Questions.

Simple questions, but are the answers straightforward?

Should faith groups consciously use the provision of foodbanks and other means of alleviating poverty as opportunities for evangelism?  

A follow-up question.  In tackling issues of social justice: marginalisation, discrimination, exclusion,  racism etc should faith groups concentrate solely on the issues to the exclusion of evangelism?

One more question.  In providing pastoral support to an individual should the support relate to the issue in hand without recourse to any evangelistic input?

I ask these questions as there is debate concerning how churches should engage in social issues/justice. Is the provision and campaigning a launchpad for evangelism?  Or is the provision self-standing: following the teaching and actions attributed to Jesus by the authors of the synoptic gospels? In other words: why do churches engage in tackling social issues, what is the motivation behind it? 

Below is an article by Jon Swales.  Excellent.  Consider in the context of the questions asked above. 

'Throughout his earthly ministry, Jesus did not simply describe the Kingdom of God—he enacted it. He preached, “The Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the good news,” and then he lived it: healing the sick, forgiving sin, welcoming the overlooked, confronting what dehumanises, and laying down his life in self-giving love. 

This Kingdom—the reign of God—is not removed from the real world. It presses into it. It speaks into how we order our common life—socially, politically, economically, standing over and against systems that crush and exclude, and gathering a people shaped by mercy, justice, and compassion. 

Jesus has inaugurated this Kingdom and will bring it to completion—a world without domination, without injustice, without tears, where there is a tree whose leaves are for the healing of the nations. But for now, we live in the tension of the now and not yet, and in that tension, allegiance to Jesus is worked out in the real.

There is something in Jesus’ ministry that is often softened, or quietly set aside. He did not only comfort the poor; he also confronted the accumulation of wealth. In his opening sermon—the Nazareth manifesto—Jesus reaches back to Jubilee, not as metaphor but as memory: debts released, land restored, lives reset—a loosening of the grip of accumulation so that the poor might breathe again. 

This thread does not sit at the edges of his teaching; it runs through it.

'Blessed are the poor.' 'Woe to you who are rich.' The man building bigger barns while others go without, the rich man stepping over Lazarus at the gate, the call to relinquish, to give, to release. 

This is not a side note in the Gospel; it is part of its centre of gravity.

To be clear, this is not an argument against profit, nor against differences in pay that reflect responsibility, skill, or risk. It is a question of scale. At what point does the gap become so wide that it is no longer incidental, but revealing? At what point does it begin to tell the truth about what we value—and who we do not? We tend to avoid that question, because once you see it clearly, it is difficult to unsee.

Take something ordinary. I saw a post recently about someone going into a supermarket, filling a basket, walking out without paying, and then taking it all straight to a food bank before handing themselves in at a police station. I’m not sure what to do with that, if I’m honest. I’m not against protest, and there are times when civil disobedience matters, but this kind of thing doesn’t quite sit right with me. Still, it made me stop and look again.

It got me thinking about supermarkets—Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s—the kind of places most of us move through every week without really thinking about how they are put together. If you look into it even a little, the gap is hard to ignore. Someone on a checkout might be earning £13 or £14 an hour. It is steady work, necessary work—the kind that kept things going when everything else slowed. And yet it is not uncommon for people in those roles to rely on Universal Credit just to make it through the month. Some will visit a food bank; they don’t always say they’re going—sometimes it just becomes another errand you don’t explain. A person can spend an entire afternoon scanning a week’s worth of food for others—the steady beep, item after item—and still go home unsure how they will pay for their own.

Working—and still not enough.

Then you look at the other end. Tesco’s CEO was paid about £9.9 million last year, and Sainsbury’s CEO around £4.9 million—figures you almost read twice just to be sure. Tesco’s own reporting puts the pay ratio at roughly 400:1, which is difficult to picture in any meaningful way, but it effectively means a CEO can earn in a year what a typical worker would not earn across a lifetime, or several. The issue is not that these roles are identical; they are not. The issue is the distance between them. 

Because beyond a certain point, disparity does more than differentiate—it distorts. It begins to signal whose contribution really counts, and whose does not, quietly shaping our sense of what is normal.

