Andy Bannister reports from another exciting Creation Fest in Cornwall. To find out more about future festivals click here – or to hear Andy and Carl Beech dicussing “Jesus and the failures of the church” from Creation Fest click here (audio only).
News
Is Your Life Worthwhile?
Have you ever wondered if your life is worthwhile? We all long for significance, but where is it be found? Is our value to be found in the size of our bank balance, our grades, our friends, our fame? What happens if we don’t have those things — or if we lose them? In this Short Answers film, Andy Bannister shows why all those attempts to prove our value fail and why perhaps we’ve been looking for our sense of worth in all the wrong places.
Thanks to our friend Elizabeth Humble for letting us film at her jewellery studio.
Share
Please share this video widely with friends or family and for more Short Answers videos, visit solas-cpc.org/shortanswers/, subscribe to our YouTube channel or visit us on Twitter Instagram or Facebook.
Support
Short Answers is a viewer-supported video series: if you enjoy them, please help us continue to make them by donating to Solas. Visit our Donate page and choose “Digital Media Fund” under the Campaign/Appeal button.
First we are worshippers!
Christians – especially those who are distinctly evangelical – have always been activists. In fact, according to the church historian David Bebbington, one of the 4 defining hallmarks of evangelical Christianity is ‘activism’ (the belief that the Christian gospel must be expressed in word and in action). Evangelicals, he wrote, have “An eagerness to be up and doing!” As a result our churches are busy, with kids clubs, poverty relief schemes, evangelistic initiatives, housegroups, services in care homes, prayer meetings, youth getherings, cafe’s meetings for older people – and more. It’s why people from evangelical churches have headed out from these shores all over the world in mission; and why we now receive missionaries into this country from countries as diverse as India, Brazil and Australia.
But what drives all this activity?
The Apostle Paul was clear about his motivation for his intentional ministry of preaching, church-planting, letter-writing and missionary-journeying that he undertook in the middle of the first Century. Early in his ministry he wrote about his determination to persuade others to trust in Christ, saying “For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.” (1Cor5:14-15). The revolution of love that had changed Paul’s heart meant that he was so captivated by the grace and love of God in Christ for him, that he was compelled to share it with others. What started on the Road to Damascus, took Paul all over the Greco-Roman world. Today, we evangelicals are busy people.
Why do mission?
So, why do you do mission? Why do I? Is it out of duty or habit – or just the done thing in your church circles? Of course, mission can be undertaken in a murky attempt to use the gospel to promote oneself, build a platform or grow a career-ministry. So – why do you do mission? Is it driven by a genuine desire that people outside of Christ can experience what you have found in him? My experience is that when I have tried to share the gospel from a place of pride, duty, guilt, or with my eyes on myself – it has been a car-crash. It’s been toxic to me and unhelpful to anyone I have spoken to.
We so often (rightly!) emphasise the importance of prayer in evangelism. We know that without God’s help we are powerless and fruitless – and so we pray for success as we proclaim and defend the gospel. Don’t we also need to pray that our hearts would be aligned with His as we go out – and that we really are filled with God’s love for the lost? After all, if I can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge and have a faith that moves mountains is but have no love.. I am nothing. 1 Cor 13 is too often restricted to weddings – perhaps we should read it in mission too – and pray that our hearts are changed.
True mission, which is pleasing to God – and fruitful – is mission which is not done for ourselves, but done for God and others. It is the expression of the gospel of grace that makes us other-centred, and Christlike, and enables us to speak the gospel of grace with authenticity. I knew a man who had done outreach for one of the sub-Christian sects that sees salvation as being achieved by works – especially door to door evangelism. He said, “The problem was, I did that work ultimately for me, to earn my spot in heaven. The people I reached out to really only were means to my ends. I was using them for my salvation, what I ultimately cared about was me”. This is the exact opposite of what it means to be bearers of the gospel of grace, compelled by the love of Christ!
The Psalms tell us something further about the second great motivation for mission.
Psalm 96
Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth.
Sing to the Lord, praise his name; proclaim his salvation day after day.
Declare his glory among the nations, his marvellous deeds among all peoples.
For great is the Lord and most worthy of praise; he is to be feared above all gods.
For all the gods of the nations are idols, but the Lord made the heavens.
