Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow; it empties today of its strength.-

Corrie ten Boom

Adult: "What did you learn from Zechariah?"

6-yr-old: "How not to talk to an angel."

"But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint." - Edmund Burke

"We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education." - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"I confess the Cross, because I know of the Resurrection." - St. Cyril of Jersualem

“When the only verse of the Christmas story you identify with is ‘They came with haste,’ it’s time to reevaluate the season.” - Alice N. Daniels

“Fear will always knock on your door. Just don’t invite it in for dinner. And for heaven’s sake, don’t offer it a bed for the night.” - Max Lucado

“There are no rules here. We are trying to accomplish something.” - Thomas Edison

“[The] new phones don’t require punching buttons, which were already too small for my fingers. Now it’s all touch screen technology and hooked up to the Internet….Not only do I need a degree in computer science to work the thing¸ but my fingers haven’t gotten any smaller. The first night I ended up accidentally calling a number of people, including a former high school girlfriend who now lives in Idaho or something, at 11 p.m. The next morning I apparently ‘poked’ another woman on Facebook whom I haven’t seen in 15 years. I never bothered with this poking business on Facebook before, so I don’t understand it. But if you would’ve told me 10 years ago I’d need my phone to tell when or if I poked a woman, I would’ve thrown my pager at you.” - Tony Hicks

“We feel naked if we go to the store and forget to bring our cell phone-camera-Internet browser because maybe there’s a melon in the produce section that looks just like our old wood-shop teacher’s head and we absolutely NEED to immediately send a picture to all 455 people we went to high school with, but haven’t seen in 21 years.” - Tony Hicks

"The beauty of the internet is that you can attribute any quote you want to any famous figure throughout history, link it to a wiki page that you edited, and nobody will ever question its validity." - Thomas Jefferson

"We have a strange prejudice nowadays — perhaps it is really a superstition — that truth is a function of time, i.e., that being later in time and truer are more or less identical, as if the best way to avoid error is to hold off being born as long as possible." - Benjamin Wiker

"We live in an era when the passions of ideology and the passions of religion become joined in certain zealots. Thus we hear intemperate talk, in many communions and denominations, of Christian revolution. Most of the men and women who use such language undoubtedly mean a bloodless, if abrupt, transformation of social institutions. Yet some of them nowadays, as in past times, would not scruple at a fair amount of bloodletting in their sacred cause. Whether bloodless or bloody, an upheaval justified by the immanentizing of Christian symbols of salvation defies the Beatitudes and devours its children. Soon the Christian ideologues (an insane conjunction) find themselves saddled and ridden by some 'great bad man', a Cromwell at best." - Russell Kirk

"Populism is a revolt against the Smart Guys. I am very ready to confess that the present Smart Guys, as represented by the dominant mentality of the Academy and of what the Bergers call the Knowledge Class today, are insufficiently endowed with right reason and moral imagination. But it would not be an improvement to supplant them by persons of thoroughgoing ignorance and incompetence." - Russell Kirk

"I have read the entire Qur'an and can find no guidance in it on how Muslims should live as a minority in a society. I have read the entire New Testament and can find no guidance in it on how Christians should live as a majority." - a Muslim

"If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need." - Cicero

10 Rules for Apologetics

Over the years, I have learned five things about the sort of people who write strangers to ask religious questions: 1) even a question about an apparently trivial matter or a wildly unfair criticism may reflect a real spiritual struggle; 2) most inquirers are looking more for confirmation or consolation than engagement and teaching; 3) many of those who honestly want to be taught do not want to be taught that much, beyond a “yes” or a “no” and a two sentence explanation; 4) many who ask your advice believe they know as much as you even though they have never read more than three pages on the subject; and 5) few will read you closely and will instead often misread what you’ve written as agreement or approval because that is what they really want.

Here are ten rules developed from my experiences writing people I don't know, for those who find them helpful.

They also apply to the kinds of discussions any Christian whose faith is known will get into, with the curious neighbor, the office atheist (usually a relative of the village atheist), the spouse's most annoying uncle, even the skeptic in the next pew on Sunday mornings. You may know almost nothing, and feel hopelessly inadequate, but they asked you and you must give them a reason for the hope that is within you.

First, not all questions need or deserve an answer, but you can only sometimes discern the cases in which a tactful silence, a gentle non-answer, or a rebuke is best. Sometimes rudeness masks a serious search and wide-eyed openness hides a desire only for endless discussion or for trapping you into writing something on which they can leap. One learns to recognize the types with practice, but never with much assurance. (more...)

"It is not for us to imagine that we can prove the truth of Christianity by our own arguments; nobody can prove the truth of Christianity except the Holy Spirit, by his own almighty work of renewing the blinded heart." - J.I. Packer, Knowing God, pg 71.

"Without the Holy Spirit there would be no gospel and no New Testament. When Christ left the world, he committed his cause to his disciples. But what sort of witnesses were they likely to prove? They had never been good pupils; they had consistently failed to understand Christ and missed the point of his teaching throughout his earthly ministry; how could they be expected to do better now that he had gone? Was it not virtually certain that, with the best will in the world, they would soon get the truth of the gospel inextricably mixed up with a mass of well-meant misconceptions, and their witness would rapidly be reduced to a twisting, garbled, hopeless muddle? The answer to this question is no - because Christ sent the Holy Spirit to them, to teach them all truth and so save them from all error, to remind them of what they had been taught already and to reveal to them the rest of what their Lord meant for them to learn." - J.I. Packer, Knowing God, pg 69.

“God became man to turn creatures into sons: not simply to produce better men of the old kind but to produce a new kind of man. It is not like teaching a horse to jump better and better but like turning a horse into a winged creature” - C.S. Lewis

"The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese."

“You would be surprised – or, maybe you wouldn’t be – by the number of people who see no inconsistency in voicing their disdain for hunting as they bite into a double cheeseburger….If you are a vegetarian anti-hunter, I applaud your consistency. But if you have a taste for baby back ribs, keep in mind that they don’t grow on trees.” - Lansing State Journal columnist John Schneider

"If you want to hear from God, read your Bible; if you want to audibly hear from God, read your Bible out loud." - Justin Peters

Knowledge vs. Wisdom

‎"Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad." ~ Peter Kaye

Every father should remember that one day his son will follow his example and not his advice. - Anonymous

Once you become aware that the main business that you are here for is to know God, most of life's problems fall into place of their own accord. - J.I. Packer, Knowing God, pg. 34

Daniel and his friends were men who stuck their necks out. This was not foolhardiness. They knew what they were doing. They had counted the cost. They had measured the risk. They were well aware what the outcome of their actions would be unless God miraculously intervened, as in fact he did.

