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 PrintableVersion Just loveEN talks to Ben Cooper about his life and ministryIt’s an interesting change from researching high-flying economics to the daily challenges of church work. But Ben Cooper, assistant minister at St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate, finds that this background provides him with a fascinating perspective on the gospel. EN spoke to Ben to discover how he’s been coping with the joys and pressures of life there. EN: In your new book, Just Love, you observe that you ‘grew up in an atmosphere of scepticism about most things’. How has this affected you and how did you become a Christian? BC: In some ways I’m glad I grew up in that environment — it’s led me to question things rather than just accept them at face value. But questioning things can go too far. You just end up dismissing everything. I dismissed Christianity with hardly a thought, for example. I was happy to call myself an atheist. If at the age of 24, God hadn’t challenged me, that’s exactly where I would still be. The story of how my wife Catherine and I came to hear the gospel began with her curiosity about a work colleague. She was working at the time in a basement laboratory in Oxford, as a member of a research team. One of the other team members was a Christian — and neither of us had met a Christian who talked so openly about his faith and about God. For two years he patiently answered our questions and encouraged us to find out more. Even when he moved away to Paris, we continued the discussion by post. We received long letters dealing with my heated objections — the only letters I’ve ever got with footnotes! Eventually he persuaded us to go and talk to someone else about it. We went to see David Fletcher, then the Rector at St. Ebbe’s Church. David asked us: ‘Do you think it’s right, that people should be punished for the things they do wrong?’ I wanted to wriggle out of that and say, ‘Well, it depends…’ But I stopped myself and thought for a second. What did I really think? Did I really think that it’s right for people to be punished for the things they do wrong? Well, maybe — certainly sometimes. So I said so. He nodded, and then got us to open some Bibles. And he explained what had happened on the cross. And the upshot of it was, although I wouldn’t have been able to articulate this clearly at the time, that I was deeply convicted of my sin. And on that very day, Catherine and I prayed that God would forgive us. Game theoryEN: Your background is in Game Theory, a rarefied branch of economics. What exactly does this involve? How does this method of thinking affect your understanding of your faith? BC: I have to admit that when I mention ‘Game Theory’ to people, they often mentally freeze, and quickly glaze over! But it’s not as difficult as you might think, and much more interesting. Economics is all about people making choices: what to buy, what price to set, and so on. Often when we make decisions like that we have to think through what others may do too. ‘The best thing for me to do depends on what you decide’ — that sort of thing, as if we were playing a game. And Game Theory is just a way of thinking about that. How has it affected my understanding of my faith? Not too much, I hope! I hope my understanding of that basically comes from God as he speaks to me through the Scriptures. But Game Theory is a useful tool to think about the world, I think. We can use it to help explain how the behaviour of individuals translates into what societies look like. So, when sinful people interact together, it can help to explain how that then translates into the sort of dysfunctional, mixed up societies we live in. And when sinful people are transformed by the gospel we can begin to see some of the possibilities. We can see how communities of such people can witness to the world around them. But Game Theory also helps us understand the limitations on social change better too. For a society to be wholeheartedly transformed, the gospel must come first. EN: This is your first posting from theological college to the large St. Helen’s Church, in Bishopsgate, London. What are you particularly involved with there? BC: It has been rather like jumping in at the deep end! However, it’s been a good experience — especially in retrospect! I do a share of the preaching on Sunday evening, and oversee many of the small groups which meet midweek. St. Helen’s is an interesting church in that we draw in people who work in the City — since that’s where we are — but also a great many who don’t. And, at the Sunday evening meeting in particular, people travel in from all over London. My particular responsibility is to look after those others. Challenges of fameEN: At such a well-known evangelical church, what do you think are the biggest challenges faced there?BC: Of course, one challenge is coping with the size of the church — we have well over 1,000 people through the doors each week. We work very hard to be welcoming, and people say we are welcoming, but it can still be a bit daunting getting to know people. Certainly that’s how I felt when I arrived a couple of years ago! So one of our biggest priorities is getting people into small groups. Like the Sunday meetings, they’re places where we can listen together to God speaking to us personally in the Scriptures. But the smaller format means we can support one another better, and get to know one another in a more intimate and friendly setting. But then the small groups have their own problems and difficulties too. I get very frustrated if people start to treat them like an evening course. As if just accumulating and storing theological information were what it’s all about! Like other Bible-believing churches, we try to have gospel teaching at the heart of every situation. And we pray that through that God will grow people, building them up in their faith and servant-hearted love for one another. It’s always an issue, of course, wherever you are, but in a large church there’s a particularly strong temptation to sit back and let it all happen, and assume someone else will do what’s needed. But we do see the gospel at work, changing people, and that’s wonderful. EN: Just Love, the book you’ve just had published, looks at the theme of God’s judgement, frequently a difficult topic to address with unbelievers. Often we are distracted from telling the good news of the gospel, as we seem to spend all our time defending our stance on controversial subjects. How do you deal with this? BC: Like many others, I often find it pretty difficult to move the centre of a discussion back to Jesus and the gospel. I know some people who are great at it — I’ve noticed that Peter Jensen is excellent. But I find it difficult — which is frustrating because it should be possible. So when I find myself challenged on ethical issues, for example, it should be possible to go on the front foot and question people’s foundations for making the judgements they do. So when, as happened to me recently, friends say things like, ‘I think people have the right to die with dignity’ (meaning: the right for terminally ill people to commit suicide), we ought to be pressing them, gently but firmly, in a way that leads to the need for Jesus. I got so far, but could have got much further. I could have asked, ‘Why do you think that’s a right?’; ‘Why is that dignified?’. I could have said, ‘Well I disagree, I think the God who created this world might know better’ — and so on. We need to become better at shifting the focus onto what matters. Understanding the crossEN: There’s much discussion in evangelical circles, that the concept that Jesus took God’s punishment could be viewed as ‘a form of cosmic child abuse’. Having studied this subject in depth, what are your thoughts? BC: First, to say that ‘Jesus took God’s punishment on the cross’ is more than just expressing a ‘concept’ — it’s the plain teaching of Scripture. It’s there in the language about what happened on the cross. We see Jesus facing up to it in Gethsemane. And we see it in the mere fact that he died — since we’re told right at the beginning of the Bible that death is the punishment for sin. Secondly, I would say that the offensive thing would be to suggest instead that God punished his Son for no really substantial reason. That he punished his Son just as an example, or just to identify with our suffering, say. Punishing a son for no really good reason is more like child abuse, I would have thought. EN: What are your plans for the future?BC: I’m planning to do some more writing — this time for a book on God’s sovereignty, which I’ll be working on over the summer, God willing. But at some point I’d love to do some more research — but on Biblical Studies this time, not just Game Theory! Ben’s new book, Just Love, which examines the necessity of God’s judgement, is published by The Good Book Company for £7.00. To order a copy, call 0845 225 0880 or visit at www.the goodbook.co.uk. © Evangelicals Now - August 2006 |
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