How Do We Make Sense of Life?

Do we use life to make sense of life?

That sounds a bit weird, but what I mean for example is this: my society says violence is bad and Pride is good. 

What if your society says that violence is good and Pride is bad?

As someone once famously said, ‘if God is dead, and mankind is highest, then good and evil are decided by a majority vote’.

So what if someone says killing terminally ill people off is wrong? Tomorrow they might introduce ‘assisted dying’.

Life isn't the measure of whether something's right or wrong. Murdering people is either right or wrong: it can't be both.

Do we use life to make sense of the Bible?

Here's where I zoom in a bit. 

Say we've been brought up to believe that violence is bad and Pride is good. 

How do we make sense of the Bible? 

There's lots of violence in the Bible. There's Pride too, but violence and Pride are still wrong (unless it's a just war against a violent opponent).

Let me use another example of flag waving. There's a lot of flag waving going on in the UK nowadays. 

Maybe we've been brought up to say that violence and arrogance are wrong. So maybe we're uncomfortable about people waving Saint George's Crosses (the England flag) with its association with the violent Crusades. Maybe we think we should wave an England flag without a Saint George's Cross (which would literally be a white flag of surrender to the Islamists who are trying to take over). 

How do we respond to violence and arrogance? With violence and arrogance? Or with the Gospel? The Gospel includes violent and arrogant people getting forgiven and transformed by Christ crucified. Let's fight not with flags or fists, but with the Good News.

Some people, professing Christians included, prefer to wave the flag of the terrorist ‘state’ of Palestine, that wants to wipe Israel off the map. They may as well be flying swastikas or Islamic State flags. Are they really as English people so full of self loathing that they want Islam to take over and annihilate them?

I've probably strayed into this section already, but how do we…

Use the Bible to make sense of life?

I often mention Simon the Zealot and Matthew the tax collector as examples of how Jesus can unite opposing people with opposite ideologies.

Simon wanted to kick out the Romans; Matthew had worked for them. The Kingdom of God was big enough for both of them.

The Kingdom of God is big enough for flag waving Christians, whether of genocidal Palestine or racist England. Yet I suspect Jesus would tell ‘Tommy’ to lay down his Saint George's Cross and take up a more metaphorical cross. I think Jesus would tell ‘Mohammed’ to lay down his Palestinian flag and let Christ's banner fly over him which is love.