theology | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

In which Christ Has An Identical Calling for Men and Women: To Follow Him

Jesus calls us to follow him. He makes no distinction between men and women.

He does not call women to follow him by “being anxious and troubled” about cooking and cleaning, and men to follow him by fishing.

He praised Mary, who sat at his feet and listened to his teaching– like a seminary student–for having chosen the better part, though she was certainly not “being busy at home”. It was Martha to whom she left “all the preparations,” “all the work,” who was playing “the woman’s role” whom He gently rebuked.

Nowhere in the Gospels are there distinct commands for women and for men.

Had Jesus intended distinct roles for men and women–women to run the home, and men to run the church and the world–He, being brilliant (as Dallas Willard points out in The Divine Conspiracy) would have said so. And his brilliant biographers would have recorded it.

* * *

I have seen perfectly good teaching ministries get derailed when they venture into gender roles. [Read more…]

How Persephone Marlowe can Keep You Straight

By Anita Mathias

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When we moved to Oxford, and my daughter, Irene, was five, she sat next to a little girl in school called Persephone Marlowe.

And in church, to our surprise, there was Persephone Marlowe. And the whole Marlowe family who were lovely and became good friends of ours.

And when Irene was 10, I began to blog.

* * *

Now, blogging is an enormous vehicle of growth if you decide to be honest (since, anyway, one day all that is hidden shall be revealed).

And I was. I explored my discomfort with the church I currently attended (which wasn’t the wisest thing, and led me to having to leave it:-).

I explored my discomfort with contentious issues on the edges of faith. With those too ready to consign others to hell, with rigid positions on homosexuality, women’s roles, theology, or rigid inerrancy.

I threw the jigsaw of my faith on the floor, in mid-life, and reconstructed what I, Anita Mathias, really, really, believed rather than what I, Anita Mathias, had been taught.

And having questioned everything, I came back to a settled Mere Christian faith, and it was good. I felt at home in it.

* * *

And then I noticed that little Persephone Marlowe, now a beautiful teenager, was following my blog.

And, oddly, that settled the direction my blog was going to grow.

Persephone Marlowe was going to have plenty of her own faith shifts in time. We all do. But was I going to be the one to precipitate them? I, who know the anguish of questioning the very fabric of the faith so precious to me. It’s like jumping off a cliff trusting that the air will catch you.

I had asked my own daughters not to read my blog when I was working things out, so as not to scandalize then. The Holy Spirit would work on their faith in his own time. They continued to believe the conservative evangelical position taught in church, and I let them, while I was questioning–because I was questioning, and I hadn’t arrived, and some journeys can only be made alone, and one of those journeys is the journey of faith. In fact, my elder daughter Zoe’s faith is more conservative than mine, and when I don’t agree with everything Irene is taught at youth group, I am silent.

So could I, should I, be responsible for precipitating the faith-shifts of the teenagers who follow me, friends of Zoe, friends of Irene? Or should I celebrate the broad common ground of mere Christianity, rather than explore the exhausting, thin, low oxygen Machu Picchu air of dissent.

I decide. I probably didn’t believe everything my faith tradition taught in the way others believed it. But my common ground with other charismatic evangelicals was massive, and there was much to celebrate and rejoice.

There were a myriad celebratory posts I could write with good conscience, ideas which strengthened, encouraged, inspired and comforted me, and so might, if I were lucky, strengthen, encourage, inspire and comfort others.

I would major on the majors. Where I disagreed, I would largely be silent, unless I thought bad theology was actually harmful, in which case it would be my duty to speak.

* * *

When I tried to get my sister Shalini to join me in mischief, my mother used to say, If anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.

Now I sure Jesus meant it rhetorically, but I decided since I loved Christ, and loved so much about the body of the Christ, I would rather write celebratory, positive, faith-filled posts than risk scandalizing, or denting the faith of Persephone Middleton and the other sweet friends of my daughters who follow my blog.

