Scribbling Theology:

Christian Spirituality & Thought
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    • Scribbling Journal: Entry 3

      Posted at 11:47 am by Camaron G. W. Smith, on December 17, 2022

      Tis the season…


      A book in the bible I often return to is Ecclesiastes. A particular passage that comes to mind is:
      There is a time for everything,
      and a season for every activity under the heavens:
      a time to be born and a time to die,
      a time to plant and a time to uproot,
      a time to kill and a time to heal,
      a time to tear down and a time to build,
      a time to weep and a time to laugh,
      a time to mourn and a time to dance,
      a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
      a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
      a time to search and a time to give up,
      a time to keep and a time to throw away,
      a time to tear and a time to mend,
      a time to be silent and a time to speak,
      a time to love and a time to hate,
      a time for war and a time for peace.


      The funny thing about this time of year is that Christmas confuses the seasons and the times. It is far flung from the sacred holy day it once was. Christmas has become a bubbling cauldron of consumerism, suicide, crippling debt, and anxiety with a pinch of hope, a sprinkle of love, and a snifter of joy.


      For me, Christmas has always been about presents. As a child, I would often wake up when it was still dark to find gifts at the end of the bed or under the tree. I’d be excited as I desperately hoped for pokemon cards or a new N64 game (The Legend of Zelda was my favourite). My parents spoiled me. My mum was a crafty character. She’d often hide or pretend that I wouldn’t get so much, and then when I least expected it, bam! There’d be a new bike or a new gaming console. Thanks, mum. As I got older and my parents separated, I started paying close attention to those around me. Especially in my young adult years, I saw that Christmas became less enjoyable for most people because putting together the perfect day was more important than people “just being.” But who can blame them? The perfect Christmas day is every other day of our lives turned up to eleven.


      I love Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 because life is ordered, simple, and easy to understand. Life is hardly that easy, unfortunately. For many of us, every day is an anxiety-riddled, depressed-filled, hope-flickering Christmas day that we all try to manage. Like Christmas, Jesus fights for the spotlight in life. We often shove Him off into a dark corner after a quick chat as we eagerly unwrap our other presents.


      I often feel at odds with myself because I know I should be enjoying the gift of Grace more than anything else. Still, the new God of War PS5 game seems so much more fulfilling in the moment. I mean, it’s not like Jesus carries around an axe and slays pagan gods with a broody demeanour. It’s not like Jesus shamed the other gods of the world, had victory over them, and now rules over them from Heaven. Sarcasm, by the way, because he is (weird side thought, who’d win in a fight between Kratos and Jesus…?). It doesn’t always feel like it when every other power inundates me daily. Like at Christmas, it is easy to lose sight of the One in whom love and life are found.


      Recently, I had an argument with one of my bosses about the Christmas season. Knowing I’m a Christian, he asked, “what do you think of carols, Cam?” I don’t really like them, I replied, already exhausted with where this was going. Surprised, he said, why now? I rattled off a few reasons I don’t like carols or Christmas in general. I gave statistics on how suicide rates increase over the season, how much waste is used over the holiday, how much food we throw out, and how much crippling debt people go into. After my two-minute rant, he told me, “it’s not Christmas’s fault that people go into debt. They don’t have to spend that much money.” Of course, he was right. What shocked me, however, was not the answer he gave me. Instead, it was the gross oversimplification of the statement. Of course, people can decide not to go into debt, kill themselves, or waste food and rubbish. However, the question we should be asking ourselves is, “why are they?” Why do people need to spend money and ruin Christmas with petty fights that expose the ego? In reality, why do we do anything?

      Why do we do anything? For the longest time, I believed that our motivations and intentions were driven by evil hearts that always wanted to do wicked and sinful things. I no longer believe this to be the case. Most of us do what we believe is right in seriously broken ways. There are expectations to this, I’m sure. However, I think most people don’t wake up and decide to murder, steal, cheat, or lie. Instead, our actions result from a lifetime (generations even) of decisions to good that often cause more harm than good. People are trapped in debt because they believe that spending so much money is the right thing to do. They’re afraid of the social consequences of not buying the latest Ipad for their partner or a family member. People kill themselves over the Christmas season because they’ve bought into the lie that what they lack is more important than who they are and the world would be better without them. There are narratives and systems, and ideas being told that cause people to do the things they’re doing. The human heart, of course, would find another way – no doubt. My point is that we can’t simply chalk actions up to the doctrine of original sin and total depravity (for the black and white Christian), or (for the more secular), we can’t just assume people make choices in a historical vacuum void of influence or trauma.

