Jesus Course

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 I’ve heard it described as an outdated idea based on the assumption that the gods only helped us if we were good to them.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

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

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