 
As I read through this book I found myself entertained by a multitude and kaleidoscope of anecdotes taken often from the author's own life experiences, soon learned not to be fooled by these interesting and sometimes humorous stories, because suddenly one is confronted by some chokingly basic issues of life. The anecdotes vary, but the thread of Christ weaves in and out as a highly persistent and convincing relevance to each issue and illustration. The fallacy of fallen human thinking (often pseudo-scientific and highly intellectual) is tested throughout by the authors uncompromising confrontation by the True Truth of Biblical revelation. Mike writes like he talks which makes the read easy and personal. Apart from linking Christ to a variety of 'factual investigations' we are all familiar with, preachers, Bible study leaders and public speakers will find a wealth of extremely clear illustrations and convincing, logical arguments that are worth remembering.

Revd Colin Bishop (Director, Transformation Time. Howick, KwaZulu-Natal)

According to Jesus?

Mike L Anderson

Published by Smashwords

Copyright Mike L Anderson

ISBN 978-1-4581-8659-1

Discover other titles by Mike L Anderson at Smashwords.com

http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/mikelanderson

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Unless otherwise stated, quotations from the Bible are taken from Holy Bible: New International Version, Copyright © 1978 by the International Bible Society, New York.

All Bible quotations are from the New International Version unless otherwise stated.

###  Dedication

This book is dedicated to all my prayer and financial supporters.

Preface

This book could have been entitled "What would Jesus think?" but that title had already been taken. What would Jesus think about drugs, dinosaurs, Christmas trees, fairies or gaming? Although he said nothing about these things specifically, it is possible to be deeply and positively influenced by the Person, life, resurrection and especially the death of Christ while investigating the facts for ourselves. This book shows how. The book is a proposal. I suppose that the gospel is too exquisitely deep for anyone to have been fully properly infused by it. Only one Man has ever succeeded. I am just thinking to myself while trying to let Jesus in.

###  Acknowledements

Contents

1. How not to enter a prayer-meeting

2. Superman according to the Gospel

3 .The powerlessness and power of virtual life

4. Black-and-white thinking and trigger-happy cowboys

5. Prickly pears and methamphetamines

6. Lotto nonsense?

7. How not to look for stationary

8. Who lost a day? Not God

9. Easter eggs according to Jesus

10. Fabricated gods

11. How do you tell the sex of a chromosome?

12. The Bible Code revealed

13. How to be unromantic

14. Christmas trees and intelligent design according to Jesus

15. Shroud of Turin: shroud of Christ?

16. Was Jesus a scientist?

17. Mom, where do dinosaurs come from?

18. How not to take photographs

19. How not to evangelise evolutionists

20. The mind according to the Master

21. Jesus says it with flowers

22. The True Vine and the false

23. How not to speak to an audience

24. Fairies according to Jesus

25. Vic

26. Miracles according to Jesus

27. How not to change washers

28. How to and how not to find God's will for your life

29. How not to introduce oneself

30. The ultimate exam technique

31. Mathematical proofs according to Jesus

32. Evil according to Jesus

33. Dorian

34. Pete according to Jesus

About the author

Other titles by the author

Notes

1. How not to enter a prayer-meeting

It started with a dreamy shower. I like to think that this is one of the better opportunities for brainstorming. I carry on dreaming while I towel myself down. I'm still dreaming while I walk around the bedroom to let the remaining moisture evaporate. I'm still dreaming when I decide to bounce an idea off my wife, Janice, while drying off. (I believe in multi-tasking).

I expected Janice to be in the lounge.

Unfortunately, I failed to realise that she was hosting a ladies prayer meeting.

Fortunately, they believed in "so with all eyes closed, let's pray..."

Unfortunately, they choose to pray quietly. There were no ecstatic "amens" to alert me to the spiritual nature of the occasion.

Still very much in my dream world, I stepped, naked, just through the lounge doorway.

Fortunately, my wife spotted me immediately.

Unfortunately, the only strategic communication she had available was strictly non-verbal.

Fortunately, she managed to produce one of the most expressive faces she had ever mustered. It said in effect, "This is a prayer-meeting you dithering idiot. Get out of the lounge!"

Unfortunately, because Janice is such an evenly sweet soul, I had some difficulty reading her.

It took a couple of long seconds for the full reality of the situation to dawn on me. Then, with the surprising grace of a ballerina, I skipped back out of the lounge without being seen.

Later that day, Janice had looks ... and words ... that began along the lines "What the ..."

Then we relived the incident and laughed over the ridiculousness of it all. Before I could berate myself, it occurred to me that the potential for embarrassment comes with my propensity to dream. You can't have one without the other. Dreaming has its benefits and its costs. And God, through Jesus, loves and accepts me - dreamer, warts and all. Not even God can have everything. Even God cannot save humanity without a terrible cost. It left Jesus, naked, humiliated and dying on a cross. Only superheroes have it all and they are firmly in the realm of dreamland.

*****

2. Superman according to the Gospel

There I was just past adolescence, at the edge of a cliff-face in the Magaliesberg Mountains, expecting a piece of string with a 10kg breaking-strain to hold me up. My flying attempt was inadvertent. I had forgotten to transfer a crucial piece of equipment to my harness. Instead, one end was attached to a little piece of string, the other to the rope that would hold me up. You get the picture. The stunt would have been better described as nose-diving than as abseiling. I had bent my legs to spring off when a fellow-climber spotted the error. If he was a second or two late, death would have been inevitable. I waited until that night to think about the incident and pursue the implications. It brought on a cold sweat. Trying to be something I was not had very nearly cost me my life. I was forced to admit my predilection for dreaming - dwelling on things other than the physical task at hand. This makes me a potential candidate for the Darwin Awards. The award commemorates "those individuals who ensure the long-term survival of our species by removing themselves from the gene pool in a sublimely idiotic fashion." Nowadays, to avoid nomination, I try to relegate adrenalin rushes to extreme sports of the PC-game variety.

What got me up the mountain in the first place? Perhaps I was trying to undo past sporting failure. (I was finally kicked off a school rugby team after tackling a guy who didn't have the ball and was on my own team!). Perhaps a childhood staple of Superman comics fostered the notion that the ideal man is defined by his physical prowess?

Superman has certainly had a tremendous influence on popular culture. He is considered to be a universal icon. Need one have any beef with Superman as escapist fun? However, he does have a serious side. Religious education classes in the United Kingdom have even used Superman as a way of introducing people to Jesus. Superman stories may indeed illustrate spiritual truths – all truth is God's truth - but how does the Ideal Man, Jesus, compare with Superman.

Superman according to Jesus

To be sure there are many parallels between the life of Jesus and the Superhero. It has been remarked, for instance, that "Both Superman and Jesus had earthly family ties, both had heavenly origins, both heroes were raised incognito on Earth, both were of "royal" blood, both righted wrongs, both acted as saviours, both displayed incredible powers, and both performed miracles." There is nothing theologically significant here. The entertainment industry has business savvy. Deliberately weaving in Christian subtexts ensures the inflow of Christian dollars. How ironic that religious education classes use the Superman story to introduce Jesus when the entertainment industry uses the Jesus story to bolster Superman profits!

One author is so besotted with the parallels that he thinks some are inspired by God! He grabs at resemblances between Jesus and Superman as if it they have deep import. In his book entitled The Gospel according to the World's Greatest Superhero he ventures that the "S" on Superman's costume echoes the bronze serpent of the Old Testament (the bronze serpent foreshadowed Jesus Christ). An alternative explanation is that the "S" merely stands for "Superman" and that the perceived parallelism merely reveals the over enthusiasm of a devotee.

To be fair, Superman is upstanding, even respectable and battles crime and other social ills. Is it not churlish for me to nitpick when young people need all the good role models they can get? Nevertheless, the contrasts are very revealing. For all his superior physical abilities, his moral code is not impressive. Semiotics Professor Umberto Eco notes that for Superman "evil assumes only an offense against private property, good is represented only as charity." This is hardly surprising since he is a corporate product. In contrast, Jesus located evil "from within, out of men's hearts." Superman's value system merely parrots current and local moral fashion. According to Lauren Karp in a recent thesis, whenever Superman's popularity slumps he is given a character makeover to boost sales. In contrast, Jesus vigorously reacted against conventional wisdom saying, for instance, "You have heard that it was said, `Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."

Their feats are also different. Superman flies through suns at the speed of light, pushes planets into space, and travels through time. Jesus did not even fly from Galilee to Jerusalem and did nothing to stop the tower of Siloam falling on the eighteen unfortunates. Superman gets his energy needs from photosynthesis; Jesus needed to eat and drink. Why the difference?

It is epitomised by their attire. The entertainment industry makes superheroes wear dazzling costumes to accentuate their distance from humanity; it is preoccupied with spectacular achievement however much it alienates superheroes from people. On the other hand, the plain-clothed Son of Man was preoccupied with close relationship. It is preposterous to imagine Jesus taking the cross and giving his tormentors a hiding with it. Instead he prays in keeping with his ministry of reconciliation, "Father forgive them for they know not what they do." When the bumbling Clark Kent talks to humans, it is an act - Superman is an alien pretending to be human. When Jesus expresses God's love on the cross, it is as a real human in real pain. For Superman the really important stuff happens when he is wearing his cape. For Jesus the really important stuff happened when he was naked on a cross. He did not wear a uniform because he expects us to continue his work with him, invisible, in our hearts.

When Superman "takes care" of a carload of villains with the twirl of one hand it is to merely remove them from his presence and from society; when Jesus takes care of villains it is to restore the ear of one and the souls of many to himself and the community. Superman theatrically treats symptoms; Jesus treats underlying spiritual causes. Jesus' first reaction to the paralytic is to forgive him. When he heals him it is to show that he has the authority to do just that. Superman is into, in the words of Umberto Eco, "parochial performance" whereas Jesus is into interminable impact. When Superman works, people merely watch. When Jesus works it is first for, then in, and then through us. He forgives then sends the forgiven to proclaim God's message of forgiveness.

Superman according to creation

It is not only Jesus that puts superheroes in their place, but God's creation too. My children loved the story I told of the animals hankering after each other's abilities. Mr. Lion felt that his drab coat was unbefitting his status as a king; he wanted to be pink like the flamingos. Mrs. Porcupine was fed up with trying to hug Mr. Porcupine; she wanted the fluffy coat of the rabbits. So it was with many animals. They wanted what the others had. Only the warthog was content to be himself. The animals got together and demanded from God that he change them. God acquiesced. Before long Mr. Lion was exhausted and hungry from all the unsuccessful attempts at hunting. His prey could see him coming from miles away. Mr. and Mrs. Porcupine were equally exhausted and hungry because they had no time to eat. They had to keep running away from all the animals that saw them as an easy meal. Only the unchanged warthog was content. The animals cried out to God to forgive them for their ingratitude and return them to their original state. God did. So it is with his economy. Every strength or ability in one department brings with it a cost in another.

Biologists have discovered the principle playing itself out in remarkable intricacy and scale. Have you ever berated yourself for forgetting that telephone number after closing the directory? It turns out that chimpanzees in some ways have a better short-term memory than we do! It seems that our ancestors replaced this ability with language acquisition. Which would you rather have? How would you like to be able to reassemble yourself after an injury? The humble sponge can do this with ease even after being passed through a sieve! But it comes at great cost – they have no eyes, nose or brain. How would you like to never grow old? Bacteria have this benefit, but at the great cost of being little more than automatons. So it is with real creatures.

Hollywood creatures are superheroes or super-villains. Lassie is a phenomenal emergency worker; real collies are wonderful as companions but disappointing as rescuers. Hollywood sharks are not only efficient swimmers, but tactical thinkers too - remember the movie Jaws? Whereas Superman is equally at home in space or underground, the so-called King of the Jungle becomes Subject of a Dinner when in deep water with a crocodile! God has created no super-animals.

Humans in tight-fitting costumes

Comedian Jerry Seinfeld said, "Spider-Man, Superman, Batman . . . men don't see these as fantasies, they see them as career opportunities." It is ridiculous so over-stated, but do we not hanker after the abilities of others? Is the fixation on superheroes not a reflection of our frustration with our limits? How often do entrepreneurs try to be plumbers, sportsmen try to be poets and relatives try to be medical advisors? Force of circumstances may lead us beyond our natural abilities – a mother has to be a father too or an elder sibling a mother. But this is less than an ideal arrangement.

Charles Darwin perhaps tried to don a tight-fitting costume. For instance, he wrote to his friend Joseph Hooker, "Your conclusion that all speculation about preordination is idle waste of time is the only wise one; but how difficult it is not to speculate! My theology is a simple muddle; I cannot look at the universe as the result of blind chance, yet I can see no evidence of beneficent design or indeed of design of any kind, in the details. Darwin's gardener thought the great naturalist was wasting his time studying flowers  Perhaps theology is less a waste of time for theologians, as biology is to biologists and gardening to gardeners! At least Darwin admitted his confusion. Richard Dawkins wears the dazzling costume with a great deal more enthusiasm. He actually believes that he has a "statistical demonstration that God almost certainly does not exist"

It has often been noted that extraordinary genius in one department brings with it extraordinary costs in others. For instance Van Gogh's artistic genius came with depression and some sort of mental illness. The literary accomplishments of C.S. Lewis came with "extreme manual clumsiness" from a congenital defect. Indeed, Lewis admits that because of it he could do nothing but writing. The biological accomplishments of Charles Darwin came with a self-confessed loss of taste for poetry, music and pictures. Even the greats among us have their handicaps. God has created no super-humans.

Superman according to Jesus

Should we not let God's Creation and especially Jesus on the cross orientate our thinking about Superman ... and ourselves? Fundamentally the problem with humans is not so much sins, but sin. We want to have no limitations so that we can be independent of God. The Ideal Man did not have this problem.

As Patrick McCormick puts it, "...Satan tempts Jesus with the superpowers that will allow him to escape human frailty and rule over others, but Christ chooses to embrace human suffering and to take up the cross...." The Suffering Servant did not yearn after the Father's powers while he was dying on the tree. Instead, he accepted the divine division of labour. He left the sovereign foreordaining of his death to his Father. The Father left the actual dying to his Son. Jesus did not look like a superhero during his greatest act on earth; he looked like a humiliating failure. The cross informs us of the best kind of heroism. It is the kind that sacrificially gives of oneself and is not super but ordinary.

Christopher Reeve, the actor who played Superman, came to be this kind of hero after his horse-riding accident and subsequent quadriplegia. "When the first Superman movie came out I was frequently asked 'What is a hero?' I remember the glib response I repeated so many times. My answer was that a hero is someone who commits a courageous action without considering the consequences--a soldier who crawls out of a foxhole to drag an injured buddy to safety. And I also meant individuals who are slightly larger than life: Houdini and Lindbergh, John Wayne, JFK, and Joe DiMaggio. Now my definition is completely different. I think a hero is an ordinary individual who finds strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles." Reeve's life as a quadriplegic demonstrated this ordinary heroism. What Superman did not do, Reeve did, making many support telephone calls to people with spinal cord injuries. From the perspective of the cross, these modest acts were greater than anything his movie character ever did.

From a gospel point of view, we do not have to be anything like Superman to play a role in God's kingdom. We can have a stutter, quadriplegia, HIV, mental illness, deformity or be retarded and be used by God. Indeed the Lord says, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Even Almighty God needed weakness to reach out to us and so came to earth as a babe (when he comes in power he tends to frighten us away). God used the powerlessness of his Son's death to draw people towards himself. As Jesus said, "But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself." And this is why he still needs weakness, even our weakness, to reach out to the world. Our limitations are not a problem but an opportunity for God. People who know this and know God is what the world needs - not Superman.

*****

3. The powerlessness and power of virtual life

I felt like some kind of mad, evil, Dr Strangelove, tinkering away in a cellar-laboratory. I had just created a weapon of norn destruction \- a virtual gun. Norns are cute, teddy bear-like, artificial-life creatures that have an enormously popular presence on the Internet (the world population of norns was estimated at one time at five million)! Norns eat, grow, learn, mate, get sick and die. My children name them, care for them and become attached to them.

"Look here," I said to my son Nathan as I tossed in a dozen norns and as many guns. It was pathetic. A norn wandered over, picked up a gun and said, "what dis?" It was hard to watch the inevitable. Yes, he discharged the firearm, and nearby, Amy the norn was struck by a bullet. She exclaimed "I've been shot!" Then she whimpered and died. In just minutes, few norns were left standing.

Turning to Nathan I asked, "What is the difference between norns and little children?"

"Not much," was his reply.

It was a dirty job, but I did it for the purpose of letting norns expose a common fallacy in discussions about guns. I should also emphasize that norns are not conscious and cannot actually suffer. The norn gun is available for free on my website. Some might say that guns do not kill norns, but norns kill norns. Leaving a few guns around quickly demolishes this idea. _Norns with guns_ kill norns. The gun comes with a gun crusher. When the user can no longer stand the destruction, firearms can be simply dropped into the crusher to be rendered flat and harmless.

Sometime ago I developed a freeware simulator of the effects of gun availability and other variables on society called _Guns and Moses (s_ ee accompanying screenshot). It is available on my website. The program has limitations. The agents themselves have no emotional impact. The program speaks volumes to a statistician that sees patterns in the big picture, but most people are not statisticians. Most do not engage reality at this level. Patterns at the population level are, as I have said before, not human-sized. They are less dramatic than events that happen to individual people. Anglican reformer and abolitionist Bishop Beilby Porteus understood the principle when he said, "One murder makes a villain, millions a hero." This is why it so often takes dramatic tragedy in the lives of specific persons to galvanize reaction to big issues. For instance, what has been described as the first significant piece of gun control legislation in the USA in twenty-five years (the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act) carries the name of the person that was shot and seriously injured in the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan.

The power of the powerless

In 1996 in the Scottish town of Dunblane a gunman, armed to the teeth, massacred sixteen defenseless young children and a teacher. This tragedy, much more than the hundreds of people that had died annually in the United Kingdom from firearms, so deeply impacted public feeling, that many hundreds of thousands of signatures were obtained petitioning parliament to pass new gun legislation. The following year all cartridge ammunition handguns were banned in most of the United Kingdom. In death, the powerless became powerful enough to affect parliament, but with the terrible cost of real lives and suffering.

Why not let virtual lives influence public opinion? The powerless, big-eyed norns have power. They have induced people to set up "rehab centers and adoption agencies to provide shelter for the poor victims" of virtual abuse according to Steve Grand, the creator of the norn universe. Preoccupation with norn-care by adults reveals misplaced priorities, but it also reveals that virtual life is sufficiently emotionally engaging to focus attention on the personal cost of gun homicide. When statistics fail to reach the human heart, perhaps Amy the norn's virtual death will. It is a mistake to merely appeal to people's emotions, but since we are composite beings it makes sense to take into account all levels of our being - intellectual, emotional and spiritual.

Seeing norns sacrificed for human good, inexorably drew me towards Another who sacrificed himself for human good. It is paradoxical, but God's most powerful act in history was to become powerless to the point of death. This act has so wooed the hearts of millions that many would willingly die for him. He taught us that seemingly small and insignificant events done here and now could have effects that last for eternity. Perhaps a norn could influence a human spirit? Perhaps events in virtual reality and cyberspace could reach into eternity? Perhaps we should bear this in mind when considering sending off that encouraging email, comment on someone's Facebook wall or starting that blog.

*****

4. Black-and-white thinking and trigger-happy cowboys

I my mind's eye I can still see the gleeful grin of the student prankster. He had just served a pilchard in custard. The trick was particularly effective on me because I was brought up to divide cuisine sharply into two categories - savoury and sweet. My wife challenged this neat division by sprinkling sugar on an obviously savoury food, avocado, and reminded me that it is called avocado pear. The Chinese would say I was trapped in black-and-white thinking (also called the false dichotomy, faulty dilemma or binary thinking). Since then my culinary repertoire has expanded to include sweet-and-sour. Logician Trudy Govier explains that we commit the fallacy when we "classify ideas and situations in terms of an either-or. ...Thinking that everything is either good or evil is a false dichotomy; it polarizes our thinking by leading us to a false division of the world, one that ignores complexities, neutral situations and situations not open to moral evaluation at all." A joke doing the rounds on the Internet illustrates the fallacy: "There are two kinds of people in the world: those who think in binary terms, and those who do not."

House of mouse

I fell into the trap again. It was a Saturday morning. My children and I were huddled up watching House of Mouse on television. We were feeling safe and cosy and then came an intrusion - a sudden advertisement for a violent programme - and during kiddie's hour! I was livid. I wrote to the Broadcasting Complaints Commission, objecting to the violent preview for 'Andromeda' during a programme for young children. They reviewed the insert, found it to be not violent and dismissed the objection. I was wrong. I had slipped into dichotomous thinking by dividing advertisements into only two categories- violent or not. I apologised for the sloppy communication and restated my objection - that while the preview itself was not violent, it was, very clearly, a teaser for a violent programme. The very nature of the clip - short, pacy and without a context sent the signal that the violence itself is the attraction. My objection was still not upheld. It appears that the Commission got stuck in the same logical trap as I did. It was enough for them that the preview was not explicitly violent. But what a coarse criterion for determining the acceptability of a clip for viewing by young children! It is a little like approving an advertisement for marijuana because it does not show anyone actually inhaling.

Sometimes dichotomous thinking is sound - you are either a minor or you are not, you are either happy or nonhappy. You either have a driver's license, a learner's license or no license. Jesus Christ is either Lord or not. But often dichotomous thinking just does not cut it. People are not just friends or foes - they can be neutral and every shade in between. Judas Iscariot was not just a disciple of Jesus; he was also his enemy. The apostle Peter was one of the three closest to Jesus, but even he denied knowing Jesus when the going got tough. Jesus did not naively embrace Judas as a disciple; neither did He cast Peter aside because this disciple's love was deficient. Instead He displayed the finesse that comes from discernment and wisdom.

The mind of the trigger-happy

Black-and-white thinking can be very dangerous. John Allen Williams and Lee Malvo - the snipers of Washington, DC - divided up their world very simply. For them any American, chosen at random, and whether man, woman or child, deserved a bullet. Serial killer, Eileen Wuonos, was not any more discriminating. Any older man deserved to be shot - whether armed or not and whether he was a cop, a rogue, or a missionary. For an extraordinary application of the faulty dilemma and mangled exegesis, consider a certain Brian Hood. He grouped all sin together as equally bad. Thus, he persuaded his lover, Jennifer Reali, that murdering his wife was not any worse than continuing their adulterous relationship. The courts saw things somewhat differently. He got no jail term for the adultery; as an accomplice to the murder he was given 37 years. She was given life for pulling the trigger. Hood based his argument on Scripture: The apostle James wrote, "For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. He abused the text for his own nefarious ends. An examination of the context and a glance at a commentary reveals James' point. "The law is a unity. The detailed laws express the detailed manner of loving one's neighbour. To fail in any one point is to fail in love. It does not mean that a man who steals a sum of money is automatically guilty of murder or adultery."

The good, the bad and the sheriff

Considering the potential consequences, it is disquieting that many computer games seem to foster black-and-white thinking. The options are simple. Shoot enemies and co-operate with friends. In my freeware The Good, the Bad and the Sheriff (see screenshot) there are several options. It is available at www.mikelanderson.com. Left click pulls the trigger of a six-gun, but you lose points when doing so is inappropriate, such as killing an unarmed baddy, the sheriff or a gopher. Even shooting a rattlesnake is penalised because simply retreating would leave both you and the snake intact. This is where the "right-click" comes in. It provides other choices - persuading a baddy to mend his ways or chasing away a gopher. But it does not always earn you points. Right- click on an armed baddy and you get shot! The game tests reaction time not reflexes. Reflex actions actually bypass the brain and therefore happen more quickly than reactions. So, Billy the Kid did not have the fastest reflexes in the West. At less than a tenth of a second, it is found in the humble cockroach  Simply having fast reflexes is no great claim to fame. Exercising higher faculties seems to be in order.

Black-and-white thinking is also not very tactical. It is not necessarily the best way to beat even genuine enemies. Jesus taught us to love our enemies and Solomon said, "If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head, and the Lord will reward you."

Theology and black-and-white thinking

Black-and-white thinking is also evangelistically problematic. I was asked if I would invite a certain speaker to a local campus. The gentleman came with high recommendations so I quickly responded, asking if he could speak on "Christianity and evolution." "Yes, indeed!" he replied excitedly, "That is just what I have been talking about for the last 30 years." His credentials were very impressive - several degrees including a PhD from Harvard, head of a branch of NASA and service on Mission Boards and church councils. He sent me a copy of his six-hour seminar course that defended, in his own words, the "concept of the Christian God." Since this was his stated aim, and the topic was "Christianity and evolution," I anticipated a discussion on the crux of Christianity, Christ and him crucified. I got a lot of "intelligent design," some evolution, but very little on Jesus. The first mention of him and the New Testament was in the second last page and only in connection with his virgin birth. There was nothing about the Cross. He did indicate that there would be an "evangelical (sic) appeal" at the end of the course. Presumably Calvary would have been tagged on at the end. But my distinct impression was that he saw an attack on evolution as equivalent to the defence of Christianity.

The thinking consumer

We are not consistent in our use of balck-and-white thinking. How carefully we avoid it when it affects our pockets. Can you imagine anyone accepting the delivery of a van when a sports car was ordered? What salesperson would dare to argue that there is nothing between them because the one is as much a car as the other? No. The buyer would demand nothing less than the correct model of sports car. How much more cautious should our thinking be when it comes to the central tenets of the Christian faith!

Was Jesus a black-and-white thinker?

The Lord himself has been accused of dichotomous thinking for saying "He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters." In another place Jesus says, "for whoever is not against you is for you." What is Jesus teaching? The first statement is referring to allegiance to Christ himself and it is entirely appropriate for the Son of God to demand total commitment from all. The second statement is referring to allegiance to the disciples. Here Jesus allows latitude and again this is entirely appropriate. Christians do not have to all belong to the same denomination.

If anyone is justified in black -and-white thinking it is God. We are all so vile compared to his Holy Majesty that He cannot tolerate us in his presence. "You cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live." This is why the ancients were so terrified to get close to God. They knew well that the "Lord our God is holy," whereas "all [humans] have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." There is a divide between the category "Holy" and the category "sinful" that leads to our spiritual death. "For the wages of sin is death." We are wanted, not dead or alive, but dead. God is quite justified in sending a Bounty Hunter, the Angel of Death, after us. Yet, even He does not get into black-and-white thinking! He did not set us apart from himself as irredeemably wicked. In his genius and grace, He created another category - "the ransomed." The bounty has been paid. God paid the price himself with the death of his only beloved Son. We are wanted so that He can create holiness out of the sinful.

*****

5. Prickly pears and methamphetamines

All that stood between me and deliciously ripe prickly pears, was a small fence and rockery. Oh, and there was the sign "beware of the dog." I was on the way to primary school and must have felt the need for juicy sustenance. Then I saw the dog. I laughed at the tiny, nervous-looking mongrel as I climbed over the fence towards the prize. Just as I gingerly removed the largest prickly-pear, I got the distinct feeling that I was being watched. There at the bottom of the rockery, gazing at me intently was a formidable-looking bulldog. I was down and over the fence before I became aware of the burning sensation in my right hand. The preoccupation for the rest of the day was determined - removing myriads of tiny thorns from my hand.