But these things did not move them. Once they were convinced that their stand was right, and that loyalty to their God required them to take it, then, in Oswald Chamber's phrase, they "smilingly washed their hands of the consequences." - J.I. Packer, Knowing God, pg. 30

"When despair for the world grows in me, and I awake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and childrens' lives may be, I go lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief....For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free." - Wendell Berry

“There is no shadow of a doubt that the rakish society of the Restoration began by tolerating indecency for the sake of wit, and ended by tolerating dullness for the sake of indecency.” - Agnes Repplier, on the famously raunchy stage comedy of the English Restoration

"We should avoid ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden we ourselves ought to bear." - George Washington

"The real question of the moral life, at least as far as philosophical 'warrant' is at issue, is not whether one personally needs God in order to be good, but whether one needs God in order for the good to be good." - another from David Bentley Hart

"Christ is a persuasion, a form evoking desire, and the whole force of the gospel depends upon the assumption that this persuasion is also peace: that the desire awakened by the shape of Christ and his church is one truly reborn as agape, rather than merely the way in which a lesser force succumbs to a greater, as an episode in the endless epic of power." — David Bentley Hart, from The Beauty Of The Infinite: The Aesthetics Of Christian Truth

“I often wonder about people who live in tropical destinations. What do their screen savers look like?” - comedian Derick Lengwenus

"Children are like wet cement; whatever falls on them makes an impression" - Dr. Haim Ginott

Not so Great Moments in Faith...

"If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth - only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair." - C. S. Lewis

“A prophet’s task is to reveal the fault lines hidden beneath the comfortable surface of the worlds we invent for ourselves, the national myths as well as the little lies and delusions of control and security that get us through the day.” - Kathleen Norris, from her book The Cloister Walk

“The Incarnation is the most dramatic thing that ever entered into the mind of man; but if you tell people so, they stare at you in bewilderment.” - Dorothy Sayers

"Agnosticism, when it becomes an ear-stopping dogma, may be as bad a mental handicap as superstition." - Herman Wouk

"Experience is a slippery slope philosophically and spiritually. It’s a fog in which all sorts of worlds can bump together. Now, no one wants to go to extremes. Some lines are drawn in the sand. For example, no one in their right mind would endorse mass murder. But we need to follow a path of wisdom and have standards. When you come into the life of the Church, there is a way of life followed there. There are codes of conduct. It’s like when you come into someone’s home. You take off your muddy boots when you enter the house. You don’t take tea and pour it down someone’s back. There are standards in how we live together. Experience needs to be affirmed, redirected, and rebuked by God’s authority. Because of our propensity to self-deception, we constantly need to check against scripture, whether we are allowing the word of God’s grace in the gospel, and God’s reaffirmation of us as made in his image, to validate what is in fact an idolatrous and distorted form of humanness. When, through letting scripture be he vehicle of God’s judging and healing authority in our communities and individual lives, we really do “experience” God’s affirmation, then we shall know as we are known." - N.T. Wright

"The Bible is here to equip God’s people to carry forward His purposes of new covenant and new creation. It is there to enable people to work for justice, to sustain their spirituality as they do so, to create and enhance relationships at every level, and to produce that new creation which will have something of the beauty of God himself. The Bible isn’t like an accurate description of how a car is made. It’s more like the mechanic who helps you fix it, the garage attendant who refuels it, and the guide who tells you how to get where you’re going. And where you’re going is to make God’s new creation happen in his world, not simply to find your own way unscathed through the old creation." - N.T. Wright

"Our assumption is that Church is where you say the things that have to be said. So people will speak but say, "Oh, I wouldn't say that in church." Well then, where would you say it? To me, it's the place where you would push it the furthest. A faith community should be the place with the most honesty and vulnerability and prophetic culture—calling things what they are. So when I hear people say, "That's nice but you really couldn't do that in church," I can't even fathom that. My understanding is it would lead the culture in reality." - Rob Bell

"I think that's one of the most warped ideas—that God just can't wait to bless you. God blesses you so you will bless the world and if at any point I keep that for myself, then I am in trouble." - unknown

“The problem with our churches today is that the lead pastor is some sissy boy who wears cardigan sweaters, has The Carpenters dialed in on his iPod, gets his hair cut at a salon instead of a barber shop, hasn’t been to an Ultimate Fighting match, works out on an elliptical machine instead of going to isolated regions of Russia like in Rocky IV in order to harvest lumber with his teeth, and generally swishes around like Jack from Three’s Company whenever Mr. Roper was around.” - Mark Driscoll

"People who know their God are before anything else people who pray, and the first point where their zeal and energy for God's glory come to expression is in their prayers....Yet the invariable fruit of true knowledge of God is energy to pray for God's cause - energy indeed which can only find an outlet and a relief of inner tension when channeled into such prayer - and the more knowledge, the more energy! By this we may test ourselves. Perhaps we are not in a position to make public gestures against ungodliness and apostasy. Perhaps we are old, or ill, or otherwise limited by our physical situation. But we can all pray about the ungodliness and apostasy which we see in everyday life all around us. If, however, there is in us little energy for such prayer, and little consequent practice of it, this is a sure sign that as yet we scarcely know our God." - J.I. Packer, Knowing God, 28

Those who know God have great energy for God. In one of the prophetic chapters of Daniel we read, "the people that do know their God shall be strong and do exploits (11:32 KJV). RSV renders thus: "the people who know their God shall stand firm and take action...While their God is being defied or disregarded, they cannot rest; they feel they must do something; the dishonor done to God's name goads them into action." - J.I. Packer, Knowing God, 27

"The question is, can we say, simply, honestly, not because we feel that as evangelicals we ought to, but because it is a plain matter of fact, that we have known God, and that because we have known God the unpleasantness we have had, or the pleasantness that we have not had, through being Christians does not matter to us? If we really knew God, this is what we would be saying, and if we are not saying it, that is a sign that we need to face ourselves more sharply with the difference between knowing God and merely knowing about him." - J.I. Packer, Knowing God, 27

"Meditation is the activity of calling to mind, and thinking over, and dwelling on, and applying to oneself, the various things that one knows about the works and ways and purposes and promises of God. It is an activity of holy thought, consciously performed in the presence of God, under the eye of God, by the help of God, as a means of communion with God." - J.I Packer, Knowing God

"How can we turn our knowledge about God into knowledge of God? The rule for doing this is simple but demanding. It is that we turn each truth that we learn about God into a matter for meditation before God, leading to prayer and praise to God." - J.I. Packer

"To be preoccupied with getting theological knowledge as an end in itself, to approach Bible study with no higher a motive than a desire to know all the answers, is the direct route to a state of self-satisfied self-deception. We need to guard our hearts against such an attitude, and pray to be kept from it. As we saw earlier, there can be no spiritual health without doctrinal knowledge; but it is equally true that there can be no spiritual health with it, if it is sought for the wrong purpose and valued by the wrong standard." - J.I. Packer

If we pursue theological knowledge for its own sake, it is bound to go bad on us. It will make us proud and conceited. - J.I. Packer

