A campaign was launched a couple of weeks ago to raise money to put adverts on London buses. Buses are often used for advertising but this will be the first time we will see specifically atheist advertising. The Atheist Bus Campaign (as they are calling themselves) want their slogan to go out on the side of bendy buses. It should happen in January and the words of the advert will look like this…
There’s probably no God.
Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.
One of the organisers of the Atheist Bus Campaign is unsurprisingly the militant atheist Richard Dawkins. He says: “This campaign to put alternative slogans on London buses will make people think - and thinking is anathema to religion”.
Not everyone in the church has responded negatively to the news. For example Rev Jenny Ellis (on behalf of the British Methodist Church) has welcomed the idea of getting God onto the buses.
“We are grateful to Richard Dawkins for his continued interest in God and for encouraging people to think about these issues. This campaign will be a good thing if it can get people to engage with the deepest issues of life.”
As to Dawkin’s idea that thinking is scary for religious people, here is Jenny Ellis again…
“As Christians we respond to Jesus’ call to love God with our minds as well as our hearts, souls and strength. Christianity is for people who aren’t afraid to think about life and meaning. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, believed that no one should be saved from the trouble of thinking – because that is the path to understanding God.”
If the atheists can raise more money there are plans to run the ads on buses in other cities in the UK – including Edinburgh (and possibly even Glasgow) So maybe we’ll soon be seeing this on buses where we live.
Today I’d like to use these words as my text.
There’s probably no God.
Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.
What do people mean when they use the word God?
Are they thinking of the God that I am thinking of?
Are you and I today even thinking of the same God?
These are very real questions.
You see, the trouble with the bus slogan is that it gives the game away.
Well, at least the second part of the slogan gives it away. The words – “so
stop worrying”. Why would we be worrying? Why would we be worrying if there is a God? Well, we would be worrying if God was in the business of trying to trap us, trick us, trip us up or bamboozle us with rules and make life difficult and miserable. And if this God was just waiting to punish us.
That kind of God would indeed give us plenty to worry about. And of course that kind of distorted picture of God is exactly what the atheists have in mind. That’s what they think of when they think of God. That is the picture they carry. That’s what they think God is like. No wonder they aren’t keen on God!
So what I want to say is that I agree with the first part of the slogan. God does not exist. Not the God they’re thinking of. That God doesn’t exist. But the God that does exist is another God entirely - the real God - the God of Jesus Christ – the God we have come to know and love and trust.
What has any of this got to do with our Bible reading and Jesus and the Pharisees? Well, as it turns out, it has everything to do with it.These enthusiastic religious people of Jesus’ day shared one very important characteristic with the militant atheists of our day. These religious teachers were very keen on God and very serious about their faith, but they were peddling an idea of God which was far from the truth. Their image of God was some kind of lawmaker and rule-giver who was just waiting for us to slip up and make a mistake. Their idea of God was some kind of tyrant. Their idea of God was pretty much the same as those who today want to stick their adverts onto UK buses.
For the Pharisees, religion was all about keeping rules. And their rules were a burden.
This is what happened in the case of God’s Law. The people of Israel believed that what defined them was their special relationship with God and that was seen in the Law that God had given them – guidelines for living. They reckoned that the relationship worked like this. If they worked hard at observing the Law, God would bless them. If they didn’t God would fix it so that trouble came their way.
So they became rule fanatics. And they wrote down all kinds of interpretations to the rules to cover all possible eventualities. And in the end the Scribes and Pharisees had put together more than fifty books describing in detail what was acceptable (or not acceptable) according to the Law.
You could hardly move for fear you would put a foot wrong. In fact to be a Pharisee was literally a full-time occupation. Observing the laws was so difficult and so complicated and so time consuming that they couldn’t hold down a normal job. This way of life was like their full time job. All the rules made them seem not too bad, but everyone else felt hopeless and unworthy.
God had become a monstrous caricature. God was like some sadistic teacher or twisted games master. Certainly not our heavenly mother and father as Jesus himself put it.
Life is hard enough, with all kinds of dilemmas and troubles for us to face, without imagining that God is some kind of perfectionist who is trying to see how difficult God can make it for us, and hoping that we are going to slip up so we can be punished or rejected.
God loves us. God is for us. God is on our side. God wants us to know and relax in that love.
And what is tragic about all this (and why Jesus got so angry about this) is that if people have a totally false picture of God then they will either feel that God will never accept them or love them - which is not good, or they will feel that they cannot believe in that God – which is not good either.
