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I hate following instructions. I hate it because I am completely useless at it. Computers are the worst. There is one way and way only that I can learn to do something on the computer. Somebody has to show me. Somebody who does not feel the necessity to explain why things work, but will just stand over my shoulder and show me and then watch me do it a dozen times before it finally sinks into my head. But reading a book from the Dummy series just makes me feel more of a dummy than I feel comfortable with or want to acknowledge. Recipes are the same. Over the past several years, since my wife became a teacher, I have been chief cook during the week. That might explain the drawn, emaciated look on all family members, and why weekends are now anticipated with even more eagerness than before. I have developed something of a culinary repertoire which enables me to scrape through the week, but I never follow a recipe. Perhaps it is a form of dyslexia, but beside the fact that all manuals use esoteric vocabulary the meaning of which escapes me, recipes instruct you to do things I have never heard of and certainly don’t know how to do. Reading instructions demands more concentration and focus than seems reasonable and I just end up grumpy and frustrated. Far easier to stick with what I know and just throw something into a frying pan, boil the vegetables to within an inch of their lives, and voila, dinner. Not all manuals, however, are about how to do practical things – use computers, cook a soufflé, build a patio. Library shelves increasingly groan under the weight of other types of “how to” books, books about how you might improve who you are as a human being. How to lose weight. How to look younger. How to make friends. How to be the perfect parent. How to make lots of money. How to be happy. I have yet to discover a How to read how to books, but surely it is only a matter of time. Perhaps that is the niche waiting for me to fill it. If you were to assess the state of humanity by the books on sale in airport book shops, you would think nobody thought of anything except how to do things differently or better. How to clinch the next deal, how to become executive vice president of a major international corporation before you even start shaving. I am here to tell you that all such books are a waste of time. I have read lots of them, and remain an entirely unimproved human being. When I was nineteen and had been unceremoniously ejected from Adelaide University, I was wondering what to do with my life. Becoming very rich seemed like a good idea. I remember I even read a book about it. Think and Grow Rich, it was called. I read it. I never got rich. Obviously the book was a fraud. From time to time I fret about my weight. So much so that I have read numerous diet books. It seems that no matter how many diet books I read, I steadfastly remain ten pounds heavier than I think I would like to be. What is wrong with all of these writers of diet books? I settle into a comfortable chair, with a bag of crisps and a pint of beer for company, and I read their diet books from cover to cover, and still I don’t lose weight. I am more than happy to concede that there are lots of people who know lots more than I about lots of subjects. I am more than happy to concede that writing books about those subjects for the benefit of lesser mortals is a good and, no doubt, lucrative thing to do, and that other people do not suffer from my instruction manual dyslexia and find them helpful. However, a curious phenomenon is it not, that while recipe books continue to be best sellers, fewer people actually cook, while diet books are always in fashion, more and more people are overweight, while there are more and more experts in all walks of life, fewer and fewer of us seem to know how to live well. All of which makes it somewhat surprising that the book lying on my desk awaiting my attentions is a How to Book. It has been recommended to me. Usually, when someone recommends a book to me, particularly a book about religion, I groan. It is hard enough for me to keep up with the books I want to read, let alone the books other people want me to read. And usually my experience of reading “religious” books other people have pressed upon me is unfavourable. Particularly when they are of the ”alternative” category. I recall about ten years ago a member of my congregation enthusiastically giving me a book, the name of which now escapes me but which I think had the word Mutant in it, but which was all the rage at the time. The author, a woman, purported to have had a mystical experience with a tribe of aborigines in the Australian outback. Perhaps because I knew something about that setting, having spent four years as a jackaroo in the outback, which probably explains my Marlboro Man image. I could hardly stop myself from gagging as I read it. Though read it I did. It was, in my humble and entirely non-judgemental opinion, rot. But this book, How to Find God, is by Deepak Chopra. Chopra is very highly regarded in the world of alternative/complementary health and