I see Deepak Chopra was speaking at the National Concert Hall last week. There was an interview with him in the Irish Times.

For those of you who don’t know who Chopra is—you mustn’t watch enough Oprah where apparently he is something of a favourite!—he is a medical doctor with Indian roots who has written 55 books on the mind, body and spirit.

It’s interesting that he has come to Ireland—it doesn’t surprise me, for we are ripe here for his message.

We live in a strange time—the more postmodern and technological we’ve become, the greater the yearning for spirituality of some description. It seems that the human psyche is hardwired for some sort of spiritual input.

People say of themselves, “I’m spiritual, but not religious”. This reflects the disillusionment people have with the established religions, particularly Christianity. They look for something that connects, something that has personal meaning and not empty forms or rituals.

In such an environment it is not surprising that eastern practices like those advocated by Chopra take off.

But are they really the answer? Take for example the increasingly popular practice of meditation.

Chopra advocates it saying:

“Meditation allows you to go past your mind and get in touch with your spirit. Eventually, it means the loss of fear and a gradual discovery of your true self.”

Meditation is commonly seen as an emptying of the mind, seeking a point where you are thinking of nothing, and so at true peace.

This stands in complete contrast to what the Bible talks of when it deals with meditation, transformation and peace. In Romans 12:2 Paul writes “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind”. Biblical Christianity is intensely mind centred. It isn’t about finding peace by “going past your mind” but by filling it with something.

Meditation requires something to meditate on—It is when we grasp and think through the implications of what Jesus Christ did in history in his life and at the Cross that we can find peace, hope, power, and forgiveness.

What we need to find is not so much our true selves, but a true relationship with God, for that will change us, beyond measure.

Is meditation the answer? Yes, but not the emptying of our minds but the filling of them with the deeply satisfying unchanging truths of God’s word.

Mark Loughridge is the minister of Milford Reformed Presbyterian Church. He can be contacted on 074 9123961 or mark@milfordrpc.org. You can read more or listen online at www.milfordrpc.org

Ok, so I know that newspapers like to make their headlines as punchy and provocative as possible, but the whole story bears this one out. From last week’s Independent:

“Axing came out of blue, says radio psychic”

According to the paper, “PSYCHIC Una Power, who hosted the 'Psychic Zone' programme on Dublin's 98 since November 1996, said she didn't see it coming when the station's management abruptly cut her hours and then cancelled the show after 12 years on air.”

While it’s not nice to see someone lose their job, does anyone else see the supreme irony in this whole thing? “I didn’t see it coming” – isn’t that the whole point of her job, to see what’s coming? Surely if anyone should be unsurprised at losing their job it should be a psychic! Perhaps she didn’t read her stars that morning—“Beware of nasty men in suits who say it’s all over”.

It reminds me of the incident when Kelvin MacKenzie, former editor of The Sun, found the newspaper’s astrologer had been recycling his predictions; he sacked him with a letter that began: “As you will no doubt have foreseen...”!

It’s easy to poke fun, but for many this is a serious business. People genuinely believe this stuff is true; they base their lives around the predictions and unfounded ramblings of these soothsayers.

But why do people pay any heed to this stuff? I think part of the reason is the failure of modernity’s promises—of a life that can be lived without beliefs in external powers. And part of the reason is the failure to leave the pagan past behind.

Life isn’t simply about what happens from day to day. Something deep within us tells us that we are made for more than that, that there is has to be meaning in the random events of daily life. Modernity has no answer, so people reach for the ancient mystical remedies.

But the answer isn’t to be found there either. The answer is to be found, not in irrational, impersonal superstitions, but in a rational, personal God, who appeared in time and history giving sufficient evidence of the truth of his claims. And with him we find meaning to the seeming randomness of life, guidance for the difficult decisions of life, and a certainty about the afterlife. Unlike any astrologer, nothing comes out of the blue to God. And unlike any astrologer he offers to give his own life so that your future can be secured.

(by Jonny McCollum)
An average person lies 4 times every day according to a recent survey. That’s 1460 lies each year. Truthfulness seems to be an all too precious commodity in our society.
It’s apparent in the North, where they’re gearing up for an election. Smiling candidates will soon look down from virtually every lamppost, TV schedules will fill up with coverage of debates, and column inches will be monopolised by analysis of key events.
So have the people across the border been gripped by election fever? In spite of media fixation, most people have little interest in the whole process. Voter apathy is becoming clear.
If there was an election in Ireland next month, how would you feel? Would you be determined to see Brian Cowen keep his job? Would you be excited by the prospect of change? Or would you be utterly indifferent?
Few of us get excited about politics and it’s easy to see why. Politicians have a serious image problem – they’re simply not trusted. The public perception is of men and women who are quite prepared to lie, backstab and cheat their way to power if necessary, with each candidate being more deceitful than the last.
In fact, many euphemisms for lying have been conceived in the world of politics – have you heard of someone being ‘economical with the truth’? Or telling a ‘terminological inexactitude’? Lying is part and parcel of politics.
Our view of politicians is mirrored in the rest of society. How much do you trust your neighbours? What about workmen and salespeople? Can you trust your own family? Undoubtedly there are many honest people living in Donegal, but we find it hard to believe others. We’ve had our fingers burnt too many times.
Thankfully there is someone we can trust. In the bible, God doesn’t use wordy expressions to try and justify deceit; he condemns it as strongly as possible. He hates lying because it goes against his own character – he is 100% truthful, 100% of the time.
When God makes a promise, he always keeps it, even at great cost to himself. We see a startling reminder of this each Easter as we think of Jesus dying on the cross. We can have total confidence about our salvation, not because of ourselves, but because of God’s character.
"Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." (Romans 10:13)

(by Jonny McCollum)

Sometimes you think you’ve heard it all, and then the news manages to shock you further.

A South Korean couple were arrested last week by police investigating the death of their 3-month-old daughter. This helpless girl died of malnutrition due to being neglected by her parents who are part of a growing number of “gaming addicts”. They fed their daughter only once a day, in between marathon gaming sessions at an internet cafe. In a tragic irony their time was taken up nurturing a virtual girl on an online role playing game.

Surely this is just an isolated incident? Sadly not. Recently two men died after playing online practically non-stop for 50 and 86 hours respectively. It's hard to comprehend how something as harmless as a computer game could have such devastating consequences.

Here's a worrying thought – could we turn on the news in the future and hear of such a death in Donegal? Admittedly those three cases were extreme, but increasingly young Irish people are struggling to deal with this particular obsession.

I've read first hand accounts of the dramatic impact these games have had on people's lives. Self-confessed addicts explain how every minute of every day can be taken up with these games, with time spent meeting friends, studying and even washing or eating being pushed to the side to make way.

I've read of “gaming widows”, whose relationships have been ripped apart as they tried and failed to compete with a computer screen.

What drives someone to devote hour after hour to something so obviously unproductive? One theme keeps raising its head – escapism. In the virtual world we can be outrageously talented and stunningly beautiful. It's a place without dead end jobs and unfulfilling relationships. It's not hard to see the attraction.

