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[0:00] Our question today is how good is good enough? What do I have to do to get to heaven? We're looking at our final character who meets Jesus in Luke's Gospel.

[0:11] He's kind of no nonsense, doesn't waste time, gets straight down to what is most important. If you had Jesus in the room and you could pin him down for just one question, then verse 18 is a pretty good one, isn't it?

[0:24] Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? How do I get to heaven? We said two days ago that death is a real thing for all of us, all of us will die, and that the Bible is claiming after death we have a future that might be good, might be bad.

[0:43] So the question, how do I get to heaven, what do I have to do to inherit eternal life is a good question. And we're going to hear Jesus answer today. But first, in order to help us do that, I want to just calibrate a scale.

[0:57] I'm hoping there's some people with backgrounds in, I don't know, testing whether everything works properly in offices and that sort of thing. So we're going to calibrate this piece of council property here as a scale of goodness and badness.

[1:08] Again, I'm aware it's lunchtime and you probably don't want to stick your hand up, so just nods or looks will be enough. So we're going to assume that good people are near the top and bad people are near the bottom. And I just want to know where you think I should put this gentleman.

[1:22] So Adolf Hitler, where would he be put by the crowd in E-Link? Yeah, okay, so that's fairly easy, isn't it? We'll put him down the bottom. How about Anders Breivik?

[1:33] So the Norwegian bomber and killer. So again, the decision is just further down or higher up? Further down and hit low? Interesting. Or slightly high?

[1:45] Okay, we'll just about give him... Good, okay, there we are. As you say, as far as I'm aware, God will take no notice whatsoever of our moral judgments. Okay, so we can do that.

[1:56] Now how about Nelson Mandela? Where should he go? Okay, so pretty high. Let's put him up here. That's good. But then I've got someone else here.

[2:07] So Mother Teresa, Mama T, where should she go? Now, compared to Mandela, where's she going? Higher. Okay, that's interesting. Okay, that's...

[2:19] There we are, she goes like that. And then one just... Actually, we could have several for this one. But Rupert Murdoch or James Murdoch currently being... Now where? Right down here? Okay, interesting.

[2:30] A bit higher here? Okay, there we go. Okay, so that's helpful. Let's just calibrate our bit of council property here. Then two questions we're not going to stick on the board.

[2:40] But if you could do this on your own. First one is, where would you put yourself? Just for a second, think where you put yourself on the scale. Give you a few seconds on that.

[2:53] And then, next question. If you were God's... And again, I should stress, as far as I know, God will pay no attention. If you were God's, where would you draw the line?

[3:04] In terms of who goes to heaven and who doesn't. How far up that scale would you draw the line? So just again, a few seconds to think where you would put the line.

[3:15] Okay, I hope that's got us warmed up because we're going to now look at Jesus' answer. And Jesus' answer means we need one more character on the board.

[3:26] There is this man who meets Jesus, the ruler. So if you look at him, and let's try and work out about him. So, verse 18, he is respectful to Jesus, good teacher.

[3:38] He is interested in heaven, that is a good thing. He's also a VIP. He's a ruler, verse 18 tells us. Verse 23 tells us he was extremely rich.

[3:49] Which we might think makes him a really bad person. In those days they thought it made you a good person. And he says, verse 21, with an absolute straight face. He says, I've done all these things since I was a boy, since I was a youth.

[4:02] And the things, verse 20, are adultery, murder, stealing, false witness, and honouring your parents. So I think we are meant to be pretty impressed. I think he is meant to kind of come up there.

[4:14] I don't want to obliterate Nelson Mandela. There we go. Can you still see that? No. I'm going to have to wipe out Nelson. Sorry about that. He is meant to be right at the top of our scale.

[4:29] Which means that his question in verse 18, we know what he's asking, don't we? He's asking, what one more thing do I need to do to inherit eternal life?

[4:41] Well, given that I'm pretty good already, and I'm sort of best player in the second team, what do I need to do just to pull myself up into the first team? One more small thing.

