Phill Sacre

Category: Writings

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.

  • Why we shouldn’t tear down statues

    Why we shouldn’t tear down statues

    The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous,
    and his ears are attentive to their cry;
    but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil,
    to blot out their name from the earth.

    Psalm 34:15-16

    Something else that’s been in the news this week: the protesters for Black Lives Matter (which I wrote about a couple of days ago) have now torn down a statue in Bristol. The statue was of a man called Edward Colston, who was a 17th Century slave trader. On his death he gave his wealth to charitable causes, and lots of things in Bristol still bear his name.

    What has surprised me about all this is that this action seems to have received a generally positive response from people I’d normally say were quite reasonable and sensible. The fact that he was a slave trader is enough, it seems, to justify the actions of the crowd.

    In my opinion, I don’t think we should be so quick to start toppling statues, and here’s why.

    #1: Mob rule is not justice

    I think it’s probably fair to say that no mob in history has ever actually resulted in justice. It might make people feel better for a while in making sure that “the bad guy gets it”, but that’s about it. This is why in this country we have as one of our British Values “the rule of law”: there is such a thing as due process, and due process should be followed. Yes, it doesn’t always come out with the outcome that we want, and there are some occasions where we should rise up. But unleashing anger in this way is destructive and will never actually result in anything good.

    Think of all the social changes for good we saw in the 20th century. Think of the American civil rights movement, led by Martin Luther King – peaceful protests. Think of the fall of the Berlin wall – peaceful protests. Every time I can think of something good like that happening, it’s been as a result of peaceful protest rather than angry protesters. The abolition of slavery itself did not happen with angry mobs but with democracy and the rule of law (and, I should point out, Christians such as William Wilberforce were at the forefront of the abolition movement).

    Maybe this is because protesters, when they are confident that they are on the side of justice, do not feel the need to use violence. If you use violence and mob tactics like this, you lose the moral high ground and undermine your cause.

    #2: You can’t erase history

    There’s a wise saying by George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

    We can’t change the past – but we can learn from it. If I lived in Bristol, and had to walk past the statue of Edward Colston every day, I think it would have given me a lot to think about:

    1. How it’s possible for such a great philanthropist to be such a flawed man;
    2. How a society can be so blind that most people can believe something wrong is actually right (let’s not forget that Edward Colston’s views were pretty mainstream back then);
    3. How I’m thankful for the way in which society has changed.

    In other words, a statue like that can actually help us to remember where we’ve come from and be thankful for where we are as a society. They should teach us something about where we were and where we’re going.

    #3: Where does it end?

    Who decides what statues are allowed? Plato and Aristotle, for example – they had some pretty abhorrent views about slavery. Are protesters going to start smashing statues of them? There’s a whole website set up called Topple the Racists – indicating which statues we should tear down. They say they have only included cases where there is “colonial violence” – so I guess that doesn’t include Plato and Aristotle, then.

    But the point is, if you look hard enough at anyone throughout history, you’re going to find they had some pretty abhorrent views. That’s because societies change. We can’t simply erase everything that happened in the past.

    This is exactly the message of the Bible – all the people who God used throughout history were deeply flawed. Abraham was a liar; Moses was a murderer; David was an adulterer – and the list goes on. No-one in the Bible is perfect – no-one, that is, except for one: Jesus.

    And Jesus was the man who said: “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”

    I think this would be a good saying to remember in these days: when we cast stones at others for their sins, we need to remember there are things in our own lives and in our own society which future generations will consider abhorrent. One thing I believe we will look back on with horror is abortion – the killing of 200,000 unborn babies every year. We’re about as barbaric as the ancient Romans in that respect!

    When we point the finger at figures in the past and demand they be toppled from their places, we are casting ourselves in the place of judge. But there is a judge, who will judge us all. He is the one who will blot out the name of the wicked from the earth. On that day, believe me, toppling statues will be the least of our worries.

    The book of Revelation in the Bible pictures that day:

    Then the kings of the earth, the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty, and everyone else, both slave and free, hid in caves and among the rocks of the mountains. They called to the mountains and the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can withstand it?”

    Revelation 6:15-17

    There is a God who judges rightly and justly. And the key question for us is, not which bad guys can we stand in judgement over – but whether we are right with the God who judges justly, who one day will judge us. And on the day he comes as our judge, it won’t make one bit of difference how many statues we’ve toppled.

