This Christmas as we look back on 2016 I believe we can reflect
on some monumentally foolish electoral decisions. There might be better things to reflect on (more on that later), but these are my own foolishness ratings out of
10 for three of those decisions:
- · The Brexit vote- 9;
- · The re-election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader- 7;
- The election of Vladimir Putin's friend Donald as US President -10.
These were decisions in which I believe the majority (in Donald's case technically a minority) were deceived by big lies into voting in a way that will
ultimately be seriously harmful to both themselves and the wider world. As a bible believing Christian sadly I'm not
surprised when people are taken in by such big lies. What saddens me most of
all is that so many of my fellow bible believing Christians have been deceived
by such lies in these vote, especially the election of Donald Trump, who captured the votes of three quarters of white evangelical Christians. “Thank
you Lord Jesus for President Trump” read the placards. Why thank Jesus, I
thought, for something gifted by Satan? But then most
white American evangelicals (in my view) have been deceived in their politics for decades
now.
They voted in their droves for Donald Trump mainly because of his supposedly Christian stance on two “moral”
issues; abortion and gay marriage. And
sadly for too many evangelicals these are the only moral issues that really seem
to concern them when it comes to their politics. Yet the bible says nothing at
all directly about abortion and makes few direct references to homosexual
relationships. And both are subjects upon which Jesus himself said
nothing. But the bible and Jesus himself
have plenty to say on another moral issue- poverty and helping the poor. Therefore, as far as the bible is concerned, these are much greater priorities to God than abortion or gay marriage,
whatever view we may take on those issues. So how come supposedly
bible-believing Christians failed to exercise their votes according to biblical
priorities, i.e. God’s priorities- to help the poor? How come they end up voting as
a President a man whose policies threaten to do the very opposite?- to destroy
the lives of many thousands of the world’s poor by tearing up climate change
agreements, to oppose any refuge to the persecuted from Muslim countries and to
destroy “Obamacare” with its offer of wider affordable
healthcare for those who could otherwise not afford it? It is these things and
not Donald's newly-adopted belief in tighter abortion laws or opposing gay marriage that
should have dictated how evangelicals voted. So why were they so deceived?
Ultimately they weren’t deceived by Donald Trump or by right
wing preacher or even by Vladimir Putin's hacking of Democratic Party emails. Those people were just instruments of a much greater deceiver:
the Father of Lies himself, Satan. It’s been his mission to deceive the whole of mankind
right from the start, a mission recent events show he continues to this day,
with great success. But happily it is a mission that will ultimately fail.
Let’s take it back to the beginning of human
history. The bible teaches that from the very start humans were always
susceptible to the big lie. Back in the Garden of Eden we had it so good. God
had provided us with a beautiful place, supplying our every need.
But then along came Satan, the fallen angel, the Father of
Lies. He twisted the truth about what God had offered them and the great liar
told them it was God who was lying- deceiving them that they'd die if they eat
from the tree of knowledge of good and bad. No eat from it, he claimed, and
they would be great and wise like God Himself. Don’t listen to the
voice of the establishment just trying to keep the best stuff for Himself. And
so they were deceived into rebelling against God and eating from that tree,
ignoring the warnings God had given them.
And just as He had warned them, when they ate from that tree
they did start dying, morally spiritually and physically. And after the lie and the sin
came the cover up; both literally and metaphorically, as Adam and Eve hid
themselves from the Lord’s gaze. Then when He tracked them down
there came the spin; trying to blame others for their own failings. And it’s
been the way of humans ever since; the lies, the sin, the cover-up, the spin
going round and round in a viscous circle. And after their fall from grace Adam
and Eve were driven out of the beautiful land God had provided them into the
much harsher land outside the Garden, where the ground was “cursed”
to “produce
thorns and thistles” and “through painful toil you will eat food
from it.” (Genesis 3). And that’s
how it’s been for us humans ever since; life is tough and hard (but
much harder for some than others).
And the Father of Lies, Satan, the one who spun the
first lie that made us fall and drove us from the perfect land, is still active
today. He "prowls around like an angry lion waiting for someone to devour ” (1 Peter 5:8), with more of his lies. His mission remains the same- to create chaos and division
so that men turn against God and each other so that we all suffer. He just
loves to see us suffer. And he’s probably more angry and hateful
towards us than ever when he thinks- what was so special about them that God
sent his only son to die for them? He’s
still spinning his lies in all aspects of our lives. And in our personal lives
as in our politics we remain susceptible to those lies and often it's the biggest
lies that we are most taken in by.
