David Rhodes - Faith in Dark Places

First published in Great Britain in 1996

Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge

36 Causton Street

London SW1P 4ST

www.spckpublishing.co.uk

Reprinted once

Second edition published 2013

Copyright David Rhodes 1996, 2013

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

SPCK does not necessarily endorse the individual views contained in its publications.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken or adapted from the New English Bible, copyright The Delegates of the Oxford University Press and The Syndics of Cambridge University Press, 1961, 1970. Used by permission.

Extracts marked RSV are taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1946, 1952 and 1971 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9780281070411

eBook ISBN 9780281070428

Typeset and eBook by Graphicraft Limited, Hong Kong

Contents

Journalists are not all held in the highest regard these days, but wed be in a mess without them. How else would we know what is going on in the world? Social media would partly fill the gap but it is fragmentary by its nature. So we should be grateful weve got the Press, imperfect though it may be.

Writing the first edition of this book some years ago was like uncovering a news story: the story was that the Gospel is good news from the poor. As time has passed, new discoveries have come to light. Pieces of the picture, whose significance had been overlooked, suddenly snapped into focus. There was a lot more to the story than first appeared.

Even so, I was impressed when SPCK agreed to publish this extended book. After all, I had shown them the new material and it looked quite alarming.

I said that Jesus was crucified because he hated paint; that the Magnificat is good news for the rich as well as the poor; that most people could beat Usain Bolt over 100 metres; and that we may need to change our traditional image of God. I told them how much I worry about a beloved friend who is a tightrope walker; and why you should never say the Lords Prayer last thing at night. Not if you take the words seriously.

Why has this extended book been written? Because, in all the suffering and heartache of an unjust world, there has been a conspiracy of silence by the Church and by a lot of other people. They have used the excuse of neutrality to walk by on the other side. They have chosen dignified silence rather than risk the challenges of life. Even when children starve and the poor cry out for help.

Christians often think of silence as a holy disposition. Be still and know that I am God is a Bible text much quoted by religious people. But we are not called to be silent or still: silence and inactivity in the face of suffering are themselves acts of violence and injustice.

There is no neutrality.

David Rhodes

I would like to thank some very special people whose lives have been an inspiration to me, although in the eyes of the world they may not seem very important. They are people like Eve and Rachel, Mick and Brian, Corinne, Jack and Lee. Some have died and we mourn their tragic deaths. Others survive, despite all they have suffered, and we give thanks for their courage and their generous love.

This book is an ordinary persons attempt to answer a very important question. The question is simply: what is real in this life?

Each of us might want to ask the question in a slightly different way: what is there in this life that means anything? What is there that matters? What does it mean to be alive on this battered little planet of ours? And does it mean anything?

Seeking after reality may sound as pointless as chasing after shadows, but perhaps we will find that when we actually engage in that search we shall make some surprising discoveries.

The book explores the unlikely suggestion that much of what western society counts as important is probably a huge deception: but that, unexpectedly, those things and those people we often dismiss as being worthless may in fact be the most real and precious.

It is a story about failure and about hope. Its heroes are people whom society despises for being unemployed, homeless and sometimes alcoholic. People counted as worthless but who in strange and fragmentary ways, and despite their human weakness, faults and confusions, seem to embody what is real. People materially poor and physically ill who despite that can show us things of immense value; people who live close to death but who reveal to us what it means to be alive.

This book is not about religion but it is about God. It is about people and pain; failure and courage; laughter and prayer.

Who is it for? It is for people uneasy with the prevailing values of western society; people on the fringes of the Church; people who may suspect their own lives to be hollow; who want to find a worth that does not damage or exploit others. People who want to be able to make sense of life: and to be allowed, in their own space and time, to encounter God but perhaps not the God they have come to expect. It may even be for the Church as it seeks a deeper encounter with God and struggles to respond to that meeting.

And who is it from? It is from people consigned to the margins of society from where, it is assumed, they have nothing and can give nothing. People who may be the very ones who can give us life.

How it began

This story was not planned: it was discovered, almost by accident. It was stumbled upon by people intent on doing other things, who gradually realized that the world is not entirely as they thought it was, and that the voice of God may be heard in the most unlikely places.

They are people like the man taking part in a project to learn about life in the most deprived areas of the inner city.

The catch was that the people taking part in the project were not going to learn by reading books they were going to learn by doing: walking the streets and meeting the people. Above all, they would be following the pattern of Christ, who challenged his disciples with the words: Follow me. Come from where you are and where you feel safe, to where I am. It sounded easy, but for many people this was a demanding and uncomfortable experience, as one participant discovered.

As he parked the car the man was angry. Angry with himself. Switching off the engine he sat for a long time as if unsure what to do next. He looked at the sheet of paper with the hand-drawn street map on it.

Reluctantly, he got out of the car and glanced uneasily around him. The alarm system gave a loud bleep as he locked the car and the man looked anxiously down the road for any sign of trouble.

The car stood out in the poverty of the surrounding area. Even his clothes faded jeans and an old golfing sweater looked out of place. He was less than two miles away from his own home in the leafy suburbs. It was the same city but it might as well have been a different planet. He was a stranger here.

The man was angry because he was afraid. He was in one of the worst areas of the city for muggings. This was well known. He had often read in the papers about people being knifed by young thugs wanting money for drugs. This was a place of danger and he felt vulnerable and very much alone. He glanced at his little map again and set off. He had been given a task and it was too late to turn back.