Skeptical Faith

At what point in our lives do we become aware of ourselves as a distinct and unique personality to that of the early influences in our lives? Whether it be from our parents or guardians, siblings, teachers or friends, our conscious voice emerges from our childhood dream, perhaps at first uncertain of its direction but which through the passage of time, becomes unquestionably clear to us that we have our own mind and will. It is this voice that speaks to us through our conscious waking and our unconscious sleeping, as a constant reminder of who we are and what we are to become.

Depending on our individual personalities, we respond to this inner voice with varying degrees of self-expression. Those of us who have confidence in who we are, develop self-assurance which may trigger the adoption of more extrovert methods of extracting what we want from life, than those of us who are less so. I tended to be in the latter camp, being very timid and lacking any identity of self until the reality of the world and my parent’s imminent divorce, invaded my conscious thinking at about 11 years of age.

My parents always appeared to be self-absorbed… in the 1970’s, the housewife and working husband roles was a pattern of life we were all familiar with, something that can often be scorned today. But when these types of lifestyle break down, there is always bitterness from all involved. 

My parents had lived their teenage years in the 1960’s where even in northern coastal towns, 300 miles from London, the touring bands would play regional concert halls such as Morecambe's Floral Hall and Winter Gardens. 

Beatles Play Morecambe's Floral Hall 1963

My parents both watched bands such as the Beetles, the Rolling Stones and the Who as they journeyed to international fame, in their young adult lives and believed the rhetoric that the world was indeed at their feet. Indeed, I believe that I am named after Roger Daltry, the lead singer of the Who, although my father will neither deny nor affirm that fact.

I suppose my parents, escaping from the shackles of the post-war generation, who had continued to live life in a style that seemed outdated to the generation of young people who lived under the protection of NATO and the freedom of any real threat from overseas aggressors, that their parents were out-dated and in whose values they had out grown. I suppose even if the social etiquette of an enlightened society in the 60’s, which was changing at a faster pace than any generation before it, that getting married and having children, was not a natural vocation in a shifting world of sexual and religious freedom.

It is often said of those in the West that lived through the hope of the 60’s and 70’s, that they found the reality of living a ‘normal’ life a little, well, ordinary. Like all of us today, we are searching for ways-out of the monotony of a life prescribed through our careers and the disposable wealth we have to follow our dreams. We take it for granted that we can go on holiday from anywhere in the UK, to some exotic location where the sun always shines and where the food and culture is a little different to our own.

Indeed, technological change has been so fast that a computer that would once have filled a warehouse, is now in the palm of our hand. 

Yet still, as our children form their own world view, they experience the same time honoured rites of passage we have all faced. The largest of which is still the influence of our parents and our peers. At 11 years old, my parental idyll was suddenly rocked by my parent’s separation.

One morning I woke up to find my dad trying to hold the fort with my younger brothers. It was a little easier for me as I had started senior school and was reasonably independent, the  second of my three brothers could also make his own way to school, but the two youngest could not. I don’t know how we survived for a week, but survive we did until my father, exhausted and weakened by not taking his epilepsy drug, fitted in front of us. 

I can remember trying to comfort my brothers because I had seen my father have a fit before. In these episodes, the patient takes on extra strength and my father had previously fitted in the bathroom, pulling the bathroom sink off the wall and falling against the bathroom door, blocking himself inside.

I can also remember a taxi being called by neighbours and we emerged from it at my grandparents’ house, dazed and a little confused but to our surprise, finding our mother there. Sleeping arrangements were made and we continued with our lives from our new accommodation. I’m not certain how we made it through that dark time, certainly my grandmother carried the lion’s share of the burden. We were still children after all… how where we to know what we were supposed to do?

Children can be extremely resilient, as can be seen by the many street children around the world who are left to get on with it. Up until I was 15 years old, the four of us slept head to toe in a bunk bed in a box room. I never considered the social ramifications of this arrangement as we might do in today’s social climate; ‘it was what it was’. Nothing could be done to change it. We didn't holiday, have branded clothing or the possessions of the children of the time. We had some toys that entertained our leisure time and we had the TV.

If these conditions were reported to the authorities today, it would be considered as some form of neglect but to us as children, we never thought anything of it. It is only as I have got older and have recounted the toll of our childhood to others through the perspective of having my own children that I began to think, 

“Hang on a minute, that wasn't quite right was it?”

My parents lives were what they were… they made their choices within the context of the generation in which they lived, and they had to take on the responsibilities for those decisions as their lives went on. The overall effect of the separation and the social arrangements and parenting I experienced during my childhood, took its toll on my self-esteem. I was always withdrawn, joyless even. The world happened around me and to me. I had no control over events or consequences, how could I? I lived my life in response to circumstances, no matter how dysfunctional they had become.

