Solas

Book: More>Truth: Searching for Truth in an Uncertain World by Kristi Mair

by Editor24th June 201921st June 2021

More>Truth is Kristi Mair’s great addition to the IVP ‘More’ series, which aims to help readers connect the Bible’s wisdom to some of the biggest issues we face in our fast-paced, postmodern world. In just 126 pages, she shows us the dilemma at the heart of our culture – that we are at the same time suspicious of claims to absolute truth and desperate to know truth, to know we’re not being lied to. After helping us see how we got to this cultural moment, Mair holds up Jesus Christ as the Truth and explores the implications of this for our understanding of what truth is like and how we can live and speak in truth. There are many reasons that More Truth is worth reading, but here are some of my favourites.

It understands our world

Welcome to the world of post-truth. You can identify its impact in the weariness printed across our foreheads. We are tired. Tired of hearing everybody’s truth just to be misled. Tired of wondering what truth is and whether it’s even possible to know something truly. But something in us just can’t give up…Something deep within us calls for truth. (p2) One of the real strengths of the book is Mair’s analysis of how truth is regarded in our culture today and why. Her sketches of the effects of ‘post-truth’ in our divided world all feel very current and familiar, from her depiction of the cynicism and distrust that so often accompanies truth claims to the way she describes the fear around how truth relates to power. She manages to capture not only the facts but the feelings of our culture’s struggle with truth. As a reader you feel she really knows the issues, and that she is speaking with relevance to some of the most potent questions about truth at this moment: Can we really know truth with any certainty? If there is such thing as truth, where do we find it? Is truth safe, or does it just divide?
Alongside this concern to understand and articulate how our wrestling with truth feels in our culture today, Mair is also unafraid of being counter-cultural. This book calls Christians not to abandon the idea of real, objective truth – especially the truth claims about Jesus that are unpopular in our current climate – but rather to stand by truth confidently. This call feels compelling because Mair helps us understand so clearly the struggles and contradictions at the heart of our culture’s relationship with truth.

It aims to grow disciples

We fight lies by standing in the truth. Standing firm. And we stand firm by actively calling to mind and physically walking in the truth of the gospel; in our listening and our doing. (p101) More Truth doesn’t stop short at convincing us that truth is a real thing that can be known. In her relentless focus on Jesus as Truth himself, Mair encourages us to grow as followers of Jesus. She wants us to live as those who know, love, live and speak truth because Truth lives in us and gave himself for us. This was probably my favourite thing about the book and I found myself repeatedly challenged about how knowing Truth himself should hit the road in my life in a variety of ways. Jesus’s words to Pilate are startling: ‘those who belong to truth listen to my voice’ (John 18:37). Jesus says what we belong to, we listen to: those who belong to Truth listen to Truth himself. The thing is, we are always listening to something and it isn’t always Jesus (p72)
Mair wants us to grasp that being people of ‘truth’ isn’t simply about head knowledge of certain facts. Our hearts and wills are meant to be caught up in the truth too – by listening to Jesus’s voice of truth and discerning lies around us; by being quick to confess and repent, turning consistently back to Truth; by speaking truth to others, and by sharing the joy that comes from knowing Truth himself.
A book written on the topic of truth for today’s world could so easily have stopped at providing some strong arguments for the existence and reasonableness of absolute truth claims. But Mair goes further than this, devoting the second half of the book (about six chapters) to exploring the implications of truth being personal and relational rather than merely propositional. She wants us to be disciples of Truth himself so that we can point the way to him in a world that both resists and longs for truth. This emphasis makes More Truth a really refreshing, practical and Christ-centred take on the topic.

It has an evangelistic heart

Although often directed towards Christian readers, Mair reveals an evangelist’s heart in her call for followers of Truth himself to live and speak in a way that commends him. Chapter 11 on engaging the apathetic, sceptical and truth-seekers offers a compassionate example of how to receive our friends’ struggles with truth, as well as practical ways we can unmask wrong thinking about truth claims and point to the answers found in Jesus.
Again, there is no speech–life divide here: we are called to both speak up for truth with rational argument, and at the same time to stand by our words by living truth-filled lives that witness to what we’re saying. And that note of confidence that marks the whole book is here too – because whatever culture says now about truth, Jesus remains the same and we are to be his witnesses:
The beauty of the Great Commission is that Truth finishes these words saying that he will be with us to the very end of the age. To the end of our post-truth age or whatever age we ‘progress’ into next, Truth comes with us…Truth does not leave us alone. Truth comes with us. Truth lives in us. Truth speaks for himself through his Word. We have the liberating privilege of being those who point to Truth. (p123)

It puts Jesus at the centre

There’s so much here in this short, conversational book: a whistle-stop tour of the Bible storyline and the history of philosophical thought about truth; reflections on our ‘post-truth’ world; explorations of how we know what we know – the list goes on. But in the end, More Truth is foundationally about Jesus Christ. You could give it to Christian friends of all ages and stages, as well as to a friend who is seeking after truth but doesn’t yet know Truth himself.
More Truth wants us all to place our confidence and hope in Jesus, because in him we find God’s real, living and satisfying Truth – and that is its greatest recommendation. As Mair concludes, ‘Truth is real, Truth has flesh, Truth walked among us. And Truth’s name is Jesus Christ.’

