Jeanne Warren
The Christian Story shows us a way to think about the world we live in and how to live in it.
It says that the world as created is OK and that we do not need to fear death, which is a part of creation. The way to live is to care for each other. A world in which each cares for the others will be a world in which we can find security and well-being. Bad things may happen, but they do not cut us off completely from a meaningful life as long as we remain connected with each other. Healing is always a possibility.
When I call this story Christian, I am not talking about what is Christian dogma or theology, but of what we can read in the first four books of the New Testament.
These four gospels tell the story in four different ways, which correspond roughly to the four functions attributed to human beings by the psychologist C G Jung: thinking (Matthew), feeling (Luke), sensation or sense perception (Mark) and intuition (John). Each of us has elements of these four functions in ourselves but most of us favour one of them, so it probably helps that we have four presentations of the story.
If I had been raised in a different culture, I would know a Muslim story or a Jewish story or a Hindu story or a Buddhist story or some other story. It would probably satisfy me in the way that the Christian story satisfies Christians.
Sometimes people change stories. We also change interpretations of our own story, and it is never wise to force people into pre-conceived understandings which they cannot really agree with.
What the story does not talk about:
- How to amass ever more knowledge
- How to amass great wealth
- How to acquire power over others
- How to create beautiful objects and sounds
It does not preclude all these things, but it does not emphasise them.
Quakers have tried to learn the meaning of this story for life in their own time and they continue to do so today. To do this they had to discard the traditional thought structures that had become Christian theology. Early Friends, in the 17th century, believed they could hear the voice of God in their hearts and that Jesus was ‘the Christ’, the living spirit who spoke for God when he was alive and continued to do so after his death.
Modern Friends are not always so sure that they can hear such a voice, but they remain open to something from deep within that can sometimes guide them through the immense complexities and dangers of modern life. In our Meetings for Worship, we listen for that voice.
All the above is just my own view, but I think it accords with mainstream Quaker thinking. Of course, there are many Quakers today who do not come from a Christian tradition and so do not think of their Quakerism in Christian terms. They have different issues to deal with. And we all need to think of ways to know and accept each other in the depth that has drawn us to Quakerism in the first place.
This Month’s Forty-Three Newsletter Contents
- June 2023
- Narrated Newsletter June 2023
- The Challenge of Poverty
- Artists, Correspondents, and Photographers
- Monthly Appeal June 2023
- The Christian Story
- “Why Walk When You Can Dance?”
- A Letter from Banbury and Chipping Norton Amnesty Group
- Oxford Quaker & Answer
- Happy News
- Adwoa Burnley – Yearly Meeting Epistle 2023
- The Courage to be a Quaker
- From Quaker Faith & Practice 26.50
- Meetings for Worship June 2023
Back to June 2023 Newsletter Main Page
Forty-Three Newsletter • Number 530 • June 2023
Oxford Friends Meeting
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