We noticed just now that a special characteristic of our
mental make-up is a sense of values.
The idea of values is, in short, an essential feature of at least that part
of the universe that consists of our own minds.
Every action of our lives is the result of a choice of some kind based on
the notion that one thing is 'better' than another.
What do we mean by 'better'?
Obviously each one of us looks at this from his or her own point of view,
and points of view vary enormously.
If you and I both think that it would be good for us to have a pork pie,
and there is only one pork pie in the shop, then I think that it is better
that I should have it than you, and you think that it is better that you
should have it than I.
In actual fact we may both be wrong, because the pork pie may turn out in
the end to give a nasty stomach ache to which?ever of us gets it.
In other words, while we each have a standard of values based
on our limited knowledge, that can be only an inadequate reflection of a
true standard of values which depends upon a complete knowledge of all the
facts.
The only person Who knows all the facts is God;
and the only real meaning
that we can attach to the term 'better', therefore, is 'nearer to God's pur?pose
and will'.
The difficulty which we are up against is sometimes stated rather like this:
If this is right, what becomes of the Christian claim that God is all-good, all-loving and all-powerful?
It would be foolish to pretend that there is an easy answer to a question which has puzzled many wise heads throughout the ages, but the real problem is not quite as stated above.
In the first place, as we have seen, we cannot be sure, without
knowing all the facts, that any particular thing is good or bad.
What seems to us a good and desirable pork pie may be seen by God (who alone
knoweth the dark and unfathomable mysteries that lie beneath the piecrust)
to be a thoroughly bad and injurious pork pie.
If he deprives us of the pie he may be doing us a kindness and not a hurt.
Everyone can think of innumerable examples of things which have been regarded
as good or bad by individuals, and have turned out to be exactly the oppo?site
of what they had seemed to be.
Even so, there is a vast mass of things in our experience
which we are quite sure must appear bad not only in our judgement but in
the judgement of any God we could care twopence about.
Yet, if we think about it, we shall have to admit that a very large part
of this mass of evil is due to the action or inaction of human beings.
War, for instance, with all its miseries and waste, is clearly the consequence
of human error and folly.
Disease would long ago have been robbed of many of its terrors if people
had been willing to give as much thought and trouble to education, social
welfare, and scientific research as they are willing to give to making their
fortunes or ruining one another.
Greed and ignorance, carelessness and selfishness, cause a very large proportion
of the troubles for which we are only too ready to blame' Providence'.
The really vital problem, then, is why did God make man with
these evil characteristics;
or why, having done so, does he not either prevent
man from indulging them or at least tell him how he can avoid doing so?
The Christian answer to the last part of the question is,
of course, that God has told us quite definitely and plainly what we ought
and ought not to do.
But as man is very clearly far from profiting by this instruction we have
to consider the rest of the question.
Behind this question is a bigger one, which we must try to
answer:
why did God make man at all?
The only conceivable answer is, because he wanted to.
And if he is good and loving, he must have wanted to make us because he thought
(or rather knew) that we should like it.
That does not mean that he expected or intended us merely to have a good
time, though on the whole, in spite of everything, most of us prefer being
alive to not being alive, as we show every time we don't commit suicide.
Yet it is obvious that we don't enjoy ourselves all the time, and that many
of us have a pretty miserable sort of existence.
We must clearly look more
deeply into this question of happiness: and if we do so, we must conclude
that, if there is any truth in our ideas about God and his purpose, true
happiness can consist only in being in complete harmony with him.
That happiness, then, and no less, God must intend us to have if he loves
us.
We cannot enjoy that, or any other degree of happiness, unless
we are conscious of it.
So God has begun by making us conscious beings, that is, personalities.
Our capacity for enjoying happiness is bound up with our power to think
and act for ourselves.
This is only another way of saying that we have freedom of choice.
We have not unlimited freedom, for with each of us freedom is restricted
by circumstances.
But we all have some freedom, and within such ranges as are open to us we
can and must use it.
Here we come back to the idea of values.
We have seen that this idea is fundamental in our make-up, and we must assume
that God meant this to be so.
He knows that, in the long run, our happiness depends upon our valuing him
and all good things.
