HAVING SEX WITH GOD

Sometimes life delivers unreservedly classic film set scenarios and clichés. For example, an owl hooting just as I arrive on a dark starry night at the door of the Old ‘Haunted’ Castle where I work. Or the red cloud streaked sunset of December behind the Castle's East Wing as a gentle warm yellow glow filters out through leaded lights – so Kincaid that if it wasn’t real it would be considered naively kitsch. Well, today at church I had one of those unreal moments, too perfect, too stereotypical, and so textbook and clichéd that you’d think I had invented it.

Shortly after I walked late into the foyer on security duty the congregation struck up with one of my favourite carols ‘O Come Emmanuel’. This carol is packed with allusions and imagery taken from the texts of Old Testament history: ‘Ransom captive Israel’, ‘Lonely exile’, ‘Thou rod of Jesse’, ‘Thine advent’, ‘Key of David’, ‘Sinai’s height’, ‘In ancient times did’st give the Law’. As I listened I wondered how many of the congregation connected with a language that to be understood requires a modicum of OT scholarship. After all, this was the church where I had heard on more than one occasion a negative response to having ‘Yet another Bible study’. Anyway, as I had barely finished mulling all this over the next song started, and it turned out to be a quantum leap from the ridiculous to the sublime – no, make that ‘from the sublime to the ridiculous’.

The mind often filters, generalises and then forgets the data on which its generalisation have been made, and one is then left in doubt about the validity of the mind’s abstractions because the original protocols aren’t there to check against. Thus, my generalisation that parts of the contemporary church has abandoned erudition (whether Biblical scholarship or science) in favour of the much exalted and sought after ‘there and now’ quasi-sensual God experience or ‘God orgasm’ has sometimes felt a little off the wall. But as this new song struck up I felt vindicated. As if to emphasise the polarity of scholarship versus the ‘God orgasm’, starkly contrasting against the obscure Old Testament lyrics of ‘O come Emmanuel’ still sounding in my mind, steamy allusions to the ‘God experience’ now assaulted my ears: ‘Fill us’, ‘Passion!’, ‘Breathe within’, ‘abandoned to you’ ‘Lord have your way with us’, ‘God fall on us’ ‘More than this!’ all packed into a single song. (Note: More! More! Is an ecstatic cry one hears in some churches – I wonder if one also sometimes hears Yes! Yes! Yes!…?)

In spite of all the pretensions of prophetic insight that Charismatic Christianity has brought to churches nowadays, those churches seem so utterly unconscious of themselves!

So there you go, yet another minor adventure so pregnant with freudian meaning and insight that I'm sure I'm dreaming!

THE FOUR TO SIX MIX

The November edition of 'Christianity' magazine contains the results of its reader survey. The male-female gender mix of the survey respondents was reported to be 43%-57%; once again the approximate 4:6 mix ratio pops up. By way of comment ‘Christianity’ adds ‘This mirrors the majority female church attendance in the UK’.

FIGHTING SPIRITUALITY

Whilst trawling through the NCBC archives at the record office I stumbled upon the following typed note. I have no idea what the exact connection was, but it was written at about the time Dereham Road Baptist Church premises were being extended to include a large church hall and more schoolrooms. It appears to be part of an address dating around 1935.

“Now we shall have the building – but buildings alone are not enough. We must have earnest, concentrated devoted service. We who have laboured must strive to make ourselves fit, more willing, more persistent. You who have watched but not put your hands to the plough, what of you?”

Press articles of the day convey that mild intoxication experienced by a group of people when something new and full of hope is in the offing. With the recent renovations of our current building we can empathize with that. But can we empathize with this language? It is the language of different times, the language of a spirituality that was founded in the will, and not that of the late 20th century which equated a quasi-orgasmic perpetual honeymoon ‘experience of God’ with ‘closeness to God’. Instead we hear of labouring, ploughing, persistence, earnestness, concentrated service, devotion, striving. The unknown speaker is saying “OK, many of you have worked hard, but now ALL of you must work even harder”. With the living memory of World War I still very much in the public domain they soon had to face the privations of another war. They were ready.

