Twin sisters, twin faiths?

Fascinating programme on Radio 4 this morning, here; Anna Scott Brown bringing us the tale of identical twin sisters, one who has become a Christian, the other a Muslim, and how they are dealing with the terminal illness and imminent death of their (initially atheist) mother.

Its striking first because it cuts through the mushed-together presentation of religion that we so often get in the media; two sisters clear on the 'fundamental differences' between what they believe, so much so that they have each chosen in their will that the other will not look after their child in the case of each of their deaths.

Second, the huge difference that therefore follows in the assurance each of them holds. The near death of their mother is clearly focusing the issues. The Muslim sister is clear that 'Muslims will never say anyone is saved, it's between God and our hearts... and on the day of judgment God will judge and he is just.' Whereas the Christian sister is humbly confident, 'I believe I will go to heaven, and I want that for my Mum, but I don't know if she will, and that's really hard.' She goes on, essentially trusting that 'God has already made it better between you and God.'

And then thirdly, striking in the emotional trauma of a family going through suffering together. Close to her death the mother has a 'religious experience', believing she has met God, and bringing about a visible turnaround in her beliefs about life. Interestingly the Muslim sister is clear that this experience essentially hasn't been about Jesus and so shouldn't be classed as a 'Christian experience'. Credit to Radio 4 for bringing us real life stories that do highlight the differences between Christianity and Islam and for not portraying either as religious wackos.

A thought...

'In our world it's cool to search for God, but uncool to find him.'

as quoted by Raymond Ortlund Jr.

Now for something different...

I think this is brilliant! Created to dispel the Dan Brown-esque myths that overshadow too many UK opinions about Jesus and the historicity of the birth narratives, I think it does a great job. Spread the word.


That's Christmas! from andy pearce on Vimeo.

McGrath on Dawkins...

On Tuesday night I went along to a public lecture given by Oxford Prof. and General-Wise-Theologian Alister McGrath. His subject was a brief look at some of the big ideas in Richard Dawkins' work, and particularly those of his latest book The God Delusion (on which McGrath's latest offering, The Dawkins' Delusion is a critique). McGrath was articulate and stimulating as he identified and rebutted four of Dawkins' key ideas:

1. Faith is delusional... Dawkins' bills faith as 'non-thinking' or a 'refusal to engage with evidence', but McGrath showed that actually faith does think, see Lewis, Swindoll, Plantinga. There are plenty of worldviews in which faith makes sense, and which explain our world. To look at the world and remark that it can be interpreted in an atheistic way holds no more ground than to say the same about a theistic approach.

2. Science disproves God and/or illuminates the conceptual space God once occupied... In short McGrath said this view is riduculous as there are plenty of scientists who in no way see their faith as irreconcilable with their scientific background. In fact there are limits to scientific evidence, especially in the area of metaphysics and religion; 'the ultimate questions' as Karl Popper called them. Of course science may lead to atheism, and science may be interpreted with an already present atheistic worldview, but neither are the only option.

3. Origins of religions can be explained naturally/scientifically... The cry of the 1960's was that religion was on it's way out, and yet now it is evident everywhere. Dawkins summarised goes something like this: There is no God, yet people believe there is, so therefore they have to offer an interpretation. Obviously, wishing something to be true does not make something true, yet wishing something to be true does not also mean it cannot be true. Dawkins' tries to explain religion by describing it as a virus, and also bringing up the meme theory. However both these ideas are merely exactly that, ideas for which the evidence is not at all great, and both can be turned around at pointed at to explain atheism.

4. Religion leads to evil... Empathising with most people's thoughts no doubt, McGrath was quick to point out that there is no doubt that religion has and will cause violence, but this capacity is also present in anti-religion, races, politics. Noting that Dawkins' was motivated to write the God Delusion after the suicide terrorism of 9/11, McGrath quoted Robert A. Pape who has written extensively on suicide-bomber-mentality. Pape writes that religion is neither necessary or a sufficient cause for suicide attacks, with it often bottling down to a group of minority people faced with a vastly suppressive enemy and no access to a military voice.

