Black Friday or White Christmas?

My article for the December and January magazines:

Christmas is a time for traditions: the food, the music, the decorations (and complaining about how early they go up!), the parties, the church services and of course it wouldn't be Christmas without the cries of “It's all too commercialised!” We may lament that children are no longer content with Christmas presents consisting of shed-built wooden toys, an apple, an orange and some nuts, but I suspect that none of us would actually want it to be like that again. However it is true that in all the focus on the extravagance of presents or celebrations, the true reason for Christmas gets lost.

Nothing exemplifies this more than 'Black Friday'. Originally a term to describe the crowds of U.S. citizens starting their Christmas shopping on the day after Thanksgiving, it became an opportunity for retailers to offer big sales. This trend has recently (at least pre-pandemic) become more popular outside the U.S.A. and has been adopted by many retailers in this country. It's not just the consumerism of Black Friday that is a problem, but also the behaviour that it stirs up – there are often stories about injuries and even deaths caused by crowding and fighting over hugely discounted and desirable products. Fighting and injuries are also a feature of the other UK Black Friday – the nickname used by the emergency services for the Friday before Christmas due to its popularity as a night for Christmas parties. So, whether it's about presents or partying, for many people Christmas is defined by Black Friday.

Although Black Friday, in either use, is almost the opposite of the meaning of Christmas as a time of altruism and peace, it does show us why Christmas was necessary. Black Friday reminds us how as humans we can easily take something good, for example giving presents and celebrating with family and friends, and turn it into something bad. This is what the Christian faith calls 'Original Sin' – the innate tendency of humans to choose selfishness and our own interests over the interests of others, and to reject God's authority over us. Black Friday shows that Christmas is necessary because Christmas is defined not by Black Friday but by Good Friday.

The consequence of Original Sin is that we are unable, and ultimately unwilling, to do anything about our sinfulness and so we need a Saviour. This Saviour had to be human so that he could identify with us, suffer in our place and sympathize with us in our weakness. But he also had to be divine to pay off the infinite wrath of God incurred by our sin. In Psalm 51 King David acknowledged his sinfulness and asked God for forgiveness saying “wash me, and I will be whiter than snow” (verse 7). Christmas is the day we remember that Jesus was fully human and fully divine, being born so that he could die in order to pay the punishment for our sins on Good Friday and then rise from the dead at Easter to give us a new start.

So is your Christmas defined by Black Friday or Good Friday? Is it all about materialism, excess and self-centredness or is it about an awareness of your sin, and the celebration of the birth of your Saviour who will wash you whiter than snow?

What War Memorials teach us about life

This is the sermon I preached at Broughton for this year's Remembrance Sunday service:





We've just been remembering those from Broughton who died in the two world wars at our unique and special War Memorial, which was unveiled in 1923. However, next month is the 100th anniversary of the unveiling of the War Memorial in Port Sunlight.



Port Sunlight is a village on the Wirral, near Liverpool. It is the site of a soap factory founded by William Lever who also created the model village for his workers to live in. Some of you may remember Sunlight Soap. The company is now called Unilever and makes amongst other things, Lynx deodorant, Ben & Jerry's Ice cream and Persil washing powder, though you probably don't want to mix those up!!

Mr Lever, who had become Lord Leverhulme in 1917, was anxious to have a memorial to commemorate those of his workers who had been lost in the First World War. It was was unveiled on 3rd December 1921. But why am I telling you about this memorial rather than our own?

Well, Lord Leverhulme decided that the unveiling of the memorial should be carried out, not by a famous person or even by himself, but by employees who had served in the war. A vote of all the Lever ex-servicemen was held, and those chosen were Private Robert Cruickshank who had been awarded the Victoria Cross and Sergeant George Eames, who had been blinded at the battle of the Somme. George Eames was also my great, great uncle.

I never knew George or his branch of our family, but by a little bit of Googling I found out some facts about him. Not only was he blinded at the Somme, but his left arm was wounded making it 'virtually useless'. In August 1916 George went to St. Dunstan’s Lodge for Blinded Soldiers where he learned typewriting, braille and poultry farming. However, George decided to pursue singing and went on to be incredibly popular and became well-known as ‘the blind baritone’ or 'the soldier baritone', even appearing on postcards.

Amazingly, I also found a Pathé newsreel showing George unveiling the War Memorial.

