Fallen women?

A fallen woman. If you’ve seen the film Philomena, you may have heard that horrible term. In the film, a journalist (Steve Coogan) helps Philomena (Judi Dench) track down the son who had been cruelly taken from her at the age of three. In the words of the nuns who separated her from her child, Philomena was a ‘fallen woman’. By that, they meant a woman whose child had been born out of wedlock. 

The misogyny is obvious. Where are the fallen men? Only one woman has ever given birth without the involvement of a man, and the nuns certainly wouldn’t have treated Mary in the way they treated Philomena. Yet it is the women who were labelled as fallen.  While mothers were punished for having a child out of wedlock, the fathers were left to carry on with their lives.  Despite being women themselves, the nuns judged other women by stricter moral standards than they judged men.

But the whole idea of labelling some people as ‘fallen’ is flawed in a deeper sense. In the Bible, the word ‘fallen’ has nothing to do with sex outside of marriage. It’s not even used to describe individuals. When Christians talk about a fallen world, they’re talking about the introduction of death, suffering and imperfection into this world as a result of humanity’s rejection of God. We disobey God’s law on a daily basis and we deny His authority over our lives. That is what sin is. And because Christians sin as well, they are still fallen.

Yes, those women were fallen. But so were the nuns. And they are just as fallen as me or you. So it was hypocritical for the nuns to treat so-called ‘fallen women’ as more sinful than themselves. And it would be just as hypocritical to look at the sins of the nuns and think ourselves better than them.

Taken from https://www.crossroadsinitiative.com/media/articles/the-adulterous-woman/. (N.B I haven't read it. I'm using the painting rather than endorsing what it says)

Jesus was once faced with someone who could be described as ‘a fallen woman’.  Some priests brought a man and woman caught in the act of adultery to Jesus and asked if they should stone her. For reasons I don’t fully understand, that was the punishment for having sex outside of marriage in the Old Testament. (Unless it was not consensual, in which case only the man would be punished.) Jesus replied that ‘any one of you that has not sinned should throw the first stone.’ One by one, everyone walked away. Jesus, the only one who had never sinned, was left alone with her. He let her go, telling her to ‘sin no more.’

Some people get very excited about this and start saying all sort of wild things about this. One sign I saw recently claimed that ‘Jesus was the first to decriminalise prostitution’. But Jesus’ last words are important- ‘sin no more’. According to Him, the woman had committed a sin. Jesus wasn’t saying that we can’t make moral judgements about someone else’s behaviour. Instead, he was telling us that we have no right to think that we are better than them.

Um, no, he wasn't...

We all reject God’s authority every day, even if we do it in different ways. And when you consider that Jesus broadened the definition of adultery to include looking with lust at another person, it’s clear that almost everyone is guilty of it in one form or another. No one is less innocent than anyone else. Only Jesus, the Son of God, was truly innocent. And all of us, nuns and ‘fallen’ women, are lost without the forgiveness that He offers. 

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/23362491797135382/

No worries?

“Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life? Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?”

Though the saying may be 2000 years old- you might have guessed that it’s one of Jesus’- it’s still true today. In fact, science now tells us that worry and stress will shorten, rather than lengthen it.

But, even as a Christian, I don’t think that these words on their own offer much hope. If Jesus had stopped there, then he might as well have scrawled it down on as an empty inspirational quote on a public announcement board.

But, as you might have gathered, Jesus went on to explain why he could tell us not to worry.

“Consider how the wild flowers grow. They do not labour or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendour was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today, and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, how much more will he clothe you—you of little faith!  And do not set your heart on what you will eat or drink; do not worry about it. For the [rest of the] world runs after all such things, and your Father knows that you need them. But seek his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.

“Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.  Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will never fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Luke 12:27-32

These words have meant a lot to me in times of uncertainty. I heard a sermon on these words during my AS exams. The Sunday before I got my results (which were unexpectedly in alphabetical order), I heard another minister speak about the same verses. And the same thing happened a year later, a few days before I got my A Level results. Since then, I’ve come back to them every exam season. Now that I’m in the midst of a discouraging job search, I find myself reading them several times a week.

