Author: Phil Lowe

I'm a writer who finds the only way to make sense of the 'big stuff' is to get it out through my keyboard. I mostly blog about my recent journey to Christianity - and busting stereotypes around the same - because, hey, that was 'big' thing to do at 43 years of age.
Me before you. Where the movie meets Jesus.

Me before you. Where the movie meets Jesus.

Phil Lowe

Disclaimer: I read both books Me Before You and Me After You (the sequel) by JoJo Moyes long before the movie hit the screen. I cried buckets as, contrary to my kevlar exterior, I am nothing but a soft romantic underneath who adores a happy ending and the promise that love will, against all odds, conquer all. image-3

Spoiler alert: In a nutshell, the storyline is this: Will Traynor, after a terrible road accident, doesn’t want to live as a quadriplegic and has promised his parents to hold off on assisted suicide for six months. Louisa is hired to be his assistant for six months in the hopes that she can motivate him to want to live. They fall in love. He still chooses the assisted suicide. Love doesn’t conquer all.

Since the movie release of Me Before You there’s been plenty of Christian commentary about why Christians ought not pay for popcorn and viewing time because – like Christian author Ellen Painter Dollar – there are many who think there are dangerous lies in the movie’s plot. Dollar writes on her Patheos blog that Me Before You tells audiences that people with disabilities live difficult lives that aren’t worth living, and they are a burden to their loved ones.

The Christian commentary about the movie is it doesn’t take into account the hope of Christ. With Christ, everything about Will’s reality changes.  Not miracles and healing, but the promise that God can bring about good from anything, no matter how hard.

With Jesus, Christians point to the promise that God has a plan and a purpose for our lives. With Jesus, then Will choosing to end his life is Will playing God, instead of trusting God.

I think as Christians we have to be cautious of the vertigo we can succumb to on a high horse of morality. Yes, we all want Jesus to be enough, but not everyone grasps that blessing. Maybe Will couldn’t find enough hope in Jesus to go on. Or maybe Will was more like Jesus than first appears – offering hope and redemption to Louisa who was just as stuck and broken as he, despite her being able-bodied.

Yes, Louisa is also broken, she just looks whole and healthy on the outside. Victim of a gang-rape, she has ended up with unfinished studies, dating a one-dimensional local lad, and has packed away her hopes and dreams of travel and adventure because one night stole them away. Her previous joy in life, her positivity, her technicolour view of the world was jarred, broken and smashed. She exists cautiously. Carefully packing away the colour and joy that attracted those drunk boys who did not stop when she begged.

Will brings colour back to Louisa. Yet he still chooses to die, despite Louisa’s protestations. I imagine the disciples having a similar conversation with Jesus:

“Look at the miracles you are performing. There is so much joy and life and colour in what you do. What we are doing together. Why do you keep saying you have to die? Aren’t we enough? Why don’t you want to stay with us?”

Of course, Will doesn’t resurrect. Instead he leaves Louisa a financial bequest to pursue her dreams, broken hearted he still chooses self-termination, but with the knowledge that she can come back from the grief because Will has already shown her how to come through past horror. Echoes of Jesus, if you choose to adjust the lens with compassion.

My Mum was so shattered at a point in her life she attempted suicide. At the time, I experienced first-hand the lack of grace and compassion from Christians who muttered about it being a sin. Perhaps not as pre-meditated as Will’s assisted suicide, but – if you agree with the Christian movie commentary – the same judgement: she wasn’t trusting God could bring about good from anything, no matter how hard. Choosing to try to end her life was her playing God, instead of her trusting God.

Does the movie romanticise euthanasia? Buy into the Hollywood illusion that unless you are physically whole you have less value? Perhaps. Or does Moyes cleverly show us that brokenness pervades all and – no matter how shiny or perfect Hollywood attempts to make it – broken is broken.

The movie gives Christians a platform to talk about faith and hope in Jesus beyond wordly suffering, sure. And there are many Christian individuals with disabilities who point to their faith as the reason they persevere with joy.

But to sit in a ‘for’ or ‘against’ camp regarding the movie doesn’t truly speak the full measure of Christian compassion and grace. Jesus understands our pain, doesn’t he? That much as we may want to walk like him, being unable to move from the neck down, reliant on medications to stop your body backing up and breaking down with toxins, needing someone to feed you, toilet you, wipe you, move you, scratch your damn nose – well…. until you’ve sat an ulcer-prone month in a specially adapted wheelchair, it’s unwise to judge.

I read the book and – ever the optimist – thought Will wouldn’t go through with it. Was he selfish to do so? Many (most) respond that suicide is the ultimate selfishness. But so too is judgement. Whether it’s judging a character on a screen or another human being for his or her choices, as soon as we judge we are showing how we selfishly believe our way is best. Our choice is best. Our hope is best. Our Jesus is best.

Problem is, as soon as we do that, then people raise their eyebrows at Jesus being best. “How can he be best?” they scoff, “when so many Christ followers are wagging fingers and telling us what movies to watch and avoid? Pass me a choc top and tell them to quieten down.”

I suspect Jesus wouldn’t wag his finger at the end-my-life Will. He’d most likely grab him close, see him redeemed and unburdened by his broken body, mind and heart. Cry with him over the pain. Maybe we ought to try that ourselves before wagging our fingers.

Like a prayer. Jesus as sex therapist.

Phil Lowe

Sex is – when done well, with a caring, respectful partner – awesome. Releases endorphins. An orgasm is (in my humble opinion as I can’t speak for a man’s orgasm, not being a bloke) a total mind, body, emotional reset.

Also, a couple’s orgasm is far more satisfying than a DIY solo orgasm. There’s just something about the whole skin-on-skin, intimacy, ‘hey, we’ve both just blown the tops of our skulls off (ahem) together.’ When you’re intimate and comfortable with your partner, you laugh, roll around on the sheets – or across the kitchen counter, whatever takes your fancy – and put some effort into ensuring sex is bloody great fun.

