what is important?

I've not blogged for a while as firstly mr pastasmissus went away for a few days and the laptop decided it wanted a change of scenery too; then, when they did both come back, we discovered the technogizmo that allows internet access had obviously suffered a withdrawal reaction and consequently died!

I'm starting to realise that maybe I'm actually getting through this. That even though it feels as though I've been cast adrift in the middle of the ocean with no map, compass or supplies, I'm actually managing somehow to navigate my way through uncharted territory. Even though I've been expecting to capsize at any moment, the reality is that I haven't.

And I'm learning things from it. Not always things I wanted to discover...
When I last posted, I was non-specifically angry about the whole church mess/ situation. A throw-away comment by mr pastasmissus that he hoped that God would bless the church here resulted in me having a rather incandescent internal reaction. I didn't want God to bless the church here - I wanted it to fall apart, to prove that we had been right all along. And then some unwanted scripture popped up in my head: Some say 'I follow Paul', others 'I follow Apollos'. But this should not be; it is Christ we follow. (based on 1 Corinthians 3:4-8). Was it more important to me that I should be proved right, or that the kingdom of God be extended?
When put like that, there could only be one answer. And somehow, alot of the anger seemed to melt away.

choices

The last couple of weeks have not been particularly good ones for me. I have been angry (although when asked why or with whom, I couldn't specify). I also tended to cry for no obvious reason. And I was having major issues with God.
Feeling that somehow God has let me down and therefore can't be trusted is an all too familiar temptation for me, going right back to when I first became a Christian. I was a teenager at the time, and the prevailing theology I had picked up was that if you prayed for something hard enough and believed 'properly', then God would do it. The brother of a girl in my class had leukaemia. So I prayed - fervent, naive, trusting prayer. A month later, he died.
This had a huge impact on my relationship with God (the Father) for the next 20 years. Yes, I came to understand that it was bad theology, that God's ways are not our ways, that He knows what's best etc etc. But deep inside there was still that little niggle from a devastated teenager that God could not be trusted.
I stayed a Christian because Jesus was different, being a fellow victim and sufferer. In that way, projecting all the bad stuff onto God the Father at least allowed me to keep some kind of faith.

I think last year was the first time I again took the risk of trusting God by praying in that way - not that I didn't pray, it was just always slightly guarded - why give God another chance to disappoint me? After all, if I don't ask, I can't be let down. I prayed for a friend to be healed from a chronic illness that was causing considerable pain and difficulty. I expected a miracle. In the end, it did all get sorted out, but through major surgery - not quite what I had expected. I again had to live with God apparently letting me down. At that time I made a conscious choice that I would NOT react the way I had before, that I would continue trusting God.

And now with the recent situation I find myself having to choose again. We prayed so hard about our church situation, and believed God was telling us to stay. Right up to the very last minute I was expecting God to intervene somehow - to do a miracle, cause an outbreak of mass repentance. It didn't happen. So, what do I do this time?
I have a choice: I can either stay bitter and resentful about what happened, and become cynical and mistrusting of God; or I can decide to trust God, and use this as an opportunity to learn and practice Christ-likeness.

I can't alter what has happened. What I can do is realise that the way in which I respond to this shows how deep my faith actually goes. It's only when things get tough that you discover what you really believe and who you really are.

a tricky situation

So, mr pastasmissus is no longer the pastor. We're still living in the manse until we get housing sorted out. The church does not have a building, so our phone number was the contact number for the church (although I have to admit I took great delight in changing the answerphone message!), so we still get occasional phone calls about church stuff, which we deflect on to the church secretary.
But this morning we had a call that one of our members had died, and a request from their relation for hubby to do the funeral. This relation didn't know he is now the ex-pastor. He told them they would need to talk to the church secretary.
So what is the etiquette in this situation? It's made more difficult by this being a small town, and our church being a small congregation.
Yet one more thing they don't cover in the ethics course while training for ministry....

going round in circles...

I've spent the last week going round in circles. Or rather, going part-way round one circle and ending back up where I was. Rather disheartening. All the anger, bitterness and cynicism have been back with a vengeance. And I know it's part of grieving, and I know it's normal, and I know it takes time. But I don't like it. I don't like myself when I'm like this. I end up focussing on how bad I feel, how I feel I've been wronged, and ultimately blame God for allowing it to happen. All of which is stupid, destructive and pointless.
Right now, trying to follow Jesus is hard. I don't particularly want to pick up this cross of accepting these feelings and yet choosing to forgive. I'd much rather sit down on the ground and kick my heels and scream 'It's not fair' in best 2-year-old tantrum style. Except I've done that before. I thought I'd learned from it, and grown up a bit. Maybe the fact I'm posting this is a sign that I have...

