Why do I believe I am surrounded by God’s grace? (Part 3)

Why do I believe I am surrounded by God’s grace?

Part 3: We turn to God because we feel there is “something more”.

Let us turn to the core dimension of religious experience, often expressed in symbols.

Two people view a stunning sunset. One says, “What a wonderful sunset! It fills me with awe and joy at the beauty of creation and how wonderful it is for me to be here, seeing it”. The other says, “What a wonderful sunset! It fills me with awe and joy at the beauty of creation and how wonderful it is for me to be here, seeing it – and it connects me to a sense of God’s presence and love”. The second person “sees through” the sunset to a sense of God. In an unformed faith, we have just dropped that bombshell of a word “God” into the sentence, with all its host of connotations. However, for the person newly becoming aware of the wonder of life / the grace of God, the word “God” is a label for a concept that initially has little content. So, if a new believer is looking at the sunset, what do they mean when they say that “through, or behind, or above, or beyond” the beauty of the sunset they sense the beauty of God? I think it’s much more than simply a failure to find adequate words to describe the experience. The atheist may also be lost for words to describe the beauty and joy that the sunset evokes. What the believer is grasping after to express is that, no matter how awesomely, joyfully wonderful their experience of the sunset is, they are experiencing more than the totality of what a beautiful sunset could possibly impart to us. The beauty of the sunset has connected them to a sense that the beauty of the sunset depends on, stems from, flows from a presence – as yet barely known, but for shorthand we are calling “God” – which presents “himself” (to use standard terminology) as immeasurably more beautiful than the beauty of the sunset. And then God excels in all other good qualities that the experience of a sunset might evoke.

Why should we go beyond the beauty of the sunset to posit that there might be, indeed we feel sure is, “something more”? What can be more beautiful than the beauty of the sunset? Yet to the believer, it appears to be the most natural thing in the world to not be “limited” by the sunset (extravagantly, over-flowingly unlimited to our senses as it is) but to recognise that “obviously” there is a power “behind” the sunset, which is responsible for it. And we naturally identify this power as a person. (Note: in my idea of something “behind” the sunset, I am not simply bringing God into the picture in order to explain the existence of creation – even though I feel sure this was an important factor in the early development of religion. What I am exploring is the sense that there is an additional experience in the view of the sunset that is not explained simply by pointing to the beauty of it. The experience of God is a reality – an extra dimension of the experience)

Why do I believe I am surrounded by God’s grace? (Part 2)

Why do I believe I am surrounded by God’s grace?

Part 2: Life without God can be wonderful; does God add anything?

Life is – or can be – wonderful. We are glad to be alive. If our life is in any way sustainable, then there will be many good aspects to it. We will have enough to eat and somewhere to live, and some people whom we love and who love us. We will have a sufficient sense of security and safety. So, it is an important question as to whether people who have never known anything except living in terrible poverty or oppression are able to experience God’s grace. I know that many people who do experience awful poverty or misfortune, that would crush me, are able to continue in faith in God. However, I don’t have sufficient knowledge to say if faith is possible without having at some point in our lives known the goodness of life. If my suggestion (which I hope is wrong) that our experience of the grace of God just is the experience of the goodness of life is correct, then I would expect that it is NOT possible to experience grace if life has always been awful. I suspect though that there are many people who live lives of faith despite constant hardships through their lives, and this would suggest that “God” is something extra to the experience of life as wonderful and something to be loved and cherished.

If the experience of God’s grace is really an entirely natural experience of coming to awareness with the wonder of life, it seems strange to me that humanity should have bothered to add on to the experience a claim that they are encountering a person called God. We know that the human mind is a wonderful, and strange and complex, thing, but in many other respects we are capable of enjoying profound satisfaction in aspects of life without bringing in a (supposedly) imaginary figure.

