Tag: image

Atheism’s hollow response

Following on from the eight areas where Genesis 1.26-28 lays a positive basis for understanding various aspects of our human situation, it is interesting to see how the scientific materialist worldview compares. While it seems that the biblical worldview corresponds very well with our aspiration for human flourishing, what can be the result of taking an atheistic position as our starting point? Let’s take up the same eight points again.

  1. Does atheistic materialism honour our human capacity for rationality? C.S. Lewis saw with his clear rational thinking that you cannot value human reason on the basis of materialistic evolution. “Something beyond Nature operates whenever we reason”, he wrote. “When you are asked to believe in Reason coming from non-reason, you must cry ‘Halt!’, for if you don’t, all thought is discredited.” Rational thought cannot come from mindless, material, godless evolution.
  2. The question of man’s meaning has no answer if the haphazard evolutionary process is all that brought us into being. If we are here by the fortuitous activity of various chemicals, there can be no ultimate meaning for our existence.
  3. Our human value is also reduced to nothing if we are merely a conglomerate of various chemicals. C.E.M. Joad famously listed the chemicals composing our bodies and worked out the modest value of the phosphorus, potash, lime, magnesium, fat, iron, sugar and sulphur! Jesus taught that our value comes from our soul, though our bodies are also valued in Christian thought.
  4. If there is no divine mind behind the creation of humans, there can be no purpose to our existence. We are people who formulate purposes for our daily activity; how could such purposeful persons come forth from purposeless primeval slime? Forming a purpose is the activity of a person. If there is no personal creator, there is no purpose to our existence.
  5. The question of sexual mores, in the absence of revealed Divine wisdom, easily becomes a simple question of personal choice. There may be social pressures ordering our sexual decisions, but ultimately there is no reason why hedonism would not prevail, bringing with it its lot of sexually transmitted diseases and undecipherable feelings of guilt. Louise Perry brings wisdom to this question in her book, “The Case against the Sexual Revolution”.
  6. Our moral judgments can also have no absolute grounding if there is no Creator God. Again C.S. Lewis has some wisdom to share: “If we are to continue to make moral judgments (and we shall) we must believe that the conscience of man is not a product of Nature.” Moral judgment “can only be valid,” he affirms, “if it is an off-shoot of some absolute moral wisdom…which…is not a product of non-moral, non-rational Nature”.
  7. What place to give to God? The atheist, by definition, has no place for God. We are left to our own devices (or vices). All religion is then groundless nonsense. 
  8. What of the essence of religion, if it is not to be in relationship with God? In a godless universe, religious practice is a waste of time and effort, even if 90% of humans practice some kind of religion.

Let me pose two questions as I close. Which of the two worldviews appears the most fulfilling, the most fitting to our human reality? There is a choice to make here.

Then why do people choose atheism? The answer to that question is both simple and vital. “God is light”, says the Bible. Light symbolises truth and holiness. Human people, suffering the effects of man’s fall into sin, do not want to approach a holy God who may well be their judge. They don’t want to be bothered with commandments that limit their freedom to act according to their sinful propensities. Hence the real reason, though admittedly unconscious, why atheists reject God, is that they prefer to go their selfish way without being bothered by the divine requirements. Jesus – who said, “I am the light of the world” – unmasks their hidden motivation: “Light has come into the world,” he said, “and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed” (John 3.19-20).

Clive Every-Clayton

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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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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

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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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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).
  4. 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

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Clarifying your identity

Many young people these days are confused about their identity. Some believe that by stating their chosen preferred identity, the problem is resolved – at last they know who they are. This is not the best way to go about this deeply personal and potentially complex issue.
The fact of deciding to follow Jesus brings the question of identity into a whole new perspective. The only one who ultimately knows us totally and can define who we are is our Maker and Saviour. By creation he has made us in his image, either male or female; but due to the entry of sin into human existence, an essential element of our identity is that we are fallen: “if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1.8).

So there is something glorious in our human constitution – “in the likeness of God!” Yet there is something humbling too: we are sinners in need of redemption. As I shall explain further on, once you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you are redeemed: your status is radically altered. You have a new identity as “a sinner saved by grace”. But much more is involved in your new identity.

Your becoming a child of God is an important element in your new identity as a Christian believer. As a result you have become a brother or a sister of all the others who by trusting Jesus have become children of the same heavenly Father as you. You are a member of God’s family, which is also called the church. (The church, in its biblical meaning, is the company of born-again believers in Jesus). So as you meet up to worship with others who know the same saviour as you do, you find the family atmosphere of brothers and sisters in Christ.

A surprising word used in the New Testament to describe the believers is “saints”. This is not to be confused with the Middle Ages’ idea of super-good Christians with halos round their heads. Rather, when the apostles wrote their letters to quite ordinary believers, they greeted them as saints. It was a perfectly normal way of speaking about the believers in the local churches: Paul writes his letter to “the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 1.1; see also 2 Corinthians 1.1, 1 Corinthians 1.1.) In Romans 1.7 they are “called [to be] saints”, that is, committed to a life of goodness, truthfulness, and obedience to God. Saintliness is in fact living a good down-to-earth Christian life, doing what Jesus wants his followers to do; and we receive help from the Holy Spirit to live as saints in the modern world.

So we are brothers and sisters, saints, beloved children of God, forgiven sinners, members of the family of God… the list goes on. All this because we have become believers: believers in Jesus who gave his life that we might be saved; and believers in God our Father who has “adopted” us (that concept is in the Bible too) as his dear children. This new identity that you received upon believing in Jesus, in many ways boosts your self-image; but it should do so in a way that keeps you humble, for all these blessings were granted out of God’s loving heart by grace. It was he who he drew you to himself. We do not deserve such kindness from Him, but he acts towards us not according to what we deserve, but out of his grace, which means his undeserved favour. 

Clive Every-Clayton

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The real truth about human nature

The all-knowing Creator who made humankind “in his image” is the one – the only one – capable of telling us who we really are as human beings. Of course, there are billions of different versions of humans throughout the globe; yet there is a commonality to our humanity that our Creator knows well. His kind wisdom gives us the vital indications we need in order to understand ourselves truly.

These indications, revealed in the Bible, were well grasped by the great French thinker Blaise Pascal, and his “thoughts” are very illuminating on this theme.  He calls people to “know… 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. Is it not clear that man’s condition is dual?” 

Pascal encourages humility, which means to consider ourselves according to truth. Pride is considering ourselves as better than we are. Discouragement comes from considering ourselves as worse than we are. Humility strikes the balance, seeking both to assess and to accept the true reality of who we are. And Pascal’s profound insight is to recognise that this our human reality is “dual”. There are two essential sides to our human nature.

 “There are two equally constant truths”, writes Pascal: “one is that man in the state of his creation, or in the state of grace, is exalted above the whole of nature, made like unto God and sharing in his divinity. The other is that in the state of corruption and sin he has fallen from that first state and has become like the beasts. These two propositions,” he concludes, “are equally firm and certain” (Pensée §131/434). It is wisdom for us to recognise both these aspects of our human nature.

Realising how our self-image impacts our mental health, Pascal comments further, “It is dangerous to explain to man how like he is to the animals without pointing out his greatness. It is also dangerous to make too much of his greatness without his vileness. It is still more dangerous to leave him in ignorance of both, but it is most valuable to represent both to him” (Pensée §121/418). So we really need to take on board both features of our reality – our nobleness and our vileness. We are great – the greatest of God’s creation, made in the likeness of God; yet we are perverted, twisted, fallen from our pristine glory. And that is true of you as it is true of me.

A final more amusing thought from Blaise Pascal: “Man is neither angel nor beast, and it is unfortunately the case that anyone trying to act the angel acts the beast”! (Pensée 678/358) He would thus pinprick the bubble of our pride. We are both wonderful, yet wicked; both marvellous and malevolent; both glorious in humanity’s origin and yet tragically fallen from such grace.

So what can we do with this vital double assessment? Realise, first of all, that God does not love you because he finds you perfect, but he loves you in his grace despite your sinfulness. Secondly, when we invite our Saviour, Christ, to come and dwell in our hearts by faith, the Holy Spirit progressively develops within us the desire to overcome our sins and to grow in Christ-likeness. The biblical Christian is encouraged to “put off the old self which… is corrupt through deceitful desires, and put on the new self, remade in the likeness of God in righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4.22-24).

Clive Every-Clayton

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Implications of creation

It is not for nothing that the Bible begins with the story of creation and specifically that of the man and the woman in God’s likeness. This is a key factor for our very basic need to know who we are and what our life is all about. There are far-reaching and vital implications of that introductory statement in Genesis 1:26-27: “God said ‘Let us make man in our image’… So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them”.

The first is that God is actually the Creator of all that exists, as the context makes clear. This fact has further implications: God owns everything; he has rights over everything; he knows the purpose for which he made everything.

This leads to the further implication that God has a purpose for our human existence. He alone, as Designer and Maker, is able to give meaning and purpose to his creation. When we are confused about our raison d’être, we must refer to Him; our own guesses are not worth much, whereas he both knows and can correctly inform us about the aim of our lives.

Furthermore, he cares for his creation: he cares for us in providing the air we breathe, the life-giving food we eat, and human companionship – and a lot more besides. The further context in Genesis chapters 2 and 3 show how God is solicitous for his creatures, how he gives them instructions to follow and tasks to fulfil. He is not an absentee God: he is right there in communication with his personal creatures, talking to them and listening to them.

If human beings are made in God’s image, the Creator values them highly – indeed, they are the crown of his creative work. They are, one might even say, his pride and joy. Before they went astray, God was pleased to see his own image reflected in them.

Humans were made in the likeness of a God whose nature is holy, righteous, and loving. He would still like to see that holiness reflected in his image-bearers. If we are not holy and loving, we tarnish that image, we show off a false impression of our Maker. In other words, God is misrepresented by sinful humans. Sin cuts across our Creator’s purpose; sin displeases him and causes our dysfunction. Indeed, it brings about a whole lot of miseries that we suffer from. And it grieves God’s heart. He would like us to be better – not only in the sense of being good rather than sinful, but that we find true fulfilment which we will not know if we persist in our tacit or open rebellion against his will.

Will God stand by and wring his hands in hopeless sadness? No! He sets in motion a plan for recuperating and restoring his prize creature to its pristine glory. Even as he banishes the rebel human pair from his glorious presence, he promises he will find a way to bring people back into the harmonious relationship with him that they have lost. His kindness is such that he desires to restore them to an even more wonderful final end. 

That’s why the Creator came to earth to be the Saviour! And we will find true human fulfilment when we are saved by that Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who was sent into the world to mend our brokenness. “Return to me,” he calls, “Come to me”. We can receive both mercy and true human fulfilment as we trust in him.

Clive Every-Clayton

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Yes Christianity is the answer!

Justin Brierley has very judiciously recorded a fascinating swing of opinion among leading intellectuals like Jordan Peterson and Tom Holland. These thinkers and many others have recognised the radical necessity of a key statement in Genesis chapter 1:27 for the understanding of human nature today. This verse affirms “God created man in his own image”, and this and this alone, they realise, can properly undergird our necessary conviction that our human life has any value, significance, and purpose.

Without that basis, considering humans from a purely scientific perspective, we are nothing of importance at all. Juval Noah Harari has shown this: he is strong on analysis, but oh, so weak on hope – when he writes, for example, “to the best of our scientific understanding, the universe is a blind and purposeless process”; and “in a universe devoid of meaning, modern culture… is plagued by more existential angst than any previous culture”. “Scientists have reached the conclusion that there are no free individuals”. “Scientists cannot deliver ethical judgments”. He sums up, “as far as we can tell, from a purely scientific viewpoint, human life has absolutely no meaning”.

Wiser thinkers turn away from such purely “scientific” assessment, realising that our human reality cannot be reduced by such unliveable theories, to the level of animals or machines. So these new bright thinkers render a great service to us. Conscious of the inability of science and atheism to find any serious grounds for human value and meaning, these intellectuals are leading the way “back to the Bible”, returning to the marvellous concept of humans made in the image of God.

They are also confronted with a delicate problem, however: how can they benefit from this essential foundation of man’s true value without having honestly to admit the whole context of creation. If God created us, the necessary implication is that we are answerable to him. (That’s why many dislike the principle!)

This stresses out people like Jordan Peterson: he clearly sees this logical consequence and has oriented his life to live as if there is a God. This is honest, and he is a conscientious man. Others may still try to escape the inevitable logic, but if man is made in the image of God, God is our Maker. And we easily discern that the God who gave us a conscience will hold us responsible for our conduct. The same God of Genesis 1 is the God of Exodus 20 where he gives to humankind the Ten Commandments. The God who made us personal, with capacity for speech, is able to speak to us, and his Word is Truth, said Jesus. So here we have at last the key source of truth to understand our human value and to answer all our existential questions! To reject the rest of the Bible’s wisdom while holding to the foundation is illogical. You cannot agree to Genesis 1.27 and stay on the side-lines. Logical consistency demands that we give God his due place and listen to the whole biblical revelation. 

As leaders do that, they will see that many thinkers have got things wrong. If we are made in the image of God, our essential orientation must be towards God, receiving his love, learning his wisdom, obeying his will, and living in a right relationship with him. We came from the creative hand of God, and can only find our place when we put our hand in his.

Living consistently with the foundation of Genesis 1.27 is the only logical and hopeful course of action open to us. 

Clive Every-Clayton

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