The Bible Mission Trip to Vietnam has been eye-opening. We saw how God is working in and through the lives of the local there. There were certainly many needs that we saw, but also much to give thanks and praise to God for. Despite the language barrier, we had the opportunity to edify each other through testimony sharing and affirming one another in love. The faithful and tireless way that the locals carry out God’s calling is a reminder and model for me as I serve in my own church. I encourage everyone to join mission trips to participate in the larger Christian body. As much as I hope I have been a blessing to the locals, they have also blessed me through this short trip.
ETHOS Institute: Some Thoughts on Being a Christian (Part 2)...
From geostrategic rivalries to the global emergence of mass populism and the fourth industrial revolution, we live in a world that is changing at a fast pace and unpredictable pace, with consequences we are only just beginning to grapple with. What does it mean to be a Christian in this age of uncertainty? How should Christians understand and respond to all these challenges that before us?
Come and learn how Bible-believing Christians can and should approach these questions as they search for answers.
Our speaker, Dr Joseph Liow Chin Yong (PhD, London School of Economics) is the Dean of both the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, and the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Dr Liow’s research interests encompass Muslim politics and social movements in Southeast Asia and the geopolitics and geoeconomics of the Asia-Pacific region.
For more informative videos, visit ethosinstitute.sg!
ETHOS Institute: Some Thoughts on Being a Christian (Part 1)...
From geostrategic rivalries to the global emergence of mass populism and the fourth industrial revolution, we live in a world that is changing at a fast pace and unpredictable pace, with consequences we are only just beginning to grapple with. What does it mean to be a Christian in this age of uncertainty? How should Christians understand and respond to all these challenges that before us?
Come and learn how Bible-believing Christians can and should approach these questions as they search for answers.
Our speaker, Dr Joseph Liow Chin Yong (PhD, London School of Economics) is the Dean of both the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, and the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Dr Liow’s research interests encompass Muslim politics and social movements in Southeast Asia and the geopolitics and geoeconomics of the Asia-Pacific region.
For more informative videos, visit ethosinstitute.sg!
Vietnam Bible Mission Trip 2019
Linette Tan, Participant of the Bible Mission Trip to Vitenam shares her reflection.
Resurrection or Hallucination?
Throughout the history of the Church, there have been numerous attempts by her adversaries to debunk the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus. It seems that these detractors understood very well – arguably perhaps better than some Christians do – the centrality of Christ’s resurrection in Christianity.
‘If Christ has not been raised’, writes the Apostle Paul, ‘then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain’ (1 Corinthians 15:14). The resurrection of Jesus is not an optional extra, a concept or claim that can be pushed to the margins of Christianity. It is the truth upon which the Christian faith stands or falls.
The advance of modern science in the 18th and 19th centuries has led to the proliferation of naturalistic theories regarding Jesus’ resurrection. These range from the theory that the body of the dead Jesus was stolen by the disciples (Hermann Reimarus) to the proposition that Jesus did not in fact die but merely fainted or swooned (Friedrich Schleiermacher) and recovered later.
In recent decades the hallucination theory, popularised in the 19th century by David Strauss and Ernest Renan, is witnessing something of a revival.
In The Resurrection of Jesus (1994) Gerd Ludemann commandeered hallucination studies to offer a rehash of David Strauss’ hypothesis, that the appearances of the risen Christ were merely internal psychological events or subjective visions in the minds of the disciples – in a word, hallucinations.
Ludemann maintains that these hallucinatory visions were the result of ‘religious intoxication’ and ‘ecstasy’. They spread to the other disciples and to the five hundred witnesses mentioned by Paul by ‘an incomparable chain reaction’, resulting in ‘mass ecstasy’.
Michael Goulder, in a 1996 essay ‘The Baseless Fabric of a Vision’ adopts a similar approach to Ludemann, arguing that Peter was the first to experience a ‘Jesus hallucination’ due to the anxieties brought about by Holy Week and the shame he felt for denying his Master. Peter’s hallucination subsequently spread to the rest of the disciples.
In his attempt to find analogies of the ‘Jesus hallucination’, Goulder came up with some of the most farcical suggestions: the moving statue of Mary at Knock, the phenomenon of UFOs and the ‘Sasquatch’ (Bigfoot) sightings.
