Why Being Yourself is a Bad Idea: Facing the Canon with Bishop Graham Tomlin

welcome to my youtube channel my guest on facing the canon is graeme tomlin bishop of kensington in london [Music] graeme tomlin welcome to facing the canon john lovely to see you today and you you too always a delight to see you graeme you're a bishop in the church of england i am indeed yeah you are where are you a bishop uh well i'm the bishop of kensington which um is basically the area that i cover is a part of west london that goes from knightsbridge harrods at one end all the way to stains at the other end and everything in between so that's the bit that i cover it's about 800 000 people live in the area about 90 odd different parishes and so it's a great part of london to be part of absolutely in your diocese or your area at the grenfell tower you were involved in the sense of trying to do what you could as a result of that i i drove past it actually last sunday and it's still there what's the what's the future of the building graeme do you know anything well the building is still standing and there's a lot of feeling locally that in some ways it needs to stay standing until there's some kind of resolution of the ongoing issues both within that community and more widely about issues like cladding across the what the country i think there's a fear locally that if it's taken away somehow the thing will be brushed under the carpet and some of the issues that grenfell raised will not be dealt with and so as a result there's been a kind of careful management of the building and it still there's a there's a whole team of people working on that building to keep it to keep it as safe as it can be there's the covering around it so i imagine it will stay for some time there is a memorial commission uh that has been set up to think about what replaces it eventually because of course it can't stay there forever hopefully they'll they'll if with the inquiry uh reports and there is some form of resolution that brings a little bit of never closure but a little at least a little bit of resolution to the situation it may be possible to take the building down and then some memorial garden or something will be will be produced on that site um so yeah it's still an ongoing um president in some ways that that building symbolizes something quite important and which is quite important why it doesn't come down right now because there are still issues that need to be addressed that grenfell raised for our society and and community and what was the church able to do um for the families that lost loved ones and for the the families that lost their homes what what did the church do well on the day of the fire i i found out about it first thing in the morning when i woke up and there was a little tweet on my phone from a radio station saying would i you know report on the fire and um i thought what fire of course then it went online found out where it was realized that it was in one of the parishes i was responsible for so i went up to um to north kensington on the day i spent most of that day you know at the base of the tower actually we were some of the few people allowed into the uh the area around the tower talking to firefighters and emergency services going in and out but also part of the day in the local paris church which pretty quickly became a kind of depot for gifts and volunteers and people who had been evacuated from their homes and so on and i think what the church was able to do was because we as the christian church not just that particular church but a number of churches around that area because we had buildings and we had people on site that had spent time investing in that community were known in that community and trusted we were able to if you like provide a degree of emergency relief that others found it difficult to provide so the council came in but because the council in that part of london isn't trusted quite as well as other bodies there was a bit of suspicion about the help offered there but because the church alongside other religious communities as well because we had a presence there people could go to the church the doors were open we have a building where we could we could um we didn't have to kind of muster some great resources and then a week or two later on come in and help we were there at the site on the day so you know the local vicar literally opened the doors at three o'clock in the morning and people started coming in and so the church being you know it struck me about the importance of of local churches being present in every community across this country whenever a disaster like that happens it happens in someone's patch in someone's parish next to door to someone's church and that church is there ready to respond and it spoke to me a little bit about kind of our readiness to respond to whatever human need emerges at any particular time you never quite know when something like that's not gonna happen no um uh last century um there was a coal mining accident in wales uh abbavan and in punch magazine the title of their article was god is dead saying well why did he allow that to happen how do you answer questions like that you know the a fire started in someone's fridge you know on whatever floor it was and you know why did god allow that it's so funny i was asked that very question uh at the time i remember going in to do a i did a lot of some tv media work at the time and i remember going to do one interview on the top of a pub nearby to grenfell tower and i was coming down through the pub afterwards and i was wearing my collar and everything else and um someone called out to me hey father come over here you know so i went over and we started having a chat and he said well you know how do you how do you explain this then you know why this god you believe in you know how can you believe in a god when something like this happens and i'm sorry you know put on the spot and that's gonna respond