Where can we find truth?

I watched Glee tonight.

I was persuaded to start watching the show last year after being initially critical of it… I’m glad I do, because it’s a great show. It doesn’t feature the best plots, or depth of character, but there’s something about it that makes it a good watch. I think, for the most part it’s the music that’s just too perfect, the characters that are just too fake… It’s all a total load of rubbish…but such fun.

Well tonight’s episode, entitled ‘Grilled Cheesus’ is probably my least favourite episode so far. Aside from the music being a little below it’s usual standard, the story and content left me quite irritated. The episode had a ‘spiritual’ theme, but the massive range of ideas about God, faith and religion was genuinely overwhelming. It was impossible to really know what to think… Such important issues should never be dealt with in such a shallow way, in my opinion.

It got me thinking… In a world where there are so many different things that people believe about God, about life – its purpose and direction – and death – what happens next – how can we tell what is the truth? My view is just as valid as the next person’s…so what right do I have to claim that what I believe is the truth? I don’t.

The thing with truth is that it isn’t dependent upon what people believe. If something is true, it makes no difference what people believe about it. It remains true whatever. If God is real, that isn’t because someone on earth believes in Him. If no-one on earth believed that God was real, He still would be…

So we have established that everyone has different views. And we have established that whatever these views are, the truth will remain true. This applies to everything – for example people have different views on whether the earth is spherical or flat, (I know this sounds ridiculous, but try arguing with a flat-earther…it’s harder than you might think!) but whatever the earth truly is, it will remain, regardless of what people think about it.

If we gently bring this back to God…people often have different views about Him, but they don’t make a difference to His existence. The big difference between the shape of the earth and the existence of God is the small matter of proof…although I would argue that the evidence for God is quite compelling. But I won’t get into it. Back to truth…

The Christian faith has something rather special by way of truth – it’s called the Bible. I won’t be patronising by explaining what it is… What many people don’t understand about the Bible is that it is relevant to us today, not just its writers from 2000 years (or longer) ago. Often it can be pretty hard to understand, but there are so many resources available to us to help with that. (One thing I highly recommend is Soul Survivor’s ‘Bible-in-one-year’ scheme, check the Links page).

It is so important for Christians to constantly read the Bible and see what God says. You might have noticed from other posts on this blog that they often contain a few Bible references – it’s so full of wisdom. More importantly, it’s full of truth. It’s a strange book in a sense – like no other book I’ve ever read. It has the unique ability of quite literally being alive. It is often described as the living word of God. God often speaks to us through the words in the Bible – and the more we read it, the more meaning we can unpack from it, even passages we’ve read over and over in the past. It’s amazing.

Here’s what the Bible has to say about itself:

All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work. – 2 Timothy 3:16-17, NLT.

You might be thinking…that’s rich!! How arrogant for the writer of 2 Timothy (Paul) to say that about the book that he’s contributed so much to! I’d completely understand – that’s the sort of thing I was thinking when I first read that bit.

What I will leave you with is this: there is not a single document throughout the whole of history that is more reliable than the Bible. It stands up to every single conceivable test for such thing, and fits perfectly with archaeological evidence, other writings from its time, known human history…

It remains a perfect history, geography and life book. And this makes sense…it’s God’s book. He doesn’t settle for anything less that perfect.

I was going to leave this post there. But I’ve just realised I’ve left out the most important thing – Jesus Christ. Jesus had a lot to say about truth. I’m not sure how many times He used the phrase, ‘I tell you the truth:’ because He said that quite a lot. But Jesus also went one step further… In one of His most famous statements:

“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” - John 14:6, NIV.

Jesus said that He was the truth. Again, that’s a pretty massive claim, and if He was the only one to say it, it’s pretty difficult for many people to distinguish it from hot-headedness.

If I may, I want to look at something that C.S. Lewis came up with. It’s often referred to as Bad, Mad or God, or maybe Liar, Lunatic or Lord. It refers to the three possible explanations for Jesus and His life – there can be no other explanation for Him having said the things He did. Either He was a ‘bad’ man, a ‘liar’, who had no good purpose on earth and sought to spread seeds of deceit amongst the people of the time. Everything He did was for His own personal gain, and He lied about who He said He was – the Son of God. Or, He was mad, a complete lunatic. He didn’t even know what He was saying. Or, He was (and is) truly the Son of God, as He said He is.

I find it hard to believe that Jesus was bad – even by reading a tiny part of the accounts of His life it is impossible to reach this conclusion. He healed people, raised them to life… He called for justice and mercy for the poor. He loved children and welcomed them openly. A bad man would never do any of these things if He was only out for himself. Jesus can’t have been bad – it doesn’t add up.

I also find it pretty hard to believe that Jesus was mad – we read of many accounts of men who are ‘wild’ or ‘possessed’ – the people of the time were pretty good at recognising when someone was a lunatic, and Jesus wouldn’t have been any different. He can’t have been mad. Why would they have believed Him?

