Pete Greig Joins a Cult

Published: August 3rd, 2009

I just joined a cult. I realize this may come as a disappointment to some of you and I hope we can still be friends – in fact I am hoping to stay involved in 24-7, if you’ll still have me. In the end I converted because so many cult members have been preaching at me, showing me how much better my life will be, explaining that I won’t fully understand until I take the leap of faith, and testifying daily to their own personal experiences. In the end I’m not sure if I was won over or merely ground down but I finally did it: I exchanged my battered old BlackBerry for a sleek and sexy black iPhone. I have joined the cult of Mac. It’s been a long process because my old phone really wasn’t that bad – nothing like the neolithic Nokia brick that requires my mum to stand on one leg, on the front doorstep, with her mouth about 15 inches from her ear.

However, now that I’ve made the switch, and although there have admittedly been no blinding lights and angelic choirs, I’m telling my friends how much better their lives could be too with an iPhone. I’m even advertising Apple courses at the holy church of All Things Apple in Regent Street, London. My old Blackberry was functional, but my iPhone is fun. What’s more (and bear with me here), my iPhone has been teaching me things about communicating with God.

Prayer can easily become formal and functional like an out-of date phone, when it’s meant to be enjoyable, intuitive, surprising and expansive. Prayer isn’t just a way of getting things done and making stuff happen (a healing here, a heavenly memo there and a parking space at WallMart on a Saturday afternoon). Prayer is the heart and soul of any dynamic, colourful, intuitive, intelligent, fun interaction with Jesus Christ.

When he was very little my son Danny came into my study one day and started playing with my hole-punch. He was very taken with it; very impressed, and spent a long time driving it around the floor like a car and snapping it like a crocodile. It was a long time before he turned to me and said “Daddy, what is this for?”

We can often treat our faith like that – enjoying it, admiring it, using it for all sorts of things but never really stopping to wonder “Father, what is it for? Why have I been saved? What is the point? Now that I am Spirit-filled, baptized, praying 24-7 and part of a Boiler Room community – what now?”

I sometimes wonder what Adam and Eve talked about with God every evening in the Garden of Eden before the Fall. After all there was no sin to fight, no sickness to heal, no gospel to preach, no transformation of society required. Back then they did not pray to make stuff happen. They prayed because they enjoyed sharing their lives with God – it was the most natural thing in the world. They knew that it was what they were made for.

We pray because we’re wired for intimacy with God. Sammy and I did not have children as a “child-raising strategy”, but as an expression of our intimacy and because we desired to lovingly raise our children to maturity.

If you’re living in the northern hemisphere, it’s summer time right now: a great season to change pace and to celebrate sunshine and family and good food and cheap novels. It’s also a time to remember why we do what we do: that family is more important than work, that computers are not our friends, that Facebook is not, in fact, a community, that childhood is fleeting, and that the word ‘functionality’ only makes sense when those first three letters take their place at the start. Most important of all the holidays are a time to celebrate and grow in our relationship with God by making time to walk and talk with Him each day, sharing our thoughts and concerns and observations and aspirations with the one who loves us most. That is a level of communication that my iPhone will never ever be able to provide, but in the end it’s what I’m for and all that really matters.