and i suppose my you know you could go into all kinds of philosophical sure answers to that but i think my response at the time was well i mean in one sense i can't give you an answer and if i were to go into the philosophical answer i would say something like this that actually the the nature of evil is that it has no purpose it has no point so you can't ask the question what what point does it does this have is there a reason for it because there is no reason for it because evil is it's very naturally irrational but i think that's not the answer to give at the time i think the answer i gave at the time was simply that like you know i can't tell you exactly why this happens but what i do know is that if i didn't believe in god i wouldn't have any hope that things could ever get any better or any different yes and actually what my faith in god brings me is a sense that something can change that people's lives can be redeemed that that things like this are not the final word that the final word is not death and fire and disaster and and and um despair the final word is life and hope grace and mercy and that's what keeps me going during a time like this and actually eventually enough i found at the time i didn't find many people whose faith was destroyed by the fire in fact if anything people turn towards their face because they lean on him don't they do exactly when you are really going through the mill very often what you you reach out for a source of hope yeah and the thing about faith the thing about god and especially the god of jesus christ gives you hope at a time when actually where else are you going to find it yes sorry i really like that grain actually that yeah the reason i believe and know god is that i do have hope it gives me hope yeah absolutely you've got a new book out and it's a very clever title because it's got words that are crossed out so the title is being yourself and it's interesting that the crossed out words you're drawn to them aren't you you're like well what are the cross that words you know so the original title was why being yourself is a bad idea but then of course it's being yourself so what is that about well it's a book that um emerged out of i think the the sparks of it began in a conversation i had i was at a wedding or a baptism or something i was talking to some friends of our of our daughter uh you know people who were at university with her and they were they were kind of young intelligent bright people and i was thinking about how different it was from talking to people you know when i was their age you know i was you know when you and i were that sort of age you know back in the 1980s it was the time of margaret thatcher everybody wanted to make money it was all about materialism and so on and struck me how different um this generation was this were these were people who were um quite sad they weren't that interested in money they were on interesting experiences they want to travel the world they were quite spiritual they did mindfulness they do yoga um they were um people who are very idealistic they wanted to change the world they wanted jobs that weren't just going to be lots of money but they wanted to do something that was significant but yet christian faith was something right off the off the scale for them just had no inclination that this would be anything that they could take seriously and so i began to think how would you present the christian faith in a way that makes sense yes to people like that so in some ways the book is primarily written for people like that outside the church and um it's it's trying to say how would you explain the christian faith in a way that might make sense to someone like that and it starts off with the idea of um how do we talk about ourselves these days very often you go into book shops and you'll find titles like you know learning to love yourself yes um you know how to be yourself or you know valuing the the the the genius that you that is yeah motivational yeah exactly yeah and you know we talk about um you know discovering ourselves or being ourselves or finding ourselves or whatever um and i was thinking a little bit about um you know what's the advice we often give so you know say if there's a teenager comes to you and they're going out on a date with a friend uh you know they want to impress them or maybe someone you going to a job interview and and you know what do i do and the advice we often give it oh it's all right just be yourself and i suppose the more i thought about that more more confusing that advice is because actually when you think about it the advice to be yourself isn't actually as straightforward as we think it might be i think for a number of reasons i mean number one because you know who is this self that i'm supposed to be yes very often when you want to impress someone whether someone you're going on a date with or someone you're applying for a job for the last thing you want them to know is actually what's really going on inside your head or your heart you don't want them to know about the anxieties and the fears and the doubts and the jealousies and the lusts that are going on there so what we do is we present a very sanitized version of ourselves to them and so um this this being ourselves isn't quite straightforward because there's there's a part of ourselves that we do like to project there's a part of ourselves that we actually want to hide and we don't want to i get i'm actually we don't want to sort of you know present out there um in any case the other thing i think is that um though it surprised me that this advice to be yourself focuses upon ourselves and when you meet someone who is only thinking about themselves they're not usually a very attractive person to me the people you really enjoy meeting are the people who are interested in you yes they're not thinking about themselves am i being myself they're actually really genuinely interested in you as a person and