Yes, I’m still a Christian. I’m not subbing for Harlequin/ Mills and Boon romance writing/light erotica. Because guess what, Christians have sex. And hopefully lots of it. Within their covenant of marriage. 12342347_10153357289097689_5032277087355300038_n

Bolting on our newish arrival at Christianity to a ten year marriage – and 20 year relationship – has taken some effort for Big T and I. What God desires for us both within our marriage is fairly different to what we had arrived at under our own steam. Thankfully, God has no desire for me to batten down my own desires, wear chastity belts, ankle-skimming skirts and keep my head bowed modestly.

Yes He loves me, this I know, because He gave me the Song of Solomon sealed section of the Bible as the place to go.

Shall I tell you the secret to a cracker of a Christian sex life? 

Prayer (and stop your jokes about Madonna songs).

I’m 100% serious. His ‘n’ Her Prayer. When I shared this little gem with the SAP he spluttered somewhat. “Phil, in all my years of pastoring, I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone tell me they use prayer as foreplay.”

But think about it. What’s the biggest frustration women have with their men? Here’s a typical sample:

  • “I don’t know what he’s thinking.”
  • “We don’t talk enough.”
  • “He doesn’t understand me.”
  • “I tell him what I want, but I think it goes in one ear and out the other.”

In defence of all the husbands, women too often say one thing and mean something else. Which is a minefield for a man who simply says what he means. But this communication breakdown has an awful impact on a healthy sex life, purely because women’s desires are linked with their brain whilst men’s are linked a lot lower.

Big T could have had the most hideous day on earth, come in the house, trip over a pile of laundry and smell burnt dinner, but if I sashayed out the bedroom in my dodgiest ugg boots and tattiest dressing gown, crooked my finger and said something about no clothes underneath, he’d be, well, up for it.

But us women? Wired differently. Foreplay starts the moment we open our eyes in the morning. It’s all in how our brains and minds are engaged. In the scenario above, unfair as it reads, if I come home after a terrible day to a great dinner, laundry packed away, with Big T freshly-shaved and smelling yummy? His odds of come hither, finger-crooking success are greatly increased. Terribly unfair. Blame that serpent. Prior to that I bet Adam and Eve were at it like…well…

So this is where His ‘n’ Her prayer is fabulous because it connects you. Each night I am able to have an intimate, articulate peak inside my husband’s mind. When we pray together, as Big T is being open with God, he is being open with me. I know what he is thinking. The reverse is true.

Regardless of good day, bad day, folded laundry or burnt dinner, it all gets poured out and handed over to God. The clear, undistracted mind I need to really focus on my husband and my sexual response? Delivered. As we pray together with God, we open up more intimacy with each other. The fact that we’ve not had a chance to communicate between home, activities, dinner, kids’ bedtime, homework, late-work, who took the bins out – becomes less of a thing. Prayer as the deliverer of intimacy. Foreplay.

Plus (and I hope I’m not too off piste here), I really get off on the idea as sex as worship. If God designed man and women to be together, and He sees a Christian couple growing closer towards each other and Him as part of their married, healthy sex life, I’d say He’d be jolly pleased.

By the way, this doesn’t occur every time Big T and I pray together. But His ‘n’ Her prayer does appear to increase the likelihood of it happening.

So if you ever ask what I did last night and I tell you I spent an enjoyable time in prayer and worship with my husband? I’ll be telling the truth.

Note: Someone told me today there are historical peaks in babies being born nine months after revivals. So I think I’m onto something…

God’s blowtorches & blessings

Phil Lowe

It never ceases to amaze me that people manage to sell (and get sold on) the prosperity gospel. God may refer to pouring out His blessings, Jesus mentions how the Father clothes the birds and flowers, so how much more will He will do for us etc. but there’s nowhere in the Bible about life being easy, rolling around on piles of dollars, strewn on satin sheets, all because God desperately loves us so much He wants us to be uber-wealthy.

Prosperity gospel reminds me of law of attraction /universal manifestation teachings. Whereby the believer is told to use God/ the universe as a power to achieve whatever the believer wills. Thought creates. Think a million dollars strongly enough and it will appear in your life. 122408_Blowtorch_448x336

Whilst the truth of biblical Christianity is just the opposite: God uses me, the believer, not the other way round. Rather than the Holy Spirit (HS) being my magical manifestation magnet, instead the HS resides within to help me do God’s will. Because, heaven knows, I’d be up the proverbial creek without a paddle trying to carry out God’s will without it!

Yet the most hilarious bit about the prosperity gospel is, well…. does no-one read the fine print nowadays? I have many joyous phrases to describe my journey with GJ&HS, but “winning lotto” and “gee, isn’t it a smooth road without hiccups?” aren’t ones that spring to mind.

God has His crucibles. His ways of achieving the growth of those who love Him:

The crucible for silver and the furnace for gold, but the Lord tests the heart. – Proverbs 17:3

He will sit as a smelter and purifier of silver, and He will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, so that they may present to the Lord offerings in righteousness. – Malachi 3:3

The crucible metaphor being how heat purifies metal to its purest form, just as times of trial, tribulation and suffering refine our faith.

It sounds so lovely, doesn’t it, precious metals and crucibles? Conjures up images of tastefully-crafted jewellery at the end. But let’s not forget the sweaty, burning, eyes closed against the furnace heat part.

I refer to such times as God’s blowtorches. Personally, the last few months? They have not been the simmering sense of a frog warming up in a pot, but a blasting heat that requires an asbestos grip on Jesus’ divinity because…wow…so You think I need that much refining, Lord? Ouch.

After a series of intense weeks, the SAP picked a shift in my tone from: “Yes, just little bit of testing, but, oh, such joy to be embraced in the trials. I’m totally meditating on James 1 2-4, whilst colouring-in a mindfulness page I’ve designed based on the same Bible passage..” …to something darker. Think Steven Seagal meets Jason Statham.

