Category Archives: Articles

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“On Living in an Atomic Age” — C. S. Lewis

In 1948, C. S. Lewis wrote this profound little essay, “On Living in An Atomic Age”. Just five pages long, it seems incredibly timely — and as challenging (and encouraging) as it was when it was first written. Here’s the opening …

In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. “How are we to live in an atomic age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.”

… you can download the entire essay here.

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One Solitary Life

JesusEyes

Clearing out some old files recently, I came across this famous meditation, written almost a century ago:

He was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another village, where he worked in a carpenter’s shop until he was thirty. Then for three years he was an itinerant preacher. He never wrote a book, never held an office, never went to college, never visited a big city. He never travelled more than two hundred miles from the place where he was born. He did none of the things that usually accompany greatness. He had no credentials but himself. He was only thirty-three when the tide of public opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. One of them denied him. He was turned over to his enemies and went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed to a cross between two thieves. While dying, his executioners gambled for his clothing, the only property he had on earth. When he was dead, he was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend … All the armies that have ever marched, all the navies that have ever sailed, all the parliaments that have ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned put together, have not affected the life of mankind on earth, as powerfully as that one solitary life.[1]

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Jesus: Man, Myth, Prophet … or More?

JesusEyes

It has been remarked that if you were to make two lists: on one, write the ten most influential people in history, on the other, write people who have claimed to be God, that only one name would appear on both those lists: Jesus of Nazareth. Indeed, it would be hard to overstate Jesus’s influence: much of art, politics, ethics, literature, music, and culture—in the west but also in large swathes of the east—has been influenced by his life.

And, of course, Jesus is the central figure of Christianity—making Christianity, uniquely, a historically grounded religion. Consider this: you could remove the founder of any other religion and that religion could still stand. Somebody else could have taught the system of thought that became Buddhism. The Qur’an could have been brought by somebody other than Muhammad. But Christianity is not a system of teaching taught by Jesus, in a very real sense, Christianity is Jesus Christ. Jesus’s personality, his character, his identity, are the heart of the Christian faith. Christianity stands or falls on Jesus.

For Christianity claims that “God” is not some mere abstract idea, some vague higher power, something “out there” like the Force in Star Wars, or a distant, remote deity, like the God of Islam, but a God who is very, very real. A God who took on human nature and, in Jesus Christ, walked and talked in history.

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Lessons from the Beauty of the Highlands

Every year around this time, the outdoor bug gets hold of my kids and they start dropping hints: “Dad, it’s going to be 5 degrees on Saturday—please can we go camping?” Thus last weekend the shed was prised open and miscellaneous dusty camping paraphernalia stuffed into our elderly Volvo until its springs groaned. Despite my wife’s trepidation, the sun actually shone and we had a fantastic weekend, the highlight of which was bribing the kids to climb their first Munro, the gnarly rock summit of Càrn Aosda that overlooks the Glen Shee pass. 

My six-year-old son’s reaction on arriving at the top was priceless. As the cries of “Wait for me!” and “Parents shouldn’t be allowed to make their kids climb mountains” died away he stood, open-mouthed, gazing at the incredible view down Glen Clunie, with the snow-capped Cairngorms glittering in the distance. “Dad! That’s amazing!” my son cried out. “Look at the view!” And then he flopped to the ground and just stared for a few minutes. It’s one of the few times I’ve ever known him silent.

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The Circle of Rights

Being British, I have a naturally mischievous streak and one of the things I occasionally enjoy is gently poking students with the sharpened end of a question to get a reaction. This can easily be done with the aid of a whiteboard and a marker pen. Draw a large circle on the whiteboard and say to the class something like: “This circle represents the entire set of genomes of every living thing on planet Earth. Everything is here, from whales to whelks, ants to antelopes, bacteria to bats, hippopotami to humans.”

Now I ask the class a further question: “Raise your hand if you do not believe in human rights?” Rarely will a hand go up (peer pressure can be a wonderful thing). “Excellent!” say I, taking my pen and drawing a second, much smaller circle, within the bigger circle. “Now what those of you who believe in human rights are saying is that anybody who lives inside your smaller circle, whose genome is ‘human’, enjoys a special set of rights that inhabitants of the bigger circle do not. Agree?”

Again, rarely will anyone protest.

“Wonderful,” I enthuse, rubbing my hands together in anticipation of what is about to follow. “So here’s the problem. Along comes the white supremacist, armed with a marker pen of his own, and he draws a much tinier circle within your small circle and says, ‘No, only those who are white and European enjoy full rights. Any other races do not.’. See the problem? You have drawn a circle, he has drawn a circle, you have both drawn circles. So tell me: why is your circle acceptable (even laudable, as the we give awards to people who defend human rights) but the circle drawn by the racist is not?”

Usually, there is a stunned silence at this point.

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A Year of Reading

One of my new year traditions is to look back at what I read in the last year — my goal was to read 30 books in 2020 and one impact of COVID/lockdown was that I managed to read (re-read in some cases) 51! An eclectic mix in here … (I’m kicking off 2021 by re-reading the The Lord of the Rings) …
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How to Avoid Being a Village Atheist

It is never a good idea to try to set fire to your shorts whilst wearing them, I thought to myself, as Darren departed the football field shrieking, white smoke trailing behind him. During my high school years, Darren was the class idiot. (I think he’d been aiming at class joker but had missed, badly: as somebody once remarked, many people who attempt to be a wit only make it halfway). Darren was always ready to interrupt a class with a stupid remark or snide heckle, was often in trouble because of pranks or stupid stunts gone wrong, and was the first person I ever saw wounded off a sports field with scorch marks.

Every community has its brilliant members, its leading lights and all have their single-watt flickering light bulbs, their village idiots. This goes for every community, not least the atheist and secular community.

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Why is Religion So Divisive?

A recent survey revealed that many people harbour incredible negative attitudes to religion: 46% of those surveyed said that “religion is a major part of the problem in our world” whilst 42% think it’s not religion per se but “people of faith” who are the problem.

Why are people so down on religion? Why do so many imagine with John Lennon that a world “without religion” would be more peaceful, more tolerant, more inclusive and more harmonious? What’s the problem with religion?

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Miracles in an Age of Science

We live in an age that’s very sceptical about miracles. A culture that shouts at us through the media and a myriad other channels that science can explain everything and that to believe in the miraculous is positively medieval. There’s no such thing as the supernatural, we’re told, just the natural—a universe where the naturalistic laws of physics, chemistry and biology can explain everything.

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The End of Tolerance

In Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, the detective-ghost-horror-who-dunnit-time-travel-romantic-musical-comedy-epic by the British comedy writer Douglas Adams, the eponymous private investigator, Dirk Gently, has had a major falling out with his secretary, Janice, who is preparing to storm out of the office in a rage:

She retrieved her last pot of nail varnish and tried to slam the drawer shut. A fat dictionary sitting upright in the drawer prevented it from closing. She tried to slam the drawer again, without success. She picked up the book, ripped out a clump of pages and replaced it. This time she was able to slam the drawer with ease.[1]

A few days later, faced with a client to whom some events have occurred that are, quite literally, completely and utterly impossible, Dirk happily remarks:

“Luckily, you have come to exactly the right place with your interesting problem, for there is no such word as ‘impossible’ in my dictionary. In fact,” he added, brandishing the abused book, “everything between ‘herring’ and ‘marmalade’ appears to be missing.”[2]

If I could remove just one word from the dictionary it wouldn’t be ‘impossible’, nor ‘pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis’ and especially not ‘marmalade’, living as I do in Dundee.[3] No, if I could remove just one word from the dictionary, it would be the word ‘tolerance’.