Penal Substitution & Ransom Theology (Dog Delusion part 3)

This post is taken from the previous 'Dog Delusion Part 2', which I have split into these two posts for ease of reading.


The serious questions of a new hermeneutical approach to the Bible will be discussed in a future blog, but for now I am going to discuss the doctrine of Penal Substitution, which was the other major cause of my loss of faith. I believed in Jesus, I was developing a new way of reading the Bible, but what about the reason Jesus had to die?

            The traditional Christian understanding of the cross, called ‘Penal Substitution’ teaches that all people are born under the wrath of God and destined for eternity in Hell. The reason God is so angry at everyone is because they are sinful, but he is the one who cursed them so that they would be that way in the first place. The reason he cursed every human being that would ever live is because Adam ate an apple in the Garden of Eden. Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it?

To save everyone from his own savage fury, he sent his only child to earth to be crucified and tortured, and vented all his inexpressible psychotic rage upon him as he died on the cross. Now that Jesus has been butchered to satisfy his own Father’s demand for a bloodbath, we can all go to Heaven when we die to be with that same God. It is a picture, I’m sure you will agree, that leaves a lot to be desired.

But is the message of Jesus inseparable from Penal Substitution, or is there some other way of understanding his death and resurrection? After looking into it, I discovered that Penal Substitution was not how the early church understood the cross; they understood it through a different framework called the Ransom. When I read it, it fit perfectly into place with what I already believed about Jesus, God and the Bible, and so I will now explain it in the light of New Theology.

We will start at the beginning with the reason we needed a saviour in the first place; the fall of man. If we recognise that the Old Testament is not historically 100% accurate, but communicates truth through myth, we are no longer bound to believe in a literal Eden story. Adam and Eve can be viewed as representations of those whom God entrusted with leadership over all of humanity. Whoever they were, God decided to take a risk on them, granting them also a limited level of authority over all life in the world and over the very planet itself. As a race they possessed freewill, but had only knowledge of good within which to exercise it. Life was heavenly as every new choice or decision uncovered a vast spectrum of new joys and wonders.

We can continue to develop our understanding of the fall of man using similar mythological language. At some point the leader of an evil faction from the unexplained spirit world; ‘the serpent’ or Satan, made the leaders of the human world an offer. He offered them knowledge. They already knew goodness, but he could offer them greater knowledge than God had already given them. He could give them knowledge of evil also, and he reminded them that God himself knew both good and evil – so why should they not? Surely if they possessed both, they too would become gods.

The knowledge offered was not free though, he would only give it at a price. The price echoed a similar offer made to Jesus in his temptation in the desert – they had to come under Satan’s authority. They had to put themselves (and the limited level of authority they had been granted by God) under him, and in return he would grant them knowledge of evil so that they could be ‘like God’, knowing both.

We too, their descendants, were required by Satan into the bargain, and for reasons we do not know, Adam and Eve agreed. Perhaps they thought they would be doing us a favour. Perhaps they believed that in selling us they would extend godhood to us too, or perhaps they were simply greedy and traded us without a second thought. For whatever reason, they agreed to Satan’s terms, and brought themselves and everything they had authority over under Satan in exchange for knowledge of good and evil.

The thing is, they were tricked by the serpent. They became like God in the sense that they now understood both good and bad, but they were still unlike him because they were not almighty, they could not always choose the good.

Under the new authority of the serpent, the world, all life on it, and the evolutionary processes which were underway became warped and twisted. Adam and Eve possessed only limited authority over these things, but all they had was transferred to Satan, and became corrupt to reflect its new master.

According to the Ransom Theory, mankind is not being punished by an angry God for Adam and Eve’s disobedience; we are suffering the consequences of being traded away to Satan by our ancient ancestors. Penal Substitution says that Adam ate an apple and so God cursed the whole planet and everything on it. Ransom Theology says that the earth is in a state of semi-fallenness because Adam and Eve transferred their power over it to the devil! God was not even involved in the fall, and is consequently not to blame for the pain-filled existence in which humanity finds itself.

Some might say ‘if God is all-powerful and all-loving, surely he is ultimately responsible for constructing the reality in which an outcome such as the fall was possible’. This boils down to the old (and very valid) problem of pain and suffering, the question of why it should be allowed by God, if he is both all-loving and all-powerful. Why should there be a reality in which we can suffer, if there is the option of one where we don’t?

