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PEP Talk Podcast With Dez Johnston

If you haven’t heard of the Alpha Course, it’s a popular tool used by churches and small groups to create a welcoming place for others to ask questions. This year has seen an sudden move to online Alpha courses, which continue to be effective places for ministry. In this episode, Kristi and Andy welcome the Director of Alpha Scotland to learn about his journey to faith and the various ways he’s seeing the gospel at work today.

With Dez Johnston PEP Talk

Our Guest

Dez Johnston was a Glaswegian bouncer with a drug problem who came to faith 12 years ago. Now an ordained Baptist minister, Dez worked in youth ministry before becoming the Director for Alpha Scotland. He continues to live in the Glasgow area with his wife Fi and two small children.

About PEP Talk

The Persuasive Evangelism Podcast aims to equip listeners to share their faith more effectively in a sceptical world. Each episode, Andy Bannister (Solas) and Kristi Mair (Oak Hill College) chat to a guest who has a great story, a useful resource, or some other expertise that helps equip you to talk persuasively, winsomely, and engagingly with your friends, colleagues and neighbours about Jesus.

A Beginner’s Guide to the Argument from Meaning

A recent poll for a major Internet search company ranked ‘What is the meaning of life?’ as the most important question we can ask as humans. But is it actually possible for life to have meaning if God doesn’t exist? If there is no God, if we are here by chance in an materialistic, atheistic universe, then isn’t life meaningless, valueless and purposeless?

Some atheists have tried to avoid this bleak conclusion. The late Molleen Matsumura, a leading figure in the secular community in the USA, once wrote:

We humanists agree that there is no karmic law, no Grand Plan, and no Grand Planner to make the world make sense for us. Instead of discovering “The Meaning of Life,” we’re faced with the job of creating meaningful lives for ourselves.[1]

But like a canoe made out of newspaper and glue, this leaks all over the place. Let me explain why, if there is no meaning built into the universe, we can’t just try and make a meaning up.

The first problem with trying to invent our own meaning to life, is that this rather assumes the universe cares. If reality consists of nothing more than the slow inexorable grind of the blind deterministic forces of physics, then life doesn’t suddenly acquire meaning just because I say it does. There’s nothing to stop you making as many eloquent pronouncements about the meaning of life as you wish, but it’s only a matter of time before you pass away, leaving your voice as just an echo in the wind.

Cheerful stuff, eh? But there are further problems for atheism. For instance, what happens if my invented meaning contradicts your invented meaning? Let’s imagine that you decide that meaning to your life will be found by embracing the cause of environmentalism: But I, on the other hand, decide that the meaning of my life will be to have a carbon footprint bigger than Beijing. So who wins? There’s simply no reconciling our wildly different ‘meanings’. And given that on atheism there’s no meaning ‘baked’ into reality, no ‘right answer’, then I guess we’re left to fight it out.

Perhaps the underlying problem here is that some atheists are a little confused about the meaning of the word “meaning”. Let me illustrate what I mean (pardon the pun) with an illustration from literature. Consider that wildly popular atheist manifesto, The God Delusion. What’s Richard Dawkins’ book actually about, what’s its meaning? Suppose you and I were hotly debating the intent of the book—and could not agree; we could solve our debate by deferring to Dawkins himself, because as the author, he has the right to determine the book’s meaning. But on the other hand, if there is no author, if The God Delusion were simply created by an explosion in the ScrabbleTM factory, the letter tiles falling in such a way that they created the text by sheer fluke, then there is no ‘meaning’ in the book, only what you or I choose to read into it.[2] What goes for books goes equally for the universe too. No God, no author, no meaning, no purpose.

Over the years, wiser and more thoughtful atheists who have pondered the question of life’s meaning have been willing to admit that they have a real problem in this area. In one of his most famous essays, Bertrand Russell, arguably one of the most influential atheists in the twentieth century, wrote:

No fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins … Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.[3]

Whilst these are not jolly or optimistic words, I appreciate Russell’s honesty. If there is no God, then humankind is not designed, purposed, or planned: there is nothing we are intended to be. All that we hold dear, all of our ambitions, goals and accomplishments are pure accidents of atoms. Furthermore, all achievement—the whole cathedral of human accomplishment—is destined to become no more than rubble, buried beneath the debris of the end of the universe: utterly ruined, pitch dark, cold as death, achingly alone.[4] Given this one and only certainty, our only option, says Russell, is to embrace despair—to use it as the sole foundation on which we can build.

Is there any escape from despair for an atheist? One recent secular writer who has tried to avoid Russell’s conclusion is ex-Muslim Alom Shaha. In his witty little book, The Young Atheist’s Handbook, Alom thinks that cake might help us. Yes, seriously. Cake. “Crumbs!” I hear you exclaim. And you’d be right; Alom writes:

People seem to struggle with the notion that this life is all there is. Many seem to think that if they accept that this is it, life has no meaning. A friend once compared this to saying that a cake has no meaning once you’ve eaten it. A cake provides you with a pleasurable experience, a focus for celebration, a memory, and even perhaps a wish. An eaten cake will give you energy. Some of its atoms may literally become part of you through the processes that are continually replacing the billions of cells in your body. Similarly, when you die, your memory and the things you did will live on for a while, but your atoms will live on for a lot longer, becoming part of other objects in the universe.[5]

Does this work? Not really. The American psychologist Roy Baumeister, in a very helpful and influential book, once noted that the reason humans struggle with questions like “the meaning of life” is because it’s too big a question. Better to break it down into four simpler questions::[6] the questions of identity (Who am I?); of value (Do I matter?); of purpose (Why am I here?); and of agency (Can I make a difference?). Does Alom’s cake-orientated-approach-to-meaning help the angst-ridden atheist here?

Well first, consider identity. On atheism, who are we? It seems clear that are nothing more than just a collection of atoms and molecules—in the same way as a piece of cake, a piece of wood, or even a stagnant puddle are collections of atoms. If atheistic materialism is true, we really can’t properly answer the question of identity.

What about value? Alom seems to suggest that a slice of cake has meaning because of what it can provide: a pleasurable experience.[7] The problem with applying this to human beings, of course, is that it is thoroughly utilitarian, a philosophy that is deeply troubling because it tends to see human beings as means rather than ends. It appreciates what a person can do; but doesn’t value them for what they are.

Things get even worse when we turn to Baumeister’s third question, that of purpose. For Alom, a cake has purpose—it can satiate my hunger, but of course those were not purposes the cake picked for itself, they were purposes I gave it. In other words, unless purpose is provided from outside, there then is none at all, for cake or us. And in an atheistic universe there is no purpose, things just are.

