Uncovering the purposes of God

(I) Introduction

What does it mean to Uncover the Purposes of God?

In legal terminology disclosure is the process whereby the prosecution and defence exchange their documents before a trial so that each is aware of what the other is claiming to be the facts of the case, and the evidence they hope to produce to support both allegations and denials. Through the documents each side gets an idea of where the other is heading, what evidence they will be relying upon to persuade the jury of their case, and what their purposes are.

In uncovering God's purposes both for ourselves and for our society, we are involved in an act of uncovering purposes which God has already disclosed to us in creation.

In this lecture I will argue that God's purposes can be uncovered through a threefold approach of trust and worship of a loving God, love of neighbour and caring for creation. God will be God without humanity. But without God humanity would be naught.

The story is told of a man who lived in an area prone to the most terrible floods. One night the rains begin to fall heavily and the residents are urged to evacuate. The local police come to escort the man away, but he tells them, "It's ok God will take care of me". The rains continue and the coast guard come to take the man away to safety. "It's alright," he says "God will take care of me". Finally the man is forced up on to his roof as his house is flooded out by the rains and an army helicopter comes to rescue him but he refuses to board saying, "It's ok God will save me". The man drowned and when he got to heaven he came before God and asked "Why didn't you rescue me?"

"I tried to save you," replied God. "First I sent the police, then I sent the coast guard and then I sent the army."

As this story demonstrates, trusting and worshipping a Loving God is easier than we would sometimes make it. God's purposes are here for us if only we care to stop, look and hear. Rather than waiting for God to act on our terms, we need to see what God is already doing in our world and to step out in faith and trust if we are to involve ourselves in his purposes.

This evening I am going to invite you to join me in spending some time with people who have uncovered the purposes of God in their lives and in our country's history. Through their trust and worship of a loving God, their love of neighbour and their care for creation they have shown where the purposes of God might be found and where we need to begin if we are to learn from their journey.

Having considered how God's purposes have been discovered in the past, I then want to consider a world where God's purposes are discarded, before concluding with a brief reflection on what we as individuals and as a society might do in our attempts to uncover the purposes of God.

There are doubtless those who would look at the title of this lecture and suggest that you should all be provided with a Bible, be told to sit in silence and read it, and at the end you will have discovered God's purposes. Well I will not do that, although I do have some sympathy for the starting point of that particular argument.

There is certainly a need for a reference to and an understanding of the Bible if we are serious about uncovering the purposes of God. However there are serious issues about interpretation and a careful handling of sacred texts which need to be borne in mind if we are to avoid the pitfalls of literalism on one hand and pure symbolism on the other.

Perhaps the worst system for handling sacred texts is that favoured by the occasional Bible reader who seeks God's purpose by turning to random verses in the Bible in the hope of revelation or receiving an inspired word. Such a faulty system may well lead to a verse such as Matthew 27:5 "Judas throwing down the pieces of silver in the temple, he departed; and he went out and hanged himself." And then randomly followed by Luke 10:37 "Go and do likewise."

This is not meant in any way to belittle the sacred texts of faith. Later in this lecture I will argue that Jesus' words as recorded in the Gospels are an invaluable guide as to uncovering God's purposes and that for our evidence of this we need to consider the role played by Christian pioneers of social justice in our country's history.

However, we must remain alert to the very real danger of misusing texts or selectively applying texts so that they simply become ways of seeking approval for acts which are truly abhorrent to God. This is a topic I will address more fully towards the end of my lecture.

(II) 'Your God is Too Small'

In his 1951 seminal work Your God Is Too Small, the author and priest, J.B. Phillips described how society had surrendered a vision of an all powerful creator God for an image of a deity which was variously conceived of as the old man in the sky, the policemen of the conscience or a parental hangover.

People no longer believed in the God of the Bible argued Philips because sociologists and others had re-categorised faith as being a prehistoric necessity of prehistoric man which has no place in the modern world, where man's own achievements have rendered any sort of conception of God obsolete. At best God was seen as a fluffy pink duvet who may ease our discomfort, should we find ourselves, through bad luck, lying on a sociological bed of nails and an economic pillow of broken glass.

Fifty years on, the situation described by Phillips has, if anything, become worse rather than better. Is it any wonder then that for many, the place of faith and religious belief systems in general is now described as being "widely viewed as the lowest form of knowledge."¹

Britain is tired of its own culture and the unbridled consumerism and secularism have led many to assume that human beings alone can make themselves. God has been totally shut out. What we are in danger of developing is a culture that excludes God from public consciousness.

