Dear all,

 

  Who am I? Who is God? And why does it matter? “The value of identity of course is that so often with it comes purpose.” Richard R. Grant Happy new school year! September is upon us and offers an alternative to January’s New Year as thousands of young people and their teachers, lecturers and assistants start a new academic year. Learning well comes from asking great questions and so, with this in mind, I thought I’d kick off this year with a real corker: “Who am I?”

 

  The ability to answer the question “Who am I?” will more than often lead us to identifying what our lives are about. For example, by saying “I’m a mother”, we can immediately attach the purposes and goals of motherhood to that identity.

 

  From the Bible’s perspective, truly knowing ourselves can only come from firstly knowing our Creator. Our family, friends, colleagues, acquaintances and even the media will have different opinions and views on who we are and therefore on what our purpose in life is. And they will all have a view on who God is – or whether, indeed, He even exists.

 

  Bishop and theologian Tom Wright shares his experience as a university chaplain:

‘For seven years I was College Chaplain at Worcester College, Oxford. Each year I used to see the first year undergraduates individually for a few minutes, to welcome them to the college and make a first acquaintance. Most were happy to meet me; but many commented, often with slight embarrassment, “You won’t be seeing much of me; you see, I don’t believe in God.”

 

  I developed a stock response: “Oh, that’s interesting; which god is it you don’t believe in?” This used to surprise them; they mostly regarded the word “God” as a univocal, always meaning the same thing. So they would stumble out a few phrases about the god they said they did not believe in: a being who lived up in the sky, looking down disapprovingly at the world, occasionally “intervening” to do miracles, sending bad people to hell while allowing good people to share his heaven. Again, I had a stock response for 3 this very common statement of “spy-in-the-sky” theology: “Well, I’m not surprised you don’t believe in that god. I don’t believe in that god either.”‘

 

  So, a friendly challenge for the beginning of the Autumn term – what questions are you asking? And where will you hope to find your answers?

 

Blessings

Yann Dubreuil