There is a struggle that goes on in my life every day as I try to reconcile the differences that these two strands of thought and belief present.

It’s a simple predicament:  If God is responsible for everything that happens (which my intuition tells me is correct), then how am I to understand free will which is central to the Bible and to Christian thinking?  I do not feel that I can be a fully committed Christian with this dilemma filling my thoughts each day.  And yet I love to pray and feel I must, and I believe in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

I have probably been frustrating my Christian friends as I have agonised over this dilemma for several years.  I recently spoke with an Anglican priest about it and he wasn’t able to provide a satisfying solution.  Indeed, it seems that no one that I talk to (Christian or not) can reconcile this problem for me.  No books that I have read or lectures that I have listened to have helped me to settle the dilemma.

It seems to me that I am going to have to live with the dilemma.  That doesn’t make life easy – I am “not quite a Christian” which is not a generally acceptable position among my Christian friends who are mostly very evangelical.  I don’t feel I can preach the gospel with any gusto having the problems with Christianity that I do.  And the pull of what I believe is the truth about God is strong enough to keep me believing that the panentheistic vision of God that I espouse is the right one.

The best advice that I have received on this matter actually came from my own father.  We were sat in a park talking about Christianity and as I explained my predicament he suggested I might have to “live with the question”.  I think that for now, at least, that is good advice.

I can’t imagine my life without prayer as a major component and I expect I will always reach out to God to give thanks and praise and to offer supplications.  Jesus will remain a hugely important figure in my life, even if I can’t commit to His teaching in the same way as my Christian friends.  Living with the question at least gives me some peace of mind and I am open to the possibility that God, who is infinite, may reveal new truths to me in the future.

I have almost finished writing my second book which discusses my thinking around these issues in a lot more depth.  I hope that the book will help others to gain insights into my struggle, which will in turn enrich their own spiritual journeys.

It is a good thing to seek the truth, and I hope and pray that God loves me for my struggle.

Do you wrestle with similar problems in your own life?
Are there questions to which you feel you must live with without an answer?
Can you relate to my struggle?

Despite these truths, at the moment I am suffering from a kind of spiritual insecurity.  I want to believe, so very much, but there is an intellectual part of my being that is causing me to doubt some of the fundamental tenets of the Christian faith.  I have written about my problems with the faith elsewhere on this blog (see, for instance, A Leap Too Far), and there is no need to repeat them here.

At times like these I just fall on my knees and beg God to reveal His truth to me.  It is the most important and rewarding thing in the world to have a relationship with God, and my fervent desire is that I would not do anything to compromise that relationship and risk God’s anger.

There may be aspects of the Christian faith that never make sense to me (from an intellectual standpoint) and I suppose the battle I am facing is faith versus intellect.  When I think about the power of the cross and the love that I have experienced from the Lord it makes me quite sure that faith must win this battle.

But how can I stop the intellectual doubts from resurfacing and interfering with my Christian walk?  It terrifies me that whenever I build spiritual momentum in my life my doubts and questions may resurface and rob me of my peace.

My prayer today is this:

Heavenly Father, most glorious ruler of all, thank you for the peace and blessing that I enjoy in my life.

Help me, most merciful Lord, to live a life based on faith in you, and reveal to me your truths so that they might surround me and stabilise me, and so that I might live in them all my days.

Help me to know what I must know in order to be held in your favour, and help me to rebuke and dismiss any spirit that seeks to rob me of your peace – the peace that surpasses all understanding.

Oh mighty, sovereign, and eternal Lord, give my faith a solid foundation and an unshakable certainty, so that I need not wrestle with doubts and troublesome questions in the future.

Lord Jesus, I offer my life to you, and I say strengthen me, renew my mind, save me from sin, help me to understand, conquer my struggles, and keep me in your peace.

I beg of you Heavenly Father, please accept this prayer.  In the mighty name of Lord Jesus I pray.  Amen.

I’m happy to say I am now out of psychiatric hospital and living in the community again.  The Lord has been very generous to me, blessing me with a lovely room in a great location.  I can’t quite believe my luck!  This is surely an answer to prayer.

I apologise once again for the lack of updates recently, and also that the blog was made private for a couple of weeks.  I was in two minds about whether to carry on with the blog at one stage and making it private seemed wise while I was deciding what to do.

Now I’m out of hospital (which is very refreshing indeed; I was first admitted before Christmas and it is now April) I have a chance to think about the future again.  I am feeling more positive about keeping an online presence, and I hope to continue updating this blog and working on several books that I have already started.

