You Matter!

"Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows."

The above quote comes from Matthew's gospel, chapter 10, and I've always felt a little uncomfortable with it! I've never really understood exactly how I'm supposed to find it comforting. "not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father" - how much comfort is that to the poor sparrow who does fall to the ground, apparently in line with the Father's will! "you are worth more than many sparrows" - so it's less likely (but still not impossible) that anything bad will happen to me! This doesn't help me that much to feel loved or protected by God...

As I've pondered this more recently though, another angle has occurred to me:

First of all, on re-reading it I've realised that I've previously failed to properly take the context into account. In the preceding verses, Jesus warns his followers that they are actually quite likely to get killed because of Him. His intention can't have been then, to assure them (or us) of physical safety. So what was he getting at?

I think just this - "you matter"! God doesn't promise that nothing bad will happen to you, but if and when it does, it doesn't mean he doesn't care! Jesus doesn't say, "the very hairs of your head are all numbered", to illustrate the fact that God is a great big know-it-all, he says it to illustrate how much attention he gives you. God is that interested in you that He actually would sit there and count every hair on your head!

So "don't be afraid"? - seriously? Well, first of all, the context here is eternal. Death (and therefore suffering) is not the end of the story and this message comes through very clearly in this passage and elsewhere in Jesus' teaching. Apart from this though, surely the scariest thing is not to suffer - or even to die - but to suffer and die alone: to suffer and die (and no-one can perpetually avoid either) in the belief that no-one cares and that you don't matter. The message of the above quote though, is that you will always matter. Even sparrows matter to God. But don't be afraid, you are worth much more than many sparrows!

Apple - "Think different"?

As I've mentioned in one of my other posts, I love technology, although I'm not a big spender when it comes to technological gadgets and am quite conscious of waste and consumerism.  Within my own - fairly arbitrary - sense of "reason", I try to limit my contribution to both.

A year and a bit ago, I bought an Apple laptop, and I honestly think it was one of the best purchases I've ever made.  I didn't have a laptop before and it's proved extremely convenient.  I love being able to use a computer from any room in the house and even take it with me and use it elsewhere when I'm travelling.  I'd only really used Windows before and am very much enjoying the Apple experience.  My experience - in general - is that it all just works!  It boots up in 30 seconds and it's responsive when I'm using it.  I particularly like the multi-finger touch pad, which allows me to scroll with 2 fingers, browse and switch applications with 3 fingers and perform various other operations.  The standard windows laptop, single key touchpad with extra buttons for left and right mouse click feels very clunky and awkward by comparison.

Another Apple invention which I've been very impressed by recently is the iPhone, although on balance I've decided that if/when I do buy a new phone I'll probably go for something Android-based because the iPhone seems like a very closed system and I'd prefer something I have a bit more control over.  I also think Apple have been very controlling about their marketing strategy - e.g. initially only allowing the iPhone to be used on O2 - and this also put me off it somewhat.  The iPhone is still an amazing piece of kit though, and completely ground-breaking when it first appeared.

The thing I like most about Apple devices is their strong focus on usability.  Apple devices usually don't just do the job, they're easy - enjoyable even - to use.  Technology shouldn't just be about doing clever things it should be about people - it is for people after all.  I think Apple have got this dead right.  It was with some disappointment therefore, that I recently came across this article (I've already posted about this on Facebook, so apologies to those of you who've already read this or seen my comments on it), discussing a report on Apple (among other IT companies) regarding their activities in China (an important part of their supply chain because of its much cheaper labour costs).

It seems that Apple's concern for people and even for the environment (see here), extends only so far as they think it likely to directly affect their profits.  In fact according to the article referenced above, for their activities in China, Apple were rated joint bottom out of 29 global IT companies, by a consortium of 36 of China's leading environmental groups.  Particularly concerning is their apparent disregard for the health and safety of their workers.  Here's an extract from this article by the Guardian:

"... last May ... at least 62 workers fell sick after inhaling n-hexane used to clean touch screens at a Wintek electronics factory in Suzhou. The managers at the Taiwan-owned plant reportedly switched to the noxious chemical – which can cause nerve damage for up to two years – apparently because it dried more quickly than alcohol, thus increasing efficiency.

Hospitalised victims, cited in the new Green Choice video, said they made products for Apple and have written to the company's chief executive, Steve Jobs, requesting an explanation.

Nokia and Motorola responded to questions about their involvement with Wintek soon after the poisoning was revealed. Apple has yet to confirm or deny a relationship. The company said it would not comment on individual allegations."

The authors of the report particularly highlight Apple's secrecy - in contrast with other IT companies who are willing to disclose more information - about its supply chain and it's mechanisms for auditing the environmental impact and working conditions of its suppliers.

