Perseverance, Character & Hope

 

Every day one can read a Bible passage, or even a line, and continually uncover profound ways it can be transformative for any individual. Here’s a good case in point – a Bible verse from my reading this morning.

“And we boast or rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. We also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.
Romans 5:2-4

We are going to endure suffering and challenges in the world, but we must persevere because we should really want this kind of character of which Paul speaks, for it is the only true source of hope. In the context of Romans 5:3–4, the "hope" referred to is not some vague desire for a low-probability event to happen, it is a profound and enduring confidence in God's promises and the ultimate fulfilment of His plan for humanity – so there is no better or truer definition of what we should hope for than this hope. Here, hope is a confident expectation rooted in trusting God. Our suffering produces perseverance, which makes us steadfastness and resilient, and this shapes our character. And it is through this character that we can withstand life’s challenges, draw on God’s strength, and live a hopeful life in Christ.

Let me reiterate, we should want this kind of character, because it gradually shapes us into the people the world needs, and into the individuals we should desire to be, because it is what we were Divinely created to become. The converse of that is to live like Mathieu Delarue, a character from Jean-Paul Sartre’s novel The Age of Reason. Reflecting on the existentialist theme of wasted potential, regret, and the realisation that time has passed without having truly lived, he says:

“I have led a toothless life, he thought. A toothless life. I have never bitten into anything. I was waiting. I was reserving myself for later on - and I have just noticed that my teeth have gone."

This quote reflects the stark realisation of a life unfulfilled due to inaction and perpetual postponement. Sartre uses the metaphor of "teeth" to signify vitality, agency, and the capacity to engage with life's challenges and joys. To live a "toothless life" is to avoid biting into the raw substance of existence, choosing instead to wait for an undefined future that never arrives. The discovery that one's "teeth have gone" is a moment of anguish - a confrontation with the irrevocable passage of time and the wasted potential of one's freedom. It is a poignant reminder that existence demands engagement now, because uncourageous inaction and disengagement is the silent thief of authenticity, meaning and, ultimately, our Divine calling.

Be Wary Of The Fashionable Outcry

 

Published earlier on Network Norfolk - sharing here too:

Here is a brilliant passage from C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters that speaks as much about today as when it was written:
 
“We direct the fashionable outcry of each generation against those vices of which it is least in danger and fix its approval on the virtue nearest to that vice which we are trying to make endemic. The game is to have them running about with fire extinguishers whenever there is a flood, and all crowding to that side of the boat which is already nearly gunwale under. Thus we make it fashionable to expose the dangers of enthusiasm at the very moment when they are all really becoming worldly and lukewarm; a century later, when we are really making them all Byronic and drunk with emotion, the fashionable outcry is directed against the dangers of the mere “understanding”. Cruel ages are put on their guard against Sentimentality, feckless and idle ones against Respectability, lecherous ones against Puritanism; and whenever all men are really hastening to be slaves or tyrants we make Liberalism the prime bogey."  C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
 
Today’s misdirected cultural trends are classic cases of directing the fashionable outcry of each generation against those vices of which it is least in danger, especially compared to salvation matters. Society is awash with top-down manipulations – from the mainstream media, social media, political parties and large-scale institutions - showing how priorities can be manipulated away from seeking Christ and desiring a relationship with Him. 
 
The psychological trickery is all well-established in the literature – and it’s a heady mix of accidental or inadvertent spillover effects and deliberately orchestrated manipulation. Instead of addressing the biggest concerns facing a generation, people are made to obsess over less relevant or even comparably harmless issues (in the long run). For example, a society that's grown indifferent and apathetic is warned against being too passionate or enthusiastic; a culture spiralling into moral recklessness is warned against being too rigid or judgmental, that sort of thing. This is why, in encouraging the junior devil to “fix its approval on the virtue nearest to that vice which we are trying to make endemic”, Lewis points out the danger of confusing virtue with vice’s adjacent.
 
There are plenty of these psychological tricks designed to get people to defend a value that masks a growing problem. Like how tolerance and inclusivity are being used not to protect genuine diversity, but to silence moral conviction; like how authenticity and self-expression are widely championed as virtues, but are often tools for justifying self-indulgence, pride, or a refusal to take responsibility; like how community is used as a synonym for exclusive tribalism; and like how scientific and technological progress often masks prideful secularism.
 
Lewis exposes this whipsawing effect brilliantly, "Thus we make it fashionable to expose the dangers of enthusiasm at the very moment when they are all really becoming worldly and lukewarm." Each generation’s moral panic is inversely related to its real failing; when people are emotionally cold, they’re warned about being too emotional; when people are selfish and hedonistic, they’re warned about being too strict or puritanical; when people are drifting toward tyranny, freedom and liberty are painted as dangerous, that sort of thing. This creates a fairground mirror image of reality, where society chases the wrong demons and ignores the spiritual antidotes, as the rot sets in.
 
I believe all this is a subtle form of spiritual warfare and psychological manipulation employed by the enemy and his influencers - channelling the energy of conscience away from truth and toward distraction. Because in many cases, and especially in places where God is not at the top of the hierarchy of priorities, I believe the greatest danger is not the vices many are obsessing over - it's the ones being ignored.
 
I’m glad to hear there may be a Christian revival on the way, because in many places in today's UK culture, instead of confronting the deep spiritual need for Christ and the call to live out genuine Christian responsibility, many are consumed by lesser political, social and ideological concerns that, while not inherently wrong and are certainly worthwhile, become idols when they displace the centrality of the gospel.
 
It must be Christ at the top, then pray He’ll equip us to help solve problems in the world. By fixating on issues that feel urgent but are ultimately peripheral, people neglect their deepest need – relationship or reconciliation with God and the daily obedience that flows from that relationship.
 
Just as C.S. Lewis warned, society runs about with fire extinguishers during a flood, passionately opposing dangers they’re not actually at risk of, while ignoring the real and present threat of spiritual apathy and worldliness. This misdirection keeps hearts far from Christ, all under the illusion of moral seriousness and societal progress – and this generation should be on guard against this spiritual deception and psychological cheat. Even the best virtues must be protected against this idolatry, for as de Rougemont warns us, “Love ceases to be a demon only when he ceases to be a god.”

