Again I find myself apologising for the infrequent updates. Sorry. I’ve made a couple of attempts at drafting articles, but I can’t seem to come up with anything that doesn’t read like a rant. I’ve spent the last two weekends at an Intercessors For Britain Prayer and Bible weekend and then a SPEAK Flower Model weekend: an interesting combination. I’m also making a third attempt at reading Tom Sine’s Mustard Seed Verses McWorld. Broadly speaking, the result is that I’m terrified. Where I thought I understood, I’m now confused. Where I was confident, I’m now uncertain.

I’ve always positioned myself in a place liberals consider conservative evangelical, but conservatives consider liberal. In secular circles most would probably put me somewhere left of centre, provided I keep my mouth shut when discussing certain issues. I’ve always been happy with that position. It’s let me stay out of traditional stereotypes, and anyway, surely it’s better to take God’s ideological position than a worldly one that takes a few of His values and compromises many others. It’s beginning to hit me, though, that such a position doesn’t really lend itself well to building strong relationships.

Of my friends; I consider some too right wing, some too liberal, most just too apathetic. Very few seem to be in that place of wanting to truly give God everything, and even less actually having the courage to go through with it. I don’t seek to blame God for my own inadequacies. I know already that the Christian must forsake all family and friends and daily take up his cross, but that doesn’t make the prospect any less frightening.

To make matters even harder, self sacrifice alone is not enough. In this place where I agree with no-one and in which I must seek to live entirely opposed to modern culture, I must also consider others as more important than myself, and keep love for those same forsaken family and friends absolutely central. Beyond even that, I must love my neighbour irrespective of prior relationship, or such week political divisions as mentioned earlier.

Now how does that work?