Esteem

“What a waste of time!” 
I have spent a career trying to be better, more refined and more accomplished in what I do on my job. I've tried to be equitable, sincere, and polite even. I have tried to show courtesy and respect as well as be accommodating and yet, I still have an uneasy feeling about who I am. I might try to polish the veneer of my professional façade and indeed in public, be consistent in my approach to life and my faith, yet in the quiet of my heart, the inner turmoil of conflict between my perceptions of self and the reality of my thoughts betray my true self.

I have struggled my whole life for identity. I have no real self-esteem. I would easily believe that this blog, the 43 before it, my teaching in the small group that meets in our home, and my worship leading, are all part of me trying to make up for something I feel that is missing from my life. I find it difficult to accept the friendship of others because of the isolation of my childhood and I am not good at developing my relationships beyond the obvious courtesy we all have towards each other. I have never really been able to ‘hook-up’ with people and form strong friendships. I suppose on reflection, I don’t do anything to develop these relationships because from my perspective of the people I know, I assume that they would rather be doing something else with someone else.

I suppose it’s easier for me that way. I don’t need to bother about anyone affecting my sense of emotional well-being, nor have I the need to develop a dependence on relationships that could go in directions that I don’t want to go in. No, I am better off by myself. In my nuclear family and in my limited interactions, I can control my world much more easily. These are the emotions that arise in my head each time I feel as though I am threatened by external factors beyond my control or when I feel like I need to protect myself from what I perceive may be a threat.

I have no excuses for this behaviour… I am emotionally and socially broken from a difficult childhood where each day I endured name calling and bullying. I’m not even trying to say, “Please accept my lack of social graces”, I am putting my hands up and saying, “I’m broken.” My story is probably no different to many children growing up in 1970’s Britain. Parental discipline involved corporal punishment of some kind and a lot of shouting. Children had a love/fear relationship with their parents where in our innocence, we would role play with our Star Wars toys or our Action Man (if you were a boy), play football in the back alley or play hide and seek. I can remember long summers where we would stay out later in the warmth of the evening sun until dusk, where children would play together for hours.

When we did get it wrong, there was the usual inquisition and slap on the leg. There was also the ensuing drama when we got older, where our parents tried to make us accountable for our actions. This could involve a mixture of being shouted at and being slapped. A slap across the face or head meant that we knew the argument had escalated beyond our pleading for our honesty. Being told to pull your own pants down, so that the punishment you were considered deserving of could be administered, psychologically reinforced our subjugation to their moral authority as their children.

So for me anyway, I didn’t question my parents authority, I did what they asked, followed wherever they went, behaved as they asked. I had no real imagination to dream of anything more for my life than what it was. I obediently went to school and did my homework. By secondary school however, my character was odd and I became that peculiar child with a haircut provided by my mother in the kitchen, and clothing that was obviously purchased from the cheapest stores, due to it being unbranded and ill-fitting. Amongst my peers, I became an easy target for bullying.

It started with name calling at first, then it progressed to made-up stories and innuendo. I was shunned and ostracised by my peers often sitting by myself for lesson after lesson, and I hated myself for it. I was miserable for most days. At home I feared putting a foot wrong, where the bare hand of childhood discipline became a slipper in the teenage years. My mother, now divorced and having to care for four boys was ruthless in her discipline. We were not allowed to sleep in late, having to do household chores almost as a currency for being allowed to live in the house. We had no money or holidays, no identity other than what we were allowed to express through my mother’s life. We lived the life that many children worldwide live, who go to their second parents’ house for the weekend; we were passed around like a commodity. I saw many things that I shouldn’t have seen and bore the emotional pain that went with it.

I internalised many experiences, hardening my heart against the emotional blackmail of being made to feel that I was always in the wrong and could do nothing right. I went to school to experience more jibes and prejudice that I seemingly deserved, particularly with regard to my sorry state. I was miserable, alone and isolated in a seemingly cruel world. So I hope this helps to explain why my mind is plagued with the seemingly irrational fears I have with interacting with people today. I am not proud of the way I am… the way that I react to various situations or deal with people who offer friendship and hospitality. I don’t have a natural happiness or joy for just being me, as the things in my childhood never allowed me to believe I could be happy. I look back at my childhood now with great sadness and with a tinge of remorse.

As I stated earlier, I am not offering this story as an excuse for my present behaviour, but as a context for my reactions and the precautions that I have to battle with my mind each day. Every incidence of failure, whether it be in my relationships, working life or my church community, resurrect my fears of being unworthy and in being unacceptable to others. I have worked hard to make my life a success, not because I thought that I deserved it but rather, that I felt that I needed to work hard so that I could cement my place in the social setting that I existed. I have a strong feeling of unworthiness strapped to my back that makes me hunch my shoulders, point my face to the ground, avoiding eye contact and always taking a back seat.

The first term that I returned home from University, I arrived to find that all of my possessions from my childhood had gone, including my bed. I spent each semester break on the floor of what used to be my bedroom, in a sleeping bag and no mattress. I worked every holiday to make my University pay, long shifts in factories, doing as much overtime as possible. My mum would demand payment for unpaid bills or broken electrical appliances because I had to pay rent for sleeping on the floor. I had at least been fed after all. Going back to University ‘Diggs’ was a relief as I could have my life back.

The effect of this was that I subconsciously became dependent on education as my key to a more successful life. I was secure in a weird way, in education as an institution for my surrogacy, until I could stand on my own two feet. I can remember rationing myself to £5 sterling per week… I had no wealthy parent to bail me out if I got into debt, no inheritance, and no savings. I was indeed alone. I couldn't consider a University life full of socialising and gap years, tours around the world, or any particular indulgence. If I got into debt, then I would pay the price later.

