Good day to you my brothers and sisters.
To those of you in Christ and those of who are not, but have open minds.
I would like to share the last chapter of the book `Who made God`, by Edgar Andrews.
Reformation or rebirth?
The new atheists have a commendable desire to reform human nature. `We are born selfish,` declares Richard Dawkins, but we can be taught to behave unselfishly. The Bible, on the other hand, demonstrates that such a strategy simply does not work. Dawkins misses the central message of the Old Testament - men cannot be reformed simply by giving them moral laws and instructions to obey. The covenant that God established with Israel at Mount Sinai (the `odd covenant`, also called `the law`) epitomized the principle of loving our neighbour as we love ourselves. This is the entire thrust of the last six of the Ten Commandments handed down to Moses on the Mount (the first four exhort us to love God). Israel was thus the perfect (and intentional) test-bed for the idea that you can make people good by teaching them to be good. It didn`t work then and it doesn`t work now. Much of the Old Testament was written to demonstrate this fact. The test failed miserably and the New Testament concludes: `...whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the law is the knowledge of sin` St Paul , who wrote these words, was speaking out of personal experience. As a Pharisee he had striven with all his might to obey the moral rules he had been taught under the old covenant, but it didn`t work because mere teaching couldn't change his selfish heart. That is why Dawkins` quest is hopeless and why the Bible presents us with a new covenant - predicted in the Old Testament by Jeremiah 31 and cited in the New Testament as follows:
Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah - not according to the covenant that I made with there fathers in the day I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they did not continue in My covenant, and I disregarded them, says the LORD. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days ... I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people, None of them shall teach his neighbour, and none his brother, saying, `Know the Lord,` for all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them. For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.32 ( The New Testament applies this covenant to Jews and non-Jews alike.)
The hypothesis of God predicts that man`s sinful heart can never be changed by mere instruction, no matter how good and noble that teaching may be. It can only be changed by a `new birth` in which the spirit of God himself takes up residence in a person`s heart and mind - `writing` there the moral law and empowering the recipient to love and obey God. This work of new birth is accompanied by the forgiveness of man`s `sins and lawless deeds` on the grounds of Jesus Christ`s atoning death and justifying resurrection.33
Does it work? Yes, indeed, as the the author of this book can testify, along with countless others (including me, the writer of this blog.) who have found grace in the eyes of the Lord` and salvation in Christ - who, says St Paul again, `loved me and gave Himself for me`. 34 For all such people the hypothesis of God is amply proven to be true. I therefore end this book at the beginning of another story. Read more about it in `the Gospel according to St John`.
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Ah, I have just looked in the front of the book and seen in childish writing, `Happy birthday DAD 2010 love xx Josh
What a great present that was from my son. Wonderful
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