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Great radio interview on the BBC website where Jason Robinson, one of England's greatest-ever rugby players in both league and union, talks about how finding Christ saved him from himself, and from the emptiness that worldly success had brought him.
His story is fairly well-known among those of us who love both Christ and sport, but what is always striking is the way he came to faith through his team-mate, Vaiga Tuigamala, who was a living embodiment of 1 Peter 2 v 12: "Live such good lives among the pagans that … they may see your good deeds and glorify God".
His autobiography, Finding my Feet, has been around for a few years, but is a great read—you can get it second-hand here
I recently caught the tail end of Radio 4’s Today programme. A presenter was apologising for a remark made earlier in the programme. In a discussion about inventions she’d commented that children would probably vote Father Christmas as one of the best ever inventions. A flood of tweets and texts followed. People were concerned that children able to hear the radio as they journeyed to school by car would discover that Father Christmas is only an invention!
The mock-horror tone of the complaints and the light-hearted “grovelling” apology do not altogether disguise the fact that many people today hold very dear a child’s “right” to believe in the existence of Father Christmas. Undermining that belief in any way before the “appropriate” age is viewed as tantamount to child abuse.
How should Christians respond to these expectations? In our over-commercialised, secular culture, where the true Christmas story is largely buried or avoided, it’s not surprising that non-Christians cling to the modern “myth” of Father Christmas with a religious-like fervency. But what about Christians? Don’t we have compelling reasons to be different?
This tradition of safeguarding the belief of small children in Father Christmas is also alive and well in our churches. It’s not hard to imagine the outrage if someone were to spill the beans about Santa at a Christmas family service. In fact, this is precisely what happened to a preacher that I know in the early days of his ministry. Interestingly, the unhappy complaints came not from visitors, but church members.
So, what should Christian parents be teaching their children about Father Christmas? I and my husband took the approach that there are two Christmas stories—one is magical but fake, whereas the other is thrilling and wonderfully true. And from their earliest days we wanted our children to know the difference.
We didn’t want our children to reach an age where they realised that we hadn’t told them the truth about Father Christmas, and to draw the parallel conclusion that we were not telling them the truth about Jesus Christ.
We didn’t want them to miss out on the fun and enchantment of Christmas. But we wanted them to be enchanted with the true story of Christmas, and the wonder of Jesus Christ’s birth into our dark world—a wonder that needn’t fade as they grew older but could sustain them all through their lives because it is true.
We wanted to have fun with the Christmas traditions too. Precisely because we’ve always told our children that Father Christmas is made-up, we’ve been able to play with all the Santa traditions—stockings mysteriously filled with gifts, half-eaten snacks on Christmas morning, and so on—without any fear of misleading our children.
Of course we need to be sensitive to non-Christian friends and family at this time of year. But in our own homes and families, let’s be unabashed in being different from our culture, honest with our children, and gripped with awe and wonder by the true story and person of Christmas.
A haiku is a short, three-line poem which always follows this pattern:
The scientists working at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland are expected to announce today that they’ve found the “God particle”, the Higgs-Boson. I’m not a scientist, and would love someone to explain it all to me in very short words, but I think it’s a particle which, if it exists, proves the “Theory of Everything” and explains what happened right the start of the formation of the universe.
That’s why it’s called the “God particle”.
But there was a fantastic moment on Radio Five Live this morning when a scientist from Manchester University (whose name I missed) said that if the God particle does exist, it’s very exciting because (and I paraphrase) “then we can start finding out even more, and looking for more particles like this one”.
So it’s not really the “God particle” then, is it?! The thing about God is that, if you find Him, you have your first cause, your primary reason, your explanation of everything that is, was and will be. You don’t find God and then need to keep looking for answers.
So if this particle exists, and if once scientists have found it they’ll get on with looking for other, even more exciting, things, because actually the Higgs-Boson was never the ultimate answer, shouldn’t it be renamed: the Idol Particle?
On a more serious note (and again, my understanding is from a couple of newspapers articles and Five Live Breakfast, so do please correct me!), this particle will explain what happened in the nano-seconds after the universe began. Which really is very exciting.
But not exactly on a par with finding God. Assuming the Big Bang is how it all started, God is the One who stands behind the Big Bang. He’s the One whose word was heard nano-seconds before the Big Bang. He’s the One who created the Higgs-Boson.
The God/Idol Particle may tell us more about how creation happened. It will, if we have the humility to do so, enable us to worship the great God of everything more. But nothing that exists within creation can ever explain away, or be offered as a replacement to, the God who stands outside creation. There’s a reason Genesis 1 v 1 starts “IN the beginning”, not “Very, very shortly after the beginning”!
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has weighed in this week on the causes to, and solutions for, this summer’s riots.
It’s fashionable to criticize him every time he pops his head over the parapet, and the Daily Telegraph and other media to the right-of-centre have enjoyed doing so.
There is actually a lot of thought, and a fair amount of wisdom, in what he said. If he were a politician, head of a think tank, a local councillor, or a youth worker, his article in the Guardian would be a thought-provoking, useful contribution.
But he isn’t any of those people. He’s the day-to-day head of the Church of England. And so it matters that in his article, he did not mention God the Father, God the Son, or God the Spirit, or even the Bible or the church.