Will my blog be saccharine sweet? Nope. My no bull-shXt rule still applies. Fortunately, as Adrian Plass says, “God is nice and he likes me,” and so the central fact of the love of God for us provides us a multitude of subjects for blog posts that are sweet, and nourishing and also true. Thank heavens!

Two Cures for Too Much Theologizing

By Anita Mathias

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1 The Stars

When I heard the learn’d astronomer,

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,

When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,

When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,

How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,

Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,

Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

Walt Whitman

2 The Living Word

In his famous Christmas sermon of 1522 (600 years ago!!) Martin Luther declared,

“O that God should desire that my interpretation and that of all teachers should disappear, and each Christian should come straight to the Scripture alone and to the pure word of God!

You see from this babbling of mine the immeasurable difference between the word of God and all human words, and how no man can adequately reach and explain a single word of God with all his words.

It is an eternal word and must be understood and contemplated with a quiet mind.

No one else can understand except a mind that contemplates in silence.

For anyone who could achieve this without commentary or interpretation, my commentaries and those of everyone else could not only be of no use, but merely a hindrance.

Go to the Bible itself, dear Christians, and let my expositions and those of all scholars be no more than a tool with which to build aright, so that we can understand, taste, and abide in the simple and pure word of God.”

When Faith falls into Place like a Jigsaw, Piece by Piece

By Anita Mathias

Jigsaw Puzzle Tabgha - Bread and Fish Mosaic

As I was writing on the cosmic significance of the Cross of Christ, I realised that though I was born Catholic, remaining so until I was 21 and was, sometimes, a serious Catholic–even a novice in Mother Teresa’s Convent for 14 months–I had never understood why Jesus had to die. If I committed a mortal sin, I would go to hell–if I had not had the chance to go to confession and be absolved before I died (Do you see how this strengthens the power of the priesthood?)

If I only committed venial sins, I would go to Purgatory, and then after a period there, shortened if people prayed or paid, offering Masses on my behalf, I would go to heaven. Just as if Jesus had not died?

And when–after a six year period in my twenties of not really believing anything very much–I decided to recommit to following Christ, I went to serious Bible-believing Protestant churches.

And when the Atonement was first explained to me, I am afraid I did not really believe it.

Why? Because it could not really be proven.

I had, similarly, not really believed in heaven and hell for those six years, because, for all I knew they were theological inventions, theological fairy tales. I had decided not do anything for desire for heaven or fear of hell, because there was no proof for either of these.

* * *

As an undergraduate at Oxford, I had listened to lectures on Lord Raglan’s The Hero and was struck at the resemblances the life of Jesus bore to these mythical heroes across cultures.

1. Hero’s mother is a royal virgin;
2. His father is a king, and
3 4. The circumstances of his conception are unusual, and
5. He is also reputed to be the son of a god.
6. At birth an attempt is made, to kill him, but
7. he is spirited away, and
8. Reared by foster -parents in a far country.
9. We are told nothing of his childhood, but
10. On reaching manhood he returns or goes to his future Kingdom.
14. For a time he reigns uneventfully and
15. Prescribes laws, but
16. Later he loses favour with the gods and/or his subjects, and
17. Is driven from the throne and city, after which
18. He meets with a mysterious death,
19. Often at the top of a hill,
20. His children, if any do not succeed him.
21. His body is not buried, but nevertheless
22. He has one or more holy sepulchres.

Numerous heroes fit into this archetype, including Krishna, Moses, Romulus, King Arthur, Perseus, Heracles, Mohammed, Beowulf, Buddha, Zeus, Samson, Achilles, and Odysseus.

And so I wondered: Was Jesus God? Was there a God?

* * *

When C.S. Lewis was troubled by the same thing, in Oxford, 45 year earlier, Tolkein sorted him out by explaining that Christianity is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened:

Lewis writes to his friend, Arthur Greeves,

My puzzle was about the whole doctrine of Redemption: in what sense the life and death of Christ “saved” or “opened salvation to” the world. I could see how miraculous salvation might be necessary. What I couldn’t see was how the life and death of Someone Else (whoever he was) two thousand years ago could help us here and now — except in so far as his example helped us.

