The Distillery Church

Everything you know is…

…the sum of a combination of factors including what you have been taught, what you have read, what you think you have been taught, superstitions you developed in your youth, …

Not to say that it is wrong of course.

In our discussion on Sunday, we read the gospel reading from the lectionary: John 14 v8-17. In fact, we read to the end of the chapter, because that’s the kind of folk we are! I was challenged when I read it by how much I am tempted to read it through the lens of what I believe rather than allowing what I read to inform, challenge and shape what I believe. So, I passed the challenge on, asking us all to pause and discuss which of a series of simple statements were supported by this particular passage. We did not ask which we agreed with, nor which were actually correct – but allowed this particular passage to speak to us about what Jesus said about the Holy Spirit.

These are the statements we used (one at a time) for our little exercise:

Some of these caused a fair deal of discussion as we tried to separate difference of intent from simple semantics. The last two took the conversation in an interesting direction as we decided that saying anything is ‘the key’ jarred with our approach to our faith. I hope it was a healthy exercise in seeing how our background and our world-view influence our interpretation of the Bible. After that, we watched the Nooma video Rhythm – in this Rob Bell suggests that we should not look for the intervention of a God who is elsewhere ‘helping one person find things on sale and another a parking space’ but rather to see the living God as in all things and we can choose to act in harmony with him – in love and justice for example – or not.

We ended by reading the passage again – one participant likened it to having a pair of tinted shades taken off his eyes as he saw Jesus’ words in a new light.

For me, this exercise in re-examining well-rehearsed beliefs – sometimes dismantling them or putting them aside altogether, is a microcosm of my life over the last few years. I hope and pray that we all will become stronger, more whole and more faithful followers of Jesus as we engage openly with his teaching.