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Have You Ever Wondered if You Were Created For A Purpose?

by Editor

Have you ever wondered if you were created for a purpose?  You probably have if you’ve ever complained about feeling bored or demotivated.

Novelist Mark Twain once said: “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why”.  But is purpose and meaning in life something we can discover, or is it something we have to invent for ourselves?

Fundamentally, this is a religious and spiritual question, because it forces us to consider: what is the ultimate nature of reality?  There are two families of faith that offer different answers to the question:

  • Everything has arisen from nothing by no one for no purpose. This is the worldview of secular humanism and atheist existentialism.  Its answer to the meaning question is that it is something we must determine and create for ourselves.
  • Everything was created from nothing by Someone with a purpose. This is the worldview of theism, most importantly Judaism and Christianity.  Its answer to the meaning question is that it is something revealed to us by God our Creator.

Let’s compare and contrast them.

Most of us have grown up being taught that human beings are the products of evolution – we exist because of time, chance and natural selection.  Or as someone has said: “we are blobs of carbon, floating from one meaningless existence to another”.  That might sound a bit bleak, but for many people it is liberating and appealing.  You see according to the secular worldview there are no deities to please and no purpose to which you have to conform your life.  You are free!  We can all, in the words of Frank Sinatra, do life “my way”!

However, this worldview is not all freedom and fun.  For example, the philosopher Thomas Nagel admits that this worldview taken it to its logical conclusion is depressing and demotivating:

“Even if you produce a great work of literature which continues to be read thousands of years from now, eventually the solar system will cool or the universe will wind down and collapse and all trace of your effort will vanish…It wouldn’t matter if you had never existed.  And after you have gone out of existence, it won’t matter that you did exist”.

If this world and life is all that there is, then ultimately nothing matters!  In fact it doesn’t even matter whether you dedicate yourself to live a life of goodness and generosity helping others or a life of wickedness and selfishness that hurts others – in the end it is all meaningless!

How does that make you feel?  Empty… unfulfilled… hopeless?  Something feels wrong – we all need a sense of purpose and meaning to get out of our beds in the morning and to hold us back from suicidal thoughts.  So people have to invent an individual purpose for themselves.  For example: some people live for other people: their friends or families.  Some people live for personal success: through sporting or academic or workplace performance. Others dream of doing something that will make a meaningful impact on the world through business enterprise or political activism.

Nevertheless, these self-created meanings aren’t the full solution.  They are more fragile and less fulfilling.  Let me introduce you to two people who will explain why.

Firstly there’s Harold Abrams – the British athlete whose life is chronicled in the film “Chariots of Fire”.  At one point in the film, as he prepares for the next race, Abrams shares his existential angst: “And now in one hour’s time I will be out there again…I will raise my eyes and look down that corridor; 4 feet wide, with 10 lonely seconds to justify my whole existence. But WILL I?… I’m forever in pursuit and I don’t even know what I am chasing.”

Many of us today in our secular western society are a lot like Abrams – we’re running, chasing, pursuing something in this world that will justify and bring value to our existence.  However, if your created meaning depends on your performance then you will often be left feeling exhausted, insecure and anxious as you try to achieve it or try to hold onto it.

Interestingly, the film contrasts Abrams’ mindset with the Scottish Olympic gold medal winning athlete Eric Liddell.  Liddell was a Christian and he expresses his perspective on life and running in a conversation with his sister: “I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel His pleasure”.  His life was given meaning by the fact he knew he was running a greater race with a higher purpose from God.

I believe that Liddell points us towards a better answer.

The gospel of John – one of the four historical accounts of the life of Jesus – begins with these astonishing words:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things were created through Him…” (1:1-3)

John wrote in Greek and the term we translate as “the Word” was originally “the Logos”.  For centuries the greatest Greek thinkers had been searching for the Logos – the Logos was the logic behind life, the universe and everything.  If you could discover the Logos, then it would unlock the secrets of the meaning and purpose of life.

So John wants us to realise, that there is an objective meaning and purpose behind the universe.  It is not an impersonal principle to learn in philosophy, but a divine person to know in relationship.  That’s why he goes on to tell us: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us and we have seen His glory…” (1:14) – he is claiming that the meaning of life is revealed in the person of Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God!

God invites us back into relationship with Himself through trust in Jesus – and promises within that relationship we will find and fulfill our greatest purpose and potential.

PEP Talk Podcast With Graham Alder

by Solas

Here at Solas we love hearing about how Christians are living out their faith and sharing it creatively in all kinds of contexts. Today we hear from a policeman about the particular challenges and opportunities he finds in his line of work. 

With Graham Alder – PEP Talk

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Our Guest

Graham Alder is a Police Sergeant and Christian Police Association Scotland Branch Leader & Trustee. He has over 18 years Police service in a variety of roles and locations.  Blessed with a wonderful wife and children, a keen musician and late comer to enjoying books, mainly on apologetics and church history.

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About PEP Talk

The Persuasive Evangelism Podcast aims to equip listeners to share their faith more effectively in a sceptical world. Each episode, Andy Bannister (Solas) and Kristi Mair (Oak Hill College) chat to a guest who has a great story, a useful resource, or some other expertise that helps equip you to talk persuasively, winsomely, and engagingly with your friends, colleagues and neighbours about Jesus.

