Here’s a sad but amusing quote from Simon Heffer in the Telegraph this weekend:

One of Labour’s great triumphs with the National Health Service is that people now go into hospital to die rather than to be cured. It seems to render the whole debate about assisted suicide utterly pointless. Who needs a Dignitas clinic when you can check into a hospital in Basildon and be relatively certain to be taken out in a box?

Atul Gawande seems to have done quite well for himself. Not only that, but he has done a great deal for others in the process, especially patients. The Harvard Associate Professor, writer and general surgeon desparately wants doctors to be better at their jobs, which is the focus of his book, the aptly titled Better, published in 2007. It’s all about getting better at being doctors.

Better is possible. It does not take genius. It takes diligence. It takes moral clarity. It takes ingenuity. And above all, it takes a willingness to try.

I know how often I witness  doctors who fail to do simple things like washing their hands. This is nothing new. The author explores how hard it has been throughout history to get doctors to comply with simple, obvious guidelines for infection control etc.

Gawande is all to aware of the limits of medicine, and of the potential for doing more harm than good in our attempts to push the boundaries of modern care. One of the chapters which intrigued me most dealt with how more people are living longer than ever, but with more disease than ever too. Now people are living long enough to get cancer where in the past they would have died of something else first. Gawande explores this phenomenon among horrifically wounded soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. He asks searching questions, not least what sort of quality of life these “saved” soldiers will have if they are kept alive with no arms and only one leg. I don’t think it’s our place to judge how someone else views their quality of life, but it does make for a thought-provoking read.

Gawande acknowledges his own failings as much as he points them out in others. Better is a good exploration of a world where mistakes happen all the time, yet where the consequences can be disastrous. Looking forward to getting my hands on his latest book Complications, out soon.

Bob reminds us that the most important thing as a Church is to be sure and steadfast, not to seek to be relevant, cool etc at the expense of the gospel which saves us.

“Let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good.” 1 Peter 4:19:

John Bunyan had a pretty miserable life in many ways, yet he has some of the best things to say about God’s sovereignty in suffering and its ultimate fruitfulness. In his book Seasonable Counsel or Advice to Sufferers he says:

It is not what enemies will, nor what they are resolved upon, but what God will and what God appoints, that shall be done… and as no enemy can bring suffering upon a man when the will of God is otherwise, so no man can save himself out of their hands when God will deliver him up for his glory… Suffering comes not by chance or by the will of man, but by the will and appointment of God…

How kindly, therefore doth God deal with us, when he chooses to afflict us but for a little, that with everlasting kindness he may have mercy upon us. Isaiah 54:7-8.

Found this on the Huffingdon Post today in the run-up to the release of the Collision documentary:

The atheistic worldview is nothing if not inherently reductionistic, whether this is admitted or not. Everything that happens is a chance-driven rattle-jattle jumble in the great concourse of atoms that we call time. Time and chance acting on matter have brought about, in equally aimless fashion, the 1927 New York Yankees, yesterday’s foam on a New Jersey beach, Princess Di, the arrangement of pebbles on the back side of the moon, the music of John Cage, the Fourth Crusade, and the current gaggle representing us all in Congress…

If the atheist is right, then I am not a Christian because I have mistaken beliefs, but am rather a Christian because that is what these chemicals would always do in this arrangement and at this temperature. The problem is that this atheistic assumption does the very same thing to the atheist’s case for atheism. The atheist gives us an account of all things which makes it impossible for us to believe that any account of all things could possibly be true. But no account of things can be tenable unless it provides us with the preconditions that make it possible for our “accounting” to represent genuine insight. Atheism fails to do this, and the failure is a spectacular one. Nor does atheism allow us to have any fixed ethical standard, or the possibility of beauty.

Read more here

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-hitchens/collision-is-religion-abs_b_326673.html

Driscoll and Breshears give us a solid biblical treatment of issues facing many today. In terms of content, I find little to complain about. The introduction to penal substitution is brilliant. Nevertheless, the idea of reading letters meant to confront someone else’s stuggles with sin and/or dispair does seem a little wierd, even if the advice is good. Driscoll doesn’t pull any punches and I’m left feeling quite uncomfortable in places. Maybe that’s a good thing; after all, sin is a big deal and it should be dealt with seriously.

Driscoll’s explanation of modern biblical relevance is worth taking note of:

The gospel message comes from God to the culture but does not eminate in any way from the culture, though it must be effectively communicated to all cultures. Because of this, the truth of the gospel of Scripture is binding on all peoples, times, and places.

Alcoholism is widely recognised as a huge problem in Mongolia, particularlly as there is little social stigma attached to drunkenness. Bernie Anderson, missionary in Mongolia, writes for DG Blog today:

Our dream to is to see men and women who love Jesus more than alcoholic euphoria. We want to see the church in Mongolia grow strong in the Word and deep in the Gospel so that this culture will ultimately transformed for the Glory of Jesus, and the glory of the Lord will fill the earth as the water fills the seas (Habakkuk 2:14).

Read more here.

A handy quote from Doug Wilson at the Desiring God National Conference this week:

We come to declare that all men need to repent and believe. The kingdom of God is here.

We declare what has been accomplished, not what we would like to be accomplished.

We are ordained to feed the sheep and drive away the wolves.

And if needs be, we have been ordained to preach the word as if we were thunder and lightning. How can we not? The Scriptures are thunder and lightning.

Looks like this could be worth watching. Out 27th October. Here’s a Hitchens quote from the book he and Wilson co-authored which led to the film:

The Christian faith is good for the world because it provides the fixed standard which atheism cannot provide and because it provides forgiveness for sins, which atheism cannot provide either. We need the direction of the standard because we are confused sinners. We need the forgiveness because we are guilty sinners. Atheism not only keeps the guilt, but it also keeps the confusion.

I’ve just returned from a couple of weeks in Greece and Turkey. Apart from the 5am call to prayer, one of the highlights was a trip to ancient Ephesus. It was incredible to think that we were standing in the theatre where Paul once stood, provoking the Ephesians to riot in defence of their god, Artemis.

Throughout the country, I was struck by the huge number of mosques, and the almost total absence of churches; hardly surprising in a country which is over 99% Muslim, although many are nominal. Opperation World estimates that there were only 10 Christians in Turkey in 1960, a number which as risen to 20,000 today.

Turkey remains the largest unreached nation in the world. Strange, as for over 1000 years is was a world centre for Christianity. Of the 66 million Muslims, few have ever heard the gospel.