The dangerous truth

I had a friend who, whenever we used to go to a nightclub, would immediately check for the fire exit.

Only when he had located it would he allow himself to relax into the intoxicating hedonism of the night.

It was entirely sensible. If danger broke out we could quickly leave - there was always that opportunity to snap back to reality.

Often, truth works that way too. We like to think of truth as a great revelation or a soild undeniable fact, but the truth is most meaningful to us when it offers a unique chance to break free, especially if it's freedom from ourselves.

When dreams go wrong

The truth can be a slippery thing

We can enjoy the dream for as long as we like, but when the dream becomes a nightmare, that's when we need the truth to wake us up.

This, however, seems to be the danger of religion. A famous philosopher once described religion as a social drug, allowing us to escape from the pain of life. Yet, ironically, the whole basis of religion is the search for truth and meaning. The issue is that when a 'truth' offers us freedom from oppression we tend to grab it with both hands and we don't want to let go and that can be a mistake.

I suppose there are then two ways of working out if the truth we grasp onto is indeed true. One is to let it go and try to understand if it is truly necessary for our freedom. The other is to cling to it and let the trials of time and trouble prove whether this truth has any validity.

The danger of the first option is that the dream is usually preferable to reality. We may not like the truth we find and so we choose the lie instead. But the danger of the second can be that we hold so tightly to the truth that we don't allow ourselves to explore how robust it really is. Then the truth itself becomes a lie, it's another kind of dream or worse because sometimes the truth can turn in on itself, becoming ugly in its expression.

My apologies for sounding so morbid, but it's fascinating to think that truth has the power to enslave as well as offer freedom.

Mystery revealed

The ancient Greeks has a curious understanding of the word mystery. As I understand it, it didn't infer something that was hidden from knowledge but something to be explored. Something that was never quite graspable but something that was there to be perceived nonetheless.

I think this is our best understanding of truth. We might cling to it as a rock in the storm, but when things are calmer, we should take the opportunity to discover how great the rock that rescued us is.

The futility of God-magic

Recently, I was invited to tell my story.

The story of how I discovered God.

Of course, I didn't discover God, but that is what people want to hear. The truth is God discovered me. No. That doesn't sound right. It would be better to say God 'recovered' me.

But at that moment, my nerves kicked in and I hesitated to answer...

Miracles are only part of the story. 
Photo by Tomasz Harasim

There's no God-magic in my story, at least not in the beginning and nothing that should convince a cynic - but I think God likes it that way - He prefers to avoid Hollywood dramatics because He wants to communicate with our hearts, but it's not usually the starting point.

Truth be told, there really has been plenty of God-magic in my life. Some of it has been outstanding by anyone's standards. You know what I mean by God-magic don't you? The miraculous stuff. And, when I mention these things, I've seen people immediately respond to the God-magic stories positively with their own thoughts about about God, but then something else happens... their hearts seem to freeze over, the flow of enthusiasm stops, as if it would be dangerous to talk of going further.

God needs something else for us to really connect. I believe he needs you and me - with our simple normal lives. He needs our honesty and vulnerability. He needs our humour and our fragility. He needs tears, he needs anger, he needs desperation, he needs hope. These are the things that reach the heart.

In each one of us the story of God has already been woven into a tale to tell. Our job is to pick up on the highlights that point to a life much greater. They exist in every person and it's really something to get excited about.

Friendship
My story is simple. It describes how I knew I wasn't in the right place in life and how I looked for God and, when I started looking, I began to realise that God had been looking for me.

After that. It didn't take us long to become friends. And, yes, there really were some exciting bits: visions, healings, miraculous escapes, but to hear them, you'd really need to sit down and listen, and I'd need to hear you and you'd need to hear me.

Friendship, I believe, is the real miracle in any situation, especially when you realise how wasted and devastated our lives can be. Mother Teresa said it best:

'The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved.'

So let's sit down, you can tell your story and I'll tell mine, and we'll let God do the magic.