We live in a highly pluralistic context here in the UK, with many of our major cities incredibly multicultural. Where I grew up in South London, we were surrounded by every religion imaginable: you could choose from Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Atheism, Islamism, Judaism, Jainism, Secularism—you could even support the local football team, Crystal Palace; we called that masochism.

Those religious changes are accelerating rapidly and are especially apparent when it comes to Islam. With the number of Muslims in the UK projected to rise to 13 million in 30 years time, according to numbers from the Pew Research Centre, it’s vital that Christians think missionally, evangelistically, and apologetically about Islam.

We don’t always do this well. On the one hand, the reaction of many Christians when they think about Islam is one of fear. Fear of extremism, fear in the face of another religion that is evangelistically active and confident, fear of how different Muslims often seem. But then on the other hand, I get equally worried by some parts of the church that think the way to deal with Islam is to ignore it, to turn our back on and say nothing to our Muslim neighbours about Jesus.

The good news is that God is at work among Muslims in amazing ways. For example, I have a good friend who grew up in a strict Muslim family and was a committed, devout Muslim. One day at university, he was studying at home when there came a knock on his door. He opened it, to see two Christians doing door-to-door evangelism. My friend loved arguing with Christians and he thought this was great—“You guys deliver!” He invited them in, tore them to pieces, and sent them on their way.

The next week, they were back. And the next and the next. My friend said he was hugely impressed that all of his arguing and being difficult didn’t deter them, but they kept coming, they worked to answer his questions, and they kept pointing him to Christ. Their persistence was the beginning of a journey of some years that led to him becoming a Christian.

So, how can we reach more Muslims: whether bold, confident ones like my friend, or the quieter ones, who are our fellow students or colleagues, our neighbours, and so on. Let me offer you five suggestions that will help get you started.

1. Love

The first step is to love our Muslim neighbours. For some of us this may be hard, because of the fear thing—or, almost as bad, the apathy thing. But God can change hearts, so we can pray that God gives us a love for the Muslims in our midst.

Then we need to take the time to get to know them. I have a friend who had a new colleague join his company. The new colleague was a Muslim, so my friend invited his new colleague out for lunch and then said, “Forgive me for asking, but you’re a Muslim, right?” “Yes,” his new colleague replied. “I’ve never really talked to a Muslim before,” my friend Nick said. “Tell me, what do you guys believe?” Nick then asked lots of follow-up questions and then, after 20 minutes, was able to say: “This has been fascinating. I’m a Christian, so some of the things you believe I believe too. But there are also many differences.” “Such as what?” his colleague asked—which of course gave Nick an amazing opportunity to talk about Jesus!

So love our Muslim neighbours, pray that God brings them across our path, then boldly and winsomely seize every opportunity.

2. Be clear about the differences

When engaging with Muslims, it is crucial that early on we are clear about the differences between Christianity and Islam. Whilst it can be tempting to ‘play it safe’ and focus on things in common, often that will just cause confusion. And remember, commonalities are often so vague as to be useless. (For example, a chicken has legs and a table has legs!)

If we just focus on what Muslims and Christians have in common, this can cause huge distortions because we fail to appreciate that people use words in very different ways. Just because a Muslim says “I believe in God” does not mean they mean by ‘God’ the same thing that you do.

Scholarship increasingly recognises, by the way, that Islam is not a sister religion to Christianity and Judaism; rather Muhammad took Arabian religious ideas, borrowed Christian and Jewish terminology, and messily bolted the two together.

And finally on this, it’s worth noting that Muslims who come to Christ tend to come not because they thought “Oh, look, this is just like what we believe”; rather they saw something very different and wanted it. Read Nabeel Qureshi’s powerful testimony, Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus, to see an example of this.

Exploring the differences

A really helpful framework for exploring differences (in this case between Christianity and Islam, but also between worldviews more generally) is this set of four questions; they’re fascinating to ask friends:

• Do you believe in a God and if so, what is God like?

• What are human beings?

• What’s gone wrong?

• What’s the solution?

Is there a God? Christians would say yes, and that he is relational, knowable, love, and has suffered for our redemption. The Qur’an would disagree and say, no, Allah cannot be known, is not relational, is not love, and suffering is beneath him; he is not a saviour, he is supreme will.

What are humans? Christians would say we are made in God’s image, designed to be his sons and daughters, and we can call him Father. The Qur’an would disagree: humans have an elevated status over animals, yes, but we are slaves, God is our master, and it is blasphemous to suggest anything more.

What’s gone wrong? Christians would say sin, which has fundamentally damaged our nature, our world, and our relationship with God. Islam would say sin, yes, but there’s no fundamental problem; we are simply forgetful of God’s commands.

What’s the solution? Christianity would say we need rescue, redemption; we need a saviour. Islam offers no saviour; the Qur’an never says such a thing. Rather we can earn our way back through keeping more commandments and hope, if there’s a gap between performance and prize, that Allah will be merciful—but any mercy, any forgiveness, is earnt.

Oh, and if you succeed in Islam, what do you get? Paradise: a place with rivers of wine, crystal-clear fountains of water, fruit trees, and (for the men) women to enjoy. But Allah does not dwell with his people in Paradise; the Qur’an simply does not offer that. By contrast, in Christianity, the future vision is New Heavens, New Earth, an eternity walking and talking with God again.

The differences are massive. Even though the same words are used (God, sin, heaven etc) the ideas are radically different. If we don’t factor that in when we talk to Muslims, we’ll end up in a huge mess, because all of those questions are foundational to the gospel.

3. The questions Muslims ask and how to answer them

Next step: as you talk to Muslims, as you talk about the differences in what we believe, our Muslim friends will have questions. By far the two most common are:

• Can you trust the Bible? (or more directly: hasn’t the Bible been corrupted?)

• Why do Christians believe in the Trinity?

Why do Muslims ask the questions they do? I’d suggest at least two reasons:

(a) They’re generated by the Qur’an (e.g. the Qur’an attacks the Trinity, therefore Muslims accept this as a given).

(b) They’re generated by necessity: for example this applies to Muslim questions about the Bible. The Qur’an does not claim the Bible has been corrupted, but rather the belief evolved later, in the early centuries of Islam. Early Muslim scholars had a problem: Muhammad claimed he was preaching the same message as the Bible, but the Bible was not available in Arabic at this point. When the Islamic conquests began and Muslims conquered former Christian territory, they then finally got to examine it. Horror of horrors! They discovered the Bible was wildly different to the Qur’an. What to do? Either they had to say Muhammad got it wrong—or they could claim the Bible had been changed.

So how do we respond to the questions of Muslims? I suggest five steps; let me outline them, then demonstrate them in action.

(i) Begin by asking good questions (think of Jesus, who asked questions all the time: he asked 307 questions in the gospels.) I often like to use questions like what do you mean by that? and why do you think that?.

(ii) Take the time to know a bit of their own scriptures and tradition; yes, it takes time, but if you’ve read a little it will be immensely helpful.

(iii) Help your friend think through the theological implications of their question or assumption.

(iv) Make sure you understand the biblical story and where your friend’s question fits into it.

(v) Point every question towards Jesus.

So, for example, take the question Muslims often ask about the reliability of scripture. Well, we might begin with questions: What do think scripture is? What do you mean by ‘corrupted’ or ‘unreliable’? And why do you think it was changed—could you give me some evidence?

Next, you might draw on their own scriptures and point out how positive the Qur’an is about the Bible:

He hath revealed unto thee (Muhammad) the Scripture with truth, confirming that which was (revealed) before it, even as He revealed the Torah and the Gospel. (Qur’an 3:3)

To thee We sent the Scripture in truth, confirming the scripture that came before it, and guarding it in safety. (Qur’an 5:48)

Next, the theological problem: ask your Muslim friend if they think the Bible is corrupted because Allah couldn’t protect it (he was too weak) or he wouldn’t protect it (he couldn’t care less that humans had no guidance).

Fourth, the wider biblical story: take the time to help your Muslim friend understand what Christians believe about the Bible—namely that the job of the scriptures is not just to reveal God’s commands, but also God’s character and God’s plan of salvation.

Finally, point to Jesus: maybe by gently suggesting that Muslims believe the final revelation is a book while Christians believe the final revelation is a person. So maybe, rather than compare the Bible and the Qur’an, we should compare the Qur’an and Jesus. As Muslim scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr puts it:

The Word of God in Islam is the Qur’an; in Christianity it is Christ … The form of the Qur’an is the Arabic language which religiously speaking is as inseparable from the Qur’an as the body of Christ is from Christ Himself.1

4. Pray!

So in terms of reaching Muslims we have thought about the importance of friendship; of being clear about the differences; of answering the questions of our friends; fourth—and penultimately—pray! Pray for Muslims to cross your path, pray for divine encounters, pray for God to help you befriend and love Muslims, pray for God to engage them. And pray for the supernatural!

I’ve been struck over the years by how many times God intervenes dramatically—often through dreams—but sometimes in other ways with Muslims. One of my favourite stories comes via a friend who runs a network of apologists in Pakistan. Dangerous work. One of his team, Asif, was travelling on a train going to Lahore. Sitting opposite him in the train compartment was a very orthodox-looking Muslim gentleman. Asif felt that God wanted him to give his Punjabi New Testament to the man. He resisted, an internal struggle raged, finally he gave in. He started a conversation, worked it around to an appropriate place, and offered the man the book as a gift. Instantly, the Muslim flew into a rage and began getting violent, insulting Christians, cursing and then, finally, tore the New Testament in two and threw it out of the window. Asif backed out of the train compartment, concluding that you can get these things wrong.

A year later, he was preaching in Lahore. At the end of the service they had a time of testimony. A man stood up and shared how, a year or so before, he’d become a Christian, listening to satellite TV broadcasts. But he had no Bible in his language. So he began to pray. He prayed and prayed and prayed. One day, he was praying as he walked alongside the railway tracks. “Lord, please give me a Bible that I can read and understand.” A train roared past and he was hit on the head by first one half, then the other of a New Testament. He produced it in the meeting, bound together by sticky tape.

God is at work. Sometimes dramatically. Sometimes quietly. But when we pray, who knows what God may do.

5. Jesus

Finally, my last piece of advice is to find ways to bring Jesus into the conversation. One way to do this is to start from Jesus in the Qur’an. Many Christians are not aware that the Qur’an has about 90 verses about Jesus. You can use this as a bridge; for example you might say to a Muslim friend:

“The Qur’an mentions Jesus in about 90 verses—what do you know about Jesus?”

A follow-up question to feed into any subsequent discussion might be: “Did you know that Jesus taught through stories? Have you read any of his stories?” And then open up the gospels and introduce your friend to some of the parables of Jesus. I often find that the Good Samaritan is a great place to start (Muslims are drawn to the themes of justice and compassion there). Then you might move on to, say, Luke 15 and the story of the father and the two sons. One son is lost by running away; one is lost through trying to please his father through keeping the law. The story opens up lots of windows into the gospel and the question of how we really please God.

6. Conclusion

God loves Muslims and he is at work amongst them and calls us to be his co-labourers in that work.

And God has revealed his love, his character, his forgiveness, his suffering so clearly and so powerfully, most especially in Jesus Christ. Jesus said: “Go and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19). In the twenty-first century, multicultural UK, the nations have come here. Let’s ensure that as well as welcoming them to our land, we introduce them to our Lord.

A while ago myself and two colleagues were speaking at a university mission and we started the week with an open forum where my colleague spoke on “Why Jesus?” Over two hundred students came to the evening and the Q&A was very lively.

A week later, I heard from a man who had come to the evening and had brought a Muslim friend along. For some months, his friend had been questioning Islam and asking questions about Jesus. Something his Muslim friend heard that evening struck home, the final objections fell away, and a few days later he gave his life to Christ.

God is at work—sometimes slowly, sometimes dramatically—amongst Muslims. Let’s pray that he might work through each of us to reach the Muslims he brings across our path.

I hope you enjoyed this piece and found it helpful. Paid subscribers will find a link below to download a free copy of my book Do Muslims and Christians Worship the Same God?

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Is the Qur’an truly the perfectly preserved word of God—or is its history more complicated than many believe?

In this episode of the All Rise podcast, I join my friend (and former Muslim) Abdu Murray to talk about the turbulent early history of the Qur’an: from its oral roots to the compilation controversies that many Muslims have never been told about. Was there really just one Qur’an from the beginning? Did early Muslim leaders know what the Qur’an was? And what can the evidence of oral storytelling, variant versions, and missing passages tell us about how the Qur’an came to be?

With wit, respect, and deep scholarship, Abdu and I try to cut through the myths to explore what Islamic, historical, and scholarly sources actually say about the formation of Islam’s central text.

Whether you’re a Muslim, a Christian, or just curious about the Qur’an’s origins, this conversation offers thoughtful insights that challenge assumptions and invite further investigation.

Until the mid 1990s I hadn’t thought much myself about the question of how to navigate the maze of different religions. I’d been raised a Christian and had never talked much to those of different religions, so probably assumed, like many people, that most of the world’s religions were broadly similar. Then in 1997 I went along to a place in London, England, called “Speakers’ Corner”.

Known as the free speech capital of the world, on a Sunday afternoon at Speakers’ Corner anyone can stand on a ladder or a soapbox and talk about what they believe. They argue, they debate. And at Speakers’ Corner I found plenty of people of other religions—but especially Muslims—willing to attack what I believed and challenge my beliefs. And those early conversations with Muslims fascinated me so much I went on to do a PhD in Qur’anic Studies. That makes me an unusual Christian I guess.

Over the last almost 30 years, I’ve had hundreds of conversations with Muslims about my faith and I’ve probably spent as much time thinking about Islam as I have about Christianity. I’ve deeply appreciated Muslim friends and academic colleagues over the years.

So given all that: why am I a Christian and not a Muslim?

I want to offer you three reasons why: first, Muhammad. Second, the Qur’an. And third—and we’ll spend most our time here—Jesus.

Those first two are the pillars that Islam stands or falls on: Muhammad and the Qur’an—but those pillars stand on nothing, they support each other. The validity of the Qur’an is based on the testimony of just one man (Muhammad), yet Muhammad’s prophethood is based on the Qur’an. And so the whole thing is viciously circular. But let’s say a bit more.

Historical Problems with Muhammad

When it comes to Muhammad, the founder of Islam, I have two main problems. First, there are the terribly poor sources we have for the life of Muhammad. Muhammad’s earliest biography, the Sirat Rassulah, was written by Ibn Ishaq (d. 767) who was writing over a century after Muhammad’s death in 632—quite a time gap, compared to the Gospels, for example. But things are even more problematic: we do not possess Ibn Ishaq’s work, only parts of it reproduced by Ibn Hisham (d. 833)—so we’re now over two centuries removed from Muhammad. Ibn Hisham edited the work in order, as he wrote, to remove “things which it is disgraceful to discuss; matters which would distress certain people; and such reports as al-Bakka’i told me he could not accept as trustworthy.”1

The problems continue when you look at the growth of the biographical tradition. Ibn Ishaq’s biography is often fairly sketchy: he’ll mention, for example, that a battle occurred, but won’t provide the exact date, the names of the participants and so forth. One generation later, another biographer, Waqidi (d.823), managed to compose a considerably larger work than Ibn Ishaq’s, despite only covering Muhammad’s time at Medina. As the historian of Islam, Patricia Crone puts it:

[Waqidi] will always give precise dates, locations, names, where Ibn Ishaq has none, accounts of what triggered the expedition, miscellaneous information to lend colour to the event … given that all this information was unknown to Ibn Ishaq, its value is doubtful in the extreme.2

So there’s the huge question of how much we can even know about Muhammad, given the sources.

Muhammad’s Character

But when we look within the sources that we do have, there is the problem of Muhammad’s character. With the very greatest of respect to my Muslim friends, I find Muhammad’s character deeply troubling. We have a man who …

• Had his critics assassinated. For example, Asma bint Marwan. She was a Medinan poet who wrote a poem insulting Muhammad. When Muhammad heard what Asma had said, he asked his followers: “Who will rid me of Marwan’s daughter?” A man volunteered and crept into her house that night. She had five children, and the youngest was sleeping at her breast. The assassin gently removed the child, drew his sword, and plunged it into her, killing her in her sleep.

• Kept slaves for sexual purposes. This is mentioned in the Qur’an 33:50:
  
  “O Prophet, We have made lawful to you the wives whom you have granted dowries and the slave girls whom God has given you as booty.”
  
  Among other slaves, he had a Christian slave girl called Mariyam, given to him by the governor of Egypt. In The History of Al-Tabari, Al-Tabari (an early Muslim historian) reports that:
  
  “He (Muhammad) used to visit her (Mariyam) there and ordered her to veil herself, [but] he had intercourse with her by virtue of her being his property.”
  

• Used torture. For example, after Muhammad’s army conquered the Jewish town of Khaybar, one of its leaders, a Jew called Kinana, was brought to Muhammad. In the earliest biography of Muhammad, Ibn Ishaq’s Sirat Rassulah, we read what happened:

  
  Kinana al-Rabi, who had the custody of the treasure of Banu Nadir, was brought to the apostle who asked him about it. He denied that he knew where it was. A Jew came (Tabari says “was brought”), to the apostle and said that he had seen Kinana going round a certain ruin every morning early. When the apostle said to Kinana, “Do you know that if we find you have it I shall kill you?” He said “Yes”. The apostle gave orders that the ruin was to be excavated and some of the treasure was found. When he asked him about the rest he refused to produce it, so the apostle gave orders to al-Zubayr Al-Awwam, “Torture him until you extract what he has.” So he kindled a fire with flint and steel on his chest until he was nearly dead.

… and if we had time we could list much more. The more I’ve read in the Muslim sources about Muhammad’s character, the less I’m impressed. I have many friends who are former Muslims who left Islam when they discovered this for themselves.

Problems with the Qur’an

Then there’s the other key pillar on which Islam, stands: the Qur’an. Muslims have an extraordinarily high view of the Qur’an. For example, it is considered to have come down to earth directly from heaven, with no human involved in its creation—Muhammad is considered to have received it, via the angel Gabriel, but certainly not to have created it. The idea that the earthly Qur’an is a copy of the heavenly archetype is found in Surah 85:21-22:

“This is a Glorious Qur’an, (inscribed) in a Tablet Preserved!” (Q. 85:21-22)

But I don’t think this view of the Qur’an stands up. First, there’s the fact that 25% of the Qur’an consists of retellings of biblical stories, Jewish and Christian legends, and Arabic folklore. My PhD explored this and showed how the Qur’an looks very human—it looks like a series of orally composed sermons from the seventh century that borrowed heavily from elsewhere.

