A City on a Hill...

“You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven."

Matthew 5:14-16

In just under 20 days time over 1,200 cities and towns across the world will be lighting up a monument in the twilight hours to mark the 10th annual Cities for Life Day.

The movement was started by the World Coalition for Death Penalty as a form of protest appealing to nations of the world to repeal their policies on capital punishment. The day was chosen on account of the fact it marked the anniversary of the first time a state abolished the death penalty (Tuscany in 1786).

You may have gleaned from the very fact I am composing this post, that I'm not a fan of the death penalty... and you'd be correct. I acknowledge there are no easy answers when it comes to how we deal with the worst offenders in society but I fundamentally believe that we must stand for values that fly in the face of barbarism when confronted by it; I also believe that if a person is a supporter of the death penalty, they can only do so in good conscience if they would personally be prepared to throw the executioners switch... anything less than this would be hypocritical.

The idea of lighting a monument up in protest at the death penalty started with the Colosseum in Italy - a deliberate irony. The Colosseum played host to the death of countless individuals and innocents at the command of Emperors for the entertainment of the mob. I've had the privilege of standing inside it, without the knowledge of history you would scarcely be able to conceive that so much blood was spilled there. Nevertheless it was and so it is that every time a nation abandons capital punishment, or enforces a stay of execution... the once great theatre of death lights up to celebrate the preservation of life.

The Colosseum: The first of many monuments to have lit up in protest at the death penalty.

The thing about light is that when people see it in the distance it gives them hope, they see it as something desirable and it makes them think. So year by year this movement has grown and across the face of the entire planet, nations speak to nations by virtue of the light shining from monuments and buildings in support of life.

Last year I struck upon the idea of getting involved myself; living in a small rural town, I must confess I've never written to any of my local councillors about doing something like this... however this is the age of social media, of Twitter and Facebook... and there are other ways of showing support for the cause. I hit upon the idea of changing my social media profile pictures on the 30th November to display an image of my local church illuminated at night:

St. Nicholas Church, Alcester at night.

The great thing about doing something like that is that anyone can get involved.  Even if you don't have a monument in your own town or village that lights up at night, you can always pluck an image from the Internet that portrays a monument or building you find meaningful. Below my post is a video that illustrates the argument against the death penalty and why many groups and states have joined forces to get it universally ended.

I hope you feel you feel this is a cause you can also support, joining me in this and adding an image to your own profile(s) as the day approaches.

Some questions for you to consider either way:

• Do you agree or disagree with the death penalty?
• In your opinion, what can be done to administer effective/fair justice in society?

Voyagers

Today is the day when members of the Facebook event 10eleven12  (organised by Andy Campbell), have been charged with finding a moment of inspiration and contribute a photograph, poem, blog post or other creative work and share it with other members in the group. As fate would have it this day is also the anniversary of Carl Sagan's birthday.  I've had a blog brewing for a while and as Sagan was executive director in the Voyager Space Program... it seems fitting that today I write it.

A couple of weeks ago I had the privilege of watching Voyager: To the Final Frontier - a BBC4 programme featuring as part of the channels Big Science season. I've always held something of a fascination for the Voyager program - the ongoing story of two late 1970's space probes that were sent to analyse the Solar System's outer planets and having accomplished their mission, continue onwards through the void of local space on a new mission to become Earth's first interstellar spacecraft... and now in 2012 they (particularly Voyager 1), are on the verge of achieving this.

I believe those of us born in the 1970's can consider ourselves "Children of Voyager", we are the Star Wars generation - always looking outward from the desolate sands of this Tatooine... imagining what a brighter and more exciting future could await us if only we could break free of our restraints and limitations. When the Voyagers launched, I was merely an infant making my own first discoveries at the tender age of 2... I had already experienced my first major setback in life and was just literally getting back on my feet - though really, how many of us remember much from those first chaotic years as our brain begins to make sense of itself and define who we are?

Having a relatively contemporary timeline to the Voyager program, has caused me to think that perhaps we share something in common with those two mechanical space emissaries.

Like the probes, our journey begins at the same source... we emerge from the womb and begin our journey of exploration through life. The Voyagers both have golden discs attached to them which give hints and clues to anybody who should happen upon them about our diverse cultural heritage, our nature, our values, an invitation to discover us and directions on how to find us.

As a Christian I believe that we carry a similar message in our souls. It isn't visible, it isn't physical; it's not a golden disc inconveniently branded onto our buttocks. No, it is our very lives... our interactions with everyone we encounter, that reveal our culture, our nature, our values and if you are willing to accept it... the invitation and directions extended to others to come and meet with our creator - God. In fact the Bible tells us this is so... and this is the message we bear:

"All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.  God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."