Splendour and majesty are before him; strength and glory are in his sanctuary.
Ascribe to the Lord, all you families of nations, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.
Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; bring an offering and come into his courts.
Worship the Lord in the splendour of his holiness; tremble before him, all the earth.
Say among the nations, “The Lord reigns.”
This great missionary psalm begins with such an exalted and lofty view of the glory (the sheer significance) of God- that the Psalmist is driven to declare it to the ends of the earth! The majesty, glory, power, love and mercy of God – who loved the world so much that he sent His one and only Son- is the most important thing to know. It is wrong, that this world does not know, honour or obey God – and we must proclaim the gospel to correct that wrong; declaring the glory of God to all people.
Mission’s Flame
Someone who understood this, is the contemporary Christian songwriter Matt Redman. He has (perhaps more than most), grasped that before becoming activists, evangelists or missionaries – we must first be worshippers. He wrote these arresting lyrics:
Let worship be the fuel for mission’s flame
We’re going with a passion for Your name
We’re going for we care about Your praise
Send us out!
The truth is that if we rush into activism before we are worshippers of God and are filled with His love for the lost – things fall apart. My Solas colleague Gareth Black lamented the public fall of a prominent preacher saying, “We must never get to the point where our character is playing catch-up with our calling”. And where is our character – especially our love for God and others – formed? It is formed as we encounter God, when we sense His presence, love, grace, forgiveness and holiness. It is on our knees that we align our heads, our hearts and our hands – our intellect, emotions and actions. It is as true today as it was in Acts, when Luke tells us of the first Christians that “the place where they met to pray was shaken, they were filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly”. Jesus met with them first- and then sent them out. He changed them first before sending them out to change the world. Do we put the cart before the horse, and rush out to speak, before we have first worshipped? Do we open our mouths for God, before we have truly opened our hearts to God? What is the antidote to our failing here? This: Let worship be the fuel for mission’s flame.
The miracle of the gospel of grace is that it turns us inside out. Jesus meets our most profound needs and sends us compelled by his love for others, secure in Him to serve the lost; and gives us a vision of Himself so glorious that we cannot be silent until all the world has heard about this God. Before we are evangelists, we first must be worshippers of God who love the lost like he does.
I leave the last word to Matt Redman:
Image from Matt Bottsford on Unsplash
Newday Festival
Andy Bannister reports on his trip to the impressive Newday youth festival in Norfolk where he spoke recently.
PEP Talk Podcast With Clare Williams
The Church Behaving Badly can be an insurmountable obstacle for many people in coming to faith in Jesus. In the case of religious justification for racism and slavery, this issue impacts whole communities and ethnic groups. How can we de-bunk the concept of “the white man’s religion” when speaking to our friends in black communities? Andy and Kristi speak with Clare Williams on PEP Talk to unpack this obstacle to evangelism.
With Clare Williams – PEP Talk
Our Guest
Clare Williams is the founder of Get Real, a Christian apologetics organisation which addresses questions about Christianity, particularly from the black British community. She has a degree in English Language and Literature from Oxford University, and she completed postgraduate training in theology at Wycliffe Hall. Clare has an MA in Leadership and an MA in Culture, Diaspora and Ethnicity. She enjoys engaging with questions of culture, truth, identity and the gospel.
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.
Book: Proving Ground by Graham Hooper
There was a time when Christians spoke as if work was a necessary evil, which had to be got out of the way as early in the day as possible in order to do “God’s work” in the evenings. The implication was that people who didn’t organise their work lives around church rotas had a bit of a problem with ‘the love of money’ and that their lives were the product of that ‘root of all kinds of evil.’ With a worldview embedded in an assumption of a sacred-secular divide, the aim of the Christian was to spend as little time on the wrong side of that line as possible, it seemed. The suggestion that work was ordained by God before the fall, or that He might want us to work our discipleship out as much in the market-place as in the worship-space, was almost never made.