Glib motivational sayings mean nothing to me because they are never spoken with authority. Bob Marley may tell us that ‘every little thing will be all right’, but how on earth would he know? Imagine saying that to someone with a terminal illness.

I feel the same thing when I see those ‘inspirational’ quotes on announcement boards in tube stations. They try to reassure us by saying that something is in control, but they rarely say what that thing is. Their words are powerless because the person who writes them lacks the authority to tell us that everything will work out.

Oh really?

But Jesus reassurances are different because He has the authority to say them. He is God. Those who believe in Him don’t have to worry because the God who created the flowers of the field is perfectly capable of looking after them. That doesn’t mean that everything will be all right. Even the most beautiful flower dies. But the point is that God is in control even when that happens.

But Jesus gives us another reason not to worry; “the Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.”  Those who believe in Him don’t need to worry about their lives in this world because there is another after it. The ultimate promise that Jesus makes is that there is something more than the worry, stress and sadness of this world. He offers Heaven to those who believe in Him. We may not be satisfied with this world, but we will be satisfied in Heaven.

That’s only reassuring, of course, if you believe that Jesus has the authority to make that promise. If Heaven doesn’t exist, then those words can give us no hope. If Jesus was just a great teacher, then His promises here are meaningless. He would be a charlatan who could offer us nothing but His words would have no more power than Bob Marley’s to say that ‘every little thing will be all right’.   

But if He was more than a great teacher, then His words could not be more powerful.

"So how was your year abroad?"

“You studied in Paris?! That must have been amazing! How was it?”

It’s a question I used to dread. Even now, almost two years later, I find it difficult to answer.

I know what they’re thinking. They’re remembering  every weekend away in Paris, every idealised depiction in literature and every film starring the City of Love and then projecting all those expectations onto my year abroad. The result? Study abroad seems like a year-long, 24/7 holiday paid for by the European Union.

Funnily enough, I’ve had similar conversations in Paris.

“You study in London? That must be amazing! How is it?”

Most of the people who assume my year in Paris was amazing would be surprised to hear that same assumption being made about London.

I’ve enjoyed my time in London, but sadly my small flat bears little resemblance to the Victorian grandeur of 221B Baker Street. No, while I like lots of things about London, it is not the London of films and books and games of Monopoly. And even the good things about London don’t make the bad things in life any better. I loved my time in university. But not once, even in the height of dissertation season, was it a source of comfort that I lived near the Queen.

“How was it?”

My stock answer is as truthful as I can manage in just one short sentence.

“To be honest, I prefer London to Paris.”

I think it’s difficult for a lot of people to admit that they found the experience was underwhelming. Perhaps it’s even more difficult in the age of Instagram, where we see each unique experience shared with everyone else. It seems ungrateful not to enjoy something that everyone else assumes they would love to do themselves.

There are even higher expectations for those of us who are language students. We are meant to relish cultural immersion. We are told to ‘make the most of the experience.’ We are expected to be confident about our linguistic skills, completely unafraid to make mistakes. And this should be easy because we are of course love the language and culture that we study.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but by these standards, I was a terrible French student. Not in terms of my language ability (although there’s room for improvement there), but because I studied for mainly practical reasons. I love languages, but I only like French. Though are many things that I enjoy about France’s history and culture, I think there are more beautiful languages than French. I studied French because it was a useful language to learn before going into international development.

But I know I’m not the only one to find their year abroad hard. I recently received a one-line Facebook message: “You were right about study abroad.” Another friend said she cried down the phoneline to her friends and family. Even the most confident and extraverted person I know told me there were times when he wondered why he wasn’t enjoying studying abroad.

Of course, there will be people who love the experience. There was also be people who find it hard at first but then find it gets better. That confident and extraverted friend of mine found the second semester much easier.