"Knowing God is crucially important for the living of our lives. As it would be cruel to an Amazonian tribesman to fly him to London, put him down without explanation in Trafalgar Square and leave him, as one who knew nothing of English or England, to fend for himself, so we are cruel to ourselves if we try to live in this world without knowing about the God whose world it is and who runs it. The world becomes a strange, mad, painful place and life in it a disappointing and unpleasant business, for those who do not know about God. Disregard the study of God, and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life blindfolded, as it were, with no sense of direction and no understanding of what surrounds you. This way you can waste your life and lose you soul."- Charles Spurgeon

"And whilst humbling and expanding, this subject is eminently consolatory. Oh there is in contemplating Christ a balm for every wound; in musing on the Father, there is a quietus for every grief; and in the influence of the Holy Ghost, there is a balsam for every sore. Would you lose your sorrows? Would you drown your cares? Then go, plunge yourself in the Godhead's deepest sea; be lost in the immensity; and you shall come forth as from a couch of rest, refreshed and invigorated. I know nothing which can so comfort the soul; so calm the swelling billows of sorrow and grief; so speak peace to the winds of trail as a devout musing upon the subject of the Godhead." - Charles Spurgeon

“St. John the Theologian ….. is called theologian because he actually lent on the breast of Jesus and listened to His heartbeat. That’s Theology!….. to listen to the heartbeat of God. “ - Fr. Meletios Webber

"No subject of contemplation will tend more to humble the mind, than thoughts of God...But while the subject humbles the mind, it also expands it. He who often thinks of God, will have a larger mind than the man who simply plods around this narrow globe..." - Charles Spurgeon

"There is something exceedingly improving to the mind in a contemplation of the Divinity. It is a subject so vast, that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity; so deep that our pride is drowned in its infinity." - Charles Spurgeon

"How small of all that human hearts endure / That part which laws or kings can cause or cure." - Samuel Johnson

“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” -- Helen Keller

“What happened to the idea that the Internet Age would make everybody smarter? You can lead people to knowledge but you can’t make them think.” - Clarence Page

"If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm." - Vince Lombardi

"The first testicular guard, the 'cup', was used in hockey in 1874 and the first hockey helmet was used in 1974. That means it only took 100 years for men to realize that their brain is also important." - Unkown

Every one of us is, even from his mother's womb, a master craftsman of idols. - John Calvin

26 Ways IT Support Differs from being a Pastor

1. People come to you for help — instead of assuming that, if you really knew your job, you would intuitively know they needed help, and come to them without being asked.
2. Everyone immediately tells you, to the best of his ability, what his or her actual issue is.
3. Everyone who asks you a question really wants to hear the answer.
4. Everyone who asks you for help really wants to he helped.
5. Everyone who calls you really does want his/her computer to work the very best it can.
6. You and your callers agree that computer bugs and problems are bad, and should be done away with.
7. When you identify viruses, spyware, unwanted popups, and crashes as "bad," and target them for elimination, the folks you help don't accuse you of being harsh and judgmental.
8. Nobody who calls you is actually in love with the computer problems and misbehaviors they're experiencing.
9. When you identify a computer malady you want to eradicate, nobody can wave a book or point to a Big Name who argues that it is actually the latest, greatest "thing" in computers, and should be earnestly sought after, cherished, cultivated, and spread abroad.
10. Nobody who calls you for help thinks that he's hearing a little voice in his heart telling him that what you're saying is just so much smelly cheese.
11. Everyone to whom you give sensible counsel will hear, heed, remember, and follow that counsel — they won't insist on "feeling an inner peace" before doing it.

(more)

Prayer Vigil

they kept up, night and day, a continual repetition of the English Liturgy; being divided into relays and watches, one watch relieving another, as on ship-board; and never allowing at any hour the sacred fire to go out. - The Life of Nicholas Ferrar

They are extraordinary well reported of by their neighbours, viz. that they are very liberal to the poor; at great cost in preparing physic and surgery, for the sick and sore (whom they also visit often), and that some sixty or eighty poor people they task with catechetical questions: which when they come and make answer to, they are rewarded with money and their dinner. By means of which reward of meat and money, the poor catechumens learn their lessons well; and so their bodies and souls too are well fed. - Introduction to the Life of Nicholas Ferrar

In Nicholas Ferrar himself, " the Levite in his own house," we have the rare spectacle of a man whose one end in life " was to make himself or others better ;" by his veneration for saints and martyrs entitling himself to like veneration; " spending eighteen hours out of the twenty four in useful business, serious study, devout prayers, or heavenly meditations;" comforting and supporting his companions in every trial; on his death-bed "passing the days and nights in heavenly counsels to all the family;" reprobating the fatal and still prevalent delusion that literary power atones for an author's want of moral purpose...- Introduction to the Life of Nicholas Ferrar

The volume of business in religion far outweighs the spiritual capital of its leaders. The initial consequence is that leaders substitute image for substance, satisfying the customer temporarily but only temporarily, on good days denying that there is any problem (easy to do, since business is good), on bad days hoping that someone will show up with the infusion of capital. No one is going to show up. The final consequence is bankruptcy. The bankruptcies are dismayingly frequent. - Eugene Peterson

The deepest need is not food and clothing and shelter, as important as they are. It is God. - Thomas Kelly

Earth is crammed with heaven
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

-Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Eugene Peterson & Annie Dillard

"Annie Dillard prays with her eyes open. She says, Spread out your hands, lift up your head, open your eyes, and we'll pray…. She gets us into the theater that Calvin told us about, and we find ourselves in the solid biblical companionship of psalmists and prophets who watched the 'hills skip like lambs' and heard the 'trees clap their hands,' alert to God everywhere."

ANNIE Dillard is an exegete of creation in the same way John Calvin was an exegete of Holy Scripture. The passion and intelligence Calvin brought to Moses, Isaiah, and Paul, she brings to muskrats, rotifers, and mockingbirds. She reads the book of creation with the care and intensity of a skilled textual critic, probing and questioning, teasing out, with all the tools of mind and spirit at hand, the author's meaning.

Calvin was not indifferent to creation. He frequently referred to the world around us as a "theater of God's glory." He wrote of the Creator's dazzling performance in putting together the elements of matter and arranging the components of the cosmos. He was convinced of the wide-ranging theological significance of the doctrine of creation and knew how important the understanding of that doctrine was to protect against the gnosticism and Manichaeism that are ever-present threats to the integrity of the incarnation. Matter is real. Flesh is good. Without a firm rooting in creation, religion is always drifting off into some kind of pious sentimentalism, or sophisticated intellectualism, or snobbish elitism. The task of salvation is not to refine us into pure spirits so that we will not be combered with this too solid flesh. We are not angels, nor are we to become angels. The Word did not become a good idea, or a numinous feeling, or a moral aspiration; the Word became flesh. It also becomes flesh. Our Lord left us a command to remember and receive him in bread and wine, in acts of eating and drinking. Things matter. The physical is holy.... (read the rest here)