so i began to think this idea of being yourself actually focuses attention in the wrong area there's a little statement that martin luther makes um where he describes the human condition and he says the problem with the human condition is the heart curved in upon itself in itself yes and you know it's like this and actually this whole being yourself idea does that it curves us in upon ourselves and actually what we really need is to be opened out towards god and towards our neighbor so that's basically the idea of the heart of the book that actually this focus upon ourselves um which has been going on for the last few hundred years we could talk about the cultural background to that actually it draws attention in the wrong place actually what we need is to be drawn out of ourselves in love towards god and love towards towards our neighbor and that is what the good life really is about okay so the words are crossed out and we're left with being yourself there are many times and i think i've been in situations where i would like to be myself and i feel it's inappropriate and you know there are certain constraints and uh so where did where how can you be yourself and be authentic and and truly be honest and i i find sometimes you know in church of england circles i feel like i can't be myself is that a bad thing so yeah yeah i think it's at least back to this question of it's what i call in the divide itself that we are these confused creatures so paul talks about the the old self and the new self the new self is sort of emerging and the old self has to be left behind and there's a sense of which you know he talks about baptism as the sort of you know the transition point between the old self and the new self uh i contrast that with you know all the language about being yourself discovering yourself finding yourself what does jesus say about the self he said she says deny yourself that's really counter cultural now what does he mean by that i think what he means by that is not abnegating himself not destroying the self but it's saying discovering a new self which is the new self created for good works in jesus christ and what that really means i think is is discovering a new self that self that is the beloved child of god made in the particular way that he's made you and he's made me and that the selves that we have are not so much to be discovered but they're to be created and one of the images i use in the book is are we essentially artichokes or onions yes so an artichoke is is a you know when a cook prepares an artichoke they peel away the leaves and you find this beautiful little sort of tasty morsel in in the middle and very often we think of ourselves as like that that basically ourselves are some inner pure self that we have somewhere and if we took away the expectations of other people the demands others make upon us all those sort of pesky people who kind of expect us to do this that and the other we will find this this pure self inside but then what if actually we're not like artichokes we're actually like onions because of the point of an onion is you take away the the layers and there's nothing in the middle yeah the onion is the layers in other words ourselves are not some pure in us in a sort of spark that we can that we certainly discover from looking within but they are actually the sum of what happens to us over our lives the relationships we make the commitments we enter into that's what creates ourselves and therefore um the question for example of what we worship what we give ourselves to that's what shapes us and so the question of what you worship is vital so worship the best thing that you can possibly find and for me that is the god of jesus christ yes and you we become what we end up worshiping exactly yeah yes that's right there's a there's there's a sense in the bible it talks about how um you know what we shall be has not yet been revealed ourselves are still being created and as a culture we've turned in upon ourselves one of the philosophers that i've referred to quite a lot canadian philosopher charles taylor who talks about the subjective turn in modern culture whereas in previous in the ancient world people looked outside themselves for moral truth and for guidance to the stars or to the natural law or to god um but you know since the last couple hundred years we've we've looked inside ourselves for moral guidance yeah me myself and i yeah exactly so are we a very selfish society well it's a it's a mixture we're not entirely a selfish society because i think back to this divided self idea that yes as individuals there's impulses in it which are those good created impulses that long to connect with other people to serve other people and to be um you know to be altruistic to reach out to others but there are those self-centered fearful uh impulses within us that simply want to be to be protective and to to guide and to looking inwards and to find if you like our our secrets of life not in our relationship with others but in but in ourselves and i think it's true of ourselves as a culture as well so we're not entirely a self-centered culture but i think a lot of the rhetoric we talk about this idea of being ourselves this i think about individualism of modern culture militates towards that kind of um you know not in the direction of a of an outward looking um you know love for others and love for god but more into that introspection which actually doesn't really lead us anywhere but there is an encouragement isn't there graeme uh today be yourself and it doesn't matter you know what other people think you've got to be yourself however you feel yeah and we're encouraging that a lot and and nobody actually speaks against that because it almost feels politically incorrect to speak against that yeah and i think what the book is trying to do is to point out some of the some of the problems with that particular way of thinking yes about that life is all about discovering