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Book Review: Of Popes and Unicorns by Dave Hutchings and James C. Ungureanu

by Editor

Of Popes and Unicorns: Science, Christianity, and How the Conflict Thesis Fooled the World

As someone who has spent his career working in science and has been a Christian all his adult life, I have never really understood people who think that there is a conflict between science and religious belief.  If I did feel the strength of what is commonly called ‘the conflict thesis’ I should presumably have spent most of the last 35 years wrecked by existential angst about my inability to link up two irreconcilable halves of my life.

Of course, it is wholly possible that I am so dim-witted that I can’t actually perceive the conflict which is so obvious to everyone else. But at the risk of sounding pompous I’ve always rather doubted that. I am widely regarded as being dim-witted, but not quite so dim-witted as that.

At the foundation of the modern conflict thesis sits two books. John William Draper’s 1874  A History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science and Andrew Dickson White’s two volume 1896 A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom. When published these books were influential, widely read, and are the root of a number of commonly held beliefs about the interaction between science and religion. In Of Popes and Unicorns David Hutching and James Ungureanu give us brief biographies of Draper and White before diving into their books to test their assertions. They do a thorough, readable, and at times very witty, job of dismantling the conflict thesis, showing that many of Draper and White’s historical arguments are not just muddle headed or over-simplifications but rather are based on falsehoods and evidence that simply isn’t there.

The problem, as Hutching and Ungureanu make clear, is that some of Draper and White’s lame nineteenth century arguments are still alive and kicking in the twenty-first. And this despite the best efforts of modern historians of science to set the record straight.

To give just one example of this, in chapter 4 entitled Walnuts for Brains, the authors note that Andrew White asserts that from the twelve hundreds the church banned human dissection. This was because of the thirteenth century ecclesiastical maxim ‘the Church abhors the shedding of blood’. Pope Boniface VIII banned the separation of flesh from the bones of the dead which rapidly became interpreted as a ban on dissection or surgery of any kind.

If it were true, it would be a terrible example of how the church held back progress by power and nonsense. Unfortunately for ‘the conflict thesis’ it isn’t true. There is no earlier source of the ‘the Church abhors the shedding of blood’ than the eighteenth century and while it seems that there were what Hutchings and Ungureanu describe as ‘a small number of folk’ (p.89) who did indeed read Boniface’s ban on the separation of flesh and bones as applying to human dissection, there is no record of the church preventing dissections.

They quote the contemporary historian of medicine Andrew Cunningham to seal the point: ‘As a life-long evangelical atheist I certainly hold no brief for the Catholic Church. Nevertheless the fact is that the Catholic Church has never been opposed to the practise of anatomy, whether for post-mortem demonstrating teaching or research purposes. Never, ever, anywhere’ (p.89).

Alas, despite the categorical ‘never, ever, anywhere’ the myth of opposition propagated by White is still alive and well, with Hutching and Ungureanu quoting, amongst other examples, a BBC Bitesize  GCSE History webpage which stated ‘Causes of medical stagnation in the Middle Ages included the forbidding of the Church of dissection and its encouragement of prayer (and superstition).’ Thankfully it has since been corrected, but it is pointed example of how historical fiction manages to persist.

Of Popes and Unicorns is well stocked with similar (if you will forgive the word) dissections of Draper and White’s alleged conflicts. The stories that Christendom held back scientific progress for a thousand years during the ‘dark ages’; or that the pope excommunicated a comet; or that Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) was burned at the stake for his scientific views; or that the church taught that the earth was flat, are all considered.

In some cases there are grains of truth in the myths. For example, Bruno was indeed burned at the stake, though for theological rather than scientific heresy. Admittedly burning people at the stake for theological reasons doesn’t reflect that well on the sixteenth century church anymore than burning people at the stake for scientific reasons, but at least we should get the reasons right. On the flat earth ‘conflict’, there were indeed a grand total of two theologians, Lactantius in the third century, and Cosmas in the sixth, who thought that the earth was flat. But pretty much no one took them seriously in their own lifetimes, or since, making it a little bit difficult to build a case that lots of people, never mind the entire church, thought, or taught, that the earth was flat.

The ‘conflict thesis’ has long been discarded as inadequate scholarship. In some historical instances it is just plain false, in others it does not do justice to the complexity of the history involved. This is all well known among academic historians of science, but David Hutchings and James Ungureanu have done a very good job of making the facts page-turningly-accessible to a wider audience.

Mark McCartney teaches mathematics at Ulster University

Of Popes and Unicorns: Science, Christianity, and How the Conflict Thesis Fooled the World, by David Hutchings & James C. Ungureanu, OUP, 2022, 263 pages. Is available here.

Confident Christianity in Grantown on Spey

by Editor

Hope Church Aviemore were our hosts for a half-day Confident Christianity conference  held at the YMCA Community Centre in Grantown on Spey. There’s a sign on the wall there that says that ernest Shackleton once adressed audiences there, so Andy Bannister has now walked in the footsteps of the great Antarctic explorer! It’s a small, but charming venue which was a perfect location for an event up in Speyside.

 

As ever, these conferences are about encouraging Christians in their evangelism. Mike Causey from the church – who had planned and organised the event welcomed everyone, before Hope Church’s pastor Kenny Rogan brought an opening devotion about our reliance on the Holy Spirit for evangelism and apologetics to bear fruit. Andy then shared his “How to talk about Jesus” talk on conversational evangelism. Gavin Matthews spoke next, opening Ephesians 2:1-10 looking at the heart of the gospel, “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy,  made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.” After a coffee break and brief slot about Solas’s ministry, Andy spoke on “Is Christianity Bad for the Environment” – addressing an important topic – but also demonstrating how the gospel can be shared through a contemporary issue. We finsihed off with an interesting time of Q&A which delved into eshcatology, Islam, heaven, the failures of the church, and witnessing to the apathetic.