    There is only one way to stand in that judgement, and that is through repenting of our sin and trusting in Christ alone for salvation.

  • Social Media, #BlackLivesMatter and being consistent

    Social Media, #BlackLivesMatter and being consistent

    Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves,
    for the rights of all who are destitute.
    Speak up and judge fairly;
    defend the rights of the poor and needy.

    Proverbs 31:8-9

    One of the things I am fascinated by – as I mentioned again recently – is social media and the way it has changed the world in ways we have only just begun to understand. I think the recent killing of George Floyd and the subsequent #BlackLivesMatter response is a good case in point.

    The facts are fairly well known: George Floyd, a black man, was held by a police officer until he was asphyxiated. This has provoked a backlash of responses against police brutality and racism – even in the UK (e.g. the BBC reported that thousands turned out for anti-racist protests in the UK).

    There has been a Christian response too, and I’ve seen a range of videos and blogs about it from a Christian perspective – e.g. this video from Speak Life, which I thought was very helpful. Many of my friends on social media a couple of days ago posted up black images with the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag. I’ve even seen today (Sunday) that a number of clergy in groups I belong to have been preaching about racism.

    I’m not going to talk here about Black Lives Matter, or about the responses to it – I think racism is wrong and it’s right to speak up against it publicly. But I really want to focus on one thing which has intrigued me, and that is consistency.

    To my mind, this issue has brought out issues of consistency like no other in recent times. What I mean by that is, speaking up on this particular issue and not speaking up on other issues. You see, the Christians who have been joining in with #BlackLivesMatter have been communicating a message – that racism is wrong. I get that. And, although I disagree with aspects of the protests (rioting, of course, as well as breaking of social distancing rules during a pandemic) – I think it is right to communicate the message that racism is wrong.

    I just want to flag up at the outside, lest anyone should be mistaken, that I am in now way agreeing with racism or trying to silence the protests!

    However. What intrigues me is why people – and especially Christians – are joining in loudly with the protests now, and preaching against racism etc – when other things seem to pass without comment. Let me give a few examples.

    #1: Grooming Gangs

    At the end of last year the Independent published an article which said: “More than 18,700 suspected victims of child sexual exploitation were identified by local authorities in 2018-19, up from 3,300 five years before.” And it’s the same old, same old – apparently “lessons have been learned” but nothing seems to change.

    Where are the hashtags #WhiteWorkingClassGirlsMatter? Where are the protests against the police and the government, who have largely brushed the issue under the carpet? Where is the Archbishop of Canterbury to stand in support of those who have been abused?

    I can’t think of a church leader who made a public statement about this – possibly because there wasn’t a big outcry at the time. It all seemed to fly below the radar. How something like this can happen without being a national scandal, I don’t know – especially when the media can spend a full week venting fury at Dominic Cummings for possibly breaking lockdown rules.

    #2: French police and Gilets Jaunes

    Have you heard anything about the police brutality that’s been happening in France? Here’s an excerpt from an article on Spiked:

    The scale of police violence was astonishing and stomach-churning. Between November 2018 and June 2019, according to figures compiled by Médiapart, 860 protesters were injured by the police – 315 suffered head injuries; 24 lost the use of an eye; and five had hands torn off. In December 2018, an elderly woman who had no involvement in the protests was killed when police threw a grenade into her flat.

    Among these victims are not only protesters but also journalists and medics. Police have been filmed beating elderly and disabled people, as well as using tear gas, water cannons and rubber bullets against peaceful protesters. The main source of injuries was ‘Flashball’ rubber bullets – a non-lethal weapon that has been banned in every EU country except France. More than 13,000 of these bullets were fired in the first three months of the protests. Another extreme weapon used by police was the GLI-F4 – a teargas grenade which contains explosives that maimed numerous protesters. The grenade was eventually banned by the French government in early 2020.

    Things got so bad that the UN called for a ‘full investigation’ into the police’s ‘excessive use of force’. Similarly, the Council of Europe’s human-rights commissioner called for an end to the use of Flashballs against protesters. Amnesty International denounced the ‘extremely heavy-handed’ policing deployed against peaceful protesters. Eventually, even the French government acknowledged it had a problem with police violence.

    Where are the #FrenchLivesMatter hashtags? Where are the instagram pictures in solidarity? Where are the church leaders standing up for those oppressed by the police in France?