I was estranged from my dad for many years and being the eldest, I would listen to my mums concerns and take on her fears. Life is never straightforward. Being older than my brother’s meant that I could comprehend what was happening, so I understood the nuances of what was going on. This put me in a different position to my younger brothers emotionally, who were totally unaware of these concerns. Indeed, my university years conveniently distanced me further from my existence as part of the family because I was no longer a financial burden to my mother and the age difference between my brothers and I, meant that I had not developed the relationships with my siblings that other families might appreciate.

"Indeed, when I met my youngest brother’s wife for the first time, before they were married, my brother had neglected to tell her that I even existed. These events fed my low self-esteem and my introvert personality to a point that I always felt I had something to prove to myself or that I had to be better at doing my job, in order to justify my role, my pay packet, my position of responsibility and the purpose of my existence." 

My mother disciplined us through a policy of tough love: Do as I say or else! I suppose for her, this was a method of authority that had been modelled to her, or at the very least, a policy she adopted as a single mum of four boys with a height of 4ft 9 ¾’s.  I suppose to a parent who has brought four children into the world, who appeared to take everything you had to give them and yet they still wanted more, you can understand the need to exert total control over your children in a physical way, as that gets results the quickest.

However, it is much clearer now with the perspective of hindsight that my mum was trying to escape a life that had somehow trapped her free spirit into what had become a loveless marriage. I am certain that she did not expect to see us on her doorstep at my grandparents’ house that fateful night. I know too, that there were many occasions where in desperation, my mum would have given all four of us up to social services, in the hope of freeing herself from the emotional and financial burden of raising four children alone. 

"Yet we survived... she survived." 

Our relationship with our parents is the foundation on which we find purpose. It is a springboard for many things. For me, I became independent in my determination for what I could achieve in this life and God was my agent of change. It would be easy for me to reject God: “Where were you in my suffering and pain when I would cry myself to sleep? Where were you when the bullying I received from my peers was so intense that I became agoraphobic?”

I could blame a whole range of experiences on God if I chose to; yet I know that God is in the centre of all of my experiences in this life. My Father in heaven was in every storm I have ever faced and his comfort has encouraged me to build resilience in my determination to make something of this life. He has taught me to endure when all seemed hopeless. I know this to be true because when I read the Bible from the Old Testament, right through to the New Testament, God chooses the weak to carry out his purposes because often, they are best placed to respond to his invitation.

If I was self-assured and confident in my intellect and my own accomplishments, would I have been the same person I am today? The answer to that would be a simple no. I would probably have banked my success on my own ingenuity and in my ability to solve my own problems. In reality, my life is the life I was destined to have. God has a plan for me that he is working out even today.

I was reflecting on my birthday with a friend who is knocking on the door of 60, and we agreed that we had spent too long sulking over the ‘could have been’ and the ‘should have done’. Today will not be the same as tomorrow, so enjoy each moment, avoid worrying about tomorrow and let God guide you to the next encounter. The longer we spend worrying about the consequences of the past, the harder it becomes to make progress in our lives today.

We can have the confidence to do this as Christians because when we come before our Father, in whatever state we find ourselves in, we know that we stand in the righteousness that Jesus grants us, not our own. I cannot redeem myself from the mistakes of the past, neither can I truly rid myself of those nagging feelings of resentment to those who have wronged me. Jesus reminds us that it does not profit us to seek revenge for the things that are out of our control. Yet we are encouraged by Jesus to forgive seventy times seven, believing that the ultimate justice is dispensed by God. 

"When I trust God with my life, it will go well with me."

The more I try to control my life, the more complicated the life I try to invent for myself becomes. If I try to ignore the decisions of the past by pushing it to the subconscious part of my mind, then they will be forever lurking in my fragile psychology, waiting to burst out when similar circumstances present themselves. The hurts of the past, no matter how they might define us in our present reality, do not need to control our response to the future. The Holy Spirit dwells within each one of us who renounce our sinful natures so that we can find comfort in these times when our emotions are left open and raw.

There were many times in my childhood and my young adult life, where I have encountered intense feelings of loneliness and despair. I seemed to be out of sync with the rest of the community I attached myself to during my teenage years and my university life; I still find to this day, that I have difficulty making friends, sustaining relationships and enjoying the company of others. 

These are the remaining outward human signs that I know of from my childhood, which seek to control my emotions and elevate my fears. The Holy Spirit counsels me in my understanding of these deficiencies within my character and confirms my adoption into the kingdom of God. This truth, which is planted deep within my consciousness, helps me to dispense with the feelings of inadequacy that would leave me without hope, and helps me to embrace a new future that goes beyond that which I could possibly achieve alone. 

This is the reality that I know: that despite the sum of my parts, I am complete through Jesus who strengthens me. There are many who reject God at work in the world because of what they observe, hear or what they assume to be wrong with the world in which we live. You could argue that a God of love would not have exposed me to the dangers that I have experienced. In fact, you could argue that it is my humanity that led me to the life I now enjoy. Yet I would disagree. I know that God’s hand on my life has been consistent, fair and benevolent, and it was my need for him that rescued me from myself.