Finally, what, of Baumeister’s fourth question, that of agency: can we make a difference in the long term? Yes, says Alom Shaha, in the same way that the cake can: just as the fruitcake’s atoms become part of us, so our atoms will outlive us, going on to become parts of other things. Of course, that presumably means that my atoms aren’t really mine, are they? They’re just passing through, temporarily occupying the space that comprises me on their way to becoming something else. These may one day end up in a murderer or a life-saving medicine and the atoms don’t care which. Why would they?

We have had a little fun here, but I want to give credit, too: for all of the foolishness of the illustration, Alom Shaha has recognised that atheists have a real problem. Namely that we cannot live as if life is meaningless. No matter how beautiful the rhetoric, Bertrand Russell was simply wrong—you cannot build upon unyielding despair, rather you need to find a framework that enables you to answer those questions of identity, value, purpose and meaning. We need more than nihilism, we more than cake, we need more than atheism.

So what about Christianity. I passionately believe that Christianity answers the questions of identity, value, purpose and agency better than any other worldview I have investigated in my decades of studying the world’s religions and beliefs.

For example, concerning identity, Christianity says that you are not an accident of atoms, but rather that you were fashioned, shaped and created by the creator God.

What about value? Economic theory tells us that something’s value is determined by what somebody is willing to pay for it. Christianity says that God was willing to pay an incredible price for each one of us, the price of his son, Jesus Christ.

Concerning purpose, Christianity claims that there is indeed a purpose, one baked into reality and that purpose is to know God and enjoy him forever.

And finally, what about agency, the power to make a real difference? Christianity says that we can make a difference if our efforts, our energy, our work is caught up in and with and is part of God’s greater purposes. Then our strivings cannot merely outlive us, but can be revealed to be part of something bigger, beautiful, more real; the kingdom that God is building for eternity.

If Christianity is true, really true, then life does have meaning and purpose. And part of that purpose is that we would come to know the purposer, the God who gives us, freely and wonderfully, identity, value, and purpose. Those are all absent in atheism: but on offer in and through Jesus to all who would truly repent and believe.


Andy Bannister Short Answers 13Dr Andy Bannister is the Director of the Solas Centre for Public Christianity

Further Reading:

McGrath, Alister, Surprised by Meaning: Science, Faith, and How We Make Sense of Things. Louiseville, (KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011.)
Guinness, Os, The Long Journey Home: A Guide to Your Search for the Meaning of Life. (Colorado Springs, CO: Waterbrook Press, 2001)

 

[1]        Molleen Matsumura, ‘Ingredients of a Life Worth Living’ in Dale McGowan et al (Editors), Raising Freethinkers: A Practical Guide for Parenting Beyond Belief (New York: AMACOM, 2009) 129 (emphasis mine).

[2]        See the discussion in Richard Taylor, Metaphysics (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1983) 100-105.

[3]        Bertrand Russell, ‘A Free Man’s Worship’, available online at http://www3.nd.edu/~afreddos/courses/ 264/fmw.htm

[4]        Like Skegness on a cold February evening.

[5]        Shaha, The Young Atheist’s Handbook, 36.

[6]        His work is nicely summarized in McGrath, Surprised by Meaning, 104-112.

[7]        I often find that cake leads to a wish for more cake. Indeed, so powerfully does cake seem to attract cake, that were there not a balancing force the universe would surely collapse in on itself as it crossed the Cake Event Horizon. Thus my hunch is that much of the missing ‘dark matter’ that befuddles physicists is actually Pepto-Bismol.

Sharing the Good News Over the Dinner Table – Andy Bannister at the C.S. Lewis Institute

Andy Bannister reports from Washington DC

At The CS Lewis Institute in the USA I did two things.

The first is that I recorded a podcast with my friend, Randy Newman, he’s coming up soon on our Solas PEP Talk podcast (The Persuasive Evangelism Podcast), when he was in Scotland. So when I was in the USA he returned the favour and I was guest on his podcast. Randy is the author of a really helpful book called “Questioning Evangelism” that we recommend a lot at Solas, which is all about how you can use good questions in evangelism.

That was also the subject of an event I spoke at for the C.S. Lewis Institute, in Washington DC. The title of the talk was “How to talk about Jesus without ruining the holiday meal”. The talk was presented in the run-up to Thanksgiving in the USA and then Christmas in the UK. The issue is that a lot of Christians get quite encouraged at these times, because non-Christian friends and family members might actually come to church; and if not they might come to dinner! The pressure on Christians is that on one hand they want to talk about their faith during what is, after all, ‘religious occasion’, but on the other hand they are afraid of being the person who wrecked Christmas dinner because they started an argument about religion – and what if they never speak to you again!

So I shared some of the stuff we regularly do at Solas, about how to have good conversations about Jesus in a natural way, and angling that into the Christmas season. You can hear the whole talk here.

 

A chapter of Randy Newman’s other book, Unlikely Converts is available here on the Solas website.

 

Why Are Some Atheists So Afraid of Changing Their Minds?

Why are *some* atheists so afraid of changing their mind? Whilst there are many atheists who are thoughtful and winsome, willing to engage in substantive discussions about the big questions of life, others will do anything to avoid thinking and resort instead to hurling insults and abuse, or simply parroting soundbites, refusing to consider anything that might challenge their worldview. In this Short Answers video, Andy offers a challenge and some advice for this kind of skeptic—and reminds us that if you’re not willing to put your cherished beliefs to the test, you can never be sure they’re true.

Do check out the additional resources Andy mentions: his article, “How to Avoid Being a Village Atheist”, can be found at http://www.andybannister.net/how-to-avoid-being-a-village-atheist/ whilst Rebecca McLaughlin’s book, “Confronting Christianity”, is here: https://www.rebeccamclaughlin.org/confronting-christianity.

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Developing a Culture of Invitation

In 2004 a simple truth turned my life around – that before you can welcome someone to your church you have to go through the fear barrier of inviting them! I have never met anyone who goes to an unwelcoming church but how welcoming can we be if we are not inviting?

Back then I was working on the Back to Church Sunday project, which developed in 18 countries and has allowed me to conduct over 900+ focus groups across multiple denominations and streams. In my research I discovered that, although most of us would like to invite people to church, 80 to 95 per cent of us have no intention of doing so.

Other research underlines this. The Evangelical Alliance’s ‘21st Century Evangelicals’ discovered almost two in every three Christians feel they have missed a chance to speak to others about God in the past four months, almost half admitting they were ‘just too scared’ to talk about their faith with non-Christians.

My curiosity focused on the gap between desire and intention. Some call it the confidence gap. I would call it the courage gap and suggest it is the place we meet God.

The reason we have no intention of inviting is the emotion of fear. That’s what those in the 900+focus groups told me when asked to identify why they don’t invite: fear of rejection, fear of disappointment, fear of failure, fear of embarrassment and more. (One little difference in Scottish Christianity would be that I often hear the word ‘reticent’ used when describing why we don’t invite ).They have someone in mind God may be prompting them to invite but fear paralyses them. Fear can bubble wrap us in unlived missional lives.