It was perhaps John R. W. Stott who shifted the conversation decisively for evangelical Christians in this regard – regularly seeking to address workplace issues in books and sermons. Subsequent leader at the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity (LICC) Mark Greene then wrote the seminal book “Thank God It’s Monday” which sparked a significant shift in many church’s attitudes to work. Several other authors have then weighed in, with titles like “The Heavenly Good of Earthly Work” (D.Cosden, Baker Academic 2006), and Tim Keller’s “Every Good Endeavour” (Hodder, 2018). Here at Solas, we have looked at this subject, with a series on interviews with Christians seeking to live for Christ in a wide variety of secular workplaces, which you can read here.
The latest contribution to this field comes from the pen of Graham Hooper, a Christian who has been in business for over forty years – in several countries. In fact, he became a Christian whilst working abroad early in his career, and helpfully reflects on the differences that Christian faith made to all aspects of his work. His new book “Proving Ground” makes a really helpful contribution to this important topic – which has been so neglected by the church.
The book contains “40 Reflections on Growing Faith at Work”, and these come in five sections. The first looks at ‘why’ we work, and examines our motives, probing Christians to think through what we actually ‘get out of bed for in the morning’. Helpfully he examines things such as what it could mean for a Christian to ‘take a pride in their work’ but not indulge in the deadly sin of ‘pride’. Section 2 examines the values that we seek to foster in ourselves as disciples of Jesus, integrity, service, opposing corruption, and out witness in the workplace. Three, is a section about relationships with a healthy mix of how to handle both power and humility. The fourth section looks at the struggles all face at work, stress, frustration, redundancy, boredom, setbacks and so forth – this is a very useful and helpful response to, and acknowledgement that work under the fall is both God ordained and subject to the curse (Gen3:17-19). The final section draws back the lens and looks at the bigger picture of what is for, how it fits into the picture of discipleship and what we are called to as followers of Jesus. This also contains some very helpful wisdom from someone who has clearly thought-through and lived-out the calling of discipleship, which extends well beyond Sundays and into the rest of the week.
Hooper’s very accessible volume is well theologically grounded, takes whole-life discipleship seriously and is both practical and addresses the issues of the heart that undergird our outward actions. Especially helpfully, at the end of each of the forty ‘reflections’ on a different aspect of serving Christ through work, he has added three or four questions for personal study. These could easily be discussed by a group – (such as a workplace Christian group of the type that Transform Work UK are pioneering), or by a church housegroup made up of working age people. While evangelism is Solas’s area of special interest, what is helpful in this book here is that Hooper sets ‘speaking for the Lord’ in the wider framework of what it means to serve Him in all aspects of life in business: values, temptation, integrity, pride, relationships. identity, conflict resolution and so forth.
Equally significantly, I think pastors should read this book. If their job is to ‘equip the saints for works of service’, then they need to be fully aware of the challenges, opportunities and callings and costs of ‘secular’ work – and this is a great place to start opening up those conversations. I can recall many conversations with friends who think that the quality of the exposition of scripture they receive on a Sunday is not matched by adequate application or illustration – because so many preachers have not been employed outside the church for so many years. We, of course, rightly expound Galatians, Ephesians etc; but our task is make disciples who will follow Christ in call centres, retail parks and financial houses and care homes; not first-century Greek cities. Perhaps if a pastor decades into ministry were to read Hooper with some thirty-somethings in his congregation it would be very helpful for all.
Proving Ground by Graham Hooper is available here.
OCCA – World Religions Day
I recently had the privilege of travelling back to Oxford to participate in the “World Religions Day” at the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics (The OCCA), which was a day-long conference about how Christians can relate-to and engage-with people from different faith traditions. Between the online audience and those in the room, there were about 7-80 people booked in, – a good sized, and engaged audience.
As people who follow Solas would expect, I had been asked to deliver the sessions on Islam – about which I have been thinking and writing for many years. We looked at how to understand Islam and Muslims; especially focussing on the questions that many Muslims have about the Christian faith and how to answer them helpfully.
I also shared a lot of material from my book, “Do Christians and Muslims Worship The Same God?” I address that topic quite regularly because it a subject around which there seems to be some confusion; especially when Christians chat to Muslim neighbours, friends and colleagues. The problem is that similarities of language can sometimes mask differences of substance. The most obvious example is that Christians and Muslims will both happily affirm that “We believe in only one God”. That sounds like the basis for widespread agreement; until you ask the question; “What do mean by the word, “God”?” The natural assumption is that we all mean the same thing when we employ the same word
A left-wing Marxist and a right wing capitalist might both say, “I am passionate about politics” – but if you were to probe beneath those sentences and find out what they are passionate about; they would be very different things! They believe different things behind the same form of words. So it is with theology, our Muslim friends understand quite different things about the word “god” than we do. So it can be quite helpful in these conversations with these friends to (at least in the back of our minds) be aware that there are differences, and to be aware of them.