But we cannot value the good unless there is at least the possibility of
the not-good against which to measure it.
God would like us freely to choose the good for its own sake:
but we cannot do this unless we are also free to choose the bad.
In this sense we can say that the existence of evil is part of God's will.
He does not want it, but it has to be there.
If he had made us without the power or opportunity of choosing, we should
not be personalities but robots.
As we saw just now, the only possible definition of 'better'
is 'nearer to God's purpose and will'.
The only possible definition of 'good' is, in the last analysis, God.
God, then, is the standard and centre to which everything else is relative.
But we are individual personalities, and it is 'good' that we should be,
because God made us so.
Yet, because we are individual personalities, we have a natural tendency
to regard ourselves as the centre and to look on everything as relative to
ourselves.
It is evident that, if we do so, our standards and values must be distorted,
and our choices must be wrong.
We can only correct this tendency if we recognize that, so far from our being
each the centre of his little world, we are all parts of a whole, which has
its centre in God. 'It all depends on me' is an utterly misleading slogan
unless it is completed by the essential addition ' and I depend on God'.
According to the Christian view, all this is part of a vast
plan by means of which the whole human race will eventually be brought into
the perfect and eternal happiness of companionship with God through the
free choice of every individual.
Each one of us will inevitably, and yet (and this is the essential point)
without compulsion, choose God.
It can hardly be denied that this is a reasonable objective for God to have
set before himself in creating man, or that it is consistent with regarding
him as a loving Father.
The difficulty is to see how it can possibly be true.
To see that it must be true is not so difficult.
If God is all-powerful, all-loving and all-good (according to the highest
standard of good that we can conceive), we should insult him by expecting
anything less of him.
But to reconcile this truth with our knowledge and experience is not easy.
Obviously, we know only a limited part of the facts, and
we cannot attempt to tell how the plan works out in all its details.
But (according to the Christian) we can see the broad outlines and, if we
will, can grasp the essentials here and now.
The keystone of the plan is the entry of God into human life
in the person of Jesus Christ.
No one can presume to fathom all the implications of this stupendous fact,
but we can discern some of the more obvious results.
First, God thus showed us clearly and unmistakably his own character.
Jesus said: 'He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.'
We have no excuse for saying that we do not know
WHAT THE CHARACTER OF GOD IS LIKE.
IT IS THE CHARACTER OF JESUS.
Second, he gave us, once and for all,
AN ABSOLUTE STANDARD OF VALUE BY WHICH WE CAN FORM OUR JUDGEMENTS.
Third, HE SHOWED US WHAT A HUMAN LIFE COULD BE LIKE IF GOVERNED BY THAT STANDARD OF VALUE ALONE.
Fourth, he showed us how to solve the problem of evil,
not by ignoring or denying it,
nor by resisting it forcibly,
but by ACCEPTING IT,
LETTING IT DO ITS WORST,
and THEN USING IT TO BRING ABOUT GOOD.
Fifth, he gave us an absolute guarantee that the universe is friendly;
that in the long run GOOD WILL PREVAIL;
and THAT HE LOVES AND VALUES EACH ONE OF US,
whatever our present imperfec?tions.
Sixth, he gave us a complete assurance
that GOD IS ACCESSIBLE TO HUMAN BEINGS THROUGH PRAYER,
and THAT NO SINCERE PRAYER GOES UNANSWERED,
though the answer is always what is best for us
and not necessarily what we, with our limited knowledge, think would be best.
These are great results indeed;
yet Christians have always maintained that they are nothing like the whole.
They are all results of THE LIFE OF CHRIST;
but the Christian faith from the first has always claimed to be based in
a special way
ON HIS DEATH.
Why is this?
Why do the Gospels devote what seems a disproportionate amount of attention
to the story of the Passion?
Why does Saint Paul insist that 'we preach Christ crucified'?
Why is the Cross the essential symbol of Christianity?
Discussion of these questions is not helped by the fact that
pious art and literature have produced a great deal of sentimental and even
disgusting rubbish on the subject of the Crucifixion.
We are not concerned here with sob-stuff or with horrors
but with the question whether, as sensible people, we find the Christian
assertions reasonable.
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