The SAP suggested it was all part of God’s refining rather than one isolated lesson for me to grasp.  So refining is a lesson in itself. Yet it was fairly obvious I’d reached flash point when I began slanging back at God with blackmail threats:

“You know those awesome gifts of engagement, communication, and ‘sell ice to Eskimos’ You gifted me with, Lord? Well (through gritted teeth), you really don’t want me using them against You rather than for You. I reckon the atheists would love me on their team…and I’m feeling just pissed-off enough right now to do a really awesome job. Ease up on the damn blow torch!”

Thank heaven for answered prayer. I suspect God answered The SAP’s respectful one – “I’ll pray the blowtorch turns off,” he kindly offered me – over my full-frontal tactical assault.

And in His constant, loving, amazing, God-only way, the next day His gentle Yellow Post-It notes of care began to appear or, rather, I was able to see them more clearly. Perhaps the SAP added in something about scales from my eyes in his prayer too?

Like the meeting – after a time of attempting to introduce more prayer into a Christian workplace and feeling a resisting silence to change – when a team member, without prompting, suggested prayers directly afterwards.

Or – in the middle of my worst blowtorched stresses, as that voice in my head began to ask how seriously I had got this wrong, that God really was a spaghetti monster in the sky and wasn’t this just a freakin’ mess and why not go back to how it used to be, because surely it was easier then? – sitting with two Christian women who demonstrated total commitment in their faith, an unwavering certainty that prayers would be answered, that God’s hand was in everything. Intelligent, Godly women, one older, one younger, who through shared prayer reminded me that their faith in Jesus’ sacrifice came not through spaghetti monsters but seeing God work in their lives over and over.

They didn’t even know, those two women, as they sat across the table from me, how close my fingertips had come to breaking point hanging off my blowtorched cliff.  But listening to them talk, hearing the clarity of their certainty, was my chance to draw faith from their faith.

There’s a lesson for us all. You never know who is listening and watching, how God is using you in one moment, and the unexpected encouragement that moment can bring to someone else. Salt and light.

The same day, God drew me back to the longer passage in James 1:

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.

I realised I had missed a major point on perseverance. There I had been, with ground teeth and bleeding fingernails, grittily persevering. “Just hang on,” I would grind out to myself. “You can do this.”

I had been focused on the wrong two verses: the ‘most famous’ first two, the ones held up as the lights to be guided by in testing times. “Just hang on, Phil, because, on the other side of this, you’ll be whole and complete. That’s the deal.”

Trouble is, the harder I hung on, the more effort I put into this back-breaking perseverance, the more sweat-drenched and slippy my grip became.

No-where in the passage does it say enduring in the sense of being ground down. No. James’ emotion is pure joy. As for the work of perseverance so I could be mature and complete? James doesn’t write that I’m the one having to do the work. The elegant solution, the best approach, the one that would take the pressure off my clamped jaw and anguished, exhausted brain? Verses 5 and 6 leapt out at me:

If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.

I didn’t need bleary perseverance and gritted teeth. I needed wisdom – God’s. And I needed to get my head back into His game so I could draw on His wisdom without doubts. Otherwise I was going to be swamped.

Finally, it filtered through. “I’m so sorry. I’ve been unstable, haven’t I? I don’t have the wisdom here. I need Yours. Please.” Even better, after all my slanging, all my challenging ungratefulness, I could hold onto His promise through Jesus: that He would give it to me generously, without finding fault.

The wisdom He whispered made me smile and hiccup, and get a little snot-monstery. “Count your blessings, dear heart. The way through the blowtorches are to count your blessings.”

I am recognising God’s methods with me: Pressure, pressure, blowtorch, refine, okay so now you’re hanging on by your fingertips, dear heart, so… pause. You’ve taken too much on yourself. Here’s a hint. Why not lean on Me? Ask Me? Let me encourage you? Ah, yes, there you go. See, look, you’re still here, now get your breath back, get the growth, rumble with the joy and get back out there and FLY.

So I am back to swigging grace like Guinness, chomping humble pills like Smarties and remembering the one with all the wisdom. Whilst holding onto the greatest lesson of all. Crucibles refine and the way through my blowtorches are to count my blessings, because blessings are our paths to pure joy:

  • Children who are heathy and nourished
  • A husband who never fails to make me laugh: from impersonating a Cath and Kim power walker to being a doofus over helping me stretch a hamsting when I’m taking life too seriously
  • A job that not only delivers regular income to our household, but challenges, stretches, satisfies and allows me to contribute to something bigger than myself
  • A business. With fun-loving clients who trust me and let me have fun too
  • A house. With a room for each child and more to spare
  • A roof that does not leak
  • Running water. Electricity. WiFi!
  • Indoor plumbing
  • Friends. Whose doorsteps I could turn up on at 3am knowing they would help
  • Faith. That God has my back. That Jesus has it covered
  • Access to healthcare
  • The ability to worship in public. Read the Bible in plain sight
  • A SAP
  • Shops without food shortages
  • Answered prayer
  • Blog posts that are read, shared and commented on across the globe
  • Being Loved. Crazy, radical, God-driven, let me lay down My son’s life because I want to be right next to you always, loved.

Just wow. So many blessings. So many joys. Plus, after the blowtorches? Growth. Always growth.

Newsflash: Self-confessed non-Christian disagrees with Christian view of Jesus

Phil Lowe

Taking a slightly different approach with oneweekinaugust.com today – with a warm welcome to my first guest writer, Lea Carswell.

Lea attended the Sydney Writer’s Festival the other month and specifically the session with social commentator Hugh Mackay. You may have seen the social media tweets when Mackay said: “Jesus never told anyone what to believe in. He only spoke about how to treat each other.”