You Were Not Harmed By The Distant Past

 

Many people seem to be filled with discord about events and circumstances in history that happened long before they were born. Perhaps the most (in)famous is the call for slavery reparations, alongside behaviour conducted during the British Empire, and things of that nature. Now, it’s true that not everything about our human past, including the British Empire, was rosy (welcome to humanity), and it’s also true that some things that happened in the distant past decades before you were born could go on to have some effect on your family’s current situation. But in virtually every other sense that’s conceivable to you, things that happened in the distant past, decades before you were born, have caused you no personal harm at all. In fact, it’s difficult to think of anything that happened before your parents were born that had any discernible harm to you, alive today – and even more so if you understand that you have a lot of control regarding how you reflect on such events.

Yet, strangely, society is awash with people who are convinced that the distant past is responsible for all sorts of their perceived woes, victim status and injustices. If you choose to focus on the distant past in this way, you are likely to be ensnared by a very unhelpful narcissism, attention-seeking and victim-mentality that is impeding your chance of being the person you could be.  

If that’s you, not only should you desist from all this regretful preoccupation, in actual fact, I think it’s highly probable – given the socio-cultural butterfly effect and the fragility of causal chains – that if history hadn’t happened exactly as it did, you wouldn’t be here to think about it. Such is the precarious contingency on which the precise historical narrative rests, that if you altered any of the small details, it would have such a profound knock-on effect that everything about the present would look different, and you wouldn’t have been born. Even if you don’t buy the proposition at that level of tiny detail (and I think you should), certainly if any past event significant enough to be retained in your historical knowledge had not occurred, the specific combination of genetic material that led to you or me would not exist. Therefore, strange as it may seem, you cannot claim to have been harmed by past significant events because their absence would preclude your existence altogether.

One issue you may have with the above is past harms, like historical institutional racism, that might have brought systemic disadvantages affecting a group (black people, for example) due to historical injustices. But strangely enough – although past injustices should serve as a catalyst for us to not repeat such mistakes, and to treat each other as well as we can, for you to retain the argument that you’ve been personally harmed by the distant past, there must be a coherent scenario in which you could possibly exist in a better state due to that injustice not occurring - and there isn’t one. That is, even if a past group was systematically disadvantaged, individual members of that group today would not exist but for the specific combination of genetic material that led to their birth, and the unique history that led to their parents’ sexual union. Thus, the claim of personal harm or entitlement to feel individual harm is undermined by the argument of non-identity without such a past, and that many seemingly obvious present individual harms are not harms at all if the alternative is individual non-existence.

To be clear, we can all see that some historical injustices have created slight systemic disadvantages - such as wealth gaps and educational disparities - that persist today in certain regions, where individuals could claim that they are still enduring the consequences of institutionalised disadvantage. And this does mean that some individuals have to work harder to seize opportunities, to break through barriers and to address their consequences. But since your existence is contingent on the very events you claim harmed you, and since harm requires a comparison to a revisionist, counterfactual state where you exist in better conditions, do you really want to live a life where you’re constantly burdened, upset, defined, and limited by your interpretation of the past? A much more fulfilling path is to live with wonder and gratitude for your improbable existence, to rise above any inherited hardship, and to shape a life that is grounded not in grievance, but in growth, positive agency, and the exhilaration of personal responsibility that aims to make your part of the world a better place.

Rethinking the LGBTQ ‘Community’

The LGBTQ acronym is not only careless in falsely imputing a community to one that barely exists*, it’s even stranger because when you break down the components, you’ll actually find there is quite a lot of division between the Ls, Gs, Bs, Ts, and the Qs

I actually have quite a bit of experience of Ls, Gs and Bs, as a former girlfriend of mine from about 20 years ago had a gay brother, a gay lodger and a gay best friend (all different people 😊), so you can imagine how many Ls, Gs and Bs I met on the party scene in the duration of our relationship. Being the social dynamo, compassionate and caring fellow that I am, I got to know many of my girlfriend’s friends and social acquaintances pretty well. And they constituted a fairly broad cross-section of what people would now call the ‘LGBTQ community’. But not only is it remiss, in my view, to lump them all together in a carelessly formulated acronym, I think it rather deindividuates the people the acronym is trying to collectively categorise (as most group labels of this kind do).

There are, of course, exceptions – and I’m sure there are many individuals who find succour in associating themselves with such a group. But a lot of the attribution is by people outside the group who find it convenient to impute group labels to diverse individuals. And in actual fact, most people of any sex, skin colour, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and so forth thrive by being engaged with primarily at the individual level, where any group to which they happen to belong is extremely tangential to their own identity as an individual.

Furthermore, there is actually more division within those groups than you may realise. Many gay individuals do not want to be defined so prominently by their sexuality - they are citizens first, with diverse experiences, professions, backgrounds, and identities. Many gay and lesbian individuals certainly don’t like the Pride spectacle which flaunts sexuality, hedonism, and sometimes promiscuity in everyone’s face. Lesbians are by and large very different from gay men, with sometimes conflicting objectives. Bisexuality is often frowned upon by both gay people and lesbians. And the so-called trans incentives often run counter to gays’ and lesbians’ perceived rights (and those of women generally) when biological males try to identify as female. The media frequently reports on a growing schism, among older Gs and Ls and younger trans-inclusive activists. And this has produced the inevitable subsidiary divergence, with those claiming that sexual orientation is based on fixed, biological sex, and those in gender identity ideology asserting that sex is fluid, socially constructed, or irrelevant. Further, some so-called trans activists argue among the ‘community’ that refusing to date or sleep with so-called trans people is transphobic.

The upshot is, once you dig deeper, you’ll find the so-called LGBTQ community is rife with discord and varying beliefs and objectives, and replete with a strong desire not to be homogenised or dehumanised through recourse to an arbitrary acronym. All that is not to deny that people you’d place in the LGBTQ group have faced overlapping challenges, like legal discrimination, social ostracism, and difficulties with identity. But pick any group – white teenagers, black primary school teachers, young fathers, Irish Catholics, manual workers, nurses, and so forth, and you’ll be able to find overlapping challenges they’ve faced, without creating a coalition of convenience, driven by ideological incentives, hasty attributions, political lobbying, and corporate branding. 

