Bridge of Reason

How are things with you these days? I imagine there have been significant changes to your normal routine. Confinement has seen me running out of excuses and actually tacking the mess I laughingly call my study. (Starting to tackle) My local shop is allowing just two customers in at any one time. He has considerately marked out the floor into metre squares in black and yellow tape. Shopping is now a dance class, but we are all grateful. I like chunky rolled oats for my porridge and it is not easy to come by these days. But my local shopkeeper, who doesn’t usually carry them, found a box for me and made a friend for life. I needed to visit the chemist in the city centre and the roads and pavements were quieter than a wet Sunday morning in November. I knew the police were stopping drivers to ask if they have a legitimate reason to be out. I did, but I still felt somehow guilty, waiting for that tap on the shoulder. We had to go to the hospital and that journey has never been so ...

The Knowledge of God in Christ People can struggle, especially in the current church climate, with the question of what does being a Christian look like. So many claims and counterclaims are made on our lives it can be daunting trying to simply walk in faithfulness. Two areas in particular are problematic for people, Bible reading and prayer. I will have something practical to say about that, but first I want to build on the question I addressed in my last post ; where do you stand in the daily battle of faith? (Eph.6:13) Of especial concern throughout the New Testament is the threat of error from within the church. Paul, in his farewell address to the Ephesian elders, warns of false prophets who will arise ‘from your own number,’ (Acts 20:30); He warns the church in Corinth not to be taken in by ‘false apostles, deceitful workmen, masquerading as apostles of Christ,’ (2 Cor.11:13) In his first letter to Timothy, Paul writes of some who will ‘abandon the faith and follow deceiving...

The February 2017 Enisgn magazine of the Mormon Church just dropped through my letterbox. Leafing through it, my eye was immediately drawn to the visiting teaching message on page 7, Christ’s Atonement is Evidence of God’s Love. The atoning work of Jesus is a fundamental of the Christian faith. What a movement has to say on this issue tells a lot about where it stands in relation to the clear message of the Bible on first principles.The piece begins: “Understanding that our Heavenly Father gave His Only Begotten Son that we might have immortality and the potential for eternal life helps us feel God’s infinite and incomprehensible love for us.” Mormon thinking is shot through with references to feelings of course. Understanding in this instance, “helps us feel God’s infinite and incomprehensible love for us.” The Bible, however, tells us that our understanding of gospel principles helps us know ! John writes: “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God s...

In ministry the least reliable thing of all is a testimony. I know that sounds a strange thing to say but when people stand up and tell their story you really have little or no control over what they will say, there is often little chance of verifying their back story and, especially if it goes to print, it can be a serious liability. Testimonies can also be heart-warming, encouraging, and inspiring, and I don’t want to discourage them. Its a question of how they are handled, what we make of them, and what weight we give them. Content is a good guide. Twelve Baptisms My wife and I were invited some years ago to a baptism in a local church. It was a pretty exciting occasion, in a charismatic church so plenty of music, ‘alleluias, and arm waving. If I tell you there there twelve baptism candidates that night you will understand all the excitement. We took our seats, but not for long, as the band struck up a hearty chorus and the congregation were on their feet, on their chairs – you ...

After sharing some pizza with my new Mormon missionary friends, Elders E and Y, I went along today at their invitation to attend the Mormon General Conference down at the well-known LDS church in South Kensington opposite the Science Museum. It was really nice to bump into my old friend Elder J there, and also get to know a Down Syndrome gentleman named Chris who told me he is a deacon in the church. The meeting was a repeat of the Saturday afternoon session in Salt Lake City on the big screen. There were the usual line-up of Mormon 'suits' giving speeches one after the other - mostly white, middle-aged gentlemen from the Quorum of 12 or the Seventy, though there was one endearing Japanese chap. Occasionally the speeches were punctuated with a number from the choir - one of which those around me joined in with, the other of which was just listened to. I am on this ongoing search to distill the Mormon message, and (I'm probably going to oversimplify here) according to the ta...