Jo Berry and Pat Magee. Photo: Courtesy of The Forgiveness project.
Beyond belief: Howard Grace ponders a familiar question
‘The key thing is to follow our inner journeys with integrity.’
Do you believe in God? It seems like a simple question but it’s multicoloured, and so there are no black and white answers.
A Christian friend said to me recently, ‘Some people who say they don’t believe in God have a perception of an elderly man with white beard. Well, I don’t believe in that God either.’ But this friend does believe, among other things, in a loving God who guides them. Many sincere believers would resonate with that. But it does prompt further questions, and I’d like to explore this a bit further.
I’ll begin with an extreme. In his second inaugural address as president, Donald Trump expressed a conviction that he had been saved (from assassination) by God to ‘make America great again’. Many are concerned about the president’s steps since, including on the environment, which could lead to untold destruction. Yet, many sincere Christians support him.
There are less extreme examples of people who believe they are being guided by God, of course. People on all sides of the political space are dedicated believers who seek God’s leading. Even among Quakers there are sometimes deep rifts between those who seek to be guided by God.
For four years in the 1970s I was in South Africa to support the Initiatives of Change organisation, among friends who were indeed trying to bring change. But the Dutch Reformed Church was giving biblical advocacy for the apartheid policy. Whatever those in our team felt politically, we were trying to build bridges towards a greater inclusive vision.
At one point, when hundreds of black school children were shot dead in a schools boycott, a sixteen-year-old boy, who was a good friend of mine, became leader of the school students in Soweto, the black township where these killings had happened. He was put in prison. I felt a conviction (God’s leading) to visit him there, where he told me of how he was being tortured.
Eventually, as a result of these visits, I myself fell foul of the security police and was compelled to leave the country. If I had taken a stand on this, Initiatives of Change could well have been banned. Our bridge-building work would have crumbled (indeed, some of my friends were critical of my actions for jeopardising our work).
I share this example purely to point out that all of us – the authorities, my friends, and I – felt we were being guided by God.
Sincere non-religious people also try to follow a deeper inner leading. There are some very positive results. But of course they get into deep conflict in the same way as religious people do. Is there then a universal issue we can focus on?
Quaker faith & practice 26.31 quotes Harvey Gillman from 1988: ‘I do believe that there is a power which is divine, creative and loving, though we can often only describe it with the images and symbols that rise from our particular experiences and those of our communities. This power is part and parcel of all things, human, animal, indeed of all that lives. Its story is greater than any one cultural version of it and yet it is embodied in all stories, in all traditions. It is a power that paradoxically needs the human response. Like us it is energised by the reciprocity of love.
‘It wills our redemption, longs for us to turn to it. It does not create heaven and hell for us, but allows us to do that for ourselves. Such is the terrible vulnerability of love.’
‘It seems like a simple question but it’s multicoloured, and so there are no black and white answers.’
The experience of love is something the great majority of us can identify with. Yet conflict often occurs when people try to nail down beliefs about its source. Religious people will understand it as a gift of God. Non-believers will see the origin and evolving development of love differently. Contrasting opinions in this and in many other areas of life often lead to worldviews which clash.
Mixed with conflicts of interests, this range of worldviews can produce a deadly cocktail. One of my Palestinian friends says that a primary problem in his part of the world is that Palestinians and Israelis are both trapped in their own narratives. I’m sure that this entrapment is true for so many situations, whether on an international level, with religious affiliations, clashes within families, or even football team allegiances which can turn into crowd violence.
As a way forward, my friend highlights the value of really living into each other’s lives/narratives – of ‘walking a mile in the moccasins of the other’, as the saying goes. But further than that is the importance of bringing our own contributions to seeking a shared vision which all can buy into.
It is this level of exploration that I hope will be triggered in people’s thinking by a new film The Hardest Bridge, which I have been involved in making. This documentary explores with Jo Berry and Pat Magee their profound journey since Jo Berry’s father, the MP Anthony Berry, was killed in the IRA bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton in 1984. Pat Magee had planted the bomb.
Jo and Pat have become friends. They are on deep journeys, often struggling with their emotions and internal conflicts. Some may see these leadings as God at work. But neither Jo nor Pat are religious people. So, whatever our interpretations of the source of the inner leading, I hope that The Hardest Bridge will prompt people to look more deeply at their/our own hardest bridges. We have received screening requests from conflict areas around the world, to help people understand that reconciliation is possible. The key thing is to follow our inner journeys with integrity and in as loving a way as possible.
Do I believe in God? What I do believe is that there is a mystery that is actually way beyond our human understanding. Let us follow our deeper inner leading, and not get hung up by our different interpretations of the source of this.
Before screenings of The Hardest Bridge can be made available worldwide, the film needs to be subtitled in several languages. To make a financial donation to help make this happen, contact howardgrace40@gmail.com.
