Chris Brown

My thoughts and prayers are with the family of murdered aid worker David Haines at the moment. When the reporters have moved on to the next story David’s family will be left to rebuild their lives. It is a disgusting and terrible thing that goes against everything that Christians (and Muslims, etc) believe in.

One of the things that has also upset me is how so many atheists have used this incident as another reason to bash religion. Not only is it crass and insensitive to use such an event to further one’s own ends, it is also a remarkably ignorant thing to do.

If there is no God and hence no meaning to life and no way of determining values (this is what atheists believe) then we have no right to be appalled at what anyone does to another person. According to the atheist world view we are nothing more than animals in a universe that has no purpose. In such a world view we have no right to be upset or appalled at anything.

However, I for one believe that this murder was an appalling act and that the murderers should be brought to justice. I believe this because I believe in God who brings meaning and value to life and who enables us to have objective values, the kind of objective value that gives me the right to be upset by what has happened. Without religion we have no reason to be upset.

Of course, I deplore those power mongers who use any philosophy or religion for their personal gain. Those who use violence on others to aid the propagation of any philosophy are wrong – but then I can say that because I believe in God.

When will atheists finally understand that they don’t have any right to be upset about anything and certainly no right to pass moral judgements, and that they should not use such a terrible tragedy to push their meaningless agenda.

Just watched an old video on you tube where Ricky Gervais talks about God and Jesus, you can see it here. I found it really sad – although some people seemed to like his jokes about God.

I found it sad for several reasons.

First, he seemed to think that being honest and interested in the truth was what atheists do, this is not my experience. If by truth we mean knowing what is actually out there then the atheist can make no more claim to truth than the believer. There are plenty of examples of the philosophical argument around the existence of God available and, despite what some dismissive atheists say, there is every reason to believe that God does exist. Here is a good place to read some of the arguments for the existence of God … My experience with atheists is that they don’t usually want to talk sensibly about truth but increasingly treat it all as a joke. Atheism is a step of faith just as much as belief in God and they really need to understand this.

Second, I was sad to hear that he became an atheist in an hour because of what is brother said whilst his mum had nothing to counter the argument. This is sad because so often atheists are given lots of reasons why it’s wrong to believe in God yet Christians never seem to have any reasons why you should believe in God. I often hear very sensible and learned Christians say that there is no point in trying to argue that God exists because we can’t win. This is very disturbing. In academic philosophy there are plenty who believe and argue the case for God (for instance Swimburne and Plantinga) – if it was not possible to win an argument then no philosopher would ever believe in God but many do. The same could be said for scientists, of course. I wonder if his mum had some of those arguments available maybe Ricky would not be an atheist today?

Third, like many atheists what he seems to want to attack is the dum side of religion (can’t think of a better phrase but hopefully you get what I mean). They attack things like biblical literalism (which actually very few Christians believe) and stifling religion – that is religion stops exploration and enjoyment of life (by this they usually mean those religious people who are nit picking about rules to follow or rather a whole list of things we are not allowed to do). I understand that there are things that are just plain right or wrong but there is an awful lot of so called Christian rules that don’t come from the bible and have no place in a Christians life. If the rules are also claimed to stop scientific exploration then this is simply not true – the church has always encouraged scientific exploration and indeed the first scientists were mainly people of faith. I can’t deny there have been some mistakes along the way but this is true of all philosophies and not just those with religious belief. Surely, claiming that just believing in God is a joke stifles free exploration after truth (something new atheists like Ricky are fond of doing). Please stop tilting at the straw men, it really helps no one.

Fourth, he said that as a child he really thought Jesus was wonderful. It seemed to me that he went off Jesus because he was made to feel he was being silly believing in God as a vulnerable child. His mother seemed to treat the subject like it was believing in father Christmas – just don’t talk about it. In our society there are plenty of people who want to bring this approach into our education system. It is about time that belief in God be defended academically – perhaps it should be part of the RE syllabus? but at the very least the right to believe should be heavily defended.

Throughout the interview Ricky suggested that he really would like to believe in God because it sounds such a wonderful idea – my prayer is that he finds someone who can help him with this.

Special revelation is the direct communication from God. It is different from general revelation which is more about clues that God has left in the actions he has taken e.g. creation. We learn something about God by observing God’s actions but sometimes God speaks directly. An example of this kind of thing might be prophecy. Of course the best example is the special revelation of Jesus where God becomes incarnate and lives as and among us, you can’t get more special than that.

So what about the bible, is that special revelation? This is where things get complicated. I believe in some sense it is special revelation in that it is inspired by God to be a communication from God. However, the bible is not dictated (at least that is what the vast majority of Christians believe) so most of it is not a special revelation in the sense of a direct communication from God. Much of the bible, indeed, seems to be general revelation in that it points out where and how God has been at work rather than being a direct communication of God’s words.

Hope this makes sense.

Yes, it’s that sad time of year for school children and their teachers when the summer is finally over and its time to get back to work. Of course, many of the teachers I know have spent a good part of their summer preparing for the new year.  I think it’s time to show a little appreciation for teachers and what they do. Most parents I know find it exhausting to look after a couple of children all day (fun as well of course) and really struggle if their children have friends around. Imagine having a room full and having to teach them something they don’t really want to learn.

There are times when teachers make mistakes, even the occasional bad teacher – I had a couple myself so know all about it. But its time we started appreciating teachers again and gave them respect. It really galls me when so many people who know nothing about how to teach think that they can tell teachers the best way to do everything – it must be much worse for teachers. I get the same problem as a minister but at least the government don’t keep sticking their nose in and messing things up – well not often anyway.

So hoorah for the teachers!

Today I’ve been thinking a little about general revelation. This is revelation in the sense that God has shown us something but it is general in the sense that it is generally available and not specific to any one religion or philosophy.

General revelation, for example, is that we can discover God’s existence and his desire for order and harmony by exploring nature. There is enough evidence within nature to prove that God exists. General revelation is the bedrock of natural theology and for the proofs for the existence of God (more of those at a later date). So it is possible, though exploration and logic, to discover things about God even if God had never given us any more than the world in which we live.

Atheists would dispute this of course, although I would want to maintain that they are wrong and the evidence is overwhelming, to deny such evidence is to choose to do so and so is another example of how atheists rely on faith more than anyone.

Sorry I’m about about to reveal something to you but instead want to explore the two senses of the word revelation.

Revelation in one sense has a very particular revealing of something unknown or hidden. This is what newspapers often call revelation. Within the Bible there is the occasional revelation – the book of revelation is full of this stuff. Something that we could not know if it was not revealed to us. However, this is not often shown in the Bible where there is something that we would only know if God specifically told it to us. We might find this in the prophets or the book of revelation for example.

The other sense of revelation is that of showing something, in other words just to show something or reveal something that isn’t a direct message but is simply made known. Much of the Bible should be seen in this way. General stuff that we could discover in other ways. For instance the gospels give us information that we widely available at the time they were written. They are not revelations in the first sense but they are revelations in the sense that they tell us something about Jesus.

It is important to see this distinction because we need to appreciate that not all revelation is of the first kind but also that the first kind if actually very limited.

One of my other responsibilities is to help promote evangelism in the District as the District Evangelism Task Group Enabler. One of the things that the District committed itself to was to employ an Evangelism Enabler. We deliberately chose the word evangelism to avoid any confusion over using the name mission – people understand evangelism better even if some get hung up on tele-evangelists they have known.

We had a meeting to support the DEE (District Evangelism Enabler) and something came out again about how depressed the church seems to be. Unfortunately we have talked so much about decline that we seem to have accepted it as an inevitable part of our work. The more depressed we become the less attractive our message is. The gospel is supposed to be good news but all we ever seem to talk about is the bad.

The news that God love us is surely enough. If our old churches are no longer working then lets concentrate on where God is choosing to work and then we will see God’s kingdom grow. I don’t believe that God has finished with church or that the way we have done church is wrong but shouldn’t we as Christians spend our time working where God wants us to, rather than moaning about where God used to work?

Let’s get positive about our faith, still the largest by far and growing faster world wide than ever. God’s good news is still good news!