God has saved me from my warped reasoning on countless occasions, yet with his help, I tenuously tread a path that demonstrates my trust in his grace at work in me. You might ask, ‘Why do I need his grace… surely a loving God would have no conditions in expressing his love for us?’ But what do we base our understanding of love for others on? Is love blind? Do we have no choices in how we love or what we choose to love? Shouldn't a God of love not forgive all that we could get wrong?

If I consider the relationship that I have with my parents, there are many issues that are left unspoken, which causes barriers between us. If I needed to seek answers for the way that our family life panned out, I might never find what it was I were looking for, nor be able to heal the wounds that such a relationship engendered. I could spend a lifetime trying to comprehend how my parent’s actions demonstrated their love towards my brothers and I; seeking clarification for the consequences of their actions; trying to comprehend the way that I feel about those actions today… but this can be as much a distraction than the questions themselves, which may never be resolved except for the grace of God.

These are the same questions we might ask about our relationship with God. Love is more than a feeling however and I too, have an opportunity to express my love to my parents through my actions. It is not the sentimental love that those in the honeymoon period of a new relationship express for one another, nor is it a paternal bond that transcends time and space. Rather, it is a love born of our blood relationship and the unbreakable truth of the nurturing heart that my parents poured into each of us before the relationship deteriorated. The consequences of that fall-out invaded my conscious identity… there is still a sense of belonging there, but I am uncertain how I might reclaim it.

"Our actions demonstrate how we are willing to tolerate, support, cherish, encourage and be vulnerable to those who matter to us most. But there are always compromises that we make in order to accommodate each other so that the relationships we make, form bonds that transcends sets of rules that we abide by, becoming truths that we follow, in order to honour each other by the very actions we seek."

We experience these same questions that I have with my parents, whenever anyone mentions God to us... we get a feeling that maybe, we once belonged there but for some reason, often in our rejection of the church and it's representatives, we have an irrational fear of wanting to know God or experience an overwhelming emotional response to it that we can't quite explain.

Suppose for a moment, rather than simply being taught it, that our core nature understands the morality of our relationships and the ethical choices we should employ during the interactions that we have with one another? We also know that there are things that serve our own ambition rather than that of others, which might skew the choices that we make in the light of this knowledge. We also know that our nature chooses to protect those things that are precious to us or those things that are important to us. These emotional impulses seemingly override our rational choices, in order to defend what we believe to be our right, no matter what it takes. This can bring us into conflict with the very things that we hold dear to us, so we make compromises with our ethical choices that can lead us down a path we should not have taken.

We are often willing to forsake some aspects of what we believe to be true in order to accommodate our literal understanding of what is real. We call this relativism: there are no absolute truths, only those truths which we use to make sense of our context, as this fits with our worldview. Anything that exists contrary to what we perceive to be true is considered false, regardless of the morality from which it came.

This is why many reject religion in the face of cultural changes in our society. God is unchanging, even though we are blown by the wind of culture and the indifference we feel about the nature of Gods will for our lives. The values that he instilled in humanity at the beginning of time are the same values that govern our interactions with him today. This sense of absolute truth is what leads many to reject God because we want to accommodate our new identity whilst feeling constrained by what is considered by many to be an imposed morality, upheld by religion that has no form of expression in our new world order.

"The Bible teaches us that God created humanity to be in relationship with him and to bring honour to the world in which we live; being his representatives on the earth. In Genesis he commands Adam and Eve to go into the whole earth and be fruitful: To bring glory to his creation through family and through community; through our relationships with each other and through our relationship with our heavenly Father." 

God offers us the protection of his Kingdom here on the earth, in exchange for our obedience. Knowing that this was going to be difficult for our humanity to comprehend, God provided a way through Jesus to heal the inevitable separation between God and man which was to come. Now that our humanity through Adam and Eve, has tasted the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, humanity has to forge its own path in the world. We have it within us to do what is right, whilst possessing the knowledge that some of our actions are wrong. This is why today, humanity still challenges absolute truth in the form of God, finding it hard to reconcile his nature to that of our own in favour of its own understanding of what best suits us.

Just as my relationship with my parents has been broken through circumstances beyond my control and through the circumstances that I brought to bear on the situation through my sense of grief, we also have to come to terms with the separation that exists between ourselves and God. We reject God because we do not accept or want to recognise our need of him but at the same time, God’s relationship with us has to be restored. 

This is particularly so if we are to find any kind of peace and make sense of the purposes for which we are called. Each of us has a desire for contentment and we each have a need for wholeness that cannot be satiated through our lifestyle choices. We fill our lives with the things we like, be they family, wealth, possessions, experiences and even for some, a kind-of pseudo spirituality, where we might recognise that there is something out-there that might be more than our present reality. 

"Life can be like a drug, the more we experience it, the more we want of it. When our lives are in balance and everything is going well with us, what need have we of God?" 

I have lived like this, feeling that I had no need for my parents in my life for 32 years. I visit them once, maybe twice a year, for a few hours where nothing is really said or asked of us. The only thing that bonds us is my birth right and an acceptance that we are who we are. Many of us feel the same way about God too – having a vague notion that there may indeed be a god but his influence on my worldview is negligible. I know deep down, that I am missing something in my life that I could draw great strength from but I do not trust that it may go well. So I hide my secret pain away until, well, who knows.

