Christmas, flags, identity and leadership

We hear it every Christmas time but hope and history won't rhyme

Peace on earth

Those words were written by U2 in response, as far as I understand, to the Omagh bomb in 1998. They were a recognition that in the midst of a fragile peace process, violence and prejudice were never far away. Fourteen years on, at Christmas time, we seem to be witnessing once again the failure of hope and history to rhyme with each other. 

What is it that we are really witnessing this week, I wonder? I have had discussions about the protests and violence of this week with friends online and in the flesh. I have heard endless radio phone in shows trying to find out what is really going on out there. I have been told that it is a lack of leadership, and yet every politician I have heard claims to be exercising real leadership. I have been told that it is a crisis of identity and yet nobody could possibly miss the fact that the protestors on our streets very strongly identify themselves  as British. I have been told that the church has to take some responsibility for walking away from loyalist areas from the 1970s onwards and leaving them without the hope of the gospel. To a large degree I sympathise with that view.

What do I see as I watch the news from our land and how does what I see make me feel?

I see lost people. Politicians lost for a way to exercise any real influence on society and lost for a way to genuinely seek a shared future. Ordinary people from working class loyalist areas lost for a way to make themselves heard and so taking the opportunity to express themselves in ways that are unacceptable in a democratic society. People who would be lost for an identity if their Britishness was taken away from them. And yes, I see church leaders lost for a way to reach out with the gospel of redeeming grace into our communities at the one time of year when God's amazing and indescribable gift of grace should be inspiring our every thought, deed and word.

And how does it make me feel? Like Naomi Long, I feel heartbroken for my country. But I also feel angry at the ways in which we still try to manipulate human beings and their emotions in order to score points against our political opponents. Let me be clear. There are people in positions of responsibility on all sides who have acted irresponsibly this week and that makes me deeply angry.

But then I feel guilty. I feel guilty because I am part of this society and have been for 40 years. What have I done to make things better for those who are deprived of opportunities, deprived of a voice, deprived of an identity, deprived of the assurance that they are valued and loved? I have been given the enormous opportunity of being a child of God. My voice is heard in the throne room of the King of Kings. My identity in Christ is an identity that can never be threatened by any external act. I am valued at the cost of the cross and loved beyond my wildest imagination. Have I shared that? Have you?

I will pray for my country. I will pray for those Christian leaders genuinely reaching out to these socially isolated and desperate communities. I hope you will too. Let's not just sit back and blame the politicians for a lack of leadership without considering what we can do. Let's approach the King of Kings, who alone deserves our total allegiance and, if we are serious about that allegiance, let's answer his call to be salt and light in our land. Only in that way will the hope of the gospel and the history of our wee country be found to be in harmony with each other.

Going out like Elijah

The following is from my contribution to Ballygrainey's monthly newsletter. I hope you like it:

Rich Mullins is one of my favourite Christian song writers. Since university I have been listening to his music and the wisdom that comes through his songs. One of his most evocative and meaningful songs for me is a song called Elijah. It takes its inspiration from that final journey that Elijah takes with his student, Elisha, in 2 Kings chapter 2.

In the story Elisha refuses to turn back, despite Elijah’s repeated requests. He also refuses to listen to the words of the various prophets they meet on the journey stating that Elijah will be taken from him that day. He knows this will be the case but he doesn’t want to think about it. Isn’t this attitude one that we share when we know we are going to lose a loved one? As the end approaches we don’t want to think about life without them and we don’t want to leave their side.

But in his song, Rich Mullins concentrates on Elijah’s attitude to leaving Elisha and everything else behind. Elijah knows that the end of his earthly life is coming. That expectation is reflected in the very first lines of Mullins’ song; ‘The Jordan is waiting for me to cross through.’ But Elijah does not fear the future. He has learned through the highs and lows of life that he can trust God for every step he takes and he has only one thought in his mind – allowing God to lead him into whatever happens next.

The main theme of the song is that Mullins wants to be like Elijah when he faces the end of his own life – looking forward with expectancy not back with regret. This is how he puts it;

‘When I go I want to go out like Elijah

With a whirlwind to fuel my chariot of fire

And when I look back on the stars

It’ll be like candlelight on Central Park

And it won’t break my heart to say good-bye.’

The New Testament fills out the hope that we have beyond this life. We have the promise of a new, resurrection body. We have the hope of being reunited with others who have gone before us. We have the certainty that all sin and sorrow will be banished as God himself wipes away every tear from every eye. We have the expectation of a true homecoming when God welcomes us into full and free fellowship with him.