But then there’s the question of how we got the Qur’an. Muslims have been taught it’s been perfectly preserved, but the evidence doesn’t support this. In the early Muslim historical sources themselves we read how In 644 AD, the third caliph to rule after Muhammad, ‘Uthmān took the throne. As the Muslim armies advanced up into Armenia and Azerbaijan, rapidly conquering territory, reports reached ‘Uthmān that Muslim soldiers on the battlefield were arguing about how the Qur’an should be recited. The Muslim general, Hudhaifa ibn al-Yaman, brought a worrying report to the Caliph:

Narrated Anas bin Malik: Hudhaifa was afraid of their differences in the recitation of the Qur’ān, so he said to ‘Uthmān, “O chief of the Believers! Save this nation before they differ about the Book [the Qur’ān] as Jews and the Christians did before.” So ‘Uthmān sent a message to Hafsa saying, “Send us the manuscripts of the Qur’an so that we may compile the Qur’anic materials in perfect copies and return the manuscripts to you.” Hafsa sent it to ‘Uthmān. ‘Uthmān then ordered Zaid bin Thabit, ‘Abdullah bin Az-Zubair, Said bin Al-As and ‘Abdur-Rahman bin Harith bin Hisham to rewrite the manuscripts in perfect copies. ‘Uthmān said to the three Quraishi men, “In case you disagree with Zaid bin Thabit on any point in the Qur’an, then write it in the dialect of the Quraish, for the Qur’an was revealed in their tongue.” They did so, and when they had written many copies, ‘Uthmān returned the original manuscripts to Hafsa. ‘Uthmān sent to every Muslim province one copy of what they had copied, and ordered that all the other Qur’anic materials, whether written in fragmentary manuscripts or whole copies, be burnt.3

‘Uthmān’s destruction means we will never know what was in those other qur’anic manuscripts and how they differed from the Qur’an we have today. What we do know is that ‘Uthmān was widely criticised by other Muslims for what he did. For example, Ibn ‘Umar (son of the second Caliph) said:

“Let none of you say ‘I have learned the whole of the Qur’an’, for how does he know what the whole of it is, when much of it has disappeared? Let him rather say, ‘I have learned what is now extant of it.’”4

Whilst the tenth-century Muslim historian al-Tabari reported people saying to ‘Uthmān:

“The Qur’an was many books (kutub); you have abandoned all but one.”5

And thus this second pillar Islam stands on looks unreliable.

Jesus

So let’s now talk about Jesus. Jesus Christ is, of course, central to Christianity and to Christian faith, especially his death and resurrection. As the Bible puts it, everything stands or falls on the resurrection of Jesus:

¹⁷ And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. ¹⁸ Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. ¹⁹ If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied (1 Cor 15:17-19)

It’s for this reason I’m encouraged there is tremendous historical evidence for the resurrection.

But whilst Jesus stands at the centre of the Christian faith, many Christians are unaware that Jesus is also an important figure in the Qur’an, where about 90 verses talk of him and 25 verses mention him by name, using an Arabized version of his name, Isa.

This should not be a surprise: the seventh-century Arabia in which the Qur’an was composed was religiously very diverse, with Christian, Jewish and other groups present—and religious ideas and stories circulated freely. The Qur’an draws on these traditions and as we saw earlier, it’s been estimated that about 25% of the Qur’an consists of retellings of Jewish and Christian traditions.

In the fifth sura or chapter of the Qur’an, the qur’anic Jesus’s ministry is briefly summarised:

(Remember) when God said, ‘Jesus, son of Mary! Remember My blessing on you and on your mother, when I supported you with the holy spirit, (and) you spoke to the people (while you were still) in the cradle, and in adulthood. And when I taught you the Book and the wisdom, and the Torah and the Gospel. And when you created the form of a bird from clay by My permission, and you breathed into it, and it became a bird by My permission, and you healed the blind and the leper by My permission. And when you brought forth the dead by My permission, and when I restrained the Sons of Israel from (violence against) you. When you brought them the clear signs, those among them who had disbelieved said, “This is nothing but clear magic.”’ (Q. 5:110)

Elsewhere as we read the Qur’an we discover

• A major emphasis on the Virgin Birth of Jesus. The Qur’an tells this story twice, in sura 3:42-48 and sura 19:16-34. Here are a couple of verses from the first of those accounts:
  
  ⁴⁵ When the angels said, ‘Mary! Surely God gives you good news of a word from Him: his name is the Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, eminent in this world and the Hereafter, and one of those brought near. ⁴⁶ He will speak to the people (while he is still) in the cradle and in adulthood, and (he will be) one of the righteous.’ ⁴⁷ She said, ‘My Lord, how shall I have a child, when no man has touched me?’ He said, ‘So (it will be)! God creates whatever He pleases. When He decrees something, He simply says to it, “Be!” and it is.’
  

• That Jesus taught and brought a book called The Gospel (or Injil).6

• That he performed miracles (we saw some examples in Q. 5:110 earlier; elsewhere we read of him summoning a table of food from heaven.7)

• We also discover some very, very lofty titles applied to Jesus. So, for example he is:

  • The Messiah
    … the Messiah, Jesus son of Mary … (Q. 4:157)

  • A Word from God
    … a Word from Allah whose name is Jesus … (Q. 3:45)

  • A Spirit from God
    The Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, was only the Messenger of God, and His Word that He committed to Mary, and a Spirit from Him (Q. 4:171)

A Polemical Jesus

The Qur’an is also concerned with asserting right belief about Jesus. Thus his place in the prophetic line is repeatedly stressed (Q. 2:136; 3:3; 4:163; 42:13). His humanity is heavily underlined, the Qur’an being especially concerned with correcting Muhammad’s perceived doctrinal excesses of the Christians (3:59; 5:72). Jesus is not Allah’s Son, but merely his servant (4:172). The Qur’an also famously denies that Jesus was crucified.

This polemical focus makes Jesus unique among qur’anic prophets. As the Muslim scholar Tarif Khalidi writes: the qur’anic Jesus is “embroiled in polemic”, indeed “[he] is in fact an argument addressed to his more wayward followers.”8 One result of this is to abstract Jesus from his first-century Jewish context—he becomes, not a first-century Jew, but a seventh-century argument.

A Jesus Who Doesn’t Fit

Yet as we move through Islamic history, interest in Jesus continues to grow. If we turn to the hadith, the collection of traditions about what Muhammad said and did that were collated and edited in the ninth century, Jesus appears all over the place, taking on in particular a role in the end-times where he will return to fight the Antichrist, al-dajjal:

It would at this very time that Allah will send Jesus, son of Mary, and he will descend at the white minaret in the eastern side of Damascus, wearing two garments lightly dyed and placing his hands on the wings of two angels. When he will lower his head, there would fall drops of water from his head, and when he will raise it up, drops like pearls would scatter from it. Every non-believer who would smell the odour of his self would die and his breath would reach as far as he would be able to see. He would then search for him (Al-Dajjal) until he would catch hold of him at the gate of Ludd [a village near Jerusalem] and will kill him. Then a people, whom Allah will have protected, will come to Jesus, son of Mary, and he will wipe their faces and inform them of their ranks in Paradise.9

And so we begin to see a problem—both with the Qur’an and the Hadith. The problem is that the Islamic version of Jesus doesn’t look very Islamic; he doesn’t fit:

• There’s no Islamic reason why Jesus is born of a virgin.

• His names (‘Word of God’ and ‘Spirit of God seem to suggest he doesn’t just speak God’s words, that somehow he is God’s word). This doesn’t look very Islamic.

• The title ‘Messiah’, used by the Qur’an eleven times10 for Jesus, gave later Muslim scholars huge problems, as the Qur’an nowhere explains what it means (to discover what it means, you need to read the Bible). The fourteenth-century Iranian lexicographer, al-Fīrūzabādī, collected all the interpretations he could find in previous commentators, some 50 different ideas, my favourite being “flat footed”, because Jesus walked about preaching so much his feet were flat.

• His miracles look Islamically rather odd—no other qur’anic prophet (certainly not Muhammad) performed these sorts of amazing feats. Why so many miracles?

• His role on the Day of Judgement—hinted at in the Qur’an but vastly expanded in the hadith—also looks very odd.

The more you study this, the more apparent it increasingly becomes that the Qur’anic Jesus doesn’t look very Islamic. He doesn’t really fit the Qur’an. The Qur’an claims he is just an ordinary prophet, whose role (as is that of all qur’anic prophets) is just to pass on messages from God. But there is much more going on—he is virgin born, works miracles, bears special titles. And he turns up on Judgement Day, striking down God’s enemies, dividing good and evil, welcoming the righteous into paradise.

The Qur’an has tried to squeeze Jesus into its story but has failed miserably: it’s rather as if somebody has taken Pride and Prejudice and inserted into it Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings, hoping nobody would notice.

Jesus does not belong in the Qur’an and Islam. He has been borrowed, ripped from his home habitat, and even though the Qur’an does its utmost to squeeze him into its theology, Jesus simply refuses to fit.

The Muslim Jesus doesn’t fit into Islam—he acts weirdly, says strange things, bears strange titles. He feels like an alien invader. And that’s because he is. He has been borrowed by the Qur’an and his background forgotten.

But when we turn to the Bible, Jesus suddenly makes sense. There we see a Jesus whose claims of messiahship, whose titles, miracles, and virgin birth make sense. A Jesus who was always challenging people with questions about his identity:

²⁷ Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked them, “Who do people say I am?”

²⁸ They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.”

²⁹ “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?” (Mark 8:27-29)

And the Christian answer to that question is that Jesus is more than a prophet, but God himself, stepping into space and time and history.

That, of course, is the big divider with Muslims. And the question I am asked by Muslims more than any other is why do you Christians worship Jesus? Muslims think Jesus was just a man, just a prophet, and thus Christians are guilty of blasphemy for worshipping something other than God. As the Qur’an puts it:

Allah said, “O Jesus son of Mary, didst thou say unto men, ‘Take me and my mother as gods, apart from God’?” Jesus said, “To Thee be glory! It is not mine to say what I have no right to.” (Q. 5:116)

I like to respond to Muslim friends by pointing out that Jesus is worshipped all over the New Testament—for example in Revelation 5:6-14 he is portrayed as a lamb, standing on God’s throne, receiving worship. In Philippians 2:10 we are told that every knee will bow in worship and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord . In Matthew 28, after meeting the resurrected Jesus, we are told the disciples “worshipped him”.

Elsewhere in the New Testament we read of Christians praying to Jesus, baptising in the name of Jesus, and “calling on the name of the Lord” (a phrase that in the Old Testament referred to God).

This was how the early church behaved. So now we have a choice: either Jesus was the most useless religious leader ever—he didn’t believe he was God, but utterly failed to communicate that to his closest followers, and they all messed up. Or … or … Jesus really did make claims to be God that his disciples understood.

Let me give you five brief reasons why I think Jesus did indeed claim divine identity:

1. His attitude to the Old Testament, sacred scripture to Jews. Jesus put his own words on a level with scripture, frequently saying things like “you have heard it said, well I say to you”. Commenting on this, the famous Jewish scholar, Rabbi Jacob Neusner, said that Jesus’s attitude to Torah wanted to make him ask: “Who do you think you are? God?”11

2. Jesus believed he had the authority to forgive sin—something that only God could do.

3. Jesus’s attitude to his own name. Rather than say “the Lord says to you” like Old Testament prophets, Jesus usually said “I say to you”. He taught his followers to pray in his name.

4. Jesus declares himself “Lord of the Sabbath” (Mark 2:28). The Sabbath was central to Judaism and faithful Jews believed the Sabbath was sacred time, the Sabbath was something God himself had set up at the beginning of creation. Jesus thus claiming Lordship over it is tantamount to Jesus saying “I am the Lord of space and time”.

5. Jesus’s favourite title for himself was “Son of Man”, a title he took from Daniel 7 in the Old Testament, where “one like a Son of Man” is enthroned beside God in heaven. In his trial before the high priest, Caiaphas, Jesus quotes Daniel 7, to which Caiaphas responds “blasphemy!” and sends Jesus to the Roman governor to be executed.

If Jesus did and said all this and was merely a man, he would be a liar, a deceiver, and a blasphemer. Indeed he was crucified by the religious leaders as a blasphemer. And if he’d stayed dead, he would be a dead deceiver. But he didn’t. God raised him from the dead, proving and vindicating the claims Jesus had made about himself. That’s why Christians worship Jesus.

In Conclusion

So why am I not a Muslim? Because the twin pillars on which Islam stands, the Qur’an and Muhammad, are historically doubtful and morally questionable. Not least the Qur’an, in the way it has borrowed and mangled Jesus, is revealed to be a deeply confused and contradictory book.

But I’m also not a Muslim because I trust and believe Jesus. I believe his words, I believe his testimony about himself, I believe we have incredibly good historical evidence for his life, ministry, death, and resurrection. And if Jesus was who he claimed to be—that leaves no room for Muhammad. Not least a Muhammad who tried to rewrite Jesus’s story 600 years after the events.

And it was the historical Jesus who said on one occasion:

“Greater love has no one than this, that they lay down their life for their friends.” (John 15:13)

The greatest form of love is self-sacrifice: a person laying down her life for her friend; a parent sacrificing themselves for their child; a soldier giving his life to save his platoon during war. Now, if God is a god of love, then the love God shows must be the greatest form of love, because everything God does is the greatest. He is the greatest creator, greatest judge, greatest lover. And that means that God must be able to show self-sacrificial love, or he wouldn’t be love and he wouldn’t be God. And that’s what the God of the Bible has done, in and through Jesus:

“God demonstrates his own love for us in this—while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)

There is nothing like this in Islam. And that’s why I’m not a Muslim, and why I’m a Christian.

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Most of the toughest questions about the Christian faith are not abstract or philosophical but are deeply personal. Whether it’s the problem of suffering and evil, or doubts about whether God could love somebody like us, or the questions and doubts that arise when we feel our prayers go unanswered.

You don’t need to have been a Christian for very long to run into the challenge of prayers feeling as if they are bouncing off the ceiling. So if you’re wrestling with this question, you’re not alone. The famous Christian writer C. S. Lewis said that unanswered prayer, especially as he prayed for his sick and dying mother as a boy, was one reason he abandoned faith until his 30s. Lewis wrote:

The trouble with God is that he is like a person who never acknowledges one’s letters and so, in time, one comes to the conclusion either that he does not exist or that you have got the address wrong.1

At this point it’s easy for atheists to scoff and say “I told you so!” but the challenge is there’s no solace in secularism. If atheism is true, there is no God to be silent, but worse than that, the universe is utterly impassive and entirely doesn’t care. And when suffering comes, or you see injustice, or when life feels unfair, well suck it up: if atheism is true, we live in a world where evil prospers, the strong flourish at the expense of the weak, and one day everything ends in the heat death of the universe.

If prayer isn’t real, if God doesn’t exist, that wouldn’t be some kind of triumphal win for atheism, but rather the bleak and depressing recognition that humans are, as atheist cosmologist Lawrence M. Krauss put it, “a 1% bit of pollution in the universe”.2 Maybe the very fact that we recoil at that suggestion is itself a clue that we are more than just cosmic debris, and that the spiritual instinct most humans find within themselves is a clue to a bigger story.

For Christians, that bigger story is centred around the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus—the Bible repeatedly proclaiming that if you want to know what God is like, then look at Jesus. And in the one and only prayer that he taught his followers to pray, the words we know today as The Lord’s Prayer, Jesus emphasised that God is relational. “Want to know how to pray?” said Jesus.“Well, start like this: ‘Our Father in heaven’”. No other religion makes the bold claim that you can pray to the very Lord and Creator of the universe using such relational language as this.

But it’s that deeply relational quality to Christian prayer that can make it feel very tough if it seems that our prayers are going unanswered. If God were simply a distant, remote PO box number to whom we sent our missives with no expectation of any response, we might be able to shrug our shoulders and say “Well, what did you expect?” But that’s not the God of the Christian faith, the God who revealed himself in Jesus, and thus we can feel abandoned, or forgotten, or just plain baffled when we think our prayers have been ignored.

But if that’s the place you find yourself in, there are some questions that it can be helpful to ask. The first is this: “if God feels distant, who has moved?” Whilst it is not always the case, the reality is that sometimes it is we who have walked away, we who have allowed our relationship with God to grow distant and cold. Perhaps we’ve allowed other priorities to take the place of God in our lives in which case maybe the place to begin is with seeking a reset in our relationship.

In Luke 15 Jesus tells a famous story of a son who through his own stupidity had become alienated from his father. When the son finally hits rock bottom he trudges sorrowfully back home, with a carefully prepared speech begging to be taken in as a servant. But his father sees him on the road, runs to embrace him, and welcomes him back as a son. God is like that, Jesus said, ever ready to welcome us back into his household, always ready to forgive. Perhaps if we’ve allowed ourselves to become distant from God, the place to start is by asking for forgiveness and experiencing the mercy and reconciliation of our heavenly Father.

Second, if we are wrestling with unanswered prayer, it’s worth pausing and asking ourselves whether we’ve unconsciously begun treating prayer as a kind of magical slot machine. Yet whilst there’s nothing wrong with asking God for our needs, it’s important to remember that God is our heavenly Father and his primary desire for us is that we would grow to love and trust him and see our character refined so it’s more like Christ.

This is why prayer is good for us, even when we don’t receive the answer we would like. Those times remind us that God is not a cosmic Santa Claus but our Father, whose desire is not to grant our wishes but to draw us into deeper communion with him. When we pray, we should not simply be chasing outcomes but seeking God himself. The deeper we come to know God, the more we will find peace in his presence, regardless of whether we receive the answers we wanted.

Third, because God is primarily concerned with our hearts and our character, that sometimes requires learning tough lessons; so it could be that the reason we haven’t seen an answer to a particular prayer is that God wants us to learn persistence. In Luke 18, Jesus told a story about a widow who needed a judge to help her obtain justice. He kept rebuffing her, so she repeatedly asked until finally the judge gave in and met her request. Jesus wasn’t suggesting that we need to pester God enough so he’ll grant our wish to get some peace, but rather Jesus was saying if an unjust judge acts like this, how much more can we expect from the truly just Judge of the universe. So don’t give up: ask, seek, knock, and be patient.

Fourth, it can be helpful to ask whether you are leaning too much on your feelings. The wonder and joy of the Christian faith is that you don’t get to decide how much God loves you based on whether a particular prayer has been answered, or whether you’re feeling happy or sad, but the Bible explains that if you have any doubt what God thinks of us, then look at Jesus:

God demonstrates his love for us in this; while we were still sinners, Jesus died for us. (Romans 5:8)

Speaking of Jesus, it’s helpful to remember that Jesus himself, God’s own son, experienced the silence of heaven when on the cross he cried out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” In Jesus, we have one who understands our pain when heaven feels silent. But the silence of heaven when it came to Jesus was for a reason—in his case, bearing the sins of the world, mine and yours, so we could enjoy God’s friendship.

We live in a broken world and are broken ourselves; and in that context prayer can sometimes feel tough. But God’s love is our unshakeable foundation and when the deep, personal questions about faith come, make sure that you’re standing on the rock of God’s love for you shown in Jesus; because that way, the storms may still batter, but you can stand firm.

Finally, if you’re wrestling with unanswered prayer, some practical wisdom: don’t wrestle alone. Find Christian friends to pray with, who can carry you and comfort you when the valley seems dark. One friend of mine, after her husband’s untimely death, struggled with prayer for a year; but she said what made all the difference was friends who came, sat with her, and prayed with her.

