All One in Christ JesusHumanists adhere to ethical values which belong to a tradition which they claim to have discarded. A good example of this is the modern notion that all ethnic groups are 'equal', therefore it is wrong to discriminate against members of racial minorities, to denigrate or abuse them verbally. Most reasonable people would agree with this principle. Even so it is worth asking exactly on what basis racial discrimination is morally wrong — who laid down this principle? To this, the Bible gives a clear and unambiguous answer. From earliest times God's people were commanded to show compassion for the 'alien' (i.e. the immigrant) who, with the orphan and the widow, was to be protected from exploitation:
He (the Lord) defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the alien, giving him food and clothing. And you are to love those who are aliens, for you yourselves were aliens in Egypt (Deuteronomy 10:18,19).
God had shown compassion towards His people when they were strangers in another land, therefore they must show the same compassion towards members of other races who lived among them. As always, it is the character of God which determines human conduct. The Bible proclaims a vision of human unity based upon the fact that all nations and races are the creation of a God who has a purpose for mankind:
"From one man He (God) made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth, and He determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live" (Acts 17:26).
Therefore, for members of one racial or cultural group to despise members of another group is contrary to the will of God.
The Apostle Paul describes the Christian ideal of a community of men and women sharing a unity in Christ and a status before God in which all distinctions of race and gender are transcended. He writes:
"There is neither few nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for van arc all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28).
This is surely the ideal after which humanists are striving, but which they can never attain despite all their talk of equality. freedom and rights. The Apostle Paul does not predict that these ideals can be attained through parliamentary legislation, or social reform. They can be attained only by those who are united under the fatherhood of God and the lordship of Jesus Christ.
It was in part this biblical view that all men have value in the sight of God that inspired the great reformers of the past to abolish slavery and serfdom and improve the conditions in factories and prisons. It inspired them to denounce as immoral anything which violated the dignity which Christianity attributed to mankind. While rejecting this Christian vision, liberal humanism still affirms the wrongness of discrimination, and often pursues the crusade against it with great dogmatism. Yet in the absence of the original Christian ideal, the justification for this goal is no longer clear.
If we are not in fact the creation of a wise and loving God, then we are left with a purely naturalistic explanation for our existence. A Darwinian account of human origins sees life as a struggle, in which we have evolved according to the principle of the survival of the fittest and strongest. The strong must eliminate the weak in order to survive. It was an interpretation of Darwinism which gave us racism in the original sense of the term, i.e. the belief that some races of mankind are further up the evolutionary scale than others, and are therefore have a greater capacity for civilisation.
The study of nature does not teach the equality of the races nor do the laws of nature teach us that conflict and exploitation are immoral. On its own nature is neither good nor evil. Humanism, however, does not always take its own beliefs to their logical conclusion.
As in so many issues, liberal humanism has borrowed certain ideas, principles and phrases from Christianity — human dignity, brotherhood of man. tolerance, freedom, equality — setting them up as though they were basic laws of our being. But detached from the context which once gave them meaning, they appear increasingly arbitrary and lacking any real authority.
“Humanism as a doctrine tends to be somewhat vague, powerless and lacking in the power to stir the imagination. Like streams which flow into the desert and disappear in the sand, it tends to ebb away and leave a religions vacuum.” (Lloyd Geering, Faith's New Age, p.165).
Accident of Nature or Divine Creation?Our answer to such questions as—Where have we come from?—and—What is the purpose of our existence?—will inevitably influence the way we conduct ourselves. If we believe that the world was created by a wise and loving God, who desires our eternal welfare, then we will tend to conduct ourself in a way that is consistent with that interpretation of human life. If we believe that our existence is no more than an accident of nature, then we will tend towards attitudes and behaviour quite different. It is a bit like children who inevitably develop in different ways depending on whether or not they were brought up by parents who love and trust them.
However, there are many voices in the modern world who assure us that God has no part at all in our origin or in our ultimate destiny. He makes no moral demands upon us. He does not even exist. We are nothing more than an accidental offshoot of the processes of nature, an intelligent species of animal which, by a caprice of the evolutionary process has developed a larger brain than the other.
