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Thus, the first thing that Daniel says about God in his book is that he is involved in human history: a statement of immense import, if it is true. Daniel is not content to inform us of what happened; he is much more interested in why it happened.
In an exhibition of breathtaking inconsistency, evidence is the very thing he fails to supply for his claim that faith rejoices in the independence of evidence.
Like all who espouse such relativism, he falls into the error of making himself and his ideas an exception to the logical consequences of those ideas.
“No, I am not going to do that, but I am going to put another question to you: why do you believe in the concepts of consciousness and energy, even though you do not understand them fully? Is it not because of the explanatory power of those concepts?” “I see what you are driving at,” he replied. “You believe that Jesus Christ is both God and man because that is the only explanation that has the power to make sense of what we know of him?”
Far from thinking of God’s holiness as glorious, they associate holiness with drabness and the absence of life and colour – the very opposite of glory.
Indeed, in the ordinary practical business of life, people tend to be relativists only in those areas that they consider to be matters of opinion rather than matters of fact.
It is far too glib to say that someone is a relativist, for the simple reason that no one is a relativist in all areas. Indeed, in most areas, everyone turns out to be an absolutist.
Frankl believed that the most important thing we can do for our fellow human beings is to give them hope for the future.
The pressure to conform will be felt the moment one questions any aspect of this relativism – that all lifestyles must be approved, for instance. The right to choose trumps everything else, including tradition and divine revelation. It is the one absolute in a sea of relativism, however self-contradictory that may be.
the God of the Hebrews gives meaning to the world, whereas the pagan gods do not. The meaning of the system will not be found in the system.
We should notice Lewontin’s honesty here. He claims that his materialism is a priori – that is, he is a convinced believer in materialism before he does any science at all.
For some, the conviction that they “know the truth” produces in them an aggressive attitude that reeks of superiority and is very off-putting. They forget that the One about whom they profess to be witnessing – he who was the truth (John 14:6) – was the most gentle of men. He was gentle and lowly in heart (Matthew 11:29).
These advisors passionately believed in the power of the human mind to study historical movements, economic developments, and cultural shifts in order to be able to give some sort of advice to the emperor regarding the future.
What we do know is that he immediately made the matter known to his friends and asked them to pray to God for mercy. There is something very moving about this. Here are four captive students, alone in ancient Iraq, daring to believe not only that there is a God in heaven but also that he is sufficiently interested in them to communicate with them and answer their prayer. It was the first student prayer meeting recorded in history.
They would all die if they could not answer him convincingly. They would all die if there were no such thing as revelation. They would all die if there were no such thing as a wisdom that came from above. They would all die if God did not speak.
Peter knew, of course, that he was uniquely privileged to have been with Christ on that occasion. What about the vast majority of Christ’s disciples, who were not there? How could they – how can we – be convinced that Christ’s eternal kingdom is no delusion?
In other words, the fulfilment of (supernatural) prophecy lies at the heart of what Christianity is.
We do not tolerate people with whom we agree – the word itself indicates that it is people with whom we disagree. But we support their right to hold and express their world-view, provided it is without threat or incitement to violence. However, in many countries tolerance has degenerated into a simplistic, all-affirming political correctness: a debilitating and very dangerous attitude that prevents people saying what they believe in case anyone should take offence. It is the very antithesis of free speech, and it is having a paralysing effect on public discourse.
the stone is not part of the statue. The metals succeed each other as parts of the same man; the stone comes from elsewhere.
History has taught the hard lesson: there is no pathway to paradise that bypasses the problem of the dark side of human nature.
An “impersonal God” – well and good. A subjective God of beauty, truth and goodness, inside our own heads – better still. A formless life-force surging through us, a vast power which we can tap – best of all. But God Himself, alive, pulling at the other end of the cord, perhaps approaching an infinite speed, the hunter, king, husband – that is quite another matter. There comes a moment when the children who have been playing at burglars hush suddenly: was that a real footstep in the hall? There comes a moment when people who have been dabbling in religion (“Man’s search for God”!) suddenly
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They could save themselves simply by bowing down to the image. But was it worth it? Is there really something more valuable than human life? Especially when that life is my life?
His whole scheme of getting his nobles to bow depended on the assumption that, for each person, life was of absolute value. To his utter amazement he discovered that this was not always the case.
Latimer’s last words at the stake were: “Be of good cheer, Master Ridley, and play the man, for we shall this day light such a candle in England as I trust by God’s grace shall never be put out.” That candle still burns today.
But what I discovered in the camp was this: God does not help us to face theoretical situations but real ones. Like you, I couldn’t imagine how one could cope in the Gulag. But once there I found that God met me, exactly as Jesus had promised his disciples when he was preparing them for victimization and persecution.”
