Assurance for the modern age

Part 8: The powerful engine of the inner life

This sounds good in terms of our relationship to the outer world. How can a secular ideology help us in our inner life? Ways of life, such as meditation, enjoyment of beauty and creativity, fostering community life and enriching friendships are all important. What about our relationship with ourself? I struggle to envisage a secular alternative because, for me, my relationship with God is the method, or means, of conducting my relationship with myself. A sceptic, certainly a cynic, might say that this is what my faith in God is: a way of relating to myself, using God as a mechanism to review, direct and improve both my behaviour and my state of mind – to do with my inner happiness, peace of mind, confidence in coping etc. Let’s suppose for a moment that they sceptic/cynic is right – well, it’s a very effective mechanism! If, when I (falsely, perhaps) believe that I am in conversation with God, I am really in conversation with myself, then I have to declare that faith in God is humanity’s most brilliant ever invention. It successfully enables me to have access to inexhaustible reservoirs of goodness, love, forgiveness, peace, reassurance, confidence, strength etc etc etc! It enables me to pour love into my life! If God is not real, then when I believe God is saying to me, “Don’t worry, I love you”, then what is really happening is that I am saying to myself, “Don’t worry, I love you”. In this case, the “lie” -that God loves me – is proving amazingly effective, in making me feel loved. Now, as soon as I confront the possibility that all my faith is doing is saying to myself, “Don’t worry, I love you”, then I am appalled. What I have understood to be a gift from a compassionate and gracious God is really just self-serving massaging of my ego. I could not possibly accept what I currently understand to be a gift of God’s love if I came to believe that I am really just engaging in self-love. I am not certain, but I pick up some signs that in our modern society, expert psychologists might say, “No, this is right! We ought to bestow this sort of self-love on ourselves”. Now I am the sceptical one. Humanity is so intent on self-interested manipulation and distortion of the truth, that I truly doubt that self-love, overtly understood in this way, can be a good thing. Perhaps we will return to consider this point more. For now, my faith experience is that – because I understand the message of love to be coming from God – I can accept it, precisely because I am not doing it to myself, but receiving it as a gift from another. Before our sceptical secularist seizes on this to denounce religion as simply a method for self-love, we can note the religious impulse of constant penitence because, as well as God’s message of love to us, we believers constantly feel the need of confessing, “Forgive me Lord, for I am a wicked sinner!”. While a modern psychologist might criticise this impulse as unhealthy for mental health, for the believer it becomes a vital mechanism for avoiding precisely that self-serving love that humanity is so adept at, and which religious believers might fall into.

Assurance for the modern age

Part 7: Foundation stones for a good secular life

We looked earlier at how fortunate we are to live in the modern age, in the UK. So, let’s begin with a sense of gratitude and thankfulness. Let’s not, briefly, think, “Aren’t I lucky!”, and then forget how lucky we are and simply focus on enjoying our own opportunities. Thankfulness and gratitude look like a solid foundation for a good life. If we then engage our mind, and take notice that not everyone is so fortunate, then our thankfulness will naturally overflow into compassion. I consider that anyone who has consciously, actively taken on a compassionate life has probably already done enough to live a good life to the full. I will go on to say much more, but I think that compassion is so important that, if we have this, it will make up for many other things that we may lack. However, this compassion must be active, overt, arising from the core of our understanding of what life is for -rather than an occasional emotional response to an accidental meeting with someone in an unfortunate situation (valuable as such compassion is).

A compassionate life rests on our taking responsibility. We are not content with drifting through life. We take on a mission! The very word evokes resonance with a religious way of life, for mission is central to it. However, here we are accepting the value of secular mission. Each person takes on board roles and goals that strike them as central to expressing what life is for, in a way that expresses their own personal core values. This is vitally important, for it allows each person to choose their own distinctive way to make their contribution to the common good. It’s also vital because each person is likely to feel tempted to despair at the size of the task of making the world a better place. So, without absolving ourselves from responsibility, we can consciously, actively commit ourselves: “I am going to live in this way, and do this job, and help those two causes as my key contribution”.

