Adam Harbinson

NOTHING CAN I DO TO MAKE GOD LOVE ME LESS

2012-01-02T06:53:00.001-08:00

Someone once said, ‘Show me a fifty year old man who
believes exactly what he believed when he was twenty and I’ll show you a man
who has just wasted thirty years of his life.’ That’s a nugget of truth with
which few would disagree, and yet so many of us interpret changing your mind as
a sign of weakness.
Richard Rohr,
founder and Director of Center for Action and Contemplation makes the
following observation: ‘The Christian life is a matter of becoming all that God
wants us to be.’ And he adds, ‘But the path is more about unlearning than
learning.’
What Rohr appears to be saying is that life is a series of
opportunities to question something we have always assumed was written in stone,
and if it does not stand up to rigorous examination we should have the courage
to reject it. The implication appears to be that we have been mis-taught by our
society’s values, our parents, our education system or our religious leaders,
and our progress along the road of becoming what God wants us to be, is a measured
by our willingness to reject firmly held beliefs. But we don’t like change, we
tend to believe what we believe because we have always believed it. And that is
not good.
Allow me to suggest that we all make a New Year’s Resolution
right now. Unlike the others that involve stopping this or cutting down on
that, this one requires us only to believe and act on something that deep down
we know is true.
For example, let me take you back to the creation story. In
Genesis we are told, ‘God created human
beings in his own image... male
and female he created them.’
Now move forward only two chapters to where the woman is beginning
to doubt what God had done. The tempter said, ‘You will not die (if you eat the forbidden fruit), for God knows that
when you eat it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God.’
Most of us miss the point here because our vision is clouded
by arguments about how long God took to create all that was created and how he
did it and the Big Bang Theory and all that angry Richard Dawkins’ nonsense.
The remarkable is buried under the ordinary, for the woman and the man were
already created in God’s image! They were already like him regardless of
whether they ate the forbidden fruit or not! But they both failed to embrace
what was glaringly obvious.
Many of us trudge our weary way through life crushed by a
great weight of guilt because we have been misled by our religious leaders and
the meritocratic world system we inhabit. Regardless of the rhetoric we hear
from many a pious pulpit the truth is that there is little room in religion for
grace: getting what we do not deserve, or mercy: not getting what we do
deserve.
Preachers tend to give with one hand and take back with the
other, but the liberating truth, which when believed will change lives for good
and forever, gives and does not take back. Here it is: ‘He was pierced for our rebellion,
crushed for our sins, beaten so we could be whole and whipped so we could be
healed.’
Let’s take this truth with us into a new year and
we will find new life: if God punished Jesus for my rebellion and sins, will he
punish me as well? I don’t think so, but does that not suggest that I have
already been forgiven? And if already forgiven am I not throwing his forgiveness
back in his face by refusing to forgive myself?
We all woke up this morning with a completely clean
sheet. Write these immortal words on it: There
is nothing I can do to make God love me more, and there is nothing I can do to
make him love me less.