    #3: Working Class Discrimination

    The church in the UK has a problem with class, as I talked about before. The other day I was watching a video by Duncan Forbes, “Are lower classes welcome at churches?” In that video he starts by telling a few stories about how he has been made to feel like an outsider and discriminated against because of being working class.

    Now I do feel like the church is slowly beginning to wake up to class problems in the church – but it’s something that not many Christian leaders have actually spoken up about.

    In fact, I think one of the most ironic things is that many of the people at the Black Lives Matter protests will are from the more affluent middle classes who have just spent the last four years telling Brexiteers how ignorant and racist they are. Black lives matter – the white working class can safely be sidelined and ignored.

    Being consistent

    All in all, what we choose not to stand up and protest about speaks as much as what we do protest. If we protest, loudly, one particular thing – and yet fail to speak out on another issue – what message are we sending about what, or who, we value?

    I started this post by quoting Proverbs 31, which I will quote again because I think it’s so helpful:

    Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves,
    for the rights of all who are destitute.
    Speak up and judge fairly;
    defend the rights of the poor and needy.

    Who, in our current culture, cannot speak for themselves, who are destitute? I’d suggest the working class, especially the white working class, have as good a case as any. The police have been hopeless when it comes to actually stopping some of these grooming gangs from abusing working class young women. Many have spoken about how the school system seems to be failing working class boys. The church is dominated by middle-class culture.

    If we speak when it’s easy to speak out – it’s not exactly controversial to join the Black Lives Matter protests at the moment – and yet fail to speak out on issues which society does not speak out on, aren’t we failing the Proverbs 31 test? If we only speak out on issues that are approved by the Guardian, or by social media, we’re going to say a lot about a small number of things but miss a lot of things which Christians really should speak up about.

    Let me finish by, again, clarifying what I am and am not saying – just because this is an issue which it’s so difficult to speak about.

    I am not saying it’s wrong to protest. However, I am saying we should be careful about what we protest and what we don’t protest. Especially in a world of social media where perspective can be be so distorted (what’s important on social media is not what’s important to the country, let alone to God!)

    I am not saying racism is unimportant. However, I am saying that society is saying a lot about racism at the moment but very little about the other issues I’ve mentioned. I think Christians have a duty to speak out on issues where society is not speaking (the issue of abortion comes to mind, but there are many other examples).

    I am not saying we have to stop talking about racism, or pretend the church has a flawless record in this area. We should be realistic about everything. But I do feel we could have a more level-headed approach which is less directed by the social media mob.

    I’m going to finish with some words from Psalm 12, which really jumped out at me recently as I read it:

    “Because the poor are plundered and the needy groan,
    I will now arise,” says the Lord.
    “I will protect them from those who malign them.”
    And the words of the Lord are flawless,
    like silver purified in a crucible,
    like gold refined seven times.

    You, Lord, will keep the needy safe
    and will protect us forever from the wicked,
    who freely strut about
    when what is vile is honored by the human race.

    Psalm 12:5-8

    The Lord shows no partiality – he is fair, and he is just, and ultimately he is the one who will ensure those who are needy will be protected and kept safe. I pray that we will learn to be like him.

  • The Pattern of Sound Teaching

    A week or so ago, my friend Andy asked me to write a guest piece for his blog. I duly obliged, and it was published a couple of days ago.

    Here’s a snippet to whet your appetite:

    But if the Trinity is a deeply Biblical and important truth for our faith, why is it that Christians seem to have so little confidence with this doctrine? Why is it, as Andrew Wilson highlighted in a blog a few years ago, that modern worship songs are rarely Trinitarian (they tend to address God only as ‘God’ or ‘Lord’, rather than the specific Father / Son / Holy Spirit)?

    You could extend this to many different areas. I, along with many other Christians, have been deeply distressed over the last few years that many churches in the UK have changed their minds on a number of significant moral issues of the day e.g. about marriage and sexuality, end-of-life issues, and so on. Why is it that churches in the 21st century seem too often to take on the values of the surrounding culture rather than being counter cultural?

    If you would like to know my opinion about the answer to the question, read the rest on his blog. (Did you see, I tantalisingly left off the answer to the question? Marketing, you see. I was never any good at it…)

  • The Social Media Pandemic

    I am fascinated by social media. I just find it amazing how it seems to have changed the world so fast in so little time, I don’t think we have grasped how much difference it has made to our society. I think you can really see the difference it has made with the response to covid-19 in all sorts of ways.

