Sinclair B. Ferguson

And then Martin Amis said something that apparently prompted an outburst of laughter in St.

Martin's in the fields.

Well, yes, said Kingsley Amis, it's true I'm an atheist, but it's more than that.

You see, I hate him.

People thought it was funny, like seeing a cartoon of someone who says something when it's quite clear that what they've said is self-contradictory.

I'm sure Kingsley Amos' son meant people to laugh, a great moment in the service.

But you know what he said was not so much funny as tragic.

I wonder if any of the A-listers in the congregation that day thought how desperately sad, how stunning an illustration of what Paul says in Romans 1 verses 18 to 32.

Kingsley Amos denies the existence of God and yet hates the God whose existence he denies.

He's simply living and now dead proof of what Paul says in Romans chapter 1.

He has suppressed the truth he has known and he's done it not because of intellectual honesty but because of unrighteousness.

You know, if Yevgeny Yevtushenko had been a Christian, I think he might have wanted to pull on this loose thread that was so obviously sticking out of the poorly woven garment of Sir Kingsley Amis's bravado and pointed out the inconsistency between what he professed to believe and what he really deep down believed.

I imagine that would have taken not a little courage.

And sometimes it will take not a little courage for us to do the same with people who are supremely self-confident and hate the hubris of their sinful hearts being unmasked.

But we do need to look for and listen for these loose threads.

Some of them will be less obvious.

Some of them will be very obvious.

So let's ask the Lord for eyes to discern them and courage to begin to pull them, so that we may help people whose foolish hearts, as Paul says, have become darkened.

Help them to see their need and to point them to Jesus Christ.

And let's not forget to thank God daily that we see His handiwork in everything He has made, and that He has made us as His image, and in Jesus Christ, He's transforming us back into that image so that we may be like Him again.