I no longer care much for prickly pears. The taste is too subtle and forgettable for me. It was the pain that came first and stayed and stayed. Through God's grace recreational stealing of prickly pears has permanently ceased.

One insidious thing about recreational drugs is that the pain-first pleasure-second sequence is reversed. Methamphetamine (also called meth or tik) produces a euphoria that is immediate, acute and stays and stays while it can take several years for the depression, the aggression, the loss of appetite and other effects to become fully realised. Meth is cheap and the consequences not "human-sized" so it unsurprising that is exacting such a huge toll in South Africa and globally.

If only the process could be sped up. We could then perceive the link between cause and effect more readily. It can be. We have the means in the cute little artificial-life creatures called norns. I found it fiendishly tricky to do, but have engineered the norn's digital DNA to make them susceptible to methamphetamine addiction. (I had to first alter their biochemistry so that they produced neurotransmitters such as dopamine and serotonin. Then I had to make the drug enhance the effects of the neurotransmitters in the short term, but disrupt their function in the longer term). The norns inject themselves and get immediately very happy indeed while being thoroughly unaware of what is to follow (see attachment). It takes only minutes for the norns to begin to settle into a state of almost permanent gloom and aggression. They normally find a bouncing ball enjoyably absorbing, but now it barely distracts them. I released these "Meth Norns" on the Internet (www.mikelanderson.com) with the suggestion, "If you know someone who is prone to experimenting with drugs, why not show him or her the consequences on norns instead

There is One who sees the link between cause and effect perfectly. How it must pain him to see humans taking decisions oblivious to the consequences when for him cause and effect are one. Much sin is like methamphetamine. While the pleasures are immediate, the wages take time.

Scripture puts it this way, "... each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.

If only the process of sin leading to death could be speeded up. It has been. One afternoon in the Middle East the full weight of human sin met an inevitable and terrifying outcome. The perfectly Innocent One became sin on our behalf and died under the judgement of God. On the Cross, cause and effect were joined. No longer do we need to walk into consequences obliviously. God made the destructiveness of sin obvious through the Cross. Perhaps we would be less eager to sin if we continually looked upon its awful cost to our Saviour? May your insight into sin's destructiveness be matched by your deep awareness of Christ's utter vanquishing of sin's penalty.

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6. Lotto Nonsense

I think it was at a church fete. I was around 12 years old. The game was darts. The board had red, green and white stripes. You could double your money if you landed on the correct stripe. I do not remember the bets. I do remember winning and winning big - for a kid, then. I began with coins and ended with notes. It was exhilarating. A small crowd gathered around and cheered me on. People love a winner.

Would you like to know the secret of my success? The trick is to choose the best game and strategy out of the many available. Consider national lotteries. Do they enable people to pass poverty by or do they pass poverty on? To know what is going on, one has to see the big picture and for that one has to do the numbers.

Bad games

Consider the slot machine or so-called one-arm-bandit with its spinning wheels. Whether this is a good game or not turns on what is known as the "expected value." It is a very important concept in gaming. Think of it as the long run average. A game in which your total winnings equal your total losses has an expected value of zero. It is called "a fair game." Bandits are designed to give an average expected value of something less than 0. In the long run, players as a group will always lose. Casinos do actually want some to win – but only in the short term. Winning or seeing others win means you will come back to lose in the long term.

Long can be really long. I have written a freeware computer simulator to speed things up. It is called The Freudian Slot Machine and is available on my website (www.mikelanderson.com). Instead of pressing a button countless times, just one key press gets the computer to do thousands of bets per minute. You can watch your pile of money oscillate smaller and bigger and smaller and smaller and then vanish completely. It takes a few minutes to lose 1000 simulated bucks. To lose this amount of real bucks at a casino would take five or more hours of non-stop play. The one-arm-bandit is a bad game. It is a supremely effective way to waste time and money - for the gambler.

For the casino, the slot machine is a supremely effective way to get money. A Las Vegas casino owner candidly put it this way, "When we put 50 machines in, I consider them 50 more mousetraps . You have to have a mousetrap to catch a mouse." Another Las Vegas owner said, "If you wanna make money in a casino, own one." Billionaire and owner of several casinos, Donald Trump, who knows a thing or two about making money, said, "Frankly, the idea of risking hard-earned money on the toss of the dice or the spin of the wheel seems slightly ludicrous to me personally."

Why don't casinos design quick slot machines like my simulator? Human psychology. We remember the occasional win far better than innumerable losses. They distribute the pain over time and we feel it less acutely. The trouble with slot machines is that the losses are not "human-sized." Unlike a gun-toting bandit, the peril of the one-armed variety takes time and casinos go to a lot of trouble to sugarcoat the peril. Hurrah's casinos track player's losses and before they reach the predicted point at which the players will not return for more, a "luck ambassador" is sent to steer the players towards a pleasant diversion. My simulator, in contrast, gives a quick whammy of reality. You only need to play it a couple of times to be put off slots machines for life.

Perhaps there is a better game out there? Is the national lottery better or worse? Imagine a lottery that sells only four tickets at one buck each. The person with the winning ticket gets two bucks (the payoff). In this case there is a 0.25 probability of winning 2 bucks. On average a person can expected to receive (0.25 X 2) = 50c for every buck spent. The expected value is –50. This imaginary lottery is a waste of time and money.

In real lotteries, you also get a bad expected value. Real lotteries are a waste of time and money. In fact, as bad as one-arm-bandits are, they have a far better expected value than state lotteries. People go for lotteries because all the attention (especially by advertisers) is focused on the payoff while nothing is said about the expected value. Indeed advertisers will encourage you to buy two tickets to double your chance of winning. How many appreciate that the poor expected value remains exactly the same? Lotteries are big on hype and small on mathematical explanation.

Professor of mathematics, Ian Stewart, says that the lottery "is a tribute to public innumeracy." A person playing Lotto every week can only expect to win the jackpot about once every quarter of a million years. The expected value is so low because the chance of winning is so low. For the South African National lottery the probability of winning the jackpot is about 1 in 14 million. According to the National Safety Council, an American getting killed by lightening in a given year is more likely (about 1 chance in 6 million). If this is so, I hear someone ask, why do we hear so many reports about lottery winners and so few about lightning victims? Human psychology again. The former is of so much more interest to people than the latter.

You do not have to wait a quarter of a million years to see the big picture. Download my freeware lottery simulator called Lotto Nonsense? In just a minute you can see the effect on your pocket of playing the lotto for ten years. It enables you to compare spending your money on a lotto ticket or putting it into an interest-bearing savings account instead. I have written another freeware lottery simulator called Lotto Loot? that tracks the effect of a lottery on a community. In this simulation you can manipulate many variables such as the propensity of people to play the lotto, the expected value, the number of balls and the size of the community. It demonstrates that Lotto players get poorer compared to those that save despite the occasional winners and despite being the recipients of the charity raised by the very lottery they played!

Unless they make a mistake, whatever the game of chance, the house or the bookmaker has the advantage over the player. This is why it has been said that, "A racehorse is an animal that can take several thousand people for a ride at the same time." This is why journalist Jeffrey Bernard said, "In most betting shops you will see three windows marked "Bet Here," but only one window with the legend "Pay Out."" And it is why Jack Yelton said, "There is a very easy way to return from a casino with a small fortune: go there with a large one."

The worst game

From a Christian point of view, examining the payoff and the expected value is far too narrow. There are other more important things to consider. Take freedom for instance. Would winning a game give one more freedom? Dolores Macnamara won 77 million pounds on the Euromillions lottery. Death threats and kidnap plots have forced her and her children into hiding. All her children have been fitted with a personal alarm.

Or consider being rich towards God. The trouble with winning the lottery is that many people have to lose money they need for you to win money you do not. And it is the very poorest that lose the highest proportion of their income. The National Prevalence study of gambling and problem gambling in South Africa for 2006 found that lowest income regular lottery players spent 7 percent of their income on the lottery compared to 1 percent for high-income regular lottery players.

When governments promote both the Lotto and numeracy one has to ask whether they are innumerate themselves or simply wicked. God takes a very dim view of those that exploit the weak. "Do not exploit the poor because they are poor and do not crush the needy in court, for the LORD will take up their case and will plunder those who plunder them." States are culpable before God for making losers out of their citizens through national lotteries. They may improve their coffers, but will lose far more. Perhaps they will inherit a bigger crime problem. One study found that pathological gamblers are three times more likely to have been incarcerated than non-gamblers. Another compared crime rates in United States counties with and without casinos. The former showed dramatic increases in aggravated assaults, rapes, robberies and other crimes. Or perhaps they will inherit more suicidal citizens. Reviewers of the evidence found that between 13% and 20% of pathological gamblers have attempted suicide.

Just one moment I hear someone say. Scripture says, "The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD". And did not the disciples of Jesus cast lots. What if I prayed before I gambled? It is true that God is sovereign in all things including the goings on in casinos. It is also true that the ancients gambled. But God never instructs us to follow this example. To pray to win the lottery is to pray that others will lose. "Dear Lord, help me to break even. I need the money" would be a better prayer. But the best prayer is, "Lord enable me to spend my money wisely."

From a Christian point of view, exploiting the weak is the worst possible game because not even death lets you off the hook. "Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment... ." The worst game to play is to let others lose money so that you can win. At best you end up rich towards men and poor towards God.

Why do we play bad games?

Biologists suspect that our propensity to gamble may be because it has some adaptive value in a variable, natural environment. Taking risks opens up new environments and new resources. The trouble is that propensities that are useful in a natural environment can be maladaptive in an artificial one. Being attracted to light works for moths on moonlit nights, but became suicidal after the invention of the candle. Humans are attracted to slot machines like moths to a flame and casino owners are taking advantage of it. Don't get down on yourself if you have struggled with gambling. Instead, confess to God what needs to be confessed. Remember that Jesus died so that all your sins could be forgiven. Try to understand what it going on and look for a better game that rises above mere primal urges.

A better game - how to never lose

The reason for my little bit of success at gambling has little to do with skill or luck. It has to do with my having negligible opportunity to gamble in my formative years and early adulthood. I won because I did not gamble long enough to lose. An even better strategy is not to start. Since casinos and state lotteries do not provide a fair game, the claim that "winners know when to stop" and "you cannot win if you do not play" is more than misleading. The wise motto is, "you cannot lose if you do not play". The way to stop losing is to stop playing. There is a much better game out there.

The best game

From a Christian point of view the best game is to lose so that others can win. Jesus Christ lost his life so that we could win ours. His example reveals a deep and inspiring truth. To live for God and others is to really live. As He said, "Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." You could do far worse than lose money from gambling - you could forfeit your soul. The trouble with gambling is that it denies the gospel. It focuses attention on self at the expense of others and for the here and now. How narrow are gambling diversions next to the grandeur of the gospel with its focus on God and others. Forget that silly game called poker. How about joining a game that began in eternity? "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-- not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." Now that is a big game indeed!

Wait just a minute. If losing for others is such a good game, I should buy Lotto tickets because the National Lottery gives to good causes. By this argument, I should support tobacco companies because they give to charity. It is being softhearted and softheaded at the same time. One question to ask of a cause is whether and by how much the good outweighs the bad. It was in the context of giving (of oneself) that Jesus said, "Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves." It is best to play the best game strategically.

Let us apply this criterion to the Lotto. According to the National Lotteries Board website, for the current seven year license an average of only 30 percent of lottery ticket sales will be contributed to good causes. This is not a very efficient way of giving. Furthermore, you will have given up your freedom to decide exactly on the causes to which to give. And you may not agree with what the National Lottery Distribution Trust Fund considers the best causes. It gives a greater percentage to sport and recreation than it does to reconstruction and development. In 2007 it gave more than one and a half million rand to the Castle Military Museum. And through the jackpot you would be helping to give the few more money than they really need. Does this match your priorities? The National Lottery is not the best way to win money or to give it away.

But, I hear someone say, you have made gambling look like school homework whereas it is meant to be entertainment. It is about the thrill of the risk and the unexpected reward. Indeed, research has revealed that people engage in risky behaviour such as gambling to escape boredom. The researchers suggest a better way of pursuing excitement - find something to live for. It works. I recall hearing about a novel social programme. They took felons and trained them in dangerous search and rescue operations. Instead of the excitement of a bank robbery, there was the excitement of rescuing people from a precipitous cliff. A former robber explained that he gets a better adrenalin rush now that he is helping people.

Gambling short-changes people. It is big on promise, but small on delivery. It is unlikely, but at best there is only a monetary reward that is left behind when we enter eternity. Many people do not see the big picture. They are like the soldiers who crucified Jesus – looking down at the lots they cast for his clothes instead of up at him dying for them. A far greater thing was happening than their little game. If you see the big picture, how about helping another that does not? How about persuading someone to serve Jesus rather than a slot machine? Explain that ultimately, gambling ruins whereas God restores lives. Jesus said, "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full." Because it involves souls, serving Jesus is far bigger than the national lottery. Decisions taken for him affect heaven and earth for now and eternity.

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7. How not to look for stationery

Silly things can happen when one is in a hurry. I needed some computer labels to meet a deadline and rushed off to the stationers. Thanking Jesus for the parking space I found right outside the shop, I marched straight in. Experience has taught me that to save time, I should not hunt around for the labels myself. Instead, I went straight up to the woman behind the counter and asked, "Do you stock computer labels?"

"No," she replied with an amused smile, "mainly because this is a baby wear shop. The stationery shop is next door."

If you think that was silly, imagine this – my looking for a scientific proof for God. This is what I did as a student trying to grapple with evolution and my faith. I looked to science and scientists to support a flagging faith But, scientists are not automatically qualified in matters of faith. In going to them, I was in the wrong shop. A telescope is a wonderful instrument for looking into the heavens; it is a poor instrument for looking into heaven. It is very odd is it not? We can be very interested in what scientists say about God even though they are talking outside of their field. And then we can be very dismissive when they talk about science even though they are talking within their field.

A case in point is the story of the lost day in time...

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8. Who lost a day? Not God

According to the story of the Lost Day, scientists in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) made a discovery confirming the truth of the Bible. This story, which I found in my email box, seems to have originated with Harald Hill, a computer consultant in the NASA space program.

Space scientists at Green Belt, Maryland, were using a computer programme to determine the position of the sun, moon and planets when they came across a missing day. They were stumped over how to account for it. In the department, however, there was a Sunday school teacher who had the answer. He showed them passages from Scripture (Joshua 10:8, 12, 13 and 2 Kings 20:9-11) which recovered the missing day. God had miraculously caused the sun to stand still for Joshua and move backwards for Hezekiah.

At first blush this looks like a wonderful story that Christians should welcome because it helps to confirm the truth of the Bible. It has the apparent support of tough-minded scientists from a prestigious institution.

Well, how should Christians respond to the story? This might appear to be a strange question. Surely the issue turns simply over the facts. The question is whether scientists did discover a missing day. Everyone (Christian or not) should simply humbly bow down before the facts.

However, behind the story there is an assumption made which must be evaluated biblically - that Christians have some need for extra-biblical assurances for their faith. Is this true? Let's look at the Bible.

How does Jesus deal with those whose faith is faltering? Two of his disciples who had this problem were travelling on the road to Emmaus. It was just after the crucifixion of Jesus and their faces are described as downcast. Preliminary reports about his missing body served only to perplex them further. They were greatly in need of faith. How does Jesus counsel these men? (By the way, there is a problem in using Jesus as a model. The Teacher's mere presence is enough to bolster the pupil's faith. We don't have that option. However, on that road to Emmaus the disciples were prevented from recognising him. The Lord can be used as a model after all). So, what does Jesus do? He rebukes them! "How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?"

Isn't this a bit harsh? Remember that the only Scripture the disciples had to go on was the Old Testament. They didn't even have the New Testament (or any discoveries by NASA scientists). Is the Old Testament really enough? Jesus apparently thought so. Think about it. What better proof could the two have had than his resurrection? Jesus could have triumphantly announced it to them. He didn't. Instead "... beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself." And it worked.

They asked each other, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scripture to us?" Note that this response occurred before Jesus opened their eyes to recognize him. The message is clear: Scripture is enough. Do those who deny this really know the Christ of the Scriptures? Even the Old Testament alone provides enough basis for faith. The New Testament and the resurrection provide more than we need and reveal God's abundant grace towards us. The Christian faith is worthless without the resurrection, but the two disciples were assured that the suffering and resurrection of Christ must occur on the basis of the Old Testament alone. Let us be grateful for having more, much more, than these two and not seek for further "proof" from science. "Come on" some might want to say, "surely Christians should be interested in all truth." God is certainly glorified when we pursue truth wherever it may be found. However, while we should be interested in truth (small t) all that faith needs is Truth (big T). The Christian's faith is centred in a Person - Jesus Christ.

But, let us go hunting for truth. Public Relations Officers at NASA have stated that a missing day was not discovered and that if there was a missing day they do not have the means to discover it. .They also say that Harald Hill was not a consultant in the space programme, but involved in "diesel engine operations and maintenance contracting". Astrophysicist and biblical scholar Prof. Robert C Newman has studied this case extensively. He points out that the main features of the story predate NASA and computers! In 1890 a Prof. Charles Totten claimed such a discovery but failed to provide the necessary evidence. In the interests of truth the Lost Day story has to be rejected. Newman has strong words for those who would use falsehood to defend the Bible: "This is trying to do God's work using Satan's tactics!"

Christian philosopher James Sire says it well: "Put simply, the best reason for believing that the Christian religion is true is Jesus, and the best reason for believing in Jesus is Jesus Himself." The biblical way is for Christians to be "built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone." Christians so built have no need for dubious extra-biblical stories.

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9. Easter eggs according to Jesus

What is the true meaning of Easter? According to a 30 year old supermarket public relations officer there is much ignorance among the British people on the subject. She wrote, "But over a quarter don't know why handing them out symbolises the _birth_ of Jesus"(italics mine). The irony of the ignorance of one lamenting the ignorance of others was quickly sized on. Too quickly I think. There is other stuff going on. First, we can quickly dismiss the disingenuous claim of the supermarket that it was a typo rather than ignorance. This would be more believable if she said something like resuscitation. Also, when the error was spotted she quickly sent an amendment, "But over a quarter don't know why handing them out symbolises the _rebirth_ of Jesus" (italics mine). Nope, she definitely had birth on the brain.

I don't think it is simply a case of ignorance either. The babe in the manger is so thoroughly associated with Christmas rather than Easter, that it is hard to believe that a British child let alone an adult could be so confused. It is a little like thinking that the Easter bunny rides a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer! I think she told the story that she wanted to be the case. A god that is more into the birth of Jesus than in his crucifixion and resurrection can be better employed in the selling of Easter eggs. Truth was less important than marketing products. It could have been worse. They could have marketed a chocolate babe-in-a-manger!

If Easter eggs symbolise anything, it is Creation even if they are of pagan origin. Jesus made every single one of them using confectioners as his instruments. The apostle John is emphatic, "Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made." And his making wine at the wedding in Cana reveals that Jesus is no killjoy. We can enjoy Easter eggs on Sunday and thank him for them. All the while we know that there is One alive that is so much greater than these things.

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10. Fabricated gods

One of my son Nathan's favourite PC games is called "Black & White." It is a kind of strategy game in which the user trains a demigod to look after villages. A remarkable innovation is that the demigod and atmosphere of the land take on the character of the user. Be kind and the demigod becomes kind and the land develops the aspect of spring. Be cruel and the demigod becomes cruel and the land develops a gloomy, sinister, barren aspect. Black & White is a so-called "god game." The user is like a god to the villages in the game. I explained to Nathan that the game is much like real life. Humans become like the god they worship. This is why it is so spiritually vital to have our misconceptions about God corrected. But where should we go for that?

Jesus. As the exact representation of God's being, as the One in whom "all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form," we can do no better than him to check out our view of God. Jesus is no mere demigod.

Fabrications are not always wholly false. They may contain truth, but emphasised at the expense of other attributes of God. Jesus, because of his fullness, also corrects this kind of error. The Pharisees believed in a morally demanding God. They forgot that He is equally a God of grace. In the story of the woman caught in adultery, we see both attributes and others held together exquisitely. The teachers of the law and Pharisees want to stone her because she broke the law. With the wisdom of the Father, Jesus says, "If anyone one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her." They all know they have sin and leave. With the grace of the Father, He says to the woman, "Then neither do I condemn you." The One without sin loved the sinner. With the moral exactness of the Father He says, "Go now and leave your life of sin." In one fell swoop Jesus shows the fullness of God and leaves people with a better idea about how to behave like him.

That was the Pharisees, the teachers of the law and the woman, then. Each age has its own fabrications. I want to pick up on a few gods of our own.

The nerdy god

You know you have met a nerd when you find that the dinner conversation is distracting him from examining the fly in his soup! Examining a fly does not make one a nerd. It is doing so at a dinner party that does. There is a kind of nerd that puts scientific details above all else. Information has an importance, but we can make it all-important and can fabricate a god who makes it all- important. The nerdy god is eccentrically super-informed.

Scripture very clearly teaches that God is omniscient, but the True God revealed in the Bible has no pressing need to prove it to humans. And it is one dimensional to see God as essentially omniscient. His omniscience must not be emphasised at the expense of his love. Take creation for instance. The biblical doctrine of creation actually stresses God's love rather than intelligence. Look closely at the structure of Genesis and one sees that it points to Jehovah Jireh - God as provider. He prepares the land for land creatures, the sea for sea creatures and the sky for flying creatures. When Jesus calls us to look at the lilies of the field, it is not to draw attention to how cleverly God made them (least of all how he made them), but to how loving God is. His point is that if God can clothe a plant so beautifully, why do people worry about what they wear, drink and eat? Jesus does not call us to worship an "intelligent designer", but a loving Creator.

William Paley made the designer argument famous. He reasoned that if we happened upon a watch, the intricate arrangement of its parts would lead us to reasonably infer a watchmaker. Similarly, the intricate arrangement in living organisms leads one to reasonably infer a Great Designer. Paley illustrates how easily we fabricate a god in our own image. The watch is not the greatest monument to human ingenuity. Radios, computers and airliners can be placed ahead of it. Compared to these technological accomplishments, what would be the greatest monument to God's glory? What does Jesus think? He does not look to the living in seeking God's glory, but to the dying, His own dying. He prays, "Father, the time has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you." Jesus is talking about his crucifixion. The cross is the final monument that He chose to glorify the Father. While humans leave bigger and bigger skyscrapers as testaments to their glory, the Son leaves an enormous spiritual footprint with a tiny ecological one. How much does our crumbling world need to worship this kind of God?

God's ultimate statement to the world is not an argument from design or anything else. How does the True God destroy nerdy wisdom? Not with tit-for-tat showy intellectualism, but with what the apostle Paul calls the foolishness of the cross. He says "Jews demand miraculous signs, and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God." For those who have eyes to see it, Christ crucified, at once, displays the love, justice and wisdom of God.

The specimen god

God creates problems for us. His inscrutability and transcendence make him difficult to handle. God is like a fish - slippery or like a whale \- too big to fit into a laboratory. Rather than let God be God, humans have this penchant for remaking him into something manageable. One expression of this in today's age, with the spectacular success of the scientific method, is to make God amenable to scientific proof. This is the fruit fly god. He is trapped in a vial so that humans can examine him at their leisure. Web sites abound with claims of definitive scientific proofs for God. It is that crude.

Trying to prove God scientifically is like trying to prove that cheese is grammatical. The scientific method just does not apply. Christians need to be careful about how they respond to the taunt, "God has never been proven scientifically." Behind the statement is the demand that God be less than He is before He will be believed. God cannot be proven scientifically precisely because he is above science.

But didn't God make himself into a specimen in the person of Jesus? If Jesus is a specimen, He is not one prepared by humans. The elite did not discover God through scientific ingenuity or technological innovation. He revealed himself to ordinary people- fishermen, shepherds, tax-gatherers and the like. Paul says, "Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things - and the things that are not - to nullify the things that are so that no one may boast before him." We did not find God. Jesus found us.

The instigator god

There is a popular idea that in the Big Bang we have the moment of Creation and proof of the existence of the Creator. Cosmologists can trace the history of the universe to within a fraction of a fraction of a second after the Big Bang. Before that the laws of physics break down and we enter mystery. Some people are attracted by the Big Puzzle and see in it the moment of Creation. The problem with this line of argument is that it ends up downplaying God's role for the remainder of the universe's 18 billion-year history. This is god the instigator. It is like giving special prominence to Shakespeare's involvement in the first letter of the first word of Act 1 scene 1 of one of his plays. Worshipping an instigator god is effectively practical atheism. God becomes absent in ordinary life. He acted spectacularly in the Big Bang, but does not really do anything in my home, particularly when times are tough.

But, Shakespeare was always involved whatever the scene. And the God that Jesus believed in is always involved. Jesus says, "My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working." The True God is not less involved today than he has been in the past, even in difficult circumstances. Worshipping the True God affects the way we live now. It means we can live in hope even in hard times. As Paul says, "And we know that in all things God works for the good to those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose."

The god of small puzzles

A similar popular idea is to find God's hand in the small puzzles of science. A conspicuous example has been provided by two non-biologists. They start by erroneously claiming that the speciation rate has dropped to virtually zero since humans arrived on the scene. "The best explanation," they write, "given the provable limitations on natural selection and mutations, is a divine Speciator." Speciation is much less of a puzzle for biologists partly because they do not find natural selection so limited and partly because they find other mechanisms behind evolutionary change. But, what a tiny role to give Jesus! It can often be very difficult to tell two species apart. At least Six-day Creationists give our Lord the more ambitious project of creating "kinds" of plants and animals. As Donald Mackay has brought home, seeking God through the (alleged) puzzles of science is like looking for the inexplicable in a story and concluding that the story must have an author. Theologians call a god so inferred a "god-of-the gaps."

It is a modern notion. By contrast, the God that Jesus believed in lies behind both the explicable and the inexplicable in the world. Jesus knew full well that He would die at the hands of wicked men. No puzzle here. Yet he could say that no one takes his life from him, "but I lay it down of my own accord." Ultimately Jesus died because He chose to. God is sovereign.

Jesus exposes our fabricated gods. And He does so most clearly at the cross. The greatest event in the history of the universe was not the mysterious beginning of the Big Bang but happened on a crude cross. At one level, the cross is no puzzle. Jesus died at the hands of wicked men and he gave up his life for wicked men. The greatest event in history was not something that can be examined by cosmologists alone. Anyone can look on the cross and say with the Roman centurion, "Surely this man was the Son of God!" Whereas we cannot get a handle on God in his inscrutability, God allowed himself to get manhandled by us even to the point of death. How much greater and humbler is the True God than the fabrications we make of him!

The God revealed through the cross is the One who made himself nothing. This is the God who glorifies himself through sacrifice. What a contrast to the gods of greed, status and power that so many moderns worship! Our lust to have, display and control is changing the world. The gloom of pollution fills city skies, skyscrapers to human glory replace the grandeur of trees and global warming threatens to give our world a barren aspect. The world needs to worship the True God for the world's sake.

