Category Archives: Christian failure

Banned from the Kingdom of God

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PaulHere’s ‘Saint’ Paul’s list of those who won’t be allowed in God’s Kingdom:

Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor sexual perverts, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God. (1 Corinthians 6. 9-10)

We can do better than that though. Who else could we add? How about the self-righteous? The converted? The born-again? The saved? Fundamentalists? Evangelicals? Evangelists? Ministers, bishops and popes? Christians of all stripes and persuasion? Will they all make it into the Kingdom?

No, they won’t. Not one of them will enter the magic Kingdom.

Why not?

Jesus, Paul and other New Testament writers were sure that the Kingdom of God would be arriving on the Earth soon. That’s ‘soon’ as in their own time, 2000 years ago*, and, as you’ll have noticed, the Kingdom, promised in the past for the past, never arrived. It’s not going to now either; neither Jesus nor Paul thought their fantasy was going to materialise some time in the distant future.

More than this, both were wrong that God was preparing to establish a heavenly kingdom on Earth at all. They were religious fanatics caught up in the religious zeitgeist of their day, religion being all they had to explain life, the universe and everything. Their interpretation was wrong on so many levels – but they were stuck with it. And so, when so much seemed unjust, unfair and unreasonable to them, Jesus in particular felt sure the only solution was for God to intervene to set things right; the meek would inherit the Earth, those last would be first and the first last. It was a dream, a vain hope, a complete invention. Not only did the Kingdom not arrive when Jesus and Paul said it would, it was never going to. There was no God waiting in the wings to make everything better.

So don’t worry if you’re gay or you like sex with more than one partner or you drink a bit too much or you’ve not been as honest as you might have been. You won’t be part of the Kingdom of God, to be sure, but that won’t be because of your sexuality or your morals or your ‘lifestyle’. You won’t be part of the Kingdom because it isn’t real. You’ll be in good company though – those who love the Lord won’t be getting in either. They’re just as far from Jesus and Paul’s land of make-believe, their special magic club, as you are.

 

* See Matthew 24:27, 30-31, 34; Luke 21:27-28, 33-34; Matthew 16:27-28; Matthew 19.28; 1 Corinthians 15.51-52; 1 Thessalonians 4.15-17; 1 John 2:17-181 and Peter 4.7 for predictions by Jesus, Paul and other NT writers that the Kingdom was coming real soon.

Idiotic Stuff Jesus Said 8: Hate, hate and hate again

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Preacher2If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters – yes, even his own life – he cannot be my disciple… In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14. 26 & 33)

The words, not of an extremist Islamic preacher, but of Jesus.

The man was a megalomaniac. Almost everyone, with the exception of a few gullible fishermen, thought so (Mark 3.20-21). Even his own family was convinced he was mad. He claimed that all the spiritual leaders who’d come before him were thieves and robbers (John 10.8) and believed – demanded – that everyone should give their lives over to him. And, boy, did he turn unpleasant when they didn’t! (Matthew 11.20-22 etc) Imagine what we’d make today of a fanatic who went around making the same sort of claims. It puts Jesus’ delusions of grandeur in perspective, doesn’t it.

Christians will tell you, though, that Jesus had such a high opinion of himself because, of course, he was divine; he was, and is, God’s only son – God himself, in fact – so he was fully entitled to say the nutty things he said about himself.

But there are a couple of problems with this conclusion:

1. Little of what he promised came to be, from his predictions of his own return heralding the end of the world (Matthew 16.28) to his guarantees his followers would be able to do all manner of wondrous things (Mark 11.24 etc). In other words, there’s just no evidence to support Jesus’ ludicrous assertions about himself. The end of the world, marked by his return in power and glory, didn’t happen when he promised it would (or, indeed, at all); his followers didn’t and still don’t do the incredible things he said they would. In fact, the early church, despite the rosy story made up for it in Acts, spent its time judging and squabbling (Romans14, etc), much like the church today. Little wonder that Jesus’ friends and biographers had to invent the resurrection story, to replace all the stuff he said would happen that didn’t.

