Focus on Faith in Stretton Focus, March 2016
One of the real pains in modern life is packaging. It seems ridiculous to have slices of ham sealed in plastic, even if the tear off top sometimes makes access to the ham easier. Move away from food to small items, such as a new toothbrush and hard welded plastic is everywhere. The growth of online shopping has fostered a parallel growth in the use of cardboard boxes.
Faith is delivered in packaging too. Perhaps that is one of the reasons for the dramatic fall in church attendance in recent years. The packaging has become hard to deal with. It may not be faith which is failing but the packaging may be putting people off. Christ’s core message was very simple. Christian faith is essentially very simple. However churches package it with doctrine, ceremony, myth and mystery; just like using wrapping paper and polystyrene chips. It also serves to narrow the faith, channelling it in ways which suit the doctrine. We need to get inside that wrapping, get to the content and release understanding of the spiritual bigness of faith.
So who can help? The press is no use at all. It wraps faith in religion and then puts that inside its own branded wrappers. There are ghetto slots like Thought for the Day on Radio 4, some newspapers have dedicated columns and Sunday morning TV is another area with its own branding and packaging.
Where can we go to get help understanding faith better? Where there is no packaging or branding, no ritual, mystery or impenetrable doctrine. We need places which are open, inclusive and questioning. Places where our spirit is awakened to fresh ideas and interpretation. They need to be inclusive and questioning so that faith and belief do not get narrowed by false boundaries, trapped in bubble wrap.
All churches are concerned about faith and how it is perceived in society. We do not always challenge our packaging. Where we can we must learn to do so; then we can help those who are striving to understand God, striving to get past the wrappers which strangle access to true expression and the understanding of faith.
Roger Wilson
