Religious Journey Resumed

 

Life begins at Forty 

Part I

 

One of the differences between Margaret and me when we were discussing marriage was the different stages we were at in our religious journeys. Synchronising our steps in this regard was an important challenge. 

Margaret was a regular at the Paihia Open Brethren Chapel Sunday morning services, and in the evenings she would drive to Kaikohe to the chapel there.  And her main loyalty was to the Te Atatu Bible Chapel, where Denise and Rod and many of her Auckland friends were based. 

As I have said, I had long ago left such regular religious affiliation behind, though my thoughts often went to matters of spirituality on Sunday mornings, out of long habit. 

So we spent time discussing the basis of her religious ideas, which she had formed through attendance at Methodist Sunday School, and later at activities associated with the Bible Chapel in New Plymouth, and with the Youth for Christ movement as well. 

I talked to her about my developing ideas in connection with my work in India, in discussions with Brian Smith, and with thinking since returning to New Zealand. 

We discussed the basis of the authority of the Bible as a set of rules for living, the disjunction between the ideals preached by Jesus and the practice of the churches, as well as other specific doubts about some of the central items of “faith” as defined by evangelical theologians nowadays, like virgin birth, resurrection, eternal life, and so on. I was reassured when Margaret told me she had also had some queries about some of these points which had never been adequately explained for her. 

When we moved to New Plymouth, Margaret started going to her old Bible Chapel again, and soon found herself questioning their conservatism: women were still second-class members, as far as she could see. She wanted to make a contribution, as she could in such activities as the Urenui Beach Mission, which she was part of each January. 

After we had married, I had joined her at Urenui; we both did the cooking for the mission team for two successive years. It was always important to me to meet Margaret half-way in these matters, and the mission team was a valuable service for the beachgoers at Urenui, quite apart from its Christian content.