Ten Letters by Chris Russell

As always when I know an author I must lay that out in the open. Chris is a good friend and the vicar at the local CofE church I go to in Reading. He is gregarious, thoughtful, humble and incredibly bright – although he normally hides that under his hair. The book is written as a series of letters to people, both real and imagined, that should be delivered in the event of his death. It’s a simple conceit that allows Chris to lay out some deep and difficult subjects in the context of personal reflections and individual relationship.

The subjects covered are challenging and frequently controversial (at least in the mainstream) – covering suffering, community, the good life and meaning. Thrust in there are views on celebrity, sexuality, women, science, money and politics. Chris covers everything no polite person should ever talk about at a party. In reality he’s laying out his own systematic theology (apologies if that turns you off – it’s just my take on things) – using letters written in a personal style to deliver the kinds of thoughts academics normally stumble over. Now, it’s kind of easy for me to like this book – I like Chris, I agree with most of his views such as being pro-science, women, freedom and grace (except I’m not the fan boy of Barth he is) and his style is engaging.

However, it’s great for more than the fact (albeit important ;-) ) I find myself sympathetic to its outlook on the cosmos. At the heart of what Chris is writing is community and, more specifically, being in communion. Unless you’re a theology type that probably means nothing so let me unpack it a bit. By using this phrase we suggest that actual being, being properly there, realized, fully you, requires more than just being an individual. It suggests that to be properly human requires you to be in relationship – more than that, in community – with others. A lot of things can be said of communities but what Chris is doing in invoking this idea is twofold. Firstly he is suggesting that at the heart of the divine life is a relationship, a community and that in the life of that community, in its unfolding, humans also find themselves. Chris makes a sharp distinction as he invokes the Christian life as the expression of that but he is clear – it is not the only expression of that – he explicitly avoids declaring he knows the mind of God on the matter of what other people believe. He knows what he believes to be the sharpest and most pressing self revelation of the divine in history but he does not draw a boundary around that event and claim there is no truth beyond it.

Secondly in arguing for the life well lived as being one lived in communion, Chris is arguing for a life that is intensely lived here and enjoys this world (all of it) and sees it as something awesome. No platonic dualism of matter and spirit here – rather an integrated view of human and world as wholes to be celebrated in the here and now.

I like these ideas and I think they’re important. They help frame everything else; suffering, hope, joy, loss, laughter, mercy, justice and truth. They also help ground us, help us see the pointlessness of certain questions that seem to dog us – why do bad things happen? Why doesn’t this change for me? Is it science vs. religion? is money evil? is suffering evil? Some of these questions are poor questions (which earn the epithet of ‘not even being wrong’). Others are those to which no definitive answer can be given honestly – only self-delusion can provide such certainty. In other words these ideas have the power to set us free.

At the heart of this for Chris is Christianity and he makes an impassioned case not ‘for’ Christianity as religion but for a radically different world view of Christianity as communion – it’s an idea which can’t be satisfactorily summarized here.

Personally there was one letter, to a little boy (and member of Chris’ wider family) who died in a tragic accident, that really moved me. Chris writes personally here about loss, about God in the face of loss, in the face of meaningless and he doesn’t draw back into platitudes or denials, easy answers or avoidance. He hits it head on with his own hurt and, for once, an author on this subject does it right – they answer honestly and reveal themselves. I can’t think of any answer to suffering that doesn’t involve vulnerability and the willingness to admit fragility.

At times his writing is perhaps a little too idiosyncratic (references to ‘the London’ look like typos) and I felt he occasionally must have been a little breathless as he frantically tried to fit his entire arguments around open ended subjects into tremendously short letters. I think though, for a man writing his heart to people for after he’d died that can be forgiven.

Finally, the ideas and hopes in this book are a thrilling antidote to the painfully trite and frequently offensive structures so often represented as Christianity (by Christians). I’m sure Chris would demur on this point but I’m given to being a little more judgmental than him.

I’d recommend this book for people with any kind of spirituality – even if it is explicitly Christian (perhaps because it is so). Recommended.