Crticising the person or criticising the method?

There has been a lot posted recently on a certain preacher who was arrested in a city in Scotland while preaching at people.

Depending on who you read, it is either a preacher arrested FOR preaching the gospel, or a preacher arrested for breach of the peace.

It has divided opinion and bloggers have taken to their computers in large numbers, as clearly I am moved to do.

But my area of interest today is not so much this incident but rather how we deal with such incidents.

For the record, I agree with much of the first 3/4 of the following blogger's article: http://theweeflea.wordpress.com/2013/10/04/persecuting-preachers-in-perth/ (the writer of the wee flea is much more conservative in his theology than I am on other issues).

The part where I have to pause is at the end of the post, where there is a personal (genuine and heartfelt I believe) plea to this preacher to repent.

It reminds me somewhat of the other news grabbing (but on a much wider scale) open letter to Miley Cyrus from Sinead O'Connor. A well meant open letter was written, which I actually believe has done a lot of good. However, when I read it, I knew immediately that the intended recipient would be one of the only people to not take it well, and so it proved to be the case.

The reason is that when things are public and personal, our response is usually one of defensive behaviour, and usually this becomes counteroffensive. Our pride prevents most of us from taking these things on board. The exception is perhaps in cases of extremely low self esteem where we automatically take on all negative comments (and filter out the positive ones).

Going back to our street preacher, the blogger above asks him to repent. Straight away, this is going to get his back up (and a few of his supporters and others have clearly responded in the comments section).

There is in fact a small unintentional irony in that the blogger rightly points out "you can’t preach if no one is listening!" However, a public posting like this has some similarities to public preaching. The intended recipient is not listening, because he is not there.

I believe these kinds of personal requests are best done face to face and in private, rather than in what can be a humiliating (and less effective) public call.

This is not to say it is wrong to highlight the flaws in the method. When Jesus spoke to people he was often interested in the details and gave constructive comments. However, to condemn a person is very different from constructively critiquing a method. The problem is that our constructive comments can easily be taken as condemnation if we are not very careful in how we express ourselves.

If we are seeking a change in someone's behaviour, I think we need to try and build relationship with that person first and inspire people from a position of love and trust. This is where I feel the street preacher failed to engage properly.

While the blogger of the wee flea was actually criticising the method (in a detailed and helpful manner), I don't feel the call to repentance will have the desired effect.

One thing that helps me greatly is to ask myself the question "how would I respond to a criticism of something dear to me?" By what method would I receive the feedback best and from whom? When giving critical feedback we need to ask ourselves how to give it, when to give it, where to give it and what exactly needs to be said and left unsaid.

To be clear, I am not (ironically) having a go at the wee flea blogger. We actually agree on most of what he is saying. Nor do I have a personal grudge against the street preacher (or Miley or Sinead!). But these events do give plenty pause for musing! 

God bless.

Do we ever change our views when someone tells us we're wrong?

I occasionally visit a fairly conservative blog.  On occasion I feel moved to contribute to the conversation, but I find that as my views are typically more moderate and inclusive (particularly on issues regarding homosexuality), my posts are frequently shot down in flames. I recently posted the following comment: "The world has many needs and is calling out for the love of God, which we carry within our hearts to share." 

I was fairly flabbergasted to read a response that this was a "liberal statement" and that I was probably not even a Christian!

But it got me thinking.  On this other blog, people seem to be doing the text equivalent of shouting their views at one another.  I would genuinely be interested to know if this has ever resulted in someone changing their views?

Usually, when someone challenges us, our first instinct is to go on the defensive (or counter offensive).  Rarely does this seem to result in a change of view.  The exceptions are when there is a relationship already in existence, and the giver gives the message with a clearly positive tone, in love.  And no, I don't mean the harsh words that are often spoken "in Christian love" (but that are far from it!).

There is one blogger I read, and I am frequently willing to engage with his views and take points on board and I am surprisingly willing to adapt my own views after reading what he posts.  I think that it his style and genuine willingness to wrestle with issues and doubts and take points on board that make this so.

God bless

why I believe in...

The Virgin Birth and Miracles

I grew up hearing the Christmas story and reading about the miracles of Jesus.  Then I became a scientist and a Christian at almost the same time.

I remember hearing atheists using science as some kind of club to beat religion.  This always bemused me, as it is like using Mathematics as a weapon against English or Art.

For me, the universe is like a giant tapestry.  Look at it from one side and you see beauty, patterns, colours, stories and much more.  Look behind and you see a complex weave of thread and the "mechanics" behind it all.  To me, science is the exploration of what is going on behind the tapestry.  That some use that understanding to try to disprove that the tapestry was ever created has always bemused me.

I completely understand why many people are agnostic or atheist.  We are so influenced by our parents, friends, school teachers, role models etc. that each of us goes through life with the inherited views on much of what is around us.  Few of us take the time to challenge these things.  While I believe in God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit, I do so with a questioning faith.  Many times I've asked God "why?" and when I read something in the Bible I don't just accept it at face value, but I remind myself that it is a collection of translated sacred texts that need careful interpretation to discern what God would say to us through them.