Speaking of dark valleys, that language comes from a famous chapter in the Bible, Psalm 23. If you’re struggling with prayer because heaven seems silent right now, try taking words like that psalm and using them as your own prayer; praying with the words of the Bible can be very powerful.

Ultimately we may never know why a particular prayer goes unanswered; I’ve offered some thoughts above, but everybody’s story is different. There will be times when we simply need to acknowledge that we don’t know why God doesn’t intervene: we know that he is good (Jesus and the cross prove this), we know that we live in a fallen world and we can also know with certainty that one day everything that is sad and bad will become untrue when Jesus returns. Sometimes we need to hold onto that hope and trust God with our questions.

But in all of this, remember: God loves you. No matter what you’ve done, what you’re going through, what you’re wrestling with, nobody is too far from God to be encompassed by his love and offered his forgiveness in Jesus. As Deuteronomy 33:27 puts it: “The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms”. Our sense of God’s presence may ebb and flow as our emotions ebb and flow, as life’s circumstances toss and batter us; but God’s love and care for us is the same, yesterday, today, and forever.

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This article is a modified version of the chapter in
Have You Ever Wondered?

During my schooldays I hated maths with a vengeance. Maths was hard, maths was difficult, but above all it seemed to me to be mind-numbingly boring. I particularly hated negative numbers and would stop at nothing to avoid them. Terrible jokes aside, my dislike of maths wasn’t unusual, for many of us struggle when it comes to anything to do with numbers; indeed it’s been remarked that there are three types of people in the world: those who can count and those who can’t.

What finally got me excited about maths in my late teens was when I discovered computers and in particular computer programming. Rather than numbers that described things (“six curries”, “three trips to the loo”, “one bad night’s sleep” etc.) with computers came numbers that did things. Give a computer the right numbers and it could play a game, draw a picture, or solve a problem.

Maths is Everywhere

That was the 1980s and now, of course, computers are everywhere and so is maths. Even if (like most of us) the phrase “let’s do some maths” seems about as exciting as “let’s take up stamp collecting” or “how about a wet weekend in Bognor Regis?” you can’t actually escape the fact that all of us use maths, dozens of times a day. Every time you drive a car, make a budget, bake or cook, kick a ball into a net, or watch a weather forecast you’re using maths, usually without realising it.

We can’t get through life without numbers and this is especially true when it comes to the sciences. Whether it’s launching a space probe, or modelling the curvature of space-time, or calculating orbital trajectories, scientists are utterly reliant on mathematics.

Not least this is because nature is inherently mathematical. Numbers are written into the laws of physics whilst mathematical patterns turn up everywhere. For example, in AD1202 the Italian mathematician Leonardo Bonacci, more popularly known as Fibonacci, published an essay in which he described a series of numbers like this:

1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34

Each number in that series is the sum of the two numbers before it. “So what?” I hear you cry. Well, what’s fascinating is that pattern turns up frequently in nature: the Fibonacci Sequence describes the growth of animal populations, the number of petals on flowers, the spirals on a shell and so forth. It also turns up in aesthetics, with the Fibonacci Spiral, based on those numbers, popping up all over art and architecture. This connection led the famous atheist philosopher, Bertrand Russell, to remark that “Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty.”1

A Mathematical Mystery

But there’s an intriguing mystery here that cries out for an explanation—namely why does mathematics work so well? Because numbers are all around us in everyday life, we don’t tend to stop and think about them—but have you ever wondered why life, the universe, and everything seems to align so well with maths?

Here’s the problem. If we live in a purely material universe, where the ultimate reality is atoms and particles then what actually is a number? What is “2”? I mean you can’t sit on it, climb it, lick it, or whack it with a hammer. Instead, numbers are just a human invention—a mere concept probably first invented by Mesopotamian goat herders sometime around 3400BC as a way to keep track of their flocks. So how is it that numbers also seem to describe the very fundamental building blocks of the universe? As Professor Jim Al-Khalili, former president of the British Humanist Association put it:

It’s a huge philosophical question: Why does nature speak the language of mathematics?2

Either those goat herders got very, very lucky—or else there is something bigger going on. And remember, by the way, that maths isn’t just about counting things, it’s also full of purely conceptual ideas, like imaginary numbers. (I remember when this concept was first introduced to me as a teenager I complained to the teacher: “Real numbers are awful enough, why would anybody want to make up more of the things?”) But these mathematical constructions, these concepts, turn up all over nature. What is going on?

Numbers are Really Real

Some time ago I was having a beer with a friend who is a professor of mathematics at a leading British university and I made a throwaway remark about what an exciting job he must have, inventing new concepts all day long. Alex looked at me very seriously and said that this was a common misunderstanding. “We don’t invent maths,” he said. “Maths is about discovery. Mathematicians are explorers—we head out into the unknown to find what’s there; that’s why maths transcends culture, time, and place”.

I think Alex was right—there isn’t “Chinese maths”, “British maths”, or “Indian maths”—there’s just maths. Mathematical concepts don’t change depending on who discovers them, they’re universal. But when you discover something: a new type of frog, a previously unknown mountain, the sharp corner of a Lego brick under the foot in the darkness of the midnight hallway, you’re finding a real thing, in the real world, something that has a concrete existence. But what about numbers? Where precisely is this mathematical realm that Alex and his colleagues spend their days exploring, mapping, and charting?

The Miracle of Numbers

In 1960, the Hungarian Eugene Wigner published what is now a very famous essay, ‘The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences’, in which he explored this conundrum. Wigner begins with the story of two friends, one of whom was a statistician working on population trends. The statistician showed his friend an essay he was writing on the first page of which was a mathematical equation concerned with population growth. “What’s this little π symbol here?” the friend asks. “Oh, that’s pi, the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter?” “You’re having a laugh,” his friend retorts, “what on earth has the population to do with the circumferences of circles!”3

Wigner goes on to show how time after time, mathematics and science—whether it’s demographics or physics—fit together like a hand in a glove. Wigner admits that scientists cannot explain why this is the case, but that nevertheless we should be extremely grateful that it is. He concludes:

The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. We should be grateful for it and hope that it will remain valid in future research and that it will extend, for better or for worse, to our pleasure, even though perhaps also to our bafflement, to wide branches of learning.4

Maths and the Meaning of Life

Numbers are everywhere and they can do a lot for us. But there are some things that numbers can’t do—they can’t, for example, solve bigger questions like telling us the value of a person, the purpose of existence, or the meaning of life. Hence why attempts by some atheists to reduce the whole of life to that which can be indexed, measured, or numerated remind me of an episode from Douglas Adams’ famous novel, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. A group of scientists have built a super-computer, Deep Thought, tasked with answering the question of the meaning of life once and for all. Despite major protests from the Amalgamated Union of Philosophers, Sages, Luminaries and Other Thinking Persons (“I mean what’s the use of us sitting up half the night arguing that there may or may not be a God if this machine only goes and gives us his bleeding phone number the next morning”5) the computer is switched on and allowed to ponder the question. After seven and a half million years of contemplation, Deep Thought is finally ready to announce the answer: the final answer, the objective answer, the definitive answer to the Great Question of Life, the Universe and Everything:

“I don’t think,” said Deep Thought, “that you’re going to like it.”

“Doesn’t matter!” said Phouchg. “We must know it! Now!”

“Now?” inquired Deep Thought.

“Yes! Now...”

“Alright,” said the computer and settled into silence again. The two men fidgeted. The tension was unbearable.

“You’re really not going to like it,” observed Deep Thought.

“Tell us!”

“Alright,” said Deep Thought. “The Answer to the Great Question...”

“Yes...!”

“Of Life, the Universe and Everything...” said Deep Thought.

“Yes...!”

“Is.” said Deep Thought, and paused.

“Yes...!”

“Is …”

“Yes … !!! …?”

“Forty-two,” said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.

It was a long time before anyone spoke. Out of the corner of his eye Phouchg could see the sea of tense expectant faces down in the square outside.

“We’re going to get lynched aren’t we?” he whispered.6

When it is later suggested to Deep Thought that the answer is somewhat anti-climactic, the computer retorts that the problem is possibly that nobody knew what the question actually was with any precision.

Numbers are not going to answer the question of the meaning of life for you. But I do want to suggest that numbers might be a clue as to where that meaning might be located. For if nature really is fundamentally mathematical; if numbers are as real as apples, aardvarks, and anticyclones, then it seems that whatever the deepest level of reality is, we’re looking at something more like a mind, rather than mere atoms and particles. Which is, fascinatingly, precisely what the Bible has always claimed—for in the beginning, it says, was not a molecule, nor an atom, nor a field of quantum particles—but God himself, the ultimate mind, in which numbers and mathematics have their source.

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The English village of Hayle is typically picturesque, a small cluster of cottages set around a harbour, looking out to the tranquil waters of St. Ives bay. But like so much of England, layers of darker history lie beneath the pretty-as-a-postcard facade. Hidden behind the undergrowth in the garden of what was once the local youth hostel, yawns the mouth of a tunnel. Stoop to step inside its cool darkness and one can walk for hundreds of yards, eventually emerging beneath the cliffs on a nearby cove. Although dank and musty now, local legend identifies this as an ancient “Smuggler’s Tunnel”, once used for bringing illegal contraband ashore under cover of darkness.

The coastal towns and villages of England are full of tales of such tunnels, many dating back centuries to when smuggling was at its height. On moonless nights, sailing ships would pull quietly into bays like that at Hayle, offload their illicit cargo into smaller boats and bring it ashore. There the contraband would be hauled across the sands, carried through tunnels, or even manhandled up sheer cliff faces to a waiting line of locals who would spirit it away. Whole communities benefited from the smuggling trade and the customs men, whose job it was to thwart the black market trade, were often foiled by a stone wall of silence. As Rudyard Kipling, who grew up on the English coast and knew these stories well, wrote in his poem “A Smuggler’s Song”:

If you wake at midnight, and hear a horse’s feet,
Don’t go drawing back the blind, or looking in the street.
Them that ask no questions isn’t told a lie.
Watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!
Five and twenty ponies,
Trotting through the dark—
Brandy for the Parson,
‘Baccy for the Clerk;
Laces for a lady, letters for a spy,
And watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!1

When you heard the sound of horses, or the whispers of voices late at night, you were supposed to look the other way, ask no questions, ‘watch the wall’, as the contraband was smuggled past.

Today, the smuggling business is alive and well, only it is not tobacco or brandy that are secreted past, but value judgements. You see, whenever a writer tells you that something is good and laudable, or that something is bad and condemnable, there is an important question you must ask before you consider whether or not to believe them. What worldview do they subscribe to and does that worldview support the value judgement they are making, or are they having to smuggle it in from outside, hoping that everybody will look the other way?

Let me illustrate by means of the humble sport of cricket. Back in 2013, at the height of the Ashes test series against Australia, English cricketer Stuart Broad allegedly engaged in some unsportsmanlike behaviour by not admitting the ball had caught the edge of his bat before it was caught. Whilst a cricket match may move, at least to American eyes, with slow glacial majesty, it is a game high on chivalry and so Broad’s actions caused huge controversy. One cricket fan, the well-known English atheist, Richard Dawkins, took to Twitter to protest:

Stuart Broad obviously knew perfectly well he was caught. Refused to walk. What a revolting cheat. I now want Australia to win the Ashes.2

Dawkins followed this up with:

I am well aware that it is a fact that professional cricketers care about winning more than about morality. But they bloody well shouldn’t.3

When I first read this flurry of tweets,4 I must confess that I found them exceedingly curious. This is, after all, the same Richard Dawkins who has argued that when it comes to explaining all of life, evolution is the “only game in town”. Indeed, in his book River Out of Eden, Dawkins penned this oft-quoted passage:

The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. As that unhappy poet A. E. Housman put it:
For Nature, heartless, witless Nature
Will neither know nor care.
DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is. And we dance to its music.5

But if this is true, it raises a question. If nature really is neither good nor evil, if we are all simply dancing to the music of our DNA, from where is Dawkins deriving the value judgement which he is waving around and bashing hapless cricketers over the head with? The answer is that it is a smuggled value judgement. If Dawkins were consistent the best he could offer would be to grumble that Stuart Broad’s DNA is clearly playing a different tune to his, but hey, some enjoy waltzing whilst others prefer to tango. What his worldview certainly does not allow him to do is pronounce Broad as immoral, instead he must smuggle that value judgement in from somewhere else, hoping we don’t notice. Watch the wall, my darling, while the value judgements go by …

That was fun. Let’s try another.

This next example comes from Alom Shaha, former Muslim and author of The Young Atheist’s Handbook. After an introductory chapter extolling the wonders of bacon, Shaha switches from pork to beef, specifically his beef with organised religion. Among the many aspects of religion that irk Shaha is the belief in the afterlife:

It’s an insidious idea, this notion that there is life after death … It depresses me to think that so many people on the planet live their lives with this notion. Can we truly fulfil our potential as a species as long as we hold on to, and encourage, the perpetuation of the lie of life after death?6

Like the writings of many other atheists, Shaha’s book is not so much an argument as a moral tract. Just look at his words above—do you not sense the energy, the passion, his beatific vision of a species fulfilling its potential? But hold on one moment, though. Shaha is, like Dawkins, committed to naturalistic materialism—the belief that all that exists are atoms and particles. Human beings are just the result of time plus chance plus natural selection, there’s no reason we’re here. And that means there is no potential we have to fulfil. Study science if you wish, feed the poor if you’re so moved, or simply park yourself on the couch, eat pizza, and watch endless re-runs of Game of Thrones. DNA neither knows nor cares.

In his satirical poem, ‘Evolutionary Hymn’, C. S. Lewis illustrated the dilemma for the atheist well:

Lead us, evolution, lead us,
Up the future’s endless stair,
Chop us, change us, prod us, weed us,
For stagnation is despair!
Groping, guessing, yet progressing,
Lead us, nobody knows where.7

If the evolutionary story is all that there is, then there is nothing that human beings are supposed to be. We are simply one point on the graph of the endless march of evolution and we have no way of knowing where the ever-winding road takes us. Behind us, lies a trail of ancestors all the way back to the primordial soup, ahead of us lies—well, we have no way of knowing. So where, pray, is Shaha getting the language of “potential” from? Certainly not from his atheism. Like Dawkins, he is smuggling it in from outside, distracting us with stories of illicit bacon in the hope we won’t notice anything suspicious. Watch the wall, my darling, while the value judgements go by …

One last example, this time from Sam Harris, atheist and neuroscientist. In his book The Moral Landscape, Harris excitedly tells us that religion is no longer needed as the compass of morality, nor to determine the content of ethics, but instead that science can answer moral questions. Here’s how the trick is done:

[Q]uestions about values—about meaning, morality, and life’s larger purpose—are really questions about the well-being of conscious creatures. Values, therefore, translate into facts that can be scientifically understood: regarding positive and negative social emotions, retributive impulses, the effects of specific laws and social institutions on human relationships, the neurophysiology of happiness and suffering, etc. … If there are objective truths to be known about human well-being—if kindness, for instance, is generally more conducive to happiness than cruelty is—then science should one day be able to make very precise claims about which of our behaviors and uses of attention are morally good, which are neutral, and which are worth abandoning.8

In other words, morality is all about well-being, about happiness, and science can tell us how to maximise that. By the careful application of science, we can ensure that the greatest possible number of people can live happy, healthy, productive lives. No God needed.

What’s the problem? Well, to answer that it helps to realise that Harris’s argument is nothing really new, but is basically a modernised version of an old ethical theory called Utilitarianism, one which traces its roots to two English philosophers, Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873). Their approach said that morality is about maximising “utility”—which is usually defined as happiness. When you’re faced with a moral choice, you must pick that action which will produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. And many atheists today, like Harris, think science can answer those kinds of questions very well.

But here’s the problem. Why maximise happiness? Why is happiness a good thing? Even if we decide that it is, why should I decide that your happiness is worth the same as my happiness? (Perhaps mine is more important than yours.) From where is Harris deriving the value judgement that maximising happiness (and doing so with a careful eye to equality and fair play) is a good thing? Watch the wall, my darling, while the value judgements go by …

With practice, you can learn to spot smuggled value judgements everywhere. Whenever somebody tells you that something is good or bad, noble or evil, ask yourself whether their worldview sustains the value judgement they are making.

A few years ago, I had lunch with a young atheist from the University of Toronto, who wished to ask some questions about the Christian faith. Over the space of a couple of hours, he fired dozens of questions at me and I did my best to respond. As soon as I had answered one question or objection, he’d fire another at me—bang, bang, bang! At the end of our time together, as I walked him to his car, I was racking my brains, trying to think of something I could leave him with to make him think more deeply. As he opened the door of his car, I said to him: “I’ve enjoyed our lunch and I hope some of my answers helped you. But more than that, I hope you felt that I treated you with respect and dignity, despite our profound disagreements?”

“Yes,” he replied, “you have been very kind”.

“Good,” I said, “and I have to say, you have also been very courteous, despite your clear difficulties with the Christian faith.” He thanked me and I continued: “But I’d like to leave you with a thought. The reason I have treated you with respect is I believe that as a human being, you are made in the image of a God who created you and loves you, and who showed how much he values you by sending his Son, Jesus, to die for you. That’s why I treated you the way I did. Now, I know that you do not believe this. In fact, you have told me three times in the last two hours that you believe humans are nothing more than atoms and particles, that we are just an accident of biology. But you have not treated me as an accident. You have treated me as a person of value and significance. In other words, you have treated me on the basis of my worldview, not of yours. For this I am grateful, but it raises some questions, wouldn’t you say?” For the first time in two hours, he had nothing to say in reply.

If the Christian worldview is true, if the arc of the biblical story tells the truth of who we are, then it gives the only basis I know for the use of words like ‘good’ and ‘evil’, ‘ought’ and ‘must’, ‘purpose’ and ‘potential’. If you wish to wipe God from the picture, then God, in his mercy, has given you that freedom. But with God goes the source of all value judgements, leaving the atheist alone in a purposeless universe and thus left with just two choices: either to be consistent and admit they can no longer speak of things like morality, or to start smuggling in value judgements from the Christian worldview, under cover of darkness. Altogether now: Watch the wall, my darling, while the value judgements go by …

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This is an extract from the best-selling book,
Have You Ever Wondered? … get the ebook from free at this link!

I grew up in a very diverse part of London; where I lived as a teenager, you could choose from a thousand different belief systems: Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Humanism, and a multitude of other isms. Within a mile ori two of home, there were churches, mosques, temples, a gurdwara, and a myriad other places of worship.

Religion was everywhere as I grew up and today, a few decades on, it’s still everywhere and it’s growing. According to the statistics, we are becoming a more religious society here in the West. People don’t believe less, but they do believe more diversely.