    1. It dominates the news

    In the days before social media, a news item may have dominated in the press – but it wouldn’t have been in your face 24/7. These days, you can’t look at Facebook or Twitter for very long without seeing something about the pandemic.

    This is one of the features of social media I find most difficult: you just can’t escape from the news!

    And, of course, because most of our journalists and broadcasters are on social media, it’s a vicious circle: everyone’s talking about it, so it makes the news, so everyone talks about it…

    2. Fear spreads on social media

    A few years ago I talked about how outrage spreads on social media. After this last few weeks, I’d add another emotion that spreads on social media: fear. A couple of weeks ago, when I was in the supermarket, I saw someone wearing an actual gas mask. That’s a rare occurence, but a lot of people are wearing masks, gloves, etc. Now some of this may be sensible precaution – but it seems to me that a lot of people are doing these things because they are terrified.

    And the reason that they are terrified is because they keep hearing how many deaths there are of covid-19. Day after day, it’s relentless: the media is fixated on the ‘peak’, on how many deaths there are… in the UK as I write there have been 17,337 deaths with covid-19 – although many more have recovered. I’ve seen quite a few people say, “Why don’t they report the number of people who have recovered?”

    The problem is, the data is not entirely straightforward – Will Jones has been doing sterling work examining the evidence on the Faith and Politics blog, e.g. what is really killing people, and are we more immune than we think. It seems that the data does not actually support the apocalyptic note about covid-19 that we hear so much from the media. But, as Peter Hitchens found out, dissenting from the ‘correct’ opinion on covid-19 can bring the mob down on you.

    And this is the problem with social media: if people believe a particular thing (e.g. that covid-19 is a deadly virus which is going to kill us all), then they’re going to believe it despite the evidence. Fear wins out. And I think that is, to some extent, what is happening at the moment.

    3. Over-the-top responses

    I’ve written before about virtue signalling – that is, saying something on social media to appear virtuous without actually having to be virtuous. I think it’s one of the most ugly sides of social media. Sadly, I think it’s been all too evident in the responses to the crisis from the top down:

    Firstly: The Government. The UK didn’t initially go into lockdown, initially the government pursued a strategy of advising people to handwash and avoid unnecessary contact and journeys etc – but businesses remained open. Why did they make the change? Part of the reason for the change was the (dubious) study from Imperial College London.

    Personally I think a lot of it was due to the government wanting to be seen to play it safe. MPs get so much flack on social media these days for just about anything – particularly conservative MPs. Politics has become so toxic that I think MPs and the government want to do what they can to avoid criticism. Who wouldn’t? And, make no mistake, a lot of people were calling for a lockdown and being very critical of the government for not acting sooner. (Maybe because of the climate of fear I talked about!)

    The problem is, I think it’s driven them to impose a policy which looks like it is cracking down hard on covid-19, but actually – on closer inspection – will probably do more harm than good. In other words, the lockdown is a knee-jerk response to the crisis because the government want to be seen to be cracking down hard.

    Secondly: Shops. The other day I went to Sainsbury’s, and I had to queue outside – they’d stuck little ‘foot’ stickers on the floor outside, two metres apart, and we had to wait dutifully in line. They were limiting the number of people in the shop. It all just felt so ridiculous. When you go into the shop, you have to touch things (which is a far more effective way to transmit the virus). You can’t stay two metres away from others in a confined space, even if you limit the numbers. And there’s precious little evidence that ‘social distancing’ actually works to contain the virus.

    So… why are shops doing it?

    In addition, some shops introduced an hour only for NHS staff, or only for the over-70s. Which sounds like a great idea, except for the fact that it’s caused long queues and – so I’ve heard – actually made things more difficult for some of the over-70s.

    The problem is, I think a lot of shops want to be seen to be cracking down the hardest on covid-19. “Come to us, we’ll keep you safe! We’re the toughest on the virus!” And it just seems they’re trying to outdo each other in a bid to see how many ridiculous measures they can introduce. Our local Tesco has introduced an enormous entrance queue (like you might find at an amusement park), and a one-way system!

    All in all, to my mind, the last few weeks have demonstrated a lot of what is wrong with society at the moment. I genuinely hope that things will change, and that – as social media becomes more established – we’ll realise some of the downsides to it and change the way we do things.