No bad thing, some might say. We are now free from the hocus-pocus of religion and can get on with making our own decisions based on the rationale and reason of the Enlightenment. Yet as I will be arguing in this lecture, the relegation of religious thought and of religious motivation to the lowest form of knowledge, not only runs the risk of negating the role played by Christian champions of social justice but more importantly risks removing those core and essential values of human worth which are essential in discovering God's purposes. Such an approach also forgets the truth of liturgy, in the words of St. Bede, that it "was the Gospel which conferred nationhood on these islands."

As a society we are in danger of suffering from collective amnesia when it comes to considering the work of those who have uncovered the purposes of God in our history, and in particular seem to have airbrushed from history the motivation of these social pioneers who have been inspired to act by a passionate and vivid faith in the God who caused "his light to shine in the face of Jesus, giving us the knowledge of his glory." (2 Corinthians 4:6)

Let me begin with a brief but wholly incomplete consideration of some of the causes and changes in society which have been achieved by those seeking to uncover the purposes of God for our world and our nation: the Abolition of the Slave Trade in the British Empire, the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Act, free education for children at primary and secondary school, the introduction of licensing laws for the protection of children, soup kitchens, housing for the homeless, and the improvement of prison conditions.

Then there are those organisations and charities founded by Christians, many in the last century alone, which have contributed an incalculable amount: The Hospice movement, Amnesty International, Shelter, Save the Children, the Samaritans, Alcoholics Anonymous, the Shaftsbury Society, Jubilee 2000, the YMCA, the trade Justice Movement, the Children's Society, and National Children's Homes.

And lest anyone think that these charities and movements are a part of our distant history, the front page of the Yorkshire Post today reports findings by Shelter that over 100,000 children in our region and over a million children nationwide are living in squalor. So bad are the overcrowded conditions in which some of our children live, that Shelter's research suggests a direct link between these housing conditions and a rise in childhood tuberculosis, coughing and asthmatic wheezing. One million children ! How is it that we can read of such Dickensian housing conditions and even the resurgence of tuberculosis, now, in the twenty first century?

Whilst the shortage of decent affordable family housing is a major cause in creating this situation, the breakdown of family life is also a contributing factor.

The family is the primary social unit. The well-being of the whole community requires that children, so far as possible, be brought up by their own parents as members of one family, with all the give and take that family life demands. For it is within the family that we first learn what it means to love, to trust and to care for one another. We learn how to forgive, how to overcome and how to grow. These lessons are not optional, and for the fabric of society to remain strong, the state and the laws of the land need to support and encourage families.

Shelter is just one of the thousands of British charities that exist today only through the Christian beliefs of those who have founded or established them as organisations. Whilst Christians can in no way claim to have a monopoly in the field of social justice, their contribution has been incalculable. As Nelson Mandela suggests in his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, '... the Church was as concerned with this world as the next: I saw that virtually all of the achievements of Africans seemed to have come about through the missionary work of the church.'

Before looking at the work and lives of some of those who have uncovered the purposes of God in Britain over the past decades, I want to consider first part of the Biblical mandate which would have inspired those pioneers of social justice.

(III) The Biblical Mandate

Central to any such mandate is the life of Jesus Christ and his central redeeming work in the purposes of God. His life lived out 2,000 years ago has inspired millions of men and women to acts which clearly signpost the purposes of God in society. The path these pioneers have trodden is set out most directly by Jesus in two instances of his recorded life as set out in the Gospels. The first is what has become known as the Nazareth manifesto, and the second the parable of the sheep and the goats.

Luke's Gospel account of Jesus in the synagogue at Nazareth tells of Jesus unrolling the scrolls of the Jewish scriptures and reading from the prophet Isaiah:

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour."

This prophecy Jesus tells his hearers will be fulfilled in Jesus own life. His ministry will be to one of proclamation, healing and release. The resonance of this proclamation has echoed down through the centuries to men and women who have taken Jesus' words as a blueprint for the purposes of God.

The second instance is the parable of the sheep and the goats. Here Jesus talks of the day of judgement where those who receive eternal life are those who have fed the hungry, met the thirst of the parched, clothed the naked, welcomed the stranger, and visited the sick and the imprisoned. The care and provision for others who are in need of physical and spiritual wellbeing is highlighted as being central to uncovering the purposes of God.

Central to both of these is the inordinate worth placed on human life as the pinnacle of God's creation. The lives of the oppressed, the captive, the poor, the sick, these are the lives which become the centre of Jesus' mission on earth. It is the lives of the have nots, the down and outs, those who live on the margins of society or have been abandoned by it altogether, it is through interaction with these lives that God's purposes are uncovered. Caring for God's creation requires us to care for one another.