For us fortunate citizens of modern Britain, life is for most people saturated with good qualities. Therefore, it should be the most natural thing in the world for people to relate to my concept of “God’s grace”, even if, as secularists, they might call it something else – “the joy of living”, or some similar title. It’s interesting then that, as society has become much richer in material terms – and this translates into many other social goods, not necessarily linked to our personal wealth – it has become less inclined to faith in God. I really do not know the range of inner conversations that secularists have with themselves. I try to guard against the derogatory conclusion that, as secularists don’t have what I hold precious that therefore they must have nothing. All people value love and goodness, truth and trust; they have aesthetic and moral inspiration and unspeakably rich inner and outer emotional lives. Are they experiencing the same things as me, simply translated from the religious idiom to the secular? By analogy, is it no more than translating French into English? This is, of course, not easy to know for sure. The issue boils down to whether God adds anything or not. Of course, we can answer immediately that God adds a multiplicity of things of inexpressible value to the believer, which the atheist lacks. However, our question is whether – once our “translation exercise” has been done, there is anything in the believer’s life that the atheist simply cannot have?

Why do I believe I am surrounded by God’s grace? (Part 1)

(A theological reflection in 7 (rather long!) parts. This article is very much about my experience, so the word “I” appears rather a lot. There is a huge range of experience amongst Christians, so many people will see things quite differently, but I am hopeful that my experience is sufficiently understood to strike chords with many readers)

Why do I believe I am surrounded by God’s grace?

Part 1: Grace is certainly a real and wonderful experience, but do we need God for it?

I realise that I made a bold statement when I said that I feel strongly that I am surrounded by God’s grace. This raises the obvious challenge: “That’s all very well for you, but what if I don’t feel that?”. So, I will try and explore as honestly as I can what this feeling of grace is.

In previous posts, I often try to translate my faith beliefs into secular equivalents. I am doing my best to understand what my faith is. To consider if it might be understood in an entirely secular manner – in the sense that I might admit that I was mistaken in embarking on a life of faith because I could have found the same – very precious – experiences through an entirely secular route. I don’t want to belittle secular beliefs, but I hope that I can find something extra that faith adds to human existence. So, I will consider alternative understandings of what I consider to be the experience of grace, and then look at what a faith perspective might add – even if there is profound validity in the secular point of view.

So, what might an experience of God’s grace actually be if there is no God? Let me go back to my teenage years and investigate my own experiences, for that is when I feel I was strongly encountering God for the first time.

It could be an experience of the wonder of life, of how wonderful it is to be alive. As we move from childhood to adulthood we develop new mental faculties. So, I was overwhelmed to discover how beautiful the natural world is. I can remember staring at cherry-blossom and daffodils, scarcely believing how anything could be so beautiful. Of course, I had seen such things before in childhood, but I had not noticed them in the way I was now able to.

It could be an effect of the growing self-awareness we develop. Whereas, as children we take many things for granted, or unthinkingly, as we move into teenage years, we develop an ability to reflect upon our own experience, and to realise that, although things are so, they might not have been. We sense – and much of this will be unconscious, though in other respects we will be consciously aware of being inspired by new principles and values that we have just discovered – the wonderful potential of life. We are free, independent agents with the opportunity and possibility of charting our own particular course through life. There will also be a lot of unconscious, as well as conscious, awareness of the possibilities of sexual and romantic attractions that open up an entirely new realm of existence.

I can appreciate that all these factors can combine to give an extravagantly wonderful and extremely powerful sense of entering a new realm of existence, a new way of being. As it is a new faculty of mind and spirit and body that we are entering into, it strikes us as a wonderfully – almost magically – enchanting new way of life. For anyone with familiarity with a religious life of faith, it is the most natural thing in the world to associate this new experience with the experience of meeting God. In this train of thought, we are putting forward a suggestion, not simply for what the experience of God’s grace is, but a suggestion for what God is, in himself. This is not as big a step as I thought a couple of sentences ago, as, if there is any validity in the thought, then what we are saying is that the reality of God is “simply” an experience of being surrounded by grace. We have mistakenly thought that this grace is an effect of being in relationship with a person we call “God”, but really grace is an experience of becoming aware of the wonder of life.

Washed up on the shores of heaven. (Part 2)

Washed up on the shores of heaven

Part 2: The grace of God will bring us home

I hope you can see that I am a fan of grace! So, what about this particular image?