I have to learn to forgive my parents for the pain that I felt in my childhood but ultimately, it is me who should swallow my pride and say: “I love you - I’m sorry for the hurt that I caused you when I did not understand. Please forgive me of the wrong I have committed.” To do that, I have to let go of any preconditions that I hold to, either consciously or un-consciously, and honour my parents by accepting them back into my life.

Jesus did this very thing for us. Knowing that the human heart remained conflicted by what it thought it should do, and what it actually went ahead and did anyway, he was willing to substitute his life for ours. Even the twelve, who were Jesus’ closest companions, were scattered when the temple authorities came to arrest him; failing to follow through with the courage of their convictions, despite what they had seen Jesus say and do. Today we do the same with science and progress, saying that we have lost our belief in the church because we cannot reasonably believe in the existence of God.

"Each one of us has to come face to face with the real Jesus. "

We can do so from any position we might find ourselves in. Peter, who would have considered himself to be the leading disciple, despite walking on water and watching the miracle of blind men seeing, denied Jesus’ friendship three times, before he realised that what Jesus had said about him was true. Yet Jesus restores Peter in his broken identity, to become the leader of the church, watching over the sheep. 

"God speaks into each of our lives through the life of his son, if we are willing to sit up and take notice." 

When you love someone and you see them doing something that may do them harm, you do everything in your power to help them. This is what Jesus did for Peter and still does for each one of us. We have boundaries designed to protect us from ourselves, but our nature always rebels against God's will for us. In order to realise that God is love, we may still need to go through heartache to find loves true meaning in Jesus, before we are made complete in him.

When we understand that God through his son, is determined to bring hope to the hopeless and justice for the weak, we will be able to find peace in our lives in the knowledge that if God is for us, who can stand against us? Without this truth, society is quick to replace Gods justice with its own brand of justice. If that sense of justice is self-absorbed and self-centered, then what would this justice look like? 

"Everyone has biased views of how the world should be and how we ought to interact with it. How we interpret these actions, events and the emotions that we might feel when we witness what is going on around us. These all help to define our morality. If we have rejected absolute truth in favour of that which best accommodates our will, then even with the best intentions, we will have to compromise at some point."

In understanding our status as children of God, we should also recognise that our destiny is far greater than our humanity alone. We are destined for an eternal life based on faith, hope and love. Our heavenly Father yearns to offer us his protection through the life of his son and has plans to prosper us, not to harm us. Yet we can still fight with our conscience to try to reject his offer of grace. Through Jesus, our relationship with God is restored and he becomes the source of our joy. We know that we cannot find a lasting joy in the transient nature of this word, but revel in the hope of that which is to come. When Jesus returns to usher his Kingdom into our present reality, we will know pure joy.

Only in God’s presence will we flourish, giving and receiving joy with all of our brothers and sisters in Christ. All the heartache of this life will be restored, particularly those raw emotions of hurt and longing we have had to endure whilst on the earth; being replaced by his perfect love which casts out all of our fears. I implore you to grab hold of Jesus and embrace the gift of life that he alone is worthy to offer. If we choose to decline Gods offer of grace, preferring instead, our own ‘take’ on the world around us, then you are destined to carry all that you ‘take’ with you into a life separated from God’s love.

This is how God demonstrates his love: he gives you the freedom to choose his life or let you go your own way. Whatever choice that you make, God is routing for you to return to him, not sitting in judgement but reaching out to us through his son in love. When we know this love, we become willing participants in ridding ourselves of the heartache of this world by allowing the Holy Spirit to unravel the sin in us that has bound us. We become desperate to cast off those things that have held us captive for so long, and we begin to understand his mercy and recognise his grace.

Closing thoughts...

Many discount God today because it suits us to do so and we have heard enough philosophy, science or reason to discount the need for God. However, science and reason cannot hold all of the answers for life because there will always be someone else who will question the truth of what has been observed or modelled. There will always be a nuance of life that has been denied in an effort to understand our reality in some format that suits the proposer. Reducing our humanity to chemical, biological and chemical interactions which could be measured in some form, doesn't account for our conscious experience, our thoughts and the values we adopt to make sense of this life… 

"Life is more than a set of electrical impulses between our cerebral cortex and our rational mind."

Should I simply dismiss my childhood experience as a genetic method to build resilience in my character to survive and reproduce offspring, therefore serving the principle of natural selection? Or are the feelings I have towards my childhood experiences, designed to helped shape my understanding of the world in a metaphysical sense? My choice to believe that God is out there, looking out for my best interests, could be a psychological crutch also designed to build resilience that leads to me producing healthy offspring?

Both critiques of my life experiences could be used to explain where I am today, however only one would give me reason for hope. I have ended up with my life as it is today, in spite of the hand I was dealt, not because of it.
God wins, his love wins.