Perhaps, 900 years before Jesus’ resurrection, Elijah already had an inkling of what to expect. There is a real sense in 2 Kings that he is eager to get to the next stage. Does that reflect our feelings? Are we eagerly anticipating what God will do for us in heaven? Or are we so attached to the things that we have here that we still, even after the resurrection, allow the fear of death to paralyse us?

On 19 September 1997 Rich Mullins was killed in a car crash. Like Elijah, he left this world suddenly. Like Elijah, he was ready to go. While many people understandably mourned the loss to this world of such a great song writing talent. Mullins rejoiced as he came home.

May the same be true of us when our time comes.

Where is hope?

It seems a very long time since Friday night when I came into the house after picking my eldest son up from Boys' Brigade to see the Ulster Rugby team finish off a tight, tense victory over inter- provincial rivals, Munster. Since that night, when the joy of playing and following sport was so evident from the crowds at Ravenhill Rugby ground, a deep sadness has enveloped the sporting community, the farming community and one tragically bereaved family in County Down.

There have already been many tributes paid to Noel, Graham and Nevin Spence. There has also been a genuine outpouring of sympathy from all quarters to a mother, two daughters and a daughter-in-law with two small children who are enduring unimaginable suffering, and doing so with real dignity and faith.

I have rarely seen such a widespread impact from one family tragedy. It brought home to me what I have been learning in my five and a half years as a pastor in a semi-rural congregation - that the ties which bind the farming community in Ulster are deep ones. Perhaps they are so deep because they recognise that these tragedies are not as uncommon as we would like them to be. We, who do not live off the land, sometimes fail to appreciate the risks that some people take simply to provide food for our tables. On Sunday morning as some of the farmers in my congregation left church, it was all I could do to hold myself  back from saying 'would you people PLEASE take care of yourselves'. I suspect that I didn't really need to anyway.

But the other thing that has struck me forcibly in the light of this tragedy is the immense depth and wonder of genuine faith in Jesus Christ. The media will scratch their heads as members of the Spence family and friends from their own congregation and others express their certainty that, for these three men, true life has really just begun. Unable to deal with this powerful hope the media will, instead, ignore it and focus back on the appalling tragedy that has occurred. They will talk about how the family will need support from their neighbours, friends and fellow Christians (and there is no doubt that they will). But they will shy away from talking about how the source of all their comfort will be found in Jesus Christ. They will not  talk about his death and resurrection which, while they do not give an answer as to why this accident happened on Saturday afternoon, do give this family the strength to face the future certain that their loved ones are enjoying that fullness of life in which they will one day join them.

The grief is real. The heartbreak is real. The outpouring of sympathy from across this community and from further afield is undeniably genuine. But none of it is more real, more certain than the love which is ours in Jesus Christ, from which no-one and nothing can separate us.

I realise that I am adding to the sea of words already spoken and written this weekend about the Spence family and their awful grief. I hope that what I have written is seen as someone who has watched the events unfold trying for himself to come to terms with something so dreadful. I know that other tragedies have made the headlines this weekend - a man dying of stab wounds in Craigavon, two British servicemen killed in Afghanistan, apparently innocent civilians killed in a NATO airtstrike as well as the continuing mayhem and murder in Syria. My mind and heart are unable to process so much suffering but on this weekend, I have not been able to stop thinking about this family whom I do not know, for whom everything has changed in the blink of an eye. 

May the God of all comfort and the God of resurrection hope be to them all and more than all that they need.

Jubilee

So we have had our days of Diamond Jubilee celebration. It has been ludicrously expensive, faintly cheesy at times (especially if you were watching some of the BBC coverage) and probably incomprehensible to most people from outside the commonwealth, but it has revealed something about the British and the institution at the centre of British life.

I am not an ardent royalist and I don't go along with the idea that these few days alone make it great to be British. But when I see the levels of genuine devotion displayed this weekend it does make me think that there are a lot worse things that a nation could unite around than a hereditary constitutional monarchy. Did we need a thousand boat Thames River pageant? Probably not. Could we have done without Sir Cliff, Sir Elton and Sir Paul straining their ageing vocal chords (and our ears)? Yes we undoubtedly could. But would this nation be better off as a republic? On balance I think, probably not.

If the small group of royals who appeared on the balcony to wave to the crowds at the end of the celebration represent the future scale of monarchy without all the other hangers on then it demonstrates that this institution is adapting to its future, less extravagant role and doing so at a time when every other institution in national life is suffering from chronic distrust and decline. Somehow an incredibly privileged family have demonstrated an ability to truly connect with ordinary people and win their support without changing their essential character.

