Thoughts for the day

Over the years I’ve written various ‘thought for the day’ articles, some published on the internet, some read on the radio. Here are a selection

Greece is on the verge of a great future – don’t throw it away!

/ Minimalist Christian / 8 Comments

What is it that defines a successful country? The wellbeing of the citizens, or the nation’s riches? The two are not the same.

Wellbeing: feeling loved and valued, health, happiness, contributing to society –these are the things that matter, that make us human. These do not come with national wealth but with equality and relationships – how people value and treat each other.

In the war, everyone was ‘in it together’ and although times were hard, apart from the obvious war wounds, people were healthy, valued and fulfilled. Society became much more equal. If Greece chooses to adopt a true attitude of unity (not like Cameron’s phony ‘Big Society’) where everyone looks out for each other, where those with more help out those with less – because they matter as fellow human beings – then Greece will thrive!

The worry is that Greece is so keen to stay in the “Euro” club that they will give up their wellbeing to do so. They are already feeling un-valued, un-loved and betrayed. They are dealing with institutions, but institutions don’t have a soul and don’t care about people, so why is Greece surprised. But they don’t have to shackle themselves to the rich man’s yoke to live well.

So long as there is food on the table and friends to eat it with, so long as their whole society unites in a common cause, they will thrive. But if they choose to be victims of the wealthy, if their society chooses to take what they can as individuals then they will indeed suffer. The richer Greeks will be materially fine but the poor will hurt, health for all will worsen, there will be riots and unrest, and productivity will reduce too – the signs are already there.

Greece is at a crossroads, but it’s not the crossroads reported in the press. It is a crossroads of its citizen’s attitude to each other. They can lead the world in showing how to be successful without being serfs to the economic barons. I hope that they choose wisely.

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Work and Pay

/ Minimalist Christian / 9 Comments

I think the world has become confused about work.

Instead of thinking that work is something to be endured to bring in the money we need to live, or a means of making us rich we should think of our work as our contribution to fulfilling the needs of society. We need to start thinking of it as ‘what can I give’ instead of ‘what do I get’.

And in a similar manner, society needs to think more clearly about the needs of the individual. All of us need to eat, sleep and live somewhere that we can call home. And the reciprocal side of the exchange is that when someone contributes to society, then society has a duty of love to meet the needs of that person.

Jesus told a parable of a man who hired workers for his vineyard. Some he hired in the morning, some in the afternoon, and some just before closing time. But he paid them all the same. He paid them what they needed to live. But of course, those who worked all day felt that this was not just and grumbled. Yet the vineyard owner pointed out that they were happy to work for their agreed wages, and they had received them. All the workers were willing to work. They were willing to make their contribution to society, even if there was no immediate work required. And they all had the same needs. The vineyard owner met their needs. Why can’t we follow this example?

Similarly, how do we decide how much someone should be paid? Is it according to the contribution that the job makes to society? How valuable is it to society when a person sits at a desk and manages our money? How valuable is it to society when a person removes the rubbish that we create during the week? How valuable is it to society when a person serves us a meal in a café or restaurant? I have to say that the most valued workman I’ve encountered is the one who came to clear our blocked drains when the raw sewerage was overflowing! Yet he is paid less than I am, when I spend much of my time sitting at a computer terminal.

It is not my aim to claim that job A is X times as valuable as job B, but to add into our thinking and actions that we need to be willing to pay each person sufficient to meet their needs.

Unfortunately the recent trend is that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. I don’t have a problem with unequal pay, and with pay that reflects the value to society of the work. But I do take issue with a system that ignores the ‘need’ part of the equation.

Can you and I do anything? Yes we can. Even if it is only being willing to pay a fair price instead of the lowest price for goods and services.

But also, the reward for our work is more than just money. We all value the respect of our fellow human beings. One thing that we can all do is to treat everyone, in whatever job, with respect and with appreciation.

And similarly, when we are working, we can consider our work as more than just a job but as a contribution to society. The bricklayer can choose to be building a home instead of laying some bricks.

And we also need to respect those who are seeking work but unable to find it. Not only do they receive no wages, our benefit system disrespects them and prevents them making their contribution to the good of us all. Can’t we treat them like those in Jesus’ parable who were looking for work , and who at the end of the day were then paid what they needed to live.

Let’s think on these things as we go about or daily life of working, waiting, shopping and ‘consuming’.  Let’s change our attitudes.

Financial advice from Money Box Live, or Pope Francis?

