It Doesn't Change God. It Changes Me.

Richard Attenborough’s 1993 film Shadowlands is the story of the famous children’s author C.S. Lewis (known as ‘Jack’, 1898 – 1963) and his marriage to American poet Joy Gresham (nee. Davidman, 1915 - 1960). Joy had corresponded with Lewis (back when writing letters was still the primary means of communication!) and they had struck up an unlikely acquaintance that had grown over time. In the first place, their marriage is one of convenience so that Joy can remain in Britain. But when Joy is diagnosed with cancer, they both come to realize that they bear a deep and abiding love for one another.  

Joy’s prospects are not good. It is a pressing and anxious time where the familiar and haunting questions around pain, suffering, death, life, and God, swirl about in a tangle of emotion and fear. Unexpectedly, following treatment, Joy goes into remission for a period; a ray of light shafting into the bleakness. And at this point there is a beautiful and telling exchange between Lewis and the college chaplain Rev. Harrington around the transformative nature of prayer: 

“Christopher [an atheist friend] can scoff’, said Harrington, ‘but I know how hard you’ve been praying, Jack. And now God is answering your prayers.” 

“That’s not why I pray, Harry. I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God. It changes me.” 

Prayer doesn’t change God. It changes me. 

Our world is changing rapidly these days. It feels like very little stands still. I recently played my 20-year-old son the ‘dial-up internet’ sound, now a relic of a bygone era. He responded the way I might have on encountering a hand cranked butter churn: ‘What’s that?’ AI now dominates our world, so much so that Pope Leo’s recent (and first) encyclical carried the subtitle: ‘On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence’. The Pope is asking significant theological and Christological questions of life and faith in the light of the emerging phenomenon. In the face of online criticism, it was reassuring to find that, having been put through the necessary filters, it was determined the encyclical itself was not the product of AI. One outlet led with the headline: ‘Pope: a man of his word.’ 

Not all change is created equal of course. Observed across different domains, a vast range of nuances emerge. Sometimes it can be positive and life-affirming, sometimes less so, sometimes smooth and navigable, sometimes disruptive and difficult. There’s a whole publishing industry devoted to ‘change management’, awash with theories, flow charts, and prescriptive guides seeking to provide principles and approaches for effective organizational reform. 

We’re aware that the church more broadly and the UCA in particular are in a time of transition just now. Structures and institutions should be reformed when they are no longer fit for purpose. The church of today speaks into a very different context than in 1977 at Union. As the Pope’s encyclical suggests:  

‘[The Church] recognizes today’s questions and challenges as the current setting in which to carry out her particular vocation of listening, dialogue and service, and of being responsive to everything concerning the lives of contemporary men and women.’ (Para. 19) 

Perhaps, though, there’s a more basic sense in which the Christian faith embraces change. Of course, much of Christian theology and practice presupposes transformation of various kinds. Repentance (metanoia) literally means ‘change of mind’. Historically, we have used the language of conversion to describe the process of coming to faith in Christ with Paul’s experience on the Damascus road a kind of archetype. The life of discipleship has been framed as a pilgrimage – a journey in which nothing stays static. The Judeo-Christian tradition has consistently deployed a prophetic voice in the cause of liberation and freedom.  

There’s yet another facet – as evidenced in Paul’s exhortation to the Romans:   

“Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of the mind, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.” 

The temptation here is to assume that what this means in the first place is something like the acquiring of more knowledge about God. Transformation comes through knowing more. I think, though, Paul is speaking from a prior, deeper horizon that has something more integrated and confessional in view. Just before these words he writes:  

“I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, on the basis of God’s mercy, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable act of worship.” 

The renewing of our minds is set within a context of worship, of the presentation of our bodies (and so our whole lives) as living sacrifices to God, and as a holy people. In and of itself this statement presupposes community, relationship, trust – in God first and foremost, and with each other. It may not be stretching things too far to summarize this as fundamentally a context of prayer – the embodied praxis of acceding to God. Being transformed (changed) by the renewing of our minds flows from the confessional, communal, Christ-centred patterns of prayer and worship – it doesn’t change God, it changes me…and us. This is how we are (trans)formed as followers of Jesus. Through prayer, through worship, we learn to discern the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect…together. 

For many years the Christian Century has published essays from well known theologians on How My Mind Has Changed. In the collected edition of 2011, British feminist theologian Sarah Coakley wrote of what she calls Prayer as Crucible. She describes how: 

“…a practice which I first took up as a young theologian in my early twenties has disconcertingly changed my mind about almost everything – God, theology, philosophy, politics, race, and feminism.” 

Coakley is here describing a transformative phenomenon of faith wrought through the crucible of prayer. A crucible is a testing place, a refining place, sometimes a painful place, but where new settlements may emerge. While Coakley focuses especially on contemplative prayer, silence, and stillness, perhaps each of us has our own ‘crucible of prayer’. Perhaps we each have our own place and practice before God where we might be transformed. For all the talk of change in the church and beyond – much of which is important and necessary – change that leads to deeper participation in Christ begins in the quiet recesses of a thousand hearts, at bedsides each night before sleep, in small groups before study and sharing, in services of divine worship across our church, at the forefront of protests for justice, and in the ordinary ways of ordinary Christians day by day: where our need flows out endlessly, the desire for relationship, where we’re helpless and in need. 

It doesn’t change God. It changes me.

Rev Dr Michael Earl