    I do hope that good will come out of this crisis – and I think in some small way it has: a lot of churches have been using social media to spread good news, e.g. livestreaming services (as we’ve been doing on the Great Clacton YouTube channel). I think God is using these events to bring about good – even if, for the moment, it shows up a lot of what is bad in society. Let’s hope and pray that this is the case.

  • “I’m not that kind of guy…”

    Breaking out of the mould

    I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what type of person I am. It just seems over the last few months I’ve done a couple of things which don’t fit my “type”.

    A few months ago I started worrying about my fitness and health – I really wanted to try and lose some weight and shape up a bit. I don’t have much time to do sports, and I don’t particularly like going to the gym, so I wondered about whether I should try lifting some weights instead (as I was reading up about it I discovered it’s very good for you). The strange thing was, one of the biggest things I had to overcome was not physical but rather my view of myself: “I’m not the kind of person who lifts weights!” I’ve always been a fairly nerdy kind of person who isn’t really into physical fitness. I don’t know why I should think doing something like that is not for me, but there you go.

    The second thing is, as I mentioned the other day I started up the Sacred Podcast – a DJ podcast with Drum & Bass music. Again, that’s probably not the kind of thing which goes with my “type” – most people don’t associate members of the clergy with that kind of music! And it seems that most people tend to assume – for whatever reason – that I like classical music, or maybe the style they play on Radio 2. (For the record, I do like most kinds of music, including classical, and when I listen to the radio in the car it’s usually Radio 2.)

    But – this is the point. Why should we have ‘types’ of people? Why should we restrict our interests to the kinds of things people expect us to be interested in? Why should we try to fit into a particular mould?

    Some of the most interesting people I know are people who just don’t fit into any mould: they are their own people. God made us all to be individuals. We all have different interests – we don’t all have to like a particular kind of music, or a particular kind of exercise, or hobbies, or anything like that.

    C.S. Lewis once said: “How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been; how gloriously different are the saints” (Mere Christianity). This is one of my favourite quotes: those who follow Christ are gloriously different – not carbon copies of one another. We don’t have to share the same interests or hobbies or whatever – that’s what makes us interesting.

    J.B. Phillips, a Bible scholar, translated the New Testament into modern English. Some of his translations are very memorable – his translation of Romans 12:2 is another favourite of mine: “Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould, but let God re-mould your minds from within.” Don’t let the world squeeze you into its mould – how brilliant! As God remakes us in his image, we don’t lose our identity – we become more individual.

    Just for a bit of fun…

    One of the funniest scenes from the film about what it’s like to be an individual…

  • Am I just my brain?

    A wise and learned philosopher once said, “We are living in a material world, and I am a material girl”. OK, those were the lyrics to Material Girl by Madonna – but, whether she realised it or not, I think she was onto something: many people today, especially within science, do think we are quite literally living in a material world. Many scientists (and, indeed, people from other fields such as history) presume methodological naturalism – the idea that the best explanation for anything is always a naturalistic one. ‘Supernatural’ explanations are discounted a priori.

    This kind of attitude seems to have become standard fare in many scientific circles. Although I don’t usually read the magazine, back in 2012 my wife kindly bought me a copy of the New Scientist special edition “The God Issue”. The editorial on the front page talked scornfully about religion: “Religious claims still wither under rational scrutiny and deserve no special place in public life.” Ouch! This kind of attitude was evident most of the way through the magazine.

    I’ve written a review of Sharon Dirckx’s book “Am I just my brain?” for Ian Paul’s blog Psephizo.

    Read the rest of the review on his blog.

  • Laura Bates, teenage boys and misogyny

    Earlier on I read an interesting interview with Laura Bates, the founder of the Everyday Sexism website. (The interview itself is behind a paywall but you can register with the Times to get free access to a limited number of articles per month). The interview itself is pretty shocking:

    What I do not recognise from the 1980s, however, is a subgenre of sexism that Bates encounters again and again when she visits schools to talk to teenagers. It makes no difference if the school is private or state, co-ed or single sex, in the south or the north; everywhere she goes, boys say the same things. “Rape is a compliment, really,” they tell her. “It’s not rape if she enjoys it.” “It’s normal for girls to cry during sex.” “A girl has to have sex with you if you’re her boyfriend.” Why does Bates even bother talking about consent and assault, they demand, “when everyone knows so many women lie about it”?

