Mourning Christianity (or at least its decline)

Reports of the death of Christianity, like those of Mark Twain’s death, have been greatly exaggerated. Reports of the death of “Christian Britain” are not so much exaggerated as misconceived, given that the adjective “Christian” is usually so emptied of its meaning that it provides no useful description of the noun “Britain”. But you would be forgiven for thinking that something seismic is going on if you had been reading the Times of late. Last year it went to town when the UK Office of National Statistics published its analysis of the latest census figures for England and Wales, reporting that less that 50% of the population (actually 46.2%) self identified as Christian. This prompted headlines such as “End of an era for Christian Britain” (The Times, Nov 30^th, 2022). At the time I commented on similar reports in the Guardian, which has the great virtue of not being behind a paywall.

As an aside, it is worth pointing out that between then and now we have had the SNP leadership election. That is relevant because one of the candidates had made clear publicly that she was a Christian (in the Biblical as opposed to popular sense) and that this motivated and affected her politics, resulting in Christianity and politics grabbing the headlines for a time. This led to quite a furore in Scottish politics which revealed, among other things, the complete inability of the media, as well as a fair proportion of the political class, to report such matters and discuss the issues raised with any great accuracy (let alone consistency). I discussed this at the time. There were honourable exceptions of course including, in the Times, Matthew Parris (see his column “In politics, there’s no such thing as private faith”, March 4^th, 2023). Mind you I was surprised to read in that particular column that “Most of our Prime Ministers have been practising Christians”. Church goers, probably. Intelligent, educated people from a time and of a class who obtained a bit of Bible knowledge and could conjure up the odd quote when necessary; some of them, certainly. Decent human beings trying to do an almost impossible and complex job in always tricky circumstances, fair enough. But using “Christian” in this context would again require some definitional work to be undertaken (although not now – this is an aside).

For it is necessary to return to the Times, and some of its output this last week. It has been reporting on the results of a survey that it conducted into the views of Church of England clergy (starting with “Britain is no longer a Christian country, say frontline clergy”, published Tuesday, 29^th August). Such an exercise is not without merit. After all, the Church of England is a large, wealthy and culturally important English institution. It is in the midst of debating and seeking to come to a mind on important and divisive issues. The particular issues, let it be noted, are of wide, political and cultural significance. From the data returned in the survey various conclusion were drawn and boldly asserted. “Two thirds of Anglican clergy think that..”, “A majority of priests want…” (apparently what the culture wants). Others have commented on the survey and its reporting, and a highly readable critique of it can be found on Ian Paul’s “Psephizo” blog. Unlike me, he was actually sent the survey, and has interesting things to say about some of the questions asked.

As is common in our newspapers today (and the media more widely), the conclusions come well before the methodology and the raw numbers, although to be fair both are eventually provided. This is the opposite of how things are presented in (most) scientific papers. If you are going to draw sound conclusions from such an exercise, then how you go about obtaining the data is critical. But newspapers (and even Times) appear to think that such information is a tiresome detail. It has to be included for form’s sake, but who is going to read that far into the article? In this instance (as ever) how they obtained their numbers is revealing, as is the fuller picture of their numbers that the methodology provides.

According to last Tuesday’s article: “The Times selected 5,000 priests at random from among those with English addresses in Crockford’s Clerical Directory of Anglican Clergy and received 1,436 responses, analysing data from the 1,185 respondents still serving.” According to the Church of England there are about 20 000 active clergy (although exactly what “active clergy” means is complicated). So the Times started with a potential sample of 25% of the population it was interested in. Not entirely unreasonable. But while it sounds sensible to pick addresses at random, this doesn’t mean that the resulting sample will be able to provide anything like a snapshot of the clergy as a whole. In fact, as a population the Church of England clergy is highly structured, breaking into clearly defined sub-populations, often along lines related to some of the issues the Times was interested in, and there’s no way to control for this, although it might have been possible to account for it in the analysis. It doesn’t appear that a weighted analysis was done, even if they had the numbers to do it. In any case, 28.7% of their initial sample responded (actually not bad for a survey of this kind); of which 82.5% provided analysable data (we’re not told the problem with the other 17.5%). So the reporting is based on the views of 5.9% (approximately; 1185/20000) of the Church of England's active clergy.

