January 2nd, 2025
Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s video, and a happy New Year to you all. I hope your Christmas celebrations were joyous.
As the last year drew to a close, the papers were full of both reflection on the year past and predictions for the future. The reflections are often a series of excuses as to why last year’s predictions were so wildly inaccurate. Foretelling the future is clearly not an exact science! Other articles named the person of the year, or the business of the year, but the one that caught my eye was the Cambridge dictionary’s word of the year. Apparently, for 2024 it was ‘manifesting’. It was looked up over 130,000 times on their website. The word is used as a verb, ‘to manifest’ in the sense of ‘to imagine achieving something you want in the belief that doing so will make it more likely to happen’. I had honestly never heard it before until I was stuck on a train without a driver outside Worcester a few weeks ago. The passengers behind me talked of manifesting their desire for a driver to turn up. Oddly, one did shortly afterwards, but I’m not sure their manifesting was causal.
Cambridge University Social Psychology Professor Sander Van der Linden, author of ‘The Psychology of Misinformation’ describes it as an example of what psychologists call magical thinking, or the general illusion that specific mental rituals can change the world around us. Despite its popularity, it has no scientific validity. It can lead to risky behaviour or the promotion of false and dangerous beliefs, such as that diseases can be simply wished away. Professor Van Der Linden went on to say how crucial it was to understand the difference between the power of positive thinking and moving reality with your mind – the former is healthy, whereas the latter is pseudoscience.
As Christians, we approach the start of a New Year with neither. Manifesting is clearly silly, but positive thinking, whilst very good for self esteem and resilience can also be based on shaky foundations. Paul advised the Christians in Rome, “for by the grace given to me I say to every one of you; do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgement, in accordance with the measure of faith God has distributed to each of you”. Facing the future in prayer, trusting in the presence and action of God is a distinctive approach that neither positive thinking nor manifesting comes close to. The locus is neither in our own abilities nor in a pseudo pagan manipulation but in confidence in the oft-quoted, “I don’t know what the future holds, but I do know who holds the future”. The Spirit-filled life is one where we may be taken well beyond the self-confidence produced by positive thinking. The Spirit's action may well produce effects far greater than ‘manifesting' could imagine. Indeed, the lessons from the apostles and the great Saints throughout history is that the edge is where the power of the Spirit is most made evident.
As we begin our Year of Engagement, we will be called out of our comfort zones. Fear keeps us locked up in the comfortable and familiar. We will be called to engage with new people well outside the confines of the church, to listen undefensively, to share humbly and to act lovingly. This will stretch us, but we will be permanently expanded (if may extend the metaphor) in our spiritual capacities as a result. I hope this year will produce many different models, each authentic to the individuals and communities that comprise our diocesan family. We want to engage so we may love and make Christ known. May the lord empower us as we do so.
+ Richard