Nowadays when a couple come to see me about getting married, they know more about me than I do about them.

It’s not hard to use the internet to find sermons and articles I’ve written, or opinions about me.

And nowadays couples, particularly those who know something about Christianity, will want to know what I believe and whether my beliefs align at all with theirs. For not only does my behaviour matter, but seemingly my beliefs too. So, they ‘check me out’.

Which is not a bad thing when we consider the many who have been hurt in their past experience with the Church. Those who have felt judged. Those who feel the worldview of Christianity is archaic. There are many who want to get married in a sacred place, but don’t want the baggage of dogmatism intruding.

Wedding couples are not the only people who ‘check me out’. I get emails from churchgoers saying things like “I haven't heard anyone speak about God in the way that you have” and wanting to know how what I say aligns with the Bible.

“By what authority do you say these things?” is an ancient question. And usually, I try to answer them as best as they can hear.

Sometimes, particularly in the past, I have engaged with the traditional sources of religious authority and offered alternative interpretations (and the interpretive stream they come from). But it often becomes like a debate, with one side wanting to prove the other side wrong, and we begin to talk past each other.

Besides, particularly these days, I don’t wish to convert anyone, or prove anyone conclusively wrong. Those are ‘head’ sort of things, whereas I’m more interested in the ‘heart’. Which I think is where ultimate authority should lie.

Sometimes those of a legal bent get involved. One lawyer wanted to try me for heresy. On the matter of the Trinity no less. He gave up before the press got wind of it. Which probably was a good thing. Arguments about God can be very esoteric.

Another lawyer wanted me to ‘cease and desist’ from publicly criticising his bishop, otherwise I would be tried. (The bishop in question had said some silly things). We agreed to disagree.

Another person, and her church, again wanted me to be tried for heresy, and they began proceedings. And again, it was about the nature of God. As if the nature God is something that can be proved or disproved.

All of which is to say beliefs seem to matter to people. And they can be tightly held and defended.

I had an older clergy friend who once told me that as he aged the beliefs he held became less and less, fewer and fewer. It was if he was shedding them. And as he came close to death there remained just one belief, and it was sufficient. That belief was also a behaviour. Indeed, it was everything. And that everything was love.

Glynn

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