When I become unwell, it’s hard to know what is fantasy (schizophrenia gives you some funny ideas about reality!), and what is real.  I sometimes have lofty ambitions and in the coming weeks I will have to re-assess where I’m at and what I can realistically achieve in this new season of my life.

One thing is clear at the moment.  I need Jesus Christ in my life!  And I need to keep attending church to stay focused on spiritual matters rather than earthly concerns.  Above all I want to be a good, Godly, generous person and I want to leave a positive impression in the world as I go about my business.  I am praying that I can achieve this and I have faith that the Lord will help me.

Peace and blessings to you!  Thanks for reading.

As mysterious as thought is, it is clear that when we think, there is a movement within consciousness that we are aware of.  An impression in the mind seems to arise out of nothing.  That impression might be a word or a sentence, or an image, or something more obscure.

The interesting point to note about thought is that it appears to be spontaneous.  If you are asked to think of a fruit, for instance, then one fruit rather than another will pop into your head quite spontaneously.  You might think “apple” or “watermelon” without having any particular reason for thinking of the fruit you chose.  It is not necessary for you to have had an apple for breakfast, or have seen a watermelon in your local store earlier that day, for you to think of a particular fruit.

It seems that we never know what our next thought will be.  If I asked you to tell me what you will be thinking about in a minute’s time, or in an hour’s time, you will have no idea.  We do not plan our thoughts, they arise spontaneously.

One argument for this might be that our thoughts are always linked to our needs, drives, and desires.  Therefore I might start thinking about lunch because a feeling of hunger has arisen somewhere in my body.  I might start thinking about going to a club because of a sexual urge.  And in a more complex way, I might think I need to do some study because I want to achieve good grades, which will get me a good job, which will secure me a steady income, so I don’t have to worry about food and shelter in the future.

But the above explanations, which link thoughts to desires, fail to explain the often random nature of thought.  Why does the theme tune to a TV show I haven’t seen for years suddenly pop into my head while I am out taking a walk?  Why, when asked to name any city in the world, do I choose Berlin rather than Moscow?

It doesn’t seem that we can argue that we are in control of our thoughts, so we must look for other reasons why our thoughts are arising.  I think that there are only two options; either our thoughts must be determined by prior events, or they are being brought into existence by a power operating in the present moment, which I will call God.

It is difficult to imagine how a historical cause and effect process could explain why in a moment I suddenly start to recall a particular Mozart piano concerto.  What possible causes could there be for this?  How do we explain the fact that I might suddenly remember my friend’s birthday, whilst eating dinner and discussing a completely unrelated subject?  It is clearly possible to have these kinds of thoughts, without any obvious trigger from the past.  It would be absurd if the thoughts that a composer thinks when writing a piece of music could be explained by evolution or childhood experiences.  Seeing our present moment thoughts as the result of our past simply doesn’t make sense.

The random, unpredictable and spontaneous nature of thought means that there is only one feasible explanation for why thoughts arise.  There must be a power that is in control in the present moment, bringing our thoughts into and out of existence.

Of course, it is not just thoughts that happen spontaneously.  If we observe the unfolding of events within our consciousness, we can see that everything is happening spontaneously.  Our hearts are beating spontaneously, our hair is growing spontaneously, we walk along without thinking about how we walk, and we think without knowing how we think.  The reason that all these things happen spontaneously is because God is doing them.

I used to spend my days meditating.  I would focus on my breathing, and attempt to simply observe, without any effort, what was going on in my body and in my mind.  This was a regular practise for a few years, and I sometimes experienced feelings of peace and calmness.  On one occasion, I had a deep spiritual experience, and I witnessed my bodily form dissolve into a feeling of bliss.  The feeling only lasted a few seconds, before I came back “down to earth” and began reflecting on what I had experienced.  I don’t know whether meditation gets much deeper than that.

I was definitely trying to get somewhere with my meditation practise.  I was desperate for peace.  In a sense, I was trying to escape.  It wasn’t until, after years of struggling, I finally decided to give psychotherapy a try, that I began to realise what I was trying to escape from.

No doubt, I was a mess when I began attending psychotherapy.  My mother had passed away after a terrible illness, and I was still merged with my mother in the way that children tend to be merged with their parents.  I had loved my mother dearly, and been obsessive about looking after her, but in the meantime I had lost a great deal of myself.  What psychotherapy did was begin to put me back in touch with myself.