I’m not trying to discourage anyone from doing study abroad. If you are thinking about doing it, don’t panic. It might be the best year of your life. But it might not be and there’s nothing wrong with that.

As study abroad experiences go, I know mine could have been a lot worse. Academically, the year was fine. It turned that I really was able to make sense of 2-hour lectures in French. Although I lacked close friends in Paris, I did have one or two friends. There were things that I genuinely liked about Paris. And I ended up enjoying my second semester much more than the first. But it was difficult for a lot of reasons.

I ended up living alone in Paris. As an introvert, I assumed that that wouldn’t pose a problem. But it is not easy to live by yourself in a different country.

Unsurprisingly, I struggled with loneliness and homesickness in Paris.

When John Lewis’ Christmas advert was released that year, it was all about loneliness. I remember reading a piece in the Guardian about loneliness amongst young people. It was a painful read. It was just too close to home.

The truth was that I missed my friends in the UK and I found it difficult to develop meaningful friendships in Paris. I made a lot of acquaintances but very few friends.

I began to withdraw during my first term. It’s true I still saw people. I still met up occasionally with my course mates from London. I loved going to the debating society. I always looked forward to my weekly English-language Bible study. Despite all that, my social life felt incomplete.

Sundays were particularly hard. At the risk of sounding melodramatic, when I think of my Sundays in Paris, I think of silence. 

Sunday, for me, isn’t usually quiet. It’s the day when I go to church. But that changed during my few months of my year abroad.

As the first term wore on, I went to church less and less. It was never a conscious decision. My faith remained as important to me as ever, perhaps even more so. But when Sunday morning came, it was so easy for me just to stay at home, even when it meant not seeing anybody else that day. In fact, I dreaded the small talk in French that would follow the evening service. Not for the first time, I felt that everyone I met was judging me for my poor level of French.  But that wasn’t the only reason I wasn’t really going to church anymore. To be honest, I still don’t know why it was so hard for me to go to church.

I first realised something was wrong when someone from the church introduced me as an ‘irregular attendee’. The words came as a surprise. I’ve been a Christian since the age of 14. Both my parents are Christians, so I’ve literally been going to church since before I was born. It was a big thing that that when I stopped going every Sunday, particularly as it was there that I had I made most of my close friends the UK.  I ended up moving church. It helped, but I still never really felt settled there.

It’s difficult, in a way, to separate homesickness and loneliness. Was I homesick because I missed my friends in the UK? Or did I miss the UK itself? It’s probably a mixture of both. Whatever it was, it meant that I really didn’t feel like immersing myself in the culture. Rather than frequenting authentic Parisian cafés, I loved going to Starbucks and Costa on the weekend. Not that I particularly like Starbucks coffee. But going there reminded me of home, even if Starbucks is an American company.

As well as struggling with loneliness and homesickness, I felt left behind when I was in France. Having started university a year later than most people, I had already seen most of my school friends beginning their careers before me. The same thing happened when I was in Paris. While I was stuck doing something I didn’t particularly enjoy, everyone else was getting ready to start a new chapter in their lives. They were going places. I was not.  Of course, the grass is always greener on the other side.  they probably thought I was having the time of my life.

I felt it most when I came back to visit my university friends. Coming back for a few days was a major event for me, but it seemed like less of a big deal for everyone else, even if they were happy to see me.

It’s difficult to put my finger on some of the problems I had during my year abroad. Some things became more stressful for me. I’m generally a very laid-back person. But in Paris, the things that I could have coped with in the UK stressed me out. I never applied, for example, for the French equivalent of the Oyster card. It would have saved me money, but it was just another thing to do. 

Similarly, I never finished my application for the student housing benefit. I dreaded having a phone conversation with an official in French, despite being perfectly capable of doing so.

I hope this doesn’t sound overly dramatic. Even as I write this, I keep remembering things about my year abroad that I did like. But I know that even if it wasn’t like this all the time, it was like this a lot of the time.