2. Christians aren’t prepared to be as radical as Jesus demands; by and large they don’t disown their parents and offspring; they don’t hate their own lives (only other people’s ‘lifestyles’) and they don’t give up their possessions when they become disciples. They’re right not to, of course, otherwise they’d be giving into the whims of a madman, but all the same they want their cake and eat it: to adopt this particular extremist as their saviour while ignoring everything he demands that they do. So they compromise; not prepared to despise their families, and certainly not wanting to give up everything, they claim him as their God while hanging on to all they hold dear. I don’t blame them, but Jesus certainly wouldn’t approve of the compromise. He says so in the passages quoted at the top of this post and in numerous other places in the Bible.

So, Christians, why do you call him ‘Lord, lord’, when you won’t do what he tells you? (Luke 6.46)

Good For Nothing

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HamWhere does morality come from? Ken Ham of Answers In Genesis says it can only come from (his) God. Atheists have no grounds for morality, he claims, because, without a God to tell them, they’ve no way of knowing the difference between right and wrong .

As usual, Ham is being creative with the truth. Clearly atheists are as capable of being moral as anyone else. Equally and also evidently, Christians and other brands of believers are capable of deplorable immorality. Hardly a week goes by without more reports of Christians abusing, cheating, lying and killing in Jesus’ name.

Why do Christians act so despicably when, supposedly, they have God’s Spirit inside them – that’s the God from whom all morality flows, according to Ken Ham. Why doesn’t his indwelling Spirit guide Christians so that they always behave morally, or even just considerately?

I don’t have the answer. Perhaps Ken Ham or some other knowledgeable Christian can tell us.

No, morality doesn’t derive from any god. It has evolved, inevitably and like much of our behaviour, from our being social animals. Living in close proximity with other humans has meant we have developed ways of behaving that take these others into account, as well as the repercussions of our behaviour on ourselves.* The principle of treating others as we ourselves would like to be treated is very old – much older than Christianity.

Morality, though, is not absolute and is far from infallible. Non-believers, like the religious, make mistakes and don’t always treat others as they should. But the fact they behave well most of the time is evidence that behaving morally has nothing to do with a god, especially not the capricious, murderous psychopath of the Abrahamic religions.

Ken Ham’s position, and that of other religionists who tell us we have no grounds for morality without such a god, is as offensive as it is absurd.

 

* There are innumerable books that consider our moral evolution; you might like to try Frans De Waal’s Primates and Philosophers; How Morality Evolved or Christopher Boehms’s Moral Origins.

 

What did you do today, God?

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Duck

What have you achieved today? I finished some illustrations for a children’s book a friend has written. It’s a minor accomplishment, of course, but one I like to think hasn’t added to the sum total of suffering and misery in the world (though you might want to disagree.) There’s every chance that whatever you’ve done today has been productive and positive too. That is, unless you also happen to be a deity.

What are God’s accomplishments today? What has the Omnipotent, Omniscient and All-loving God achieved in the last twenty-four hours?

Has he, for example, eliminated Ebola, Aids or cancer, or even helped those sinful human beings who strive to develop cures for these terrible diseases (which we would be right in thinking God himself created in the first place)? Erm, no. He hasn’t. Ebola, Aids and cancer are still with us today, their cure and prevention a little closer only because of human endeavour.

Has he prevented any further brutal murders by those who claim to operate in his (alternate) name? Has he rushed to the assistance of Christians being persecuted in Syria and Iraq? Erm… that’s another no. You’d think he might, wouldn’t you, given that his own people are among the persecuted, but no. And given that ‘gentle and compassionate’ relief worker, Alan Henning, has today been beheaded by Islamic extremists, you’d be right to wonder just where God is. What does he spend his days doing?

Did he, then, decide that today was the day he’d let us know which of his many manifestations is the real him – Yahweh? Allah? Shiva? Ra? One of the myriad others? None of the above? No, he didn’t do that either. He left us in our ignorance about which of the many religions, groups and sects has got it right about him. He couldn’t find the time today to tell us who it is that worships the real him, and who it is who’s deceived. Just as he couldn’t for all of the days that have so far made up recorded time.

Maybe, however, he hasn’t had time to do this because he’s been too busy sustaining the universe; you know, winding up gravity and giving the Earth those little pushes it needs to make it spin. But of course, the universe doesn’t work like this. It needs no external power source to keep it going. Even if it was God who set the ‘laws of physics’ in motion at the beginning of everything (it wasn’t), they have been self-sustaining ever since. So, no, he hasn’t the excuse that he spends his days making sure everything is ticking over nicely.

