So here we are. Thing number one which has been annoying me: a few weeks ago, someone I follow on Twitter posted up the following tweet: “Between religion and science, science is willing to change and review, whereas change in religion is tantamount to heresy.” This is a claim which I often hear as a criticism against religion. On the surface I think it may even look vaguely passable as an argument. However I think it’s a pretty bad argument to make, and here’s why:

The implication is that scientists are willing to change their theories whereas religion is not. Scientists objectively look at all the evidence, and then it will lead them where that may. Scientists are the very epitomy of objectivity, whereas the close-minded religious fools blindly believe in something because their holy text tells them to. They unquestioningly accept the dogmas of their religion, never changing, while the world moves on around them.

This is wrong on several different levels, but here are the main ones (or at least, the main ones I can think of right now):

• Scientists aren’t a model of objectivity. Just look at the work of someone like Thomas Kuhn to see that it really isn’t as simple as that. Scientists have pet theories and will often not give them up easily. The data doesn’t lead scientists where it may, not always at least.
• Both Christianity and science have changed. Look at slavery, for example: I’ve seen many people accuse the church of supporting slavery (which is probably a fair accusation). But then again, so did science. Scientific data at the time was used to justify what is basically racism. Now we can look back at those times and shake our heads – but the point is the change has been made since then. I can’t speak for the scientists, but in the case of the church I think they were genuinely wrong to condone such behaviour – that said, it was a Christian who was at the forefront of the campaign to abolish slavery.
• Change in itself is not a virtue. The truth is what we are aiming for. The goal of science is to get ever closer to the truth and describe our universe. The goal of religion – well, Christianity in particular – is to bring man into a relationship with God. The purposes of the two things are different. I believe that Christianity is true, therefore – why would it need to change? Now, don’t misunderstand me, I’m not saying that the church is incapable of error (see slavery above, for example) – but I do think that the core truths of Christianity do not change. Science is always going to be changing. One is not ‘better’ than the other, they just serve two different purposes.

The other thing which got me thinking was another quote I read: “if Christians really believe in heaven, why do they wear seatbelts?” This struck me as completely missing the point of Christianity.

It is true that the apostle Paul said “to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21). But that doesn’t mean we should just go and kill ourselves! It seems to me that the Bible says there is far too much valuable in this life. God created the world “and saw that it was good”. Although this is a world gone wrong, it is still “good” in many ways.

As Andy Saville pointed out in his sermon at Sunday@6 last Sunday (his last ever sermon as the assistant minister at Fordham, actually) – heaven is not going to be some airy-fairy place in the clouds with harps and the like! We hope for a bodily resurrection, with a new heaven and a new earth. We hope for a renewal of the earth, not a total destruction of it!

So the reason we do not kill ourselves, firstly, is that the earth is good and we do not wish to leave it! Secondly, we believe that we all have a purpose on this earth. In Ephesians 2 Paul says, “for by grace you have been saved… to do good works which God prepared in advance for you to do” (from memory, might not be exact). God has given us jobs to do, we need to do them!

I could go on here, but I think my point has been sufficiently made: making a statement like that seems to betray a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means to be a Christian.

Anyway, I think that’s enough of my ramblings for now!

It struck me when reading a tweet by Rick Warren (who wrote “The Purpose Driven Life”): “Much prayer=much power. Little prayer=little power. No prayer=no power.” (Thanks to Simon for re-tweeting, by the way).

The first thing I thought of when I read this was of the dangers of ungrace (as Philip Yancey calls it). Essentially the issue is we stop seeing ourselves in relation to God’s grace, and start seeing ourselves as somehow meriting favour. This can work in two ways. The first is, when we’ve done something wrong we think “God could never anything good for me now, I’m too bad.” The second, and probably more subtle, is “Well, I’ve done lots of good things today! God should listen to me.”

Both are flawed. God deals with us in relation to his grace, not in terms of our merit or demerit. If God dealt with us according to what we deserve, we’d be in a pretty poor state!

So, in terms of what Rick Warren actually said, I think it’s true in the sense that, God wishes us to pray regularly and persistently. We are exhorted several times by Jesus himself to pray, and this is echoed in many of the apostolic letters. That said, we must never think that God will listen to us because we’ve “put our hours in”. God deals with us on the basis of grace, not our merit. A good prayer life should flow from a response to the grace that God has already bestowed on us in Christ Jesus.

Then, a few years ago I heard via some friends of what was going on at Essex Christian Union. It seemed that what happened there was that the leadership had been away on a UCCF weekend, come back with the idea that “evangelism is the most important thing for a CU” and then proceeded to ignore pretty much everything else (everything except evangelism, that is. So socialising etc. weren’t really done very much). Again, simplification, but that’s how it seemed. Now, the CU leadership circumstances at the time might have caused this problem, but I don’t think UCCF really helped matters. But I won’t make too much of that because I wasn’t involved.

