Magic Statistics

Two items with far-reaching theological implications appear in today's online edition of London's Daily Telegraph.

The first item is Lord Pearson's first-person account of an experience he had during a recent surgery. (Lord Pearson is a prominent and out-spoken Eurosceptic, i.e., critic of British involvement in the European Community.) Although anaesthetised, he felt he was awake and in terrible pain. He heard voices speaking around him and to him. Then he believes he was ushered into the presence of God, who gave him a message to bring back.

The message was that God was sad because He was losing the fight of good against evil, and sad because people have lost faith.

I realised that this was the message I had to bring back and tell people: that it is possible God will indeed lose, and that people must fight harder for good against evil, for right against wrong, if He is to win.

This experience has fundamentally changed his understanding of Christian teaching: "I suppose I am still a Christian, but a rebellious one. To me the Church's message is weak: it believes that God will ultimately win, whether people fight for good or not. That is not the message that I was given when I met God."

This raises so many theological red flags that one hardly knows where to start. First of all, Lord Pearson's message conflicts with Christian belief that God is omnipotent and omniscient. If God is omnipotent, then he can certainly conquer evil no matter how strongly the forces of darkness resist. If He is omniscient, then He is in no doubt about the final outcome of the fight between good and evil. The being who delivered this message to Lord Pearson is neither all-powerful nor all-knowing.

Moreover, God has revealed that history will end with His victory and the defeat of Satan. According to the Bible, God's ultimate triumph over evil is not in doubt. (See, e.g., 1 Cor 15:20-28; 2 Cor 5:10; Rev 21:1-8.) Shortly before he ascended into heaven following His resurrection, Jesus told the disciples, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me" (Mt 28:18). But, according to Lord Pearson, God made a mistake and now realises that He doesn't have all that much authority.

Lord Pearson calls the traditional Christian belief in God's omnipotence "weak". To the contrary, it is in fact Lord Pearson's message that is weak. His message makes God simply pathetic, a figure to be pitied. This "God" is not only lacking in power, He even feels rather down at the mouth because of it. Lord Pearson says it is up to human beings to ensure the defeat of evil because God is not up to it on His own. This is hardly a "God" who would command the worship, respect, and obedience of those who believe in Him.

I guess you just can't believe everything you hear while you're in the middle of undergoing surgery.

This brings us to the second item: an opinion piece by the highly respected academic historian Niall Ferguson. Prof Ferguson is disturbed by the decline of Christian belief in modern Britain and argues that this decline has made Britain (and, a fortiori, the rest of Europe) an easy target for Muslim terrorists.

Prof Ferguson ridicules the belief of suicide bombers that they will be rewarded with 80 virgins in the hereafter, but then is dumbfounded by a British reporter who, like most of her colleagues, believes in nothing at all. He laments the loss of European Christendom; he cites the wisdom of such Christian literary figures as G.K. Chesterton, Evelyn Waugh, and C.S. Lewis; he provides a litany of depressing statistics on the low state of British religiosity. He is evidently deeply concerned by "the moral vacuum our dechristianisation has created".

For all these reasons, he believes the British people "must" return to their traditional religion. Yet, already in his second paragraph, Prof Ferguson has admitted being, in a sense, part of the problem. "I am a hard-shelled materialist myself", he says rather sheepishly.

The irony does not prevent my agreeing with Prof Ferguson's analysis. I find the situation as troubling as he does. As for what to do in response, it is good to encourage others to return to the church. But even above this, I think a productive, and most personally edifying, course for him to follow would be seriously to consider becoming part of the solution.

The Collect for today, the 10th Sunday After Trinity, from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer:

Let thy merciful ears, O Lord, be open to the prayers of thy humble servants; and that they may obtain their petitions make them to ask such things as shall please thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

At right: Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556), Archbishop of Canterbury, Martyr.

He is believed to be the principal author of the early editions of the Book of Common Prayer. During the reign of Bloody Mary, he was burned at the stake in Oxford.

Since she's off school for the summer, the StatDaughter tells me she has been spending a lot of time watching Food Network Canada. Today she tried out another recipe she saw on the channel and downloaded from the foodtv.ca website.

