Category Archives: Christian proselytising

A word from the WITLESS

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Arun

We of the Wishful Thinking League of silly sods sausages – WITLESS for short – would just like to say how jolly unfair we think it is that our local cinema won’t show our new advert. All we want to do is remind everyone going to see the latest Flash Gordon film that they have three wishes. Three wishes from the special genie no-one can see but who we know is there. And, what’s really exciting, they can use their three wishes however they like! We just wish the cinema would stop being so jolly difficult and let us show our advert about the genie and the magic wishes. 

Damn! That’s one wish gone! And the man at the cinema still won’t let us show the ad. We wish we knew why not. He just says he doesn’t show adverts made by cranks, which is a little unfair when we’ve been recognised as the official cranks in this country for a very long time. Some other spoil-sports take the vue, er… view, that if the cinema goes ahead and shows our advert then other, unofficial cranks will want their adverts shown too. We quite agree this would be a very bad thing. Nobody else’s genie is as real as ours and noboby else grants three wishes the way he does.

We just wish the man who runs the place would come to his senses and agree to show our advert. It’s not a lot to ask. We wish too that…

What? What d’you mean, we’ve had all our wishes? But none of them have come true! That’s so unfair. It jolly well is, you know. And it’s all that rotter from the cinema’s fault.

Please, genie, can we have three more wishes? Can we, please?

Talking Jesus

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Harvest

The Church of England published its report, Talking Jesus, last week. It finds that, rather than interesting others in Jesus, Christians only put them off when they talk about him. What a dilemma! To evangelise or not when all it achieves is the opposite of what’s intended. Christians must feel their hands are tied.

Not that this will stop them doing it, more’s the pity. But why? What drives some Christians to talk about their beliefs at every opportunity? What makes them think others haven’t heard of Jesus already? Do they honestly think that in England and other places where the Anglican church holds sway, people have never heard of him? Let’s have that show of hands: if this is the first time you’ve heard about Jesus, raise you hand. Or admit to being a Jesus-virgin in the comments.

That’ll be no-one then.

Please – we know about Jesus! And, what’s more, most of us would be happy if we didn’t. While some feel duty-bound to treat him with respect (God knows why when they don’t do the same for Father Christmas or Julius Caesar) most recognise him for the myth he is and trust their instinct not to get involved.

Here in the West it’s almost impossible to escape him, especially as Christmas approaches. Church leaders, with free access to the media, burble on about him, Christian web-sites number in the hundreds of thousands, and songs about his miraculous, fabricated birth will soon be everywhere. At any time of year, armies of street preachers invade our town centres, shouting about how we all need him, while Jehovah’s Witnesses hawk their version at a front door near you. And if we’re really unlucky, a friend or colleague will feel it their duty to tell us all about him at work or school or in the pub.

But, Christians, this isn’t how you’re meant to ‘make disciples of all the world’. The Jesus of the gospels (though that should be ‘Jesuses‘, plural) tells his followers how it should be done. Not by ambushing others to tell them how much they need him but by letting your lights shine (Matthew 5.16). Your ‘good deeds’ and sacrificial love are what should mark you out and impress others; Jesus says so himself. Actions, not words, are how to demonstrate your faith in him, if that’s what you feel you must do.

But they don’t, and that’s why we’re not interested when you’re subjecting us to your fantasy and dogma. If you lived the life – the really radical life Jesus advocated – forsaking wealth, spending yourself on others, going the extra mile, turning the other cheek, giving and forgiving, loving everyone sacrificially – then we might just be persuaded there’s something to this Jesus cult after all (then again we might not). As it is, talking the talk without walking the walk, is – how does the Bible put it? – just the empty noise of clanging cymbals.

 

You’re all sinners!

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BabyYou are a sinner. You deserve the wrath of God. After you die, you will meet God face to face and because of your sin he will throw you into the pit of hell for all eternity. But repent of your sin and believe the gospel and instead he will cast your sin away from you, as far as east is from west.

