Tag: Bible

Diagnosis of human nature

“What is man?” is an age-old question. Another question we should also ask is, What’s wrong with man? Because we are fraught with trouble that we cannot easily grasp. Things are not right with human nature, but how to make sense of our psychological ills – that is the question.

Blaise Pascal had an astute understanding of this human dilemma; indeed, few had the penetrating insights that he expressed with such incisive prose: “Man is neither angel nor beast, and it is unfortunately the case that anyone trying to act the angel acts the beast” (§678/358).

Speaking of the unity in man of mind and matter, Pascal writes: “This is the thing we understand least; man is to himself the greatest prodigy in nature, for he cannot conceive what body is, and still less what mind is, and least of all how a body can be joined to a mind. This is his supreme difficulty, and yet it is his very being. The way in which minds are attached to bodies is beyond man’s understanding, and yet this is what man is” (§199/92).

But there is another duality in our nature that Pascal points up: some, he says, are “exalted at… the sense of their greatness” while others are “dejected at the sight of their present weakness… If they realised man’s excellence [but] they did not know [man’s] corruption… the result [is] … pride, and if they recognised the infirmity of nature, [without knowing] its dignity… the result [is] that they… fall headlong into despair.” So he sums up: “We feel within ourselves the indelible marks of excellence, and is it not equally true that we constantly experience the effects of our deplorable condition?” (§208/435).

“Who cannot see that unless we realise the duality of human nature we remain invincibly ignorant of the truth about ourselves?” (§131/434).

So, is man good and glorious? Or is he weak and wicked?

“What shall become of man? Will he be the equal of God or the beasts? What a terrifying distance! What then shall he be? Who cannot see from all this that man is lost, that he has fallen from his place, that he anxiously seeks it, and cannot find it again? And who then is to direct him there? The greatest men have failed” (§430/431).

“You are a paradox to yourself” says Pascal – echoed by Professor of Psychology Jordan Peterson, “You are too complex to understand yourself”. We need help!

“Men, it is in vain that you seek within yourselves the cure for your miseries. All your intelligence can only bring you to realise that it is not within yourselves that you will find either truth or good” (§149/430).

“Know then, proud man, what a paradox you are to yourself. Be humble, impotent reason! Be silent, feeble nature! Learn that man infinitely transcends man, hear from your master your true condition, which is unknown to you. Listen to God.” (§131/434).

When we are seriously ill without realising it, a doctor’s diagnosis is hard to take. So also it is humbling to face up to our existential pain, when our pride is the main problem, and our pride is hurt. 

On the other hand, a doctor’s mistaken diagnosis can be very harmful for a patient, because the remedy proposed may actually be detrimental to the patient’s health. So it is with our human predicament: many a wrong diagnosis of our ills has only led people into further distress. So, what is wrong with us? Where is the doctor who can bring the right diagnosis?

“Listen to God”. Only our Maker can mend us. 

Clive Every-Clayton

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Our human predicament

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) was one of France’s greatest minds: inventor of the first calculating machine, and the first public transport (in Paris), he was a mathematician but most famous for his literary accomplishments; he was regarded by many as the greatest of French prose artists. He was an unconventional Catholic because he struggled against the Jesuits, calling their Society and the Inquisition “twin scourges of the truth” (Pensées §916/920). Also unusual for a Catholic layman in those days, he profoundly studied the Bible which was for him the source of absolute truth; so he was quite like an evangelical not only for his high regard for Scripture, but also because he underwent a profound experience of the risen Christ, which was a radical conversion, the essence of which he wrote immediately in his “Memorial” which has been described as the most sublime writing ever put on paper. 

Pascal thought long about the human condition: he compares mankind to a feeble plant, like a reed, then adds “but he is a thinking reed… All our dignity consists in thought” (§620/347). Well, he had lots of thoughts; he would be a blogger if he lived today, though some of his thoughts (pensées in French) are short like a tweet. They were considered so powerful and brilliant that they were published just as he jotted them down in his moments of inspiration and they are still in print today – 350 years later.