 

Finding out all of this about George, and also seeing him on film gave me some sense of connection with him, but he is still not much more than a name carved on a piece of stone. And the same might be true of the names we heard read this morning. When the Cubs came in last Thursday to think about Remembrance we looked at the names and thought about the families who lost loved ones. We also found one of them, Charles Hogg, in the baptism register and thought about the fact that he would have been baptised in that font over there, as had some of the Cubs, and I suspect many of you here today. But although we can find out interesting facts about people who died in the wars, and we can make connections with them because we are related to them, or live in the same place, or were baptised or married here in the same church - they can still be little more than names carved on stone.

And that is quite a sobering thought. We often say when someone has died that they live on in our memories, but as we look at the names on the memorial, there are few people left, if any, who would have known those men. They've become figures from history, known only through pictures and writings, just the same as Henry VIII or Cleopatra.

Our first reading from Psalm 103 puts this thought poetically but profoundly: God remembers that we are mere dust, our life is like grass – we flourish like flowers but like them we wither and our place remembers us no more. We like to think that we are so important, but even in an age of social media there will be little trace of us in two hundred years or so. But this doesn't mean that our lives are meaningless nor that we are worthless. Because even though our bodies will decay and the people who remember us will also eventually die, Jesus reminds us in our second reading that we are much more valuable than the flowers and grass that wither and die, we are more valuable than the birds and animals, and despite the very valid concerns about environmental damage, we are more valuable than the earth itself.

We are more valuable because we are loved by God our Heavenly Father, and he formed us, he knows us, he forgives us, he loves us and he remembers us from everlasting to everlasting. As we seek to bring his kingdom here on earth we will find that he gives us the things we need so that we no longer need to argue and fight over things. As we respect his authority over us we will find that as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for us. As we turn to him to say sorry for the things we continue to do wrong, we will find that he forgives us and he has taken our sins from us as far as the east is from the west.

As we accept him as our Heavenly Father, it doesn't matter that one day we will be names in books; historical figures known only through pictures and words. It won't matter because we will have eternal life, and we will be known and loved by God. Our names will be engraved on his hands (Isaiah 49:16), they will be written on his heart.

Eternity calling

Here is my November magazine article:

Containing both All Saints Day and Remembrance Sunday, and with the signs of winter all around, November is traditionally a month when we remember those who have died. This year we not only have the 'usual' deaths, but we also continue to mourn those lost through the pandemic and there have also been notable 'high profile' deaths, such as Gerry Marsden, Una Stubbs, Prince Philip and Capt. Sir Tom Moore.

There is often a public outpouring of sorrow at these deaths, even though the majority of the people who express their sadness have never actually met the person in question. And along with the commiserations, there are often assertions about where they are now, which, except in a few cases, is usually heaven. When Prince Philip died there were photo-shopped pictures of him being welcomed at the pearly gates by Capt. Tom Moore, and when musicians die there are often suggestions of a super-group in heaven featuring Elvis, Buddy Holly and Jimi Hendrix. Why do we do this?

The primary reason is, as the Bible tells us, that God has “set eternity in the human heart” (Ecclesiastes 3:11). No matter how hard we try, we cannot fully get away from the sense that there is more to life than the material world we see. Even at 'secular' and 'humanist' funerals the celebrant often talks in terms of the deceased person going on the next stage of their journey, or now being with previously deceased loved ones. We have an inbuilt repulsion to the idea that we will just cease to be when we die. And the 'eternity' that is placed in our hearts is that of the 'new heavens and the new earth' where there “will be no more death, or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Revelation 21:4).

However, this sense of eternity should not be taken as all-inclusive promise but as an invitation. It is firstly an invitation to think seriously about this life. The writer of Ecclesiastes reminds us that “All share a common destiny—the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, the clean and the unclean, those who offer sacrifices and those who do not” (9:2) meaning everyone dies. And he recognises that “There is something else meaningless that occurs on earth: the righteous who get what the wicked deserve, and the wicked who get what the righteous deserve” (8:14). If there is nothing after death, there is no justice and there is no reason to be good at all. And secondly it is an invitation to do what is necessary to gain that eternity, that is to come to Jesus: “Whoever believes [i.e. trusts] in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life ” (John 3:36).

We should not be so bold as to claim to know eternal destiny of individuals no matter how good or how 'saintly' their lives were. Investigations into child sexual abuse remind us that some people look good but do evil whereas the penitent thief (Luke 23:39-43) reminds us that at the last minute even the vilest offender can receive forgiveness and eternal life. God has placed eternity in your heart and invites you to know that eternity through repentance and faith in Jesus.