*****

11. How do you tell the sex of a chromosome?

A student approached me with the question, "How do you tell the sex of a chromosome?" My first thought was how could she ask me this question after I had just explained that chromosomes determine sex (not the other way around). I began to launch into an explanation. Then I noticed the glazed look in her eyes. She was trying to tell me a joke. The answer: you pull down its genes. I was so pre-occupied with science that I failed to appreciate ordinary discourse. I was being a nerd. In the same way, nerdishness can keep one from understanding the Bible correctly. There are some that even think that the real message of the Bible in encoded so that computers are necessary to decipher it...

*****

12. The Bible Code revealed

The Bible Code has been hailed as one of the most fascinating discoveries of the century. It has been repudiated as anti-Christian. It has been welcomed as good science. It has been dismissed as drivel. What is it and what are Christians to make of it? Consider the following message:

"Before I remember the last frenzy of code-prompted drool, let me disclose antics, rudely errant, that bars rest in Gods promises."

There is a one surface message. If you pick out the bold letters by omitting intervals of five letters (the skip interval), ignoring spaces, hyphens and punctuation, you get another, coded message, "Bible codes are tripe". I had fun manufacturing the coded message. Bible Code enthusiasts believe that God did a similar thing with the Hebrew text of the Old Testament to help sceptics believe in him. Using computers, one can place the text in rows and, by trying out different skip intervals perhaps thousands long, sometimes discover hidden words.

The Bible Code idea has an ancient history, but the recent resurgence of interest seems to have begun with the publication of an article by three respected Israeli mathematicians in a journal of statistics. Journalist Michael Drosnin took the idea further, predicted the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and tried to warn him. His book, The Bible Code has been a best-seller. The response to the Code has been mixed. One pastor who believes that the Bible code supports the inspiration of the Bible, wrote warmly, "Consider this: no book other than the Bible has been found to work as a sequence code". A host of Christian sites on the Internet favour the Bible Code. There is even one, where - for a fee of course - one can have a Bible Code search done on one's name

The response of others has been colder. A mathematics professor and observant Jew from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem says flatly that it is "totally baseless". So what should we make of the Bible Code?

Biblical objections

There are several key questions one can ask to biblically evaluate the Bible Code or any new argument for God.

From what we know about God in the Bible, would he use the Bible Code as a means to communicate?

Christian Bible Code enthusiasts believe that God provided the Code to enable this sceptical, advanced generation to believe in him. Pastor John Thomas says, "In the providence of God the Bible Code may just have been published to help the secular, agnostic mind come to grips with the fact that the Bible is the actual, living Word of God. But Jesus responded to scepticism by being less inclined to perform miracles and praised his Father for keeping the things of heaven "from the wise and learned" while revealing "them to little children."

Does it encourage genuine faith in Christ? Genuine faith is directed towards Christ as its basis. Where does the Bible Code direct our attention? Professor Louw Alberts mentions the case of a man who wrote to him "about his faith in the Bible and its message because of discoveries" of a numerical code in the Old Testament. Alberts replied that he would be "well advised to base his faith on Jesus Christ rather than some mystical numerical sequence in the Old Testament however interesting the latter might be". Albert's correspondent later learnt that a professor of statistics had refuted the numerical code hypothesis and, sad to say, has now given up his faith because its basis had been destroyed. One commentator says of the Bible Code that it " ... shifts the focus of biblical apologetics from the essential core of the gospel - the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ \- to esoteric speculations". Notice, too, that Michael Drosnin's extensive investigations into the Bible Code have not done anything to bring him to faith in God, but merely to admit "another intelligence."

Who does it glorify? On the surface, the Bible Code may seem to glorify God. In reality it exhibits a god who shows favouritism towards the computer-elite over the ordinary person. It compliments human ability to hack code rather than glorifying the God who stooped to reveal himself through ordinary people. The gospel is the clearest expression of the way God reveals himself. It gives no opportunity for human pride. God expressly devised the Gospel so that human boasting is excluded. Why would he devise the Bible Code to exalt the technically advanced?

Scientific objections

The Bible Code has come in for a great deal of criticism by mathematicians, statisticians and Bible scholars. One mathematics professor said, "It's complete nonsense. If one has enough data one can project any pattern within it. You could fiddle with letters until you found a message you wanted." Squint hard enough and one can imagine almost any shape in the clouds.

Drosnin had a quick reply. "When my critics find a message about the assassination of a Prime Minister encrypted in Moby Dick, I'll believe them." One researcher who took up the challenge was mathematics Professor Brendan McKay. He found several people whose assassination had been "encrypted" in Moby Dick including Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, President John F Kennedy and even Drosnin himself

There is evidence, then, that the Bible Code is resting on less than a solid foundation. Most of us do not have the background or the inclination to assess the statistical arguments surrounding the Bible Code debate. What does one do? One has to use authorities. Bible Code enthusiasts know this, of course, and have made many arguments from authority, including some very slipshod ones. Much has been made of the three respected Israeli mathematicians publishing in a renowned journal. But one paper in a scientific journal does not supply sufficient authority. The original paper was published not because the editor believed it to be statistically unequivocal, but because it was curious and prompted further investigation. Some Code enthusiasts have given titles to people that do not have them and have even listed certain authorities as Code supporters who do not actually support it

An appropriate use of authority is to depend on the consensus position of experts. A signed statement by more than 50 mathematicians and statisticians, including some who accept the divine inspiration of the Old Testament, is that the "almost unanimous opinion of those in the scientific world who have studied the question is that the [Bible Code] theory is without foundation".

The real code

We have it from divine authority that there is a "code." God is the One who is encoded and he is indecipherable. No one can fathom his understanding or his greatness.

If humans cannot decode him, how can we know him? The biblical answer is that God has done what we could not do. God has, in a manner of speaking, decoded himself. Jesus is God decoded. "In the past God spoke ... in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son ... The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being...." The Real Code is different from the fake Bible Code. You do not need a computer or a decryption programme to decipher the Real Code. You simply need to know Jesus in "whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge."

*****

13. How to be unromantic

I was courting my wife-to-be, Janice. There we were spending a very romantic summer evening on top of a hill. It was full moon. We watched the sun go down over the sea and then turned around and watched a gloriously bright full moon rise over the lights of Cape Town.

Behind me came the voices of another couple enjoying the evening. She was saying "Isn't this brilliant?"

He: "Yes"

She: "Say, look there - what's that light?"

He (matter of factly): "Oh, that's a satellite."

She: "Isn't it a plane?"

He: "No, it's a satellite."

She (slightly skeptical): "Gee - how do you know?"

He: "Well you can tell from the refractive angle of the incident light against the upper stratosphere."

She (obviously impressed): "Oh!"

So, for a while we sat quietly, forgot about the moon, and watched the satellite. Then "the satellite" put on its landing lights. The fellow's embarrassment was palpable.

I understood him. I too have tried to impress Janice with know-how. What is even worse, I have tried to make God into one who woos unbelievers in this sort of way. I wanted Scripture to have a technical, encyclopedic aspect so that informed skeptics would be impressed.

But Genuine Omniscience did not in the end impress with knowledge. How much can you know when you are dead on a cross? The One who revealed himself in Jesus is the true romantic. In the end his greatest act was a demonstration of kindness rather than his know-how.

*****

14. Christmas trees and intelligent design according to Jesus

It's Christmas time.

There is a box beneath the tree.

It has no ribbon, the tree no leaves.

The box is empty, but for hay.

The tree is bare, but for blood.

The Babe has grown and died and risen.

It's Christmas time.

A feeding-trough caked with grass and cow saliva. This is not the first image that comes to mind when the Christmas commercials appear on the telly. The term "manger" has lost much of its rudeness as has "cross". At "heck and manger" means to live in comfortable circumstances and the cross has become a fashion accessory. I have joined the trend to add refinement to the rawness of the Jesus in the feeding box and him hanging on a blood-soaked tree. I have added the tinsel and baubles of scientific apologetics.

It is hard to publically admit that I have done this and why. The truth is that there was a time when I was ashamed of Jesus. The Christian message seemed such a crude argument in the sophisticated environment of the academy. I still wanted to believe, but I wanted a Christian message with a more intellectual touch. But the gospel exposes my pretentiousness and teaches me not to cover it up with my own crafty decorations. The gospel itself is the criterion to evaluate my approach to its proclamation. It is to God's glory that he chose a way to reveal himself that does not pander to human pride. For God is a humble God who speaks to the poor, the ignorant and the helpless. He has no need to be ostentatious in his greatness.

As Paul writes,

"Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God,

did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,

but made himself nothing,

taking the very nature of a servant,

being made in human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a man,

he humbled himself

and became obedient to death--

even death on a cross!"

Who designed the tree?

While Jesus was content to use humble analogies, his followers frequently fall for fancy-pants arguments and in so doing have added decorations to the gospel. One argument that is making much headway in certain circles is called Intelligent Design. The idea is that just as a human-designed machine (such a mousetrap) cannot function with any of its parts missing, so the structures of living things, particularly at the sub-cellular level, cannot function with any of their parts missing. The structures are said to be "irreducibly complex." They cannot have arisen naturally it is argued, and therefore must have been intelligently designed.

Scientists, theologians and philosophers have exposed the scientific, theological and logical problems with this argument. The biggest problem, however, is that it does not square with the cross. Clinging to Intelligent Design is unnecessary after the cross because the crucifixion of Christ is the greatest revealer of God's genius (and love, and justice and power) and the cross was not intelligently designed. Humans designed it and it was cruel and stupid - or at least ignorant. According to Paul, "None of the rulers of this age understood [God's secret wisdom], for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. To claim that God intelligently designed the crucifixion of Jesus would be to accuse him of culpability in his Son's death. However, the cross was intelligently pre-ordained. In God's wisdom he foreordained that wicked men would put Jesus to death and usher in his salvation plan.

Let us pray that Christians would not try to improve on the argument of the box and the tree as rough as it may sound. May the bare, blood-stained tree rather than the pretty, lush, decorated one have the deepest impact on us.

*****

15. Shroud of Turin: shroud of Christ?

"In the darkness of the Jerusalem tomb the dead body of Jesus lay, unwashed, covered in blood, on a stone slab. Suddenly there is a burst of mysterious power from it. In that instant the blood dematerializes, dissolved perhaps by the flash, while its image and that of the body becomes indelibly fused onto the cloth, preserving for posterity a literal 'snapshot' of the Resurrection".

In such soul-stirring tones, Ian Wilson provides a popular explanation for the haunting image on the most famous cloth in history - the Shroud of Turin. The alleged burial cloth of Christ captivates. Theologian, Robert Perry says the "Shroud is intentionally produced by Jesus as his own record for posterity, as his own gospel"(emphasis his). Artist and theoretical physicist Isobel Piczek calls it the "... only window on the future in the cosmos, on the cosmos".

It has elicited such devotion that Reverend Joseph Marino drew these parallels between Jesus and the Shroud. "When Jesus was crucified, He was mocked ... the British Museum mocked the Shroud in an exhibition about forgeries ... just as Judas was paid 30 pieces of silver for betraying Jesus, the Oxford lab was given 1 million pounds by 45 rich businessmen to establish an archaeological chair for supposedly debunking the Shroud. Do you know when that payment was made? It was made on Good Friday, 1989".

The breadth of this devotion is also remarkable, as another Shroud enthusiast has noted. "When I first began to lecture on the Shroud of Turin I had very real reservations as to how it would be received by the larger ecumenical community. What I have discovered in the intervening years is that the Shroud needs no such apologist. It is now, as it was on that very first Easter morning, self-authenticating. In presentations ranging from the Salvation Army to the Syrian Orthodox, from the Bible Belt to the Biretta Belt, Christians of all persuasions are beginning to acknowledge not only that the Shroud is Christianity's most precious artefact, but that it is also "the" most significant visual aid available to the religious educator for teaching about our Lord's Passion, Death and Resurrection".

The catalogue of a popular virtual bookstore listed 53 books on the Shroud of Turin compared to 57 books on that other great icon - the painting of the Last Supper.

Is the shroud a fake?

Did the Shroud really cover the body of Jesus? Or was it merely painted to look like it covered his body. Is it genuine or a fake? Let us look at the evidence.

Bible scholars have noted several discrepancies between the gospel records and the Shroud. John describes several burial cloths, including a separate one that covered Jesus' face, which were soaked in a large quantity of spices. The Shroud is a single cloth with no trace of any spices.

The testimony of Bishop d'Arcie in the 14th century is that an artist confessed to painting the image as part of a healing scam to defraud pilgrims.

There is no orthodox history of the Shroud prior to its appearance in the West in the 14th century.

Art historians place its origin in 13th or 14th century Europe.

Three independent radioactive dating laboratories have dated the Shroud to between AD1260 and AD1390.

The fact that these lines of evidence converge is significant. Notice that the same medieval date for the Shroud keeps cropping up. If this date is in error, how is it that the disparate fields of inquiry yield the same date? How would a medieval bishop's mistake happen to coincide with the mistakes of three independent modern-day laboratories and the evidence of history? The arguments for the Shroud's authenticity only seem plausible when particular lines of inquiry are considered paramount and assessed in isolation. But the evidence must be considered collectively and it mutually supports the case for fakery. The Shroud has spoken and it says it is a fraud.

Some writers on the subject make the inference that, since the Shroud is of human origin, it cannot be a divine product. Theologically, this is too cursory. If what is meant is that the Shroud is not the result of divine intervention, all well and good. If God performed a miracle on the burial cloth at the time of the resurrection, He would not make it look medieval. This does not mean that God is not involved, however. Just as He sovereignly ordained that Judas would commit treachery, so He has allowed fakes to come into existence. But He is faithful and no cosmic deceiver. He has made a covenant with the fixed laws of heaven and earth. It is the coherence of the natural order that makes it possible to reliably reconstruct so much of the past. If the evidence points so strongly in the direction of medieval shenanigans, then that is what has happened. It is ultimately God who has spoken and not of his Son, but of the sinful duplicity and credulity of the sons of men.

Under the spell of the shroud

Rather than submit to the evidence, many Shroud enthusiasts have come up with ingenious arguments to justify retaining their faith in the Shroud. One suggestion is that the resurrection of our Lord changed the composition of the cloth so that the dating was thrown out. Another is that the scientists who dated the cloth conspired to switch samples. Such ad hoc attempts to rescue a fake, coupled with the all too common assumption that the Shroud "makes it possible for us to believe," sends out a clear signal. By dredging the bottom of the bucket to bolster their faith, they are implying that Jesus is insufficient as a basis for faith. This mentality is very different from the apostle Paul's conviction that "each one should be careful how he builds. For no-one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ."

Some have pointed to the Shroud being instrumental in the conversion of agnostics and atheists. This does not prove its authenticity. It merely proves that the Lord is humble, gracious and sovereign enough to use a fake or a Judas to bring people to himself. One can just as easily point to those that have lost faith because of the Shroud. Former member of the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP), Walter McCrone writes, "One unexpected result of my experience with STURP has been to convert me from a reasonably faithful Presbyterian to a committed Humanist. If they (STURP) are religious, I want to distance myself from them as far as I can get".

Behind the spell

Why is so much devotion reserved for a fake thing over the real Person? Shroud researcher Thaddeus Trent finds pride to be a factor, "To interpose science as an adjudicator of faith would be but a reflection of human pride. But, perhaps an even greater error would be to interpose the Shroud itself ... Faith in Christ should not depend upon any sort of idol, sacred or profane".

Excessive value of the material over the personal is another factor. Iconographist Professor Nicholas Allen writes, "If I wanted to present just one tangible piece of evidence of humankind's remarkable ability to transcend the ordinary and to accomplish the most extraordinary technological feats, I would point to the Shroud of Turin ... Ironically, if I wanted tangible evidence of the inability of seemingly intelligent people to see the obvious, I would have to point to the same phenomenon. In fact, it would appear that many still want desperately for this artefact to be some form of material proof of their personal religious conviction".

Allen's comment hints at another factor: we prefer manageable evidence to an unmanageable Person. An anonymous author puts it this way: "We demand concrete proof to verify and re-verify the substance of our faith. Somehow, the stirring facts of our Lord's resurrection and the testimony of millions that have been glorified in Him has receded into just a dismal memory. Looking for some remnant of existence on earth, we scout for His shroud, or even Noah's ark, or some archaeological artefact that will suddenly scream "the Bible is absolutely true", and when these objects don't come forth in our days, we open yet another crack for doubts to slip in unawares. We let slip away the awareness of the closeness of the one spiritual proof that always bolsters our faith - the presence of the Comforter, the Helper, the Illuminator, the Holy Spirit of God, who, having taken up residence in our lives, in our thinking, and in our hearts forever attests to the truthfulness and rightness of our faith and the One to whom it is directed".

Rarity is perhaps another. It has made the Shroud a priceless piece of memorabilia in a consumer age, whereas the apostle Paul declares that God is freely available anywhere to those who would reach out to him on his own terms. "God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though He is not far from each one of us ... we should not think that the divine being is ... an image made by man's design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now He commands all people everywhere to repent."

Forensic scientist, David Stoney, sounds a warning, "The object of faith, of course, is not this cloth nor the image that appears on it, but He who was (or wasn't) buried in it. That is where faith should belong." With so much converging against the Shroud, it is a great irony that so many fixate on an image when so much is converging for and in the Person of Christ, declaring him to be the Son of God. There is, for instance, the witness of Moses and the prophets and his exquisite combination of love, wisdom, truth, grace, power and justice so especially well revealed in his death and resurrection.

Perhaps one day the Father will exact an answer from many to this question: "How is it that you tried to shroud the glorified One in a medieval cloth?"

*****

16. Was Jesus a scientist?

In a Wizard of Id cartoon Gwen sidles up to Rodney.

Gwen (fluttering her eyelashes): "look into my eyes, Rodney ... tell me what you see."

Rodney: "the conjunctiva, the cornea, the iris, the sclerotic, the anterior aqueous chamber, the..."

Gwen: "Forget it." Rodney is extracting more from Gwen's eyes than she intended to convey. She signalled romance; he observed anatomy. He has read more into her non-verbal cues than was there. And by taking more he ends up with less. Rodney has fallen into a fallacy called overspecification.

Was Jesus a scientist? Physician Demick finds so from the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount: "The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!"

He correctly recognises that these verses are a warning against selfishness and greed, but then says that this moral instruction depends on a natural phenomenon. " ... the higher truth has no meaning unless the natural truth is also sound. Jesus' words specifically mention light in the eyes "filling" the whole body, implying a systemic physiologic effect for light perceived through the eyes." He goes on to say "... developments in neurophysiology have shown that light sensation in the eye is indeed important for the healthy functioning of the entire body." Demick may be well intentioned, but do you see overtones of Rodney's overspecification here? Demick does not merely see the simple but profound words of a humble carpenter; he sees the discourse of a physician-scientist. The sermon of the Nazarene becomes the lecture of a professor.

And by taking more, he ends up with less. The words of Jesus are no longer allowed to stand alone, independent. Instead, they must be undergirded by neurophysiology. He distracts the eyes of faith from a focus on Jesus towards a focus on a contemporary scientific field. Neurophysiology is a fascinating and successful field, but what a benighted place to look for light for the soul!

It is worse than this. Demick goes so far as to make Jesus into a type of Rodney: "Jesus Christ with the all-seeing eyes of the Creator, knew centuries in advance of modern science the incredible microtechnology that is involved in the mere opening of a flower, and the formation and coloring of its petals. Thus, he was able to say with truth and confidence concerning the flowers that "even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." He thinks that one needs scientific knowledge to properly appreciate the beauty of a flower, but that fortunately, Jesus, being omniscient, had oodles of it.

Demick seems to have glimpsed less of Jesus and more of a projection onto Jesus of contemporary scientistic foibles. What is remarkable about Jesus is how unlike Rodney He is. Indeed, he "... did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing." Christologists find this self-emptying of God-incarnate so important that they have a formal term for it, kenosis, from the Greek. Jesus is extraordinary in how he did not parade his knowledge about. He spoke "in parables, so that, though seeing, they may not see; though hearing, they may not understand." He thus reserved the secrets of the kingdom of God for His disciples and was cautious to keep things from his disciples when they were not yet ready to bear it.

Rodney missed a great opportunity to tell Gwen that he only has eyes for her. The appropriate response to the Bible is to tell Jesus that we only have eyes for him.

*****

17. Mom, where do dinosaurs come from?

Someone once asked, "If evolution is so wonderful how come mothers don't have four arms?" The question expresses something of the demands made on mothers and the scepticism many have about evolution. With so much on your plate how can you, as a mother, guide your children as they try to relate their faith to the world of science? What can you do to prepare them for the big wide world so that their faith remains intact? I know of a few instances of university students committing suicide because they could not handle the teaching of evolution. The tragedies of spiritual and intellectual suicide happen more often but are less noticed. Mom, your hands are not tied over the spiritual and intellectual fate of your children. When they ask "Mommy, Mommy, where do dinosaurs come from?" you can grab the opportunity to prepare them for their future. Here are a few questions your child could ask and some suggestions for how to deal with them.

"Who came first - Jesus or the dinosaurs?"

After reading a story about Joan of Arc, a mother told her son, "This really happened a long, long time ago." "Before the dinosaurs?" he asked.

"No, after Jesus," she explained.

"No," he retorted, "this is how it happened, first it was the Dinosaurs, then God and then Adam & Eve..."

"First it was the Dinosaurs, then God." This is funny in a child. It's lamentable in adults - especially when dinosaurs (or science) are considered first in significance as if God needed to be propped up by science. There are those who endlessly try to marshal scientific facts to show that our faith in God has not been discredited after all. Don't play this game, Mom! It is a recipe for intellectual exhaustion. If my son is anything to go by, children today are often well acquainted with the facts about dinosaurs. And don't worry that science is unable to prove the existence of God; you should worry if it could! Because, then, He would not be worth believing in. God is a different kind of reality to the reality of scientific facts. Science is far too coarse an instrument for penetrating God in his inscrutability. "Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!" says Paul. "How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!" How does one convey this concept to a child. A philosopher colleague provides an illustration that may help. "My daughter Anna, who is fond of drawing, asked me "Where's God?" I pointed to the picture she had drawn of a little girl in a garden surrounded by animals and flowers. "Where's Anna?" I asked. "I can't be in the picture, silly, I'm drawing it" she said. Her point, of course, is that she, the drawer, has a different kind of reality from the girl in the drawing. They exist at different levels and so can't really be compared, or even added." The reality of God is the primary reality. God just is - whenever and however the dinosaurs appeared on earth. God does not depend on science for his existence; it is science that depends on God for its existence. Help your child realise that one's faith should not hang on a resolution of any scientific issue whatsoever. While it is true that dinosaurs came before the incarnation of Jesus Christ, He is nevertheless "before all things." Jesus Christ is first in significance. He is foremost.

"Mommy, I need some answers."

This statement is ambiguous. Your child could simply be requiring some facts to complete a school project or to satisfy intellectual curiosity. Fine. However, there could be other overtones. A very prevalent mindset says that it is education that confers worth on an individual. To call someone ignorant is not to describe but to condemn. A paleontologist once publicly defended the teaching of paleontology on the grounds that it's study makes decent human beings out of our children. Children can easily imbibe the party- line - subconsciously pursuing education in order to be accepted. Here is a great opportunity to remind them that God's love for us does not hinge on our moral or our intellectual performance. The gospel declares that He accepts us because of who He is and what Christ did on the Cross and not because of who we are or what we have done.

"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast." From the perspective of Omniscience, trying to impress him with our knowledge must be a little like your son trying to impress you by showing how far he can spit! Learning about dinosaurs has value because all truth is God's truth and humans have intellectual needs. However, God shows no partiality towards those so informed.

"Why does the Bible not say anything about dinosaurs?"

When my daughter Rachel was little, I took her downtown to see an animated dinosaur show. I asked the manager about the public reaction to the show. He told me that there were some that denied that dinosaurs ever existed because the Bible never mentions them. They saw the whole show as make-believe. They doubted the existence of dinosaurs because of the Bible. Others doubt the Bible because of dinosaurs.

We can avoid unnecessary tensions by approaching the Bible with the same courtesy as we do other, ordinary communications. Take birthday cards for instance. My wife, Janice, is a great card-maker. She has taught me the value of making my own cards.

I once made a birthday-card for my son, Nathan, that had him riding atop a Tyrannosaurus rex and which said "We love you, from Dad and Mom." Now as dinosaur-crazed as Nathan was, he did not let knowledge about dinosaurs get in the way of knowing me. He did not say, "Sorry Dad. Sorry Mom. I'd like to believe you but there is far more evidence of the existence of dinosaurs than there is of your love for me. By my empirical standards, I find the evidence of your love for me inadequate. By the way, _T. rex_ was never contemporaneous with humans." Fortunately, my son did not inappropriately bring science into our relationship and was not too affected by his scientific know-how. Far from dismissing the card as unscientific, he revelled in the attention that he and his interests were getting. If we value knowledge in terms of sheer quantity of evidence, then yes, the evidence for our love for Nathan pales next to the evidence of the existence of dinosaurs. But that is not the only way to value knowledge. There is evidence of our love in the time and effort in making the card, but it is not the quantity of evidence that is so telling, but that it was directed at him.

Sadly, some adults do not get what my son understands. Evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne wrote, "if one applies the same empirical standards to Christianity as scientists do to Darwinism, religion suffers: we have far more evidence for the existence of dinosaurs than for the divinity of Christ." If we must compare, there were many dinosaurs, but only one Jesus although there are many references to him in the Old Testament. Dinosaurs merely existed; Jesus pre-existed. T. rex and Stegosaurus merely died out for good. Jesus died for us and rose again.

Children need to understand that scientific writing is not the only kind that has validity. There are many others such as birthday cards, poetry and, of course, Scripture. Help your child to appreciate the value of various kinds of writing. The so-called Bible-science debate very often misses the point. Those who show contempt for the scriptures because it is lacking in science and those who try to show that it is scientific after all, are obscuring its real message. "And how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." God is paying attention to us, speaking to us and loving us though the death of his Son on the Cross and guiding us to the abundant life. How unfortunate when the real message gets lost in all the pedantry. Help your child prevent the extraneous from keeping him from the central message of the gospel \- Christ and him crucified. Why does the Bible not say anything about dinosaurs? Because it has other, higher, purposes.

"Mommy, you said that God created everything, but at school I learnt that dinosaurs evolved. Who is right?"

Our daughter, Sharon at four and a half, had a parallel concern. She asked Janice, 'Did God build this house?' How would you respond? You may be tempted to say 'No. God didn't build it, people did' and then, in order to give God something to do add 'But He did make the basic materials.' This is a natural response but it is unbiblical. Scripture says 'Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labour in vain.' Or, in the terms that Janice put to my daughter, "Yes, Sharon, God built the house and He used people to do it."

God is not in competition with the means He uses to do things. Jesus says, "All by itself the soil produces grain" whereas Paul says God creates food. These are not contradictory. Paul was talking about the ultimate cause. Jesus was talking about the natural cause. Both are valid. They are complementary. So, let us get back to your child's question, "Mommy, you said that God created everything, but at school I learnt that dinosaurs evolved. Who is right?" Don't answer in such a way that an inevitable conflict is set up between God and science. This could lead to regretful spiritual and intellectual consequences. Janice showed the way to go: "Both are right. God created the dinosaurs and He used evolution to do it."

"Mom, I want to be a paleontologist."

