J.B. Phillips - God Our Contemporary

❋
❋ ❋ ❋
❋❋
❋
❋ ❋ ❋ ❋
❋❋ ❋❋ ❋
❋❋ ❋
❋❋ ❋ ❋ ❋ ❋
❋ ❋ ❋
❋ ❋ ❋❋
❋❋ ❋❋ ❋ ❋❋ ❋ ❋ ❋
❋ ❋ ❋
❋❋ ❋❋ ❋ ❋❋ ❋ ❋
❋ ❋
❋❋ ❋❋
God Our Contemporary

J.B. PHILLIPS
Contents
Personal foreword, 3
1. The time in which we live, 6
2. Faith and unfaith, 10
3. A plea for understanding, 15
4. The inadequacy of humanism, 21
5. The limitations of science, 26
6. The beginning of wisdom, 32
7. The necessity for true religion, 37
8. Religion and modern knowledge, 43
9. A new look at Christianity, 49
10. The question of probability, 53
11. The crucial issue, 57
12. Returning to the source, 61
13. Christian revelation, 66
14. Some criticisms of Christianity, 1, 72
15. Some criticisms of Christianity, 2, 77
16. Problems of suffering and evil, 1, 82
17. Problems of suffering and evil, 2, 91
18. The challenge to living, 98
19. The missing dimension, 103
20. Re-presenting Christianity, 110
21. Christ and the Church, 115
Conclusion, 121
God Our Contemporary, copyright 1960 by J.B. Phillips.
2 • God Our Contemporary, contents

Personal foreword
For over twenty years I have worked within the parochial sys-
tem of the Church of England, and have therefore retained a strong
impression of the point of view of the average hard-working parish
priest with his absurdly large and varied responsibilities. And, for the
same period, I have had a good chance of observing the behaviour and
pattern of life both of those who have been within the Church from
the cradle, as it were, as well as of those who came to join the Church
from a background either pagan or agnostic. But for the past five years
I have been living without parochial responsibility, and have had the
opportunity not only of speaking to groups of most denominations in
this country, but also of listening to a great many people, both Chris-
tian and non-Christian. While heavily engaged in parish work I used
constantly to complain that I could not see the wood for the trees; for
almost any conscientious priest or minister is kept so close to the im-
mediate interests of his particular job that he cannot easily achieve any
detachment. But when one is detached from a local responsibility for a
period of even five years the over-all picture grows more clearly in the
mind. One cannot help seeing life both from the point of view of those
inside the Church and of those outside it. And one cannot avoid being
almost intolerably aware of the gross misunderstandings which exist
between the worlds of faith and non-faith.
There can be no doubt at all that the contemporary God is at
work outside the limits of the Church’s direct influence. Yet much as
I admire and thank God for all the random goodnesses which exist in
our country today, I cannot see any prospect of any rebirth of religious
faith without the Christian Church. Heaven knows there are sections
of the Church which are antiquated and backward-looking, loving the
traditions of the past rather than the living men and women of today.
God Our Contemporary, forward • 3
And it cannot be denied that the Church spends a good deal of time
and energy on matters of quite secondary importance. Nevertheless,
there are in the living Church hundreds of men and women of vision,
of courage and selfless devotion, doing all kinds of bold and imagina-
tive things to bring back into our common life that true religious faith
which alone can give to it depth, meaning and purpose. The need is
very urgent. I have found for myself, in various parts of this country,
the most appalling ignorance of what Christianity is basically concerned
with. Very few people outside the churches appear to have any knowl-
edge of the aims and achievements of any live contemporary Church
even in our own land. And as for the magnificent heroic work of the
Christian Church throughout the world, most ordinary people have no
knowledge of it whatsoever.
Our society today bears all the marks of a God-starved commu-
nity. There is little real moral authority because no ultimate Author-
ity is known or acknowledged. Since there is no accepted standard of
values beyond the purely material, the false god of success, the lure
of glamorised sex, the love of money and the ‘rat-race’ of business or
social competition hold almost undisputed sway in the lives of many
people. When the true God is unknown, that combination of awe,
love, respect, admiration and wonder, which we call worship, becomes
diverted toward human beings who exhibit unusual gifts in the pub-
lic eye. Without the Spirit of the living God the public conscience is
capricious and ill informed. The death sentence passed on a brutal,
calculating murderer arouses hysterical protest, while the killing and
maiming of thousands of people on our roads raise among the general
public little more than a perfunctory regret. Cruelty to animals is a far
more burning issue to many people than the terrible damage done to
the personalities of children by the irresponsibility or infidelity of par-
ents. Where there is no belief in a Purpose extending beyond this life
people are inevitably oppressed by a sense of futility. And since there
is no great cause for which to suffer and labour, words like ‘duty’ and
‘moral obligation’ have simply lost valid currency for large numbers
of people. Further, since a great many people know nothing of the
4 • God Our Contemporary, forward
Christian certainty of life beyond death, the power of death to injure
and terrify is restored to a pagan level. And finally, since most people
have no idea of any resources beyond their own, and apparently believe
that we live in a closed-system of cause and effect, they come to accept
both their own characters and those of other people with a slightly
cynical fatalism. The whole situation cries out for the restoration of
real religious faith.
I believe that modern man can never possess a faith which can
both command his intelligent loyalty and influence every part of his
thinking and feeling until he discovers the unique authority of Jesus
Christ. Those who have discovered that authority, which is at once so
different from and superior to any known human authority, must do
all they can to make the widespread recovery of faith possible. There
are many false ideas to be exposed, and the difference between what is
purely traditional and absolutely essential must be made plain. There is
sound historical evidence as well as modern information to be brought
to the attention of those who are largely ignorant of the true content
of the Christian Faith. This is no time for reticence, and all those who
have found a satisfying religious faith in Christ are nowadays called not
only to serve the patient purposes of the Kingdom, but to make the
King known. Today information is as necessary as testimony. In a time
of dire spiritual poverty the extreme difficulty of ‘communicating’ the
Gospel of Jesus Christ appears to me to underline the urgency of the
situation. And, unless it can be communicated, what is meant to be
Good News for all men everywhere becomes a frozen spiritual asset.
God Our Contemporary, forward • 5

1. The time in which we live
The concern of this present book is chiefly the relationship of

man with the contemporary God, and it is in this context particularly
important not to sigh for old days which can never come back. If we
admit the existence of ‘God’ we can certainly claim that because of his
nature the passage of time cannot alter his character. But as for man,
his conditions of life, his perceptions and outlook, his attitude of mind,
both toward himself and toward any possible Creator, have all changed
so enormously in the last sixty or seventy years that we face almost a
new situation. In the whole long history of mankind there has never
been such a violent acceleration in the acquisition of human knowl-
edge, at least of certain kinds. We really cannot be surprised that the
young person of today is very largely lacking in historical sense. There
is such a fundamental difference between his attitude to life and that of
his counterpart of less than a hundred years ago, that he can hardly be
blamed if he sees no more than the most tenuous connection between
his own age and all the previous centuries.
This marked change of outlook has swept over us with unbeliev-
able speed. It is in a really very tiny fraction of the thousands of years
of recorded human history that the lonely watcher on the hill has been
superseded by scanning radar, the cannon ball by the guided missile, the
urgent message on horseback by the telephone call, the peepshow by
the cinema, the spreading of unreliable rumour by responsible broad-
casting, the eyewitness account given to a few by the mass-perception
of television, the months-long weary voyage by quick and comfortable
transport, dangerous and arduous labour by powerful mechanical de-
vices. New fabrics, new materials included under the general term of
‘plastics’, new drugs and antibiotics, the mechanization of farm and
factory labour, new methods of food packing and the widespread use
6 • God Our Contemporary, 1
of refrigeration, these and a hundred more things are quite new in the
human scene. It is no good repeating nowadays the weary old cliché,
“there is nothing new under the sun,” for it is obviously and demon-
strably untrue. There are literally thousands of human discoveries and
devices which have never, even in embryo, appeared before in human
life.
In addition to this, never in all our human history has there been
such interchange between the nations not only of ideas but of living
people. (We need constantly to remember that in past centuries only a
very privileged or adventurous few were able to travel at all.) The net-
work of news coverage throughout the world is so efficient and on the
whole so reliable, that the intelligent man of today may make himself
better informed about events in the distant places of the world than
the intelligent man only a hundred years ago could make himself in-
formed about events within his own country. Despite all men’s fears
and prejudices and differences, it is for the first time becoming pos-
sible for thinking people to sense what was foreseen a long time ago,
that we are ‘members one of another’.
Yet while human achievement in practical and scientific matters
has progressed by leaps and bounds, the presentation of the Christian
religion is still frequently made in an atmosphere at once stuffy and
old-fashioned. The language of the Authorised Version of the Bible, the
language of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, yes, and the language
frequently employed in home-made prayers in the Free Churches, not
to mention the language of hymns, are unquestionably heavily redolent
of the past, only partially aware of the present and vaguely hopeful
about the future. At the risk of offending many Christian people it has
to be said that to the impartial observer, the faithful Christian is appar-
ently saying, ‘This must be true, it has been believed for so many cen-
turies.’ But the non-Christian is at least sometimes saying, ‘This thing
may be essentially true, but it is so old and encrusted by tradition that
it is high time that it was cleaned and re-examined.’ Under sentimental
appeals, under pressures of guilt or fear, through a wistful nostalgia for
the serenity and security of the past, or in sheer desperation through
God Our Contemporary, 1 • 7
his modern bewilderment, modern man may be driven to accept the
faith and trappings of past ages. But for every one who consents to do
this, there are a dozen men of good will who cannot be intellectually
dishonest, who cannot lightly forget the fears and superstitions of the
past, and who cannot reconcile what appears to them to be the mumbo
jumbo of bygone days with the dear cold knowledge of the present. If
there is a God at all he must be ‘big enough’ to fit into the modern
scene (and that naturally means a conception of the Creator a million
times greater than that held even a century ago).
Although we are deeply concerned with the present and the fu-
ture, no sensible man will deny his debt to the past. If it is impossible
to put back the clock, it is equally impossible to think that we can face
life today without the slightest regard for the generations which have
preceded us. It is neither more nor less than adolescent arrogance to
think that any generation starts de novo. Young people, for example, may
be intensely critical of all that has been taught them and may be con-
temptuous of the tradition and culture in which they find themselves,
but they would be in no position to exercise their critical faculty at all
if it were not for the educational process which is part of the system
they are so anxious to denigrate. Even on the purely physical plane the
voluble young rebel against the present order of things owes far more
than he realises to the past. What young person could feed himself, or
maintain even a modest level of hygiene, without using the knowledge
and accumulated experience of other people? Does he know anything
about agriculture, weaving, the manufacture of soap or indeed of the
mechanical processes which enable him to disseminate his ideas? I am
not at all sure that this very obvious debt to the past is always clear to
the modern ‘clevers’. The most clear-sighted, fearless and unpreju-
diced writer of today is able to do what he does only because of the
knowledge and invention of the generations which lie behind him. The
modern writer, however contemptuous of days gone by, does not write
as an Australian aborigine or a South American Indian.
Just as inescapably as we are rooted in the past, so there is a quite
inevitable ‘given-ness’ about the present human predicament. In our
rebellious adolescent days we all feel like the poet who wanted ‘to grasp
this sorry Scheme of Things entire’ and ‘re-mould it nearer to the
Heart’s Desire’. But as we grow more mature, we realise that such a
sentiment is not only highly egocentric but utterly impracticable. The
plain fact is that we can do little or nothing about the basic terms on
which we live. It is only after acceptance of these terms that we can do
something constructive and practical. The countries of the free world
are at present suffering fairly patiently the cults of ‘angry young men’
or their equivalents. More serious attention would be deserved by the
outbursts against Things as They Are if the rebels themselves would
do something more than denounce and destroy. They claim that there
are no causes left to live and die for, but I have yet to hear of an angry
young man dedicating his life to the cure of leprosy, to the care of crip-
pled children or the spreading of medical knowledge in newly-awak-
ening continents, to name but a few of the worthwhile human causes.
They cry that they have nothing in which to put their faith, but have
they seriously considered the claims of true Christianity? If one looks
upon human life as a challenge to courage, compassion and charity, the
anger could be readily transformed into worthwhile energy, the frus-
tration be resolved and the self-pity be forgotten.

