A Letter to the Almighty

Dear God

As one of your curious but disappointingly inconstant followers, I took serious note recently of a short speech made by a young father on the occasion of his daughter's christening. His farsighted view was

that, regardless of his and his wife's not particularly vibrant engagement with religion, they firmly believed in young people having choices as they grow up, the implication being that we cannot later choose something of which we have neither knowledge or experience. 

A sound philosophy, I thought, while musing simultaneously that your followers, and even yourself, make it difficult for the young to acquire the first clue, let alone a real understanding of what you are all about. I remember being so puzzled as a child singing ' There is a green hill far away without a city wall', wondering what on earth a green hill would want to be doing with a wall anyway, before turning my slowly developing mind to another celebrated hymn line ' The earth shall be filled with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea '. I could understand why, looking down on you creation, you might in retrospect wish to cover Milton Keynes or Luton with eternal flood water but I thought you might have grasped that covering the oceans with yet more water was something of a superfluous exercise. Then one day, as a ten year old, in a Presbyterian church in Scotland I found myself singing ' Bring your harps and bring your odours ' -- not a nice thought at all -- to be relieved soon afterwards by the New Testament reading ' In my father's house are many mansions '. Ah good I thought, that offers some refuge to those who wish to escape undesirable smells and cumbersome, if sometimes sweet sounding, instruments.

 Thus confused,it was perhaps not surprising when, as schoolchildren, we substituted another hymn line ' God is working his purpose out ' with ' God is walking his porpoise out '. But then we also sang ' God be with you when we meet again' in preference to ' ...... till we we meet again '. And as for ' As pants the hart for cooling streams ', I really did, for many years, assume that was about a high blood pressure sufferer. Mind you my good friends Kenneth and Stephen, on revising the Gordonstoun Hymn Book in 2005, solved all such problems. Conscious that certain words can cause juvenile mirth when sung by assembled teenage masses, rewrote the early eighteenth century words with ' As thirsts the hart ..... '. I did eventually forgive them.

1961 was a significant year and not primarily because I found myself at an educational institution, firmly rooted in the Christian faith where the three Chaplains [ those were the days ] were known affectionately to us in almost Snow White fashion as Weary, Botty and Doggy. No, it was more a matter of finding myself, when it came to matters of faith, in the words of the sadly largely disappeared cannon of Flanagan and Allen ' Always on the outside looking in ' as an approach to religion which in that year saw the first editions of both the shoring up of the faithful via ' Songs of Praise ' on TV and the encouragement offered to the cynically irreligious fraternity through Private Eye. The latter of course begat Monty Python which begat The Life Of Brian, thus infuriating Malcolm Muggeridge, a somewhat tardy convert from communism, to the plans set out by your son Jesus. I expect you forgive them all  --  or do you?

Do people in fact ever question that imprecation in your special prayer ' Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us '; that sounds as if your forgiveness is conditional on our own behaviour in this area but I thought you were meant to be all forgiving. But then I've never really understood ' Lead us not into temptation ' either. As you're a good guy, the perfect guy in fact; of course you won't be leading us anywhere except along the paths of righteousness, painful or blissful as they may be. Should we not be praying ' Help us to fight the tendency to be led into temptation '. Are you OK with my questioning these fundamental planks of your philosophy which you articulated through your son?

As a child I had no trouble learning all these things but they were somewhat confusing  I had been brought up in the world of Winnie-the-Pooh and you may know that outside his tree house Owl had a sign reading TRESPASSERSWILL so I came to the conclusion that you resided in Hundred Acre Wood. Then there were those lucky people who got a mention in your Beatitudes, including ' Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness '; I always wanted to know what you thought of those who hungered and thirsted before righteousness. This was followed by a largely [ to a child ] incomprehensible illusion to people with moats and beams in their eyes. I was keen on medieval castles and how could you have one of those expansive circular water defences gushing through your eye, especially if a camel [ ignoring the needle bit ] was competing for a way through too?

When I was twelve I attended a Christian / Scripture Union camp in a school called Forres in Dorset. It was run by the Reverend John Eddison who was by far the best communicator with young people on Christian themes  I have encountered. I am now involved in an organisation called Oxfordshire Teacher Training, the motto of which is ' The influence of a great teacher can never be erased ' and that is clearly true about the teachings of Jesus as we read them two thousand years later but how were they actually received at the time?. This was after all a religion for all the people and while the old Scribes and Pharisees may have known exactly what he was on about, how did the ordinary folk cope with his complicated parables and stories?