(IV) The Pioneers

Next year sees the bi-centenary of the abolition of the slave trade in Britain, and there are already numerous programmes and events being planned to celebrate the achievements of one of the greatest sons of the North East, William Wilberforce – and it is appropriate that in the Church of England's calendar the Gospel reading for commemorating Wilberforce's life is Jesus Christ's Manifesto proclaimed in Nazareth.

Wilberforce was born in Hull in 1759. Rather then becoming ordained, Wilberforce was encouraged by John Newton that his faith would find expression through politics, with his election as a Member of Parliament at the age of 21 marking the beginning of a parliamentary career during which he fought tirelessly for numerous causes, not least for the abolition of the slave trade. After years of effort and defeats in parliament, the trade in slaves was made illegal in 1807 when Wilberforce received a standing ovation in the House of Commons in recognition of his campaigning to proclaim release to the captives.

Twenty one years later, in 1828, Josephine Grey was born in Northumberland and baptised that same year. Aged 24 she married an Anglican priest and as Josephine Butler campaigned on behalf of the hundreds of destitute and poverty stricken women she had met who had turned to prostitution as the only way out of desperate poverty. From 1869 until 1883 Butler dedicated herself to this work, campaigning for the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Act which criminalised prostitutes rather than those who paid them. For Butler uncovering the purposes of God, translated into letting the oppressed go free.

Almost half a century before Butler was born, another Christian woman of devoted service was beginning a lifetime of service to the imprisoned and the homeless. Elizabeth Fry was a Quaker and an evangelistic preacher of great repute, proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ in London. The appalling state of prisons and the particular ill treatment of women prisoners led Fry to devote much of her time to the welfare and well being of prisoners as well as setting up one of London's first night shelters for the homeless in 1820.

Then there are those wonderful Quaker industrialists whom I would like to call The Trinity of Chocolate: George Cadbury, Joseph Rowntree and Joseph Storrs Fry.²

George Cadbury's faith was his primary motivation, and the fulfilment of its commandments, his overriding objective. He improved the living conditions of thousands, influenced legislation, created models for future industry and became a catalyst for social change. His efforts also saw many come to faith, perhaps his most valuable legacy.

His biographer notes that: "He had only one passion – to leave the world a better place than he found it – and he spent his whole life in its pursuit."³

Joseph Rowntree (1836-1925) was both an active Quaker and also a hugely successful businessman. As a young man he took over his father's grocery shop in York but it was in the confectionary industry that Rowntree was to become a household name.

Rowntree's legacy, however, spreads far beyond the popularity today of fruit pastilles and fruit gums. Indeed, Rowntree's most important influence is that of a faith-inspired entrepreneur, a progressive industrial patriarch with a deep social conscience, who had a far reaching, positive influence upon Victorian England. Today, the values and motivations of Rowntree live on, embodied in the Trusts he established, influencing the world beyond the limits of his lifetime.

His biographer described him as "an adventurer to the end of life, forever peering forward, never content with what had been achieved...." "He heard the echoes from the past, and with them he challenged the future."⁴

The third of the Chocolate Trinity was Joseph Storrs Fry II.

Born into a Quaker household, Fry became a third generation confectioner, inheriting the chairmanship of J S Fry and Son, Britain's largest chocolate and cocoa manufacturer. Fry's accounted for a quarter of the chocolate sold in Britain. The family concern had developed a reputation for innovation, quality and honesty, all hallmarks of Quaker industrial practice which was distinctive during this era.

Yet despite his great wealth Fry has largely been forgotten by history and there is little in terms of biographical detail available. What we do know however is that J S Fry was undoubtedly a generous man, with the heart of a giver and a desire to serve God.

In their own ways, and with varying success, each of the chocolate trinity sought to enable those who worked for them by giving them dignity and meaning to their work and life and leisure. Their desire to serve God as their motivation was unapologetic and unashamed.

I could carry on with examples of great lives lived in the service of others, examples of men and women who have taken seriously Christ's urging and have through their work reflected God's purposes. In Britain alone in the last century there has been Bruce Kenrick, the first Chairman of Shelter and one of its founding fathers. Chad Varah, the London Vicar who founded the Samaritans who now receive 13,000 calls a day. Peter Benenson, the young Christian lawyer who founded Amnesty International and Dame Cecily Saunders, the founder of the Hospice movement, who declared that without the inspiration of Jesus' teaching and the strength given her by His Spirit, the problems she faced would have overwhelmed her. She was not overwhelmed and her work has spread worldwide; whilst in Oxford in 1982 the first British hospice for children was founded in Oxford by dedicated Anglican nuns.