We all live for the dream of our imaginings… “When I am a…. I will…” University for me, was what I needed to do to get into teaching – get a degree, teaching certification and hopefully, employment? I did meet some of the most influential and generous people along the way but not one friend from my school years or university years remain. Yes, there have been people I have been close to, but in the end, I find that my phone remains silent. In the three years since my 40^th birthday surprise meal, where my wife gathered together some friends to celebrate with me, two of those people are no longer part of my life. I know that seasons change and people depart, but I have so few real relationships that I have stopped trying to account for them, conveniently believing that I am simply not good enough for them.

I seem to need the life skills I developed as a child as much today as I did then. I go to work and get hammered over the head with standards and procedures designed to tell you what you have got to do to improve and go home anxious about how I could achieve that. For example, I left work on Friday evening mulling over how I could use the bank holiday to catch-up with school work. As I drove home, the radio presenter got his listeners to text-in their holiday destinations. As I sat in the traffic listening, my ears pricked up when they mentioned places around the country I knew well, Whitby in North Yorkshire, The Lake District in Cumbria and Stonehenge on the Salisbury Plain. I could close my eyes and picture each location and the happiness enshrined in the memories of it, before the traffic moved forward and I was brought back to the reality of GCSE moderation.

I hate this intrusion on my life. I want none of it. Yet, it is my job and I am obligated to do what is required regardless of the time commitment. My wife is my one source of companionship and I have two lovely children. They complete me. I will get up each morning for eternity to ensure that they are happy and secure in this world. I chose to love them in this way, so in spite of my emotional frailty, I will endure. Yet when work intrudes on our family life, as it so often does, I feel grieved by it.

However, I know that despite this, I am not alone. God is the author of my life and I will honour his will for me by being obedient. I know that God alone can complete me and God alone can bring honour to my life. I know this because no matter how much I love my wife and children, my actions cannot satisfy the desires of my heart. There will always be something that I cannot do or should have done. My failure in whatever these tasks are likely to be, will cement in my mind a penalty point that I was simply not good enough. In doing so, it dims the brightness of my sense of self-worth because if my family are my sole identity, then I would feel like a failure for being foolish enough to forget it.

It is the same for my friendships and my job status. If I derived my sense of worth from my social connections and popularity, then I would be nothing. If it was my work, I would also be nothing. For both of these parts to my life, I consider myself to be a failure. At the height of my teaching career, I presented at national conference and had delegates queuing for my teaching resources. Now I sit in meetings being lectured by 23 year old, fresh out of college probationary teachers, on the finer art of teaching. It’s ironic that I have been teaching longer than they have been alive, yet there I sit.

Any structure that we put around our character in order to build our sense of self-worth is liable to failure or at the very least, at threat from being torn down. Just as much as we wear our football shirt with pride through the highs and lows of our team’s success and failure, so we too wear a veil of civility over the hidden storms of life. However, it is when this veil is torn in two that our true nature is exposed and we can either descend into the depths of our human emotion or we can choose to forsake our will for Gods so that we can begin to relate more freely to our human condition and our relationship with him. It really is that simple, yet we are quick to over complicate it. Jesus tells us to forsake everything for him, and he means all of you.

On the whole, we vastly over-estimate our sense of worth and value. Whilst society flatters us in our social standing and we are rewarded materially with the wealth of a successful career, we can be fooled into thinking that everything is all right. When the fine balance between our health and material well-being is derailed somehow, we can also have a wobble in our faith life. It is Jesus that adds everything to our lives, not us. There are times where in order to get to the gold, you have to first mine through tons of ballast and waste before we can locate the treasure within.

It’s our pride that is wounded when problems emerge within our carefully crafted life. We think that if we can put all of the pieces of the jigsaw together ourselves, we can want to complete the puzzle ourselves in order to find meaning to our lives without God. The reality is that it is impossible to do it by ourselves. Very often, you find the very things that one group find so liberating, become a bondage as soon as the honeymoon period ends. Until you have given it all away to Jesus, you will always think that the world owes you the very things you think you have lost or felt entitled to. No matter how hard you try, you can seem to be getting nowhere. If indeed you do get to where you wanted to go, it is common to find that as soon as you have attained that success you craved, when you look at yourself, you are still the same. You feel no more complete than if you were still wishing on the dream.

When you have truly died to self, you are then ready to pick up the mantle that Jesus has given to each one of us, his grace. When we are following our own dream, and doing what we feel is right, it makes us feel good about ourselves for a season but in reality, we are lost in our own meaning of existence. When our dreams become all consuming, we elevate them beyond the ordinary, to a place of prestige – an anticipation or hopefulness for something better. When we fail to attain that which we aspire to, our inner self mourns for what we feel we have lost. Sometimes, when it is our own actions that cause the loss of an aspect of what we hope for, we can feel doubly conflicted in our emotions.

When we are looking for esteem from our family or from any other social status, or from any combination of cultural expressions we use to define ourselves, we are leaving ourselves prone to the frailty of our emotions and the loneliness of our humanity. If this reality really is our ‘one-life’ and we have not met the expectations we hold of ourselves, we are going to become increasingly frustrated with our lot. The increasingly nagging voice in our head telling us that we are a failure, makes us start to look for alternatives. 

"The number of marriages that have failed because one partner starts to look outside of the relationship for that elusive idea of a perfect partner, is currently at 13 per hour in the UK, with 71% of those being first marriages."

