Home Page
Church Services
Doctrines
Library
Pulpit
Oratory
Reliquary
Pilgrimage
Growing Faith
Lectern
OCR GCSE
Church Yard
Links for Bebington ULC
Message Board
Guestbook
Mail Form
|
Sermons
 I hope to address some of the difficult issues identified in our discussion of doctrine in these sermons |
Why You Should Believe in God
 |
Today, many people take it for granted that it is old fashioned and even ridiculous to believe in God. The arrogance of militant atheists such as Prof. Richard Dawkins is taken by the uninformed to be evidence of certain knowledge when it is in fact evidence of nothing more than ill-founded assertion and presumption. There is, perhaps, a good case to be made for being agnostic - after all, most religious believers emphasise the key role of faith, believing when there is no certain proof, unlike the case of doubting St. Thomas. There is no case for atheism which is not also based on blind faith and I would argue that such faith is less well founded than faith in the existence of God.
It is important to remember that belief in God’s existence is not the same as faith in Him nor is it the same as Christianity. Presumably even the Devil believes in God’s existence! It is perfectly possible to be a deist (believe in a god who has no role in the present world) or theist (believe that God created and influences the world) without accepting all or any of the teachings of Jesus (or any other religious teacher). Some would argue strongly that mere theism is quite inadequate but I would hope that it is at least a step in the right direction.
Here are some (I hope) good arguments for belief in God:
· There is no better explanation for the existence of the universe
· The fine tuning of the universe suggests a creator - if any one of a large number of physical and chemical parameters was even slightly different, life (and even matter) would be impossible.
· The beauty of nature speaks to many of a creator
· The theory of evolution contains a number of (as yet unexplained) difficulties and in any case does not disprove the role of God as creator.
· Many honest and serious people claim to have had direct communion with God
· Inexplicable miracles have been documented through the ages
· Spiritual truths have been ‘revealed’ in the Bible, whose scriptures contain some remarkable claims, many only recently fully understood and shown to be true
· It is difficult to explain morality from an atheist perspective
· The disciples must have believed sincerely that Jesus rose from the dead - why else submit to such persecution?
None of these arguments proves that God exists but atheists cannot prove that He does not.
Two final points -
1. Which is a more attractive vision - a wholly materialist and atheist universe that is amoral and arose completely by chance, or a theistic universe with a moral purpose?
2. The cost of erroneous disbelief could be eternal damnation; the cost of mistaken belief is .... probably nothing worse than the loss of a small amount of worthless pleasure and maybe not even that! (This is Pascal’s famous ‘Wager’).
Only you can decide in the final instance, though some argue that it is only by the Grace of God that you can come to belief.
|
|
The Problem of Evil
 Survivors at Auschwitz
A problem that has troubled believers for at least three thousand years is that of evil. Atheists have used it to condemn religion and it is true that for many it is a grave concern. Put simply, why does God allow such suffering in the world? There are two types of evil that one can identify - natural disaster (famine, disease, earthquakes, death) and man-made disaster (war, crime, persecution etc). There is no reason to believe that ‘good’ people suffer consistently less than ‘wicked’ people - at least not in this life. Sceptics seem to have a valid point when they ask ‘couldn’t God have made a better world than this?’
A number of simple answers to this question appear unsatisfactory:
1) God would like to eliminate evil but cannot.
2) God could eliminate evil but does not wish to
3) Evil does not really exist
The first seems to imply that God is not omnipotent, the second that He is not good while the third seems to devalue the real suffering people undergo.
Some philosophers have argued that God did the best that was possible with the material available, that matter is in some way imperfect and therefore there are bound to be flaws in anything made out of it. Others have argued for a cosmic dualism in which there is an on-going battle between good and evil. Even if we anticipate the final victory of good this suggests that God is less powerful than we would wish Him to be. Early Christian heretics offered such a view, as did the early Persian Zoroaster. It seems alien to orthodox Christian teaching but some Biblical / Evangelical interpretations effectively see the world as a battlefield between God and the Devil with God allowing the Devil certain powers over humans with the exception that through faith Christians can enjoy victory over sin. At the last judgement we will see the final defeat of evil, for which the writing has been on the wall since the death and resurrection of Jesus.