"Skilled bowyers [bow makers] ... will agree that a perfect bow never begins with a perfect stick of wood. In fact, there is no such thing as a flawless stave from which a bowyer begins the process...The same can be said of people...Once sin entered the world all who have been born begin from day one to grow like wood - twisted, crooked, knotty, hard, and often difficult to work with...God's determination to use us is not thwarted by our flaws!...imperfect people...[become] perfect examples of the Master Bowyer's willingness to choose and use flawed individuals. Thankfully, the human demonstrations of His willingness to use crooked bows are not confined to people found in the pages of the Bible. There are living and breathing examples among us in our times." - Steve Chapman

Roller Coasters

“For a full six minutes or so a person could enjoy a neck-popping, vocal-chord-stripping, hip-bruising ride on a state-of-the-art machine that boasted some of the highest peaks and lowest valleys known to those who thirsted for a violent, near-death experience. But to enjoy those six precious minutes the riders had to stand in a line that resembled the winding path bowels take through the human abdomen.” - Steve Chapman

Clothed With and By Christ

R.C. Sproul

"The Church is our mother, but it is Christ’s bride. In this role, we are the objects of Christ’s affection. We, corporately, are His beloved. Stained and wrinkled, in ourselves we are anything but holy. When we say that the church is holy or refer to her as “holy mother church,” we do so with the knowledge that her holiness is not intrinsic but derived and dependent upon the One who sanctifies her and covers her with the cloak of His righteousness.

As the sensitive husband shelters his wife and in a chivalrous manner lends her his coat when she is chilled, so we are clad from on high by a husband who stops at nothing to defend, protect, and care for His betrothed. His is the ultimate chivalry, a chivalry that no upheaval of earthly custom can eradicate or make passé. This chivalry is not dead because it cannot die.

The bride of Christ is soiled but will one day be presented spotless to the Father by the Son who bought her, who loves her, and who intercedes for her every day. If we love Christ, we must also love His bride. If we love Christ, we must love His church.

Coram Deo: Ask God to rekindle your love for members of the body of Christ, the true church.

Revelation 3:5: “He who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments, and I will not blot out his name from the Book of Life; but I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels.”

"The only thing to fear is fearful elves." - unknown

“There are far too many people who settle for practicing a sterile religion rather than enjoying a growing, vibrant, personal relationship with the living God. God is not a concept or a doctrine. He is a Person who seeks a close, one-on-one relationship with you and me. God does not want us to merely believe in Him, He wants to relate to us on a personal level. He does not just want to hear us recite prayers. He wants to converse with us. God’s plan is not to abandon Christians once we are born again, leaving us to build the best life we can. He does not intend that we simply use our wits to ‘get by,’ to bravely ‘survive’ until we are finally ushered into heaven. God wants to be actively involved in our lives each day.” -- Henry Blackaby, in Experiencing God

A Michigander, re: getting a tan on a spring break trip: “I was able to work my way up from translucent to pale.”

Lamborghini CEO Stephan Winkelmann: 'We never talk about the future. The point is, we sell emotions. If we talk about what might happen, they might wait. And that’s not good.'

“There are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by the gradual and silent encroachment of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpation.” - President James Madison

"A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it." - G. K. Chesterton, from Everlasting Man, 1925

“I sometimes hear old people, including Christian people who should know better, say, ‘I don’t want to be a burden to anyone else. I’m happy to carry on living so long as I can look after myself, but as soon as I become a burden I would rather die.’ But this is wrong. We are all designed to be a burden to others. You are designed to be a burden to me and I am designed to be a burden to you. And the life of the family, including the life of the local church family, should be one of ‘mutual burdensomeness.’ ‘Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ’ (Galatians 6:2).” - John Stott

"Walk faithfully in the way God has called you...We do not know what the moment will require until we get to that moment." - John Ruchyana, Never Silent, pg 116

One Way of Coping with Daylight Savings

"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it." - Groucho Marx

"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts... for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang (1844-1912)

"Impossible" is just a way of not trying... - Unknown

Do you have a hunger for God? If we don't feel strong desires for the manifestation of the glory of God, it is not because we have drunk deeply and are satisfied. It is because we have nibbled so long at the table of the world. Our soul is stuffed with small things, and there is no room for the great. If we are full of what the world offers, then perhaps a fast might express, or even increase, our soul's appetite for God. Between the dangers of self-denial and self-indulgence is the path of pleasant pain called fasting. - John Piper

When the devil, the foe and the tyrant, sees a man bearing this weapon [fasting], he is straight-away frightened and he recollects and considers that defeat which he suffered in the wilderness at the hands of the Saviour; at once his strength is shattered and the very sight of this weapon, given us by our Commander-in-chief, burns him. - Isaac of Syria

Many people not only lose the benefit, but are even the worse for their mortifications [i.e., sacrifices, abstensions],...because they mistake the whole nature and worth of them: they practice them for their own sakes, as things good in themselves, they think them to be real parts of holiness, and so rest in them and look no further, but grow full of a self-esteem and self-admiration for their own progress in them. This makes them self-sufficient, morose, severe judges of all those that fall short of their mortifications. And thus their self-denials do only that for them which indulgences do for other people: they withstand and hinder the operation of God upon their souls, and instead of being really self-denials, they strengthen and keep up the kingdom of self. - William Law

Our greatest victories are won on our knees and with empty stomachs. - Julio C. Ruibal

In Shansi I found Chinese Christians who were accustomed to spend time in fasting and prayer. They recognized that this fasting, which so many dislike, which requires faith in God, since it makes one feel weak and poorly, is really a Divinely appointed means of grace. Perhaps the greatest hindrance to our work is our own imagined strength; and in fasting we learn what poor, weak creatures we are - dependent on a meal of meat for the little strength which we are so apt to lean upon. - James Hudson Taylor

Fasting is important, more important perhaps, than many of us have supposed,... when exercised with a pure heart and a right motive, fasting may provide us with a key to unlock doors where other keys have failed; a window opening up new horizons in the unseen world; a spiritual weapon of God's provision, mighty, to the pulling down of strongholds. - Arthur Wallis

Is fasting ever a bribe to get God to pay more attention to the petitions ? No, a thousand times no. It is simply a way to make clear that we sufficiently reverence the amazing opportunity to ask help from the everlasting God, the Creator of the universe, to choose to put everything else aside and concentrate on worshiping, asking forgiveness, and making our requests known-considering His help more important than anything we could do ourselves in our own strength and with our own ideas. - Edith Schaeffer

Fasting confirms our utter dependence upon God by finding in Him a source of sustenance beyond food. - Dallas Willard

Every one must study his own nature. Some of you can sustain life with less food than others can, and therefore I desire that he who needs more nourishment shall not be obliged to equal others, but that every one shall give his body what it needs for being an efficient servant of the soul. For as we are obliged to be on our guard against superfluous food which injures body and soul alike, thus we must be on the watch against immoderate fasting, and this the more, because the Lord wants conversion and not victims. - Francis of Assisi

Jesus has many lovers of His kingdom of heaven, but he has few bearers of His Cross. Many desire His consolation, but few desire His tribulation. He finds many comrades in eating and drinking, but He finds few hands who will be with Him in His abstinence and fasting...But those who love Jesus purely for Himself, and not for their own profit or convenience, bless Him as heartily in temptation and tribulation and in all other adversities as they do in time of consolation. And if He never sent them consolation, they would still bless and praise Him. - Thomas a Kempis

Bible Study

I left that youth group after I became exasperated with the whole approach of ['studying' the Bible]:

"let’s sit in a circle and go around the room asking what each person thinks such and so verse means 'to me.'"