Or so said the street preacher in the centre of town at the weekend (yes, our old friend Dale McAlpine; he who suffers excessively from religion-virus).

I’m not a sinner. And neither, dear reader, are you. Sometimes in my life I’ve behaved badly, it’s true. I’ve hurt other people, though usually unintentionally, and I’ve been thoughtless. I’ve been unappreciative of loved ones and haven’t done enough for others. I’ve said things I shouldn’t and have occasionally lost my temper. I’ve even had sex when it wasn’t for making babies.

Maybe you’ve done similar things and, like me, have transgressed the moral law (which is entirely of human making) in all of these minor ways. Others have transgressed it, and the societal laws it gives rise to, in far worse ways, by deliberately hurting or abusing others, raping and murdering.

But still neither they nor us are sinners. Whether we have behaved reprehensibly or only a little thoughtlessly, we are still not sinners. We are human and we behave as humans behave; as evolved apes our developed brains jostle with animal natures, and we act as our distinct environments have taught us. ‘Sin’, on the other hand, is a distinctly religious concept, a component of a fantasy perspective of life with no purchase outside of its religious context. The problem with it is, however, that it has intruded for the best part of a two thousand years into reality, into life as it is lived by most people most of the time, and we’ve grown used to it. We give it credence when it’s talked about or preached from pulpit or soap box. But it is a meaningless concept.

The word for sin that is used most frequently in the New Testament (221 times) is ‘hamartia’, an archery term meaning ‘to miss the mark’. It means not being as good as we could be; not coming up to God’s standard: ‘for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,’ as old wingnut Paul puts it in Romans 3.23. And this is the secondary – some would say primary – application of the idea of sin; it denotes our separation from God. The thinking behind this idea goes as follows: there must be a reason God always seems so distant, remote, far away, elusive and absent from us. And because he’s God and so wouldn’t behave in such a cold-hearted way if we didn’t deserve it, it can only be our fault. His distance, therefore, can only be because of sin, our failure to behave and be, from the moment of our birth, as he would want us to. Yes, sin really is God’s kryptonite and, according to Christian doctrine, Jesus came to be the lead lining that blocks its rays.

But this is an unnecessarily convoluted way to account for the perceived divine distance. It is much better explained by God’s existential and literal absence. It’s not our fault he’s so far away – or rather it is, but not because we sin. In our childish need to have someone out there who both explained everything and cared for us, we made him up. We anthropomorphised an insentient, indifferent universe, which could only ever lead to a God who felt distant and remote.

So, as Dale was recommending on Saturday, free yourself from ‘sin’. Recognise that you don’t fall short of the glory of God, because no such thing exists, and that you behave as you do because you’re human. And then you will be free indeed.

Christians’ Favourite Delusions 35: Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.

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LaughAccording to God’s Magic Book (in Hebrews 13.8), Jesus is ‘the same yesterday, today and forever’. Let’s see how that works out in reality:

Yesterday he said the way to ‘inherit eternal life’ was to follow the law and sell everything you had (Mark 17.17-22).
Today, according to his spin doctors, he says you’ve got to believe a magic formula – the one about him dying – if you want to live forever.

Yesterday he despised wealth and possessions (Luke 6.24-25).
Today he thinks they’re just fine.

Yesterday he said this world would end while his disciples were still alive (Matthew 16:27-28).
Today he says these are the end times:

… we’re now living in Romans 1. How do you know when the wrath of God is released? How do you know when the wrath of God is unleashed against a society? First, Romans 1:24, there is a sexual revolution. We’ve had that—in the 60s, the last century. Then there will be a homosexual revolution led by lesbians. The women are mentioned first in Romans 1:26. And then there will be the reprobate mind. And that’s when the thinking is really the product of the sexual, homosexual revolutions, and the thinking is so corrupt we can’t find our way back. That’s where we are. (John MacArthur, We Will Not Bow; all subsequent references to MacArthur are from this same poisoned well)

Yesterday Jesus’ Good News was about the coming Kingdom (Luke 4.43).
Today it’s about eternal damnation:

And the most compassionate thing you can do for those (LGBT) people is, in love, to warn them of eternal damnation—to warn them of eternal judgement. That’s compassionate. That’s compassionate. Preach the gospel; proclaim the gospel; proclaim grace and forgiveness such as we read in Isaiah and 1 Corinthians. But preach judgement. (MacArthur again)

Yesterday Jesus invited people to join God’s Kingdom on Earth (Matthew 6.10; 13.43 etc).
Today he’s made to invite everyone to Heaven.

