MortiBlog

I just wanted to make a quick blog post to express my thoughts on the release of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, convicted murderer of 270 people. I must stress though that I don’t know anybody who was affected by the tragedy and my understanding of the case is limited entirely to what I’ve been watching on BBC News last night and for the last couple of hours. I’ve been following this news with interest because it’s so rare that we see an example of pure grace in international news.

Let’s look at what happens now. The relationship between Scotland and the US will be sour, the families of the people who died in the 1988 tragedy will understandably be upset and feel that justice is not being served. The only recognisable and universally acknowledged goodness that comes from this applies solely to Mr al-Megrahi, a mass murderer, and his family. Despite this I believe that the Scottish government did the right thing.

Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi did not show any compassion for his victims, he did not allow his victims the luxury of returning to their families to live out their last days. He committed a terrible act which is entirely indefensible and just how bad it was isn’t something that I or anyone else can express. So why would anyone show him grace and compassion? To most people it’s a massive scandal, it doesn’t make any sense.

I’m reminded of the old saying “two wrongs don’t make a right”. It sounds overly simplified and it probably is but saying that he showed no compassion is not a reason that we also should avoid compassion. Of course he doesn’t deserve to be released back to his family, I’m not saying that, after what he did he certainly could never deserve that. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t care about him and show him compassion though.

Something that has been confusing me about all this is the response from America, with people saying that there was already compassion shown to him when he was given a life sentence; presumably the implication is that he should receive a death sentence. This is what I don’t understand, when many Americans say “we love Jesus, also we like the death sentence” they are showing a complete misunderstanding of the gospel and it’s very sad to see.

The Bible tells us that we are all sinners and that all sin is equally abhorrent to God. Me, you, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi… none of us is perfect so all of us have done something wrong. God’s response? Grace. Absolute total undeserved grace. To put it simply, how do you think you could possibly deserve life in the first place? Life is an amazing gift and however much pain you go through in life it’s great that you get the opportunity to live it in the first place and to have free thought and, mostly, freedom to pursue whatever passions take your fancy.

God not only gave us life and free will in the first place but when we strayed from Him we weren’t left to our own devices. God’s response to us rejecting Him was to send Jesus to die for us on the cross and rise again, defeating death, so that not only do we have life but we have the option of eternal life. None of us deserve it, it’s a massive scandal, but it’s the love of God. It’s nonsensical, we will never fully understand just how much God loves us and how He loved us enough to give up His only son to the most painful death anybody has ever experienced or will ever experience. We’ve all seen The Passion of The Christ or at least the promotional material for it, that only goes some way to describing the pain Jesus went through. The biggest pain of all, for Father and Son, was the separation. They had been together loving one another in a perfect relationship since before the universe was created and the pain of their separation was so much greater than the pain Jesus suffered from His wounds for our sins.

So why then do so many Americans believe that Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi should die in prison or be given the death sentence? God showed so much grace to us that we never deserved, why should this man not get the same? The abhorrence of his crimes to us is less than the abhorrence of our crimes against God and yet God sent His only son to die for us. In fact more than that, if Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi was the only man in the world Jesus would have died for him.

There was a woman on BBC News just now, I don’t know who she was, claiming that releasing this murderer showed weakness. I don’t see how. The easy thing to do would be to deny the appeal, America is a big country and the vast amount of people there (and in the UK it seems) want him to rot in jail. That would have been the weak choice. What Kenny MacAskill did was so difficult but he remains strong in his conviction that this is the right decision. That takes more guts than most people have and doesn’t show any weakness at all. Grace and compassion are hard things to do, it’s so much easier to follow the majority and pass judgement. I applaud Mr MacAskill for what he did today and pray that this decision won’t lead to the end of his career. He should go down in history as a man who made the difficult choice and took responsibility for that choice which the UK government was not willing to take.

