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Is the gospel message really enough? Can we seriously expect people to respond in faith and repentance to words – spoken or written – and so be saved? Do we not need miracles, signs, wonders, healings, exorcisms? Look at the growth experienced by churches who major on such things, and then look at the number of conversions experienced throughout our entire denomination. Are we not getting something seriously wrong? Are we trapped in a past when people were more word-centred, when they didn’t have TVs, computers and all the trappings of the visual culture that shapes the minds of people today? Do people not need to see God acting in dramatic, visible ways before they will respond to Jesus? Are we doomed to paddle along as a tiny minority in a Christian world that is rapidly leaving us behind? Are word-centred, sermon-preaching churches a relic of the past, only fit to be visited by those who want to see how things used to be?

We could respond in various ways to these questions, though not, I trust, with an ‘amen’ to the objections they pose. We might, for example, unpick the ‘successes’ of the wonder-workers with some hard questions of our own. The challenge issued by a medical doctor some years ago to one of the most prominent of these miracle peddlers to produce several of his best successes in healing for medical examination remains unanswered. You can’t believe all you hear, or indeed all you think you see. We have, however, all too often thought that pointing out the failures of others somehow lessened the significance of our failures, so we need a better response.

Surely if we wanted to justify a focus on the miraculous in mission we could turn to the Book of Acts. Isn’t it full of healings, exorcism, and all the other miraculous phenomena, even raising the dead? Case proven! Or is it? Look a bit more carefully, and you will see a very different picture. Try the conversion of Sergius Paulus, the Roman governor on Cyprus, recorded in Acts 13. Wasn’t he converted as a result of the miraculous blinding of Elymas by the Apostle Paul? Luke does write, ‘When the proconsul saw what had happened, he believed’ (v12). The lesson seems clear. But read the rest of the verse: ‘for he was amazed at the teaching about the Lord’. The crucial factor in his conversion was the content of the gospel message, the words spoken by the apostle. That was the means of his conversion. The miracle was no more than a visual reinforcement of what Paul had to say about the Lord. The lesson of Acts 13 is not the one we might initially have expected. The word of the gospel is sufficient.

None of this is to overlook the role of the Holy Spirit in bringing the gospel home to the sinner’s heart with saving power. As others make much of the Spirit giving miraculous gifts, we need to highlight constantly the miracle which, according to Scripture, the Spirit will perform in all ages, namely the giving of new life to those who are dead in sin. It is as Jesus said to Nicodemus: ‘unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God’ (John 3:5). To know that this is the case keeps all who speak the gospel humble. It is not our eloquence, cleverness or persuasiveness that bring anyone to saving faith: it is the work of the Spirit of God. If the Lord had not opened Lydia’s heart (Acts 16:14), Paul could have preached to her for the rest of his life and she would not have been saved.

A focus on the ministry of the Word of God in evangelism is essential and in no way detracts (or it should not) from the miraculous working of the Spirit in granting new life to the spiritually dead. Nothing else can act as a substitute, however impressive it may seem on the surface. God has promised that his word will not return to him empty but will infallibly accomplish his purpose (Isaiah 55:11). We should not be intimidated by claims of miraculous phenomena or assertions of their necessity for evangelistic success. Having been born again, every Christian has experienced the greatest miracle performed by the Spirit in human life, and the Lord has promised that miracle in connection with the proclamation of his word, and in no other connection. Our confidence in the gospel is confidence in the Spirit who gives life, and we must never lose sight of that precious truth.

No – I don’t have the solution to the euro zone crisis. That may well come as a shock to fans of this column, the multitudes who habitually turn to this site as soon as a new blog is posted, seeking for the usual wit, wisdom and enlightenment. On this occasion – sorry! Maybe a little wit, but certainly no wisdom or enlightenment.

Have you tried to follow the debates? Few discussions contain as many words and concepts that are incomprehensible to the average reader (except maybe quantum physics, whatever that is). Utterly baffling. But if you think of all the others who are baffled – world leaders included – it probably isn’t a cause for embarrassment. At least you don’t have to try to run Greece … or Italy … or Ireland … or Spain … or anywhere, in fact. Sighs of relief all round.

