Iain Strachan

It's now notorious and has "gone viral".  I'm referring to Stephen Fry's response on being asked by a television interviewer what he'd say if he found God actually existed and was confronted by Him at the Pearly Gates.  Stephen replied that he'd say (something like) "Bone cancer in children - what's that about? How dare you deliberately create something that can cause so much misery and it's not our fault?"  Such a God would be evil, malicious, and he would want nothing to do with such a being. I sympathise, I really do.  Some years ago, I used to go to a poetry group.  The founder was a lovely lady called Sally.  Sally was one of the most honest people I'd ever met - if she liked your poem she'd say so, but wouldn't pretend if she didn't like it.  Everyone valued her.  She died at the age of 36, in Indonesia, when her plane crashed into the side of a mountain - she was one of the two Brits on board. I searched the sho...

When as a child I came into the world Helpless and lying in a draughty shed Your wisest men, they say, brought gifts to me: Of gold - for crowning of an infant King; And frankincense - for raising prayers to him; And myrrh - portending burial and death. But would you bring me gifts like this today, And lavish me with costly offerings? I would instead you follow me and let Me show you where I make my dwelling place. See this naked child, starving in the sun Witness his ribs etched starkly on his skin See his swollen belly, and how his eyes Ignore the soft caresses of the flies. I am that child. Today I live in him. Each pain, each pang each gasp is also mine. I would have you bring not crowns of gold But food and water, simple gifts for a King For when you nourish him, you nourish me. And see the tramp who shivers by the door Frozen from the night spent on the streets. So will you offer up a prayer for him That floats to heaven on a...

The following is a somewhat expanded version of an article I had published in the "Christian Forum" column in the Abingdon Herald: One particularly hapless character in Samuel Beckett's play "Waiting for Godot", is ironically named "Lucky". I think that Lucky is a negative analogue of Christ: a suffering servant treated abysmally by his master, carrying a heavy burden of two bags about the stage. A famous passage in the book of Isaiah in the Bible also concerns a suffering servant: Christians believe this to be a prophecy of Christ. Lucky only gets to make one speech, a long, rambling and incoherent tirade, the gist of which is this: no matter what we do, we are all going to waste away to death, and our labours will be unfinished. The final word of the speech is, despairingly: "Unfinished!" By contrast, the last words of Christ on the cross are triumphant: "It is finished." The text of Lucky's speech (along with gui...

I have been returning quite a bit this year to T.S. Eliot's "Four Quartets" (in fact those who know me might think I'm becoming a bit of a T.S. Eliot bore!). I first read these poems in 1996. I found them challenging to understand, but equally I have found that they repay re-reading, and each time reveal a little more wisdom, which Eliot had evidently accumulated from his readings of mystical and religious figures across the ages. A recurring theme of Four Quartets is timelessness, or a contemplation of the "timeless present", compared to our continual pre-occupation with contemplating the past and the future - an activity which Eliot saw as pointless instead of living consciously in the present moment - something which we can only experience fleetingly, and in doing so access the true spiritual states. In the final section of the third of the four poems ("The Dry Salvages"), for instance he wrote: Men's curiosity searches past and future A...

The following words from David Hartley, whose wife Marie was killed in the 7/7 bombings in London struck home to me, amidst all the celebrations on the killing of Osama Bin Laden, and comments that justice has been served: They have got one but there are more behind there. I can't see this meaning terrorism is likely to stop there. They might try retaliating a bit more now. There is no sense of justice. They have some one but there are plenty of people willing to take his place. He is just one of them. Of course, I am not saying that David Hartley speaks for all those who lost loved ones in 7/7 or 9/11.  Many of those will feel a sense of justice; and be glad that an evil man who had no conscience about killing innocent civilians is now dead.  I guess for all of us there is a feeling of "he got what he deserved". But evil atrocities, whether they are on a mass scale or perpetrated by one individual on another, make us all feel angry.  In my voluntary work, I ge...

[Author's note:  One of the biggest questions facing believers is the problem of pain and suffering.  There are no easy glib answers to this question.  It is clear that on a planet of fixed size, if there is birth there has to be death to make room.  But what if all pain were removed and death was always painless?  I have tried to imagine what this would be like in the following story ..] One in fifty thousand is not much to worry about.  It is hardly worth concerning yourself when you go to sleep that one in fifty thousand will not wake up the next day, and you could be one of them.  One in fifty thousand will go to sleep, content and happy and painless, and will be carried off by the silent swathe that passes over the slumbering.  One in fifty-one thousand one hundred and thirty-five, to be precise, the statisticians have calculated.  It is so curious an exactitude that one may expect to live, on average for precisely threescore years and ...

Quakers believe that something of God may be found in every human being.  That thought prompted me to dream up this modern reworking of a very old joke. After a long, good, moral, and kind life, an atheist finally dies at a ripe old age.  Much to his surprise he discovers that there really is such a thing as God, and life after death, despite never having entertained such notions during his life.  Moreover, he discovers that God, whom he had previously been warned was a jealous and judgmental character, was in fact the source of the good that was in his life - and indeed he had lived a very good and noble life. So, as a result, completely unexpectedly, he finds himself admitted to Heaven.  It is a wonderful place: a massive party with tables laid out with delicious food that never seems to run out,  and plenty of drink which you can drink without ever getting too drunk.  Laughter and dancing abound all over the place. He takes a stroll around and come...