If such an atheistic explanation for our origins is true however, then we are no longer potential children of our heavenly Father, made for eternal fellowship with Him. Therefore we have no destiny. The individual will die and that is the end of him forever. Eventually the whole human race will become extinct. Human life is a "tale told by an idiot". Much of modern culture, its art, films and literature reflects this moral and spiritual emptiness—reflects it and influences it: life without the hope and the vision which faith in God once provided.
“That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs arc but the outcome of the accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labour of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, arc destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins—all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, arc yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built (Bertrand Russell, Mysticism and Logic, p.47).
"Not by Bread alone ..." Modern society has many benefits, technology has provided the means to travel, to communicate, to cure disease. As a result people enjoy better health, they live longer, they have more money and time, they can fill their houses with electronic gadgets. At the same time many feel that there is something profoundly wrong at the very heart of modern society and that for all the technical progress around us, we have lost something and that our humanity is debased when we live without that spiritual dimension.
"Man shall not live by bread alone", said Jesus, "but by every word which comes from God" (Matthew 4:4). He meant that people cannot live only on a material level. They need a spiritual dimension also. It is surely this need which has inspired a reaction against what many see as the dehumanising influence of science and its purely materialistic explanation for human life. Many have turned to alternative forms of spirituality offered by a proliferation of cults and pseudo-religions: astrology, the worship of Gaia, New Age philosophy, the occult, witchcraft. All these are surely expressions of a deep-rooted desire to believe in something. They are a reminder also that human nature needs a hope, a vision to live by. G. K. Chesterton is reported to have remarked: "When men cease to believe in God they do not then believe in nothing, they believe in anything'". It could be said that there is a 'god-shaped hole" in the human heart. If traditional forms of religion are seen as inadequate and the Biblical God is denied, then people will find a new object of worship, a new vision and a new hope.
“If redemption is to come, it has to come from outside the things that science and contemporary politics have to offer. It has to come from outside us altogether, from a recognition that our efforts on their own arc not enough. We have to see ourselves as part of a larger process, whose end is not just that human beings should breed and swarm, but that is addressed to higher ends. We exist neither to serve nature's blind reproductive ends, nor to manipulate nature for our own purposes.” (After Progress - Finding the Old Way Forward, Anthony O’Hear, p.248)
Failed Utopias There have been many attempts to bring about a new social order by revolution, by legislation, by economic means. They have all failed simply because it is impossible to impose the high ideals of humanism on a population by force or legislation. The ideals of Marxism were not evil. A society where each individual works for the common good was a noble ideal. But how can people be persuaded to treat their neighbours as brothers, to seek the interests of others before their own, to make selfless contributions to the common good? It simply does not work. Every attempt to impose moral improvement on people by government decree has failed, because government decrees are external to human nature.
Throughout the twentieth century the optimism about human capacity for self-improvement was repeatedly exposed as hollow. When the thin veneer of civilisation was removed and darker forces came to the surface, then the world was shown the barbarism of which human nature is still capable. War against civilians, tyranny, genocide and ethnic cleansing have repeatedly given the lie to the prophecies of unending progress so common at the turn of the 20th century.
The reason why man cannot achieve a perfect society is that the root cause of wars, injustice and tyranny are due to dark forces deep within the human psyche. Tanks and guns do not cause wars, secret police and prison camps do not erect tyrannies. Greed, pride, mistrust, folly, lust for power do. If the earth is polluted by the effluent of civilisation it is because the heart of man is polluted by greed. And the solution is not ideology, legislation or technology but a radical change of heart.
"What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you" (James 4:1).
The words of James describe the root cause of all conflict, whether it be on a personal level or between nations.
A New Heart For much of his life H.G. Wells proclaimed a Gospel of progress by technology and optimism. In time man could transform the world and inaugurate a new order based upon rational principles. By the end of his life, however, and during the Second World War, he wrote his final book, appropriately entitled Mind at the End of its Tether, in which he acknowledges that technical progress had not led to greater wisdom or maturity:
“The writer sees the world as a jaded world devoid of recuperative power. In the past he has liked to think that Man will pull out of his entanglements and start a new creative phase of human living. In the face of our universal inadequacy, that optimism has given place to a stoical cynicism. The old men behave for the most part meanly and disgustingly, and the young are spasmodic, foolish and all too easily misled. Man must go steeply up or down and the odds seem to be all in favour of his going down and out. If he goes up, then so great is the adaptation demanded of him that that he must cease to be a man. Ordinary man is at the end of his tether” (H.G. Wells, Mind at the End of its Tether p.30).
