Jesus is the answer

Maybe Wordle is past its peak popularity, but there are still 100,000 daily players. The object of this online game is to pick letters to guess a five-letter word. There is one word every day - the same word for everyone. Players can share colour-coded graphical summaries of their guesses but the key point of Wordle etiquette is: don't give away the answer!

In real life, as in Wordle, everyone is searching for the answer. Politically speaking, Britain has now decided the answer isn't BORIS. Other global leaders overshadow daily circumstances, including PUTIN and BIDEN. Tragically, every politician is flawed ... indeed every human is flawed. The answer is not found in powerful people.

There is a tired triad of intangible goals that promise to have the answer: MONEY, POWER, AMOUR. However like the tantalizing pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, these objectives can never be realized. Trangically, every earth-bound ambition is empty. The answer is not found in attractive things.

So, what is the answer to our existence? How can we find someone to save us and something to fulfil us? JESUS is the answer! Listen to the words of Peter, one of Jesus' closest friends: In no one else can salvation be found. For in all the world no other name has been given to men but this, and it is by this name that we must be saved! (Acts 4:12, JBP)

Does it seem banal to recommend JESUS as the answer? After all, if a solution has been available for two thousand years, why are there still so many difficulties in our world? The Christian reply is that we all, individually, need JESUS as our personal answer to life's problem.

ASCII and it shall be given

How do we let others know we are happy? A happy face emoji is ideal. 😀 Although this picture may not be worth a thousand words, in the era of instant messaging a little happy face says a lot. In fact, it is possible to convey a whole range of sentiments and ideas with these little icons. We may not have reverted to ancient Egyptian style hieroglyphics, but much of our 21^st century communication is pictorial.

In 2015, the Oxford English Dictionary word of the year was 😂 or ‘tears of joy’. Emojis have become commonplace, only a couple of decades after their invention by Japanese technology designer Shigetaka Kurita.

Some emojis have different meanings or are interpreted to resemble different ideas from the designers’ original intentions. For instance, the High Five symbol 🙏 for celebration is often used to mean ‘praying hands’ to express our needs or gratitude to another.  Praying seems to be a fundamental human instinct; we want to appeal to a higher power outside of our circumstances. Christians pray to God to express our dependence on him, and to praise Him. The first prayer a Christian must pray is often referred to as the ‘sinner’s prayer’, when we humbly repent of our sins and ask God to accept us through the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross.  ‘God be merciful to me a sinner’ – Lk 18v13. Have you ever prayed like this?  🙏

Some feelings and emotions do not have direct emoji character representations. For instance, there is no official Emoji symbol for forgiveness. (Official emojis are published and recognized by the Unicode Consortium.) There is a public campaign at forgivemoji.com to produce a forgiveness emoji, since this is such an important concept for life in general and for the Christian faith in particular. ‘If we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins’ 1 John 1v9. God fully and freely forgives sinners on the basis of Jesus’ death and resurrection.

When sinners repent, the Lord Jesus explains that there is ‘joy in heaven.’ 😀 is the right response to people being saved by God’s grace.

Slipping Quietly into Heaven

C.T. Studd, the famous Victorian cricketer and christian missionary, has a number of memorable quotes. I encountered this one for the first time today:

"Let us not glide through this world and then slip quietly into heaven, without having blown the trumpet loud and long for our Redeemer, Jesus Christ."

 I often feel like I am slipping quietly through life, on my way to heaven, without making much impression en route. A quiet believer in Jesus is not necessarily a bad thing, but true followers of Jesus have a responsibility to be witnesses for Him.

After a particularly quiet few months, I have resolved to speak up when the following three opportunities occur in future (as they often have in the past, when I remained silent).

1. If I'm in a conversation where people mis-quote the Bible, I want to gently state what it actually says, and then see if this goes anywhere more productive theologically. For instance, people sometimes talk about the sun shining on the righteous - whereas Jesus stated God sends his sun on both evil and good people impartially, in unequivocal demonstration of common grace.

