I watched Back to the Future this evening with the intention of working out whether I could show it to my sons.  I’m trying to educate them in the ways of movie high-watermarks of the past 30 or so years.  I know they would love the film (what’s not to love?) but I couldn’t remember how ‘grown up’ it was.

One of the things that I thought as I watched was about how the movie is going to seem so old to my sons (they’re both under ten).  I’m not sure that they’ll get some of the cultural references to the mid-eighties.  To them, the film will be a period piece about a man leaving the past, to go further into the past, to then return to the near past, which is referred to as ‘the future’.

Weird.

Anyway, this retro-movie love fest was spliced onto the end of a day that was full of reminiscence for me.

I am moving house with my family and I’ve been trying to clear out the loft.  Our loft is (or, indeed, was) crammed full of all of our sons’ clothes from all the time that they’ve been alive.  I wouldn’t say that we’re hoarders, it’s more that we put things out of sight and hope that they’ll deal with themselves.

Occasionally, as I rifled through old baby-grows and miniature hoodies, I would be hit by a sudden jolt of memory.  One stripy, knitted hat in particular sent me back to a clear, crisp winter’s day when my youngest son was tiny.  So it has been a day of sudden gasps of memory.

I also spent this morning thinking of my home town, Medway.  This place is a fairly deprived, average sort of group of towns, which is obviously special to me.  I will, quite reliably, begin to miss being in Medway every 6 months or so, despite the fact that I left about 13 years ago.  The place is obviously full of people I love and plenty that I haven’t seen or spent time with in too long.  I have several dark memories of my time there to contend with, as well as lots of happy ones.  I think the place is tarnished for me in a, probably unfair, way.

As well as all the nice things that I came across in my loft, there were plenty that reminded me of less happy times.  There were reminders of things I’ve witnessed or things I’ve done that I’m ashamed of or wish had not happened.  All these past events, good and bad, shape and determine my character and behaviour in some ways.

I’ve recently been aware that I’ve been living in a way where I’m allowing my past to affect my behaviour in the present in some unhealthy ways.  For example, it’s easy to convince myself that I’m not the sort of person who does things successfully.

One clear example is with a novel that I’ve been writing for a comically long period of time.  I think it has great potential (I’m biased), but I’m at a certain point, in Chapter 5 that is proving brutally difficult to write.  This is the point where a young man has to climb a wall to get away from his past (I know, in terms of metaphor, it’s hardly subtle, but you know me).  Well, the poor kid has been stuck at the bottom of that wall for at least two years.  I literally cannot bring myself to write him over the wall, get him free and get on with the novel.

I know it’s weird, but I think it rings true for a lot of us.  We become stuck in the illusion that we are a certain person, living with certain damage and cannot get over that wall.  We can’t get over our past and back to the present day – and our futures.

I think that grace is a concept that recognises that we cannot get over that wall.  Instead, it introduces the fact that there is a door.

I suppose I need to begin turning the handle.

I’m striking for the first time tomorrow.  It isn’t something that I’m happy to do.  I’d actually prefer to be at work and earn that day’s wage.

I really feel driven to strike by the UK Government’s mistreatment of public sector workers.  I believe that I have a responsibility to myself and the rest of the public sector to stand up and be counted.  I will not be a nameless drone.  I want the Chancellor to notice our collective dissatisfaction.

Now, you are probably fairly likely to agree with my attitude on this – if not my specific interpretation.  My main way of publicising my under-achieving blog is through Facebook and Twitter, where most of my friends or followers are likely to hold similar political points of view to me – with a few, happy exceptions.  You might disagree in part or in total (in which case, please accept my apology and celebrate with me as I retract my huge assumptions about my ‘readership’), but I doubt you’ll tell me so (please do tell me through comments – you have no idea how happy it makes me).  But whatever the readers of this post think, there are whole swathes of people who would detest the very notion of the second paragraph of this post and that really interests me.

I have an irritating trait of always staying passive and non-confrontational, so the act of striking seems slightly foreign to me.  There are people who disagree with me and my act of striking is essentially designed to heighten the confrontation.  This is not normal behaviour.  But I believe that it is healthy.

