Steven Colborne's Blog, page 81

Happiness in the Digital Age

The rate at which technology has advanced since the turn of the century is staggering, and while it’s wonderful to unbox a new phone or tablet, it can also be hugely stressful trying to keep up with the latest software and hardware across a range of media and devices. In this post I want to offer a few reflections on how we can experience peace and fulfilment amidst the chaos of the digital age.

Maintaining Focus

I believe everyone has God-given areas of talent and expertise. Of course, to become good at anything takes commitment and practise, and because of this, it’s a good idea to narrow down one’s interests to a particular niche.

Personally, as you will see from my blog headline, I have two great passions, music and theology. Ideally, I would have a separate blog for each of these interests, as not everyone is into both. But at the present time I feel running one blog is enough, so I take a positive spin on things and hope I will introduce some music lovers to my theology, and some theology lovers to my music.

By narrowing down our focus to those areas in which we have a God-given talent, we can work on honing our skills and not get sidetracked trying to juggle so many different activities that we become overburdened. In an age where our options can seem endless, focus is key.

There will always be more to learn than we are able to learn because the Internet is a vast domain and there are only 24 hours in a day. I read recently that 300 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute, and that’s just one example of the information overload that currently characterises the Internet. I don’t believe this is a bad thing in itself, but it warrants a response from us, and that response is to take an organised approach to life online.

Staying Organised

We all have to juggle many commitments, but I believe that in the digital age it is easier to be organised than ever before. Productivity apps such as Evernote, Google Keep, and Asana, help us to manage our time well and make sure we don’t forget things, which reduces stress. Of course, there is initial stress when figuring out how to use a new app and get to grips with all its features, but as long as we focus only on those apps which we consider will contribute to our wellbeing and ambitions, rather than distract us, there’s a huge amount value to be found.

I hope the above paragraph shows you that I’m not anti-technology, on the contrary, I believe it brings many wonderful benefits. However, we should regularly reflect on how we are using technology and be aware of the effect our devices are having on our wellbeing. As society moves at an ever-increasing speed to automate everything and employ artificial intelligence, we really need to evaluate whether being entirely dependent on technology is necessarily wise.

My New eBook

Amidst the chaos of the digital age, it’s vital that we take time to ask deep philosophical questions about what gives life meaning, and how we can be happy. To this end, I have put together a new PDF eBook entitled Finding Your Balance: The 10 Key Ingredients of a Happy Life, which I’m giving away free to everyone who subscribes to my mailing list. I believe you will find this resource thought-provoking, and I hope it will encourage you to reassess the happiness balance in your life.

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To claim your copy of the eBook, click here or on the image above.

Must I Love My Enemies?

Envisage this scenario: You’re a Christian and your next-door neighbour is keeping you awake playing oppressively loud music in the middle of the night every night despite your repeated attempts to ask him to let you sleep. You also hear him being abusive towards his son, and witness him dealing with every life circumstance with aggression and bullying.

He’s been in prison several times for causing bodily harm to others, and you know he is currently engaged in criminal activity that has not been brought into the light. You and others are suffering a great deal as a result of this man’s behaviour, and you feel that something needs to change, and quickly.

You know you need to pray for this guy, but what kind of prayer should you pray?

You reach for your Bible in the hope you can find some inspiration, and decide there must be something in the Psalms to give you direction. You turn to Psalm 10, and read the following passage, where David is crying out to God for justice against his enemies:

For there is no faithfulness in their mouth;

Their inward part is destruction;

Their throat is an open tomb;

They flatter with their tongue.

Pronounce them guilty, O God!

Let them fall by their own counsels;

Cast them out in the multitude of their transgressions,

For they have rebelled against You.

(Psalm 5:9-10 NKJV)

That seems to fit your emotions perfectly! You are tempted to get down on your knees and pray this prayer to God, asking for your neighbour to be pronounced guilty and receive punishment for his cruel behaviour.

But there is something holding you back. It doesn’t feel quite right to pray in that way, because you know Jesus said something important about loving your enemies. So you reach for your Bible once more and turn to the book of Matthew:

“You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbour’ and hate your enemy. But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you!” (Matthew 5:44)

All of a sudden you’re conflicted. You need to pray over this situation with the guy next door, but do you pray for him to be arrested and face the justice of the legal system, or do you pray for God to change the guy’s heart and forgive him – for mercy rather than justice?

