Starting Points

It has been rather cold and snowy recently, with some excellent days of freeze and thaw, which makes for good ice conditions in the mountains. Good if you like climbing that is. I went out earlier this week for a mountain walk, along with a friend and his group of clients. It was to be a long, fairly steep walk in places, but a very straight-forward day out, taking in England's highest peak, Scafell Pike.

Grand. A walk in the mountains in full winter conditions. Great fun; dead easy; what could possibly go wrong?

My boots were misbehaving and the integral gaiters in my salopettes were obstructing my view to sort out my laces. Basically I couldn't put my boots on. No problem though: I could hear the chatter of voices nearby indicating the group had not yet set off. I treated myself to a quick bite of hill fuel and slowly emerged from behind the car to join the rest of the team.

The team which had long since departed. The voices I had heard were those of the farmer, accompanied by the babbling stream nearby. They could not be more than a couple of minutes ahead I surmised, so I dashed through the farm yard expecting to see the tail-ender merely a couple of hundred yards away.

Seeing no-one anywhere puzzled rather than alarmed me. Following this initial debacle I legged it over the footbridge, and, spurred on after hearing a shout higher up the mountain, I stepped up a gear and strode up the tiringly snowy path. Being an expert tracker (Hmmm...) I could see a number of fresh tracks, even dog tracks of the size made by Pippa, so I knew I would soon catch up, make my excuses and apologies and get on with the day.

Ten minutes later, having run out of tracks and examining a view devoid of any humans I took out my map, and decided to plan a route which would intersect a point where I knew we had all intended going. It was only then that I found that my map started just a little South of where I was actually standing.

No possibility of navigating an intercept route. No chance of finding a real path, and absolutely no chance of meeting up again with the team.

What a twit.

I did try to circumnavigate the hill I was on, and kept trying to find good vantage points from where I would surely catch a glimpse of someone. All I succeeded in doing was to become increasingly tired as I cut into the soft snow with my boots, and on occasion having to concentrate rather too hard on avoiding some pretty serious consequences should I have lost my footing (consequences like broken limbs, plural, or worse). Of course, as a Christian minister I never once became frustrated or evenly slightly fed up. And of course because I have such a sense of value, being in Christ and all that, I never once felt foolish for taking too long to put my boots on, and then not knowing which flaming footpath I was meant to start out from.

Yeah right.

So as I loitered back at the cars a couple of hours later, something took shape in my fiendish preacher's mind: It's all about starting points. If you get that wrong, if you do not know the actual fact of where you start from, then you have no chance of continuing the journey and certainly no chance of achieving the right end point. Here are some erroneous starting points that will really land you in the mire:

• There is no God therefore just do what seems right to you. 
• All roads lead to Heaven so follow whatever you want, as we all end up in the same place in the end anyway.
• God exists to make me happy. Therefore if I am not happy it is His job to sort it all out. Otherwise I have a right to be angry with Him.
• Because of all the bad things in the world that means either God is not there or He is a rotten swine.
• There is nothing that exists that we cannot see, feel or touch. There is no spiritual realm.
• Hell does not exist. A loving God would never send anyone to hell. He's just too nice.
• God would never ask me to do something that I did not like doing.
• I have certain rights. If God is a loving God He will allow me to fight for my rights.
• Evangelism is someone else's job. It's just not my calling.

Boy, I could go on all day. I would welcome a bunch more if you want to comment. So as a minister, here are a few of my Starting Points. I say them not to offend or make people take sides, but I merely want to point out a few things that I believe are real fundamentals, true cornerstones of my Christian faith and daily walk. It's not exhaustive, but addresses a few of the points raised above:

• Of course there is a God. You can't have order inventing itself out of chaos, and you cannot have design without a designer. 
• A loving God must hate. He must hate evil, He must hate what is contrary to His character, and a Holy God must hate all that is not Holy. To do otherwise would make Him unholy. And that would never do now, would it?
• The end of all things is the glory of God, not the happiness of man. Man exists to glorify God, whether we like it or not. God does not exist to make man happy. Jesus will be worshipped by everything that has ever existed, once He returns to claim that which He has paid for. Love it or hate it, there it is.
• As a Christian I have one right. Only one right. It is found in John's gospel chapter 1 verse 12, "But as many as received Him to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name." Everything else, everything, is a bonus: health, money, happiness, family, career, you name it. Joy, however, is a promise, if we focus our minds on eternal things, rather than on the here and now.
• As Christians our lives should focus on Jesus all day, every day, and that is the best evangelism in the world. If you claim Christ and yet do not reflect Him in your life in some way, if you never have conversations that bring Him up and what He is doing in your life with those that do not claim Him, than I have to challenge the nature of your "Christianity". Ask yourself this: "How has Jesus changed me forever this year?" If you have no answer, be very concerned and start a conversation with Him to find the answer.

I need to stop. I am preaching, I know. But if you  were lying in the snow next to a car for over 4 hours wishing you were not such an incompetent twit, and hoping your feet would not hurt any more from the cold, then perhaps you would start to preach to yourself for a while as well.