We are surrounded by hurt and suffering. For some, their very existence is characterised by hopelessness. We may not have an interest in computer games, but we do like to divert our attention. This may involve gazing at the TV, playing sport or retail therapy. We have our different ways of getting away from it all.

Surely there's a better solution. Is being distracted from the bad stuff the best we can hope for? Instead of running away from the hopelessness of this broken world, perhaps we should turn to the one who sacrificed everything to give us hope.

“I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” – Jesus

Dreaming of a Dry Christmas
(by Jonny McCollum, working with Milford church)

It looks like Ireland is about to have a white Christmas. How do I know? Because according to one ‘expert’, the last two were in 1999 & 2004 – five years apart. Which means that we’re due to have snow in 2009! Maybe someone should tell this ‘expert’ that weather doesn’t necessarily work like that.

Wouldn’t it be handy if the weather followed sequences like that? There would be no need for expensive meteorological equipment, because forecasting would be child’s play. Planning our lives would be much easier too and best of all, conditions would never take us by surprise.

If only we had known how wet November was going to be. We knew there would be rain (when isn’t there?), but few expected it to be the wettest November on record.

If we knew what was going to happen flood defences could have been improved and homes could have been protected. But sadly, we were taken by surprise. Rivers burst their banks and water gushed out of drains as streets were submerged and housing estates were cut off by torrents of water.

The effects of the floods were devastating. Thousands of people watched in horror as the floodwaters crept towards their homes and eventually forced their way inside. Many experienced the heartbreak of seeing their possessions ruined—furniture sodden beyond repair, carpets defiled by the foul water, electrical equipment destroyed.

Businesses were devastated too as shops, restaurants and hotels were gutted. In a matter of hours, massive investments and years of hard work were rendered meaningless. We ought to feel sympathy for those affected—for some, everything they’ve worked to achieve was wiped out as the waters made their presence felt.

We all ought to take heed; we don’t know what’s around the corner.

If we base our happiness or our sense of security on our possessions, our homes or our businesses we are heading for disaster. If they are destroyed, our lives come crashing down. In fact, Jesus Christ warns us about that very danger. There’s only one way to find lasting happiness and security and that’s by turning to Jesus. He won’t exempt us from the difficulties of this world, but he’ll give us the grace to cope and the promise of a world to come that’s free from hardship.

And unlike the weather, he won’t let us down.

What are your ambitions? I remember that question being asked in English class at school. What nonsense we wrote—one of mine was swimming the English Channel. I suspect we weren’t writing our ambitions, but seeking to impress the teacher.

The ambitions of children differ somewhat from those of adults. But perhaps only in terms of realism. Our ambitions become a little more in tune with our abilities (unless of course you’re on X-Factor).

Ambition is fine, but it has a nasty habit of springing surprises on us. Consider the now infamous Thierry Henry, footballing superstar, and now possibly seeking to switch to Gaelic football, except that he wouldn’t be welcome in Ireland. His ambition to get France to the World Cup finals took a nasty turn for the worse.

Ambition has a habit of narrowing us as individuals. We see our goal and only our goal. Other things that stand in the way become secondary—in Henry’s case, the rules of the game, sportsmanship, integrity, reputation etc. The result becomes all that matters. And it’s true not only for him, but also for us in all sorts of different ways. Consider the pursuit of something ordinary—a quiet evening in. Your aim is peace and relaxation, but your children aren’t aware of that! And in pursuit of your goal, you turn into a screaming threatening monster, resentment and fear is bred, and relationship damaged. Our ambition has blinkered us.

Ambition also has a habit of disappointing us; we get what we aim for, only to find out that it isn’t as fulfilling as we thought. Or we achieve success, only to be eclipsed by others.

Ambition brings fear and anxiety too—what if my goal doesn’t materialise? What if I get it and something threatens it?

Am I saying that we should all be spineless, ambitionless couch potatoes? Certainly not. But there has to be a way of having ambitions that doesn’t narrow us, disappoint us, or threaten us.

The answer is found in Philippians 3:10-11where the apostle Paul sets out his ambition in three strands. He wants to know Christ, he wants to be like Christ, and he wants to be with Christ.

Here is the greatest ambition anyone can have—to know and relate to the infinite God who created the universe, forever. Here is ultimate success. Here is ambition that lasts. Here is an ambition that will never disappoint, be taken from us, threaten us, or narrow us.

Instead, when we get this one right, then all our other ambitions fall into place, and we can enjoy the pursuit of them, whether we get them or not—because our happiness, security, identity isn’t bound up in them, but in who we are before God.

What is your ambition? And where will it take you?

Not me. At least, not the way scientists are trying to go about it. Scientist Ray Kurzweil claims that humans could become immortal in as little as 20 years’ time through nanotechnology. He’s not quite a nutcase; he has a track record of predicting new technologies.

He argues that the technology to replace many of our vital organs could be available by then. Already artificial pancreases and neural implants are available.

He writes, “I and many other scientists now believe that in around 20 years we will have the means to reprogramme our bodies so we can halt, then reverse, ageing. Then nanotechnology will let us live for ever.”

“Within 25 years we will be able to do an Olympic sprint for 15 minutes without taking a breath, or go scuba-diving for four hours without oxygen.”

It still sounds pretty fantastic—ie. mostly fantasy—to me. It would certainly make the Olympics a non-event. And there’d be little need for performance enhancing drugs when we can all run like a gazelle.

Yet from time immemorial man has sought ways to find the elixir of youth and live forever. In more recent years those rich enough have settled for plastic surgery and looking like a youth until they die. And those richer still, and even more hopeful of scientific progress, have had themselves cryogenically frozen in the hope of a second shot at life at a future date.

Much and all as I enjoy life, I can think of few things worse than living forever in this world. This world is profoundly messed up, and for all the progress that science has made, it has failed to deal with the problems of the human heart. The thought of living forever in a world surrounded by selfishness, greed, evil, murder, dishonesty, etc is a depressing one. Despite the compensations of friends, family and pleasures, an eternal nightly litany on the news of abuse, violence, corruption and immorality isn’t a particularly appealing one.

I do want to live forever, but not here. I want a perfect world, one where the problems of the human heart have been dealt with. And that’s not a pipe dream. While it can’t be done by science, it’s why Jesus came to live and die here: to deal with the problem of the human heart, so that that longing that lies deep within us—the hunger to live for more than the few short years we have on this earth—could be fulfilled.

I was browsing through a collection of short essays the other day when I came across several by Robert Louis Stevenson of Treasure Island fame. What intrigued me were the passing references to characters and incidents from another book by a different author. If I hadn’t already read that book I wouldn’t have understood the references.

I filed that away in the recesses of my mind until I was reading a DL Sayers novel “Clouds of Witnesses” where I found more references to the same work.

Then, like many things, once you see it in one place, you start to notice it in many places. Fashion magazines have taken their titles from it. Novelist John Buchan named one of his books after a character.

