Truth and love.

The whole balance of the Christian life in the church and in homes and fellowships of whatever kind is summed in that wonderful phrase of St.Paul in Ephesians 4.

Speaking the truth in love.

Truth and love - the balance is important - these two things need to be constantly kept in balance .

When love is more important than truth, then fellowship descends into a sentimentalism, where there are an increasing number of things that cannot be said because they are hard and therefore seen as unloving; where resentments and disappointments a re never left behind because they are never truthfully addressed; where the "friendliness" becomes increasingly fragile and more a matter of surface politeness than real sharing or mutual understanding. You, oddly, find this in fellowships who emphasise their friendliness - "we're a friendly church",( the unspoken implication being "and people who ask akward questions or who dig beneath the surface aren't all that welcome") Sometimes there is a darker side to Christian cheerfulness than is usually recognised.

When truth is more important than love then doctrinal correctness is valued more than a fellowship maintained steadily in spite of misunderstandings and different outlooks. Fellowship degenerates into a huddling together of the like minded, warmed by the thought of the unhappy fate of the unbelievers outside the sacred citadel. I need hardly say that is very rarely the way with the U.R.C.

The right to be offensive.

I want to write about the right to be offensive! We had Sachsgate, when Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand were (rightly) punished for obscene andhurtful phone-calls live on air. Now there is Jeremy “One Eyed” Clarkson and Carol “Look for the Golly” Thatcher, whose admittedly crass remarks were greeted with shrill protests and in Thatcher's case led to her dismissal. Most recently there was Bristol nurse who was suspended after simply offering to pray for the recovery of an elderly patient. It seems to be a crime in our caring sharing society to offend anyone.

So it is. The 1999 Macpherson report, into the 1993 murder of Stephen Lawrence, introduced the concept of ‘unwitting racism’ - any incident could be legally defined as racist if it was seen as such by the victim ‘or any other person’. The context or intended meaning of what was said or done were irrelevant, all that mattered was that somebody somewhere felt racially offended or hurt, even if they were not involved. That concept found it's way into the statute books via laws against racially aggravated offences. (The Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 and the Terrorism Act 2006) The notion that it is criminal, or should be, to offend someone seems to have wider currency.

Over against all this, Jesus said “The truth will set you free.” (John 8:32)

And that means we have the right to be offended - to be presented with a truth so contrary to our usual way of thinking, to our taste, to the way we perceive ourselves, that we find it offensive. The truth that jolts us and challenges us and makes us think again and really sets us free can often seem deeply offensive and yet we need to hear it. So it can be deeply dangerous to settle simply for the sanitised speech of government and official pronouncements, and outlaw what may be offensive simply because it offends. The racist, the fascist, the homophobe, need to be heard and then argued with in public.

It is right, for example, that Richard Dawkins can write (wrongly) that raising a child Catholic is worse than subjecting the child to physical abuse - and right that he should be confronted by atheists and believers alike who see this for the disgracecful smear it is. It is right for Christians to proclaim the gospel where ever they can without abusing the defenceless. If people find that offensive, let them howl! It is becoming much harder to tell the truth without being hounded and your job put in danger, much harder even to offer a prayer without that being seen as a threat. But we must persevere. The truth will set people free – but only when the truth can be heard. Where the gospel offends, Christians have a God-given duty to be offensive. Keep it up!!

21st century witch hunt.

This week, the UK National Secular Society (NSS) backed the North Somerset Primary Care Trust’s decision to suspend a 45-year-old community nurse and mother-of-two, Caroline Petrie, for offering to pray for patients.

Today Christians can find themselves subjected to disciplinary hearings and even risk getting sacked and excluded for being open about their faith or promoting Christian values. For example, Christian colleges in Oxford were recently threatened with the loss of their university status because the education that they offer is not sufficiently ‘inclusive’. Several students' unions have tried to ban Christian Unions on similar grounds.

Petrie, who became a Christian 10 years ago after the death of her mother, is suspended for the crime of failing to comply with a Nursing and Midwifery Council code, which states that ‘you must demonstrate a personal and professional commitment to equality and diversity’. How simply offering to pray with someone, without in any way pursuing the matter when the offer is rejected, constitutes a breach of this code is a mystery.

Petrie has not taken blood tests with used needles, given the wrong drugs, taken heroin on her rounds, breached patient patient confidentiality or tried to get into bed with her patients. She simply offers patients prayers for an easy recovery. If they turn down the offer the matter ends there. Yet she has been suspended, is being subjected to a disciplinary hearing and could be sacked. A witch-hunt indeed, in the name of secularist dogma.

Capitalism and hell?

We sheep are communists by nature - we are both the means of production and the product, and you can't get much less alienated than that can you? And we love a good fire. So we liked this quotation from one Jerry Taylor of the Cato Institute.

"Capitalism without the threat of bankruptcy is like Christianity without the threat of hell. It doesn't work very well."

Why we need a philosophy - G K Chesterton

By G.K. Chesterton

From The Common Man

The best reason for a revival of philosophy is that unless a man has a philosophy certain horrible things will happen to him. He will be practical; he will be progressive; he will cultivate efficiency; he will trust in evolution; he will do the work that lies nearest; he will devote himself to deeds, not words. Thus struck down by blow after blow of blind stupidity and random fate, he will stagger on to a miserable death with no comfort but a series of catchwords; such as those which I have catalogued above. Those things are simply substitutes for thoughts. In some cases they are the tags and tail-ends of somebody else's thinking. That means that a man who refuses to have his own philosophy will not even have the advantages of a brute beast, and be left to his own instincts. He will only have the used-up scraps of somebody else's philosophy; which the beasts do not have to inherit; hence their happiness. Men have always one of two things: either a complete and conscious philosophy or the unconscious acceptance of the broken bits of some incomplete and shattered and often discredited philosophy. Such broken bits are the phrases I have quoted: efficiency and evolution and the rest.

Anger.

As our dear minister saw fit to preach on Ephesians 4:26-27 yesterday - "Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath: Neither give place to the devil.", I thought this snippet from "The Ladder of Divine Ascent" might be appropriate here.

As the gradual pouring of water on a fire puts out the flame completely, so the tears of genuine mourning can extinguish every flame of anger and irascibility. Hence this comes next in our sequence.

Freedom from anger is an endless wish for dishonor, whereas among the vainglorious there is a limitless thirst for praise. Freedom from anger is a triumph over one’s nature. It is the ability to be impervious to insults, and comes by hard work and the sweat of one’s brow.

Meekness is a permanent condition of that soul which remains unaffected by whether or not it is spoken well of, whether or not it is honored or praised.

The first step toward freedom from anger is to keep the lips silent when the heart is stirred; next, to keep thoughts silent when the soul is upset; the lst, to be totally calm when unclean winds are blowing.

Anger is an indication of concealed hatred, of grievance nursed. Anger is the wish to harm someone who has provoked you.

Irascibility is an untimely flaring up of the heart. Bitterness is a stirring of the soul’s capacity for displeasure. Anger is an easily changed movement of one’s disposition, a disfigurement of the soul.

Just as darkness retreats before light, so all anger and bitterness disappears before the fragrance of humility.

Some unfortunate people, who have a tendency to anger, neglect the treatment and cure of this passion and so give no thought to the saying, “The moment of his anger is his downfall” (Ecclesiasticus 1:22).