2. Faith and unfaith
Many men and women are baffled and bewildered by the com-
plexities of the modern human scene. They can see no sense or pur-
pose in it at all, and many of them are not a little frightened at the new
vistas of human knowledge and power which are continually opening
up in a dozen different fields. Most of them hold on, without much
reason or authority, to the moral standards of what is commonly sup-
posed to be the good life. But it must be plainly said that when they
turn to the churches they feel they are entering the atmosphere of a by-
gone age. Indeed the whole language, teaching and climate of ‘Church’
appears almost totally irrelevant to modern life. I am not of course
saying that the irrelevancy is factual. I am merely concerned to point
out that this is how the whole machinery of ‘Church’ often appears to
the outsider.
I am happy to be aware of exceptions, but the fact remains that
most of the practising Christians in our churches are the product of
Christian parents—there is a sort of hereditary indoctrination. What
is more, almost every clergyman or minister of my acquaintance comes
from a Christian family, and is not infrequently ‘a son of the manse’.
The training of young men for the ministry of the Church is certainly
far better today than it was when I myself was ordained. Nevertheless,
I am convinced that even today it does not do enough to help a man
understand the unbelieving world to which he is called to minister. It
is not uncommon to find that those who train him however learned
they may be in such matters as theology and Church history, are almost
totally ignorant of non-Christian ways of thinking, except perhaps the-
oretically. It is still possible to find plenty of ordained men who have
never worked, in the secular sense, in the contemporary world, and
who find it difficult to understand the perplexity and insecurity of god-
less materialism. The very fact that the modern Church finds ‘commu-
nication’ such a desperately difficult problem is undeniable evidence of
its lack of understanding of the world of unfaith. I know that these are
hard words, but they are not written in any spirit of useless criticism.
I am merely concerned to point out, and to emphasize as strongly as I
can, what is to me the daily tragedy—the gulf between the good men
of faith and the good men of unfaith. Let us put briefly the two con-
temporary points of view.
The Christian believes in a God of Love, All-powerful and All-
wise. He believes man to be God’s special creation, and whether he
believes the fault to derive from the failure of the first man or not, he
believes mankind to be suffering from a universal infection called ‘sin’.
He is inclined to believe that the non-apprehension of God is chiefly
due to this moral infection. The Christian further believes that the
eventual effect of sin is death, and that man would be in a hopeless
impasse were it not for God’s personal visit to this earth in the man
Jesus Christ. This man not only provided a perfect example of human
living but by making himself, as it were, representative man, allowed
the forces of evil to close in upon him and kill him. By this action he
reconciled the sinful human race with the utter perfection and holiness
of God. After his death by crucifixion he returned to life again, both to
prove his own claim to be divine, and to demonstrate the fact that he
had overcome the power of death. After his Resurrection and Ascen-
sion he sent his own Spirit into the personalities of his early followers
so that they might be the spearhead of a movement designed to convert
the world to belief in, and cooperation with, God himself. Christians
further believe that Jesus Christ founded a Church which is to be on
earth a witness to heavenly truth, and that he gave that Church unique
spiritual authority. The Church therefore seeks to add to its member-
ship so that men and women may be reconciled with God and may do
his Will upon earth.
In sharp contrast with this view of life is that of the intelligent
agnostic. He finds himself part of a vast number of human beings living
on this comparatively tiny planet. He knows something of the aeons of
time which must have elapsed before Homo sapiens appeared. He can
probably see an upward trend in the process of evolution, however
blind and ruthless that process may sometimes seem to be. But, if he is
honest, he is not wholly convinced that the present tendencies of man
are in an upward direction. He cannot help observing evil, injustice
and cruelty. He cannot help seeing how frequently the innocent suffer
and how the tough and cruel go through life comparatively unscathed.
He also sees a good deal of human unselfishness, kindness and cour-
age, and these qualities he is prepared to recognise as good and even to
regard with a certain reverence. Now the Christian’s starting point, or
at least the starting point of such evangelism as he may chance to hear,
probably seems to him quite monstrous. The emphasis is on human sin
and on the failure of men to reach the apparently arbitrary standards of
God. After all, he thinks, if there is a God in charge of the whole bewil-
dering universe, it seems singularly unfair that he should be presented
in the role of a hanging judge! For, to put it plainly, he holds all the
cards and knows all the answers, while even the most devout Christian,
on his own admission, walks by faith and not by sight. It seems to our
sensitive agnostic that the God presented by the passionate evange-
list is making unwarrantable demands. For if, after a long process of
evolution, highly complex beings with self-consciousness emerge, then
surely any reasonable Creator would not expect too much of his crea-
tures who are blind and limited through no fault of their own. Indeed,
if there is a God his attitude toward man could fairly be expected to
show both pity and the desire to help. But to call his creatures ‘sin-
ners’, and to insist that to admit their ‘sin’ is the only way to get to
know him, seems uncomfortably like condemning a small child for not
understanding the binomial theorem!
To my mind the difference between these two points of view is
not always properly appreciated. The Christian, who is far more in-
doctrinated than he realizes by upbringing and training, very naturally
tends to consort with fellow-Christians who share his point of view. If
he is a clergyman or minister his specialized training will condition him
even more deeply. It becomes virtually impossible for him to view the
human scene without theological colour. He holds a faith which, in my
view, is infinitely worth passing on; he is more often than not a man of
kindness, compassion and sympathy. But again and again he feels frus-
trated and grows disheartened because he does not really understand
the thinking and feeling of people who possess absolutely nothing of
that Christian conviction which shapes his whole life.
At the same time the intelligent agnostic, with his prejudices
against the churches and all their ways, very rarely takes the trouble
to look behind the tradition and the façade and to find out the mean-
ing of essential Christianity. His knowledge of what the alert modern
Church is doing in any part of the world is usually infinitesimal, and
equally minute is his first-hand adult knowledge of the early Christian
documents which comprise the New Testament. Consequently his at-
tacks on the churches are nearly always ill informed or out-of-date. If
he rarely fires a shot at Christianity itself it is simply because he usually
has little more than a very sketchy knowledge of what it is all about.
There is an added difficulty in the modern situation which is not
always appreciated by the sincere lifelong Christian. In the old days,
when man knew very little about the true nature of the physical world,
he could very easily be reduced to a state of awe and even terror by
natural phenomena which he did not understand. But with the vast
increase in scientific knowledge in the last seventy years—a knowledge
which is expanding all the time—man’s attitude toward Nature has
greatly changed. When confronted with the inexplicable his reaction is
very far from that of the saints of old who could humbly say, ‘It is the
Lord, let him do what seemeth to him good’. Old-fashioned humility
of this kind is a very delightful virtue, especially when we observe it in
other people’s lives! But the modern agnostic is not necessarily lacking
in humility when his reaction before the inexplicable is markedly dif-
ferent. He says, in effect, ‘This is something new to human experience;
let us try to understand it and, if possible, control it’. And it may be
worth pointing out here that if it were not for this attitude men would
still be living in terror of darkness, lightning and contagious disease.
Some Christians, at least, do not appear to have properly ob-
served this change of atmosphere in thinking. For a man who believes
in a God who is a benevolent Heavenly Father, it may be easy to accept
life at the Father’s Hand. But it is really expecting too much to think
that the intelligent agnostic is going to smother his own critical faculty
and observations of life and submit to an unknown quantity called ‘the
Lord’s Will’. The modern agnostic, who is by no means unaware of the
mystery of life, is not nearly so arrogant as he appears. But he is not
going to be shocked or coerced into faith by the sheer weight of the
inexplicable. ‘If we admit that there is a God’, he is saying, ‘surely we
can consider ourselves as having passed the fears and bogeys of child-
hood. Cannot God treat us as intelligent adults and let us have at least
a few hints as to what life is all about? Can we not know something of
its purpose so that we may cooperate with it? We cannot abrogate our
intelligence, but we would give a great deal to have reliable clues to the
nature and purpose of life.’ Surely such an attitude is reasonable, and
surely the Christian should try to understand it!

3. A plea for understanding
I have already mentioned the widespread ignorance on both sides

of the chasm which divides the world and the Church. The traditional
churches do not always seem to realize that the premises for sensible
argument, which are basic to themselves, are probably neither valid nor
comprehensible in the world outside the Church. When the practising
Christian talks to modern man about the ‘Law of God’, the ‘Teaching
of the Church’, or invokes the authority of Holy Scripture, he is to his
own mind bringing out the heaviest weapons in his armoury. But to
the man whose idea of God is nebulous to the point of negligibility the
invocation of ‘God’s Law’ is quite meaningless. To say that ‘the Church
teaches’ is equally without force, for the man of intelligence knows, in
the first place, that there are a great many churches and that some of
their teaching is contradictory. Secondly, he may ask rudely but perti-
nently, ‘Who are the churches anyway and by what right do they attempt
to speak with authority to me?’ And although in the heated atmosphere
of the revival meeting the phrase ‘the Bible says’ may carry fervent
conviction, the intelligent man who has read the Bible knows perfectly
well that it can be made to ‘say’ a lot of things, and that, as a matter of
sober history, witch-hunting, slave-owning and the inhuman policy of
apartheid have all been justified by reference to the same Bible.
But the ignorance and misunderstanding do not exist only on the
side of professing Christians. There is, for example, a basic misconcep-
tion held by a great many people outside the Christian Church. It is
commonly supposed that, in the religious view, life is primarily a kind
of competition in goodness and morality! Consequently, the agnostic
who can, and frequently does say, ‘I am as good as So-and-so who goes
to church’, feels that he has given a final and unanswerable reply to the
whole Christian position! But true Christianity has never taught that
life is primarily a kind of competition in goodness. Most Christians to-
day are ‘in the Church’ because they have felt the need for God and for
cooperating with what they know of his purpose. There probably were
times in the history of the Christian Church in this country when some
church-going Christians would look upon themselves as ‘superior’ to
those outside the Church. But to imagine that such is the common at-
titude today would be laughable if it were not a tragic part of the mis-
understanding between the worlds of faith and unfaith. Most modern
Church-goers give this weekly witness to their own inner conviction
without the slightest sense of superiority, and more frequently than is
sometimes supposed, it is given by young Christians despite ridicule,
discouragement and even some persecution. If I plead for more un-
derstanding on the part of Christians for those who have not enjoyed a
Christian upbringing, I would also plead that the agnostic should know
much more accurately than he appears to do what the Christians of
today, particularly the young Christians, really believe.
Now apart from the nonsense of the supposed ‘competition in
goodness’ both Christians and humanists believe that it is important to
lead a good life. But in this country there is not the sharp black-and-
white contrast between Christians and pagans, largely, I believe, be-
cause the whole life of the country has been soaked for many centuries
in the Christian tradition. Thousands of people today are exhibiting,
even to a marked degree, ‘the fruits of the Spirit’ which Paul listed long
ago in his letter to Galatia. They are, for the record, ‘love, joy, peace,
patience, kindness, generosity, fidelity, tolerance and self-control’.
It is obvious that these qualities are no monopoly of the church-
es, and that devoted selfless service is quite frequently given without
any religious faith. It is naturally argued by our scientific humanists
that this is good and normal human behaviour. But is this really so? It
would need first-hand knowledge of an entirely pagan country to say
for certain that these impressive spiritual qualities are growing sponta-
neously, rather than being the delayed action of many years of uncon-
scious Christian absorption. It could surely be reasonably argued that
many people in this country are living on the spiritual capital of the
past, and that there are signs that the capital is being depleted. Already
there are many thousands of present-day parents who were brought
up with no religious faith and few standards, and they have had almost
nothing, and sometimes less than nothing of spiritual value, to pass on
to their children. Surely it is not far-fetched to suggest that the deple-
tion of spiritual capital accounts for the breakdown of moral standards
in our society. For, as I hope to show in a later chapter, moral standards
ultimately depend upon something transcending the human scene.
Quite apart from the gulf between the comparatively small world
of faith and the world of unfaith there are innumerable smaller gulfs
between various sections of our common life. I am not pining for the
long-past ‘ages of faith’ when I point out that there was in those days
a communal basic belief in God and in revealed standards of human
behaviour. This central belief to a large extent held people together
in their widely varying activities. Moreover, in days when the sum to-
tal of human knowledge could practically be held in the mind of one
man the division caused by human specialization was little more than
a superficial difference of function. Men could at least imagine that all
truth was one.
But today, in our country, the picture is entirely different. A com-
mon faith in God is held by only a minority, and comparatively few
people believe that there is Absolute Truth to which all human dis-
coveries of truth can be referred. This means in effect that our mod-
ern greatly accentuated specialization tends to divide people more and
more. In our industrialized society all kinds of professions and voca-
tions, all kinds of skilled and unskilled occupations, tend to become
wrapped in their own cocoon of specialized knowledge, and to have
little more than superficial contacts outside their own mystiques. What
does the steelworker, for example, know of the life and problems of a
modern secondary school teacher? What does the electronics engineer
know of the life and problems of the surgeon? Such examples could
obviously be multiplied many times; there are many human occupa-
tions which exist in practical isolation from the rest of the community,
and in the absence of a common faith there is today no effective meet-
ing point. From time to time crises such as strike action remind people
that they are dependent upon one another, but for the most part they
live and work within the confines of their own occupation, and there is
extraordinarily little communication of ideas of any significance. This
truth is most easily observed by those who have the opportunity of
passing readily through the unseen barriers. The doctor, the nurse and
the clergyman or minister are some of the few who can observe these
divisions.
Now these people, divided into occupational compartments of
knowledge, skill and experience, are a kind of parable of what is hap-
pening in the realm of thought. The scientist who is exploring the very
frontiers of human knowledge in some specialized department of truth
may have absolutely no knowledge of the work of any other specialist
and may indeed take a certain pride in such ignorance! Of course there
is a fascination in retiring more and more completely into the ivory
tower of expert knowledge, and the temptation to do so is just as real to
the religious man as it is to the poet, the archaeologist, the astronomer,
the geneticist, the mathematician and all the others. But the result of
such retirement is that there is no common pool of human knowledge,
no interaction between various aspects of truth, and no kind of con-
clusion based on the total of human knowledge and experience. It will
naturally be objected that the real expert cannot share his specialized
knowledge with the untrained, and that is no doubt true. But surely
his point of view can be expressed, and the reason for his dedication
to his particular facet of truth translated into terms comprehensible to
other men of intelligence? Can it not be more widely recognized that
we are all in the human predicament together and that the pooling of
knowledge and experience might lead to considerably more light being
shed on the business of living which faces every one of us.
There is another danger in extreme specialization. Unless the spe-
cialist informs himself to a reasonable degree outside his speciality he
can easily be misled in a department where his critical faculties have no
familiar data on which to work. Thus a dedicated scientist who feels,
because he is a human being, the need for something less coldly de-
tached from humanity, may easily be drawn into a religious cult which
is both crude and obscurantist. His highly developed mind apparently
ceases to function in an unfamiliar milieu—or it is possible that he may
not wish it to function. Psychologically it may be an enormous relief to
him to enter a world of warmth and fantasy after the cold, disciplined
life of the laboratory where feelings count not at all. That this can and
does happen I know from personal experience, and it sometimes has
unhappy consequences. For other scientists, doctors or whatever the
specialists may be, are apt to jump to the conclusion that ‘religion’ is
simply an emotional escape. They are therefore hardly encouraged to
examine such a phenomenon as Christianity with unprejudiced critical
faculties.
Apart from such dangers in excessive specialization, there is a
kind of intellectual snobbery about the whole matter which I am sure
all men of good will should steadfastly resist. I call to mind a former
high dignitary of the Church of England who was presented with a
fountain pen. But he never used it, on the simple ground that ‘he did
not understand mechanical things’! I cannot see why the artist should
despise the engineer or the engineer the artist, and I have little pa-
tience for artists or intellectuals of one sort or another who dismiss
a scientific device, which has taken years of patience to perfect, as a
mere gadget. Those who make it their proud boast that they ‘don’t
know the first thing about electricity and couldn’t even mend a socket’
or, when referring to their car, say, ‘I haven’t the remotest idea what
goes on under the hood, I just drive the thing’, are to my mind guilty
of a quite unpardonable conceit. It would not take them long to un-
derstand at least the elementary principles of those things which they
affect to despise, and even to have some clue to the rudiments might
give them an inkling into the enormous skill, patience and ingenuity
which lie behind the practical application of physical science. Those
who loudly deplore the intrusion of ‘science’ into our private lives and
speak nostalgically of the past would be among the first to complain if
they were deprived of the convenience of electric light, the telephone
or the motor car! On the other hand, the man of science has no right
to dismiss a religion such as Christianity, for example, as a mere hango-
ver from more primitive days. He surely cannot seriously imagine that
men of similar intellectual calibre to his own have not asked the same
searching fundamental questions about life and its meaning which he
himself asks, and yet have come to the conclusion that the Christian
Faith is an indispensable part of total truth. If it is rare to find a bishop,
shall we say, giving time and thought to understand the elements of a
scientific process, it is, in my experience at least, also rare to find a
scientist giving his serious attention to the meaning and significance of
Christianity.
Obviously, in an age such as ours there must be specialization; but
must there be such drastic isolation of objective? Surely there need not
be such divisive walls between art, science and religion, erected and
maintained only too often by pride, ignorance and prejudice. No intel-
ligent seeker after truth imagines that he is the only one on the right
track, and the time has gone by when complete ignorance of another
man’s point of view could be considered a virtue.