For a book that was written by an unschooled mender of pots and pans Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan has had a remarkable impact. Bunyan wrote it in the 1670s whist in prison for preaching without a license—strange what you needed licenses for then! It is reckoned to be the most translated book after the Bible, and one of the most significant works of English literature.

References to Vanity Fair, to Sloughs of Despond, to Mr Despondency and his daughter Much-Afraid, Mr Linger-after-Lust, Mr Standfast, Mr Worldly-Wiseman, and a host of other characters, places and allusions crop up in many different places in literature. Mark Twain, Charlotte Bronte, CS Lewis and Enid Blyton, to name but a few, make reference to it in their writings.

It intrigues me that until recently this book was expected by authors to form a part of the mental frame of reference for their intended readers. Allusions were made to it on the understanding that you would be familiar with them. And yet now you could probably count on two hands the number of people around Milford who have read it.

Pilgrim’s Progress is the original, the predecessor of such works as ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’, ‘The Hobbit’ and ‘Lord of the Rings’. It tells the story of one man’s journey from a city facing destruction to a city of delight. It is the journey of Christian on his way to Heaven. It is packed with vivid and rich descriptions, some by now rather quaint. Yet with great insight Bunyan portrays many of the pitfalls of life, and where the answers may be found. And since no one life captures all of life’s experiences, part two of the book retraces the same journey through the eyes of the man’s wife and children, making the journey at a later stage.

Such is the vivid richness and delight of Bunyan’s writing that the greatest theologian of the day, John Owen, when asked by King Charles why he, a great scholar, went to hear an uneducated tinker preach said, “I would willingly exchange my learning for the tinker's power of touching men's hearts.”

In a world where far too many books are published and pass quickly into obscurity, let me encourage you to read this classic. It’s also a great book to read to your kids—I’ve just finished reading a children’s version to my 4 year old, and she loved it. Why not look it up in the library, or get a copy from the Open Door bookshop in Letterkenny.

Forgive me for stating the obvious—It rained all summer. Farmers in particular suffered as silage cuts were delayed, fields turned into quagmires, crops got battered by rain, harvests were late, animals had to be kept inside. It was a tough summer for the farmers. Much and all as the rest of us were disappointed every time we opened the curtains to another dreich day—how much more those in the farming community.

These months are meant to be a delight, the warmth of the sun on your backs, working long hours—yes, but getting a lot done in the time. Not plowtering about in puddles and soaked through to the skin, day after day.

And then came two glorious weeks of sun. Typically it was in September when schools were back! Farmers were like men unleashed. Tractors roared across fields, crops were harvested, silage was cut. Roads were clogged with machinery—and somehow it was okay because we knew they had been penned up all summer. And we loved it too—not perhaps the wafting smell of freshly spread slurry, but the sunshine.

Like children let loose in a sweetie shop we got out our barbecues and barbecued for all we were worth, we sunbathed and crammed a summer’s worth of sunburn into a couple of weekends. We walked around lobster red, with pride. We wanted all those who had fled to the Med to see that we had had sun too.

One farmer said recently “I wonder how many people will stop and thank God for the sunshine?”

He’s right to ask that. It’s so easy to take these things for granted. But at the same time, I don’t think God’s desperately looking for our thanks; that would be to miss the point. The farmer went on to say, “It’s rained all summer—that’s all it took for us to be utterly helpless.”

That perhaps is the key thing. God doesn’t particularly want to teach us lessons in thankfulness, he wants us to see that we are not the great masters of our destiny that we like to think we are. For all our machinery and technology, a little rain left us helpless.

He doesn’t simply want our thanks, he wants us. He wants us to humble ourselves and cast aside the shackles of self-sufficiency and pride. Ultimately, and perhaps surprisingly, the rain was a messenger of mercy, reminding us that we need God more than we realise. And much and all as we hate the rain, we need to listen to its message.

Angels are all the rage at the moment. Dublin woman, Lorna Byrne’s best-seller Angels in my Hair has done the rounds. I remember listening to a radio discussion on angels. It was really intriguing. Various callers talked about their belief in angels: about having a personal angel who turned up at just the right time, about what their angel was called, and how they talked to their angel.

It sounded great – to have this great being take such a personal interest in your life, to listen to your requests and to help you, to be there and never to leave you or forsake you.

Then it struck me – what do you need an angel for when you can have the angel-maker?

Almighty God spoke the angels into existence. They are creatures and he is the Creator. They are finite and he is infinite. He is all-knowing and they are not. He is all-powerful and they are not. He is all-present and they are not.

• He offers to have a close personal relationship with us.
• He then promises to hear and answer our prayers for our best.
• He promises that he will never leave us nor forsake us.

So why bother with angels when you could go straight to the top and have the angel-maker?

Of course my question could be asked in the other direction – What do you need the angel-maker for, when you could have an angel? If they are already offering all that, maybe we don’t really need him?

But there is one thing an angel can never do for you.

No angel will die for you. No angel will suffer God’s wrath in your place. No angel will answer for you on the day of Judgment.

And that is precisely what the angel-maker, the Lord Jesus Christ, offers to all who will come to him.

No angel can stand in your shoes on that day, because no angel went to the cross. In Jesus, God came as a human, so that he could take the punishment that humans deserved, so that he could stand in your shoes. And so the angel-maker outranks, out-saves, and out-performs the angels.

Why trust in angels, when only the angel-maker can offer what is ultimately necessary?

‘For to which of the angels did God ever say, “You are my Son”… And again, when God brings his firstborn into the world, he says, “Let all God's angels worship him.”’ (Hebrews 1:5,6)

Mark Loughridge is the minister of Milford Reformed Presbyterian Church. He can be contacted on 074 9123961 or mark@milfordrpc.org. You can read more or listen online at www.milfordrpc.org

So you’ve come home from holiday, downloaded your photos to the computer, and as you sift through them you have that familiar feeling of disappointment—you’re not as young as you once were. Or as slim. Or as tanned as you would like.

So what do you do? Apparently, more and more holidaymakers seek to improve their pics by computer wizardy. According to an article in The Times, “It may mean slimming an expanding midriff, lengthening the legs or plumping up lips. All will be done at the click of an airbrush rather than the flick of a surgeon’s scalpel.”

Obviously if you’ve a piece of hamburger relish stuck to your cheek, or one of your children is great in one photo and not another—a bit of airbrushing is a blessing. But Snappy Snaps photographic chain says it has seen a 550% increase in the past year in people requesting work on their holiday snaps to make them look more attractive.

The airbrush was once the preserve of film stars, but advances in technology mean it is now available to everyone. Crooked teeth can be straightened and whitened. Bags under the eyes can be removed, wrinkles and frown lines eased and bodies can undergo a magical digital diet in which pounds disappear in seconds.

One delighted holidaymaker on seeing the results said, “Wow, that looks a bit weird now, not like me. But yes, I like it.”

“I like it”—it’s not really me, but it’s how I like to think of me.

