What I wrote to Maria Miller MP during the 'equal marriage' consultation

I thought it might be helpful to share with you the email that I wrote to my Member of Parliament during the UK government's 'consultation' about their 'equal marriage' proposals. For those who don't know, Maria Miller, is coincidentally not only the MP representing the constituency in which I live, but she is also Culture Secretary in David Cameron's government. It is her department that is responsible for the consultation and the resulting legislation.

On re-reading I recognise I may have been a tad aggressive. I tend to be overly blunt when up against opposition and feeling the need to be both clear and forceful. Not everyone, even those who agree with my reasoning, will agree with my conclusions. Let me know - particularly fellow believers - what you think. Should this change the way we vote? I am open to correction and guidance from those wiser than myself, especially on such an important issue.

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Dear Mrs Miller,

I write as a registered voter in the Basingstoke constituency which you represent. I have lived here 20 years, and live in Rooksdown with my wife and four children.

I have normally voted Conservative since I turned 18. Fundamentally, however, I am a Christian, and my political views are shaped by and subject to God's revelation in the Bible, including the foundations of justice and morality. The Conservative party always seemed to me to align best with Christian foundations.

Unfortunately, having been uneasy for years over the state of British politics from a Christian point of view, I now find myself at a turning point. The government seems hellbent on redefining marriage to include same sex marriage. The consultation is a sham, with the conclusion having been decided in advance. I hope that you have seen the open letter addressed to you by the Christian blogger 'Archbishop Cranmer'. If not, the link is below. It sums up much of what I think about the issue, and aligns with the views of many Christians in Basingstoke, certainly at least at the church I belong to (St Mary's, Eastrop). I have signed the Coalition for Marriage petition, along with hundreds of thousands of others, and sent my views into the consultation.

http://archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/an-open-letter-to-maria-miller-mp.html

For David Cameron, yourself and others this seems more than just the normal boring political wrangling over who is best at running health and education. This is about fundamental philosophical beliefs. I heard that David Cameron once said that the church would have to change like the Conservative party, and realise that equality is the absolute bottom line. This is the thing that really perturbs me. Politicians seem to see the church and religious groups as exactly the same as political parties, and seem to think that everyone buys into the same pluralistic philosophical presuppositions. We don't! For Christians the bottom line is not equality. The bottom line is the worship of the real God. And that is something unchangeable, non-negotiable and utterly fundamental. All Christian views on equality and justice and morality stem from the view that God sets the rules, not us, and true freedom comes from following those rules.

Christianity, it has to be said, is a religion of grace and good news. That's because none of us is capable of keeping God's rules, and the world is in the bad state it's in because of the sin of rejecting God's commands. Jesus Christ came to offer eternal life to those who will repent of that sin and trust in His death and resurrection. And Christian love, forgiveness and 'acts of mercy' are fundamentally based on the belief that no human being is beyond forgiveness, no matter what their sin, because God accepts all who come to Him through faith in Jesus Christ.

However, in democratic political terms, I don't believe that any Christian could in good conscience use their electoral vote for someone who directly defies God. And that is what you, Mr Cameron, Mr Clegg and others are doing. You believe that you know better than the real God, the one who created everything - including you - and made things to function in particular ways. In fact, you probably don't even believe there is a god. And therefore all you are left with is your own intellectual authority. Who says equality is the philosophical bottom line? You do!

Anyway, I could go on. I have never written to an MP before. But at this point in my life I have finally reached the point where I can no longer justify voting Conservative. After his stand against Christian morality, and after making it clear that he will push ahead with these changes no matter who objects, I do not want Mr Cameron to remain Prime Minister, and I do not want any equal marriage supporter to be in parliament. Therefore, you have lost my vote.

Of course, that wouldn't bother you… because who else can I vote for? Not any of the main parties, who are all infected by the same anti-Christian philosophical bias. Hence I will vote for any sensible looking independent candidate. This, I know, is unlikely to have any tangible effect on the political landscape, even if lots of Christians decided to do the same. But I have to go with my conscience.

