I had a conversation with someone I know recently, someone who doesn’t follow Jesus, and someone I thought who had no interest in God. I found that not only does he not have an interest in God, but believes He exists and is real.

No, his problem wasn’t God.

His problem was religion.

I had no problems talking to him about Jesus, the Bible, God and my faith whatsover, and he was even open to a proper discussion on the subject. He even went so far as to say he believed Jesus existed.

But religion? Not interested. Not one iota.

And, to be honest, I was inclined to agree with him.  I’ve written before how if you look at the story of God in the Bible from the beginning and read certain passages in their proper context its possible to understand that Jesus didn’t come here to start a new religion. He didn’t come just to take care of our sin. No, Jesus came to restore all things to how they were originally created to be – including the human race and its sin – and to show us how God has always intneded and planned for us to live. The cross and empty tomb makes possible a new way of life, bringing the sacred and the common closer, and bring God’s way of life into the everyday of our lives.

Before Jesus’ sacrifice it wasn’t possible, religion was necessary in one sense because the seperation between the sacred and the common was very much there, because of the mistakes of the human race. However, once Jesus took care of this the curtain was torn, God – the sacred – could once again become part of the common, the everyday. God could become part of our everyday lives in a much more real way, and God could send His spirit on us to equip us to live this life.

Jesus sacrifice and resurrection actually was then intended not to start a new religion, but to end religion altogether, and initiate a big restoration project on all of creation, with the risen Jesus, the Son of God, at the centre of it all.

Yes, you heard me right.

Jesus didn’t come to start a new religion. I would argue He came to abolish religion altogether.

So, you ask, if that is the case then what is the purpose and role of church?

Well, God has always thought humans work best in community. Right from the beginning He said that it wasn’t good for us to do this life alone. Jesus even speaks of the importance of ‘church’ and it is menitioned as the bride of Christ. In fact, in the absence of religion, church – in the truest sense, in the way God designed it rather than the way we often do it – is the best way to do community and for followers of Christ both to meet and serve together.

Church, in its best and truest form, is important to God, and important to us. In fact, even more than that, we are church.

A church service and church community is where you will connect with other folllowers of Jesus, where you get discipleship and accountability as you look to grow and mature, and know Jesus more. It is where you get support for the things that are going on in your life, practically, emotionally, physically and spiritually. It is where you are taught about what it means to bring the Christ into the everyday, to see Christ in the everyday, and to be Christ in the everyday.

That’s the purpose of teaching/preaching, to enable and equip people to bring Jesus into their everyday more and more, and bring truths from scripture to life in way that helps us in today’s context, in creative, innovative and relevant ways.

But make no mistake. ‘Church’ is not the point. Jesus is.

Some people make church their idol you see. Lots of problems can rise up in a church if you are not careful, no matter how successful or how progressive and positive the intentions.  In fact, success can often be the cause of some problems in itself.

One, some or all of the following problems can rise up in a church if it becomes the idol, or the centre of everything:

-Preserving the status quo, getting everyone to fit to the same mould can become a bad habit. People can get entrenched and happy with how things are and stop being progressive, whatever their original intnentions were.

-A culture can easily build up where you get used to only meeting God at church, where church and associated events are the only places where you are ‘allowed’ to meet God or where God is perecieved to be present.by many. You start to feel guilty – or be made to feel guilty by others –  for not going every single week.. The church can start to exist to defend itself and further itself rather than for the good of the community outside and to serve God’s purposes.

-People start looking to build their own kingdoms and powerbases and this is a detriment to the ministry of the church,and divisions can be formed.

I am not saying these things happen in all churches, far from it. In fact I don’t think it happens now as much as it once did, and a corner is being turned. But one or some of these things can happen in any church, no matter how progressive or successful it mught be, no matter how good its original intentions.

These issues arise because people can easily take their eye off what is the most important thing, which isn’t the church itself , isn’t the organization or institution,

but following Jesus,

helping others to enage and grow in Jesus

and ‘being’ church.

That’s why I believe when starting any church it is vital to make serving Jesus, acting in the interests of His kingdom and glory, being obedient to Him and serving Him and worshipping Him and His interests over the interests of the church itself has to be at the heart of a church’s key values.

Jesus needs to be the point.

We need to promote Christ in the everyday

and help people live that out – and that becomes our evangelism,

it becomes ‘doing church’.

Jesus becomes our whole life.

The life of everyone who is part of that church community, and then part of the lives of the people they know, and so on and so on. And we still have as part of ‘doing  church’ a community of followers who we connect with and who help us grow and mature, and who we can be accountable to, and who we can meet for fellowship and teaching and encouraging together. Not a place where the separation between sacred and everyday is increased and encouraged, but a place where we are taught how to find Jesus in the everyday and how to make Him part of our everyday – then go and do it.

The Sunday meetings are important. Very important.

But they are not the point.

They are not the only place we ‘do church’.

Church was never intended to be an organization or institution, or ‘the establishment’. Its about following Jesus, proclaiming His kingdom, being obdient to Him, seeking to build His kingdom and not our own, seeking not to separate the sacred from the everyday, but promote this idea and teach about how we can do that more and more.

Its His church. Its a community of followers of Jesus.

It so important church leaders are emphasizing always that being church and doing church is as much about being Jesus in our everyday as what we do on Sundays. I think its is absoluetly vital to ensuring a church stays church in the truest sense, and avoids falling into the religious trap which Jesus never wanted His followers to fall into.

The church of Jesus Christ – the community of people who choose to follow Him, ‘Christians’ –  have fallen into the trap of religion. Some are desperately trying to escape and trying to find a way out. Others have fallen away because they have lost hope. Others thought about God but gave up when religion got in the way. Others see Christianity and the traditional church image and don’t even take a second look.

The church is very sick. Jesus wants to save it, like He has already saved us all. Jesus sacrifice was a once and for all sacrifice to ‘reconcile to Himself all things in heaven and on earth’ – all things, literally translated from the Greek, means literally ‘all things’. Jesus has opened the door for the restoration of all things – and that includes not just people, not just the earth, but the church – who are His people, and His bride.

In all seriousness, this topic is so huge and has such repercussions I have a feeling it may eventually turn into a book (the title above could probably be a book title). But I will end for now with this:

I believe people are looking for God. They are looking for a way of life better than the one they have. They are looking for real genuine hope.

