God Bless America

To my American friends and all those affected by the events of yesterday on Capitol Hill; my prayers go with you.

Democracy has never been perfect; America has never been perfect, but yesterday both received a shocking blow to their fragile sense of order.

Democracy is fragile, but it is made strong by those who are committed to it.

Democracy is not perfect, but it is so much better than the vacuum that is left in its absence.

Yet there is hope, I believe, in the small but significant majority who know what happened was wrong; there is hope in the knowledge that even during this dark day, a black pastor and a Jewish son of an immigrant were voted into the Senate from Georgia, a southern state. There is hope that what we see in this moment is the fever breaking; that the last throws of this disease of anti-democratic, self-delusional denial of reality, in breaking to the surface in this moment, is finally burning itself out. This is the hope I cling to in this moment.

I cling to the hope that there will be a renewed commitment to honesty and truth. Though America’s democracy clearly needs to move to a place of forgiveness and reconciliation, that place needs to be reached by holding the truth to account, and this can only be done if those individuals and groups who have sought to abuse and abandon the truth are also held to account.

For the first time ever I will say this phrase, and I say it not with the nationalist triumphalism with which it is normally said, but with sadness, and sympathy, and the genuine hope that people of faith will take seriously the gravity of responsibility that is on their shoulders; I say it with the knowledge that it is not about a privilege received, but a covenant that American Christians should promise to uphold, in solidarity with the work of God throughout this world - may God bless America.

What do Flat Earthers, scientists, and the Bible have in common?

 

In a recent online conversation about biblical views on creation, I was struck by an interesting and almost paradoxical truth. And the truth  is this: There is a strange point of agreement between current thinking in science, the Flat Earthers, and the text of the Old Testament - And the connected truth is that none of these viewpoints see the Sun as the centre of the universe.

OK, perhaps it seems like a false point of agreement. After all, the Bible and Flat Earthers talk about a Sun and Moon that go around the earth, whereas science talks about a solar system where the Earth goes around the Sun. However, I think there is a deeper sense of agreement to be found, particularly between the Genesis account of creation and our modern scientific understanding. Genesis does not discuss a centre of the universe as such, rather it simply describes the Moon, stars and Sun as lights in the sky. It has no point to make about absolute position, only the position relative to the ground we walk on, relative to the viewpoint of the human observer.

In addition, it makes no comment about the Earth being specifically flat. this is partly because Hebrew has no language to speak of a ‘planet’ Earth: It simply speaks of the ground beneath us and the sky above. But it is also because the specific notion of 'flatness' is absent from the description.

As we read the text of Genesis 1, we might interpret the ground as being flat or level, because that is a traditional interpretation. The language of flatness was available to the writer, but that language is not used in Genesis 1. In fact, we are far more likely today to use idioms like ‘get my feet back on level ground’ or ‘lying flat on the ground’ than the scribes of the Bible ever did.

Genesis speaks of waters above and below, and it speaks of expanses, vaults or as some translations suggest, perhaps a dome, but nothing flat. It is only when we are battling between a universe with the Earth as its centre, and a universe with the Sun at its centre, that the text of Genesis feels out of place.

There is a tendency these days to seek conflict, even when that conflict does not exist. It is easy to forget, when people argue about the disagreements between science and religion, that we no longer live in a world where scientists see the Sun as the centre of our universe. That was only a brief and passing step along the way to where we are today. 

Now we know that our Sun is just another star, like all the other stars in the sky; like all the other lights that fill our night sky. Yes, we have moved from the Sun moving around the earth to the earth moving around the Sun, but in the vastness of the universe, that is a minor detail. Once we take on a universe where the earth beneath our feet is like the earth of any other terrestrial planet, spinning around any other star, in any other galaxy, that conflict should begin to dissipate.

We stand on ground like that of any other rock at any distance from the centre of the universe and at any moment since the big bang. In this light that view of a universe in Genesis 1, seen by humans standing on the ground with their eyes fixed upon the mysterious lights in the sky, seems as true now as it did, thousands of years ago when Genesis 1 was first written down.