And the example business, tho’ true and important, is not Christianity: right in the centre of Christianity, in the Gospels and St Paul, you keep on getting something quite different and very mysterious expressed in those phrases I have so often ridiculed (“propitiation” — “sacrifice” — “the blood of the Lamb”) — expressions which I could only interpret in senses that seemed to me either silly or shocking.

Now what Dyson and Tolkien showed me was this: that if I met the idea of sacrifice in a Pagan story I didn’t mind it at all: again, that if I met the idea of a God sacrificing himself to himself, I liked it very much and was mysteriously moved by it.

Again, the idea of the dying and reviving god (Balder, Adonis, Bacchus) similarly moved me, provided I met it anywhere except in the Gospels. The reason was that in Pagan stories I was prepared to feel the myth as profound and suggestive of meanings beyond my grasp even tho’ I could not say in cold prose “what it meant.”

Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened: and one must be content to accept it in the same way, remembering that it is God’s myth where the others are men’s myths: i.e. the Pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using such images as He found there, while Christianity is God expressing Himself through what we call “real things”. Therefore it is true, not in the sense of being a “description” of God (that no finite mind could take in) but in the sense of being the way in which God chooses to (or can) appear to our faculties.

The “doctrines” we get out of the true myth are translations into our concepts and ideas of that wh. God has already expressed in a language more adequate, namely the actual incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection. At any rate I am now certain (a) That this Christian story is to be approached, in a sense, as I approached the other myths. (b) That it is the most important and full of meaning. I am also certain that it really happened…

Ah, but I then had no Tolkein to sort me out!

* * *

In my mid-twenties, I yearned to return to faith because my life was not working elegantly, and I thought I had made rather a mess of it. Surely I would do better if I followed Christ, I thought.

When I longed for faith again a North Star to guide; when, you might say, I missed Jesus; a friend, Peggy Goetz, suggested I try to do what Jesus said, and see if it was true or not.

“If anyone chooses to do God’s will, he will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own,” John 7:17 was Jesus’s own apologetic, the proof he offered of whether his words were from God, or his own.

So I started giving to everyone who asked of me; lending and not asking back; praying and keeping a list of my prayer requests. And there was a tidal wave of answers, sweeping me into the Kingdom. Little odd things: I had just moved into an unfurnished house for my Ph. D and realized I’d need to buy a mattress. What a hassle without a car! I prayed I’d be given one, and a student returning to Korea offered me hers the next day. Several coincidences like that! Wow!

And so, real faith slowly slipped into place like pieces in a jigsaw.

* * *

Does anyone become a Christian and then instantly believe all its doctrines? Or do they fall into place, step by step as they did for me? Do we construct our creeds gradually? Yeah, I believe in the Resurrection. Yes, I believe in the Atonement. Yeah, I believe in Hell, because Jesus talked so much about it, though I am uncertain of its demographics. Yeah, I believe in Heaven–ditto!!

I believe!

The Deep Play of Blogging, Philosophy or Theology

By Anita Mathias

My daughter Irene, aged 5

The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he’s always doing both. James A. Michener
Simone Beauvoir, brilliant philosopher and life-long partner of Jean-Paul Sartre describes in Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter her pleasure in studying philosophy.

She found grown up, brilliant people seriously discussing the very same questions which had intrigued her as a child. Eternity. The good life. God. Right. Wrong. Happiness. Time. Goodness.

* * *

I find the same pleasure in theology. It deals with the same questions which puzzled me as a child. Is there a God? Is Christ God? Why did Christ die, and for whom? How can I be happy? How should I live? What is the purpose of life?

* * *

And blogging for me only retains its fun when it has a child-like sense of play. When I can play with ideas, think them through, record my conclusions, capturing stray bluebirds and hummingbirds of thought. Occasionally sharing cool things I’ve learned– beach glass and starfish of facts; little ideas, little insights, little delights. When I can write short imperfect posts every day, rather than one perfect post a week.