You can purchase More>Truth from our book partner – 10ofThose.com

Kristi Mair

is Research Fellow at Oak Hill College, and is pursuing a PhD in aspects of epistemology at The University of Birmingham. This review by Liz Willis of UCCF was first published at Be:Thinking.org.

Coffee-shop evangelism in Dundee

by Editor19th June 20194th May 2021

Andy Bannister’s video report:

It was great to work with our friends at St Peter’s Dundee and Blend Coffee Lounge in central Dundee for an evening of coffee, cake and conversation about Jesus. Read the church’s report on the evening here.

Fairies at the Bottom of the Garden

by Editor17th June 20199th November 2022

Is believing Jesus rose from the dead like believing in fairies at the bottom of the garden? Well, that depends.
Religious people generally bristle at the charge that their cherished beliefs belong in the same category as fairies, or dragons, or flying spaghetti monsters. They’re quick to distinguish a faith they experience as rational from mere fables.
But in a recent interview for the weekly podcast I’m part of, I was taken aback when a respected literary scholar, Alison Milbank from the University of Nottingham, said this:
“I can’t tell you that fairies don’t exist. I don’t really know! I would be very careful to say that there are no fairies, and certainly when I was a child, I had experiences of fairies. And there are no fairies in the Bible – but that doesn’t mean there are no fairies.”

Wait … what?

Milbank went on to explain, in her mild, unabashed, extremely English way, that “even if” there are no fairies, they represent something: a mediation between ourselves and nature, a moral order; something just on the edge of our consciousness; an enchantment we’re always losing – fairies are always leaving, always flitting away. It’s an enticing idea. It tells us something about ourselves, and about the world.
In our secular age, we tend to think of disbelief in the supernatural as default. Yet surveys regularly show that the decline of belief in “something more” doesn’t track neatly with the decline of religious affiliation in Western countries. Even in Western Europe, that bastion of secularism, 65 percent of people say they believe in God or a higher power, according to a 2018 Pew Research Center survey – including 75 percent of non-practicing Christians, and 29 percent of the religiously unaffiliated.
Most Western Europeans also believe in the soul – even among those who reject the existence of a higher power, 22 percent of Brits, 43 percent of the Dutch, and nearly a third of French people still think there’s more to them than just their physical body. Very few of us are entirely consistent in our beliefs. Surveys regularly run across rich seams of contradiction. A fifth of non-religious people in the UK believe in life after death. 6 percent of American atheists and agnostics say they pray daily (and 11 percent weekly or monthly). 9 percent of non-religious British people believe that Jesus rose from the dead, and 6 percent of non-religious Australians. And a fluctuating proportion of churchgoers say they don’t.
And this is without getting into how many people believe in witches, or horoscopes, or that aliens have visited Earth; or the proliferation even in places like avowedly secular France of private exorcists, mediums, shamans, and “energiticians”. The stats mirror back to us a mosaic of belief and doubt far more intriguing than the black-and-white battlelines of materialism and religion.

There are a few options for responding to this metaphysical jumble.

One is to lump it all together in order to dismiss the lot, as the writer Kurt Andersen does in his Atlantic article on “post-truth” thinking in the age of Trump. He excoriates his fellow Americans for their “promiscuous devotion to the untrue”, and proclaims himself one of an embattled minority he loftily calls “the solidly reality-based”:

“Only a third of us, for instance, don’t believe that the tale of creation in Genesis is the word of God. Only a third strongly disbelieve in telepathy and ghosts. … More than half say they’re absolutely certain heaven exists, and just as many are sure of the existence of a personal God … 15 percent believe that the ‘media or the government adds secret mind-controlling technology to television broadcast signals,’ and another 15 percent think that’s possible.”

Equating religious dogma with conspiracy theories with any old supernatural belief may be satisfying – but it does mean being forced to conclude that most of your fellow citizens, and most humans who’ve ever lived, have been loonies. (Some may not consider that a downside.)
Second option: we can focus on where to draw the line between supernatural beliefs that are “reasonable” and those that aren’t – where warranted faith ends and the lunatic fringe begins. I would argue that we have a moral obligation to do this for our own beliefs; but in approaching other people’s, it may be less constructive.
Finally, we can opt to bend our attention back on itself – on the phenomenon of faith in the first place. It’s striking that humans are so prone to what Milbank calls a “natural desire for the supernatural”. We can be thrilled by the wonders of the cosmos and the little joys of our daily lives, yet still we yearn for something more. We can suppress it in ourselves and belittle it in others, but it tends to take its revenge, one way or another.

I believe that Jesus rose from the dead for what I sincerely believe to be historical, evidence-based reasons. But not only for those reasons.

I believe that Jesus rose from the dead for what I sincerely believe to be historical, evidence-based reasons. But not only for those reasons. C. S Lewis, looking back on his conversion from atheism to Christianity, wrote that he once considered the Christian story simply a version of the old myth of the “corn king”, a god who dies and rises again as a symbol of the agricultural cycle. And yet:
“Early in 1926 the hardest boiled of all the atheists I ever knew sat in my room on the other side of the fire and remarked that the evidence for the historicity of the Gospels was really surprisingly good. ‘Rum thing,’ he went on. ‘All that stuff of Frazer’s about the Dying God. Rum thing. It almost looks as if it had really happened once.’ … If he, the cynic of cynics, the toughest of the toughs, were not – as I would still have put it – ‘safe,’ where could I turn? Was there then no escape?”
Lewis came to believe that something could be both myth and fact, at the same time. And he was as shocked as anyone to find in orthodox Christianity the satisfaction of his “natural desire for the supernatural”.
I still don’t believe in fairies. But I’m retiring my cynicism, and accepting that the near-universal longing for something “beyond” might itself have something to tell us about reality.