ALONE WITH THE GREAT ALONE

2011-06-05T05:36:00.000-07:00

I once knew a young lady who suffered from heart palpitations. It was frightening, at best the fluttering feeling in her chest was annoying, at worst there were times when she thought she would die. The most frustrating aspect of the condition for her was that all the many tests she underwent indicated that there was nothing physically wrong with her heart, at times she wished the medics could find some defect, for then she could see a possibility of getting it fixed, for if there’s nothing wrong there’s nothing to fix, and she suffered on.
Now I’m no medic but it seems to me that the difficulty could have been related to her chosen lifestyle; the frenetic busy-ness, always going somewhere, or coming back, indeed it would be little surprise if she were to meet herself on the way. The incessant music plugged into her ears, the jumble of parties and part-time jobs and studies were indicative of an inner malaise: she was afraid of her own thoughts.
What I mean is this, a couple of years earlier, when I thought I began to see trouble ahead for her, I pleaded with her to slow down the pace of her life, to take time to think, to reflect, to observe the beauty of the world in which she lived. How wonderful, how invigorating and therapeutic it is to watch the waves crash onto rocks, or listen to the quiet gurgle of a stream on its way to the sea, or to stand on a mountain top and simply absorb the majesty of creation. But no, she told me she could not bear to be alone with her thoughts for ten minutes. And therein perhaps lay the problem.
Os Guinness in his book The Grave Digger File, quotes Bertrand Russell; ‘Most Christians would rather die than think – in fact they do!’ and that is my conclusion too. For example I wrote in this column a few years ago, scathingly I think, of a well known American evangelist who said, ‘Follow the man who is following Jesus.’ The sad thing is that because of the perceived stature of the man, you and I both know that thousands of his devotees will mindlessly trot out that saying as a cool mantra. If they were to pause for a couple of minutes, exercise some original, critical thought they would quickly see the utter stupidity of the idea, quite apart from its dubious theological basis.
We live in a world of increasing madness and I’m convinced that the only way to avoid contamination is to cultivate a habit of quietness, allowing for solitary moments in our daily lives. Richard Rohr talks about learning to be alone with the Great Alone.
There are many references in the Bible to the benefits of stillness, indeed on a trip to the Holy Land a few years ago I spent some time alone in the Judean Desert, the place where Jesus would have gone: ‘...at daybreak... to a solitary place.’ And I think I gained some insight into the uniqueness of that time and place in communicating with what writer Paul Hawker came to know as the Source of all life.
For me however the great lesson is in the experience of the old prophet Elijah. He was afraid, depressed and lonely, hiding from those who would have had him dead. He needed to hear from his God and as he stood on the mountain top a mighty windstorm hit the mountain, but God was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but God wasn’t in the earthquake either. And after the earthquake there was a fire, but it was only after the fire that the tired old man heard the voice of God in a gentle whisper.
We don’t need to go on Retreats, nor are we expected to become hermits, but we can, with a little self discipline learn to hear the voice of comfort and guidance, in the stillness of our own hearts.

Sit Loosely in the Saddle of Life

2011-05-30T03:30:00.000-07:00

I’d love to know exactly what Robert Louis Stevenson had in mind when he exhorted his listeners and readers to ‘sit loosely in the saddle of life.’ But the wonderful expression conjures in my mind a picture of a man whose life is not dominated by rules. He is at peace with himself and with the world; he does not take himself too seriously, he holds lightly onto his possessions and his position. He’s a man who does not make demands on himself or on others, who enjoys the journey as much as, or maybe more than the destination. And he’s not constantly looking over his shoulder to his past glories, nor constantly straining to see beyond the horizon in the hope of a better future. No, he has learned to live in the beauty and in the pain of the now.

The Westminster Coalition Attacks the Vulnerable

2011-03-21T15:24:00.000-07:00

The decision to re-package Disability Living Allowance (DLA) in order to cut the cost of this benefit by 20% is to be deplored. There are a number of factors that explain the relatively high up-take of DLA in Northern Ireland and there have been despicable attempte to use these statistics as a stick by which to beat Northern Ireland. However, the telling statistic is that on average some 30% of applicants are disallowed, while something in the order of 50% of appeals against the decision to disallow, succeed at Appeal Tribunals.

Bearing in mind that it is government officials who disallow claimants, and it is independent tribunals who overturn half of their decisions, it is clear that there is an expectation on the part of officialdom to reduce the welfare budget by denying the neediest in society the safety net that any civilised society should afford them.

The Tories in this coalition government, these children of Thatcher are faithfully following in the footsteps of their forebears whose default position has always been to target the vulnerable; the poor, the weak and the voiceless.

Who Killed Jesus - according to Woodie Gutherie

2009-08-09T14:04:00.001-07:00

It occurred to me some years ago that the people who orchestrated the crucifixion of Jesus weren’t the nasty Romans, indeed if you read the record you’ll see that the leading politicians of his day; Herod Antipas and Pontius Pilate both portrayed Jesus as an innocent man and reluctantly sanctioned his execution.
No, those who most enthusiastically called for Jesus’ death were the religious leaders. Why? Because his lifestyle and teachings threatened to undermine all they stood for. Their very identity was based on their strict adherence to the Law of Moses, while Jesus spoke of love, tolerance and mercy.
One of my sons sent me an email the other day, ‘Dad, listen to Woodie Guthrie singing a song called Jesus Christ.’ I did, and discovered that old Woodie was way down the road ahead of me, for here’s what he sang, 'If Jesus was to preach (now) like he preached in Galilee they would lay Jesus Christ in his grave.'
Do you think they would?