As I explored my frustrations, fears, anger, and suffering, I began to find words to convey to my psychotherapist the deep loneliness that I had felt for many years.  With frequent tearful outbursts, I began to talk through emotions that had been repressed, and I began to be much more self aware.  A big part of being an adult is simply finding words to express emotions.  This is something I never learned how to do as a child, and it was liberating to learn how to do so as an adult.

The more I attended psychotherapy, the less interested I was in meditation and enlightenment.  This is because I was finding the peace that I had been seeking through meditation by being able to express myself openly and be in touch with my feelings.  It surprised me that the enlightenment I had been striving so hard to attain became relatively unimportant.  All I had really needed was to explore what my fear of not being enlightened meant, in terms of my past, and my present emotions.

When God began to reveal Himself to me in my mid-twenties, this brought a whole new dimension to my life.  The reality of God puts the idea of meditation in a completely different perspective.  I became aware that the supreme reality was not just a feeling of bliss, it was an active God.  I realised that God is in control of everything, from the movement of thoughts to the movement of bodies.

What troubles me about meditation is that it tends to neglect God as doer, as it focuses so intently on what can be personally achieved.  I also believe it can be an attempt to escape from emotional states that we are afraid of.

It bothers me that there are people who consider themselves to be spiritual gurus, who have supposedly attained enlightenment, because I can clearly see now that there is no such thing.  Having doubts, frustrations, and fears is simply part of life – there is no magical state where we are free from these things.  We wouldn’t be human if we didn’t experience these emotions.

There is no supreme peace in this life, because we are all in touch with other people, who have their problems, and we have to deal with them.  Even if you sit under a tree for decades and meditate, you are still 100% dependent on God for any peace of mind that you experience.  God can bring or take away your peace in any moment, so no one has ever really attained stable peace or enlightenment.

If anyone claims to you that they are enlightened, alarm bells should ring in your mind, and you should ask that person to explain precisely what they mean.  If it doesn’t make sense to you, on your terms, then you must reject the idea.  It is quite probable that the supposedly enlightened person is deluded.

There is a culture in India where those who are supposedly more enlightened gain devotees and win the respect of many people.  This is analogous to the pop stars of the West.  But please realise that the so-called enlightened one has absolutely nothing to offer you.  Don’t think that they are great.  Don’t think that they are special.  In the same way that the guru is a child of God, so are you.  The guru has nothing that you don’t have!

There is no enlightenment.  Give up the search, and realise that your happiness or sadness in this eternal moment is totally dependent upon the will of your creator and sustainer, almighty God.

If what I have said in the preceding paragraph is true, it means that God must be responsible for all human action.  After all, God is “doing” human action as well as everything else.  This means that God is in control of our emotions and actions.  We experience life through choices God makes for us to experience things in a certain way.

Admittedly, I am describing God as the cosmic ‘puppeteer’.  This is an unpopular idea amongst those who believe in free will, but nevertheless, I believe it is the way things really are.  There is so much evidence that we are not in control of ourselves.  I can raise my arm or nod my head; I can grow my nails or my hair; I can beat my heart and flow my blood – yet I have no idea how I do any of these things.  The reason I have no idea is because God is doing them.

On the whole, human beings seem to experience both the yin and yang of existence; the ups and downs, highs and lows, joys and miseries.  Why is this?  Why do we not live lives of pure happiness?  Why must we suffer?

I believe the answer to this problem lies in God’s own nature.  If the panentheistic view of the world that I believe in is correct, then really there is only one being in the universe, which is God.  God is eternally alone.  What must that be like?  I can imagine that there are two poles to God’s experience of being alone.  There is the bliss of having infinite power and infinite awareness, but there is also the misery and suffering of being always alone; of never having another being with whom to interact.

Perhaps the reason why God makes creatures is because there is such joy in interaction.  Making creatures that interact is as close as God Himself can get to interacting with other beings.  And perhaps the reason why God gives us negative emotions as well as positive emotions, and bad times as well as good times, is because this is an honest reflection of God’s own predicament.  God’s creatures each get a taste of the real thing; of what ultimate reality is like for God.

So we suffer because God suffers.  But I believe that God is ultimately merciful, and doesn’t want us to suffer too much.  God is deeply aware of how painful suffering is, and so He gives us enough suffering for us to taste what it is like, without ever letting it become unbearable for extended periods of time.  God could, if He so wished, inflict infinite enduring suffering upon each of us, but He chooses not to do so because He is loving and merciful.

When we suffer, God is not punishing us for right and wrong action.  That is illogical because God is in control of all action.  But God does want a varied and interesting universe in which His divine nature is expressed in all its complexity.  That is why He has made creatures, and that is why He chooses for us to suffer.