Jesus and God

When mr pastasmissus was applying to train as a pastor, he had to fill out some rather detailed forms. One of them asked for "short notes explaining your understanding of..." There was then enough space for about 3 sentences. The things they wanted you to explain included "the trinity".
We had some fun with that. My initial suggestion of "God is 3 and God is 1, and, no, I don't understand that either" may have been honest but was dismissed as not quite having the right tone. So I tried again "the tripartite unity of the Godhead is a paradox beyond human comprehension". That got dismissed as too pretentious!
I am always intrigued by how different people see God. For me, Jesus, God the Father and God the Holy Spirit have always been quite distinct. That's not saying I think they're separate, just that I react and interact slightly differently to each. And it's different again for God the trinity.
A consequence of this is that I am very careful when I pray, to know who I am addressing. I know that many other people I have spoken to about this can't understand why it matters - after all, it's all the same God. (Although, oddly enough, if you then suggest praying to the Holy Spirit, the same people often get very upset and start telling you why this is wrong - and the comment "it's all the same God" does NOT go down well ;-) ) But it does mean I have a mental disconnect when I hear communion prayers that start off "Father God" and then say "thankyou for dying on the cross" - I want to stand up and shout that he didn't....
It probably all stems from the image of God I had as a child - the critical parent/ teacher in the sky, who was big and scary and powerful, sitting on a cloud, armed with thunderbolts, just waiting to zap me if I did something wrong. Jesus, in contrast, was much more approachable, and on the side of the victims. At that stage the Holy Spirit was a rather unknown concept (never mind person). I'm not saying this is good theology, it's just where I started from.
When I hit problems with my faith, it all got blamed on God the Father. He was the one who could have stopped stuff from happening, but hadn't. Therefore He was the bad guy. I couldn't do that to Jesus - he had already suffered so much, I didn't want to add to it. And anyway, he knew what it was like to feel helpless and abandoned and let down by God. So even when I was having major issues with 'God', I was still committed to Jesus.
My understanding of God has changed alot since then and has become more integrated. But I am still very careful with who I am addressing when I pray.

Why do I still follow Jesus?

So why do I still follow Jesus, if it makes my life more difficult?
There are alot of different reasons.
The main one is the same reason I started following Jesus in the first place: I couldn't come up with a convincing alternative to the resurrection. So if Jesus rose from the dead, then I had to take the rest of what he said seriously too. That meant believing in God (which I didn't want to....) and recognising that Jesus says to people "Come and follow me". Which I chose to do about 25 years ago.
Since then I've fallen in love with Jesus, hated God, been scared by God, ignored God completely, resented God, argued with God, and tried to break up with him (I couldn't).

For me, it really does all come down to Jesus. How could God love me (when I was hating him) enough to leave his nice cushy number in heaven and become a baby? I mean, why not come as an adult? - at least you would have bowel control... And then living a life where your friends don't understand you, the people who should help undermine you, and in the end a friend betrays you and dying horribly alone... And all the time, having the power to stop it from happening.
I think that is the most awesome bit - that Jesus had the power to stop it, but chose not to.
I can't turn my back on that - it calls to something deep within me.
So there's an element of 'if Jesus loves me enough to do that, then I love him back' - not as an obligation, but as an emotional reality.

In terms of following Jesus making life easy - oddly enough, I don't ever see Jesus saying that in the Bible. He actually tells people to be prepared to give up everything for him, and if they're not prepared to do that then not to bother. (Luke 9:57-62 Luke 14:25-33 Luke 18:18-29). He also tells them to expect trouble because of their faith (John 15:18-16:4) and not to be surprised when it happens. To me that sounds rather different to "come to Jesus and all your problems will be over".

holiday theology

The theology digressed a bit onto chocolate theology - something which I think would bear closer examination (and sampling!) - and yes, Angela, I'd be up for a joint project ;-)
So going back to the original post: while on holiday I read "Christus Victor" by vonAulen. I'm not sure I understood all of it, so please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong...
Basically what I got from it is that the idea of atonement has different interpretations; and penal substitution, although very influential in Western thought actually did not occur as that concept in the early church or the Patristic period. In fact, the idea of penal substitution came out of discussing the sacrament of penance - if someone good did lots of penance then they could accrue extra Brownie points, which God could then transfer to someone else. So Jesus dying on the cross accrues megaBrownie points which can then get transferred to our account, wiping out what we owe God. It's an extremely forensic view of God, who seems to delight in keeping lists of every individual thing we do wrong, and who will only wipe it out if someone pays for it (in blood).
I've always had an issue with this, as for me it's very difficult to reconcile this image of God with the idea that God is love. But I never knew that it was rooted in the doctrine of penance, especially as developed by Anselm.
VonAulen says that this view of the atonement is too narrow in scope. Jesus dies for my sins. Yes, that is true. But in this model, only the fact that Jesus dies is significant. So why come as a baby? Why wait 30 years to start preaching? Why get raised from the dead? And yes, he dies for my sins, but is it only humanity that needs to be redeeemed? And using the idea of God having a list - Jesus might die to wipe the contents of the list off, but does that do anything to change my underlying sinfulness???
His view, which he says is that of the early church (and is still that of the Eastern Orthodox church) is that the atonement is God acting to reconcile all creation to himself, despite the best efforts of Satan. Christ lives life the way Adam should have (and didn't). By doing this, the result was that the evil which opposed him finally over-reached itself and claimed his life, although in reality it had no claim on him. Consequently Jesus broke the power of sin, death, hell and the grave. This reconciles creation to the creator and gives the possibility of a new way of being.

It made alot of sense to me, particularly in view of our recent issues. I had been feeling that the things that had been said about my husband were personal, and had been deeply hurt by them. However, this changed my perspective to see that all of creation is caught up in a cosmic war between God and evil and we simply have to decide which side we are on. In our church mess, hubby and I tried to do what we thought God wanted. Eventually, the evil present came to light. Unfortunately, we paid the price for doing the right thing. But what does it profit a man (or woman) to gain the whole world but lose their soul?