2. When the thorny issue of creation crops up, I must not hide my firm conviction in the divine Creator as the ultimate first cause.

3. When friends speculate about the meaning of life, or admit a sense of purposelessness, I must be ready to argue for salvation history as the underlying narrative of the universe, which can (must!) be experienced in a personal sense.

My Post-Truth Post

Post-truth is the 2016 word of the year, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. The acrimonious Brexit referendum result and the surprise Trump victory have both been attributed to post-truth debating tactics. Experts are surplus to requirements. Facts are secondary to emotions. Truth is relegated to backstage, if it makes an appearance at all.

The motto of the CIA is:  "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free". These are the words of Jesus, from John 8:32. If liberty is founded on truth, then can we be genuinely free in a post-truth world? Orwell's dystopian novels suggest not. Floundering post-truth politicians seem to reinforce Orwell's conclusion.

Christ promises freedom through truth. So how can we know the truth? Christ said, "I am the way, the truth and the life." [John 14:6] He is truth incarnate, quintessential truth. To know Him is to know the truth.

Therefore a post-truth society implies a post-Christ society. Indeed, many would recognise our culture as post-Christian. So how can we know Christ? How can we steer to the truth despite the prevailing winds of post-truth? I suppose the answer is the same as it ever was - by searching the scriptures. "Thy word is truth." [John 17:17]

Show me the truth concealed
Within Thy word;
And in Thy book revealed
I see Thee Lord. 
[Lathbury/Groves]

Earnest Christ-seekers (and all Christians should be included in this company) must scrutinize the Bible to learn of Christ. What an excellent resolution for the new year!

Bigger than Brexit?

Bigger than Brexit?

Colossians 1:13-14 - NASB

13 For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

A new word has entered our vocabulary. ‘Brexit’ currently dominates newspaper headlines and personal conversations across the nation.The issue at stake is whether Britain should remain in the European Union, or leave it altogether. A referendum will be held in June to determine the outcome to this question. Depending on whether you listen to Barack Obama or Boris Johnson, you might be ‘in’ or ‘out’. There are elements of truth in the argument on both sides, which means it is difficult to reach a definitive decision.

In our Bible passage, we read about a more significant exit - a deliverance from the power of darkness. God is always linked with light in scripture: ‘God is light; in Him is no darkness at all’ (1 Jo 1.5). So darkness is anti-God. If God is good, then darkness is evil (Jo 3.19). If God is wise, then darkness is folly (Jo 1.5).

To remain in the domain of darkness is to be captivated by sin. We are addicted to wrong behaviour, and powerless to break free from it.  Without deliverance, we are prisoners. We are slaves to sin, facing God’s judgment, which results in ‘blackness of darkness for ever’ (Jude 13). This describes an eternity separated from God and His grace.

The good news of the Bible is that we can be delivered from the darkness and gain membership of a different spiritual society - the kingdom of God’s own Son. How? Because a man died on a cross. He was no ordinary man. The officer in charge of Jesus’ crucifixion said this of him, ‘Truly this man was the Son of God.’ (Matt 27. 54). Christ suffered for sins (1 Pet 3. 18). He soaked up all the wrong of a rebellious, God-despising world, so we can be freed from our sins if we repent and trust in Him.

To belong to this kingdom is to be in the light. The darkness is filled with hatred. The kingdom is filled with love. The darkness culminates in death. The kingdom results in life. The darkness leads to hell. The kingdom leads to heaven. This requires a choice - we must opt-in. Like the Brexit referendum - we need to take a side. To know deliverance from the darkness, we must trust in the risen Christ. The Amplified Bible paraphrases trust in Christ as ‘rely on and have confidence in Christ’.

The arguments in the Brexit debate generally centre on Security, Prosperity and Sovereignty. These same subjects come up with the transfer into God’s Kingdom. Once we turn to Christ and trust in Him, we are eternally secure. He says of those who believe in Him: ‘They shall never perish’ (Jo 10. 28). He gives us all the blessings of heaven: freedom, forgiveness, reconciliation, ‘every spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ’ (Eph 1. 3). He frees us from slavery to sin and makes us God’s own children (Ro 8. 21). Which side are you on? Have you left the darkness? Have you come into the light?