But they are sick of religion. They want God, they may even want church. But they don’t want legalism, rules, traditions and politics to get in the way of it. They want something that is liberating, life changing and sets them free from the culture they are in and gives them genuine, authentic hope. They want faith which deals with the real issues in our world today and the day to day problems of life and faces up to them rather than brushes over them.

They are sick of today’s ‘pharisees’ telling them what they aren’t and not, and how bad they are, being guilted into faith, and of being ‘sold’ Jesus like a bad insurance policy.

They want to be set free. They want to be the people they were made to be.

Its up to the church. Its up to church leaders. Its up to followers of Jesus. They – we – are the ones given this responsibility. We are meant to be the answers to prayer. We are the ones with the respsonsibility to rise to this challenge, and we have the creator of the universe to help us. We need to stop dividing and fighting over issues which don’t matter, and unite around issues that do. Issues that matter to Jesus that all of us can make a difference to – locally, nationally and internationally. Projects like the foodbank are one obvious example close to home.

The question all followers of Jesus need to ask ourselves – me included –  is ‘What am I going to do?’ Then they need to do it.

And if you don’t know Jesus, He is looking for you. He is waiting for you. And He’s not the church, He’s not a hypocrite, He’s not against you, He doesn’t reject you and He wants to hear from you. He is so much more than you think or been led to believe.

What are you – indeed, what am I – waiting for?

“If it’s a Christian way, then it should be leading us toward a new kind of humanity. A church should be an inspiring display of a new way to be human” – Rob Bell, interviewed 2008

Interesting quote isn’t it. Its something we don’t often read, church and Jesus being about creating a new humanity itself, that Christianity or church shouldn’t be about seperating us from the rest of humanity, but instead of uniting it together.

Its the bigger picture of Jesus.
Its the bigger picture of church.
Its a bigger picture of humanity.
Its a bigger reality.

You see, God had a plan for humanity and creation all along. Right from the beginning, there was an idea for it all. It wasn’t made perfect – but good. It wasn’t static, there was room for more creativity, more growth.

It was without sin. Totally in unity with God, heaven and earth together.

But it wasn’t static – what we often term as ‘perfect’. You see we think of perfect as some ideal and after that there is nothing to change about whatever it is. Or perfect is the only opposite to sin.

You see here is the thing. God is perfect. Nothing else.

At creation, the universe wasn’t perfect. But it was good.

Without suffering.
Without death.
Without pain.
Without abandonment and mistrust.
Without our rejection of God – sin.

It was God and man united almost as one. In the same place.
Heaven and earth, in the same place.

A place of huge potential for growth, creativity, life, joy.

But we ruined it when we rejected God. We separated heaven and earth, we put a barrier between us and God, we rejected the way of God and decided to try and do things by ourselves. God gave us the freedom to do that, and still allows us the freedom to do that.

He’s not going to force Himself on anyone.

Jesus came 2000 years ago and was executed by the Roman Empire, seen as a rebel troublemaker who had the potential to bring a revolution to a small part of the Roman empire. Three days later He rose up, and over 500 people testified to seeing Him alive.

This happened, according to the scriptures, not just to bring God and mankind back together, not just for our forgiveness. But to bring the whole of creation back to God.

To restore all things how they were intended. To make things as they were always planned to be. And now He asks us to partake with Him in this grand plan, to renounce our rejection of God and partner with Him in remaking this world back to how it should be.

Bring humanity back to how it should have been. Was always planned to be. Was always intended to be.

It is, in one sense, the ‘new humanity’. But in another sense its a reclamation of something we had right at the beginning. Its a restoration of humanity to how it was always intended.

Peace. Justice. Joy. Unity. Equality. Love.

No war. No weapons. No criminals. No injustice. No grudges. No adultery or rejection. No cynicism. No inequality. No poverty.

This is the humanity Jesus spoke of. And now we are in process of trying to restore that humanity. In small steps, and not perfectly. But in process.

Bell speaks of church being an ‘inspiring display’ of this humanity. He is spot on.

Church is a community of followers of Jesus. A community who are all trying to live out this new humanity together. A church meeting should be a place where you are equipped to live out this new humanity, and taught about what this new humanity looks like in today’s world and helps people find their role in God’s plan for the new humanity, to find their true identity. Outside of this the members of this community can be accountable to each other and support and encourage each other in doing this, acting like a support network.

Ultimately though, the new humanity is really lived out in our day to day lives, in the everyday, in the ordinary, in the common. In how we live out what we believe practically.

That’s what church really is.
That’s where church makes this new humanity a reality.Because of course, church is not about separating the sacred and the everyday, but bringing them closer together.

When that really happens, when we truly embrace this new humanity, then radical change begins to happen. When people start to see church as it really should be, when people start to see the real Jesus in action, when they see this new humanity as a reality, and understand that following Jesus and church isn’t about religion, division, rules, tradition, hypocrisy and legalism, its about a new humanity and a new reality, a great big earth/humanity restoration project in which we all have a role to play and which not only can change the world but make it how it was always meant to be, the best it can possibly be, they can get inspired. They can start to see Jesus differently, and the idea of church is transformed.

When we bring the sacred and the everyday closer, we find the real church,

the real Jesus,

and the new humanity.

I heard a sermon by Rob Bell today, and it has profoundly impacted my life. It has changed my perspective on Jesus, the cross, church, following Jesus, evangelism and many other things. It has given me much greater faith, and much more of an awareness of the reality of God on our world.

It has become part of my testimony.

Think, whether you are a Christian or not, about how much of what you have heard about Jesus and the cross is about forgiveness of sins, about how you need to turn away from your old life and give your life to Jesus and getting forgiveness, and that this is the whole point of following Jesus, and what Christianity is all about.

How often have you heard that evangelism is about telling people, in love (or otherwise) that they need Jesus to get forgiveness for their sins, or they are big trouble with God?

You see, for a long time, I thought this was all that faith in Jesus was for, and about.

But recently I have come to see following Jesus as a way of life, the best way to live. Not a religion but a way of seeing the world, a way of living and an attitude and perpsective that is different.

Then I heard this sermon by Rob Bell, which confirmed this and explained this totally.

