Michael Ramsden - "Has Christianity Failed?" April 22 2019

and a very warm welcome to all of you to this very exciting evening my name is Nick Diller for those who don't know me ex lawyer by day an anglican bishop by night father of six and a husband of one formerly like many people here i guess a skeptic when it came to issues of faith certainly someone who had severe doubts I would have described myself when I'd got out of the umbrella of my parent's control as a kind of a hedonist but tempered by guilt anyway if anyone had said to me in those days that I would invite it or go to an event like such as this I would never have believed it and I probably wouldn't have come so I'm very pleased to see that you're here and that you've been brave enough to come out this evening and and if any of you are in the position that I once was because I'm no longer in that position I have a particular affinity with you and you are particularly welcome tonight's the night for asking important questions and there'll be opportunities for that to happen a little later on this evening and we'll explain that in just a moment but just to say you're not going to be invited to do any of those embarrassing kind of christiany things like sing or pray or give money so you're safe and no one has to do anything that they don't want to do except to listen and to take in some of the stuff you'll hear and to have an opportunity for you to express your own questions and to to say what you think which will happen a little later on I guess my main task is to kind of explain the process for this evening and to introduce to you the various speakers and that's a great joy and a delight the our main speaker tonight is on his second visit to Bermuda I won't ask for a show of hands for those of you who saw him the first time I'd like I was tempted to introduce him to you as Matthew Ramsbottom the reason is that he got my name wrong last time when we were in this position on a number of occasions and it's now gone on to youtube so anyway so people around the world know me as dick bill or I remember what it was that you said Michael but anyway but I will be I'm a forgiving type and he's literally walked off the plane from the British Airways flight having been stuck in traffic yesterday and missed the flight so he says we're not wanting to go into the prisons this morning which is where his two compat rates were today because he's come within for some reinforcements so we've got a pincer movement Michael from Oxford and then we've got Vince and we've got Alisha who come from Atlanta and they're coming here to be a part of this conversation that we're going to be having tonight and it's really very exciting between them they have well that you are correctional facility today working hard the two of you aren't you how was the British Airways food today anyway you can tell us that yourself but but but between them they they they have been educated a variety of different places from Princeton University and Oxford University and some were called Roberts Wesleyan College which is in somewhere called North Chile New York I mean who knew that there was such a place anyway and they have spoken at a variety of different places around the world just about every conceivable University you can imagine in the States in Europe in Africa all sorts of different places heard of the White House the United Nations and NATO all kinds of different places two terrorists groups not that there's any connection and and now back in Bermuda which is really really exciting and it's great to have them here we're delighted because they're gonna be looking at some pretty serious issues and I guess stumbling blocks you could say to the Christian faith there was a time of course when Christianity seemed to be a good cohesive glue and a good thing in a society but those days are gone and it seems that you know for many it's um it's past its sell-by date and it's a malevolent force not rather than a good force and so maybe it's time to just put the whole thing to bed and then of course there are other issues that face people the issues of suffering or the reliability of the faith as a whole and I guess to be touching on some of these issues and the way it's going to work is this is michael is going to come and speak to us for a little while I have no idea how long we'll see and and then there'll be little hiatus or a pause and during that time that's when you have an opportunity to write a question if you have one if you've come with the question or something has stimulated you during the course of what you've heard please write the question on either your your your ticket as you came in or there are very very friendly and happy people who go bits of paper and pens and the thing is if you you write your question you have two ways of delivering it one in person there will be an open mic I think down here and you're welcome to come up through if you're brave enough to ask a question directly or just to hand the question along to the end of the row into the center aisle and someone will pick it up and then the three stooges are sorry the three guest speakers will we'll be sitting here and they will endeavour to answer your questions for you one thing I do want to add though is if if you really want to have your question out to make sure you put your name on there and some contact details just in case they're not able to cover everything tonight because we don't want to be here till the early hours of the morning but to make sure that someone does contact you to deal with any issue that you feel has been unresolved so please do feel free to do that as I say there are pens and paper available if you like well I think I probably said enough and you've seen enough of me that's not why you're here is it really no no no so can I introduce Michael Ranson to you and ask you to give them a very warm bermuda welcome please [Applause] well it is a delight and a privilege to be back here in Bermuda unable to speak to you again especially having rechristened the bishop with a variety of names I'm gonna plead that I was tired and ignorant anyway he has to forgive me he's a Christian so that's part of his job but otherwise it is absolutely wonderful to be back I was meant to be here as you may have gathered last night just be able to catch my breath before speaking this morning and and then speaking to you tonight but the traffic conspired against me and so having just walked off the plane I'm hoping that what I say will that make at least some coherent sense to you and if it doesn't there will be a time of Q&A in which I'll be able to spread the confusion further and deeper reminds me of one piece of feedback at the end of one event a bit like this where someone came up and said to the speaker you know I'm still confused but at a much higher level than I was before and hopefully that's not what we'll be doing right now I I have to say the food in British Airways I actually decided to spare myself that particular ordeal on this particular flight they do treat me generally well although I remember it's quite a long time ago now but when British Airways introduced the Concorde service from London to New York the the attraction of it was obviously you landed three hours before you took off so because you've made up the time as you were crossing the Atlantic so British Airways had this advertising campaign that said lunch in London breakfast in New York you know the idea I mean you know you could have an early lunch meeting fly to New York and have a breakfast meeting and someone enterprising young person I guess with a standard pre-paint found one of these giant billboards in London and added their own line at the bottom so now the slogan read lunch in London breakfast in New York luggage in India and it's uh you know these things don't always go according to plan now I've been asked to share a few thoughts with you about this this subject of house the Christian faith failed which is a very tricky question to deal with and like most difficult and challenging questions the temptation can always be to hedge everything you say in so many different way is that you're trying to give so many different opinions it sounds like that you're informed about everything but you're giving no definite answer and we sometimes think that that's a sort of very sort of you know generous open-minded way of dealing with those kinds of things of course there are some questions which need to be answered it's like the story of the boy who was asked by his geography teacher of school what is the capital of France and replied what I like to keep an open mind on the issue there are some questions which actually deserve and should actually have some kind of answer given to them and so even though this one is particularly challenging that's what we'll be trying to do tonight and I'm going to couch my remarks to you in three very broad categories we're going to look at the question of whether the Christian faith is philosophically failed then we'll look at it whether it's sort of personally sort of existentially failed in terms of our own personal experience and then that's going to lead into the second into the third category of moral failure and there are a variety of ways of dealing with the criticism or the question put to the Christian faith that has it morally failed but one of the biggest of those is actually to do with the question of suffering namely if God is a good God then why is this world so messed up in the way we see it to be and one of my colleagues who was with me dr. Vince vitally has both done his doctorate at that area dr. V University and published a book on it and so what we'll do is after I finish talking while you have this pause to to write down your own question both him and Alicia are going to come and join me up on stage and I'm going to put the first question to Vince about suffering and to give him a fair stab to give him at least ten minutes or so to be able to a deal at least with some of those issues that's raised by that question and then we'll move into the time of Q&A with you so hopefully between us we'll be able to cover as many bases as we possibly can now this whole question of has the Christian faith failed you let me just try to start off with with a couple of what one main point of definition because when you ask that question has Christianity failed the question is well how do we define that what does that mean and if we're talking in terms of Christians in the church then the answer is definitely there are times both in history and in present where the church and Christians have failed where we've done things that we shouldn't have done and where we have got things wrong and in that sense it's very important for Christians themselves to remember that in the book of Revelation it's the church that's commanded to repent by God where he challenges the church and he speaks to them about their attitude and their belief from what they've reduced the Christian gospel and Jesus Christ into rather than following him wholeheartedly mercifully when even though there have been times when the church sometimes for prolonged periods of time has been out of step with what God would want and what he's taught it is also being revived I'm the great skeptic who was also converted a guy called GK Chesterton very famously said there being five times in history when the church has gone to the dogs but in each case it's been the dog that's died and hopefully there is that sense that even when the church does get it wrong there are those within it who are still wanting to ask that question are we right what would God Himself say to us directly but if we're asking the question about the person of Jesus Christ and what he taught and said and has he failed then the answer to that question I believe is no and this is one of these very interesting things that the Bible speaks to that even though we may be faithful estat times God is actually faithful and so I want to urge you right at the very very beginning and I'm going to do this again in my in the second part of my presentation please don't be discouraged if you've encountered people who claim to be Christian but you're sure that they're fake that's a problem that has been around for a long time and we will come to that in a moment what I find very interesting is I remember once talking with a bank teller who was explaining to me how their bank trained they're tellers too to spot the difference between the genuine note and a fake note and the interesting thing is is the way they train them is they don't allow the bank tellers when they're in training to handle any fake money they only allow them to handle the original the reason is is that there's no limit to the number of fakes you can have but there's only one genuine article and so the goal is that they become so familiar with that genuine article with its smell let's feel how it is in the hand it's look that when they see a fake whatever their fake is they can recognize there's something wrong here in other words you can you can't give enough instruction on error but you can sufficiently teach truth to recognize error when it then comes along and so so with that sort of preamble let me just jump straight in into these three main main headings that we have first of all list is still the question about has the Christian faith