This could come out just as your child sets out for university. The statement is ambiguous. If she just wants her vocation to be paleontology - wonderful. However, she could be starting on a track in which she defines herself by what she knows. This might sound like a good thing when one is good at paleontology, but it brings with it a curse. Withdrawing into ability can cut us off from our humanity. Your child needs to be reminded that she is first of all a person and then a paleontologist. In particular she needs to understand that knowing God is a matter between a person and a Person. There is a difference between knowing God and knowing about his works. Here is an illustration that might help. I suppose there are some experts today who know more about Shakespeare's plays than he did! They certainly know something. But they do not and indeed cannot know Shakespeare personally. On the other hand, did you know that Shakespeare's wife was illiterate? She could never compete with today's scholars in a quiz about her husband's plays. Yet, she knew her husband intimately. So it is with knowing God. It is possible to be quite ignorant about his works and yet know him and it is possible to be very knowledgeable about his works and yet not know him. These are different kinds of knowing. If you don't pit them against each other, your child can have both. She can know Someone and know something. But the greatest thing is to know him.

"Mom, where do dinosaurs come from?"

If you really want to impress your child you may wish to memorise this answer. "Dinosaurs evolved from a thecodont archosaur such as Lagosuchus that was one third of a metre long and had hind limbs that were much longer than its forelimbs." But be aware that your child may respond, "Oh, and I thought they came from eggs"!

How do you prepare your children for their spiritual and intellectual future? Help them understand that they do not need to choose between Jesus and dinosaurs. One does not have to exchange knowing about dinosaurs for knowing Christ or vice versa. Dinosaurs are interesting and extinct! Jesus Christ, on the other hand is not an object of interest, but a Person who is alive and well. He did die for our sin, securing our relationship to the Father, but He rose again to bring us eternal life. The appropriate response to him is love and devotion.

*****

18. How not to take a photograph

For an honours project, I was given the task of photographing chromosomes using a sophisticated camera atop a sophisticated microscope. My professor explained that the film was very expensive, and asked me to pay close attention to the procedure. After satisfying him that I understood, I went to work. I remembered every step in the procedure. Except one. The film was rendered useless. With my tail between my legs, I apologised and asked for a second spool. And set to work. This time I remembered every step in the procedure. Except one. A different one. My apologies were abject as I asked for a third spool. My professor was clearly pained but graciously obliged. This time I remembered every single step in the procedure. Except one. My apologies were profuse and abject. I suggested that I write an essay instead of the experiment. He heartily agreed.

I received a First for the essay, but still wanted to work in a laboratory. It took a few more failures for me to concede that I would be better behind a keyboard than a microscope. Evangelists have also struggled with knowing their limits.

19. How not to evangelise evolutionists

Consider the following experience I had with a pair of street evangelists. I'm not sure what came over me. I was in an experimental and mischievous mood. As they presented their tract, I mentioned that I was an evolutionist to see what would happen.

They were quite taken aback and blurted out: "What about all those missing links?"

"Oh," I replied, "You mean such as the Pelycosauromorpha, Tetraceratops, Thrinaxodon, Cynognathus, Probainognathus, Diarthrognathus and Morganucodon? They're not missing. They're found"

What followed was a lengthy, but unconvincing attempt to justify their position on the fossil record. They made several statements by their reaction.

First, they fell for my bait and implied that the primary issue is how much one knows. They tacitly pronounced the priority of the evolution question - that it must be discussed before one can preach Christ. I worry about the effect of this approach to evangelism. People could quite easily go away reinforced in the belief that the most important thing is how much they know. They might fluff up their feathers in their superior knowledge and end up further away from God than when they started. Instead they should have followed the example of Jesus. They should have made him and the cross their subject and defence. Scientist-theologian George Murphy has argued strongly for this on the basis that, "God is revealed most clearly in the cross of Christ."

Second, whereas the Son of God himself was not under the illusion that he must know everything, these evangelists have swallowed a demandingly expanded job description. This is not surprising since many that train evangelists send this signal. Theologian and apologist Michael Green, gives this scientifically erroneous advice to the would-be evangelist. He suggests asking the atheist, "If there was no Creator, how did it [the universe] originate? ... Press him hard in this area. He will wriggle and probably tell you that evolution supplies the answer. That is very unconvincing, not primarily because it is a theory that is unproven, full of missing links, and by no means universally accepted in the scientific community; but because you have to have a starting point for this evolutionary process". With comments like these from leaders, it is small wonder that some Christians at the coalface of ministry have a misplaced confidence in attacking the science of evolutionary biology.

Green's assessment of the scientific community's position contrasts with that of evolutionary biologists. Ernst Mayr, for instance, wrote a few years earlier, "One hundred and twenty-five years of unsuccessful refutations have resulted in an immense strengthening of Darwinism. Whatever attacks on Darwinism are made in our age are made by outsiders, jurists, journalists and so on ... The claims of certain outsiders that Darwinism is in the process of being refuted are entirely based on ignorance. To repeat, the basic Darwinian principles are more firmly established than ever".

I have a book on my shelf that is intended as a guidebook for Christian ministry on the university campus. In it the author, a professor, presents his personal testimony with the breathtaking announcement that he has discovered that modern science has confirmed the biblical account of origins. Considering that his PhD and professional experience do not come close to touching cosmology, geology, palaeontology, or biblical theology (his PhD was in management science) and that modern science is vast, the authority of his testimony is somewhat suspect. He placed his testimony in his book as an example; it will doubtless encourage some evangelists to practice similar misuse of authority.y

Third, the evangelists' reaction told me that they did not know very much. If I were spiritually uninformed, I might reason that if they responded so poorly in scientific matters that I know about, why should I trust them in spiritual matters that I did not know about? It is all the more vital for the church in this age of communications technology to hold the Person and work of Christ above mere information. It is morally inexcusable _and_ poor strategy to tie the gospel to bad science today. In the past an evangelist could claim the absence of transitional forms without being found out. Today, a teenager can do a quick check on the Internet. I googled "transitional forms" and "evolution" and received 146000 hits in a quarter of a second. The Internet has made knowledge, and in particular for our discussion, evolutionary knowledge extremely accessible to ordinary people all over the world. For instance, all of Chile's high schools have web access. Peruvian villages and even the Arctic have web access.

Fourth, their reaction did not reveal much great faith in Christ. Here they were, non-paleontologists, apparently more confident in their paleontological knowledge than they were in Christ. How much better would it have been if they had said, "The fossil record is not our field, but may we talk to you about someone we know who has changed our lives."

*****

20. The mind according to the Master

What is the right place for the mind in the Christian life? Throughout the ages the Christian church has struggled with this question. Some despise the mind. How can a depraved mind know God? Others have much more time for it. Paul said we can have the mind of Christ. The Scriptures itself, may appear to say contrary things. On the one hand Jesus praises God when the wise and learned struggle to fathom the kingdom of heaven, but on the other commands his disciples to "love God with all their minds," to be as "shrewd as snakes" and not to "be like the horse or the mule, which have no understanding...."

How can the mind be a good thing when it can keep us from the kingdom of heaven? How can it be a bad thing when we are commanded to use it?

Horses and camels

Here is an illustration that may help. A little while ago I got chatting to a camel-owner. He had some memorable stories about people falling off his camels. You might think that those with horse-riding experience would be the most likely to stay on the camels. It turns out that they were the least likely. Camels are not like horses. They behave differently and unexpectedly for the horse-rider. Is horse-riding experience a good thing? Yes, ... for riding horses. For camel-riding it can put you at a disadvantage. A shrewd mind is like the ability to ride a horse. It is good for some things, bad for others. Those who try to achieve salvation through their shrewd minds end up falling on their behinds. The gospel declares that we are saved, not through ourselves but through Christ. God has done it this way expressly so that no one can boast. This is why Jesus praised God for keeping the gospel from "the wise and the learned" and revealing it to "little children " and why he says "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." The mind is a bad thing when we try to use it to earn God's acceptance. Yet some would redefine faith so as to make intellectual performance a requirement for salvation. For example, Christian philosopher Moreland writes "...biblically, faith is a power or skill to act in accordance with the nature of the kingdom of God...."To see where he has gone wrong take the term 'faith' in Ephesians 2:8 & 9 and substitute his definition for it. We get, "For it is by grace you have been saved, through a power or skill to act in accordance with the nature of the kingdom of God--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-- not by works, so that no one can boast." We have a contradiction. Either we are saved by some prowess we have - then we can boast. Or, we are saved by grace - then we cannot boast. He cannot have it both ways. He should have used his mind to pick up the contradiction - that is the correct use for it. He should not have made it integral for salvation. The New Bible Dictionary gives the biblical definition: "Faith is an attitude whereby a man abandons all reliance in his own efforts to obtain salvation, be they deeds of piety, or ethical goodness or anything else."

However, to get on in the world a shrewd mind is imperative; now is not the time to be childlike. Jesus commanded his disciples to be shrewd straight after telling them He was sending them out as sheep among wolves. We need our minds for many things such as to contend against evil, for prayer and to correctly interpret Scripture. The Bible expressly warns against being childish in such matters. I have heard it said that God is not looking for intelligent people to be his labourers but humble people. Actually, we should be as humble as pie and as shrewd as a serpent. God has commanded both.

The wise mind

The important thing is to use the mind appropriately. The Scriptures calls this wisdom and has much to say about the characteristics of the wise mind.

The wise mind is God-centred. According to the Scriptures the wise mind does not lean on its own understanding, but fears the Lord and emphasises Christ and him crucified. In contrast, there are some who centre their faith on something other than Jesus then seem to add him as an afterthought. I came across an example in a book called "The Seal of God in Creation and the Word." In it the author claims that God has designed the number 'Seven' into his Creation and his Word as a testimony to himself. The evidence: the rainbow has seven colours, the human embryo is viable at 28 (7 X 4) weeks, chicks hatch from the 21st (7 X 3) day and so on. It hardly seems necessary to refute this claim. From a Christian perspective he really falls into trouble when he writes " ... I sincerely believe that God has set these and other immovable signs before us, especially so that those of us who may be somewhat weak in faith, may have some tangible evidence of His plan and purpose through Jesus Christ." Is the death of God's own Son not tangible enough? Does Calvary and the Epistles not speak sufficiently plainly of God's redemptive plan? This Seven is not in God's creation; it is the product of an overly excitable human mind and is elevated to a position next to God's supreme revelation in his Son.

The wise mind is humble. The Bible says that humility fosters wisdom and wisdom fosters humility. There is a story about Einstein and the chemist Dr. Henry Eyring coming across a plant they could not identify. They consulted the gardener. It was a bean plant. From then on Eyring went around saying that Einstein didn't know beans  They had the humility to recognise that one physicist and one chemist do not make a gardener. In contrast, two scientists wrote a book pronouncing Archaeopterix, the famous reptile-bird fossil, a fraud. The problem is that the scientists were nowhere near their field - they were astronomers! It is not only the distinguished that can so fall. Charles Darwin's gardener apparently said of the great biologist, "Poor man, he just stands and stares at a yellow flower for minutes at a time. He would be far better off with something to do." And biologists are not immune to pride either - one has made public claims about Christian theology that reveal a very rudimentary acquaintance with the New Testament.We can take our cue from the Master himself. The Son of Omniscience himself was able to admit that He did not know everything, saying, "No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.* The wise mind is interdependent

The wise mind recognises its need for others. Having a critical mind is rightly valued in academia; it is certainly necessary for advancing the frontiers of research and, indeed, to be good at many jobs. But a critical mind can only take one so far. Because we are limited in time and space we are forced to rely on others. We cannot all be brilliant in everything. God gives wisdom to one and knowledge to another and tells us to consult the wise and seek out many advisers. It is precisely because God gives people different gifts that we should seek out many advisers and use them according to their giftedness.

We have already seen that to find out the biblical perspective on faith it is better to consult the New Bible Dictionary and its team of Bible scholars than the work of a Christian philosopher. And in biological matters it is best to consult a biologist. I know of a case in which someone was invited to the pulpit to speak on "the scientific arguments against evolution." I asked the pastor what the gentleman's PhD was in. He did not know! After some investigating, it turned out that it was in Divinity! Not that I was surprised. I went to one of his talks and he had very little scientific idea of what he was talking about.

The wise mind is not gullible. The Bible disapproves of the mind that, like a sponge, will soak up anything. Such a mind delights in folly and is happy to simply have the ear tickled. Any further processing seems to be taken as unnecessary. Prime examples are responses to the email hoaxes that seem to abound on the Internet. One story making the rounds is that geologists in Siberia discovered hell during a research mining operation. They temperature at the bottom of the 14 km hole was 1 100 degrees Celsius, and, when they lowered microphones into the well they heard the screams of countless tormented souls. A report mentioned a brilliant being with bat's wings flying out of the hole. The perpetrator of the "bat out of hell" amendment has confessed that his motive was to show up the Trinity Broadcasting Network for going public with such stories without bothering to check the facts. True, scientists in Russia did drill a 14km deep well, but the temperature was 82 degrees Celsius and they did not discover hell. Yet, there are many Christian sites that repeat the fabrication.

A mind that is closed to everything is unwise just as the mind that is open to everything. If the gullible mind is like a sponge, this mind is like a stone. It cannot receive anything. It speaks abusively against what it does not understand. It does not respond to correction, answers before the question is heard and delights in airing its own opinions rather than in understanding.

Reality is complex. How do we know that Jesus is both God and man? How can whole continents move around the globe? How can God be sovereign and humans have free will? How can we be sure that the earth is billions of years old? How can an almighty, loving God allow evil and suffering? How do we know that birds are descended from dinosaurs? It takes intellectual effort to even begin to answer these questions. The abusive mind would rather mock.

I had a conversation with a non-scientist some time ago. The subject was the demise of the dinosaurs. I mentioned that scientists believe a comet was largely responsibly. She replied, skeptically, "is this true?"

"Yes," I said.

"How do they know?"

"One piece of evidence is a layer of iridium in the geological record at the time the dinosaurs became extinct. Iridium isn't generally found on earth. But it is found in comets."

"God could have put it in the fossil record - as a joke," she replied. Scientifically, she was out of her depth and so she frivolously, and disdainfully, forced God into it.

Or to take an example from the other direction, here is non-theologian writing about the Bible. He is commenting on Genesis 3:14 where God commands the serpent to eat dust for the rest of its life. "Serpents, of course, do not eat dust. They are carnivorous creatures. The dust-eating is simply an over-hasty conclusion from the position of their heads near the ground and from the constant flicking of their heat-sensitive tongues ...." Theologically out of his depth, the writer poked science into it. Yes, serpents do not eat dust. They do not speak either (see Genesis 3:1-3). What over-hasty conclusion brought the ancients to the conclusion that serpents could speak? The insertion of science is uncalled for and suppresses the theological message of the text.

The wise mind is discerning. The wise mind, like a filter, extracts knowledge. It has sound judgement and is able to tell the difference between right and wrong. We all know of Solomon's famed wisdom but there is a telling story of Daniel and Bel in the Apocrypha. Bel was an idol which was offered a substantial amount of food and wine each day. King Cyrus joined in the worship of the idol. Daniel did not. When the King asked why, Daniel laughed and replied that the idol had never eaten or drunk anything. The temple priests were furious. As they left they challenged the king to place food and wine in the idol's temple and to seal the entrance with his own seal. If the food was not eaten they could be put to death. If it was eaten then "Daniel, that slanderer" should be put to death. The king agreed, and privately, while in his presence, Daniel had his servants strew ashes over the floor. The next morning the seal remained unbroken, but the food and wine had gone. Just as the king began to worship Bel, Daniel pointed to the human footprints in the ashes. The priests had come in through a secret entrance and removed the goods. Daniel displayed a great deal of discernment. He distinguished between Creator and creature unlike the king. He also knew how to expose the temple priests through the pertinent use and interpretation of material evidence.

The wise mind defers to the Master. How can we know another's mind unless he tells us? How can we know the mind of God unless He tells us? The apostle Paul uses this analogy to show another characteristic of the wise mind. The wise mind looks to God to reveal himself. And He has - supremely through his Son Jesus Christ. "In the past God spoke to our ancestors many times and in many ways through the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us through his Son ... He reflects the brightness of God's glory and is the exact likeness of God's own being ...." The wise mind knows its own limits and defers to the Master. How can we know the way to the Father better than the Professor of salvation? How can we do better than the one who made our salvation his profession by going to his death on the cross? The truly wise mind knows when to stop relying on its own wisdom; it knows when to become like a child and trust in the Master "in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge."

*****

21. Jesus says it with flowers

I know a lecturer at a college (let's call him Billy) who is very smart, articulate and highly educated, but outside of biology. He has made some public pronouncements on "intelligent design" and evolutionary biology that are quite at odds with the facts. He saw himself as a knight in biological matters. I saw a cowboy on a camel. I decided to try and help him see that, like all of us, he is not in a position to make authoritative pronouncements outside his field. He does not have a foolproof system for avoiding deception. There is just no such thing as a Universal Humbug Detector. I invited him to lunch at the University Club.

While enjoying our meal, I pointed casually to a vase on the next table and asked, "What would you say is the colour of the flowers of that plant?"

Billy glanced over and replied, "Reddish-pink." Then, suspecting that I was up to something, he took a second glance and added, "with some blue thrown in."

"I say they are a very pale yellow."

He examined me for a moment then retorted, "You are either psycho-linguistically or perceptually challenged."

"What if a botanist said they were yellow?" I asked.

Still he persisted (he knew that 'Appeal to Authority' is a fallacy).

"What if ten botanists said they were yellow?"

Still he persisted (he was not about to fall for 'Appeal to the People' or listen to these evolutionary-minded botanists).

Let us forget for a moment what the evolutionists and Billy think. Let us find out what Jesus says. How are we going to do that since the Bible does not breathe a word about this plant? Remember, Jesus created everything – including this particular plant. The way to find out what Jesus says is to investigate the flowers themselves.

Then I showed Billy. The plant was a Bougainvillea. What he thought were flowers are actually modified leaves called bracts. The hidden and tiny flowers were indeed pale yellow.

"Now," I said to Billy, "if in the simple matter of the colour of the flowers of this plant you have been had, what makes you so sure that you are on top of the big subject of evolution?"

I have used the Bougainvillea lesson in different settings - on university students, in courses on critical thinking, in church groups and on individuals. Except for botany students (and even then there are occasional mistakes), everyone I have tried it on is insistent that the flowers are not yellow despite the verdict of botanists. One fellow even offered me his spectacles.

Why was Billy fooled by the Bougainvillea? He was right to think that it is ultimately to the evidence that we must look to decide on the colour of the Bougainvillea flower, but he was naive to think that his personal handling of the evidence was ultimate. Billy fell for the superstition of the Universal Humbug Detector. He thought he had the faculties to see things as they are and that he was a neutral observer. Philosophers of science have shredded this possibility. Norwood Hanson, Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper amongst others have shown that we always come with assumptions or perspectives that constrain the way we see. Billy assumed that the coloured parts of plants are flowers. Botanists do not share this assumption - they know exceptions.

I think Billy was labouring under what Karl Popper called the doctrine that truth is manifest. Popper explains that according to this doctrine "... truth, if put before us naked, is always recognisable as truth." He says that Bacon and Descartes defended this doctrine theologically. "What we clearly and distinctly see to be true must indeed be true; for otherwise God would be deceiving us. Thus the truthfulness of God must make truth manifest." While it it true that God does not deceive and this makes it possible to reliably uncover truth about the world, it still takes considerable intellectual effort to do so.

I think he was also labouring under experiential foundationalism. The idea here is that beliefs are confirmed by indubitable experiences. But philosophers such as Willard Quine, Richard Rorty and Wilfred Sellars have discredited this idea. It is not that good theories do not have a foundation, but that their foundation is a great set of experiences of many scientists that are individually disputable, but collectively reliable. Philosopher of science Michael Polanyi has argued compellingly that what we know in science is mediated through others and cannot be stated explicitly. This means that to know as scientists know, it is not enough to read what they say; one knows through being a part of the scientific community. What should Billy do to avoid being fooled by the Bougainvillea? Ideally, he should expertly examine the plant himself, but this requires that he get some training in botany. If he does not want to take this trouble, the wise alternative is to go with the consensus of botanists. If Billy wants to hear, there is a message from Jesus through the Bougainvillea. It is a message about the importance of diligence in studying his creation. A casual glance does not cut it. And there is a message about humility and wisdom in listening to what botanists say about it.

Philosopher Mary Midgley identifies attitudes of independence and individualism in our post-Enlightenment culture that I think also serve to preserve the superstition of the Universal Humbug Detector. These attitudes may be more Western and male than African and female ones. Philosopher Augustine Shutte argues that the African idea of ubuntu (which means humanity) is a welcome corrective both to the excesses of the individualistic spirit and the collectivist spirit . Midgley points out it may indeed be progress to go from childish dependence to adolescent independence, but this is not yet maturity. Mature people are interdependent. They lead in their areas of competence, but rely on the competence of others when they need to. Billy thought it intellectually virtuous to persist against botanists over the colour of the flowers. He gave his direct experience of the flowers greater value than the experience of botanists. But reality is much bigger than his personal experience of it. Many botanists had examined Bougainvilleas long before Billy was born. To think that his casual experience was superior to the diligent study of many botanists was arrogant and lacking in wisdom. Billy thought the Bougainvillea was a test of his observation skills; it was actually a test of his humility and wisdom.

Billy has also fallen into the trap of disciplinary chauvinism – thinking that one's particular field is the key to understanding other fields. This is nicely illustrated in the story of Dr Fleiss, a friend of the founder of psychology, Sigmund Freud. They had a falling out, partly because Fleiss insisted that all psychological ailments have their source in an ear, nose or throat infection! Guess Fleiss's occupation. Yes, he was an Ear, Nose and Throat surgeon! His is a particularly extreme example, but the fallacy is prevalent. Billy said to me that evolution is "ultimately a matter of metaphysics not biology." This, of course, puts him, as a philosopher, in the ultimate position to evaluate it! However, if philosophy, on its own, could not help him with the colour of the Bougainvillea flower, how is it going to help him with the vast field of evolutionary biology? It is bad philosophy to think that a philosophical training, on its own, makes one competent to evaluate evolutionary biology.

*****

22. The True Vine and the false

In a Parker and Grant cartoon, the Wizard of Id has a telescope pointing out of his window.

King: "What are you doing Wiz?"

Wizard: "I'm looking for the centre of the universe".

King: "Speaking."

Jesus is the true vine.

We laugh at the preposterousness of the king's reply. Yet, Jesus made statements just like it such as, "I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing." Jesus claims to be the centre of the spiritual universe. To those who are looking for the centre of love, for the centre of faith, for the centre of joy, for the centre of righteousness," Jesus replies, "Speaking." It is clear and radical. His statement is anything but tame. And it is grandiose, unless Jesus really is the Son of God. If He is the Son of God, He has every right to say it. Notice how Jesus begins with himself rather than with the branches and the fruit. "I am the vine; you are the branches"(v5). Him first with us second. That is the appropriate and healthy sequence. The analogy is very simple. Just as the branches are utterly dependent on the root for the sap to live and produce fruit, so we are utterly dependent on Jesus to produce spiritual fruit. "The branches of a vine," says commentator, R.V.G. Tasker, "are not self-centred or independent. They have no source of life within themselves."

Jesus not only sustains our spiritual lives; He is also the initiator. He says that we did not choose him (v 16), but He chose and appointed us. In the upper room Jesus declares himself as spiritually necessary (we can't do without him), elsewhere scripture declares that He is spiritually sufficient (He is all we need). "His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness...." Jesus is crucial and He is enough.

The word "crucial", from the Latin "crux", for cross, is deliberate. Later in the passage Jesus says "Greater love has no one than this that he lay down his life for his friends" (v 13). He says this the night before his crucifixion. It is vital to keep in mind that it is a cross-shaped vine that the branches depend upon. Elsewhere Jesus says, "I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you." It is also a vine that was once dead but is now living. The risen Christ empowers the branches to produce fruit.

We make a big mistake if we think that Jesus is first of all talking about fruit in this passage. He is first of all talking about himself. If we are not producing fruit the appropriate response is not to become pre-occupied with the fruit but to become pre-occupied with Jesus. If we remain in him, we will produce fruit.

Christ-likeness is the fruit

What is this fruit that Jesus is talking about? In a word - Christ-likeness. "I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. (vs 12, emphasis mine). The particular Christ-like qualities Jesus mentions here are joy and love (vs 9-13,17) with special emphasis on love. The crucified Christ both demonstrates and defines genuine, unconditional, sacrificial love while the risen Christ empowers us to love like He loves. Jesus' death informs us of the quality of the fruit; the Holy Spirit provides the means to produce such fruit. While the focus of this passage is love and joy, of course all godly character has its source in Jesus. This is why Paul calls it the fruit of the Spirit, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control." This is not an exhaustive list. Another passage adds faith, knowledge of God and perseverance. Another adds righteousness and truthfulness. James adds the "wisdom that comes from heaven" and describes it as pure, peace-loving, considerate, submissive, merciful, impartial and sincere.

We are the branches

"If you remain in me and my words remain in you ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you" (v 7). "If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love" (v10). The branches are not just passive conduits of sap, but active producers of fruit. First of all the branches have to be a part of the vine. We become a part of the vine by appropriating what Jesus did for us on the cross through faith. Second, we must remain connected to the vine. We remain in the vine by the ongoing decision to know Christ's words, to pray, to obey Christ's commands and to be controlled by the Spirit. It is clear from the context that while our prayers need not be so restricted, what Jesus has in mind, first of all, is that we pray for fruit. Those who know Jesus and his words will know that this is what Jesus wants and will so pray. And this is what Jesus himself prays. He prays that Peter's faith will not fail. He prays that the disciples will have joy and will be holy. He prays for all believers that they will be in God, in effect that they will remain in the vine. "My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you" (v 12). This is a command. It is something we either decide to do or we decide to disobey. But to love is also a Christ-like quality and so cannot be fulfilled without him. We must step out in love while abiding in Christ.

God is the gardener

"He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit He prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you (v 2-3). The juxtaposition of these two verses may seem strange. What has pruning got to do with being clean? But, the "ancients spoke of pruning as a 'cleansing' of the branches." How can the clean require cleansing? There are two kinds of cleansing. The deep cleaning is what happens when believers come to faith in Christ. God has forgiven all the sins we have done, are doing and will do. We are counted as righteous or are "positionally" clean - to use theological jargon. But whenever we commit sin we still need to confess and receive forgiveness. We are now "experientially" clean. God's pruning leads to growing fruitfulness. We do not start out Christ-like. It is a process that takes time and produces maturity. Jesus wants "fruit that will last" (v 16). Such fruit is doubly from God. Jesus is the source and the Father is the cultivator. "If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned." It is clear from verse 5 that those who are truly in Jesus will bear much fruit. Those branches that are cut off and burned must be those that are in Jesus in name only. The unfruitful are unconnected. They have fallen away because they were never really connected. The Jesus label may be worn by the unfruitful, but he is pushed off-centre. Tasker writes "Unwillingness, through a proud sense of self-sufficiency, to draw strength from Jesus, or to submit to the discipline which alone makes possible the flow of this vitalizing power, renders the so- called believer a dead branch unable to bear fruit."

Something else may have become the source for spiritual nourishment. When Jesus said He was the true vine, He implied that there are false vines. Let us take a look at some of the false vines that we might look to for spiritual nourishment instead of Jesus.

