Why I am a Christian (18)

Watching Christians Die Confident and Unafraid Is Inspirational

In 2012 I jotted down all the reasons I could think of why I am a Christian. I found 26 so I decided to serialise them in a blog every fortnight for a year.

I have so far covered themes linked with science, philosophy and theology before looking at five different facets of Jesus (I could have explored many more). Then I looked at the inspiration, invincibility and influence of the Bible.

These last nine posts are more personal and are based on my experience. As I’ve said before, my conversion was experiential - emotional even - and I only came to think through the logic of my faith afterwards. I would have said when I was 17 that I am a Christian because I have experienced something like nothing else I have ever known. That hasn’t changed. But I say now that I am a Christian first of all because I think Christianity is true, and I think that there is good circumstantial evidence to support it. Only secondly do I say that I’m a Christian because it works for me.

But work for me it certainly does. My experience of Christ is real. He is not like an imaginary friend (though I struggled to make friends as a child I never invented one) nor is it like Father Christmas or the tooth fairy or anything of the sort. I worked out that these were fictitious at the age of about 6 and Kathie and I resolved never to mislead our children by encouraging them to believe they were real. 

The first thing from my personal experience that inclines me to being a Christian comes from accompanying Christians in their final days and being involved in their funerals.

The Baptist preacher David Pawson sometimes speaks about a man he knew in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire who was told that he had only a few weeks to live. He took the news calmly, thanked the doctor and returned home. He then sent out invitations to all his non-Christian friends. The invitations read “Come and stay with me. Come and see how a Christian dies!”

I have had the privilege of visiting Christians who know that their battle with serious illness is going to result in death. Generally, they don’t feel that “beating cancer” means staying alive. As John Piper puts it in his little booklet Don’t Waste Your Cancer “Satan designs to destroy our love for Christ. God designs to deepen our love for Christ. Cancer does not win if we die. It wins if we fail to cherish Christ.”

I remember vividly one woman smiling gently and saying to me: “I don’t much care for leaving my friends just now but I’m not afraid at all. I know I’m going to a wonderful place.” I would travel to see her wondering what I might say that might be of any comfort. I would come home feeling that the visit had been more beneficial to me than to her.

Her funeral was a tremendous celebration of her life but it contained an appropriate expression of our grief at parting. The abiding memory for me was a rousing “There is a Redeemer” – a song she had specifically requested.

When I stand in glory

I shall see His face

And there I’ll serve my King forever

In that holy place

Christian funerals have a quality about them that is unique. What I mean here is funerals arranged for committed Christians rather than funerals with Christian elements for people who have only the vaguest notions of the Gospel and probably haven’t been near a church since their wedding or baptism. In genuine Christian funerals - yes, there are tears but they are usually a release of emotion and gratitude, not bitterness and not anger. Overwhelmingly there is a sense of victory, of triumph, of homecoming.

And in Christian writing, death is often referred to as sleep – something to wake up from refreshed in the light of a brand new day.

“Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.”

(I Thessalonians 4.13-14)

Another beautiful death happened about a year earlier; another woman with a strong and radiant faith. On her death bed, she gathered friends round and lifted her voice in praise with them in the week she died. I’m told they exhausted the entire hymn book and felt uplifted, grateful and full of joy as they sung happily of Christ’s incomparable glories and grace.

Strangely enough, about halfway between those two deaths, I was asked to visit a man who was not a Christian but who wished to see a priest before dying. He was quite frail when I saw him. He had been a critic of Christianity and had evidently made decisions in his life that he now regretted. I noticed Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion in his bookshelf; though it was full of books, the spine of that book caught my eye among the other volumes.

He was resigned to the inevitability of death, somewhat forlorn and manifestly not at peace. That’s why he had asked to see me. We talked for about an hour, mostly about matters personal to him, and he accepted my offer to pray with him at the end. Though he was evidently wealthy, it was quite pathetic that he had only recently seemed to realise that he wasn’t able to take anything with him. As they say, there’s no prize for being the richest man in the cemetery. It was remarkable how a sense of stillness and grace settled in the room as we prayed. I think he felt it too but I do not know whether he made his peace with God before he died. I hope so.