Of course it isn’t a joke, and the practical consequences for ordinary people could be very serious. Hard decisions will have to be made and painful consequences endured, although possibly not by those who make the hard decisions. The impact of austerity seems to be cushioned somewhat in the upper echelons of government. The incoming Prime Minister of Italy stayed in a four star hotel instead of a five star one – real sacrifice is clearly the order of the day.

Even to the semi-ignorant layman, however, it seems clear that a major factor in the crisis is debt – vast, overwhelming, virtually unpayable debt, ‘think of a number and add half a dozen zeros’ debt, the result of policies which, if you pursued them with your overdraft and credit card would be taken as signs of dangerous lunacy. But governments are different … or maybe Europe is finding out that they aren’t really. Sooner or later borrowing money that cannot possibly be repaid will catch up with the borrowers, and the hole they are in just gets deeper.

Somewhere in the midst of it all is surely the word ‘greed’ – the desire for more and more, whether you can afford it or not. It’s a symptom of the sinfulness of the human heart. It’s one form of worshiping the creature rather than the Creator, as Paul describes the manifestations of sin in Romans 1, and as one of the most misquoted texts has it, ‘the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil’ (I Timothy 6:10). The results are plainly evident all around us. As the previous verse vividly puts it, ‘People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction’ (v9). Sometimes the ruin and destruction are national.

No – we are not suggesting that a few pithy Bible texts offer a simple solution to the current financial problems of Europe. Politicians, economists and various other experts will have to give their best efforts to devising workable solutions to the crisis. Simplistic nostrums will not work. Nevertheless there are biblical (and therefore) God-given principles of conduct that should inform financial behaviour, and not just on the personal level. The God who addresses us in the Bible is as concerned about nations as he is about individuals. You could open the writings of the prophets almost at random to see that.

Avoidance of greed and of covetousness (which made it into the Ten Commandments summarizing God’s requirements) need to be combined with hard work, thrift, concern for those in need, contentment with and confidence in God’s provision, and many other positive principles of Scripture. We know very well, of course, that only a work of the Spirit of God transforming the hearts of men and women by grace can enable anyone to live in this way, or even to want to live thus. Which is only to say that ultimately the only real hope for Europe is a powerful working of the Spirit at all levels of society which will deliver the nations from greet and materialism. A naïve idea to most of the movers and shakers (who are having a taste of being moved and shaken themselves), but the Maker’s instructions are always ignores at our deepest peril.

‘We’re all going the one way’. A standard answer when somebody complains about their advanced age and the down-side of growing old. It’s supposed to afford a few crumbs of consolation, assuring the aged that their situation is not unique, that the speaker will face the same problems, a polite way perhaps of asking ‘What are you moaning about?’ It doesn’t console, of course, especially if the speaker is so far back down the road of life that he is scarcely visible in the rear view mirror. What does he know?

Ageing is of course one of those subjects that most people would like to avoid altogether. It has too many bad vibes, too many things we would rather forget about. Unfortunately, it won’t go away, and as the years pass all too quickly it becomes harder to ignore, even for a relative youngster like the present author.

The fact is that we live in a culture that has little respect for age. To be old – or to be perceived to be old – leaves you on the sidelines of life, as far as most of society is concerned. The old, it seems, have little to contribute, are stuck in the past, are mystified by technology (not a monopoly of the old!), are slow (and usually driving the car in front), and generally clog up the highways of life. At the very least, they ought to stand aside and let everybody get on.

The problems of growing old have been highlighted by a recent report into care for the elderly in NHS hospitals by the Care Quality Commission (CQC). Although ‘heartened by the amount of good and excellent care’ it saw, the CQC also found that of 100 hospitals checked, more than half needed to do more to meet the needs of older patients, 20 failed to meet the essential standards of care for the elderly regarding either dignity or nutrition, and 2 fell below the legal minimum for care provision. The report paints a worrying picture.

