Thoughts on the Atrocity in Norway

We have all been shocked by the terrible crime committed in Norway last week. Anders Behring Breivik, previously an unknown man holding extreme and murderous political views, planted a bomb in Oslo before traveling to an island retreat where the youth wing of the governing party was holding a camp. The details are well-known as to what he did next.

It is quite plain what Christians are to think of such actions. The Bible is abundantly clear that "You shall not commit murder." Yet a word is perhaps necessary since Breivik claims to be a Christian.

That profession is quite false, he claims to be a disciple of Jesus, but Jesus "went around doing good". Jesus did not come to destroy, but to save, and in John 18:36 Jesus says, "My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight." So, then, it is clear that a man who seeks to kill people is not a Christian, and cannot be. No murderer can inherit eternal life unless he first repents and believes in Jesus. Breivik is unrepentant, he is therefore still lost and in the gall of bitterness.

He is described by the press as "a right-wing Christian extremist." He is not a Christian, whatever he may claim, because he ignores the law of God. He is said to believe he is in a war. I have my suspicions that Breivik may be insane, but the reality of the matter is that he is not in a war. He is not a soldier except in his own imagination, and he has no warrant for committing the crime that he has committed.

Christians follow the Prince of Peace. No man does God a service by murder, whatever he may think, and the man who kills in Jesus' name is committing an act of blasphemy as he does so. "You shall do no murder" still stands in the Law of God, and the man who says, "I love God" but does not love his neighbour is a liar.

The message of Christianity is the Gospel, the word means Good News. Breivik's twisted ideology is one of hate, and is good news to none. I sincerely doubt whether he even knows the meaning of the word grace, or the meaning of love. For God's love is self-sacrificial, it is the love of Jesus dying on the cross to take away sin. And there is grace even for Anders Behring Breivik if he repents of his sins and trusts in the Lord Jesus Christ.

He is no Christian who commits murder. But we follow a Christ who was murdered, and who prayed for his killers, "Father, forgive them."

A Plea for Discernment

With the first part of the adaptation of the last Harry Potter book hitting the big screen, the Christian media (and particularly the fundamentalist portion) is full of claims that this is encouraging the occult. Now, this is not a defence of Harry Potter, or a condemnation. It is a plea for us to get beyond simplistically attacking the mere fact that the books and fils use the imagery of magic and witchcraft, and to address what is behind these trappings.

A few years ago I was treated to one of the worst, most superficial Christian responses to a film that I have ever heard (naming no names). It was supposed to be a response to the film The Golden Compass (remember that?). Now The Golden Compass was an adaptation of the first book in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. While using the genre of fantasy, complete with magic and witches, Pullman's books are in fact designed to teach atheism, and he is quite explicit about this. Yet this review treated the film as though it was occult propaganda. It seemed that the reviewer was unable to get beyond the trappings of the novel to its core message. I was deeply embarrassed by the review, and I have to say that I have never listened to the podcast in question since. Why? Because the review was utterly superficial, and there are more substantial things one could listen to. There was the problem, you see. Now it seems to me that to say of the Harry Potter stories, "The involve people who do magic, therefore they are bad" is on the same level. It simply fails to engage with the stories at all. Now you may say, "Christians ought not to engage with worldly entertainment", but if you do, then that is reason enough not to engage with Harry Potter without invoking a superficial argument about witchcraft. If you are going to try to say that it is all right for Christians to watch secular films and read fiction, but that they ought not to have anything to do with Harry Potter, then you need to actually offer substantive reasons.

The books and films do not encourage children to participate in the Occult, for in Harry Potter's world magic is something you are born with. The divide between the magical and the non-magical is absolute and unbreakable. Harry Potter has magic powers because he was born with them, just as Clark Kent has the powers of Superman because he was born a native of the planet Krypton. No character in the Harry Potter books acquires magic powers, they possess them by virture of their birth. Thus J.K. Rowling has actually done all she can to depict magic as non-transferrable. Secondly the magic in the books works 'mechanically', without the invocation of spirit-beings. Magic is not a religion in Harry Potter, it is a super-power, like Superman's X-ray vision, but with the trappings of English folklore. Unlike Spider-Man's Peter Parker, Harry Potter did not get his powers in an accident. Nor did he gain them by his own ability. He got them from his parents, like Superman. Thus, at least in J.K. Rowling's mind, the world of Hogwarts is necessarily separate from the world of her readers.

For this reason I am unconvinced by the argument that Harry Potter encourages dabbling in the occult. There are shows and films that do that, as well as books. So a critique of Harry Potter must go behind the stylized, fantasy magic and address the actual messages of the books. That I do not intend to do - merely to challenge Christians to think about content, and look beyond trappings. Otherwise we shall make ourselves look foolish, and may even find that we are ourselves doing the right thing for the wrong reason - and in such a way as to fail utterly to make the case for others doing the right thing, as in the case of The Golden Compass. And by the way "It's just not my sort of thing" is a thoroughly good reason for not doing something!