      A closing thought. Perhaps we just need a reformation around Christmas, actually in life. As Christmas day was intended, every day should be participated in and meditated on in light of the Incarnation and what that means for humanity. What is that meaning? In the words of Jesus himself, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour” (Luke 4:18-19).

      Posted in Journal Entries | 0 Comments | Tagged Christ, Christianity, Christmas, Jesus, Journal, Season, Spirituality, Theology
    • Scribbling Journal: Entry 2

      Posted at 6:06 am by scribblingtheology, on November 12, 2022

      Jesus came to me first through religious fervour and fanaticism. Christianity was almost a swear word, a kind of “you know who” or a “he who must not be named” sort of thing that, if you had to bring it up, an unsavoury taste lingered upon the tongue in conversation. Far too many stories were heard of priests molesting children and preachers zealously proclaiming “turn or burn” on street corners, causing most people who heard them to ignore their existence, if not shy away in embarrassment for them entirely.

      My parents, and their parents, grew up in an age believing religion and politics weren’t things one talked about at the dinner table if one were to have a civil conversation. This is ludicrous because spirituality and politics are some of the most important topics of discussion when getting to a person’s heart. Never have I known a person more than when they painted for me a picture of the world and how they believe it can be fixed. If this kind of conversation were fostered more, maybe we’d be having very different conversations now about identity and the sorts.

      It wasn’t until much later that I started to see Jesus as more than a “car salesman.” I had always been interested in mythology and spirituality, and as I started reading about new-age teachers, historians and storytellers, I learned that Jesus was a serious spiritual person. It just took hearing it from someone who wasn’t a Christian first for me to realise it. It still took me longer to trust in Jesus – whatever that means – or at least to give the Christian thing a red hot crack… here I am, still giving it a go more than ten years later.

      I can’t tell you exactly what got me into trusting Jesus. Some would say it is the sovereignty of God, and others would say he filled the hole in my life or whatever (in some ways, I have more “holes” and “cracks” now than I ever did). As I got to know it more and more, the biblical story made the most sense of my humanity (or lack thereof), the world around me, and my place in it. I used to believe that the Bible was something you could sit down, read, understand, and walk away with. However, the Bible takes more than a lifetime to master. The Bible is the sort of literature you have to sit with over coffee or tea every day for the rest of your life. It is supposed to be read in a community, and It is the kind of story that moves from only the intellect to the centre of your being.

      As I read the Bible more, Jesus started moving from being a spiritual guy who told us to love people (erg!) to him representing me. I can imagine the surfer Jesus that puts flowers in people’s hair and sings kumbaya coming out of the surf, pushing a craft beer in front of me and staring at me in the eye with a look of intense affection and saying, “Camaron, look at me. There’s more to life than what you lack. I can show you how to be more.” I think he would have an Aslan kind of effect on me. When he speaks, he shakes off the salt water from his long curls, but you shudder in fear and awe, and the space he commands has a certain gravitas. But instead of running away, you want more of him. You can’t help but be drawn to His presence. You hang off every word, even if they’re hard to hear.

      “When we learn to read the story of Jesus and see it as the story of the love of God, doing for us what we could not do for ourselves–that insight produces, again and again, a sense of astonished gratitude which is very near the heart of authentic Christian experience.”

      ― N.T. Wright

      I pray that we will all have that sense of astonished gratitude.

      Posted in Journal Entries | 0 Comments | Tagged bible, Christianity, Gospel, Jesus, Spirituality, Theology
    • Scribbling Journal: Entry 1

      Posted at 12:33 pm by scribblingtheology, on November 5, 2022

      The thing about the Christian life is that no one really knows what they’re doing (this is true for most of life). There’s a reason why we have so many different denominations and sects. I’ve met pastors, scholars, and believers from all sorts of churches and traditions, and, apart from Jesus, the one thing we all have in common is that none of us really know what to do with it.


