Some churches have a dearth of men—their pews are populated by women and children, giving the impression that Christianity is only for such. In some churches the men are present in body, but not in mind—you can tell by the vacant look in their eye. They are there perhaps because they have to be, or perhaps in order to protect some vague notion they have of their cultural identity.

In other churches men are present in equal measure to women and children, with their heads switched on, and anticipation in their faces.

So what makes the difference?

I could answer it in one word—Jesus—but I need to unpack what I mean.

Men like heroes, manly men who do great deeds. Too often Jesus is portrayed as a slightly effeminate hippy with long hair and deep soulful eyes—all languid and limp. I don’t know where this comes from, for it certainly doesn’t come from the Bible. As a middle-eastern man he would likely have been short and stocky, with swarthy skin. Long hair was forbidden, and “he had no beauty to attract us to him” (Isaiah 53:2). He was gentle and kind, but his bravery, courage and passion are often left out. The Jesus of popular culture is a victim accidentally crushed by the vicissitudes of a cruel world. Who wants to follow such a figure?

Such a figure rightly gathers the pitying focus of soft and tender souls. But do men want to sit around and pour out pity? Is this what following Jesus is?

This is not the Jesus of the Bible. The Jesus of the Bible out-manned every man that has ever lived. His death was not accidental, but a deliberate act of self-sacrifice in order to provide rescue for everyone (man, woman and child) who would put their trust in him.

Not only so, but he rose triumphant out of the grave, like the warrior king that he is, having defeated death itself. The Bible tells us that this great King calls men and women to follow him into the new Kingdom that he has made theirs through his life, death and resurrection. He is not looking for your pity but for your allegiance.

That’s the sort of man that is worth finding out about and following.

Why is it that men hate going to church? Because too often they don’t meet the Jesus of the Bible. They are presented with an object of pity, and pity will not motivate men to follow—but the real Jesus does.

Dear Calliope,

Thank you for your letter in response to a previous column, although since you gave no address, this is the about the only option left for response. In response to my claim that God is a master artist you raise what you imagine to be numerous “design faults, never corrected” such as earthquakes, tsunamis etc. I can only assume that you haven’t read much of this column before because I have written often on these sorts of issues, as well as others you mention.

You write, “If I were God I wouldn’t have the neck to ‘proclaim my handiwork’ when it is so lethally shoddy”. It is as a result of mankind’s ‘handiwork’ that it has become lethal. I don’t just mean that in the sense that we have damaged the planet physically, although we have, but the issue goes deeper.

The Bible teaches that the world was created perfect—without any such design faults. Man however decided that he would rather cast aside the authority of his Creator, and in doing so found out that he cannot both have his cake and eat it. He cannot throw off God’s rule and still enjoy all the benefits of God’s rule. As a result of mankind’s rebellion God subjected his creation to decay and struggle in order to help us see the painful reality that life without God is fragile and futile. They are not design faults; they are consequences of rebellion.

In short, the brokenness of the world is our fault, and is there to show us that we need God more than we realise. Even it we are the ones to blame, God himself has stepped into the brokenness in the person of Jesus Christ to provide the solution, but that solution isn’t simply the waving of a magic wand to take away the earthquakes etc. The solution starts much closer to home in the recesses of your heart and mine. We need to resubmit to the authority of God (by the way, the God of the Old Testament and the New Testament is exactly the same, and there is no contradiction between him and Jesus, for they are one), and seek forgiveness for our own rebellion against his kind rule. Only when that is done can we look forward to seeing this broken masterpiece restored to its original form—with everything corrected.

Yours sincerely

Mark

PS – I know this doesn’t answer everything, but if you really want to discuss, then drop me a line, with an address.

The Holistic & Psychic Health Fair is in Letterkenny this weekend. Now I have nothing against alternative forms of medicine – provided they are alternatives, in other words, provided they work.

And I’m all for people getting in touch with spiritual issues. As long as they go about it the right way – see John 14:6.

But I do hate to see people falling for all sorts of nonsense. GK Chesterton once said, “When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing, they believe in anything”.

I heard an interview a while ago with some exhibitors from a previous fair. One of them was a bonereader and did a reading on air. Someone in the studio chose an object from the bonereader’s bag, and the dialogue went something like this:

Bonereader: “This tells me that you have set or that you need to set some boundaries in your life. Perhaps in the area of emotions, or telling people you can’t come into this part of my life, it’s private. Would that be the case?”

Other person: “Yes that’s right”

Then the bonereader really warmed to the theme, discoursing on the benefits of setting boundaries in life. Another object signified “Completeness” – something in her life would draw to a close, something in relation to her setting these boundaries.

Now I have nothing personal against this lady, just the whole new age mishmash of nonsense that she represents – fortune telling, bone-reading, palm reading, crystal healing, etc. She happens to provide a good example. As I listened I wondered, “Do people really believe this stuff?”

It always starts off so vague. Who of us doesn’t need to set boundaries in their life? And of course there are always things drawing to a close in our lives—especially if you’re going to start drawing a few lines in places there weren’t lines previously. Apparently she charges €35 for this advice.