There was also a session from another friend of Solas, Rahil Patel, who was on our podcast recently. Rahil is a former Hindu priest – not just a Hindu believer but one who ascended to their priesthood for over twenty years. Then a little over over fifteen- years ago Rahil had quite a dramatic conversion to Christian faith. So he shared about how to understand and communicate with our Hindu friends and colleagues which was tremendously insightful.
Tom Price from The OCCA then talked to everyone about The New Age – and other contemporary spiritualities and how we engage with those. They are, of course, everywhere – and Christians are not always aware of them in the way they are say with traditional religions. Yet – we are surrounded by spiritualities which are sometimes devoid of definite or coherent content. Tom did a really good job at looking at how we engage or connect, challenge and build bridges with people, beginning where they are and offering them the true spirituality that is found in Christ.
I love, as part of Solas, to work in partnership with other organisations. We’ve known lots of the people at the OCCA for a long time, and they are going through something of a re-launch at the moment, so it was good to be working alongside them at an important time.
The OCCA – The Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics, hold regular events like this, and details of future events are posted here.
Why Are We Drawn To Leaders Who Serve?
With the death of Queen Elizabeth II there has been lots of talk about her life of service and duty. But why do we find those qualities attractive in a leader? Most rulers throughout history have simply used power for their own ends — so where did we get the idea that a leader should be a servant to their people? In this timely Short Answers video, Andy Bannister explores how this idea goes back to the greatest servant leader of them all.
Thanks to our friend Elizabeth Humble for letting us film at her jewellery studio.
Share
Please share this video widely with friends or family and for more Short Answers videos, visit solas-cpc.org/shortanswers/, subscribe to our YouTube channel or visit us on Twitter Instagram or Facebook.
Support
Short Answers is a viewer-supported video series: if you enjoy them, please help us continue to make them by donating to Solas. Visit our Donate page and choose “Digital Media Fund” under the Campaign/Appeal button.
Have You Ever Wondered Why Black Lives Matter?
Why ask the question?
The question, ‘Why do black lives matter?’ seems a redundant one because surely it is self-evident that everyone, regardless of ethnicity, is worthy of life. Our shared humanity is enough to answer this provocative question. And yet, it is clear that there is more to it; there is something prompting the inquiry, ‘Why do black lives matter?’ Our common humanity, or the fact that ‘all lives matter’ is indeed true, but is there something about the way our society operates which gives the impression that black lives don’t, in fact, matter? It would be dishonest to wilfully ignore and not explore why we might pose the question in the first place.
Often when we are confronted by the problem of racism in the UK, we can be quick to point a condemnatory finger at the US or some other part of the world, because the issue isn’t that bad here. However, some disturbing statistics suggest we should be alarmed. Black women are four times more likely to die in childbirth than white women .[1] Black children are more likely to be strip-searched by police.[2] Black Caribbean children are more likely to be permanently excluded from schools.[3] And by their own reporting, police use greater force with black and Asian suspects than white suspects.[4] One live example of disproportionate use of police force upon ethnic minorities is the tragic case of Chris Kaba.[5]
Now we might respond, as the 2021 Race and Ethnic Disparities Commission did, by citing factors other than racism as the cause of these inequalities. For example, in response to disparities in education, the report says, “If there is racial bias within schools or the teaching profession, it has limited effect and other factors such as family structure, cultural aspirations and geography may offset this disadvantage.”[6] The point is, issues within certain ethnic minority communities may hinder their own progress. Well, this is certainly one way to interpret the picture.
