spirituality Archives - Colin Dye

JESUS & RELIGION (Part One)

Colin Dye — Mon, 20 Dec 2021 12:28:51 +0000

Religion worldwide is growing. 84% of the world is religious. Even in secular societies various forms of religion are thriving. But isnâ€™t this harmful? Isnâ€™t religion basically a toxic force for evil? Surprisingly you might get that idea from Jesus himself who spoke passionately against the corrupt religion of his day. He taught another way â€“ a clearly non-religious way of approaching God.

JESUS AND RELIGION

A Religious World and a World of Religions

Our contemporary world is undeniably religious. According to a 2018 article in the British Newspaper The Guardian, 84% of people in the world identify with a religious faith. And the world is getting more religious as we speak. High birth rates and high conversion rates in the majority world mean that religious belief is growing at a daily rate of hundreds of thousands.

From a historical point of view, the world has always been religious. As far as we can tell, every society in history has had some form of religious belief in the supernatural world, belief in a God or gods.

The secularism of the modern Western world is an exception. This is virtually the only time in history when a society is led to believe that we are merely the product of material forces, there is no divine plan, no purpose and no life-after-death destiny. But even in the West, the Judaeo-Christian influence is still strong. We rely on this sacred tradition to inform our consciences on such matters as moral and social justice, dignity of human life, the value of the individual, and much more. Note: birth rate is low, but some religions are growing even in the West

Most people recognise that religion has been a force for good and a force for evil.

The â€œNew Atheistsâ€ of our day, the so-called â€˜Four Horsemenâ€™ (Richard Dawkins, the late Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett & Sam Harris) have only one thing to say, â€œReligion is evil!â€ Itâ€™s all about hegemonic power and control. The ideas of religion, all religions, are toxic, harmful and must be eradicated.

Released in 1971, the song, Imagine became an iconic statement of the 1960â€™s revolution of freedom. Religion is perceived as the problem. Itâ€™s the cause of fear, conflict and division. John Lennon imagined an utopian world without religion.

Lennon and Lennox

Imagine by John Lennon

Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard 971to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one

John Lennon, got the symptoms right, but was he right about the cause?

Let me introduce to you another John. This time John Lennox, the Christian apologist, philosopher and mathematician. In his book, Gunning for God he wrote in response to Lennonâ€™s Imagine:

â€œI am not John Lennon. I happen to be John Lennox, and I would like you to imagine a world with no atheism. No Stalin, no Mao, no Pol Pot, just to name the heads of the three officially atheistic states that were responsible for some of the worst mass crimes of the 20^th Century. Just imagine a world with no Gulag, no Cultural Revolution, no Killing Fields, no removal of children from their parents because the parents were teaching them about their beliefs, no refusal of higher education to believers in God, no discrimination against believers in the workplace, no pillaging, destruction, and burning of places of worship. Would not that be a world worth imagining too?

(Gunning for God p 83).

The evil of totalitarian religion and ideology

It seems to me that any totalitarian belief, whether religious or non-religious, tends towards evil. These systems have a number of things in common:

They all believe that their understanding of truth is absolute and must be accepted without question
These systems are inexorably tied to power. Through domination or coercion, their beliefs are to be imposed on society. They are ready to use whatever means they can â€“ political power, military force or ideological indoctrination. We see this crop up in many different forms The Christian crusades, the Jesuit inquisition, the Islamic Jihadists, Daesh or ISIS, Hitlerâ€™s concentration camps and Communist crimes against humanity
These ideologies take the dangerous moral high ground. Because they are right, absolutely right, the end justifies the means. After all, so they believe, they are acting for the good of humanity.

Not all religion is bad

Research from the USA Heritage Foundation, shows that:

Religious practice appears to have enormous potential for addressing our social problems
Religious practice can improve:
1. Health
1. Learning
1. Economic well-being
1. Self-control
1. Self-esteem
1. Empathy

Jesusâ€™ attitude to religion

While Jesus must described as a religious man, a man of faith, his attitude to the religious leaders and the corrupt institutional religious system of his day, is startling. Matthewâ€™s Gospel, Chapter 23 and verses 1-36 records Jesusâ€™ confrontation of the religious authorities:

They [the religious leaders] crush people with impossible religious demands and never lift a finger to ease the burden. “Everything they do is for show. On their arms they wear extra wide prayer boxes with Scripture verses inside, and they wear robes with extra-long tassels. And they love to sit at the head table at banquets and in the seats of honour in the synagogues. They love to receive respectful greetings as they walk in the marketplaces, and to be called â€˜Teacherâ€™.