You see so much of Christianity and evangelism is about repentance and sin, and talks about the cross as being only about that, and then when you die you go to heaven, this perfect place somewhere else.

Bell argues something different.

He argues that the cross is not just about forgiveness of sins. But a reconciliation of all things with God.

In the first two chapters of Genesis we see the world before we rejected God – ‘sinned’. We see a good world with beauty, peace, creativity, order, justice, love. There is no seperation between God and mankind, God walks in the garden with man.There is no seperation between heaven and earth. If heaven is where everything about the place is as God intends it, without what we call ‘sin’, the kingdom of Heaven as Jesus talks about it – the realm, domain, reality, way of God – is on earth.

Heaven and earth. They are the same place.

God isn’t somewhere else.

He is here with us, dwelling with us here. That’s how it was meant to be.

In Genesis 1 there isn’t somewhere we go where we die, because we don’t die, there is no death at all. There isn’t somewhere else to go because there’s no somewhere else at all, not anywhere talked about.That’s how things were originally, and that’s how things were always intended to be forever.

Then we reject God, think we know better, decide we want to be God and do things our own way and disrupt the natural order. We screw this up and bring ‘sin’ into the world. We rebel against God. When that happens, heaven gets separated from earth.

That is when that happens, not before.

Not in God’s ideal.

Not in God’s original plan.

Fast forward to the end of the Bible, and it talks about a new heaven and a new earth, and the first one passing away, and where there is no more death, no more night. Yet again, it’s all good, its all how God wants it, its all been restored. There’s a city…which is collection of gardens. That’s a natural, evolutionary progression from one garden isn’t it? Almost like its a plan.

The last two chapters of the Bible and the first two chapters sound pretty similar. They are the only places in the Bible where sin is not involved or mentioned. In the entire Bible.

Now lets look at a passage from a scripture (be brave, its only short)

Colossians 1 v 19: “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross”

Now this is a passage often missed in its significance. In the original Greek you see the phrase ‘all things’ in this passage literally means ‘all things’.

Not some things.
Not many things.
Not specific things.
Not certain people.
Not just human sin.
Not just human beings.

All things. Everything.

You see, when we rejected God the world was separated from the kingdom of Heaven. They were no longer one. Hence the world became full of suffering, pain, greed and everything that goes against how God wants us to live, and things which separate us from God. However, luckily for us, God loves us, and He thought His original creation was good. He wanted to restore it. In fact, He wanted to get us to partake with Him in that. Jesus sacrifice on the cross was the only way to do this. So when Jesus died on the cross He not only paid the penalty for our rejection of God, but He also somehow made possible the restoration of all things to the way God intended them…including us.

When Jesus was on earth He consistently said that the kingdom of God is not somewhere separate from here, not somewhere else we don’t know about, not in a distant land.

He said its here.
Its now.
Its within us.

Jesus said that at the end of time all things will be renewed. That things will go back to how they were originally. That means heaven and earth will be united, together again.

God is still present here, now, by His spirit. Whenever and wherever people do things which are reflections of Him, which give us a glimpse of Him and who He is, which are reflections of His nature, then a bit of heaven touches earth. In that moment, the kingdom of heaven – the reality of God – becomes more real on this earth than it was before.

God has given us His spirit in order to try and bring more of His reality, His realm, His kingdom, back to the way it originally was.The gifts we have, the talents, the callings, are all about playing our role in restoring this world into how it was originally intended to be. They are to bring heaven to earth. Then when we die, we don’t go off to some distant land and the whole of this place is burnt to hell.

No.

We wake up in new bodies, in a new earth totally restored to how things were originally intended to be.

This earth, remade, restored.

A place of total peace, love, joy, creativity, no death, no pain, no suffering, no night.

Home.

You see if we begin the story of the Bible with our rebellion against God, then Jesus is all about sin. Its all about avoiding eternal punishment and getting into heaven which is somewhere else. That’s often what Christians and the church do, and have done throughout history. Its ‘in the beginning…sin’, when that wasn’t the beginning at all. That way begins at Genesis chapter 3, not chapter 1. Like most books, the Bible begins at Chapter 1.

If we begin the story of the Bible at the beginning of the Bible – Chapter 1 of Genesis – we see that Jesus is all about not just taking care of our sin, but also about restoring this world to how it was originally made to be. Repentance becomes about admitting we rejected God and our role in the bad things that happen and the mistakes that we make, and choosing instead to follow the story of God, the reality of God, and choose to try and make His story a reality.

We then become partners with God in trying to remake this world in the way that He intended it to be. He gives us the equipment and we, with His help, do the work.

The normal becomes sacred, and the sacred becomes the ordinary. As we make everyday choices for God, instead of for ourselves, when we involve God in the everyday aspects of our lives and choose His reality over our own, we are partnering with Him in bringing His reality – His kingdom – to earth a lot more.

There is no seperation between spiritual and physical There is no distinction. Its not about ‘physical’ being bad and spiritual being good somehow. Both are interlinked. God is reflected in creation, and His spirit is present in us all the time.

We are 100% physical and 100% spiritual.

God is with us. All the time. Everywhere. In everything. Whether we can see Him, feel Him or seems present or not. Even in the bad times, in our suffering, in our pain, in dark place. He is there. We are not alone. And we are partnering with Him in His big project of remaking this earth in the original way it was intended.

When you look at things this way, suddenly following Jesus, doing church and evangelism all takes on a whole different dimension.

Suddenly being a follower of Jesus doesn’t sound so much like a religion, it doesn’t seem such a burden, and we aren’t asked to do it out of fear, and God is no longer some distant being far away from us.

Now following Jesus becomes an adventure, a way of life.
Now we have a role in changing this world.
Now hope becomes something authentic and true, and about the whole of the world, and a hope involving this world, not some distant world far away.
Now the role of church becomes totally different.
Now God is near, close, with us, present and part of our reality.
Now following Jesus is relevant today and every day.

Its a new day. Its a new reality. Its a new hope.

Following Jesus is about pursuing justice in the world.
Its about creativity – whether something is labelled ‘Christian’ or not.
Its about loving people.
Its about forgiving people, even if they don’t deserve it.
Its about pursuing peace in all circumstances.
Its about loving your enemies, and those you don’t like.
Its about sacrifice.
Its about finding your true identity.
Its about working to change the world in the genuine hope – and faith – that there is something better, that the pain, negativity and injustice doesn’t go on forever, that God is going to make things good again and we have a role to play in that work.