Yesterday his Good News was only for his own people: ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel’ (Matthew 15:24).
Today he says anybody can go to Heaven so long as they believe the magic formula. Oh, and aren’t gay.

Yesterday his own people were the Jews (Luke 2.22-32; Matthew 4.23 etc).
Today he’s really only interested in America (to listen to MacArthur and others).

Yesterday he was recruiting slaves for his Kingdom (Matthew 20.27).
Today he wants to be your buddy.

Yesterday he’d nothing good to say about marriage (Luke 20.34-35).
Today he’s all for it (unless it’s same-sex marriage).

Yesterday he had nothing good to say about the family (Luke 14.26).
Today he’s all for it (unless the parents are gay).

Yesterday he had nothing to say about abortion, homosexuality or people changing sex.
Today it’s all he’s interested in (MacArthur and just about every other Christian preacher).

Yesterday he was an itinerant Jewish preacher and failed messiah.
Today he’s a Starman waiting in the sky to zap unbelievers to hell (yup, MacArthur again, quoting 2 Thessalonians 1.7-8).

Like a ventriloquist’s dummy, Jesus just says whatever his self-appointed spokespersons want him to say. Pliable and malleable, he can be made to match the needs of anyone who recruits him to their spiritual, moral or social crusade. He is all things to all people and what he’s like today is nothing like what he was yesterday. Which doesn’t say much about ‘forever’.

When it’s Gone, it’s Gone

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JudgementAs you’ll see in comments to previous posts, Christians like to encourage gambling. Recycling Pascal’s wager, they say things like ‘if I am wrong then I have based my life on a false premise and have ceased to exist. I won’t even have the opportunity to express regrets. However, if you are wrong, having rejected Christ, you, sadly, will have quite a while to weep, wail and gnash your teeth.’

The old faith-as-insurance-policy argument. Rather like the Chance card in Monopoly that lets you avoid jail, it offers you the chance to escape hell, where all this gnashing is supposed to occur, by the simple expedient of holding a particular set of beliefs in your head.

Surely this hedging of bets doesn’t impress God, the supposed creator of the universe, Father of mankind and judge of all the Earth. He won’t really be taken in, will he, on that great and dreadful Judgement Day when we admit, ‘actually, I only believed in you so you wouldn’t send me to hell’? Maybe he will, being a God without discernment or insight. It’s certainly all that evangelical Christianity has to offer – just ask my preacher friends – a Get Out Of Hell Free card. Which is a long way from what Jesus taught about the coming Kingdom and how to be part of it; not, in his case, by believing the right things but by doing them (Matthew 25.31-36).

What if I am wrong, though, as Christians think? Then I could be in trouble. But so might they; they could find they’ve gambled on entirely the wrong God (curse you Pascal for not thinking of that!) and find themselves up before Allah or Vishnu once they’ve miraculously survived death. ‘Wrong God, mate,’ Allah will have to tell them: الله خطأ، تتزاوج . What then?

And given that they think eternal life awaits them, why are so many Christians fearful of leaving this life? Could it be because they’re not convinced that the gamble is going to pay off? They know intuitively that this life is the only life they’ll be getting – and that when it’s gone it’s gone, as it says in Poundland. That will be why they mourn their brothers and sisters in Christ who ‘pass away’; “sorry to hear about your loss,” they say, when according to their magic betting slip it’s no loss at all but an immortal gain.