I think the meaning is that, even if we should somehow – spiritually speaking – suffer ship-wreck, whereby the whole vessel of our being is ruined and sunk, so that we are utterly lost, incapable of achieving anything at all – except to be drowned and lost, instead of being lost we will find ourselves – against all the odds, against all hope, utterly miraculously as it were, finding ourselves not lost, not dead, not simply temporarily given reprieve, as though clinging to a rock and hoping something will come along to rescue us. Rather, as we come to on the beach, we discover that we are exactly at the place that we have been heading for all our lives. Perhaps we thought that we were far, far away, perhaps we despaired of ever getting there. Perhaps we thought that with much striving and effort and time we might possibly draw near to our dear destination. But instead, we find that, even if we should, to our minds, find ourselves ship-wrecked and going down for the third time, we discover that we are not lost, but found, not alone, but firmly in the embrace of God, not far off, but home. Deeply home, the home that we have always longed for, the home where we are completely and utterly at home, at peace, at rest, at one with all whom we love, at one with the God of love, who by his grace has brought us safely here. Regardless of the chances and pitfalls of life, of success and failure, of our efforts to get there, or to go astray, heedless of the apparently immensely powerful forces that might sweep us away and against which we sometimes felt powerless, it turns out that none of that counted for anything. This is not fatalism or destiny; this is simply the power of God’s grace to achieve our salvation, to make us whole, to complete us by his love, to bring us, at the last, completely and forever to be with him. I nearly said that all that we need to do is trust in him, but even that is not so. The fullness of the power of grace to bring us safe home is that, even if we should deny him, betray him, turn away from him, so it seems to us, even from the depths of our souls, there is something even deeper that we cannot see but that God can. Having once loved him and, perhaps, and I think this must be true, him having once loved us, even deeper than the complete rejection and failure of our faith, there is still the grace of God within us. And because of this we will find ourselves washed up on the shores of heaven.

Washed up on the shores of heaven. (Part 1)

(A theological reflection in 2 parts)

Washed up on the shores of heaven

Part 1: We live and move and breathe within the grace of God

In a recent sermon, I made this comment:

“Somewhere at the centre of our souls – something that we cannot see, but that God can, is a drop of baptismal water that has made us clean, which is continually refreshing us, and which will, one day, wash us up on the shores of heaven.”

There is something about this final phrase: “will wash us up on the shores of heaven” that strikes chords with people, for a few people at the end of the service have delayed going directly to the tea-trolley to come and tell me how much they appreciated it. So, I thought I would explore what I understand about the image a bit more.

The main reason I am a Christian is that I am overwhelmed by the grace of God. I tangibly feel that I am surrounded by the undeserved, loving kindness of God. His grace upholds me in all things: through disappointment and failure, despite my weaknesses and lack of trust and faithfulness to God. His grace directs me in paths of goodness, truth and love. He protects me from vanity, selfishness and unkindness (to a remarkable degree). He enables me to achieve good things, and to take pleasure in the goodness of them while being guarded against the delusion that I am anything without God. God’s grace is, and will be always, and particularly at the end will be, all sufficient for me. I never can – and neither do I have to worry about being able to do this – present myself before God with a record of my achievements and an expectation, or even a demand, that I deserve entry into heaven, or now, that I deserve recognition as a good person. As Paul so wisely notes: the word of the Lord came to me saying that my grace is made perfect in your weakness. Of the many paradoxes in the life of faith, this is one of the most profound. It is not that our weaknesses or failures do not matter – they do, intensely! The well-being or harm of others, and the state of our own souls depends on whether we do good or evil. Nor is it simply that our weaknesses leave more scope for God’s grace – as though, if we could somehow be very good people, we would hardly need God at all. The point is that God, in his loving kindness, understands what we lack, and has the willingness and ability to make up for that, so that, by grace, we are able to achieve, not simply, what we could not do without him, but we are able to achieve God’s gracious purposes which are – without God – totally out for reach, for without God we neither know, nor are willing, nor have the power to achieve God’s transforming will. But when we “lean on God”, allow our weakness – and our strong desire to serve him, along with the gifts that he has bestowed on us -to be infused with God’s grace then we see his grace triumphant in achieving what he wanted, and clearly in a way where our weakness has become a strength, precisely because, in that weakness we called on God to help us, and so our weakness became not simply something that didn’t get in the way of God’s action, but became a partner in God and us together achieving the good that we both desire.