Bad fruit

Our own fruit can be very insidious. God gives us a measure of righteousness and we become so affected by it that we feel we do not really need the true vine any longer. God says, "If I tell the righteous man that he will surely live, but then he trusts in his righteousness and does evil, none of the righteous things he has done will be remembered; he will die for the evil he has done." Trusting in one's own righteousness rather than Jesus is like removing a branch from the vine and attaching the base to a bunch of grapes. It sounds ridiculous, but this is in effect what the self-righteous do. Their fruit has become bad.

It is good to remember that our righteousness is as filthy rags before God. Even at our best we are marred by ulterior motives. And if we excel in one department it is at the expense of another. Only Jesus kept the virtues in perfect harmony. If we compare ourselves to him, it will help to remind us of our need for him.

Listen to these sobering words from Jesus in Matthew 7.

"Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them. Not everyone who says to me, `Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, `Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?' Then I will tell them plainly, `I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'

The basic problem was that Jesus did not know them. They were not connected to the true vine. Notice how those who are not so connected try to justify themselves. They justify themselves on the basis of their service for God instead of putting their faith in what Jesus has done for them on the cross. "Without faith it is impossible to please God" and "everything that does not come from faith is sin." In God's eyes they have done nothing.

Branches without root

The church can make for great branches, but it is a poor root. When the church goes too far and comes between Jesus and believers it has become all branches and no root. How can such branches produce fruit? The function of the church is to be Christ-like and not try to replace Christ. There are important respects in which we cannot emulate Jesus. For instance, He never had to confess because He committed no sin. In contrast, we must confess our sins to one another as scripture commands. Those who create the impression that they are sinless are lying and in pretending to have the features of the root, they can lead the naive to connect to them instead of Jesus. When the false root withers, the branches that are connected to it wither also.

Other vines

God gives a very severe warning to those who would trust in other vines:

Who among you fears the LORD

and obeys the word of his servant?

Let him who walks in the dark,

who has no light,

trust in the name of the LORD

and rely on his God.

But now, all you who light fires

and provide yourselves with flaming torches,

go, walk in the light of your fires

and of the torches you have set ablaze.

This is what you shall receive from my hand:

You will lie down in torment."

God has taken all the trouble to reveal himself completely in the true vine. In so doing He gave us the best possible basis for trust in him. Jesus is the true and best foundation for faith. However, there are false lights or false vines that come in all sorts of guises and are made to compete with Christ. I want to mention one category that can be rather pernicious. I used to think as a young Christian and student in the life sciences that Jesus needed scientific support. I did not put it this way, of course. I had more sophisticated ways of expressing it. But what I was doing was trying to make science into the true vine instead of Jesus. Science needs Jesus; Jesus does not need science.

I gave a talk to a church in Cape Town in which I belaboured the point that Jesus is the true basis for faith. During question time, an educated Christian gentleman stood up and said, "The core issue is the flood." He then tried to begin a lecture on the supposed geological evidence for Noah's flood. How is that for missing the boat? The core issue cannot be both Jesus and geology. As soon as the geology is made core, Jesus has to be relegated to a lesser place. Geology is a great science, but a poor Vine.

It reminds me of the story of Dr Wilhelm Fleiss. He was an ear, nose, and throat specialist and friend of Sigmund Freud. Fleiss believed that the nose was the source of all physical and mental illness. Fix the nose and you have fixed the person. In placing himself at the centre of medicine, Fleiss shows overtones of the King of Id. Such is the pattern with false vines. They give themselves or their disciplines the prominence that only truly belongs to Christ and him crucified.

The glory goes to the gardener

"This is to my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples" (v 8).

Bearing fruit is not an end in itself. It points to God. His glory must be our concern. We begin with him and we must end with him. Jesus is the source and the goal; He is the Alpha and the Omega. Let us pray that we would resolutely and wholeheartedly remain in Jesus so that He would produce fruit in us to the Father's glory.

*****

23. How not to speak to an audience

After dropping my kids at youth group, I amble down to the mall and browse the bookshops. On this particular day most of the seats are taken, but right at the back there is a stool and tall table. I plonk myself down and become engrossed in an article. I'm very deeply into it when a small voice from somewhere says, "Excuse me." Then again, "Excuse me, sir." I look up and there is this fellow saying, "Do you know that we are having a meeting - eh, a speaker?" I look around and realise that I am sitting at a podium and have an audience! Those seats that were taken - they are arranged in semi-circles facing me.

"Um ... I could speak to you if you want," I say to the group.

"Eh ... ha ha," the fellow says with an embarrassed smile.

My family's response to the incident was predictable. They laughed. I suspect they inwardly thanked God for not being associated with me in public. My wife, Janice, finds social mistakes acutely embarrassing. While I'm with her I tend to make them less often. I need her. One person who struggled to admit his need for others was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and it cost him...

*****

24. Fairies according to Jesus

When our children were little they had some fairy-friends. Every now and then they would write a note for the fairies, leave it in our back garden overnight and ... get a reply. Here is a typical message:

"Dear Nathan

When people look at us, we turn invisible because we are very shy. Sometimes you see the sparkle of our fairy wands. We brought you a fairy sweet. Love from the Fairies"

We have enjoyed the delight this fantasy has brought our children. However, when Rachel turned eight years old she began to think that fairies are invisible because they don't exist. She had noticed that fairy handwriting is suspiciously similar to her mother's! She was growing up.

The naivety of little children is quite excusable, but what of adults believing such fantasies? Sadly, it happens. Several full feature films have been released which are favourably disposed towards fairies. They recount the now famous story of two schoolgirls who claimed to have photographed fairies in Cottingley Glen, in Bradford, Yorkshire. The renowned Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the detective Sherlock Holmes, investigated. He concluded that the photographs were genuine and wrote a book about it. The fairies, however, had been faked and one of the perpetrators admitted as much in 1983.

How could such a thing happen to the intellectual favourite of his day? Let us investigate. This does not have to be in the spirit of gloating over the fall of a famous intellectual. One can have the attitude that if someone of the stature of Sir Arthur could be taken in, then perhaps no one is immune to deception. Who of us can claim to have never been deceived? Learning from his mistakes might be very worthwhile.

How to be deceived

It might be supposed that Sir Arthur's susceptibility arose from a lack of intelligence, reasoning ability or education. I do not think this can be sustained. He was, after all, trained as a physician and his creation, Sherlock Holmes, was masterfully skilled in logic and observation. Furthermore, Sir Arthur showed great ingenuity in attempting to discount his critics. There must have been other factors that conspired to keep him from employing his talents and they must have been powerful.

One of the photographs was "so silly" says illusionist James Randi "that its fraudulence can be detected by any intelligent observer, let alone a scientist with modern methods". Another photograph had crisp fairies against the backdrop of a blurred waterfall. Why were the fairies not blurred as well? This is hard to explain if they were real; it is easy to explain if they were paper cut outs. Randi lists as many as nineteen categories of error made by Sir Arthur and his investigating team. What kept him from picking up the mistakes? I will suggest three factors.

First, personal tragedy predisposed Sir Arthur to deception. He lost his beloved eldest son, Kingsley, his brother and his brother-in-law in the First World War. Spiritualism, with its promise of communication with departed loved ones, softened him up for fairies. However, we have to have some sympathy with Sir Arthur here. If he had been less devoted to his son, he might have been less susceptible. To call him simply gullible is a little superficial.

Second, Sir Arthur believed in the superstition of the Universal Humbug Detector- that a one-sized training fitted him for all fields. James Randi gives some background, "It must be understood that he was considered an absolutely unassailable authority on any subject he chose to expound upon". Dinwall, a psychic investigator who knew Sir Arthur personally, said: "Doyle was never wrong, and no-one dared to suggest that he could have been mistaken - in anything ... He was not accustomed to being doubted. For Sir Arthur it was enough to be eminent, and the eminence could be in anything but that which was actually required. This is like choosing a Nobel-prize winning physicist to fix one's teeth or a brilliant logician to fix one's car. In spiritual matters for instance, he dismissed the "pedantry of theologians," calling them "a curse to this world" but welcomed the positive statements of renowned jurists, scientists, and militarists. In the matter of séances, he habitually invited eminent scientists and editors while dismissing from consideration those most capable of detecting cheating - conjurors.

Sir Arthur was perfectly confident in his own expertise in detecting deception, despite not having the requisite training. His friend Harry Houdini, the great illusionist and escape artist, like Sir Arthur, was devastated by the loss of someone he loved dearly and tried to contact his late mother through mediums. Houdini, unlike Sir Arthur, wasn't taken in for long. His training in magic equipped him to uncover deception and towards the end of his life he devoted a great deal of his time to exposing charlatans. But Sir Arthur, with a less than mature independence, was not prepared to admit his limitations. In the matter of the Cottingley fairies, he took it upon himself to commission an informal inquiry and appointed himself as the sole selection committee. To his credit, he deferred to photographic experts including one that made a hobby out of faked photographs. They let him down badly. (Although it must be said that it was not the photographs that were faked, but the scene). To his discredit, his choice to head the investigation was inappropriate. The gentleman had credentials in theosophy but little in cheat-detection and it showed. Even the Son of God admitted that he did not know the time of his Second Coming and left the matter to his Father.

Third, Sir Arthur evidently preferred human expertise to divine revelation as his source in spiritual matters. For example, Jesus flatly declares that He came to give his life as a ransom for many. Sir Arthur finds no justice in this. Rather than believe the One who knew no sin, he trusted mediums that stressed the importance of conduct but hardly ever mentioned redemption. Sir Arthur did not account for the extent of human evil. Harry Price, the great psychical investigator, wrote that "Doyle simply could not bring himself to believe that any medium was vile enough to trade on the most sacred feelings of the bereaved by producing ... faked "communications" from the dead". While they were stressing the importance of conduct, the mediums were milking their victims of their money.

In the matter of the Cottingley fairies, Sir Arthur apparently believed Gardner's report that the schoolgirls were "undoubtedly honest, coming from a family of tradesmen and down-to-earth people incapable of guile". It is sad to see this great writer, after receiving a letter informing him of the evidence of the fairies, writing that it "filled me with hopes". The irony of it all. He preferred to believe that the schoolgirls had expertise in the supernatural than expertise in fraud. He believed that since they came from the artisan class, they would not have had the skill to perpetrate such a hoax. He preferred to be seduced by the idea that cameras could penetrate the supernatural than rely on the Spiritual Expert himself.

How not to be deceived

God is often disregarded in discussions about these matters. All too often purely human resources are sought as antidotes to superstition. The trouble with this perspective is that it cannot account for all the simple folk who cannot boast of the education or cognitive faculties of a Sir Arthur, but who were not fooled by the Cottingley schoolgirls. The artisan father of one of these girls said, " ... how could a brilliant man like him believe such a thing?". One has to bank on God knowing how to exalt the humble and humble the proud. He guides those who lean on him rather than their own inappropriate expertise and sends a powerful delusion to those who refuse to love the truth. To avoid being deceived one can take a leaf from Jesus himself and humbly recognise one's individual limitations.

*****

25. Vic

Back in the days of film, I asked a very good friend, who happens to be a pastor, to help me photograph a solar eclipse. The eclipse happened to fall on my birthday, so I was doubly excited about the occasion. The apparatus was set up well in advance since eclipses wait for no one. I noted when the eclipse began and it was right on time - to the second!

After the eclipse was over, we discovered that the camera was not actually loaded with film. Vic merely presumed it was. I hit him. Then I forgave him.

The eclipse was more reliable than my friend. That is just the way it is with the human condition and with natural laws. Fortunately for us God is as dependable as an eclipse.

"This is what the Lord says: `If I have not established my covenant with day and night and the fixed laws of heaven and earth, then I will reject the descendants of Jacob and David my servant and will not choose one of his sons to rule over the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. For I will restore their fortunes and have compassion on them.'"

As surely as God will cause the next solar eclipse to happen on time, he will raise the redeemed to eternal life. This is so even for the faithless. As the Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy

"if we are faithless,

he will remain faithful,

for he cannot disown himself."

Those who have put their faith in Christ can count on God. When the book of life is opened, they will not find that God has run out of paper. Their names will be there. Depend on it.

*****

26. Miracles according to Jesus

Imagine a computer that could read your mind! It sounds scary doesn't it? I have made available (www.mikelanderson.com) a few freeware widgets that apparently allow computers to do just that. For example, one widget asks you to choose any country in the world.

Now count the number of vowels in the country's name. Add 2. Multiply the resulting number by 9. Take the digits of your answer and add them together. Subtract 5. Convert your answer to a letter using the code 1=A, 2=B, 3=C, 4=D and so on. Think of a country that begins with this letter. Take the second letter of the country's name. Now think of a large animal that begins with this letter. Ready?

Hmmm, well elephants do not come from Denmark! So says the widget. Is there some mysterious psychic force behind this phenomenon? Some might want to conclude that there is on the basis that they cannot find a natural explanation. Actually, there are shenanigans behind the widget. It is an old trick. Here is how it works:

The widget exposed

Whatever the starting number, the final number is always four. Try it for yourself if you don't believe me. Now 4=D. It so happens that the names of very few countries begin with D. Most people will say Denmark and elephant. The impression created is that you have a lot of options to choose from, but this is an illusion.

Principles in deception detection

It is relatively easy to figure out how the above trick works, but it suggests some general principles that will help us avoid being duped by craftier hocus-pocus. A little specific mathematical know-how helps to expose the deception in the widget. This might suggest that education, special abilities or intelligence is what is needed. But this would be a recipe for information overload and anxiety. Specific education only helps with specific kinds of deception. Expertise in one area does not necessarily help us avoid deception involving another. There are countless ways in which one can be deceived. We cannot be experts in everything (used car and home purchasing also come to mind here). This is why even educated, intelligent people can, and sometimes do get hoodwinked as we will see.

There is a more fundamental problem - and a more fundamental solution. Non-mathematicians who believe that something psychic must be going on because they cannot see how the trick is done are certainly arguing from ignorance. However, they are also arguing from arrogance. In effect, they are saying, "If there was a natural explanation for this phenomenon, we would have found it. We didn't find it. Therefore the computer is psychic." This mistake is called the Fallacy of False Authority. Furthermore, by tacitly dismissing mathematics from consideration, they are being single-dimensional in their thinking. Their attitude declares that their own perception of the phenomenon is all that matters. So, it was not mere gullibility that led to them being bamboozled, but overconfidence. The solution? A healthy interdependence on the expertise of others would be a good place to begin. We use this principle when we ask the Automobile Association to examine a car before we buy it, or when we consult a lawyer before entering into a legal contract. When it comes to trickery, the person to consult is, of course, an appropriately qualified illusionist.

Let us see how these principles pan out in the case of spoon-bending by the self-proclaimed psychic, Uri Geller. Many believe he is able to accomplish this feat with just the power of his mind and there is a webpage replete with endorsements by scientists, including some from the University of Cape Town. Mathematics Professor John Taylor said, "I myself performed such [careful] investigations with both Geller and numbers of children in England over the last year, and I have been convinced that such supernormal abilities do actually occur". How does his response square with the principles outlined above? Notice the glaring False Authority. Why should anyone take notice of his pronouncement? It isn't immediately clear why expertise in mathematics or science should certify someone in detecting a spoon-bending trick.

What has been proved is that some experts do not know where their expertise ends. I am not convinced by Geller - not because I can tell - it would be very easy for Geller to fool me. I am not convinced because Geller has not convinced top-notch illusionists such as Andre Kole. Kole is one of the world's foremost illusionists according to David Copperfield. He is not convinced by psychic claims because he is able to duplicate their feats and uncover their tricks.. There have been several exposures of Geller's many lies and legerdemains.

Feat or feet?

The next example involves a medium, a dress and a team headed by a Professor Lombroso. The medium claimed to be able to levitate - at least partially. The professors placed her on a scale and recorded a loss in weight of seventeen pounds. One aspect of the experiment perplexed them. They noted that the effect disappeared whenever they prevented the medium's dress from touching the floor. No fraud was detected. Notice the False Authority and the single-dimensional thinking again. They so fixated on their experiment that they forgot about critical factors that lie outside of pure science - such as moral character. Pressing a toe against the floor can make one appear to weigh less. A duplicitous mind and sleight-of-feet could have produced the "feat."

When it comes to miracles - or magic - there is one person whose feats stand head and shoulders above everyone else's - Jesus. Did He work genuine miracles? Let us apply the principles above to his miracles.

Did Jesus work miracles?

Philosopher, David Hume, argued famously that "a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature"; we should reject miracles because they go against "firm and unalterable experience." But the only way one could declare experience unalterable is by experiencing everything that has ever happened in history! Hume is claiming to be able to see things as God does. How is that for extreme False Authority! The appropriate attitude for mere mortals is not to decide beforehand whether miracles are possible or not, but to investigate the facts.

There are experts in historico-legal matters who are convinced that Jesus did work miracles. That is, they are convinced that the events-in-themselves must have occurred. There is the separate question whether they were genuinely miraculous or mere tricks. According to Andre Kohl. the miracles of Jesus must have been genuine. For him to attempt some of his miracles through trickery would require truckloads of modern equipment. Even the lesser miracles that Jesus casually tossed out would provide an enormous challenge to a contemporary illusionist and are hard to attribute to the placebo effect. For example, He told Peter to fish for the coin that was to pay for their taxes. Since the miracle was performed from a distance, sleight of hand is precluded. Other miracles are even harder to manufacture - such as fulfilling prophecies made centuries before, or rising from the dead after having been crucified. Some rabbinical sources put Jesus' miracles down to magic (i.e. sorcery as opposed to illusion) learnt while in Egypt (note that the events themselves are not denied). Indeed, while Jesus was driving out demons, his faultfinders were accusing him of the same thing. Jesus refutes their charge with the reductio ad absurdum, "If Satan is divided against himself, how can his kingdom stand?"

What do miracles mean? Those who have experienced miracles are not necessarily the best people to ask; scripture says that they may exaggerate their import. To understand their significance, the best authority is the Master himself.

The meaning of miracles

"Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in him." Jesus is speaking. It is a climactic moment. Something is about to happen that would glorify God the Father like nothing before. Can you imagine what sort of stupendous miracle this would have to be? Actually it wasn't a miracle at all. Jesus was talking about his death. While his resurrection cannot, of course, be separated from the gospel, the New Testament makes his death the centrepoint of history. The one memorial that Jesus institutes is not to his virgin birth, nor to his transfiguration nor to his ascension, nor even to his resurrection, but to his death. Even while the gospel writers are recording the great miracles, his death is being foretold or at least there is an allusion to it. Before Jesus is born the angel of the Lord declares that He "will save his people from their sins." During the transfiguration, when Jesus' appearance became a dazzling white, the subject under discussion was his death. Theologian John Stott says simply, "His death was central to his mission." This helps in putting miracles in perspective. While Jesus worked miracles, He disparaged sign-seeking. After his resurrection He told Thomas, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." It was an agnostic who said that Christians do not "need miracles to sustain their beliefs. Christ himself was the miracle." A strong thread of theological teaching down through the ages might concur with this layman - it finds that the evidential value of Jesus' miracles requires the backing of his character. Biblical Scholar, F.F. Bruce says, "The centre of the Gospel is Christ Himself: we must view the miracles in light of His Person."

Miracles are limited in what they can accomplish. It has been noted that the calming of the storm did not foster intimacy between Jesus and his disciples; rather it terrified them. Jesus reveals that not even the dead coming to life again necessarily persuades. When the seventy-two got very excited by the demons submitting to them, Jesus responds, "However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven." They were evidently struck by the power of the miracle. Jesus redirects their attention to their redemption - to something that would be bought for them by his powerlessness on the cross. Miracles do not redeem their witnesses, for that we must look to Calvary.

Miracles are pointers to something, such as God's glory, Christ's identity, our salvation the forgiveness of sins or the power of the Holy Spirit in creating righteousness in the believer. So, it is superficial to fixate simply on the miraculous events themselves.

The Master himself

We need the help of experts when it comes to deciding between miracles and magic as events in themselves. It is not so with character. Indeed, we saw earlier how some experts went fantastically wrong in assessing character. Jesus says, "by their fruit you will recognise them," expecting the layperson to be able to evaluate character and to recognise him. By coming as a Person, God has revealed himself in a way that makes him accessible to all. Jesus fulfills an Old Testament prophecy: "No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' because they will all know me, from the from the least of them to the greatest." To know True Authority does not require that we be historians or theologians or illusionists or scientists or philosophers. And no authority can know him for us. The best that they can do is to point to him:

Here is one description of him: "One of the most remarkable things about Him was the perfect balance of character he displayed. It is a truism that a man's strong points nearly always carry with them corresponding weaknesses... he never succeeds in achieving a perfect balance - a sympathy which is never weak, a strength which is never insensitive, a benevolence which is never indulgent, or a drive which is never ruthless. Jesus alone seems to have achieved this balance; and in Him every temperament finds both its ideal and its correction. He was a man, not a woman, yet women as much as men find their perfect example in Him. He was a Jew, not a European, African or Indian, yet men of every race find in Him all they would most wish to be."

And another: "It is difficult enough for anyone, even a consummate master of imaginative writing to create a picture of a deeply pure, good person moving about in an impure environment, without making him a prig or a prude or a sort of "plaster saint." How comes it that, through all the Gospel traditions without exception, there comes a remarkably firmly-drawn portrait of an attractive young man moving freely about women of all sorts, including the decidedly disreputable, without a trace of sentimentality, unnaturalness or prudery, and yet, at every point, maintaining a simple integrity of character?"

As stirring as these passages are, I'm sure these authors would be quick to admit that their descriptions of him could never do justice to his character. If you do not yet know him, why not consider it? Once you know him it becomes preposterous to think of him as a cheat or under Satan's power as his enemies charged. Once you know the sublime character of the One who would allow sinners to torture him to death so that He could save those sinners, you will know that your knowing has reached its ultimate destination. As his Word says, "You will know "the mystery of God, namely Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge."

*****

27. How not to change washers

One weekend, while the family was out, I decided to tackle the simple, ten-minute job of changing the washers on the kitchen taps. It went like this. Brilliantly, I switched off the mains tap and geyser tap _before_ taking off the cold water tap. As I began to take off the hot water tap I noticed that water was still coming out. For moment I was confused then remembered - of course- there is still a full geyser of hot water. As I replaced the hot tap I said to myself "Can't waste all that hot water - better have a shower now." As I stepped into the shower, I noticed there was no cold water. Oh yes, I've switched of the mains. Instead of being inefficient and getting all dressed again, I decided to bear the cold outside in just my shorts. As I returned I noticed a sound like a waterfall coming from the kitchen. I had created a fountain at the sink. Oops, I forgot to replace the cold tap! When Janice arrived home I tried to intimate that it was out of the kindness of my heart that I had mopped the kitchen floor.

"Yes," she replied. "And thanks for mopping the chairs - and the table cloth - and the fridge."

Slips ups are part of life, but they can have consequences....

*****

28. How to and how not to find God's will for your life

Daredevil Bobby Leach survived the Niagara Falls in a barrel. Then, while on holiday in New Zealand, slipped on an orange peel and died from complications. It is scary to think that an unexpected trifle can be our undoing. Perhaps it is for this reason that many would like to be able to see into their personal future or at least be directed by God. And perhaps this is why the topic of God's will is such a pressing concern for so many Christians. So, just how does one discern the will of God? Let us examine some commonly used methods to see whether any of them are biblical.

Looking for a sign

A fellow is not sure if God wants him to go out with a certain young lady, so he prays: "If she isn't the one for me let her come to the front door with a banana sticking out of her ear." The fellow reasons, "If Gideon can use this method, so can I". You will remember that in the book of Judges, God calls Gideon to rescue Israel from the Midianites. Gideon responds, "Give me a sign that it is really you talking to me" and asked God to make a wool fleece wet with dew while the ground remained dry and vice versa. God assented to his request. With the example of Gideon before us, is this not a biblical method? Let us look more closely at the text. Notice that we are told what Gideon did; we are not given an instruction about what to do. Walter Henrichson in his book on interpreting the Bible says, "Biblical examples are authoritative, only when supported by a command." For the discerning reader, the Judges passage is a declaration of what happened ( a statement of fact); it is not a command. It is declarative not imperative. Nowhere in scripture are we ever commanded to use this method. The idea came from Gideon, not God. Gideon would become a great man of faith, but here we find him hesitant and fearful. The passage shows God's gracious accommodation to Gideon's weakness; it does not give general instructions for believers in determining how to find his will for their lives. The laying-out-a-fleece method is in the Bible but is unbiblical.

Tossing a coin

A young lady is not sure how to spend her evening. She decides to leave it to God. She flicks a coin. "If it's heads, God wants me to go to a party. If it's tails, He wants me to watch a video. If it lands on its edge, He wants me to help my flat mate with the laundry." As with our previous case, this approach seems to have precedent in Scripture. The apostles feel that eleven of them are not enough so they pray ""Lord, you know everyone's heart. Show us which of these two you have chosen to take over this apostolic ministry, which Judas left to go where he belongs." Then they cast lots, and the lot fell to Matthias; so he was added to the eleven apostles." No doubt they knew the Proverb "We toss the coin, but it is the Lord who controls its decision."

Does the Bible encourage us to use this method? Again, if we examine the text we will see that it does not. Both passages are declarative statements not imperative ones. The first is a description of what the disciples did, not a command to cast lots. The second is a statement of theological fact - God is sovereign over such events as the fall of a coin. It is not an invitation to toss coins! Nowhere in Scripture are we exhorted to us this method. Interestingly, Matthias is not mentioned again in the New Testament. Perhaps this is because God would choose Paul instead. The tossing-a-coin method is in the Bible, but is unbiblical.

Looking for open and closed doors

A woman wants to be an author. The first publisher to which she sends her book turns her down. She concludes that God has closed the door to a writing career. This approach appears to be based on the fact that there are many passages in Scripture that teach that God is in control of our circumstances. For example, Paul says in Ephesians, "In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will."

Again, notice that this passage is declarative not imperative. It is saying that God works out all circumstances according to his will, not that we should use circumstances to gauge his will. God commanded Jonah to go to Ninevah, but he found an open door in a ship going to Tarshish, which was in the opposite direction. A closed door can be an obstacle put there by Satan. It is true that God may close a door to prevent us doing something against his will. That is his prerogative. It does not mean He wants us to use open or closed doors as a kind of magic signaling of his will. The fact is that circumstances by themselves are a partial and ambiguous guide and should not be taken on their own. Take the death of an individual for example. It can occur for a variety of reasons. It can be a judgement from God, an act of grace by God or it can occur from natural causes or by chance.

Seeking a verse

A fellow can't decide between the disco and the youth rally on Friday night. So, he asks God for a verse. In the course of the week he happens upon this verse: "And David danced before the Lord with all his might." He concludes that it is God's will for him to go the disco.

It is not only Christians that have used this method. So has Satan. "Then Satan took him to Jerusalem to the roof of the Temple. 'Jump off,' he said, 'and prove that you are the Son of God; for the Scriptures declare, 'God will send his angels to keep you from harm,' ... they will prevent you from smashing on the rocks below."

