I have seen where it grows

Without meaning to turn my blog purely into an apologetic medium I feel compelled to address the issue that humanists or scientists lay before Christians of 'cherry picking' what is morally and socially acceptable from the Bible and conveniently ignoring the more morally offensive elements (particularly in reference to the Old Testament). I take exception to this phrase 'cherry picking' in that it seems to have found acceptance in debates I have seen between Christians and atheists when discussing the interpretation and application of the Bible.

Firstly, many Christians do not 'cherry pick' Biblical principles. This ignores or does a huge disservice to the nature of the Bible itself. Atheists or humanists talk as if the Bible is one book that was written as a whole. This is not true. The Bible is a library of books written by several different authors over several hundred years. As in any library there are books of different genres - from history, law, prophecy, poetry and wisdom to historical narrative and theology. Collectively these books were canonized and form the Christian Bible (commonly known as the Old and New Testament). Therefore the historical and cultural context of any given book of the Bible must be taken into account before we draw practical application for how we should live our lives and treat others. This is known theologically as Hermeneutics: the study of interpretation theory.

Secondly, the interpretation and application of the Old Testament Law (or Torah) for Christians culminated in the person of Jesus. Jesus radically reinterpreted much of the Torah or the Law of Moses. For example Jesus enlightened his disciples to the principles underlying clean and unclean food and thus Christians see nothing wrong in eating pork or eating without first ritually cleansing their hands. As Jesus taught "it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person." Matthew 15:11. Why don't Christians stone adulterers or homosexuals? Because those judgements are obsolete in the context of the Cross. This is known theologically as Christology. Jesus taught: "Do not think I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them." Matthew 5:17 (my emphasis added) As a Christian I believe that the Law of Moses finds its fulfilment in Jesus. Jesus lived a perfect life; Jesus was the only perfect human being to have ever lived and as such fulfilled the requirements of the Law. This is how Jesus' sacrifice upon the cross has the power and efficacy to heal and to save for all time. "For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us..." Romans 8:3-4 (my emphasis added).

But some atheists might mistakenly interpret Christ's fulfilling of the Law as reason to do away with the Old Testament. This is a misconception because as Jesus said in the Gospel of Matthew he came not to abolish but fulfill. We still need the Old Testament (or the Hebrew Bible) to understand the person and divinity of Jesus. The Old Testament is replete with messianic prophecies regarding Jesus as God's anointed one who will bring salvation to His people. Indeed the apostle Paul calls God's callings as irrevocable (Romans 11:29). Christianity is rooted within Judaism and there is no Biblical mandate to sever that connection. It is from within the context of Judaism that Christianity's spiritual principles of sin and justice are founded: in the Monotheism of the Jewish heritage.

So what does this mean for the 21st century? Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever. We do not go around judging, discriminating or punishing people of other lifestyles and religions; salvation is open to all through Jesus Christ. We all have free will to choose whether or not to confess and repent of our sin and believe in the sacrifice of Jesus for our redemption. As it says in Ephesians: "by grace you have been saved" Ephesians 2:5. In and through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ there is no mandate for bigotry or discrimination. Indeed Jesus teaches to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you (Matthew 5:44). Thus to conclude through the study and application of Hermenuetics and Christology Christians can reasonably and justifiably believe in and apply these Biblical principles to their lives without fear of hypocrisy or 'cherry picking'. 'Cherry picking' is such an unhelpful term when intellectually, academically and respectfully debating the relevance of Christianity or the Bible to the 21st Century.

There is one other issue I want to address in this blog and that is of the rationality of faith. As I watched the topical debating programme on BBC 1 this morning 'The Big Questions' one atheist representative in response to a Christian member of the panel retorted to his point about individual faith: "But I could believe in lepricorns but that does not make them true!" Underlying this remark is a critical attitude to the nature of faith and a subtle implication that all faith is irrational. To imply that 'faith' as a general term is irrational is indefensible in my opinion. The whole debate between religion and science over the flat earth theory or evolution for example is a fallacy. Galileo who was forced to renounce his scientific discovery was a man of faith himself! Scientists of the renaissance where not the vanguard of atheism. Historically science was born in the West from Christianity and was known as 'Natural Philosophy'. The issue the Catholic Church had with Galileo was not atheism but heresy as they understood the term to mean. Now heresy was often associated with atheism but they are not to be mistaken as synonymous. Indeed our present decimal system of mathematics has come from Islam. It was not until the Enlightenment of the 18th century that atheism started to become much more philosophically robust and defensible. Then again this was not so much the work of scientific progress (Newton himself was a theist) but in the anti-clericalism of the French philosophes. Human liberalism really has its roots in the Enlightenment when a revolution against the established Church led to more free thinkers in the form of theism, deism and atheism. Even Darwin later in the 19th century in his seminal work 'The Origins of the Species' was reluctant to emphasise the implications of his evolutionary theory to organised religion and the basis of many peoples' faith. Interestingly it was a Catholic Monk named Gregor Mendal who discovered laws of genetics while experimenting on pea plants around the same time as Darwin published his book on the Origin of the Species and he later posthumously became known as the 'Father of Genetics'. In the 20th Century Albert Einstein (famous for his pioneering work on the theory of relativity) believed in a 'Supreme Mind', which even if it wasn't the monotheistic Judao-Christian God was still a 'higher being' that strictly speaking atheism rejects.

So what does this mean? Well it means that science does not intrinsically lead to atheism or lack of faith in the Judao-Christian God. But rather atheists look to science to find reason for unbelief in God. If someone chooses not to believe in God (their worldview) then they can find support for this in science - in the theory of evolution; in 'the selfish gene' as Richard Dawkins puts it etc. Now I am not accusing all atheists of this sort of broadbrush discimination of faith (or Biblical faith to put it another way) as being both morally hypocritical, obsolete or irrational but I do feel very strongly when this is the impression that is given by atheist representatives on topical debating programmes. Faith is not irrational or obsolete - a study of history, philosophy and theology will tell you that!