If you think this is a bad state of affairs, and that at the very least Apple ought to be more transparent about its operations and more accountable for its claims of environmental and social responsibility, would you please join me in signing this petition?

Petitions by Change.org|Start a Petition »

The Beatification of John Paul II

Pope Benedict XVI has recently signed a decree officially recognising nun Marie Simon-Pierre's apparent recovery from Parkinson's disease as a miracle (reported here on the BBC).  The significance of this particular "miracle", is that Marie Simon-Pierre and her fellow nuns prayed to then deceased pope, John Paul II, for her recovery.  The recognition of this miracle then, makes it possible for John Paul II to be "beatified" - the necessary preliminary step on the path to official sainthood.

Especially as an evangelical Christian, I have lots of problems with the whole concept of "sainthood".  First and foremost, whenever the Bible talks about saints, it is referring to all those who have trusted Jesus for their salvation and persevered as His followers.  In contrast, the Catholic concept of "sainthood" elevates certain people to a special holy status - unattainable to the rest of us mere mortals.  What's more, the gateway to this exclusive heavenly club is controlled, not by God, but by the earthly (and it has to be said, often not very "saintly"!) Catholic institution!

The thing I dislike most about the Catholic model of sainthood though, is the whole idea of people praying to them!  As I understand it, saints are not deemed to have any special powers of their own, but according to Catholic doctrine they can, and do intercede with God on behalf of the rest of us.  I just can't grasp though, why anyone (well, any Christian anyway) would want to go that route.  The whole point of the gospel is that God is accessible - personally accessible - to all of us!  The only person in heaven whose job it is to intercede on our behalf is Jesus - that's one of the primary reasons he came to earth, died and was resurrected in the first place!  Jesus taught us to pray in His name, and to pray to God as Father - he actually used the word "Abba", implying a close personal relationship.  The whole sainthood thing just puts an extra layer back into a hierarchy that shouldn't really be there in the first place, and seems to me to make God look more like a distant remote authority figure instead of a loving caring personal God.

All that said however, this "miracle cure" remains.  Marie Simon Pierre said she was completely healed.  Certainly her symptoms seem to have disappeared and she was able to go back to work as a nurse again.  There have been claims that she has since fallen ill again, but as yet these seem to be unsubstantiated.

Was she really cured from Parkinson's disease?  There have also been claims that she may not have had Parkinson's disease at all, but instead some sort of psychiatric condition which simply mimicked Parkinson's symptoms.  To me though, in all honesty, this sounds like the argument of someone who's desperate for an alternative explanation because they're determined not to believe in miracles, rather than someone giving a totally honest and unbiased assessment of the evidence.

What's your opinion?

Sex on Pandora

The best portrayal of a Biblical perspective on sex and marriage I've seen recently was in the science fiction film, "Avatar":

Pandora is a beautiful planet (actually it's a moon according to Wikipedia, although I missed this when I saw the film) with rich forests, inhabited by - among other creatures - a 10 ft tall race of blue-skinned humanoids known as the "Na'vi".

Jake Sully is a human ex-marine who is sent to Pandora with a mining corporation and given the use of an "Avatar" - basically an artificially grown Na'vi body which he can "inhabit" via telepathic link-up. These have been developed, partly because Pandora's atmosphere is poisonous to humans, and also as an attempt to gain the trust of the Na'vi, so that human scientists can learn more about Pandora and its inhabitants.

Jake's mission is to befriend the local Na'vi tribe and convince them to move elsewhere because the "Home Tree" where they all live, is right on top of a massive deposit of "unobtanium", which is what the mining corporation are there for. Failing this, Jake is to gather as much strategic information as possible so that the Na'vi can be evicted by force if necessary.

However, Jake quickly becomes emotionally involved with the Na'vi, in particular a female, Neytiri, who is assigned by the Na'vi to teach him their way of life. Jake and Neytiri fall in love and eventually have sex. In Na'vi culture though, having sex means you are mated for life! Fortunately, by this point Jake has also fallen in love with Pandora and the Na'vi way of life, and is happy about this as is Neytiri (although it does cause some tension with the rest of the clan and Neytiri later has cause to regret it, at least for a little while). I'm not going to go any further with the rest of the plot as this is the bit I want to talk about. To find out more you'll have to see the film for yourself (if you haven't already) or else read the plot summary on Wikipedia.

