Thanks, Soul Survivor

Judy:     Night Howlers aren’t wolves; they’re flowers. The flowers are making the predators go savage. That’s it! That’s what I’ve been missing! Oh, keys, keys keys keys, hurry, come on! Thank you! I love you! Bye!

Stu:        You catch any of that, Bon?

Bonnie: Not one bit.

Gideon: Well, that makes me feel a little bit better. I thought she was talking in tongues or something.

Zootropolis (2016)

So here’s news: apparently the legend that is Soul Survivor is going to stop being a thing after the 2019 summer event.¹

 

So the main meeting tent at Soul Survivor is not altogether dissimilar to this one, but bigger. Like, a lot bigger.

Crikey, Anne, you’re a bit late to that party; that’s been common knowledge (at least among the sort of people who care) since the very beginning of the summer just gone.²

Yes, yes, I know, but I’ve been writing about other things and it only just occurred to me to write about this one. And actually, it’s really not that bad a delay given that most of the time, I post about things I saw or read literally years ago.

It was also literally years ago that I had anything to do with Soul Survivor. In case you’ve been living under a rock/not in the UK/in largely heathen company/etc. over the past two and a half decades, the named is a Christian youth festival held over several weeks in the summer (with various other events at other times of year hanging off its edges). When I was in my late teens, I went twice to the event proper, and once to its sister festival Momentum (for twenties-and-thirties, that is to say, people who grew up going to Soul Survivor and just couldn’t bring themselves to stop). It was … well, for a kid who’d grown up in the church traditions I had,³ it was pretty blooming weird, to be honest. Like, what was with all this hand-raising and jumping about? Did I have to do that too? Did it help somehow? And crikey, what the heck was this speaking-in-tongues business? And how was it that these people up the front apparently had a direct line to the Almighty, to be able to announce heavenly messages to specific individuals? And why on earth did people keep yelling and crying and falling over so much? Was I supposed to feel those feelings too? Was that what it meant for the Spirit to be moving? What was wrong with me that I felt so detached from it all?

Seriously, Anne? The thing is dying a full and deliberate death and you’re here to criticise it in its final moments? How tasteful.

Hey, let me finish. I’m going to start with the critical stuff in order to finish on a more positive note. So there you go, that’s the structure of the post spoiled for you.

I think my biggest criticism of ministries akin to Soul Survivor (not it alone; I went to something described as a ‘New Wine service’ one time, for example, and found it similarly guilty) is the implicit suggestion that the deeds of God that we should be really excited about are flashy, dramatic, tangible ones that plonk themselves down in our own experience in flashy, dramatic, tangible ways. Several things come under that category: the stories the preacher tells about a time when he did something a bit bizarre and risky in response to some spiritual instinct or prompt, and the result was some impossibly coincidental positive effect (like, he just knew the weirdly specific thing that such-and-such a person really needed to hear to make her burst into tears and repent, or whatever); the miraculous healings and speaking in tongues and falling over or laughing uncontrollably as (ostensibly) prompted by the Spirit; the personal spiritual high, the overwhelming sense of God’s presence, the whatever-it-is that some people apparently experience when they go up the front and get prayed for. I by no means want to dismiss all of that as uniformly worthless or contrived, but whichever way up you hold it, it really, really isn’t the point. The deeds of God that we should be really excited about are those laid out in the scriptures: Jesus’ death and resurrection, and everything they have achieved for sinners like us, and everything that foreshadowed them, and everything they’ll ultimately mean – that’s where we really learn to know and love our God better. A story that demonstrates God’s ongoing sovereignty and faithfulness doesn’t mean a thing detached from the scriptural portrait of him as sovereign and faithful forever and ever; a miraculous healing hasn’t achieved its purpose unless it’s put in the context of how the cross grants us to be healed on a yet more vital level; a sense of God’s presence likely doesn’t actually represent God’s presence at all if the God perceived to be present doesn’t match up in terms of his characteristics with the God revealed in the Bible. But of course, things like the historical fact that Jesus died and rose, and the slow work of sanctification, and the promised inheritance held for us in heaven, are not terribly flashy or dramatic or tangible in one’s direct experience as one sits about in the Soul Survivor main meeting, even though they’re ultimately of incomparably greater value than the kinds of things that are. The emphasis consequently placed on those latter kinds of things made me feel as if they were what I needed in order to be doing this Christianity thing better, which wound up being pretty disheartening when I failed to experience them.