Looking for Answers in the Wrong Place

One of the most amazingly daft ideas I have ever come across is that somehow natural science can decide for us questions of morality. This is foolish, because natural science (I possess a batchelor's degree in environmental science from the University of Liverpool, so I think I know something about natural science) can only describe what is. Morality, however, is a matter of how human beings ought to behave, and that cannot be the same as how human beings do behave. Why? Because we are all agreed that there are boundaries to acceptable human behaviour. It is an unarguable fact that murder, pederasty, incest, rape and torture happen. Yet there are (thankfully) very few people who think that they are fine, good things - and quite right too!

So why is it that there are attempts to argue that we should accept homosexual behaviour because it is 'natural'? If natural science tells us that some people are disposed to homosexual behaviour, while others are not, then does it follow it's good? No! Moral questions are outside of the realm of natural science - and rightly so. Natural science tells us what is, it cannot tell us what is good.

Which is why you will not see our lawmakers going to scientists to learn ethics.

The Church is not a Democracy

Recently our government here in Britain invited members of the public to suggest which laws they would like to see abolished. Predictably someone suggested the law of gravity. There's always one, isn't there?

Now, in a democracy, laws change. Drivers are no longer forced to be preceded by a man with a red flag (and a good thing too!). Dog owners no longer need a licence for most breeds, I don't need a licence for my aged Phillips Stealla radio. And in a democracy, the will of the majority is behind changes to the law. That is all well and good - in a democracy.

The church, however, is not a democracy. The Kingdom of God is a monarchy, and not a limited constitutional monarchy either! So the laws are not up for re-negotiation. The Episcopal Church USA has forgotten this in its mad dash to look just like the most liberal part of western culture, and the Church of England is not far behind. To be honest, if a man can be a clergyman and deny every essential tenet of the faith, I'm not going to get too excited just because suddenly a man who lives with another man as with a woman can be a bishop. They began with a doctrinal down-grade, it does not surprise me that "Where there is no revelation the people cast off all restraint." The will of God trumps the will of the majority every time, especially in the church. Now, one can go off and join the Unitarians, or found your own little group, if you think that Christianity's wrong, but please, don't call yourself a Christian! If you (British language coming up here) say you are a republican, but uphold the monarchy, you are not "a new kind of republican", you are a monarchist!

And this goes for all God has said. Norman Geisler is trying to defend Ergun Caner, but has actually ended up saying that lying is acceptable if it is "one of us" who lies. No, lying is never acceptable, especially if it is "one of us" who is guilty of it. Lying is a sin! But Geisler is bending over backwards to deny that Caner ever did anything wrong. Liberty University beg to differ, and I would not be at all surprised if Caner was no longer on faculty there in the 2011-12 academic year.

We are not at liberty to re-write any of God's laws, for any reason. Not even because we're sure he's a nice man and a friend. Now, is Jeffrey John's situation worse than Caner's? In one way, yesm because Jeffrey John is an apostate. But in another sense, both involve men flouting God's law, and others covering up for them. And now I need to see about the sparrow that just did a Kamikaze run on my study window.

On Narcissism

Recently I watched through the run of the modern-day Battlestar Galactia. It is, as expected, quite different from the original in many ways. Very sensibly, characters are played with little if any similarities to the originals. Though it is great fun to watch Jamie Bamber as Lee Adama opposite Richard Hatch as Tom Zarek. Obviously the two Apollos work well together.

One of the most interesting of the new versions of original characters is Gaius Baltar. The original Baltar was a thoroughly rotten villain who deliberately sold humanity out to the genocidal robotic Cylons in exchange for power, alternately vicious and cowardly. John Colicos played the character perfectly, and is still great fun to watch in the role today.

In the modern version of the show, Gaius Baltar, played by James Callis, is weak, yes, but the defining characteristic of the character is his narcissism. Gaius Baltar has only one loyalty, and that is to Gaius Baltar. His narcissism blinds him to mistakes that he makes (which result in the genocide of humanity at the hands of the Cylons). James Callis portrays the character wonderfully.

Baltar is a villain in both versions of the show. But the modern Baltar is a villain because he is so utterly self-centred. At one point, discussing why Baltar did what he did, a character notes that Baltar always sees himself as the victim, never as the perpetrator. And that is the genius of the show's writers, they see this for what it is. The man who always sees himself as a victim is finally a villain, because his world revolves around himself. Only the man whose world does not revolve around himself is capable of doing truly heroic things - because he is the only man who is actually selfless.

It is therefore hugely ironic that modern evangelical preaching has tended to be self-centred, "be the best that you can be." But this is not the Bible's focus at all. The Bible focuses on God and what He has done, in Christ, for us. To Baltar, it is all his story, to the Christian, this is all God's story.

This is the first time I have written anything based on popular culture. It may well be the last.