In the 6^th Century a monk by the name of Dionysius Exiguus suggested that the calendar be reworked from the existing Roman model to a model based around the birth of Jesus Christ.
1500 years on and still the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus comprise the pivotal period of history upon which everything else hangs.
Because the Jesus’ death and resurrection took place in time and space, and is recorded in history, we can look at it and enquire of it.
It’s one thing to agree that the Resurrection happened; it’s another to believe in the risen Jesus as Lord and Saviour. To understand the implications of the historical events of the Cross, we need to understand what the mission was.
And this indeed was a mission. The cross, far from being an unexpected catastrophic event – what the disciples mistook for what was happening – was foreknown. Indeed, the origins of the Cross go back before the origins of the world.

Jesus’ Mission Was Pre-Set

The Biblical account of the creation of the world (Genesis 1) is quickly followed by the first humans getting things wrong (Genesis 3), introducing sin and decay to the world and everyone and everything in it.
Put simply, God created a perfect world and we messed things up.
Sin affects everything. It is no small problem; it is the underlying affliction that is the root of all that is wrong in the world today. It robs everything of its beauty because it sets the human heart as “hostile toward God” (Romans 8:7). It is a divorce of monumental proportions.
Where Adam and Eve first deviated, every human heart has since followed suit: we’ve chosen ourselves before God. We’ve made something other than God to be God. We’ve “missed the mark” and introduced aberration, which has poisoned everything.
We might think that at this point God reverts to Plan B: enter Jesus. But the Bible tells us a different story. It says that Jesus was “foreknown before the foundations of the world” (1 Peter 1:17-21). This is remarkable. Before God created the world he knew that things would go wrong, and he knew that he himself would put things right, at unimaginable cost.
And the intrigue builds as we are told that not only was Jesus’ plan foreknown, but we too were known before the beginning of time. The Bible does not tell us that we are simply a random collection of molecules, the product of blind chance. It says that God “chose us” before the beginning of the world (Ephesians 1:3-10).
You and me, we were known by God, chosen by God, and before we had taken our first breath God had already enacted an outrageous plan in love to rescue us. This was the way that God planned it from the very beginning! In love he created us, and in love he came to rescue us.
The story of the age is that we are basically good people that get things wrong from time to time.
The story of the Bible is that we are more depraved than we can possibly fathom, yet we are more loved and more valuable than we can possibly imagine.

Jesus Knew His Mission

The Good News continues when we learn that as a man Jesus knew of his mission on earth. In John 2:19 Jesus prophesies his own death and resurrection when he tells the Jews, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”
Whilst the Jews were thinking he meant the temple building at the time, they later understood he meant physical resurrection of himself as Matthew records in his gospel:

“The next day, that is, after the day of Preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate and said, “Sir, we remember how that impostor said, while he was still alive, ‘After three days I will rise.’ Therefore order the tomb to be made secure until the third day, lest his disciples go and steal him away and tell the people, ‘He has risen from the dead,’ and the last fraud will be worse than the first.” Pilate said to them, “You have a guard of soldiers. Go, make it as secure as you can.” So they went and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone and setting a guard.”

God from the foundations of the world knew of the cross. Jesus from the beginning of his ministry knew of his mission on earth.

Jesus Died For Us

The ultimate problem with sin is that it comes with a cost. It separates us from God, it incurs a debt, and it results in death.
The ultimate problem for humanity is that it has no way of dealing with this cost. What power do we have over death? How can a now imperfect person return him or herself to perfection, paying off their debt? How can we find our way back to God?
The pattern of the religions of the world goes something like this: live a good life, doing the right things, and you will have eternal bliss.
The message of the Bible is: only perfect people go to Heaven. That leaves us with a problem. There are two types of people on this earth: the imperfect, and those who claim to be perfect (thus displaying for all their imperfection!).
Jesus Christ was God, come to earth, in all of his perfection. The Bible says that he was the only one to live a perfect life.
When the Romans were nailing Jesus to the cross they were unaware of what they were doing. They thought they were executing just another man. What they were doing was killing the only perfect man to ever have lived. The only man who could have ever escaped death on his own.
Jesus’ voluntarily died on the cross and in doing so gave to us his righteousness. Not that we asked him to; he chose to do this in love for us. As the Bible says,

“but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)

On that cross Jesus absorbed all of our sin. Martin Luther called this the ‘Great Exchange’ – his righteousness for our sinfulness.
At once, the separation between humanity and God was removed. At this point in history, the Bible records that the heavy curtain used to separate the Holy of Holies (where the presence of God resided) in the temple was torn in two, signifying that access to God had now been restored (Matthew 27:41).
God came to earth to restore and redeem his own. We, who were known before the foundation of the world, were rescued by God by the greatest act of love the Universe has ever witnessed or ever will witness.