This has changed my awareness of the reality of God in the world, in me, in my life, in everything. Its made me more aware of God speaking to me. It’s given me a new sense of purpose and hope that that impulse, that drive, that desire to make the world a better place, to make it as it could be and that indeed it can be better, is not just some vain hope, but is a reality.

I feel like I am not alone. That God is fully present here. That God is real, and my visions and ideas for church and evangelism suddenly don’t seem so ‘out there’, they seem to fit totally with what God has been doing all along.

The idea that following Jesus is a way of life, not a religion.
That life isn’t about labels.
That you can find the sacred anywhere in anyone, not just at church or in things labelled ‘Christian’.
The vision of a church that is a community of followers of Jesus who meet together to learn and understand more about how to live out the reality of God in this world, and who support each other in doing that, rather than a place to go where we meet God and escape from reality.
The idea that the kingdom of heaven is here, now, in us and God wants us to bring it.
The idea that legalism, rules, tradition and religion are not at all what Jesus is interested in, but living like Him.

These all fit with this idea that Bell articulates so well and which when I heard it made perfect sense.

I intend to write a series of articles based on my response to this idea, and how this essentially impacts church, how we respond to creativity in this world and how it impacts evangelism too. Look out for those.

To conclude though, I will say this. God made this world, this creation, and united Heaven and earth in one place. We disrupted this, rebelled against God, separated Heaven and earth, brought pain, violence and suffering into world.

Now, through the cross of Jesus, it can all be remade and restored to how it was, and God wants us to discover our true identity and play our part in that.

That’s what following Jesus – being a real ‘Christian’ – is really all about.

He just needs us to say yes.

Have you ever noticed how often things need to die for other things to grow, or to live? Or how so often in human history some of the greatest achievements have come from greatest suffering, or how some of the greatest artists and musicians are only truly appreciated once they have died? Indeed, virtually every scientific breakthrough was probably only achieved after many failed experiments before that.

Then of course, there is the ultimate example. The paradox that the only way for our relationship with God to be reconciled was through the death of His son, put to death by the very people He came to save.

I don’t think any of this is coincidence. This is the world we live in.

When we rejected God – however and whenever that happened, although some do believe the Genesis story as literal truth, I don’t think it has to be just because you follow Jesus – at the beginning, we brought suffering into the world.

The consequence of us putting a barrier between us and God was always going to be suffering, because there is that separation, and because we started putting ourselves first and orientating ourselves around other things.

They often say – quite righty – that you can have all the knowledge in the world, but it doesn’t make you wise. Wisdom is the correct application and interpretation of knowledge. Its knowing something, knowing how to apply it and then the act of applying it. When we chose to separate ourselves from God, we did this by gaining the knowledge of the difference between good and evil. There is a metaphor for this, that we ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

The problem was, that we didn’t know how to correctly deal with this knowledge. We aren’t God, and we were reliant on God, so only He knew how to rightly deal with this knowledge.

God always knew and knows the difference between God and evil, but only He had the wisdom to apply this knowledge correctly, perfectly, all the time.

When we cut ourselves off from God, we cut ourselves off from His provision, from His protection and security. We decided we knew better than Him. We wanted to be equal with Him and thought we could deal with the knowledge of the difference between good and evil. God had to give us the choice to know or not to know, to reject Him or choose Him – because if He if He was going to give us free will, which He did because He loved us, by definition He had to – and we chose to reject Him and thought we could deal with this understanding and knowledge.

We couldn’t. Hence, knowing what was evil, evil inevitably came into the world.

God knew this. But being God, He also knew that pain and suffering – and regret – was not only inevitable, but was an opportunity to see the bigger picture, to learn a lesson, to understand things more as God understands them.

We often say that we learn as much from experience as from studying, maybe more. The reason is that in suffering and in making mistakes, we gain an insight into the true realities of life and what its all about. We gain a deeper perspective on things, whether we know it or not we are more in touch with how God sees things.We also have much more of a desire to change when these things happen. We have more of a reliance on things outside of us – including God – and in turn God is allowed more of an influence on our lives, whether we see and know Him or not. Not only that, but when we experience the greatest pain, it reminds us of how far we can fall, or how bad things can be. It gives us a deeper perspective on life and puts us more in touch with God – even on a subconcious level – and makes us all the more determined to deal with the problems in our life. It gives us an extra drive and zeal.

Whether its grief, loss, or whether its regret or abandonment, when these things happen, when we experience pain or we come to a realization of the mistakes we have made and that we have problems, then things start to change and good ultimately flows out of it.

For example, whilst my mum was alive I used to have real problems taking my medication for my epilepsy. My mum used to nag me about it all the time, and I would just ignore her and keep forgetting my pills.

Then she died.

By some strange coincidence (or maybe not), ever since that day I have not forgotten my pills once. Now this wasn’t because I made a concious decision to take my pills every day. It was because somewhere deep inside I realised how important this was. My mothers’ death brought into focus the things that were really important and gave me the resolve and the drive to change and do something about them, even on a subconcious level.

So as we go through pain and suffering, as we make mistakes and come to a realization of those mistakes, we learn and understand things better.

It was inevitable that suffering would come into the world once we rejected God, but it is arguably just as inevitable that through this suffering, pain and through our recognizing our mistakes, that we would learn more, gain more insight and understanding, and achieve greater things.

God doesn’t just use suffering and our mistakes and regrets to bring good into the world.

I actually think its inevitable that good comes into the world this way.

I believe when those things happen, when we feel those regrets or that suffering, when we encounter reality, change is bound to come.

We see the bigger picture, and we recognize what’s really important.

The death of Jesus was the punishment we all deserved for rejecting God. Because He hadn’t rejected God, our punishment went on Him. And as a result not only did God raise Jesus from the dead, but the power of His message grew. His suffering was the ultimate demonstration of His message of love, grace, mercy and forgiveness. His pain and ultimate glory made people take notice of Him and think about Him in relation to their own lives. It made people more open to God and interested in what His message was all about, and led to the growth of the early church and the Christian faith which many still follow to this day, which has changed millions of lives.

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is inevitable. Mistakes and regret are inevitable, by all of us.

