Jesus Course

There are plenty of people who believe in God but some of them say that although they accept that God exists they don’t think it is possible to know anything about God. They might be willing to accept that there must be a creator but that we can’t know what that God is like.

Of course this belief can give a lot of comfort to people who want to believe that there is a God but still want to live and behave as though there isn’t one. It’s possible to admit that the evidence points to the existence of God but then by excluding any possibility of knowing anything about we can continue to live however we want to (without any supreme being interfering with things of course).

Unfortunately, in my view, this doesn’t really make a lot of sense.

For instance, why would God want to create such a magnificent Universe just to ignore it? If God did create everything and then decide not to take any notice of it we get a pretty bad picture of the way God is. Wouldn’t this also be a self defeating argument with a God who is all knowing but doesn’t want to know? All powerful but doesn’t ever do anything? Omnipresent but not wanting to be everywhere. One would have to wonder why such a God would want to bother creating in the first place?

Doesn’t the fact that God created give us an idea that God must, at least, be interested in his creation?

Christians, of course, believe that God is more than interested in his creation. That God is so interested that he chooses to reveal himself to his creation. That within the design and manufacture of the creation it is possible to discover things about God. But then Christians want to go even further and say that God is so concerned about his creation that he incarnated himself in the person of Jesus Christ. That to know God all we have to do is to know Jesus Christ.

Then we believe that God loves us so much that he would be willing to suffer and die for us and then to rise to life to show us hope for the future.

So far from it being impossible to know God it is in fact possible to know God as one might know a friend.

Thoughts jesus christ

It’s time for the release of the new British Social Attitudes Report which makes interesting reading. Of course it doesn’t really tell me anything that I didn’t already know or at least suspect. I guess this kind of report challenges the church to consider how much influence it actually exerts in modern Britain (in my experience most Clergy have an overinflated view of how much influence they think they have over society).

Whenever I am surprised by something the U.K. public says I remind myself that these are the same people who vote on the “X” factor (Britain’s Got Talent, etc) and then it all makes sense.

However, I’m not one of those who looks at such surveys and then feels sad (or even worse mad) at the way everyone is ignoring the teachings of Jesus. It’s not a vicious plot against the teachings of Jesus and everyone should be berated for ignoring them, instead I believe much of it is down to ignorance and lack of interest.

So the challenge to Christians is how do we get people interested? This is made especially hard when the majority in the U.K. have a pretty comfortable life (notice I didn’t say happy life because other research I’ve read suggests that people in the U.K. are less happy than many other people in underdeveloped countries). A comfortable life now seams to mean that people are less bothered about thinking about what life might be like after death (one of those things that makes people think about God).

Personally, I would love people to explore what they believe more. It is hard to get people to understand the importance of trying to understand who Jesus is but if what Jesus claims is true then Jesus is the single most important person to listen to. If what Jesus claims is true then the best education in the world is insignificant compared to listening to Jesus.

Thoughts

Plans are under way to stage a Passion play of the easter story in London’s Trafalgar square.

You can see the story here

News, Thoughts Jesus, Passion Play

Our thoughts and prayers are with the people of Haiti as they work hard to cope with the devastation caused by the recent earthquake.

I was watching the news on the T.V. this morning and I found it interesting to compare the news from Haiti to the more local U.K. news. In the U.K. we are currently thinking about the increase in accidents due to some icy weather and also how there are more pot holes in the roads than usual. I don’t want to devalue the problems faced by people in the U.K. but it really does seem insignificant compared to this earthquake.

We all have problems and they don’t go away just because someone else has a bigger problem, but then our problems shouldn’t stop us helping those who are in need.

I’ll be praying, as well, for those who are going to help the people of Haiti, both now and in the future.

Thoughts

Wisdom has always been highly prised. We even find a lot of talk about wisdom and being wise in the bible. Then in the stories just after Jesus is born we read about some Wise men who came to see Jesus. We don’t know how long the gap was between his birth and them turning up but we are encouraged to think about at this time of year (also known as Epiphany in the church calender).

Who do you think would be considered a wise person in todays world?

I think we tend to think of wise people as those people who know lots of stuff. We might consider University Professors or Scientists for instance to be the wise ones. Or then again we might think that wise people are those who gain the most in a material way – business leaders, entrepreneurs, etc.  Or what about those who can make a clever argument – philosophers or politicians, etc.

However, if you consider the wise to be those we take advice about life from then we might have to consider people like popular singers and film stars as being the wise in our world today (gulp). Or what about journalists – they are forever telling us what’s what?

I find that the list of people we tend to consider wise a bit disturbing and doesn’t fit with the bible’s idea of what a wise person is.

So what are the features of a wise person?

Here are some of the things that the book of proverbs tells us about wise people:

• they help others with good advice
• they cautious and like to think things through from all angles
• they seek knowledge and more wisdom
• value wisdom above money
• respond positively to correction
• control their anger
• keep peace
• avoid doing bad things
• welcome good advice

You see it’s not so much what they know but the way they apply it.

Elsewhere in the bible we are also told that the first step in being wise is to seek a good relationship with God.