Here is an example of Pascal’s penetrating understanding of our human dilemma – which you will agree, as you read, sounds like it was written in our time.

“When I see the blind and wretched state of man, when I survey the whole universe in its dumbness and man left to himself with no light, as if lost in this corner of the universe, without knowing who put him there, what he has come to do, what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost and with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair. I see other people around me, made like myself. I ask them if they are any better informed than I, and they say they are not. Then these lost and wretched creatures look around and find some attractive objects to which they become addicted and attached. For my part, I have never been able to form such attachments, and considering how very likely it is that there exists something besides what I can see, I have tried to find out whether God has left any traces of himself.” (§198/693)

If his emphasis on man’s “wretchedness” sounds too negative, know that Pascal also emphasises man’s wonderfulness: “What sort of freak then is man! … glory and refuse of the universe”! (§131/434)

Clive Every-Clayton

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God loves you very much

We may not be keen on loving God, but we should know that he loves us very much. His love is of immense, eternal proportions! There was love in the heart of God before he began creation: Jesus prays to his Father, “You loved me before the foundation of the world” (John 17.24). That is mind-blowing!

Before creation began, God had foreseen his plan of action, to create persons able to love each other and to love him, and one day he would reveal to them the greatness of his love for them. His love is all the more powerful in that he allowed us humans to live in potential rebellion against him, and indeed, we humans are not, in general, passionate about loving God. But despite our indifference, going our own way instead of His, he has persisted in drawing people out of their inner reticence into his arms of love.

So he demonstrated his immense love in a mind-boggling manifestation. He came into the world like an ‘undercover boss’ by sending his Son, Jesus. Jesus came to seek and to save the lost. “All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way,” says the Bible, but Jesus came as the Good Shepherd, seeking the sheep that was lost.

Let’s face it, we’ve all wandered far from God in thoughtless disinterest in doing his will, and so by our disobedience we have incurred his displeasure. He would be quite entitled to cast us away, to pay no attention to us, even to visit righteous judgment upon us. But when he came in Jesus, he did not come to demand we pay for our sins – no! the marvel is that he came to pay for our sins! That’s what Jesus’ death on the cross was all about. The Good Shepherd gave his life for us, the wayward sheep!

“God demonstrates his own love for us in this” – says the Bible – “in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us”. We didn’t have to clean up our act before God loved us – we were, in his verdict, “sinners”. We were guilty, we deserved righteous judgment; but Jesus – who never ever sinned – interposed and bore our sin in his body on the cross, suffering the horror of punishment that should have fallen on the guilty. “He died, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3.18). “This is how God showed his love to us”, says the Bible (1 John 4.9-10) “He sent his only Son into the world… not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be an atoning sacrifice for our sins”. 

It’s maybe hard to grasp, but an atonement was needed because of the demands of justice. Since God is absolutely just, he cannot grant pardon to all the guilty people in the world – that would be a supreme injustice. Yet he desires to forgive and receive us into a warm loving relationship. How could he do it while yet upholding the demands of his justice? By himself providing the atoning sacrifice, whereby his Son, truly man but also truly divine, accepted out of love to come and bear – on the Cross – the full penalty of our many sins. His death for us is the most loving event ever, in the entire history of the world. 

And he did it for you, because he loves you that much.

Clive Every-Clayton

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God loves

Love puts a spring in your step, a smile on your face and joy in your heart. What happiness to love and to be loved! That’s because we were made for love. But therefore how sad is the experience of those who are not loved, or whose love relationship has ended in acrimony… There is deep pain in feeling unloved – because we were made for love, not for disputes and hatred.

The good news is that God loves you. This is no mere religious fantasy, not just a heart-warming ideal that we are pleased to entertain: if that is all it is, we would be indulging in a religious illusion. Humans cannot invent a God of love. The real issue is not what we desire, but what God is objectively like. The Judeo-Christian God alone, in all the religions of the world, presents himself to us as a God who loves us dearly. Jesus, God incarnate, told us not only that God is there and that he is our Creator: he brought the astonishing revelation that God loves us. 

