What we need

What do humans need to find fulfilment?

The basics are food and drink, shelter and warmth and caring companionship.

Beyond that, however, there are existential needs that must be met. There are at least three: our minds need understanding; our hearts need love; and our wills need purpose. That summarises the needs of our personal nature, whose three components are our intellect, emotion, and will. To that we may add our conscience which has complex needs of its own as we shall see.

Let’s begin with our minds: we need understanding of the basics of our human existence, and if we are misled, if we think something is true when it is wrong, we are in trouble. So we need education, and that education needs to be correct. This is already a serious difficulty, since fake news and unsound philosophies seem to be everywhere; even our own personal ideas are not necessarily wise and true. It would be great if we had an all-wise teacher to guide us.

Then our hearts need to feel loved. Some are blessed with loving parents or partners; but many are those who suffer from neglect, rejection, even hatred from those who ought to give them loving care. A lot of psychological pain is due to lack of love, and it is not at all easy to find the love that we all need. It would be great if there was someone who always really loved us.

Thirdly, we need to have something to do which will give us stimulation and satisfaction – some purpose to which we can give ourselves and spend our energies. Boredom is a killer; it brings its own lot of psychological hang-ups. We need to know that what we do is not only something we like, but something of value. Our talents vary, but something worth living for is what our soul really needs. All the better if it fits into some overarching great purpose. It would be great if we knew what that purpose was.

Faced with imperfect solutions to our deep personal needs, we suffer – some more than others. If we fall short in any of these areas, or if we fail in some way, our conscience multiplies feelings of shame or guilt which compound our psychological disarray. Is there a way forward?

Do we have to yield to the despair of a meaningless and frustrating existence? Is this what God has made us for? Isn’t there anything better? Could God provide what our soul needs and longs for?

What did Jesus say? “I am the way, the truth and the life” (John 14.6); “I have come that people may have life abundant”. “The one who believes in me”, he says, will as it were experience “streams of living water” flowing through him (John 7.37-38). Let’s consider this.

Our understanding needs essential truth: truth about who we are, where we come from, why we are here and where we are going. Our Creator God alone can give us that essential truth, and it comes through the One who said, “I am the truth”! God renders us this extraordinary and vital service! We do well to study Jesus’ teaching and commit to following him.

He is not only “the truth”, but he is “the way” to God: he leads us to know God, coming into relationship with him, discovering his purpose for us. Our Creator’s purpose essentially comes down to knowing that he loves us and forgives all our sins and failures; he will help us to live what is true “abundant life” (John 10.10).

The next blog post will develop that.

Clive Every-Clayton

April 1, 2025 0

Humanity’s supreme value (part 2)

We continue on the areas where the Genesis statement that God created man in his own image brilliantly illuminates our self-understanding. This key also reveals:

The best arrangement for sex and family life. The verse just following the Creator’s word making man “male and female”, Genesis 1.28, says: “God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply’”. He it was who gave humans their sexual appetites and capacity for procreation. He thus instituted the family by bringing Eve to meet Adam, enunciating the principle, “for this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.” God created the body of the man and the counterpart body of the woman for the purposes of bringing into existence more human beings – in the image of their parents. Sex was God’s idea; he knows how best we should enjoy it – in the security of a committed, unique relationship of mutual love, with a view to founding a family and bringing up children. In the family we can even discern the reflection of the image of a triune God.
The gaining of a due regard for moral truth. God’s holiness is reflected in our conscience. Whether we like it or not, moral truth is inscribed into our inner being, and the voice of conscience makes us aware of the evil of temptation, and the duty of following the good. No materialist explanation of our existence can properly account for this inherent reality we all experience. The biblical fact of being created in the image of a good and holy God alone justifies the supreme value of our conscience (even though it can be tarnished and downgraded by being unheeded). God’s creature works best when following the dictates of holiness that he communicated in his Word by the Holy Spirit.
The understanding of the important place to be given to God. Coming from the hand of a Creator God means that our essential orientation is towards God. All our miseries are ultimately due to man’s turning away from God himself and spurning his wise commandments. The first two of the Ten Commandments insist that God be given the prior place that is his due in our thoughts, worship and behaviour. This is basic wisdom. We “work” best when we follow the Makers instructions. Ignorance of God’s wise and good commands is the way of folly and frustration, not human fulfilment.
The essence of true religion: it lies in our human relationship with God. Man is lost and suffering if he is not in relationship with God – or rather, if that relationship is bad rather than harmonious. True blessedness comes from being loved. God loves his creation, but he detests human wickedness. So long as our hearts are set on selfish disobedience to God’s will, he is displeased with us and we suffer dysfunction. When in repentance we commit to doing his will, expressed in his commandments, we find that he welcomes us and leads us into the way of true happiness. So long as we wander far from God in the selfishness of our sin, our hearts are restless, disquieted, burdened, guilty. But when we see at what cost God seeks to bring us back into a good relationship with himself – when we see the gift of his Son, Jesus Christ, suffering on the cross as he bears our sin and expiates our guilt – and when we hear and heed his call to repent and believe in our Saviour, then we can start a new relationship with God. He forgives our past sins and gives us power to live a life that pleases him, that reflects afresh his holy character and brings us to fulfil the divine purpose and find true fulfilment.

Clive Every-Clayton

December 3, 2024 0

Humanity’s supreme value (part 1)

God has given us a key to understanding ourselves and getting the true answers to all the key issues we are concerned about as human beings. That key is on page 1 of the Bible: “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1.27). This fundamental fact has remained hidden from philosophers who pay no attention to the Word of God, and this is the cause of their failure to find adequate answers to our existential questions, and the deep reason for our feelings of confusion and lostness.

To those however who receive this basic truth as wisdom revealed by God himself, this Bible verse proves to be the key to personal fulfilment that eludes atheists and agnostics. It is the essential guideline, the unique basis, for a wide-ranging, wise, beneficial assessment of our human reality in the following eight areas.

The revelation that at the beginning man was made in God’s image is:

The basis for the value and validity of man’s thinking. If we were the result of an age-long unguided process of chemical matter complexifying itself, there would be no way of fathoming how our physical brain could ever serve the cause of truth. Organic physical material cannot produce rationality. Neither can it create consciousness. The only rational basis for attributing value to our reason is to see our minds as created to reflect the mind of God. Atheistic materialism, if it seeks by reason to justify its philosophy, is obliged to acknowledge that philosophy cannot ground its own value: the value of reason requires the Christian, biblical basis, the revealed fact that we are made in the likeness of an intelligent Creator.
The proper orientation for finding man’s meaning. Godless evolution cannot furnish us with any credible meaning to our existence. Chance can provide neither meaning nor purpose. If we feel that our existence is meaningless, it is because we have missed the essential starting point – we come from the hand of God. Our Creator knows the meaning of his creation.
The proper orientation for our value. Why is a human of more value than a thistle? Both were created by God, but the human was made in God’s image. This gives him supreme value. If you damage a thistle, or kill a cow, no-one turns a hair, but if you kill a human, that’s serious! Man is the crown of God’s creation, the most glorious of all his creatures. The Creator himself attributes such value to man. Jesus said it like this: “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” (Mark 8.36).
The proper orientation for finding man’s purpose. Chance is haphazard, purposeless. Only a person can formulate a purpose. The great Creator formulated his purpose for human beings when he said that he was creating them in his own image. Man was destined to be a reflection, at the human level, of the divine character – to exhibit God’s holiness and love. Whatever activity people might be engaged in, it is not the work itself that is the essence of their purpose, but the way they do that work. The New Testament calls believers to “do all for the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10.31). That means in all our human activities we are supposed to show forth something of the glory of God’s nature, his kindness, compassion, goodness, truthfulness and grace.

[Continued in next post]

Clive Every-Clayton

December 3, 2024 0

Am I a good person?

What is a good person? How to define what goodness is for a human being? In his ground-breaking, thoroughly reasoned, brilliantly insightful book “After Virtue”, Alasdair MacIntyre clarifies the question with luminous simplicity. Taking as examples how we would assess whether a watch is a good watch or a farmer is a good farmer, he says “we define both ‘watch’ and ‘farmer’ in terms of the purpose or function which a watch or a farmer are typically expected to serve.” A knife or a pen is similarly “good” if they fit the purpose for which they were conceived.

Reflecting on this, I realised that Jesus had taught this principle when he referred to salt. “Salt is good” is one of his words, (Luke 14.34). Its purpose is clearly to provide flavour to food. In the Sermon on the Mount, however, he adds, “but if salt has lost its taste… it is no longer good”; it can’t fulfil its purpose (Matthew 5.13).

Why is our generation so confused about goodness and morality? Why do ethical debates, instead of helpfully defining goodness, end rather in a good mess? Alasdair MacIntyre puts his finger on the deep reason: what’s missing is an understanding of man’s purpose (telos is the word he uses). If a thing is considered good because it fulfils its objective or purpose, the key question is what is the purpose of human beings? If there is no clear answer to that question, it is impossible to judge whether a person is good.

Now if everything in the universe, including our human species, resulted from a powerful explosion without any guiding intelligence and wisdom to provide the purpose of it all, there can be nothing but confusion both as to our meaning and purpose. And lacking understanding of our purpose, there is no means of assessing the goodness or badness of people.

So the secular West’s evacuating the Biblical wisdom of the divine Creator who had in mind a purpose for his creation, and specifically for human beings made “in his image”, is the real cause of our profound confusion. If we do not know what a person if “for”, we cannot say whether or not he is good in accomplishing that purpose.

So both the meaning and purpose of our human existence, and the criteria of good and bad, depend on knowing why we exist – what is our telos. Back in the 17^th century, some serious biblical scholars, reflecting on the essence of Christian truth, posed in the Westminster Shorter Catechism the question, “What is the chief end (telos) of man?” They furnished Christianity with the most brilliant summary answer, unsurpassed in four centuries: “The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever”. Vital wisdom in 14 words!

The same essential answer was expressed by Stephen Meyer, erudite scientist, biblical Christian, and author of “The Return of the God Hypothesis”. Interviewed by Piers Morgan and asked point blank: “What is the meaning of life?” he responded wonderfully: “To come into a relationship with the Creator”. If that is the purpose of our existence, and we are not in harmonious relationship with God, we are not truly “good”, for we are not fulfilling the purpose for which we were made. Today the Creator calls us out of that problematic situation: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened”, says Jesus, “and I will give you rest… learn from me” (Matthew 11.28). We will find that rest, through Jesus, as we commit to fulfilling His purpose for our lives.

Clive Every-Clayton

June 17, 2024 0