Expressing gratitude to God is likewise an acknowledgment of indebtedness and dependence upon him. It is here that humans in their pride tend to go wrong. They will not acknowledge that they are dependent upon someone higher than themselves. We have no masters, is their cry. Nebuchadnezzar was one of them.
Paul claims that rejection of God has a detrimental effect on reason.
We have only to think of some examples of what is accepted as art or entertainment nowadays to understand that rejection of God leads to the death of civilized culture. It leads to the inversion of values; where a pile of excrement is hailed as avant garde art, and blatant immorality is hailed as marvellous theatre. The darkness is such that there is little or no understanding or appreciation of what has happened – man has descended to the animal.
For Nebuchadnezzar, coming to faith in God was not a forsaking of reason; in a very literal sense it was a return to reason.
We may be very gifted by God, but if we do not exhibit love in our character those gifts are of no value to us.
Paul goes on to point out, one day the gifts will no longer be necessary. All that will be left is character. It is a humbling question to ask: what will be left of me when the gifts are gone?
This is a challenge to all of us. There is great pressure in the contemporary (Western) world for the privatization of the expression of religious belief – if not for its outright abolition. It is a widespread conviction that naturalism is the default belief system; and, ironically, Christian theism has no place in the very academies that it founded in the first place!
In the first half of the twentieth century this principle was at the heart of the wave of Social Darwinism that spawned eugenics programmes on both sides of the Atlantic. And the danger is with us still. Postmodern relativism has made deep inroads into many people’s minds, resulting in an erosion of the concepts of truth, morality, and the value of human life. Put that together with the cult of the self, and you are well on the way to engineering an egocentric society, where truth and morality can be defined in such a way as to make sure it is “I” who survive.
What does tolerance mean? I ask the question, because it seems to me that one of the things that pose a real threat to human freedom is the contemporary understanding of tolerance. I say contemporary, because the old and good meaning of tolerance has been abandoned for something insidious and dangerous.
principled tolerance is always careful to avoid offence wherever possible. However, offence may not always be avoidable, especially where truth is concerned.
the old tolerance accepted the existence of other views while disagreeing with them; the new tolerance insists on accepting the views themselves and not merely their existence.
The relevance of Daniel’s story, however, lies in the fact that there is a powerful drive to embed the new tolerance in enforceable legislation. The new tolerance wishes to invoke the state to impose its view. It does not heed the warning of nineteenth-century philosopher John Stuart Mill about the tyranny of public opinion that stigmatizes and silences minority and dissident beliefs.
In some countries today there are laws against so-called “hate speech”. That topic raises all sorts of questions: whether such laws achieve their objective, or if they have the effect of closing down rational moral debate.
But, unlike humans, animals are not inhibited by moral considerations, since animals are not moral beings. Empires tend to behave like that – as amoral power blocs.
they argue, God is a God of love; and talk about judgment is grim and medieval. They could not be more wrong, as a little thought will show.
“We thought we could get rid of God and retain a value for human beings, but we found that was impossible.”
That concept of freedom is shared by many people today, and given as their reason for abandoning God. They say that God is out to stifle them – their self-expression, their creativity, and their flourishing. They want freedom from any authority above that of man, and they think that secular society can deliver it to them.
For some years we in the West have enjoyed an unusually calm period of history, living in a more or less Christian culture conducive to the development of many institutions that enable life to flourish in relative peace. Yet, in the last century, there was more bloodshed in the world as a whole than in all the intervening centuries put together. We need to wake up to the fact that a great proportion of that bloodshed has been as a direct consequence of anti-God ideologies, forced upon people by dictators who held enormous power. Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot tower over Antiochus Epiphanes in terms
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No theory of politics can be credible that assumes that human impulses are naturally benign, peaceable or reasonable.
For example, the following reprehensible statement by Sam Harris sounds just like a harbinger of death (2005, pages 52–53): Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them.
The issue is not so much what city we live in but what city we live for. Daniel lived in Babylon; but, in an ultimate sense, he lived for Jerusalem and all that it stood for.
This is one of the open secrets of Daniel’s life and witness. He believed that the Scriptures were the Word of the living God. This conviction is still the secret of how to live in “Babylon” without “Babylon” living in you.
What he does tell us is that he turned his face to seek God in prayer. That is, he is not just saying that he set himself to seek God’s wisdom and guidance on the matter. He is telling us more than that: he set himself to seek God.
For him, there was an intimate relationship between the scrolls (the Bible) and living contact with God himself. Not only had God spoken through his Word; his voice could still be heard through what he had spoken. Wonderfully, this remains the case.
If the Bible really was the Word of God, why did I not find it more interesting? Surely, if God was behind it, I should be getting more out of it? I noticed too that many of my Christian friends also paid lip service to the doctrine of inspiration, but spent very little time reading and thinking about the book they claimed to be inspired. There seemed to be a deep inconsistency here that affected them as well as me.