14 Ways to Embrace a Fractal Theology

Some suggestions for applying a Fractal Theology to our congregations and our lives.

A fractal tree based on the sending out of the 12 & the 72

1. Always ask why.

Never plan anything just on the basis of ‘what are we going to do?’ Always include the question ‘why are we doing this?’ Ask if the two parts fit together. This is how we keep root and branches connected and how we know if the pattern of our actions reflects something of God. (John 15:1-11)

2. Recognise that we teach by our actions

We teach by our actions, so the way we share our message speaks as loudly as the message itself. The Church we grow will learn all the good and bad habits of its leadership, and probably more deeply than the words that are spoken. So always compare the message being shared with the method of sharing – if the two are telling a different story then the message will be affected. (John 15:12-17)

3. Check if your message is true.

If the message of faith being shared is at odds with the world around, then ask why? It may be because the world around needs to change to respond to the message or it may be that your message needs to be corrected. If the created world reflects God, then it is not all sin out there, and all good in here. The message we share may well challenge the behaviour of people around us and how people see the world. Yet it should not be at odds with reality, and should equally offer challenge to ourselves. There is only one creation and all its internal patterns will be self-similar, not made from separate designs. (Romans 1:20)

4. Make actions as specific to the context as possible, but make the reasoning universal.

Presume that if something is true in one place, then its reason for being true is true everywhere. If it is true at one level of organisation, it is true at all levels – even when it does not appear so. God’s plans are universal, but they may appear very differently in different situations. Where there are things that seem true in one place and not in another, it is because we are looking at the outward expression of that truth, not the inner reason. If the inner reasoning does not match, then a mistake has been made. Contrary to the beliefs of most congregations, every village, town or city is both equally unique in outward expression and equally similar to the others in terms of the underlying reasons. (Acts 17:22-34)

5. Recognise that nothing is complete.

Fractal patterns can never be perfect in this world and even within the biggest computer, its shape cannot be calculated to an infinite level. So everything we do is moving towards that perfection, but never gets there. This is not a mistake; it is part of God’s design. Therefore, we should neither despair at our lack of perfection, nor should we pretend that anything is as good as it could be. Being incomplete reflects creation and shows that we are alive. (Heb. 7:19)

6. Recognise that the Bible contains fractal patterns.

The scriptures offer stories, parable, sayings and instructions that speak about God’s inner reasoning. These outweigh the importance of Biblical rules based on the outward behaviour of people, or the outward expressions of those inner ideas. The outward behaviour rules are more tied to the situation, they are less perfect and less universal. This idea is clearly expressed in Matthew 22:37-40. In these verses, Jesus talks about our love for God, and our love for others as if it should be the central fractal pattern for all our theology. This is also what God seems to be telling us through the prophets when we hear about a law that is written on our hearts. It is also at the root of many disputes between Jesus and the Pharisees. The Pharisees are able to twist the rules of outward behaviour to their own advantage, whereas Jesus wants them to look at the inner reasoning that is true and just for all people. (Jer. 31:33, Rom. 2:15, Heb. 8:10, Heb. 10:16)

7. Recognise that numbers tell a vital part of our story, but we need to learn to read that story properly.

 Congregations should never simply be measured on the basis of how many turn up on a Sunday morning. Small numbers do not necessarily mean a congregation is failing, but stagnation at any scale is self-similar to death. Sharp decline may tell us that there is a problem, but not what the problem is. It is an outer expression of an inner issue. Not all growth is good; a congregation that grows rapidly from, a flawed message, a message shared in an unethical way, or an organisation that is not prepared, can become like a cancerous growth. Good growth is about the transformation of individuals and communities towards being more Christlike. Measuring this is not simple and cannot be done by just adding up numbers of people. Rather it is done by recognition of patterns and counting the ways in which those better patterns are being expressed. (Ex. 33:13, Job 21:14, Psa. 67:2, Psa. 139:3)

8. Events work well with big numbers, but discipleship only works with small numbers.

(feeding the 5,000 Luke 9:12-17, calling the 12, Luke 9:1) Luke’s Gospel shows Jesus to be using a pattern of leadership with a ratio of 1 or 2 to 12 (sending out of the 12 and 72, Luke 9:1-6 & 10:1-20). 2 to 12 as a ratio for discipleship keeps relationships close, stress low and keeps leaders safe in pairs. That ratio can be repeated at many levels of scale in our organisations.