MORE MALE-FEMALE HEAD COUNTING: A CONCLUSION

Taking the average of figures I have posted on the above subject gives a 42%-58% split between males and females at NCBC services. Last Wednesday night I had the opportunity to take a peek at the list of names of people who have signed up for NCBC’s “Christianity Explored” course. I tallied up the males and females (excluding one or two foreign looking names I was unable to identify as either male or female) and arrived at 14 males against 23 females; that is a 38%-62% split. Once again we have the approximate 4:6 ratio popping out of the woodwork. What makes this result interesting is that the same value now emerges in a rather different situation to the services – namely, the take up of a course which is probably populated by a younger cross section, but nevertheless returns a similar ratio. Interestingly, and I don’t know if this means anything, I got exactly the same 38%-62% ratio in the morning service, a service that includes widows. Is this evidence of “first in last out” effect amongst women?

So what does it all mean? Well, I’ve rattled on about the feminization of Christianity, and that may be a factor, but is this bias toward the feminine part of something more general? After all, the readers of astrology columns and the members of a stage spiritualist’s audience have a female majority. Likewise, although I did no sample counting on the evening, the Benny Hinn rally in Norwich (which I endured for research reasons), looked as though it had a female majority amongst the white members of the audience. Is the female mind more likely to tune into the ‘spiritual’ than the male mind? In attempting to explain all this, my best shot at the moment is what follows.

The mind has at least two modes of working. Mode 1: It uses a series of prefabricated heuristics and algorithms. Mode 2: it is capable of actually constructing new heuristics and algorithms. Mode 1 is often loosely associated with the’ limbic’ system; it is instinctual, intuitive, emotional, inscrutable, mysterious and largely unconscious in operation apart from its end results perhaps. Its pros and cons are that it is fast in producing results, embeds much age-old wisdom, but its inflexibility makes it error prone and its inscrutability makes it difficult to correct. Mode 2 is associated with cerebral and conscious thinking. It is clearly a much more complex and difficult activity. Its disadvantages are that it is painstaking, doesn’t quickly arrive at conclusions and can be indecisive, but it is flexible, adaptable, accountable and correctable.

Now here is the rub: these two different modes can be at odds: in fact industrial society, which is largely the product of mode 2, has created conditions in which the prefabricated mental structures of the intuitive mind often feel like a fish out of water. It’s the old head verses heart cliché in another guise. Religion, which so often uses the limbic as its main resource, may find itself alienated from the products of conscious cognition. Rather than a negotiated peace between two complimentary modes of mind there is, in some religious circles, a war on, a head versus heart war. And one can see this in Christianity. Take for example these two quotes that I have culled from Christian circles:

If you always process salvation through your mind you will never enter the fuller things in your walk. You must move from a place of cognitive reasoning ability to a place where faith and belief flows through your spirit and not your head … God is beyond your logic.A softer and perhaps less objectionable version of a similar thing:

I have met many people over the years who have tried to build their faith in their minds. However the mind is based on logic and sometimes the things of God are not logical! The key, I find, is to have your faith in your heart, here needing to understand every detail is not important as all you believe in is based and surrounded by the ultimate truth that God loves you!
(Interestingly in the audience listening to speaker of the first quote I estimated a 35%-65% male-female mix) These quotes attempt to elevate the 'limbic' by heightening its inscrutable mystique and defame the cerebral by suggesting it is mundane, prosaic, earthly, dead and cold. But the fact is that both modes are human and both modes are error prone and yet at the same time both are deeply mysterious in their operation and function under Divine sovereignty. They are complimentary and they should negotiate and not be set against one another.

Now here is the second rub: the female mentality is slightly more skewed toward the limbic mind than the male mentality and hence (I submit) the 4-6 mix of males to females found in churches and other ‘spiritual’ connections. Religion often exploits the age-old limbic system. I wouldn’t want deny that revelations come via this system, but its inscrutability leaves it wide open to exploitation by charlatans and religious quacks. I would be the first admit that we need different kinds of folk in church: intuitive oracles and conscious thinkers and they should compliment one another. However, it seems that looking back at the recent history of western Christianity the swing betrayed by my male-female statistic is not just a statistic – it is thermometer indicating a swing in values toward the limbic: limbic responses are considered to be a sign of a superior spirituality. As limbic Christians have become more and more alienated from the results of a science based society whose main resource is the cerebral mode of thinking, there has been a reaction against the cerebral in favour of the intuitive, emotional, and instinctive and this reaches its extreme in Gnostic flavours of Christianity.