Is there a lesson here for the church, I wonder? We may not, indeed we must not change our essential message because it is a message which is and will always be necessary and relevant but we must find ways to live and breathe and share that message in our communities. We must dispense with the hangers on of unnecessary tradition, enlightenment rationalism and postmodern attempts at relevance and reconnect the gospel message with real people. We need to be 'good news' in our communities and share good news with those around us. We have it to share. The irony is that we have had a tendency in church to keep what makes us irrelevant and discard the necessary gospel truth in the dogged pursuit of relevance.

The Queen's sixty years have shown us what kind of impact single minded devotion to the service of a cause can have. Christians are called to single minded devotion to the service of Jesus Christ. He was single minded in his devotion to serve God and achieve our salvation. He deserves no less than our whole lives in glad service to him.

I still have problems with enforced flag waving. The first verse of 'I vow to thee my country' is nothing short of an invitation to idolatry. Just having a royal servant like Elizabeth II does not mean that being British is any better than being French or Chinese or Peruvian. But there are worse things to bring about a national celebration than an avowedly Christian woman who has served her God and her country with loyalty and, at times, courage for sixty years.

I only have three pleas for the next such royal occasion. Try to make it slightly less expensive, leave the boats out of it and please, please, please let Sir Cliff, Sir Elton and Sir Paul fade away into retirement.

PCI General Assembly 2012

Well, that's it over for another year. Resolutions have been written, presented and largely passed. Work has been recognised and people thanked. Worship has been offered and time has been spent in prayer. We have heard about the church in Ireland and the church around the globe...and we have drunk a fair amount of coffee!

The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland is always interesting even when, as this year, it's quiet and pretty uncontroversial. Perhaps being quieter allows us to hear more clearly the voices that are not always heard in years with more controversy. The quiet but impressive voices of our brothers and sisters from Malawi, Latvia, Pakistan and Syria and Lebanon were humbling as they demonstrated what it means to offer a prophetic voice in countries where threats range from endemic malaria to very real persecution.

The quiet but persistently prophetic voice of our young people has been heard through the SPUD youth assembly and this year they were given their own slot. Once again they brought their own challenge to us and brought it with eloquence and grace.

Perhaps one of the lessons we need to learn from this assembly is that we ALL need to listen to God and to each other more if we are going to be the prophetic voice this assembly is calling us to be. We need to listen to God to hear what he is saying to our church in a post-Christian world. Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali helped us begin the process of that listening on a great but poorly attended Wednesday celebration.

We need to listen to each other if we are going to present an effective and united voice in congregations, presbyteries and as a denomination. When we don't listen to each other we risk divisions that can only damage the message we need to bring and the world needs to hear.

My lasting memory will probably be the way our church said thank you to someone who has served our young people and children over twenty years. Roz Stirling has had an impact which will last a long long time in the work of our denomination. The church which she has served and sometimes provoked (sorry Roz!)stood together to recognise her contribution as she stood down from her post as Director of Youth and Children's Ministry. Thank you Roz, you will leave great foundations on which we need to build.

So that's it - a quiet year but one where, if you were really listening, you could sometimes hear a still, small voice renewing our ministries and leading us on to discover the plans God has for us today and tomorrow.

The Past really is another country

As we were travelling along the Westlink in Belfast the other day on our way to visit friends in Hillsborough, our younger son pointed out something on top of a building. 'Look, the Ireland flag!' he said. The building, as many of you will be aware was Divis Tower. He did not notice the Union flag and Northern Ireland flag on Clifton Street Orange Hall as we passed it a few seconds later (largely because he was still trying to point out the Irish flag to his less observant older brother)!

However his innocent observation got me thinking. I am quite certain that when I was 7 years old I would have been aware of a deeper significance to all of the flags that I saw. It is a significance which, I am glad to say is completely lost on my 7 and 9 year old boys.

I might not have been able to express it but somehow I would have felt threatened by an Irish flag, just as others would have felt threatened by a Union flag. There are still some people who seek to use national flags as a symbols of threat and intimidation in N.Ireland but it seems to me that their power over many of us is diminishing. Perhaps that is why, as the twelfth of July approaches, the Union flags and N. Ireland flags are increasingly interspersed by paramilitary flags that let people know exactly who is supposed to be in charge in a particular area. The national flags just don't carry the same level of threat any more.

Without having the vocabulary to say so my seven year old self might even have been aware that there were people who were ready to kill in the service of the political aspiration represented by these flags. As adults we know that there are still a handful of (very dangerous) people who think this way but they are nowhere near as relevant to our daily lives as they were 30 years ago. The result of their irrelevance is that fear of 'the other side' has lessened and the possibility of a genuinely 'shared future' is a real one.