[4:53] And I said a bit yesterday, but I identify with this guy quite a lot. I think my background means I identify him with quite a lot. Particularly, I'm not quite so moral, I think, but I was more religious than he was.

[5:06] So in terms of how he's trying to live, what he assumes about God, I identify with that a lot. My background is my mother is a Roman Catholic. My dad was a Church of England vicar. When they got married, that was still a bit surprising.

[5:18] And so they struck a sort of deal with the Pope, that I would be both. That was the deal. So we had my baptism with two priests fighting around this one baby. They decided I would go to church twice every Sunday, one of each, plus every kind of feast day or special day or saints day or everything extra that ever was.

[5:37] Altar server in the Catholic Church. I don't know, mowing the lawn in the Anglican Church. Doing everything. By the time I was ten, I'd been to church 2,000 times. I worked out, which is a lot.

[5:48] And I was absolutely sure that I came top in the scale, that I was near the top. I was more religious than anybody else I knew.

[5:59] Again, I wonder if there are people here who are a lot like that man, a lot like me. And assume that you want to go to heaven and you assume it will be okay. Assume that wherever the line is drawn, you've done enough.

[6:14] When God cuts the line, you'll be okay. But that's why the second thing we need to get clear, that was getting the man clear. The second thing we need to get clear is how badly the conversation goes for him.

[6:26] Conversation with Jesus goes really, really badly for him. So verse 22, I think, for him, just comes completely out of nowhere. Jesus doesn't say you need to say a few Hail Marys.

[6:38] He doesn't say you need to go to church more. He doesn't say you need to give up chocolate for Lent. He says just one more thing. Just, verse 22, one thing you still lack.

[6:49] Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor. And you'll have treasure in heaven and come, follow me. And that makes the man very sad, verse 23.

[7:00] And Jesus looks at him, sees how sad it makes him, and comments, verse 24, it is really difficult for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God.

[7:11] We looked at some of the reasons for that two days ago. How wealth can actually blind you to what's really going on in life. And actually Jesus says it's not just difficult.

[7:22] Verse 25, how very, very, very hard. It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. Some of you may not have my farming background.

[7:33] Before my dad was a vicar, he was a farmer. But just a camel is roughly the same kind of volume as a cow. Camel and cow. So the question is, could you get a cow through the eye of a needle?

[7:45] And again, if you had, you know, the best chainsaw available, and industrial strength wood chipper, and a kind of blender for the really small bits, could you actually get a cow? It just couldn't be done.

[7:56] Jesus means it is impossible. Which, verse 26, is not at all what they were expecting. Who can be saved? They thought a rich person had a head start.

[8:09] Because they clearly had God's favour for being rich. And Jesus' answer, who can be saved? Verse 27 is, it is impossible. With men it is impossible.

[8:21] If you mean, how can you be saved by doing good stuff and working your way up the ladder? You can't. With men it is entirely impossible.

[8:34] Okay, so third thing we need to know is, why is it impossible? Why is it impossible? Why is it impossible? To work that out, we need to look back at the man a bit more, and just kind of think, well, how can Jesus turn him down?

[8:45] How could Jesus turn him down? And the big clue is in verse 19. Jesus says, nobody is good. No one is good. And the whole approach, with this kind of ladder, the whole approach behind his question, what must I do, it assumes that you can be good enough.

[9:03] It assumes there's mileage in that approach. So, Jesus tries to wake him up to what he is really like. And he asks, in verse 20, a question that is all about how good are you really?

[9:15] Ask the question with some commandments. And the guy is right back at him in verse 21. I am this good. I've kept all of them since I was a young boy. But I wonder if you see anything in the question in verse 20 that should wake him up.

[9:30] Again, I apologise, this is sort of an exam. You weren't expecting that as you came out of work today. The first 20 is a list of commandments. How many commandments should there be?

[9:42] Ten. There you go. That was the easy question. How many are there here in the list? Five. That's the other easy question. And here we go. What commandments are missing?