My answer is that there is a serious problem with the question. I would like to make the somewhat unorthodox suggestion that God is not in fact omnipotent (all-powerful) in the modern-day understanding of the word, because the modern-day understanding of it is a complete nonsense. By the word ‘omnipotent’, we mean ‘capable of doing any act conceivable, both bad and good’, and I am personally of the belief that the God described by Jesus,[ii] is incapable of evil. Although on many points I disagree with Paul, the same thought seems to have occurred to him in 2 Timothy 2:13, where he states that God cannot be untrue to himself.

The modern concept of omnipotence, of a being that is capable both of perfect good and purest evil is a nonsense, because to be perfectly good, you cannot be capable of being evil!

Can God be unfaithful to himself?

Can God sin?

If the answer is no (which it is), then God is not morally ‘omnipotent’ in the modern-day understanding of the word. There simply is no omnipotent, anarchic, chaotic being of such insanity that it is capable of being both entirely good, and entirely evil; the very concept makes about as much sense as saying the cup is both entirely full and completely empty at the same time! Nonsense!

When people dispute Christianity with the problem of pain; that God cannot be both omnipotent, all-loving, and allow suffering, they are actually arguing from a place which they have not thought through, and making an ultimately meaningless statement on a par with claiming triangles are hungry, or pigeons are psychology.

Some might argue that God is capable of evil, but simply never chooses it, but at this point we enter into a matter of opinion, which cannot really be “proved” either way. It is my personal belief that our Father God cannot sin, and cannot want to sin, and so therefore is not capable of sinning.  One might answer the question of ‘can God sin?’ by saying ‘yes, theoretically he could if he wanted to’, but if the truth is he is incapable of wanting to sin then the real answer simply has to be ‘no’.

Is God capable of wanting to sin? No? Then when it comes to morality, he is not omnipotent as he can only choose the good (and thank God for that!).

God may not be ‘morally omnipotent’, but he is nevertheless almighty; that is, the mightiest being that there is. If good is mightier than evil (which it is),[iii] and God is the only one who is perfectly good (which he is),[iv] then he is therefore the mightiest one of all. However, he cannot be simultaneously perfect in goodness and be capable of evil… that just doesn’t make sense.

When we rephrase the problem of suffering in this slightly altered light, it begins to take on a little more intelligent meaning; “If God is all-loving, perfect in goodness, and almighty, why does he allow suffering in the world?”

The answer I would offer is found in the previous rereading of the Adam and Eve myth. The very bottom rung of goodness is fairness,[v] and if God is perfect in goodness, he must also be perfectly fair.[vi] He took a risk on Adam and Eve, whoever they were, and he granted them a certain level of authority, which was truly and unconditionally theirs to do with as they willed.

They legally sold it to Satan, and as he had bought and paid for it, it was now Satan’s right to introduce a strain of evil into all the things Adam and Eve had previously ruled. The two parties had struck and completed a bargain, and God being bound by his own fairness, had no choice but to allow the transaction to continue, resulting in their percentage of the world taking on hellish characteristics. It is a good thing God did not give Adam and Eve complete authority over the planet, because it would have literally become ‘hell-on-earth’ when they traded it into the hands of the devil! God did not take bring about the fall in anyway whatsoever, the whole thing happened behind his back.

In this light, the death of Jesus on the cross becomes not the satisfaction of a furiously angry God, but the gift of a loving Father who has decided to offer himself in exchange for our release. It is not as Steve Chalke so famously put it; ‘divine child abuse’, it is rather God freely offering his own death as the ransom to set humanity free from the devil’s legal authority over them. It is God breaking everyone one of us out of prison, and then staying behind to face the music himself.

However, God is not just ‘good’, he is perfectly good, and this goes far beyond basic fairness to include grace, that is, undeserved favour. Grace is goodness that doesn’t just pay off the balance, but that gives over and above the legal obligation.

God decided to buy humanity back from Satan, and offered himself to his enemy as the ransom. Satan, seeing another opportunity for personal advancement through a bargain, leapt at the chance, and greedily swallowed up the life of Christ in payment. He laughed at Jesus’ stupidity, crowing over his dead body that even though humanity were no longer owned by hell, God was dead so they could never be owned by heaven either. With God dead and gone, he alone would be the supreme power in existence!

