see it in our everyday lives. 
It is not within our power to banish pain and suffering from the world altogether. But through Jesus, hope for the world’s healing has entered the world.  We are healed by accepting suffering, maturing through it and finding meaning through union with Christ who suffered with infinite love. 
Each of us can live out this when we see those in pain in our families, in our schools, or our work places. 

Where is God calling you to partner with him in reaching out to a suffering world?  Who needs to know the hope which you have found in Jesus?  How can you demonstrate his love to others today?

  • Words – As Christians we should never limit ourselves to asking, how can I be saved? We are given hope in order to share it with others. When we see those in pain or suffering, we should pray for them, we should comfort them. But then we need to share our hope with them. When all else has passed, that is what they ultimately need. That can be as simple as offering to pray with them, sharing our stories of hope with them or inviting them to Church with us.

To have faith in Jesus is to have hope. This hope sets us free to know love and purpose, to live and to die, and to look to eternity.

  1. Hebrews 11:1 ↩︎
  2. Rom 8:24 ↩︎
  3. 2005 December 16, The Ottawa Citizen, Carrey’s been busted, Continuation title: Carrey—Being rich not the answer by Jay Stone, Start Page F1, Quote Page F2, Column 2, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
  4. https://queenarchives.com/qa/ ↩︎
  5. 1 Thes 4:13 ↩︎
  6. Rom 8:26 ↩︎
  7. John 16:22 ↩︎
  8. John 17:3 ↩︎
  9. John 13:1 ↩︎
  10. In 1 Ioannis 4, 6: PL 35, 2008f ↩︎
  11. 1 Cor 3:9 ↩︎

The Dignity of Life

All human life is sacred, given by God and should be cherished and protected.

All human life is sacred, given by God and should be cherished and protected.

This week I want to think about one of the most pressing, important and sensitive issues we can: the dignity, value and sanctity of human life.

Before I write another word, I want to acknowledge that this topic may bring up painful memories, experiences or ideas. In a blog I cannot possibly do justice to the pastoral or emotional issues that arise when we consider abortion, euthanasia, war, or any related issue. For that reason I want to ask for your patience and forgiveness for when I misstep or write clumsily. Above all, however, we must always remember that while it is vital that we speak and think with clarity and courage on these issues, Jesus came not to condemn but to restore and that there is always grace and forgiveness available to us in him.

[If you’re interested in some Bible passages that relate to these ideas, you can find them here]

  1. The Central Importance of Life

There is no more important issue in all human ethics – all moral questions – than the dignity and value of human life. It shapes and affects everything. Your view of this question changes your answer to every other question.

Christians make several startling claims about the value of human life that change the nature of every other discussion profoundly.

We believe that human beings, both male and female, are created in the image of God. Pause there. That is the ethical point being made in the story of Eve being created from Adam; not that she is inferior to him or an afterthought. Rather that she is inseparable from him. Men and women together equally share in God’s image and his dignity.

We believe that every human being is, in the words of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, ‘unique and unrepeatable’. You matter as an individual. You are not a lego brick, interchangeable with a million others, whose only purpose is to make a bigger model. You are unique. God saw you in your mother’s womb, before you were born. He chose you. 

As Benedict XVI beautifully put it, while evolutionary theory may picture how God took the stuff of this world and shaped it into people, nevertheless ‘we are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary.’

We believe, therefore, that every human being has an inherent dignity and worth that does not depend upon others. Every life matters whether other people love it and cherish it or not. It is inherently worthy because every individual is known to God and loved by him. Every person is, to quote the Psalmist, ‘fearfully and wonderfully made’.

This means that a person’s value, dignity or worth does not increase or decrease as they age. It does not depend upon race or social class, upon intellectual ability or usefulness to a society. It does not diminish upon injury or disability.

