The stories we tell….

My reading project for 2025 is N. T. Wright’s “Christian Origins and the Question of God”. But because I managed to finish my 2024 project (Calvin’s “Institutes”) early, I decided to get started on Vol 1 of “Origins”: “The New Testament and the People of God”. Now admittedly there’s a lot of ground clearing goes on in the early chapters, but it’s useful for getting one’s bearings. And central to a lot of it is the issue of “story”. Of course the Anglo-Saxon scientist in me began to bridle at this point. But I managed not to get to the stage of chanting “just give me the facts” under my breath. Of course, had I been better educated (which is my aim in reading Wright in the first place) I would have realised that such a chant would simply be evidence of my capture by a particular story, the “modern” story. This is a story on an epic scale that still has quite a lot of us in its grip. It’s a tale about facts being true statements concerning things that exist absolutely, and phenomena that can be established in their totality using data (observations, measurement etc; for further discussion of facts, see here). We need to busy ourselves collecting such facts and once we have enough (although the threshold for “enough” is rarely explicitly stated) we can know some things for a certainty (because we’ve established the facts). Anything that doesn’t fit with this scheme (ie anything that can’t be measured and weighed, prodded and poked) probably isn’t meaningful, possibly doesn’t even exist and certainly isn’t worth bothering about. Therefore, basically only science can be trusted (because this is the sort of thing that science “does”), anything else is junk. This general view is a holdover from a particular philosophy that no longer impresses philosophers (and their fellow travellers in the humanities in general). But it holds sway in the minds of more than a few scientists I have encountered. And you’ll find it in the popular books they write (usually at or towards the end of their professional scientific careers). So more than a few non-scientists, otherwise normal and intelligent people, have made this their story. The problem is that as a story it is self-refuting. It itself is not a fact or collection of facts, it’s not science (even although it usually involves science) it cannot be measured, and therefore if true it must be false. 

Having calmed myself down, I returned to thinking about stories more widely. Wright’s contention is that “stories are important as an index of the world-view of any culture”. Which got me to thinking about the stories that are current today, those stories that might reveal the world-view of the contemporary culture. This is not a task I am capable of carrying out in any great detail. Others have spent more time and expended much more effort on projects like this. Carl Trueman and his “The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self” comes to mind (well worth a read, published in 2020, but by now probably obtainable second hand). What is the defining story of contemporary culture? It clearly cannot be the 18th/19th century story of humanity’s inevitable progress. The bloody 20^th century, with its world wars and atrocities, surely provided ample evidence that inevitable progress was a cruel fiction and could not be a story worth investing in. Its bankruptcy has been amply confirmed by the early disasters of the 21^st century. The story that elevates science and assumes that anything not approachable scientifically (ie most of life as we live it), while widespread, is now only held tentatively. Science itself is in a spot of bother, assailed by crises of reproducibility (what should have been one of its hallmarks turns out to be surprisingly rare) and integrity (a proportion of scientists turn out to be thoroughly untrustworthy). The results range from climate crisis denialism to falling vaccination rates with the consequential return of once banished diseases. Or maybe the more recent story that denies that there is any overarching story, and the nihilism to which this inevitably leads, is in fact the current prevailing story.

How this came to be is precisely what Trueman and others have tried to track. By his account, the efforts of a number of “story tellers” have brought us to where we are, of whom the most familiar are perhaps Marx, Nietzsche and Freud. The particular stories they originally told have themselves largely been discredited and discarded. It’s the residual, cumulative influence of their stories and their cumulative effects that are still with us. For each of these three, part of the objective was the destruction of one particular competing story. Nietzsche was perhaps the most obvious and knowing of the three as far as this aspect of the project was concerned. God might have been killed, but Christianity still had to be dealt with; it would in time “perish”. He was happy to initiate, or at least be in at the beginning of its demise. He knew (or suspected) that this would be a long-term project. In his preface to “The Dawn of the Day”, written in 1881, he writes of “a ‘subterrestrial' at work, digging, mining, undermining.” He probably didn’t realise how long it would take, in part because he was thoroughly dismissive of Christianity’s intellectual merits. After all, key Christian truths originated “in nothing but errors of reason”. He had a substitute story, and yet this story, along with those of Marx and Freud, have faired and aged arguably much worse than Christianity (and indeed other religious “stories”). The churches that these thinkers had so little time for, the centres from which the Christian story was and is (in theory at least) proclaimed, while apparently struggling in Europe and North America, appear to be doing rather well in Africa, South America and Asia. And at an estimated 100 million (estimates vary, this is by no means the highest; see here), there are more Christians in China today than in Europe. It appears that the story that Christians tell has yet to fall into the pit that Nietzsche sought to dig for it. If numbers matter, this might suggest that the story that Christians tell, of all stories, appears to be worth investigating.

But I’m not sure that these numbers do matter. What matters is the truth of the stories we tell and their ability to explain things for us; things like the past, the present and even the future. You may have noticed that we’ve been retelling part of the Christian story this week, acting it out, watching our children acting it out. Mind you, some of the versions on display may have been considerably tweaked from the original. Fortunately the original is available and can be checked, along with the larger Gospel story to which it belongs (not to mention the overall Bible story to which both belong). One can go right to the sources, rather than be suckered by caricatures. What will you find there and what world-view will it reveal? Will it be better than other stories that have been and still are told? Well, that’s a whole other story – which is rather the point.

I’ve decided to try and be constructive rather than just rant, even although the temptation to rant has been with me since mid-September. That’s when, once again, “X-mas Movies” started to appear on various TV channels, closely followed by adverts for assorted types of turkey roast, artificial fir trees, celebratory confectionery etc, etc, etc. And to cap it all, the contrast between Western commercialized end-of-year bonhomie and what is actually going on the world is perhaps starker this year than it has been for a while. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has bogged-down into a meat-grinding bloody stalemate. And more tragically still (if that were possible) in the part of the world where the events supposedly commemorated at “Christmas” actually occurred, bloodshed on an appalling scale is a daily occurrence. This is accompanies the reignition of an inter-ethnic war-for-land that had been reduced to a smoulder (or at least largely forgotten about by the Western media) and a widening of the conflict by Iranian proxies in Yemen and Lebanon (two failed states that promise more conflict for the future). None of this is to forget the tangling of Philippino and Chinese boats in the South China Sea (something of a misnomer - the tangle in question was much closer to the Philippine than Chinese coast), civil war in Myanmar (and several more in the horn of Africa), and political chaos in the Anglo-Saxon world. Oh, and then there’s the prospect of another Trump presidency. But no, I am not going carry on listing reasons to be (un)cheerful, rant, or even just sink into deep despair, tempting though all of those may be. Precisely because this is a cursed world, there is an amazing contrast to be drawn between what’s actually going on and an event actually worth focussing on, although often either missed or mythologized.

