Church – the real one

Alcoholic  Anonymous may be closer  to the  real  Church.  One of the  accusations  or  ridicule  I get to hear on Easter, Christmas or New Year is that there are many who attend church only during these days.  Some how these hallowed institutions teach extremely good stuff without knowing what it means and hence dont practice them.  For those who take it seriously its all a huge muddle and for the ones who pay scant ear it passes by.  There are many who are in the edges of evangelical and charismatic churches or who had fallen off the edge altogether since churches tend to demand a degree of conformity over and above the essential requirements of the gospel.

Many no longer attend church but still retain their faith and practice it in various settings – in workplace, in social gatherings and even in parties.If the Post evangelical option were presented to them they would still be attending church.

An unconventional church, Holy Joe’s, that meets at the lunge bar on South London pub on Tuesday nights, with all its frailities and weakness has demonstrated the possibility of an alternate church life.

The format is simple and the atmosphere very relaxed. People behave as they normally would in a pub: they can drink or smoke, they can participate as much or as little as they wish, and if they really like it they can move to the main bar.   Contemplative worship evenings with candles, symbols and ambient music, participants are active trying to understand and interpret the scriptures. This satisfies the needs the churches fails to meet, it does not set itself against the church.  This surely is not the way ahead for post evangelicals by any means but it surely is an example of a group of post evangelicals who are trying to work out their faith communally.

The mystery of listening

I had this privilege of discussing with a student of mine about the life of a Christian. It all started when I casually mentioned that I did not attend church on 31st December. She was appalled and taken aback “A Christian not attending New Year service?”  she went on to say  she was a ‘converted Christian’ and that she was a Hindu earlier. For the next 20 minutes I listened to her tell me what a Christian should do and what he should not do. She went to the level of saying that a Christian should not watch movies and that wearing the traditional Indian dress “salwar kameez” is sure passage to hell.

I tried asking her if its practical to follow all these rules, she said no, but we must strive follow it. I was perplexed. I did not have the time to talk to her more neither did she seem to have the inclination to listen.

If scriptures are inspired by God and written by man. It must be perfect in inspiration and imperfect in conveying the message. If the reader takes it literally he is in all probability  assimilating the imperfect execution and disregarding the perfection in the message. Since its impossible to write about a infinite being with the words of the language having the finite limitation its important to make the scriptures come alive by reading and listening at the same time.

Listening is one of the most difficult activity today, with all the sounds and distractions and high decibels. How does listening take place? What is a word? These are few aspects we need to look at seriously.

A word is a combination of sounds (phonemes) . Our ability to process the phonemes in quick succession gives us the ability to process speech. In the event of any problem or challenge in processing sound, it will be impossible to understand or listen to human speech.

And listening is a fascinating activity. Sounds are pressure on the air. When the sounds are funneled in through the outer ear it enters as mechanical energy and then gets converted into electrical energy somewhere in the cochlea, and these electrical signals are carried by the nerves to the brain. These signals do not carry words the way we a telephone or radio carries it. These signals reach the brain as a formation – spectral content – and what is known as the phase locking happens over here. It is here that we the brain does a forward prediction of these formations and interprets the sound. The three networks – alerting, orienting and the executive network – takes over.

Listening is not simple. The interpretation of a word or a sentence depends entirely on the experiences we have gathered in our memory. The executive network before understanding or deciphering a sound or word draws heavily from existing memory. This is why the scriptures being inspired by God can communicate individually to every person provided he listens keenly and does not read it as a religious activity or academic pursuit.