News

Book: Come and Behold Him, Christmas Through Different Eyes

David J. Randall has produced a helpful little book for anyone who wants to scratch below the surface of the Christmas story. The nativity story, (baby Jesus, Mary, shepherds, wise-men, and assorted donkeys and cattle) is well-known – and will be performed in countless churches, schools, and nurseries again this year. Yet, many people who watch these charming performances will be left with little to help them understand what these events actually mean – or why this story is faithfully retold every year.
David Randall’s way into unearthing the heart of this great story is by looking at it through a series of different lenses. The Bible was written across many centuries, from a range of cultures, and presents a vast range of people – yet each of these presents us with a special perspective on the whole book’s central character, Jesus Christ. Randall takes fourteen of these and in fourteen short, easy-to-read chapters unveils different aspects of the heart of the Christmas story, which is Jesus himself.
Some of these chapters deal with Old Testament characters who look forward to the promise of the messiah. The chapter on Job, wrestling with the question of suffering – yet longing for the appearance of his redeemer, was a highlight there. Then there are a whole load of characters familiar to us from the nativity plays, Mary, Joseph and then of course Herod. The Herod chapter was especially compelling, comparing the temporary grandeur in his great palace, with the eternal glory of Christ found lying in a manger. Then the last set of chapters are based on the insights of writers such as John and Paul who looked back on the birth Jesus and reflected on its meaning and significance.
The compelling picture of Jesus which emerges from this very short book is one which will provoke the reader to look beyond the trappings of Christmas and to embrace the heart of the matter; that Jesus the Son of God, came to save us from sin, and to bring us life, light, salvation and reconciliation with God. Randall nicely illustrates this with a quote from CS Lewis, who famously noted in Surprised by Joy, that if Hamlet and Shakespeare were to meet, it could only be at the instigation of the author who could write himself into the play. In Jesus, God the creator writes himself into our story – and calls us to respond to him.
Randall’s little book would make a nice starting point for anyone wanting to work out what the Christmas story is about. It could also be used by Sunday School teachers or pastors, to raid for a few neat ideas to use in their upcoming teaching series this advent. The little study guide at the end is worth looking at too, as it contains some useful discussion points.


Come and Behold Him is published by Christian Focus Publications (£7.99) and is available here.
David J. Randall is a retired church pastor, who ministered in Scotland for over forty years. He has written several other books some of which are available from Solas.

Can We Be Happy Without God? | Andy Bannister

Our culture encourages us to try to find ultimate happiness in things like food, sex, success, career or performance. But can those things really satisfy us? In the latest SHORT/ANSWERS, Andy Bannister explores why God is ultimately necessary for true happiness, peace and security.

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Changing work, changing times, abiding opportunities

On the 25th Anniversary of his landmark book, “Thank God it’s Monday”, (and publication of a new edition) Mark Green reflects on change in work and society, and the opportunity for mission.

Thank God it's Monday-ADScroll back to 1994 in the UK: no iPhone, no Facebook, no Uber, no Skype, no PayPal, no delivery drones, no Strictly, and no Starbucks– what on earth did we do all day? Society has changed, work has changed.
People entering today’s job market are likely to have six, seven, eight entirely different jobs in their working life, and many of the jobs they start out doing won’t even exist in twenty, ten, five years’ time. And the number of people in the gig economy, the number of people on zero-hour contracts, the number of people working into their seventies is rising. Artificial Intelligence is humming along, reshaping working practice across pretty much every sector – from transport to law, even counselling. And the robots are coming.
The result is that there’s anxiety in the air. It has been there for most of the last 25 years, except now it feels more pervasive, cutting across social and economic strata. Employment is up but many of our jobs are less secure. We are less confident that we could easily get another one, and less sure that our pay will keep pace with the cost of living. This generation will be the first since World War II to be worse off than their parents.
Yes, things are changing. And in this context the Christian’s role in our workplaces is even more important. In a time of anxiety, we are called to model the peace that comes from the prince of peace. In a season when fear can lead to short fuses we are called to patience and compassion. In a period, when some may feel pressured to cut corners, to treat team members as rivals, we are called to integrity and generosity and compassion. And in a time when wisdom is required, we are called to seek it and find ways to offer it.
It is after all in our workplaces where many of the decisions that affect our daily lives are made. If we, as followers of Jesus, want to make our contribution to the peace and prosperity of the land that we’re in, to the way children and young adults are educated, to the kinds of housing we build, the projects that our scientists focus on, the output our media produce, the care of the old and dying, the way we treat our prisoners, the way we treat each other at work, yes, we will indeed need to pray. But, as Jeremiah 29:7 makes clear, we will also need to ‘seek’ it, to be proactive, to do our bit in the very places where the decisions that shape the way we treat one another and interact with one another are made.
Back in 1994, there wasn’t that much teaching on work at all. Far too many Christians thought that work was the thing they did to pay the bills, support the church, and try to have evangelistic conversations. But progress was made. We saw a flurry of books, a flurry of conference activity, and the emergence of a number of gifted workplace teachers and speakers. For a season, work was on the agenda of the national church.
But it didn’t stay there.
Work became a church-approved special interest, not something central to the disciple-making and missional goals of local churches. Overall, local churches focused on church-based neighbourhood and community mission – with much good fruit. Praise God for it all. But churches rarely had a vision for the 95% of time that the 98% of God’s people who aren’t ordained spent away from church activities. Yes, people might pray for each other’s work crises but not for each other’s daily mission in and through their work, not for the work itself, the bosses, the organisation’s ongoing prosperity, the salvation of individuals known by name.
In the last ten years, there’s been a shift in that. A growing number of church leaders have grasped the need for whole-life disciple-making. And more and more are seeking to offer Sunday worship and praying and preaching that integrates the opportunities of scattered Monday to Saturday life with the concerns of the gathered church community. Still, you won’t find many churches where the sixteen-year-old going for their first holiday job at the COOP is taught a theology of work. You won’t find many churches where people going to work have a biblical vision for God’s purposes for them there. Marriage prep has become a natural part of church life but preparing for the challenges and opportunities of fifty years of work hasn’t.
That’s why we’ve revised Thank God it’s Monday for a new generation. All through the last 25 years, I’ve seen its impact on individuals and, more broadly, I’ve seen the transformative impact Christians can have when they have a vision for work, when they pray into it, when others get behind them. It’s good news for the work, it’s good news for their co-workers, and it can be good news for their organisations.
Vitally, quite apart from those benefits, there’s the deep reassurance that comes when we know that we are his ambassadors in it all, that he is with us, whether our workplace is toxic or joyous. And there’s the sheer joy and sense of purposefulness that we experience when we know that this work we do, this task, is important to God, that it contributes to his purposes in time and eternity, that it can be done for his glory and in his strength, and offered to him in humility and love.
Ours is a high calling, however lowly the job.
So I’m praying that this new edition will give a new generation a fresh vision of the worker God, his purposes for them, and presence with them in whatever they do – for the blessing of millions, and the salvation of many in our needy land.


