What makes rich and famous people steal items that they can easily afford? It’s a mystery. Did you know that certain medications given to people with Parkinson’s disease carry a health warning ‘may induce shoplifting’? How does that work?!

It’s a mystery sometimes, the way we behave. Have you ever found yourself hating something you did or said? Paul the apostle certainly did. In one of his letters he cries out: ‘I don’t really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead, I do what I hate!’

Paul identifies in himself an innate selfishness that twists his best intentions. This is what causes us to hurt those we love, act in ways we are ashamed of and let ourselves down. Christians know this as sin. Rich and famous sinners need the cure just as much as homeless thieves. The cure is a person; his name is Jesus, and his living, guiding presence in our lives is the answer to our deepest problem.

In the video clip, a dazed young man, profusely bleeding from a facial wound, is helped to his feet by another man while others stand around. As we watch the grainy CCTV imagery we hope the hurt man will get the hospital treatment he needs, we hope those around him will help him, that they are concerned.

They are. They are concerned to gain any valuables that they can from this wounded victim. They don’t want to help him, they want to help themselves to his stuff. As he stands there concussed, a man rips open his backpack and empties it of its contents. An ipad, or palm top, is taken out and the robber swaggers off.

It is the precise reverse of the well known parable of the good Samaritan, in which a wounded man is given aid by a stranger. We can call this incident ‘the parable of the bad Samaritan’, as it illustrates, not neighborly care, but selfishness run riot (no pun intended); selfish greed run riot in the most disgusting and predatory way.

‘Self will run riot’ – that is what the Alcoholics Anonymous handbook describes as the root of the alcoholic condition. It could just as well be used to describe the motivations of the hundreds of young men and women out for violent fun last night.

This is what Christians mean when we try and explain that dusty, old-hat, outmoded idea of ‘sin’. Sin has ‘I’ in the middle. It is self will running amok. It will burn your house, kill that cop; it has no concept of society or care for the vulnerable.

Sin expresses itself  in many forms, not all as in-your-face and newsworthy as the rioting. One thing is a common feature, however, of sin at work: sinners don’t want to acknowledge that they are sinners. Why should they? They are the important ones, and to hell with the rest of you; the weak, the innocent, the wounded. Self is all. Self is God. Self must be obeyed, and woe betide anyone who tries to stop me.

That, I submit to you, is the genuine heart of the bad Samaritan.

Passion and loss. Reckless waste and love. It was passion that led Christ to the cross. What a pity it seemed, that such an inspiring figure, whose words carried such power, should die in such a seemingly senseless way. If the cross was the true end of Jesus of Nazareth, there’s no way that Christianity could have swept across the nations. Thousands of others died in similar blood drenched futility. No one remembered them.

No, what makes Jesus different is what happened next. History changed when, as the letter to the Romans puts it; Jesus was declared to be the Son of God with power by his resurrection from the dead.

There was no flower strewn grave, no token-surrounded shrine made by his mourning fans after he died. Jesus’ followers experienced something totally novel; their shock and sadness turned into amazed awe and overwhelming joy on meeting Jesus again.

This powerful awareness of resurrection life that Christians know leaves no room for hopeless despair. Christ has conquered death. Grief does not have the last laugh. Love lives on.

God works through these really rather powerfully.

had not been to a similar cell group before.

How? God told Simon, again, to offer the man a biscuit from the pack he was carrying. Simon, as last time, didn’t want to, but when the Almighty pressed the point he felt he really had to.

Sure enough, the man – let’s call him Ed – didn’t want the biscuit. But interest was aroused. Before he knew it he was inside our Christian community house and dancing round the table singing a worship song in 4 languages just like the rest of us; just like red indians in fact! I tried to put myself in his shoes – he must have been blown away!

These God-ordained, anointed biscuits of churchward-pulling power are the business, I tell you. I would recommend them to any serious contemporary gospel evangelist.

God can use biscuits of any size, shape or colour

‘What? No!’ was his response, as Simon, in characteristic human fashion enacted over the ages, bottled out of doing just what God had said.

Simon didn’t fancy asking a complete stranger – and a disconcertingly well dressed one at that -  to come with him to church ‘out of the blue’.

As a hopeful compromise, he offered the guy he was sitting next to a biscuit from an open pack he had with him. The chap refused.

‘Invite him to church’ came God’s insistent voice. So there and then Simon invited this complete stranger to come with him to the church meeting he was going to.
I know this because the meeting was taking place last night at my house, a Christian community in Handsworth Wood, Birmingham.

Richard, the stranger that Simon invited, was the last person to leave. He and I talked at length after Simon and all the rest had gone. He was fascinated by my off the wall lifestyle. Over a cup of tea and a NICE biscuit we shared stories and he asked probing questions. Did I really share my salary? What happened with my money? How did we guard against fraud?
Richard was very struck by what he’d seen; the warmth and worship and friendship. He was guarded, but then he’s had some tough experiences in life and finds it hard to trust. He is intelligent, urbane and has a faith in God; I could tell that he was really impacted by the evening’s meeting.

In his words: ‘what struck me was the warmth Simon showed me. People just don’t talk on buses in Birmingham; they are miserable and ‘in themselves’. I had to come and see what made him different.’