Does he spend them instead empowering believers to move mountains, heal the sick, raise the dead and perform miracles even better than those of his ‘son’, just like he had Jesus promise? Not so’s you’d notice. In fact, not at all.

Oh dear. We really are running out of possible things for God to do. Despite the sometimes desperate state of the world, perhaps all of his time is taken up finding parking spaces for Christians and sorting out their career prospects. Perhaps he’s too busy directing the thoughts and words of his ‘chosen instruments’ (see my previous post) so they can express their hatred for non-Christians and gay people. Or maybe all of his energies go into inspiring those Holy Spirit led church services that ‘bless’ Christians but are no more than human emotion run riot. Alternatively, maybe he just spends his time being offended by everything and everybody. If these are his accomplishments over the last twenty-four hours, then, given all the things he could have been doing, doesn’t it all seem rather pathetic? This is all he can manage?

Of course not. All of the triviality, and all of the brutality, attributed to him is entirely human in origin and manifestation; the beheadings, the euphoria, the offence, the vitriol. All part of the self-delusion that is ‘faith’. There is no God doing all these things, no God who manifests himself in the operation of the universe, in human suffering or the pleasures and happy coincidences of life.

It’s possible, I suppose, that there is a god somewhere, one without any interest in human beings and life here on Earth, but then he’d be even more irrelevant than the impotent gods we’ve invented for ourselves.

As Ariane Sherin famously said, ‘There’s probably no God’, with the ‘probably’ looking ever more redundant.

God’s Blunt Instruments

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CultI get so tired of how Christians think they should show ‘love’ to others. They’ve got clear instructions in their holy book about how to do this but as with so many of their beliefs, they by-pass the commands of their saviour, to come up with their own, less costly ways of ‘loving’ their neighbour.

The righteous will (say), ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ (Matthew 25.38-40)

Christians, however, have decided that the best way to show love is not to do what Jesus says but instead to call out others’ ‘sin’, to rant about how lost they are and how they’d be so much better if they adopted the same beliefs as Christians themselves.

I’ve experience of this in my own life. ‘While you’re a sinner of the worst kind,’ I’ve been told, ‘I love you enough to tell you about Jesus’ –

As if I’ve never heard about Jesus before;

As if there’s any credence to the entirely religious concept of ‘sin’;

As if this kind of emotional blackmail equates in any way with love.

In case you’ve been lucky enough to avoid it yourself, there’s plenty of this kind of stuff online too: try here or here or here or here for starters. As Matt Barber, who modestly describes himself as ‘an instrument of God’s truth’, puts it, ‘all we, all you, as faithful Christians can do is to speak truth in love and pray that those truths plant a seed that bears fruit in the hardened hearts of lost souls.’

Oh yes, it’s all done in the name of ‘love’ – and the cherry-picked bits of ‘God’s truth’ that appeal to the self-righteous.

Of course, gay people get more than their fair share of this brand of Christian love™. There’s no sign of the unconditional love of which Jesus speaks for the ‘sodomites’ regularly trashed by Christian Voice (Stephen Green’s choice of phrase, not mine) and those ‘mired’ in ‘the homosexual lifestyle’ (no, I don’t know what it is either) invented by the likes of Matt Barber and others who mistake their prejudices for truth and their bigotry for love.

Christians just don’t seem to get it that their ‘witness’ doesn’t consist of judging and condemning the rest of us for our ‘sin’, accosting us with ‘God’s truth’ and telling us how they love us really, even though they don’t show it.

It is – or should be – about action; doing and showing love unconditionally and sacrificially. How do we know this? Because their saviour says so. And until we see this, Christians, you’ll forgive us, won’t you, for not taking very seriously your claims to be instruments of God’s truth nor your empty rhetoric about ‘love’.

 

The words in the speech bubble above are Bill Muehlenberg’s, another of God’s self-appointed tools. Even Jesus, who was not averse to unpleasantness, didn’t spout the vitriol that some of today’s Men of God™ delight in. In any case, doesn’t Muehlenberg’s claim describe Christianity so much more accurately than it does ‘homosexualism’, whatever that is? Just try replacing the term with ‘Christianity’ and you’ll see. Bill doesn’t know a cult when he’s in one. (Well, he wouldn’t, would he.) And don’t you just love his mismatched pronouns?