Northern Ireland is a different country from the one in which I was a seven year old who knew that I was a Protestant and that there were other people called Catholics who were suspicious of me and of whom I was to be suspicious. It is a place which, even in the midst of the worst recession in thirty years, feels like a good place to live and raise children.

The past from which we have emerged seems alien and unreal and it is a past of which my children are completely unaware. At some point soon they will learn that, not long before they were born, there were people here who were willing to kill for the meanings they had invested in those flags. Maybe it is wrong of me, but I would prefer their innocence regarding the past to remain for as long as possible. Maybe that is just because I will find it difficult to explain how we allowed ourselves to get into that mess. I know that one day I will have to explain it and I pray that I will explain it to them in such a way that they become men who are determined to play their part in ensuring that we never return to being that other country again.

Confident Christianity: a book review

Every so often a book comes along that makes you sit up and take notice because it breathes a fresh new air into the world of Christian literature. There will be many Christians out there who feel that the world of apologetics is not one in which they are comfortable but Chris Sinkinson's new book demonstrates very helpfully not only why all Christians should care about the defence of their faith in the early years of the 21st century but shows how all Christians can be truly confident in making that defence.

Sinkinson recognises that there are two opposite views of apologetics which both make crucial mistakes. One view suggests that human reason is so affected by sin that using reasoned arguments in evangelism is pointless. This view says that we should concentrate on preaching the gospel and forget about dealing with people's objections to faith. The other view seems to suggest that we can help people reason their way towards faith in Christ. The first view is deficient because it refuses to engage with the world into which we are sent as ambassadors for Christ. The second is deficient because it fails to see the need for a supernatural and supra- rational experience of new birth which can never be brought about by the exercise of pure reason. Both have their place but must not be given too much authority over our style of evangelism.

Because Sinkinson believes apologetics to be an important tool in evangelism, he gives a robust defence of its use and a clear and helpful critique of its misuse. He helps the reader to understand how the use of logical, reasoned argument can be a helpful resource in evangelism and goes on to show how these tools have been used in the history of Christian philosophy. He also helpfully deals with the roots of logic in pre-Christian Greek thought, while avoiding the mistake of completely Christianising Plato and Aristotle. At the same time he gives the reader an excellent overview of the essential logical mistakes we should try to avoid in making the case for Christianity and should be able to point out when we spot them in the arguments of our opponents.

He also points out that (unlike some)two of the best Christian apologists of the last century, Francis Schaeffer and CS Lewis, happily used different types of apologetic argument according to the situation they were facing and were not wedded to any one particular method. Using the example of the apostle Paul, he suggests that this flexible approach to apologetics is the best one to use in a context in which those with whom we find ourselves debating often shift the grounds of the argument even in the course of one debate.

In the first of two brilliantly illuminating chapters in the middle of the book give a superb overview of the history of apologetics from the influence of Greek thought on the early Church fathers (which produced both positive and negative results) through Thomas Aquinas, the Reformers to the age of Enlightenment and the increasing scepticism represented by Descartes,Kant and Hume. The second of these chapters shows us how the massive changes in worldview brought about by Darwin helped Enlightenment materialism to develop and have an impact on the liberal theology of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A comment on the impact of Friedrich Nietzsche's thought leads to a very helpful discussion of post-modernism.

A further chapter on Sinkinson's specialist subject of archaeology gives a balanced and helpful view of the role archaeology can play in supporting the historical claims of Scripture before he deals coherently, helpfully and clearly with some of the classic apologetic questions of science, pluralism and suffering.

Books on apologetics are often helpful reference works but are not so often highly readable. Confident Christianity proves to be both. It is an extremely helpful, clear and well thought out work which will engage your mind and fire your heart. It deserves it's place on every thinking Christian's bookshelf alongside Lewis's Mere Christianity and Keller's The Reason for God.

The Meaning of Marriage

Today is the day when women traditionally take the opportunity to propose marriage. This leap year there has been a lot of talk about marriage, both in Christian circles and in society as a whole.

The government in the UK last week announced the beginning of a process to consult on changing the definition of marriage to include same sex marriage. Even before the official announcement a group of churches and others had organised to fight the proposed change. The Coalition for Marriage (C4M) had 15000 signatures on their website within 24 hours of going live last week and that number has steadily grown. The online debates have begun on Facebook and other places and I have been involved in some of them.

