Stuff which I would class more as an attempt at the art of ‘writing’, as opposed to the general junk I come out with most of the time. Not that this isn’t junk, but… well, yeah.
I know I haven’t spoken much about it recently, but my book was published back in March and it’s still available. I just realised that I hadn’t made available the introduction and first chapter (as tends to be customary these days). I know that these things are available via Amazon, but not everyone wants to read a book like that.
So, I’ve uploaded them to the Understand the Bible website. That link will get you the introduction, and click through for the first chapter as a PDF.
By way of encouragement, I checked the Amazon page and realised someone had kindly left a review of the book (if that was you – thank you!):
Highly readable, practical and engaging exposition on the concept of grace within the Christian worldview.
Highly readable, practical and engaging. What more could you want? Check it out!
Laura Dodsworth’s new book “A State of Fear” is an absolute must-read. Everyone in the country needs to know how the government have intentionally created fear during the pandemic. It needs a response. Here I share a few thoughts and quotes from the book.
A few weeks ago I wrote about how truth has become political. On certain issues, truth is determined more by what is politically necessary rather than the actual evidence. You can see this across a whole range of issues. Earlier today I read a very good article by Frank Furedi, We need scepticism more than ever. There he explains how it is now routine for any kind of voice which dissents from the majority (climate change and lockdowns, for example) to be censored. This is happening more and more.
I have found personally that whenever I post up on social media something which is sceptical of lockdowns, it usually attracts some quite negative comments. It’s not simply that people disagree, it’s more like people think even questioning is dangerous. Many people seem to think it’s reckless and irresponsible to question whether masks are effective, or whether lockdowns are worthwhile, etc. I believe, by contrast, we need free speech more than ever at a time of crisis – I’ll come onto that.
Free Speech is a hugely important value which we must not allow to be lost. If we lose it, we will lose everything that we stand for. Let me briefly explain why I think it’s so important to hold on to.
Free speech treats us as human beings
I’ve just finished reading George Orwell’s novel 1984. Someone in school said that I should read it before I turned 18 – well it’s only taken me another 20 years, but there you go! Better late than never. It’s well worth reading. One of the things which the book majors on is the whole concept of truth.
Winston, the protagonist, works for the Ministry of Truth. His job is to ‘correct’ newspapers and other media so that the historic version of the truth aligns with what is politically convenient. History is always being rewritten – sometimes people are written out of history, sometimes people are created, simply for political purposes.
Towards the end of the book (spoiler alert!) Winston gets found out to be a thought criminal. He is arrested and taken to the Ministry of Love for punishment and correction. One of the most fascinating things is the battle between him and O’Brien. O’Brien asks Winston if he can believe anything the party wishes him to believe, such as 2+2 = 5. It really struck me how dehumanising this is: if Winston can be persuaded to set aside what he knows to be true in favour of what The Party say is true, then they have complete control over him. It’s totalitarian.
Actually it reminded me of the scene from the Next Generation episode Chain of Command, where Picard is interrogated and asked: “How many lights are there?”
Human beings, made in the image of God, should have the dignity of freedom. This means not coercing them into believing things, but persuading. This is exactly what God does through the Bible: he sends prophets to warn the people of what would happen if they disobeyed. He does not force them to obey. Free speech and free thought are essential to treat human beings as God’s image bearers.
A lack of free speech causes social problems
One of the biggest and most divisive social issues in the UK has been that of immigration. This is not surprising: a lot of people are not happy with the ‘open borders’ approach which New Labour started back in the late 90s. Different people have different views about immigration – that’s about as surprising as the Pope being a Catholic. However, no public debate is really had about immigration. Most politicians tend to avoid it, because it’s politically “difficult”. Who, after all, would want to be seen as a racist? It’s just better not to raise the issue.
Now, does ignoring an issue make it go away? No! It just goes underground, and then finds outlets in unhealthy ways. Perhaps this explains why the vote for Brexit back in 2016 came as such as surprise to the political class: they simply didn’t realise how strongly people felt, because opinions on important issues had been suppressed.
I was watching a PragerU video earlier, where Dennis Prager said that free speech was an “outlet”. If people feel like they can express themselves, it lets out a lot of tension. If, on the other hand, speech and thought is controlled, if the goverment don’t even acknowledge the existence of different views, it stores up problems which will explode.;
The best way of dealing with divisive issues like immigration is not to sweep it under the carpet but hold an open and honest debate. Let the open borders advocates make the case. Talk about problems like integration or Islam. It would let out a huge amount of tension if people felt that politicians were engaging with different views, rather than only allowing one mainstream political view within goverment.
Free speech is necessary for knowledge
Every scientific advance has come about because someone, somewhere, decided to question the status quo. Think about Galileo, for example. Until then, it had been established orthodoxy that the sun revolved around the earth. Galileo thought that didn’t fit with the evidence – unfortunately, he wasn’t treated very well.
Sadly, that still happens today. The physicist Max Planck observed, “science advances one funeral at a time”: people are emotionally attached to their ideas and theories. When things change – perhaps when new evidence is discovered – they don’t just change their mind. A big change needs a new generation to grow up who are not so emotionally attached to the previous orthodoxies.
I heard of a doctor at the start of the 20th century who started treating victims of heart attack differently. The wisdom of the day was to have them lying down on their backs for about 6 weeks – the idea being, it was better to try to rest the heart to recover. He started sitting them up for an hour a day, just to be able to look out of windows. He encountered a fair bit of resistance – including, apparently, a group of interns in the hospital who would come and give him Nazi salutes! But his thinking differently paved the way for an improvement in treatment.
This is why free speech is so important: existing orthodoxies must be challenged in order for progress to happen. And even if it’s not progress, it’s important for knowledge to develop. For example, the Christian faith literally invented orthodoxy and heresy. Did you know that we only have the creeds because of heresy? The creeds developed because people asked questions. Asking questions was actually helpful in coming to a right understanding.
I can’t stress enough how important it is. When questions are suppressed, so is knowledge. When questions and free thought are encouraged, knowledge can flourish.
Why free speech is necessary for covid
I said at the start that free speech was a vitally important thing, even during a crisis. In fact, it’s doubly important during a crisis. Why? Because every decision you make will have a big impact. Think about the impact lockdowns are having – in all sorts of ways. We’re currently in the worst recession for 300 years. In a crisis, we desperately need people to ask important questions – that’s what the opposition and the media are for.
It would be so easy in a crisis, if you’re not looking at all the information coolly and rationally, to panic and go down a rabbit hole. Free speech helps to mitigate against that.