9. Put things in perspective.

Fractals have levels of scale or iteration and in Fractal Theology it is sometimes useful to think about how we might break information up into useful levels of iteration, such as local, national, global. As a Methodist, I often think about the levels of Connexion, district, circuit, congregation, member. It is useful to ask whether the fullest iterations of church coincide with those levels or somewhere in between them. Also, this method might help us to put bits of theology into hierarchies of iteration. Not necessarily to say one is more important than the other, but to ask which ones are dependent on others and how they relate to each other. It is for example useless having a theology of how we treat church building assets if we don’t have a theology of the environment. A well-maintained chapel on a dead planet is of little use to anyone.

10. Put things in Balance.

Congregations can easily get out of balance. It’s easy to spot when a congregation is mostly elderly, mostly young, mostly women etc. It may not be so obvious just by looking that a congregation may have become mostly introverts, mostly practical workers, mostly evangelists. There are several ways of making those kinds of division, but it is useful to pick some categories and find a method of assessing a congregation’s balance. Knowing that there is an imbalance doesn’t solve the problem, but it will help explain some problems and will help a congregation to look for ways to reset those imbalances.

11. Learn to be embrace the abstract.

Christians are often committed to a life of practical service, and rightly so. But in any healthy Christian community there needs to be people who can think about the ideas behind the practice; to think about the underlying reasoning and ask the questions that busy practical people don’t have time to ask. More importantly, we need to give them time to be heard. Those who struggle with the abstract often mistake simple for simplistic. Simplistic is easy but often wrong, simple is usually the result of much deep thought and observation. Avoiding elitism and being accessible to all is deeply Christlike, but mistaking that for wilful ignorance and reverse snobbery is dangerous and disturbingly common. Not everyone can process all the information and ideas needed to be able to map out fractal patterns. However, we can all train our instinctive sense of what is beautiful, to recognise the shape of patterns that echo God’s call to love and justice for all humanity.  (John 1)

12. Be prepared to adjust your thinking.

Sometimes we encounter people from other cultures, religions and even from our own, who see the world differently. It is the same created world and its truths are universal. Others may have seen something from another perspective that may help enrich our view. The question should not be ‘who is right and who is wrong?’, but rather ‘what underlying truth connects these two differing perceptions?’. (Luke 10:29-37) (Matt. 2)

13. Be prepared to adjust your plans.

Sometimes the results of what we do, are not what was planned. This may be because our pattern is wrong, but it may also be because there are many variables that we don’t understand. People tend to assume that the connection between a plan and its results is a straight line. Fractals remind us that most things exist in a far more complex state of chaos, but if we are paying attention, we can see patterns within the chaos. It would be impossible to understand how every variable affects the outcomes of our plans, but what we can do is observe the effect of adjusting little things. Perhaps more importantly we should become more aware of the difference between surface adjustments that suit particular people’s preferences, and changes to the underlying reasons. (Josh 6.)

14. Be prepared to expand your Universe.

Not only are there people out there with different religions and ideas, but there is also an entire universe out there with a vast amount of stuff that we don’t yet understand. There are many scientists working to better understand our universe and it is vital that our theology does not deny science or try to create divisions between these aspects of the truth. If Christ was there from the beginning of creation, then our view of salvation and our understanding of the universe should also be understood as part of one single pattern of action by God. A good Fractal Theology should be one that prepares us to live way beyond the narrow traditions of our past, but knows how to learn the universal wisdom gained from those traditions. (John 1)

Fractal Theology - A Simple Definition

People often ask me if I can give a simple description of what Fractal Theology is. This is the most simple version I have managed so far:

What is Fractal Theology?