My instinct tells me that Jesus is the ultimate authority, and so if we find ourselves in such a situation we should pray for a transformation of our neighbour’s heart, and for God’s grace and mercy in his life, rather than for him to be found guilty in the way that King David desired for his enemies and as expressed in the Psalms. After all, we have all done wicked things, and wouldn’t we want God’s mercy for our own transgressions?

Have you ever faced such a conflict in your prayer life? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

How Have You Been?!

I’ve not posted anything in four days, which is unusual for me. I don’t actually have a strict writing schedule at the moment, just a bunch of ideas in the Notes app fermenting and gradually taking shape.

My last post was God’s Grand Game (on Monday) and that opened up some really interesting discussions, despite the fact that there was an annoying problem with the tags. I have been in touch with WordPress support (aren’t they great?!) because the post wasn’t showing up under its tags and categories in the Reader. They have assured me they are working to fix the problem, but in the meantime it’s just one of those ‘meh’ things that I believe God sends to keep us humble.

I’m delighted to have finished recording Song 5 of the T.E.N. project, and God-willing that will go live on 10th February. I’m excited about that, especially because I have been working on a (very simple) lyric video to accompany the track.

I’ve also been doing a lot of reading. I’m trying to get my head around email marketing, which is a huge area to learn about. I don’t particularly like the word ‘marketing’ because it’s very businessy and I’m in the WordPress game to build relationships and discuss ideas, not make money. Nevertheless, I do want to find more effective ways of introducing people to my books and essays, and running an effective email list is one way of doing that.

But what’s been taking up the bulk of my time is a new writing project I’m working on. It’s something a little different in that it’s more psychology than theology. I don’t want to give too much away at this stage other than to say it’s coming together really well and I’m excited about it.

Oh, and my toilet broke. The plumber pretty much trashed my bathroom and created more problems than he fixed, but it’s a lesson in patience and these things happen!

Love to all of you and I hope you’ve been well. On Sundays I spend some quality time in prayer and always pray for God’s blessing over all my WordPress subscribers.

That’s it for now. Have a wonderful weekend and keep in touch!

Steven x

God’s Grand Game

My belief that God is the sustainer and animator of the whole of creation is somewhat controversial among Christians and others who believe in free will. After all, if we do not have free will then ideas like sin, the fall, and judgment, don’t necessarily make sense.

However, I believe there is a certain perspective (or perhaps let’s call it a framework), in which these central Christian ideas can be understood in a new light, stemming from an understanding of God’s true nature and what that means for His relationship with human beings. In this article, I will outline this framework.

At the core of the framework is the idea that whatever you do is what God is doing through you. The best analogy I have found for this is that of a puppet show. In a puppet show, puppets can have distinct personalities and attributes and can be so realistic that a child who is watching the show might forget about the puppet master completely.

We are puppets in the theatre of life and God is the puppeteer, or to broaden the metaphor, I like to use the phrase ‘cosmic animator’ to describe God. He is the life force that sustains and animates all activity in the microcosm (on a small scale, such as the working of atoms) and the macrocosm (on a large scale, such as the movement of planets) and everything inbetween.

In order for you to accept what I am saying about the way God is involved in creation, I ask you to consider His attribute of omnipresence. If God is omnipresent, there is no particle anywhere in creation which is not a part of Him. And it follows logically that everything that is a part of God must be under God’s control. So if God is truly omnipresent, He is also in control of everything in existence.

Now although much of the time I am aware of God as I go about my daily life, because He speaks to me or because I feel His presence, at other times I forget about God, and it is during those times that I feel as though I am a free agent. As a person to whom God has revealed Himself, there are dimensions of my life in which I experience Him that can be particularly vivid; in prayer, or during a praise and worship session, for instance. At other times, while doing some chores around the house, working a job, or having a meal with friends, it’s possible for me to forget about God and lose that awareness.

But just because in some situations I lose my awareness of God, that doesn’t mean He goes away. He is still omnipresent and in control of every aspect of my life, from my thoughts and words, to the functioning of my body, to my every action. It simply means that there is a mode of mind that we experience as part of God’s activity in our lives, where He makes us forget about Him. This is obviously an acute reality in the case of life-long atheists, who may never have an awareness of God, as He has totally veiled His existence in their minds and lives. It seems that God does not reveal Himself to all men all of the time, and this is a central element of the game of human life that God is unfolding.