In my research I also discovered that if you ask a congregation, ‘is there someone God has laid on your heart to invite?’ 70 percent of Christians already have the name of the person. This has led me to conclude that God is the ultimate inviter. God is already at work. All we have to do is ask God who to invite and be obedient in God’s strength.

In scripture we read of God constantly saying to individuals: “Fear not”. Mission is, therefore, first of all a discipleship issue. This means we must help believers discover and experience that God is alive, can be trusted and is calling them to mission, and that maybe the first emotion we feel when God calls is fear, because God often calls us to go to places that humanly speaking we don’t want to go

So how does a church move from just being a welcoming church to an inviting church that experiences the presence of God through mission?

There have to be three paradigm shifts – three ways to think differently and behave differently.

First we must grasp that success is not getting a “yes” to an invitation – as getting that is God’s job. And nor is getting a “no” a failure. Success is simply to make the invitation. As the Apostle Paul says, “I Paul planted Apollos watered but it is God that gives the increase.” (1Cor3:6)

Second, as churches we must be as focused on the inviter as we are on the invited person. When God called Moses to invite Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go, it was also to form Moses into the person God wanted him to be. Mission is as much about Christians growing in faith as it is in others finding it. This I think is the main point I am trying to get across to those of us in leadership today

Third, God is the ultimate inviter. God is already at work. All we have to do is ask God who to invite and be obedient in His strength. The 70 per cent of congregational members who already have someone laid on their heart to invite to church shows that God has already invited them to invite.

To help individual Christians understand and apply this, I work with folk through a very simple process. I mentor congregational members through their own attempts at a personal invitation and then ask them to mentor another congregational member through a similar invitation, all the time looking for the presence of God and what they have learned. Often this leads me to being invited to do a workshop on a culture of invitation at the church to walk a wider group through the process

Then I visit the church to teach them the three paradigms – the new ways to think and behave – and bring these to life through the experiences, good and bad, of their leader and congregational member. These experiences become central to helping the whole congregation face their fears.

Then comes an activity called Invitation Heart or Cross Sunday. Keeping all that they have been taught and have heard in mind, they are helped to prayerfully identify who God might have laid on their heart to invite. They put the person’s initials on a post-it note and pin the note to a heart or a cross at the front of the church. The following week they are encouraged to share what God did when they stepped out in faith to invite.

Some remarkable stories come out of this simple structure. Nigel Barge of Torrance Church of Scotland describes the process in this way

For along time as a congregation, we have been introspective and this process has been an important part of turning us outward and inviting others to share in the life of the church.

Fearful? Of course. That is exactly the point where God speaks to us all! Ask Moses, Joseph, Elijah, Mary and a bunch of shepherds on a hill.


Michael Harvey leads the National Weekend of Invitation, To find out more click here.

 

St. Peter’s Church | Sunday 15 November 2020

Sharing Hope: Good News for Tough Times

Here you will find links to the various resources that Andy mentioned during his talk (and some bonus ones). We hope you find these useful …

First, you can download of copy of Andy’s slides as a PDF here.

Second, some of the books that Andy mentioned:

Third, a really useful and practical book on everyday evangelism:

For more information about the Solas Centre for Public Christianity that Andy Bannister leads, visit www.solas-cpc.org. In particular, do check out our SHORT/ANSWERS video series. Over a million people have now watched, downloaded, or shared one of these videos with friends. They’re a great, free evangelistic resource. 

We also hold regular free webinars and have an archive of previous ones. Here are previous videos related to tonight’s topic:

If you’d like to help support Solas’s work of evangelism and evangelism training across the UK, you can do for as little as £3 a month and we’ll send you a choice of one of several great books as a gift.

How to Avoid Being a Village Atheist

It is never a good idea to try to set fire to your shorts whilst wearing them, I thought to myself, as Darren departed the football field shrieking, white smoke trailing behind him. During my high school years, Darren was the class idiot. (I think he’d been aiming at class joker but had missed, badly: as somebody once remarked, many people who attempt to be a wit only make it halfway). Darren was always ready to interrupt a class with a stupid remark or snide heckle, was often in trouble because of pranks or stupid stunts gone wrong, and was the first person I ever saw wounded off a sports field with scorch marks.

Every community has its brilliant members, its leading lights and all have their single-watt flickering light bulbs, their village idiots. This goes for every community, not least the atheist and secular community.

Over the years it has been my pleasure to read, learn from, and sometimes debate with a wide range of brilliant atheist thinkers and writers. From Michael Ruse to Mary Midgley, Julian Baggini to Luc Ferry, there are many secular thinkers whose work is thoughtful and engaging. Both offline and online I’ve also met thousands of atheists of all ages and backgrounds (some of whom I have had the privilege to call friends) who whilst disagreeing with what I believe have been intelligent, articulate, and thoughtful.

But there are exceptions. The atheist and secular community also has its fruity and nuttier varieties and that led some writers, a few generations ago, to coin the term ‘Village Atheist’ to describe those who let the rest of the secular tribe down by their antics.

Whilst the Village Atheist has always been around, their presence has been amplified by the Internet for to misquote the proverb, a fool and his opinion are soon tweeted. Before the advent of social media, Village Atheists lurked in the dark corners of pubs muttering incoherently, whilst a few of the more gregarious ones clubbed together and formed sad little societies on university campuses. But once the Internet took off, suddenly Village Atheists discovered a currency for badly Photoshopped memes or sarcastic soundbites.

This has proved frustrating to the wider secular community, who have in recent years been working hard to brand themselves as rational and reasonable. The atheist enfant terrible, Richard Dawkins, himself not immune from the metaphorical equivalent of striking matches near his nether regions, contributed to this rebranding exercise, at one point suggesting that atheists should use the term ‘Bright’ to describe themselves. But it’s hard to sustain that image when there’s a local Village Atheist in the corner, muttering and mumbling pearls of wisdom like ‘religion is for idiots’ whilst flossing his teeth with a live electricity cable.

Hallmarks of Village Atheism

So if you’re an atheist or secular type, how do you know if you’re a Village Atheist, or in danger of heading that way. Here to help you out are thirteen hallmarks of Village Atheism:

1. The tendency to mindlessly parrot soundbites

Village Atheists have a habit of lobbing tired old atheist catchphrases into the conversation and then chickening out when asked to defend them. I see this regularly on my social media feeds. A passing Village Atheist sees a link to, say, a book review by a Christian philosopher and, wiping the flecks of foam from his mouth rapidly types: ‘Belief in God is irrational’. When you politely ask: ‘Really? Tell me why you think that?’ there is usually silence or, if I’m really lucky, another entirely random secular soundbite.

