In our Ethics class yesterday we were thinking about the way that your ‘filters’ affect your interpretation of events, and can influence your reaction to events.

Remembering Gospel realities can be a good way of restoring correct perspective in the face of difficulties (or blessings) and can help to re-cast your response to a situation, and gradually re-form your character, in the likeness of Christ.

Fieldy mentioned 5 Gospel Filters which were a great starting point for seeing the world correctly. So if you are a Christian, and have at least one hand, why not use it to remind you of these great truths…

(as I was searching for a suitable image to use to create this, I came across the following which is a similar idea with respect to the Word of God - another great resource from the Navigators - The Word Hand.)

Some wonderful old words by John Newton which I re-discovered today through the ministry of a wise man…

“I Asked the Lord That I Might Grow”

I asked the Lord that I might grow
In faith, and love, and every grace;
Might more of His salvation know,
And seek, more earnestly, His face.

’Twas He who taught me thus to pray,
And He, I trust, has answered prayer!
But it has been in such a way,
As almost drove me to despair.

I hoped that in some favored hour,
At once He’d answer my request;
And by His love’s constraining pow’r,
Subdue my sins, and give me rest.

Instead of this, He made me feel
The hidden evils of my heart;
And let the angry pow’rs of hell
Assault my soul in every part.

Yea more, with His own hand He seemed
Intent to aggravate my woe;
Crossed all the fair designs I schemed,
Blasted my gourds, and laid me low.

Lord, why is this, I trembling cried,
Wilt thou pursue thy worm to death?
“’Tis in this way, the Lord replied,
I answer prayer for grace and faith.

These inward trials I employ,
From self, and pride, to set thee free;
And break thy schemes of earthly joy,
That thou may’st find thy all in Me.”

John Newton, 1725-1807

An intriguing article appeared on the BBC yesterday reporting that theologians in Turkey have been commissioned by the government to revise the Hadith - an important text for Muslims interpreting the Koran (and an important source for Sharia law).

This may well be a very positive thing - particularly in relation to the rights and treatment of women in that society.

Although, as a Bible-believing Christian, I would deny the truth of the Islamic texts, two of the approaches which the article suggests are involved in the process are very similar to what we seek to do in understanding the Bible:

1. Trying to interpret individual verses in the light of the whole text
2. Trying, as far as possible, to return to the ‘text as given’ and so to remove ‘later interpolations’

However, the overall process sounds to be an extremely subjective one in which the aim is really to produce a new version of Islam which suits the needs of the state and the mores of the day.

It is in the light of this that some of the comments by Fadi Hakura (”an expert on Turkey”) seemed particularly inaccurate:

“This is kind of akin to the Christian Reformation,” he says.
“Not exactly the same, but if you think, it’s changing the theological foundations of [the] religion. ”

It seems that Mr Hakura hasn’t really grasped anything of the Essence of the Reformation. It wasn’t a revision of the text in the light of current social ideals, it was a return to the text which was used to challenge current social (and particularly religious) practises. The entire basis of the reformation was a submission to the texts themselves - not the subjective revision of the texts.

The Rev Dr Williams has done it again.

No comments from me, but a pointer to the actual text - What He Said since in all the reporting, that often seem quite hard to get to.

A very helpful analysis by David Field - Meet your new god - who argues that this is just an explicit (in the dense and slightly opaque sense of the word) example of ‘principled pluralism.’ Christians beware. Jesus is Lord!

Was pointed to this recently and it is excellent. These are mp3 versions of Mark Dever’s OT Overview Sermons which have been published as Message of The Old Testament. Edifying and helpful.

There has been wide coverage of the Prime Minister’s recommendation of presumed consent for organ donors.

I will side-step the question of whether such ‘consent’ is genuine or not because a different question bothers me.

I am amazed by the number of people who are prepared to stand up for the right for people’s wishes to be upheld after they are dead when contrasted with how few people seem to be bothered with the right’s of human beings while they are still alive.

Apparently in the UK over 1,000 people a year die for lack of organ donation. Compare this with (in 2006) almost 200,000 lives terminated via abortion.

And this latter number is only likely to rise. Thus only a month ago there was discussion about the possibility of GP surgery abortions.

The irony seems to lie in the fact that although people will always debate about when life starts, there seems to be much greater unanimity about when it ends. And when your life has ended, it seems fairly clear that you have no use for your organs. Unlike the person who is still alive…

We thought it would be good to end 2007 on a positive (albeit slightly late) note, by flagging up the results of a recent (last month) survey on prayer conducted by Tearfund.

