One Thing That Can Trigger Revival

One Thing that Can Trigger Revivals

In Judges (and 1 Samuel 7) we have statements that there were revivals of true religion after times of apostasy.

A theme that occurs over and over again runs like this: “Israel again did evil in the eyes of the Lord and he gave them over to ----- for ---- years. When the Israelites cried out to the Lord because of their distress he sent them --- who delivered them.”

Several times the stress is on God's compassion for them and there is no mention of him waiting for revival of religion – apart from appealing to him for help — before he acts. In others there is either the demand to, or the stated fact that they did, put away their false gods and return wholeheartedly to him.

There are two examples in particular that I think repay closer inspection.

The first is that of Gideon.

In Sunday School we tended to focus on the episodes of “Gideon's fleece”; the choosing only the 300 warriors who didn't kneel down to drink; and the exciting bit of smashing the pitchers, holding up flaring torches, blowing trumpets, shouting “for the Lord and for Gideon” and standing there while the confused Midianites killed each other. For our purposes I want to pass over those.

In Judges 6 we have the familiar “again the Israelites did evil in the sight of the Lord”. This time “and for seven years he gave them into the hands of the Midianites.” Then after a brief account of their privations under this incessant raiding: “When the Israelites cried out to the Lord he sent them a prophet ...” So God's first response on this occasion was to call the nation to repentance, for the prophet's message was: “This is what the Lord the God of Israel says: I brought you up out Egypt, out of the land of slavery. I snatched you from the power of Egypt and from the hand of all your oppressors. I drove them from before you and gave you their land. I said to you 'I am the Lord your God, do not worship the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you live.' But you have not listened to me”.

So in answer to their cry for help there was a reminder of God's gracious dealings with them in the past and their ingratitude and disobedience. Interestingly there is no mention of their response to this call to repentance at this stage, rather the narrative continues with God beginning to rescue them.

Gideon is told he is God's chosen leader for this purpose. Like many others in this position he demurs at first but when God demonstrates his presence, Gideon accepts his commission. Now we come to an interesting bit. What is the first task God sets Gideon? (can you remember without looking it up)

Gideon's first assignment is to tear down the local pagan shrine and offer a bull as a burnt offering to the real God.

This may sound simple: it was not!

Gideon sensibly did it at night, and even so, when the fact was discovered the men of the town demanded Gideon be put to death. 

 

So the populace could not have listened to the prophet sent to them if their attachment to the cult of Baal and Asherah were still so strong that they wanted to Kill Gideon for challenging it. Nevertheless God proceeds to rescue these ingrates! But I think it is really significant that his chosen leader has to thus demonstrate his loyalty to God.

Coming forward to the present day, how would any of us even in a society where we at least won't be killed fare in standing up against false “gods” that have been intertwined in our culture? I offer this challenge because I have faced it myself! Yes, I chose loyalty to God and no I wasn't killed, but on the other hand I was not rescued as Gideon was by his father's edict: “Whoever fights for Baal will be put to death by morning” instead I paid – only in human terms of course – a price for my loyalty. Of course I don't regret it for a moment! (well not many moments anyway), as Paul said anything we suffer now is nothing in comparison to the glory which awaits us in heaven. But I have mentioned this as a warning that being part of a revival will not be all fun and games!

The second example is in the preface to the account of Jephthah in Judges 10.

The usual start “again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord. They served the Baals and the Ashtoreths, and the gods of Aram, the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the Ammonites and the gods of the philistines”. The Israelites certainly seem to have outdone themselves in disobeying and forsaking God this time! Then: “ he sold them into the hands of the Philistines and the Ammonites who that year crushed them. For eighteen years they oppressed them.”

Once again when their suffering brought them to their senses “the Israelites cried out to the Lord 'We have sinned against you, forsaking our God and serving the Baals'.”

This looks like repentance, but this time God is tough on them : “The Lord replied 'When the Egyptians, the Amorites, the Ammonites, the Philistines, the Sidonians, the Amekites and the Maonites oppressed you and you cried to me for help did I not save you from their hands? But you have forsaken me and served other gods so I will no longer save you. Go cry out to to the gods you have chosen. Let them save you when you are I trouble!”

This is a lesson which is repeated and expanded on through the Bible. For instance the N.E.B. translates Rom. 2,4 as “Or do you think lightly of his wealth of kindness, of tolerance and of patience, without recognising that God's kindness is meant to lead you to a change of heart?” 