But what also is inevitable, I would argue, is that something good, something positive, something constructive, will always ultimately come out of that – no matter how long it takes or how difficult it is to see.

Because when these things happen it puts us more in touch with reality, more in touch with God, and allows us to see the bigger picture, and more determined to make the changes we need to in our lives.

A seed might die to bring life, but out of that death comes fruit and food for us to eat. Its the same with life, and the same with God.

Suffering. We like to avoid it don’t we?

Isn’t so much of our lives a desperate attempt to avoid suffering, avoid pain, or at least trying to make sure that if we do we are best prepared. So much in our society is sold to us on the basis that it will extend our lives by making us healthier, that if we buy this product, eat this food, or get into this habit then it will make us healthier and our lives longer. So much is about prolonging life, avoiding death and avoiding suffering.

We don’t like talking about suffering. We find it awkward talking about pain, people like to avoid the subject and focus on the positive.

We think that if we take enough precautions, do the right thing, eat the right thing, have the right habits, have the right insurance or take the right precautions our life will end up being longer and therefore better. Avoid suffering at all costs, becuase nothing good can come of suffering.

Now no one wants to suffer. I think most of us would love to have no suffering or problems if we possibly could. No one likes suffering. In my own life, I was bullied at school intensively, I had to witness my parents go through a difficult divorce and lost my mum too young – for her and for me (or at least, it seemed so at the time). None of these things was easy, and I would love to have avoided all of this if I possibly could. I’m sure you’ve had suffering of your own, maybe on a smaller or bigger scale, but everyone has had issues or problems they have had to deal with.

No one’s life has been without some kind of suffering. I challenge anyone to find a person who hasn’t had tough times of one kind or another. Yes some have much more than others  - and I would say those who have experienced the worst kinds of suffering probably understand the consequences and impact of it and how it affects us more than those who haven’t – but many of us have experienced rejection, loss or pain of some kind or another.

But when we experience it, it always seems so hard, it takes a long time to deal with, we build up resentment, anger and bitterness – and understandably. We resist suffering even when its happening to us, because we don’t want it to happen. Because what we want to happen isn’t happening, in fact the opposite is.

Now people often, quite naturally, blame God for suffering. “If God were real and loved me, then He wouldn’t have let this happen”. When my mum died I often question why God allowed it to happen, why was this happening to me, why hadn’t God stopped it, it wasn’t fair. These things tormented me for a long time. I even began to resent those who had happy families with both parents who were still alive and still together, for a while. I was angry with God.I was fighting against the suffering, I wouldn’t accept it and let the suffering control my life.

The thing is, that God didn’t kill my mum, He didn’t even ‘allow’ her to die. The truth is that a long time ago God made the world and gave us total freedom about how to live our lives. We could live in harmony with God and do things His way, which was the best way for us, or we could rebel and try and do it ourselves. Whether the Adam & Eve story is literally true or not, it doesn’t matter. What is clear is that very early on we decided we knew better than God, that we could do things ourselves, that we wanted control over everything. God, because He loves us, gave us the option and we took it.

The consequences were always going to be suffering. Becuase when things try to do things they weren’t designed for in a way that’s not suited for them, then things are going to get difficult. When we wear clothes that are either too small or too big for us, then we look silly. Why? Because they don’t fit.

Human beings were designed to live the way God intended us to live, and He always knew what was best for us. But He loved us, so gave us the freedom to choose how we lived and what our gods were.

He wasn’t a dictator who just told us how to live and made us live that way, He took the risk of giving us free will. Free will was an act of love, a gift – not a right.

You see, God knew that in giving us free will, that He was taking the risk that He might have to sacrifice His own Son to save us if we rebelled.

God knew the cross might be necessary even before He made us. He knew that if there rebelled then allowing His Son to suffer – which no parent would ever knowingly do – was the only way to bring us back. He didn’t have to give us free will, but He chose to anyway, because He loved us. In fact, Jesus in Heaven would have known it was necessary before creation even began. Yet it was still allowed to go ahead, knowing the what the eventual outcome would be.

In giving us free will, He opened up the potential for suffering.

Because suffering would be a consequence of us choosing to reject God. In rejecting God as a human race we would bring consequences on ourselves. By choosing to live without God we would leave ourselves vulnerable.

God could have avoided any suffering, by not giving us free will. If we don’t get to think for ourselves and are all subject to His way of living, we are like robots. There’s no way we can rebel or misfunction or go against God. Its a no risk no pain option – and God didn’t take it, because He loved us and wanted us to be free to make our own choices.

Now does the idea that we rejected God which brought suffering into the world explain why good people like my mum suffer, seemingly unjustly? Why I have epilepsy, why my mum had asthma? Yes and no. My mum was a good person, who loved Jesus, loved her family and was good to all around her. Yet she had to suffer with brain damage for 15 years, asthma for longer and got to die young.

Not exactly fair. Not seemingly just, is it? Sickness and disease don’t have any sense of justice. They don’t pick according to merit. It just happens, as a consequence of living in a world that has rejected God, which allowed the opportunity for all sorts of diseases and conditions to grow and flourish in the human body. And they don’t pick and choose according to merit. They just happen.

When we suffer or people we love suffer, we want revenge. We cry out for justice because we don’t think we deserve it. We get angry at God because He could have stopped it and didn’t, and more deserving people in our eyes didn’t have this happen to them. A lot of anger and pain comes from that sense of injustice.

But here’s the thing which I can’t get away from. First, I know in my heart that Jesus is true. That His suffering was equally as unjust and probably even more painful. God doesn’t avoid suffering either, He embraces it too. Second, God uses the suffering and brings good out of it. God always uses suffering.

Jesus suffered abandonment and betrayal by His friends, physical torture of the worst kind ever devised by man, lack of sleep, emotional torture by those around Him, spiritual torture by being separated from God, hunger, thirst and ultimately humiliation by being crucified – the worst form of execution ever devised – totally naked in public and being mocked by everyone who saw Him. Maunday Thursday and Good Friday were not happy days for Jesus. And probably not the happiest of days for His Father either.

