How do we all relate?

When I was at school I used to be fascinated by Venn diagrams. Many people hated them, thought them too confusing... maybe it is because I am a visual person they seemed to communicate better to me than numbers.

Over the last few years I have been thinking about the different strands of the church and about whether we could express those relationships in a Venn diagram. Last few days I have been thinking more and come up with the following diagram.

The first reaction I had was from my son [who is studying theology] and was 'Brilliant'. Hmmm... now this is just a first draft and based upon gut reactions. But what do other people think? Is this a helpful way to express things? How do we measure the overlaps?

Its quite deliberate that some groups overlap all core Christian beliefs and some do not... obviously one problem with this diagram is that each group defines core Christian beliefs differently. Nobody thinks that they are unsound themselves... but maybe the problem is the words sound and unsound. And what do we mean by 'core' anyhow?

Made in the image of (a creative) God

I was lent Rollo May's The courage to create out of a discussion with a friend about creativity and my desire to [maybe sometime, maybe never] write a book entitled Made in the image of (a creative) God. Actually I think a better title would be In the image... of a creative God. Anyway enough about abstracts, what about May's book?

On page 134 Rollo May builds up to his central thesis:

I shall explore the hypothesis that limits are not only unavoidable in human life, they are also valuable. I shall discuss the phenomenon that creativity itself requires limits, for the creative act arises out of the struggle of human beings with and against that which limits them.

Citing the start of human consciousness in Garden of Eden as a portrayal in the context of a rebellion, struggling against a limit, Rollo goes on to say how punished by God and Adam and Eve get other limits - anxiety, the feeling of alienation and guilt. But, he claims, valuable qualities come out of this: sense of personal responsibility and ultimately the possibility, born out of loneliness, of human love. But he concludes Confronting limits for the human personality actually turns out to be expansive. Limiting and expanding thus go together. [P136-137]

Using the example of a river and river bank, Rollo believes that in creativity limits are as necessary as those provided by the banks of a river, without which the water would be dispersed on the earth and there would be no river - that is, the river is constituted by the tension between the flowing water and the banks. Art in the same way requires limits as a necessary factor in it's birth. Creativity arises out of a tension between spontaneity and limitations. [P137]

Thinking of the limitation of the canvas upon the painter as a boundary to their work I was reminded of a work by Martin Honert entitled Kinderkreussug which he developed between 1995 and 1997. In this work of art Honert does not allow himself to be limited by the canvas but marching out from the acrylic are three dimensional characters, confronting the viewer with the edge between flat art and sculpture.

Honert claimed to be motivated in his art by ...the emotional confusion of pathos and embarrassment, seriousness and absurdity, demand and reality, the sad ending of a happy time. He looks on in seeing not so much a struggling against the boundaries or limits but in seeing the paradox or symmetry of life.

Personally, I think in fact the struggle with limits as Rollo May puts it is not really a struggle with limits but a struggle with rationalism to reconcile these paradoxes we call human life. Is it the river that defines the river bank or the bank that defines the river? Though I am not a fan of all the eastern ways of looking at life the easterner expresses this balance as yin and yan. Those of us who assert that there is a God and that He loves us are confronted with another group of humans who assert that there is no God, or that if there is He is severe and that we cannot know Him.

Nobody expresses this better for me than Tom Stoppard, in his play Jumpers, which claims to be a serious attempt to debate the existence of a moral absolute, of metaphysical reality, of God... Stoppard provides George, the main perpetrator of this debate, with this closing monologue:

"A remarkable number of apparently intelligent people are baffled by the fact a different group of apparently intelligent people profess to a knowledge of God when common sense tells them - the first group of apparently intelligent people - that knowledge is only a possibility in matters which can be demonstrated to be true or false, as as that the Bristol train leaves from Paddington. And yet these same apparently intelligent people, who in extreme cases will not even admit that the Bristol train left from Paddington yesterday - which might be a malicious report or a collective trick of memory - nor that it will leave from there tomorrow - for nothing is certain - and will only agree that it did today if they were actually there when it left - and even then only on the understanding that all the observable phenomena associated with the the train leaving Paddington could equally well be accounted for by Paddington leaving the train - these same people will, nevertheless, and without any sense of inconsistency, claim to know that life is better than death, that love is better than hate, and that the light shining through the east window of the bloody gymnasium is more beautiful than a rotting corpse!"

Art and creativity is not merely about beauty but is about expressing this tension, and in the last few decades we have seen the limits pushed further and further. For example Henrik Plenge Jacobson in collaboration with Jes Brinch created a rotting corpse entited Teacher for the "Human Conditions" exhibition in 1997 in Finland.

