A friend, a lifelong neo-Marxist humanist, was in hospital with cancer, and one night it all got too much for him. He was crying quietly, trying not to disturb the others in the ward, when a nurse came in, noticed his distress and listened to his fears about life and death and suffering.
She suggested he needed Jesus in his life, and gave him a prayer to say at any time if he chose to hand his life over to the one who had already given up his life for him.
He thought he had nothing to lose and, later that night, decided to invite Jesus into his life.
He said a total peace enveloped him and he slept till morning.
The next day the peace remained.
He could have reported the nurse. She could have been disciplined, cautioned not to speak again about her faith, or even have lost her job.
He knew this, and knew that she knew it too. The fact that she had taken this risk for him, he said, gave her action value and made him more inclined to listen.
It worries me that another nurse has been sacked this week, not for mentioning the God-word to a patient but for mentioning – in a training role-play exercise – that he wouldn't rule out this possibility in certain circumstances.
It worries me that Christians in Eritrea are being imprisoned in shipping containers and beaten for refusing to renounce their faith.
It worries me that public organisations in the UK are countenancing a superstitious taboo against mentioning the name of God to anyone who appears to hold different beliefs or doesn't know what to believe.
And it worries me most that ardent human rights activists are nonchalent about defending a person's right to vote for God with their life.
Surely it has to count for as much as the right to campaign and vote for a fallible politician?
Monday, 25 May 2009
Thursday, 7 May 2009
Offensive
I’m bemused by news items about Christian people suspended from their jobs for offering to pray for their patients, colleagues or clients, or even for asking their own church members to pray about a personal situation involving their work.
Who are these people who claim to be offended by someone praying? Or, more often, claiming not to be offended themselves but afraid that ‘other people might be’?
Surely, in a country supporting free speech and freedom of belief, this is hardly a disciplinary issue, let alone a sacking offence?
As long as the person to whom the prayer is offered is free to say no, why would anyone find it offensive that someone offers them the best they have to give, whatever it is?
As a Christian, I’ve sometimes been a bit taken aback when someone who knows I believe in the God of Jesus Christ has offered me crystals, astrology charts, ‘psychic healing’ or invited me to follow the latest personality claiming to have all the answers to the mystery of life.
But I’m not actually offended by it, and I try not to offend them when I refuse.
If anything, it seems a good sign that people are searching for truth and meaning, even if takes them on some rather odd - to my mind - routes.
So if anyone finds it eccentric that in this day and age, as in every other, people believe in Jesus Christ and find it worthwhile to pray to a God who listens and cares and has been known to provide solutions to problems that appear beyond human remedy, I quite understand if they don’t want me praying with them.
But being forced to not speak about what I genuinely believe to be good, or being told that offering to pray for someone is offensive, seems to me an abuse of authority and a form of fundamentalism.
Who are these people who claim to be offended by someone praying? Or, more often, claiming not to be offended themselves but afraid that ‘other people might be’?
Surely, in a country supporting free speech and freedom of belief, this is hardly a disciplinary issue, let alone a sacking offence?
As long as the person to whom the prayer is offered is free to say no, why would anyone find it offensive that someone offers them the best they have to give, whatever it is?
As a Christian, I’ve sometimes been a bit taken aback when someone who knows I believe in the God of Jesus Christ has offered me crystals, astrology charts, ‘psychic healing’ or invited me to follow the latest personality claiming to have all the answers to the mystery of life.
But I’m not actually offended by it, and I try not to offend them when I refuse.
If anything, it seems a good sign that people are searching for truth and meaning, even if takes them on some rather odd - to my mind - routes.
So if anyone finds it eccentric that in this day and age, as in every other, people believe in Jesus Christ and find it worthwhile to pray to a God who listens and cares and has been known to provide solutions to problems that appear beyond human remedy, I quite understand if they don’t want me praying with them.
But being forced to not speak about what I genuinely believe to be good, or being told that offering to pray for someone is offensive, seems to me an abuse of authority and a form of fundamentalism.
Tuesday, 5 May 2009
Broad canvas
Most people are familiar with famous paintings without ever going to an art gallery. The really well-known ones, like the Mona Lisa, or Monet's waterlilies, are everywhere in print, from postcards to biscuit tins.
But it's only by going to see the original that you realise the scale of the painting. It's surprising to find that the Mona Lisa is quite small, while Monet's waterlilies fill an entire wall of a Paris gallery.
Spiritually, people seem to be designed on different-sized canvases.
Looking at people's lives superficially is like looking at prints of paintings side by side: in the same format, all poster or postcard size, you can't see the scale of their character or the brush-strokes the Artist used.
