Insight is a monthly contribution on remarkable topics dedicated for thoughts, reflection and prayers. Please feel free to contribute to this page what you would like to share with others.

Who thinks this -
"The world is secretly run by reptiles. Reptiles which look like people, but they're not - they're extraterrestrial reptiles." - David Icke, played football for Hereford United and Coventry City, retired early due to arthritis, became a sports reporter, then in 1990 was told by a medium that his mission was to heal the earth.
"The world is not a sphere. It is flat" - Flat Earth Society, founded in England in the 1500s, still going today and has website
"Global warming - at least the modern nightmare version - is a myth. I am sure of it and so are a growing number of scientists." - David Bellamy, British conservationist.
"The country is moving toward a police state" - Mohammed Naseem, chairman of Birmingham's Central Mosque.

Why do we believe what we believe? Where do our beliefs come from? Who's seen the film "The Truman Show"? This film is really the ultimate reality TV show. In it, a baby is selected from a number of babies born around the same time to be part of a TV show for the rest of his life. Viewers can switch on at any time and see what is happening to him - watch him grow up, watch him at school, watch him get a job, watch him fall in love. Only he doesn't know that he's being filmed, he doesn't know that he's in a show. He thinks that he's living an ordinary life like anyone else - he doesn't know that everyone around him, including the bus driver, his boss at work, the woman in the sweet shop, his girlfriend - they're all actors. They are all playing a part. He in fact lives in an enormous dome from which he can never escape because every time he tries to travel outside what he thinks is his small home town, something stops him - the road is blocked, someone calls him home because of an emergency - all the actors around him go into overdrive to make sure he continues to believe the myth that they've built up around him - and for a long time he does believe that myth. Until one day he doesn't any longer, and eventually he escapes. Inside that huge bubble though the people around him made him believe something that was actually a lie. Just like him, we can be influenced by those around us. And what we pick up from those around us eventually becomes what we believe. Sometimes those beliefs are not necessarily true.

In the summer of 1957, the city of Little Rock, Arkansas, made plans to racially desegregate its public schools. Arkansas was one of two Southern states to take immediate steps to comply with the new 1954 law getting rid of racial segregation in public schools. Little Rock felt it could break down the barriers of segregation in its schools with a carefully developed program. But the smooth transition to the school system's integration was not to be. There were protests outside the school from those white people who objected to black students being able to join the school, and in the end President Eisenhower had to send troops to help escort the black students into the school. Some years ago there was a programme on the radio in which people who had been involved in those protests against integration talked about their experience and how they felt now. What one woman said stuck in my mind. She described how she had been a child in 1957, taken to the protests by her parents and how she had believed what she was doing then because of what they believed, but gradually, over the years, she'd changed her mind. She described the change as quite painful, because it meant setting aside beliefs that had become a part of her. They had come from outside her, but they had become hers, and had become so much a part of her that she hardly recognised them as beliefs - she really thought they were true, that was reality, and it was painful to let them go.

The star of the Truman show appeared to feel the same when he discovered that he had been living in a bubble for 20 something years of his life, and everything he thought was true was in fact make-believe. Total shock and pain - disbelief at first. But then coming to terms with what was really true, as opposed to what he thought was true, was really painful.

So what has any of this to do with God's influence, or the passages from Luke or Revelation? I want talk about both of these passages. Let's have a look at Luke first. In this passage we see Jesus with his disciples. He's tired after a long day. They're sailing across the lake. He falls asleep. Up comes a sudden storm. The disciples feel afraid - they think they're going to capsize and drown - they wake him up. Do they think that he might be able to do something? Or are they annoyed that he's sleeping while they're in danger? Or do they just want him to be aware that he's about to drown? The passage doesn't tell us, but if you imagine yourself in that situation, I expect it's just human nature to wake someone who's sleeping if you think they might be in danger. Anyway, they wake him up. And what does he do? He rebukes the wind and the water and the storm ends. All is calm.

