Tag: Philosophy

The key to wisdom

King Solomon came through a rough time struggling through his own existential wisdom journey, but finally he came to the profound answer, summed up in a curious expression: “Fear God”. This, he concluded, is what our human life should be all about.

So are we supposed to live our lives in fear of God? But God is loving, so we shouldn’t be afraid of him. What does the “fear of God” mean?

In another of his books, entitled “Proverbs”, which contains much practical advice, Solomon returns to this question, summing up his thought with a simple but profound maxim in which he lays down the foundation of real wisdom; we do well to take heed. 

This key truth is enunciated in a succinct proverb which recalls his conclusion in Ecclesiastes: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9.10). Before considering what the fear of the Lord means, notice that this is just the “beginning” of wisdom – meaning you don’t even start out on the way of wise living without this first basis. Millions of thinkers have failed to find satisfying answers to the Big Questions because they didn’t heed Solomon’s wisdom at this point. Herein lies the essence of profound God-given wisdom. 

If we want to find it, we must begin by coming to “fear the Lord”. Let me explain what that means, beginning with the negative: it is not intended to teach that we should lead a life of fear, being constantly fearful of God. The idea is rather that we are to take on board who the Lord exactly is. He is no small god; neither is he a divinity invented by some religious philosopher. No, He exists from all eternity, already present before the creation of the universe. He is the mighty Creator, whose power and wisdom are infinite: “he made the earth by his power, established the world by his wisdom and by his understanding stretched out the heavens” (Jeremiah 10.12). The immense number of stars is no problem for him – he calls them all by their names. And he knows every thought that passes through our minds too.

The Lord is absolutely good, both holy in the commandments he gives us, and loving as he calls us to belong to him. In his love, he desires to share his wisdom with his creatures so that we may find the way of true happiness. To “fear” the Lord is to take account of all that God is, in a right-minded openness to his truth. He is absolute Lord, gracious Saviour, and man’s very best friend. Without acknowledging God’s existence, man can never find the true worldview. This is the one essential fact to grasp – taking account of God’s reality is “the beginning” of proper understanding, without which we go obligatorily astray. We need to begin by reckoning on the existence of our Creator.

The Greek philosophers paid scant attention to the basis Solomon laid down in his inspired writings. Their philosophies lacked that necessary wise foundation; godless thinkers have suffered ever since from the confusion of having no absolute grounds for their worldviews.

Does God himself have any real place in your life and in your thinking? Do you realise that he has revealed truth and wisdom to humankind? Are you paying any attention to what he has communicated in the Bible? If you don’t have this key to knowledge, you can’t even begin to know true wisdom. God being the fundamental reality behind all his creation, we can never make sense of it if we ignore him. 

Clive Every-Clayton

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Healthy eyes

Two days ago I had an eye test and a prescription for new spectacles. Then I read some words of Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount: “The eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness” (Matthew 6.22-23). 

For a long time I didn’t really understand those rather enigmatic words. But then I saw that the eye is how you see the world. Do you see it correctly? If you do, your whole life will be well led; if you don’t, you will stay in the dark about important things.

Another way of saying this is: what is your worldview? How do you understand the big picture? Do you see meaning in our human existence? Can you put it all together? If you’re confused about the big issues of life, your personal experience will be dark, rather than light. You will experience dark emotions like meaninglessness, hopelessness, anxiety and despair, and emotional or psychological problems will not be far away.

So it’s important that your eye be healthy – that you see the world and your place in it with good sense and a true perspective. Then you will have a meaningful life and be able to conduct yourself in a worthy and fulfilling manner.

So how should we see the world? There are basically two major options: either we are here by pure chance, with no design, no wisdom, no overarching intelligence to guide us, but merely our fate to fulfil; or there is a Greater, wiser Mind behind the universe and more specifically able to lead us into a fulfilling life according to his intelligent design as our divine Creator. 

After generations of scientific experts have contributed to the first of those options, using the theory of evolution to support their philosophy of naturalism and materialism, we are able to come to a serious conclusion. This worldview must be categorised under the rubric, “the eye is not healthy”: it not only fails to offer a positive vision of human fulfilment, it actually destroys various elements that we require in order to live a psychologically healthy and fulfilling life. There can be no purpose if all came about by chance; there is no reason even to believe that our brain and its rationality is valid if we are but the result of an impersonal movement of atoms; there is no serious basis either for any wise guidance in moral questions nor for the wondrous value of love which would be merely the emotions of our physical system. It is for following this worldview in the West over these last decades that society suffers from its various ills. This is not the best explanation. As Jesus also said, “if the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!”

