Ten Hundred Word Pentecost

Before Mr Jesus went away into the sky to be with the Father, he promised that he would send the air-person-God to help his friends to know what to do. One story says that he also gave people the air-person-God before he went away, but that’s usually ignored.

When the air-person-God arrived, all the first God-liking people started to use different ways of speaking, so that people from all over the world could understand what they were saying.

Ten Hundred Word Sin

God is very concerned about what we do, and wants to make sure that we do some things that he likes, and especially that we don’t do things he doesn’t like. When we don’t do what God wants, it’s called ‘sin‘. Sometimes, these are things that almost everyone agrees that people shouldn’t do, and sometimes they’re things that most people don’t see a problem with. But God says they’re bad anyway, and that’s all that matters.

When the first people were made, they never did bad things, so everything was fine. Then one day, they did a bad thing by eating from a tree, which meant that they were always going to do bad things and so were all the rest of us. That doesn’t make sense to me, but they were told to do it by a talking ground-animal, so maybe that explains it.

Ten Hundred Word Heaven

There’s a nice place in the sky where God lives. If we’re good and don’t do bad things, or if we do bad things but say sorry for them, we get to go there when we die. It’s not really in the sky, because if it was we might be able to find it and try to get in. Like all nice places, the people who go there don’t want lots of people bothering them in their nice place when they’re trying to have fun.

The nice place in the sky must be really fun, because it’s meant to be a good thing to go there for all of time. I think I’d get bored of even the best places in the world if I had to be there for ages and couldn’t go somewhere else.

Theological certainty is less comforting than you’d think

One of the strangest things about looking back at the past is noticing how certain I was about everything. It’s hard to explain, and people often have a hard time understanding it, but during the period when I really, truly believed, I was absolutely certain that I was never going to change my mind. I felt that I’d finally found the truth, and that could never be undone.

It wasn’t as if I was moving in line with a different worldview, more as if I’d discovered a new fact. People can change their opinions, but why would I ever think that France wasn’t a country, now that I knew it was? I didn’t usually talk of knowing, but that’s what it comes down to – I had special knowledge, and I couldn’t imagine that ever changing.

Ten Hundred Word Forgiveness

When we do bad things, we should do something to make it better. If we don’t, God is allowed to do bad things to us to make it even. We do a bad thing that he doesn’t like, so he does a bad thing that we don’t like. God likes blood to make it better, but there aren’t enough animals for all the bad things we do, so Mr Jesus died so that there would always be enough blood to make God happy. Now all we need to do is say sorry.

God of the Gaps, the ultimate argument from ignorance

A recent discussion reminded me of how often I hear arguments for God’s existence that stem from a lack of any explanation for our existence. I can see the appeal of such a position, and it used to be just about the only thing I could cling to when religion made no sense. The universe must have come from somewhere, therefore God.

In more sophisticated forms, or possibly in the hands of skilful bluffers, this argument would also incorporate claims that there is no experimental or observational evidence for abiogenesis, for example, or some similar position. Fundamentally, though, the argument remains the same and has the same flaws.

How and why the how/why distinction is irrelevant

“Science answers the how questions, and religion answers the why questions” – that’s a common claim from people who are arguing that science poses no threat to religion, or that they’re Non-Overlapping Magisteria, in Stephen Jay Gould’s rather grand phrase. It’s another one of those many ideas and beliefs that I’ve previously accepted, but am now starting to question.

It’s not controversial that science tells us how things work. The precise position is a little more complicated than that, because the scientific method only really draws provisional conclusions, and is more about the best way of finding out how things work, rather than dictating that this is right and that’s wrong, but it’s perfectly reasonable to say that if a question begins “How”, you’ll want to turn to science to answer it.

Ten Hundred Word Communion

Just before Mr Jesus was taken to be tried for saying he was God, he ate some food with his friends. He gave them all some food and said it was his body, then gave them some drink and said it was his blood. He told his friends to do the same thing to remember him, so when God-liking people meet together every week, they do something that’s sort of the same, but a bit different.

Ten Hundred Word Baptism

When people want to show that they like God, they usually go under water to show it. The idea is that their old life dies, and they start a new one. But they have to remember to come back above the water, or they really die and go to see God straight away.

When Mr Jesus wanted to show that he liked God, he went under water and God the Father spoke to say that He liked him, while the air-person-God came down from the sky, like a flying animal. That doesn’t happen for most people.

Ten Hundred Word Resurrection

Every year, on the day when people give each other sweet things that look like baby flying animal cases, we remember that a long time ago, God’s son came back to life after being dead. This is called ‘resurrection’.

After this happened, he was a bit like when he was living before, but also a bit different. He still had deep cuts in him from when he was killed, and people could put their hands right in them and touch him, so it’s a bit like he was a dead body that could walk around, like in movies. But he could eat normal food, not just brains, and he could also walk through walls and other way cool stuff.