Many blame God for these distractions… our health and the loneliness of cancer for example, the onset of dementia - for those whose lives add so much richness to our own, being robbed of their identity through the loss of their own mind; their memories and personality seemingly lost to eternity. There are so many strands to our humanity for which their absence grieves us; in whose dilemma we share and in whose burden we would love to take away from them. When all seems impossible and we are looking for the improbable to occur, we blame God for it not happening as we want it to. We might profess to disown God for the majority of our lives, yet when trouble knocks on our door, we look for a source outside of our experience to recompense us for our calamity.

God is more than a convenient metaphor for someone or something out there that can become a target for our frustration. When our hope is dashed, or our dreams dampened and our human frailty uncovered, we recognise that beyond our status, beyond our material wealth, beyond even our conscious thinking, there is still a small voice calling out to us, knocking at the door of each of our lives, waiting to be invited in. This voice is Jesus calling out to us: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for my souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30, NLT)

What is it that we need rest from? How can we identify with Jesus here? The answer is never easy because we all think that we are impervious to the storms of life, comfortable in who we are and these terrible things happen to others, not me. There is also the other extreme, where people believe that God is indeed dead. He is a figment of an immature and superstitious mind that has been superseded by science and reason. 


Yet knowledge fades, generations come and go and even science changes its mind. But what remains, is still the same question we have all asked; ‘What is our purpose? How did we get here? What are we to become? Only God offers an answer to these questions, and we can find our purpose in the completeness of Jesus. Jesus said that he was the source of living water, he was the bread of life and he had come to do his Fathers will. So in the analogy that Jesus uses of himself, we can sense that in him, we will nourish our spiritual needs through his presence and by entering into a relationship with him, we can find what we are truly looking for.

“I am the way, the truth and the life. No one can come to the father except through me.” (John 14:6)

It is so hard to come to this place because we feel we need so many other things in our lives. Even those of us who have travelled with God for many years find this journey, a difficult path to take. It is so much more convenient to hold onto our grief or onto our pain, thinking that we cannot give it up. Sometimes we use this pain to help define who we are. It becomes such a fall-back to our personality, that we forget that it was ever painful. We react according to our character, thinking that everything is going well for a while until something stops us in our tracks. There is bitterness in this place, where we can become anaesthetised to the dull ache inside of our conscious thinking, moving swiftly on to the next experience or action, so that we do not dwell there for too long.

Is this really life as we would want it or would we be glad to be rid of it? Do we really want to carry around our secret pain, out of view and out of mind, but always present and always disparaging? No amount of coping mechanisms, such as ‘Mindfulness’, the new self-help technique stolen from Buddhism but adopted in the City of London to help those working on the stock market to deal with the stress, can account for the completeness in which God removes our self-doubt. In all of the self-help strategies we might employ in psychotherapy sessions, there is always the need for each one of us to take control, learn how to manage our emotions, and seek within ourselves, a method of distancing ourselves from our fears. This however is a futile effort because as soon as we feel that one action has been conquered, another one slots into place that was bigger than the first.

Like Jesus’ disciples in the storm on the lake, they were petrified at what they saw, yet Jesus was asleep in the bottom of the boat, oblivious of the storm. He had peace in the middle of the storm because he was secure in his identity. Wouldn’t we appreciate this peace? I know that I would. Accepting Jesus as Lord of our lives is sealed by the comfort of the Holy Spirit, who reassures us of our place in the grander scheme of life which is eternal. 

"When we accept Jesus into our lives as the source of our esteem, we also begin an eternal life, where we learn through the help of the Holy Spirit, to undo all of the hurt that we have endured for far too long. All the bitterness and hate that we feel towards ourselves or others who have harmed us, can be unburdened at the foot of the cross, with the Holy Spirit as guide. We can leave all our hurt behind and look forward to a new expression of life through Jesus who has the power to save us from ourselves."

What a glorious life it will be, when we truly know we are set free from our human frailty, anchoring our lives in the here and now, gaining our inheritance as sons and daughters of the living God. There is a purpose to your life which you are free to live today. Whatever you are having to endure, God is right there with you. You may not get the answer you were looking for but you will still get an answer, even if it is no. You may not even receive a sign that the answer is no but it is clear with the passage of time, that you may need to learn to live with the situation you are experiencing, despite how you might feel about it, giving glory to God for the privilege of being able to honour him in spite of what we might naturally think or feel.

In this, we learn to esteem our saviour and in return, he lifts us up in the throne room of grace to declare to our heavenly Father that we are co heirs in Jesus' inheritance who clothes us in his righteousness. The stain of our sin is gone and we can stand complete.

New World Order

David Cameron, the UK Prime Minister, has stepped into a political and sociological muddle between humanism and religion, stating over Easter that he is a Christian and practices a private faith that has significance to his life. He furthered this by making the rather strained link that the UK was a Christian country and that our churches should have a louder voice in the moral direction of UK plc.

I say strained because the last time I looked, there were more people in Southend High Street on a Sunday morning than in the town’s churches. Quite expectedly the very next day, the Humanist Society had issued its usual open letter, penned by a number of scientists, philosophers, lawyers, entertainers and celebrities that the UK, isn't in fact a Christian country; even going as far as to say that such sentiment over a nostalgic past is divisive.


 

These people, who are representing whomever their sponsors may be, chose to speak out on Easter Monday, at the height of the celebrations, to propose that the UK is a multi-religious society or preferably, non-religious in identity. Groups who resent the Christian label, in favour of a more pluralist or utopian view, believe that religious expression is an unwarranted indulgence for those in public life. However, it is clear that this propaganda move over the Easter period is not inclusive, nor is it egalitarian in nature. Their statement is self-serving in that it promotes the values of the humanist society over that of other people's worldviews, and does not represent the views of the population at large.