4. The inadequacy of humanism
The prevailing atmosphere among thinking men and women of

good will today is one of what may loosely be termed ‘scientific hu-
manism’. Since all of us are filled with admiration for the achievements
of science and since all of us desire to practice and propagate such
human virtues as friendliness, tolerance, good humour, sympathy and
courage, we unconsciously assent to scientific humanism as a working
philosophy of life. What we do not so readily see is that science has
very little to offer in solving problems of human relationships, even
though these are the problems which most need to be solved. Nor do
we see, behind what appears to be a kind-hearted philosophy, an ut-
ter denial of any dimension beyond this present observable life, of any
such thing as absolute right or wrong and of any power which might
be called God.
Now although I know that many humanists are good and kind
people I remain convinced that humanism itself is a bleak and cruel
creed. For it offers man a blank denial where his needs are greatest and
his aspirations frequently most desperate. But before we examine this
failure let us see the extraordinarily fragile foundation upon which the
humanist position rests. No man in this country with its centuries-old
tradition of Christianity can detach himself from that tradition, how-
ever vehemently he abuses the Christian Faith and denies the exist-
ence of God. Not all humanists, of course, are to be found attacking
Christianity or denying God; many of them indeed strike me as wistful
people. But humanism itself, according to its official literature, explic-
itly denies the Christian Faith and the need for any moral or spiritual
authority outside humanity.
What exactly does humanism mean by “human” values? It is easy
enough, in a land where more real Christianity has been practised than
is sometimes supposed, to believe that it is truly ‘human’ to be kind,
just, faithful, unselfish and tolerant. But does the humanist seriously
imagine that such ideas are universally held? Is he really so naïve as to
think that they are widely held in, for instance, a Communist-control-
led country? And if not, who is to say what is really ‘human’? Where
are the real standards of right and wrong? It is worth noting in this
connection that conference and negotiation between a traditionally
Christian country and a Communist country invariably break down
because the values held by the parties concerned are not the same.
What appears to us to be insincere, false, callous and cruel may be
perfectly ‘moral’ and ‘human’ by the standards of Communism. It is
monstrous to suggest that whole races of people have suddenly ceased
to be ‘human’! But it is perfectly possible that they have conformed to
a view of life which is quite antipathetic to the one which we tradition-
ally hold. Yet if we say that they have been ‘deceived’ or are ‘mistaken’
or have been indoctrinated by ‘false’ ideas, then we are passing moral
judgments, and the moment we do that we are implying that there are
standards of good and evil. Without some knowledge of pattern and
purpose behind life, what constitutes ‘a good human being’ can vary so
enormously as to make any definition nonsensical.
Humanism denies men any religion, any suprahuman standard,
any timeless point of reference; and without any of these things I do not
believe humanists have a leg to stand on, and it is high time the absurd-
ity of their position were realized. The most a thoroughgoing humanist
can do is to express his own opinion about what is ‘good’ and ‘right’,
and there may be a hundred different views about that! And I cannot
help commenting that the very same intellectual humanists whom I
have met, and who can speak so convincingly about the uselessness of
religion and the sufficiency of scientific humanism, are among those
who are quick to point out that ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are purely relative
and vary both from country to country and from age to age!
But there are other weaknesses in the atheistic humanist position
and they are much more serious than illogicality. Since in the humanist
view a man’s life is entirely restricted to his consciousness of living on
this planet, and since God is totally denied, a conscientious humanist
renders himself impotent in many crucial situations. Thus, since there
is no life beyond this one, humanism can offer no hope to those who
are severely handicapped. Since there is no God, it can offer no exter-
nal power to guide and strengthen a man who is defeated by his own
emotional conflicts. Humanists are themselves prisoners of a closed-
system and, since they believe in it so tenaciously, they have no gospel
of any kind to offer to the weak and struggling, and can offer neither
hope nor security beyond the ills and accidents of this present stage of
existence.
Sometimes I cannot help suspecting that some of the atheistic
humanists who write and talk so brilliantly have had very little experi-
ence of life ‘in the raw’. For I know, as many others know, that in the
crises of life men and women not only reach out desperately for God
but quite often find him. You cannot visit hospital wards, for example,
week after week for many years, you cannot attend many deathbeds
and speak with literally thousands of bereaved people over the years
without realizing what potentialities there are in the spirit of appar-
ently quite ordinary people. Personal contact with many suffering, lov-
ing and sorrowing people convinces one that man does not live only
in this dimension of time and that no amount of humanist docketing
will confine him to it. It is not merely that human beings in their hour
of need show tremendous courage, although this is true. Quite ordi-
nary people reach out and touch powers beyond themselves and use
them. They receive solid assurance that goes far beyond their tentative
hopes. Those of us who have had much to do with the sick and suffer-
ing know how common it is for people to tell us that they have drawn
upon reserves outside themselves or rested their hopes and fears upon
a serenity apparently quite independent of their own minds. Most of
them describe this in religious terms, rightly, as I believe, but even if
it were not so described I cannot doubt that it is part of the total hu-
man picture. I have used the example of human behaviour in pain and
suffering because it is under those conditions that insincerity, pretence
and habitual self-deception are most easily stripped off.
I know perfectly well that the militant humanist will tell me that
I am merely describing subjective phenomena. But the whole point is
that what I have observed results in objective phenomena—courage,
faith, hope, joy and patience, for instance, and these qualities are very
readily observed. For while the kind-hearted humanist can at the very
most only rally a man’s own resources, the one who has some expe-
rience of a power outside himself can invite others to share it with
him. This will mean fulfilling certain conditions, and if the result were
merely a subjective experience it would scarcely be worth while. But
if it results in a new sort of reality being apprehended, the effects of
which are objective and demonstrable in terms of human living, then
surely it is very valuable indeed.
The man who wants everything proved by scientific means is quite
right in his insistence on ‘laboratory conditions’ if he is investigating,
shall we say, water-divining, clairvoyance or telekinesis. But there can
be no such thing as ‘laboratory conditions’ for investigating the realm
of the human spirit unless it can be seen that the ‘laboratory condi-
tions’ are in fact human life itself. A man can only exhibit objectively a
change in his own disposition, a faith which directs his life and a belief
in its significance, in the actual business of living. And this is precisely
where I join issue with the humanist. If I had not seen objective results
springing from faith in spiritual realities, I should no more believe in
God than the most thoroughgoing atheist.
But what really puzzles me is the attitude of mind adopted by the
humanist who denies the existence of God. He claims that his own life
has a purpose, and that other people’s lives have their various purpos-
es, but he emphatically denies that there is any purpose in the whole.
Moreover, since he also denies any further existence beyond that of
this planet, there can be no sense whatever of ultimate purpose of any
kind. For the whole tale of man’s struggles, discoveries, achievements,
insights and aspirations ends automatically when this little planet be-
comes either too hot or too cold to support human life. I honestly find
it impossible to believe that men who are otherwise quite intelligent
can seriously think, as they appear to do, that the end of the whole
vast human experiment is sheer nothingness. I think I can understand
a man willingly devoting his life to posterity, even if he is unable to be-
lieve in his own personal survival of death. But what I cannot believe
is that it is worth anybody’s while to give time, talents and energy to
something that finally is utterly without worth.
Now I am well aware that one of our modern humanists might
interrupt at this stage and say, ‘Now your religion, your belief in God
and immortality are put up by your mind, simply because it will not
face the true facts—the utter loneliness and futility of human living.’
But, quite apart from other arguments, which I will advance later, I
am perfectly entitled to retort, ‘But suppose your attitude is also one of
wishful thinking! It is because you cannot bear to believe you are set
on this temporary stage to develop responsible moral character, and
because you cannot tolerate the idea that this is only the first of what
may be many stages of conscious existence that you deny completely
the idea of God and of life on any other plane, but the terrestrial. You
are deliberately lopping off certain human experiences because they do
not fit in with your theory of closed-system humanism.’
I am convinced that there is a true humanism, which flows not
from a vague Christian tradition but from a quickened sense of the
meaning and purpose of God. I am further convinced that the true love
of mankind springs more readily and more potently from the Christian
Faith than from any other religion. Such a love of humanity is no en-
emy of science or knowledge, but it can add a quality and a depth to liv-
ing which are impossible without a true religious faith. The particular
brand of scientific humanism which affects so much of our thinking is
either agnostic, in the less narrow sense of that term, or rigidly atheis-
tic. And a system which denies the existence of God, the possibility of
touching extrahuman spiritual resources, and any dimension of human
living except that which is lived upon this planet, seems to me to be a
pathetically inadequate philosophy for the complex spirit of man.

5. The limitations of science
Let us be clear in our minds that there is a sharp difference be-

tween the attitude of the dedicated man of science and the man who,
with little real knowledge of science, sees in it the answer to all the
problems of humanity. The truly great scientist, as far as my experience
and reading inform me, is a humble man. He unravels one complex-
ity only to discover that the small door which he has opened reveals
vista after vista of further complexities. He can hardly escape an over-
whelming sense of awe. It is true that he may find himself unable to
accept those childish conceptions of ‘God’ which are all that perhaps
have come his way, but frequently he is a deeply religious man. He
knows how little he knows, and that is for all of us the beginning of wis-
dom. But that attitude of mind is poles apart from that of the man who
thinks only in terms of the revolutionary contributions which science
has made to human living on the material plane. Such a man thinks that
the answers to all questions will inevitably be produced by scientific
knowledge. To him, all that art or religion or philosophy have to say is
really quite beside the point; science will lead him by sure and certain
methods to heaven upon earth. I am not suggesting that many people
would consciously express such a blind and arrogant view of life, but I
am concerned to point out that it exists beneath the conscious level in
a great many people’s minds. We need to see clearly how ‘scientism’
has become a kind of sacred cow. Its infallibility is often accepted with-
out question, and its limitations lie unsuspected. In Dr. Magnus Pyke’s
book Nothing like Science (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1957) we have
a most significant side light on the sanctity of this modern god. For the
author states in one place that he once proposed to give a broadcast
talk on ‘The Failures of Science’. He was not allowed to do so—apparently
because to debunk what is held by many to be infallible would be the
ultimate heresy!
Let us take some simple illustrations of the limitations of science.
By the use of scientific methods we can be told accurately and com-
pletely about the sound produced in the playing of a Beethoven sonata
or a Bach fugue. There is not the slightest deviation in tempo or pitch,
not the smallest variation in harmonic or overtone which is not read-
ily measurable by the appropriate instruments. But in such an analysis
would any sane person consider that science had done anything what-
ever to explain the music, to give the slightest clue to its effect upon
human emotional experience, still less to explain why one piece of
music should be great and the other mediocre? Similarly, in the art of
painting, science may give the most complete physical and chemical
analysis of a certain canvas, but can do absolutely nothing to explain
its value or its effect. Thus science by its very nature and method is
excellently equipped for dealing with physical matters, whether the
problems arise in the conquest of disease, the fatigue of metals or cor-
rosion by sea water (to name but three which come to mind), but by
the very same token science is quite irrelevant in the field of any of the
arts, or of philosophy or of religion. There are realms of human experi-
ence where the scientific method, as commonly understood, is simply
not the right instrument to use. Indeed it would be as inappropriate
to attempt scientific analysis in some human situations as it would be
to use a microphone to detect odour, or a Geiger counter to measure
the consumption of domestic gas! In the nature of the complex human
situation of which we are a part it must be understood that there are
aspects and dimensions of truth which are vital to man’s well-being on
which science has nothing to say. Because science can answer so many
of our hows we should not be deceived into thinking that it can answer
any of our whys.
Of course we all owe an incalculable debt to the science which
is applied to our common life. I confess I have no patience at all with
those who long to return to some fanciful prescientific age. Who would
wish to go back to an age in which there was no electricity for light-
ing, heating or power, no printed books, no piped water, no roads, no
charted seas, no reliable means of communication, no anaesthetics, no
antibiotics or sulfa drugs, no real understanding of physical or mental
illness—in fact to lapse back into ignorance? But at the same time
my common sense and my experience tell me that many of the really
intransigent problems in human life are hardly touched at all by such
scientific advances.
There seems to me to be a danger for some lest they become
drunk with scientific achievement and imagine that if only men make
bigger and better technical strides then all ‘human’ problems will solve
themselves. Again, this is not an error into which any of us would
fall consciously, but I believe it lurks dangerously in many unconscious
minds. Surely it is not unreasonable to plead that more of the admira-
ble patience and dedication required for scientific advance should be
directed upon really pressing human needs. Is it not a measure of our
bewitchment by science that modern man should be seriously planning
to visit another planet within measurable time when there are on earth
a thousand unsolved economic, social and moral problems? We can
think at once of the problem of ‘integration’ with people whose skins
are variously pigmented, of the problems of nations emerging from
centuries of primitive ignorance, of the problem of health and nutri-
tion of millions of people in ‘the East’. We can think of the problem of
cancer or of poliomyelitis, of the increasing number of people who are
mentally sick, of the thousands of broken homes, of the juvenile delin-
quent, and of the special problems of the blind, the deaf, the dumb, the
spastic and the mentally defective. These are but a few of the dozens
of urgent human problems which surely challenge man’s enterprise,
compassion and willingness to serve. Yet, in actual fact, there is a tragic
dearth of people willing to dedicate their lives to coping with them.
Is not this also an indication of the extent to which man has become
intoxicated by a false idea of science?
We have already reached the point where the discoveries of sci-
ence can ‘greatly bless or wholly destroy’. But the way in which the
knowledge is used cannot be decided by scientific means. The majority
of scientific men are without doubt kindly and humane people, but it
is not their science which gives them their kindness or their human-
ity, nor can any branch of science assess what is ‘good’ or ‘right’ or
‘human’. Science itself is incapable of making moral judgments and it
is not really too wild a step of the imagination to think of a situation
where scientific knowledge is valued more highly than human lives. In
countries where our traditional ‘Christian’ values are not held it seems
to me perfectly possible that science could become the master instead
of the servant.
Most of the activities of what is commonly called science are con-
cerned with the physical and the material. But there are departments
of scientific knowledge which do touch what I believe is our crucial
problem, the problem of human behaviour. The comparatively newly
born science of psychology can offer much illumination and disentan-
glement. Enormous loads of human unhappiness have been lifted by
wise and patient psychiatrists. Men and women have been reintegrated
into society, human relationships have been vastly improved and a host
of hitherto insoluble problems have been successfully dealt with by
skilled psychological methods.
The curing of mental ill-health, enabling an individual to fit hap-
pily into normal social life, demands great patience and skill. We can-
not be other than full of gratitude and admiration for those who de-
vote their lives to such demanding work. But we might properly ask
whether such adjustment, valuable as it is to the community as it exists,
is sufficient. It may be doing no more than producing a well shaped
cog instead of an ill shaped cog for use, for instance, in industrial life;
it cannot integrate a man into the total pattern and purpose for human
living, and does not attempt to do so. It is well known that the man-
hours lost to industry through mental sickness of one kind or another
reach an alarming figure. We may be sure that a Communist country is
as quick as we are to use psychiatric methods to cure such mental sick-
ness, if only in order to maintain the efficiency of its factory personnel.
But such treatment would inevitably leave the godless, Communist-
indoctrinated attitude of the patients as it was before. The Communist
psychiatrist, or our Western psychiatrist has, we will say, performed his
work skilfully and well. He has helped the patient to ‘adjust himself to
life’, but in either case he has helped a human being to fit into a pat-
tern of human life without giving him any clue as to whether it is the
right pattern.
We gratefully acknowledge that psychiatry can, and does, remove
certain disabilities and resolve certain conflicts, but it cannot by itself
supply our standards or values. It cannot answer any questions outside
the immediate range of human personality. I believe that those who
would see in modern psychiatry something at once more efficient and
more ‘scientific’ than true religion are doomed to disappointment. For
however excellent psychiatric methods may be, no adjustment can be
provided toward any suprahuman purpose in life and no connection
made with any resource outside human personality. Such further in-
tegration may be, and of course sometimes is, provided, even uncon-
sciously, by the psychiatrist. But that is because he is a man of faith
himself, and not because he is a practitioner in psychiatry. He has to go
beyond his function as a scientist if he is to adjust his patient to a world
of spiritual reality.
Obviously this whole business of ‘adjustment to life’ raises funda-
mental questions. Unless we have some standards beyond the immedi-
ate human situation, the most we can do is to help fit a man into the
existing social fabric. But suppose that our whole social fabric is wrong,
as is sincerely believed by Communists, then our good, well adjusted
man is only good and well adjusted in our opinion, in a certain con-
text and under certain conditions. This is, of course, the cue for the
humanist to appear and advocate his ‘human’ values. But let me repeat
that the man who denies the existence of God or any spiritual order
can only produce a set of ethical standards which he and his friends
have decided are the best and most conducive to human happiness.
He can have no sort of answer for the millions of people who sharply
disagree with his concepts, and who is to say who is right?
Now I know from conversations which I have had with scientists
that their whole method of training and pattern of working makes it
difficult for them to conceive the apprehension of valid truth by any
‘non-scientific’ methods. This, by an effort of the imagination, I think
I can begin to understand. But I would appeal to any scientist who
happens to be reading this book to think seriously that people such
as poets, artists of every kind, mystics and indeed ordinary people of
faith may be receiving truth in an entirely different way from that to
which he is accustomed. It is not in the least that his own wholly admi-
rable and painstaking methods are being ignored or, so to speak, short-
circuited. It is simply that there are ways of apprehending some kinds
of truth which are quite independent of the scientific method. Some-
times these are intuitive and sometimes they are developed by long
practice, and of course sometimes they are both. I think the honest
scientist cannot help admitting this, and perhaps he may be persuaded
to see what I myself find quite plain—that the more man’s attention is
concentrated upon the material the more his spiritual faculties become
atrophied. I hope he will be good-humoured enough to realize that
such a chapter as I have just written is not meant to be an attack upon
science but an attack upon that one-sided obsession with the material
and the tangible which leads to the loss of spiritual apprehension. Man
cannot live in any real sense by science alone.