(verses 4-7)

Don’t let anyone call you â€˜Teacherâ€™, for you have only one teacher, and all of you are equal as brothers and sisters.

(verse 8)

What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you shut the door of the Kingdom of Heaven in people’s faces. You won’t go in yourselves, and you don’t let others enter either.

(verse 13)

What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you cross land and sea to make one convert, and then you turn that person into twice the child of hell you yourselves are!

(verse 15)

What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are careful to tithe even the tiniest income from your herb gardens, but you ignore the more important aspects of the lawâ€”justice, mercy, and faith. You should tithe, yes, but do not neglect the more important things. Blind guides! You strain your water so you won’t accidentally swallow a gnat, but you swallow a camel! What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are so careful to clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside you are filthyâ€”full of greed and self-indulgence! You blind Pharisee! First wash the inside of the cup and the dish, and then the outside will become clean, too. What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombsâ€”beautiful on the outside but filled on the inside with dead people’s bones and all sorts of impurity. Outwardly you look like righteous people, but inwardly your hearts are filled with hypocrisy and lawlessness.

(verses 23-28)

Snakes! Sons of vipers! How will you escape the judgment of hell?

(verse 33)

The context of Jesusâ€™ condemnation of religious leaders is important.

Jesus was confronting the corrupt religious institutions of his day. This is not an anti-semitic interpretation of the gospel after the time of Jesus. Matthewâ€™s Gospel is the most semitic of all the 4 Gospels. Matthew shows that the was himself Jewish and faithful to the Jewish laws and traditions of his day. He was against the corruption of the Jewish religion, not authentic faith and practice.

Jesusâ€™ world view is entirely Jewish. He believed in the God of the Jewish Scriptures. He had a supernatural world view.

Jesus was fearless and outspoken. This is rooted in his own sense of authority and consciousness of his unique relationship with God. So unique that Christians feel justified in referring to him as â€œthe son of God.â€

I believe we are justified in applying what Jesus says to all corrupt religious institutions. At least in principle. Corrupt, merciless, inhumane, controlling and self-serving religious teaching and practice are wrong in any context.

But there is something even deeper than this to grasp about Jesusâ€™ attitude to religion.

Jesusâ€™ way versus the religious way

Religion as commonly understood and practiced is a way of qualifying yourself in the eyes of God. What you have to do to get God to accept you. Every religion I know teaches that except the religion of Jesus. This includes the corruption of the â€˜Christian religionâ€™ which teaches that our relationship with God is based on a quasi-legal interpretation of what God requires of us.

But Jesusâ€™ way, is not the regular religious way. Jesus does not teach that we have to reach up to God, and do things to impress him so that he will accept us. Rather, he teaches that God has down in his own Person, the Person of Christ, becoming human, just like us, demonstrating who God is, and accomplishing on our behalf everything that God requires of us. Central to this, is giving his own life as a sacrifice for our sin. He teaches us that through trusting him alone, trusting what he has done for us, we can have a personal relationship with God. Through Christ we can know God as our ever-present, all-loving and totally affirming, heavenly Father.

Simply put â€“ itâ€™s not so much a matter of religion but having a personal and intimate relationship with God, through Jesus.

The post JESUS & RELIGION (Part One) appeared first on Colin Dye.