All this leaves is that Jesus must have been the Son of God. Even that short logical analysis helps us to understand that that is the only possibility. It may be helpful to look at how long Christianity has existed and been believed, against huge opposition. It went against the entire Roman Empire and won. Something about Christianity must be true… Or how about we consider the resurrection of Christ? The Chief Jewish Priests and the Roman Governor all wanted to see Jesus dead, and remain that way for a very long time. Yet they could find no way of disputing His disciples’ claims that He was alive again. If they’d wanted to disprove the resurrection, they could have quite easily produced the body, and Christianity would never have existed. Jesus would have been forgotten.

It is impossible to ignore Jesus Christ – He is indisputably the most important and significant character throughout the whole of history. What He said must be true.

Of course, that might all be wrong. And if Christianity is all wrong, then Jesus is of no importance to anyone.

As C.S. Lewis also famously said:

“Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.”

We cannot rationally ignore Christianity when we search for the truth. Everyone on the earth has this responsibility to choose for themselves what they should believe, and anyone who does not look at Christianity and ask what it’s really all about is shirking that responsibility.

Jesus said, “…the truth will set you free.” - John 8:31-32, NIV.

I take it all back…

I’ve just finished watching the third episode of Hustle (series 7). It blew me away – just excellent! I can’t recommend it highly enough – watch it here (available until 25th February 2011).

I genuinely believe that Hustle is one of the greatest shows available on the BBC. Such a great group of actors – and after last night’s, writers too – make it a pleasure to watch. This latest episode was infinitely better than the first episode of the series, that I somewhat slated a couple of weeks ago. The show is doing a fabulous job at filling the season break in Smallville, The Big Bang Theory and Glee. I’m spoilt…

I hope I haven’t spoken too soon, because I’m expecting great things of the next three episodes. Don’t let me down, BBC!

Much better

Hustle, that is. This week’s was excellent – well worth a watch. Available here until 25th February 2011.

What makes a man?

I’m currently watching a hilarious programme on E4 called Tool Academy – it is well worth a watch if you get the time! There are some very interesting characters on there…

I don’t want this to be a long post – the show got me thinking about what makes a real man. At first, lots of things popped in to my head – being a faithful husband, a good father, strong, handsome…

Then I realised that that’s all complete rubbish. Wonderful traits they may be, they don’t make a man a man.

I managed to whittle it down to two things:

Love God.

Love People.

Quite simple, really.  Well, not really – managing to fulfil both of those requirements completely, all the time is a mean feat. Indeed no one can fully achieve it…except Jesus.

Jesus is the perfect example of a man. (And a perfect example of a human in general… Notice that there is no gender requirement to love God and love people!)

We should all try to be more like Jesus Christ. That is after all where the name Christian came from in the first place!

Hu$tle

Last night, Hustle returned to our screens for a seventh series. (Available here on BBC iPlayer, until 25th February 2011.)

I must say I was genuinely disappointed – the episode just didn’t manage to live up to the show’s usual outstanding quality.

You could say that I should have seen it coming – series 6 left a lot to be desired, and it seems as if it was the beginning of the show’s demise. It seems to me as if it could have been so much better so easily – it just requires someone with a taste for quality and intelligence at the BBC.

For a start, the characterisation was just ridiculous. The four marks were vastly overplayed, far too flamboyant and stereotypical. It was impossible to believe that those people could exist in the real world. As a consequence, the characters lacked depth and appeared merely as tools to drive the plot.

In the past, the marks have been almost as well played and interesting as the grifters – notably Carlton Wood and Harry Fielding from series 5 provided a formidable opposition – starting in the second episode and returning for the sixth – leaving the viewer unsure as to whether the grifters would actually succeed. There was a true sense of suspense and tension. Now, the opposition seems to be all too easy to con and the tension, one of the best parts of the show, has all but disappeared.

On top of this, the plot from last night was ridden with holes. For a show which could easily be believed to be realistic, the people in it seem to act like fools – it’s just too perfect a con.

It wasn’t all bad. Any cast comprising Adrian Lester, Robert Glennister and Robert Vaughn can’t go too far wrong. I’m massively impressed with Matt Di Angelo and Kelly Adams – I was a little dubious as to how well they would replace Jaime Murray and Marc Warren when they joined at the start of series 5, but both have given solid, believable performances. And Rob Jarvis as Eddie, perhaps the weakest regular, remains enjoyable to watch.

It’s the writing that is letting Hustle down. It’s a brilliant show concept – entertaining, clever and quite fascinating – that gives the viewer a sense of superiority over the humiliated marks each time. Whether or not this is a good thing is a subject for another day… But it does keep the viewing figures high. Yet like a lot of TV programmes these days (try the last couple of seasons of Doctor Who, the last few episodes of Misfits, season 9 of Smallville or season 4 of Prison Break) the quality of writing has gone down the drain. It’s such a shame that such great acting talent is wasted on weak scripts and characterisations.

Series’ 1-3 and 5 were the best Hustle has been and I think probably the best that Hustle will ever be.

But let’s hope that in 5 or 6 weeks I’ll write another post saying about how wrong I was today – let’s hope that this series picks up and surprises us all.