    I have difficulty believing that boys talk about rape in such casual terms, but it’s not surprising given the access that teenagers now have to pornography. The article explains further:

    What happens between 11 and 13, of course, is that most children get smartphones — and by the age of 12, a quarter will have seen online porn. “When parents think about their children seeing porn, quite often they’re thinking about kids seeing an online version of an FHM centrefold or a Playboy spread.” In fact, if you type “porn” or “sex” into Google, “you’re likely to be presented with videos that are specifically about hurting women, degrading women, abusing women, raping women — very young women, schoolgirls; women who are subject to extreme racial stereotypes; women who are categorised as busty Asian sluts or virgin teens. It’s not something that you go looking for. This kind of really misogynistic, extreme stuff is what boys are seeing at the top of the pile. Then we wonder why they’re confused and have these ideas about what sex looks like.”

    I quite agree – and this is one of the things I talk about on Friend Zone. I think young boys (and girls too) often have negative or damaging views about sex, which come – in part – from watching pornography. These is plenty of evidence to demonstrate that many teenagers are learning about sex from the internet – and, of course, learning all the wrong things.

    So far, so depressing. What interested me about all this is that Laura Bates didn’t really seem to have any solutions. Feminism isn’t really working, because (she says) the boys are being got to by ‘alt-right’ ideological extremism. (She mentions Milo Yiannopoulos, although I wonder whether someone like Jordan Peterson might qualify as well. If you haven’t seen it, you should definitely watch his interview with Cathy Newman which has managed to rack up 14 million views to date – with good reason).

    I wonder if the problem isn’t a bit more basic. The problem is the basic message in our society of sexual liberation: people basically want the freedom to have sex with whoever they want, whenever they want – the only real value is consent. The problem is, sexual liberation and consent are in opposition: you can’t have full liberation so long as there is the barrier of consent.

    My view is that consent is not, and will never be, enough to stop boys and men from taking advantage of women. You can’t say to young boys “the best thing about life is sex. You need to make sure you have the best sex life possible, because it’s the ultimate thing about life” – and then, in the same breath, tell them: “only… make sure it’s consensual”. It’s a nonsense! In the world of sexual ethics, where consent is the only value, then there are effectively no values.

    The solution to the problem is not to try and hammer home the value of consent – you need to question the more fundamental message about sexual liberty.

    It seems to me that there is a reason why God designed sex to be within the confines of marriage. As I have already quoted on this blog, talking about #MeToo:

    Sex is like fire. In the fireplace it keeps us warm. Outside the fireplace it burns down the house.

    Ray Ortlund

    If our society stopped trying to promote the one value of consent and started trying to promote marriage instead, I think we would see this problem begin to fade away. Many young women think they must have sex in order for men to like them – they think if they insist on marriage, it will rule them out of the game. But the problem is – and I see this all the time – that young men use this to get what they want without any of the responsibility. It’s why so many mums are raising children on their own. Mark Regnerus talks about this in his book Cheap Sex. If women insisted on the traditional Judeo-Christian ethic of sex – that is, sex should happen only within marriage – then men would be forced to take responsibility, which seems to me to be what Laura Bates is aiming at.

    As I was reading the interview, I felt my heart breaking: people have got no idea of which way is up any more. There is a huge problem in society, virtually everyone agrees on that – but no-one seems to be willing to admit that the solution might be dethroning the god of sexual liberation.

    You cannot have your cake and eat it. How many more young people will have to be hurt before we realise that?

  • Vicky Beeching – Undivided: The power and danger of stories

    I’ve mentioned Vicky Beeching a couple of times on this blog, most recently discussing whether it’s right to say ‘Change or Die’ about the church.
    Yesterday she released her new book, ‘Undivided’, which is her story of how she’s ‘come out’ as gay and Christian, and learned to embrace her sexuality.
    As I’ve started with the YouTubing now, I thought I’d do a little video about why I think we should be wary of making the jump from her story to changing what the church has always believed about marriage.
    https://youtu.be/U7vjc5fjLVA

    If you want to read further there are some good resources which I mention in the video:
    Living Out are a brilliant ministry, check out their site – especially the stories – for an alternative perspective to Vicky’s.
    David Bennett – A War of Loves (book) – a tale of a gay activist finding Jesus.
    Sam Allberry – Is God Anti-Gay? – short and well worth reading.
    And for a more detailed review of the book, check out Joshua’s review on Sanity’s Cove.

  • No more boys and girls: they’re not good enough apparently.