In the Anglican Service of Ordination, the Bishop reads a list of things that newly ordained ministers are expected to do and it includes “they are to minister to the sick and prepare the dying for their death.” I have found it a great honour to accompany people at the end of life and I am rarely unmoved by the experience. It is, in short, an inspiration to my faith in Christ and it affirms his authority over death in my experience.

I am in good company. The British historian and author A. N. Wilson became a cause celebre amongst sceptics when his withering attacks on Christianity followed his embracing of atheism. But around April 2009, Wilson stunned his readers by returning to Christianity, celebrating Easter at his local church. He wrote about his U-turn in the Daily Mail and I understand exactly where he is coming from:

“My own return to faith has surprised none more than myself… my belief has come about in large measure because of the lives and examples of people I have known, not the famous, not saints but friends and relations who have lived and faced death in light of the resurrection story, or in the quiet acceptance that they have a future after they die.”

This summer, I read Simon Guillebaud's book Dangerously Alive. It's a collection of diary entries and newsletters from his time as a frontier missionary in genocidal Burundi, at that time (1998-2009) the most dangerous place to live on Earth. The scale of human depravity recorded in that book makes for sobering reading. But Guillebaud, along with other Christian ministries like Scripture Union, Tearfund, Youth for Christ and Partners Trust International, made a huge humanitarian and spiritual impact on that country, most of the time in peril of his own life. Here's one passage that is typical:

"I sped around the bend in the road on my motorbike, but quickly scrambled to a stop, surprised to see a figure in the middle of the road, just ahead of me. He was holding a grenade in his hand, ready to blow me up. I knew this for a fact - he had made his intentions clear two days before when he'd written saying he was going to cut out my eyes. I'd had sleepless nights over the threat, of course, but I'd gone to stay at someone else's place for a while and was varying my routes around town so that he wouldn't know where to lie in wait for me. My guard waved at me - a pre-arranged sign not to approach. This was both surreal and yet chillingly real. God, what on earth shall I do? If it has to be, I'm ready to die. Let's go..."

For me, to live is Christ; to die is gain. (Philippians 1.21).

Put alongside the vacuous nihilism expressed by Bertrand Russell before his death, it is no surprise which philosophy draws me and which one leaves me cold. Russell said: "There is darkness without and when I die there will be darkness within. There is no splendour, no vastness anywhere, only triviality for a moment, and then nothing."

Oh wow…

In a recent book, leading atheist French philosopher Luc Ferry reflects on what death means.

“The truth is, when we admit the difficulty common to all philosophies, that none of them really have an answer to the question of death... On the other hand, the Christian religion really does have an answer to this question. Without hesitation, it promises the resurrection of our soul and our body, so that we will meet our loved ones again after death. The philosopher does what he can but it’s only a stop gap measure, making the best of a bad job by talking about the beauty of renouncing immortality, of being part of the cosmos so that our atoms will continue to exist... The originality of the Christian message is that individuals are no longer mortal. It is not just the fear of death which has been defeated but death itself.”

Well, yes. Christians do not hope against hope when it comes to death. The Bible teaches that people are saved from hell and eternal death not on the basis of what they have done but on the basis of what Christ has done.

As John Wesley said of his conversion experience: “I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.” (My emphasis).

That’s why Christians have assurance of salvation and perfect peace in death.

That’s why a young, pretty mother-of-two Rachel Barkey was able to speak so confidently just four months before her untimely death from cancer at the age of 37 in 2009. Here is a video link to her final speech. As you can see in the video, she is not in denial; she is clearly emotional about having to leave her husband and children so soon. But the overwhelming theme of her address is gratitude. 

This is the way I want to die whenever the time comes. And that’s the 18^th reason I am a Christian.

How do you want to die? Please don’t live in denial by constantly putting the question to the back of your mind. And where's the wisdom in putting off thinking about all this until old age sets in?

None of us knows for sure when our life will end. If yesterday was an average day, 150,000 people died. I'm guessing most of them had plans for the following week...

