7th December 2012

With the divine gift of freedom, human beings learn to change, adapt, be responsive to life and all its events. This leads to responsibility - how do we use the choices before us? To further our evolution or just to subsist and survive? For growth or destruction? For the benefit of self or of others? For good or for ill, however that may be understood in context.

Knowing that we are mortal brings with it consideration of what we might do or become within that finite time span of life. We reflect on these things at each major stage in life, matching our ambitions and plans against the reality of our achievements. However great or small our resources and potential may be, each of us is finite. It's quite natural to want to make the best out of our limited opportunities, and check that we are doing so. However, when our own expectations aren't met, either for ourselves or others, a sense of failure and inadequacy causes distress, undermines trust and confidence. This is of no benefit to a healthy life.

With good reason  Paul teaches: "There must be no passing of premature judgement." We cannot see the wider context in which present success or failure occurs. It's better not to engage in the kind of criticism which undermines, when what everyone needs is nurture and support. Jesus often speaks against pre-judging and condemning each other. He teaches that mutual restraint is vital for the health of all our relationships when he says: "Judge not and you shall not be judged." If we are to use our critical faculties considering our lives or the lives of others, it must be to build up and not to break down.

Scripture speaks of the End as the proper occasion for final judgement. Then, all created things and human beings are to give account of themselves for the part they have played in the unfolding of the divine purpose while time continued its course. When the End comes for us, whether it's early for us or finally: "It is our human lot to die once, with judgement to follow.." says the writer of Hebrews.

It's not an occasion to criticise or condemn, but for Christ's work to be completed, bringing salvation (wholeness and fulfillment) to those eagerly awaiting him. Only the Creator can ultimately evaluate what people make of themselves in this life. The reason why judgement and condemnation are so closely linked in our thinking is fear that inadequacy and failure will cause our annihilation. Scripture itself, born in a context of tough testing and trial has its share of imagery expressing this anxiety, but it is not the last word on judgement.

In the End, Christ will be all in all. No matter how anxious, dramatic and tortuous this process, the way to salvation remains open for every person to reach ultimate fulfillment in Him.

2nd December 2012

The modern world is fascinated with how we die and telling the stories how victims have come to a violent end, no matter how much else there may be to tell of their lives. We joke about after-life, and paint imaginative pictures to console ourselves when confronted with the cold facts of mortality and the dissolution of the body. We know so much about the universe we inhabit, so little about ourselves. We don't know whether or not anything of ourselves survives death, apart from solid achievments and other peoples' memories of us we leave behind.

We know the universe began and will inevitably end. What then happens to any trace of our existence for others to recall? If death spells annihilation in the short or long term, what are we? What is the point and purpose of existing at all? Can life be lived to the full and to good purpose in the light of such profound unanswered, unanswerable questions? Faced only with what we think we know for sure, the facts, these are profound and disturbing issues confronting us individually and collectively.

Hell in every religion is an imaginary realm where the dead end up, punished for consequences of wrong actions when they were alive - but what constructive purpose does this imagery and mythology serve, apart from deterring evil-doing? The prospect of death as mere annihilation hasn't removed the notion of hell as punishment from the modern world view. It has identified and re-located the experience of hell in the midst of life itself. Hell is perceived wherever tragedy, disaster or brutal conflict imposes suffering on people. Humans are adept at causing each other suffering. "Hell is other people"

At least as long as we are alive there's a possibility of rescuing others from hell, by working on putting right relationships with one another. It's the most noble and significant way we have of making existence meaningful even if, in the end, life came to nothing.

Any experience of unrelieved torment and suffering can drive us to long for an end to existence. Yet, for the most part, we cling on to life for as long as we can cope with it. We want more than we get, we long to know if there's more to life than life itself.

Do I in any sense exist? Not just when my mind and body are failing and cease to function, but when it is reduced to its component elements? We long to know, but are confronted with not knowing, disturbed by by longing, immortal longing. Yet we have no means of imagining what we long for, what existence would be like beyond the realm of present knowledge, experience and understanding.

This longing is part of our consciousness of self, something which seems to distinguish us from other creatures. It's part of what being in in the divine image means for those who stake their existence on believing in God.