Salisbury and Stonehenge

First things last; we almost went to Stonehenge today. There were hundreds of people there. Queuing up to walk around the stones. We gave up trying to get on the car park - it was full of coaches - and decided to give it a miss. You can see the stones from the road anyway.

Salisbury cathedral was quite busy, but not as busy as Stonehenge. It seems a few roughly hewn blocks of stone sticking out of the ground are more popular than a gothic cathedral built out of thousands of exquisitely crafted blocks of stone.

Some kind of metaphor then for primitive religion/ fuzzy spirituality vs. the highly developed particularities of Christianity. Everyone likes a bit of spirituality, but not that "organised religion". This, I seem to remember, came as a surprise to the abbot on The Big Silence last year, when "ordinary people" tried out being quiet and meeting God in a monastery. And BBC 2. People had unexpected, profound, spiritual experiences. But didn't relate them to the Christian religion which provided their environment.

I've recently been listening to a few atheists complaining about how Christians jump about between the rather vague Creator God implied by the fine tuning of the universe, and the personal God as revealed in Jesus. There is some substance in the complaint insofar as debates go, but of course to a Christian those two Gods are one and the same. Or more accurately, the concept of a Creator God is a subset of the concept of the Christian God. God as revealed in Jesus has personality and character, and purpose - one of which is expressed in creation.

Pretty much everyone would like to believe in God - even the most deluded atheist isn't really that keen on oblivion - as their belief logically entails. Maybe Stonehenge appeals to that sense that there has to be something more, even if we don't know what it is. Christianity fleshes out that yearning, in the idea that the something wants us to know us so much that it became a particular human being, at a particular time and place. The specificity of that belief puts off many people, as do the moral responsibilities that follow from that belief. It's not easy but it is worth it. Whether or not you accept it is up to you. It takes a step of faith, but not necessarily a leap.

Colossians 1 (NIV)
15 Christ is the visible image of the invisible God.
He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation,
16 for through him God created everything
in the heavenly realms and on earth.
He made the things we can see
and the things we can’t see—
such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in the unseen world.
Everything was created through him and for him.
17 He existed before anything else,
and he holds all creation together.
18 Christ is also the head of the church,
which is his body.
He is the beginning,
supreme over all who rise from the dead.
So he is first in everything.
19 For God in all his fullness
was pleased to live in Christ,
20 and through him God reconciled
everything to himself.
He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth
by means of Christ’s blood on the cross.
21 This includes you who were once far away from God. You were his enemies, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions. 22 Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault.

Location:Salisbury