Unwavering on Priorities for Life (Nehemiah 13.1-31)

Introduction

And so, as we approach the completion of the renovation work on the roof, we reach the end of the book of Nehemiah. After all the opposition Nehemiah faced, the wall was built and the people recommitted themselves to the Lord.

All that remains now in the final chapter is to hear about how they all lived happily ever after. But that’s not what we find when we read it. We find compromise. We find disobedience. We find backsliding.

When I was putting this teaching series together, I was tempted at first to stop at chapter 12. I wanted to end on a high. But I felt the Lord rebuke me. Chapter 13 is there for a reason and it contains a serious warning we need to hear.

Raymond Brown puts it well in his commentary when he writes this; “Nehemiah’s closing chapter shows how easily the most spiritual community can find its standards subtly eroded as it gradually accommodates to the pressures of contemporary worldliness.”

Yes, the roof is as good as done, the money has come in and we’re going to recommit ourselves to the Lord and celebrate a month from now. There’s a feel good factor to that – but we are still in a spiritual battle and the fight will go on until the Lord returns.

Did you know that flat tyres on your car are rarely due to a sudden puncture? Most tyres lose one or two pounds of air a month in cold weather, and slightly more in warmer weather, due to a process called permeation, which is when air escapes through tiny openings in the valves and by the wheel rim. So you’ve got to keep inflating your tyres.

Similarly, spiritual decline is rarely due to some big crisis. It’s what happens when the Church gradually becomes complacent.

In chapter 10, you’ll remember, the people had made four promises. They pledged to submit to God’s Word, they vowed to shun spiritual compromise, they agreed to support God’s work and they promised to keep the Sabbath special.

And after that, Nehemiah returned to his home in Persia. We don’t know how long it was before he came back to Jerusalem again but sadly, by the time he did in chapter 13, each one of those four promises had been broken and things were in disarray.

Now, as it happens, each one of these four areas threatens to shift us too into spiritual decline like a slowly deflating tyre. These are warnings for us. So let’s look at them in turn.

1) Obeying God’s Word (v1-3 and v23-28)

The first concern is obedience to God’s word and it comes up at the beginning of the chapter and at the end of it.

The specific issue here was that members of God’s people were intermarrying with foreigners.

Let me say right away that this has nothing to do with ethnic prejudice. In Deuteronomy 10.18 it says “God defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing.” 

God loves the foreigner.

The first three verses of Nehemiah 13 are a reference to Deuteronomy 23.3-5. It is not a blanket ban on marrying foreigners but refers only to the Moabites and Ammonites; two nations who were bitter enemies of Israel. It’s a specific warning to stay away from particular people who are bent on evil.

It isn’t even a blanket ban on intermarrying with them. You’ll remember that Ruth was from Moab and she did marry into the people of God and even became an ancestor of the Lord Jesus. But, crucially, she had said to Naomi, her mother-in-law “Your God shall be my God.” She ditched her Moabite idols and became a member, by faith, of God’s covenant community.

The problem in Nehemiah is that the opposite was happening. God’s people were inviting cultures that are adamantly opposed to the things of God into their community. The children born to these mixed marriages were growing up more at home with pagan ideas than with the ways of God’s chosen people.

Do we want our children to be more at home with the values of the world than with those of the kingdom, having never tasted the goodness of the Lord? Those of you who are parents; your children will never have a heart for God if they don’t see that you have.

But the community in Nehemiah 13 started to say “We don’t need to obey the word of God. It's too strict. It's harsh. Let’s supplement it with our good ideas and human wisdom.” And so they went into spiritual decline.

Whenever I see Christians indulge in doctrinal compromise, as sure as eggs is eggs, it’s only a matter of time that they’ll slide into moral indifference and end up spiritually lukewarm.

Whenever churches downgrade the Bible they head towards decay and irrelevance.

All the great revivals - from the mighty 16^th Century Reformation to the Great Awakening in New England, to the Methodism that changed the face of 18th Century Britain, to the 1905 Welsh revival and Azusa Street Pentecostal outpouring to the East African revival of the 1920s and 30’s - all of them held to the inspiration and authority of Scripture.

