Message from Tim

What is truth?

‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.’ So read the American Declaration of Independence. They are grand-sounding words, that are hard to interpret and live out in practice. If these things are self-evidently true, how come America has a history of slavery and of racial discrimination? Over the nineteenth century the right to life became increasingly focused on the still controversial question of whether or not abortion should be forbidden by law. Today the imposition of Covid restrictions has temporarily deprived millions of their right to liberty. And the pursuit of happiness is all very well, but what happens when my happiness entails someone else’s misery? Are these truths as self-evident as they first appear?

And what about us as Christians? Is there any aspect of our Christian faith that is self-evidently true, that is so obvious that it requires neither proof nor explanation? Is there anything we can take for granted? The statement that, ‘God is love’ may sound simple enough, but there may be times when we struggle to believe it, so perhaps it is not a self-evident truth. What we believe needs to be thought through very carefully.

Yet faith does not have to be complicated: it is enough to have a ‘simple trust like theirs who heard beside the Syrian sea the gracious calling of the Lord’. At that point the first disciples followed Jesus without really understanding who he was. Faith was a response from the heart to Jesus’ word, without the need to give intellectual assent to the mind-bending Christological definitions of the Chalcedonian Creed. We are saved by grace, through faith, and not by our level of theological comprehension, which is just as well! It is enough to be able to sing, ‘Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.’

Yet it is natural and right that faith should also seek understanding and that it should grow and develop in the process. I became a Christian more than 40 years ago and not many of the clothes I wore then would fit me now. I have changed, and my faith has changed as well. Working through those changes has sometimes been difficult. God has not changed, but my understanding of him has grown and developed over the years, and so has my faith in him. Indeed, if my understanding and faith had not grown and developed over the years, they would be of little service to me now, because they would not fit who I have become.

One of the great things about Brighton Road is that ours is a church which encourages people to think things through and to find a faith that fits them. We do not expect or require uniformity, but we do want everyone to find a faith that they can hold personally, with authenticity. Maybe your faith has been changing quite drastically over the past year as you have had more time and space to ponder and reflect and question. That is a challenging, but worthwhile process, and one of which you should not be afraid. A child’s first train-set will usually be a simple oval; in time, that initial layout is dismantled and replaced with something more complicated. Sometimes faith grows through a similar process of dismantling and reassembling, questioning truths that maybe once we accepted as self-evident and replacing them with a deeper understanding. Brighton Road is a safe place to figure out what we believe, and I hope you can join with me in thanking God for that.