This is not a sculpture I think I would ever create, and it begs the question that Rollo May asks earlier in his book: The fact that talent is plentiful but passion is lacking seems to me to be a fundamental facet of the problem of creativity in many fields today, and our ways of approaching creativity by avoiding the encounter have played directly into this trend. We worship technique - talent - as a way of evading the anxiety of the direct encounter. [P101 The courage to create]

The limits to what is and isn't art and what creativity in art is further confused when we look at someone like Vanessa Beechcroft's works. In her exhibition openings and performances she has a group of girls silently take up positions, moving very little, standing before their public like living pictures. This is like looking at a mirror in some ways, seeing ourselves, well not ourselves, but humankind. Vanessa says "I am interested in the difference between what I expect and what actually happens".

Actually I believe there is always something unexpected in the creative process. I wonder whether it was somewhat unexpected for God when he created the world. Thinking about Rollo May's assertion that creativity is about limits and expansion, I wonder how that relates to the primary act of creation by God.

We think of His creation in terms of the earth, the universe, mankind, etc. However, we know that there is no end to the universe and in fact many secular scholars now talk about how it is actually rather unexpected that the universe is continually expanding. The creativity is a process without end. It certainly did not, does not and will not have limits or boundaries, it is quite literally expanding.

Henrik Jacobson again, "For me, art should not restrict itself to formal questions. It should represent an alternative, not an assertion. Maybe I'm idealistic, but I think art should be an instrument of criticism." Where May talks about limits, here Jacobson also talks about alternative or in some ways paradox or symmetry.

Maybe Jacobson's criticism can be seen in his work Everything is wrong. It's a simple target like an archery target painted in acrylic with the words overlaid. I guess, at least there is no ambiguity to his message!

It's not a work of beauty, nor a work like his rotting corpse... I find these abstract works to be often more difficult to understand, even though they appear to be clear at first sight.

So... braving all I decide on a creative act of symmetry for Jacobson's, mine entitled Cake is everything.

So if everything is wrong and cake is everything, it must prove that cake is wrong!

No?

Oh well...

Maybe at this point I should quote two entries by Adrian Plass in his book Bacon Sandwiches and Salvation, which he claims is an A-Z of the Christian Life:

Art: something regarded with deep suspicion by many folk in the church. This sad prejudice was exemplified at the Spring Harvest art gallery a few years ago, when someone wrote in the comments book: 'Too many bottoms for my liking.' particularly frustrating when one reflects that most of the great art produced over the years was influenced by Christian belief.

Icon: (1) a devotional painting or carving, usually on wood of Christ or another holy figure (2) it is not generally known that, as a creative race, icon artists are less than confident. When addressing them on the subject of their art, one should look very directly into their faces and express one's response to their work with delicacy and subtlety. This is known in artistic circles as icon-tact.

This is a pastel drawing I did more than a couple or years ago which is in the entrance to our office. It's there to remind us that though much of what we do is technical, it is the people that matter. It's there to give eye-contact with the audience we never see.

My conclusion on a more serious point is actually to reject Rollo May's assertion that Creativity arises out of a tension between spontaneity and limitations is actually not the starting point for creativity but the starting point is paradox and symmetry and that the tension between spontaneity and limitations is actually an outworking of that paradox and symmetry.

My question arising from this is whether much of the church's monochrome approach to teaching is actually counter to God's creativity in the world. No, I'm not advocating a pluralistic 'everything goes' approach, but an acceptance of the ambiguity that arises from a relationship with a creative God and an understanding that because we are created in His image there will be ambiguity and paradox in our lives and our worship.

The ultimate act of creativity we are involved with is bringing new human beings into the world and caring for them. That is surely symmetry for God's relationship to us.

This wire-frame sculpture I saw in Singapore - I wish I had noted the name of the sculptor, there was no name on the work. It expresses that relationship of parent to child. The light air passing through and around the sculpture gives a solid yet almost non-existent quality to the man and the child. Much like the relationship between God and us as his children where the relationship is apparent and obvious and experienced without the same solid-ness of the human relationship that mirrors the original one.

I was going to say that since we are made in the image of God I believe our ultimate worship of Him should seek to express that creativity... but realised that could be ambiguous as I believe the ultimate act of God's creativity was in creating humankind... and we probably have to be careful or the readings from Song of Songs could change the whole tone of Sunday morning 'worship'.

