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From The Bishop

June 2008

                             Being the right kind of Christian ‘nutter’

How do we overcome the perception that Christian faith is for people who have let go of their critical faculties? This month Bishop Lee reflects on the credible good news of the gospel.

Earlier today I received an e-mail from someone who heard me on national radio speaking about some of the issues related to the Government’s Embryology Bill. It was an encouraging one thanking me “for making it clear to at least a small part of the population that Christians are not all nutters!”

I was reminded of Tony Blair’s admission after he stepped down as Prime Minister that he kept his religious views largely to himself because he felt he would be accused of being “a nutter.”
Since a nutter is defined as someone who is, at best, eccentric or exceptionally silly and, at worst, foolishly insane or mad this perception is unlikely to give us a foot up in advancing the cause of Christ and God’s Kingdom. As Joel Edwards’ has made clear, we need to connect the gospel and Christian life with credible good news.

But that does not entail abandoning our values or principles in order to get a good press. It does not mean ruling out of court the ideas of a virgin birth, Jesus’ resurrection or miracles in order to be acceptable to the likes of Richard Dawkins or Polly Toynbee, or for that matter, your workmates or friends. It is not about accepting contemporary mores or a secularist agenda as the way things have to be, or gagging our moral consciences – blowing whichever way the societal wind takes us. No!

Being credible means making a well founded case for our position but being honest about the weaknesses as well as the strengths. Credibility and humility are not opponents but cousins. It means remembering that Christian faith is not an argument to be won but a loyalty to be graciously attested to and demonstrated. And if it truly is good news we are about, we ought to be clear who will be blessed and why. What reliable difference does this good news make to the poor, the marginalised, the oppressed or the broken? What about the other parents at the school gate, the managers at the office, the men and women in the canteen, the folk in the day care centre? What might it mean for those of another religious faith or none?

Yet even when we have been as credible and as full of good news as it is possible to be, we may still find ourselves labelled as nutters. We can present Christ’s claims and God’s way for human flourishing as well as we can, but there is a foolishness associated with the cross which always risks dismissal and ridicule as the apostle Paul made particularly plain to the Corinthian Christians.

In my time in the Holy Land earlier this year I met a hugely impressive Palestinian Arab Christian who is a Lutheran Pastor. Around 20 years ago he founded an outreach project which has grown over the years to be the third largest employer in the Bethlehem region. In a time of political uncertainty, economic adversity, and Christians leaving the region, this Pastor is pulling together a major new project involving an international Conference Centre and a Centre for the Arts and Education. “People say we are crazy,” he said. “But in this crazy world, God needs crazy people like us.” Sometimes in God’s economy being credible good news involves being regarded as foolishly insane by most people.

+Lee