Once I’d managed to get my theology and priorities straight, though, it became clear that, though I didn’t get a heck of a lot out of the bits of Soul Survivor where we stood about and waited for the Spirit to move or whatever, I got a good deal out of what was actually taught. It was at Soul Survivor that I became acquainted with the principle, if not the vocabulary, of understanding scripture in terms of types; that I heard my favourite ever definition of the Trinity;⁴ that I realised how extraordinarily funny the scriptures could be;⁵ that I discovered the work of Open Doors in supporting the persecuted Church;⁶ that I was reassured to learn that even some people who are really evidently gifted and used by God are nearly as ineffective at evangelising as I am; that I began to be properly equipped to think about controversial issues like Christianity’s relationship to other religions, and the role of women in the Church; and, let’s not forget, that I bought my copy of the literary masterpiece that is A Nearly Infallible History of Christianity.⁷

And, funnily enough, attending Soul Survivor was a fairly important component of the process towards getting my theology and priorities straight. Through the rest of the year, I could get away with ignoring that the flashy, dramatic, tangible stuff even existed; at Soul Survivor, I had to acknowledge and even to confront its existence. Clearly, something was going on, and I was forced to ask myself how much I thought it mattered – whether it was representative of the kind of Christianity I wanted. On one occasion, the speaker invited anyone who wanted to, to come up the front and be prayed for that he or she might receive the gift of tongues. Hordes of youths stood and went forward. I stayed seated where I was. I couldn’t decide which option I hated more: to go up, and inevitably have nothing happen – because nothing out of the ordinary ever did happen to me when I went up – and feel as if I’d tried and failed; or to not go up, and feel as if I’d failed by default for not even trying. And then it suddenly occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, God wasn’t, after all, horribly disappointed in me because I hadn’t yet managed to get any sort of extra-special spiritual experience under my belt (beyond, you know, being given the gift of faith in Jesus and literally coming back from the dead in spiritual terms). Maybe, just maybe, it was enough that I was, through Jesus’ death on my behalf, the child of my heavenly Father. Maybe, just maybe, he really did love me as I was, without requiring anything of me.

So I stayed seated where I was, quiet and still while everyone else got on with speaking in tongues and crying and falling over and that jazz, and in my heart gave glory to God for the grace he’d shown me.

Thanks, Soul Survivor.

Footnotes

¹ You can still book for 2019 should you wish to, though: https://soulsurvivor.com/.

² This article appeared on the first of June, for instance: https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2018/1-june/news/uk/soul-survivor-festivals-to-end-in-2019.

³ To wit, Methodist-and-United-Reformed, followed by almost-evangelical-Church-of-England.

⁴ If you’re wondering, it went something like: so there’s God, and within that there’s God the Father, who’s fully God, but not the same as God the Son or God the Spirit; and God the Son, who’s also fully God, but not the same as God the Father or God the Spirit; and God the Spirit, who’s also fully God, but not the same as God the Father or God the Son. Confused? Good. I can’t for the life of me remember the name of the chap who said it, though I seem to recall he worked in Muslim-Christian relations in Birmingham, if that helps at all. Fancy the classic Bad Trinity Analogies sketch by Lutheran Satire while you’re here? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQLfgaUoQCw

⁵ The bit that’s making me laugh the most at the moment is Aaron’s comment after Moses confronts him about the golden calf: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus+32&version=ESVUK.