The thing, however, that I hoped may bother the political powers, like yourself and the Prime Minister, is that being a matter of conscience and deeply held belief means that Christians will refuse to obey any new laws based on the redefinition of marriage. What our God tells us is more important than what you and Mr Cameron tell us, and God's laws are more important that the laws of the UK. It is true that one of our most peaceable principles as Christians is that we must obey the law of the land, because God has set the government in place for our good. However, when the law of the land tells us we must disobey God, then we can't do that.

Why is this such a watershed? For Christians this is a step too far. We have tolerated homosexuality as practiced by individuals. We believe it is sinful, and we call for repentance, but we tolerate the presence of such sin, because we live in a sinful world. We have tolerated civil partnership arrangements, which endorse immorality, because we do not have to recognise them as anything more than two individuals committing to an immoral relationship. They should still repent, but we tolerate the presence of civil partnerships because we live in a sinful world. However, when the legal definition of marriage is changed that will mean that churches (which are legally obliged to offer marriage to everyone in England) will be legally bound to offer marriage to homosexual couples. Christian ministers will not do this (unless they are very liberal). It means that schools will have to teach that marriage is not about one man and one woman, but about two people. Christian teachers, and church schools, will not teach this. And there are a whole host of other implications which have been pointed out by the Coalition for Marriage.

The sad thing is that you will be forcing the most benign, law-abiding, minority group in the country into law-breaking, and forcing Christians to be outsiders and outcasts in a society that was founded on Christian belief, morality and justice.

After this, my view of British politics is changed for ever.

Regards,


Andrew Burrows

The risk of offending people

Whose Rules Rule? - Part Twelve

Should we try to avoid offending people?

This is the last part of this series and I would be surprised if I haven't offended anyone by what I've been saying over the past few months. As I've said throughout the series, talking about morality can be unpopular in a culture that is based on the ultimate final authority of self. A detached discussion is almost impossible, since we are moral beings, when most people see themselves as ultimately in control of what defines right and wrong in their own lives.

And yet this is something that Christians are rightly very sensitive about. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10:32, "Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God," meaning give no offense to anyone. Jesus said, "Judge not, that you be not judged." (Matthew 7:1) We know we have good news to share with people, we want to share it, and offending people causes them to shut their ears and refuse to listen to it. We don't want to judge people, because we know that we too are sinners and are only saved through God's grace in Christ. To try to remain at peace with those around us, so that we may have opportunity to share the good news of the grace of God in Christ with them, is a very laudable aim.

So I want to make two points. First, I want both Christians and modern non-religious people to understand that simply talking about morality, saying that something is wrong, immoral, unrighteous, or sinful, is not in itself being judgmental. A judgmental attitude involves portraying ourselves as better than someone else, looking down on them. Romans 14:10 makes this clear: "Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God." Paul equates passing judgment on someone with despising them, and his reason for saying that it's wrong is that we are all equally deserving of judgment. That ties in with something I talked about in parts 7 and 8.

That's why I have spent such a long time trying to get across that the difference between Christian morality and non-religious morality needs to be understood. Non-religious people understand discussions about morality within their own frame of reference, and that is that all morality is relative and guided by our personal preferences. Christian morality, however, does not fit into that. We have an objective basis for our moral code.

So simply saying something is wrong is not being judgmental. Saying something is wrong in a way that despises other sinners and puts ourselves in a superior position is being judgmental, and is not speaking in the way Jesus would want us to. So we need to learn a compassionate way of speaking about morality, one that makes it clear that we are equally under the law and equally sinners, and that the reason for our talking about morality is in order to lead them into the way of salvation. We want to see them saved, we want them to have eternal joy and life, we want them to find true fulfilment. But they will not get that without recognising and repenting of their sin.

And neither can we say we are better because we have repented and turned to Jesus in faith. Faith is itself a gift from God (Ephesians 2:8,9). We are, without the work of God within our hearts, dead in trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1-7). Jesus himself said that we must be "born again" (John 3:3) in order to see the kingdom of God - in other words something must happen to us that we cannot initiate ourselves. Our salvation, as Christians, is dependent entirely on God's grace.

