The night I took my life in my hands

Paul at the Aeropagus

It was a good night for everyone but me. The food was delicious and highly appreciated by the guests. Attendance was up. The travellers were very attentive to Peirce's talk on "New Life".

But for me it was a different kind of evening. It started so well. I was excited to snag a seat at a table with a young Frenchwoman who professed faith in Jesus last week, and a French couple who are very engaged and engaging. Also at the table were two new German guys and a lad from Yorkshire.

As soon as the talk was over the young German guys monopolised my attention, and I never got back to my amiable French friends. 

They started out by "politely" correcting me thus - it is inappropriate, they said, to refer to religious/spiritual claims as "facts". Perhaps it was a language problem, and my husband did not mean to make this embarrassing mistake of speaking of "facts".

A conversation followed in which every relativistic, naturalistic fallacy you can think of showed up in a sort of ghastly, unstoppable parade. There was barely any kind of recognisable train of thought to hold the fallacies together, and if I managed to reasonably confront one of them, they just tag-teamed on to the next one. It was like Cliff's Notes on the last 200 years of German philosophy. 

"Do you know," one of them demanded gravely, "that it has been absolutely scientifically proven that God didn't create the world like the Bible says?" Actually, that was probably my favourite part of the conversation because it gave me a good, honest laugh. Neither of them could tell me how it had been scientifically proven, though they did seem concerned that after hearing this information my faith might instantly crumble, reducing me to quivering mess.

I could give you a blow-by-blow and tell you about the couple of moments that I think I might have actually lodged a tiny doubt in their minds. But that's not the point.

At the end of the evening, while I had not been actually rude or unfriendly to them, I knew that in my heart I had not been really acting out of love for these young men. I let their arrogance and condescension irk me. I wanted to WIN the debate -- for Jesus, yes, but also because I wanted to hang their rotten worldview out to dry. 

While I was busy shadow-boxing a whole education system, I missed the thing. What was the thing? All the truly soul-destroying things they claimed to believe -- it was a smokescreen. The screen dropped for a moment and here's what was said in that moment:

"I don't want it to be that way [i.e I don’t want there to be objective truth]. I want to make my own way. I don't want God to give me a purpose. I will make my own purpose."

And that, my friends, is the reason. Not all that guff about religion being violent, and morality being a social construct, and love being made up of nothing but chemicals. I want to be in charge. I'll give up on love, meaning, and rationality -- I'll give up everything -- if only I can be in charge.

"They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator" Romans 1:25

If you find yourself in a maddening debate with someone - whether it's because you are in over your head philosophically or because your opponent won't face facts - be patient. The Holy Spirit can show you what the real thing is. Not the smokescreen reasons for rejecting God, but the real heart reasons. If you are attentive, they will eventually show up.

Francis Schaeffer, himself a very skilful debunker of rotten worldviews, said that "love is the final apologetic." And any Christian, even if he doesn't know much about German philosophy, should know a good bit about love.

Getting home that night, feeling restless and dissatisfied, I picked up a book from my bedside table and was surprised and comforted by this from C.S. Lewis:

"I have found that nothing is more dangerous to one's own faith than the work of an apologist. No doctrine of that Faith seems to me so spectral, so unreal as one that I have just successfully defended in a public debate. For a moment, you see, it has seemed to rest on oneself: as a result, when you go away from that debate, it seems no stronger than that weak pillar. That is why we apologists take our lives in our own hands and can be saved only by falling back continually from the web of our own arguments...from Christian apologetics into Christ Himself."

So my friends, I give you the story of the night I took my life in my own hands, and escaped to Christ.

Highways, Byways, and Bus Stops

'Master,' the slave said, 'what you ordered has been done, and there's still room.'Then the master told the slave, 'Go out into the highways and lanes and make them come in, so that my house may be filled.' - Luke 14:22-23

The second week at Pilgrim Dinners was an instance of God’s sovereign grace. 

At 7 of the clock, when dinner was meant to start, we had zero guests. Seven happy team members doing last minute prep, one happy team member playing lovely live music, but zero guests. ‘It’s ok, it’s only 7,’ thought I. 

Fast-forward all of five minutes, to 7:05, and we had… zero guests. At this point, hope flagged. “Praise God we had people last week,” I thought, “maybe God gave us those folks to encourage us to endure a week with no one?” Not much of a pump up. 

Jump with me forward another five minutes, to 7:10 on the clock, and... zero guests. We had some very tasty food plated and ready, a great vibe to the room, and I’d prepped a talk on Faith which (rarely for me) I was feeling I’d really nailed in the writing, but… we had no guests. We had our posters up across the valley, we’d fliered backpackers, and sent cars to shuttle guests from the two hostels, but… no guests. None, zip, zero. 

“Ok,” thought I, “let’s sit down, and I’ll give the talk to the team. It’ll be good for us too."

And then, out of the nowhere, praise to God, 12 people appeared: 8 Japanese travellers, a couple from Korea, a guy from the Netherlands, and an Aussie youth. And the twenty of us + kids sat down and did Pilgrim Dinners, with a great discussion after. 

Now where did these folks come from? Very much God’s sovereign grace through one tenacious team member, who did not lose hope but like the slave in Luke 14 kept going out asking folks to join us, long after we were meant to start. She even braved the local bus stop and asked some hoodied youths to join us (hence our lone Aussie, who was more scared of us than we of him, considering his friends had to dare him to come, and they kept checking on him to see that he was still alive). 

It was a great night, for which we praise God and have learned a good lesson - keep asking. And so we pray and ask again for guests to come each Thursday to Pilgrim Dinners, so that one day they would fill our Father's house at the Great Banquet.

At the Gates

Enjoy the community artwork on the walls!
Did they have this in OT times?

"Fellowship is having your church friends over, and that's great, but hospitality is inviting the stranger in. ... Hospitality by definition means meeting the stranger at the gates...and bringing the stranger in."
- Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, in this interview

In the world of the Old Testament, the community gathered at the city gates. Elders and judges sat and heard cases. News and current events were shared. Strangers arrived here, looking for hospitality. (In Genesis 19 and Judges 19 you can read two stories of strangers arriving at the gates and being offered hospitality. Things don't go so well from there on, but the horrifying developments of these stories are partly why they were included - hospitality was a very solemn duty and violating it was serious.)

So where or what are the city gates in Huonville, Tasmania? I suppose you might make a case for a local pub, or perhaps the visitor information centre. But for us, it is the public library, where many travellers come to read the newspaper, check email, and glance over community notice boards.

On October 30th, we took ourselves and our hospitality to "the gates". We laid tables, heated up pots of curry and chili con carne, prayed, and waited for the strangers to come.

And they came. 

Yes, those are baby legs on my lap.

On the first night, five of them came, from Taiwan and Hong Kong. They shared a meal with us, they listened attentively to Peirce's talk on God, and they discussed it with us. 

They asked questions. They listened. We asked questions. We listened. I talked with "A" about her fear of the supernatural world and the fact that she hasn't carried on her family's traditional ancestor worship. I shared with her that as Christians we are free to both acknowledge the reality of the spiritual world, and not live in fear of it. Another guest, "M", claimed his only belief was in naturalism, but admitted during our discussion that naturalism offers no explanation for the origin of all things.

So please pray for us every Thursday, as we go to the gates, and welcome the strangers in Jesus' name.