6. The beginning of wisdom
I believe I am right in saying that no primitive race or tribe has

ever been discovered without a religion of some sort. Of course it can
easily be argued that since primitive man is far more vulnerable than we
are he has to invent, out of his fear and insecurity, ‘gods’ with greater
knowledge and power than he has himself. We may further argue that
primitive people have to invent ‘sanctions’ or ‘taboos’ for the regula-
tion of tribal life. There must be some authority commonly agreed
upon which transcends the wishes and power of any individual. Fur-
ther, we cannot leave out of our consideration the action of the human
conscience, however variable and misguided it may sometimes be. A
sense of guilt and fear is found in most primitive peoples and that in-
evitably leads to rites of propitiation and sacrifice. Life is both mysteri-
ous and awe-inspiring and death, in its starkness and finality, is always
at the elbow of primitive man. In some way, simple or complicated,
horrible or beautiful, he has to reassure himself that the death of the
body is not the death of the human spirit.
Now at a superficial glance all primitive religions are no more
than a natural defence mechanism against man’s ignorance, fear and
insecurity. Consequently if these last three were reduced we should
expect to find the decay of ‘religion’. To some extent of course we
have seen this happen, although it would be a bold man indeed who
would claim that today’s ‘civilized’ world is free from ignorance, fear
and insecurity! Nevertheless, as mysteries of the natural world are ‘ex-
plained’, and as man gains more and more mastery over nature, one
particular necessity to invent ‘gods’ tends to die away. That side of
nearly all religion which is produced by fear, ignorance and superstition
will obviously be dissolved in the light of scientific knowledge. And that
is all to the good. But for myself I would consider it quite unwarrant-
able to assume that the need for religion has been abolished. A primi-
tive religion may express itself in very primitive ways indeed, but when
we come to examine its heart and essence we find it to be far more
than a defence against fear and ignorance. It contains in it, in however
crude a form, basic human longings, which I do not believe we have
in any sense outgrown. There is a desire to discover supernatural laws
for human happiness, a willingness to cooperate with a purpose higher
than the transitory human purpose, a longing to communicate with
the Creator and an attempt to grasp some security which transcends
physical death.
Civilized man is insulated far more than he realizes from the raw
material of living. Most of the exchange of intelligent ideas today takes
place, I believe, under strongly protected conditions. Man’s sense of
wonder is blunted by many inventions, his solitariness upon the planet
is concealed from him by the presence of many people, and the highly
competitive world in which he makes his living stifles any lingering
yearning for anything outside it. However expert he may be in his own
particular field, his actual experience of life is far smaller than he realiz-
es. Ideas and emotions are often not stimulated by life itself, but by the
mediated experience of other people. The newspapers, radio, televi-
sion, the cinema and the theatre, all create in him an illusion of experi-
ence. His first-hand knowledge of human living is usually restricted to
a small circle of intimate friends, and between them they have worked
out a more or less reasonable code of conduct for their department of
life. It is hardly surprising that the modern urban worker rarely sees
any need for any kind of religion. Obviously we cannot undo the proc-
ess of ‘civilization’ which has made us what we are, but at least we can
make some attempt to see how it disarms and deludes us.
At this point, then, I would put in a strong plea for a more re-
alistic grasp of our human position, for more true humility. Whether
our view of life be ‘scientific’ or ‘religious’ or both, it would seem only
sane and proper for man to feel a sense of awe. He is but a part, and
in all probability an extremely small part, of this astonishing universe.
The sensitive thinking man is probably aware of this, but he may be
quite unaware that for vast numbers of people the capacity for awe,
wonder and humility has been exhausted or numbed by the bewilder-
ing advance of modern knowledge. Human beings have scarcely caught
their breath after one achievement before they are confronted with yet
another. They have no time to assess the worth of what has been ac-
complished, still less to value it in relation to the total human situation.
This is surely where the thinkers and writers must come in and make
some attempt to restore the balance.
I believe that it is necessary for us to recover a certain salutary hu-
mility before we can discern pattern and purpose in our present stage
of human existence. I do not in the least mean that we should disregard
scientific knowledge or that we should somehow restrict or distrust
it, but simply that we should realize our own inherent limitations. We
have to accept that our status and our standpoint in the totality of crea-
tion are both lowly and circumscribed. For example, astronomers are
constantly telling us how foolish, indeed how arrogant, it is to regard
the planet on which we live as in any sense the centre of the universe
around us. But in condemning the arrogance of such geocentric think-
ing we should beware of another, subtler arrogance—that of supposing
that the sum total of truth can be gathered, sorted and interpreted on
this earth where we live! We are quite literally in no position to ascertain
all the facts, and what monstrous conceit makes any man suppose that,
if we had them, we have the intelligence and the wisdom to understand
them? Astronomy itself provides a telling parable of our limitations.
The development of the radio telescope, with a range thousands of
times greater than that of the optical telescope, can give us information
of certain happenings in the universe millions of light-years away. We
are naturally enormously impressed by this reaching out into space,
but our wonder can easily blind us to the fact that astronomy is always
telling us of what has happened in the past. It can only say that such-and-
such an event took place almost countless millions of years ago. It has
absolutely no means of judging what is happening now. It can, for in-
stance, tell us that the universe is expanding very rapidly. What it really
amounts to is that we know beyond reasonable doubt that the universe
was expanding a very long time ago. We cannot know what is happening
now, at this point of earthtime, and indeed for all we know the universe
may be rapidly contracting! Now there is no cure whatever for this kind
of limitation, and it seems to me but one instance of the intrinsic limit
of the human situation, and this might reasonably be expected to recur
in other fields in man’s search for truth.
I do not think we need be either depressed or surprised at this,
but I do think we must learn to live with it as one of the facts of our ex-
istence. It often seems to me when listening to the talk of clever people
that they are in effect saying, ‘Unless I understand, unless I am let into
all the secrets of the Creator, I shall refuse to believe in him at all’. I am
sure that such an attitude, even if it be unconscious, creates a strong
barrier between man and his understanding of his true position.
Anyone with the most elementary knowledge of physics knows
that there are sounds which are too high in pitch for us to hear, and
forms of light which are quite invisible to the human eye. Nowadays
we accept as commonplace the fact that we can devise instruments
which can ‘hear’ and ‘see’ for us. Yet for some curious reason we find
it very difficult to believe that there may be sense higher than our
sense, reason above our reason, and a total purpose quite beyond our
comprehension. It seems to me perfectly possible that there may be
suprahuman wisdom, and we might well assume an attitude of whole-
some humility when we reflect upon our relative insignificance. Can
we not accept the suggestion that there are facts, even ‘scientific’ facts,
which we can never know because we are incapable of understanding
them? Can we not be persuaded to believe that specks of conscious-
ness on this little planet cannot, in all reasonableness, be thought of
as accurate critics of the total purpose behind creation? I believe it to
be essential for us to appreciate our inescapable limitations before the
results of our observations and experience can make any sense to us.
We do have to become as little children—which is in fact what we are,
comparatively—before we can begin to appreciate anything of the plan
or purpose of the Creator.
I make no plea for obscurantism or ‘blind faith’, but rather that
men should find their proper place in the universe. This is precisely
where a real religion, which takes proper account of man and his limi-
tations and of the Creative Mind which knows no limitations can pro-
vide sense and sanity in our bewilderment.