This is one of the major problems Christianity has with ideologies or belief systems that make the individual’s worth and dignity contingent on their value to the rest of society. Communism, Fascism and other forms of totalitarianism are offences against the idea of the dignity and worth of the individual created in the image of God and of infinite value to him.

It is also one of the major problems with seeing people as a bundle of characteristics, each of which increase or decrease their significance. You are not worth more, you do not have greater dignity, if you are black or white, male or female, attracted to men or women. That kind of thinking leads inevitably and inexorably to the oppression of groups and divisions between people. 

All human lives are possessed of God-given value and rights from the moment they are conceived – when God knits them together in their mother’s womb and begins to plan the adventures he has for them – until the moment they die.

We do not, we dare not, violate that dignity in others or in ourselves. To do so is a crime against the person and, most profoundly, against the Creator whose image they bear.

All human life is sacred, given by God and should be cherished and protected.

  1. Ethical Implications

What then does this mean for our moral lives?

It means that to be a Christian is always to be pro-life. 

I am going to explain what I mean by that in a moment. Of course it is nuanced. But it is not negotiable.

The witness of the Christian church from its beginning today, in almost all places and at all times, is that to follow Christ means to be for life. 

That is why Jesus came for us. He came in order that we might have life, and life to the full, life that extends to the ends of the earth, to the depths of hell, and beyond the limits of time.

To be a Christian is to be pro-life because Jesus is radically pro-life.

This has implications that are uncomfortable to talk about in polite British society.

Because Christians believe in the dignity and value of every life, irrespective of age or gender or race or class, we should work to reduce and then eliminate abortion and oppose euthanasia.

Human dignity and worth do not start at a low level, increase until a point of maximal productivity in mid-life and then decline as we get older. Putting it as baldly as this might sound odd. But that is functionally how much contemporary ethical dialogue proceeds. It is common to come across the sentiment that the very young are inconvenient, unnecessary and it would be better all around if they weren’t born at all and there were fewer people. Or that the views of the old should be given less weight and less priority because they in some sense count for less than those of the young.

The creeds begin their narrative of Jesus’ life by recording that he was ‘conceived of the Holy Spirit’. The gospels speak of how John the Baptist leaped in his mother’s womb in celebration of the presence of Christ. That is a reflection of one of the great joys of expecting a baby – to feel him or her move while still within the womb.

Abortion is a direct attack on the weakest human lives. Intentionally ending the life of an unborn human being represents a rejection of the dignity and value of those seen only by God, loved by him, and yet treated as disposable by others.

Now I will concede immediately that these are profoundly painful issues and if anyone is struggling with this, I am happy to listen, to pray and, if needed, to extend God’s forgiveness. 

But we have to confront this painful reality. 

More than seventy million abortions occur throughout the world each year, significantly more than the whole population of the UK.

Every. Year.

This is almost as far from God’s desire and plan for us as it is possible to get.

We will think about the broader questions in a moment. But being pro-life does not mean only that we work for the elimination of abortion.

It means opposing the intentional taking of life in other situations.

Euthanasia is not compatible with Christianity. We do not have the right to take another’s life from them. Nor do we have the right to take our own lives.

Suicide, whether assisted by others or not, is a subject of extraordinary pain. Who truly knows the anguish and illness that afflicts someone who would take their own life, except God himself. 

We address these issues not to condemn those on whom we pray God has mercy and compassion but to protect and care for those who are in pain now.

I can offer many pragmatic arguments against assisted suicide from my time as a lawyer, times when I have seen people take major decisions because of perceived pressure or depression about their worth to others. We protect them against the effects of those decisions because we recognise that they are not thinking clearly. 

Or the fact that the vast majority of those who attempt suicide and survive (between 90 and 95%) do not end up killing themselves. To quote the New England Journal of Medicine, this suggests that ‘many suicidal crises… including attempts that were expected to be lethal’ are actually of a ‘temporary nature and fleeting’. In other words, the evidence we have suggests that the majority of people who try to kill themselves regret it and, if they survive the attempt, do not try again.1

The idea of a settled suicidal wish, for the vast majority of cases, is just not true. And it is a profound and awful tragedy when, instead of working to make that person’s life better, society colludes in ending it.