Out of Church Christians

2009-07-22T15:13:00.000-07:00

Google, 'Don't want to go to church anymore', and at the last count there were over 70 million results. That suggests a hot topic for debate! But what does it tell you? Could it be that in today's world there are millions of people who go to church but don't want to and lack the courage to stop?

Or are there millions more who don't go and think they should but are put off because they misunderstand what the true church is about? Maybe it's a bit of both. In my case it took more years than I care to count, trying to make sense of the weekly pilgrimage before I finally said, 'You know what? I'm not going back!' And I didn't!

The result is that my understanding of what church is all about has radically changed, my relationship with God has been vastly enriched, and the deep inner peace that I spent almost half a century searching for fills my life every day.

Does that make sense?

Yes? Then tell me your story and be encouraged to tell others.
No? Then visit www.outofchurchchristian.com and tell me what you think.

A SONG AIN'T A SONG 'TIL YOU SING IT

2009-06-05T14:12:00.000-07:00

I’ve discovered how to make myself invisible, but I’ll come to that in a minute. Meanwhile let me tell you about my favourite contemporary Christian writer; Brennan Manning. By all accounts he’s an odd character, perhaps in his mid-seventies. A Franciscan priest committed to serving the poor. Among his ‘callings’ he has transported water to rural villages via donkey and buckboard; he’s been a mason's assistant under the blazing Spanish sun; a dishwasher in France and a voluntary prisoner in a Swiss jail. Many see him as a mystic, an intensely godly man although not religious, and he struggles with alcoholism. He claims to have heard the voice of God audibly on an occasion when he spent six months living in solitary contemplation in a remote cave in the Zaragoza desert. Late one night as he gazed into the inky blackness of the sky he says he heard these words; ‘For love of you I left my Father's side. I came to you who ran from me, who did not want to hear my name. For love of you I was covered with spit, punched and beaten, and fixed to a wooden cross.’

Brennan later reflected, ‘Those words are burned into my life. Once you come to know the love of Jesus Christ, nothing else in the world seems beautiful or desirable by comparison.'

But it wasn’t until his collapse into alcoholism in the mid 1970’s that his writing began in earnest. He has since written fourteen books, among them my favourite, The Ragamuffin Gospel. Brennan has a gripping style; you either love him or you wish he wasn’t there. I was listening to him the other day as he was telling one of his stories about an old friend who was dying. At one point he grabbed Brennan by the arm and said, ‘I can’t relive my life, but you’re still a young man. Brennan, don’t waste your time doing things that don’t count.’ He opened a drawer, ‘I want to give you something,’ he said, and from the drawer he pulled out a picture with some text on it. ‘Read it for me,’ he said, and Brennan read; ‘A bell ain’t a bell ‘til you ring it. A song ain’t a song ‘til you sing it. And love ain’t love ‘til you give it away.’

The two men talked easily for a while until his friend died and Brennan tells how as he looked back over his own life most of it was a drab grey, with little peaks of brilliance poking through like church spires through a blanket of fog. ‘Those were the moments when I was giving of myself for the good of others. For the rest of the time I might as well not have been born.’

So, how do we make ourselves invisible? You sit on a wooden box at the bottom of Main Street with a handful of ‘Big Issue’ magazines on your knee. Few people will see you, those who do will side-step you, studiously avoid eye contact, and yet how we love to put on our pious Sunday best, we congratulate the pastor on another ‘life-changing’ sermon and we make our way home, oblivious to the screaming pain of hurting humanity to the safety of our respectable little bubbles.

We sanitise the words of Paul to the young church at Ephesus, ‘…live a life of love,’ but they can’t be sanitised, because love ain’t love ‘til you give it away,’ and you can’t do that at armslength.

SO, YOU THINK GOD IS RELIGIOUS?

2009-04-14T14:24:00.000-07:00

Most people do. Perhaps because most religious activities are centred on places that people associate with God, or observing rules dreamed up by religious patriarchs. But take a minute and think about how Jesus related to religion and religious people of his day.

