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Alison Atkinson-Phillips It’s an orthodox Christian teaching that God is found in relationship. After all, the Christian understanding of God is the inter-related three-in-one of the Trinity: creator, son and spirit. But how does this understanding translate to real life?
A few years ago, Rev Geoff Hurst conducted a fairly traditional wedding service at Karratha Uniting Church in the north west of WA. “I started to preach the sermon and I realised the bride was starting to cry — and then the groom started. I looked around the room and people were crying all over the place,” he recalls. “People usually come up to you after a service to shake your hand, but after this one I had people I’d never met hugging me and telling me how great it was. That’s not how it usually goes!” So what was different about this sermon? “I was talking about the couple who were about getting married and how they had already had 14 great years together, and how God had already blessed their relationship, and now they were ready to move onto a new part of their journey together. “I think what touched people is that maybe that was the first time anyone had talked about their relationship as being anything other than a bit dirty, the old idea of ‘living in sin.’ I was the first time anyone had said, ‘God thinks what you’ve got is good.’” The issue of relationships has not always been tackled well or honestly by churches, and for many people this has meant a sense of alienation which might stop them acknowledging themselves as a spiritual being. In his book, Putting Life Together, Philip Hughes argues there are five different kinds of relationships: with self, close others, wider society, the natural environment and with a worldview, what would traditionally be described as God but could equally be a humanist understanding of the universe. Each of these relationships can be either negative or positive but at their best, says Philip, they become spiritual. “At one level, spirituality has to do with the relationship with God, but I also think some hints of that spirituality emerge in other relationships too,” he says. “They emerge, for example, in our relationships with ourselves, seeking to be authentic in one’s self. Sometimes it is this search for authenticity which brings people into conflict with traditional religion. Putting Life Together comes out of Philip’s experience with the Christian Research Association (CRA) and his involvement in an extensive protect looking into “The Spirituality of Generation Y,” which was published late 2006. The study showed over 90% of people aged between 16 to 44 value deep friendships as important or very important, yet spirituality what not highly valued. Philip says this suggests we need to re-think what we mean by spirituality. “Spirituality is not primarily a matter of what you do, it’s not a matter of whether you go to church or not — a person can go to church regularly and not be spiritual,” says Philip. “It’s also not about what you believe. What I think lies at the heart of spirituality is relationship. And it’s the quality of that relationship which is the spirituality itself. “I would say that amongst young people the strongest sparks of that are in the relationships with family and friends. That’s where people come closest to what’s authentic and good and true, and in biblical terms closest to God.” Bec Lindsay is in her mid 20s and has travelled to almost every continent, picking up friends along the way. She teaches English as a second language and also works part time for Tertiary Students Uniting at the University of NSW. “I find, in terms of being a teacher, some of the things my students tell me about religion or Chinese communism can have quite a big impact on my self reflection and my understanding of faith,” she says. “Every person we interact with has some kind of impact on us, so how could it not affect that kind of faith journey as well.” “Sometimes it challenges me. If I think I know this particular thing and I meet someone whose experience doesn’t seem to fit, what am I going to do with that?” Paul Benness is 31 and has been married to Janine for almost two years. He’s got a wide social network of people he has met through work, sport and community involvement. “I have lots of different groups of friends and I have a bit of a spectrum of friends within each of those groups, in that I’m closer to some than to others,” says Paul. “Most of my close friends I’ve met through church circles, and they tend to be the relationships that have permission to have more of a spiritual element,” he says. Paul says he feels his relationship with Janine has helped him grow spiritually. “A friend of mine once said to me that your relationship with God won’t be any closer than your closest human relationship. And while I’m not sure I totally agree with that statement, I do understand it a lot more now,” he says. “I never used to like sharing the negative parts of my past with Janine, because I was like, ‘what’s the point?’ and she would say to me that she just wants to know all about me, the good bits and the bad bits. “When you realise someone still loves you even though you do stupid things, or you have bad things in your past or whatever, it gives you just a glimpse of how God can love you,” he says. Nonetheless, Paul thinks it’s important to maintain his other relationship outside his marriage. “Being part of a community is really important. I don’t think you can find ‘the one’ and then cut yourself off from everything else. I think people make that mistake a lot.” Philip Hughes agrees, arguing the changing nature of Australian society in terms of more social opportunities for social networking has a beneficial effect. “There’s no reason someone can’t have some form of love expressed differently with different people. I think the multitude of group networks of young people are a good demonstration of that commitment to a group of others. “When there’s one person, a ‘soul mate’, that might be the ideal, but it’s not always the way it works out in practice. “People sometimes lock themselves away from the breadth of human relationship by putting all their attention on that one relationship,” he suggests. “I sometimes think that the failure in marriage has happened because we’ve had too high expectations on that relationship with one other person. “In fact you become a full person in that multitude of relationships.”
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