Doing My Head In

I haven’t blogged in a while.  The posts that have been on here recently have been ones I’d scheduled a while ago.

The reason for that is mainly because I’m not well.  If it were a flu-type thing, that would be easy to ascertain and deal with.  Yet the ailment is not a physical one, it is a mental one.  My personal journey in mental health has been an intriguing over my life taking in quite a lot of different experiences and nuances.  This particular episode is new and as such is rather baffling to comprehend even if the strands and contributing factors are not so baffling.  In terms of those factors, without going into detail February has been an amazing month for things happening – nothing traumatic in itself, with the possible exception of one piece of news which is usually a game-changer.

In this current phase, it’s almost impossible to even blog, which is a huge deal for me, because I do love blogging.  I have been encouraged to share some of the issues about once I get through this episode, and I look forward to doing so.  Being a believer in Jesus Christ and having trying issues mentally are not incompatible at all.  Thankfully I’m not longer under a guilty feeling when I’m not well as though every time I’m not well it’s because I’ve sinned.  If that were the case surely people would be perpetually sick.  So seasons come and go, and this is another one.  In God I trust do and even though it’s doing my head in, He still gives sweet peace.

Something I’m looking forward to posting that should keep my mind stayed on Him as it were is the usual March Thru Proverbs exercise that I’ve conducted on this blog over the last two years and a project that I initiated about five years ago now.  Now more than ever tapping into the wisdom of God will be a huge help in negotiating this particular episode in the life story.

Want to thank the usual suspects – Alan (over at Assembling), Arthur (over in the Wilderness) and Eric (over in his Progress) – for putting material online that thrills, stimulates, challenges and questions the commitment I have in Christ.  I pray that their efforts will go from strength to strength as they encourage the saints to go from glory to glory.

Despite my state of wellbeing, I have been aware of some interesting news that I felt worth sharing and getting y’all to pray for God’s wisdom.

The Same-Sex Marriage: Issue:

It is interesting that this issue is taking so many column inches in the press.  The nature of the issue is not the same as it is across the pond and certain moves within the Church of England makes it harder for it to be as polarising as it would be in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.  It is still though evidently a topic worthy of reporting.  When I read articles like this concerning the Archbishop of Canterbury’s suggestion that the government shouldn’t make the issue one of legislation, I have mixed emotions.  It often appears that the issue is a distraction to the mission of the church.

By distraction, I mean it brings to mind again the role of the Church in society, especially one that continually seeks to get the Church to accept and bend to the norms and values that are prescribed by society.  So a pressure group comes out with equalities legislation and the language of liberty to suggest that the Church’s ‘traditional’ stance on the issue is outdated and contravenes fundamental human rights and what the power of rational mind has concluded as being right.

We can turn this into a philosophical issue, we can argue it as a political contention, we can debate it for its social ramifications, we can put our point across as a cultural perspective to be upheld.  Whatever we do, however, I struggle to see how we are remaining faithful to God’s call for us to be light.  If society has rejected God’s standards, is that really a surprise.  Let’s face it, those standards were rejected even in the ‘traditional’ model where the number of marriage of conveniences and empty marriages were so rife it was almost a given.  It is with rose tinted glasses that we should suggest that things were better before.  Evidently there was a disconnect between the lives that were lived and the message that was passed down t the generation to come.  Or maybe there wasn’t so much of a disconnect if we were promoting the autonomy and glory of the individual.

In any case, my point is that the role the church is called to play is by being that of a prophetic community hightlighting the Kingdom standards God expects us to live by in all our brokenness and flawed issues.  That prophetic statement doesn’t go down too well if we suggest something we ourselves are hardly upholding.  Still, I hope we can use this as an opportunity to spread love and the light of what God says on the issue in a way that penetrates through the contention and argument and merely establishes what His will is and leaves people to engage with it and then accept or reject it.

Infanticide OK:

It is not often not what you say, it is how you say it.  Consider carefully the proposition being made by the authors of the article that is reported in today’s Telegraph.  They are not explicitly proposing the arbitrary disposing of babies as soon as they are born if we don’t like them.  They merely wish to help define the stage when the foetus and subsequently delivered baby is worthy of moral worth.  It is their conclusion that we justify infanticide in the same way we justify abortion (we of course justified it when we legalised it, because like the same-sex marriage issue, once we rationally justify it then we can crack on and legalise it with the authority invested in us by ourselves).

This is not a new argument.  This is not an argument that started in this century or the one before.  It’s just that now we have people who are highly regarded in their medical field who have considered the matter and have spoken with the authority invested in them by their own kind.  And with such a highly revered authority and their exalted status in our society, it is only a matter of time before some leeway is given for the ‘exceptional’ circumstances that they speak of in which such acts can take place.

Once the principle is in place, it will not take too much for our perfection driven society – best car, best house, best mobile, best laptop, best wife, best baby – to make room for more allowances to relieve parents in the modern cut-and-thrust world of the burden of rearing, nurturing and cultivating undesirables who happen to still be precious in the eyes of God.

As with the same-sex marriage issue, it’s important to be aware of what’s going on primarily for the reason of then reasserting what the Kingdom Lifestyle promotes and how it engages and counters the values of the world it encounters.  Vociferous political campaigns aren’t really the answer.  Formal education and legislation certainly isn’t the designated route we should take to solve this thing.  As a community it for us to hold high the banner of the standard of the love, righteousness and justice of God is the call.

I can say that for all the problems I’ve endured over this month it has been the community of faith that has rallied round in their own unique, informal, compassionate and superb way that has really given me the strength and hope to know that God is far greater than teh situation and His love and consideration of me as part of His family doesn’t wane because I’m having a dip.  It’s that often understated love and compassion that is the declaration the world needs to see as the alternative to some of the more pressing words that others would have you follow.

For His Name’s Sake

Shalom

dmcd