Most people, especially those in pastoral ministry, will have encountered widely varying standards of care for the elderly in hospitals and nursing homes. Some are outstanding and do everything possible to look after older people, whilst there are others about which you think ‘I’d rather be shot than end up there’. No doubt a range of causes of deficiencies could be offered, many relating to lack of resources and shortage of staff, and all may, up to a point, be valid. Nevertheless, care for the elderly undoubtedly reflects society’s attitude to its older members. If you are considered to be a useless burden, consuming scarce resources that could be spent on younger, more productive people – watch out!

Christians, more than anyone else, should be standing against the attitudes which devalue the elderly. Among the people of God, those who are older have always been held in high esteem as sources of godly wisdom. Those who have long experience of God’s Word and God’s ways should have much to teach others, and those younger in the faith should be ready to listen. The church owes much to the prayers of its older members – those who are likely to say ‘All I can do is pray’. Those are the people we need urgently, and they should be respected and indeed honoured. It doesn’t mean they are always right or that their advice should always be followed, but they should always be heard.

Ageing is a token of the fallenness of the world, and should not be foolishly glamorised (in response to society’s failings). Someone has said that growing old is not for wimps. The physical and mental decline that can come with advanced years can be very challenging, to the sufferer and to carers alike. It is not easy, and we should not pretend that it is. Nevertheless God’s grace extends right to the end of life and will always prove sufficient (Psalm 92:12). In its attitude to and care for its older members, the church should, as always, be profoundly counter-cultural.

Anybody could write a blog about Amy Winehouse. Seriously – they could. It isn’t difficult. All the pieces are ready to hand. The voice, the talent, the prodigious early success, the instability, the drink, the drugs, the long-awaited second album that never appeared, the increasingly erratic behaviour, the boos at a disastrous attempted performance that turned out to be her last, the lonely sad premature death. It’s all there. Like others before her, George Best, Hurricane Higgins, and all the rest, she squandered her talent and self-destructed. Another example of how ability, success and adulation cannot give life meaning or purpose. Another object lesson in how attempts to fill the God-shaped hole at the centre of life with anyone or anything else will lead to disaster. Maybe not as public as Amy’s, but disaster just the same.

An easy piece to write. Anybody could do it. And it would all be true. It’s all the easier because it lets us all off the hook. The talents that most of us have are unlikely to qualify us for lives of self-destructive excess. Clearly the lessons to be drawn from the life and early death of Amy Winehouse are for others. We’re OK. We’re in the clear.

Or are we? Let’s look at it from a different angle. Amy needed the gospel. She needed what the church of Jesus Christ has been entrusted with – the Word of Life. How would she have fared if she had walked into one of our congregations? Let’s leave aside the vocal quality of some of what passes for praise. What else would she have encountered? Would the reactions of a typical congregation have drawn her towards or driven her further from Christ?

We trust that what she heard from the pulpit would, over time, have offered a balanced presentation of the gospel, setting out the seriousness of sin against a holy God and the consequences that it inevitably brings, along with a warm, loving statement of the hope for sinners that is to be found only in Christ crucified and risen, accompanied by an urgent, heartfelt call to believe in Christ for salvation, the kind of passionate pleading with sinners that our Covenanter forefathers were not ashamed to make. And all this in the language of the twenty-first century. We trust that is what she would have heard. Perhaps a little honest self-evaluation would do us preachers no harm.

And what about the congregation? There’s a factor that can undo much that is said from the pulpit. Would Amy have found a fellowship of people who love the Lord, who love each other and who will love anyone who walks in the door? People who delight to worship God and who live out their faith (however imperfectly) in the realities of everyday existence, with its sorrows as well as its joys. People for whom God is real, whose lives are touched at every point by his Spirit. People who do not condone sin, but whose arms, literally and metaphorically, are open to accept sinners as people made in God’s image who may become new creatures in Christ. People who know they are forgiven sinners. People who will extend the same welcome to sinners in sharp suits or designer dresses, redolent of the latest scents, and to sinners in second- (or third- or forth- ) hand clothes, who may struggle with English or who don’t smell the freshest.

