Being right!

I missed the Champions League final, which Liverpool lost to Real Madrid 1-0. I wanted Liverpool to win. Never mind! I was at friends for the first time in a long time, so conversation seemed better than football. And anyway there’s always next season. What has subsequently emerged though, is the trouble Liverpool fans had getting into the stadium to watch the match. Although nobody has said it that I’ve heard, it seemed to me to have frightening parallels to the Hillsborough tragedy in 1989: fans stuck outside with gates locked and too many people being funnelled into a small space. Thankfully there was no repeat of that day. What seems to be happening now is as inquisition as to what went wrong, and rightly so. I, of course, am not qualified to comment on what actually happened, how and why. But I have listened to lots of people talking about it: fans, journalists, commentators and the French authorities. And what I’m wondering is how much of the explanation from the authorities is, ultimately, about being right. They don’t want to take the blame for bad organisation. Or admit they got it wrong. Better to blame others. After all, it doesn’t bode well for future events they are hosting. There’s a lot at stake. An independent inquiry may shed light on the truth, but as we know it’s not always about the truth. I wonder more and more, how much that is true in the church both now and historically. Rightly, the Cristian faith puts a lots of emphasis on the truth. It claims to have the truth about God after all. Just for the record, I’m in that camp. I think it does have the truth about God. But I’m not sure that means that everything the church (and by that I mean the Christian church through the ages) has claimed to be true, is in fact, true. Take for example the belief that the earth was the centre of the universe. Turned out to be wrong, but for a long time it was the established belief of the church. My point here is not to be overly critical of things we now understand differently (and we have to accept that some of this was to do with knowledge we now have but wasn’t available in the same way to other generations of believers). My issue, what I struggle with, is how being right becomes the main thing. I guess another way of expressing this thought is how we treat people with whom we disagree. How do we, as Christians, respond to, and treat, those with whom we disagree, who don’t have, or know, the truth? When does being right become more important than the truth? Key to my thinking and my wrestling is to hold that, perish the question, what if I’m wrong? What if, what I believe is not true? Now I’m sounding like I don’t believe, that I’m not even a Christian! Actually I do. And I am, more than I’ve ever done or been. But, what I have come to realise, is that I have to hold the possibility that on any number of things I might be wrong. I’m reading a really good book at the moment on the issue of same sex relationships, the Bible and the church. It is deeply biblically and theologically astute. It is written by experts in biblical studies and theology respectively. It engages both sides of the debate. And here’s the point, the two sides of the debate don’t agree. And, they can’t both be right! It’s a very nuanced debate, much more so than most people want to make it. It’s difficult, pastorally sensitive ground. What most impresses me about the book is that all four authors hold deeply to the truth as they understand it, but they all hold the possibility that they may be wrong! Perhaps we would all do well to stake this stance. Does it mean I can’t preach what I believe to be the truth? No it does not. I have said I will preach only that of which I am convinced. I will continue to preach only that of which I am convinced. But I do so holding that I might, in fact, be wrong. I’m wondering how the inquiry into the trouble at the Champions League final might be different if all sides have the humility to hold that they might be wrong. I’m wondering how much of church history would be different if Christian had held that they might be wrong. And I’m wondering what difference it would make to Christians today if we hold to the truth we believe, but hold to it in the light that we might, in fact, be wrong. I’m sorry if this leads you to think I’ve lost my faith, or at least it’s core. I don’t think I have at all. And, I might, of course, be wrong about all this! But that concerns me less now. The good news is that God knows the whole truth. And he holds me and loves me. And he does so however right or wrong I might be.