Physics-shattering miracles?

One of my favorite questions sent in after my talk on the 25th Nov @1830service was this:

Aristotle talked about a prime mover who kicked things off and left it.  I guess miracles are a sign there is an interventionist God.  But how many truly physics-shattering miracles have we seen?

I've seen a man blinded (probably by cataracts) healed by God while one of my friends was praying for them.  I've prayed with a woman incapacitated by advanced malaria serving her family with food less than 24 hours after being prayed for.  I've seen a friend walk out of his wheelchair and a huge bruise disappear on a different friend. I've heard accurate words of knowledge and seen countless people impacted physiologically and emotionally by the power of the Holy Spirit while being prayed for.

But these are all as nothing...

Can everything be explained without God?

I've been answering a number of questions that were sent in via text or tweet after my talk @1830service on the 25th Nov.  One of the toughest questions that was sent through that night was this:

'Outside the Bible, how can we find concrete evidence to help our friends who are looking for tangible evidence of God?  Everything I day as an example my friend explains it with science.  Even miracles, she doesn't believe in them.  Help!'

Faith with evidence?

Another question that got sent in on Sunday evening was this:

Does a sign which shows the existence of God as a certainty take away the point of faith? - faith being a belief in something you can't prove.

I think this is a great question - it gets at something really central in the Christian life.  We all talk about something called the 'Christian faith'  what is that thing?  Is it like the belief in the existence of Santa - unprovable, false but ultimately quite useful for a small child?  Is it like belief in the existence of gravity - provable, true and ultimately obvious and whether you believe it or not it makes no difference? Or is it something else entirely?

Can Jesus save ET?

There are always one or two questions that make you chuckle when you ask people to fire away. This is one of my favorite ones from Sunday night:

Would God create another planet, in another solar system with the right living conditions to support human life or is it just ours?

But other religions work too!

There were a couple of questions on Sunday night about other religions and this is one of them:

'What about people of other religions who believe that they have been changed in the same way that we, as Christians, feel that we have been changed?'

So I've met a number of Muslims who have had their life changed for the better as a result of following Islam. I've met Jews who have had a deeper sense of morality and care for the world because of their faith. I've met Mormons who have received a sense of purpose and value as a result of their new-found Mormon faith.

Can we trust the Bible?

I got a couple of questions on Sunday night that relate to whether or not we can trust the Bible:

"Didn't Constantine change (or compile) the Bible for his own ends?"

"When was the Old Testament written? How do we know this?"

These are good questions - they show a seriousness of thought.  Some churches and some Christians live in a way which makes you think you have to leave your brain at the door if you want to follow Jesus.  You do not.  Jesus calls us to love him with all our mind - and this involves applying the same level of intellectual rigour to our faith as we do to our studies.  It is a very good idea to ask why Christians trust the Bible.

Grill-a-preacher?!

On Sunday night I preached for half an hour on five signs of God in the world around us.  It's some material I've been working on for quite a few years and I really enjoyed delivering it.

After the sermon we gave the members of the congregation the chance to text in their question and, together with two of the vicars of the Church I attempted to answer about 5 or 6 of them.  The idea was so popular that there's no way we could get through all the questions on Sunday night, so I'm going to attempt to answer a few of them on here over the next few days.

It feels a bit like standing in front of a firing squad - but strangely exhilarating!

Belong Believe Behave

We're in the business of introducing people to Jesus; to building an ever-growing community of people who love and serve him.  But what comes first when a new person comes along?

I've come out of a community of people who firmly taught that you believe first, then you belong, then you behave.  In practice they wanted you to believe first, then behave properly and finally you could belong.

In reaction to this I've known  people who say you need to belong before you believe.  While the church more broadly is known for its moralising and teaching people to behave properly before they can belong and believe.

How about we press into a new dynamic.  Lets leave arguments about the chronology of these processes behind, and begin to understand them like a triangle.  All three happen at the same time.  They all need to grow concurrently.  There's never going to be a single person who cannot belong more fully, believe more truly and behave in a more Godly way.  Everyone needs to be challenged in all three areas.

They're all linked as well... the nature of a triune God tells us that we need to be in community to believe properly and to behave/live in a Godly way.  If you want to behave you have to believe and belong, and if you want to belong properly you have to believe and behave.  No one is more or less important than the others.

