Christianity

We are all the same

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A doctor has the resources to help those who are injured or unwell, to make them comfortable and to set them on the path to healing and recovery.  Would it be wrong for a doctor to walk past a person injured and dying on the street and do nothing to help, even if the doctor didn’t know them or like them? 

We know it would be wrong for a doctor to not do what they were able to help someone who is suffering severely or dying through sickness or injury.  Yet doctors are only people like us so it must also be wrong too for us not to help someone who is dying through – for instance – malnutrition, or lack of clean water, or military oppression even if they are not on our doorstep.  It would be wrong of us not to make room in our country for those who would die from war or persecution in their home country.

Let’s not shirk our responsibilities to our fellow human beings.  Let’s remember that every single person is equally valuable and worthy of our love and care and do what we can to help and accommodate them. When we fall short of doing all we can, let’s recognise that that is our shortcoming.  Let’s not justify our inaction by claiming that they are somehow inferior to us, and that we ‘don’t want them here’.

The wonder of life: a slipped disc can heal itself!

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I have just about recovered from damaging my back twice in succession.  Two lots of 6 weeks out of action and on constant painkillers has not been fun.  These days one expects that the doctors will just be able to fix stuff, but the ‘treatment’ available was basically take painkillers and when it’s feeling well enough do some exercises to strengthen it.

So it was down to me, or at least my body to fix itself.  Although I don’t think I had a slipped disc, with nothing much to do I spent some time on the internet to understand more about back problems and found that “The body’s defense mechanism can spontaneously retract, shrink, or eliminate disc herniation.” https://www.spine-health.com/blog/can-herniated-discs-heal-their-own

Just let that sink in for a moment. 

If my car has a worn joint, there is no way that it can heal itself.

If a computer program has a fault there is no way it can heal itself.

There is nothing that I personally can do to cause my back to heal.  It is ‘simply’ that my body has the ability to heal itself.  And if you look at how our bodies heal themselves, and how our immune systems work you will be astounded by the complexity of the processes.

Now I don’t want to question the process of evolution, but it is beyond me (or I believe beyond anyone) to explain how a completely unguided or undesigned process would lead to a mechanism within the body to heal a slipped disc.

And even if that’s not a challenge enough, isn’t it astonishing that the fabric of the universe; the raw elements (Hydrogen, Carbon, Oxygen etc) can combine together to create a living organism that contains within it the power to heal itself of a slipped disc?

We take these things for granted every day and grumble when our bodies don’t function as ‘normal’.  Isn’t it more appropriate to take a step back and let the wonder of what our bodies do do just sink in?  And maybe to thank the creator of the universe for the amazing gift of our lives?

Have a blessed day.

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The hand of God

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A few years ago I decided to dig deeper into the apparent conflict between science and religion.

Many people have the view that science can in theory explain everything, that even if we don’t know the answers yet then it is just a matter of time before we find them.  This view of Science has turned it into a faith.

I admit that I wondered if advances in science since I studied it might actually bring more powerful arguments than I was aware of. But I also wondered whether the extreme unlikeliness of life might be sufficient to prove that there must be a God and so I spent several years reviewing what science has discovered and assessing how that fits with Christianity. 

The first thing to say is that there are clearly things written in the Bible that are not to be taken literally.  And it causes problems when people do. When people hear both Christians and atheists claim that Christians believe that Genesis is the literal truth then they are unlikely to look any further.  It is that which put me off even considering God until I was forty, and so I feel that Creationists do God a disservice.

Putting Creationism aside, I have not found any serious conflict between science and faith.

I have found that when you try to calculate numbers, you find that the chances of us being here are extremely small – but we are here.  The chance of me winning the lottery if I buy one ticket is extremely small, but every week someone wins. If you try often enough then extremely unlikely events will happen. 

But how can I say that there isn’t any serious conflict between science and faith?  Isn’t there a conflict between science and miracles?  Hasn’t science shown that they are impossible?

To answer that we need to think about what we actually mean by science. It’s a term that is in such common use that we often don’t think about what it really is. A few years ago the Science Council realised that they didn’t have a definition of science, and so they came up with one.

“Science is the pursuit of knowledge and understanding of the natural and social world following a systematic methodology based on evidence.”

Let’s break that down a little:

“the pursuit of knowledge and understanding” – I’m sure we are happy with that, although it doesn’t say ALL knowledge and understanding.

“of the natural and social world” – that’s good, it defines the scope where it applies.  Science has nothing to do with what is not the natural and social world.

“following a systematic methodology based on evidence” We can expand on that a little.  The methodology includes steps of

  1. Observation of a phenomenon and experiment to find out what happens
  2. Trying to think of what the rules are that describe the phenomenon – the rules should be consistent with the accepted laws of science.
  3. Establishing new experiments or observations to test the theory
  4. Repeat the experiments
  5. Analyse and review the results, and publish.

Critical to this is repetition.  Science assumes that the “natural and social world” behaves in a manner that is repeatable.

Richard Feynman, a famous physicist was giving a talk about what is known as the ‘two slit experiment’ – you shoot electrons at a barrier which has two slits in it, and a screen behind it, and you observe where each electron hits the screen. He comments that

“A philosopher once said that: ‘It is necessary for the very existence of science that the same conditions always produce the same results’. Well, they do not. You set up the circumstances, with the same conditions every time, and you cannot predict behind which hole you will see the electron.”