Of course this selection is far from exhaustive and does not begin to take account of the work of all those Christians beyond these shores who have uncovered the purposes of God in their own countries and the countries of others. The names of Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr and Archbishop Desmond Tutu are familiar to all, whilst the martyrs of the Church such as Oscar Romero and Janini Luwum show us that following the teachings of Christ in the serving of others can be as costly as to be demanded of your life. How far away do such figures seem from those Christians ridiculed by the psychologists and sociologists for using their faith as a crutch. Faith is not a crutch to lean on. It is the very act of learning.

In my inauguration sermon as the 97th Archbishop of York I said that the Church in England must once again be a beacon by which the people of England can orient themselves in an unknown ocean by offering them the Good News of God in Jesus Christ in a practical and relevant way to their daily lives. Having shed an empire and its missionary zeal, has this great nation, and mother of parliamentary democracy, also lost a noble vision for the future? We are getting richer and richer as a nation, but less and less happy. The church in England must rediscover her self-confidence and self-esteem that united and energised the English people those many centuries ago when the disparate fighting groups embraced the gospel.

The Venerable Bede in his Ecclesiastical History tells not only of how the English were converted, but how that corporate-discipleship, the Church, played a major socialising and civilising role by uniting the English and conferring nationhood on them.

The history of the See of York tells a wonderful story of York's part in the conversion and civilisation of the English. In 627 Paulinus converts the King of Northumbria, Edwin, and baptises him on Easter Day. Paulinus is allowed to build a little wooden church, the first church on this site of the Minster. And it wasn't easy country. The Venerable Bede tells us that there were villages in these mountains and forests rarely visited by a Christian minister. The first three archbishops here were driven out – because of war and revolution. But the small band of Christians, like a tiny acorn, courageously stood their ground. Aidan, a monk from the monastery in Iona, came to the rescue, and extended the Christian presence in the north of England, which radically transformed the existing social order.

In our own time, this socialising and transforming power of corporate-discipleship is illustrated further by three young Christian men at the University of Oxford: Richard Tawney, William Beveridge and William Temple, who were challenged to go to the East End of London to "find friends among the poor, as well as finding out what poverty is and what can be done about it".

In the East End their consciences were pricked by poverty: visible, audible, smellable. After university, Tawney worked at Toynbee Hall, creating a fraternal community; William Beveridge paved the way for the Welfare State in his report which for the first time set out to embody the whole spirit of the Christian ethic in an Act of Parliament. And William Temple, as Archbishop of York, and then Canterbury mobilized church support for a more just, equal and fraternal Britain. His book Christianity and Social Order is one of the foundation pillars of the welfare state.

It is very clear, then, that the socialising and transforming power of the Gospel, lived out in corporate-discipleship, wasn't only in the early church, in seventh century England, but in our own lifetime too – and more recently, by Faith in the City⁵ and Faithful Cities.⁶

(V) Vision

These basic precepts to Uncovering the Purposes of God – Trust and Worship of a loving God, love of neighbour and caring for creation – are not limited in their application to individual lives and circumstances. I believe it is quite possible for the state to adopt these principles in establishing a vision of what it is to govern.

"The art of government in fact," wrote Archbishop William Temple in 1942, "is the art of so ordering life that self-interest prompts what justice demands". This marrying of justice and self-interest is deeply unfashionable in a political scene where parties rush to outdo each other in enticing and beguiling the swing vote of middle England not with justice but with preference and consumer choice.

Temple's description of the art of government rings hollow in our rights based culture. At times the citizen's motto of "my God and my right" seems to have been replaced by "my right and my choice" where political vision based on values has been replaced by consumerist politics where choice is king, even where such choice is illusory. The main political rarely chase the votes of the marginalised. They take their votes for granted.

In a brilliant essay, Imitatio and Ethics in Judaism and Christianity,⁷ Professor Raphael Loewe, formerly Goldsmid Professor of Hebrew at University College London, says that "The whole concept of human rights is one that is alien to rabbinic jurisprudence... all humankind are the reciprocal beneficiaries of the duties, which each individual owes to God.

"It is mercy, loving kindness and reciprocal solidarity, which binds together, at the level of both individual and group, superior to inferior, advantaged to disadvantaged, man to God and God to man. It prevents either self-discipline or social responsibility from being ignored. It is walking in all God's ways. Deed of mutual charity. It is the cultivation of submissiveness to the divine will, and praying, 'Subdue thou our self-assertive drive, to enslave itself to thee.' For the Torah is a golfing-umbrella, not an infinitely extensible bus shelter."

