The God you can't escape

God… is not far from any one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being. Acts 17:27-28

“I don’t believe in God. But… I say my prayers every night not because anyone is listening, but because I always have. Cathedrals fill me with wonder, graveyards with reverence”.

Now, what kind of silly person could say that? How daft is it to offer prayer to a God who you don’t even believe exists?

Answer: the highly intelligent and well-respected journalist Matthew Parris, in a recent column in The Times newspaper. I always turn to his column because he usually writes impressive good sense.

I’m sure he wrote those words with a mischievous smile on his face, knowing full well their absurdity and looking forward to the reaction they might (and did) provoke.

His column that day was, in essence, a lament for Anglican Christianity, which he dearly loves, but which, in his view, has nothing to do with God. He was condemning recent efforts in the church to reinvent itself by reaching out to non-churchgoers with new methods and non-traditional approaches.

What, of course, he failed to recognise is that the kind of “Christianity” which he values so highly has nothing - literally nothing - to do with the Christianity we find in the New Testament and throughout history. It’s like one of those “working museums” you find dotted around the country – quaint, interesting places for a visit and a bit of entertainment, but otherwise of no importance.

It would be silly of us to argue with Parris - he himself wouldn’t expect us to take him too seriously. But his comments triggered a couple of thoughts which I think do deserve to be taken seriously.

First, what if that liking for various outward trappings of “religion” is in fact a sign of something deeper and truer within all of us that people like Parris need to recognise?

What if that pleasure in “saying my prayers”, that sense of awe in beautiful buildings, in stained-glass windows, in the power of the Bible, in that sense of peace in strolling round a graveyard – what if all that turns out in fact to indicate something of infinite depth and importance? - a true spiritual longing, a hunger and desire for the creator of the universe and the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ? What then?

Ecclesiastes 3:11 tells us that God has “set eternity in the human heart”. I’m not entirely sure what that means, but it certainly suggests that we human beings are more than just fleshly, earth-bound creatures.

No. We do in fact have “heavenly longings” - as someone has said, humankind is “incurably religious”. And a day is coming when our eyes will be opened to realities at present beyond our wildest dreams, realities that will have us gasping in amazement. A day, indeed, when Parris’s non-existent God will turn out to be the very God before whom we stand as he passes holy judgment on our lives.

People who share Parris’s view would be wise to take seriously Paul’s warning about the danger of “suppressing the truth” – the truth about which God has given them strong and beautiful hints (Romans 1:18).

Second, if it’s true that God has given us such pointers towards his reality, how good are we believers at encouraging our non-Christian friends to notice those pointers?

Think of our worship services. Yes, we sing and pray and listen to God’s word as it is read and taught. But how often do we pause and encourage people to reflect? Are we guilty of cluttering our services with words, words, and still more words? Repetitive words? mechanical words? perfunctory words?

Somebody came to me once and thanked me for the service just ended. At which (pathetic wretch that I am) I felt an ugly little glow of pride – obviously yet another riveting, powerful, Spirit-filled sermon preached. And then he said, “I specially appreciated the times of silence…” Ah. What was that uncomfortable bump I felt?

I didn’t know much about him, but I’m pretty sure he had a busy work-life and quite a lively and noisy home-life. So I suspect that for him the opportunity to be still for a few moments in the presence of God was precious.

Words – even true words – can come across cold and even hard. We fool ourselves if we imagine that once we have pumped people’s heads full of words, words, and even more words it’s a case of “job done”. An act of worship needs time to “breathe”; God’s word, delivered with the power and warm vitality of the Holy Spirit, needs time to be absorbed and to do its work in people’s inmost beings.

Perhaps Matthew Parris, even though he doesn’t realise it himself, is responding to a deep inner need when he says his daily prayers or strolls through a graveyard or sits and ponders the Bible.

Well, he’d better be careful! One day that non-existent God of his might suddenly come alive and give him the shock of his life…

Pray that it may be so!

Father God, we live in times of stress, depression and anxiety, times when many people are struggling with feelings of hopelessness, even despair. Please, by your Spirit, stir the hearts of millions who have previously hardly given you a thought. And help those of us who love and trust in you to live the kind of lives and to speak the kind of words that will make you wonderfully real to them. Amen.