 

In this case they had thought lightly of God's kindness so he resorts to toughness which fortunately for them does lead the people to a real change of heart: “But the Israelites said to the Lord 'we have sinned. Do with us whatever you think best, but please rescue us now.' Then they got rid of the foreign gods among them and served the Lord. And he could bear Israel's misery no longer.” And God does rescue them.

So at least one thing that can trigger revival is when suffering as a result of abandoning God brings people sufficiently to their senses that they ask God for help.

 

Perhaps that is like a group version of the “Prodigal Son” who only comes to his senses when he is starving and finds forgiveness and reconciliation when he takes the road back to his father. We may see further instances of this particular cause of revival, and find others as we proceed.

Spiritual Boom and Bust Cycle

Spiritual Boom and Bust Cycle

This seems to be a major theme of the book of the Bible called “Judges”. 

 

I said earlier that we had to be careful applying things that God did with ancient Israel to modern entities because Israel had a unique relationship with God. However in this 'boom and bust' cycle it is human nature that is in question and so we should still be able to learn valid lessons. Also God's mercy and kindness even when his covenant people flagrantly broke the covenant and brought on themselves the dire consequences this involved is something we can take great comfort in.

As readers may be aware, mostly these “judges” were not judges in the legal sense. They were national leaders raised up by God in times of emergency to rouse Israel to fight and defeat enemies who were oppressing them. With two notable exceptions: Deborah, a prophet, seems to have been a law-court type of judge. On God's orders she appointed a military leader to throw off Canaanite domination. Samuel was another law-court judge doing yearly circuits of Israel. When the neighbouring Philistines attacked the Israelites gathered at Mizpah, Samuel did not lead the army but prayed and in response God threw the Philistines into such panic that they fled from the Israelites.

I think it will be best to describe this cycle in the Bible's own words from Judges Ch 2.

6 After Joshua had dismissed the Israelites, they went to take possession of the land, each to their own inheritance. 7 The people served the Lord throughout the lifetime of Joshua and of the elders who outlived him and who had seen all the great things the Lord had done for Israel. …….

1  After that whole generation had been gathered to their ancestors, another generation grew up who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel. 11 Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and served the Baals. 12 They forsook the Lord, the God of their ancestors, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshiped various gods of the peoples around them. They aroused the Lord’s anger 13 because they forsook him and served Baal and the Ashtoreths. 14 In his anger against Israel the Lord gave them into the hands of raiders who plundered them. He sold them into the hands of their enemies all around, whom they were no longer able to resist.15 Whenever Israel went out to fight, the hand of the Lord was against them to defeat them, just as he had sworn to them. They were in great distress.

16 Then the Lord raised up judges, who saved them out of the hands of these raiders. 17 Yet they would not listen to their judges but prostituted themselves to other gods and worshiped them. They quickly turned from the ways of their ancestors, who had been obedient to the Lord’s commands.18 Whenever the Lord raised up a judge for them, he was with the judge and saved them out of the hands of their enemies as long as the judge lived; for the Lord relented because of their groaning under those who oppressed and afflicted them. 19 But when the judge died, the people returned to ways even more corrupt than those of their ancestors, following other gods and serving and worshiping them. They refused to give up their evil practices and stubborn ways.

So the pattern seemed to go like this: God rescues them and they stay faithful for a while, then the next generation ditches God in favour of attractive human-invented “gods”. God leaves them to the consequences … eventually they cry out to him, he rescues them and so the cycle starts over.

It seems to me that this (and the continuing occurrences through the Old Testament) tell us something about human nature and human-invented religion (if we can include modern secularism as a religion!). Our human nature is intrinsically flawed. This nature rebels against true religion and coming into a friendship with the God who really exists. Jesus had quite a lot to say about this, and it is eloquently described at the start of John's gospel

“9 That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. 11 He came unto his own, and his own received him not. 12 But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: (KJV – for the poetry of it!)

What our human nature feel more comfortable with is this:– a religion which does not require us to repent of our sins and seek and receive God's forgiveness and henceforth be ever in God's debt – infinitely in his debt! That our proud human nature abhors! Yet to those who subdue their human pride, turn to God and devote themselves to being like Jesus, it is infinitely precious: forgiveness, adoption as God's sons and daughters, recipients of his love and heirs to his promises of eternal life with him in heaven.