Easter sermon 2025 : Christianity is the most realistic and transformative faith we could possibly have.

(I am taking the liberty of posting my Easter sermon, and all in one go. The bible reading to go with it is John. 20. 1-18, which is the story of Mary Magdalene meeting the risen Christ after having gone early to attend to Jesus’ body for proper burial)

Christianity is the most realistic and transformative faith we could possibly have. Our faith is the supreme gift of the God of love to us, each and everyone of us, and to the whole world, as the way of finding life in all its fullness.

Let’s begin with a lesson for resurrection life that we learn from today’s passage.

Perhaps counter-intuitively, the lesson is faithfulness in death. “Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary of Magdala came to the tomb”. Mary went to attend to the messy, gruesome business of caring for the body of her Lord and master and friend. No expectation of a happy ending. All hope gone. Yet still there are jobs to be done.

Christianity is the most realistic faith we could possibly have because we accept the reality of the world we live in, and of human nature, including our own. We understand that Christ was put to death because he challenged the authority and position of those who held power – whether it be the religious authorities hating to be upstaged by a common, wandering preacher who rejected the religious orthodoxy, or the Romans, always ready to stamp on any threat of disorder. We understand that in this wonderful, beautiful, bountiful world, every single one of us will suffer, sometimes terribly. And around the world, so often, that suffering is because of the stupid, violent hatred of men seeking power.

And in response to our own weakness in combatting the suffering and evil poured into the world through the abuse of power, what do we do? We continue in faith and love to deal with caring for those we love who are in need and trying our best to clean their wounds – in whatever way our situation requires. For Mary, that meant going, as soon as she possibly could, to clean away the blood of her dear Lord and treat his dead body with reverence.

Because this is who we are, or rather, because this is the way that God in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ has made us, we do not realise how shockingly unusual this is. The normal human response is hatred, fear and anger, hitting back at those who hurt us, and sometimes getting our attack in first just because we are afraid of what might happen. But I am jumping ahead to the transformative power of our faith in Christ.

We also accept the reality of our own failures and loss and despair. It seems to me that the modern secular world is so lost precisely because people cannot bear to think that they are not exactly as they should be, and living their best possible life. In contrast, we know that we are sinners, and sometimes we feel that very keenly indeed – wretched sinners that we are. But we are redeemed sinners! We accept the reality of the gift that God has given us, what God has made possible. To be forgiven, redeemed, purified, healed, restored, empowered, enfolded in the love of God, in communion with him and in the fellowship of our brothers and sisters all round the world and through all eternity. Our faith has enabled us to see that this is the ultimate reality, the pearl of great price, worth giving up everything else in order to have that privilege to come before God and say, “Yes Lord, here I am”.

So, we also accept the reality of our hopes, and we dare to believe. Mary – like all of us – had put her hope in Jesus, except, unlike us, she had done so with no inkling that the resurrection of Jesus was possible, or that life in the Spirit, in full communion with God was the mission for which the Father had sent his Son. But, again, unlike us, when Mary put her trust in Jesus she had no inkling that he would be put to death with such horrific violence and hatred and humiliation. She, who saw and listened to Jesus, could not possibly believe that his message of God’s forgiveness and acceptance of all people would be rejected.

So, Mary and we are alike in our faith and love for Jesus, but we approach from different ends of the story – she not knowing how that story would finish, but we not being in on the beginning when all was hope and excitement and joy. But we are also alike in our faithfulness in death and in our acceptance of the reality of our own humanity, with its glorious possibilities for reaching out in compassion, and our capacity for selfishness, fear and greed – which we never lose sight of, but of which we are not afraid, because we have complete trust that it is the grace of God which will triumph in us.

Christianity is also the most transformative faith we could possibly have. Mary was still in the garden crying. One of the great mysteries of the resurrection accounts is that the closest friends of Jesus did not initially recognise him. What might we take from this? On that first Easter Sunday morning, Mary was already in the presence of Jesus, but she didn’t yet know it. Seeing Jesus in the garden, hearing his voice, did not have any effect, but when he called her name, she knew him instantly. Similarly with the two on the road to Emmaus, they saw and talked with him for ages without knowing him, and then in the instant Jesus broke and blessed the bread for them, they knew it was him.