The most recent attempt to revive the hallucination hypothesis comes from the pen of a historian at the University of California, Berkeley, and trenchant advocate of atheism, Richard Cevantis Carrier.
‘I believe the best explanation, consistent with both scientific findings and the surviving evidence … is that the first Christians experienced hallucinations of the risen Christ, of one form or another’, writes Carrier. ‘In the ancient world, to experience supernatural manifestations of ghosts, gods, and wonders was not only accepted, but encouraged’.
Before we examine the differences between hallucinations and the experiences of the disciples of the resurrected Jesus, it may be helpful to consider a broad definition of hallucination. According to the 1996 edition of the Encyclopedia Americana a hallucination is a ‘report of a sensory experience in the absence of an actual external stimulus appropriate to the reported experience’.
Scientific studies show that this phenomenon is very commonly reported among mental patients. People with normal mental health only experience hallucinatory visions when they are suffering from extreme fatigue or grief. People on certain kinds of drugs may also have such experiences.
There are a number of important factors that have led Christian theologians and apologists to rule out the possibility that the early disciples may have experienced hallucinatory visions of their dead master.
The first is the facticity of the empty tomb. No secret was made of the fact that the body of Jesus was placed in a tomb that belonged to Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Sanhedrin.
If the sceptics thought that the early Christians were merely hallucinating when they claimed to have seen the resurrected Christ, they could easily have exposed their delusion by simply producing the body of Jesus. However, the sceptics simply did not do this (because they could not).
The second factor that rules out the possibility that the sightings of the resurrected Jesus were hallucinations is the number of people involved. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul provides an impressive list of eyewitnesses of the resurrected Jesus: Cephas, the twelve, the five hundred, and finally Paul himself.
According to the clinical psychologist Gary Collins, ‘Hallucinations are individual occurrences. By their very nature only one person can see a given hallucination at a time. They certainly are not something which can be seen by a group … Since hallucinations exists only in this subjective, personal sense, it is obvious that others cannot witness it’.
In addition, the fact that the people who encountered the resurrected Jesus have different mindsets and different frames of mind when the experience took place also works against the hallucination hypothesis.
As the evangelical philosopher Gary Habermas compellingly puts it: ‘The wide variety of times and places when Jesus appeared, along with the different mindsets of the witnesses, is simply a huge obstacle. Men and women, hard-headed and soft-hearted alike, all believing that they saw Jesus, both indoors and outdoors, by itself provides an insurmountable barrier to hallucinations’.
The bodily nature of the resurrection also militates against the view that it was merely a psychological state or hallucination. All the appearances of the resurrected Jesus were bodily appearances, as opposed to only psychological visions.
The resurrected Jesus ate with his disciples on the seashore (John 21:14-15) and at the home of the two disciples traveling on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:28-30). In addition, Thomas touched the wounds of the crucifixion on the body of the resurrected Jesus (John 20:27).
Thus, William Lane Craig insists that ‘There is no trace of nonphysical appearances in the sources, a remarkable fact if all the appearances were really visionary, as some critics would have us believe. That strongly suggests that the appearances were not in fact visions, but actual, bodily appearances’.
Even the duration of the appearances serves as a strong refutation of the hallucination hypothesis. Hallucinations are usually fleeting, occurring not more than a few seconds or minutes at a time.
However, in Acts 1:3, we are told that the resurrected Jesus appeared to his disciples for forty days: ‘He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God’.
Finally, the lives of the disciples who saw, touched and ate with their resurrected Lord were radically transformed. They not only became faithful witnesses of the risen Christ, but they were also willing to suffer persecution and even die for him.
Studies in hallucinations, on the other hand, show that those who experienced them are seldom transformed. This has prompted Habermas to observe: ‘Critics acknowledge that Jesus’ disciples were transformed even to the point of being quite willing to die for their faith … To believe that this quality of conviction came about through false sensory perceptions without anyone rejecting it later is highly problematic’.
The resurrection of Jesus is not a brilliant idea or a powerful myth. It is certainly not a hallucination! It is a historical reality, the non-negotiable essence of the Gospel of salvation (1 Corinthians 15:1-11).
Difficult Love
In 2017, ISIS detonated bombs at two Coptic churches in Egypt during their Palm Sunday services that killed at least 45 worshippers.