It is an event with even greater resonance because of what is going on in Israel and Gaza. Arguably today, as in the time detailed in the Gospels, Bethlehem is occupied territory. Precisely who is doing the occupying is at the centre of the current dispute. But the absence this year of anything worth celebrating is not. So there will be no Christmas tree or Christmas lights in Manger Square; the Church of the Nativity will be all but silent. And yet this is all similar to the circumstances that God Himself decided to enter in the person of His eternal son, Jesus. The Bethlehem in which Jesus was born was just as gritty as today, although a lot less famous. It was far from the centre of the world’s attention, but was an obscure location, within an obscure, conquered and occupied region of the world empire of the day. There was no Manger Square of course. And there was arguably no stable either; only a manger is mentioned in Luke’s account – the stable is inferred. There may well have been no inn, in which there was no room. Only Luke mentions what is usually translated as  “inn”, and it may have been a guestroom in the house of a relative. At no point in this story do we find all the other things that stand in the foreground of the contemporary Christmas – trees, presents and old men with white beards. All of this stuff was invented (and became “traditional”) relatively recently; the Santa with white beard and red coat is essentially the product of 1930’s advertising designed to sell a particular US soft-drink. I would suggest this stuff is the bit that’s worth forgetting. The earlier stuff, of much older provenance, is it turns out, much more relevant to our current hard-pressed circumstances.

At some point after the baby was born in Bethlehem (essentially to two homeless people who were about to become refugees in a country not their own), ugly politics intervened in the form of the local power-broker. Alerted by some unexpected visiting dignitaries to the fact that a potential rival for the peoples’ affections had been born, King Herod decided that power was more important to him than basic humanity. So he instigated the slaughter of who knows how many male children under the age of two in and around Bethlehem. Given this further sickening resonance with what is currently occurring in Gaza, it will be a brave pastor or minister that will include this little nugget in their nativity stories this Christmas. But these were the circumstances surrounding Jesus birth, and they contrast with the sanitized version that decorates the front of many a Christmas card. It was a world of poverty and suffering, of scandal, of refugees, political violence and curse. In other words, this world, our world, not a made up one.

And yet beneath the surface something important, joyful even, was happening. Jesus birth is not the whole story, but it was the beginning of something with staggering implications. Angels in the Gospel accounts are not always perceived to be good news, even if it’s good news they bring. The angel that came to Mary initially terrified her. And the news that was communicated to her was scary too. While no gynaecologist, Mary knew fine and well where babies came from, and so did her betrothed, Joseph. So it took another angel appearing in a dream, who also had to pacify Joseph and calm his fears, before telling him to continue with his plan to take Mary as his wife, notwithstanding the fact that she was pregnant, and not by him. All credit to him to reverting from Plan B (quietly divorcing Mary) to Plan A. The angel that encountered a bunch of Bethlehem shepherds initially terrified them too. Yet what they are told is “..good news of great joy..”: a long-promised rescuer had been born. Some rescuer, lying helpless in a feeding trough! Others also identified the baby as a deliverer of peace with significance way beyond the borders of Israel (Simeon in the temple at Jerusalem). Something was stirring in this world. It would be missed by the vast majority of those who lived at time, just as the Jesus’ significance continues to missed today.

So you could do a lot worse for yourself than forget about the made up man with the red coat and white beard, and focus on the real baby born in weakness, frailty and vulnerability in Bethlehem of all places. I wonder what became of Him?

Easter 2023: The calm between storms…..

It is unclear what Jesus and His disciples did during the middle of what has come to be called “Holy Week”. In part this is because ancient writers were not as obsessed by high resolution chronologies and itineraries as were are today. But it is possible to work out what happened during most of that particular week.

At the beginning of the week, on the Sunday as we would say, Jesus had entered Jerusalem in the most public manner, riding on a young donkey. He was arriving in a manner which had all sorts of resonances for those who knew their Old Testament. The people of the day came out in force. The Gospel writers record crowds welcoming Him, with waving palm branches and shouts that would have further wound up Jesus’ enemies in the religious establishment of the day. They had been after Him for while, necessitating Jesus avoiding Jerusalem and Judea at one point in His ministry. But apparently no longer. Knowing exactly what they were up to, He heads to what they assumed to be their seat of power. Some of them, particular Pharisees who were still on speaking terms with Him, asked Him to calm some of His more enthusiastic admirers. He politely declined.

He came not just to Jerusalem, but right to the temple in Jerusalem. Then as now, the temple was as much a powder keg as place of worship, it was political as much as spiritual. Jesus had been there before of course, but this time was different. The temple had become a hub of (probably not very honest) commerce, and Jesus wasn’t having it. He drove out animals that were being sold for use in the temple services as sacrifices, and overturned the tables at the “bureau de change”. This no doubt annoyed those with a financial interest, but it was the last straw for His religious opponents. They now looked for a way to “destroy” Him. These were not the actions of man looking for a quiet life, nor those of someone being driven by events. These were the actions of someone who knew exactly what was going on, who knew what was going to happen; He was driving events.

So by midweek, maybe they all just needed to rest up. They probably found a degree of peace and quiet in Bethany, perhaps at the home of Lazarus, Martha and Mary. A rest would have been a good idea for the disciples. It gave them a chance to contemplate the things Jesus had been saying, as well as the strange case of the withered fig tree. There would be lot’s more to think about. While those who were out to get Jesus plotted and schemed, He would continue to teach in and around the temple. At the end of the week, when they all came together for their Passover celebration, He would teach just the inner group of disciples in the most intimate of settings (what we know as “the Last Supper”). What is clear throughout is that Jesus knows that events are unfolding to a timetable. Although uninterested in the kind of chronology of hours, minutes and seconds that tends to obsess us, there was another chronology that was being followed.