Natasha Moore

is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Public Christianity. She has a PhD in English Literature from the University of Cambridge and is the author of Victorian Poetry and Modern Life: The Unpoetical Age, as well as editor of 10 Tips for Atheists and other conversations in faith and culture. This article first appeared on publicchristianity.org

If God Appeared to Me, I’d Believe in Him

by Solas13th June 201931st January 2022

“If God appeared and did a personal miracle just for me, I’d believe in Him!” Solas Director Andy Bannister tells the story of an unusual conversation with an atheist friend—and how it led to the question “Does God just want us to believe in Him? Or is He looking for something more?” Check it out in this fascinating episode of Short Answers.

This video is used as part of the SU Scotland “Connect Groups Q&A” curriculum.

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Spring Harvest 2019.

by Editor12th June 20199th November 2022

The Christian festival, holiday and conference, Spring Harvest celebrated it’s 40th anniversary earlier this year. Andy Bannister was on the speaking team at Minehead, and in this video-blog reports on a week of ministry and encouragement.
Solas, partnerships, evangelism training, humanity, Islam, the resurrection of Jesus are just some of the things Andy talks about in this lively three minute report!

To find out more about how your church could work with Solas in evangelism and evangelism training, contact us here.

The Only Failure Is Unfaithfulness

by Editor10th June 20199th November 2022

Ask the question, ‘who wants to fail?’ and you have a fairly sure thing that no hands will be going up in the room. Nobody aims for failure. This is just as true for Christians. Nobody who wants to share the gospel with their friends, family, colleagues and neighbours is planning to fail. Everybody, at the end of the day, wants to be successful. In truth, there is nothing wrong with that. Only an idiot or a scammer would purposefully go into something to fail on purpose. So, let me say this clearly: it is right to want to succeed in our Christian witness.
Where we tend to go wrong is in our measure of what success ought to look like. Despite the fact that almost every Christian recognises this is a terrible measure, we so quickly fall back onto numbers. At church we ask, “How many people came to the event” as if that is some measure of anything. Sometimes we try to be a bit more spiritual and ask, ‘how many people have said that my life has made them consider Jesus?” but these are really all ways or saying much the same thing.
Others prefer to judge it by ministry output. If you can increase the ministry opportunities and the range of ministries you do, you have ‘made it’. Some consider punishing schedules that they take largely upon themselves as a sign of success. If you work and work, preparing to burn yourself out for Jesus, then you are a success.
The problem with all these measures is that they are all unbiblical. In fact, by all of these measures, the ministries of Jesus and the apostles after him were unsuccessful. They also unhelpfully labour under the presumption that these things are somehow within our hands. But the people who are saved, the people you are able to influence for Christ, and potential ministries you are able to do all ultimately rest in the Lord’s hands. None of these are really measures of your success and are more things that the Lord was pleased to do with you.

The measure of our success is nothing less than faithfulness.

The measure of our success is nothing less than faithfulness. Whether your church grows in number or not, whether you lead more or less people to Christ this year than last year: the only question that matters is this: were you faithful? Did you faithfully obey the Lord in the ministry he has given to you?
Jeremiah’s 40 years of ‘no response’ must be judged a success on this measure. Isaiah’s ministry of nobody listening is a similar success. They faithfully did what they were called to do. Our call is, likewise, one of faithfulness to Christ. Our ministry will be a great success if we do the things that Christ has called us to do.
And what has he called us to do? Live godly lives, make the most of every opportunity to speak for Jesus, to always be ready with an answer for the hope we have in Christ, to speak to anyone with gentleness and respect, and to be ambassadors for Jesus in this world. The number of people who respond, and the ministry opportunities that present themselves are above our pay grade. You cannot save a single soul, you cannot grow a single person, you cannot create and single ministry opportunity. These things are all the within the hands of the Lord. Your task is to remain faithful to that which he has called you to do.
You should definitely want to be a ministry success. But ministry failure is not when people don’t want to hear your testimony, or reject you or the gospel. The only failure unfaithfulness to Christ. The success for which we are aiming is faithfulness. The big concern with that is as we look at scripture and see the unfaithfulness riddled through the history of God’s people. But knowing that we have the Holy Spirit who gives us the words to speak and, all the more, remembering that we have a sovereign God who will ensure that what he wants to achieve will be achieved, including our faithfulness. So even in our one task of remaining faithful, we rest on the Lord who works all things according to the counsel of his will.

Stephen K. Kneale

is married to Rachel and has two children, Clement and Aurélie. He is the pastor at Oldham Bethel Church, an FIEC church in the Greater Manchester area of the UK which is also affiliated to the North West Partnership. He holds qualifications in History & Politics (BA, University of Liverpool), Religious Studies & Philosophy (PGCE, Edge Hill University) and Theology (MA, Kings Evangelical Divinity School). He blogs at Building Jerusalem, where an earlier version of this article appeared.