I enjoyed her perspective, so I asked to publish what she wrote. It resonated because oneweekinaugust.com  was born from my coming to a (surprised and somewhat unwilling) faith in Jesus in my 40s – and my ongoing frustrations around how G,J &HS are lost in translation. These posts are my attempts to do what Lea encourages all Christians to get better at in her article: describing Jesus’ blueprint for Heaven and Earth. I hope you enjoy it, I did!

Newsflash: Self-confessed non-Christian disagrees with Christian view of Jesus

There was really no surprise, during his session at the Sydney Writer’s Festival, that social commentator Hugh Mackay made assertions contrary to what the Bible teaches and to what evangelical Christians believe.BPH_2016_Hugh_Mackay_2

More surprising were the aspects of his view of Christianity (described as ‘his struggle with religion’) that he got pretty right.

Promoting his new book, Beyond Belief, Mackay said he had tired of the labelling around religious or spiritual belief and has decided to move away from the isms and ologies.

“Now when someone says ‘I’m a this’ or ‘I’m a that’, I say, ‘I don’t care what you call yourself. How does it affect the kind of society you want to live in? What are you doing to make that vision of society a reality?’”

That seems a very good way of describing what Jesus did, which was to portray his blueprint for society and to live that out in His own life. (In churches, we refer to that blueprint as the Kingdom of God – a multi-layered term that doesn’t always make much sense to people hearing it for the first fifty or sixty times.)

Raised as a fervent Baptist Mackay described his first 20 years as a world of complete certainty, leading to arrogance and prejudice.

“We opposed Anglicans for goodness’ sake because they baptised babies with little dribbles of water, instead of only adults in full immersion,” he said.

This kind of experience, coupled with the public shame of institutions finally being brought to account for sinful and abusive policies and practise, is not uncommon for Australians who have chosen a life without religion.

Mackay walked away from church, convinced by his own ‘reason’ that it was all false (the crowd smirked knowingly at this point) and that tenets of Christianity were no more than myths.

According to Mackay, “Even so, I came to realise that the myths of all the religions are full of significance. I can not believe the truth of the story but I see that there is a truth in the story.”

Whether we agree with him or not, the session raised questions that we should answer for ourselves and our churches, for the Glory of God.

Does our ‘certainty’ lead to arrogance or a freedom from fear of things that deny Jesus?

If national statistics are of any help, and Mackay certainly believes them to be so, then there is a clear disconnect between what people want to believe, what they like to think others believe, where they want to educate their children and what they actually do with their time, money and loyalty.

What does that disconnect look like in our own area? Why not buy his book and have a read? Why not get better at describing Jesus’ blueprint for Heaven and Earth?

Hugh Mackay appeals for ‘loving-kindness’ as the paramount shared value in our society; our path and destination regardless of our own spiritual or religious conviction. Great perspective. Loving-kindness showed itself most clearly on the Cross and in Jesus’ resurrection. Just a myth? I’m certain that it’s not.

You can read more of Lea’s writing at https://smashedpottery.wordpress.com/

 

Hey, Christians. Let’s talk about doubts

Hey, Christians. Let’s talk about doubts

Phil Lowe

Lately I’ve been wanting to dig into doubts a bit more. Not due to some strange call to self-flagellation, but because I wonder if the term is used so broadly amongst Christians we actually don’t stop to think about doubt in all its nuances.

As my ‘on a scale of one to ten, I’m going to heaven‘ post hopefully demonstrated, I have little problem with being saved. I know I can’t ever do enough or be enough, but that doesn’t matter because of the pure certainty that ripped through me when I grasped Jesus’ gift to me.

giphy

Once I got passed the, ‘why in God’s name would you do something like that?’ confrontation of being utterly loved, the acceptance of grace was fairly easy. On my worst day I never doubt that, come my last day, Jesus will be there (probably shaking his head and smiling wryly with affection) pulling me in close.

I will likely be snot-monstering my awe, hiccuping, and – as the song goes – on my knees or (more honestly) dancing like a loon. I imagine it a little like the wildest reunion: “Oh my gosh I’m here and there’s Mum and Jo and Percy and, wow, look there’s Dorothy’s husband and, yes, he’s a handsome so-and-so in his resurrection body, just as she told me she imagined after his funeral.”

I have a dear girlfriend and when we catch up – not frequently enough – it typically involves big hugs, then pulling back to hold each other at arm’s length to check each other out, whilst jigging on the balls of our toes, then back in for more enormous hugs, all to a sound track of exclamations. “Darlz!” she half yells, half screams, “let’s grab a champagne.” I imagine my heavenly reunions in a similar fashion.

(BTW, I’m really praying the SAP won’t be in heaven until after God calls me home. That’s because I have a codicil in my will about dog collars and robes being worn by the pastor I’d like to officiate my funeral. I’m only sad I won’t be there to see it.)

So what are doubts, then? If I’m assured of being saved by the Jesus fella, then what are the wobbly periods about? I know mine to be different to Big T’s. Blame it on his Roman Catholic hangover as – unlike me – his doubts often take form as ‘the works burger’. What if I’m not ‘good’ enough? If my works aren’t super-sized sufficiently to get me in?

Some days I do a Thomas. My journalist brain kicks in and – despite all the investigation I undertook – I have this strange shimmer of, I can’t quite put my finger on it, but if I could actually put my finger into those nail prints… Yet it is just that, a shimmer. As I can’t discount what has happened – for real – since getting to grips with the J-man.

When my doubts are in the here and now, they are mostly around not ‘feeling‘ God and Jesus as intensely as I’m used to. It’s never about my end of days.

Some days in the now you just need solid. When my daughter has a rough day in the schoolyard and I remind her to pray for strength and help – as well as doing the actual work of engaging with others around her – and she rolls her eyes and says, “But, Mum, Jesus isn’t there to play handball with me when I’m lonely!”

There are days when I want Jesus to turn up next to me and play handball. I want to grab his hand and feel the physical. Not to check for nail holes (well, maybe I’d take a peek) but because I am human. Sight, smell, touch and warmth; oh my gosh, they mean something on our dark, down, doubting days, don’t they?

