Reverend Stephen Kuhrt says God 'sends his love into the world' to allow good to triumph over evil.Kuhrt said: "I see people who have been through horrendous times and still they find the power to not turn inwards, but to turn outwards".WATCH ABOVE.
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00:00You wanted to talk about, in this hour, about how we find the strength to go on after, I mean, terrible times, after tragedy, I guess in Jesus Christ's case, the literal strength to resurrect after being crucified.
00:15But we can adopt those same lessons in our own lives.
00:17Well, it does fascinate me.
00:18I think the thing that makes me a Christian more than anything is when I see people who've been through horrendous times, terrible things have happened, and somehow they find the power to not turn inwards, but to actually turn outwards and keep showing love and to keep trying to make a difference to other people's lives.
00:38That's quite a hard thing to explain, actually, how that happens.
00:41And to me, the Christian explanation is the one that I personally find most convincing, that actually God himself has sent his love into the world to conquer the power of evil so that people are enabled to do that.
00:57And Christians believe that the resurrection of Jesus Christ indicated that something had changed in the world forever, that a power was now available, which we can tap into and can be part of our lives.
01:10What's your definition of God?
01:14Well, I think God is understood as distinct from this world, shouldn't be confused with it, shouldn't be blurred in with it.
01:24And yet the Christian understanding of God is that God is still intimately involved in this world.
01:29So quite a lot of religions want to do one or the other, either make God totally distinct from this world, but therefore fairly distant, fairly separate.
01:36You can't know him personally, or they want to, at the other extreme, merge God in with the world, what's called pantheism, where they're more or less identical.
01:44Is that the idea that God lives within us?
01:46Well, I think the Christian answer is trying to do both, is trying to have its cake and eat it, as it were, by saying that God is distinct from this world, but is intimately involved in it.
01:56We can know him as father.
01:58We can know him personally.
01:59We can have a relationship with him.
02:01So that's quite a complex understanding of God that Christians have.
02:05Jews have the same understanding of God, really, without necessarily understanding that God has come close to us in Jesus Christ.
02:13So that's the understanding of God, which I have.
02:16And the wonderful thing for me is that I can have a personal relationship with that God.
02:20I can draw on his power.
02:22I can do stuff not through anything to do with me or anything that's particularly noteworthy about me,
02:28but God, the power of his love, can work through human beings, particularly flawed ones who mess it up, which includes me as much as anyone.
02:36All of us, I guess we can put into that.
02:37Absolutely.
02:38Final question.
02:39There is this narrative, and I've covered it before on this channel, especially over Christmas, when you see signs such as winter, world delights, holiday magic, without the word of Jesus or Christmas, anywhere.
02:50But is this narrative, is this feeling that Christianity is somehow under attack in the UK?
02:56Do you give any weight to that?
02:57I want to be careful on this, because for a long time, Christianity had a privileged position in this country where, and Christianity, the Christian church was guilty of dishing out a lot of persecution and not behaving terribly well.
03:10So I think there's been quite a strong reaction against that, which we're still in.
03:14So I don't want to bleat too much.
03:15You know, if people give the church a good kicking, then we should be able to cope with that.
03:20And, you know, if we have to win the right for people to listen to our message, that's no bad thing.
03:27I don't want to go back to the days when there's uncritical deference, when people tug their forelock to the vicar.
03:32You know, I want people to listen to the message that we're saying and evaluate whether they think that's serious or not.
03:38So certainly in this country, I don't think Christians are given too tough a time.
03:43There are other parts of the world where they really are being persecuted and they need our support big time.