Tim Tebow and the UK/US Media Difference

If you live east of the Atlantic, you may not have heard of Tim Tebow. He was last season's quarterback for the Denver Broncos (American football, if this sentence is losing you), leading them to the NFL play-offs. He has more than a million Twitter followers and landed an endorsement deal with Nike. Last week, he was traded (transferred, in UK English) to the New York Jets.

Oh, and he's a Christian, who prays before games and uses media interviews to share the gospel.

On the other hand, in the US Tebow's faith is more than just cannon-fodder for journalists who want to look clever. And his beliefs are mentioned, and commented on, in a pretty respectful way—see here in the New York Times, not exactly a bastion of Biblical viewpoints.

I don't want to make too much of it. But it does point up a difference between the UK and US media. In the US, Christian faith is more mainstream, more respected, more understood. If a Christian pastor writes a book, he's far more likely to have it picked up and discussed in the secular media. Talkshows are far more likely to give a hearing to a proper, biblical Christian voice.

In the UK, the secular media doesn't really understand Christianity; doesn't bother to get to grips with it and discuss it in the same way as the Budget is, or the Champions League is. Public displays of faith are usually quickly watered down (my favourite was at the 2003 World Cup, when the commentator said of the South African and Samoan teams praying together after they'd played one another: "Ah, the unifying power of sport").

This isn't to say "it's better in the US" (though in many ways their church scene has much to teach us). It is to say "it's different in the US". The great things that are happening in UK churches—the gospel transforming deprived areas one person at a time, the Bible being gently brought to bear on people facing agonising, life-changing decisions, and so on—go unreported, or are only spoken of to be undermined. The pastors who preach with conviction, faithfulness and passion go unnoticed. The growing churches remain unmentioned.

That doesn't mean they're not happening. It just means that we'll have to look harder. And that we won't hear about them in our secular media.

The UK: Still a religious country (#Pray4Muamba)

Richard Dawkins must be turning on his soapbox.

There’s been a lot of praying going on—and a lot of people telling other people to pray—since Fabrice Muamba collapsed on the White Hart Lane pitch nine days ago.

Other players prayed on the pitch. Twitter was alive with prayer requests from celebrities such as Wayne Rooney. “Pray 4 Muamba” T-shirts sprung up everywhere. And all this before Muamba’s family had requested prayer.

And wonderfully, God seems graciously to have chosen to save this man’s life. Though his heart stopped for 78 minutes, he is now talking and moving—and was able to watch Bolton’s 2-1 win on Saturday (they may yet avoid relegation—see, miracles do happen!)

So what do we make of all this? Two things, perhaps:

1. Britain is still a religious country.

When the chips are down, people pray. And people preach prayers to others, too. Wayne Rooney may be a surprising preacher, but that’s what he was doing—telling others to act in a certain way to the Almighty. Despite the best efforts of active secularists and militant atheists, prayer is still our default action when confronted with the shocking reality of a broken world where 21-year-olds nearly die (and, sometimes, do die).

2. Britain is NOT a Christian country.

Let’s not kid ourselves. These were not prayers offered in faith to a Father who was being trusted to act for the good of His children and supremely for His own glory. Nowhere in the celebrity/sporting twittersphere did I spot a prayer which began “Lord, if it is your will” and ended “for the glory and in the name of your Son”. These prayers were offered to an unknown god, a genie in a bottle. A kindly deity who we can ignore every day except the day we need him, and who we can then whistle up, tell what we need, get it, and carry on as before. That’s not who God is. He would be no more or less God if He had decided that Muamba had come to the end of his life (as he will, one day—just as we all will).

And there are prayers which God won’t answer—prayers which come from a heart which has the wrong attitude, to which God says: “Even if they call to the Most High, he will by no means exalt them” (Hosea 11 v 7). God saving Muamba isn't the result of the prayers of people who treat the Creator of everything as though He were a God who can be taken off the shelf, dusted down, given His orders and then returned. It may be the result of the prayers of His children, who know who He is, who seek to treat Him as God, and who ask for His forgiveness through His Son when they fail to. And it certainly is because He is a gracious God, who gives us every breath we enjoy as a gift, whether we recognize that or not.

• Ultimately, the difference between pagan folk religion and real Christianity—between twitter-prayer and real-prayer—is about what we pray for, and why we think we’ll be heard.
• Do we pray first and foremost for what we want, or for Jesus to be praised?
• Do we pray because we think prayer works, or because we trust that God works?
• Do we pray because we think prayer is an offering—we’re doing something for God, so He’ll do something for us? Or because we know prayer is speaking to our heavenly Father—we can do nothing for Him, but Jesus has done everything we need to be able to enter His heavenly throne room as His children?
• Perhaps here’s the crunch: do we pray because we need something, or because we simply love our Father?