7. The necessity for true religion
I believe a recovery of real religion to be essential to the well-

being of modern humanity. But, alas, the very word ‘religion’ has the
wrong associations for many. They think of Puritanism, of churchiness,
of spiritual restriction, of taboos, of dreary church services and senti-
mental hymns, of pious legend, of traditional thinking, of the attempt
to squeeze all truth into a narrow religious mould, of the inefficiency
and blindness of some churches, of the hypocrites who profess one
thing and obviously believe another, of blind faith with its fear of true
knowledge, of the pride of those who believe that they alone hold the
truth—and so on, ad nauseam. And yet what I am pleading for when I
urge a return to real religion is something quite different. It must mean
a willing adjustment to our situation as human beings in the whole
creation, and that must mean accepting a relationship not only with
other human beings but with the Spirit behind the whole scheme. As
I have said above, we are children living largely in the dark, but we are
not wholly without clues. We have reason, we have critical faculties,
we have a more-or-less developed moral sense, we have intuitions and
intimations which point to something beyond the here-and-now. We
have, too, enough accumulated human experience to show what pat-
terns of human conduct lead to misery and disaster, and what can lead
to happiness and fulfilment.
The humanists would say that we have enough without super-
natural religion—with all our knowledge and experience there is surely
no need to postulate a spiritual world and a supreme being called God.
It would be pleasant to believe that they are right as far as they go, and
that a little spiritual superstructure is all that is needed to turn a hu-
manist into a truly religious man. But my experience and observation
convince me more and more that the humanist position is quite unre-
alistic. For one thing it never takes serious account of evil. In humanist
thinking the reason why people behave badly, cruelly or selfishly can
always be explained in economic, political or psychological terms. Hu-
man perversity, callousness and brutality, when exhibited in sufficient
quantity, lead the humanist mind to the end of its tether. Yet, to be
frank, it has no remedy to offer except good advice!
It is all very well to be a humanist and exhibit ‘human’ values if
you are a reasonably well adjusted, kindly, tolerant, honest and de-
cent person. In all probability you habitually exert a certain amount
of self-discipline of your own thoughts and feelings, and probably you
do not see why others cannot readily do the same. But suppose your
temperament is a mass of contradictions and that you find it extremely
difficult to be kindly and tolerant. Suppose that by nature you have no
great interest outside yourself and have no desire to serve other people
or ameliorate their lot. Suppose that you are only too aware of evil in
yourself which vitiates relationships and dries up the springs of com-
passion. Is there, then, no hope for you to be a good human being?
This is to me the very heart of the whole matter. If there is no
restoring force, no healing and rehabilitating Spirit, no extrahuman
source of goodness and compassion, then many of us are undone in-
deed. If I did not know that there was such restoration and reinforce-
ment, that there are such springs which can be tapped by human beings,
I should naturally not be writing this book at all. But here is a field of
actual human experience disgracefully neglected and very imperfectly
explored, which could make a radical change in our human condition.
It is a fine thing to say that unless we learn to exercise more love and
compassion for one another we shall end up by destroying one another.
But unless we can implement that rhetoric by exploring a power wiser
and greater than mere humanity we are doing no more than underlin-
ing the obvious. For the more we examine the human situation—and
the more we can do of this at first hand the better—the more we see
that a deficiency of love is the root cause of nearly all our most re-
fractory problems. Juvenile delinquency, for example, may be traced
back to a childhood starved of love, and juvenile delinquency is never
cured without the wise application of love. Marriages break up because
love diminishes. Industrial relationships become embittered, men and
women are cheated, exploited and deceived simply because there is a
lack of love. It is time the very word ‘love’ was rehabilitated, for prob-
ably no other single word has been so grossly misused. But the true
love of which the world stands in such desperate need is compassion-
ate and wise, strong and patient. Wisdom, cleverness, experience and
psychological ‘know-how’ are all useful tools in dealing with human
situations, but unless they are used by love no situation is permanently
changed and no human attitude radically altered. That is a matter of
observable experience.
But to adopt the way of informed, constructive love is necessar-
ily costly to the personality. And nowhere do we see more clearly the
terrible lack of real love than in the scarcity of people willing to give
themselves in coping with dark, difficult and messy situations. Why is
there a chronic shortage of nurses and midwives? Why such a lack of
those willing to nurse the mentally ill, or care for the physically handi-
capped? Why indeed is there such a lamentable shortage of leaders for
youth organizations, of prison visitors, of doctors willing to go to the
disease-ridden parts of the world? Why are there so few volunteers in
the really needy centres of human misery—why are there so few whose
love extends any further than their own circle? Why are works of hu-
man compassion nearly always left to be operated by a mere handful
on a shoestring budget? Why indeed, unless there is a tragic and world-
wide deficiency of outgoing love?
Unless we are totally blind to human situations as they really ex-
ist, we cannot avoid the conclusion that without a revolutionary quality
of living the human race is doomed to an endless process of unproduc-
tive suffering or even of total extinction. Even if a few should survive
a nuclear world war there is absolutely no guarantee that the same
dangerous situations would not reappear. Much as we may dislike the
doctrine of original sin—and indeed it has often been formulated in
a way that must antagonize any man of sense and good will—there
would appear to be in human beings the seeds of selfishness, arro-
gance, brutality, callousness, the lust for power, jealousy, hatred and all
the rest of the miserable host of evil. I do not believe that we serve the
cause of truth or of humanity if we insist that these things have no real
existence, when in fact they may be merely dormant or unprovoked. A
realistic view of human life demands that we take into account the evil
as well as the good in human nature.
To me it seems perfectly plain that there can be no satisfactory
human living, feeling and thinking without a true religion. For exam-
ple, men can without much difficulty regard one another as comrades
and brothers in undertaking some difficult enterprise provided that
their basic ideals are more or less the same. Those who are opposed
to the ideals of such a band of comrades must be either converted or
destroyed. Without true religion I cannot see anything illogical in this
process, which is indeed the process of Communism. The intrinsic
value of the individual, his dignity and his freedom become meaningful
to us only when we see him standing in the same relationship to the
Creator as we do ourselves. Without recognition of the Creator, with-
out some apprehension of a good over-all purpose for all human beings
in whatever stage of development they may be, to consider all other
men as our brothers is no more than a pious phrase. And certainly,
without access to resources of patience and compassion beyond one’s
normal human endowment, most of us would have to face life with no
more than a stoic despair.
Further, as I have said before, if this little precarious foothold
upon earth is all that we are ever to know of conscious living, if in fact
there is no life except the material and physical, those of us who are
not particularly altruistic by nature would hardly think our labours and
struggles worth while. Why should we not eat, drink and be merry?
For tomorrow we die. But suppose this is not true. There are many
besides myself who know that when we allow ourselves to be used by a
purpose much greater than we are, we become conscious of fitting into
a pattern with a feeling of permanence, a pattern only incompletely
outlined in the here-and-now. If this be true, as many of us are con-
vinced it is, then life itself, ourselves, our neighbours and all the crying
needs of the world take on a new significance. This little life with its
incurable limitations, its apparent injustices and pointless tragedies, its
hopes, disappointments and frustrations, is seen as no more than the
outcrop in time-and-space of a vast process which we can only begin
to discern.
But such a view of life, which at once accepts man’s present limi-
tations and believes in his ultimate potentialities, is only possible to the
one who has true religious faith. The man who has no religion, and
denies the possibility of there being any such thing, imprisons himself
within the closed-system of physical life upon this planet. This is the
position of the agnostic who, according to the Oxford dictionary defi-
nition is ‘one who holds that nothing is known, or likely to be known of the
existence of a God or of anything beyond material phenomena’. The dreams
of the poet, the visions of the artist, the ‘pattern’ apprehended by the
truly religious man, have all to be explained as purely subjective phe-
nomena within the material setup. All the hopes, joys, inklings and
intuitions which seem to have a point of reference outside the physical
world must be shown up for the illusion that they are. Every ‘intima-
tion of immortality’, every ‘sunset touch’, every sense of awe and won-
der and mystery have to be seen through and explained away. For the
true agnostic the material dimension is the only dimension. There is
no reality beyond this reality, no purpose and no God.
Yet I would doubt very much whether the majority of those who
call themselves ‘agnostics’ would accept the dictionary definition. They
are much more like people who ‘don’t know’ than like those who would
definitely assert that no one can ever know anything at all in fields be-
yond the material. False religion, prejudiced and perverted religion,
arrogant and self-opinionated religion have unhappily made them dis-
trust the religious approach to truth. Yet I say with some knowledge
that there are modern agnostics who have never given ten minutes’
serious adult critical study to what real religion stands for. They have
allowed themselves to be put off by the hypocrites, the obscurantists
and the lovers of power, who exist in any religious system—as they
do elsewhere. I am concerned here to plead that such people should
examine the religious approach de novo, and be prepared to give such
a widespread human phenomenon as religion their serious attention.
The man who possesses a strong religious faith knows very well that
there are hundreds of questions which are likely to remain unanswered,
at any rate in this life. But he is in possession of a strong clue to reality
and a conviction that he is cooperating with a purpose transcending
present observed material phenomena.

8. Religion and modern knowledge
The heart of all real religions is an affirmation that human life

on this planet is only part of something very much greater; that ‘hu-
man values’ are determined by an authority higher than human beings
themselves; and that man neither finds happiness nor discovers his true
self until his worship, his loyalty and his love are given to Someone
infinitely greater than any man or group of men. Through the great
religions of the world man is trying to find some clue to the mystery
of life and to find some expression of those longings within himself
which transcend the confines of ordinary material existence. In short,
however crude his attempts, he is trying to prove that he is more than
a physical entity. It appears inevitable that with the passage of the cen-
turies the world’s great religions are inclined to become complicated
and corrupted. Even in the best cases it may be difficult for the mod-
ern observer to penetrate to the original intention of the founder of a
religion, while in the worst cases the pristine spirit has been entirely
suffocated. It is therefore essential for the modern man who attempts
to understand religious truth to get behind the accretions, distortions
and degenerations and try to see the original light.
As modern knowledge advances and hitherto insoluble problems
are solved, a good deal of religion will be seen to be based on false
premises, to be inadequate for modern conceptions of the universe,
or to be little more than a collection of superstitious taboos. In our
day whole nations who have been held in fear and ignorance by certain
religious systems are being released almost overnight, as it were, by the
rising tide of modern knowledge. This is happening at this very mo-
ment in the continents of Asia and Africa, for example, and insofar as
men are being set free from ignorance, superstition and fear we cannot
but be glad. But that is not the whole story. For if nothing is put in the
place of the old religion then men are left with a greatly diminished
sense of their own value. With the old taboos gone and the author-
ity of the old gods exploded, moral standards are the first casualties.
Under the old religion a man had status, significance and purpose,
but with the old beliefs discredited beyond recall, he very quickly be-
comes lost and sinks into being a mere unit in the mass-mind. This is
of course the golden opportunity for Communism. In place of the old
vague, ‘spiritual’ purpose a definite observable program is set down in
concrete terms. Man’s place and worth are established, and provided
he can disregard any immortal longings he can fit happily into such a
comprehensive system. The State takes over the ‘father-figure’ of God,
and the State provides for his needs much more reliably than any of his
old capricious gods.
The State makes laws which are plainly for the good of all, and
the whole scheme is obviously making more physical and technical
progress in a few years than was previously made in as many centuries.
We really cannot be surprised that as old religions are shattered Com-
munism moves in and meets men’s apparent needs.
Before we become too pessimistic about the inevitable spread of
Communism, let us remember that all religions are attempting to say
something about man’s place in the universe, and are to some extent
satisfying his immortal yearnings. Since Communism is essentially an
earthbound and spirit-denying creed, and since man has never been
able to live by bread alone, I believe it quite reasonable to hope that
there will be a reaction from regimented materialism. The old gods,
the old superstitions, the old wives’ tales, the fables and the legends
have been destroyed, but I see no valid reason why there should not
be a recovery of true religion of the kind at which I have hinted above.
Moreover, we should be foolish to ignore the significance of any reli-
gion, however faulty and inadequate. Let me illustrate what I mean. As
modern medicine advances throughout the world the superstitions and
mumbo jumbo of magic-medicine very naturally disappear. But even
in the most ignorant and primitive medicine there existed the desire
to heal, and that desire has not been superseded. Thus it seems to me
that although the acids of modern thought may quickly dissolve myth
and superstition, nothing can destroy the basic need which led to the
emergence of religion. A false view of ‘the gods’ may easily be blown
away by the first breath of scientific knowledge, but a true faith in God
is not destroyed but rather enhanced by every fresh discovery of the
complexity of God’s wisdom. I believe the time may come when it will
seem ludicrous for men to discover layer after layer of truth which
bears all the marks of pattern and design, and then categorically to
declare that there is no Designer! I see nothing far-fetched in the idea
that man may one day consider it just as important to make spiritual
discoveries and live in harmony with the spiritual pattern as he now
thinks it so important to discover, and cooperate with, physical laws.
It has sometimes been suggested that what modern man needs
is a religion composed of all the best elements of the existing world
religions, purged of course of their magical, superstitious and miracu-
lous elements and presented in an ethical form which might win wide-
spread acceptance among men of good will. It could be argued that
such a synthetic religion would provide a suitable acknowledgment of
the Supreme Wisdom behind all observable phenomena, and while
properly respecting the visions and ideals of religious founders, would
not affront modern intelligence by retaining what is plainly irrational.
It is only when we come to examine the world’s religions in some detail
that we realize the impossibility of such a synthesis. Naturally, in all re-
ligions there is a common denominator of human ethics, although even
this is not as high as some humanists with a Christian tradition behind
them would suppose. It is when we come to study the basic concep-
tions of God, the relationship between man and God, the impact of
belief upon social conduct and the view of life after death, that we real-
ize how wide and deep are the gulfs between the leading religions. If we
attempt to combine them into one modern super-religion we are left
with something very like humanism. For since human beings would
be the judges of which tenets are included and which are excluded we
find ourselves back again in the closed humanist world which denies
supernatural revelation. Thus I believe it is essential to have revelation
if we are to have a religion which can give purpose and power to human
living. To my mind there must be a breaking through into human life
of information about an order both supra-human and ultra-human.
Otherwise the best we can do is to form an ethical society with its ob-
jectives and horizon limited to this planet.
It is not my purpose, and indeed it is not within my competence,
to write a book about Comparative Religion. There are several such
books quite readily available for those who want to study the subject.
But I must make a few observations to underline the impossibility of
synthesizing the great religions. For example, according to Islam, God
is a strict unity and although compassionate he is predominantly a God
of power rather than of love. God and man are permanently separate;
God orders man’s destiny (Kismet) and freedom is an illusion. Sin is as
much foreordained as righteousness. Conversion may be forcible, and
women are regarded as inferior to men. Of course many Moslems are
better than their creed, but we can at once see how irreconcilable Is-
lam is, for example, with Christianity. The central point of the Christian
Faith is the indissoluble link between God and man, expressed through
Christ; man is free to choose either good or evil; God’s purpose is to
bring all men into the right relationship with himself; and in the teach-
ing of Christ there is neither class distinction, colour bar, nor discrimi-
nation between the sexes. In fact the only common ground between
Christianity and Islam is the belief that God is infinitely greater than
man and is a God to be worshipped and served. Now what compat-
ibility can we find between these two great faiths, and either Buddhism
or Hinduism, in which millions have their only experience of religion?
Again, to pick a few random but important points—Buddha himself
was agnostic about the existence of God. He held that the question
had no bearing on practical living. Consequently any problems of the
relationship between God and man simply do not arise. Sin, which is a
matter of antisocial behaviour, results in repeated unpleasant reincar-
nations into this present world, while the ultimate state is the aboli-
tion of either existence or desire (Nirvana). Now although the teaching
of Buddha contains much that is beautiful and compassionate, it is a
known fact that in predominantly Buddhist countries for centuries very
little was done to relieve suffering or ameliorate the lot of other people.
After all, if a man were working out atonement for sins in a past life
by his present suffering, what right had anyone to interfere with the
process? Hinduism is also equally difficult to combine with any other
world religion. Within it are enormous varieties of philosophical and
popular belief. Common ground with Buddhism may be found in the
doctrines of rebirth and Nirvana, but there are many contradictory
notions held within the framework of this religious system. It has been
observed with some truth that, at any rate in the past, a Hindu could
believe anything so long as he observed caste, reverenced the cow and
accepted the Veda as revelation! According to Hindu philosophy God
is the unknowable Absolute, while at the same time man is God, the
apparent distinction being due to illusion (maya), which in turn is due
to ignorance (avidya). Within the almost unbelievable latitude of be-
lief allowed by Hinduism there stands out the most rigid caste system
which the world has ever known. Of course it is true that this system is
being slowly broken down under the various modern pressures, but it
remains an essential part of official Hinduism, and a lasting memorial
to man’s religious inhumanity to man.
Let us think of another great world religion, Judaism, the religion
of the Jews. It is indeed hard not to be thought unfair to this mono-
theistic religion which has given so much to the moral thinking of the
Western world. A religion which could produce the Ten Command-
ments and the inspired writing of the Old Testament prophets, for
example, cannot but command the greatest respect, while those of us
who are Christians should never forget that the teaching of the New
Testament sprang historically from Judaism. It is only when we come
to examine the religion of the Jews more closely that we find its severe
limitations. It tends to be both backward-looking and inward-look-
ing and it is a religion for one people only, containing no intention of
embracing the whole of mankind within its system. Orthodox Judaism
by its very nature cannot be combined with or incorporated into any
other religious creed. It can never become the religion for modern
Gentile man.
I should like to make it plain at this point that I am not saying
that there do not exist within the great world religions true, honest,
wise and good men. Of course there are many such, and many men and
women rise far above the spirit of their particular creed. Furthermore,
Eastern religions, despite that wealth of fantasy, myth and legend which
make them quite unacceptable to modern minds with an historic sense,
possess a keen perception of the spiritual as opposed to the material.
They underline the virtues of quiet meditation, of contemplation and
of control of the body by the mind and spirit in a way which is foreign
to most Western minds, but which might yet prove valuable to mod-
ern Western man in his busy, noise-infested world. Thus, while we are
bound to reject the fictitious and fanciful content of Eastern religions,
we might do well to accept techniques of practising religion which we
in the West have almost wholly neglected.
But if we are to find a religious system which cannot be outdated
or outgrown, from which the acids of modernity can only remove ac-
cretions and encrustations, a religion which properly practised pro-
duces the highest forms of human behaviour, and offers both super-
natural pattern and spiritual power beyond human endeavour, then I
believe we shall have to take a fresh look at Christianity. We shall have
to look at it with new eyes, forgetting the distortions, suppressions and
misapprehensions to which it has been subjected over the centuries.
We shall have to overlook men’s blindness to its revolutionary char-
acter, their stupidity in attempting to confine the spiritual within the
temporal and their many sad demonstrable failures in Christian living.
Then we may be able to touch again the heart and centre of something
which I believe reorientates the whole of human thinking, feeling and
action.