There is an irony here: Christians place a heavy emphasis on the role of the Holy Spirit in bringing people to faith. That’s true enough, but it seems that the Holy Spirit is not transgressing the properties of His own creation: The same subtle pressures found in the current social milieu which favour a retreat of a cross section of religious people into the inscrutable world of limbic reactions are also found amongst Christians. The limbic appeal of Christian churches, like astrology columns and spiritualist churches, is betrayed by the side effect of a skew toward female majorities. This doesn’t invalidate Christianity but it suggests that the Holy Spirit is working very much within the parameters of His own creation.

How does someone like myself fit into all this? The ‘skeptic’ Larry Moran on Sandwalk, is likely to accuse someone like myself of being a deist. In his own terms he may be right as I am inclined to stress the full range of options that the Divine has available without resort to the overtly miraculous. In defence I would have to say to Larry that with the passing of the Newtonian universe deism is a less clear cut category than it was – the day by day providence of God is seen in the vicissitudes of chaos and randomness. But of course redneck limbic Christains will have none of this: they react instinctively against any thing that goes against their instincts and they have no truck with such fine distinctions. This attitude is at once both conceit and self-deceit.

DARE TO ADMIT IT

Norwich Central Baptist Church is the product of two main events: Primarily: the merger of Dereham Road Baptist Church and St. Mary’s Baptist Church. Secondarily: the decision to use the St Mary’s Baptist Church premises as the venue for the merged church.

The following admission is long overdue. Dereham Road Baptist Church’s view on both of these events was initially wrong, whereas the St. Mary’s congregation were at least right from the very beginning that the merger should take place. Initially, however, almost everyone was of the opinion that if the churches merged the Dereham Road premises would be the venue to use and that the fate of the St Mary’s building would be demolition. However, after the merger of the two churches, minds began to change on the on venue question and in this, as with the merger, the St. Mary’s congregation lead the way.

It’s going to be a tough admission for some, but it is clear that God spoke through the St. Mary’s congregation first; not the Dereham Road congregation. I can say this because I’m the first to admit that I got it wrong on both counts. However, perhaps it was easier for me than some to eventually admit I had got it wrong: at the time I was very careful not to back myself into a super spiritual corner by claiming my (wrong) views were based on what “God was saying” or a superior gnostic insight. The gnostic spirituality that sometimes influences evangelicalism is part of the problem rather than part of the solution. (there I go again, slagging off Christian gnosticism)

So, many thanks to God’s servants at the original St. Mary’s Baptist Church who helped bring us to where we are now. Special thanks should also go to the efforts of Rev. David Milner, Mrs. Mary McLarty, and to Rev. Neil Walker; in particular the latter spoke very well at one church meeting and helped me correct my views.

THE HYPERFEMINISED CHURCH.

After my blog on the hyperfeminised church and the subsequent head counting blogs that resulted, I was interested to read a review in the September 2007 edition of ‘Christianity’ about a book called “No More Christain Nice Guy” by Paul Coughlin. The reviewer (Tony Horsfall) says that the book contains a chapter called ‘Jesus the Bearded Woman’ and that it is a “...hardhitting call for men to rediscover their true identity, which he (the author) claims has been emasculated by radical feminism and the teaching of the church. Rather than being passive, naive and avoiding conflict, men should be proactive assertive and courageous, taking hold of the rugged side of Jesus.”

At the very least, it does seem this is not just another of my own idiosyncratic hobby-horses and that there is an issue here percieved by others. Although I wouldn’t say that I find what goes on in my own church particularly obectionable, I have to admit that I often feel its ethos fails to connect, relate, or illuminate the interests, problems, and aspirations I face in my own day-to-day living. In fact this very issue of hyperfeminisation is one of them. As far as my church is concerned the issue simply doesn’t exist. Moreover it is likely to remain outside the cognizance of the church, and the ‘prophecies’ it receives will in turn reflect its ethos. Surprise surprise!

MALE_FEMALE HEAD COUNTING RESULTS

Here are the latest male-female head counting results at NCBC.
Morning Service 23/7/2007: 48 males and 79 females: 38%-62%
Evening Service 23/7/2007: 36 males and 47 females: 43%- 57%
The evening service ratio remains stubbornly static. The morning service shows an even greater preponderance of females, perhaps because it includes the older members, many of whom are widows.