So the reaction to Muamba’s heart attack—and let’s give thanks to our Father that He has mercifully saved his mortal life—is at once heartening, and disheartening.

Britain still believes in something. But most of us have no idea who He is.

Cool pair of lights

I’ve just cycled home with my wheel on fire. Well, almost. I have a pair of bright red lights attached to my spokes which, when turning at speed, make a truly impressive circle of fire. They’re seriously cool – and seriously safe too, as I battle the city traffic. But I know they’re only this bright because I put new batteries in yesterday. In a couple of weeks they’ll start to fade back to an anaemic pink.

But above my head this evening was an even cooler pair of lights. It’s a busy time for the planets this week, with Venus and Jupiter meeting up for a chat. Two bright lights, hanging in the sky, beckoning me onwards. I get really excited when I recognise planets – seeing things that are such a l-o-ng way away. But like my spoke lights, these will soon fade – they’re only going to be paired up like this for a few more days.

But planets always remind me of my favourite throwaway line in the Bible. It’s from Genesis 1 v 16: “He also made the stars.” God is the perfect Creator the stars point to. His power never runs out. His radiance never fades. And we know that, if we have put our trust in His Son, then we will see Him – not just for a few fleeting days like Jupiter and Venus – but for eternity in His perfect new creation – where it “does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp“ (Revelation 21 v 23).

That’s the coolest pair of lights of all!

Teach the Little Ones

We've just finished this season's round of Growing Young Disciples training events with a day in Rugby. It was a great day, filled with biblical insight (thank you Andrew Sach), wisdom (thank you everyone who led seminars and workshops) and encouragement (thank you Jonty Allcock). But what struck me most was how many hands went up when I asked if this was the first formal training they had done for the ministry they are involved in.

Over half the room of 230 or so put their hands up.

One of Andrew Sach's illustrations from his opening talk springs to mind. He tells the story of Ray the plumber from Peckham, who came to fix a dripping tap and a lavatory that wouldn't stop flushing. Of course, Ray turned out to be a bit of a cowboy, and 5 minutes after collecting his cash, the tap was still dripping, and the loo wouldn't flush at all.

Andrew shared his recurrent nightmare that he's in hospital for some major heart surgery, and just as he slips under from the anasthaetic, he looks up at the surgeon and sees the beaming face of Ray with a scalpel in his hand.

And the point is that Christian ministry, and especially Youth and Children's ministry, is far more dangerous and deadly than physical heart surgery. A botched op from an untrained surgeon may leave me crippled or dead. But a botch job of Bible teaching and ministry over the years we have children and young people in our groups may end up with people who are spiritually crippled, or lost for eternity.

Of course the great news is that the job is not ours alone. When the Bible is opened, and we do even our humble untrained best, God loves to use that. His Holy Spirit will work in their lives despite our weakness and ineptitude.

But it has renewed my passion for the training we are involved in at this level. How vital it is for us to convince those who may often feel they are just "minding the children" that they are doing a vital task in growing children to maturity in Christ. How important to help them to see how the foundations they are laying at age 2 and 3 is something that can shape the spiritual outlook of someone for their whole lives. What a privilege to help leaders and teachers understand how they can make the gospel of grace shine through the legalism which is the instinctive position of the human heart.

So we're planning the next round of training days, and the Youthwork residential next year, not with a heavy heart but with renewed enthusiasm that the task is both vital and needed. Bring it on!

And if, in the mean time, you are keen to stimulate your thinking in this area, the Open Bible Institute offers a distance-learning package on Youth and Children's work as well as lots of other training opportunities.

The enemy within

The arrest of two priests in Eastbourne on Tuesday highlights a growing issue for the place of the Gospel in public life.

Many Christians will have applauded the Cardinal Keith O'Brien's statement about Marriage over the weekend. But scroll down the responses to online articles, and you will find a huge amount of hostility. And not just the usual, and often orchestrated, response from gay lobby groups. There is a growing groundswell of opinion that the Church has lost all its moral authority to comment on these things because of the rank hypocrisy it has displayed over child sex abuse in recent years.

Admittedly, the Anglican church has reacted better to revelations of scandal than the Roman Church, whose cover ups have been its undoing in the US and Ireland in particular. The Anglican hierarchy has had the sense and courage to deal more openly and decisively when these things have come to the fore. Let us pray that they do the same with this developing story.

Scandals of ministers involved in immorality will be with us all the time. They will always be shocking. They will always be unexpected. They will always leave us thinking : "How could this have happened?" And they will continue happening despite all our best efforts to be CRB'd, mentored and accountable to each other. Because, as the proverb says, it is the human heart that is deceitful and wicked above all things. It will find ways of wriggling through the cracks of the barriers we put in the way.

