"Make Me a Christian"

"Make Me a Christian" is the title of a new series set to air on Channel 4 in the U.K. this Sunday. It's...well...just read:

The Reverend George Hargreaves thinks Britain is in a state of moral decline and that a return to a more "Christian" way of life would stop the rot. He and his team of mentors aim to show how by convincing a group of non-Christian volunteers to live by the teachings of the Bible for three weeks.

In this three-part series, a group of volunteers from around Leeds in West Yorkshire give up their normal lives and attempt to live like Christians for three weeks. They're not obvious candidates for such an experiment - there's:


• a biker who's a tattooist and a militant atheist
  
• a young man who was brought up Christian until he was 12, and now has a girlfriend who is 10 weeks' pregnant
  
• a lap-dancing manager who can't live without continually acquiring expensive designer shoes
  
• middle-class parents who are so professionally busy that they have hardly any time to spend with their children
  
• a man in his 20s who, unbeknown to his girlfriend, goes out every week drinking and womanising
  
• a man who found Christianity unfulfilling and has converted to Islam
  
• a lesbian who sometimes sleeps with men.

Their mentors come from different branches of Christianity but they share a number of core beliefs.

First stop is York Minster - an awe-inspiring cathedral that's almost 1,000 years old, where they are asked to participate in a communion service. Then it's back to Leeds, where George Hargreaves gives each volunteer a Bible and asks them to read some every day.

The mentors visit the volunteers in their own homes, to get a picture of their lives and to give them guidance. The parents are asked to spend 15 minutes each day with their children. The lesbian is ordered to get rid of her explicit pictures and books. The young man and his pregnant girlfriend are given some instruction in the basics of Christianity. The lap-dancing manager is discovered to have more than a passing interest in witchcraft and magic - her books and ceremonial paraphernalia are taken away. The womanising 20-something is persuaded to agree not to 'look lustfully at a girl'. The biker, so far, is challenging every instruction and the others are beginning to get fed up with his refusal to listen.

All this is just the start of their three hard weeks. Can they embrace Christian ideals and learn to live in a different way or will their old lives prove just too strong to resist?

What does the Bible have to say? "Yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified" (Galtians 2:16).

Any chance these people will actually be presented with the gospel, or is the goal to just get them to adopt an outwardly Christian lifestyle? Unless the heart is changed, there won't be any change at all (no matter what Obama might say).