Mr al-Megrahi does not deserve freedom but who among us does? I submit to you that all the good that we have is a result of God’s grace for us and MacAskill’s decision to free al-Megrahi was a small example of how grace works and how all of us are made in His image. I don’t think anybody has the capacity for love and grace that God has, I don’t think I could sacrifice my only son to give al-Megrahi eternal life, but being made in God’s image we have a smaller but still significant capacity for grace and compassion and that has been shown today by Mr MacAskill.

I pray that the victims of the Lockerbie bombing will be able to experience God’s grace themselves, that their questions about the tragedy would be answered and that they will be able to go on with their lives. I cannot begin to understand what they dealt with in 1988, what they are dealing with now and what they have to deal with for their whole lives as a result of that terrible tragedy. I know I have a tendency to muscle in with my opinion without thought for those who could be hurt by it so I feel I should emphasise that while I feel Mr MacAskill made the right decision today in showing compassion I don’t want to belittle the pain and suffering felt by people on that day and since.

As it stands this is undiluted grace with no conceivable good outcomes for those people hurt by the bombing. My hope is that out of this an enquiry would come for the good of the people of Lockerbie. More important to my mind though is the example of grace and compassion shown with a great amount of bravery and how it reflects, in some small way, the mind and heart of God. I think it would be good for us to use this as a chance to look at ourselves and our flaws and how many good things we’ve received despite those flaws.

Ephesians 2:8-9 (ESV): For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

Luke 6:35-37 (ESV): But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven.

Amen.

We are stubborn people, aren’t we? It’s okay to admit it, most of us are. We are all brought up in a society that has a certain set of moral values and, for no particular reason other than “it feels right” we are likely to hold to those our whole lives. This has led to a disturbing trend among new Christians where they try to marry the word of God with the world. The most obvious example is where the Bible says “no sex before marriage and you only ever have one marriage”, the world says “it is right and normal to have multiple sexual partners”, the compromise is “no sex outside of a committed relationship”. Some would go so far as to belittle the nature of God Himself where the Bible says that the God of the Bible is the one true God, society has many different contradictory religions and all are equally valid (though we daren’t talk about which is true) so the new Christian would try to marry those into this idea that the God of the Bible is one route to salvation and other religions provide other ones.

As you may be able to tell from this point, I’m writing something potentially quite challenging. Stick with me though, if we don’t allow ourselves to be challenged I think we naturally fall into a position of arrogance and self-righteousness whereas accepting the odd challenge encourages our humility.

I feel that anyone who tries to find these compromises is really missing the point. Society and the teachings of the Bible (which, if you are a Christian, you believe to be the absolute word of God, by the way) cannot be taken together when they contradict one another. The choice there is to follow God or not, it’s all very binary. In the examples above where people try to find middle ground they have chosen away from God without realising it.

Let’s look back a bit at one example where the Bible unashamedly challenges society. This is an easy one and hopefully nobody reading this would have a problem with this verse:

Ephesians 5:25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her

All fine and good, right? But in the ancient Roman society that would have been hugely challenging as it still is in some parts of the world today. The very idea that a man should lay his life down for a woman is ridiculous. People then would have taken the “wives submit to your husbands” part and stop reading whereas here it says men are to love their wives as Christ loves the church. I cannot begin to explain what kind of love this entails. Ephesians 25 promotes different roles for men and women but equal importance with each partner prioritising the other over the self. Madness, at the time.

So let’s look at one we’re having trouble with today, a very famous verse at the moment:

Leviticus 20:13 If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them.

Put aside all arguments about shrimp and validity of the Old Testament and answer this simple question. Is God saying here that homosexual sex is right and good? I’m not going to get into further argument about this issue and anyone who takes up an argument with me on this verse or this issue is entirely missing the point. All I’m saying by bringing up this verse is that the Bible often contains things that are incompatible with what our society tells us.

Here’s the bottom line:

Luke 9:57-62 As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” And Jesus said to him, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Yet another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Jesus calls us to lay down everything to put Him at the centre and follow Him. As we are creatures of society and habit our temptation is always going to be to sway towards the morality of society. Everyone is committed to something whether it’s a job, a family, friends or perhaps an ideal. Some give their lives to the support and promotion of various causes such as the aforementioned homosexuality or vegetarianism or various political ideals or whatever. We all have them.

