What has Christianity got to do with mathematics?

Just added to my website: "What has Christianity got to do with mathematics?". This article aims to give a brief, non-technical answer to the given question.

Your family is your work, and your delight

Ever heard someone say... "because of work, I have little time for family?"

Amongst pastors, ever read one of those book dedications where the author apologises to his family for neglecting them whilst he worked at it? The most "memorable" one such I ever read was at the front of a book on holiness...

According to God, a man's family is his work. You can't neglect your family in favour of your work any more than you can neglect your health for the good of your body, or omit to brush your teeth whilst pleasing your dentist.

I find this thought a big help because the temptation comes to all men. We've started a task or twenty tasks, and then comes an "interruption" - another one! - from family. "How will I ever get the work done", the man wonders. Remembering that the "interruption" is itself his work - his God-given appointment, his holy calling in God's earth - helps us get over mental hurdles. Ultimately God appoints every task we have, and if he's now called us away from one to the other, what is the problem? Is it not right that he sets the schedules, not us?

And if we think Biblically, then the work which earns our daily bread is of much less true value than the work which bequeaths godly people to the world to serve it. A great career might earn you a stack of cash and a gold retirement trinket at the end (though we trust you also fulfilled your God-given vocation to his glory on the way!). All this is left behind at last. But your family can be a real gift to the world that lasts and lasts - to a thousand generations! Even if your "career" is spreading the Word, ultimately no convert or student can be influenced by you to influence the world like your family can.

Once we are set free from the tyranny of the secularist belief that work is real life and family is an often-unaffordable luxury, we are set free to delight in one of God's greatest treasures and pleasures. I ran some running races after tea against my eldest today. A simple pleasure, but worth more than words can express and more than can be counted in money. Smiles, fellowship, a bond strengthened in a simple way; it's an investment where you can't see the worth growing by observing anxiously, but whose worth is obvious to all with eyes in the end. At times, and often, it takes faith to measure the value of patiently persevering with all the trials of daily life in a family; but the rewards of a Christian family are abundant in this life as well as the life to come.

Interupt work for family? Interupt work for a glorious work, and a true delight.

When Jesus was born

Tomorrow the world (with varying degrees of awareness) remembers the day that divided human history into two: the coming of God as man.

I have been walking outside earlier this week, and today, whilst on various errands. It is very busy where I am. People are building, buying, selling, repairing, planning, working, partying, relaxing, spending...

As I walked home this afternoon, I thought to myself... why do they bother? Such a lot of activity. For what, ultimately?

The old pagan view of history was that it was cyclical. Everything comes and goes... then comes again, and goes again... and so on.

And on, and on, and on. And on.

Christians have a radically different view of history: history as inevitable (but not smooth!), God-ruled progress leading to a glorious fulfilment. History under the control and direction of Jesus Christ, the God-man who is now raised to the Father's right hand, and who will fulfil all that his Father has appointed for him, bringing the nations to obedience under him and ultimately reigning forever and ever.

Since the Enlightenment, modern secularists have seemed to be trying to combine parts of these two ideas (cyclical / progress). Relentless progress comes from scientific endeavour and (since the 20th century) pushes for democratic reforms. New advances are indeed made. (Modern secularists ought to be honest enough to acknowledge that modern science and democratic ideals had their historical roots ultimately in the Protestant Reformation. I digress). But where is the goal? What are we heading to with all of this? What will the technological nirvana look like, and will it leave us feeling fulfilled when we get there? Will we arrive in some kind of heaven once everybody has fully free and fair elections? On the other hand, a lot of modern life is tediously cyclical. The X Factor comes, and goes... and comes again. The reds win the league, then the blues win it, then the reds win it again. The blue party wins at the polls, then the red party, and then the blue one again. People are born, get educated, work, have a family, get into some scrapes along the way, die, and then their offspring repeat it. Is there an ultimate destination that these cycles are heading towards? Or is it just more of the same but just a little bit better every decade or so? Is the ultimate goal of humanity the X Factor as it will be in the year 3000, and the Premier League will be so exciting that you'll, you'll, ... well ... you'll what? Isn't there something more to life than this? Is progress more than just better technology, a better education system, a more "fair" society, better health care and everybody getting to choose freely from a wide range of choices as to precisely how they slowly die? Isn't there something more?

So, as I walked home I looked at the green grass and the trees. Life has colour because there is one great, over-riding story: that of the Saviour who was born at Bethlehem 2000 years ago. All things are because of him, by him and for him. Life has colour and purpose because of him. It's worth pressing into another year because his kingdom can never fail, and its final fulfilment is now a year closer. Hallelujah!

The end of the world as we know it

I read the UK news websites 6 days a week.

In them, I see that in the UK, the idea of possibly facing very modest cuts in lifestyle standard is apparently one of the worst things you could possibly contemplate.

I ask myself - why do people in the land of my birth seem to have such a strong dose of this in their thinking? Grant that my description is too much of a generalisation.. but there is something there, isn't there? Where does it come from?