The serious side is that so many people take the advice of such new age gurus and put it into practice unquestioningly. At best it’s common sense that you don’t need to pay for, at worst it is the guesswork of a stranger who knows very little about your life.

On the other hand there are pastors in this town preaching something sane and sensible from God’s word every week, and you can come along and hear it for free. What’s more, God’s word is entirely relevant to everyone’s life, and is written by one who knows us individually and perfectly. Why not come along?

With the publication of the report into child abuse in Ireland in May and its horrific findings, many will no doubt add this to the list of reasons why they can’t believe in God. This is a perfectly understandable reaction, and one which the guilty will have to answer to God for. Jesus warned in Luke 17:2 that it would be better for such a person, “to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around his neck than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin”.

It is not simply this report alone which gives people reason to doubt Christianity—it is one in a long line of offences attributed to those who claim Christianity as their religion. Add to that list the Crusades, slavery, racism amongst the ‘Christian’ southern United States etc.

Several answers could be given. One is that disbelief in God fares no better—it has spawned the atrocities of Communism with its long list of human rights abuses all over the world, and the awfulness of Nazi Germany to name but two. Violence done in the name of Christianity is terrible, and must be addressed, but societies which have abandoned religion have been just as oppressive as those steeped in it. A deeper answer than disbelief in God is needed.

A second strand to the answer is to recognise that there is a difference between real Christianity and what is often claimed as Christianity. Genuine Christianity results in deep change, and has been at the forefront of the righting of ills such as slavery and racism. God will be the judge of the hearts of those who claimed Christianity and carried out evil in its name—and there will be many to whom he says “'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'” (Matthew 7:23). It would be a tragedy to reject Christianity because of frauds and yet to find yourself judged alongside them.

A third strand to the answer is to realise that the solution to these moral ills is not the abandonment of Christianity, but the embrace of it. The answer is to call the perpetrators to be more Christian, not less. The Bible condemns such behaviour in far stronger terms than any human has. This is what Martin Luther King realised as challenged those claiming Christianity whilst engaging in racism. He took the Bible and called them to live out what they believed—to be more Christian, not less.

Mark Loughridge is the minister of Milford Reformed Presbyterian Church. He can be contacted on 074 9123961 or mark@milfordrpc.org. You can read more or listen online at www.milfordrpc.org

Flight AF447 went missing on Sunday off the coast of Brazil. As I write this reports of wreckage are coming in, and the 228 passengers and crew, including 3 Irish doctors, are believed to be dead.

Inevitably questions arise at a time like this about God and suffering. Understandably so—for if God is powerful enough to do something about it, why doesn’t he? Once again this column isn’t big enough for an in-depth answer, and I am aware that many who ask this question do so out of deep personal hurt. This is not merely an intellectual itch, but a cry from the heart.

I would say that it is partly because of suffering that I do believe. I find in the Bible the only credible explanation and solution to the problem. This broken world that we find ourselves in, with its prevailing sense of “This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be”, is this way because we are the way we are.

The problem isn’t with God, it’s with us. That doesn’t mean that there is always a direct correlation between a person’s suffering and their lack of uprightness. But it does mean that in a world where people choose to live for themselves rather than for God, we can’t expect the harmony that is promised when we live with God at the centre.

And because the problem isn’t at the level of disappearing planes or earthquakes, but is at the level of the human heart, that’s where the solution is concentrated. The Christian God isn’t uncaring or indifferent to our suffering. Instead he takes it so seriously that he is willing to get involved, not simply to track planes, or to empathise and comfort—although he can and does—but to provide the solution.

At the cross God gets involved to provide the solution at the cost of great personal suffering so that we could, not simply have comfort for broken lives, but ultimately have restoration to a life free from brokenness, hurt and pain—Heaven.

As Timothy Keller puts it, “Jesus came on a rescue mission for creation. He had to pay for our sins so that someday he can end evil and suffering without ending us.”

We may not know the reason for suffering—but we know what the reason isn’t. It isn’t because God doesn’t care. To forsake God because of suffering is to forsake our only hope, comfort and the ultimate answer.

From time to time I hear people give various reasons for not believing the Bible. Since I hold that the Bible is key for a right understanding of life I thought I’d try to answer some of these. If you have a particular reason, why not drop me an email, and we’ll try to cover it in the column.

This week’s objection runs like this: “We’re more scientifically advanced now and not so gullible as to believe in miracles.” Is it just the case that primitive people in Bible times were more easily fooled?

However, the New Testament era is much closer to us than the prehistoric era is to it. The people in those days knew that virgins didn’t have babies, people didn’t walk on water, calm storms with a word, nor raise the dead. They disbelieved and doubted as much as we would.

The whole point of a miracle is that it is outside of the regular flow of normal life. It is something that can’t be accounted for by the laws of nature. It is an interruption by a force greater than the universe. They are meant to shock us, to make us stop and realise that something or someone bigger than ‘mother nature’ is in control.

It is worth noting that miracles weren’t an everyday occurrence in the Bible—they are grouped at key moments when God wanted to make a point.