Mark Greene

Mark Greeneis the Executive Director of the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity, and first published this article in the Baptist Times. The 25th Anniversary edition of Thank God it’s Monday, is available from Muddy Pearl Publishing.

Outreach in Stirling – “Has Science Buried God?”

Stirling Baptist Church booked out their local Indian restaurant and invited me to come and address the topic, “Has Science Buried God?” The event was structured in such way that church-folks could only come if they brought a non-Christian friend, so it was a 50:50 ratio of Christians to non-Christians. There were about thirty people there, so around fifteen non-Christian folks came to hear the message and engage with it.
In the talk I showed that science and the Christian faith, far from being at war with one another, actually fit together very well. This is partly because they are answering a different set of questions, but also because Christianity actually provides the best foundation for doing science. The pursuit of science itself requires answers to questions such as, “Why should we put effort into pursuing truth?”, “Why is important to report your results truthfully in the sciences?”, *(its ethical foundation); and then of course – “Why can we trust our minds to do science in the first place, if in fact our minds are just atoms and particles?” On the other hand, if we are made in the image of a God who is the source of all knowledge, all truth, all reason, then that is a very good foundation for pursuing scientific enquiry.
After the talk we did some Q&A, and there were some very interesting questions. What was great was that after that, people didn’t just get up and leave, but hung around for ages and there were many great conversations with people who were very stuck by the message. It was also really encouraging that several of them signed up for the Alpha Course at Stirling Baptist Church.
At the very end I had a really interesting conversation with a man who had only been a Christian a few months and had found the evening really encouraging. Looking back just two or three months to when he had been an atheist, he recalled that he had always just assumed that science had disproven God. Now as a Christian he id beginning to fill in the foundations of his faith, processing some of the objections to Christianity, and he found this really, really helpful.
It was great to see the church taking this kind of initiative, and Christians stepping up and bringing their friends. For example, Michael Wright who organised the event, is a great runner and had invited several friends from his local running club.
At Solas we have a great relationship with Stirling Baptist Church, they hold regular outreach events at a pub in the town called “The Kilted Kangaroo!” and I’ve done three of those. However, this curry house event was even better; more structured and deliberately designed to promote Alpha.


Editor’s note. After Andy Bannister wrote this report, Michael Wright from Stirling Baptist wrote to say:
 “I thought the evening was excellent, and Andy Bannister’s talk was fantastic. I think the talks by Andy at our pub or curry night evenings, is probably the one thing in our events that I don’t need to worry about! It is always thought-provoking, humorous, and always, and ultimately, pointing to Christ, and it is perfect for our outreach evenings.”
Solas can help your church run an outreach event. Contact us, to find out how. Read more about some of the great work Stirling Baptist are doing, and of lives transformed by the gospel here.
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PEP Talk Podcast With Nigel Watts

Nigel Watts is currently the British Isles Director of Precept Ministries. But he also served over 25 years in the British Army, many as a helicopter pilot in active war zones. What lessons has he learned about sharing your faith in such diverse situations as the Green Zone in Baghdad or a taxicab in Cornwall? Andy and Kristi caught up with him at CreationFest recently.

With Nigel Watts PEP Talk

Our Guest

Nigel Watts flew helicopters for the British Army for over 25 years. He and his wife Molly now lead Precept Ministries in the UK & Ireland. Nigel is a keen tennis player and member of the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club at Wimbledon.