Idiotic Stuff Jesus Said 6: The ‘I Am’ sayings

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CampLet’s be clear from the outset here; Jesus never actually made any of the seven ‘I am’ claims put into his mouth in John’s gospel. You know the ones: ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life’, ‘I am the True Vine’, ‘the Good Shepherd’, ‘the Light of the World’ and so on. So it is a little unfair to lump them with all the idiotic things it’s more likely Jesus did say (see previous posts.)

How do we know he didn’t say them? Lots of reasons. Firstly, they’re not in the other three gospels all of which were written earlier than John’s, and are therefore closer to the time Jesus lived (though the earliest, Mark’s gospel, was probably put together thirty to forty years after Jesus lived.) If Jesus had really made all those grand ‘I am’ claims, wouldn’t the other gospel writers have recorded them too? Yet none of them mentions even one.

Secondly, in the synoptic gospels – Matthew, Mark and Luke – Jesus has a different message from the one given to him in John’s gospel. The earlier gospels have Jesus talk about himself only very rarely. Instead, he goes on at length about the coming of the Kingdom of God (or Heaven) and how y’all better get ready for it ’cause it’s a-coming soon. Was he wrong about that one! On the odd occasion he does refer to himself in the synoptic gospels, he often does it in a sort of coded way, calling himself ‘the son of man’. He hardly ever uses ‘I’, let alone makes grandiose claims about himself.

Thirdly, all three of the synoptic gospels rely on earlier sources, now lost to us, and none of those has Jesus make ‘I am’ statements either. How do we know? Because, again, they’re not there in any of the three accounts – Matthew, Mark or Luke – that are built up from them. Significantly, one of these sources is an early record of Jesus’ sayings; that’s a ‘sayings gospel’ that doesn’t relate any ‘I am’ sayings.

Fourthly, John’s gospel is late – at least sixty years after JC’s death and also after Paul’s supernatural Christianity had gained a foothold among the gullible. The Jesus of John’s gospel is a reworked version, more in-line with the ‘Christ’ that Paul preached and much less like the Jewish peasant who had lived and preached the Kingdom of God. Despite what Christians claim, John’s gospel is not another eye-witness report (none of the gospels is) that differs only in minor details from the other three accounts. It is total reworking of the story, with its central figure transformed into a sort of divine Superman, and the idea of the coming Kingdom relegated to a single mention. This change of agenda renders the fourth gospel utterly unreliable as an historical record of anything the earthly Jesus might have said.

Fifthly, Christians claim John’s gospel differs from the others because in it Jesus reveals special, secret truths about himself to ‘the disciple whom he loved’, traditionally the John whom the gospel is named after. But again, the problem with this explanation is that the synoptic gospels don’t mention Jesus favouring one particular disciple over the others (unless it’s Simon Peter). In these, John, a loud, brash fisherman, plays only a minor role. Why don’t the synoptics refer to the special, more intimate relationship that John’s gospel refers to? Largely because there wasn’t one – not until the fourth gospel came to be written and ‘John’, who led the community that produced it, wanted to bump up his part.

So, idiotic as it would have been for an itinerant Jewish preacher and ‘prophet’, whose mission ended in failure, to make these claims about himself, Jesus never did. He didn’t say he was ‘the Way, the Truth and the Life’. Or ‘the Vine’. Or ‘the Good Shepherd’. These are claims made for him long after he lived, by people who were persuaded by a snake-oil salesman that a God-man had mystically ‘saved’ them. They ‘re-imagined’ Jesus, sayings and all, to fit their idea of what he must have been like – and John’s gospel was born.

Its Jesus, if he was being honest, should really have said, ‘I Am… nothing but Pure Invention.’

Idiotic Stuff Jesus Said 5: Give to everyone who asks

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Beggar

Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you… Love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. (Luke 6:30-35)

I’d really like to see this. I’d like to see Christians giving to anyone and everyone who asks them.

Asks them for what? Jesus implies in this ridiculous command that it’s ‘what belongs to you’. He’s talking about physical possessions – give your possessions to whoever asks, he says, and don’t try to get back any item that someone takes from you. There can be no making a metaphor out of this, or symbolising it away. Christians try to of course; see here and here for their lame attempts at explaining why Jesus doesn’t really mean they should give their stuff away. But he does mean it, and just in case Luke might’ve got it wrong, the writers of Mark’s and Matthew’s gospel record him saying much the same thing.