philosophically failed now over when we ask that question what we generally mean I think what's in most people's imaginations at that point go something like this look Christianity is a faith which is different from the truth faith is believing something in the absence of evidence so the trouble with Christian faith is it's not capable of being true or false you just believe it you're not interested in evidence or facts or truth or anything like that it's a question of what you want to believe now the challenge of that particular definition of faith faith is believing what you want to believe is that would mean therefore that strong faith would mean believing is something which you suspect isn't true but we were able to believe it anyway because that would be really strong faith right and the strongest possible kind of faith you could have is when you know something isn't true and you're able to believe it because that requires like an enormous amount of faith now it's true that the Bible described defines faith as a gift but it's not the gift of stupidity it's not the gift of being able to believe something that isn't there or isn't real the there's only one Greek word used in the New Testament which we translate faith and actually in the language there are two in the Greek language there are two words for faith you can have the word pista' s-- or the word naam it's ER nomid so comes from the greek word namaste Norrell custom and when you talk about faith that comes from Norma's what you what you mean is well there is no real reason apart from the fact that my father did it and if you ask an ancient Greek well why did your father go to the temple well my grandfather went well why did your grandfather go well my great-grandfather went I mean eventually we're gonna say look that's just what we do so when you're asking why that's all you can get this is our custom and there's no reason behind it but the only time you'll ever read the word faith in the New Testament is always translated from the verb pista switch is a noun derived from the verb Peto to be persuaded it means to be sure about something particularly in a moral sense of the word so if I were to say to you look I have faith in Bishop what name should we give him today should we use Nick or you know maybe we should call him Michael actually Bishop Michael sounds nice a little on the bishop Michael if I were to say look I have faith in the bishop I'm saying two things about him number one he actually exists he is real even if you didn't want him to exist tough okay he's not going away because you decide not to believe in him anymore and secondly that I could I could trust his promise I can trust his his word if if he says yeah sure look we'll help organize something if you come back that I can rely on him so faith is always in response to that reality and that truth you you can't have faith outside of that you that's the only way in which we really use the word faith in any way that makes real sense so if I talk about having faith in the British government which given our current political situation really would be quite a leap at the moment it would seem i I'm saying again there's two things one there that is actual real thing it's not a made-up thing it's real and two I think I can trust what they're saying so when we talk about a faithless friend or an unfaithful lover what we're saying is someone whom I trusted I trusted their word I trusted their promise I trusted what they said has broken faith with me does that make sense I I was relying on them I was leaning on them I was trusting them and they betrayed me and then we feel that sense of they Phyllis Nisour are being unfaithful so when the Bible talked about having faith in God is not asking you to do a leap in the dark as a matter of fact that phrase a leap in the dark has found nowhere in scripture the Bible always talks about the idea of putting your faith in God is like stepping into the light and when you step into the light it's so you can see you can actually see what is there in other words the Bible talks about faith is putting your trust your complete weight your truth into a God who is both true and real you can depend on him he is real and you can rely on his promises he is not the kind of person who promises you bread and gives you a stone or will offer you a fish only to deliver a scorpion he can be trusted both in his word and in his reality and so then the fundamental question is do you know him in other words faith isn't a wishful thinking I I hope this might be true in the same way we may talk about my football team's gonna win this year and what we're now of course we could be let down in all kinds of ways especially a few support dogs would unite it who make a speciality of disappointing other people but it breeds resilience the the that's just wishful thinking that's hoping something might eventually happen but faith is different from that it carries with it therefore a certain type of certainty and in that sense we all have faith in someone and also in in other things as well things that we're sure are true and maybe therefore the other way of illustrating is to say therefore that faith is justified by her object what do I mean by that well if I want to sit on this chair that's next to me I two things have to be real true doesn't make sense so more sensible that the first one is that there's an actual chair a real chair I can't just try to sit on my faith does that make sense it would be funny but painful and the second thing is that it's got enough integrity truth to support my weight of about 70 kilos also and if the chair is both real and able to support the weight that's put into it then I'm justified in what I've done faith is always justified object so that is why the Christian faith is capable of being challenged and being proved to be untrue that may sense it's not a question of what do you want to believe the question is what is actually real and even if God is real can you trust what he says is he trustworthy can you put your faith in him or not so the this attack if you like your this criticism the Christian faith is incapable of being true or false this is wrong once you understand what real faith looks like as a matter of fact the the English dictionary if you pick up a really old version of it will be very very clear about this because even in the English language the word faith was actually a verb up until the Middle English period in even torture Chaucer and Shakespeare who lived during the Middle English period used the verb faith to have faith was a distinction from simple belief belief was speculation maybe this is true but I'm not sure but to have faith was to say I know this is real and I know this is true and therefore I can put my complete weight on it I can rely on it completely totally and without exception which is why the Christian faith always therefore has invited historical criticism which is why it's always invited and should always invite those with difficult questions and with those who have struggles because that's how your faith then grows the way your reliance and something grows is the more you question it's the more you stand it more stands up the stronger it is sometimes the more certain you are of it the more you question it and the less it the less it goes down and mesons proves to be weak the less you can rely on it and so faith therefore grows and strengthens in relationship to truth and knowledge you need those two things which is why there's a verse in the Bible very famously in Hebrews 11:6 where it says without faith it's impossible to please God and if you need faith therefore to please God the next question you better ask yourself is well what is it and very usefully the Bible defines it and faith is very next sentence and faith is knowing that he is that's a statement about reality God is actually there and some of you in the room will know this off by heart and there's a reward or of those who diligently seek Him in other words you can trust his promise you can trust him you can trust everything he's given you can put your faith in him so it's very important therefore that this if you like philosophical level we understand that asking questions is fine and it's okay and if you're wrestling with questions then our view is this events been put on tonight specifically if we need for you to be able to ask them and we would invite you ask your questions that you may have we would love to hear you and we'd love to hear try and give a response to them and anything I can't answer my colleagues most certainly can but let's just move them from this philosophical idea is the Christian faith actually capable of being true and I'm saying yes it is - this may be more pertinent issue about personal just our personal struggle because there's also this other sense this existential encounter with God if you like our experience of him where we can feel let down and that's something which is very real I remember once joking that this group consisted largely people who went to church and realized they didn't like their vicar or because who went to church and realized I didn't like the congregation that was in front of them it's a it's a broader group than that but it is this sense of God look I'm doing my best and I'm basically a good person but it doesn't seem to be working for me I'm not my encounter of life my walk in it isn't I feel being you know sort of rewarded in some way so help me understand therefore this this sense of disappointment I have well let's just deal first of all with people who have that sense of disappointment with the church that we've alluded to in the in the introduction one of the earliest Christian writings in the New Testament is the book of Galatians we're not sure which is the earliest part of the New Testament but the book of book of Galatians is right up there with a chance of being one of the very first things ever written by a Christian and it was written by a guy called Paul who was one of the first converse to the Christian faith and he'd moved from a point of extreme kept skepticism he enjoyed killing Christians and torturing them a thing which some of you in this room may feel you connect with right now and to suddenly becoming this ardent believer and planter of churches and following his conversion he wrote to this group of Christians in Galatia and and in the book of Galatians he has two primary concerns actually there are lots of concerns he has in that letter but there are two really big ones the very first one is you need to understand what this gospel actually is so we're going to come back to that in a minute he said cuz there's one gospel one good news actually as bad news but then he's also very interested in what is a real Christian what does a real Christian look like and the Apostle Paul basically says look you shouldn't just believe someone because they says I'm a Christian he says that's not enough you need to look at their heart in their life and there's a very famous saying in where he gets into chapter 5 of this letter it's 6 chapters long and in chapter 5 verse 28 he says look if you're a Christian there should be a fruit in your life the word is in the singular he says you should be able to taste this fruit and it should taste of love joy peace patience kindness in other words well the Apostle Paul is saying to his critics is he saying bite me but in a very very nice way and he's saying you're you're questioning what's going on well you should be able to taste the fruit of my life he says you should be able to taste my life and you should be able to taste the difference because once you come to know Christ the human heart this is what it should look like love peace patience kindness gentleness self-control and so on this very famous list he says how every thought you taste is anger rage malice lust evil if that's what you're tasting then even though someone's claiming to be Christian you have every right to question in reality of it in the same way if someone offered you an apple and it looked a bit like a pear and then you tasted it and it tasted like a pear chances are it's not an apple and Paul's saying exactly the same thing don't don't necessarily say yes to anyone who claims yes I'm a Christian look at their life taste the reality of it look look for it and if you have been in any way upset or driven away because of your personal experience with people who claim to be Christian than I am very sorry about that but as I said please don't reject the possibility of the real because you've simply engaged a fake in the past i am i can't remember i if i shared this story or not i'm trying to remember the chain of events and i think when I was with hate you here last year I haven't been to Africa yet I think I was about to head off to Africa was I here in April last year I can't even know what time of year I was here goes to show how good my memory is and I was going to a place in northern Nigeria called jaws which is a city which is fairly well-known you may be it made the headlines a few years ago for all the wrong reasons when 274 girls were kidnapped do you remember this story and then sold into slavery and there were people all around the world holding up her these signs of the hashtag you know you had to get these girls back and not all of them have been returned yet by the way they're still trying