      Once I met a guy who had a family, and he was an avid street evangelist. He would stand on street corners and loudly preach repentance. He was even arrested for it once. It wasn’t long after that, however, that he did a complete 180 and became aggressively antichristian in everything he did. He told me that he changed his mind on everything because we don’t even have the original copies of the bible. This surprised me because I wasn’t aware that we believed there were.


      I used to meet regularly with a friend for coffee at a local cafe near the beach when I was a pastor. He was and still is one of the most passionate people about Jesus I’ve ever met. We used to talk about everything “bible.” From miracles to church to science and faith. One morning, as we were discussing science and biblical interpretation, he said that if evolution was true, he could never be a Christian. I was shocked. Here was one of the most lovely, passionate people I’ve met who never backs down from talking about Jesus to people and yet a single potential change in his worldview could lead to his entire faith being undermined.


      I meet people like this day in and day out. I’m not saying there aren’t legitimate reasons why one would walk away from their faith. There is. The reasons above are justifiable. I completely get it. What surprises me is how easy it is for these reasons to cause us to walk away from something we’ve placed our entire identity on. Though I doubt and wrestle with God, and I sometimes wonder what life would be like if I didn’t follow Jesus, I’ll never not believe until I’m dead and come face to face with endless nothing. Until then, I’m winging it. I try to attend church, knowing it’s good for me, even if it’s boring. I read my bible, knowing that I am getting to know Jesus more and more, even if most of what it says is either lost on me or it just drags on. I try to pray even if no one talks back. I do good even if there’s not always sense in doing so. My life is based on risk. My life is a gamble. I believe my choices in the here and now will pay off in a potential eternity.


      The irony is that if I gave it all up now, I’d be trading one sense of freedom for another and one doubt for the next. If I walked away from Jesus, I’d spend the rest of my life wondering if I made the right choice. What if He is real? What if Hell does exist? I would be wrestling with the God of Nothing, wondering if worshipping at his altar is any better than the last. Would I miss how the biblical story makes the most sense of my existence, or would I ignore the voice at the back of my mind and embrace the meaninglessness that my new God offers?


      All this diatribe makes me wonder if Jesus struggled with the same levels of doubt. We’re told that he was tempted in every way we were, yet he was without sin… But did Jesus doubt that God was real (a strange thought given Jesus is God) or that he was imminent or in his corner? When offered the riches of the world from Satan, did he – even for a fleeting moment consider bending the knee? There’s debate within theological circles as to whether or not Jesus could really sin.


      On the one hand, some say he can’t because God can’t sin. Others say his temptations couldn’t have been genuine if he couldn’t sin. The answer may depend on how you see the person of Jesus. There’s something comforting in the idea that the humanity of Christ genuinely struggled with doubt, questions and temptations on the same level that we are tempted. He overcame sin not because he was divine but because he was truly human. Which means most of us aren’t truly human. Which begs the question, what does it mean to be human?


      I’ve been watching and listening to many of J. R. R. Tolkien’s works lately. The more I get into it, the more I identify with the Hobbits of all people, or I may want to identify with them. Living in the rolling lush green hills of the Shire with its winding creeks and rivers, the Hobbits are reclusive but communal. They’re simple and well-fed, not wanting to stick their noses where it doesn’t belong. Bilbo Baggins cooks, cleans and smokes his pipe. Frodo runs around the Shire and plays as they anticipate festivals and parties. They are living the human dream.


      Furthermore, the one ring, perhaps one of if not the most corrupting power in Middle Earth, has a hard time genuinely turning them to darkness. Humans, on the other hand, wage war and consume and destroy anything they get their hands on. They build up their kingdoms, and the ring corrupts them very quickly.


      I see the good life in the Shire, but I know it’s currently in the power-hungry cities and wartorn lands of men. I desire the carefree life of Bilbo (before he goes on his adventure), but I try to take it according to my own power rather than wait for the good life to be given to me. I maybe have 50 years-ish left on earth, and as I look back on the last 30 and the world around me, I realise that the thing that defines humans the most is having an idea of the good, striving for it, but in all the wrong ways.

      Posted in Journal Entries | 0 Comments | Tagged Christianity, church, doubt, Human, Identity, Jesus, Spirituality, Theology
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