One reason for the growth in religion and spirituality is that people are increasingly dissatisfied with shallow secular answers, the idea that all you need is money and pleasure, and that’s enough. As psychiatrist and author Viktor Frankl famously put it: “Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.”1

How do we answer that meaning question? Winifred Gallagher is a journalist who has written for magazines including Rolling Stone, Harper’s and The Atlantic. In an interview about her book, Working on God, she describes this growing unease in our culture, this sense that there must be more to life than this:

The only way to describe the new phenomenon I am observing is to coin a new phrase: spiritual agnostics. We have regarded religion as belief in unbelievable things. Our trusted tools of intellect and learning have deconstructed religious belief. But we’re finding that we have inexplicable feelings. We wonder: Is this true? Is this all there is? I have tried to muffle this question in all the accustomed ways all my life: love, achievement, stuff, and therapy. I tried to muffle it by writing two books on science. By middle age, I have wearily recognized that religion is the only road I have not taken in pursuit of the answer … We’re haunted by faith.2

If as Winifred discovered we are spiritual beings who need more than the endless treadmill of career to satisfy us, that raises a deeper question: which religion? Many people when they first begin to realise that there’s a spiritual side to life then quickly panic when they see the incredible range of religious options on offer. Paralysed by choice, the temptation is to reach for easy platitudes, such as “Well, I wonder if all religions teach basically the same thing?” That’s a warm, comfortable answer, not least because it allows us to approach spirituality in a slightly consumerist way, picking the beliefs, ideas, or practices that “work for us”: a little bit of yoga, a dash of meditation, the odd prayer, a couple of candles, and a lemon-scented journal.

But the uncomfortable, nagging fact remains that the only way to maintain this idea is by not actually going and looking. It’s a bit like when I frequently misplace my car keys: “Have you looked in the lounge where you normally lose them?” my wife will ask. “Yes, dear,” I reply, by which I mean I glanced briefly through the door but didn’t bother searching properly.

And it doesn’t take much looking or searching before you stumble across some fairly stark differences between the teachings of the world’s major religions, faiths, and spiritual traditions. Take just the two biggest religions, Christianity and Islam—often sloppily lumped together under the label “Abrahamic Faiths”. To give just one major example, if you look at the character of God in the Bible, you discover the Bible’s claims that God is relational, knowable and is not just loving, but is love. Turn to the Qur’an, and you discover its claims about God are almost entirely opposite.

“Ah, but that’s just theology,” you say. Alright, well what about some history. The central event of the Christian faith is the death and resurrection of Jesus—and secular historians will tell you that the former is one of the best attested facts of first-century history. If we can’t be sure that Jesus was crucified, under the Roman governor Pilate, sometime round about AD33, then we can’t be sure of anything in first-century history, as the evidence is so overwhelming. But along comes the Qur’an, some 600 years after these events, and claims that Jesus was not killed by crucifixion, but that this was just a wild claim made by the Jews. Those two historical claims (crucified and not-crucified) are impossible to reconcile, as execution by crucifixion is a rather binary affair: you can’t be partly crucified or only-mostly-dead.

And the more you study Christianity and Islam, or indeed the more you compare any of the world’s faith traditions, the more the contradictions mount up. Short of closing your eyes, covering your ears, and muttering “What car keys?”, you can’t escape the differences.

So how to navigate the maze of diversity and difference? Well, first, don’t be worried by it—it’s just one more sign that human beings are inherently religious, that we’re wired for faith, designed to be spiritual. That a desire for connection with God bubbles up everywhere in human culture, across time and space and history, is itself a massive clue. But that aside, how do we work through all the options and choices? Do we just pick randomly and hope for the best—or is there a better way?

I think there is. And so my first suggestion is this: try praying. Radical idea, right? But if there is a God behind this universe and there is religious truth to be discovered, then rather than take on our shoulders the full load of finding it, maybe we might ask for help? After all, Jesus famously said: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” So why not try praying, perhaps something like this: “God, I don’t know what to believe about you, but I want to know the truth and I want to encounter you. Would you please guide my steps as I seek?”

Second, take a long, hard, careful look at Jesus—perhaps by reading one of the four first-century eyewitness accounts of his life, death, and resurrection found in the gospels in the New Testament. Lots of religions claim to offer wisdom, advice, or high-minded thoughts about God and spirituality—but Christianity teaches that God stepped into space and history in the person of Jesus, in order to show us what he was like. If Jesus’s claims not to just have ideas about God, but to be God-with-us stand up, then that answers both the “Which religion?” question as well as the “What is God like?” question, in one go.

It’s easy to forget just how startling the impact of Jesus’s life has been, until you stop and actually think about it. The paradox is captured powerfully in this famous meditation written a century ago:

He was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another village, where he worked in a carpenter’s shop until he was thirty. Then for three years he was an itinerant preacher. He never wrote a book, never held an office, never went to college, never visited a big city. He never travelled more than two hundred miles from the place where he was born. He did none of the things that usually accompany greatness. He had no credentials but himself. He was only thirty-three when the tide of public opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. One of them denied him. He was turned over to his enemies and went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed to a cross between two thieves. While dying, his executioners gambled for his clothing, the only property he had on earth. When he was dead, he was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend … All the armies that have ever marched, all the navies that have ever sailed, all the parliaments that have ever sat, all the rulers that ever reigned put together, have not affected the life of humankind on earth, as powerfully as that one solitary life.3

And, third, try reading the stories of those who have trodden the path of spiritual inquiry before you, especially those who have had the courage to follow it out of the religious tradition where they began. One of the most powerful books I have ever read in this vein is Nabeel Qureshi’s autobiography, Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus. It tells the story of how, as a young and highly devout Muslim, he set out on a quest to know God better—and discovered that the journey led him not deeper into Islam, but to an encounter with Jesus.

When it comes to the most important questions of life, ultimately what matters are not our feelings or our hunches, but what is true. When we go to the doctor with a worrying pain we don’t want her to say: “What medicine do you feel would help?” but we want a diagnosis, and a correct prescription. When we board a plane, we don’t want the captain to come over the PA system and invite anyone who feels like it to come up to the cockpit and have a go at flying. What matters in these situations are not feelings or preferences, but truth. And it’s the same when it comes to questions of spirituality and religion—tempting as it is to settle for easy answers that make us feel good, I want to suggest that we need to find answers that measure up to reality, given that much is at stake.

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Based on a talk first given at Canford School in Dorset

I was recently stunned when I logged onto the BBC News website to read the following story:

In a stunning historical revelation, researchers at the German Federal Archives have uncovered a handwritten letter, allegedly dictated by Adolf Hitler on April 29, 1945—just one day before his death. The letter, addressed to an unnamed clergyman, contains statements of remorse, with Hitler reportedly confessing his “immeasurable guilt” and pleading for God’s mercy. “I was blind,” one passage reads. “If there is a God, may He have mercy on my soul.” Historians are divided on the letter’s authenticity, but if genuine, it could rewrite everything we thought we knew about one of history’s most infamous figures.

How does that story make you feel? Shocked? Relieved? Outraged? Baffled? Stunned? Why is that? I confess I made that story up. (And when I gave a talk at a school based on this essay, I even photoshopped the BBC News website and had half the students in the room convinced).

But suppose the story were true. Could God forgive Hitler?

Evil incarnate?

One of the grim realities of human nature is that we are very conflicted creatures. All of us have the ability to be angelic and all of us have the ability to be monstrous. If only one could easily divide the world into “totally good” and “totally evil” people, life would be so much easier, right?

But Hitler does seem easy to categorise. He is one of a small group of people (Stalin might be another) whose actions represent the utter extremes of human wickedness. Hitler was responsible for the death of six million Jews in the Holocaust, along with millions of others—prisoners of war, Roma gypsies, civilians, the list goes on.

No wonder that if historians did discover that on 29 April 1945, as Allied troops were closing in on the Führerbunker in Berlin, Hitler had somehow prayed, repented and come to Christ, we’d be asking: could God forgive Hitler? Would Hitler be in heaven?

Some thoughts about forgiveness

What amazing questions. But to tackle them honestly and properly, we first need to explore a little bit of background, starting with asking what we mean by forgiveness and why we need it in the first place.

At the heart of the Christian faith stands the incredible claim that Jesus died on a cross to forgive our wrongdoing, our brokenness, our screw ups, our evil. As Jesus himself put it:

For even the Son of Man [Jesus’s preferred title for himself] did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. (Mark 10:45)

But maybe your reaction to that is “Well, I don’t need forgiveness. There’s nothing wrong with me.” Well, nice try: but the reality is we all go wrong in all kinds of ways.

Imagine that you died and arrived in heaven. An angel meets you at the gates of heaven and says, “Welcome, so glad you could make it, we’ve arranged a special surprise for you”. And he escorts you to what appears to be a cinema. He guides you to screen 1, sits you down alone, and gives you a large bucket of popcorn. “Welcome to the Theatre of Judgement” says the angel, smiles, then disappears as a movie begins to play.

Lo and behold, it’s the movie of your life—everything you’ve ever thought, said, or done is up there on the screen. Some bits are great, other bits make you cringe with embarrassment—all the stupid decisions, all the rude hurtful things you said about others, all those secret thoughts and selfish ambitions. All the things you did—but also the things you didn’t do.

Finally the movie ends and as the credits roll, the angel reappears. “Hope you enjoyed that,” he says cheerfully. “Now we’re going to have a second screening, and everybody else featured in the movie is going to come and watch it—all your family, your friends, your enemies, your neighbours, colleagues—everybody is going to get to watch every little detail of your life”.

Who would want that? Who would want to show that movie to their friends, family, to their dear old granny? Most of us who are really honest with ourselves know there are things deep within us that we don’t want anyone to know about—and the Bible has a word for that stuff, for that inner brokenness we try to hide from others, even ourselves. The Bible calls it “sin”.

Imagine that you commit 5 sins a day, every day, between the age of 16 and the age of 60. Nothing necessarily major, just petty cruelties. That’s a total of 80,355. And that’s before we get to things you should have done, but didn’t. Friends you could have helped. That mobile phone you bought despite knowing it was made by slave labour in China. And so on. That life movie is looking more like a multi-part series now and granny is in for a massive shock.

No wonder that the Bible says:

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23)

Every one of us needs forgiveness. No exceptions.

But suppose you say, grudgingly, okay, maybe I might need forgiveness. Well why can’t God justforgive me; why did Jesus have to die?

Well, notice something for a moment. Real forgiveness, genuine forgiveness is always costly. Imagine that you were to accidentally reverse your car into mine and dent it, causing £1,000 of damage. You look in the glove compartment for your paperwork and horrified, you discover your insurance has expired—and there’s no way you can afford to pay for this yourself. But I take pity on you, forgive you your debt and let you off—you have been forgiven but your forgiveness came at a cost. I paid the price so you could be forgiven. Your forgiveness was not free.

Or imagine a friend betrays you and damages your reputation. Then they come to you, genuinely ask for your forgiveness and you forgive them. But forgiveness carries a price. If you choose to forgive them, you have to carry within you the cost of forgiving them and turning away from vengeance.

Forgiveness is always costly for the forgiver and always free for the one being forgiven. And thus it’s no surprise that this even more the case when it comes to God. Because the reality is that each one of us is so bad that Jesus had to die for us, yet so loved that he was glad to die for us. As the Bible puts it:

God demonstrates his own love for us in this—while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)

But here’s the thing—if forgiveness is free, where is justice? If you’re feeling that tension, good—because it shows you understand something crucial: forgiveness isn’t the absence of justice. True forgiveness is costly. Someone has to bear the weight of the wrongs done. That’s exactly why God didn’t just wave sin away, but Jesus paid for it with his own life.” Grace isn’t cheap. It’s incredibly expensive. God doesn’t just shrug his shoulders at sin. Every sin (yours, mine, Hitler’s) is accounted for. Either we bear it ourselves, or Jesus bears it for us. There is no third option.

So … what about Hitler?

And that we all need forgiveness and that forgiveness is costly is the key to thinking about Hitler. Because here is the thing: if you discovered that Hitler really had repented and would enjoy an eternity with God, your response reveals nothing about God, nor about Hitler, but it reveals a lot about you.

You see here’s the question: what grounds or basis do you have for getting into eternity that Hitler didn’t have? Why should God allow you into heaven? Maybe you might say:

· “I’ve done more good works than Hitler!”. But good works are not the basis of God’s forgiveness.

· “I’ve lived a better life!”. But that’s not the basis of God forgiving you.

· “I didn’t do the evil that Hitler did!”. But if you’re a Christian, this is not why God forgave you. God does not owe you, or me, or any of us forgiveness. Forgiveness by its very nature is always free to the one receiving it.

So why would God forgive you? Because you genuinely asked. And genuinely repented. And genuinely threw yourself on God’s mercy. And when God forgives you, you did not deserve it. Not in the slightest. It was totally God’s gift.

Apart from God’s grace, we would end up separated from him for eternity. And we would entirely deserve it. But if you ask God’s forgiveness and receive it and get to spend eternity with him, there will never—not for one single second in eternity—be a moment where you deserve to be there.

And so ends our thought experiment.

Let’s be clear, I don’t think there is the slightest piece of evidence that Hitler repented because forgiveness needs true repentance. But God could have forgiven him. But let’s forget Hitler for a moment. Let’s talk instead about you. You see, if God’s grace is big enough for Hitler, it’s big enough for you and your mess ups. But have you accepted it?

Practical Forgiveness

And all of this isn’t just theoretical, but it is also very practical. Because God’s forgiveness also has an impact in the real world, bringing peace between those who were once enemies.

One of my heroes is Corrie ten Boom. In 1939, Corrie lived with her father and sister in the Netherlands, where her father ran a watchmaker’s shop. Holland fell to the Nazis in 1940 and soon attacks on Jews became commonplace. Committed Christians, Corrie and her family began helping to smuggle Jews out of the country, hiding many in their home. But in 1944, disaster struck. They were discovered and the family were arrested by the Germans. Her father died very quickly, but Corrie and her sister, Betsie, were shipped to Ravensbrück Concentration Camp. There they suffered terrible abuse and atrocities and Betsie eventually died an agonising death.

Corrie, however, survived and was eventually released and began a post-war career as an evangelist, speaking about God’s love. But one day, something shocking happened. Let me quote Corrie’s own words:

“It was at a church service in Munich that I saw him, the former SS man who had stood guard at the shower room door in the processing centre at Ravensbrück. He was the first of our actual jailers that I had seen since that time. And suddenly it was all there—the roomful of mocking men, the heaps of clothing, Betsie’s pain-blanched face.

He came up to me as the church was emptying, beaming and bowing. “How grateful I am for your message, Fräulein”, he said. “To think that, as you say, He has washed my sins away!”

His hand was thrust out to shake mine. I tried to smile, I struggled to raise my hand. I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity. And so again I breathed a silent prayer. Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me Your Forgiveness.

As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me.

And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on Christ’s.”1

I think Corrie was right. And if that is true, that God’s forgiveness does not hang on us but on Jesus, then yes, God could forgive even the most monstrous of us. He has forgiven me (and I know what I can be like and how much I needed it). So what about you?

“This clearly isn’t a path,” my wife shouted, struggling to make her voice heard above the roar of the gale. We were on the side of a hill in the Lake District, enjoying what was supposed to be a summer afternoon stroll. But this being England, the weather wasn’t playing ball, or indeed any sport other than possibly water polo.

“But there’s a path marked on the map,” I protested, as the rain (which was blowing sideways) began to leak down my neck. Thankfully I was wearing one of those modern outdoor jackets optimistically marketed as ‘breathable’, which I think translates into “it lets the water in, but doesn’t let it out again”.

“What precise map are you using?” my wife yelled, as a raven blew past us, backwards.

“The OS one.”

“That explains everything.”

For those not familiar with British cartography, OS stands for ‘Ordnance Survey’, the UK national mapping agency. Its curious name reflects its roots, which lie in military history and defence of the realm. In the past, military surveyors would pace the land, mapping every peak and dale, every road and every village.

These days, things have changed. Much of the work of map making happens behind a desk, because using satellite photos and aerial photography is much cheaper. Unfortunately, it’s also less accurate, as cartographers can misread a photograph or simply come over all creative and say ‘Hey, let’s draw just a path here on the side of Mungrisdale Common and hope for the best’.

So I was fascinated recently to meet a lady out in the wild and lonely back country behind Skiddaw in the Lake District’s northern fells. What stood out was that she was carrying a backpack with a huge aerial sticking out of the top as well as some kind of electronic pole that she was tapping on the ground every 30 seconds or so. We fell into conversation and I asked her what she was doing.

“Ground-truthing,” she replied.

My experience of the terminology of modern surveying being on a par with my terminology of Latvian Spoon Dancing, I asked: “What’s ground-truthing?”

She explained her job was to walk all the major paths on the OS maps in the area, checking that what was on the map corresponded to reality.

“Sometimes I think somebody at a desk in Southampton makes a lot of stuff up,” she whispered conspiratorially. Then with a smile, she did something technical with her survey pole, and strode off purposefully northward.

But her word stuck with me. Ground-truthing. What a wonderful term. And what a crucial idea, that a hunch (drawn from an aerial photo, say) must be verified in person, on the ground. Cartographical theory needs testing against geographical reality.

WHEN PHILOSOPHY WANDERS OFF THE MAP

It also occurred to me that ground-truthing applies in lots of areas of life, for example when it comes to our deepest beliefs about the world. It’s very easy to come up with all kinds of clever ideas about life, the universe, and everything which sound great on paper or in your head, but then fail in the real world. I would suggest that atheism can be particularly prone to this.

Consider these words from atheist philosopher Alex Rosenberg, whose book The Atheist’s Guide to Reality is refreshingly direct about what atheism entails:

Is there a God? No.

What is the nature of reality? What physics says it is.

What is the purpose of the universe? There is none.

What is the meaning of life? Ditto.

Why am I here? Just dumb luck.

Is there free will? Not a chance!

What is the difference between right and wrong, good and bad? There is no moral difference between them.

Is abortion, euthanasia, suicide, paying taxes, foreign aid, or anything else you don’t like forbidden, permissible, or sometimes obligatory? Anything goes.

Does history have any meaning or purpose? It’s full of sound and fury, but signifies nothing.1

Putting aside the fact that paragraphs like this make it clear why Alex is a philosopher and not a motivational speaker, my problem is that this deeply materialistic let’s-chuck-out-God-but-also-much-of-what-it-means-to-be-human-too kind of atheism fails when you try to ground-truth it. What happens when you try to live out “anything goes” in the real world? What happens if we treat other people as if they’re just deterministically driven lumps of matter? At best, you’re going to be friendless; at worst, the strong trample all over the weak.

It really is vital that we ask how our beliefs work when we try to live them out in the real world. Do my beliefs pass any kind of basic liveability test? If you’re an atheist, you’re free to reject Christianity’s teaching that human beings are valuable and precious because they were made in God’s image (Genesis 1:26-27). Reject that by all means and replace it with “genetic robots dancing to our DNA”. But unless you’re willing to ground-truth that and see what it looks like lived out in the real world, perhaps you need to ask yourself whether you really believe it.