Engaging with Pullman, Part Two: Pullman and the Power of Stories


It’s a wonderful thing to see something that you have only read in books and pictured in your imagination come to life on the television screen for the first time!  On Sunday night, watching the first episode of the BBC’s new series “His Dark Materials,” I felt the tingles run down my spine as I read the words on the opening title card:
“This story starts in another world, one that is both like, and unlike our own.  Here, a human soul takes the physical form of an animal, known as a daemon.  The relationship between human and daemon is sacred.  This world has been controlled for centuries by the all-powerful magisterium.  Except in the wilderness of the north, where witches whisper of a prophecy.   A prophecy of a child with a great destiny…”
This is what great stories do: they engage our interest, stir our emotions and fire our imaginations.  And Philip Pullman is an expert story teller!  He often relates how as an English teacher he managed class discipline and held pupils’ attention by bringing their books to life and leaving them on a cliff-hanger until they came back next period.
Pullman appreciates something that many of his New Atheist colleagues do not and something Christians have sometimes forgotten: Man does not live by facts and figures alone – but by stories.  Inherently human beings are narrative creatures – the philosopher Alasdair Macintyre argues we can only understand ourselves by telling a story that begins with our birth and progresses through life towards death.  Indeed, the philosopher Charles Taylor argues that before we try to engage with the beliefs of the secular worldview in our society we need to understand its “social imaginary”, the prevailing stories which render belief in the God of Christianity implausible in the 21st century.
Furthermore, the journalist Christopher Booker spent 35 years studying literature and storytelling around the world before concluding that there are only “Seven Basic Plots” around which all human stories are constructed.  It seems like just as science reveals a physical order to the universe, and our consciences witness to a moral order, likewise our imaginations suggest there is a narrative order woven into the fabric of mental reality.
Whereas the New Atheists are the champions of reason and rationality; Pullman argues that science, logic, reason are not all sufficient.  We are not just walking brains on a stick, we are also deeply emotional and imaginative beings.  That’s why in his latest novel one of the characters reflects:
“Has reason ever created a poem, or a symphony, or a painting?  If rationality can’t see things like the secret commonwealth, it’s because rationality’s vision is limited.  The secret commonwealth is there.  We can’t see it with rationality any more than we can weigh something with a microscope: it’s the wrong sort of instrument.  We need to imagine as well as measure”. 
Also, in that vein, the hardcover spine of that book is embossed with these words: “The way to think about the secret commonwealth is with stories.  Only stories will do”
The driving story of His Dark Materials is a quest to kill God – the Authority – and liberate the world from the tyranny of the Church – the Magisterium.  It finishes with the rallying cry that now the king of heaven is dead that we must build “the Republic of Heaven” on earth.  It’s hard not to hear the echoes of Nietzsche’s Madman: “God is dead – we have killed him, you and I”.  Whereas Nietzsche’s atheism lead to nihilism – no more good and evil, no more meaning or hope; Pullman argues that the eclipse of the Christian worldview and loss of the gospel story need not lead to meaninglessness and existential despair.  For example, shortly after finishing the trilogy, in his lecture “The Republic of Heaven” he stated:
“What I’m referring to is a sense that things are right and good, and we are part of everything that’s right and good. It’s a sense that we’re connected to the universe. This connectedness is where meaning lies; the meaning of our lives is their connection with something other than ourselves. The religion that’s now dead did give us that, in full measure: we were part of a huge cosmic drama, involving a Creation and a Fall and a Redemption, and Heaven and Hell. What we did mattered, because God saw everything, even the fall of a sparrow. And one of the most deadly and oppressive consequences of the death of God is this sense of meaningless or alienation that so many of us have felt in the past century or so.”
Into that absence steps Philip Pullman, leveraging the power of the imagination and story, to lay out a manifesto for a meaningful and fulfilling life after the death of God.  In a different interview Pullman once asserted:
“This is the mistake Christians make when they say that if you are an atheist you have to be a nihilist and there’s no meaning any more. Well, that’s nonsense, as Mary Malone discovers. Now that I’m conscious, now that I’m responsible, there is a meaning, and it is to make things better and to work for greater good and greater wisdom. That’s my meaning – and it comes from my understanding of my position. It’s not nihilism at all. It’s very far from it.”
(However, I suspect that fellow British atheist John Gray might regard Pullman’s generous humanitarianism as just another “secular version of Christianity”).
It was only years after reading the books that I realised that His Dark Materials is really the antithesis of the Chronicles of Narnia.  Pullman is outspoken in his criticisms of C.S. Lewis – dismissing him as a bigot, racist, misogynist.  For example, Pullman takes umbrage at how Susan ceases to be a friend of Narnia (and is on course to be excluded from Aslan’s Country – heaven) because as she grows up, she stops believing, and becomes more interested in boys and make-up.  Thus, in contrast, at the heart of His Dark Materials is the coming of age story of Lyra and Will, which celebrates their growing up and becoming fully self-conscious and sexually awakened.
Nevertheless, at the same time, Pullman recognises the power of what Lewis was doing in using story to communicate the Christian faith.  For example, C.S. Lewis describes in his spiritual autobiography, “Surprised by Joy,” that as a teenager he read a fictional story by Gordon Macdonald that “baptised” his imagination – preparing his heart and mind for later understanding and receiving the truth of the gospel.  Later in an essay entitled “Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What’s To Be Said”, Lewis further reflected on the power of story to prepare the heart and mind to consider the truth of the Christian worldview:
“I thought I saw how stories of this kind could steal past a certain inhibition which had paralysed much of my own religion in childhood. Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or the sufferings of Christ? I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to. An obligation to feel can freeze feelings. And reverence itself did harm. The whole subject was associated with lowered voices; almost as if it were something medical. But supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday School associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency? Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons? I thought one could.”
This is exactly what Lewis is doing in the Chronicles of Narnia.  I’m one of his children who first fell in love with Aslan, wept at his sacrificial death on the Stone Table and rejoiced in his resurrection from the dead to defeat the White Witch – only later did I fall in love with Jesus, the true Aslan.  Explicitly Lewis explains his agenda at the end of the Dawn Treader when Aslan says:
“In your world, I have another name. You must learn to know me by it. That was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.” 
(Although fellow Christian and Inkling J.R.R. Tolkien thought that Lewis was a little unsophisticated in how he did it, both recognised the inherent power of stories that connects with our hearts and communicate truth).
Now in His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman is seeking to do the same thing, except to baptise the imagination against the God of the Bible and Church of Jesus Christ.  In our next article we’ll critically reflect on the God and Church as presented in Pullman’s story.


David Nixon is a pastor in Edinburgh, where he lives with his wife and chldren.

Why are Humans so Curious? | Andy Bannister

From space travel to mountain exploration, human beings are inexhaustibly curious. But why? If we are just another animal, why do we put so much time and energy and resources into not merely survival and reproduction, but pursuing knowledge, adventure, and exploration? In the latest SHORT/ANSWERS, Solas Director (and amateur mountaineer!) Andy Bannister sets out to explore how Christianity offers a better answer for the curiosity of humans than does atheism.

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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.