Again, I’m not writing this to put anyone off studying abroad. Despite everything I’ve written, I’m still open to the idea. I’ve even applied for a few jobs in other countries. I feel better prepared to live abroad now that I’ve already done it once

No, I’m writing this because I want people to know that study abroad might be different to what you expect. It may be the time of your life, but it might not be.  I think it’s disgraceful that we send thousands of students, including many with mental health problems, to spend a year in a foreign country without being honest with them about that can be like.

More than that though, I’m writing this for those of you who will never study abroad. It’s important that you realise that what study abroad is like for some people. Your support and understanding could make all the difference.

Usually, at this point in a blog, I’d end with a stirring call for socialist resistance in the face of capitalist oppression. Sadly, that seems a bit out of place here, so I’d end instead with some advice about study abroad.

If you’re the person who’s going to study abroad:

• ·        Don’t panic. I’m not trying to scare you. You may love study abroad. You may hate it. Just realise that you there’s nothing wrong with you if you don’t enjoy it.
• ·         Live with somebody else if you can. You will appreciate having at least one person to speak to if you are finding it difficult to make friends. Don’t feel that you have to live with someone from the country you’re living in. There may be times when you want to speak with someone without having to think about irregular verbs.
• ·         Don’t worry about making mistakes. You’re not in the classroom anymore. You’re not being examined. People just want to understand what you’re trying to say.
• ·         If you’re a Christian, carry on going to church. Don’t feel guilty about going to an English-language church if you think that means you’re more likely to go. Your mental and spiritual wellbeing is more important than your ability to speak another language.

If you meet or are friend with somebody who is studying abroad:

• ·         Don’t assume that someone is having a good or a bad year, not even if you enjoyed studying abroad yourself. If you tell someone that they’re having a wonderful time before asking them how they are finding it, they will probably be less honest in their answer. You might even make them feel guilty for not enjoying their year abroad.
• ·         Remember that bad things can happen in picturesque places. Terrible things like illness, depression and sexual assault can happen anywhere in the world. If somebody has been through that on their year abroad, they’ll have enough to deal with without you telling them that they should have enjoyed their year abroad.
• ·        Make time for them. I feel indebted to the people who made the time to skype me to see how I was doing. You may be stressed or going through things yourself, but your friends in foreign countries might be as well. And they might have to deal with that alone.
•       If you’re a Christian, ask them what they need prayer for. And then pray for them.

A God who Feels Pain

If you’ve been to a carol service this year, you might have heard that cryptic phrase: the Word became flesh. While those words seem confusing on their own, the rest of this passage from the Gospel of John makes it clear that they describe the essence of the Christmas story: God took on human form.

This fundamental truth of Christianity changes the way we think about the man we call Jesus. We miss the point if describe Jesus as a teacher, humanitarian or prophet. By becoming human, God revealed something more than ethical guidance. He revealed something of Himself.  

When God became Man, He made it clear that He is a God who cares for the people he created. Some people, asking themselves why a personal God would create a world so full of terrible things, argue that God must be impersonal. They see God as being in everything and everyone, or as a force like gravity, or as some ultimate truth.

I understand how someone could come to that conclusion. The problem of evil is something that has perplexed Christians for millennia. But thinking of God as impersonal doesn’t deal with that problem. It may make God less responsible, but it leaves Him indifferent to suffering. To me, that’s far worse than believing in a God who is control when suffering happens. It means God is unable to explain or even understanding the pain we experience in life. Some religions and philosophies see transcending suffering as the key to a meaningful existence. But how can any ultimate truth explain anything if it can’t account for the pain that characterises so much of human life? And how could any ultimate truth ask us to ignore the feelings that are so fundamental to the who we are? Sometimes, I wonder if the only people able to transcend suffering are those who have never experienced it.

But if God became Man, then He not only understands pain- He experienced it. When faced with the death of His close friend, Lazarus, Jesus made no effort to ignore what he felt. He said nothing about the need to transcend pain. Neither did He come up with any sentimental nonsense about Lazarus living on in our hearts.

Instead He did what all of us would do- He cried.