Memories and Meritocracy
Growing up black in Britain, my experience presents a different view. I remember my parents telling me that I would have to work twice as hard as my white peers to be taken seriously. I remember my dad telling me how to conduct myself if I ever got stopped by police; he had been stopped several times, including one time on his way to church! I remember teachers scoffing at my ambition to apply to Oxford University and saying, “You’ll only get in because of positive discrimination.” I remember being asked if I was the candidate at an interview or the speaker at an event when institutions had received my CV or bio, but not seen or met me in person. Whilst teaching in multicultural London schools, I remember going over and above in my duties to show that black women could lead well. But all of this hard work didn’t stop white colleagues who struggled with their own classes telling me, “The kids listen to you because you’re black.”
The thing is, working twice as hard does help to overcome some barriers but it’s incredibly exhausting. It is a relentless cycle of seeking worth from individuals and systems that set a higher bar for faces that don’t fit. And this is not to disregard disadvantages which people experience because of class. Not at all. During my years of teaching, I have seen the struggle of white working-class boys in education and the research which highlights their particular situation.[7] Since leaving teaching, I have set up a charity which supports them and other underrepresented groups in aspiring to higher education.[8] However, I am also keenly aware that racism compounds class disadvantage.
A Faulty Metric
Even if we’re not convinced that racism is the cause of disparities for ethnic minorities in the UK, we must admit that there is something much deeper to consider: what are the implications of a society in which black people must prove they’re worthy of being treated with dignity, that their lives matter? If black lives only matter if they perform well or if we measure black life by what individuals contribute to society, we are setting everyone up for failure. Why? Because this kind of metric makes us all into objects which can be used, rather than people with inherent dignity. Regardless of ethnicity, we will all face limitations when we age, get sick, lose our jobs or some other tragedy strikes. Do our lives cease to matter then?
I have been alive and black for 35 years and I can tell you that this type of thinking doesn’t work. It’s dehumanising to both black and white lives. How so? In his strident narrative denouncing slavery, Frederick Douglass describes how slave buyers came to inspect enslaved Africans in a prison. He says, “A swarm of imps, in human shape the slave-traders, deputy slave-traders, and agents of slave-traders… watching for chances to buy human flesh (as buzzards to eat carrion) flocked in upon us… Such a set of debased and villainous creatures, I never saw before, and hope never to see again.”[9] The objectification of Africans in this scene is horrific and it also reveals how the slave-buyers were dehumanizing themselves with this behaviour. Something of our humanity is lost when, and if, a person views someone else as a thing or a product. When someone exploits other people, their sense of respect for and dignity of others slowly but surely becomes warped.
A Better Way
Christianity subverts this idea completely. Firstly, human dignity is grounded upon the claim that we are made in God’s image.[10] Like a Banksy piece, which is beautiful in its own right, the value of the art is ultimately determined by the acclaim of the artist. In the same way, we are God’s masterpiece, and he delights in us, painting a diverse palette of people across the globe.[11] My life matters, not because of achievements or when others think I’ve done enough as a black person. I matter because in my very blackness, I reflect something of God himself. In a future picture of the world restored by God and all injustice done away with, people from every “nation and tribe… and language…” will be united in worship.[12] This is a vision of hope where God doesn’t erase but instead celebrates ethnic diversity. Secondly, the Christian faith is hinged upon the concept of grace. Getting to know God is not about the things we can do but about what he has done for us. We can’t earn our way into relationship with God. Our skin colour cannot give us special privileges or access to God. No. Christianity says that we are all broken and in need of a saviour. The good news is that an unlikely saviour has come in the person of Jesus.[13]
[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-59248345
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/aug/08/police-data-raises-alarm-over-welfare-of-strip-searched-children
[3] https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/education-skills-and-training/absence-and-exclusions/permanent-exclusions/latest
[4] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/police-use-of-force-statistics-england-and-wales-april-2020-to-march-2021/police-use-of-force-statistics-england-and-wales-april-2020-to-march-2021#use-of-force-by-age-gender-ethnicity-and-health-condition-of-individuals
[5] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-62940371
[6]https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/974507/20210331_-_CRED_Report_-_FINAL_-_Web_Accessible.pdf
[7] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-57558746
[8] https://masterclassedu.co.uk/
[9] Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
[10] Genesis 1:27
[11] Ephesians 2:10
[12] Revelation 7:9
[13] St John 3:16
Christianity and The Environment – Andy on NewGround’s Life and Leadership Programme
The Life and Leadership podcast from New Ground Churches is a lively discussion programme which features an array of guests, discussing topics as diverse as ethics, preaching, politics, leadership, and current issues. Andy Bannister from Solas was a recent guest on the show, where he was asked to speak about a Christian response to the question of environmentalism.