When you look at the humanist agenda within the UK, Christianity is not the only source of its frustration. It also sees no need for holistic remedies or give precedence to anything of a metaphysical nature that contravenes its own understanding of science and the natural world. Indeed its pursuit of a rational world view, tramples on the toes of those who do not share their opinion, regardless of creed or colour. By insisting on their own model and no other, they have failed in their understanding of the human condition and have consequently succumbed to the kind of fundamentalism they blame religion on inciting.

"If indeed, only one way is the right way, then we will have difficulty achieving any form of consensus, particularly if our reasoning is deemed corrupted by unproven relics of a religious past. There are some humanists and natural scientists who would prefer to see the final death throes of religion by legislating it out of the civic arena, into a more private faith that should not be spoken of in public life."

This view is very similar to that of Roman culture, experienced at the birth of Christianity, when the Emperor Caesar, whose status was considered to be that of a minor deity, ruled absolutely through taxation and the support of an elite fighting force, to enhance his own cause and no other. Faith was a personal, private affair: 'for the glory of Rome' was the cry that each citizen publicly expressed, swearing allegiance to Caesar, as faith in his abilities is what prospered you in society.

At first, the followers of ‘the way’, as early Christians were referred to, were seen as a sect of Judaism. Jesus was crucified by Pontius Pilate as, the King of the Jews. When the Roman occupation was threatened by insurgents and fundamentalists from the north, keen on freeing the subjugated people from Roman rule, Christians became a popular scapegoat. It was easy to convince the population, that Rome’s security was weakened by those who did not worship Roman gods... as these Christians worshipped a different God, it was argued that their lack of faith in Caesar brought anger from the Roman gods, leaving Rome vulnerable to attack.

Such was Caesar’s power and influence over people’s lives, the Roman Empire survived in name at least through the governance of the church, long after Constantine had converted to Christianity. The world map, once united by the Holy Roman Empire, slowly fragmented from one imperial super state into a feudal system, with the new nations of Europe such as Britain, France and Germany, exerting their influence over world affairs.

Instead of the might of the Roman army, controlled by a strong Caesar, it was the Pope and the church that filled the vacuum of leadership, helping to spread Christianity to the barbarians in Northern Europe. So in this respect, the UK did indeed become a Christian nation as each missionary that brought the Gospel to our shores taught and educated the people. Unfortunately, as with all things where people are involved, corruption is never far away from opportunity… power corrupts absolutely, no matter the cause.

After decades of religious influence on the affairs of state, a new secularism has emerged within our culture and with it, a new confidence to reject forms of religious expression that used to define the UK and other countries of Western Europe.

Modernity and reason has replaced what is now regarded as religious superstition, with science and relativism taking the place of religious worship. If you hanker after the sensibilities of the past, then that is to be kept a private affair; best not disclose these matters in a more civilized and enlightened culture that has discarded these stuffy ideas... religious untruth that have served no other purpose than to cause guilt and hold humanity back.

With this in mind, I read with interest in China, that the great social experiment of the Cultural Revolution, begun by Chairman Mao in 1966, has become eroded by a new expression of Christianity, which had been suppressed for many years. China, being the embodiment of an atheist state that exerted absolute authority on all aspects of the lives of its subjects, has become wary of the effects of Christian teaching on its ability to control the population.

It is odd that in these uniquely egalitarian, pluralistic and secular societies, that those in government would feel the need to control the population in such a way as to deny them their basic human rights. In our western world view, we embody humanity with having basic rights by which we hold all people to, considering  it unjust, when we see those rights being abused. Yet where does the premise for humanity having universal rights come from? The scientific answer would be that our perception of human rights developed within our gene's because it suited our survival. I struggle with this argument because inclusively prospering all cultures seems contrary to natural selection, as we are told that each culture seeks to preserve its own uniqueness or dominance in some form, in order for it to have the best chance of survival. We would surely be more confident of our survival when we view the demise of a rival culture, in order to allow our own society to prosper?

However, there is something much greater at work here, beyond the reasoning of science. Science would be happy to say we just don’t know where this form of universal ethic originates and yet it is quick to assert that the answer certainly isn't God. However, you cannot discount God, particularly if we are to approach these matters with an open mind. 

"My experience is that men and women would be more prepared to believe in the metachlorians of Star Wars than believe in God. The rational mind is an odd commodity, only willing to accommodate what it chooses to; discarding anything that doesn't fit with its approximation of life."

Is this really our existence? Is life really a random coincidence of probability? Do we accept that the planet earth exists because out of all the multiple universes, by chance, we happen to have all of the ingredients required for supporting sentient life? Is the earth the epicenter for life as we know it… or do we look out to the stars, hoping that out there, somewhere, there could be sentient life evolving independently of our own, reassuring us of our cosmic inheritance? As a natural scientist, you would have to believe that life could exist in other universes, so that you can discount the notion that our existence has been fine-tuned within the vastness of the cosmos, by a mind or designer who brought it all into being for our sake.

To that end, you would invest a lot of time and resource into exploring the cosmos in search for evidence that life exists outside of the earth. Perhaps that is why so much air-time was granted to the discovery of Kepler 186f. This planet at the edge of the habitable sphere of the star in which they revolve, has been hypothesised to support life similar to ours on earth because it is roughly the same size and mass. TV shows have already animated what life on earths cousin could look like and how the earth-like terrain might appear. This type of propaganda is important because it's easier to put this type of information into the public domain, speculating that the science behind it is good, when it is almost impossible to communicate the theoretical models used to propose these claims to a general audience without it.

