Battle for the Mind!
Edmund Burke said,
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
There is a profound 'cold war' being waged in our society, yet few realise that it is taking place. It is a battle for the control of our thinking. Who is to say what is right or wrong? Is it permissible for me to think and behave however I like in private or is there an authority over me even there? Traditional Christian beliefs have been ridiculed and denounced in a radical social experiment during the last century. God has been deliberately excluded from our thinking and we are now reaping the consequences. There are influential people in our society who are determined that God should have no place and consequently try to stop people recognising that this underground battle is taking place. If people do not realise what is happening, they are unlikely to react. If a frog is placed into very hot water it reacts immediately by jumping out. If it is placed into cold water and then the temperature is gradually increased, it just sits there till it dies! Similarly it is the gradual exclusion of God from our thinking that is killing our society. A young doctor personally writes to a few patients, with their consultants permission, to invite them to a local doctors home just before Christmas so that they may have the opportunity of thinking again about the Christian message. Several welcome the invitation and attend. Some politely give their apologies but one person makes a complaint. He says that he finds it offensive to have been invited and asks the Health Service authorities to take a firm line. It would be interesting to know if he complains about any other personal invitations. It is more likely that he finds the Christian message not to his liking and does not want others to have the opportunity of learning more. The others did not find the invitation to be objectionable, and some who came were helped to find a real faith for themselves. Can it be that bad to help people investigate the Christian faith?
The food retailers 'Asda' decide to remind its customers about the Christian meaning of Christmas. They invite those in their stores to join in a few carols and to listen to a 90 second message from the Archbishop of Canterbury. There is a campaign criticising the company for doing this. We are told that they should stick to selling groceries! The interesting point is who has instigated this campaign. Was it the mass of customers? No, we are told that it was the National Secular Society, a group who are committed to destroy the Christian faith. In our society any efforts to encourage others to investigate or think about the Christian faith are openly criticised and complained about by a few people who have their own agendas. They know that authorities hate any fuss, so the best way to prevent Christians helping others to consider the relevance of Jesus, is to complain. ' Such talk is offensive' they say. The effect of such publicity is to make people apprehensive about sharing their convictions with others. Could this be their aim?
This pressure to leave God out of our thinking is very dangerous for ours or any society. Dostoevsky wrote in 'The Brothers Karamozov', "Is there no God? Then everything is permitted." Perhaps this is the reason why many want to treat God as if he were dead! The agnostic author, Aldous Huxley, when he was an elderly man, admitted that he had such biases for rejecting Christianity when he was young. "I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning - consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for that assumption. For myself, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and political." The rejection of God brings with it a loss in personal integrity. No wonder we are becoming an increasingly selfish society with all the family and social disasters that this brings.
Spiritual forces at Work
There is a battle on to exclude God from our thinking. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards wrote a pop song called 'Sympathy for the Devil'. They recognise that there is a force at work to undermine the Christian faith.
"Please allow me to introduce myself I'm a man of wealth and taste I've been around for a long, long year Stole many a man's soul and faith."
Yet the loss of a real faith brings great disadvantages whereas the presence of a faith gives considerable benefits.
a) A Strength to Face Adverse Circumstances.
Victor Frankl was a psychologist who survived the horrors of the Nazi death camps during the second World War. He noticed the life saving effects of having a sense of purpose. Those without a hope faired much worse. In the hospice movement it is well recognised that those who are clear about their eternal future face death in a more relaxed way. I was impressed by one of my hospitalised patients who was dying of advanced cancer. On a teaching ward round when several junior doctors, students and nurses were present, I was sitting on her bed, holding her hand when she asked
"Mr. Palmer, how long is it before I go home?"
I replied that she wasn't strong enough to cope by herself at home.
"No, I don't mean that," she said with a sparkle in her eye, "I mean my home in heaven - to be with Jesus".
Her simple faith helped her but this demonstration was also a great tonic for those of us listening. Having a faith helps us to overcome other stresses. There is recent medical evidence from the United States that people with a firm faith recover from operations more quickly and have less complications. Knowing that God cares for us and that we can trust him in all circumstances does bring peace and well being.