The temptation to get out of it, to come down from the cross, to avoid His destiny, must have been immense. He could have got out of it at any time and I’m sure the enemy – otherwise known as Satan -reminded Him of this several times. And He also had the test of faith, to trust God and be obedient to what He had been called to do, without knowing 100% what would happen. Remember, He entered fully into our human experience and by doing that had to have faith in the same way we do, to trust God in the same way God asks us to trust Him now. So He would have to have had faith to keep pressing on and doing what He had been called to do.

To think that because He was the Son of God made any of that easier is a total fallacy. If anything, it made it even harder.

But instead of resisting suffering, instead of fighting against it and trying to avoid it, instead of trying to avoid it and move on, Jesus embraced His suffering. He became fully submissive to it and trusted God throughout it. He allowed Himself to suffer, it wasn’t God who allowed Him to suffer.

In Chinese wrestling, often it looks like people fall very easily. We all know that a lot of wrestling we see is staged. Once a man asked how they make it less painful and make the falls easier. The answer? “They go with the grip”

That’s what Jesus was doing on the cross. Going with the grip.

But what ultimately happened? His suffering turned into His greatest victory. The cross became a symbol of freedom and hope, instead of a symbol of death. Millions of peoples lives have been changed because Jesus chose suffering and allowed Himself to suffer.

In my case, my mother’s death changed my life. In dealing with my grief I finally allowed myself to let go of my painful past before my mother had died. For a long time I held on to anger and bitterness, but that had just made it worse. One day I did something motivated by anger that I really regret – but it woke me up. I finally started to grow up and take responsibility for myself instead of letting my mum do everything. I finally found my true identity and my life changed for the better. God brought good out of the suffering. The more I embraced what had happened and accepted it, instead of fighting it, the more healing I received, the easier it became to deal with, the stronger I became and the more I was able to move on with my life and really grow up.

I fought against the pain for so long, and it almost consumed me. But by facing and accepting the pain I was facing and embracing the reality of it, I finally dealt with it and moved on. By going with the grip and facing the reality of suffering, it became much easier to deal with.

We can take all the precautions we want, but one day something out of the blue will come and cause us pain and suffering. We will feel anger at the injustice of it, we may hate God for allowing it to happen, or at least be angry at Him. We may doubt His very existence because of the injustice of it all.

But what we need to do then is not resist the pain and suffering. We need to go with the grip. We need to accept that we are suffering, and that what is happened has happened. We need to accept that maybe it is unjust, but that letting anger and resentment build won’t deal with the pain, it will only make it worse. But by accepting what is happening, talking about it, and remembering we have a God who has suffered just as much and whose suffering was as unjust as ours, if not more so, who has the power to heal and to bring us through any kind of suffering, and bring good from even the darkest day.

God does work in amazing ways.

Not long after writing the above part of the post, a situation arose with someone I’d lost contact with, which aroused all my fears and insecurities about relationships, abandonment and rejection.

It was one of those moments where I just snapped. We all have them, even the most patient of us, and I don’t have them that much now. But it just happened.

At first, I resisted the pain I felt. I got angry. I blamed God. I resented other people’s blessings. At that moment I felt like the worst off, most lonely and abandoned person on the earth. All the anger and frustration inside came out, and I realized just how much stuff I’d been bottling up. Just because I hadn’t got angry in a long time didn’t mean it wasn’t there. I’d just not admitted the pain or fear I’d been feeling, and it all came pouring out.

Then God answered my prayers. A good friend came and offered me wise advice and perspective, and clarified the whole situation. It calmed me down, and gave me space. In that moment, I remembered my blog post.

So I prayed. I told God how I felt, but that I still trusted in Him, that I couldn’t deny Him. That He was my only hope and no matter how angry I was at Him, I would still believe and follow Him, and that I would go with the grip. I felt this pain, and I would go through it with Him and not alone. I felt that reassurance from Him too. I was at peace with God. I knew He was bigger than my problem, and capable of dealing with it.

A peace came over me. Like a burden being lifted. The hurt was still there, the pain still real.

But the anger, bitterness and resentment had gone. I had a better perspective. I knew it that moment that although I was in pain, i was not alone. I understood even more how the anger and bitterness weren’t anything to do with how I was feeling, and were mere by-products I could cast aside. The pain might still be there, but i wasn’t alone in dealing with it and i could get through it.

I wanted to write this, as a thank you to my friend and also as a thank you to God. But also to share with you how this ‘going with the grip’ can really work – both in the bigger problems, and the ones that don’t seem so big, in hindsight anyway, and that the anger and bitterness doesn’t belong with the pain, its merely a by-product, and if we go with the grip and give that to God, then the healing process is made so much easier.

We don’t ever have to be alone in our pain, and we don’t need to surrender to anger. God can take care of them both. God is bigger than them all. After I finished writing this post I found the following video, where Rob Bell talks about Job, a man in the Bible who suffered greatly and got angry with God.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eDN6uKtGT4]

Go with the grip.

In fact, go with God’s grip. Say what you want to say, don’t hold back. Give the anger, bitterness and resentment to God. Give Him your feeling of injustice. Let God have it and move on…be silent. That way we may not avoid suffering, but it will make dealing with the pain a whole lot easier.

And out of the darkest days, He can ultimately bring us to our greatest triumphs.

There’s no denying now. We are in a digital age. The communication age. The visual age. The age of instant access. The age of the internet. The age of the podcast.

Not many churches worth their salt, or any modern well known figure, is without their own website or podcast. Barack Obama – or should I say President Obama (brilliant news isn’t it?) still has his own podcast, website and video podcast. 

The church has to keep up. If it doesn’t, it will not move forward. It will lose ground.

I’m going to be writing a series on this issue, but this is more a way of introduction and overview of the issue. Its an issue that the church needs to be addressing right now, or we will reap the ‘reward’ for our inaction. We need church leaders who understand this, and take action.

This is why I am such a fan of Rob Bell. More than anyone, he has grasped the reality of the generation we are living in and how we need to communicate.

The Nooma DVD’s are superb – a simple Christian message presented in modern language, with modern music, in a creative format, professionally made and produced. His tour DVD’s are the same.

Video is an underused format in today’s church. In an age where you can download and watch videos even your phone and people seem to be busier and busier and only a short sharp message easily accessible and understandable will work, we need video podcasts like the Nooma ones, which give a short message out, and an appetiser for the full 10 minute message.

In an age where people watch more than they read, we need a volume of work which people can access easily and which communicates the message relevantly, simply and without jargon or cheese. Something not cheaply made with corners cut, but professionally put together using the best talents.