His bread and water might fill us up. But so too do our friends when they nod in the right place and lean over and hug us. Make us laugh. The real and solid. From a full human contact hug to the lightest rub of an understanding hand across your back. Every now and again my doubts seek the equivalent from GJ & the HS to squash the air out of them.

“Can’t You sneak Jesus down on a sort of day release from heaven, God?” I whisper. “For a hug?”

Some readers may respond that time in the Bible ought to be enough. Praying and talking it through with Christian brothers and sisters. But sometimes it’s a massive, tight, ‘channelling a boa constrictor’ hug that’s required. Jesus seeping through my skin, across my nerve endings, into my marrow and I want it – need it – to be just as real as Big T wrapping his arms about me.

I may just start a trend at my next bible study, or set up a ‘free hug’ sign at the doorway to church next Sunday.

So what are your doubts? Are they of the works burger variety? Do you do a Thomas, like me? Maybe your doubts are around creation, cosmology, miracles, suffering, evil, even God’s patience. Doubts, I think, take form in the stuff that gets in the way between myself and Jesus. The distance I allow in. It’s never God or Jesus that move, after all. But dismissing it as a catch-all collective of ‘doubt’ is an easy excuse. Hence my wanting to dig deeper into what doubts really are.

Will you join me on this excavation? I’d really appreciate your willingness to share your doubts in the comments below. At the very least it may spark some new blog posts and great conversation. At the very best it may shine a light on doubts and extinguish them in the viewing.

Blessings.

P.S: Atheist doubters are welcome to add their comments. Please be respectful and kind. Any, ‘you crutch-needing, weak minded weirdoes who believe in the spaghetti monster’ comments will be deleted. That isn’t contributing to a conversation. It’s simply trying to yell loudly. Same applies to any blustering Christians who see doubt as a weakness of faith, being possessed by the horned mother-trucker and turn up with the written equivalent of bible-thumping and exorcism.

Play nicely.

 

Dear friend, I understand you don’t believe..but

Phil Lowe

This is an open letter to all my gorgeous, loyal, non-believing in God, Jesus or the Holy Spirit friends. There’s a few really important things we ought to clear up. Good-Friend-and-Best-friend-quotes

1) Please don’t freak-out when I say the name Jesus.

It’s OK, it really is. I’m not about to grab holy water and douse you in it. But being friends with a Christian and expecting not to hear the word Jesus pass my lips is like being friends with a passionate West Bromwich Albion supporter and being surprised when they bring up the Baggies.

I get it, I do, because not so long ago I sat on the other side with you watching Christians myself for signs of rabid evangelising and judgement. Back then, when I sat with a Christian who bought up the J-man, I’d get itchy. “Oh man, they’re going to ask me to church.”

2) I may ask you to church, I may not.

Depends. I’m not in the business of shoving Jesus down people’s throats. If you fancy a good singsong at Christmas, then, yes, I’ll extend the invite.

If you’re struggling, and I see you going through some hard times, and it seems to be a suffering you’re facing over and over with little respite, then, yes, I’m probably going to ask you along. Not because I want to shove Jesus at you. But because I love you and don’t like to see you hurting. Jesus and his church have helped me through some seriously challenging times: a friend’s death, marriage needing a defibrillator, job uncertainties, and children’s health issues, to name a few.

Maybe I’ve watched you try other avenues to alleviate the suffering and you’ve told me it’s not working. So, having been there myself – looking for pain relief in a myriad of places without success – I can put my hand on my heart and tell you this helped me. So that’s why I’d ask you – in case you find some relief in coming along too.

3) I’m going to pray for you. Deal.

You were an awesome friend before I became a Christian and you’re an awesome friend now. So you are going to get added to my prayer list, because that’s what Christians do. Even if you don’t believe in G, J& HS, when you are going through tough times (and when you’re not) I’m going to pray they care, support and help. So don’t look like a rabbit in headlights when I say the P word. Try a little faith in my faith.

4) Expect me to knock back invites that are on a Sunday morning.

I need to go to church. My soul needs to. It fulfils me. It’s like going to see the best lover you can imagine and learning more about what makes them tick. With that level of attraction – a somersaulting butterflies in the stomach happiness – it’s definitely an every week thing. I grow stronger in my faith and I learn more about myself in church each Sunday. So please don’t roll your eyes when I decline the invites or think I’m in some happy-clappy cult. I don’t love you any less. But doing church each week makes me a kinder, more patient, more other-focused soul. Which (I hope) delivers benefits to our friendship.

5) Please don’t treat me differently.

I’ve changed but I’m still me. You’re likely going to swear in front of me – that’s fine. I’m not going to freak. I am likely to be just as sweary with the F-bomb but not so much with the G&J. I still drink. I’m not going to judge you. That’s precisely what a Christian ought not do. If you’ve been hanging around with judgey Christians, please let me know. I’ll try my best to show you how flawed Christians really are. It won’t take much, as you already know I’ve got plenty of flaws and I really like to let them all hang out!

6) Your support is appreciated.

When you ask me what I did at the weekend and I tell you I went to church, can we try and avoid the awkward silence? Tell you what, why not ask me how it was – just as I’d ask you how the picnic/footie/breakfast in the city/cycle in the park was for you on Sunday morning. It doesn’t mean I’ll unleash a floodgate of sermonising and bible passages at you. It means you are a caring friend who is willing to take an interest in what I’m up to, and for that I am grateful.

7) I understand it may feel weird.

After all, I was an anti-Christian, anti-religion soul just two short years ago. You might feel I’ve headed down a path you will never understand. But we celebrated our differences before I met the Jesus fella, so let’s keep celebrating and respecting those differences. I don’t need you to believe in God and Jesus to justify my faith, just as you don’t need me to not believe to justify your not believing in them. Of course, if you do need me to not believe to justify your non-belief, that’s a whole different conversation.