I know this because when considering all of the other major religions in the world, only Christianity shares the story of a personal God who created the world out of love. Many of the ancient near eastern and far eastern religions tell a story of deities battling for supremacy and violent struggles for power and ascendancy in the natural order. Even the apparently gentler religions, such as Buddhism or Taoism exert the convert to live a selfless life in order to achieve a sort-of balance between the natural elements of the earth and the spiritual realm. None of these world belief systems recognise that we can be in a personal relationship with God who came to the earth in search of his people who were lost, broken and hurting.

Even in Islam, one of the world’s fastest growing monotheistic religions, God is considered to be unattainable and impersonal. Just as no image of Allah or the Prophet Mohammed is allowed to help us to personalise God and his messenger, Christianity by contrast, invites all who are weary of this world to meet with a personal Saviour, Jesus, who chose to hang on a cross so that the judgement of sin that we each deserve, is fully met in his sacrifice.

The theist can also look at the beauty of the earth, its fine tuning and the natural order of things, and consider that the heavens and the earth all point to a divine creator. You may reject this and place your faith in the naturalist cause where organic life as we see it today, is 'a product of random patterns of life guided by no-one mind or consciousness, but through evolutionary forces that respond to reasoned scientific discoveries'. However, this creates more problems to your world view than it solves.

If indeed the morality of humanity that exists today, was developed though evolutionary forces, in order to further the kind of ethical choices we make today, is it plausible then, that in order to develop altruism as expressed through human interactions, that we would have seen it acceptable to do the opposite of those values, namely use force to defend them, in order to protect and preserve them? Anything that stood in the path of our naturally selected nature, would have to be eliminated in order for it to survive? This brings to doubt the notion that altruism could conceivably have survived in the face of our competitors seeking out what was beneficial for them through the elimination of the weak. 

"By its very nature, altruism is a benevolent action that seeks to serve others above one’s own need and yet it seems that Jesus answers this question too..."

If we are to argue that our moral compass and the direction of our lives was determined by evolutionary forces, then the arguments based in science and reason become metaphysical in nature, open to philosophical argument and go beyond scientific interpretation, taking us back to where we started. When we consider all that we know about our universe and its cosmology, our biology, philosophy, sociology, and our neurological study, I find that….

"God is empirically verified as the source of our existence because in him, the evidence of his influence at work in each of our lives, helps to explain our existence more completely than any conceivable alternative theory or model that exists" 

… it’s your call.

Spring Forward

It seems to have been a long winter for the start of 2014. In the UK, the snow blizzards experienced in the USA had travelled across the Atlantic Ocean to become stormy weather that battered our sea defences, flooding many acres of land, cutting off communities and trapping people in their homes. The unnatural rainfall was subsequently blamed on global warming with many scientists publishing papers backing up their claims and political sound-bite blaming the government for not doing enough.

Come the spring, and the extra daylight saving that British Summer Time brings, the plight of others and the world outside our window will dissipate as we anticipate what the warmer weather might bring to us personally. Living in a traditional British costal town within an hour of London adds to the tourism and traffic that clogs up our road network that was designed centuries ago, real evidence that our community has awoken from the winter slumber.

 

Like all things, our worries that we carry with us, change with each new season. I have been putting 70hr weeks into my job in order to meet April deadlines, of which I am now sat at my dining room table in the spring rain and grey overcast skies, waiting for the next season to begin. When we are so busy, there are so many things that we take for granted, and other things that we neglect. I take it for granted that my wife patiently gets on with family life when I am absent, recognising that I am being indulgent in my use of our family time because of the skilful way in which she manages our home.

 

There are many friendships that I fail in as a friend when I am busy; no man is an island. In the organised chaos of our fractured work-life balance, I might manage an odd hello or a Facebook message but quality time is a fleeting thing. People, friends and family deserve more than a cursory hello, which in times of busyness, is all I can rather rudely manage. There are many things that we can indulgently obsess over to the detriment of other situations in our lives but we are fickle like that.

 

Before we are truly aware of what we have become, there are a whole host of hang-ups and miscommunication that we have to deal with, adding an extra layer of complexity to an already overflowing concoction of misplaced sensibilities that cloud our judgements and overcomplicate life.


For example, I have been using a road on my journey to work for a number of years. As is often the case in local road networks, you get familiar with the obvious… the crossing lady in front of the school, the pedestrian crossing, the bus stop and the right turn where waiting motorists always block the carriageway. Then there is the popular convenience store with too-few parking spaces for the number of visitors and the ever-present delivery truck blocking the road.

 

All of these hazards and warnings should make me cautious about the level of concentration and observation that I ought to give to the situation I encounter each morning. Yet on Friday I happened to notice a small red sign stating: ‘New 30mph Speed Limit in Force’.

I had never noticed the sign before, nor had I any indication from the traffic I was travelling in, that they had either. The next day I looked for the position that the original 40mph signs were once erected and indeed, they had gone. Eye’s peeled, I travelled along the road for a while before noticing their new location about ½ of a mile further down from their original location.