PEP Talk Podcast With John MacKinnon
Have you put a “no” in the mouth of a non-Christian friend before you’ve even invited them to investigate the Bible? Isn’t it surprising how people we know well react once they’re given an opportunity to speak about Christ? Today on PEP Talk we chat about some great resources helping Christians walk through the Bible with their enquiring friends – why not invite yours?
With John MacKinnon – PEP Talk
Our Guest
John MacKinnon is based in East Kilbride, Scotland, where he served as the Lead Pastor of Calderwood Baptist Church for more than 17 years. He previously served as an Evangelist and Bible Teacher in an itinerant capacity, with an emphasis on enabling churches to develop their members to make Jesus known amongst their friends. Currently he is Director of Evangelism at The Word One to One, where he rejoices in the privilege of drawing alongside local churches to encourage, equip and enable them to raise up an ever-increasing number of joyful bible sharers. He is married to Linda and they have three children, all adults, and he is Papa to five grandchildren who fill his life with so much fun.
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.
Atheist says Queen’s funeral was ‘empty and platitudinous’. I disagree.
On Monday 19th September I gathered with a small group of family and friends to watch the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II. We were not alone—almost four billion people globally watched the service from Westminster Abbey.
I found the funeral profoundly moving but although there was sadness, the service was not in the slightest way depressing, for the Queen’s funeral was deeply and thoroughly Christian, saturated throughout with a message of joy and hope, the good news that for the follower of Jesus, death is not the end. As the final hymn that the Queen herself had chosen proclaimed:
Finish then thy new creation,
pure and spotless let us be;
let us see thy great salvation,
perfectly restored in thee,
changed from glory into glory
till in heaven we take our place,
till we cast our crowns before thee,
lost in wonder, love, and praise!
Existential despair
Not everybody was so impressed by that message of hope in the face of death. Whilst the funeral was still in progress, journalist and broadcaster Ian Dunt tweeted:
The first thing that struck me about Ian’s comment was his honesty. There can sometimes be a tendency for atheists to pretend that life is all rainbows, roses and kittens—think of that terrible bus slogan from a few years ago: “There’s probably no god: now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” Now there’s a platitude with attitude. But Ian is at least honest enough to recognise that suffering and despair are a grim reality of life.
Other atheists go further still. In his best-selling book, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval Noah Harari writes: “Any meaning that people ascribe to their lives is just a delusion.”
For Harari, it’s not just religious people who try to fend off existential despair with falsehoods, but everybody. Life is meaningless, period—and so Dunt is guilty of not going far enough. Quick to criticise the “cardboard shield” of religion, he hopes you won’t notice his own paper cocktail umbrella of comfort.
Is religion empty?
The second thing I noticed about Ian’s tweet was his criticism that religion is “terribly empty and platitudinous”. Aside from the point that in atheism, everything humans do is ultimately empty, I’d again go further than Ian and observe that all of us can be tempted to shallowness. For every Christian who doesn’t get beyond tweeting “Jesus is the answer”, there are at least as many atheists who mindlessly parrot soundbites like “faith is irrational”. Perhaps the world might be more a civil place if we were all a bit more robust in our thinking.
And Biblical faith certainly is robust. It’s easy to forget that much of the Bible was written by people who were suffering, who knew full well that the world was a messy and broken place, for whom despair was an ever-present temptation. And throughout two thousand years of Christian history, biblical faith has been battle-tested as Christians have discovered that faith in Jesus does provide solace when one is faced with war, disease, persecution, or death. I wonder if Ian needs to get out a bit more and talk to Christians in places like Iran, or China, or North Korea.
We’re all going to die
But let’s return to Ian’s remark about “existential despair”. Given all that’s going on in the world right now (pandemics, Putin and financial chaos) and the grim fact that death awaits all of us, what should we do? You basically have three options. First, you could just give up—indeed the famous French atheist Albert Camus once remarked: “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.”
