Rock solid

"I am the same yesterday, today and forever" - I have seen this verse and the blog title as an indication that the message of Christianity is a solid, unchanging one. Because rocks are solid and unchanging, aren't they?

I do wonder how the coastal residents of Devon and Cornwall especially feel about this, after the winter storms. Because quite a lot of the coastal rock was not solid, and tumbled into the sea. In truth, even the solid granite of Cornwall is being eroded - I remember when visiting Tintagel Castle that they were aware that the island was being eroded, and would eventually be washed away. "Solid Rock" seems rather less solid.

I think that is the point. rock is solid in the short term. For a while, it is unchanging and robust. But if you look over a longer period, rock is not solid. What is more, at certain times, rock is anything but solid - ask people in an earthquake zone. When you take a long-term chronological perspective, rock is not really very solid at all.

The truth is, we live on a living, changing planet. Over time, nothing stays the same. Nothing is really solid, nothing really stays still, stays the same. Everything changes. Sometime there are changes for the good, sometimes for the bad - without a volcano in the pacific, we wouldn't have Hawaii. Without the movement of the UK, we would not have the wide beaches on the East coast - or the erosion in places like Whitby.

The living, changing planet is crucial, because that is what gives us life. Without this, our planet would be dead, we would not exist. The same applies in our thinking, our ideas. They should never be considered defined, eternally sorted and answered, because things change. Christianity changes over time - as any other set of beliefs. Just because this is something we once believed, doesn't mean it therefore has to always be true - we once believed in 4 elements, in the indivisibility of the atom. As we understand more, learn more, question more, we find out more, and our understanding changes. That is the right way.

Of course, that does not mean that new ideas are automatically better - Dawlish was probably not improved by losing the railway line. It does mean that there will be changes, and we have to adjust to that. It means that our ideas, our beliefs will and should change over time. I know that there are things I used to believe that I no longer accept.

Because change is an indicator of life. Change or die is not a threat. It is a reality.