 

The rules of the road for that short journey had now changed overnight without me even being aware. It meant that I was now in a position to violate a number of traffic laws concerning the speed now accepted on that stretch of road. In the UK, we have this weird law that states that roadside lighting pillars in urban areas are placed approximately 30ft apart. Motorists who are unaware of the speed of the road they are travelling on should take notice of the distance of each road-side light to help the driver determine what the speed we should be actually travelling at is... it would be a maximum 30mph unless a sign tells you something more specific.

 

The law is designed for those of us who register for a driving licence, to encourage us to use our reasoning in obeying the rules of the road. There are absolute rules of the road that are applied to all circumstances, even if it is not immediately obvious what rules of the road those circumstances dictate to. If we stuck signs up all over the road side stating what the rules of the road are, if would be a forest of metal poles and light refracting signage. It would simply look terrible if in front of some of our Roman and Medieval towns and villages; blotting out the view with speed restriction signs and warnings of elderly people crossing.

 

In life too, we seek to free ourselves from the shackles of too much red-tape. Social etiquette, professional conduct, parental will, religious instruction, political control all combine to influence our perspective of the risks we can take and the controls we put on our conduct. In our teenage years, we dream about the freedom of adulthood and the opportunity of the lives we can live, then in our 20’s as young adults on the first rung of our careers, we have that bit of money in our pocket that empowers us to start our adventures and perhaps, find that connection with the world in which we live.

 

Youth brings a certain determination to make something more of ourselves than possibly our breeding and circumstance might allow, and we strive forward to make an impact in our corner of the world. The people that we meet and the situations we find ourselves in, shape us into who we become. Life can be colourful for those who embrace all that there is to offer and have the financial means and professional success to bring to life those childhood dreams. There are those too who do not seem to get the same breaks in life and fail to realise the potential inside them for whatever reason because the opportunities never seemed to materialise.

 

For most of us, the idealism of youth becomes the realism of our adulthood and the foundation for parenthood. In the words of John Lennon: ‘You can say that I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one, I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will be as one’. Lennon was singing of a human consciousness, the brotherhood of man, who had no allegiance to a creed or country, money or possessions. That there would be no heaven or hell so therefore no rules to judge humanity by and no condemnation. Without these things, the world would be one.

 

Like my journey to work, if I was to travel free of restrictions, governed by the brotherhood of man, I might not get to my destination in one piece. Each day with the rules of the road common to each driver, I have motorists tailgating my car when I am already over  the 30mph limit… motorists pulling out in front of my car because their journeys are more important… and evidence of mobile phone use while driving, illegal in the UK, impeding the drivers ability to pilot their vehicle. I’m not sure that I can always trust my fellow man to make sensible decisions when driving, let alone with my health care, quality of education or indeed, the protection of my family.


"There will always be another person out there who will employ their own world view in situations that might contravene our own considerations."

Indeed, our sensibilities can be considered to be second rate or outdated in the light of this new collective consciousness. Lennon also sang about the need to deny religion and country in favour of his utopian ideal and the societal organisation that might arise from it, because it would be better than what we have today. However, in suggesting that his view was somehow better is in itself, a judgemental attitude towards the values that those countries and religions have. That somehow his way was better is an illusion of his own mind.

 

All of the major religions follow similar ideals to better humanity and to draw it together in unity under one banner. None of them suggest that men should take up arms to force this banner over everyone except when man gets involved with organising religion. When man tries to do the work of God, there are always issues just as those politicians and governments who are supposed to represent the will of the people, get it wrong. Whether it be politics or religion, fault can always be lain at the feet of those dispensing it. People come and go, but the institution that remains stands testimony to the journey of those that have walked along its path, whether they be good or bad.

 

And so, like our own lives, we have to decide for ourselves what it is we want to believe: To determine what truth is and what is untruth. We often need to look beyond our own reasoning to be able to determine what objective truth is because we recognise that our interpretation of the truth is corrupted by our own reasoning that has become bruised along life’s journey. If we are to become mature in this life, we need to seek assurance, without prejudice or through any preconceived ideas, of our purpose and responsibility in this life and indeed the next.

 

I am always amazed at how many reject the existence of God because they cannot see him or have not experienced him.

The premise being that our experiences in this life determine what we know and understand. As we have never seen God, nor do we know what he looks like, we therefore by default, have no reason to accept his existence and therefore, we are absolved of any obligations that such a God might request of us. This argument is always put together with the question about the amount of suffering there is in the world. "If God so loved the world, then why not remove all suffering?"

 

There is not one answer to this question, but several approaches to the topic of suffering that allow the questioner to be given a direct response to the intellectual or theological arguments for the role of suffering in a world created by God. Some argue that suffering leads to  an appreciation of the beauty of those things that we might previously have taken for granted. However, the answer given doesn’t always heal the psychological and emotional scars of those who ask it. I spent time with my wife’s friend today who is suffering with cancer and undergoing chemotherapy. With her wig and in the company of friends, there were no outward signs that she was battling a disease that could rob her of life. So as a man of faith, I echo the same sentiment even if I think I might understand some of the answers.