So how about it Christians? How about giving away all you’ve got? Even a little bit of it to everyone who asks of you? Should you own cars, property and businesses when there are charities asking you to give generously to the needy (‘give to all who ask’) and when there are people out there with nothing? Your Lord and saviour proposes you sell all you have and give the proceeds to the poor (Mark 10.21), so how about it? How about conceding (civil) same-sex marriage to gay couples, without making the shameful song and dance about it that you do? How about shouting less about the ‘rights’ you claim are being taken from you when your Lord specifically says not to? Why not try doing instead just what he commands?

Because you don’t really believe him. You prefer the super-hero Jesus, the ‘Christ’ that St Paul invented, who ‘saves’ you, guides you and doesn’t make demands like Jesus did when he was alive. That Jesus you don’t believe in. And who can blame you? He was a fanatic who believed the world was going to end very soon (Matthew 16.28). His idiotic demands, like this one, were for this soon-to-end system of things. You could give everything away when God was about to intervene and set up his own Kingdom in which you would be rewarded for your generosity. It’s this radical Jesus you reject; you don’t do what he says because he’s just too damned demanding.

Give to all who ask? Let others take things from you? Sell all you have?

Don’t be ridiculous.

 

Idiotic Stuff Jesus Said 4: Rivers Of Living Water

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Or more precisely: Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them (John 7.38).

WoundMe: What does this even mean, this ‘rivers of living water’ stuff?

Christian: It’s a metaphor. Jesus means it symbolically.

Me: Symbolically, how? A metaphor for what exactly?

Christian: The wonderful life-giving message that is the gospel.

Me: Which gospel? Jesus’s or Paul’s?

Christian: Oh, you’re splitting hairs. They’re one and the same.

Me: They most certainly aren’t, but we’ll let that pass for now. So by ‘living waters’ you mean that death-obsessed, rag-bag of negativity that fails to deliver in any way? (See all previous posts).

Christian: Well, I wouldn’t put it quite like that, but when one is reborn of the Spirit, then this wonderful feeling takes hold of you. That’s what we mean by ‘living waters’.

Me: I see. So all it comes down to is how good it makes you feel inside. ‘Living waters’ is just a metaphor for feeling good.

Christian: Oh, no, it’s more than that. It’s the Love that compels us to share the good news with others – that’s really what Jesus means by rivers of living waters.

Me: So banging on about hell and how the world is doomed (because, you know, gay people) and how only you know the Truth, is letting your love flow, is it? Is that what we see on sites like this, and this and this? Living waters of love? Or running sores of bile?

Christian: Well, those sites and those people aren’t representative of true Christians.

Me: That’s funny. They say the same about you.

Christian: Now you’re being unfair.

Me: And what’s more, there’s no reference to ‘rivers of living water’ flowing inside people anywhere else in ‘Scripture’. That’s another bit of made-up nonsense.

Christian: Oh, no, you’re mistaken about that. You must be. Jesus wouldn’t get a thing like that wrong.

Me: You know, maybe none of you have rivers of living water sloshing around inside you. Maybe this is just another of those idiotic things Jesus said, or was made to say about a hundred years after he lived, that means absolutely nothing at all.

Christian: Ma! He’s persecuting me.

Let’s Suppose…

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This article originally appeared as a guest post on Bruce Gerenscer’s U.S. blog, ‘The Way Forward’ a couple of months back. Bruce has since had to close his blog and as a result the article became inaccessible. I’ve rescued it, my little lost sheep among a hundred, and present it here for your delight and delectation. Or something.

While on ‘The Way Forward, the post generated quite a few comments from Bruce’s readers. Feel free to respond to it here in like manner – and indeed to any other posts. All comments, spam excluded, are published whether agreeing or disagreeing with what I have to say.

BlessedLet’s, for the sake of argument, suppose that Christians could prove that the universe was created by a supernatural agent.

Let’s further suppose that they could demonstrate conclusively that this supernatural agent is none other than their very own God, as opposed to, say, Allah or Atum or Marduk.

And then let’s say they are able to show us, with sundry proofs, that an itinerant Jewish preacher, generally known by the Greek name, Jesus – though he was never called that by those who knew him – was somehow a manifestation of this God on Earth.

Then let’s say we grant them, although it doesn’t seem it from reading Jesus’ story in the synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew and Luke, all written between forty and sixty years after this man lived) that his death somehow or other bridged the gap between humanity and this very touchy deity.

