Jesus Course

There always seems to me to be two stories going on at the same time in the nativity story. There is the one where lots of spectacular things happen – angels appearing and wise men following stars and prophecies being fulfilled etc.

But then there is the simple ordinary story that no one would bother with normally. The story of a young woman from nowhere who is pregnant before she gets married (big deal); travelling to a place for registration because the government wants to tax them (that’s a new story, a government wanting to tax people – boring); she then has her child in a stable (slightly more interesting but not much (how many funny stories are there of children born in strange places – I heard of a better one the other day with a baby born in a toilet!).

Yet, its the thing that brings these two stories together that counts. The baby.

The baby is the one who the angels sing about and prophets write about and yet its the baby who is born in a very boring way. It’s this baby who comes to change the dull and ordinary into something wonderful and meaningful.

So although we may be very ordinary people with nothing remarkable in our own story that doesn’t matter because God is born into just the kind of life that we live. No great armies or palaces or record deals or Simon Cowel, etc just ordinary parents in a boring place. Yet this is the same one that the angels sing about. This is the life that changes the world.

I am grateful every day that it was into a life just like mine that God chose to be born into. This is what makes it the greatest story ever told.

Thoughts Christmas, Jesus, jesus christ

Oh dear (yet again). It’s time to pack away the emergency rations and un-board the house. It’s time to say sorry to the boss for the things that were said on the understanding that we wouldn’t be coming in to work on Monday. Only kidding of course. But I’m sure like many people you were not surprised when the predicted end of the world never came.

Now, I’m all for the end of the world myself and one day it will surely come but God didn’t write the date for it into the sub-text of the Bible. Sadly too many Christians (past and present) have been sucked in to believing that there is something hidden in the text of the Bible that just needs a little calculation and all will be revealed. In some ways it would be good if this were true but in my experience and from what I know of the Bible it isn’t.

If the people who ‘found’ these secrets just let us all know they had and then we all ignored it things would be fine. Unfortunately, there are many people who get sucked in by the charisma or seeming authority of the people in question and then the trouble starts. Of course this isn’t something that is limited to religion and there are plenty of times in history that people have supported political nutters. In fact I have to say that in every election I’ve witnessed countless people get suckered by the politicians on offer (quite often these politicians get elected in this way) – but that is a subject for a different kind of blog I think (I’m not anti-politics by the way, just anti political salesmanship).

You will not find any predictions of the end of the world on this web site. I’m afraid Jesus just never told us when the world would end and so we are stuck having to live each day as if Jesus were going to return tomorrow – not a bad way to live anyway.

Thoughts armegedon, end of the world, jesus returns

I’m sorry for being away from my blog for so long. Circumstances have been changing with me at a quick pace and I hope they are now settling down. To cut a very long story short I have returned to full time Methodist Ministry.

I hope to get back to more regular blogging now.

It’s hard to explain to people with little or no faith why Christians get so convinced about some things – for instance feeling ‘called by God’ to ministry in the church – to say it is a feeling does not do justice to it.

One of my favourite stories is the story of the emporers new clothes. You probably know it well yourself and hopefully understand it’s message. Sometimes we can be blinded to the truth because of our desire to be a part of the crowd; or sometimes it is hard to see something because we refuse to look. What I’m trying to say (and it’s probably not really working here) is that sometimes it hard to see something because you don’t look in the right ways. When I look at things through my eyes of faith in Jesus life looks very different – to me it is an opening of the eyes to see the truth but I appreciate that some will claim it is the reverse. I guess its up to each of us to decide for ourselves whether we are closing our eyes to the truth or not.

However, surely the only way to be is to open your eyes to the possibilities and not to be swayed by the opinon of others – not just to follow everyone else’s opnion but to see for yourself. It was my choice to look for myself and not to follow what all my friends were telling me that led me to faith in Jesus. Where will your exploring lead you?

Thoughts believing is seeing, faith, seeing is believing

I’ve been alarmed recently by the story of a Pastor in the U.S.A. who is planning to burn copies of the Koran on the anniversary of the terrorist attacks on New York (aka 9/11). I believe such an action is just plain wrong and I want to distance myself as a Christian, and an ordained minister, from this and condemn his actions.