If the people we speak to will listen carefully and graciously, then they may at least understand this point, even if they don't come to accept God's authority in all things including morality. On the other hand, it may lead them to take even greater offense.

You see - and this is my second point - even when people see clearly that we don't judge people automatically by making moral statements about right and wrong, the Christian message may still be offensive to them. Paul talks elsewhere about, "the offense of the cross" (Galatians 5:11).

Why would the wooden cross that was used to kill the Lord Jesus Christ be offensive? Because it demonstrates the justice of God, the kind of wrath He pours out on disobedience. It demonstrates that no one can see themselves as automatically "in" with Him, but they must go through His Son, Jesus Christ. The cross demands repentance, it demands we put our faith in someone who is genuinely better than us, genuinely greater than us. He is perfect, and yet He suffered death for our sake. But we don't want to be told what to do, who to have faith in. We don't want to submit to anyone. We love our sins, our sinful personal preferences. Repentance is an utterly repugnant idea to us.

We hope that people will accept our message, but we should not expect everyone to do so. Paul said of his own ministry, "For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life." (2 Corinthians 2:15-16) In other words, if God is working light and life within a person, He will use our words to save them. But if not, our words will be to them an offensive, deathly stench that will only push them further away.

Therefore, we should not tone down our message simply because people are offended. When people are offended we need to understand that they are feeling threatened by the very core truth of the gospel - that we are responsible to God and we have failed Him and deserve His wrath. That is actually a good thing. Without seeing that, no one would be able to understand the need for faith and repentance.

To put it another way, following the parable I gave last time, if I were to offend people by warning them that they are going the wrong way on a countryside walk, and are heading towards a cliff edge and towards certain doom, what should concern me most? The fact that those people are annoyed with me? Or the fact that they are continuing towards the edge of the cliff? What would I do? Stop talking about the fact they're going the wrong way, because they want me to shut up? Or keep talking, finding any way possible to get them to realise that they are in danger?

So I hope we are all, by now, challenged to keep talking about morality, to base our moral statements/arguments firmly on what is in God's Word, to use the opportunity to expose the bankruptcy of non-religious foundations of thinking, to recognise where the offense we cause is because of the truth, and to love the gospel and love our Saviour all the more.

To Jesus Christ be all the glory. Amen.

Why should we care about morality?

Whose Rules Rule? - Part Four

I've been writing recently about morality, and comparing non-religious concepts with the Christian source of morality. I am writing this series of articles for two reasons. Firstly, I have noticed the apparent paradox whereby many non-religious people, who seem to have strong moral repulsion to awful acts such as rioting, looting from shops or child abuse, also have a strong dislike of Christian morality. So I’m trying to point out why this is, and why Christian moral standards have much more in their favour than people think, even if they don’t like living by those standards. 

Secondly, Christians, influenced by the pressure from the prevailing philosophy of our culture (thrust at us through every channel available – billboards, tv, newspapers, magazines, internet) have become timid in our reasoning about morality. That’s a big problem in our presentation of the gospel, the core of our faith, and the good news we have for the world. You see, without a conviction of sin, the news of salvation from sin makes no sense. My perception is that much of our evangelism makes no sense to the non-religious people who make up the majority of our population in the West, and it makes no sense because we do not challenge their faulty concept of sin.

Of course, this should not be any surprise to us, and it isn’t just that the non-religious have a faulty concept of sin. They also have a faulty concept of God, humanity, knowledge, science, and just about everything else. It shouldn’t be a surprise because the Bible tells us that in order to see the kingdom of God we have to be born again of the Spirit (John 3:3-5) – i.e. it is impossible without God’s spiritual intervention.

However, every age and every philosophy and every false religion have their own major blind spots and points where they diverge from the truth. It has been noted by evangelical commentators for many years that as generations through to 20th and 21st Centuries have passed, the influence of our Christian heritage and institutions has become less and less (see, for example, Telling the Truth, D.A. Carson (ed); The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World, John Piper and Justin Taylor (eds); Above all Earthly Powers, David Wells; The Gagging of God, D.A. Carson). Whereas 60 years ago, when Christian assumptions were still influential, an evangelist could speak of the sinfulness of people and be more or less understood, that is not the case now in an age where Christian assumptions and beliefs have been largely rejected.