Pioneering Olympian Silvia Ruegger faces cancer with grace, running and an unrelenting faith.

by Editor5th June 201910th June 2020

by Tania Haas

It was September 15, 2017 when doctors told Silvia Ruegger she couldn’t run for the next three months. It was the minimum time advised for her body to recover after her surgery. A thoracic surgeon had spent seven and a half hours in the operating theatre removing the cancer cells that lined the inside of her throat. A tumour, shrunk in recent months by radiation and chemotherapy, was taken out, as was her oesophagus, the surgical treatment for esophageal cancer. In its place was her stomach. The expandable organ has the magical ability to take over the role and real estate of the oesophagus. Understandably, she needed to rest to stave off infection, and heal.
So Ruegger, then 56, Olympian, retired long-distance runner and former Canadian marathon record-holder followed the doctor’s orders. Doing so had helped her manage injuries in college and competition years ago. She was not new to the long game. At age of 14 she pledged to compete in the Olympics. In 1984, she did; competing in the first women’s marathon in Los Angeles. And then, in 1985 at the age of 24, she ran the Houston Marathon in 2:28:36, shattering the previous record and holding the Canadian record for 28 years. Instead, she waited, rested and prayed.
But three months and a day later, Silvia pulled on her layers, strapped on her Adrenaline sneakers, rolled a balaclava gently over her face and went for a run. On that day in midtown Toronto it was negative six degrees Celsius.
“It was excruciating due to the impact of the surgery (and anatomical changes),” recalls Ruegger nearly 16 months later. “I had to walk-run for a while but it reminded me of my days as a young athlete when I would interval train between telephone poles. And I was running again, which was a blessing.”
Today she runs eight to 10 kilometres; five times a week; outside; without music and solo. But she’s never truly alone. As Ruegger says, she’s with her Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

HIGHER POWER

1_ZOELjr59KsuE7nNNx35qXA — Silvia Ruegger in 1980

“Running is my faith walk with God,” she explains. “My relationship with God influences every moment of my life. In seasons of uncertainty, it has always anchored me. Through my running journey, it was what undergirded me and gave me strength — it has been the same through this health journey.”
Silvia says she found salvation in the conviction that a benevolent and compassionate God would guide and protect her when she was a young girl growing up on a farm in Newtonville, Ontario. As a strong-willed child, her drive would manifest in ‘doing whatever it took’ to get what she wanted. At the age 14 an incident at grade school caused her to realise that she was acting like a bully. That sudden awareness left her reeling with guilt and shame.
“I was devastated by the impact my behaviour had on others,” recalls Silvia. “I recognised the need of being saved from myself and I remembered the wonderful invitation to receive the unconditional love and forgiveness offered through Jesus Christ. “In His great love, God heard me, forgave me and invited me into a wonderful relationship with Him that changed me.”
It was around that same time that Silvia’s dream to become an Olympian was seeded. She credits her God for ensuring the right support systems — like her family and coaches — were around to support her audacious dream.
“My relationship with God was what gave me the courage to begin, and keep going.”

IT TAKES A VILLAGE

After her eighth-place finish at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, the year the women’s marathon debuted, and winning the 1985 Houston Marathon, Silvia officially retired from long-distance running in 1996. In addition to a full-time job at Brooks, she turned her energies toward children from low-resource neighbourhoods by creating literacy and running programs in Ontario and then across the country. “Physical activity enhances learning, memory and clarity of thought,” Ruegger told the National Post in 2012. “It’s a pathway of hope. Let’s tell these children that we believe in them, and that they’ve got what it takes.”
Her interest in helping children marginalised by poverty started early. Luciano Del Monte, a runner and a former pastor at the University of Guelph, developed a friendship with the young varsity runner when she joined his non-denominational faith congregation on campus. Over the years, Del Monte observed Ruegger’s faith in action both on the track and in the community, including her devoting years to the mentorship and sponsorship of young athletes and students, including Del Monte’s three sons, who refer to her as Aunt Silvia.
“Although Silvia has lived as a single person her whole adult life, she is a person who is a close friend to many. And even though she can appear to be a lone ranger, she actually works hard at being interdependent with people,” adds Del Monte, who along with his wife, thinks of Ruegger as the protestant version of Mother Teresa.
As Ruegger navigates life after a cancer diagnosis, Del Monte sees the same grace and discipline she exhibited all through her running and charity.
“Silvia availed herself of everything medicine had to provide, but she also knew that her faith would be what would carry her through, and although she did her part, she also had an unshakable trust that her God would heal her. At times we found her faith overwhelming because it caused us to wonder about our own lack of it,” says Del Monte.
Nancy Ralph, a friend for over 30 years, has also witnessed Ruegger’s unrelenting faith.
“All of the disciplines she developed as a runner serve her as a cancer survivor. Everything in her life before that diagnosis prepared her for the battle that she has waged against this cancer,” says Ralph. “She has been utterly convinced that God would eradicate cancer from her body and she was equally determined to do her part in the marathon of recovery. Hand in hand with Silvia and her medical team, God has been enthroned above this furious flood.”

