Think Question Believe

What’s the expression, ‘There are none so blind as those who will not see’?

We see it in those who won’t even have a conversation about faith, and we can see it in ourselves.

It is a situation familiar to psychologists:

We tend to trust information more if it agrees with things that we already believe. It’s called ‘confirmation bias’; we screen out challenges to our beliefs, anything that makes us uncomfortable and uncertain, and more readily let in news and ideas that fit neatly alongside what we already think we know.

We listen to the politicians who tell us what we want to hear, we read the newspapers that tell us what we want to read, we dismiss the opinions of those who might help us flourish beyond our expectations and imaginations.

And this can sway us either reject information, that actually may be helpful to us, and that actually might be true, or we can only partially perceive, limiting the reality we experience to our preconceptions and pre-judgements, so bound up in our own expectations, our own wants and concerns, that we can’t see that the answers to our prayers and yearnings might be staring us in the face.

One of the tragedies of human experience is that we will not let go of our fixity of thinking until grief or trauma, or pain or shock force us to re-evaluate our world, our expectations and ourselves.

Recent studies have found that the national and cultural stereotypes, that we hold of ourselves can be pretty wide of the mark.

And if we portray, even to each other, an inaccurate and dishonest image of our shared culture, are we any more honest in the way that we represent ourselves?

For in many ways it is true to say that we are all strangers, strangers to each other, but also to ourselves.

There is always something held back, something in reserve, something behind the mask that we have created, and which we wear to the world.

And if the mask begins to slip, we can go to enormous lengths to glue it back into place.

And whilst at times the mask may seem to comfortably fit, all too often we continue to wear it, long after it has failed to serve us, indeed even to the point where we can become disliked or made to suffer for projecting a personality that isn’t even ours.

So fearful can we be of showing our real selves, that we can protect the artificial mask at real cost to the person behind it.

And if the mask can hamper and sabotage the depth of our relationship with others, it can also serve to undermine, even more destructively, our spiritual growth, the growth of our soul.

The supreme error of Palm Sunday, the critical failing of the crowd, and us too if we fall prey to the same temptation, is to look for the wrong kind of Christ, the wrong kind of God.

There is the great danger that we can worship a God of power and greatness, that we crown Jesus as Lord and King, but we actually want a God that conforms with our own egos, a glorious God to give us the glory. Hubris.

He is so great, because we are so worth it.

Look at how popular certain forms of religion can be, how confidence and certainty can empower and electrify the worshipper, temporarily at least. 

Look at the absolute, if only superficial certainty, of Christian Nationalism in the US, supposedly everything they do, think and desire is ordained by the almighty. America is God’s favourite country, Trump his most favourite president and servant, and the hard right as his most favoured politics and social values. For now.

But faced with the harsh realities of life, beyond the febrile self-delusion and fragile conviction, the drowning out of any inner doubt by ever more vehement assertion, those brittle certainties turn to dust, just crumble away and disappear with the breeze.

To mix my metaphors, religion that is too big for its boots, will one day be cut down to size.

So, Palm Sunday is an object lesson in the dangers of religious triumphalism.

Jewish tradition saw the wilderness as a place of transition, of fundamental changes and intense physical and spiritual experiences - of stark need for food and water, of isolation, of danger and divine deliverance, of renewal, of encounters with God.

So, there is a psychology and spirituality as well as a geography of wilderness, of faith and courage and devotion fired in the crucible of the wilderness experience.

In the story of Jesus's temptation in the desert, all that evil could offer, can ever offer, was and is, the victory of the moment, the glory of the fleeting instant.

In Jesus’ struggles and wrestling with himself, and the inner voices that assailed his conscience, Matthew also points to the continuing struggles of Christianity to follow the path that Jesus walked for us.

We must ask ourselves this question, are we, will we ever be ready, to walk ‘The Way’?

The priest and Franciscan Monk Richard Rohr published a book called ‘Falling Upward: A spirituality for the two halves of life’.

In it he speaks of something long defined by philosophers and more recently by such psychologists as Carl Jung, as the first and second halves of life.

In the first half of life, we are naturally and rightly preoccupied with establishing our identities – climbing, achieving and performing. 

We all try to do what seems like the task that life first hands us: establishing an identity, a home, a job, relationships, friends, community, security, and building, both a foundation and a ‘container’ for our lives.

But too many of us stop there. As Bill Plotkin, a psychologist, and wilderness guide once observed, many of us learn to do our ‘survival dance’ but we never get to do our ‘sacred dance’. How sad that is.

If we as a society were wise, we would do well to remember the enormous contribution that the oldest among us can make to our community life.

In the story of Simeon and Anna, we hear how they came into their own in old age. Their testimony was revolutionary, shocking to conventional minds and systems.

For the job of a prophet is to challenge, to test the fads and fashions of today against a measuring rod of long years and experience.