My conviction is that this is no reason to minimise talk of sin in our gospel presentations, and indeed our day-to-day conversation (which is what leads to personal evangelistic opportunities). It is instead time to recognise the need to press deeper into our culture’s philosophy. When we present the gospel, at almost every point we will meet with challenges and misunderstanding. And therefore the work of apologetics – answering objections – is now a more important discipline than ever, and something that all Christians should become proficient in.

So part of my purpose in writing these articles is to attempt to work through how we should, as Christians, talk about sin and morality. How can we engage with the culture in which we live in a way that not only tries to democratically prevent further descent into God-dishonouring behaviour, but also forces debate that allows us an entrance to share the gospel. After all, it is not politics but only the gospel that is the “power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes” (Romans 1:16).

What our non-religious friends and neighbours need to see is that Christian talk about sin and morality, even in politics, is in actual fact our way of being kind to them. We want them to know what sin is, acknowledge it as sin in their lives, and have the opportunity to turn from it, and in turning from it and turning to Christ receive salvation. The church needs to have this explicitly in our rhetoric when debating in forums such as the Church of England’s General Synod (though I acknowledge that the media often portrays even the most loving rhetoric as hateful). 

I have to admit to being more than a little concerned when I hear the language of outrage being used by Christian preachers and politicians speaking about homosexuality and abortion. The very fact that the worldly counter-rhetoric speaks in terms of phobias and religious hatred may partly indicate that we are not communicating in the right language. We are being misunderstood. I admit also that part of this misunderstanding is deliberate prevarication by the liberal intelligentsia and media in an effort to avoid the truth, but at least we ought to take care in the words we use.

At the same time I firmly believe that Christians ought not to stop talking about sin, specifically and generally. And should not pull punches when it comes to talking about its seriousness and serious consequences. We should not expect necessarily to remain friends or to be popular when we tell the truth about sin and morality. However, we should only fall out for the right reasons – because of the truth and not the harshness of the way we present the truth. “In your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander.” (1 Peter 3:15-16)

So far, I’ve outlined the following:

• That non-religious people have moral standards, but the source of their morality is themselves. This is the reason why they get upset when Christians say that some actions are sinful that they do not think there is anything wrong with – even if they do not do these things themselves. They take it personally.
• That non-religious moral systems are therefore necessarily subjective, and have no objective basis. The logic of this is anarchy, unless sufficient common ground can be found to keep the peace in a democratic society.
• That non-religious assumptions either devalue humanity and make even their own moral standards pointless, or reduce to arbitrary emotional biases. Both situations militate against a peaceful and orderly society.

To summarise: non-religious people, even though their basic assumptions about life and the universe give them nothing on which to base moral standards and care for others, still get upset about the brutal killing of a child, the famine victims and AIDS victims of Africa, or terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre. This seems illogical, but it actually isn’t when you take into account that they see themselves arbitrarily as the final authority in matters of right and wrong. If something makes them feel bad, then it they define it as bad. As someone has said, non-religious morality is based entirely on “the yuck factor”.

In future articles I hope to probe other areas that demonstrate the emptiness of postmodern thinking about morality compared to the robust rationality and cogency of Christianity. I also hope to demonstrate further how Christians can talk about morality in clearly loving ways.

What’s so special about being human?

Whose Rules Rule - Part Three

What I’ve done so far in this series of blog articles is only to sketch outlines. I’ve tried to outline the fundamental difference between Christian morality and non-religious philosophies of morality – the final authority. For the Christian the final authority in all matters is God, and He communicates through His Word, the Bible. For the non-religious person, however religious his background and upbringing, the final authority is himself. I believe, as I’ve said, that this is the reason why Christians are treated so harshly in the West when we use our right to free speech to point out the immorality of certain actions and lifestyles. It’s because any criticism is taken personally, as an affront to the non-religious person’s authority and autonomy.

However, I also indicated that the lack of absolute standards gives problems for the non-religious person. When they meet someone whose moral standards are different they have no basis on which to argue. 