Reflections on a Lunchbar talk

For those of you not familiar with a lunchbar (they're a staple of Christian Union activity for years) they're a free lunch provided by a Christian group with a talk addressing an objection that a non-Christian might have to the Christian faith.

I was speaking at one of these events yesterday and my subject was 'Freedom'.  Does Jesus want to set us free or put us in chains?  I felt like I did a good job of presenting on the subject and I might blog some of the ideas soon.

The thing that stuck out to me from this event was the Q&A session afterwards.  A few guys had come along wanting to challenge Christianity and their questions went from: 'why can you trust the Bible?' through 'how can a good God allow suffering?' into statements like 'God is a moral monster', 'the church is evil' and 'there is no evidence for Christianity - i'm a scientist and only believe things for which I have conclusive evidence.'

The outstanding impression I left with was that they didn't actually believe any of these statements.  I gently rebutted each of them and their disbelief was unwavering.

One of the guys came to a noble conclusion that the evidence he is looking for as to whether Christianity is true or not is not in the academic arguments but in the story of believers with transformed lives.  If Christianity is true it must work in transforming people into the image of Christ.

What he needs more than anything else is a Christian friend to share life with - to see living in the light of the truth of the gospel.  He doesn't need them to have the answers - just to show him a life transformed by Jesus.    

His words not mine.

Arguments for the existence of God

My faith in Jesus is not founded on logical arguments but on an experience of God working in and through me.  However if God is real, it would be natural if we could look at his world and observe his handiwork.  This is my effort at trying to clarify how I see God at work in the world every day.

The arguments are well known, the red highlights are what I take from them.  Please note the sequential nature of the conversation:

1.       Classical Ontological Argument (Being)

a.        God is by definition an absolutely perfect being.

b.       But existence is a perfection.

c.        Therefore, God must exist.

Creates the possibility of God’s existence (non-trivial)

2.       Classical Cosmological Argument (Cause)

a.        The universe had a beginning.

b.       Anything that had a beginning must have been caused by something else.

c.        Therefore the universe was caused by something else (a Creator)

Activates God’s existence in our minds

3.       Classical Teleological Argument (Purpose)

a.        All designs imply a designer.

b.       There is a great design in the universe.

c.        Therefore, there must be a Great Designer of the universe.

The God who exists must be more complex, powerful and intelligent than we can conceive

4.       Modern Moral Argument (Law of God)

a.        Moral laws imply a Moral Law Giver.

b.       There is an objective moral law.

c.        Therefore, there is a Moral Law Giver.

This God value’s life and human life above all else in creation

5.       Modern Epistemological Argument (Existence of Rationality)

a.        Human rationality correlates with the rational structure of the world.

b.       If the world developed by chance, it would be highly unlikely that human rationality would correlate with the structure of the world.

c.        Therefore, there must be a Creator that created human rationality to correlate with the rational structure of the world.

We have a unique capacity to know God and mediate between him and the world

Network & Neighbourhood

What is local?

It's a conversation that's relevant to me only as i use the phrase 'local church' maybe 100 times a week.  I have a theological sense of the meaning of the word Church, but not the same clarity around the idea of local.

Bishop Graham Cray has been helpful to me on this.  He's written in answer to the question 'what is local in the 21st Century?' and he affirms the idea that local has become two things: neighbourhood, and network.

Your Neighbourhood is your domestic location, where you watch TV, sleep, and other basic things.  It's basically your home - your digs.

Your Network is your social (or vocational) location.  The places our work takes us, the students on our course or in our societies.

The key thing is that these two ideas coexist in everyone's life to a greater or lesser degree.  Someone who is multilingual and travels the world all the time would have a stronger sense of network whereas someone who is not economically mobile would have a stronger sense of neighbourhood.

Arguments about whether a church should be attractional or incarnational seem to be a little missing the point.  Do we not need network churches to reach those who have a strong sense of networked life?  And do we not need neighbourhood churches to reach those who have a strong sense of neighbourhood?

Smart undergrad students from middle-class families are almost the epitome of networked people.  We build church in Leeds to suit them and to reach them.  Our experience of church as students is almost completely network-led and we sometimes need to remember the value of neighbourhood churches.

[Reference: Matt Wilson, Concrete Faith, pg 113-114 http://eden-network.org/concretefaith/]