McGrath pointed also to the life and death of Jesus, who suffered great violence against him yet no violence came from him, and he noted that Dawkins' discussion of Jesus in his work is 'tantalizingly inadequate'. Sure, violence is evil, and religion can lead to violence, but it is not typical. A thoughtful pointer to the Amish community in Pennsylvania that last year faced the murder of a handful of school-children, showed that violence can be met with forgiveness. McGrath also asked for evidence: 'if religion is destructive, the evidence must show that, but it doesn't'.


So, overall all then, McGrath's message to the Christian was:
a) there is nothing to fear from Dawkins' book, and
b) think about your faith. This was certainly a big challenge to me, and is part of the reason why I blog, to become more skilled at articulating what I believe.

His word to the atheist was that actually Dawkins' isn't the great example of atheism that pop-culture makes him out to be, and consequently much of the secular left in America has distanced itself from Dawkins.

A couple of things that struck me during the lecture and the question-time...

i) Actually often Christianity is billed as wishful thinking, 'simply choosing the worldview you like'. Now, I love the fact that I'm adopted by God, a c0-heir with Christ, destined for the glory of God, so in one sense Christianity is a worldview I like. Yet there are many aspects that I wouldn't naturally seek to choose from a world view: self-sacrifice, hardship, unpopularity, rejection, not living for my worldy happiness.

ii) McGrath's lecture seemed to spend much time, particularly in his fourth point, discussing 'religion' without any distinction made between religions. Now this may work on some levels as a rebuttal to Dawkins' work, but surely it is a major mistake to classify all religions as equal, especially when weighing up whether 'religion is destructive', for anything must be destructive ultimately if it is not about the Lord Jesus.

iii) McGrath was an engaging speaker and performed well within his remit (a critique of Dawkins), yet I wonder what the role is for the Christian theologian in such a context, after spending forty minutes knocking down the false-idols, is there not a duty to then point people to Jesus Christ. McGrath had little time to mention the reasonableness of Christianity specifically, and did touch on his own conversion as a student ('I had to work out what is the best way of making sense of the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth'), but it seemed many may have left the lecture with no sense of urgency to bow before the one name under heaven by which men may be saved!

Dave has some more thoughts on Dawkins' here.

Ramsden on Conversational Apologetics...

Michael Ramsden sets out with the aim of making Christians think about sharing the gospel in a culturally relevant conversational way here, but below are some notes I made...

Apologetics is not for philosophical experts... when Peter writes his letters he writes them to the church (1 Peter 3.15,16): - 1. Set apart Christ as Lord; 2. Be prepared to give a reason for the hope you have. Not a complex specialist talk, but a command to the church: You must be prepared and ready, to give an answer, an apologia for the hope you have. Not an increase in profoundness to make more confusion, but to add profundity to clear confusion.

1 Peter 3... Well, what if people aren't asking... well the quality of our lives should be prompting questions, for surely that's the context of 1 Peter 3. It is a spiritual discipline for the mind. 2 Cor 10.5 - 'we demolish arguments... and take every thought captive to obey Christ'. It's not an intellectual struggle, but what is being assumed in 1 Peter and taught in 2 Cor is that the spiritual battle involves the mind.

Our reason for hope is JESUS!
It is more than giving 'answers'... there's more to apologetics than giving answers to questions, but also asking questions of other people's answers or even asking questions of the questions themselves.

Asking questions allows people to open up within their cultural assumptions...
Luke 20.22... should we pay our taxes... our answer is automatically 'yes'. Why doesn't Jesus use 'yes'? Because it's a cultural trap (v20) - asking questions exposes their trap - the Jews knows they are God's chosen people oppressed by Romans - paying taxes finances oppression of God's people thus moral compromise, but if you refuse to pay taxes you're breaking the law...
Jesus answers their question... pay your taxes, but paying your taxes is not a compromise, for holiness is giving to God what is God's. To say 'yes' is to not communicate to culture...
E.g. 'is abortion wrong?'... now, you want to say 'yes'. But if you say 'yes', they'll think you're narrow-minded, hate women. In the world's eyes it's a choice situation - dictators get rid of choice, so you're showing God as a dictator. A cultural assumption asks the wrong question... it assumes 'do you think its ok to eliminate people's choices by force if necessary?'. 'Is this a human life?' is the real question: 'when is it right to kill a human person?' Giving the right answer to the wrong questions is always wrong. Jesus is defining the issue. 'Supposing I thought life began at conception, what would abortion make me?' - you've communicated.
'Does your mother know you are stupid?' - a faulty dilemma... artificially limiting options. You have to introduce another option...
20.41 - won't morally compromise: who's authority?