Of course what happens when reality meets the image? When people look at your pics and look at you and say, “Boy you’ve really gone downhill since the summer?” And when old age comes and we take out our photograph albums we’ll gaze longingly at what we never were, and have to tell our grandkids, “This isn’t me”.

While it might only be a bit of fun in some cases, or tidying up in others, it’s also an indicator as to where we are really at. We’re obsessed with appearance, continually putting it over substance. And now it has become a parody of itself. It used to be that we accepted natural beauty over deeper character traits, that was bad enough. Then it was the fakery of enhanced surgical beauty, which hid a two-dimensional person behind its three-dimensional enhancements. Now it’s faked fake beauty, that doesn’t even exist outside the two-dimensional page.

But more than an indicator of fickleness, it’s an indicator of how much we want to hide from the truth about ourselves. And if we are prepared to do it for a few wrinkles, or inches, how much more will we do it about the deeper recesses of our hearts. Yet our only hope lies in absolute judgment day honesty about who we really are, not who we like think to think of ourselves as. You can’t airbrush your heart, it needs direct intervention by God to work beauty there. And to ask for that, we need to stop hiding from the truth.

There’s a fine line between fishing and standing on the shore looking stupid. Some time ago I trod that line. Well if I’m being honest I never made it to the sane side. I went fishing with a few friends, although for all I caught I mightn’t have bothered with the licence. I could have stood on the bank enjoying the sun and the scenery for the afternoon without paying the €10. Ah well, there’s a fine line…

Anyhow, as I was standing minding my own business, not troubling the fish, seeking to look to the casual passer-by like an accomplished fisherman, something lit on my neck. Whatever it was it inserted a hypodermic needle and started to siphon off a fair share of my lifeblood. As I went to take action its cousin assaulted my ankle – thus giving me two large welts for the price of one. Clegs, horseflies, I don’t know what you call them, but they’re a real pain in the neck, or wherever they land. And wherever they bite stays itchy for days; the slightest touch sets it off again.

But if you have the patience you can see a sight that will bring a pleasurable sense of revenge. Apparently (at least 3 reputable farmers assured me of this) if you let a cleg suck for long enough, it will keep on going until it bursts! “Brilliant,” I thought, “what a stupid insect!”

Yet how many of us try to suck the pleasures out of this life, only for it to backfire on us for all eternity.

In prophetic-like fashion, with words that seem startlingly 2009AD and not 29AD, Jesus once told a story about a rich cleg—sorry—man. This man said to himself after a prosperous year, “I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I'll say to myself, ‘You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.’”

Just like the cleg inserting his needle and sucking you dry. And like you watching him expand until breaking point, God said, “You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?” (Luke 12:18-20)

Are we really here just to get all we can out of life? Remember the cleg.

Mark Loughridge is the minister of Milford Reformed Presbyterian Church. He can be contacted on 074 9123961 or mark@milfordrpc.org. You can read more or listen online at www.milfordrpc.org

(By Robert McCollum)

Do you ever think much about the snooze button?  I imagine it is the next best button to that little morphine button they give to patients in the hospital.  And probably just as addictive.  For some, the snooze button on their alarm clock is possibly the greatest invention—a device we can hit while we are still half asleep so we can put off the ‘inevitable’—getting up and facing the music.  Not only can you hit it once, but over and over again—it is the ‘ultimate’ in procrastination.  Gone are the good intentions of the night before.  Everything is now all about those extra minutes.

Who doesn’t love to indulge a little in the snooze button now and then?  We set our alarm clocks a little earlier than we need to get up just so that we can hit the snooze.  
 
Not only do you get your feel good factor, but you then get to go back to sleep!  For 10 whole minutes! And how is that sleep?  Those 10 minutes are better than the 6 or 8 hours you might have gotten the night before.  You get to stay in that ‘half-awake, half-asleep’ place where you are aware you are asleep and everything is timeless. 
 
We can do the same with life—hitting the snooze button when a wake up call comes along. You know occasionally something makes us think about more serious issues—illness strikes, or a near brush with death, or a bereavement or an article in the paper. We are forced to think about what happens when we die… but before it gets too serious we hit the mental snooze button, and put it off for another time.
 
Those who keep hitting snooze on the clock miss out on the rest of the day. Likewise when we hit snooze on the bigger issues. You know that it is time to do something about your eternal destiny. Why do you keep putting it off?  You hear the alarm, but are you repeatedly hitting the snooze button and sleeping through your life? 

Wake up, get up and live it. Jesus came so that you may have life, and life to the full.

“I’m searching for God” is a phrase I occasionally hear, and sometimes wonder what the person means. At one level it’s perfectly straightforward—there’s a spiritual inquisitiveness, or a hunger to find out more. They’re aware that there is more to life than job, car, home, family, success, relationships—that we are made for something bigger than 70 or 80 years. That’s great, I wish that more were hungry for this sort of knowledge. If that’s you, let me encourage you to do a course like Christianity Explored to find out more about the God you are looking for. If you are interested, please contact me.

But sometimes as I listen to other people using the phrase I detect something else. My girls love to play hide and seek; one of them loves it so much that sometimes she hides when we’re not even playing the game. At some point we realise she is missing, and panic ensues until she’s found hiding in the wash-basket or some such place. That’s not what God is doing—hiding away, waiting for people to start looking for him. He doesn’t play hide and seek. You don’t need to look too far to find him.

What’s meant here when people say “I’m searching for God”, is that they’re looking for a god they like. They’ve heard about the God of the Bible but they don’t like what he says, and yet they still have that hunger for something greater to live for, or for an acceptance, or redemption greater than we can manufacture.

They’re caught on the horns of a dilemma—they want a God big and wonderful enough to be worth following, yet not big enough to make demands that we should follow. They want what one writer calls a ‘Stepford God’—named after the film ‘The Stepford Wives’. These beautiful wives did their husband’s bidding, never contradicting, but they turn out to be robots. That’s the sort of god some people are looking for—wonderful enough to please them, but undemanding enough not to require deep change. And such a god is as incapable of a personal relationship as one of the Stepford wives.

We need a God who isn’t a ‘Yes’ man, but one who is big enough to challenge us and tell us the way things are. When you meet that God, a God who is prepared to tell us truths we don’t like about ourselves, then you know you’ve found the real God and not a figment of your imagination.

This is the true God who reveals himself in the Bible—he isn’t hiding.

Ireland is full of religion. North and South are bunged to the gills with it—so bunged with it that, like a post-Christmas-dinner nausea, we often don’t want to hear or see another bit of religion. We want to move on from the old ways. Or perhaps, in these days of financial uncertainty, people find themselves looking back to the old ways once more, seeking to find security and hope.

Whatever the case, we need to recognise a difference between religion and biblical Christianity—or to use another phrase ‘the Gospel’. The two are radically different, as different as credit and debt, or as different as hire-purchase and gift.

Let me illustrate it with a series of contrasts:

• Religion is based on my performance
• Gospel is based on Jesus’ performance—his life, death and resurrection.

o Religion says if I obey, God will love me.
o Gospel says because God loves me, so I will obey.