An alternative approach is to explain that wrong doing is inevitable if we allow free will and that without free will there can be no goodness and no meaningful relationship between people and God. He could have created robots who are incapable of sin but they would equally have been incapable of love. Dostoyevsky suggests that the price (suffering) is not worth the benefit but that is a value judgement which many would reject.
Peter Vardy (The puzzle of Evil) offers his own version of the free will defence. It is based on the belief that the ultimate purpose of life is fellowship with God while accepting certain limits to God’s power to act in the world. This power is used sparingly. God, it is held, could not have created a better world given His purposes. Evil does exist and needs to be fought - people need to play their part in this and may have to pay a high price .
This is a cleverly argued view (merely summarised here) but I do not find it entirely convincing. We need to abandon a human-orientated view of the problem and see things from God’s perspective. In a vast and possibly eternal universe the suffering of humans seems insignificant. That does not mean it is insignificant to those who suffer it of course! However, if this life is merely a ‘waiting room’ for eternity then things do appear in a different light.
We might also suggest that many of the ‘evils’ we suffer are only evil because we have completely adopted a materialistic and worldly view of life and its purpose. The Buddha pointed the way - by rejecting transient material things we can avoid suffering. Christians do not see suffering for their faith as real suffering at all but as a joy (see St. Paul’s letters). Most human suffering arises from material loss, from physical injury or from separation from loved ones. Those religious men and women who have turned their backs on these concerns may have found the solution to the problem of evil. This is little consolation to those of us who have not found this tranquillity but that is not God’s fault. He has offered us the chance to turn to Him and live a spiritual life that transcends material evil but how many of us have taken up His offer?
Thus, God cannot remove evil without giving up on his purpose for creation so he chooses not to act directly (for the time being) but instead has ensured the ultimate defeat of evil by the resurrection and by offering a spiritual approach to life which eliminates evil for those able to accept that approach. Faith would be the key to being able to accept that offer.
|
Pagan Jesus Heresies
 The popularity of so-called revisionist interpretations of the story of Jesus is now such that many take these radical new versions for the established truth. The way in which apparently scholarly research is mingled with more dubious claims to have uncovered secret knowledge or reappraised old ideas leaves non-specialist readers confused as to what is true, what could be true and what is sheer nonsense.
Among recent examples of this genre are The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, The Templar Revelation, The Jesus Puzzle, The Jesus Mysteries and, in the realm of fiction masquerading as fact, The Da Vinci Code. It is probably the last of these (together with a vast amount of material on the internet) that has most influenced the general public.
The exact details of the claims made vary but the most common themes include:
· Secret knowledge of ‘true’ Christian teachings that will ‘rock the church’
· A enhanced role for John the Baptist
· Secret orders (notably the Priory of Sion and the Templars) and symbols
· A Jesus married to Mary Magdalene who was a pagan priestess
· A blood line of Jesus’ descendants (the real Holy Grail)
· Hidden ‘treasures’ in the south of France
· Similarities between Christianity and pagan dieing-god mysteries
· The suppression of sacred sexuality and women by the church
When one reads that the similarities between the Gospel and the mysteries of Isis, Osiris, Mithras etc have been known for centuries but concealed by the church, it is no wonder that many find their faith shaken by the ‘discovery’. But how much of a threat to orthodox belief are these claims? Should we be worried?
Much of what is put out is based on academically very dubious material. The revisionists are particularly fond of relying on so-called Gnostic Gospels – to an extent that they would regard as credulous in those who place their trust in the canonical four. They tend to quote (selectively) from each other’s works, supplementing their information from unnamed contacts within alleged secret orders. It is not clear exactly what the intention of these writers is – beyond a bestseller or sewing scepticism and disbelief. They do not seem to have any (attractive or convincing) alternative religious (or atheistical) message to promote, though there is sometimes a sinister implication that we are ruled by unknown forces or the suggestion that we have been deceived for 2000 years by the ecclesiastical hierarchies.