Yet these are not the most basic arguments. Most fundamentally, euthanasia is wrong because this is a person made in God’s image and neither we nor they have the right to end their life.

All human life is sacred, given by God and should be cherished and protected.

We could go on to talk of other examples of affronts to human dignity such as war, capital punishment, poverty, discrimination and so on. We will return to these ideas later in this series.

  1. Putting It Into Practice

What should we do about this? How should it affect the way we behave?

As Voters

As voters, there is realistically no mainstream option among political parties for those who want to work to eliminate abortion.

However, we can campaign on and ask candidates for their plans to reduce the conditions that make abortions attractive.

In the UK, this takes the form of policies such as removing the limit on child benefit, to build more homes, to increase access to adoption services. Each of these might have a measurable effect on the demand for abortion.

We can write to MPs and campaign on the issue of Euthanasia when it comes up. The same applies if the nation is being taken into an unjust war.

As a Church

As a church we should continue to promote a culture that embraces life. That means being clear that caring for the elderly is a priority for us, within our church community and beyond.

It means welcoming children and supporting families with babies. This means going beyond Sundays to the work that we do with midwives, health-care visitors, toddler groups and so on. 

As Individuals

As individuals, the most important thing we can do is to pray.

Beyond that, however, let us challenge ourselves: do we see all people as created in the image and likeness of God? Do my actions and interactions with others reflect this belief?

What about the people who bother us at work, at home, or at school? Do we care for them as made in God’s image? 

All human life is sacred, given by God and should be cherished and protected.

  1. Matthew Miller and David Hemenway, ‘Guns and Suicide in the United States’, N Engl J Med 359.10 (2008) < https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp0805923#:~:text=The%20temporary%20nature%20and%20fleeting,on%20to%20die%20by%20suicide. > ↩︎

God is Love

God is love. He gives love to us. We give it away to others. 
A guest post from the inestimable Heather Fellows.

Here’s a guest post from the inestimable Heather Fellows.

God is love.  He gives love to us.  We give it away to others.   

I want to share some of the ideas I was meditating on when I went away on my retreat a few weeks ago. I have drawn particularly on Pope Benedict XVI’s first encyclical, God is Love. You can find a copy for free online if you want to read it.

Introduction

Christianity has been transforming societies across the world for the past 2,000 years. The positive impact of the Church cannot be overstated: guided by the teachings of Jesus, Christianity has touched virtually every part of life. Over the centuries, the Church has founded schools, hospitals and orphanages. Christians have campaigned for prison reform, better housing and an end to the slave trade; they have helped to establish a huge number of charities to support the poor, the underprivileged, prisoners and their families, the homeless and those seeking justice. Churches run marriage courses, thousands of parent-and-toddler groups and provide support for the bereaved. The people of this church make sacrifices day in and day out for the good of others. 

Research in the UK in 2015 for the Cinnamon Network calculated that the time given by churches and faith groups to their communities through social action was worth more than £3bn a year.[1]  I imagine that figure is much higher now, if only through inflation.

And that is staggering, isn’t it?  So, what has, and what continues to motivate the Church to reach out in these kinds of ways day after day, century after century? 

Love. 

Love is at the heart of it all.  Jesus says that God is, Himself, love.  He defines what love is.  And Jesus ultimately demonstrated what this love looks like by laying down his life for us on the cross. 

Today I want to spend a little time dwelling on the love of God.  What does it mean to us and for us? And what is its impact upon us?

I’m not going to quote long bits of the Bible here. But if you want to dig into where this comes from, you can look at 1 John 4: 7-16 and Mark 12: 28-31.

God is Love

When looking at the subject of love, we must begin with God himself.  Only after that can we begin to think about what love means for us. 