2. A binary view of the world

Village Atheists tend to divide the world into polar opposites: rational sceptics versus irrational died-in-the-wool-faith-heads (that’s one of Dawkins’ more charming aphorisms, probably coined on a day he’d misplaced his Ritalin). Somehow Village Atheists missed the part of growing up where you discover that people can hold a different view to you and that doesn’t make them stupid. Over the years I’ve met incredibly smart religious people and incredibly smart secular people; I’ve also met religious people and secular people who are as dumb as rocks. What makes the difference is not a person’s belief (or the lack thereof) in God, but their willingness to explain their reasons and listen to and engage with those who disagree.

3. A lack of awareness of the foundations of your own beliefs

A classic hallmark of Village Atheism is the inability to think about your own dearly held views and what supports them. I remember a Twitter exchange with an enthusiastic young secularist (so passionate, he’d adorned his social media profile with a weird mash up of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and Christopher Hitchens, which had the unfortunate side effect of making Hitchens look like Medusa on a bad hair day). During our discussion, the atheist kept insisting that ‘Any fool knows human beings are just matter and molecules’ and yet, five minutes later, was accusing Christianity of being ‘bad for human rights’. When I politely asked how he thought human beings had ‘rights’ if we were ‘just matter’ he admitted he’d never thought about that question.

Similarly, if you’re an atheist keen to use your Reason (capital ‘R’, of course) to beat up on those superstitious religious types, perhaps you might want to think about tough questions like why you can trust your reason and thinking in the first place if atheism is true. As the secular scientist, J. B. S. Haldane famously put it:

If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically.[1]

4. Ignorance of your own intellectual tradition

When one reads more widely in atheist literature, you quickly find secular writers very willing to raise tough questions that require real thought to grapple with. For example, Bertrand Russell, one of the most influential atheist intellectuals of the twentieth-century, wrote about the conclusions that flow if atheism is true and how, logically, they lead to despair:

Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins … Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.[2]

Unfortunately Village Atheists tend to be completely unaware of any of this. I remember a debate I did at Hull University with Andrew Copson, then head of the British Humanist Association on the topic of ‘Can Life Have Meaning Without God?’. Toward the end of the evening, Andrew grumbled words to the effect of ‘I don’t know why Christians think that if there is no God, there any implications for hope or meaning’. I replied: ‘Andrew, I haven’t quoted a single Christian thinker all evening; all the quotes about meaninglessness I have used have been from atheist writers. This is your own team!’

5. Cutting off the branch you’re sitting on

Another classic sign that you may be a Village Atheist is that you merrily make sweeping statements that actually destroy your own position in the process. For example, one conversation on social media recently went like this:

Atheist:    ‘You’re only a Christian because you were raised in a Christian family.’

Andy:       ‘Were your parents religious, by any chance?’

Atheist:    ‘No, they were freethinking sceptics!’

Andy:       ‘Aha, so you’re only an atheist because you were raised in an atheist family, then?’

And with a sickening thud, the flightless bird of atheism crashed to the forest floor, after having chain-sawed through the branch it was sulkily squatting on.

6. Laziness

Life can be busy if you’re a Village Atheist: so many memes to share, tweets to misspell, and people to shout at. That leaves little time for actually bothering to read or watch things that might challenge your position. (I once met an excitable sceptic who told me ‘I’ve read Christopher Hitchens’s book God is Not Great fifty times’. ‘Fascinating,’ I replied, ‘how many rebuttals to it have you read?’ Answer came there none.

But there’s an even greater laziness that Village Atheists sometimes exhibit and that consists of posting a snarky remark underneath, say, a Facebook link to a video or essay without reading or watching it. I’ve sadly lost count of how many times a Village Atheist has popped up on our Solas Facebook feed, typed ‘But what about …?’ only to have me point out that this very thing was addressed in the video or blog post.

7. Lack of emotional intelligence

Most normal people figure out pretty early on in life that it’s good manners (and a recipe for not getting blunt objects thrown at you) to listen, be thoughtful, take your turn in conversations, and generally avoid behaving like a twerp. And, again, most atheists do a great job—I have had thousands of fantastic conversations online and offline with committed sceptics and we’ve managed to do that without walloping each other. But Village Atheists often lack an ability to read emotional cues, show empathy, or give even a nod to the kind of social graces that the typical five-year-old has already mastered.

8. Caricaturing the beliefs of others

The Village Atheist has no time for trying to understand what somebody actually believes and respond to that; far better to accuse Christians of worshipping a ‘Dead Zombie Jewish Carpenter’ as a Village Atheist charmingly tweeted at me on one occasion. Not merely is this childish, it reduces the whole conversation to the level of the mud pit, as Christians can equally caricature atheism with stupid soundbites: ‘Atheism: The belief that in the beginning there was nothing, and then the nothing did something and now we have a universe.’ Does this get us anywhere? Not really. (And, yes, there are Village Christians as well as Village Atheists, both throwing their memes around like monkeys tossing poop at each other).

9. Childishness

Another classic sign of Village Atheism is to take the most simplistic, low-level version of an argument that you can possibly find and respond to that, rather than bother to think about the strongest form of what Christians are saying. (Sometimes this tips over into a full-blown straw-man fallacy, attacking something that no Christian actually believes). I’m in two minds as to whether this Village Atheist tendency is cowardice (I’m too scared to read a big book by a grown-up Christian thinker, they might convince me!) or immaturity. As C. S. Lewis, the Oxford professor and Christian philosopher, once remarked:

Such people put up a version of Christianity suitable for a child of six and make that the object of their attack. When you try to explain the Christian doctrine as it is really held by an instructed adult, they then complain that you are making their heads turn round and that it is all too complicated and that if there really were a God they are sure He would have made ‘religion’ simple, because simplicity is so beautiful, etc.[3]

10. Overly focussed on the West

There’s a tendency for Village Atheists to ignore the rest of the world outside of the West when they think about Christianity. Thus they make comments about the Church shrinking without being aware of the rapid growth of Christianity in places like China or South America. I even caught one Village Atheist mouthing off about how Christianity was a ‘European faith’ and I had to gently point out that Christianity began in the Middle East and that the majority of Christians now live in the southern hemisphere. A cautionary note to atheists: when making a sweeping statement about Christians, perhaps think how your words might sound to somebody who is from Asia, or who is being persecuted, or who is poor, or who isn’t as privileged as you are.