*Further reading: Last year I wrote a blog post called Bogus Communities, pointing out the human tendency to insert the word ‘community’ after an adjective, acronym or slogan to fraudulently impute shared views and beliefs among a group of people who are only tenuously connected.

 

The Thing We Have Most in Common

 

We have a sloppy tendency to lump people into groups: white people, black people, gay, straight, immigrants, indigenous people, and so forth, as though people in those groups have the most in common by virtue of being labelled that way. But that’s generally false or overstated. Assuming no prohibitive language barriers, then from my experience of people, the factor that most determines what they have in common is not skin colour, ethnicity or sexuality, it is their level of education. 

People functioning and performing at a similar educational level have shared frameworks that far exceed other commonalities. A highly educated black woman and a highly educated white man usually have more in common than a highly educated black woman and a very uneducated black woman. Education often gives people a more common vocabulary, worldview, and analytical approach. Education also often determines which media, literature, and historical frameworks people are familiar with, as these become influential points of connection. Also, many social behaviours, expectations, and conversational styles tend to be shaped by education, which makes interactions more fluid within similar levels. And also, education strongly influences income level, job type, and social mobility – which, of course, affects social circles, lifestyle, housing, health, and community involvement.

There are exceptions, of course – people with similar levels of education can have different upbringings and values, different temperaments and worldviews – but I think education is one of the strongest predictors of shared worldview, especially in modern societies, as it most heavily intersects with other deep influences like communication, values, culture, family, and class.

What God Knows

 

Even though I can’t even know 0.000001% of 1% of what it’s like to be God, I do get intrigued sometimes by peculiarities understood through my limited, finite human brain. For example, God is omniscient, omnipotent and a perfect Being – so what does that mean in terms of some of the supposed limitations of mathematics, logic and information? For example, we know that there cannot be a set of all truths (especially in mathematics or logic), because Tarski proved that truth cannot be defined within the same language in which the statements are expressed. Suppose you try to form a set of all true sentences in a formal system (like arithmetic). Then you would need a truth predicate that determines whether a sentence is true – and such a truth predicate cannot be defined within the same system - it leads to contradictions, like the liar paradox.

Ok, so, I actually don’t think that is a wholly unsolvable problem in this context, as I explained in this blog post. It says more about our own human limitations. But I do not know what a set of all truths could mean for God, because if each set of truths entails further propositions about those truths, then a set of truths is a problematic concept, even if presumably this must be contained in God’s mind somehow. This recursive, self-expanding structure creates an essential tension in the idea of omniscience when it's imagined in my limited human logic, but perhaps that’s because semantic hierarchies are also a phenomenon attached to being human. I don’t know what it means for God to know a set of all truths that entail no further propositions or any kind of semantic hierarchy. This process isn't set-like - it seems more like a dynamically unfolding, internally structured totality – at which point, we humans cannot compute it.

Maybe this means that the idea of a set of all truths is a human limitation not a Divine reality. Sets are static mathematical objects, but God must be a unified act of understanding where He intuits all relations and truths simultaneously. I suppose it’s a bit like trying to write a complete dictionary, but for every definition, you also have to include; 1) the fact that it’s a definition, 2) the implications of its use, 3) the relationships it has with every other definition, and 4) the meanings of those implications… it would loop back and extend outward endlessly. Maybe that’s what such a dictionary would be like for God, but obviously even more complex than mere words.

And, next, what about Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem, which shows that for any sufficiently powerful, consistent formal system (like Peano Arithmetic), there are true statements about natural numbers that cannot be proven within the system. So even we try to gather all provable truths, we miss some that are true but unprovable. Therefore, even the idea of a set of all provable truths doesn’t capture all truths. Or consider Russell’s Paradox - the set of all sets that do not contain themselves, which leads to contradiction. A universal set (the set of all sets) is not allowed in standard set theory because it also leads to paradoxes. Moreover, the set of all true sentences in arithmetic is not recursively enumerable, because there’s no algorithm that can list all and only the true statements, even in principle. This again means the "set of all truths" isn't just seemingly impossible to construct, it’s not even properly definable.

With God’s omniscient mind, does He know all truths, or only all knowable truths? I assume there is nothing God doesn’t know, although His truths have to remain within the internal consistency of their own logic – so He can’t create a rock so heavy He can’t lift, because that’s just a human nonsense, just as it would be if I said, “My dog is half past three steps into next week”. For us, the set of all truths is not well-defined or not formally capturable - but again, that is presumably a human problem connected to being human (like cause and effect), not a God problem connected to being God.

Consequently, we’re left with what we kind of know already – that God's knowledge must transcend formal systems, and He must know truths that no human language or formal system can express, which means the human mind reaches the level of analysis here where it goes blank. The way I picture it is like light before it breaks into colours. In a sense that we might be able to sparsely capture for our own illustration, what we call "truths" are to God as colours are to unbroken light: distinctions that arise only when unity is filtered through the prism of human limitation, but still absolutely glorious for our having done so.

The Negativity Threshold

 

In the book Getting The Love You Want, by clinical therapists Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly, the authors suggest that marriages can only thrive when both beloveds consciously work to get rid of all negativity. One of the key concepts in this generally excellent book is that individuals often bring unresolved emotional wounds from childhood into their romantic relationships, which can manifest as negativity in communication or behaviour. It’s true that by actively addressing and healing these wounds, partners can create a healthier and more fulfilling relationship.

But the idea that beloveds should consciously work to get rid of all negativity has potential downsides if taken too rigidly, and these seem to go unnoticed in the authors’ work here. The benefits of reducing negativity are obvious; it reduces hostility, resentment, defensiveness and contempt; and it fosters a safer, emotionally secure environment. But there are costs too, especially if negativity is merely suppressed, because it usually won’t go away – it will manifest stronger further down the line.

It will also impair healthy conflict, which is necessary for growth. If couples avoid expressing frustration or disagreement to maintain a "negativity-free" relationship, they will inevitably sidestep important conversations that would lead to deeper understanding when negotiated sufficiently.