Think about your lifestle and what you do and what you believe about it to be good and right, premarital sex is an easy place to start if you’re not sure. The question you have to consider (before figuring out what the Bible says about that issue specifically) is “if God wanted me to give up this thing that’s so important to me, would I?”. When I first became a Christian my answer, when really thinking about it, was “no”. I tried to reconcile my thinkings that had come from my society, from my peer group, with what the Bible says. Eventually the inescapable conclusion was that God breathed the words of the Bible to be the absolute truth for all eternity, therefore what the Bible says must take priority over what I said at the time and what the people around me say. This is the challenge of the modern Christian and it doesn’t start with arguing about whether homosexuality is right or wrong, it starts with figuring out whether you are open to being challenged and changed by the word of God.

I cannot instruct your mind to think a certain way or believe certain things. All I can do is attempt to challenge your thinking such that you read further into the things mentioned and discover for yourself what God wants for your life. And take it from me, once you get there life gets so much better and makes so much more sense, God really does know what He’s doing and really does want the best for you so, please, think about the controversial issues and, while doing so, read your Bible as it was meant to be read: as the living word of God.

I wrote this post already. I’m writing it again and backing it up this time. Here we go.

Cold isn’t it? On my way home from university yesterday I took a bit of a long walk because I had to pick up some tender vittles on my way. I was wrapped up fairly warmly so I was mostly fine against the harsh weather conditions (it was a bit cold) as long as I kept walking but when I stopped at a traffic light I began to shiver. Personally I hate shivering, it’s weird. Makes me feel like I’m not manly or something, unlike all the other people who are really tough and radiate extra heat that makes all the cold air that gets near them turn to steam. Or something. Anyway it’s not something I find pleasant, my body convulsing through no will of my own makes me feel in some small way that I’m not in control as much as I should be and, hence, weak.

And I think this topic can make people feel like that. I didn’t have the free will to stop shivering, I think naturally the very idea that we don’t have free will can be something that weakens us. We cling to the free will that gives us control over our own destiny as something that shows we are strong, resiliant and just generally powerful. When asked whether or not you have free will I reckon the answer would be in the affirmative and any notion otherwise would be preposterous.

This is a very modern way of thinking. When the early church first found its way into Africa they came across thought processes that put everything down to “the gods”. Even after becoming Christians some of these people would say things like “I shouldn’t have stolen the camel but God controls my destiny, He made me do it” and “I shouldn’t have slept with my neighbour’s wife but God’s sovereign”. It’s the ultimate “I didn’t do it”.

Were they right in saying that? I don’t think so. So then, do we have complete free will? Again, not by my reckoning. Can you choose to fly? Didn’t think so. Perhaps then you might define free will as the choice we make to do something rather than actually acting out that choice. If I can’t fly can I still choose to fly? For the purposes of this discussion, let’s assume no. To have the choice to do something you have to be able to do it in the first place and free will is merely exercising decision-making when the choice is available.

But that might fall down as well. Do we actually have any choices or is every decision we make simply a result of our DNA and upbringing in ways we can’t control? Let’s say I had an apple with my lunch today and chose to do so because yesterday I had a banana and I fancied something different. I had a banana yesterday because that particular supermarket had a sale on bananas, I went to that supermarket because it was on my way home, I live where I do because a trusted friend recommended it to me, I met that friend through university, I went to this university because it was the best academic option my grades allowed, I got low grades because my parents didn’t bring me up with the greatest work ethic…

See? Follow any decision far back enough and perhaps you’ll find that it all stems from something that was out of your control. I don’t know if that’s true about my parents by the way, it probably isn’t and I certainly don’t blame them, but I didn’t choose to be lazy at school I just was, whatever the reason. So maybe the guys in Africa had a point, that predestination does play a large role in the decisions we make, whether or not that predestination comes from God or our upbringing/surroundings.