What does it mean to say that God loves us?

We love, John tells us, because God first loved us.  God is the source of love.

We all need to be loved.  We know that if a child is deprived of love when they are an infant, it has huge implications for their life.  It leads to attachment problems, anxiety, insecurity and many other things. 

So perhaps it should come as no surprise to us that the Bible and especially the New Testament, is laced with references to love.  We need it like we need air to breath and water to drink and food to eat.  And so God, in his great mercy, came down to earth, to meet our greatest need. 

This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 

Our sin separated us from God and this was a big problem.  From that point on mankind has been restless.

I think we can sense that in the world around us, can’t we?  People are always seeking and searching for something and yet there is a sense that it is always slightly out of reach.  And God’s answer to the problem is love. 

Love looks like God himself taking the form of a man and coming to the earth to live and die in our place, bearing the weight of our sin upon his shoulders and paying the price we can never pay, so that we might be united in love with him.

God loves man with a personal, elective love.  He chooses Israel and loves her, but precisely with a view to healing the whole human race.  God gives her the Torah, the Law, opening Israel’s eyes to man’s true nature, his sin, and showing her the path leading to true life.  And man, through a life of fidelity to the one God, comes to experience himself loved by God, and discovers joy and truth and righteousness – a joy in God that becomes his essential happiness:

“Who do I have in heaven but you?  And there is nothing upon earth that I desire besides you…for me it is good to be near God” (Psalm 73).  

How beautifully the Psalmist captures the heart of one who has come to know something of the depths of God’s love.  There is nothing that matters more.

Our society is obsessed with love, but there is something distinct, something unique about God’s love.  If you know your Greek, you might know that the most commonly used word for love in the New Testament is agape.  This is the kind of love demonstrated by Jesus.  It is a kind of love whose concern is not primarily for oneself, but for the other.  The kind of love we often seek is more of an eros love.  This kind of love is a desperate, and hungry longing that desires to be filled for its own sake.  It says, I need something and you can give it to me.  But what God does is to intervene in man’s search for love in order to purify and perfect it.  He unites our eros desire with his agape selfless love and creates something beautiful and powerful. 

Jesus sums this up so well in Luke 17:33 when he said, “Whoever tries to keep their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life will preserve it.”  The essence of love and life itself is found in giving it away, just as Jesus himself so perfectly modelled.

But as well as there being a hunger in each of us to be loved, so too God loves.  God’s own eros desire for man, his passionate love for us, is also totally agape, totally self-giving.  God’s love is unmerited, we have done nothing to deserve it, in fact we rather deserve death for turning our backs on our Creator.  But God loves us with a passionate and forgiving love.  So great is God’s love for man that by becoming man he follows man even into death, and so reconciles justice and love.  The Song of Songs describes God’s relationship with man and man’s relationship to God.  It is a love poem and pretty erotic in places:

I belong to my beloved, and his desire is for me: (Song 7:10)

The essence of biblical faith is that man can indeed come into union with God.  Our search for peace has a true destination. 

In Jesus we see that it is God himself who goes in search of the lost sheep – the lover in search of his beloved, culminating in his death on the cross – giving himself in order to save man – love in its most radical form. 

When we take Communion we remember that Jesus has given his body and blood as the new food from heaven. 

Before Jesus, the Jews understood that God’s Word was man’s real food – the Old Testament says that man cannot live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.  But this same ‘Word’, the word become flesh as John puts it, now truly becomes food for us as love in the person of Jesus. 

When we take Communion, we enter into the very dynamic of Jesus’s self-giving.    And in taking this meal in communion with each otherwe remember that union with Christ is also union with all those to whom he gives himself.  I cannot possess Jesus just for myself.  We become one body with Christ, together.  And so we see how the love of God and the love of our neighbour are now truly united.  Communion includes the reality of both being loved and loving others in return. 