In the Patients Charter of the National Health Service the importance of meeting the spiritual needs of patients is rightly emphasised.
b) A Determination to Live Rightly
A firm faith also gives an incentive to live honestly, caring for others. A conviction that God was involved in making us, and that one day we will meet him in judgement, must influence how we live. If we are convinced that Jesus is God, that he came to this earth to give us the opportunity of having a personal relationship with our creator, then we will want to live in such a way as will please him. Conversely if there is no God, then there is no absolute right or wrong.
Charles Darwin recognised the awful consequences of denying the presence of God in our creation.
"The horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has developed from the mind of lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would anyone trust the conviction of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind."
It has been rightly said,
'A Godless individual is usually a selfish individual'.
It is interesting that the prison service recognise the advantage prisoners have when they find a personal faith. They therefore actively help them to do so. Those with Christian convictions reoffend less often and are more likely to become usefully rehabilitated back in society. In schools the need for personal convictions are also recognised, though at present there seems to be some ambivalence as to how to help people find who they will believe in. Faith is ultimately always in a person, and the way we learn to trust them is to know as much as possible about them. Our youngsters will not be able to have the advantages of a faith unless they have the opportunity to be taught the facts about Jesus by someone who knows him well. In the health service there appears to be great reticence to help people find a faith. 'We mustn't cause offence," we are informed!
c) Social and Political Implications
Family, social, business and political relationships ultimately depend on trust. There is no way that laws can control all aspects of our lives. Laws cannot control personal integrity. Few people recognise the opposite of 'integrity' is 'dis-integrity' or 'disintegration'. When individuals cease to live with integrity, then their personal lives begin to disintegrate. This can be followed by their family life, social life and eventually national life. When personal convictions disappear, governments tend to become more totalitarian.
William Penn, an early colonist in America noted
"Nations must be governed by God or they will be ruled by tyrants."
History has yet failed to produce a single example of an enlightened, benevolent government, whose leaders have rejected a personal God whom they feel they are responsible to. It is of interest that General Practitioners who have a high reputation locally for their caring attitude to patients are very often those who have a deep faith of their own. I wonder how many atheists have founded or selflessly helped to run mission hospitals in deprived areas of the world?
d) People need a Purpose
The artist Francis Bacon once wrote,
"Man now realises that he is an accident, that he is a completely futile being and that he has to play out the game without reason."
What a ghastly basis for life yet it is shared by many who have rejected God. The existentialist Jean Paul Sartre wrote-
'That God does not exist I cannot deny, but that my whole being cries out for God I cannot forget."
Fellini, the celebrated film director had a similar depressing view of life. He was an atheist with no hope, although he worked on in a vain hope that an answer to life might miraculously come from somewhere, even from a planet that has no life.
"Like many people I have no religion. I am just sitting on a small boat, drifting with the tide. I just go on cutting, editing, shooting, looking at life, trying to make others see that today we stand more naked and defenceless than at any time in history. What I am waiting for I do not know - perhaps the Martians will come to save us!"
The singer Sinead O'Connor was blunt about our emptiness.
"As a race we feel empty. That is because our spirituality has been wiped out. . . as a result we fill that gap with alcohol, drugs, sex or money."
She could have added work or sport or many other modern idols. Is this not the main reason why drug addiction has risen so astronomically? In 1973 there were just over 500 Heroin addicts in Britain. In 1992 there were 7658, and this was just one drug. The figures for the United Kingdom are now horrifying
During 2018/19, 9.4% of adults surveyed, between the ages of 16 to 59 had taken an illicit drug
In 2018/19, 20.3% of young adults, within the ages range of 16 to 24, had taken an illicit drug
In 2018/19, there were 7,376 hospital admissions recorded for drug related mental and behavioural disorders
A higher frequency of visits to pubs and nightclubs in 2018/19 was linked to a higher occurrence of drug use In 2018/19, 9.8% of people living in urban areas were more likely to have taken any drug than 7.7% of those living in rural areas
People with lower levels of happiness were more likely to have taken drugs than those with higher levels of happiness
About 7 per cent of Brish people now use cannabis. Crime has also increased dramatically whilst this experiment in godlessness has been going on.