And then there is profit. Tesco made around £2.8 billion in operating profit last year, and Sainsbury’s just under £1 billion. These are large, successful businesses doing what they are designed to do. But set alongside that is something harder to ignore. The Trussell Trust distributed just over 3.1 million emergency food parcels in 2023/24—the highest number on record, with many going to families with children. More and more, those needing this support are in work.

That is the part that lingers.

Not just poverty, but in-work poverty—people earning, contributing, showing up, and still not quite managing to get by. You begin to notice the overlap: the same towns, the same high streets, supermarkets that are busy and functioning, and nearby—often closer than you’d think—food banks trying to keep pace with demand. I don’t think profit, in itself, is the issue. But when profits are measured in billions, and at the same time millions of food parcels are being handed out, it becomes difficult to pretend those realities sit easily together.

Or perhaps more honestly, that they do—and that’s the problem.

Jesus spoke into a world marked by inequality too. The structures were different, but the patterns are familiar: wealth concentrated among elites—landowners, tax collectors, those aligned with imperial power—while many lived close to the edge, vulnerable to debt, loss, and hunger. Into that world, Jesus speaks plainly. He names the poor as blessed, warns the rich, and imagines an economy shaped not by endless accumulation but by release, restoration, and enough.

When we look at our own world, the parallels are difficult to ignore. The language has changed and the mechanisms are more complex, but the gap remains—and in many places it is widening. In the UK, we have normalised a quiet contradiction: people in work who are still poor, food banks woven into the fabric of communities, hardship that rarely makes headlines but is felt in kitchens, in compromises, in sleepless nights. Alongside this sits extraordinary accumulation at the top. Again, the question is not whether business, enterprise, or reward are good—they can be—but whether the scale of inequality we are living with can be squared with the Kingdom that Jesus announces.

At a certain point, it is not simply a tension to manage.

It is a contradiction to face.

This is not separate from the wider crisis we are living through. The same patterns—accumulation without limit, growth without restraint—are shaping not only our economies but our relationship with the earth itself. We are already living with the consequences: floods, fires, instability. And again, it is the poorest who bear the heaviest weight, those with the least margin absorbing the greatest shock.

So the question returns—not as abstraction, but as invitation. What does it mean to take Jesus seriously here—not as an idea or a slogan, but as Lord? 

It begins with seeing clearly, refusing to look away from the scale of inequality we have learned to call normal. It means allowing the words of Jesus to land with their full weight, even where they unsettle us. And then, in ways both small and costly—and sometimes inconvenient in ways we would rather avoid—it means learning to live otherwise: with generosity that interrupts accumulation, with attention to those being edged out, with communities that measure worth differently.

Because we are not neutral in this.

We are being formed—by the market, or by the Kingdom.'

Rev'd Jon Swales

 

Reconstruction: building afresh

Below is an article written in 2024 by the Revd. Jon Swales, Team Vicar at St. George's Church, Leeds and the Founder of Lighthouse West Yorkshire.  I commend it to you.  It brings out with clarity the important point that deconstruction is not a negative dead end.   It is, for many, the precursor to a life following the teaching and actions ascribed to Jesus by the authors of the synoptic gospels.

                             -----------

Deconstruction isn't merely a buzzword; it's a profound existential journey that countless souls embark upon. It's about shedding the old, the familiar, the once-unchallenged bastions of theological certainty. We're talking about those systems and structures that held us tight, promising safety and solace in a world teeming with uncertainties. But now, they lie discarded, their foundations cracked under the weight of relentless questioning.

For many of us, it wasn't just a matter of intellectual curiosity; it was a soul-deep reckoning. The neatly packaged doctrines, the tidy theological explanations—they simply couldn't bear the weight of our doubts and dilemmas. We found ourselves wrestling with the thorniest of questions, questions that refused to be silenced by pat answers.

Do we truly believe in a hell where souls suffer for eternity in torment? Can we reconcile an all-powerful, all-loving God with the staggering injustice and suffering that pervade our world? And what about scripture—can we still call it God's word when it recounts tales of divine commands to annihilate entire populations? In the face of climate breakdown, why is the church complicit by silence and lifestyle in unrestrained capitalism and consumerism?

