Identity in Christ

When I began to get acquainted with Jesus in my mid-teens, I was in a pretty miserable state. I had a very low self esteem because I didn't match up at all to the sporty, trendy and confident standard expected at my boarding school. I had been quite heavily bullied and felt no one valued me, and consequently was fairly self-absorbed. One of the amazing things I discovered as I began to get to know some Christians was how precious and unique I was to God. For example Jesus illustrates the Father's deep love for us by saying that he even counts the number of hairs on our heads, he calls us children and friends rather than servants. And the Bible contained phenomenal statements about how differently God saw me (compared to the negative way other people might) and promises about how he was transforming me to become more like Jesus.

Back in my school days I gathered together a page of my favourite quotations from the Bible related to the new identity I'd come to embrace as someone loved by God. It's clear from the context that many of the verses in the Bible, for example things Jesus says to his little band of disciples, are intended not just for the immediate audience but also apply to us today. This is not always the case of course, and I have no intention of building a giant wooden Ark because I've read that Noah was once asked to do this! Anyhow, for those verses which were clearly universalisable, I look the liberty of replacing pronouns like "you" with my own name as a reminder that amazingly these truths and promises really were meant for me as well (and you too)! I wrote as an introduction that: "God treats us as individuals, He knows everything about us, yet He loves us and has made it possible for us to come into relationship with Him." I sometimes made similar sheets for friends, and they were generally well appreciated.

When I first put together a website, almost a decade ago, this sheet was one of the first pages I posted up on it. I'm mentioning it now because I just got an email from a guy in the US who stumbled upon this page via Google. He has transformed it into an online form which will generate a list of those personalised verses which can be viewed on a webpage and/or sent by email. It's a great idea, so thanks Jacob!

My letter about Islam in the Daily Mail

I was just (vainly) doing a search for my name online and I discovered that a letter I wrote to the Daily Mail last month was published (in a somewhat edited form) under the title "Peaceful Majority". As I didn't get a response from them, and don't read that newspaper, I hadn't realised it was actually published!

It was written after the excellent Arab Media Watch sent an alert about a column of his that said: "The chairman of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee was forced recently to admit he didn't know the difference between Sunni and Shia... So, for the benefit of Mail readers in the same boat, here is a simple cut-out-and-keep guide to the two dominant branches of Islam: Sunnis are the peace-loving, Saudi-backed wing who brought you Al Qaeda. Shias are the peace-loving, Iranian-backed strain behind Hamas and Hezbollah. I hope that helps."

My letter said: "I was shocked to read Richard Littlejohn's characterisation of the two main branches of Islam, implying that neither is 'peace-loving'. One might as well describe Christians as being 'behind the IRA and Ku Klux Klan'. Muslims who commit violent acts are not at all representative of the vast majority of the 1.3 billion Muslims worldwide - almost a quarter of humanity. And Hamas isn't a Shia organisation: it is composed entirely of Sunni Muslims."

One line that was unfortunately cut from the published letter was: "I have worked in Palestine and Iraq with outstanding Muslims of both sects whose faith inspires them to risk their lives non-violently in the cause of peace and reconciliation."