Think about it. What if:
lockdowns are not actually effective in controlling a virus (there is scientific evidence which suggests that it is not)?
keeping people away from their family, friends, and support networks, and keeping them stressed out with constant messages of fear is making things worse?
asymptomatic transmission (the idea that you can have the virus with no symptoms and pass it on to others) is actually much less common than commonly thought?
What if EVERY government intervention on Covid is actually making things worse rather than better?
This is why free speech matters so much. If we are not free to question, if all we can do is nod along to whatever the authorities decide because it’s “dangerous” to question, then we are in danger ourselves of running off a cliff. You could say the same about other issues like climate change, or just about anything contentious.
If questioning becomes dangerous, then – ironically – we put ourselves in far greater danger. I’d rather live in a society where people were free to question and occasionally get things wrong than a society where we had to toe the line on everything. I hope you would too.
This is why I believe we must stand up now for free speech.
It’s been a while since I last posted in my occasional ‘hymnology’ series, where I look at the meaning of Christian hymns. You can see the previous ones under the hymnology tag. Seeing as it’s Advent Sunday, I thought it might be worth looking at the popular Advent hymn O Come, O Come Emmanuel.
It’s a beautiful, haunting hymn – but what does it really mean?
If you want to understand O Come, O Come Emmanuel – you need to understand the Old Testament. The hymn draws heavily on the Old Testament, and you can’t talk about the meaning without it.
Biblical Background: Israel and exile
The first verse of the hymn begins:
O come, O come, Emmanuel, And ransom captive Israel, That mourns in lonely exile here
The fundamental thing to understand here is exile.
Let’s take a very brief history of the people of Israel through the Bible:
God promised Abraham that he would eventually have his own land. You can read about that in Genesis 12:1-3.
The people of Israel ended up as slaves in Egypt, so God rescued them and promised to bring them into “a land flowing with milk and honey” (Exodus 3:8).
Before they entered the Promised Land, Moses warned them that if they disobeyed: “The Lord will drive you and the king you set over you to a nation unknown to you or your ancestors” (Deuteronomy 28:36).
They did take possession of the Promised Land – the land of Israel – and you can read about that in the book of Joshua.
However, because of their disobedience, eventually they were conquered by Assyria and Babylon and taken into captivity.This is what is meant by exile.
The people did eventually return from exile – you can read about that in Ezra and Nehemiah.
In a nutshell, when God’s people were in exile, they were away from the Promised Land. They were awaiting the day when they would be able to return.
Christians and Exile
All that happened to the Israelites. But what relevance does that have for modern day Christians? And why does O Come, O Come Emmanuel talk about things which happened long ago?
Interestingly, the New Testament book of 1 Peter picks up the theme of exile and applies it to Christians. The book begins: “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To God’s elect, exiles, scattered throughout the provinces…”. So Peter addresses Christians as exiles. Why?
It’s all because of a concept called ‘typology’. This basically means that things which happened in the Old Testament prefigure or foreshadow things in the New Testament. Peter is saying that there is something about the Old Testament exile which applies to Christians.
What this means is that the situation of the Old Testament nation of Israel is analogous to Christians today: we, too, are not living in the Promised Land. We’re here because we as the human race disobeyed God – because of the Fall (which happened in Genesis 3).
Of course, for Christians, the details are different: the Promised Land is the New Creation. The one holding us captive is not the Babylonians or Assyria, but Satan (2 Corinthians 4:4). There are differences! But Peter says that, nonetheless, in a sense we are in exile.
The key thing is, does that help us to make sense of the hymn?
O Come, O Come Emmanuel and Exile
Let’s return to the hymn and see if the theme of exile helps us to make sense of it.
Verse 1 and chorus
The first verse of the hymn finishes off:
Until the Son of God appear.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel.
We are in exile until the Son of God appears. This is what the Bible says: we will not reach our Promised Land – the new creation – until Jesus returns to judge the living and the dead. But the good news is, we can rejoice – our comfort in this dark world is that Jesus will return and come to us.
Verse 2 and onwards
O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free Thine own from Satan’s tyranny; From depths of hell Thy people save, And give them victory o’er the grave.
As we’ve already seen, Satan is the one holding this world in slavery to sin. The ‘rod of Jesse’ is a reference to Isaiah 11:1 (‘rod’ is the way it was translated in the King James version; these days modern translations go for a ‘shoot’). It’s basically saying that Jesus, as the descendant of King David, would come and free us from Satan.
Jesus, Son of God, would save us from the claims of hell and death (Hebrews 2:15). Although we are living in exile, we need have no fear of the future because we know that all those in Christ are secure.
The rest of the hymn is basically a variation on the same theme. Jesus is the one who saves us from our sins (Matthew 1:21). He has defeated Satan and death. He rescues us from exile and leads us into the promised land.
Interesting fact: Joshua led the people into the Promised Land in the Old Testament. Joshua and Jesus are basically the same name – Joshua is the Hebrew version, and Jesus is the Greek version. That’s interesting, isn’t it? Like I said – typology!
In a nutshell
In a nutshell, then, O Come O Come Emmanuel is saying that Christians today are living in exile. We’re not in the Promised Land. Although Jesus has and defeated sin at the cross, we still await the final judgement, where all evil will be destroyed. Until then, we have to deal with a dark world, where sin and death still exist. And yet, we have hope that one day Christ will return, lead us into the Promised Land of the new creation, and destroy death, sin, and Satan forever.
Bonus…
Here’s a version of the song recorded by Belle & Sebastian:
What I want to look at in this piece is the way politicians and the media are talking about risk in relation to the lockdown. We are constantly being told of the risk that covid poses and the need for more lockdown. What is often sidelined or ignored completely is the risk that a lockdown poses in itself.
The number of Covid cases has quadrupled in the last three weeks. Cases may be doubling as quickly as every seven to eight days. There are now more people in hospital with Covid than on 23 March when we went into national lockdown. And while the number of cases is rising more sharply in some areas it is increasing across all regions of the UK and in all age groups.
We know from bitter experience and great personal loss where all this leads. Three things are now clear: the Government has not got a credible plan to slow infections. It has lost control of the virus. And it’s no longer following the scientific advice.
The SAGE minutes from 21 September – published yesterday – underline this. They warn that: ‘A package’ of ‘stringent interventions’ is now urgently needed. SAGE also says that: ‘not acting now… will result in a very large epidemic with catastrophic consequences.’