It matters that one of the comments beneath his article online says this: “Once again Dr Williams has been very brave, considering his position, and he has also not offered faith or religion as a solution to the problem. Top marks!”
It matters that when he could have said that…
…he didn’t.
Interestingly, even some secular writers seem to pine for the “good old days”, when churchmen believed in and talked about the God of the Bible. Here’s a revealing thought, from someone who appears to be an atheist, that “the fear of God was a very useful thing … the idea that, one day, you would pay”.
That idea is a very real thing, too. Which is what Rowan might have mentioned.
Fascinating piece on the BBC website about the origins of "What would Jesus do?" as a global symbol.
The intriguing question started as part of the title of a novel in the 1896 by an American Congregational minister from Kansas, Charles Sheldon. He published a story called In His Steps: What would Jesus do? in which a town is revolutionised when Christians "pledge themselves, earnestly and honestly for an entire year, not to do anything without first asking the question, 'What would Jesus do?'".
Owing partly to a strange quirk - the publisher failed to register copyright for the work - the book became one of the 50 best-selling books of all time as other publishers produced cheap knock-off copies.
Fast forward a hundred years, and we have a fine example of history repeating itself. A youth leader at a church in Michigan read the book in 1989, and discussed it with her group. She was thinking of having some T-shirts printed, with the slogan on, but picked up on the new idea of wristbands - shortened the question to WWJD, and had 300 made for herself and her group. The idea snowballed, and was picked up by commercial companies who made their own and started marketing a range of products with the question on it nationally and internationally. By the time Janie Tinklenberg tried to register the trademark it was too late.
The question has now become so familiar in the culture that it has achieved iconic status - having inspired a thousand rewrites for use in politics, protests, advertising, and cheap shots by stand up comedians.
Certainly, for Christians, the phrase has a powerful encouragement, but is also filled with potential dangers. Christians are those who have responded to Jesus' call, to deny themselves, take up the cross and follow Christ (Mark 8 v 34). So when we ask the WWJD? question of ourselves in the general sense, it can deliver positive encouragements. It should remind me to speak the truth, even when it is unwelcome. It should encourage me to be humble and servant hearted, even when I am exhausted, or the recipient of my kindness is unlovely or unworthy by the world's standards. It should encourage me to pray and trust God, rather than my own resources. These were all things that Jesus most definitely was and did - and importantly, these were the things he commanded his followers to do.
But of course there are many things that Jesus did that we are not called to emulate him in. We don't expect to walk on the water, or multiply loaves, for example. And his first disciples spoke plainly and openly about Christ, whereas the Lord Jesus did much of his public teaching in parables - actually designed to hide the message of the kingdom in some ways (see Mark 4 v 10-12). And there are many questions we face in the modern world, where it is not actually that clear what Jesus would do - because we have no clear word from him on the subject.
So the danger for those who have a less clear grasp of the Bible and the gospel message is that it becomes an opportunity for hitching a "home-made Jesus" to their own interests. We focus only on the parts where Jesus seems to back up our cause, whether that is equality, the fight against poverty, the challenging of a corrupt system, or just being kind to animals and children. The result is that Jesus is used to baptise our particular cause. The result: we become the master, and he the servant, not the other way round. The responses to the BBC article provide a snapshot of this tendency.
WWJD? Is a great question to ask. So long as we recognise its limits. And so long as we search the scriptures carefully to make sure we really know what Jesus would have us do, rather than just doing what suits us in the name of a made-up Jesus.
It's that time of the year. Many of us are surrounded by piles of the things. And the fact of the matter is that those cards simply must get written in the next few days! But much as it is lovely and useful to send out a picture of a nativity scene with a Bible verse attached, I can't help thinking that there are ways of making even more of these little pieces of paper which we send to our friends, near and far, in this festive season.
So, this year, I've made a promise to myself. I wont be just signing my name at the base of each card. I'll be aiming to write something meaningful in each one: something that spurs on my fellow-believers (Hebrews 10:24) or something that points my non-Christian friends to Jesus (Mark 16:15). If you still have yours to write, maybe you would like to do the same? Why not include one of the following?
1. A thank-you
Throughout 2011 there have been many people encouraging us: our preachers, home group leaders, those who run our childen's work, our friends who enjoy our company when we are having a good day and stick by us when we're not, to name just a few...Let's use our cards to make sure they know just how much we appreciate all they have done throughout the year.
2. An encouragement
We all know people who have had a really tough time in 2011 and those for whom 2012 is looking even worse. Those who are severely ill, those who have been bereaved, those whose key relationships are under pressure and those who are really struggling in their walk with the Lord... Let's use our cards to tell them that we are praying for them or to remind them of some great truth about God from his word.
3. An invitation
Christmas is a time of year when people who wouldn't normally go near a church or think about Jesus are willing to ponder him for a small moment. So let's use our cards to help them do that more by including a tract, a business card pointing people to the Christianity Explored website, an invitation to the next event your church is running or even an invitation to dinner so we encourage them in person.
We don't need to write essays ... a few words will do. But with just a little effort, we really can make the most of our Christmas cards this year.