When we read the wonderful Biblical narratives depicting the interplay between God and His human creatures, we see that these stories reveal such interactions as command and obedience, action and judgment, prayer and response. In a world where God is omnipresent, this is peculiar, as in reality God is in control of both the command and the obedience, the action of humans and subsequent judgment, and even their prayers and His response to their prayers (imagine a puppet praying to his puppet master and you’ll understand what I mean).

But let us consider this paradox in terms of the bigger picture concerning who God is. God is the extremely powerful, uncaused, necessarily existing, eternal being, who created the entire universe, and everything in it. He has all of eternity at His disposal. What will He do with all this power and all this time? It seems logical to me that He would create a complex universe as a way of entertaining Himself as the vast aeons of eternity unfold.

What I propose is that God has created this great universe for His pleasure, and unfolding the complex story of creation is God’s pastime. In light of this, it makes sense that as part of His grand game, God would create complex and wonderful story lines, such as those that we find in the Abrahamic religions (and other religions).

Within the framework that I have outlined in this article, Christianity makes sense, though not in a mainstream or traditional way. All of life is animated by God, so all our decisions, including whether to follow Christ, whether to read the Bible, whether to visit our neighbour in hospital, whether to fast, repent, and believe – all of these Christian activities are the will of God in people’s lives and part of His grand game. The central events in the Christian story – the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross and His resurrection – these are also part of God’s storyline.

Believing as I do in an omnipresent God, this is the only way I can make sense of the Christian worldview. The fall is part of God’s plan, and so is redemption. Sin is part of God’s plan, and so is salvation. Atheism is part of God’s plan, and so is faith.

This is not what most Christians believe, but without this framework, Christianity makes no sense at all, for I firmly believe that the cherished Christian idea of free will is not logically compatible with the idea that God is omnipresent. If you’re going to accept the sovereignty of God over creation, you must also accept that we don’t have free will, and so a framework such as that outlined in this article becomes a necessary way of making sense of the Christian worldview.

For further elaboration on this perspective I recommend reading my book Ultimate Truth: God Beyond Religion which I sell on a not-for-profit basis. Visit my Books page for all the details.

A Bit of Humour

I thought you might appreciate this recent comment from one of my readers which was posted during a discussion about God’s sovereignty and the freedom of the human will. This particular reader was responding to my insistence that God is in control of everything that happens.

Appreciate your good and gracious spirit, Steven. I might opt to exercise my free will in not reading your next post on free will, and I have to wonder if that would be God exercising his will and forcing me not to understand what you think is His will about free will. Ha!

Love it. Always grateful for the injection of a little humour into a debate that for some people can seem quite heavy and quite abstract!

May I take this opportunity to wish you all a peaceful and blessed weekend. Of course, whether you actually have a peaceful and blessed weekend will depend entirely upon the sovereign will of God, but let’s not go there right now…

Self-Publishing in 2018

It seems that almost everyone is writing and promoting books nowadays, and I don’t see that as a bad thing. That so many people share in the joy of writing is wonderful, and I love reading books from big authors and self-published authors alike.

I read a combination of paperbacks and eBooks. I really enjoy the experience of reading on my Kindle, and I’m signed up to BookBub, which I would highly recommend. If you don’t know the site it offers a daily email about eBooks related to your chosen areas of interest, and they are usually either free of hugely discounted. You can pick up some real bargains.

The downside of the super-abundance of books on the market is that after putting a great deal of time and effort into writing a book, it can easily get lost in the crowd. You either have to become an expert at PR and marketing, or pay an agency to do the job, which isn’t cheap if you want to make a real impact.

Fortunately, a lot of online marketing opportunities these days, such as running Facebook and Google ads, or running a mailing list, are designed to be simple and intuitive and it’s not too much of an investment of time or effort to get some ads or a mailing list up and running. In addition, websites like Fiverr allow you to easily find freelancers who can help you to run a promotional campaign on a budget.

The self-publishing revolution has meant that you can do almost everything yourself these days. There are even easy ways to design book covers, advertisements, flyers, and Facebook and Twitter headers without any design knowledge – Canva and PicMonkey are examples of websites that will help meet your design needs at low or no cost.