Of course, that would be meaningless if Jesus was just a good teacher. But if Jesus was God, then it means that the Creator of the World knows what it is like to be human in a way that no impersonal God, force or ultimate truth ever could.  You could pray to a God like that. But how could you pray to a force and expect it to sympathise with you? If God is not personal, if God doesn’t care about you, than His existence can offer you no hope during the hardest times of your life. The force of gravity is far from comforting when the aeroplane engines fail at 40,000 feet. I can’t see how an impersonal, force-like God would be any different. Whenever I hear about a force-like God, I think of Star Wars. I think of the Force, a mercenary God that serves both good and evil.  And if God is nothing more than a force, I can’t see how it could have any conception of right and wrong. How would you know that God wasn’t on the side of the tyrant? If that’s what an impersonal God is like, then I’d rather be an atheist.

 At best, you could hope for Karma to carry out some form of justice when you are wronged.  But that offers no hope if you are in the wrong.  If Karma is impersonal, there is no mercy. You must suffer for what you have done. You can’t ask Karma for forgiveness.

But if God is personal, then there can be forgiveness. In fact, God became Man so that there could be forgiveness. In dying as a human, God restore the personal relationship with Him that we had broken. Because he has personal, He can forgive us for breaking that relationship. But only if we ask him to. If we do ask, then we can enjoy a personal relationship with a personal God who understands what it is like to suffer. But instead than just experiencing this suffering, God defeated it when Jesus rose from the death.

None of this is possible if God is an impersonal or is no more than a force. And because God is personal, He is too familiar with suffering to ask us to transcend it. Instead, He chose to endure suffering so that we could enjoy a world without it. 

"He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem."

Isaiah 53:3

Are Christians wasting their lives?

Two week ago, a man walked into the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs and opened fire. 26 people died. The following day, news broke that Ian Squire, a British missionary and charity worker being held hostage in Nigeria, had been murdered by his captors.

Tragedies like this remind me of what my Christian faith is really about. When the lives of Christians are cut short, we are forced to wonder whether we are wasting our lives. Why should we dedicate so much of our short lives to our faith? Shouldn’t we be making the most our lives rather than wasting our time on something that might not even be true? Was Pastor Frank Pomeroy right to spend hours of his life in church meetings and Bible studies when he could have spent that time with his 14-year-old daughter, Annabella, who died during the attack?

Sometimes people talk about religious beliefs as if they are just a matter of taste. Religions, they say, are just different ways of helping people to find meaning in our short lives. We have a right to pursue happiness in our lives and if we want to do that through Islam, Christianity or none of the above, it’s all equal. We can pick whatever moral code suits us best as long as we don’t impose it on others. If someone’s faith helps them to be a better person, then we have no right to judge what they believe.

But when Devin Patrick Kelley opened fire on the members of First Baptist Church, what his victims believed about life after death really mattered.

Religion is not a matter of personal preference. It’s a lot more like life insurance. Life insurance might give you peace of mind in life, but what really matters is what happens after death. The true test of a policy is whether it pays out. The peace of mind it provides is irrelevant.

Of course, Christianity is about more than just death. It does provide us with a moral code. It is a refuge when life is hard. But if Christianity turns out to be wrong about life after death, then it would be nothing more than a faith of false hopes.   It would be as much use as a life insurance policy that never pays out.

The Bible itself such as much. In 1 Corinthians, the Apostle Paul addresses those who deny that Jesus rose from the dead:

“¹⁵If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. ¹⁵ More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised.¹⁶ For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either.¹⁷ And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. ¹⁸ Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost.¹⁹ If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.”

There is no inherent value in faith. It’s not rewarding to dedicate your life to to a God that doesn’t exist- it’s delusional.  

If what Ian Squire believed in the wrong God, they he died for nothing. If 26 victims of the Sutherland Spring shootings were wrong about life after death, then they ‘of all people [should] be pitied’. If they were right, then every moment they spent on their faith was worth it.

There is no middle ground.