Firstly he broke all their rules; they said you shouldn’t heal people on the Sabbath, and he did. They said it’s wrong to pluck ears of corn and eat them on the Sabbath, and he did. And they taught that you shouldn’t associate with prostitutes and drunkards and social drop-outs, and he did that too. And there’s more. While he did go to the temple daily, it wasn’t always the same temple, so he didn’t ‘belong’, he wasn’t ‘committed’ to a particular group, or denomination, or assembly. And if the Bible is to be believed, he didn’t go to the temple to warm a pew, he went to teach his listeners that Moses’ Law was now obsolete. He said, ‘I’m giving you a new commandment: love each other… as I have loved you’ - that’s one pretty good reason why they wanted him dead.
He didn’t say that he was introducing another commandment; it was a new commandment, one that would render the others obsolete, one that placed relationship at the heart of his new way of life. For example, you wouldn’t steal from people you love as Jesus loves you, would you? And you wouldn’t commit adultery, or be envious, or kill, or lie, because love would be your life's guiding principle. But religion can’t handle that way of thinking, so religious people demanded his crucifixion.

And another thing, as I’ve just said, Jesus did go to the temple regularly, but there are only two occasions when his going was specifically reported, once he riled them so much they tried to throw him off a cliff, and the next time he wrecked the place, flexed his muscles, made a whip, kicked over tables.
So, do you still think God is religious? I don’t. And if he’s not, what is church all about?

DOMESTIC ABUSE - Don't Put Up With It!

2008-04-27T13:44:00.001-07:00

There are things in each of our lives that we don’t like, and that we can change, but for whatever reason we don’t. Why don’t we? Why are we prepared to settle for second best? Perhaps the most common reason is fear of the unknown. Better the devil you know than the one you don’t know, so we live with a devil.

I grew up in a good home, and while it wasn’t all sweetness and light, apart from normal family disagreements and healthy sibling rivalry we all treated each other reasonably well. I never saw physical violence, not ever. As a teenager, there was a girl in my circle of friends whose boyfriend smacked her once, and to me it was a black and white issue; the relationship ends here. It was as simple as that. So it was quite a shock when later in life I realised that for many, violence in the home is their perception of normality.

Statistics suggest that over 40% of women will suffer domestic abuse at some point in their lives, and the same statistics show that it is at least as prevalent in religious communities as it is in non-religious communities.

That raises two questions; why do people stay in violent relationships, and why do you rarely, if ever hear it addressed from the pulpit? Are preachers in denial or is it a messy business that’s not spoken about in decent company? Either way, it’s an example of monumental and unforgivable failure by the church.

But the first question; why do people stay in abusive relationships? It’s partly a matter of self-esteem. A woman will allow a man to physically abuse her only when she has been conditioned to believe she deserves no better. And she’s conditioned to believe that abuse is normal by systematic humiliation – verbal and emotional abuse – over a long period of time. Thus, she becomes a person with a limited understanding of love, she’s not valued as an individual, and therefore she neither loves nor values herself.

What can the church do about it? Firstly, acknowledge that the problem exists. Secondly, make it clear that domestic abuse is totally unacceptable. And thirdly, teach and demonstrate the love of the Father by creating a safe and loving place where hurting people can rebuild their lives and move on.

And the woman? No matter what you’ve been told, nothing justifies violence.

RECEIVE THE FATHER'S LOVE - AND PASS IT ON

2008-03-02T07:18:00.000-08:00

To many, being a good Christian is being a good preacher, or a good pastor, or a good worship leader, and that becomes the focus of their life. But so often they miss the point; they become so obsessed with the work of the Lord that they lose sight of the Lord of the work. And God draws along and says, ‘Let’s sit and yarn for a while about your life.’
‘But, but Lord, you don’t understand. I’ve got to get this sermon finished, and I need to arrange for someone to visit old Mrs Smith, and the Praise Group is responsible for the music in the morning.’ And God says, ‘OK, but I’m here if you need me.’
Do you know what the Christian’s ultimate purpose is? It’s to receive the Father’s love and pass it on. Like breathing; breathe in – receive his love, breathe out – pass it on.
Have you any idea how simple that is? How fulfilling? How absolutely freeing? If the Praise Group is your life and someone better comes along, you feel threatened, angry – Right? And if the assistant minister is a better preacher than you, you want rid of him – Hmm?
But in the utter simplicity of breathing in, and breathing out, there can no competition, no conflict, no stress. Isn’t that how it should be?