The Spiritual State of Britain Today

Colin Dye — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 10:26:51 +0000

Archbishop of Canterbury and David Cameron

Reports on the demise of the church in Britain have (to borrow a phrase) been greatly exaggerated. There is no doubt that the anti-Christian bias of some within the British media is in part the cause of this negativity. But we must admit they have plenty of data on hand to support their bad news stories. During the last 30 years we have witnessed a steady decline in mainline church denominations. Baptist, Anglican and Methodist church attendance has reduced by between 20% to 40%.
Positive signs
Coincidently, this is approximately how long I have been in pastoral ministry and I have personally noticed the numerical decline so frequently reported in the press. However, what is not often reported is the phenomenal growth of Pentecostal churches during the same period. Pentecostal Church membership has grown by 178%. ?I certainly have witnessed that and not just in Kensington Temple where I have served for twenty-five out of those thirty years. In many British cities, the large, fast-growing churches are Pentecostal. Clearly, we must be doing something right.
There are other positives signs. Despite the discouraging predictions of the prophets of doom and gloom, the national religious identity, is still largely Christian. 71.6% of respondents in the 2001 National Census stated Christianity was their faith. In 2010 the Office of National Statistics surveyed 250,000 people and 71% said they were Christian. Apparently, there has been no decrease over the last 10 years.
This prevailing cultural attachment to Christianity is paying good dividends wherever Christian believers reach out in evangelism. Some are too quick to dismiss the increasing pockets of church growth evident in many British cities by pointing out that they are mainly among immigrant populations and ethnic minorities. True, many of the most encouraging signs are found among these communities, but it is nevertheless happening today, and it is happening in Britain. We still have a responsive environment in which to proclaim Christ. For years now in London, one in two serious conversations about Christ leads to a personal commitment. We regularly see signs and wonders on the streets and in our communities. Increasing numbers of those from Muslim backgrounds and other religions are also joyfully coming to faith in Christ.
Another little-known fact is the rise of the new church planting movement in Britain. Between 1998 and 2005 churches were being planted across the UK at a rate faster than Starbucks could open new coffee shops. 481 Starbucks new branches were opened while 500 new churches were planted. At that time the coffee business was booming and Starbucks was one of the great pre-credit crunch commercial success stories. That success was openly reported, but little attention was given to the greater spiritual success story of church planting.
Today, there are positive signs of life returning to the non-Pentecostal denominations. We are encouraged to notice the results of recent statistical surveys which provide hard evidence suggesting the long decline in British main-stream church attendance has finally stabilised. For example, the Baptist Union of Great Britain has seen attendance rise in recent years with particular growth among young people aged 13 to 18.
The Church of England has also seen modest but steady growth in attendance over the last ten years.? These figures include midweek attendance and not just Sunday morning worship, showing how churches have been adapting and changing in recent years. But there are many aspects of church growth that do not yet figure in the statistics that reveal the situation is even better than we thought. These include recent Anglican ?fresh expressions? of church ? a relevant and flexible approach to church designed to impact and transform whole communities.
The Anglican Church has also has been responsible for devising the most successful evangelistic tool in recent British church history. Two and a half million people have attended Alpha courses in Britain with courses now available for the workplace and for prisons, 70% of which are officially registered as Alpha course providers.
Christianity is increasingly being publically acknowledged as a vital arm of social and spiritual care, not only in prisons, but also hospitals, youth work, marriage and family support groups, drug rehabilitation. There are, of course, highly-vocal and all too often successful secular attempts to stifle specifically Christian faith-based projects of social outreach to the community. But our efforts have been largely welcomed by the public powers ? apart from, of course, those whose personal agendas are motivated by the new Christianophobia.
But, desperate (and, therefore, increasingly shrill) secular-humanist objections to Christian influence in the public arena, cannot persuade government agencies to refuse the help coming from Christian churches. Constrained by finance, the statutory sector is creaking under the weight of the ever-burgeoning social needs of our society. The government and the nation are becoming increasingly dependent upon the initiatives coming from voluntary organisations, a great number of which are Christian-based. More than ever, Britain is looking for help from practical and relevant expressions of Christianity and is increasingly open to them as a constructive force for good.
Challenges
With these positive signs, there are, however, some disturbing trends increasingly evident within the spiritual climate of Britain. In June 2008, the Church of England issued a report entitled ?Moral, But No Compass? criticising the policies of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown for favouring Islam and minority religions and of paying mere lip service to Christianity. The report voiced growing concerns held by a broad range of Church groups, Christian agencies and Denominational leaders about the perceived growing marginalisation of Christian values and ethics in British society.