Assurance for the modern age

Part 6: A possible positive world view for the secular age

How then might an entirely secular worldview look that still succeeds in promoting a fulfilling inner life, and fuelling a life that we regard as good – and hopefully win general approval? I think that simply following good customs in our culture, or even being a person of good character is not sufficient. I think we need to adopt a set of values and principles that can direct even a good character beyond simple qualities of kindness and honesty (wonderful as they are) to a life that has self-consciously set goals that are not based on personal achievement and satisfaction, but on achieving good goals for society and in our personal development. If you want to argue, “Well, we all do that!”, my challenge is to ask how effective this is? In contrast to the life of faith, where the believer has adopted a comprehensive package to guide their lives towards goodness and to guard them from selfishness, unless your secular philosophy has principles as coherent, intense, demanding and overarching, so that the whole of life comes under the direction of your values and principles, then it is likely that our lives are – to some degree – “lost” in wishy-washy good intentions that are superficial rather than transforming to your own life, and through you, transforming to society. I freely acknowledge that many religious people treat their faith in a similarly superficial way – and I would not exclude myself from this criticism. Nevertheless, with faith there is an overt goal, a belief in the complete sufficiency of your faith – even if you only intermittently live out the full depth and implications of your faith. In other words,, even though religious people often fail, they are trying to succeed in living the right way – which is the same as living life to the full – rather than never even attempting the task – and, perhaps, spending the whole of your life simply distracting yourself from the questions that ultimately really matter.

So, for a secular ideology to achieve the same impact – both internally on the individual, and through them on society – it would have to be an all-embracing, comprehensive way of life that energises living a good, fulfilling, creative and beneficial life. I will try and explore what this might look like – trying as hard as I can not to be drawn into those faith values that I already hold.

Assurance for the modern age

Part 5: We all need to adopt a world-view in which we can hold the myriad things that may happen to us

In this respect, one answer to my question about assurance is for some people to argue that it just doesn’t bother them. If I want to navel-gaze and agonise about existential, spiritual questions, then more fool me: they are quite happy to just have a good time. I don’t mean that in a derogatory way – enjoying time with your family, in your job and on holiday are wonderful things. Yet I write from the perspective of someone who has discovered that it is the inner life which brings the greatest source of satisfaction of all. It is a life of faith that makes all life more precious. I am going to argue that adopting a set of values, principles and ways of life is the ultimate way to bring meaning, purpose, value and joy to life. If I am right, then even the fortunate person whose life, on balance, tips strongly towards good things, needs to adopt their own set of values, principles and ways of life that gives them their foundation in life. Some way is needed to tie this list of good things into some coherent whole, to integrate all their experience into an understanding of what it is they are doing with their lives. Their good fortune needs, somehow, to sink into the roots of their lives, and it must be from their depths that their choices and decisions and judgements in life arise, so that the “list of good things in their lives” is not what defines them, as though all of life is just a surface flow of experience, but, rather, the good things that they produce in their lives arise from a person who is living with intent, to achieve purposes that they – and others – can affirm as good.

Otherwise, one obvious danger for modern secular people – and I think this is much in evidence – is that life becomes overtaken by consumerism. That is, in the absence of sound values on which your life is founded, life becomes about maximising consumption. If good things are good – and clearly they are, then it must be better to have more of them – more of everything. I feel an expression of this is found in the concept of “bucket lists” – 50 or 100 things that “we ought to do” before we die. Of course, there is no harm, and much to commend, in the idea of setting yourself goals and fulfilling dreams, and maximising pleasure – why settle for less when you can have more? My complaint is in the spiritual effect of an attitude that puts the focus of life on consuming pleasure. Surely life is more profound than that? Pleasure is good, and a good life will bring us many pleasures, but pleasure is not the same as goodness, nor the same as fulfilment.

Assurance for the modern age

Part 4: Coping with the fragility of what we have

Let’s suppose you are fortunate enough to be on track to enjoy all these things: what else might you still be lacking? What are the aspects of the human condition that might still unsettle you?

Firstly, there is the fragility of your good fortune. What if ill health or tragedy do befall you? How will you cope if your sense of well-being in life rests on the multitude of good and enjoyable experiences that pervade your life?

This fragility is multiplied beyond measure if you are deprived of your good fortune through injustice. This could well be at the national or international level through warfare or famine – not likely for us in Britain, but, even though we are considering our situation, our worldview needs to be able to encompass others – we cannot simply bury our heads in the sand and revel in our good fortune while ignoring the plight of others. And, of course, even in Britain, the scope for suffering from injustice is present – whether it be through crime, changes in technology and the economy, government decisions, or simply other people “doing us in” in some way to gain advantage for themselves.

Finally, there is finality. With a long and happy life, it is perfectly possible to just put off thinking about big questions, and only when time finally catches up with you and you realise you’re on the final countdown, then start to consider big existential questions. Perhaps by then, it will be too late to bother you, as you’ve already got 80 years of good living “in the bank”, and there is barely time to adjust to your new frailty before you’re gone.

