John’s Notes: Parish Newsletter editorial, February 2020
At the age of 21 I was made redundant and joined the ranks of the unemployed. It was one of the most formative experiences of my life, if entirely unwelcome.
I found myself unprepared for a difficult journey: from being a young engineering apprentice learning skills which ought to have set me up for a long working life, to suddenly being an outcast, reduced to signing on each fortnight, and unjustly regarded by unsympathetic critics as being 'work shy', a 'sponger', etc. As a young Christian I was disappointed to find that church people had little to say, in their sermons, magazines, youth ministry or in personal conversations, about the situation I was in. Little comfort, reassurance, or hope. It was during this period that I left the church.
Following the instinct that God did care, I embarked on the most significant course of theological learning of my life: self-taught, over many months spent with philosophers, poets, publicans, priests and pop singers, and other laid-off friends of mine. We discovered that God valued all people equally, unemployed or not; we noticed that in the story of Adam and Eve work is a curse - but that elsewhere in scripture God validates and celebrates work (as the Creator of the world - quite a job - and as the carpenter of Nazareth); and we realised to our astonishment that whereas our society belittles and marginalises them, God has a special place for the world’s struggling people of our world.
This is my testimony, if you want to call it that. It’s the story of how I started back into faith. What’s your story? This Lent if you join in our Talking Jesus course, it’ll be good to hear it. https://talkingjesus.org.
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