Anyway, the other day I was reading something about the inerrancy of the Bible in a doctrinal basis. This reminded me of the UCCF doctrinal basis, which is something I had to sign when I joined the CU committee. This is the relevant point (taken directly from the website): “c. The Bible, as originally given, is the inspired and infallible Word of God. It is the supreme authority in all matters of belief and behaviour.”

Back in the day, I signed up to the doctrinal basis without really thinking about it. I didn’t have a problem with any of the statements. But now I do. Why’s that?

Well, for comparison check out the 39 articles (which is the closest thing the Anglican church has to a Doctrinal Basis):

Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation. In the name of the Holy Scripture we do understand those canonical Books of the Old and New Testament, of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church. (source)

(I’ve been reading a book on the Anglican Church and I think I’m pretty much ‘converted’… but I digress). Also, check out the Evangelical Alliance basis of faith: “The divine inspiration and supreme authority of the Old and New Testament Scriptures, which are the written Word of God—fully trustworthy for faith and conduct.”

The Baptist Union of Great Britain has a similar statement to the 39 articles and the Evangelical Alliance. Do you see the difference? The UCCF doctrinal basis is the only one to mention (1) the Bible as originally given, and (2) that the Bible is infallible. I disagree on both points.

The first one makes it sound like the Bible basically fell out of the sky, complete. The Bible wasn’t written as a complete unit, dictated by God! It was written by man, recording God’s actions in history. Which leads on to the second point – infallibility: this seems to be tantamount to saying that it’s inerrant, that it doesn’t have any errors in it. To my mind that is patently false – we know there are a few of various magnitude. Not really important ones, but nonetheless claiming that the Bible is ‘infallible’ is unhelpful and actually a misuse of the English language. I also think that this is actually far more than the Bible claims for itself (despite what some people will tell you, the well known passage in 2 Timothy does not claim that every single word is literally true).

I can wholeheartedly agree with the 39 Articles, the Evangelical Alliance and so on, but I just can’t agree 100% with UCCF. (This might prove to be an issue if I ever get asked to speak at a CU meeting, but let’s save that for the moment). In fact, it seems to me that this doctrinal basis was written to be exclusive rather than inclusive.

And this goes to the heart of why I disagree with UCCF: they seem to base what they believe and do around quite a narrow definition of what it is to be a Christian. That is to say, they define a Christian – and what it means to be a Christian, as well as a CU – that people and organisations that are legimately Christian would not be able to be affiliated with them.

This is particularly galling to me having been studying Ephesians for the past few months. What is the major theme of Ephesians? The unity of the body of Christ. Why introduce things like this into the doctrinal basis which are badly worded which some people won’t be able to sign for legitimate reasons?

Well, here ends the rant. I should note that I’m not the first person to blog about this. I may revisit this topic at some point when I’ve had a chance to re-read and possibly re-think ;)

Edit: Well, after having read through this, I realised that in my rush to write this I’d left out something important. I don’t want to come down too hard on UCCF because they do do good work. The UCCF worker we had at uni was very good, and he helped us a lot in various ways and helped to unite the CU. A good friend has also just told us tonight that she is going to be working for UCCF in London, and obviously that’s a good thing – I’m sure she’ll do a great job and be really helpful to all the CUs she’s involved with.

I think my issues with the organisation do in no way prevent them from doing good work, or God’s will. I wanted to make that clear because otherwise I was pretty harsh… also, I’m probably wrong. I expect there’s probably a good reason to have what they have in their doctrinal basis. Although I don’t know what that is… but there you go.

But I never let the truth get in the way of a good rant, so I’ll leave it as it is for now :p

I don’t know why but I feel like it’s not been quite as good as previous Moore Course modules that we’ve done. It just seemed to be based around a particular commentary a little too much. Sometimes the book would make statements which didn’t seem to be backed up by any of the verses it quoted – which I think is probably because the line of argument was traced through properly in the commentary, but not in the book.

Either way, I’m not sure about it. My exam marks over the past few years have been going steadily down – the weird thing is, I’ve been putting more time into revising since the first one! So this year I don’t know what I should do, perhaps if I spend less time revising I’ll do better… the exam is on 27th, so we have a little while anyway. No reason to stress about it either, whatever happens – whether I pass or fail – it’s not going to really affect my life in any meaningful way!

Aaaaanyway. I thought I would do a bit of “Live Blogging” from the conference. Live Blogging, as defined by me, is blogging when you’re actually at the event, rather than looking back at it afterwards. That’s not the normal definition of live blogging. I don’t care. Talk to the hand…

So. As Wayne from “Wayne’s World” once said, let me bring you up to speed. I had the day off today (as I have the past couple of days). After lunch I headed over to pick up Quinlan, who I was travelling to the weekend with. Unfortunately I was about 25 minutes late (due to roadworks and getting lost, don’t ask), but we eventually headed off in his VW Beetle. Which I was driving. I think he quite likes being chauffered (he is a world-famous architect after all…) and so I drove. It was the first time I’ve driven a Beetle – new or old (this is an 04 model) and it seemed pretty nice. Standard VW really – drove well, steering felt light, decent engine. I did miss my Saab’s 2.0 litre turbocharged engine though – it really eats up the motorway miles and is pretty efficient. You could virtually see the fuel guage move on the VW!