So if you are looking for a wise person to help you with your life then I suggest you look elsewhere than the celebrity lists (not that it’s impossible for a celebrity to be wise).

Thoughts epiphany, new year, wisdom, wise men

I’m sure it will come as now surprise if I say that Jesus was probably not actually born on 25th December. There are various options for the actual date but one thing we are sure of is that it wasn’t 25th December. So why is this the day that we celebrate Jesus’ birth?

It could be that it is simply the date 9 months after the day Jesus was believed to have been conceived (March 25th). Or it was picked because it was 6 months from the date of Jesus’ death (which was believed to be significant for a prophet). It may just have been picked because it seemed to be a good day to celebrate. The earliest physical reference to the Christian celebration is dated to a 354AD (read about it in Wikipedia) where both Sol Invictus and Christian Christmas get their first mention. Of course both festivals would have been celebrated on that date before this but which one came first can never be proved.

Well in the U.K. this makes a lot of sense to us because our monarch (Queen Elizabeth II) has an official birthday and an actual birthday. The official birthday is the day when the country celebrates her birthday (we have a thing called Trooping the Colour) and then the Queen celebrates her real birthday with her family and friends.

When I was talking about this with my youngest son he pointed out that we all do the same. We have a real birthday and then an official birthday when we have a party. Sometimes the party is on the same day but more often it isn’t.

So 25th December is Jesus’ official birthday and the day we all join in celebrating it.

Now, some party poopers like to make something out of some of the ancient festivals that used to happen on the 25th December. Whilst it is true that 25th December was the Romans official date for the winter solstice (shortest day) it was only later (quite possibly after the time of Jesus) that it ever became the date for a festival (the celebration of the Sun god – Sol Invictus).  Later the followers of Mithras claimed the day for their own celebrations (Mithraism is notorious for jumping on popular ideas to gain a greater following – it died out of course) but the evidence really points to this happening after Christians were celebrating on that day. It’s true that nearly every western culture had a festival in mid-winter (Yule for instance) but this doesn’t mean that the Christian tradition of celebrating the official birthday of Jesus Christ has any less of a claim on the date.

The other old chestnut that is often roasted around this time of year surrounds the headlines of “Puritans ban Christmas” which isn’t – needless to say – the whole story. Then this tends to get twisted to the idea that Christians don’t really like Christmas anyway (Puritans = all Christians in the modern journalists mind). Christmas was seen as a Roman Catholic idea and so the Puritans (being fervent opponents of Roman Catholicism) wanted to call it Christ-tide (getting rid of the mass bit). They also banned various things that people used for the celebrations (including mince pies, etc). The celebration of Christmas was surrounded by 12 days of partying and drunkenness and they wanted to reform this. This was hugely unpopular – as you can imagine. So the Puritans didn’t ban Christmas at all they simply wanted to reform it – in some ways an admirable thing to try and do, and we do the same (encouraging people not to drink and drive for instance) but it seems to me the modern approach of encouraging people to act in a more responsible way rather than forcing them to do it is a better approach. Oh, and by the way I like mince pies.

So Christians haven’t stolen someone else’s idea for a celebration and we haven’t tried to ban Christmas in the past. This is just the day for our official celebrations of the birth of Christ.

A very merry Christmas to you all.

Thoughts

Just heard on the T.V. that in a survey of favourite carols for a couple of UK radio stations “O holy night” came out top. This was a bit of a surprise but my own guess is that people were voting on the tune rather than anything else.

I love a good Christmas carol myself and think they are an ideal way to celebrate the Christmas season. Carols are: uplifting, fun and they tell you something about the real Christmas story.

Personally, I’m not sure that “O holy night” qualifies as a carol (more of a Christmas song I would have thought).

Just in case you are interested, here is the top 5

1. O holy night

2. Silent Night

3. In the bleak mid-winter (to Darke’s tune).

4. Hark the herald!

5. In the bleak mid-winter (to Holst’s tune).

What is your favourite?

Thoughts Christmas

My youngest son just loves his torch. He has a quite a fancy torch that changes into something different with each click. The first click shows a red laser kind of light, the second click has an ultra-violet light, and the third is more like an ordinary church. About every 18 months or so I have to buy him a new one because he manages to break a wire or something. Of course the problem with a child and a torch with three different clicks – fourth turns it off – is that he is always leaving it switched on. So we have to ration the batteries.

Now the point of me telling you all this is that in the sermon on the mount, that we have been looking at lately, Jesus says that we should be light to the world.

If you let your batteries go flat then your light won’t shine.

I’m sure Jesus wasn’t thinking about batteries when he was talking about letting your light shine for others to see, but I think there is an important point to made here about following Jesus. Our light only shines because we follow Jesus. It has nothing to do with how clever we are or which church we go to or how important we may feel we are.  So a relationship with Jesus is what makes a light shine. Jesus is the battery that makes our torch work – if you’ll forgive the analogy. So to keep shining we need to work on building our relationship with Jesus.