Through repetition, science has discovered that if you look at enough numbers of electrons then a predictable pattern emerges.  However,  the behaviour of an individual electron cannot be predicted.

And what is a miracle?  The Cambridge Dictionary definition of a miracle is:

“An unusual and mysterious event that is thought to have been caused by a god because it does not follow the usual laws of nature”

By definition, science and miracles are mutually exclusive.

  • Science defines the usual laws of nature
  • Miracles don’t follow the usual laws of nature

But this does NOT mean that science tells us that miracles cannot happen.

It’s like putting everything that behaves in a predictable manner into a box and calling that science.  I can learn all about what goes on inside the box.  But none of my knowledge about what goes on inside the box can tell me anything about what is outside the box.  

I might assume that nothing exists outside the box, but science can give me no evidence of whether my assumption is true.  Belief in that assumption is called materialism. The faith of materialism asserts that there cannot be miracles, but science itself can say nothing about whether miracles can happen. 

But what if there is evidence that the universe doesn’t always behave according to fixed materialistic laws? Does that disprove materialism?

What if I know that there are things outside the box?

It seems to us that we are able to make choices.  We can decide who to vote for in elections.  We can decide whether to come to a breakfast talk.  We can decide whether or not to kill our next door neighbour. 

It’s called free will.  We experience our free will every day.

But if the universe operates according to fixed laws of nature, where is there scope for free will? 

There are some who believe so completely in Materialsm that they think free will is an illusion.  Here’s an example from an on line discussion forum:

“. . . given our understanding of determinism and un-determinism there is nothing left that explains exactly what free will could be, in the traditional sense. It’s more a case of a challenge to those that assume free will to explain its mechanism.”

In other words, Materialists believe that free will cannot exist in a universe which operates according to fixed laws.  So if you or I believe that we have free will, then that is a strong hint that materialism is wrong – that there are things outside of our box. 

There is another definition of miracle in the Cambridge dictionary:

“a very lucky event that is surprising and unexpected”

Even within the laws of physics it is possible for miracles to happen. 

There is an account in the Bible of when Jesus told one of his followers to go and catch a fish, and that in the mouth of the fish he would find a gold coin, and then he was to use that coin to pay their tax.  That is such an extremely unlikely event that it becomes a miracle, but a miracle operating within the “laws of physics”.

I said earlier that I’d wondered whether the extreme unlikeliness of life might be sufficient to prove that there must be a God.  Whilst the origin of life may follow the laws of physics, is it so unlikely that it is classed as a miracle? Let’s explore that a little and try to get a feel for some numbers. 

It is difficult to define what life is, but one element that we are all aware of is the ability to reproduce, or replicate.

All life as we know it – plants and animals – contain long chain molecules.  Proteins are building blocks for much of the body, and DNA acts as a template for organising amino acids into the correct order to make proteins and to replicate itself.

DNA is made up of four nucleotides, called ‘bases’.  These are held in place on a sugar/phosphate backbone.  The order of the bases defines the order of amino acids that are assembled by machinery in the cell in order to form a protein.  The machinery in the cell includes other long chain molecules that are essential for the replication process.

Although human DNA has around 3 billion bases, scientists have estimated that the minimum length of a long chain molecule that would be able to replicate is around 40 bases.  Like DNA, those 40 bases would need to be in a precise order to be able to replicate.

The question is, where did this first long chain molecule come from?  It was not built by the mechanism in the cell, because there was no mechanism. 

Perhaps it might have self assembled by chance if we had a pot of molecules bubbling in a primordial soup.

Now, the number of different possible sequences of a chain of forty molecules of four different types is massive, and the chance of any particular one forming at random is on in a septillion!  That’s 1024  –  a million billion billion.

And if you needed two specific molecules to ensure replication then it would be the same as searching for a single molecule in the whole mass of the earth.

No wonder Richard Dawkins has said that

“Self-replicating molecules that made copies of themselves came into existence by sheer luck….. Nobody knows how it happened.”

We can agree I think that the origin of life is “a very lucky event that is surprising and unexpected” …. i.e. a miracle. 

Another extremely unlikely occurrence is the fine tuning of the universe.

We use equations to represent the laws of physics as we know them. The equations usually include a number of constants.   Some constants can be derived mathematically, such as the ratio of the circumference of a circle to the diameter which is known as Pi.

Other constants don’t appear to have their value for any particular reason – as far as I’m aware there is no particular reason why the speed of light is what it is.   These constants are only obtained by careful measurement.

Scientists can calculate what might have happened if the constants had been different. These calculations show us that the constants in this universe seem to be incredibly fine-tuned. 

John Lennox quotes that “If the ratio of the strong nuclear force to the electromagnetic force had been different by one part in 1016, no stars could have formed. If the ratio of electromagnetic force-constant to the gravitational force-constant was increased by only 1 part in 1040 then only small stars would exist; decrease it by the same amount and there will only be large stars. You must have both large and small stars in the universe; the large ones produce elements in their thermonuclear furnaces and it is only the small ones that burn long enough to sustain a planet with life. That is the kind of accuracy a marksman would need to hit a coin on the far side of the observable universe, twenty billion light years away.

Many thinkers and Christian scientists pursue the idea that these levels of extreme improbability must ‘prove’ that the laws of nature are insufficient, and that ‘The hand of God’ is required at critical points in the history of the universe to explain where we are today. I find the idea attractive, but it is not unquestionable proof as there is always the counter argument that with enough attempts unlikely things happen. 