To me, this view on sex seems a perfect match with the Biblical ideal. It says in the Bible that a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh. This is what sex is all about. This is why Christians (well, I think most of us anyway) generally don't approve of sex before marriage. It isn't because there's anything bad about sex, or because there's anything especially significant about a legal marriage contract or an official ceremony, but rather because sex and marriage are - or at least should be - inseparable. Sex is the most intimate possible physical expression of love between 2 people and when recognised as such and given the honour it deserves, it forms a powerful bond - a bond that ought to be for life. I think Avatar illustrates this principle beautifully!

How Not to Defend the Bible

The Bible is pretty central to the Christian faith. Without it, the Christian faith - as we know it at least - would not exist, because everything we know about Jesus and the early church and about the relationship the Jews had with God before this comes from its pages. It is perhaps not surprising then, that the Bible comes in for considerable attack from those who have a negative view of our faith, and who see it as their mission to discredit it.

Richard Dawkins famously declared in, "The God Delusion", that, "The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully."

Leaving aside for the moment, the controversial reference to "fiction", as you can see, Dawkins doesn't pull any punches! Dawkins has a very clear agenda here, which he at least has the decency to be honest about, and the resulting rant above is by no means a balanced or fair assessment of the Old Testament!

Having said this however, there are still elements of some of these things to be found in its pages, parts of the Old Testament have been used to justify some pretty terrible things, and many honest seekers have been put off the Christian faith by some of the stories found there. Marcion in the 2nd century famously concluded that the God of the Old Testament was a different God to the one that Jesus spoke about. This was a powerful idea which persisted for several centuries in opposition to mainstream church teaching.

How do we explain these apparent contradictions? How for example, do we explain why a supposed God of love, would order his people to engage in genocide? Various attempts have been made, including the following:

1. Morality was somehow different back then. I've never really totally understood this argument so I may not be doing it justice, but it has something to do with everything changing at the death and resurrection of Jesus. By atoning for sin, Jesus' death and resurrection made grace and mercy possible in a way that it hadn't been previously which is why the Old Testament portrayal of God often seems so harsh and uncompromising compared with the God of love that we're more familiar with today.
   
   I can see some sense in this, but to me it's an inadequate explanation. I still can't imagine the God I love and worship ever ordering his people to engage in the wholesale slaughter of men, women and children (however deserving the victims might have been!). Apart from the obvious damage inflicted on the victims, this has a massive de-humanising effect on the perpetrators and sets a horrendous precedent for future generations!
   
   
2. It is not the Bible, but our imperfect view of morality that is at fault. Yes, God appears to do some terrible things, but they only look terrible because we don't understand all His reasons. If we understood everything perfectly as He does, we would see that His actions as portrayed in the Bible were really all just and good after all.
   
   I am prepared to accept that in some cases this may be true. I cannot rule out the possibility (remote as it seems to me right now) that it could turn out to be true in every case and that all my discomfort with God's portrayal in scripture may eventually amount to nothing. In the mean time though, there is just too much there that seems too contrary to my own God-given moral compass, for me to just pass it all off in this way. We must always be willing to accept that our understanding - intellectual and moral - is limited, but if something flies in the face of everything that seems to be good or praiseworthy then in all good conscience we surely cannot and should not be trying to excuse it?! 

To me there seem to be 3 remaining possibilities:

1. God is not really good - at least not completely and consistently. 
2. There is no God, so nothing the Bible says about him is true anyway. 
3. The Bible is an imperfect witness to God's behaviour and character. 

1 & 2 are ruled out for me, for all sorts of reasons that I don't have room to discuss properly in this post, which only seems to leave me with number 3.

This is an extremely difficult and controversial conclusion for most evangelical Christians to accept (significantly less controversial than 1 or 2 however!). In fact I think many would claim that you cannot believe this and still call yourself an evangelical Christian. For me though, the Bible doesn't have to be 100% true and accurate in every detail in order to be God-inspired (see 2 Timothy 3 verse 16). I am prepared to accept that it is written by people, who weren't always in possession of all the facts. The Bible is about God speaking to and interacting with people, who are the product of their culture and circumstances. Their circumstances, lives and culture are shaped by this process and God's character, heart and purpose are revealed, but these events are recorded by imperfect people who remain - to a greater or lesser extent - the product of their times.

We must not forget however, that we are also the product of our time, and that our reactions to the text will be influenced by our own, non-universal values and assumptions, coupled with an imperfect understanding of the period in which it was written. For this reason, none of us are in a position to pass supreme judgement on it, but we must be continually weighing it, allowing it to speak to us, and allowing God to use it to challenge our own hearts and prejudices. This doesn't mean we have to agree with everything it says though, or to defend as perfect something which occasionally does seem at odds with so much that we claim to stand for.

Away in a Manger

I have a couple of other ideas for blog posts rolling around my brain at the moment, but seeing as its Christmas Eve I thought it would be fitting to write something more about Christmas.