MALE-FEMALE HEAD COUNTING RESULTS

On the Sunday night service of 15/7/2007 I counted 34 males and 45 females and 34 males – that’s a 43%-57% ratio. At the church meeting of 19/7/2007 I counted 20 males and 27 females and 20 males – that’s a 43% - 57% ratio. So, the roughly 4:6 ratio seems to be holding up. What’s it mean? I’m working on it....

MALE-FEMALE HEAD COUNTING RESULTS

Last night I did another male-female head count at church and got 41 males against 57 females – that’s a 42%-58% cut and very close to the previous cut of 41%-59%. It is interesting to note that although we had 17 more people at the service last night the male-female ratio was more or less constant – that’s suggestive of a general background ratio, although it has to be admitted that it is rather early to be sure about this.

THE HYPER FEMINISED CHURCH

An article in the July ‘Christianity’ reports on the difficulty Christian women are having finding marriage partners because of the paucity of males in church. As a result of this article I did some head counting at last Sunday night’s service at NCBC. I came up with 32 males against 46 females – that’s a 41%-59% cut. I suppose this isn’t really news. Moreover, the article brought to my mind another article in the September 2006 issue of ‘Christianity’ which raised the question of whether there is room in today’s church for the expression of the masculine. Also, I have written before on an apparent imbalance toward the feminine in contemporary church culture.

I think there is something very deep here, something that’s actually bound up with the very fabric of our world. One senses it when one reads a book like H. G. Wells “The Time Machine”, a book that investigates feminine and masculine traits by separating them out into two different branches of human evolution, the Morlocks and the Eloi. Looking back on history since enlightenment times one sees a twoing and froing between the analytical and the romantic, as these two perspectives, like Wells' Morlocks and Eloi, constantly react against one another. The analytical favours the masculine caricature: objectivity, focus, the impersonal, the mechanical, the unfeeling, the categorical, the rational, knowledge, evolutionary competition, conquest, even war. The romantic favours the feminine caricature: subjectivity, holism, the personal, mystery, feeling, the intuitive, the heart, the irrational, the inner life, gnosis, tenderness and pacifism.

Like some deep underlying geological fault line imposing itself on the geomorphology of the Earth above, there is, I feel, a deep dualism in the way the world is being perceived and this dualism is making itself felt here. That psychological fault line is constituted by a perceived dualism between the inner life of the heart versus the ‘external’ world of apparently impersonal things. This conceptual fault line is not only affecting our weltenshauung but even affects our church culture; as that culture attempts to disconnect itself from the impersonal, it skews itself toward the feminine.

COMPLIMENTARITY
I was interested to hear Sweet Pete, during his leading of worship on Sunday evening (06/05/2007), quote from a book by Gary Thomas, a friend of Rick Warren. This is what Warren, in his book “The Purpose Driven Life”, says about Gary Thomas’ view (see page 103):

In his book Sacred Pathways, Gary identifies nine of the ways people draw near to God. Naturalists are most inspired to love God out-of-doors, in natural settings. Sensates love God with their senses and appreciate beautiful worship services that involve their sight, taste, smell and touch, not just their ears. Traditionalists draw closer to God through rituals, liturgies, symbols and unchanging structures. Ascetics prefer to love God in solitude and simplicity. Activists love God through confronting evil, battling injustice, and working to make the world a better place. Caregivers love God by loving others and meeting their needs. Enthusiasts love God through celebration. Contemplatives love God through adoration. Intellectuals love God by studying with their minds.
Warren concludes:

There is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to worship and friendship with God. One thing is certain: You don’t bring glory to God by trying to be someone he never intended you to be. God wants you to be yourself. That’s the kind of people the Father is out looking for: those who are simply and honestly themselves before him in worship.What can I say other than, “I’m extremely relieved to hear this”? I think it is the first time I have ever seen the complimentary role played by personality types amongst the ecclesia not only being acknowledged by prominent Christian leaders but also so clearly expressed. This is certainly not the message that has so often been thrust down my throat by a miscellany of Christian leaders who are apt to define authentic Christianity exclusively in terms of what is accessible to their own personality type. Very well said Gary, Rick and Pete.