And we also have to consider that negativity in healthy amounts is a reality of being human, and a key part of authenticity in relationships. Trading off helpful negativity for the purposes of total abolition is not going to foster an authentic relationship, because there are going to be some negative things about growing together in marriage. The bridge to mutual transformation involves constructively navigating negativity.

Clearly, it's both unhealthy and unrealistic to eliminate all negativity. A more sustainable approach is to manage negativity in a constructive way - acknowledging difficult emotions, expressing concerns respectfully, finding solutions together, and turning negotiations into opportunities for deeper connection rather than sources of disconnection.

I personally do endeavour to remove most negativity from relationships - I much prefer a positive, encouraging, hopeful dynamic in relationships. But it's important to understand that just because a small amount of negativity has to be encouraged as one of the essential tools for transformations - both personally and relationally - we mustn’t be complacent about its detrimental effects on marriages. You can think of it a little like salt on your vegetables; a pinch will bring out flavours that otherwise remain blander, but as soon as it's applied in excess it will spoil the whole meal. I'll explain what I think are the benefits of a pinch of negativity, both from an epistemological perspective and a psychological one.

From an epistemological perspective, healthy negativity is a necessary part of the process of knowledge and growth. The very nature of understanding and learning involves questioning, challenging, and sometimes even rejecting previous assumptions. In relationships, it is through confronting difficult emotions and challenging our perspectives that we grow closer and develop deeper mutual understanding. When partners are able to engage with the "negative" aspects of themselves and their relationship - be it frustration, disappointment, or disagreement - they are engaging in a vital cognitive process that allows them to redefine their relationship and evolve together. This active confrontation of tension, rather than the suppression of it, invites important learning and deeper connection.

And from a psychological perspective, healthy negativity plays a crucial role in emotional regulation and psychological resilience. Healthy negative emotions like frustration or anger can serve as signals, pointing us toward areas that need attention or adjustment. When managed appropriately, these feelings offer a route to catharsis and emotional release, fostering emotional intimacy when expressed and understood. As I said above, suppressing negativity doesn’t resolve the underlying issues - it simply buries them, allowing them to resurface in more damaging ways later on. It's psychology 101. By acknowledging and processing difficult emotions, partners open up pathways to healing and genuine connection. This process of emotional integration - transforming negativity into insight - creates a stronger bond and greater psychological safety.

Furthermore, on top of all the above, I believe the danger of telling couples to eradicate all negativity is that they will also feel more pessimistic about themselves and their relationship when it inevitably keep materialising. What beloveds should instead understand, and be encouraged by, is that when negativity is used as a tool for growth, with beloveds in full truthseekng mode, it can strengthen the foundation and resilience of the relationship itself, forging deeper mutual trust and respect than its suppression would ever cultivate or allow.

Efficient Use Of Knowledge

It would be remiss here if we didn't elaborate on yesterday’s blog post The inefficiency Trap and tailor the content to one of the most important works in the whole of economics - Hayek's The Use of Knowledge in Society, which is the most natural bedfellow to the inefficiency trap. This essential work by Hayek is a foundational essay in economic and political philosophy. It challenges the idea that central planning can efficiently allocate resources, and argues that the real economic problem is not just resource allocation but the efficient use of dispersed knowledge.

Hayek makes the case that decentralised decision-making through market processes is superior to central planning because it best utilises the knowledge that exists in society. His argument emphasises the role of prices as a communication mechanism that helps coordinate economic activity without requiring any single individual or entity to possess all relevant information. This is standard economic fayre now, and has been for many decades, but it's important to acknowledge how innovative this work was in its day, and how influential it has gone on to be.

Hayek helped challenge the traditional economic problem as framed in classical and neoclassical economics. One of the main issues in economics is how to efficiently allocate scarce resources among competing uses. But we cannot, of course, assume that all relevant information about available resources and technological possibilities is already given to a central planner or decision-maker. In reality, as Hayek argued, knowledge is fragmented and dispersed among individuals - and the key challenge is how to make use of this scattered information effectively.

So, Hayek talked about the role of decentralisation in knowledge utilisation, and he distinguishes between two types of knowledge:

Scientific Knowledge - this includes general rules, principles, and data that can be formally studied and documented.

Local and Tacit Knowledge - this consists of specific, often unarticulated knowledge possessed by individuals, such as an entrepreneur's awareness of local supply constraints or a worker's skills acquired through experience.

The big limitation of central planning is that the planners cannot effectively capture and utilise local and tacit knowledge. The challenge is how to coordinate this dispersed knowledge in a way that leads to efficient economic outcomes. Hayek argues that decentralised decision-making is the only practical way to make use of dispersed knowledge. When decisions are made at the local level by individuals who have first-hand knowledge of their specific circumstances, the economy as a whole can adjust dynamically to changing conditions.

On top of that, one of Hayek's most important contributions is his explanation of how the price system functions as a communication mechanism. Prices convey crucial information about the relative scarcity of goods and services. When a resource becomes scarcer, its price rises, signalling producers to conserve it and consumers to use less of it. Conversely, if supply increases or demand falls, prices drop, signalling increased availability. Each individual reacts to price signals based on their local knowledge and needs. This allows the economy to coordinate millions of independent decisions without any centralised control. This spontaneous order, or 'catallaxy' as Hayek calls it, emerges naturally from market interactions.

Moreover, markets not only distribute existing knowledge, they also help generate new knowledge. Entrepreneurs experiment with different products, production techniques, and business models. When some strategies prove successful, they are imitated and refined, leading to continuous economic innovation and progress. Central planning can stifle this discovery process because it does not allow for optimal decentralised experimentation. As we know from our own successive government top-down failings, over-interference means resources are allocated based on short-sighted directives rather than market signals, leading to inefficiencies, shortages, and surpluses.

Of course, while most of us don't advocate for a completely laissez-faire economy, we can all heed warnings from sound economic principles against excessive government control - especially around price theory; knowing that policies that interfere with the price mechanism - such as price controls, excessive regulations, and subsidies - distort information flow and lead to inefficiencies. This is obvious even to most laypeople with a basic grasp of economics - but the application of the use of knowledge in society is perhaps less obvious, but just as vital a thing to understand.

