sin

Harry Williams – Life Abundant or Life Resisting?

Harry Williams – Life Abundant or Life Resisting?

In the sermon Life Abundant or Life Resisting? published in The True Wilderness Harry Williams asks whether our Christianity makes for a better and happier world or does not. He believed that quite often it does not - that Christianity in many of its forms is not a good but an evil thing. I think the theology of Living in Love and Faith draws on an unhealthy conception of God. The Christian story, it says, “is about our rebellion, disobedience and refusal to depend on one another and on God – a disorder which has infected the whole of creation. This results in a form of Christian teaching that makes the Church of England an unhappy place for me, a gay man.

Too much sin and guilt, not enough forgiveness?

Too much sin and guilt, not enough forgiveness?

We human beings can feel guilty enough about ourselves and the things we have done without the need for the church to amplify the effect on our shame and guilt. I think feelings of guilt can be hauntingly present all the time and are not easily dismissed by the act of confession of sins and absolution in the context of Sunday worship. Where are the systems that can help people process their feelings of shame and guilt and relieve the pain they feel? One is the process of long term psychotherapy and psychoanalysis and the other is the charism of spiritual direction, also long term.