Sunday 30 May 2010

Pick n' mix, bread sandwiches... and a good bowl of stew

What's your experience of Christian teaching?

Mine seems to have been largely one consisting of pick n' mix, or bread sandwiches... 

I love pick n' mix... it's redolent of a time when you could still buy sweets in quarters... and when a quarter only cost 23p and you could, therefore, get a pound of sugary sickness for less than £1... There's no feeling quite like turning up equipped to the cinema... diving your hand into the bag, not knowing what you were about to find... munching your way through a film... trying to balance the variety still in the bag, in the dark, without looking. Perhaps that was the key with pick n'mix... buying the right amount, and of the right sweets so that your bag emptied steadily, providing the perfect confectionery accompaniment to the progressing storyline... and didn't suddenly dry up, or dump you in a sea of hundreds and thousands covered milk buttons at the film's most exciting moment.

Thing is, pick n'mix being what it is, if you eat enough, it's not long before you have the desire to manically run about, or giggle, or - more likely - spew it up over the person sitting in front of you.

Similarly, pick n' mix teaching isn't great. As Forrest Gump said... 'you never know what you're goin' get...': A colourfully wrapped 'quality' message, a banana flavoured yellow toothy grin, a somewhat empty foam flying saucer with a tiny zingy filling, a tangled and confused strawberry (beret?) shoelace? You sit through sermon after sermon eating until you feel hyper, and a bit sick. But you still have a 'food sized' hole... after all, man cannot love by Chuppa Chupps alone... or is that bread..?

Bread!! I like bread... very much. There's something extremely satisfying about ripping the crust off a still-warm loaf, and tearing out the middle... I have been known to eat a whole 800g loaf in one sitting. I did suffer from intense heart-burn for a few days afterwards, but I'd do it again. 

But bread's at its best when its an accompliment and not the focus of a dish. It makes good ends for a sandwich, but not a great filling. Imagine a bread sandwich... that's a sandwich, made from two slices of bread with - in the middle - a nice slice of bread. Not, bread sauce, I hasten to add before my wife suggests that this might indeed be the 'king of sandwiches' - but bread... so that would be three slices of bread. Don't feel restricted to one slice... add two... perhaps add a slice of wholemeal... even a slice of some unpronounceable Italian bread... but it must all be bread... bread bread bread...

Some teaching reminds me of a bread sandwich. It looks really nutritious from the outside and it's initially quite filling... it gives you something to chew on. The only problem is that, as you bite deeper and deeper, you find that it's all full of the same slightly hard to digest and very theologically orthodox grist that's been poured into the teaching-mill for the last 100 years...

In some churches this takes a particularly odd form... concerned by the need to be utterly blameless in their teaching... their teaching becomes centred on their teaching itself... I don't know if you've ever sat through a series of devoutly Baptist sermons about Baptist theology... it's 800g of tradition... and also a sure recipe for heartburn.

Occasionally though, just occasionally - usually not in church (but sometimes there) but with friends, or on my own, working through some material on the internet, or reading through books - I've experienced teaching that is more like a good bowl of stew. It's not as sparkly or as immediately enticing as a pile of sweets... and it's not as defineable as bread... but it doesn't make me spew, and it doesn't give me heartburn... instead, it satisfies a hunger that is usually not touched by what I hear on a Sunday morning.

So, what's the difference.

Well, much to my regret, pick n'mix is a bit expensive, and not really designed to be a single source for all of life's nutrition... similarly pick n'mix teaching... it's not something that sustains you long term, it's something that you pig out on as a celebration... otherwise it takes its place as a fairly minor member of the food groups... alongside the more important ones, like vegetables (unfortunately). 

Similarly, bread is designed to supplement other foods and bread teaching should be there to supplement other teaching... it's all very well being proud of traditions... but others have equally proud traditions that are just as well informed... and to get fixated on why 'ours' are better than 'their's when all of them arise from different readings of what is essentially a fuzzy, and variably interpreted canon of scripture is rather like the residents of Flipper-o-loo and Jibberty-lot with their shoes and pots...

Stew, on the other hand, doesn't try to be something that its not, it accepts its limitations, it's made up of quality ingredients that haven't been processed beyond belief and that float to the surface in new and interesting (but still recognisable) forms... it varies with the seasons, but it's still recognisably stew... and it's working food... full of nutrition... it's like eating molten vitamins... it's good solid food, to fill the hungry bellies of good solid people so that they can do good solid work.

1 comment:

  1. I am now extremely hungry. It's a good job my dinner is in 5.

    Sainsbury's could get people to read this article just before entering one of their supermarkets. Their sales of food would increase big time.

    You make a good point, however. Preachers everywhere take note.

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