9. A new look at Christianity
Although the moral standards and ethical judgments of this coun-

try have long been permeated by Christian teaching, there is a wide-
spread ignorance both of the actual history of the Christian Faith and
of its revolutionary character. Generally speaking, there is no intake of
Christian information and consequently no attempt to see the relevance
of basic Christian principles in modern situations. It is not, I repeat,
that the thinkers, the writers and the leaders of popular thought, in
whatever media, have for the most part studied Christianity and reject-
ed it as unhistoric, impractical and outdated. It is simply that they have
not studied it at all! I believe their attitude of almost total ignorance to
be quite indefensible, and I find myself in agreement with a friend of
mine who was to discuss on television the Christian position with four
leading London journalists. He asked them simply whether any one of
them had given five consecutive minutes (minutes, mark you!) to the
serious study of what Christianity had to say, and every one of them
admitted that he had not. Whereupon my friend remarked kindly but
firmly that if that were the case no real discussion could possibly take
place. In my own experience I find it perfectly extraordinary that men
and women of unusual ability in their respective spheres have rarely
taken the trouble to give their adult attention to such a unique way of
life as that proposed by Jesus Christ. I am happy to admit that there
are exceptions, but how often has one met otherwise intelligent people
who have dismissed the whole Christian Faith because, for instance,
they cannot believe that the first chapter of Genesis is true to science,
that Jonah was swallowed by a whale, that unbaptized babies go to hell,
or that heaven is above the bright blue sky! Because the Church has
been guilty of many glaring faults over the centuries, because Christians
have frequently failed to be Christians through cowardice or lethargy,
because an archbishop has said a foolish thing, because the methods
of some evangelists are not approved, or because of some other quite
trivial or irrelevant reason, some people appear to think that Christian-
ity is finally discredited and its challenge can be honourably ignored!
Such people are worse than ‘grandstand critics’, for not only are they
criticizing a game in which they are not themselves involved, but they
have seldom taken the trouble to acquaint themselves with the rules!
If this ignorance is prevalent among the leaders of popular opin-
ion, and I believe it is, we cannot be surprised that most ordinary
people have no idea what Christianity is all about. Many of them have
no use for the churches, regard clergy and ministers, as a class, with
suspicion, but nevertheless have a certain vague respect for the per-
sonality of Jesus. The situation is not made any easier by the fact that
almost their only source of knowledge of what modern Christians are
thinking and doing is their daily newspaper. They therefore get an en-
tirely negative impression; they are apt to read about only such things
as a denunciation of gambling or Sunday amusement, a condemnation
of modern moral standards, or, now and again, the story of some un-
happy parson who has ‘gone wrong’. They read nothing in the national
Press of what Christianity is all about, and they are given negligible
information about both the aims and the work of Christian churches
throughout the world. It would therefore hardly be an exaggeration to
say that very many people look upon Christianity largely as a repres-
sive system, designed to spoil the pleasures of life and offering a man
a rather dubious heaven in some vague world to come. I believe that
if it were possible to get people to listen with fresh and unprejudiced
minds to what Christianity is really saying, they might not accept it,
but at least they could not dismiss it as a hangover from childhood, a
beautiful but impractical dream, or as mere ‘religion’ quite irrelevant
to modern living.
Let us for the moment forget all about the churches’ reputedly
narrow views, their ‘dressed-up bishops’, their peculiar language and
their apparently naïve ignorance of how life has to be lived by millions
of people. Let us forget the churches’ failures over the centuries and
their present disagreements—in fact, let us for the time being forget
the churches altogether and get back to the source of the Christian
Faith. For Christianity begins with an historical fact, indeed its start-
ing point is the most important event in the whole of human history.
The Christian religion asserts that nearly two thousand years ago God,
whose vast and complex wisdom science is daily uncovering, visited
this small planet of ours in Person. Naturally the only way in which
he could do this was by becoming a human being, and this is precisely
what Christians believe that he did. This is the heart and centre of the
Christian Faith, this is the Gospel or Good News which those who had
witnessed this extraordinary event went out to tell the then known
world. That God so inserted himself into the stream of human history,
and that we are consequently living on a visited planet, are statements
audacious enough to take the breath away, and no reasonable person
could be expected to accept such a belief as fact without considerable
thought and careful examination of the evidence. To have had God,
reduced to the stature of a human being, but indubitably God playing
a part in the earthly scene, is a staggering thought. But this is where
Christianity starts, this is the rock on which it is founded, and this is
the point where men are compelled by the nature of the event to make
up their minds as to whether it is true or false.
Let us not concern ourselves about how this startling event has
been smothered in decoration, blunted by overfamiliarity, or overlaid
by merely secondary considerations. Nothing must be allowed to dis-
tract us from considering with adult minds and hearts whether this is
true history or a beautiful myth. The decision is so important that it
must not, indeed cannot, be avoided. Yet this is the point at which so
many people take evasive action. They begin to hide behind clouds of
criticism of the Church or of particular Christians, or they create a
diversion by arguing about the historicity of the Old Testament stories,
or, for example, about the Church’s attitude toward war or divorce. I
believe that each one of us must eventually face the real issue, which is
quite simply: do I believe after adult examination of the evidence that
Jesus Christ was what he claimed to be, or am I prepared to assert quite
definitely that he was wrong in his major claims and that, though much
of his teaching is beautiful, he himself was a self-deceived fanatic?

10. The question of probability
I have sometimes heard people speak of the ‘inherent improb-

ability’ of the Christian Faith, and I must confess that I am never quite
sure what they mean. We are not in any real position to assess the
‘probability’ of anything which happens within the framework of the
laws of the universe, and we deceive ourselves if we think we possess an
exhaustive knowledge of even these. Many commonplaces of today are
the improbabilities of yesterday, and in any branch of science ‘improb-
abilities’ occur from time to time which are apparently arbitrary ex-
ceptions to previously observed rules. The scientist does not conclude
that his observation must therefore be faulty; he notes that the appar-
ent exception is part of the total of observed phenomena. Sometimes
he will later discover another law which accounts for what appear to be
the exceptions, or he may have to be content for the present to register
phenomena as ‘exceptional’.
Now we are not living in a lunatic world, but in part of a law-
abiding universe, and we are quite right to reject on rational grounds
that which outrages reason. We may be perfectly certain, for example,
that the Greek goddess Pallas Athene was not born as a fully developed,
and fully armed, woman out of the head of her father Zeus! We rightly
call that sort of thing myth, and it could never be considered as sober
history. But we cannot so dismiss the historic accounts of the birth of
Jesus. If we will admit for a moment that God did enter into the hu-
man historical process, we may reasonably expect something unusual,
something analogous to the ‘exceptions’ of science. We may have to
accept the operation of a law higher than the normal law, but we are
not expected to accept an irrational myth. But, of course, the crit-
ics of Christianity may mean that the ‘improbability’ of the faith lies
in another direction. We have only to consider how human planning
would have arranged such an event, and compare it with what actu-
ally happened, to see this kind of improbability! If human planners
had been at work no doubt the entry of the Creator into his creation
would have been arranged with the maximum of publicity. The fam-
ily into which he was born would have been the noblest in a nation
whose culture represented the peak of human achievement. For his
human adventure the Creator would have been provided with the fin-
est clothes, the best books, and surrounded by the most influential
friends. The most detailed observation of his life, of all that he said and
did, would have been most meticulously kept. No stone would have
been left unturned to ensure that everybody knew who this unique
person really was. Compared with such a fantasy, the recorded facts
are, of course, lamentably ‘improbable’. Jesus was born into a family
of humble station. His actual birth was in lowly and improvised condi-
tions. His upbringing and education took place in an obscure village
with none too good a reputation. His whole career as a preacher and
teacher was very limited and sadly cut short, and it all happened in
a small, rather despised country occupied by the Roman powers. Of
course this appears ‘improbable’, but may I say in passing that this is
the kind of improbability to which we have to become accustomed if
we are to have any dealings with the contemporary God. We have to
learn to work with a wisdom which follows a pattern quite foreign to
much human thinking.
But there is yet another sense in which the Christian story may be
thought to be improbable, and that is because it appears to be arbitrar-
ily and even monstrously unjust. If God chooses to reveal himself on
this planet in the person of a man, why must whole nations rise and fall
before he is even born? Why must millions be doomed for hundreds
of years to live and die without the slightest possibility of knowing
anything about him? The plain answer to this is naturally that nobody
knows; we are not in on the secret. We do not know why there should
be millions of years of life upon this planet before ever Homo sapiens
appeared. We do not know why one man is so brilliantly endowed and
another is of rather low intelligence. We do not know why some men’s
skins should be darkly-pigmented, or why some men’s faces are yellow
and others pink. We do not know why there should be races of men
who are pygmies and races of men who are tall in stature. Life as we
know it is full of inequalities and apparent injustices, and to claim that
one particular piece of history is improbable because it appears to be
unjust does not seem to me to be reasonable at all. It is like saying that
electricity is improbable because men were obliged for so long to live
without its benefits and facilities! The ‘timing’ of events, discoveries,
developments and revelations is not subject to any law of probability
of which we have knowledge. If we can believe that there is a Divine
Wisdom working out a total pattern extending far beyond our own
short-sighted view, we shall not be quick to say that a unique event is
untrue because it is ‘improbable’.
I am not here concerned to argue about the historicity of the
person of Jesus. (For those who want to study the subject I would
recommend a book Did Jesus Really Live? by H.G. Wood, published by
S.C.M. Press.) For even if the records were scantier than they are,
it seems to me quite inconceivable that a movement as vigorous and
revolutionary as early Christianity could have sprung out of a myth. No
one in his right senses denies the authenticity of most of the letters, or
epistles, included in the New Testament, and several of these are con-
siderably earlier documents than the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke
and John. It is obvious from even a superficial reading of these human
unself-conscious letters that people were being transformed in outlook
and character, despite the general collapse of moral values in the pa-
gan world. We may very properly ask the critic of the Christian story
by what power were such transformations effected in such places as
Corinth and Ephesus. Paul of Tarsus was undoubtedly a man of strong
personality, but it certainly does not make sense to suggest that such
radical changes in human character were made by the personal impact
of one man. It is even more unthinkable that the weapons of such per-
suasion should be drawn from wishful thinking or a piece of calculated
deceit. Can anyone seriously suggest that a man of Paul’s not incon-
siderable intellectual powers should lose his ‘prospects’ and wreck his
career for the sake of something which never really happened? Is it
reasonable to assume that such a man would write to the Christians
at Corinth and quote as witnesses of the resurrection of Jesus several
hundred people who were still living at the time? (Does that surprise
you? I suggest that you read the fifteenth chapter of the first letter to
Corinth in modern English, remembering that it was written in about
A.D. 56.) Can anyone really account for the audacity, assurance and
endurance exhibited by the young Church without admitting that these
early Christians were convinced that Jesus really rose from the dead?
No one could honestly read the letters of the New Testament with-
out becoming aware that not only the writers themselves but scores of
other people were looking at life and death in a way in which they had
never been looked at before, and were experiencing a contact with the
living God unprecedented in human history. No one could fairly deny
that in the first century A.D. something unique and remarkable had
happened and that the letters spontaneously record its repercussions
on human personality.
I find that people frequently forget the great value of these early
pieces of evidence. They will quite readily suggest that the gospels were
written-up stories of a departed hero, composed some time after his
death. But they forget that the letters, which are real letters written
to real people, reflect a phenomenon which has somehow got to be
explained. What had any of the early Christians to gain by subscrib-
ing to an acted falsehood? Yet we find them willing to endanger their
livelihood and their lives, prepared to undergo hardship, humiliation,
persecution, torture and agonizing death, simply because they were
convinced that Jesus had really risen from the dead. Naturally all turns
upon whether this ‘resurrection’ really and objectively occurred. The
claims of Jesus to represent the character of God, his claim to be the
master of men and of their ultimate destiny, and his claim to be sent by
God to effect the reconciliation between man and God would remain
as the lunatic arrogance of a disordered mind if everything ended in
the judicial murder of a field-preacher on a Roman Cross.