One of the striking features of John’s account of these events are the continuing references to time. In fact John structures the first chapter and a bit of his Gospel around a sequence of seven or so days. This is a clue that time is going to play an important role in his recounting of events. Early on, he records Jesus as saying “...my hour has not yet come” (John 2:4). The time not being right will be mentioned again (7:30; 8:20), and then in the week in question the language changes. Early in the week Jesus says “Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour.” (John 12:27). By the end of the week He will know “this hour” is about to arrive, indeed arrive within literal hours. He knew what time it was. He had always known.

So midweek, with a number of momentous events behind Him, and knowing what lay ahead, perhaps there was some time to pause. Was it frustrating to watch the disciples just going about, apparently missing almost entirely the significance of what was was happening and what they were seeing and hearing? We don’t know. I hope not. Because that’s me a lot of the time even now. They didn’t get it as it was happening, no matter how explicit He had been (and He had been fairly explicit). But they would after the event, although admittedly with Divine help.

Knowing that here and now, midweek, prior to all that will be said and sung this coming weekend for us, perhaps a pause to draw breath and prepare for what’s to come is no bad idea. 

Messiness and main things

It can be very easy to fall out with people, something all human beings seem to have a talent for. Sometimes religious people in general, and Christians in particular (particularly those at the Protestant/Evangelical end of the spectrum) get singled out for being key exemplars of this propensity. Given that, it is worth pointing out that the Monty Python joke about “splitters” has much more to do with politics than religion, suggesting that this really is a human, not specifically Christian, frailty.

Unity is of course important. In philosophy it has been a matter of debate from Plato and Aristotle forward. In politics, it is valued because of the perception that people don’t vote for divided and disunited political parties (a rule most recently restated by Nadhim Zahawi, Boris’ final chancellor). More importantly for me, it is enjoined by the Psalmist  (Ps 133:1 – “how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity”) and prayed for by Jesus (John 17:21 – “..that they may all be one..”). But unity is one of those odd things that while important, is not really of value in an of itself. Just as faith can only ever be as strong as its object, so unity is only of value where there is something (or someone) to unite around. This brings us back to splitting.

One of the accusations constantly thrown at the Reformers in the sixteenth century was essentially that they were “splitters”. They were introducing division into the church that had no business being there. The point was often made that it would not end well; once a splitter, always a splitter (partly the Python’s point). It was predicted that once the split had occurred from Rome there would be other splits, until the whole reforming project ran into the sand. Where previously there had been glorious unity under Rome, there would be all these fissiparous protestants, both defacing the beauty of the church, and generally causing lots of trouble. And it did rather look like this for a while. Except for a couple of things.

The unity of Rome was both around the wrong object and was in part illusory. The human institution of the church, with its accretion of prelates and both extrabiblical and unbiblical ritual, with its devotion to international politics and political rather than spiritual leadership, had moved so far from the church as instituted at Pentecost as to be unrecognizable. It had become a barrier to the saving truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, not its doorway. Even so, even Luther recognized a high threshold for secession, and his original intent was reform rather than schism. That door, if ever open, was swiftly closed against him. In any case, Luther faced a situation in which no-one was entirely sure what the truth really was that everyone was supposed to unite around. He was active during a period of theological pluralism, when even for key ideas (including some that would become hotly contested like justification) the right line was often ill-defined. The production of Erasmus’ new translation of Scripture, a great improvement on the Vulgate, had the effect of showing up that in certain areas what had become accepted truth was far from it. The institution, when challenged, reacted with hostility. A split became both inevitable and unbridgeable where truth was defined by God in His Word, as opposed to a human institution.

And while it still looks to some that chaos was the result, chaos that is still with us, this is surprisingly deceptive. That central role of Scripture as defining truth has another important aspect to it. Some things are both true and necessary – get them wrong and the consequences can be eternally disastrous. Deny them, and the outcome is likely to be as unpleasant. It is clear that Jesus is not just a great teacher or prophet, but God and man. As hard as this is to get our heads around, undermine, redefine or deny the truth of who Jesus is, relegate the truth of His life, death and resurrection to opinion, and the Gospel is emptied of its transforming relevance and power. This hypothesis has, as it happens, been tested in contemporary Europe (including the UK) and North America, and the results may be clearly observed. However, it is less clear whether it is necessary for Christians to meet at 10.30am every Sunday morning, sit in wooden pews and sing songs written prior to the nineteenth century only accompanied by a pipe organ. In the New Testament there is teaching about some of things we should do as Christians, and in some cases the way in which we should do them. But there is surprisingly little practical detail, leaving ample scope for a legitimate spectrum of practice. This has not prevented some Christians from falling out over details that Scripture simply does not supply.

John Newton, former trafficker in human slaves, writer of “Amazing Grace” and latterly Church of England vicar and rector wrote “If a man is born again, hates sin, and depends upon the Saviour for life and grace, I care not whether he is an Arminian or a Calvinist.” I think Newton puts it rather well. Essentially he was saying that we should keep the main things the main things, and not fall out over the other stuff. And this was the genius of the eighteen century revival and awakening. Even though there were fallings out, and the big one was the Calvinist/Arminian division between John Wesley and George Whitefield (the one referred to by Newton, and one that still exists today), there was an underlying unity in the Gospel. Even the division between Wesley and Whitefield should not be overstated; they found a way to work if not together then at least with a degree of harmony. Wesley famously preached Whitefield’s memorial sermon in 1770.

Of course there will always be a legitimate debate about what the main things actually are, and where the border really is between main and secondary issues. I think Newton summarises them well. There are primary issues, those necessary for salvation, and then there are secondary issues. We can debate these, and perhaps we should, but we should not be falling out about them. Because some have fallen out about them in the past, we find a range of different groups, and it can all look a bit messy. And yet I have always found so much in common with fellow believers in, and followers of Jesus, that there has always been a degree of unity for all to enjoy. This unity, based on God’s Word, is the sort of thing experienced at places like Keswick.

Keep the main things the main things and it turns out things are not as messy as they first appear.

Keswick 22.1: Baton passing for beginners……..

It’s July, it’s hot (record-breaking hot), and it’s time for the Keswick Convention once again. Today (Monday) was the first day of this year’s Week 1 “Bible Readings”. The theme of the week is “Grateful” and this week’s messages will be from 2 Timothy, delivered by Alistair Begg. And I’ve already been amply reminded of lots of reasons to be grateful.

Some of these are to do with my own past. In listening to the Begster (as a friend of mine called him recently - I would never be that cheeky), I was reminded of seed-sowing, mind-shaping experiences of student days in the Christian Union in the University of Glasgow. In fact I last heard Alistair Begg in the Queen Margaret Union common room (actually just a big beer-stained party space) in the early 1980’s. The older I get the more I appreciate those far off days when with a group of like-minded and like-aged individuals started to grow up – a process that continues. Home and family provided a good foundation, but it had to be built upon. A whole range of speakers at CU “teaching meetings” and a network of Christian friendships provided both means and materials. That is now 40 years in the past. I have no doubt that there are those who do not look back so fondly. For me it may only have been a stage but it was no passing phase. It was critical.

This morning, Alistair Begg mentioned in passing his friend Eric Alexander. The Rev Alexander, who retired from ministry in the Church of Scotland some years ago, in my day was something of a hero to many of us. A faithful and gifted preacher of the Word of God, and a man of faultless courtesy, he and his congregation in St Georges Tron in the centre of Glasgow provided a spiritual home to many of my contemporaries. He also figured in an early Keswick I attended, again in the ‘80s. There have been so many of these figures. I attended a memorial service for Peter Maiden yesterday in the Keswick tent. I suppose those whose formative days are today will have their own heroes, models and influences. But today the subject of baton passing was definitely front and centre.

This is one of the big themes of 2 Timothy, a parting letter from Paul to his young (or at least younger) associate Timothy. There is truth, ‘sound words’ to be guarded. Believing this truth, teaching it, obeying it, living it, would be costly. It would entail suffering because to live in this way would inevitably evoke opposition, and that opposition would bring pressure. To resist that pressure would involve cost and suffering. Paul endured suffering, and invited Timothy to share in it. This all sounds a bit grim. And it would be if we were talking about suffering for a philosophy or creed. But the Gospel is much more than that. Much more than a set of human propositions. It is both a person to whom we are drawn and united, and the truth that reveals that person. Paul calls it the “testimony about our Lord”. It was transformative in Paul’s life, and in Timothy’s. But would it, could it, survive the passing into history of the likes of Paul and the other Apostles?

This was Paul’s concern. He would tell Timothy (I’m assuming we’ll come to this later in the week) to pass it on to faithful men and women. Others who, having been called and transformed, would themselves pass it on, unaltered and untainted (otherwise it would not be the Gospel). Paul need not have worried, indeed he probably didn’t. He had both conviction and confidence. Not in himself, and not even in Timothy. He reminds Timothy (I’m fairly sure this was ground they covered many times) that the resources available to accomplish this task were primarily not human but divine. The same God who authored the Gospel (Paul calls it the “Gospel of God” in Romans), provided the resources for its preservation; the “spirit of love, power and self-control”, the Holy Spirit who through His indwelling would empower Timothy to guard the good deposit. This is hardly surprising given that the Gospel is God’s rescue plan for sinful, fallen creatures, initiated in eternity past, with an objective in eternity future. Its execution is not likely to want for resources.

But Paul’s letter to Timothy was written a long time ago and long way away. How is it all going? Well, Timothy found those trustworthy men and women, and then they, in their turn, found others, and so on down the years. All the way along there were probably those who fretted that things were so bad that the whole thing was running into the sand. But eventually the very same Gospel was entrusted to the likes of Alexander and Begg, who have spent their lives doing exactly as Paul instructed Timothy. It happened again, today, in a big tent in Keswick. I owe a great debt to the likes of them, and many others. In a sense that same message has been entrusted to me.

Many thanks. Now to pass it on. 

What’s so good about this Good Friday?

Just as grave concerns about a global pandemic, caused by a new virus for which there wasn’t initially a test or cure, begin to recede (whether they should or not only time will tell), war breaks out on the continent of Europe, a continent that everyone thought had learned its lesson in the 20^th century. And not the kind of war Brits have been involved in recently, whether in the Falklands (40 years ago this year), the Gulf or Iraq – wars of choice, mainly about politics – but an honest-to-goodness, old-fashioned war of national survival. A big state has picked on a smaller state, and for spurious reasons has attempted to steam-roller it into oblivion. In the pandemic we elected to follow the science. And science largely stepped up to the plate. Recent discoveries and new molecular and genetic techniques provided tests and vaccines, and then treatments, in record time. So now, even although there’s still lots of infection about, particularly from dreaded “new variants”, the fear and certainly the panic has largely dissipated. Nothing of any spiritual interest to see here, or so it would seem. And no particular spiritual lessons to be gleaned from war in Ukraine.

But there are two related things that strike me. The first is that surely now no one can cleave any longer to the naively optimistic modernist belief in the inevitable progress of humanity. For years (indeed hundreds of years) they’ve been telling us that the Christians and their Bible were just flat wrong. Humanity is not intrinsically and self-helplessly bad. Men and women are good, made bad by their environment and lack of education. Improve their environment, and educate everyone (neither of which is a bad idea), and all the bad stuff will stop happening. And, of course, it’s religion that starts wars. Do away with religion and that will also be to our benefit. No religion, no war. Anyway, religion in general, and Christianity in particular, belong to humanity’s adolescence; we can progress past that. We have progressed past that. Well, apparently not.

The war in Ukraine is every bit a cruel and violent as any fought in the 20^th century. And as for rules governing war, rules like not targeting civilians, or civilian infrastructure, apparently there’s a new rule book. The one that allowed for the systematic destruction of Grozny and Aleppo; that’s the one that is now being followed in Mariupol and Kharkiv. So far the numbers of dead and the geographical extent may not have reached the level of previous world-scale conflicts, but who knows where we are headed.

It turns out that radically improved living conditions, longer and better health and mass education, all good things in their own way, have in part only served to distract us from deeper realities. They have provided a veneer. They have improved the outside, but have apparently left the inside largely untouched, unreformed and unimproved. Yes, the war is about a bad man and his enablers and acolytes. But it’s a reminder of a central truth. There is something rotten in all of us (and not just “them”) that cannot be fixed from the outside in.

As troubling as this is, the second thing is a much trickier issue to raise, and I do so hesitantly. It is profoundly disturbing in its implications. And I claim no deeper insight than anyone else, and certainly do not claim any particular or personal revelation. One of the Old Testament prophets, Habakkuk, had a real problem with what God was doing in his day. Times were tough and things were bad. God was acting in judgement on Habakkuk’s people Judah. So far so good. Habakkuk knew that Judah had become corrupt, and they had all been well and often warned. But then God told Habakkuk how He was going to judge Judah. He was going to use the Babylonians! “But how can you?”, shouted Habakkuk, “They’re even worse than us!”. There was an answer to Habakkuk’s question of course, even if it was in part “You’ll see”. Those who lost loved ones as the Babylonians swept into Judah no doubt grieved. Those who were subsequently deported, becoming strangers in someone else’s country, were no doubt aggrieved. How could God do this to us using them?

Now, don’t get me wrong. There is a bad man at the heart of the Ukraine war, who is responsible for death and suffering we haven’t seen the likes of in generations, at least not in this part of the world. And as in time Babylon was dealt with, so will the President of Russia be. “Will not the judge of all the earth do right?”. And yet it’s precisely this part of the world, Europe, that has taken the lead in proclaiming that God is an irrelevance (if He exists at all). Either He’s made up or we’ve abolished Him. But don’t worry, because we can get along without Him very happily thank you. Now, if there is a God, not the unattached, uninvolved watch-maker of the deist, but the God who is intimately involved in this very world (because He made it and sustains it), how is He supposed to respond to all of this? 

Maybe, just maybe, as well as doing what we all can to alleviate real suffering, we also need to reflect on what He might be saying to us all, even in these current events. Maybe there’s a need to reflect on our whole spiritual and moral direction and recent tradition, and look for another way. Because the track we’re on just isn’t working. It hasn’t solved the basic problem - something deep in me, in us, that no amount of environmental or educational improvement can touch or fix.

But what makes me think that there is a God, and what makes me think that he’s bothered by any of this? That’s where we come to Good Friday. If there’s anything that shows that God is not an uninterested bystander in all the mess of this world, it is that He Himself, in the person of Jesus, stepped into precisely this broken, bloodstained world. And in order to provide a means whereby the real issue could be dealt with, how to bring about the internal revolution needed in each human heart and mind, He went to neither a lecture hall nor a pulpit but to a cross. There He gave up His life in appalling circumstances, not as an illustration or an example, but as a sacrifice. Making provision for all God-ward human failure, making it possible to break the power that holds us captive, and enable a fundamental break with our personal failure where God is concerned. Making possible personal, inward, revolution and renewal This is not a new way, or a newly concocted alternative to modernism’s (or post-modernism’s) manifest failure. It’s a rediscovery of an ancient truth.

Buried in another of those “obscure” and ancient Old Testament prophets, quoted by Peter after Jesus’s resurrection, and taken up by Paul in one of his New Testament letters is a startling statement about how entry into this different, new, old, radical way is possible. And it requires Good Friday. Precisely because Jesus died on the first Good Friday and was raised on the first Easter Sunday, it is the case that “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Joel 2:32; Acts 2:21; Rom 10:13).

Now that’s good, whether it's Friday or not.

Life in the Pandemic XVI: The light at the end of the tunnel

The great sulk continues in the actual Whitehouse. The great contrast with the Bartlett Whitehouse continues (yes, I know it’s made up, but I’m still enjoying it). The great pandemic continues. Indeed in the land of the Whitehouse it is getting unbelievably worse. Each day in the US literally thousands are now dying, with the numbers still growing. No slick drama could cover this misery. Or the tearful frustration of healthcare workers at the end of their endurance pleading with people and politicians alike to do what can easily be done to ease the situation. We have our moments on this side of the Atlantic, and have endured our own share of political chaos and incompetence during the pandemic, but it does not seem to have reached quite the proportions of the Trumpian dystopia in the US. However, a light has now appeared at the end of the COVID tunnel.

Thanks to a remarkable effort and a ton of public money, there is now good evidence of no less than three effective vaccines, and slightly weaker evidence for at least two more. These have already been used on tens of thousands of people in various clinical trials. In the UK the first vaccine was authorised for use on the 2^nd December, and the needles were stuck in the first arms earlier this week. There are lots of people who deserve lots of credit for these achievements. Those who pioneered some of the underlying science behind the “Pfizer” and “Moderna” vaccines certainly deserve credit because they have come up with a new way of designing and producing vaccines which, at least in this case, appear to be amazingly effective. In the case of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine (not far from approval now), science plus some inspired guesswork appear to have produced the most usable of these initial vaccines. Because of its simpler production, ease of transport and robustness, this is the one that will perhaps have the most global impact. (Some) politicians and the regulators deserve credit too. There appears to have been little haggling over funding to push forward with trials, and real cooperation to expedite both trials and approvals without compromising safety. If there has been a conspiracy, it has been to advance as quickly and safely as possible, and it has achieved something of real and lasting benefit. And for once those on the outside of the rich, industrialised and wealthy world have not been forgotten. Yes, I’m sure grubby politics and grubbier economics will soon reassert themselves, but for now it’s worth smiling about much of this. But, of course, it is just the start.

There is a world of difference between a vaccine and vaccination. The real value of the work that has been done will only be realised when the vaccines end up in peoples’ arms. There are lots of other people we will need to rise to meet a whole different heap of challenges before we approach the end of the pandemic tunnel. Manufacturing enough vaccine for close to the whole human population of the planet is hardly trivial. Production problems have already reduced the rate at which the newly approved Pfizer vaccine can be rolled out in the UK. And after making the stuff, it has to be transported, and then distributed. For the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines this is a challenge because they appear to be rather delicate requiring very cold transportation and storage temperatures, and minimal handling. That's why it’s the Oxford vaccine, which is slightly more robust and happy at roomish temperatures, will probably have the global impact. Once all of these challenges have been overcome, there is the issue of the population’s willingness to bare their arms.

This will all take time. So for at least the next few months most of us will need to do what the media claims we’re all sick of doing. The routine of facemasks, social distancing, handwashing and lots of working from laptops at home where we can, will all have to continue. Restrictions on activities we all used to take for granted will also continue. And if we don’t stick to this, more people will die than would otherwise be the case. Maybe, just maybe, next summer we might be returning to something akin to what we used to think of as normality. The virus won’t have disappeared of course. And we don’t know how quickly our new-found, vaccine stimulated immunity will. So care will still be needed. There remain many unknowns. In reality we have a distance to travel in the tunnel, and the light, while reasonably bright, isn’t stellar yet.

Which brings me to what I’ve been reflecting on. The COVID tunnel is far from humanity’s longest or darkest. COVID vaccines, impressive as they are, are no solution to our biggest problem. Indeed, although they are vital, it would be a great mistake to indulge in any collective hubris about our achievements, before moving on to some other issue. After all, it was almost certainly human activity that led to the pandemic in the first place. And before most of us adopt a smug attitude because we know whose fault it all is (or think we do), there’s plenty of collective blame to go around for all sorts of abuses that have exacerbated the pandemic. Some of the very same things may well lead to the next global disaster. And that’s all before we get to other things like the climate crisis. It turns out that the inevitable progress of humanity has never been inevitable at all. And sometimes progress is not as progressive as is claimed. In economics, poverty abounds and seems only to shift rather than decline (although statistically until the pandemic progress had been made). In health as we’ve seen, old diseases may be conquered (if not eradicated) but new ones emerge. Even although poverty, illness, war and famine are avoidable, we manage not to avoid them. There are lots of good things that we can now do which previous generations didn’t even dream about. But for all that we appear to be largely stuck.

Maybe this is because fundamentally humanity’s big problems aren’t intellectual or technical. Therefore the really big issues do not have intellectual or technical solutions. The nub of our problems are moral, and beyond that, spiritual. The real tunnel we’re naturally stuck in is that we’re just not what or who we are supposed to be. But particularly at this time of year, we remember a light that appeared. And it appeared not at the end of our tunnel, but in the middle of it. It would be hard to put it better than John put it at the beginning of his Gospel:

^9 “The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. ¹⁰ He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. ¹¹ He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. ¹² Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— ¹³ children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.” John 1:9-13

Note to self: It’s time I stopped fixating on the pandemic, and considered again the events that culminated in the arrival in this very world of Jesus, who came to illuminate the way out of this very tunnel.

Life in the Pandemic XIII: Living, doing and knowing……

Here in the England’s northwest, the second wave has well and truly arrived. In Liverpool, our cases and hospitalisations are up and rising, and we have just had new restrictions imposed on us. I have discussed modelling and predictions previously, but we didn’t need a model to predict the predicament we now face. In the Spanish ‘flu pandemic of 1918/19 there are reckoned to have been three waves, with later waves more deadly than the first. Talk of the second wave of COIVD19 has been around since the early summer. In France case numbers began to climb in early August, and deaths (still mercifully low) in September. In Spain it was slightly earlier (and may be receding now). The actual number of cases detected is not the key statistic to focus on because it depends on the testing regime, but the trajectory is clear enough (you can see the relevant plots in the Worldometer Coronavirus site). But, given we’re now into month nine of the pandemic (if we assume it started for real in February), and given the effort that has gone into learning about this new virus, why are we again on the verge of major lockdowns, with all the misery and damage such a state of affairs implies?

It’s not that we haven’t learned anything. The spread of the virus has been followed and probed and information about how transmissible it is has been gleaned. Spread is not just dependant on the properties of the virus, but on the characteristics of the populations exposed to it. But this too is increasingly well understood. How the virus is spread, how long it can survive in the air and on surfaces, have also been the subject of study and debate. And of course who is likely to (and not likely to) get seriously ill, be hospitalised, need ventilation and in some cases die, is now better understood. There are now treatment options available to combat both the virus and its effects, which of course the President of the United States recently availed himself of. All of this hopefully means that in second and subsequent waves, fewer will die than in the first wave, at least proportionately. We are about to find out. And on the horizon there are multiple vaccines, although decent evidence of their efficacy is still not available, and their arrival is not certain.

Perhaps more important than all of this is that we’ve known for months how to combat the virus, and its spread, in inexpensive, simple and effective ways. These are methods that almost all of us are capable of adopting, and in practical terms they don’t interfere too much with all the things we all have to do day to day in our daily lives. Currently in the UK they can be summarised using the Government mantra of “hands, face, space”. Frequent handwashing, wearing facemasks and keeping a reasonable distance between folk from different households, if followed by most of us, would have perhaps saved thousands of lives in the first wave (when effective treatments were still being developed), would have prevented the expected second wave (probably), and could still save thousands of lives now that we are in the midst of the second wave. At least in the UK these measures remain relatively uncontroversial, unlike in the US where they’ve got caught up in politics. So what’s the problem?

The problem is us, all of us. Most of us, as individuals, haven’t experienced the virus (yet). We may have heard of friends or family members who have experienced it first hand, but in many cases their experience was of a mild illness. And although daily cases in the tens of thousands sounds like a lot, it is a small proportion in a population of millions. And even this low level of actual experience is very patchy. The media have worked hard to expose us to the sights and sounds of the trouble the virus can cause. But this is relatively out of kilter with the lived experience of most of us, and comes from a media that various segments of the population distrust. Many appear just not to get it (as an example see this report). None of this is to deny the seriousness of the virus, or to in any way minimise the experience of those who have lost loved ones to it. There are far too many of them (more than there should have been). But it remains the case that this experience, horrible and tragic as it is, is a minority experience. And the problem is that we live in a culture which prioritises experience over knowledge. So while “science” is relatively clear, and the warnings that flow from it are fairly dire, many feel that none of this really applies to them. They will escape and don’t have to heed the warnings. Mask wearing and the rest of the actions they should take, don’t have to be taken too seriously. There isn’t really a need to err on the side of caution.

The problem then becomes one of compliance; we know what we should do, we know what the “scientists” say we should do. Their claim is that if we do these simple things across the population, there is abstract information showing that it will be a good thing and lives will be saved. But we just don’t do it.  Compliance falls. And it is always easier to blame others for the situation that results from this. “Others” may be culpable of course. Government may have been inconsistent, the elite may have got away with flouting rules, some of the modelling may have overstated the impact of the first wave, and all of the modelling comes with a degree of uncertainty. All this may be true, but while it may provide me with excuses for not doing what I should be doing (because it’s mildly inconvenient), none of these are reasons. Meantime, cases, hospitalisations and deaths all climb, although much of this was probably avoidable. My “truth”, what is true for me based on my actual experience, trumps the truth.

Given all of this, I find it completely understandable, that when I try to explain the existence of a whole other aspect of reality, folk are generally sceptical. I concede that the idea that a person who died a long time ago and a long way away has any relevance to anyone today is, on the face of it, far fetched. And as for the claim that the same person came back to life, and that His death and life have both personal and cosmic significance? Well I can see why this might not all compute. And of course, all of my evidence for this is beyond experience, and comes from an ancient book. All this in a culture that prioritises experience over truth. I see the problem.

Doesn’t mean it’s not all true of course.

Life in the Pandemic VIII: So many goodbyes….

There are many folk who are grieving these days and having to say their goodbyes. While some probably knew the time was approaching when an older relative, spouse or friend was going to leave this life, they didn’t think it would come so soon, precipitated by an unknown virus, in the midst of a global pandemic. For others death has arrived as an unwelcome, unexpected surprise and shock. And there have been those stunned by an overwhelming sense of injustice at a young life cut tragically short. No death is just a statistic. Each one leaves grief in its wake. Every death matters, just as much as every life.

As long as there have been people, there has been death. It is the inevitable last experience of our lives here, all of which follow a pattern. We move from our earliest memories, on a journey via definable phases and critical events. Shakespeare likened life to a play (of course he did) and talked about how men and women have their  “..exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts; His acts being seven ages.”(1). Less poetically perhaps, I remember enjoying 18^th and 21^st birthday parties with friends. Then it was University graduations and rounds of weddings. There was the arrival of kids (for most), and catching up with family exploits in the occasional Christmas epistle (some of which I actually read). I’m just getting to the stage of metallic wedding anniversaries and those milestone birthdays as the decades accumulate. And also for me, now there is that gradually souring note of parents, aunts and uncles being lost; a hint of what’s to come. The deaths of celebrities and others I grew up with, some I looked up to, are becoming more frequent. The diseases of ageing are beginning to take their toll on my contemporaries. A cancer scare here and there. And instead of births and birthdays, I know it that eventually there will be funerals and condolences. And then….

Fair enough, I know that this might be a bit morbid, but I’m thinking that it needn’t be. I’ll admit that the pandemic has encouraged morbid thoughts. Daily death statistics will do that to you. But we all know that we cannot live in this world forever, even if sometime we secretly think as though death won’t come for us, only other people. In our general culture too, pre-pandemic, death had perhaps become remote, the business of various professionals, leaving the rest of us to get on with living. So thoughts of it could be suppressed, and squeezed down into the farthest, dark recesses of our minds. The pandemic has changed that, at least for the moment. But as well as the pandemic I have two other reasons that have caused me to reflect on this. The first is, as it happens, a death, the second is a book.

Last Tuesday I heard of the death of a man called Peter Maiden(2). I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t know me, although we met on a couple of occasions. He came from, and never moved far from, Carlisle (in the northwest of England, up near the Scottish border). He was widely known as the International Director of a missionary organisation called Operation Mobilisation from 2003 to 2013 (although he had been involved with OM since 1974) and he was a trustee of the Keswick Convention. I heard him teach the Bible on a number of occasions. And although I can’t honestly remember any of the specifics, what does stick in my memory is his manner – gracious, humble, straightforward. Others have been speaking and writing about his influence on them through his teaching, leadership and books. Now, to be honest, his death is not that of a close friend of relative. There are many folk who will be grieving for him in a way that I am not. But I am aware of a loss. He was one of those people who served as a marker for me along the route of my journey. Not just a marker of the way, but a marker of the destination. His teaching and living pointed to a life beyond this life, that in many ways is more important than this life. He devoted his life to sharing and teaching what he took to be the words of God. In the process he was used to influence many thousands, including me. His death is, of course, a demonstration of his mortality, but it is to me a reminder of mine. His life here has ended, something he was prepared for, knowing that more was to come. I wonder - was he deluded to think like this? Were those he influenced deluded? Was (or am) I deluded? I don’t think so.

The book I mentioned above is the snappily titled “Evangelicalism in Britain 1935-1995” by Oliver Barclay(3). I confess it wasn’t one of the ones I mentioned in my last post as being on my summer reading list. I met Oliver Barclay too, when I was a PhD student in the 1980’s, at a Research Scientists Christian Fellowship (now Christians in Science) conference. He belonged to a very different generation, but was a clear and long-sighted thinker, encourager and organiser. In particular, he played a key role in the development of the Intervarsity Fellowship (now UCCF), the organisation that links and supports Christian Unions in universities and colleges in the UK. In the book, he relates the work and struggle of many men and women, who established the evangelical culture and infrastructure that I and many others depended on as we grew and matured in our Christian thinking. There were those who ministered in churches in University cities throughout the UK, with a clear commitment to the transforming truth of the Bible. There were resources like commentaries, and books in critical areas of apologetics, written from a robust evangelical perspective. He mentions the work of many who are now obscure to many of us. And the book stops in 1995 - a quarter of a century ago. As I read Barclay’s book, I found I was reading of many who seemed like giants – Martin Lloyd Jones, J.I. Packer, John Stott and many others beside. Markers for my journey, marking it out even before it began, now receding into the distance. These  were men and women, whether I encountered them personally or not, to whom I owe a great debt. They made the way easier for me, very often at cost to themselves. They were passionate about God and His word. They lived it as well as taught it. They weren’t supermen and women, they weren’t heroes to be placed on high pedestals; every single one of them had his or her flaws. But they were critical to me and many others. And one of the keys that comes out of Barclay's book is the utter centrality of that other book. To them it was the book of God’s words, a notion that the world they inhabited derided even more strongly than it is derided today. Their conviction and claim was that by teaching it and living it, they were encountering and living for the God who made, saved and sustained them.

The book was and is the Bible (of course), and its key message is the good news (the Gospel) of Jesus Christ. When others turned their back on its truth as truth, the Maidens and Barclays and their ilk believed, lived, taught and shared it, and encouraged others to do the same. I was one of those so encouraged. And ultimately it is the Bible and the God who stands behind it and is revealed in it, that provides not just the markers along the way, but the very way itself. It is a way does not end in bereft goodbyes. Don’t get me wrong, goodbyes there are and will be. Oliver Barclay moved on from this life in  2013, and I'm sure there was sadness and loss. And there will be a funeral in Carlisle at some point soon, with grief and grieving. There will be goodbyes along my journey, until it too, reaches an inevitable destination. But the Gospel is so powerful that it transforms these goodbyes. Death here is the destination of one part of our journey, but it is not the terminus. For those of us who have encountered, trusted and followed Jesus, the goodbyes are accompanied by a transforming hope that takes us beyond death and the grave, through resurrection to safety. And they are then followed by a welcome to a whole new journey.

