There is an old joke about a sceptical husband who came home
and said to his more pious wife, “That parson of yours is a hypocrite”.
“What makes you say that?” asked his wife.
“Well, you know he’s always going on about how lovely it will
be when we die and go to heaven. I saw him crossing the street in town this
morning, and a fast car suddenly came round the corner. Judging by the way he
ran, I’d say he’s in no particular hurry to get there!”
A more recent story comes from Peter Rollins in a talk he
gave at Greenbelt this year. He was listening to a preacher who was a firm
believer in divine healing. He eloquently insisted that if only we believe we can be healed
of anything. Then, at the end of the service, one of the congregation had an
accident and appeared to have broken a bone. The preacher’s first reaction was
to say “We must get him to the hospital”!
We all know that even the strongest believers temper their beliefs with common sense. In spite of all the positive things we say at funerals, we all go to the doctor when we are ill and even centenarians hope to get
better.
Some Christians claim to believe that anyone who is not a
born again believer will go to hell to suffer for eternity. But many of them
have unbelieving loved ones who have died. Believing what they do, how can they
sleep at night? I once heard of a fundamentalist Christian woman who was found
preaching in the street in the early hours of the morning calling on her
neighbours to repent. Her husband, who had the same beliefs as she did,
immediately called a doctor and got her admitted to a mental hospital. It
seemed to me at the time that what she was doing was not mad at all but
perfectly logical in the light of the beliefs she held. After all, if your
unbelieving neighbour could die at any moment and go straight to hell, there is
no time to lose. If a building is on fire you don’t wait for an appropriate
moment to raise the alarm!
This paradox applies to many aspects of religious belief. On
Remembrance Sunday congregations heartily sing:
“Sufficient is thine arm alone,And our defence is sure.”
But many of those singing are in army uniform, and only
a small minority of Christians are pacifists.
We preach the message of Jesus that we do not need to
accumulate possessions because God will look after us from day to day, but how
many of us turn down a chance to have some savings in the bank or to join a pension scheme? We believe Jesus was right when he said “It is more
blessed to give than to receive”, but how many of us take even a slight risk of
impoverishing ourselves by giving to those in greater need?
There have been in history only a few people who have
really, literally believed the Christian message. Some have been outstanding
saints like Francis of Assisi, but most of the others have been dangerous
fanatics, willing to torture and kill people “for the good of their soul”.
What does it really mean to believe? Are all our “beliefs”
dishonest and hypocritical? Or are they aspects of some deeper truth that
common sense feels after but cannot explain?
