No Fixed Address, faith as a journey: John Bodycomb

 No Fixed Address, faith as a journey: John Bodycomb

This book is as the title says 'a journey'. It is a 'spiritual' journey of John Bodycomb a Uniting Church minister. From his initial childhood to his current understanding of Spirituality now. There are a couple of reasons why I wanted to read this book. Firstly it is a book on Spirituality by an Australian author. This is rare, if you go into any Christian book store you would be going to get one. The other is that in some way some his religious journey is similar to my own.
The book is divided into five sections

1. Born to dissent
2. The falling edifice
3. The new age of discovery
4. God, humanity and Cosmos
5. The new mystics

I couldn't help thinking that the book was trying to encourage the reader to understand and even join Bodycomb on how he sees Christian Spirituality. For me it was coming from a 'modernist' perspective. Most of the arguments sit easily with the ideas of been measured in a scientific sense. For me I'm ok with the rationalistic but I also am open to God at very rare times intervening and the implications of this.
There was a few annoying aspects in the book. The spelling of G-O-D usually to make a point. For me it was just annoying than making any point. This sort personal jargon he used a bit, I didn't find it that helpful.
In the end I can't help but feel a bit sorry for John Bodycomb, been part of a the Church system, the Uniting Church which when he started was at a reasonable number now in decline. There are a number of thoughts given by Bodycomb for the decline and he genuinely believes his understanding of Christian Spirituality is an answer to 'post-modernism' in Australia. But I'm not so sure. It as if he has new wine with the expectation it will fit into old wine skins.
Overall I thought this was a worthwhile read. I enjoyed his journey while not always coming to the same conclusions. I suspect if Bodycomb had been born 10 years later he would have been an atheist to agnostic.
If I was to try and 'box' John Bodycomb in it would be close to Jack Spong and to the right of him would be Marcus Borg.

No Fixed Address faith as a journey, John Bodycomb

I've just finnished my review of 'No Fixed Address, Faith as a Journey', by John Bodycomb. You can read the review here

God intervening?

 

John Bodycomb writes about a God who intervines in his book 'No fixed address' ::

'I do not believe that God is in any sense 'interventionist; that God changes weather, health or wealth in response to impassioned pleading, cajoling or harassment from the pious. I am not persuaded by accounts of so-called 'miracle healing'. I am not opposed to prayer for, by and with the sick - but I have yet to meet the paraplegic or amputee miraculously restored. And if I did, I would wonder why God meddled in that person's life and ignored all the other amputees and paraplegics'

Couple of thoughts::

• If he was praying what would it be for? Peace?
• One of the greatest gifts a person could ever have is hope. While I am against an exclusive miricles that only occur if you do and believe the right thing. I've seen many miracles where people are in all sorts of places in there life.
• Bodcombs last sentence is a 'Theodicy' For me the only way to get away from it is to become an atheist. Or live with the tension, a 'mystery'.
• A miracle is often a persons only hope. Hope is one of the most precious gifts. Tread carefully.

Compass Scott Stephens last week interviewed Dr Philip Nitschke one of Australias most prominent Euthanasia advocates. He was asked if he had ever had a 'Spiritual experience'. His reply nearly knocked me over. 

The most bizarre one was when I was in my undergraduate years in university in Adelaide and I woke up one morning and I had really swollen feet. Feet were incredibly swollen, I couldn’t stand on them. I was in a dreadful state. Couldn’t get to university. And for whatever reason, whatever I did that day as I was sitting there going “what the hell am I going to do?” I opened up a copy of the bible that was there in the boarding school and the first words I read were – this is what struck me – was “Asa was diseased in his feet.” And I thought come on. How many references to feet are there in the bible? And you open it up and you read it and nothing. So I sat there thinking what are the statistical probability of opening a bible and reading about feet when you’ve got a problem with your feet?

 For me this very much seems like the 'Creator' was knocking at his door. Who knows God may still have plans for Philip Nitschke, he came across as a very thoughtful person, who I warmed to as the interview went on.

I suspect that Bodycomb would agree with Nitschke that this was just a statistical fluke. Mind you I often think life is made up of statistical flukes. For us humans the difficulty lies in which ones to embrace and which ones to ignore.

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Related articles

• Australia may get euthanasia clinic (news.theage.com.au)

Mystery Religions

Image via Wikipedia

I'm currently reading 'No Fixed address' by John Bodycomb. He had a interesting paragraph in relation to Hellonisation::

".... One  of the mystery religions was Mithraism, after the Persian hero-divinity Mithras. Mithras was mediator between the unapproachable and unknowable divinity who reigned in remoteness, and the human race who were struggling and suffering here below. The story had it that after joining his disciples in a last supper, Mithras ascended to heaven..."

 I must say this has a familiar ring to it. It also gives some support to the idea that we are as humans able to add legend and myth to a story.
I've done a bit of a quick wikipedia search and could find Mithras but nothing about his ascension and 'last supper'. Never the less something to look into further.