The first explosion, which killed 27 people and injured 78, took place in the Mar Girgis church located in the city of Tanta, about 90 km from Cairo. The second explosion took place three hours later at St Mark’s Coptic Orthodox Church, killing 18 and wounding 35.
Days after the incident, a journalist spoke to the widow of Mr Naseem Faheem, the Christian guard who was killed at St Mark’s Church. “I’m not angry at the one who did this”, she said, with her children by her side. “I’m telling him, ‘May God forgive you, and we also forgive you. Believe me, we forgive you.’ ”
Mr Amir Adeed, arguably the most prominent talk show host in Egypt, was stunned when he heard what the widow said. “How great is this forgiveness you have!” Amir exclaimed, his voice cracking. “If it were my father, I could never say this. But this is their faith and religious conviction.”
Naseem’s humble widow embodies and so profoundly exemplifies that radical self-forgetting love that the Bible calls agape.
There are a number of passages in Scripture with the injunction for Christians to love their neighbours, including their enemies:
“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” (Luke 6:27-28, NIV)
“Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.” (Romans 12:14)
“Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing…” (1 Peter 3:9, NIV)
Agape is a difficult love. It calls us to do something that clearly goes against our inclinations. By calling us to love our enemies, the very people who hate us and who have either done us harm or wish to do so, agape stretches human love beyond its limits.
The American Catholic social activist Dorothy Day, who has poured out her life to serve the poor and disenfranchised, confronts the impossible possibility of such love with undisguised honesty.
“All men are brothers,” she wrote, “but how to love your brother or sister when they are sunk in ugliness, foulness, and degradation, so that all the senses are affronted? How to love when the adversary shows a face to you of implacable hatred, or just cold loathing?”
The command to love our enemies is a call to love in the way God loves. In Paul’s epistle to the Romans, he tells us that while we were sinners (i.e., God’s enemies – see Romans 5:10), God showed His love through the sacrificial death of Christ (Romans 5:8). On the cross of Calvary, Jesus prayed that God the Father would forgive the people who tortured and crucified Him (Luke 23:34).
Thus, in loving an adversary who emanates only “implacable hated” or “cold loathing”, we reflect in our lives the very ‘agapic’ love of God.
Approached from another angle, in loving others in this way, we become more human, for to be human is to be the bearer of the image and likeness of God.
But is such love even possible? Naseem’s widow has clearly demonstrated to us that it is. Agape is possible because of the power of the Spirit who dwells in us.
Following the approach exemplified by Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Dorothy suggests that we could begin to love in this way by seeing Jesus in the other. “Jesus is disguised and masked in the midst of men, hidden among the poor, among the sick, among the prisoners, among strangers,” she wrote, no doubt with Matthew 25:35 in mind.
But decades of selfless service to the poor and marginalised have disabused Dorothy of all puerile idealism. ‘Agapic’ love is never easy, and very often she feels that her “love is too small”.
But Dorothy recognises that the Bible commands such love, and obedience requires nothing less than a strenuous act of will. In her book, On Pilgrimage, she put this again in manifest honesty: “If you will to love someone, you soon do… It depends on how hard you try.”
For Dorothy – as it should be for all Christians – loving our neighbour is not an option for those who have themselves received the forgiveness and love of God. It is a responsibility.
“Whether I Can See or Not, I Will Continue to...
When Honglin, 40, cannot find her way home during rainy days, she would pray earnestly. God never fail to help her find her way.
Even though she has to take three buses to reach church, she looks forward to it every week and she will always pray for God’s angels to lead her along the way.
“Life as a blind person is hard,” she shared. “From leaving the house, buying daily necessities and visiting the doctors, to taking a bath. But I’ll always go to God in prayers and through prayers I’ve experienced the Lord’s grace in my life.”
Honglin lost her sight gradually and by age 20, she was totally blind. When she first accepted the Lord as her personal Saviour, she had hoped that God will miraculously restore her sight.
But that did not happen. As she grew to understand God’s Word more, her faith was strengthened. “I was convicted of this truth. Whether I can see or not, I will continue to believe in this God.”
Over the years, Honglin has learnt to put her hopes on God. “Light is when we focus our sight on God. Darkness is when we do not do so.”
Miracles
Even the most casual reader of the Gospels will be struck by the many stories of miracles they tell.