But there are other problems. The majority of moral opinions held by non-religious Westerners – those brought up under the influence of Christianity – assume human beings are superior to, or at least set apart from, other animal species, and further regard all human beings as equal. In some ways this is not remarkable. Since we are human we are naturally concerned with the morality of our own species, and we naturally generalise for all of the same kind. Apes have certain general habits and traits, iguanas have their own general characteristics, eagles and rats too, and so on. So we humans focus on the general moral characteristics of humans. But in many ways it is more than that. We do tend to talk about the human race as somehow special or greater than animals.

The problem is that these assumptions are inconsistent with other fundamental beliefs of non-religious people.

First, let’s think about whether human beings have any intrinsic value that means we should care what happens to them. To do that we have to have some definition of what it means to be human. If we want to have a concept of some kind of intrinsic value in humanity, then that must come from what we are. And what we are is determined by how we originated. 

My amateur assessment is that non-religious people divide into two camps with regard to how we originated. One group is the atheist group that believes everything that exists is the product of random chance evolution. This is their most basic assumption. (It’s an assumption that has no proof… but that’s not for discussion here!) The other group cannot bring themselves to believe that the intricate beauty of the universe - in its majesty, complexity, intricacy and variety – could have evolved randomly. They believe that the universe was probably designed and made by an intelligent being, greater than any other being or any part of creation. In short, they believe in a Creator. They just don’t see Him as relevant to the way they live their lives, or indeed have any concept of His attachment to any particular religion. 

The atheist, I assert, would be inconsistent and irrational to build any moral code at all based on the value of human life. As Christians living in a democracy we are thankful for this inconsistency, for without it we would have violent anarchy and a disintegration of civilisation. However, for the atheist to say that something is wrong because it attacks a valuable human life is irrational, because it conflicts with their basic belief.

I’m worried that this may be stating the obvious, but I’ll explain it anyway, just in case. If atheistic, random evolution is true then the basic building blocks (let’s call them atoms and molecules to save us from unnecessary technicality) of the universe simply ebb and flow in a meaningless progression that we define as evolution. One formation of atoms looks like primordial soup, another like rocks, another like invisible gases such as oxygen. Chemical reactions happen as these atoms and molecules come into contact with each other, and these reactions bring about big changes from time to time. The result is yet more different formations of atoms and molecules. Mutations happen so that some fish spawn new amphibian species; some amphibian species spawn bird and reptile species; some bird and reptile species spawn mammal species, and so on through to apes and humans.

With evolutionary philosophical foundations, though, the progression has no meaning. And the distinctions between different forms have no meaning either. Different forms of atoms are just different forms of atoms. End of story. And yet even an evolutionist makes distinctions between things, even though in his own worldview these distinctions are meaningless. They persist in distinguishing between non-living things (solids, liquids, gases) and living things (animals, birds, trees); between plants, animals, fish and birds; and between non-intelligent animals and intelligent animals (of which human beings are allegedly the only type so far known to have evolved… but leaving the possibility that we may find that some animals or aliens qualify as being intelligent). Non-living things tend to just follow the laws of physics and chemistry. Non-intelligent living things tend to just follow the instincts, cycles and habits of their species. But as intelligent living things we are characterised by conscious struggle, according to the secular atheist - the struggle for meaning and to "find our place in the universe".

However, these distinctions are arbitrary for the atheist, since he wants to say that fundamentally we are just random collections of atoms. Feelings, knowledge, memory, understanding, wisdom, relationships are all meaningless for the atheist. They are simply, for him, just more random chemical reactions within the random atomic residue. So we, as human beings, surely should have no more rights than the gecko, the gopher, rocks, seaweed or nitrogen gas!

The atheist is inconsistent and irrational because they persist in living their lives as if things that happen to human beings matter whilst philosophically asserting that they don’t! Why do they get so upset about certain things they claim are “wrong”? Why do they get upset about people who disagree with their irrational babbling? Those are not the logical responses of people who really believe that all human beings are only different to rocks, plants and lizards by degrees of evolution.