Focussing on what might happen
The first thing I notice is that the focus is based on predictions of what is going to happen in the future. He says “we know … where all this leads”. If we don’t act now, according to SAGE, it will result in a “very large epidemic with catastrophic consequences”. It’s as if his prediction of the future is a foregone conclusion.
This is the kind of language I see all the time. It’s the primary reason why many people are against a herd immunity strategy. For example, as this New Scientist blog published today says, “We don’t yet know whether natural immunity to SARS-CoV-2 (or the experimental vaccines) will halt transmission. Until we do, assuming that herd immunity will automatically appear is unscientific and, frankly, irresponsible.”
So a herd immunity strategy is “irresponsible”, because we don’t know if it will happen or not. We don’t know – so let’s play it on the safe side. Let’s be safe and not take the risk. This is the message which we are hearing all the time from the government, from scientists, from the media. “Better safe than sorry”.
The problem with ‘better safe than sorry’
I think “better safe than sorry” is generally good advice. But, like a lot of good advice, you can go too far with it. There’s a funny scene at the start of the film Ratatouille.
An old lady spots a rat, and so she decides to deal with it in a perfectly proportionate way… with a shotgun. She ends up basically destroying her house! The action she took ended up doing far more damage than the danger.
You could think of many other examples. If you take the principle to its logical conclusion, you’d never do anything risky. In fact, you’d probably never leave the house – but wait, staying in the house carries an element of risk! And that’s the point: being alive carries an element of risk with it. We can mitigate against some risks, but there has to come a point at which we say “well, that’s a risk we’re just going to have to take”.
I know that driving is risky, for example. But I weigh up the risks and, in general, decide that the risks are pretty low and that it’s of more value to me personally to get somewhere quickly. Everyone has to accept a measure of risk in everything, but in general most of us don’t think about the risks too much. And we survive!
There’s more than one kind of risk
Add to that the fact that risk applies in more than one way. Let’s go back to the example of driving. Driving a car carries a risk. But then, what if I decide to walk? Walking carries a risk too – in fact there might be a greater risk of being run over. If I decide to cycle, again – there are risks involved. But think about it more deeply: if I drive everywhere, maybe I’ll become obese. Maybe I’ll die early of heart disease. Cycling or walking may be a bit more risky, but I’ll get more healthy.
The point is that there are risks in every area of life – no matter which course of action we take. We have to balance those risks every day. Most of us are pretty good at it – we decide what level of risk is appropriate for us, and we act accordingly. But the point is that we all have to balance risk no matter what we do.
So this brings us onto the question of the lockdown. In the speech I quoted at the start, Keir Starmer said a ‘circuit breaker’ lockdown would avert one risk – of people dying from covid. However, what he didn’t say is that there will be risks of another lockdown. I think we should consider those risks.
Also – just to re-iterate: the risks of not locking down are a “maybe”. We’ll think a little about the actual chances of that happening below. But we can see the risks of lockdowns right now.
Risks of another lockdown
The Economy
The UK has plunged into the largest recession on record since the start of the lockdown. There could be over 700,000 redundancies in the autumn alone – bringing the total for 2020 to over one million. I don’t know anyone personally who has died of covid – I do know several people who have either lost jobs or face extreme uncertainty about whether they’ll be going back to jobs.
And we should say that a strong economy has health benefits: where does the money for the NHS come from? From the taxpayer. If the government are spending more money for people who are unemployed, and collecting less tax, the NHS is going to suffer. A recession is not going to help public health.
Health in other areas
The lockdown has meant that many people who would (and should) have been treated for other conditions have been staying away from hospital. For example, Prof Karol Sikora warned that cancer was the next big crisis facing the NHS, because of the number of people who had not received a diagnosis. The Sun reported that hundreds of stroke and heart attacks have gone untreated.
The hospital had speciality wards for medical emergencies such as strokes, which were always full (before Covid). An emergency episode like a stroke can be easily diagnosed and treated with thrombolytic therapy, a hugely vital service preventing death and worsening brain injuries. The stroke ward was virtually empty. … It makes me shudder to think that these people, mainly the elderly again, collapsed and likely died at home as coming into hospital for treatment no longer seemed an option for them.
I nursed a 50-year-old lady last week who was diagnosed in January with aggressive breast cancer. Her mastectomy was planned for early March but was then cancelled. She had no contact with the Oncology Team and only just had her mastectomy 3 weeks ago. When I met her, she was waiting on the results of her recent MRI to see if her cancer had spread anywhere else. She has really experienced a lot of fear this year.
I have heard anecdotally from people I’ve spoken to that these experiences are not uncommon. Someone I know from the school gate says a friend has been delayed treatment due to covid. People are being discouraged from visiting GPs. I’ve read reports of nearly-empty GP surgeries. Where are all the people who would normally be there? Surely illnesses are not simply going away?
Mental Health
I think mental health is quite possibly the biggest risk which is not being talked about. I think there is a massive issue bubbling away under the surface. The ONS, for example, reported on 9th October:
Average anxiety scores for adults have increased to their highest level since April at 4.3 this week, according to the latest Opinions and Lifestyle Survey (OPN).
Of those who reported that their wellbeing has been affected by the coronavirus pandemic, 63% said they felt stressed or anxious, while 64% said they felt worried about the future.
Over 60% of people are feeling stressed and anxious. Now that’s an epidemic – a mental health epidemic. Similarly, ONS data from June says:
Almost one in five adults (19.2%) were likely to be experiencing some form of depression during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in June 2020; this had almost doubled from around 1 in 10 (9.7%) before the pandemic (July 2019 to March 2020).
One in eight adults (12.9%) developed moderate to severe depressive symptoms during the pandemic, while a further 6.2% of the population continued to experience this level of depressive symptoms; around 1 in 25 adults (3.5%) saw an improvement over this period.
Many British people right now are feeling anxious and depressed. I can testify to this from my own experience! But I’m particularly worried about the effect this is having on a younger generation. For example, one of my wife’s co-workers said her daughter’s class (primary school age) are all really anxious at the moment. Someone at church said before the summer, her granddaughter refused to go back to school when she had the opportunity (she was in year six) because she was so terrified.
The lockdown directly impacts our mental health. I know of several people who are really struggling at the moment. Another lockdown would compound the mental health problem. We shouldn’t be surprised about this given that a lockdown essentially prevents us from doing what human beings are supposed to do.
Is the risk worth it?