On page after page, the Gospel writers describe Jesus cleansing the leper, opening the ears of the deaf, giving sight to the blind and even raising the dead. There are stories of Jesus turning water into wine, multiplying loaves of bread and fish to feed the hungry multitudes and calming the raging storm.
Should Christians today take these stories of miracles seriously? Can Christians who inhabit a world that is so vastly different from the writers of the Gospels – informed and shaped as they are by the scientific worldview – still believe in miracles?
Many have replied these questions with an emphatic ‘No’.
The 19th century Scottish philosopher and essayist, David Hume, is an example of a modern skeptic whose vision of reality is shaped by the natural sciences. Defining miracle as ‘a violation of the laws of nature’ or ‘a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity’, Hume argues that it is unreasonable to believe that miracles are possible because they fly in the face our standard notions of how the world works.
Thus, in his celebrated An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding Hume writes: ‘as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws [of nature], the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined’.
The positivists in that century, influenced by the reductionisms of modern science, argued that belief in miracles belonged to a stage of human development in which the dominant vision of reality was shot through with the supernatural. Describing this phase as ‘theological’ these positivist philosophers went on to assert that humankind has now entered a new phase in which knowledge of the world is established on empirical facts obtained by the scientific method, not superstition.
Consequently, Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872) famously postulated that belief in God and the supernatural are simply objectified (and personified) projections of basic human desires. And Levi Strauss (1808-1874) suggested that the Incarnation and miracles are just mythological images conjured by primitive people.
In his attempt to reconcile Christianity with science F. D. E. Schleiermacher, who is christened as the ‘father of modern theology’, maintains that the only miracle is the act of God in sustaining the world he has created. All other lesser ‘miracles’, according to Schleiermacher, are just extraordinary events that science will eventually be able to explain.
Bewitched by the explanatory power of the natural sciences, many modern thinkers accuse Christians who believe in miracles of fabricating a ‘god of the gaps’. Christians attribute to divine agency the extraordinary phenomena or occurrences for which science has yet to provide satisfactory explanations. But the ‘god of the gaps’ will shrink – and perhaps one day he may even disappear – as science narrows the gap, so to speak, by providing ever more comprehensive accounts of natural phenomenon.
It is crucial to note, however, that the rejection of miracles is based on a certain view of science and a certain power that we have given to it, a power that it does not in fact possess. We have placed our hope in science’s omnicompetence – its ability to penetrate the depths of reality, and its ability to explain everything.
This hope is misplaced. In his book entitled, The Limits of Science Sir Peter Medawar, the Nobel Prize winner (and atheist) offers a sober (and sobering) estimate of science, its possibilities and its limits. ‘That there is indeed a limit upon science’, writes Medawar, ‘is made very likely by the existence of questions that science cannot answer and that no conceivable advance of science would empower it to answer’.
Theologian and scientist John Polkinghorne has perceptively pointed out that ‘no one lives as if science is enough’. This means that everyone knows that reality has a depth and breath that science is simply unable to reach. It has a profundity that science simply cannot fathom. Positivists, secularists, and atheists (including the new atheists) would all agree to this, if only they chose to be honest to themselves.
Miracles not only point to those depths inaccessible to science, they point more significantly to the God who is at work in this world.
The New Testament describes miracles as ‘a wonder’ (Gk: teras), an ‘act of power’ (Gk: dunamis) and a ‘sign’ (Gk: semeion). Theologian James Oliver Buswell offers this concise but comprehensive definition of a miracle in the biblical sense. A miracle is (1) an extraordinary event that cannot be explained on the basis of natural laws, (2) an event that causes the observers to conclude that God is at work, and (3) an event that points to a reality much greater than itself.
Even Christians who believe in miracles sometimes miss their true significative purpose. In the Bible, miracles, signs and wonders are never ends in themselves, but point to a greater reality.
Miracles in the Bible signals the presence of the kingdom of God that Jesus, the incarnate Son of God, came to inaugurate. In Matthew 12:28, Jesus said: ‘But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you’.
In sending the twelve apostles to preach the good news, Jesus instructed them thus: ‘And proclaim as you go, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand”. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons’ (Matthew 10:7-8).
Miracles are a sign that the kingdom of God has come into our world through the incarnate Son. They are a pledge and foretaste of the blessings to come when God’s inaugurated kingdom will be fully consummated when the risen and ascended Christ returns.
