The Lord is my shepherd, I lack for nothing. Part 1

(A reflection in 3 parts)

The Lord is my shepherd, I lack for nothing

Part 1: We are strange creatures. Report card: “Could do better”

Dear Lord, forgive me.

But more even than forgiveness: heal me.

And beyond this, nurture me to grow.

Human nature is our greatest glory and our biggest problem. We have evolved beyond mere instinct, but not enough to fully master it. And so we are that unique species, capable of both good and evil. We have matured enough to be able to judge against our own actions, but not enough to always act with justice.

We should give ourselves some credit. In nature, creatures exercise their power to do whatever they want and are capable of doing. We have developed powers of reflection and moral judgement to decide that some of the things we do are not right. Yet we are painfully aware that the distance moved away from the raw exercise of power to get what we want is not very great. Much of our supposed moral action is cleverly disguised self-interest, and what we do achieve is often only given because of our great plenty. When things get tough, we are easily frightened and then our self-interest reasserts itself. Again, this is not surprising: all our instincts are evolved for self-preservation. Yet we do strive to do better than that. And, certainly, our desire to do better is genuine. But we do find it extremely difficult.

Humanity’s greatest tool in doing better is the religious impulse. It’s not impossible to use secular ideologies to support altruism and to empower full-blown commitment to justice and compassion. However, such philosophies of life tend to be effective for only a small proportion of particularly strong-minded people, whereas religion has mass appeal – because it offers ordinary people a very attractive way of life.