We trust she would not have found people who drew aside in judgmental self-righteousness, wrapping their Pharisees’ robes tightly round themselves for fear of contamination. Surely that wouldn’t have happened among us, would it? Well – would it? For the truth is that a gospel not lived out by those who claim to believe it rings very hollow when presented from the safe elevation of a pulpit. Amy sang of ‘going back to black’. She didn’t cross the threshold of an RP church. May God grant that, if she had, she would have found joyful believers living in the light and longing to share it with her.

You couldn’t make it up. Actually, you don’t have to – it’s there on BBC2. If Dr Francesca Stavrakopoulou is to be believed, the opening chapters of the Book of Genesis have nothing to do with the early history of the human race. Instead they are actually about the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple at the hands of the Babylonians in 586BC. The ‘fall’ is not the fall of the human race: it is the fall of the Temple. All that poetic language about a garden? The artwork in the Temple, described in familiar Middle Eastern terms as a paradise, a perfect garden. The ‘fall’ Genesis depicts may have been a traumatic experience for the Jews – it certainly was – but it says nothing about human nature, least of all that we are inherently ‘bad’.

Perhaps the claim made by Stavrakopoulou in the recent BBC series ‘The Bible’s Buried Secrets’ sounds shocking. They certainly should offend anyone who accepts the Bible as God-breathed Scripture. But they aren’t really all that surprising. In the academic world such ideas are far from rare: indeed in some respects they are ‘old hat’. The shaking of academics’ confidence in the trustworthiness of the Bible, especially of the Old Testament, goes back a long way. It was in the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, when confidence in the unaided power of the human reason to discover truth was growing rapidly, that any claim made by any book to be the result of action by any god began to be derided. From such poisoned roots grew all kinds of theories about the origin and nature of the Bible, none of which treated it as the product of the work of the Holy Spirit on its human authors. The roots bore fruit especially in the nineteenth century in Germany. In the 1880s, for example, Julius Wellhausen argued that the first five books of the Old Testament were a collection of documents from diverse, and even contradictory, sources, stitched together by editors who apparently couldn’t see the problems and contradictions in the material they were handling.

Such ideas became the reigning orthodoxy in academic biblical studies for many years. The theories have changed, but the underlying assumptions are much the same. In recent years scholarly confidence in the reliability of the New Testament has increased, but the Old Testament is still highly suspect. To suggest that Moses actually wrote (any of) the first five books would provoke hoots of derision. Dr Stavrakopoulou in a previous programme suggested that the record of David’s reign in the Old Testament is utterly unreliable, and pretty unhelpful in moderating Jewish political claims to possession of ‘the land’.

Depression or rage may be the responses that most readily arise when we are confronted by such fantasies. Wiser counsels should prevail, however. ‘Don’t panic’ may have come to be associated with burying heads in the sand in the face of situations when panic is in order, but we really shouldn’t panic. Of course it is a problem when such sceptical views are given wide currency on the media, and there will be people who listen and believe, (she’s a ‘biblical scholar’, after all), and who feel their unbelief has been confirmed and they have ammunition to use against Christians. Nevertheless, the Word of God, Old and New Testaments, has been under attack for centuries and it is still around, a best-seller that continues to transform the lives of men and women. It is good to know that there are able, well-qualified scholars who do hold to a high view of Scripture and who can answer sceptical critical views such as those of Dr Stavrakopoulou, even at a popular level. If we are troubled by such views, we should make it our business to search out the answers. And through it all we have the confidence that ‘the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword’ (Hebrews 4:12) and it will accomplish its God-given task.