[9:54] And if we don't know, then I'm just going to make Chris tell us. So, as long as you're ready. Which ones are missing? Does anyone know? No idols.

[10:06] Thank you. Yeah, only worship God. Only worship God. No idols. That's T. Sabbath day.

[10:18] Love your neighbour. No. That's not one of the Ten Commandments. Do not covet. That's good. No. Doctrine is on the list. Chris is looking slightly uncomfortable. What's the other one?

[10:32] No. Father and Mother is on the list. Lord's name in vain is the other one. What do you notice about the ones Jesus includes and the ones he leaves out? Have no other gods. Make no idols.

[10:43] Do not take the Lord's name in vain. Keep the Sabbath day holy. And do not covet. Do not covet. I can't see coveting.

[10:53] Yeah, brilliant. Thank you. Feel that. So, all of the five Jesus lists, they are all external and they are all about human beings. Whereas the five Jesus leaves out, one of them is about human beings but it's inside.

[11:07] It's coveting. And the other four are all about God. So, murder. Do not murder. I know whether I've murdered someone or not. That is fairly easy normally to work out. Have I? Oh, no, I haven't.

[11:18] Great. And it's that kind of thing we're doing here, isn't it? That is why Hitler is down the bottom for murdering six million people. And Mother Teresa is at the top for trying to save the lives of loads and loads and loads of people.

[11:32] But, in Bible terms, the five that Jesus leaves out, or certainly the four God ones, they are the most important ones. So, this is a strange exam that Jesus sent him, isn't it?

[11:45] He's just asking the easy questions. So, just to illustrate that, imagine that, obviously, in a month or two, they're going to get rid of Roy Hodgson and look for a New England manager. So, assume that I then put myself forward for the job. And there'll be a sort of interview.

[11:57] So, Mr. Screen, thank you for coming forward. Just need to ask you a few questions. We need to know, do you own a nice suit? Because, obviously, since Fabio Capello, that's quite important. So, yeah, I think I do. I own a suit. Sorry, I own a suit.

[12:08] Can you unhinge your jaw and shout really loudly? And actually, pretty good at that. So, that would be good. You can do that as well. Well, some of the matches coming up are against Ukraine.

[12:19] It would be really handy if you've been to Ukraine. And I have. I've been in Kiev. I actually had to run out of the way of an angry football crowd in Ukraine. So, I have football experience in the Ukraine. Which is sounding good so far.

[12:30] So, do I get the job? Is that all right? Well, no. Because, in the interview, those are questions, well, 6 to 10. Probably more like questions 50 to 55, aren't they?

[12:41] And the more important questions, questions 1 to 5, are the ones that would come first. So, have you ever played football beyond the kind of five-a-side team? No.

[12:51] No. Not really. Are you any good at football? Really? No. No good. No good at all. Do you even understand football? No. Championship manager is beyond me.

[13:03] I tried to play it once, just didn't understand any of the kind of questions and options. Do you understand the tactics? No. Do you understand how to coach it? No. So, it doesn't matter if you pass questions 50 to 55.

[13:16] If you are no good at all on questions 1 to 5, the most important ones. So, you look at our guy, our man, the ruler, and from the outside, he is absolutely fantastic.

[13:29] And he is. You would love to go and work for him. If he was your team leader at work. If he was your neighbour next door, you would love to have that man involved in your life.

[13:39] He looks really good from the outside. But all of that is questions 6 to 10. Because the questions that really matter are questions 1 to 5 about gods.

[13:51] And I hope that means now you see why Jesus asks him about his money. What commandment is it that he has broken? He has broken commandments 1 and 2.

[14:03] Have no other gods, make no idols. He has made money into his idol, his gods. Again, there is nothing wrong with money. We said that 2 days ago. Money is a great thing to have. But it is a very bad god.

[14:15] Is what we said. And if you worship a different god. Then you are not okay on this list. See, when he asks his question. He assumes he is near the top.

[14:28] And needs to do one more little thing. Just to push himself over the edge. And get to heaven. And he assumes that because. He has no idea. How high God's standards are.