Book: Am I Just My Brain? by Sharon Dirckx

Reviewed by Dr David Glass

In this short book, Sharon Dirckx provides a very helpful introduction to some extremely big topics. As she points out in the introduction, how we answer the question ‘Am I just my brain?’ has implications for free will, robotics, ethics and religion, so the stakes are high. A commonly held view is that the answer is ‘yes’, there is nothing more to us than our physical brains. Evaluating this belief is the central focus of the book and, with a scientific background in brain imaging, Dirckx is well-placed to address the issue. Drawing frequently on work in neuroscience, she nevertheless emphasizes the inability of science to give us a complete picture on its own since philosophical issues are never too far away.
Addressing the question of whether we are just machines, Dirckx introduces the well-known Turing test for intelligence. Although I am not convinced that `some robots are barely distinguishable from humans’ (p. 41), the test still raises an interesting question. Dirckx also discusses a famous thought experiment – the Chinese room argument – to suggest that even if a machine appeared to be intelligent it might have no understanding at all. However, her main focus is rightly on the subject of conscious experience and she argues convincingly that this fundamental aspect of our lives poses insurmountable problems for the view that we are just machines.
What about the soul? Is there any such thing? It might be a surprise to readers that many Christian thinkers – both theologians and scientists – believe the answer is ‘no’; there is no soul, at least not in the sense of a non-physical part of us. While Dirckx does not rule out such a view (known as non-reductive physicalism), she draws attention to the problem of generating conscious minds from non-conscious neurons in the brain. Some claim that this is just down to the complexity of the brain, but Dirckx is sceptical of this idea. Overall, she leans towards some version of the traditional view of the soul (substance dualism) and draws attention to the fact that recent, powerful defences of the soul have been provided by a number of leading Christian philosophers. Although belief in the soul is often rejected as unscientific, Dirckx argues that it is quite compatible with science and makes sense from a theistic perspective. After all, ‘if God exists, then it is possible to be conscious without a brain’ (p. 74), but more importantly, the idea that consciousness is fundamental rather than being physical, fits very neatly with the belief that the ultimate nature of reality is non-physical as theism maintains.
If we are just our brains, it is very difficult to see how free will fits into the picture, but this has huge repercussions for how we think about ourselves. Dirckx provides a good overview of different views on free will and helpfully shows why the famous Libet experiment does not show that free will is illusory. In later chapters, she argues against the idea that science can explain away religious belief as well as religious experience. In fact, this fits with earlier chapters, which essentially considered the view that science explains away the mind, the soul or free will. Dirckx is certainly not anti-science; she does not deny that science explains, but she does deny that it explains away. The idea that science explains away any of these things is really just a dubious philosophical claim.
In the last chapter, Dirckx raises the intriguing question, ‘what is consciousness for?’ Having argued that the existence of consciousness makes more sense in a universe created by God, she now explores how this relates to the Christian belief that humans are made in the image of God. We were made to know and be in relationship with God and ultimately that is the reason for consciousness: ‘We are conscious because [God] is conscious. (p. 123)’
By way of minor criticism, I felt at times that the book was too ambitious in the range of topics covered. Personally, I would also like to have seen a bit more coverage of some topics, such as more engagement with the arguments for a version of dualism advocated by David Chalmers, one of the world’s leading philosophers of mind. But these are minor points. Overall, this book raises important questions in an interesting and engaging way. Recognizing the controversial nature of these topics, readers are encouraged at the end of the book to keep asking questions. This book certainly stimulates questions and will help readers to investigate them in a thoughtful way.

You can purchase Am I Just My Brain? from our book partner – 10ofThose.com


Dr David Glass
dhg (1)is a Senior Lecturer in Computer Science at Ulster University in Northern Ireland. He is the author of Atheism’s New Clothes (IVP/Apollos) and contributes to the apologetics website www.saintsandsceptics.org .

PEP Talk Podcast With David Bennett

Last year David Bennett released“A War of Loves” which was his personal story of transformation from atheist gay activist to Christian theologian. Andy and Kristi caught up with him at CreationFest recently. Purchase the book from our 10ofThose partner page.

With David Bennett PEP Talk

Our Guest

David Bennett is from Sydney, Australia and is pursuing a PhD in theology at the University of Oxford. A fellow at the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics, he holds degrees from Oxford and University of St Andrews. His recent book, “A War of Loves”, recounts his dramatic story, from his early years exploring new age religions and French existentialism to his university experiences as an activist.

Engaging with Pullman, Part One: Why I’ll be watching ‘His Dark Materials’ and so should you!


On Sunday night the BBC will commence showing what is billed as their most expensive series ever: “His Dark Materials”.  I will be watching – but not only because I’m a license fee payer who wants to keep a track of my investments!
I grew up in the 1990s with three authors in my life: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkein and Philip Pullman.  The BBC/HBO series is based on the latter’s best-selling and award-winning novels: “Northern Lights” (1995), “The Subtle Knife” (1997), and “The Amber Spyglass” (2000).  It has been 20 years since I first stepped into Pullman’s gripping narrative world and I have eagerly returned to it in the ‘equel’ series “The Book of Dust”: “La Belle Sauvage” (2017) and “The Secret Commonwealth” (2019).
I first read the series while confined to bed seriously unwell for a number of weeks.  I came newly alive reading of Lyra as she travelled through streets of Oxford in an alternative universe, sailed to the north, rescued a friend from certain death, fought with armoured bears, liberated her father, and stepped through a rip in the fabric of existence into another world.  Slowly unfolded over the course of the action is the motivation of Lyra’s father, the enigmatic Lord Asriel, who is seeking to liberate people from the tyranny of the Church (“The Magisterium”) and establish the republic of heaven on the earth by destroying the king of heaven: God (“The Authority”).  In so doing, the English teacher Pullman retells and inverts the Milton’s classic poem “Paradise Lost” – from which the series draws its name.  Now you can see why I was so gripped and fascinated – and also why I sensed it was controversial!
This is the sensational story that the BBC have spent some £50 million bringing to the screen.  The first series, retelling the first book “Northern Lights”, will be watched by millions of people in this weekend prime time slot in the run up to Christmas.  Some critics have dismissed the books as “atheism for kids” – given the story involves celebrating the death of God, allying with fallen angels, shamans, and witches, practising divination, among other things you can see where the critics are coming from!  However, I don’t think we should just ignore this series or mindlessly consume it.
As one of the leading British New Atheists, Pullman has a thoughtful message he wants to communicate.  Once when interviewed Pullman stated:
“I’m religious, but I’m an atheist. I think religious questions are the big questions. Where did we come from? What is life about? What is evil? Those are questions I do think about.” 
Answering these questions by analogy, he hopes to supply something of what is missing in the secular humanistic worldview.  In another interview he explained that his project is about telling ‘a better story’:
“The Christian story gives us human beings a very important and prominent part. We are the ones who Jesus came to redeem from the consequences of sin, which our parents – you know. It is a very dramatic story and we are right at the heart of it, and a great deal depends on what we decide. This is an exciting position to be in, but unfortunately it doesn’t gel at all with the more convincing account that is given by Darwinian evolution – and the scientific account is far more persuasive intellectually. Far more persuasive… The kingdom of heaven promised us certain things: it promised us happiness and a sense of purpose and a sense of having a place in the universe, of having a role and a destiny that were noble and splendid; and so we were connected to things. We were not alienated. But now that, for me anyway, the King is dead, I find that I still need these things that heaven promised, and I’m not willing to live without them. I don’t think I will continue to live after I’m dead, so if I am to achieve these things I must try to bring them about – and encourage other people to bring them about – on earth, in a republic in which we are all free and equal – and responsible – citizens”
But is the materialistic philosophy and godless worldview of Philip Pullman truly a better story than the gospel?  (He starts at a disadvantage because his is written as fiction, while the gospel is recorded as fact!)
So over the coming weeks this series of blogs will explore the world of His Dark Materials and engage with the worldview of Philip Pullman from a Christian perspective.  Maybe you can watch with, read along, and talk with your friends at school, university, or at coffee time in work about the series too?

