Tracting

Christians today disagree on the value of trying to give out tracts in the High Street. I can see both advantages and disadvantages. We continue to try and go out once a month, however, and I find it stimulating. Last time we went most did not take tracts but some did. One lady wasn't going to but then did.

Among the refusers were a lady who claimed to be an atheist. Apparently there is a lack of evidence so I suggested she take a look around. She was unconvinced so I pointed out that God had sent me to her to tell her that there is a God/ She was unimpressed. It is hard to see what more could be done.

Another refuser said he did not believe in Christianity. I try not to get wound up but I did tell him he was a silly man as the whole reason I was there on the streets was to reach people who don't believe.

I also saw three Hindu priests dressed in saffron accompanied by a minder. They were heading for the opticians. They politely refused my Christian tract.

At one point I saw someone I knew. I thought it was someone else, a woman who grew up coming to the church, at first but then I realised who it was. I don't think what I said was out of place.

Some of the time there was a lull and at one point the wind blew a tin can about so that it danced in quite a delightful way for about 30 or 40 seconds. God puts on these little shows sometimes quite unexpectedly just to amuse us.

At one point a girl stopped to sit on a bench nearby and take a stone out of her shoe. I remember thinking - if only all problems were as easy to solve.

Tom Conti Unbeliever

Tom Conti the actor must live somewhere round here. We see him around from time to time. I guess he's quite an intelligent man yet what nonsense he can talk. In an interview in the Daily Mail Weekend magazine I notice he is asked what figure from history he'd most like to buy a pie and a pint for. His answer?

"St Paul. He started Christianity by creating the myth of Jesus. I don't believe any of it, so I'd ask him why he made it up."

Yet at the same time he says he has a curiosity about quantum physics. "I'm deeply fascinated by how things work on a microscopic level - these things will lead us to extraordinary revelations."

So he presumably has access to Paul's letters but pins his hopes on quantum physics. If he just read the New Testament he'd surely see that what he says is nonsense. Or perhaps not.

Huxley's motives

I had motives for not wanting the world to have meaning; consequently I assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption…. We don’t know because we don’t want to know. ... For myself, as, no doubt, for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom; we objected to the political and economic system because it was unjust. The supporters of these systems claimed that in some way they embodied the meaning (a Christian meaning, they insisted) of the world. There was one admirably simple method of confuting these people and at the same time justifying ourselves in our political and erotic revolt: we could deny that the world had any meaning whatsoever
Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means, p. 270, 273, 1946, cited in Can Man Live Without God by Ravi Zacharias

Darwin's unbelief

I have been reading a biography of Darwin recently. If there is any doubt in anyone's mind as to his spiritual standing, his autobiography makes clear that by the time h wrote his famous Origin of species he was full of unbelief. He stands as a warning to all who depart from the truth. I think this passage is particularly striking:

Thus disbelief crept over me at very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have never since doubted even for a single second that my conclusion was correct. I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all of my friends, will be everlasting punished.
And this is a damnable doctrine

For the whole section see here.