http://www.milfordrpc.org/index.htmlTirconaill Tribune Columnenmark@milfordrpc.orgCopyright 2007 Mark Loughridge2012-05-15T14:50:41+01:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 Tue, 15 May 2012 14:51:13 +0100mark@milfordrpc.orgCurrent Events2012-05-15T14:50:41+01:00http://www.milfordrpc.org/Newspaper/files/4d5fb6e6f60414487714d8dd8ab9bd57-331.html#unique-entry-id-331http://www.milfordrpc.org/Newspaper/files/4d5fb6e6f60414487714d8dd8ab9bd57-331.html#unique-entry-id-331(By Stephen Steele)

100 seconds can make all the difference. Just ask your nearest Manchester United fan. That’s how close they were to winning their 20th league title last weekend, when a late, late goal from Manchester City changed everything. For City fans—some of whom had already left the stadium—despair was turned to joy.

However that dramatic turnaround is nothing compared to what happened in the final hours of a first century terrorist, whose name we don’t even know. We do know his story though, because of whom he died alongside—Jesus.

At one stage, this hardened criminal was cursing Jesus up and down—but then something changed. Maybe it was the sight of Jesus on the cross beside him, dying as no-one else ever had: punished, yet innocent; suffering, yet in control.

Luke records the 100 seconds that changed this man’s eternal destiny. In fact, it probably didn’t even take that long. What good works did he have time to do? How could he undo a life of criminality, and most likely murder? All he said was: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus response? “Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

For Jesus, there are only ever two options: Heaven or Hell. This dying terrorist was given the absolute guarantee that he would be in Heaven. In this late, late show he had snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. No time to turn over a new leaf or take part in religious rituals.

“Surely it can’t be that easy?” is our natural reaction. But no-one watching Jesus, and realising that he was suffering not just physical punishment but the wrath of God for sin, could call it easy.

The lesson from this dramatic transformation isn’t that we can leave getting right with God to the last minute. This deathbed conversion is the only one recorded in the Bible—to presume that we’ll suddenly have the desire and ability to turn to Jesus at the end would be folly.

However we do see what it takes for us to snatch victory from the jaws of the defeat of our lives. We need to do what he did, and hang all our hope on Jesus. If we turn from our rebellion and trust in him we can be as confident of closing our eyes on earth and opening them in Heaven as this man was when Jesus said: “Today you will be with me in Paradise.”

Man City were lucky; you don’t have to leave it as late as they did.

]]>mark@milfordrpc.orgCurrent Events2012-05-08T14:50:06+01:00http://www.milfordrpc.org/Newspaper/files/fae8b2ea0b9483569d0ad33c4d153e18-330.html#unique-entry-id-330http://www.milfordrpc.org/Newspaper/files/fae8b2ea0b9483569d0ad33c4d153e18-330.html#unique-entry-id-330A friend of mine wrote this piece recently—and I thought it worth reprinting:

There are so many people suffering at different levels and in different ways. The financial collapse of the country has affected the vast majority of Irish people—special needs assistants removed from schools, hospital wards closed, A&E units overflowing with people on trolleys for hours, families pressed to the limit of emotional endurance wondering weekly whether to pay for heat or to put food on the table, families so overcome that they leave the home they have saved and slaved for, people with pensions have seen their investments fall so low that they may have to continue to work for years to come.

On top of all this new taxes seem to appear with regular frequency—the property tax, septic tank fee, etc. Taxes are rising; services are dropping. The situation is nothing less than a national scandal.  Yet those that were elected and paid well to watch over our country have sailed off into the sunset with pensions and benefits that are breathtaking in their enormity.

These people, still in the middle of life, will live off the backs of others into old age with no shame. The bankers with their immoral pension pots add more anger to people’s pain. Our so-called leaders have emptied the cupboards as they left office. The new national leaders have no reason to point the finger at their predecessors and blame them—they were there and had expensive advisers; they knew what was going on. They are culpable to such an extent that should silence them as they impose hardship on the people.
 
What I am driving at is this—for the sake of natural justice and to instill confidence in us who will be paying for the giant waste and criminality for years to come—we as a people must demand and seek that those responsible be stripped of their pensions and benefits and that those who were criminally culpable should go to jail.

Rather than seeing them as leaders, history should portray then as figures of shame. How can we admire such corrupt and self-serving people? The elderly, the vulnerable, the needy, the average person is suffering because of this mess. Some have taken their own lives because of their financial burdens.
 