My favourite book promotion tool is BookLaunch, a website that allows you to make an informative website for each of your books, at a low cost. I love the ease with which you can put a page together, and you can link directly to merchants so interested visitors can easily get their hands on a copy of your book. You can see an example of a BookLaunch page I created for my book The Philosophy of a Mad Man by clicking here.

The main point I would emphasise when it comes to book promotion is that in 2018 you really need a multi-pronged strategy. People access content in a wide range of different ways, and your strategy should reflect that. There’s loads you can do online, but I also recommend incorporating some old-school offline promo strategies into the mix, as I discussed in a recent post on blog promotion entitled Blog Promotion the Old-Fashioned Way.

My last tip for book promotion is that it can be really helpful to put together a short promo video. I’ll leave you with a video I made with the help of a design expert I found on Fiverr, and this video is for my latest book. I hope you like it and that it inspires you in your own promotional endeavours.

Are there any great strategies or resources you would recommend for promoting a self-published book in 2018? Feel free to leave a comment below with your thoughts.

Is Jesus the Only Way?

During times when I have been immersed in Christian life and enthusiastically proclaiming the gospel message, there has been an urgency to my endeavours owing to a passion for Jesus and a fear that everyone who isn’t saved is going to hell. This is the basis for Christian evangelism, and this is why Christian evangelists can often seem pushy. It’s because they genuinely feel they have an exclusive claim to truth, and that the only way to avoid eternal punishment is by becoming a believer.

But if God is the omnipresent creator of the universe, then He has created every religion, not just Christianity. He is the creator of millions of Muslims, Jews, Mormons, Sikhs and Jehovah’s Witnesses. He is also the creator of all those people who are atheists, or agnostics. He has created literally billions of people who have lived and died outside of the Christian faith. Can it really be the case that all of these lives, with all their richness and diversity, are meaningless, because they are empty of Jesus Christ?

An alternative view would be that creation is a rich tapestry in which every thread, or every person, has a distinct and meaningful role to play. Existence can be seen as a grand performance in which God is expressing His infinite power by creating great diversity. Everyone who has lived and died has played out their role in God’s grand game, and God will bring everything together in a coherent way in the future.

Some Christians argue that nonbelievers are judged ‘by the light they have received’, meaning that even if they haven’t heard the gospel, they are still morally culpable, as they have been exposed to good and evil and have had to choose accordingly. This is a way of accommodating all those outside of the faith into the Christian worldview.

But I wonder whether every life might be valuable to God in its own right, because if God is the sovereign creator, sustainer, and animator of all there is, then everyone’s life has unfolded in exactly the way God intended, even if they did not embrace Jesus as Lord and Saviour and live a Christian life.

The above article is a modified extract from my essay entitled An Almighty Predicament: A Discourse on the Arguments For and Against Christianity which is available as a free PDF download from my Essays page, here.

Quick Update & Thank You

In my last post I talked about the uncertainty surrounding my living situation and asked for your prayers in relation to a housing meeting I was having today.

The meeting went ahead this afternoon and by the grace of God it went really well. We covered a lot of ground in the meeting, but one of the main takeaways was that I was given an assurance I wouldn’t be forced out of my current accommodation, other than if I were to breach the tenancy agreement in some way.

This isn’t exactly closure, because they will still try to move me on in the coming months and years, but at least to a certain extent I feel ‘protected’. Another positive outcome is that the housing manager at Mind is going to look into the possibility of me getting an Assured tenancy, which would mean I would have a contract that clearly states I can stay in my present accommodation indefinitely. This rarely happens, but if it does, it would be the best outcome.

I have no doubt that your prayers helped the meeting go so well, and I feel that despite the fact that there will still be an amount of uncertainty moving forward, today was a positive step in the right direction. Praise the Lord!

Thank you for your support, and I really appreciate the fact that so many of you are so supportive of me despite the fact that I openly question various aspects of Christian theology. I know it must frustrate you at times, and it’s tough for me too. But your friendship means so much to me, as do your prayers.

Peace be with you all and God bless.

Staying Put or Moving On?

I’m sitting in the living room of the flat that I’ve called home for the last three years. It’s peaceful, other than the sound of muffled hip hop beats penetrating the wall from the flat next door. The distraction, which I’m quite used to, is annoying but bearable. Normally my neighbour’s routine is to start pumping out music at 1pm, gradually get more and more stoned throughout the afternoon, and then collapse into bed around 6pm (or that’s what I assume he does, as that’s when the music stops).

