Essential Aspects for faith

Life under the board 1

Christianity, once a common part of community life in the UK is now very alien, so in order to help understand aspects of the faith I am using a metaphor - I hope it does help. 

Metaphor: Life under the board

When I was a small boy I used to love playing in our garden. It was a big garden, a neglected garden, it had a particular area which was overgrown and had various bits of wood, boards and panels trodden into the ground. This was my favourite area. I loved lifting the boards to see what lurked beneath. All kinds of creepy crawlies! The grass would be yellow and it was all slimily from the damp and lack of sunlight. White slugs, centipedes, wood louse, ants, beetle lava, many strange creatures all living their whole lives under the board. 

It was like an alternative world under those boards. But outside of those boards was a big, wide, bright, colourful, warm and buzzing world outside. 

When I came to faith I realised - it was as though I was like those creepy crawlies living under a board right up to the point of coming to faith. 

What we call life, with all its ups and downs, dramas, highs and lows - all the wonderful discoveries of science, advances in technologies, marriages, babies being born, deaths, wars,  famines, art - all of it - it is all like life lived under the board once you come to faith in Christ. 

This life under the board is all natural to us. We’re at home there - or as at home as we can be - this life is all we know - it is just 'life - until we cone to know Jesus - then we look back as see, all along it was like life under the board.

Tell-tale signs

And yet as we live this life under the board, we know this is not really our home. That is - in our own world, we feel a sense of lostness. We instinctively know that home should be a place of comfort, security, safety, warmth, a safe place for family - a rock. But we feel unsettled. We look around at this completely normal world and we know - we have no real home here. There is no security. We are wanderers  looking for shelter and safety, clutching at whatever we can get. This world of ours that should be home, is not the home it should be - something is wrong.

If we’re honest with ourselves we have to admit, something is very, very wrong. It’s bad enough that there are, what we might call ‘natural’ tragedies and disasters such as diseases and tsunamis etc - but it’s far worse than that - there is also inexplicable evil in the world and at every conceivable level. 

Our fellow men

At a global international level. 

Consider that the richest 1% in the world own just over half the world’s wealth. To quote the Guardian “0.7% of the world’s adult population – control 46% of total global wealth …” At the same time, 70% of the world’s population (the poor) have to share 2.7% of the world’s wealth.

To break this down it means if there was just 200 people in the world, and all the world’s wealth equalled £100. Then one person has about £48 for their self. 59 people would have £0.77 each and 70 people would have £0.04 or 4p each. That is how the world’s wealth is distributed. If that 1% shared all their wealth equally with everyone in the world, we would all be upper middle class having £2 each! Literally, 99% of people in the world would be a lot better off! Only the 1% would be worse off - they would no longer be super-rich - just upper middle class like everyone else. This reality is wicked - it is an evil that well over 1 billion people live in absolute poverty.

Or consider this, one national ruler can command troops to launch missiles at another country and utterly devastate millions of people’s lives. Bt this is our world.

At a local individual level

From the big global international level right down to the individual there is terrible evil. Consider this; the most vile of atrocities you can possibly imagine - it’s probably happening somewhere right now. Rape, gang rape, mutilation, butchery, unimaginable abuse against babies and children - it’s all happening somewhere right now in our world.

But there is more ‘domesticated’ evil too. Consider the wreckage caused by an unfaithful husband. I don’t just mean the dead-beat excuse of a man who cheats on his wife (or wife who cheats on her husband) but the pathetic excuse of a man who does not care for and look after and love his wife and children. That is an act of wickedness.  It causes untold hurt and pain. But it all just seems normal and acceptable - except when we experience it, when we feel the pain of it and see the damage it does we realise - it is wicked. 

But none of us like to use terms like 'wicked' and 'evil' because it’s all a bit too close to home. How many men and women do you know who have abandoned their children or partners? There’s a good chance you the reader are guilty of it. How many of us have stuck the emotional knife into the people we are supposed to love? The problem with all this is, in the end we must all put our hands up and admit we are all part of the problem of evil, and if you think you are not part of the problem of evil, I guarantee you someone somewhere thinks you are.

Tragically, evil is rampant and normal, just watch the news.

It's all just nature?

Now let’s be straight about it all - If there is no God as many assert - it is all just ‘natural’ because ‘natural’ is all there is. There is no wrong or right - it’s all just natural. Everything that everyone does - it’s all just natural - nothing more, nothing less, because there is only nature. This is the view of Secular Humanists (Philosophical Naturalism). But we all know deep down - it is not just ‘natural’ - something is profoundly wrong - we just know it.

Evidence for God

But we can only say that if there is God. Why? Because if there is a God, if there is an intelligent creator, then ‘natural’ is whatever He created us to do. So if we act in ways we were not created to act - then we act unnaturally. We are acting in ways we are not made for. If there is a God - only then can we say certain things are unnatural.

But what about evil? If there is a God some things are unnatural for sure - but how do we explain evil? Evil is the end of unnatural - it’s where it leads if left unchecked.  Evil is the ‘natural’ but twisted and made perverse - that is evil. It is the opposite of what God created us for. 

Thank God for goodness!

But that’s not the whole story. There are also the heights of human nobility. People everywhere express love and selflessness in a million ways. We all take things for granted, but every now and then we see the beauty of the so-called ‘milk of human kindness’. I think of Tyson Fury the boxer, he has many critics and haters - perhaps deservedly so - but after fighting his latest bout donated all his £7m winnings to charity! Then there are all the men and women that selflessly work hard to provide for their families. The response of millions to a sudden world disaster in giving aid. The person who stops in the street to talk to the homeless and buy them a hot chocolate. In the midst of evil and war - people giving their lives to protect those they love. As well as the depths of depravity - our hearts are warmed by the heights of human nobility. What conflicted creatures we are!

This is all 'life under the board.' But there is more...