She has surpassed herself with this chocolate cream pie. We sampled it for dinner, and it's superb.

More from our Summer 2004 vacation. On our last day at Oban, we took a day tour to the island of Iona. This is a very important island in Christian history. A monastery was established there in 563 by St Columba, which became the staging point for the evangelisation of southern Scotland and northern England as well as a centre for Christian scholarship. It is not easy to get to, even today.

A day trip from Oban allows maybe three hours on Iona itself; if we had the visit to do over again, we would stay on Iona for one or two nights. It's a beautiful and wonderfully peaceful place—even more peaceful in the evening and early morning than in the afternoon when all the day trippers crowd in.

The next three photos illustrate the logistics of transportation from Oban to Iona. First, there's the ferry from Oban to Craignure on the island of Mull; this takes about 45 minutes.

Second, there's the 30-mile bus ride from Craignure to Fionnphort on the far side on Mull via a single-track road—another 75 minutes.

Third, a foot-passenger ferry from Fionnphort to Iona. This last leg takes only 15 minutes.

So, after rising bright and early in Oban, we arrived on Iona at 12h30. We went right to the Argyll Hotel for an excellent pub lunch. Then we set off toward the nunnery and Iona Abbey. We looked around the ruins of the nunnery, walked by MacLean's Cross, and looked into St Oran's Chapel and the Abbey. Time was much too short, and we felt we had only a few minutes to spend at each location of interest before we had to rush on to the next. It was at this point that we wished we had planned to spend a night or two on Iona itself.

Above is the Abbey as it looked on the day we visited. The original monastery was destroyed by the Vikings in the 8th and 9th centuries, re-established in the 12th century, and disbanded again after the Reformation; then the abbey was restored in the 20th century and a Christian community lives and works there today. The permanent population of Iona is currently about 130.

Below, the StatDaughter and I are standing in front of St Martin's Cross, which dates to the late 8th century. At one time, Iona was covered with hundreds of standing crosses, but today only three survive. This is the only one standing in the place where it was originally erected.

Links to all my blog posts about British churches and Christian sites can be accessed through the box located at the top of the page. 

This is one of those rare instances where Yukon makes the national news.

Douglas Farrow, Associate Professor of Christian Thought at McGill Univ., has contributed a strongly worded essay to the Web Elves at CaNN regarding the legalisation of same-sex marriage in Canada. He predicts that this law will destroy marriage as a meaningful social institution but, before that actually happens, the war between pro- and anti-marriage forces will move into the schools.

“We shall seduce them in your schools,” prophesied Michael Swift in Gay Revolutionary, and it seems he wasn’t kidding after all. Those who see in this 1987 diatribe only its deliberate excesses – “for us too much is not enough” – are being played for fools. “There will be no compromises,” warns Swift; “those who oppose us will be exiled.” Quite so, if the case of Chris Kempling, the B.C. teacher who was banished and fined for his opposition to homosexuality, is anything to go by.

Read the whole thing.

Prof Farrow's recommended course of action is to pass a constitutional amendment preserving the traditional definition of marriage. Although I agree with Farrow's perspective and I hate to raise a discouraging word, but the Canadian constitution is practically impossible to amend. It was apparently designed that way. (Maybe Trudeau thought his creation was perfect as is?) I myself would whole-heartedly support such an amendment, but I don't have a lot of hope for its success.

By the way, Prof Farrow is on the steering committee of a non-profit organisation called Enshrine Marriage Canada. Their website is quite impressive and very interesting.

Another reason to visit Enshrine Marriage Canada is to sign their online petition calling for a marriage amendment to the Canadian constitution. I've already expressed my view on the likelihood of its passing. However, one of the fundamental principles of Christian ethics is to do the right thing and leave the consequences to the Lord. So, those who think that a marriage amendment is the right thing for Canada might prayerfully consider signing the petition.

Last summer, we went on the vacation of a lifetime. My wife, daughter, and I spent seven weeks in Britain and one in Paris. One year ago today, we arrived in Oban for a three-day stay. Here's me on the waterfront.