Wednesday 7 August
Prof. John Lennox joined us by LiveLInk from Oxford to answer questions from his younger brother Gilbert (our New Horizon chairperson).
Gilbert: Good evening, John. It was 2008 when you last spoke here at New Horizon.
John: Good evening. It was a long time ago. I’ve been watching for a few minutes and it is lovely to see that New Horizon is thriving.
Gilbert: Can you tell us a bit about yourself.
John: As you can see, I’m rather old. My brother is the youngest in the family and I live with my wife Sally, to whom I’ve been married for 56 years. We live just outside Oxford. We have three children and we have ten grandchildren. As for me, I’m what is called an Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University and at Green Temple College in Oxford. Most of the time now, I write books. For health reasons, I don’t travel very much anymore. I write books about scripture and about the way Christian faith impacts on the contemporary world.
Gilbert: What were the significant spiritual influences on you back in Armagh where you grew up?
John: We were fortunate to have remarkable parents who loved us enough to allow us to think. That was quite a gift in those days in Ireland. I can remember dad, when he had felt that he had been a bit rough in disciplining us, apologised to us. Our parents lived Christianity and that made a big impression on us. That has stood me in very good stead. They had a marvellous attitude to other people no matter what they believed. The root of that Dad explained to me was that since all men and women are made in the image of God, he intended to treat them like that. Believing in this fundamental idea of creation – all men and women made in the image of God – is one thing. The challenge is not only to believe it but to act as if we believe it.
The other thing that we both owed to our parents was the way in which they opened Christianity to us. There was nothing boring about it. They encourage us to read the scripture and books about theology. It was a house where there was a lot of reading done. We live in a very different world at the moment. Just ask yourself, when was the last time you read a book? We are all glued to screens. To me, Christianity to me was living and interesting and that interest has never left me now I’m over 80 years old.
Gilbert: Dad gave you a copy of the communist manifesto when you were in your teens. (He gave me a cricket bat.) Why did he do that?
John: Well I remember him giving me that book. I said, “Dad have you read it.” He told me, “No.” “Then why should I read it?” He answered, “Son, you need to know what other people think.” Somehow deep down he sensed that I was being prepared for a very different arena from his own. I knew nothing about it at the time.
You need to know what people think. In the Lord Jesus’ day, he once asked his disciples a question, “Who do other people say that I am?” It is important that we get to know what people think and we find out by asking them.
Gilbert: What was it like for an Armagh boy going to Cambridge university to study mathematics.
John: I had to make an effort because they couldn’t understand what I was saying. The important thing to me is to make sure that people understand what I am saying. CS Lewis said, “I will be understood.” I arrived in Cambridge prepared to witness to the Christian faith. I had read quite a lot of what people like Karl Marx and other famous atheists were aying. I had also read a lot of CS Lewis. I had no idea what it was like to be an adult and an unbeliever but he had been.
I had come to the conclusion as a teenager that if Christianity was true, and I believed it was, then I could not be silent about it.
That didn’t mean ramming it down people’s throats. I started befriending people who did not share my worldview. There were two major challenges. The first one was a student who asked me, “Do you believe in God, John?” and then answered himself, “Oh I shouldn’t have asked you that. All you Irish believe in God and you fight about it.”
It is a ridiculous argument to say you believe in God because you are Irish. I was always searching for reasons for faith. It was not simply my origin. A big change in my experience when I saw a friend come from agnosticism to faith in Christ. I learnt from that that it is possible for the Lord to change someone’s worldview when they repent and put their faith in Him.
I spent a lot of time talking to atheists and then spent a lot of time behind the Iron Curtain and then after the end of the cold war, I spent time in Russia and Ukraine.
One pivotal moment was having dinner with a nobel prize winner and asking him, “Sir in your research, did it ever occur to you that the universe had a creator.” He said, “No it did not.” He stopped speaking to me and turned to other people. At the end of the meal, he said, “Lennox come to my room” He had invited senior members of the college. He sat me down and they stood around me while he said, “Do you want a career in science? Tonight give up this nonsense otherwise you will never make it in academia.” I said, “Sir, what do you hve to offer me that is better than what I already have?”
He mentioned an evolutionary philosophy – it was a poor choice. I looked at this man and said, “If that is all you have to offer me, I’ll stick with what I’ve got.” I vowed never to do what he did. But I wanted to get reasons for God into the public space and give people the choice.
Gilbert: You were talking about the book of Daniel in 2008 when you were here. What can you say to students as they prepare to go to university?
John: The pressures of our society are much greater on you than they were on me (even thought they were very real). We can start to lose contact with the reality of our Christian faith by hiding what we are. The same pressure tries to get us to conform to the attitude of the world around us. Making a stand is so important. The apostle Peter tells us that we should always be ready to give a defence; the reason for the hope that we have.
I was very clear that I was not going to be leveraged into a compromise. This was the swinging sixties. There were all kinds of moral forces trying to break the moral norms that have been in place for hundreds of years. But in order not to compromise, you have to take the word of God seriously. It is no use reading a few scriptures just before jumping into bed. We need to study the word of God in order to know God.
Gilbert: What disciplines helped you in that?
John: I was fortunate to have a mentor Prof David Gooding. He took me under his wing. He began to show me the wealth of resources that were available in scripture. That completely blew my mind. It showed me the depth and the wealth that were in scripture.