2 Corinthians 5:17-19

 Another way we are like the Voyager probes is that we take different journeys based on what our Creator plans for us.  Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are in completely different locations in space... this is because NASA decided to send Voyager 1 off to investigate Saturn's largest moon, Titan. This meant that the probe missed out on journeying to the other outer planets with its counterpart. For 10 years Voyager 2 continued throughout the Solar System recording data on Uranus & Neptune... and all this time Voyager 1 drifted in darkness encountering no planetary bodies at all.

Sometimes I think we can look at our lives and think we are drifting through nothingness. We see our friends and counterparts living active lives and being used for God's glory while we seem to be doing nothing... but really we are foolish to do this, it isn't a race and our journey is unique and not a carbon copy of anybody we encounter. In fact after his resurrection, Jesus gently rebuked the apostle Peter for enquiring after the future fate of John in comparison to his own. We may drift in silence, but God has a plan for each one of us and our moment will come... perhaps at an hour we do not expect. What became of Voyager 1? Did its mission end after it shot away into the darkness beyond Titan?

No.  Billions of miles from Earth, as it reached the edge of the Solar System in 1990,  Voyager 1 was given a command to turn its cameras around one last time and take a "Family Portrait" snapshot of our Solar system... our home. Among those images was perhaps one of the most humbling pictures you will ever see when it comes to contemplating our place in the universe:

The Pale Blue Dot

Entitled "The Pale Blue Dot", the photograph depicts a single pinprick of blue riding on a single sunbeam of solar wind. That dot is us... all of us.  Voyager 1 may have missed out on many of the encounters that Voyager 2 experienced... but it had its own special moment of glory. When you see people around you living out the joys and experiences you feel you are missing out, have faith that your moment will come... your trajectory is your own and your own experiences will have just as much value in the long run.

On a personal note, for several years I've been periodically orbiting the same Bible passage from Isaiah over and over again:

“For a long time I have kept silent, I have been quiet and held myself back. But now, like a woman in childbirth, I cry out, I gasp and pant. I will lay waste the mountains and hills and dry up all their vegetation; I will turn rivers into islands and dry up the pools. I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them."

Isaiah 42:14-16 

I used to think the imagery in that passage was quite strange until I looked at what the end result of the actions described would be. Mountains and rivers mark the natural borders of kingdoms... the barriers that impede and prevent us from passing from one place to another and keep us confined within a sandbox. When God takes down the mountains, dries up the rivers and burns up the briers, he removes the obstacles that prevent us from heading off into new and exciting territories.

There is however a cost.... and again it is a cost that the Voyagers share in their journey.

As they traverse the area of space at the very edge of our Solar System known as the Heliosheath, the Voyagers are to all intents and purposes blind; they aren't passing any known physical objects and so there cameras are deemed to be of no further use. To maximise their working life and to prepare them for that final step beyond into interstellar space, NASA shut off the probes' cameras to conserve battery power.

I think there's a lesson to be learned there for us (especially me) there too. If we are to make the most of our journey... if we are really going to move beyond our limitations and into God's promises...
we can't waste energy looking back at where we once were, or looking across at our neighbour and observing how successful they are. If we want the darkness before us to turn into light, we have to shut off our over analysing cameras and paradoxically submit ourselves to a kind of blindness. for God says that He "will lead the blind by ways they have not known". How can He do this if we resist it by turning our gaze elsewhere?

Finally I want to take a look at the fantastical. We don't know what awaits the Voyagers once they disappear into the night, but science fiction offers us some tantalising (if far-fetched) possibilities. In the 1984 film Starman, Voyager 2 is encountered by an alien race who in response send an emissary of their own with miraculous powers, to walk about among us and learn from us. As we journey deeper into our relationship with God, it opens up more areas of our life for his Holy Spirit to enter and testify to the others around us about the presence and love of God.

However it's the fate of the fictional Voyager 6 in Star Trek: The Motion Picture that I want to focus on:

In the film, Voyager 6 became the entity known as V'Ger. It was programmed by NASA to "learn all that is learnable and return that knowledge to the creator". However V'Ger didn't simply want to hand over its notes like a good schoolboy; it wanted to be united with its Creator.  As we move through life in our walk with Christ, we should be striving for the same thing. That on the final day when we have learned all that we can, loved as unreservedly as we can and fulfilled all that was asked of us we shall be called Home into full union with God... no longer seeing a reflection in a mirror but seeing face to face; no longer knowing in part but knowing fully... as we are fully known.

"Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."

Philippians 3:13b-14

• Learn more about the Voyager program here.
• Learn more about Carl Sagan
• Read more 10eleven12 entries by other contributors

"Please RT The Heaven out of This"

In case you were wondering, the title of this post is not an ego-driven request, it's a statement mirroring a Twitter post I observed the other day.