Our host Mike Causey wrote:

“Welcoming Solas to Grantown was a joy. The desire to bring together believers from across the Spey Valley was realised in an impactful way. Not only did we hear practical guidance on sharing our faith in Jesus, we also connected with believers from multiple churches who hadn’t previously known of each other, even though they were in the same town. As a result, new opportunities to pray together are already arising, as well as a sense of a co-labouring for the gospel in our beautiful part of Scotland. Hope Church Aviemore is already planning its next Solas visit!”

Is Christianity the White Man’s Religion?

by Solas

Whether it is the modern-day tragedy of George Floyd or the contested historical figure of Edward Colston, the legacy of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade is very much a live issue today. For today’s black and other minority communities, the religious justification of African slavery leaves many writing off Christianity as the tool of white oppression. But is Christianity really the “white man’s religion”? Clare Williams gives us three great reasons to think otherwise.

About Clare Williams: https://realquestions.co.uk/about

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Have You Ever Wondered Why Mathematics Works?

by Editor

During my schooldays I hated maths with a vengeance. Maths was hard, maths was difficult, but above all it seemed to me to be mind-numbingly boring. I particularly hated negative numbers and would stop at nothing to avoid them. Terrible jokes aside, my dislike of maths wasn’t unusual for many of us struggle when it comes to anything to do with numbers; indeed it’s been remarked that there are three types of people in the world: those who can count and those who can’t.

What finally got me excited about maths in my late teens was when I discovered computers and in particular computer programming. Rather than numbers that described things (“six curries”, “three trips to the loo”, “one bad night’s sleep” etc.) with computers came numbers that did things. Give a computer the right numbers and it could play a game, draw a picture, or solve a problem.

MATHS IS EVERYWHERE

That was the 1980s and now, of course, computers are everywhere and so is maths. Even if—like most of us—the phrase “let’s do some maths” seems about as exciting as “let’s take up stamp collecting” or “how about a wet weekend in Bognor Regis?” you can’t actually escape the fact that all of us use maths, dozens of times a day. Every time you drive a car, make a budget, bake or cook, kick a ball into a net, or watch a weather forecast you’re using maths, usually without realising it.

We can’t get through life without numbers and this is especially true when it comes to the sciences. For example, when NASA launched the James Webb Space Telescope to international excitement in December 2021, there was a lot—a heck of a lot—of  maths involved in ensuring it got to the right place, at the right time, and was pointed the right way. And whether it’s launching a space probe, or modelling the curvature of space-time, or calculating orbital trajectories, scientists are utterly reliant on mathematics.

Not least this is because nature is inherently mathematical. Numbers are written into the laws of physics whilst mathematical patterns turn up everywhere. For example, in AD1201 the Italian mathematician Leonardo Bonacci, more popularly known as Fibonacci, published an essay in which he described a series of numbers like this:

1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34

Each number in that series is the sum of the two numbers before it. “So what?” I hear you cry. Well, what’s fascinating is that pattern turns up all over nature—the Fibonacci Sequence describes the growth of animal populations, the number of petals on flowers, the spirals on a shell and so forth. It also turns up in aesthetics, with the Fibonacci Spiral, based on those numbers, popping up all over art and architecture. This connection led the famous atheist philosopher, Bertrand Russell, to remark that “Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty.”[1]

A MATHEMATICAL MYSTERY

But there’s an intriguing mystery here that cries out for an explanation—namely why does mathematics work so well? Because numbers are all around us in everyday life, we don’t tend to stop and think about them—but have you ever wondered why life, the universe, and everything seems to align so well with maths.

Here’s the problem. If we live in a purely material universe, where the ultimate reality are atoms and particles then what actually is a number? What is “2”? I mean you can’t sit on it, climb it, lick it, or whack it with a hammer. Instead, numbers are just a human invention—a mere concept probably first invented by Mesopotamian goat herders sometime around 3400BC as a way to keep track of their flocks. So how is it that numbers also seem to describe the very fundamental building blocks of the universe? As Professor Jim Al-Khalili, former president of the British Humanist Society put it:

It’s a huge philosophical question: Why does nature speak the language of mathematics?[2]

Either those goat herders got very, very lucky—or else there is something bigger going on. And remember, by the way, that maths isn’t just about counting things, it’s also full of purely conceptual ideas, like imaginary numbers. (I remember when this concept was first introduced to me as a teenager I complained to the teacher: “Real numbers are awful enough, why would anybody want to make up more of the things?”) But these mathematical constructions, these concepts, turn up all over nature. What is going on?

NUMBERS ARE REALLY REAL

Some time ago I was having a beer with a friend who is a professor of mathematics at a leading British university and I made a throwaway remark about what an exciting job he must have, inventing new concepts all day long. Alex looked at me very seriously and said that this was a common misunderstanding. “We don’t invent maths,” he said, “maths is about discovery. Mathematicians are explorers—we head out into the unknown to find what’s there; that’s why maths transcends culture, time, and place”.