The real logic of atheism and evolution is that human beings are not special at all, and deserve no special laws. So what if one random atom blob called a child is attacked by another random atom blob called an adult, and in a way that other random human atom blobs call sexual abuse? So what?

In the film Collatoral Vincent (played by Tom Cruise) is a cold-blooded contract killer who hijacks a taxi and forces its driver, Max (played by Jamie Foxx), to take him to various places to kill people. Max asks Vincent at one stage why he is killing the people he kills that night. Vincent’s reply is typical of the consistent atheist, “Get with it. Millions of galaxies of hundreds of millions of stars, and a speck on one in a blink. That's us, lost in space. The cop, you, me... Who notices?” Later on, he says simply, “There's no good reason, there's no bad reason to live or to die.”

So the atheist not only has the problem that he cannot find an absolute and universal basis on which to argue for his moral standards, he also has the problem that his own philosophy concludes that morality and immorality is meaningless!

But what of the non-religious person who believes in a Creator? Their basic problem is that their concept of the Creator or god comes from within themselves. As such it has no objective truth, and therefore there is no way to know this god absolutely. The reason I say that their conception of god comes from within themselves is that it cannot come from anywhere else. What I mean is that even if they are influenced by Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism or whatever, they consider themselves authorized to vary and contradict elements of those religions on the basis that they simply don’t feel like believing them. You may hear them say things like, “I don’t see god as being angry,” or “I see god as primarily a benevolent force,” or “I don’t think god will judge people”. If you were to ask them why they believe these things about god, they would say they just think it’s obvious or that they’re entitled to their opinion.

This applies just as much, by the way, to the assertion that the gods of all religions are really different faces of the same being, and therefore all religions lead to God. It is a belief that has no basis. It is wishful thinking, inasmuch as people don’t want to have to choose. They don’t want God to be someone whom they must know and honour. That would be too threatening. They want the Creator to be a being so distant and unknowable that we only catch glimpses of him/it in the insights of various religions. From that distance and obscurity he/it is no threat and they can choose to ignore him/it.

Their feeling that the human race was created, or that evolution was guided, by some intelligent powerful being, however, gives them no clue as to what they are as human beings. They too, like the atheist, are left wondering, making it up out of their own emotions and intellect. They have no basis on which to talk about what human beings are or what our purpose is. And therefore they have no basis on which to build any conclusions about whether we are distinct or set apart from animals, and about what constitutes right and wrong things that we should or should not do.

So non-religious people of the West in the early 21st century have some serious problems when it comes to discussing morality. Everyone has concepts of right and wrong, as we saw, but the criticisms of Christian moral standards from contemporary non-religious people fall apart because they have no rational basis.

Get Real!

Well it's not quite what I expected to be dwelling on when I started my blog just over 6 months ago, but my thoughts on hardship and suffering as a Christian do seem to be multiplying. So this is turning into a series, and I intend to pursue it as long as I can find useful things to reflect on. And by useful I mean God-glorifying.

To set the context, I'm starting to write this on 13 February 2010, four days after completing my first cycle of chemotherapy. I am still in hospital. The lymphoma was found primarily in my duodenum (pipe between stomach and intestine). This meant that as the swollen area got worse it was not letting food through, and therefore I kept being sick because my stomach was just filling up. I now have a naso-gastric tube which relieves pressure in my stomach if it happens to get blocked up. That isn't comfortable, I can tell you! And I've been back on IV fluids for a few days. So fully tubed up - that's me!

Apparently even the first cycle of chemotherapy will reduce the swelling, so I should (according to the doctor) be able to eat normally again within the next few days or so. And I can leave hospital when I have shown signs that food is going through properly. So hopefully I will be home in a few days, and be eating fine. And since I haven't had a proper meal since just before Christmas, that will be great.

All that probably sounds unpleasant. And don't get me wrong, it is a bit of a pain. But I am well looked after in hospital. The nurses are brilliant. And there are always drugs on hand to make things feel better. And my mind is, most of the time, pretty alert, even when my body is a little weak. I praise God for those mercies! But it's not particularly the aches and pains of my body that bother me most of the time.