to find many of them and as I was getting ready to go and speak there I was having a taxi ride in Oxford and I got talking to my taxi driver and you know introduced myself and he introduced himself and when he gave me his name I said that's an amazing name it does it have a meaning and he explained the meaning of his name and I said I said are you Nigerian he said yes I am and I said I do have a Christian background he said well I used to be but not anymore he said I want nothing to do with the church he says why do you ask I said well I have bad news for you have an evangelist riding in the back of your cab he said and I said what's more I'm going to Nigeria in a couple of weeks and he says he's and then he began to pour out this tale of woe and I won't go into all about how he was cheated and swindled and betrayed and misled you know by some leaders in his church and when he'd finished speaking I I said to him can I ask you another different question he said sure I said has anyone ever given you any fake money and I was surprised about how quickly he would he replied he said yes like that immediately and I said does that mean when we get to the end of this journey and I offer you a 20 pound note to settle the bill that you won't accept it because in the past someone's given you something fake and he said he went very quiet and then I said you were a smart man I think you're understand what I'm saying he said I do I said please don't reject the possibility of the real because in the past and was trying to pop give you some kind of fake I said look look for the reality of what is actually claiming to be look look for that but this is there's another side to this personal if you like sense of disillusionment which is also addressed with not just like me of people claiming to be a Christian but it it comes from our side this whole idea before God I'm trying to uphold my end of the bargain but I just don't feel you're there for me and and that the argument goes has to say something like this look I'm basically a good person I'm doing my best and I try my best but God where are you where are you in the midst of all of this and there's a very difficult answer reply to that particular question it's not very easy to give in in the book of Galatians the Apostle Paul's also not simply talks about real Christians and fake Christians he also talks about the real gospel in the fake gospel and as I said he says there is a gospel of good news about God that's actually no good news at all these as a matter of fact cursed is anyone who believes it and cursed as anyone who preaches it it's a very strong like double negative he's saying it's bad for the one who speaks it and it's bad for the person who receives it and that this message which sounds like it could be good news but is actually really bad news is this message that says well if I do my best for God then God's how obliged to do his best for me and he says that's not what this is about at all this is if that's what you think then you you're not even close to understanding what the Christian gospel is is all about ultimately he says for at least two reasons and I say and neither of these answers are easy to give first of all where there are we're not good people I know we like to think of ourselves that way and I know I shared this the last time I was here so please forgive me if I'm repeating it but if you're sat here this evening and you honestly believe you're perfect you've never done anything wrong the only way out of that particular state of self-deception is to get married and that will disabuse you of that illusion straightaway the this then raises this rather more basic question well if it's not then about me trying to be good than may sense if we're all in this room if we've all messed up and we've all done things wrong what distinguishes one person from another um Paul is trying to say well look look hit here's the difference he's saying this whole motivation in the Christian life to do good things and this change of heart doesn't come about because you're trying to do good to impress God it says that's not how it works he's saying rather God is interested in forgiving you he's offering you forgiveness and if you received that forgiveness that he's offering you as a gift it will completely change who you are it literally he's saying we're all in this mess and God comes to us and office hey his forgiveness and if you say yes to that forgiveness you are forgiven and the whole thing is if you are forgiven you don't need to do anything anymore to endear yourself to the other person doesn't make sense you may want to out of love but not because you have to do simply because you want to we're very bad at saying sorry in this world and we're very very bad at seeking and receiving forgiveness and I think it's why it's sometimes very hard for us to understand this is what right at the heart of the Christian faith and the Christian gospel this message from Jesus Christ isn't God wants you to try harder to impress him that's not the message the message is that while you were still God's enemies and you're a long way from him God wanted to reconcile you to him and that's why I've come to draw you to him and I'm doing that by offering forgiveness and if you say yes that forgiveness then you are forgiven and it changes everything it's very interesting I just my parents live in Cyprus and one of those sort of global families where I've got one brother now living in America another one living in the Middle East my parents living in Cyprus and giving family reunions together is very very difficult but it's interesting just yesterday I was talking about this particular story with my mother but I heard when I was about 14 years old my mother wanted to introduce me to one of her friends and I'm sure I'm you probably all had this experience when you were a teenager and your parents wanted you to meet one of their friends and you meet them and after about half an hour you're thinking how do I get out of this and so I venture I made my excuses and I left and and my mother afterward said were you excited to meet them and I'm thinking it's that one of those trick questions where if I tell the truth I get into trouble and so I can't remember how I replied but or something why did he want me to meet them and my mother looked at me - have I never told you the story and then I I heard the story about why this woman wanted to meet me and now we were back in visiting the country we were living in the Middle East now we've moved the reason she wanted to see me is that when I was about 2 years old my mother took me to a park in the town that we were living in at the time and she was chatting to a friend and I'd crawled over to the edge of a river and I wanted obviously I don't know I guess to touch the water and I just fell in and my mother didn't even notice but this friend of hers was walking along the bank and she saw me falling and she yelled and my mother looked up to see her best friend running as fast as she could along the riverbank and then jumping into the river and my mother thought she's nuts this woman what's wrong with her and then this woman stood up in the river holding me and now all of a sudden my mother's now running towards the woman you know to take me out of her arms and then helps her out of the river over the river bank back up onto dry land and this woman wanted to come and meet now this year a 14 year old boy who you know was still alive and as soon as my mother explained to me that I remember saying to her is there any way you could invite her back because this time I would really I just want to say thank you that is the most natural reaction in the world isn't it if someone comes and saves your life and rescues you you you want to say thank you and the motivation in the Christian life to want to spend time with God or to live differently it's got nothing to do with trying to impress him it's because if he has genuinely come into this world to rescue and to forgive and to save us you you want to spend time with him and you you want to say thank you that's what worship is primarily about is expressing all of that Thanks thank you you love me so much you came to do this for me to rescue me and it becomes the major driving force the in the Christian faith to want to live differently and so it's inevitably the case if you've been trying to live a life to impress God by doing all the right things you may be feeling pretty empty about it right now because it's gonna feel very much like a one-way equation that's not what it's about at all God isn't asking you to do something in order to be accepted by him he's offering you a gift and he's saying would you say yes I mean just imagine how your own parents would feel if your birthday they're offering you were present and you felt before you could receive it you had to do various things to impress them to get it I mean first of all don't be confusing to them and secondly even when you get the present it's no longer a gift anymore doesn't make sense it's now something which you burned but that's why Jesus also talks about salvation as a gift it's something that he's to actually pass on to us and it should then change everything else about about us and how we live well this third area then about then these moral questions we have about God well those are also very profound and very important in a couple of minutes I'm going to invite my colleague Vince and Alicia to come up and I'm gonna put the first question to him but let me just introduce this particular section this way these moral questions that we have about God's character are really important because what we're basically asking in all of these questions is God are you really fair are you actually good or not but some people think Nietzsche was an out-and-out atheist but that's not strictly true the the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche Friedrich Nietzsche was slightly more nuanced than that he said even if there is a god he's so bad we should fight against him that makes sense and there was way of basically morally good and if there is a God well he is morally bad and as good people we should fight against him even though he can squish us and so that was part of like his argument against the whole thing and in a sense it's a very very profound question it because it links back then into that very first issue about faith trust who can you ultimately trust if God is somehow morally equivocal he's not actually basically good you know sometimes he's good and sometimes he's bad and you don't know which side of the bed he's you know he's woke up on that day when you come before him well I don't any don't know if any of you ever had the pain of witnessing an abusive relationship or even being in one the trouble is if you're ever caught in a relationship like that every time you come into their present you don't know if it presents you don't know if they're gonna hug you or hit you so you become very guarded you become very very careful when you're in their presence because you don't want to provoke anything that's going to get you into trouble and if God isn't basically good if he can't be trusted then we have an enormous problem when it comes to putting your faith in Him because how can you put your faith in someone your trust in someone they're not actually good I mean it'd have to be nuts to do that and so the question about is God actually morally good or trustworthy becomes very very very important and when we raise these big moral questions therefore about God is going right to the very heart of the Christian faith God can we trust you now there is one area also which I'm going to just briefly touch on before we move into the suffering side of this which is aside from suffering the other really big problem we have with God moral character is to do with his nature of his judgment so one thing for you Christians to talk about a God who loves and all that kind of stuff but how can we worship a God who judges us how's that actually even possible and let me let me suggest at least two things just to bear in mind while we process that if you've ever experienced some kind of gross injustice in your life you will know how much you crave for it to be put right when we've seen grave injustice in your life or to a group of people are close to you the idea that someone will come along and pass judgment on it makes you sing I sense finally someone in authority will come and speak and do something about the situation and actually address the wrong that I see there's a basic cry of every human heart and we long about it and when it happens we tell stories about it and some of our heroes around the world are people who in their nation actually did bring that about so wouldn't it be strange if somehow God had no interest in justice whatsoever that he never spoke out about that which was wrong that would that would make him a very strange type of how can he simply approve of everything we we live in a very confusing time and I'll be speaking a little bit about this as a different meeting I'll be speaking at tomorrow morning when we talk about about division in our current society but right now in our world most of our cries for justice are motivated by anger and if you've noticed that you you may have you may have seen that most of the cries for justice that I see around the world