But what is love? Impossible fully to define, we may consider it as delight in the other, as emotional attachment, deep friendship, harmony and mutual understanding, caring and helping… On the human level, love is seen in seeking the good of the other, and acting on that love, even at extreme personal cost. All this – and more – applies to God’s love for his creatures: he seeks our highest good; he wants to be our friend and he desires that we come to know his love and enter into a warm loving relationship with him.

The one who loves longs for the other to respond in love; and so it is with God. That’s why Jesus insisted that the first commandment – which is God’s foremost desire for us his beloved creatures – is to “love the Lord you God with all you heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12.30). Such total love cannot just be demanded, however; it must be won. And God has taken steps to demonstrate his immense love for you in such a way as to win your total love in return. In other words, God loves you with a love so strong, faithful, immense and kind, that he considers your response to loving him with all you have as the only fitting response.

One of Jesus’ apostles wrote, “We love him, because he first loved us” (1 John 4.19). God takes the initiative in love. He “proved his love toward us” says the apostle Paul (Romans 5.8). Why does no other religion teach that God is love? Because they cannot show any proof of God having shown great love. In Christianity this is unique: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3.16). “This is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4.10). Christians therefore see in Jesus’ self-giving sacrifice the supreme demonstration of God’s love for them. 

This needs to be developed in order to be understood; the one who has not grasped this yet has a glorious enlightenment in store!

Clive Every-Clayton

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Divine prerogatives

For some people the idea of God as Creator represents a specific problem: they do not like the idea because they realise that God would logically have the right to command their obedience. There are three things to say to such people, and the first is, that we are not dealing with simple philosophical ideas here. The witness of Jesus and all the biblical prophets, the findings of science as it has revealed how fine-tuned our universe is, and the deep intuition in the human heart combine to tell us there is a Creator behind this amazing world we inhabit. Chance does not do things so extraordinarily well! I have sought to show this in previous posts.

The second thing follows from the first: whether we like it or not, whether we acknowledge it or not, we have been created by an almighty, wise and loving God. Once we are persuaded that Jesus came from God, his teaching is clear: God is our Creator. The subtle reason many people strive against Christianity is because there is that in our nature which does not like being obliged to obey a higher power. To those who share this viewpoint I would say, I understand, for I have been there. It was realising how greatly God loves me that enabled me to bow the knee to his lordship over my life, and that would be my advice – study how much God loves you. I plan to deal with this in an upcoming post.

Thirdly, we should get it into our heads that we, God’s creatures, are obligatorily in some kind of relationship with God: it is either a warm friendly relationship or a fraught distant relationship. He is there, and he knows us through and through, even though we deny him and don’t want him to be there! Wisdom dictates that we make peace with God, that our relationship is positive. That is what God wants, and that is what is best for us.

We do need to clarify, however, what God’s prerogatives are as the Creator of all things. If he is over us, we are necessarily under him – under his all-seeing eye and subject to his ultimate judgment on the way we conduct ourselves. For though God did create us with the freedom to reject him and disobey his will, he did not put us in a context where we could rebel with impunity. We are responsible beings, and our Creator does hold us answerable for our conduct.

Furthermore, it is God’s prerogative to tell us what is true. If we reject God, we reject the source of the very truth we need to answer our existential questions. There is no other source of absolute truth to which we can turn for such answers! We need both humility and wisdom to listen carefully to what God has said to us, through Jesus and in his word, the Bible. 

In particular, God’s word not only indicates general truth about our relationship to God, but also, as our Creator, he gives us moral truth – clear indications of his will for us. He is wise, loving and holy: his commands are wise, indicating what is really best for us. As he is loving, he seeks our true happiness, and his commandments are good and right. Indeed, our Creator defines what is good – as no-one else in the universe can. Believe it – he really does want the very best for you!

Clive Every-Clayton

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Cancer and death: why?