One bloke who used to be my youth worker, but is now a ‘Pioneer Curate’ at Rochester Cathedral (basically, he’s a special sort of vicar) taught me a bit about this idea of engaging with debate – probably without knowing he was doing so.  I guess I’d wrapped my passivity and neutrality up with my faith.  But I saw Rob engaging with debate, being a passionate member of a political party and arguing vibrantly through social media about serious issues.  I guess I registered the fact that faith – and perhaps especially Christianity – has to engage with debate.

Belief itself is obviously a huge area of contention at the moment.  The big Atheist/Theist debate is a famous one right now – despite the fact that there seems to be very little actual debate.  Instead, what actually seems to be happening is that there are several people (largely middle-aged men) shouting (often in a very childish way) about how wrong everybody else is.

There are some places where people are trying to grow debate on this issue.  In a series of articles  on the Guardian website, Julian Baggini has proposed some articles of 21st-century faith to create some common ground to begin with.  Unfortunately, as Jonathan Chaplin points out, Baggini’s idea of common ground is not particularly common to all sides of the debate.  (Note that the comments on these articles tend to be pretty aggressive and wide of the mark – I would recommend staying ‘above the line’.)

I have been convinced for many years that questions about whether any god exists will not be answered through debate.  Sure, some people might be convinced either way – though rarely through debate alone – but I think the wider argument will be ongoing until that inevitable point where each of us finds out first hand the answer to the question ‘What happens after death?’

In the light of that (I know this might sound strange from a Christian), while I believe that the question of whether God exists is the question upon which the whole of life rests, I think there are more fruitful disagreements to offer my interest to.  There are arguments about justice issues in the Church a the moment that seem very pressing to me.

The debate about sexuality and sexual orientation in the Church is obviously one that is imperative.  I do find this debate difficult, partly because of some of the extreme views expressed on either side.  I tend to find myself in a sort of permanent dissonance on this issue, where I’m very aware of the Biblical point of view of sex as a celebration of the male-female marital relationship, but also aware that love, compassion and mercy are at the root of my calling.  I guess my stance on this issue tends to be similar to person-centred counselling – with congruence and unconditional positive regard for all people, brought together by empathy.

Whatever my views, this is an important debate – if only because of the amount of people who are hurt by it and who will continue to be hurt – and it is well worth the effort to engage with it.  There are some great writers on the web on both sides, including Symon Hill (a Christian who previously expressed homophobic views, but later came out) and Peter Ould (who describes himself as ‘PostGay’, became a Christian, married and had kids, then became a vicar).

What about other arguments in the Church?  Women in leadership is another current issue, especially for the Church of England, who are working out whether to accept women bishops,  I saw a really interesting debate on Twitter between Peter Ould (see above) on the more conservative side and Vicky Beeching (who has, for example, written this on women in leadership).  I do come down heavily on the side of women in leadership on this issue, but it’s a debate I’m really interested in.

I could go on forever about the endless debates in the Church – from the intensely emotive (abortion) to the slightly less intensive (predestination) – but I think the point is clear.  There are a huge amount of debates that are worth engaging with both in the Church and out of it.

My own church has its own way of doing this.  We basically have a few ‘primary’ issues, which all the members agree on and then several ‘secondary’ issues, which are (unsurprisingly) secondary to membership.  This essentially gives us freedom to disagree on several things, but still live in community together.  I guess that one problem with this way of doing things is that, despite our great interest and our best intentions, the secondary issues just don’t get spoken about.  We never really engage with the debates, perhaps because we know that, in those debates, there is potential for pain and damage to the community.

I think that, when two people disagree, God can do amazing things through that disagreement.

I know two members of a family who haven’t spoken to each other in several years.  They disagreed over a very important issue ages ago.  After a huge argument, they announced that their relationship had ended.  I desperately hope that they will meet up again and that they will speak about the issue in hand.  The reason I hope that they will speak about this cause of their friction is that it is only when we engage with an issue where we feel wronged, that we will be able to forgive the other person concerned.

By engaging with each other in our differences, wrongs can be righted.  Bad relationships can be made good.  Love can blossom.

Love is easily worth an uncomfortable disagreement or two.