So I’m confident I’m not wrong. The odds are in my favour; the evidence is on my side. Consider, if you will, Christians:

  • Every single human who has ever lived has died, or will die, and has ceased to be in their entirety;
  • No human has ever lived again after death (not even Jesus who wasn’t, according to you, properly human anyway and so doesn’t qualify.)
  • No human has ever lived forever;
  • There’s nothing on the other side – no judgement, no Heaven, no Hell, no eternal life – because there is no ‘other side’.

If any of you would like to demonstrate that these assertions are wrong, please do. All I ask is that you bear in mind that insisting they’ll happen at some point in the future because the Bible says so, is not evidence; it’s wishful thinking. Which is pretty much where we came in.

All is vanity.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

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PissImagine the outcry there would be from Christians if having decided to hold an open-air service, a group of atheists turned up and started shouting through tannoys at them as they attempted to enjoy their celebration. Imagine those atheists shouting ‘Hypocrites!’ and ‘Losers. You need to come to your senses!’ Imagine if they said they were only doing this out of love to break the spell the Christians were under, the spell of religion. Imagine they held up signs the entire time with text inspired by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, like ‘Free yourself from your God Delusion’ and ‘ Religion Poisons Everything’.

Yes, imagine the outcry; the Christians would see themselves as persecuted by ‘militant atheists’ out to spoil their day. And, who knows, perhaps they’d be right, though perhaps persecution is overstating it, though we all know Christians like their martyrdom. So long as it doesn’t entail any actual… erm… martyrdom.

This didn’t happen at the weekend in my home town – I doubt it happens anywhere – but pretty much the opposite did. A bunch of Christians, complete with loud speakers and placards with scripture verses on them, turned up at the Gay Pride celebration in the centre of town and proceeded to tell those out to enjoy their day that they were sinners in need of Christ and his salvation. They kept this up, because, they said, they loved the people whose afternoon they were trying to disrupt, for at least two hours. These were not members of a local church; according to the young man I spoke to they had come from various parts of the UK and from the States specifically to interfere with the event, or ‘preach the gospel’ as he put it.

The LGBT people at the Pride were having none of it, of course, and drowned out the tired old rhetoric with whistles and good natured chanting until the Righteous Ones accepted the futility of their mission and packed up to go home… but not before they transplanted themselves near the stage to show off their signs again.

Now, how is this different from the scenario we started with?

Christians would object if others gate-crashed their events and attempted to disrupt their celebrations; yet they think they have the right to do just that to others, with their message of hell and damnation. They’d cry ‘persecution’ and see the same kind of actions as militant (when they have no idea what the word ‘militant’ actually means) and part of an ‘anti-Christian agenda’, if it was they on the receiving end.

It’s Christians themsleves who have the agenda – to judge, impose on and convert those with different beliefs and philosophies. They think they have special knowledge of The Truth that no-one else has and which has never been heard before when all they really have is a superstition, a belief in a sky god and magical incantation, much like any other superstition. Even if this weren’t the case, even if their beliefs were what the Christians think they are, that does not give them the right to exercise their arrogant, shouty agenda by rudely imposing themselves on others’ special days.

 

Update: Evangelist Dale Mcalpine says it wasn’t his merry little brand of preachers that invaded Pride. Oh no. According to Dale, a bunch of irresponsible LGBT people tried to spoil a bona fide Christian event that just happened to be going on nearby at the same time.

These people’s self-delusion knows no bounds.

 

The View from Higher Ground

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PopesLast week, the good people of Ireland voted to legalise same-sex marriage. Predictably, the Holy Men of the Roman Catholic Church have emerged from wherever it is they secrete themselves when they’re not in their frocks to condemn the outcome. Sour grapes the Holy Spirit prompts Cardinal Raymond Burke to whinge:

I was deeply saddened by the result… I think that you cannot just talk of a defeat for Christian principles, but of a defeat for humanity… I mean, this is a defiance of God. It’s just incredible. Pagans may have tolerated homosexual behaviours, they never dared to say this was marriage.

Of course, same-sex marriage is not ‘a defiance of God’, because there is no God, and marriage is a wholly human institution that we can arrange and change exactly as we like – but perhaps I’m splitting hairs here.