"I know everyone who lost their life that day, some of which were my best friends, and my daughter. "And I guarantee without any shadow of a doubt they are dancing with Jesus today. God gets the glory."

Pastor Frank Pomeroy

“Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.”
C.S Lewis

How can God ask us to worship Him?

The idea of God demanding to be worshiped is difficult to swallow. It makes God seem like an attention-seeker who relies on our praise to bolster his fragile ego. The idea that He would create the world or cause events to happen in order that he would be ‘glorified’ through them seems equally problematic.   Even as a Christian, it’s taken me a while to understand how a God who asks us to be humble could ask us to place Him at the centre of our lives.  

Some people answer this objection by referring to God’s role as the Creator of mankind. Just as the carpenter owns the table or chairs she creates, the act of creation gave God certain rights over us, including the right to be worshipped.

I can see the attraction of this argument. But it’s always seemed flawed to me. I am not a mahogany table. I see no reason why the carpenter who made me would be free to let me gather dust in the attic. Having a right to use an object as you please is very different to having unlimited rights over a person. We have word for the latter: slavery.

Even our parents, who literally created us, don’t have a right to use us as they please. I love my parents. But heaven forbid they ever have unlimited rights over me. They are flawed people. We all are.

Every one of us is flawed and so the thought of them having unlimited rights over us is terrifying. When we talk about a God that wants us to praise Him, he sounds like yet another flawed human being. And only the most flawed and selfish people every openly ask anyone else to worship them. He may be powerful, but that doesn’t make His claims over our lives any more valid. If His strength was the only reason He could command our obedience, God would just be another despot.

But God has a right to our praise not because of His strength, but because of His moral perfection. That’s why the act of worshipping God is fundamentally different to worshipping a person. Perhaps it is closer to worshipping a virtue. Most of us, I imagine, would consider the worship of an ideal to be more acceptable than the worship of a person. In fact, many of us already worship a virtue. “Love trumps Hate” seems to have been the standard response to so many of the horrible things that have happened recently. We put our faith in Love. We put our hope in Love. We think of it as the guiding principle of our lives. That sounds a lot like worship to me. 

Don’t get me wrong, worshipping Love is not the same as worshipping God. I do not believe that God is a metaphor or an abstract ideal. (How could anyone worship a metaphor?) Though God is outside of this universe, I believe that He is as real as the world around us. (Yes, I know that Elon Musk, the Independent and Morpheus from the Matrix question whether the world is real,  but let’s forget about them for a minute…)

But in God those virtues are embodied in a person. If God is, as the Bible claims, Love, then worshiping Him is fundamentally different to worshipping a person. To worship something else would be to worship something that wasn’t Love. If only God is perfect, then to worship something else would be to worship something morally imperfect.   If only He is just, then to worship something else would be worship injustice. That is why, I think, God can only allow people to worship Him.  I don’t see how God could be perfect if he were happy for us to worship something that was imperfect. And by God, I mean the Christian God of the Bible.

If God were content for us to worship anything, be it a totem pole or Allah, then he would again be saying it was ok to worship something that wasn’t the perfect embodiment of love, compassion, perfection and justice.

If God were not Love, I don’t believe He would have the right to demand that we worship Him. I’m not certain, but I don’t think the fact that He created us would alone be justification for worshipping Him.

I know this is far from a complete answer. Perhaps it even raises more questions than it answers. Where do the virtue of Love, Justice and Compassion come from in the first place? Are they set by God or are they independent of Him? Some, I know, will find it difficult to accept the claim that God is love itself. But I hope this at least explains why I’ve become more at ease with the idea that God has the right to demand that we worship him.

Donald Trump: A lost cause?

We’ve given up on Donald Trump. It doesn't feel like that. After all, courts have blocked his odious Muslim ban. Every day, a new public figure weighs in with yet more condemnation of his sexist, racist, everything-ist policies.  I’m proud to say that my own pro-refugee placard lies somewhere amidst my laundry, ready for the next anti-Trump protest.  