PAT ROBERTSON - 700 CLUB - is at it again

2007-10-17T03:25:00.000-07:00

According to broadcaster Pat Robertson, the United States risks God's wrath if it forces Israel to surrender part of Jerusalem to the Palestinians.

'He that touches Jerusalem touches the apple of God's eye,' Robertson said on "The 700 Club," the daily religious news-and-talk television program he hosts from his Christian Broadcasting Network.

'And if we decide we're going to wrest East Jerusalem away from the Jews and give it over to the Palestinians, we're risking the wrath of God on this nation, and I think it's very dangerous,' Robertson said.

Christians say they believe that Jesus was punished for the sins of the world. Is God a just God if he punished his son for our sins, and then punishes humanity for the same sins?

RELIGION OR SPIRITUALITY?

2007-10-06T16:08:00.001-07:00

I said something on radio recently that I hoped the presenter would edit out – but he didn’t. It was to the effect that if religion were to be exposed to the white heat of the truth of Scripture, the entire edifice would collapse in one unholy mess. I momentarily regretted saying it because it came across as harsh and judgemental, and I didn’t mean to sound like that. But I take nothing back, for history demonstrates that religion more often than not does more harm than good.
Think of the Crusades of a millennium ago, the Middle East of today, or the Suicide Bombers in Iraq – all deeply rooted in religious mindsets that believe, ‘Everybody’s out of step but me!’ Even the crucifixion of Jesus was masterminded by religious people.
I’ll shed no tears if I wake some morning to a world without religion, although the downside is that humanity would be overwhelmed by hopelessness and despair, because most of us have been duped into believing that you can’t have peace with God without religion – a monstrous lie! I’ve been to many services when ministers were being installed in their new churches, and I’ve always been a little bemused at the proceedings; men dressed in frills and robes and silver buckles and clerical collars, each vying with the others as they parade their lofty titles.
What does Jesus make of it all; the irrelevant circus, men honouring each other in their pious bubbles as their brothers are slaughtered in the streets in their struggle for religious freedom half a world away? He loves them, but still he didn’t miss and hit the wall as he voiced his opinion of them. He said, ‘They love to sit at the head table at banquets and in the seats of honour in the churches. They love to receive respectful greetings as they walk in the marketplaces, and to be called teacher. Don’t let anyone call you teacher, for you have only one Teacher, the Christ, and all of you are equal as brothers and sisters.' 'But you need teaching!' howl the evangelicals. O really? Well, try this one for size: ‘I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will a man teach his neighbour, or a man his brother, saying, “Know the Lord,” because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.’
Sometimes we think, ‘If I had lived when Christ was on earth I wouldn’t have rejected him,’ but the religious mind is as opposed to Jesus now as it ever was. To quote Matthew Henry, ‘Christ in his Spirit, in his word, and by his ministers, is still no better treated. By a thousand devices they make religion give way to their worldly interests.’
Things don’t change much, do they?

YOU TOO COULD HAVE A PROBLEM FREE PHILOSOPHY

2007-10-03T12:19:00.001-07:00

I don’t have a nut allergy, nor do I need to stick to a gluten free diet. So, given recent reports that allergies in the UK have reached epidemic proportions, I feel pretty lucky. One thing I am allergic to however, is stress. I hate it. Medical evidence suggests that stress reduces the body’s defence mechanism, it causes depression, high blood pressure, ulcers, sleepless nights, poor appetites, and it damages relationships.

By and large I think I succeed in living my ‘Hakuna Matata’ life – that’s the Swahili phrase you hear in The Lion King, remember? It means a problem-free philosophy. My secret is four simple words that will be engraved on my headstone some day; ‘It really doesn’t matter!’

I was driving to my office in Belfast the other day with a longer than usual ‘To-Do’ list, and I got caught in heavy traffic, but when stress began to raise its ugly head, I washed it all away with those wonderful words; it doesn’t really matter. Nobody will die if I’m late, the world will keep on turning, and my old mum’s motto came to mind, ‘If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing tomorrow.’

Now you’d think the most laid-back people in the world should be Christian ministers? I mean didn’t Jesus the church’s founder promise that nobody serving him would ever suffer stress as a result. He said, ‘… my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.’ And yet in a poll of 600 Church of Scotland ministers, 250 of them said their health was affected by stress and a further 180 said their marriage was adversely affected by their work.

