Shush - there's a Christian about!

Worried Christians worship in secret. This was the headlines of an article in The Daily Telegraph today.

The Very Rev John Hall, the Dean of Westminster, said believers were increasingly keeping their faith to themselves. He went on to criticise the decision to suspend a nurse, Caroline Petrie, who offered to pray for an elderly patient.

On the same page was another headline – Prayers got me fired, says GP. This was the case of a Muslim doctor, Musarrat Syed-Shah, who says she was sacked because she wanted to attend a mosque for prayers every Friday.

Both these stories highlight the growing religious intolerance prevailing in every aspect of human life.

I think I mentioned in a previous blog how I became persona non grata after visiting a children’s home in my locality and made the mistake of handing out Bibles to the kids and was subsequently refused entry. At the time I merely thought the home had something to hide but in hindsight it has become very clear that the chap in charge probably felt I was recruiting for my Christian army – God forbid!

Tony Blair has publicly stated that he hid his Christian beliefs while running the country and of course his master of spin Alistair Campbell once interrupted a question about the prime minister’s faith with 'I'm sorry, we don't do God.'

Broadcaster Jeremy Vine has also publicly declared that he daren’t mention his Christian faith on the radio for fear of reprisals.

What can we glean from these examples and would it be a good thing to abolish religion completely?

Of course there is no easy answer. Spiritual matters tend to be made very complicated by fickle human analysis and arguments for and against the worship of the God of love are fundamental to the ongoing ‘war’.

Take the John Lennon classic song Imagine as an example – One of my favourite songs begins:
Imagine there's no Heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today

John asks us to imagine a world where there is no fear of repercussions for what we do. A worthy sentiment, if only the human spirit lent itself to always doing the right thing!

The song goes on
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

I love this idea of a global village with no boundaries of race, creed, or culture. Sounds like Heaven to me! Unfortunately John was blissfully unaware that was what he was describing so beautifully. Yes it is true that people kill each other in the name of patriotism and religion but the perpetrators of such crimes would operate within any context. To kill in the name of patriotism is only a very small leap from the mentality that prevails among football hooligans. Those that kill in the name of religion are not doing God’s work – He is more than capable of defending himself. To suggest that the world would be safer or more peaceful without religion is naïve bordering on delusion. Humans lie and cheat so naturally, even the best of them practice nepotism and a state of chaos would soon persist if human life was left to its own devices and God abandoned us.

The song finally describes Heaven on Earth – A way of life alien to so many people but those truly touched by the Holy Spirit. Of course John wrote these words in his disillusionment with human beings and the mechanisms by which they choose to remain disparate from each other – patriotism, religion and greed.

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

Far from being the atheists’ anthem that it would appear to be this song is every Christian’s dream for their fellow man. Yes we would love to live as one, live in peace, live in equality – often this is the initial appeal of converting to Christianity (or any religious denomination I should add) but since man’s first disobedience he has shown himself to be untrustworthy, fickle, irrational, moody, inconstant and several other adjectives of the same ilk which all add up to the same thing – man will ultimately cock up – every single time, without fail.

There is no such thing as a good person – we are all tainted – but we place an acceptable level of behaviour in the category of being good despite our shortcomings which without guidelines will eventually supersede the good. These guidelines are necessary, essential even, they are part of what we call religion.

Take the example of MPs’ expenses. Virtually every MP has been found guilty of abusing the system. Irrespective of what the fees office might allow all MPs should have enough foresight to know that they are going to be judged harshly by making speculative claims and I for one could not trust any public figure who blatantly milks the system for all its worth and then expects me to believe they have the necessary integrity to make important decisions in the public interest. Inevitably these people are tarnished in the same way as the bejewelled evangelists and defrocked priests. Guilty of bringing their profession into disrepute but not devaluing the message in any way, in fact the message is enhanced rather than diluted. We need good candidates.

Things are never quite what they seem in this world. On the whole people are greedy and self-serving. Those that become financially successful often throw a few crumbs about to ease their conscience and inflate their ego, those that become financially very successful tend to become megalomaniacs – true philanthropists are a rare breed indeed and all the ones I know are touched by the Holy Spirit.

I suppose Richard Dawkins is the most famous atheist in the UK. His method of rationalising religious beliefs is to concentrate on all the negative aspects of faith without ever giving a balanced view of the positive aspects. They do not exist to him!
I could write an A to Z of the negative aspects of Religions and it would be a far larger tome than his, larger than my A to Z of Everything – by far. I would though feel compelled to write about the positive aspects too and fear my life span is too short to complete such a book.