Some seem more accurately defined and others may look a bit slapdash. The talent in some is more obvious than in others. The faults in some are more hidden, while in others they hit you in the eye.
Attempting to see someone through God's eyes, as happens when you pray for a person rather than judge them by your own impression or by comparison with somebody else alongside, is like going from seeing a print to seeing the original.
One person may be designed on a small canvas with such delicate brushstrokes that their whole life escapes notice by casual observers. This person doesn't appear to achieve great things or fill their life with events.
But on closer examination their life is full of exquisite detail, unobserved kindnesses, deepening character, shades of meaning and understanding.
There will be faults in there too, but on such a small scale they may escape detection except by someone who really takes the trouble to see the whole picture.
This is the kind of person who may get away with claiming they've never really done anything wrong in their life. Their faults are not of the spectacular variety.
Another person may be designed on a broader canvas. You can't miss seeing them. Their achievements attract attention. And so do their misdemeanours.
With a large, open character, a person's range of talents and depth of heart are easy to discern. But when this person makes a mistake, it's big-time. Casual viewers are more likely to condemn them. They can't get away with their failures: everyone sees.
It just doesn't work, somehow, comparing people's lives with each other's. It's like looking at postcard prints when you could go to the gallery, see the original and even, if it's contemporary, meet the artist.
A person with big talents and big emotions is going to be subject to a wider range of temptations.
A person who is sensitively designed will have more of their life affected by the same suffering that a larger-scale person would to confine to one corner of their life and ignore.
Only the Artist knows how he designed each of us.
Perhaps that's why he reserves the right to be the only Judge of humankind.
But it's only by going to see the original that you realise the scale of the painting. It's surprising to find that the Mona Lisa is quite small, while Monet's waterlilies fill an entire wall of a Paris gallery.
Spiritually, people seem to be designed on different-sized canvases.
Looking at people's lives superficially is like looking at prints of paintings side by side: in the same format, all poster or postcard size, you can't see the scale of their character or the brush-strokes the Artist used.
Some seem more accurately defined and others may look a bit slapdash. The talent in some is more obvious than in others. The faults in some are more hidden, while in others they hit you in the eye.
Attempting to see someone through God's eyes, as happens when you pray for a person rather than judge them by your own impression or by comparison with somebody else alongside, is like going from seeing a print to seeing the original.
One person may be designed on a small canvas with such delicate brushstrokes that their whole life escapes notice by casual observers. This person doesn't appear to achieve great things or fill their life with events.
But on closer examination their life is full of exquisite detail, unobserved kindnesses, deepening character, shades of meaning and understanding.
There will be faults in there too, but on such a small scale they may escape detection except by someone who really takes the trouble to see the whole picture.
This is the kind of person who may get away with claiming they've never really done anything wrong in their life. Their faults are not of the spectacular variety.
Another person may be designed on a broader canvas. You can't miss seeing them. Their achievements attract attention. And so do their misdemeanours.
With a large, open character, a person's range of talents and depth of heart are easy to discern. But when this person makes a mistake, it's big-time. Casual viewers are more likely to condemn them. They can't get away with their failures: everyone sees.
It just doesn't work, somehow, comparing people's lives with each other's. It's like looking at postcard prints when you could go to the gallery, see the original and even, if it's contemporary, meet the artist.
A person with big talents and big emotions is going to be subject to a wider range of temptations.
A person who is sensitively designed will have more of their life affected by the same suffering that a larger-scale person would to confine to one corner of their life and ignore.
Only the Artist knows how he designed each of us.
Perhaps that's why he reserves the right to be the only Judge of humankind.
Saturday, 21 March 2009
Under the microscope
My cousin who is a scientist started a new job which involved examining an unfamiliar set of samples under the microscope and found it took time to ‘get her eye in’ and be able to discern what she was looking at.
Although she had many years’ experience of microscope work, looking for the first time at new material meant that at first, quite literally, she couldn’t see for looking.
A true story is also told of remote tribespeople who were filmed by a visiting Westerner, who then showed them the film. All they could see were shadows moving across a white screen.
After a long time of staring at the shadows, one man distinguished the shape of a chicken.
Once several people followed his pointing and identified the chicken, they began to see other things - houses in the background, then faces they could recognise.
They were amazed - both by seeing their lives on screen and by the fact that they hadn’t been able to see any of it in the beginning.
I’ve spent quite a lot of time with quite a lot of people who, for most of their lives, thought religion was pie-in-the-sky and faith was for people with too much imagination who needed to get a life.