Whenever I get too ninja about it, and want to write big, significant, meaty posts, which make people think, and get shared and retweeted, blah-di-blah, blogging takes too long, and loses its fun. Stress enters the domain of play.

And my life becomes slightly less pleasurable because my blog is taking too much time, making “real writing” impossible.

* * *

So, when I was praying about my blog today, I heard surprising advice, but advice I hear each time I pray about my blog, “Lower your standards. Write shorter posts. Try just one idea per post.”

Yeah!!

I no longer even try to write the big meaty posts. I don’t have the energy to. Instead, I ask, “So what are you saying to me, Lord? What are you teaching me?” or even “What’s on my mind?”

And these may be small, slight things, but they may speak to someone I do not know.

One aspect of a prophetic ministry is tuning in to God’s thoughts and sharing them with others.

Can a blog do this? I would like mine to try.

* * *

I know that I have the most fun, and the most delight in writing when I calm down, slow down and tap into the stream of what God is saying to me, or even into my own inner stream of consciousness, and then record it, be it a minuscule humble insight or a life-changing one.

For we need both, don’t we? Cups of coffee, glasses of cold water, snacks, and the occasional banquet.
And I find the most joy in blogging when being at play in the fields of the Lord, or the fields of the blog, become one and the same.

“Both” and “And” are beautiful theological words, as is “Yes”

By Anita Mathias

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I once worshipped at a maverick church in Williamsburg, Virginia, The Williamsburg Community Chapel. It was good to me, and for me. My spiritual gifts of speaking, and leading and teaching Bible studies were identified while I was there, for instance, and I led four Bible studies in a row.

Williamsburg Community Chapel was non-denominational, with members from every Christian denomination, and none.

So, they had an answer to pretty much every theological question put to them.

And that was “Yes!”

* * *

Oh, it drove me nuts. It seems an illogical way of answering an OR question, and an annoying way of deflecting it.

But thinking about it now, I see its brilliance.

Do you believe in infant baptism or in believers’ baptism?

Yes.

Do you believe in water baptism as a once-in-for-all experience, or do you believe in the Baptism in the Holy Spirit?

Yes.

Do you believe the Baptism in the Holy Spirit, the second blessing, is a one-time experience, or can we have a second, third and fourth Baptism in the Spirit?

Yes.

Are we justified and saved by our faith alone, or does true faith need to have an expression in works?

Yes.

Should a Christian woman be a keeper at home, or use her gifts outside the home too?

Yes.

Should a Christian woman be silent or teach and lead, if so gifted?

Yes.

Were Charismatic gifts given to establish the church, or are they still active today?

Yes.

Do you believe in the gift of tongues?

Yes.

But I don’t need the gift of tongues to be a Christian?

Yes.

* * *

It’s because God is so big and so rich that he is unlikely to confined to any of our restrictive, limited theological positions.

If you take rigid theological statements like Calvinism, and more moderate theological statements, truth is often to be found between the two extremes, with each of them having some truth, some Yes.

So the next time, I start getting emotionally involved in a theological controversy, that’s a theological word I am going to remember: AND. Most positions of sincere Christ-followers are likely have some truth in them, and the absolute truth is likely to be found somewhere in the middle.

* * *

Jesus came to us, full of grace and truth (John 1:14). And where will we find him?

Quite likely between the position of those who interpret scripture rigidly when it comes to homosexuality, let’s say, or abortion or the demographics of hell–and the extreme grace, “everyone is okay because is God is love” position.

Not in the place of controversy, over “circumcision or uncircumsion,” but in the place of gentleness, of truth working through love. (Gal 5:6). In the middle ground between sheer uncompromising truth, and a look-the-other-way love.

The land of And, the place where love and truth meet, (Ps. 85:10) is the place where we are most likely to find Jesus.