SURVIVING THE TIMES

“Navigating angry waters” is a poetic way to describe Ruegger’s recovery after surgery. With a six-inch scar on her throat and a 16-inch scar on her side body, Ruegger spent 10 days in hospital with her three siblings, close family and friends by her side. She then moved into the family home of another life long friend, Linda Gamble, for six weeks until she could live on her own.
Linda remembers Silvia then, in so much pain. She could not lie down flat, and had tubes to help her eat and drink. She barely slept more than one hour at a time.
“Though I have always known how important Silvia’s ‘quiet’ worship time with Jesus is each morning, nothing prepared me for the fact that she set her alarm for 3:30 a.m. to not miss an extended period of singing hymns, reading her well-worn Bible. She would sit facing the window looking outside for the first ray of morning light,” says Gamble who recalls Ruegger’s recovery period in her home as some of the richest times her family experienced.
“Silvia has taught me volumes during her cancer journey. Along with my family, she is the one I want to turn to with pain, or delightful news, we end up laughing, crying, and praying through all of these.”

WE CARRY ON

When Ruegger’s cancer cells reappeared late last year and she returned to the hospital for radiation; her faith never wavered. Ruegger’s inner scrappy 14 year old lives on today with her fierceness guided by faith. She says her cancer has brought her closer to God than ever before.
“I know I am loved. I trust him and his perfect love. There is no room for fear,” Ruegger shared recently at a Toronto cafe, decked out in a black leather jacket, her dark hair pulled back, the scar on her throat barely visible. Ruegger spoke at length of her joy of worship and the importance of prayer. Dozens of her friends — “men and women of great faith” — joined her in prayer vigils before and after her surgery, and continue to pray for Silvia every day, which means so much to her.
Ruegger’s large green eyes tear up as she shared one of her favourite Bible verses.
“I press on toward the goal for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” (World English Bible, Philippians 3:14.)
“ ‘I press on,’ says Ruegger, as she emulates running, her arms swinging at her side. “Those words take me back to the Los Angeles Olympics in ’84. We were still ways away from the final miles, but we could see the stadium in the distance. I fixed my eyes on it and kept on pressing.
“And it’s the same today. I have fixed my eyes on Jesus Christ, and because of that, I won’t be deterred by any obstacle or hindrance. I’m not alone. There’s only love.”
To which, we can all say, Amen.

Tania Haas

is a writer and photographer and regular specialising in running and health. This article first appeared in iRun magazine in Canada, here. It is reproduced with the kind permission of iRun @iRunMagazine. Older photos supplied by Silvia Ruegger and iRun magazine, 2019 photo by Tyler Anderson photography, used with permission.

New Book, New Country! Andy Bannister interviews David Robertson (video)

by Editor29th May 20199th November 2022

It’s a significant time for Solas’ founder David Robertson. His new book, A.S.K. is being published just as he is packing his bags to move to Australia. He sat down with Andy Bannister to discuss the book, which the questions from teenagers, and explains what life and ministry will look like when he arrives in Australia.

Ask. Seek. Knock. by David Robertson is available here.

Read more about David’s new work in Australia here.

Has science explained everything?

by Solas29th May 201911th May 2020

“Has science explained everything?” In this episode of Short Answers we see why the answer is a resounding “no”, explore why science is an utterly brilliant invention, and discover why science only works in the first place if God exists.

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Does ‘Matter’ Really Matter to God?

by Editor27th May 20199th November 2022

When I Google ‘Do material things matter to God?’ I find over 20,000,000 results. Some sites (confession: I didn’t check them all) warn of the dangers material things pose to our relationship with God: ‘be spiritual and don’t get sucked into worldly concerns’. Others claim to give the secret of material prosperity, usually in return for a fee. It seems Christians are mightily confused about whether the stuff we think we own, the world of nature, even our own bodies, are deep-down good or not.
We’re mixed up largely because Western Christian thinking has been compromised by Greek philosophy’s unbiblical separation of body from soul and material from spiritual. We may quote ‘Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things’ (Colossians 3:2), but we spend our lives pursuing and all-but-worshipping material things – nice homes and cars, good food, good-looking people, comfortable churches. The results are disastrous both for our world and our relationship with God. Believing material things don’t matter has allowed us to pollute and plunder the gift of God’s good world. Believing only spiritual things matter divorces us from the constant biblical reminders that our attitudes and practices concerning possessions, people, other creatures, and the land we inhabit are at the very heart of our relationship with God.
Of course, Genesis is clear. Everything God made, darkness as well as light, fish as well as fowl, mountain, moorland, maggots (presumably!) and me, are all good. Put them all together and in their totality they’re ‘very good’. Matter does indeed matter to God, so much so that he made lots of it. Millions of variations upon it. As the atheistic scientist J B Haldane rightly, if apocryphally, said: God has ‘an inordinate fondness for beetles’. After all, he made at least 400,000 species.
Material things are to be celebrated and cherished. It is not disembodied souls that are ‘fearfully and wonderfully made’; it is our physical bodies (Psalm 139:14). God made wholes not souls, as Tom Wright puts it. Jesus doesn’t tell us to contemplate philosophical concepts. He encourages us to study birds and flowers to understand God’s Kingdom (Matthew 6:25-34). In fact, matter matters so much to God that in Jesus he entered into his material creation. Jesus, God with us, is the greatest possible ‘Yes!’ to physical, flesh-and-blood life, both human and animal.
Look at Job: a man who had it all, materially-speaking, and then lost it all, along with family and health. How did God answer his raging and questioning? Not by telling him to be more spiritual, or to contemplate the happiness he’d receive after death. God made him look more closely at the bio-physical world around him. Ironically, Job’s problem was that material things, specifically the non-human natural world, had not been important enough to him. His world had been centred on himself. It was in wildness and wilderness, in the mystery and majesty of untamed nature, in recognising that this world is not for us but is in the deepest sense for God that Job began to put the pieces back together.
What about us? If we try and pretend matter doesn’t matter, we get sucked into an unconscious materialism, we treat God’s earth without the respect God gives it, we cease worshipping God with our whole being, and we fail to enjoy God’s material blessings – which are not found in owning and possessing, but in enjoying, receiving and sharing God’s gift of creation. So next time you need some material therapy, keep clear of the mall. Read Psalm 104 and then step outside and immerse yourself in the wonder of God’s creation.