So humans find for themselves other gods. These may make cruel demands: the O.T. condemns the people turning to worship “that detestable god” Moleck and burning their sons and daughters alive in his fiery statue. Today tourists may see Hindu devotees carrying a kavardi by metal skewers piercing their skin, and be awestruck at the torment they are prepared to endure in the course of their religion. On the other hand they may be religions that pander to our lusts: the worship of Asherah seemed to involve much sacred prostitution and adultery.

But the point is that the people who knew God and had been beneficiaries of his kindness kept turning away from him to these human religions. As he said through Jeremiah: (2:10 ff)

“Cross over to the coasts of Cyprus and look,
send to Kedar and observe closely;
see if there has ever been anything like this:
11 Has a nation ever changed its gods?
(Yet they are not gods at all.)
But my people have exchanged their glorious God
for worthless idols.
12 Be appalled at this, you heavens,
and shudder with great horror,”
declares the Lord.
13 “My people have committed two sins:
They have forsaken me,
the spring of living water,
and have dug their own cisterns,
broken cisterns that cannot hold water.”

So we should not be at all surprised that we have seen a general falling away from Christianity over recent decades in the West. The rise of a stridently anti-Christian secularism is also explained once we recognize it as a human-invented substitute for religion of the old sort. This may not have advanced our thinking on the how of revival, but it has shown us that every generation needs one!

Bible on Revival

What the Bible has to say on Revival

There is no shortage of books about Christian revivals. Over the decades I have read a fair cross section of them, so why do I want to go back to basics and look at biblical examples? The answer is a bold one: I think on the whole that the books are missing vital elements.

To be sure some of the stories of past revivals make exciting and inspirational reading which is good as far as it goes, but I want to know more. Also authors of these put their own spin on them. Some are super-spiritual and discount the human – sociological factors, human psychology and techniques of persuasion. Others go to the other extreme of denying anything except these human elements. Finally some produce one-size-fits-all human based blueprints for revival which strike me as pretty useless.

So I want to go back to basics.

A word of warning before we enter the world of the Bible. I happen to believe it – which sets me apart from an awful lot of modern church ministers! For those who eschew the Old Testament, just two quick points. Sure the Old Testament pointed forward to Jesus and found its fulfilment in him, but Jesus quoted it as authoritative in teaching and said “I did not come to do away with the Law and Prophets” (which is what they called what we call the “Old Testament”) So If one believes in Jesus one is committed to taking the OT as authoritative too. Second point is the statement in 1 Corinthians 10.11 about the experiences of the Israelites in the desert: “These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us...” This should alert us to the fact that there are things to be learned from the narratives in the OT. So far from being “just a Jewish history” as I have heard it described, we have deliberately preserved for us in the OT narratives historical scenarios which have something to teach us.

I also happen to credit God with more (infinitely more!) than average human intelligence which sets me apart from an awful lot of “Christian” platform speakers and their followers. Here is what I mean: First they treat the Bible as a grab bag of quotes to back up their own one-eyed ideas – they wouldn't dare do that if they really believed it came from God! Then they read it in a literalistic way – as if God didn't know about the figures of speech and plays on words that even pretty dumb humans use all the time.

For example we understand a play on words – as in this joke: “There are two fish in a tank; one turns to the other and says 'Hey do you know how to drive this thing?'” Guess what? God uses plays on words too! For instance a very simple play in Jeremiah 1.11-12 where the footnote in your Bible should tell you that in the original Hebrew “almond tree” and “watching” sound alike.

If we interpreted our everyday language literalistically – which we don't – we would get ridiculous meanings. This is exploited for humour by one author (Terry Pratchett) in this example: “A brass plaque on the wall proclaimed that – against all gynaecological probability – 'Fred Bloggs was born here'”.

Other aspects of “methodology” will be discussed and developed as we go. If I were to put up a starting hypothesis to test it would be something like this:

a) There is no one-size-fits-all pattern of revival. Rather a great variety to suit different situations.

b) The initiative for revival is generally taken by God alone, but occasionally in response to the prayers of devout people.

c) Human agents are generally invited to play a role. Occasionally human agents unwittingly play a role.

d) God frequently utilises crises and sociological factors to motivate revival, and uses many honest techniques of persuasion.

Case Study : The Golden Calf – Exodus 32

I'm not going to treat this one in depth because it has many unique features.

But I think it is fair to use it as an illustration is the role played by a leader chosen by God. It would appear God was going to destroy the Israelites for turning away from him so quickly and attributing his deliverance of them from Egypt to an idol in the form of a golden calf, but in answer to Moses' petition spared them.