But here is the catch – the serpent tricked humanity into fallenness on the half-truth of ‘becoming like God’, and so God (being as wise as a snake but innocent as a dove)[vii] tricked Satan into taking Jesus as the ransom for humanity. Satan took the bait, not realising what Jesus was worth before he devoured him.

As C.S. Lewis put it, the White Witch thought she had finally killed Aslan, who had offered himself up to save Edmund the traitor according to the ‘Deep magic from the dawn of time’. However, Aslan came back from the dead, because the White Witch did not know about the ‘Deeper magic from before the dawn of time’. This magic said that if an innocent victim is killed in a traitor’s stead, death itself begins to work backwards![viii]

Christ not only paid the price to purchase back all of humanity from Satan, he overpaid by so much that he reversed death itself. This is Ransom Theology, and I suspect that you also find it infinitely closer to the picture of the grace-giving God of Jesus Christ than the monstrous God of Penal Substitution.

There is however, much more to Ransom Theology. In offering a payment of perfect, infinite goodness, Jesus set the scales of justice at a massive, eternal imbalance. It doesn’t matter how great the sin of all humanity might be on the one side of the scales, if the counter-balance is infinity, it wipes clean the debt, and then keeps on paying!

The transaction of infinite goodness paid for finite sin suddenly puts Satan in a very dangerous position indeed. He who once poached a whole race from God through an underhanded legal trick now finds himself horribly and ominously indebted to that same God. He who once held high the heavenly law-book to justify himself begins to be pinned down beneath its crushing weight. He had thought the game was his, but one greedy move left him desperately trying to escape checkmate.

The sacrifice of Jesus on the cross purchases the freedom of our race from Satan completely, then it purchases back the life of Christ himself, who rises from the dead.

Next it purchases resurrection for every freed person who wishes to come under the authority of God.

Satan begins to realise that he can put all of us, every human being he will ever own onto his side of the scale, every animal he has ever corrupted, every part of the earth he has ever stirred up to destruction, and still the imbalance will remain.

After the whole planet has been redeemed, Satan will see that the infinite payment of Christ is still paying, making the balance uneven; he is still in God’s debt – and God has a legal right to come for him. He will then throw a handful of the lowest of his fallen angels onto the scales to appease their infinite demand, but their deaths will not be sufficient.

One by one he will throw every wicked creature he possesses onto the scales to delay the approach of the divine Debt Collector who has so magnificently turned the tables on him, but nothing will quench the death of Jesus.

At last no evil thing will remain for him to offer on the great scales, and the Debt Collector will come and claim his final (and thoroughly insufficient) instalment. Satan himself will be cast upon the scales by God, and the father of lies will vanish into oblivion. His whole existence will be swallowed up as an unwilling offering which cannot even hope to make a dent in the debt owed to the all-consuming event of Christ upon the cross.

The Dog Delusion Part 2

I once again believed in a supernatural being whose name was Jesus.

The next question was: if there is a God, and his name is Jesus, what should I do with that information? What does he want from me? While I believe he exists, why on earth should I accept anything the Bible has to say on the matter? My objections to the Bible remained, yet I knew as a serious student of theology that without the Bible there is no Christianity, and very little information on the Jesus I believed in.

            I began studying the work of the Jesus Seminar, a group of over a hundred PhD holding specialists who use textual criticism to separate the historical Jesus stories from the legends and myths. I purchased one of their books to study their results and methods, but all too soon came up against the same problem as Dawkins; they rejected any possibility of the truly miraculous. I studied some of the work of theologian John Hick, who discusses alternate readings of the Gospels, but again found exactly the same problem – no supernatural.

I searched to find any scholarly textual criticism of the Bible from a more open-minded source, but was unsuccessful. I did however read several books about supernaturalist critics who set out to disprove Christianity, and ended up being converted to it through their work! Were the only people who were both supernaturalists and textual critics on the Bible already Christians or about to be? It certainly seemed so.

The more I studied, the more the implications of believing in Jesus dawned on me. Through the miracle and the prophecy he had chosen to be personally involved in my life, therefore it was natural to conclude that getting involved in people’s lives is something that he does.

If your Granddad gives you £20 a month for pocket money, it is a very small leap of faith to think he might get you something for Christmas or your birthday. In fact, it’s better than a 50-50 chance; it’s probable that he will.