One can understand why this number is, if not obscured, not particularly prominent. On the basis of this rather thin sliver of opinion, we are told there has been an “historic shift on gay marriage and questions of sex” – suspiciously in exactly the direction favoured by the culture at large. One proponent of such views, now no longer himself ministering within within the C of E, was happy to proclaim that “This is absolutely huge”. But it really isn’t. I assume the gentleman concerned was unaware of the methodology that had been used, only of the conclusions that had been reached. Do the results of this survey indicate any real change of view within the Church of England? We have no way of knowing. But clearly there is a constituency who would dearly love the Times’ reporting to contribute momentum to a drift in a particular direction.

To jump from either the results of the last census, or the results of the Times’ survey of clergy in one particular Christian grouping, to conclusions about those who make up the body of Christ (i.e. the Church in England), is to jump to unwarranted conclusions. And it is a tad parochial (no pun intended). It is to confuse the visible church in one part of the world, always a mixed and often an apparently weak body, with the invisible church, a graced and glorious body of saints worldwide known certainly only to Jesus Himself. The latter group is in rude good health, although I wouldn’t expect this to be reported any time soon in a newspaper any of us have heard of.

To sightly misquote an anonymous funeral poem “Do not weep for [us] for [we] have not gone. Not yet that is. But one day, perhaps soon. 

It’s Christmas on Sunday…….

You wouldn’t think it was that big a deal that December 25^th happens to be a Sunday. And for most of the planet’s 8 billion inhabitants it probably isn’t. Many will neither recognize or celebrate Christmas regardless of when it falls, including those with no Christian interest or history, and those who as a matter of their atheistic principles will not want to have anything to do with it (and quite right too). After all, the (nominal) Christian world only makes up about 30% of the world’s total population. Within that 30% one might reasonably expect that Christmas falling on a Sunday would not lead to any dramas. However it turns out that there has been a bit of a tiz going on. Apparently, because it is Christmas day some places of worship (I hesitate to call them churches) have cancelled their services. While the debate probably started on Twitter (don’t they all these days?), and spread to the “Christian” press and websites (e.g. see “The Christian Post”), it eventually reached the New York Times, hardly an evangelical rag.

I should mention at this point that I have skin in this particular game. I come from a theologically fairly conservative background, and remember at least one childhood Christmas that fell on a Sunday. Because of my aged state I’m afraid I can’t remember the details of that particular Christmas day. But I do remember having the distinct impression that this was a Sunday to be spent like every other Sunday. Same meetings (with perhaps the exception of the Sunday afternoon Bible class), same content. Jesus' birth may have been mentioned, but only as the necessary prelude to His life, death and resurrection. The world may have been celebrating with its trees and tinsel, but that was nothing to do with us. There was also perhaps a touch of if the world was happy we had to be miserable. None of us can entirely escape our backgrounds, so I still find myself in two minds about all the Christmas hullabaloo (ie the trees and tinsel) and still sometimes find myself wondering what it has to do with me.

As an aside, there are those who end up in roughly the same place but come at it from the opposite direction. Self-confessed “cultural Christian” Poly Toynbee, likes goodwill, the idea of the poor inheriting the earth and the way “the stable stands for the homeless and refugees”. The rest of it (by which I think she means biblical Christianity) she finds “loathsome”. And so she should too. The theology of carols (like “veiled in flesh the Godhead see”) should strike her as bizarre. And there are all sorts of reasons to be appalled at a Saviour born to die on a cross (a “symbol of barbaric torture”). Christmas comes with “religious baggage we should shed” she says. Although one might be forgiven for pointing out that this confuses carts and horses - without the religious "baggage" there would, of course, be no Christmas. Her main motivation, though, appears to be that she wants religious opposition to the “right to die” removed. It is far from clear that is a sure fire way to ensure goodwill to all men. Time will tell. But certainly I can see why, from her point of view, there are logical reasons for a degree of ambivalence about Christmas.