Once, For All

 “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit,” (1 Peter 3:18, ESV)

Flogged. Mocked. Abused and hung upon a tree to die. Jesus, God himself, made good the world. He bought us back at tremendous price.
Three days after his death, the tomb in which he was laid was found empty. On Easter Sunday, we say – as his disciples said – “He is risen!”
Death could not contain the creator of the world! In dying on the cross Jesus took away the sin of the world; in rising again Jesus broke the power of death.
For the Christian death is not the end of this world. Our lives have been secured by Jesus’ sacrifice and as this world and our physical bodies are passing away, we know that our souls are secure.
Having faith in Jesus Christ means accepting all that he said about himself, all that he said about us, and all that he did for us. It is realising that our individual stories are caught up in his ultimate story. When we come to see all that he’s done for us, the only proper response is to make him Lord and Saviour of our lives.

This is the fourth post in our series on  The Resurrection. We’ve seen so far that:

1. Jesus died
2. The tomb was found empty
3. Many people reported seeing the resurrected Jesus

Fact 4: The Transformation of the Disciples

The night before the crucifixion of Jesus, Simon Peter – one of Jesus’ closest friends – in an act of cowardice, denied that he even knew Jesus (John 18:15-18 & 25-27). As the tension rose and the threats grew, the disciples just walked away from their leader.
The following day the leader of this once-happy band of disciples was executed. It appeared that it was game over.
The execution of Jesus – ordered by the Jews on the charge of blasphemy – was designed put an end to this new movement. This method is as old as time: remove the leader and let the movement that followed him wither away.
This is what the Jews thought was going to happen. But history records a different story.
Mere days after the death of Jesus, the disciples far from being defeated and dispersed, popped up again in Jerusalem. Led by the same man that had only just denied he knew Jesus, Peter, they were proclaiming in public the Resurrection and calling men to repent (Acts 2:14-41).
They preached with such passion and fervour that records show 3,000 people believed and started to follow Jesus after their very first public appearance. All of this in the same city where Jesus was just very recently nailed to a cross for all to see.
The disciples then went on to spread the message of the Resurrection far and wide. It became their life goal. For most of them, it would be their death sentence too. Out of the 12 original disciples, 1 betrayed Jesus and then took his own life (Judas), 1 died of old age (John, the brother of James), and the remaining 10 were martyred for their faith.
In the years to come the early Christian church would face horrendous persecution under the reign of Nero with many believers paying for their faith with their life. It would be a few hundred years before Christianity secured state protection. But through all the torture and the horrors, the church grew and grew, with people putting their trust in the Resurrected Jesus and placing their faith in Him above their own lives.
The question that must be asked of this is: what on earth caused this to happen? And that is precisely the question that has to be asked by one who is unwilling to consider a supernatural explanation.
So what could have happened?

Self-Delusion?

Perhaps the disciples decided, even now they knew that Jesus had died, that they couldn’t revert to their old life. They had invested too much. The show had to go on. So they summoned up the inner strength required to move past the defeat of the cross and grouped together to keep the band on the road.
You wouldn’t be the only one who thinks this is hard sell. Pinchas Lapide, a Jewish New Testament scholar said this,
“If the defeated and depressed disciples overnight could change into a victorious movement of faith, based only an autosuggestion or self-deception-without a fundamental faith experience-this would be a much greater miracle than the resurrection itself.”
Could one man summon up the strength to suppress the truth he knew and live a lie? Could 11? Could 3011?

Conspiracy?

