A Reply to: Dawkins’ Manx Shearwater
”Gun-running criminal turns over a new leaf.” That was the headline of a feature article in the Weston and Somerset Mercury -19 July 2007. Mark Rowan had just authored a book called, ‘Condemned.’ It is a grim and chilling biography of a rebellious criminal young man eventually coming to know God and becoming a Christian and further more, he has now entered the Christian ministry! The newspaper showed him with his wife and four-month old baby called Charlie - looking very much now a settled family man.So what brought about the change? Mark tells us that after a spell in Channings Wood Prison in Newton Abbott in 2000 (the last of his prisons) he became a Christian. How all this came about you can read in the book, but the local paper reported Mark saying, “Becoming a Christian changed me in every way, from my attitudes and thoughts to my actions.” Mark Rowan credits God for this miraculous turnaround in his life. What the Bible calls the ‘New Birth’ is what Christians call a miracle - Mark’s life is only one of so many stories of God’s intervention in their lives for the better - despite The Times promoting TGD in Culture Magazine (21 October 07) as “Powerful arguments on the irrationality of and harm caused by faith.” What a difference in these two ways of looking at the Bible. For Mark Rowan, it reveals the grace and goodness of God. Where his life was evil, through the grace of God his life is now turned around for good. He now wants to let God use his life to bring a better quality of life for himself, his family and the community. This is what Christians understand as knowing God from ‘personal experience’ - not as Professor Dawkins describes in TGD (p. 97-92). The newspaper reported that, “Today, Mark is an associate pastor of an Assemblies of God church in Weston Super Mare, and in the process of setting up a Christian-run drug rehabilitation unit.” His Christian friends introduced him to God and it is his relationship with God that gave him the power to change his life.
One can argue about the existence of God and about the origins of the universe and about how the world came to be and how we came to be. But the greatest argument for Christianity is a changed life due to a person’s engagement with God through the work of the Holy Spirit. We don’t know how the Holy Spirit works, but we know the result, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17 NIV).
When Mark was transferred to a Devon prison that had a Therapy Unit, he saw his lot with drugs, sex and violence being literally a dead end! Suicide was an option! He finally knew he needed help. Although being highly suspicious of it at first the positive influences of the Therapy Unit within HMP Channings Wood, began to get through to him. It obviously opened up to broaden his horizons in managing social relationships. He even became open to the witness of some of those he saw as belonging to the ‘God Squad’, a separate prison ministry. That led him ultimately to be open to the Bible itself. He was given a Gideon’s Bible . Says Mark of his reading, “I began to realise that the Bible was not just a book but that it was living and powerful. I was hungry for more” (p.134).
The newspaper feature reported Mark saying, “I go now to prisons and schools and teach them about the lifestyle I led and the dangers of drugs and binge drinking.” The newspaper reported that, “In the past year Mark has led teams to do garden makeovers for the elderly and partnered with North Somerset Council to take youngsters off the streets.” It wasn’t The God Delusion or Darwin’s Origin of Species that Mark tells us he read in prison - it was the Bible - a Gideon’s Bible! All credit to The Gideons!
