Faith – Page 17 – Chandler Warren

One Month in Scotland

One month. Thirty days. 720 hours. 43,200 minutes. I have lived in Scotland for a little over four weeks now. I have just finished my third week of lectures. I will turn in my first essay within the next couple weeks. I have attended four churches. I have drank so much tea. What will one month living in the UK do to you?

A quick aside… This is actually my second time to live in the UK for a month. I spent twenty-eight days in June 2019 staying in various places in the UK. However, the experience is quite different this time around, and it has a different feel when you are staying, mostly, in one place with plans for a longer period of time.

If you live in the UK for a month, be prepared to drink tea a lot. I know, I know. I’ve already mentioned the tea, but I don’t think I have yet communicated the amount of tea that you will consume, or at least be offered, throughout the day. To remind my American readers of a story, there was once a group of rebellious (you might even say “revolutionary”) persons who dumped a shipload of tea in Boston Harbor. I can almost imagine the harbor with a tea bag steeping in it as it slowly turns the water black. Well, if you added some cream to that ocean-tea, it may be about the quantity that will be offered or drank by you when you live in the UK.

If you live in the UK for a month, be prepared to hear a lot about Brexit and Boris. Before I move on, this is obviously not a normative experience, but over this first month I’ve my living here, it’s huge. Without going into political details, no one can stop talking about the unexpected roller coaster that has been the last month of UK politics and governance. I’ve overheard world-leading New Testament scholars and theologians, old ladies in cafes, and groups of blokes in pubs discussing these crazy, unprecedented times. I’ll just say that being here right now makes the US political system look rather tame. Perhaps it’s making me optimistic for my home country.

If you live in the UK for a month, be prepared to never know what to do with trash. Once you get around the confusion of talking about “rubbish” instead of “trash” and “bins” instead of “cans”, you still have to navigate what items to throw away and what items to recycle. Personally I really enjoy the option of recycling, but for someone untrained, it can become too difficult when you just want to get rid of a food container.

If you live in the UK for a month, be prepared to always have coins. The first thing to mention is that they have coins for one pound and two pounds instead of notes (like having dollar and two dollar coins instead of paper money). Plus if there is a place where small coins are basically useless, it’s the UK. When you purchase things here, there are no non-advertised sales taxes, so you often have items rounded to nice neat numbers. However, when you don’t have nice round numbers, you get stuck with one cent, two cent, five cent, and ten cent coins which you will rarely use. They will just sit in your backpack, or “rucksack”, and jingle as you walk everywhere. They also sound like toy coins, and that only makes it worse. Jingle, jingle.

Real coins from my backpack. I thankfully spent about ten coins earlier today.

If you live in the UK for a month, be prepared to forget that cars drive on the right side of the street back home. You will probably be riding a bicycle or walking everywhere, so even if you don’t drive a car, you will get use to riding your bike or looking for cars on the left side of the road. Sadly, a part of you will always doubt it. You will constantly be confused and paranoid. Such is the fate of an American (or German, so says my friend).

If you live in the UK for a month, be prepared to constantly not know where to walk on the sidewalk (“pavement”). If there is one thing that annoys me about living here, it’s that no one is consistent on picking a side of the sidewalk to walk on. People from American don’t know where to walk. People from Germany don’t know where to walk. And worse, people from here don’t know where to walk! There is just a constant mass of confusion any time you have to pass someone going the opposite way as you.

This is a joke. This is actually a crowd from an event I attended, not people on a sidewalk…

This post mainly serves as a joke and will, to some extent, misrepresent some things. So I want to end on this note: if you live in the UK for a month, be prepared to love the people, love the place, and be thankful for the opportunity. If you have ever had such an opportunity, you understand the feeling. If you haven’t, do whatever you can to get a similar experience. It can be transforming to engage a diverse world.

Review of On the Road with Saint Augustine

In his newest monograph On the Road with Saint Augustine, James K.A. Smith introduces the patristic theologian, philosopher, bishop, and—most importantly for this work—a spiritual traveler looking for home. Before reading this book, a warning is in order. This book is not a biography. It is not a historical theology. It is not a contemporary philosopher’s attempt to anachronistically claim Augustine as the first existentialist. It is not an academic book or a devotional for new Christians. It is not a postmodern apologetic for Christianity. It is not a gospel presentation. James K.A. Smith does not set out to do any of these things, but of course, by discussing Augustine, he does all of them. In this book, Smith invites us to get on the road that was traveled by Augustine centuries before us and discover how similar his own journey was to ours.