This is the million dollar question, so to speak. I wouldn’t like to be a politician at the moment, to have to balance these kind of things. Personally, I don’t think the risk of another lockdown is worth the benefit of maybe saving lives. I say maybe because, as I said at the start, the ‘circuit breaker’ lockdown is based on a prediction of the future. This is a complicated subject, and it’s one I’m not a specialist in. But I think there are a few reasons to be optimistic.
The death rate is nothing like it was at the peak
This graph shows the number of weekly deaths which name covid on the death certificate. As you can see, it climbs very sharply at the beginning of April, and then in the middle of April things begin to fall off again. As you can see on the graph, deaths are beginning to climb a little but it’s nothing like what we saw in April. There’s a similar picture in other countries, too, such as France and Spain.
Graph to show number of weekly deaths from Covid
In fact, some people say that the peak actually happened before the full lockdown restrictions were introduced (if you take into account the typical time between infection and death).
Lockdowns don’t work
Recently the WHO Covid-19 envoy David Nabarro said they did not recommend lockdowns apart from a short measure to ease pressure on health services. Some scientists are now saying that there is little to no evidence that lockdowns actually work:
In a National Bureau of Economic Research paper published last month, UCLA economist Andrew Atkeson and two other researchers, after looking at COVID-19 trends in 23 countries and 25 U.S. states that had seen more than 1,000 deaths from the disease by late July, found little evidence that variations in policy explain the course of the epidemic in different places.
There are other voices saying the same thing. There’s very little correlation between the way a country has responded to the virus and the number of deaths.
Even in the UK, there is some doubt as to whether local lockdowns have done anything to actually slow the spread of the virus.
There are many other angles we could talk about here, such as the fact that the average age of death from covid is about 82 (average life expectancy in the UK is about 82). We could go on – but let’s leave it there.
Let’s wrap this up
One of the problems with a lockdown is that it’s a blunt instrument. It’s like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut: you might crack the nut, but you might break a few other things in the process. My feeling is that many of our politicians and the media are keen to use the sledgehammer of lockdown without considering the risks of that strategy. I think this is doubly the case given that it’s unclear how much benefit lockdowns actually bring. Is it actually possible to control the virus?
Would a better strategy be something such as what the Great Barrington Declaration says? I’ll leave you to make your own mind up.
In the last week, I’ve seen two friends announce they watched the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma and are deleting their social media accounts. I understand the sentiment. I’ve thought about deleting my social media accounts on several occasions! But I still haven’t quite been pushed over the edge just yet. The positives have always (just about) outweighed the negatives. So – was The Social Dilemma enough to convince me?
In a word, no. Let me give a few reasons why I’m not going to be deleting my social media accounts yet.
There was no new information
A year or two ago, I watched a documentary on the BBC about social media. Almost every point made by The Social Dilemma had already been made in that documentary. In fact, for that reason I felt The Social Dilemma felt a little outdated already. It felt 3-4 years old, which is probably not surprising given that most of the people who were interviewed for it left the big social media companies a few years ago.
This is not to say that their warnings do not apply today, but I do feel that social media companies have started to make changes. For example, I think Facebook has become aware of being a political echo chamber – lately I’ve seen more posts on my news feed which I disagree with. (Actually that’s why I blogged about hiding political memes).
You can mitigate against some of the problems
As I said, all of the issues raised by The Social Dilemma I was already aware of. In fact, it actually inspired me to created a couple of videos about smartphone addiction. This one below, and another one looking at a more Biblical angle.
That video was recorded a year ago, and I think even since then things have changed: Facebook and Twitter are becoming more and more annoying. The ads are getting in the way more and more. It’s becoming less easy to simply connect with other people, which is its main selling point. In other words, these days I find myself much less tempted to use it.
And for me personally, I found it really helpful to think about it from their perspective. When I knew that they were deliberately trying to get me to stay on their site for as long as possible, all the annoying things made sense. And I stopped giving into it so much… maybe it’s because I’m a contrarian, but that knowledge was very helpful.
The problems were all human problems
A long time ago, I was involved in an internet discussion forum for DJs. One day the owner of the forum basically packed up and decided to go on a year-long trip round the world. He didn’t let anyone know before he went, and the forum moderators didn’t have very much power to keep order. As you can imagine, things went a bit crazy – I remember people falling out, accusing each other of things, all that sort of thing. When he returned, after things settled down, the blame game started: was he to blame, for leaving the forum without giving appropriate power to the moderators? Or were the people to blame who’d actually done the things they shouldn’t have done?
I argued then, as I would now, that – at the end of the day – circumstances do not cause people to do wrong. They may be a contributory factor. But we all face the choice of doing right or wrong – human beings have dignity and responsibility (as I argued last time).
I think it’s exactly the same with social media. The fact that social media may be an echo chamber doesn’t mean that we have to hate people who have different views. That’s something which is not the fault of social media – even if social media exacerbates the problem, it doesn’t cause it. Social media has been designed to be addictive – but the weakness lies within human beings.
And this is the key point: social media only has as much power as we give it. It doesn’t have to become all-consuming or divisive. It only will if we let it.
There are still positives
There are still a few positives to social media. It’s nice to be able to see photos of what other people have been up to, especially if they’re friends or family who don’t live nearby. I also appreciate the Facebook groups – I’m in a couple of groups which are really useful. And the nice thing about groups is, it doesn’t suffer so much from the algorithm problem – Facebook doesn’t hide posts which it thinks I will disagree with.
I also find Twitter a helpful resource – if you use an app like Tweetdeck rather than the standard Twitter app, it won’t prioritise tweets it thinks you will like. You’ll just be able to see your “vanilla” feed, without promoted tweets etc. Twitter is still a really good resource to find articles and pieces which I wouldn’t see otherwise.
So I think social media still has its uses, even if there are real issues with it to contend with.
It’s important to be a witness
As a Christian, I think it’s important to be salt and light in the world. Basically what this means is, I think it’s important for Christians to try and show the world the right way of doing things – however imperfectly. We need to try to love each other, even our enemies. I don’t think social media is so irredeemably broken at the moment that it cannot be used in the right way. I think Christians should use it, but try to use it in a right and godly way.
For example: not calling someone names if they disagree with you or even are rude to you. Not getting into fights about trivial issues. Trying to seek the truth rather than post fake news.
At the moment, I think it’s possible to use social media in a good and godly way. If it becomes impossible, I think that would be the moment to leave.
It’s where people are
The final thing I wanted to say is, it’s just where people are at the moment. A lot of people do spend a lot of their time online.