Last week, August 4th, 2023, I went for a check-up in the hospital where, seven months ago my much loved wife died. For the second time in my life, a surgeon who examined me told me I had cancer. I had come through the first with radiotherapy, chemotherapy and an operation, some 14 years ago. Now the verdict has fallen again.

What does a Christian do in times like these? Having thanked God through my tears for giving me such a wonderful wife and the mother of our children, though the grief was uniquely overpowering at times, as I now face another ordeal, I remain thankful that whatever this cancer may involve for me, the God who loves me will be beside me day by day as my ever-present helper.

What a blessing to be a believer in Jesus in times like these, when suffering pain, experiencing loss and facing the shadow of death! What wondrous peace to know, on the basis of Jesus’ words which I fully believe to be trustworthy, that there is an eternal life of glory awaiting me where I shall see both my beloved Saviour and my dear wife!

I do not know what treatment, what pain, what distresses may lie before me, but I know that the God who loves me has promised never to leave me nor forsake me. I wish for all my readers the same confidence whatever you may be going through. God’s truth, his love and his wisdom may be fully trusted. This is the way to know peace in the midst of whatever trial you may have to undergo.

In God’s heaven, he promises, “there will be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain” (Revelation 21.4). The most important of our existential questions is – how can we be prepared for death and the life beyond? For many years I have known the answer and sought to share it with others: as I face the probable reality, the answer holds true. 

Why, then, does God allow such suffering? The full answer is long, but here are some elements. God uses our trials as a way of getting through to us, reminding us of our weakness and our need of him, encouraging us to turn to him with a better attitude, to find comfort and help in him. Sadly, many don’t have the right attitude. Each of us should reflect on how we should react. To rebel is unhelpful; to trust is better.

As for me, God is granting me an opportunity to show him that I will faithfully love him and follow Jesus whatever suffering may be involved. A trial tests the reality of one’s faith. It is a way through which I can prove my commitment to him whatever the cost. The biblical principle can be found in Deuteronomy 8.2: “You shall remember the whole way the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you, to know what is in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not”. 

As I look back, I see how God has helped me; as I look forward, I trust he will help me still.

Clive Every-Clayton

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Christ the perfect image

More than once the New Testament tells us that Christ Jesus is “the image of God”. While humans at the beginning were created “in the image of God”, Jesus is said to be the image of God. He reflects God’s reality perfectly because not only was he a holy man, and like God in his holiness, but he was the “I am” in person – God himself come among us in human form. As such, we may ask how he fulfilled the role that we humans should fulfil as being God’s image in the world. He reflected God’s nature so perfectly that he said, “Whoever sees me, sees him who sent me” (John 12.45), and “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14.9). Jesus shows us what God is like.

What was Jesus’ purpose? He told us plainly: “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me” (John 6.38). Using figurative language he said, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work” (John 4.34). He did this so well that he could testify, “I love the Father” (John 14.31), and “I do always what is pleasing to him” ( i.e. pleasing to the Father, John 8.29).  Jesus was lovingly totally obedient to the will of God, his Father. That is the very definition of holiness.

But Jesus fleshed out what that will of his Father involved, particularly in two main services that he rendered to humankind.

The first, he stated to Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor who was judging him: “For this purpose I was born, and for this purpose I have come into the world – to bear witness to the truth” (John 18.37). In another passage, he refers to himself as “a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God” (John 8.40). Elsewhere he affirms, “What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has told me” (John 12.50). It is because of these affirmations that I have been insisting that we may know truth to answer our essential questions, since Jesus brought us truth from God. We need truth and God sent it to us through Jesus.

The second vital service, that Jesus was sent by God the Father to accomplish for us, is formulated in complementary ways by Jesus: “The Son of Man [Jesus himself] came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19.10). This was the supreme role that Jesus was sent to fulfil: we were lost, and he came to save us. How he did this deserves a fuller elaboration than I can give this time, but Jesus himself made it clear when he said, “the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10.45). Jesus’ mission was to “give his life”; he repeats this when having just said, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep”, he adds: “For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life… I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father” (John 10.11, 17-18). 

In other words, Jesus came from the Father into the world seeking to save the lost, and in order to do so, he was to give his life as a ransom. This is the deep meaning of Jesus’ death, which I hope to develop in subsequent blog posts. It is of the very essence of Jesus’ divine mission of salvation. And it was vitally necessary in order for us to find true life, to find God, and to find God’s forgiveness. 

Jesus could pray to his Father at the end of his life: “I have glorified you on the earth, having finished the work that you gave me to do” (John 17.4). Mission accomplished!

Clive Every-Clayton

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Three human needs

Humans have numerous needs – physical, social, emotional… and I want to highlight three.

First we desire, and need, some kind of purpose or aim in life. We are so constituted that we are purposeful: all the time we envisage what we want to accomplish and set out to achieve it. To have no aim in life is the gateway to despair. Now it is odd that on atheistic assumptions, where the universe is supposedly just the result of chance and therefore purposeless, that it should have given birth to persons whose very fibre is to seek to fulfil their purposes. We must be clear: if there is no God, there is no purpose to anything. The fact that we do live by purposes, however, fits in well with the biblical vision that we are made in the likeness of a Creator who has a purpose for us, his creatures.

Secondly, human beings, from the cradle to the grave, need love. A purely materialist origin of the universe and mankind cannot account for this personal need we all have. But if “God is love” (1 John 4.8) one can easily see that persons made in his image are capable of loving and are in need of love. “God loved the world”, Jesus tells us (John, 3.16): he loves us all. Here our need for love can be uniquely satisfied. If we are loved by God, we must love him in return – and this is the most important commandment of Scripture, according to Jesus. Blaise Pascal wrote: “The sign of the true religion must be that it obliges men to love God… No other religion than ours has done so” (Pensée §214/491). You cannot really oblige or force people to love God; love must be won. But God can be loved when we first receive strong evidence that he loves us. This evidence is supremely provided by Jesus: “God proved his love towards us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5.8). That verse is so full of rich truth I will come back to it another time to explain it more fully, for it speaks of divine love that alone fully satisfies our needy heart. The apostle who wrote it also said: “the Son of God loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2.20). To grasp what that means will deliver you forever from despair and aimlessness.

Our third need is for intellectually satisfying answers – in other words, we need truth we can rely on. We are rational beings and our reason requires true answers to our basic vital questions. There can be no satisfaction to this need except through the infinite wisdom of God’s mind; he alone can answer our dilemma. The atheistic materialist has problems here: “on his assumptions,” said Cornelius Van Til, “his own rationality is a product of chance.” If our brains resulted from chance movement of atoms and molecules, there is no real intelligence, only an illusion of personality. Without a rational creator on whom we can ground the validity of our rationality, we are for ever lost in confusion, for the very value of our mental processes would be undermined. God’s rationality alone can justify the value of human rationality. “Unless God is back of everything, you cannot find meaning in anything” (Van Til). 

All three of these needs are met by our Creator God. His wisdom specialises in revealing truth to satisfy our minds. His loves is like none other, to satisfy our hearts. His purposes are the best for us as the true way to find fulfilment.

Clive Every-Clayton

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The real purpose of our lives

There is a crucial fact that God our Creator told us from the very beginning of his revelation in the chapter of Genesis that Jesus quoted: it is that we are made “in his image”. Our purpose in life must correspond to what we really are – and we are image-bearers of our Creator God.

An image is a reflection, a likeness to, or a copy of, the original; we are meant to be like God – not in his infinite power and greatness, but in his personal character of love and goodness. God wants to see his virtues reflected in his human creatures. So as we go about our work and fulfil our family responsibilities, we are to show forth something of the glorious nature of our perfect God.

If this seems too idealistic to be feasible – and we all seem to fall short – I shall shortly deal with that issue. But I am starting out these explanations by looking at the pure and pristine creation of man and woman at the very start, before any imperfection arose; we’ll look again shortly at our difficulty actually living this out.

There are actually two aspects to this deep purpose of our existence: not only to be in God’s likeness, but also to be in good relationship with him. Here we are dealing (finally!) with the very essence of what it means to be a human being in the plan of God our Maker.

We should wonder – what does God want, in making people in his likeness? First, he wants to see his goodness reflected in his personal creatures – so we are to be kind, loving and holy as God is kind, loving and holy. This is absolutely fundamental to our human fulfilment.

But just as vital, is God’s desire to have a harmonious relationship with his personal creatures. Our personality enables us to enjoy personal relationships not only with other people, but also with God himself. Again, the fact that many know nothing of this in their experience does not mean that it is impossible: we’ll come back to that later. But a real relationship with God – what might that look like?

First, it means receiving God’s love for us, and loving him in return. I will develop this glorious theme in time to come; but our Creator loves us, and desires that we love him. In that relationship is the key to the greatest possible fulfilment and happiness that we can know.

Second, it means seeking to live a life that does indeed reflect God’s goodness and his kindness, his love and his holiness, in the world in which we live. When God as it were looks down on us, what does he want to see? People being kind to each other. Not for nothing did Jesus insist on his commandment to love our neighbour as ourselves. God is love, and he wants to see love – true, godly love – reflected in his creatures.

Thirdly, God wants us to share his purposes and collaborate with him in the world to see those purposes come to pass. We may be co-labourers with God to the end of seeing his will done on earth, his good and righteous will. And we begin by committing ourselves to it in response to his love for us. 

Clive Every-Clayton

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Atheists are purposeless

If there is no Creator God, and if atheists are right, there can logically be no purpose for our human existence. I hold that only the Creator could have a purpose in mind for his human creations; if there is no Creator God, there can be no purpose either for the whole universe to exist or for our human life. Atheism therefore has no answer to our deep desire to find the reason for our existence. No God, no purpose. Atheists have no ultimate reason for living; they may seek to do what they think is right and good, or they may give themselves over to a hedonistic lifestyle to get the maximum of pleasure before they die; but it is all meaningless, utterly without any overarching scheme or goal.

We don’t, however, believe in God’s existence as our Creator because of this kind of argument, but because God sent his Son into the world that we might hear his truth on the important questions of our existence. Jesus told us God is our Creator; that is an essential truth that we must take on board.

God’s purpose for our lives is profound. In Genesis chapter 1, as I have mentioned, the basic tasks God gave humankind are to multiply (have families) and to govern the world under his guidance. This means that both family and work are instituted by God and blessed by him, though he also insists, in that same chapter, on the importance of periodic rest from work.

Human work takes many forms: it includes developing our natural God-given talents, in study and education, in the affairs of men, business, politics and economics. It includes cultural activities like writing, composing, singing and dancing, music and art. From the start it involved cultivation, care for animals, agriculture and care for the planet, and developed in so many areas to beautify life, including bringing up children and caring for people, and much more.

All good works are thus ennobled, valorised and blessed in God’s good purposes, and we find satisfaction both in work and in family life.

All this leaves unsaid the most important aspect of the purpose of our lives: “all things were made by God and for God. He was before all things, and he maintains all things in existence”. That is what the New Testament says and it provides the key to God’s real deep purposes for our lives. We exist for God. He made us for himself. We find fulfilment only when we are in contact with God. That is why our hearts are so desperate for love, meaning, understanding, and true fulfilment: it is also why human societies everywhere are religious – there is a “God-shaped void” in our existence. We somehow know that he must be there, but we reach out after him in vain so much of the time, or we just follow the religious traditions into which we were born. The principle remains, however: if we are not in meaningful relationship with our Creator, the God who made us for himself, we will be forever frustrated, and that is the sad experience of so many people.

Atheists may seek all the pleasures this world affords, yet they still miss out on that which alone satisfies the human heart – a friendly relationship with the God who made us for himself. Indeed, their very refusal to envisage such a relationship damns them to a life of profound dissatisfaction – unless they think again.

Clive Every-Clayton

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