1. William Shakespeare. “As you like it”, Act II Scene VII.

2. For tributes see https://www.uk.om.org/InMemoryOf/peter-maiden 
or https://keswickministries.org/a-tribute-to-peter-maiden/

3. Oliver R Barclay. Evangelicalism in Britain 1935-1995. A personal sketch. IVP.
  https://ivpbooks.com/evangelicalism-in-britain-1935-1995-pb

Easter Reflections I

I came across an article recently that opened with the following statement:  Perhaps the most boring question one can ever direct at a religion is to ask whether or not it is ‘true’. The author went on to claim that Easter “commemorates an incident of catastrophic failure”[1]. Well, we’ll see. My view is that deciding whether the events commemorated at Easter are true is far from boring. Not bothering to consider whether they are true is probably a product of the author completely misunderstanding what was going on. But let’s go back to the thorny issue of truth.

We now apparently live in a culture that has a real problem with truth. For some, and for a long time, the idea that there is something “out there” to be known is a non-starter. For others, even if there is an “out there”, it cannot be known in any certain way. This sort of thing has been argued back and forth for centuries. Meanwhile, most of humanity has just got on with life, not really bothering too much whether they could/could not prove in any absolute sense that it was all “real”. Family, food, employment, cushions, art, music, football, Radio 4, Monty Python and model railways might all be illusions, but they are comforting illusions. Interestingly (at least to me), even those who think that truth is an illusion seem to spill a lot of ink trying to persuade other people of the truth that truth is an illusion. It is almost as though it matters.

In fact most of us seem to live with the notion that it’s important to know what is true and what is not. Not all truth is equally important I’ll grant you. For most people, most of the time, knowing that there is a river that flows through Merseyside to the sea, is of only trivial importance. It’s maybe useful in the odd pub quiz, but it hardly counts as one of life’s great truths. Mind you, it becomes considerably more important if you have to make your way from Liverpool city centre to Birkenhead – look at a map (hopefully a true representation of certain geographical features) if you don’t believe me.

Clearly there are some people who claim that certain events that occurred in and around an obscure city in the Middle East called Jerusalem millennia ago have continuing significance. As a matter of observation, these events have been celebrated annually throughout large parts of the world, and by a growing and now large proportion of humanity, ever since. There are reports that provide some level of access to those original precipitating events. Can we reach a judgement on the truth of what those events were, whether they are important and indeed whether some of them were catastrophic? I think we can, and I think we should. I think we owe it to ourselves to investigate for ourselves what the fuss is about. We could just surf the web and explore the blogosphere. We could depend on the opinions of others. I much prefer the notion of doing as much of the work as I can for myself. Of course, I’ll have to take some things on trust. But as I’ve argued here before, some level of trust is always required in any enquiry. How much trust would be too much? Well, if I’m standing at a bridge wondering if it can bear my weight and get me safely across a river, I know some of the signs I need to look for. Does it go all the way across? Is it fairly clear what’s keeping it up? Does it appear steady as I set out, or does it begin to creak alarmingly? Of course I could be fooled. But not to attempt the crossing could be equally foolish, particularly if there’s a pressing reason to cross the river.

As far as Christianity is concerned, the question “is it true?” has to be the key question. Christianity depends on claims about things that happened (or didn’t happen). While some of these things are probably more important than others, if any of them turn out to be demonstrably untrue, then the credibility of the whole will take a hit. If the major claims are untrue, then the whole thing comes crashing down. Certain of the key claims are clearly unusual, and some, on the surface at least, approach the bizarre (at least from a 21^st century standpoint). It’s tempting to dismiss these out of hand, a priori. This is a temptation worth resisting.

The Easter story turns on one of the most famous characters in history called Jesus. Four main accounts compiled from eye witness testimony from his own time have come down to us, along with accounts and interpretations of others who claimed to know him. These various sources have been frequently attacked but have yet to be fatally undermined. They tell us quite a lot about the life of Jesus, including what they claim was a miraculous birth (also still celebrated). They tell us much of what he said. But they seem to spend an inordinate amount of time on his death, implying that it has some significance beyond the ending of a particular life.

Jesus as portrayed in these accounts does not come over as a fanatic, a rabble rouser or a tyrant. He seems to have been attractive to some, and a curiosity to many. He doesn’t seem that interested in gathering a movement around himself. Indeed, in at least one of the accounts (by one of his followers called John) he seems to go out of his way to drive the merely interested away. For all his apparently humility and simplicity, it is his claims about himself that stick out. His original audience were in no doubt that he made one particularly objectionable claim. It’s a claim that many have made for themselves, and today it would be taken as a sign of poor mental health. He claimed to be God. One modern writer about Jesus introduced the subject by confessing that it was “easy to sympathise with scepticism” because the claims made by Jesus and his early followers “are staggering, and indeed offensive”[2]. And C.S. Lewis famously pointed out that these claims paint both Jesus and enquirers about Easter into a corner:

“A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”[3]

It was at a place just outside Jerusalem that his claims and his death collided. By all accounts he died a barbaric, if not entirely unique, death. In Jesus day, those in control of where he lived had a standard form of execution. This involved literally nailing the condemned person to a wooden frame, raising them up, and waiting for them to die from suffocation, blood loss, thirst or a combination all three (plus various other encouragements like breaking legs, or sticking with spears). Even in the midst of these excruciating circumstances (which he had some insight into before they happened) he verbalised forgiveness for his torturers, made provision for his mother, comforted someone being executed with him, and made several other statements. None was a statement of regret. One was tantamount to a final claim. It is reported that he shouted “finished” (probably a single word in his original language). Even in dying (an extended process lasting several hours), he was claiming that he had accomplished something.

And there the story should have ended. If this was a man, a good man, a clever man, an exemplary man, ending as all men do, what possible significance could he have for the rest of us? Less than none. This would not be a sad story of what could have been. It might be a story that was instructive, but hardly one that would in any way be transformative. For most of us it would be more of a footnote than a catastrophe. But remember he claimed to be something considerably more than a man. If the story ends with his death, then this claim is clearly bogus. This, and probably all of his other claims are untrue, his credibility fatally flawed. He might have occasionally said something clever, or even something that appears high and moral, but it’s not. He got the one thing he could truly know wrong; he didn’t ultimately even know himself, never mind anything else. So why then twenty centuries later is there still even a question? Why a story to repeat? Why claims to consider?

Because of what happened next.

1.       “Easter for Atheists”, The Philosopher’s Mail 

2.       Donald MacLeod, “The Person of Christ”

3.       C.S. Lewis, “Mere Christianity”