Well maybe the disciples had something else in mind. Perhaps they had something else up their tunic sleeves. Perhaps, even, they were bribed and induced to lie and continue proclaiming the message of Jesus.
But cracks do appear in this hypothesis too. Who was bribing the disciples? What was the value of their reward, and why was it greater to them than their own lives?
And the point is made that someone who has been bribed once can always be bribed again. It would only have taken one of the disciples to crack – say under the threat of death – and the game would be up, as Blaise Pascal noted:

“The hypothesis that the Apostles were rogues is quite absurd. Follow it out to the end and imagine these twelve men meeting after Jesus’ death and conspiring to say that he had risen from the dead. This means attacking all the powers that be. The human heart is singularly susceptible to fickleness, to change, to promises, to bribery. One of them had only to deny his story under these inducements, or still more because of possible imprisonment, tortures and death, and they would all have been lost.”

As with Fact 3 the natural explanations offered become quite absurd when they play out, each becoming more and more complicated until they undo themselves.
The one solution that’s left is the simplest one: Jesus rose from the dead, appeared to the disciples, and the disciples were transformed on the basis of this witnessed miracle.
These four minimal facts of the Resurrection all say one thing: something big happened. Some extraordinary took place. So what do you make of it all?

What is the simplest explanation for the historical accounts of the Easter weekend? That is what we’re asking in this series. In parts 1 and 2 we looked at two basic facts of the Resurrection story: that Jesus died, and that on the Sunday the tomb that he was placed in was found empty. Part 4 looks at the amazing transformation of the disciples.
The third fact that requires an explanation is the multiple sightings of the resurrected Jesus.

Fact 3: Post-Resurrection Appearances

On Easter Sunday, after the tomb was found empty, Jesus appeared to a number of different people. They hugged him (John 20:17) and examined his crucifixion wounds (John 20:27). This was a physical, walking Jesus.
This is when things get really interesting. The prior evidence strongly points to the death of Jesus (not at all unexpected) and an empty tomb (perplexing). Now we have resurrection sightings (extraordinary).
It is of course important for Facts 1 and 2 to be established. If Fact 1 was not true, then Fact 3 could not be true: you can’t have a resurrection without a death. And if Fact 2 was not true, then Fact 3 would be disproved by providing the body as evidence against the Resurrection.
If the death shocked Jesus’ followers, then the empty tomb raised hope, and the sightings of Jesus confirmed their hope and filled them with joy.
Not only did the disciples see and interact with the resurrected Jesus, but Saul (who changed his name to Paul) was transformed from militant anti-Christian to passionate Christian missionary by an encounter with the risen Jesus also (Acts 9).
Paul talks of all of this in his letter to Corinth, which we looked at in Part 2. It continues:

“and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.” (1 Corinthians 15:5–8, ESV)

For the Resurrection to be real, a supernatural event must have taken place. Because naturally, dead people do not come back to life. The fact of the matter is that many people find the Resurrection story hard to believe because they rule out supernatural intervention to start with. If you don’t allow supernatural explanations, then you won’t find a supernatural answer, and the Resurrection can not possible be true.
But if we suspend bias and examine the evidence closely, we see that naturalistic explanations just don’t fit. And as Spock, quoting Sherlock Holmes, once said, “if you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains – however improbable – must be the truth.”

Alternative Explanations

So what else could be an explanation for the post-resurrection sightings of Jesus?
Well, firstly, we could say that they simply weren’t real. They didn’t happen and the church made up the story later on. But as we saw with Fact 2, “legendary development” doesn’t fit because the early Christians (within the lifetime of the eyewitnesses to the resurrected Jesus) claimed to have seen a resurrected Jesus. The evidence informs us that people at the time believed Jesus had come back to life and people had seen him.
Secondly it has been suggested that the disciples and other witnesses did believe they had seen Jesus, but they were deceived, or they hallucinated.
The problem here is the sheer number of witnesses. Over 500 people were said to have seen the risen Jesus.
Hallucinations do occur, but there has been no recorded episode of mass-hallucination – that is, more than one person experiencing the same hallucination.
For example, let’s say that you were to slip in to a deep sleep and not awake until December this year. You then meet me, and I (as a passionate Scottish Rugby fan) fill you in on what you missed during your extended nap: chiefly, the Rugby World Cup. I tell you of the amazing feats of Scotland. How they ran riot over South Africa and topped their group, before beating Australia in the quarters, knocking over the All Blacks in the semis, and humbling England, at Twickenham, in the Final.
Barring any loss of judgement incurred during the shut-eye you would be right to question my story. When you see that I firmly believe it and I’m not trying to pull your leg, you would think I had lost it. You would probably want to check me in to a facility.
But then, if the next person you met, and the next, and the next all told you the same story and they passionately believed it too, you would have to come up with some other explanation other than individual mental disturbances.
The fact that many people claim to have seen Jesus removes the possibility of hallucination as a cause and requires us to ask, if the story is not true, why does a large group of people believe that it is?
Are they lying? Well then we have to ask, what’s in it for them? Furthermore, if they were lying, where was the body? So then maybe Jesus didn’t die? But the evidence from Fact 1 strongly suggests he did.
In the absence of a credible naturalistic explanation for these sightings, a supernatural explanation that fits the evidence – of not one, but now three facts – really ought to be considered. If we have a problem with that then we must ask ourselves if we’re really open to discovering the truth of the matter. For if we insist that our discovery must conform to our presupposed beliefs, then how honest are we really being with ourselves?

