Foreword:
R't Revd Nicholas Holtam. (former Bishop of Salisbury)
Most of us put a lot of effort early on in life into working out what we believe and on what we can base our life. Sometimes things then happen that cause us to change our minds, modifying our assumptions and beliefs because of experience that doesn’t fit with what we previously believed; or because something happens that causes a major discontinuity so that the old ways no longer work for us; or because we receive new information that brings light and shows us a better way, like St Paul on the Damascus Road where the world changed for him because of an encounter with Jesus Christ whom previously he had been persecuting.
The world sets the agenda of all serious theology. There is little point in the Church answering questions no one is really asking and producing an abstract and vacuous theology. What everyone seeks in life is meaning, life, love, friendship, community, purpose, goodness, truth, fairness and justice as well as how best to respond to the challenge of universal difficulties to do with our failures, guilt, suffering, sickness, death and grief. In all of this what if anything can be said and what lasts for ever?
Our world sees tolerance as a virtue and given the terrible things people have done to others in the name of God it is easy to agree. But it isn’t enough to say if that’s what you believe, and it doesn’t hurt anyone else that’s OK. Good theology matters: bad theology is deeply damaging. Just look at the allegedly Christian myths in Section 1 that do such damage. We urgently need a positive account of what it is to be human that works for the common good and not just for my/our sectional interest. ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’ is a universal golden rule in all the world’s religions.
‘My God, Your God? Who?’ is practical theology. David John has lived an interesting and full life. He has worked for the Metropolitan Police and for part of that time he has been a priest. Now no longer in the Police, he is a parish priest in Dorset in the Diocese of Salisbury, a very beautiful and mostly rural part of England. How does he connect his life and work with belief? He has faced life’s complexities and tried to make sense of them in the light of his Christian beliefs.
David is one of life’s natural teachers and wants to use his experience, insight, training and knowledge so that we learn with him. He wants to pass on his knowledge of Christianity and its wisdom. He has the enthusiasm, passion and energy of an evangelist who wants to share what he has found to be good.
There is an evangelical framework to this book in as much as this is good news being told by a passionate believer. David also makes the space for us to find our own response to what he gives us, to work out what we believe and make it our own, as each of us must do from time to time throughout our life. Here is belief you can base your life on. The electricity of the Christian faith comes when that which has been passed on to us by teachers is lived in real lives that are transformed by what inspires fidelity and is costly and sacrificial.
Jesus was a Jew and in Judaism a Rabbi is a teacher. Jews have a wonderful capacity for lively disagreement and finding the truth not so much in one person as within the community disputing and learning together through discussion. In this book David John is performing that sort of rabbinic role. He is contributing to a conversation which will be continued in the minds and hearts of those who read it and in the discussion of the groups that use it for their education. This is education that shapes the soul of individuals, families and communities.
David John says he has been working on this book for seven years but in reality, it is the product of a lifetime. For all of us readers, I hope and pray it will help us to know, appreciate and explore Christianity and find in it the basis of belief that gives joyful life abundant and strengthens the common good.
+Nicholas Holtam
Bishop of Salisbury (retired)
Category - Christian books - New testament books