A single light only shines bright when its really dark

If you turn on a light in a bright city then nobody will notice it. If you’ve been in a big city during the night you will have noticed that one thing you don’t lack is light – of course there are dark places but mostly there are lights. To get any idea of what Jesus was talking about when he described us as being lights we have to imagine ourselves away from cities or towns or villages and out into the dark countryside. If you have even been out in the hills when its dark and there is not even a moon to see by you will know what darkness is really like. Then if in that darkness you light one single, even weak, light you will see it. In fact you can see one small light for miles and miles if its really dark.

When its really dark even a small light burns brightly.

A city on a hill cannot be hidden

So Jesus says, and he is right. I like to walk in wilderness areas on in England there is one place that I really love, called Dartmoor. I’ve been on a few night walks on the moors and they can be pretty dark but when you get in view of a village or even a farm with its lights on it looks amazing. You can’t miss it because it is so bright.

Jesus compares Christians to such a light.

Light is supposed to help us see things by

Jesus wants Christians to be such a light to the world. Christians are supposed to make life easier to navigate. Of course this isn’t always the way things work and you might get the impression that some Christians are determined to make the world a very dark place. Light brings illumination. The light that Jesus brings is supposed to lead us out of ignorance and into truth and understanding, it’s supposed to lead us from the dark ages to light ages. Light is supposed to help us navigate through life.

Jesus offers such light and those who follow Jesus are supposed to bring that light with them.

So do you bring light to the world or darkness?

Thoughts light

Few people can escape from the problem of stress. We have always suffered with it but recently it seems to have been reaching pandemic proportions. Of course this may be just down to people being more willing to report it but I suspect we are at least discovering the real problem that it is.

To earn a crust I am a stress management consultant. I don’t force my faith on those battling with stress because I don’t think that is the thing to do. However I do mention faith in my talks as being an important part of stress therapy.

Research shows that people who go to church are far less likely to be stressed and far more likely to cope with stress than those who don’t.

I think there are lots of reasons for why this is so:

• Belief in a loving and supportive God
• Good relationships with others
• Positive attitude
• Times of meditation
• Singing

But for me the biggest reason for me is that Christians have Jesus. Being a follower of Jesus not only gives you a good view of life but it also gives you a good relationship with the creator. God can help even in the worst of circumstances – not always taking the problem away but sometimes just offering the strength to carry on.

Yes, Jesus does help reduce stress.

Thoughts stress

Although I haven’t watched the program (I’m in the UK and don’t follow the series anyway – perhaps my loss) I’ve had my Internet news feeds about Jesus dominated by the story of Larry David ‘urinating’ on Jesus painting in a ‘Curb your Enthusiasm’ episode.

From what I’ve read the event seems to have involved some splashed urine on a painting of Jesus that was then mistaken for tears. I think in some ways the idea was a clever one, although perhaps the idea could have been softened to avoid offense with someone washing their hands (perhaps there is something funny about urine that escapes me somewhat).

This is the kind of issue that constantly comes up in the UK with religion and religious characters (although Jesus and Christianity seems to be the main source for the fun) being the object of ridicule and innuendo on many TV comedy shows ).

So then we have the dilema. Do we laugh at it to show we are just the same as everyone else and can take a joke or do we make a stand to say actually this is really quite offensive?

Not just Christians, of course, see Jesus as a great religious figure and this is likely to be offensive to quite a large percentage of the worlds population.

There is always a fine line between using something for a joke and trying to squeeze some humour out of an offensive situation. There are certainly people who find any offensive remarks to be a great source of humour.

Personally I feel that with so many other things to laugh about (and I personally enjoy a good laugh) any humour that degrades other people is not right.

We already have some restrictions on free speech (and rightly so) where people are not free to say what they like about people of different races or genders. We don’t accept that it is ok to say anything you like about anybody (we don’t accept verbal bullying as being acceptable for instance). So at some point we want to draw the line. Personally I think we need to make sure we don’t draw the line so close that people are not free to express opinions – whatever they may be – as long as those opinions are not expressed in a way that is going to cause a riot. This is about the way opinions are expressed and not the opinion themselves.

So we come back to humour. Humour is not just about expressing opinion it is about the way it is done. People must be free to say Christians are wrong but not to piss on them (sorry for the language!).

I think this is a case of things going too far and perhaps we let too many comedians get away with too much – in the interests of free speech and being afraid we are going to be labeled as humourless killjoy spoilsports.

Perhaps comedians are sometimes themselves guilty of bullying others – how far is it from a good joke to bullying someone (those who have been bullied at school will tell you have most bullies use tactics to make others laugh at them).

Of course humour has been used in the past to make us laugh at: black people for being black, homosexuals for being homosexual, Jewish people for being Jewish, etc. And at the time we all collude with the claim that it’s just humour and people should loosen up and learn to laugh at themselves. I hope by now that we have come to see that humour can play a part in the way people view others. Of course it isn’t the cause of the problem but it certainly can contribute to making some pretty terrible things to happen. I hope by now that even those who hate Political Correctness would understand that some things are just too far.

I didn’t see the episode and we get worse in the UK but I want to make a plea for people not to degrade others (or their beliefs) whether in the name of a good joke – or otherwise.

Thoughts humour, jesus christ