Scandals like this, in God's goodness, should spur us on to renew our efforts at getting our structures accountable. But it should also spur us on to examine our own hearts afresh, and to ask how we are contributing to the growing view that the church is just "a bunch of hypocrites".

Post-birth Abortion: Any different to pre-birth abortion?

Academics, some based in the UK, have argued it is not morally wrong to kill newborn babies if they are disabled. Here’s a chilling line from the Guardian’s report—it’s worth quoting the whole paragraph:

“What they preferred to call "after-birth abortion" rather than infanticide should be allowed not only for babies with abnormalities, such as Down's syndrome, which had not been detected during the pregnancy, but also newborns whose parents would have been granted an abortion because they felt they could not psychologically or materially cope with a child.”

We want to say that they are wrong...

But it is worth noting that, within the ethical framework most people in the UK operate, they are, logically, being consistent (please don't panic - bear with me…).

They argue that a baby is a non-person because they have no sense of their own existence, or of the fact that their existence is valuable. “The moral status of the individual killed is comparable with that of a fetus”. And it’s that sentence that is going to be a problem for people who don’t think abortion is wrong—so it’s that sentence which perhaps helps us to talk to friends about this issue.

In terms of value, there’s no intrinsic difference between a baby in the womb and a baby in the cradle. If one isn’t a person, neither is the other. If I say abortion is morally justifiable, I can’t really oppose infanticide (though these academics prefer to call it “after-birth abortion”). If, on the other hand, I understand that humans, made in God’s image (Genesis 1 v 26-28), have intrinsic value as His image-bearers (whether or not they have a sense of this great value), then I will oppose infanticide. And so I will oppose abortion as well.

Sadly, though not surprisingly, their views have led to threats being made against them—and that’s what some newspapers led with, rather than the substance of their argument. But justice is not ours to mete out, however horrific the opinion or the action: “’I will repay,’ says the Lord” (Romans 12 v 19). Our part is to love those who hate God and His standards—to pray for them and seek to tell them of judgment to come and forgiveness to enjoy. Wouldn’t it be great if their inboxes were filled up with assurances that they are being prayed for?

No Questions Asked

The story about doctors giving abortions on the basis of gender, “no questions asked”, must be one of the saddest news items of recent years. Let’s be thankful it has come to light, and is being dealt with.

But there’s something illogical about the outcry, too. If an unborn baby girl has the right to life, then surely surely any unborn baby does—whether the sex is known or not, whether the baby is a girl or a boy.

It seems strange to accept you can terminate because you are upset at the prospect of having a baby—but not because you are upset at the prospect of having a baby who happens to be a girl.

And just another thought… in the UK you can opt to find out the gender of your child when he/she is 20 weeks old. You can opt to terminate a pregnancy up to 24 weeks. Which means you can easily abort a girl you don’t want—you simply have to say it’s for social reasons, not sexist ones.

Let’s pray that this news story means no baby loses their life ever again in the UK simply because they’re of an unwanted gender. But let’s also pray that no baby loses their life again in the UK for any other reason. And let’s pray that women, and men, who find themselves in difficult, unplanned situations receive the help and love they need—and that women, and men, who look back at difficult decisions they wouldn’t take now accept and appreciate the forgiveness that Jesus offers all of us.

For some more in depth biblical reflection on the issue of abortion, scroll down a few blogs and see last week's series ...

After the pancakes have gone...

There will be many Christians with very full stomachs this evening. A significant number of frying pans with burn marks. And more than a few ceilings sporting the odd stalactite of half-cooked batter, casualties of the inevitable over-enthusiastic pancake-toss. But once the eating and cleaning has been completed, many believers will be turning their minds to a highly tricky question: what on earth should we do about Lent?

Evangelicals have a strange relationship with these 40 or so days of the Christian calendar. It's not that we object to the concepts of sacrifice or fasting or repentance. Nor that we mind giving up a few things. But many of us worry about the half-hearted candy-related resolutions that all too often get made at this time of year just out of tradition. While giving up chocolate might have benefits for some people's waistline, and if the money saved is given to charity then good work in the world can result, is this really what God wants of us? Isn't it true that an outward show of sacrifice, if not accompanied by an inner change of heart, is quite frankly very far from God's will for his people? So how to respond?

Isaiah had this to say to believers who were involved in tokenism in their fasting:

"Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice, and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free, and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter - when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?" Is 58:6-7

We live in a world where millions are in physical bondage to tyrants and spiritual bondage to the devil; a world where many have no idea where their next meal is coming from and are ignorant of the awesome gift of the bread of life; a world where countless numbers have no roof over their head and no understanding of the eternal God, the ultimate rock and refuge for those who turn to him. Spending Lent prayerfully and proactively addressing some of those needs might just make the post-pancake period of 2012 rather more gospel-centred than it might otherwise be.