I think Alex was right—there isn’t “Chinese maths”, “British maths”, or “Indian maths”—there’s just maths. Mathematical concepts don’t change depending on who discovers them, they’re universal. But when you discover something: a new type of frog, a previously unknown mountain, the sharp corner of a Lego brick under the foot in the darkness of the midnight hallway, you’re finding a real thing, in the real world, something that has a concrete existence. But what about numbers? Where precisely is this mathematical realm that Alex and his colleagues spend their days exploring, mapping, and charting?

THE MIRACLE OF NUMBERS

In 1960, the Hungarian Eugene Wigner published what is now a very famous essay, ‘The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences’, which he explored this conundrum. Wigner begins with the story of two friends, one of whom was a statistician working on population trends. The statistician showed his friend an essay he was writing on the first page of which was a mathematical equation concerned with population growth. “What’s this little π symbol here?” the friend asks. “Oh, that’s pi, the ratio of a circle to its diameter?” “You’re having a laugh,” his friend retorts, “what on earth has the population to do with the circumferences of circles!”[3]

Wigner goes on to show how time after time, mathematics and science—whether its demographics or physics—fit together like a hand in a glove. Wigner admits that scientists cannot explain why this is the case, but that nevertheless we should be extremely grateful that it is. He concludes:

The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. We should be grateful for it and hope that it will remain valid in future research and that it will extend, for better or for worse, to our pleasure, even though perhaps also to our bafflement, to wide branches of learning.[4]

MATHS AND THE MEANING OF LIFE

Numbers are everywhere and they can do a lot for us. But there are some things that numbers can’t do—they can’t, for example, solve bigger questions like telling us the value of a person, the purpose of existence, or the meaning of life. Hence why attempts by some atheists to reduce the whole of life to that which can be indexed, measured, or numerated reminds me of an episode from Douglas Adams’ famous novel, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. A group of scientists have built a super-computer, Deep Thought, tasked with answering the question of the meaning of life once and for all. Despite major protests from the Amalgamated Union of Philosophers, Sages, Luminaries and Other Thinking Persons (“I mean what’s the use of us sitting up half the night arguing that there may or may not be a God if this machine only goes and gives us his bleeding phone number the next morning”[5]) the computer is switched on and allowed to ponder the question. After seven and a half million years of contemplation, Deep Thought is finally ready to announce the answer: the final answer, the objective answer, the definitive answer to the Great Question of Life, the Universe and Everything:

“I don’t think,” said Deep Thought, “that you’re going to like it.”

“Doesn’t matter!” said Phouchg. “We must know it! Now!”

“Now?” inquired Deep Thought.

“Yes! Now…”

“Alright,” said the computer and settled into silence again. The two men fidgeted. The tension was unbearable.

“You’re really not going to like it,” observed Deep Thought.

“Tell us!”

“Alright,” said Deep Thought. “The Answer to the Great Question…”

“Yes…!”

“Of Life, the Universe and Everything…” said Deep Thought.

“Yes…!”

“Is.” said Deep Thought, and paused.

“Yes…!”

“Is …”

“Yes … !!! …?”

“Forty-two,” said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.

It was a long time before anyone spoke. Out of the corner of his eye Phouchg could see the sea of tense expectant faces down in the square outside.

“We’re going to get lynched aren’t we?” he whispered.[6]

When it is later suggested to Deep Thought that the answer is somewhat anti-climactic, the computer retorts that the problem is possibly that nobody knew what the question actually was with any precision.

Numbers are not going to answer the question of the meaning of life for you. But I do want to suggest that numbers might be a clue as to where that meaning might be located. For if nature really is fundamentally mathematical; if numbers are as real as apples, aardvarks, and anti-cyclones, then it seems that whatever the deepest level of reality is, we’re looking at something more like a mind, rather than mere atoms and particles. Which is, fascinatingly, precisely what the Bible has always claimed—for in the beginning, it says, was not a molecule, nor an atom, nor a field of quantum particles—but God himself, the ultimate mind, in which numbers and mathematics have their source.

—

[1]        Bertrand Russell, ‘The Study of Mathematics’, The New Quarterly 1 (Nov 1907). Online at: https://users.drew.edu/~jlenz/br-ml-ch4.html

[2]        Jim made this comment during an appearance on the Premier Unbelievable podcast episode ‘Who invented the universe?’ (https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/unbelievable/id267142101?i=1000354571909)

[3]        Eugene Wigner, ‘The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences’, Communications in Pure and Applied Mathematics 13.1 (1960) 1-14, citing 1 (emphasis mine). You can read the full paper here: https://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~v1ranick/papers/wigner.pdf

[4]        Ibid. 14.

[5]        Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (New York: Harmony Books, 1979) 172.

[6]        Ibid., 179-181

Sharing Our Faith With Followers Of Islam – Andy on UCB ‘Life Issues’

by Editor

Andy Bannister recently appreared on the “Life Issues” show on UCB Radio to discuss how Christians can relate to their Muslim neighbours. It’s a lively and fast-paced interview, but especially listen out for the story of how a Pastor and an Iman struck up friendship which led to a series of Christianity and Islam dialigue events and why that led to some Muslim people trusting in Jesus. It’s a very interestng and unusual story!

PEP Talk Podcast With Mary Jo Sharp (Again)

by Solas

Today we welcome back a previous guest on the podcast to discuss Gen Z, deconstruction and the role of apologetics in the church today. Mary Jo Sharp also introduces Darkroom: a new, free resource for young people and youth leaders to address the issues Gen Z cares about in terms they understand. Clare Williams also joins the podcast as our guest co-host for this episode.

With Mary Jo Sharp Again – PEP Talk

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Our Guest

A former atheist who came to faith, Mary Jo Sharp has experienced two worlds of American culture: the post-Christian culture of the Pacific Northwest and the evangelical culture of the Bible Belt. She first encountered apologetics in her own spiritual search while seeking answers. Mary Jo is now an assistant professor of apologetics at Houston Baptist University and the founder and director of Confident Christianity Apologetics Ministry. She has been featured in Christianity Today’s cover story “The Unexpected Defenders” and is an international speaker on apologetics, focusing on love and logic to uncover truth. 

About PEP Talk

The Persuasive Evangelism Podcast aims to equip listeners to share their faith more effectively in a sceptical world. Each episode, Andy Bannister (Solas) and Kristi Mair (Oak Hill College) chat to a guest who has a great story, a useful resource, or some other expertise that helps equip you to talk persuasively, winsomely, and engagingly with your friends, colleagues and neighbours about Jesus.

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The Work of Street Pastors – In conversation with Sandy Gunn

by Editor

Every week all over the UK, countless volunteers put on their “Street Pastors” uniforms and head out onto the streets of our towns and cities to “Listen, Help and care”. Typically after praying together, these volunteers from the local churches in the areas they serve, go on patrol at 10:00PM and don’t get home until after 4AM. That’s when they are most needed, when people are drunk, lonely vulnerable or isolated.

Sandy Gunn helps to co-ordinate the work of Street Pastors across Scotland, and is a regular on the patrols of his local patch in Perth. He’s a passionate advocate for the ministry that Street Pastors provide and came to Solas to tell us all about it.

“When Les Isaac started Street Pastors in Brixton in London in 2003, he wanted the church to present an alternative to the crime and sadness of the streets. His first 18 volunteers went out to represent Jesus on the streets, listening, caring and looking after people”, Sandy told me. “Since then it has spread across the UK, and there are 20 Street Pastors groups across Scotland now.” Sandy explained.

While each local initiative is run independently, Street Pastors Scotland acts as an umbrella-body, standardising training, skills, equipment, procedures and quality assurance; so that while each community can respond to local needs, there is a consistent standard of care.

I asked Sandy how he became involved.

“I was working as a Church of Scotland minister in the town and was invited along and was immediately hooked!”, he enthused.

Every city is different, but Perth’s streets can sometimes be very quiet – especially on their midweek shifts. Sandy Gunn observes that sometimes the quiet shifts can be the most significant ones. When the streets are deserted, girls walking home alone can feel especially vulnerable, and welcome the reassuring presence of a trusted, uniformed volunteer. Equally, people walking alone on those nights often want someone to talk to, and there is more time to give them when things are quiet – and some of the most profound conversations occur.

Sandy described some typical events on a Street Pastors night shift.

“We walk the streets, make eye-contact with folk and ask how they are doing” he says. “We are familiar faces in the town, and people often come up and chat to us. A common thing people say to us is ‘What’s a Street Pastor?’ and we always tell them that we are volunteers who are there to listen, help and care. We don’t start conversations by talking about our Christian faith, because we don’t need to – and it would send people a mile away. We do not go in ‘proselytising’, and making people think that we are having a go at them. Instead we listen, ask questions and begin conversations with people where they are at and see where it goes. Sometimes people will have a go at us because we are known as a Christian organisation. I remember one person wanting to start a row with us about religion and war; but instead of getting drawn into an argument, my colleague said to the guy, ‘I’m so pleased to meet you, I wish there were more people like you in the world who really care about justice and right and wrong.’ The guy’s attitude totally changed. As the conversation developed it turned out that years ago he had had a very sad bereavement and then had been unable to talk about it; but opened up to us. Now if we had started by talking about Christianity, he would have walked off, but by the end we were discussing the evidence of the resurrection and he went home to read Psalm 73.”

Having said that they are not there to preach at people, Sandy explained that that doesn’t mean that Street Pastors hide their faith.

“Even secularists would say that if you are asked a question about what you believe you are entitled to answer”, he pointed out, and as a result of going out, meeting people and serving them “We seldom have a night when we do not have a spiritual conversation. One man said to me, I don’t like drinking – but it’s better than sitting in on my own on a Saturday night. Often these conversations find their way to talking about Jesus.”

People sometimes ask Street Pastors about hope. Covid, climate change, recession and price-hikes and wars all conspire to take away people’s hope. Sandy Gunn is an enthusiast for Christian hope. He told me,

“1 Peter 3:15 says always be prepared to give an answer for the hope you have, but do so with gentleness and respect – and people do ask us where we find hope in this world. And we are ready to answer them. Another Bible verse that comes up in conversation often is Romans 8:26 which says that the Holy Spirit prays for us with wordless groans. That surprises people, especially those who are hurting – who picture prayer as chanting in a church; not of closeness to a God who is personal and involved in their pain.”

Street Pastors undergo thorough training before they don the uniform and take to the streets. That training consists of everything from do’s and don’ts, safety,  identifying and responding appropriately to mental illness, interactions with the emergency services, to administering Naxolone for opioid drug-overdoses (Scotland only), and how to have jargon-free, concise conversations about faith. Street Pastors are also trained to deal with revelations of abuse or disclosures about criminality which come their way as they are often trusted with confidential and sensitive information.