If Jesus is interested enough in my personal life to get directly involved with me in miraculous ways, then it’s not even a leap of faith to believe that he preserved the Gospel scriptures that point to him, it is in fact probable.[i]

There is no other ancient document as well attested as the New Testament. Homer’s Iliad comes in second place, but the difference between the two is immense. There are 643 copies of Iliad, the earliest of which was made at least 500 years after the original. There are 5,686 copies of the New Testament (that’s around eleven times as many), the earliest of which was made less than 100 years after the original. We may not have the first copies, but the ones we have are so early that scholars can clarify the text to 99.5% accuracy. They were written by eye-witnesses, and if one is to be consistent in treating works on antiquity without bias, there are only two reasonable options following the trail of logic: if ancient writings including Plato, Homer, Josephus etc are to be accepted, then by their criteria of acceptance the New Testament must also be accepted. Alternatively, if the gospels are discarded as inaccurate and unreliable, then literally every single other ancient workmust also be discarded as unreliable and inaccurate, because they are all accepted on exponentially less evidence.

The Bible remains the bestselling book in all history, with sales of up to 6 billion. To the reader with a non-religious outlook this is easily explainable, but to someone who has accepted the existence of the divine Jesus, it bears the hallmark of supernatural promotion and preservation. 6 billion copies? There are only 6.9 billion people in the world!

I know at this point we enter the realm of serious eye-rolling for anyone reading this from an Agnostic or Atheistic perspective, but it’s always difficult for a non-religious person to see the world through the eyes of someone with a faith, and vice-versa. Having been both religious and non-religious recently, both outlooks are fairly fresh in my mind, and I sympathise thoroughly with how ridiculous we all often seem to each other.

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[i] For serious academic study of the historical reliability of the Gospel documents I recommend The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict, by Josh McDowell – it’s over 700 pages long, but if you have the mind for it, a worthwhile read!

Awesome Dinner...

OK, so I did say that the next blog would be part 2 of the Dog Delusion, but I havent got that one edited into shape yet, and Im afraid I have to tell the world about how flippin awesome the meal I just made was (in all deference, modesty and humility of course).

Defrost some chicken breasts for 5 or 6 hours on a plate in the kitchen (probably one per person).

Put them in an oven-able container submerged in water and then cook them at 180 for an hour (make sure they are well and truly submerged because they will burn otherwise).

Wash a jacket spud for everyone who will be eating and stab each one viciously with a fork a few times on each side, then put them on an oven tray and in the oven at 180 also, for an hour.

When the hour is up, put the spuds on the bottom shelf, and take the chicken out.

Cut the chicken into pieces, however big or small, it mattereth not.

Pour enough cheap single or double cream to cover the chicken into a sauce pan, and cut up a small-med block of white stilton into there too. Then slosh in some cheap white wine. Heat it until the cheese melts, put the chicken in, turn the heat down and let it simmer for a bit.

Heat some veggies in the microwave, and take the spuds out of the oven.

Put the chicken, jacket potato and veggies (I went for carrots) onto the plate, cut the tatties open, then cover the whole lot in the stilton-wine sauce, and robert's your father's brother! A dead easy meal, which tastes delicious, and passed the Sydney taste-test tonight!

Simples.

The Dog Delusion

This post explains what happened after I lost my faith in Christianity, and became an Agnostic. It is the first of several posts which will bring any regular readers up to speed.

Months passed, and soon my family and friends all knew I was no longer a Christian. Some people became much warmer and sympathetic, sharing that they had experienced similar doubts, and others decided it would be best to avoid me lest I spiritually contaminate them. Their attitude was understandable I suppose, because as an Agnostic I could no longer see the harm in getting a bit drunk, which might have been upsetting for the more sensitive believers.

On a Wednesday night, I got together with some friends and we had a lad’s night in. My Granddad whom I loved very dearly had passed away a few weeks earlier, and still being emotionally raw from the funeral, I was looking forward to unwinding with my mates. The day of the planned event however, I allowed myself to get drawn into an argument with a fellow student at Bible College which escalated and escalated over the course of three hours. When the evening event rolled around I had a complete meltdown, got drunk off my face and was carried back to my apartment in pieces by my mate Tom. The next morning, a nauseous and hung-over me and a perfectly sober Sydney drove back to stay with my parents for a few weeks, just to get away from it all and escape. I knew that word had spread like wildfire about my drunken behaviour, and that it was the ‘talk of the town’. I was so angry at Christians, all Christians everywhere, that by this point I had decided I truly wanted to be an Atheist.

Sydney, being the generous sweetie that she is, wanted to cheer me up and so bought me a Kindle E-Reader (which is one of the coolest things I have ever owned). Along with a pile of C. S. Lewis, Tolkien and Rowling books, I downloaded The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins and read the whole thing virtual cover to cover over the next week. I spent most of the following three days thinking, pondering, meditating and analyzing to see if I could finally cross the Agnostic divide and become an Atheist.

While on some levels I felt free, released, with a limitless horizon in-front of me, losing my faith had left a terrible, gaping void in my life. Some might have said 'you haven't lost your faith, you have chosennot to believe', but I assure them it happened very much against my will.

In the absence of religion, the simple question ‘why?’ had been growing on my mind and paralyzing me from somewhere deep down in my gut. The book of Ecclesiastes read like the very script of my soul, everything was just meaningless!

If someone in this stalling economy wants to use their lives to do something significantly good for themselves or others, they first have to get rich simply to have any time or money to be charitable with! Everything else is mere survival! And as the writer of Ecclesiastes observed: if at the end we just die and lose it all, ultimately why bother? Why should I try to build something incredible if I have to toil my every waking hour to create it, and then die and no longer enjoy it? And who knows who might inherit my life’s work in a generation or two? No matter what I do, it could easily end up in the hands of some idiot who will ruin it all.

The whole circus of life became miserably absurd and pointless to me, and hopelessly geared to favour the wealthy and talented. It was all very well for people like Richard Dawkins to claim that a God-less view of life is a noble one filled with hope, but he is a famous public figure with money and time to spare. My life amounted to working, sleeping, working, sleeping, and a few moments of precious family time squeezed in wherever possible. The odds were good thatwithout money, success and time on my hands I would be swallowed up from the cradle to the grave in simply surviving, and then I would die. On top of it all, I looked at those who had time and money; I looked at the divorce rate and suicide rate among rich celebrities and despaired. Could anyone find meaning or purpose anywhere? Meaningless, meaningless, meaningless!

The endless horizon of possibility turned out to be a cliff edge, and I was staring over the precipice. I could see no reason to live in laughter, sadness, indulgence, denial, deep thought, constant entertainment or good company, because why?

If this was life, why was I submitting to it?

Why was I remaining in it?

Why not leave this horrific mockery as swiftly as possible?

Why not refuse to be a brick in the monument which elevates the ungrateful rich and powerful?

Why bother doing anything at all?

Why live?

Although I was never actually suicidal, these questions occurred to me and I had no defence against them. For a poor man with neither wealth nor title, life without God no longer looked grand, infinite and wonderful; it looked bleak, crushingly brutal and intolerably meaningless. This did not change my beliefs in any way though, because what if this wasreality? Just because it is cruel doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

A friend of mine from Texas got in touch having bought and read the first version of my book (which was titled Comic Divinity), and sent me an email, quoting to me a Bible verse from Matthew 12:38-40:

Some of the Pharisees and teachers of the law said to him, “Teacher, we want to see a miraculous sign from you.” He answered, “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

As a student of theology I knew that in this passage Jesus was saying that those seeking a miraculous sign from him would not receive one on their own terms, however they would receive all the evidence they needed in his upcoming death and resurrection. My Texan friend was making the point that I shouldn’t put God to the test, and that perhaps he had already given me everything I needed to believe. I found the email a little annoying, but the point she was making stuck with me; Jesus did say not to test God. I wondered if his silent response to my pleas for evidence were in fact frustratingly consistent with his character, as opposed to being proof that he did not exist. Had he given me all the evidence I needed?

After I completed The God Delusion, I was left with the impression of Richard Dawkins as both an outstanding scientist, and a desperately inadequate philosopher. He struck me as a fireman who could tell you all the details of the chemical composition of the water in his extinguisher, but had absolutely no idea how to use it to put out a fire. He could explain quantum-physics but couldn’t tie his own shoelaces – someone who is an absolute genius in one field of study, and a close-minded mule in another.

This book was the Bible that the modern-day Arch-Bishop of Atheism had to offer, and it made both fascinating and exasperating reading. I was very impressed with the science contained therein, but was constantly wearied by Dawkins’ insistence that there cannot be anything ‘out there’ that we will not one day prove in a lab, that isn’t merely a law of nature obeying itself. By its very nature the supernatural is something he can’t understand or measure, so how on earth did he come up with any data by which to calculatethis probability?