An airport departure lounge has got to be one of the best places in which to view the diversity of the human race. Having time to while away offers the opportunity to marvel at the shapes, sized and colours in which humanity is available. Add in the different styles of dress favoured by different ‘ethnic’ groups and different age groups, and there is never a dull moment for the dedicated people-watcher. Over the years I have spent quite a few hours in airports, and if the book hasn’t quite gripped the attention, or if nothing on the MP3 player fits the mood, there is no shortage of interesting people to observe. Who are they? Where are they going? What are they thinking? What are their problems? Is he looking at me?

Such a diversity of people. All made in the image of God, yet no two exactly the same. Not even twins are entirely identical. What could demonstrate more clearly the infinite richness of the mind of the Creator? So much delightful variety, so much to appreciate, so many ways in which his image can be translated into human terms. Yes, the fall has marred that image in many ways, and yet it has not been erased. Still something of God’s glory remains, despite the damage. It is the same with the entire physical creation which is groaning in its ‘bondage to decay’ according to Paul in Romans 8, yet which also manifests breathtaking beauty. An hour in the departure lounge can be a recipe for boredom, or a source of praise to the Creator.

And the best is yet to come! The creation will be liberated from that bondage to decay by the power of the Creator, and that will take place when God’s redeemed children are transformed fully into the likeness of their Saviour and will share his glory (Romans 8 again). Indeed ‘we shall be like him, because we will see him as he is’ (I John 3:2).

It is a wonderful prospect to contemplate – and we will not be clones, we will not be like identical peas in a pod. All the rich diversity that we have known on earth will be taken up by the Lord, cleansed of the effects of sin and transformed into something utterly glorious. Each redeemed sinner will be everything that God has made and re-made him to be, a unique expression of the image of God, manifesting the likeness of God as it is displayed in the personality of that particular individual. The entirety of redeemed humanity will be an eternal expression of the richness of the Creator, and yet there will be so much more to learn about him that eternity will be insufficient. The children of God have so much to look forward to, knowing that in every respect they will glorify the Lord perfectly.

How sad that some would like to have a church filled with clones – usually clones of themselves. How good it would be, they seem to think, to have everyone just like me – a church where we all think alike, act alike, speak alike, even look alike (perhaps the most frightening!). A church were anyone who isn’t just like me is a bit suspect, maybe not even really converted. Conformity is the order of the day, the safe path to get through church life unscathed. Just one snag – that’s not how the Lord has made us, or how he is re-making us in his grace. His holy Word is our absolute authority, our rule of life, but within its generous borders we are to be uniquely the selves God made us to be, a multitude of expressions of the richness of an infinitely complex and wonderful God. Uniform grey is not the colour of his Kingdom.

Tunisia – the Jasmine Revolution. Egypt – the ? Revolution. The Arab world has been shaken to its core. Popular unrest has exploded and the results are dramatic. Egypt –who would have thought it? Even Israel’s famed intelligence service was taken by surprise, and that is quite an achievement. Hard line, repressive regimes have crumbled after years of domination. One night Mubarak was staying put: the next day he had left Cairo for the seaside. At the time of writing, nobody really knows what the future holds for Egypt. For the time being the situation seems to have reached a stalemate, although the army, as it has always done, wields great influence. Will there be a secular democracy to replace the oppressive government of the past? What role will the powerful Muslim Brotherhood play, and what will be their outlook if they come to share power?

It’s not only Israel that has cause for anxious thoughts. Across the Middle East other authoritarian regimes should tremble. Who could be next? Yemen, Jordan or someone else entirely? Some rulers, not known for their interest in democracy, are scrambling to make concessions in the hope that revolution, violent or more peaceful, may be averted and their hold on power may continue. Whether or not it will be a case of too little, too late, remains to be seen. Instability can spread surprisingly rapidly, not least because of the speed with which news can travel and destabilisers can communicate with each other in a digital age. The case of Eastern Europe in 1989 has demonstrated how the momentum for change can build to an unstoppable point – and then the dominoes being to tumble.

