In Depth:  Matthew Roberts

Matthew Roberts

When our children were young, we would occasionally give in to pressure and take them to McDonald’s for a Happy Meal. If you’ve never experienced this delight, it’s a portion of highly processed child-pleasing food, in a cheerful-looking box, which includes a freebie plastic toy.

The burgers, of course, are gone in minutes; and in my experience, the toys last very little longer. Not just because they’re rubbish, but because the children know that they’re rubbish. I don’t remember any of my children ever caring about a Happy Meal toy longer than the duration of the car ride home. If something is given away for free, everyone – even a child – knows that it’s worthless.

Matthew Roberts

It’s said that during the filming of the 1975 movie Jaws, the director Stephen Spielberg thought the giant rubber shark from his props department so “unscary” that he decided to shoot the film with the shark supposedly hidden underwater for almost the whole time; suggesting its fearsomeness and size with clever acting and suspenseful music.

Later he credited this with the film’s success; a plastic fake you never quite see is far more frightening than it would be in full view.

Matthew Roberts

There have been two questions I’ve been asked more than any others in the last few weeks. First, what do you think about assisted suicide? And second, what do you think about Justin Welby? There’s plenty that could be said in answer to both. But at heart, the answer I want to give is the same: It’s all about God.

Of course we want to talk about the ethics of medicine, the sanctity of life, the devaluing of the weak, the protection of the vulnerable, the application of justice to the wicked, the goodness of marriage, the sinfulness of sexual immorality, and many more things beside. But they are, in a sense, derivative; for all of God’s laws flow from God Himself. When terrible ethical failures happen, it is because there is first a failure to know and love the one true God.

Matthew Roberts

Christianity appears to be having a little cultural recovery.

I don’t mean for a moment that the general hostility in society to Christianity is lessening. But it is true that a growing number of secular commentators are realising that Christianity is, in some sense, a thing which we cannot do without.

Matthew Roberts

The cheesy ABBA-shaped musical Mamma Mia has, as you’ll know if you’ve seen it, a rather peculiar ending.

At the climax of the film, as the bride and groom stand side by side, they suddenly decide not to get married after all. Instead, they realise that the truly romantic thing would be to travel the world (together) rather than settle down to marriage – which, it is implied, would be far too dull for them to start right now. The structure of marriage would, perhaps, stifle their love; what real love needs is shapeless, limitless freedom. Solid boundaries and hard edges, duties and necessities, are the opposite of what love is about.

Matthew Roberts

One of the most memorable moments of our late Queen’s funeral was when the orb and sceptre which had been given to her at her Coronation were removed from her coffin and placed on the table in St George’s Chapel.

While evangelicals would rightly quibble at some of the ceremonial, the basic theological point is true: ‘There is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God’ (Rom.13:2). Queen Elizabeth’s authority to reign was granted to her (symbolised by the sceptre) by Christ, who has been given all authority in heaven and earth (symbolised by the orb topped with a cross). God the Father has placed all things under his feet (Eph.1:20-22). All earthly rulers derive their authority solely from Him; they hold it for a time, and in time it is removed from them by Him again.