Is there anybody out there...?

Here's my October magazine article:

I love showing people around the church and talking to them about its history and also what's going on in the present. One of the most common questions from adults as well as children is: “Are there ghosts here?” - an understandable question given the graves that surround the church and probability of people also buried inside the church. But it's not an easy question to answer, at least not in a brief way.

This is because we need to be clear what is meant by the word 'ghost'. It is true that there is a 'spiritual dimension' to the universe in which spiritual beings exist. These beings are either good or evil; they are either obedient to God or they are in rebellion against him (Ephesians 6:12). These spiritual beings can manifest themselves in the world, and we often refer to them by the general terms 'angels' and 'demons' (for more on angels, read the Advent 2019 reflections on this blog). The difficulty comes because evil spiritual beings don't mind lying – they will masquerade as good angels (2 Corinthians 11:14) or even as deceased people.

The term 'ghost' usually refers to the 'souls' or 'spirits' of people who have died, which can appear and even communicate with those who are still living. Thus they are thought to be human rather than spiritual in origin (this is further confused by the common but incorrect view that we become angels when we die). However, there is no such 'limbo' state: “people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment” (Hebrews 9:27). Jesus tells us (Matthew 25:31-46) that judgment leads either to an eternity in the presence of God or an eternity cut off from God's presence (which therefore cannot be in the world as God is present in the world). And Jesus' physical resurrection from the dead teaches us that our resurrection will also be physical – he even told his disciples “I am not a ghost!” (Luke 24:39). Humans are 'embodied souls' and 'ensouled bodies' (Genesis 2:7) - the two cannot be separated, that is why Paul teaches that at our resurrection we will receive immortal bodies (1 Corinthians 15:53).

So do ghosts exist? If you mean 'do the spirits of dead people hang around in the world?' then the answer is no. Some might point to mediums who have told them things that were only known by themselves and the loved one as proof that this is indeed the spirit of the dead person communicating. It may be true that no human could know those things but as these beings are supernatural, they have knowledge that humans don't. The medium may indeed be communicating with spiritual beings, but these beings are impersonating humans and must therefore be evil, as God has forbids us from trying to contact the dead (e.g. Leviticus 19:31, Deuteronomy 18:9-12).

Halloween is a time when evil spiritual beings are trivialised and rational people will claim to have seen ghosts or communicated with dead loved ones. There is only one person who has spoken to us after their death, the physically resurrected Jesus, and one of his messages to us is “stop doubting and believe” (John 20:27).

Harvest or hubris?

Here's my magazine article for September:




What do Superman, the Addams Family and 'Wir pflügen' all have in common? Answer: they are all tunes that my family uses to sing a 'grace' before a meal. 'Wir pflügen' is better known as the tune to 'We plough the fields and scatter' but you'll have to ask me the lyrics to the other two next time you see me!

As things slowly start to return to normal, so does the regular cycle of special services, the first major one being Harvest. Despite living in a rural area surrounded by people whose living depends on farming, we, like our more urban neighbours, have largely lost a sense of how dependant we are on the natural processes of food production, and in particular on the importance of the harvest. So a bad harvest will affect the livelihood of agricultural workers but rarely affects consumers. I would guess it is also fairly rare for people to start their meals with a 'grace' – thanking God for the food they are about to eat and those who had any part in producing it.

This can lead to an unconscious hubris that we as humans are no longer subject to the vagaries of nature; that we can control nature to produce what we want, whenever we want it.  This arrogance also extends beyond food to everything we have – we have gained or earned it and it is ours to do with as we please. Perhaps this is why natural disasters such as floods and earthquakes shock us so much – they remind us that the natural world is actually beyond our control. 

So the dwindling importance of harvest celebrations may not be just because we've lost the connection between what we eat and how it is produced, but because harvest itself is a reminder that we are not in control, that we are dependant upon God's provision through nature. Harvest is an affront to humanity's sense of self-sufficiency.

But harvest is also a reminder of God's generosity to us: he didn't have to create us, but he did; he didn't have to give us a world with all its variety for us to enjoy, but he did; he didn't have to send his Son to die so we could be forgiven, but he did. Our response should be thanksgiving but also a desire to be generous as God is generous. One of the prayers we use in church when we receive the collection is “everything in heaven and on earth is yours. All things come from you, and of your own do we give you.” We need to go along a journey that starts with ‘how much of my money do I give away?’ to ‘how much of God’s money do I keep?’