8) This isn’t wearing off.

Believe me, I waited for it to wear off, I did! Yet here I am, two years later, still writing a blog about the journey, and helping run a Christian not-for-profit that has an amazing impact on lives around the world. It doesn’t wear off. Instead it just gets better. I never imagined the joyful, head-over-heels feeling that emerged in my soul would last – or could even improve. But it does.

Although, at the risk of sounding like a shiny-suited evangelist, I’ve got to ask. Doesn’t what happened to me ever make you wonder?

Oops, I left Jesus in the freezer section

Oops, I left Jesus in the freezer section

Phil Lowe

At a speaking engagement recently, regarding the blessing of a Christian leadership development course I am undertaking (thanks to a generous CMA scholarship), I was asked three questions, “Why did you apply? Would you encourage someone to do the same course? And why?”

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Buy this poster (yes, really) from this website

I answered: “I undertook the course because, as a newish Christian, I don’t know what I don’t know. I have experience leading from a secular perspective, but that’s not the point. And absolutely, apply – because if you’re not growing, then you’re dying.”

I didn’t intend to be prophetic in the final part of my answer, but it appears God was listening. Imagine that.

I like the word ‘newbie’. I often refer to my Christian training wheels. Yet after some recent challenges, God has been fairly explicit that it’s time to stop making excuses. “How can you grow if you use training wheels as an excuse?” He asked pointedly. “What did you say the other week? If you’re not growing, you are…what?”

So, as is God’s fairly hilarious way with me, off He led. It started with the sprinting Psalm reality TV week. After I’d remembered to grasp onto Jesus’ hand and stop swallowing seawater he thrust a fairly wonderful sermon regarding the Woman at the Well (John 4 1-42).

Now, this is going to read fairly strangely, given I blog about Jesus, gave testimony about how he had turned my life upside down and around in my mid-40s, even changing jobs to honour how he makes me feel, but it was in the middle of this sermon that God yelled “Jesus Heals” at me and suddenly a new lightbulb went on.

I’ve been trying to take short cuts. Even though the Bible tells me the only way to God is through Jesus, lately I’ve been sloping around the side of him.

I pray to God, I thank Him for what He did for me in His son’s name. But I haven’t spent enough time with Jesus. I’ve been taking tricky shortcuts. Flicking the SAP questions rather than sitting prayerfully and reading through the Bible. That’s the trickiest, sneakiest bit I think. Outsourcing your growth to a smart-alec pastor is still growth, isn’t it God? Ah, no. It’s sort of cheating. 

Which is what God fairly threw at me on Sunday night. All the while, I’ve been neglecting the central character.

I left Jesus behind. Kind of like the time I left my newborn in the supermarket freezer section on our way home from the hospital. I didn’t mean to. It’s not like I didn’t love him insanely. I just forgot to pay attention to this precious gift and the next thing you know, I’m at the checkout muttering, “Ice cream, lanolin cream…I’m sure there’s something else I need…”

“You need Jesus,” God told me. “Now turnaround, go back and fetch him, spend more time with him and stop trying to take short cuts.”

Even funnier, the VERY NEXT DAY after this lightbulb blasted into my brain, the SAP took off on some remote mission. Out of range. Hmm. What a Godincidence.

No short-cuts. No outsourcing growth. God is hilariously, weirdly, oddly cool in how He times and presents such lessons. Think you can avoid hanging out with Jesus by distracting yourself by chasing down random theological answers? No. Stop the distracting, bright shiny object syndrome and get on with the work itself. And I’ll help by putting a ‘Stop, Turn Back’ across one of the short-cuts.

Which brings me back to growing. Sitting with Jesus during whatever what pains me and remembering he understands suffering intimately. Getting stuck into prayer yesterday and asking G, J & HS what true growth is. And the three of them, doubtless ROFL in a kind, supportive, ‘oh, she’s finally getting on with the program’ sort of way, sent me the Bible’s book of James. Which is a fairly robust epistle when you realise God is giving you some stick about growth. Forgetting Jesus, Phil? Well, try reading a letter written by his half-brother. You know, just to ram the point home.

Growth is all about persevering. No short cuts. James is like a guidebook for Christian growth. Like faith and action: dear heart, if you believe in what Jesus did, and have faith in that, then your deeds and action last week ought to have been prayer and serious bible time, not sprinting around like a scared meercat on speed. 

I take some solace in my sprinting last week being part motivated to keep a poisonous tongue quiet (James 3). But the growth comes from realising that it was very ‘BC’ behaviour on my part – prayers for wisdom would have been more fruitful.  Yet we all stumble in many ways. Which led me back to Jesus and his grace.

I like James’ epistle. It’s blunt and to the point beautiful. With the reminder that I will never face any circumstance that God will not use for my good and His glory. Even if it’s when I leave Jesus in the freezer section.

Motherhood doesn’t have a manual

Motherhood doesn’t have a manual

Phil Lowe

Today my mum, Veronica, would have celebrated her 70th birthday. A long-term disabling illness, followed by cancer, took her in her 66th year. On the eve of Mother’s Day, she deserves some attention.

If you’ve spent anytime in these blogs, you’ll know she lived with emotional pain. How she dealt with it wasn’t wise – but who amongst us are? What I have written about my childhood has generated comments of compassion – plus sorrow that I had not been mothered and tended to as society expects.

Yet you tend from what you know. Your nurture of others stems from what you are taught.

My mum was not taught how to parent under stress, during a marriage breakdown, in the early 1970s in the UK when getting divorced was not the ‘done’ thing. Her own Mum – a fairly controlling woman I’m told by all accounts, who liked things just so, to the point of serving the same meals on the same day each week – died before Veronica’s 30th birthday. Her mother-in-law died even earlier. So when it came to navigating a marriage breakdown, she had no maternal help to seek.

