If Knowledge is Power, Should we Fear God or Google?

A man has successfully managed to stop Google from holding information about his past.

Articles have highlighted the fact that we live in an age where our misdeeds are remembered more permanently and more visibly than ever before.

As one man points out in a Guardian article, ‘forgetting is intimately connected with forgiving’. So we come to theology…

God is the being with the greatest memory in the universe! This Google case reminds us of the vulnerability we suddenly experience when a shameful event from the past becomes publicly accessible. If knowledge is power, then God is truly omnipotent (due to his omniscience). God intimately knows your thoughts, in fact, everything you’ve ever done to everyone ever is known by him. Feel vulnerable now?

But the beauty of God and his grace is that there is protection against this disastrous situation we find ourselves in, and it’s not a measly court injunction.

It is possible to experience a divine pronouncement of unbreakable forgetfulness, how? Through Jesus.

If Jesus becomes the one on whom the responsibility for all those shameful acts we have committed in our past is laid, then forgiveness is possible. And our sins will not only be forgiven by God, but forgotten by him.

Why does Stephen Fry feel like a Calvinist?

Fry writes in his second autobiography (The Fry Chronicles, 2010) of the countless acts of immorality that he commits on a daily basis. He claims that, ‘there is almost no moment in the day when I do not feel myself to be intensely guilty of numberless trespasses’.

He goes on to list a number of acts which he feels are against his conscience, ranging from drinking too much alcohol to not keeping in contact with his friends. He brushes these off as ‘pathetic little particles of plankton in the deep ocean of sin’ but cannot deny that his ‘feelings are as craven, cringing and confessional as the most self-abasing Calvinists in their most prostrate and abject furies of repentance’.

My immediate thought — of course — is that he needs the divine salvation found in the cross of Christ, but his answer comes swiftly: ‘I dont believe there is a god or a judgement day or a redeeming saviour’.

Why does the human heart insist upon rejecting the only person who can help us? We all experience these pangs of guilt. The reason is the fact we are fearfully and wonderfully made, but that we have broken God’s law.

I can pray that Mr. Fry’s life may be changed by the transforming power of the gospel.

The vilest offender who truly believes,
That moment from Jesus a pardon receives.

Do You Want a Fresh Start?

Don’t ask me how or why it happened, but I was doing some tests on Google’s suggestions in response to the typing of the beginning of a certain phrase (similar to this.)

I typed the words “I want a…” into the search bar and one of the results interested me quite a bit: “I want a… fresh start.” It got me thinking, why have a large number of people have typed that phrase into Google?

We know that a fresh start is something God has desired before, God destroyed the whole world with water, only saving eight people including a man called Noah.

I heard a sermon on Psalm 51 last week and have read it again since, it really is a wonderful place to turn to for assurance of forgiven sins, as well as for an example of what our own forgiving attitudes should look like.  “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” (Verse 10) David want a fresh start and when God forgives us, that’s exactly what he gives us.

I watched the film Funny People  the other day, which I wouldn’t necessarily recommend — you can make your own decisions — anyway, the best line in it came at a point where the lead (Adam Sandler) had messed everything up in various ways and his friend decided to be honest with him:

You’ll never be happy, ’cause you’re always gonna be stuck with yourself! Unless somehow you can get away from you, you’re always gonna be miserable.

We all have problems, no one is happy with their lives, but when it comes to finding the root cause of those problems, we always point the finger elsewhere, whereas the issue is quite the opposite. We need to get away from how we are naturallym 2 Corinthians 5:17 – “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” But what is it to be “in Christ”? Well, by nature we are all in Adam, 1 Corinthians 15:22 says that “in Adam all die” so we can’t be in Adam, so how do we becoming Christ’s? Numerous passages tell us that this happens “through faith”. So put your faith in Jesus so that you can have this fresh start, so that like David in Psalm 51 God can wash away all our  iniquity and cleanse us from sin.

A Miraculous Testimony?

One of the first thoughts of God I remember having as a child was one of ridicule.

“How on earth can people not believe in God? It’s so obvious that there is a God, when a man and a woman get married; God sends them a baby! Where else could a baby come from but from God!?”

I was later corrected on my somewhat naïve logic, but my theories on God didn’t stop there. A few years later, I found myself saying and thinking things like:

“How can we be sure there really is a God?”

“I really do hope there isn’t an after-life, because then we could actually enjoy our time here on earth, instead of having to follow a set of rules and regulations.”

My parents always encouraged such honesty, and my Father was used to answering such questions as he was the pastor of the church I had been taken along to since I was a baby.

