Day 1: Bible Reading

The Jesmond Conference Day One: Bible Reading

As you know, the presenting issue which led to David calling this conference is the government's definition of British values. And as David has written in what he's asked us to read in preparation, that raises two immediate problems. One is that it is not the government's place to define values. And the other is that their definitions are inadequate and can easily be used by them and minorities who have their ear to push their agenda. For example, if by 'tolerance' (one of their values) they actually mean 'affirmation of belief or behaviour', that definition could be used to support a 'pro-gay' agenda.

So as a backdrop to today it seemed that the most obvious part of the Bible was Romans 13.1-7:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgement. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God's wrath but also for the sake of conscience. For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honour to whom honour is owed. (vv1-7)

Now that's primarily a passage about living under government. But it's equally a passage about how to see government from God's point of view – with implications for how we seek to influence government, and how we try to get government to understand itself. And the main imperative is v1:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. (v1)

And being subject means recognising our subordinate place in an order. But it's a God-given order – v1 again:

For there is no authority except from [or you could translate that 'on behalf of'] God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. (v1)

And at first glance, that sounds like unnecessary repetition – 'For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God' – but the second part is emphasising that those that exist right now, those that you currently live under, those particular people – David Cameron, and whoever is your constituency MP, and so on – those have been instituted by God. Which, when you look at all they do that is patently anti-God is hard to believe. For example, when you look at David Cameron's pride in so-called 'gay marriage'. Or, for example, when I look on the Christian Institute's website at the voting record of my constituency MP – who has voted the wrong way, Biblcially speaking, on almost everything I can think of – some of it doubtless because of his own sexual commitments. But, Paul insists:

those that exist have been instituted by God. (v1)

Ie, 'What you have, is from God.' And we not only have something – compared to, say, the anarchy of Libya today. We have a very great deal – albeit vulnerable.

So, we're to see our government as instituted by God. Which is why when Jesus wanted to get Pilate to understand his position, he told him,

You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above." (John 19.11)

So one of the problems with our democracy is that the government thinks of the people as having given them authority – in the best scenario, to do what is popular (what 51%, at least, of people want); but in the worst scenario, to do what they or the minorities who have their ear want now that they have the chance.

But Romans 13 sees the authority of government as God-given, for God's purposes of punishing (and by implication, restraining) evil and encouraging good. So verse 3 again:

For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain.

And where it says government is God's servant for your good, the you is plural and the good there has got to mean the corporate good. And that has got to involve the limitation of individual freedom – you can't have the corporate good and a moral free for all. It's one or the other.

And the assumption is that good and evil are not what the 51% or the government says is good and evil, but objectively and universally good and evil. So that as someone put it:

When governments fail to stand for such goods as justice, they lose the basis of their authority and legitimacy, which is fundamentally moral – notwithstanding the number of people who voted for them.

Now if I used the phrase 'objective and universal good and evil' in many contexts today, I'd be laughed out of court. Because here's how one writer describes the prevailing mood today:

We no longer feel ourselves to be guests in someone else's home and therefore obliged to make our behaviour conform to a set of pre-existing cosmic rules. It is our creation now. We make the rules. We establish the perameters for reality. We create the world. (Algen: A New Word – A New World, Jeremy Rifkin – quoted in Christ and Culture Revisited, Don Carson)

Ie, we define reality. Whereas the Bible says human beings need to discern reality – because there is a natural or created order of things (such as heterosexual relationships) and there is a Creator whose sense of morality is imaged in our consciences. But as Romans 1 says, that reality is both known and suppressed – and therein lies the challenge for communicating with the world on these things.

So all people know there are sexual relationships 'according to created nature' and 'contrary to created nature' (to quote Romans 1) – but people opt for the latter in the name of freedom (not out of ignorance). And to quote Romans 1 again,

3Though they know God's decree that those who practise such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practise them. (Romans 1.32)

So all people know there is good and evil because they have a conscience – but conscience is suppressed in the name of freedom (and suppressed corporately as evil is affirmed corporately, as the end of Romans 1.32 makes clear).

But as John Chapman used to say, we must assume as true of people what the Bible says is true of people. And the Bible says they do know God is there, and do have a sense of morality. Everyone has a morality (even the person who claims to be a relativist) – the argument is about the content of morality. And that in turn becomes an argument about the basis or premises for morality. And that is where we are in the very sobering and responsible position of having the most privileged knowledge – 'The most precious thing this world affords,' as the Coronation Service calls the Bible.

And the question for this conference is: how do we speak that knowledge into government and into the public debate?

You can obviously take the route of critiquing what's going on, on its own terms. So for example, take so-called 'same-sex marriage'. You can argue and show that it's not equal to heterosexual marriage in that it doesn't form an analogous union, and in that it's sterile as opposed to procreative. And therefore you can argue that if it isn't equal then it shouldn't be treated as equal. That's the route of critiquing what's going on, on its own terms.

Then there is also the route of arguing from social sciences. For example, showing that on average and over time, children from married families do better on a range of indicators than children from any other 'family arrangement' (to use the newspeak).

And the value of those routes is that neither requires the non-Christian world to accept the Biblical premises we're working from before listening to them. But the problem with them is that the problem is premises. And we've got to be both challenging premises and showing that only Biblical premises support the 'British Values' that are currently being discussed, and only Biblical premises define those values adequately. And that is where I, for one, feel out of my depth and where I come to this conference looking forward to the wisdom to be learned.