But for me there is no ambivalence that applies to Sundays. I know what Sunday is about. Albeit the English name goes back to pagan times, it’s clear what Christians are to make of the first day of the week. It is the day on which our priority is to come together to focus on and remember Jesus. Maybe Greeks have the right idea (and not for the first time), naming Sunday “Κυριακή”, which is derived from “Κύριος” Lord. The Lord’s day, one that affords that opportunity for fellowship with other believers, with Jesus “in the midst” (as He put it Himself). A weekly opportunity to be provided with fuel for our living as we take our minds of our twitter and RSS feeds and fill them with His word. All of this is mandated; it marked the early Church and should mark churches today. So, on the one hand a (Christmas) day of ambivalence and on the other a (Lord’s) day I’m fairly clear about. Seems like a no brainer as to which should have prominence when the two coincide.

We would, in any case meet as a church on Christmas day, not something I have ever found a chore. But it did lead to a degree of mental and chronological confusion because it meant that a Monday, Tuesday or whatever would end up feeling like a Sunday, without actually being one. At least this year there will be no need for such dissonance. It will be like killing two birds with the one communal stone. This helpful aspect aside, it does seem strange to me that some who claim to be Christians seem keen not to meet, and the suspicion arises that it being Christmas day is an excuse not a reason. A bit like those who think that things like cup finals in which their favourite team is playing is a reason not to meet. This is to put church on the level of a hobby or diversion; it’s really not. This coming Christmas Sunday those of us who followers of Jesus have an extra reason to be together (not a reason for not gathering) to focus with others on what, or rather Who, really matters. And indeed not just His birth, as remarkable as that was. But on His life, death, resurrection, ascension and return.

It was, after all, the Saviour, Christ the Lord, that was born, not just a baby.

The neo-Babylonian captivity of (some) evangelicals

Around September 1520, Matin Luther published a tract. Along with his other writings, he would be invited to repudiate it at the Diet of Worms in 1521. When Erasmus read this particular tract he is reported to have blurted out “The breach is irreparable” for it was seen by Luther’s contemporaries as his most incendiary writing to date. It attacked the sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church, which Luther maintained had actually held the Church in a kind of servitude. His aim was to set the Church free. The tract was called “The Babylonian Captivity of the Church”. It seems that today part of the contemporary church may have fallen prey to its own modern version of captivity. We all run the risk of being held captive by the culture which surrounds us. It configures us to think in certain ways, and not think in others. It has an ability to weave a spell that for the most part we are unaware of. It is always a challenge to break free.

For the Christian (in the Biblical sense) culture is particularly problematic where it is suffused with ideas and values opposed to the way the Creator would have us think. That there is such a thing as “the way the Creator would have us think” is of course highly contested in modern culture. Some maintain there is no Creator. Others maintain that even if there is He/She/It is unknowable (at least in any practically important way); one can therefore live as a practical, if not a philosophical, atheist. Then there are those who are happy to wander around in an agnostic fog, probably because it frees them to live as they see fit. This will have the added advantage of allowing them to fit in with the culture that surrounds them, of which they will be largely unaware. For my part, I am convinced that there is a Creator to whom I owe my existence. I am also convinced that He has revealed Himself in the Bible, not as the remote watchmaker of the deist, but the loving Father who goes to inordinate lengths precisely so that the He might know me, and I Him. As this is a minority view (and always has been) there is a potential clash between ways of thinking and behaving taught in the Bible (properly understood and applied), and those taught or even mandated in the surrounding, non-Christian, culture.