I think there is a deep truth about the Christian life here. Not so much about the way we become Christians, for some of us can tell you the exact moment of our conversion, while others can only say that they came to faith sometime between – and then they quote one time when then did not believe and another when they did. Rather, I think it tells us about how we become aware of the presence of the Lord. God is always with us, but we are sometimes unaware of it. What is it, what does it take to bring about the breakthrough? I am not grasping for some unrealistic, miraculous, mystical experience. Notice how Mary took completely in her stride an encounter with two angels – her focus is simply on serving Jesus – she simply says to the angels that her Lord has been taken away and she wants to find him. When she is actually in the presence of Jesus, she does not immediately have a wonderful emotional experience; she simply asks Jesus, if it was him who removed the body, please tell her so she can go to him.

Then there is the moment of recognition. It is in recognising the presence of the risen Christ that she is transformed. It is not resolution for her grief she seeks, not some guarantee of well-being, not some gift of everlasting peace: she wants her Lord. And this is her message when she rushes back to tell the disciples. She doesn’t even say, “Jesus is alive!” – though this is the inescapable truth behind what she does say. What she says is, “I have seen the Lord!”.

This is what makes Christianity the supremely transformative faith. Modern secular ideology, in the corruption and futility of its thinking, mistakes the reality of the physical creation and the work of human hands as the only reality that there is, but the ultimate reality is the presence of God. When we see him, then everything we look at is transformed.

In human reality, the cross is the place where those in power imposed their will to destroy Jesus. They thought that they were destroying him, humiliating him, proving that Jesus was a liar and that God supported their way of thinking. It is a symbol of the fear of change, fear of losing control, fear of the challenge if we change our values. It’s a symbol of hatred – hatred of Jesus’s message of forgiveness of sins. It’s a rejection of the hope that God will come to us.

But in God’s hands, the cross becomes the place where his mission to redeem humanity succeeds. It is a symbol of the triumph of love and life. It is the door opening up between God and humankind to enable us to live in communion with him and in justice and compassion with one another.

The cross should be a symbol of revulsion which all good people should reject. How can the messiah, the saviour sent by God, possibly be hanging in powerless humiliation, dying the death of a common criminal? But so transformative is the grace of God that when we see the cross, we see God! Our eyes are opened, and we exclaim, “Ah! This is what God is really like. I see it now”. He loves us so much that he gives his very self unto death in order that we might be set free from the dominion of sin and evil and death. All worldly values are upended. It is not power that is the supreme value in the world but love. It is in service to others that we are made whole. We see that on the cross, Jesus is not being defeated by evil and hatred and fear, he is winning the victory of our salvation. We see exactly how much God loves us. How could we have ever grasped this if God had not done this for us? He who is Lord came not to be served but to serve, and in loving us, and all people, he loved us to the end and on the cross he wins the victory of our redemption.

Our life now is simply a life of living out the grace that God has given to us, to love and serve him, to rejoice in the faith by which we are redeemed.

Christ is risen! Alleluia!

The strange distortions of secular ideology: My best possible life! (Part 5)

The strange distortions of secular ideology: My best possible life!

Part 5: The mystery of God’s peace

I believe that God has a way of putting everything right. However, I no longer see this as something that is done in heaven – and we will have to wait till then. I believe that the fulfilment that comes from knowing the presence of God has the extraordinary power to put everything right, now. I realise that this is counter-intuitive, potentially ridiculous when you look at the suffering of the world, and that it will be condemned as false and wicked by secularists. I am not saying that our faith in God is some escape from reality – rather my entire message is that it is secular ideology that seeks to escape from reality. I call on us to strive with all our might to make the world into the kingdom of God and not to rest till there is justice and peace and well-being for all. People who are suffering terribly will not feel that God has put everything right. The point I’m searching for is that we do not have to wait on circumstances to receive God’s perfect fulfilment – that makes us the prisoner of chance over which we have no control. We are not demanding that everything must be perfect and that I must be my perfect (or at least my best) self before I can feel whole. Wholeness is God’s gift to us, and he is in charge of that. And the wholeness that God offers – despite the manifest lack of wholeness in the world and in our lives – is complete and perfect. To know God is perfect bliss, and nothing has the power to get in the way of that – certainly nothing can stop God reaching out to embrace us, and if we will stay open to him, then nothing can prevent us from being embraced.