Is Christianity Bad for the Environment? | Andy Bannister

Is Christianity bad for the environment? Are Christians so focused on heaven they don’t care about the earth? In a culture ever more concerned with environmental issues, Christians are often portrayed as unconcerned — or worse, even hostile to the natural world. But what does the gospel really have to say about the environment? The latest SHORT/ANSWERS video finds out.

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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.

The End of Tolerance

In Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, the detective-ghost-horror-who-dunnit-time-travel-romantic-musical-comedy-epic by the British comedy writer Douglas Adams, the eponymous private investigator, Dirk Gently had a major falling out with his secretary, Janice.  She was preparing to storm out of the office in a rage:

She retrieved her last pot of nail varnish and tried to slam the drawer shut. A fat dictionary sitting upright in the drawer prevented it from closing. She tried to slam the drawer again, without success. She picked up the book, ripped out a clump of pages and replaced it. This time she was able to slam the drawer with ease.

A few days later, faced with a client to whom some events have occurred that are, quite literally, completely and utterly impossible, Dirk happily remarks:

“Luckily, you have come to exactly the right place with your interesting problem, for there is no such word as ‘impossible’ in my dictionary. In fact,” he added, brandishing the abused book, “everything between ‘herring’ and ‘marmalade’ appears to be missing.”

If I could remove just one word from the dictionary it wouldn’t be ‘impossible’, nor ‘pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis’ and especially not ‘marmalade’, living as I do in Dundee. No, if I could remove just one word from the dictionary, it would be the word ‘tolerance’.
I dislike the word ‘tolerance’, dislike it with a vengeance, in fact. Why? Well, quite simply, tolerance has become the virtue of our age, the last virtue standing in fact, as the classical virtues have fallen more quickly than a row of dominos on a massage chair. Prudence, temperance, courage and justice—apart from the last one, which we’ve redefined to mean using the appropriately woke hashtags on Twitter—our culture wouldn’t recognise these if it bumped into them in the street.
But tolerance. Tolerance is everywhere: we must tolerate other people, tolerate those who are different to us, never criticise, never question, never disagree, and certainly never—absolutely never—tell somebody else that we think we’re right and they’re wrong. Tolerance, all hail tolerance.
Well, I’ve had enough. I can no longer (pardon the pun) tolerate tolerance. Why? Well, my first issue with the word ‘tolerance’ is that it’s a deeply disrespectful word. Think about the kind of things we usually tolerate. We tolerate the cat, when it deposits half a dead mouse on the front door mat and claws the sofa for the third time in a week. I tolerate my three-year-old son when, acting on his latent (although rapidly emerging) artistic tendencies, decides to emulate Banksy on the lounge wall using, bless him, a permanent marker he somehow found, even though my wife and I were convinced we’d locked those down with the same kind of security protocols usually reserved for nuclear warheads or Roquefort. In other words, we tolerate things that are misbehaving, things that don’t measure up, things that are a little bit beneath us: animals, young children, TV celebrities.
On the other hand, when you encounter an adult who thinks differently to you, who sees the world in a different way, who—heaven forbid!—disagrees with you, I’d suggest ‘tolerance’ should be your Verb of Last Resort. What about instead listening, talking, or dialoguing with them? In short, treating them as an equal, rather than as your inferior.
But there’s a further problem with ‘tolerance’, in that it’s a ready made license to ignore those who are different to us. Rather than talk to people, engage people, listen to them, we just dismiss them with an offhand, “Oh, that’s just the Muslims …” And whilst we pat ourselves on the back with warm thoughts of how tolerant we are, we are all the while deeply dehumanising people. Sure, we may not have thrown a half brick at somebody, or said angry things about them on Twitter: but we have ignored them, airbrushed them out of our circle of concern, and we’ve done it with a sneer of superiority.
Tolerance? None of us want to be tolerated. If you’re still not convinced, I put it to you that you don’t want other people to tolerate you. Rather you want to be listened to. You want to be taken seriously. To be heard. You want other people to consider your views, even if they disagree, to treat you like an adult, to understand you. Nobody just wants to be tolerated.
The Christian basis for treating people as truly human, as loving and listening even to those who are radically different to us, who are even disagreeable or unlikeable, lies at the heart of the gospel. For the good news about Jesus tells us that God didn’t just tolerate us. He could have done: he could have looked at the mess we’ve made of our lives, our world—His world, given to us as a good and wonderful gift—God could have looked at what we’ve done, shrugged, tolerated us, and walked away.
But God didn’t step away. Rather, in the person of Jesus, he stepped in. In Jesus, God gave everything for us, even while we were his enemies, even whilst we deserved nothing better than condemnation, let alone toleration. God demonstrated his love for us in that we were still rebels, bullies, and oppressors, Jesus Christ died for us.
You see, a final problem with tolerance is it’s cheap. Dirt cheap. It costs nothing to look down on people, to sigh with a sneer, or to walk on by and not give people a second glance. Tolerance is cheap. But by contrast, love is expense, love is pricy, love always costs the one who gives it.
I’m incredibly grateful that God didn’t tolerate us but instead he loved us and did so in a way that was costly. And Christians—those who’ve realised that they’ve no grounds to be superior and to look down on others, but need the forgiveness and help that God offers through Jesus—Christians are called to show the same love to others that Jesus showed to us. Especially to those who are difficult, different or disagreeable. As the New Testament, in Ephesians 5:1 puts it:

Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children, and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

PEP Talk Kristi Mair

PEP Talk Podcast With Kristi Mair

Co-host Kristi Mair swaps chairs this episode to become a guest and let Andy Bannister interview her. They discuss her background in student ministry, the current questions she’s hearing and why you don’t need a dramatic testimony for effective evangelism. 

With Kristi Mair PEP Talk

Our Guest

Kristi currently works as Pastoral Support and Research Fellow at Oak Hill College, whilst studying for her PhD at University of Birmingham.  Kristi is also an apologist and evangelist who speaks regularly at evangelistic events. While pursuing her academic career, she has worked with Friends International and the UCCF as their Assistant Team Leader for the Midlands. Kristi’s latest book is More Truth: Searching for certainty in an uncertain world. Get a free copy when you support the podcast!

Can we be good without God?

The question of whether a person can be good without God might seem a strange one. After all, surely none of us would be so arrogant as to claim that only those who believe in God can live a good life. In fact, Christians recognise that others who do not share our faith can live exemplary lives. So, is that the end of the matter?
By no means. In fact, it is possible we have misunderstood the question[note] Craig highlights the importance of correctly framing the question (William Lane Craig, On Guard, p134) [/note]. It is not a question of practice but rather at its deepest level a philosophical question. While we can say that the actions of many who do not believe in God can be considered good we must ask on what basis we judge their actions to be good. That is, how do we know what is good? Do we have a basis on which we can consistently distinguish between right and wrong, between good and evil? Is there such a thing as objective morality, a set of moral absolutes which we can authoritatively present to all human kind as standards by which they should conduct their lives, standards which do not come subjectively from us but transcend us? Or is the alternative true; that values we hold dear are in fact mere social convention? If morality is just social convention, can we really say that any action is truly good and truly right? William Lane Craig points out that fundamentally the question of whether a person can be good without God is not a question of whether ‘belief in God’ is necessary for morality but whether the ‘existence of God’ is necessary for morality – if God does not exist is there any alternative basis for morality?[note]Craig, On Guard, p134[/note]
This article will seek to answer the question of whether someone can be good without God – or to put it another way is the existence of God necessary as a basis for objective morality. It will begin by setting out what a basis for morality looks like, answering the question: ‘What does it mean to describe something as an absolute good or moral right?’ and discussing whether this standard is necessary. It will then show that the Christian, through his/her belief in the infinite personal God, has a consistent moral system by which he/she can judge what it means to be good. Finally, it will explore alternative theories, highlighting their deficiencies.

What does it mean to describe something as an absolute good or moral right? Is this description necessary?

A moral absolute is the opposite of moral relativism. Moral relativism, which is very prevalent in our society today, states that morality is essentially a personal thing. We each have the right to determine what is right and what is wrong for ourselves. Our upbringing means we each have different perspectives, which lead us to different conclusions as to what is right and what is wrong. I may believe that it is right to do ‘X’. You may believe that it is wrong to do in ‘X’ and in fact we must do ‘Y’. How are we to settle this conflict between our competing moral values? Moral relativism says we are both speaking our own truth and neither has the right to tell the other that they are wrong.
The problems with moral relativism are clear. What if I believe it is right to do you harm? Who has the right to tell me I cannot do this? Timothy Keller, in The Reason for God, put it like this:

‘It is common to hear people say, ‘No one should impose their moral views on others, because everyone has the right to find truth inside him or herself.’ The belief leaves the speaker open to a series of very uncomfortable questions. Aren’t there people in the world who are doing things you believe are wrong – things that they should stop doing no matter what they personally believe about the correctness of their behaviour? If you do (and everyone does!), doesn’t that mean you do believe that there is some kind of moral standard that people should abide by regardless of their individual convictions?’[note]Timothy Keller, The Reason for God, p146[/note]

It is easy to think of examples to illustrate this point. Would you stand back and let Hitler murder Jews because he believed it was right? Would you care if he told you that he sincerely felt he was doing a service to humanity? What if Hitler had won the Second World War – would that have made what he did right? [note]Ibid., p147[/note]
Or consider this example. What if you came across someone raping a girl in the street? Would you walk by as though it were none of your business?
Andy Bannister states that his first reaction to someone who claims everyone has the right to decide for themselves what is right is to reach over and steal something of theirs[note]Andy Bannister, The Atheist Who Didn’t Exist, p148[/note] . When they object he points out that they do really believe that some things are always wrong[note]Ibid.[/note] . Despite people’s insistence on moral relativism we want justice for ourselves and for others. There is a positive desire in us to help others and to relieve suffering. We know that within us there is a desire to help our fellow humans. It is not satisfactory to say we have no right to interfere. Accordingly, moral relativism as an option collapses.
In 1979, the late Yale professor Arthur Leff published an extraordinary article entitled “Unspeakable Ethics, Unnatural Law” in which he states:

‘I want to believe – and so do you – in a complete, transcendent, and immanent set of propositions about right and wrong, findable rules that authoritatively and unambiguously direct us how to live righteously.’ [note]Arthur Allen Leff, “Unspeakable Ethics, Unnatural Law”, p1229[/note]

The question Leff then seeks to answer in the article is whether a basis exists for believing in those absolute moral rights and wrongs? This is the same question we must answer today, and one I believe Christians have an answer to.