But it's not just about theology; it's about the lived experience of faith. It's about the glaring gaps between the ideals preached from pulpits and the harsh realities we encounter in our spiritual leaders and communities. For some, it's the failure of the church to embody the radical compassion of Jesus. It's the wounds inflicted by those that were meant to offer healing and hope.

In the midst of this upheaval, deconstruction becomes a deeply personal journey. For some, it's a process of refinement, of sifting through the rubble of our beliefs to uncover something truer, something more authentic. Yet, for others, it's also a raw and messy ordeal—a wrecking ball that shatters the carefully constructed edifices of our souls.

But amidst the refinement and the rubble, there's also possibility—the chance to rebuild, to reimagine, to rediscover faith in its most honest and unadorned form. Deconstruction isn't just about tearing down; it's about making space for something new to emerge, something more resilient, more compassionate, more true.

In my journey of deconstruction, I have found life-giving strength in the person and work of Jesus. He, in his beauty and grace, is my compass, guide, and consolation. The church may fail, doctrines once concrete dogma are now challenged and malleable, but Christ is compelling.

Another way of putting this is that love alone is credible and offers a beauty that leads us onwards . My former beliefs and dogma have been weighed in the scales and found wanting, but love is my journey, my guide and my destination. Christ, the one who is love, holds my affection, and he, praise God, holds me.

- Jon Swales 2024

the role of scripture

Below is an article by Jim Palmer.  I concur with his conclusion.

Jim Palmer 

People will often say, “My authority is the Bible.”

The reality is usually more complicated. Their authority is rarely the Bible alone. It is the Bible as interpreted through the theological tradition, community, and assumptions that formed them.

There has never been a singular, universally accepted interpretation of the Bible. Throughout Christian history, believers have disagreed about nearly every major doctrine associated with the faith. Christians have debated the nature of Jesus, the character of God, the reality of hell, the meaning of salvation, the doctrine of original sin, the Trinity, free will, predestination, and countless other theological questions. 

The idea that there exists a timeless and universally recognized form of “Biblical Christianity” becomes difficult to sustain once one becomes familiar with the history of Christian thought.

What one community regards as biblical truth, another regards as error. What one denomination treats as essential doctrine, another dismisses as theological speculation. The text has remained relatively stable. The interpretations have not.

This should not surprise us. Every act of interpretation is shaped long before a person opens a sacred text. Readers bring assumptions about what the Bible is, what kind of authority it possesses, and how it should be read. Some approach scripture as literal history. Others see myth, metaphor, poetry, and symbol. Some seek certainty. Others seek wisdom. Some welcome revision in light of new information, while others regard changing one's mind as a threat to faith itself. The text never arrives alone. Neither does the reader.

What many people fail to recognize is that interpretation is not something that happens after reading the Bible. Interpretation begins before reading the Bible. The lens precedes the reading. The framework precedes the conclusion.

This is why appeals to “the Bible clearly teaches” don't work. What seems clear to one person isn't to someone standing within a different theological tradition. Human beings have a remarkable tendency to mistake their interpretation of reality for reality itself. Religion is no exception.

Ironically, Jesus appears to have understood this dynamic better than many of his followers.

The religious culture in which Jesus lived was deeply anchored in sacred texts and authoritative interpretations. Yet Jesus rarely taught through systematic theology. He taught through stories, images, parables, questions, and encounters drawn from ordinary life.

Again and again, his sharpest criticisms were aimed not at scripture itself but at those who had become trapped within their interpretations of scripture. The issue was not the text itself but the assumption that possessing the text was equivalent to possessing truth.

This helps illuminate one of the most striking statements attributed to him: “You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life, but you refuse to come to me to have life.”

The criticism remains relevant. A sacred text can become a substitute for the reality toward which it points. A map can become more important than the territory. A finger can become more important than the moon. A book can become more important than life itself.

This is the danger of bibliolatry: mistaking a witness to reality for reality itself.

Viewed differently, the Bible becomes far more interesting than either its fundamentalist defenders or its dismissive critics often acknowledge. It is not a systematic theology. It is not a doctrinal handbook. It is a sprawling literary anthology composed over many centuries by numerous authors wrestling with the deepest questions human beings have ever asked.

