My favourite vicar, the Reverend Gavin Ashenden of Sussex University, never says, "I am a Christian," but rather "I'm trying to be a Christian". Me too. Between the darkness that faces me from within and the darkness that faces me from without, it may just prove to be the hardest thing I've ever done. I love it.
The full article is here.
Ever since I graduated from the Funday Times, I've always loved Julie Burchill. Always wanted to write as startlingly well as her. Always admired her supreme ability to write the most audacious, shocking, shit-stirring things, and then to allow all resulting vitriol and fury to so gracefully slide past her. Not that this piece is excessively over-controversial, or not by her standards, anyway. It's mainly a very genuine encapsulation of faith...
8 comments:
Thanks for that. I hadn't heard of her before.
Hi Grace, sorry this is very random, but you commented on my blog about people being paid less than £3 an hour - thought you might be interested in this BBC investigation from the weekend:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ipm/2008/08/homeworking_and_the_minimum_wa.shtml
Hmmm
Ever since I've come across Julie Burchill I've only read her sporadically to confirm that she's still the most awful journalist around.
It's not her writing, she is very very good. But it's her vitriolic dismissal of everything and everyone she doesn't agree with.
A totally self focused woman with no grasp of the reality of other people.
I hope her Christianity will help her to find a little more depth and empathy for others inside her.
Otherwise it's all just like everything else she writes - beautiful but totally me me me focused.
Sorry to disagree so vitriolically!
Can see your point, Erika (probably really why Ruth and few people in the US have heard of her). So I think it'll be interesting, and maybe very revealing, to hear more about how her faith affects her life.
And thanks, Joe, for the link... just so glad this is being noticed in the media. I've also had a read of the report it links to here, which highligts that public sector and charity workers can also be spectacularly underpaid... that it's a wider problem than in manufacturing or catering...
"I'm trying to be a Christian"
Doesn't that defeat the point of our faith entirely? It's not about works. If I do all this stuff really well, follow the rules, be a good girl, then I'll be a Christian.
Even though I mess up a lot of the time, I'm still a Christian, because my salvation is a free gift from God that doesn't rest on my good deeds.
Ultimately, I suppose, it's a question of category and language... the concept of what defines or demarcates or what it means to be "a Christian" and/or Follower of Christ maybe goes beyond theology.
The idea salvation as a free gift does not, I think, negate the duty to act worthily of Christ. Not to that I would claim I do...
I agree that our faith does not depend on good works and that trying to be a Christian sounds odd.
On the other hand, it's a refreshing change from the more common belief that I am a Christian by virtue of my faith, and because I'm so saved and so Christian I can also decide who isn't a Christian because they don't measure up to my standards and to my views of what is acceptable and what is unacceptable.
To say, in that context, that you are trying to be a Christian implies a degree of uncertainty, of openness, of maybe not having the whole thing wrapped up watertight, of accepting that other people's ways of being a Christian may be just as valid in God's eyes, although it is different from mine.
There's a kind of humility in that statement that I really like.
Well good for her. But I hope she doesn't stop stirring up the shit just because she's realised her faith.
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