The devil can indeed quote Scripture for his own purposes. But notice that the quote is declarative. It does not say what Jesus should do but what would happen if He were to do such a thing. Jesus responds with an imperative statement from Deuteronomy: "You shall not put the Lord your God to the test." Satan is using Scripture sloppily. He is not using Scripture to examine his thinking; he is looking for a verse to confirm his thinking even if it is taken out of context. The looking-for-a-verse method is in the Bible but is unbiblical.

The way of wisdom

All the methods I have mentioned so far are largely cop-outs. We use them because we want God to be our nanny and make our decisions for us. But God will not have it. He wants us to make decisions for ourselves and to do so wisely. Whereas the cop-out approaches are merely narrated by Scripture, the way of wisdom or understanding is expressly and repeatedly commanded.

For example: "Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding" and "I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you and watch over you. Do not be like the horse or the mule, which have no understanding but must be controlled by bit and bridle or they will not come to you." The mule approach is to let God make the decisions for us. The wise approach is to make our own decisions while being open to God's guidance. The mule-approach is simple and easy. Flipping a coin or waiting for a door to open is a one-step operation that bypasses the mind. It is the way of wisdom that is the challenge. It is a challenge because it costs time in prayer, Bible-study and mental effort and because there are many parts to wisdom. The mule wants God to tell him exactly which way to go; God wants us to weigh up the options and make the best choice.

An example of the way of wisdom

To see the way of wisdom in action let us take a look at that celebrated case of wisdom involving King Solomon and the two prostitutes. This case is so familiar that we can easily miss its insights. The two women were living in the same house and had had babies within days of each other. One had accidentally lain on her baby and it died. She went over to the other, sleeping mother and child and exchanged babies. When the other woke up and examined the dead baby closely she realised it wasn't hers and confronted the other who denied the deception. They come before Solomon with their dispute.

How does the wise Solomon deal with the case? There are knowns and unknowns about this case. First, let us see how the wise Solomon deals with the knowns. Notice that Solomon is not in a quandary over whether to hear the case out or just remove the baby from the brothel; he does not have to examine Scripture or pray for God's guidance in this. Why? One reason is that he knows about a mother's love for her child. This is not something one needs to find out from Scripture. One just has to be a good observer and Solomon was a student of nature - human and otherwise. How often do people have unnecessary quandaries over God's will because they fail to observe what is around them? Another reason Solomon knows what choice to make is that he has the compassion to take a mother's love for her child seriously. He does not begin with judicial brilliance, but with heart. His wisdom has the hallmarks of being God- inspired. The apostle James says that the wisdom that comes from heaven is, amongst other things, considerate and full of mercy. Solomon's approach is hardly surprising since he started his judicial career earnestly praying for wisdom . How often do people have unnecessary quandaries over God's will because they do not know him or pray to him? While Solomon's course is clear - to join the baby to the real mother, he has no idea who she is. How does the wise Solomon deal with the unknown? He does not cop out and ask the One who knows all to shine a light from heaven on the real mother. Instead, he tells his servants to cut the living child in two and give each woman one half of the child. One woman (the real mother) pleads to the king to let the other have the child; the other says go ahead and cut. Solomon uses a holy trick to identify the real mother. With all his innocence, he does not skimp on shrewdness. How often do people have unnecessary quandaries over God's will because they do not employ their minds?

Solomon did not ask God to tell him directly which way to go. He figured it out by knowing God, knowing human nature and using his head. As we can see his wisdom had several parts. God's Word has much to say on the parts of wisdom and the way to it.

The parts of wisdom

One part of wisdom is the consulting of other minds because many brains are better than one. "For lack of guidance a nation falls, but many advisers make victory sure." God guides us through others. Solomon did not know the true mother of the baby, but he knew that the women did and he knew how to get this out of them. The fellow who was unsure about whether to go out with a certain young lady can do much better than inspect her ears for bananas. He could ask his friends and family what they would think of the relationship.

However, while we should make use of what others say, we should not lean on their words. We have to consider another part to wisdom. The writer of Ecclesiastes warns, "Do not pay attention to every word people say, or you may hear your servant cursing you." We have the responsibility to discern what is true in what others say. "A simple man believes anything, but a prudent man gives thought to his steps" says Proverbs, and the "heart of the discerning acquires knowledge; the ears of the wise seek it out." One of your "friends" thinks the relationship would be a disaster. He might be saying this just because he wants to go out with the same young lady. As important as these parts of wisdom are, this is not all there is to it. The trouble with our own understanding is that we are limited, sinful, biased and have agendas and motives so that we see only partially and imperfectly. Wisdom is not something that can be found even by searching for it with all ones effort. Job says, "But where can wisdom be found? Where does understanding dwell? Man does not comprehend its worth; it cannot be found in the land of the living."

The reason Job gives for wisdom being so elusive is,

"God understands the way to it and he alone knows where it dwells, for he views the ends of the earth and sees everything under the heavens."

Yet another part of wisdom is spiritual. As Job concludes, "The fear of the Lord--that is wisdom, and to shun evil is understanding." Would it not be great to find out how God sees things - to have a window into the very mind of God? That would be the way to wisdom, indeed. But how could we? The apostle Paul argues, "Who knows what you're thinking and planning except you yourself? The same with God - except", Paul adds, "that he not only knows what he's thinking, but he lets us in on it." We cannot know God's mind on things unless He tells us. But, He has - through the Bible.

This is why Bible study is such an important part of wisdom. Take God's mind on relationships, for instance. Scripture is very clear that God should be the first love in your life. It would be unwise to start going out with someone who would try to take his place.

But this is not all there is to it. Application of Scripture is another vital part. For instance, it is not enough to know that the Bible says we will be judged according to how we use our talent. The wise apply this principle by giving serious consideration to the career move that makes best use of their talents. The woman who wanted to be an author should send her manuscript to another publisher if she knows she has writing ability. Furthermore, the wise know that there are many principles in Scripture and understand how to apply these in relation to each other. For example, while it is good to make the most of one's talents we need to be careful not to exaggerate them. Scripture says "For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you."

Remarkably, Paul claims not only that we can have a window into the mind of God, but that it is possible to "have within us a portion of the very thoughts and mind of God!" How's that for a way to wisdom! He asks, "Is there anyone around who knows God's Spirit, anyone who knows what he is doing? ..." and answers that there is such a person - Jesus Christ. "Christ knows, and we have Christ's Spirit." To have the Spirit of Christ is a vital part of wisdom because to have his Spirit is to know the One "in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" and knowing him completely re-orientates one's thinking about life and the world. The wise know what directions to take in life not because they are privy to knowledge about the future. No, their confidence comes from knowing the nature of Christ. They leave the future and the outcome of their decisions to him. If Solomon was affected by the wisdom of God in the way he treated the two prostitutes, how much more should the Christian be affected by the wisdom and love and justice of God as displayed by his giving up of his Son to die on the Cross?

The way of wisdom is commanded, described by Scripture and found in Jesus. The way of wisdom is in the Bible and is biblical. Those that follow this way are able to face an uncertain future, not because they know what the future holds. It is enough for them to know and trust the One who holds the future. They know that their part is to try to make the best possible decisions with the available evidence while leaving the outcome to God.

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29. How not to introduce oneself

What is the first thing you say about yourself during introductions? We were having tea after a lecture on science and theology. Someone introduced herself with the comment that she was into "Quantum Theology." I had never heard of Quantum Theology. Now it was my turn. I felt the urge to introduce myself in a comparably high-sounding way. I babbled something about "organismic biology." Having academic interests is good of course, but to define myself by these is another matter. I felt that I had not been up front about my real identity. I confessed to the Lord and asked for grace in the future. The needed grace came sooner than expected. The next day someone asked me, "So, how do you justify your existence?" I was taken aback by his exacting boldness, but replied, "I am a Christian" and added "who dabbles in evolution." Since I am accepted by God through Christ, I do not need to justify myself.

He struck a nerve though. It was as if I needed to pass some ultimate exam.

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30. The ultimate exam technique

Charlie Brown is writing a test.

He leans over to Lucy and whispers. "Psst. What's the answer to question number 2?"

"Green," says Lucy

"But the question is 'what is 4 + 7?'"

"Yes I know, but I think it is a trick question."

Have you ever been tricked in an exam? How about pulling some tricks of your own on your examiners? Would you like to hear the secrets from someone who has been an examiner? I feel a little like a traitor to the examiner's cause, but what I am about to reveal has already been published. There is no question about it, good exam technique will consistently improve your marks. Furthermore, if we think about it, life in general is like an exam in many ways. So, many of the principles that apply to exam technique also apply to life in general. We'll see this as we go along. I will also reveal the secret to passing the greatest examination of all - the entrance requirements for heaven. It will be convenient to divide the principles into those that apply before, during and after the exam.

Before the exam

First and foremost - study and study study hard. Exam technique won't help you if you haven't studied. There is no substitute for good hard work. A student once told me that he hadn't studied hard for the upcoming exam, but that he had prayed hard. I prayed that God would give him the grace to accept the results that he would get.

Study well. Work on your study technique. This is a separate topic that we cannot go into here, but many books have been written on the subject. Studying how to study is a good investment of one's time. What I do want to say, however, is that it is very important to plan your study timetable. Set it up so that you are not caught with insufficient time for a particular exam.

Use past exam papers. Try to write them under exam conditions. If you make it easy on yourself, there is the danger that you might carry bad habits over into the real exam.

This is very important: make sure you have the correct date, time and venue for the exam. Do NOT rely on secondary sources. I had a friend in my student days that missed an important exam this way. He arrived for Physics Theory exam only to discover that it had happened a day earlier. You know how this sort of thing happens don't you? "You told me that the Physics Theory exam was on Tuesday." "Well, that's what Mary told me." Mary: "No, I didn't. I said that my Physiotherapy exam was on Tuesday." In general, the more important the information is to your life, the more important it is to make sure that it comes from a reliable source and that it is correct.

Make sure you have a good night's sleep before the exam. Cramming the night before the exam is not a good idea. It assumes that the examiner is primarily interested in how much you know. Good examiners are interested in how much you understand. If you are tired you could easily be incoherent. If you are incoherent, no matter how well you know the facts, you are likely to be marked down. In general, adequate rest is vital for optimum performance. This is true on a daily, weekly and annual basis. Try to ensure that you have at least eight hours sleep per night and keep one day per week free from work. Don't be so busy that you cannot take holidays.

Make sure that you have everything you need for the exam. Take a spare pen, pencil and batteries if you are using a calculator.

Get to the exam well in time. Rather be early. Make allowances for potential mishaps. In general, the more important an occasion, the more time you should allow for getting there on time. For example, one occasion where you don't want to arrive late is a job interview.

During the exam

Make sure it is the correct paper. Once while I was invigilating for an exam, I noticed a student looking visibly and intensely distressed at her paper. It turns out that she was a first year student and had somehow been given a third year paper. Read the whole paper carefully before you write anything.

Make sure that you obey the examiner's instructions. Note the number of questions that need to be answered. Note what is optional and what is compulsory. Make sure that you answer all the questions required and not more than is required.

Make sure you understand the questions. Circling the key instructions may help you. For essay questions, you may wish to rephrase the question in your own words and check that the rephrase means the same thing as the original.

Answer the question! Make sure your answer is relevant to the question. Irrelevant material, no matter how insightful, will not likely earn you any marks. What can happen is that you see a word or phrase in the question and say to yourself "I know about this" and get straight into writing furiously all that you know about a topic but which is not actually relevant. Remember that the examiner is not simply testing what you know, but whether you are able to take what you know and bring it to bear relevantly to a question.

Plan your attack. Allocate the time for each question properly. (E.g. 3 questions in 3 hours = 50 minutes for each. 10 minutes for planning at the beginning, 10 minutes at the end for a buffer and corrections and a few minutes between questions for a rest). Why is this so important? Consider the following two students:

Alice gets sixty percent for each of three questions. Her average is 60 percent. Bob on the other hand gets 75 percent for the first two questions but runs out of time so does not even attempt the last question. His average is only 50 percent. Alice has the better strategy. This is because it generally takes disproportionately more effort to do very well than moderately well and it is quite hard to get no marks for a question if you write at least something. Keep to the time limits you have set yourself. If you have not finished a question don't waste time on it. Quickly finish it. If you do run out of time, briefly tell the examiner how you would have proceeded.

Answer the questions in order of ease. Begin with the one's you are most confident about. You are not required to answer the questions in numerical order. In life, try to put your best foot forward. This means knowing what you are good at and doing that. Be wary of choosing careers and courses that are unsuited to you. Do aptitude tests to determine your interests and abilities.

For essay questions briefly list the important points you want to make before you start writing. Many make the mistake of rushing into the writing and waste time repeating themselves. Work concisely and clearly. Identify your answers clearly.

After the exam

Don't mope. Don't brood over past mistakes. Don't say, "if only I had done..." Make sure you understand where you went wrong and learn from your mistakes. Start work for the next exam after giving yourself an appropriate break.

Remember that failing an exam does not mean you are a failure as a person. Don't base your self worth or the self worth of another on success in exams or anything else. In general failing in a job does not mean you are a failure as a person; it may mean you haven't discovered the right job for yourself yet or that you are not adequately trained yet. Did you know that Steven Spielberg, the film director, dropped out of high school? He was persuaded to come back and join a learning disabled class. He lasted a month and then dropped out for good. He was a failure at high school, but is clearly not a failure at film directing. Did you know that Albert Einstein did not have a high school diploma? He also dropped out. It did not keep him from being a success in physics. In my undergraduate days I distinctly remember my first encounter with an open-book exam. We were told that we could bring any books or materials we wanted to the statistics exam. "This will be easy," I thought to myself, "I must just make sure I have everything I could possibly need." And I did. I had my lecture notes, the prescribed text, several books from the library, my calculator, pen, pencil, eraser. When you add the question paper, graph paper and answer book - there was a lot of stuff on a desk so small that I was sure the university got it at a bargain from a pre- school that had closed down. You can guess how it went. I would locate some piece of information only to lose my answer book. I would find the answer book only to lose my pen and so on. In short, I was so encumbered by information and stuff that it hampered my presentation of it. I did not do well, not because I lacked information but because I lacked technique. Examination technique is important.

The ultimate exam

There is a sense in which our whole lives are an exam - an entrance exam for heaven. Jesus said, "But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgement for every careless word they have spoken." Some people think that God weighs what we have done right against what we have done wrong. If the former outweighs the latter we will make it. This assumes a pass mark of 51%. Is this true? Remember the general principle mentioned earlier, that the more important the information is to your life, the more important it is to make sure that it is correct. Had we not better make very sure that we know the correct pass mark for the most important exam of all? The pass mark is not 51% and not even 80%. Jesus' standard is 100%. While telling us what we need to do "that you may be sons of your Father in heaven." He said, "Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." The apostle Paul says, "Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God?" Elsewhere the apostle James says, "For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it." One mistake and we fail the ultimate exam paper. The Bible calls this the curse of the law. And everyone has failed. As it is written, "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."

How, then, is anyone ever going to get into heaven? What we need is the ultimate exam technique. Do you know that the Chief Examiner, God himself, has revealed the secret? He did a wonderful thing. He sent his Son to write our exam for us! And Jesus got a perfect score; He had no sin in him. Then God allowed Jesus to cross out his name on his exam paper and put your name on it. And then Jesus crossed out the name on your exam paper and put his name on it. "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree."" . One can think of it like this. When Jesus died on the cross for your sins, God placed a big cross next to the name of his Son so that He could place a big tick next to yours. This makes it possible for you to present an exam paper of 100% to the Chief Examiner - with his blessing. We have seen that exam technique is the art of displaying what you know to the best advantage. In the case of the ultimate exam technique, in satisfying heaven's entrance requirements, it is a matter of displaying Who you know to your best advantage. Jesus said, "Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent." Displaying Jesus guarantees your entrance into heaven: "And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life." Actually "technique" is not the correct word to use at all in the case of the ultimate exam because passing it does not depend on any ability we have. It depends on the great grace of God. As the Bible says, "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast." So, how do we crack the most important exam of all? Trust in Christ and in what He did for you in dying on the cross. Say something like this to the Chief Examiner, "I know I am doing badly in the exam you set for me. I have sinned against You. I will not trust in my own efforts to get the required pass mark. I will trust in you. Come into my life Lord Jesus, be my Saviour and make me into the kind of person you want me to be. Thank-you for letting Jesus write the exam in my place."

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31. Mathematical proofs according to Jesus

"(a+b^n)/n=X, therefore God exists."

A story is told of the great 18th century mathematician Leonhard Euler using this argument on the eminent French philosopher and atheist, Denis Diderot. How does his argument square with the example of Jesus as compassionate persuader? Euler was called "Analysis Incarnate" by his contemporaries for his exceptional mathematical ability. Diderot was renowned for skillfully demolishing philosophical arguments for the existence of God, but when confronted by this mathematical equation, which was very much outside of his turf, he was left speechless. Those in attendance laughed.

Euler had quite often blundered when straying into philosophical turf, so some have suggested that he was attempting to get his own back. His "argument", if serious, was doubly fallacious (I'm inclined to think it was a cruel joke). As he knew full well, it was a mere assertion. Furthermore, using it on a non-mathematician was a form of intellectual bullying since his audience was not able to evaluate the equation. Euler's tactic could, therefore, be classified as a species of appeal to force or argumentum ad baculum. In effect, he was saying "I'm right because, mathematically, I'm cleverer than you."

There are several good reasons why Christians should avoid the mathematical appeal to force. First, it is a fallacy! It may sound impressive, but the reasoning is invalid. Second, it is not acting in line with the truth of the gospel. In God's greatest act of self-revelation we do not see him declaring his omniscience and omnipotence. Instead we see a humble carpenter dying. He does not coerce his creatures into submission through intellectual bullying. He woos through sacrificial love. Jesus is the compassionate persuader. Third, it is a misuse of a wonderful and powerful gift from God. As mathematician Michael Guillen points out, "mathematics is not a science - it is not capable of proving or disproving the existence of real things."

However, mathematical models can and have been used to represent reality. Here is a formula which hints very dimly at God's revelation of himself through the Cross:

lim X/x -> infinity

x->0

where X represents God the Father and x God the Son. Jesus made himself nothing to glorify the Father. However, using this formula as an _argument_ on the non-mathematically inclined would be appealing to force -- and subverting its message!

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32. Evil according to Jesus

God, being perfectly good, would keep his creatures from evil and suffering. God, being all-powerful, is able to do so. Evil and suffering exist. Therefore God lacks goodness or power or both. This, in simple terms, is the problem of evil and suffering. The attempt to solve or minimise the problem is called theodicy. It has vexed human minds for millennia. The Greek philosopher Epicurus outlined the problem three centuries before Christ. "It is" as an agnostic has pointed out, "a problem at all only if you believe that the world was made by a loving and all-powerful God. Then, of course, your ingenuity is taxed to the utmost to reconcile the irreconcilable."

The philosopher John Stuart Mill dealt with the problem by suggesting that God was lacking in power or intelligence. This has the benefit of reducing the tension between the existence of evil and the existence of God. The drawback is that his god is no longer worthy of belief. So, we will not let his suggestion detain us here. Others, such as many of the ancients, had no theological problem because they believed in good and bad gods or in a god that was both good and bad. Again, these gods are not worthy of belief so let us not entertain them any longer.

Traditionally a distinction has been made between non-moral or natural evil (e.g. earthquakes, tsunamis and disease) and moral evil (e.g. war, murder and rape). Some argue that only the former presents a theological problem. The latter is due to human choice - God cannot be held responsible.

Others have argued that pain and moral evil are inevitable by- products of a coherent world-order that allows for free will. To see the kind of logic employed here consider this question: Is it possible to avoid danger without pain? Yes. There is a system that allows it. It is called the reflex and has two advantages. It is quick and so minimises injury and does not involve any pain - put your hand on a hot stove and it will pull away before you feel any pain. There is a cost, however. You have no say in the matter. The signal is passed from the hand to the spinal cord and straight back again - the brain is completely bypassed. Pain allows us to make conscious decisions. It seems that pain is a necessary accompaniment to free will. However, this is disputed by some philosophers. While the distinction between moral and natural evil has value, it only reduces the tension partially for several reasons. While God is not culpable for human decisions, Scripture declares that He still sovereignly ordains them. "The king's heart is in the hand of the LORD; he directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases." Second, moral evil is only part and a very recent part of evil. What of the many millions of years of pain, suffering and death that appeared before humans appeared on the scene and that are a core component of evolutionary history? Philosopher of biology, David Hull asks, "What kind of God can one infer from the sort of phenomena epitomized by the species on Darwin's Galapagos Islands? The evolutionary process is rife with happenstance, contingency, incredible waste, death, pain and horror." And the answer he gives: "The God of the Galapagos is careless, wasteful, indifferent, almost diabolical. He is certainly not the sort of God to whom anyone would be inclined to pray." As blunt as Hull is, he has not put the problem in its strongest form. His focus is an archipelago on earth. But the chances are that life (and suffering and death) are cosmic in spread. There are billions of galaxies containing billions of stars. Who knows how many billions of planets have life on them? Billions of organisms times billions of planets over billions of years. Cosmically, there may well be immense death and suffering indeed.

Still others have suggested that evil and suffering are illusions. This doesn't wash with Charles Darwin. Observe his sensitivity to the suffering of even little creatures: "I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae [parasitic wasps] with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice." In many species of aparasitic wasp the mother paralyses a caterpillar and then lays an egg inside it. Upon hatching the larva slowly eats the caterpillar alive. It begins with non-vital organs so that its meat remains as fresh as possible. If you doubt that the caterpillar feels any pain after paralysis consider another wasp parasite - Odynerus. She creates a cement cell, fills it with two dozen or so caterpillars and suspends her egg in mid-air from a thread. In this case the mother does not paralyse the prey caterpillars. Upon hatching the larva hangs from the thread. It takes a bite from the caterpillar and then shoots up the thread to avoid the thrashing of the victim. When all is quiet she will descend again for a second bite. The caterpillar is slowly eaten alive. Surely death by myriads of army ants is a mercy by comparison?

And if space and resources are available to evolution on a cosmic scale, surely it has invented far more gruesome alien parasites on even more sentient creatures than humans? Even this would not be the greatest possible instance of evil and suffering. It could always be argued that these creatures are lacking in either innocence or feeling so that their suffering is either deserved or diluted in some way or both. Now Scripture very solidly supports the reality of evil and suffering. Theologian- philosopher John Hick states, "Its [the Bible] pages faithfully reflect the characteristic mixture of good and evil in human experience. They record every kind of sorrow and suffering, every mode of man's inhumanity to man and of his painfully insecure existence in the world. There is no attempt to regard evil as anything but dark, menacingly ugly, heart-rending, and crushing."

However, for Hick, "the climax of this history of evil is the crucifixion of Jesus." It is here that the reality of evil and suffering is most clearly tested and where God faces the most acute challenge to his goodness and power. Imperfect creatures cannot have perfect innocence or sensibility to pain and rejection, but the Flawless One had no such disability. His soul was overwhelmed to the point of death and his sweat was like drops of blood just anticipating his suffering, death and abandonment by the Father. After suffering many hours of mocking, beatings and then crucifixion He cried out "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Animals are certainly innocent because they are morally incapable of choosing between good and evil. How much more innocent is Jesus who was morally capable and always chose good over evil? Jesus certainly did not deserve his suffering. Yet the truly Innocent One suffered and died unjustly at the hands of wicked men and under God's set purpose and foreknowledge. The Cross declares that evil and suffering are awfully real and were predestined by God for Innocence Incarnate.

It seems curious to me that Darwin would baulk at the suffering of a caterpillar and apparently gloss over the suffering and death of Jesus. It is even more curious when expressly theological tracts on the problem of evil and suffering say much about Christ but completely ignore his suffering and death. It seems to me that the problem of evil and suffering comes to a head for God at the Cross. How is the Cross reconcilable with the power and goodness of God? C.S. Lewis argues that "In a sense, it [Christianity] creates, rather than solves, the problem of pain, for pain would be no problem unless, side by side with our experience of this painful world, we had received what we think a good assurance that ultimate reality is righteous and loving." Scripture does not try to explain how evil can be reconciled with an almighty and loving God. Its focus is practical rather than theological. For C.S. Lewis "Christianity is not the conclusion of a philosophical debate on the origin of the universe: it is a catastrophic historical event... It is not a system into which we have to fit the awkward fact of pain: it is itself one of the awkward facts which have to be fitted into any system we make." Or to put it differently, Jesus does not try to resolve the problem of evil; instead he succumbs to evil to show how much he loves us.

There is no need to tax our ingenuity to reconcile the irreconcilable. God simply acts and leaves us to judge and respond to his character from his act. Georgia Harkness puts it well, "Whatever happens to men, God suffers most... But the last word in the problem of pain, is not understanding of the mystery, but mastery. With the living companionship of God, whose love for the world is equaled only by his agony for human sin and pain, any suffering can be endured."

What kind of God can we infer from the Cross? The same kind of God that died on the cross. As theologian Jurgen Moltmann has put it, "When the crucified Jesus is called the 'image of the invisible God,' the meaning is that this is God, and God is like this." Theologian Tom Wright agrees, "The cross is the surest, truest and deepest window on the very heart and character of the living and loving God...."

What does the Cross proclaim about God?

The Cross proclaims God's identification with the suffering of his creatures. Far from being indifferent to their suffering, He participated in it. Dorothy Sayers put it this way, "For whatever reason God chose to make man as he is - limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death - he had the honesty and the courage to take his own medicine. Whatever game he is playing with his creation, he has kept his own rules and played fair."

The Cross proclaims the unconditional love of God. Jesus said, "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends and then went on to do exactly that for us. Paul says, "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

The Cross proclaims the justice of God. Paul says that God presented Jesus "as a "sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice ...." The Cross shows that God's justice is not reduced by his love. His wrath against sin requires complete satisfaction; there is no leniency with him. The penalty for sin is death and Jesus paid the penalty in full. The Cross proclaims the power of God. It is the resurrection of Christ that is usually presented as evidence of God's power and it certainly is. And it is in the Cross, as Moltmann has shown, that God presents his powerlessness. But, paradoxically, the Cross is also proof of his power in multifarious ways. It has been said that from God's point of view Creation does not present a challenge. The real challenge for him is redemption. Jesus himself says it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." When the disciples hear this they ask in obvious exasperation, "Who then can be saved?" Jesus replies, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." The Cross made the impossible possible! As Paul says, "For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God."

The Cross also proclaims God's power over men because the death of Christ on the Cross, could, humanly speaking, very easily not have happened. The most significant event in all of history was poised on a knife-edge. The Jews who wanted to sentence Jesus to death did not have the power to do so. Pilate, who had the power to condemn Jesus, was sure of his innocence and wanted to release him. From a human perspective, there was a problem in ensuring the success of God's salvation plan.

Pilate tries three tricks to avoid condemning Jesus. First, he tries to evade the problem by sending Jesus to Herod. Herod sends him back. Second, he offers the compromise of having Jesus flogged. Will the crowd accept it and thwart God's salvation plan? Just a few days earlier they were waving palms and singing "Hosanna to the Son of David." Perhaps there is sufficient residue in this sentiment to keep them from pressing for his death. Perhaps they will remember God's injunction: " I desire mercy rather than sacrifice." What is God doing pivoting his salvation plan on the fickleness of the crowd? They don't remember. His plan is still on track.