At the ripe old age of 13 I blurted out, “I don’t care what it means to me, I just want to know what it means!”

- Perry Robinson

"a leader... is primarily a steward of a story." - Daniel Taylor

"Like prayer, fasting is not to manipulate God to do what we want. It is humbling, submitting and positioning ourselves to be in a position to allow God to do what He wants." - Unknown

"... when people are intensely focused on observing some specific feature of the landscape, they may not even see what is obvious to another observer. The classic demonstration of this is a video in which people toss around a basketball; viewers told to count the number of passes rarely see a person in a gorilla suit who strolls into the picture, stops and faces the camera, and strolls out." - NYT

"You hire yourself a boy; you got a boy. You hire yourself two boys; you only got half a boy. You hire yourself three boys? Shoot, you ain't got a boy at all." - Rural Wisdom from a Central Ohio Farmer

If it comes up in the bucket, it was down in the well. - Rural Wisdom

“Every father should remember that one day his son will follow his example instead of his advice” - Unknown

'Slaughter, Vengeance and the Burning Wrath of God'. How ‘Christian’ is the Bible?

The Bible is still the world’s most in-demand book, or more accurately, collection of books. But in Western 21^st century culture the Bible is, for many, in disrepute.

Certain passages may still be popular and widely accepted as containing spiritual truth or comfort but few people believe we can completely trust everything in the Bible to faithfully reveal the truth about God, the human condition and the way we should live.

For many, human reason is seen as a better way forward. Scientific reasoning, it’s widely claimed, has proved some of the Bible’s claims false. For others, in our post-modern culture, the issue is not so much the perceived conflict between science and faith but an instinctive dislike for or mistrust of all–embracing claims to truth. The in-thing is to find out, not the ‘one big truth’ that’s ‘out there’ so to speak and to which we all have to submit to, but the truth’s that true for me, and what helps me as an individual fulfil my own sense of what life is about.

The Bible is seen by many post-modern thinkers as a rag-bag of very diverse material, reflecting the self-interests of the different people who wrote it, and giving rise to at least as many interpretations as there are people who read it.

In this culture, anything that seems uncomfortable, harsh or restrictive to me in my situation, I should feel free to reject. Bible passages can, we’re told, be ‘deconstructed’ so that when we read a portion of Scripture, we can, if we’re ‘enlightened’, look beyond the plain meaning ‘to see what is really going on’ and what power games are being played. We should then feel at liberty to pick and choose from Scripture what is helpful to us. Authority is no longer seen to be invested in a God who has revealed Himself to us through His Word. That would be an oppressive illusion. Ultimate authority to judge what is true for us and what ‘works’ for us now, we feel, rightly belong to us. The Bible is seen as only one religious document among many, which we might, if we choose, use as a resource for discovering our own truth – a truth that might as well serve our own interests and make us feel good about ourselves.

So, many people today pour scorn on the idea that the whole Bible reveals the character of the one true God we should all worship and believe in. For example, those with a superficial knowledge of the Bible caricature much of the Old Testament as portraying a primitive tribal god who enjoys “smiting” the other tribes and declaring all sorts of harmless things “abominable”. They are horrified that the Old Testament should be used for the ethical instruction of children or to underpin modern codes of morality. Stephen Fry, in a recent Channel Four programme on the Ten Commandments, described the Commandments as “the hysterical ramblings of a desert tribe”. He saw the Ten Commandments as “restrictive, oppressive, and designed to appease a totalitarian god.”

People who want to knock Christianity feel they have plenty of ammunition with which to attack the Bible. It’s heroes of faith have obvious character defects – Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Gideon, Samson, David were all flawed people. God is repeatedly described as “a jealous God”, brooking no rivals. He is described as a warrior God. He punishes sins “to the third and fourth generation”. He inflicts terrible judgments, hardens people’s hearts like Pharaoh’s and still blames them for rejecting Him. He commands the Israelites to slaughter the resisting Canaanite population residing in the Promised Land to make way for their occupation of it.

Today, the feeling is that one person’s religious views are as good as anyone else’s. There is huge ignorance about the Bible, despite the massive influence the Bible has in fact had on our laws, our literature, our morals and our understanding of God for many centuries. Before students arrive at University to study English literature, they are advised to read the Bible because tutors are finding that fewer and fewer students are understanding the great number of allusions to Scripture in the great classical works they have to study.

I remember once, many years ago, travelling in a train compartment full of Goths - young people who like to wear all black and be freethinkers and ‘alternative’. They were for some reason talking about the Ten Commandments, and trying to establish among themselves what they were. Well they managed I think to remember three – ‘don’t murder’, ‘don’t commit adultery’ and ‘don’t steal’, but then they got stuck. I tried to be helpful and filled them in on the remaining seven, and they looked at me as if I was a great religious oracle! But if you asked a random group of youngsters today if they could name any of the Ten Commandments, I think you might find they’d be hard pressed to name any.

Sadly many Christians feel that the Bible as a whole is too difficult, and that it’s not very important to believe everything or even most of what the Bible says. Sceptical theologians argue the Bible can’t ”say” anything definite at all, because in good post-modern fashion they see it as a collection of diverse theological, political and philosophical ideas without an underlying integrity of message. And even committed Christians who are thoughtful and know their Bibles may struggle with significant parts of the Bible – especially those that seem uncompromisingly harsh.

Let’s consider the Old Testament first. If we hold out the Old Testament is the inspired Word of God, are we not, perhaps unwittingly, promoting unworthy beliefs about the character of God? What about the ‘smiting’, the vengeance, the sacrifices, the strict laws and severe punishments?

Well a tempting solution to this problem is to believe that it is up to us in this day and age to discern somehow the errors the Bible contains regarding the character, conduct and commands of God.[i] So when Genesis tells us that God decided to drown everyone on earth except Noah and his family and two of every kind of animal, we should now see this was a mistaken, if sincere, belief and reject it as unbearably vindictive. When the same book says the LORD rained down burning sulphur on Sodom and Gomorrah, we should now see that this was really the Israelites giving their own somewhat biased interpretation of a purely natural disaster affecting a people they didn’t much care for. When the writer of Deuteronomy claims that God told the Israelites to ‘show no mercy’ to the Canaanites but completely annihilate them, we must surely conclude that this belief was either a sincere mistake, or a cynical religious justification the Israelites gave for their need for living space. In reality, their action was nothing other than brutal ‘ethnic cleansing’ and genocide. Surely God should not be implicated in this evil?