And for me, trying to find God in the unlikely concedes too much.  It is a false way of thinking that seems to accept that if we can explain something scientifically then we don’t need God – so we have to look for things that we can’t explain scientifically and voila: God. This is called ‘God of the Gaps’, and constrains God to those things that we can’t explain – the gaps. 

But it is actually applying the faith of the Materialist to God.  “I’m going to claim everything that is explainable as my materialist faith, and just leave you with the gaps to explain by God” 

It implies that:

  • God is confined to the gaps
  • God only ‘appears’ intermittently
  • God only does miracles

That is a misunderstanding of God.

What if we apply this sort of ‘improbability thinking’ to the development of a human being from a single cell?

DNA is often called the blueprint of the body, and is the template to build all the protein molecules in the body. Human DNA has just under 3 billion bases.  There are around 3.5million letters in the Bible, so it would need around 800 books the size of the Bible to write out human DNA. That sounds a big number (although our DNA only a tenth of the size of that of an amoeba), but let’s look at what the DNA has to do.

An adult has fifty trillion human cells.  That’s 17000 cells for each DNA base. And scientists have said that 97% of our DNA is actually ‘junk’ … not used for producing proteins. If that is right, then there are over half a million cells for each non-junk DNA base.

Our fifty trillion cells are organised into systems:

  • Circulatory system
  • Skeletal system
  • Immune system
  • Muscular system
  • Hearing
  • Sight
  • Nervous system
  • Brain
  • ….

Those systems change with time.  Components are built at different times in the development process.  Cells have to die off to make way for other cells.  We have to stop growing at some point.  We are programmed to die.

And our “short” string of DNA is supposed to define all of this. The orchestrated operation of the fifty trillion cells for over seventy years is not something that is learned as the body grows. And the coding of these systems was contained in the DNA of one single fertilised cell.

Using a ‘probability’ type of thinking, we might deduce that it is impossible for a human to grow from a single fertilised cell without the hand of God.

And yet we see it happen every day, 350,000  new babies born a day around the world. This miracle has being repeated by the hand of God billions of times, just in humans. The hand of God is very busy!

Now actually, this is a better understanding of God.  This is not a ‘God of the gaps’ but a ‘God of everything’. This is a God who sustains the operation of matter in a consistent manner that we can predict through the scientific method.  This is a God who provides the raw materials for science to study.

This is a God of whom the psalmist wrote:  “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.”

The behaviour of matter, as modelled by the laws of physics can be understood to be the hand of God. We no longer search for a God who lives outside the universe and occasionally pops in to correct it when it goes wrong, but we have a God who is intimately involved in the universe, sustaining not only the laws of physics but also our very being. Everything that science discovers is simply discovering more of the wonders of God. 

If we can grasp this it leads to two responses:

Wow! …. and…. Why?

To understand the Why, we can’t look to science – but we can look to Jesus. And when we understand the Why, and respond to it, the Wow becomes our worship.  The study of science returns to its origin, the search for a better understanding and knowledge of God.

Thank you for reading.

How can one God be Father, Son and Holy Spirit?

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Christian doctrine tells us that Jesus is God, that the Holy Spirit is God and that ‘the Father’ is God.  And that Jesus is not the Father, who is not the Holy Spirit, who is not Jesus.  And that there is only one God.

Doesn’t it defy common sense and logic? How might we think about this mystery? 

Consider an analogy:  what is War and Peace?  It is a novel by Leo Tolstoy of course.  And of course, we all know what a novel is.  Or do we? 

It is of course the book that you buy in a bookshop?  But is it the paper and ink? No, it’s more than that.  Is it the pattern made by the dark ink on the white paper? No, the same words can be written in different fonts?  And what about different translations? And what if the book is read out loud?

Is it the precise set of words that Tolstoy wrote? – were early drafts not War and Peace? 

Is it the precise story? – then what of screenplays, are they not War and Peace?

War and Peace is the book, it’s the film, it’s the spoken word, it’s all the translations.  The book is not the film, which is not the spoken word.  The Chinese translation is War and Peace, the English translation is War and Peace, but the English translation is not the Chinese translation – there is only one War and Peace.

Something which we think is simple is actually much more complex! 

And so it is with God.  We might think we know who or what God is, but most certainly we don’t.  They are far more complex!  But perhaps thinking about the analogy of War and Peace we will understand a little more.

And here’s a bonus question – did the story exist before Tolstoy wrote it?  Would it cease to exist if humanity was wiped out and there was nobody to remember it? (Isn’t memory just another medium for recording the story anyway).  If another civilisation emerged ten thousand years after humanity died out and were able to read the book, would War and Peace come into existence again?  Or did it continue to exist throughout that period.  Did the tale exist before it was written down, in the same way that 1 + 1 has always equalled 2 – even before there was intelligent life to discover it.  Has War and Peace always existed?  Does this help us understand how Jesus always existed, how ‘in the beginning was the word’?

Good news!

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Deep inside each of us we know that we ought to be good.  Perhaps it’s stronger than that, and we want to be good.  But we aren’t as good as we’d like to be, and we often disappoint ourselves and perhaps give up trying, and ignore our shortcomings – burying them in a busy and ‘important’ life.

Millions of years of ‘survival of the fittest’ evolution has honed our human nature to make sure that we thrive physically and materially, even if it is at the expense of others.  We want a better house, a better car, more money.  We want our country to be richer and have a better healthcare system than others.  We recognise that there are laws that we must obey, but we will find ways round them if we can if it improves our lot.  We might get angry about world situations; the dreadful behaviour of the Taliban, or Trump, or Putin, or global warming, or social injustice; demanding action from governments but perhaps being unwilling to actually do much, if anything ourselves.

In this environment, what is the relevance of and role of religion?  And what about God? And do They have anything to do with religion, or us?

Reliable historical texts describe that Jesus brought ‘good news’ to the people of Israel, and that he told his followers to take that good news to all nations.  The people he brought the good news to were probably not that different to us, although with less technology and material possessions; they had the same drives and motivations.  They felt the same disillusionments.  Yet many people were changed by the message he brought, transforming their lives and motivated to take his message to the world. 

So what was this ‘good news’ that Jesus brought, and why don’t we hear it today?

Basically, the good news was (and still is) that ‘You can be good, and this is what being good looks like.’

On top of that simple message, he brought us tools and techniques to help us, the primary one being the tool to free us from the ‘badness’ of our past.  Using his tools we can look forward to what we can become rather than being dragged back by our past mistakes. 

The tool that he offered was repentance; sincere regret and remorse.  But repentance alone is clearly not enough and might simply add a feeling of extreme guilt and worthlessness (who would want to subject themselves to that).  The ‘magic’ that Jesus brought was, and still is authoritative forgiveness.

Forgiveness only works if it is offered by someone with the authority to forgive; it doesn’t mean a thing if I forgive you for stealing, it needs a judge to do so.  In Jesus day the religious leaders recognised that ‘only God can forgive sins’ and so were angry that Jesus did so. 

Today, we don’t have the same understanding of God, and perhaps for us it is better to think of ‘infinite love’ or ‘infinite goodness’ instead of the God.  But how ever we look at it, the magic of Jesus clearly worked at the time and has continued to work ever since – if we repent and ask Jesus to forgive us then he does.

As I wrote in my book “Christianity – why bother?”:

“To live a rich and satisfying life in the future we have to accept that we made mistakes in the past.  We have to want to change for the better.  We have to want to wipe the slate clean and start again. And we do that by accepting God’s forgiveness.

It’s about accepting God’s unconditional love, and then working with Him to become who we are meant to be. And it starts with a decision to submit leadership of our life to Christ.

And this is freedom.

Freedom from the guilt of past sins.

Freedom to love God.

Freedom to love one another.

Freedom to stop sinning and to do what is right without worrying about the future.

Freedom to trust Jesus when he tells us that he has come to bring life in abundance.

Freedom from religious ritual.

In essence, that is the Good News of Christianity; that is the Gospel.”

And what is the role of religion?  Well religion should help us find this truth.  Religion should help us to understand who and what God is, and to help us see what ‘good’ looks like.  Unfortunately, much religion today seems to want to show what is good by living the opposite – a perverse sort of reverse psychology.  Nevertheless, there are many good and solid leaders and grass roots members of religions who are simply trying to tread a good path, trying to live graciously with one another.  Being part of such a community can be a great help and encouragement, and can bring companionship on our journey.  Spending an hour or two of ‘spiritual’ reflection once a week helps us maintain focus and direction.  So yes, there is still a role for religion.

Seeking adventure?

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There is an account in the gospels of Jesus sleeping in a boat while a storm rages and seems about to sink it.  The disciples wake Jesus, he calms the storm and then says to his followers “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?”

Usually we take from this story that Jesus has the power to calm storms, and that we can ask him to calm the storms in our lives.  i.e. call out to Jesus so that we can live placid boring lives. But I think the message is different. 

I was on a sailing boat in storm force winds when a mast fitting broke. We had to get the sail down whilst being tossed in the massive waves, with wind and rain and spray.  It was exciting, we felt alive and ‘present’, …. and yet safe.  Our skipper was completely calm, and so we were confident that we would come to no harm; and we didn’t.  It was a joyful and exhilarating shared experience which we will all remember and which is a bond between us; so much more than flat seas and a gentle breeze.

So I think that instead of offering calm seas in our lives, Jesus is saying ‘I am in your boat, you are perfectly safe.  Go and enjoy the adventure.’ And it is with sadness that he has to calm our storm because we have so little faith.

Do you want adventure?  ‘Safe’ adventure?  Feel free to get in touch…

Christmas Joy?

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Christmas is supposed to be a time of joy, yet my heart is torn by so much that is wrong in our world that it can be hard to find joy. 

I was privileged to have visited Mozambique some years ago.  Having experienced a tiny glimpse of life there, I now regularly send money to help some of the poorest who live there.   This picture shows one lady with all that she has to live on for the next month:

Is she any less valuable human being than me, or you?  Does she matter less because she happens to have been born in a poor country?  Or because she’s black?  Isn’t that what we think deep down if we deny help to people in this situation?

It’s not just our government cutting back that matters.  What about each of us as individuals?  There is a line in a song “my Chinese take away would pay for someone’s drugs”  (medicines) – that is so true.   I know many people, quite a few now retired or close to retiring – university professors, doctors, professional engineers, teachers, civil servants – who have amassed significant amounts of money, own big houses, take expensive holidays.  Healthy pension funds and investments have secured a comfortable retirement – as our culture tells us that that is what we have to do.  