In the notion of spontaneous order - the idea that complex social and economic systems mostly evolve naturally without central design - economies function best when individuals are free to act on their knowledge and incentives. To that end, Hayek's work The Use of Knowledge in Society remains one of the most profound economic works in demonstrating that the key economic challenge is not merely resource allocation, but the utilisation of dispersed and tacit knowledge. The market system, through the price mechanism, most efficiently coordinates this knowledge - and that is just as important as efficiently allocating resources, because the two go hand in hand.

The Inefficiency Trap

 

There's a classic Econ 101 brainteaser often posed in introductory economics courses (I think I saw it first in Steve Landsburg's work), which I won't quote verbatim, but it's along these lines:

Question: Suppose apples are produced by a competitive industry, while pears are provided by a monopolist. Coincidentally, they both sell for the same price, and you would be equally happy with either. If you care about conserving societal resources, which should you buy?

Answer: You should buy the apple if you care about economic efficiency and conserving societal resources. In a perfectly competitive market, firms produce up to the point where price equals marginal cost (P = MC). This means that the price of an apple reflects the true societal cost of the resources required to produce it.

I hope that makes sense because, by contrast, a monopolist typically restricts output and sets a price above marginal cost (P > MC). This results in underproduction - some consumers who would have been willing to buy at a price above MC are unable to do so, leading to deadweight loss. This artificial scarcity means society is not producing as much as it efficiently could, making the monopoly inefficient from a resource allocation perspective.

Since the price of an apple equals its marginal cost, choosing an apple means you are participating in a market that operates efficiently, ensuring that goods are produced at the optimal level. By contrast, choosing a pear supports a monopolistic market structure that produces inefficiently low quantities, reinforcing the misallocation of resources. Thus, if your goal is to align your purchasing decision with economic efficiency and the best use of societal resources, you should buy the apple.

At first glance, the idea that a seller in a competitive market sells at a price equal to marginal cost (P = MC) does seem counterintuitive - it almost sounds as if they are only breaking even on the last unit produced. However, there's more to the story, because we are considering average cost as well as marginal cost. Marginal cost is the cost of producing one additional unit, but average cost is the total cost (including fixed costs) divided by the number of units produced. In a perfectly competitive market, the price is typically equal to both marginal cost and the minimum average cost in the long run. This ensures that firms cover all costs, including fixed costs, and earn a normal profit, which is the minimum return necessary to keep a business operating in the industry.

That's also why, in the long run, in a market-friendly industry with no barrier to entry or excessive regulations, competitive firms earn this normal profit but not excessive profits, because competition drives prices down to the level of average cost, but not below it. Incidentally, it also shows the foolishness of the statement 'people before profits', to which I can refer you in past blogs (see here and here).

The fact that it's usually better to consume from a competitive industry than a monopoly (natural monopolies sometimes excepted) also shows why it's usually better for the market to provide goods and services than the state. Markets are competitive industries but governments are monopolies. In competitive markets, firms must minimise costs and innovate to survive. This tends to allocate resources efficiently, leading to lower prices and better quality for consumers. Competitive markets produce goods where the price reflects the true societal cost of resources, ensuring that production aligns closely with consumer preferences. And markets tend to adjust quickly to changes in demand or supply, as firms compete to attract customers and maximise profits.

Governments, which are de facto monopolies, usually lack incentives to innovate or reduce costs because they do not face direct competition. And government-provided goods and services usually do not reflect true marginal costs, due to subsidies, taxes, or inefficiencies - meaning an almost inevitable over- or under-consumption of resources.

In his famous dictum, The Four Ways to Spend Money, Milton Friedman outlined the perennial problems of governments spending someone else's money on someone else - the typically least efficient way that money is spent. It's obviously not the case that markets are always preferred over governments in every sector - but politicians are primed to put their own interests first, which means the probability of inefficiency and bad value for money increases. I'll elaborate on that in tomorrow's blog post. 

It Would Be Stranger If The Bible Is False

 

When you look at everything contained in the Bible that purports to show the truth of God – the prophecies, the miracles, the testimonies, the Incarnation, the resurrection, the eyewitness accounts, and so forth – you are being asked to consider the probability that it speaks true propositions about God. You have to decide which is more probable, that when interpreted correctly the Bible A) does speak the truth about God, or B) that it does not. Here is why A is much more likely than B. 

Every time someone wins the lottery, the sequence of six balls is highly improbable, yet someone wins regularly. The chance of guessing the six winning numbers is about 1 in 45 million - extremely unlikely. Still, we don’t dismiss the outcome simply because it’s improbable; we look at the context and evidence. The improbability of an event does not automatically disqualify its truth. The same principle applies when evaluating claims in the Bible: the question is not whether the events are rare, but whether the surrounding context makes them credible. Faking the winning lottery by guessing the correct numbers beforehand is just as unlikely as actually winning. Likewise, the idea that the Bible’s unified narrative, fulfilled prophecies, and theological depth were all fabricated - and yet converged so seamlessly over centuries - strikes me as at least as improbable as the proposition that it is, in fact, the divinely inspired word of God.

To be crystal clear – I’m not making the non-sequitur that says “The Bible is highly unique; Therefore, it's unlikely to be false; Therefore, it is probably from God”, and nor am I saying that someone couldn’t easily make up a story that they correctly guessed the winning lottery numbers, but didn’t really. I also acknowledge that this is a subjective assessment where the priors are not numeric like they are with the lottery win. But the point is, the Bible is such a remarkable book, with such a completely unique set of stories, prophecies, linked text, historical accounts and integrated composition – all cohesively tied up with the proposition that Jesus is God (call this proposition x) – that the theory that it’s not the word of God is much less likely than the proposition that it is. In other words, I think the Bible has a lower probability that it’s all fabricated, made up, false, inaccurate, or a mixture of the four, than the proposition that it’s a true account of Jesus being God. It would be more remarkable and improbable if it isn’t from God than if it is. It would be stranger if the Bible were false than true.