60 years ago there were less than 300,000 crimes recorded each year in England and Wales. Today 5.3 million crimes are recorded a year, and of these more than 300,000 are violent crimes. In 1951 only 3% were divorced before the tenth year of marriage. Today this number has rocketed to 25%, with 41% of marriages ending in divorce! When will we wake up to realise that a war is on and that the price of inactivity in our failing to tackle the problem is extremely high.
The cost of rejecting God
There is a battle on to exclude God from our thinking, but if we reject him there is a high price to be paid. Aldous Huxley realised that disastrous personal and social effects could result.
"It was the manifestly poisonous nature of the fruits that forced me to consider the philosophical tree on which they had grown."
However just because deep problems result from the rejection of God in our everyday lives, it does not mean that any remedy will do. Faith in anyone or anything may give a psychological prop but not a firm foundation that everyone can apply to themselves unless it is based on 'true truth'. The teachings about Jesus are not true because they work but work because they are true. When I was at University I expressed an interest in becoming a Christian. I am very grateful to a friend who advised me first to be certain that the Christian faith really is factually true. If Jesus was not God who died for my sins and who rose again on the third day to prove it, then I want none of it. The apostle Paul had the same conviction.
"If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith." 1 Corinthians 15 : 14
Fortunately for us there is much objective evidence to support the claims of Jesus. Jesus did claim to be God. He did fulfil all the 60 or so major prophesies in the ancient Jewish Scriptures that describe the coming Messiah, even to the extent of giving details about the name of the village that he would be born in, his family pedigree, his death by crucifixion and his ensuing resurrection. There is very good medical evidence that he did die when crucified and could not have swooned. Soon after his death he met over 500 people and convinced them that he had risen. Eleven of the original twelve disciples were then willing to give their lives, in order to pass on the facts about Jesus - the Christ. The Christian faith was certainly widely held throughout the Roman world within 25 years of Jesus' death in spite of persecution. Thomas Arnold was a Professor of History at Oxford, who specialised in Roman times. He was also the famous headmaster of Rugby school. He said,
"I have been used for many years to studying the histories of other times, and to examining and weighing the evidence of those who have written about them, and I know of no one fact in the history of mankind which is proved by better and fuller evidence of every sort, to the understanding of a fair enquirer, than the great sign which God has given us that Christ died and rose again from the dead."
What is surprising is to find how few people know of this evidence or have bothered to investigate it. The Christian faith is a reasonable faith, not a blind wishful thinking! * Those who reject the Christian faith do have a problem as to what they can do with all the evidence for Jesus and his claims. The facts cannot simply be discarded by turning a blind eye to them. The problem is not in the belief, but in the believer. The evidence is there, but our wilful independence prevents our grasping this.
A man stood on a soap box at Hyde Park corner pouring scorn on the Christian message. "People tell me that God exists, but I can't see him. People tell me there is a life after death, but I can't see it. People tell me there is judgement to come, but I can't see it. People tell me there is heaven and hell, but I can't see them." There was some limited applause and he stepped down. Then another man struggled up onto the soap box and started to talk. "People tell me there is green grass around, but I can't see it. People tell me there is a blue sky above, but I can't see it. People tell me there are trees nearby, but I can't see them. It is because I am blind! Let us start asking again "Is it possible that there is a mind behind this creation we are involved in?", "Could there be a meaning to life?", "Could Jesus be the answer that we all need?" The point of opening our minds, just like our mouths, is to close it on something solid. There is no point in having an open mind unless we are willing to be satisfied by what we find. Surely there can be no other area in life where something that is objectively true, and gives such real benefits to individuals and society is so decried by the false propaganda of those who wish God to be treated as if he were dead. How long will God's patience last?
BVP
* A summary of this evidence and of what Jesus actually taught can be found in the recently published 5th edition of 'Cure for Life' 1