People don’t walk on water as a rule, or raise the dead, but if they are an all-powerful God what’s to stop them? If you are, as Jesus was, seeking to demonstrate your credentials as God, some extraordinary evidence is needed. He wouldn’t be much of a God if he couldn’t do miracles. To disbelieve the Bible because of miracles is like saying, “If there is a God who does God-like things, then I couldn’t believe in him.”

It’s a strange way to argue—it excludes the answer before the question is asked.

However this is not a call to be gullible. The Bible nowhere argues for naïve acceptance, rather that we use our God-given critical faculties to assess what we read. We are expected to be surprised and questioning, but not dismissing. In the reporting of the miracles, and the reactions they provoke we see evidence for the truth of the Bible, not reason to doubt.

I came across an item in the Telegraph newspaper reporting on a book published in the States, When Good People Have Affairs by Mira Kirshenbaum.

The author argues that society has failed to have a sympathetic discussion of infidelity, and therefore the positive sides of cheating have been ignored. According to Kirshenbaum having an affair can be good for a marriage, but above all you must never admit it to your spouse, even when directly asked.

Her book is not aimed at “creeps” who think they can cheat with impunity, but at decent people who know they have made a mistake. “These people are suffering terribly and need to be relieved of their sense of guilt and shame because those emotions are paralysing,” she said.

It’s hard to know where to start with such an argument, but let’s shift it sideways for a moment. What if the above paragraphs had read:

The author argues that society has failed to have a sympathetic discussion of murder, and therefore the positive sides of murder have been ignored. Murder can be can be good for a society, weeding out the weak, the distasteful, and the vulnerable, leaving only the strong. “These murderers are suffering terribly and need to be relieved of their sense of guilt and shame because those emotions are paralysing”

It doesn’t work, does it? We’d never buy that argument. Ok, some would say the two things aren’t interchangeable, or even moral equivalents. But the reality is that her argument is based on post-event justification, rather than looking for any moral or ethical principles to guide us.

Let me highlight three other mistakes:

Kirshenbaum confuses the good which comes out of an event, with the good which justifies an event. It’s rather like saying, “I was drunk and crashed the car, severely injuring someone. But it put me off the drink for life. Therefore it’s ok to drink and drive—good might come out of it.”

She also writes off guilt as merely an emotion. This is short-term and ultimately unhelpful because guilt is much more than an emotion. It is more crushing than an emotion because it is tied to a reality. We did wrong—and that wrong needs to be addressed, not explained away. And to add to the guilt of infidelity the guilt of dishonesty is to pile up burdens that only eat away at us, or harden us into something callous and uncaring—neither of which is an attractive option.

A third mistake is that Kirshenbaum treats marriage as merely a social construct. The reality is that marriage is a picture of God’s never-fading, always faithful, unbreakable, never-dying love for his people. So when we dishonour marriage we are like vandals defacing what is meant to be a masterpiece. And God does not hold innocent those who do that. Guilt and shame are present because there is a God before whom we must stand, and neither Ms Kirshenbaum nor anyone can write off the guilt and shame that it is God’s prerogative to deal with. That is the height of arrogance.

And that leads to the real solution. The real solution is not to deny or hide the problem, but to bring it to God. Only he has the right and authority to forgive. And he has the power to bring healing and restoration to broken marriages.

Someone said to me the other day about the different religions, “We’re all just taking different paths up the same mountain.” It sounds profound, it sounds magnanimous – but is it the case?

What if the mountain is too high for any man to ascend? What if it is too steep? If that’s the case what’s the use of religion? A moment’s reflection will show that the mountain must indeed to be too high – if we are seeking to be acceptable to God, and God is perfect, how then can we who aren’t perfect be acceptable to a perfect God? The mountain is just too steep.

But what if God isn’t at the top of the mountain? What if God came down the mountain so we wouldn’t have to climb? Well that would change everything, wouldn’t it? No point climbing if there is a much easier route. No point in climbing, because the further we climb, the further from God we get!

That’s exactly what the Bible teaches.

Real Christianity isn’t about trying to climb the mountain to God; real Christianity is about God coming down to us. That’s what Jesus was doing on the cross – paying for our sins so that we wouldn’t have to. We need to turn from our own efforts and turn to Jesus, and put our trust in him to make us acceptable.

Poetry isn’t my particular thing, but I came across this poem that sums it all up:

O long and dark the stairs I trod
With trembling feet to find my God,
Gaining a foothold bit by bit,
Then slipping back and losing it.

Never progressing; striving still
With weakened grasp and faltering will,
Bleeding to climb to God, while He
Seemed not to notice me.

Then came a certain time when I
Loosened my hold and fell thereby;
Down to the lowest step my fall,
As if I had not climbed at all.

And as I lay despairing there,
Listen.... a footfall on the stair,
On that same stair where I afraid,
Fumbled and fell and lay dismayed.

And lo, when hope had ceased to be,
My God came down the stairs to me.

Religions may be about climbing mountains to find God, but Christianity is about God climbing down to find us.