I am sure that many of us can remember important conversations we have had which made possible significant changes of direction in our lives.  I can remember one such conversation which took place in the early 80s. Those who have read this blog over a period will know that, long ago, I completed a university thesis connected with my interest in the Greek Orthodox liturgy.  The detail of this research is unimportant here.   However, there was a dilemma I faced that comes with getting involved with any information of a very specialised kind.  This will be familiar to any of my readers who have undertaken post-graduate research.  The problem in essence is this.  Unless you are able to pursue a career of academic research and teaching, the information gathered over two or three years of academic research becomes rapidly out of date, especially if one has no access to university libraries.  What does one do with research which may be of interest to only a handful of people who happen to be interested in your chosen topic?  Was it all a massive waste of time to get so involved in a single specialised area of knowledge? 

The conversation I had was with a distinguished academic who understood both the substance of my research and the dilemma of my being unable to take it further.  What she said to me at the end of our conversation was a moment of liberation.  I had described to her my then fairly recent interest in healing and the way that this dimension of activity seemed to embrace almost every Christian culture that was around at the time.  I was meeting it in a New Age context right across to the charismatic.  My academic mentor was interested in this exploration and made a fascinating observation.  She pointed out that I, in the process of absorbing the highly visual culture of the Byzantine Orthodox faith, had also developed a facility to penetrate other value systems and cultures.  Struggling to understand the assumptions of the Byzantine writers for two years had been, effectually, an initiation into thinking within an alien culture.  This ability to live inside another culture in this way had demanded skills of imagination and intellectual flexibility which would always be useful.  My new interest in Christian healing would draw on these same skills of understanding, imagination and flexibility of thought.  In summary, my academic research had prepared me for an immersion into Christian cultures that were not my own.  The word I use to describe this process is rather an old-fashioned one, the word ‘indwell’.   One tries to live inside the thinking of another in order to understand better what the other is experiencing and talking about, while not necessarily agreeing with them.  Indwelling the culture and thinking of other Christians has become a core activity of mine over the past 40 years.

The attempts, on my part, to indwell other people’s thinking have been partly successful in my professional work as a clergyman.  For a time in the 80s I acted as an ecumenical officer for a diocese when the possibility of achieving Christianity unity seemed an achievable goal.  My later work as a part-time adviser on the healing ministry was also undertaken with a background of a substantial generosity of spirit between Christians from quite different backgrounds.  The emergence of a spirit of division and intolerance among Christians which seems to be a feature of this present century, is reflected in the current bitter disputes among Christian bodies who cannot agree on same-sex relationships.  The deeper issue is that Christians fail to understand one another or agree how to read and understand the Bible.   And it is on this point that my own skills and ability to indwell the thinking of others seems to fail.

 ‘Bible-believing Christians’ present us with a model of truth which allows no compromise.  The problem I have with this group is not the tenets of their belief system which are in continuity with certain beliefs from the past.  My problem is the way that the word ‘true’ in the context of the Bible is defined.  When the word ‘infallible’ is also introduced into the discussion, I desperately feel a sense of shutters coming down, precluding anything resembling true dialogue.  It is only since the eighteenth century that ideas of truth and falsehood in the scientific sense have been circulating.   The definitions of truth that existed before had to accord with the dictates of those in spiritual or political power, not in the language of scientific reasoning.  The contortions that some biblical ‘scholars’ get into to accommodate the ‘plain meaning’ of God’s Word when reading the text of Genesis are tortuous and insulting to anyone of basic intelligence.  Answers to simple questions are needed – how did the creation of sun and moon take place after the creation of light in the Genesis narrative?  What were the numbers of animals entering the Ark? These questions cannot be answered with the pseudo-scientific formulae of many Biblical conservatives.  The answers that exist in reasonable discourse belong to the world of symbol and metaphor not scientific measurement. I recognise that few Christian teachers in the UK spend much time on these questions.  In the scheme of things, they are trivial.  More important is the possibility that ordinary Christians, reared to accept ideas of scriptural infallibility, secretly spend a great deal of time worrying about such issues.  Only allowed to have a single version of the meaning of truth, these Christians are deprived of any insight as to how things can be true in a whole number of ways that are more glorious, more life enhancing than a narrow concentration on scientific fact.  One quotation from Scripture draws us back to the richness of beauty in our understanding of God ‘O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness’.  The truth encountered in beauty takes precedence over the truth contained formulaic barely understood doctrinal formulae.  The latter matter but they never engage the human spirit without the former.

To return to my important conversation with my academic mentor, which had the effect of releasing my imagination and my aesthetic sensitivity into my spiritual and intellectual journey, I am grateful for one special gift.  I am deeply grateful for the fact that in my reading, learning and discussions over the years I have never been encouraged to think I have arrived, in respect of truth.  The discovery of aspects of truth on this journey only urges me on further to explore new things.  Paradoxically the more of truth one learns, the more truth yet to be discovered emerges.