• Religion sees people as either good or bad depending on how they live.
• Gospel sees all people as sinners who need Jesus.

o Religion depends largely on the family you are born into.
o Gospel depends on a new birth into God’s family.

• Religion has no hope for the really wicked.
• Gospel says you can’t be too wicked for God to forgive.

o Religion claims that my behaviour makes me acceptable to God.
o Gospel claims that God’s acceptance makes me behave better.

• Religion is about getting something from God.
• Gospel is about getting God—it’s a relationship.

o Religion sees Heaven as something to be earned.
o Gospel sees Heaven as a gift to be accepted.

• Religion sees hardships as punishment for sin.
• Gospel sees hardship as a means to grow in godliness.

o Religion ends in pride or despair.
o Gospel ends in humble joy.

• Religion brings an uncertainty about our standing before God.
• Gospel brings certainty based upon Jesus’ work.

Over the next few Sunday mornings we’re going to be looking at St. Paul’s letter to the Romans—a group of Christians who lived in Rome. Paul, himself once a deeply religious man but now trusting in Jesus, illustrates and explains the difference between Christianity and religion.

In doing so, he reaches deep into the hearts and lives of people, revealing to us the truth that we know—namely, that we are much worse than we like to admit. His purpose in reaching deep and casting aside the layers is to bring a profound and lasting healing, forgiveness, peace and reconciliation with God.

Our studies of the first three chapters of Romans will take us right to the heart of the problem with us as individuals, but also deep into the heart of God, where the solution is found. Why not come along at 12-noon on Sunday for a look at this ancient but ever-relevant letter, which has been changing lives for 2000 years? Or feel free to listen on-line at www.milfordrpc.org once the sermons are uploaded.

Mark Loughridge is the minister of Milford Reformed Presbyterian Church. He can be contacted on 074 9123961 or mark@milfordrpc.org. You can read more or listen online at www.milfordrpc.org

A friend tells me that her work has a ‘swear box’ for Lent. In other words, if your mouth runs free and loose, you have to cough up some cold hard cash as a punishment. In an unusual twist she got them to recognise that throwing around words like ‘God’ and ‘Jesus’ count as swearing. This is no minor achievement in itself, given how freely they fly in our culture.

I found it intriguing was that there was a lower tariff on blasphemy than normal scatological/biological swearing. Apparently it is a worse misdemeanour to speak wrongly of bodily functions than of God. It strikes me that there is something slightly out of kilter with that. I’m not arguing that we should find the scatological/biological swearing acceptable, but that we perhaps need to recalibrate our vocabulary, getting a sense of perspective.

I could get all precious and talk about how it offends me and others to whom the name of Jesus means everything. But that’s not the reason we need a rethink. It offends God. If I treated your name the way people treat his, you’d be upset. And so he warns us that we are not to use his name lightly, or in trivial, pointless ways—as a swear word, a space filler, or an exclamation.

People need to look at how they use and abuse God’s name, not because they cause offence to others, but because they are digging a monstrously deep hole for themselves. Out of concern for themselves they need to hear what God says:

“You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.” (Exodus 20:7)

‘Guiltless’ isn’t the sort of thing you can buy off with a euro or two in a box, much less advance payment for a week’s worth. It’s going to take something much, much bigger—so big, in fact, that we can’t pay it; God has to offer to pay it for us. And that’s what Easter’s about.

Mark Loughridge is the minister of Milford Reformed Presbyterian Church. He can be contacted on 074 9123961 or mark@milfordrpc.org. You can read more or listen online at www.milfordrpc.org

“Never criticise” is the mantra that we are all told these days when it comes to working with young people.

Teachers are told not to use red pens because it crushes the spirit. Instead of getting an ‘F’ for ‘fail’, you now get a ‘U’ for ‘ungraded’—as if that will make you feel better! All this because we want to wrap people in cotton wool, and shield them from the reality that there are some things they aren’t good at—in case we harm their self esteem.

Of course there is some truth in it—some have only known the harshest of voices and the sternest of criticism from those who should have been encouraging and loving.

But as often happens, we have swung to the opposite extreme, swallowing the whole sickly nonsense of self-esteem. We tell ourselves that it is more productive to shower ourselves and others with praise.

Yet psychologists have realised that it simply doesn’t work. Instead it produces people who only think that they are good at something, but are unable to take even the mildest criticism. The Dean of Education at Stanford University keeps a box of Kleenex in her office for students who, for the first time in their lives, receive tough feedback and can’t deal with it.

The conclusions of an in-depth analysis on self-esteem included the following: high self-esteem does not of itself earn children higher grades; it does not make people better at their jobs; humility, rather than self-regard, is a better predictor of who will make a successful leader.

Roy Baumeister, Professor of Psychology at Florida State University, writes “After all these years, I’m sorry to say, my recommendation is this: forget about self-esteem and concentrate more on self-control and self-discipline.”

Interesting. That’s exactly what God says in his word.

“This is the one I esteem: he who is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word.” declares the LORD. Isaiah 66:2

Then Jesus said to them all: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” Luke 9:23

In my line of work I sometimes hear the refrain, “I have no self-esteem”, and it has often made me wonder. After all, we are only reconstituted earth, which lives in rebellion against its creator—what have we to be esteemed about? True esteem comes only when we realise our worthlessness, and guiltiness before God, and come to him seeking forgiveness. And then, when he forgives us and brings us into his family, we realise that we are more loved than we could ever have imagined. And that is where our esteem comes from. It isn’t to be found in ourselves—that is a modern-day version of the emperor’s new clothes.

Esteem is only worthwhile when it is realistic. And it is from God alone that we get a true sense of who we are.

“As for man, his days are like grass, he flourishes like a flower of the field; the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more. But from everlasting to everlasting the Lord’s love is with those who fear him.” - Psalm 103:15-18

All over the news this week has been the case of Alfie Patten and his girlfriend Chantelle Steadman who gave birth to a daughter Maisie. Why the fuss? Alfie is 13, and Chantelle is 15. Add to mix the fact that they aren’t even sure if Alfie is the father since she had several other partners.

Leaving aside the particular details of this case, how is it that parents can equip their kids for making right decisions? Is life simply to be a list of no’s or a catalogue of don’ts? Every parent knows that a ‘no’ or a ‘don’t’ is one sure-fire way to get kids to do something. Another option is to govern by fear—if you do this you’ll be for it. Or the more sophisticated version—if you do this you’ll make a mess of your life. It’s hardly the best approach to family relations.

Another approach is to govern by pride—we’re the such-and-such family, and we don’t do a thing like that. But this feeds a tendency to look down your nose at others.

Yet another approach is to think that if we give enough information to young people, they will make informed and wise choices. This too is staggeringly naïve—and has proved a startling failure with more information available than ever before about sex, drugs and alcohol and yet higher rates of teenage pregnancy, STDs, alcoholism, and drug abuse.