There’s so much that I love about living here. This flat has afforded me my first spell of peace and stability since I found myself caught up in the mental health system in 2007 after experiencing an episode of psychosis. I have moved home about five times since then, and have had four spells in hospital, so it’s been a fairly chaotic time. But my last spell in hospital was over five years ago, and I feel very blessed to have enjoyed an extended period of stability, both in terms of my mental health and my living situation.

Unfortunately, that could be about to change. My present accommodation is ‘supported’ which means I have a rolling week-to-week contract that is tied to the support I’m getting from a local mental health charity called Mind. After my last spell in hospital in 2013 I moved first into a shared house supported by Mind, and then after a year and a half I moved into my current accommodation, a self-contained one bedroom flat (also supported by Mind). The shared house was utter chaos – non-stop antisocial behaviour from several of the tenants – so I was delighted to move into a flat where I would be living alone.

I have had regular assessments from the staff at Mind since I’ve been living here, and within the mental health system supported housing is generally regarded as temporary. When you are well enough you are expected to move on. I have a review meeting tomorrow and I’m expecting I will be put under pressure to move on.

Naturally, tomorrow’s review meeting has been occupying my thoughts and prayers in recent days. I’m quite anxious about it. During times of prayer God has spoken to me and indicated he wants me to stay where I am, and so part of me feels I must trust what I hear from God and fight to stay, even if that doesn’t chime with the norms of the supported housing process, or even my instincts.

Obviously, work and finances come into the equation. I’m not going to go into the details of my financial situation on a public forum, but I’ll just say that I have some savings, though they would only be enough for me to rent privately for one-to-two years before I would need to be in full-time work or claim state benefits if I want to stay in London.

Part of me would love to be working and to own my own flat. But it would be very difficult for me to get a mortgage with my mental health condition, and it would also be difficult for me to find a suitable job because of my turbulent past and ongoing mental health problems. I have a lot of good experience and skills, but the medication which I’ve been taking now for over a decade has sadly affected my mental and physical health due to some pretty unpleasant side effects that I now live with on a daily basis.

There are many other aspects to this situation that if I were to discuss would mean a really lengthy blog post which I suspect no one would read. After all, it’s not nearly as interesting as discussing the omnipresence of God or my latest musical endeavour! But I wanted to give you this overview of my situation in the hope that some of you will pray for me, particularly over this meeting tomorrow, and that God would grant me wisdom in dealing with all of these issues. Please pray that the way forward would become clear, and that I would have peace of mind whatever happens.

Thank you so much for reading and God bless you.

To read the follow-up to this post, from after the meeting, click here.

What Prayer Reveals About God

Implicit within prayer is the acknowledgment that God is in control of our lives. If it were not the case that God is in control, it wouldn’t make sense to pray to Him.

In this article I will give a few examples of how Christians trust in God’s omnipotence and omnipresence when they pray. I will explain why such beliefs, while demonstrating the believer’s trust in God’s power, simultaneously create problems for the Christian worldview.

God is in control of our relationships.

For instance, Christians pray to meet a future spouse, or pray for God to grow and bless their friendships, or their marriage.

God is in control of our circumstances.

Christians would naturally pray for God to bless them with a new job. They might pray that God would bless their friends or relatives with a safe journey, indicating God is in control of all circumstances related to transport. Christians often pray for God to plant them in a great church, or to help them pass an exam.

God is in control of the weather.

Christians pray for rain for our crops, or for severe weather to be calmed, or for a bright and sunny wedding day.

God is in control of our bodies.

Christians pray to be healed of sicknesses and diseases.

God is in control of society.

Christians pray for God to raise up good leaders in our political parties, and for Him to protect and bless our countries. Also, Christians regularly pray for God to bless those who are living in poverty, or for those who are being persecuted.

God is in control of evil.

Christians pray for God to deliver them from evil (for instance, by reciting the Lord’s Prayer), and to protect them from the schemes of the devil, or from the wickedness of their enemies.

My argument is that on some level, Christians know that God is in control of everything that happens, and this is reflected in the way they pray to God. But if God is in control of everything that happens, this necessarily implies there is no free will. Therefore central Christian doctrines such as sin, judgment, salvation, and the fall of man, don’t make sense.

Do you believe there are things that are outside of God’s control? With reference to the argument made above, feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments below.