How do you explain that one? Easy, they’re carrying the wrong burden, one that has been imposed by someone else: unreasonable committees or demanding congregations. There may not be a lot you and I can do about that, except to commit ourselves not to add to their hardships, but we can learn from their mistakes. Don't ever allow anyone place on your shoulders a burden that’s not yours to carry.

Rich Thinking About The World's Poor

2007-06-28T09:45:00.001-07:00

Where the words come from I don't know. And I can't vouch for every statistic quoted. But the sentiment is powerful. Next time you – or someone nearby – are having a bad day try this for size:
If you woke up this morning with more health than illness, you are more blessed than the million who will not survive this week.
If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture or the pangs of starvation, you are ahead of 500 million people in the world.
If you can attend a church meeting without fear of harassment, arrest, torture or death, you are luckier than three billion people in the world.
If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof over your head and a place to sleep, you are richer than 75 per cent of the world.
If you have money in the bank, in your purse, and spare change in a dish somewhere, you are among the top eight per cent of the world's wealthy.

These words may not exactly be ‘Footprints', but they still speak volumes to us in our ‘life must be perfect for me' world. Because for most people life is anything other than perfect.

When I first came across these words they'd been sent to someone for whom life was going considerably pear shaped. And they concluded with, ‘And by reading this message you are doubly blessed because I was thinking about you, and love you'.

And isn't that the rub? It's not just that we can become so focused on our own needs that we fail to see them in their true perspective. It's that, in the process, we become distracted from thinking about – and genuinely loving – those who really know how bad things can be.
Two shopping lists:
What it would cost to...
Help the world to feed itself — $8 billion
Provide the world with clean water — $9 billion
Provide universal primary education — $6 billion

What the world already spends...
On the military — $780 billion
On illegal drugs — $400 billion
On perfumes — $12 billion

Go to www.worldvision.org.uk andfind out now about sponsoring a child

AND WE ALL LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER

2007-06-04T03:17:00.003-07:00

I have a friend who, a few years ago, found himself falling in love with a divorced woman. No big deal? Well, it was for him. He had been brought up by a fundamentalist father who belonged to a fundamentalist church that taught fundamentalist doctrines that must never be questioned - and he’d been taught that a woman who divorces her husband and then remarries, commits adultery.

So for the first time in his life my friend began to read his Bible with an open and questioning mind. And he made some startling discoveries; many of the things he read were in direct contradiction to what he had been taught. And that offended him.

It offended him because the leaders of the little community he had grown up in could not possibly have missed the things he was seeing for the first time. Had they lied to him? Were they lying to each other? Or were the ‘teaching elders’ conniving to keep the ordinary members in the dark? Rightly or wrongly that was his conclusion, and so he began to ask awkward questions, and he was branded a heretic, and ‘cast into outer darkness’ – where he bumped into Jesus and discovered the truth. Jesus love and accepts us warts and all.

Have the courage to believe that if you don’t already, and your life will never be the same again.

JESUS AND RELIGION

2007-05-07T10:15:00.000-07:00

When I was a lad I wanted to be a missionary. In those long ago days missionaries were real men. When they disappeared up the Yangtze or the Amazon, often they were never seen or heard from again.

Anyway, I changed my mind about being a missionary When I was in my late teens. I looked around one day and saw that the religion I had wanted to share with folk in the Third World was self-righteous and hypocritical. And then I asked myself; if I don’t want them to have this religion, do I want it?

Just about this time a friend the family, a seventeen year-old girl, got pregnant. Her parents were nice, decent, God-fearing people – and that sort of thing doesn’t happen to daughters of nice, decent, God-fearing people. So the young lady disappeared for a while, and when she returned she wasn’t pregnant anymore. They had sacrificed an innocent, unborn child to their god of respectability. And that was the straw that broke my camel’s back. If that’s Christianity, thought, I want no part of it. So I dumped it. And I’ve never regretted it.

But where was Jesus in all this? He was appalled by it, and that was my breakthrough. For the first time I could see that it wasn’t the Roman authorities that called for Jesus to be crucified. It was religious leaders, those whom he called ‘hypocrites,’ ‘whitened sepulchres,’ ‘brood of snakes,’ ‘sons of hell.’

They wanted rid of him because he was an untidy, unpredictable trouble-maker who just would not conform, whose teaching undermined their hollow status that was based on a system of rules. They kept the common people in subjection by making them feel dirty, Jesus spoke the truth and set them free. A veneer of self-righteousness only just covered their corruption, and they hated Jesus because he saw right through them.

But Jesus wasn’t religious, he’s the one we should resemble, and I honestly believe that there are many people who are Christians but they don’t know it because they think they have to be religious. Trust me. You don't!

Savage Shepherds - Extracts From Second Edition

2007-01-11T02:42:00.000-08:00

We're running to a second edition, and there's some interesting 'post publication' material. Here are some extracts:

EXTRACT ONE:
Savage Shepherds was first published in November 2006. In a reaction to a press release that had been shown to him by a member of the River of Life Fellowship, one of the elders rang me to say he wanted to see me. It was clear he was annoyed, for although I had changed names of people and places, even some dates and the minor details of some events to conceal identities, ours is a small town and I suspected that those involved in my story would easily recognize themselves and others.

I hadn’t spoken to the man more than twice or three times since I left his church fifteen years previously, and I was surprised that he had called, for I was sure he would adopt his default position, one of ‘dignified detachment’. I agreed to see him, but suggested that if it was Savage Shepherds he wanted to talk about it might be an idea to wait until he read it.

‘No, I want to talk to you about this press release,’ he said curtly, and that was that; so we agreed on a time and place.

The power of the manipulative mind can be rooted in the demonic, and so while the prospect of his visit held no fear for me, I felt unsettled in my spirit. There were times when I had been fascinated by this very man’s teaching on Jezebel, the scheming wife of King Ahab – and the ‘Spirit of Jezebel’ was a popular topic for discussion in the River of Life Fellowship, allegedly evident when a person uses cunning to get their way. The implication was that the only way to ‘get your way’ is by the exercise of legitimate authority; God’s delegated authority by a shepherd over his sheep.

It is perhaps one aspect of human relations that I tend to over-react to for some reason. There was one occasion when I said to Tom, ‘I will never ever allow myself to be manipulated, by anyone.’ And the strange thing is he replied by saying something like, ‘Mmmm, I’m not sure that it’s always wrong.’ I confess I’m still not sure what he meant…

EXTRACT TWO:
My wife and I prayed about Tom’s visit; we were both perturbed, especially during the couple of hours before he was due to arrive. How could we expect anything approaching a positive purpose? Even if I wanted to – and I didn’t – I could not un-publish the book that threatened such annoyance.

People were now starting to come out of the woodwork, and I was reminded – and I needed reminding because I had quite forgotten the trauma it could be to sit under ministry that teaches little of God’s unconditional love – that the man appeared to have no understanding of the priceless value of grace to those who struggle to please God by observing the law.

For example, an ex-elder in his church called me, having received a copy of the book direct from the publisher, and in conversation said, ‘If the secret gets out that the Christian life is all about grace and love and all that mushy stuff, then Tom and the likes of him are out of a job.’

And so my wife and I prayed that the meeting would be productive, that there would be no conflict, just humility and a desire for reconciliation, maturity and a sense of moving on. But still I was troubled, and I decided not to be drawn into a blow by blow analysis of the book. ‘He’s good at controlling a conversation by confusion,’ said another. ‘If you get involved in justifying yourself, or explaining your conclusions in detail, you’ll end up going round in circles.’

Another ex-member who had once been relatively close to Tom advised that I create a six-foot bubble around myself, ‘Don’t let him get in.’

In due course he arrived and after initial pleasantries I cut to the chase by saying that I was intrigued as to why after all these years, he was prompted to visit me now.

However, I began as I’ve done a hundred times when discussing the book, by saying that while Savage Shepherds is based on my real experience in a real church, the River of Life Fellowship, it is principally about spiritual abuse, a phenomenon that has always been with us. And while I sincerely regret any ‘collateral damage’, spiritual abuse must be exposed, for it can only flourish in the shadows. I reminded him that Ezekiel addressed it two thousand seven hundred years ago, and Jesus warned his listeners against it, as recorded in Matthew chapter 23.