Across its many voices, the Bible wrestles with the enduring questions of human existence: suffering, meaning, justice, power, love, mortality, transcendence, and the challenge of how to live.

The Bible contains poetry, myth, history, wisdom literature, prophecy, political critique, letters, visions, and stories. It preserves humanity at its noblest and humanity at its most destructive. It contains beauty, violence, compassion, tribalism, liberation, oppression, wisdom, and folly. Like humanity itself, it is complicated.

Many modern critics assume the Bible deserves ridicule because some readers insist that every story must be interpreted literally. Yet this criticism often grants fundamentalism the very assumption it seeks to challenge. The deeper question is not whether Jonah was literally swallowed by a fish. The deeper question is why a story about resistance, avoidance, transformation, and reluctant responsibility continues to resonate thousands of years later.

The enduring power of these stories may lie less in their factual status than in their ability to illuminate dimensions of human experience that remain recognizable across cultures and generations.

Yet even if one grants all of this, the Bible cannot function as the ultimate authority for a human life. No description can fully contain reality. No formulation can exhaust truth. No sacred text can relieve us of the responsibility of direct encounter.

SSacred texts can inform us. They can challenge us. They can inspire us. They can deepen our understanding. But they cannot do our seeing for us.

At some point every person must decide whether authority resides primarily in inherited interpretations or in the difficult and ongoing work of direct engagement with reality itself.

The deepest authority is not found in a text, a tradition, an institution, or an expert. It emerges through conscience, awareness, experience, discernment, and an ever-deepening relationship with reality.

Sacred texts may accompany that journey.

They may illuminate it.

They may enrich it.

But they cannot live it for us.

Sooner or later, each of us must decide whether we will merely inherit our understanding of reality or participate in discovering it for ourselves.

Jim Palmer

Prophetic Outsider

I am an Anglican in a diocese mostly conservative evangelical in its theological outlook. This makes me feel I am an outsider as I advance ideas from radical, liberal, liberation, progressive, postmodern and deconstructivist perspectives. The ideas I espouse have been described as prophetic, or was that pathetic?

I have been an outsider since I commenced my studies at secondary school and this  continued through university and employment in education and local government, my involvement in local politics and my relationship with organised religion.  It is as though I have been looking in, participating, but distant.  This has nothing to do with shyness or ability to relate to people.  Rather, it is my reluctance to sign up unreservedly to the ethos of an  organisation, whether it be an education establishment, a council, a political party or a church

This article contains little, probably nothing that is original. It is commentary and observation. It is emphasised that I am not a theologian, my discipline is law, although I did manage to scrape a diploma in theology awarded by a prestigious university

I choose to seek to follow in the way of Jesus, to follow and apply his teaching, to follow and act like him: above all to live out his statement to love our neighbour. In other words how I relate and with others to the principle of love, to the concept of inclusion, to the elimination of poverty. I have no desire to follow church doctrine, dogma, or tradition, or be bound by literal interpretation of scripture.

The life, teaching and actions attributed to Jesus in the synoptic gospels are the product of multiple edits of material, mostly oral tradition. They are an human construct: not given or inspired by an unknown metaphysical 'entity'. They act as a guide to assist us on our journey to treat all people equally: they are not a user manual to be pored over and applied literally.

To follow Jesus in word and deed requires an individual to think and engage in actions motivated by loving-kindness. Loving-kindness is not an attribute only of Christians: it is recognisable in other faiths and in individuals of a secular disposition. Loving-kindness is unconditional love rooted in the concept of the interconnectedness of all people. As a concept it is closely related to love your neighbour and the Golden Rule: treat others as you would want to be treated. It is an attitude of mind that translates into action: to assist individuals at point of need and to campaign for social justice. Christians do not have a monopoly of the principle 'love your neighbour'.  Worldwide similar expressions of desired behaviour are to be found in a broad range of faiths, as well as in the secular world. The Golden Rule, promotes a high standard of ethical behaviour.  It is a consequence of my background, experience etc that I approach the Golden Rule from a Christian perspective.

