The Commentary

I have had a dreadful cold-cum-flu thing which may yet turn me into a Darwinian.

At present I am sneezing up something green, reminiscent of the ‘primeval soup’. I am expecting life to evolve from it anytime. (Perhaps you didn’t want to know that.)

Corruption and free speech

With this infection taking its toll there is plenty of depressing news to add to the flu-blues. Can you believe it that a Labour Government which came to power on a promise to clean up sleaze has been caught doing what the previous Tory administration had done, and which New Labour itself had legislated against, namely receiving illegal payments to party funds? December saw the police beginning to take up the matter. Politicians always like to draw the picture in terms of ‘the good guys (us) and the bad guys (them)’. The electorate fall for it every time. But the truth is that corruption knows no political boundaries. ‘For all have sinned…’ says the Scripture.

At the same time, the West has been rightly shocked by the sentencing of Gillian Gibbons, a British teacher working in the Sudan. She was found guilty of insulting Islam, by allowing her class to name a teddy bear ‘Mohammed’. Later pardoned from a 15 day prison sentence, crowds in Khartoum had called for her execution. Muslims in the West were embarrassed. But the totalitarian nature of much of Islam is already felt in some parts of Britain today where converts to Christianity are hounded and the symbol of the cross cannot be displayed.

However, the postmodern liberal West is tending towards its own totalitarianism with its own ‘blasphemy’ laws. To question the dogma of atheistic evolution is to find ostracism in the scientific community. To be anti-abortion is to be labelled by the media as ‘right-wing’ and ‘narrow-minded’. But it was heartening that, despite protests at the end of November, the Oxford Union came out on the side of free speech. They allowed BNP leader Nick Griffin and holocaust denying historian David Irving to speak. Though we would be absolutely against what they stand for, these people must be answered in open debate. The argument that to debate with them is to legitimise their ideas and therefore they should not be allowed a platform is the way free speech will be lost. But if postmodernism prevails, with its denigration of rational argument, it will be lost.

Second Coming

Meanwhile, at the start of a new year, it is good to look to the Second Coming of Christ as our source of hope and joy. We are promised a transformed universe and eternal life with no more sin or death or tears (or flu). Some Jewish people say that the Second Coming is not found in the Old Testament and that it is simply a Christian fiction to cover the fact that Jesus did not bring world peace (as the Messiah is meant to). But, without getting into textual arguments, it occurred to me recently that all the great Old Testament leaders of the Jews had a ‘second coming’. Joseph was first rejected by his brothers, only later to be acknowledged as their saviour. Moses had the same experience when he first tried to help his people in Egypt (Exodus 2.14,15), only for him to come a second time to be their deliverer. Similarly, though anointed by God as their king, David was persecuted for years before finally coming to the throne. Just so, Jesus the Messiah came once and was rejected but will appear a second time to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.

John Benton

© Evangelicals Now - January 2008
Please consider supporting this ministry by subscribing.