by David Robertson, Christian Today
As a Christian pastor who reads and engages widely, I regularly come across what I would call serial fantasists – people who are so good at spinning lies that eventually they get caught in the web of their own deceit and come to believe their own lies. The man who can’t string two words together but believes he has a special ‘anointed preaching’ from God. The woman who can’t sing but was told by a couple of friends that she has the voice of an angel. The numerous ‘apostles’ who want to be my Facebook friends. The American missionaries in whatever European country they are in who write home saying they are bringing the new Reformation. Such delusions and fantasies range from the mildly harmless to the insanely dangerous – such as the well-known prophetess who is selling a book based on the ‘fact’ that aliens planted a device in her uterus in order to harvest her ovaries and have created a human/alien child.
Sadly, the whole question of how we deal with those who provide an invisible set of clothes for the Emperor, which only the enlightened can see, has come to the fore with the tragic death of Professor Jason Arday of Cambridge University. I find the subject of suicide really difficult to write about – for various personal reasons and because over decades of ministry I have had to deal with it many times. Therefore, I had no desire to add to the endless articles that have appeared in both the secular and Christian media about this subject. However, Andy Burnham who rightly described the death as ‘a tragedy on so many levels’, called for a ‘moment of reflection’. I have heeded the call and have spent the last week reading an unhealthy amount of articles and other people’s reflections, so I thought I would write something on what the Church can learn from this.