But this love doesn’t stop there.  As we accept and receive it, as we receive Jesus into our lives, God’s love is poured into us, saturating our hearts and minds and transforming us from the inside out into the very likeness of Christ.  God’s love fuels and enables our Christian life.

In Romans 5:5 it says: “… God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”

It’s the fulfilment of Jesus’ promise in John 7: 37: “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.”   If we want our lives to be characterised by love, then we need Gods love first. 

There is one God who is the source of all that exists, and we need to come and drink from him if we are to know love and life as he intended. 

Jesus himself tells us that the focus of our lives should be love.  When Jesus is asked which is the most important commandment, he answers by uniting into a single precept the commandments to love God and love your neighbour.  The two are intertwined.  And this echoes the passage we read in 1 John; we cannot truly love others, without first experiencing the love of the Father.   It is a response to the gift of love with which God has drawn near to us. 

That same love which prompted Jesus to lay down his life for us, God’s love, has been given to us if we have received Jesus into our lives. 

And so as we have considered something of the nature of God’s love for us, we must now look at what it means for us.  Because the very nature of God’s love is that it was designed to be given away, to impact the ones to whom it was given, to impact us. 

And how does his love impact our lives? 

We know from the well-known parable of the Good Samaritan told by Jesus that our neighbour is everyone and anyone.   Love for others should absolutely characterise the church family and it is the place where no-one should go without.  But loving our neighbour is a much wider calling.  It is a call to love everyone we meet. 

And Jesus had a particular heart for the poor and the least in society. This is what he said in Matthew 25:31-36:

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

Jesus identifies himself with the least. 

The love of God and love of others are inextricably bound together. He is the stranger, the prisoner, the who is hungry and naked. 

Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me. (Matt. 25:40)

In the least in society, Jesus tells us, we will find him.  And we know that in Jesus we find God. 

God is, of course, everywhere and we all bear his image, but Jesus says when we show love to the least, we are especially loving him.   God’s love is taking a hold in our hearts, we are beginning to love with a God-like love in response to his love for us.  And in doing so our own appreciation of God’s love for us grows.

When Gods radical, self-giving love is poured into our hearts, something happens.  If you are a Christian here today, perhaps you can identify with this.  As we receive God’s love, we find ourselves feeling a love for others that we cannot explain and didn’t previously experience.  Sure, was a nice enough person before I was a Christian and I was, mostly, hopefully, kind to my friends and polite to people I met.   But God’s love goes far beyond niceties.  God’s love extends to the poor and the stranger and the outcast. 

Putting Love Into Action

First, let’s ask God to help each of us to know more deeply and fully his love for us. 

Why not spend some time this week chewing over some of the verses we have looked at today? 

God loves you so much.  His desire is for you.  Do you know that?  If you aren’t a Christian, perhaps you are hearing this for this first time.  Perhaps this speaks to you and there is a deep desire in your heart to be loved.  Then God’s word to you today is this ‘I love you so much that I gave my only son for you, so that by believing in me you might not perish but have eternal life.’  Come to me, he says. 

And second, if you have received Jesus into your life, then do you know that his transforming love has been poured into your heart by the Holy Spirit?  Perhaps you have experienced hurt and your heart has grown a little cold.  Ask God to reveal his love afresh to you today, invite him to pour his love afresh on you, to warm your heart. 

Finally, Jesus’ s love for us was never meant to be kept to ourselves, but to be given away.  In fact it only truly finds completeness as it is given away.  Why not ask God to open our eyes to the people around us to know how we can love them today?

Who are your neighbours?  Who is at the school gates or in the office?  Where are the poor near you?  I once prayed a prayer asking God to show me the poor in Hersham and he did just that, which is another story.  It was a ‘take me deeper than my feet could ever wander moment’.  It’s a powerful prayer to pray.  But in seeking to love others, God has moved powerfully in my own heart too.

Who needs to know God’s love this week?  We could do worse than just ask that question each day. 