Predictably enough the defenders of traditional marriage have been accused of being homophobic, reactionary, bigoted, out of touch and lacking in compassion for gay people. Also predictable has been the response of the defenders to these allegations, sometimes making assertions for which they have no evidence, sometimes chucking verses of Scripture about like ammunition, not caring where it lands. ( The words of Jesus about pearls before swine have sprung to mind here at times.)

Meanwhile,in America two well known pastors have published books on marriage in the last few months. Tim Keller has published The Meaning of Marriage and Mark Driscoll has produced Real Marriage to considerably more controversy. I have only read Keller's book which is a typically thorough and thought provoking exposition of Ephesians 5:18-33. At the beginning of the book Keller, who writes along with his wife, Kathy, defines marriage as 'a lifelong monogamous relationship between a man and a woman', a definition which previously would not have been required but which, increasingly Christian leaders are going to be required to give.

Keller's book also explains why, for Christians, the redefinition of marriage is more than just an extension of civil rights. Marriage is not simply for the stability of society or companionship or even procreation. Marriage, in Paul's terms is an illustration of the gospel and a demonstration of God's love for the church. Typically, therefore Keller's book is not simply a manual on how to have a happy marriage but a discussion of how our marriages can present the gospel of Christ to the world and how couples can help each other to draw closer to God (and to each other)through their determination to love one another and give of oneself to each other. (Although there are plenty of examples of both success and failure from the Kellers' own marriage.)

In the chapter written by Kathy Keller there is a discussion of the controversial area of headship and submission which concludes by asking each partner in a marriage to take on 'the Jesus role' in the marriage. The husband is to take on the role by exercising headship as a servant, always putting his wife's needs before his own. The wife is to take in the role by willingly submitting to her husband's servant leadership just as Christ willingly submitted to his Father even when he was co- equal in the Godhead.

At a time when traditional views of marriage are under attack and when attitudes to marriage are increasingly superficial, The Meaning of Marriage is a vital corrective. Married Christians are encouraged to recognise that their marriages are intended to present the gospel to the world. Unmarried Christians are reminded that marriage is not the be all and end all but rather only serves as an illustration of the ultimate relationship between Christ and his church; the only relationship through which every Christian (married or single)finds fulfilment.

If you are engaged to be married, read this book now. If you are married, read this book to remind yourself of the importance of your relationship and your covenant decision to love one another. If you are unmarried read this book to remind yourself of the proper Biblical perspective on marriage and singleness. All Christians should read this book to be reminded of the astonishing depths of the gospel of grace.

On the eve of a 200th anniversary

Studying English Literature in school can go one of two ways. It can lead some people to never want to pick up another book again in their lives or it can nourish a love of literature that lasts a lifetime. Often it depends on the material studied and on the teaching of it. Or it can depend on whether the immature teenage brain is capable of understanding the mind blowing nature of what it is taking in, rather than just reading Brodie's notes (remember them?)and desperately trying to remember key quotations for the exam.

I was very nearly put off reading the work of Charles Dickens when I studied Oliver Twist for GCSE. On reflection I don't think it was anything to do with the teaching which was very enthusiastic (to the point of reading dramatic episodes aloud and hamming it up ridiculously as Fagin). Rather it was due to the fact that I could not appreciate the revolutionary nature of what I was reading.

Thankfully I overcame my initial reaction to start reading some of Dickens' other work. His use of language to provoke a smile or a tear in his reader was second to none. He could lose his reader (and sometimes himself) in overlong passages of vivid description or wild tangents of social comment which did nothing to serve the plot but did everything to let you know what the author thought of the corrupt institutions of his day.

His personal life was a troubled one. Nobody could mistake Charles Dickens for a model husband and father and his attitude to women (both in real life and in his novels) was weird. But his novels shaped life in this country like no other works of literature could. Some of his characters were bland (Oliver Twist, Little Nell) but that only served to demonstrate the colourful character of many of the others (Fagin, Miss Havisham, Uriah Heep).

But why am I writing about Dickens in this blog? Not just because he is one of my favourite authors and Great Expectations is almost certainly my favourite novel of all time but because his (almost prophetic) voice is just as relevant to society today as it was when he wrote. We have plenty of satire today but none of it comes with the moral outrage so often contained in Dickens' writing. We have plenty of campaigners for justice but movements like the Occupy protests lack the imagination, punch and vicious sense of humour that made Dickens incapable of being ignored by the powerful and corrupt.

Maybe it is going too far and maybe Dickens himself would reject the idea but I think it is entirely possible to see him standing in the heritage of the Old Testament prophets who were stark in their criticism of power and who often delivered their message with biting satirical humour. (NB Hosea also had a pretty strange personal life!)Our society with all it's dissatisfaction at the perceived corruption of financial, governmental and ecclesiastical institutions is surely ripe for a new Dickens. There are many blurbs on the back covers of paperbacks that use that tag about an author. None of them live up to the hype. Perhaps we need to recover the old Dickens and ask ourselves what he would write about 21st century society. Would it be any less scathing than his opinion of 19th century Britain? I think not.