Dawkins implied from the outset that his philosophical outlook was a correct, neutral one from which to evaluate the probability of the supernatural existing or not. The problem is we cannot get behind our core philosophical outlook to see whether it is neutral and therefore a valid starting point! We cannot even think about thinking without doing it through a pre-programmed filter! To even think about thinking you have to have a philosophy on philosophy! So how can the philosopher ever know that the way they are thinking about thinking is neutral and therefore valid and unbiased? There is simply no way for any of us to view our own basic core outlook from a neutral position and evaluate whether or not it is the most unbiased one, because we have no way whatsoever of knowing which philosophical outlook is the neutral one!

OK, I am aware that the last paragraph will sound like incoherent gibberish to many of my very worthy readers. Let me think of a better way of explaining it…

We are all wearing contact lenses of differing colours and distortions, and we cannot take them off. We have worn them all of our lives, they have always been in our eyes, and they always will be. Everyone has a slightly different view of the world, but no-one sees it perfectly clearly.

Even when we look at a set of contact lenses in the optician’s window, we are already looking through our own different sets as we do so. Thinking about thinking is a bit like that; it’s like inspecting a set of warped lenses without realising you’re already wearing some! We can never get that first pair off, and see the world as it really is. When we choose our philosophical outlook, we are already using a philosophical outlook to make that choice.

Richard Dawkins wearing his set might perceive a perfectly straight line. He might write a book about his straight line, publish it and give the book to someone else, but when they see it through their differently distorted lenses they will protest that he has merely created something crooked.

When it came to the supernatural, he seemed to be saying ‘my outlook is right, and yours is wrong’.[i] He was saying that if I didn’t have the same contact lenses as him, I needed to wear an additional pair of corrective Technicolor Dawkins-glasses to see the world clearly.

Even when I wanted to be an Atheist however, I could not intellectually assent to what he said. There was obviously no way he could ever prove whether his claims were correct or not, because had no data on the supernatural. The supernatural force that healed my arm cannot be harnessed and studied in a lab, and Dawkins simply cannot know if we will be able to control it in the future or not. How could he possibly know either way? It was merely his opinion, and it struck me as pompous and arrogant in the extreme. I knew I could never accept his insistence on the non-existence of the supernatural, first and foremost because I had experienced it first hand.

We are all wearing faulty contact lenses, Richard Dawkins included, and none of us can take them off, Richard Dawkins included. The only person who theoretically could see everything without contact lenses, who could describe the colour ‘red’ to you accurately, or who could show you what a straight line truly looks like, is someone who knows everything. Only that person could view all philosophical outlooks, and choose the neutral, unbiased one. Only a God could truthfully say ‘my view is right and yours is wrong’, and Dawkins would be the first to tell you he is not one.

For the rest of us who are stuck wearing contact lenses with all their tints and distortions, it all boils down to this; we choose the philosophical outlook which seems the most justified to us as individuals and that is all that anyone can be reasonably expected to do. We each choose the pair of glasses we will wear, and all we can do is try in good conscience and ignorance to pick the clearest ones.

I was never willing to be one of those Christians who would slam their hands over their ears and shout ‘I’m not listening!’ when confronted with uncomfortable evidence. When it came to reading Dawkins’ New Atheism, I was equally unwilling to explain away every single event in some cherished belief system, and I felt on many points that this was exactly what I was being asked to do.

Three supernatural events held me back from becoming totally Atheist: the healing of my arm through laying on of hands, the accurate prophecy I received at sixteen, and the fulfilment of that prophecy. The big question was whether the supernatural force was some power like electricity or radio-waves that we have not yet learned to control, or was it an actual person?

I decided to re-read over the prophecy (in my overwhelmingly pro-Atheism state) and to decide whether it was a real message from God or just a load of waffle about which I had got over-excited. I strongly suspected it was the latter.

Below I have copied a few short excerpts from the prophecy, and attempted to explain how they applied to me at seventeen. As you read, please bear in mind that these are just small snippets and you are only reading one half of the conversation. Without being me, and experiencing how these things applied, you cannot quite get the full picture. I have tried however to fill you in as much as possible.

So anyway, read on as I put one of the most personal things I have ever received on display for the world…

You're thinking on two levels – You have thoughts that people don't know about, thoughts you’re struggling with that you’re not sharing with anyone. You feel guilty because you’re not sharing in an open way with your parents and friends, and God is saying he wants you to take those things to him.