With all those we encounter in everyday life, we are called to reflect God’s love by seeking to see them as Jesus does, attending to their practical needs, but also keeping in need their deepest need of all, for Jesus himself.

God is love.  He gives love to us.  We give it away to others.  

[1] Cinnamon Faith Action Audit, May 2015, p.4; Louise Ridley, ‘Could The Staggering £3bn Social Contribution Of Religious Groups Be The Antidote To Austerity Cuts?’, HuffPost, 20 May 2015 <https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/05/20/church-groups-community-social-contribution-tories_n_7321288.html> [Accessed 17 May 2024]

Do We Still Need Pastors and Priests?

Faith, and the pastors and priests who embody it, not only remain relevant, in our current age they are essential.

Do we still need pastors and priests? Or has our society progressed made such people and posts irrelevant or actively harmful. It’s a question I think about a lot both as a pastor/priest myself and as I watch many of my colleagues struggling with a crisis of calling or identity, scrabbling for relevance to other disciplines or professionals.

To this question, Joseph Ratzinger gives a rallying cry: faith, and the pastors and priests who embody it, not only remain relevant, in our current age they are essential.

The shadows are becoming longer, the loneliness— more profound, and the question of those who remain— more difficult: What sort of a future do they face? Does it still make sense to become a priest in a world in which only technological and social progress matters now? Does faith have a future? Is it worthwhile to stake one’s whole life on this card? Is priesthood not an outdated relic from the past that no one needs anymore, whereas all our efforts should be applied to eradicating poverty and furthering progress?

But is all that really the case? Or is mankind, by running the machine of progress faster and faster, not at the same time rushing into suicidal insanity? The famous French aviator Antoine de Saint- Exupéry once wrote in a letter to a general: “There is only one problem in the world. How can we restore to man a spiritual significance, a spiritual discontent; let something descend upon them like the dew of a Gregorian chant. Don’t you see, we cannot live any longer on refrigerators, politics, balance sheets, and crossword puzzles. We just cannot.” And in his book The Little Prince, he says: How uncomprehending the world of adults, of clever people is. By now we understand only machines, geography, and politics. But the really important things, the light, the clouds, heaven and its stars, we no longer understand. And the great Russian author Solzhenitsyn records the cry of distress of a Communist who landed in Stalin’s prisons: We could use cathedrals in Russia again and men whose pure life makes these cathedrals alive and turns them into a space for the soul. Indeed, man does not live by refrigerators and balance sheets alone. The more he tries to do that, the more desperate he becomes, the emptier his life is. We need even today, and today more than ever, people who do not sell luxury items and do not make political propaganda but, rather, ask about the soul of a man and help him not to lose his soul in the tumult of everyday routine. The scarcer priests become in the world of business and politics, the more we need them.

Joseph Ratzinger, Teaching and Learning the Love of God, p.207-8

What Is the Future of the Church?

We don’t need a church that celebrates the cult of action in political ‘prayers’. It is quite superfluous…the future of the church, this time as always, will be shaped anew by the saints. By people who are aware of more than mere phrases, people who are modern but have deep roots and live in the fullness of the faith.

We don’t need a church that celebrates the cult of action in political ‘prayers’. It is quite superfluous. Therefore it will collapse of its own accord. From today’s crisis this time too a church of tomorrow will rise, which will have lost much. It will become small, and to a large extent it will have to start again from the beginning. It will no longer be able to fill many of its buildings that were built in times of prosperity. Because of the number of its adherents it will lose many of its privileges in society. Unlike in the past, it will present itself much more strongly as an optional community, which can only be joined through a decision to do so. It will surely find new forms of office and ordain reliable Christians as priests, who also have other jobs. But, as before, full-time priests will be essential too.

The future of the church will not come from those who just follow recipes. It will not come from those who just want to choose the easy way. Those who avoid the passion of the faith and call anything demanding false and obsolete, tyrannical and legalistic. To put it positively: the future of the church, this time as always, will be shaped anew by the saints. By people who are aware of more than mere phrases, people who are modern but have deep roots and live in the fullness of the faith.