And then let us suppose that, although he never met Jesus but only had some sort of hallucination about him, the man Paul was right to say that through magically invoking Jesus’ name, people could be reunited with God and completely remade.

Let’s further grant them that, although their book about Jesus and Paul doesn’t actually say so in so many words, they really are going to go and live in Heaven when they die.

Assuming all of this is true – even though Christians are unable to demonstrate even the first of these propositions (the one about the universe being made by a supernatural being) – why is it they disregard and otherwise ignore most of what their god-man, Jesus, tells them about how they should live their lives?

Why are they, for example, so cavalier about forgiving others when he says in order to be forgiven they must first forgive those who have offended them? (Matthew 6.14-15)

Why are they so harsh in their judgements of others when he tells them that how they judge others will be how they themselves will be judged? (Matthew 7.1-2 & Matthew 25.34-46)

Why are they so lacking in compassion, when he says the amount of compassion they’ll receive is directly related to the amount they show others? (Matthew 5.7 & Luke 6.38)

Why are they so vociferous in their condemnation of others when they should be dealing with their own ‘sins’ first? (Luke 6:42)

Why do so many of them fail to serve others sacrificially, without expectation of reward and with no ulterior motive? (Mark 9.35 & 10.43-44)

Why are they not known for selling their possessions, giving to all who ask and going the extra mile? (Luke 12.32, Matthew 19.21, Luke 6.38 & Matthew 5.41)

Why do they not turn the other cheek, bless and pray for those who abuse them, and treat others like they want to be treated themselves? (Luke 6.28-29 & Matthew 7.12)

Why do they not love their neighbour as themselves, and their enemies too? (Matthew 22.39 & Matthew 5.44)

Shouldn’t they be doing these things, and more, as if their eternal lives depended on it? Especially when Jesus says their eternal lives do depend on it (Matthew 25.37-40). Shouldn’t they be just so much more radical than they actually are, changing the world by serving others? (Matthew 25.34-40)

Yes, they should, but they’re not, and they never have. Deep down, they know that Jesus is too extreme, too demanding. They make excuses for themselves; he doesn’t really mean the things he says; he speaks in metaphor and uses hyperbole (specially when he’s saying something they don’t like the sound of) and they invoke the bumper-sticker theology of ‘we’re not perfect, just forgiven’, even when ‘perfect’ is the very thing Jesus tells them they must be (Matthew 5.48).

The only reasonable conclusion we can draw from all of this is that Christians don’t really believe the man they call God and Saviour. Their actions, or lack of them, speak far louder than their words. It’s so much easier to claim Paul’s magical incantation, looking heavenward and damning the rest of us, than it is to do what Jesus demands. Who cares what Jesus said anyway. What did he know?

John Sentamu To End All War

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SentamuNever one to shy away from self-promotion, the Archbishop of York, ‘the most reverend and right honourable’ John Sentamu, has begun a week-long fast and prayer vigil for world peace. The Archbishop reckons this will show ‘solidarity with the suffering people of our world, particularly in the Middle East.’

How, I hear you ask, will it do this? How will John’s fasting and praying – ‘on the hour, every hour’ – be any more effective than, say, his cutting up his dog collar in 2007 in protest at Mugabe’s presidency of Zimbabwe (seven years later and Mugabe is still there.) What will all the prayers and the fasting accomplish, other than thrusting the Archbishop briefly into the limelight once again?

Does God need Sentamu’s prayers to alert him to what is going on in the world? Doesn’t God know already? Will his pleading prick God’s conscience so that he intervenes and brings to an end the bloodshed in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine? Why doesn’t God do something anyway?

And isn’t all of this rather arrogant, this assumption that God will only act if problems are pointed out to him by fallible human beings? (Even Jesus thinks this is how it works in Luke 11.5-8.) What sort of God is this, who is unaware of how things are here on Earth and is unable or unwilling to do anything about them until important show-offs men like the Honourable Rev. let him know?

Maybe though, the Archbishop is less ambitious. Perhaps he just wants to demonstrate to those caught up in the world’s conflicts that he stands with them – though only metaphorically. But if that’s it, what exactly is he saying in all those prayers, on the hour, every hour?

Whatever it is, there will be no divine intervention. There is no God to take action, as evidence throughout history has shown us time and time again. Religion is part of the problem not its solution.