Such a clash is exactly the state of affairs that prevailed when the first Christians began to preach the Gospel, the good news of Jesus’ rescue mission (the one we’ll be celebrating in a few weeks). The Gospel was so counter-cultural in their time that living it and preaching it cost many of those first believers their liberty and their lives. That doesn’t of itself constitute evidence that the Gospel is true. Men and women in history have given their lives for all sorts of causes. But it does indicate that Biblical thinking and living has and can be costly. There are areas in the world where this is true today. But because broadly Biblical ideas and values came to predominate in the “West”, while there have been periods of difficulty, it would be hard to argue that, at least in recent times, we have experienced having to pay a high, let alone the ultimate, cost for following Jesus. And there have even been places where it has been reasonably comfortable for “evangelicals”. 

I mean of course the U.S. where historically it has not only been relatively easy to be a Christian believer, but in recent decades one could argue it has been desirable. Evangelicals in the US have had a political presence in the US since the 19^th century. However in the second half of the 20^th century, they emerged across the Protestant denominations to form a more clearly defined block, albeit with fuzzy edges. In the 1970’s moreover, they began to form a coherent voting bloc, coalescing around a number of political issues, particularly abortion. As a bloc they were of course actively courted by one Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election, and as a bloc they apparently supported him. This was always a transactional relationship. Trump promised to put conservative justices on the US Supreme Court and announced himself to be an ardent “pro-lifer”; the evangelicals voted for him in large numbers, even if some of them held their noses as they did so. Back in 2016 there were those who pointed out that Trump did not pass some fairly basic tests that evangelicals should have been interested in. For Max Lucado he didn’t pass the “decency” test that he would apply to someone who wanted to take his daughters out for an evening, let alone run the most powerful country in the World. Russell Moore elicited a Twitter rebuke from Trump, when among other things he called him one of "two immoral options". For Al Mohler too, Trump didn’t pass the smell test, although the other candidate was at least equally unpalatable. Mohler is a smart man, who made a ton of cogent points at the time. That he has now changed his tune has led some to question his motivation. Other evangelicals are reported to be heading in the opposite direction, experiencing what sounds like frustration and a degree of buyer’s remorse. But the fact is that in their support for Trump they were prepared to prioritize the political over the theological. They got what many of them wanted. But they got a lot more besides.

There has always been an anti-intellectual strain in US evangelicalism (and perhaps evangelicalism in general). By that I don’t just mean a dislike for intellectual endeavours outside of the Scriptures some of which like philology, history and science, were used to attack orthodox Christian belief. Thinking hard about that very belief has sometimes seemed too much like hard work for some evangelicals. There is something simple in the Gospel that is attractive (“Jesus loves me, this I know”), but the New Testament is clear that we should progress from milk to meat (1 Corinthians 3:1-3; Hebrews 5:11-14). Where teaching, training and thought are lacking, churches become vulnerable to being captured by influences and teachings other than those found in the Scriptures (Eph 4:14). It was the this sort of thing that Mark Noll diagnosed in the 1990’s:

“The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind. An extraordinary range of virtues is found among the sprawling throngs of evangelical Protestants in North America….. Notwithstanding all their other virtues, however, American evangelicals are not exemplary for their thinking, and they have not been so for several generations.” (Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind).

Just over 25 years later, that hollowing out of evangelical thinking, intellectual, apologetic and theological, has led in some churches to partisan politics trumping (pardon the pun) Scripture. Those churches have entered a new Babylonian captivity. We shall see whether they return, and in what state.

Meanwhile, on this side of the Atlantic we have no reason to be complacent. We either hear and appropriately respond to the warnings of Scripture and grow up in our faith, or we too run the risk of entering some or other captivity.   

Life in the pandemic XX: It feels a bit like 1517….

As well as enjoying box-sets of the West Wing, I spend quite a lot of my time reading history. It was my best subject at school, and I would have taken it further. But in my school bright kids applied to do other stuff at University, so I stumbled into science. However, I was never cured of the history bug. You won’t be too surprised to learn therefore that I’m reading some history at the moment - Alistair McGrath’s “Reformation Thought”.