There was a period when I was divorced, penniless, homeless, unemployed and lonely. The effect on me was one of despondency bordering on depression. Live for today and dread what tomorrow might bring. This experience brought home to me the inadeqacy, indeed downright failure, of the statutory sector to provide meaningful assistance at my point of need. Also it highlighted the importance of systemic change to overcome the social injustice ruining the lives of so many individuals. The help I did receive came from the voluntary sector, from secular and faith charities, importantly from individuals working on a paid or voluntary basis for these organisations.

During this time I witnessed, indeed was a member of, a community in an area of multiple deprivation. Poor housing, sink schools, inadequate health facllities, woeful public transport, and grinding poverty, all with no hope of improvement. My response initially was to engage in local politics. However it was obvious very quickly that local government moves very slowly and is constrained severely by central government fiscal, economic and social policies.

It was at this juncture I became involved with an umbrella church organisation promoting social responsibility. Over a long period the organisation supported faith groups engaged in meeting the immediate needs of individuals: food, shelter, clothing, debt advice, as well as campaigning for a credit union and engaging in the development of the local community plan. The activities of the organisation were underpinned by the theological imperative to love your neighbour and reference to Old and New Testament verses expressing the necessity of helping people at point of need and  also for systemic change to achieve social justice.

My current thinking has ingredients from inter alia, humanism, existentialism, postmodernism, radical, liberal, progressive, liberation and deconstructivist theology. I describe it as a melange (or should it read 'mess'?).  My ideas are influenced by non theological factors. Politically I subscribe to democratic socialism. Earlier I referred to my  chaotic personal life of many years ago: divorce, destitution, sofa-surfing homelessness, and unemployment: all concurrently.  These experiences still deeply influence my actions and my political and theological opinions.  

We should escape from a theological silo mentality  by seeking to understand interactions between religion, politics, economics, sociology, ethics, law, environment etc.  Theology should not be about doctrine, dogma creeds and biblical interpretation to the exclusion of  understanding and application of said to the realities of life for individuals, a reality shaped by myriad factors.  We can apply  theological ideas without recourse, reliance, or reference to scripture interpretation, church doctrine, dogma or creeds.  We do not need guardians, sentries or gatekeepers of church or academia to understand and apply our theological ideas.  It is for us, and us alone, to determine the relationship of theological concepts to our own lives and how our lives affect our theology.  The relationship is symbiotic.  It must be remembered that our lives are shaped by our experience, reason, tradition, relationships, work, poverty, family, political opinions etc and these factors impinge of our thoughts and actions, theological and otherwise, in many instances being what Oliver Wendell Holmes called inarticulate major premises.

If there is an entity we name as 'God' it is beyond human imagination, incapable of definition or description or symbolism. Judaic and christian scripture perceives God as being transcendent, supernatural, metaphysical and anthropomorphic.  Human supposition is opinion, not fact.  The scriptures are not the divine outpourings of God.  Marcus J  Borg states it well: 

 'I let go of the notion that the Bible is a divine product. I learned that it is a human cultural product, the product of two ancient communities, biblical Israel and early Christianity. As such, it contained their understandings and affirmations, statements not coming directly or somewhat directly from God.....I realised that whatever "divine revelation" and the "inspiration of the Bible" meant (if they meant anything), they did not mean that the Bible was a divine product with divine authority.'

Colin Coward expresses brilliantly how the gospels came into being, how they are used by the Church of England and argues for fundamental change in attitude:

 'Reflecting on the Holy Week and Easter stories over the past weekend, I have done so not thinking or believing that the Gospels are verbatim accounts given by, let alone written by those who witnessed these events. They are edited and re-edited stories based on oral accounts that had been told and retold and embroidered by the Jesus-followers, the first witnesses, the early Christian gatherings, and those who subsequently joined the Jesus-centred communities. To the oral accounts that formed the basis of the Gospels were added stories told to and re-told and experienced and embroidered by Paul (with the help of Luke).