If that seems a bit extreme, option two is to distract yourself. There’s an old Indian folktale about a man stuck on a raft that is approaching a huge waterfall that will almost certainly kill him. After trying to rescue himself by paddling (but the current is too strong and the river too wide), he decides to lie back, put his arms behind his head and whistle away the minutes until his doom. We can do the same: try to use TV, or music, or sex, or some other pleasure to distract us from our impending doom.
If neither killing yourself nor distracting yourself sound particularly promising, maybe it’s time to consider option three and give religion a proper look. After all, if there is a god behind the universe (not merely the blind forces of time, chance and physics) that would give us a proper basis for human value, for meaning, and perhaps offer the possibility that death is not the end (along the way explaining our instinct to see death as unnatural and something to rage against).
True religion
Queen Elizabeth was not simply ‘religious’, nor was her faith in some generic wishy-washy god with a lower case ‘g’. Rather she trusted in the God of the Bible, a God who stepped into history in the person of Jesus. In the New Testament, Peter, one of Jesus’s closest friends and followers, writing to a group of Christians being persecuted for their faith, says this:
“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade.”
The living hope that Christians have, says Peter, is not empty or platitudinous, not based on wishful thinking but is grounded on the resurrection of Jesus from the dead—an event that took place in the full light of history (and to which Peter was one of the earliest group of eyewitnesses). Yes, life may be tough, says Peter, but we know that there is hope to be found for those, like the Queen, who place their trust in Jesus, the one who has overcome death and decay.
One of the hallmarks of Queen Elizabeth’s life was her devotion to duty and service. As the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, put it in his sermon at the funeral:
“People of loving service are rare in any walk of life. Leaders of loving service are still rarer.”
Concrete hope
Is the Queen’s example of duty and service inspiring? Well, if we live in a godless universe, with nothing more than atoms and particles, then I’m afraid she was actually a fool. She’d have been far better off, like so many leaders throughout history, using her power for personal gain and pleasure. If Ian Dunt is correct, the best thing one can do is try to die with the most toys, wins, right?
But what if we don’t live in a godless universe? What if there is a bigger, deeper, truer story, one that gives us a concrete foundation for hope, a foundation for believing that everything sad-and-bad will one day become undone, a foundation for believing this life is not all there is, a foundation for hoping—for knowing—that death, despair, and doom are not the last word, but that love is the last word? In which case, in following Jesus, Queen Elizabeth II made the wisest choice of all.
This article was first published at Premier Unbelievable.
Image: BBC iPlayer
Facing the Canon
Canon J John is a well known speaker, writer, evangelist and more recently TV presenter. His ‘Facing the Canon‘ programme has become well known for its incisive interviews of all kinds of different church leaders, thinkers and writers. The latest guest on J. John’s show was Solas’s director, Andy Bannister. You can watch the whole programme below.
How Do I Become a Christian?
Maybe you’ve been exploring the Christian faith for sometime and realise you now need to make a decision. Perhaps you’ve been looking at Jesus’s life, teaching and claims for a while and you know you need to respond. So how do you become a follower of Jesus? In this very practical episode of Short Answers, Andy Bannister helps explain how you can become a Christian.
Share
Please share this video widely with friends or family and for more Short Answers videos, visit solas-cpc.org/shortanswers/, subscribe to our YouTube channel or visit us on Twitter Instagram or Facebook.
Support
Short Answers is a viewer-supported video series: if you enjoy them, please help us continue to make them by donating to Solas. Visit our Donate page and choose “Digital Media Fund” under the Campaign/Appeal button.
Have you ever wondered why music has the power to move us?
Most of us (unless we are musicians) probably don’t think too deeply about music. But imagine for a moment, if you can, a world without it. Imagine a film with no sound track. A wedding where the bride walks in to the church in complete silence. Or a Six nations rugby match where the anthems are simply spoken rather than sung.
In one sense life could continue perfectly fine without music. The story line of the film would be unaffected. The couple would still get married. The game would still be played.
Yet in a deeper more profound way we would have lost something precious. While the soundtrack to a film is not something we are always consciously aware of, it plays a huge part in helping us to ‘feel’ the emotion of what we are seeing. The music accompanying the bride’s entrance to the church deepens the beauty and solemnity of the moment. And as for singing the anthems… I’m sure that for the Welsh rugby team at least, the sound of 80,000 of your compatriots singing the anthem is worth at least at 10 point head start!
