Jesus Course

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

There is an advertising campaign run by atheists claiming that there is “probably no god” in the U.K. at the moment. I haven’t seen them myself but I believe that they exist.

Perhaps that is the nub of my problem. I can believe things without having to see them. Like I believe Australia and the Antarctic and India and Mount Everest all exist even though I have never seen them.

It seems to me that we have got so hung up on philosophy (and I like reading philosophy by the way) and the meaning of words and what truth is that we have missed out on some basic parts of life and how we actually know that something is true.

For instance it is possible to make an argument about colour and that we can’t really know that what one person sees as a colour is actually what another person sees. My blue may be red to you. We see the same thing, the same wavelengths etc but how do we know that we see the same colour?

It’s thinking like this that leads some to conclude that there is no god. If we can’t be certain about anything then we have to doubt everything and if we doubt everythng then we have to doubt that god exists, etc.

All very boring I know.

And yet I can turn to my youngest son and point out the beauty of a rainbow or the stars in the night sky and together we enjoy the experience. In some way we just know that we are sharing something together and finding pleasure in it. I can have a conversation with my wife and we end up concluding the same thing. I can watch Harry Hill on the T.V. and enjoy his humour.

There is a part of us that longs for certainty about everything but sometimes that search for certainty gets in the way of knowing and of truth.

Some scientists have tried to claim that they know the only and whole truth and yet ultimately what they claim is based on probabilities only. Science only works if the universe works to a pattern or rules but perhaps we have just made those rules up and in fact the universe is completely random. It is possible for people to see patterns where none exist.

In the end everything we know can only be known by faith.

So then we come back to the existence of god. “Probably”, injects an element of doubt but that doubt works both ways. To say there is probably no god is to say that there might be. If there is even a small chance that god exists then we need to be living as if god does exist. We should also be looking out for the evidence.

Of course I believe that the evidence for the existence of God is overwhelming and so it only takes a little faith on my part to believe in God. After concluding that God does exist I felt a great release and sense of peace about things. Since that time I have even met God, felt his presence. I could now no more deny the existence of God than I could deny the existence of my wife.

Philosophically I can only say God probably exists but in my heart I know He does. Philosophy is great fun but it’s rubbish for working life out.

Thoughts christian, faith, god, Jesus, religion