I received this prophecy six months before I was hit with the overwhelming anxiety attack I mentioned in chapter three. When it happened, I didn't know what to do or how to cope; I was terrified and couldn't talk to anyone at all – I couldn’t even put the feeling into words. At that age I only saw two alternatives if I wanted this panic-attack to ever lift; getting drugs or turning to God.

You've heard your parents say things, but now you need to know for yourself, and that's valid and that's OK - but because that feels so strange and uncomfortable to you, you feel guilty, you keep burying it at a deeper level. "You're missing the point" is what I'm hearing God say.

The time to take personal responsibility for my faith had come. I could no longer believe because of how I was raised, the time had come to explore Christianity for myself, and to draw my own conclusions about it.

You're sorting in your life right now. He wants you to know that's OK with him, and he loves you in the midst of the sorting. You've had questions like "Am I a sinner because I'm not sure?" and he's saying "It's OK, everyone comes to that place of crisis in their faith."

The sorting was happening, more so then than at any other time in my life. The knowledge that I was meant to have questions and allowed to be unsure was both encouraging and relieving.

He's given you a safe framework; a box around you, and even as things are stirred up he's saying "I'll keep you safe if you do it my way. But come to me! Run to me! Talk to me! I love you and I know what you're going through!"

That year from seventeen to eighteen I was in a safe, sheltered world of home, college, and church, and my world was smaller and quieter than it had been for years. In that time that I really did come to God, run to God, and talk to God. I found that in my prayer, worship and Bible reading the anxiety became less, and sometimes went away completely. I found that God worked as a remedy to the anxiety, as long as I remained 100% committed.

Father, take him back to the things that happened in his past that you did for him, how you reached out to him from the very start. Encourage him that those things are true, those things are solid, and those things are a part of his spiritual identity, may they grow stronger!

Whenever I listened to this section, I felt strongly that ‘God reaching out to me from the very start’ was the healing of my busted arm as a kid. He had proved himself to me when I was so young that I wasn’t even capable of passionately seeking him, and the prophecy said he did this for a reason – because I would need those things now.

These snippets of text are only fractions of one half of a conversation. The way the whole prophecy spoke to me, and the way it was fulfilled in my life are the other half, and without those firsthand memories no-one can comprehend how scarily accurate it was. But it truly was, and without being me no-one cannot objectively say that it wasn’t.

I couldn’t get past the conviction that the healing, the prophecy, and the fulfilment of it were genuinely supernatural. I knew what I had been at sixteen, and what the prophecy had made me by the time I was eighteen.

I also could not believe with any intellectual integrity that these signs were a nameless force, because the prophecy was personal; it was addressed to me from someone. The supernatural force behind the prophecy asked things of me, felt things about me, and wanted to be involved in my life.

Dawkins offered various natural explanations for all this, but I couldn’t help it, even though I truly, deeply wanted to, I just didn’t believe him. Supernatural power keeps cropping up all over the globe, not just as a force but with evidence of supernatural personhood, so why not believe the evidence? Why should any unbiased person try to explain these phenomena away as an as-yet undiscovered force or an implanted memory? If the evidence points to a supernatural person then that is what I will believe in.

At this point the New Atheist might try to undermine my definition of ‘evidence’, but considering that I have more data on it than them (my experiences), I can’t see why I should accept their opinion on the matter. My contact lenses are just as good as theirs, and they haven’t seen what I have. 

My good friend Kevin once mocked postmodern theology with the phrase ‘I think the concept of truth should be expanded to include things that aren’t true – but only insofar as it suits me’. Pure genius. Asking me to ignore and undermine my own mental faculties whenever they contradict the creed of New Atheism makes just as much sense – even to an Agnostic wishing to become an Atheist. I might as well try to explain away the existence of my dog whenever it happens to get on my nerves (the Dog Delisuion). Something being inconvenient or annoying to someone does not make it a lie. The miracles happened, and I am convinced they came from a person, no matter how much that regrettably upsets any Atheist readers out there.

For the thinker with integrity, forcing real-life evidence (perceived through our already preset mental faculties) into a rigid belief system is the road leading to madness, and I had to say “sorry Dawkins, I wasn’t willing to do it for fundamentalist Christian nut-jobs, and I’m not willing to do it for you either”.