I’m sad to see the amp and cab go.  During my gigging days, as I performed around the UK as guitarist in the progressive metal band Marconi’s Voodoo, that combo served me well.  It had a fantastically big, crunchy sound, which was just what I was looking for in those days when my greatest pleasure was to bash out riff after riff at high volume.  But eBay now beckons, and before I sell my beloved amplifier, I want to make sure it’s still in good working order, as it’s been a few years since I plugged a guitar into it.  It has been so long, in fact, that I don’t even have a guitar lead or speaker cable in my home any more!  So a trip to the local music shop was necessary.

On my way to the Northcote Music Shop (my local independent music shop) I was thinking a bit about live music, and music in general, and how much things are changing in the music industry.  When I was working in the music industry, between about 2003 and 2007, independent music stores were already in decline (physical record sales were falling drastically), but there were still a large number of record stores clinging on for dear life.  You still had indie music stores that were the hub of the local music community.  I used to work in one such shop, Modern Music, which sold instruments upstairs and CDs downstairs.  It really was the centre of the musical community in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, where I grew up.

Countless indie record stores proceeded to shut down as the digital revolution swept in, and it was sad to see Modern Music amongst the many casualties of the dramatic shift within the industry.  And what went, along with the physical presence of the store, was the community hub that the shop represented.  With so few music shops remaining in the UK, other than instrument specialists, I can’t help but wonder whether the community aspect of music is suffering?

As consumers increasingly look to the internet as a place to discover and buy music, are the physical interactions being taken out of musical exploration, and is this detrimental to music communities?  I wonder how many bands have formed through chance meetings in independent music shops, whilst one person was purchasing a CD, another trying out a guitar, and another trying out a drum kit?

Maybe I am getting my knickers unduly in a twist here, for there is no evidence that I have seen that shows musical instrument sales are in decline.  It is the physical products of recorded music that have seen the major downturn in sales.  But on the other hand, isn’t it possible that more and more instrument shops will close, as bargain hunters look to the digital world for guitars, drum kits, and pianos?  If this is the case, then there is somewhat of a cloud over the future of those chance meetings that lead people into the relationships from which bands form.  Without the community hub of music stores, there is much less opportunity for musicians to  interact, other than chance meetings at gigs perhaps or virtual discussions on online message boards.

Will music suffer as a result of the digital revolution?  Will the price we pay for digital convenience be that there is a drought of musical talent in the future?  Maybe my estimations are too extreme, and it may well be that human beings have music in their blood, and will always seek out ways of connecting with others and forming bands.  But it is impossible to deny that the music industry’s revolution continues to challenge musical conventions.  I only hope that in the digital age, everything works out for the best.

Northcote Music Shop didn’t have any speaker leads in stock when I went in this afternoon, so it looks like I’ll be heading back in again tomorrow morning after the shopkeeper has had a chance to visit their stock warehouse and pick one up for me.  Would it have been easier to have ordered it online?  Perhaps, but then I would have one less contact in the music industry.  And as we all know, in music, as in so many industries, networking is everything.

I want to talk a little bit about the belief aspect of Hillsong church.  It is one thing to be running an effective organisation, essentially a business, which is the way many aspects of the church seemed to be run.  But it is another thing to appeal to people on the grounds of belief, or faith.  There has to be some kind of appeal that touches people’s hearts, and makes them take the ‘leap of faith’ (Hillsong often used to describe it in this way) into Christianity.

Does Hillsong church offer a sound theological basis for faith?  My experience with the church, and I have found this at other churches as well, is that there is a real need to emphasise what we don’t understand, as well as what we do.  I remember the lead pastor Gary Clarke speaking on many occasions and reassuring the congregation that ‘it doesn’t all need to make sense’, and ‘it won’t all make sense right now’.  Within the service there was a kind of pull towards faith, but the lead pastor acknowledged that there is a lot about Christianity that frankly, doesn’t make sense.

Why doesn’t it all make sense?  Is Christianity very complicated?  It certainly seems to be a simple enough faith when looked at in terms of the core story.  A man named Jesus was born of a virgin, he was the Son of God and taught crowds of people by speaking in parables about life and truth and the Kingdom of God.  He used to perform miracles, and was persecuted by the authorities, who eventually crucified him.  He rose again on the third day in an act which symbolises the overcoming of death, and of evil.

But the truth is that even in the above description of the Christian faith – as simple as it is – there are countless difficult questions.  Is a virgin birth really possible?  What does it mean to be the Son of God?  In what way was Jesus different from everyone else?  What is the Kingdom of God?  How do miracles work?  Is it possible to rise from the dead?  What is evil?  There are so many problems here that it is difficult to know where to begin!