Nooma is fantastic, but it cannot be the only thing of its kind. Rob Bell can’t do this alone. There needs to be more resources like his – not the same, but with the same basic principles. Biblical truth, relevant language, properly made and with a modern soundtrack, and above which is simple and to the point.

Teaching needs to become a creative form once again. Rob Bell said himself once that the scientists have too much control over teaching and what it should be…when we can be creative. 

Creativity in teaching is a must, and that goes hand in hand with all the modern methods of communication. We need to get the message accessible and understandable, and relevant, without losing the heart.

This is why I believe more and more that churches who have the resources available need to empower and equip, and actively seek out, people who are gifted in the media and arts, who are gifted creatively, and work with them to find new ways to communicate the message, to enhance the teaching in church. People who can help everyone unlock their own creative gifts  - as we all have them – and help people engage with the gospel relevantly. We need website designers, animators, video-makers, writers, playwrights, painters – all sorts. Even churches with less resources need to be looking at ways to be innovative and creative in how they communicate.

And one thing which Rob Bell always speaks about and which we need to remember, is to find the right medium for the message, not the other way round.

If something works best as video, then do it as a video. If it best done part-video, part talk, then do so. If it is best done with artwork, then do it that way. If its’ better as a blog or as  podcast, do it that way. 

Whatever medium suits the message, that’s what you use. No boundaries. No restrictions. Use the imagination that God gave you.

In an age where people are more and more learning visually and online, where people want to be engaged and engaging, we need to be ahead of the game as a church. 

If the church is to evolve and reclaim what it should be, we need to be aware of the world around us, how communication is changing, and we need to get creative and use our imagination, and be ahead of the game in how we communicate. 

Not struggling to catch up.

Before I go into answering all the questions posed in my previous blog (more on that later this week) I want to talk about the creation story and the creation/evolution argument..

When we talk about what we believe it can with a lot of issues end up being and/or. In this case if you believe in the theory (yes, theory, not proven historical fact) of evolution, then to some or even to most people you can’t believe that God created the world.

A question. Why not both?

Can’t they be two sides of the same coin?

Why can’t God have created the world, and used evolution as His tool? Just because the Biblical story of creation (which is actually a poem, and more likely a metaphor rather than historical fact) doesn’t advocate it doesn’t mean it isn’t how God created.

God is God, and He can do things however He chooses. You don’t mess with God.

Its only when we get legalistic or proud, and insist on being right and that you have to believe one or the other that we start to get into the realms of falling out over these things.

Creation/evolution issues have caused major division amongst Christians. There are other issues as well where people are falling out over either/or when it might be both/and. God isn’t rigid and bound by anything. He can do as He chooses.

The bottom line is that however it happened, none of it changes the truth about Jesus. It shouldn’t do anyway.

The point of the creation story for me isn’t to tell us in exact detail how God made the world and isn’t necessarily historically accurate (I hear cries of heresy already…). The point is that it illustrates the fact that God made the universe and everything in creation, and that we were the pinnacle of that and rejected Him, hence the need for Jesus.

That’s more important than actually knowing the exact details of how He did it. The idea that He made it in six literal 24-hour days has flaws. For a start, the way we measure 24-hour days isn’t even created until the third ‘day’. So how were days measured before that? Who measured them?

It doesn’t add up.

If God used evolution to create the world, then so what? Seriously somebody give me an argument to prove that it matters.

Truth is, it doesn’t.

What matters is believing and knowing God made the earth. God created everything. That’s the principle behind this story.

Some people criticise Christianity purely on the basis of the creation v evolution argument. But once you tear that down they are left with the simple truth and way of Jesus. Then they have little left on that score. Because they seem to have the same way of thinking, not the three-dimensional way of thinking outside of it all that God has.

It could change everything.

There are some people whose whole relationship with Jesus depends somehow on whether God made the earth exactly as described in the creation story, in six 24-hour days.

If your faith depends on that, then its not very strong faith. Take one thing out and it all falls apart? Not exactly built on rock is it?

However God made the earth, that’s up to Him isn’t it? The point is He made it, and however He did it doesn’t change one bit the truth about Jesus and our need for Him. God created everything, we rejected Him and He sent Jesus to save us and show us how He wants us to live and the values and lifestyle He wants for us.

That’s what’s important. Not how God made the world.

There are some people who think science can disprove Christianity. They say that the theory of evolution (note: its a theory) proves once and for all that the creation story in the Bible is rubbish, therefore the rest of it can be written off.

Then when you give them the story of Jesus, they throw science at you again and say He may not even have been dead in the first place and that He didn’t rise from the dead.

Okay, lets look at these issues.

Who says science has to disprove faith? Why not science and faith?

For example, the idea of ‘the dials’ in creation. The proven scientific fact that there are hundreds of different measurements in creation – percentage of salt in the sea (the exact same as in the human body), the exact degree that the earth faces the sun, the distance we are from the moon, the level of certain elements in the air and hundreds of others, that all have to be exactly as they are to sustain life on earth.

Not only that, but the simple truth that if even one were out of sync then it wouldn’t matter if all the others were correct. No life on planet earth would exist. Now one or two coincidences is one thing, but hundreds and hundreds (at least 300) all being the exact correct measurement? A complete coincidence and accident?

Not for me. Looks to me like there’s some kind of design.

Then there is the fact that scientists are now beginning to conclude that there are at least 11 dimensions to reality, and as many as 13. Scientists are starting to conclude that there is some scientific uncontrollable force out there which governs everything we do. This is science by the way, not some religious texts. Starting to sound similar aren’t they?

To me that many coincidences in creation, the different dimensions to reality, the way nature all fits together and apart from all that the sheer beauty in creation suggest to me that there has to be something more. There’s simply no other explanation.

Once you come to that conclusion then you look at all the accounts of creation, and the one which sticks out is in the Bible. It may not be the literal description of events, in fact personally I think the creation story is a metaphor, for both the fact that God created the heavens and the earth and designed them, and for the fall of man. Who says that evolution was not the method that God created the universe and life on earth? In fact even more, does it actually matter?

Should our faith in Jesus really be dependent on whether the creation story is literally true?