Story telling is very definitely an art form and Jesus one of the key story tellers of all time. He had a sense of both timing and structure. Consider the story of the Prodigal Son or as some prefer to call it 'the two lost sons'. There was apparently a similar story circulating around Palestine at that time, but Jesus changed the end and gave new meaning. In that story we see both paradox and symmetry.

Many times even Jesus closest friends asked for an explanation. In our rationalism we want everything so plain everyone understands everything. Yet this is not what we have seen as the way of God down through the ages. To me it seems in our desire for a mechanistic 'all answers' church we have created something alien to the historical people of God. We have lost creativity and here I let me paraphrase Rollo May:

The fact that church is plentiful but passion is lacking seems to me to be a fundamental facet of the problem of worship today, and our ways of approaching worship by avoiding the encounter have played directly into this trend. We elevate technique as a way of evading the anxiety of the direct encounter [with God and others].

I fear we have lost the direct encounter with the living God and replaced it with a synthetic plastic alternative. The debate about church usually surrounds form rather than substance, yet for me form can so easily obfuscate substance. In my experience real direct encounter only takes place within a small group of Jesus-followers. The rest is as insubstantial as the parent and child in the wire frame not an incarnational living relationship with God.

Having replaced the encounter with a weekly repeatable programmed experience we have totally lost the creativity which was a vital part of encountering (a creative) God.

Start at the beginning

I have just been lent a copy of 'The courage to create' by Rollo May. The came about because I mentioned that I wanted to write a book entitled 'Made in the image of (a creative) God'. Maybe I still will, but Rollo's book got me thinking about where it all started. In what we call the 'garden of Eden'.

At the centre of the garden there were two trees: the tree of the knowledge of good and even and the tree of everlasting life. God said 'Don't eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil'. He said nothing about the tree of everlasting life.

When the first man and woman ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil God was upset with them for disobedience. He said that they had now become 'like one of us, knowing good and evil' and kicked them out of the garden so that they wouldn't eat from the tree of eternal life and also become like God living for eternity.

OK, so some questions: Why did God not want us to know the difference between good and evil? Why was He happy for mankind to live forever if they didn't know good and evil? And not when they did? If mankind didn't know the difference between good and evil what kind of relationship would have been between God and mankind? Would God have become bored with that relationship?

What I am really thinking is that there is a paradox here. Without the knowledge of good and evil there is no real free will, because without that knowledge you cannot know to chose. Now God created man with free will, but without the knowledge of good and evil. So... if Adam and Eve didn't have the knowledge of good and evil how did they know not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Answer because God told them... but... before they ate it they didn't have the knowledge that it was wrong. So it was inevitable they would eat it. Hmmm... a paradox maybe.

So what was God looking for in the relationship with Adam and Eve if they didn't know what was good and what was evil?

Here's where I'm at from this: I am coming to believe that a true understanding of God is about paradox and symmetry and that is what separates followers of the one true God from all others. That we don't need a neat packaged system with all the bugs worked out we follow a living God with all the paradoxes there are in Him.

OK, if that's true, that's why I am seeing so many problems with some parts of the church: Evangelicalim being a big part of that. Modernist Evangelicalism wants to worship a God with all the bugs worked out. They are thus demeaning Him to the level of other gods, and in reality not worshiping the one true God. 'In religion, it is not the sycophants or those who cling most faithfully to the status quo who are ultimately praised' [P31, The courage to create, Rollo May]

Interested I got led from Rollo May to Kester Brewin who hosts a site/blog called 'The complex Christ' which is the name of the book he has written. In review of 'The courage to create' Kester writes this:

Perhaps we need a churchless Church.
The body of Christ is a given - we have to belong to the Church [macro]. But perhaps we should give up calling the things we are involved in church [micro]. It is just such an unhelpful and loaded word to use. "Do you want to come to church?" To be honest, no I don't. And by the numbers and temper of those in the debate, there's plenty others who don't either. Church can be something I am a part of. But it's not something I want to 'go to'. [The Complex Christ]

Hmmm... now this is interesting. Is the problem with going to church really that it packages things up too neatly and creates a paradox free sycophantic religion that Jesus came to abolish? Back to Rollo May again:

Those we call saints rebelled against an outmoded and inadequate form of God on the basis of their new insights into divinity... Their rebellion was motivated by new insights into the meaning of godliness. They rebelled, as Paul Tillich has so beautifully stated, against God in the name of the God beyond God. The continuous emergence of the God beyond God is the mark of creative courage in the religious sphere.[P32,The courage to create, Rollo May]