Next Pilate offers the Passover amnesty as a way out. The crowd could have Jesus declared a criminal without actually having innocent blood on their hands. Will they take the offer? Cleverly, Pilate tries to force their hand by asking whether they want the innocent Jesus released or the known murderer Barabbas. Given such a choice, maybe the crowd will choose amnesty for Jesus and block God's salvation plan. They don't. His plan is still on track. Then Pilate's wife tries to upset the proceedings. She mentions her troubling dream the previous night as a bad omen and strongly admonishes him to have "nothing to do with this innocent man." Pilate has to live with his conscience (and his wife). Perhaps this Roman will not bow to the crowd. Even Jesus says words that seem to obstruct Calvary. He had set his feet resolutely towards Jerusalem and the cross- lets be clear about that. Why, then, does He say things that induce Pilate to make efforts to release him? "Jesus answered, "You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above. Therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin." In effect He says calmly that Pilate will commit the sin that he is trying to avoid. From then on, Pilate tried all the more to set Jesus free. Will he thwart God's salvation plan? Jesus knows that he will not.

Pilate has the sobering words of Jesus and the shrill voice of his wife ringing in his ears as he faces the clamour of the crowd. Who is he going to listen to? He has exhausted his evasive options. All he can do is try again. "Which of the two do you want me to release for you?" Their firm answer: "Barabbas."

Pilate replies, "What then should I do with Jesus who is called Christ?"

They answer, "Let him be crucified."

Pilate asks as many as three times, "Why, what evil has he done?" The crowd is insistent- they want him crucified.

Finally Pilate cowardly bows to the crowd and delivers Jesus over to be crucified.

Why did God not play it safe? Why did he balance such a huge matter as his salvation plan on a knife-edge? Was He not declaring his power through the Cross? The Cross proclaims the wisdom of God. We saw earlier that Jesus proclaimed the power of God in the context of salvation when he said, "... with God all things are possible". His own death demonstrated this power. However, it also qualifies his power. Not even God could find a way to save humanity apart from Calvary. Jesus asks "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup [the Cross] be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will." The silence of the Father declares that it was not possible. For God to save humanity apart from the Cross would be like making a square circle or a rock that is to big for him to lift. God cannot do these things, not because He lacks power, but because these things are nonsense. They are self-contradictory or, to use C.S. Lewis's term, intrinsically impossible. God cannot be unwise. He had to find a way to save humanity that did not contradict either his justice or his love. In his justice He required the death of Jesus. In his love he took the penalty on himself. In his wisdom He brought full justice and unconditional love perfectly together.

The Cross proclaims the foolishness of humanity. Seeking understanding is a good and noble thing to do, but in our intellectual arrogance we demand that evil and suffering be reconciled with the love and power of God. Theists want to help God out. Skeptics require an answer before they will believe. But in the Cross, God demonstrates his love and power through evil and suffering without explanation. Michael Roberts, Vicar of Cockerham in the United Kingdom says, "There is no theological answer to suffering; clues are given in the Book of Job, and, above all, in the death on the cross." It is as if God is declaring that how these things can be is too deep for human wisdom to fathom, too wide for human powers to circumscribe and too high for the human heart to reach.

The Cross vindicates the believers hope in suffering. Paul says, "He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all--how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?." Paul says this in the same breath as listing trouble, hardship, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, sword, slaughter, death and demons. If God acts so powerfully and lovingly in the suffering and death of his own Son how sure we can be that he is acting so in our personal lives, throughout history and throughout the cosmos. If we baulk at the suffering of innumerable creatures throughout time and dare to frown heavenward, the Cross assures us that God is yet a Loving Power and a Powerful Love. We can look at the history of life on earth, human history and our own personal history with new eyes. He used the suffering of creatures to produce the wondrous diversity of life on earth. He used even the awful ugliness of parasitism to effect the evolution of sex, culminating in humans, in a great symbol of love and union. The suffering Church has inspired great faith and saintliness. And we know with Paul that in Christ "suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope."

*****

33. Dorian

There was Dorian leaning against the hatchback door of the Station Wagon. We were in grade four. One of the boy's mothers was taking us to school. I turned to Dorian and said, "I laugh you fall out."

Moments later the hatchback door opened and he did. I didn't laugh. Instead, I watched as the little heap on the road got smaller and smaller in the distance, then slowly got up, picked up his satchel and started walking to school. The remainder of the journey was uneventful. On our arrival the mother asked, "Where's Dorian?"

"He fell out," we replied matter-of-factly.

"What?!" she exclaimed.

Buoyed by her interest in the line of conversation we continued, "Yeah, he fell out the back!"

I suppose we thought that the particular problem of an individual classmate was not worth delaying the Transport System to an Educational Institution. The System will go on. What can little us do about it?

This is a thought that has hamstrung people through the ages. According to journalist Bryan Appleyard, there was an event in history that forever changed people's mindset. That event? The incarnation. He writes, "The world destroyed its saviour. God sent his Son to become human and to suffer and die as a human... Perhaps, in becoming flesh, God died. Perhaps the story tells us that truth is here, now and within, rather than in some distant paradise. And, if that is so, perhaps it here, now and within Einstein, Newton or Galileo as much as in Jesus or St Paul." He goes so far as to argue that the cross has a powerful claim to be the sole creator of the modern world.

His argument may be overstated, but what is clear is this. Individuals are important and individuals can change things. Jesus died for individuals and the death of this One individual deeply impacted the world and eternity. Furthermore, Jesus pointed out that not even the institution of marriage is eternal. But people are. When systems and institutions fail to serve people including little people perhaps it is time for a change.

We didn't think about it at the time, but we had to walk to school from then on. Dorian had destroyed a Transport System to an Educational Institution. He had much more significance than he realised.

*****

34. Pete according to Jesus

Jesus called Peter the rock on which he would build his church. What did Jesus see in Peter? Did he not see him as one of little faith and foresee him denying him? Peter seems a surprising choice for an apostle. Who was this Peter? Was he Saint Peter or Sinful Simon? If the New Testament is a photo album, let us take a look at a few snapshots of the man Peter. Perhaps Jesus saw something else in him.

A man and his fish

Peter was a Jew born in Bethsaida on the northern shore of Galilee. His original Hebrew name was Simeon and his father's name was Jonah. He grew up as a fisherman, moving a short way west to Capernaum in early adulthood. Peter was unschooled and had a thick northern country accent. If a picture had been taken of him he would no doubt be holding up a prize catch.

An enigmatic man and his faith

In the middle of his ministry, Jesus focuses his camera on the disciples asking, "Who do you say I am?"

Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."

What picture does Jesus have of Peter from his answer? He replied, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it."

It is instructive to compare the pictures we have of Peter and Herod. Herod believed that miraculous powers were at work in Jesus and that Jesus was John the Baptist raised from the dead. This is quite respectful, partly true, but also partly ridiculous - since Jesus and John the Baptist lived for the most part concurrently and John had only recently died. So, is God impressed when people just have respectful and partially true ideas about Jesus? Is not the important question whether they have faith in Jesus?

In contrast to Herod, Peter did have such a faith. His faith was directed towards the Person of Jesus Christ. He was blessed because truth about Jesus was revealed to him by God rather than by man. Why is this so important? It is important because it is quite possible to have true beliefs about Jesus while our faith actually rests on something other than him. For instance, it can rest on man's wisdom. Remember what Paul said,

"When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power."

Paul is talking to the church - not to unbelievers. He is implying that it is possible for believers to have a faith that has the wrong foundation. To be blessed like Peter one's faith must come from God and must return to God. God is both the object of our faith and the means to faith. He is whom we believe and he is why we believe.

We need to be careful not to see more in the picture than was there. What did Peter mean when he said, "you are the Christ, the Son of the living God?" It does not mean that he had great faith. Earlier Jesus had said to Peter, "You of little faith." It is worse than this. Straight after complimenting Peter, Jesus explains to his disciples "that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life." Peter takes Jesus aside and begins to rebuke him. "Never, Lord!" he said. "This shall never happen to you!"

Peter does not get very far because Jesus interrupts with a shockingly stern reprimand. Jesus turned and said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men." According to Jesus, he had taken a mug shot of an indignant Satan! It is striking that while Peter (like Herod) did not object to the miracles of Jesus, he had a problem with the crucifixion - and he had the gall to declare it. Can you see it? Peter beckoning to Jesus. "Look - as the rock of the church – I have to say, Lord, that you must not be so defeatist with this stuff about you getting killed." How arrogant of Peter! Andrew Murray puts it this way, "There was Peter in his self-will, trusting his own wisdom, and actually forbidding Christ to go and die. Whence did that come? Peter trusted in himself and his own thoughts about divine things."

The cross is a scandal and an offence and it still is repugnant today. Billy Graham wrote, "I find that I can preach on any subject other than the cross, and it does not seem as offensive to people as the cross does. I can preach on doing good works, on social improvement, on all kinds of things, and people will applaud me. But when I preach on the cross and the blood of Christ, there is an offence." The Revd. Sun Myung Moon suggests that "we de-emphasise the cross" in order to reduce tension between religions. He even arranged for a cross to be taken down and buried in Israel as part of a ceremony.

At least Peter and Moon were honest. Others deal with the ugliness of the cross by sanitising it, romanticising it or playing it down. From early in the Christian Era up to the present there have been those who de-de-stress the cross by claiming that Jesus was not distressed by the crucifixion at all. They argue that since Jesus was divine, he could not really suffer. This may be subtler than Peter's way of dealing with it (was he ever subtle?), but is it any less satanic? Is it not devilish when we try to let human sensibilities dictate God's agenda? Ironically, some sceptics have the right idea. Richard Dawkins approvingly quotes, "If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses."

One way we can downplay the cross is by saying "God cannot forgive me." This is false humility and actually very arrogant. We are telling God that the cross is not powerful enough to grant us redemption. Does this sound satanic to you? Peter eventually came to realise that an important part of being saintly is to remember that we have been forgiven.

So, was he Sinful Simon or Saint Peter? The answer is yes. He was both. Peter reflected the enigma of the human condition. His faith was imperfect. Nevertheless he did have faith in Christ. Note both the graciousness and the severity of Jesus. Jesus is quick to recognise and reward even imperfect faith directed towards him, but we become objects of his anger if we try to monkey around with his mission.

A man with a confident demeanour and a cowardly heart

The picture of Peter at the end of Jesus' ministry is remarkable. It is remarkable because if we look closely we can make out both God and Satan standing behind Peter.

"Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift [each of you] you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers."

But he replied, "Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death."

Jesus answered, "I tell you, Peter, before the rooster crows today, you will deny three times that you know me."

That confident smile on Peter's face is false, of course. It is hiding a notoriously cowardly heart. However, there is a much more significant scene somewhat in the background. There are revealing expressions both on the face of God and Satan.

Satan's face has a religious aspect. He is praying to God. He asks for permission to test Peter. The "but" reveals that God has granted Satan's request. Jesus' prayer reveals what Satan and God are up to. Satan does not want Peter to simply deny Jesus. This is the easy part. It depends on human weakness and humans are weak. He wants Peter's faith to fail. Satan wants Peter to say something like this to God "I have failed you. I do not deserve you. I am no good for you. You cannot love me." Satan wants Peter to think that God's acceptance of him depends on his performance. Whatever the religious demeanour, the one behind Peter's left shoulder has an expression of satanic derision.

Jesus' prayer reveals God's heart. What he prays and does not pray for reflects his priorities. Jesus does not pray that Peter would not be sifted. God's first interest is not in giving us positive experiences. It has always been this way. Remember the prophet Isaiah.

Who among you fears the LORD

and obeys the word of his servant?

Let him who walks in the dark,

who has no light,

trust in the name of the LORD

and rely on his God.

But now, all you who light fires

and provide yourselves with flaming torches,

go, walk in the light of your fires

and of the torches you have set ablaze.

This is what you shall receive from my hand:

You will lie down in torment.

This passage is addressed to believers. So much for this idea going around that believers should never find themselves walking in darkness.

Jesus does not pray that Peter would not deny him. God's first interest is not in our performance even when we are performing for him. Peter is about to deny that he even knows Jesus, yet the Lord does not shout "Get behind me, Satan!" Instead, Jesus prays that Peter's faith would not fail. God's first interest is in Peter's (and our) faith in him.

The trouble with Peter's faith is that it was imperfect; it was complicated by his own faith in himself: "I am ready to go with you to prison and to death." Notice that his assertion comes soon after the disciples were bickering among themselves as to who was the greatest. Their eyes were on themselves rather than on Christ. It took the darkness of Gethsemane to expose the disciples. The unthinkable started to happen – the temple guard came to arrest Jesus and take him way. Peter, instead of turning to Jesus' word that he must be killed, turned to his own flaming torch \- his sword. He cuts off the ear of one of the guards. Peter's self-confidence would still fail him – even denying that he knew Jesus. Then he goes out and weeps bitterly? Do you think Peter was in torment? Perhaps the rock of the church was contemplating the rock from which he was cut. The torment is both an act of judgement and an act of grace. It is an act of grace because God does not just leave us to our own devices. He is in the business of perfecting faith and this sometimes requires torment.

Is God big enough to accept us despite our failure? Jesus knows that Peter will deny him. Far from rejecting him, we find Jesus praying for him. When Jesus repeats his name "Simon, Simon" in the culture of the time, it was a token of affection. In our day it is like calling him, "Pete." There is a tender expression on the divine face behind Peter's right shoulder. Peter's failure does not induce Jesus to disqualify him from a relationship with him or from service for him. Instead, Jesus commands him to strengthen his brothers when he has turned back. And this was not the last time that Peter failed Jesus – that we know about. Much later, after the ascension and resurrection, Paul had to take Peter to task for hypocritical conduct and for not living up to the truth of the gospel. We can be sure that Satan was at his left shoulder again saying something like, "And you call yourself an Apostle, the rock of the church! How can God accept such a man?"

Peter repeatedly stumbled, but his faith remained. And Jesus knew his Father would answer his prayer. Why was he so sure? Surely it was because Jesus had God's heart. He knew he was praying according to his Father's will because he had the same priorities. Are you ever unsure what to pray for when someone is going through a hard time? Why not pray that their faith will not fail?

The final portrait – a man of faith upside down

The last page in the album is empty. The picture is still to be taken. Jesus says, ""I tell you the truth, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go." Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. Then he said to him, "Follow me!"" Jesus is predicting the final scene in Peter's life. Second century sources say that Peter asked to be crucified upside down. Look what has happened to him! He started out objecting to the cross – even rebuking Jesus over it. Then he runs away from Christ crucified. Now he embraces Christ crucified. Peter was able to face his own crucifixion because of Christ's crucifixion. He had the same inspiration as the writer to the Hebrews, "Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." Peter had his eyes so fixed. In a letter written shortly before his death, Peter encouraged suffering Christians with the reminder that "when they hurled insults at him [Jesus], he did not retaliate; when he suffered he made no threats. For Peter, Jesus was "the living Stone--rejected by men but chosen by God."

The shadow of the cross is the greatest light in our darkest hour. Peter finally had an uncomplicated faith in God. In the end God did answer Jesus' prayer. Peter's faith did not fail because it was sustained, not by his own strength, but by Christ and him crucified.

What picture do you have of Peter? Do you see a pebble? Was he not an ordinary, enigmatic, self-confident, even satanic man? But these snapshots are not all there is to him. Jesus takes the final picture. According to Jesus, Peter was a rock. What was so special about Peter? How could Jesus rest the future of the Church on this fisherman and a little band of disciples? Was it not whose Peter's eyes were on that made him so special? Peter was a rock of unfailing faith because of, and in the dying and living Cornerstone. Jesus was confident that Peter would put his confidence in God and God alone and lead others to do the same. Two thousand years later there are many that have there eyes on Jesus. Jesus has been vindicated.

About the author

Mike has a PhD in the philosophy of evolutionary biology from the University of the Witwatersrand. He has taught philosophy of science at Wits and taught evolution and coordinated a graduate course in religion and science at the University of Cape Town. He is a writer and educational software developer and plays Starcraft. He is married to Janice and they have three children.

Email address:

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Notes

Kozlovic, A.K. (2002) Superman as Christ-Figure: The American Pop Culture Movie Messiah. Journal of Religion and Film Vol 6(1) www.unomaha.edu/jrf/superman.htm
 Lightfoot, L. (2006) Is it a bird, is it an RE Teacher? Superman called on to help in the classroom. Telegraph.co.uk 04 Feb 2006.

 Kozlovic,A.K. (2002) Ibid.
 Wilson, W. (undated) The Gospel According to the World's Greatest Superhero. Christianbookpreviews. http://www.christianbookpreviews.com/christian-book-detail.php?isbn=0736918124

 Eco, U. (1979) The myth of superman. The role of the reader: explorations in the semiotics of texts. Indiana University Press, Bloomington pp.123-124.

 Mark 7:21.
 Karp, L. N. (2009) Truth, Justice and the American Way: What Superman teaches us about the American Dream and changing values within the United States. Master of Arts thesis.

 Matthew 5: 43-45.

 Quoted in Karp, L.N. Ibid.

 It may be that Jesus teleported the disciples, a boat and himself to the lakeshore (see John 6:21). However, he did not do this before the public, but to get away from them (see John 6:15 and John 6:22-24).

 Luke 13:4-5.

 Mark 2:1-12.

 Inoue, S and T Matsuzawa (2007) Working memory of numerals in chimpanzees Current Biology 17(23)1004-1005.
 Researchers from the University of Ontario faked emergency situations and discovered that dogs, including collies, failed to help their owners. This does not mean, of course, that dogs have never saved lives, just that it is unwise to rely on them alone. Boese, A. (2007) Elephants on Acid and other Bizarre Experiments. Harcourt Books, Orlando, Florida. pp. 123-126.

 Quoted by Fleming, J.A. (2006) Does the World Need a Savior? Sermon preached before St. Paul United Methodist Church http://www.stpaulumclr.org/sermons/070206.html

 Charles Darwin, letter to Joseph Hooker, 12 July 1870 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2739/old/1mlcd10.txt

 Christian, J.L. (2009) Philosophy: An Introduction to the Art of Wondering. Wadworth Cengage Learning, Belmont, Canada p.415.

 Dawkins, R. (2006) The God Delusion Bantam Press, London, p. 113.

 Blumer, D. (2002) The Illness of Vincent van Gogh. American Journal of Psychiatry 159:519-526.

 Castriota-Scanderbeg, A and B. Dallapiccola (2005) Abnormal Skeletal Phenotypes. Springer-Verlag, Berlin. p. 405.

 Darwin, C. (2005) The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin. Adamant Media Corporation, p.81.

 McCormick, P. (2003) Who will save the day? In the pantheon of superheroes and superpowers, Jesus offers us a different model. http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Who+will+save+the+day%3f+In+the+pantheon+of+superheroes+and...-a0102452967

 Acts 2:23.

 www.chrisreevehomepage.com/stillme.html

 Hall, F. (2005) Christopher Reeve. UU World: The Magazine of the Unitarian Universalist Association, Jan/Feb, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa4071/is_200501/ai_n9465752/

 2 Corinthians 12:9.

 Even God the Son had this problem - see Mark 4: 35-41, Mark 9:2-6, Luke 8:34-37.
 John 12:32.

 Govier, T. (1997) A Practical Study of Argument. Wadsworth Publishing Company, p. 223.

 Notice that nonhappy is not the same as unhappy. Happy versus nonhappy is a valid dichotomy. Happy versus unhappy is not because it is possible to be neutral - neither happy or unhappy.

 See John 13:21-26.

 See John 21: 15-19.

  http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/29/national/29SHOO.html?todaysheadlines

 Reynolds, M. (1993) Dead Ends. Boxtree Limited, London.

 http://www.col-ed.org/cur/sst/sst231.txt

 James 2:10-11.

 Guthrie, D. et al (eds.)(1970) New Bible Dictionary. Inter-varsity Press, Leicester, England,p. 1227.

 http://www.mtsu.edu/~psyskip/ltlec5.htm

 Luke 6:27-25.

 Proverbs 25:21-22.

 Matthew 12:30.

 Luke 9:50.

 Exodus 33:20.

 Judges 13:22.

 Psalm 99:9.

 Romans 3:23.

 Romans 6:23.

 Mark 10:45.

 Ephesians 2:10.

 James 1:13-15.

 Bluman, A.G. (2005) Probability Demystified. McGraw-Hill, New York, p. 83. Formally, the expected value is the sum of the product of probabilities of the outcomes and the value of the outcomes. Ashline, G. & J. Ellis-Monaghan (2004) The lottery: A dream come true or a tax on people who are bad at math? Primus XIV (4): 303-314.

 This is with an expected value of –14. With a better expected value it would just take longer - assuming a negative expected value.

 http://ffbookmarks.com/ betting_ quotes.htm

 http://www.iht.com/articles/2000/11/ 18/booksam.2.t.php

 Quoted in Goldberg, M.H. (1994) The complete book of greed. William Morrow & Co., New York, p.224.
 Committee on the Social and Economic Impact of Pathological Gambling (1999) Pathological Gambling: A Critical Review National Academy Press, Washington, D.C., p. 244.

 Ayres, I. (2007) Super Crunchers: How anything can be predicted. John Murray Publishers, London, pp. 30-31.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lottery

 Stewart, I. (1996) It Probably Won't Be You," Times Higher Education Supplement, April 12.

 The probability of winning the 6 pick lottery can be calculated from the formula for combinations (nCr = n!/r!(n-r)!). With n=49 and r=6, nCr = 13,983,816.

 http://www.nsc.org/research/odds.aspx

 http://www.dartmouth.edu/~chance/ chance_news/recent_news/chance_news_12.03.html#item7

 Quoted in Viner, B. (2008) The set of odds that all gamblers ignore. The Independent http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/brian-viner/brian-viner-the-set-of-odds-that-all-gamblers-ignore-782516.html

 http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/ tm_objectid=16592986&method=full&siteid=94762&headline=lotto-millions-exclusive--the--77million-curse-name_page.html

 The lowest income group earned less than R800/month. The highest income group earned more than R12000/month. http://www.responsiblegambling.co.za/media/user/documents/NRGP%20Prevalence%20Study%202006.pdf

 Proverbs 22:22-23.

 Grinols, E.L. (2000) Casino gambling causes crime. Policy Forum 13(2)1-4.

 Grinols, E.L. & D. B. (2001) Mustard Measuring industry externalities: The curious case of casinos and crime. http://www.ncalg.org/Library/Studies%20and%20White%20Papers/Crime%20and%20Corruption/casinos_and_crime_grinols_mustard.pdf

 Petry, N.M., and C. Armentano (1999): Prevalence, assessment, and treatment of pathological gambling: a Review. Psychiatric Services 50:1021-1027.

 Proverbs 16:33.

 Acts 1:26.

 Hebrews 9:27.

 McCoy, A.N., and Platt, M.L. (2005). Risk-sensitive neurons in macaque posterior cingulate cortex. Nature Neuroscience 8: 1220–1227.

 Matthew 10:39.

 Ephesians 2:8-9.

 Matthew 10:16.

 http://www.nlb.org.za/nldtf.asp

 http://www.nlb.org.za/upload/ AnnualReports/Annual%20Report%202007 .pdf

 Gosline, A. (December 2007/January 2008). Bored? Scientific American Mind, 18(6), 20-27.

 John 19:23-24.

 John 10:10.

 Luke 24:25-26.

 1 Corinthians 15: 14.

 http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970325g.html

 Loftin, R.W. (1991) Origin of the Myth About a Missing Day in Time. Skeptical Enquirer 15:350-351.

 http://www.57piano.com/scispks.htm

 Sire, J.W. (1994) Why Should Anyone Believe Anything at All. IVP, Downers Grove, Illinois Bank.#

 Ephesians 2:20.

 Quoted in Hobson, T. (2007) And on the third day...? http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/apr/04/somerfieldthesupermarkethas

 John 1:3

 Hebrews 1:3

 Colossians 2:9

 John 8:3-11

 The text is arranged thematically and teleologically rather than chronologically. So, for instance, on the third day (Genesis 1:11-13) God makes the land and vegetation, on the sixth (Genesis 1:24-31) the land creatures including humans.

 Matthew 6:25-34

 John 17:1.

 1 Corinthians 1:22-23.

 For instance, a physicist claims that "God is mathematically described by the Einstein Curvature Tensor of General Relativity" and that "this is the central mathematical-physics result of the scientific proof of God." http://geocities.com/scientific_proof_of_god/Hammond5s1.html

 1 Corinthians 1:26-29.

 John 5:17

 Romans 8:28

 Ross, H. and K. Ross (1994) The Creation-Date Controversy. The Real Issue 13(3): 10-14.

 MacKay, D.M. (1988). The Blind Watchmaker - a review. In The Open Mind and Other Essays, M. Tinker (Ed.). Inter- Varsity Press, England, p. 214.

 John 10:18

 Mark 15:39

 Doron Witztum, Eliyahu Rips and Yoav Rosenberg. Equidistant Letter Sequences in the Book of Genesis. http://www.ma.huji.ac.il/~rips/wrr1.htm

 Drosnin, M. (1997) The Bible Code. Simon and Schuster, New York.

 Thomas, J. (1997) The Bible Code: Fact or Fiction. Today October/November pp. 20-23.

 For example http://www.grantjeffrey.com, http://home.cwnet.com/crm, http://www.yfiles.com/yeshuacodes.html

 http://www.newbiblecode.com/

 The Bible Codes by Michael Drosnin, Translated by Dafna Levi Yediot, Acharanot Publishing House, 238 pp. 78 NIS Reviewer: Alex Lubotsky http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/dilugim/opinions/lubotsky.html
 Yacov Rambsel, a Messianic Christian pastor from Texas, says that the Codes "declare that Jesus is the Messiah to a technically advanced, yet supremely skeptical generation" Moore, W.J. (1998) Bible Codes: or Matrix of Deception? Part II by SCP Newsletter, Winter, Volume 22:3 http://www.scp-inc.org/publications/newsletters/N2203/Bible_Codes_part_2.html

 Thomas, J. (1998) Today Issue 81. February/March pp. 20-23.

 Matthew 13:58

 Matthew 11:25

 Alberts, L. (1998) Today Issue 81. February/March p. 9.

 1 Corinthians 15:1-4

 Hanegraaff, H. Magic Apologetics. http://www.equip.org/news/magic.html

 Drosnin, M. (1997) Ibid., p. 97.

 Ephesians 2:8-9

 Brendan McKay, Dror Bar-Natan, Maya Bar-Hillel and Gil Kalai (1999) Solving the Bible Code Puzzle http://www.ma.huji.ac.il/~drorbn/Codes/StatSci.pdf, Simon, B. The Case Against the Codes http://www.wopr.com/biblecodes/TheCase.htm, Hasofer A. M. Torah Codes: Reality or Illusion http://www.bigfoot.com/~perakh/fcodes/hasofer.htm

 Tigay, J.H. The Bible "Codes": A Textual Perspective. http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jtigay/codetext.html

 You magazine 17 July 1997 No 509.