[14:40] No idea how high God's standards are. I meet people like this all the time. I met a guy a week ago. A student. Who was absolutely clear. He had never done anything wrong in his whole life.

[14:51] We talked for 2 hours. And I didn't have any of his friends there with him. To get you. Really? Are you sure? But he was absolutely convinced. He basically had done nothing wrong. And elsewhere Jesus is asked.

[15:02] How good do you have to be. To get to heaven. And Jesus says. You need to love the Lord your God. With all your heart. With all your soul. With all your mind. And with all your strength. Which means all of you need to love God all of the time.

[15:17] And also. What we had here. Love your neighbour. As yourself. And again that means. Love everybody. All of the time. Love the person you pass in the street.

[15:29] Who are down on their luck. Love the person who hates you. At work. Love the member of your family. Who is most difficult. So that means that. This chart. Is nowhere near big enough.

[15:42] Isn't it? If that is God's scale. See. Our guy is doing really well. Compared to the rest of us. Compared to me. I guess. I don't know you. But I guess.

[15:52] Compared to you. He's doing well. But it is no good being top of the class. If the whole class fails. When I was at school. In my lower sixth.

[16:02] I thought we'd just done GCSEs. I hit a particularly arrogant phase. And we kind of decided. We'd just done GCSEs. They were so easy. I reckon you could do GCSE in anything. And we. A friend of mine was doing Chinese GCSE.

[16:14] She said. Go on. Bring us the paper. I reckon. Let's have a go. I reckon that would be alright. And he gave us the paper. And four or five. I said. We'll do a Chinese GCSE. We'll have a look. And I opened the page. And actually. It would be quite hard.

[16:25] I haven't got it. I don't know any of the answers. And imagine that we had gone in for it. We luckily saved our money. And didn't. And imagine I had one. You know. I got five out of a hundred. Where everyone else had only got one.

[16:36] And that's no good at all. Is it? If the pass mark is 50 or 60. No good getting five. And being better than other people. Jesus says the pass mark.

[16:48] Is 100%. Love the Lord your God. With all of your heart. All of the time. And love your neighbour. All of the time. So if we're. I don't know where you did draw the line.

[17:00] If we're wanting to know where to draw the line. It would actually not be on this pillar. It wouldn't even be on the great and stately town hall. We'd need a huge skyscraper. To be able to draw the line right at the top.

[17:13] 300 floors up. If we're going to get how good you've got to be. That's why it is impossible with men. Because nobody could be that good.

[17:23] All my attempts to be good. Are feeble. Compared with what the pass mark is. All of my 2000 times in church. That's like kind of climbing on a chair. Am I tall enough yet?

[17:34] Oh dear. That's not good. Let's just take that off. That's a shame. That's Jesus. Who I've just stepped on. I'm sorry about that. We'll need him in a second.

[17:48] All of the things that we do. And it's sort of comical. And sort of tragic. Isn't it? As I look around at other people. And I'm really invested in.

[17:58] How much better than them am I? How much more religious than them am I? Have I clocked up more hours in church? More hours doing good things? All of those good things I do.

[18:10] I do. Cannot take away the bad things I've done. Stupid illustration of that. It was Scott Mills. The Radio 1 DJ. He had his credit card cloned a little while ago. And he was whinging about it on the radio.

[18:22] And he kind of. They'd spend a load of money on mobile phones. And taken some money out. And also. This is what really annoyed him. They'd given £10 to charity.

[18:33] Off his credit cards. And that had particularly. Is it that made it okay? I mean we've stolen your cards. We've ripped you off for thousands of pounds. But £10 to charity. Good people.

[18:45] Actually it's the same thing. Isn't it? All the things I was trying to do. Good things. Great things. Love your neighbour. Look after your mother and father. Actually.

[18:57] Aren't doing anything about the bad things you've done. We said on Wednesday. Our lives. Our world. They all belong to God. And it's as if we've kind of nicked God's credit cards.