It is the extraordinary testimony of ordinary but grace-filled people that not even their suffering has been able to separate them from the love of Christ. I hope that I am never tested as they are. For now, I will not say more about the intense problem that suffering presents – to everyone of course, but given our focus today, particularly for those of faith who – along with Jesus – are sometimes compelled to cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!?”. Yet, somehow, by grace meeting faith, it is the testimony of so many people that God carried them through to where they hold all the weight of their pain and loss, looking steadfastly at it, yet they also hold themselves to be fully embraced in the love of God, and gazing at him, they still find life in all its wholeness. “In Christ, my all in all, I find peace”.

The strange distortions of secular ideology: My best possible life! (Part 4)

The strange distortions of secular ideology: My best possible life!

Part 4: We already have what we long for

My answer to this, is (even if my hope of heaven is false) that the purpose of being a Christian is to enter into fullness of life now, in our current mortal life. The gifts received now make it all worthwhile – and, who knows, the reward of heaven might be real too. This is made so much easier once we acquire a little bit of wise awareness and realise that God does not ask us to give up good things – as some sort of test: “Let’s see if you’re willing to do this for me!”. Instead, he asks us to give up things that – though they may seem superficially attractive – are not really good for us, in order to embrace a way of life that is truly fulfilling. So, God has not set arbitrary rules to deny us truly good things in order to test our self-discipline, as though God is in need: “You must show me that you love me more than these other things”, and then that he will bribe us, “And if you do this, then I will reward you 100 times over for what you gave up for me”. Instead, God is our guide into the life of perfect fulfilment. His love for us is complete and he needs nothing in return – though he takes delight when we do love him back. God simply wants the best for us – and, interestingly, this takes us back to our original point when I noted the modern tendency to be terrified of not living our best possible life. It is in responding to God’s love that we find fulfilment, but this is not grasped at, not clung onto fearfully, not snatched at in a competitive race against others, not demanded as our right, not created by our own powers. It is received as a gift of love, from the God of love, who knows us better than we know ourselves, and who, in his constant self-giving, strives to bring us to completion. Our response is of vital importance; we are called to try with all our heart and mind and soul and strength to live in communion with God. However, we do not have to fear failure, we do not have to deny our flaws and our weaknesses, and the challenges we face, for we know, and admitted to ourselves and to the Lord, that we accept the truth about ourselves and about the world in which we live. Yet we do not have to wait for some future consummation. We do not live in anxiety: “What if heaven is not real? What if I should prove unworthy? What if I should fail and never reach the finish line?”. All these fears are calmed by the presence of God and dealt with in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and gently blown away by the Holy Spirit’s breath. We are not waiting for fulfilment, even as a gift, in the distant future. We receive it as a gift now. This is the full measure of the grace of God. He does not leave us on tenterhooks, hoping for the best. Once we know him, and receive his love, we have the assurance of his love. It is this assurance that is the perfect fulfilment that we desire and need, and in the grace of God, all our needs are met.

The strange distortions of secular ideology: My best possible life! (Part 3)

The strange distortions of secular ideology: My best possible life!

Part 3: Can we manage without heaven?

Once we have an inkling of grace, we, though still very weak in the weakness of our human nature, have at least some resources to cope with injustice and to forgive others. Living on planet reality, we have accepted our own flaws and we have accepted that we live in an unjust world. It has certainly been a long-standing source of anguish to religious people: how can it be that the omnipotent God of goodness and love does not end all suffering and injustice. There are some excellent theodicies (explanations for this) available, and I will return to address them directly on another occasion. All I will say for now is that – counter-intuitively perhaps – once you start to consider in detail exactly what you’d like God to do, life becomes ridiculous and impossible – and probably not holding much worth, if we demand that he must end all suffering.