in every country go to a motivated by anger right now the problem with that is that when we're pursuing justice out of anger even when we get justice we're left with anger and that's a very literally bitter pill to swallow it causes all kinds of problems and at a human level we very often confuse justice with revenge so we think justice is getting what we want or getting our own back I don't know do any of you ever watch James Bond movies they don't be ashamed if you watch this is put up your hand how many of you watch this Oh shame on you I can't condone watching that kind of rubbish I have to watch all those movies because of the cultural research I do about trends but I I remember going to see the movie Goldeneye when it first came out I've been invited into the cinema and it's very excited it was completely packed and I don't know if you've seen that particular movie but the way it ends is dense than the way all James Bond movie ends James Bond is fighting the arch villain and he's almost gonna die but he doesn't die cuz James Bond never dies no one's died almost as many times as James Bond and of course the final set is always spectacular there's this huge lake on an island I don't remember where exactly and the lake drains away and there's this massive bowl concrete basin maybe 200 meters wide maybe 100 meters deep and it's a giant radar controlling a satellite in outer space and James Bond and the bad guy are fighting on the metal needle suspended by long wires over the middle of this radar array and so as they're fighting on this metal spiky needle all of a sudden the positions are reversed and now James Bond is safe and the bad guy is literally hanging on by his fingertips and James Bond sinking am I meant to rescue now she's trying to kill you but you know as a gentleman do I now save you or what and at that point a guy loses his grip and he begins to fall all the way down to the bottom of this radar dish so hundred-meter fall you see him screaming all the way down good as he goes like that and then they have a camera from the ground so you can see the body rushing towards the ground does that make sense as it's going down and out and you have a camera from the needle and you can see the body getting smaller and smaller and smaller so getting closer to the ground you have the wide-angle camera or the close-up camera you know whatever you can you have a camera like it's in his eyes he can see the ground rushing up towards him yeah you get it you get multiple views because that's what you want to happen at the James Bond movie you don't want the cab got bad guy caught and put on trial and then locked up for 12 years you want the bad guy killed and he has to know he has to be killed he can't be accidentally killed hit by a bus he didn't see coming he has to know he's gonna die and then it has to take a lot of time and then he has to die really painfully so you see every single conceivable camera angle and the bodies falling all the way down and then the guy lands on this concrete surface and of course you think he's dead and and even without medical training I know if you fall a hundred meters and land on your head you're dead but is he dead oh no he opens his eyes just in time to see a massive explosion right above his head release the large metal needle which is conveniently situated directly above his mouth 100 meters in the sky now you see the needle coming down towards the man line on the ground you hear the guy screaming all the way as the needle comes down you have a camera on on this big metal needle looking down so you can see his head getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger you have the camera coming out of the guy's eyes looking up as he scream as you can see the needle coming down and down and down and then the camera goes through his mouth and skewers him into the ground now he's dead and I remember when that happened the whole auditorium rose to his feet he started clapping like this because the bad guy got it and when we think about God's judgement that's what we often imagine somehow some kind of glorified revenge but interestingly also in the Bible God says I take pleasure in the death of no one so there's something else which is very interesting about God's justice it's not driven by motivation for revenge as I say when anger drives your quest for justice in this world even when you get justice you're left with anger and bitterness but if your quest for justice in this world is driven by love when you get justice what you're left with is love and as the Bible talks about God's judgment it also promises something else - yes you and I have all messed up and there aren't any good people in this room but the gods also willing to come into this world and has come into this world to actually take the full force of that judgment to himself in other words he he's willing to pay the price what we've done wrong so we can know forgiveness so when Christ talks about the coming judgment and the judgment he comes to bring it's not because he wants to condemn the world he says the world was already in that mess I've come to save it and the reason I've come to save it is because I love you for God so loved the world he sent His only Son love isn't the result of the cross it's the reason for the cross the the reason God came into is what in order to bring about forgiveness reconciliation peace isn't because he was against it in that sense he was for us but he was against all the terrible injustice has been done and he knew that someone had to pay to put it right and he was willing to do it and so the more you look into these moral questions about the nature of God's character and what's actually happening in that story the more incredible becomes and the more deeply in love we fall in love with him I'm at least has been my experience but what I'd like to do at this point if I may is I'm going to invite both Alicia and Vince to come join me up here on this platform please do welcome as they come up and you're okay that's enough that was longer than you clapped me so we have to have a pecking order you know you're about to find out why I was so keen for them to join me here both more articulate and more brilliant than I could ever hope to be and while you're thinking about the questions that you would like to write down or potentially ask at the at the microphone and there will be Usher's as you've heard coming up and down the middle I'm gonna should I said in the middle why don't why don't you sit there Vince you take this microphone I'm gonna put the first question to Vince which is Vince the one thing we haven't talked about tonight is this whole question of suffering which for many people is one of the biggest stumbling blocks how how do you go about trying to understand what does it mean if God is actually good and loving yet we see all of this mess around this thanks Michael I'll be happy to say a few words to that you made it here when I got the text yesterday saying that Michael wasn't gonna make it I wanted him to send me a picture because I was had a sneaking suspicion he had made it but he was just lying on a Bermudian beach can do my talk last night instead but I always always appreciate speaking with Michael because usually when you have some ideas in your mind you have a joke or an illustration and you think is that a little bit too far to the line like could that possibly offend some people in the room but one of people with Michael I never worried about that I think whatever illustration I have he's gonna break out of James Bond oh I think I'll be fine this question of of suffering is it's a really significant one and I think the first time I was ever asked about this as a Christian I grew up in a non-christian family I wanted during my college years I was very skeptical initially I came to see that God wanted me to love him with my mind I was studying philosophy at the time I thought I could get behind that I began to examine the evidence ultimately I gave my life to Christ and began to experience much of what Michael spoke to but my aunt Regina probably the first time I was asked this question as a Christian she spoke with me about some of the suffering in my cousin Charles life Charles had some disabilities which have caused two serious suffering and she was talking to me about how difficult that is for Charles and then for her as well and I began to spout some of my philosophical explanations for why God might allow suffering such as Charles is and and Regina listen to me very graciously and then she turned to me and she said but Vince that doesn't speak to me as a mother so I've always been slower to try to respond to this question since then and Jesus was a lot better at that than me you know when his good friend Lazarus died Jesus had waited waited a couple of days before he went to see him and reading between the lines and the Gospels when he got there Lazarus his sisters Mary and Martha were not too impressed and they were saying Jesus why didn't you come sooner if you had been here our brother would still be alive and surely at that point I believe as a Christian Jesus could have given an explanation he could have given an answer he could have explained why he had to wait those days before he came but that's not what's recorded in fact we get the shortest verse in the whole Bible Jesus wept and to me that's very significant I genuinely believe that my God weeps more tears than any of us for the suffering of this world was very important to me in terms of who I worship a couple of thoughts that I will share it'll be an inadequate answer because this is a big question and it's a very personal question for every one of us but hopefully it'll point us in in a few directions whenever I'm asking a good question I always like to turn it around and make sure that I'm having integrity about asking it of myself as well so if I'm asking this question God why would you be responsible for suffering I want to make sure I'm turning that question around and asking it of myself as well am I responsible for suffering and there's a boy named Ewing that I used to fight with as a teenager I wasn't a very nice kid he wasn't a very nice kid either and I can remember taking every opportunity that I could to push him down the very same free will that God gave me to help him up I used it to push him down and a number of years ago I learned that you and had taken his life and there's a place in the Bible where it reads for the wages of sin is death and I had probably read that verse hundreds of times before I heard that news and never had it struck me the way that it did then and I had to start asking some questions of myself would you and have taken his life had I had big time to him had I used that free will God had given me to help him off rather than to push him down I didn't know the answers to those questions sometimes when I talk about the concept of sin in his relationship to suffering to people they want to tell me that I'm exaggerating that really I'm pretty good it's not like I've killed anyone the reality is that's a much harder question for me to answer then you might realize them what if God's showing or like not just on the rippling effects of my unkindness to you and but on the rippling effects of all of my own kindness throughout the years so just as a starting point when we start to ask this question of suffering and who's responsible for it let's make sure it yes let's ask it of God he loves our questions well there's also asking of ourselves as well and I think sometimes we need to be humble enough Michael mentioned GK Chesterton earlier GK Chesterton was once asked to write into a newspaper in response to the question what's wrong with the world and he wrote in a very short article he wrote dear Sirs I am Sincerely Yours GK Chesterton there has to be something of that response in our hearts to this question as well a couple more thoughts let me tell you two of my favorite family stories italian-american background we have lots of stories and these are two of my favorite ones the first one is my parents second date they're standing at this point on the Brooklyn Bridge they've fallen in love over New Year's on their first date now they're on their second date they're standing on the Brooklyn Bridge and my dad notices a ring on my mom's finger so he asks about it and she says well that's just some ring one of my old boyfriends gave to me I just wear it because I think it looks nice and my dad said oh yeah it's nice let me see it so she took it off and did it to my dad and I hope that you already was bobbing that way I've told this story in England no one responds at this point I think people are so polite they can't see what's coming tell this story in New York everyone's laughter they know exactly what's about to happen and then my my dad my dad hurls it off the bridge and he watches it sink to the bottom of the East River says you're with me now you won't be needing that anymore and my mom loved it now how is this relevant to this question of suffering I promise you that's relevant it's relevant because what if my mom had responded differently now she loved it I think that was a clinching moment for them but what if she had decided you know what this guy's a bit nuts I'd better run back with the old boyfriend instead now what would that have meant for me now I might be tempted