It’s not an easy or straightforward journey – but this harvest is a good time to start.

A Christian perspective on sport

Here's my magazine article for August:

Photo by Einar Hansen from FreeImages

When it comes to board games, I can be quite competitive and if I'm honest, I'm not a very good loser. However, I've never got to the stage where I throw the board in a fit of rage, unlike an unnamed member of the Royal Family which is apparently why the Queen has banned Monopoly! As we enjoy another summer of sport, it is perhaps worthwhile reflecting on the themes of winning and losing, on success and failure.

It might be assumed that Christianity, if it has anything to say about sport at all, would be against the idea of competitive sport. After all, doesn't loving our neighbour mean that we want them to win and turning the other cheek mean that if they beat us at something, we should let them beat us again? Happily that's not the case, but it does help us to see how we can approach competitive sport in a Christian way.

Firstly, loving our neighbour means that cheating is not acceptable. There are many times in the Old Testament where God commands fairness in business and justice (like Leviticus 19:15 and 35), which could equally apply to sport. Paul says that “anyone who competes as an athlete does not receive the victor’s crown except by competing according to the rules” (2 Timothy 2:5). Secondly, turning the other cheek means that if we do lose we should do so graciously and not be filled with anger and a desire for revenge.

It is this second one that is sometimes very hard! The more the competition means, the more painful it is to lose. The answer is not to give up caring about winning and losing (e.g. by saying that it's only the taking part that counts) nor to dispense with the idea of winning at all (e.g. the 'non-competitive' sports days). Rather the answer is to put sport into the correct perspective.

The Latin root of the word 'competition' means 'to strive together' – by having something to strain for (i.e. victory) all competitors push each other on to improve. So in this sense it is the taking part that counts, because both winning and losing are learning opportunities, and losing is probably more instructive and character-building. This image may also lie behind the exhortation to “consider how we may spur one another on towards love and good deeds” (Hebrews 10:24) - church is a competitive activity!!

But sport, along with all human activity, needs to be put in its proper place: Paul reminds us that athletes “do it to get a crown that will not last, but we [follow Jesus even when it is difficult] to get a crown that will last forever” (1 Corinthians 9:25). As great as human success can be “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” (Mark 8:36). Failure in sport, in career or in exams can be traumatic but failure to respond to Jesus' invitation to repent and trust in him has eternal consequences.

Anything can happen if you let it. Discuss.

Here's my magazine article for July:

The first production I saw at Broughton Juniors, as it then was, was Mary Poppins in 2012, and they are doing that same musical this year, albeit in a different way. Growing up I loved watching the Mary Poppins film, and I was amazed at how well the Broughton children performed it. There were a few differences as theirs was based on the stage show, one of which was the song 'Anything can happen'.

This optimistic song is about dreaming big and aiming high: "When you reach for the stars all you get are the stars... When you reach for the heavens, you get the stars thrown in". These are the kind of messages we like to give children and young people to inspire them to work hard and pursue their dreams, and often schools have motivational phrases like this on their walls. They are also theme of thousands of memes on social media, and the summer's sporting events will give us plenty of stories of people who succeeded 'against all odds'.

However, I worry that we are selling a false hope. To say that 'anything can happen if you let it' is inspirational but not true – for example even in my younger, fitter days I would never have been able to play football for England: I could have been a better footballer if I'd have practised more but I don't have the natural talent and ability that you need to become a professional never mind an international. Similarly, I would never have been able to fulfil my childhood ambition of being a King!! Some things can be taught and practised but others can't.

But even if these aspirational phrases are not strictly true, what's wrong with giving people an inspirational thought? It seems to me that false hope can often be dangerous. I've written before about putting our hope in vaccines, which may help with the physical effects of COVID-19 but cannot help with our underlying fear of death. I've also written about how a false hope that our loved ones are 'safe' and 'happy' after death and that we will be reunited with them after our deaths means that we fail to take heed of Jesus' warnings that salvation is only through true and lively faith in him.

As well as this, encouraging false hope will inevitably lead to disappointment and bitterness, particularly if the message is “if you dream it, you can achieve it, just believe it”. When a person who thinks this is unable to achieve their dream then they automatically blame someone else: their belief was enough to achieve it, so the fact they haven't achieved it must be due to someone or something else. This feeling of entitlement to success or to have dreams fulfilled means that any opposition, however logical or reasonable, must be silenced (or 'cancelled'). Dreams and desires then become inextricably linked with identity – 'I am whatever I want to be' - and if anyone disagrees that becomes an 'abuse of human rights'.