• Fractal Theology recognises that, if the universe is God’s creation, and creation is better described using fractals (patterns that repeat at many scales), then God’s actions and intentions in general will be better described in a fractal way.
• Fractal Theology explores how the created world, how our actions as believers, and how our religious organisations follow patterns that are similar to descriptions of God and descriptions of God’s instructions to us.
• Fractal Theology asks if these patterns are repeated in various ways, in our lives, in our Churches, and in the way we treat each other.
• Fractal Theology challenges us to question why these patterns don’t always match up; does our image of God need correcting, does our response to that image need correcting, or is it a little of both?
• Fractal Theology sees the Kingdom of God, as spoken of in the Gospels, less like an earthly kingdom, and more as people and creation, ruled by good patterns of living that are rooted in patterns of their creator. 

What is a Fractal?

A fractal is a shape, a pattern, an idea, or a thing that has self-similarity. Self-similarity means it has parts that are similar to the whole of it. Fractals can be self-similar to many levels of scale. Fractals are a useful way of describing things in the world that don’t look like squares, triangles, circles, etc. They are a relatively simple way of describing very complicated things more accurately. A tree might be described as a green sphere on top of a brown cylinder, but that would be a very poor description. We could describe a tree far more accurately in terms of how its twigs and branches divide and sub divide at each level in a way that is similar to the whole tree. All we need to know is where the shoots come off of the branch, the angle of the divide and the relative change of size at each division. From these bits of information, we can build an image of the whole tree. In theory, a fractal can be infinitely self-similar and perfect, but in the real-world, fractals are limited to the number of levels that are possible in the situation and are affected by variables and imperfections. However, those imperfections can also be fractal in nature and so very realistic theoretical models of real world situations can be made by applying several fractal formulas to each other.

What is Theology?

Theology is the study of God. It is the exploring of ideas and the conversations that people have about God. It is often, but not always, a word used to describe conversations about God as seen by Christians, Jews, and Muslims. However, theology is not just a subject studied in schools and universities. Theology is what happens every time somebody makes a decision based on what they believe, which in some ways, is every decision that is ever made.

14 Ways to embrace a Fractal Theology...

Why delivering Brexit has nothing to do with democracy

There are many people shouting about the current state of our democracy in Britain. A common theme is that in the referendum, the people decided on Brexit, and therefore either failing to deliver Brexit or seeking a second referendum would be a betrayal of that democratic process. But there are a number of problems with that notion. Primarily, it fails to understand the reality of our democracy as it exists today.

Democracy is a great source of stability and justice in our world. The benefits of any democratic system are considerable; amongst other things, the poor have a voice, dictatorships are far less likely to occur, and a broad breadth of issues are brought to the attention of those in power. Yet no democracy is perfect; there is no country in the world where all the people’s voices are heard all of the time and on all matters. No system is perfect in converting all votes into exactly proportionate public representation. And even if a democratic system was perfect it would still face the problem that democracy often involves people voting on the basis of their opinions about complex situations they don’t fully understand. Our democracy is not built on the basis of referendums on specific subjects, it is based on the principle of representation. We vote for a representative and the representative makes the decision based on their expertise. This is how we reduce that problem of opinions about things we don’t understand. Referendums are a useful an addon to that system, but one that comes with a significant risk, the risk that we are not sufficiently informed, to make a decision on the matter in hand. As Winston Churchill is reputed to have said; “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”

All that aside however, here’s the bigger point that we always seem to miss. Our democracy, like all democracies, works on the basis of having a defined group of people of whom we can ask the question; ‘What do you collectively want?’ It starts with an already defined set of borders and social groupings. These are groupings that we did not choose. For the most part, the national borders of this world have been decided by war, by dictators, by empires, by long forgotten quirks of geography, by the availability of resources and the half-forgotten arguments of history. For better or for worse, they have been decided by committees, leaders and experts behind closed doors. Even our current local boundaries such as wards, unitary authorities and parliamentary constituencies are decided without our vote. And even if this weren’t the case, it would still be true that none of us get to decide what nation we are born into. 