This freshness of thought may help us to get out of the quagmire of Human Rights debate. These are the core-values of true citizenship. Values which were the building blocks that gave nationhood to this nation through the medicine of the Gospel. "Reinventing the wheel isn't the problem; it is reinventing the flat tyre that is the killer."⁸

(VI) Grace

It is not part of my lecture tonight to argue that Christians or Christianity has a monopoly on social justice. Equally emphatically I want to reject any notion that Christianity is a faith where redemption can be earned on good works alone. That particular ship sailed long ago and sank without trace, but like the Titanic it is often recalled.

There is a danger that uncovering God's purposes may begin to be little more than the Church or Christians acting as another branch of the social services. As the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats reminds us, our love for our neighbour is grounded in practical and just action, but it must not end there. Without direction, without a spiritual purpose, such action runs the risk of being little more than a sticking plaster which is peeled away with the occurrence of the next tragedy.

A modern day re-writing of the parable may go something like this:

"I was hungry and you formed a committee to investigate my hunger.
"I was homeless and you filed a report on my plight;
"I was sick and you held a seminar on the situation of the under-privileged and malnourished;
"I was in prison and you set up a prayer group for prisoners of conscience;
"I was naked and you bought Café Direct and Traidcraft good.
"You have investigated all aspects of my plight and yet I am still hungry, homeless, sick, naked and in prison."

The late Mother Teresa of Calcutta visited Cambridge University to deliver a lecture on Poverty in August 1976.

The frail body of this Albanian nun climbed up the platform to rapturous applause. When the clapping had died down she said, "In the West, one of the greatest problems is loneliness. People die alone. You have the greatest evidence of poverty. Poverty of the spirit. It can only be fed by the bread of heaven: Jesus Christ.

"In India our greatest problem is togetherness. Diseases are easily shared but hardly any dies alone. We have the greatest evidence of poverty. Physical poverty. It can only be fed by the bread of heaven: Jesus Christ."

For all of these Christian pioneers uncovering the purpose of God has meant being agents of God's grace, God's movement of change, in places and situations that were graceless. Uncovering the purposes of God entailed seeing that divine spark in their neighbour and recognising the incalculable worth of each individual human being.

It meant seeing each person as a child of God whose life is measured not by financial worth, not by a quality of life, not by potential success of achievement and not by usefulness to society but rather valuing people by virtue of their very existence and acknowledging God as the source of all life and one another as poor but infinitely valuable reflections of the divine image. The person is primary, not the society: the state exists for the citizen, not the citizen for the state.

So at its heart Uncovering the purposes of God requires of us as an essential prerequisite to see in one another that image of God himself. Until we can learn to see God in our neighbour, in our enemies and in those we pass by, we will be blind to uncovering God's purposes for ourselves and for our nation.

(VII) Change

Once we have uncovered the purposes of God, these can prove to be a powerful catalyst for change in the lives of our neighbours and our country, not least upon the laws which govern us.

Writing in 1979 in his book The Discipline of Law, Lord Denning wrote: "The principles of law laid down by judges in the 19th century – however suited to social conditions of that time – are not suited to the social necessities of the 20th century. They should be moulded and shaped to meet the opinions of today. But that moulding and shaping cannot be left to Parliament alone. Only too often it is swayed by the political views of the party in power without reference to any moral basis."⁹

Earlier this week Billy Dunlop pleaded guilty to the murder of Julie Hogg, 22, a pizza delivery girl on November 16, 1989. Mr Dunlop's trial made legal history as the first man to be convicted after an end to the double jeopardy rule, having previously been found not guilty on two occasions. Although the change to the law came about with the Criminal Justice Act of 2003, the recommendation to bring an end to the injustice of the double jeopardy rule was made by Stephen Lawrence inquiry which was published in 1999.

The inquiry recommended that "consideration should be given to the Court of Appeal being given power to permit prosecution after acquittal where fresh and viable evidence is presented." The inquiry was committed to truth and justice and in light of DNA developments that it would be wrong for the guilty to go free just as much as it would be wrong for the innocent to be convicted.

The purposes of God can be uncovered in the midst of the deepest of tragedies and the most blatant of injustices. Nowhere is God's will absent or his purposes unfathomable.

One hopes that compelling evidence will come forward so that the killers of Stephen Lawrence will be brought to trial.