Loving your digital neighbour
Director of Theos Think Tank, Elizabeth Oldfield, explores new media and reconciliation in an age of incivility
Despite public perceptions that religion causes violence and division, Christianity has a long history of peace building. As well it should; the word reconcile means ‘to bring together again’, and reconciliation between God and his creation is the end of the mission of Christ; first on the cross, and finally at the end of the world. Formal and informal Christian peace-building initiatives, such as CHIPS (the Christian International Peace Service), have been quietly serving across conflicts all over the world. Christian peace-building principles were foundational to the civil rights movement in the USA, and in the aftermath of apartheid. They are still needed in conflict zones today, but attention to less dramatic battles, conflicts and divisions being played out daily in our public conversations is limited.
At Theos, we see our ability to engage across difference and to equip Christians to do this better as central to our role. We are in an age where connecting with those who are different from ourselves presents serious challenges. It has become a truism to bemoan the parlous state of public debate. A search for ‘the death of civility’ returns 150,000 results on Google. It is difficult to provide hard data for a trend as things change so rapidly and social media itself is so recent, but most people’s experience is of public conversations, particularly online, that are angrier, more hostile and more peppered with insults and generalisations. Earlier this year the CEO of Twitter announced it would take action to help make our public conversations healthier. Jack Dorsey admitted that the platform was hosting toxic engagement in ‘increasingly divisive echo chambers’. Our Trump and Brexit saturated discourse has been dubbed the ‘age of outrage’.
This applies no less to debates about religion. Although the particular animosity of the new atheist movement has passed, public debate about religion still often erupts into fractious conflict about faith schools, abortion or ‘gay cake cases’. Those with no appetite for these often stay in their respective filter bubbles and do not engage with people who believe, behave and belong differently from themselves.
Sadly, sometimes Christians can be tempted to be part of the problem, not the solution. In a world that feels unstable, in which Christian faith is increasingly alien to the mainstream, it is understandable that many of us enter public debate already feeling fearful and defensive. This work must be both for its own sake – because we are called to love and serve even our enemies, not just those who we disagree with – and also because in the immortal words of Netflix series Queer Eye: ‘You can’t antagonise and evangelise at the same time.’
How, practically, then do we do it? In my work as a leader of a Christian think tank I spend a lot of time engaging both in person and on social media with atheists, secularists and others who do not share my beliefs. I am currently exploring how we build bridges across differences of belief through Theos’ new podcast, The Sacred, which features a range of interviews with people in public life about what they believe and why, and what they find difficult and helpful in the ways that Christians engage in public debates.
This experience has taught me that peace building requires first a better, fuller understanding of human beings and how we deal with difference, and second, some habits and disciplines.
What humans are like?
We are less rational than we think we are (all of us)
I live in the world of ideas. My background is in factual programme making at the BBC, including on The Moral Maze, and I now run a religion think tank. Facts and arguments, graphs and theories are the official currency of academia, journalism, policy and politics – and by extension, our public debates, at least at the elite end. It is an economy in which we are taught that evidence wins and logic reigns.
Except it does not. Everywhere I engage with big, neuralgic issues – whether they are our national identity, how we distribute resources, immigration, rights and obligations at the beginning and end of life, race, gender, or anything else painful – I come across a disconnect between how human beings really are and how we are trying to engage.
Part of the problem is that the most prevalent, if implicit, model for why we believe what we believe and how we change our minds is outdated. Rational Actor Theory underpinned much economic and social thought in the twentieth century. This model painted a picture of human beings as rational self-optimising individuals making broadly utilitarian choices to maximise their pleasure and minimise their pain. Homo Economicus, as people in this model are sometimes called, presented with better evidence and clear arguments, would make better and different choices. Rational Actor Theory was never intended to be anything but a helpful economic model, but the dominance of market logic means it has filtered into a broader sense of idealistic individualism. It is a very attractive picture of ourselves – coolheaded, reasonable, enlightened and clear-sighted. Not swayed by peer pressure or beholden to irrational emotions, but charting our own course. Unfortunately, it is also almost completely false.
The academic consensus now offers a very different picture. Jonathan Haidt has written about the rational brain as like a rider on an elephant, thinking it is in control but, in fact, providing justifications for where the emotional mind already wanted to go.1 Our feelings of disgust, fear, anger, pride or attraction engage faster, deeper and more enduringly in our decision making than the rational reasons of which we are consciously aware.