Perhaps it would be even better if we re-read some of those Old Testament prophets and began to apply their voice to our culture today and echo their cries for justice and mercy. In May the Presbyterian Church in Ireland will launch its theme for the year 2012-13 which calls the church to be a prophetic voice in our society. I suspect Mr Dickens would approve. He might even ask what has been keeping us?

If God is there why doesn't he prove it

Big Questions

If God is there, why doesn’t he prove it?

This post is the text of a talk given in Ballygrainey on 29th January. It relies heavily on the work of much better communicators than me - namely Paul Williams and Barry Cooper ('If you could ask God one question'), Michael Ots ('What kind of God?'), Tim Keller (The Reason for God) and, of course, CS Lewis. If you find anything here that is helpful it probably came from one of them. Anything that you find unhelpful almost certainly came from me.

The Clues

I have no doubt that it is one of those stories that is told that has just grown and grown until every teacher in every pre-school classroom claims it happened to them but it goes like this. The teacher asks the pupils to sit down and draw a picture of what they did at the weekend.

They all happily go about drawing swimming pools and swings supermarkets and then the teacher discovers one child drawing something different. ‘What’s that Jimmy?’ asks the teacher. ‘That’s God’ replies Jimmy. ‘But no-one knows what God looks like’, says the teacher. ‘They will when I’m finished’, replies Jimmy.

And that is our problem. We don’t know what God looks like and so we end up coming up with all sorts of pictures for him ourselves. We start saying there are hundreds or thousands of gods, or we say that planet earth is a kind of god. We make God in our image.

The only way we can know what God is like is if he reveals himself to us. And we have a God who has done that and has left us with a number of clues to his existence.

I am going to talk a little about some specific clues God has given us to show that he exists and then, later on we’re going to look at the main way in which he has revealed himself to us.

I am going to deal with four questions about the universe, whose answers give us clues to the existence of God.

1. Why is there anything rather than nothing? Just about every scientist now aggress that the universe had a beginning. They call it the Big Bang, we call it Genesis 1:1. In his book The Reason for God, Tim Keller quotes Francis Collins one of the driving forces behind the Human Genome project; ‘We have this very solid conclusion that the universe had an origin, the Big Bang. Fifteen billion years ago, the universe began with an unimaginably bright flash of energy from an infinitesimally small point. That implies that before that, there was nothing. I can’t imagine how nature, in this case the universe, could have created itself. And the very fact that the universe had a beginning implies that someone was able to begin it. And it seems to me that had to be outside of nature.

The point is that if everything in the universe depends on the existence of something else, then the universe itself depends on the existence of something outside itself. This argument doesn’t prove that the God of the Bible exists, but it gets us to the possibility (or even probability) of a Creator. Either a creator outside of the universe started it all off or nothing just exploded into something.

2. Why is there life in the universe? Why is it that the universe is perfectly set up to support life, particularly life on this small blue-green planet called earth? Things like gravity, the speed of light, the composition of atmospheric gases on this planet all come together to support life. If any of these forces were out in even a tiny way, we could not exist. This suggests to many people that the universe was fine tuned by God in order to sustain life.

Atheistic scientists will come back on this and say that there might well be an infinite number of universes out there and we just happen to live in the one that supports life. There is absolutely no scientific evidence for multiple universes whatsoever and it almost certainly requires more faith to believe in that than to believe in a creator.

One philosopher called Alvin Plantinga, quoted by Keller, gives this example; Imagine a man in the Wild West dealing himself twenty straight hands of four aces in one poker game. As his companions reach for their guns, he says this, ‘I know this looks suspicious but what if there are an infinite number of universes out there so that for any possible distribution of cards in a poker game there is a universe where each one comes about and we just happen to be living in the universe where I always end up with four aces without cheating!’ What effect do you think that will have on the man’s fellow poker players? What effect do you think it will have on the man’s chances of making it out of the saloon alive?

It is possible that, purely by chance, we happen to be in the one universe out of trillions where life could exist but does it make sense?

3. Why is the universe ordered and regular so that it can make sense to a rational mind? Science itself depends on regular patterns in nature – gravity, speed of light etc. make sense to rational minds. To many people that suggests that there is a rational mind behind it. If there isn’t we have no justification in assuming that the patterns will keep going because there are, in fact, no patterns.