/ Minimalist Christian / 3 Comments

I was listening to the radio program Money Box Live last week. They were talking about pensions. It seems that if you delay taking your pension for a year then the amount of your pension increases by about 10% per year when you do take it. I guess this is a government scheme to reduce spending on pensions today at the cost of increasing it in future years, perhaps when there may be another government in power – but that’s not the point of this article. The thing that caught my attention was that they got a mathematician to describe the best time to take your pension.

The longer you delay, the higher the pension when you take it, but the less time you take it for. So if you know when you are going to die (which you can look up in statistical tables) the mathematician was working out a time at which the total amount of money you receive reaches a maximum.

All very logical and calculable, so why am I writing about it? Because it is a symptom of the cancerous thinking that underlies so many decisions today:
Our goal is to maximise the money we get, even if we only get it on the day before we die.

We forget that the more we have, even when we don’t need it, the less there is for others.

We don’t consider that the schemes we invest our money in minimise costs, such as the wages of the lowly paid, or maximise income, such lending our money at high rates of interest.

We ignore the fact that making decisions on the basis of maximising our income reinforces the extremely unfair financial systems that we have today, where the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.

It is not easy to turn down opportunities to make more, or spend less. It is natural to want to buy the cheapest milk, or trainers, or energy – but each decision has its consequence.
When we invest to minimise our tax bill, we are placing the burden of paying for our public services on others. We are encouraging our government to introduce ‘austerity’ measures – “sanctioning” benefit claimants if they miss an appointment (in effect, fining them 100% of their income). We place the burden of balancing the government’s books on the poor.

My mother died last year. She didn’t spend the pension she received, and her investments grew, and we were surprised at the amount of money that she left. I have to decide what to do with the money I inherited. Money Box Live would tell me to invest to maximise my income. But I agree with Pope Francis, I reject that basis for my decisions. How about you?

There are no border controls on the Kingdom of God

/ Minimalist Christian / 1 Comment

Jesus taught that “the Kingdom of God is at hand”. But how do we get there? Do we need a passport, or apply for a visa? Do we have to pass an entrance test to become a citizen?
Anselm described God as supreme goodness, and John’s gospel tells us that God is love; “But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love. And if God is love, love is God.
But God is more than that, he has ‘person-ness’ that I describe in “Four steps of reason leading to a personal God” . So we can think of love as part of his realm, his kingdom. Therefore to live in love is to live in the Kingdom of God. Every act of goodness or love is by definition carried out in the Kingdom of God. Every time a person choses to act kindly to a neighbour, they are in the Kingdom of God. Every time they choose not to respond in a loving, good way they are choosing to live outside the Kingdom of God. It doesn’t matter whether they call themselves Christian, Moslem, Hindu or atheist – acting is love is acting in the Kingdom of God.
Because it is our choice whether we act, or live, in the Kingdom of God there are no border controls. God does not make any demands, or set any tests for those who want to live there. We simply decide. I choose to love, therefore by definition I choose to live in the Kingdom of God.
But by definition, if I choose to be selfish then I am not in the Kingdom of God, because selfishness is not love, and therefore is not part of the Kingdom of God. If I live selfishly, I am in the Kingdom of Me.
Clearly we move in and out of the Kingdom of God every hour of every day. Perhaps we all need to be a little more conscious of which Kingdom we want to live in.

The arrogance and hypocrisy of Stephen Fry

/ Minimalist Christian / 2 Comments

So Mr Fry, you are judge, jury and executioner for God because some people get cancer, or illness; because God allows suffering.  I am reminded of your character Melchet sentencing Blackadder to death for killing his favourite pigeon.

You assume that God can do anything and so he must be able to prevent all cancer and suffering, and therefore He must be evil to allow it.  What trivial thinking from a man purported to be intelligent. What arrogance to presume to be worthy to judge.

Can God make a square circle?  Of course not, and it’s silly to suggest that he can.

Can God make a universe that spawns intelligent, purposeful life without any pain or discomfort?  Of course not, and it’s silly to suggest that he can.

So should God not have bothered?

Would you, Mr Fry, rather live, love and die with pain in your life or not live at all?  You have a choice, and your daily choice seems to be continue to live.

Whenever you get into a car Mr Fry, you risk running over an innocent child, inflicting anguish on their parents.  You cause actual damage to the ecosystem of the planet, and consequential pain and suffering in those less privileged than yourself.  You choose to damage your fellow human beings when you actually do have an alternative.