So let's teach our children to dream big, aim high and work hard, but let's not kid them, or ourselves, with a false hope that we can achieve or be anything just by wishing hard.

Holding out for a hero?

Here's my article for the June magazine:

The theme for this year's Scarecrow Festival in Scawby is 'Heroes' – a very appropriate theme given the year we've had since the pandemic struck. We've been encouraged to clap for the heroes of the NHS, and to hail other key workers as heroes too – including the often overlooked jobs such as refuse collectors, cleaners and delivery drivers. And then we've had the shining examples of people like Capt. Sir Tom Moore and others locally who have done outstanding work to raise funds, help other people or keep the community spirit up. Perhaps 2020/2021 will be seen as the year of heroes.

Whilst it is always right to thank those who make our lives better in any way, and particularly to thank those whose contribution is often taken for granted, we do need to be careful about using the word 'hero'. The main reason is that we can use the concept of 'hero' to assess a person's value and dignity: the more heroic they are, the more value they have.

Since the start of the pandemic, we've had to think a lot about the value we put on people's lives: whether that through the Me Too campaign or the Black Lives Matter awareness or simply through thinking about who we prioritise for treatment / vaccines for COVID-19. In an interview on Good Morning Britain, Lord Sumpter suggested that the lives of the elderly like himself were worth less than those of the young and so treatments and restrictions should place the interests of the the young before the elderly. Piers Morgan countered that Capt. Sir Tom Moore was 99 when he did his fundraising walk. There is a full discussion about this exchange on the 'Speak Life' YouTube Channel, entitled “Are All Lives Equally Valuable?” the jist of which is that both Lord Sumpter and Piers Morgan are wrong because they see human value in terms of what a person contributes to society, or their potential to contribute.

The problem with thinking like this is that the category of 'good for society' has no definitive meaning, it is always decided by those who have power, usually to protect their own position. All oppression and all abuse has at its core seeing someone else, or a group of people, as less valuable and less worthy of respect. Another problem is that we also tend to think of 'heroes' as being most qualified for a good afterlife.

The Bible is quite clear that human value and dignity does not come from things like cleverness, beauty, ability, fame, power, wealth, beliefs and not even from character; humans are valuable because they are made in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:27). This is the only firm foundation for human dignity and also for human equality. But the Bible is also clear that all of us, no matter how heroic we are, fall short of God's standard for living – which is perfection (Romans 3:23 and Matthew 5:48). That is why we need the forgiveness Jesus has won for us by his death and resurrection, which is available freely to everyone equally.

So let's thank and celebrate those who do heroic things, let's aim to be heroic ourselves, let's value each other as people who are made in the image and likeness of God and let's ask God to forgive us for failing to value each other and failing to be God's heroes.

Can you truly say the Lord's Prayer?

 Here's my May magazine article:

Ascension Day, forty days after Easter, is on 13th May this year and it again marks the start of the 11-day global prayer movement called 'Thy Kingdom Come'. The title is taken from the Lord's Prayer, the prayer that Jesus taught his followers as a pattern for our praying as well as a prayer that we can make our own. The familiarity of that prayer means that we can lose sight of the radical nature of what we are praying for, and perhaps the most radical part of the prayer is the most over-looked: the opening two words - “Our Father.”

Our Western civilisation is so saturated in Christian thought that it is quite natural to think of God as 'Father'. However, this is unknown in Greco-Roman culture and unthinkable in Islam (hence the famous account of Bilquis Sheikh's conversion from Islam to Christianity entitled “I dared to call him Father”). Even in the Old Testament, God is the Father of the nation of Israel, and only of certain special individuals such as David. Conversely, the Christian-soaked Western world takes the idea of the Fatherhood of God too far the other way: as God is the Creator and originator of everything, the thinking goes, every human is therefore a child of God.

Jesus' radical message saves us both from a distant deity and from a conception of our position as God's children that is so wide that it becomes meaningless. John's gospel opens by telling us that Jesus would be rejected by many “Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12). Paul tells the Christians in Galatia: “you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:26 New King James Version) and “God sent forth His Son...to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons...Therefore you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ” (Galatians 4:4-7 NKJV).

