Keith’s Blog

Rediscovering the Joy of the Gospel (part1)

And now for something completely different…

Over the next number of weeks my hope is to begin a conversation with those of you kind enough to read my blog – a conversation about what it will take to help people in Ireland to rediscover the joy of the Gospel.

I have been a follower of Jesus for some twenty-six years and, for most of that period, I have been wrestling with what I can now articulate to have been a form of ‘cognitive dissonance’. This lasting ailment of mine, as our friends at Wikipedia put it, ‘is a psychological state that describes the uncomfortable feeling between what one holds to be true and what one knows to be true.’

My particular discomfort arose, and remains, because of two – for me undeniable -realities that have I seen played out since my very first encounter with the Gospel .

The first is that there is something simply incredible about this message Jesus has brought to our world. Ever since my first encounter with the good news of God’s Kingdom I have believed it to be the most powerful, wonderful and liberating news ever declared in human history. It simply captivates, invigorates and all sorts of other ‘..ates’ me! It has been a life-transforming joy for me to have discovered that the creator of this universe has revealed himself and has done so to invite us into new relationship with Him, with each other and with our world.

The second is that there is something simply wrong with our churches. There is something simply not right about the so-called ‘communities of faith’ in which this gloriously good news is being embodied. T.S. Mooney, my dear old friend and mentor in the faith, used to joke that whilst the early believers outlived, outlaughed and outloved all those around them, Christians today tend to be dull, daft and devout! I can remember myself laughing the first time I heard him say this and I’ve shared his humorous insight with many since. But as I have observed in my own ministry, as I have travelled to churches in all parts of our Island and as I listen as friends and colleagues describe the circumstances of their own church situations, I have come to the unwelcome conclusion that, in fact, our circumstances are far graver than even this.

When people in those early decades and centuries of the church were trying to find a way to summarise this new and rapidly spreading message that had come from a supposedly resurrected Rabi from Nazareth, the phrase that they came up with was ‘the Good News!’ When they tried to describe the sort of people that were arising from this growing religious movement, what they settled on were labels such as ‘followers of the way’ or ‘Christians.’ (There were some funnier ones too, such as ‘cannibals’ because people heard Christians were into eating flesh and drinking blood!)

But what do people in Ireland today say when they are trying to do the same thing? Over and over again, with young people and with adults, the summary I have heard people give to the message proclaimed by Jesus’ followers contains words/phrases such as ‘condemning’, ‘controlling’, ‘frightening’, ‘boring’ and ‘irrelevant’. The descriptions they make of those within this Jesus movement include tags such as ‘self-righteous’, ‘judgemental’, ‘sectarian’, ‘bigoted’ and ‘hateful.’

When we watch what happened through the lives and communities of the very first followers of Jesus, we see that they not only were filled with joy but greatly impacted and radically changed the world around them. When we observe what is happening through our lives and church communities today, what we see are churches who have little joy and who are becoming increasingly irrelevant, unappealing and impotent (in a non-sexual way!)

How can this be? Well for many years now, I have simply assumed it is because those of us who have been recipients of the unchanging Gospel of Christ have woefully failed to live it out in any adequate way before those in our families and communities who are watching on. I have simply assumed it is because we have been teaching one thing in our words and then doing something completely other in our actions – a kind of ‘the mind is willing but the body is weak’ sort of thing.

Well, the reason I am hoping to begin the ‘conversation’ mentioned above is that this is no longer what I believe. I no longer think that our problem lies in our failure to live out the unchanging Gospel of Christ. I think our problem is that many of us in the Irish church no longer know what the unchanging Gospel of Christ actually is! I think we have changed it, and in changing it, we have lost the very thing that makes it the most wonderful and liberating news this world has ever known.

Over these next few weeks, I would like to try and spell out some of the reasons I think this devastating loss has occurred and invite you to discuss them with me. I do not have all the answers. I’m not sure that I even have many of them. I am simply hoping to start a conversation in which I, and maybe others, can explore again what this message of Jesus is all about. As I have been helped to do this myself, I have rediscovered a joy in the Gospel that I thought I had lost. I have found again a message that can truly change the world. My hope is that those who suffer a similar dissonance to me, will be helped do the same.

If you would like to correspond with me on any of what I will write, please just email me at kmccrory@maynoothcc.org and I will send you out the summary sheets of the discussions that follow.