As a Christian minister, I think it’s important to be with people where they are. That’s what Jesus did: he didn’t stay in the synagogues and preach there. He went into the towns and villages. His most famous sermon is the Sermon on the Mount – because it was preached outside! Where would the equivalent location be today? I don’t know, but I think social media would be part of it.
My other site Understand the Bible started life as a YouTube channel. I wanted to make videos that would reach people where they were. These days I also upload videos to Facebook. Social media is actually a good platform for sharing the gospel – it allows a lot more people to see and interact with Christian content.
A few weeks ago I read an article where someone was talking about the Reformation. They mentioned that the printing press was a key part of the Reformation. I think social media could be something foundational for a new, 21st-century reformation: Lord knows we need one! Social media means the gospel can get into people’s homes, onto every computer and smartphone. Who wouldn’t want that opportunity?
As Paul says in Ephesians 5:
Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.
Is the film ‘Cuties’ a wake up call for our society to recognise that we have a far deeper problem on our hands?
Netflix have been accused recently of encouraging paedophilia because of the film Cuties. Cuties features 11-year-old girls dancing / twerking in a sexualised way. (Some people have defended Netflix on the basis of it being a critical commentary – this article talks about it).
I haven’t seen the film, but I have seen a lot of people who are upset about it on social media. I don’t want to comment about the rights and wrongs of the film. But I do wonder if it actually has opened up a conversation which needs to be had. In particular, I think we need to say that this problem goes way bigger and way deeper than Netflix.
A problem bigger than Netflix
We live in a world which is sexualised almost beyond belief. This is especially true of the internet: just have a read of Pornhub’s 2019 statistics:
To start off, there were more than 42,000,000,000 site visits to Pornhub in 2019—nearly 6 visits to the site per person on Earth—which is 8.5 billion more visits total than last year. That’s over 23 million more visits per day in 2019 than in 2018, a considerable uptick that’s double from last year. Note that YouPorn–a sister site to Pornhub—received just a humble 5 billion site visits.
Those statistics are shocking in itself, but it gets worse. It’s no secret that internet pornography often involves underage girls. In fact, just a couple of months ago over a million people signed a petition to take action against Pornhub for trafficking. This included trafficking of children:
The Sunday Times investigation into Pornhub found DOZENS of illegal abuse & child rape videos on the site within MINUTES. The revelation that Pornhub was enabling & making big money off of sex trafficking led to PayPal pulling its services. Shut it down! https://t.co/OmmkCRLGiWpic.twitter.com/w8ULtB2pAA
Pornography is a phenomenon which we as a society largely ignore. I think part of the reason it’s ignored is because a lot of people in society use it themselves. I mean, the numbers are just too big to ignore. According to this website, 70% of men aged 18 to 24 visit a porn site at least once per month. Is that the reason people are hard on Cuties but turn a blind eye to the bigger problem of pornography?
A problem with the way we view sex
Part of the problem, as I have argued before, is the whole way that our society views sex. The sexual revolution caused us to see sexual freedom as an ultimate good. We wanted to be free to have sex with whoever we want, whenever we want, and damn the consequences. (This is the argument some abortion advocates make: they want women to have the same sexual freedom as men, without pregnancy getting in the way).
When we live in a society which is almost literally obsessed with sex – it’s on TV, advertising, films, everything – it becomes harder and harder to say that kind of sex is OK, but not that kind. You can’t pick and choose. If consent is our only value, then effectively there are no values.
What I’m hoping with Cuties is that people will come to see that there are limits. I hope the sexualisation of children will cause people to take a step back and think. Perhaps we too, in our society, are complicit in a culture which sexualises children. Perhaps we need to rethink our own values.
What can we do?
The main thing we can do is, avoid pornography. Porn on the internet is often supporting trafficking / child sexual abuse. Not to mention other kinds of abuse. And the effect trickles down: you might think that using porn is an entirely private affair, but it changes you – and with it, the world. You can see an overview of the effects porn has on the (excellent) Fight the New Drug website.
As they say: “What is it if it isn’t just you seeking ever more explicit pornographic material, but your next door neighbour, your teacher, your doctor? What happens when it’s half your country?”
Porn is an issue for society. And when it trickles down, it leads to things like Cuties. If you feel strongly about Cuties, then cut out porn, and encourage others to do the same. There are lots of resources, including the Fight the New Drug website I just mentioned.
Also, I have just recorded a video about breaking free from porn addiction for Understand the Bible, which I will release in the next couple of days. If you subscribe to the YouTube channel, you’ll see that when it goes live. Porn can be beaten.
Beauty is something you don’t often hear Christians talking about – at least, not the beauty of the human body. We often talk about the beauty of nature in creation, such as beautiful scenery or the beauty of the universe. But we rarely describe someone as beautiful. Why is that? And what does the Bible have to say about physical beauty?
I think we Christians have, without knowing it, become too influenced by the world around us: have you noticed that our culture rarely describes someone as beautiful these days? In our society – in 21st Century Britain at least – it’s more common to describe someone as ‘attractive’ or the like. Part of the reason for this is, I think, the association between attractiveness and sexuality: the media is saturated with sexualised images. ‘Sex sells’, as they say. (Netflix has just got into hot water for a film about young, pre-pubescent girls twerking!). Perhaps we’ve become suspicious of beauty as the body has become so sexualised – we just try to avoid that kind of talk.
I can’t speak for other men, but personally I would never call a woman apart from my wife ‘beautiful’! Saying someone is beautiful has become tied up with calling them sexually attractive.
At the same time, it seems like people have never been more keen to be beautiful (or attractive, at least). The cosmetics industry is huge. Gyms are popular at the moment. Hardly a week goes by without a new diet plan or book being released. People are looking for something physically.
So what does the Bible say about beauty and the body? Can the Bible shed any light for us?
Beauty in the Bible
Let’s go back to basics and look at beauty in the Bible. The Hebrew word for ‘beautiful’ occurs several times in the Old Testament. In fact, one of the most important women in the Old Testament, Esther (who has a whole book named after her!), is notable precisely because of her beauty. She basically won a nationwide beauty contest in order to become the new queen (now there’s a reality TV show idea…)
Many women are described as beautiful – Sarai (Gen 12:11, 14); Rachel (Gen 29:17), Abigail (1 Sam 25:3). Men, too, are described with the same Hebrew word (ya.pheh), often translated ‘handsome’ e.g. Joseph (Gen 39:6); David (1 Sam 16:12); and Absalom (2 Sam 14:25). The word is used most in Song of Songs (11 times), as the two lovers describe and delight in each other’s beauty.