SERMONS IN STONE..... is the name of one (yes, just one) of my latest projects. I was asked by the NCBC powers that be to compile an album of photos of our church buildings as they used to be before the recent renovations. This album is intended to be an artifact that people can browse in order to see how things have changed, property wise. This task provided me with an excellent cover story to commence a project that I have had in the background for years: Namely, the “Sermons in Stone” project. It entails using a set of photographs of our church architecture to illustrate a piece of text I wrote ten years ago called “High Pulpits, High Priests and the Bedford Blessing”. This piece briefly explored the architectural significance of the ex-Dereham Road Baptist church in relation to the mediaeval period, through the reformation, to the coming of the exotic sounding “Toronto blessing” (except that the “priesthood” who administered the blessing at the Dereham road venue - and wouldn’t you just know it - hailed from ........... Bedford)

In the cover story of an “nostalgia album” I had the perfect excuse to prize out some excellent photographic material from skilled photographers like Steve Genders and Les Thacker both of who obviously have some class equipment. Because every one at NCBC obeys the leadership to the letter, this couple of poor stooges had to hand over their artistic work to me! The album will, of course, ultimately be published in order to maintain my cover story, but the background project will be a little bit more nefarious. Little do they know!

As I have said “Sermons in Stone” is just one of my projects. Another of my current projects also harks back to the past, in fact right back to 1977 when I was involved with the ultimate mathematical control freaky: a study of randomness that attempted to capture it completely in mathematical equations. There was a paradox here that fascinated me – how can you mathematically characterise unpredictability and chaos by bringing it into the compass of the Great Rationales of Mathematics? Aren’t chaos and unpredictability the antithesis of mathematical order? To embark on this project is the ultimate conceptual imperialism. Right up my street.

This project was partly triggered by a question raised Arthur Koestler in his fascinating book “The Roots of Coincidence”. In chapter 1 he tells us how roulette wheels, the daily frequency of ‘dog bites man’ in New York and the number of lethal kicks delivered to German soldiers from their own army horses, all conform to the mathematical patterns of statistics and then he asks a simple but profound question:

How do those German army horses adjust the frequency of their lethal kicks to the requirement of the Poisson equation? How do the dogs in New York know that their daily ration of biting is exhausted? How does the roulette ball know that in the long run zero must come up once in thirty-seven times?
My mathematical work on this fascinating subject was completed by 1987 and I defined, at least to my own satisfaction, the notion of randomness without resort to algorithmic information theory. I typed up my findings, somehow managing to create all the mathematical formalisms using the limited character set of a mechanical typewriter. Hence, my current project is to transfer this paper to computer format, probably expanding and enhancing it in the process. In some ways this mathematical project does have parallels with my attempts to formulate the Open Gospel – in both cases my desire was to find order and theme amidst disorder and complexity. In the first case the complexity is found in those prosaic patterns of heads and tails generated by the throws of a coin and in the second case the complexity was found in the chaotic varieties of Christian culture.

Why do I do these projects? It’s not necessarily that I am particularly expert at them or that I uncover anything special. There are probably two reasons; the first is that I find mystery to be kind of food, a food that I need to devour in order to sustain myself. Thank God then that His mysteries are infinite in number thus ensuring an eternal supply of ‘food’. The second reason is that if I don’t keep at it, if I don’t keep hunting in this world of mystery, boredom, to the extent of being a mild form melancholy, settles upon me – I find the stimulation is necessary. It’s like having to run to keep warm, or like the shark that has to keep swimming to prevent itself from sinking. If you think that there is something wrong about this then think again. God’s creative activity has pulled all sorts of strange creatures out of the nether world of contingency space. I, along with you weird lot out there, seem to be the strange forms he has graciously extracted from the everlasting limbo of possibility, into eternity.