Summary

Smith invites the reader, a traveler like himself, to journey on the same road that Augustine went down centuries ago. We travel to find ourselves and become authentically us, and for someone living in a culture so distant and long ago from ours today, it may shock us to learn how similar Augustine’s journey is to our own. This book tells stories within stories. Every chapter is composed of a series of vignettes taken from Augustine’s life or connect with his experiences and ideas. These brief stories can seem random in their placement, but it does not take long to see how each stories connects to form a carefully-woven narrative. These chapters can feel similar to mind-bending films (such as Christopher Nolan’s Memento) wherein things may feel unsettled and random until one reaches the end and feels the satisfying (or unsettling in Nolan’s case) conclusion that brings the pieces together.

The ‘Idea’ Chapters

These chapters feel like a journey through life’s most prevalent topics. After setting the stage for Augustine being our contemporary in thought and deed as we, like him, are refugees looking for a place in this world to call home, Smith walks us through a series of topics. He opens this series of chapters by introducing the problem of freedom without end or without a goal. He then moves to address how ambition, though maligned in some parts of contemporary culture and worshipped in others, cannot be put into either category so neatly. When our ambition is rightly ordered for God’s sake, it becomes a great good, but this is difficult when the line between God’s sake and our own is rather fuzzy. Smith remarks that Augustine clearly admits that he still does things out of selfish ambition while still maintaining the desire to do them for God alone, and this does not make them entirely selfish or immoral or inconsistent—it just makes them honest. Throughout the book Smith address other topics of broad and sometimes theoretical significance such as enlightenment, story, and justice, but he also moves to some practical topics as well.

The Practical Chapters

Concerning the practical and everyday topics that connect with Augustine, Smith discusses family, friendship, death, and homecoming. Smith’s chapter on sex does much good in moving past some of Augustine’s hang-ups and misgivings almost certainly brought on by his own checkered past. For those familiar with some of Augustine’s claims concerning this topic, Smith gives a refreshing reinterpretation of Augustine that is honest and charitable.

In this book, we also glimpse at Augustine’s parental relationships. The chapter on Augustine’s mother relates the story of his rebellious emigration from her faith and home until he returns after experiencing her faith from another place in his life. Many people have similar experiences in scorning the faith and beliefs of their parents. Augustine finally realizes that, the whole time he left his geographical home to find one of rest, his mother was there pointing him to the proper home of peace. Augustine had an absent father like many others today, so Smith, in sharing that part of Augustine’s life, uses it as a platform to discuss our brokenness and the longing many feel for the place in their lives abandoned by absent fathers. Smith also talks about important topics such as friendship and death which have great significance in our lives as we seek loving companionship from others and await the fate that will reach us all.

Assessment

I quite enjoyed On the Road with Saint Augustine. I had the typical experience of reading Confessions for the first time. As a college freshmen with no real idea who Augustine was, I was shocked when this bishop from Africa told my story. His struggle with sin and wrestling with God could not have described my own story better. His heartfelt pain and tears came through so clearly even though he originally wrote in a different language and different century. It opened my eyes to the universal journey of fighting sin and evil and finding God and grace. Smith writes like a master-weaver, bringing Augustine’s story together with ours. For those interested in a faith that may seem foreign yet oddly familiar, I would recommend this book wholeheartedly. My one personal caution is that this book is not your typical narrative.

Like those mind-bending films mentioned before, every piece is essential even if you may not enjoy it while it happens. Many of those films have moments that seem to drag on or seem to not contribute enough to the story to warrant their inclusion, but again I believe they all have their place. The same is true of Smith’s work. Is it superbly written? Does it demonstrate a well-seasoned writing career? Yes, but it may not always feel like it. This critique, my only critique, may also be a strength. I will let the reader decide. Take up and read.

Encounters of Kindness

I grew up like many others reading picture books that wanted to teach us about kindness. I’ve even heard some in the church bemoan these books because it teaches people to be moral without teaching them about Jesus (the ultimate exemplar of virtue/morality), and it teaches them to care more about kindness than conviction. I’m less concerned about those particular issues when it comes to children’s books in public schools and doctors’ waiting rooms. However, I find it funny that with all these books and lessons that I have grown up with how unkind people can still be. It only takes a few minutes scrolling through social media or flipping through channels on television to learn that lesson. But despite this lack of kindness, there is actually so much around us. In this post, I want to share a point made to me about kindness and a couple experiences that I have recently had.

1. Can you do anything for Christ in an un-Christ-like way?

Without much information and perhaps as an act of faith, I trusted the advice of two people I barely knew (I met one in London and the other in Cambridge), and I reached out to a stranger living in St. Andrews. He welcomed me to his home, shared a pot of tea with me, invited me to stay for dinner with his family, and gave me some great advice and encouragement. I don’t want to rush to judgement, but he was possibly one of the wisest people that I have ever met.