The New Testament doesn’t say much about beauty, but it does contain one of the most well-known passages about beauty. Peter here addresses Christian wives:
Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewellery or fine clothes. Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight.
1 Peter 3:3-4
All this should be of no surprise to anyone who has read Genesis 1, where God creates mankind as the climax of creation and declares it: “very good” (Genesis 1:31 – the only time when “very good” is used instead of simply good). I talked about this in my post about sex. The physical world is good, the human body is good – godliness actually means being more physical (in the right ways).
So, physical beauty is a good thing. It’s often used within the context of marriage, as you’d expect, but it’s not just that – it is a good thing in its own right. However, in this lifetime it’s not perfect.
Tainted Love Beauty
Sin affects everything in creation (e.g. Rom 8:22). In fact, you can see this in the curses God pronounces in Genesis 3 – e.g. the natural world is cursed (3:17), and childbirth becomes painful (3:16). So sin isn’t simply a “spiritual” thing but it has real, physical effects. It affects our bodies as well as our minds.
Stop for a moment to think about the implications of that: we often think about sin as being on a purely spiritual plane, or at least, something which exists in our minds. Do we ever think about the effects of sin in a physical way? Think about all the negative things that can affect the body. Illnesses, scars, broken limbs, disfigurement – it’s a long list! All of those things, too, are a result of sin.
They won’t be there in the new creation, the perfect world which is coming. Philippians 3:21 says that God “will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his [Jesus’] glorious body.” One day our bodies will be redeemed. We will be given new bodies, immortal, perfect, free from the ravages of sin.
Sounds great, doesn’t it? But – here’s the thing. The new creation does, in some sense, start now.
Sanctifying the body
‘Sanctification’ is a long word which basically means, growing into the people God created us to be: loving God more, and loving others more. It’s what the Christian life is fundamentally all about.
It’s important for Christians to understand that sanctification isn’t something that we accomplish – it is something that the Holy Spirit accomplishes working within us. As we walk with God, as we read the Bible and pray, as we seek him day by day, the Spirit works in us to change us. In a lovely passage in Galatians 5, Paul talks about “the fruit of the Spirit” – the good qualities the Spirit works in us as we “walk in step with the Spirit”.
But there’s more to it than simply our inner life. One of the interesting things about the New Testament is that it talks about sanctifying us body and soul. Let’s take a couple of examples:
Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness.
Romans 6:12-13
Here, Paul talks about sin in explicitly bodily terms. It’s not just a mental “thought-life” kind of thing but it’s actually how we control ourselves. Our whole selves, our whole bodies, should be offered to God to be used for what is right.
May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
1 Thessalonians 5:23
The implication here is that it’s not just our spiritual or psychological side which needs to be sanctified, but our bodies too.
The point is that the Christian life is about offering everything to God – body and soul. I think we often focus on the ‘soul’ part, but I think we sometimes neglect the ‘body’ part.
Get to the point! – what practical difference does it make?
I think we often thing about our bodies in an entirely ‘earthly’ way – i.e. that there is no spiritual significance to them. We see our bodies as tools: something we need to be in good working order to accomplish more important things. What we don’t do is think about our bodies in a spiritual way. Not all the time, anyway.
We’re inconsistent: in health, for example, we appreciate that we don’t simply go to the doctor and expect to get better. We pray about it as well: health is not seen simply as a physical thing but a spiritual thing too. God gives good health to our bodies, and if we want good health we need to seek him and not just see a doctor. (I’m not advocating some kind of prayer-only strategy, by the way! – it’s both / and, not either / or).
But do we apply that logic in other ways?
Losing weight
There are literally thousands of books, courses, fitness instructors, and the like who all claim to help you lose weight. These things are incredibly popular at the moment. In fact, just recently the government unveiled a new strategy to help combat obesity to help with covid-19.
There haven’t been many Christian approaches to losing weight that I’ve seen, apart from the Daniel Fast. But, given what we’ve seen about the body, is obesity and losing weight something we should actually see as a spiritual issue as much as it is physical?
Should Christians see losing weight as a matter of sanctification, something which they should seek to walk in step with the Spirit about, rather than something on a purely earthly / physical level?
This might mean, for example, as well as diet and exercise, praying that God would give us a right appetite and desire for a healthy lifestyle. Asking God to transform us to be people who are healthy inside and out.
Dieting is a lot about our desires, our appetites – in fact I’m often struck by how like legalism it is. (Legalism = thinking we can please God through our obedience to rules). There are many parallels. I think Christians should be doing things differently.
The perfect body
“Are you beach body ready?” – a poster from 2015
A few years ago, there was a poster with the message “Are you beach body ready?” It came in for a lot of criticism at the time! But I think the reason it did was because it tapped into something: there is a huge pressure at the moment for people, especially younger women, to look a certain way.
There’s a gym almost next to one of our church buildings here in Clacton. When I park to go to our 9am service, it’s usually busy with people going to and from the gym. Many people put an unbelievable amount of effort into their bodies. They are desperate to look a certain way.
But, here’s the thing: those people are seeking something good. Being strong, fit and healthy is a good thing, right?
However – Christians have a different angle on it. We Christians should be aware it’s not simply about lifting weights or running on a machine, but rather it is God who gives us health. If being fit and healthy is a good thing, should we not also see that as a spiritual thing? As above with losing weight, should we not also seek the Lord in our efforts to grow in fitness and strength?
Beauty
I’ll finish up where we started. Beauty is something else which is pretty huge at the moment. I remember back to when I was a teenager – back then, before the internet became really popular, people were worried about teenage girls seeing airbrushed photos in magazines. Models looked unrealistically perfect. If that was the case then, thing what it’s like now – models have Instagram accounts, the internet is awash with people looking perfect! Beauty is a big industry now – apparently the cosmetics industry worth over $500 billion.
As we saw at the beginning, in the Bible beauty is a good thing! God made us, and he made us good. Beauty is a good thing to desire. However, we need to seek it in the right ways. If we go back to the quote I mentioned above from 1 Peter:
Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewellery or fine clothes. Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight.
1 Peter 3:3-4
I don’t think these verses should be read to say that outward beauty is wrong or undesirable to God! But rather, beauty comes not from lots of cosmetic products or expensive clothes and the like, but from God. Beauty is linked with godliness.
In other words, true beauty (or handsomeness) does not come from the amount of time we spend in the gym, or the amount of time we spend doing make-up. Those things may be of some value – but, ultimately, true beauty comes from God as a gift. He is the one who is the God not just of our souls but our bodies as well. He is the one who made us to be more than what we are right now. And he is the one who can accomplish in us what no gym or cosmetics ever could.