You convict God for allowing suffering, should you not be lambasting the Ford motor company for creating machines that cause such carnage?  It is impossible to make a car that does not risk causing death and damage to the planet, yet we all choose the benefit and accept the consequence.

Do you not feel a hint of hypocrisy in living as you do and yet criticising the one who has given you the opportunity?

 

 

A robust intellectual basis for Christianity is not enough.

/ Minimalist Christian / 5 Comments

I like to understand why things are like they are. As a child I was taught that science provides the answers that I needed.

When in later life I became a Christian I thought that there was a conflict between science and God, but for a while reconciled this with the idea that ‘God can do anything’. A simple idea, but science and faith was not an area that I really wanted to explore.

We are given the impression that ‘science knows’, but we just haven’t been told yet. About five years ago I decided to find out. What does science know? What does it still not know? Are there things it can never know? Taking everything into account, what story best fits all the facts, a godless universe or one with a God?

I adopted an analytical approach, but avoided the temptation to dig too deeply into details of each field. I just tried to understand the underlying principles sufficiently to see what they contribute to the big picture. I found that most people feel uncomfortable outside of their specialist field, that few seem willing to take the necessary overview.

Having read a couple of books like ‘The Edge of Evolution” by the Intelligent Design proponents I began thinking that it may be possible to prove God exists. But then I read secular books on the origins of life and realised that everyone accepts the remarkable unlikelihood of life but that it doesn’t provide irrefutable proof – there are alternative explanations such as the multiverse theory.

I needed to find out where the Bible came from; could I trust it, and if so, why? I researched the source of the NT documents in particular, and some of the gospel accounts that are excluded from the Bible (the Da Vinci code stuff). I realised that the gospel accounts are not trying to prove who Jesus was and what he did, but that they wouldn’t have been written if he hadn’t done some amazing things. The accounts are simply people trying to capture what happened for future generations. The Bible is not a spells book: “Do this and God will do that for you”.

I reached a number of conclusions about how to understand and respond to the big picture of what’s going on. Realising that everything requires a level of faith (including science of course), I suggest a response which recognises that many religious and scientific dogmas are unproven and unprovable – but unnecessary. I call the response “Minimalist Christianity”. I wrote up what I found in “The Big Picture”, found a publisher and then set about marketing my masterpiece.

There is a robust intellectual basis for Christianity, and I would commend it to others, but I recently realised that in exploring it I was falling into a bit of a trap. Because I have necessarily spent several years testing and probing, viewing things sceptically, I let my personal spiritual life become analytical too. My reasoning has shown that God exists, and that he must have a ‘personality’ and want to interact with each of us, but I have not really been responding to the real God – just developing an intellectual one.

We need to ‘get to know God’ as more than an idea; I need to follow my own advice! It is from the integrity of that relationship that the power to fulfil our purpose will flow. We need analysis to know that we can trust, but then we need to act on that trust to complete the experience. Having determined that the rock exists, we need to actively build the house of our life on it!

“Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock. Though the rain comes in torrents and the floodwaters rise and the winds beat against that house, it won’t collapse because it is built on bedrock.” Jesus circa 30AD

“Here, there be dragons”

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Centuries ago many people used to live their entire lives within a few miles of where they were born. Occasionally travellers would pass through with tales of far-away places which held wonders, treasures and maybe ‘dragons’. But few would dare cross the borders surrounding their small world of familiarity.

Dragon-Linda_BlackWin24_JanssonNowadays many people again live their entire lives within a relatively small environment. Maybe it is not physical, since modern transportation puts the whole world within reach, but I’m speaking of relationships, culture and spirituality.

Our sphere of friends is gathered through encounters where we like to pass our time: work, the sports club, the toddler group or school, the pub. We meet like-minded people in comfortable environments and put down roots there. Occasional travellers pass through with tales of other lifestyles: we get peeps at them on the TV reality shows, a foreigner might join our band, or a tragedy might move us out of our comfortable world. But “few dare cross the borders of their small world of familiarity”, and most will lobby to maintain their personal utopia.

We understand how the world works through what we have learned through personal experience, the media and common sense.  With our Western worldview glasses we know such things as: the economy has to be healthy, everyone should be educated and democracy is the only system that works. And of course we should all have rights, to health, happiness and freedom, particularly freedom of speech. We seldom stop to question the basis on which we have decided that all of these ‘truths’ are correct. When we hear tales of other cultures we are fearful that they will invade our territory and bring unimaginable horrors and suffering.