The theist asserts that the mind, which fine-tuned the cosmos in order to support life as we know it today, is indeed God. The classic analogy is of the watchmaker. The watch, when built, doesn't require the watch maker in day-to-day operation but you can see his handiwork throughout the timepiece. The watch maker’s role changes from designer and builder, to one of maintenance and from time-to-time, the need for adjustment. Indeed, when wound fully, the watch need not consider its maker because it is fully self-sufficient, particularly the kinetic watches that can keep themselves wound up. Any fault within the machine may not be immediately obvious, as it could lose time over an hour or even gain time... or the hourly chime might fail or the alarm malfunction.

Some deem this analogy to be too childlike in nature but it is not as silly as it might sound. We do ignore things in our world until it is too late, look at climate change for instance. In cellular biology, it is reported that each cell under observation of an electron microscope, has an arrangement of bio mechanical parts within the cell, which function as though they are an engine, powering the cell with energy. Without this machine, snappily called an ATP Syntheses, our cells would not have sufficient energy in which to perform their function. The idea that there are tiny machines powering our bodies, which in and of itself, is a large biological machine, is amazing. The science is overwhelmingly fascinating and leads me to believe philosophically and theologically that there is a purpose to our existence that goes beyond evolutionary processes. 

Those against people holding a belief in God, would argue vehemently with this type of statement, insisting that these microscopic machines are not evidence of an intelligent mind behind the biochemistry, but a simple requirement of evolution. Preferring instead to infer by implication that before the cell was formed and before it coalesced into the simple building blocks that facilitated life as we know it today, there was the necessary chemical and biological knowledge within the evolutionary processes taking place, to evolve these machines. Some may go so far as to suggest that theists should change their minds about the nature of God in the light of scientific discovery.

"It’s almost as though natural science feels that is has exclusive ownership of the interpretation of any new discoveries that help us to understand how our bodies work and the theist should stick to their Bible, if that is what they want to believe. However complicated the chemistry, biology or the physics needed to understand these new discoveries, their existence alone cannot spark life from the nothingness that existed before the big bang. How can nothing become something?"

So let's talk about the Bible for a moment, with its mixture of history, narrative, metaphor, philosophy, poetry, reason and law. It cannot tell us about the discoveries of science and technology today because the ancient patriarchs who recorded their observations of the world around them, did so from the perspective of their contextual understanding. This approach enabled these writers, keen to record the collected wisdom of the culture, to interpret what they knew to be true, based on what they had seen and heard. The Biblical interpretation of the ancient world recorded in its pages, echo the will of God through the lives of those contained in the written account.

In the beginning, the author of Genesis, trying to make sense of the civilised world in which he was writing, declares that the spirit of God hovered over the waters. This metaphor of water, is used to describe the barrier between God and his creation. The earth as they knew it, once stood empty and formless. God said, “Let there be light…” There is room here in this opening statement for the big bang to occur, if that is what scientifically fits the evidence, as well as accommodate the possibility of a supernatural event occurring, where the sun is created.

The author then suggests that our atmosphere is the next element to form in the timeline of the planets birth. Perhaps even before some form of plate tectonics occur to account for the land forming out of the sea. Later, the moon and the stars are formed to cast light onto the earth, perhaps suggesting the expansion of the cosmos from one point in time. Then we hear of the sea swarming with fish and other creatures, then birds, then the animals; all seemingly fitting with evolutionary processes and the origins of species. 

Why are we amazed, particularly evolutionary scientists, at how the DNA of different species are interrelated? The theist has always argued that it is because God designed it this way. Whether you believe purely in Darwin’s theory of evolution or in the divine intervention of God with the power and authority to create new life, the elements from which that life was created, have synergy with the earth on which they belong. 

"Both creation and evolution, signpost a starting point in time; both need a beginning - an action, a causation."

 

Christians derive a sense of purpose through their understanding of our relationship with the author of creation. This is not blind faith, but a reasoned response to the evidence presented before us. If you are an atheist, you will not even contemplate God as an agent of change in creation, preferring instead to wait for a best-fit model that is too complicated for the lay person to comprehend. This put’s man’s knowledge in a fairly lofty position, unattainable by most, and elitist in conception. I have heard scientists in argument state that you or I couldn't understand the ‘math’ behind the science so just take their word for it about quantum mechanics and believe what we say about the formation of the earth.

However complicated the science, I do want to see the evidence for the models being developed, as Darwin did before them, when he presented his theory of natural selection in 1858 after 30 years of research. The agnostic sits in the middle, perhaps willing to accept that there could be a God but they are not so certain that they would believe it fully, as there could be alternatives to God. Then we have the theist, who would assert that God has a purpose for this world that he created, which helps us to make sense of it. He determined the cosmology of the earth’s location within its orbit around the sun and its position within the galaxy to support sentient life. This viewpoint is preferred over the random probability of quantum mechanics, where life is described as existing because in all probability, it was mathematically possible.

"Suppose for a moment, that God is not so much a superhero in the sense that he has fantastic powers, rather he is the unconditioned cause of our reality. God is what grounds the existence of every contingent thing, making all things possible, sustaining our existence through the journey of time, unifying our experiences, and giving us purpose. God is the agent who causes our reality to exist and we respond automatically to his presence at work in creation. This distinction is highlighted to make it clear to the reader that humanity was created as a distinctive work of God within the created order."