Ps 106.23 Puts this graphically even painting the image of a warrior defending the breach made by an enemy in a city wall: “So he (God) said he would destroy them— had not Moses, his chosen one, stood in the breach before him to keep his wrath from destroying them.”

From this I deduce that a person God has appointed leader may be able by their intercession to be responsible for God – in this case dramatically - changing his intentions, or in a more ordinary way sending revival. We may be able to refine this observation as we examine further cases.

Saving the West - Conclusion

Saving the West – Conclusion

The far right seeks a return to a golden past that never was. The far left seeks a utopian future that will never be. Religious extremists believe you can bring salvation by terror. Aggressive secularists believe that if you get rid of religion there will be peace. These are all fantasies. [Rabbi Lord Sacks]

To save the West we need to pursue hard reality not chase enticing fantasies.

Those things in Western cultures and nations which were good, humane and productive of happiness were achieved by the laborious application of Christian principals to further refine moral rules which had themselves evolved over millennia as bases for successful community life coupled with the determined suppression of wickedness, evil and vice.

Jeremiah prophesied in his day: “this people has forsaken me, a spring of living water and hewed out for themselves cisterns – cracked cisterns that can hold no water” This also is the sin of the West.

In France the Revolution ushered in an attempt to create a society without religion. In Germany, th elate 1800's saw a decline which by the 1930's saw a resurgence of Nordic paganism. England, perhaps as early as the beginning of the nineteenth century was showing signs of decline. Australia had revivals in the early 1900's (when some of my forebears were converted by a Methodist revival) and the 1950's with the Billy Graham crusades. But I would place decline visible in the late 1960's. The United States has maintained a much more visible religiosity, but deep it goes is another matter. In any case there has been opposition movements to any Christian influence visible from the late 1960's mirrored in the rise of Social Progressivism.

“We” have attacked the old rules and tried to formulate a new morality. That really was a high point of human arrogance – to think that we could in one go create a better set of rules that those which took generations to evolve, face the test of real life and be endowed with Christian virtues. Our self-hewn cisterns were also cracked: they did not take into account the sad srate of human nature depicted in the Bible, they paid no heed to the Creator's moral character and purposes, and they dismissed Divine aid – either in their project or in transforming human lives.

No wonder the West is teetering on the brink of destruction.

I come back to my original premise that the only hope is a Christian revival.

Jesus said his followers were like salt and yeast. As olden days mariners found, a bucketful of salt can preserve a whole barrel of beef. Just a little yeast can leaven a whole lump of dough. So even though past revivals have rarely converted more that 10% of the population to a sincere faith, this may well be enough to change the course of nations.

One reason is that, even in the present situation many, perhaps a majority have a sort of faith, but are cowed into submission and silence by the vocal Progressives – who will brook no dissent. Revival may firstly inform them better of the Faith they nominally hold and secondly liberate them to express it.

Another is that as discussed in previous posts there is no “golden age” to go back to: we must go on. This does requite continuous effort to apply the basic principles to new situations. As a student of engineering I learned the laws of thermodynamics. The first and second laws can be (very) simply expressed in a jingle that I remember after forty something years : “Heat is work and work is heat. And heat flows from hot to cool as a rule.” However actually applying these to real life requires much more complex formulations. So with our national malaises. Godfearing men and women are needed in every walk of life to formulate the complex solutions from  Biblical teachings.

The third is God's intervention. The Biblical narrative should leave us in no doubt that walking away from God deprives us of his help. It also should leave us in no doubt that “God desires not the death of a sinner but rather that they should turn from their wickedness and live” So a revival where even say 10% truly turn to God may result in their prayers being answered and the whole nation being rescued.

This end the series “Saving the West”

No more posts for 2 weeks, then I begin a new series examining revivals in the Bible and history to see what can be learned from them

Saving the Planet

“Saving the Planet”

The catch-cry “Save the Planet” is a favourite of environmental activists and is so often repeated that ordinary people are starting to echo it without critical thought.

What nonsense. Apart from sci-fi movies where the bad guys manage to blow a planet to smithereens saving a planet has no meaning. Ah! To be sure there is climate change or global warming as it used to be called. But how exactly would that “save” the Earth? If you are a dedicated environmentalist please bear with me writing what must seem the worst of blasphemies for a moment – after all if you read the last post remember that rejecting new ideas because they conflict with the ones you have previously accepted is not a good thing.