Conclusion
We live in a society which is obsessed with the body. People are desperately searching for fulfilment. Social media is full of people who look the way that we might want to look – so we dutifully go to the gym, or buy that new diet book or those new cosmetics, or whatever – to try and look that way.
I think Christians should have a different outlook: God is the God of our bodies. The Bible has a lot to say about beauty. Our bodies are part of the fallen world which are in need of redemption – and God has the power to redeem us. I think Christians need to show the world what God can accomplish when we seek him – to show that what the world is seeking can ultimately only be found in God.
Perhaps it’s time to rethink the way that we think about beauty and the body?
I had an interesting discussion the other day on Facebook about how social media has changed the world. It was sparked off by this article by the former Prime Minister of Iceland, where he says:
Leaving aside the reasons for the collapse of that particular government, it has become clear that things that previously might have been considered minor or defused in a matter of days in the media (or over several years in an enquiry) now have the potential to start a ‘nuclear chain reaction’. This is the new political reality. The speed and unpredictability of modern communications means that an infinite number of issues, big or small, have the capacity to take on a life of their own. They have the potential to start social trends, provoke riots, and bring down governments or even start wars.
Those are big words – can social media bring down governments or start wars? It’s certainly caused a lot of upset, e.g. people who’ve had to resign over “twitterstorms”. I’ve blogged before about the dark side of social media and whether Twitter makes us dumb and angry. It wasn’t always like this; it seems like things have changed a lot in the past ten years or so. When I first joined Twitter back in 2009 it had a much more positive vibe about it.
What’s happened?
Let’s explore some of the reasons why I think social media has become toxic of late. I don’t claim this is an exhaustive list, but I think these are all contributing factors. I’m sure there are more – let me know in the comments what you would add.
1. Big things going on politically
The first thing is, over the last ten years we’ve had a lot of polarising decisions as a country. It was kicked off by the financial crash of 2008, and then the austerity programme. A lot of people were very unhappy about austerity, and took to social media to express it.
Then we had Brexit, and now the coronavirus – all things which split opinion. Particularly Brexit – which is the nature of an in/out referendum.
I wanted to start with this because I do wonder whether things would have been half as bad if we hadn’t had so much to contend with as a country. It’s the same with anything – when everything’s fine, it’s easier to be generous with those you disagree with. When you’re under pressure, it’s much harder.
As a country we have been divided before – the civil war was pretty divisive! – so division is something which occurs with or without social media. As such I don’t think that social media causes division – but I do think it can exacerbate it. Let’s look at a few reasons why that is.
2. Social media merges the personal and political
Let me describe an experience I’ve had many times: You meet someone in real life and get on well. You’re quite happy to talk about all sorts of things – kids, partners, life, jobs, etc. Eventually you become friends on Facebook… and you find that their Facebook is full of political messages which you don’t agree with. Over time this colours your view of them as a person.
Does that experience ring any bells? I’d be willing to bet it’s something which has happened to a lot of people.
Before I was on social media, I hardly ever had a conversation about politics outside of my own group of friends. I’ve had far more conversations about politics (and various other contentious issues) with people I barely know on social media than I’ve had in real life.
This simply isn’t the way it’s meant to be: on the internet, it’s so easy to see a screen and reply without considering the person behind. You can say things online which you’d never be bold enough to say in person – and that’s not a good thing!
3. Social media amplifies the minority
One of the things which social media does is amplify the opinions of people who shout the loudest. If a handful of people are vocal about a particular opinion, then – even if that only represents (say) 1% of your friends list – it will feel like ‘everyone’ shares that opinion.
I think it can work like that with disagreements online as well. A week or two ago I had a discussion about face masks on Facebook. A few people joined in, probably not more than about ten people in total. A few of them were quite vocal about disagreeing with me. Now, there are over 200 people on my Facebook friends list – so the number of people who engaged with what I wrote was less than 5% of the number of contacts I have.
But it didn’t feel like that. It felt like more of a battle than it should have done. One or two more aggressive comments carry much more weight than they should. I’m sure there’s something psychological there!
I’ve heard it said of the current ‘culture wars’ – “both sides think they’re losing”. This is the problem with social media: it can amplify the voices which oppose you and, outside the context of a relationship, make it seem much worse than it is. It’s very difficult to be objective about it.
4. Social media makes it harder to stand out
We human beings are social animals. We find it hard to stand out from a crowd. There’s a famous psychology experiment called the Asch Conformity Experiment. In these experiments, subjects would conform their understanding to a group, even though they knew it was wrong.
Now, those trials were done back in the mid-20th century, before social media had even be conceived. Peer pressure is something that existed back then – but imagine how powerful it is now that we’re always connected to each other!
If it was hard to stand out back in the 1950s, think about what it’s like now. Think about what it’s like when, for example, you are scrolling through Facebook and see lots of your friends have changed their profile picture to support a particular cause. Do you want to be the one who stands out?
Coupled with the previous point, I think this makes social media very dangerous: it’s easy to think that ‘everybody’ thinks in the way that vocal activists think. But this is far from the truth. It’s just that the people who think differently are staying quiet…
5. Social media encourages superficial point-scoring
While I was writing this blog post, I opened up Facebook and saw this meme posted by a friend of mine.
This, to me, is typical of the political memes I see on Facebook. There’s no real political argument. There’s no looking into the nuances of an issues, the shades of grey… it’s just “blame whoever-you-don’t-like”.
“Our side” gets portrayed as the distillation of everything pure and good, while “their side” gets portrayed as the distillation of everything evil.
I am very aware in writing this post that only a handful of people will read it. But a meme like that could be seen by hundreds or thousands of people. It’s pithy, it makes a point, people will click the “retweet” or “share” button – even though it doesn’t actually further the discussion in any meaningful way. All it says is “my group good; that group bad”.
And that leads into the final point.
6. Social media encourages tribalism
One of the things which emerged a few years ago is that social media companies were intentionally feeding people news and links which they thought that person would like. Facebook admitted, for example, trying to determine someone’s political preferences and then trying to show them things which matched their preferences.
This lead to what became known as an ‘echo chamber’ – where you only ever really saw and engaged with views you already agreed with.
Now I think this is complicated: I see plenty of views which are different to my own political preferences. But, as we saw in the previous point, a lot of political memes aren’t about trying to actually persuade with logic and reason – they’re about trying to shame or bully the ‘other side’ into agreeing.
