We’ve had to cope with yet more tragedy in recent days.
After terror attacks in Manchester and London, now the news of massive loss of
life in a tower block fire. But another, seeminly more trivial event, caught my attention on Tuesday
evening – the resignation of Tim Farron as the leader of the Liberal Democratic
Party. At the outset of the general election campaign, he was persistently and
specifically questioned about an issue not in his party’s election manifesto,
and not likely to feature in upcoming legislation. The issue of whether he
thought “gay sex” was a sin, became sport for the media and a distraction to his
party’s campaign. It was partly on the media’s radar because he is known to be
a Christian (in the confessional as opposed to the ethnic sense), and while his
voting record on LGBTIx issues is fairly consistent, he abstained on a final
vote on the Same Sex Marriage Bill in 2013 (having voted consistently for the
legislation up to that point), a decision he later said he regretted. The
reaction to both his resignation and his resignation speech is instructive.
Some have gloated and some have provided a more nuanced
commentary. On one hand it’s claimed we have seen prejudice and medievalism
driven from the public sphere, on the other that tolerance and liberalism are
now proven to be in decline rather than in the ascendancy. Before throwing in
my tuppence worth, I’ll make clear my own perspective and commitments.
I too am a Christian - a term that needs further
qualification. I am a follower of Jesus Christ, as He is revealed in the Bible,
which I take to be the Word of God. I am convinced the Bible is both an
ordinary and an extraordinary book. It’s ordinary in that it is composed of
words, and has to be read and interpreted like any other book. It’s
extraordinary in that these words are the means by which the God who is real communicates
to 21st century men and women. As with all words, the ones in my
English translation of the Bible have to be interpreted, and that entails a
degree of work and commitment on my part. Unlike the words in any other book,
behind and within the words in my Bible, is the Living God. He is not the words, and the words are not
Him, but He communicates by means of them. Words can be misinterpreted of
course. When I do that with the Bible, it is because I am limited and fallible,
and sometimes just plain lazy. That is my failure, not God’s. All of this
leaves room for disagreement among followers of Jesus and there are some areas
of “twilight” in what Scripture says and what Scripture means. But, to quote Dr
Johnston, the fact that there is twilight doesn’t mean I can’t tell night from
day.
All of this matters because it is words, and partly Bible
words, that contributed to Tim Farron’s downfall. I’m clear that God in His
word is clear on matters such as human sexual behaviour and marriage. The views
that I hold, based on a rational reading of Scripture, used to be the majority
view, and were the consensus view on such matters for centuries. But no longer;
I am now in a minority. It’s unclear the extent to which Tim and I agree on
what the Bible teaches on these issues. I don’t know him personally, and have
no inclination to speculate. But, despite many of his public statements, his
voting record in parliament and his work on LGBTI issues in the Liberal
Democrat party, the commentariat appear to assume that he thinks certain things,
and on the basis of this assumed pattern of thought, he has been stalked, outed,
criticised and condemned.
David Laws, not a stranger to controversy and the odd political
resignation himself, was revealing in his article on the topic: ..”you cannot
be a leader of a liberal party while holding fundamentally illiberal and
prejudiced views". Never mind Farron’s voting record and tireless party work.
Laws continued that the LD election campaign had been “undermined by the
outdated opinions and views which Tim clearly holds”. It appears from this article
that Mr Laws thinks that even if I accept that the law should treat he and I equally,
I am not entitled to even think (let alone argue) that he or anyone else is
immoral on the basis of my “outdated” and “irrational” beliefs. Exactly which
methods should be used to expose my beliefs (if I should I keep them to myself)
or to what extent I should be penalised for believing stuff he finds offensive,
or whether I should be coerced to think differently – all this remains unsaid
and unclear. Re-education camps perhaps? Sounds a bit illiberal to me.
The open and tolerant society that
allowed campaigners to overturn the consensus view on legislation relating to
issues like homosexuality and abortion was rooted in and shaped by a Biblically informed world view. It appears as society moves ever further away from this, I’m not even to be allowed to think
differently from the new consensus, never mind to debate or campaign for change
in a different direction. Liberalism apparently has its limits.
So much about politics, political leadership and illiberalism.
But occasionally, I hear the question asked: is it possible to be a Christian
and a scientist? After all, to be a Christian one has to be irrational. You
have to believe stuff against reason, or at least not think too carefully about
it. There are irrational beliefs (ie beliefs held either without evidence or in
the teeth of evidence). But I am a Christian because having weighed the
evidence and found it compelling, I have responded to it. Or not so much
responded to it, but to Him. Because Christianity is at root a relationship
with a person, not an information processing exercise. And having become a
Christian, everything (including reason) is involved in being a Christian. And
being a Christian, one exciting way of understanding the world around me, is to
use the methods of science. In doing that, all I am doing is further exploring
what ultimately God has done and is doing. Where others assert conflict, I find
that these are more apparent than real. No choice between science and scripture
is necessary. In happily being a Christian and a scientist, I’m doing nothing
new, and I'm not alone. I’m following in a long and distinguished line.