⁶ They’re pretty epic: https://www.opendoorsuk.org/. Think about supporting maybe?

⁷ It’s so funny and good: http://nickpage.co.uk/front-page-books/a-nearly-infallible-history-of-christianity/. Hey, don’t be fooled by the fact that I’m currently working towards my second postgraduate degree in a Theology & Religion department; I get basically all my knowledge of church history from distinctly non-academic sources.

And I Write: A Very Short Origin Story

“I mean, I am always writing in this journal … I mean, I feel like I am always writing. I do it so much, I never even thought about it as being a talent. It’s just something I do all the time, like breathing.”

Meg Cabot, The Princess Diaries: Mia Goes Forth (2003)

Hey, a typewriter! We used to have one of those when I was a kid (because we were a bit eccentrically backward, not because I’m secretly that old, just to be clear).

Sometimes people ask me why I started blogging. I’ve thought about it, and my best answer is that, in the months before I started blogging, I kept thinking to myself, if I had a blog, I could write about such-and-such; I could articulate this idea; I could make that case; I could indulge in a thorough exposition of this pet fan-theory of mine; I could turn that suspicion I’ve been entertaining about the way people deal with the scriptures into an actual robust argument – and, you know, after a few months of thinking wistfully, if I had a blog, one eventually hits on the radical possibility that maybe it might be a good idea to start a blog.

I remember that one time in my first year of university, over a year before I started blogging, I came home from a campus cinema screening in a state of such mental overspill that I felt little short of compelled to sit down and draft something awfully close to what is now my usual post format: I compared an idea found in the film with an aspect of Christian thought.¹ I did it on paper, and I have no idea where the relevant bit of paper is now, and I doubt I’ll ever try to turn that particular concept into a real post, but it was arguably the beginning of something.

I write because raw thoughts only become proper things that I can actually deal with once they’re put into words. I write because the only real way I know to tame an interesting idea that’s bouncing around my brain and stop it distracting me from almost everything else, is to pin it down and articulate it. I write to make sense of things; it’s an expression of my endless longing to wrest order from chaos.

Don’t take the bit of poetry below too seriously, though. Imagine me saying it with a grin and a general sense of the futility of all endeavours and strivings by which human beings try to define themselves; I do know where my identity really lies, and it’s not, thank God, in any deed or activity or achievement of mine.² (Actually, that’s, rather paradoxically, another aspect of why I write: because it enables me to tell myself truths like that in a way that’s vigorous enough to make them actually take some sort of root in me.)

So I sit and I write and I write and I write.

It’s just something to do with the chaos inside.

Nothing scares me so much once defined and described.

Words are weapons with which I turn darkness to light.

So I sit and I write and I write and I write.

It’s just something to do with this noise all the time.

Noise is noise only ’cause it’s so disorganised:

Impose order, and music is born … well, I try.

So I sit and I write and I write and I write.

It’s just something to do with the mess of my mind,

Some imagined control in this crazy old life.

It’s just bailing the water, not quelling the tide.

Still I sit and I write and I write and I write.

It’s just something to do; it’s just somewhere to hide.

Says my soul to itself: Are you yet satisfied?

And it’s not, and it’s never, and (would that it rhymed!)

No, I’m not – but it’s better than nothing. All right?

Footnotes

¹ The film I’d seen was From Up on Poppy Hill, which is one of my favourite Studio Ghibli projects, and that’s saying something: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-rhgSCAqDU.

² As for where it is, check out, say, Ephesians 1, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ephesians+1&version=ESVUK, which I’ve been inflicting on a little extra-curricular Greek reading group I’ve started running this academic year.

This Reality is a Lovely Place, But I Wouldn't Want to Live There

“We were on a job. Exploring dreams within dreams. But we didn’t understand how your mind can turn hours into years, how you can get trapped, trapped so deep that when you wash up on the shore of your subconscious, you can lose track of what’s real … fifty years … we built, we created a whole world for ourselves. It’s not so bad at first, being gods. The problem is knowing that it’s not real. It became impossible for me to live like that … She accepted it. At some point she’d decided to forget that our world wasn’t real.”