I remember on one occasion having lunch with a student who had asked if we could meet up so he could ask me “A few questions about Christianity”. I hadn’t realised that he was using ‘few’ in the same sense of the word as ‘Amazon stock a few items’ and for two hours over burgers he peppered me with question after question after question. I occasionally tried ineffectually to turn the conversation around to what he, as an atheist, believed, but got precisely nowhere. Finally, as we walked from the restaurant to the car park and got to our vehicles, an idea popped into my head.

“I hope you found our conversation useful?” I asked.

“Yes, thanks for taking the time.”

“And I hope, as I tried to answer all 54 of your questions, I treated you with respect, even though we disagreed.”

“Oh yes, thank you, you’ve been very kind and patient.”

“Great,” I added, “and I must say, even though your ability to ask tough questions would make a hardened political journalist on Red Bull look like a mere amateur in comparison, you were also polite and generous in how you asked them.”

“Thank you.”

“But just one thought for you to consider. The reason I treated you with kindness was because I believe you are, as the Bible teaches, a person with value and dignity because you are made in the image of God. On the other hand, you said over lunch—three times if I recall—that you think we are just atoms and particles. Yet you didn’t treat me as just a bunch of atoms; you treated me as a person with value and dignity. In other words, you treated me on the basis of my beliefs, not on the basis of your beliefs. Don’t you find that fascinating?”

For the first time in over two hours, he didn’t have a quick-fire remark in reply and as he thought about what I’d asked, finally admitted that there were perhaps a few issues with his atheism that he perhaps hadn’t considered before.

This is, I think, one of the biggest challenges for atheism. Proclamations like “we’re just particles”, “we don’t have free will”, “science explains everything”, “music is just a neurological tic” (to quote a few New Atheist soundbites) may sound impressive sitting at a desk, or after a few beers down The Slug and Skeptic, but try and live by them and, like relying upon an imaginary path on a Lakeland fellside in a rainstorm, you’re likely to get badly lost.

LONG-TERM GROUND-TRUTHING

Ground-truthing can be a rapid, one-off exercise, like the Ordnance Survey lady I met out in the back country with her surveying gear. But it can also be a longer-term project.

Ronald Blythe was one of England’s greatest nature writers. For almost 50 years until his death, aged 100, in 2023, Ronnie lived at Bottengoms Farm deep in the Essex countryside, from where he built a writing career around observing, long-term and in detail, the nature around him. One of his friends was another nature writer, Robert Macfarlane, who wrote of Ronnie:

I’ve long thought of Ronnie Blythe as a ground-truther, in many senses. For decades, he has been fathoming place as deep rather than wide, and doing so by walking, talking, listening, and watching … ‘Everywhere,’ writes Ronnie, ‘it is all so perfectly interesting that one might never go to bed.’ That is his sensibility in a sentence: inquisitive, wandering, democratic, giving us the truth on the ground.2

Ronnie was so respected as an authority on nature and the English countryside because he had lived in it, observed it, tested it, walked in it—ground-truthed it—for decade upon decade. And, again, there are parallels when it comes to our beliefs about the bigger story, when it comes to God, faith, and Jesus. I have a lot of respect for Christians who have thought their faith through. But I have even greater respect for those who have not just done that in a vacuum, but whose faith has been tested over decades, who have put Christianity to the long-term ground-truth test.

People like my father-in-law, David, for example. It’s just over a year since we lost David to cancer, at the age of 89. He had followed Jesus for over 70 years and throughout the quarter of a century I knew him, I’d been impressed by the depth of his faith. Being a Christian for that length of time often means your faith has been lived in, tested, refined, and ground-truthed. Through good times, bad times, and everything in between, David had put Christianity to the test through living it.

When David was first diagnosed with cancer back in 2024, I remember him quietly saying to me: “I’ve followed Jesus for seven decades. Never in all that time has he let me down. That gives me every confidence that, no matter what this final stage of the journey looks like, I can trust him.”

For David, what sustained him at the end wasn’t primarily an argument or a creed. Rather it was experience, 70 years of walking the road with Jesus, knowing the road—but more importantly, the guide—was trustworthy.

Which is how the Bible describes faith. Time and time again, it uses the imagery of walking to describe what following Jesus looks like. In the hyper-rationalistic world of the West, we can be too quick to try to reduce Christianity to factoids: “Give me the claims, just the facts, then I’ll decide whether I believe your list of propositions.”

That’s a start; it gets you to the garden gate. But a good walk doesn’t stop at the garden gate but heads out into the lane, across the field, up the foothills, and into the mountains. And then you’d better be sure your map is reliable.

Christianity is similar. Yes, its claims matter. Truth is important. But I have followed Jesus these last 45 years not purely because I’ve signed off on a list of beliefs, but because as I have walked with Jesus into the real world (where life, in all of its messiness happens), I have found, again and again, that it works, that it is ground-truthed.

Beauty. Justice. Identity. Love. Stories. Nature. Hope. These things intrigue us, move us and prompt us to ask big questions. Could there be clues in our deepest desires that point to life’s meaning?

Have You Ever Wondered? Finding the Everyday Clues to Meaning, Purpose and Spirituality is a fun, readable, and accessible book designed to gently start spiritual conversations. It’s one of the most exciting books it’s been my privilege to be involved with!

Have You Ever Wondered? invites you on an immersive tour through the issues that matter. This book is for anyone who has looked at a landscape and contemplated why we are drawn to beauty; or wondered why we are so insatiably curious about our universe, or even for those who have simply looked up at a million stars in the vast night’s sky and just wondered.

Whether you’re seeking and exploring spirituality and faith yourself; or if you’re a Christian looking for a gentle book to give to a friend to help them think about Jesus in an engaging way, Have You Ever Wondered? is the ideal book for you.

Starting from the things that already matter to us and showing how these are clues to life’s bigger story, Have You Ever Wondered? really is a book for anyone, no matter where they are on their spiritual journey.

With chapters written by ten different authors from a wide range of backgrounds, there’s truly something in here for everybody!

How do I get a copy?

• If you’re in the UK, you can order it direct from 10ofThose — there are some amazing deals for bulk orders for churches, too!

• It’s at Amazon.

• Live in Canada? You can get it via our friends at 10ofThose Canada.

• If you are in the USA, it can be ordered via 10ofThose in the USA.

• Buy it from your favourite (ideally independent!) bookstore.

Order it in the UK from 10ofThose or direct from IVP

In North America, get it from 10ofThose Canada or 10ofThose USA

I was recently planning a trip to visit a colleague who lives in Perth in Scotland. Being a typical man and therefore proud of my navigational skills, my ability to fend for myself, and my intricate knowledge of the British motorway network, I reached manfully for my phone and typed ‘Perth’ into Google Maps.

Despite the fact that I live just outside Swindon in the south-west of England, that my phone has navigated me to Scotland many times, and that one would have assumed a computer would pick the nearer destination than one many thousands of miles away, Google Maps decided I must mean Perth, Australia.

It’s not easy to confuse Perth, Scotland with Perth, Australia. One is hot, has great beaches, and exotic wildlife; the other is wet, windy, and is more famous for its midges than for its marsupials. Thus I’ve yet to encounter a tourist stumbling out of arrivals at Perth Airport in Scotland wearing sandals and shorts and muttering “what the heck?”

But somehow, Google Maps confused the two and threw up an error: “No route possible”.1 My eleven-year-old son, who was looking over my shoulder at this point, asked: “Dad, why would Google think you meant Perth in Australia—if you wanted to get there, you wouldn’t start from here”.

If you wanted to get there, you wouldn’t start from here.

Those words of wisdom reminded me of another experience I’d had on my phone the very same day. I’d been checking the comments on a video I’d posted on social media and come across something an atheist had written. The video had been addressing the question of whether life can have meaning and purpose without God and I had argued that it could not. The commentator had protested and replied: “I have a whole set of values I live by”. He’d then shared a graphic that laid out some of those values, including ‘love’, ‘peace’, ‘kindness’, and ‘justice’.

But just as in my Google Maps experience, we can say: “That’s a great destination! Who wouldn’t want to arrive at love, peace, kindness, and justice? But here’s my question: can you get to those things from your starting point?”

The problem is that, at least if you want to be a consistent atheist (and let’s be fair, all of us as humans can be terribly inconsistent) then you’re committed to a number of things. In short: that there is no God, no supernatural, no soul, that humans are just another animal, that we’re merely the stuff we’re made of, and that the basic bottom-level reality of the universe is just the laws of physics.

Now you’re welcome to start from there. But trying to start from there and navigate your way to love, peace, kindness, and justice does look a bit like trying to drive to Perth, Australia from the south-west of England. At some point, you’re going to end up at the bottom of the ocean wondering if you should rethink your life choices.

In case you think I’m being unfair or misrepresenting atheism, here is what popular atheist philosopher, Alex Rosenberg, has to say about ‘love’:

Let’s start with love and the design problem it solves for males. A male won’t get sexual access to a female unless the male can convince her that he’ll be around to share some of his resources with her and the kids he is going to produce. Since females have been selected for not being fooled by mere expressions of fidelity, they demand stronger assurances before they will allow males to have their way with them … What will reliably guarantee unenforceable promises about the future when it would be irrational for any male to keep them? One thing that would do it is a sign of irrational commitment to the female and to her interests that could not be faked … love is irrational and unfakable, by males at any rate. In nature’s search through design space for a strategy that will ensure males’ sexual access, the emotion of love looks like it will just do the trick.2

All I can say is that life must be an absolute barrel of laughs in the Rosenberg household, especially around Valentine’s Day or wedding anniversaries. But I respect what Alex is trying to do here. He’s committed to his atheism, he’s smart enough to know that ‘love’ must therefore be explicable purely in terms of the nuts-and-bolts of biology, and so he ended up with that joyous little paragraph.

It gets similarly tricky with the other things on my commentator’s list. Justice? Again, on atheism it’s hard to see how you can do more than recognise that we each have preferences for how we’d like others to behave and if we’re lucky, we get to gang up with others (call it ‘society’ or ‘civilisation’ if you’re feeling flashy) and enforce those preferences on others. Kindness? Well, again, nature doesn’t seem particularly bothered about that one—not for nothing is it called ‘survival of the fittest’ not ‘survival of the nicest’. And peace? Well, good luck with that one.

Don’t mishear me on this. I think that love, peace, kindness, and justice are wonderful—that they are things to aspire to, virtues to aim at developing in us and in society. But we need to answer the question: what’s the basis of these things? What’s the starting point, the foundation on which we can build them? Because just as you can’t drive to Australia from England, bicycle to the moon from the Earth, or build a house without foundations, you can’t pick your values at random. Your starting point matters.

The historian Tom Holland puts it well when he writes:

People in the West, even those who may imagine that they have emancipated themselves from Christian belief, in fact, are shot through with Christian assumptions about almost everything. All of us in the West are a goldfish, and the water that we swim in is Christianity, by which I don’t necessarily mean the confessional form of the faith, but, rather, considered as an entire civilisation.3

That’s true in so far as it goes. Only it doesn’t go quite far enough, as the reason Christianity has survived (and thrived) for two thousand years, despite the best efforts of tyrants or sceptics to destroy it, isn’t because it’s a great foundation for a nice set of values. That’s to put things entirely on their head. Christianity didn’t spread, didn’t turn the values of the ancient world upside down, didn’t change hearts and minds because people liked its ethics. Rather it spread because people were convinced it was true, that Jesus really was God, really did die, and really had risen from the dead. And then, emboldened and empowered by Jesus, they transformed how they lived. The values we hold so dear are the fruit of Christianity, not its root. Indeed, as former atheist Louise Perry put it:

One of the reasons that I ended up becoming a Christian is because I realised if it were supernaturally true, you would expect it to be sociologically true.4

At the heart of the Christian faith stands not a set of values but a person, Jesus Christ. And if his claims hold water, if not just his teaching but his entire life stands up, then that doesn’t just give us a foundation for the values we yearn for, but it has some personal implications too. For Jesus didn’t just come to sort society out; he came to sort us out, and as he promised: “I have come that you might have life and have it to the full”.

We’re told that we should care for the environment, but why should we care? Can we do better than selfish reasons that make it all about us? In this webinar from a few years ago, I talk about two of my favourite topics—God and the natural world—and show how I believe that it’s only a robust Christian faith that can truly give us a firm foundation to care for nature.

I was recently speaking at a university where I’d been asked to address the topic “Does Religion Poison Everything?” During the lecture, one student at the back of the lecture room gesticulated wildly every time I made a point with which he disagreed. At the end of the talk, there was a time of Q&A and this student was among the first to raise his hand. He began by self-identifying as an atheist and then proceeded to ask a series of increasingly complex questions about moral philosophy. After the event was over, the student found his way to the front and continued his questions and we went to and fro for about half an hour across a range of issues: Can you be good without God? Do you need God for moral values? What does the good life look like? Finally the student shook my hand and said, “I’ve disagreed with almost everything you’ve said in the last 90 minutes. But this has been the most fascinating conversation I can remember and you’ve given me much to think about. Thank you.”

That comment made my day because it was a refreshing break from the norm. For too often when those who hold to wildly different worldviews—atheism and Christianity, for instance—engage with each other, the result can be more heat than light. Atheists can fall into “argument by soundbite” (or by meme!) whilst religious believers sometimes write off those who disbelieve in God as immoral pagans, and thus neither side actually takes the time to listen to the other. As Harry Lewis, the former Dean of Harvard College, once wrote, lamenting the fact that intelligent conversation about the deepest questions is now increasingly hard in universities (and his point might apply to the media, too):

What used to be the big question of humanistic learning—what does it mean to be human?—now has little place in the academy because there is no way to tell whether the question has been answered correctly or not.

It might encourage Harry to learn that one of the things I have discovered in years of travelling and speaking in a wide variety of settings, including many universities, is that I think many people are open to talking about some of these issues in a way that is intelligent and respectful.

A few years ago a colleague and I were speaking at a Canadian university for a pair of events entitled “Does Spirituality Matter?” We had been told by the organisers that we might, if we were lucky, get 100 students per evening. In the end, 900 per night attended, and the overflow room had an overflow. People of all faiths and none wanted to engage with the topic and the questions and conversations flowed long into the night.

I believe we stand at a cultural moment where the need to answer some of life’s biggest questions gets ever more pressing, as science, technology, and politics raise them all the louder. What kind of “questions” do I have in mind? The old ones: What does it mean to be human? Does life have any kind of purpose? What does the ‘good life’ look like, and who gets to decide? Is death the end and how does your answer to that question, negative or affirmative, affect the here and now? Was the famous atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell right when, after reflecting on where his worldview predicted the universe to be heading, he concluded that “only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built”?

Whatever position one takes on these matters, we can at least agree, I hope, that these are not unimportant questions. They are also questions on which people disagree and thus we need to find a way—through dialogue, conversation, questioning and listening—to explore what others think.

When I lived in London, one of my favourite habits on a weekend was to visit Speakers’ Corner at Hyde Park. Speakers’ Corner is affectionately known as the world centre of free speech, for there anybody can stand on a ladder or a soapbox and speak about their beliefs—religious, political or otherwise. I learnt public speaking at Speakers’ Corner but also found it a wonderful place to debate and dialogue with people who radically disagreed with my Christian faith, especially Muslims and atheists. (I so enjoyed those conversations that they led me to do a degree in theology and philosophy, and then a PhD in Islam.)

What I learnt at Speakers’ Corner and what I’ve continued to discover, as I’ve had the privilege of speaking to diverse audiences around the world, is that human beings are not going to agree on everything. The major worldviews disagree profoundly on almost all of the important questions (for example: are human beings merely atoms and particles, or do words like ‘mind’, ‘consciousness’ or even ‘soul’ refer to something?) But it is through dialogue and debate that we can be encouraged to think more deeply, stretched to consider the potential pushbacks against our own worldview, and perhaps be challenged to think through the reasons for our convictions more carefully.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the Russian writer and political activist who survived the gulags and wrote with such insight into the human condition, was fond of this old Russian proverb: “One word of truth outweighs the whole world”.

Much of the modern world is deeply pluralistic. Some people look at that pluralism and think the way to deal with difference is to rudely squash all challenging worldviews. Others think we should collapse the distinctives and say that “truth is relative”, that we should pretend that everybody believes essentially the same. But I think the way to a peaceful society lies down neither path, not least because truth is too important to reduce to power plays or to relativism. Perhaps if instead we can listen, discuss, dialogue, and debate well, we can find ways to live together with our differences.

If you found this piece helpful, thought-provoking, curiosity-sparking or in other ways useful, please consider subscribing. It helps me keep my writing free for those who can’t afford to make a contribution. Thank you.

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It is never a good idea to try to set fire to your shorts whilst wearing them, I thought to myself, as Darren departed the football field shrieking, white smoke trailing behind him. During my high school years, Darren was the class idiot. (I think he’d been aiming at class joker but had missed, badly: as somebody once remarked, many people who attempt to be a wit only make it halfway). Darren was always ready to interrupt a class with a stupid remark or snide heckle, was often in trouble because of pranks or stupid stunts gone wrong, and was the first person I ever saw carried off a sports field with scorch marks.

Every community has its brilliant members, its leading lights and all have their single-watt flickering light bulbs, their village idiots. This goes for every community, not least the atheist and secular community.

Over the years it has been my pleasure to read, learn from, and sometimes debate with a wide range of brilliant atheist thinkers and writers. From Michael Ruse to Mary Midgley, Julian Baggini to Luc Ferry, there are many secular thinkers whose work is thoughtful and engaging. Both offline and online I’ve also met thousands of atheists of all ages and backgrounds (some of whom I have had the privilege to call friends) who whilst disagreeing with what I believe have been intelligent, articulate, and thoughtful.

But there are exceptions. The atheist and secular community also has its fruity and nuttier varieties and that led some writers, a few generations ago, to coin the term ‘Village Atheist’ to describe those who let the rest of the secular tribe down by their antics.

Whilst the Village Atheist has always been around, their presence has been amplified by the Internet for to misquote the proverb, a fool and his opinion are soon tweeted. Before the advent of social media, Village Atheists lurked in the dark corners of pubs muttering incoherently, whilst a few of the more gregarious ones clubbed together and formed sad little societies on university campuses. But once the Internet took off, suddenly Village Atheists discovered a currency for badly Photoshopped memes or sarcastic soundbites.

This has proved frustrating to the wider secular community, who have in recent years been working hard to brand themselves as rational and reasonable. The atheist enfant terrible, Richard Dawkins, himself not immune from the metaphorical equivalent of striking matches near his nether regions, contributed to this rebranding exercise, at one point suggesting that atheists should use the term ‘Bright’ to describe themselves. But it’s hard to sustain that image when there’s a local Village Atheist in the corner, muttering and mumbling pearls of wisdom like ‘religion is for idiots’ whilst flossing his teeth with a live electricity cable.