‘Democracy’, of course, is a marvellous word. Everybody agrees (well, lots of people agree) it is a ‘good thing’ – billions of US Dollars have been poured into trying to export the American version to a region that has not had much exposure to democracy, and often was quite content to work through clan and family structures. It has to be remembered, however, that the Iranian Revolution was carried out in the name of democracy, and the results in present-day Iran are rather less than democratic, by most definitions of that word. It’s a little ironic that that revolution removed the repressive regime of the Shah, who had been put in power by the US as a replacement for a democratically elected leader whose views were not to the liking of the US. Curiouser and curiouser.

For Christians looking in from the outside, it is an immensely complex situation and few of us have even a fraction of the knowledge that would enable us to give a sensible opinion. In some circles the only test that will be applied to any outcome is ‘Is it good for Israel?’ Even deciding that may be far from easy. Those who believe that the purposes of God in the Middle East are rather wider than the interests of one nation probably have many more questions than answers.

What we do have, however, is direct access to the God who governs the affairs of all nations, including Egypt, Israel and all the others in the region. We may not be able to read the mind of the Almighty as he unfolds his purposes, but we can pray for peace and justice to prevail, and above all we can pray for the cause of the gospel in these countries. We have brothers and sisters in most of them: brothers and sisters who may well be perplexed, anxious, fearful, facing an unknown future which could bring very testing times. The exodus of Christians from Iraq since the invasion designed to bring democracy shows what can happen. We must pray that our spiritual kin will be kept in safety and will have grace and wisdom to know how to speak and act in the midst of turmoil. We might well also pray that those from western governments who have a role to play (and some may well be Christian) will help and not hinder the transition to greater freedom.

We are being washed away on a flood-tide of information. From every direction we are bombarded with facts, opinions, claims, counter-claims and enticing offers. Via radio, television, videos, CDs, DVDs and the World Wide Web we have access to stores of information that boggle the mind. It has become commonplace to speak of the Information Revolution having succeeded the Industrial Revolution, a revolution which has transformed individuals and societies across the globe. And it’s not finished yet. If those at the cutting edge are to be believed, the next steps in the development of communications technology will make the recent past look like ancient history.

In large part the revolution has been driven by the development of technology which has given birth to the Internet and the World Wide Web. By tapping a few keys on our computers (and that will soon be out of date) we can now be put in touch with people, groups, organisations, networks, companies, governments, universities, across the world. Type a simple sentence into your search engine and you will be directed to hundreds, thousands or even millions of web sites, more than you could check in several lifetimes. The result may well be a sense of helplessness, even paralysis, rather than instruction and help. Who could ever possibly absorb even a fraction of what is available out there?

Of course there is a vast amount of helpful information to be found, if you know where to look for it. Few Christian ministries lack a web site, and some who have gifts in this area are using specifically web-based approaches to spreading the gospel. We should be thankful for such new opportunities. Statistically speaking, there is even more that is evil and dangerous, as pornographers and others make use of new technology to infiltrate their filth into the lives of young and old. Parents are not the only ones who need to be concerned about what is swimming in the information tide.

Even this, however, does not get us to the biggest issue raised by the Information Revolution. The fact is that although there is a vast amount of information available, few have any idea how to make use of it in ways that promote the welfare, especially the spiritual welfare, of individuals and communities. What is lacking is the commodity called by the Bible “wisdom”. We are information rich, indeed information surfeited, but wisdom poor.

Wisdom, in Scripture, is a very practical gift. It deals with right living – the way of life that leads to physical, mental and spiritual health. It is not abstruse or abstract. Consider the Book of Proverbs, which has so much to say about wisdom. It touches on relationships, families, politics, business, and down-to-earth, everyday, “ordinary” activities. All of life is embraced by wisdom.

Of greatest significance is the fact that wisdom is fundamentally spiritual. It is not the product of human thought or education. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Psalm 111:10). To be in a right relationship with the Lord – to “fear” him – is the start, and indeed the first principle, of wisdom. Without the fear of the Lord, which is the product of divine saving grace, men and women are “fools”. The fool, in biblical language, is not the uneducated person but the one who does not fear God and so does not know how to live in God’s world. There are many educated fools in our society. As Paul says in I Corinthians 1:21, “the world through its wisdom did not know God”.