(VIII) A World Without God's Purposes

There is of course another path open to each of us, and that is to ignore the purposes of God and instead to re-create God in our own image. For although each of us, as Augustine noted, retains a 'God shaped hole' within our being, this hole can be filled by other means. Our capacity to worship is transferred so that instead of worshipping God we worship the demons of materialism, celebrity or wealth. You only need to go to a football match of a rock concert to see that people's capacity to worship remains very much in tact.

However a world where God's purposes are ignored becomes a very bleak place indeed and there are parts of our world which we can look to in order to get a glimpse of what our society might be like if we ignored the purposes of God and pursued our own interests at the cost of our shared humanity.

I want to highlight two areas where I think God's purposes are being ignored and where the consequences have led to a cheapening of human life.

(IX) International Conflict

The recent conflict in the Middle East between Israel and Lebanon highlighted once more for me the cheapening of human life which is now taken almost for granted by those in power. Unsurprisingly it is the stories of human interest, those stories of individual suffering, of the elderly and infirm unable to flee Katusha rockets, of families sleeping on the floors of Beirut car parks and children bereaved of entire families through air strikes that pull at our heart strings and grab our attention.

But there are no resources enough in the media for telling the stories of each individual life that is lost. More than 1,000 Lebanese and more than 120 Israelis were killed in the conflict. The fact that some were from Hezbollah and others soldiers of the Israeli army does not mean their lives were worth any less than those of the civilians who also lost their lives.

Yet for both sides the political and propagandist pictures presented of their opponents reinforced the gradual de-humanising which takes place in conflict; where the life of an individual is less valuable once they wear a label of terrorist, soldier or militant and where the deaths of innocents are regretted in the same breath as the next volley of rockets are launched or air sorties scrambled.

And whilst militarism succeeds in dehumanising individuals, genocide succeeds in dehumanising whole tribes. So it is for the people of Sudan, where the situation in Darfur is now reaching the levels of slaughter last seen in Serbia and Rwanda. Edmund Burke's words that "for evil to triumph it requires only good men to do nothing" serve as condemnation for the wandering interest of Western governments.

As a recent newspaper editorial noted: "once again, there has been a reliance on peacekeepers when in fact what was needed was peacemakers. The frustration is that peacemaking, i.e. the addressing of the problems that lead to violence, and acting robustly when conflict threatens, is far cheaper and more effective than trying to rebuild a country after war has run its course."¹⁰

In the absence of an effective UN intervention in Sudan, the suffering will continue. The UN has lacked the will to intervene and the African Union has lacked the means. Until there is an effective intervention by the United Nations in Darfur, which would be entirely legal and proper under international law by virtue of Security Council resolution 1706, our collective inaction on this issue will lead to the triumph of evil over and above God's purposes for that place.

(X) Acts of Terror

The second area where I believe God's purposes are not only being ignored, but turned on their head, is that of so called "Islamic terrorism." A religious person who commits acts of terror denies the faith they appear to profess. By treating God's creation with contempt through the murdering of others, and in the case of suicide bombers, self-contempt, those who commit acts of terror both usurp and pervert the fundamental tenets of faith in the most basic denial of the faith possible, by killing others in God's very name.

Martyrs witness to their faith by their commitment to love and service and not killing themselves and murdering others in the process.

Some of those who commit acts of terror have been described as 'Islamic fundamentalists' or even as 'Islamic fascists'. These are unhelpful terms to use, not least because they further alienate those who commit these hideous crimes through the use of terms which are Christian in origin in the case of fundamentalists and political in origin in terms of fascism. It is dangerous to use these terms which implies aggressive tendencies of certain strains of Islam are imported rather than indigenous. The simple add on of these disparate terms to Islam does not describe motivation or purpose of these criminals, so have little use and add little to our understanding. Rather I believe the term to use for those committing acts of terror and those who seek to pervert the Islamic faith is "Salafi Jihadists".

In their rejection of all forms of Islamic scholarship in favour of a politically driven agenda, Salafi Jihadists reject the reality of God's creation for a fantasy. Their starting point is victim hood, especially against the West and Christianity.

The violence of those who commit acts of terror is fed less by the clash of civilisations or belief than by its lack, and the insult to God that Western disbelief represents. And sadly individual choice can justify anything, including murder and acts of terror. Knowledge for its own sake has become a power of destruction.

The history of the interpretation of Jihad in Islam is a long one with very a positive emphasis on spiritual growth and development as a process of self-denial in the battle of wills and achievement of peace.