So writes one of the prophets of humanism. It is significant that Wells blames the nature of man for his inability to make progress, and that such progress can come only if man makes an adaptation to his basic nature. It is precisely this need for a change to man's basic nature that the Christian Gospel demands of those who accept it.
The Gospel of Jesus is radically different from all the Utopian dreams which have been promoted as offering the salvation of the world. His followers did not hear from him the political slogans of the freedom fighter nor the high ideals of the social reformer. A programme to put the world right or to strive for a more just society does not enter into his teaching nor did he urge his followers to undertake such a programme. Instead, he began the work of transformation where it was most needed —in the hearts of responsive individuals. His Gospel was given to remove from their hearts those things which stand as a barrier between them and God.
He looked forward to a future transformation of the whole world, urging his disciples to pray: "Your kingdom come, your will be done in earth as it is in heaven'" (Matthew 6:10). Significantly, he never described the economic, political or social arrangements of this future new order. He described only the qualities of character that must be shown by those who hoped to enter it. The citizens of God's Kingdom he taught, were "the poor in spirit", "the meek", "those who hunger and thirst for righteousness"—"Anyone who will not receive the Kingdom of God like a little child will not enter it" (Mark 10:15).
He taught that one day he will return in glory to judge the world and gather his disciples to himself. With this in mind, he urged his followers to view this world as a temporary sojourn; its wealth and pleasures, its loyalties and power struggles are not worth the allegiance or affection of those who have embarked upon this pilgrimage towards the Kingdom of God. Neither their security nor their true wealth are rooted in this passing life.
How then do we qualify for a place in that Kingdom? Jesus gave the answer: "Unless a man is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God" (John 3:3). To be "born again" means to be baptised, to be immersed in water. This symbolism of going into water and coming out again is a very important part of the Christian life. It means symbolically to die with Christ, that is, to put to death the selfish side of our nature, so that we can rise with him to newness of life (read Romans 6:1-19). In this way we turn from the darkness of this life with all its selfishness and futility and set ourselves instead to face the light of a new life derived from him.
A Transforming Influence The Apostle Paul provides a good example of this transformation. He began his career as an implacable enemy of the Christian Gospel, persecuting it as subversive of everything which he believed. Yet he was not wicked or irreligious. On the contrary, he strained every nerve to obey the law of Moses, to irradicate the badness within his heart. Despite this, he found that his efforts to obey the law were unsuccessful. This was because his own lower nature, what he called his 'flesh'. prevented him from achieving the moral perfection which the law demanded. (See Romans 7:7-25). But when he discovered that Jesus had returned from the dead then Paul found a new way to achieve moral goodness:
“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me (Galatians 2:20).
Notice in these words how closely the Apostle Paul identifies himself with the life of Christ, All that Paul had once been, the proud, self-righteous Pharisee, the intolerant persecutor had died in the waters of baptism. In another sense he lived on, yet not him, but Christ in him, as an influence and a power which came from beyond himself.
To return then to the question with which we began—can we be good without God? The answer is Yes, we can—but only up to a point. We can obey the law, pay our dues and live in peace with our fellow men. Nevertheless, we cannot achieve the standard of perfection which alone is pleasing to God. Only in Christ can we, like the Apostle Paul, find a new influence, a new power whose source lies outside ourselves and which can transform us in our innermost being and strengthen us to do what is right. In this way Christ's victory over sin can be a reality and a transforming influence in our lives. What Christ transforms us into is not something contrary to our nature, but what God intended all along that we should be. When we put His will before our own, then we find our true selves.
This is not to suggest that when we are joined to Christ we can expect to attain moral perfection within this life, or that all trace of sin and self-will is irradicated. That would be quite unrealistic. One who has been baptised is still very much subject to the weaknesses of human nature and to the temptations common to all men. Only on the other side of the resurrection of the dead will we attain perfection. But until then, we have the assurance that when we fail God will forgive us, strengthen us against temptation and enable us to move forward.
Jesus was the perfect man and only by his influence can we grow into that maturity for which God made us and fulfil the purpose and goal of our creation. "Then-fore, if anyone is in Christ be is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has conic!" (2 Corinthians 5:17).
But the fruit of the Spirit is lore, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we lire by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-25).
Labels: Bible, christadelphian