God Has No Favourites

Carmody Grey

• Publisher: York Courses
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9781909107342
• eBook ISBN:
  9781909107359
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion

God Has No Favourites is the York Course written for Lent 2022 by Dr Carmody Grey.

In this 5 session course Dr Grey explores how each of us is called to discover that God is completely inclusive. He does not apportion his welcome or love according to our prejudices or preferences. God Has No Favourites, because God favours everyone.

Every single human being, whatever age, sex, class, race or religion is in God's image. Jesus has identified himself personally with each one of us, God's love and the power of the Holy Spirit is for everyone, no caveats.

As with previous Lent York Courses, the standard study book is supported by an in-depth interview, covering all 5 sessions between Dr Carmody Grey and Simon Simon Stanley available on CD, as a Digital Download or as a transcript in either paperback or ebook.

GOD HAS NO FAVOURITES

Transcript of Audio

[1]

GOD HAS NO FAVOURITES. A five-session course from York Courses with Dr Carmody Grey and Simon Stanley

[2]

SESSION 1

THE BEST PICTURE OF GOD

Hello, I’m Simon Stanley, and it’s a great pleasure to welcome Dr Carmody Grey of Durham University. Carmody, welcome, and thank you for writing this course, God has no favourites, and thank you for agreeing to talk to me about some of the issues that arise.

CG: So, thank you so much, Simon, for that introduction, and it’s wonderful to be part of this process and wonderful to participate in conversations going on around the country, and perhaps the world, by this means.

Let’s just fill in a detail or two. You’re Assistant Professor of Theology in the Department of Theology and Religion at Durham University. You’ve won a number of prizes for your work from several eminent universities, so as you can imagine, I’m a bit nervous, but I do know that you have the reputation of making complex and difficult things understandable, so I think we are all in good hands.

One more thing to mention is that from time to time, as we go along, we’ll hear three people from different Christian backgrounds who give their opinion about some of the questions we’ll be discussing. They are Bernadette, Jim and Frances, and we call them simply our ‘Voices’. So let’s give them a chance to go first, shall we? I ask them if they’ve ever felt as though they were less important to God than other people are?

BERNADETTE: Yes, most of the time. I’ve spent most of my life in the entertainment industry – and how does that compare with being a nurse or a farmer or a dentist or a teacher? Then sometimes I think about those people who are, not nurses and doctors, but who, you know, appear to live, as it were, a very simple life, but who actually have fantastic influence, and make a real difference to their community. And they’re the perfect example of how God doesn’t value one person over another because of what they do. It’s just because you exist, you matter.

JIM: I think I have done that at times, and particularly in my youth, when worshipping at the local parish church where I was brought up in Glasgow, it seemed to me that other young people carried evidence of their faith and commitment in the form of their crucifixes around their necks or other signs. I did feel feelings of inadequacy as far as my value in God’s eyes. I think my confidence grew with exposure to a bit more learning about New Testament teaching and what was expected of people, and the assurance that the outward signs weren’t the important ones.

FRANCES: I haven’t felt as though I was less important to God than other people. But I have felt that other people have felt that I was less important than other people.

Well, they’re all a bit unsure of their value and with feelings of inadequacy. Do you think that’s common among believers, Carmody?

CG: Yes, I think that’s extremely common. In fact, I might even say it’s almost universal. And I think it’s very important to acknowledge, and to be willing to say that in front of ourselves and others – that we do struggle with feelings of inadequacy, and that being a Christian doesn’t, as it were, save us from that, in any straightforward sense. It doesn’t take away our insecurities overnight. It doesn’t suddenly transform us into people who need nothing and are afraid of nothing. The gospel addresses us in exactly that place, the place of our insecurity and our fear and our weakness. And it’s an ultimate reassurance that God values us. In the company of Jesus we don’t need to see that others are somehow less good, in order to feel more good ourselves. In the world of the gospel, God’s affirmation of me and God’s affirmation of you, come together, and so God, as it were, heals us in our insecure places together with others, and not apart from them.

[3]

Thank you. Now I believe you were brought up in a non-religious family, but when were thirteen, you got a shock when you wandered into your local parish church for the first time. Could you tell us the story briefly?

CG: I went to a very secular school, where I wasn’t actually allowed to go to church. There was no chapel or church on the school grounds and there was no religious education. There was no chaplain. There were no prayers. There were no hymns. There was nothing in my education that gave me a sort of sense of what Christianity was about. I eventually took it on myself to wander down to our local village, to be able to get into our parish church, and I think it is one of the most extraordinary turning points of my whole life. The church was just like a foreign world, and it was in that context that I found myself walking around the church, and reading the messages in the stained glass windows, and finding it unutterably strange. And then the strangest thing of all was my encounter with this image of Saint Peter, who was holding a banner in the window and I was standing there for a long time, trying to make out what the words said, and finally realizing that what they said was: ‘For behold, I perceive that God is no respecter of persons’, and I was absolutely baffled. The church was completely empty. I stood there for a long time by myself thinking, ‘Wow, these people worship a God who doesn’t respect any one’, [laughs] and it made a very deep impression on me and at first, of course I was disturbed. And then, as I went away and reflected, and processed, and looked it up in a modern Bible – and I realized that this wasn’t about God not respecting people in general, it was about God not taking people’s status – social status – into account, in the way he related to them. Christianity was not a religion in which God took notice of people’s social status. That was the first thing I knew about Christians – that was really their trademark for me from then on.

I asked our Voices if they ever find it difficult to understand things in the Bible that seem contrary to what they thought the B...

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• God Has No Favourites