 

Our personal battles with the suffering we experience or that which we witness in the lives of others, defines our opinion of God. If God is indeed good, how can this suffering be allowed? The first observation to make is whether the suffering that we are going through is natural to our human existence or is it supernatural? Similarly, if we recognise suffering is part of the natural evolution of life, why do we demand God’s intervention? Surely if there is no God, he would not be there to intercede in the lives of others anyway, so the very question, ‘Why does God allow suffering?’ is out moded before we begin to analyse this cry of our heart.

 

A common question is to do with natural disasters. Our world sits on a crust of tectonic plates that sit on a molten magma that has eddies and flows which cause movement. These flows of magma cause pressure on the tectonic plates, causing them to pull apart of squash together. At other fault lines, where the tectonic plates drag alongside each other, we experience earthquakes and Tsunami’s that have become catastrophic within our urban communities. Just as those populations that exist on the edges of arid landscapes and frequently experience drought and famine, our civilised world is fraught with natural disasters that affect our natural evolution on the face of the planet.

 

Are we to blame all of these events on a God who doesn’t care, even if he were to exist? It would be convenient to do so don’t you think? Let’s forget that we understand the science behind why these things happen in the world for a moment and call it an act of God. Catastrophes, accidents, terrible illness and pandemics; let us all group these grievous events together and blame them on God?

A colleague of mine was in the Tsunami of 26^th December 2004. He is not a Christian, nor has he changed his lifestyle because of it. He and his partner escaped the incoming wave by climbing to the top of the hotel complex they were staying in, just before it swamped the beach they had been sat on moments before… he was one of the lucky ones. I can remember watching the Tsunami that hit Japan with both shock and awe. The power of the wave was so well documented as it swept inland, that it seemed unnatural somehow as we do not experience this phenomenon each day.

 

We are all secure in our understanding of our built environment and believe that science has all of the answers and yet the fragility of our humanity was clear for all to see.  The Bible reveals what Jesus says about their being wars and rumours of war, earth quakes, famine and drought…

 

And you will hear of wars and threats of wars, but don’t panic. Yes, these things must take place, but the end won’t follow immediately. (Matthew 24:6, NLT)

 

Jesus says these are just signs to humanity to reveal that this world is not finite. That there will be a time where what we believe and understand to be certain, will quickly lead to uncertainty. Just as doubts over global warming has led to a lot of foot dragging over environmental policy, the human condition, with its doubt over the existence of God will continue to evade the question until finally it will be too late.

 

The longer we reject God in favour of our own ability to think rationally through the challenges of life and plough our own furrow, the harder it becomes to accept the simplicity of the Gospel story: That God in his mercy and great compassion for those he created, surrendered his own son to the cause. In Jesus we find God who became one of us. He ate, joked, laughed, cried, shared, grieved… he had no special powers or secret stores of wealth or magic. Jesus was a simple man, a carpenter from a small town and from a family who had to manage the shame of their daughter being with child outside of wedlock, claiming that the baby growing within her was from God.

 

From this humble beginning, the whole of the world has been changed. Jesus stands testimony to all of the suffering in the world. As the world cried out, God answered the prayer of our forefathers and sent a Messiah in the form of a child. Jesus had never known a time without the presence of God running through his soul. We find that Jesus didn’t make things up as he went along, but did the work of his Father God, here on the earth. Where he saw suffering he brought healing, where he saw injustice, he spoke out to end it with truth and where he saw death, Jesus demonstrated that he had power to defeat even that.

 

Mel Gibson’s film the ‘Passion of the Christ’ is not without its critics but the humanity of Jesus’ suffering was made very real within it. Here was God who had known no sickness, physical brutality or any of the hardships of life, yet as a man, Jesus knew all these things at first hand. Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane on the night before he was betrayed by one of his own friends, wept before his father, asking that the cup he had to drink from be taken away.

“Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” (Luke 22:42, NLT)

 

Believe me when I say this but as I write these words, my rational thinking mind and my emotions combine in a symphony of pure joy and with tearful eyes my soul declares:

“That MY Lord would do such a thing for me… that he would suffer in this way for me. This suffering is what I deserve, not him, and I cry with him there in the garden for his evident grace and mercy towards me.”

The Christian faith is built on the suffering Jesus; the servant of God’s grace. Jesus knew that all of creation so far had led to this very moment. He knew that he was now going to become one of us – separated from his Father from whom he had never been separated. Even for us, when our loved ones pass away in circumstance beyond our control or through the ravages of time, we experience that separation of love, or relationship with the one we have shared so much.

 

God is in that because he understands it. He recognises your pain and my pain as his own. Jesus brought forward the conclusion to this world through our adoption into the family of our heavenly father. But for a moment we have to endure all that life throws at us. You know, I struggle from season to season with my walk with the Lord. The demands of this world encroach on my personal space, asserting control on areas of my life that I wish they would not. I have to make ethical and moral choices that demand compromise to what I hold true. I really want to stay in that place of emotional comfort that we all get to at times when listening to that favourite album or watching that movie that speaks into our consciousness. Yet life is always wanting me to compromise.

