My new book Remember the Creator is published today (April 1st in America). The subject of the book is summed up in the title. This is the most important thing for modern day humanity; to remember God. But on its own, it is not enough. For what sort of God are we remembering and how are we remembering him? It is a cliché to say that God invented Man in his own image and ever since Man has been returning the compliment, but such is the case. Look at modern religion of practically any type you care to mention. People pray to God, they talk of God but I venture to suggest that the God they address is often one of their own imagining, conjured up from the limited resources of their own minds and a projection of their own thoughts and desires.
Of course, none of us really knows God. As the absolute and eternal, he is beyond us all. But there really is a difference between those who intuit something of his reality because they have begun to open themselves up to what is beyond themselves, the truth of the transcendent, and those who may believe in something but do so from within the context of their own minds. It's like an enclosed circle and one in which there is a little opening so that the light outside begins to seep in. We in the West can see the mental conception of God quite clearly in Islam but it appears just as much in many contemporary Christian churches where God has been reduced to something like the head of a social services bureau, a non-judgemental figure preoccupied with egalitarianism and universal friendliness rather than the Maker of Heaven and Earth who hates sin but whose love touches like a blazing fire that burns without hurt. Make sure that the God you remember is the fullest expression you can conceive of Goodness, Beauty and Truth, and try to understand him in spiritual not worldly terms. Accept no lesser substitutes.
This is also the day that the UK was supposed to have left the European Union and regained its economic and political independence, turning back towards its true mission in the world. For, cutting through all the obfuscation and waffle, that is what this is all actually about. However, the bullying potentates of the EU and the craven incompetents of the British Government have put an at least temporary stop to that. Not to mention the behind the scenes manipulations of civil servants and bureaucrats whose arrogance is only matched by their complacency.
Hard words, I know, and I'm not saying these are all bad people. Doubtless many mean well according to their conception of things. But they see everything in terms of this world (even the religious among them - apparently most of the clergy and all the bishops in the Church of England want Britain to remain in the EU), and they have no spiritual insight or vision, substituting for that a belief in progress on the worldly level. One must hope that their actions will make an increasing number of people realise how completely untrustworthy the political class and technocratic elites are. May they consequently turn to deeper ways of engaging with the problems of life. As the outer world descends further into illusion, remembering the Creator becomes more vital by the day.
7 comments:
Congratulations on the publication of your latest book. I look forward to reading it.
Thanks very much, Francis.
Mr Wildblood
I am reading your book, which arrived promptly as promised. It is beautifully and clearly written, and explains simply and powerfully what God is, and what we are.
Thank you.
Tobias
Thank you, Tobias. I'm glad you're enjoying it.
I have finished reading your book. It explains clearly just how human beings need to behave to be true to God's good. In 'A Final Word', bottom of page 249, you say that 'the believer accepts because of love'. It is at those times, when I have love in my heart for fellow human beings, and when I am least fearful, that I have most faith. If love for our fellow human beings is a lesser expression of the love felt for God, it seems to make sense that faith is brighter at such times.
But much of the time, my faith is weak, and I feel the sin of despair. I feel to be in a place of danger, stuck between belief and disbelief. Dr Charlton has said that one must decide on one's metaphysics, and whilst that may be true, I cannot see how deciding in a rational, mental, thinking way does it. It certainly does not for me. What I am waiting for is some sort of divine intervention - something that is like a flash of light - a 'knowing' that is real in my heart, not just my head. This is hard to explain without it sounding childish, as though I am expecting God to do a magic trick for me, but I need something more.
But where do the people like me go, who haven't crossed the abyss, who are not sure? I look to try and find God, and I hope that one day I will find him for sure, and that I will talk to him, and he will talk to me. And if he is talking to me now, then I hope I will one day hear him clearly, and loudly.
In the meantime, what do I do? How long must this doubt and pain last? How do I get to the other side?
Faith is a funny business, Tobias. I don't think any of us have absolutely perfect faith. The doubt and pain you talk about is something I am familiar with too. It's part of being a human being in this world. It's also a test.
You see, God is making something of us. He's not just wanting children who love him and he loves, nice as that might be. He wants real grown ups who can live with doubt and pain and (eventually) not let it worry them because through all that there is something deeper that makes them put up with it, something that has knowledge that our life in this world is strengthening us spiritually, and it's doing that by removing us from God, from the source of being, and putting us out there on our own with only ourselves to fall back on. We do have help what with religion, scripture and so on but at the end of the day we are on our own in this world. We won't always be on our own but here we are and the reason for that is to make us spiritually independent.
But it hurts. At least, it hurts the sensitive soul who can see through the world but not see quite far enough to heaven or not see that with full, clear and perfect vision. The pain and the doubt must be endured and if they are and we perservere in spite of them we shall one day see that without them we could not have come as far as we have. They are like the hammer blows of the sculptor as he make a statue. We doubt because we can't see but we also doubt because we can see. I mean by that that we can't see fully but our vision is beginning to clear. People who are completely happy in this world don't doubt because they don't sense anything beyond this world. But those of us who do are in the position of being between two worlds and not wholly in either of them. The pain too is felt because of the contrast between what we sense within, and that is a true feeling or it would not cause us this pain, and our everyday experience in the physical world especially now when the physical world is regarded as all there is. But if we don't let the pain overwhelm us the it can be a growing pain. And we do have the example of Jesus who suffered. He showed us the way and how to deal with the problems encountered. In the Garden of Gethsemane he had just the pain and doubt you describe but he did not let them deter him from what he knew inside to be true. We must try to do the same.
Perhaps a fully formed metaphysic is not so important. We can build one that seems to make sense to us but the most important thing is to know that the love of God is real. He loves us. He loves you and he wants to bring you to an eventual union with him. That will require some work but if we just keep keeping on in the certain knowledge of that love, we will eventually reach the place where doubt and pain are no more.
There is evil and darkness in the world but that is only there because love has given us the freedom to love too. But love is the basic truth. If it weren't how could it be the thing that has the most meaning for us?
Thank you. I'll reflect on what you have said to me.
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