Everything/Nothing Leads to God

A simple observation: It seems that a people are most likely to turn to God when they have either everything or nothing.

If someone is doing 'OK' in life, they are generally unsatisfied but have this idea that if they could just get more stuff (money, power, etc.) than they currently have then they would be happy. I suspect that many people in western societies spend their entire lives in this unsatisfied state.

If someone has nothing, they will often turn to God for help. If they own nothing, if nobody will help them, they turn to the being they have heard is both powerful and loving. Fortunately for us, God is not too proud to be the God of Last Resort. He welcomes His children no matter which route they use to come home because He loves them more than we can imagine.

The unexpected part of this might be the suggestion that when someone has everything, they can turn to God. But don't we always see news stories about rich celebrities battling depression, or even taking their own lives? Of course, by 'everything' I am here referring to everything that a human mind has decided it needs from this world to be happy. That could include fame, money and power. But it will probably also differ from person to person.

Part of my own testimony of becoming a practicing Christian is that, at the age of 16, I had everything a 16 year old boy wanted. I had as much material wealth as I thought I needed due to parents providing me with a generous allowance, I had a girlfriend who adored me, I had friends in and out of school, I had a lot of freedom with my time outside of school and success within school. This wasn't the money, fame and power that some people might call 'everything', but it was everything I thought I wanted, so I was surprised to find myself unsatisfied. That was my clue that there must be more to life than all these things, so I fell into the group of people that turn to God because they have 'everything' and found that it wasn't enough.

Spectating is Good for your Soul

Sport is ancient, online videos are modern, but both have millions of people watching them.

It's easy to find negative things to say about spectators (the word itself even used as a negative description at times) because there are so many things where you could say that more people should be helping out with the work required in the world.

However there is a positive side to spectating the achievements of others.

C. S. Lewis once wrote in my favourite book 'The Screwtape Letters' that God wants human to able to celebrate their own achievements as much (but no more than) as if the same thing had been achieved by somebody else. If an architect looks at an impressively constructed monument, he should celebrate it's beauty the same regardless or whether it was designed by himself or a different architect.

Lewis wrote this as an explanation for how God wants our hearts to move away from pride, but his imagary also highlights for me the benefit of spectating. When you watch sports, you are practising the simple yet important action of celebrating others achievements. The more practised we become at that, the easier it should be for us to balance our humility in the way God intends.

There's nothing wrong with joy in your own success, and spectating is healthy because it keeps you well practised at taking joy in the success of others.

Forgettable Influence

An annoying thing I've spotted is that the times you are most likely to deeply influence someone are also ones that you are likely to forget.

I'm talking about the times that you give a piece of advice, teach someone something that you know, demonstrate something. The person you do this for, or in front of, feels that this is a huge revelation and they remember that moment for years. But if they speak to you about it years later, talking about "the time that you taught me..." whatever, you have no recollection of that moment, because for you it was a fairly ordinary one.

I've had this happen to me, and I've done it to others too.

I think the reason this happens is because the forgetful (or ordinary) moments are the ones most likely to have that big impact in the first place. If you are consciously trying to impart some deep wisdom, people pick up on the fact that you are trying. They know that it's coming from your head, not your heart. But if you say something succinct or take an extreme action with actually thinking about it too hard, then a person listening to or watching you will realize that this is something you genuinely believe, that it shapes your behaviour. That enables the feeling of big impact they get. They realize that this isn't just some pretty words, it's something you can live your life by.

The Barrier of Class

On an average day, I'm quite a friendly person. I am happy to start up a conversation with people who are like me, but also people of different ethnicity and people from a different generation, younger and older.

But I've noticed in myself that I suffer from a slight amount of Classism. This inclination to look down on, or at least be less comfortable around people from lower class backgrounds than myself is not something I chose (in fact I positively try to remove it from my character when able), it is just something which I think I picked up from parents and other sources as I grew up.

The main issue I have with this particular 'ism' of mine is that it appears to be the main barrier in my life to both effective community within my church and also evangelizing to those outside the church. I also wonder whether I'm not the only one.

For my generation (and increasingly so for younger ones) I think that racism isn't much of an issue due to the world becoming increasingly smaller thanks to technology. It is currently normal to live alongside people with origins from across the globe. So classism may overtake racism as the main barrier to building authentic communities.

When comparing the two, I also wonder whether the solutions to these two 'isms' are the same or different. The solution to racism began as education but was also largely helped by real-life contact, the opportunity for sheltered citizens to see that when you go to work or the shops, this person from another country has pretty much the same habits as I do. But class isn't part of your DNA in the same way your race is... unless by race we mean which country you are from instead of the pigmentation of your skin, in which case neither race nor class are part of your DNA, we are just talking about the culture (or sub-culture) that you grew up in.

Saying that the solution to classism is education seems ridiculous. Real-life contact can help you along, but when God asked his church in the Bible to work together as a single-minded community He knew that the main thing it would take is a decision to love each other. Classism is just one more issue I've spotted occasionally tugging my choices in bad directions and it turns out that it doesn't require a different answer than most temptations.