If you want to proceed in Bayesian terms (as I did here, here and here), then we begin with a prior probability that Christianity is true (call that hypothesis A), and we then ask whether the evidence in the Bible makes that hypothesis more likely than its alternatives (that it's false, inaccurate or fabricated - call that B). I’m saying proposition x so greatly increases the probability of A over B that it would far more remarkable if B is true not A. In other words, such a remarkably consistent narrative written over many centuries by dozens of authors from different backgrounds; the fulfilled prophecies; a compelling account of the resurrection, with multiple witnesses, early proclamations, and a dramatically transformed early Christian community; and a coherent theological system centred around Jesus Christ, whose life and teachings have exerted a more profound and lasting influence on the world than anyone else - together, they form such a strong cumulative case that it would be far stranger if B was true not A.

Footnote: If you disagree that Christianity is true, you may have some objections on similar grounds to what I would have if someone used Bayesian reasoning and a lottery analogy to make a case for something I thought was untrue. So, let me consider the objections I’d offer to that person, and tackle them on my own article.

Objection 1: James, you're using probability theory without any numbers, models, or defined probability space, so a Bayesian analysis is difficult for Bible analysis.

My comment: Indeed, and I too am cautious about the use of Bayes to "prove" God, but the hyperlinked blog posts above show that if we are simply looking for evidence, then it can be applied to increase the probability. Under the frequentist interpretation of probability, calculating the probability of an event requires defining the broader context or reference class within which that event occurs – and if we nest all those contexts together surrounding reasons to believe, and priors, the weight of evidence is stacked in favour of Christianity. It’s fine to use a Bayesian structure to frame reasoning even when precise values are unavailable, as long as we are clear and transparent about what we are doing.

Objection 2: James, the lottery analogy is problematic. Lottery outcomes are random and well-modelled, whereas Biblical authorship and theology are historical, intentional, and deeply contextual.

My comment: Don’t worry, it’s fine. The point of the analogy is epistemic, in that it shows that improbability alone doesn't justify disbelief, especially when there’s a known context that supports the outcome. I acknowledge that the subjectivity and imprecision in such cases are not exactly the same as the lottery, but then analogies are not exactly the same as the real thing. The lottery analogy is good for showing that the probabilistic framework still helps articulate the idea that certain types of evidence (like cumulative coherence, fulfilment of prophecy, and unique historical influence) shift the balance in favour of one hypothesis over another.

Objection 3: James, you're arguing that the evidence strongly supports Christianity, but you have neglected to mention the base rate.

My comment: Indeed, and in many blog posts you’ll find me making the same criticism of other writers who neglect the base rate in a way that undermines their argument. But in this case, it’s difficult to meaningfully assign base rates to metaphysical events like divine revelation, because such events are one-off and unique, not repeatable in a way that makes statistical base rates meaningful. In this case, priors must be informed by the weight and coherence of the available evidence. And as per comment 1, it’s absolutely fine, as long as we establish what we are doing. And what we are doing is saying, over several blog posts, that Christianity justifies significantly updating our priors in huge favour to its truth.

Objection 4: James, your category B “Not from God” is too broad, and you risk lumping all alternatives (fabricated, inaccurate, partly true, culturally evolved) into one single hypothesis B, which oversimplifies the spectrum of possible explanations.

My comment: It’s not a problem, because we are basically saying either the Bible is the word of God or it isn’t. It’s a binary proposition. This highlights that none of the alternative explanations, taken together or separately, account for the cumulative complexity, depth, and consistency of the Biblical narrative – so either Christianity is the truth (with a correct interpretation - especially of the fundamentals) or it isn’t. There can’t be a “It’s sort of true’ or “It’s partly true” because the whole creation story hangs on it being the truth or not. In fact, the multiplicity of alternative theories weakens them, because they lack the unified explanatory power that the divine authorship hypothesis has. Bayesian reasoning often involves comparing clusters of alternative hypotheses with a single well-defined theory when the alternatives individually lack explanatory strength, and that is what we are doing here.

Objection 5: James, aren’t you in danger of selectively emphasising the positive features of the Bible (coherence, influence, prophecy) and downplaying purported counterevidence (apparent contradictions, moral difficulties, historical issues).

My comment: Well, every worldview involves a degree of interpretive weighting of the evidence - but that doesn’t invalidate the process of evaluating cumulative credibility. I am familiar with all the purported counterarguments, and I’m not ignoring them; I’m saying that in totality, the affirmative evidence for Christianity not just outweighs the objections, but actually renders those kinds of counterarguments either moot or easily explainable through the lens of Biblical truth and justification – especially once we realise that if a document is 2,000+ years old, written in multiple languages across centuries, some tension points are inevitable. What’s surprising isn’t that these exist, but how consistently the central message holds together despite them – which is why the positive features are strong enough to frame the purported counterevidence in their right place, and in a way that actually reinforces the Bible’s authenticity, rather than undermines it.

Theistic Evolutionist: An Extraneous Epithet

I personally don't like the term Theistic Evolutionist - it's a term that YECs felt needed to be perpetuated to describe people who, ostensibly, quite naturally accept the empirical evidence presented from independent scientific disciplines throughout the world, and reject the non-factual claims that YECs have made about physical reality due to their clumsy reading of scripture. I'm aware that in a debate, having a labelled group identity can offer some practical utility in identifying who falls into which camp - but I think the term Theistic Evolutionist gives too much regard for what YECs consider to be a valid debating ground.

Denial of evolution (at least, descent with modification over billions of years on earth) has the same kind of lack of credibility as denying gravity, electromagnetism, Newton's laws of motion, Archimedes' principle of buoyancy, Hooke's law, quantum mechanics, general relativity, and so forth. But not only do most YECs support most (if not all) of those scientific theories - even if they do not, they naturally don't have to refer to other Christians as Christian Newtonians or Christian General Relativists or gravitational Christians or Christian electromagnetists. It is always reasonable to assume a Christian you meet is an electromagnetist Christian or a gravitational Christian - it goes without saying, really.

Consequently, what YECs don't realise is that for the vast majority of the world population of Christians, they are simply folk who accept the Bible as the book through which we learn more and more about God and our relationship with Him, and at the same time folk who accept the findings of science as an integral part of acquiring knowledge and understanding the physical world. Referring to such folk as Theistic Evolutionists is really a label invented by YEC folk who don't understand science competently, and who don't interpret scripture with enough competence (if they are even willing to acknowledge it needs interpreting at all – as many aren't) to see that it does not conflict with a scientific understanding of physical reality.