If ever godly wisdom was needed, it is surely needed in dealing with the Information Revolution. Wisdom promotes discernment: between good and evil, useful and useless, helpful and harmful, profitable and time-wasting, true and false. There is much on the “information superhighway” that is dangerous or simply a waste of time. The wise person will know what to reject and ignore. There is also much that is good and helpful. The wise person will know how to use it profitably. Only a healthy relationship with the Lord, nurtured by the Word, prayer and worship, can produce the wisdom needed when switching on the radio or TV, picking up the newspaper or, most of all, going online.

If you have not been keeping up with new film releases or reading the cinema reviews, you may well have missed it. Life in a Day is a documentary that began as a YouTube spin-off designed to provide a portrait of global life on a single day (July 24, 2010), put together from videos generated by YouTube users. It in fact mushroomed into something rather grander – a panorama of modern human life around the world.

In order to provide material for the film YouTube users were asked, while filming their video diaries on that July day, to answer three questions: ‘What do you love? What do you fear? What’s in your pockets?’ It’s a measure of how such technological innovations have spread across the world that 80,000 YouTube users in 153 countries uploaded 4500 hours of video footage. For someone scribbling a blog with a free pen, these are amazing statistics. From such raw material Life in a Day was assembled.

As we might expect the answers to ‘What do you love?’ were diverse, reflecting people’s ability to love all manner of things, animate and otherwise. Rather more interesting is the fact that in answer to ‘What do you fear?’ everyone included death. Age, ethnicity, socio-economic class, geographical location: no factor made a difference to the universally acknowledged fear of death.

That will not come as a great surprise to anyone attuned to what the Bible has to say on the subject of death. More of that in a moment. More surprising, however, is the general optimism that pervades the contributions to the project. The film’s producer commented that ‘people in the film, no matter how tough their circumstances, were overwhelmingly positive about life. In fact … we were desperately trying to find something, anything, dark to help balance the narrative, but we really struggled. People were simply inherently positive’. What are we to make of all this?

Universal fear of death is something we should expect. At the simplest level, death is inescapable: nobody who thinks seriously about the subject can really contemplate cheating death indefinitely. It’s there, waiting, sooner or later. How it will come is naturally a source of anxiety, fear, even terror. How much pain? How long to endure? When?? In that context we may understand, though we would not endorse, calls for the timing of death to be put in each individual’s hands through the legalisation of euthanasia.

Death is, of course, ‘the wages of sin’, a death that embraces much more than the cessation of physical life and a return to the dust. Death in its full biblical sense involves spiritual death: separation from God, the source of all that is good, the one whose fellowship is ‘life in its fulness’. Unless divine grace intervenes, that death will become everlasting. There is plenty of cause to fear death, with the deepest reasons often operating below the level of consciousness.

But whence the positivity? Self-reporting is of course not always reliable and it may be that the less positive didn’t offer their thoughts to the film makers. That cannot explain the overwhelming optimism entirely. For some it may well have been due to religious faith. It would seem that for many, however, an underlying fear of death is not generally allowed to colour people’s thinking too much. Perhaps it is kept locked up in an obscure corner of people’s minds so that they can avoid thinking about it or facing up to its implications for living. We can all slide into the attitude that if we don’t think about something unpleasant, it won’t happen. Unsurprisingly people don’t want to think about death if they can possibly avoid it.

That must have implications for our evangelism, since we have the only true answer to death in the good news of a crucified and risen Saviour. It is a message that gives us true hope for time and eternity, not a self-generated optimism with no solid foundation, which will ultimately prove to be an illusion.