If it is, I’d humbly like to question just how strong someones faith is. Personally my faith is based on the fact that I believe Jesus is true. That He was who He said He was and that His way is the best way to live. Simple as that.

The creation story and what exactly happened is not as important as what that story represents, and its certainly not what my faith is based on.

But nevertheless, to me the idea that God created the universe explains all the coincidences and science of creation better than any story that it was all just an ‘accident’. It only adds to my faith, rather than destroys it. The science of the universe makes much more sense to me when you explain it through the idea that it was specifically designed and created by a sovereign God.

So you see, science doesn’t disprove the idea of a creator God. To me it merely strengthens the idea that there is a creator God behind it all and therefore gives me even more confidence that Jesus really is who He said He is and did what the Bible says He did.

If you want to go into whether Jesus was dead, well that’s simple to me. The background to the whole story, the science and the historical facts behind it, leads to a different conclusion.

Jesus had been through a Roman flogging, which was known to have killed people on its own without any need for official execution. Following this He had then been executed in the most painful and brutal form of execution ever devised by man. He was totally emotionally drained, and given that He’d been abandoned not just by all His friends but by God as well (unlike anyone else in history) I think its perfectly believable that He died on the cross. To me there is no question. He surrendered His soul to God, He was physically dead.

Even if you question if He was dead, there’s the cultural issues and facts around the story of the empty tomb.

It was near enough impossible for a Roman tomb to be opened from the inside, especially by someone with the level of injuries Jesus would have sustained. Roman gravestones would have needed several men to move them, from the outside. Given the amount of Roman guards guarding the tomb, whose lives may have been at stake if they had failed in their job, there is no way the stone could have been moved by anyone without it being noticed. Not a chance.

Then there’s the fact that the first person to discover the empty tomb was a woman. In Jewish culture a woman’s testimony wasn’t valid at all. Only men’s’ testimony was valid. If Jesus wanted to convince people of a lie that He was risen from the dead, a woman was not the best person to tell first.

Bottom line, to me there’s simply no other realistic conclusion than that the story in the Bible is true. Not for me. The evidence otherwise just doesn’t add up, scientifically, culturally or historically.

So yet again scientific fact, in this case research about Roman and Jewish culture and how the human body reacted to Roman executions, doesn’t destroy faith, it supports it and even encourages it.

Far from one destroying the other, science and faith can in fact be very complimentary.

People often defend the idea of absolute, fundamental truth.

I agree that at a very basic level, there are basic truths – about God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit and also scientific truths.

They are all linked as well. Science is part of God’s creation. He made it, He defined it, and so any proven 100% (as opposed to 99%) scientific fact can be called true. True about God’s creation.

Science is limited however. There is only so much you can measure with science.

However, if you look at science as a dimension of God’s creation, or even part of God, then you have a slightly different view. God the creator expressing Himself through creation, and science as a means of making it all happen.

Almost like God created science in order to help us understand His creation and measure it. They are two sides of the same coin. They compliment each other. Science can’t 100% prove God’s existence, but God can sure explain the existence of science.

There are things about God, and about science, that we don’t know yet.

Believe it or not.

In terms of science, well we are learning more every day; there are plenty of people looking for those new ideas.

As for God, well that’s a different story. Progressives are always called heretics by their generation.

The problem, which can be found in science as well as in Christianity, is that every generation seems to think they are the enlightened ones, that they have the definitive answers to everything, both spiritually and scientifically.

Each time this happens progressive thinkers come along and come up with new interpretations, new ideas. In science, until they prove it, they are called crazy.

If you’re a Christian, you’re called a heretic.

The Christian faith as we know it now is very different from that 400 years ago. Most Christians living now would be burnt at the stake as heretics if they went back there and spoke the same things.

Yet now, many of these self-same people call any preacher or church that comes up with progressive ideas which challenge us to look at things or at God in a different way, in a new way, in a way which is radically different from anything before, a heretic.

Here’s an interesting fact for you. Jesus Himself was effectively called a heretic. He was accused of blasphemy. He was executed for it in fact.

Is that not a lesson for us?

Every so often a time comes in history where we need to push forward, where we need to look at things in a new way, where God is showing us new dimensions of Himself and giving us new challenges.

The church needs to move forward and adapt and change so that it can communicate a relevant message in a relevant way. The basic truths never change, but how we live them out has to change.

I think often we’re more the problem with making Jesus relevant.

We limit the message, we put boxes around it, and we say there is only one right interpretation or meaning to a passage.

Well some people do anyway.

There are so many new things God wants to say through old scriptures. Teachings which don’t go against old truths, but elaborate on them, but open them out and open our eyes to new ways of seeing them and new ways of applying them.

Christianity more than ever before is something not just that we believe in, but a way of life. A culture in itself. A way of living, a lifestyle choice.

It always was meant to be so, but now, in the lifestyle culture we live in, that teaching, that interpretation is more relevant now than ever. Being a Christian isn’t just about believing and going to church.

It’s a lifestyle choice.

It’s an attitude.

It’s a state of mind.

Based on basic truths found in the Bible.

We need to be humble. We need to be open to anything God says, even if it hurts our pride or ego. Fear too is a boundary to hearing new ideas and teachings from the Bible.

As long as they don’t contradict the nature and character of God, as long as they don’t contradict the very basic truths in the Bible – at a very basic level – then they are worth considering.

Basic truths for me are summed up beautifully in the Nicene Creed….

“I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.

Who, for us and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried; and the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father; and He shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.

And I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life; who proceeds from the Father and the Son; who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spoke by the prophets.

And I believe one holy catholic and apostolic Church. I acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins; and I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.”

In my opinion if any teaching comes along which doesn’t in any way deny this, and doesn’t go against the perfectly just, loving, merciful, gracious and forgiving nature of God then it is worth considering and thinking about.

There is so much more to learn about God, and about how to be a Christian. There’s so much more He has to say to us.

Let’s not get so caught up in religion and tradition that aren’t aware of how God wants us to live. Now. Today.

Because the way He wants us to live today will be different from what has gone before, purely because the culture, society and world that we live in today is different from even 50 years ago, yet alone 400 years ago.

Let’s not get stuck in tradition. Let’s be progressive. Let’s grow.

Personally I’m excited to see what new things God wants to say and do and I want to be open to see and hear them.

Aren’t you?