The Christian response to morality

Christians find their basis for absolute morality within the good character and nature of God. If God exists, then we have a basis for an absolute morality grounded in his character. We have a lawgiver, as Isaiah asserts: ‘For the Lord is our judge; the Lord is our lawgiver; the Lord is our king; he will save us.’ [note]Isaiah 33:22[/note]
The existence of a lawgiver provides a source of morality outwith ourselves. This source is unchallengeable. It must be if it is to show us how to be good. God is the ultimate arbitrator of all things. The issue of competing views of right and wrong is resolved in God. We can abide in him and trust his absolute goodness. Indeed, this allows us to be certain whether a particular action is right or wrong, good or evil. We have a touchstone against which to compare it. This touchstone does not change with our mood or feelings. It rests upon our unchanging Lord[note]‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever’. Hebrews 13:8 [/note]. The more we reflect on this, the more wonderful it seems. The Christian God is the ultimate basis for all morality and has graciously given us propositional objective truth in His word, the Bible to train us ‘in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work’ . [note]2 Timothy 3:16-17 [/note]
As Christians, we are blessed to have a God who is there[note]See Francis Schaeffer, The God Who is There.[/note] ; a God of justice, who upholds the perfect standard of right and wrong. And also, a God who is not silent[note]See Francis Schaeffer, He is There and He is Not Silent[/note] , but proclaims his glorious standards to us in His Word. After all, if he had not revealed these standards to us in written form, how could we know what he requires of us? [note]Micah 6:8[/note]
It is clear that Christians have a consistent basis for morality on the basis of the character and nature of God. A basis that does not depend on us and is ultimately able to decide between competing moral values. But is there any other basis for morality?

An Alternative Theory?

Alom Shaha believes that there is a basis for morality in the absence of God. He writes:

‘Despite not believing in God, and not believing in an afterlife where I might be rewarded or punished for my behaviour, I try to be a good person. That’s the most any of us can do.’ [note]Alom Shaha, The Young Atheist’s Handbook, p45[/note]

What is particularly striking about this quotation is that Shaha is not content simply to say that an atheist can be good without God, he actually claims that the Atheist’s motivation is better that the religious persons since Atheists do not practice good behaviour for some ulterior motive, such as being rewarded in the afterlife.[note]Bannister, The Atheist Who Didn’t Exist, p144[/note]. Shaha essentially believes Christians and others only do good because of the fear that God is watching whereas the non-believer is ‘good even when nobody is watching’[note]Ibid[/note]. However, there is also a major problem with Shaha’s position in that he states he tries to be a good person. This exposes the fact that perhaps he realises he has no way to objective prove that his behaviour is actually good. What does ‘goodness’ actually look like? If it is not to be derived from the character of God then on what can Shaha base his definition of ‘goodness’? [note]Ibid., 146[/note]
One option is to say that the majority has the right to decide right and wrong – is this not the point of democracy? The problem is what happens if the majority decides to exterminate the minority?[note]Keller, The Reason for God, p153[/note] If you say that is wrong and the majority does not have the right to kill the minority then you are back with the same question – on what basis can you say that they are wrong .[note]Ibid.[/note]
Another option is to try to formulate a scientific, naturalistic basis of morality. One of the strongest attempts to do this has come from the Atheist Sam Harris in his book The Moral Landscape which is subtitled ‘How Science Can Determine Human Values’. This subtitle purports to tell us that Science can provide an answer to our question. Unfortunately, the book does not live up to its subtitle. Harris does not even attempt to demonstrate how science determines moral values. Instead he only refers to future scientific research, which might provide us with a basis for human values[note]Sam Harris, The Moral Landscape, p243 states that ‘This book was written in the hope that as science develops we will recognize its application to the most pressing questions of human existence.’[/note]. He concludes, ‘Whether or not we ever understand meaning, morality, and values in practice, I have attempted to show that there must be something to know about them in principle.’[note]Harris, The Moral Landscape, p244[/note] He argues generally that ‘kindness’ and ‘happiness’ have a role to play in determining what behaviours are morally good and that ‘one day’ science might be able to make ‘precise claims’ about what is ‘morally good’ [note]Ibid., p8[/note]but he fails to do so in his book. Harris clings on to a hope that future scientific advances might provide a basis of morality but as things stand he is unable to provide this basis. Accordingly, we must conclude that Harris has failed in his attempt to provide a basis for morality in science.
Harris is not alone in his belief that morality exists as a product of some form of naturalist evolution[note]For other important works that seek to explain our moral obligations on the basis of natural selection and evolution see: Edward O. Wilson, On Human Nature; Dawkins, The Selfish Gene; and Robert Wright, The Moral Animal. For extensive critiques of this approach see Philip Kitcher, Vaulting Ambitions; Hilary Rose & Steven Rose, Alas, Poor Darwin; and John Dupre, Human Nature and the Limits of Science.[/note]. The general view is that altruistic people, who act unselfishly and cooperate with one another, survived in greater numbers than those who were selfish and evil. Therefore the “good”, altruistic genes were passed on to the next generation and so forth. Keller points out the main weakness in this argument:

‘…an individual’s self-sacrificing, altruistic behaviour towards his or her blood kin might result in a greater survival rate for the individual’s family or extended clan, and therefore result in a greater number of descendants with that person’s genetic material. For evolutionary purposes…the opposite response – hostility to all people outside one’s group – should be just as widely considered moral and right behaviour. Yet today we believe that sacrificing time, money, emotion and even life – especially for someone ‘not of our kind’ or tribe is right. If we see a total stranger fall in the river we jump in after him, or feel guilty for not doing so.’ [note]Keller, The Reason for God, p148[/note]

