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Cheating - 1 December 2009

OK, I cheated. I just mocked the British Humanist Association.

Sorry.

Let me just tidy up the loose ends. Shouldn’t take a moment. Here goes.

The fact that the BHA accidentally picked two Christian kids to front their latest advertising campaign does not, strictly speaking, undermine the logical coherence of the BHA’s stance. To address that question, you’d have to point out a bunch of other obvious things. Like this:

1. Atheism is plainly a religious position, since it makes substantive claims about facts materially significant for religious people, such as the affirmation, ‘There is (probably?) no God’.

2. As a religious commitment, therefore, atheism falls by its own attempted critique of religious one-sidedness, since atheism, no less that Christianity, is one-sided on the question of religion.

3. Another way of saying the same thing: there is no such thing as ‘legitimate neutrality’ on any morally significant question. If you don’t believe me, imagine what might happen to a historian who claimed to be ‘neutral’ on the question of whether the Holocaust took place. People (and, amazingly, there have been some) who attempt such ludicrous equivocation soon discover that this is one knife-edge on which it’s pretty hard to remain balanced.

Perfectly happy - 1 December 2009

The British Humanist Association has been proclaiming its gospel in a series of adverts on the side of buses. One poster boldly assures us, ‘There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.’

However, their most recent campaign has committed something of an own-goal. It’s one that just goes to show (to the eyes of faith) that the Lord is both (a) utterly sovereign; and (b) blessed (if that’s the right word) with a great sense of humour.

The poster in question pictures two happy, bouncy kids, and declares, ‘Please don’t label me. Let me grow up and choose for myself.’ Presumably this is intended as a blow against the tendency of Christian parents to bring their kids up to worship the one living and true God rather than to bow before the idolatrous false deity of humanism.

Unfortunately (for the BHA), the two (happy, bouncy, smiling) kids they picked ‘just happened’ to be the children of Brad Mason, a Christian who plays drums for the well-known Christian rock musician Noel Richards.

Oops.

It’s like this: Ruth ‘just happened’ to find herself in Boaz’s field (Ruth 2:3); David ‘just happened’ to see a woman bathing (1 Samuel 11:2); an arrow fired at random ‘just happened’ to find the chink in the armour of the King of Israel (1 Kings 22:34); and the two kids chosen by the BHA to demonstrate how happy we can all be without God ‘just happened’ to be perfectly happy with him.

U-turn - 2 June 2009

The San Diego County authorities have backed down – well, a bit. Having initially threatened to require a Pastor and his wife to apply for an expensive permit to allow them to hold Bible studies in their home, they’ve now apparently decided to hold fire until they can ‘[find] a solution to the matter’.

Was I being a bit harsh on San Diego County? After all, even if the State has no right to interfere in this case, there are of course some actions that Caesar ought to prohibit. And, moreover, merely attaching the slogan ‘religious’ to an action is not enough the establish that the State should keep its nose out. The ritual killings of young children that have been uncovered sporadically in the UK in recent years are murder, pure and simple; invoking ‘religion’ as an excuse, and then insisting that the State should not regulate religious expression, doesn’t get the murderers off the hook.

But this exposes the crucial underlying issue. At some point we have to decide what behaviours the State does have the right (and therefore the responsibility and authority) to prohibit, and what behaviours it does not. This in turn requires them to outline and justify the basis for the decision so made.

For more on that, you could do far worse than to look here.

Caesar just overstepped the mark - 31 May 2009

An American couple have been ordered to stop holding Bible studies at home without a permit.

Isn’t there a song about this somewhere? Land of the free and home of the brave, or something?

This one could run and run. Some initial thoughts:

Tyrany of this kind is inevitable as soon as the State starts thinking that freedom of religion is something that it needs to establish rather than something that is simply beyond its remit. For once the State takes it into its head proactively to ‘establish’ religious freedoms (rather than to simply keep its nose out), it always needs to place definitional boundaries around the freedoms so established (after all, we don’t want people to just do anything, right?). You can do this, but you can’t do that. This in turn means that we citizens now have to pass ‘tests’ or apply for ‘permission’ to obtain freedoms we once took from granted.

Furthermore, since administering this kind of system obviously takes time and costs money, these ‘freedoms’ tend to be given in the form of ‘licences’ for which citizens must pay. As in the above case, where San Diego County (yup, you heard right) want to charge this couple tens of thousands of dollars for a ‘Major Use Permit’ so that they can read the Bible with some friends in the comfort of their own home.

By objecting to this kind of nonsense, we’re not undermining the biblical insistence that certain acts of religious worship are right and others wrong. But the mistake of many modern States is to assume that (a) they, and not someone else, get to set the rules; and (b) they have the right to administer sanctions for disobedience. God will impose sanctions for misuse of religious freedom on the Last Day. Perhaps the church should do so ahead of time. But whatever gave Caesar the idea that the church needs his permission to worship her Head?

Stop trying to save the world - 28 April 2009

Someone asked me the other day what ‘political’ stuff like this is doing on a blog by a Christian Minister.

Good question.

There’s a lot that could be said (and, indeed, has been written) on this subject. See for example John Owen, Sermons to the Nation (Works, vol. 8). But here’s one (brief, cursory, incomplete) way of looking at it.