There is no doubt that there are some genuine issues raised by the ‘Jesus Mysteries’ writers. Some of these were, apparently, of concern to those Christians writing in the Roman Empire. Some concern apparent difficulties with the NT accounts (why, for example, do the epistles show so little knowledge of the life of Jesus?) and some with historical problems. Was there tension between John the Baptist and Jesus later on? Why was the destruction of Jerusalem seen as a punishment for the death of James, as opposed to Jesus? There may well have been ancient traditions concerning Mary Magdalene in southern France and it seems likely that women did have a more prominent role in the early church than the later hierarchy would admit. It may even be true that the Templars practiced certain heretical rituals which some of their leaders were able to continue after the dissolution of the order. It is very likely that through the centuries all sorts of crack pot ideas have circulated among those who delude themselves into considering that they are heirs to some hidden truth – but none of this means that they really do have higher (Gnostic) awareness. If they had, there is precious little to show for it over 2000 years.
Close examination of the heretical accounts will reveal their very weak evidential and logical foundations. Some writers make claims that are without support or simply incorrect while others rely on the flimsiest of documentation or copies of copies. Their claims contradict each other – was Jesus a myth or a pagan practitioner? Was he married with children or a celibate Essene? There simply was no time for mythical interpretations to arise between the crucifixion and the letters of Paul; had he been talking complete nonsense there were plenty of people alive to point it out. People then may have been more credulous, but not to that extent! There is one simple fact that none of the revisionist accounts can explain – the early Christians were convinced of the truth of their faith – to the point of death. It is inconceivable that these people had entirely missed the point of Jesus’ teaching while some ‘inner circle’ grasped the meaning and passed it on almost unnoticed by the authorities.
A number of articles on the web (see below) show that the alleged Christian borrowings from pagan cults are nothing of the sort. There is no need to repeat the arguments here. The OT inspiration for the NT is clear to see without invoking dubious pagan antecedents. In some cases the borrowing is likely to have been the other way – there is very little evidence of a Mithras cult before the mid to late 2nd century AD. In other cases you need a good deal of faith to accept the proposed similarities!
Some early Christians were so worried by the similarities between the Gospel and pagan mysteries that they argued that the Devil had caused this to mislead the simple minded. Coincidence, later copying and the fact that some early Church fathers may have used pagan ideas to explain the Christian faith are more likely explanations. There is also the possibility that both Christians and pagans are tackling the same spiritual issues and that at times pagans have approached the truth with some of their own ideas. One intriguing possibility is that in some respects pagan ideas have foreshadowed Christianity. In some ways this is an attractive idea: it removes at a stroke the difficulty some find in the idea of Jewish exclusivity and it would provide exiting additional evidence for the truth of the Gospel. My guess is that this is probably not actually the case (because, as we have seen, the alleged parallels are mostly imaginary) but I would not rule it out entirely without having much greater knowledge of the relevant theology.
In conclusion, the revisionist mythologies of the sceptics and modern-day Gnostics need not trouble Christians too greatly; they should use the claims made to explore their faith more deeply and thereby strengthen its foundations.
Further Internet Reading:
Priory of Sion – facts, theories, mystery www.fiu.edu/-mizrachs/poseur3.html
Parallels between the Christian Gospels and Pagan Mythology www.religioustolerance.org/chr_jcpa1.htm
The Da Vince Code – facts behind the fiction www.aboutbibleprophecy.com/davinci.htm
The Jesus Puzzle – review www.truthbeknown.com/jesuspuzzle.htm
The Jesus Mysteries (excerpts) www.courses.drew.edu/sp2000/BIBST189.001/Jesusmys.html
A “Sigh” about Osiris www.frontline-apologetics.com/sighaboutosiris.htm
Mithras www.frontline-apologetics.com/mithras.htm
OH-SIGH-RIS Pagan Origins Refuted www.frontline-apologetics.com/ohsighris.htm
Hoax, Myth or Reality www.geocities.com/Heartland/2964/resurrection-evidence.html
Books of interest:
Abanes, R. The Truth behind the Da Vinci Code
Hanegraff, H. and Maier, P.L. Da Vinci Code – Fact or Fiction?
Olson, C.E. and Miese, S. The Da Vinci Hoax
Welborn, A. De-coding Da Vinci
|
Why Pagans are Wrong
 | It has become rather fashionable these days to be a pagan. The armed forces, prisons and hospitals have all recognized the rights of pagans to practice their religion and have access to priests. The Royal Navy has even had to concede this right to a Satanist. Much of this neo-paganism is little more than the vaguest of New Age sentiment combined with a romantic yearning for a past that never really was and in many ways it is quite harmless, indeed to some extent the ideals of those involved are perfectly laudable.