to think hey maybe I would've been better off maybe you know the old boyfriend maybe he would have been taller maybe he would have been smarter maybe would've been more athletic maybe would have been better looking maybe he would have lived in a castle that little bit cool it could've been Rorty but there's a philosophical mistake with thinking that way right because if my mom wound up with the old boyfriend rather than my dad it wouldn't have been me who came to exist maybe some other child would have come to exist and maybe that child would have enjoyed living in a castle but part of what makes me who I am is my beginning the parents that I have the sperm and egg that I came from the combination of genes that's true of me sometimes I think that we long understandably so to take some piece of suffering out of this world while keeping everything else the same sure that it works that way sometimes when we picture ourselves in this world of suffering and then we picture ourselves in a very different world with far less suffering or no suffering and then we think to ourselves well surely God you should have made me in this other world with no suffering we forget to ask the question would it have been me if I came to exist if I had been born into that very different world even the throwing of a ring off of a bridge can have an effect on who comes to exist well what if God stepped in and just took away our free will every time we thought to hurt someone what if he changed the laws of thermodynamics and the way that the universe works what if he made big scale changes like that would it be the people in this room who would have come to exist could it be the case that if we take seriously the biblical idea that God chose people even before the foundation of the world that he knew people before they were born that he set people apart that he knitted people together in their wombs could it be the case that one of the reasons that God allows for this world even in its broken state it's because he desired every one of us and every person that we love and every person that we see walking down the street now sometimes when I share that idea with people their responses well why us why would God choose to create us when surely he could have created some more impressive creatures who maybe would have been less prone to suffering and it's a good question it's a biblical question Psalm 8 Psalm 8 which says God why are you mindful of humankind but to refer back to what Michael was speaking on God's love for us it's not based on how impressive we are it's not based on the fact that God could have created these beings which would have been more excellent than us what if God just found himself with a love for us I have a 10 week old son at home and when I look down at him there's nothing in what he does that could earn my love for him I mean always really do it right now the owner the bathroom and throwing her bathroom again and again right he's not in a position to earn my love my love is simply based on the fact that I was involved in creating him that he is in one sense in my image that he is my child he is my son that's all it takes from my love for him to be utterly utterly extravagant what if God loves each one of us like that you know I said at the beginning my aunt Regina spoke with me about this suffering my cousin Charles's life well there's some people who would say it would have been better off if Charles never existed hey after all the world would have had less suffering overall if Charles didn't exist with the disabilities that he was born with there would have been less suffering in this world I couldn't more strongly disagree with that statement it's because I knew Charles intimately that his suffering was so frustrating to me but it's also because I knew Charles intimately that I can understand why God out of grace would love him so much and why God might be willing to at least for a time endure a broken world that would allow for him to come to exist and for him to call him into relationship with himself for all eternity one more family story I was six years old the most vivid story from my childhood I was playing football American football on next-door neighbor's front lawn I was getting knocked around pretty good started crying and I came running home to my mom who was on the front porch and I was saying I'm not tough enough I'm not tough enough so what did my mom do my mom did what any loving mother of a six-year-old son would do she positioned herself like this she got down in quite an athletic stance hung her nose out in the air looked at me lovingly and she said punch me in the nose she said you are tough enough punched me in the nose I know you're thinking crazy Americans but she persisted at first I looked at her like she was crazy and indeed she was but she persisted she said punch me in the nose you are tough enough punch me in the nose and I don't know what sort of psychological state I must have been in at the time but finally I did I reared back and actually gave my mom a punch to the nose and to my astonishment and to my mom's astonishment blood actually began to come out of my mom's nose and drip down her face then came then came just one of the most gorgeous images from my childhood through this blood that was coming down my mom's face came the most radiant just vibrant dazzling smile my mom said no get back out there and she sent me back out into that game and she went inside to get cleaned up now you might not know what to make of that story understandably so what an unthinkable messy bloody thing from my mom to do and I'm not recommending it but in at least one sense in at least one sense what an extravagant display of love my mom chose to bring me into this world knowing that there would be suffering all right sometimes we look at God and we want to say it would be wrong for anyone to bring another person into a world when they know that that world will include suffering in their lives well you know what if we think that we're not only going to impugn God we're also going to have to call evil anyone who decides to have a child so interesting how sometimes we don't hold ourselves to a standard that we hold God to we look up and blame God for the suffering of this world the same God who when he suffered at our hands he looked down and he said Father forgive them my mom chose to bring me into this world she knew there would be suffering but that did not make her evil why because when the suffering came and my eyes filled with tears she bent down into the suffering with me even though that meant suffering at the hands of her own child and for me that is a picture of Jesus on the cross where God did something unthinkable and messy and bloody where he did not stay on some far-off distant heavenly throne unaware of suffering but he came and he bent down into our suffering with us even though that meant suffering at the hands of those that he had created the night before Jesus died he said my heart is sorrowful even to death I've always thought it's one of the most amazing verses in all of the scriptures that the God of the universe the creator of all things would speak the words my heart is sorrowful even to death whatever it is that you've been through there is no depth of agony or helplessness that we can experience in this life that Jesus doesn't understand and then ultimately he offers hope he offers that this is not the end of the story and that one day we can exist in a place with him that is described in the Bible as a place where there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain why little detail on that verse it says because God Himself will wipe away the tears it's an amazingly intimate picture of God himself perhaps Jesus and his physically redeemed body literally physically wiping away our tears is an invitation into relationship with him for all eternity I think we need to take seriously when we take suffering and when I think about my cousin Charles I think that God chose him before the foundation of the world because he loved him wanted him to exist wanted to call him into a relationship with himself that's at the beginning of time during Todd God loved him enough that he was willing to come alongside him and suffer with him and then at the end of time I believe God will set things right is that a perfect answer no but I think for many people suffering pushes them away from God I think for me it's precisely because I feel the challenge of suffering so severely that I'm led to trust a God who can do something about it I know that's a big question in just a few thoughts but I hope that they're helpful and we look for to the rest of your questions Thank You Vince so I I guess we're now over to you guys say there my colleague Bob is over here with a microphone if you would like to ask question live and otherwise if you have a question feel free to write it down either on your ticket or on any one hundred dollar bill you happen to have in your pocket and pass it up to the front and we will do our utmost to try and answer as many of those as we can yes as long as it's not a fake my body and so there may be a few that have already come in how are we doing okay if you pass your question to the center I'll just fold it in half maybe just pass it down the line no peeking if you want to if you want a pen no pay but just put up your hand and there are some people here with paper and pens and they can give you some also I see you over there at the end okay we have a question okay yes when a question authentic Christians suffers should it not be a badge of honor but when non-believers suffer or see suffering is it not the catalyst that God uses to either question God or bring them to that point to God so it was the question about does this God use suffering to bring people to him yes sure can you just be pretty part of that again sorry they'd ask me just leave the microphone I missed a bit of that question when an authentic Christian believer suffers should it not be a badge of honor second Corinthians 1 verses 2 to 4 but when non-believers suffer is it not the catalyst that God uses to either bring them to question God or to bring them to God sure thank you I I do appreciate the fact that you are trying to look at this from two different perspectives it's one thing to talk about something when you say you know maybe God is doing something in a particular Christians life but is it the same kind of idea when someone doesn't claim to have a relationship with God and yet they seem to be going through something I was recently speaking with a young girl who lost her mother in a very tragic certain way and this bit of suffering put her in a position where she was like I really don't want to deal with God at all I don't want to do with them she's hurt which is understandable and for her it was this I this experience of why did God take her so God intentionally acted and removed her from it caused this pain when he actually could have kept it from her and kept it from our family and so for her yes it did push her away what is interest saying though is that we would began to speak and one of the things that I began to share with there was actually one of the last things that Vince alluded to because I think no matter who you are you have to respond to this question of suffering whether you hold a belief or not all that changes is the answer but every person has to deal with the question and what I love about the Christian answer to this is that it isn't just this is why suffering happens but it is as Vince says it's also about a God who says I want to enter in and essentially and realistically get bloody with you and enter into this painful moments that you aren't experienced at alone and what I shared with her was was along those lines about in this moment of when you are saying to God I don't want you because I'm angry with you which is what she honestly shared and you know what in those moments I can't say that I one have said some of the same things too like let's just be honest with each other but in that moment I just tried to encourage her you know what the very being that puts you here the very being that you are fighting against have you considered that maybe is the very being that can we bring you the comfort you're looking for in it and very much the same way that Vince was talking about that when you are in these moments of pain if someone has a cancer diagnosis who do they want or who do they find so beneficial really grateful for to come and help them to talk to them then somebody who is a cancer survivor why because they understand they've had the chemo they've had the radiation maybe they've lost hair they've had the sickness they've got all of these things so how much better to get through a painful situation than with somebody who's been there too and so while we are pushing against maybe it can bring somebody towards and so yes there is a sense in which it kind of pushed people away but I think it and it can also someone who is not saying you know what I don't really have this relationship with God I don't really understand what this means there is a sense in which when they're in the midst of a suffering situation and they look all around them for answers and they don't find anything that satisfies them then they actually may say what does Christian even say atheism will tell you why are you