Those who derive their worldview from the world can only find themselves sinking into a mire, ‘for we have made lies our refuge, and in falsehood we have taken shelter’ (Isa.28:15b). Nowhere has this become more obvious than in the year that has passed since Anders Breivik bombed government buildings in Oslo, and then carried out mass shootings at a Labour Party camp. On 22 July 2011 Breivik murdered some 77 people, many of them teenagers. What could motivate a man to do such a thing? First reports stated that Breivik was a Christian fundamentalist, and his rambling 1500 page manifesto was also treated as a declaration of his Christian faith. To those who already believed that the press is committed to truth and that the Bible is highly suspect, this was confirmation that any sort of decided Christianity is to be treated as the enemy of civilization.
The long-term editor of the Manchester Guardian famously asserted that ‘Comment is free, but facts are sacred.’ What, however, are the facts? Things have indeed become ‘curiouser and curiouser’, to cite Alice in Wonderland. For one who was supposed to be a fundamentalist Christian, Breivik has some strange views to go with his barbarous actions. He advocates a kind of cultural Christianity as opposed to Islam, adding, without much regard for grammar or the gospel, that ‘Myself and many more like me do not necessarily have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God.’ He wants to see the Protestant Church return to the Catholic Church, then he condemns Pope Benedict XVI as cowardly and incompetent, and so urges the overthrow of both Churches to set up a new European Church. His final authority is hardly the Bible as he claims that ‘it is essential that science takes an undisputed precedence over biblical teachings’ – so it is a case over Darwin over Jesus, of ‘survival of the fittest’ over ‘love your neighbour’.
Breivik’s family life had become sadly dysfunctional, as his mother and father divorced when he was only one year old, and there was no contact with the father. The mother has testified that she became increasingly worried over his obsession with violent computer games. Furthermore, his closest friends have expressed their concerns that he was a depressed homosexual who was fastidious about his appearance and who boasted that was ‘metrosexual like David Beckham’. None of this sounds very fundamentalist. Quite clearly, Breivik was driven by a vitriolic rejection of Islam, and had little empathy for the biblical injunction: ‘When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God’ (Lev. 19:33-34; see also Ex.22:21; 23:9).
The point is not just the tragedy associated with the events in Norway on 22 July 2011, but how this was presented to the public. The danger for all of us is to believe what we want to believe. Those who detest Christians as a dangerous menace to the community were delighted to portray Breivik as a fundamentalist Christian, and ignored his rejection of personal faith in Christ, his repudiation of biblical authority, his addiction to violence, and his probable homosexuality. How we look at the world is crucial. The world looked the rich man and was envious, and looked at Lazarus and despised him; God looked at the rich man in judgment and at Lazarus with mercy and compassion (Luke 16:19-31). The world saw Joseph in prison as a cursed man and the reigning Pharaoh as the important figure of the times; God looked on Joseph in prison and was with him, and does not even bother to name the Pharaoh of the day (Gen.39:21). Love believes all things (1 Cor.13:7), but that can hardly mean that we believe everything we read or hear, for ‘the simple believes everything’ (Prov.14:15a).
In the world, we wear blinkers that distort; in Christ, we see reality as it is. True faith does not make us more gullible but less, for in Christ there is light.