spirituality, certainly in the United States, where he has a huge discipleship. His public presentations are sell-outs. His books sell in large numbers. He is certainly at the more scholarly end of the alternative/complementary spectrum. So I approach reading it with more goodwill and open-mindedness than if it had been written by someone I had never heard of, about whose credentials I had serious doubts. That Chopra is an intelligent, thoughtful, scholarly and knowledgeable man I know. That he will have some interesting, challenging things to say, and that he will say them well, I do not doubt. Nevertheless, How to Know God. The title seems awfully presumptuous. I tremble at the prospect. In spite of my best efforts to remain open-minded to what he might have to say, I find myself being sceptical from the outset. It sounds so very prescriptive, and so very sure of itself. Three or so years ago, for reasons we don't need to go into, I did The Alpha Course. I am finding that therapy is helping me in my recovery from that experience, but one of the things which constantly irritated me so much about that course was the absolute certainty the presenter had about himself and his relationship with God. Nicky Gumbel was in no doubt whatsoever that he knew God, and more than that, he knew what God wanted for all of us. There is nothing more guaranteed to make me very nervous than when people tell me they know what God wants. If only people could be stopped telling other people what God wants for them, this troubled world would be a much more peaceful and harmonious place. There is no-one more to be feared than someone brandishing their holy scriptures like a sword. How to know God. It raises all kinds of questions. How do you know when you have known God? Which God do you have in mind? And, even if a particular way might have worked for you, and you have felt sure that you have known God and your life has been transformed because of that knowledge, is there only one way to know God and does the way that happened to work for you have to work for me, too? If that way does not work for me, am I doing something wrong? Or maybe God does not want to know me! Nevertheless, wanting to know God is surely a good thing. One thing we do know about God, according to some of the best witnesses on the subject, is that he moves in mysterious ways his wonders to perform. Well, I did have an instance of that recently. In the news a few weeks ago were the stories of the serious fires in Greece and in southern California. It brought back some memories of my own. I know something about bushfires. I was a jackaroo in the outback. After a prolonged drought we had had heavy rains for two years, but then it was the end of summer, and there was a lot of tall, tinder-dry grass. One night there was an extensive electrical storm, and a dozen fires started over an area of several thousand square miles. None on the property where I was working, but nearby. The horizon all around was an orange glow. So I, and others from my station, went to help. For two weeks we battled against the fire. Whatever we did was useless. Trying to fight the actual fire front, we finally realised after several exhausting days and nights, was a complete waste of time and very dangerous. Once, on my motor bike scouting the front, I could barely stay ahead of the advancing flames, so fast were they travelling with the hot north wind behind them. We tried falling back several miles and building breaks in the scrub and trees. The fire would reach the break, pause a moment to admire our handiwork, and then leap across as if it wasn’t there. Nothing we did was of any use. After two weeks of continual labour, during which I managed a total of maybe twenty hours sleep, I was near the limit of my physical endurance. We had run out of ideas. For all the good we had done in stopping the fire, we might as well have gone on holiday for the duration. The only useful thing we had done was cut all the fences, so that the sheep would have at least a chance to flee the flames. And mercifully, no buildings had been lost and nobody had been hurt. And then, one night, after months of hot dry weather, without announcement or forewarning, it started to rain. At first just a few drops. And then heavily and for several hours. What God had started with an electrical storm, God finished with rain. Was it God? Who knows. I do know that my theology does not allow or encourage me to believe that God is in charge of climate control. Richard Dawkins does not need to write me off as one of dangerously deluded. But what it did help me to know was this. That for all of our human hubris and activity, for all of our creativity and cleverness, our busyness and bombast, we are subject to forces and powers beyond our comprehension to know and certainly beyond our ability to control. And the concept of God is a way of being reminded of that. The only way I know to know God is to be sure I am awake and aware, open and receptive to such reminders. I can’t make them happen. But when they do, I can acknowledge with humility that I have been blessed. And so may it be. Amen.
Rev. David Usher |