My experience of talking to Christians about the above questions is that when asked, they give a consistently unsatisfying reply.  The answer tends always to be that, as Pastor Gary used to say, there are aspects of the faith that we will never understand.  This is because God’s ways and purposes are beyond our comprehension.  And that is why we have to have faith.

I realise that what we are coming up against here is the age-old faith and reason debate.  I am, perhaps, not bringing anything new to the table here.  But maybe what needs to be highlighted is the immense frustration that the current crop of atheists feel about what they perceive to be ‘blind faith’.  Why is it that there can be so many questions which Christians find impossible to answer about their faith, and yet they still choose their faith, in spite of all the problems?

For me, the problems proved too great.  I found that Pastor Gary’s reassurances were not ultimately sufficient to lock me in to the faith.  In particular, I couldn’t understand how a God that is supposed to be omnipresent (by all accounts in the theology that I have read) could at the same time be leaving human beings to act freely.  There was a glaring contradiction here that made me feel deeply uncomfortable.

The whole Christian approach to sin troubled me as well.  It seemed that Christians were forever saying that God is responsible for all the good stuff in life, but not the bad stuff.  God does good, and humans do bad.  But for me, the separation between God and humanity that Christians were making was disastrously unclear.  Where do you draw the line between what God is doing and what humans are doing?  I have asked Christians to talk specifically about the things that God is doing and they have been left dumfounded.  Yet it is an important question, don’t you think?

I could go on.  But suffice to say, there was just too much about the Christian faith that didn’t add up for me, and that ‘leap of faith’ was just too great.  It is a shame, in a way.  There was a buzz about church life that seemed so real and appealing.  But then again, there are countless examples of things in life which provide a buzz, but not deep and enduring satisfaction.

I would be surprised if any Christian didn’t have doubts nagging away at the back of their mind in relation to the difficult questions asked above.  But I suppose in many cases there is a pull that is stronger than those doubts, and that pull is faith. And I have to acknowledge that the pull to Christian faith, as I believe everything in life does, comes from God.

I do not in any way dispute the reality of God.  There is so much in life, for me, that points to God’s existence, and I am so sure about this that it doesn’t even feel like faith to me – it’s something I know to be true in the same was as I know I have a body.  Knowing the reality of God, and not being a Christian or a person of any other particular faith, leaves me in a rather strange situation.  I desire to worship God, and I pray every day, though I modify my prayer style in terms of the way I believe God to be, so my prayers are not Christian prayers.

I hope that one day I will find a group of people that believe the same things as me about God and the world.  The closest thing I have found to a similar understanding is panentheism, which is the belief that the world is in God, but that God is more than the world.  I can relate to that.  Whether I can find a group of people who share that vision is another matter.

But the crucial thing for me is that, no longer calling myself a Christian, I am free from the doubts and contradictions that must plague so many.  I am grateful to God for the peace of mind that brings.

There is a place of true connectedness where both friends can be free to be their childlike selves – there is a zone where nothing is being suppressed and where all emotions can be expressed without reservation or tension; happiness, sadness, anger, joy, frustration, anxiety, etc.  In the zone of pure friendship, much laughter is to be found.  Laughter arises quite spontaneously when both friends feel at ease, which is the result of sharing openly.  There are no awkward silences in the zone – silences, maybe, but they are comfortable and natural.

The zone can be reached by talking in depth about our experience of being in the present moment.  We can ask our friend the question, ‘what are you feeling right now?’.  It is helpful to explore what is going on in the body.  Do I feel nervous?  Tense?  Fragile?  Exploring these things in the context of a friendship helps us to open up, and to feel at ease.

There are normally stories attached to our present moment feelings, which can be expressions of a more complex past.  These stories might be of hurt, frustration, or loneliness, and might be the result of years of negative feeling being somehow stored up in the body.  To share these stories can be liberating, can help heal broken hearts, and can help friends feel closer together.

In a true friendship there is no need or possessiveness, but instead there is an unconditional love.  When you love a person for who they are, you don’t need them, you simply want them to be happy.

There never needs to be a reason for a friendship, and it can be damaging to say that your friend is your friend because of such and such a reason, because they make you laugh or because you have the same taste in music.  A deep and true friendship will be about so much more that what you have in common with someone – it will be about love.

Friendships are a gift from God and a true blessing.  They are to be valued, nurtured, and worked upon, so that hurdles are overcome and a depth of connection is sustained.