While I met with him, he emphasized kindness as an important virtue for Christians to have. (This was unsurprising because of how well he was treating me.) He had just returned to town after teaching a week-long ethics course at a seminary. There he posed this question to his students, “Can you do anything for Christ in an un-Christ-like way?” It’s a question that hits you like a ton of bricks as you realize how un-Christ-like you have been in many situations where you once felt justified. It’s a question that demands only one answer, “No!” The ends do not justify the means. Jesus approached people with love—even his enemies. We are without excuse.

This question has been on my mind ever since.

2. A Cup of Tea, a Kind Concern, and the Power of Love

With this question deeply on my mind, I got sick. It was a week or so after that meeting (this last Saturday), and I woke-up with a sore throat. I was distracted all day with a day trip to Loch Tay, but that evening it returned. Sunday was rough again. Monday was dreadful. I barely made it through class. Tuesday was better, but when I arrived for class in the afternoon, one of the other students had brought me a green tea with ginger and honey from the shop he was studying in before class. (He commented that the person making the drink really wanted to add whisky to it.) It was one thing that he remembered that I wasn’t feeling well; it showed how thoughtful he was. It was an entirely other thing that he was also kind enough to do something for me. He didn’t just pray, which would have been enough, but he went beyond what was hoped, expected, or encouraged of him.

I have also had an instructor take special care to help me intellectually and pastorally with some of the content covered in class. He has taken the time to meet with me to discuss the content covered, and he has stayed after class and during breaks to ask me about the questions that I brought-up during the class time. He has not only been kind enough to meet with me, but he has also taken the initiative to reach out to me. Again, it’s been a time of seeing people be intentionally kind and loving to me.

I can’t think of anything greater, or more meaningful, than experiencing God’s love, and it can be difficult sometimes to have those experiences. But God has chosen to work through the church, through a community of Jesus-people. When we join in fellowship and discipleship with the Jesus-people around us, we can quickly and joyfully find the love of God waiting for us.

Exploring Scotland

On the advice of one of my undergraduate professors who studied in Edinburgh, Scotland (a mere hour and a half train ride from St. Andrews), I joined the university hill walking (i.e., hiking) club. The club takes several trips throughout the school year, and I was able to attend their first trip for the academic year. It was a day trip to Loch Tay with a small trip to the waterfalls in Killin village. I had a great time walking through some Scottish countryside. After we got back that evening, I was able to attend a concert by Satellite Worship at Holy Trinity church in St. Andrews. Enjoy the pictures!

Living in Scotland

I keep waiting for a good time to sit down and summarize my life in Scotland right now. I keep waiting to get through one more event or activity to end my update with, but alas, things keep happening. If I wait any longer, I may just never write about my experiences. So today is my attempt for you to share in the story so far.

This month has been busy and exciting and nerve-wracking and overwhelming—all in the best possible ways. It has only been seventeen days since my last day in the US, so everything I share about my thoughts and feelings should be taken with a thick pinch of salt. However, despite the “new bike smell”, I do have thoughts and feelings about my lot in life. I live alone in a little studio apartment which will only feel smaller once I marry and get a new roommate. I have cooked nearly every meal I’ve had since moving in here, and I’m tired of washing the terrible pan that everything sticks to. I have two coffee cups which are on constant rotation in the washing because of my fondness for two or four cups of tea in the first half of my day. I ride my bike into town most times because it turns a twenty minute walk into a seven minute frenzy.

I fill my day reading, and watching an occasional Netflix show that isn’t available in the US—they have a better variety except for the devastating lack of The West Wing. I found a nice library and a couple other places to study. I have met kind people, wise people, strange people, and smart people. I have met Scotts, Germans, Indians, and far too many Americans. But I have loved it all.

I had plenty of welcome events the last week to attend, but I finally attended my first week of classes on Monday and Tuesday (16 and 17 September). I listened to N.T. Wright saying things that I completely agreed with and others that I completed disagreed with while I sat by his side. I had a couple Scottish lecturers lead riveting discussions on philosophy’s role in theology and the doctrine of Creation. I met a stranger and shared a meal with his family, and I saw a lifetime of wisdom face-to-face. I wrote an article, I read an essay, and I tried to not talk too much in class. I’ve had FaceTime calls, and I’ve had long messages. I’ve made friends and had fun. I’ve watched lectures (including my first Gifford lecture!). I have engaged great scholars, and I’ve let myself dream.

Picture by Vi Bui. Pictured from left to right: myself (Chandler), and Professor Wright. Edited to remove a fellow classmate.

Without diving into too much detail or boring you too much, this has been my first seventeen days.