He asked “Why do we study scripture?” and went on to say, “I read scripture and study it to get to know God.” That was the key idea that it is possible to get to know God. He can speak to us and we can speak to Him. It seemed to me that one of the most important things was to get to know God and it means prayer and serious bible study. That influenced a whole generation of us. There is another one and that is sharing our Christian faith with other people.
Talking to those of you who are young. If you have not yet seen a friend become a Christian, then pray that He will lead you to someone because that will change you. God is in the business of cleaning up messes through His power.
Witnessing seems to me an integral part of maturing in the Christian faith. How can we keep this message to ourselves? If we do then we don’t really believe it.
Gilbert: Tell us a bit about your marriage.
John: A Christian marriage is a triangular relationship. It is a relationship between a man and a woman and the Lord. Make sure your life partner shares your worldview because otherwise it will tear you apart. It is hugely important to have that support through reading the Bible and praying together. It can be something simple to read, talk about and pray together. I find that an immense strength.
It is very important to learn to share things, to listen to one another and to learn to apologise when we have done wrong. It has been important for me to share the journey with someone who is totally committed to it. When we got married it was obvious that I was going to have an unusual path and my wife resolved to do nothing to hinder my ministry. It is those very important simple practical things that add a great deal for our life for God.
Gilbert: there are lots of your books available in our Faith Mission bookshop including your latest “Abraham the Friend of God” and a series called “Doing What’s Right” that you wrote with your mentor. Talk to us about this series of books.
John: They were first published in Russian and Ukrainian. My visits to Russia and Ukraine opened many doors and we were both asked to produce a book. Originally in Russian the title of the books was translated “Worldview” – for people who had been brought up in Marxism it is a book discussing different worldviews including Christianity. The response in the school system was amazing. (They were delivered to every school in Russia and Ukraine). These were used in classroom. They were dealing with the facts and teaching people how to think about these things. About 40 times, we went to the Ukraine to teach teachers how to use these books. I’m encouraged to find that people who come across them, still find them helpful. Basically they are to help people confront all the big questions of meaning that arise in contemporary society.
Gilbert: I wish I had had these books when I was at university. We have had some questions from people here at New Horizon. One says, “I am a parent and I see so many ideas from post modernism presented to our children though media, etc.”
John: When I was that age nobody knew what postmodernism was. The question is really how do we cope with relativism. It depends on the age of the children. We need to do a lot of work as our parents and so do ministers. This is a huge question but what I would say, these books are a resource that we have worked on and it will give you ideas of how to deal with this. There are many arguments that young people can understand. The whole problem is biblical illiteracy. People don’t even know the facts of the Christian faith so how can they deal with all the “isms”. We need to know facts but we also need to teach answers.
When people say, “There is no such thing as absolute truth” … my answer is, “but you think that what you have just said is absolute truth!” It is very important as parents that we give ourselves to reading and take our eyes away from television. We need to teach our kids to read again but do it by example. I’ve met young people who have never read a book. That is a tragedy. We need to look at ourselves first. Ask yourself, how many hours you spent last week playing with any electronic gadget that had nothing to do with your work or your faith in God and then tell me you have no time.
I’ve developed a little phrase. You’ve heard of fasting but “electronic fasting” is important. If we are not careful they master us rather than us mastering them.
Gilbert: what excites you most about the challenges and opportunities facing the church.
John: I think it is thrilling to see the in-roads that young evangelists are having. We have a young Canadian evangelist here in Oxford. He has great credibility and he was talking to a bunch of young people and a hundred of them became Christians. Often these people have never been exposed to the Christian faith. I see a whole swathe of young people growing up who take God seriously and who are prepared to put their head above the parapet and witness to their faith. The church will only thrive if we do that. Not all are public speakers but some are private speakers.
Pastors need to lead from the front showing their people how to witness. People get scared stiff. I wrote a book called, “Have no fear” for those of you who are worried about witnessing and asking “How can I get over the fear barrier?” I am encouraged in seeing what is happening in the younger generation.
Gilbert: And finally what are you looking forward to?
John: I am looking forward to meeting the Lord that I have been following for 70 years. As I get older, instead of my horizon getting shorter, it gets greater. When you look in the New Testament, you discover things CS Lewis wrote about.
Joy is a foretaste of heaven. Even in a broken world, there are glimpses of what is to come.
Paul writes “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived”— the things God has prepared for those who love him..” These things God has revealed to us by the Spirit. Scripture is the medium through which God reveals to us. What makes heaven heaven, is that it is where Jesus is. I believe, as a scientist that just as Jesus died and rose again, so He will return. He will certainly return.
Think of a world in which there are no lies. We have all got to learn to be on our guard. We need a realistic understanding of what the coming of the Lord mean. Heaven is not a retirement home where we will all sit on clouds and play harps. Broken bodies and broken minds will be gone in this new heaven and new earth. Much of the description of the world to come is in the negative (no crying, no pain, no death) because the positive is beyond words.
I’m looking forward to eternity. Don’t start just thinking about eternity when you get to my age. One phrase that has stuck with me, “we will only be a few moments in heaven when we will think, if only I had known what this would have been like, I would have invested more in it.” We need to invest all of our lives for eternity. That means all of our lives including our work. It is hugely important that the Lord Jesus is interested in every aspect of our work, Whatever you do, do it as unto the Lord. You will never regret living like that.