To that end, I wish we lived in a world where we don't have to be referred to as Theistic Evolutionists, in the same way we live in a world where we don't have to be referred to as electromagnetist Christians or gravitational Christians.

Gospel Seed Adventure

I like writing things that can be shared again and again when the situation arises - a go-to article for 'You think X? Well, here’s Y.' I have plenty of those I use frequently, and I think this could be another one I might use repeatedly. This one’s about the ways that people can respond to the Christian gospel, ingeniously encapsulated in Christ’s Parable of the Sower. Not only is it one of the greatest, wisest and most truthful parables ever told – it was also being lived out as Christ spoke it, as His disciples, like all who hear His message, had the potential to respond in any of the four ways. Here is the parable, taken from Mark’s gospel:

The Parable of the Sower
A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants, so that they did not bear grain. Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up, grew and produced a crop, some multiplying thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times.

Then Jesus said to them, “Don’t you understand this parable? How then will you understand any parable? The farmer sows the word. Some people are like seed along the path, where the word is sown. As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them. Others, like seed sown on rocky places, hear the word and at once receive it with joy. But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful. Others, like seed sown on good soil, hear the word, accept it, and produce a crop - some thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times what was sown.

So, in terms of an individual hearing the Christian gospel, we have four responses – what I’ll call Snatched (The Seed on the Path), Rootless (The Seed on Rocky Ground), Unfruitful (The Seed Among Thorns) and Accepting (The Seed on Good Soil): 

1)     Snatched: As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them

2)     Rootless: Hear the word and at once receive it with joy. But since they have no root, they last only a short time

3)     Unfruitful: Hear the word; but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful

4)     Accepting: Hear the word, accept it, and produce a crop (in other words, embrace the gospel, bear the fruit, and grow).

One of the brilliant aspects of this parable is that it literally covers every possible response one could have to the gospel, because they all focus on the condition of the heart. There are, of course, potential changes in the condition of the heart over time – a man could have soil that’s both rocky and thorny, or a woman could start with hardened soil but find the encouragement to cultivate it into good soil, but our response to the seed of the word is always going to be contingent on where our heart is at any period of time in our life. I suppose the most common people in the world are as follows. There are many fellow Christians who have Accepted the gospel, understand it, and allow it to transform their life (praise God). Believers of all the false religions (including smaller cults) would usually come under the Snatched category, where the seed has fallen on the path; they’ve heard the gospel but immediately dismissed it because their existing beliefs seem incompatible.

Another large group are the ones I call ex-churched (they think of themselves as ex-Christian, which I have doubts about). They would mostly fall under the Rootless and Unfruitful – they have experience in church life, often raised in a Christian home, but the seed ultimately fell on rocky or thorny ground. They have experienced one or more of any number of things - a personal tragedy, peer pressure, societal opposition, mistreatment, personal challenges to religious fundamentalism, resistance to dogma, preoccupation with career, relationships, financial success, or social status, the list goes on – and this has been inimical to their accepting the gospel.

Then there are those who’ve made gods or idols of other things – they are also Snatched, and very numerous. They include those whose hearts are consumed by career, status, success, relationships, pleasure, entertainment, material acquisition, socio-political preoccupations, the inflation of their own perceived intellect, and other forms of self-reliance.

The word is powerful and transformative because it stands as the most profound and important truth ever proclaimed, offering hope, redemption, and eternal life to all who receive it. It is not just a message to be heard, it is a seed to be planted deeply in the soil of a heart willing to embark on the full adventure of a relationship with God.

The Often Overlooked Cheat of Propaganda

 

The true essence of propaganda is designed, not only to influence an individual’s thoughts and beliefs directly, but also to shape their perceptions of what the broader society believes. This usually works in two ways; one is through mass propaganda, like left wing economics and wokeism, and the other is through small propaganda - hermetically sealed small cults, like Jehovah’s Witnesses and Answers in Genesis. Mass propaganda tries to orchestrate an illusion of widespread consensus around specific ideas or ideologies. Small propaganda tries to orchestrate an illusion of inside exclusive beliefs, where the cult is the only true purveyor of the truth, and the masses are the ones who’ve been deceived or led astray. Most cult leaders of this kind have been so adept at indoctrinating their members that they’ve become scared into thinking that the mere questioning of their cult’s beliefs and practices is part of the same heresy to which they are in opposition.

Consequently, propaganda’s ultimate goal is first to get your soul, and then control your thinking through a subset influence where, in mass propaganda, you believe that the majority is also convinced; and in small propaganda, you believe it’s everyone else except those with the privileged information who are deluded or blind to the truth.

In either case, it’s a top-down attempt to control your perception of the collective mind. And the biggest cheat is that the victims of propaganda are the ones who most fervently defend it, and most unaware that they are ones being manipulated. They are like prisoners who believe that the outside world is the prison, and their jail cell, the keys of which they guard with their life, is the only sanctuary of freedom.

Mind The Gap

 

The so-called “God of the gaps” critique is a classic straw man. Virtually no serious Christian thinker ever claimed, “We have a gap in our scientific understanding, therefore God did it.” It's a flimsy criticism of a proposition that is rarely, if ever, seriously made.

By contrast, there is a valid “Science of the gaps” criticism, easily directed at figures like Richard Dawkins and others. It goes something like this: “We don’t currently understand X, but eventually science will explain it - so there’s no need to consider other possibilities.”

This attitude assumes the primacy and completeness of the scientific method, even in areas where it may not be applicable. Science is inherently limited to the lens of reality it can measure and quantify, which means the framework often narrows until only scientifically tractable phenomena are treated as real or important. Anything outside that scope is dismissed as trivial, mistaken, or irrelevant.

In this light, the “God of the gaps” critique is significantly over-attributed, and the ‘Science of the gaps” critique is hugely under-attributed.

Between The Cheats

 

I ran into this very interesting article - The Different Types of Infidelity Which Make Men and Women Most Upset. 64,000 people in the study were asked to imagine:

1) Their partner falling in love with someone else, but not having sex with them.