And these lies can cause good people to do bad things and
intelligent people to do stupid things. They’ve certainly led me to do some bad and
stupid things over the years- including how I voted in the 2010 election, as well as plenty of bad or stupid things in my personal life (as my wife would no doubt tell you!). Such lies certainly deceived many good an intelligent people in these recent votes. Like my cousin, a very intelligent University
lecturer from South Wales, who voted for Brexit. He lives in a “forgotten”
rust belt of a region. But it’s a region that is a net recipient of EU
funds and has low EU immigration levels and he himself earns his living from
the academic sector which relies heavily on EU support in both research and people. Whatever problems South Wales or he himself
face, by what logic could he have reached the conclusion that leaving the EU
could do anything except make things worse for both him and the people around
him? It’s clear to me that like so many in the EU referendum he was
just taken in by the leave campaign’s lies that made him hope and vote for a
mythical better land that is simply never going to exist. It doesn’t
make him or the rest of the 52% bad or stupid people. Just weak and fallible
human beings, like all of us, susceptible to lies, especially the big ones.
As a follower of Jesus I myself am looking for a better
land, a better place I can put my hope in. Like all the other faith heads
throughout history- Abraham, Moses and all the rest- I’m looking for that better country, the
land Jesus promised He'll bring when He returns to earth. (See Hebrews 11). It’s
the restored Garden of Eden which Satan’s lies drove us from. This is the land
John describes in Revelation 21, where there is no more pain or sadness but
perpetual sunshine in a dazzling jewelled city, whose gates are open to men and
women of all nations and where they
will receive complete healing and know perfect peace.
Many would say that I've fallen for the biggest lie of all
and that there's simply no evidence at all that the land I believe in ever can
or will exist and that I'm just taking all this on blind faith, a much blinder
faith even than those who believed in Brexit, Corbyn or Trump. After all, look
around at what a mess we've made of the world. How can I really believe that
such a perfect world can come out of something so broken, damaged and
imperfect? Yes my belief in Jesus's better land is something I take on faith,
but it's far from blind faith. In fact, I’d say there's rather more evidence that
the man I believe in - unlike the Brexiteers or Corbyn or Trump- can be trusted
to deliver and that the better land he invites us to does or will exist. Boris,
Corbyn and Trump can't claim to have ever been to the better lands they believe
in. No one ever has. But Jesus claims to have come from his better land-
heaven- and to have gone back there. It’s that
land he promises to bring down to earth.
But how do we know He even promised this better land let
alone how He can deliver it? Well we have the four historical accounts of his
words and actions in the gospels. Their historicity stands heads and shoulders above
other ancient writings in the time intervals between events and writing and
writing and earliest manuscripts and this in a society of strong oral
tradition. These accounts record Jesus predicting five things: his execution,
his rising from the dead after three days, the coming of his Holy Spirit, the
destruction of Jerusalem within his generation and his eventual return in power
to bring his kingdom in full.
The first four of those have all happened (or so us
Christians believe) and they happened just when he said they would. The fifth
of course has yet to happen and he was very clear about giving no predictions
on the timescale of that one- “only the Father in heaven”
knows when he will return. (Matthew 24:36)
But really? Really did those things happen? The
difficulty is we don’t have proof for these things in the
form that we are used to seeing proof, i.e. pictures, video or sound
recordings. We are inured to not believing things until we have seen them with
our own eyes. It’s part of our human instinct. After all ever since “Edengate”
we have a history of being deceived which makes us naturally sceptical until we
have seen it with our own eyes.
(Although at other times weirdly we are still so easily taken in). And
that was true in Jesus’s own time as well. Hence the demands by the
Jewish authorities for a visible sign that Jesus was the Messiah he claimed to
be. Even one of his own disciples, Thomas, said he wouldn’t
just take his friends’ word for Jesus’s resurrection.
He wanted to see Jesus’s risen person in the flesh- nail marks
and all. And in his rising from the dead and appearing to dozens of people, including Thomas- nail marks and all- Jesus did provide just that visible evidence at the time.