 McKay, B. (1997) Assassinations Foretold in Moby Dick! http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/dilugim/moby.html

 http://lib.stat.cmu.edu/~kass/biblecodes/kass.html

 Perakh, M. The Rise and Fall of the Bible Code. www.bigfoot.com/~perakh/fcodes/codepaper.htm

 Mathematicians' Statement on the Bible Codes. http://www.math.caltech.edu/code/petition.html

 Isaiah 41:28

 Psalm 145:3

 Hebrews 1:1-3

 Colossians 2:3

 Philippians 2:5-8

 1 Corinthians 2:8

 Acts 2:23

 Wilson, I. (1978) The Turin Shroud. Penguin Books Ltd., Middlesex, England, p. 283.

 Perry, R. (1999) What Does the Shroud of Turin Mean? http://www.shroud.com/rbtperry.pdf

 Isabel Piczek, I (1996) Alice In Wonderland and the Shroud of Turin. http://www.shroud.com/piczek2.htm6. Cited in Meacham, W. (1983) The Authentication of the Turin Shroud: An Issue in Archaeological Epistemology. Current Anthropology 24 (3):283-311, http://www.shroud.com/meacham2.htm>

 Marino, J (1996) The Disciples On The Road To Turin, O.S.B. St. Louis Priory School http://www.shroud.com/marino.htm

 Dreisbach, A.R. (1997) The Shroud of Turin: Its Ecumenical Implications. http://www.shroud.com/dreisbc2.htm

 www.amazon.com

 For example Keathley, J.H. III (1995) The Shroud of Turin and the Resurrection of Christ. http://www.bible.org/docs/pastor/seasonal/easter/shroud.htm. See John 19:40, 20:6-7.

 Memorandum of Pierre d'Arcie, Bishop of Troyes, to the Avignon Pope Clement VII In Wilson, I. (1978) Ibid., pp. 306-312.

 Young, A. et. al. (1998) The Shroud of Turin:A Mystery Across the Ages http://www.roca.org/oa/65/65m.htm. Wilson has tried to locate a prior history for the Shroud by identifying it with the Mandylion. Ibid., pp. 127- 139 but this is refuted by Caldararo, N. (1998) The Status of Research into the Authenticity of the Shroud. Approfondimento Sindone, Year 1, Vol 1, Centro Studi Medievali, Pontremoli MS, Italy, http://www.humanist.net/appro- sindone/caldararo.html

 Allen, N.P.L. (1999) Dating the manufacture of the Shroud of Turin: An exercise in basic iconography http://www.petech.ac.za/shroud/Dating.htm

 Damon. P.E. et al (1989) Radiocarbon Dating of the Shroud of Turin. Nature 337 (6208):611-615.

 Allen, N.P.L. (1999) Ibid.

 Jeremiah 33:25

 The confidence some scientists have in the coherence of the world is aided by their belief that God would not deceive us by His works. See for example Darwin, C. (1859) The Origin of Species. Avenel Books, New York. pp. 201-202.

 Cramer, G. (1997) Ionization Resurrects The Shroud of Turin. ttp://www.direct.ca/trinity/shroud1.html

 Wilson noted critically that many Shroud enthusiasts in Continental Europe took this position. Wilson, I. (1999) An Appraisal of the Mistakes Made Regarding the Shroud Samples Taken in 1988 - and a Suggested Way of Putting These Behind Us. www.shroud.com/wilson.htm

 This quote is on the fly-leaf of Wilson, I. (1998) The Blood and the Shroud: New Evidence that the World's Most Sacred Relic Is Real, The Free Press, New York.

 1 Corinthians 3:10b-11

 Marino, J.G. and M.S Benford (1999) The Shroud of Turin: Bridge between heaven and earth? http://www.shroud.com/mrinobnf.pdf. Wilson, I. (1978) Ibid., p. 52.

 McCrone, W. (1996) Judgement Day for the Turin Shroud. Microscope Publications, Illinois, Chicago p. 172.

 Trenn, T.J.(1997) The shroud of Turin: A parable for modern times? Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies Vol 9 http://www.shroud.com/trenn.htm

 Allen, N.P.L. (1999)Ibid.

 Anonymous. http://elvis.rowan.edu/~kilroy/CHRISTIA/library/christia-doubt.html

 Acts 17: 27-30

 The foreword in McCrone, W. (1996) Ibid., p. xvii.

 See John 13 especially v 31.

 Sire, J.W. (1980) Scripture Twisting. InterVarsity Press, Downers Gove, Illinois. pp. 63-64.

 Demick, D. (2003) Glimpses of Christ the Creator. Impact No. 355: i-iv.

 Matthew 6:22-23

 Philippians 2:6-7

 O'Collins, G. (1995) Christology. A Biblical, Historical and Systematic Study of Jesus. Oxford University Press, pp. 248-249.

 Luke 8:9-10.

 John 16:12

 Historian Ronald L. Numbers recounts cases in his (1992) The Creationists: The Evolution of Scientific Creationism, University of California Press. Some studies have shown that acceptance of scientific findings correlates inversely with particular, prior religious beliefs e.g. Fulljames, P. Gibson, H.M. and L.J. Francis (1991) Creationism, scientism, Christianity and science: A study in adolescent attitudes. British Educational Journal 17(2): 171- 190. Short, R.V. (1994) Darwin, have I failed you. The Lancet 343: 528-529.

 E.g. Ross, H. (1993) The Creator and the Cosmos: How the Scientific Discoveries of the Century Reveal God. Navpress Publishing Group, Colorado.

 Romans 11:33.

 Shutte, A. (1993) The Mystery of Humanity. SnailPress, Cape Town, p. 68.

 Colossians 1:17.

 Ephesians 2:8-9.

 Coyne, J. (2002) Ibid.

 I'm not tilting at straws. The renowned geneticist J.B.S. Haldane failed to read C.S. Lewis's romances correctly partly through his being besotted with science. "The Professor has caught me carving a toy elephant and criticises it as if my aim had been to teach zoology. But what I was after was not the elephant as known to science but our old friend Jumbo." Lewis, C.S. (1982) Of this and Other Worlds. William Collins Sons & Company, Ltd., London, pp. 99-100.

 2 Timothy 3:15-17.

 Psalm 127:1.

 Mark 4:28.

 1 Timothy 4:3.

 Complementarity is not a novel concept as many people seem to think. Actually, the idea as old as scripture and has been discussed by many theologians and Christian thinkers. See for e.g.. Sayers, D.L. (1941) The Mind of the Maker. Meridan Books, Inc., New York, Lewis, Sayers, D.L. (1946) Creative Mind. In Unpopular Opinions The Camelot Press, Ltd., London, pp. 43-58. C.S. (1949) Transposition. In "Transposition and other addresses." Geoffrey Bles, London, MacKay, D.M. (1974) The Clockwork Image. Intervarsity Press, Leicester, England, pp. 91-92, Cupitt, D. (1976) The Worlds of Science and Religion. Sheldon Press, London, pp. 7-13.

 Carroll, R.L. (1988) Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution. W.H. Freeman and Company, New York, pp. 275 - 276.

 My retort is a fallacy called blinding with science.

 Murphy, G. L. (2000) Cross-based apologetics for a scientific millennium. Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith (52)3: 190-193.

 Green, M. (1992) Evangelism through the Local Church. Hodder and Stoughton, London p 154.

 Mayr, E. (1988) Toward a New Philosophy of Biology. Harvard University Press, Massachusetts, p 264.

 Mellichamp, J. (1997) Ministering in the Secular University. Lewis and Stanley, Carrollton, Texas p 22.

 Sweet, L. (2001) Carpe Manana. Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan, pp. 34-35.

 1 Corinthians 2:16

 Matthew 11:25-26.

 Matthew 22:7

 Matthew 10:16.

 Psalms 32:9

 Ephesians 2:8-9

 Matthew 11:25.

 Matthew 18:3

 Moreland, J.P. (1997) Love your God with all your Mind Navpress Publishing Group, Colorado, p. 25.

 Morris, L.L. (1982) New Bible Dictionary. J.D. Douglas (Ed.) Inter-Varsity Press, Leceister, England, p. 366

 Matthew 10:16.

 1 Peter 5:8.

 1 Corinthians 14:15.

 Revelation 17:9.

 Hebrews 5:11, Ephesians 4:13-14.

 Proverbs 3:5.

 Proverbs 9:10.

 1 Corinthians 2:2.

 Payne, F.C. (1979) The seal of God in Creation and the Word: An Unanswerable Challenge to an Unbelieving World. Aldis Printing, South Australia, p. 90.

 There are six primary colours. Newton artificially split indigo and violet to make the perfect number of seven colours. There is nothing magical about the 28th week in human development. This represents a rough average (viability is variable) that is no longer true for countries with advanced medicine. The 21st day for egg-laying in chickens is not a pure biological fact, but also a device to help farmers remember when to check.

 Ibid., p. 91.

 Proverbs 11:2

 James 3:13

  http://www.cp-tel.net/miller/billee/quotes/Einstein.html

 Hoyle, F. and C. Wickramasinghe (1986) Archaeopteryx, The Primordial Bird: A Case of Fossil Forgery. Christopher Davies, Swansea.

 http://www.chester.ac.uk/~sjlewis/DM/Intro.htm

 Poole, M. W. (1995) A response to Dawkins. Science & Christian Belief 7(1)51-58

 Matthew 24:36

 1 Corinthians 12:8

 Proverbs 15:12.

 Proverbs 15:22

 Proverbs 14:15

 Proverbs 15: 21

 2 Timothy 4:3.

 http://ship-of-fools.com/Myths/03Myth.html
 http://198.64.129.160/religion/wellhell.htm

 E.g. http://www.ecpministries.com/ecp/hell.html, http://www.av1611.org/hell.html 38. Jude 1:17.

 Jude 1:17

 Proverbs 15:.

 Proverbs 18:13

 Proverbs 18:2

 Asimov. I. (1981) In the Beginning: Science Faces God in the book of Genesis. New English Library, Kent, U.K. p. 111

 Proverbs 14:6.

 Proverbs 8:14.

 Hosea 14:9

 Daniel 14: 1-22 The Apocrypha, Jerusalem Bible.

 1 Corianthians 2:9-13.

 Hebrews 1:1-3. Good News Bible.

 Colossians 2:3.

 Appealing to authority is not always a fallacy. Courts do it and call the authority an expert witness. What is important is that the authority be appropriate (otherwise it is called the fallacy of transfer) and the final appeal is to evidence not authority.

 Carrington, C.M.S. (2005) Reproduction in Flowering Plants. http://scitec.uwichill.edu.bb/bcs/cape/capefl.html. The probable explanation is that the bracts have evolved to become large and colourful in taking over the function of petals. Artificial selection has also led to the bracts becoming more attractive.

 Popper, K. (1972) Conjectures and Refutations. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, p. 7.

 Thiel, J. E. (1994) Nonfoundationalism. Fortress Press, Minneapolis, pp. 12-24.

 Polanyi, M. (1969) The Logic of Tacit Inference. In Knowing and Being. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, pp. 138-158.

 Ibid., pp. 117-125.

 Shutte, A. (1993) Philosophy for Africa. Marquette University Press, Milwaukee, USA.

 A now famous example of disciplinary chauvinism is seen in the failure of the editors of the journal Social Text to consult a scientist in reviewing a spoof paper containing a mixture of arcane physics and nonsense that was submitted by physicist. As Alan Sokal, the author of the paper writes, "Social Text's acceptance of my article exemplifies the intellectual arrogance of Theory -- meaning postmodernist literary theory -- carried to its logical extreme. No wonder they didn't bother to consult a physicist. If all is discourse and "text,"' then knowledge of the real world is superfluous; even physics becomes just another branch of Cultural Studies."  http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/lingua_franca_v4/lingua_franca_v4.html. Illusionist James Randi recounts an example of two physicists who refused to consult him (an expert in misdirection) in the execution of experiments to detect psychic ability. The claimed to find genuine find psychic ability in two subjects. Their subjects announced that did not have this ability, they cheated and were students of James Randi! Randi, J. (1983) The Project Alpha Experiment: Part 1. The First Two Years. The Skeptical Inquirer 8:24-33, Randi, J. (1983) The Project Alpha Experiment: Part 2. Beyond the Laboratory. The Skeptical Inquirer 8:36-45.

 John 15:5.

 Tasker, R.C.G. (1960) The Gospel According to St. John: An Introduction and Commentary. Inter-Varsity Press, Leicester, England. P. 174 2.

 Peter 1:3.

 John 6:53.

 Galatians 5:22-23.

 Peter 1:3-9.

 Ephesians 5:9.

 James 3:17.

 Luke 22:32.

 John 17:13.

 John 7:17.

 John 17:21.

 Ibid., p. 175.

 Ibid., p. 175.

 Ezekiel 33:13.

 Matthew 7:15-23.

 Hebrews 11:6.

 Romans 14:23.

 1 Peter 2:22.

 James 5:16.

 1 John 1:8.

 Isaiah 50:10-11.

 Hebrews 1:3.

 Doyle, A. C. (1921) The Coming of the Fairies. Samuel Weiser Inc.

 Randi, J. (1982) Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns and other Delusions. Promethius, Buffalo, New York p. 32. Computer enhancement technology has revealed that the fairies in the photographs are not three-dimensional. Further, they resemble very closely and beyond coincidence the fairy pictures in a popular children's book published in England at the time.

 He did lack specific education in detecting deception as indicated later, but his good education, in itself, did not render him immune from deception.

 Randi, J. (1982), Ibid., p.27.

 Ibid., pp. 37-41.

 Personal tragedy cannot explain Sir Arthur's entry into deception as some have thought. His interest in fairies and public endorsement of spiritualism occurred before his son's death. What it does help to explain is his dogged belief in the face of periodic exposure of frauds. He wrote: "The sight of the world which was distraught with sorrow and which was eagerly asking for help and knowledge, did certainly affect my mind and cause me to understand that these psychic studies, which I had so long pursued, were of immense practical importance..." Doyle, A. C. (1975) The History of Spiritualism. Arno Press, New York.

 Ibid., p. 21.

 Doyle, A.C. (1918) The New Revelation. George H. Doran Company, New York, pp. 18-19,102, Doyle A.C. (1919) The Vital Message. George H. Doran Company, New York, p. 23, 37.

 Tabori, P. (1961) The Art of Folly. Prentice-Hall International Inc., London, p. 175. Doyle, A.C. (1918) p. 23. In many cases, however, the fraud was so clumsy that one did not need to be a conjuror to uncover the deception.

 Mark 10:45

 Doyle, A.C. (1918) Ibid p. 54 wrote, "One can see no justice in a vicarious sacrifice, nor in the God who could be placated by such means."

 Doyle A.C. (1919) p. 25 wrote, "... but reading many authentic spirit communications one finds that the idea of redemption is hardly ever spoken of, while that of example and influence is for ever insisted upon."

 Quoted in Tabori, P. (1961) Ibid., p. 175.

 Randi, J. (1982) p. 14. In matter-of-factly calling us evil (Matthew 7:10), Jesus' assessment of humans differs from that of Sir Arthur and Gardiner.

 Ibid., p. 14.

 Doyle reduced God to an impersonal Force (Doyle 1918 p. 15) and Jesus Christ to little more than a saintly psychic (pp. 59-60) and not uniquely the Son of God (Doyle, A.C. 1919 p. 25).

 Randi, J. (1982) p. 25.

 "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight. (Proverbs 3: 5,6 ); 2 Thessalonians 2:10-11.

 Jeremiah 33:25-26.

 2 Timothy 2:13

 http://www.tcom.co.uk/hpnet/uribiog3.htm. One of the Professors, J.W. Juritz, publicly recanted 25 years ago (New Scientist 14 November 1974 p. 523), but there is no mention of this on the webpage.

 Taylor, J. (1976) Superminds: an Investigation into the Paranormal. Pan Books, Ltd, London, p. 23.

 Trouten, D. (2000) Crystal Balls, Tarot Cards And Psychic Friends: Is The Power Behind Them Real? http://www.coloradochristiannews.com/archive/1000/feature10.html, Kole, A. (1987) Miracles or Magic? Harvest House Publishers, Oregon, USA. We can avoid a lot of deception by relying on experts, but there are no guarantees with human experts. They can be wrong or mischievous. One magician's test of Geller that produced a favourable report was flawed in several ways (http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/ukskeptic/zorka.htm).James Randi has exposed Geller as a cheat and a liar (Randi, J. (1982) Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns and other Delusions. Prometheus Books, Buffalo, N.Y. pp. 153-160). However, Randi's considerable reputation as a psychic watchdog has been tarnished by a jury finding him guilty of libel with malice. (http://www.tcom.co.uk/hpnet/courts.htm)

 Emery, C.E.Jr. (1987) Catching Geller in the act. Skeptical Inquirer 12(1):75-80. Australian magician Ben Harris describes Geller as "a superb showman" who uses no "gimmicked apparatus." The pro-Geller's website mentioned above quotes this accolade, but then omits to say that Harris attributes Geller's success to "expert presentation" of "simple but bold tricks." Geller claims to have discovered coal in South Africa from a map shown to him by Clive Menell, chairman of Anglovaal Corporation but Menell says Geller never found any mineral reserves. This and eight other such falsehoods have been documented by Kendrick Frazier (News and Comment Skeptical Inquirer 11(3):226-228). In a civil case, a court in Israel ruled that Geller performed stage-tricks rather than genuine telepathy (http://www.tcom.co.uk/hpnet/courts.htm).

 McCabe, J. (1920) Is Spiritualism Based on Fraud? Watts & Company, London. pp. 54-55.

 Hume, D. Enquiries concerning Human Understanding and concerning the Principles of Morals. Clarendon Press, Oxford. p. 114.

 This is a strong accusation against Hume, but it seems to stick. He writes, "But it is a miracle, that a dead man should come to life; because this has never been observed in any age or country (Ibid, p. 115)." But the apostles claim to have observed just that in the Resurrection of Jesus.

 E.g. Montgomery, J. W (1983) History and Christianity. Here's Life Publishers, Inc, San Bernadino, California. pp. 74-78 and Anderson, J.N.D. (1969) Christianity: the Witness of History, Tyndale Press, London, Morison, F. (1958) Who moved the Stone. Faber and Faber, London.

 Kole, A. (1987) Ibid., p. 30

 Matthew 17:24-27. It is not stated that Peter found the coin, but it is strongly implied.

 Brown, C. (1984) Miracles and the Critical Mind. William B. Eerdmans Pulishing Company, Grand Rapid, Michigan, p. 275.

 Luke 11:14-15.

 Luke 11:17.

 Colossians 2:18.

 At least primarily. Jesus made this statement the night before His crucifixion, just after Judas goes out to betray him and goes on to say "My, children, I will be with you only a little longer."(vs 33). Cf. John 16:16-22.

 John 13:31. I am grateful to Alan Purser of the Student Christian Association for bringing this point home to me.

 Luke 22:19-20.

 Matthew 1:21.

 Luke 9:30-31.

 Stott, J.R.W. (1986) The Cross of Christ. Inter-varsity Press, Leicester, England, p. 17.

 Matthew 12:39. Cf. John 2:23-25; 6:26.

 John 20:29.

 Raymond Fletcher, British Member of Parliament. Quoted in Anderson, J.N.D., Ibid., p. 39.

 Brown, C., Ibid. He sums up the view of Martin Luther as, "Miracles give glimpses of the glory to come. But the way to glory is the way of the cross" (p. 15). See also note 19. Theologian A. E Garvie writes, "The miracles are harmonious with the character and consciousness of Jesus; they are not external confirmations, but internal constituents of the revelation of the Heavenly Father's love, mercy and grace, given in him, the beloved Son of God, and the compassionate Brother of men." Quoted in Anderson, J.N.D. (Ibid., p. 45).

 Bruce, F.F. (1950) Are the New Testament Documents Relible? The Inter- Varsity Fellowship, London, p. 61.

 Yancey, P. (1997) Jesus, the Reluctant Miracle Worker.http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/7t6/7t6080.html 29. Mark 4:37-41.

 Mark 4:37-41.

 Luke 16:30-31.

 Luke 10:20.

 John 11:40.

 Romans 1:4.

 Hebrews 2:3-4

 Mark 2:10f.

 Romans 12:10-11

 Brown, C. (1984) Ibid., p. 323 writes: "... it is important to remember that that the signs [in John's gospel] illustrate and embody the teaching of Jesus. The signs are interwoven in a series of discourses and discussions that they illustrate. They are thus prophetic signs in the tradition of the Old Testament prophecy. They do not lead away to another God, like the signs of the false prophet who is to be condemned and destroyed. Rather, they illustrate and embody the work of the Father, and as such reveal God's glory." F.F. Bruce says, commenting on Mark 2:10f. (Ibid., p. 69), "that the visible operation of His healing power was the evident token of His forgiving power."

 Matthew 7:16.

 Jerusalem would be judged for failing to "recognise the time of your visitation" (Luke 19:44 New American Standard Version).

 Hebrews 8:10

 Anderson, J.N.D. (1969) Ibid., p. 51. .

 Quoted in Anderson, J.N.D. (1969) Ibid, p. 51-52.

 Colossians 2:3.

 Danilov, V.J. (1997) Hall of Fame Museums: A reference Guide. Greenwood Press, Connecticut, p.223.

 . Judges 6:17.

 Henrichson, W. A. (1978) A Layman's Guide to Interpreting the Bible. Zondervan publishing House, Grand Rapids. Michigan, p. 31.

 More precisely, the passage narrates some instruction for Gideon.

 Acts 1:25-26.

 Proverbs 16:33 (The Children's Living Bible).

 Galatians 1:1.

 Ephesians 1:11.

 Jonah 1:3.

 1 Thessalonians 2:18

 Romans 1:13.

 1 Corinthians 11:30.

 Isaiah 57:1.

 Luke 13:4.

 2 Samuel 6:14 (Children's Living Bible).

 Matthew 4:5-6 (Children's Living Bible).

 Matthew 4:7. Jesus is quoting Deuteronomy 6: 16.

 Proverbs 4:7.

 Psalms 32:8-9.

 1 Kings 3:16-28.

 1 Kings 3:7.

 James 3:17.

 1 Kings 3:7-9.

 Proverbs 11:14.

 Ecclesiastes 7:21.

 Proverbs 14:15.

 Proverbs 3:5.

 Job 28:12-13.

 Job 28:23-24.

 Job 28:28 see also Proverbs 1:7; 2:5-9; 8:22-31; 9:10; 22:17-19

 1 Corinthians 2:10-11 (The Message).

 Deuteronomy 5:7, Matthew 22:37

 Matthew 25:14-30.

 Romans 23:3.

 1 Corinthians 2:16a (The Children's Living Bible).

 1 Corinthians 2:16b (The Message).

 Colossians 2:3.

 Rein, C. (1988) Examination technique. Shuter & Shooter, Pietermaritzburg.

 Matthew 12:36.

 Matthew 5:43.

 Matthew 5:48.

 1 Corinthians 6:9.

 James 2:10.

 Romans 3:23.

 1 John 3:5.

 Galatians 3:13.

 John 17:3.

 1 John 5:11-13.

 Ephesians 2:8-9.

 Guillen, M. (1983) Bridges to Infinity: The Human Side to Mathematics. Hutchinson Group (SA) Pty Ltd., South Africa, p. 1.

 Guillen, M. (1983) Ibid., p. 4.

 John 17:1, Philippians 2:6-8

 Stewart, D. (1980) Exploring the Philosophy of Religion. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, p. 245.

 Hawton, H. (1950) The Thinker's Handbook: A Guide to Religious Controversy. The Rationalist Press Association, Ltd., Drury Lane, London, p.82.

 Stewart, D. (1980) Ibid., p. 249.

 Hick, J. (1973) Philosophy of Religion. Second Edition, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, pp. 38.

 Tennant, F.R. (1968) The Problem of Evil. In Philosophy of Religion G.L. Abernethy & T.A. Langford (Eds.), The Macmillan Company, New York, pp. 470-477.

 See Davies, B. (1982) An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion. Oxford University Press, pp. 17-22, Hick, J.(1973) Ibid, pp. 38-43.

 Proverbs 21:1.

 Hull, D. L (1992) The God of the Galapagos. Nature 352:486.

 Quoted in Gould, S.J. (1983) Hen's Teeth and Horses Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History. Penguin Books, Ltd., Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England, pp. 41-42

 Crompton, J. (1948) The Hunting Wasp. Collins, St. James Place, London, pp.192-193.

 Hick, J. (1973) Ibid., pp. 36-37.

 Ibid., p. 37.

 Matthew 26:37, Luke 22:42-44.

 Acts 2:23.

 E.g. Does God Really Care About us? If so, Why does he Permit Suffering? Will it Ever End? (1992) Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania.

 Lewis, C.S. (1940) The problem of Pain. William Collins Sons & Co., Ltd., Glasgow, p. 12

 Lewis. C.S.(1940) Ibid. p.12.

 Harkness, G. (1947) Understanding the Christian Faith. Abingdon Press, Nashville, Tennessee, pp. 64-65.

 Moltmann,J. (1991) The Crucified God. Harper Collins, New York, p. 205.

 Wright, N. T. (2000) The challenge of Jesus. SPCK, London, p. 69.

 Sayers, D. (1949) Creed or Chaos? Harcourt, Brace and Col., New York, p. 4.

 John 15:13.

 Romans 5:8.

 Romans 3:25.

 Matthew 19:24.

 Matthew 19:26.

 1 Corinthians 1:18.

 John 18:31.

 Luke 23:20.

 Hosea 6:6.

 Matthew 27:19.

 Luke 9:51, 18:31-33.

 John 19:12.

 John 19:11.

 Matthew 27:26.

 Matthew 26:39.

 Lewis, C.S. (1940) Ibid., p. 15.

 Roberts, M. (Undated) Taking Darwin and Creation Seriously http://princehouse.homestead.com/roberts2.html

 Romans 8:32.

 The origin of sex has been a conundrum in biology but there has been a great deal of success recently in explaining it as a response to parasitism. Ward,M. (2000) Virtual Organisms. Pan Books, Eccleston Place, London, pp. 242-244.

 Romans 5:3

 Appleyard, B. (1992) Understanding the Present: Science and the Soul of Modern Man. Pan Books, Ltd., London, p, 88.

 Douglas, J.D. (1988) New Bible Dictionary. Inter-Varsity Press, Leicester, p. 916.

 Matthew 16: 15-17.

 Matthew 14:1-4.

 1 Corinthians 2:1-5.

 Matthew 14:31.

 Matthew 16:21-23.

 Murray, A. (1897) Absolute Surrender and other Addresses Fleming H. Revell Company, New York. p. 51.

 Quoted in Beaird, M (2000) Living in the Shadow of the Cross. http://www.nationalbaptist.com/images/documents/635.pdf

 Moon, S.M. (2009) As a Peace-Loving Global Citizen. The Washington Times Foundation, Inc., p.242

 Yamauchi, E.W. (1982) The Crucifixion and Docetic Christology. Concordia Theological Quarterly. 46(1):1-20.

 Dawkins, E. (2006) The God Delusion. The Random House Group, Ltd, London, p. 251.

 2 Peter 1:5.

 Almost causally Jesus says to his disciples that they are clean (John 15:3). How quick God is to forgive us!

 Luke 22:31-34.

 Isaiah 50: 10-11.

 Luke 22:24.

 Galatians 2:11-14.

 John 21: 18-19.

 Ehrman, B.D. (2006) Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene: the followers of Jesus in history and legend. Oxford University Press, p.85.

 Hebrews 12:2.

 1 Peter 2:23.

 1 Peter 2:4.