New Labour, New Danger poster from 1997
This kind of thing has been happening for a long time (e.g. I remember the Tories election poster back in 1997 “New Labour New Danger”). I can well imagine if social media had been around then, that would have been shared all over!
But, back then, that kind of thing was restricted to billboards and bus shelters and the like. You could leave it behind when you got home. These days, you can’t escape from it.
Summing up
The problems that I have highlighted here all existed prior to the advent of social media. All that social media does is take an existing problem and amplify it. This is what’s happened with technological innovation all through history: there are good sides and there are bad sides. The steam engine and the industrial revolution had many positive effects, but there were negative ones too. It’s the same with everything: there’s good and bad.
We human beings are tribal by nature, we like to have an “us” and “them”. Social media simply takes that instinct and puts it on steroids. We human beings find it easier to point the finger at “them” rather than listen to their arguments. And on it goes. Social media simply takes the human problem and puts it on a larger scale.
What can we do about it?
There’s a quote which I often go back to: “the heart of the human problem is the problem of the human heart.” Social media, or any technological innovation, isn’t good or bad in and of itself – the problem lies in the hearts of those who use it.
G. K. Chesterton was once asked to contribute to a newspaper piece “what is wrong with the world today”. He simply wrote, “Dear Sir, I am.”
The problem isn’t with social media – it’s with you and me. The Bible diagnoses this problem as sin – a failure to love God and our neighbour. We don’t treat people with kindness, we don’t listen to them, we want to put ourselves and our own interests first.
No technology can solve that problem. But – mercifully – there is a solution. This is what God says in the Bible:
I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
Ezekiel 36:26
Although our hearts may be ‘stony’ – although we don’t love as we should – God, the expert at hearts, can give us new hearts, hearts which love as we should and treat God and others as we should.
The problem with social media isn’t one which can be defeated by better technology or algorithms: the only way it can be overcome is through the new hearts that only God can offer us.
The Church: What it should be like…
I am very struck by how the church is called to be very different to the way social media often is:
There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
Galatians 3:28
The church is called not to be petty, not to be tribal, to value everyone as those made in the image of God. Of course, no church is ever perfect. But I think in the church I belong to, however much we get it wrong, God is still at work in helping us to love each other.
So – my final thought: if you want to be part of a community to join which isn’t tribal, petty, divisive, and so on – find a good local church to join.
Earlier today I watched a fascinating interview with Laurence Fox on Triggernometry. It was an interesting interview, talking about many of the problems going on at the moment in society. I don’t want to get into all the politics and rights and wrongs of what’s happening in society at the moment, but I think many people feel that there is a real sickness and it’s getting worse.
Konstantin Kisin, one of the interviewers in Triggernometry, said the other day:
There are two types of people in the world right now:
1) People who are worried about what is happening 2) People who don't understand history
A couple of years ago, I recorded a Christmas message called “Do you fell the shadows deepen?” If that was the case back at the end of 2018, it’s even more the case in mid-2020!
The most fascinating part of the interview I watched was the part starting at 38 minutes in.
If you don’t want to watch, here’s a transcript (typed quickly by myself – so might have a few mistakes..)
Konstantin: I don’t know, man, I want to have an answer. I want to go this is what we do, then this is what we do, then this is what we do. But all I can see now as we look into the future is, how do you stop the violence in the short term? OK, you prevent the protesters from both sides getting together, that’s what you do, right? What do you do after that? What’s the next step?
Laurence: (Pointing upwards) It’s that one up there I’m afraid, it’s the only answer, whether you believe in it or not, it’s the only answer. Because, what are we gonna come out of this with? We’re certainly not going to come out of the situation we’ve just been through with a great faith in scientists (laughter) … scientists are the new estate agents. People need meaning, right?
We’ve spent a long time looking to science, we have to turn around and look to the values, the real values society was built on, and those are Judeo-Christian values, and that’s – you’ve gotta look up there, and look at what was said by him and by the people that followed him. That’s what I reckon.
And that’s not coming from a person who’s profoundly religious. I’m just going, there is a manual, they wrote a book about this before, you know, and try and bring some of those values back. There are very complex things in the Bible which are really tricky to get your head around, and they can educate.
After that the conversation moved onto other things (although Laurence did briefly return to it later on by talking about Jesus’ words “love your enemies”.
I find it intriguing that Laurence recognises that what we need is a return to Judeo-Christian values. This is what I think a number of people have begun to realise, including people like Douglas Murray and John Anderson (former Deputy Prime Minister of Australia) – to name but two examples.
What I want to say is: can you have the fruit of Judeo-Christian values, without the roots of Christianity? Can you have all the good stuff – loving your enemies, for example – without the roots of actually believing in Jesus?
One of Jesus’ most famous teachings is “love your neighbour as yourself”. A lot of people have heard of that one. What most people don’t know is that this is only the second most important commandment. Let me quote the whole section of the Bible:
Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: ‘Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?’
Jesus replied: ‘“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: “Love your neighbour as yourself.” All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.’
Matthew 22:34-40
So the first greatest commandment is to love God with everything we have. Now, the question is: can you have the second commandment without the first? Can we really love our neighbour without loving God?
I think Jesus would say, no, you can’t. That’s because we need his help, we need the kind of love that only he can give. In John 15:5, Jesus says: “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” I’ve been reflecting on those words a lot lately: “apart from me you can do nothing”. Jesus says that we cannot do anything apart from him. The ‘fruit’ that he talks about is the fruit of obedience to God – love.
Love is not something which we can simply work up in ourselves; it’s something which is given to us by God. If we seek him, he will give it to us.
Is it really surprising that in a society which ignores and rejects God (like ours), that it doesn’t really love? Is it really surprising that there is so little forgiveness? Is it really surprising that woke heresy hunters are cancelling anyone who doesn’t agree with them? These are the fruits of a society which has turned its back on God.
So the choice that we face as a society for the road ahead is not between Judeo-Christian values and other values. It’s deeper than that: it’s between seeking God or not seeking him. It’s not what we will choose, but who. Will we choose the Lord who made us?
if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
2 Chronicles 7:14
Postscript
As Laurence said: “There are very complex things in the Bible which are really tricky to get your head around”. If you’re struggling to make sense of the Bible, do have a look at my website Understand the Bible. It’s dedicated to helping people understand the Bible and the Christian faith from scratch (no prior experience or knowledge required). The course content is all free, there’s even a mobile app you can download to make it easier.
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