Now planet Earth, on our present scientific understanding has been a ball of condensing incandescent gas, had its surface totally covered with ice, and most things in between. In what way is preventing or slowing a few degrees of heating “saving it”?

Ah, not the “planet” itself but “life on the planet”? Well once again any aspiring polymath should be rolling around the floor laughing! The scene we enjoy is the result of what I have been told was the biggest environmental disaster in Earth's history: the release of oxygen into the atmosphere which killed off near all of life on earth at that time. Then there was whatever cause the extinction of the big dinosaurs (I am told birds are the descendants of some little dinosaurs). In the Permian period the “great extinction event” killed off 95% of all life. But life on Earth went on – indeed it flourished. Then as well there were the five – yes five - ice ages scientists have recorded, with inter-glacial warm periods. Geologists reckon that in the late Paleocene period the temperature was about 8deg. C. greater than at present. Really all this makes a few degrees here or there seem child's play – and who knows despite any anthropogenic influence earth may be about to enter another cold patch or even ice age!

OK enough “heresy”! My point is that if people have, or are unthinkingly repeating ideas relating to climate change based on a mystical view of “planet Earth” or even the “life on earth” as a god or gods then these aught to be firmly rejected!

What then really does matter? Humans. From a Biblical perspective only humans were “the image of God” only humans in Genesis are described as having God breath his life into them, thus setting them quite apart from animals. The Son of God took human nature in lived among us and died in order to reconcile us humans to God.

Granted other things have some though lesser importance. Some theologians point out that in ancient near east pagan religions an “image” was thought of as the visible and present representation of the absent deity. On this basis mankind as the image of God would mean something like humans being appointed as God's representatives to manage the earth and its creatures. The “rule over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air and every living creature that moves on the ground” (Gen 1.28) is in the same vein. Naturally with authority comes responsibility and additionally “ruling” would be in accordance with God's moral character – not mankind's fallen and sinful nature!

So a proper response to climate change is not necessarily trying to prevent it – that may even be like King Canute trying to stop the tide – but to work at achieving the best outcome for all humans.

Before one responds “Oh but we are!” let me give a counter-example. Australia has large coal reserves. India wants to build a large new mine here to get coal for its expanding electricity needs. Environmental activists are thwarting this plan on the grounds that to prevent climate change the coal must stay in the ground. But millions of people in India will be trapped in terrible poverty if new coal fired (because they are big and cheaper than alternatives) power stations are not built. So to look after humans in general and not just allow well fed and affluent Western activists feel self righteous the coal should be mined.

Even in the West itself we are in danger of crippling our economies in the name of “sustainability”. This suits the Luddite mentality of activists but it is not looking after humans – in the West and worldwide. Whatever ill effects come from climate change, human ingenuity, technology and money can be used to alleviate. Crippling our economies may be the global equivalent of olden days doctors bleeding their patients!

Finding the best way forward for humanity is being obscured by a number of factors

Global Warming has become an industry – too many funded research positions, manufacturing products like expensive wind turbines and school syllabus are dependent on current thinking to allow for contrary facts to be allowed to emerge

The “save the planet” dogma has become for many a religion – and woe betide anyone who challenges ardent religious beliefs; People innately feel guilty. Having rejected the real cure for guilt – repentance and forgiveness through Christ – many in today's “post Christian” society find relief for their guilt, and even a warm glow of self righteousness in environmental activism and so are quite addicted to it.

Human psychology: We accept the first premise we hear, often without critically examining it, but we then put our blinkers on and employ every critical faculty to defend it from contrary evidence. Thus anyone questioning the “party line” is immediately howled down as a “climate denier”, any research news is censored, anything we do hear that conflicts with what we have been told is rejected.

My bottom line is that the West, to itself rise and also to take poor countries with it, needs to reform its response to climate change.

This, considering what I have said here, and the fact that many churches and people who profess Christianity are so caught up in the bad aspects of the present response, and indeed so addicted that they preach Jesus as a means to this end rather than the one true End in himself and only Saviour, that only a radical and grass roots revival of Christianity will suffice. The political change is, as I said at the very beginning of this series only a spin-off, a very beneficial spin-off but not the real “end” of a revival of Christianity.

Reviving Intellectual Honesty

Intellectual Honesty

There has probably never been a golden age for honesty. Nevertheless in those instances when it has prevailed the West made scientific advances which have brought immeasurable benefit to the world and made the West great.

