Monthly Archives: September 2014

Obeying the Bible means living a radical, green life

Posted in Matters of Faith, Simple Life by

It was great to see so many people out marching for Climate change around the world last weekend. It’s always good to see a community getting together for a common cause. But will it change anything? I doubt it. Governments already know that a significant minority of their populations are concerned about climate change. What will really change the situation is not going on marches, but changing the way we live.

And, encouragingly for Christians, this way of living is laid out pretty clearly in the Bible. In fact, even if you don’t believe in climate change, if you want to take the Bible seriously, you’ve to live a life that is in agreement with the greenest and most right-on environmental protesters.

Why? Well, anything that is producing carbon and going into the atmosphere, is related to consumption. It’s caused by money, or more to the point, it’s caused by some people having too much money and greed. It’s now the norm for our culture to be going off on foreign holidays via plane, even twice a year, having two cars, changing technology every few months, eating vegetables that were flown from the other side of the world. And what makes all this possible? Having too much cash, and then choosing to spend it on ourselves rather than on helping others. This is a lifestyle that we’re all caught up in in the West, and dealing with it is a lot harder than going on a march. Our societies need root and branch reform, and the Bible is the best place to start. I think this passage is key to the issue:

“Yet true godliness with contentment is itself great wealth. After all, we brought nothing with us when we came into the world, and we can’t take anything with us when we leave it. So if we have enough food and clothing, let us be content.

But people who long to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many foolish and harmful desires that plunge them into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. And some people, craving money, have wandered from the true faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows.” 1 Tim 6:6-10

How true this Bible quote is. Greed, and the lust for entertainment, stuff, activity and fashion, has lulled us into this situation, where the world’s resources are scarce and we’re wasting them on consumer goods and leisure rather than investing them into people and the planet. We have a model in Jesus, who was so low-impact that he didn’t even have his own house (Luke 9:58). We’re told to be stewards of the Earth and all the living things in it (Gen 1:28). When we think of Matt 25 we normally remember that those who go to eternal punishment are those who have not helped the sick, the imprisoned and the hungry. But Rev 11:18 also points out that those who destroy the earth will be in this group. So if we’re God’s people, then we’ll be caring for people and caring for the Earth too.

Breaking our addiction to consumption, cars, boys toys and all the trappings of the modern world will take a long time. In the same way as an addiction to crack or alcohol, it takes Jesus to fill the hole that the addiction leaves and repair the damage. This in and of itself will direct our attention from entertainment and buying stuff, towards helping others and loving Creation, in all its beautiful variety. We’ll not be working every hour God gives us, but working fewer hours because we’ll need less money: truly we’ll be serving God and not filthy lucre (Matt 6:24). We’ll have more time for our friends and family, and serving our community, even putting on dinner parties for the lost and broken (Luke 14:13). We’ll be able to give away the money we do have to good causes.

I can hear the mini-me Richard Dawkins of the twitter world howling in outrage at what I’ve just said, thinking of the gas-guzzling SUVs and private jets of certain parts of the Christian community, especially in America. But it’s not our job to shout at them, it’s our job to lead by example. And perhaps we need to get the log out of our own eye, before we can help others get the speck out of theirs (Matt 7:3-5). We need more than shifting to a green tariff, reusing plastic bags and buying recycled paper, to get the almighty, rotten trunk out of our own eyes.

Living a life worthy of that 1 Tim passage, and to be content with just having enough food and clothing to survive, is radically different from our Western culture. But as the ancient monks and nuns discovered, it can leave more space for what’s really good, and what’s really God. After all, it’s His Earth, not ours.

Potatoes grow fruit that look like tomatoes – who knew?