In the Bible we read: “When the sentence for a crime is not quickly carried out, the hearts of the people are filled with schemes to do wrong” Ecclesiastes 8:11. 
 
This verse teaches us that others will do the same thing if the guilty are not punished. The attitudes of “If they got away with it, why shouldn’t I?” or “It’s coming off a broad back” are already all too common.

Justice should be pursued, for God is not simply a God who is interested in our souls, but who calls for justice to be done for the sake of the vulnerable and the oppressed.

But if it is not done here, then there is a sentence passed in the court of heaven that stands against them.  The Lord may be slow in executing the sentence but do not mistake the delay for indifference.  God’s delay may be misused by the wicked; they may continue thinking that they will get away with it, but be sure your sin will find you out and you will give an account for your leadership.

Matthew Brennan - Clonmel
]]>mark@milfordrpc.orgBible2012-04-29T14:49:12+01:00http://www.milfordrpc.org/Newspaper/files/20a115694a345c9c8fe05fec49f5a033-329.html#unique-entry-id-329http://www.milfordrpc.org/Newspaper/files/20a115694a345c9c8fe05fec49f5a033-329.html#unique-entry-id-329(May’s Verse - by Stephen Steele)

Have you ever expectantly watched a TV debate on an important issue, only to see the contributors spectacularly miss the point? In your frustration you feel like shouting at the TV – “a blind man on a galloping horse could see it!”

This month’s verse seems, on first glance, to be an example of Jesus completely missing the point. This popular young preacher has been teaching in a house that’s so packed that no-one else can get anywhere near him, when suddenly those in the room start to notice bits of plaster falling from the ceiling. As they look up, they begin to see a small patch of light which gets bigger and bigger. Eventually the hole is big enough for the four guys on the flat roof to lower down their paralysed friend on a stretcher—so determined are they to get him to Jesus.

The crowd wait with baited breath to see a miracle. But our verse tells us:

‘Jesus said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”’ (Mark 2:5)

What?! Here’s a man who can’t even move, yet Jesus doesn’t see his blindingly obvious physical disability as the first priority! Only after declaring him forgiven (to the outrage of the religious leaders), does Jesus heal the man’s paralysis.

If you could ask God to do one thing for you, what would it be? So often we see our biggest needs as physical health or relational restoration—perhaps a long-term illness, or broken relationship. But to Jesus, the biggest need of each of us is spiritual; we need to be cured of the most pervasive disease of all—sin.

The religious leaders’ outrage at Jesus’ blasphemous (as they thought) statement was partly because the words are easy to say—any charlatan could come out with them. But true forgiveness is always costly. When people wrong us, it costs us not to make them pay for what they’ve done. Forgiveness always costs.

For Jesus to say these five words cost him the ultimate price. He had to go to the cross, not just to suffer physically at the hands of the Romans, as many before and after him did, but to quench the wrath of God due us for our sin. The one who had created the universe by speaking a word, could not simply say ‘Let there be forgiveness’. A price had to be paid.

If you could ask God to do one thing for you, what would it be? Would it be the thing that cost him the most? Or are you content just to keep on asking for the things that cost him nothing?

Jesus came to this earth so that the words of our verse—“Son (or Daughter), your sins are forgiven”—could be true of you. Are they?

]]>mark@milfordrpc.orgCurrent Events2012-04-22T14:48:47+01:00http://www.milfordrpc.org/Newspaper/files/a9b0f53289c9baddc0816c3a23e399c5-328.html#unique-entry-id-328http://www.milfordrpc.org/Newspaper/files/a9b0f53289c9baddc0816c3a23e399c5-328.html#unique-entry-id-328This last week has seen a furore over the use of various f-words. One by radio presenter Ray D’Arcy in describing his opinion regarding the Catholic church, and the other, by Mayo TD Michelle Mulherin, describing consensual sex outside of marriage (fornication). In one, it was the use of a word deemed socially unacceptable, and in the other an opinion was deemed socially unacceptable.

Much amazement seems to have gathered around this so-called archaic word ‘fornication’—are we really to uphold such an ‘outmoded’ idea in 21st century Ireland? Are we to keep sexual intimacy within the confines of marriage? Surely what you do sexually and with whom you do it are your own business?