questioning it why do you think that you shouldn't have suffering why do you feel that suffering is even wrong that it shouldn't happen like why do you have this expectation in the first place is Lomb will tell you that it's part of a laws will they wouldn't even call it suffering they would call it hardship or tough times so Muslim wouldn't cry out injustice towards God they may more an agree but they would never say this isn't fair because it's part of his will and plan she sued I mean everybody's answering this question and if those answers don't satisfy you and then you encounter Christianity which says not only gives an answer but also says let me walk with you and mourn with you there is a sense in which yes suffering can draw people to God it couldn't it can do a both both kind of thing it is gonna be how they respond and so I think your question is fair it is gonna be a different response in a different engagement and a different experience based on who they are but here's a beautiful thing I don't think God just offers comfort to people who only like to wear red shirts or people who live in once in our country I think what he says is look I'm here and I'm willing to do this life with you should you want to your life with me question regarding evil if God created everything did he create evil why would he do that the Evans my new favorite quote from it's a really insightful question the sort of question that philosophers like me spend way too much time thinking about if God created everything and we look we live in a world that clearly has a lot of evil and a lot of brokenness what didn't he create that as well I don't think so but here's the way to think about it and it's a it's a pretty simplistic analogy but I find it helpful when I go to a buffet especially with Michael do we both really like food and you see all of the good options in front of you everything there is good in fact everything looks great and my problem is that I then go and put a bit of everything on my plate and I never think to myself do these foods go together at all and usually they don't so I've taken things which all in and of themselves are good but I've put them together in such a way that they wind up being bad now I think it's a good thing that God have given me the power to move my arm I think it's a good thing that God has given me free will the question is how do I put those good things together that's where my responsibility comes into play and did I use the combination of those good things to push you and down or to help him up that's where the question gets real serious and gets turned back on ourselves so that's the way I think about that that God has only created good things but because he's given us freewill he's given up that choice of how we put the good things together and sometimes when you put good things together in the wrong way you wind up with a bad thing and I think that's where evil comes from great question here's a question regarding suicide what do you think happens in the afterlife to those who take their own lives and what would God think of this well speak to that but first of all and let me just say especially since we live in a world where incidents of mental distress are going up through the roof and the number of people battling with real deep levels of depression is also escalating in almost every single country I've been in if you're in a situation right now where this is a live issue for you we would first of all love to be able to talk to you after this meeting just personally and secondly it would also encourage you to find someone who has been given sufficient training just to help you understand what may be going through all of your heart and mind right now you know it's an interesting question we we all work in a team that's headed by a guy called Ravi Zacharias and some of you all know he actually came to faith on a bed of suicide I've been unsuccessfully mixed up a very powerful cocktail of drugs to try to end his own life and as he sometimes put it he said for me he says despair was no longer a moment it was simply a way of life and this seemed to be the best way to exit out of that out of that way so I think I want to be very careful in how I answered this question because there are two different things going on here and it can be very hard to confuse those two messages the first one is when God is talking to us about not doing something or that it's wrong or it's bad and so on and this would be one of those things that word isn't spoken out of hatred or anger we live in a very computing culture where we confuse the categories of love and affirmation so we think if someone loves us they always affirm us in what we do and want to do does that make sense so if you're not affirmed therefore you must hate me and this is one of the reasons why we have such global rising anger right now because almost everywhere I go people confuse this two categories but there is actually a time when love no not not out of hatred but out of concern and care so you know when my four-year-old daughter Lucy wanted to borrow the electric drill and I said no and she felt affronted by this you know it wasn't because I hated her or what was even angry with her about what she was asking it was put out of concern and the fact that she wanted to play dentist with my two-year-old son was you know it was not a good you know excused as to why she should have it I don't know if any of you have ever seen something like Alcoholics Anonymous in action but every so often they may stage an intervention in someone's life and that normally works with the group of relatives and possibly someone from the organization itself who will confront somebody in at the time of confronting them the person will normally respond by saying something like I thought you loved me and how could you all betray me and how could you all gang up on me like this and how could you and so on what you're hoping for isn't a couple of years time they'll actually come back to you and say I want to thank you so much for stepping into my life and if you didn't I'll probably be dead right now so they're going to say thank you so there's a time when when love says no and when God says no so when God says don't do this and this is wrong that's not spoken out of hatred that spoken out of concern now the question you're asking that this is even more profound than that because you're saying what is the ultimate outcome of that and I think that's where we're going to have to be really careful because it's impossible to know what passes through someone's mind in those very last few seconds I think there's a reason why we're told the story of how Jesus Christ was crucified between two people either side of him one of whom called it awfully fine where since before saying to the Lord yes and Jesus said you'll be with me in paradise today and this is the amazing thing about forgiveness forgiveness takes about a nanosecond I don't if you've noticed that if you've ever wronged somebody you've done something wrong and you say sorry and the person you've offended is willing to forgive you the next day you see them your needs see them for a moment for a glance and you know if they forgiving you doesn't make sense you can look across the room there could be miles away there could be a long way if so long as you can see their eyes as soon as they come into the room you can lock eyes with them and know if you've been forgiven it's a most amazing thing well if it's the case that God is continually offering us this grace and forgiveness then even after having done something as whatever it may be taking a cocktail of drugs or whatever else he may be if in that moment there's that last minute cries and said cry out to God then the answer is well yes of course they can be with him so it's very hard to answer that question with any degree of certainty because none of us in this room will know what passes through anyone's heart and mind in those final moments so we know we can trust God to do what is right and it's very very difficult when when we're left behind but the I say the main weight I'd almost like to give to that question is to anyone who is wrestling there are maybe a whole bunch of reasons as to why it seems that global rates of mental distress are going up through the roof and that's something that we could maybe unpack after I say after this meeting when the World Health Organization did the largest mental health survey ever on the history of the planet I remember the results were published in 2004 major medical journal I think the title of the medical journal the article if you're interested was called prevalence severity and unmet need in the world health surveys mental health survey of 2004 which is why I love these academic articles they have such snappy titles and what that showed was at the point of survey if you if you're in an affluent country at the point of survey the rate of mental distress was one in four twenty five percent at the point of survey you know what that means that means if you came here tonight with three friends and they seem to be doing ok guess who's in trouble if you if you extended those results to say in the previous 12 months it goes up to fifty percent fifty percent suffering from acute mental distress in the last twelve months so what we're living in a world where it's it's becoming increasingly difficult it seems to find that kind of emotional and psychological peace and balance in this world and one of the sad consequences of that is when that's unmet and when that's unresponded to and for some I'm gonna just take that final step and it is sadly a pattern we seem to be seen increasing in lots of different places I I did see an article about a year ago by very well-known academic to our respect saying look the idea that the amount of mental illness in our world is going up is wrong just look at the government stats and it's true if you look at the government stats we're all getting better the trouble is I've had at least two private conversations with governments and citizens statisticians who compiled figures for youth suicide and I obviously I can't lean either country for you by in both of those instances I actually asked them point blank just privately are the figures manipulated and their response was yes and they both gave the same reason we're worried that if we were honest with the extent to which it was happening in our society it would it would spark an endemic that make sense if we say it's getting worse then you could trigger others but if we say it's not true and it's getting better then maybe people it will cause people to restrain I'm not sure that logic works I think if you're at that point of despair and you hear that everyone else is getting better apart from you it can make you feel worse that make sense well why not mean it so then you feel even worse off so I'm not sure that's the right response but whatever it is it's it's a major problem but I would like to offer out that ray of hope and that that ray of hope is available for everyone in the room who makes that response no matter how late in the day it comes and however fleeting it may be why do we need a god to set our moral compass or to create laws and rules for us to follow when we have science based on facts and the rule of law provided by governments in one sense you could argue the reason why we may want to make sure that there is a God who's setting the moral standards he may have noticed not every government actually sets very good laws there was a very famous incident during the Nuremberg trials at the end of the Second World War where one of the guys defending those who had committed all the atrocity so they committed in the concentration camps their argument were well these were German citizens obeying German law and German held territory so they've done nothing wrong and there was a very famous professor of jurisprudence the moral theory of law who argued they did do nothing wrong in England from Oxford he said you can't judge these people they just they were obeying the law so what they did was right to join the actual trials I can't remember I think was the fourth or the fifth or the sixth time this particular defender was defending saying that they were just obeying the law the guy threw his hands up in the air and said but is there not a law above our own laws is there not a law above our own laws which we can decide whether a law is actually just or unjust and in God's absence the officer that question is no Martin Luther King very famously answered the same question too and his letter from the Birmingham jail which if you haven't read I strongly suggests this it's not that long and it's an amazing thing to read he was criticized for breaking the law and so when he was in prison in Alabama a group of pastors actually published a letter against him saying this guy can't be a real Christian because he's breaking the law and Martin Luther King very famously started off his letter by saying look I don't respond to every criticism I get otherwise I've spent nothing apart from writing letters he's saying but for since I think you've laid forth an argument well and you're sincere I want to reply to you sincerely and at one point in that letter he says you're asking me why do I advocate we should uphold some laws and break others and he says then the reason is very