I can’t believe that Jesus would want this to happen. I admit that Jesus didn’t hold back from speaking out about hypocrisy and wrong thinking but I am sure he would not go so far as to burn someone else’s holy book. This is just the kind of thinking that has given the Christian church a bad name in the past and I’m sure this will push more people away from Christianity than it will draw them in.

I do disagree with Muslims over their interpretation of who Jesus is. I also disagree over what we must do to build a good relationship with God. I disagree with them on many things. But this is not and never can be an excuse to burn their Holy Book.

Pastor Jones – you are wrong to plan to do this and I appeal to you to put the love of Jesus and his care for people above your desire to make a point and so please stop your plan. Don’t lower yourself to the same level as those who use terror to try and force their opinion on others. God has never approved of this approach and those who take it will someday have to answer for what they have done. Leave that judgment up to God. You are not helping Jesus by doing this.

Thoughts

I don’t usually like to write on subjects concerning science and religion but with Stephen Hawking’s new book coming out and all the press hype around it I thought I’d post something.

It is a complex subject and Stephen is obviously a brilliant man but brilliant men are not immune from coming to bad conclusions. In an article about Stephen Hawking’s previous work Dr Schaefer describes why he doesn’t always agree with Stephen Hawking’s. You can read it here … (Part 2 is here…)

I found it interesting to note that Stephen Hawking’s mother was a  Communist – this is only significant in that Communism has a very anti-religion and atheist emphasis  – and his boyhood hero was Bertrand Russel (a very aggressive atheist philosopher). Like all of us Stephen Hawkings does not come from a neutral position and this can be clearly seen in his writings.

Let me just quote the description of the many other brilliant scientists who don’t agree with Stephen Hawking’s conclusions about creation and God.

Does everyone agree with Stephen Hawking’s opinion on these matters? The answer is no. Alan Lightman, a MIT professor, said in his book Origins: The Lives and Worlds of Modern Cosmologists (Harvard University Press, 1990), “Contrary to popular myths, scientists appear to have the same range of attitudes about religious matters as does the general public.”

This fact can be established either from anecdote or from statistical data. Sigma Xi, the scientific honorary society, ran a large poll a few years ago which showed that, on any given Sunday, around 46 percent of all Ph.D. scientists are in church; for the general population the figure is 47 percent. So, whatever influences people in their beliefs about God, it doesn’t appear to have much to do with having a Ph.D. in science.

There are many prominent counter-examples to Stephen Hawking. One is a colleague of mine at Berkeley for 18 years, Charlie Townes. Townes won the Nobel Prize for discovering the maser. One statement he made differs greatly from Hawking’s view; he said, “In my view, the question of origin seems to be left unanswered if we explore from a scientific view alone. Thus, I believe there is a need for some religious or metaphysical explanation. I believe in the concept of God and in His existence.”

Arthur Schawlow is another Nobel Prize winner, a professor at Stanford who identifies himself as a Christian. He states, “We are fortunate to have the Bible and especially the New Testament which tells us so much about God in widely accessible human terms.”

The other Cambridge professor of theoretical physics for much of Hawking’s career was John Polkinghorn, a nuclear physicist. He left his chair of theoretical physics at Cambridge in 1979 and went to seminary to become a minister. Upon completing that, he had a parish church for awhile and now has recently come back to be the President of Queen’s College at Cambridge. He states, “I take God very seriously indeed. I am a Christian believer and I believe that God exists and has made Himself known in human terms in Jesus Christ.”

Probably the world’s greatest observational cosmologist is Allan Sandage. Sandage works in Pasadena, California at the Carnegie Observatories. In 1991, he received a prize given by the Swedish academy that is given every six years in physics for cosmology and is worth the same amount of money as the Nobel prize (there is not a Nobel Prize given for cosmology). Sandage has even been called “the grand old man of cosmology” by the New York Times.

At the age of 50, Sandage became a Christian. He states in Lightman’s book, Origins: The Lives and Worlds of Modern Cosmologists, “The nature of God is not to be found within any part of the findings of science. For that, one must turn to the Scriptures.” When asked the famous question regarding whether it’s possible to be a scientist and a Christian, Sandage replies, “Yes. The world is too complicated in all its parts and interconnections to be due to chance alone. I am convinced that the existence of life with all its order in each of its organisms is simply too well put together.”