Dave Bookless

has worked with A Rocha since 1997, He has recently completed a PhD at Cambridge University on biblical theology and biodiversity conservation. This article first appeared at http://www.arocha.org/, and is republished with permission.

THRIVE: The Gospel in the Workplace

by Editor22nd May 20194th May 2021

Andy Bannister reports on an eye-opening conference in Aberdeen, on being open about your Christian faith at work:

Grace versus Karma

by Editor20th May 20199th November 2022 2 Comments

Do we reap what we sow? Do we get what we deserve when we die?
Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism, India’s contribution to the world, teach that our thoughts and actions have consequences, namely rewards or punishments. Goodness leads to rewards and bad thoughts and actions lead to pain and suffering. This, in a nutshell, is Karma.
On the other end of the religious spectrum is Historic Christianity that teaches the virtual opposite – Grace. The dictionary definition of grace is mercy, clemency or pardon.
A brief study of Grace and Karma is invaluable to those on either side as well as the honest seeker. Karma and Grace gain utmost significance because they are two fundamental and uncompromising doctrines within their respective worldviews. Christians and Hindus would never compromise the doctrines of Grace and Karma, respectively.

KARMA

Karma means action, “Karma in Hinduism (Sanatana dharma) is considered to be a spiritually originated law that governs all life. In the Law of Karma even though an individual is considered to be the sole doer and enjoyer of his Karmas and their ‘fruits’, according to Vedanta, the supreme being (The Divine) plays a major role as the dispenser of the ‘fruits’ of Karma…”[note]http://www.thekundaliniyoga.org/karma/karma_gods_law_action_fruit_rebirth_reincarnation_hindu_perspective.aspx#Types of Karma, last accessed 2nd Feb 2017.[/note]
The following is a listing of the basic facets of Karma:[note]http://www.hinduwebsite.com/hinduism/h_karma.asp, last accessed 2nd Feb 2017 & http://www.hinduwebsite.com/conceptofkarma.asp#fn02, last accessed 2nd Feb 2017.[/note]
1. The Hindu Scriptures, Uphanishads, Bhagavadgita and the Puranas, teach Karma.
2. Karma applies to human beings, plants, animals and microorganisms. Karma also applies to groups such as associations, organizations and nations; this is termed as the collective karma.
3. Karma does not apply to God. But gods and celestial beings are bound by the law of Karma. (According to some Puranas, Brahma, Vishnu and Siva attained their position of divine responsibilities because of their meritorious actions in their previous births.)
4. Sin, according to Hinduism, is an offense committed against human beings and not God.
5. Karma includes both the physical and the mental actions (thoughts). Man possesses free will to perform a good action, a good word or a good thought, and these would fetch him/her rewards. Anything bad would fetch punishment. (Karma includes even our most natural acts such as sleeping and breathing, hence non-action and deliberate inaction is also a part of karma.)
6. Hinduism recognizes four types of karma:

6.1 Sanchita Karma: It is sum total of the accumulated karma of previous lives.
6.2 Prarabdha Karma: That part of the sanchita karma that is currently activated in the present life and which influences the course of the present life.
6.3 Agami Karma (Future Karma): The karma that arises out of the current life activities, whose consequences will be experienced by the individual in the coming lives.
6.4 Kriyamana Karma: This is the karma whose consequences are experienced in this very life.

7. Reincarnation is a necessary aspect of karma. Karma binds its subjects to cycles of births and deaths by initiating the cycle of cause and effect. Rebirth would occur until there is balance in the individual’s karmic account. The soul cannot attain moksha (salvation) without exhausting the accumulated Karmas.
8. A soul could exist for even a million years to exhaust the accumulated karmas. Thus the individual soul carries the burden of its karma until a permanent liberation is achieved through the renunciation of the doership and detachment from the fruits of actions. Hindus are obligated to perform certain duties to neutralize their karma. There are two mandatory karmas every Hindu ought to perform (it is sinful to not perform these duties) and there is an optional karma:

8.1 Nitya Karma includes duties every human being ought to perform (sleep, shower, eat, pray etc.).
8.2 Naimittika Karma includes duties that ought to be performed on specific occasions such as festivals, solar, lunar eclipses, marriage, funeral rites etc.
8.3 Kamyakarma includes optional duties such as going on a pilgrimage, educating one’s children, property purchase, performing a sacrificial rite etc.