Anyway. We got here at about 17:50, which gave me ten minutes to find my room and get to the first meeting. I managed to get there but stupidly forgot my Bible, notbook, pen, programme etc… looked over someone’s shoulder for most of it. It was OK though! The first session was from Adrian Reynolds on Ezra chapter 1, which was very interesting. Then we had dinner (Beef Chilli, nice, and some sort of chocolate cheesecake, also nice).

And then we had our second session, which was by Christopher Ash on Old Testament Narrative. I really enjoyed it actually, it gave a good taster of what we’re going to be studying this weekend. Won’t go into it now though as, well… if you’ve read this far you’re doing well.

Think that’s about it to be honest. After that I just chatted with some random people and started writing this blog… exciting stuff! To be honest I don’t have much else to say right now, so I’ll say ta-ta for now. We have some free time tomorrow aftenoon so I might update again then.

Anyway, someone wrote a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) about it, the ASA rejected the complaint, someone set up a Facebook group, etc etc. If you’ve not heard it already, you can read the background here.

Anyway, apparently the ASA have now upheld the complaint and taken the adverts down (see the Church Times article). One thing I wanted to pick up on is the ASA’s response after giving in and ordering the adverts to be taken down. They said: “people have the right to choose their own lifestyle” – which presumably is why they didn’t take the adverts down in the first place.

Now, I wouldn’t consider myself ultra-conservative or anything. But that statement strikes me as being a bit odd: Yes, people can choose their own lifestyles. But would you allow advertising that positively encouraged bad traits – such as breaking promises, letting other people down, acting selfishly? Because that’s effectively what they’re doing with the Marital Affairs advert – by allowing it they are tacitly saying, “It’s OK. Go on, have an affair. It’s your lifestyle, after all.”

My view is, when two people get married, they make a commitment to each other. If you get married in a church (specifically CofE, I think the wording is very similar in other churches) you agree to be faithful to each other for as long as you both shall live. I think those are beautiful words, but they are not just words: it’s a promise you make. If you go into marriage thinking that you’re not going to be able to keep that promise, you might as well not bother.

Adultery, or marital infidelity, whatever you want to call it, wrecks marriages. Even if the couple manage to stay together things can rarely be the same. It’s not just a broken promise, it’s actually potentially wrecking people’s lives.

And, given how the tabloids react when a famous person gets caught having an affair (for a recent example see Tiger Woods), I think most people would go one further and say that having an affair is actually an immoral action.

So, come on ASA, for goodness’ sake, what the heck are you playing at? Yes, people can choose their own lifestyles, and having an affair isn’t (and shouldn’t be) illegal, but it’s hardly advisable to promote a website which allows people to indulge in such a thing is it?

Here endeth the rant…

You can read it here :)

A few years ago I was involved with a site called Crossring, started up by a friend of mine called Simon. It was undoubtedly one of the best Christian websites around for young-ish people (I think it started off being aimed towards students, but we reached a lot of different people).

Anyway, due to no-one having the time to maintain it the website shut down, but come September 1st it will be back up again at the old address! Simon has asked me to write a few articles over the next few months – the initial series will be on Mark’s gospel. I’ve been busy writing the first one over the past week or so.

So, if you’re interested in Christian things, come 1st September do check it out – but in the meantime, if you’re a Twitter user you can follow the Crossring Twitter account for updates.

The story so far: the 456 (or four-five-six, the aliens) have demanded 10% of the world’s children. It seems that they’re running some sort of protection racket: give us what we want, or we’ll wipe out your species. What I don’t quite understand is… if they want children so badly, why don’t they just wipe out the population and take them? If they do indeed have the power to wipe out everyone on the planet, why don’t they just do it?

I think they’re bluffing. But we’ll see!

One other thing about Torchwood I forgot to mention the other day which annoyed me. When Gwen was interviewing the doctor who wanted to join Torchwood, he said that one of the reasons he was interested was because of a woman who committed suicide. Apparently she was a devout Christian, and when she found out that aliens were real she couldn’t take it… “science had won”, she said. She realised that her place in the universe was, well, tiny. This annoyed me, because even if there were aliens, that would say nothing about the relationship between science and Christianity. It seemed bizarre – it was just perpetuating the myth that science and religion are in conflict. Lazy writing, in my opinion! Anyway, just a little rant.

I blame all this on Richard Dawkins and the so-called “new atheists”, they have a lot to answer for. Anyway, I’ll stop rambling on about Torchwood and science and stuff ;)