Modern (neo)paganism is an ill-defined and essentially incoherent set of beliefs. There are a multitude of paganisms – some Egyptian, others Celtic, many are Wiccan, others druidic, others a mish-mash of all of these. Their basic creed is simple – ‘an it harm none, do as ye will’ – a view many Lib Dems would be happy to share. Paganism also claims to respect the environment and to live in harmony with nature – a lesson many Christians would do well to heed. They emphasise the creative opposites of male and female and many are animist or pantheist, seeing the divine in all creation. Many believe that all gods and goddesses are essentially facets of one Spirit while many also believe that the divinities are archetypes or abstract energies. They may refer to the ‘spirit’ of a place or object and this can have the sense of ‘its essential nature’ or the presence of some spiritual energy arising from the place itself or events which took place there once. Wiccans will also practice spells (white magic) and pagan rituals include drawing circles and celebrating the rhythm of the seasons. Other pagan practices include shamanistic attempts to make contact with an Otherworld. It must be made quite clear that neo-pagans are emphatically not Satanists and do not approve of any abuse of human beings, animals or even plants.
It can be tempting to attempt to reconcile Christianity with these pagan beliefs in the spirit of multi-faith interfacing. Undoubtedly there are a number of potential parallels and one might feel that pagan respect for the Divine, concern for Nature and strong sense of morality are greatly preferable to secular and purely materialist atheism. Indeed, many current Christian rites are adaptations of pagan ceremonies (Christmas, Easter, All Saints Day, to name but a few). It is, perhaps, unjustified that pagans are not represented on multi-faith committees – their teachings are hardly any more objectionable to monotheists than, say, Hinduism! – but it is important to be clear as to why paganism is, fundamentally, wrong.
The teaching of the Bible and the Koran is absolutely clear that God is One and that pagan practices are to be abhorred. Some may argue that the doctrine of the Trinity undermines the claim to Oneness or that pagan rituals were condemned because they involved human sacrifice or ritual prostitution but even allowing for the validity of these arguments it remains the case that paganism is fatally flawed. Neo-paganism can, in fact, be rejected on a number of grounds:
1. Their teachings are incoherent and inconsistent – essentially being a New age concoction of the more mystical and attractive parts of various ancient (and often little understood) religions.
2. They confuse the Creator and the created and in worshipping the latter diminish the majesty of the former.
3. They divide the Divinity which is essentially One – by creating a myriad of gods and goddesses, some of which may represent aspects of the Divine but many of which are reflections of purely human qualities.
4. They ascribe to God flawed characteristics – many of the pagan gods are hardly models of moral and ethical conduct.
5. Their liberal moral code is simplistic and often simply an excuse for enjoying a hedonistic lifestyle of excess, drink, drugs and unrestrained sex.
6. Ancient pagans committed many abominable acts in the name of their gods and deserve no respect or imitation (though so too have Christians, Jews and Muslims, so perhaps we should not be too judgmental).
When Christianity (or Islam) encountered pagan cultures many of the old faith were resistant to change but others – more perceptive perhaps – welcomed the new religion and saw in their old beliefs a foreshadowing of the Truth. We are told that the Jews of the Old Testament had only a veiled understanding of God’s purpose until the incarnation of Jesus; we might believe that the pagans too had been able to glimpse – however faintly – something of the truth in the wonders of creation and through the power of their own consciences but the claims for some of these foreshadowings remain unproven. Saint Augustine argued that there was never a time when Christianity did not exist and Saint Columba is said to have exclaimed that ‘Jesus is my druid’ and to have embraced Christianity as the fulfillment of his druidic beliefs. We should follow his example and see paganism for what it was – a seriously flawed human attempt to grasp the mystery of the universe which has long been superceded by the purer light of the gospel.
A factual account of paganism:
http://www.sullivan-county.com/nf0/nov_2000/pagan.htm
A critique of Wicca:
http://www.apologeticsindex.org/w04.html
|
|
|