11. Confusing science with scientism

This, sadly, is a common trait marking Village Atheists and it manifests itself as a temptation to think that science and only science can give us any access to knowledge. Who could think anything so daft, I hear you cry? Well, here’s a typical example:

Science is the only philosophical construct we have to determine truth with any degree of reliability.[4]

That pronouncement was made by Harry Kroto, a man who is no dribbling halfwit but rather a Nobel Prize winning chemist. Here’s another example from another leading atheist, Peter Atkins of the University of Oxford:

Humanity should be proud that he [sic] has actually stumbled into this way of understanding the world and that it really can attack every problem that concerns humanity with the prospect of an outcome. Science also gives you the promise of understanding while you are alive, whilst religion offers the prospect of understanding when you are dead.[5]

On many levels, I can understand why science has been elevated to religion-like status: it has graphs, statistics, flashing lights, and Professor Brian Cox. It also attracts huge amounts of funding, and, of course, even a gibbon looks intelligent if you stick him in a lab coat and give him a pair of spectacles. But for all that, science is only one way of knowing and there are a myriad other ways: everything from economics to geography, art history to philosophy, and a thousand other disciplines beside. That science can’t answer everything is also shown by simply asking the question: ‘What experiment would you perform to prove it can answer everything?’ When Village Atheists wave ‘science’ around like a monkey brandishing a bone, it does science a terrible disservice as well as making themselves look silly.

12. Tribalism

A sure sign that you have been infected with Village Atheism is that you don’t just hate religious people, you go totally nuclear on anybody who disagrees with your favourite writer. (‘Dawkins is never wrong!’ one Village Atheist once shrieked hysterically across the room at another student at a university event I was at. Their poor target wasn’t a Christian, just an agnostic who had dared to say they had read Dawkins and didn’t agree with everything). This tribal fury is directed with particular ire onto those who dare to leave the atheist camp. Thus when Anthony Flew, one of the most celebrated atheist philosophers of his era, moved from atheism to theism,[6] Richard Dawkins let rip with both barrels, implying that Flew was going senile,[7] unable to comprehend that somebody might consider the arguments carefully and change their position. Flew wrote a very witty response, which concluded:

This whole business makes all too clear that Dawkins is not interested in the truth as such. He is primarily concerned to discredit an ideological opponent by any available means. That would itself constitute sufficient reason for suspecting that the whole enterprise of The God Delusion was not, as it at least pretended to be, an attempt to discover and spread knowledge of the existence or nonexistence of God but rather an attempt to spread the author’s own convictions in this area.[8]

13. Magical and naïve thinking

Village Atheists have a tendency to uncritically swallow any number of beliefs, but one of the most common is their insistence on the idea that if one removed religion, the world would magically be a peaceful harmonious place, with kittens dancing with unicorns, and rainbows and tinsel bedecking the clouds. For many Village Atheists, John Lennon’s song Imagine has been adopted as something of an anthem, especially that bit about imagining a world without any religion and all the people living in peace. (Imagine also asks us to picture a world without possessions and greed, a bit, er, rich coming from a man who died with a net worth of 800 million dollars). But to anybody a little more critical, some questions arise: haven’t there been (and still are) secular states that are pretty violent, everything from Stalin’s Russia to Pol Pot’s Cambodia to and Mao’s China? The secular historian Tom Holland also points that Village Atheists frequently fail to realise that much of what they enjoy in the west (freedom of thought and speech; human rights and dignity etc.) is actually the legacy of Christianity.[9]

Fascinated by God

For all of the annoying traits that characterise Village Atheists, I still find them a fascinating sub-species of secularism. I’m particularly fascinated by how they’re drawn to talking so much about God (as one comedian once quipped: ‘Nobody seems to talk as much about God as those who claim they don’t believe in him’). What is it that draws angry Village Atheists to hang out on religious pages on social media, for example, furiously typing snarky comments like a monkey trying to turn out a page of Hamlet? What motivates them? I don’t spend hundreds of hours trolling atheist social media accounts—why do Village Atheist types spend so much of their time doing so to Christians? I do wonder if the fact is that they can’t help themselves, indeed it’s almost as if they were wired to be drawn toward God and thus to slightly paraphrase Shakespeare: ‘Methinks some of them doth protest too greatly.’

The Gravitational Pull of Fundamentalism

But what’s the attraction of Village Atheism? Why would you spend your time flinging soundbites, shouting at people, searching out things you disagree with just so you can sound off? In some ways it reminds me of the famous cartoon:

But then I also think it’s more than that: namely that Village Atheism is at its root a form of fundamentalism and fundamentalism can be deeply attractive to a certain narrow kind of mind. For starters, it’s safe (you can shut the doors and windows of your mind and not let anything in that disturbs you). Furthermore, if you’re unsure of your identity and place in the world, fundamentalism can help build it: in that sense, Village Atheism is a bit like a cat spraying around the house. You mark your territory, your viewpoint, and woe betide anybody who seeks to question you.

And then Village Atheism is also very modern, a low calorie atheism-lite for the social media age. Social media tends to flatten everything to the banal, shallow, and ridiculous and it’s done that for some forms of atheism. What philosopher David Bentley Hart said of New Atheism holds for Village Atheism too (and the New and Village varieties of atheism are close cousins):

In a sense, the triviality of the movement is its chief virtue. It is a diverting alternative to thinking deeply. It is a narcotic. In our time, to strike a lapidary phrase, irreligion is the opiate of the bourgeoisie, the sigh of the oppressed ego, the heart of a world filled with tantalizing toys.[10]

Sidelining the Idiots

Thankfully the vast majority of atheists are not Village Atheists. I remember a wonderful radio debate with the atheist philosopher, Michael Ruse, who is incredibly smart, very funny, and a delight to dialogue with. During that debate Michael said:

Christianity is a very serious answer to a very serious question. I have no time for anybody who thinks they can dismiss it with soundbites. It is, I say again, a very serious answer to a very serious question. I don’t believe that is the right answer, but nevertheless, as an atheist I need to consider it and weigh it carefully.

Many atheists are also as much disturbed by the Darrens in their midst as I am. On one occasion, after describing to an atheist friend in Toronto (who was at that point the leader of a secular organisation) some very rude messages I’d been sent online by an atheist, he looked at me with a pained expression and said: ‘Please, please don’t judge the secular community by that behaviour. Every community has its the lunatics.’

He’s absolutely right. Every community does have its lunatics, the atheist community and the Christian community. Christians have Fred Phelps; atheists have Ricky Gervais. Both our communities have our Village Idiots attempting to wreck the conversation for everybody.

What Michael Ruse said about Christianity, I would equally say about atheism. Atheism deserves to be taken seriously, its arguments listened to, its advocates engaged with, and those who identify as atheists taken seriously. Let’s leave the Village Atheists in the corner to set fire to their shorts whilst those of us who are capable of a grown up discussion can get on with the real conversation about the big questions that really matter.


For Further Reading

Whilst I was working on this essay, I came across two other writers (one Christian, one secular) who had similar concerns to me and had also written critiques of Village Atheism. Do check out their work:


Endnotes

[1]      J. B. S. Haldane, ‘When I Am Dead’ in On Being the Right Size and Other Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985) p. 30.

[2]      Bertrand Russell, ‘A Free Man’s Worship’, available online at https://www3.nd.edu/~afreddos/courses/264/fmw.htm

[3]      C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Glasgow: Collins, 1990) p.36.

[4]      Cited by atheist P. Z. Myers in the article ‘There’s Something Obvious Missing From This Argument …’ on his Science Blogs website (now a dead link, alas, but accessible via The Internet Archive here).