Posted in Gardening/Permaculture, Simple Life by

You learn something new every day. At the veg social enterprise I’m involved in, all the potato plants have long since died, but they’ve left these funny looking little fruits behind. Apparently it’s rare, but potato flowers will become fruit in the right conditions. The little fruits contain seeds that can be harvested and stored like tomatoes, and sown the next year. This will produce lots of new varieties of potatoes. Whatever you do don’t eat the fruit – they’re poisonous!

image

I’m going to try it out next year. Have you ever done this? Let me know how it went. I’ve also got some beans stored, and apparently they’ll develop into new varieties too. Waste not, want not, n all that.

Humanists launch a new ad campaign: I chat to their chief exec

Posted in Ethics, What's going on by

The British Humanist Association has just launched a new advertising campaign on the London Underground. Under the heading, “What’s it all for?” the posters feature quotes from atheists such as AC Grayling and novelists like Virginia Woolf. Partly it’s to rival BBC Radio 4’s ‘Thought for the day’ which continues to be religious.

I rang up the chief executive of the BHA this morning, Andrew Copson. He was more friendly than the folk in certain other secularist organisations. It was an interesting exercise in conversing with someone from a different point of view, while asking my questions about the campaign.

I think most Christians would say that there is very little broadcasting that they can relate to as Christians: what little there is, such as Songs of Praise, is often designed more for the older generation, or can come from a very liberal point of view. I suspect other religions might feel the same. But it seems that this feeling is the same for humanists.

This surprises me, because to me, almost everything on TV and radio has an underlying humanist worldview and secularist assumptions, which are definitely not neutral. I’d love to see some quantitative evidence of to what extent religious and humanist views are expressed on TV, and whether they’re given a positive or negative light.

In any case, the conversation did help me to understand this guy’s point of view, at least a little bit. Perhaps we all notice opinions that are different to ours much more often than we do our own. The difficult thing is to communicate with the people holding those opinions, but that’s the way we come to understand each other.

How gay people are treated in church

Posted in Matters of Faith, Personal stories, Relationships by

I’m listening to an interesting debate between Steve Chalke (a British pastor who is well-known for his liberal approach to sexuality issues and other things) and Sean Doherty, a teaching pastor at Bible College St Mellitus. Doherty described himself as gay, and when at university he was open about this with his Christian friends. Yet he said that he has never received homophobia or criticism from the church or other Christians. However he did get criticism from outside the church. Why? Because he’d decided to be celibate.

I find this fascinating. Sean comes from an evangelical background, but it’s a similar story to a Catholic guy, Steve Gershom (not his real name). Gershom also said he’s never experienced negativity for being gay in church: but he has experienced negativity outside the church for being celibate. He said:

“Where are all these bigoted Catholics I keep hearing about? When I told my family a year ago, not one of them responded with anything but love and understanding. Nobody acted like I had a disease. Nobody started treating me differently or looking at me funny. The same is true of every one of the Catholic friends that I’ve told. They love me for who I am.

“Actually, the only time I get shock or disgust or disbelief, the only time I’ve noticed people treating me differently after I tell them, is when I tell someone who supports the gay lifestyle. Celibacy?! You must be some kind of freak.”

Yes, we hear some horrible stories from other people who are gay: negativity, and being thrown out of church, and even terrible stories about teenagers being thrown out of their homes. But the experience of Doherty and Gershom suggest that this is not the whole picture. Vicky Beeching, a worship leader who recently came out, received a lot of criticism (she, unlike Gershom and Doherty, doesn’t seem to be aspiring to celibacy), but she also received an overwhelming amount of support and encouragement from Christians, certainly on twitter.

So, it’s not that someone who is gay is immediately ostracised by churches, at least in the UK. Even in conservative circles, gay people can experience inclusion, love and acceptance. This has to be the right way, whatever your theological stance on the matter is.

But what about our culture’s distaste for celibacy? Why should people who choose not to have sex, be ostracised, mocked and criticised? For the most part, our culture appears to have learned the lesson of welcoming and including people who identify as gay, though there are exceptions. Yet it is still not very good at including and accepting other people who are different to them: whether that’s because they are celibate, they believe in God or many other things that are not fashionable at the moment. We desperately need to learn, and encourage others, to accept and love other people whoever they are and whatever is fashionable. The culture might decide that one group is OK (at the moment that’s gay people) and that another is not (at the moment that’s celibate people). The church has to be different: we have to love everyone. Many times we fail: but that’s got to be our goal.