Surely I should be worried about the fact I have a life threatening disease? But I'm not. Not at all. I do not worry about what is going to happen in the future. Not only is there no point worrying about things I cannot change, but I also trust the One who has the future in His hand. And as I have said elsewhere, He holds not just the future in this life, but assures the place of believers in the glorious New Creation after the judgment day.

But it might be that some people are thinking that this all sounds a bit 'pie in the sky'! We "fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." (2 Corinthians 4:18) "We live by faith, not by sight." (2 Corinthians 5:7) "Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." (Hebrews 11:1) "Hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently." (Romans 8:24-25) "Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls." (1 Peter 1:8-9) "Then Jesus told him, 'Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.'" (John 20:29)

We Christians seem to take a lot of comfort from something wonderful that is completely inconceivable in the present world, promised to us by a God who is invisible, to be received a time perhaps way off in the future and almost certainly after we die… by which time it will be too late to change our minds about it! What grounds do we have for having that kind of hope? Is this "blind faith"? Isn't it just too convenient that we rationalize all the bad things that happen to us by saying it will be all outweighed by something we can't see, in the future we can't see, promised by the God we can't see?!

For those who are not Christians this may be a major obstacle to them having a faith in God. For those who are Christians it is not always easy either. In fact it is in the nature of the "spiritual battle" I have been talking about elsewhere. Part of our struggle is against "the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms" (Ephesians 6:12), which we can't see! So this is the fight of faith, the battle to find our satisfaction in God, trusting Him for the present and the future through the love of Christ.

Belief in an invisible God

First of all let's quickly deal with the issue of having an invisible God. Is it irrational to believe in a God that you can't see? Doesn't it involve a leap of irrational blind faith?

Unfortunately, some Christians do talk about a "leap of faith", as if you take leave of your senses and just believe. But true Biblical faith has never been like that. The Bible portrays the truth about God as something rational, reasonable, logical. And can it be otherwise? God, who created the universe in an orderly design, with laws of logic and laws of physics inherent within it, surely would not then hide himself behind a mask of irrationality! Human beings are made "in the image of God", and therefore it is His imprint on us that requires us to be rational and logical in our reasoning. So I am not arguing that this is a battle between faith and reason. I am arguing that faith itself is reasonable, but a lack of faith in the Christian God of the Bible is irrational.

If you were reading fast at this point, I urge you to slow down and pause a few seconds and re-read the last couple of sentences. They look fairly innocuous, but they are pretty significant and worth reflecting on.

So let's deal with this issue of the fact that we can't see God, or the future that He promises, and yet we hold firmly to hope in Him. Is the fact that we can't see Him a convincing reason for not believing in Him? Shouldn't we only trust fully the things we can see, or sense (touch, smell, hear, etc)?

Well, let me ask, can you see the laws of logic? Did a law of physics ever bump into you? No! These are intangible, abstract, concepts. They are not made of physical matter. And yet we live our lives, necessarily, putting our faith in them as universally true. We could not function if we thought that somewhere the laws of logic did not hold true, because the fundamental law of logic is that of non-contradiction. i.e. something cannot be true and not true at the same time. If something could be true and not true at the same time, then all our reasoning would fall apart. So we have to believe that the laws of logic apply universally.

Similarly with the laws of physics. We could not function if we thought that the laws of physics were not true universally in all places at all times. All our movement, our conversation and our living and breathing depends on it. For example, oxygen has the same effect on our lungs anywhere in the world at any time. If it didn't we would live in fear of dropping dead randomly one day because a physical law suddenly changed! All our technology, building, design and communication, energy production, medicine and so on, are all based on the belief that physical laws are true all the time, in every place, and never change. So we have to believe that the laws of physics apply universally.

So if we have to believe that the laws of logic and the laws of physics are always in force, and yet we can't see them, then the fact that we can't see God should be no barrier to belief in Him.

But also this points to the nature of faith in God. I hope that you can follow me through the argument from this point. I'll try to put it as clearly as I can.

