Bridge of Reason

A couple of weeks ago I had a phone call from an elderly relative. He was anxious about a text he had received warning him that his Apple Pay account was about to be closed because of ‘suspicious activity’. To resolve this situation, it said he had to click on a link that would allow him to change his password. Concerned that his Apple Pay facility was about to be suspended, he called me to ask for advice. When I told him it was a scam, he asked me how I knew. I said: ‘Because you do not have an Apple Pay account!’ We have all had a suspicious texts, calls, and emails and sometimes they are obvious scams, but occasionally they are a little more difficult to detect. Religious Scam How do we spot a religious scam? How, do we as Christians, know that what we are being told is true or false? This is an important question. Why do we believe what we believe? Have we done our due diligence in checking the facts, or do we believe something because someone who appears to know more than us (kno...

  A New Year usually brings a fresh wave of optimism. There appears to be an opportunity for a fresh start, a chance to get your house in order, the possibility of doing something different. Each year people resolve such things as losing weight, giving up smoking, not drinking as much, going to the gym, or learning a new language. None of these are bad in and of themselves, but very few people will continue these activities much beyond February. Why is it that people resolve to try and change themselves? Change Did you hear of the small boy who swallowed a pound coin? When his mother called the doctor to ask of her son’s condition, the doctor said: ‘I’m afraid there has been no change’. There is something deep within us human beings that causes us to be dissatisfied with our lives. We know things are not right and so we seek to change. Realising the truth of this, the American author, Henry David Thoreau said that: ‘The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation’, meaning that mos...

  Upon joining my current church, I was keen to get to know people. I had previously been a teacher, so I had experience of quickly getting to grips with names, but on my first Sunday at church, I realised it wasn’t going to be that easy. After the service I was introduced to not one, not two, not three but four sets of identical twins, and when I say identical, I mean identical.  So closely did one twin resemble the other that, in the style of one of my literary heroes, Sherlock Holmes, I began to scan them for any clues that might help me. I found nothing. They looked the same, sounded the same and even dressed so similarly, that I believed their parents may still be buying their clothes. Afraid of getting their names wrong, I began to call them ‘brother’ and ‘sister’, (which is the Christian version of calling someone whose name you can’t remember ‘mate’); after all I did not want to offend them, nor embarrass myself. One set of twins (the lads – the rest were girls), were ...