Belief is a dilemma for me because I do not believe in what is rehearsed in church every Sunday and maintained by the authority of the institution as adequately representing an adequate vision of the Jesus who transforms life and culture. The Gospels and Acts and the history books of the Hebrew scriptures are not accurate, historical accounts of the events and lives they describe. History never is accurate but always a personal view and interpretation. The contemporary “traditional, orthodox, Biblical” ways of our religious systems do not, for me, embrace the essence and heart of Jesus’ life and teachings. We live with ideas about God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit that are human interpretations of Jesus’ teachings and essence. All knowledge is developed and communicated through the medium of human understanding. Any distortion or misunderstanding of the teachings of Jesus is the result of human failure to comprehend. Throughout my life I have been trying to disentangle the ingredients of distortion and error from healthier wisdom and truth, trying to be more aware of and recapture and synthesise the essence of a holy, sacred, incarnated transformational wisdom that helps us embrace the essence of life in all its fulness.

Whether we are aware or not, all of us are dealing with myths and the development of human interpretations and teachings and corruptions of the divine human we worship as Son of God.

We continue to have great difficulty in distinguishing the unhealthy divine attributions that are fundamental corruptions of Jesus’ life and teachings from the Jesus’ essence that is the catalyst for healthy, creative consciousness that make life in all its fulness into real presence.'

It really does not matter if Jesus was an actual person. What does matter is the principle of love and how we in the twenty-first century CE interpret that principle for the future. Of course the Sermon on the Mount and the parables assist us in our understanding and application of the corpus of statements attributed to Jesus. Borg puts it well:

'Properly understood the Bible is a potential ally to the progressive Christian passion for transformation of ourselves and the world. It is our great heritage. Along with Jesus, to whom it is subordinate, it is our greatest treasure.'

God it is beyond description, it is of our imagination and searching for explanation of how the universe came into existence, what it is and our place in it. Humanity's enquiry has elicited some understanding of the universe but can we comprehend its vastness? I cannot even begin to provide an answer to the God question. I know my mortality: soon enough I shall die,  and then what?  

Don Cupitt expressed the following opinion:

You can't slip a knife between them  If you love your fellow human being, you know God and are in God, whereas if you don't love, you don't know God.  The word God doesn't designate a distinct metaphysical being; it is simply Love's name. 

My understanding of what it means to hold to Christian belief has moved away from unquestioning acceptance of church creeds, doctrine and dogma. I do not regard scripture as literally the word of God, nor the result of God's inspiration, and therefore not to be challenged.  Scripture, creeds, doctrine and dogma are human creations in their entireties and not the result of activity by metaphysical or anthropomorphic sources. 

The bible is not a statement of rules set out by an omnipresent god 'out there' that have to be followed if we are to receive the reward of eternal life.   It sets out the ideas of authors over 2000 years ago.  The world has moved on.  Christian belief evolves: it is not set in stone by manuscripts written long ago.  But we should not consign the bible to the scrapheap.  It is a valuable source and resource of concepts. Yet we need to remember that it is of human origin and not to be cloaked with the veneer of the divine.

It is my perception that we have allowed ourselves to be hemmed in by church doctrine and dogma and  by scripture.  No matter what method of biblical interpretation is used: literal, liberal, historical, progressive etc, we permit our ideas to be contained and constrained within the parameters or envelope of scripture. It is as though our understanding of God's purpose is fixed in work composed in a distant past

Surely we can do better than be boxed in by the gatekeepers and guardians of 'the truth'?  We can be inspired by concepts attributed by the authors of the synoptic gospels to a person we know as Jesus, but we need to appreciate that the concepts are subjective and capable of varied interpretations, not objective unchangeable 'truth'.  Flexibility, not rigidity, is the order of the day.

You might think I am a humanist, or even an atheist, in expressing the opinions very briefly outlined above.  I reject both appellations. It is my opinion that inherent within each of us is the power to love: to love our neighbour.  So I argue love is God within us, it is our task to tease out what that means.  Jesus points the way, but his is not the final nor only word.  Our understanding of what it is to love should not be bound by adherence, however interpreted, to scripture. It is not a user manual.  Yes, scripture may assist our use of reason, our understanding, and our actions; it must not be used to prescribe or proscribe how we apply the principle of love your neighbour.  

So I turn from the unknown and direct my energies to consideration of and campaigning on concrete issues: combating poverty, deprivation, racism, misogyny, marginalisation, discrimination and exclusion, not only at point of need but also by campaigning for systemic change to achieve social justice. In this endeavour the way of life concepts attributed to Jesus in the synoptic gospels together with ideas developed by Liberation Theology theologians such as Gustavo Gutiérrez and Jurgen Moltmann have been the major influences on my thinking and action.