 

But more than this, we can have a personal relationship with God if we are willing to enter into it. Like all good relationships, when we first develop a fondness for the other person, either through their appearance or through spending time with them, we look for tangible evidence that we might be compatible. There are two markers we can use for grounding our relationship with God. The first is found in our likeness to God, and the second is found in the life of Jesus. In Genesis 1 and 2, we find that man was created separately from the fish of the sea, the birds of the air and indeed, the animals of the land.

First this: God created the Heavens and Earth—all you see, all you don’t see. Earth was a soup of nothingness, a bottomless emptiness, an inky blackness. God’s Spirit brooded like a bird above the watery abyss. God spoke: “Light!" And light appeared. God saw that light was good and separated light from dark. God named the light Day, he named the dark Night. It was evening, it was morning-Day One. God spoke: “Sky! In the middle of the waters, separate water from waters. God made sky. He separated the water under sky from the water above sky. And there it was: he named sky the Heavens;it was evening, it was morning-Day Two. God spoke: “Separate! Water-beneath-Heaven, gather into one place. Land, appear! And there it was. God named the land Earth. He named the pooled water Ocean. God saw that it was good. God spoke: “Earth, green up! Grow all varieties of seed-bearing plants. Every sort of fruit-bearing tree.” And there it was. Earth produced green seed-bearing plants, all varieties, and fruit-bearing trees of all sorts. God saw that it was good. It was evening, it was morning- Day Three. God spoke: “Lights! Come out! Shine in Heaven’s sky! Separate Day from Night. Mark seasons and days and years, lights in Heaven’s sky to give light to Earth.” And there it was. God made two big lights, the larger to take charge of Day, the smaller to be in charge of Night; and he made the stars. God placed them in the heavenly sky to light up Earth and oversee Day and Night, to separate light and dark. God saw that it was good. It was evening, it was morning-Day Four. God spoke: “Swarm, Ocean, with fish and all sea life! Birds, fly through the sky over Earth!” God created the huge whales, all the swarm of life in the waters, and every kind and species of flying birds. God saw that it was good. God blessed them: “Prosper! Reproduce! Fill Ocean! Birds, reproduce on Earth. It was evening, it was morning-Day Five. God spoke: “Earth, generate life! Every sort and kind: cattle and reptiles and wild animals—all kinds.” And there it was: wild animals of every kind, Cattle of all kinds, every sort of reptile and bug. God saw that it was good. God spoke: “Let us make human beings in our image, make them reflecting our nature so they can be responsible for the fish in the sea, the birds in the air, the cattle, and, yes, Earth itself, and every animal that moves on the face of Earth.” God created human beings, he created them godlike, Reflecting God’s nature. He created them male and female. God blessed them: “Prosper! Reproduce! Fill Earth! Take charge! Be responsible for fish in the sea and birds in the air, for every living thing that moves on the face of Earth.” Then God said, “I've given you every sort of seed-bearing plant on Earth and every kind of fruit-bearing tree, given them to you for food. To all animals and all birds, everything that moves and breathes, I give whatever grows out of the ground for food." And there it was. God looked over everything he had made; it was so good, so very good! It was evening, it was morning-Day Six. (Genesis 1, The Message)

The Biblical narrative was not written as a science textbook but the evolutionary timeline described within its pages both mirror and contrast with the evolutionary models we read today. Where man is perceived to have evolved from the sea, the Bible clearly identifies man being formed from the dust of the earth. What is distinctive in the narrative is that God breathed life into the man: God was the causation of the man’s life. 

The dust of the earth could be a Biblical reference to the genetic material common to all species of the earth that man is symbiotically linked with, as these are the natural elements that make up the fabric of earth. It has however, proven difficult to create a cell or the amino acids necessary to formulate cells in the laboratory, with scientists choosing to devolve cells into the simplest of building blocks for sustaining life from higher order organisms. However, no biological organism has been sparked into life from these chemical building blocks.

"Research into Biochemistry has not yet proven in the 156 years since Darwin proposed his Origin of Species, that sentient life can evolve from the basic elements of the developing earth. It will take great faith to place your trust in this research in the hope that someday there may be an answer."

This is the limit to my understanding of the science as I am not a chemist, biologist or physicist. I can follow the thread of the hypothesis being proposed and I respect the integrity of the research. I am however, always puzzled when scientists use their highly evolved theoretical model's to philosophically explain how our universe was formed in the nothingness of space, or how life began, when such sketchy, although mathematically complex data is used. Here too, there has to be faith in the model above all else, even when elements of it are as  hypothetical as the theists claim for intelligent design may seem to be to the scientist. 

I am however, far better convinced with the Biblical account; that the author of creation breathed life into us. I am more open to the trustworthiness of the source, particularly when we are being told by scientists that the model they are using to explain our existence, is too complicated for me to understand. My question is then not a scientific one, about how things exist but a philosophical one... Why do we exist? God fits this question perfectly... Jesus was a real person who we can relate to and in whose teaching, we can find evidence for our earthly existence.

To be able to develop our relationship with God, we need to look at the life of Jesus. We can identify with his humanity, as he was a man living in the context of his community. So why do we need to consider Jesus as being divine? The Jews certainly rejected Jesus as their Messiah because he spoke out against the religious leaders who subsequently plotted against him and sent him to his death on the cross. Islam recognises Jesus as a lesser prophet to Mohammed and in no way is he divine. So why does Christianity assert that Jesus is the real deal against such opposition?