While Street Pastors have a ministry to individuals, caring for them practically and having conversations about faith; their work is of great benefit to communities as a whole. The Street Pastors are not part of the police, nor are they ‘spying’ for the authorities; but the police forces across the country do appreciate their work. Sandy summarises, “the police say we make the streets safer”.  In many cities the police call on the SP’s to look after people who are just drunk or cold and need to be cared for – freeing them up to attend to more serious crime. In some places like Glasgow Street Pastors run “Safe Spaces”he same for people who don’t need medical treatment but somewhere safe to “sleep it off”.

Sandy Gunn concluded,

“It’s always a joy and never a chore to go out with the Street Pastors. I look forward to it being ‘my turn’ enormously. We do occasionally get a militant atheist who isn’t pleased to see us, but the vast majority of people are very glad we are there. We meet loads of people, help a lot of people and sometimes get to tell them about Jesus.”

The Street Pastors are always looking for new volunteers, prayer and financial supporters and people to come and observe a shift with them to get a taste for this unique ministry. If you’d like to find out how to get involved, or where your nearest local Street Pastors organisation is,  go to https://streetpastors.org/

A Passion for Life: Inverness

by Editor

The beginning of April 2022 marked the 10th anniversary of Highland International Church (HIC) and some months ago the church leaders decided it would be good to mark this with a focus on mission and outreach.

This also coincided with the Passion for Life initiative whose aim was to encourage and resource local churches to engage in ‘a month of mission (and a life-time of evangelism’) in the run up to Easter 2022. Passion for Life were also keen to see local churches co-operating and working together in the cause of the gospel.

So, working with Culduthel Christian Centre (CCC) and Smithton Free Church (SFC), we asked Andy Bannister to come north for a few days, to help equip our members for the task of mission and outreach as well as to speak at an event to which non-Christians would be specifically invited.

Andy spoke at 6 different meetings over 5 days. The first two were Q&A sessions where some questions had been submitted in advance, but most were fresh from the floor in an ‘open mic’ style. One of these was held in the Craigmonie Hotel, where HIC normally meet, and the other at SFC. Although the majority of those there were Christian, as it was billed primarily as an apologetic resource for Christians, a few non-Christians were also present.

There was a good range of questions which Andy dealt with honestly and humorously, while also acknowledging that he was not there as some kind of ‘guru’ with all the answers to all of life’s questions!

The third event was held at another hotel in Inverness and consisted of a meal with a talk given by Andy entitled ‘Hope in a time of fear’. The meal was subsidised by two of the churches so that the cost was £10 per person. The idea was that a Christian would invite and pay for their non-Christian friend to attend and it was so encouraging to see the number who did just that.

I can only speak of those I know about, but from our own fellowship we had Christians bring neighbours, work-colleagues, spouses, adult children and other family members – some of whom had studiously avoided attending any kind of ‘Christian’ thing for years.

Andy spoke well and the response on the whole was positive; there was one man who was very dismissive of everything that was said, but he was very much in the minority. Others took invitation cards to attend a follow-up Alpha Course run by Culduthel, a young woman has been attending church services regularly since then (and showing evidence of the Holy Spirit at work in her life), another woman came on a church-organised hill-walk and a man has continued reading through John’s Gospel using the Word One-to-One resources. So there has been much to give thanks for and much to pray on for!

The fourth event was a Saturday morning ‘Confident Christianity’ session held at CCC, during which Andy spoke on ‘How to share the message and hope of Easter in everyday conversation’ and ‘Sharing your faith in a post-Covid world.’

On Sunday morning, Andy spoke at HIC’s 10th anniversary service which was followed by a buffet lunch. His theme was ‘Jesus and the failures of the church’. Again, a number of non-Christians were present including a Buddhist-Agnostic-Quaker (!), whom some of us have been praying for, for quite some time. She was able to speak with Andy after the service and told her Christian friend later that she had been challenged by what he had said.

Andy’s last speaking engagement was speaking at the evening service at Smithton Free Church where his topic was ‘War and Peace’.

It was a blessing and privilege to be able to partner with Solas and Andy over the course of these days. We are grateful to Andy for all his work and energy in preparing to speak, speaking and then speaking to others after speaking! The Lord was gracious in hearing and answering many prayers and we look forward to seeing ‘fruit that lasts’ either here or in eternity.

James Torrens, Highland International Church

You can watch Andy’s talk “Jesus and The Failures of the Church” from Inverness, below.

What Happens When We Die?

by Solas

Have you ever wondered what happens when you die? Whilst we tend to avoid thinking about our own mortality, we can’t escape the fact all of us will one day die. Then what? Are we just worm food, soon to be forgotten forever? And what about justice — can you live a selfish, monstrous life and if you die without facing justice, you win? In this Short Answers video, Andy Bannister suggests that what we think about death has huge implications for what we think about life.

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Have You Ever Wondered If Your Life Is Worthwhile?

by Solas

Scrolling through social media, we swim daily in a sea of memes, motivations and messages which affirm our lives—and all before 7am!  Find something inspiring? Like and share.  Find something triggering? Block and delete.  But the question of our worth cannot be answered simply by our daily diet of feel-good digital content.  It is a deeply confronting question because it demands that we examine our standard for a life well lived.  What is the measure of a worthwhile life?

Three ways in which we attempt to answer this question are through stuff, self-care and selflessness.

Stuff. A good education, a well-paid job, a loving partner, 2.4 children and a healthy body seem to be self-evident indicators of a great life.  Education demonstrates that we’ve worked hard, a top job that we’ve worked harder.  A partner and progeny show that we’re loved and that we haven’t been rejected.  But what happens if we don’t make the grade?  What happens if we’re made redundant, our loved ones pass away, or our health is compromised?  Does the loss of these things–and they are very good things too–mean a loss or decline in the value of our lives?  Surely not.