I am certain she adored me. She was ridiculously proud of me. But – with too few figures around to offer counsel – as a single mum she gave her daughter the roles of confidant, care-giver, sounding board and, yes, in times of stress, emotional baggage attendant.

Yet, in the overall timeline of her life and mine, the low points still don’t outweigh how much she loved. So, as a communicator who tells every pastor off when they fail to offset any negative in a sermon with three positives, it is time for me to take my own advice. Please meet my Mum as she ought to be remembered:

Driving along in a sky-blue Volkswagen Beetle, picking me up from school and pretending the car was a bird that we ‘flew’ along english hedge-rowed lanes.

Walking on a snow-covered road, collecting money for charity, glamorous in high heeled red wellington (gum) boots and a fur coat that she told me was ‘Sasquatch’. I only just discovered, by googling it to write this blog, that she was having me on. Good one, Mum.

Taking a hump-back bridge at speed in the same Volkswagen Beetle, on another English country lane, getting wheels off the tarmac like we were Herbie racing at Monte Carlo. Myself and my cousins giggling like loons in the backseat as we bounced and hit our heads on the car roof.

During the 1980s AIDS campaigns, calmly helping me water-fill condoms, tie them up, stick on eyes, and perch them around the house. She also got in on the practice game with carrots and bananas. For awareness. Thankfully I didn’t whip out some stick-on eyes when I first rolled one on a penis…

Happily having tribes of my friends to camp on our lounge-room floor. She loved guessing who had slept over based on the lines of squashed and battered school shoes in the front hall.

Working two jobs in the 80s – when UK interest rates jumped from eight to 13% in six month – to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table.

Sitting with me, 16, in a small english pub drinking blackberry wine. Giggling together as we wove our way unsteadily back up the hill to the place where we were staying. “I don’t think that was alcohol-free, ” she whispered. Maybe not legal. But the closeness, the peek into adulthood, the memory? Perfect.

Waking me up with a jolt the morning my A-level (HSC) exam results were due by vacuuming out her stress at some unearthly hour. When I called her with the results later she managed an english understated, “jolly good, Philly” – but the hug on the driveway as she raced home during her lunch-hour spoke volumes. Even though, all the way through, as other Mothers stressed and fretted, she simply said, “Oh, so what. You can always sit the exams again next year if you need.”

Pretending to be an uber-qualified geologist who worked on the north sea oil rigs. Just so I had a feisty, sea-battling, helicopter-flying, tertiary-qualified female role model to whom I could aspire.

Turning up at airports, alone, in her wheelchair, ready for long-haul flights to Sydney. Doing the same at Circular Quay one day. I had left her sight-seeing and was returning to fetch her after helping my cousin unpack her new flat. But no, that wouldn’t do. Too much fuss: “Oh, don’t worry about me, Philly. I’ll get the ferry over to where you are and you can pick me up the other end.”

She disembarked full of tales of the adventures of being winched – winched! – in her wheelchair up the side of the ferry because navigating the gangplank proved a bit tricky.

When I asked about the quality of the lift, she flicked her hand airily and said, “Oh, Philly, it was two planks of wood, these lovely ferry men lifted me onto it in my wheelchair, then they tied ropes at each end and pulled me up. I just had to make sure the brakes were on!”

Tracing her finger on her young grand-children’s palms, singing “round and round the garden” as they wriggled and giggled at her. Driving them along in her electric scooter. Letting them drive the electric scooter. Unsupervised.

Dancing with my husband to a Beatnicks Beatles cover band one night at a Mudgee winery. Her in her wheelchair, Big T tipping her up and back on two-wheels and spinning her about. “Oh, Tones!” she would admonish,  holding onto the sides for dear life, whilst loving every minute.

Packing up her flat in the UK after she died. “Did you ever get the Baby Alive doll?” Big T called from the other room. “What? ” I questioned. He appeared in the doorway, his hands full of my childhood letters to Santa, ‘What I did in the holidays’ kindy essays and school art Mother’s Day Cards.

So, you see? Not a bad mother. Simply a mother. Human. Tending to her life and mine with the love she had and the tools she understood. Patient and loving one day, impatient and upset another. Just like me. And you.

Happy Mothers’ Day for this weekend. Please hug your Mum if you can reach her. Send up a prayer in her absence if you can’t. Also, if you ever take a ride on a Sydney ferry, please think of Veronica, being winched up the side, sitting in her wheelchair tied to two planks of wood. She’d get a kick out of that.

 

 

My Psalm Reality TV Program

My Psalm Reality TV Program

Phil Lowe

This last week I’ve been running.  Not simply for exercise. For sanity and domestic necessity. I run because if I don’t sprint and sweat as my heart pumps and my limbs piston? Then instead it will all flow out my mouth. Every mother-trucking bit of it. Nasty.

There are days when GJ&HS are padding along with me on my runs. I share, they guide, I puff and pray, they smile serenely not having to worry about heart-rates and how sitting sedentary behind a desk all day is a silent killer.

But the days when I’m running on madness? Jesus isn’t with me at that point. Well, I don’t feel like he is, even though the SAP would assure me he is with me. At that point, as I’m breath-labouring, eyes burning, life-filled and furious, he, God and HS are jolted around my brain and heart. Makes me think about the health warning about carers who violently shake their babies. I imagine the trinity getting tossed and turned around my soul and spirit. This is no happy, martini-making cocktail jiggle.

It is throw the glass at the wall, vermouth-smearing, slash and slice and then let’s break the damn bottle on the table and brandish it by its broken neck.

So that’s why I run. The days when writing is not enough to process. When prayer and Psalms don’t match the boiling within. The days when it is only hard exercise – sprinting as fast away from those I love, hurling the grenaded mushroom cloud of my thoughts as far away from them as I can – that saves.

You see, how can I be like Jesus when all I want to do is fight? How can I walk saved when all I feel is a fierce, embittered joy about hurling words that wound? Bring on the fight, I yell, brandishing the broken-necked bottle of clever, incisive vocab…let me just stab at you and slice the arteries so you bleed out.