And well he might be bothered. 31,000 elderly and vulnerable people are being frightened by the prospect that they might be having to find another place to live quite soon. They don’t need this worry; to face the potential scramble for new lodgings when they are old, infirm and possibly alone in the world.

The company bosses already cashed their shares in a while back and made a killing. Now it is anyone’s guess whether a rescue plan can be cobbled together. In many ways this is a business saga like any other. The difference here is that Southern Cross provides us with an illustration of the inherent queasiness of a situation where care has been commodified.

Care homes are a relatively new development and only in the 21st Century have they become the standard form of care for the most aged and incapacitated people in our society. Before that it was family, friends, the church maybe.

Now, ‘you pays your money, you gets your care’. But when it becomes a money issue, the care on offer becomes subject to the vagaries of the market. The help you desperately need in order to end your life with a measure of dignity may well be withdrawn because a banker no longer sees your care home as a prudent investment. It’s not pretty, but it’s the way our society seems to have gone with our unsound emphases on money as the key to everything and independence at all costs.

Shakespeare would have understood John Humphreys’ unease well. In his play ‘King Lear’ the abandoned, desolate old King wanders the freezing, rain sodden heath at night. His daughters have taken his property, got what they wanted, and abandoned all affection for him in the process. King Lear is overwhelmed by a sense of the ghastliness of life without genuine human warmth:

‘How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is/ To have a thankless child.’

I feel for those in Southern Cross care homes who are now aware of their lack of the security that real care should bring. I hope they still have families who can help them. May they be saved from the serpent’s teeth of the bankers, the loan companies and the insurers. That is perhaps an appropriate prayer for a prayer-less age.

Another African, Archbishop John Sentamu, prays in a similar way, praising and thanking God and putting himself last on the list. I heard him say that to the nation on Chris Evans’s radio show not long back.

How wonderful! How self forgetful! How unlike me!

Sadly, I’m often top of my prayer shopping list. Today I realised that I was moping through another me-centred set of prayer issues and gave myself a bit of a shake, asked God to centre me much more on him.

‘Your will be done’. Years ago, before I was a Christian, I prayed on bended knee to a God I mocked, slighted and scarcely believed in – to get me into Cambridge University. I wanted to be with my girlfriend (who went there), I wanted to be successful and to be seen to be doing well. That was one prayer in a long list of self centred prayers which I am glad, with hindsight, that God did not answer. I guess He knows we will be a lot better off if we ditch our sappy, self orientated plans for our best benefit and get into His perfect will for our lives.

But this struck me yesterday. Of all the overseers that we had recently appointed in these 24 countries, at least two had already died – in Africa. Simply because, out there, life expectancy is lower than where we are.

I guess in this country we are more or less used to thinking we’ll probably get to our three score years and ten, unless heart attack, cancer or car crash intervene. It creates a certain expectation of life that the world out there doesn’t share. Is it an arrogance? Perhaps it is, fostered by a pretty good health care system and no scarcity of food. In any case, I’m sure that the way we count our days is different to the Africans.

I was unsurprised, therefore, to see more distortions published by him on Twitter.

In essence, he messaged his audience on Twitter on or around 27th May to say that one of the Pope’s closest advisers was a paedophile. This linked to an article that said nothing of the sort. It wasn’t even close to being true.

After some complaint Derren Brown withdrew his tweet. I can’t find it on his timeline now.

Instead, one or two responses linger as evidence.

“Yes, misleading. Still terrible”. (Derren Brown’s words)

This was a response to @johnbirrane saying “not his policy adviser, it’s a priest in the diocese of his adviser. Misleading headlines”.

Why does this matter?

It’s this. Derren Brown knows full well that what he puts out on Twitter can carry, can circulate far and wide. The lie, to paraphrase that old Churchillian maxim, can get around the world before the truth has got its pants on. Smears are subtle and powerful in the online world.

We can test this hypothesis – why Derren Brown knows the power of what he’s doing – in this way:

Ask yourself; if many and influential people on Twitter started retweeting why he, Derren Brown, is not a paedophile, would he be uncomfortable? Or would he treat that as a trivial matter?

I think he’d be uncomfortable.

Because mud- even made-up, oblique, ‘accidentally thrown’ mud- sticks.

Derren Brown is happy to send out any old unscrutinized propaganda that supports his cause, in this case the cause of aggressive atheism – even if he hasn’t read the detail; even if it distorts the truth, even if it slanders the innocent and destroys reputations. 

Here are some words from a monk of Gethsamani, Kentucky, that caught me recently:

‘The basic thing of a monk in the search for God is an ongoing discovery of who we are. A monk will be called to do many things in the line of obedience that he may not especially like to do but he feels takes him into the area of God’s providence. He’s vowed his life to God, so this is a radical expression of our dependency on God. There is a surrender, as it were, in that obedience, in going into places that you wouldn’t ordinarily go by yourself.’

That surrender is breathtaking. I concur that to follow Jesus is to go places that you would rather flee. It is to experience the opening of your raw and distempered soul to the searing inspection of the light.

The powerlessness you experience in the vowed life is at times perhaps what it’s like being on a plane – like in my dream. You feel you are out of control and your whole life is crashing. But you pray and hold tight, and keep on singing those songs, because we’re coming down to land, and we’re going to be alright.