And yet this old lady has no such ‘essentials’.   She lives day to day in accommodation that we would not give space to in our garden, and is desperately grateful for a sack of rice and some cooking oil:

We in the ‘developed’ world are not deliberately evil, but we are ignorant.  We are ignorant of the life of the majority of the world.  We have money but are fearful of losing it.  We are taught to save for our rainy day, but we do that when so many others are already being flooded out by a deluge. 

It would be hypocritical of me to say we should sell all we have and give to the poor – although since Jesus said it, it is probably right.  But we can start to move in that direction.  It does not cause any discomfort if the total of our investments drop by (say) 10% when we still don’t think twice before having our Chinese takeaway – and yet I have found that joy comes from seeing the images of those who I have been able to help.  This person has something to eat because I chose to send some money.  That person can now put a tin sheet over the hole in the roof of their house because I chose to send some money.  When I  give, I feel no pain, only gain.  And yet it is still not ‘easy’ – still the pressures of sixty years of western capitalist propaganda take effort to resist.  It takes an act of will sometimes to give, but it is worth it.

Try it this Christmas?

May God bless us all.

On life, and death

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Have you reached the point yet of wondering what happens when you die?  Perhaps the current pandemic will prompt more of us to think about this important question.  It is important because of the impact that the answer has on us whilst we are alive.

There is an unspoken assumption behind all the current fears and actions that death is a bad thing; that we must do whatever we can to extend life – even if the extended life comprises sitting in an armchair in a care home gazing out the window or watching daytime TV.  I use the term ‘extend’ deliberately instead of the more common term ‘save’ because we are all destined to die;  rescuing someone from drowning does not ‘save’ their life, it extends it.  But to what purpose?

Actually, it may be that rescuing someone from drowning does ‘save’ their life, in that the experience may cause them to turn from a previous pointless and self-centred existence to a life of love and purpose.  The fact that someone cared about them enough to rescue them may make them realise the importance of relationships, the importance of selflessness, the importance of love.

People who have gone through near death experiences often become dramatically changed, dedicating the rest of their lives to acts of loving kindness to others.  So it is indeed possible to save someone’s life. But it is the quality, value and purpose of the life that is saved rather than the biological state of being alive for ever.

We confuse the biological life with what I will call spiritual life.  An amoeba has biological life, a tree has biological life, and so does a virus.  But none of these have spiritual life.  They do not ‘experience’ life, they have not brain to sustain any form of consciousness and they simply live biologically.  There may be other forms of higher life (apes, dolphins) that can ‘experience’ life; I don’t know because I’m not one of them.  But I do know that I experience life.  When I eat a curry I ‘experience’ a taste, but even that is hard to pin down.

If you Google “The Qualia Problem” you will find a paper by Frank Jackson which states that:

“I think that there are certain features of the bodily sensations especially, but also of certain perceptual experiences, which no amount of purely physical information includes. Tell me everything physical there is to tell about what is going on in a living brain, the kind of states, their functional role, their relation to what goes on at other times and in other brains, and so on and so forth, and be I as clever as can be in fitting it all together, you won’t have told me about the hurtfulness of pains, the itchiness of itches, pangs of jealousy, or about the characteristic experience of tasting a lemon, smelling a rose, hearing a loud noise or seeing the sky.”

But whatever it means for me to experience the taste of the curry, I know that there is a ‘me’ to experience it.  It is that ‘me’, not the biological me which I long to preserve, whose ‘life’ I want to save.  And so the big question is, does that ‘me’, that spiritual me, cease to be when my physical body ceases to be?

If the spiritual ‘me’ will end when the biological me ends, there will be no ‘me’ to experience that I am dead.  Do not grieve for me, I will no longer exist.

Of course I will remain in your memory, and you will look back on your memories with joy and sadness – as with all memories.  They are not erased simply because I die; they are as real as they are today while I live.   But if extending my life gives me no ‘spiritual’ life at all, then any new memories will bring sadness in remembering my final days.  So what will be the value of extending my biological life when I have no spiritual life?  The preservation of my decaying body simply to avoid biological death will bring sadness to overshadow previous memories, and will in practice bring mourning forward before my death.

This may sound heartless, particularly if you have not yet lost your parents or other loved ones.  But before you condemn me, I have suffered loss.  I have lost a child, at birth.  I have lost both of my parents.  And I know the pain that the pointlessness of the latter days of their lives brought them.  My father knowing he had to suffer the pain of prostate cancer with no hope of end other than death; my mother wondering when the pointlessness would end, her daily routine seeing her sitting on her bed gazing out at the suburban street for hours.  I grieved over them all when they died, and the grief is still there of course, many years later, just less acute.

I am not heartless.  No.  I want to see people truly, spiritually ‘live’ whilst they have biological life.

But what if the spiritual ‘me’ continues to exist beyond death?  What if my purpose is indeed eternal?  And how can I know?

The crew of early sailing ships believed that there were other lands over the horizon.  Europeans believed that there must be a large land mass south of the equator before they found it.  And brave adventurous souls set off to find it.  Some came back and told others that it was true, and soon constant travel to and fro confirmed it.  That made it easy for those who had not been there to ‘know’ that Australia existed.