You see, Hosea 14.9 says “the ways of the Lord are right.” They’re right. So the Holy Spirit always blesses obedience to the right Word he inspired and he is always grieved when it is resisted.

Incidentally, if anyone asks you the difference between Ezra and Nehemiah, it’s that Ezra pulled out his own hair when his people intermarried with pagan nations (Ezra 9.3) and Nehemiah pulled out other people’s (Nehemiah 13.25). The Bible tells you the truth - some leaders pull their own hair out and some leaders, sadly, pull out other people’s. I think you can tell what kind of leader I am just by looking at me!

2) Refusing Compromise in the Church (v4-9)

If the first issue was disobedience to God’s word in the home, the second is spiritual compromise in the church.

Nehemiah returns from Persia to find that a large temple storeroom has been emptied of its supplies and one of the enemies who had given God’s people so much grief in chapters 2-6 has moved in. This man Tobiah, let me remind you, had been a constant thorn in Nehemiah’s side and now he is lounging around in the temple making himself at home.

Now obviously, we’re not going to shift the communion table and Bibles and band instruments into the garage to make space for the nearest pagan druid to move in. But don’t be deceived. There are clear parallels for us.

This is like what happens when the church begins to gradually accommodate things it would have once found totally unacceptable. Before you know it, the standards of the world get a stronghold on our thinking and decision making.

This is like what happens when legalism begins to take the place of grace in the life of the church. All these regulations and procedures, making religious accessories central instead of decorative, wearing the right clothes and observing certain rules to try an appease God instead of coming to Christ and living in him. God forbid that we should ever prefer the religion of the Pharisees to the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

This is like when we allow impurity and worldliness to stifle the joy and the freedom of the Holy Spirit out of our lives.

What did Nehemiah do? He did what Jesus did to the money changers in the temple courts. He started throwing furniture around. In v8-9 Nehemiah showed Tobiah the door, threw his sofa, his pots and pans and his TV set into the street. He had the room disinfected so that no one could even smell his after-shave after he left. Then he had everything put back in its proper place.

We’ve got to make sure that the enemy of the gospel is just as unwelcome here. Everything that is not life-giving and that undermines the work of the Holy Spirit has got to be shown the door. And everything that properly belongs to God’s house has to be restored to its rightful place. This is a house of prayer, a place of healing not a centre for accusation and condemnation.

3) Giving for God’s Work (v10-14)

The third issue Nehemiah had to sort out was giving.

With £60,000 of our total for the roof project coming from the pockets of this congregation – on top of regular giving to finance the work of this church (not to mention support for the mission trips to Chester and Tijuana Mexico last year) I hardly need labour the theme of generosity. When we give to God, we are just taking our hands off what already belongs to Him. Most people here understand that.

But in my pastoral work, including here, I’ve often heard tales of woe from people who are struggling with debt and financial strain. In not one case, not one, has someone told me it’s because they overextended themselves in charitable giving.

Over and over again, and I’ve found this in my own life, and I have no idea how it works, but the more people give gladly to the Lord’s work, the more they find themselves blessed and the less they find themselves wondering how they’re going to get to the end of the month.

We need to give to God what's right - not what's left. This generation in Nehemiah 13 were giving God what was left, if anything was left.

And here's what was happening: the Levites were temple servants and they had no source of income except the tithes from the eleven other tribes. But things had drifted. Verses 10-14 show us that when Nehemiah got back he found half the Levites, away from the temple, out on the farm, making ends meet. The Lord’s work wasn’t getting done because the people were neglecting to support the Levites with their tithes.

In Christ we are under grace, not law. Giving is not a heavy obligation, it’s a holy opportunity. We are free to give more. The New Testament teaching is that those who serve in the church deserve a respectable wage and it ought to be enough to supply their needs. They shouldn’t have to struggle or consider leaving just because fellow believers who benefit from their ministry don’t adequately assess and meet their needs.

Now I know we live in the real world and since the banking crisis the world’s economy has stagnated - but our paid staff here have had one, modest, under-inflation pay rise in four years (and I am not talking about myself as my remuneration is handled nationally).

With the roof project now almost behind us, I think we should look at this area as a church in the light of what God says to us in this chapter.