c 1977, 1987, 1997, 2007

EAST IS EAST AND WEST IS WEST….
The good Rev James East expressed the perception (NCBC 21 January, Sunday evening service) that there is a current resistance to any suggestion that the failure to invoke miraculous healing is bound up with a lack of faith in Christ’s power (and willingness?) to heal. This perception of James probably stands a better chance of being right if it is qualified. Perceptions like this are notoriously dependent on the Christian subculture one naturally identifies with, not to mention swings in fashion. Swinging pendulums, counteractions and polarization may explain why in the May of 1996 I wrote the following passage which, in fact, expresses the very opposite perception – namely, that the “Faith deficit” hypothesis as an explanatory tool for making sense of an apparent dearth and/or failure to invoke miraculous healing was very much in vogue. The following is from a work of fiction I entitled “Signs and Numbers” and it uses the device of a fictional Christian fundamentalist organization (whose acronym was simply “BO”) to explore the subject of the miraculous:

The larger part of the healing theory of the BO was a cluster of ideas that could be invoked to explain why, in so many cases, what they thought should be the norm of miraculous healing on demand did not actually appear to be the case. When faced with a "healing" that conflicted with appearances they resorted to two types of explanation to resolve the conflict. The first were those ever popular explanations, although very unpopular with those on the receiving end, that healing had not taken place because of some hidden impediment like a lack of faith, spiritual blockage, hidden sin, fear, demonic influence, or lack of desire for healing etc. The second category were more subtle, for they asserted that healing had actually taken place but then gave an account of why appearance suggested otherwise; for example it might be claimed that although the indisposition was healed, only the symptoms persisted, or that old age and not illness was the problem, or that the healing would eventually take place even it took days, months, or years (making it ostensively indistinguishable from “natural” healing), or that demonic influence was manifesting itself with misleading symptoms etc etc. The BO was a heavy-duty user of explanations of this kind and from a collection of ideas of this sort it was always possible for faith to find refuge in some explanation of why the appearance of indisposition persisted in spite of prayer for healing on demand.

The BO was proud of its strong affirmation of miraculous healing, but with a cluster of explanations with which it could spin-doctor the awkward realities of failed healing events, when it came down to it, the BO did not have much more faith than anyone else. Certainly not more than those Christians who would claim that miraculous healing did not take place on demand; The latter Christians accepted that there were many cases when miraculous healing did not happen for inexplicable and inscrutable reasons; reasons whose mysteries would not yield to heavy handed spiritual trouble shooting which either intimidated the acceptance of an ambiguous "miraculous healing" or else sought someone to loudly blame for having obstructed it in some way. In fact even dispensationalist Christians who claimed that miraculous healing was largely confined to early church history could hardly have their faith faulted by the BO when they were only doing what the BO itself did; namely, to provide their own explanation as to why certain miraculous healings did not happen. The fact was, and is, that most traditional Christians believed in miraculous healing and they only differed in their beliefs about why it did not always take place: Consequently, the cause of contention was not so much the concept of miraculous healing itself, because most orthodox Christians believed in it anyway, but rather in the differing theories they invoked to explain why miraculous healing was not invariable. Some said that miraculous healing once happened and now doesn't. Some said that it sometimes happens and sometimes doesn’t. The BO, although it was unlikely to admit it, also said, in effect, that it sometimes happens and sometimes doesn't; but they, like many other authoritarian Christian groups hinted at the causes of failed healings by mixing up imperatives with matters of fact; for them miraculous healing should happen and sometimes didn't because someone somewhere was to blame.

The BO, paradoxically, probably prospered all the more for these views, which provided a pretext for spiritual bullying and thus pandered to the quasi-masochistic drives of the religiously insecure and guilty who needed an opportunity to punish their fleshly intellects that ran on logic.


Let me summarise: The task of human cognition, as always, is to make sense of reality and when difficulties of interpretation arise that cognition is capable of creating some very ingenious devices to maintain a semblance of logic and balance. Accordingly, the “faith deficit” hypothesis takes its place amongst other sense making cognitive resorts that are commonly used to explain away a lack of healing (or failed healings) and other awkward facts of Christian reality via a kind of ontological laundering. All this is highly ironic as many fundamentalist Christains who are heavy duty users of cognitive resorts often disparage any attempt to bring logical sense to “spiritual world”, which they believe to be better experienced through the quasi-illogical sensings of the “heart”. Hence, the suggestion that Christians tender interpretative hypotheses in such a spiritual area as miraculous healing will, of course, be strenuously denied if only on the grounds that “heart Christains” don’t work in the scientifico-intellectual fashion of consciously trying out this or that hypothesis: True! They don’t! But what they do, in fact, is to tender interpretations unconsciously just as the mind unconsciously and automatically tenders such things as face patterns in the clouds (or even on the surface of Mars!), but which presumably get short shrift when it is clear that these patterns, in this context, are not evidence of real faces. Hypothesis tendering, of sorts, is what the mind does unconsciously and this process is so effortless, seamless, unconscious and so often successful that it is easily put down to some kind of esoteric understanding. It is at once both an irony and an hypocrisy that those who impugn the faith of fellow Christains for finding reasons why miraculous healing is absent, cannot yet see that their preference for the faith deficit hypothesis fits in the same category of being an explanation for the absence of healing!