But it’s not quite the same with life beyond biological death.  Our bodies cease to function and eventually the flesh rots and we are left with a skeleton.  We don’t find dead people returning to re-inhabit their skeletons; there is no free travel between here and any ‘afterlife’.  At least, not that we are aware of.

Imagine for a moment a caterpillar.  It has a physical body, it eats and excretes, it moves around and (pretending for a moment that it has the capability) experiences the physical domain of the leaf.  And then, after it has grown and fattened up, it appears to die.  It becomes encased in a shell and the caterpillar’s physical form decays.  But it is still alive, rather than being dead, it is being transformed into something different.  The butterfly that emerges from the cocoon bears no resemblance to the caterpillar, and is not even constrained to living on the leaf.  A thing of beauty, it soars into the air and is a delight to see.  Yet it cannot return and tell the caterpillars who remain on the leaf that there is life beyond the cocoon.  Neither should we expect human spirits return to tell us what happens beyond biological death.

And yet… one did return.  No ordinary man, but a man who had turned the lives of those he met upside down;  A man who taught the secrets of true spiritual life to those who would listen – yet more than a great teacher;  A man who healed those who were physically ill by the touch of his hand, yet more than a great doctor;  A man who brought biological life back into a friend’s physical body after they had been buried in a tomb for three days;  A man who willingly surrendered his body to excruciating crucifixion and inevitable physical death and burial in a tomb.

Two days later, his tomb was empty.  Although his friends and more importantly his enemies searched everywhere for it, no body was to be found, just some folded grave clothes.  His enemies were desperate to find the body to disprove the claims of his closest friends that he was alive; that they had seen him, spoken with him, and touched him.

Madness we say – they must have imagined it.  And yet such a madness that they were willing to die rather than deny it.  Such a madness that they were filled with joy, and their lives were transformed;  freed from the greed and selfishness of their world – sharing all they had with one another, loving one another.  Such a madness that they began to understand the secrets their friend had taught them about what a true spiritual life looks like.  Such a madness that brought ‘life in abundance’, not just for them but for all who listened to their eye witness accounts and trusted and believed them.  A madness that has affected millions upon millions over the past 2000 years.

Our decision of what we believe happens when our bodies physically die has enormous impact on our lives whilst our physical bodies live. Do we trust in the eyewitness accounts of what happened to that man, and hope and expect  that spiritual life is not snuffed out with our decaying bodies?   Do we choose to believe that our spiritual selves will live on, no longer constrained to the two dimensional leaf of this world but soaring into the sky of eternity; that we will be transformed from caterpillars to butterflies.  Do we start putting into practice the words of wisdom that bring spiritual life today?

Madness?  Or the sanest decision that we ever make?  Do we trust or ignore the evidence?  Do we dare to find out?

Liberating repentance – Acts 10; 34-43

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I’m going to draw out from Acts 10; 34-43 what makes the Gospel transformational, and suggest how we can engage it more fully.

The short speech by Peter was made after he’d been summoned to meet a Roman centurion.  Peter willingly went to meet him after having had a vision where Peter was being told to eat food that Jews considered unclean.  In the vision he was told “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”

Peter is describing what he learnt from the event, and it efficiently describes why  I am a Christian.

First of all Peter declares “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.”  In short, God loves you and me equally to the Jews.  We are ALL allowed to share in the life giving message of the good news of Christ.

Peter then describes that he personally was witness to the facts that:

  • John baptised Jesus, at which point God anointed Jesus with the Holy Spirit
  • Jesus went around doing good and healing people
  • Jesus was crucified
  • Jesus was raised to life on the third day, and appeared to those selected to be his witnesses
  • Jesus told them to preach that He is the one who will judge the living and the dead
  • And finally that everyone who believes in Jesus will have their sins forgiven

The first four points bear witness to who Jesus was.  But I want to focus on the last two points. That Jesus will judge the living and the dead, and that everyone who believes will have their sins forgiven.

If we are honest, we’d rather not be judged at all.  Perhaps we are living quiet lives, keeping our head below the parapet.  We come to church on Sunday and we just want to be left alone until we die when we hope to go to heaven.

If we are to be judged, we don’t want our neighbours or friends judging us.  And when we see what the Tabloids say about people, we certainly don’t want society to judge us.

We probably get angry at anyone who dares to criticise us – “who are they to judge?  They’re no better than me! Hypocrites!”

What about Jesus judging us?

Jesus – the human incarnation of infinite goodness.

The one who gave every moment of his life to heal, teach and serve.

The one who allowed himself to be sacrificed by crucifixion, and still forgave those who nailed him to the cross.

Jesus.  We can’t be angry with Him – he’s certainly no hypocrite.  We can probably accept that he has the right to judge us, but maybe we are still not happy with the idea.

Deep down we know that if Jesus were to judge us he would see SUCH shortcomings in our lives.

  • Our petty grievances with our neighbours, with our fellow Christians
  • Our contentment to live in comfort whilst we know that there are others who have nothing
  • Our consumerism, looking for the cheapest product that then keeps the poorest in poverty and makes those in work put in more hours at lower pay than they can manage
  • Our readiness to get in our car to go anywhere, to take cheap overseas holidays, to travel on a whim, leading to overheating of our planet and the mass extinction of so many species

And that’s before we get to more obvious ‘sins’…

And yet we probably don’t ‘feel’ like sinners.

When I was on the cusp of becoming a Christian I had been told that I needed to ‘pray the sinner’s prayer’.  This is what I wrote in my journal:

I sit down – I’m not ready for kneeling yet – and start to read the prayer…

 “Dear lord I have sinned…”

 The trouble is…I don’t feel like a sinner.  Yes, I know that I could be a lot better than I am, but I just don’t feel it at the moment.  So I start to pray that God will help me to make the step from logic to feeling.  At least I try to do what I think praying is ….  I wonder if I’m doing it right.

I didn’t ‘feel’ like a sinner – but I recognised that I needed to.

If we don’t ‘feel’ our sin, then we need help.  We can pray, like I did, for God to help us make the step from logic to feeling.

A little later in my journal I wrote:

My daughter had organised her own birthday party, with half a dozen friends coming round for a ‘scary party’.  It was impressive to see them all dressed up as witches and devils (and a cat!?).  However, for some reason I was rather grumpy.  I didn’t get into the party spirit and got rather short with all the mess, and split drinks and so on.  I wasn’t very sympathetic when my daughter got upset that no-one was listening to her, and tried to explain that they couldn’t help it if they got distracted.  At the end of it I felt that I had let her down.  I don’t know if she noticed particularly, since it was rather a busy affair, but that was how I felt.  I felt like a sinner.  Was someone trying to tell me something?

But if we can ‘feel’ our sin, if we can let the Holy Spirit show us our shortcomings then we will surely fear his judgement.  That is in part what it means to fear God.

And recognising our sin is the start of healing.  When recognise what we are, when we see through our masks of self-justification, and we don’t like what we see!  We want to be different, we want to change.  That is what repentance is – honest assessment followed by determination to change.

I recently watched a TED talk by Eve Ensler, and activist for women.  She was talking on the profound power of an authentic apology.  She describes how her father abused her, but that he’d never apologised – never repented.  She describes the process of repentance.  In her words:

Apology is a sacred commitment. It requires complete honesty. It demands deep self-interrogation and time. It cannot be rushed. I discovered an apology has four steps, and, if you would, I’d like to take you through them. 

 The first is you have to say what, in detail, you did. Your accounting cannot be vague. “I’m sorry if I hurt you” or “I’m sorry if I sexually abused you” doesn’t cut it. You have to say what actually happened. “I came into the room in the middle of the night, and I pulled your underpants down.” “I belittled you because I was jealous of you and I wanted you to feel less.” The liberation is in the details. An apology is a remembering. It connects the past with the present. It says that what occurred actually did occur. 

 The second step is you have to ask yourself why. Survivors are haunted by the why. Why? Why would my father want to sexually abuse his eldest daughter? Why would he take my head and smash it against a wall? …..  My father had to live up to this impossible ideal, and so he was never allowed to be himself. He was never allowed to express tenderness or vulnerability, curiosity, doubt. He was never allowed to cry. And so he was forced to push all those feelings underground…

 Those suppressed feelings later became Shadowman, and he was out of control, and he eventually unleashed his torrent on me. 

 The third step is you have to open your heart and feel what your victim felt …. You have to let your heart break. You have to feel the horror and betrayal and the long-term impacts of your action on your victim. You have to sit with the suffering you have caused. 

 And, of course, the fourth step is taking responsibility for what you have done and making amends. 

 So, why would anyone want to go through such a gruelling and humbling process? Why would you want to rip yourself open? Because it is the only thing that will set yourself free.”

This is SO important.  This is what Jesus is talking about when he says “Repent of your sins and turn to God”

When we repent we still feel the guilt of our past mistakes.  I still feel angst thinking about that party.  And this is where the final point is Paul’s speech brings such freedom:

“Anyone who believes in Jesus will have their sins forgiven.”

Perhaps this seems a little unfair – what about someone who doesn’t ‘believe in Jesus’.  Are they not forgiven?  Well clearly they will not be able to believe that they are forgiven.  We have to believe that Jesus has the authority to forgive our sins in order to accept that forgiveness.

Maybe it’s actually more serious if we claim to believe in Jesus. We know the theory, but have we really repented?  Do we really know that freedom that we are forgiven?  How can we tell?

I actually found the TED talk above when I was looking for a quote about activism:

“An activist is someone who cannot help but fight for something.  That person is not usually motivated by the need for power, or money or fame.  But in fact is driven slightly mad by some injustice, some cruelty, some unfairness, so much so that he or she is compelled by some internal moral engine to make it better.”

So my question is, are we activists for Christ?  Have we repented and turned to God with such deep honesty that we “cannot help but fight for Him”, such that we are “compelled by some internal moral engine to make it better”

And if not, it’s time we did something about it.

Let’s pray that God shows us our sin, that we can understand why we do it, that we can feel what our ‘victims’ feel, that we take responsibility for it and that we commit to making amends.

That is the only thing that will set us free.

(Delivered as a sermon – January 2020)

How should we respond to climate change? – A Christian perspective

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The earth’s climate has seen dramatic change. Four and a half billion years ago, the earth was formed.  Its atmosphere had massively high levels of carbon dioxide, and there was very little oxygen.  Miraculously, life originated in this extremely hostile environment, and for the next one and a half billion years or so the cyanobacteria began cleaning up the atmosphere and enriching it with oxygen and allowing the formation of the protective ozone layer.

Over the next two billion years the beautifully designed process of evolution took those earliest forms of life and developed them into the staggering array of life that we take so readily for granted today.   Darwin hinted at the beauty of the process in the final paragraph of his book “the origin of species” when he wrote “There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

So it is clear that man-made climate change will not destroy the planet, nor will it extinguish life.  But it will disrupt the extremely finely balanced ecosystem that sustains the human race.  That disruption will enlarge areas of local extinction of humans (desert regions), and in the extreme the whole planet could become unsuitable for human life.  Whilst wealthy countries are able to create local ‘microclimates’ with technology, for example air conditioning, people sentenced to live in the ‘natural’ local climate will inevitably suffer and may face extinction.  We already see an increase in suffering from natural disasters such as the cyclone Idai, and other increasingly destructive climactic events.

Greater parts of the world will become uninhabitable not just for humans, but for the cornucopia of other species who thrive in the environment that spawned us.  New species will emerge, but many of our present ‘friends’ will disappear.

The first book of the Bible describes how we were given the world to look after.  It is clear from the description above that if we don’t look after it then it will not be taken away from us, but we will be taken away from it.  This is reminiscent of the description of Adam and Eve being taken away from the Garden of Eden: the garden still thrives, but they were no longer in it.

God allows us to do things that harm us.  He doesn’t want us to, but he allows it.  Such action is called sin.  The basis of the Old Testament law was that God gave us rules that would bring us wellbeing, but our selfishness leads us to choose ways that harm ourselves and others.  Greed, lust, envy, and all the ‘sins’ damage both us and our neighbour.  Climate change is damaging to us and to our neighbour, and so the actions that leads to climate change are ‘sin’.  God permits us to damage the planet that sustains us, but it is not His will.  And disobeying the will of God is sin.  It is not good for us to do it!

There is not space here to fully discuss how we, through our actions are hurting God themselves, but we might empathise by imagining how we would feel if after giving a loved one a beautiful gift – perhaps a bunch of flowers,  we see them slowly trashing it, picking off one petal at a time.

So, how should we, as Christians, respond to the challenge of climate change?

First of all, we must recognise that it is real! (see for instance https://climate.nasa.gov/effects/)

Climate change is not the sin, but the consequence of our sin.  We need to reflect on what sins are the root cause of climate change.  Greed, selfishness, gluttony, envy will be high on our list, but a thorough examination of our lifestyle (in the context of and comparison with the other seven and a half billion people on the plant) must bring insight.

We then need to ‘repent of our sins and turn to God’.  There is surely enough evidence that we know that we are sinning, but we need to let the evidence sink into our hearts and truly convict us before we can honestly repent.  Until we reach that state then we might feel a little guilty but we will not have the power that comes from true repentance.  We need to be so convicted that we get on our knees, confess, and ask for forgiveness.

We must work with God to eliminate our sinful behaviour. We will need to be bold, counter-cultural and outrageously attractive in our approach.  We are Christ’s representatives, and our response has to mirror his character. And we must encourage our brothers and sisters to do the same.  Not only must we turn from our damaging practices, but we must do our utmost to relieve the suffering of those whose homes and livelihoods are ruined by the changing climate.  A radical change in our lifestyle must include loosening our grip on our wallets.

For example, we need to ask ourselves why we need to go to America, or China, or Australia for our holidays, for a speaking engagement, or for work.  99% of the world’s population cannot afford these luxuries – and yet many are closer to God than we are.  http://www.globalrichlist.com/

We have to challenge every decision of where we spend our money.  Should we always buy the cheapest, or should our buying decisions be made to minimise planetary damage?

We can make reparation for the damage caused by our personal sin.  We can ‘offset’ our carbon emissions, for example “Climate Stewards helps you to offset unavoidable carbon emissions by supporting community forestry, water filter and cookstove projects in the developing world”.  Some are beginning to do this for holidays or the odd long haul flight, but that is surely just lip-service.  Should we not examine our carbon emissions over our lifetime and offset them?  (see https://www.climatestewards.org/) At only £20 a tonne, many of us are in the privileged financial position to be able to do that.  There is real potential for tree planting projects to ‘buy some time’: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/planting-trees-could-buy-more-time-fight-climate-change-thought.  And churches can do the same, committing to offset past energy usage and adding carbon offset as a statutory spend each year.  It is much easier if we all make the commitment together.  Leadership from our Bishops can help here.

Those of us who live comfortably in brick houses in rural England can send financial assistance to those whose pole and dagga houses are swept away by floods or typhoon. (see https://www.christianaid.org.uk/emergencies/south-asia-floods-appeal)   As James says:  “Suppose you see a brother or sister who has no food or clothing, and you say, ‘Good-bye and have a good day; stay warm and eat well’—but then you don’t give that person any food or clothing. What good does that do?  So you see, faith by itself isn’t enough. Unless it produces good deeds, it is dead and useless.”  Communication is so good that we see our ‘brother or sister who has no food or clothing’ daily on our TV’s or computer screens.

We will of course fail to live up to our aspirations, but we can try. And when we fail, God’s grace will free us to try again.

And finally a thought about our legacy.  The younger generation are worried.  Environmental issues are at the top of their concerns.  And the younger generation tend not to know Christ.  We have a wonderful opportunity to bring them hope, both for a world to live in and from a God who loves them.  That is a far better legacy than bequeathing a scorching earth that is hardly able to sustain human life.

Let us be at the forefront of change, not dragging our feet but leading the way to a sustainable future.