But someone may say that believing the laws of nature, laws of physics, laws of logic is nothing like believing in God. Yes, all of them are intrinsically invisible. However, we believe natural laws because we see evidence that they apply. We discover through mathematical and scientific research in the physical world (i.e. the world that we experience with our senses -sight, touch, smell, taste, hearing) that certain rules seem to apply to things. And therefore we believe them. On the other hand surely we can make no such discoveries with God, so why should we believe in him?

The answer to that is that it is incorrect thinking on two counts.

Firstly, it overstates the quality of the evidence for natural laws. Remember we live our lives on the basis that these so called natural laws (laws of logic, laws of physics, laws of mathematics, etc) apply universally. That means they work at any time in any place in the world. But there is no physical evidence that we have, or can possibly have, that the natural laws apply universally. We do not see every action and consequence at every moment in every place. We only see the things we see. How do we know there is not something different and contradictory happening somewhere else we can't see, or that we will see at some time in the future?

So how do we live our lives with the confidence that we can walk down the street without gravity suddenly acting differently, or without running out of oxygen, or without bumping into air? We have faith!

Secondly, the incorrect thinking I was talking about understates or completely discounts real evidence for God. The Bible says that, "God's invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse." (Romans 1:20) The world around us shows the hand of the almighty, personal God. Even our own existence, and the inner workings of our hearts and minds, show the touch of a just, loving and personal God. If we would open our eyes we would see the hand of God everywhere, so that we are "without excuse" if we doubt his presence.

At this point we should note, importantly, that this is where it comes to the crunch. The committed atheist will often cry foul at this argument, saying that we only see design and beauty and emotion and justice as evidence of God, because we have assumed he exists in the first place. They say that all these things are illusions and don't really exist. We've evolved chemical and hormonal responses to external stimuli that we label as emotion or justice or design or beauty etc.

And at first that seems to be a valid argument. But it's not. You see the atheist is doing exactly the same. They are looking at the universe saying, "nope, no evidence of any god", because they have assumed he does not exist in the first place. They can explain away anything that the believer calls evidence because they have decided that it cannot be evidence based on their belief that no god exists.

So how do we resolve this? First of all, it is critical that we all understand and accept that we are seeing worldviews head to head. We are seeing what we call presuppositions. Presuppositions govern the way we all look at the world. If we are convinced God exists then we look at the world one way; if we are convinced God does not exist then we look at it another way.

There is a lot more that could be said, but I am already working way beyond my allotted space. And I want to mention something else important.

Are we at loggerheads? We Christians look at things one way, atheists look at things another. Is that it? No way of resolving the conflict of worldviews?

I believe there is a way to show that Christianity is rational and required, whereas atheism is irrational. And that is, briefly, to go back to the questions we came to above. How do we live our lives with the confidence that we can walk down the street without gravity suddenly acting differently, or without running out of oxygen, or without bumping into air?

With atheism or agnosticism we are left with nothing. No-one can say that they can see the future, so no-one can say that they know everything about everything. And therefore no-one can legitimately say that the laws of logic and mathematics that meant that their bank account balanced today will still apply tomorrow. But none of us questions that will be the case. We'd think someone nuts if they suggested that it wouldn't be the case. So why does the atheist believe it? It turns out that they are only capable of blind faith!

On the other hand the Christian has the reason for their belief. The reason that we have confidence in natural laws applying universally is because we believe in a God who is rational, personal and created the universe with purpose. He has set it up that way, and told us that in the Bible.

The philosophical way of putting it is that belief in God provides the "preconditions of intelligibility". That means that only belief in God can provide the beliefs that are necessary to make sense of the world.

So you see far from belief in an invisible God being irrational, it is the only belief that will make sense of the world. This, in its deepest sense, is why the design of the world, the way the universe works, its beauty, justice, our emotions and our unique abilities, are evidence. They are clearly seen in the world, and we all live using them. And yet the only belief that will make sense of them is Christianity.

So the punch line is that even atheists live like Christians, because they live by presuppositions that only Christianity can substantiate. And yet they use those very things (logic and reason) to try and prove that God doesn't exist!

I find this a really strong reason to believe in an invisible God.

There is more to say, but I will break at this point, and in the next article speak to Christians about how they can believe God's promises about the unseen world and the unseen future.