I’m back home from Aberdeen after doing two events with Aberdeen University Christian Union (AUCU). The first was a lunch bar, on the topic of ‘Cancel Culture’ and ‘Is there any hope for forgiveness?’ It’s an important question which is highly relevant in today’s culture – including in higher education. This came about because the UCCG staff worker Sam Moore, had heard me speak at the CU at RGU.
About thirty students came along to the lunch which was good, including a good number of people who aren’t Christians but were interested in exploring this topic with us.
I looked at cancel-culture and asked if there was a better way? Examined what promotes actual change and asked the students to consider how we might all become better agents of reconciliation. I used the example of Nelson Mandela from my native South Africa to illustrate some of these points.
The Q&A that followed was interesting. It took a while for the conversation to get ging, so I offered a free copy of Have You Ever Wondered? to whoever asked the first question! It worked, someone asked the excellent question, ‘How can we forgive without excusing sin?’ It was phrased in terms of do we need to forgive and forget. But I don’t think we need to do that, if we forget sin, we don’t need to forgive it! Forgiveness acknowledges the wrong, and doesn’t say we allow it to continue either. It begins with an acceptance that we are all in need of forgiveness, and that there are consequences for our actions. On the part of the one doing the forgiving, it begins with a decision and a disposition, and the feelings come into line with that later – and may take some time. Forgiveness assumes an offence, and certainly doesn’t’ deny it! The phrase in South Africa was Truth and Reconciliation. Truth names the sin, reconciliation brings the parties together and you can’t have one without the other. Reconciliation without Truth is cheap grace and denial, and Truth without Reconciliation leads to a bloodbath, cycles of revenge. A talk I found very helpful on forgiveness is from Everett Worthington, and can be seen below:
I also spoke at an Aberdeen University Christian Union Accousitc night which was also at the Mission Church on the edge of the campus. It’s a great venue which the church are happy to see being used for student mission. About sixty students came along, many of whom had no Christian faith at all.
The topic I was given was “Is God the greatest activist?” So I began with the deliberately provocative statement “If God doesn’t exist we have no basis for activism” and that got us off to a lively start. I then unpacked that statement! The feedback at the end was that that opening salvo had made people think more than anything else that evening.
While people gathered for refreshments, the first acoustic band played. Then I did two ten-minute talks, followed by five-minute discussion times. My talks had used PowerPoint, and then I put up discussion questions on the screen too. During the Q&A time we were accompanied by an amazing string-quartet! And then we were entertained by a third band, who are hard to classify, but played kind-of contemporary acoustic hippie-music!
I was amazed at the quality of the music on offer. All the musicians were members of the Christian Union and were seriously good performers in three different genres. It was great to be part of it!