My answer: I think it's part of the misery of the practical atheism of the modern West. There's nothing to aim for, so they believe, in the next life.

Therefore, if you don't get it in this life, you won't get it at all.

That's why social engineers, dreamers and interferers want to find a way to guarantee continual happiness for everyone, if at all possible. Because if we don't get happiness now, so they think, we won't ever get it.

Of course, when I say things like that, people are tempted to think of old stereotypes of a Christianity which insists that the social order must remain what it is today, forever and ever amen - the rich man in his castle and the poor man at his gate.

Not at all. The point is that if you think you must build heaven on earth, you're building on doomed foundations. It can't be done. You will be uneasy, unhappy, you will fail. But if you being by letting heaven be heaven, and let earth be earth, then you have laid the foundation for being happy in both.

Why shouldn't it be you?

"Though these three men, Noah, Daniel and Job, were in it [the land], they should deliver only their own souls by their righteousness, says the Lord God." - Ezekiel 14v14

"Oh Daniel, a man greatly beloved" - Daniel 10:11

The Bible teaches that some people are closer to God than others. Not all Christians are the same. God has his favourites, as even a scanty consideration of the Bible's history or of Christian biographies shows.

And if some believers walk more closely with God and enjoy more of his favour than others, how can you bear for it to not be you? If some have got closer to God than you have, is not that itself enough to make you resolve to get there too? They didn't get closer because they were someone else's children other than Adam's. They got closer because of nothing in themselves, but because God's power and grace were greater towards them: and that power and grace are no less real today. Some Christians enjoy a depth and sweetness of fellowship with their Saviour that you haven't known yet. What sins are worth holding on to, rather than exchanging them for that? What do you want from life? If you want to get closer to God, you can, if you seek him and obey his commandments. It's not magic; use the light and opportunities you've been given, and you will receive more - with sufferings too. How much do you want it?

Do not be afraid

The Bible's most common command to Christians is, "do not be afraid". It appears 84 times in the Old Testament alone.

Why is it the most common command? There are two obvious reasons:

1. Fear and faith are opposites. To trust God means not to be afraid of the worst that men or Satan can do. To fear as we see circumstances closing in on us, means that we think we won't be safe relying on God alone.
2. For fallen men and women, in their alienation from and ignorance of God, fear drives almost everything they do. They fear social rejection or ridicule, so they conform with what is wrong. They fear being hungry or homeless because they don't have access to the God who provides and try instead to fall back on their own resources. They fear death because they instinctively know they are not right with their Maker, cut off from the source of life.

Ultimately, fear makes no sense for God's children. Is God all-powerful, so that he can prevent anything not ultimately beneficial to you? Yes. Is God all-loving, so that he does not desire anything not ultimately beneficial to come to you? Yes. Is God all-knowing and all-wise, so that he is fully aware of everything that could possibly come to you? Yes. So what is there left to be afraid of? Only God himself - and because of Jesus Christ, that is the fear of obedient and reverent and rejoicing sons and daughters, not of condemned sinners. The only thing we should fear is not loving and trusting him enough.

Because we know

Newspaper headline: "Jim Morrison wins posthumous pardon - American rock legend Jim Morrison won a posthumous pardon Thursday for charges of indecent exposure brought after a drunken rant at a concert 41 years ago Florida officials said."

Mr. Morrison was before my time. I don't know anything more about him than is in the above article.

But I do know that the concept of a posthumous pardon is only meaningful in a theistic universe. The Bible says that everybody knows about the reality of God, though they try to suppress it. But it just keeps leaking out, because it's who we are - made in God's image, living in God's world which testifies everywhere and always to God, we can't avoid it. Leopards have spots, ants work hard, and men know that God is, because that's how they're made.

In an imaginary atheistic universe, by now Jim Morrison would have been nothing for a long time. There is no Jim Morrison any more to pardon: he's dead, Jim. In a consistent atheistic universe, justice and righteousness do not exist as fundamental concepts, only as constructed ideas that exist solely in people's imaginations. (And which they disagree a lot about). The idea of handing out "justice" to a no-longer-existent ex-lump of long-rotted carbon-and-calcium would be foolish and absurd. Why bother? Who's keeping score, who cares, and if they do care shouldn't we send them for corrective counselling rather than indulge them?

But if human beings do continue after death, and if justice and righteousness are fundamental concepts of the universe, then this kind of thing makes sense. At least, it makes sense in principle...

Once someone has died, the right to pardon belongs to God alone. Mr. Morrison has left this world in which God has delegated authority to men, and entered the next world where God alone gives the verdicts - so it's not for us to pardon those who have entered His courts. That makes this line in the article a logical nonsense, even though Governor Crist identifies the underlying assumption:

"In this case, guilt or innocence is in God's hands, not ours. That is why I ask my colleagues today to pardon Jim Morrison," Crist said.

A world in which God is, God's law matters, and human beings know it, but are confused. That's the world we live in... and we know that too.