We know that exterior stuff can’t truly satisfy, so instead we look within.  We recite positive affirmations, practise gratitude, detox and diet.  Our mood improves and we face life challenges with a renewed sense of purpose.  Self-care is healthy and healing for many of us.  And yet, the reality is we don’t always feel good about ourselves.  We don’t always eat clean and workout dirty.  We don’t always have something profound to say when life gets hard.  Does a dip in our personal wellbeing and inner peace undermine the value of our lives?

Rather than looking within, we sometimes opt for looking out.  We redirect our focus and energies onto the needs of others.  We stand with the marginalised and give to the less fortunate.  We campaign and call for justice.  Genuinely seeking out the liberation of others is a beautiful act.  Doing the work of justice is a rewarding and exhausting pursuit.  Such self-sacrifice has undoubtedly been instrumental in the moral progress we have made over millennia. But can we ever reach perfection? It seems there will always be a cause for which to contend.  And who takes care of the heroes?  It’s impossible to always be saving the day; we must take some time to put down our capes.

Perhaps stuff, self-care, selflessness or a combination of all three will always be found wanting.  Maybe we should stop taking ourselves so seriously and throw out the idea of a worthwhile life altogether.

In the latest offering of the Jurassic Park franchise, a young and brilliant scientist reflects upon the age of the earth and the dinosaurs which traversed it long before humans ever did.  She muses that the very idea of a planet billions of years old and the existence of species much stronger and fiercer that our own should humble us.  Instead of looking for stuff, looking within or without, we should look back and bask in the wonder of our insignificance.  Tiny specks in the expanse of time, we are lives of spectacular mediocrity.  And this view is not just the stuff of fiction.

In his essay, ‘Sanctity of Life or Quality of Life?’, philosopher Peter Singer asks a chilling question: “Why should we believe that the mere fact that a being is a member of the species Homo Sapiens endows its life with some unique almost infinite value?”  In this vein, there is nothing about being human that legitimises any presumption of ourselves and our lives as having intrinsic worth. Whilst it’s possible to subscribe to this view intellectually, can we do so practically? Is it liveable? In the day-to-day grind of joys and injustices, we behave as though good things that come our way are deserved and bad things are unfair, precisely because we intuitively believe that we are fundamentally people of worth. And what if this intuition is correct, not just a fuzzy feeling?

Moreover, the stuff, self-care and our attempts at selflessness also fail to deliver a lasting sense of worth because of their impermanence. They’re fleeting. They’re not sustainable. They’re only parts of a story that comes to an abrupt and unfulfilling end.  However, the Christian worldview tells a different story.  We are encouraged to look up—not back, within or without.  We look up to a God who has created us with inherent dignity and value because we are made in his image.  As theologian Ekemini Uwan writes, “The image of God, also known as the imago Dei, is not a supplementary gift or addendum, not is it accidental.  The imago Dei is irrevocable.”[1]  So when we lose our stuff, when we feel we’re not enough, when we can’t cure the ills of this world, and when we feel insignificant, we can look up.

We look up to God who has stepped down into human history in the person of Jesus and affirmed our lives as worthwhile.

[1] Ekemini Uwan, Truth’s Table: Black Women’s Musings on Life, Love and Liberation (2022)

Partners in the Gospel of Jesus in Milngavie

by Editor

Milngavie is an East Dunbartonshire town, a northern suburb of Glasgow; famous for being the starting point for the West Highland Way, and being mispronounced by English TV pundits on election night! In the heart of Milngavie are four churches who work together in gospel partnership – and who Solas have been working with recently.

The minister at St Luke’s parish church, Ramsay Shields describes the friendship that has sprung up like this:

“There is a massive difference between “unity” and “union”. As Eric Alexander once said – you can tie two cats together by their tails and you have union, but the last thing that you would have is unity. Here in Milngavie we enjoy true Gospel Partnership across St Luke’s Church of Scotland. St Paul’s Church of Scotland, Allander Evangelical Church, a Milgavie United Free Church Church, and to a lesser extent, the Episcopalians. This Gospel Partnership has been a great blessing to the church, and, we pray, to the community. We started working together at the millennium and have held some wonderful outreach events over the years.

Our joint Holy Week Services have had an evangelistic theme (we have had Rico Tice, Dick Lucas and Steve Brady, to name but three guest preachers), and have delighted to see the churches coming together for these. We have drawn on the best of the leadership in the churches to host, Christianity Explored, Discipleship Explored, etc, and more recently, A Passion for Life together. We also join together monthly for a prayer breakfast which goes around the churches too.”

Solas was delighted to work with these Milngavie Churches recently, both in evangelism and evangelism training.

Andy Bannister said of his time with the Milngavie Churches:

“At Milgavie I did our introductory session on conversational evangelism which I call, How to talk about Jesus without looking like an idiot. The idea behind it is to teach people how to have conversations about Jesus which are productive and persuasive with friends and colleagues.
One of the core ideas in this session is teaching people that wise use of questions can be a way of opening up really helpful conversations, and we look at a few such as, What do you mean by that?, Why do you think that? and Have you ever wondered..?