Christians accept Jesus as being divine because of the evidence presented in the Bible and in the eyewitness accounts of his life and work, his death and his resurrection. These accounts are verifiable because they come from secular historians as well as Christian writers. Being both man and God, we have in Jesus, someone who we can recognise as knowing all that we know about the frailty of our humanity and the conflicted nature of our character. God knows that we have it within ourselves to show intense compassion and hospitality and yet vehemently defend wrong actions and inconsistencies within our choices. We can prefer serving the welfare of others over our own desires or practice the exact opposite, being selfish and conceited.

Jesus was born into our human nature, yet we know from his experience in the desert after his baptism by John, that he chose to honour his father by his actions, rather than seek after his own ambition. The devil tempted Jesus in the desert with food, symbolic of material well-being when he was hungry and thirsty; he was encouraged to test the will of God – to force his hand; and he was encouraged to worship false gods in return of short term gain. We are each tested in similar ways today.

"What ethical or moral standards are we willing to compromise to get what we want? How far are we willing to push the patience of those who have our best interests at heart, breaking the boundaries of that relationship and straining the bonds that unite us in community? What alliances or memberships are we willing to sign up to, that might compromise our integrity and the direction we are heading, all for the prospect of short term gain?"

 

The lengths to which humans are willing to go to in order to preserve their quality of life, over the interests of others, is endemic within our nature. At the same time, there are however, genuinely warm hearted and inclusive people who I meet every day, who seek out the best in themselves and others, seeking to serve rather than just take what is on offer without giving anything back. When we look to Jesus, we see that he doesn't blow hot and cold, neither does he compromise on his goal to reveal the way that we can seek out God's grace. This is why we can trust his teaching and believe the promises he makes of God’s love for us. Jesus reveals a new world order where sin can be forgiven and our bodies can be healed.

We can believe this truth because of Jesus’ character and because his suffering on the cross fulfilled the purposes of God. God is by nature holy. Holiness is a state of being that is morally and ethically incorruptible and from which all truth can be discerned. This truth is absolute and can therefore be used to dispense justice and by default, identify actions that are contrary to his will. The conflict between our will and God’s purposes for his creation, is what causes us to question his sovereignty over our lives. Some reject God’s claim on our lives as creator because they cannot reconcile what we want out of life with what God wants from us. We are called to honour God with our lives, which means that we adopt a lifestyle that is lived how God intended.

However, we all fall short of this standard when our actions are compromised by our human nature. In theological terms we call this sin. In the everyday, sin works its way into our lives when we ignore our conscious leaning in favour of doing what we feel is right. However well-meaning our decision’s, we seek to preserve what we feel is rightfully ours. If we place our ambition alongside the holiness of God, the purity of his justice, exposes our weaknesses and we find ourselves in need of redemption.

Redemption is simply the process of restoring the bond between the victim and the offender, which has been broken as a result of our sin. When a wrong is put right, a payment or forfeit is usually offered to correct the mistake and restore that which has been lost. In the case of humanity, it’s our relationship with God that is broken when we continue to live lives contrary to his expectations. We call this payment, atonement.  

Our lives can be put right with God when we recognise our sin and our need for redemption. We cannot do this for ourselves because of our sin, so we look again to Jesus for the solution. Jesus referred to himself on many occasions as the Son of Man:  “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many." (Mark 10:45)

Jesus’ death on the cross became the atonement that we all seek when we recognise our sin and know we need to do something about it. Jesus went to the cross to accept on our behalf before God, the punishment that we deserved. By offering his life as a sacrifice, the selflessness by which he shed his blood is enough to atone for the sin of the whole world, not just our own. However, there is something more to the title: Son of Man. In the Old Testament book of Daniel 7:13-14, the phrase also means ‘exalted one.’ Jesus is clearly stating, by using the Son of Man phrase, that he is both fully human and fully divine. 

Being God, Jesus’ purity and holiness binds our sin to the cross and in his death we are released from paying this price. His bodily resurrection reveals that the curse of sin, death, has been defeated. Only God can raise the dead to life, so we have to assume that Jesus was God because of the sheer number of eye-witness accounts, testifying to the truth of his resurrection. Jesus offers all those who choose him, atonement from sin and a new, eternal life, where we will be with him in paradise.

The atheist will reject this truth because our reasoning and our scientific understanding does not allow us to accommodate God’s omnipotence – having power and authority over the earth. It is perhaps easier to argue that people cannot be resuscitated beyond a few minutes of cardiac stimulation after death because we know that as fact. Yet in making this assumption, we deny God’s sovereignty over our whole being, which places us in sin, believing that our own understanding of the natural world somehow makes us better than God and we have no need of him.

"The philosophical argument for humanities need of God becomes high jacked by the sceptical realism of natural science. The scientist will always state that God isn't real and we can all live happy and fulfilled lives without God. While we examine the philosophical and theistic reason for humanities need of God, we seem prepared to wait for the scientific answers for life, even if those answers may not be forthcoming in our lifetime."

The reason for this reaction, is often to do with our discomfort at accommodating the thought that our mind and character may be compromised and that we get things wrong; that we may need to account for the wrong actions we have taken. We are not prepared to accept the judgement of a God we do not care for nor have asked for. However, humanities track record stands testament to our faults. 

The financial crisis experienced throughout Western Europe was a direct result of financial miss-management. In our pursuit of wealth, we can make poor business choices. If we deceive those with little so that they lose all that they have, then we have fundamentally harmed the society we are part of, for the sake of greed. I’m thinking of the legalised loan sharks in the UK who legitimately use British law, to offer pay-day loans at upwards of 3000% to people who are struggling to make ends meet.

