The Words of the Cooper Family
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The Words of the Cooper Family |
On Sunday I was on the BBCs Big Questions. Damon just watched it because one of his class mates said they saw me. So we had a fantastic talk about a whole range of things. At the end I said, "Damon, can I ask you some questions?" He pointed out I took a while to get to the question. But the conclusion was that he said that he does sense his own personal faith in God, at least in the capacity available to someone his age.
He was happy and relieved that I mentioned at one point in the debate that several of our congregation are across the park at Imperial College. From watching the Simpsons he has been given the impression by Flanders that religious people are not very rigorous with their science. So thank you to all the numbers people in our congregation who understand equations and are studying engineering. I stop at long division.
Watch the debate here: The Big Questions www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01j2n2n/The_Big_Questions_Series_5_Episode_18/
Let me know what you thought of the debate. The ironic thing is that all the people who tweeted about it where generally disparaging about religion full stop, and had no time for belief in God.
Some thoughts on why I believe it is worth going on the telly and generally being fully involved in society outside our movement, as a self-confessed Unificationist or Moonie:
Here is where I stand; I am skeptical of how our movement is able to do anything significant in the next 10 years to evangelize the nation, and transform our society. But, I do believe we have a unique and priceless contribution to make, and that without us playing our part in the bigger picture of our nation's affairs an opportunity for God's will would be frustrated and possibly lost for a long time.
We need to place ourselves more firmly in the main stream, which means we need to keep a public profile that is down to earth, candid, and shows that we are people who want to learn rather than just preach.
We should go out to our Christian community, to inherit from them. If we see ourselves theologically in the role of the younger brother, then we do what sensible, humble, sincere younger siblings do, learn from their elders. Firstly it allows us to fill in the gaping gaps in our community's religious and spiritual culture, and secondly it naturally helps to establishes trust and friendship.
When you have friendship love is fostered and God gets involved, and when He is present, well, everyone gets blessed.
This change that I want to see in where we focus our efforts as a community and how we are perceived by society, gets me into prayer and gets me checking my reasons. 'Why?' is always a great question to test out ones motivations. Ask it again and again and you arrive at the heart of the matter.
In the end I need to be sure that I am not just seeking some outward change. Some passing comfort, public image for the sake of public image or seeking to get out of the Ghetto because it's nice to live in the leafy socially connected suburbs. The change we seek has to be because we seek some inner path that brings us to salvation. Last Sunday, I spoke about this, and how 'God needs you on YOUR path, not somebody else's', which is essentially a spiritual path, where you can find your true colors.