Inception (2010)

Adelphoi, I think we’ve forgotten that we don’t live in the real world.

 

The real world, looking weirdly surreal decked in all those pretty lights.

This, this around us; this earth and this sky; this ground we stand on and this air we breathe; this universe, this wonderful, bizarre, orderly and chaotic, glorious and pathetically broken, excellent and appalling universe; these bodies by which we exist in it and these senses by which we experience it; this isn’t the real world. It’s not. This is some Inception dream-world. In actual fact, that’s not a bad analogy – though it’s not by any means the only one I could have chosen – so I’ll run with it.

This current reality is very much like the dream-worlds of Inception.¹ Like them, it exists and there’s stuff in it and it can represent the whole of a person’s experience at a particular time; good and bad things can happen to people in it; they can live in it and build things in it and make contributions to what sort of world it is; and it’s even the case that what goes down in the dream-world can even have a genuine long-term impact in the real world as well. But crucially, the dream-world isn’t the real world, and furthermore it’s highly dangerous to get it in your head that it is.²

Many people go about – of whom I would often tell you, and now also tell (while) crying – hostile to the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose God is the stomach and glory is their shame, those minded towards earthly things. For our citizenship exists in the heavens, from where also we eagerly expect a saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform the body of our lowliness (to be) conformed to the body of his glory, according to the exercise of his ability even to subject all things to himself. – Philippians 3:18-21

According to faith these all died, not having received the things promised, but from afar having seen and greeted them, and having acknowledged that they were foreigners and sojourners on the earth. For people saying such things show that they are seeking a homeland, and if they were remembering that (land) from which they had come out, they would have had an opportunity to return; but as it is they strive for a better (land), that is, a heavenly (one). Therefore God is not ashamed of them, to be called their God, for he prepared for them a city. – Hebrews 11:13-16

Do not treasure up for yourselves treasures on the earth, where moth and corrosion consume and where thieves break in and steal, but treasure up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor corrosion consumes and where thieves don’t break in and don’t steal, for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. – Matthew 6:19-21

For we know that if our earthly dwelling of a tent is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made by hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this (tent) we groan, longing to put on our home from heaven over (it), if indeed having put (it) on, we will not be found naked. For those being in the tent groan, burdened, to the effect that we don’t want to take off but to put on, so that what is mortal might be swallowed up by life … we prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord. – 2 Corinthians 5:1-4, 8

This world isn’t home. It isn’t where we ultimately belong; we’re just visiting. If God were to issue us passports, they’d list our nationality as of heaven; we’re expatriates here, foreigners, exiles. This world is just temporary accommodation. It’s mortal, and what’s in it wears away and is consumed, and it shall one day be brought to nothing. Compared to the eternal heavenly homeland we’re waiting for, that makes it a mere dream-world. We can’t be settled here; whatever we may build or treasure up for ourselves here, we know it’s of no account next to the building and treasure in heaven that awaits us. We might have business in the dream-world for the moment, but we wouldn’t want to be hanging out here forever and ever. Or, to readjust that last idea slightly, we blooming well shouldn’t want to be hanging out here forever and ever.

 

Ancient Egyptian pharoahs, of course, thought they were storing up treasure for the life to come, but, um, that’s not quite how it works, guys. Sorry.

According to the section of the film script I appropriated as an opening quotation,³ Inception’s protagonist Cobb and his wife Mal initially started hanging out in the dream-world because they had business there, but they got distracted. For one thing, the time they spent there started to feel like an awfully long one, so that the knowledge of the real world waiting for them felt more and more removed from where they were. And for another thing, forgetting about the real world allowed them to kid themselves that they were gods, able to make and do whatever they wanted without consequences. Ultimately, Mal chose to make the reality that was in front of her into the only reality she would acknowledge – but that didn’t mean it actually became so. It didn’t mean the real world actually stopped existing, only that she ended up with a totally skewed view of what actually mattered. The dream-world, after all, was transient and mortal, and all the while, somewhere up in the real world there was an actual and substantial body of Mal’s, waiting for her to leave her dream-self and take possession of it. Somewhere up in the real world also was her real family and her real life.