Hinduism also teaches that since man can never develop the sense of being perfectly right or wrong, performing these duties need not necessarily incur merit. Hence spiritual means are necessary for a Hindu to be liberated from his/her karma, “Karma ends when you have perfected yourself in the art of doing Karma without attachment. The ability to do Karma without attachment (without expectation of Karma-phala) can be attained by perfecting oneself on the path to the Divine by following various yogas – Karma yoga (yoga of action without attachment), Bhakti yoga (yoga of love for the Divine), Gyan yoga (yoga of knowledge and awareness), Siddha or Kundalini yoga (yoga of divine consciousness), Hatha yoga (purification of the body and mind through Asanas and Pranayama), Laya yoga (yoga of meditating on interior energy centres), Mantra yoga (yoga of Divine or Sacred words, phrases, or syllables) or any combination of these.”[note]http://www.thekundaliniyoga.org/karma/karma_gods_law_action_fruit_rebirth_reincarnation_hindu_perspective.aspx#Types of Karma, last accessed 2nd Feb 2017.[/note] (Emphasis Mine).

GRACE

In the Hindu worldview there is an inexorable connection between man’s actions and consequences, not even death can break this connection, for the law of karma carries over into the next incarnation.
However, in the Christian worldview, the sin-punishment sequence can be interrupted by repentance and confession of sins, with consequent forgiveness, and death brings a release from the temporal effects of sin. God’s love and grace offer this privilege to the repentant man.
God does not deal with man based on man’s merit. God deals with man based on HIS own goodness and generosity. God also deals with man based on his nature and his need i.e. man’s nature is that he is innately sinful and his perpetual need is to be forgiven.
Grace means God’s goodness towards those who deserve only punishment. God supplies man with undeserved or unmerited favour ie. HIS favour is toward those who deserve no favour but only punishment.
In other words, salvation is a [free] gift from God to man (Romans 6: 23; Ephesians 2: 8-9). Salvation, according to Historic Christianity, is by the grace of God (Ephesians 1: 5-8).The Bible also mentions God’s grace as an extravagant gift (Cf. Titus 2: 11, 3: 3-7).
Since God’s grace is unmerited, there is only one human attitude appropriate as an instrument for receiving God’s grace, namely, faith (Cf. Romans 4: 16). While it is faith that leads to man’s justification, justification must and will invariably produce works appropriate to the nature of the new creature[note]Man who trusts and remains in Christ becomes a new creation and will no longer live for himself (2 Corinthians 5: 17), man’s life will become spiritual.[/note] that man has become (Ephesians 2: 8-9; James 2: 17).
The good news of Christianity is that God became man “full of grace and truth” (John 1: 14-17). God did not come in the form of Jesus Christ as a judge and executioner, for if HE had done so, entire mankind would have been found guilty and sentenced to everlasting punishment. But God became man to be gracious to us. Hence, Christ died on the cross for the sake of man’s sins. The cross of Christ is a symbol of the fullness of God’s grace.

HARMONY

A few instances where Grace and Karma harmonize are:
1. Christianity deems man as sinful [from birth]. Hinduism, by virtue of the law of karma, believes that man would sin in thoughts, words and deeds.
2. Christianity and Hinduism emphasize the need for punishment of sins.
3. The Bible also mentions reaping and sowing (Job 4: 8, Psalm 126: 5). However, the act of receiving rewards for our good deeds is in this life and in our life in heaven (Matthew 16: 27; Revelation 22: 12).

DISSONANCE

The Bible diverges from karma in these aspects:
1. Every sin merits death and no amount of good works can override our bad thoughts, deeds or words, for man is innately sinful. Hence, man needs to receive God’s grace through repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
2. Good works are an outcome of man’s trust and perpetual dependence upon Christ (Cf. Philippians 2: 13).
3. Outside of God’s love and forgiveness there is no hope for mankind. Because God loves the sinful man, HE has offered a provision for him to repent and turn to Christ, so that everyone who repents of his/her sins, declares that Christ is Lord and believes in his/her heart that God raised HIM from the dead will be saved.

Rajkumar Richard

has a Masters in Religion (Southern Evangelical Seminary, NC, USA) and Masters in Biology (School of Biological Sciences, Madurai Kamaraj University, India). He is a Christian blogger, itinerant speaker, who blogs at, rajkumarrichard.blogspot.com

Do Muslims and Christians Worship the Same God?