Also lost on the Cardinal is the irony that he speaks for a church (one of several as it turns out) that systematically abused children for many years, attempted to cover up its crimes, lied to victims and, when finally caught out, denied it had done anything wrong. A church, in other words, that has voided itself of all moral authority and has forfeited the right, if it ever had it, to judge anyone else’s ‘principles’ or ‘behaviours’. Those who voted for equality in the Irish vote were right to ignore and defy an organisation as dissolute and hypocritical as the Roman Catholic Church. That this church now believes itself to be in a position to condemn same-sex marriage demonstrates just how shameless and arrogant it is.

To add insult to injury, this Burke goes on to declare that the church should respond to the growth of equality, not with humility and gracious acceptance, but by intensifying its efforts to convert others to a corrupted, lifeless religion:

The church must take account of this reality, but in the sense that it must strengthen its commitment to evangelisation.

Because believing in Jesus, Mary and a whole load of other dead people will make the gay go away. Or something.

Talk about a defeat for humanity.

BurkeCardinal Burke can be seen modelling a fetching chiffon two-piece in – what else – Cardinal red, with a dainty lace number to complement. Here he demonstrates the fabulous fullness of both items, which, regrettably, are no longer available in sack-cloth or ash grey.

Spontaneous Conversion

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st-paul-conversionThe missionaries pressed on into the Amazonian jungle. They were now in uncharted territory. No-one had ever been this far in. And then, sounds from somewhere not too distant; human sounds, human voices – singing even. The missionary troupe emerged into the clearing to an amazing sight. Groups of Amazonian natives gathered together, a rudimentary cross in front of them, towards which they were undeniably directing their worship. These people, whose existence had hitherto been unknown, and who had never before encountered Westerners, were Christians!

Weeks later once basic communication had been established, the tribe’s chief priest and the head missionary communed together. The priest explained how, long ago in the past, his ancestors had recognised God’s presence in the incredible world around them and had opened their hearts to him. As a result – Miracle of Miracles! – God sent them a vision of Christ himself, much as he had to St Paul and the other disciples, and the whole tribe came to believe in Jesus. Ever since then, the tribe had worshipped the one true God and his only son, that same Jesus Christ.

“Amazing,” said the missionary, “so it looks like St Paul was absolutely right when he said God reveals himself in nature and speaks to our hearts to make himself known to us. It’s not as if we ever needed the Bible, or to go round telling people how to be saved. God is more than capable of doing it for himself. Praise the Lord and pass the communion wine!”

What a story! And it happened time and time again as the world was opened up by explorers and missionaries.

Or maybe not. Definitely not, in fact. But it should have happened if what Paul says in Romans 1.18-21 is right, as Ken Ham believes it to be:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by their wickedness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse; for though they knew God, they did not honour him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened.

If God is so obvious in the world that (supposedly) he created and if we humans can see and understand him through it, then why do Christians need to proselytise? Why doesn’t God make his personal presence felt just that tiny bit more clearly – with the odd ‘revelation’ like the one he provided Paul, say – so that people come to believe in him more fully? And by ‘him’, of course, I mean the proper God – the Jesus one. Why does he leave it so that folk seemingly pick up on the special vibes he’s placed in their hearts but then worship a ‘counterfeit’ god, like Allah or Jah or, back in Paul’s day, Zeus? Why doesn’t he provide revelations like he used to, to ensure everyone knows just who it is who’s standing at the door knocking?

If he did that, if God did indeed plant clues to his presence both around us and in us as Paul says he does, then the Bible wouldn’t be needed to convert people. But that’s not what we find, which is that the Bible is essential in perpetuating the God-myth. We wouldn’t even be aware of Paul’s ridiculous claims if they were not preserved in that ramshackle collection of writings.