Assurance for the modern age

Part 3: A life full of opportunities

I can expect to live for 80 plus years in reasonable good health before a decline where I will be well looked after – though things may be difficult in my final few years. I will never go hungry; on the contrary, I will have a plenitude of good things to enjoy. I will receive a good education and there will be many opportunities open to me, subject to my personal interests and aptitudes. Of course, there will be obstacles, set-backs and difficulties, some caused by others, some inevitable according to how the cookie crumbles, and from time to time I will stumble because of my own weaknesses and mistakes. Nevertheless, there is every opportunity for me to enjoy a satisfying life, where, according to my preferences and the chances of life, I may get married, have a family, pursue an interesting, worthwhile and fulfilling career, and enjoy numerous milestones in the lives of myself and my loved ones and through holidays and special occasions, have many, many high spots.

There is much to celebrate! And, in practice, these things are the bedrock of what makes life worth living. I suppose I have a particular concern because – although I freely recognise that the above wonderful list of experiences is what makes life satisfying – I am committed to a life of faith, and I want to explore how modern people may discover an inner life and a world view to sustain them – not simply in case they should be unlucky and miss out on this list of “goodies”, but precisely because there is a deep-seated calling in humankind for life to be about even more than enjoying the good things of life.

Assurance for the modern age

Part 2: What foundation is there, then, for atheists in our secular society?

My deep concern is for secular minded people who, in their self-confident atheism, have gladly, sometimes triumphantly, abandoned faith in God. They have a certain sort of assurance, in that they are absolutely convinced that they are right in their thinking, but they patently lack the assurance that I am blessed with. This emptiness reveals itself in multiple ways in modern society. Therefore, I wish to investigate how people in a secular age may discover a fulfilling, robust, supportive inner life. Is this possible in an entirely secular way? What would that look like, and how would it compare to and improve on the current negative effects of secular ideology? Then, if we can find such a positive ideology, how does it compare with the religious and spiritual worldview that I have? Will they be sufficiently similar that we might conclude that one is as good as the other? Would such a secular ideology be so close to the religious one that it would be wise to recommend that modern secular people simply take the final step and move over to embrace the assurance that is found in God?

What we’re talking about is the human condition – those essential, inescapable, core experiences that are at the heart of being human. What does life look like from an entirely secular point of view?

We must begin with the Big Bang and evolution, which, after a very long period of time, have resulted in us living our lives today. Richard Dawkins has written very eloquently and inspiringly on this theme, so it is perfectly possible to produce an exceptionally positive life view from the simple facts of our existence. Many people do not do so, of course, so we must consider how best to attain such a positive view. In many ways, it is very straightforward, and the story we would tell ourselves would be something like what follows.

How fortunate we are to be alive in the 21^st century, with the immense benefits that modern life gives us for prosperity and the advantages of technology. How fortunate we are to live in the UK, a society which is prosperous, peaceful, governed by law, democratic, with strong respect for individual rights. Of course, there are many blows that may befall us – we may have a severe disability, be born into a dysfunctional family, live in poverty, develop severe mental health problems, be the victim of other people’s cruelty and greed. The list of pitfalls is long, and we must return to think how a worldview could be created that would benefit these people too. However, for now, let’s consider the situation of – hopefully – the large majority of people who – while facing many a challenge, for almost no-one escapes challenges – have what I think is a typical life ahead of them. What does the human condition look like for them?

(A long reflection in 12 parts – some stamina will be required!)

Assurance for the modern age

Part 1: A firm foundation in faith

How may people in the modern secular world find peace for their restless hearts? This appears to be a vital, urgent task. I write as a person of faith, who finds all they need in the assurance of God’s love. This provides me with complete stability of spirit, even within the trials and tribulations of life. I do not mean, of course, that I serenely step through life untroubled by any external events in the life of the world, nor undisturbed in spirit by all the internal anguish that befalls humankind in response to the many troubles that come our way. How on earth then can I talk about “stability of spirit”? It is because my faith in God gives me a foundation on which to stand, and I have complete confidence in this foundation. Though I may regularly be battered and wounded and in distress, these are not sufficient to shake my trust in the God who loves me. In him, I find an invincible confidence in life -that life is wonderful, that hope, goodness, truth and love surround and uphold me. I have complete assurance that these things can never be taken away from me – not even by death. Though in my bodily weakness, I am often anxious and sometimes afraid, even these stabs of pain to my soul do not threaten my assurance, for the Lord is with me, I will not be afraid, nor will I ever be lost to him.