Our financial giving often reflects our wholeheartedness – or our half-heartedness. Or even our hard-heartedness. Our giving authenticates our devotion to Christ – or it contradicts it. Let me encourage you to look realistically and radically at your giving again as I promise you I will.

As the New Testament says, “Just as you excel in everything, see that you excel in this grace of giving.”

4) Honouring the Sabbath (v15-22)

The last issue Nehemiah had to deal with was the violation of the Sabbath. Instead of setting aside Saturday as a day for rest and worship, as God had commanded, people were living as on any other day, producing, manufacturing, travelling, buying and selling.

Now, again, we are not under the Law of Moses. Christ has fulfilled that for us. He castigated the Pharisees for their burdensome, nit-picking attitude to the Sabbath. If your donkey falls into a pit, for goodness’ sake pull it out!

It’s not a sin to nip into the shop on the way home and get a bottle of wine to go with lunch. If the Lord has called you to work in the emergency services or caring professions it’s not wrong to take your turn and work your share of Sunday shifts.

But on this day I believe every Christian should want to gather together with other believers and worship Christ and make every reasonable effort to do so. And not out of grim obligation but because you love Jesus and want to honour him above everything and everyone else that competes for your affections.

If you are spiritually healthy, gathering with other believers for worship will be a no-brainer top priority for you. If you’re really converted to Christ and serious about making him Lord of your life, it will be the first thing in your diary. And if you have children, training them to put Christ before everything else will be great investment in their future.

Sunday is the weekly anniversary of Christ rising from the dead: the New Testament says “set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on the earth.”

Ending (v29-31)

And so we reach the last verses of Nehemiah. And what a strange way to end!

“I also made provision for contributions of wood at designated times, and for the first fruits. Remember me with favour, my God” (v31).

And that’s it. It’s abrupt. It doesn’t even say they all lived happily ever after. It’s hardly what you’d call ending with a flourish is it?

So let me finish by saying this; we are moving towards a moment when history will suddenly end. The New Testament tells us that we shall be working, like Nehemiah was making provision for contributions of wood, and suddenly the Lord Jesus will be here. Finished!

Jesus said it will be like in the days of Noah; people will be marrying, buying, selling, working and then suddenly that will be it! It will all be over. You might say “Well, can’t I just finish the extension on the house? Don't we get to see who wins the FA Cup or Strictly Come Dancing?" No we don't. "Or does that mean my holiday is cancelled next week?” Yes it does.

It won’t be at the climax of some vast international conference. His return won't be announced by a vast choir who will have been rehearsing for weeks.

No! There will be no more time to change your mind. Jesus will be back.

“Look, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done… Yes, I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus! (Revelation 22.12 and 20).

Let’s pray…

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 25th August 2013

Why I am a Christian (17)

The Message of the Bible Touches and Changes Lives

In 2012 I jotted down all the reasons I could think of why I am a Christian. I found 26 so I decided to serialise them in a blog every fortnight for a year.

I have so far covered themes linked with science, philosophy and theology before looking at five different facets of Jesus (I could have explored many more). Now I am looking at the Bible.

Having marvelled at the extraordinary unity of its message and its impressive resilience, the thing that most stands out for me about the Bible – and the seventeenth reason I am a Christian – is its power to change the lives for the better of people who read it with an open mind.

I once knew an old American man called Frank who married and settled in France after serving in the U.S. Army in the Normandy landings. If you’ve seen the film Saving Private Ryan, you’ll have a graphic idea of the carnage he survived as he made his way up Omaha Beach on 6th June 1944. Each soldier in that operation had been issued a pocket New Testament. Frank tucked his into the breast pocket of his shirt and forgot about it.  

As a young man, by his own admission, Frank was a fairly cynical, hard swearing, heavy drinking kind of guy with no time for spiritual things. But shortly after that harrowing battle to breach the Nazi defences just north of Colleville-sur-Mer everything changed.

Frank still had that same New Testament some sixty years after D-Day; it was just about intact but was badly damaged. It had in fact been the shield that stood between an enemy bullet hitting him straight through the heart. Between assault battles Frank began to read the damaged pages of his little pocket New Testament and it started a surprising journey of faith for him.