yourself and being yourself because what it's saying is it effectively what that does it focuses a potential upon oneself where actually the the secret of life is learning not to be self-obsessed but actually to be interested in other people and so on there's a chapter in it on wonder and how wonder is the beginning of wisdom because one thing's about the experience of wonder when you see something just amazing you know it's a fantastic view or you're in a concert and the music is just sublime or you know you watch a brilliant bit of sporting activity or whatever the thing about those moments of wanderers they take you out of yourself for that moment you're just not even conscious of yourself at all you're just transfixed with the beauty of this thing you're looking at and it seems to be that that is a real clue to what we're meant to be about in fact the people you meet that are the most people i meet that are the most saintly people i've met are those people who are quite content within themselves but they're so content within themselves that they have the space and time to be interested in me or you and um whereas actually people who are just totally thinking about themselves all the time but really not very nice people to be with no and we can think of lots of examples of people like that in public life and in private life and people we know as well so re so i mean this could have been called be your real self yeah yeah so how how can we graham become the real people that god created us to be one of the deepest human needs that we have is the need to be loved you know if a child grows up knowing that they're loved that they will grow up it's a relatively secure child if they don't feel they're loved however much stuff they have they won't grow up secure so there's a deep need to be loved and yet in christian faith we find this this message this word that tells us that the very heart of god is love and christian faith is the only religion in the world that says that about yes only christian faith can say that statement that we get in one john god is love no other faith can say that in quite the same way and so there's a kind of fit between those two things our deep need for love and this message we get through the god of jesus christ that god is love as we see in the face of jesus there's a whole chapter on you know why the big bang has a face yeah you know what yes what is the power that brought this world into being it's it's love and how do we know that because we see it in the face of jesus christ and so i think how we grow into this is by learning to open ourselves to the source of life and the source of love which is god himself the one who created us and who brought this world into being so and by doing that and by then beginning to to to open ourselves to one another the last two chapters in the book really one is about prayer and the one and the second and the last one is about the church yeah someone sounds rather ordinary prayer in church there's not pretty standard things but it's kind of saying prayer is the way in which we begin to open ourselves out to god we open our sort of dark places of our lives the chapter is actually called why praying is dangerous yeah because once you start praying you start allowing god into the dark places of your your life but it also is going to change you if you pray seriously it will change you will take you out of yourself um so prayer and then church because what church does is it brings you into a relationship with a whole lot of people that you didn't choose the whole point about church is you don't just do church with your friends you do church with a whole lot of people you didn't choose to be there they happen to be there they may annoy you like crazy but they're the people that god has according to church is a sort of schooling in learning how to love your neighbor yes that's how to love god even i'd love your enemy sometimes definitely no i really enjoyed those chapters on prayer and and the church uh great very much and uh yeah i think there's so many misunderstandings people have about prayer and the church you know in prayer we're not twisting the hand of god we're holding the hand of god and we're not asking for our will to be done in heaven we're asking for god's will in heaven to be done on earth and many people today um admire jesus love jesus want to follow jesus um but they're not interested in the church a bit disillusioned with the church um obviously you're a bishop you you oversee many churches what would your encouragement be to the people who've either been hurt disillusioned by the church and no longer want to be part of it what would you say i think i think i'd say that i mean the church always has been a mixed bag and and most of our experiences of church church can be the most incredible thing yeah you can have moments of encounter with god and with other people that just always see this but the spine tingling that sense of being in the presence of god whether it's through some worship or a sermon that speaks directly to your heart or through you know sharing and holy communion that sense of just intimacy with god it could be the most amazing place so you can have this spine tingling a sense of the presence of god but it can also be a pretty grim place where you watch christians fighting on twitter or arguing at the pcc or the church council or or whatever it is over little scraps they don't seem to matter that much it can be a pretty depressing place at the same time but in a way i think both are part of the point um because the church is the bride of christ yes it is the dwelling place of the living god so we're to expect to find god there to find those amazing experiences but at the same time church is a place where it's meant to change you you don't join a church because it's perfect you join a church because it's the place of where you will find yourself you know rubbing up against all kinds of imperfect