Why read ‘The Reason for God’?

I am just coming to the end of reading The Reason for God by Tim Keller. With just one chapter to go I can say already that it is a book I would recommend to anyone and this is why:

If you are a skeptic, agnostic, atheist or in any way negative towards the Christian faith then this book attacks all of the major topics that I’m sure you would have questions about. The first half of the book seeks to answer some of those big questions and statements such as ‘how could a good God allow suffering’ and ‘science has disproved christianity‘. Having looked at these kind of questions and arguments the second half of the book is then to show you why you should believe Christianity. For this reason I would endorse this to any non-christian.

But if you are a Christian then I would recommend this book just as much. I think there are lots of big questions that Christians have about their faith that they are often scared to ask and try to brush under the carpet – this is a great book for looking at some of them and seeing the answers for them. My main reason for recommendation though would have to be how this has encouraged my walk with Jesus. A little snippet fresh from the chapter about the resurrection:

‘Sometimes people approach me and say, ‘I really struggle with this aspect of Christian teaching. I like this part of Christian belief, but I don’t think I can accept that part.’ I usually respond: ‘If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all He said; if He didn’t rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what He said? The issue on which everything hangs is not whether or not you like His teaching but whether or not He rose from the dead.’ This is how the first hearers felt who heard reports of the resurrection. They knew that if it was true it meant we can’t live our lives any way we want. It also meant we don’t have to be afraid of anything, not roman swords, not cancer, nothing. If Jesus rose from the dead, it changes everything.’

The rest of the chapter brilliantly and heart-warmingly shows why.

Whoever you are and whatever your stance to the Christian faith I wholly recommend this book.

Ramadan

You may think this is a strange title for a Christian Blog! Don’t worry I’m not about to promote the observance of Ramadan!

But today, the 22nd of August, is the beggining of the Muslim festival of Ramadan.

I was chatting to a good mate of mine from my cricket team after our game today (which we won!) His name is Uzman and he is a Muslim. He told me that Ramadan is a time where people refrain from things such as drinking and smoking, he said that he would have no physical/sexual contact with women during this time. Instead he will fast from dawn till dusk and pray more than usual. The whole aim of this, he told me, was so that they can repent of sins they have committed within the year, and gives them a chance to meditate and learn. If they observe Ramadan then at the end of the it there slate is clean and they are like new born children in Allah’s sight, with a clean slate.

It was interesting chatting about why he observed it. Ultimately it is so that they gain approval before Allah. We started chatting about some of the differences between Islam and Christianity. Basically the big difference is Jesus!

Islam teaches that Jesus was a prophet, but it would be an unforgivable sin to say that Allah has a son. This is a major difference. Also, and I think this is so vital, is that we don’t have to observe anything like Ramadan in the Christian faith. We believe that Jesus Christ IS the Son of God, that He died on the cross as our once for all sacrifice and then was raised to life showing that death was defeated for all who would turn to Him! We don’t need to try and please God by doing certain things, such as Ramadan is for the Muslim. We believe that Jesus has done that for us and this is a glorious and life changing message!

Ramadan lasts for a month and most Muslims will be observing it. As followers of Jesus I think we need to be respectful, but also to realise that they need Jesus so much. They too are made in God’s image and it is a terrible thought that any should be cast out of His presence for Eternity, as it is with anyone living. What a motivation to spread the Gospel!

Whats the Point?

Today at work I was having a chat with two people, Michelle and Rebecca, about evolution, life and just what is the point to anything.

Basically something I have thought about a lot recently is that if there is no heaven and hell, if there is no God and no point to anything and we are just formed out of chance, then nothing really matters. If there is no consequence for right and wrong and no reason why good things happen and no reason why bad things happen then whats the point to anything? Why cant people kill for fun and have no repercussions? If when you kill me I shall just be buried and that be the end of it, then why are people so scared of death? We could debate these things for hours!

But one of the main things raised in response to this was the issue of consience. People assess what is right and wrong by consience and that is why we don’t just do what we want. But surely this cannot be the way that the world operates! Often people’s conscience dosen’t rule, or what peoples conscience tells them is wright happens to be what millions of others thinks is wrong!  Just take the holocaust as an example of this!

I think we do all have a conscience, but where did that come from. If we are but a chance in existence and have evolved over millions of years then where has this ‘conscience’ come from?’

I believe there is only one answer: there has to be a higher power. There has to be someone who has ordained these precepts in us, someone who has given us ‘conscience’. The bible gives reference as early as Genesis 3 where Adam and Eve recognise their wrongdoing against God. They rebel against Him, and they know it is wrong (v8 – they hide from God!) Thus the first appearance of conscience and, I believe, where it all started.