The next generation of disciples came up with the Apostles' Creed, clear albeit stark you might say, but I struggled when obliged to learn it at age ten. ' He will come again to judge the quick and the dead ' it says but that was not fair for one whose chief athletic prowess was gained through running faster than average. I didn't approve of a system whereby I would face final judgement alongside the having passed away old folk, while my mates, possibly even more wicked [ unlikely ] but not as swift over 100 yards, would not be summoned and get away with it. What was immoral about running fast?

It was all rather strange. Then I grew up [ sort of ] and had the good fortune each Christmas for over

twenty years to read the opening verses of St John's Gospel that you inspired him to write; you know, that passage which starts ' In the beginning was the word '. The introduction was always ' St John unfolds the great mystery of the incarnation ' but in truth he did nothing of the sort. Whether intentionally obfuscating  or not, dear old John served to make the whole thing far more mysterious and complicated but we all marvelled at it and thought it a jolly good show as it sounded rewardingly authoritative.

Then there are the bits that were perhaps meant to be complicated -- Jesus being the son of a virgin and coming back to life after death -- but in fact they are more straightforward; take it or leave it, like it or lump it stuff, God or not God, while at the same time and rather more fascinatingly facing the greater challenge of being something of a normal human being between birth and crucifixion. As a twelve year old he seemed to take pleasure in telling his inevitably confused,earthly parents where to get off when they came to collect him from the Temple: ' Wist ye not that I must be about my father's business? '.  He clearly fancied having his feet massaged by a lady of questionable social acceptability with her jar of perfume and he relished overturning the desks of the first century hedge fund managers in the big church. How we admired that very human rant ' You have made it a den of thieves '.

There once was a man by name Christ

Who liked his foot ointment well spiced;

From the temple some lenders

He turfed out as offenders,

Quite sure that their terms were mispriced.

And you, in human form,  were pretty caustic with the elders and religious leaders who wanted to stick to the old ways and reject your modernist, compassionate, common sense based religious code [ with which I agree wholeheartedly ] yet you yourself were dogmatic that the Old Testament prophecies must be fulfilled. You were a Jew [ ' born in a Jewish stable under a Jewish sky ' as we learnt ad infinitum at school ], yet you appeared to reject and ridicule Jewish traditions. Have you ever thought if that may have been exploited, albeit subconsciously, by individuals and regimes who adopt antisemitic stances?

Mind you, your created earthlings haven't always got it right either. Some of us are shocked seeing banners at mainstream Republican gatherings in the United States which promulgate ' God and Guns ' together. And yet in a side chapel of St Leonard's Church in Seaford, Sussex, there is a rather fine piece of stained glass next to a First World War role of honour. It depicts a young man, still a teenager in fact, asleep at the foot of the cross from which the crucified Christ looks down. The young soldier was Maurice and he died at  the Battle of Givenchy in 1915; he is portrayed fully  armed, sharing  of course  with Jesus Christ the noble virtue and value of giving up one's life for one's friends. And yet it is not a huge jump in ideology or language to put this alongside the American poster,  justifying the arming of the law respecting citizenry  on the basis of tackling the forces of evil. The true Christian might say that both are wrong and that we should turn the other cheek but human beings, individually and collectively, except for those of Gandhi like qualities, find the greatest difficulty putting that maxim into practice.

I was going to tackle you on the subject of some hidden heroes in your son's parables but I think you may have heard enough for now. I'll test you with just one. If you really want to support the underdog, why in the parable of the talents did you not reverse the roles of the man who had ten coins and have him bury them in the ground, later to be dealt with harshly for having achieved so little, while at the same time, imagining that the poor man who had only one went and grew it into two and was thus congratulated. Jesus's story makes it seem that the wealthy will be given more and that's not in keeping with what you say elsewhere. And incidentally, this is not a criticism but shouldn't the innkeeper in the parable of the Good Samaritan get a bit more kudos. It was he, after all, who took the injured man in and, without any guarantee of further recompense, just agreed to keep looking after him. I have often thought that it is people like him and the Prodigal Son's elder brother who keep the world going round.

I do have a different sort of question. Conscious that you and I may meet one day [ sapiens qui prospicit ] whenever I go to church and at sundry other times I  find myself saying the well known prayer of St Ignatius of Loyola:

Teach us, Good Lord, to Serve Thee as Thou deservest;

To give and not to count the cost;

To fight and not to heed the wounds;

To toil and not to seek for rest;

To labour and not to ask for any reward

Save that of knowing that we do thy will.

Now my question is what is the difference in your mind between ' to toil ' and ' to labour '? I really would be interested to know.