These verses tell us important things. Firstly, only those who believe in (in the sense of putting their faith and trust in) Jesus are truly children of God. Secondly, adoption as a child of God is a result of redemption, i.e. by repenting of our sins in the faith that Jesus' death has paid the penalty for those sins. Thirdly, we are adopted as sons. This last point seems to be sexist, and indeed most modern translations of the Bible in these verses will render the Greek word 'son' as 'child'. However, Paul deliberately uses the word 'son' for a particular reason: in the society of his day only males could inherit, so Paul wants us to understand that those who are adopted as God's sons will share in everything the Father has. This distinction might also help us today for though it could be said that by virtue of being created by God we are all children of God, only those who are redeemed are sons of God and thus inherit the kingdom / salvation / eternal life.

The Lord's Prayer is therefore a family prayer – the prayer of those who have been adopted as God's sons through faith in Jesus. Can you truly say that prayer as part of that family?

Living Hopefully

Wildflowers in Scawby churchyard

Here's my article for April:

Spring has sprung and in the natural world we are seeing signs of new life, and with them brings hope that the cold winter days are past and the warm (and maybe even hot!) days of summer are on their way. But it's not just in nature that hope is springing: with the government 'road map' we have a hope that the dark days of the pandemic are coming to an end and the bright days of 'normality' are getting closer. Although hope is a powerful emotion that can keep us going through difficult times, it is good to question what the grounds of our hope are.

As we emerge from the shadow of COVID-19, the obvious grounds for our hope is in the vaccines, and then (as it has been throughout the pandemic) in the NHS to treat us if we fall ill. But these aren't solid grounds for hope. With each variant that appears there is concern that the vaccines won't be effective against that strain of the virus. With each rise in cases there is concern that the NHS will not be able to cope with demand – it is not surprising that one of the constant slogans has been to 'Protect the NHS'. The development of the vaccines is something to be celebrated and the NHS do fantastic work with all sorts of medical needs, but vaccines and the NHS are not solid foundations on which to build our hope of overcoming this plague, still less are they solid foundations on which to build our hope of overcoming the root cause of our fears about the virus.

We are desperate for protection against the virus because ultimately we fear death. To those who believe that the physical world is all that there is, death makes all our lives ultimately meaningless. As it says in Ecclesiastes 5:15 “We leave this world just as we entered it—with nothing. In spite of all our work there is nothing we can take with us” (Good News Translation). To those who do believe in a supernatural afterlife, death brings the uncertainty of eternal existence – uncertain because of not knowing what the outcome will be. The general sense that if you're good enough you'll have a nice eternal existence sounds reassuring until you ask the question of what 'good enough' means, and if we're honest, we don't even come up to our own standards! Death then is something to be feared and therefore our only hope is to delay it as much as possible. Unless there is a better and more solid ground for hope.

Thankfully, there is a better hope – the new life of spring overcoming the death of winter is one way God points us towards the good news of Easter; that Jesus' death and resurrection mean that death is no longer something to be feared. Our lives have meaning because they don't stop at death, and we can be forgiven for our constant failure to be 'good enough' because Jesus took our punishment on the cross. Just as we benefit from the work of many scientists by having the vaccine so we can benefit from Jesus' sacrifice by putting our faith and trust in him. So this Easter, live hopefully!

The answer to suffering: caprice, karma, chaos or Christ?

Here's my magazine article for March:

Anniversaries are usually happy occasions, but this month marks a year since the first COVID lockdown and I suspect few of us thought that one year on we'd still be facing restrictions. The pandemic has prompted many people to ask deep questions about life and death; and meaning and purpose, some of which we've looked at in previous articles (see here for some of them). However, we haven't looked much at perhaps the biggest question of all: why does God allow suffering? The problem is often put like this “Suffering exists so God either cannot do anything about it, in which case he isn't all-powerful (omnipotent); or he is unwilling in which case he is not all-loving.”

The first thing to say about this is that this is a specifically Christian question. Although it is often used as the knock-out argument against a belief in God, philosophically, suffering is only a problem if Christianity is true. In other worldviews suffering may exist, but it's not a problem.

If we look at other ancient religions, and to a certain extent Judaism and Islam, the will of the gods is supreme. Norse, Greek and Roman gods were capricious and fickle, they would cause humans to suffer on a whim and were not expected to be fair or just. As ABBA sang: "The gods may throw a dice / their minds as cold as ice / and someone way down here / loses someone dear" ('The Winner Takes it All' 1980). Similarly, for strands of Judaism and Islam, God is so supreme that he can never be questioned even if he acts unjustly. Suffering is therefore not a problem, it should simply be accepted.