As life went on I found that if things were going well in my life, I would only give God the odd thought or two; however if things weren’t going too great I would find myself turning to God and praying to him often.

I decided that if I was going to be part of this Christian thing I should ask for forgiveness for my sins, that’s what I’d heard was the right thing to do. I did that, or at least I tried, but there was no light from above and no change of feeling inside. This was not as romantic as it had been made out to be.

Going on in my early teens I found myself more and more drawn towards the world’s way of thinking. People in school seemed to find me funny and as puberty wore on, my hormones were pulling me in all sorts of directions. I was never a naughty boy in school, but I couldn’t say that I wouldn’t get in trouble on a daily basis from various teachers.

I was having a great time, Sundays were a drag but it was something that I didn’t want to let go of. I felt that I wanted to have a foot on each side of the fence. Have a great time in the ‘real’ world, and have a bit of time to think about spiritual things.

I felt I was “on the fence” so to speak.

My answer was always the same if someone asked me whether I was a Christian, “I’m not sure”. I don’t think I was lying when I said that, I really wasn’t sure, I had asked God to forgive my sins but I wasn’t living as a Christian; and looking back – I wasn’t a Christian.

Summer 2004, I was 14 years old. I had been booked to go along to a Christian camp in Wales, under canvas and all that. It seems that God really does bless such ocassions, and he did so on that week. I suppose it was partly due to me having many examples from older Christians, as well as being out of the context of ‘a church’ and also having a real focus on God’s word. I know that people were praying for me, and God spoke to me throughout that week. I was really persuaded that to ask God for a new life was the right thing.

Looking back on my story, in a way I wish it was different; more romantic. I think to myself,

It would sound better if I wasn’t brought up in a Christian environment, or if I had gone off the rails a bit more, taken drugs, gone to prison – it’s those conversions that are truly miraculous.

But that isn’t true. I was a lost soul. I was heading for destruction. I had no hope.

God saved me. God helped me, and he continues to do so to this day. Through Jesus my sins are forgiven, that is a miracle!

This post can also be found on new theology blog, Onward Motion.

Recent increase in secret confession type stuff means something

Over the past year or two I have noticed a steady increase in websites and videos like…

postsecret.blogspot.com

and

(some strong language)

As one looks and listens through these various confessions, some are shocking revelations, some are quite funny, some are proud.

Why do people feel that they need to get such things off their chests? As humans, why can’t we just keep things to ourselves? Why, when someone tells us a secret do we often find it impossible to keep it in? Why are we often plagued with guilt about things? Why do things we did years and years ago, which seem to mean nothing to us or anyone, all of a sudden flood back into our minds and bother us?

In the Bible, Psalm 32 sheds some light on this whole subject.

David writes that,

When I kept silent,
my bones wasted away
through my groaning all day long.  For day and night
your hand was heavy upon me;
my strength was sapped
as in the heat of summer.

David was obviously deeply troubled by guilt, as we all are. What an accurate description we have in the Psalm of the heaviness and pressure our own guilt puts on us.

The weight on Christian’s back in John Bunyan’s Pilgrims Progress is a great illustration of the pressure sin puts on us.

But he goes on…

Then I acknowledged my sin to you
and did not cover up my iniquity.
I said, “I will confess
my transgressions to the LORD “—
and you forgave
the guilt of my sin.

So how can we get this forgiveness? David continues…

Therefore let everyone who is godly pray to you
while you may be found;
surely when the mighty waters rise,
they will not reach him.  You are my hiding place;
you will protect me from trouble
and surround me with songs of deliverance.

Many are the woes of the wicked,
but the LORD’s unfailing love
surrounds the man who trusts in him.

These websites and videos are on their way to the right idea. Confession and telling of secrets is what is needed, and it is clear that people will indeed get closure from telling their secrets. But I guarantee that the guilt will not go if the confession ends there. We are creatures designed with consciences. Only God can take that burden from us, through Jesus. God is holy, we are not, no one is sinless.

But…

God became man; Jesus. He became a human and came to this earth, he was tempted and tried, but did not sin! He was killed as an innocent human,

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:9

I was thinking, the most normal thing to do would be to pray to God, just to talk out loud to him or in our heads, and he will hear us. But God sees us as well as hears us. If we felt more comfortable, just to write a letter or a postcard, God will see. No one else has to see it, just you and God. Personally I find talking a lot easier but however you choose to ask God, don’t let this pass you by.

P.S. Notice that no where in the Bible does it say that we must confess to a Priest our sins. Jesus is the only mediator between God and man.

Here’s an interesting one: