Arthur's Links

It was great to have Arthur visit last Sunday.

During his talk he mentioned two websites and so here are links to them:

The Tomorrow Project

The Governments Statistics on Social Trends (3.8 mB pdf)

Hope you enjoy some light bedtime reading!

Christian Persecution

Ever since the Road-Tax petition publicised the government website where anyone can start an on-line petition it seems like everyone’s at it.

These are some of my favourites:

David Kitchen’s petition: “We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to replace the national anthem with 'Gold' by Spandau Ballet.”  It has 4,912 signatures.

Tim Ireland’s Petition: “We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to stand on his head and juggle ice-cream.”  It has 4,037 signatures

Anyway, never to be left behind, us Christians are at it as well… and this is what worries me.

In the last couple of weeks I have received an e-mail asking me to sign a petition protesting against a government bill which “will give homosexuals far greater rights”.  Now regardless of what we think about this issue, what concerns me most is the message being conveyed by the words.  Campaigning against a group’s rights is the same as saying we support restrictions being placed on that group, which seems to me to suggest persecution.

Should Christians be persecuting people?

I got another e-mail this week for a petition asking the government to stop the building of a mosque in London.  If I’m honest, I just don’t understand why we would be asking our government to do this.  Would we like a country where the building of any religious building by groups other than Christians to be banned?  (Who would decide what constitutes orthodox Christianity anyway?) What would the next step be, pulling down all temples, mosques and synagogues?  Then what?  Deporting all non-Christians?  (the test for this would be interesting…)

We’re very concerned when foreign governments try to prevent the building of churches, as happens in countries like Egypt.  Is that the sort of government we want in the UK?  Or is it ok because we’re Christians?

Jesus went to the cross because God gave us free will as a precious gift.  We abused it, yet God loved us still.  If people choose to go to the Mosque or if gay people want to stay at a bed and breakfast, it’s their choice and I’m really uncomfortable with these campaigns asking the government to legislate on these issues.  Especially when God desires us to follow him with our heart, not just with outward conformity.

I’m uncomfortable because when these petitions are sent around they claim to speak for Evangelical (or ‘Born-Again’) Christians and I don’t like issues of individual conscience being presented as issues of Christian doctrine or orthodoxy.

I’m uncomfortable that these petitions vilify and demonise Muslims and the gay community, when we need to see that the vast majority of conscientious Muslims are seeking God in the only way they know (see Acts 17:22-23 for Paul’s attitude to people of a different religion and how he concentrates on what they have in common rather than pointing out why he thinks they’re wrong).

History shows us time and time again that when an idea welded by those in power tries to stifle a different idea held by a minority it always has the reverse effect.  The Church has thrived time and time again under persecution.  Despite the fact that I think it goes against the heart of the gospel to so aggressively harass others, it’s not even a good idea from a purely practical perspective.

And what are we afraid of anyway?  Where should we point the accusing finger because people aren’t finding Jesus’ offer of abundant life and want to go to a mosque?  Is it the governments fault?  Is it their responsibility?  Or does the blame lay a bit closer to home?

On a level-playing field I’m convinced that Jesus’ radical message of life, hope and love will beat all other ideas every time.  We don’t need to try and fix the game with the government's help, and personally I think that by trying we’re actually making our job an uphill struggle.

I firmly believe Christians should be involved in politics and government, campaigning for justice and the poor.  Sticking up for the disadvantaged and the needy.  Reminding society about the people that everyone else wants to forget.  But not picking fights with minority groups!

So let’s get behind something we can all agree on… changing the national anthem to Spandau Ballet’s classic!
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Jesus’ Yoke - The Missing Point

On Sunday we looked at the passage in Matthew 11:25-30. I don’t want to fall into the usual trap of repeating my talk – if you missed the talk and want to hear it you can download it from here.

Anyway, this passage can often be a textbook example of us interpreting the Bible with a self-centred approach. The NIV heads it with the title, “Rest For The Weary” and I’ve always centred on this, a nice promise of rest after a hard day’s work. A kind of spiritual lavender-bath-soak.

The more pressing impact of the passage is this revelation of who can follow Jesus and how we do it… (to be read in a Lion-o voice: “Must… resist… temptation… to repeat… talk…")

I didn’t cover the whole passage on Sunday and promised I’d make a final point on my blog, so here it is… It revolves around the last two verses:

“Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

I always skip over this idea of Jesus’ yoke. I guess I’ve never really thought of it and anyway, it’s not very conducive to my spiritual lavender-bath-soak.

But what does it mean if we’re going to cast of a yoke of religious expectation, of having to perform to the standard of the best of the best of the best, and in exchange take on Jesus’ yoke. Can’t I just lay back and relax in my lavender bath?