I always understood why a non-believer would struggle to believe that the Virgin birth was a real event.  I completely understand why they would doubt that a resurrection or miracle could actually take place.

(On a side note, one of the things that I think damages Christian witness most is when a believer tries to prove God by describing some kind of miraculous event and they claim there is no other way it could have happened, but by God.  That is laying down a challenge to a scientific mind and where does it say in the Bible that the mechanics of all God's workings could never be understood?)

But what confused me most was Christians who did not believe in the Virgin birth or the resurrection.  There are some who see the virgin birth as just meaning that Mary was a young girl, and who think Joseph was probably the real father, but it didn't suit the writers so they wrote another angle into the story.  Some say the resurrection is a symbolic story rather than a literal one.

I wonder if this might in part be a counter response to the dogmatic unquestioning if-it's-in-the-Bible-it-must-be-true-and-needs-no-interpretation attitude of some?  Perhaps a way of reconciling a faith we love to a universe we (partly) understand is to reject literal understandings of much of the Bible.

However, as a scientist, I actually find that science helps me have more faith and I actually believe in a literal virgin birth and literal resurrection.

Firstly, there is an importance, I am led to believe, to a Jewish audience, that sin is passed down the generations through the male line from Adam.  The virgin birth would have been a proclamation to the Jews that this child, this man, was not born with sin (and therefore would be a perfect and flawless sacrifice when he gave himself up to take on all the sins of man, according to their custom of giving up meaningful sacrifices as part of their covenant with God to show their thanksgiving, their awareness and repentance of their sins and their total dependence on God).

Secondly, I have no problem theologically if science were one day to discover how God actually got Mary pregnant without a biological father.  There have been many "miraculous" things that science has begun to understand over the millennia.  Take for example the regular message that by trusting in God and lifting our anxieties to him, we find peace and comfort.  Psychology has shown us that the things we think about have an impact on our emotions.  There is a deeply mechanical (for want of a better word) process to prayer and faith, but this understanding doesn't diminish in the slightest our need for it or the wisdom God gives us in commanding it.

When faced with amazing "I can't believe it!" events, rather than jump to a conclusion that it probably didn't happen, I remind myself that if our earth were a few centimetres out of its orbit of the sun then life as we know it would not exist.  I remind myself that the beautiful child I see living in my house did not even exist a few years ago, but this sentient, conscious, delightful being was created into existence... It's a scientific miracle!

I remind myself of the beginning of our universe.  Either it was suddenly created out of nothing in a Big Bang, or it has always been and is always growing (growing into what we might also ask?).   The world around us is so full of amazing things we barely understand.  Each year we understand a fraction more through the wonders of science.  I remind myself to never try to prove God by something I don't understand ("if we can't understand, it must be God"), and I cringe when I hear Christians try to engage with others that way.  We don't demonstrate faith by arguments.  There is a place for logical arguments and apologetics but we demonstrate faith (and by this, I mean our relationship with God) by love.  It was the greatest commandment Jesus gave and remains the best form of evangelism.

I believe in the literal resurrection of Jesus because of the witnesses and accounts of the gospel.  It was also something he predicted and Jesus was an entirely trustworthy man.  It also was core to his message of salvation and hope.  But also, as a scientist, I have no reason to doubt that it could actually happen.  If my wife and I can create a child, if the sun can rise and set, if the world can actually support sentient life, if humanity can evolve into what we know it to be today, then why would I have a problem with Jesus being put to death, found to be dead (the piercing of his side and the fluids that emerged were physical proof he no longer lived), being buried and then rising again to show that God had conquered death and by putting our faith in Jesus we need never fear!

You see, I don't believe miracles are there to prove to a scientific mind that God must exist.  I think they are there to remind God's people that we can depend on him completely.  If Jesus can turn water into wine, then he can turn my despair into hope.  If Jesus can feed the multitudes on only a few small loaves and fish, then God can use a small number of Christians to feed the needs of a starving world (literally and metaphorically).

I actually think there is a danger in Christians beginning to doubt the miracles of God.  It is understandable to find them hard to believe (we are skeptical humans after all), but if we are not careful, we might start to doubt that we can actually depend on God.  We might lose confidence in hope.  We might doubt salvation.  We might drift away from the rock and find ourselves buffeted by the waves and storms with nothing to offer the world in terms of witness and confidence (a word that actually has faith at its root).

I don't write this to condemn or judge Christians who don't believe in miracles or the virgin birth.  But I do hope to encourage some who doubt because of reaction to the over confident bragging of some, that it is actually okay to believe in the miraculous without leaving our brains on standby, and we don't need to ever convince a world of miracles.  Leave that to God.  Instead, let us unite, whatever we believe on smaller issues, to show a world just how big and inclusive God's amazing love is!