The only test

I have not added to the site for about six months, because these last several months have been a time a great creative activity for me (with work on another site) and this has somehow pushed my 'Meditations' rather into the background.

On a few occasions I had the germ of a theme, but somehow it did not press for attention enough, and the opportunity went by. But now some interesting events have caused me to take up the reins again.

For whatever reason I am coming quite often into contact with people who have a faith, or at least a set of religious principles and a mode of devotion, that is at variance from my own. When asked about my religion, I always simply describe myself as a 'Christian'. Not as an Anglican, though that is the community of worship where I attend on a Sunday. But there are those who call on doors, or are otherwise described as belonging to a particular sect, with whom I do come into contact from time to time, apparently by chance.

When ones meets such folk as these, the most obvious characteristic is the certainty of their beliefs. They do not seem willing to consider any ideas outside their own body of convictions, and to this I always respond in the same way: I look for the bedrock of what we share, the tenets we have in common, and rejoice with them over the way in which these beliefs bring peace and focus into our lives.

But deep down I am hoping that our encounter will help them understand that there are those outside their clearly defined circle of adherents who also have met 'the living God' and are utterly involved in 'working out our salvation', relying on His grace and strength to do so.

Just as meeting them inspires me to ask myself why I can be sure that the revelation I have received of the Almighty is reliable, I am silently praying that they are asking the same question too. I do not particularly want them to leave the body they are joined to, but I do want them to move closer to God from within that body.

For at the heart of my own theology is the conviction that the body (sect, church, denomination, call it what you will) we say we belong to is essentially a human organisation. I found God myself through the ministry of an Anglican clergyman, having lived socially in an Anglican environment from my birth, with the old Book of Common Prayer's cadences wafting through my conscious and subconscious mind from the time I could understand words at all. At my first school we prayed 'Lighten our darkness we beseech Thee, O Lord ...' (the third evensong collect) at the close of every day. During the most energetic period of my life I found myself searching for a deeper spirituality by moving to other groups of worshipers, each seeming more devoted (which is not difficult when the comparison is with traditional Anglicanism). I have known the charismatic movement and the house-church movement from within, and have a huge regard for the integrity of many I am glad to call brothers and sisters in Christ, who belong to groups such as these.

But getting inside such an organisation one discovers that there are all the usual problems of human fallibility to contend with, often most obviously caused by those who are leaders wishing to exercise more control than perhaps is appropriate. We all of us experience our own fallibility. It is only common sense to presume that it exists in a similar measure in others too.

Regarding sects and denominations, one formula for success (that is to say, defining growth in numbers as success) seems to be to demand allegiance, obedience, and a financial commitment far greater than that required by organisations with a much greater age behind them. And often the new adherents are such as I was, travellers from another denomination seeking greater spirituality. Another formula for success is to have some focal belief that is utterly distinctive, something that really distinguishes this body from all others, and to hang on to that distinctiveness - that exclusivity - in a totally uncompromising way.

All the four or five major worldwide sects (most being founded in the nineteenth century) have much to be proud of, whether it is their behaviour under persecution or the closeness and uprightness of their family lives. I do not wish to sound as though I am standing in judgment on either their founders or their subsequent leaders or any member I meet. There are striking similarities, however, as well as mutual exclusiveness, between the organisations founded by Joseph Smith, Charles Taze Russell, and Mary Baker Eddy, not to mention the Seventh-Day Adventists (who believe in the prophetic teachings of Ellen G. White) or the Christadelphians (founded by John Thomas). You could also include the modern examples, where dynamic preachers have gathered a strongly committed body of adherents, even to their early demise in Waco or the Amazonian rain forest - or the adherents of the Church of Scientology, founded by L Ron Hubbard (which may or may not be a religion). The parallels are worthy of note.

So there is a question we all need to ask: am I relying for salvation on membership of a particular organisation, or on something else?

I do not know on whom God's mercy will rest, and who will be able to receive the forgiveness every human needs. All I ask for myself is this: that God gives me the grace to go on seeking - literally every day - the forgiveness I know I need, not because of any deed I do, or because I belong to this or that body of believers, but simply because of His Love and my need. So I do not think there is a membership test, or a doctrinal test (at best we know in part, after all), but if there is a test it must be this: the genuineness of our desire to become the man (or woman) God wants us to be. For salvation is the realisation (the reality-becoming) of that desire.