Over the years I’ve read various accounts of the events, personalities, thinking, politics and impacts of the sixteenth century, famously starting with Luther’s posting of his 95 theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, on the 31st October 1517. Of course, as McGrath point outs, this didn’t happen because Luther woke up that particular morning and on a whim decided that this would be a wizard wheeze. It may have been a discrete event (and not everyone is agreed that it occurred where and when it is said to) but it wasn’t just a discrete event. Many things preceded it, some of which had impacted on Luther himself, and there were many other things influencing him indirectly. All of this undoubtedly shaped his thinking and actions; this is the nature of things. And what followed, what is now termed “the Reformation”, did not then unfold in a vacuum either. There was a lot going on beside and around the theological outrage of one particular German monk, and a lot that then flowed out from his actions. All of this rich tapestry is what we call providence. But we like to identify points in time and places in space, and for the start of the Reformation a Wittenberg church door in 1517 will do. But the before and after turns out, at least to my mind, to be really interesting.

As to before, one wonders how Biblical Christianity survived given the state of the institutional church at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Philosophy was in fine fettle, with rise of humanism in the universities of the day, and renewed interest in the ideas of antiquity, perhaps reaching a high point in the person of Erasmus. Art, including of course church art, was flourishing; this after all was the age of Leonardo. Literacy rates were low, but were climbing, perhaps reaching around 10% by 1500; this doesn’t sound like a lot but it would have an important bearing on the spread and development of reformation ideas. Under the surface, one big change was the arrival and evolution of printing in Western Europe from the East. But the Church in Western Europe was mired in corruption and confusion, and arguably had been for centuries. Somewhere, no doubt, what we might call a Gospel remnant remained; this was certainly Broadbent’s contention, and is the thrust of his famous book (“The Pilgrim Church”). However, this was not at all obvious, at least to mainstream, documented history. In general, the knowledge of what was, and what was not, Bible truth must have been fairly limited, at least as limited as access to Bibles. At this point in history there were no vernacular translations, and the Vulgate, which was available in monasteries and universities, partly made the problem worse by being a relatively poor translation from the original Bible languages into Latin. It also confused the canonical books of the Bible with the (non-canonical) apocrypha (although this was and is a matter of contention). Mind you, as what happened afterwards rather demonstrates, none of this was a particular problem for the God who weaves the tapestry of human events.

The 21^st century seems to be very different from the 16^th. And in so many ways it is. An easy parallel could be drawn between the COVID19 pandemic, and the outbreaks of plague which still occasionally occurred in the time of the reformers. But the plague devastated in ways scarcely conceivable in the modern world. Two years after Luther pinned up his theses, the plague struck the Swiss town of Zurich, where Zwingli, one of the other early reformers, was at work. Between a quarter and third of the population were wiped out, and Zwingli was nearly among their number. Bad as COVID is, it is nowhere near this deadly. However, if in the midst of our pandemic, you had begun to wonder if there was more to life, and wanted to find out what the Scriptures (ie the 66 books of the Bible) had to say on the topic, you’d be spoilt for choice. Even in lockdown, you’d be able to download to a device of your choice the very words of God, from sites like Bible Hub and Bible Gateway and many others beside. Our problem is manifestly not, as in the early 16^th century, the unavailability of the Word of God in our own language. It is freely available. Many of us have a copy somewhere in our homes, some of us have multiple copies, in multiple versions. Yet, paradoxically, although the Bible is widely available, confusion and ignorance about what is taught and revealed in its pages abound. Confusion and ignorance, I would suggest, on a par with 1517. And not only in society, “out there”.

