But I don't like Anne Atkins!

'Thought for the day' had already started when I turned on the radio this morning but I soon tuned in to what the speaker was saying and it did what it says on the tin - it gave me something to think about throughout today.

The speaker was describing her life in a barely populated village and questioning the orthodoxy about the population 'explosion'. Do we really not have room for everyone? Or isn't the problem that everyone now wants to live further and further away from everyone else? She had a point, cities have a lot to be said for them - particularly when it comes to learning to live with (and tolerate) your fellow human beings. How many, seemingly idyllic, villages are actually places where ignorance and prejudice fester without ever being challenged? I was particularly impressed that she linked this idea to CS Lewis's 'The Great Divorce' (Hell is a place where people get further and further away from each other) and how she talked about the difference between the simple garden of Eden in Genesis and the vision of the heavenly city, brimming with people, in Revelation.

She was also right to point out how families divide themselves up into separate houses and flats more and more. She's right about this but I this isn't something I'd like to change. Like most people I think I'd rather eat my own limbs than live in a house with three generations of the same family. The old deference and conservatism doesn't last long when it becomes economically possible to live a more independent life. Don't get me wrong, I think families are great, and big extended families do a much better job of bringing up children than smaller ones (there's always someone to talk to who is a little bit, but not too much, older than you) but all living under one roof often destroys relationships that could thrive given more space.

Overall it was an impressive and thought provoking little talk. The only problem was about half way through I started to recognise the voice of the speaker. 'Oh no, it's Anne Atkins' I said. 'But I don't like Anne Atkins!'

She's really annoyed me in the past by mixing the attitudes of the Daily Mail with scripture into one distressing and smug monologue. But I have to admit she was pretty good today.

It's true, isn't it? We find it hard to separate the message from the messenger. How many times, I wonder, have I rejected something good because I don't like the person saying it? And how many times have I persuaded myself that black is white because of warm feelings towards the person saying it?

Which makes a real problem for the church. A lot of people don't like Christians and to be honest a lot of Christians are not very likeable. Many people find the Christians that they meet smug, arrogant, irritating, bland, unattractive, weird... (I could go on for a very long time)

We fall into a trap of thinking that people aren't Christians because they haven't heard about Jesus. But very often the opposite is true: some people are not and never will be Christians because they have heard about Jesus, and they didn't think much of the person they heard it from.