One tragic example where, although the truth ultimately triumphed, many lives would have been saved and a brilliant man honoured in his lifetime had there been widespread intellectual honesty in the medical profession of the day is the story of Ignaz Semmelweis, also described as the “saviour of mothers”.

As a senior doctor in the maternity hospital in Vienna in the mid 1800's he noticed that many more women died of blood poisoning in the clinic staffed by medical students that the one staffed by trainee midwives. He refused to sweep this observation under the carpet but worked out that midwives washed their hands whereas medical students did not – even when going straight from an autopsy to the delivery room. He instituted hand washing in a disinfectant and the mortality rates immediately dropped.

Semmelweis tried to promote the practice of surgeons disinfecting their hands, but was met with opposition, scorn and ridicule by the medical profession. He was dismissed (for political reasons), and when he continued a virulent campaign for hand washing he was committed to a mental asylum where he died two weeks later after being beaten by the guards.

After he was replaced at the hospital the practice of hand washing was abandoned and mortality rates among mothers returned to previous levels in the clinic training doctors. This statistic was suppressed and ignored by the authorities. However many of Semmelweis's former students spread his discovery around Europe. However he was only vindicated later when Pasteur's work showed how disinfecting hands prevented the transmission of the bacteria that caused blood poisoning. Belatedly he was recognised in his home town as a hero.

Lack of intellectual honesty and rejection of that love of the truth that allows debate so that all the facts can come out has caused harm many times in recent years. A couple of times just in the past few months my wife. Reading the latest medical journal has pointed out that another medical issue long held as incontrovertible has been disproved.

Generally the history of the issue has gone something like this: A paper has been published saying that XYZ is good (or bad) for people's health. The story has been taken up by both medical and allied health professionals, been popularised in the press, and manufacturers have got onto the bandwagon advertising that their product is extra high or low as the need may be in XYZ.

Now that this is the accepted wisdom, research papers claiming the contrary are either ridiculed, or simply refused publication. After 20 years or so some researcher finally breaks through the silence barrier, proves that the original research was faulty and sets things straight. Of course it takes a long time for the trickle down effect to change professionals' and the public's minds and all this time they have been carefully following bad advice!

These examples probably cause little harm, but illustrate the problem when intellectual honesty is made second to other things and free debate is gagged on scientific matters.

Take the DDT case. Malaria kills millions of people a year. There was a campaign to eradicate its animal vector the Anopheles mosquito using the powerful insecticide DDT . The Anopheles was on the verge of being made extinct – which would have made malaria “extinct” too when environmental activists, aided by the film “A Silent Spring” campaigned successfully to have DDT banned. Ten years later the UN reversed the ban having decided on the evidence that DDT was in fact safe to use. But that was ten years too late. The Anopheles mosquito had got the reprieve it needed, and millions of people continue to die each year from malaria.

Take the “Anti-Vacc” movement. True most people do see them as cranks, but to ignore the benefits to humankind of vaccination requires a complete denial of intellectual honesty. Just take Smallpox as one example.

I still have the tell-tale scar of the inoculation I got when I first planned to travel overseas – it was too dangerous to travel to countries where smallpox existed without inoculation. During the 20^th century it is estimated that smallpox caused 300 million to 500 million deaths. But an eradication program largely featuring inoculation was successful and in 1980 the WHO declared the disease to have been eradicated.

In a totally different field of endeavour I read a columnist in the financial section of the paper today emphasising the need for intellectual honesty in order to be successful as an investor. He pointed out that the investment guru Warren Buffet when he formulated an investing strategy spent considerable time trying to dis-prove it! Only when the strategy has survived this process does he put his money on it. The columnist went on to quote a book on rational behaviour: “rational beliefs must correspond to the way the world is, not to the way you think the world ought to be. … If you can't be honest with yourself about the difference between the truth and what and what you think ought to be true, you may be intelligent but you aren't rational.”

Intellectual honesty and love of the truth are essential for successful living in the real world. For the West to pull out of decline one of the many things necessary is to recover the intellectual honesty that gave us the great leaps forward in science and technology and the knowledge that a real world has real truth.

Christmas in the West

Christmas in the West

Secularists are trying to sweep it off the stage: Iislamists are trying to create carnage: but still persists.