Surprisingly, much of our moral behaviour, much of what we consider good, contradicts that which we would instinctively expect to help us to survive. Morality does not win out in the survival of the fittest. In fact, if the basis of our morality or sense of morality is merely naturalistic evolution, then it is just our genes which desire that we do what humanity considers good. There is then no actual reason why we should be good if it does not serve us well in a particular set of circumstances. We should take advantage of every opportunity we have, provided we can get away with it. And yet we know this runs contrary to our moral sense or conscience[note]The Bible is clear that we all have a conscience, see Romans 2:14-15[/note] . We will even put ourselves in danger to save another.
Moreover, even if it were true that altruistic behaviour had helped our ancestors survive this does not provide a basis for actual morality, it merely provides a description of behaviour[note]Bannister, The Atheist Who Didn’t Exist, p156[/note] . Just because we might ‘feel’ something is wrong for biological reasons does not make the thing objectively wrong . [note]Timothy Keller, Making Sense of God, p182[/note]
This shows that there is not a naturalistic basis for morality and we must look for our definitions of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ elsewhere. It seems that the only consistent response to the question of morality apart from God is to be found in some form of nihilism or existentialism – that there is no morality at all. Dostoevsky’s character, Ivan Karamazov, states that without God or immortality “Everything is permitted…” and “All is lawful.”[note]Fydor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, p589[/note]If there is no God it appears that the most honest person among us would have to agree with Nietzsche who got to the heart of the matter when he wrote:

‘God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we not ourselves become gods simply to be worthy of it?’ [note]Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Section p125[/note]

In the absence of a lawgiver separate from ourselves, we must become ‘gods’. In such a system we return to moral relativism but in practice power rules – the strongest will determine the laws that govern us all. We all know how that ends. In the 20th Century we saw the result of power and strength. We saw Hitler, the democratically elected leader of Germany, impose his morality. Even if we have a good ruler currently, we know it is all too easy for that to change. And if the only source of our human rights and the protection of our freedoms is the law that the current rulers have put in place we know that ultimately this protection is meaningless. If the law is given by a changeable ruler, then the law can be changed, and oppression can come to us all. After all, there is no reason for us to object to being oppressed because our oppressors have just as much right to their version of morality as we do.
Professor Leff reaches the same conclusion – there is no normative absolute standard of morality and law. The very point of Professor Leff’s article was to seek a basis of morality on which law could be founded. The debate is whether all law is found by man or made by man. He searches in his article for a basis of law that is not arbitrarily based on the will of a certain ruler and is not based on a God he feels unable to prove in his article. He concludes with the following:
“All I can say is this: it looks as if we are all we have. Given what we know about ourselves, and each other, this is an extraordinarily unappetizing prospect; looking around the world, it appears that if all men are brothers, the ruling model is Cain and Abel. Neither reason, nor love, nor even terror, seems to have worked to make us “good,” and worse than that, there is no reason why any thing should. Only if ethics were something unspeakable by us could law be unnatural, and therefore unchallengeable. As things stand now, everything is up for grabs. Nevertheless:
Napalming babies is bad.
Starving the poor is wicked.
Buying and selling each other is depraved. […..]
Those who acquiesced deserve to be damned.
There is in the world such a thing as evil.
[All together now:] Sez who?
God help us.” [note]Leff, “Unspeakable Ethics, Unnatural Law”, p1249.[/note]
For Professor Leff, who was an agnostic, there is no real hope at the end of his article. He never again tackled the problem of morality and law. He was left with nothing and was ultimately unsatisfied with his conclusion. He could have ended with the nihilism of “everything is up for grabs” but instead feels compelled to conclude his article a different way as he cannot deny his conscious that tells him certain actions are absolutely right and wrong.
Phillip Johnson, Professor of Law at the University of California, in his article “Nihilism and the End of Law” has suggested that Leff’s article is really a critique of Nietzsche’s ‘God is dead’ argument[note]Phillip E. Johnson, “Nihilism and the End of Law”[/note] . Johnson continues by stating that while what Leff says is fascinating ‘what he failed to say is more fascinating still’[note]Ibid.[/note] . If there is no ultimate judge of morality ‘then there is no real distinction between good and evil’ and yet we know that evil is real[note]Ibid.[/note] . Accordingly, we must re-evaluate the premise and conclude that the reality of evil points to the reality of the judge – the reality of God . [note]Ibid.. Traditionally this has been called the ‘moral argument’ for the existence of God.[/note]
Unlike Leff, we as Christians can read his article with hope. Leff is left crying out for a God who can say that all the horrendous behaviour he describes is wrong. Christians can say that God does exist, He has spoken and He is abundantly clear. There is such a thing as evil. Ultimately, He will have the final word and evil will be punished.

Conclusion

We must conclude that no consistent basis for morality apart from God has been found. Perry writes that while ‘there is a religious ground for the morality of human rights…It is far from clear that there is a non-religious ground, a secular ground, for human rights’[note]Michael J. Perry, Towards a Theory of Human Rights, xi[/note]. If there is no God the only consistent view is nihilism. However, we know this fails to satisfy our desire to do what we can to end suffering, to help others and ultimately to strive to be good. This should lead to a recognition that we need God in order to have an objective basis for morality.
God is the ultimate lawgiver and the basis on which we can challenge injustice wherever we see it. We also should realise that this ultimate moral sense we have can only come from God. The very fact that we have a conscience, which provides our moral sense is one of the strongest reasons for believing God exists.
Of course, it is not enough to simply recognise our need of God philosophically to justify morality. We then must ask who this God is and if he is knowable. The Bible makes clear that God has revealed himself to us most perfectly in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus embodied goodness as he lived the perfect life. But he also helps us to deal with our failure to be consistently good.
Both Christians and Non-Christians strive to live good lives. Yet we also know that none of us truly measure up to even the standards we set ourselves. None of us are good all of the time. So how are we to deal with this failure? Only Christianity offers us hope when we fail to be good. Jesus knew that we fail but he provides the solution to this through his self-sacrificial death on the cross. In love he died for us, paying the penalty for our failures so that we could be forgiven and renewed in Christ. He gave us the Holy Spirit to be at work in our lives transforming us more into his likeness and he promises to one day do away with the evil in our lives completely when we are glorified to live with God forever.


Stephen Allison

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is the minister of Kiltarlity Free Church: A Christian Community Sharing the Good News of Jesus in The Rural Highlands.