Some who take this position do so on the grounds of human reason. Our reason, they say, tells us the picture of God these passages paint can’t be true. One of the problems with this view is that how can we be so sure our human reasoning is reliable enough to assess this? Our reason, along with every part of us, has been corrupted by the fall, according to the Bible. Therefore what at first seems unfair or too harsh to us might not be, especially if we don’t even recognise our human reasoning has become seriously warped by sin. What if we, in our culpable blindness to God’s holiness and justice are claiming for ourselves, in supreme arrogance, the right to judge God – to put Him and His revealed Word in the dock, instead of recognising that it is we who stand condemned as rebellious sinners before a holy God?

Some people claim a theological and spiritual basis for rejecting large parts of the Old Testament. They say that the Old Testament demonstrates an evolving understanding of God, from a primitive understanding to a sophisticated one, a tribal one to a universal one, a violent one to peace-loving one. When Jesus came as God’s full and supreme revelation, we can, the argument goes, now see clearly in the light of his ‘gentle, loving, non-judgmental character’, those bits of the Old Testament we should reject and those which we can safely retain as spiritually helpful. The Holy Spirit, it is claimed, is our guide in separating the biblical dross from the biblical gold as He guides us into all truth.

The first problem with this view, as a careful reading of the New Testament shows, is that every book of the New Testament takes for granted the authority and trustworthiness of the Old Testament. In the Gospels it is absolutely clear that Jesus saw all the Hebrew scriptures as the inspired, authoritative Word of God.[ii] For Jesus, what the Scripture said was what God said – pure and simple. For example, when tempted by the Devil in the desert, Jesus responded each time with the words “the Scripture says…” The verses he quotes are recorded in the Old Testament as being God’s words, so Jesus might have said to the Devil “God says….”. But he didn’t need to expressly invoke God to make the quotes authoritative in the face of the Devil, because that was clearly implied when he said that Scripture said something.

Some people claim that Jesus rejected the “eye for an eye” principle of the Old Testament, and took a softer line on sexual sin, but in both these cases this view shows a deep misunderstanding.

Jesus said “You have heard that it was said ‘eye for eye, tooth for tooth’, but I tell you turn the other cheek.” However, what he was countermanding was not the original commandment by God. He did not say “It is written…..but I tell you something else. He said “You haveheard it was said” . In other words he was challenging the current memory of the command as it had become distorted by Jesus’ day. The eye for an eye legal principle was an important Old Testament law which provided just compensation for criminal acts and forbade the escalation of blood feuds. It was also not meant to be applied literally. If a master, for instance, struck his slave and damaged his eye, then the “eye for an eye” law provided that equivalent compensation should be provided for his eye. This, in practice, usually meant the slave’s freedom had to be granted. Jesus was in no way undermining this just and wise Old Testament law (which we still follow today in our civil courts when assessing fair compensation for personal injury) but was challenging the current assumption that the principle justified a vengeful spirit towards anyone who upset you.

In the area of sexual sin, the story of ‘the woman caught in adultery’ is often trotted out with the intention of showing that Jesus thought the Old Testament too harsh and that the woman’s sin wasn’t very serious. But if we look at the story closely in John 8, we see that that’s not what Jesus said at all. The Old Testament penalty for adultery was stoning for the man and the woman. Harsh we might think, but since adultery destroys community and Israel was a fledgling and fragile community and women were extremely vulnerable if their husbands were faithless, who has the right to say God got it wrong? Also, two witnesses had to be found, and these witnesses had to show they could not have prevented the adulterous act from happening so in practice a high degree of proof was needed to convict and the death penalty would have been accordingly very rarely carried out.

In the Gospel story, the religious police drag the woman, and the woman only, who’d been caught, quite possibly in a sting operation, and so the evidence probably wouldn’t have been admissible anyway under proper Old Testament Law. “Moses commanded us to stone her”, the Pharisees and teachers of the law say; “what do you say Jesus?” Jesus said “let the one who is without sin throw the first stone.” it is important to note that Jesus did not criticise the Law of Moses, but questioned who had the right to enforce it there and then. In Jesus time, the moral state of Israel was utterly compromised. The people asking if the woman should be stoned probably knew they were not acting in a properly legal way, with God’s authority. No doubt their main motive was to put Jesus on the spot. Jesus actually says the punishment can go ahead, as long as it is initiated by someone who has never sinned and who therefore had the right in that highly compromised society to carry out this solemn act of judgment. He writes on the ground, and as he does so, the would-be executioners leave one by one, the eldest first. I wonder what Jesus was writing in the sand? Perhaps it was something to do with the sins (possibly sexual sins) of each individual, causing them to flee in terror. The eldest would have a longer list of sins and be most keen to get away.

Jesus was the only one who could have carried out the death penalty on this woman if he had wanted to. But his mission at his first coming was to save, not to condemn. And so he told the woman to go and leave her life of sin. There’s nothing ambiguous about this. There’s a strong command to her to end her sinful behaviour not least so that when Jesus returned in glory, she would not be condemned along with all those who refuse to repent.

What about the other bits of the Old Testament deemed to be un-Christian and barbaric by New Testament standards? There is the command to slaughter the Canaanites in Deuteronomy and there are the Psalms, many of which cry out for God to avenge the suffering of the righteous by hastening his judgement on the ungodly. Some people take the view that most of the psalms are unsuitable for Christian worship. Even those who believe they are inspired often shy away from their emotional intensity and raw passion.

The command to annihilate the Canaanites is probably the passage that we find hardest to stomach. But Deuteronomy teaches that God commanded the Israelites to clear away the Canaanites, whose sin, over many generations, had reached such a peak and so polluted the land they lived in, that God said the land needed to “vomit them out”. As God is God, wemight be willing to accept that He had the right to send the Flood to destroy the human race which he had made, when he saw that “every inclination of the human heart was evil all the time and he was grieved and full of pain about the earth he’d created” (Gen 6 v5&6). We also perhaps accept that God causes earth’s proud empires to rise when they are strong and disciplined and fall when they are corrupt and decadent, with all the human suffering and dislocation that involves. But although the Canaanites were particularly wicked and depraved and the Israelites were smaller in number and vulnerable, and needed a land to occupy where they would not be corrupted by idol worship in their very midst, we still shudder to think that Israelite soldiers were directly commanded by God to put to death everyone in the towns that resisted them.

However, the dreadful book of Deuteronomy, containing these commands, seems to have been Jesus’ favourite book in terms of the number of verses he quoted from it. Also Jesus seemed to equally love the book of Psalms, quoting particularly from the ones that sophisticated people have a problem with, the ones that call for the slaughter of the wicked and the enemies of God’s people to get their come-uppance.

The second problem for those who say we should reject the Old Testament as sub-Christian because of its harsh commands and portrayal of a wrathful God, is that the New Testament has plenty of warnings to about the wrath of God. [iii]Furthermore, the most severe words about God’s judgement and wrath in the whole Bible, with the possible exception of certain passages in Revelation, come from the mouth of Jesus in the Gospels. So Jesus talks about the Flood in the time of Noah and says that Judgment Day will have the same terrifying sudden-ness and calamity. He talks about the fiery judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah and warns that those who reject the Gospel will actually suffer a worse fate on the day of judgment. (Matthew 10 v15).