The indoctrination of others is utterly reliant on two things and two things only. Not God-in-nature or inner prompting or visions, but on ‘the scriptures’ and those who are driven to spread the Jesus-meme. Now does that not strike you as odd? It strikes me as something entirely human, with nothing supernatural about it. If people have to be told, evangelised to and indoctrinated into Christianity, then it can hardly be the case that they see the one true God in nature or have an intuitive feel for him. If that were the case, then we would have discovered hitherto unknown groups of humans who already knew of him and the nonsensical clutter of beliefs that surround him. And we haven’t. Ever.

Christians’ Favourite Delusions 33: Atheists know in their hearts that God exists

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DenyTwo tried cliches trotted out by evangelising (i.e. aggressive) Christians are that ‘atheism is a religion‘ and that in their ‘heart of hearts atheists know there really is a god’. Ken Ham of Answers In Genesis is fond of both assertions, as are other equally desperate promoters of unsupportable beliefs. We’ll come to the first in a later post, but here’s how Ham expresses the second:

They (atheists) know in their hearts that God exists, but they are actively suppressing this belief in unrighteousness (Romans 1:18). They fight so hard against a God that they claim doesn’t even exist because they know that He really does! We need to pray that, instead of fighting against God, these lost individuals will repent and put their faith and trust in Christ and in what He did for them.

Romans 1.18 that he cites says: For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by their wickedness suppress the truth.

Assuming Paul is saying here what Ham claims he is (it’s doubtful from this verse alone) both he and his hero are demonstrably wrong – as they are about so much. The evidence suggests that while young children look for meaning and assume agency, they do not necessarily attribute these to a god until they are taught to do so by others. The god they then come to acknowledge is the one already prevalent in their social environment. In a predominantly Christian context, they will come to be acquainted with – and may go on to develop a full-blown belief in – the interpretation of the Christian God common within their particular culture.

It is the same for conversion generally. You are more likely to be a Mormon in Salt Lake City, a Roman Catholic in East Timor. If raised in a Jewish environment, it’s more likely you’ll subscribe to YHWH; in an Islamic one, an interpretation of Allah; Buddha – not strictly speaking a god – in a Buddhist one. Statistically, those who adopt a religion and a belief in a god, almost always opt for that which is prevalent in the society into which they are born. This is not god ‘writing a knowledge of himself’ in their hearts, it is a cultural, human phenomenon.

Ham and others see this as evidence for their belief that we all have some sort of ‘god-shaped hole‘ in our psyche that we can just as easily fill with false gods as with the real one (theirs). But this is a shift in the argument; it’s not now that God makes himself known to everyone but that we all find a need for a god. This is not the same thing, nor is it true. Certainly humans have a history of creating gods to explain the strange, magnificent and sometimes hostile universe in which we find ourselves; but this does not mean these many gods exist, as Ham would be the first to admit (c’mon, there’s only one real God – his.) It means only that the human brain seeks pattern and meaning, and has often drawn the wrong conclusions in its quest for them. The gods – and God – are part of these wrong conclusions.

And what of Ham’s assertion that atheists deny their awareness of God because of ‘unrighteousness’ – because, he implies, we just want to live a life of rampant ‘sin’? Well, I admit, I like a bit of a sin as much as the next man, but that’s not why I’m an atheist. I’m an atheist because, like most others, I find no evidence for gods or God either in my ‘heart’, nor in the way the world works nor in collections of iron age stories. Morality doesn’t come into making this assessment. In any case, those who buy into a god don’t have a monopoly on ‘righteousness’, as their weak morals, judgemental attitudes and destructive behaviour regularly demonstrate. More than this, and as Ham admits, Christians are only concerned about others because the Bible says they should be: ‘The reason I care about poverty,’ he says, ‘is because God’s Word instructs me to care, and all humans are made in the image of God as God’s Word tells me.’ This is not righteousness, nor a morality that comes from any real concern for fellow human beings.

Finally, atheists don’t, as Ham claims, ‘fight so hard against’ a non-existent God that we secretly believe in. We oppose Christians and other purveyors of supernatural nonsense when they try to impose their irrational beliefs on others, when they condemn fellow human beings, seek to control them and try to limit their rights in the name of God and the cause of ‘righteousness’.