We are more tribal than we think we are
In his book, Moral Tribes, Harvard professor Joshua Green unpacks why we are fundamentally social creatures – interdependent persons, not independent individuals.2 We long to belong and so we often become ‘us and them’ creatures, wired to detect and defend against difference. Study after study shows that evidence and arguments coming from people who feel like ‘one of us’ will be filtered and understood entirely differently from the same evidence and arguments presented by someone who feels like ‘one of them’. We are all, to a greater or lesser extent, ego driven, scanning the world like Narcissus’ pool for glimpses of our own reflection.
Worryingly for Theos’ work, at least one study shows that the more highly educated you are the more skilled you are at bending the evidence to match your pre-existing supposition. Those of us educated to university level tend to think we are the best at changing our minds based on evidence but we may in fact be the worst; we are all biased and behavioural psychology adds daily to the list of the cognitive biases that hinder our ability to make purely rational decisions.
We are suckers for a story, and mainly on autopilot
Any PR person will tell you that we are also narratively driven creatures – motivated much more by story than by data. Neuroscience is also exploring just how automatic and habitual we are – making big and small decisions and judgements based on past experiences to save on cognitive capacity.
And God knows this
None of this will sound new to those interested in theological anthropology. Religious understandings of what human beings are like have never really been close to Homo Economicus. The Christian tradition in particular takes seriously human beings’ capacity for self-delusion, selfaggrandisement and self-righteousness and calls in the law for aliens and strangers to be treated equally, to the New Testament covenant which overcomes divides between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female, God challenges our tribalism.
Christianity teaches radical scepticism towards ourselves, and values truth arrived at in community and through story alongside individual human reason. If we can keep in mind this radically different anthropology and use it as an opportunity for self-reflection, we might find we can engage with the ‘other’ more productively. What is clear is that our current tendency to shout statistics and, failing that, insults across the chasm of our tribal allegiances is unlikely to get us anywhere. It is particularly corrosive for Christians to allow themselves to become defensive, shrill and antagonistic in public towards those with whom we may not feel a natural affinity. One of the disciplines we practice at Theos is becoming more aware of our ‘political allergies’– the kinds of people that deep down we think probably are not worth bothering with. When this becomes conscious rather than unconscious we are better able to challenge it. Yes, secularist campaign groups can be irritating. Yes, ‘spiritual but not religious’ types might make you want to roll your eyes. These people might not consciously be your enemies, but they are certainly people it would be worthwhile intentionally learning how to engage with and love.
All of this takes concentration. At Theos we are developing a framework of how we do such Christian peace building within British culture, especially online. So what does that look like practically?
How to engage
Recognise and manage your own emotions and those of others
Peace building requires enormous internal discipline. Becoming defensive, fearful and angry is a very natural and human reaction to people who challenge the things we hold most sacred. I am more and more convinced that our bodies react to intellectual threats to our sense of self or our tribe in a very similar way they do to physical danger. When faced with a threat, our bodies release cortisol – a reaction commonly known as ‘fight or flight’. When faced with people who disagree with us, our reactions often map onto those two options – withdrawing from the conflict and surrounding ourselves with like-minded people to avoid encountering difference or lashing out with insults. Cortisol inhibits the ability of the brain to process information rationally and makes everyone look like the enemy. It takes an enormous amount of self-control to recognise that threat response, and to acknowledge that self-righteous anger is attractive because it feels safer than fear and anxiety in an unstable world. Letting that first stress response wear off before trying to process information or attempting to respond helps a lot.
Recognising this fight or flight reaction also helps me have patience with others. Quite often, without knowing much about me, my very presence as a Christian can provoke a threat reaction in people. Perhaps they have painful history with the Church. Perhaps they are gay and assume I will be hostile to them. Perhaps the very concept of God feels undermining to their individual autonomy.