He also says it will be “more bearable for Tyre and Sidon at the Day of Judgment” (Matthew 11 v22) than for the places in Israel where he did miracles only to be rejected. Tyre and Sidon were in Phoenicia, and the leading people there were wealthy and sophisticated but followed the most debased religious practices anywhere in the world. Their gods were vile, greedy and capricious; their worship - orgies of cruelty and sexual degradation. They disgusted even the pagan Greeks with their human sacrifices, mainly of children between the ages of 4 and 13, judging from the bones archaeologists have discovered. Jezebel, who married the Israelite king Ahab, and who Elijah confronted was from this region - daughter of the priest-king of Tyre. She worshipped the fertility god Baal and all the materialism, sexual perversion and abuse of power which went with that.

It was to destroy this kind of religion that God told the Israelites to totally destroy all remnants of Canaanite religion and forbade them to inter-marry with the surrounding nations. He commanded this so that the fledgling holy nation of Israel, weak and outnumbered, would not be immediately corrupted and totally unable to even begin to fulfil God’s mission to save the world. Jesus said that Judgment Day for those who reject Him will mean eternal punishment even more severe than even that meted out to Tyre and Sidon, whose civilisations were crushed by God.

So Jesus is clearly more severe in his warnings of judgment than anything in the Old Testament. Judgement in the Old Testament is almost exclusively seen as happening through earthly events. Jesus pronounced a terrible earthly judgment on Jerusalem (fulfilled in AD 70 when the ~Romans crushed Jewish rebellion) but went further than the Old Testament in warning of eternal punishment and the fires of hell. If our hands or feet cause us to sin, better to “cut them off” and leave them behind! If our eyes cause us to sin, better “gouge them out”! In other words, we should give up anything and be willing enter heaven maimed, blind or crippled rather than be thrown into hell, where the “fire is not quenched” (Mark 9 v43-49). In Matthew 25 Jesus promises he will describe as ‘cursed’ those who have rejected him by showing no compassion to “the least of his brothers” and send them into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and all his angels. Jesus spoke of weeping and gnashing of teeth as people grope about in darkness, of people being shut out of the presence of the God and all that is good.

Jesus made it clear that He will be the judge of everyone and that he will judge us on the basis of our response to him in this life. There are no more chances for those who have rejected him in this life (Luke 16 v9-31, Hebrews 9v27). According to Revelation 14 v9-11 and Matt 18 v21-35, he will condemn those who refuse to repent to a level of torment that will perfectly match their level of guilt and there will be no rest day or night. Men will have to give an account of “every careless word they have ever uttered” (Matt 12 v36). The Bible seems to indicate a totally just level of punishment followed by destruction, rather than everlasting torment which, I think, relies wrongly on the Greek pagan idea of the inherently immortal soul. However, the ‘smoke of God’s judgment’ will continue to rise for ever as an everlasting memorial of shame to those who have embraced evil and rejected God’s love. This is all spelt out clearly in the New Testament. If we don’t believe it or don’t accept it, we are choosing not to believe Jesus himself. We are also rejecting the Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of Christ as well as that of the Father. God’s wrath is very personal, just as his mercy is personal, and the person at the centre of it all is Jesus. The whole of the New Testament lays this out most clearly, most of all the words of Jesus himself.

The question I started with was, bearing the mind the severity of certain passages in the Old and New Testaments, how ‘Christian’ is the Bible? Well, if the centre of our Christianity is a Christ who is a sentimentalised projection of our own feelings of what he should be for us or if he is merely the embodiment of what we think a reasonable God should be, then the Bible is not really ‘Christian’ in this sense at all.

In fact, if our Christianity is based on a cult figure of our own making we’ll probably want as little to do with the real Jesus of the Bible as possible, except perhaps some isolated verses or passages completely ripped from their overall context.

What will our Christianity be like then if it’s not grounded in the Christ of the Bible? Well, I believe, it will inevitably be very shallow and prone to idolatry. It will be a Christianity that is ineffective and seen as irrelevant, particularly by men and young people. We’ll have nothing to ground us and guard us when the spirit of the age seeks to seduce us and the world begins to squeeze us into its mould.

When people ask us why God allows suffering, we might compromise with falsehood by denying His sovereign power and overriding concern for His own glory, an essential characteristic of God’s righteousness, holiness and love. We’ll tend to forget that suffering can be a means of God’s grace both for individuals and communities. We’ll probably lose the concept that God disciplines those He loves, and we’ll almost certainly underestimate the depths from which we need redeeming. We’ll begin to expect from God that He’ll make us happy rather than whole, comfortable rather than battle-hardened. We’ll gradually cease to truly believe in the supernatural power of God or the reality of the spiritual powers of evil. We’ll end up thinking we all ultimately deserve a place in Heaven, and we’ll recoil from any idea of God as judge. In pride we’ll no longer believe that on the cross Jesus was bearing the punishment that we ourselves deserved. Why will be slipping away from these things? – it will be because are no longer soaking ourselves in the Word of God.

Sorry to say, that the above tendencies are manifest in the Church of England. The great biblical doctrines of God’s sovereignty, holiness, election, substitutionary atonement and judgment are increasingly ignored (without even being refuted in argument) because of the ignorance of the Bible and the unwillingness of leading figures in the church risk sounding out of tune with the drift of society. Were there to be more courage shown, I believe the hunger for God’s truth would become apparent.

If we hold fast to the Jesus the Gospels reveal to us, then we’ll come to the Bible in a humble, prayerful way, and the Holy Spirit will confirm to our souls that the written Word bears faithful witness to the Living Word. We’ll know the Bible is the Word of God and the Word of God is Jesus Christ. We’ll receive comfort, correction, hope, encouragement, wisdom, insight and true knowledge. We’ll find rich resources with which to pray, meditate and worship God. We’ll understand what true love and compassion is (as opposed to mere sentimentality), and be strengthened and encouraged in our Christian journey.

We’ll see the cross as the place where God’s wrath and mercy came together. In his amazing love God the Father and God the Son bore the anguish of spiritual separation so that our sin might be atoned for. This was the worst part of the agony Jesus endured on the cross, but the result is that now every one of us, no matter what we’ve done, can be declared ‘not guilty’ anymore if we choose to identify with Christ on the cross. In Christ we are raised to life with Him and future glory. But if we reject the Son and his sacrifice for us, then there only remains a fearful expectation of the judgment to come (Hebrews 10 v27).

I think we need to admit, with sober awareness that, one of the reasons why the Bible is held in disrepute among non-believers, is that Christians have dishonoured God’s Word by manifestly not living up to the revelation of Christ and the new life we are called to live in Him. Ghandi once indicated that if he had met more Christians than genuinely lived their lives according to the Jesus of the Gospels, he would have become a Christian himself.

