Advent Faith

An Advent Faith:  life is not an accident, and is in some fundamental way "meant" to be good.

Christianity is a discipline— one discipline— for exploring that good, and even enabling and enhancing it.

We take the old stories of Israel and of Jesus of Nazareth which we have inherited, and retell them as we live in the pain and joy of life.

We hear them as we look on the splendour of nature, the marvel of the genetic code and its expression, the almost overwhelming weight of evil, the fear that there is no enduring meaning to be had, and the reality of love.

Slowly we discover, and rediscover, and build our own vision out of the richness of our heritage; a vision which is forged in human pain and toughened with the mettle of human hope. We live for that vision and tell the stories again.

Our faith is that this conscious discipline of mining our unconscious and testing it against our knowledge of the world, whilst also letting it shine light on the world, brings us toward the Meaning behind it all. And if there is no Meaning... if we have made it all ourselves, then we have done well. We have stretched ourselves and deepened our humanity beyond what we once were.

The stories call us away from the old reality of brute force and survival of the fittest. We glimpse a "new fitness" for being human. Power is not domination to survive and rule. Power is giving, enabling, sacrificing, and building up the weak.

This half glimpsed contradiction and heresy turns life on its head. It threatens everything we have and all that we are... and yet graces us with moments of fulfilment, contentment, and sheer nobility beyond anything we have yet seen.

Andrew Prior
Advent 2 2013

 

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