A healthy eye, however, allows you to see how “the heavens declare the glory of God” and when the universe began, there must have been an almighty Creator. As you open your eyes to the amazing fine-tuning of the constants of physics, so indispensable for the universe and life to exist, you can conclude that there was a Divine Mathematician who calculated all those precise numbers. And as powerful magnification has brought to light the “language” of DNA, which language requires personality, we see that the Creator must be personal in whose image our personalities are a reflection.

Is your eye healthy? Do you see there is necessarily a Creator? 

He reveals himself in the Bible.

Clive Every-Clayton

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God – an unavoidable inconvenience?

When an atheist like André Comte-Sponville admits he’d like to be able to believe in a God who loves him and is kind and gives good things to him, he commits two mistakes. Firstly, his definition of God sums up only the positives of the best kind of God he could envisage, voluntarily overlooking God’s more distasteful attributes.  Secondly, he seems to think that people can just imagine God anyhow they like – little realising that God is objectively how he is (existing, really there, with all his divine attributes intact), whatever people may think about him.

More logical atheists have other ways of ousting God, one of which is to deny that he is the Creator of mankind, pretexting that evolution, including macroevolution, suffices to explain our human existence. Erudite philosopher and theologian R.C. Sproul, writing concerning modern secularists who adopt this evolutionary viewpoint, asks: “Why would they be happy to find out that they are a cosmic accident and that their final destiny is annihilation?” This, for many who have no clear Christian faith, is the logical outcome of their atheistic presupposition; they accept unthinkingly that they must have issued forth from a mass of confused and chaotic matter which gives them neither purpose, nor meaning, nor hope. Why do people believe in such a worldview? Dr. Sproul esteems there is “only one answer: evolution offers people an escape from accountability. When we die it is over. We don’t have to worry about facing a holy and righteous Creator.”  

The deep-down human fear of such accountability is an unpleasant apprehension underlying the rejecting of God: the simple way to deal with the dread of an ultimate divine judgment on our lives is to deny that there is a Creator and Judge. “But if macroevolution is in fact true,” the theologian-philosopher continues, “we should be in utter despair: we would have to recognise that we are utterly insignificant and that our lives and labour are meaningless”.

Jordan B. Peterson in his latest book intelligently proposes that the reality of personality is fundamental to existence, and particularly to our human reality: he reminds his readers that this chimes well with the Bible’s basic statement that we were created in the image of God, so ultimate reality (God himself) would be personal. “The idea that we are reflections of the divine nature is valid,” he concludes.  

He strikingly goes on to propose that “perhaps our reductive materialism is a reflection of something worse than mere ignorance: maybe we insist on the deadness and intrinsic meaninglessness of the world to rationalise our unwillingness to accept the immense burden of opportunity and obligation that a true understanding of our place in a truly meaningful world would necessitate”. He dares to conclude: “Perhaps it is not religion that is the opiate of the masses. Perhaps it is instead that a rationalist, materialist atheism is the camouflage of the irresponsible”!!  

As modern intellectual leaders like Peterson discern and expose the atheism that causes our present hopelessness and meaninglessness, some are turning again to the inspired basis of Genesis 1.26-27: “God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness’ … So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them”. This foundational fact – and this alone – furnishes the rational basis for our human value and meaning. Our species has the high calling of having been created in God’s likeness at the beginning – though we have fallen away from that likeness by turning from God. Without this key we cannot understand ourselves.

Clive Every-Clayton

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Hidden from the wise

Some people may wonder why – if the Christian faith is true – don’t all the most intelligent people accept it? It is, of course, a fact that many academic intellectuals reject the claims of Christ to be the Son of God, so it doesn’t seem to be obvious that Christianity is true.

Among the many astonishing statements Jesus made is his prayer of thanksgiving to his Father for the fact that “You have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and have revealed them to little children” (Luke 10.21). Jesus thanks God for hiding the truth from the intellectuals! Now that is decidedly odd, but it should alert us to two important facts.

First, you cannot find God by intellectual reflection or philosophical enquiry. There are several bright minds discussing on the internet the existence of God, bringing all sorts of arguments to bear on this key issue. But it seems they never manage to convince those who don’t want God to exist. Even some openminded people, realising the force of the arguments and even studying the Bible intellectually, fail to surrender to the claims of Christ. They may grasp various facts and reasons put to them, but they remain uncertain, unconvinced. Jesus would apparently be thankful that such is the case! Why?

The second fact Jesus alluded to in the text quoted above is that “God reveals these truths to little children”. The key word here is “reveals”. We know God only by his self-revelation. And it takes the simple-mindedness of a child to accept that revelation as coming indeed from God. 

Let’s take those points again. God cannot be known unless he reveals himself. “Canst thou by searching find out God?” is a question asked in the book of Job (11.7). The answer is no. Human research cannot find God. Human minds cannot penetrate the mystery of the invisible, eternal Creator. But God does reveal himself. How? The intricacies of his beautiful creation reveal something of his profound wisdom, his mathematical genius, his infinite power, and his love of beauty. But he reveals himself in clear words put into the mouths of his prophets by divine inspiration – and inscribed in sacred scripture. He reveals himself ultimately by sending Jesus, the incarnate Son of God, to walk and talk among us, to show us how God acts and to tell us his truth. God has therefore revealed his existence. But do we pay attention?

Jesus said God doesn’t give preference to the brightest minds that may decipher his revelation. Rather he favours the simple believer who, like a child, accepts his truth without contesting it as if he knows better. In other words it takes simple humility to receive God’s revelation: first to take it on board without immediately rejecting it, and then thankfully to believe it. 

Of course that doesn’t mean no questions can be asked. There is a place for serious reflection. But essentially the child sees that if God speaks, he speaks truth; and his truth can be believed. The Bible actually says that God cannot lie; and since he is all-knowing, what he says can be relied upon. The simple-minded child has no problem with that. Neither should the serious enquirer. 

We may take God’s truth on board; but more – we may take him at his word, and when he invites us to open our hearts to his love, to be forgiven by his grace and transformed by his Spirit, we can prove it to be true for ourselves. That is how a person comes to know God, through Christ our Saviour.

Clive Every-Clayton

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The best argument

I listen occasionally to podcasts where Christian apologists discuss with atheists about the existence of God. They are always stimulating and stretch the mind as the arguments flow from side to side. The protagonists are often erudite professors, renowned unbelievers and very able defenders of the faith, yet the atmosphere remains convivial rather than adversarial. One can learn a lot from following such debates, in which Christians like Justin Brierly and Glen Scrivener excel. 

And yet, time and again, I feel that there is a false debate going on; the discussion remains at a theoretical level – a purely philosophical effort to find the best argument. Sometimes the same old reasons come round again and again, like the so-called problem of evil and suffering: how could a good God allow such horrors? Some good answers are proposed, but I think to myself, there is a dimension that is seriously missing to this debate. Let me explain.

It is one thing to discuss the possibility of there being a divine ultimate Being, the Creator of the universe with extraordinary intelligence who made man in his image, responsible to him. It is quite another to affirm that this God has actually showed up on earth, has walked and talked among us, and has left a lot of wisdom that we might do well to listen to. The person of Jesus, the incarnate Son of God, is too often absent from these debates, and they remain purely theoretical, with little consideration given to how understanding Jesus would make any difference to our lives. Because if God became incarnate in Jesus, there are many serious consequences that need to be taken into account.

In fact, the apologists who support the Christian faith would do better if they shared more of who Jesus was and what he does in the lives of those who believe. I firmly believe that when all is said and done, the best “argument” for God’s existence is the person and ministry of Jesus 2,000 years ago in history. We have four reliable accounts of his teaching, his miracles, his claims, his holiness of life – accounts that complement and confirm each other and have the ring of truth. Those who spend time in philosophical speculations would do well to change their whole attitude and dare to listen carefully to the extraordinary words of Jesus and properly weigh up their truth.

We’ve all heard the phrase “the truth shall make you free” which is often quoted by the likes of Jordan Peterson and other modern thinkers. What is not so often made clear is the full context of that quotation. It was actually Jesus who said it; but more importantly he preceded it by insisting that it is his words that bring the truth. Here’s the full quote as he addresses those who are beginning to believe in him: “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8.31-32). This astounding claim could come only from one who knows absolute truth! Jesus is saying that he brings truth – like truth revealed from God himself – and when we grasp and hold onto his truth, we will be made free.

His Jewish listeners rightly wondered what they would be free from, claiming they had never been slaves to anyone, so Jesus explains that he can deliver us from slavery to sin! This also brings the theoretical discussion down to a challenge to turn from sin to good living that would test the sincerity of the seeker!

Clive Every-Clayton

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Jesus, the Word of God

Another profound revelation given in the first chapter of John’s Gospel that is often read at Christmas time is the use of the expression, “Word” to signify the Lord Jesus Christ. This is clear in John 1.14: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us”. 

The Gospel opens with the words “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”. This is a phrase both dense and difficult to fathom – but it deals with both the nature of God and the incarnation, both of which are supernatural themes not easy to access. Let’s examine it more closely.

“In the beginning was…” – this both evokes the first verse of the Bible, “In the beginning God created…”; and yet the verb “was” depicts not an action but a presence. “In the beginning” brings us back to the very dawn of creation – or even to the deep mystery before creation took place. The “Word” was already there!

“The Word was with God”. Here the “Word” appears separate from God, but closely connected with him. “He was in the beginning with God” (verse 2). But who ever could have been there with the Creator at the beginning of creation? The Word was in eternity at God’s side; could he be God’s equal?

“The Word was God”. Now we are really confused: the Son, Jesus (the Word made flesh, v14) was not only with God. He was God! Later in the chapter John recounts the testimony of John the Baptist at the start of Jesus’ public ministry: “I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God” (v34). The beginning of this Gospel therefore introduces us to the Son of God who was with God the Father at the eternal moment prior to creation. Christian theologians, reflecting on this and other passages of the New Testament where mention is made of “the Spirit of God”, concluded that in the one divine true God there is a tri-unity of Father, Son, and Spirit. This has always seemed out of reach of our human understanding, but that is the whole point: a god you can fully comprehend does not deserve the title of God. The Almighty Creator must always exceed our human grasp. “My thoughts are higher than your thoughts”, he says in Isaiah 55.8-9.

Next, John reveals that the Word was none other than the Creator: “All things were made by him, and without him nothing was made that was made” (verse 3). The Word, the eternal Son of God, was uncreated; indeed, he was the Creator of “all things”! So in Jesus’ birth, we see the Creator visiting his creation – even entering his own creation like the “undercover Boss”!

All this is true of that tiny babe in Bethlehem! “God contracted to a span, incomprehensibly made man”. Or as John puts it, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only-begotten Son of the Father, full of grace and truth” (verse 14). Well may the angels of heaven burst out to worship at the sight of the one who had forever dwelt in the heights of heavenly glory taking on the nature of humanity! 

John evokes however the greatest of tragedies: “He [the Word] was in the world, and the world was made by him, yet the world did not know him” (verse 10). Some, however, did come to know him, and to receive him and love him. Are you one of them?

Why not take time to read and meditate on those first 18 verses of John’s Gospel?

Clive Every-Clayton

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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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Science points to the Creator

Atheism suffers from ignorance of the most important thing in the entire universe. There are numerous indications of God’s wisdom and power in creation, facts that science has uncovered that prove there must be a supreme Mind behind this amazing creation. Stephen Meyer in his book “Return of the God hypothesis” deals thoroughly with three scientific facts that require a divine Mind. Let me summarise his reasons in simple language.

First, the Big Bang requires Someone who began it: you cannot evoke matter to explain the origin of matter, he writes. The Creator must have been immaterial (spirit), powerful, eternal, and personal. Secondly, the mind-boggling numbers of the constants of physics are so extraordinarily precise that life would not be possible if they were altered even just a tiny bit. Explosions normally result in much disorder and confusion: how then did the Big Bang issue in a created world where order and scientific laws abound, to say nothing of the beauty and the immense number of life forms? Our minds may easily conclude that this must involve an infinite Mind at work. Thirdly, the DNA discovered in every cell of our bodies possesses information encoded in what resembles a language. Scientists realise that wherever we see a language we have to acknowledge the agency of persons. The Creator of DNA must possess personal characteristics.

These three relatively recent scientific discoveries form the basis of a case for the return of the God hypothesis. People are led to believe in God on the basis of scientific facts for which no better explanation can be found. Indeed, scientists who want to hold persistently to their atheism have a hard time refuting these claims that Stephen Meyer backs up with his profound scientific reasoning. 

Atheists cannot simply close their eyes to these discoveries of science and what they imply. Rejecting as a matter of course the very notion of God is to ignore the most important factor in the universe: on the other hand, opening up to the probability of God would open the way to the meaningful and vital answers we need. God our Creator knows those answers. We do well to listen to him. And even if you’re not convinced, it’s worth taking a serious look at the Bible to check it out. There is wisdom to be found on every page!   

It may surprise atheists to know that the Christian faith is evidence based. It is not in conflict with science: rather, modern science developed in the West in the 17th century because the generally accepted Christian faith had established a consensus that the Creator was wise and intelligent and therefore his creation would yield scientific knowledge to those who studied it carefully.

But scientific facts are not the only things that point to God. It is astonishing that so many intelligent people do not grasp the vital fact that the historic person of Jesus Christ was none other than an incarnation of God the Creator! All who take the time and trouble to read and to seriously consider what Jesus said about himself in chapters 5 to 8 of John’s Gospel must admit he made divine claims. And a reading of his life and deeds in the Gospels also reveals his miraculous divine power, his unique sinless holiness and his brilliant teaching on all sorts of things we need to know. God sent his Son into the world to tell us truth we need to understand. Just consider what Jesus said before Pontius Pilate: “For this reason I was born and for this reason I came into the world, to testify to the truth” (John 18.37).

Clive Every-Clayton

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