A Christian country?

I am intrigued by all the fuss there has been over the recent speech by Prime Minister David Cameron affirming that Britain remains a Christian country, should be proud of it, and should evangelise the fact. A letter signed by more than 50 prominent figures protested against this, maintaining that Mr Cameron had no right to call this a Christian country as only a small minority were Christians.

I have always been of the opinion that you cannot truly call a country Christian until every last person has bowed the knee before Jesus Christ and acknowledged Him as Lord. This runs counter, I realise, to the view held since the days of the Protestant Reformation that a person’s country determined his or her religion. This strange concept produced the historical oddity (as I would call it) that anyone resident in a parish had an automatic right to a baptism, a wedding or a funeral in their local church, whether they were believers or not. To my mind this has resulted in no end of disastrous misunderstanding.

So talk of a Christian country seems to me misleading. What you can reasonably say, however, is that we have a country whose laws and institutions have been based on Christian values. We abandon these at our peril. I found it most unsettling when a leading judge gave as his opinion that judgements in court could no longer be given on the basis of Christian values and standards of behaviour. Does that mean that people will be able to get away with behaviour that has always over the years been considered unacceptable? A great deal of misery, it seems to me, will follow.

A Christian country? What really counts is a Christian heart and spirit triumphing in one individual after another. The Book of Acts talks about this in terms of “souls” being added to “the number”:

And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.” And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.”
So those who received his word were baptised, and there were added that day about three thousand souls. … And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favour with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. Acts 2:38-41,46-47 ESV

I was mightily encouraged by a service of believer’s baptism I attended on Easter Sunday. Four young adults declared their allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ, and all in their different ways witnessed to the fact that this allegiance had transformed their lives. It was a thoroughly wholesome and positive experience.

But there’s another country I’ve heard of long ago,
most dear to them that love her, most great to them that know;
we may not count her armies, we may not see her King;
her fortress is a faithful heart, her pride is suffering;
And soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase,
And all her ways are ways of gentleness and all her paths are peace.

Cecil Spring-Rice, 1859-1918

That, of course, is anathema to the sceptics. A great deal of work needs to be done to dispose of the persistent opinion that Christianity is dangerous and that by teaching Christian ways to children we will somehow pervert or brainwash them. In fact the reverse is true. Letting them find their own way and giving them no guidance for belief will result in despair. Generations will grow up following patterns of thought and life that are harmful, because different from what the Maker originally intended. If this is allowed to continue, we will all be the losers.

How would you cope?

Currently I am reading a book called “Outpost of Occupation”, written by Barry Turner. It shows how the Channel Islands survived Nazi rule during the years 1940 to 1945. It was of particular interest to me because I was born in Guernsey.

It is shocking to read of the terrible deprivation that those in the Islands faced during the war, especially after D-Day, when mainland France was cut off and could no longer supply any resources either to the German garrison or to the islanders. Today we take it for granted that essentials and even luxuries will be freely available. Yet only a few generations ago there were people just like us, people whose families we may have known, for whom utter starvation was often only days away. It is more painful still to read of all the crises of conscience that went with the situation – the moral dilemmas that faced people during those desperate days. Even doing a basic kindness could mean arrest and death for both the helper and the one helped.

Yes, there is so much that we take for granted. We can ask many questions: how would we react? How would we survive? Would it make or break our characters? Would we help others or push them aside in a desperate bid for self-preservation? These are things that very often we can never know until we are put to the test.

When the time comes, will we be found sufficient or will we be found wanting? Sometimes we are such a puzzle to ourselves that we simply have to rely on our sovereign God knowing all about us, understanding and being patient with us.

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,

your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. Psalm 139:13-16 NIV

For our part all we can do is fortify ourselves against the day of calamity with a living faith in the Saviour. Beyond that we can only trust that a true sense of values, guided and shaped by God, will see us through in the end.

To encourage us, God offers us Himself as an inspiration. The Lord Jesus Christ had everything when He was with His heavenly Father in glory. He let all of that go, even His dignity and His physical well-being, in order to sacrifice Himself for us and to win for us forgiveness and newness of life. It is very hard to imagine what it cost Him. No ordinary mortal has ever started from such heights and been brought to such depths – and then ascended again!

As we come back to our own situations, often really quite pampered, we can think of our Lord and what He willingly surrendered to make us spiritually rich. We should also remember that our fellow human beings, not far from us, are even now undergoing friction, deprivation, desperate times. Often the reason is not the high-flown politics that the news presenters love to attribute regional conflicts to. On the ground, the cause of conflict may equally likely be a squabble over limited resources.

May God help us to be realistic about who we really are, to appreciate all that we have, to steward it wisely, and to ensure that the world has its fair share. It may well be in our own interests on earth and it will be building up treasures in heaven. Our incentive is that God has no intention of being mean towards you and me in heaven simply because we lived in a rich country on earth. Charles Wesley, the sweet singer of sovereign grace, once wrote these lines:

Thou waitest to be gracious still;

Thou dost with sinners bear,

That, saved, we may Thy goodness feel,

And all Thy grace declare.

Its streams the whole creation reach,

So plenteous is the store,

Enough for all, enough for each,

Enough for evermore.