If you use Twitter  you may have noticed about a day and half ago, the active volcano known in comedic circles as Ricky Gervais began spurting ire from his caldera.  He flew into a tirade of aggressive posts directed at and seemingly mocking Christians. One of the these tweets had the following image attached with a request to "Please RT the Hell out of this":

The Recent Outburst from Ricky Gervais on Twitter

It's not the first time Gervais has courted controversy for aggressively baiting an individual or group on the Internet and I dare say it won't be the last. This particular series of tweets probably flew under the "outrage radar" because it was perceived as knocking the  oppressive religious establishment (I'm not so sure religion has the monopoly on oppression... not by a long chalk).  However, I think I understand what motivated his actions on this occasion.  Let's put a bit of context into the equation.  On the day these tweets came out, Hurricane Sandy was bearing down on the northern states of the American Eastern Seaboard and US pastor John McTernan had posted a blog attributing the blame for the hurricane (and other natural disasters) squarely at the door of those who want to further the gay agenda.

This may have stuck in the craw of Gervais who as an ardent atheist must have found it deeply irritating that a group who by and large often deny the scientific theories implying human activity influences climate change, were turning the gun on their own political targets... which he believes to be fuelled by mumbo jumbo.

I think whenever Gervais feels he or somebody else he feels as undeserving becomes the recipient of bullying tactics and trolling, he resorts to the same tactic.

As a point of fact as a Christian I do believe humans affect climate change. While some preachers  will emphasise that God commanded mankind to subdue the Earth in Genesis 1:28, I take a different view.  Lets look at that verse in the Amplified Version of the Bible:

"And God blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it [using all its vast resources in the service of God and man]; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and over every living creature that moves upon the earth."

Genesis 1:28 (AMP)

It seems clear to me that God didn't just hand us the keys to planet Earth and say "do what you like with it". In point of fact, the Bible emphasises that God still retains the ownership deeds:

"The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it;"

 Psalm 24:1

Our lives are for rent... and we can't learn to buy (no matter what Dido sings); everything we acquire or build up in this life, once we relinquish it - becomes the property of another. Everything we have on this planet is for our time and we must use it wisely - be it wealth, health or the resources of the planet itself. We have to look after this planet because we don't own it... we just live here by the grace of the One who made it.

All this aside I want to address my main point... the words of Gervais about Christians, Hell & Santa:

"A Christian telling an atheist he is going to Hell is about as scary as a small child telling an adult they won't get any presents from Santa".

Ricky Gervais

The whole barb of that comment relies on the self righteous belief of atheists that their view is superior... that Christians have bought into a fairy story and that when they grow up, they will see the whole tale for what it is and dismiss it as myth.

However there's another problem... both the Christians and atheists in question - the messenger and the recipient, happen to have misunderstood the message.  In all his teachings, Jesus reserved his deepest warnings for the self-righteous. He never used fear as a weapon. when Jesus is talking to "sinners", He is at his most tolerant... be it the Samaritan woman at the well, Zaccheus, or the woman caught in adultery... Jesus's message is one of love and hope, not threat and damnation. Christians should not be beating up the broken with threats; that IS bullying. It's the Holy Spirit's job to convict the world of sin... not ours. Our duty is to live out holy, Spirit-filled lives that reflect the glory of God... and when people starved of the bread of salvation ask us "why am I hungry" or "where can I get fed", that's when we provide THE answer. You can't batter someone who is resistant to your message into submission... it just doesn't work like that. All you will succeed in doing with that tactic is drive them away in fear or force them to come out fighting in anger... nobody wins. Love s the answer, always has been... always will be.

A wise man once told me a parable that illustrated this sentiment perfectly for me. It concerned a wager between the sun and the wind. Seeing a man walking down the road with his hat and coat, both bet that they could make him remove his extra apparel. The wind went first and blew as hard as it could... but no matter how hard it tried, it just encouraged the man to clutch his hat to his head and hold his coat as tightly to himself as possible.   The sun took its turn and poured as much of its warmth and light onto the man as possible... overwhelmed by the temperature, the man removed his hat and coat of his own accord and carried on down the path.

It's warmth and not force that wins the day.

But what about Santa?

I think Ricky has got it wrong. Christians are not the small child in this equation. Let me in counterpoint tell you how I think it works:

An atheist is like a small child who as he begins to grow up realises Santa doesn't exist* and is either bitterly disappointed and filled with a sense of loss... or shrugs his shoulders and thinks it doesn't matter anyway. Yet this child has not yet matured to the point of realising that for all the tales of Santa there is a very real parent who loves him, wants to provide for him and wants to have a full relationship with him. That parent is God. Far from being the foolish small child making threats to the enlightened, a Christian is the older sibling who understands that when you scratch away the superficiality of religion... you begin to understand that there is a deeper, more powerful truth behind it all - one that you wished your younger brother shared.

*Disclaimer - Santa IS real and I believe in him