The “minimal facts” of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ are there to be investigated. In the first part of this series we looked at Fact 1: Jesus Died, and asked whether the ‘swoon theory’ held any weight. Today we move on to the second fact. (Skip ahead to Fact 3: The post-resurrection appearances of Jesus and Fact 4: The transformation of the disciples)

Fact 2: The Tomb Was Empty

“Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”” (John 20:1–2, ESV)

Jesus was crucified on a Friday and laid in a known tomb nearby (John 19:38-41). The next day was the Sabbath (Saturday) and the “first day of the week” was the Sunday. It was on the Sunday that Mary Magdalene found the empty tomb and informed the disciples.
There are a few alternative theories about what might have occurred over those couple of days. The point is made that the absence of a body does not lead one to immediately conclude ‘supernatural resurrection’. Indeed. So, the question is, ‘What are the competing naturalistic explanations?

Jewish/Roman Conspiracy?

Well, firstly, someone could have come and removed the dead body from the tomb (which is what Mary seems to think happened at first). But who would have done that?
Both the Romans and the Jews had much to gain from Jesus remaining dead. The Romans crucified him at the request of the Jews who two days prior were screaming bloody murder.
Later on, when the Resurrection story began to gain traction, whatever reason the Jews or the Romans had for removing the body would have paled in comparison to the need to check the growing ‘heresy’ that was threatening unrest. The body could have been presented at this time and tChristianity stopped in its tracks.

Stolen Body?

Secondly, we could suggest that the disciples stole the body and then made up the story about the Resurrection. But some problems emerge with this theory too.
To start with, the disciples would have had to regroup from the shock of seeing Jesus crucified and come up with a plan to steal the body in just a day or so. Then they would have had to overcome the Roman guard, which was stationed by the tomb for the very reason of preventing the disciples doing just this (Matthew 27:62-66). After all of this, the disciples – knowing that they have faked the story – would have had to lie consistently, in fact, lie all the way to their death for what they proclaimed. The point was made in Part I, ‘why would they die for something they did not believe happened?’

Legendary Development?

A third theory is that the church made up this story later on when it was more powerful. We’ve looked elsewhere at the reliability of the eye-witness testimony of the Bible, but in addition there are a couple of other points to made about this.
Firstly, the Bible records that it was women that found the tomb of Jesus. Times have changed and perhaps what is not immediately apparent is that this fact significantly weakens the credibility of the story. A women’s testimony was inadmissible in court – equivalent to a drunken man’s testimony – and so to hang the story on women, as all Gospel’s do, would not make sense if the goal of the writers were to create a strong story.
The next thing to consider is to ask how long it was before the church invented this story. 100 years? 500? This idea, ‘legendary development’, suggests that the church over time came up with the idea of physical resurrection. The problem for this angle is that believers were proclaiming the resurrection very early on.
A portion of a letter Paul writes to Christians in Corinth contains what many scholars believed to be an early creed. This would have been a statement of faith that Christians would affirm.

“For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.” (1 Corinthians 15:3–6, ESV)

Scholars date this creed to within the lifetime of the eyewitnesses of Jesus’ death. That is, the very first Christians believed and stated their belief in the Resurrection.
The tomb was found on the Sunday to be empty and neither the historical record nor competing theories for the absence of the body lead us to think that anything else actually happened than what the gospels claim.
Of course, the account gets stronger when we include the stories of the many people who claim to have seen the resurrected Jesus. This is what we will look at next.

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is the focal point of the Christian faith. The whole of Christianity hinges upon it. What happened 2,000 years ago in Jerusalem is incredibly important to us today precisely because something did happen.
The Christian faith is built on historical events that present themselves to us as questions. The Resurrection is the chief event and it asks us to look at it and decide, individually, whether we will accept Jesus as King and God.
What happened all those years ago and started a movement that has been growing ever since. From hundreds to thousands to billions today, people all over the world have come to believe in and follow Jesus Christ.
We at the Demolition Squad have been offering arguments that suggest that belief in Jesus is credible. We see that the evidence is there to be examined. In this series we’re going to look at the four key historical facts about the death and resurrection of Jesus.
And this is important because if we don’t have a resurrected Jesus, we lose the testimony of Jesus and Christianity then has no foundation. Jesus didn’t come to merely offer a good strategy for life. He came saying he was God and he prophesied his own death and resurrection. So if the Resurrection didn’t happen, then we can put to rest all of Christianity. As Tim Keller has written,
“If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all that he said; if he didn’t rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which everything hangs is not whether or not you like his teaching but whether or not he rose from the dead.” Reason for God

Four Minimal Facts of The Resurrection

There is an approach to looking at the Resurrection known as the “minimal facts approach.” It seeks only to examine the core pieces of evidence that the broad majority of scholars – Christian and sceptic alike – agree on.
Taken from Biblical records (in the form of historical testimony) these facts are in and of themselves neutral. How we interpret them is what’s important.
We’re going to look at four of these facts, starting with Jesus’ death.

Fact 1: Jesus Died

We don’t have a resurrection from the dead if the person said to have been resurrected did not in fact die.
The Bible makes quite clear that Jesus died (all the gospels tell us this). These accounts say he died by crucifixion, a common Roman method of execution.
John records in his gospel that the soldiers broke the legs of the two men crucified next to Jesus. Because the body needed to push up on the legs to inhale air, breaking the legs would prevent this from happening and speed up death.
“But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water.” (John 19:33–34, ESV)
I was talking recently about the Resurrection with a medical doctor. He told me that it was on the reading of the history of this event that he took seriously the claims that Jesus made.
The Biblical record that a spear was thrust into Jesus’ side and “blood and water” came out indicates that the sac around the heart, most likely filled with fluid as a result of the shock the body was in (both from crucifixion and the whipping Jesus received before), had been punctured resulting in this discharge.

Swoon Theory

One theory to be presented in opposition to Jesus’ death is the so-called ‘swoon theory’. This position says that Jesus did not die but rather passed out, and was revived later on in the tomb. However, this idea is problematic for a number of reasons:

1. The trained Roman soldiers overseeing Jesus’ death would have failed to do their job. They were given orders to kill Jesus and they knew how to do it. Failing to do this would be unthinkable unless they had another (unknown) motive.
2. Before enduring the crucifixion Jesus had to carry part of his cross to the execution site after receiving a flogging and having a crown of thorns pressed into his head. The blood loss from this event was traumatic alone. This wasn’t some prep-school cane-whacking, this would have been truly awful. The historian Eusibius tells us what a Roman flogging was like: “The sufferer’s veins were laid bare, and the very muscles, sinews, and bowels of the victim were open to exposure.”
3. There are no competing historical accounts of Jesus have merely passed out on the cross and coming to later on.
4. The disciples actually thought Jesus was dead. They then believe they saw the resurrected body (we’ll cover this in more detail later). 10 out of the remaining 11 disciples (post-Judas) were martyred for their faith, which they proclaimed hung on the resurrection. If Jesus did not die, and the disciples knew this to be a lie and further propagated this lie, why would they die for something they did not believe happened?