One of the persons closest to Stephen Hawking, whom you know if you’ve seen the movie about A Brief History of Time, is Donald Page. Page has had an excellent physics career in his own right, but he started to become famous as a post-doctoral fellow with Stephen Hawking. The Hawkings were not financially well-off in the years prior to his book and needed some help to keep going. So the post-doctoral fellows would come to live with the Hawkings. Donald Page did this for three years.

Page described these years in the book (the book about the film about the book!). He said, “I would usually get up around 7:15 or 7:30, take a shower, read in my Bible and pray. Then I would go down and get Stephen up. After breakfast, I would often tell him what I’d been reading in the Bible, hoping that this would eventually have some influence. I remember telling Stephen one story about how Jesus had seen the deranged man and how this man had these demons and the demons had been sent into a herd of swine. The swine then plunged over the edge of the cliff and into the sea. Stephen piped up and said, ‘Well, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals would not like that story, would they?’”

Page stated, “I am a conservative Christian in the sense of pretty much taking the Bible seriously for what it says. Of course I know that certain parts are not intended to be read literally, so I am not precisely a literalist but I try to believe in the meaning, I think, it is intended to have.”

And then from Stephen Hawking’s equally brilliant wife (herself a devout Christian):

Jane Hawking has commented on this aspect of her husband’s work. “Stephen has the feelings that because everything is reduced to a rational, mathematical formula, that must be the truth,” Jane explained. “He is delving into realms that really do matter to thinking people and, in a way, that can have a very disturbing effect on people-and he’s not competent.”

From what I have read so far (in the press) Hawking’s conclusions are still just personal opinion but because he writes in a very accessible and interesting way people will believe that his conclusions are based on hard evidence. Of course there is always the question  – that it seems to me Hawking’s likes to avoid with some clever mind games  – of what was before and where did these laws of physics come from?

Thoughts creation, god, hawkings

I was at an event the other day where I met a man with an interesting story. He told me how Jesus had saved his life. I won’t mention any names here or even where I met the man because I wouldn’t want to embarrass him if he reads this.

But here was a young man who was living the kind of life that many young men live. However, things went wrong and he allowed alcohol to take over and run things. His life was a mess and getting worse.

It was then that he decided to go to church and there he encountered Jesus. He has now put his life on track. He has a part time job and has an active role in the church he goes to. He openly acknowledges that it has been Jesus working through the lives of Christians that has literally ‘saved his life’.

Jesus christians, church, Jesus, saved

Sin isn’t a popular idea these days, but then I wonder if it ever was? I’ve heard it described as an outdated idea based on the assumption that the gods only helped us if we were good to them. I see what such an argument is based on but it always seems to me to be the kind of argument you might make to cover up the fact that you are doing something you know is wrong. I have tried living with the idea that there is no such thing as sin – that it is just a matter of choice but then some choices I made caused problems and I could see that they were wrong – sometimes they hurt others and this made it worse. I think we are kidding ourselves if we think that there is no such thing as sin.

Perhaps it would be wise to try and define what sin is here. I think sin is when we do something that is wrong – intentional or unintentional. In particular sin is when we do something that is wrong in God’s eyes. I’m not going to enter the discussion about the existence of God or what law is here – my blog entries would get even longer if I tried to take every argument through it’s full range of discussion. I’m assuming God exists.

Now I could complain that God is wrong to think certain things are sin but ultimately it is up to God to decide what is right or wrong. If God is the ultimate being then I must concede that he knows better than I do.

So there are clever tricks of the mind that might let me off the hook (philosophically speaking) but somehow that doesn’t stop the fact that I know deep down that some things are just plain wrong and I shouldn’t do them. To deny this is just to deny the obvious and kid yourself that something is not wrong for the sake of trying to get a good nights sleep.

But Jesus wanted to talk more about forgiveness than sin. The message that Jesus brought was one of the loving forgiveness (Christians like to use the word grace here) of God.