Some of those people then came to believe in a historically documented person called Jesus Christ, and in a God who has got a life but isn’t content to stay up in the sky enjoying the perks of divinity, who chooses to walk alongside us unlovable human creatures in order to show us we’re loved, and who chooses to do it through that same person Jesus Christ today, tomorrow, the next day and into infinity.
And, seeing the reaction of those people who believed it was all just shadows and misconceptions, I can’t help wondering if there is a parallel: that at first, however hard they looked at the evidence and heard other people’s accounts of what they had seen and experienced, they couldn’t see anything in it themselves.
Even if they were trying sincerely to examine what it was that people believed, they ‘couldn’t see for looking’ - until suddenly they got their eye in, the shadows shifted, the microscope focused, and they were faced with an undeniable reality.
Although she had many years’ experience of microscope work, looking for the first time at new material meant that at first, quite literally, she couldn’t see for looking.
A true story is also told of remote tribespeople who were filmed by a visiting Westerner, who then showed them the film. All they could see were shadows moving across a white screen.
After a long time of staring at the shadows, one man distinguished the shape of a chicken.
Once several people followed his pointing and identified the chicken, they began to see other things - houses in the background, then faces they could recognise.
They were amazed - both by seeing their lives on screen and by the fact that they hadn’t been able to see any of it in the beginning.
I’ve spent quite a lot of time with quite a lot of people who, for most of their lives, thought religion was pie-in-the-sky and faith was for people with too much imagination who needed to get a life.
Some of those people then came to believe in a historically documented person called Jesus Christ, and in a God who has got a life but isn’t content to stay up in the sky enjoying the perks of divinity, who chooses to walk alongside us unlovable human creatures in order to show us we’re loved, and who chooses to do it through that same person Jesus Christ today, tomorrow, the next day and into infinity.
And, seeing the reaction of those people who believed it was all just shadows and misconceptions, I can’t help wondering if there is a parallel: that at first, however hard they looked at the evidence and heard other people’s accounts of what they had seen and experienced, they couldn’t see anything in it themselves.
Even if they were trying sincerely to examine what it was that people believed, they ‘couldn’t see for looking’ - until suddenly they got their eye in, the shadows shifted, the microscope focused, and they were faced with an undeniable reality.
Friday, 20 March 2009
Awarded the CDM
An old marketing campaign for Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate bars went: ‘Award yourself the CDM.’
Innocuous enough, except that CDM might just as well have stood for ‘Children Damaged for Merchandise’ - the cocoa industry being among the worst offenders for exploiting trafficked children.
Children are still routinely abducted from home or kidnapped from the streets, with poor and vulnerable children prime targets, and forced to work long hours on the cocoa plantations for little or no pay.
Fairtrade chocolate is therefore about far more than ensuring a fair price for local producers: it is about banning child slavery in the chocolate industry.
Cadbury’s has now announced that its most popular chocolate bar - the CDM - has gone Fairtrade.
The news is fantastic and hopefully will mean that children who have been secreted on plantations can be traced and returned to their families, or accommodated and educated in places where they are finally allowed to have a childhood.
Working to banish child exploitation (and, indirectly, child trafficking to feed the demand) on plantations where it has been normal practice for so long, has taken time, resources and effort on the part of Cadbury’s and they should indeed be awarded a CDM for persevering.
And of course what can be achieved for one chocolate bar can be achieved for all its other chocolate products.
And what can be achieved by one chocolate manufacturer can be achieved equally by all the others.
It would be great if our next generation of chocolate-munching schoolchildren were horrified to learn about the bad old days when chocolate was confected out of the misery of stolen children.
Because by then, we hope, all chocolate will be Fairtrade.
Innocuous enough, except that CDM might just as well have stood for ‘Children Damaged for Merchandise’ - the cocoa industry being among the worst offenders for exploiting trafficked children.
Children are still routinely abducted from home or kidnapped from the streets, with poor and vulnerable children prime targets, and forced to work long hours on the cocoa plantations for little or no pay.
Fairtrade chocolate is therefore about far more than ensuring a fair price for local producers: it is about banning child slavery in the chocolate industry.
Cadbury’s has now announced that its most popular chocolate bar - the CDM - has gone Fairtrade.
The news is fantastic and hopefully will mean that children who have been secreted on plantations can be traced and returned to their families, or accommodated and educated in places where they are finally allowed to have a childhood.
Working to banish child exploitation (and, indirectly, child trafficking to feed the demand) on plantations where it has been normal practice for so long, has taken time, resources and effort on the part of Cadbury’s and they should indeed be awarded a CDM for persevering.
And of course what can be achieved for one chocolate bar can be achieved for all its other chocolate products.
And what can be achieved by one chocolate manufacturer can be achieved equally by all the others.