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Hallmarks of Village Atheism

So if you’re an atheist or secular type, how do you know if you’re a Village Atheist, or in danger of heading that way? Here to help you out are thirteen hallmarks of Village Atheism:

1. The tendency to mindlessly parrot soundbites

Village Atheists have a habit of lobbing tired old atheist catchphrases into the conversation and then chickening out when asked to defend them. I see this regularly on my social media feeds. A passing Village Atheist sees a link to, say, a book review by a Christian philosopher and, wiping the flecks of foam from his mouth, rapidly types: ‘Belief in God is irrational’. When you politely ask: ‘Really? Tell me why you think that?’ there is usually silence or, if I’m really lucky, another entirely random secular soundbite.

2. A binary view of the world

Village Atheists tend to divide the world into polar opposites: rational sceptics versus irrational dyed-in-the-wool-faith-heads (that’s one of Dawkins’ more charming aphorisms, probably coined on a day he’d misplaced his Ritalin). Somehow Village Atheists missed the part of growing up where you discover that people can hold a different view to you and that doesn’t make them stupid. Over the years I’ve met incredibly smart religious people and incredibly smart secular people; I’ve also met religious people and secular people who are as dumb as rocks. What makes the difference is not a person’s belief (or the lack thereof) in God, but their willingness to explain their reasons and listen to and engage with those who disagree.

3. A lack of awareness of the foundations of your own beliefs

A classic hallmark of Village Atheism is the inability to think about your own dearly held views and what supports them. I remember a Twitter exchange with an enthusiastic young secularist (so passionate, he’d adorned his social media profile with a weird mash-up of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and Christopher Hitchens, which had the unfortunate side effect of making Hitchens look like Medusa on a bad hair day). During our discussion, the atheist kept insisting that ‘Any fool knows human beings are just matter and molecules’ and yet, five minutes later, was accusing Christianity of being ‘bad for human rights’. When I politely asked how he thought human beings had ‘rights’ if we were ‘just matter’ he admitted he’d never thought about that question.

Similarly, if you’re an atheist keen to use your Reason (capital ‘R’, of course) to beat up on those superstitious religious types, perhaps you might want to think about tough questions like why you can trust your reason and thinking in the first place if atheism is true. As the secular scientist, J. B. S. Haldane famously put it:

If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically.1

4. Ignorance of your own intellectual tradition

When one reads more widely in atheist literature, you quickly find secular writers very willing to raise tough questions that require real thought to grapple with. For example, Bertrand Russell, one of the most influential atheist intellectuals of the twentieth century, wrote about the conclusions that flow if atheism is true and how, logically, they lead to despair:

Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins ... Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.2

Unfortunately Village Atheists tend to be completely unaware of any of this. I remember a debate I did at Hull University with Andrew Copson, then head of the British Humanist Association on the topic of ‘Can Life Have Meaning Without God?’. Toward the end of the evening, Andrew grumbled words to the effect of ‘I don’t know why Christians think that if there is no God, there are major implications for hope or meaning’. I replied: ‘Andrew, I haven’t quoted a single Christian thinker all evening; all the quotes about meaninglessness I have used have been from atheist writers. This is your own team!’

5. Cutting off the branch you’re sitting on

Another classic sign that you may be a Village Atheist is that you merrily make sweeping statements that actually destroy your own position in the process. For example, one conversation on social media recently went like this:

Atheist: ‘You’re only a Christian because you were raised in a Christian family.’

Andy: ‘Were your parents religious, by any chance?’

Atheist: ‘No, they were freethinking sceptics!’

Andy: ‘Aha, so you’re only an atheist because you were raised in an atheist family, then?’

And with a sickening thud, the flightless bird of atheism crashed to the forest floor, after having chain-sawed through the branch it was sulkily squatting on.

6. Laziness

Life can be busy if you’re a Village Atheist: so many memes to share, tweets to misspell, and people to shout at. That leaves little time for actually bothering to read or watch things that might challenge your position. (I once met an excitable sceptic who told me ‘I’ve read Christopher Hitchens’s book God is Not Great fifty times’. ‘Fascinating,’ I replied, ‘how many rebuttals to it have you read?’ Answer came there none.)

But there’s an even greater laziness that Village Atheists sometimes exhibit and that consists of posting a snarky remark underneath, say, a Facebook link to a video or essay without reading or watching it. I’ve sadly lost count of how many times a Village Atheist has popped up on our Solas Facebook feed, typed ‘But what about …?’ only to have me point out that this very thing was addressed in the video or blog post.

7. Lack of emotional intelligence

Most normal people figure out pretty early on in life that it’s good manners (and a recipe for not getting blunt objects thrown at you) to listen, be thoughtful, take your turn in conversations, and generally avoid behaving like a twerp. And, again, most atheists do a great job—I have had thousands of fantastic conversations online and offline with committed sceptics and we’ve managed to do that without walloping each other. But Village Atheists often lack an ability to read emotional cues, show empathy, or give even a nod to the kind of social graces that the typical five-year-old has already mastered.

8. Caricaturing the beliefs of others

The Village Atheist has no time for trying to understand what somebody actually believes and respond to that; far better to accuse Christians of worshipping a ‘Dead Zombie Jewish Carpenter’ as a Village Atheist charmingly tweeted at me on one occasion. Not merely is this childish, it reduces the whole conversation to the level of the mud pit, as Christians can equally caricature atheism with stupid soundbites: ‘Atheism: The belief that in the beginning there was nothing, and then the nothing did something and now we have a universe.’ Does this get us anywhere? Not really. (And, yes, there are Village Christians as well as Village Atheists, both throwing their memes around like monkeys tossing poop at each other).

9. Childishness

Another classic sign of Village Atheism is to take the most simplistic, low-level version of an argument that you can possibly find and respond to that, rather than bother to think about the strongest form of what Christians are saying. (Sometimes this tips over into a full-blown straw-man fallacy, attacking something that no Christian actually believes). I’m in two minds as to whether this Village Atheist tendency is cowardice (I’m too scared to read a big book by a grown-up Christian thinker, they might convince me!) or immaturity. As C. S. Lewis, the Oxford professor and Christian philosopher, once remarked:

Such people put up a version of Christianity suitable for a child of six and make that the object of their attack. When you try to explain the Christian doctrine as it is really held by an instructed adult, they then complain that you are making their heads turn round and that it is all too complicated and that if there really were a God they are sure He would have made ‘religion’ simple, because simplicity is so beautiful, etc.3

10. Overly focussed on the West

There’s a tendency for Village Atheists to ignore the rest of the world outside of the West when they think about Christianity. Thus they make comments about the Church shrinking without being aware of the rapid growth of Christianity in places like China or South America. I even caught one Village Atheist mouthing off about how Christianity was a ‘European faith’ and I had to gently point out that Christianity began in the Middle East and that the majority of Christians now live in the southern hemisphere. A cautionary note to atheists: when making a sweeping statement about Christians, perhaps think how your words might sound to somebody who is from Asia, or who is being persecuted, or who is poor, or who isn’t as privileged as you are.

11. Confusing science with scientism

This, sadly, is a common trait marking Village Atheists and it manifests itself as a temptation to think that science and only science can give us any access to knowledge. Who could think anything so daft, I hear you cry? Well, here’s a typical example:

Science is the only philosophical construct we have to determine truth with any degree of reliability.4

That pronouncement was made by Harry Kroto, a man who is no dribbling halfwit but rather a Nobel Prize winning chemist. Here’s another example from another leading atheist, Peter Atkins of the University of Oxford:

Humanity should be proud that he [sic] has actually stumbled into this way of understanding the world and that it really can attack every problem that concerns humanity with the prospect of an outcome. Science also gives you the promise of understanding while you are alive, whilst religion offers the prospect of understanding when you are dead.5

On many levels, I can understand why science has been elevated to religion-like status: it has graphs, statistics, flashing lights, and Professor Brian Cox. It also attracts huge amounts of funding, and, of course, even a gibbon looks intelligent if you stick him in a lab coat and give him a pair of spectacles. But for all that, science is only one way of knowing and there are a myriad other ways: everything from economics to geography, art history to philosophy, and a thousand other disciplines beside. That science can’t answer everything is also shown by simply asking the question: ‘What experiment would you perform to prove it can answer everything?’ When Village Atheists wave ‘science’ around like a monkey brandishing a bone, it does science a terrible disservice as well as making themselves look silly.

12. Tribalism

A sure sign that you have been infected with Village Atheism is that you don’t just hate religious people, you go totally nuclear on anybody who disagrees with your favourite writer. (‘Dawkins is never wrong!’ one Village Atheist once shrieked hysterically across the room at another student at a university event I was at. Their poor target wasn’t a Christian, just an agnostic who had dared to say they had read Dawkins and didn’t agree with everything). This tribal fury is directed with particular ire onto those who dare to leave the atheist camp. Thus when Anthony Flew, one of the most celebrated atheist philosophers of his era, moved from atheism to theism,6 Richard Dawkins let rip with both barrels, implying that Flew was going senile,7 unable to comprehend that somebody might consider the arguments carefully and change their position. Flew wrote a very witty response, which concluded:

This whole business makes all too clear that Dawkins is not interested in the truth as such. He is primarily concerned to discredit an ideological opponent by any available means. That would itself constitute sufficient reason for suspecting that the whole enterprise of The God Delusion was not, as it at least pretended to be, an attempt to discover and spread knowledge of the existence or nonexistence of God but rather an attempt to spread the author’s own convictions in this area.8

13. Magical and naïve thinking

Village Atheists have a tendency to uncritically swallow any number of beliefs, but one of the most common is their insistence on the idea that if one removed religion, the world would magically be a peaceful harmonious place, with kittens dancing with unicorns, and rainbows and tinsel bedecking the clouds. For many Village Atheists, John Lennon’s song Imagine has been adopted as something of an anthem, especially that bit about imagining a world without any religion and all the people living in peace. (Imagine also asks us to picture a world without possessions and greed, a bit, er, rich coming from a man who died with a net worth of 200 million dollars).

But to anybody a little more critical, some questions arise: haven’t there been (and still are) secular states that are pretty violent, everything from Stalin’s Russia to Pol Pot’s Cambodia and Mao’s China? The secular historian Tom Holland also points that Village Atheists frequently fail to realise that much of what they enjoy in the west (freedom of thought and speech; human rights and dignity etc.) is actually the legacy of Christianity.9

Fascinated by God

For all of the annoying traits that characterise Village Atheists, I still find them a fascinating sub-species of secularism. I’m particularly fascinated by how they’re drawn to talking so much about God (as one comedian once quipped: ‘Nobody seems to talk as much about God as those who claim they don’t believe in him’). What is it that draws angry Village Atheists to hang out on religious pages on social media, for example, furiously typing snarky comments like a monkey trying to turn out a page of Hamlet? What motivates them? I don’t spend hundreds of hours trolling atheist social media accounts—why do Village Atheist types spend so much of their time doing so to Christians? I do wonder if the fact is that they can’t help themselves, indeed it’s almost as if they were wired to be drawn toward God and thus to slightly paraphrase Shakespeare: ‘Methinks some of them doth protest too greatly.’

The Gravitational Pull of Fundamentalism

But what’s the attraction of Village Atheism? Why would you spend your time flinging soundbites, shouting at people, searching out things you disagree with just so you can sound off? In some ways it reminds me of the famous cartoon:

But then I also think it’s more than that: namely that Village Atheism is at its root a form of fundamentalism and fundamentalism can be deeply attractive to a certain narrow kind of mind. For starters, it’s safe (you can shut the doors and windows of your mind and not let anything in that disturbs you). Furthermore, if you’re unsure of your identity and place in the world, fundamentalism can help build it: in that sense, Village Atheism is a bit like a cat spraying around the house. You mark your territory, your viewpoint, and woe betide anybody who seeks to question you.

And then Village Atheism is also very modern, a low calorie atheism-lite for the social media age. Social media tends to flatten everything to the banal, shallow, and ridiculous and it’s done that for some forms of atheism. What philosopher David Bentley Hart said of New Atheism holds for Village Atheism too (and the New and Village varieties of atheism are close cousins):

In a sense, the triviality of the movement is its chief virtue. It is a diverting alternative to thinking deeply. It is a narcotic. In our time, to strike a lapidary phrase, irreligion is the opiate of the bourgeoisie, the sigh of the oppressed ego, the heart of a world filled with tantalizing toys.10

Sidelining the Idiots

Thankfully the vast majority of atheists are not Village Atheists. I remember a wonderful radio debate with the atheist philosopher, Michael Ruse, who is incredibly smart, very funny, and a delight to dialogue with. During that debate Michael said:

Christianity is a very serious answer to a very serious question. I have no time for anybody who thinks they can dismiss it with soundbites. It is, I say again, a very serious answer to a very serious question. I don’t believe that is the right answer, but nevertheless, as an atheist I need to consider it and weigh it carefully.

Many atheists are also as much disturbed by the Darrens in their midst as I am. On one occasion, after describing to an atheist friend in Toronto (who was at that point the leader of a secular organisation) some very rude messages I’d been sent online by an atheist, he looked at me with a pained expression and said: ‘Please, please don’t judge the secular community by that behaviour. Every community has its lunatics.’

He’s absolutely right. Every community does have its lunatics, the atheist community and the Christian community. Christians have their Fred Phelps types, merrily picketing funerals; atheists have their crazy equivalents too. Both our communities have our Village Idiots attempting to wreck the conversation for everybody.

What Michael Ruse said about Christianity, I would equally say about atheism. Atheism deserves to be taken seriously, its arguments listened to, its advocates engaged with, and those who identify as atheists taken seriously. Let’s leave the Village Atheists in the corner to set fire to their shorts whilst those of us who are capable of a grown up discussion can get on with the real conversation about the big questions that really matter.

If you found this piece helpful, thought-provoking, curiosity-sparking or in other ways useful, please consider subscribing. It helps me keep my writing free for those who can’t afford to make a contribution. Thank you.

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For Further Reading

Whilst I was first working on this essay, I came across two other writers (one Christian, one secular) who had similar concerns to me and had also written critiques of Village Atheism. Do check out their work:

• Sincere Kirabo, ‘Three Warning Signs That Village Atheism is Your New Religion’, The Humanist, 3 May 2016 (https://thehumanist.com/commentary/three-warning-signs-village-atheism-new-religion)

• Randall Rauser, ‘The Problem of Village Atheism’, The Christian Post, 27 August 2018 (https://www.christianpost.com/voices/the-problem-of-village-atheism.html)

This is a sample chapter from Have You Ever Wondered?, the best-selling evangelistic give-away book I’ve co-written and edited with my Solas colleague, Gavin Matthews and others.

We are a happiness-obsessed culture. Every day, a million Westerners type “happiness” into Google. There are hundreds of books telling you how to find happiness, podcasts discussing it, movies and songs all about it. Coming of age in the 1990s, I can still remember the cheerful bubble-gum flavoured lyrics of R.E.M.’s classic Shiny Happy People. More seriously, among the most popular programmes ever run at Harvard University were Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar’s lectures on positive psychology, nicknamed “The Happiness Course”.

But have you ever wondered why we humans pursue happiness? After all, the rest of the animal kingdom usually seems pretty content with just the biological basics: survival and reproduction. But humans? We need so much more than merely the bare necessities of life: so what is going on here?

Let’s explore this by thinking a bit more about happiness. Perhaps the first question is what exactly we mean by the word “happiness”. Ask most people “Do you want to be happy?” and of course they’ll say “Yes!” But inquire: “What do you mean by happy?” and that’s a bit tougher.

I love reading old books, for it gives one a different perspective, rather like talking to somebody from another culture. And reading one day I stumbled across something that Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, observed—that there are actually four levels of happiness and to be truly happy, truly satisfied, we need to ensure that we are living at all four levels.

Happiness level 1 is basically animal happiness and is all about fulfilling your appetites. So, for example, I see the chocolate doughnut. I eat the doughnut. I am happy. I feel good—and I can, of course, if it’s a box of six and my wife isn’t watching, repeat this exercise. Eventually though, the happiness will be over (and pretty quickly if I indulge too much, if I misuse this appetite).

The same is true of that other appetite, sex. In the context of committed love, sex can be amazing. But abuse it, for example treating the other person involved as a means rather than an end, then a great deal of unhappiness can result. Furthermore, if you misuse your appetites—eating to cope with anxiety, or having transient one-night stands to cope with loneliness or boredom—you will soon end up deeply unhappy. And if you’re unhappy at level 1, the only way is up, to level 2.

Happiness level 2 is all about comparison, about having more or being better than the next person. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, with developing a skill and using it well. Excelling in sport, succeeding at work, coming top of the class, all that can bring happiness. But be warned: you won’t be at the top forever. Indeed, trying to live at happiness level 2 can be deeply stressful, as you worry what happens when you are no longer the fastest, smartest, or whatever. And even when you do win, sometimes that can be a hollow victory. In the movie Cool Runnings, about the Jamaican bobsleigh team’s debut at the 1988 Winter Olympics, there’s a moment where the coach, played by John Candy, says to the team: “A gold medal is a wonderful thing. But if you’re not enough without it, you’ll never be enough with it.”

When happiness level 2 lets you down, you need to move up to level 3. Happiness level 3 is all about living for somebody other than yourself. One example would be parenting; pouring your time and energy into caring for children. If you’re not a parent, you can still find other ways to serve others, giving of yourself to others less fortunate. But the problem is that these things also come to an end: those you care for will one day no longer need you. And if you’re not careful, this approach to life can also become profoundly selfish: the real reason you’re helping others is only because it makes you feel good.

So where now? If happiness levels 1 through 3 don’t ultimately satisfy us, presumably the only way is up? So what lies at the top of this ladder, what precisely is happiness level 4? Well, to build on our old friend Aristotle, level 4 comes when you get connected to an ultimate source of happiness outside of yourself.

Which reminds me of something that Jesus of Nazareth once said. Jesus had much to say about happiness, often highlighting our tendency to look for it in all the wrong places, which wearies and drains us; and so Jesus said:

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest”.

The basic problem with happiness levels 1 through 3 is that the weight of the effort rests on us—so we exhaust ourselves running, trying to reach that ever elusive goal of happiness, only to watch it constantly recede into the distance, like the end of the rainbow. Trying to find happiness this way will drive you to craziness, cynicism, or both.

But Jesus offers us something refreshingly different. For Jesus claimed to be God himself, stepping into space and time and history, and as the very one who made us, he is also the one who knows what we really need, what we were truly designed for.

There is nothing inherently wrong with food and sex, sport and success, generosity and self-giving. But they can never ultimately satisfy us. And for a very good reason: we were made for so much more. But if we make it our goal in life not merely to be happy but to know Jesus, the one who also said “I have come that you might have life!”, then we can discover something infinitely more than a happiness whose shine quickly fades; but we can discover a joy that nothing or nobody can ever take away from us.

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I recall with clarity a night a few years ago when my wife and I were on vacation in southern California. We’d spent the day hiking in the mountains and, in the afternoon, had descended to explore the mysterious and ancient landscape of Mono Lake—one of the oldest lakes in North America.

Pinned to the information board by the parking lot was a sign advertising a talk by a Park Ranger that evening: “Stars over Mono Lake”. And so it was, at 9pm, we found ourselves lying on the ancient sands, looking up at a night sky in which a million points of light glowed with an intensity I’d never seen before. The air was cold and clear, the hauntingly beautiful desert silence broken only by the occasional howl of a lonely coyote, cry of an insomniac gull, or scream for help of a distant and woefully lost tourist.