by Editor13th May 20199th November 2022

Modern Britain is increasingly pluralistic: many of us live in cities surrounded by hundreds of different faiths and belief systems. And that diversity raises lots of issues – not least how as Christians we relate to friends, neighbours and colleagues in other religions.
In the UK, the second biggest religion is Islam, one that is frequently on the front pages of the newspapers, often for all the wrong reasons. Now some people have suggested that one way to foster peace between moderate Muslims and Christians is to acknowledge that Allah, the God of the Qur’an, and Yahweh, the God of the Bible, are the same God — that Muslims, Christians (and Jews) can be pooled together under a label like “Abrahamic Faiths”.
I’ve been working among Muslims for over 20 years and I confess when I began sharing my faith with Muslims, that was my assumption — that Muslims and Christians worshipped the same God. But during those years of talking, sharing and studying, my views have changed. Let me explain why.
First, let’s acknowledge that Muslims and Christians do believe some things in common about God’s role. We all believe that God is the creator and ruler of all things, for instance. But notice that this description is fairly thin: it gives you a kind of distant, abstract God of the philosophers. In particular it says little about God’s identity — not so much who God is as what God is.
Now it’s possible to agree about somebody’s role but disagree about their identity. If I believe that the Prime Minister is Theresa May, you believe it’s Jeremy Corbyn, and the man in the pub believes it’s Donald Duck, we all believe in one Prime Minster, but we disagree about the PM’s identity. And surely that question is one that really matters.
When it comes to God, the Bible is deeply concerned with the identity question. Think about what Jesus asks his disciples in Mark 8:27: not what do you say I am, but who do you say that I am?
Now mistaken identity is a common problem. Suppose you say to me, “Andy, I met your friend Mike yesterday.” “My friend, Mike?” I query. “Yes, you know, the six foot tall bald guy.” I explain that the only Mike I know is five foot with dreadlocks. “No, it was definitely your friend,” you insist, “he’s got a small dog and plays the guitar”. I explain my friend Mike is allergic to dogs and tone deaf. And so it goes on. Now here’s the thing: how many differences would we need to discover before we were forced to conclude we were talking about two different people?
Something like that is going on when it comes to the God of the Bible and the God of the Qur’an. As the Bible addresses the question of who God is, the Bible lays out a number of key characteristics of God’s identity. Four of the most important are that the God of the Bible is relational (walking and talking with Adam and Eve, stepping into history in the person of Jesus etc.). That he is knowable (the Bible claims we can not just know about God, but know him). That he is love — not just a God who acts lovingly, but who is love in his very being. And that God’s love has been primarily demonstrated through suffering on the cross, in Jesus, to deal with our sin and brokenness and offer us the possibility of forgiveness and new life. [note] There are many, many other differences between the god of the Qur’an and the God of the Bible. In his excellent book, The Qur’an and Its Biblical Reflexes: Investigations into the Genesis of a Religion, Mark Durie, PhD, undertakes an incredibly thorough analysis of the theology of the Qur’an and the Bible, showing that they are utterly different, especially in their conception of God. This is, Mark argues, because Islam is not related to Christianity and Judaism, but a thoroughly different religion with an entirely different conceptual grid. The book is expensive (academic pricing!) but it’s worth tracking down a copy in a library. You can also watch a lecture by Mark on some of this material.[/note]
Relational, knowable, love, suffering. And here’s the problem: the Qur’an either ignores or directly denies each of those core aspects of God’s identity. For example, Muslim scholar Shabbir Akhtar points out that in Islam, Allah cannot be known nor any kind of relationship had with him:
Muslims do not see God as their father … Men are servants of a just master; they cannot, in orthodox Islam, typically attain any greater degree of intimacy with their creator. [note] Shabbir Akhtar, A Faith for All Seasons (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1990) p180. [/note]
Whilst the Muslim academic Isma’il al Furuqi writes:
Allah does not reveal Himself to anyone in any way. Allah reveals only his will … Allah does not reveal himself to anyone … that is the great difference between Christianity and Islam. [note] Isma’il al Furuqi, Christian Mission and Islamic Da’wah: Proceedings of the Chambésy Dialogue Consultation (Leicester: The Islamic Foundation, 1982) p47-48.[/note]
Which means that the God of Islam, the Allah of the Qur’an, is a very different God indeed.
All that said, I do meet many Muslims who are yearning for a God of love, who when you ask them about the God they believe in, speak of characteristics like love. What’s going on here? Well, the Bible explains that we are designed for a relationship with God, created to be in loving communion with him, and so that desire bubbles up in Muslim hearts too. Thus when I meet a Muslim who talks of God and love, I often begin not by saying “you have the wrong God” but instead, by pivoting off Acts 17 as my model.
In Acts 17:16-34, when Paul is wandering around Athens and observing the myriad pagan altars he notices one inscribed: ‘To an Unknown God’. Later, in his sermon at the Areopagus, Paul doesn’t launch into an attack on the Athenians’ idolatry, rather he builds on the Unknown God idea, saying:
“Now what you worship as something unknown, I am going to proclaim to you.”
I believe that in some cases this approach can work with our Muslim friends. Yes, the Qur’an clearly describes a very different god to the God of the Bible: utterly, irreconcilably different. But many individual Muslims are yearning for a God like the God of the Bible. In that case, we should look at our Muslim friend and say: “Come on home, friend, come on home, to the God of the Bible, the God who has revealed himself so clearly, so powerfully, so compassionately in Jesus.”
Here in the West, immigration has brought and is bringing more Muslims to our countries. As well as welcoming them to our lands, let’s also introduce them to our Lord: a God who is relational, a God who can be known, a God who is love, and a God who has demonstrated that love in costly suffering in the cross of Christ.

If you enjoyed this short blog article and would like to dig deeper, you can watch the longer lecture I gave on this topic for the CS Lewis Institute in 2016. (And you can also watch the Q&A from the evening).

Given the legacy of the Church why should I take Christianity seriously?

by Solas8th May 201911th May 2020

Many people are attracted to Jesus but put off by some of the historical failures of the Church and of Christians. Is there a way to clear away some of the baggage that sometimes prevents people seeing Jesus clearly? In this new Short Answers episode, Andy Bannister responds to this common stumbling block for many people.