Our relationship with the EU is about matters that go beyond the simplistic boundaries of nation. It encompasses complex and subtle matters of international law and commerce in the here and now, but also begs questions about our collective relationship to the future and the past. These are questions that even the most highly trained academics struggle to answer. The 2016 referendum took those matters and co-opted public emotions about what constitutes nationality into the impossibly simplistic arena of a yes or no question. A question based on arbitrary national boundaries that no longer define the nature of who we are in the way they might have done fifty years ago. And even if that were not the case, while our external UK borders have not changed in the last three years, over 5% of the UK population are different people to the ones who constituted our population in 2016 as a result of births, deaths and migration. In addition, our representatives in government have changed by a massive 18% since the referendum. In so many ways we are not who we were. The EU has given the younger generations of this country a far softer sense of boundary than we had in 1973 when we joined the EEC. In reality the referendum was partly asking us as a nation to define who we were, and we were not equipped to answer that question, because, for better or worse, that is not and never has been how nations are constituted. Neither the definition of our nation nor our relationship to other nations can be defined, much less redefined by a single binary vote. There are currently at least 67 million different versions of what it means to be British.

One of the primary reasons that Brexit has been a mess from the start, why the original referendum is now practically meaningless, is that it goes beyond the remit of what our current democracy was designed to do, but in order to move forward without significant constitutional reform, a second referendum is probably the only reasonable option. At the very least, if the referendum was ever democratically valid in 2016, it could only be more valid, not less, to ask a better educated set of questions based on what we have learned and how we have changed over the last three years.

Greta Backlash: 7 things you should know.

I have heard a lot of criticism of Greta Thunberg in recent days, many claiming she is hypocritical and should still be in school. All the adults who are turning their criticisms against Greta at this time should know this;

1. You are throwing abuse at a child who shouldn't have to know better than you - but clearly does.

2. She has acknowledged her privilege and is not speaking just for herself, but also those poor and uneducated of her generation around the world, who do not have the privilege of either having a voice or knowing what is being done to them by their elders; people you should have been speaking for, so that she didn't have to.

3. Even if she were being hypocritical and even if she were entirely wrong about all of this, which she is not, this would still not be the right way to treat our children. We do not mock them or abuse them or ridicule them for their beliefs, and we do not stamp on their enthusiasm to do good in the world. We encourage them to do better than we did. Why would any of us think it OK to do otherwise?

4. Yes she should still be in school, she herself has said so, but instead she is out doing the job that we should be doing on her behalf and on behalf of all generations to come.

5. If you were listening to her words - you would already know all of this, so why aren't you listening? I suspect because you are afraid. Well guess what? So is she, and she needs our reassurance that something will be done, not more excuses and accusations.

6. There are many jokes going around the internet about the protests. One of them is; "A million kids want to clean up the Earth. A million parents would love it if it started with their bedroom." Humour is important, never more so than when we are dealing with adversity, but it should never be at the expense of those who are suffering, never to undermine those who want to make things better. Those posting such flippant responses should be embarrassed and ashamed of their disregard for the genuine fear of young people for their future, especially when young people looking for genuine solutions are already being met with such a huge backlash of online abuse.

7. When the time comes to account for yourself before your children, your God, or even just yourself, about how you responded to climate change and to those who sought to make a real difference, "that 16 year old girl was hypocritical" and "she should have been in school" will not absolve you, it will ring out as a poor and hollow excuse. I am rarely a fan of shame, but here it is right, if we have shamed Greta, to feel the full force of that shame back upon ourselves.

Instead of criticizing, we should be seeking to move, to stand alongside the young people in their protests and put the real issues first. It's time to act like the grown ups in the room.