But it was the sky that really struck me. I’d never seen it so beautiful before: in many of our towns and cities, light pollution drowns out the splendour of the heavens and the lights that do punctuate the night tend to be of the red-amber-green-red variety. But what I was seeing, lying on those freezing sands at Mono Lake, was the spectacular sight of the night sky in all its glory—God’s handiwork writ large as a myriad of stars twinkled above me. I was awestruck and listened with fascination as a Park Ranger talked us through the various constellations that slowly wheeled above: the Big Dipper, Cassiopeia, Orion, Aquarius.

And as I looked up, I was reminded of a Bible passage, of Philippians 2:12-16, which reads:

Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose. Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life—in order that I may boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labour for nothing.

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That passage got me thinking, in particular about this question: what does it mean to “shine like stars”? What does it mean to burn brightly against the inky blackness? As I pondered this, it occurred to me that there are different types of star. For instance, there are shooting stars. Stars that burn brightly, roaring across the night sky leaving a trail of fiery dust behind them; burning brightly, lighting the way, but then falling to earth as no more than glowing embers. There are Christians like this: who want to go it alone, blaze their own trail, and draw attention to themselves.

Then there are supernovae, stars that have exploded. One almighty bang, a flash of intense brightness that lights up the night sky, and then they’re gone, fading into obscurity. Again, there are Christians like this: who burn themselves out, who make a brief impact, and then they’re forgotten.

And then we have constellations. Stars which, on their own, would be but one small, glowing dot in the darkness, but together form a bigger picture—together, they tell a more powerful story. On their own, they’re much less; together, they’re something very special. Nobody has heard of the star “Merak”, for instance; but most people have heard of the constellation it forms part of—the “Big Dipper” or the “Plough”, one of the most famous formations in the northern hemisphere.

On that same trip to southern California, we also visited the Griffith Observatory, set on the slopes of Mount Hollywood. Attached to the observatory is a planetarium and we sat in this incredible building and watched amazing images of planets, galaxies, and stars projected onto the giant dome. The show’s narrator explained how human beings are designed to think in stories: modern science is one attempt to tell a story about reality, but so too did the ancients tell stories, as they looked at the heavens and named the stars. And thus each of the major constellations bear names—usually from myth and legend or history.

Stars burning together in constellations whose names tell a story. And that’s part of what Christians are called to do: to stand together, to form a constellation, and to tell a story—a story whose significance is also painted in the beauty of the night sky, the wonder of the atom, the fire of the equations that animate it all, and the depths of the human heart.

But there’s one last aspect to stars and to constellations I learnt that night at Mono Lake. Constellations don’t stand still. They move. In particular they rotate, slowly wheeling around a singular fixed point in the northern night sky—the “North” or “Pole” Star. And that, too, is our task and calling and challenge as we aim to “shine like stars”—our axis needs to be God himself—the very centre of our purpose, our calling, our universe, our beings. He is our fixed point, our north star, our pole star, he who determines how we move and turn. The temptation is always to make ourselves the axis and have God spin about our personalities, aims and ambitions—but that way lies idolatry, the worship of oneself. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote:

If it is I who determine where God is to be found, then I shall always find a God who corresponds to me in some way, who is obliging, who is connected with my own nature. But if God determines where he is to be found, then it will be in a place which is not immediately pleasing to my nature and which is not at all congenial to me. This place is the Cross of Christ. And whoever would find Him must go to the foot of the Cross, as the Sermon on the Mount commands.1

Long before the invention of GPS, sailors, and navigators far out in the oceans or the deserts were reliant upon the pole star, the north star—the fixed point. By orientating yourself to it, you could find your way home through the wildest of seas or the remotest of trackless deserts. But in a sky filled with a billion points of light, how do you find the pole star? Well, the easiest way is to take a look at the most well-known constellation—the “Big Dipper” or “Plough”—for this constellation actually points directly at the Pole Star. And as we shine like stars, in a constellation, not alone but standing together, telling our story, His story, this is what we’re ultimately about. Shining brightly amidst the darkness, we point at Him around which everything turns—Christ Jesus himself, heaven’s bright sun, whose radiance glows brighter than the brightest star, so much so that the new heavens and the new earth need neither sun nor moon. May He and He alone be your fixed point and lead you home.

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When I was thirteen years old, one of my favourite hobbies was conjuring. Every Saturday morning, I would faithfully trek across London to attend classes at Davenports Magic Shop, an Aladdin’s cave of a place which was all the more wondrous for being located in an underground mall deep below Charing Cross. There I learnt how to baffle people with card tricks, make money disappear, and pull rabbits from hats.1

Of all the tricks I mastered, my favourite was the shell game. One of the oldest tricks known to magicians, its premise is simple: behold, three small wooden cups. Beneath one is placed a small ball. The cups are shuffled and some innocent bystander asked to guess where the ball is. No matter where they guess, their answer turns out to be wrong: the magician always wins.

For all of its audience-entertaining potential, the shell game is just a trick, merely an illusion. The ball was always somewhere, namely wherever the magician put it. Try as you might, you couldn’t actually entirely dispose of it: however cunningly you palmed it up a sleeve, stuffed it under a rabbit, or hid it in an assistant’s nose, you were always stuck with it: the ball still existed. Some things you simply cannot get rid of—the best you can do is to distract people and hope they don’t notice the bulge in your sleeve.

The same problem applies to metaphysical versions of the shell game. I was reminded of this when a contemporary magician, Penn Jillette, one half of the popular comedy double act, Penn and Teller, said this during an interview:

The question I get asked by religious people all the time is, without God, what’s to stop me from raping all I want? And my answer is: I do rape all I want. And the amount I want is zero. And I do murder all I want, and the amount I want is zero. The fact that these people think that if they didn’t have this person watching over them that they would go on killing, raping rampages is the most self-damning thing I can imagine.2

Jillette is a well known atheist and his statement is an attempt to claim that it is the non-religious who have the moral high ground, atheists who are better people. Why? Because they’re good for the sake of goodness, unlike those terrible theists who are basically sexually rapacious psychopaths, only refraining from rape or murder because they believe that God is constantly watching them like a heavenly policeman. So, who would you rather trust: the friendly atheist magician with the lovely smile, or the theist who is longing to start a land war in Asia and go pillaging and raping, only holding back because they’re afraid their Sky Daddy is watching them?

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To give Jillette his credit, this is a clever piece of rhetoric. It’s punchy, it’s witty, it’s memorable, it’s tweetable, but it’s also a trick. Just like the shell game, Jillette has misdirected us with some clever shuffles of the cups and then, whilst we’re distracted, snuck out the ball and stuffed it up a sleeve. “Nothing to see here, mister,” he winks, turning over each cup. Now in this case, the ball is a question—a question that screams the moment you give Jillette’s statement a second read. And it’s this: who gets to define what good is?

Built into Jillette’s pronouncement is the assumption that rape and murder are bad, whilst helping old ladies across the road, giving money to charity, and rehoming kittens is good. But hang on a moment: who gets to decide? If atheism is true, then nothing is inherently good or bad—things just are. Rather, what we have are a set of labels (“Good”, “Bad” and “Neutral”) and a list of human actions. Who gets to decide which sticker gets stuck on what action?

There are really only two choices: either every individual gets to decide for themselves what is “good”, or we have to defer to something like the state. But in either case, all we have are personal preferences: yours, mine, or the majority’s.3 Thus Jillette’s bumper sticker of an idea (“Atheists Can Do Good Without God”) simply collapses into “Atheists Can Do Whatever They Want Without God”. All he’s done is a classic piece of misdirection, distracting us from the most important question of all: what does the good life actually look like?

Well, then, how do we decide what counts as “good” in the first place? In most contexts, we answer that question by addressing the issue of purpose. Consider a watch, for instance. How do I decide whether my watch is a good one or a bad one?4 Suppose I take my watch and try to hammer in nails with it, breaking it in the process? Does this make it a bad watch? No, because I have misunderstood its purpose, which is not to hammer nails but to tell the time. We determine whether a watch is a good watch by how well it tells the time, by whether it does what it was designed to do, by how successfully it aligns to its purpose.

So what about human beings? Is there something we were designed to be, do we have a purpose? The message of Christianity is that yes, there is: our purpose is to know God, to be in relationship with him. As God transforms us, as we live out what it means to be a “new creation”, as the Bible puts it, then our lives and our character reflect that relationship. We become who we were intended to be: not good because we hope that God may then love us, but good because he loves us and has forgiven us. On the other hand, if the atheism to which Jillette adheres so passionately is true, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion of another well-known atheist, Lawrence Krauss, who remarked:

We are a 1 percent bit of pollution within the universe. We are completely insignificant.5

If Krauss is correct, it would seem to follow that rape, murder and pillage are perfectly okay: after all, what one piece of pollutant does to another hardly matters, does it?

Most people’s natural reaction when they see a good magic trick is to ask: “How was it done?” And the problem is that the answer is always mind-numbingly banal. The woman is sawn in two, right before your eyes, and you’re amazed. You then discover the method and you’re disappointed at the simplicity.

The same holds for Jillette’s attempt to construct a godless morality. It looks clever and sophisticated, but then the veil is drawn back and you see how it was done, namely by sidestepping the very question that matters the most: what do “good” and “evil” actually mean in the first place? When it comes to magic and illusion, a good trick is a good trick because it achieves its purpose: it entertains. But when a trick obfuscates, hides, or manipulates, I think it’s a bad one. Excuse me, Mr. Jillette, but you appear to have a metaphysical ball up your sleeve.

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The date was 10 March 1748; the location was the Atlantic ocean. The winds that had been building for days had finally exploded with violent ferocity and in the midst of a crashing gale with waves as tall as buildings, a wooden merchant ship called The Greyhound was struggling to stay afloat. The storm had already wrecked huge sections of the ship, even punching a hole in its side. As flood waters raced through the breach, crew members worked feverishly to patch the hole whilst others desperately manned the pumps. Some unfortunates screamed in terror as they were swept overboard, along with much of the provisions. The end looked near and it was surely just a matter of time before the ship was consumed by a hungry sea. But for one man in particular, this storm was to prove even more significant, for it would mark a radical and dramatic turning point in his life. That man was John Newton.

Many people have heard of John Newton for one reason alone: his penning of arguably the world’s most famous, most recorded, most regularly sung hymn: Amazing Grace. What few people realise is how astonishingly autobiographical that song is. The first verse runs like this:

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound;
that saved a wretch like me;
I once was lost but now am found;
was blind but now I see.

In this essay, we’ll take a look at the life of John Newton. We’ll explore how he sunk to the lowest of lows, how God dramatically broke through into his life—and how Newton then drew upon his experiences to develop a ministry that combined preaching, publishing, apologetics, politics and hymn writing: Newton has been described as one of the most significant evangelical Christians of his own and indeed any era. His story is a powerful illustration of how dramatically God can turn around even the most wretched of lives.

Early Life: The Making of a “Wretch Like Me”

John Newton was born on 24 July 1725 at Wapping in London’s East End, an area dominated by shipping. John’s father was a commander on merchant ships plying the Mediterranean, which led him to be away for long periods, contributing to the very distant relationship John had with him. John was, however, very close to his mother, Elizabeth, a deeply religious woman, who made her son’s moral and spiritual education a priority. There were other early influences on Newton, too; their church minister was an excellent preacher to whose sermons John was drawn. The famous hymn writer, Isaac Watts, also visited their church, illustrating his sermons with hymns. This was a radical idea for the day and one that would later influence Newton.

But tragedy soon struck, for Elizabeth Newton died suddenly when John was just seven. His father quickly remarried, had more children and John was slowly sidelined. He soon drifted into bad company, hanging out (as he would later put it) with “careless and profane children” until finally he was sent away to boarding school. None of this helped the relationship with his father and despite his father taking John on several sea voyages as a teenager, their relationship remained distant and unemotional. Whilst at sea, John’s spirituality began to wither. His father had drummed into him the importance of an iron self-discipline and John mistakenly applied this model to his relationship to God; the result was a series of massive swings between great religiosity and utter disinterest. Periods of being very devout would collapse into utter moral failure, guilt would then lead him to try to win back God’s approval by controlling his appetites, that would fail, and the cycle would begin again. Newton went to amazing lengths during his devout periods: he became a vegetarian and for a time avoided all conversation so as to avoid saying sinful things. But as he would later reflect, there was a basic problem: “I loved sin”, he wrote, “and was unwilling to forsake it”.

Newton’s life changed dramatically in March 1744. Failing to turn up for a job interview his father had arranged, he took off instead to see his childhood sweetheart but ran into a Royal Navy press gang. Press gangs were naval platoons sent ashore to seize men for military service and a fit young man like Newton, with seafaring experience, was an ideal catch, especially as England was on the verge of war with France. Newton joined HMS Harwich and soon saw action. On-board he made two friends: a Christian, Job Lewis and a “freethinker” called James Mitchell, who chipped away at what little faith Newton had left. He soon swung from apathetic to actively atheistic, taking out his hostility on Job Lewis by constantly attacking his faith. Newton’s character deteriorated and he became increasingly rebellious, eventually deserting his ship. Arrested, returned to the Harwich in chains, publicly flogged and demoted, Newton blamed everybody other than himself for his fall. He regularly contemplated murdering his Captain; although he knew this would result in execution, his atheism meant he saw death as mere extinction. Newton wrote: “I was as miserable on all hands as could well be imagined. My breast was filled with the most excruciating passions, eager desire, bitter rage, and black despair.”

Finally Newton’s luck seemed to be on the turn. On 9 May 1745, he was sleeping in late in his hammock, ignoring the wake-up whistle of the bosun. A passing midshipman decided to deal with this insubordination by slashing the ropes of the hammock, sending Newton crashing to the floor. Arriving on deck, Newton saw some fellow sailors being loaded in a rowing boat—he enquired and found they were being exchanged with some sailors from a civilian trading ship. Desperate to escape the navy, Newton pleaded with the Captain and his lieutenants to exchange him. Possibly more through the chance to rid himself of a rebellious crew member than through compassion, the Captain agreed and Newton was exchanged. He was now a member of the crew of the Pegasus—a slave ship, bound for Sierra Leone. Newton had entered the slave trade.

Despite this good fortune and his new captain treating him well, Newton continued to be vile and rebellious as ever. He defied authority, refused duties, composed rude songs about the captain, blasphemed horribly and mocked Christian crew members. He may also have sexually abused female slaves, writing in his journal that he was “slave to every customary vice”.

But then ill-fortune struck again. His captain died and was replaced by the first mate—a man who utterly hated Newton. Newton took the first opportunity to leave the Pegasus, remaining in Africa to work for an English slaver on Plantain Island, a small island off the coast of Sierra Leone. But the trader had an African mistress who instantly disliked Newton. Whilst the trader was away inland on a trip, Newton fell ill and she abused him horribly, denying him food and encouraging her own slaves to pelt him with rubbish. After his master returned, things briefly improved, until another slaver lied about Newton and his master chained him to a boat deck, leaving him with just a bowl of rice for days at a time. Exposed to blistering heat by day and storms at night, Newton’s health collapsed, and, as he wrote later, “my pride was also humbled”. The worst moment of his life, he was lower even than the slaves, a wretch who, like the Prodigal Son, had been brought low by his own poor choices.

During his months in Africa, Newton had managed to write letters back home, imploring his father to rescue him. Finally a letter made it through and his father contacted an old friend, Joseph Manesty, who alerted his Africa-bound slave ships to lookout for Newton. In February 1748 Newton was discovered by The Greyhound. But by this time, Newton’s fortunes had turned and he was reluctant to leave: the ship’s captain had to concoct a story about a large inheritance awaiting back home to persuade Newton aboard. Believing that finally he had enough money to marry his childhood sweetheart, Mary, Newton agreed to return to England.

Despite his later talk of his African experiences having humbled him, Newton initially showed little gratitude at his rescue. Soon he was cursing, blaspheming and drinking heavily. He held drinking contests, the winner being the last man standing. Yet providence continued to provide: on one occasion, utterly drunk, Newton almost fell into the ocean and drowned, only saved by a quick-witted crew member grabbing him at the very last moment. Another time, he and some friends went inland hunting and got utterly lost, ending up wandering waist deep in a swamp whilst all around the roars of wild animals punctuated the night. Suddenly the clouds parted and the moon glinted on the sea, allowing them to find their way. Yet despite all this, Newton refused to see the hand of God at work.

Conversion

Then in March 1748, Newton stumbled across a copy of the classic devotional work, The Imitation of Christ. Despite his hatred of religion, he began to read and was increasingly disturbed by the question: what if these things are true? This worried him profoundly: if they were true, he was doomed. Newton tried to push the question aside and distract himself, but the question kept nagging. Then, one night, The Greyhound was hit by the storm to end all storms.

In the midst of the storm, Newton caught himself saying to the captain after they’d plugged another hole: “If this will not do the Lord have mercy on us”. His flippant words suddenly struck him: what mercy could a sinner like him actually expect? The next day, as the storm continued, Newton took the helm for eleven hours and had time to reflect on his life: his immorality, his blasphemy, his rebellion. Newton wrote: “I thought there never was such a sinner as myself. I concluded at first that my sins were too great to be forgiven.” Finally the storm subsided and the battle to save The Greyhound was won. Exhausted and relieved, Newton actually prayed: not a prayer of repentance by any means, but it was a start. One thing that concerned him was authenticity: he wanted to know Christianity was true, not to turn to it because he wished it to be true. Newton decided to put it to the test: he would pray, ask for God’s Spirit to fill him, then live as if it were true: “The truth would be in the living”.

A few days later, the battered ship arrived safely in Ireland, hours before a second major storm hit. This alone convinced Newton that God answered prayer. For the first time in years, Newton visited a church and prayed, dedicating himself to serving God. Providence was again watching over him: on a shooting trip with the town mayor a few days later, a gun accidentally discharged, missing Newton but setting fire to his hat.

Back in England, changes to his character began to come in answer to his prayer, albeit slowly and painfully; his old habits died hard. Nor did Newton at first grasp the social implications of his new found faith and so he saw nothing wrong with slavery. Not least, slavery was a highly lucrative career. He returned to the seas and to slave trading in Africa, but with no Christian friends suffered a “rain of temptations”. But, unlike in his youth, Newton had grasped an important lesson: what he needed was divine grace, not renewed intentions, so he “cast himself on the Lord” and found peace and improvement in health and character. Returning again to England, Newton finally wed Mary, his childhood sweetheart, and was promoted to the rank of captain. He was an unsual figure, unlike the usual slave traders, seeing part of his role as the spiritual formation of his crew. He prayed for an hour or two twice a day, insisted his crew attended a service on Sundays and began to write prayers for his men, as the Book of Common Prayer was too complex—this was the beginning of Newton the hymn writer, keen to communicate Christian truths in ordinary language.