But Tom brushed my comments aside – and I could sense his ‘How dare you lecture me’ attitude…

EXTRACT THREE:
Since Savage Shepherds was published I have encountered a small number of people who remain supportive of the shepherding movement and who have been extremely vocal in their attempts to rubbish Savage Shepherds. By seizing on this single ‘factual inaccuracy’ perhaps Tom hoped he could discredit the book as being ‘based on a flawed premise’.

I apologised for the technical error. ‘But,’ I insisted, ‘changing the label did nothing to alter the way things were run. I was there from 1980 until 1991 and I saw no major changes. We still called the pastors “shepherds”, submission to a specific shepherd was still a condition of membership and we still had to tithe.

‘And in any case,’ I went on, ‘if there had been a fundamental shift in the way the church was run, there would have been a public apology, as Derek Prince and Bob Mumford had the wisdom and courage to do.’

But there never had been an apology from Tom despite his assertion that he’d be the first to put up his hand and say sorry, there had been no acknowledgement that pain had been inflicted, no appeal for forgiveness and no attempt to bring healing. True, a letter had been circulated at one stage – I was shown a copy although I never received one – but it was more of an explanation than an apology…

EXTRACT FOUR:
Tom had the bit between his teeth; ‘You must tell me specifically what it was that you had so much difficulty in forgiving me for.’ In the quietness of my mind I was sure I had to do no such thing, as far as I was concerned his bullying days were over. But I still wondered why he came to see me, for it was obvious that we were getting nowhere. The purpose of his call was not to demonstrate brotherly love, nor was it to apologise for the evils that had been inflicted on my family and me. No, it was all about Tom.

And I wasn’t expecting him to grovel, really I wasn’t. Closure wasn’t on my mind either, for with the revelation of God’s grace and unconditional love for his creation, I had long since shaken off the shackles of unforgiveness. Two things I had come to understand; God loves me totally, recklessly and unconditionally, and God loves the abusers totally, recklessly and unconditionally.
But we were beginning to generate more heat than light, and so I drew things to a conclusion. As politely as I could I said, ‘Tom, we’re getting nowhere here. There’s nothing more to talk about. This meeting is over, and I’d now like you to leave.’

The Philosopher's Stone in Ireland's Mourne Country

2006-12-12T09:24:00.000-08:00

There’s a big stone in a wood in the heart of Mourne country close to the old Ice House. I call it the Philosopher’s stone and I used to tell my kids that if I ever vanish off the face of the earth, that’s where they’ll find me.

It’s surrounded by tall pines standing as sentinels with the roar and splash of the Glen river just barely discernible above the whisper of the wind through their branches. The Mournes repose sedate and silent in the background as they preside majestically over all they survey. Sometimes as I reflect on my many moods through the years while sitting on my philosopher’s stone, my mind turns to King David as he cried out, “I will lift up my eyes to the hills....”

There have been times when I’ve been afraid, angry, heartbroken, confused, and sometimes euphoric, but the mountains and the trees never change. Their permanence has always been able to infuse my troubled spirit with their unique serenity. Good times and bad come and go, but it seems to me that there’s something of God in them thar hills, something that never changes. They tell us that however people may disappoint us, however the great institutions that we rely on may crumble and fail us, God remains unchanged in His faithfulness. The word is “immutable.”

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BONO ENDORSES ADAM HARBINSON'S NEW BOOK ABOUT SPIRITUAL ABUSE

2006-09-12T08:02:00.000-07:00

SAVAGE SHEPHERDS: one man's story of overcoming spiritual abuse.

My new book, Savage Shepherds will soon be out. It's a true story of one man's recovery from spiritual abuse in the context of the Shepherding Movement under the leadership of the Fort Lauderdale Five in the 1980's.

Abuse takes place when one person has power over another and uses that power to hurt. Spiritual abuse is worse, because it is done in the name of God. Read the harrowing story of manipulation and control, of fear and deception, of emotional blackmail and stoney heartedness, of people of God watching as a family falls apart, gloating over bankruptcy and psychological burnout.

But this is not a story of bitterness and revenge. Savage Shepherds tells how God's grace and reckless love rescues and points to the one who heals.

It is written with the prayer that many who have been wounded will through it find healing, refreshment and empowerment.

Read Bono's endorsement