[5]      Peter Atkins, Burning Questions TV documentary, Episode 2: ‘God and Science’. I resisted the temptation to point out that especially in chemistry, scientists who are not too careful may actually end up combining understanding with death. “Is this hydrogen? Is this a naked flame? Why, I do believe th—” BANG!.

[6]      See Antony Flew, There is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind (New York: HarperOne, 2007).

[7]      Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (London: Transworld, 2006) p.82.

[8]      Antony Flew, ‘Documentation: A Reply to Richard Dawkins’, First Things, December 2008 (https://www.firstthings.com/article/2008/12/001-documentation-a-reply-to-richard-dawkins).

[9]      See Tom Holland, Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind (London: Little, Brown, 2019).

[10]    David Bentley Hart, The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), p.313.

PEP Talk Podcast With Jim Grimmer

The workplace is not a place for rocking the boat by discussing politics or religion, is it? Not always the case, as today’s guest has found the business environment incredibly ripe for ministry. Jim Grimmer chats with Andy and Kristi about how he’s using his Christian faith to fill the voids of personal and spiritual support found in many workplaces.

With Jim Grimmer PEP Talk

Our Guest

Jim Grimmer has over 40 years work experience, firstly 20 years as a Police Officer, including roles in serious crime and major incident investigation and for the past 20 years in Business Development, General Management & Director roles within the Oil & Gas industry.

In 2005, he was awarded the ‘Iraq Reconstruction Medal’ following a year located in the Maysan Province of Iraq, mentoring the new Iraqi Police Service on behalf of the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office.

A co-founder and trustee of The Business Connection Charity,  in November 2017, Jim stepped into the role of CEO of P3 Business Care,  a social enterprise he created to bring personal proactive care, support & encouragement to people working in the 9-5 corporate sector.

About PEP Talk

The Persuasive Evangelism Podcast aims to equip listeners to share their faith more effectively in a sceptical world. Each episode, Andy Bannister (Solas) and Kristi Mair (Oak Hill College) chat to a guest who has a great story, a useful resource, or some other expertise that helps equip you to talk persuasively, winsomely, and engagingly with your friends, colleagues and neighbours about Jesus.

Edinburgh Bible College Sessions (November 2020)

Andy really enjoyed teaching at Edinburgh Bible College on 11 November 2020. Below, you can find links to Andy’s slides and to various articles, videos, and resources related to each topic.

The Uniqueness of Jesus in a World of Other Faiths

Download a copy of Andy’s slides as a PDF here.

Read chapter 3 of Andy’s book, The Atheist Who Didn’t Exist which has an extensive section on this topic. You can buy a copy from any good bookshop, online or offline, or find out how to get a copy as a gift by clicking here.

(And look out for Andy’s new bookDo Muslims and Christians Worship the Same God?, coming next March. If you sign up for the Solas email newsletter, we’ll let you know when it launches (and send you a discount code!)

Check out this free ebookIslam in Context by Andy Bannister and Tanya Walker. You can download it from the Solas website here.

Two great books to read around this theme are:

Watch a Solas Short Answers video:

A Duty of Care: The Christian Foundations of Environmental Concern

Download a copy of Andy’s slides as a PDF here.

Watch the lectures from the RZIM Canada Summit “All Nature Sings: God and the Natural World” here.

Two great books to read around this theme are:

Watch a Solas Short Answers video:

 

Genexsis Course Sessions

The Genexsis Course 2020

Andy really enjoyed being part of this year’s Genexsis Course and speaking at two sessions. Below, you can find links to Andy’s slides and to various articles, videos, and resources related to each topic.

Mind and Consciousness

Download a copy of Andy’s slides as a PDF here.

Read chapter 7 of Andy’s book, The Atheist Who Didn’t Exist which has an extensive section on this topic. You can buy a copy from any good bookshop, online or offline, or find out how to get a copy as a gift by clicking here.

Read these two helpful articles in our “Beginner’s Guide to Apologetics” series:

Three great books to read around this theme are:

Good, Evil, and Morality

Download a copy of Andy’s slides as a PDF here.

Read chapter 8 of Andy’s book, The Atheist Who Didn’t Exist which covers this topic. You can buy a copy from any good bookshop, online or offline, or find out how to get a copy as a gift by clicking here.

Three great books to read around this theme are:

Read these two helpful articles in our “Beginner’s Guide to Apologetics” series:


If you enjoyed Andy’s sessions, make sure to check out his new bookDo Muslims and Christians Worship the Same God?, coming next March. If you sign up for the Solas email newsletter, we’ll let you know when it launches (and send you a discount code!)

For more information about the Solas Centre for Public Christianity that Andy leads, visit www.solas-cpc.org. In particular, do check out our SHORT/ANSWERS video series. Over a million people have now watched, downloaded, or shared one of these videos with friends. They’re a great, free evangelistic resource. Here are a few in particular connected to the theme on which Andy spoke at the Big Weekend at Home:

If you’d like to help support Solas’s work of evangelism and evangelism training across the UK, you can do for as little as £3 a month and we’ll send you a choice of one of several great books as a gift.

A Beginner’s Guide to the Argument from Suffering

In one of the first significant conversations I had on the subject of suffering, my Aunt Regina expressed to me how difficult it is to see her son Charles – my cousin – struggle with a serious mental illness. When I started spouting some of my abstract, philosophical ideas about why God might allow suffering, Aunt Regina turned to me and said, “But Vince, that doesn’t speak to me as a mother.”

Suffering is very real and very personal, and since that conversation with my aunt I am always hesitant to address it briefly. Here I will try to provide a few starting points for further thought and prayer, but please forgive me if anything I say comes across as if I am not taking seriously any real life suffering you are dealing with.

Let me begin to sketch four approaches to thinking about the challenge of suffering:

  1. The Limits of Human Knowledge

One of the assumptions smuggled into the thought that suffering disproves the existence of God is this:

If God has good reasons for allowing suffering, we should know what those reasons are.

But why think that?

When parents decide to move their family from one city to another, this can be very difficult for a young child. In the moment, the child might be certain that all happiness is behind him, that his parents hate him, and that for all practical purposes his life is over.

And yet even such outrage on the part of a child does not mean that the child’s parents are wrong to make the move, and it does not mean that they don’t love him. In fact, it’s very likely that it was precisely the good of their children that weighed heavily in the parents’ decision. You can see the analogy: If parents’ reasons are sometimes beyond what a child can fully grasp, why then should we be surprised when some of God’s reasons are beyond what we can fully grasp? This general approach is referred to as ‘Sceptical Theism’ in academic philosophy. But it’s not a new idea:

  “For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
       neither are your ways my ways,”
       declares the LORD.”