2) Their partner having sex with someone else, but not falling in love with them.

"The results showed that 54% of heterosexual men would be more upset by sexual than emotional infidelity. The corresponding figure for women was 35%. Women were much more likely than men to be upset by emotional infidelity (65% of women versus 46% of men)."

So, basically, all infidelity (emotional and sexual) is bad and most unwelcome, but heterosexual men are much more likely to be upset by sexual infidelity than women, and heterosexual women are much more likely to be upset by emotional infidelity than men.

Naturally, this is only a common pattern; it does not speak for everyone. But I suspect there is some biological basis behind the claims. As it goes, homo sapiens has been the lone survivor of what is believed to be many other very similar hominin species that died out. As well as many subtle differences (adaptability, environmental factors, social cohesion), the main difference is that we, the surviving species, made a better job of passing on our genes.

Males increased the chances of passing on genes by as much copulation as possible. Females increased the chances of passing on genes by limiting the number of children, in order to be able to raise the ones she had. She would do this best with a supportive male standing by her. The hands of evolutionary biology have thus dictated that to pass on genes, the emotional relationship is more important for females than males, particularly as the mother has to ensure that her children's father is attentive to her and the raising of their children. But equally, males have to guard against female infidelity, lest they get stuck helping to bring up other males' children.

Given the foregoing, we probably have brains that are primed for the above figures to be accurate, where being more upset by sexual infidelity should be much higher for men, and being more upset by emotional infidelity should be even higher for women. We should also expect, then, that for the purposes of self-preservation, couples who work very hard to be monogamous have more chance of a successful and durable union. 

 

Let's Face It: Atheism Isn't Very Interesting Anymore

Atheism, like many other beliefs, undergoes social and cultural selection pressure in a way that resembles biological evolution. If atheism is taken to simply mean a lack of belief in God, then there is little about it to hold external interest. So, a slightly more interesting version developed into a positive view that there is no God, and with all of the subsidiary counter-apologetics and Promethean fantasies about a semi-utopian post-faith world of science, reason and rationality (especially in the past 50 years, where technological advancements have given rise to unprecedented, improved living standards, and greater global connectivity).

But these are fast proving to be superficial anticipations based on shallow considerations – nothing of the sort has happened or will happen. Quite the opposite, in fact; the attempted erosion of the Christian faith has created a deeply unsatisfactory void - a kind of spiritual vacuum that has left people discontent and spiritually hungry, where substitutes brought in to fill the void have shown themselves to be intellectually hollow, spiritually empty, morally inadequate, and an assault on many of the long-standing metaphysical qualities (like truth, facts, knowledge, freedom, purpose, meaning and wisdom) that form the bedrock of our Judaeo-Christian-Aristotelian culture.

In a good cop-bad cop critique, the bad cop in me would say that consequently, because atheism fails to provide the solution to the deepest and most profound human needs and desires, it becomes less and less interesting the more it persists - to the point where, for most of its loudest and most strident commentators, it has really become an ideological and spiritual wasteland left in the hands of cynical, myopic individuals who seek attention and validation, and whose primary way of making atheism seem compelling is to lash out at religious belief with dismissive resentment, mockery and scorn. And the more the atheists sense in desperation that what they have to offer is not very interesting anymore, the more resentful, mocking and scornful their comments become in order to grab the attention and conceal the mediocrity of their arguments, all in the service of trying to stay relevant and interesting.

The good cop part of me would cushion it by conceding that I understand that atheism can offer a powerful framework for many people, especially those seeking clarity, intellectual honesty, and a life grounded in reason and empirical evidence. At its best, it can encourage thoughtful questioning, personal responsibility, and a deep appreciation for the natural world. For many, it's a meaningful path away from beliefs that may have felt constraining or inconsistent with their lived experience, and for which I have much sympathy. The passion that some atheists express - though at times it may come across harshly - often stems from real disillusionment that their own personal experiences of Christianity have not been much better.

Ultimately, atheism just doesn’t strike me as very interesting anymore. It lacks the narrative depth, existential richness, and imaginative scope that once gave it a provocative foot in the door. In a world still grappling with meaning, morality, and transcendence, atheism rather feels like yesterday’s rebellion. Its imaginative power is largely spent.

EDIT TO ADD: I had a further thought of elaboration, where I think atheism being uninteresting is also due to how the underpinning subject frameworks are nested together and the relationship they have. Perhaps for illustration you can think of it like a dynamic feedback loop, where each is feeding back on the other – rather like an ecosystem, where science, morality, value and psychology are like interdependent species - each sustaining the others in the complex, life-giving web that is Christ’s truth. If you dislodge one, the health of the whole becomes unstable and begins to fray.

The breakdown is like this. Christianity speaks the truth about God, so it underpins science and philosophy in terms of truth and values, it underpins morality and ethics in terms of goodness grounded in God’s nature, it underpins economics and socio-politics in terms of facts and values, and it underpins psychology and psychiatry in terms of human nature, purpose, healing and transformation.

It is the latter that I think speaks most profoundly about the malaise and psychological detachment of atheism, because it becomes uprooted from any of the above fundamental groundings, and is ultimately inimical to fulfilment and satisfaction, even if it deceives in offering temporary succour or purpose. Psychology and psychiatry are essential tools in the moral and spiritual framework for understanding truth, values, restoration, the relational nature of humans, healing, and the renewal of the person – which is also grounded in the empirical sciences. And in the same loop, Christian truth and spiritual formation are essential components of the renewal process in psychology and psychiatry – always indirectly, but in many cases, directly too.

I think that, in the end, is why atheism seems ultimately uninteresting and underwhelming once the novelty has worn off. It lacks the tools to connect meaningfully to the deep questions that matter - not just what is true, but what is good, what heals, what restores, and what fulfils – because it stands outside and severs itself from the life-giving web.

You could think of atheism as operating on a kind of inverted supply and demand curve for existential comfort. The perceived benefits it offers - intellectual autonomy, moral self-determination, and freedom from Christian accountability - are always likely to be in high demand in materially prosperous, politically free countries, precisely because they satisfy immediate, surface-level needs, subjective ethical flexibility and perceived psychological independence.