Ian, Why does God allow suffering?

I was recently given this question in an "Ask the leaders anything" session at a youth event, and thought my answer worth sharing here. As always, this is just my thoughts and understanding in life so far.

Part 1: Pain is Painful

I want to begin by saying that it isn't possible for me to give you an answer that will suddenly make whatever suffering you are going through bearable. Words and understanding won't change the fact that pain is painful. So check yourself; you may be appearing to ask for an explanation, but maybe you are actually demanding a solution. If so, you will be disappointed by any explanation given, and you were asking the wrong question.

If you are reading this because you want to find an answer for someone who has asked you about God allowing suffering, pay attention to whether they are asking because of their head or their heart. Are they asking because they are searching for truth, and are interested discussing philosophy? Or, (more likely,) are they asking because some suffering in their past or present is making them emotionally angry at your belief in a perfect, loving God. One requires facts and references, the other needs emotional help, and the biggest mistake you can make is to get them the wrong way around.

Part 2: The Big Picture, or People and Nature

The cause of a lot of suffering in this world is free will. God wanted to create beings that could freely choose to love Him, so He gave humans free will. Unfortunately that same ability allows others to make choices that can cause you pain, either on purpose or by accident. That risk has to be a part of having free will, because if God intervened in all of our bad choices then it wouldn't be free will at all.

But some suffering, such as earthquakes and floods, is not caused by human free will. In these cases, the cause is that the current world is "fallen", broken compared to what God originally intended. This again was technically caused by (Adam's) human free will, but such a long time ago that it doesn't really compare.

So in the grand scheme of things, why would God allow suffering to exist in the world?  Because his highest priority is not our comfort. A great summary of the book of Job I heard recently was "We live in an amazing, beautiful, complicated world that is designed to show us how awesome God is, but it is not designed to prevent suffering."

Part 3: But what about Me and my Darkness?

Everything so far has been about the general, all-over-the-world scale of suffering that happens. I have given some answers to that. But if you want to ask me why your particular problem is happening, then I'm afraid I don't know. Even if you tell me all the details, and I think of all the possibilities, I still can't ever really know why an individual thing has happened. God knows, and my daily faith includes deciding to trust His plans. But it's not all just plans, God has something important He does in these situations...

I heard a story once of a man who wanted to show God's love to his community by helping them in basic, practical ways. A poor woman said to him "Give me money, I don't have any to pay my electricity bills," but being quite poor himself at the time, he said "I'm sorry, but I can't give you any money." He saw that this response angered her and she was about to respond, but he felt God's spirit prompt him to quickly add "...but I will come and sit in the dark with you after they've turned your lights off." It wasn't the answer she was expecting, but it also achieved something she hadn't hoped for.

God isn't detached from our pain. He experienced pain Himself when Jesus came down to earth in human flesh, and today He is with us through the Holy Spirit. In this period of time when the world is still broken and people are selfish, God won't wave a magic wand to make you comfortable, but He will be with you, He wants to be beside you, even in the darkness.

Not Saying Amen

I was trying to do some morning devotions the other week. Just setting my alarm a little bit earlier, so that I could get out of bed earlier in the morning and spend some time reading the Bible and praying to God as a positive start to my day.

I'm not a 'morning person' so it was a bit difficult, but I managed it for several days. But I realised that it wasn't helpful for me to end my prayers with the word "Amen" when I did this.

This was because I was struggling to stay focused on the task (due to still being quite sleepy) and saying "Amen" when I finished praying was starting to feel like I was finished with the 'talking to God time' in my day and moving on to everything else.

This was obviously not the right way to think of life. God is with me all the time, and I generally aim to pray as soon as I feel like I have something to pray about. Jesus made it clear that we don't need special places or times to talk to Him.

But while the word "Amen" is a useful indicator for finishing a prayer when you are praying with a group of people, it turned out to be unhelpful when I prayed in private. It was like me saying "Goodbye!" to somebody I wasn't actually leaving. So I stopped using it.

Is Happiness the Meaning of Life?

Agnostics are people who are generally undecided on what they believe in. Or at least, they are people who would not say they have committed themselves to one of the major world beliefs. In western culture this indecision seems to result in them inventing their own belief system, but in a vague kind of way.

One of the most common things I hear agnostics say or imply, if they are ever talking about belief, is that life is all about happiness. This may be dressed in phrases like "follow your heart" or "be true to yourself". The core thing that decisions come down to, says this belief, is that I should be happy.

Unfortunately, there are issues with this belief.

Swearing

I wouldn't claim to have the cleanest sense of humour, but I do have cleaner-than-average language. I try to avoid swearing whenever possible, and generally succeed. The reason for this when I was a child used to be simply "because I am a Christian" but this isn't actually a very clear reason so as an adult I eventually had a think about my choices with the language I use.

When I gave it some thought, I realised that the question of "Is it OK to swear?" isn't going to have a single answer because there are two different types of swearing, and I need to answer this question for each of them separately.