Since I wrote the piece of fiction above I have heard of another way of laundering healing ontology. This ontological resort depends on the distinction between “cures” and healing, the former being a complete cessation of the pathology and the latter being only a degree of cessation. One can then employ this device to widen the goals posts and broaden the range of circumstances that can be classified as miraculous healing. However, I have to remark that using this relaxed criterion, Christ’s miraculous healings would probably all count as cures. Another factor that makes the whole subject a slippery area is the sheer complexity of human pathologies, which sometimes make it impossible to identify just when a “miraculous healing” has occurred.

If James is right and the faith deficit hypothesis is now well out of vogue, then perhaps past reckless and unfair abuse of this hypothesis by Christian groups not unlike my fictional “BO” has resulted in a counter reaction that has made the whole subject off limits. Hence, given this qualification James may be right - although I suspect there are still many Christian groups out there who are heavy duty users of the faith deficit hypotheses: for them explaining away a lack of miraculous healing in this way is still very much in fashion.

I have to say that my own acquaintance with invocations of miraculous healing that have ultimately failed to bring an end to pathology, have all been in the context of great faith and unless I had constantly surmised the presence of hidden spiritual impediments in order to explain the anomaly, I could see no reason why the healing should not have happened if sheer faith in God is a sufficient condition to make way for it. Of course, it goes without saying that it would have been totally wrong of me to invoke scriptures like Mark 6:5 to criticize Christian groups who have failed to secure miraculous healing, as this scripture (which links to material in Luke 4) concerns those who openly opposed Jesus and it would have been unfair to use this scripture against Christian fellowships who gave every appearance of following Christ and having complete belief in His willingness and power to heal.

Given a belief in basic Christian theology we are left, therefore, with an outstanding cognitive problem – why, apparently, is there such dearth of successful miraculous healing? The orthodox dispensationalists tell us that the overtly miraculous phase of the church’s work ended a long time ago when the apostolic period came to a close (although I myself am not entirely convinced of this view). On the other hand many Christians invest their hopes in “healing ministries” – itinerate religious showman that occur with a frequency similar to the distribution of faith healers who appear in the general populace. This phenomenon looks suspiciously like the “7th son of a 7th son” effect rather than any general miraculous healing power bestowed as a gift by Christ upon certain individuals in His church. Others rely on “social texts” (or “rumours” might be nearer the mark) that do the rounds; for example one often hears someone claim that they know someone who once attended a rally who saw someone healed. I have to admit I do not yet have in my possession any evidence of spectacular healings that are of any better quality than rather remote anecdotal accounts. That I treat such accounts with reserve has more to do with a lack of faith in the human ability to reliably interpret rather than a lack of faith in God.


For myself I would not accuse even dispensationalist Christains of throwing up a doctrinal screen in order to cover up a faith deficit. Any genuine Christian who has some acquaintance with the omni-powerful vistas opened up by the Biblical vision of the super-total God, can see immediately that the sweeping and comprehensive powers available to the Biblical Creator makes miraculous healings a relatively small task, and this is clearly understood in deep way by all the Christains I have met. Hence, my own theory, as suggested in the piece of fiction above, is that the apparent dearth of miraculous healing has nothing whatsoever to do with a lack of faith in God’s authority and power; for Christains of all shades have different ways of laundering away the difficulties of applying a Christian ontology in the area of miraculous healing - and that applies as much to the users of the faith deficit hypothesis as to any one else. This whole area, in fact, is very closely related, and at least analogous to the subject of theodicy – that is, attempts to reconcile a loving omni-powerful God with suffering and evil.

