Starting the conversation

The starting point

Thanks for checking-out this blog. I’m conducting an exercise that I’m hoping you may be able to help me with. This is essentially a personal research project which has evolved out of mulling over in my mind two unrelated questions:

1. Couldn’t I find a more effective and creative way to expand my own devotional ‘literacy’ by engaging with other people who I respected?

2. When it comes to ‘building up yourselves on your most holy faith’, why aren’t we more effectively using the social networking capabilities of the internet, as we would in other aspects of life?

So I came up with this very simple idea: to use a blog tool to begin a conversation, and hopefully, begin to generate some practical suggestions for action.

My particular quest here is to explore the concept of ‘edification’ with reference to Philippians 4.8:

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are
honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever
things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue,
and if there be any praise, think on these things.

For me this is a challenging verse. It sounds fairly difficult – if not impossible to do! And on first reading, it appears to be advocating a ‘three wise monkeys’ retreat from the real world.


The specter of Mrs General

In his novel Little Dorrit, Charles Dickens brilliantly conj ours the ghastly and vacuous Mrs General. Too grand to be called a Governess, Mrs General’s vocation in life was to ‘form the mind’ of young ladies of distinguished families. She did so by only ever acknowledging what was ‘proper’.

Even her propriety could not dispute that there was impropriety in the world;
but Mrs General's way of getting rid of it was to put it out of sight, and make
believe that there was no such thing. This was another of her ways of forming a
mind--to cram all articles of difficulty into cupboards, lock them up, and say
they had no existence. It was the easiest way, and, beyond all comparison, the
properest.

Mrs General may have countenanced a Promise Box of heartwarming encouragements, but she would surely never have opened a Bible!

On the face of it, Philippians reads too much like something Mrs General might have written for my taste. It seems to fly in the face of the sleeves-rolled-up, hands dirty, engaged-with-the-world sort of faith that I believe in. How could one pick-up a newspaper, befriend a neighbour, lead anything but the most superficial existence, if this was your mantra?


Training tips

Of course, it’s always dangerous to take a Bible verse in isolation. Context is everything. And the back story here seems to be of a church fully engaged, but battered. In which case, perhaps this is not instruction for the faint-hearted, or the delicate palate, but rather advice to the battle-weary that are desperately in need of encouragement. It’s the sort of training tip that a coach might give his team. A few verses earlier Paul was roaring at them from his touch-side bench: “Rejoice! And again I say ‘Rejoice!’”. So maybe here he’s setting them a mental exercise like good coaches do: keep going, don’t be distracted from your main focus, stay positive, think about the good stuff!

If that’s the case – and you may disagree – I’m really curious to know how, in practice, you do this? If this isn’t just about ‘niceness’ or ‘propriety’ what sort of true and honest and just and pure things should we be dwelling on? Are their works of art, volumes of literature, pieces of music that, for you, fit this description? In the style of Desert Island Discs, putting aside the Bible and Shakespeare, what for you, is truly edifying?

When truth is mediated by ‘spin’, and we’ve learned to accommodate injustices of breathtaking proportions; when a ‘good report’ can mean another celebrity scandal; when internet porn is free at the click of a mouse, and ‘pure’ tends to mean ‘prude’; and when ‘virtue’ has ceased to be in our vocabulary, how do we act on Philippians 4.8?