Recent statistics have highlighted utter confusion about what is taught in the Bible, even among those who self-identify with labels like “practicing Christian” and “evangelical”. According to the “State of Theology” survey, in 2018 71% of self-identified UK Christians (74% of those identifying as evangelicals) agreed with the statement “Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God”. The 2020 figure for US evangelicals was 56%. What about the statement “The Holy Spirit is a force but is not a personal being”? What do you think? I think that Scripture is quite clear on this. But it is a point of contention between orthodox Christian belief and some of the cults and sects. So, your view as to the truth of this statement is neither trivial nor unimportant. It turns out that in the 2018 SoT survey, 69% of UK practicing Christians (55% of evangelicals) agreed with the statement. It is, of course, untrue. The Holy Spirit is a person, with the attributes of a person, and is the third person of the Trinity, standing in personal relationship with other persons (divine and otherwise). There is data on a whole series of other statements on the site that you can peruse at your leisure. Indeed you can take the survey yourself, and compare your own views with the US or UK populations, and various sub-populations.

Now I know one can quibble with the basis of any survey. One can question the wording of some the statements, and the coverage of various topics. This particular survey is done online, and therefore one could also quibble with the nature of the underlying samples. But demoting two out of three persons of the Trinity strikes me as indicating pretty serious confusion. Even amongst church going folk, even those who are attending churches where Scripture is being taught (or is claimed to be taught) confusion and ignorance of what the Bible actually teaches apparently abounds, a bit like the early 16^th Century. But the reason is clearly not because the unavailability of the Bible in the vernacular.

Clarity about what the Bible teaches is both possible and desirable. Answers are to be had. They reside in that Bible which is, mercifully, freely available to us (at least at the moment). But it is apparently a closed book many of us. Mind you, what is apparent is rarely the whole story. One wonders how this part of the tapestry will look when it is complete. 

Don't ask me how I'm feeling

Full disclosure – I’m a Scot. We have a reputation for being a dour, miserable lot. Some argue that this explains why we took to Calvinism so enthusiastically. Mind you, proving the direction of the causality (were we Calvinists because we were dour, or dour because we were Calvinists?) is probably impossible. This is all a bit unfair to both Scots and Calvinists. However, as it is emotion I'm about to discuss, I thought I had better point out I might be accused of having a problem with it!

In contemporary culture, emotion is important. We’re told to read it, explore it, own it, express it. Not to do these things is to be repressed. We don’t just need intelligence, we need emotional intelligence. How I feel is what really matters, and trumps almost everything else. Even in science, those interested in cold cognition are increasingly interested in emotion (or its proxies). How we feel is as cool a subject of study as how we think. Not all emotion is good of course. There are good and bad emotions, and the aim of modern life is to maximise the good and minimise the bad. Happiness good, sadness bad. Guilt bad, the satisfaction that flows from being self-justified, good. The “right sort” of emotional state is an objective for life. It’s healthy to pursue feeling good.

So it might be argued that it is just as well that there are churches that seem to focus on meeting this need to feel good. A recent article on the BBC website (“Hillsong: A church with rock concerts and 2m followers”; 13^th August) left me feeling that I needed to think about emotion. It ended with a quote from a young man who, for various reasons, had left Hillsong. He clearly still felt warmly towards. He was quoted as saying: 

“The music is so beautiful and uplifting and it makes you feel better. I don't think there's anything in the Bible that says we can't feel good.”

If you’ve never heard of Hillsong, it’s worth knowing that it is a rapidly growing group of churches, originating in Australia. It is perhaps best known for its music, and it has given to the church at large songs that are probably now sung somewhere every Sunday (you’ll find lots of examples on YouTube). The music and vibe attracts a mainly young audience to its large weekly gatherings, with stadium-sized conferences running more occasionally. Hillsong’s weekly live audience runs into the hundreds of thousands (if not millions), with many more watching and listening online.