What is the answer? Last week at church we were looking at the mother of Moses and how, although she had him for only a few short years before Pharaoh’s daughter whisked him away, she managed to instil into him something which held him fast against all the temptations of the court of Pharaoh—the riches, the power, the women. She wasn’t there to provide guidance at every step. She wasn’t there to check up on him. So what was it she did?

She infused him with such an understanding of who God is and what God offers that for the rest of his life Moses could assess everything in the light of that. The book of Hebrews tells us that he refused to be known as royalty, that he walked amongst all the pleasures which money can buy and walked past them because he was living for something bigger.

Young people are hard-wired to be dazzled—the daily grind of their own and even their parents’ lives bores them. They look for something bigger and better than what they are currently experiencing. And a parent’s task is to do what Moses’ mother did and give our kids such a view of the greatness and glory and wonder of God, and of the joy that God has in store for those who delight in him, that they will pass by the distractions of this world and live for something bigger and better.

It will guard them from temptation, enable them to make wise choices, and equip them to live with balance, perspective and humility. Having a view of God’s greatness will move them (and us) to nobility. They will become people who live worthwhile lives because they have got hold of something worth pouring your life into. Your children need something worth living and dying for—and only one thing is that big: God.

I’m reading a book at the moment called “A Quest for More” by Paul Tripp. I’ve only the first chapter read and already it has got me thinking. Tripp starts off the book with the classic scenario from beauty pageants the world over.

The beautiful girls parade across the stage, and then each is brought forward to the microphone to utter some deep cherished hopes for her reign as Miss Wherever. Usually it is something along these lines, “I want to work for world peace, and to solve world hunger, and to promote equality”.

We snigger and roll our eyes—noble goals, but so grandiose and out of reach.

Yet Tripp goes on, not to mock, put to point out that there is “woven inside each of us a desire for something more—a craving to be part of something bigger, greater, and more profound than our relatively meaningless day-to-day existence.”

Maybe that’s why we strive to do things that others haven’t—climb mountains or row oceans—or to invest ourselves in causes—political, social, sporting or whatever—to give us a sense of being part of something bigger and more significant.

That buzz you get from being there when your school won a final. Or from being part of a team refurbishing an orphanage. Or from voting in some historic event. Or from even watching the inauguration of the first African-American President of the USA. That sense of I was there, I was involved, I did that.

Tripp says, “We aren’t constructed to live only for ourselves. We were placed on earth to be part of something bigger than the narrow borders of our own survival and our own little definition of happiness.”

This resonates with me. We were made for something much bigger than mere existence. We were made for something great. Not necessarily to be great—for that would be arrogance—but to be involved in something that matters. We all want to matter.

Perhaps the beauty contestant isn’t so far off the mark after all. In that often mocked moment she has got something right—the desire to live for something big.

But where can that be found? There is nothing big enough or grand enough in this world to satisfy that desire. Ask the rich and famous. Tripp tells of one such man he came across who had everything, but complained “I have it all, why can’t I be happy?” Tripp writes, “he had constructed his own kingdom, indulged his every dream, met his every need… but he discovered it was an empty kingdom, and he was an empty king”.

The tragedy was not that he attempted too much, but that he had settled for too little.

It’s only when we look Godwards that we find something big enough and grand enough to live for. Something worth living and dying for.

Perhaps in these days when we are seeing the emptiness of possessions, and the futility of pursuing material goods, we need to rethink what it is that we are living for. And ask the question: Is it big enough?

Mark Loughridge is the minister of Milford Reformed Presbyterian Church. He can be contacted on 074 9123961 or mark@milfordrpc.org. You can read more or listen online at www.milfordrpc.org

It’s that time of year when pundits of various stripes stare into their crystal ball and give us their insights for 2009. There’ll be everything from the well thought out pieces to the sensationalistic—some of which will prove right and others will leave their authors hoping that no-one will remember their folly.

Alas, in these days of the internet, folly retrieval is often only a click or two away. Witness these examples from such notable worthies as Bill Gates, Alan Sugar and others:

1. The iPod will never take off – Sir Alan Sugar in 2005
2. No need for a computer in the home – Ken Olsen, founder of Digital Equipment Corp in 1977
3. "Nuclear-powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality within ten years" – Alex Lewyt, president of a vacuum company
4. TV won't last because people would, "soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night" – Darryl Zanuck in 1946
5. In 1933, after the first flight of the Boeing 247, a plane that could hold ten people, a proud Boeing engineer reportedly said, "There will never be a bigger plane built."
6. Nobody would ever need more than 640KB of memory on their personal computer– Bill Gates in 1981, allegedly.
7. Spam will be solved – Bill Gates, 2004.

I’ve got no crystal ball, but I have something much better—God’s word—so I’d like to make a few predictions based on it.

1. God’s word will still be surprisingly relevant to people’s lives, sadly many will continue to ignore it.
2. Humanity will not be wiped out by meteor collision, nuclear holocaust or anything else. The end of the world will only come with the return of Jesus Christ (not necessarily in 2009!).
3. Christianity will not die out—the good news of the gospel will still be proclaimed across the world, and accepted by many.
4. Difficulties will come on personal, national and international fronts, and the wise will see them as wake-up calls from God.
5. No-one will find that they are too bad for forgiveness from Jesus, although many will think that they are too good.
6. Pride will still lie at the root of every interpersonal problem—and the solution will still be found in placing ourselves in a right perspective before God.
7. The perpetual search for significance and identity will continue, and fail—yet true and lasting significance, purpose and identity will still be found in the eternal Jesus.
8. A fresh start and new strength will be available from Jesus, no matter what mess you’ve made of your life.
9. People will bemoan a loss of values, and continue to deny the foundations such values are based on.
10. There will continue to be a famine of hope and shattered dreams in this world—yet Jesus will continue to offer hope, forgiveness, acceptance, love and a future beyond our wildest dreams.

I wish you all a Happy New Year, and trust that you will find what God is offering to you in 2009.

Mark Loughridge is the minister of Milford Reformed Presbyterian Church. He can be contacted on 074 9123961 or mark@milfordrpc.org. You can read more or listen online at www.milfordrpc.org

The Americans have a saying when you ask them how they are, “Same old, same old” – meaning nothing much has changed. Christmas is a bit like that. Same old songs playing, same old carols, same old decorations, same old dinner.

I was talking to some fellow ministers the other day who find themselves taking round after round of carol services. They expressed something of the same sentiment – the same carols, the same readings every service, every year.

Then there is the usual outcry that society has removed Christ from Christmas; that Xmas is becoming more and more commercialised, and nobody stops to think about what it is all about. I suspect that it’s all related. Imagine that every year you went to a birthday party for a one year old – the same one year old every year. The first year or two it would hold its excitement, but after that you would start to get incredibly bored with it. You know precisely when the music is going to stop in “Pass the Parcel”, you know who is going to spill their juice all over the table, you know what will be in each present as they are opened, and the reaction to each present. A every year it would be the same – a sort of Groundhog Day for birthdays.