The way to deal with sin is not to ignore it in the hopes somehow it will go away, or to deny it’s existence in an attempt to reason it away, or to make jokes about it in the hopes that laughing will somehow mean it doesn’t matter, but it’s to accept God’s solution in Jesus Christ.

“Your sins are forgiven” – Jesus

Thoughts forgivness, sin

Every 10 years in a Bavarian town in Germany a Passion Play is acted out. The tradition began when in 1635 the inhabitants of Oberammergau (then a village) made a vow to God that they would stage the play every decade after the town was spared from the plague.  Almost 2000 people are involved in the production (around half the population of the village) and it has gained worldwide recognition.

This year the play has been shaken by the Roman Catholics abuse scandal. Despite this the play will continue because it is not about the church but it is about Jesus Christ.

The church has, once again, shown itself to be a fallible human institution and despite not being Roman Catholic myself I still feel some of the shame of on organisation that is supposed to stand up for children and yet allowed such terrible things to go on. There is much that the church can be proud of in its service to those that others neglect but no amount of good works can nullify the pain that has been caused. I pray that God will forgive us all for this and we must ensure that this cannot happen again.

Anyway, the play goes on and the message of Jesus remains. The followers of Jesus make no pretense that they make a good job of following Christ (at least the honest ones don’t) but that won’t stop us trying.

News jesus christ, oberammergau

In a letter on the KansasCity.com web site Billy Graham, the international, and well respected, evangelist explains why he believes Jesus is unique.

You can read what he said here …

This is always something that is hard to get across to people without sounding like we are being arrogant and closed minded, but Christians are left little room to think anything but that Jesus is unique.

Claiming that Jesus is unique should never be a reason to put down other people’s ideas. This isn’t a rallying call it is a simple statement of something that we Christians believe. I think this uniqueness of Christ is a challenge to us all.  If Christians are right in saying that Jesus is unique then we have to take what Jesus says very seriously indeed. Jesus isn’t just another good teacher who you can take on board alongside everyone else but instead is someone with a unique message about himself that challenges us to think differently.

Jesus jesus christ

There was yet another story in the UK press yesterday about a Christian bashing exercise that took place in a government department. There was a memo circulating with some comments (I guess they were put intended as a joke) where it was suggested the Pope on his visit to the UK should do various un-Catholic things. This didn’t come from the Government but from Civil Servants.

Now – I like a good joke as much as the next person and we all know how these things sometimes get out of hand at work but I think this does highlight a couple of problems.

1) Does this mean that the church is just seen as a bit of a joke by those who run the country?

2) Does this show that there is a general bias against the church among the UK’s civil servants?

I think the answer is probably yes to both, but that is just a feeling I get.

But then I wonder if the in fact the church has played it’s part in all this as much as anyone?

Christians haven’t always been good at practicing what they preach or at defending themselves when it was needed. The Catholic church has had a major issue with child abuse and it is hard to ask for moral respect in such circumstances. I’ve also recently heard of death threats made against a comedian who made jokes about Jesus Christ. I find such jokes very offensive but as far as I understand the teachings of Christ we should respond to this kind of thing by turning the other cheek.

Christians also are often very bad at explaining what they believe and end up resorting to churchy language that just sounds like Christians are creatures who have had their head in the sand for the last 200 years. There are very good defenses for the Christian faith that can be presented in a caring way and I am thankful for those who take the time to offer them. Sadly, when people are responded to with archaic Christian language they tend to see it as another reason for laughing at Christians rather than acknowledging a good response.

I also often hear Christians moaning about how people of other faiths get treated better – for instance if someone said the kinds of things about a Muslim leader that they did about the Pope there would be a public outcry – and I think that they are probably right in making this observation.

However, I wonder if Christians aren’t supposed to be treated differently. When we are insulted for what we believe we should be thankful for suffering like Jesus did, shouldn’t we? When we are struck on the cheek aren’t we supposed to offer the other one? When people make angry attacks at us aren’t we supposed to respond with love and forgiveness.

This isn’t the soft, easy option. This is the hard option. This doesn’t mean that we should just go around being happy that everyone is against us but that we don’t respond to things in the same way that everyone else does.

We are supposed to be different – aren’t we?

Thoughts christians, church, Jesus