The thing about music, particularly well written and well played music, is that it is a brilliant way to induce a mood, evoke an emotion, create an atmosphere. And I don’t have any problem with that. I like music, of all sorts (and play music of some sorts). It’s clearly important in church too. Christians have always sung together, taking much of their early material from the Psalms in the Old Testament, Psalms which themselves had been sung for millennia by Israel. Some of this singing is sad and poignant. But much of it is joyful and uplifting. Indeed this upbeat note is probably where the balance lies. After all, the instruction in Psalm 100 v 1 is to make a joyful noise, not a mournful one. And in the New Testament the instruction is to sing out of thankfulness; I’m assuming that this means it will be will be on the up side rather than the down. And I don't really see a problem if this really does help us feel better. So in one sense Hillsong aren’t really innovators in giving church music a key, upbeat role. But here is my problem: don’t we need something beyond feeling better, feeling good? 

Singing, particularly singing together, is powerful. But powerful enough? Maybe it would be a good idea to know why  we’re singing, and to know why we're singing what you're singing. Singing, and the feel-good factor that it can engender, doesn’t ever seem to be the primary objective in Scripture. There is nothing in the Bible that says we can't feel good. But there's lots in the Bible that suggest there are things that need attention before we get to feel good. Maybe if simply feeling good is our objective, we're missing something important. Because when singing to feel good becomes the objective, the song is all that there is. Maybe that's when the song becomes hollowed out, and becomes less than it could be. 

Something else of interest recently happened, this time among the ranks of Hillsong musicians. One of their more accomplished writers and performers decided that Christianity just may not cut it for him anymore. Posting on Instagram (since removed, but picked up by others), among other things he wrote:

“This is a soapbox moment so here I go … How many preachers fall? Many. No one talks about it. How many miracles happen. Not many. No one talks about it. Why is the Bible full of contradictions? No one talks about it. How can God be love yet send four billion people to a place, all ‘coz they don’t believe? No one talks about it. Christians can be the most judgmental people on the planet—they can also be some of the most beautiful and loving people. But it’s not for me.” (quoted more extensively  here)

There’s a familiarity about this; these are issues that have been, and are, discussed, widely. They are questions that have answers. The fallibility of Christian leaders is well known and often reported (sometimes gleefully); there are websites and blogs dedicated to it. But then who was he following, or being encouraged to follow? We’re all fallible, and we all fail. That’s why the Gospel focuses not on a man, but on Jesus (who while a man, was also God). The role and reality (or otherwise) of the miraculous is another often talked about subject (some Christians seem to talk about nothing else). But miracles in the Bible, are relatively rare and usually serve a particular purpose. And that purpose is rarely evidential. Contradictions? While the claim is often made that the Bible is "full" of them, it has consistently failed to stand up to scrutiny.  The problem of suffering is a key, important and difficult issue for many, but hardly a new one. He also says: "Science keeps piercing the truth of every religion.” I admit I’m not entirely sure what this even means. But a cursory read of this blog (and much more besides) will show that science is no competitor to faith, at least not the kind of faith the Bible talks about. So what’s going on?

Could it be a simple as this: if the music’s all you’ve got, then when the music stops you’re in big trouble. If all you have is a good feeling, an uplifted mood, based on feel-good songs, this will be a  fragile and temporary state of affairs. It will not be enough to effect a fundamental change in life-direction; it will not stand the test of time, nor stand up to a skeptical and hostile culture. Maybe, after all, life is not primarily about how we feel. It has to come back to what we know. It is true that the philosophically sophisticated puritan theologian Johnathan Edwards said: “True religion, in great part, consists in holy affections". But the same Psalmist who tells us to make a joyful noise, immediately sings: “Know that the Lord, he is God” (Ps 100:3). Scripture doesn't make the sort of rigid distinction between feeling and knowing that we have tended to in Western culture. Throughout Scripture knowing and feeling are linked and are not two rigid and separate categories. So all knowing and no feeling is no great improvement on all feeling and no knowing.

But it does seem to be clear that feeling (and singing) need a proper foundation. They need to spring from right knowing. To focus only on how we feel is to focus on the wrong thing, to have things the wrong way round. If we make how we feel our primary objective, we short-change ourselves. So, as Alistair Begg said once, “Don’task me how I feel, ask me what I know”. He, incidentally, is also a Scot.