What is the motivation for this website?
The Author of this website is unashamedly
a Christian.
Should that worry you?
Should that affect the credibility you extend to what is written
in these pages?
I believe the answer to both of these questions
is 'no', and the purpose of this section of the website is to
offer you some additional assurance that this is the case, and
to provide some insight into why this website has been written,
and why so much material has been made freely available in support
of it.
My perspective is that the main reason it
might worry you, are questions concerning the judgement and emotional
maturity of someone who espouses what might seem from the modern
perspective to be a antiquated superstition. Some years ago that
was very much my own perspective, together with a few more less
charitable judgements I am sorry to admit.
Since then, it will probably be obvious to
the reader that I have changed my mind, and this website is part
of the outworking of that, for reasons that will become clear
later on.
Despite my life choices, I would dearly like
to retain your respect for two main reasons: the first is that
I am affected by what people think of me; and the second, and
more important reason, is that the value you get out of this
website will in large part be determined by the confidence you
place in what it says.
Why would a sane and rational
person believe in profane and irrational things?
It
is true that many people come to Christianity during periods
of emotional and psychological weakness, and often in a state
of some desperation, but that does not mean that faith itself
is only for the weak and desperate, it just means that faith
provides answers which support people through times of weakness
and desperation. It does not mean that is all there is to it,
and it does not mean that those are the only people you will
find within it.
My own journey has been somewhat different.
And as I look back over it I see that there were three crucial
questions that I had to work through, both academically and psychologically,
which were:
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The
fact that I personally was unable to answer unequivocally the
first two questions, led me to wrestle with the third. And in
addition, there is a fourth question which I continue to wrestle
with today:|
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Perhaps
the above questions are enough to convince you that I have not
stumbled into Christianity blindly, but for those of you who
would like to understand a little more, please feel free to click
on the highlighted text of the questions to see my personal conclusions
to those questions. But before you read them I would like to
make the following point clear: They are only my own personal
conclusions, and should not be taken in any way as the answer.
Why has this website been
written, and supporting material been made freely available?
I
do believe that the above questions are good for anybody to engage
with, but if they do, it is important that they identify their
own answers for themselves.
I believe that people grow when they honestly
and earnestly wrestle with questions bigger than themselves,
and as they grow, they add value to the world - not necessarily
in the form of answers, but in the form of empathy, understanding,
forgiveness, support and encouragement; the very things that
combat greed, resentment, intolerance, hate and all the things
that make our world a worse place. As we wrestle with the big
questions we learn to build relationships rather than to destroy
them; we equip ourselves to embrace and repair them, rather than
to escape by rejecting them.
But all too often, we hide from the big questions.
We are frightened by the implications of their conclusions and
we feel ill-equipped to address them, so we push them to the
back of our minds and we busy ourselves with smaller details
which distract us from the big questions. And as a result we
don't learn techniques to tackle the big questions, and we don't
build up experience in them, and so the situation continues.
Sometimes of course, we have big questions
thrust upon us, such as: 'What is friendship?' or 'What is parenthood?'
or 'What do I become when the person who loves me is no longer
there?' and through working our way appropriately through these
questions, we grow. But sometimes, faced with such questions
and being so unfamiliar with them, we still hide from them when
they are thrust upon us - and at this point we can be in danger
of retreating further inside ourselves, further away from growth
and relationships and the things that fulfil us as human beings.
It should be clear to anybody reading this,
that I believe that people benefit from actively engaging with
questions like: 'Why?'
I believe, and have demonstrated, that organisations
benefit from engaging with such questions too, and in some small
way, this website is intended to support and build on this process
within your organisation, but in doing so, my fervent hope is
that it will achieve four things:
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Firstly, it will give those who work with it practice in wrestling with such questions, and build their confidence in doing so |
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Secondly, through the practical benefits that result, it will demonstrate the value of asking such questions and build a commitment to doing so |
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Thirdly, that the result of using these approaches will remove some of the clutter of the small detail questions that distract us from the big questions |
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Fourthly, that having gained confidence in the relatively safe environment of work, people will begin to extend such challenges to their personal and spiritual lives |
If
this website at least does something toward achieving that, then
I will have achieved riches beyond that which money can buy.
I will have built a new relationship, and that new relationship
will do something to add value to the world.I am sorry it sounds trite and naïve,
but as Richard discovered in the book that accompanies this website
- sometimes the Devil owns all the sophistication.Yours, with God's loveMichael
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