I had a recent altercation with a respected atheist novelist and journalist on Twitter. We had met in person briefly, so I was surprised when and he attacked me online in a very personal way. He accused me of being naïve, dishonest and a bit thick for being a public Christian. I reacted, like most of us would with anger and pain. My immediate temptation was to respond from that place – refuting his points, proving him wrong with my arguments and data, matching his contempt with my own. Instead, by the grace of God I managed to log out of Twitter and ask my husband to change my password. It took four days for me to calm down sufficiently and pray for him regularly enough that I felt able to respond from a place, if not of love, at least of peace. I engaged with him politely and empathetically and we are now building a friendship. Peace is possible if we take seriously God’s command to ‘turn the other cheek’, love our enemies and pray for those who attack and belittle us. In 1 Corinthians 13.7 Paul writes, ‘Love bears all things … hopes all things, endures all things.’ If we are to follow the one who ‘made no threats’ when he suffered, we should at least be able to endure the odd insult or inflammatory remark, remembering that the one who is on the attack is loved by God.
Perhaps always, but especially now, the world is full of people driven by pride and fear. As someone who has had to confront my own pride and fear (and very much continues to have to do so) I try and pray for grace for those also in the struggle.
We often hear in churches that love is not a feeling but an action. William Barclay’s explanation of the Greek word agape really helped me understand this more deeply: ‘Agape has to do with the mind, it is not an emotional experience but a deliberative principle … A conquest and achievement of the will … The power to love the unlovable’.3 Reconciliation and relationship building with those the adventure of moving outside our Christian bubbles and learning how to love and listen to those who think the gospel is irrelevant who believe differently from us and may in fact be hostile towards us requires this kind of love, patience, concentration and prayer.
Connect before you correct
This is actually an adage from parenting books. Apparently, there is an old youth worker version that goes ‘people won’t care what you know until they know that you care’. When you express contempt, derision or proud ignorance of people who disagree with you, you are demonstrating that you do not really want to persuade them. You are simply playing to your base and making yourself feel better. Much of what passes for public engagement is in actual fact shoring up our existing tribal identities rather than trying to solve problems.
On the other hand, if you begin with empathy and seek to build trust, you can have constructive conversations with people from tribes very different to your own.
Either way, when people get angry with me for my beliefs, it helps to remember the emotional firestorm going on inside and give it time to wear off without reacting defensively. I try and acknowledge their anger and pain and it can be a simple as ‘I can see how that is painful for you’, or ‘I’m sorry you feel so angry about this.’ Swiftly and fully admitting Christianity and Christians have been unhelpful or at fault is also key. Being heard and acknowledged is a powerful human need and a way of showing love, as well as a useful tool for moving, into a more productive place.
Be present (incarnate)
Research shows that many people do not regularly engage with those different from themselves. Our digital lives make it easier and easier to consume only content and voices we already agree with. Most Christians know the temptations of participating in church activities and church communities to the detriment of relationships with those outside. Cross-cultural mission theory has long spoken of the importance of identification and incarnation. Taking the model of Christ, who while we were yet far off came to dwell among us, it is obvious that those seeking to minister to other cultures must live and work among them and spend significant time with them. This principle follows just as much as we seek to build relationships across differences of belief in a fractious UK culture. Theos’ key audience are cultural influencers who are not Christians. We talk about our desire to be ‘in their natural habitat, talking their language’. Building friendships with those different from ourselves again requires us to be out of our comfort zone and the social ease of our own tribe. It requires courage and intentionality, persistence and hospitality but we have found it to be enormously stimulating and rewarding.
Subtle, intentional Christian peace building across difference has perhaps never been more needed in our culture. It requires much of us, but as always with the things God calls us to, gives more. The adventure of moving outside our Christian bubbles and learning how to love and listen to those who think the gospel is irrelevant to their lives has become one of the most formative aspects of my discipleship. We still have a lot to learn and many more mistakes to make, but I am inspired by Henri Nouwen’s vision of Christian peacemakers as those ‘who discover that all people are God’s people and belong to the house of love.’ 4
Elizabeth Oldfield is Theos’ Director. She appears regularly in the media and is a regular conference speaker. Before joining Theos she worked for BBC TV and radio.
Notes
1. J Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion (New York: Pantheon Books, 2012).
2. JD Green, Moral Tribes: Emotion, reason, and the gap between us and them (New York: The Penguin Press, 2013).
3. William Barclay, New Testament Words (London: SCM, 1964), pp. 20–1.
4. Henri Nowen, ‘Living in the House of Love’ in J Dear (ed.), The Road to Peace (New York: Orbis, 1998), p. 63.
This article was first published in the theological journal, The Bible in Transmission. You can get a free copy of the journal by subscribing here.