  “As the heavens are higher than the earth,
       so are my ways higher than your ways
       and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9)[i]

If God is as great as Christians claim he is, then sometimes not fully grasping the fullness of his reasons is exactly what we should expect. And if it’s exactly what we should expect to find if God does exist, then our finding it can’t be strong evidence that God does not exist.

  1. A Response of Freedom

What kind of world God would have made depends on what God values. According to Christianity, what God values above all is relationship. But for relationship to be meaningful, it must be freely chosen; for relationship to be freely chosen, there must be the possibility of it being rejected; and wherever there is the possibility of rejecting relationship, there is also the possibility of pain and suffering.

The Bible affirms this truth from its very first pages. We find a story the first people who are in intimate relationship with God but then they sin, which starts them down a path. First we’re told that they felt shame, then they hid from God. Next they begin accusing each other. Adam pointed at Eve and said “She did it!” From temptation to doubt to disobedience to shame to hiding to finger-pointing to suffering.

But here’s the most amazing part of the Fall story. The first persons have rejected God. They’ve decided they’d rather be their own gods. And how does God respond? He goes looking for them; he pursues them; he calls out to them: “Where are you?” (Genesis 3:9). Then we’re told that God “made garments of skin for Adam and [Eve].” In an ancient Middle Eastern culture this is the exact opposite of what should have happened. Their clothes should have been torn to symbolize their disgrace. Instead God made garments for them. And not only that, but the text gives this beautiful detail: “and [He] clothed them.” God dressed Adam and Eve himself, so that they would not be ashamed, foreshadowing that one day he would clothe us in Christ (Galatians 3:27), with the best robe (Luke 15:22), with power from on high (Luke 24:49). Right from the very beginning, it is in God’s response to suffering that we see the love of God most clearly, a love that refuses to give up on us even when we use our free will to cause great suffering.

  1. What It Takes To Be You

It’s typical to think of the problem of evil like this: we picture ourselves in this world of suffering; then we picture ourselves in a world with far less suffering. And then we wonder, “Shouldn’t God have created us in the other world – the world with far less suffering?”

That’s a reasonable thought. But I think it’s a thought that relies on a philosophical mistake. It relies on the assumption that it would still be you and me who would exist in that other world. And that is highly controversial. Let me explain.

There was a pivotal moment early on in my parents’ dating relationship. They were standing on the Brooklyn Bridge, overlooking the picturesque New York City skyline, and my dad noticed a ring on my mom’s finger. So he asked about it, and she said, “Oh, that’s just some ring one of my old boyfriends gave me. I just wear it ‘cause I think it looks nice.”

“Oh, yeah, it is nice,” my dad said, “let me see it.”

So mom took it off and handed it to him, and my dad hurled it off the bridge and watched it sink to the bottom of the East River! “You’re with me now,” he said; “you won’t be needing that anymore.”

And my Mom loved it!

But what if she hadn’t? What if she had concluded my dad had lost it and ran off with her old boyfriend instead? What would that have meant for me?

I might be tempted to think I could have been better off. I might have been taller. I might have been better looking. Maybe the other guy was royalty. That would have been cool! I could’ve lived in a castle! But, actually, that’s not right. There’s a problem with wishing my mom wound up with the other guy, and the problem is this: ‘I’ never would have existed.

Maybe some other child would have existed. And maybe he would have been taller and better looking and lived in a castle. But part of what makes me who I am – the individual that I am – is my beginning: the parents I have, the sperm and egg I came from, my unique combination of genes.

Asking “Why didn’t God create me in a world with far less suffering?” is similar to saying “I wish my mom had married the other guy.” I’m sure my mom and her old boyfriend would have had some very nice kids; but ‘I’ would not have been one of them.

Why didn’t God create a very different world? Well, it depends on what God values. And what if one of the things he values – values greatly and unconditionally – is you, and the people you love, and every person you see walking down the street.

When we wish God had made a different sort of world, we unwittingly wish ourselves out of existence. And so the problem of suffering is reframed in the form of a question:

Could God have wronged you by creating a world in which you came to exist and are offered eternal life, rather than creating a different world in which you never would have lived?

My family has had quite a bit of disability in it. Some people would say that, because of the suffering caused by their disabilities, it would have been better if my cousin, Charles, or Uncle John, had never existed. There would have been less suffering overall; the world would be better off.

I adamantly disagree. It’s because I knew Charles and John intimately that their suffering was so frustrating. But I also believe in a God who loved them so deeply, that allowed them to have life and to be offered eternal life. There is a strong analogy here between divine creation and human procreation. We know that intentional human procreation will result in serious suffering, because even the most fortunate of human lives includes serious suffering and will end in death.

Why, then, do we think that having a child is morally okay, and even can be loving and courageous? Because the child who comes to exist would not have existed otherwise. In human procreation we risk great suffering, but in doing so we give to someone the gift of life. What I am suggesting is that in creating and sustaining this world rather than some very different world, God gave each of us the gift of life and the offer of eternal life with him.

Here is the result of this reasoning: if you think it would be in principle evil to bring children into a world that you know will produce serious suffering in their lives, you will not only need to call God evil, you will also need to call evil anyone who decides to have a child. What follows is that if there is good reason to think that human procreation can be an act of love, there is also good reason to think that God’s creation could be an act of love.
 

  1. The God Who Suffers With Us

A fourth response to the objection from suffering I take, somewhat ironically, from Friedrich Nietzsche. He wrote,

“The gods justified human life by living it themselves—the only satisfactory [response to the problem of suffering] ever invented.”[ii]

Nietzsche is actually writing of the ancient Greeks here, and in his bias he doesn’t make the connection to Christianity! But as a Christian, I am very pleased to agree with him and then point emphatically to the cross where Jesus died. At the cross, we see the absolute uniqueness of the Christian response to suffering. In Islam, the idea of God suffering is senseless – it is thought to make God weak. In Buddhism, to reach divinity is precisely to move beyond the possibility of suffering. Only in Christ do we have a God who is loving enough to suffer with us.  And because of that unsurpassable love, we can trust the Bible when it says that one day “[God] will wipe every tear from [our] eyes,” and “there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain” (Revelation 21:4).


Dr. Vince Vitale was educated at Princeton University and the University of Oxford, and has taught philosophy of religion and served as a faculty member at both universities. It was during his undergraduate studies in philosophy at Princeton that Vince took an unexpected journey from skeptic to evangelist. He has now commended the Christian faith on the campuses of many universities, including UC Berkeley, West Point, Columbia, Yale, Johns Hopkins, Carnegie Mellon, Princeton, and Oxford. He has also recently had the privilege of speaking at Google Headquarters, Amazon, Brooklyn Tabernacle, and Passion City Church. Vince is married to Jo and the two of them are overjoyed to be new parents to their son, Raphael.