simple he says there are just flaws and unjust laws he says a just law is one that is in line with the law given to us by God and an unjust law is a law which is given to us which is out of line with the law given to us by God he said I would argue we have not just simply the right but the moral duty to protest against an unjust law he says but we have to do a piece of it peaceably and fairly and be willing to take the consequence for it I go to jail and so we there is this very important question if law and what is right is simply what the ruling power says it is then it means then at that point there's no ability to question whether that law was ever right in the first place so it is true that we make up our own moral systems that's completely true human beings do that all the time and we make our own laws but the fact that we do that it still leaves a different question unanswered ought it to be different and is there someone who who speaks for that do you wanna deal with the second part of the question sure just you know a thought Michael said you know this doesn't work if you take God out of the picture you might say well why is that the case I think about it this way most of us in this room maybe all of us in this room would agree that for a more immoral law to be legitimate it would have to be grounded in the belief in the equal value of every single person okay that every person in this room and every person we walk by in the street every day is equally valuable well here's the question I would want to ask that if a legitimate objective universal morality that can apply to all people everywhere has to be grounded in the equal value of every single person then there has to be something which is equally true of every single person in virtue of which every person can be equally valuable what is it what is the thing that's true of every single person and completely unchanging and therefore can ground the equal value of every single person that has to undergird any plausible morality take God out of the picture it's very difficult to answer that question all of our natural endowments are distributed along a spectrum some of us are going to be more useful for society than others some of us are going to be better placed to pass on our genes than others any sort of scientific or naturalistic way of thinking of that we're all gonna be along a spectrum so what is the one thing that's equally true of every single one of us and therefore can ground morality the only thing I can think of is the love of God and the image of God that each one of us is created in if you take God out of the picture and all you're left with is science and naturalistic science and having in some way to try to manifest a morality based on an evolutionary naturalistic approach to science I think you wind up in trouble because the other side of the survival of the fittest is the death of the weakest and I think that really contrasts with what we know of Jesus Christ not the survival of the fittest but the fittest God Himself willingly sacrificing himself for the unfinished for you and from me it's quite a different depiction but I think it's one they can ground the morality that I think we know deep in our hearts is true and what we should follow that every one of us is equally valuable because there's one thing that's equally true of every single one of us and that's that we're all created in the image of God there's let me just add one other thing because there's a another I'm not sure how the questions meant there's one other part to do with the science part which if I'm understanding the question correctly is if we have science we don't really need God anymore now it's true that science explains things really powerfully and well but you have to ask what it is explaining so there's an argument it goes a bit like this we use God to explain the bits we can't explain does that make sense why you science to explain this and when I get stuck I use God to fill in the gaps and the argument is science is now grown with so much knowledge those gaps have got increasingly small to such an extent that God is now literally homeless why since there are no gaps room to live in anymore and so we've basically got rid of him the the problem with this line of argument is it confuses too very different categories law and agency so scientific law explains you know the way things happen I throw this bottle up in the air in it you know it comes back down and all of that is explained actually by very simple science that I learnt and there were all kinds of very simple equations once you know what the force of gravity is you know to calculate not just simply how high this thing's gonna go when I throw it up but its trajectory and how it's gonna fall but if you ask the question why am i throwing this bottle up and down well what part of physics chemistry biology helps explain that let me give you another example and the house I live in in Oxford is very old well actually it's not very old I live on new High Street in Oxford so my house is new it was built in 1880 I'm old High Street and headington the part of Oxford I live in those houses are from the 1400s and my house is largely unchanged since it was built in 1880 which is why when you turn the shower on it feels like there's an old man dribbling on your head now I live in one of those houses that I used to draw as a kid does that make sense you put a door in the middle and the window either side and it looks exactly like that you know with the triangular roof so my house isn't at all complicated it can be exhaustively explained through science does that make sense there's no part of its structure its nature why it's still standing and everything else that cannot be explained by science there are no gaps but even though I have an exhaustive total complete understanding of it does that mean that there was no architect behind it and this is what happens when you confuse these categories of law and agency the the the the scientific understanding of all of the mathematics and physics and everything else governing my house in no way disproves a person behind it who designed it does that make sense so even if we were to have an exhaustive complete 100% total understanding of all of the mechanics in our universe and how everything works not just simply at a big level but at a quantum level and a sub quanta level even if we had all of that our disposal it's philosophically capable of disproving an architect behind this universe a person is just simply it's not philosophically capable of achieving that and in philosophy we call it a category error and this is a fairly common one so it's just worth highlighting that make sense which is why as Christians we should ultimate have nothing to fear from science because even if we had an exhaustive scientific on something of this universe that doesn't mean therefore that we've in any way disproved whether there's a mind behind it or not that's a separate question has to be answered separately there's a colleague of mine what what time is it what time is it now we are we doing you've got my watch because I just look at my watch I took of my wash and put it on the podium every night it's quarter after 9:00 what time were we meant to be finishing turns out there isn't a merciful God after all set ten minutes so don't take one more maybe after this and then we'll let some of you good folks go back home but and then we're prepared to hang around after this just continue to answer any questions one on one as much as much as we can the this whole question is is actually really really very very important it's it it means we have to realize what what we are capable of proving and what is actually what asks itself is actually capable of doing and I would encourage you if you have a scientific mind in this in this room whether you believe in God or not you should devote yourself to it and you may actually be able to do an awful lot of good through it but it's also limited to what it can do it's designed to answer particular questions and answers of exceptionally well but there are other types of questions which is going to struggle to answer because it's not contained within that discipline it's not something that they can do in and of itself and a colleague of mine professor John Lennox he'd loves to give an example and he says supposing he says my aunt Matilda makes me a cake and it's this beautiful cake and in the room I've got a fight a physicist a chemist and a biologist and the biologist goes to great lengths to explain where all of the ingredients came through and the processes involved in actually in producing the germs of wheat and everything else and the physicists then explained in the chemist and explains all the chemical reactions that took place during the whole baking process and way it rose and held firm and everything else and and then the physicist actually then goes into a whole theoretical thing and to explain how actually he can break down all of those processes into mathematics and I said model the whole thing and then you ask one of these three scientists and why did she make the cake and it doesn't matter how many degrees they have between them the only person now smiling in the room is aunt Matilda because she's the only person who knows the answer to that particular question and and unless she chooses to reveal it we will never know but as soon as she opens her mouth and speaks and says well it's because John is my nephew and I love him very much mrs. birthday today now we have that reason now we have the why and so it's just important as a hater for us to remember what it's called there's a very famous book that was published by a professor meadow a couple of decades ago called the limits of science which is well worth rereading if you if you've never read it and you can very easily access it's not a particularly big book which just describes and talks through this particular issue and so that's where even in terms of our scientific knowledge we need a certain degree of humility about what we can and can't do alright this is a question regarding the reason to believe in God do you feel the need to believe and have others believe in a God simply because you don't know the reason the earth and universe exists or do you feel there is a need to believe in a God because humans and mankind cannot be trusted to do the right thing can it be neither of those [Laughter] any of you guys want to weigh it in well first of all I'll do a little promo for this you're gonna be talking on reasons yes actually I'm gonna be speaking out why should I believe on Friday night for for youth I think it's 12 to 17 is that about right at a van Jellicle church on Friday night so you can come out and hear that answer and if you feel your 12 to 17 you can come and stand in the back and listen in do you wanna yeah yeah well then I'll do fine a Python you read it for me one more time yeah thank you all right that the need to believe and have others believe in God simply because you don't know the reason the earth and universe exists or because humans and mankind cannot be trusted do the right thing yeah thanks for that question and you know those are two explanations there might be other ones as well do I believe in God out of need it's an interesting question need is certainly related to it if there is a God and he created this universe and he allow certain needs to exist and I would expect him to be the best fulfillment of those needs and I think sometimes we're really good at distracting ourselves from the realities of our needs and our broken condition I saw a commercial a while back kind of an odd commercial but it depicted a woman giving birth and then this baby flew through the air and over thirty Seconds progressed through the entire progression of life while flying through the air so kind of a baby and then a young child and an adolescent and then an adult and then got older and older and then at the at the end of the commercial crashed down into a grave day and then the screen the screen went black and then these words appeared across the screen life is short play more Xbox and I sort of responded you know like you guys I mean I laughed it was funny you know and then got a half way through my laugh I started to catch myself too and I thought boy that's really funny but it's also devastating you know life is short and it's unjust and everything on this earth is ultimately headed towards death and injustice what's the best we have in response does it really play more xbox spend more time on Facebook and Instagram and social media and try to distract yourself in any way that you can so you don't have to think about the reality of that situation I always find it interesting when I see rankings of people's top fears and public speaking comes in ahead of death people think that what we're doing right now is scarier than the fact that life is short you know there is a reality that we walk around with deep needs and sometimes people say you know is Christianity just a crutch I want to say no it's not just a crutch but boy sometimes I do need a crutch sometimes I do need some help and if I was created by a god that would you know allow me to exist in a world where he knew I would need help then I shouldn't be surprised if he's the best answer to my needs all sorts of needs throughout life we've talked about