There was a really good audience in Milgavie, over a hundred people were there from the four churches in the town for a joint Sunday night meeting, and it was great to see a good mix of ages – with students right up to retired folks. I especially love Q&A, when people ask specific questions about how to apply some of this to their context, their friendships and relationships – and there were some very good questions at Milngavie that evening. And then some really interesting informal conversations after the meeting had officially finished. One conversation was especially interesting, with an academic from the University of Glasgow who goes to one of the Milngavie churches, and we had a great chat about science and faith – as well as the around outreach on the campus and the work of the CU’s.”

Solas was then able to send Gavin Matthews as a speaker down to Milngavie for the churches joint outreach service. He spoke about the way in which human relationships when they are fractured can be restored, but not without forgiveness. The same is true of our relationship to God, who we have alienated through our sin – but God in Christ offers us true forgiveness and reconciliation with him. The churches had arranged for everyone attending the service to be given a little leaflet explaining more about the gospel, written by Rico Tice of Christianity Explored. It was great to see so many people heading off into the Milngavie night clutching Rico’s leaflet.

If Solas can be of use to you, your church – or groups of local churches together – please do get in touch. We are committed to serving the local church across the denominational divides in sharing Christ with their communities. We work in cities, suburbs and rural areas – wherever the church has a heart for mission and invites us to come!

PEP Talk with Sarah Irving-Stonebraker

by Solas

We have recently heard more stories of Christians “deconstructing” their faith before eventually leaving it. But today we speak with an academic and historian about how her atheism was “deconstructed” when she discovered its true implications for morality, value and equality.  She goes on to show how hospitality and relationship can be radical evangelistic tools in the context of our secular individualised culture.

With Sarah Irving-Stonebraker – PEP Talk

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Read more about Sarah’s testimony here: How Oxford and Peter Singer drove me from atheism to Jesus

Check out this extract from Rosaria Butterfield’s book “The Gospel Comes with a House Key” which Sarah and Andy mention: ‘The most effective tool for sharing the gospel is your home!’

Our Guest

Sarah Irving-Stonebraker is an Australian-based academic, focusing on the history of Britain and the colonial world and especially the intersection of religion, science, and politics. She was awarded her PhD in History from Cambridge University and has lectured at Western Sydney University since 2012. Sarah and her husband, Johnathan, have three children. The family lives in the Hawkesbury region outside of Sydney where they are active members of a Sydney Anglican Church.

About PEP Talk

The Persuasive Evangelism Podcast aims to equip listeners to share their faith more effectively in a sceptical world. Each episode, Andy Bannister (Solas) and Kristi Mair (Oak Hill College) chat to a guest who has a great story, a useful resource, or some other expertise that helps equip you to talk persuasively, winsomely, and engagingly with your friends, colleagues and neighbours about Jesus.

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Keep a Thing Seven Years

by Editor

There’s a Gaelic saying which suggests that if you keep a thing for seven years, a use will be found for it. Sometimes, though, it doesn’t take that long.

This Sunday, I will have kept my grief for seven years. Like many new possessions, I carried it with me everywhere for the first while, moving it around as self-consciously as a child walking in stiff, leather shoes. When it was worn in a little, I started to forget for minutes at a time, only to be assailed by the reality of it when I least expected. In the last few days of Donnie’s life, I had been painfully aware that some time very soon I would no longer be a wife, but a widow.

I didn’t like the word and still less the idea that it represented.

Yet, in seven years, I have been taught to wear the mantle with something approaching acceptance. Instead of being allowed to push the garment from me, God has gently shown me that it IS mine to put on, every day. Traditionally, it also took seven years to train a piper, before they would be allowed to perform in front of an audience. There was no such apprenticeship for me, though – just straight in at the deep end.

I often think how this might all have been, had but one thing been different.

These seven years would have seen me grow bitter, perhaps, or reckless. I might have spent my time in wishing my husband back, or wishing I’d never met him – anything, in short, to remove the excruciating pain. The memory of his suffering could have tormented me to who knows what depths of anguish.

The one thing, though, which saved me from all of that was the hand on my shoulder. It wasn’t simply Christ saying, ‘I’m here, you can lean on me’. That would have been wonderful enough. In fact, his message was subtly different. He was actually telling me, ‘Remember I’m here. You know what to do’. This wasn’t the beginning of a wonderful new relationship, but a life-changing development of one that I hadn’t truly known I was in.

While I have carried – and will carry – Donnie in my heart, it is not loss which dominates my reflections over these seven years without him. It is gratitude. I had such a marriage that I didn’t think I could live without him. But God used that blessing to show me a much deeper and more enduring love. He has fulfilled me in the years of my widowhood, and shown me that, in Christ, all situations are an opportunity to know blessing.

I have profited from his teaching. It goes without saying that I have benefitted in more ways than I can count from his love and mercy. From the very beginning of this journey, though, God has laid it on my heart to share my providence with you. He did that, and then he made it possible.

Most miraculous of all, he took what might have destroyed me and blessed it to the extent that I can say that the Lord gives more than he takes away. Last Sunday, our minister used the sermon time to remind us of the glory and holiness of this God. And, right at the end, that devastatingly beautiful flourish of truth: ‘Remember, though, he is also your Father’.

Glorious, holy, perfect – of course; but tender and loving to the last. Not ‘also in our hard providences’ but especially. If you don’t believe it, I will take you to see a man who told me all things I ever did, and loved me just the same.

This article first appeared on Catriona Murray’s blog, “Post Tenebras Lux” here, and is used here with her kind permission.