            Even as an Agnostic utterly disillusioned with Christianity and determined to find a way to be an Atheist, I simply could not compromise my philosophical convictions or ignore the balance of probability. This force was a person, who in both the healing and the prophecy had called himself Jesus.

Despite having a mile-high pile of complaints against God, despite resenting Christians for all their false promises, in a similar manner to the oft-quoted C.S. Lewis: “I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England”.

            The reality of ‘the way God reached out to me from the very start’ (see prophecy) was like a fly that would not be ignored, refused to be swatted, and would not go out of the window. It was impervious to my reasonable requests to be left alone, ignored me when I yelled at it, and came out buzzing cheerily after I burned the whole house to the ground.

PART TWO COMING SOON. 

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[i] Please note, I am not arguing against scientific data here, I am arguing against claiming to have statistical odds on the existence of something which by its very nature is beyond our capability to monitor and evaluate.

The Latest...

I haven't been blogging for ages because Ive needed a break from putting so many of my thoughts on view for the world, while I decide what I actually think about alot of things: primarily the leading subject of this blog; Christianity and religion. I even (shock, horror) took down my facebook for several months also to simply have some space.

Alot of my readers know me, and know why I lost my faith. For them, I have decided to post some slightly edited versions from the chapters of a book I have been working on for some time, which will explain where I am now up to. I will post them every few days for anyone who is interested to read through and get up to speed with. However I am not sure that they will remain permanently online as I am hoping to market the book for sale sometime soon. In the meantime though... the next post will contain the first chapter for anyone who is interested to read.

take care :)

Testify

One thing God has always been consistent in providing for me and my family is money. The scriptures say 'I have never seen the righteous begging bread', and 'seek first the Kingdom of God and all the rest will be given to you', and I have found this to be true.

We recently moved back to the North East of England, following God's call to plant a church up here, but as a full time student, the move from Derbyshire was very expensive and difficult financially. It has been amazing however, that every time we are on the brink of running out of money, I pray and tell God we're in his hands and unless he provides, we're screwed. I then go to the ATM and voila, there is money!!!

Honestly, its been time after time. I have experienced what seems to me to be a heavenly seal of approval on our move to Catterick, because every time the money is getting low, more just comes in from somewhere else and we're absolutely fine!! And it's not just been the strict needs that have been provided for; birthdays, little dates here and there, gradually getting our new place furnished. I am in the middle now of a massive leap-of-faith, in moving up here as a full time student and father of two, following God's call to live here and plant a church, and in this moment I can absolutely testify that He is completely faithful to provide for us, as long as we are moving in the direction He is calling. God be good baybee.

An Iraqi General and a Boxing Lesson

Yesterday, the 29th of Feb 2012, we went to Galeed House, a Christian mission house in a Muslim neighbourhood in Sheffield. Me, Isaac, Aiden and Usman Habib went to visit an elderly Iraqi man who had been granted asylum in England 3 years ago. The lady who sent us to him from Galeed house knew very little about him other than his nationality and name. When we got chatting to him, we found out that he had been a General over tens of thousands of men in Saddam Hussein's army in Iraq!

He had joined the army as a young man serving the king of Iraq before the military takeover, and had remained in its ranks until he became outspoken against Saddam, and was imprisoned for 5 years in Abu Ghraib prison for his political stance. The guy was lovely, really friendly, polite, and fed us very well! I asked him if he liked living in England, what he thought of life here, and he said 'it is paradise'!! This was a man with thousands of soldiers previously at his beck and call, he probably was used to living with dozens of servants to wait on him, yet compared to life under Saddam, a life in a tiny 2-up2-down house in a cheap run-down Sheffield estate was 'paradise'. Wow, Saddam must have been a monster. Although as someone with political asylum in England he would also have access to free healthcare, council benefits, tax credits and job-seekers allowance, so I imagine there are quite a few positives to being here quite aside from the absence of a lunatic dictator.

Later on Usman did a martial arts class with the kids at the outreach house, and told us his story. Before he converted to Christianity, he had dedicated his life to training in unarmed combat in the Nigerian Military, and was a CIA-trained bodyguard to the Nigerian President, as well as a top army training instructor. He taught me the basics of boxing, because both he and Isaac thought I had the build for it!

Usman prayed with the Iraqi general in the name of Christ, and it was fine, he very decent about it and took no offense.

Very unexpectedly awesome day full of me doing things I never thought I'd do. coolness.