Something, if they chose to, that the older among us could do in our present age…… 

By the Sea of Galilee, presumably newly arrived, Jesus goes up to two brothers, Simon and Andrew, going about the comparatively lucrative business of fishing and tells them that he has chosen them as disciples. Conscripted, commandeered, requisitioned.

James and John, the same thing ‘Drop all that, your father and the rest of the family can keep the business going, get your coat, we’re off.’

And that is precisely, what they did.

This may be an excellent way of getting disciples, I wonder if it also works to get volunteers in church?

Should we give it a try?

Out of interest, how would you respond?

If you heard Christ’s call to serve him, if he came to you right now and said “whatever you are doing, stop that, follow me’ what would your answer be?

What’s your instant reaction?  

That’s the most honest one.

First broadcast in January 2026.

A doctor friend once said that our life consists in juggling four balls, our physical and spiritual/emotional health, our families and friends and the last ball - our work, money possessions. The first three balls, he said, are made of glass, but the irony is we spend more time worrying about and protecting the fourth ball - which is also the only one made of rubber – so it can bounce back.

You can usually tell what any society cares about by its largest buildings. In medieval times the Cathedrals were the awe-inspiring monuments of their times. 

Later the Victorians enshrined their municipal and philanthropic ideals in great public works - water, power, hospitals. Today what are our greatest buildings - office blocks and shopping malls. 

Those who wish to sell their goods and services exhort us to be demanding customers, for whom good is never good enough. To be discontented, and dissatisfied. No one wants us to stop coveting and craving ever more possessions it seems. 

Except maybe that small still voice inside, telling us that we surely are meant for higher things. 

First broadcast on the first Sunday after Christmas 2026.

We hear the story of the ‘Slaughter of the Innocents’ in Matthew’s Gospel; a reality check, just in case everything was getting too sentimental too saccharine – we are reminded of the kind of world into which Jesus, and countless millions of children have been born.

And tragically, we don’t have to look very far or to a different time for the slaughter of the innocents. It is happening today.

In Gaza, over 20,000 children killed, another 42,000 wounded. In Ukraine child casualties, according to UN figures, stand at over 3000, with around 750 killed and 2300 injured. And around 20,000 Ukrainian children have been abducted to areas under Russian control and Russia – who knows if they will ever return? In Sudan 1.4 million children at imminent risk of famine.

As we look to an uncertain future for the Christian faith we might reflect ‘what is the core business of our church and our faith’. For a church that merely looks inward can never truly be called a church.

In much the same way as the dead partner of Ebenezer Scrooge, Jacob Marley, reflects on the business of his life in Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’:

“Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, benevolence, were all my business.

The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business! "

Patriarchal societies and let’s face it most still are, to a greater or lesser extent, can sometimes be very unjust, especially to women. 

It beggars the imagination that a man can deem himself more manly because he oppresses and is violent towards someone who is physically weaker than himself, but such has been the culture and practice of countless numbers of men throughout history – who have bullied, abused, intimidated and dominated their way through life, when in fact it was a woman who bore them and gave them life and so often extend to them acts of kindness that they little deserve.

History and church teaching has served Joseph badly. Sadly, consigned to a bit part, and rarely depicted as anything other than a dutiful attendant, in reality, he must have been a remarkable man who proves himself to be a very resourceful protector and guide. He cares for his family, protects them and provides for them, and moreover he provides such a model of fatherhood, that when Jesus seeks to name God, he uses a word that he utters with respect and love, Abba, Father.

He stands in stark contrast to the terrible scourge of violence in the home and in close relationships – the places that should be the safest we know, that we should see as a haven, sanctuary – our homes – not places of refuge at all. And our church communities are by no means immune.

That is why it is so important that we take a lead on this issue in the church since it is so easy for certain people, certain neighbourhoods and classes to feel that it has nothing to do with them.

Victims and their abusers are everywhere, among us, standing right next to us – and we might never know. It is time for us as individuals and as communities to rise up against this terrible betrayal of violence and abuse….

More people go to their GP suffering from depression than any other affliction. Mental health problems among all ages, but also increasing among the young are ever rising.

Now we can point at the alarming political news daily on our screens; we can cite workplace stress, the accelerating pace of modern life, the commoditisation of people in our aggressive materialist economies, a breakdown in traditional community structures, so many people living on their own, in fact a whole host of distressing reasons

But least part of the answer, was taught to us over two thousand years ago, but sadly as G.K. Chesterton once commented: 

“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.”

Of course we need to put food on the table, clothes on our backs. Of course, we want ourselves and our loved ones to be safe and healthy and happy.

But is the relentless, single-minded, blinkered pursuit of possessions the means to fulfilment and peace, of truly realising our human potential?

Do we work on the state of our souls, our precious inner spirit, do we devote as much time, attention and care to the person that we are and might yet become, as we do to the accumulation of the so-called treasures of this world?

So what is Jesus trying to tell us, and why don’t we listen?