anxiety we've talked about sometimes thinking even of suicide and that this life is not worth living we've talked about the shortness of life if we get ourselves sometimes away from just our distractions Pascal said wonderful theologian and he said our trouble is our inability to sit in a room quietly he said if we would just spend some time alone with the reality of the world were living in and our thoughts we would realize that there are deep needs and that should point us towards something which can fulfill those needs so yes absolutely needs are part of it but it's not just wish fulfillment okay I believe in something that I believe is true and Elysia spoke about Jesus's death earlier and as we go those three more days and then get to Jesus's resurrection that is a large part of why I came to believe I could see the needs I could see that God was the fulfillment of the needs but I still needed to ask that question is it true good if you're falling off a cliff Tim Keller gives this example and you reach up and you grab a branch hey whether you feel that that branch is gonna hold you is not ultimately what determines your fate it's how strong that branch is that determines your faith and I saw the need I began to pursue the evidence and that led me to the resurrection of Jesus and I became a Christian in large part because I looked into the resurrection of Jesus and I would encourage you to do the same but it is utterly unique the fact that we can look back at the historical evidence for Jesus's resurrection and when you look at that not taking the Bible initially and assuming it's true but just looking at the historical evidence you have what should have been the movement ending death of Jesus he had these followers he claimed to be divine they thought he was the Messiah they thought he was gonna rise to power become a powerful earthly King that was gonna rescue the Jewish people from the heavy hand of Rome and then he died should have been movement over and then three days later you get the absolute eruption of Christianity within probably just months you have a Creed that's being circulated around the churches that lists all of the different people and groups that Jesus had appeared to including at one point more than 500 at once and it says in parentheses most of whom are still living as if to say if you don't believe me these people are still walking around go out and ask them for yourself we have someone who we worked with in Oxford if the head philosopher of religion there was for many years he's emeritus now he published a book in 2003 it's called the resurrection of God incarnate and in that book he argues that on the available evidence today it is 97% probable that Jesus truly physically bodily miraculously rose from the dead now he's not asking us to take the exact percentage - seriously he likes to work with probability theory so he plugs in estimates at different points in the argument but the fact that someone of his intellectual credibility can make that claim make it in print have it be published by Oxford University Press and then a bleed offend that claim at top academic conferences all around the world speaks to the fact that the intellectual case for Christianity is extremely strong and if you haven't looked into that please do I was so encouraged when I first read through the Scriptures and I came to the Acts of the Apostles and I read that the Bereans were more noble than the Thessalonians why not for blind faith not because they parked their brain at the door but because they examined the Scriptures daily to determine if what they were being told was true I thought I could get behind that and I remember praying to God I'm not sure if I'm talking to anyone but if I am I would really like to know about it and I remember thinking to myself that if God created me and if he created me with this mind that he would want an honest intellectual search to at least point in his direction and that is exactly what we found sometimes we think that it's our minds that keep us from God much more common is that it's our hearts they keep us from God and if we're willing to put in a bit of that effort will find that the intellectual objections get cleared away and that will open up a path for God to speak directly to our hearts and then to transform them this is our last question as a young person living in today's society I've struggled with with these questions what is the purpose of life what's the point of existing why is God created us what's the point okay it's a great question - to end on and again if you're you're still here and you would like to talk please do come up and maybe even if time runs out tonight we could pick up this conversation by email and the question is a very very very very good one for at least two reasons number one we're beginning to live in a world where we think we're all responsible for generating our own truth and if that's the case if we're all responsible for I mean generating our own truth that also means were also responded also responsible for generating our own meaning in this world it's not something you wanna discover or find something that you have to make for yourself well that puts onto every human being an incredibly heavy burden I mean since you are literally responsible for generating meaning and that's that that's very very large there's a difference between finding meaning in life and feigning you have to generate it out of nothing one is much more exhausting than the other the me to try and tie this into that other question that Vince was just speaking to a very well-known person I'm sure everyone in this room heard of him the oxford professor CS Lewis who was also professor at Cambridge too when he defected briefly and then came back to the mothership he he he very famously said in one of his books the problem of pain which was on the earliest books he wrote he said if you had asked me before when I was an atheist cuz he was an atheist well into his 30s he said if you were to ask me as an eighth why I'm an atheist I would basically say look at this world we we exist by inflicting pain on each other look at the universe it's largely empty cold dead space he says we live in a cold universe we're surrounded by all of this death I'm summarizing here it takes him 10 pages to write this he says how can you possibly expect me to believe that this is the product of a loving God and yes any particular purpose for me okay much better to reconcile yourself to the fact that this is just the way it is okay and just make of it what you will he said that would have been my argument and if you want to read that he argues it incredibly strongly for in the beginning part of his book the problem of pain so strongly that when you get to the end of those ten pages you fear he's may have dug a hole so deep he can't possibly get himself out of it but he's just trying to be honest with the depth of the argument he felt he had now but one of the interesting things that happened for him was he was wrestling the person of Jesus Christ it wasn't so much that CS Lewis sat down and figured out you know what there must be a God behind this world he felt that somehow his world was invaded by God and the more he looked at Jesus Christ and person of Jesus Christ the more he became convinced that this wasn't just any mere person or mere man this was literally God who broke into space-time history and revealed and made himself known and CS Lewis was so worried about this so worried about the implications of this for him as an atheist in his 30s this brilliant young professor he went and found a professor of ancient history at Oxford who in CS Lewis's words were the most secure atheist he knew and he went to him to get talked out of his fear that he was going to get converted and so he went to go and visit this professor to sort of get reassurance that his atheism was right and he says he describes his scene how they were sat in the this guy's study and this eminent historian is sitting puffing his pipe with the port in one hand in front of a fire CS Lewis is there with his pipe and port in the other hand and in one of the very quiet slow-moving conversation this other guy this professor of ancient history he took the pipe out of his mouth and said Lewis it's a rum thing which if you don't know what that means in modern English that it's a strange thing he says it looks like that resurrection may thing and may have actually have happened to Jesus and then put the pipe back in his mouth and seus Lewis says he felt utterly despondent literally like the bottom had fallen out of his world he says he walked out of that study that day feeling completely dejected saying if the most secure atheist I knew who'd also looked at the evidence had come to the conclusion that Jesus Christ had indeed been raised from the dead and was indeed God then what hope was there for me he said to maintain my atheism he says in that night he said I went back to my room and I became the most reluctant convert in all of England yeah when I finally said okay now why am I telling you this in the book of Revelation it says that by God's will we are and are created that means that in answer to your question about why and why you're here there are two things that need to be said number one because God actually wants you he actually wanted you not someone else not someone better or different or alternate or stronger or wiser or whatever he wanted you he actually desired for you to come into this world he wanted you and the second thing is he wants to be in relationship with you if you want to know the reason why something was brought into the world the best thing to do is to ask the maker about why they made it in the first place and if you want to know what your particular reason for being is in the best place you can do that is to be in relationship with the one who wanted you and created you and the amazing thing is is he calls all of us after the death and resurrection Mary went to the sea the empty tomb and she starts talking to Jesus she assumes he must be the gardener initially because he can't be alive he must be dead and she says just show me where you've hidden the body because she assumes that for some reason the gardener's decided to keep the body of some kind of trophy and hidden it and so and she basically gives him a legal out she says I'm not interested in prosecuting you I'm not gonna report you just tell me what you did okay I'll put it right I've got your back covered I'm not interesting getting into trouble I just wanted to know what you did with him and at this point she thinks she's asking for everything does that make sense she feels she's asking for the earth but the trouble is she's not asking for too much he's actually asking for too little she would have been satisfied with the corpse but actually there's a living Christ in front of her and then he calls her by name Mary and at that point she recognizes who he is and he actually calls all of us by name and he calls your name too and there is a reason why he wanted you here and there's a reason why you are here the general reason is out of his love for you and he wants to have this relationship and this walk with you in order to find the specifics entering into that relationship is the context within which you'll find the specific reason why you are actually here and what he actually wants you and it's calling you by name and I wouldn't want to end this evening without at least giving the response or the opportunity for response because I realized for some of you would have come here tonight and you'd been very polite and listens and you think I've still got a whole bunch of questions I'm not even close to being convinced you know the answers very firmly no well we're still glad that you're here and we would love to talk to you afterwards and for other of you maybe thinking maybe maybe there's something in this I'm just not sure well again thanks for coming please ask your questions we more than delighted to try and answer them but it's also possible in an evening like this you're listening to this into thinking actually for me the answers yes for me it's I need to say yes to that call of my life and if that's where you are please don't leave this room without talking with someone tonight I'll just leave your email and name on a piece of paper we'll get in touch with you because that's one of the single most important decisions that you'll ever make and it does begin to change everything I mean since this is the last question I'll just like to thank the organizers for all for pulling this together thank you very very much we appreciate your hospitality sorry for arriving a day late I'll try not to do that again if you invite me back I'm still hoping to come here one day with my family so they can actually see this beautiful place and meet you you're one of the kindest most responsive audiences that we ever get to speak to and that's a delight to and decide to thank Vince and Alicia for willing to join me and since I'm in that mode I may as well thank myself too thank you very much hope you have a good night and thank you for being with us tonight you [Applause]

Channel: Evangelical Church

Views: 20,766

Rating: 4.8620691 out of 5

Keywords: ECB:, Evangelical, Church, of, Bermuda;

Id: cQWfI1uyytg

Length: 110min 15sec (6615 seconds)

Published: Thu May 09 2019