 

Jesus in the garden before his death, knowing what was about to enfold, trusted in his heavenly Father to honour his side of the plan; even though his own resolve was faltering, he chose not to compromise. On the cross, the cry of Jesus isn’t about his death but his loss of a tangible relationship with the father. “My God, My God” is the cry of someone who is seeking out the source of the relationship that has empowered him to perform the miracles he conducted during his ministry. Up until this point, Jesus has known God since the beginning and yet now hung on the cross, with the burden of sin separating him from the presence of God his Father; the source of strength in his life; in desperation, Jesus cries out in hope to his Father who appears silent.

This is the position that we each find ourselves. Standing in our own strength we call out:

“Where are you God? If you are real, reveal yourself to me, end my suffering.”

 However, we are unwilling to let go of the ties that bind us to our natural lives and as a consequence, we can seek, but we will not find. Only when we are willing to sacrifice our lives and let go of the ties that bind us to it at the cross that Jesus hung on, will we be able to find peace. However, we cannot do that because we are not Jesus...  we are too conflicted by the cares of this word to even be willing to lay our lives down. Even for this act of obedience, Jesus makes it easier: All we have do is offer our lives at the foot of the cross for Jesus to reach down and rescue us from it… Jesus truly did it all, our joy can be restored.

Nicky Gumbel the Alpha Course author tweeted (07/04/2014): “If God answers our prayer immediately, it is to build your faith; if God asks you to wait before your prayers are answered, it is to teach you something about perseverance, and if he says no, then it is because he has something even better.”

For Christians, we know that there can be nothing better than to take up the place that Jesus has prepared for us in heaven. We are a child of two worlds: We are born into our humanity but we are adopted as sons and daughters of the living God as a new creation. This is why I cannot agree with Lennon to imagine there is no heaven, as this is where my hope lies. With no God and no heaven there is no more hope for humanity than what is perceived today. In my experience of living in the secular society that the UK has now become, I find that behind the façade of life, people are still searching for something more because our natural humanism is not to build community but to ensure our very survival.

Of course we can fill our lives with celebration for all that this life holds and bask in the sun of our ingenuity at rising above the complexities of modern living to achieve a sense of purpose and indeed peace, but as the sun fades and our achievements become just memories, we await death, returning to the dust from which the scientists insist we evolved from. But when we are young and full of life, we shrug off these nagging doubts and feelings of insecurity, hoping that when we get to whatever it is we are heading, we will find peace. You may even find my tone morbid or even pessimistic for what life has to offer and reject my council simply because life is for the living.

But as I approach my 43^rd birthday I realise that my time on this world is as transient as the teacher who has just left my school after 15yrs of service. His presence will be forgotten in an instant that the new colleague arrives. The reason that the man left his job is because his years of service to the school had accounted for nothing. He had seemingly lost the respect of his managers who saw him as an obstacle to some un-communicated ideal they were pursuing. I spent time with him sharing my faith and explaining how God sustained me through these dark times. Yet he knew for himself that the time had come to move on. There are many forgotten souls who have served their employers and families well; who have made contributions to the society that we take for granted today, yet all that remains of their effort is a tombstone.

So unlike John Lennon, I imagine a heaven where all of the hurting and all of the longing is healed. We trust that God will set straight the wrongs we have endured and the suffering that we face. Loved ones we have lost to disease or violence will be restored in this new eternal life for all those that profess Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. This is the one truth that we face in the 21^st Century. Jesus calls us to himself throughout history, through our culture, through our politics and through any altruistic sense that we might have about bettering ourselves for the good of humanity.

Still believe that there is no God and if there is, does he care?

Then look to Jesus. Don’t look at the church necessarily or even religion but into the face of Jesus whose compassion has no bound and whose mercy took him to a grave that we deserve. No amount of persuasive argument can convince you of the truth of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, only a personal encounter will open your mind to the realities of this world and that of the next.

If you are ready to take that step, then say this simple prayer:

"Lord, I recognise that I have tried to live my life in my own way for far too long. The things I ought to do, I don’t do and the things that I shouldn’t do, I go ahead and do them anyway. I recognise that no matter how hard I try, there is nothing within me that honours you. I repent of my sinful life and ask that you would come into my heart as my Lord and my Saviour to set right what is broken within me. Transform my heart and mind by filling me with the Holy Spirit. Lord, I ask for your healing and your restoration so that I can be born again into new life as a son/daughter of the living God, Amen."

If you have said this prayer and have not got any Christian friends to share in your new life with Jesus, I urge you to find a local church that can support you and disciple you in the Bible. Start learning about what it means to be a Christian by reading about Jesus in the Gospel stories of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and find a way to connect with God through the use of a daily reading plan that will introduce you to your new family, WELCOME!