Let me summarise: The apparent dearth of miraculous healing has no necessary connection with a lack of faith, and invokes a variety of Christian attempts at making sense of the realities of healing as they seek to come to terms with them. Quality of faith is not so much the variable amongst Christains as is the way that faith is applied. However, this view is certainly not going to be accepted by Gnostic Christains, because for them it is always a faith question. This is because for them belief in God is not about a cognitive encounter with reality, but rather it is almost exclusively about the achievement of sublime states of faith and mind that are capable of unlocking the door to the miraculous. Hence, if faith is to be equated with esoteric states of mind, as is the wont of Christian Gnosticism, then it is an easy task to rubbish the claimed faith of fellow Christains by accusing them of not having these sublime states of faith.

But, of course, the Christian Gnostic position, in spite of all its fideists sentiments, counts as a cognitive point of view, an attempt to make sense of reality even if this is strenuously denied. Moreover, it also counts as just another Christian subcultural platform from which Christians can impugn the faith of fellow Christains. Fine, that suits me. As readers of my electronic columns know the divisions and mutual-slanging matches that go on amongst Christains is a constant theme to which I return with satire and comment. It is the great anomaly that hides the deep truth of Gospel Grace. This polarized “east versus west” activity of Christains is unlikely to stop before kingdom come but that’s OK with me, because it gives me plenty of material to think (and laugh) about!

NCBC’s SIN TIN
Norwich Central Baptist Church’s chocolate distribution ritual, which takes place during its now famous "Chocolate Sandwich" services has fascinated me for long time now, and I have often pondered on its real meaning. But, I won't have to ponder much longer: The incumbent professor of UEA's centre for liberated studies and sexology, Prof Trevor H. E. Pitts, whose open-minded, open-ended, open-mouthed theoretical studies department leaves no taboo unquestioned, and whose "moral exploration" laboratories rings the changes on novel "gender reconstructions", is writing an illuminating academic paper on the subject.

In a queer twisted echo of the J. John "Just Ten" Christian talks at the Norfolk show ground a few years back Prof Pitts has organised a series of lectures entitled "Just None; Just Do It!". Recently, however, the good Prof was seen sitting in NCBC’s congregation and sure enough, as a prelude to his paper, he commented on the chocolate distribution ritual in his highbrow lectures. "These oppressed people at Norwich Central Baptist Church have a need to Sin", declared the learned Prof. He went on to say, "This Church clearly indulges in chocolate distribution as a cathartic abreaction. It is, in fact, a ceremonial and ritualised form of subliminal sinning punctuated with carnal innuendo; witness the distribution being accompanied by feigned expressions of greed, and sensual indulgence, supplemented by allusions to dishonesty, bribery, and pilfering. This make-believe submission to temptation is a cry for help from the emotionally and morally repressed. If they come to me I can help set them free and show them the pleasures of what they arbitrarily label as 'sin'. They are free to make use of my department's sin laboratories; these are equipped with videos and an assortment of specialist equipment (including, if they so wish, plenty of chocolates) in order to promote an open ended and uninhibited exploration of liberated adult behaviour patterns "

With all this talk of ceremonial sin I, of course, steer well clear of this whole chocolate distribution business and you won't see me collecting my chocolate in a month of Sundays. Or should I say at least not publicly: Ever wondered why the chocolate tin never contains any Rum fudges? Having a set of keys sometimes comes in handy and when it comes to this sort of thing I'm as big a subliminal sinner as any of people who traipse out to the front every Sunday morning and publicly make show of their self-indulgence. So you can't accuse me of not getting into the spirit of NCBC's chocolate distribution extravaganza.

Based on an article first published in the September 2002 edition of “Views, News, and Pews”

SIXTY YEARS AGO

The St. Mary’s Baptist church of 1947 was a church without premises or Pastor. In an article in the Church magazine of January 1947, the Church secretary (Mr. W.J. Mildred) wrote:

May I be allowed to put in a special plea for a larger attendance at the weekly prayer meetings. In recent months, under the leadership of Dr. Gilbert Laws, Rev. Maurice Hewett and the Deacons, a fine spirit of prayer has been sustained. There is room for improvement, however, in regard to attendance. See what you can do in helping to maintain and increase the prayer life of the Church.

The spiritual prosperity of the Church rests with each member. Let this be your SLOGAN for 1947 and for all time, “THE CHURCH DEPENDS ON ME.”