But while we haven’t given up on fighting President Trump, we have given up on him. That’s clear from the number of less than innovative variations on “F*** Trump” placards at every demonstration. We don’t just oppose his values; we oppose him as a human being. It okay to hate Donald Trump. Some even justify wishing for his death.

Most people believe that human nature is inherently good but corrupted by society. Often this leads us to think that anybody can change. But despite this belief in the innate goodness of man, we don’t expect Donald Trump to change. We see him as a lost cause.  He will stay sexist, racist and obsessed with money to the end of his days.

Though I don’t believe that human nature is innately good, I am convinced that that people can change. As a Christian, I believe that humans, though created in the image of God, have become corrupted. When Donald Trump announced his heartless ban on refugees, we saw the corruption of the image of God. In contrast, when lawyers flocked too airport terminals to offer refugees free legal aid, we saw the love and goodness that comes from being made in the image of God. That’s not to say that some reflect the image of God while others are characterised by this corruption. No doubt, Donald Trump has at some point reflected the image of God. I believe that all of us, whatever our faith, are capable of reflecting both the image of God and the corruption of this image. As the Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn once said;

“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

You might call me a pessimist for thinking this way.  If we believe that all of us are capable of acts of extreme evil, how can there be any hope for humanity? If all the good we do is tainted by corruption, how can we be optimistic that humans can change?

John Newton, the writer of Amazing Grace, was a slave trader. Though his career would have been considered respectable at the time, he was guilty of one of the most extreme acts of evil- the trade in ‘human souls’. It was during his time as a slave trader that he became a Christian. Although he had asked God that his sins would be forgiven, he saw nothing wrong with his career as a captain of a slave ship. Even after ill-health but an end to his career, he continued to invest in the slave trade.

34 years after becoming a Christian, Newton published Thoughts Upon the African Slave Trade.  He described the pamphlet, a copy of which he sent to every Member of Parliament, as ‘a confession, which ... comes too late’. He described the shame he felt about his involvement in the slave trade;

‘It will always be a subject of humiliating reflection to me, that I was once an active instrument in a business at which my heart now shudders.’

Now fully convinced of the barbarity of the slave trade, he used his own experiences to campaign against it. He lived just long enough to ‘rejoice at the wonderful news’ when the slave trade was abolished in the British Empire in 1807.

It is true that Newton was not representative of every Christian at the time. While many Christians played key roles in the fight against the slave trade, others profited from the suffering it created.  It also took an undeniably long time for him to see that his involvement in that barbaric trade was morally wrong.

But the fact remains; this slave-trader became an abolitionist. For years, he was no doubt considered a lost cause. He would have been despised. Many slaves and abolitionists would have gladly seen him dead. But, against all the odds, John Newton's life was changed.

We may not be able to wait 34 years for Donald Trump to change. Thankfully, many have been transformed much more quickly than this. The Bible tells how the Apostle (or St.) Paul, a man known for murdering the innocent, was transformed by God in an instant. Throughout history, countless murderers, criminals and even apparent good guys have become different people as a result of God working in them.

Of course, I know that Christians are still only the corrupted image of God and so are capable of evil things. Neither do I deny that some people’s lives are changed dramatically without a belief in God. I cannot, however, say I’m overly optimistic that Donald Trump will be transformed through self-reflection and pulling his own moral socks up. I’m not convinced anyone else is either. 

But I do know that anyone, when they accept that their own moral efforts can never make up for the wrong they’ve done, can ask God for forgiveness. Anyone can ask to be treated as if they themselves lived Jesus’ perfect life. Even Donald Trump.*

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All of this leaves me optimistic. Though I despise Trump’s politics, I don’t think he’s a lost cause. I believe that God can begin to restore the image of God in Donald Trump. Yes, it would be a miracle.

But it's a miracle that's happened before.

* I know Donald Trump claims to be a Christian. But since he's also said he has never asked God for forgiveness, I really don't see how he could be. If he is, however, then I am still confident that, like John Newton, he can become a changed man.