For those who believe in karma there is solace (and often glee) in the thought that those who have hurt them will be punished for the suffering they've caused. However, to be consistent the karma-believers should also recognise that the suffering they face is a just punishment for wrongs that they themselves have done. Suffering is therefore not a problem, it is deserved.

The problem for atheistic philosophies is that we see suffering as a problem, because logically there is no grounds for complaining about suffering. If everything that exists exists because of chaos - random atoms banging into each other and 'accidentally' forming the universe – then suffering too is part of this random process. Alternatively, in evolutionary terms suffering is natural: nature is red in tooth and claw, suffering is the by-product of evolution. Either way, suffering is not a problem, it is random or natural.

But we do find suffering problematic. That's because we expect the world to be good and we expect any suffering to be just, because the Christian God is good and just. Only in Christianity can you have a problem with suffering, and only in Christianity can you have the solution to suffering. God created a perfect world, but humanity through rebelling against God (what we call 'sin') corrupted that world and so suffering became part of our experience. Despite that suffering being a just punishment for our rebellion, God did not want to abandon us to that suffering. And so he came to earth as a baby in Jesus; grew up like we do; experienced our suffering and pain; and then took that suffering and punishment on himself by dying on the cross; and in rising from the dead he showed us the new life, free from suffering. By becoming a suffering God, God is able to sympathise with us in our suffering (Hebrews 4:15) but more importantly to enable us to enter the new creation where there is no more suffering (Revelation 21:4). If you have a problem with suffering, then Easter is your answer.

Do you feel like giving up?

Here's my article for the February magazine:


Lent is traditionally a time when we forego pleasures and treats in order to detach ourselves from the temptations of 'the world, the flesh and the devil' and focus instead on God and the blessings he brings. Although we may not be so good at the second part of that, we seem to have been going without pleasures and treats for almost a year now – lockdown and COVID restrictions are almost a state-enforced Lent!

This imposed 'giving-up' is causing a deeper mental health issue of people giving up on life: the strain of coping with uncertain futures or job prospects; added to the worry about catching the virus, or loved ones catching it; on top of trying to get children to learn at home; all this can become too much. Help might be sought in alcohol or drugs, or even just wanting to hide in a dark corner and cry for hours. If you do feel like this, please find someone to talk to, and you're welcome to contact me, or to pop into church any time we're open.

But perhaps there is a healthier way to 'give up'. I read an article last year that had some good advice about some things that we should be giving up. Firstly, “give up thinking you are the only one feeling this way, struggling this way. You are not alone. It is normal in a time of huge uncertainty to feel somewhat lost, frustrated, fed up.” One of the benefits of talking to people when you're feeling that everything is getting on top of you is that you find out that others are feeling the same way. Around thirty or so years after Jesus' death, resurrection and ascension, Peter wrote to some groups of Christians who were being persecuted for their faith in Jesus with these words: “you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings” (1 Peter 5:9). Give up feeling you are alone.

Secondly, “give up trying to come up with a grand plan, and instead focus on some small wins.” This is particularly helpful for those who are trying to teach children at home – perhaps getting a child to do twenty minutes of work happily is better than forcing them to do four hours of work reluctantly. It would certainly be better for the family atmosphere!! But all of us are tempted to create big dreams for ourselves to give ourselves hope and purpose, things like “In a few months time, when this pandemic is over I'll go there or do that.” When the circumstances change and we can't fulfil those dreams, we end up despairing – better to have small short term aims that have a realistic chance of being achieved.

Finally “give up thinking it is entirely up to you. God hasn’t given up, and that is our single biggest source of encouragement. God is not surprised by anything that is happening. God is still at work, and wants to help us through.” None of us as individuals can stop the spread of the virus, or prevent people dying, or save the NHS; nor can we keep all of the plates spinning in our own lives. We need the help of family and friends, which is still possible even in lockdown, and of course God is not bound by government restrictions! God knows you and loves you; God knows your situation and your struggles; turn to him for hope and help. The writer of Psalm 71 cried out to God in his time of trouble and was able to say “Though you have made me see troubles, many and bitter, you will restore my life again; from the depths of the earth you will again bring me up” (verse 20).