I enjoy attending Choral Evensong.

The Church of England Book of Common Prayer (BCP) contains the service of Evening Prayer.  Following the reading from the Old Testament the congregation say or sing Magnificat taken from Luke 1: 46-55.  

The BCP states verses 52-53 as follows:

He hath put down the mighty from their seat: and exalted the humble and meek.

He hath filled the hungry with good things: and the rich he hath sent empty away.

Congregations say or sing these words, but do many understand the principles behind them?  How do we, of fail to, apply them in the present to individuals and society?  How do we understand them through the lens of love? We  should understand them as an illustration of love by applying our intelligence and power of reason, not by a rigid, literal, limiting interpretion of individual words.

I do not claim to be a Christian.  Rather, I seek to follow the teaching attributed to Jesus by the authors of the synoptic gospels.  My reading of them is heavily influenced by postmodernism, with particular regard to the ideas formulated by Jacques Derrida.

The synoptic gospels were written many years after the death of Jesus.  No tape-recorders or social media to record verbatim the words he spoke. Instead we have the mysterious 'Q' source, myths, stories, customs handed down from generation to generation to which has to be added the interpretation of this body of information  by the authors and the purpose each of the them had in mind for the material.  Not the firmest foundation on which to develop a theology based on the bible being the inerrant word of God, to be understood and applied literally. 

To understand the reason why Jesus was crucified by the Roman authority in Palestine it is important to tease out why Jesus was perceived to be a political threat to the established  order.  Rome was an occupying power.  It had no problem with conquered nations practicising there indigenous religion and customs, Roman law was the preserve of Roman citizens.  However Rome would not countenance threats to its authority and this is precisely what Jesus was perceived as doing.  On Palm Sunday Jesus rode into Jerusalem to wide acclaim: hosanna they cried.  Here was an existential threat to Roman rule in Palestine, the long-awaited and prophesied servant of God, fomenting an uprising,  who would bring about Jewish independence and sovereignty. The crime was sedition and crucifixion the penalty.

The Roman authority was aided and abetted by the Jewish religious leadership. Jesus had explained on numerous occasions the failure of religious leaders to apply concepts of love and justice as set out in Hebrew scripture.  His elimination would dispose of a threat to their authority.  Yes, Jesus was political, perceived to be a major threat to the stability of the political and religious establishments.  He had to go.

There was a further factor in play:  Jesus is portrayed by the synoptic gospel authors as having challenged economic and social orders, which of course, had political implications.  Hebrew scripture has many exhortations relating to caring for the poor and for systemic change to achieve social justice.  These themes continue in the synoptic gospels: the Sermon on the Mount, the Magnificat, the parables, the commandment to love your neighbour as yourself and following Jesus to bring heaven on earth.  All were threats to the established faith, political and social orders and hierarchies.  They had a political dimension as statements of the need for fundamental change in the ordering of society.

Those of us who have a progressive/liberation theology mindset take these teachings attributed to Jesus and seek to apply the concepts to today's societies.  But, the danger is that we may take a patronising or paternalitic approach, we may act as gatekeepers or guardians of the 'truth'.  In other words our approach often is deductive. Instead we need to take an inductive approach: ask the marginalised, poor and excluded what the teaching of Jesus means to them: not tell them what it means for them. 

The concepts attributed to Jesus by the authors of the synoptic gospels draw on a rich vein of social concern to be discerned in Jewish scripture appropriated to Christianity as the Old Testament.  It is concern for the poor, the marginalised, the discriminated against, the excluded.  It is a call not only to help at point of need but also to change societal structures to overcome the issues.  The teaching of Jesus is not a manual for applying a set of rules: it is a collection of broad principles capable of evolving and developing to meet the challenges of today's society.

To challenge the status quo, to demand change is to challenge  society's priorities, prejudices, allocation of resources.  It is a challenge to the political process, to faith, economic and social structures.  The Jesus as portrayed by the authors of the synoptic gospels delivered a radical political message.  

As his followers so should we.  