And then what happens? Well from the disciples point of view, they are no longer in fear of drowning, but a new fear has replaced that fear. "In fear and amazement they asked one another "Who is this? He commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him?"" Drowning they understood; they might have been fearful, but they knew how it worked - a fierce storm, the boat capsizes, they are in the water and might drown. But now something has happened which doesn't fit their picture of reality. God has broken in and turned things upside down. How are they to understand things now?

I don't think that's an easy question to answer, either for them or for us. It would be possible to say, for example, that it was just coincidence - the storm was about to stop anyway. Or that maybe all storms of that type are short lived and Jesus knew that. Or that he really did calm the storm. What do you really think? What you think depends on where you start from. It depends on the beliefs that you carry around inside you - the things that you believe that are so much a part of you that you hardly notice, just like that woman from Little Rock.

For the disciples, they were there and saw something happen. For us, it's a story that we have to interpret. We can ignore it. But if we choose not to, what does it mean? Does it mean anything for us? In some ways it's similar to Luke 5:1-11 - Jesus does something he's not meant to. We read there about how he persuaded the disciples to go fishing when he was not supposed to know anything about fishing. Here, he, an ordinary man, appears to be able to calm the sea and the wind, he's in charge of nature. Do we believe the story as it's written? Do we believe God can break into the natural course of events like this? Are we prepared to let him do that? Are we prepared to let him change the way we see things, the way we see reality? Like Truman, and like the woman at Little Rock, do we want to change our views once we realise that things may not be the way we thought? Or do we want to stick to our old beliefs - that might be safer, that might be less painful, less fearful?

The other passage comes from Revelation. When I was first thinking about what I was going to say I thought I might just talk about Revelation - as a sort of challenge. I haven't done that, but I do want to say something about this passage. In this passage, John, the narrator of the book has a vision of heaven. In the previous chapters he's been giving messages to seven churches, and now he's moving on to describe heaven. He's moving from the present - talking to the churches - into the future, heaven.

One of the keys to understanding the book of Revelation is to understand when it was written, buy whom and why. It was written by John, who was in exile, at a time when the church was suffering persecution, and John is trying to encourage his readers - encourage them to persevere, hence the early chapters to the churches, and encourage them to look forward to what is to come - hence this passage about heaven. But what on earth does it mean? Another key to understanding Revelation is to understand that passages like this are full of symbolism, they are not meant to be taken literally. John is trying to convey something, but not that this is exactly what heaven will be like. He's trying to convey the feel of heaven - with God at the centre, with his people around him - but the images he uses are somewhat strange to us. However, they might have meant more to his readers.

But leaving the precise details aside, what do we think about heaven? What do you think it will be like? Do you even believe it exists? If you do does it make any difference to the way you live? How much of a reality is it for you?

The more I think about this passage, the more I wonder how much I live in the reality of heaven. One of the things about the book of Revelation, is that in it there is always this tension between the present and the future. John knew that God's kingdom had already come, and yet the full fulfillment of the kingdom was still to come - a tension between God's kingdom now and God's kingdom not quite yet but in the future. And that tension is still with us, but maybe we are less aware of it. But in reality we are still living in that period of history where, as in Luke, God has broken into our world, but as in Revelation, heaven is still to come. How much does that affect what we believe and how we act? Is it something we even think about?

What has really come home to me in preparing this is that we need as much as possible to expose ourselves to the truth so that if there are beliefs that we hold that aren't correct, God can challenge us. How do we do that? First and foremost through his word, the Bible. We still have to interpret the words for ourselves, but it is in the words of the Bible that we can find comfort and encouragement, but also a challenge to the way we see the world and the things we believe. But through prayer and through our relationships with each other, I believe God will also expose us to the truth. That's why I believe passionately in church, in us coming together as a group of people from different backgrounds, out of different cultures and education systems, to expose each other to the bits of truth that we have so that we can grow, and also so that we can be there for each other when it is painful to realise that we have been wrong, like it was for Truman, for the woman from Little Rock, and for the disciples in that boat.

Sandra