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UCCF have not exactly been in my good books recently. It all started out with the whole shenanigans about Word Alive splitting from Spring Harvest (Dave Walker of the Cartoon Church blogged about it at the time. If you look at the relevant posts that should give you an idea of what went on. Start with the blog post “Word Alive is no more”). Anyway, it seemed that the split was seen rather differently by UCCF and Spring Harvest: UCCF claimed that the whole issue was about Steve Chalke / penal substitutionary atonement, whereas Spring Harvest claimed that it was about a whole lot more than that. I’m over-simplifying it a bit, but that’s the gist. Read the linked blog posts for some relevant quotes and what have you.

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

My latest article on Crossring is up. It’s based on Mark 6:14-29 (the death of John the Baptist).

You can read it here :)

I’ve been having a discussion in the comments thread of Caity’s blog post on Kindness. The discussion revolves around the concept of morality: can we be ‘moral’ if there is no God?

My contention is that without the concept of God, there can be no absolute morals. By that I mean, no morals which would apply the world over. So, to take a topical example, suicide bombers could not be said to be acting immorally because they believe that it is right and moral for them to do so. There is no ultimate standard by which we can make value judgements on morality, therefore claiming that someone else’s action is immoral is actually illogical because you are only making judgements based on your own standard.

All of this hasn’t yet reached the point of Christian morality: all I’m doing is pointing out what I perceive to be inconsistencies in atheistic morals, and not defending Christianity as such.

However, Caity pointed out this quiz on Biblical morals, and I suggested that the writers of the quiz have got their theology wrong. She invited me to follow up this comment with something more detailed, so as a result that’s what I’m going to try and do.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ok, this is probably one of the most random articles I’ve read in a long time. So strange, in fact, that it’s virtually like something out of “The Beast with a Billion Backs” (the latest Futurama offering, in case you didn’t know).

I should say, before I start, that I do realise this is an article from the Daily Mail and probably isn’t a shining example of investigative journalism. Nonetheless, I want to make a wider point which I will come onto shortly.

I won’t go into the details of the article (it’s worth a read, even if just to make you slap your forehead and go “WTF?”). I just can’t quite believe those women are comfortable with the arrangement – do they have so little self-respect?!

The strangest thing about the story, though, is that he is apparently a ‘Messianic Jew’ (i.e., a Jew who believes Jesus Christ was the Son of God). But then he goes and says things like this:

‘God was telling me I was a king. Not the Messiah, as has been suggested, but a Messiah. What God was showing me was that I would have a significant role in a Jewish revival, that a true nation of Israel would rise up and the world as we know it today was going to be severely judged.

“A” Messiah? Hmmmmmmm… not quite sure that one works! But it gets worse.

And so from this Philip came up with the idea of making these women without heads his wives. He would be their head, their protector – their ‘husband’.

He found passages in the Bible which seemed to give the all-clear. So was this the guiding hand of God, or a terrific scam by someone who wanted to have sex with lots of women?

And then goes on to deny that it’s a scam, saying “I’m not that clever!”. Hmmmm once again (about the scriptural support for polygamy, that is).

The problem with the Bible is that it actually doesn’t explicitly condemn polygamy. For example, it seems to be allowed in Exodus 21:10. But, Genesis 2 seems to be pretty clear: “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.” Not his “wives” – but “wife”. Jesus affirmed this in Matthew 19.

The hard part for me is, why were David and Solomon not condemned for the wives and concubines? Solomon had about 700 wives and 300 concubines! That’s a ridiculous number, to be honest. But it’s not condemned… as such: “He had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray. As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the LORD his God, as the heart of David his father had been” (1 Kings 11:3-4). [Interesting side note: look at Deuteronomy 17:17]

So, Solomon’s heart was turned to other gods by his wives – but having that many wives doesn’t seem to be frowned upon.

The best answer I can come up with at the moment is that those times were different – they lived by slightly different rules. Poloygamy itself wasn’t a big issue at the time – although the original plan for marriage was always for a man to have one wife (and a woman one husband), at that time – because of the people’s hardness of heart – God had bigger fish to fry.

I don’t really know, to be honest, that’s my best guess at the moment. But any comments are welcome!

I’ve written a new article on FocusOnFaith entitled “The Ten Commandments, Part II: Idolatry“.

If you enjoyed the previous article in the series, why not pop over and have a read? Let me know what you think by leaving a comment or starting a new thread in the forum (hint hint).