[19:10] And we're spending on his account. As we run our lives the way we want to. And actually just doing a few good things along the way. Doesn't make it alright. Now.

[19:21] I don't know if you can imagine. Imagine me as a 10 year old. Who's been to church 2,000 times. Hearing this for the first time. I was absolutely furious. And again.

[19:31] There's people wondering whether they want to write their question. Because they're a bit angry about what we're saying. Please write it. Please talk to me. I was absolutely furious. The whole business of being good.

[19:41] All the effort I'd put into it. Everything I'd done. They're saying it's useless. And you're saying I'm not good enough. I am. I argue with them. You can imagine a 10 year old who's been in church 2,000 times.

[19:52] Kind of flipping through the Bible. And arguing with them. And getting cross. And then. I went away. And spent about three months. I guess looking at what I was really like.

[20:04] The experience was like getting a kind of God's perspective view on what I was really like. And actually instead of the good person I thought I was. There were losing my temper.

[20:15] There was selfishness. There was pride. There was lying. There was all sorts of stuff where I was making me God. Rather than God God's. And if you're here today as someone who is trying to be good enough.

[20:29] To impress God. Can I say please, please give it up. I've tried that. I've kind of tested that to destruction. It's not possible. It's a waste of your time.

[20:41] He is. This man. He's asking God. Please give me what I deserve. And that is a really dangerous thing. You've got to be really sure you deserve something good. To go to God and say please give me what I deserve.

[20:54] Last thing then. Fourth thing. How can it be possible with God? Do you see our verse is not all gloomy. Verse 27. What is impossible with man. Is possible with God.

[21:06] A bit like some of what we said yesterday. So we've said that nobody is good enough. But that isn't quite right. Because the person I stepped on was good enough. So Jesus.

[21:17] He did always love God. With all his soul. All his heart. All his mind. And all his strength. He did always love his neighbour as himself. It was true of him on the outside. And true of him on the inside.

[21:29] Not that he's kind of weirdly inhuman. This is because Jesus is more human than you or I. Actually if you think about it. Our best days. Are the days when actually I've managed to be less angry and selfish with my wife.

[21:41] Those are my more human days. So Jesus. If we were going to put him on. We'd need to put him at the very very top of the skyscraper. I can't go up 300 floors. But we'll just try and imagine there's a kind of huge gap.

[21:52] Between here and here. And he is going 300 floors up. Jesus is the only one. Who could get to heaven based on what he's done. The only one who could walk into heaven and say.

[22:02] Please give me what I deserve. And we said yesterday. Jesus offers. To swap places. With anybody else in that queue. Jesus came to bear sin.

[22:16] So I don't know. Who should we do that with? Let's do that with Anders Breivik. So Jesus says that I will swap places. I'll put this down so I don't drop everything.

[22:28] There we go. Jesus says that he'll swap places with anybody. So we take Jesus down. And again remember this is 300 floors up. We could put Anders Breivik at the very very top of the skyscraper.

[22:41] And we'd put Jesus in wherever Breivik had been. That's what Jesus dying on the cross says that he will do. A very simple swap.

[22:52] Take the place of anyone else. You'd get what Jesus deserves. Jesus would get what you deserve. It's so simple isn't it? I expect there'll be people here who think there just cannot be true.

[23:06] Cannot be. I walk past the talk talk guys. Flogging their better than you'd ever believe it. Mobile contract on the way in here. I imagine there is some of that going on. But if it's that easy, that simple, surely it can't be true.

[23:19] Simple for us. Very, very difficult for Jesus. This is not cost free for him. But amazingly, wonderfully true. So the real answer to where God divides is God doesn't divide it horizontally by how good you've been.

[23:35] But that God divides it vertically. And the only reason he divides is based on whether you believe in Jesus or not. Do you want Jesus to swap places or not?

[23:46] Which scandalously means there will be people in heaven, if Jesus is right, from every single layer of this tower block. There will be good people and bad people just based on whether they've asked Jesus to forgive them and swap places.