Falling out of love with strategy: A fractal theological word crisis

A fractal tree based on Luke 9 & 10

I love a good strategy game, whether it be chess, Risk, Stronghold or StarCraft. But the thing that bothers me about most strategy games is that once you've won, all that you've built and all that you've worked for is of no further use. The winning strategist never gets to live in the world they have conquered. My strategic relationship to the Kingdom of God is different to that in so many ways.

Today, I had the joy of engaging in a challenging conversation with Rev Tom Stuckey (Former president of Methodist Conference) after hearing him talk about his new book ‘Singing the Lord’s song in a strange land’. He suggested that the Methodist Church had too many strategists. Even though I agreed with him on pretty much everything else he said, I have always felt that we have too few strategists. I have for some time considered myself a strategist. After some discussion, Tom suggested that perhaps we had a different idea of what strategy meant - and I think perhaps he was right.

The trouble with the word ‘strategy’ is that it implies that there is a top down plan to put into action. Strategy suggests to many people that someone is in charge; a captain, a general or perhaps a business manager. It is a word with its origins in ancient Greek military talk and has at the core of its meaning the deployment of troops to the battlefield. Whether for military or management speak, it is largely a word that is about taking control of the situation.

In addition to the usual problems with deploying military speak in a theological context, the more specific problem here is that strategy can be heard as something too practical, too linear and too hierarchical. It is too much about the straight line between where we are and where we intend to be. It has the potential to make us sound like we know where we are going – which we certainly do not.

Tom’s suggestion is that we need to stop domesticating God and trying to fit God into a neat box that fits our expectations; that we need to stop trying to be in control of what is, after all, God’s mission. Tom pointed out how the Methodist Church has become weighed down with bureaucracy. I agree to a great extent and I realise now that we need to find a language to speak more specifically and with more discernment than simply talking about 'strategy'. We have more than enough people pushing the metaphorical troops around the map.

Where I differ from Tom is that I think we need to be strategic about how we structure church. The one to one engagement between people is great and to a certain extent that is where the great moments of faith happen. However, when things are going well things will grow and systems will develop as they always have. In order to do the corporate, connexional thing well, we need to be able to engage with and discern how God is calling us to act together. When the systems grow so the imperfections of humanity become immortalised in the structures of our organisation.

I think we need strategy, or something with a different name, that speaks more of the abstract and the aspirational. We need patterns that help us to embody a more Christ-like nature and enact the Gospel narrative within our structures. I still want a strategy, in as much as I want a plan, but I have no intention of setting the destination, or of putting myself or anyone else in charge of getting us there. I want a plan that contains the essence of all we have learned collectively as ‘Church’. I want a plan that gives space for the diversity of humanity within the body of Christ. I want a plan that brings fluidity and life to our structures, and structures that reflect the living Gospel of Jesus Christ. I want a plan that admits we know nothing and frees us to fully submit to the mystery of God. 

This is why I believe we truly need a fractal understanding of God’s creation and of God’s plan for us. We need to be a fluid, organic system, growing in the image of our creator. We need to be bold enough to be more Christ-like in our corporate, collective, connexional way of being – but we need to do that in a way that leaves space for us to turn around when we’ve got it wrong. We need to be able to implement the theological learning we do on a daily basis, simply by being one of God’s creations, in the way that we function together as Church.

The fractal theological way of thinking is to see the patterns of God’s love and justice, echoed in us as individuals and at all scales of what we call Church – at all scales of human community and in our engagement with creation itself. The fractal theological way of thinking is not about a commander setting a destination for the troops, but about setting Christ-like patterns at the heart of who we are as community and as individuals - and allowing those patterns to shape who we become – allowing them to guide us to unknown destinations.

The only word I had to describe this kind of planning was strategy, but I suddenly feel like this word is no longer enough. So, what is the word I am looking for?

(N.B. I’ve not had time to read all of Tom’s book yet but what I’ve read so far looks very good – he describes it as dropping pebbles in the pond of the conversation and watching the ripples, rather than a book that gives the answers.  More about the book here: www.tomstuckey.me.uk/ )