How to live for God while living in Babylon
By Professor John Lennox, Premier Christianity.
It was many years ago now, but I’ll never forget it. I was 19 and I tried to talk about my faith at a special dinner at the University of Cambridge. There was a Nobel Prize winner sitting next to me. After the meal, he invited me up to his room, with a number of other senior academics but no other students.He sat me down: “Lennox, do you want a career in science? If you do, give up these childish notions of God. They will cripple you. They will put you right out of the running.”
I felt the pressure. He was telling me: “You’ll not look good.”
There are many young people feeling that same pressure today. They’re nervous about confessing that they’re Christians because of people thinking the same thing, because Christianity is seen as anti-intellectual.
I rather nervously but firmly said to him: “Sir, what have you got to offer me that’s better than what I’ve got?” What he offered me was the evolutionary philosophy of Henri Bergson (of which you may have never heard). I said: “I’ll stick with what I’ve got and take the risk.”
It’s a story I told during my recent public debate with atheist philosopher Michael Ruse for The Big Conversation on Unbelievable?. I’ve never forgotten that day. It convicted me that, if ever I was given a public platform, I would use it to make the intellectual case for Christ to a secular society.
The biblical story of Daniel explores a cultural transition, and its effect on public profession of faith in God…
…Daniel was physically transported without warning to an alien culture. We may not personally experience enforced displacement in another country, but in recent years and with increasing acceleration, we have seen the culture around us shift from being broadly monotheistic into being increasingly relativistic and atheistic – a culture that marginalises the possibility of articulating faith in God in public.
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