Lost for Words

I have just come back from a really great evening at my Church called ‘Lost for Words’. The aim of the evening was to help give people some great ways in which they can respond to arguments that they may come up against, it was essentially apologetics training.

We looked at both the offense and the defense, basically how we can defend the Christian faith and how we can go on the offensive against what others believe.

On the defense side we looked at the question of suffering. The most helpful point for me was looking at John 11 and seeing Jesus’ two different responses to the one statement posed by Mary and Martha, that being ‘Lord if you had been here my brother would not have died.’ Jesus responds to Martha saying the great words of verse 25-26, that He is the resurrection and the life. Jesus responds to Mary by weeping with her (32-35). In this Jesus’ gives us a solution to the problem of death: Himself! But He is also able to sympathise with our struggles, as He shows with Mary, because He is the most human person to have ever lived, because He is the only sinless one to have ever lived.

On the offense we looked mainly at asking the question ‘Why do you believe that?’ In this you essentially just ask people why they believe what they believe and see if they don’t really know why, or if their beliefs are contradictory with what they say. This was similar to some material we got from Dan Strange at New Word Alive about always taking people back to the beginning, keep asking why until you get to the beginning of all things. This is where the Christian can stand as we have Genesis 1 that tells us God was before anything else, but no atheist can claim to know what occurred at the start of all things.

I feel this night was a very useful way of practically thinking of how to speak to people, I hope I, and you now you have read this, can put these things into practice!

Speakers Corner

Last Sunday I went with the students and workers group from my Church up to Speakers Corner.

Speakers Corner, if you dont know what it is, is basically a place in one corner of Hyde Park where people are allowed to go, take a a step ladder or a stool with them, and talk about religion, politics or whatever interests them with virtually total freedom of speech.

We didn’t take any step ladders or stools with us but we all had some good conversations with people. I spent the majority of my time talking to two athiests and a muslim, all on seperate occasions.

What was hardest I think is that people, most of the time, just didn’t want to listen. They would acknowledge what you say but never accept the answer to any question that you gave them. Its very hard because the majority of people there are all believers in absoloutes trying to convert each other, so on a human level your probably unlikely to see anyone change what they believe as a result of a conversation there. As one of the atheists, Nick, who I chatted to said after a long conversation ‘Well this is getting a bit pointless anyway because I’m not going to convert you and your not going to convert me.’

Speakers Corner is a great ground for having chats about Jesus, and we just have to trust that the Holy Spirit is at work there. A great place to go if you want to sharpen up your apologetics!

Did Darwin Kill God?

There was a documentary on BBC2 about a month ago now entitled ‘Did Darwin Kill God?’ – This is my response to the main argument of the programme.

The argument the programme has I dont think is really whether evolution disproves God but rather the belief that they can go hand in hand. The man presenting the programme is Connor Cunningham, a lecturer at Nottingham University. He claims that the idea of reading the first book of the bible, Genesis, literally is something that has only come about recently, and actually goes against what the founders of the christian faith believed. He also says that the story of Adam and Eve is just an image to show the falibility of the human nature and not something that actually happened. Therefore evolution is how God created things, with Genesis essentially just a fictitious story. My belief would be contrary to that.

I believe that Genesis was literal. I believe this mainly because of the prophecies that are written in Genesis 3, these relating mainly to the way of life that was subjected as a result of the fall (Gen 3:14-19), which still affects the way we live now,  also very specifically the curse given to Satan (Gen 3:15). The One who would crush his head was Jesus when He defeated sin and death on the cross, and Satan would only strike His heel, thus the torment and seperation that Jesus suffered on and before the cross. The goings on are also very specific, we are told that God walked amoung them in the garden (Gen 3:8), and we see in detail how the events of creation and the fall took place. And then in the new testament dosen’t Paul, who was very much an early Church leader, talk of sin entering the world through one man, namely Adam? (Rom 5:12) Thus the belief of original sin would come under much scrutiny if we exchange the story of Genesis for evolution, for where did sin enter our world if not through Adam? And could we all say with David that we were sinful from conception (Ps 51:5) if there had not been a fall that cursed humanity?

One logical fallacy (or mistake!) to look out for is how Connor Cunningham reffers to Darwin’s theory as his ‘evidence’. There was never any evidential proof in origin of spieces, only ever a theory which was shown by the 800 or so times that Darwin says ‘I suppose’ or words to that affect.

Far from the creation story belittling our view of God, as Cunningham suggests, I believe it gives us a huge view of a huge God. A God who created all things and by whose powerful word all things hold together (Col 1:15-17), this should never give us a small view of God.