The interesting thing, when it comes to science, is that all science relies on these patterns to continue but, without God there is no guarantee that they will. Without God, scientists are just hoping that every day the patterns will keep working the same way they did yesterday and the millions of days before that. It probably doesn’t cause them to lose much sleep but it is what they are doing.

4. Why beauty? Here is one of the greatest clues of all. Somewhere out there is a work of art, a piece of music, a natural phenomenon or another human being who, when you look at them, they just take your breath away. Why do we find things to be beautiful and not just functional? And why is it that the things we find to be beautiful don’t satisfy our inner desire for beauty? For a moment, they take our breath away, but then we find something else that takes our breath away.

Could it be that our innate desire for beauty corresponds to something that will one day finally and fully satisfy that desire? Could that thing, in fact, be God?

From these four clues people have worked out that God is, at least possible. But then the atheists come along and say that belief in God is simply a part of the evolutionary process – that belief in the same God, even though it wasn’t true, was something that allowed communities to be formed and was, at one stage, helpful for natural selection. We don’t really need it any more but it has been hardwired into us by evolution for so long that it is hard to get rid of.

Here is what is being said; We cannot trust our minds to guide us into truth because all that our minds will do will be to guide us to what is appropriate for our evolution, even if it is not true. But hold on a minute. If we can’t trust our minds to guide us into truth, why should we trust the people that tell us through the use of their minds, they have discovered that atheism is true? Couldn’t their minds be deluding them?

Listen to what Tim Keller says about this; ‘It seems that evolutionary theorists have to do one of two things. They could backtrack and admit that we can trust what our minds tell us about things, including God. If we find arguments or clues to God’s existence that seem compelling to us, well, maybe he’s really there. Or else we could go forward and not trust our minds about anything. … It comes down to this: if, as the evolutionary scientists say, what our brains tell us about morality, love and beauty is not real – if it is merely a set of chemical reactions designed to passon our genetic code – then so is what their brains tell them about the world. Then why should they trust them?

But if God exists then our minds do work and we can trust them to work because he made them to work in such a way as to understand truth and process beauty and recognise love and discern right from wrong and reason things out. If God exists then the fact that the universe had a beginning and the fact that it works in a consistent, regular way and is fine-tuned in a way to sustain life, makes perfect sense.

None of these clues PROVE, in a scientific way, the existence of God. But they are clues. And I think that, together, they make a pretty strong case and certainly explain what we see around us better than the theory that there is no God.

But if there is a God, why doesn’t he show himself to us more clearly? Well, he did. And we’re going to see how he did it in a few minutes.

The Man

Michael Ots tells this story in his book ‘What kind of God?’ A friend of his moved away to university and quickly got to know everyone in his particular hall o residence. But there was one student who remained a mystery. Despite continual knocking on door D23, they could get no response. Soon, they began to query whether anyone lived in the room at all. But then the clues started to appear. There was a strange smell from under the door – something like food but not particularly appetising. There was strange oboe music coming from the room late at night and a strange sound of something dissolving in the sink. None of those things conclusively proved the existence of the student in D23 but they gave some indication that he existed.

In order to demonstrate his existence he would have to have come out to meet them. The clues on their own would not have been enough. The same is true for God. The clues by themselves are not enough. In order for us to know that God exists he has to come and introduce himself to us. And that is exactly what he did.

The Gospel writers and the whole of the NT are in agreement. God did show himself to us on earth. He did it convincingly. He did it authoritatively. He did it in such a way that he could be heard and seen and touched.

The Word, who was responsible for creating everything, who was God, became flesh and dwelt among us. That is the claim the gospels make. That is the claim Jesus makes for himself.

Don’t let people tell you that Jesus didn’t claim to be God. In each of the four most reliable accounts that we have of his life, he claimed exactly that. When he forgave people’s sin he was claiming to be God. When he said ‘I and the Father are one’ he was claiming to be God. That is why, as soon as he said it, the crowd picked up stones to throw at him.

When he said ‘Before Abraham was, I am’, he was deliberately using the name God had given himself when he appeared to Moses and applying it to himself. Make no mistake. Jesus claimed to be God and people wanted him dead because of it, but he kept on doing it.

If you are going to claim to be something you need to be able to back it up. I could claim to be a great undiscovered footballer with more talent than Wayne Rooney, Thierry Henry, Gary Lineker and George Best combined. After 30 seconds on a five-a-side pitch you would soon find out I was talking nonsense.

Compare that to someone like Muhammad Ali whose constant refrain was ‘I am the greatest.’ If you are going to say it you had better be able to back it up. And of course Ali could.