According to the survey (based on a representative sample of 2000):

Of the 42% (20 million) of UK adults who pray, 13 million pray at least once a month and 12 million at least once a week. Nine million adults pray every day.

Perhaps one of the most surprising statistics is that London is the ‘prayer capital’ of the UK, with 73% of adults praying.

There seems to be little correlation between prayer and church attendance since “while 42% of UK adults pray, the figure for church attendance (at least once a year) is 22%.”

These results seem to suggest that the UK is not quite such a ’secular’ place as the commentators generally observe (see for example this American take on the UK’s religious attitudes in the light of Blair’s recent public conversion to Catholicism).

Whichever one is more realistic, we hope and pray that 2008 will be a year of great blessing for you.

Last week I had the benefit of hearing a presentation by Christian Concern for Our Nation and wanted to bring their good work to the attention of anyone who happens to read this site.

I was very challenged by the way that over the last few decades in the UK we have enabled our faith to be so easily privatised, and the way in which laws which are designed to achieve one thing, can have very different, often unforseen consequenecs.

In many ways the ungodly laws which are currently being passed can be seen as God’s judgement on our nation. This is a time for Christians to repent - of our own failure to act, and on behalf of our nation (see Daniel 9) - and to cry out to God for mercy on our nation. And we need to seek to act where we can to lobby for better laws.

Of course, real change requires God to change people’s hearts, so we need to be praying too for revival in our land. And we need to be working hard to share the gospel with those who have never heard it.

And perhaps above all to pray for wisdom to know how to balance these different ways of living out our faith, and the boldness to do so.

In many respects we want to cautiously applaud the news of the letter written by Muslim scholars to the Pope . Greater understanding between faiths must be a good aim, and in particular an end to violence would be welcomed.

Two observations.

Given the disparate nature of Islam, it is questionable how much impact such a letter can have. In some parts of the world, the issue of persecution by Muslims continues to be a live issue. For example, the Barnabus Fund today have the following prayer request:

Pray for the protection of Pakistani converts from Islam to Christianity. At least 11 convert couples have been murdered in the Lahore region alone in the past two years. Pray also for the protection of other believers around them. In the North West Frontier Province, six people were murdered in connection with one conversion - the convert himsled, the person who led him to Christ, the person who baptised him, the person who discipled him, and two others.

And this very language of “conversion” leads to the second point. Despite the apparent ’similarities’ between the two religions, it is impossible to say that Muslims and Christians worship the same God. Understanding between faiths does not mean that we have to suggest that the faiths are the same. Despite all the abuse of the term today, ‘tolerance’ only makes sense as a concept if there are differences between the opinions of which you are being tolerant.

Let us work to understand those of other faiths. Let us seek an end to the violence between those of other faiths and Christians. But let us hold on to the fact that ‘truth’ as a concept is meaningful, and that we are not all the same. Difference does not of necessity lead to violence.

The recent woes of Northern Rock (and to a certain extent the earlier panic in the USA) seem to be related to the state of the ‘Sub-Prime Mortgage’ market. ‘Sub-Prime’ seems to be something of a euphemism for ‘mortgages for people that can’t really afford them’ and as the BBC’s investigation seems to indicate, some brokers have got round this unfortunate problem by persuading would-be borrowers to lie about their wages.

Now if the normal pattern of things occurs it is likely that first of all the brokers will have their wrists slapped for ‘mis-selling,’ and then the borrowers will complain that they only took loans on ‘expert advice’ and so are not responsible at all.

The thing is, they are BOTH responsible. It is not a valid argument to suggest that because this is a ‘financial’ matter some kind of ignorance is a defence - because the issue (for the borrowers at least) is not so much ignorance as blatant falsification of information. If genuine ignorance meant they failed to appreciate they would be over-stretching themselves financially that is very unfortunate, but what on earth is going on in a society where people will lie in this kind of transaction without thinking it is wrong?

The God who made this world built the pattern of blessing for truth-telling into the very nature of things. As our society moves further and further away from His way it is no surprise that things go wrong.

I am not an economist so the following statement is problem reductionist in the extreme, but if over a long period of time we had not been encouraged to purchase properties beyond our means, it seems likely that prices would not have risen as quickly as they have done, due to the simple laws of supply and demand.

Regardless of this point, we must work and pray for a society which sees the inherent value in truthfulness, and much more than that, a society which begins to take note of the One who is entirely true, entirely good and entirely faithful.