people like you and me so when i'm part of a church i recognize that i've got all kinds of flaws that i bring to church ways in which i damage other people in which i you know i may annoy other people and other people will annoy me but actually that's part of the learning it's part of the shaping that goes on because um church is a place that changes us that in which god is changing us and growing us into our true selves and that can't happen without if you like the grit in the oyster that church often brings you know we love the pearl we don't really always like the grit no but the pearl doesn't come about without the grit and so i i think it's in some ways you know a perfect church would would not be good not be ideal to join if there's the old thing isn't it you know if you find a perfect church don't join it because you'll spoil it um but that's not that's not quite the point you find the perfect church there's not much point in joining it because it you won't grow through it and actually we grow through precisely the difficulties we find in relationships strikes me how often the new testament when it talks about the qualities you need in church talks about things like humility kindness patience gentleness now why do you need those things in church well you need humility um because actually there's a lot of pride around in church you need to learn human you need patience because there will be people who try your patience you need gentleness because actually that's what heals difficult relationships and so because church is a place that is meant to be somewhere which changes us and enables us to grow into our true selves in christ in some ways the difficulties of church are part of the point so you would encourage people who've been hurt disappointed just find another church maybe there were times when the hurts go so deep that it's very hard to continue in a particular fellowship and that's why it's important to realize that the church is wider than just one particular individual local sort of instance of church and there may be times when it's right to move on one wants to do that is the kind of last resort as it were you want to stick with something where you can but um i think it's it's and it may sometimes be right to give up on a particular church but i never think it's right to give up on the church the whole church of god and um uh and that's not to expect you'll find some perfect church somewhere because you won't yes but to find a place where you can find a sense of welcome a sense of um of acknowledgement of yes we're an imperfect place we get stuff wrong but we're trying to do this together with god and my sense would be that yes there are a lot of people and i quite understand that sense of people feeling hurt and damaged by the church but i would long that they would be able to find a fellowship that will will enable the healing work of the spirit uh to carry on to do his work within or within them as opposed to giving up on the church as a whole i've always admired this about you graham you know i mean you've got several degrees you've got a doctorate but you're a learner you you you keep learning but that's the key isn't it graeme that we've just got to keep on learning yeah and i think that's what we need to develop more in the church one of the things we're trying to do in the in the diocese of london is to instill much more of a culture of discipleship which really is a culture of learning yes that we never stop learning in the christian faith um and uh you know whenever i think i've got this taped now i've understood christian faith what's next now there's always more depths to be gained and that's that's both an intellectual and a spiritual task as well and because i think very often we have this this slightly artificial division between theology and prayer as if they're two totally separate things you know theologies you do what you do when you read books or listen to lectures prayer is what you do when you go to your room and you pray like this actually the two are intimately related because when you pray in the book i talk about prayer as a kind of christian mindfulness you know we talk about mindfulness and lord in our culture yes and mindfulness is about being mindful of yourself and so on but what christian prayer does that's different from mindfulness is it it makes mindfulness can be in a secular context quite a technique a technique to kind of steal your soul and so on but christian mindfulness christian prayer is relational brings me into a relationship with god but then the question is if if mindful prayer is about god being mindful of me does that bit in psalm eight you know what is man that you are mindful of him um if it's about god being mindful of us and then us becoming mindful of god it asks the question who is this god yes that we have to be mindful of if prayer is a kind of becoming aware of the presence of god around you who is this god that brings you into theology you can't avoid the theological question of who is this god i'm speaking to who is this god who is addressing me who is mindful of me and i want to become mindful of so prayer and theory is just so much bound together um for me you can't really do one without the other absolutely bishop graham tomlin thank you so much for joining us on facing the canon thank you so much sean great to be with you well i i'm always inspired uh whenever i i hear bishop graham and if you want a thoughtful book being yourself being yourself in christ and learning to love god love others and love yourself then pick up a copy of this hope that's inspired you thank you for joining us on facing the canon please join us again

Channel: J.John

Views: 4,623

Keywords: j.john, jjohn, Christianity, Christian, Jesus, God, Facing the Canon, Bishop Graham Tomlin, Graham Tomlin, Interview, Church of England

Id: XFvWKRRWnLg

Length: 28min 30sec (1710 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 21 2021