    On the BBC recently there was a two-part programme entitled “No More Boys and Girls: Can Our Kids Go Gender Free?” (Still available on the iPlayer at the time of writing). I watched both parts, and the programme was both intriguing and annoying in about equal measure.

    The basic premise of the programme is not a new one: we have long debated the most important factor in children’s development – nature or nurture. It’s not clear what is nature (i.e. inbuilt, genetic) and what is nurture (i.e. down to the way that you were brought up, environment etc.) Everyone agrees that both are factors, but there doesn’t seem to be any consensus on exactly how important they are.

    This programme took a fairly strong line on ‘nurture’: basically it took the view that men and women were essentially the same, except for a few basic biological differences. In particular, it claimed that male and female brains were the same. The only difference which exists between boys and girls is because they are socialised that way – i.e. they are brought up in different ways. For example, boys don’t have superior spatial skills because of genetics (nature) – they are just given Lego to play with (nurture) and it develops those skills.

    The programme tested the hypothesis by trying to make a ‘gender neutral’ classroom, where boys and girls were treated in exactly the same way.

    I don’t know where to start with all of this, to be honest.

    The biggest question to my mind was simply this: what rationale was given for the whole experiment?

    The surface reason was, of course, equality: boys and girls, men and women, should have equality. But no justification of this was given, except for a brief discussion with neuroscientist Gina Rippon about the difference (or lack thereof) between male and female brains. It just seemed to be assumed that girls doing stereotypically ‘girly’ things and boys doing stereotypical ‘boyish’ things was not good enough. If you believed the programme, both boys and girls should be doing the same things – biological sex should simply not count for anything. There was no discussion about equality and how that might work out in this situation.

    We are now living in an age where ‘equality’ is paramount. Everything has to be equal – so much so that when same-sex marriage was described as ‘equal marriage’ I suspect it won many supporters. Who wants to be anti-equality, after all? But when the drive for equality overrides even the ability to process fairly common sense observations, it’s all got a bit silly.

    A few weeks ago, at the beginning of August, James Damore – senior software engineer at Google – was fired for writing an “anti-equality” memo (you can read it online here). James Damore is a smart guy – he has a PhD in biology – and although the memo was not perfect, the science was basically right (see the response of four scientists here, and a comprehensive review of the science here).

    One of the best articles I read in response to the firing was by Ross Douthat. Douthat is a commentator who is often insightful and well worth reading, and this is no exception. He says this:

    This growing difference seems to be a striking aspect of modern Western life. In societies where both sexes have greater freedom — and women have more educational and professional opportunities relative to men than in the past — the sexes’ academic interests tend to diverge relative to more traditional societies. And not only their interests but their personalities as well: The more officially egalitarian a society, a credible body of research suggests, the stronger the differences in stereotypically male and female personality traits.

    Take a second to think about that: the more officially egalitarian a society, the stronger the differences between male and female interests and personality traits. The harder a society tries to be egalitarian, the less egalitarian it becomes. I find this fascinating, because it goes against pretty much everything that we instinctively believe about equality. I wonder if the problem is that the more ‘gender-neutral’ a society becomes, the more confused men and women are going to be and the more men and women are going to go to the extremes in order to feel secure (or, perhaps, the more people are going to identify as transgender. But that’s another story). When you eliminate traditional male and female roles, how are men and women going to express their identity as men and women?

    Douthat goes on:

    But since the usual way to reintegrate the sexes is to have them marry one another and raise kids, what Silicon Valley probably needs right now more than either workplace anti-microaggression training or an alt-right underground is a basic friendliness to family, pregnancy and child rearing.

    I think he’s hit the nail on the head here. The elephant in the room when it comes to the difference between the sexes is reproduction – and it’s notable how often it is left out of these discussions. Many of those young boys and girls in the BBC show will go on to become fathers and mothers at some point in their lives. Is that of no significance? Is the traditional role of a mother – caring for and nurturing children – valueless now?

    During one of our recent general elections (we’ve had so many…) my wife – currently a stay-at-home mum – said that she didn’t feel valued: there was so much  focus on everyone who is able going out to work, where was the commendation for mums (or dads, for that matter) who stay at home to look after the children? Where did any of the political parties come out and say “we value those who raise the next generation”?