But perhaps we are most fearful of uncharted spiritual seas. England used to be a Christian nation, although deeply divided between Protestant and Catholic, but has largely come to believe in Scientism; the religion that science can explain everything. It can be comforting to think that science can tell us why Grandma died, and to hope that in the future cancer will be conquered. Occasionally we will hear tales of a spiritual realm, something that is not simply made of ‘stuff’, and strangers will speak of God and tell us that we have a ‘soul’. A frequent response is to ignore such ramblings, or to accept that such things may be ‘okay’ for them, but I’m quite happy in my own ideas thank you very much.

Secretly, if we are bold enough to ask ourselves, we will admit that our small-world outlook is largely driven by fear. We are afraid that we will lose our basis for life, even if it doesn’t seem to be working too well for us at the moment. We would love to befriend those in different circles, experience different cultures, and reach a satisfying understanding of who we are spiritually; we yearn to find our soul and our purpose.

It is the beginning of a new year: 2015. Two thousand and fifteen years after a special baby was born. Who as a man spoke strange tales of a spiritual realm and a God. A man whose words gave us a rock to build our lives on. A man who willingly allowed himself to be crucified to show that death could not hold him – or us. A man who Christians call God. Perhaps it is time to take our courage in our hands and explore this strange new land? Many have gone there before, but few have returned with tales of dragons! Instead, they come back with stories of hope and fulfilled purpose; the promised land. Shall we go?

Do we worship the same God?

/ Minimalist Christian / 14 Comments

There is and can only be one God.

I am not going to defend that statement but to take it as read and see where it leads in the context of different religions.  If you don’t want to accept the statement, this post is not for you so please don’t waste your time and energy reading further.

There is and can only be one God.

That one God is love.  Without God there can be no love.  And so each and every act of love is an act of God.  If a Christian loves, that is God within them.  If a Moslem loves then that is God within them.  If an atheist loves that is God within them.

That one God created and sustained the universe. He sends the rain on the good and the bad.  His laws of science knit us together in our mother’s womb, allow us to experience the world, and present us with the alternatives of love or hate, good or evil.

That one God has made each of us as an individual.  Each of us is a ‘me’.  He has given us freedom to choose to love or hate, to be good or evil.  As individuals we choose.  If we choose to love we choose God whether we know it or not, whether we are Christian, Moslem, Hindu, atheist, agnostic or Jedi.

If someone prays to the single God, creator and sustainer of the universe, to the God who is love, the God who is goodness and power, does it matter what religion they are in?

If someone chooses love and goodness, does it matter what religion they are in?

What is religion? According to the Oxford dictionary it is:

“The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods”

and

“A particular system of faith and worship”

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/religion

A follower of one religion can challenge whether the “system of faith and worship” of another religion is accurate.  A Christian can reasonably challenge whether what Islam teaches about what is right and wrong is right – but can a Christian challenge which God a Moslem is praying to? Or vice versa?

Can a Christian say that a Moslem worships a different God?  Or can the Christian only say to the Moslem that “you don’t know God like I do”?

I don’t need to use Christians and Moslems for the example.  I could have used Evangelical and Liberal Christians, Protestants and Catholics.

I believe that the teaching of Christ is the best description of what God intends for each of us, and that Jesus life and death are the greatest demonstration of how God loves each and every one of us.  I can guide others to the same source of love and goodness that I have found, but am I to criticise and judge them if they do not understand the Bible in the same way that I do?  Isn’t my job to love, and aren’t I supposed to leave the judgement up to God?

Isn’t religions job to help me do my job?  Surely religion is not there to put obstacles in the way of me loving others?

What does God think of all the conflict that is caused by religious dogmatism about what he is like?  Does he simply want us to get on with loving Him, and loving our neighbour as ourselves?

Grace and love to you all.

Painful lessons on worship, thanks to Bach

/ Minimalist Christian / 1 Comment

It had been a busy period approaching Easter, but Good Friday had arrived with the promise of a short break.  We decided to start the weekend with a treat – to listen to St Matthew’s Passion by Bach in Coventry Cathedral.  An amazing piece of music that has formed an act of worship for many people over hundreds of years, we were looking forward to it.  We shared a lift with friends, one of whom was performing in the choir.

I knew nothing of the piece, but was a little alarmed to hear that it lasted three hours – I know what cathedral chairs can be like, and I was feeling somewhat worn down by some stressful meetings at work.  We had well placed seats, although the gentleman who sat next to me wore ‘fragrance of smoker’, and I noticed when the music began that his breathing was rather loud.  I prepared myself to be ‘wowed’ by the wonderful music.

Fifteen minutes into the performance I realised that the music and I spoke different languages of worship.

Thirty minutes in and I prepared myself for the ordeal as I do for the discomfort of a long flight in cramped uncomfortable airline seats; try not to wriggle too much so as not to disturb others,  focus on trying to doze and calm oneself to patiently endure the flight, listen to some nice music through headphones – not something I could do here of course.

It was not an un-spiritual experience.  It reminded me that Christ had suffered intently on the cross, that it had gone dark for three hours, that he’d willingly submitted himself to the pain, but that it would not have been an enjoyable experience.  And finally, thank God, it was finished.

The friends that I went with loved it, talking excitedly about different parts of the performance and how moved they were by it.  I was emotionally exhausted and felt excluded from the party – there was nothing positive I could think of to say, and I didn’t want to spoil their enjoyment of the evening so I was silent.  It was working until over dinner one of them mentioned I’d been quiet and asked what I’d thought of it.  After a few moments silence someone else spared me with ‘not your cup of tea then’, and the evening moved on.

Having had time to reflect a little, there are some lessons to learn from the experience.

  • Even the most brilliant worship music will not appeal to everyone, and will drive some people away.  If you want to help everyone ‘worship’, then you need a variety of approaches (not all musical!)
  • It feels very lonely and friendless being in an environment where others are enthusing about a method of worship that leaves you cold.  You can be left feeling ‘what’s wrong with me?’, and spiritually drained.  Don’t ‘demand’ that everyone enthuses about what you find uplifting, and don’t judge them if they don’t ‘connect’.
  • If you are feeling low, then a worship event may not be the best remedy.  You may end up worse that when you began.
  • Even if you are experiencing something painful, there are lessons to learn from it.

I don’t regret going, but I don’t suppose I will quickly repeat the experience.  Nobody wants to be the spectre at the feast.

A Masterpiece of Engineering

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We think that we design pretty neat things these days.  We laugh at the man who said that the world would probably only need four or five computers.  Those of us who are old enough can remember when we did a sum on the newly invented pocket calculator that gave us the answer 0.7734, which said “hello” when we turned the calculator upside down.

But whilst researching my latest book I came across some pretty amazing statistics about a design that we all treat as commonplace – each and every human being.

Our 1.5kg brain comprises around 100 billion neurons, of 10,000 different types. Each neuron can have thousands of synapses (input connections from other neurons) and each synapse has perhaps a thousand molecular scale switches.  A single human brain is estimated to contain more switches than the entire internet.

Contained within our skin are around 650 muscles attached to over 200 bones, which vary in size from the femur in our thigh to the stirrup bone in the ear.  The muscle/bone combination is precise enough to paint a masterpiece, or to putt a golf ball twenty feet into a hole.

We have around 60,000 miles of veins and arteries and 1500 miles of pipes in our lungs.

Within our lymph nodes we have billions of B cells, each of which is different and each one defends against a particular very specific infection.

The list goes on – but you get the point.

Yet this whole complex organism is built from a single cell.

We begin as one single cell.  Within the cell is our DNA, the supposed blueprint for our manufacture.  We have a massive 3 billion base pairs (characters in the ‘code’) in our DNA. Yet there are around 50,000 billion different cells in the body.  Each cell is different, in function and in position – some nerve cells can be several feet long.  How can we imagine that there is enough information contained within our DNA to define our fully functioning body?

But we do start from just one cell.  And each cell only responds to the signals that cross the cell membrane.   As we develop, the cell is what it is as a result of its history – its ancestor cells.  And each of those cells only responded to the signals that crossed it’s membrane.  It’s like a massive pyramid, built the wrong way up – with the apex at the bottom.  The process is incredibly robust.  Look at identical twins.  Most of their development is as separate human beings and yet the final ‘product’ is identical.

A human being is truly a masterpiece of engineering.

Is it reasonable to state with certainty that this happened by chance?  Is it reasonable to assert that the properties of the sub-atomic particles in the universe are such that they behave in precisely the right way to manufacture you or I from a single cell by sheer luck? Or would that be a blind leap of faith?

 

 

See also:

https://philhemsley.wordpress.com/2013/03/03/information-dna-and-evolution/

https://philhemsley.wordpress.com/2012/09/17/the-dna-enigma/