Around this time, Newton met another captain, Alex Clunie, an active Christian. Strong Christian fellowship was what Newton had been desperately seeking so over the time Clunie and he worked together, they met regularly to study, talk and pray. Clunie had the gift of explaining complex theology very simply and he had a profound influence on Newton, in particular helping him to see the difference between living ‘Gospel Christianity’ and dead traditionalism.

From Slave-Ship Captain to Anglican Minister

Eventually Newton’s health, damaged by his time on Plantain Island, began to fail and his time at sea came to an end. Newton took a job as tide surveyor, responsible for taxing ships coming in and out of Liverpool. His experience of Christians broadened and he heard and met men like George Whitefield—Newton himself began to receive invitations to preach and he soon became convinced that God was calling him to full-time ministry. In 1758, he decided to pursue Anglican ordination and he approached the Archbishop of York, but was rebuffed as he hadn’t had a university education. But a friendly Baptist minister encouraged him to write his story down and circulate it. A copy of Newton’s “spiritual autobiography” was seen by Lord Dartmouth, a wealthy landowner and influential evangelical, who was extremely impressed: as a large landowner, Lord Dartmouth had the right to appoint the vicar in the village of Olney and so in 1764 John Newton became vicar of St. Peter & St. Paul Church.

Church ministry suited Newton’s character, gifting and temperament. The congregation grew rapidly under his leadership and soon there was demand for more than just a Sunday meeting. Newton added prayer meetings, a mid-week lecture and a time of hymn-singing after church on Sundays, an event that proved so popular that Newton was forced to issue tickets! He also organised special children’s meetings, a precursor to the Sunday school movement. But it was his skill at hymn writing, aided by his friend, the poet William Cowper, that was to prove one of his greatest legacies. Hymn singing was a hallmark of the eighteenth-century evangelical revival, a movement of which the wider Church of England was deeply suspicious. The Church said only metrical psalms could be sung, but Newton and others challenged this, Newton wanting to use hymns to communicate complex truth to people. Hymns, he wrote, are “for the use of plain people. Perspicuity, simplicity, and ease, should be chiefly attended to.” Newton aimed to write a new hymn every week to fit his sermon and it was as part of this pattern that Amazing Grace was first penned, probably in late December 1772.

In February 1779, Newton moved from Olney in Buckinghamshire to the bigger church of St. Mary’s Woolnoth in London’s Lombard Street. His reputation had grown, aided by his bestselling biography, and also by the publication of his hymns. In London, Newton’s public image grew yet further and he began to take an interest in politics, especially in the growing anti-slavery campaign, many of the loudest voices within which were evangelical Christians. But one political contact in particular was to prove extremely significant: William Wilberforce, son of an old family friend.

Wilberforce had been raised a Christian, but after becoming a Member of Parliament aged just 21 quickly became a topic of media discussion. Wilberforce was rich, powerful, witty, a singer, a dancer, a card player, an impressionist, and a friend of royals. Newton suspected that Wilberforce’s Christian faith had “worn off”. But after five years in politics, one summer Wilberforce went travelling in Europe with a Christian friend, read the New Testament in Greek and a desire to know God was re-awakened. Wilberforce considered getting back in touch with his old family friend, John Newton, but hesitated—it could be damaging to his career to be seen associating with a religious enthusiast. Finally, Wilberforce quietly dropped a note through Newton’s door, asking for a meeting.

On the evening 7 December 1785, after repeatedly walking around the square outside Newton’s home several times, constantly changing his mind, finally Wilberforce summoned his nerve and knocked on Newton’s door. Wilberforce’s mind was awash with questions: should he abandon his society friends? Give all his wealth away? Leave politics and enter the church? He was shocked by Newton’s answers—in Newton’s opinion, Wilberforce could be far more effective for God by remaining in politics and using the influence and contacts that he had. Over the next year, Wilberforce worked hard on integrating his faith and his politics, staying in constant touch with Newton. Beginning with a campaign to improve the moral decay he saw all around, Wilberforce was soon contacted by the anti-slavery movement, who were struggling to find access to those in power. They needed a high profile MP and Wilberforce was an obvious choice. Eventually he was persuaded and on 28 October 1787 Wilberforce wrote in his journal: “God Almighty has set before me two great objects, the suppression of the slave trade and the Reformation of Manners”.

Wilberforce’s excitement motivated Newton to take a stand and in 1788 Newton published an essay, Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade which was utterly condemnatory, claiming that the slave trade brutalized and dehumanized all involved, slaves and owners. Drawing from the story of his own career, Newton spoke of the rape, torture and brutality inflicted on slaves, telling, as just one horrific example among many, of a sailor who threw a baby overboard because it was crying. Meanwhile, Wilberforce and his colleagues worked within parliament and in 1788, the Trade Committee of the Privy Council convened and interviewed those with first-hand experience of the trade; John Newton’s testimony made a tremendous impression. Yet powerful voices continued to argue against abolition: it would ruin the British economy and destroy cities like Liverpool. Lord Heathfield even tried to argue that slaves had more cubic feet of space than soldiers in their tents! On hearing the argument that African slaves were much happier than if they’d been left in Africa, Wilberforce wittily retorted: “Be it so. But we have no right to make people happy against their will.” Finally in 1789 the Privy Council published its report and Wilberforce put forward a bill in the House of Commons for the formal abolition of the slave trade.

In the midst of all this politics, one final tragedy struck Newton: his beloved wife died on 15 December 1790. This was the toughest test his faith had ever faced: his love for Mary had been absolutely central to his life and Newton had always hoped he would die first. Yet he’d preached about how trials were an opportunity to show the power of divine grace and now he had to live this out—the proof was, once again, in the living. Newton found a source of strength that he would never have imagined existed, writing in his journal: “The Lord, the all-sufficient God, can give strength according to the day.”

Meanwhile, the anti-slavery bill was facing stiff opposition in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords. It had suffered defeat, had been amended and now apathy was beginning to set in even among its supporters. But it was Newton’s constant prayer that he would live to see it pass and God was gracious once again: in May 1804 Wilberforce finally got the bill passed; it would take another three years before it became law on 25 March 1807. Newton’s prayer had been answered, his life’s work complete and on 21 December 1807, Newton passed away. To one of his final visitors Newton said these now famous words: “My memory is nearly gone, but I remember two things: that I am a great sinner and that Christ is a great saviour.”

The Heart of Newton’s faith

The story of John Newton is more than just another conversion story, the tale of a life dramatically turned around by God’s love and grace. Yes, all that is true. But Newton’s faith was also marked by a number of emphases that are as vital today as they were in Newton’s day.

First, Newton was constantly aware both of what he had been saved from and what he was saved to. For example, Newton constantly referred back to his time on Plantain Island in his preaching and writing, saying that whenever he was tempted to hold himself in too high esteem, he would remember how low he had once sunk.

Newton’s life was marked by faith, humility and gratitude—he knew who God was, he knew who he was, and he never forgot just what he’d been saved from. But he also grasped that Christianity is not just about salvation from but salvation to. Once he felt the call of God to preach and teach and write, Newton held nothing back, throwing himself into service and investing time and energy in the lives of his congregation and his friends, not least the poet William Cowper, who would probably have committed an early suicide had not Newton been constantly there for him.

Second, Newton developed an astonishing personal spirituality and prayer life. In this age of quick and easy answers, of short-cut spiritualities and a profound shallowness in parts of the Church, Newton is a challenge to us all. He prayed for hours a day, he immersed himself in the Bible, and he read widely.

But nor was Newton some kind of monastic recluse: he threw himself wholeheartedly into life, seeking to bring his faith to bear in whatever circles of influence he found himself in: church, society, media and politics. His was a truly wholistic approach to ministry: Newton saw his task as a Christian to preach evangelistically, disciple and mentor, engage in pastoral care, social action, political activism—there was no “sacred/secular divide” for Newton. Arguably he was also an apologist, constantly looking for ways to communicate profound truth simply whether it was to the “plain folk” who attended his churches or those in society circles with whom he increasingly came into contact, especially during his time in London. This desire to communicate clearly drove his hymn writing—for he was far ahead of his time in seeing the vital need for Christians to think through ways to connect with the common man.

Lessons for Today

There are many lessons that can be drawn from the life of John Newton. First, an encouragement: God can save even the most apparently lost of souls. None of the contemporaries of the younger Newton—who was rebellious, arrogantly atheistic, a drunkard and sexual deviant—could possibly have foreseen just how dramatically his life would turn around. If God can rescue a Newton, could we have faith that he might yet reach the unbelieving friend, colleague or family member who we could never imagine finding Christ? The story of John Newton shows that God is able, if he wishes, to touch even the hardest of human hearts.

Second, a warning, for the younger Newton’s life shows how easy it is for one to drift from a veneer of religiosity into atheism. In particular, Newton made the mistake of grounding his early Christianity purely on self-improvement, self-denial, and sheer effort; a teetering edifice that collapsed at the slightest pressure. The lesson of his later conversion and a theme that dominated his preaching and hymn writing was the importance of grace. Again, this is a lesson we sometimes forget at our peril.

The third lesson one might draw from Newton’s life is that conversion is often a process. Whilst that dramatic storm of 10 March 1748 was the turning point for Newton, God had already been at work in his life—the many examples of divine providence, childhood influences, his “accidental” picking up of The Imitation of Christ. But one might push this further and say that before John Newton could be amazed by grace, he first had to plumb the depths of rebellion, despair, and wretchedness. God, the Grand Weaver, sometimes takes many years to draw all of his threads together.

Fourth, one might note how well John Newton’s life demonstrates that the chief obstacle often standing between us and God is not always intellectual but is often personal pride. Newton was arrogant, self-confident, bristled at discipline and, as he himself put it, loved sin. Pride, self-sufficiency, and the desire for moral autonomy can be a toxic combination.

Fifth, Newton’s life demonstrates the importance of discipleship and mentoring—Newton’s life is replete with unsung heroes, whose cumulative effect on his life was profound. One might mention the childhood influences: his godly mother, his pastor, and Isaac Watts who laid a foundation that many years later, Newton could build upon. And after his conversion, Alex Clunie, the fellow ship captain and Christian who infused Newton with a love of scripture and of prayer was a hugely significant influence.

What can we conclude from this? Namely that the impact we can have on those around us is profound, even if we cannot see the immediate fruits. Elizabeth Newton never lived to see her son’s discovery of faith and his amazing ministry—but without her, it is possible Newton would never have eventually found Christ. Likewise, we may never know who we are sharing the gospel with, praying for, showing love and compassion to—and there is often a multiplier effect at work as we faithfully obey God’s call and serve others. Newton himself modelled this, with his support of his friend William Cowper and the discipleship of William Wilberforce. Without Newton, we would have had no Wilberforce and without Wilberforce, the abolition movement might have taken much longer to see slavery eradicated.

Concluding Thoughts

John Newton has been described as the second founder of the Church of England, so profound was the effect of his ministry. His life combined spiritual depths with great practical wisdom and he saw the need to have the gospel impact everything: the church, culture, the media and politics. But for all of his success, all of his fame and influence, Newton never forgot how deep was the pit from which God had rescued him. His epitaph at St. Peter & St. Paul Church in Olney sums up his attitude perfectly:

JOHN NEWTON, CLERK
ONCE AN INFIDEL AND LIBERTINE
A SERVANT OF SLAVES IN AFRICA WAS
BY THE RICH MERCY OF OUR
LORD AND SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST
PRESERVED, RESTORED, PARDONED
AND APPOINTED TO PREACH THE FAITH HE
HAD LONG LABOURED TO DESTROY

His was truly a life lost and found.

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Join me as each week I read part of a chapter from The Lord of the Rings and talk about some of the great themes that Tolkien addresses.

Find it on my YouTube channel here:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF83cVcd74ZE&si=eNwwcpPZbkUSaOu8

A couple of years ago, some good friends of ours suffered a devastating house fire. They awoke at 3am to the smell of smoke, discovered a kitchen blaze that had already spread to the lounge and the hall, and so they grabbed their kids, the cat, two guinea pigs, and (at the insistence of their six-year-old) a glass tank containing three stick insects, and fled to the safety of a neighbour’s house, from where they called the fire brigade. By the time two fire engines had arrived, sirens screaming and lights flashing, it was too late—the fire had taken hold and although the hoses doused the flames, almost everything was destroyed. “We lost virtually every possession,” our friends said afterwards, “but at least nobody was hurt. Not even a stick insect was left behind.”

Our friends’ experience got me thinking, not least about the virtue of pets who can find their own way to safety in an emergency. It especially got me thinking about the question: if my own house were to catch fire, what would I save? If, after rescuing my wife, kids, and pet hamster I had the time to pull one thing from the flames, what would it be? Would I save the TV, our family photo albums, or our collection of novelty teapots?

No, I think my first instinct as a bibliophile would be to try to save my library. The only problem there is that I have an eclectic collection of over 3,000 books crammed onto my shelves (my wife thinks that a small, self-contained, one-room fire could save us a fortune next time we move house). So I guess I would have to pick one book to rescue before the flames took hold.

And my choice would be easy: I would retrieve the most expensive book I own. A book that I paid almost £300 for some ten years ago. A book that most readers have probably never heard of: The Assault on Mount Everest 1922. It’s an exciting report of the second British expedition to Mount Everest, full of thrills, tension, and drama—and as an avid student of mountaineering history, I bought this first edition copy and it has pride of place on my shelves.1 The book is especially valuable because stuck inside it is a postcard that I paid an additional £50 for around the same time—a postcard that was actually sent from the advanced base camp on the 1924 Everest expedition.

Now I know what you’re thinking: wasn’t that a lot of money to pay for a dusty second-hand book and a faded old postcard? And on one level you’d be right: the postcard is merely a piece of cardboard and the book, just a collection of pages, yellowed with age. But I was willing to pay that price because the book and the postcard were valuable to me.

Interestingly, this is actually a basic principle of economics: namely that value is not intrinsic to something, but is determined by what somebody is prepared to pay. Consider a more modern example—a digital tablet. Perhaps some of you are reading this essay on an iPad, for instance, safe in the knowledge that if I start boring you, you can play Angry Politicians or Candy Crush Kardashians or something. You probably paid a lot of money for your iPad and why? Because it’s useful to you: perhaps for email, web browsing, work, or—if you’re like me—playing the occasional game while sitting on the toilet.

But think about this for a moment: your iPad isn’t intrinsically worth hundreds of pounds. That was simply what Apple believed people were prepared to pay. Take your iPad to a desert island, with no power, no WiFi, no phone reception and what would somebody pay? Probably very little, for aside from making a fancy glass chopping board for seafood, your iPad would be useless.

Value is not intrinsic or inherent to something—whether it’s a book or a gadget or anything—rather value is purely determined by what somebody is prepared to pay.

Which raises a fascinating question: what then of human value? Deeply ingrained in our culture is the belief that human beings have fundamental value, intrinsic worth, that humans are priceless and precious. The whole edifice of human rights, for example, is built upon this idea. But where is human value located?

Once you ask “Why do humans have value?” you quickly run into difficulties. After all, if you consider the stuff of which we’re made, the chemical parts—so much iron, so much carbon, so much fat (too much, in my case)—it’s been calculated that the typical human being is worth about £37.50. Nowhere near enough to purchase an iPad or a first edition book, not even enough for a historic postcard.

Thankfully nobody actually thinks the worth of a human being can be discerned by considering the stuff we’re made from. Or do they? Actually, many famous atheist thinkers throughout history have made precisely this claim. For example, Francis Crick, who won the Nobel Prize for co-discovering the structure of DNA in 1953, wrote:

Your joy and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. As Lewis Carroll’s Alice might have phrased it: ‘You’re nothing but a pack of neurons’.”2

Whilst theoretical physicist and cosmologist Lawrence M. Krauss, put it even more bluntly:

We are a 1 percent bit of pollution within the universe. We are completely insignificant.3

If I had the time and was feeling of a nihilistic frame of mind, there are plenty more similar statements by other atheist intellectuals I could cite, but that would be a bit depressing. Rather let’s at least commend the attempt of Crick and Krauss to be honest about the implications of their atheism for human value whilst pointing out that it would be a very brave person who tried this idea out in the real world. Whether it’s the war in Ukraine or Gaza, or the genocide of the Uyghurs, or sexual trafficking, or poverty, simply shrugging and saying “What does it matter if a bit of pollution or a collection of neurons suffers in some way?” is going to get you about as far as trying to scale Mount Everest whilst wearing nothing but swimming trunks and using a toothpick as an ice-axe.

By contrast, the Bible has something very different to say about human value. Remember what we discovered about value not being intrinsic, but instead being conferred by what somebody is prepared to pay? So what was somebody prepared to pay for you and I, for each and every one of us, no matter our background, status, race, or sex? The Bible answers that very question directly:

God demonstrates his own love for us in this—while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)

In other words, the Bible says, God was prepared to pay the life of his son, Jesus Christ, for us—an incredibly costly, infinitely high price—for each one of us, even while we were God’s enemies, in outright rebellion against the one who created us and loves us. That price that God was prepared to pay gives a tremendous basis for human value—and therefore a foundation for human rights, justice, and dignity.

Reflecting on the challenge for atheists in trying to come up with a basis for human value that does not depend upon God, the Australian atheist Raimond Gaita made this powerful observation:

We may say that all human beings are inestimably precious … that they are owed unconditional respect, that they possess inalienable rights, and, of course, that they possess inalienable dignity. In my judgment these are ways of trying to say what we feel a need to say when we are estranged from the conceptual resources we need to say it. Be that as it may: each is problematic and contentious. Not one of them has the simple power of the religious ways of speaking.4

More recently, in his book Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind, secular historian Tom Holland sets out in considerable detail just how much of what we take for granted about human value has thoroughly Christian roots. For all of its attempts to be secular and post-Christian, the West is deeply Christian in its convictions about human personhood. Tom writes:

Humanism derives ultimately from claims made in the Bible: that humans are made in God’s image; that his Son died equally for everyone; that there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female. Repeatedly, like a great earthquake, Christianity has sent reverberations across the world.5

Next time you see a story in the news about justice, or your friend or colleague speaks positively about human rights, or you see somebody suffering and you instinctively think “That’s not right!” pause for a moment and ask yourself where human value is located. Then reflect on the starkness of the choices of answer on offer: if atheism is true, then human value is a fiction; perhaps a beautiful fiction, a lie breathed through silver even,6 but an untruth none the less. Whereas if Christianity is true, then human beings are not merely the stuff of which we are made, but are people infinitely precious, bearing value and worth because of what God was willing to pay for each one of us.

As an atheist friend once remarked to me in an unguarded moment: “I can’t escape the conclusion that even though I don’t believe in Christianity, I increasingly want it to be true, because if it isn’t, the consequences are utterly depressing and horrific.” To which I replied: maybe it’s therefore time to give the evidence for Christianity a much deeper look.

If you found this piece helpful, thought-provoking, curiosity-sparking or in other ways useful, please consider subscribing. It helps me keep my writing free for those who can’t afford to make a contribution and means I won’t need to sell the hamster. Thank you.

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