    One of the privileges of my job is being able to talk to a lot of different people about their lives. As it turns out I’ve spent quite a bit of time chatting to young mums – either through our toddler group or baptism preparation. What I find interesting is that there is a common theme: the mums, by and large, although they may have to work, generally do not want to – most of those I’ve spoken to say they would prefer to be with the children. I have yet to meet a dad who has told me that they would love to be with the kids all day except they have to be out at work.

    Equality is a good thing, for sure. I think everyone should have the opportunity to do what they want to do. But, for that same reason, isn’t it wrong to basically be telling children that traditional male and female roles are not just unequal but wrong? Should we be telling them that the only value that society sets on them is as a worker, and the only achievements to be celebrated are academic ones?

    I wonder whether creating a ‘gender-neutral’ classroom is actually going to hinder rather than help things. Personally I have found it very helpful in my own life to actually acknowledge differences between the sexes and to recognise the ways that men and women complement and relate to each other. It feels like I am now working with the grain of the universe, rather than against it.

    As a Christian, I don’t think this is surprising: being created male and female is there at the beginning, it’s one of the most fundamental things you can say about us as embodied creatures. If you make a classroom ‘gender neutral’, you will not eliminate gender; and, in fact, I believe it will create far more problems as children struggle to work out their identity. This doesn’t mean that equality is not a laudable goal to have, rather that equality of opportunity needs to recognise that boys and girls, men and women might want slightly different things and that is OK. It’s not just OK, it’s good.

  • Thoughts on 'The Strange Death of Europe'

    I’ve just finished reading The Strange Death of Europe by Douglas Murray. It’s not an easy read – it deals with an issue which we as a Western society do not want to talk about (immigration) – but I think it’s important to deal with these issues.

    If you want to listen to him talking about the book and its main ideas, you can find a few interviews on YouTube such as this one.

    I don’t want to review the book as such – please read it for yourself – but off the back of it I wanted to mention a couple of thoughts I had while reading it.

    The main thing is: what gives a society a sense of identity? I think this is a hugely important question which is often overlooked in the UK. You have a group of people living together in a town. How can they get on with each other? You could list a few things: common language, jobs, values, etc. Values are important – we have to value certain things in order to get on with each other.

    The government recognised this when it created “British Values” (which are, for the record: democracy, rule of law, individual liberty, and respect for and tolerance of those of different faiths and those without faith). Those are all apparently British values which all children are being indoctrinated in – sorry – educated about at school.

    The thing is, being taught about British Values at school doesn’t really give us a sense of identity, does it? It’s just “the way we do things round here” – without a coherent system of thought to back it up, they’re meaningless. This brings me to the question of religious identity.

    In the past, this country has largely been held together by a broadly Christian worldview. It has permeated the monarchy, our government, our laws, our national institutions (such as the BBC), and of course an established church. Now this is all rapidly being demolished for a new secularist world where there is no place for religious belief. The best the government can come up with is some rather vague and not particularly convincing “British Values”.

    Then Islam enters into the picture. The secular world simply has no idea how to respond to Islam. For most secularists, religious is an irrelevance. They seem to think most religions are more or less the same – they believe in a different ‘sky fairy’ but they’re pretty much the same (I talk about that more here). The problem is, religions are not all the same. British Values have nothing to say to someone who is a convinced Muslim.

    Tom Holland did a documentary recently for Channel 4 called Isis: The Origins of Violence (at the time of writing you can still watch it on 4oD). In it he interviewed a Muslim (can’t remember who it was but it was someone important) who said that Western laws were not good because they did not come from God. He sincerely believed that Islamic laws were best because they were given by God and not man. (This is also the man who was somewhat evasive about condemning violence.)

    How do you convince someone that our laws are good in those circumstances? 

    It seems to me the only way is to actually demonstrate that our laws actually do come from God – from the Christian God, ‘the God who is there’ as Schaeffer put it. Secularism simply has no answer to orthodox Islam, it is impotent in the face of it.

    What’s interesting about Douglas Murray’s book is that he identifies the problem (the decline of Christianity in the West) – but at the same time he believes that it is impossible to believe in Christianity now due to 19th century higher criticism (much of which has now been discredited).

    I believe that the only ultimate solution to the problems we face – both personally and as a society – is the Christian faith. This is the social glue that helps to bind us together. This is the foundation of our society, the foundation of our morality and laws. This is the only way Western society can survive. My prayer is that God might send another revival as in the days of Wesley and Whitefield, or the Great Awakening in America. It has happened before, it can happened again. Lord, have mercy.