It would be great if our next generation of chocolate-munching schoolchildren were horrified to learn about the bad old days when chocolate was confected out of the misery of stolen children.
Because by then, we hope, all chocolate will be Fairtrade.
Tuesday, 10 February 2009
Tears of the Desert
Completely wowed by Halima Bashir's book 'Tears of the Desert'.
Halima Bashir grew up in a village community in a peaceful place whose name has since become synonymous with genocide – the Sudanese region of Darfur.
A happy child and a bright student, she qualified as a medical doctor and worked diligently for her patients, treating Arabs and Africans alike. For this 'crime' she was abducted, tortured and gang-raped. Returning home, she shared in the experience of a savage attack on her village which left all the adult males dead, and she was forced to flee for her life.
Selling everything she had to come to a safe country, she arrived in the UK as an asylum seeker – only to be disbelieved, told she had insufficient documentation to prove her status, and informed that Sudan was safe.
Her appeal was turned down but when advocates took up her cause, an appeal was made to the House of Lords to declare Darfur still an unsafe place to return victims of hate and torture, while the same authorities remained in power.
In the days before the bill was passed, Darfuri refugees were rounded up and forcibly deported back to the Sudan. Several were captured and tortured again.
Halima Bashan remained to tell the story – her own and that of her compatriots who either didn't survive the racism in their own country, or who didn't survive the UK's attempt to reduce its immigrant statistics at all costs.
It's an amazing book written by a person with amazing courage.
Halima Bashir grew up in a village community in a peaceful place whose name has since become synonymous with genocide – the Sudanese region of Darfur.
A happy child and a bright student, she qualified as a medical doctor and worked diligently for her patients, treating Arabs and Africans alike. For this 'crime' she was abducted, tortured and gang-raped. Returning home, she shared in the experience of a savage attack on her village which left all the adult males dead, and she was forced to flee for her life.
Selling everything she had to come to a safe country, she arrived in the UK as an asylum seeker – only to be disbelieved, told she had insufficient documentation to prove her status, and informed that Sudan was safe.
Her appeal was turned down but when advocates took up her cause, an appeal was made to the House of Lords to declare Darfur still an unsafe place to return victims of hate and torture, while the same authorities remained in power.
In the days before the bill was passed, Darfuri refugees were rounded up and forcibly deported back to the Sudan. Several were captured and tortured again.
Halima Bashan remained to tell the story – her own and that of her compatriots who either didn't survive the racism in their own country, or who didn't survive the UK's attempt to reduce its immigrant statistics at all costs.
It's an amazing book written by a person with amazing courage.
Sunday, 8 February 2009
The safest investment
One effect of the credit collapse, and the problems caused by 'virtual money' not having been backed up the real stuff, is that people and organisations, having lost real money, are understandably reluctant to invest in anything else. Even the 'safest' investment is now seen as 'virtual' – looking and sounding real and attractive on the surface but with nothing behind it.
Sadly, that reluctance to invest any cash in anything at all is having a disastrous effect on charities whose work involves the poorest of the poor.
Whereas it was difficult before for smaller charities to ensure funding for the next stage of a vital project – or even to pay next month's modest salaries – now they are finding it impossible.
It's a tragedy not only for the people who need to benefit from the charities' aid in order to survive, but for the potential donors.
Investing in people's lives, enabling them to rise from hopelessness and abject poverty to confidence and the ability to survive, is not virtual reality or an attractive concept but real and – when you see it happen – enlivening.
Organisations like Oasis India which is transforming the lives of hidden and overlooked people in Mumbai slums, or women and children rescued from the human trafficking trade, are a fantastic investment. For very small sums of money, the life of human being with nothing to live for or hope for, day to day, can be completely turned around.
What investment could possibly yield richer dividends, short-term or long-term?
Sadly, that reluctance to invest any cash in anything at all is having a disastrous effect on charities whose work involves the poorest of the poor.
Whereas it was difficult before for smaller charities to ensure funding for the next stage of a vital project – or even to pay next month's modest salaries – now they are finding it impossible.
It's a tragedy not only for the people who need to benefit from the charities' aid in order to survive, but for the potential donors.
Investing in people's lives, enabling them to rise from hopelessness and abject poverty to confidence and the ability to survive, is not virtual reality or an attractive concept but real and – when you see it happen – enlivening.
Organisations like Oasis India which is transforming the lives of hidden and overlooked people in Mumbai slums, or women and children rescued from the human trafficking trade, are a fantastic investment. For very small sums of money, the life of human being with nothing to live for or hope for, day to day, can be completely turned around.
What investment could possibly yield richer dividends, short-term or long-term?
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