I am writing this on Christmas Eve. This week has seen people massacred at a Christmas market in Berlin, a terror plot in Indonesia foiled, and a plot to massacre worshipers at the Anglican cathedral here in Melbourne foiled by police. There has been a notable lack of Christmas carols in public places. Yet it seem to me that people are starting to react against the grinches. People seem to be more open in wishing "happy Christmas" than last year. Maybe it is just my wishful thinking; but just maybe the tide of public feeling is starting to turn.

In today's paper there is a brilliant article setting our the Christian joy of Christmas. Greg Sheridan says it much better than I could so I will just paste in article for readers to look at.

It’s no miracle Christmas survives in the post-Christian west

• Greg Sheridan
• The Australian
• 12:00AM December 24, 2016

• Greg Sheridan

  

  Foreign Editor

  Melbourne

  https://plus.google.com/101372426793016687263

  

And so this doleful year ends and Christmas is upon us, with an atrocity at a seasonal market in Berlin, with police foiling an ­alleged plan to attack St Paul’s ­Cathedral in Melbourne on Christmas Day, with the Canberra headquarters of the Australian Christian Lobby, Eternity House, being car-bombed, even though police say there was no religious motive, and against the background of a continuing religious and ethnic cleansing of Christians in the Middle East.

Christianity’s long ability to ­inspire both the love and the hatred of human beings ­continues.

In many parts of the world Christianity is thriving. It is on fire in Africa, expanding through the global south and there are many more Christians in China than there are members of the Communist Party.

But much of the West, with the partial exception of the US, is heading towards a predominantly post-Christian iden­tity. The main way Christianity is treated in public culture ranges from contempt and ridicule, to ­calumny and vilification, through to just being ignored and whitewashed from the public square, unless, very occasionally, it can be recruited to serve a fashionable cause.

Yet Christmas survives, even in the post-Christian West, as the most popular Christian festival, a symbol truly of universal appeal.

We all have our childhood memories of Christmas. For me it was midnight mass, black-and-white TV, presents at the foot of the bed, Bing Crosby’s White Christmas, the roster of movies we seemed to watch every year — It’s a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, Going My Way — all long gone now.

It would take a fantastic curmudgeon to deny the happy sentimentality of Christmas, for much that is good is wrapped up in that sentimentality.

But as our society leaves Christianity behind, it is a pitiful fact the content of Christianity, and especially the content of Christmas, has all but passed out of collective consciousness.

Given that for most of the past 2000 years, until about five minutes ago, Christianity shaped Western civilisation, this sheer and wilful ignorance, entirely separate from the question of belief, is an extreme version of a perverse kind of intellectual self-harm. And to deny students especially any real knowledge of their own ­inheritance seems to mount perversity on perversity.

For Christmas, as traditionally understood in Western culture, is the most radical event in human history. The claims of the Christian religion, which centre on Christmas, are the most stupendous that have ever been made.

Consider just four of the most astonishing claims of Jesus, and of Christianity, arising out of Christmas: that Jesus is God and that God for a time was a child, that God alone is the principle of all goodness, that the devil is a real character always about and that Jesus can work miracles.

One common post-Christian way of understanding Jesus is to think of him as a good and kindly man who provided great moral teaching, a kind of early Mahatma Gandhi, and that others, ­especially the historical church, have attributed divinity to him that he never claimed.

The problem is this doesn’t ­accord with the facts at all. Jesus himself, and the Gospels generally, constantly claim that Jesus is God, not a messenger of God, not a teacher inspired by God, not an angel, still less the leader of a social movement, but actually God.

No other historical figure who founded a significant religion has ever made this claim. Therefore, as Christians used to point out, there are only three possibilities for Jesus. Either he was a deluded fantasist, a profoundly brilliant charlatan or indeed he was and is God.

One of the best ways to try to understand the cultural and historical import of Christianity is ­actually to read the Gospels. There are mysteries in them but overall they are abundantly clear on all the big points.

Did Jesus claim divinity? In St John’s Gospel, Jesus says: “I tell you the truth, before Abraham was born, I am.”

John’s Gospel, by the way, is one of the greatest works of literature in human history. Read it just for the literary experience, preferably in an older translation. Modern translators have tried to render the Bible in all the soaring prose of a telephone directory but even they cannot disguise the majesty and drama and sweep of John’s language.

In many passages, John refers to Jesus as “the word” and begins his Gospel thus: “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God and the word was God.”

In Mark’s Gospel, when asked if he is the Christ, the son of God, Jesus replies: “I am.” Not much equivocation there.

Elsewhere in John’s Gospel, Jesus declares: “I am the resur­rection and the life. Whoever ­believes in me will live, even though he dies.”