It strikes me that Christmas is the same. If your only contact with Jesus is the little guy in the manger – how utterly tedious it must be. Every year, there he is – same old story, same old carols about a kid in a cattle trough and three kings.

The problem is that Jesus has grown up, and we don’t let him. In our minds we’ve kept him as a baby. We’re forever stuck in a time warp, looping around endlessly on the same old things. And we get bored.

Why do we do it? After all what can be more amazing than the all-knowing, all-powerful, triumphant, creative, loving, wise, pure, sovereign, merciful, gracious, patient, compassionate and glorious God coming into the world on a mission to rescue and restore? How can that be boring?

The problem is that we don’t want Jesus to grow up – because when he grows up he makes demands of each of us. And we don’t like that, so we prefer to pretend that he is always in a manger, and then we find him boring. It is we who are the kings of tedium, not him. The solution is not found in working hard at celebrating the ‘real meaning’ of Christmas with more enthusiasm, but in getting to knowing this majestic grown up Jesus the 364 other days in the year.

I spent nearly half an hour looking for a Christmas card for my wife on Monday. It’s a remarkably hard thing to get the right card – especially when you rule out the crude ones which no man in his right mind would give to his wife, suggesting that he is only interested in her for one reason!

And when you have done that, what are you left with? Plenty of variety of shape and size—but all the card writers this year seem to have eaten from the same bucket of sentimental goo. It might nourish them, but frankly it was more likely to turn my stomach, never mind cause my wife to laugh uproariously at me for spending €6 on it.

You know the sort of turgid stuff they write “My dear, the first moment I set eyes on you, I loved you with all of my soul” – what sort of shallow numbskull would ever say that to his wife? It’s just a polite way of saying “Your looks are all that matter to me—I care not for the beauties of your character, the gentle way you deal with others, the wisdom you display…”

And then they usually end up saying something like, “I love sharing every moment with you, and will do for all eternity.” Could you really give that one? I’d be afraid my wife would call to mind all the moments in the past year when I was far keener to watch the rugby, the football, or read a book than to share that moment with her. It might be dangerous for a relationship to send that card!

I haven’t browsed the “To my husband” section for obvious reasons, but I presume they are of the same ilk. Unless of course those cards are written by women—then they might say something more perceptive.

I think I’m looking for the sort of card that says, “You’ve put up with me again for another year—I don’t know how to thank you, but I love you even more than I did this time last year.” Just a Christmas card that’s honest—not one that sounds like a fairy tale, that paints me as Prince Charming!

But maybe that’s really what people want—a way of keeping up the pretence about themselves; a little piece of card to put a nice warm fuzzy glow on everything for a day or two before we have to get back to reality. Is it just papering over the cracks?

Perhaps we should ask what does the Christmas card I send to my wife/husband really say about me? Or perhaps are we too afraid to face up to ourselves? You see, the Bible encourages that sort of self-assessment. God sees behind our masks. Shouldn’t we have a peek too? The Bible knows that, although we will find out that we are far worse behind the mask than we realised, God’s solution is more radical than simply papering over the cracks. When we turn to him we find hope of transformation that starts inside and works out.

Mark Loughridge is the minister of Milford Reformed Presbyterian Church. He can be contacted on 074 9123961 or mark@milfordrpc.org. You can read more or listen online at www.milfordrpc.org

I came across an article recently by Professor Carl Trueman in which he compared his grandfather’s generation with this present one. Here are some illuminating excerpts:

“If the poverty and hard work of my grandfather's era left men middle-aged at thirty, the ease and trivia of today's society seems to leave us trapped in a permanent Neverland where we all, like so many Peter Pans, live lives of eternal youth. The world of my grandfather was evil because it made him grow up too fast; the world of today is evil because it prevents many from ever growing up at all.

“The answer is not a naïve, nostalgic hankering for a return to an era of poverty and cruel hardship. Rather it is surely obvious: we need to put aside childish things and start acting like adults.

“Pascal put his finger on the problem of human life when he saw how entertainment had come to occupy a place, not as the necessary and momentary relief from a life of work, but as an end in itself. When entertainment becomes more than a pleasant and occasional distraction, when time and income become devoted to entertainment and to pleasure, when sports teams become more important to us than people—even the people to whom we are close—then something has gone badly wrong.

“The frothy entertainment culture in which we live is a narcotic: not only is it addictive, so that we always want more; it also eats away at us, skewing our priorities, rotting our values as surely as too much sugar rots our teeth.”

There is little doubt that we have had it easy over the last few years. We have become an entertainment-based culture with a proliferation of nite-clubs popping up all over the country, and ever more ingenious entertainment systems available for our homes. People have had more money to spend, and less inclination to save it.

Yet the shallowness of much of what is on TV, or escapism in its various forms or a live-for-the-moment mentality creates its own shallowness in our personality. Ed Welch in his book, ‘Depression: A Stubborn Darkness’, writes “While prosperity allows us to hide, hardship peels off masks we didn’t even know we were wearing.”

We have staved off hardship with a cocktail of money, drink, drugs and pleasure, and it has left us worse for the experience. A person may look 45 but still have the character of an adolescent. Where do we go?

We do not rejoice in hardship for hardship’s sake, but only because it shows us the futility of the things in which we are investing our lives in. Perhaps this current economic crisis will remind us that as long as we invest in that which is fleeting we will remain trapped in Neverland. The only way to grow up is to seek to invest our lives in one who will give us the strength to weather the storm, and who shows us what is ultimately valuable.

The ancient writer put it like this: “Why should I fear when evil days come? Man, despite his riches, does not endure. This is the fate of those who trust in themselves. Like sheep they are destined for the grave… But God will redeem my life from the grave; he will surely take me to himself.” (Psalm 49)

Apparently ‘spirit bottles’ are big business in Beijing these days. The Times reports that one store claimed to be selling more than 100 per day.

What on earth is a ‘spirit bottle’? Nothing more than an empty bottle with a label such as ‘Courage’, ‘Good Ideas’, ‘Unconditional Love’ or ‘Great Wisdom’. The sellers openly state that there is nothing but air in the bottle, yet people keep buying them.

One man browsing the shelf of bottles said, “If you are depressed and need to cry, or angry and need to vent, these spirit bottles give you the empty space you need. It is a concept that we really need right now.”

The biggest sellers in this are ‘Courage and change’ and ‘Sense of security’.

It strikes me as sad that in a nation mourning a massive loss of life this is their answer to trouble – buy an empty bottle and put all your troubles in it. Or buy an empty bottle and look to it for hope.

Then again, where do you look for hope when your country has effectively banned God? You can place your hope in human endeavour, but that doesn’t bring hope in the midst of disaster. It’s no surprise that the people of Beijing have nowhere to put their hope but in an empty bottle.

It would be easy to mock, yet we in Ireland have as many superstitions—whether they are in the old folk tales or in the new spiritualities that are doing the rounds. Bizarre empty bottles all of them.

To be fair, some would want to place biblical Christianity in the same category of wishful empty-bottle hoping.