11. The crucial issue
The Resurrection of Jesus is plainly the crux of the Christian

Faith. I must therefore remind the reader of some important points
in the issue.
1. Those who have taken the trouble to study the evidence close-
ly and exhaustively have frequently reached the conclusion that the
events described, somewhat disjointedly in the gospel narratives, and
in I Corinthians 15, did in fact take place. One famous example of a
trained mind seeking the truth behind the Resurrection stories is that
of Mr Frank Morison, whose thoroughgoing attempt to disprove the
Resurrection ended in his own conviction that Jesus really rose from
the dead. His well known book Who Moved the Stone? (Zondervan) is
valuable and lasting evidence of the result of honest inquiry. But Mr
Morison is not the only first-class mind to come to accept the truth of
the objective Resurrection of Christ. The trouble is that so many have
prejudged the issue. They have already decided that the whole story
may be dismissed as mass hallucination, for example, and they never
give their serious adult critical attention to this, the most significant of
all human events.
2. Those who would explain away the Resurrection of Jesus by
saying that he never really died, but revived in the cold of the tomb,
leave themselves with insuperable difficulties. The practical impossi-
bility of removing a body from a sealed rock-tomb guarded by Roman
soldiers, conveying it to a place of safety and recovery, and re-establish-
ing the resuscitated body as the Leader who has ‘risen from the dead’
seems to me to present far more difficulties than does belief in the
recorded story. Is it really possible to believe that the young Church
as it moved into action was founded upon a swindle? Can it be seri-
ously maintained that a dispirited group of disillusioned disciples were
permanently transformed into a close-knit fellowship of spiritually re-
silient heroes by a concocted story?
I have grown convinced that more often than not it is sheer ig-
norance, sheer lack of study of the actual records, which makes clever
as well as foolish men say, ‘Well, of course, he was a great teacher, but
I cannot accept the claim that he was divine.’ For such a remark com-
pletely fails to account for the joyful certainty, courage, confidence and
tenacity exhibited by the young Church. Unless we are prepared to
deny the historical evidence altogether, all these qualities spring from
one unforgettable demonstration—that after a public execution Jesus
Christ rose again from the dead. To the early Church this well attested
fact proved his claims to the hilt.
3. According to the records the appearances of Jesus were ex-
traordinarily unlike the apparitions seen by disordered minds. There
was no atmosphere of expectancy or even of hope, and several times
his sudden appearance struck his followers not with reassurance and
joy but with a very natural terror. (Who among us could bear with
equanimity the experience of watching our greatest friend publicly ex-
ecuted on Friday and then of seeing and hearing him alive and well on
the following Sunday?) On one occasion at least (Luke 24:41) Jesus
insists on the disciples’ proving to themselves that he is not a ghost or
an apparition. ‘Feel me and see,’ he said, ‘ghosts don’t have flesh and
bones as you can see that I have.’ And when their minds still could not
react properly to what had in fact happened he asked for food—for
everyone knows ghosts don’t eat! We can imagine their frantic dash
to the shelf for food, and all that they can find is a piece of cooked
fish and part of a honeycomb. It is not until he has begun to eat this
strange meal of fish and honey before their eyes that they realize that
he is unquestionably alive—that he has conquered death as he had said
that he would.
4. It is worth remembering that behind our ostensible reasons for
believing or not believing a thing there are often unconscious reasons
which go very deep. There are undoubtedly some who know intui-
tively how much depends upon the historic truth of the Resurrection.
Should they once admit it to be true that this earth has been visited
by the Creator, then the standards and values of the man who was
also God will inevitably challenge and judge their lives. To some minds
this must on no account be allowed to happen, and every ingenious
argument and every literary resource must be employed to avoid the
unwelcome conclusion.
5. Since most people have not studied the New Testament with
their adult minds, and probably have not read it as a whole for many
years, they are only too ready to accept someone else’s disparagement
of the Christian position without going to the trouble of examining the
relevant documents for themselves. I think I may claim to know these
records pretty well after many years spent in translating them into
modern English. And I will say simply that in consequence I have be-
come a hundred times more convinced of their authenticity than when
I began the work. After even a moderate familiarity with these brief
and sometimes almost naïvely simple documents, it becomes impos-
sible to dissociate Jesus the ethical teacher from Jesus who claimed to
reveal the Character of God, who quite naturally forgave sins and who
spoke with authority about human life, death and the world beyond
death. We may, if you wish, allow that he was sometimes imperfectly
reported, and it is certain that we have a very inadequate ‘coverage’
of the most important life the world has ever seen, but the more one
studies these brief and incomplete records, the more unthinkable it
becomes that they should be mere human fabrications.
For the New Testament as a whole speaks with a new certainty.
God is no longer the distant unknowable Mystery; his Nature and Char-
acter have been revealed through a man, Jesus Christ. It is now known
for certain that God’s attitude toward mankind is one of unremitting
love. The Master Plan which exists beneath the superficial activities of
human beings is now becoming intelligible to them. The reconciliation
between the holiness and perfection of God and the selfishness and
evil of men has been unforgettably demonstrated. Death, the old dark
bogey, has been exposed and resoundingly defeated. And as if this were
not enough Good News for human beings to accept, they know now,
by the acted parable of the Ascension of Christ, that God and man are
eternally inseparable. Humanity is assured of its entry into the timeless
life of God. A new dignity has been conferred upon the whole human
race for God himself has become a man. New exciting possibilities ap-
pear as men begin to understand that the purpose of God’s descent to
the human level is to enable them to rise and live as sons of God. And
what is more, he is prepared to enter human personalities by his own
Spirit to make such dreams come true. This temporary life is seen to
be no more than the training school for a purpose that points to di-
mensions beyond the confines of time and space. The centre of gravity
of the new Faith is not in present earthly activity but in a person and
purpose far transcending it.
If Christianity today has degenerated in some quarters into a dull
and spiritless moral code, that must not blind us to the tremendous fact
upon which all Christian churches are founded. What could be more
exciting than to know that the very feet of God have walked this earth
of ours, that his authentic voice has spoken to men like ourselves? It is
on this issue that we have to make up our minds and adjust our hearts.
The Good News may have to be rescued from the encrustations of
tradition, the confines of caution, and the dullness of familiarity, but it
is still there! The historic fact remains, and we in the twentieth century,
with a conception of God infinitely greater than that of any previous
generation, may have to short-circuit the centuries and let the startling
truth break over us afresh—that we live on a visited planet.

12. Returning to the source
The reason why I have said such things as, ‘Forget about the
churches for the moment,’ is simply because I think that an entirely
new, unprejudiced grasp of the God-man relation is essential for our
generation. Experience has shown that such words as ‘Christianity’ or
‘religion’ or ‘church’ already have certain stereotyped associations in
some people’s minds. This ‘conditioning’ is frequently quite enough to
insulate them from the shock of what early Christians believed—that
God had visited this planet, that he had joined mankind permanently
to himself; that he was no longer the remote and extraneous Power,
but the Spirit who was their vigorous, intimate contemporary in the
business of living. But it must be understood that by this insistence on a
direct return to the great Act of God on which Christianity is founded,
I am by no means implying that all modern churches have lost their
vision or reduced the revolutionary Good News to dull orthodoxy. I
am quite sure this is not so, but I am equally sure that since modern
man, for various reasons, is almost completely out of touch with the
life and activity of the alert contemporary Church, he must be urged to
go back and consider the act of divine initiative on which all Christian
conceptions finally rest, before he can fairly observe any contemporary
Church.
If we allow our adult intelligence and imagination to consider such
a situation as at least possible, the value and significance of the Creator’s
visit to this planet become hard to exaggerate. We should have certain
and reliable information about the character and personality of God,
about the purpose and meaning of this life, about values and principles
by which man can live usefully and happily, and about physical death
and what lies beyond it. We should learn something of the underlying
purpose beneath the shifting human scene, and how we could cooper-

ate with it; we should learn how we could make the best of this limited
imperfect world and how men could best prepare themselves for the
next stage of their existence. In fact, the more we think about it the
more valuable would be the information which we could obtain from
the Creator if he focused himself in a human being.
Naturally we find ourselves wishing that such a person could be
alive and accessible to our own age, prepared to answer our innumer-
able questions and solve our bewildering modern complexities! We
might think it desirable that such an incarnation of the divine should
appear in human life at least once a century, but the moment we begin
to indulge in speculation like that we are falling into a line of thinking
which leads nowhere. And even if we do come to accept as historic fact
this planned focusing of God, it is plain that many of our eager modern
questions will not receive the kind of detailed answer we might expect.
A life lived for a mere thirty years in a poor occupied territory, itself
of small account within the huge Roman Empire, would seem at first
sight to be so narrow in outlook and hedged in by circumstance as to
provide very little that is valuable for our modern perplexities. What is
more, when this unique event took place, hardly anyone knew what was
happening, and from the modern point of view a most maddeningly in-
complete biographical record survives. Traditional piety and reverence
have often made men reluctant to admit the paucity of information.
In the recorded life of Jesus not a word has been preserved, for exam-
ple, about his years of adolescence and early manhood. Yet these are
times of painful and difficult adjustment for many human beings, and
it might well be thought that a divine example would have been a help
to many. Again, since Jesus was unmarried and was executed while still
a young man, we are provided with no divine exemplar for the good
marriage, for the successful coping with the problems of middle age, or
for the gracious acceptance of the closing phases of earthly life.
But perhaps we are looking for the wrong things. Perhaps what
we should look for is not so much a perfect pattern of living for every
human age-group, but a revelation of truth which will illuminate the
heart and centre of human life and give it a new significance and pur-
pose. Perhaps we should be looking not for detailed answers to our
many questions but the authoritative statement of the principles which
govern life beneath the ebb and flow of human circumstance. Perhaps
the information which we so earnestly seek will be both timeless and
of universal application. Perhaps we shall to some extent be taken into
the Creator’s confidence, and yet handed back a great deal more of
responsibility for decision than we bargained for!
I do not myself believe that anyone who studies with an open
mind the records which we have of the life of God-become-man is
likely to be disappointed. He may be surprised, mystified, or even tak-
en out of his depth. The information he receives and the total impact
of the personality whose life is recorded in the gospels may astonish
and disturb him; it may even lead him to look at life from an entirely
different point of view. It is only the man who relies on some senti-
mental recollection of gentle Jesus, meek and mild, who in later years
discards what he thinks is the Christian Faith. In my experience I have
never known a man to make an adult study of this extraordinary life
and remain wholly in the dark.
When, therefore, we do examine these records with serious at-
tention, we do well to remind ourselves that the setting is, in a sense,
unimportant. To my mind it will not necessarily help us very much if
we study Palestinian customs or the Jewish religious system. It is far
more important that we should realize that we are seeing God living life
on human terms; God, in Dorothy Sayers’s memorable phrase, ‘taking
His own medicine’. We are reading about something which had never
happened before in the life of this world, and we can hardly expect
the writers of the first century A.D. fully to grasp the significance of
what they are describing. I have grown quite convinced of the substan-
tial accuracy of their writing, but I cannot help sensing, beyond what
was written, an actual awe-inspiring event, whose full implications we
are only now beginning to understand. This may seem a strange and
even arrogant statement to make, but what I am trying to say is that
while the writers of the New Testament could hardly find words strong
enough to express the certainty of their belief in Christ, the Son of
God, yet their historic closeness to him and their very limited mental,
and even geographical, horizons were bound to restrict their full ap-
preciation of what had happened.
Within their limits of knowledge and experience there can be
no doubt that the early Christians lived with sure knowledge of the
living and contemporary God. And sometimes they showed the most
remarkably inspired vision. Men like Paul could see the unlimited po-
tentialities of the new situation which God had created. He could write
such amazing things as these:
‘Everything belongs to you! Paul, Apollos or Cephas; the world,
life, death, the present or the future, everything is yours! For you be-
long to Christ, and Christ belongs to God!’ (I Corinthians 3:21-23)
‘All of you who were baptized “into” Christ have put on the fam-
ily likeness of Christ. Gone is the distinction between Jew and Greek,
slave and free man, male and female—you are all one in Christ Jesus!’
(Galatians 3:27, 28)
‘For God has allowed us to know the secret of his plan, and it is
this: he purposes in his sovereign will that all human history shall be
consummated in Christ, that everything that exists in Heaven or earth
shall find its perfection and fulfilment in him. And here is the stagger-
ing thing—that in all which will one day belong to him we have been
promised a share … so that we, as the first to put our confidence in
Christ, may bring praise to his glory!’ (Ephesians 1:9-12 )
‘Now Christ is the visible expression of the invisible God. He
existed before creation began, for it was through him that everything
was made, whether spiritual or material, seen or unseen.… He is both
the first principle and the upholding principle of the whole scheme of
creation.’ (Colossians 1:15-17)
‘In my opinion whatever we may have to go through now is less
than nothing compared with the magnificent future God has planned
for us. The whole creation is on tiptoe to see the wonderful sight of the
sons of God coming into their own. The world of creation cannot as
yet see reality, not because it chooses to be blind, but because in God’s
purpose it has been so limited—yet it has been given hope. And the
hope is that in the end the whole of created life will be rescued from
the tyranny of change and decay, and have its share in that magnificent
liberty which can only belong to the children of God!’ (Romans 8:18-
21)
Nevertheless, despite the wonder of this prophetic vision, as we
read the New Testament we may sometimes be conscious of a vast
and timeless energy confined within the thought-forms and restricted
knowledge of the first century A.D. Today the experience, knowledge
and responsibility of every thinking man is very much greater than that
of most of the men of New Testament days. But what changed and
inspired those men, what gave them daring, hope, patience and self-
giving love is quite timeless. There is no real reason to suppose that we
cannot tap the resources of God just as effectively as they did—no real
reason except our modern insulations! If we could but see it, God is
inevitably contemporary.