However for the modern day Salafi Jihadist who defines themselves through acts of mass destruction and terror, Jihad has taken on a whole new meaning and the God who it claims to serve has become too small. For the God of the Salafi Jihadist has become far removed from the God of Islam. The love of God, the love of neighbour, whether in or out of the Ummah, and care of God's creation have all been repudiated by the acts of terror carried out by the Salafi Jihadist.

In Islam Allah is "all powerful and all merciful", yet for the Salafi Jihadist there is no mercy or power in the indiscriminate acts of terror. There is only destruction. The merciful character of a creator God has been left aside in favour of a new small god, leading to a perversion of Islam. Hence rather than uncovering the purposes of God, the texts of the Qur'an are abused and selectively applied by the Salafi Jihadist so that the suicide bomber acts in the name of the smallest of gods, whilst those who deal with the aftermath of the bombers handiwork in Iraq, Israel and Afghanistan demonstrate God's love for his creation rather than the salafi jihadist's mutilation of it.

There is always a danger when making comments about 'Jihadists' that the charge of Islamaphobia follows close behind. So let me be clear. I am not by any means talking about all of Islam or all Muslims here. Indeed as a faith community Christians should recognise that one of the biggest contributions of the Muslim community in Britain has been its denial of the secularist call that faith should be privatised and should be regarded as a minority occupation.

It has often been Muslims, as well as leaders of other faiths, who have joined with Christians in refusing to accept the creeping secularisation that would replace 'Christmas' with 'Winterval', and remove references to faith from public noticeboards for fear of causing offence. It is both my view and my experience, that most British Muslims do not feel threatened by our Christian moral foundations but by the cynicism of secularised culture that denies its own foundations. What they object to is the attempt to build human society without God. And so given the choice between the two prefer a faith environment, even one which they do not share, to that of a secularist state. This is something which those who seek to remove offence continuously fail to comprehend or understand. Many, and I include myself in this, cannot understand how those who were shaped by the Christian Gospel dislike the culture that nurtured them.

Reason and human worth are at the very core of the Christian gospel, and that is precisely why, beyond the obvious historical facts, Christianity is the true foundation of British culture and values.

And so my plea to all Muslims in this country is the words of Jesus Christ who to you is a prophet and to me a saviour: "You have heard that it was said, "You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy." But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? . Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." (Matthew 5: 43-46A, 48)

During my recent prayer vigil and fast for peace, I prayed with many people who came to show their support and solidarity for the victims of violence in the Middle East. At the end of one of our hourly prayer sessions a five year old lad visibly upset, came up to me with his mother and said "Thank you for what you are doing. I am very upset with all the killings. Why didn't they get it sorted by talking?"

A teenager asked, "Why didn't God stop it? Where was He when people were killing each other?"

"He was being violated," I replied to her "God was being violated." I asked her: "Do you remember Elijah and the wind, the earthquake and the fire?"

"Yes" she said. "God was not in them, but in a gentle, still voice."

God's voice is to be heard in the cry of an eight year old Lebanese girl, injured and orphaned who had lost her eye in an airstrike and in the voice of an eighty-five year old Israeli woman, sick, poor and unable to move out of reach of the Katusha rockets.

Where is God? Surely he is being violated with those who are damaged by the consequences of violence and being diminished with those who enact it.

(XI) Conclusion

So how might we overcome these obstacles to uncovering the purposes of God and establish our trust in a loving God, love of neighbour and caring for creation ?

With regard to the devaluing of life and humanity in international conflict, I will readily admit that there will always be issues of self-defence and timing with regard to intervention, and I am not about to circumvent the continuing debates surrounding the Christian theory of a just war.

However I am now convinced more than ever that violence is not the way in which we will win over our enemies. We must each and every one of us hold responsibility for seeking peace in our own time, in our own streets and in our own homes as well as continuing to pray for the world. We must look at our own nation, our own children growing in a society which does not always foster inclusion and generosity as our priority. It is surely fear and anxiety which leads to aggression. We must build a sense of safety. If we seek for others an integrity and legitimacy of civil society, we ourselves must strive to think about our own.

With regard to acts of terror, we must support any and all international efforts to restart the shattered peace process in the Middle East. The events of the past weeks, in the Lebanon, Israel, the United States and Britain have demonstrated that we cannot afford any longer to leave the issues of the Middle East in the pending tray of unresolved business. There is no greater recruiting sergeant for would be Salafi Jihadists than the conflict in the Middle East. Without urgent action on our part, for their sakes and our own, the spiral of violence that has lasted longer than the whole of my lifetime - and I am 57 - will continue unabated, as new generations become mired in the enmity of their forefathers.