The camera can lie. It has always been able to, and with the advent of digital technology the possibilities for manipulating images are endless. Most of us find the possibility of looking better in our photographs than we are in the flesh quite attractive, but it scarcely matters since we do not earn our living from our looks (and just as well, too). In the fashion industry, however, appearance is everything, and for those in the media appearance is also a serious issue. Not surprisingly, many pictures of models, media ‘personalities’ and even sports stars are thoroughly airbrushed before publication. They are a symptom of a deep-seated problem.

Increasingly our society is obsessed with bodily appearance. From every direction the media bombard us with the message that in order to be happy and successful we must have a certain body image – young, slim, well-dressed, tanned (as long as it comes out of a bottle, given the dangers of skin cancer). Appearance, we are told, is everything. Nothing that is more than skin deep is really significant.

The results are devastating. More and more people are becoming anxious about their appearance, apart from those who faced facts and gave up on that futile pursuit years ago. It isn’t only the more ‘mature’ who invest their hard-earned cash in the premature rigor mortis of Botox injections. Some who would be hard-put to find a wrinkle at their age are also eager customers. For those with less money or a little more sense there are numerous cheaper options. How ironic it is that these treatments, which of necessity are repeated regularly, in fact provide a regular reminder of the ageing process. Saddest of all are the young girls (and some boys) who become so desperate to avoid supposed fatness that they develop anorexia, sometimes with fatal consequences. The day of stick-thin models may have gone, but for too many people the presence of an ounce, or more, of extra fat is a cause of shame and anxiety. And as for wrinkles….! As a result Girlguiding UK recently mounted a campaign aimed at ensuring that airbrushed images in magazines and adverts are clearly labelled as such. A petition, containing 25,000 signatures, was presented to 10 Downing Street. Whether it will have the desired effect remains to be seen.

The Christian’s first reaction to such cultural trends may well be to deny that the body has any real importance and so should be ignored, other than doing the minimum to maintain health. Isn’t the body only dust and destined to return to dust? Isn’t God interested in the soul and isn’t our task to save souls? Surely the body is of peripheral concern to Christians? In the history of the Church there has been a significant weight of opinion that encouraged the despising of the body as, at least, beneath concern, or, at worst, positively evil. Extreme versions of this outlook led some to live as hermits in the desert, trying to beat their recalcitrant bodies into submission.

It is an outlook, however, that owes more to pagan thinking than to the Bible. The Scriptures clearly teach from the outset that God created human beings with bodies as well as souls. The body may derive from ‘the dust of the ground’, but it is God’s handiwork and in Genesis 1:31 is included in God’s verdict that his creation was all ‘very good’. By God’s design, man is an embodied creature. Indeed Calvin even speculated that man’s upright position, distinguishing him from the animals, was an element in the image of God which he possessed.

The human body is of concern to God, and is therefore not to be despised or neglected. Many of the regulations of the Mosaic Law – God’s Law – related to the body. There are rules governing health, hygiene, disease, clothing, sexuality. The body matters to God. It is of course also implicated in sin. It is through the body that our fallen nature often expresses itself and the body too suffers the consequences of sin, finally returning to the dust from which it was taken.

One of the most amazing aspects of the Christian faith is the fact that in order to save men and women the eternal God actually took human nature, the body included, into permanent union with himself. The early Church quickly recognised that denials of the true bodily nature assumed by the Son were heretical and to be rejected. The redemption accomplished by Christ required bodily suffering to the point of death, followed by a triumphant bodily resurrection and ascension. The Saviour who reigns in heaven still has, and always will have, that body.

Salvation, God’s gift to sinners, embraces the body. The Lord saves people – not just disembodied souls. Paul reminds us that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit and that everything we do with them is of concern to God. ‘Therefore honour God with your body’ (I Corinthians 6:20). In the same vein the apostle urges us ‘to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God’ (Romans 12:1). Sanctification must involve the body, and our Christian hope is of eternal life in resurrected, perfected bodies.

The world’s obsession with the body needs to be met not with ascetic denial of the significance of the body, but with a biblical theology of the body – created by God, fallen into sin and redeemed in Christ.