ClearWords

 Autumn is a time when most plants abandon life above ground in preparation for the hardships of the Winter. The branches of most trees and shrubs drop their leaves and go into a dormant state. Herbaceous plants die back to ground level. For them life simply continues below ground where the Winter frost cannot reach. They quite literally go back to their roots. In the Bible there is an old proverb that says:     The wicked desire the stronghold of evildoers,         but the root of the righteous endures.         (Proverbs 12: 12) Very few people enjoy living with insecurity - most of us want the safety a stronghold. It might be in a good job, underpinned with qualifications, skills and experience. Perhaps in family or a circle of close friends. Sometimes it's in self-protection - playing all our cards close to our chest and never making ourselves vulnerable. Strongholds are not necessarily evil, but they have one thing in common. Sooner or later, something or someone comes along an

Some say that Jesus of Nazareth is just a myth and a legend. Others, a historical figure who was born in Bethlehem, probably around 5 BC.  Wouldn't it be great if we could find his birth certificate and settle the matter once and for all?! Oddly enough, it's not such a daft idea. The Roman Empire was assidious about keeping records, and the birth of Jesus would certainly have been noted in its archives. Unfortunately, between the sackings of Rome and Constantinople almost all of them were lost. That wasn't always the case, though. Several times in the first three centuries AD the Empire made concerted efforts to erase the story of Jesus from history. For all this time the records were available - as the Christian apologist, Justin Martyr, was at pains to point out in an open ketter to the Emperor: "Now there is a village in the land of the Jews, thirty-five stadia from Jerusalem, in which Jesus Christ was born, as you can ascertain also from the registers of the taxing

I was struck just recently by the contrast between two particular people who met Jesus, and his response to them. One was a prosperous official who had acquired many possessions. Jesus' advice to him was, "Sell everything you have and give to the poor" (see my post of 27th May for a take on what that might mean). This man could have done so much to help those less fortunate than himself, but when Jesus suggested doing so he went away sad. He was far too jealous of his own wealth to consider sharing it. I would like to think, after he had time to reconsider, he was at least motivated to do more than before. But we don't know. His contact with Jesus and the gospel sources seems to end there. The other person was a poor widow who literally put her last two pennies into the temple offering (Luke 21:1-4). Of her Jesus said, "She, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on". She had no way of knowing how her tiny offering would be used. It might

One of the questions you will often hear raised about God goes along the lines, "If there is an omnipotent God why doesn't he do X?", where X may be anything from stopping wars or preventing earthquakes to curing cancer. Often there is a deeply personal reason behind the question, which makes a purely rational answer wholly unsatisfying. All the same, it's a rational question and some kind of rational answer is deserved. But two things make it a complex question to which no simple answer is possible. One is the extraordinary diversity of the things that 'X' may represent, all of them having different causes with different and completely unrelated solutions. The other is the sole focus on God's omnipotence. Because God, if he exists, must be so much more than just that. There is an old philosophical conundrum on the same subject, of the kind that philosphers love to pose and to ponder. If God is omnipotent, can he create an object so massive that he himself

Years ago I was guest speaker at a conference of a group of churches in a remote part of SW Uganda. One of the delegates I met there had walked for a couple of days to attend, sleeping out in the bush under the stars, and drinking water from whatever muddy pool he came across. I've been back several times since, but I've never forgotten the remarkable dedication of that one individual. It's been widely acknowledged, and I've written here previously, that the universe seems to speak to us of an architect - a creator of everything we see around us. If that's true, it would require similar dedication on their part for us to have any chance of knowing and understanding them. The innumerable religions and concepts of God that we find around the world today, not to mention throughout history, and the many other theories of origins, are testimony to this. Left to ourselves we are incapable of figuring out definitively, to everyone's agreement and satisfaction, who or w

As a Christian with a scientific background, it always saddens me when people find ways to create or imagine conflict between faith in God and science. If it's true that God created the universe, then he invented science itself. The very idea of a universe that follows a consistent set of laws was his. And a good thing, too. Imagine a universe where random and unpredictable events were commonplace. Where you could pour water into a glass and, when you drink it, it might become bleach. Or where your bedroom might unexpectedly turn upside down while you were asleep in bed. Not a universe any of us would like to live in! Some Christians see a conflict with science at the very start of the Bible, in Genesis chapter 1. The seven days of creation, interpreted literally, contradict the assertion that the universe evolved slowly over billions of years - something that science claims as fact supported by evidence.  So is science mistaken? Is the Bible in error? Or is a literal reading simpl

Having lived all my life in a wealthy European country, but also spent time among people who live at subsistence level and have very little, the injustice of inequality is a constant provocation to me. Jesus had a lot of things to say about that, which are challenging but well worth hearing.  One of them was his response to the wealthy young law-keeper in Matthew 19: “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”  Not surprisingly, the young man went away sad. Well, you would, wouldn't you? That may have been an extreme case of someone who was particularly materialistic and in thrall to his possessions, and there may have been a degree of hyperbole in Jesus' response - there's no suggestion he asked the same of everyone. But the general idea of abandoning ‘treasure’ and sharing responsibility for the poor is completely in keeping with his teaching and lifestyle. On one occasion he desc

I'm not sure who originally said it, but it's become a truism in science that "the universe has every appearance of having been created". The physical constants that control the structure of matter have to be extraordinarily finely balanced for the universe to be stable and supportive of life. The probability of them being in the right proportions is so infinitessimally small that it's hard to conceive how it could have happened by accident. It appears - as Freeman John Dyson put it - that “the universe in some sense must have known we were coming.” This apparent 'fine tuning' of the universe to support life is often presented as evidence for a creator. It's also said that appearances can be deceptive. And of course, that's true. But it's normally one particular sense that's deceived, as in the case of an optical illusion. And the most of the time appearances are not deceptive at all. The grass appears to be green, and it is. My hair seems

On one occasion, Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do people say I am”. Perhaps not surprisingly, he got several answers. More surprisingly, one was that “one of the prophets of long ago has come back to life” (Luke 9: 19). Clearly this group of people were more inclined to believe in the resurrection of a Merlin-like figure from long ago than the appearance of a new prophet in and for their own time. That might seem odd, but Israel in Jesus’ time was at something of a nadir. The nation had been a vassal state of five different empires across seven centuries. One century of independence under the Hasmonean dynasty had brought renewed hope, but this was crushed with the Roman conquest of 63 BC. Since then, Israel had been subject to Roman laws and Roman taxation and garrisoned by Roman legions. There was little sign of God intervening on their behalf. Clearly some of the Jews became used to this status quo and had little expectation of anything different. Their focus was not on future

Recently I was made to stop and think when I read again the story of Legion, the tormented man (Luke chapter 8). It really is a strange one. This notorious, violent madman, living half naked among the tombs and out of his mind, is miraculously and instantaneously restored to normality by Jesus. For a long time the whole neighbourhood had lived in fear of him. So you would expect them to react to his healing with joy and relief. Instead, they simply tranferred their fear to the one who brought about his deliverance, and begged Jesus to leave the region. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" (Proverbs 9: 10). But there is also a fear of God that's unhealthy and inappropriate.  And I came to the conclusion that I'm guilty of it, too. My walk with Jesus has not been a straight one, and at times I've been guilty of misapplying faith. Sometimes through simple of errors of judgement. Sometimes when I've attempted to use it as a tool to try to get what I w