The simplest account for what went on is that Jesus died. To suggest that somehow Jesus survived requires a much greater leap of faith.
(For more on the evidence for Jesus’ death, take a look at Lee Strobel’s interview of Dr. Alexander Metherell in Stroble’s book The Case for Christ)
Next in the series:

• Fact 2: The tomb was empty
• Fact 3: The post-resurrection appearances of Jesus
• Fact 4: The transformation of the disciples

What is the one thing about you that is off-limits? Even your closest friends know not to talk to you about this. It’s personal and it’s private and it is not open for discussion.
It’s not that you’re ‘closed off’. Just careful with certain parts of who you are. After all, it is wise to be careful, isn’t it?
One area we tend to cover up contains the things in our lives that we don’t like. Perhaps this is what we call shame. You could be in debt, or you messed up at work, or there’s emotional pain from things long ago that prevent real relationship with those persons involved.
But equally, our hopes and dreams, those that are left, are often cocooned in emotional bubble wrap. We store them like the wedding china, unused for fear of breaking them and not being able to find a replacement.
As a squirrel buries their nuts before the coming winter, we can bury our deepest thoughts and feelings, and like some of those squirrels, often forget all about them.
We think that they’re safe, deep down, out of the way. We’re unaware though, of how these emotions seep through us, like unsecured toxic waste. We think we’re immune to their presence because they’re buried deep, but every now and again they become exposed.
Sometimes it’s someone else doing the digging. Maybe it’s our wife, or a friend prodding a little too deeply. It’s amazing what people find when they get under the surface (just ask the Crossrail guys who have recently finished the new train tunnels below London).
More often than not however these things are exposed by complete accident. In the fields of Flanders after WWI, the frosty winters were known to bring up unexploded shells to just below the surface. The Belgian farmers knew all-too-well about this annual menace and the problems they posed to their ploughing.
Sometimes it’s a friendly, unassuming conversation that touches something of us we had forgotten about long ago. And sometimes it’s something with a little more bite.
At the beginning of the year Stephen Fry was interviewed on Irish television channel RTE and when asked what he would say to God were he ever to visit the pearly gates of Heaven, he replied vehemently, “Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain?”
Of course Fry isn’t the first to voice this age-old problem in such strong terms. But the response seemed unnaturally large. Newspaper articles and blogs were published in reply and the clip from the show went viral on YouTube.
For many people Fry touched on a nerve. His words shattered the flimsy structures constructed around such buried thoughts like, ‘why did I have to experience that horrible thing?’
There are some big questions in this world that aren’t easy to answer. There are also big parts of who are that we’d rather leave unquestioned. But it was Socrates who told us that ‘an unexamined life is not worth living’.
Sometimes the thought of sifting through our inner person feels about as fun as receiving a do-it-yourself-molar-extraction kit for Christmas. Thankfully, we’re not left to our own unskilled hands to do this. In an ancient Hebrew poem a request is made of God: “Search me, O God, and know my heart!”⁽¹⁾
The God of the universe, who made you and knows you and loves you and has complete skill in all matters, wants to work with you to uncover who you really are. If you let him he will deal with your unexploded ordinance and he will unearth your buried treasures.
God’s love frees us from the fear of tough questions, from the pain of deep memories, and it frees us to be the person he created us to be. Life is too precious to live it in avoidance of who we really are, so why not, as the Good Book says, ‘cast all your anxieties on him.’⁽²⁾ It’ll be a load off your mind.
Incidentally, if you are interested in the problem of pain, might I recommend ‘Why Suffering? Finding Meaning and Comfort When Life Doesn’t Make Sense’ (Faith Words, 2014) by Ravi Zacharias and Vince Vitale as an excellent starting point on the subject.
1. Psalm 139:23
2. 1 Peter 5:7

