I’m writing this in a week (October 2026) when we have seen Danny Tommo arrested for cutting a criminal gang’s inflatable; five men arrested for a bombing attempt at RAF Fairford; the Archbishop of Canterbury changing her mind about giving a peace award to a terrorist; a police warning to Stephen Yaxley Lennon that there is a “credible threat” to his life; facial coverings in public banned after years of permitting them and a government pledge of millions to Gaza rather than our armed forces.
How does a Christian make sense of a world that praises terrorism, violence and abuse when carried out by the “right” people, overlooks it when it is Christians at the receiving end, lets rapists and the violent walk free whilst imprisoning people for saying the “wrong” words and condemning a small democratic country for defending itself?
Really?
Sometimes my humour gets the better of me, sometimes my cynicism, at others my desperation, but I hope never anger. A good example is feeling that one has to laugh (I think) that in 2020 everyone HAD to wear masks in public. Now we mustn’t! Whilst at the serious level realising that the whole COVID pandemic appears to have been a manufactured ploy to experiment with compliance whilst “poisoning” the majority of the world’s population. Or, to calm the conspiracy theory cries, another way of saying that I have given up believing anything I see or hear, especially from “experts” or the BBC. Oh, did I mention the twin towers? That’s a newly reopened can of worms.
Relax
The earth isn’t flat and the moon landings happened. Or at least I believe so.
Theoretical Christianity
Obviously as a Christian I would love to live in a world where everyone loved one another or at worst tolerated one another. Wouldn’t that be lovely. We are after all called to “love our enemies and do good to those who persecute you”. But in the real world some people hate others and not only wish them dead but are even happy to die themselves to make that possible.
Smith Wigglesworth used to say that he prays each day with a newspaper in one hand and the Bible in the other. That’s kind of how I feel.
The end times.
How do we stay sane when we know that the world will get much worse; where we know that persecution is bound to come. The Bible is clear that a false religion will become prominent headed by an “Anti-Christ”. For the last 1300 years that has looked strongly like being Islam. Jesus said in Matthew 24: “14 And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand), 16 then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains”. Where might that be I wonder?
In short I feel that I have two world views. The first is based on my beliefs (that which I think the Bible traches). The second is a much more earthly mix of fear, politics and incredulity, just like everyone.
There was a time when I bought into the belief that the Crusades were wrong because bad things happened at the hands of European knights and soldiers. Now I realise that Europe was fighting for its life against an aggressive Islam that threatened to take it over. War is abhorrent. But it seems inevitable. Even Jesus did once say, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” Matthew 10:34
Now we can argue that he meant sword in the same way as Moslems defend the word Jihad. But he clearly meant division and difference.
I have lots of pages on the subject of race, such as https://crosstownservices.co.uk/malcolminthemiddle/black-lives-matter/
Israel https://crosstownservices.co.uk/malcolminthemiddle/israel/