So, no, don’t condescend, Christians, to tell us we all know that there’s a God that we wilfully ignore. You’re wrong, and I’ll show you even more reasons why you are, next time.

A new creation? Or same old same old?

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Preaches3Over at Answers In Genesis, John C. P. Smith (who?) argues that Christianity must be true because of ‘the testimony of countless Christians to the efficacy and potency of the gospel to radically change people’s lives for the better.’ Supposedly, this change is the result of a radical take-over of the individual by the Holy Spirit. As Paul explains in 2 Corinthians 5.17:

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

Even as we speak, Christian Voice’s Stephen Green is proposing, in one of his more spiteful and petty blog posts, that this is only way a young activist can be saved from a selfish, insensitive and deluded – talk about the pot impugning the kettle! – ‘gay lifestyle’, whatever that is. But do such changes really happen and are they ‘for the better’?

Speaking from personal experience and observation, I’d have to say they do. Sometimes they entail an apparent overhaul of the convert’s view of life, mindset and values. It’s as if the possibility of a spiritual aspect to life takes them by surprise and everything in their psychology shifts to accommodate new ideas. For others, the change is superficial and merely accentuates characteristics they already possess.

Having said that, many people have life-changing experiences without a religious catalyst; when they survive a bad accident or a potentially fatal illness, for example, or win lots of money; when they come to a full realisation of who they are or ‘come out’; when they first have sex or a baby; when they lose a loved one or experience an out-of-body experience or start a new job or move to a new area… and on and on.

None of these transformations involves Jesus, his Holy Spirit or ‘the gospel’. Humans are capable of the most drastic and radical of psychological change all on their own. How many times have you heard it said that someone isn’t themselves? Or that no-one knows what’s got into them? Or they’re acting out of character? Some even transform themselves without any external event playing a part. You may have done so yourself.

I would suggest that religious conversion is like that. The change can be real, but it has nothing to do with an external, supernatural agent. The human personality or psyche, whatever you want to call it, is much more fluid and pliable than we care to admit. Your self, values and thought patterns are in fact undergoing constant change, sometimes radically and rapidly so. The consistency you feel you maintain, the unchanging ‘you’, is an illusion. You are regularly updated, like the operating system on your computer. You’re not the same ‘you’ that you were last year and are certainly not the same as a decade ago or when you were a child. What you regard as ‘you’ is constructed from constant change.

The change that comes from religious conversion is no different. More, it doesn’t necessarily change you for the better; it can harden attitudes and make you less sympathetic towards others by transplanting values that are not conducive to empathy and generosity. You become one of ‘us’ and no longer one of ‘them’ as your chosen place of worship and the collective influence of fellow believers make a significant contribution to the process. This is why evangelists and those who are driven to convert others always insist you become part of a church (mosque or synagogue) afterwards – provided, of course, it’s one with the right sort of teaching (theirs). Your new attitudes and values are then reinforced by those who already have them, entrenching them further and convincing you that they, and now you, are ‘right’. This is how the ‘new creation’ you’re becoming is constructed and moulded.

As I’ve argued before, conversion can often reinforce behaviours that have already become habitual for individuals. Every church and Christian movement has adherents who are petty and spiteful, as well as those who are generous and considerate. But what becoming a new creation never entails, is making converts more intelligent, rational or stable. Why not? If it’s a miracle we’re talking about – and undoubtedly we are if God’s spirit suddenly or gradually takes up residence within a person – then surely it would result in a little cognitive rewiring so that the new Christian reaches their full intellectual potential. The fact it doesn’t bring about the ‘renewal of the mind’ (Romans 12.2) in anything like this sort of substantive way is the equivalent of the missing limb that no amount of prayer and laying on of hands can regenerate.

All of which suggests – no, more than suggests; demonstrates – that neither God nor his ‘Holy Spirit’ nor a dead Jewish preacher, nor ‘the gospel’, has anything to do with it. And perhaps that’s because an increase in intelligence, rationality or stability would run counter to the process which depends on blind faith and a submission to the very social forces that reshape the self.