There is a God. And that is not something to worry about. That is something to rejoice about and fill us with hope and purpose. Far from giving us cause for worry, the real God gives us cause for hope, comfort and ultimate security. The real God brings to us the best news of all. This God has come to do the opposite of what the atheists and the Pharisees believed. This God has come to help us to enjoy our lives - to make the most of them - and to live them to the full.
So what about the last part of the slogan: So stop worrying and ENJOY YOUR LIFE?
There is a God - but that’s not just good news for me. Because this God wants us to make a difference to how the world is, and to make it better for everyone. And God wants me to think about that too.
In a world where there is so much pain and unfairness, in a world that needs more care and compassion - what are the atheists suggesting we do? – just get on with enjoying ourselves. Who cares about anyone or anything else. Just turn a blind eye.
What a selfish message!! And what a message to the starving child in Africa? “There is no God – now enjoy your life.”
What a message to the woman whose husband has just died. “There is no God – now enjoy your life.”
There is no God – so now we can get on with just looking out for number one. The survival of the fittest.
Thank God there’s more to life than that bleak view.
We have been given life by God and God wants us to enjoy life. But not at the expense of ignoring others in need. The best life isn’t lived selfishly. The best kind of life has time for others.
On Friday I came across the transcript of an interview with Richard Curtis. It was done for a publication called New Humanist Magazine by Laurie Taylor, and was actually published last year. Richard Curtis is a man who has made a great impact on film and TV. He was the writer of films like “Four Weddings and a Funeral”, and great TV series like “Blackadder”, and “The Vicar of Dibley”. He was also one of the driving forces behind Comic Relief and Make Poverty History. Half of his work is devoted to charity and making a difference. Despite this care and concern, Curtis is not a believer in God. Laurie Taylor, the interviewer, himself admitted that this was a bit unusual. Let me tell you why.
Last year (2006) in USA, a Professor called Arthur C Brooks of Syracuse University decided to carry out a survey to point out that people who do not believe in God are just as compassionate and generous as those with faith. But when the results came in he was completely shocked. It was not at all what he was expecting. The study showed clearly that people who are not religious actually give much less to help and support others…
Around 60% of non-believers may donate to charities, but over 90% of believers do. (And that’s not just putting money in the collection plates of their churches, synagogues or mosques or wherever they worship. That is giving which is over and above that – giving which is not necessarily to a religious based charity at all). Brooks was amazed to discover that people with faith also give on average four times more than those with no faith and are much more likely to volunteer their time, give blood, and engage in acts of generosity and compassion. People of faith care about the world and want to make it better. That’s because we believe that God cares about the world too. That’s because the God we believe in challenges us to play our part in making a difference. So here is Curtis – a very talented man – a good guy – a man who cares deeply about the world and changing it for the better. But he is not a believer. Why not?
“I stopped believing before university. This is going to sound facile. But I thought if God is worth worshipping then he must be at least as intelligent and knowledgeable as my own dad. And yet dad would always forgive me for the mistakes I made. There is no way in which he would look at all the pressures and temptations on a person and then still say that he should be punished. So I thought, well, either God doesn’t exist or he is thoroughly nasty, in which case I am not interested in worshipping him.”
Do you see what Curtis has done? He looks at his dad and how his dad would forgive him when did something wrong, but in his mind God won’t do that. The God he has pictured in his imagination is a God that is waiting to punish – a vindictive God. Even his own human father is kinder and more loving than this God. What Curtis has done is to reject a false picture of God. He is quite right to do that.
But what he needs to hear and understand is that God isn’t like that at all. In reality, God is greater and more wonderful than any of us can fully imagine.
In one way the atheists are right. Their God really doesn’t exist. But the great news is that they are also wrong - totally and utterly wrong about God. The God they are missing - the God they don’t understand and can’t even conceive of - is with us now and always will be, with the power to change us and our world for the better and to bring meaning and hope to our lives.
If the atheist bus campaign does in fact get people thinking and talking about God, and what God is like, then I agree with Rev Jenny Ellis of the Methodist Church. It will have been a good thing.
In the meantime, it is the job of all of us in the church to help get the message out there that the God of the atheist bus campaign is not the God that we worship, and that the God of Jesus Christ offers us all the best way to live.
Thanks to the real God we don’t need to worry. Thanks to the real God we can live life as it was designed to be lived – a life that celebrates the good gifts of this world, and a life that shares with others in need.