"These organisations have no problems with this because they believe that they are doing humanity a service. So borrowing £10 and having to pay back £310 is acceptable? Well if you are desperate, you would be ‘grateful’ of this service wouldn’t you? This is unjust and is condoned in law, advertising on children television channels and preying on the vulnerable."

If humanity is willing to do this with finance, what else is it prepared to do? Knowing that our nature is corrupted by the modern disease of ‘doing what you feel is right’, has led us down avenues of human existence that God would not want us to experience because he loves us. You might say then, ‘So why not just come and redeem us? If God can do all things and is all knowing, why not dispense with the suffering in the world and come and sort it out, end the wars, heal the sick, repair the environment, restore what is broken?” The answer to this is clear. If God did indeed do as you ask, would we love him for it and continue to obey his will, or would we quickly return to the attitude we have towards God today?

The evidence would suggest the latter. God doesn't call people to himself in slavery or as puppets of his will, he wants us to have free will, and he wants us to choose him for who he is. God chose to create us and the world in which we live, knowing what we would become; knowing how we would mess it up! In order for us to continue in relationship with God against this background, God also provided the solution in his son Jesus. Jesus came into our ‘space and time’ as the Son of Man, to provide a way for us to make the choice to follow him. 

"This has a cost: we have to deny our human nature and admit our sin." 

God makes this easier for us because firstly, we no longer need to make a payment in response to sin because Jesus paid the ransom for us and secondly, we are gifted with the guidance and empowerment of the Holy Spirit to support our journey.

Jesus’ death on the cross is transformed into a gift of Grace. Jesus states that all who come to him will be saved. We need to make no payment except for our willingness to surrender our sinfulness, choosing instead to honour the will of God who loves us, and knows us better than we know ourselves. This is not easy and many tears are to be had, as we recognise the corruption in our lives. We seek God for forgiveness for causing hurt to others through our actions and indeed, we recognise our need for healing because of our remorse for what we have done and the damage that others have inflicted on us. This is the beginning of the journey and it can seem overwhelming at first when we come to terms with the lives we once lived; we are often broken by it.

The good news is that God administers his grace freely and without condemnation. It becomes a joy to serve his will because our soul was destined for that. We don’t regret for a moment, turning from the things that the world believes that we need for contentment, in favour of God’s grace towards us. Our relationship with the creator of life, empowers us to enjoy every moment living selflessly because we know of his mercy towards us. However, we still make mistakes. I am riddled with a conflicted spirit and can be easily exasperated like today for example, when my students cannot print their design onto a piece of card at 13 years of age, when I had moments earlier explained it… I am not so loving in my responses to that. Jamie Stilson, a Vineyard pastor in Cape Coral, Florida, has written a book about it called the Power of Ugly.

In the book, Jamie encourages each one of us to rip away the façade of perfection and embrace our ugliness. We are far more powerful when we adopt the position of vulnerability, while allowing God’s grace to work through us for the good of all, in whatever position or situation we face. An example of this is in my workplace. My colleagues and I are extremely stressed by the pressure of government inspectors in school and the 'hoops' we are asked to go through in order to meet their expectations. Two of my immediate colleagues have experienced physical symptoms as a result of managing the stress; one colleague contracting Bell’s palsy and the other, experiencing acute anxiety each morning that leads to bouts of absence.

I feel the same pressures that they do but my faith allows me to process my thoughts and feelings in a different manner to which they are accustomed. I know that I am loved by God for who I am, ‘warts-n-all’, which releases me from the burden of my work being my sole definition of who I am. Yes, I will try to honour my employer, but I will not compromise on my own sense of worth, my ethical considerations or my desire to serve God in my workplace.

My faith helps me deal with the negativity and the scorn that we all feel from time-to-time, and gives me the confidence to know that my ultimate destiny has been secured by Jesus on the cross. This is all that matters in this reality. Christians consider themselves to be foreigners in a land, where those on a different path, hurry along with their own concerns, trying to make the most of this one life. I don’t think that science has all of the answers by which the humanist can feel secure enough to believe that they can discount God out-of-hand.

Many who oppose religions place in society, whether it be in our schools or in our civic life, do so because they do not like the apparent rhetoric regarding man’s sinfulness and our need for redemption through Jesus and certainly, there is no desire to accept God as the answer to the questions that science cannot answer or the moral barometer by which we judge our conduct. Is the United Kingdom Christian? Well as a community, we no longer worship God corporately, and the time when offering prayer in civic meetings was a natural start to a formal meeting has long since passed.

However, the legacy of Christian values in our justice system, our service to members of the general public and our welfare support, are steeped in Jesus teachings to support the weak and poor in society, honour the widow, and to love our neighbour as we love ourselves. These virtues of British society has served us successfully for millennia and it is in these that we could profess to be uniquely Christian in nature. There is little patience by certain groups in the UK for the need to service the whims of Christianity within our political system, with calls to terminate the role of the Queen as head of state and head of the Church of England. This is the last expression of faith in a nation that once spread Christianity to all corners of the globe.

Our choice is a simple one. Trust in the theoretical world of science and realism that seeks to know all that there is to know as long as it fits with the preconceptions of the natural order of life, closing our minds to the unexplained as being irrational. Or to embrace all of the evidence with an open mind, sifting through untruth until only truth remains. This may lead you to a realisation that some of our questions remain unanswered. I believe that Jesus holds the key to those questions because of his historical authenticity and my experience of Jesus at work in my life. These are not scientifically tested but they are historically verifiable. In the end, it is your choice what you would prefer to believe. I can only hope that you choose life.