Further Reading:

 “Non-Identity Theodicy” in Philosophia Christi, Volume 19, No. 2 (2017) by Vince Vitale

 Why? by Sharon Dirckx

 The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis

 A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis

 Lament for a Son by Nicholas Wolterstorff

 Walking with God Through Pain and Suffering by Tim Keller

 Encountering Evil, a New Edition: Live Options in Theodicy by Stephen T. Davis (Editor)


[i] All scriptural quotations are taken from the New International Version, 1984.

[ii] Nietzsche, Friedrich W, and Francis Golffing (translator), The Birth of Tragedy and the Genealogy of Morals. Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday, 1956, p. 30. This quotation is taken from The Birth of Tragedy.

 

UCCF “Big Weekend At Home” | Saturday 7 November 2020

Engaging With Other Religions

Here you will find links to the various resources that Andy mentioned during his talk talk (and some bonus ones). We hope you find these useful …

First, you can download of copy of Andy’s slides as a PDF here.

Next, get a free copy of the the ebook, Islam In Context, with lots of useful info on understanding and reaching Muslims, via this link.

During his talk, Andy specifically mentioned these two books — we’ve linked to both of them for you:

Also check out Andy’s new book, Do Muslims and Christians Worship the Same God?, coming next March. If you sign up for the Solas email newsletter, we’ll let you know when it launches (and send you a discount code!)

Finally, Andy mentioned the testimonies of friends of his who have become Christians from different religious backgrounds. Here are three of them:

For more information about the Solas Centre for Public Christianity that Andy Bannister leads, visit www.solas-cpc.org. In particular, do check out our SHORT/ANSWERS video series. Over a million people have now watched, downloaded, or shared one of these videos with friends. They’re a great, free evangelistic resource. Here are a few in particular connected to the theme on which Andy spoke at the Big Weekend at Home:

If you’d like to help support Solas’s work of evangelism and evangelism training across the UK, you can do for as little as £3 a month and we’ll send you a choice of one of several great books as a gift.

Can We Find Hope in Life Without God?

We live in a world where hope seems in short supply. The Coronavirus pandemic has revealed that so many of the things we placed our hope in (career, health, or our comfortable lifestyles) can let us down. Can we find a hope that carries us through difficult times? In this very personal Short Answers video, Andy Bannister shows why, if there were no God, then there would be, tragically, no hope to be found—but that if the claims of Jesus stand up, there is a hope to be found concrete enough to support us even through turbulent times. The famous atheist, Friedrich Nietzsche said “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” Watch this Short Answers video and discover why Christianity offers the answer that Nietzsche was so desperately yearning for.

Share

Please share this video widely with friends or family and for more Short Answers videos, visit solas-cpc.org/shortanswers/, subscribe to our YouTube channel or visit us on Twitter Instagram or Facebook.

Support

Short Answers is a viewer-supported video series: if you enjoy them, please help us continue to make them by donating to Solas. Visit our Donate page and choose “Digital Media Fund” under the Campaign/Appeal button.

Billie Eilish

If you still have not heard of Billie Eilish, let me enlighten you.  She is an eighteen year- old from Los Angeles who has been making music with her brother in her bedroom.  About four years ago they put out a song on social media.  About a year ago her first album was released.  Since then she has won five Grammy awards (including Song of the Year; Album of the Year and Best New Artist – the first time anyone has had this haul since 1981) and has released (together with her brother) her latest song – the new James Bond Theme.   Right now, her Youtube channel has 27.3 million subscribers (for comparison, John Piper’s Desiring God channel has under half a million).  So, at the stage most teenagers are wondering what to pack for their first term at University, Billie Eilish is negotiating with designer labels which want to clothe her and magazines which want to feature her.  And, as this is the 21st century, she’s also facing all kinds of trolls who want to attack her.

Teenage stars are nothing new, of course.  Judy Garland was 16 when she starred in The Wizard of Oz and much more recently Taylor Swift (see my article…) was the same age when she became a global name.  What is new, however, is Billie Eilish’s defiant persona.  Wherever it comes from, Eilish seems to approach the world with a gutsy, often cynical, playfulness we might normally associate with older, male musicians.

This posture is saleable and also defensive.  Her choice to wear baggy clothes, putting on cartoonish designer labels, crazy long painted nails and boldly dyed hair sets her apart and protects her; she refuses to be a starlet, but her bolshie anti-style makes her a kind of idol.  At first sight this looks like a very 21st century up-yours to the world of manufactured, sexualised bubble gum pop.  She says, “I never want to have a sound…I don’t want to be one thing.  I want to be everything in one”.

That’s ambitious, and perhaps naïve, because Eilish does have a sound.  It’s been described as ‘anti-pop’.  Her voice is breathy and at points tremulous – she’s certainly not an Adele or Shirley Bassey, whose powerful voices have belted out Bond songs.  Instead, her sound is intimate and often delicate and behind it we most often hear sometimes a carefully produced simple piano, or synth and bass or an occasional acoustic guitar (though the Bond theme differs from her usual output, including some soaring strings, heavy synth as well as piano).   But none of her songs are simply soft or small.  They are successful because enough of them are memorable and danceable, and also because a combination of surprising turns – pauses and swift changes – and witty, ambiguous, frequently dark lyrics makes them interesting and unsettling.   Of the material, her brother Finneas said, “we wrote an album about depression and suicidal thoughts and climate change and being a bad guy, whatever that means”.

That might make parents of teens panic.  There are tracks about tears and unrequited love, boredom, rebellion and self-disgust.  But hasn’t pop music very often been about these things?  And, it has said, that most of Eilish’s lyrics are ambiguous, and often they present a more palatable outlook that of many other sexualised young stars or gloomy heavier rock bands.  Her track ‘Xanny’, for example, is about how the heavily prescribed (and abused) tranquiliser makes her friends boring; and ‘Party Favor’ defiantly tells a (boy?)friend ‘If you don’t stop I’ll call the cops’.

In this way Eilish’s music neatly represents the experience of teens now.  They live in a scary world of financial and ecological uncertainty; there remain few boundaries to rebel against; the vocabulary of mental health and personal rights dominates the media.  This is an anxious and an extremely self-conscious age, with awe and wonder largely absent.  How is the Church to connect?  Perhaps the answer lies in agreeing with them, in part.  They see that world is dark and broken and that humans are very vulnerable.  That much is true.  One next step is to help them see their generation’s complicity in this disorder, but also to shout out for beauty.  The defiant anti-beauty of Eilish’s look and music (though it has an ethereal quality) represent a rejection of materialistic ideas of perfection; Christians must insist that beauty, that glory can be known, that it has entered and still shines in this brokenness. We must be prepared to sing of the beauty of Christ.


Sarah Allen read English at Cambridge and now works part-time as an English Teacher as well as being involved in ministry at Hope Church Huddersfield where her husband, Lewis, is Pastor. She has written a children’s book about Hannah More, and contributes to the FIEC website and EN, as well as speaking at women’s conferences.