Music is powerful. It can stir our emotions, awaken our desires, and instil courage.
But where does music come from? Why is it so important to us.
How you answer that question depends on how you view the world more generally. If life is simply the result of the evolutionary process (and nothing more) as many atheists believe, then accounting for the beauty of music is problematic.
The analytical philosopher, Patricia Churchland expressed her view of the world this way: ‘The principle chore of brains is to get the body parts where they should be in order that the organism may survive. A fancier style of representing the world is advantageous as long as it enhances the organism’s chances for survival.’
In such a view a thing is only really good in as much as it helps us survive. But does music exist simply exist to enhance our chances of survival?
At one level it might explain some things. Perhaps, for instance, the ability to create music might make one more attractive to a potential mate? Perhaps that would explain why among my friends during my teenage years, so many of us learnt the guitar?!
Yet like so many evolutionary explanations, while this may explain why some people might make some music, it seems a fairly poor as explanation for everything from Bach to Bon Jovi.
While this line of argument may seem satisfactory to some, interestingly it doesn’t seem to convince many musicians. I was recently chatting a friend who, like myself, works in universities across the country. They commented that while they have met many atheists in studying many different things, they were yet to find one that was studying music. I’m not saying that there aren’t therefore any musicians who are atheists but, anecdotally at least, it would seem there aren’t so many. Why is this the case?
In my own work in universities one of the big reasons I have heard people give as to why they don’t believe in God is the presence of so much evil and suffering in the world. How can God exist in a world that seems at times to be so utterly futile? This is a good question and one that deserves an article all of its own.
But, if the presence of so much ugliness in the world turns us away from the idea of God, what do we do with beauty when we stumble across it? Music seems to have a way of tearing us away from the mundane futility of life and confronting us with beauty.
An example of this happened to me on a school trip to London many years ago. I can’t remember the main purpose of the trip but I do recall very distinctly a moment in Covent Garden at the end of the day. We happened to walk past a string quartet just as they were starting to play Pachelbel’s Canon in D. I had never heard the piece before but I remember being struck by the incredible beauty of the music as it filled the air. The bustle of the passing shoppers seemed to diminish as I became enraptured by what I was hearing.
Without a word being spoken I had somehow been reminded, even in the midst of a busy market, that there is real beauty in this world. It’s a memory I will never forget.
The 20th century author, CS Lewis also spoke about how a childhood experience of beauty spoke to him powerfully later in life. He was, for much of his life, an atheist and one of his main reasons for not believing in God was the unnecessary suffering he saw in the world. Yet for Lewis, the memory of that experience of unnecessary beauty haunted him. That moment had created a deep sense of joy that he found hard to shake. It was this experience of beauty and the joy that it produced, that was one of the main influences in him eventually coming to embrace the Christian faith. He later wrote about this experience in his book ‘Surprised by Joy’.
Could the beauty of music awaken us to our desire for something beyond what we can see, touch and even hear? Could our experiences of beauty be, as Lewis said elsewhere, ‘the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.’
It seems that beauty, experienced through music has a way of challenging even the most sceptical to reconsider their view of the world. The philosopher Paul Gould explains how music has been doing that in Japan. In a country that has traditionally been unreceptive to the claims of the Christian faith he explains that the music of Johann Sebastian Bach now plays a key role in promoting the Christian faith in the country. He comments that ‘…many Japanese are considering or even converting to Christianity after hearing his music.’
But why? He explains ‘The beauty [of Bach] has prompted the Japanese to ask: How can Bach exist in a world full of despair and loneliness? Answering the question has set several Japanese people on the path to Jesus, who is source of Bach’s inspiration and the source of beauty itself.’
Yet, you might ask, why do we need to bring God into it? Can’t we just be thankful to the composers who created such music? But do we really just create music or do we in some sense also discover it? As I child I loved to create things with Lego (ok, I’ll admit it – I sometimes still do!). But I didn’t create Lego – I simply work with the pieces that have already been made. In a similar sense it seems that might be what we are doing with music – working with what we have already been given to create something that can be beautiful. Therefore, behind the beauty of the music could it be that we are invited to discover not just the genius of the composer or artist, but also the ultimate composer and artist that stands behind it all?