In history, we as Christians have even used the Bible sometimes to justify our own self-righteousness and selfishness, to reinforce our own prejudices and to create a distance from people God is calling us to show his love to. People who have claimed to be ‘good Christians’ have misused the Bible to seek to bolster their positions of wealth and power, to justify the plundering of the environment, the institution of slavery, the oppression of women, and lack of compassion for the poor. Biblical verses have been used as sticks with which to beat those who we despise, even-though the Bible no-where encourages us takes pleasure in the severity of God towards those who offend him and indeed positively warns against it (particularly in the Old Testament).

Many Christians have been selective in the parts of the Bible we notice and proclaim to others. If we’re rich we might soft-pedal what Jesus says about wealth. If we’re right-wing we might over emphasise the significance of nation states in God’s plan for mankind at the expense of the wider vision of unity in Christ. The Old Testament has been read as though it were not fulfilled in Christ, leading to a fortress mentality towards people who are different to us. If we like to see ourselves as holding the moral high ground in matters of sexuality, we’ll likely emphasise the bits of the Bible that condemn other people’s sins while overlooking the bits that might challenge us.

Probably every evil perpetrated by so-called Christian nations or groups has had its biblical text, deliberately twisted or complacently misunderstood. Thus it is no wonder the severe passages of the Bible are rejected by many, because in the hands of sinful people these parts of the Bible have wrongly been used to justify oppression, unjust wars and even torture. Sadly it is considered by many that the severe passages encourage the belief that religious aggression is justified, whereas in fact the New Testament makes it clear that the Gospel is not to be spread by coercion or intimidation. At the very least, the parts of the Bible about God’s wrath and judgment are often seen as are buttressing the smug and vindictive attitudes of self-righteous Christians.

The truth that the Bible emphasises from start to finish is that, if anyone is saved, it is purely by God’s grace and mercy, so we have nothing to boast about, save the cross of Christ in which find unmerited forgiveness. The wonder is not that anyone is judged but that anyone is saved, since we’re all part of sinful, rebellious humanity, deserving punishment by a just and holy God. Now made righteous in Christ, we are called to live out this wonderfully glorious Gospel of grace, reaching out to the lost with all the compassion of Christ, aware that all barriers of ethnicity, gender and class have been broken down by Jesus. If all of us Christians demonstrated more of God’s grace and truth more of the time, I believe the Bible would not be treated with such suspicion.

One recent example, I think of the Bible being brought into disrepute, is provided by the furore in America over the comments of Pat Robertson, one of the leading ‘religious right’ figures. Robertson is exceedingly wealthy, influential and has his own TV show. Very soon after the earthquake in Haiti, he suggested on his show that the reason why Haiti is so poor and corrupt, and has now been shattered by an earthquake is that when seeking freedom and independence from the French, one of the Haitian leaders of the slave revolt made a pact with the Devil, and thereby entrenched a voodoo culture which still enslaves the people in misery and poverty.

Now many Haitians and Americans, have recoiled from Robertson’s comments, as you can imagine. Richard Dawkins, in a withering article in The Times newspaper, rather gleefully claims that at least Pat Robertson is being consistent and preaching the Bible and everyone should now see what cruel teaching the Bible contains, thanks to Robertson’s ‘plainly repulsive’ comments. But there are many ‘Evangelical Christians’ who think that Pat Robertson could be right and that the Bible seems to support this way of looking at things.

But this is where those of us who claim to be Bible-believers have got to be so careful. It is one thing for the prophets of the Old Testament who were called by God to speak in His name to declare that nations were going to come under the judgment of God. It is however, quite another for a self-appointed ‘prophet’ who happens to have a lot of clout with certain people to declare, that millions of people who are still in the midst of suffering are being singled out for punishment by God because of the particular sins of a distant ancestor. This kind of prophetic statement must be tested. It’s not enough to think it’s genuine because superficially it sounds to us like something the biblical prophets said and therefore is probably ‘biblical’.

A truly biblical way of assessing whether Pat Robertson was speaking something genuinely prophetic, is to look at his character, the substance of what he said, and the spirit in which he spoke. Some of Robertson’s financial dealings and political associations are seriously questionable. He also has a poor track record on making prophetic statements in the wake of national catastrophes. After September 11^th, he and Jerry Falwell, another ‘religious right’ figure agreed on air that their politically liberal opponents were to blame, and then retracted his comments and apologised. After Hurricane Katrina, though, he did the same thing. It seems that at least some of Robertson’s past comments have less to do with prophetic insight drawn from the Bible and more to do with political and religious point-scoring.

He also seems to home in rather selectively on an evil decision made by some slaves long ago, but how can he be so sure freedom from slavery and oppression was not sought by faithful Christians in Haiti as well as voodoo-worshipping ones? Responsibility for Haiti’s problems at least ought to be shared by the white nations that perpetrated a vile system of slavery and left a legacy of bitterness and cruelty. I rather doubt whether Robertson has much to say about that.

Finally, to speak in this way while people were still being pulled out of the rubble and the country was crying out for help from abroad, seems to indicate a lack of Christian charity. When people are still in the midst of suffering, the God of the Bible wants no judgmental gloating or theological pontificating, but God-fearing people to respond with compassionate help.

Even if he had waited till a good while later before coming to conclusions as to the reasons for Haiti’s problems, Jesus taught us in the Gospels that it was a mistake to see a simplistic link between sin and suffering. Individuals, groups or nations which suffer particular disasters are likely to be no more sinful than we are in the light of God’s holiness. Also, although no-one’s life is completely sinless of course (other than Jesus), there is such a thing as innocent suffering, in which God works in a powerful and mysterious way to further His good purposes. The Bible speaks volumes about God’s concern for the poor and oppressed, and consistently warns the rich and powerful not to be spiritually complacent but to give careful thought to their ways. A truly Christian prophet would rather rouse the rich to dig deep in their pockets to help the poor, than furnish the wealthy with tempting, ready made ‘justifications’ for ignoring their plight.

However, having said that, whenever a nation suffers a disaster, the Bible (and the Old Testament particularly speaks to nations) exhorts the people of that nation to humble themselves and repent and for everyone to see to the disaster as a kind of warning to take steps to avoid the final judgment (infinitely more terrible according to Jesus). People who cry along with the psalmist “why have you done this to us O Lord?” and turn to him in prayer and fasting (as Haiti’s president has led the country in doing) are more theologically in tune with the Bible than those (normally from a safe distance) who say what has happened has got nothing to do with any kind of judgment whatsoever and that God is rather impotent in the face of it.

Ultimately, the parts of the Bible that seem to Western Christians the most frighteningly severe are the parts that the suffering, poor and vulnerable people of this world find most comfort in and the parts that speak powerfully to nations to whom disaster has come about the need to repent of the evils that afflict society. The message Jesus speaks in the ‘Tower of Siloam’ passage in Luke 13 v1-5 is not that such disasters have nothing at all to do with God’s judgment, but that nobody else should assume they are less ripe for judgment, and that we should all take warning and repent, less we in our complacency perish as well.

by Martin Kuhrt,Vicar of the Church of the Holy Spirit, Bedgrove in Aylesbury