However, we can focus on our earlier point that the Christian has resources to understand why the world is full of evil, and why so many people act so badly. Accepting our own flaws, we may have some chance of forgiving the injustices that others inflict on us. It is the Christian hope that God does have ways of providing justice ultimately, of recompensing people for their suffering, of putting right things that have gone wrong, of transforming situations that are, in worldly terms simply wicked and horrible, into occasions of grace and healing.

We need to consider heaven as a point of special interest. Traditionally, this is understood as receiving an eternal, spiritual life in the spiritual dimension of heaven, where everything will be made whole, and put right. We will, as it were, cast off everything that is unworthy of God so that, in the life of heaven, we can enjoy unalloyed communion with him, without ever having the pain of letting him down, or straying from him. We will, in fact, finally succeed in living the life that we longed to live here on planet earth, but continually failed to sustain because of our human weakness. (Quite how this could be probably deserves another article on another occasion).

I hope very much that the life of heaven is a reality. If God is God as I believe him to be, it seems entirely reasonable that he will make the life of heaven open to us. However, my concern is with secular thinkers, and they are quite right to discount heaven as unverified speculation. So, how are we to continue the Christian hope if we don’t rely on heaven? I once had a work colleague who was deeply drawn to his Catholic upbringing, but he was also deeply drawn to the attractions of adultery – and the latter regularly overcame the former. His attitude was that he would really like to live a Christian life, if only it didn’t involve having to give up so much. He regarded heaven as a wonderful reward, but only for those who keep the rules, and the rules were far too strict for him to keep. Now, if you hold that view, then the slightest doubt that heaven is not a reality is likely to undermine your resolve. You really would kick yourself if you gave up hugely pleasurable activities on earth, in order to get into heaven, only to discover that it was all for nothing, if heaven is not real.

The strange distortions of secular ideology: My best possible life!(Part 2)

The strange distortions of secular ideology: My best possible life!

Part 2: The assurance of God’s love enables us to accept the truth

The religious attitude is completely different. Life is understood as a journey with God as our companion. For Christians, this is understood in threefold form. The love of the Father over-shadows and surrounds us; everything we do and are is under his fatherly care and enfolded in his loving presence. The risen Lord Jesus is gloriously present in resurrection life, the promise to us that the powers of sin, evil and death have already been fundamentally defeated, and this victory will one day be complete. The Holy Spirit, mysterious advocate and comforter, our strength and guide, is within us and beside us. Thus, we are surrounded by the presence of God. We know ourselves to be utterly loved, with an everlasting, invincible love. God will never forsake us. Nothing can challenge him. He is Lord. He is perfect love. He is with us, now and forever. Such unconditional, never-ending love constantly reassures us that we have access to his presence where we will find forgiveness, peace, new life, reconciliation, hope and guidance, all tied together into a sense of coherent wholeness as we take our place as followers of Christ, and so have a share in the glorious mission of God, expressed in his universal, worldwide Church, to make the world into the kingdom of his Son. Within this over-arching mission, each individual Christian can discover their own sense of mission as they discern how they can express their gifts and goals within the larger mission of God’s kingdom.

As we pursue our personal journey through life – in company with God – we have a wise self-awareness of reality. Firstly, we know ourselves to be seriously flawed: we are sinners! But this is never cause for despair, because we are forgiven and redeemed sinners. This enables us to accept that there is a lot about ourselves that needs to be changed – without ever doubting that we are loved, that we have the supreme dignity of being children of God. Thus, we are completely free to accept that, of course, we are far, far from being the people we could, and indeed should, be, but this does not in any way detract from our sense of being completely whole. In common parlance, we have not the slightest doubt that “we are worthy”. However, I hesitated and would choose not to say this, for the whole point is that we are not worthy – we receive God’s love as a gift; we don’t need to be worthy in order to rejoice in the freedom of the children of God; we simply need to come to our senses and realise the truth about ourselves. So, of course, in worldly terms we have no doubt that we are worthy, but in our understanding of God’s grace we do not claim or assert “our rights” to be recognised as worthy. Instead, we humbly and joyfully accept the freely-given gifts of God’s grace.