Why does the Bible change lives? Over the years, people have found that it confronts, provokes and convicts them. It soothes, assures and consoles troubled hearts. It brings guidance, wisdom, light and peace of mind to enquiring minds. It fires up the spiritual side of people in gratitude and joy, nourishing faith and bringing health to the soul.

I’ve found that so many of those who read it often and take heed of what it says are people who “have it together.” As Charles H. Spurgeon once put it “A Bible that’s falling apart usually belongs to someone who isn’t.”

There are many people I could write about whose lives have been totally turned round just by reading the Bible and believing its message but I am going to have to be savagely selective.

I love the story of Elliott Osowitt. Born into a liberal Jewish family, Elliott worked in the tourism industry and his frequent travels away from home led him to years of what he calls “loose living and immorality.” Things unravelled in his domestic life until he lost control. One of his two daughters started to get into trouble and ended up in prison during that time. On Christmas Eve 1996 his wife Polly, fed up with the impact her husband’s lifestyle was having on their children, threw him out of the house.

Elliott, depressed and disconsolate as he reflected on the mess his life had become, was going to turn a gun on himself in his motel room that night. Before he did though, he noticed an open Gideons Bible laying on the television set.

"When I looked at it,” he says, “I thought who needs that and I threw it on the floor. It fell on the floor and it still stayed open, like it was beckoning me. It really made me mad, so I kicked it, but it hit this wooden box frame under the bed and popped back on the floor."

So he picked the book up and was about to hurl it at the wall when he glanced down and saw a verse from the Gospel of John. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid (John 14.27).

Inexplicably, Elliott stopped and welled up. That night began a long process of change and healing that eventually led to reconciliation with his entire family and his life getting back on track. “Although God is still doing a work in my family and me, we are now a recovering, reconciled, restored, and most of all, a resurrected family” he says. Elliott Osowitt now leads a church called Faith Fellowship in Jefferson, North Carolina. That’s what I mean when I say that the message of the Bible touches and changes lives.

Then consider Richard Taylor. There are remarkable parallels between his and Elliott’s stories though they come from very different backgrounds. As a teenager growing up without a father figure in his life, Richard lived an existence of crime and drug addiction in South Wales for which he served several sentences in H.M. Prison Swansea. One night, in jail awaiting trial, he picked up the Gideons Bible that had been placed in his cell and tore out a page to roll a cigarette. This is how he explains what happened next:

“I opened the Bible randomly and tore out a page and made myself a roll-up. I struck the match, but suddenly, I found that I had an inner voice that I wasn’t used to hearing. It said ‘This is all wrong, I should be reading this, not putting a match to it.’ I blew the match out, unrolled the page, and began to read it. It was the Gospel of John chapter 1. I read the page and then read most of that Gospel, about twenty chapters, before I put it down. I found it captivating. I was lying on my bunk with the Bible resting on my chest and fell asleep. Sleeping in prison is not easy because of the noise and I wasn’t on any drugs – my usual way of drifting off to sleep. Nevertheless, I slept the deepest and most peaceful sleep that I could remember. From early afternoon, right through to the next morning, I slept. It was as if the weariness of years of turmoil, crime, drugs, aggression and fighting was being rolled away through peaceful sleep. My subconscious mind was being cleared of the nightmares of my life up to now. The Bible talks about the peace of God that passes anyone’s understanding and perhaps this was my first experience of it.” (Extract from Taylor’s autobiography To Catch a Thief)

Richard was then inexplicably spared a heavy sentence on condition that he spent some time in a Christian rehabilitation centre which he agreed to. By then his life had already been turned around and he is now one of the country’s most dynamic and influential church leaders.

The Police Chief who had no control over Taylor in his days of spiralling crime can only admit that he is a reformed man and happily wrote an endorsement on the cover of the book. Taylor’s church has many ex-lap dancers, reformed criminals, drug addicts, recovering alcoholics and the like.

Two examples of lives turned around by the message of the Bible. Oh, the folly of those who want to outlaw the distribution of Gideons Bibles in schools and prisons either for fear of offending people of other faiths or because of some pipedream of a secular utopia.