Have you ever introduced a friend to a favourite sport of yours? I tried this with my wife (then fiancée) during the Six Nations last year. “It’ll only take one game and she’ll be hooked,” I mused. But which game would I choose? It couldn’t be Scotland v. England (I have split loyalties). Now, I love the way the French play, but only when they decide to play which frankly left too much to hope for so they were out of the question. I settled on Ireland v. Wales thinking that’s where the magic will happen.
It’s all easier with hindsight of course. Looking for the best examples we would all (Brits, that is) pick the 2005 Ashes over 2014 or the 5-1 against Germany over most-any World Cups finals post 1966 etc. When we want to sell something we’re going to look to the best example we can find and offer that moment as our chief evidence.
I’ve found this pattern true of most things. We point to the best of something – be it a product, or a sport, or an idea – when we’re seeking to promote it. Advertisers tell us what their thing does best of all. The fact sheets tend to be stacked with the favourable measurements at the top.
We do this too with religion when we point out the merits of a particular faith. Ideas and arguments from every viewpoint seek to offer the top example. It seems to me however that in all of the selling and highlighting of religions, only one really does stand out because, well, it just goes about things differently.
I am of course talking of Christianity. At the heart of the Christian faith is a man who claimed to be God. This is a claim that none of the leaders of other major world religions dared to make.
Every religion, or non-religion, has its best examples and top arguments. Christianity however claims that best isn’t good enough and offers ‘perfect’ instead. Jesus Christ was so bold to claim that not only was he a great man and therefore a great example, but more than that he was a perfect man and therefore the only example.
That’s why the early Christians would talk about the gospel – literally, the good news – of Jesus Christ. He was and is the example.
Christians follow Jesus’ example of offering the same Good News. But instead of pointing to ourselves, we point to Jesus.
A Christian following Jesus may themselves be an excellent illustration for the Good News, but their example really, ultimately, looks past. Christians aren’t saying ‘We’re perfect, follow us’ but rather ‘Jesus is perfect, follow Him’. The life of a Christian ought to serve as a pointer to Jesus himself.
Of course, it’s not always that simple and Christians, who though friends with Jesus and becoming more like him, are still human and get things wrong too. It was Mahatma Gandhi who famously pointed out, “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
But it was Saint Augustine who wisely pointed that we should “never judge a philosophy by its abuse”. The testimony in a Christian’s life should be that he or she isn’t the same person that you knew last month, last year, 10 years ago etc. That over time there is evidence of change into a person of character more similar to Jesus’ own.
When Jesus called his first disciples he said to them, “Follow me.” Over time Christ’s followers came to see that his invitation wasn’t just a good idea from a good leader, but the most valuable summons ever from the most perfect of men.

“Here, take this.” Looking down I found in my hands a lovely copy of the Bhagavad Gita. “We want to give you something to help to find inner peace this Christmas,” said the young lady who plucked me from the streaming Christmas crowd in the centre of town. “Are you from this city,” she asked? “I am,” I replied. She smiled and proceeded to tell me how special this time of year is to her and her religious beliefs. I smiled back. “Yes, December is a pretty special month for me too.” A short conversation, that was much warmer than the street itself, then ensued right across from Marks and Spencer.
This happened just a couple of days ago and I’m still smiling about it. Oxford, like many cities in the UK, is a multicultural city, full of people of differing beliefs and different religious and cultural backgrounds. As the lights go on and the trees go up and the shoppers search for ultimate list-fulfilment, the rush that results often leaves us breathless until we stop on Christmas Day.
One of the titles of Jesus is ‘Prince of Peace’*. Sounds almost ironic, doesn’t it, amidst pre-Christmas madness?
We know that the setting for that first Christmas also lacked that a peaceful presence. A country occupied by a foreign military power may not be Debenhams on Chritmas Eve, but it sure isn’t a Spa room full of candles either. A country groaning under the weight of oppression was seeking a liberator, a king to lead them to freedom and peaceful prosperity.
Their yearning was fulfilled by the birth of a little boy to Jewish parents in Bethlehem. This little boy, foretold by the prophets, announced by the Angels, would grow up to lead a movement that would change the world forever. But even more than that, this little boy really did grow into his title, ‘Prince of Peace’.
Peace. The absolution of anxiety and worry. We all want it, and in various ways all will seek it this Christmas. Be it through family (or not), or presents, or a little tipple, or time away from work … We will seek to quiet the chaos when we can to enjoy a moment of peace whilst we can.
We might even turn to a book, or meditation, or some other spiritual practice to help. And we may even achieve some measure of calm for ourselves through these things.
But Jesus Christ offers a deeper and truer peace. Yes, the hustle and bustle of life wearies us and demands rest. That rest is good and proper. But Jesus’ peace touches a condition far too deep for our own efforts alone to fix.
When our families get together at Christmas there can be much joy and fun. But when there is strife and brokenness at home, then joy can be painfully elusive. God is described as a Father, who loves us and who longs to be in joyful relationship with us. And Jesus? The Prince of Peace? Well, he introduces us to our Heavenly Father.
Christmas is a time of fun and laughter. Hopefully a little break in our lives to relax with those we love. Soon it will be over and we will be back to work. We can bring a certain measure of peace to our lives, but is fleeting and it is never certain. Jesus Christ – whose birthday we celebrate together this Christmas – offers a peace to everyone that is sure, steady, and inexhaustible.
“Hark the herald angels sing ‘Glory to the newborn King!’”
*Foretold by Isaiah the prophet (Isaiah 9:6)