But despite all these changes which we can imagine, the church will again decisively find its essential being in what has always been its heart: faith in the triune God and in Jesus Christ. It will be an inward church, which does not bang on about its political mandate and flirts as little with the left as with the right. It will rediscover its own core in faith and prayer and experience the sacraments again as divine service, not a problem of liturgical design. The church will find it hard-going. For the process of crystallization and clarification will cost it much labour. It will become poor, a church of the little people.

The process will be long and difficult. But after the test of this letting go, great power will stream from a church that has been taken to heart and become simplified. For the people of a wholly planned world will become unutterably lonely. When God has disappeared from them, they will feel all their terrible destitution. And then they will discover the little community of believers as something completely new. As a hope that takes root in them, as an answer, which they have always secretly been seeking – as a home which gives them life and hope beyond death.

Joseph Ratzinger, Glaube und Zukunft (Munich, 1970) (quoted in Peter Seewald, Benedict XVI: A Life (Volume 2), p.70)

How Can We Follow a Good God in a World of Pain?

Precisely because Auschwitz exists, we need faith, we need the presence of the Resurrection and of the victory of love; only the Resurrection can make the star of hope rise that allows us to live.

This is a question everyone wrestles with at some time or another. Here’s what Joseph Ratzinger, whose family were persecuted by the Nazis, addressed the subject in a talk to those about to be ordained to the priesthood:

“The answer to an oft-asked question became clear to me as well. How often has it been said: Can anyone still believe in a good God after Auschwitz? I understood: Precisely because Auschwitz exists, we need faith, we need the presence of the Resurrection and of the victory of love; only the Resurrection can make the star of hope rise that allows us to live.
Making the Resurrection present—my dear young friends—this in fact describes completely the essence of what being a priest means. It means, most profoundly, being able to bring about this reality on the killing field of this world, in which death and its powers reap a continual harvest; it means bringing about the presence of the Resurrection and, thus, giving the answer of life that is stronger than death.“1

In turn, this changes the way that we see evil. We mourn and fight it but regard it ultimately as a defeated and vanquished foe. Thus, as Ratzinger returned to Auschwitz-Birkenau and celebrated the Eucharist, he found his perspective changed:

Making the Resurrection present… It was an exciting thought and an exciting experience, over this vast harvest field of death, on this killing field on which over a million people met their death, to live to see the presence of the Resurrection as the only true and only sufficient answer to it. It was exciting to experience how this memorial to hatred and inhumanity became a place of the triumph of the love of Jesus Christ and of love.2

  1. Ratzinger, Teaching and Learning the Love of God, p.95. ↩︎
  2. Ratzinger, Teaching and Learning the Love of God, p.94. ↩︎

How Churches Can Get Better Pastoral Care, a Deeper Spiritual Life, and be More Missional?

How can we make our churches deeper in pastoral care, the sacraments and Scripture while also being more effective in evangelism and social outreach? The answer from the New Testament is to appoint and empower Deacons.

How can we make our churches deeper in pastoral care, the sacraments and Scripture while also being more effective in evangelism and social outreach? The answer from the New Testament is to appoint and empower Deacons.

Church leadership has classically been made up of teams that comprise a range of gifting but which represent two different orders, and which have different focuses. The one that draws the most attention and controversy is that of Elder or Priest, a role that focuses on mediating Christ’s presence to his people through teaching, pastoral care, and the sacraments.

Equally important, though, are non-Elder leaders, traditionally called Deacons. Acts 6 and 13 illustrate why. In Acts 6, the text in which the office of Deacon as a non-Elder leader is first explained, we find Deacons leading in two areas. First, they lead in social action – demonstrating the love of Christ in action by ensuring the people are fed. Second, they lead in evangelism, pioneering an early evangelistic and apologetics programme that leads ultimately to the martyrdom of one of their number, Stephen.

Later, in Acts 13 we find other non-Elder leaders developing the mission strategy of the Antiochian church alongside Paul and Barnabus.

As Joseph Ratzinger put it:

[B]ecause one cannot learn to do by speaking but only by doing, the diaconate originated precisely and in a special way as a ministry of “showing how to do”. When the apostles called the seven men from whose efforts the Church’s diaconal ministry developed, they did so in order to entrust to them the ministry of charity in the Church, so as to be free again as apostles for the ministry of the word. Since then charitable work, showing how to believe and to love, has always remained a defining feature of the diaconal ministry…A Church that neglected this demonstration of charity, of social and human concern, and the actualization of Jesus Christ’s goodness in practical matters would neglect an essential part of her mission…

Here a second aspect of diaconal ministry becomes visible: showing-how-to-do remains mute unless it is interpreted in an explanatory proclamation, in the message that commands the deeds in the first place.1

In all of this the Deacons enable the pastoral and sacramental ministry of the Elders precisely because they (the Deacons) lead the mission of the Church in both its evangelistic and practical forms so that the Elders don’t get distracted from their actual calling. In other words, Deacons are appointed to lead in mission because that is not what Elders should be focused on Acts 6:3-4. That doesn’t mean the Elders are irrelevant to mission. Texts such as Acts 13 and Philippians 1: 1 show blended teams of Elders and non-Elders working together. But it does mean that as Elders they aren’t responsible for directing on implementing the church’s social and evangelistic mission and  when they try to be so they will inevitably end up being compromised in the execution of their actual calling.

I’m really blessed in this regard. My church’s leadership includes some wonderful and effective leaders executing non-sacramental ministries that keep the church on mission while enabling me to focus on representing and ministering Christ to those for whom I am responsible. Nevertheless, at a time when many in church life desire greater depth and care from Elders, the mission demands of a post-Christendom world seem overwhelming, and many evangelical pastors burn out, maybe Elders should not be occupied with being vision-casting, organisation-building, missional leaders. And ask the church to appoint and empower some Deacons instead!

  1. Benedict XVI, Teaching and Learning the Love of God: Being a Priest Today, p.152, 154. ↩︎

Suffering, Joy and Evangelism

The Gospel can be proclaimed credibly only by someone who, on the one hand, has suffered, who has not evaded reality, the difficult reality of this world, and has stood fast in his faith in the love that is stronger than suffering.

Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI) is one of my favorite writers. Almost everything he produced is gold: joyful, wise and saturated in Jesus. Here he is on great form, preaching about suffering, joy and Christian evangelism:

“When a person receives a great love, when he is privileged to know that he is loved by someone who is good and powerful and absolutely reliable, then this is no guarantee that something terrible will not happen to him, too, and remain terrible. Nevertheless, it will not be able to destroy him, because there is something in him that all these terrors cannot touch: a light and a strength that are stronger than all that. The Christian, though, is such a person; for to him is granted the gift that he is loved by God, who is absolutely kind and powerful, whose love does not depend on any moods and whose fidelity never wavers. And therefore resignation, joylessness, sullenness, humourlessness, and cynicism do not suit one who is Christian… Joylessness in this most profound sense is the repudiation of the faith, the repudiation of the God whose Yes is still the foundation of our life, whatever may happen. “Rejoice” therefore means: be believers, immersed in the certainty of what the Gospel has proclaimed to us: God loves with a love that is not fickle…

But someone who is resigned or embittered himself cannot be a bearer of Good News. The Gospel can be proclaimed credibly only by someone who, on the one hand, has suffered, who has not evaded reality, the difficult reality of this world, and has stood fast in his faith in the love that is stronger than suffering. Only someone who is an evangelist in this way can hand on the joy that we need, which is not a surrogate, a brief anesthesia, but withstands the truth of this world.”

Teaching and Learning the Love of God, p.139-140