Of course, 2,000
years ago the technology didn’t exist to make a permanent visible record of
these events. There were no cameras- still or video and no sound recorders.
However, stuff did happen back then. The first century AD wasn’t a fantasy
world. It was our world only 2,000 years earlier and so that means stuff that
happened did leave visible marks we can see today, even if there weren’t any
cameras around to capture the events like you can today. We know Jerusalem fell
and at about the time Jesus predicted because we can see the evidence for the
destruction of Jerusalem in the historical writings from the time and the
archaeological evidence. We also know the Jews were disbursed throughout Europe
and as people still living today can testify (and was filmed) they did not
return to their previous land until just after the second world war.
It’s the same with
the Jesus stuff. The very fact there are hundreds of millions of Christians
today throughout the whole world is part of the visible evidence for the Jesus
events. Jesus’s existence and his execution by the Romans is a
widely-acknowledged fact by historians. It’s recorded not just in the four
gospels but by reputable secular historians of the time too, e.g. Josephus and
Tacitus. But if the fall of Jerusalem were the only prediction that Jesus got
right why would faith in him have survived his death? He was a leader of a
small sect of a weird national religion of a small country in the backwater of
the Roman empire (a country annihilated 30 years later). If the Jesus stuff recorded in the gospels was
all made up how did belief in Him not just survive but thrive after his death?
If Jesus just died on that cross why would his small band of (mostly) poorly
educated followers give their lives to share his message which they themselves had
seen to be a lie? This is very different for example to the origins of Islam
where Mohammed himself when he died was a successful religious and political
leader already, with an established large following. Jesus on the other hand
left a small, frightened band of followers. They would have been just
devastated by his ignominious death and defeat as a criminal on a cross- the
ultimate sign of cursing in both Jewish and Roman eyes.
And how and why would his
followers spread his message with such fervour that within
a generation it had spread from that obscure backwater to virtually the whole
empire? Even to the heart of Rome. If Jesus had just died on that cross surely
his “religion” would have died with him? And without some miraculous divine
power behind them how, without any worldly weapons, would this little band have
spread faith in Him so widely and quickly? And don’t forget the message of
Jesus from the outset has not just simply been about “love and peace”. It has
absolutely been about love and peace, but love and peace based on one essential
historical fact- Jesus’s death and resurrection. As the new testament writings
show that has always been central to the Christian message right from the
outset. If Jesus hadn’t risen from the dead then Peter and all the others who
were sharing his message were just outrageous liars who pulled off one of the
biggest con tricks in history. Well of course we know history is littered with
outrageous liars starting from the Garden of Eden right up to Donald Trump and
the Brexiteers. But, as is recorded in Roman writings at the time, what marked
out the early Christians was not being outrageous lairs but being good, moral
and loving people. It just doesn’t fit with their character. And anyway why
would Peter and his mates have fabricated this big lie? What did they have to
gain? They certainly didn’t get rich through it (unlike some outrageous
American TV evangelists today!) and most of them died quite horrible deaths for
their faith. Again it doesn’t fit.
With the “better lands” offered by the Brexiteers, Jeremy Corbyn
and Donald Trump people had an opportunity to vote. (Well if you were part of
the electorate for those contests- in the Brexit vote there were plenty of 16
and 17 year olds who were pretty annoyed that they didn’t get an opportunity to
vote a different way to the result we got). And of course with Trump outside of the
USA no one got a vote before he was thrust upon the world. In each of those
cases I would frankly be astonished if those who voted for these promised
“better lands” will end up in any places remotely like them. I think it will be
like they had bought tickets for the holiday of a lifetime only to find their
hotel in the middle of a noisy building site, the food gives them salmonella
and it rains every day.
But the greatest lies that the Father of Lies weaves are about Jesus. He knows that Jesus offers humankind's one way back to Eden and he's pretty annoyed about that. He must have been rubbing his hands with glee and congratulating himself when he saw Jes
us up there on that cross. Through the lies he'd spun to the Jewish people he'd got them to turn against God's Son and their Messiah, Jesus. When Pilate put the decision to them they literally voted to nail him to that cross. (Mark 15:13/14)(
Perhaps the first and greatest success Satan had at deceiving voters).