The Bible is immensely valued by those for whom the government suppresses its distribution.

Nicky Gumbel (the man behind the Alpha Course) once travelled to Communist Russia when he was 21, at a time when the Bible was forbidden there. He visited a church in Samarkand, central Asia, wondering who he might give his Russian Bibles to. It was a risk because such churches were often infiltrated by KGB agents. He saw a man who was about 65 years old and who had a radiant expression on his face. Gumbel thought he looked full of the Holy Spirit so he followed him out of the church, touched him on the shoulder and handed one of his Bibles to him. 

When the old man saw a whole Russian Bible, he was elated. He took out of his pocket a thread-bare New Testament.  It had been read over and over until it was completely worn out. Now he had a whole Bible in his own language.  He didn’t speak a word of English and Gumbel didn’t speak a word of Russian but they hugged each other with overflowing joy. This book would help sustain the old man’s faith in the most hostile circumstances. 

The organisation Open Doors has thousands of similar stories after years of smuggling Bibles into Marxist and Islamic states. The Bible sustains joyful faith that violent and oppressive regimes can’t extinguish.

But the Bible’s impact on people’s lives isn’t limited to just personal salvation or private encouragement. It also makes a difference to the way ordinary people lead their lives and, directly and indirectly, has a huge effect on society.

It’s when the Church shakes off its pompous traditions and gets back to the simplicity of the Bible’s message that it becomes truly transformative. Just today (I am writing this in late July 2013) the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby is in the news for saying that local churches, facilitating not-for-profit Credit Unions, will aim to put payday loan companies that take advantage of the poor out of business. Where does that come from? It comes from Old Testament prophets like Isaiah:

The Lord takes his place in court; he rises to judge the people.
The Lord enters into judgment against the elders and leaders of his people:
‘It is you who have ruined my vineyard; the plunder from the poor is in your houses.
What do you mean by crushing my people and grinding the faces of the poor?’
declares the Lord, the Lord Almighty.

(Isaiah 3.13-15)

And it comes from the New Testament as well with Jesus saying things like this:

When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or relatives, or your rich neighbours; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.

(Luke 14.12-14)

Isn’t this announcement by the Archbishop just a one off? Not really.

An article in the Daily Telegraph (February 2013) found that 6,500 Church of England parishes now provide special services for elderly people, schoolchildren, parents and new immigrants. 8 out of 10 individual parishioners give up their spare time to provide informal help to people struggling with issues such as isolation, family breakdown, drug abuse, domestic violence or spiralling debt. And that’s just the Church of England, not including other churches.

According to the National Church and Social Action Survey 2012 Christians offer 98 million hours of unpaid volunteer work on social projects every year - and that’s outside of church based activities like lunch clubs and youth groups. There seems to be something about the message of grace that motivates Bible-reading Christians to serve others and make the world a better place.

In one of the two churches I lead, I once conducted a survey amongst the non-churchgoing parents who brought their children to a holiday club the church organised. One of the questions was “Should All Saints’ be doing more in the community?” 80% answered along the lines of, “it already does an awful lot.”16% confessed they didn’t know.

4% felt the church should do more. Of these, one person thought we use the building too much for church programmes and not enough for non-church activities. I wondered if that was like saying that Old Trafford should be used for rock concerts, instead of football matches. Someone else confessed to be an atheist and said we should be tidying elderly people’s gardens. On reflection, I wish I had had the presence of mind to reply “Oh, there’s no need for that; there are volunteers from the British Atheist Association already doing that all over the country when they’re not running events like this.” But I don't think sarcasm helps.

I am not claiming that people don’t make a difference in society without the Bible as their inspiration. That is obviously untrue. I am just saying that, overwhelmingly, the message of the Bible touches and changes lives for the better.

And that’s the 17^th reason I am a Christian. I want the world to be a better place and the book that Christians believe to be inspired has a proven track record of transforming those who read it with an open mind.

If you’re not one of them I hope you at least you will agree with me that the Bible is good for society. And the next time you open the Bible, why not ask God to speak to you through it – if you dare?