[24:03] And that was my greatest discovery in life, I think, at age 10 or 11. Give up on my own efforts and trust Jesus instead. And I found doing that is just, it's extraordinarily life-changing.

[24:17] The sense of relief you get from not having to pretend how good you are, but having to lie to yourself, lie to other people, being able just to say, I'm a bad person and Jesus has forgiven me.

[24:28] And the sense of gratitude you get, thinking that somebody did that for me, someone who had, you know, nothing, nothing to gain. Jesus Christ gave up everything, so he'd swap places with me.

[24:40] And the sense of security you get, knowing that God loved us enough to send Jesus to do that. And no matter what I do, however bad, I can't shape that.

[24:52] Best decision I ever made. And we're going to stop there, so there's time for questions. So, do you want to take the questions, so maybe just give you a couple of minutes to write something on there, and we'll start coming around with the orange box, so we can start questions in a couple of minutes.

[25:07] If the ruler, from the passage, had sold everything, would he have been good enough? Yeah, thank you. I think we've got to say no. So the kind of punchline of the story is verse 27.

[25:23] So impossible is the punchline. It's just Jesus revealing where his heart is. Because again, it's not as if that's something Jesus asked everyone to do.

[25:34] We know from earlier in Luke, there's in particular some women who are very wealthy, who go around with Jesus and support him. It's not that money is evil, that's the one thing you've got to get rid of, to be in heaven. That's I think what some monks thought in the Middle Ages.

[25:48] It's this guy needs to be shown who his God is. Jesus knows he can't do it. Yeah, no, so I think impossible is the headline. If anyone wants the feedback from these...

[25:59] I thought you were going to say if anyone wants to give you all your money. Okay. So on a question about Hitler actually, is it fair that people who have done as many evil things as Hitler are forgiven?

[26:13] What about all the people he killed? Yeah, thank you. That is such an important question. Do you see that if God is going to be just, if the whole universe is going to be able to say, yeah God, you have done the right thing, then what must happen at the end of time is that one of someone's victims must be able to look God in the eye and say, I see that you were right to forgive them.

[26:36] And it's a live question. As far as we know, Hitler didn't become a Christian, but at the Nuremberg trials, there were other Nazis who did while they were awaiting trial for what they've done. So this is a real live question.

[26:46] And I think it's what we said yesterday. So to the victim, God will be able to say, what they did to you was utterly evil, and I hate it, if possible, even more than you do.

[27:01] And I have punished it utterly. It has been punished, but on Jesus. And that punishment, having happened, can't happen twice. So even, yeah, the worst of things, has been completely punished.

[27:17] Justice has been done, but done on Jesus, so that person can be free. And just a caution, is again, remember, that assumes that there is an enormous gulf between Hitler and me.

[27:31] And don't hear me wrong, in human terms there is. And the Bible is really clear that hell is not going to be a kind of universal experience, the same for everybody. It'll be graded. That it will be punishment due for crimes done.

[27:45] But actually, on the most important ones, the Godward ones, there is still a huge gap between me and how good I should be. So that's why the game of drawing the line halfway, Hitler, no, me, yes, runs into a huge problem.

[27:59] Maybe you'd want God to start with crimes like genocide, but as he works his way up the list and has a bit more spare time, he's going to get near to crimes that I commit, things that I do wrong.

[28:11] And again, a just God needs to punish everything. And only the cross, I think, leaves him able to do that and forgive anyone. What's the Christian response to the question, what is the meaning of life?

[28:24] Yeah, thank you. I think we've been kind of walking around it these few days. The rich fool got closest, I think. If you're in Luke, turn back to Luke chapter 12. A few pages back, page 1050 in these ones.

[28:43] So Luke 12, we've got a guy who's been all about treasure on earth. And verse 21 says, treasure for yourself isn't worth it. What you need is to be rich towards God.

[28:55] Verse 21. Or further down, verse 31, the first thing you should do is seek God's kingdom, not other things. So I think that the meaning of life is to be rightly connected to the person who made you.