In the wake of the widespread looting and rioting that shocked Britain in August 2011 other reports highlighted what was called our ?broken society?. It seemed as if the lid was taken off and we could see what was seething inside ? a mass-produced mess of relational dysfunction, benefit dependence and moral decay. Church leaders pointed out that these were the inevitable effects of the selfish ?me? culture that always dominates society when Christian values are ignored.
Britain, with the fourth largest economy in the world, is home to the largest proportion of personal debt, drug addiction and the highest proportion of family breakdown. In 2011, it was reported that in the previous 15 years alcohol consumption amongst adolescents had doubled with 10 per cent of 11 to 12 year-olds regularly binge drinking. Britain remains the abortion capital of Europe and now ranks fifth in the world for the number of abortions behind Russia, the US and Japan.
The breakdown of marriage and the family in Britain is now undeniable. Marriage statistics for England and Wales in 2009 were the lowest in 112 years, while divorce statistics continued to soar with an estimated ?20 billion annual cost to public funds due to the on-going effects and long term damage of family breakdown. Despite the growing body of evidence that marriage is the most stable family structure, successive governments have refused to promote it as an important part of fixing our broken society. The Millenium Cohort Study (which surveyed more than 15,00 children born in 2001 and 2002) showed that by the age of three, the children of cohabiting parents were generally three times more likely to have suffered the break-up of their family than the children of married parents.
One might expect that governmental authorities would be conceding that the ?liberal experiment? had failed and that it was time to pay more attention to the Christian values upon which Britain, along with the rest of Western Civilisation, was founded. Not so. The government?s attitude to Islam comes dangerously close to favouritism. This vocal minority is all but being promoted by governmental attitudes and actions, and Britain edges nearer and nearer to full Islamisation.
The ?no go areas? for non-Muslims in the parts of Britain?s inner cities where there are significant majority Muslim populations, the introduction of Sharia law by stealth and the increasing introduction of Muslim dietary laws in public places, expose government decisions not to preserve, but to abandon the traditional Christian values of Britain. Successive governments have shown a stubborn refusal to understand the true nature of Islam. They have never admitted that the plain teaching of the Quran and the Hadith, which is consistently upheld by countless authoritative Fatwas binding upon all Muslims, represents true Islam. Instead, they have chosen to promote the bizarre view that violent Jihad, anti-Semitism, intolerance of other religions and the harsh penalties of Sharia, so clearly taught in Islam, are nothing but a cynical perversion of the true Islam which is actually tolerant, peace loving and consistent with the democratic values of the West.
While this perceived favouritism continues to appease Islam, the opposition to Christians is fast developing into thinly-veiled persecution. Examples of discrimination against Christians abound, including the intolerance toward those who refuse to accept the gay life-style to be morally viable, and the scorn heaped out on those who dare to share their faith with a Muslim. Surely, freedom of opinion and speech have died in Britain when a Christian couple is banned from fostering children after refusing to condone homosexuality. Or, when a Christian owner of a caf? displaying Bible verses is told (incorrectly) by police that he is breaking the law. Or, when a nurse is suspended for offering to pray for a patient. Or, when a van driver faces disciplinary action if he refuses to remove a palm cross from his dashboard. Or, a supply teacher is dismissed when she mentions praying for a child’s family.
We should not label all opposition as persecution, but when one in four Christians say they have suffered discrimination in the workplace, it is time to pay attention. The trend is being noticed by Christians and non Christians alike. In a May 2010 a ComRes poll of Christians and non-Christians, showed that 38% believed that the marginalisation of Christianity was increasing. In March 2011, a similar ComRes poll found that 37% of the general public felt the Government favours other religions over Christianity. In the 2010 survey, 43% of the general public said they expected the marginalisation of Christians in society to increase in the next five years.
Authentic church
From a Christian perspective, we notice both the positive and the negative trends in our society. How should we evaluate these? What is God saying to us? I truly believe that the only hope for our nation is the gospel of Christ. Not just because it is the only hope of heaven to a world lost and on its way to perdition, but also because the gospel is the only hope for the kind of restoration our society needs. This is the message and way of life we are called as churches to experience, demonstrate and proclaim. If we want to rise to the challenges of a nation needing truth we must become good news for that nation and not just preach good news to it.
Therefore, I believe that the most urgent need of the hour is for a root-and-branch reappraisal of the way we understand and do church in today?s world. It is not, fundamentally, about structure but about returning to Christ as the only foundation of our vision and values. Nothing short of a widespread revival of radical Christian faith and living will come up to the mark.
A quote from Francis Schaeffer, the Christian philosopher and activist, underlines the fact that the credibility of our message lies in the quality of our corporate life. He said, ?Our relationship with each other is the criterion the world uses to judge whether our message is truthful?Christian community is the final apologetic.? We must show our nation that Christ is real and that he is everything we claim him to be. It must begin with us.
Not so long after I wrote this article, David Cameron made an historic speech on the importance of the Church taking a leading role in society… read it here
For all the references, click here

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