This is how I understand it: When we start to follow Jesus our life changes and we find ourselves challenged in areas we were previously impervious to. Jesus’ yoke is to take on his heart, his concerns, his actions. We’re doing something wrong if our growing experience of Jesus doesn’t produce in us action to help others. As James said (and almost got chucked out of the Bible for) “faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.”

There’s another verse we like to interpret for our own benefit. Psalm 37:4 says “Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart.”

What a nice verse. I’ve always desired to be rich and famous! Wonderful, God will give it to me! What a great God!

But not so fast. God giving us the desires of our heart... does this mean he will give us the things we’ve always desired, even before we knew him? Or does it mean that as we get to know us he will take our self-centred desires away and replace them with his desires. Whether or not they will be fulfilled (this side of glory) is perhaps a different question.

This has been my experience. As I’ve spent these last 15 or so years following God, the things I desire to see happen, the prayers I pray, the effort I spend, the money I give has changed. Things I couldn’t have cared less about start to have an impact on my heart. I feel compassion for things that at one time would have left me unmoved.

This doesn’t always help me relax with my lavender-bath-soak. In fact sometimes I feel extremely frustrated (although somehow at these times I feel closer to God).

Taking Jesus’ yoke is a challenge. It’s part of our call to become a church that can truly call itself the Body of Christ – being his hands, his feet and his heart to a broken world.

“Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” Matthew 10:39

Have Your Say...

Last week we had a feedback time at the end of the talk. We only had time for 3 people to share, but afterwards a number of people came up and said they wanted to say something.

So, thanks to modern technology, this is your opportunity to encourage everyone with your experiences or thoughts…

The questions I asked were:

• Have you ever felt intimidated by other Christians?


• Have you felt like you’re not a proper Christian somehow?


• Has some expectation been put on you in the past that you now realise has nothing to do with following God?


• Have we experienced times when we made a rule for others to follow God, only to realise God didn’t care about it?


• Has there been a time when someone has gone out of their way to accept you? What did it feel like?


• Have you experienced accepting someone who normally is rejected? What happened? Was it easy or difficult?

If you have something to say (anything, please! It would prove to me that someone reads this blog!) then click on the “Comments” or “Post a comment” link below. Please remember to put your name (choose “other”). You’re comment will appear after I’ve approved it (a necessary step to stop all the junk ones – sorry)
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God's Presence

Looking at the Bible as a journey from the garden in Genesis 2 to the city of the New Jerusalem in Revelation 21 is a fascinating way to think of the Bible. The garden and the city both represent high points of mankind’s relationship with God. Everything in-between pales in comparison. I love the unfolding and expanding presence of God with mankind when you look at the big picture of history seen in the Bible.

Of course the Bible is about individuals, nations, wars, poetry, kings, prophets, mistakes, successes, wisdom, stupidity and so on. But from a broader perspective we see the increasing presence of God with mankind. There are ups and downs, high- and low-points in the story, but the general direction is God’s increasing closeness. And it’s something that should really excite us.

We leave the book of Exodus as God’s presence fills the Tabernacle. Israel become a nation distinguished by God’s presence inhabiting this mobile temple that stands in the centre of their camp. God is with them! It still doesn’t match the closeness of relationship that mankind enjoyed in the garden or what we will enjoy in the New Jerusalem, but it is a significant landmark.

As we hit the fast-forward button through 4,000-odd years of history we skip through the chapter marks. Highs and lows, good-times and bad. Then God’s presence fills the temple, an awesome display that prevents the priests from performing their rituals. More ups and downs over a long period that seems like a dark-age. Suddenly the next chapter. A baby is born under unusual circumstances, grows up noticeably different and then starts a public ministry like nothing seen before. It’s a slow realisation for those there at the time, but eventually they realise this is God’s presence in flesh and blood, walking with them, talking with them, eating, working, sleeping, relating, crying, laughing, dying.

Fast-forward while disciples wonder what on earth is going on – hitting the depths of despair as everything they hoped for seems to have been in vain. And then, early one morning, tongues of fire disrupt their get together and they spill onto the street to be jeered as drunkards. Pentecost! Again God’s presence is with mankind – but now actually with man, living inside their heart, energising them, inspiring them, empowering, emboldening, bring a deposit of the abundant life we were created to live.

Skip forward and these disciples, and the disciples of these disciples, scatter across the whole earth, sharing this good news that God is with mankind – actually with mankind. It starts a revolution, it turns the world on its head. God’s presence not limited to a few select people, to a limited geographic location. God’s presence everywhere, with all sorts of people!