Asking questions makes people think... you think and work out the answer yourself. Saying I am a person of faith... tells people you have leapt into the dark... when is that used in Scripture. I'm not sure if it's true or real. Faith is a gift but not a gift to believe in something unreal! Faith in the OT... is nowhere! In Hab 2.4, it is a verb - a process of putting weight and trust in something true and real. In Gk, 2 words for faith: pistis (from verb 'to be persuaded' - so, noun carries connotations of persuaded of its truth and reality) and nomisto (to describe belief with no specific basis, e.g. in their own Gk gods).
In the English language upto middle-english period, faith was a verb. Putting trust in something, sure of its reality. But now, it means something different. The more you are convinced of God's reality and truth, the more you will lean on him! Only response to a God who is true and real! How can asking questions be a problem.
'Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life...' believe in me? Why doesn't Jesus say that? Didn't he understand the gospel? If there is a heaven, how would you get there? 'Be good!' - 'How can you condemn all these good people?' If you don't get where they're coming from, they'll disagree - shows you haven't nailed it. We're dealing with people. Luke 10 & 18 - the same question, different answers.

Asking questions exposes people's motives...
Luke 20.2-4 - 'we don't know' - that's not true, you're not being honest, neither will I answer you... Exposing motives is very helpful, and how they respond is instructive. Recover the courage to ask people how they'll respond to the claims of Christ. 'If I asked you to become a Christian now, what would be holding you back?' Giving an apologetic is giving a reason for the hope we have - it must flow from the cross, for that is where our hope stems from. Any apologetic that doesn't take us to the gospel isn't an apologetic... it may be initially useful, but we can't leave them there saying we've given an apologetic. The answer for the reason for the hope we have must be Christ!

Schaeffer: 'The greatest problem we have as a church is that we don't understand what the questions are, let alone the answers'. The goal must be the cross, in any conversation, situation.

Ramsden: 'If I were to answer your question adequately, would you give your life to Christ?'
Person: 'No'.
Ramsden: 'Then what is this issue?'.

The boat belongs in the ocean, but God help it if the ocean gets into the boat...

So there we were, at the Freshers' Fair, jammed tight up against the stage at the Student's Union with the latest Club Night being promoted through the medium of 'officially-too-loud-unless-you-have-earphones' dance anthems (according to the engineering students next door and their krazy sound measuring devices) and outrageously scantily-clad dancers on stilts.

I guess that's what being a Christian Union is about - ok, so the music was very loud - but we were in the heart of the world. Lots of sign-ups is very encouraging, and hopefully over the next few days we'll be able to encourage Freshers to stand up for Jesus.

Freshers are very young and their perceptions of what Christianity is are all over the shop. I suppose they've every right to be all over the shop, given what's going on under the banner of 'Christianity' across the UK. I am excited about what the next year brings, and seeing disciples made.

As we were walking across town, we passed two old men in the marketplace who regularly give five-minute talks to the collection of people who are sitting on the benches for whatever particular reason. There really didn't seem to be any engagement going on between the men and the message, and those to whom they thought they were speaking.

I'm thinking now of our plans for the CU this year - we want to hold out the word of life, knowing that it is folly to the perishing, but we want people to be able to engage with what we're saying.

Where is that line? Do we change our vocabulary? Do we change our 20 minute address vehicle? Where does the apologetic distrust the power of the gospel to save?

Da Vinci Code Resources

There's tons of stuff popping up all over the net in the form of Christian responses to Dan Brown's book, but here are a few sites that AC from my church back home sieved out and are worth stopping by at:

The Da Vinci Code Truth - a site designed especially for those asking questions.

A range of Christianity Today articles and responses to the film

Another well-equipped site offering a huge amount of different articles

There's heaps of books out on the shelves of Christian bookshelves too - the only one I've read and can recommend is Garry Williams' brief but substantial 'The Da Vinci Code', published by Christian Focus - it retails for about £1.99.