It’s faith, not truth, that’s out there

Sep 19 2008 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

Despite profound personal sorrows, a clergyman has mounted a robust defence of religious faith against the scientists who dismiss God. David Charters reports

NOW, you might expect the man with the twinkling glasses and the deep religious faith to talk about how he saw God in the park, the supermarket, or some other banal place of daily exchange – following the example of those high-eyed, hand-holding evangelists, who sway and give witness at revivalist meetings.

But the perjink chap in the dog-collar approaching Liverpool Cathedral’s book shop isn’t like that; no visions, no miracles, no strange encounters, no bright light on the Damascus Road for him, just a lot of thinking and talking.

On a shelf a few yards away, there is a slim volume by Peter Lundstrom called God: The Shorter Version. Alongside that, there is an even slimmer volume, introducing strangers to the peculiarities of Scouse English.

Yes, it’s a weird world, but this brilliant man doesn’t pretend to have the answers to all its mysteries. However, in the style of philosophers through the ages, he has questions. These he lays down, in an unending chain, so that you are hooked on the quest for truth – though you will never find it down here.

He takes his seat in the cafe by the bookshop after ordering a coffee with milk and sugar.

Soon the conversation is swinging between philosophy and theology, drawing from both, but also brushing subjects so difficult and obscure that it becomes necessary to speak of the personal and the painful – that moment when he held in his warm hands the still, silent and beautiful body of his baby daughter, Naomi, while his wife, Christine, lay exhausted on the bed before him.

In that moment, made an eternity in the memory, everyone would have sympathised if his faith had cracked. It didn’t. It held, as he cradled the body of their baby.

Faith drives the spirit of the Reverend Rod Garner. That is why he has just published a book called Crowded Canvas: Faith in the Making.

It is his attempt to counter society’s swelling doubts about God, accelerated by the atheistic utterances of scientists, most notably Richard Dawkins, the biologist, broadcaster and author of The God Delusion – the best-seller, which dismisses the worship of God as a false belief, offered in the face of strong contradictory evidence.

Naomi was born dead on September 13, 1978. Her body was cremated and her ashes buried in the grounds at St Mary’s Church Davyhulme, Manchester, where the couple married.

Christine had miscarried once before that. She would do so five more times before their first son, Daniel, was born. He’s 27 now and working for a PhD in Jewish studies. His brother, George, is 23. Like his dad, he has a passion for literature, music and poetry and is, among other things, a freelance writer for the pop magazine, Kerrang!.

“To bring Daniel into the world, Christine was in hospital for the whole pregnancy,” says Rod. “He was our last shot. We went under a specialist in Rodney Street (Liverpool). Obviously, there is an end to how many times you can try these things.”

In his book, a spiritual journey burnished with references to high moments and intellectual discoveries, Rod, 60, writes on the subject of why God tolerates so much suffering on His Earth.

“I speak here as a father who has held the dead body of his own daughter in his hands and also shared the prolonged sadness occasioned by repeated miscarriages. In none of these instances did it make any sense for my wife and I to interpret them as manifestations of God’s purposes towards us. They represented nature gone awry; we had to endure, hope and learn.

Secondly, the chaos and unfairness of the world, real as they are, need to be set alongside the more fundamental truth that a good deal of the time we find ourselves in a relatively stable and ordered environment, in which we have come to feel, so to speak, at home.”

But the lay person will want to know more about his personal feelings in the face of tragedy. For about three hours before her delivery, Rod and Christine knew that Naomi was dead. What did he say to God about it? He would have thanked God if she had lived. What did he say when she died?

“Neither of us at the time took this as some kind of personal judgment,” he says. “We were both old enough to know that we live in a less than perfect world, where things can go wrong and tragically wrong. We accepted the fact and still do. The world isn’t organised for our convenience. What we hoped and believed is that we would be given the strength to live with that and rise above it.

“The strongest impression we had was that when she was born and placed in our hands by a young doctor. If you looked at it externally, the moment, which would seem to have been the most awful and anguished, having her placed in our hands, was, in fact, one of great, strange peace.

“Although this was awful and terrible, we were somehow held. There were no recriminations. There was the hope that we could rise again and find the wherewithal for Christine to go on with me and make children. It was a deep learning experience and, contrary to what one might presume, it didn’t bring me to question the goodness of God or the existence of God, but, in an unexpected way, we were conscious of being upheld in a time of great personal sorrow.

“Every anniversary brings a very poignant reminder of what might have been.”

Rod is the son of the late Ernest, a railway engineer, and his wife Annie, 90.

He was brought up in Manchester. His fine mind gained him business qualifications at Salford College. He also has a diploma in theology from Birmingham University, a BA in philosophy from the University of London and a master’s degree in philosophy from Hull University.

Since ordination in the late 1970s, he has worked at parishes in Tranmere, St Helens and Kingston-upon-Hull, before being appointed vicar at Holy Trinity Church, Southport, in 1995. He is also theological consultant to the Diocese of Liverpool and an honorary canon of Liverpool Cathedral.

“There is a sense in the end where faith becomes self-authenticating. It is primary and it is self-validating. You have tested this over a lifetime. I have found this to be durable. Therefore, this is my truth. This is my faith. But it is not just my faith. It is not just me looking through the very selfish prism of my head. This is me looking at history, at politics and at many other people’s experience – those with whom I have to walk through the valley of the shadow of death in celebration of hope.

“Faith is the evidence of things not seen, hoped for, but still not yet fully realised. The world is the starting point for wonder, imagination – speculation about what it amounts to from a religious prospective, and not just a scientific one. It is sad that, in growing older, people lose the capacity for imagination, to delight in the created world.

“Some of the very best minds have never ceased to be amazed by the fact that a Creation so infinitely complex and vast could just have been there when it didn’t need to be. The world doesn’t explain itself. It cries out for someone to offer an explanation for it being here. Science and religion in their different ways do that.

“Every question begets another question in philosophy. That is the first thing you learn if you do philosophy as a degree. There is never an end to the conversation.”

I glanced, discreetly, at my watch under the table, as the crockery rattled and chimed across the room.

“How do you understand the nature and power of God?” Rod continues. “It is perhaps to recognise God’s power, not in His capacity to do anything, but in His power to love. In Christianity, the supreme revelation of God’s nature, and power and purpose, is demonstrated in Christ, a suffering servant, who is obedient, even unto death on the cross, who hangs there suffering with others.

“Christianity holds together because it’s a fusion of heart and mind, intellect and feeling, my own experience of the world and the evaluated experience of many others. No man has ever seen God. We have images and symbols, but we haven’t see Him.”

So, with darkness settling outside, we are back to faith.

CROWDED Canvas, by Rod Garner, is published by Inspire, at £12.99. His other publications include Like a Bottle in Smoke, Facing the City and The Big Questions.

davidcharters