The difference is that this bottle isn’t empty, and the proof lies ironically in something that was empty—the tomb. The resurrection of Jesus underscores the validity of Christianity.

How sad that men and women could be conned into placing their hopes in empty bottles of whatever unfounded superstitions or beliefs.

Ultimately there is no such thing as alternative spiritualities—just many empty bottles, and only one full one.

Imagine crawling into a shop from the desert—which bottle would you buy? One of the empties, or the one full of life giving water?

The only message of empty bottles is the emptiness of their hope. However, God in his rich mercy has given us a clear message from Heaven, not in a bottle, but in a person—Jesus Christ, who said, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink… whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

I haven’t seen the TV programme ER for years, but a friend drew my attention to a powerful scene in a recent episode called “Atonement”. It is between the hospital chaplain and an older patient, dying with cancer. He had been a prison doctor who administered lethal injections to those sentenced to death.

In one of the cases, after a young man was executed, a policeman was found to have framed the suspect. The doctor is wracked with remorse and wants forgiveness as he now faces his own death. The hospital chaplain is introduced and the dialogue goes like this:


Patient: How can I even hope for forgiveness?
Chaplain: I think sometimes it's easier to feel guilty than forgiven.
Patient: (Looks confused) Which means what?
Chaplain: That maybe your guilt over these deaths has become your reason for living. Maybe you need a new reason to go on.
Patient: I don't want to go on. Can't you see I'm old? I have cancer. I've had enough. The only thing that is holding me back is that I am afraid. I'm afraid of what comes next.
Chaplain: What do you think that is?
Patient: (Looking more surprised) You tell me. Is atonement even possible? What does God want from me?
Chaplain: I think it's up to each one of us to interpret what God wants.
Patient: (Flabbergasted) So people can do anything? They can rape, murder they can steal all in the name of God and it's ok?
Chaplain: No! That's not what I'm saying.
Patient: (Now agitated) What are you saying? Because all I'm hearing is some New Age, God is love, one size fits all crap. No! I don't have time for this now!
Chaplain: It's ok. I understand…
Patient: (Interrupts angrily) No you don't understand. You don't understand! How could you possibly say that? Now you listen to me. I want a real chaplain who believes in a real God and a real hell.
Chaplain: I hear that you're frustrated, but you need to ask yourself . . .
Patient: (Interrupts again) No I don't need to ask myself. I need answers, and all your questions and your uncertainty are only making things worse.
Chaplain: I… I know you're upset…
Patient: I need someone who will look me in the eye and tell me how to find forgiveness because I am running out of time.

It is a powerful moment. It highlights the reality of the power of a guilty conscience, and the inadequacy of shallow answers to such guilt. The reason that guilt has such power is because the guilt is real. That’s what I like about the Bible’s teaching about forgiveness – it deals with real guilt. And it deals with it in a real ‘blood and guts’ way.

Guilt is real. Hell is real. But sometimes in an effort to make God seem nice, people do away with the realities that provide real help. Without acknowledging a real God and a real Hell there is no help for those with a guilty conscience.

The real God (Jesus) went through the real Hell (facing punishment) so that guilty people could come to him and ask him to accept them and forgive them. And because of that he says, “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool” (Isaiah 1:18).

So a married couple from Bosnia who didn't realise they were chatting each other up on the internet are divorcing.

Sana Klaric (whose pen-name was ‘Sweetie’) and husband Adnan (pen-name ‘Prince of Joy’) spent hours in an online chat room telling each other about their marriage troubles. It wasn’t long before they were falling in love again.

The truth emerged when the two online lovers agreed to meet up in real life, and found themselves face to face with each other. What a momnent! Now they are divorcing, each accusing the other of being unfaithful.

According to reports Sana said, “I was suddenly in love. It was amazing. We seemed to be stuck in the same kind of miserable marriage. How right that turned out to be.”

Her husband Adnan, said: "I still find it hard to believe that Sweetie, who wrote such wonderful things, is actually the same woman I married and who has not said a nice word to me for years".

I don’t know what’s the saddest part – the hypocrisy of accusing the other of unfaithfulness, or the stubborn refusal to see that they could make it work after all, or the seeking of happiness in a relationship apart from the one your promised yourself to for life.

Contrary to popular myth, the love is not an emotion, but an act of the will. The word love is a verb, a ‘doing’ word as my school-teacher would have said. Love is not found when we follow our hormones, or our heartstrings, but love is developed when we continually act in a loving way day after day to another person. Certainly, love is not devoid of emotion, but emotion is not the driving force. If it was, marriage would be as unstable as our emotions – and that is what happens to those who make their feelings their guide.

What is sad about this couple is that if they had put the same effort into their marriage as they put into demonstrating their caring, wonderful characters to an apparent stranger, then they would have found their marriage transformed. But to do that you need to be able to repent and ask for forgiveness and give it – and that’s a gospel thing.

So we’ve all been issued with a free copy of “The Rules of the Road”. Ours arrived in last week, but it was only today that I got round to opening them.

I’m sorry to see them being issued—that means that I wont have marvel at people pulling onto roundabouts in front of me, or stopping on the roundabout to let me on to it. No more will people think that green means ‘Go’ and red means ‘Go faster’. No more will people think that that fancy little stick on the side of the steering column is for hanging their Magic Tree air freshener on; instead they will use it to let others know what direction they are turning. No more will people ignore the specially prepared place in the middle of some roads where you can pull into when you are turning right, so that you don’t block the traffic.

Alas I will miss the quirks and foibles of my fellow drivers. And doubtless they will miss mine. The ‘Rules of the Road’ will fix it all. A driver’s life will be idyllic and peaceful, even in the traffic jams which snarl up Letterkenny.

That’s if it’s made it out of the plastic wrapper it came in.

Go on, have you opened yours yet? Be honest—or is it still sitting on the kitchen worktop? Sure we all know what’s in it—what would we need to read that for?

It’s funny that no matter how bad a driver we are, the problem always lies with others. In our own minds we think that we aren’t that bad. We can always point to someone who is worse than us—“You think I’m bad, should see my great uncle Horatio!”

That’s the flaw in giving everyone a copy of the Rules of the Road—no-one thinks they need it. I know, because it’s the same with Bibles. Most homes have one, but when was the last time you cracked it open? Is its spine still in pristine condition, like the day you got it? Perhaps it’s sitting on the shelf in a cupboard right beside the “Rules of the Road” which you got years ago when you did your driving test—that special shelf where important-but-never-to-be-looked-at books are kept.

Doubtless if we read it we’d find that there’s part of our lives we’ve been using to hang a Magic Tree air freshener on which instead has a much more important role to play. For example, our conscience. What is that little voice that nags at us and tells us something is wrong? Is it something that we hang a few good deeds on to freshen up our lives a bit, or did the manufacturer put it there for a greater purpose?

Or we’d find that the symbol which looks like a crossroads sign has a significance far beyond anything we ever imagined.

You’ll need to crack open God’s ‘Rules for Life’ to find out.