God and Jesus whisper to be patient and kind. The HS tries his best, but he’s been less in me than I’ve been in the world. So I rail back. “You know what? You’re not down here. You’re on some cruisy eternal clouded throne and I’m in the freaking thick of it. So I don’t want to be patient and kind. Not now. Let me just shake you for being so freaking perfect and right.”

I understand this is hardly godly and righteous. I grasp in my heart that Jesus did a great deal more for me and my brokenness to be deserving of such dysfunction in return. I get it. Whatever I’m going through cannot compare. But, right now? To borrow a U2 lyric, Calvary seems a million miles from where I am and where I need to be.

These are my eye-rolling obedience to God days. The days when I imagine the Holy Spirit getting squashed within by my violent thought earthquakes. It’s hardly a Christian outpouring of love and gratitude, is it?

Then I realise I’m living my own Psalm. Reality TV viewing of the worst order. You know when they’re all being skanky in the Big Brother house and you shrink and cringe, unable to imagine someone behaving like that? quote-Alexander-Ludwig-modern-reality-tv-sets-up-these-competitive-199350

The camera pans out and back and I cover my eyes in horror… “Oh, no. That’s… that’s…just revolting. And… Dear God, that’s me.”

There are days when we all give ourselves a pat on the back, I suspect. When we’re weren’t too bad. Behaved well. Didn’t swear. Gave up our seat on the train for the pregnant lady. Dropped off a cooked meal for the sick friend. Prayed. Read the Bible. It’s easy to be lulled into the routine of Christianity. “God, I know I’m broken, but, oh, look, I’m doing ok. Really.”

Ha. Psalm Reality TV tells me otherwise. The days when I’m boiling and sprinting and really wanting to explode with venom? Those are the days when I know just how wretched I am compared to the soul God breathed over fearfully and made wonderfully.

I can always change my reality TV channel. Well, actually, I can’t. Not on my own. When I try to sprint and offset my venom through mean exercise, that’s what I’m trying to do. Yet it never works sufficiently.

My insufficiency to go it alone leaves me like the disciple Peter, sinking into the sea rather than walking upon it. Trouble is – and isn’t that God’s largest irony, His blessing us with free will? –  I can spend time swallowing sea water, glaring at my Medusa reflection, whilst taking a perverse kind of angry joy in the storm.

I swam to the surface this morning from angry sleep ready for another sprint day. Prophetically, the alarm tone that awoke me was the song Oceans (Where Feet May Fail). 

And before the storm could swell, a small calm voice whispered: No matter how angry, no matter how broken, no matter how hideous your reality TV Psalm behaviour is…no matter.

Psalm 40 flowed into my head.

Be pleased to save me, Lord;
    come quickly, Lord, to help me.

Those lines are not asked politely.  It’s a demand that speaks to the consistency of God’s character. I’ve been in the pit before, You drew me up before and I can trust you will do it again. In a ‘right now, I can’t get there fast enough to help you, and I’ll break every speed limit to reach you,’ sort of way.

I surfaced, spluttering metaphorical seawater. And there Jesus was, next to the bed, reaching out his hand and catching me up.

“You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?”

On a scale of 1-10, will you get to heaven?

On a scale of 1-10, will you get to heaven?

Phil Lowe

I was asked this question. From the stage, during a conference. Where one is no, and ten is absolutely. I answered, from my table, without even thinking, “Hell, yes. I’m a ten. Abso-freakin’-lutely.”

Well, let’s just say some crickets chirped.

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Dudley Moore and Bo Derek in ’10’. Image courtesy of grouchoreviews.com

There were some hefty UHT* Christians in the room too.

The question was posed of all of us, with the scenario explained that – when first discussed in a different location – there were people – also Christians – answering four, seven, six etc.

Now, I’m kind of a Christian newbie and I don’t want to be wagging my finger at all the UHTers, but why weren’t there more loud affirmatives of “TEN!” echoing around the room?

Before I became a Christian, there was a standing joke amongst our good friends that I was deserving of a Sainthood and would absolutely get to heaven by virtue of the craziness I put up with being married to Big T. But of course that’s nonsense.

I’m going to heaven because I’m head-over-heels with the Jesus fella and know and trust he’s done all that needs to be done. Grace. Saved. Eternal Life.

Jesus is my assurance because, God knows, I’d be deep in the negative numbers otherwise.

He delivers me the perfect ten. No doubt.

The same day, the conference also asked about revitalising brand Christian. For me, brand Christian is a little too synonymous with institutional church and it hasn’t fared well of late. Less than 8% of Australians attend church regularly, even though more identify as Christian. With those sort of response rates, I’d say brand Christian has had a bit of a battering.

But brand Jesus? Well, you’ve got to be brave to promote brand Jesus. But what a brand. He’s Coke (Live Life), Nike (Just Do It),  Apple (Think Different) L’Oreal (You’re Worth It) and De Beers (A diamond is forever) rolled into one eternal package. With his sort of unique selling point, Jesus ought to fly off the shelves.

Yet when some of his top customer service representatives,  marketing team and sales guns are all in a room and they take a moment to wonder at their score rather than yelling a heartfelt, “TEN!” to this blog’s headline?

Then I’m a little worried about brand Jesus.

How can others trust in his message, if his ‘brand managers’ aren’t trusting it fully themselves? If assurance of Jesus’ grace isn’t a ten in every single Christian heart, then the message gets diluted. And misses it mark.

God didn’t just want to save us through Jesus. He wanted us to know it. Every single day. To taste it, sing it, embrace it, be joyful about it and share it. He left His Spirit with us so we can yell ‘Ten!’ over and over.

We have assurance. And certainty. Don’t take my word for it. Take His.

..and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. – 1 John 2:2.

The Perfect Ten.

 

 

Glossary of Terms

*  UHT – treading this Christian path a long, longer life than I.