(To hear similar stories to these two men, you can look at the ‘Living Out’ website, or that of Peter Ould.

Really healthy raw chocolate brownies

Posted in Raw, Recipes, Simple Life by

Mmmmm… this is a great recipe for Raw chocolate brownies, and it’s genuinely good for you. I used orange peel rather than essence, this seems to have worked well. Plus you can just keep it in the freezer and eat whenever you want. I enjoyed licking out the bowl even more than for buttercream, and that’s saying something. Enjoy! 🙂

How did Bono come to faith in Jesus?

Posted in Culture & Arts, Matters of Faith, Music by

It’s not that widely known that Bono is a Christian, and has been throughout his very successful career. It was only when I became a Christian myself in my late 20s that I found this out, and then their music developed new meaning to me, as the lyrics are full of Christian imagery and meaning.

Interesting that his faith seems to have been sparked by Billy Graham, who at one time was a regular preacher in the UK. This comes from this poem released by Graham’s library, which is rather sweet. I wrote about it for Christian Today yesterday.

The journey from Father to friend
is all paternal loves end
It was sung in my teenage ears
In the voice of a preacher
loudly soft on my tears
I would never forget this
Melody line
Or its lyric voice that gave my life
A Rhyme
a meaning that wasn’t there before
a child born in dung and straw
wish the Father’s love and desire to explain
how we might get on with each other again…

To the Rev Billy Graham (that preacher)
Ruth and all the Graham family
From Bono (March 11 2002)
With much love and respect

Why are New Atheists so offensive?

Posted in Apologetics, Ethics, Matters of Faith, What's going on by

It’s been an interesting spectacle, to watch the fame of the New Atheists such as Richard Dawkins rise in the last decade, and then a little sad to observe that in recent years they have become increasingly offensive. It’s no longer just believers who are offended, it’s women, people with disabilities, and many others.

I wrote an article for Christian Today yesterday about the latest offence from Sam Harris: that women’s “Estrogen Vibe” led them to be less interested in his books. It didn’t go down very well and feminists expressed their irritation on the hashtag #EstrogenVibe. The article contains a short summary of offensive comments from the New Atheists.

Of course there are plenty of Christians out there who cause offence, too. But those people generally are not put on pedestals, at least in the UK. I am starting to feel sorry for the atheists. They seem genuinely unaware of why what they say is offensive, and really believe that their approach is the rational and right one.

Perhaps that is the problem: that when we become proud of how intelligent we are (or we think we are), then it naturally lends itself to being insensitive to others. The mark of a humble person is often their soft and non-judgemental attitude, and they’re the least likely to cause offence. It’s a virtue that is valued in some religious circles, and perhaps it needs more popularity outside, too.

 

Cheap cupboard nut roast

Posted in Recipes, Simple Life by

If you’ve got some nuts to use up, but no fresh food, and a food processor, this recipe is great. I made it up myself. No eggs, either!

300g mixed nuts
Tin tomatoes
1 small onion or large clove garlic, chopped
Big handful fresh herbs: basil, parsley (or heaped tsp dried)
1 can beans (red kidney, cannellini etc)
100g dried out wholemeal bread
1tsp mustard
Generous salt n pepper
Bit of oil

It’s really easy. Put the nuts and bread into the food processor and process until all are chunky. Then put everything else in, and blend until a paste that still has chunks of nuts etc. Oil a loaf tin, and put the paste in. Put in oven at about 180 c for approx. 50 mins – but keen an eye out and check whether burning. Check middle cooked, then tip out onto a serving plate.
I chill this and wrap up portions for the freezer – I can stick it into the microwave and use throughout winter. Enjoy!