Every time we lose sight of the heavenly homeland we’re waiting for, we’re like Mal in the dream-world. Once, we understood that we were only here temporarily on business, and the only things that it really mattered for us to do here were things that had implications for the real-world we would one day go home to: preach the gospel, make disciples, and all that. But the time we’re spending here has started to feel like an awfully long one, and the knowledge of the real world waiting for us feels so far removed from where we are. And on top of that, if we forget about the real world, we can make ourselves into gods, doing whatever we want without consequences: if, that is to say, we let the fact drift from our minds that God is ready and waiting to hold all things to account – to reward the righteous for having suffered and denied themselves in this world for the sake of the world to come, and to destroy those who have made this world their everything along with it – then suffering and denying ourselves in this world stops looking like a particularly great idea, and we start living to satisfy our own earthly desires instead.

Maybe we don’t take it quite as far as Mal did: maybe we don’t actually stop saying that we’re waiting to go home to the real world. But if we live as if home is here, and not there, then functionally, the reality in front of us has become the only reality we acknowledge. And that’s so, so dangerous, because whatever we do or don’t acknowledge, the real world still exists. The dream-world of the present age is still transient and mortal; our inheritance – actual and substantial glorified bodies, our real family as sons of God and co-heirs with Christ, real life that will never end – is waiting for us up in the real world. Lest we forfeit that inheritance, we cannot and must not risk letting the dream-world of the present age become the only reality we acknowledge.

That’s going to be a hard battle. We’ve never even seen the real world we’re waiting for, after all; we have no actual experience of a reality other than this dream-world. Still, to counter that, God grants us to walk by faith instead of by sight: living so as to acknowledge the coming real world as our home is something that, by the help of his Spirit in us, we are actually able to do. And if we’re wondering whether we’re doing it successfully, there are a couple of good litmus tests to be extracted from some of the passages I quoted above. First off, are we groaning over our absence from our true home with our Lord? Does that bother us, the way living in the dream-world bothered Cobb because he knew it wasn’t real? And second, where are we treasuring stuff up for ourselves? Are we investing ourselves in making and doing stuff that will only last as long as the dream-world, or rather in stuff that will have an impact on the real world too?

If not, and if the former – and indeed, none of us is doing this jazz perfectly – then the response is to fix our eyes and our minds once again on the real world, our heavenly homeland, and on everything that, because of Jesus’ death and resurrection, is waiting for us there – the most crucial of such things being, of course, our risen Lord himself. We may have business in the dream-world for the moment, but we must never forget that where he is, is the real world we’re waiting to go home to.⁴

Footnotes

¹ I’m basically writing this post under the assumption that you’ve seen the film, O Culturally Aware Reader, but here’s a trailer in case you need to familiarise yourself with the premise: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoHD9XEInc0. If you in fact haven’t seen it, I’d definitely recommend doing so, by the way.

² Links to whole chapters for you: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=philippians+3&version=ESVUK; https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=hebrews+11&version=ESVUK; https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matt+6&version=ESVUK; https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2+cor+5&version=ESVUK. You’ll have noticed that those are all ESV, but as usual of late, I’ve given my own translation above.

³ I consulted the script here, http://www.raindance.co.uk/site/scripts/Inception.pdf, which I think differs slightly from the dialogue actually used in the film, but whatever; it served my purposes.

⁴ And before I go, a tip of the hat to Owl City for supplying my title (or close enough). Here’s a really cute fanmade video for the relevant track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUvYIrytxE8.