Postscript 

My attention has been drawn to the following article.  

Palmer on Russell

 

Bertrand Russell was one of the twentieth century's most influential critics of religion. He rejected dogma, challenged religious authority, and regarded many traditional beliefs as obstacles to human freedom and intellectual honesty. 

Yet in one remarkable passage, he offered a vision of what religion might become if it abandoned fear, submission, and prohibition in favor of courage, creativity, and human flourishing. More than a century later, his challenge remains as provocative as ever.

Russell wrote: 

“If a religious view of life and the world is ever to reconquer the thoughts and feelings of free-minded men and women, much that we are accustomed to associate with religion will have to be discarded. The first and greatest change that is required is to establish a morality of initiative, not a morality of submission, a morality of hope rather than fear, of things to be done rather than of things to be left undone. It is not the whole duty of man to slip through the world so as to escape the wrath of God. The world is our world, and it rests with us to make it a heaven or a hell. The power is ours, and the kingdom and the glory would be ours also if we had courage and insight to create them. The religious life that we must seek will not be one of occasional solemnity and superstitious prohibitions, it will not be sad or ascetic, it will concern itself little with rules of conduct. It will be inspired by a vision of what human life may be, and will be happy with the joy of creation, living in a large free world of initiative and hope. It will love mankind, not for what they are to the outward eye, but for what imagination shows that they have it in them to become. It will not readily condemn, but it will give praise to positive achievement rather than negative sinlessness, to the joy of life, the quick affection, the creative insight, by which the world may grow young and beautiful and filled with vigor.” 

First, Russell argued that religion should cultivate initiative rather than submission. Too often, religion has encouraged people to obey, conform, and defer to authority. Russell believed that a mature spiritual life should instead encourage human beings to think, create, and take responsibility for shaping the world. A religion that treats obedience as the highest virtue inevitably trains people to look outside themselves for permission to live.

Second, he believed morality should be grounded in hope rather than fear. Many religious systems have relied heavily on fear: fear of punishment, fear of sin, fear of divine judgment. Russell envisioned a moral framework motivated by the possibility of creating something better rather than avoiding something worse. Fear may produce compliance, but it rarely produces wisdom, courage, or genuine moral maturity.

Third, Russell shifted the focus from prohibition to participation. Much of traditional morality has been organized around avoidance: don't do this, don't think that, don't cross this line. Russell regarded such an approach as fundamentally inadequate. The measure of a life is not how successfully it avoids wrongdoing but what it contributes to the world. A person can spend an entire lifetime staying out of trouble and leave nothing behind except a record of cautious compliance.

Fourth, Russell rejected the idea that the purpose of life is simply to escape divine wrath or secure a place in the afterlife. The world, he argued, is our responsibility. Whether it becomes more humane or more destructive depends largely upon human courage, wisdom, and imagination. Any worldview that prioritizes the next world over this one risks becoming indifferent to suffering, injustice, and human flourishing here and now.

Fifth, he believed religion should inspire engagement with life rather than withdrawal from it. Spirituality need not be gloomy, ascetic, or obsessed with rule-keeping. It can be joyful, creative, and deeply connected to the realities of ordinary human existence. Russell was challenging the longstanding assumption that holiness requires distance from life rather than deeper participation in it.

Sixth, Russell emphasized human potential. He suggested that we should learn to see people not merely as they are but as they might become. The task is not endless condemnation but the cultivation of conditions in which growth, creativity, and human flourishing can occur. Communities that define people primarily by their failures rarely help them become anything greater than those failures.

Finally, he argued that positive achievement matters more than negative sinlessness. A life defined solely by avoiding mistakes is too small. The qualities that renew the world are courage, affection, imagination, creativity, and the willingness to participate fully in life. History is not shaped by those who merely avoided wrongdoing. It is shaped by those willing to risk failure in the service of creating something new.

Beneath Russell's critique lies a deeper question: what kind of human beings are our belief systems producing? Do they cultivate courage, imagination, responsibility, and participation, or do they cultivate dependence, conformity, and fear? Russell's concern was never simply whether religion was true. Russell's concern was never simply whether religion was true. His concern was whether religion was helping people become more fully human.

Jim Palmer