In responding to the very idea we’re touching on here, the early church preached to the people about how they should exercise their free will and along came Pelagius. Pelagius put forward what I mentioned earlier as a modern individualism. He put forward a wishy-washy self-help sort of solution, anyone can live free from sin if they choose to do so regardless of whether or not they know God. Man is born into a position of neutrality, neither good nor bad, and can go either way. Following his logic on a bit then his teaching came to man having the free will to turn away from sin and turn to God with no actual intervention from God being necessary.

Then came correction from Augustine who said that man was created in Genesis with free will but then lost that free will once Adam used it badly (by eating the fruit). He stressed the necessity of God choosing us and until the reformation that’s where things were left. Around the time of the reformation John Calvin comes along and plays a big role in bringing what we now know as Calvinism or Reformed Theology which essentially agrees with Augustine.

Let’s test this out. If you’re not a Christian right now try declaring in all honesty that Jesus is Lord. Can’t do it, can you? And indeed, why should you? It’d be ridiculous to declare something honestly that you honestly don’t believe. We cannot choose what we believe, we cannot choose faith, we cannot choose God, therefore we don’t have free will. God chooses us.

One of the things Calvin said is that the dead do not know things of life. So just as a corpse cannot choose to come back to life those who are spiritually dead cannot choose spiritual life in God. Whether you want to take this idea of spiritual death as a fact or an analogy or metaphor it makes sense. We cannot choose things of which we are not aware and we are not aware of God until He reveals Himself to us.

Jonathan Edwards (born 1703, not an athelete), after the centuries of arguing about this, actually came up with a definition of “will”. He said the will is that by which the mind chooses any thing and the motive for that choice is self-interest. He also adds that therefore nobody will refuse salvation if persuaded of the value of it. So if I say the choice is live as you are and go to Hell or make a change and go to Heaven there’s one choice there which is clearly in your best interests. Why would you choose what’s not in your best interests? Because your will is not free to make that choice and indeed my will was not free to make that choice.

There is still hope. Jeremiah 29:13 says (and this is God speaking) “You will seek me and find me, when you seek me(B) with all your heart.” We cannot choose God, of course not, but we can choose to seek Him. Every bit of evangelism I do and every argument I make can never make you believe in God, all I can do is encourage you to search and assure you that it is in your best interests. God has chosen me and God chooses all who He saves, I’m not saved by my own merit or anything I’ve done to deserve it. I don’t know if He’s chosen you or not and if you’re not a Christian then you probably can’t say for sure either.

How many of you then would put off seeking God because of that? Saying that if you choose not to seek Him then surely it’s because He hasn’t chosen you? Remember the Africans I mentioned earlier? It’s funny how when understood by the world free will is absolutely true, we always have it, but as soon as God is mentioned immediately everything’s down to Him. I put it to you that there’s a balance between them.

I said earlier in the example about the apple that perhaps ultimately I chose the apple because of how I was raised. Well, not necessarily, because that’d mean I just made the decision based on having a banana yesterday. I could well have chosen to have an apple because it was closest to my hand or I could have picked another base for my decision which would have ended in a packet of crisps, avoiding the fruit aisle altogether! We do have decisions we can make and we can base our decisions on any kind of logic we like, free will exists to a point.

Therefore while it is up to God whether someone is saved or not it is still up to the individual whether or not they wish to seek God. There is evidence in the Bible of people asking God for things and God responding because they asked, as He’s the father He can choose to make Himself vulnerable to our petitions.

I didn’t choose to be a Christian, I just chose to go to church once and God chose me. I didn’t repent and get saved, I was saved so I was able to repent. Therefore free will exists but not completely, there’s a point at which we must all admit we’re not perfect and not powerful enough to make every decision. Free will suggests a complete freedom from compulsions and we certainly don’t have that. None of us do. My point is that Jesus or Christianity (however you want to look at it) increases rather than decreases my capacity for free will.

So, just to those of you who, like me, don’t like to shiver and hold onto free will because of the power it gives you: God does not take that away from you. It’s not in my power to save people but I’d urge everyone to seek God to increase their personal free will.