As I think most people are aware, there's no real evidence that Jesus was actually born on or near December 25th.  This date may have originally been chosen to co-incide with the Roman winter solstice, or with one of various pagan winter festivals which it ultimately supplanted.  However it came to be though, I for one am very glad we have a festival every year to celebrate this incredible event.

Of course, not everyone believes in the Christmas story and for many, if not the majority in this country at least, Christmas is just a time for giving and receiving presents, spending time with friends and family and celebrating all that is good about life and the world - and there's nothing wrong with any of that!

For me though, Christmas is much more than this - it's a time for remembering when God came into the world! How incredible is that?! More amazing still though, is the way in which he did it.

If you were God and you wanted to show everyone who you were and what you were like, what would you do? It would be easy wouldn't it? You could just appear in whatever awe-inspiring form you wanted, whenever and wherever you liked, and everyone would believe in you. They'd worship you - they'd have to! But God didn't do it like this - instead he was born to a poor young Jewish couple, in cramped and unceremonious circumstances, and his first bed was an animals' feeding trough!

I love this God! This is the sort of God I really want to serve and worship! He has all the power in the Universe and he chooses not to use it - he gives it up deliberately! He becomes like us - he lives as just a normal human being. This God really loves his creation and isn't ashamed to be like us, to live as one of us, to experience life in all its joy and all its pain - the same life that we live and that he created. He isn't just sitting up there on high dishing out dictates - he came down here and became a part of it all and was proud to do so!

This is humility. I don't think I'd be able to do that. I'd want big neon signs, or preferably some more heavenly, less tacky alternative saying, "Look at me! Look! It's God here!" I'd want everyone to know who I was and to be awestruck by my presence, but God goes pretty much to the opposite extreme. A few people recognise him - a bunch of lowly shepherds who are primed by the angels and some mysterious travellers from somewhere out east. Also, a prophet and a prophetess in the temple after Jesus is circumcised, who have been waiting for this event and speak tremendous words of encouragement to his parents and to others who are listening. But the rest of the world just carries on, blissfully unaware of what has just taken place.

Could you believe in this sort of God? Supposing he were available to everyone who really looked for him - would you want to meet a God like this? Or would you rather have a more in-your-face kind of a God - the kind you can't not believe in because he never gives you the option? Would you, really?

Debunking the Nativity

The Christmas Nativity story is well-known the world over and at this time of year it is told and re-told, in school plays, in films, on advent calendars and on Christmas cards.

Some people might be surprised to discover though, how many of the traditional elements are actually quite different from the 2 Biblical accounts (which are the only historical evidence we have of these events): one in the Gospel of Matthew and one in the gospel of Luke.

These are the main examples that come to mind:

No Room at the Inn?
This part of the story comes from Luke, who records that after Jesus was born, Mary "wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room in the kataluma".  "kataluma" is a Greek word which can be translated as "inn" or "guest room" depending on context.  In a small house, a "kataluma" might not even be a room - it could just be a small space set aside for guests.  Elsewhere in Luke, and also in Mark, it is translated as "guest room", but on this occasion many (although not all) English translations have favoured "inn".  It is actually much more likely though, that Mary and Joseph were staying with relatives, since Joseph's family were from that area, and the "kataluma" was full because other family members were also staying due to the census.

Luke's account doesn't even say that Jesus was born in a stable - only that Mary placed him in a manger because it was the only space available.  Small houses at that time were often built on 2 levels, with animals housed on the lower level - so a suitable manger might have been quite close to hand!

Finally, the sense of urgency in the traditional Nativity stories - i.e., "quick, find an inn, I'm about to have a baby!" - doesn't quite equate to Luke's more laid back version: "While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born".

We Three Kings?
Matthew records that the visitors were "Magi from the east" (Luke doesn't mention them).  We don't really know anything about them except that they were probably astrologers and had presumably travelled a long way.  This and the nature of their gifts suggests they were likely to have been men of wealth and influence but almost certainly not kings.

We don't know how many there were as Matthew doesn't record this information.  Neither does he record any of their names - "Melchior", "Caspar" and "Balthazar" all come from later church tradition.

Finally, the Magi almost certainly did not visit (as is commonly portrayed in Nativity plays, cards and calendars) on the same night as the shepherds.  The shepherds' visit is recorded by Luke and the Magi by Matthew.  According to Luke, the shepherds visited while Jesus was still pretty much a new born.  Matthew doesn't say how old Jesus' was by the time the Magi found him, only that they came to "the house" and "saw the child with his mother".  After realising the Magi have double-crossed him and are not going to tell him where Jesus is, Herod then issues a decree to kill all boys in the vicinity who are "two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi".