Tag: Science

A child’s faith

Jesus once declared that unless you become like a child you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. He probably meant we need the humble simplicity of a child who accepts what you tell them without distrust. Their kind of simple childlike faith is what we need to receive God’s message.

In my last blog post I mentioned that the Bible’s message is simple enough for a child to understand, so let me show how this is true by summarising it at a child’s level.

God is an invisible but all-powerful person, and in the beginning he made everything that exists. He made the stars, the mountains, the oceans, the trees, and the animals, and he even made angels. 

When he made human beings, he created them to be like himself, able to talk to him, and he loved them and placed them in a wonderful garden. But one of the angels rebelled against God and he became the devil. He came into the garden of God and tempted the first woman, Eve, and her husband Adam. God had told them they could eat from any fruit tree in the garden except one, but the wicked devil encouraged them to eat it, and they disobeyed God’s order. They followed the devil’s ideas instead of God’s wise instructions for them. They had been perfectly good, made like God in goodness and love, but now they became bad and they were punished by being expelled from the garden where they had been in harmony with God.

From then on, all their children and grandchildren were born with an unfortunate twist in their nature; instead of being perfectly good as they were at the beginning, they now had evil thoughts and desires. This explains why we are all a mixture of good and bad, and the bad is called sin: we were created good at the beginning, but became capable of committing sins too. 

Our problem is that God says he will judge us all according to what we have done, and his punishment will come after we die. It is therefore very important to be forgiven of the wrong things we have done, and God wants to forgive us. He wants so much to have us back in harmony with him that he sent from heaven his own dear Son, Jesus, who was born as a baby like us, but he was without any sin. He told us about God his Father in heaven and he told us how we should live a good happy life. But he knew that we all do wrong things, and that we deserve to be punished. As God is the judge of everyone, he must punish sins, but in order to take away our sin and forgive us, Jesus made a difficult decision: he would bear our punishment in our place. That way God would be able lovingly to forgive us freely, without us needing to try to deserve his love by our good deeds.

That was why Jesus let himself be crucified; he died on the cross, but three days later, his Father God raised him from the dead – as much as to say, he was pleased with what Jesus had done.

Jesus taught us the way to a truly good and happy life: it begins by being forgiven, and God forgives those who turn away from sin and who ask Jesus to come into their hearts to live in them and make them good Christians. This is the most important thing you could ever do and it brings new life, eternal life.

Clive Every-Clayton

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The implications of atheism

Atheism is a futile and failing faith, and the sooner society realises that, the better it will be for us all. Yes, atheism is a faith-system, a negative faith perhaps, but a belief which carries serious implications with it. It is failing, because it cannot bear the weight of expectation placed upon it to provide a meaningful and hopeful worldview. So it is futile to trust in such a baseless ideology.

In another blog post I brought out the implications of God being our Creator; now I want to think through some of the implications of atheism.

Atheism denies the Creator; what is left in his place? Chance and necessity. All that exists is the outcome of chance – from the Big Explosion onwards. Guided by no divine mind or wisdom, everything that exists is the result of the hazardous movement of matter and energy.

What then are we? Humans are merely the accumulation of accidental collocations of atoms, thrown up by pure chance. No intelligence guided the process of our evolution; no value can be put on our personal reality – rather we are either sophisticated beasts or impersonal machinery. Our human value is zero, despite our seemingly great capacities.

What is our purpose? Chance can create no purposes. Purposes are the fruit of an intelligent creative mind, such as God’s; but without such a Creator of humankind, there can be no purpose in our existence, no meaning to our lives. This is the deep cause of the rising existential crisis in societies where atheism’s bleak philosophy exerts a predominant influence. Here is the reason for the increasing mental health difficulties experienced by those without any wiser guidelines to show the way. They are psychologically lost.

What use is our intelligence? Can we think or reason our way forward? Impersonal matter – which must be what we are if there is no personal and infinite Creator – has no intellectual capacity at all. The brain merely reacts to impulses; it doesn’t think any more than computers do. But since we do think, the atheistic basis proves unsatisfactory. We can think our way out of atheism, to seek how the Creator has made himself known.

What about moral values? If there is no absolute divine holy and good Creator, there is no objective source for discerning right from wrong. We are simply left with the relativism where each decides for himself; and to prevent the moral chaos that would ensue, authoritarian governments impose what they think is good – the politically correct. And this is often far from the wisest guidance, leading to profound discontent and bitter argument.  

What about truth? The good old definition of truth was, “reality as seen by God”. Now if there’s no God, it becomes just what you or your opponent may “see” as true. So we enter the “post truth” era – the minefield of “your truth” and “my truth”; because there is no absolute truth if God cannot be the grounds for it. And “your truth” or “my truth” may well be merely falsehood or error in disguise.

What about freedom? In the atheist’s materialistic universe there can be no freedom, which is why some thinkers turn to determinism, saying that while we may think we are free, our actions are merely the result of hazardous impacts made on our impersonal brain cells. 

What about suicide? An atheist’s life, thus considered, seems not worth living. This means not that life really is meaningless, but that atheism is hopeless and unliveable. 

Our Creator God, conversely, gives meaning, value, truth, freedom, and purpose to our existence.

Clive Every-Clayton

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A blessing out of hopelessness?

Post-modernity enshrouds us in a depressing cloud of despair: despair of finding any ultimate meaning, despair of knowing any absolute truth, despair of ever truly understanding who we are and what is the meaning and value of our human existence.

All this is profoundly disturbing, but in the midst of our confusion, hopelessness and despair, there is at least one glimmer of light, one saving grace that can enlighten our darkness.

The unexpected blessing is this: we may learn, first, that the quest for valid answers to our existential questions has totally and abysmally failed because our proud expectation was incorrect that we could find them by our own reasoning powers.  This is a humbling but salutary lesson – that man’s reason is unable to ground truth on anything ultimately valid. The efforts made down the centuries by thinkers starting out merely from their own unaided intellectual powers have now been shown to offer only relative answers, human opinions, futile and partial, not really absolute truths. The wise among us can see that Descartes set us off on the wrong track with his “I think, therefore I am”. This started us off thinking only out from ourselves – and it has led to the present end of hope for getting final truth. 

This solemn discovery can prove to be a blessing for the seeking soul.

How? Well, in the light of this discovery, we may learn, secondly, that we need light from a Source that is wiser than mere mortal man. If the human brain is the most complex thing in the universe, wouldn’t the Maker of such a brain be endowed with mind-boggling wisdom? He knows very well the limits of our human thinking to come up with absolute truth, so he has provided a better way by which we may get the answers we crave.

So as we despair of our own intellectual efforts, consider the potential blessing: trust in our reason has led us to realise the limits of our reason, so the next logical step that will renew our hope for authentic answers is to trust the infinitely wise Creator who shares his knowledge with us. He knew all along that we needed his input; right from the creation of the first couple he told them in words some vital things they needed to know.

We should be thankful to God for teaching us this humbling lesson: recognising that we are unable to find many key truths unaided, we are led to acknowledge our need of God’s revelation of truth. And the first element of his truth is that he exists: it is another human folly to imagine we can do without listening to him or by dismissing him completely. It is “the fool” who “says in his heart, ‘There is no God’” (Psalm 14.1). The “beginning of wisdom”, according to God’s word, is to “fear the Lord” (Psalm 111.10) – which means taking on board the fact that he is there, that he is wise, and good and loving, well capable of teaching us the way of true human fulfilment as we yield to him his rightful place as the Lord of our lives.

Turn then from vain human thinking and study the words of God! That is the ultimate blessing from which we humans can benefit, once we abandon our proud attitude of expecting to find the answers by ourselves without his revelation.

Intellectual pride will actually blind you to God’s truth: be humble, be teachable as you turn to study the Bible!

Clive Every-Clayton

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The paradox of science

People expect that somehow science can provide the answers to those perplexing questions we all ask about our identity, our value, our meaning, and purpose. Don’t believe it for a minute! Science is hopeless in the area of our existential questions.

Here’s what a bright French philosopher, Rémi Brague, explains: “Simplified literature does its best to make us believe that chemistry, computer science, or any other kind of science can ‘explain’ why we act as we do. However, science has never claimed to ‘explain’ anything at all, if by that we mean ‘to render something comprehensible’”.  Another French philosopher, André Comte-Sponville, concurs: “The sciences do not answer any of the most important questions that we ask ourselves”.

“The dominant view of neuroscience,” Professor John Wyatt tells us, “regards the self as an illusion created by the brain”. That’s a pretty bleak way of understanding yourself!

Yuval Noah Harari has written two books that have been widely diffused, but in them he recounts the same hopelessness: “Life has no script, no playwright, no director, no producer – and no meaning. To the best of our scientific understanding, the universe is a blind and purposeless process, full of sound and fury but signifying nothing”.  That, he avers, is the “scientific understanding”; again, science brings no encouraging hopeful answers to our existential angst. Indeed, it adds to it!

Harari continues: “The scientific formula of knowledge led to astounding breakthroughs in astronomy, physics, medicine, and multiple other disciplines. But it has had one huge drawback: it could not deal with questions of value and meaning”. Well-known scientific writer Paul Davies agrees: “I don’t believe that physics can tackle questions about, for example, purpose or morality”.

Since science deals essentially with matter, energy, motion and the chemical elements and their compounds, the tendency is to see human beings only as complicated (and somehow animated) matter. This not only leaves out the very essence of our humanity, it actually destroys our humanity.

This is why Rémi Brague writes:  “We end up with this paradox: modern science is at the same time the highest realisation of man, the glory of the human spirit, and yet also the most radical factor that contributes to his dehumanisation”.

Obviously, somewhere science has got it wrong. Where? In supposing it can answer all our questions and really tell us who we are. 

Compare that frustrating confusion with the appeasing and ennobling clarity of the Bible’s first page, where we are told who and what we really are: valuable personal creatures made by a wise and loving, infinite and personal Creator God – “in his likeness”.

This profound and realistic starting point is unique to the Judeo-Christian worldview, and it is accompanied by the necessary corollary that our original holiness as God’s image-bearers has been corrupted, though we still share likeness to God in our personal reality.

C.S. Lewis wrote: “It is quite astonishing how rarely outside of Christianity we find – I am not sure that we ever find – a real doctrine of creation. In polytheism the gods are usually the product of a universe already in existence… In pantheism the universe is never something that God made. It is an emanation, something that oozes out from him”.

This is why I persist in affirming first, that man’s research, science, and philosophy can never give us the answers we crave to our existential questions, and second, that the key to the answers is a return to the God of the Bible, the Creator who has revealed himself and tells us the essential truth we need to know.

Clive Every-Clayton

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God can forgive your sin

The Bible is a very realistic book. It does not hesitate to recount the sexual failures of some of its main characters – to make us realise two essential truths. One, that in even the best of men there is sin (the sole exception is Jesus). And two, the worst sinners may be redeemed.

Take King David for an example. He was called “a man after God’s own heart”, he penned a number of Psalms that are in the Bible, many of which express his devotion to God and trust in the Lord. But when he was tempted, seeing Bathsheba bathing, he was overcome with lust and committed adultery with her. Then, in a vain effort to cover us his sin, he brought about the death of Bathsheba’s husband, and then married her.

When the Bible records such events, it never encourages such behaviour, of course. The reader is to learn from the bad examples in the Bible as well as from the good: to imitate the good, not the bad!

Indeed, the Bible recounts how a prophet came to rebuke David for his sin, and two of David’s psalms (numbers 51 and 32) give deep emotional expression to his most earnest contrition, his search for forgiveness, his prayer of repentance, and the ultimate joy of knowing God had forgiven him. 

The Bible constantly maintains that double message: first, we are all sinners in need of forgiveness, whether our sin is desperately wicked or relatively respectable; and second, our sin can be forgiven however awful it may be.

We need both those messages. To ignore how sinful we are leads us into pride and self-deception and we fail to realise our need of God’s forgiveness. To ignore the grace of God that saved even a wretch like the slave-trader John Newton (who wrote the hymn “Amazing grace”) is to cut yourself off from the hope of a conscience finally cleansed of all guilt and at peace with oneself and (more importantly) with God.

So the Bible abounds with God’s offer of forgiveness and salvation, and as we all fall short of the good life we should lead, we all need God’s forgiveness. Furthermore, no-one else can grant us that forgiveness; but God can and he wants to forgive you. In fact he wants so much to forgive you that he sent his Son to bear your sins and “pay” for them when he died on the cross, so that if you accept his offer of forgiveness you won’t have to pay for them in all eternity – yes, in hell. 

So listen to God’s words: “Seek the Lord while he may be found… Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon” (Isaiah 55.6-7). What an invitation!

“Who is a God like You, pardoning iniquity? …He delights in showing mercy. He will have compassion on us… You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7.18-19).

“In Christ we have redemption through his blood (shed on the cross), that is, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace” (Ephesians 1.7).

“Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow” (Isaiah 1.18).

“Repent therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out” (Acts 3.19).

If you turn from sin in your life – whatever you may be conscious of, and call on the name of Jesus, he will forgive you.

Clive Every-Clayton

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Male and female he created them

The first page of the Bible gives us much key information, vital for our personal self-understanding. A lot of unnecessary stress and confusion results from the inability to grasp the biblical basis for our identity and reality.

Some of that confusion has to do with our sexuality. Abandoning the sound basis of the Creator’s wisdom and guidelines leads human sexuality into all sorts of distortion, immorality, abuse, and perversion. Without the Bible’s light, human efforts have proved to be totally unable to invent better moral guidelines for their sexual behaviour.

The Bible’s foundational truth that God made humans “male and female” is no banal statement: it is one of immense importance. It means, to begin with, that men are not women. That was obvious all along, of course, but now it has scientific basis: God created the two sexes with different chromosomes that distinguish them from each other. There is an essential biological difference between the sexes. 

When God designed the human body, he made a distinction between the male and the female body. The woman’s body is unique in its capacity for giving birth to babies; the male body has the unique capacity of impregnating the female. God’s design is blatantly obvious in the way the sexual organs of the two sexes complement each other in sexual union. It is in this way that God planned for new human beings to come into existence. Indeed, his words of encouragement and blessing, right from the start in Genesis 1.28, indicate his plan for his human creatures to enjoy an intimate sexual relationship with a partner of the opposite sex, with a view to having children. That is not the only reason for sexual intimacy in marriage: it is also blessed as a means of expressing love between the couple.

The Creator and Designer of sex had a wise purpose in view – so his creatures would enjoy the blessing of his gift of sexuality as they follow his instructions.

Unsurprisingly, throughout the Bible, sins like adultery, homosexuality, prostitution, fornication, and other forms of sexual immorality are proscribed. These acts deviate from God’s will and purpose for his creatures, and they bring upon those who practice them a lot of dysfunction physically, emotionally, and psychologically. They also separate offenders spiritually from God’s blessing and cut them off from the highest human fulfilment God wants for them.

  How blessed, by contrast, are those who, following the Maker’s instructions, remain chaste before marriage and faithful within marriage! This is how sex was supposed to be enjoyed – free from all the fearful and harmful hang-ups that come from immoral behaviour.

Sexual temptations, the seductions of our uncontrolled desire, the weakness of our resistance to sin, and the pressures of an immoral society, are such that many fall into sexual misconduct and find sex to be a source of suffering. The number of cases of gonorrhoea has never been so high in the UK since statistics were first kept. Other sexually transmitted diseases cause people serious harm. Those abused and mistreated become bolder to go public with their sad stories. Too many broken marriages bring desolation and psychological stress to too many children. Couples just living together enjoy less peaceful trust that their relationship shall endure. And all who in any way fall into immorality have to manage somehow the guilt feelings that cause profound psychological distress, sometimes so deep in their subconscious they are scarcely discerned.

While God can forgive sexual sin, he would rather spare them from such agony, if only they paid heed to his instructions.

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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Religion, God, Bible, Church

Wise thinking requires correct assessment of the proper place and varying importance of Religions, God, Bible, Church.

Let’s begin with religions, which are man seeking after and trying to elucidate the Transcendent, the divine, the Absolute. This is expressed in a variety of particular doctrines, traditions, and practices proposed or imposed on believers. All religions except Christianity issue from the spiritual creativity of pious minds; but sadly, piety does not guarantee the truth of a religious philosophy. In the Bible God relativises the various religions and their gods: “They are all a delusion” (Isaiah 41.29 ESV) but “I made the earth” said the Lord, “and created man on it” (Isaiah 45.12).

God himself, therefore, is infinitely more important than human beings and their religions. It is vital to discover that he is there, and to know what he is like in his infinite Being, his majestic holiness, his divine wisdom, his immense power as Creator… As we hear from God himself, we have access to his revealed truth; that will enable us to discern what is true or false in all human thinking about him. He is well capable of making himself known. It is enlightening to read chapters 40 to 46 of the book of the prophet Isaiah, where the Lord himself speaks a lot about himself.

God makes himself known through the Bible. It is a book totally unique in the world, written over more than a millennium by about forty different writers – yet all inspired by the same Spirit of God and therefore able to convey a harmonious understanding of God. Much of the Bible expresses the very words of God himself, as in Job chapter 38, of which Rudolph Otto said, it “may well rank among the most remarkable in the history of religion”. In the Bible God gives his commandments, teaches his wisdom, reveals his love, and calls us to know him. All the Bible is centred on Jesus, the incarnate Lord and teacher, the Saviour of mankind, the Son of God sent by the Father to attest to God’s truth. The Bible itself claims to be God’s Word, inspired by God’s Spirit. By the holiness of its commandments, the profundity of its concepts, and the realism of its treatment of human nature, it certainly appears to be God’s Word. And it proves to be God’s Word when one puts it to the test of personal experience, committing oneself to the living Saviour who calls us through its pages. We find that God does in us what he promises in his Word; so we know it’s true.

The church is the worldwide family of believers, a vast brotherhood of men and women who, having heard or read of God’s self-revelation in Christ and realising he offers fullness of life to all who believe, have been led to agree that he is trustworthy. They do not, for that, make themselves the guarantor of religious truth; rather they merely testify that having received it, they have been intelligently persuaded of its Truth. Hence they do not set themselves up as authorities on religious issues; rather they bear witness to what they see as truth in the Bible. No Christian is infallible; we are all mere disciples, learners in Jesus’ school, followers of our Lord and Saviour. We simply want to know God better through studying Scripture, to please him by the way we live, and serve him by loving our neighbours and by sharing with them the wondrous offer of eternal life and fullness that God in his goodness offers to all.

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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What we’re missing

In the West, we have had the benefit for centuries of a culture impregnated with biblical wisdom that fashioned our worldview. When our Western society turned from that consensus over the last century, proud intellectuals thought they could do without that biblical backbone – indeed, they thought that without it society would be much better. They thought they could open up a different path without needing to acknowledge the Lord Jesus as “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14.6). Now as our society descends further and further into disgrace, some serious thinkers are realising what a big mistake those former bright minds made, when they led society to abandon the old paths.

Too many people suffer from the angst that shows itself in hopelessness, confusion of mind, and mental ill health. Too many young people grow up with insufficient moral guidelines to enjoy a full, balanced, and fulfilling life; rather they bring upon themselves guilt feelings without realising why they feel that way; more and more we hear of children knifing people, juveniles killing juveniles. While statistics show there is less sexual immorality, there remains a lot of sexual confusion in the minds of the young. The family breakdown has fostered a beleaguered generation of children struggling to understand themselves in this fractured society.

Intelligent thinkers search more seriously to understand where we went wrong and begin to see that the fundamental error of our Western society was the adoption of the false premise that we could manage better without God and his Word. There is now more openness to turn again to the wise Christian bases that former generations thrived on – or at least that kept society relatively stable.

We would do well therefore, to listen again to what our grandfathers took for granted as their common sense bases for their good living.

So what are these elements that we lack today?
That there is a Creator God who gives us value and purpose; that we are responsible to him; that he gives us the best and wisest moral compass in the commandments of the Bible that we ought to obey; that we will be called to account to him on the Day of Judgement which we cannot escape, and that while there is a rightful fear of hell, there is also a glorious hope of heaven; that God’s wisdom instituted marriage as a life-long unique commitment between a man and a woman, where children can be brought up and taught the ways of God; that the way of personal fulfilment and true lasting happiness is to follow the example and teaching of Jesus – whose wisdom has remained unsurpassed in twenty centuries.

And the unsuspected key to all this? Jesus’ insistence that it is in denying our selfish will and by engaging our powers to do good to others that we both find personal satisfaction and become elements of positive change in society. I sometimes think what a loss it has been that children for a generation have not followed teaching in Sunday Schools about loving their neighbour. Just think what a transformation would come on society if we all took Jesus’ teaching seriously, to love God and to love our neighbour as ourselves.

Is that not what we’re missing in society? Yet each of us can decide to do this and turn our “evil and adulterous generation” into a place where human happiness is much more the norm. Let Christians awake to give a better example, and let others learn to follow Jesus who can transform lives and cultures for good.

Clive Every-Clayton

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