[29:09] The person who made you, who knows you best, who knows how you could live best, is to be in right relationship with them. If you imagine how awful it is when you fall out with someone in your family who's close to you.

[29:22] But multiply that many, many times. If you've fallen out with your creator, then life has no meaning. Why didn't God create us to be directly in eternal life with him?

[29:36] Yeah, thank you. I saw this one earlier, so I've got a couple of Bible verses ready. Absolutely. Because you could be much more efficient about this, couldn't you? You'd think than God. I think basically you'd just get on with it.

[29:47] Wouldn't you? Rather than wasting all this time and suffering, as we talked about on the first day, you'd just go, if there's a problem, let's fix it straight away. The Bible, I think, doesn't give an exhaustive answer, but two things it does say.

[30:00] In Ephesians chapter 1, it says that God's purpose in sending Jesus was all part of a plan for the fullness of time. So it's not kind of random time.

[30:11] It's not that he was waiting for the Romans to invent rose or whatever. It was actually, this is the best possible time. The thing that would most declare God's purposes, most show what God is like to do it this way.

[30:23] And more than that, in case that sounds like God is uncaring, we do get a direct answer to why God didn't wrap things up a few years after Jesus lived. So in 2 Peter, Peter's engaging with people saying, why hasn't Jesus come back yet?

[30:39] Why is it still going on? He says, one day is like a thousand years with the Lord, and the Lord is not slow to fulfil his promises, some count slowness, but is patient towards you, not wishing that any should perish.

[30:52] So I think if God wrapped things up now, well, if God had wrapped things up 26 years ago, I would have had to go to God and say, please give me what I deserve.

[31:03] I'm a good young Roman Catholic and Anglican boy. I've been to church probably 1,960 times by then. Is that okay? And it would not have been okay. So God delays, so that people could believe in Jesus and have this swap.

[31:18] And beyond that, I'm not sure we're told why so long. Religion is divisive. Aren't we better off and more peaceable being secular? Thank you.

[31:31] It's undeniable, isn't it, that religion has been divisive. So the religious conflict I know best is Northern Ireland. I've got Irish cousins and relatives. It's sort of all come down a bit recently, but that's recent, isn't it?

[31:43] And that's right. It has been a cause of hatred. It's a reason, if you really want people to hate each other, then you can just give them a great excuse saying God wants me to hate you.

[31:54] And suddenly any kind of behaviour is all right. I want to question two things, two assumptions in the question though. First assumption is that being secular is a safer place to be.

[32:06] I don't think history bears that out at all. So you look at the regimes of Stalin or in China or in North Korea today, a secular regime doesn't guarantee kind of safe, lovely happiness at all.

[32:21] And the second thing to say is that I think you're right to blame religion, but you need to recognise that Jesus would have had all your worries about religion as well.

[32:32] So again, the loose Gospels are free to take away. Please read one through. And if that's your question, here would be a great thing to ask as you go through. What does Jesus think about religion? And the people he rants at, shouts at, cannot stand, are religious hypocrites.

[32:49] Religious people using religion to, well, grind the faces of the poor. You devour widows' houses to make themselves look good, to cause conflict. Jesus has no time for that at all.

[33:01] Christians are sinners. And that's basically what we've said today isn't everybody is a sinner. Everyone does something wrong. It's not surprising that at the moment you give a Christian some power they use the power to abuse people.

[33:12] I'm really grateful that as a sort of clergyman today people think Vicar of Dibley rather than scary, powerful person as they might have done 200 years ago.

[33:23] Really glad. Because if you give power to a Christian they'll abuse it. But look at Jesus and he's the one to weigh it on. What would things be like if people lived the way Jesus did?

[33:34] Forgive me. They don't know what they're doing as they kill him. Turn the other cheek. And weigh up Christianity based on Jesus not based on what his sinful followers have done. Thank you.

[33:45] Great. We've got a couple more questions but we've run out of time. Thank you. Thank you.