This is the world where we live. A world saturated with God’s presence, yet with so much left to do. Our privilege of knowing God’s presence is also our responsibility to work to spread this good news.

This is a long preamble to my point (sorry – I get quite excited about this!) When I talk to people about God and why I believe I find I always approach it from a certain way – I talk about why I believe, the sense of it, and what it means to me. If the whole point is God’s presence, maybe this should be more important in helping people find God than my arguments and advice. I seem to fall into the trap of trying to do God’s job for him. I set myself up as “God Promotions Inc.” and handle the marketing of the supreme deity to the mass markets. “Become a Christian, you’ll like it lots!” I say, “God is really wonderful, take my word for it – you can trust me!”

Paul says (in Acts 17:27) “God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.”

I want to let God be God. If people want to find God I’m happy to answer their questions, because I had questions myself and I found other people’s answers really helpful. I can offer advice because perhaps they, like me, have no idea of how this faith-journey works. But if they want to find God – really there’s nothing I can do. “God is not far from each of us” and his desire is that we find him. My arguments need to finish with “Give it a go! Ask God to be with you, to help you find him… see what happens. It’s up to you.”

God spoke the universe into being, he has been present with mankind since the beginning and he offers a cast-iron promise of his presence with us in the end. He certainly doesn’t need my help in being present with people.

Giving From The Heart

Talking about giving money to a church is not easy. We live in a materialistic society, the ideology of which has often seeped into the church. The cultural stereotype of a greedy and manipulative televangelist is perhaps the worst manifestation of this.

With this cultural stink hanging in the air I don’t enjoy talking about money in church. I would hate for anyone to interpret anything I say as an effort to manipulative money out of their pocket. But there’s no avoiding that running a church costs money, doing outreach costs money and effective compassion costs money. Our giving is an opportunity to partner in God’s work as his co-worker and the best we can do is to ask God what he is calling us to do and then pray for the strength to do it, in our finances and in our whole life. No matter what teaching you may have heard that suggests otherwise, I am convinced that God blesses obedience, not financial contributions.

It seems to me our confusion in this issue often comes from our perception of what the Bible thinks about money. There are two extreme interpretations of the Bible and in my experience it seems that people are often polarised to one or the other (unless they take the third way, which is not thinking about this issue at all!)

The first glorifies poverty as the peak of the spiritual life. It exalts the ideas of suffering for the gospel and looks on our possessions as a sign of weakness. Anything that might distract us from God or reduce our dependence on him means we are hovering on the edge of idolatry! Of course, living a life free of materialistic concerns gives us a great moral pedestal from which we can self-righteously look down at everyone else!

The second is the opposite; where we see prosperity as a gift of God, a way of God blessing the faithful whom he loves. It says as children of the creator God we should not want for anything and have only the best. If the world drives BMWs, then the Christians should drive Mercedes! Living this way might not necessarily lead to self-righteous snobbery, but then it’s very easy to be laid back when you’re relaxing in your heated pool!

The vast majority of Christians want to please God. They want to do the best they can to follow him and live a life worthy of him. I think this is why people end up gravitating to these extremes – we want to do what is right and we hear these powerful arguments advocated from the front of church, backed up with Bible verses galore!

But I’d suggest it’s not so simple. Much as we’d like a set of rules to follow, the Bible constantly points us towards a relationship with God first and foremost. Jesus never neatly fits into our boxes and these polarised views don’t comfortably fit all situations.

Thinking quickly of off the top of my head, check out these contradictory ideas: Jesus talked a number of times about giving our money away to gain riches in heaven (Luke 12:33). Yet his disciples and him were supported by a number of wealthy women, who thankfully hadn’t given all their money away (Luke 8:3). Jesus may have had no place to lay his head (Luke 9:58), but when he was crucified his seamless garment was too good to tear into four pieces (John 19:23-24).

I’m the first to admit it’s not the most thorough examination of the theology of wealth, but the point I want to make is it’s not as easy as we’d like. There are no simple rules, we need to hear God’s voice and do what he leads – give away all our possessions to the poor or accumulate wealth so we can support God’s work. Free ourselves from dependence on our ‘stuff’ or enjoy good things with a thankful heart.

All of this is a relationship issue – will we allow God into our heart and then do what he says? This is the lesson we can learn from Exodus. By building the Tabernacle the Israelites have the opportunity to have the living God dwell right in their mist. They give to this work because their heart leads them to give, not because they were required to give a particular percentage.

Then the whole Israelite community withdrew from Moses' presence, and everyone who was willing and whose heart moved him came and brought an offering to the LORD for the work on the Tent of Meeting, for all its service, and for the sacred garments. – Exodus 35:20-21