For many Irish men and women the idea of sexual restraint is a throw back to the negative view of sex often promoted by the Catholic Church. However such a view of sex does not reflect the Bible’s own teaching which sees it as a good gift given by God to people for pleasure and procreation within the context of marriage. There is nothing stuffy or negative about the Bible’s view, in fact it is precisely because it values sexual intimacy that it seeks to preserve a proper environment for it.

Our problem is that, in response to too negative a view, we now have too low a view. We have been conned into thinking that sex is purely a biological function. That’s like saying that a Porsche is just a car. Many would like to believe that sex isn’t that special, more like an old Lada. But in God's eyes, sex is more like a Porsche than a Lada. It is valuable. It demands care. It is something precious. You don’t use a Porsche to race around the fields in!

That means that the right answer to a negative view is not to swing to another extreme—that of sexual liberty, behaving like a bunch of children let loose in a sweet factory—rather the right answer is to find what the Bible teaches and to abide by it.

Fornication might be a ‘religious’ word, but it is still a good word, and one whose concept we would do well to value.

However, the ultimate problem is that we don’t like authority; we don’t like the idea of God poking his nose into our lives and calling the shots. We think we are capable of running our own lives. That’s where the heart of the problem lies—we want to keep God at arms length, for emergencies, but we don’t want him to interfere in other matters. But if he is any sort of a God worthy of the title, he will know better and he will tell us how to live, whether we like it or not.

Our reaction to concepts like ‘fornication’ may tell us more about ourselves than we like to admit.

]]>mark@milfordrpc.orgIn defence2012-04-17T14:48:19+01:00http://www.milfordrpc.org/Newspaper/files/219ef88acb7a82cef4ae22ef59378724-327.html#unique-entry-id-327http://www.milfordrpc.org/Newspaper/files/219ef88acb7a82cef4ae22ef59378724-327.html#unique-entry-id-327I’ve just finished Wilful Blindness by Margaret Heffernan—a superb book dealing with many of the factors which cause us to fail to see what we should see. It might be biases, an overloaded mind, emotional involvement, fear of change, money, the blind hope that a problem will just go away if we don’t look at it, failure to think outside the box—whatever the reason, there are many ways to miss the things we should otherwise see.

One of the most illuminating chapters was the final one entitled “See Better”. In it Heffernan seeks to outline steps we can take to counteract this tendency. Earlier she had told of Alice Stewart, a doctor who discovered a link between childhood cancer and x-raying pregnant women. Due to the medical establishment’s blind faith in this new diagnostic method they refused to accept her findings for 25 years, causing needless death and heartache to many. In the final chapter Heffernan identifies part of the strength of Dr. Stewart’s case:

‘When Alice Stewart conducted her survey on childhood cancers, she worked with a statistician named George Kneale… What is most interesting is how Kneale himself thought about his job. “It’s my job to prove Dr. Stewart’s theories are wrong. I am, in effect, trying to disprove her. Hence the strength of our long association.”’

Heffernan continues, ‘In his seeking for disconfirmation, Stewart knew that Kneale protected her from potential blindness in her own thinking… Kneale and Stewart understood between them that the risk of losing their theory was outweighed by the danger of being wrong.”

We need to seek disconfirmation of what we believe if we want to guard ourselves from blindness.

I was struck by this recently as I surveyed my father-in-law’s bookshelves. He had recently passed away and had a strong faith in Jesus Christ. Yet his bookshelves displayed the most interesting range of books. About a third were to do with his faith; a third novels; but the remaining third were across a wide variety of topics—from history to politics to biography to science to mathematics. In this section were a host of books hostile to aspects of Christianity—from just about everything Richard Dawkins had written, to Christopher Hitchens, Stephen J. Gould, Stephen Hawking, the Gnostic Gospels, the Lost Gospel of Judas, and many others.

Here was a man who actively sought disconfirmation—not because he didn’t want Christianity to be true, but because he wanted to be sure it was. His faith was not a blind faith, but an informed faith.

I suspect that there are many who naively believe—both in Christianity and in scepticism. You need to seek disconfirmation. I find many Christians don’t actually know what they believe. And I find many sceptics equally guilty. Ironically sceptics can be just as guilty of blind faith. Will you take time to examine your belief or disbelief, rather than persisting in wilful blindness? For one there lies the risk of a wasted life, and for the other lies the danger of a lost eternity.
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