God and the Force: Star Wars Theology

There are commercial reasons for the release of the new Star Wars film to coincide with Christmas Holidays. However I think there is also a good opportunity for us to contrast the Biblical God with the Star Wars Force.

Superficially, one might consider the Force to be divine - an immanent, omnipotent concept. But the Christian understanding of God is very different.

God is Good

'The Lord is good' says Nahum. 'Jehovah, merciful and gracious ... abounding in goodness' says God to Moses. 'God is light, and there is no darkness in him at all' says John. In terms of morality, God is unambiguously good. 

The Force is different. While it can be channelled for good, it also has a Dark Side. So the Force appears to be morally ambivalent. Power without morality is a dangerous thing. 

God is Personal

God has attributes. He is Light and Love. He portrays his character as a shepherd, caring for us, as a potter, forming us, as a Father, loving us. Ultimately, God's character is revealed in human form - the Word made flesh - at Bethlehem when the Son of God comes into the world.

The Force never communicates, or conveys any personable characteristics. This mysticism, this lack of ability to be appreciated, makes the Force impersonal and abstract. It is not possible to have a meaningful relationship with a concept.

God is Available

God reaches out to us. He calls Moses with a burning bush, Elijah with a still, small voice, wise men with a wandering star. God is 'not far from every one of us', says Paul to the pagan philosophers at Athens. He is only a prayer away - as the dying thief found out at Calvary - Lord, remember me!

The Force is only available to a select few - Jedi or Sith. General members of the Star Wars public are passed over - the power of the Force is unavailable to them. 'Who(so)ever' is a great evangelical word, entirely unknown in the Star Wars universe.

Christianity and Computer Science: a Compatibility Check

(based on a talk I am giving at Glasgow University Christian Union today)

Are Christianity and Computer Science compatible? Can a Christian happily study and work in the area of Computing without excessive theological gymnastics or veiled hypocrisy? I want to claim the answer is yes, for the following reasons...

First, I give an existence proof. There are some high profile Computer Scientists who openly talk about their Christian faith. These include two Turing Award winners: Donald Knuth and Fred Brooks - essential reading on any CS curriculum!

Next, I want to look at three concepts that are familiar to Computer Scientists, and discuss how each of these concepts has an analogy in Christianity. If something makes sense in a computing context, it should also be reasonable in other contexts too.

1. Right and Wrong

This year is the 200th anniversary of the birth of George Boole, the father of symbolic logic.  In boolean logic, we codify true and false as absolute values and use logical operators to reason about truth.

Christianity (along with most religions) has a clearly defined framework of morality - right and wrong. This morality, which correlates strongly with human conscience, is very difficult to explain away with evolutionary biology.

2. Substitution

The notion of substitution is fundamental to the semantics of computing. For instance, term substitution is necessary for beta reduction in the lambda calculus. At higher levels, substitution is an essential part of shell scripting (e.g. sed) or programming (e.g. String.replace in Java).

Substitution is at the heart of the Christian faith. Martin Luther describes it as the "wonderful exchange" (admirabile commercium)- when sinners trust Christ and accept that He died in our place. Paul describes the crucifixion of Christ in these terms: "...made ... sin for us ... that we might made the righteousness of God in Him". [2 Cor 5:21].

3. Reboot

After an operating system software update (particularly one that involves shared libraries .dll or .so), users need to reboot their machines. This is a frequent source of annoyance. This procedure ensures that the old code is removed from the system and replaced by the updated version.

I suppose the Christian analogy is rebirth. Jesus told the premier theologian in Jerusalem: 'You must be born again'. [Jo 3:7]. This is much more significant than a reboot after a software patch---it's a whole new start to life - forgiven by God, trusting in Christ and living with the help of the Holy Spirit. [2 Cor 5:17].