The Bible teaches that God delegates authority to certain categories of people (civil rulers, fathers, husbands, ministers) which is to be exercised prayerfully, in love and in accordance with his word over other groups of people (citizens, children, wives, believers).

Sadly, most of the time this authority is exercised in a manner contrary to the word of God. Either responsibility is abrogated, which leads to anarchy; or it is over-extended, exercised in areas beyond the remit God has given, which is tyranny.

Examples of the former would include a father failing to teach his children about Christ from the Scriptures, a husband too lazy to work to provide for his wife, and a minister too preoccupied with golf and cream teas to devote himself to the ministry of the word and prayer.

Examples of the latter would include a father demanding that his children get up at 4am to clean the house while he lounges around in bed until midday, a husband beating his wife for burning his toast, and a minister threatening to excommunicate church members who failed to attend church every day of the week.

The latter failure (i.e. tyranny) is also exhibited when a government places on its citizens requirements which the Bible gives it no right to impose. That, I’m afraid, is where most modern governments go wrong. They try to do too much – for example, creating a database of all citizens’ emails and phone calls.

Now, here’s the key thing (for our present purposes, at least). Since God has not authorised governments to do this (and lots of other things they try to do as well), he will not equip them to it competently. The inefficiencies and failures of many modern government projects are thus signs from God that they’re trying to do stuff they have neither the right nor (therefore) the ability to pull off. They should concentrate on doing what the Bible tells them to do (see for example Romans 13) and leave saving the world to The Expert.

‘Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me. I, I am the LORD, and besides me there is no saviour,’ … declares the LORD. (Isaiah 43:10-12)

Big brother - 27 April 2009

Yesterday we were greeted with the news that a ‘drugs liaison officer lost a computer memory stick said to contain a list of undercover agents’ names and details of more than five years of intelligence work.’ Apparently ‘the MI6-trained agent left her handbag [containing the memory stick] on a transit coach at El Dorado airport in Bogota, Colombia.’ Consequently, ‘Intelligence chiefs were forced to wind up operations and relocate dozens of agents and informants amid fears the device could fall into the hands of drugs barons.’

Then, this morning, we were woken with an update on the proposed ‘Big Brother database’. The plan was announced last year, and is still being pushed forward. The government proposes to hold ‘details of every phone call, e-mail and time spent on the internet by the public’ as part of the fight against terrorism. The content of these communications are not to be recorded, we are told; just their length, number and so on.

Here’s my prediction:

The plan probably won’t go ahead at all – at least, not for a while. Let’s face it, the Home Office, which would apparently have final responsibility for the scheme, has suffered a few dents to its credibility in recent weeks. The Home Secretary has a few other things to be concerned about right now.

But if it does get the green light, here’s how it’ll pan out:

1. The plan will cost far more then the original estimates. (Just to remind you, the cost of GCHQ’s proposal to move its computer systems from one building to another escalated from an original estimate of £20M to a final cost of around £300M.)

2. The promise not to record the content of the communications will be broken within a decade – if not by this government then by one of its successors.

3. Within the same period of time there will be a serious breach of security, resulting in a vast stash of data being left in a brown envelope in a London Gentlemen’s Club. Or something.

A bit like this.

That’s where the government does WHAT? - 2 March 2009

Deputy Prime Minister Harriet Harman has upped the stakes in the ongoing Fred Goodwin pension saga. Sir Fred is apparently entitled to a whopping £600,000+ p/a pension after retiring from RBS, where he spearheaded the Bank’s disastrous takeover of ABN Amro, leaving the British taxpayer (who now owns around 70% of RBS – congratulations) to clear up the mess.

Commentators left and right have been queueing up to gripe at Freddie’s ‘greed’, and Harriet has jumped onto the bandwagon with both feet and an almighty great thump.

Here’s what our Dep MP says:

The Prime Minister has said it is not acceptable and therefore it will not be accepted. It might be enforceable in a court of law, this contract, but it’s not enforceable in the court of public opinion and that’s where the Government steps in.

Check out the logic here: Irrespective of whether Goodwin is legally entitled to keep his pension, this state of affairs ‘will not be accepted’ on the grounds that ‘the Prime Minister has said it is not acceptable’. This, we are told, is ‘where the government steps in’ – not to enforce the law, but to break it (or at least bend it) at the whim of the PM.

Feeling uncomfortable yet?

On an unrelated note, Gordon Brown is out of the country this week, addressing the US Congress. Guess who steps in as acting PM in his absence?

Anyway, back to (deputy PM) Harriet Harman – let’s have a little biblical light on the subject:

You shall not be partial in judgment. You shall hear the small and the great alike. (Deuteronomy 1:17)

You shall not fall in with the many to do evil, nor shall you bear witness in a lawsuit, siding with the many, so as to pervert justice, nor shall you be partial to a poor man in his lawsuit. (Exodus 23:2)

You shall not fall in with the many to do evil, nor shall you bear witness in a lawsuit, siding with the many, so as to pervert justice (Exodus 23:2)

You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbour. (Leviticus 19:15)

Huh.