On the 26th of October 2014, the Union Flag was lowered at Camp Bastion. The next day the last of the British troops left Helmand Province. Over the coming days and weeks many newspaper articles, television documentaries, and pub conversations assessed the overall value of the British military campaign in Afghanistan. “What did we achieve?” “Was it worth the cost?” “Will our efforts have a positive result on the country next year, in 5 years, in 20 years?”
The British Defence Secretary, Michael Fallon, said that some mistakes were made in our 13 years in Afghanistan but that many good achievements have been made also.
The stories of tragedy, heroism, dismay, and hope have been coming to us for over a decade and soon it will be the job of historians to disseminate all of what we know and present the case for the success or failure of the overall mission.
This won’t be an easy task but it is driven forward by a strong collective sense of a nation seeking to know the truth of a situation for many so far removed from their day to day lives, yet so frequently punctuating their evenings through news broadcasts.
It’s because conflict is so costly that we won’t accept cheap answers. When lives are on the line suddenly quick-fire soundbite-replies to the big questions don’t cut it. When casualties of war mount up there grows a vested concern that truth not be listed among the number lost.
It is right to probe, to strain, to strive for the truth in these situations. With knowledge comes understanding and we hope wisdom for the future.
War has a way of framing questions rather bluntly. It also reveals how casual we can become with the search for truth in other, less immediately affected areas of our life.
Conflicts are violent and immediate and the questions we ask surrounding them are marked in the same way. Yet our own lives also have huge questions that perhaps don’t strike us with the same urgency. What we live for, what rules we live by, what hope we look to – these massive questions that religions seek to answer are treated rather shallowly.
They’re not so ‘in our face’ but surely they are of equal value to the questions that we ask of conflicts? Perhaps even more so?
Yet instead of investigating, searching, and seeking to discover the truth for these big questions so often we are satisfied merely to find what works for us and leave the bloke next to us to find his own way too. We wouldn’t want to interfere too much in his life and we certainly wouldn’t want to invite too much attention from him!
In our pseudo-civil attempts to restrict any meddling in our private affairs we end up demoting truth from her true authoritative position. If all we want is something that works for us then we answer the largest questions of life with simple pragmatism, disconnected from what may be true. Or another way of thinking about it is that unhappy with the prospect of having to bend our lives to a superior truth, we decide to make ourselves the sole arbiter of what’s true for us.
Can you imagine if we treated the Afghanistan conflict in the same way? If in the House of Commons instead of debate and counter-point, each Member were granted their own viewpoint regardless of its correspondence to the reality of the situation? This nation would deride the self-serving views of our politicians swiftly and trust would be destroyed.
Questions surrounding the things most valuable to us deserve the best answers. The struggle with the biggest questions of life is a noble quest and to shortcut the search by setting aside truth for personal preference risks a betrayal of the truth and an act of personal deception.

Apologetics is a key tool in sharing the Christian faith. That’s why we’re keen on it here at the Demolition Squad. When Christians give a defense of the hope that they have (1 Peter 3:15) they are providing reasons for belief in Jesus Christ. Many people questioning Christianity have good questions that should be met with good answers. The apologist seeks to provide good answers to people to remove obstacles that would prevent people from coming to faith in Jesus.
A great way to learn how to tackle these questions well is to take a course in apologetics. But for many of us it’s not practical to take time off work, or attend evening classes. This is where the RZIM Academy come in.
RZIM bring a talented international team of apologists together who have been travelling the world, teaching, equipping, and defending the faith in churches, universities, business, and government settings. By bringing this course online RZIM are opening up their wealth of experience of skills to a wider audience making it easier for Christians to learn and grow in this area.
As an online course the RZIM Academy offers you the chance to learn at a time that suits you. There’s fresh content each week to be absorbed but when you do this is up to you.

Key Features

• 12 week core-course
• 26 lectures provided from trained and experienced apologists
• Online discussion forums and blogs
• Study on your own schedule each week

Apply Online

If you’re interested in learning more about this course take a look at www.rzimacademy.org