And that’s the point about Jesus. He could back it up and he did it back it up. All the time. Calming storms at sea, feeding 5000 people with a packed lunch, healing the deaf, blind and lame, raising the dead. The evidence of the gospels is that Jesus walked this earth as if he owned the place.

Here is the point. We do not believe in God because of the clues that he made the universe and sustains it all, even though those clues are amazing and even though we believe that he did create it all. We believe in God because of the man called Jesus.

Here was a man who made stupendous claims about himself and did things that no-one else has ever done, including rising physically from the dead. No-one at the time was able to conclusively disprove the resurrection stories by bringing out a body. No-one since has been able to come up with another more plausible theory.

If we find all the clues about God’s existence compelling, they should at least make us consider the possibility that he exists. If Jesus made the claims he did and backed them up the way he did and if the  resurrection happened, then he would need to take seriously his claims about himself. There are a number of things that all these conclusions point us to.

First, God exists and has shown himself to the world in Jesus. Second, he is interested enough in us, not just to enter this world but to die for our salvation. Third, everyone who hears this has a response to make to him, he cannot be ignored.

Let me finish with that wonderful passage from CS Lewis’ brilliant ‘Mere Christianity’ because few people have said it better;

‘I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit on him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.’

What is evangelical?

A few things have got me thinking this week about what it means to be 'evangelical'. Last week, in Texas, there was a meeting of 'evangelical' leaders to decide which Republican candidate they could wholeheartedly support for the presidential nomination. Also last week my attention was drawn to a couple of blogs by Krish Kandiah - one, a review of a book on theology and politics by evangelical theologian Wayne Grudem, the other a report on some comments made by Mark Driscoll about the (from his perspective) lack of young, evangelical leaders in the UK.

The term 'evangelical' has always been one with which I feel very comfortable and by which I have identified my own theological position but it has always been subject to some weird and not so wonderful redefinitions.

The twentieth century saw a revival of broadly evangelical thinking and leadership in both the USA and the UK. Much of that leadership, in turn, sought to encourage the growth of evangelical thought and teaching in the developing world. This has brought incredible fruit in Asia, Africa and South America. At the same time evangelicalism saw itself as increasingly different from fundamentalism which seemed to focus too much on end times theology, anti-intellectualism, biblical literalism and a theory of biblical inspiration which owes more to Mohammad and Joseph Smith than to the Bible's understanding of itself.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century there seems to be a new shake up of attitudes in evangelicalism, especially in America, although it has an impact across the English speaking world. The church planting movement has taken off and given us a new model of church which is both exciting and challenging. The culture wars which began in America in the 1990s have not resolved themselves and are being played out in the Republican campaign at the moment. Traditional evangelical beliefs such as substitutionary atonement and the idea of hell as an eternal conscious punishment resulting from human rejection of God have come under fire or been ditched by some who still want to claim the title 'evangelical'.

It could seem that the evangelical community is in danger of breaking up over some of these issues and dissolving into an unedifying spectacle of blame and counter-blame. I suspect that now is the time for evangelicals to once again focus on what is important about our faith and to respond to John Stott's call for unity in his 1999 book, Evangelical Truth. I want to suggest a few guiding principles which might help us here.

1. Your commitment to evangelical faith does not imply within it a commitment to any one political party or grouping of the left or the right.

2. The touchstones of evangelical faith are not found in your responses to ethical or moral dilemmas, which may legitimately differ, but in your commitment to the historic good news of Jesus Christ, God incarnate, crucified Saviour and risen and returning Lord. To be evangelical is to believe in a God who reveals himself, a Saviour who redeems a sin-sick world and a Spirit who regenerates those who place their faith in Christ.

3. As an evangelical you will not reject out of hand other types of learning (especially in the field of science)just because they might restrict certain economic activities to which you are culturally or politically committed.

4. Your disagreements with each other should be carried out in a spirit of humility because none of us has apostolic authority and all of us need to listen to other people. These disagreements have, in recent months, had a tendency to take place on blogs like this one.They have also led, at times, either to people's views being condemned before they are even officially published or to provocative marketing producing unnecessary and unhelpful debate.In his book John Stott claims that the 'supreme quality which the evangelical faith engenders (or should do) is humility'. If that is true some of us (including me) have some repentance to do.

Our culture desperately needs a clear and united statement of evangelical truth. It may be worded differently from such statements in previous generations but it will contain the same historic truth which evangelicals believe goes all the way back to the apostles. Our culture needs the gospel and, as their name implies,it should be evangelicals who are most committed to bearing witness to it. And to God alone(not my church or my parachurch organisation) be glory.