Later, Jesus returns to the same theme: “I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me.”

The point of these quotations, and there are many others to the same effect, is not to convince anyone that Christianity is true but just to make clear the uncompromising nature of the claims Jesus made.

Jesus proclaimed that he is God and that, incidentally, God created all the universe.

These are the most radical and paradigm-shattering claims ever made in human history. They may be wrong but it is surely worth knowing something about them.

The other claim entailed there is that salvation, eternal life, is available only through Jesus. This leads traditional critics of Christianity to describe a jealous God, as though God were just one person among many but demanding all the attention.

Catholic Cardinal George Pell addressed this in his justly famous debate with the atheist Richard Dawkins. Asked if non-Christians could expect salvation and eternal life, Pell answered yes, anyone who sought the good and moves ­towards God might find salvation. Pell outraged some Christians and surprised some atheists, but this is the official position in the Catholic catechism. It shows that while the basic messages of the Gospel are clear enough, there is still a need for ­interpretation. The ­inclusive view of salvation rests on the sovereignty and authority of Jesus. He alone decides who ­approaches the father so it’s not up to anyone else to judge.

But there is a much deeper point. As Jesus frequently ­declares in his teaching, everything that is good comes from God. It takes only the smallest extrapolation to realise that when being asked to worship God, it is not just to choose one person, God, among others, but to choose the very principle of goodness. Since God is the principle of goodness, the jealous god is jealous that people should choose good over evil.

That is not everything that a Christian believes but it illustrates that the message of Jesus, at least as claimed by Jesus, is universal, it is for Christians and non-Christians alike.

Which leads to another ­piquant question: why do Christians believe in and practise Christianity if they also believe that non-Christians can find salvation? The answer is simple: ­because they believe Christianity is actually true, which is the only reasonable basis for any serious commitment to Christianity at all.

Two smaller but hardly less revolutionary, to modern sensibilities, features of the Gospels are the presence of the devil and the near ubiquity in the Gospels of miracles.

A little over 40 years ago, the devil made a big comeback in Hollywood through The Exorcist. Hollywood has never quite wanted to dispense with him as he’s such an arresting character. But now he’s right out of fashion. The recent Marvel Comics’ Doctor Strange movie felt obliged by the zeitgeist to give an entirely materialist explanation of the hero’s powers, which in the original had much to do with the ­occult.

But you cannot really believe anything of Jesus without believing in the real existence of the devil, for Jesus frequently talked about him and the devil is central to key Gospel episodes.

Pope Francis is immensely popular, in part because of his ­social justice messages. He is an Argentinian Pope who seems to ­interpret all economic matters through the very distinctive Argen­tinian experience. But of course, as the Pope himself often acknowledges, the Pope has no special authority on economics.

The media tends, however, to more or less ignore what the Pope says about religion, and he ­frequently talks about the devil.

Miracles are equally unfashionable. But in the Gospels, Jesus performs nearly 40 separate miracles. He spends a great deal of his time performing miracles. Intellectually, it is perfectly sensible to try to interpret the Gospels and not just read them without any ­interpretation at all. But as with all great works of literature, inter­pretation is entirely secondary to actually reading the work in the first place.

It’s pretty clear that unless the Gospels are absolutely full of lies, in which case the only reason for reading them is historical curiosity, miracles are a central part of the deal of the teachings of Jesus.

Of course, logically it’s hard to believe in God at all and not ­believe in miracles. Otherwise the proposition is God cannot do anything that we can’t do ourselves, in which case there is ­almost no meaning in the word God.

This is the quiet position of ­almost all believing Christians. Peter Costello, in his memoirs, ­attributes the recovery of his wife from a grave illness in part to the miraculous. Kevin Rudd, who I think quite nobly disclosed his Christian faith, was once asked point-blank whether he believed in miracles and answered point-blank that he did.

Yet in most circles, to assert a belief in miracles today would be to court instant ridicule.

The neglect of the wellsprings of Western civilisation in our education, and in our culture more generally, is one of the drolly miraculous elements of our own time. To desire not just to reject Christianity but to determine not to know anything much at all about it is weird and would be incomprehensible in any other field.

Though it is available to all cultures, Christianity built Western civilisation which, presumably, we still have some use for. Imagine wanting to continue to use a bridge but being determined to suppress the knowledge of how the bridge was built.

The wonders of Christmas are endless.

I wish you all a very blessed and joyous Christmas