That's a pretty superficial digression. Many of us who loosely describe ourselves as Christian recognise your faith as the best show in town. Some of us are really ' cultural ' Christians ' We're here because we're here ' and we like the language, the buildings, the people, the singing etc, etc and we feel it is very much a part of us. That won't get us through Passport Control when we approach your kingdom but we recognise your faith as being rooted in a wise and effective philosophy despite the terrible wars, abuse and persecution that are perpetrated in its name. We believe that the good done by your followers far outweighs all this evil. So we try to live by the old fashioned concept of doing good and subscribe to the old adage ' Mr X went to church, he never missed a Sunday; Mr X went to hell for what he did on Monday '. Or put rather more positively, a child threw a stone at the highly decorated stained glass window of his local church, aiming at the inscription ' Glory to God in the Highest '. The stone went through and obliterated the 'e' of 'Highest'. The Vicar decided not to repair it but leave the rather more cogent message ' Glory to God in the High St '. And I am not alone in thinking that whoever or whatever inspired hymns of the transformative calibre of ' Dear Lord and Father of Mankind ' deserves to be worshipped anyway.

O, and I nearly forgot when  I was questioning you about the vagaries of Jesus's ministry, why is it OK to turn water into wine but not stones into bread?

I am not incidentally expecting answers to any of my questions and there are several topics on which we haven't touched including your views on other routes to the almighty power [ having lived in a multi-faith community for many years, I think I know the answer to that one ] and whether the Church of England should allow full unions of gays in the priesthood and church weddings for gay couples [ of course it should, say I ].  You'll be busy so I won't attempt a ' Have you a minute, Lord ' call as you probably have neither the time or the inclination. Thank you in any case for inspiring beautiful Chapels such as that at Merton College, Oxford, as well as the outstanding choir that sings in it and all the remarkable people who work in them and keep them refreshed not only as centres of your worship but also as acutely important centres of cultural civilisation. Some of us will strive to keep them going for these reasons and because we may find you there although it has long been my belief that sometimes our God is too large and where you really are is inside us, soul and spirit, and what we should do is endeavour to seek you out there on the right wavelength. One can start gently as Frederick the Great, covering all eventualities, was wont to do, praying ' O my God if there is one, save my soul if I have one.

I am a sceptic not a cynic and I ask questions as you in the human form of Jesus were inclined to do. I have done all too little to serve you except as a thirty year old Assistant Head of a Prep School in 1978, something I had forgotten until I stumbled across the evidence quite by chance recently. I was required then to take the brief morning chapel service for 120 girls and boys, with an average age of ten, twice a week. I felt then, as I still feel now, that the Victorian vocabulary of the established prayers was unquestionably dull for young people and quite inappropriate as it served only to put them off the whole operation. So I wrote a book of prayers myself for them, undemandingly simple and straightforward but at least comprehensible and occasionally stimulating thought. The book has not seen the light of day for over four decades but I have dusted it down and offer you a few examples from it, unashamedly simplistic but perhaps right for the time and most sincerely meant. I hope you may approve and I wish I had followed them in the forty five years of life since.

We are often too quickly conceited and proud when we are praised, O god, and too quickly sulky and annoyed when we are criticised. Help us to accept praise with modesty and criticism with good humour, remembering that all we do should be done for you.

Instil in us, O God, the gift of patience. Don't let us despair and give up when things go wrong but rather help us to grit our teeth and persevere. And as you have taught us to love our enemies and to show self-control when we are attacked and under pressure, help us to try to understand those who seem to be against us; and not to be worried about what people may say or do to us if we know we are doing the right thing and what you would want us to.

Help us today, O god, to be happy, to smile and to laugh; but always to laugh with others and not at them, especially if they are suffering. Help us not just to join the crowd and find things funny at someone else's expense but to be strong enough to speak out firmly and support those who are being mocked or teased.

Help us this day, O god, to be clear enough in our minds to say what we mean; to be strong enough in our wills to mean what we say; and to be determined enough in our resolution to do what we have said we will do; so that, being reliable, we may all come to trust one another.

And finally, dear God, in the same vein can you tell your reps here on planet Earth, acknowledging that they are in many ways more effective than their forerunners forty or so years ago, they are likely to be even more successful with young people if their approach is lively, stimulating, appropriate for the age of the youngsters, for the world in which we live  and even occasionally entertaining. Having fun isn't mentioned in the Beatitudes but it doesn't feature as a verboten item in the Ten Commandments either.

With best wishes as always

Mark

Written 2nd May 2017

Revised 10th May 2023