Surely God's never going to forgive them now! he must have thought. Mankind will all be doomed. He'd literally killed off God's master plan to rescue us, wasn't he clever? But then it turned out that he the great deceiver had himself been "deceived". What he'd thought as the ultimate defeat of God's rescue plan for us was in fact God's victory. Satan himself had helped bring about the very result that God wanted- not to see His son elected King of the Jews and then the world (not yet)- but to nail him to that cross- to pay the price for our sin so that we could be reconciled with God and could return to "the better land". the Garden of Eden. (Just as Isaiah had predicted in his chapter 53 hundreds of years earlier). All this left Satan with was his mission of making sure as few people as possible believed in Jesus and what he'd achieved, so that they missed out on God's salvation. And the way he still seeks to do that is by what he's always been best at; lies:
Jesus was a myth;
Jesus was real but it was so long ago we cant know what the truth about him was;
Jesus might be true but I'm not one of those religious types so he's not for me;
Jesus just wanted us all to be nice and I'm nice (well mostly) so I'm following Jesus anyway, aren't I?;
the Jesus stuff might be true but I'm young and enjoying myself-I'll get back to him when I'm older; he might be true but I'm too busy with my job and my family I'll think about it when I've got more time;
I'm told old for big change now; I just want to relax and enjoy my retirement....
And then suddenly- time's up! Either our life ends, probably not at a time of our choosing, or Jesus returns. Either way the veil of any deception will be lifted and he will be revealed as King of the universe- "every eye will see him" (Revelation 1:7) and "at the name of Jesus every knee... bow...and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.." (Philippians 2:10/11) But sadly not everyone will then be welcomed into his Kingdom. Everyone is invited, but those who have had the opportunity to accept that invitation in this lifetime but refused or ignored it won't get a second chance. (John 3: 16-18).
With this“better land” promised by Jesus we all get an
opportunity to vote for it. Only this time the electorate is everyone, whatever
age and nationality. Unlike with the other elections I believe this “better
land” is coming whatever percentage of us vote for it. But by choosing him and
voting for the better land he promises we are guaranteeing ourselves
citizenship in that better land of Revelation 21. It’s a bit like if in the EU
referendum by voting remain we were choosing whether we as individuals would be
an “EU citizen” or by voting leave we would become “an independent UK citizen”.
(In fact, there has been recent talk that pro-Europeans like myself might be
able to apply for European citizenship, although I don’t see how you could have
the full benefits of being an EU citizen living in a non-EU country- would the
EU citizens pay a cheaper tariff-free price for our French cheeses or German
cars?). Sadly, as with the EU referendum, many will not vote exercise
their vote at all. They will decide not to decide. But unlike the referendum this is not something that we can just leave
to others to decide and it’s a decision that is far more important even than
whether we remain in or leave the European Union. It will affect our eternal
destiny and whether or not we will spend eternity as a citizen of the beautiful
ultimate better land of the new Jerusalem that Jesus will eventually bring to
earth. If we don’t make a decision then, like those who didn’t
vote in the referendum, we’re choosing to be given a result by default.
Effectively we’re voting ourselves out of his better land.
Unlike with the referendum we don’t have just one moment in time
to cast our ballot. We get potentially many moments- our entire life. The
trouble is we just don’t know how long
that will be any more than we know when Jesus will return. It could be fifty years,
it could be ten years. It could be ten minutes. Some people invest an awful lot
of time investigating the evidence and arguments before they exercise their
vote in an election like the referendum . (I know I did myself!) But how much
time do you spend investigating the evidence and arguments before deciding
whether you will “vote” for Jesus and the “better land” he offers? And yet
that’s a decision that will not just affect our lives for the next 5, 10 or
even 50 years but for the whole of eternity. Isn’t it worth examining the
evidence around that?- before we either dismiss it all as just another “big
lie” or don’t bother voting at all and by default risk missing out on our
ticket to the one truly better land? Isn’t this something that truly is
worth reflecting on this Christmas- to ponder its’ real meaning? After all we
can’t do anything about Brexit or Donald Trump and how those events will affect
us over the coming years and decades. But if Jesus’s claims are true we can do
something to affect our own eternal destiny. Over 2,000 years ago the Magi travelled from a distant land to earnestly seek and find the heavenly King. Will we do the same? And thereby find our way to his truly better land?
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