The challenge for the international community is to make peace in the Middle East a priority for the sake of us all and to sacrifice their own self-interest in the short term for the prize of sustainable peace.

As in all conflicts great and small, both sides have acquired supporters and protagonists. We as humans are prone to divide into camps named For and Against. Christians must continue to struggle to find ways to create communities which transcend tribalism, where we strive to love one another as God loves us. We must not give in to the fear which is in all of us but must seek to fan the spark of divine humanity which we all possess.

So allow me to finish by saying how I think each of us, and I include myself in this as much as anyone else, can learn how to trust in a loving God, love our neighbour and care for his creation.

In the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats in Matthew 25, Jesus was telling his disciples that if you want to meet God face to face, the nearest you are going to come to it on this planet is to look into the faces of your brothers and sisters – and especially your sisters and brothers who have been declared unrighteous, unclean, unacceptable.

It is not that we find God there; it is that God finds us there.

That is where our faith is nurtured and bears fruit. There, where we expect to meet monsters, we meet God instead. The opportunity to serve God lies there among the prisoners who have been reckoned to be least deserving of any service at all.

We are called to die to the values of the world - the greed for wealth, status and power; as well as our psychological tendencies: our desires and compulsions for success, to be loved, to be held in esteem, to be acclaimed by those in our group, to have power and control over others. It's a call to disarm ourselves, to die to our plans and let God's plans and ways take hold of us.

I have come to believe that when I shall come face to face with the Wounded Healer who bears the marks of love, he will ask me "Sentamu, where are your tears for me to wipe away? Where are your wounds of love received through loving and laying down your life for me and my brothers and sisters – the hungry, thirsty, stranger, naked, sick prisoner?"

If we throw ourselves on the grace of God and seek his purposes, our vocation - while never pitching our tent in the valley of relativism – is to see everyone in England, people of faith and none, not as enemies but as beloved neighbours and friends. All made in the image and likeness of God. A God who is Christ-like.

Bishop Leslie Newbigin is, for me, a great interpreter of the three things we must say about Christ and salvation today in England; how we relate Christianity to an England that has other faiths present. He says we must be:

1. "Exclusive in the sense of affirming the unique truth of the revelation in Jesus Christ, but not in the sense of denying the possibility of salvation to those outside the Christian faith.

2. "Inclusive in the sense of refusing to limit the saving grace of God to Christians, but not in the sense of viewing other religions as salvific.

3. "Pluralist in the sense of acknowledging the gracious work of God in the lives of all human beings, but not in the sense of denying the unique and decisive nature of what God has done in Jesus Christ."

It's from the Cross that the light of God's love shines forth upon the world in its fullest splendour. Let us strive to hold on to both the glory of heaven and the brokenness of humanity. In our worship of God and serving our neighbour may God help us to infect the world with his righteousness.

We can nurture love, foster courage and seek wisdom, we can choose not to accept sentimentality, leave foolhardiness unchallenged or lapse into cowardice.

This brings me to an end. And what does it all come to? Surely this, that if we seek the meaning of truth and justice we cannot find it by argument and debate, nor by reading and thinking, but only, in the words of the Book of common Prayer, "by the maintenance of true religion and virtue."

If religion perishes in the land, truth and justice will also. My hope and message to all of us is that in a world of short cuts, deception and death may we seek and find the Way which is of Truth and brings Life.

Thank you.

[1] David Kenning, Review of the National Communications of the Church of England, 2000 www.cofe.anglican.org/info/papers/communicationsreportandannexes.doc

[2] I am grateful for the Articles in Transformational Business Network – using business to bring spiritual and physical transformation to the world – at www.tbnetwork.org. Articles by Kris Coppock

[3] A G Gardiner, The Life of George Cadbury, Cassell 1949

[4] A Vernon, A Quaker Business Man. George Allen & Unwin Ltd 1958

[5] Faith in the City - A Call to Action by Church and Nation was published in 1985 by the Archbishop of Canterbury's Commission on Urban Priority Areas

[6] Church of England Urban Commission on Life and Faith, Faithful Cities – A Call for Celebration, Vision and Justice (London: Church House Publishing/ Methodist publishing House) 2006

[7] In Stephens & Walden (eds) For the Sake of Humanity, Essays in Honour of Clemens N Nathan, (London: Brill Academic Publishers) 2006

[8] Tom Kickey, University of Michigan

[9] As quoted in Lord Denning, The Influence of Religion on Law (London: Lawyers Christian Fellowship) 1989

[10] Church Times, 8 September 2006

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