13. Christian revelation
Now if we regard all real religions as attempts to get at a special

kind of truth to provide some answer to man’s intuitions about his
own nature, we shall, I believe, find that what we know as ‘Christianity’
comprehends, develops and fulfils all that at heart we hold to be true.
In a way that we should not have guessed, or indeed planned, God has
visited this planet, and we can do no thinking or philosophizing, nor
can we deal with any human problem unless we take this fact into our
serious calculation. It is perfectly true that the most convinced believer
in God’s focusing of himself in Christ does not ‘know all the answers’.
But at least he has enough true light by which to live, and he has pow-
erful and indeed exciting clues to the meaning and purpose of life and
to man’s ultimate destiny. In order to make this clear I will mention
some of the unique truths with which Christianity presents us.
1. With the coming of Christ a completely new God-man rela-
tionship came into being, which is not found in any other religion. Man
enjoys a new value, a new dignity and new potentialities, because God
became a human being. At the same time, man’s conception of God
is revolutionized by the thought that the Spirit of Wisdom, Love and
Power behind all that we know, and all that we do not know, reduced
himself to the stature of a man.
2. It is not always realized how closely the life and teaching of
Jesus links the life of man with the life of God. Two examples from the
recorded sayings of Jesus will perhaps serve to illustrate this:
(a) A fundamental problem of all religions is the problem of ‘for-
giveness’. Man sins and fails, despairs and loses faith, and yet he must
somehow be reconciled morally and spiritually with the absolute per-
fection of God. Only God can resolve this sin-guilt-suffering-death
complex, and Christians believe, however their interpretations may
vary, that ‘God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself ’. But
quite apart from this act of reconciliation it is most important to real-
ize that Jesus declared categorically that reconciliation with God is an
impossibility without reconciliation with man. He taught, ‘if ye forgive
not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your tres-
passes’ (Matthew 6:15). We can hardly overestimate the significance of
this statement, or of the general tenor of Jesus’ teaching, which would
not allow any divorce between love of God and love of man. We may
perhaps wish the situation to be otherwise, but as far as we are con-
cerned this is one of the conditions, definite and inexorable, by which
we have to live.
(b) As far as the records show, Jesus gave only one parable of the
final judgment which all men face after the probation of this life. The
criterion is neither religion, nor orthodoxy, nor respectability, but the
way in which man has treated man. (See Matthew 25, verses 31 to the
end.) In this altogether revolutionary way of looking at things, which is
unique to Christianity, Jesus deliberately and precisely identifies man’s
treatment of himself with man’s treatment of man.
Here surely is the true humanism. Because God has become man,
all men are at least potentially sons of God. It automatically becomes a
serious offence to injure or exploit other people, not because of some
vague humanist values but because God has done man the unspeakable
honour of identifying himself with the human race.
3. Now although Christianity leads human thoughts and aspira-
tions far beyond the limitations of this present stage of existence, and
is thus in a sense an other-worldly religion, it is also incurably earthly.
Men may have their visions, but they are required to work them out in
the everyday stuff of human situations. There is no room for mystical
escapism; we find God-become-man himself involved in the messes
and miseries of the human situation and requiring his followers to do
the same. A man whose life is united with the timeless life of God
through sincere and intelligent faith in Christ becomes strongly aware
of his eternal destiny, and all kinds of inexpressible hopes for the dis-
tant future begin to stir in his mind. But he has to learn and to act
in this present world, accepting good-humouredly his physical limita-
tions and a fair degree of spiritual blindness. He has to express what
is spiritually true in the context of ordinary human relationships and
ordinary human problems.
4. As might be expected from a religion which is not the product
of any particular human way of thinking but the result of a planned
revelation, Christianity is of universal application. It cuts across barri-
ers of class, colour and sex, and has a message of equal importance to
the wise and to the foolish. It is perfectly possible for men or women
of any race, colour or culture to be wholehearted Christians. And while
Christianity’s highest and deepest implications may tax the brains and
moral courage of the most fully developed personalities, they can also
be accepted by the relatively simple and ungifted.
One of the reasons why it is imperative for us moderns to get back
to essential Christianity is that we may realize afresh the revolutionary
character of its message. We have forgotten its devastating disregard, or
even reversal, of current worldly values, and have allowed what we call
‘Western civilisation’ or ‘the American way of life’ to become more or
less God-fearing substitutes for the real thing. For when God made his
strange invasion of the life of this planet, the little section of human-
ity into which he came was obsessed as much as we are today with the
importance of such things as power, privilege, success and wealth. By
revealing reality, by declaring the Kingdom of God, God-become-man
undermined or exposed these false values. He taught, and his teach-
ing is as difficult to follow now as it was then, that what is apparently
happening may bear little or no relation to what is really happening.
The reality, according to him, is the establishment and growth of a
Kingdom of inner loyalty which transcends all human barriers. There-
fore, the realization of the existence of this Kingdom, working for its
expansion, living according to its principles, and, if necessary, dying
for it, is the real significance of man’s temporary existence upon the
earth. Jesus taught, and demonstrated in person, that the very things
which the world values most highly are irrelevant and ineffectual in the
dimension of permanent reality. He neither denied the existing world
nor despaired of its inhabitants, but by setting up an entirely different
standard he showed the way of constructive human living. He showed
men how they need not be overinvolved with this world, how they need
be neither deluded by its glamours, nor confined by its limitations.
It is particularly interesting to notice that he who was born a Jew
cut fearlessly across the fierce Jewish prejudices of his day. It is, for
example, well worth while studying his treatment of women and of the
underprivileged. Quite as remarkable is his habit of being unimpressed
by what was, and is still in some quarters, regarded as a sign of God’s
favour and the peak of human achievement—the possession of prop-
erty and riches. It is because the teaching of Christ (which I believe to
be the truth breaking through into a world of false values) is at once so
realistic, so disturbing and so revolutionary, that we need to go back to
it with adult minds and hearts.
The moment the truth dawns upon us that the purpose of God’s
visit to this planet was not to establish another religion but to reveal
the reality behind the appearance of things, we see what I believe to be
another unique feature of the Christian Faith—its utter inescapability.
Its principles and laws do not merely apply to religion and the religious
way of life, they apply to life itself, wherever and whenever it is lived.
For Christianity, although it is a religion in the sense that it links the life
of man with the Life of God, is far more than one of the world’s great
faiths: it is the revelation of the way of true living. Since, unless we live
as hermits, we are all to a greater or less extent bound up with each
other, we cannot escape behaving toward people or treating people in
one way or another. And because Christ has plainly declared that the
way in which we treat people is a mirror-image of the way in which
we treat God, the most ardent atheist or thoroughgoing agnostic can
no more escape from Christianity than he can escape from life itself.
You cannot contract out of life, and since God has personally visited
the planet, you cannot contract out of the reality which underlies the
business of human living. To me at least this is not a ‘religious’ matter at
all; it has not necessarily anything to do with going to church, or pray-
ing, or reading the Bible, or even with believing in God. It is a matter
of the quality of our living, and God’s assessment of that no one can
ultimately escape.
It is taken for granted in the recorded teaching of Jesus (and in
the New Testament generally) that this life is lived against a background
of what can literally be translated as ‘the Life of the Ages’. The present
business of living is merely a prelude, acted in the time-and-space set-
up on this planet, to life in another dimension where present limita-
tions do not obtain. It is probably impossible to describe the next stage
of existence in earthly terms, and it would be childish to take literally
the picture-language of the New Testament writers who make some at-
tempt to hint at its unimaginable splendours and possibilities. But the
teaching of Christ is that the ultimate destiny of human beings, as far as
we can at present comprehend it, is not extinction or absorption into
the Infinite, but the full development, the bringing to maturity, of sons
of God. For all we know, there lie ahead of us activities and responsibil-
ities far beyond our present dreams, but at least it is clear that what we
do in this present life is a significant factor in determining our status
in the next. It is unwise to press parables too literally, but the general
tenor of the parables of Jesus emphasizes man’s moral responsibility
in the here-and-now, the certainty of life persisting beyond physical
death, and the equal certainty of his continued cooperation with the
joyful purpose of God—or his exclusion from it. Therefore, although
Jesus would be the last person to use fear as a moral weapon (except
in the case of the desperately self-complacent), he did teach that life
should be lived with a due sense of awe and responsibility. I believe he
did this not merely because of man’s short- or long-term effect upon
others, but because of his destiny in the dimension which follows what
we call ‘death’.
Now this background of ‘eternity’ is absolutely essential to any
reasonable belief in God. Without it the glaring injustices, the inexpli-
cable tragedies and the unsolved problems of this life make nonsense
of the idea of a loving God. But if we have here only the preparatory
stage, the first working-over of the raw material, the significant begin-
nings but not the final endings of a vast purpose, we can accept life
with a much better grace. We are no longer tortured by the dreadful
limitations of man’s life on this planet, and while as lovers of God and
lovers of man, we are bound to do all that we can to spread the invis-
ible Kingdom here on earth, we know that both the foundation and
the fulfilment of that Kingdom lie beyond the confines of our present
situation. Why this should be so we simply do not know. Indeed, it is
only one of the hundreds of known facts about human life which we
must accept with a proper and reverent agnosticism.

14. Some criticisms of Christianity, 1
A great many criticisms of the Christian Faith, as has already been

suggested, are not valid criticisms at all. The critics have never taken
the trouble to study what the Faith really stands for, and in most cases
have certainly never studied the relevant documents, namely, the books
of the New Testament, with their adult intelligence. For example, it
is only too easy to imagine Christian living as a soft, meek-and-mild,
head-in-the-clouds avoidance of reality, and therefore to pour scorn
upon it. But no one could seriously read the essential message of the
gospels or study the lives of the early Christians without seeing that
living according to the plan of God calls for the highest courage, and
makes the most strenuous demands on the human spirit. Again, it is,
alas, still possible for otherwise intelligent people to jeer at Christianity
as a ‘pie-in-the-sky’ religion which has little or no contact with day-
to-day life. But could anything be more devastatingly practical than the
way of living outlined by Jesus, and followed since by all kinds and con-
ditions of people? Could sane people really study the records of such
men as Paul and Luke, and say that theirs was an escapist religion? Or,
for that matter, could anyone read of what Christians are doing today
to combat fear, ignorance and disease in the dark places of the earth,
and still say that a Faith which impels them to do such things is either
a drug to their sensibilities or a means of escape? It is not worth trying
to answer the criticisms of those who have neither taken the trouble to
find out what is involved in embarking on this way of living, nor even
to observe the lives of those who have followed it faithfully.
Nevertheless, quite apart from the ill informed attacks upon
something which never was the Christian Faith, there are some legiti-
mate criticisms, made by sane and thoughtful people, which must be
considered. For example, there are those who are filled with admira-
tion for Christ’s demonstrated way of self-giving love, and of his per-
sonal non-resistance to the forces of evil. But in practice they may have
serious doubts about the efficacy of such methods. Here we need to do
some careful thinking, for many of the current ideas of Christ are not
true to the character revealed in the gospels. In other words we have to
see with clearer eyes what love in action really entails. While it is true
that Jesus offered no resistance to physical attacks against himself, his
love did not prevent him from using the most aggressive and blistering
invective against those who thought they held a ‘corner’ in religion. For
all his loving-kindness, he did not hesitate to say that a man who led a
little child astray would be better off dead. He roundly declared that
such notorious evil cities as Sodom and Gomorrah would fare better
in the judgment than towns which rejected the living truth when it was
before their eyes. He was no verbal sentimentalist; he was not prepared
to gratify King Herod’s whim to see him ‘perform’, but bluntly called
him a fox. He was moved to violent physical action by the combination
of irreverence and black-marketeering which was corrupting what was
meant to be the centre of worship—the Temple in Jerusalem. Thus
we must not oversimplify the issue and say that in a given situation the
attitude of Christian love must always be that of meek acceptance and
the patient smile. The schoolmaster in charge of forty or so tough ado-
lescents in one of our big cities cannot mediate the love of God without
its sternness. It would indeed become impossible for a policeman, a
detective or, shall we say, an inspector of the National Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Children to be a true Christian at all if our
concept of the way of love were limited to that of passive acceptance or
non-resistance of evil.
Now here we strike one of the really fundamental problems of the
way of love, a problem of which not every clergyman and minister ap-
pears to be aware. It is a fine and moving thing to advocate the way of
patient love from the pulpit on Sunday, but it is quite a different thing
to apply that love in the complex situations which arise every day in
the shop, the office, the garage, the workshop, the laboratory and the
factory. For the Christian is not merely concerned about himself; in-
deed he may rightly feel that in following his Master’s example he may
have to accept as patiently and as good-humouredly as he can anything
from a personal slight to sheer injustice as far as he is concerned. But
he is not only concerned with himself, and that is just where the task
of interpreting the way of love becomes difficult. Is the Christian to
stand wordlessly by while someone else is bullied or unjustly treated?
Is the Christian to say nothing when corrupting suggestions are made?
Is the Christian to give silent assent to practices which he knows are
dishonest? It is here, in the very stuff of life, that men and women so
frequently and so wistfully abandon their dream of being ‘loving’, to all
men. Surely much more thought and honest discussion between Chris-
tians is needed on this point, as well as a more realistic appraisal of the
actual demonstrated methods of Jesus. And we have to admit that it is
just here, in the painful issues of actual human relationships, that clergy
and ministers have sometimes been unable to give sound advice.
As soon as we begin to study in earnest the recorded actions of
Christ, we cannot help being struck by his extraordinarily varied ap-
proach in dealing with different people. It is immediately apparent that
no rule of thumb is applied, but that the purpose of constructive love
is very flexible in the face of human complexities of character. Thus,
one person may best respond to the most uncompromising challenge,
while another needs patient encouragement. One is told that his life
already approximates in pattern to what God is wanting him to be; but
another may be told bluntly that despite all his religious profession he
is at heart a ‘child of evil’. It is only when we detach ‘texts of Scripture’
that there are apparent contradictions in the sayings of Christ. Once
we grasp the underlying principle of love in action touching human
lives in various states of awareness and development, we can begin to
understand why so many different things were said to so many differ-
ent people.
Now if we turn from the life of Christ to our ordinary experience
of people, most of us would probably agree that there are certain types
of men and women who need to be shocked or jolted out of their self-
love and complacency before they can begin to see and appreciate what
we and constructive love is trying to do. It is impossible, for example,
for the schoolmaster to lead his pupils into the appreciation of what
is good and true and beautiful, unless he has first established disci-
pline. Those who have been most successful in rebuilding the charac-
ter of juvenile delinquents know that their work would be impossible
without love, but that such love must be a stem love, particularly at
the beginning. If Christian love is supposed to be ‘doormat-like’ in its
meekness and gentleness, in many existing human situations it does
not have a chance to get started at all. Now these words are far from
being an argument for what was once called ‘muscular Christianity’,
but they are a plea for an honest examination of real situations. The
need to use physical force, the need to bring people slap up against the
consequence of their own wrong-doing, and sometimes the need to
deflate them drastically are undoubtedly called for by certain human
situations, but as methods they are only part of a much bigger whole.
Such means may make it possible for true concern to be shown and for
reformation to begin. But the actual constructive work of changing a
situation or reforming a character can only be achieved by understand-
ing and love.
With such considerations in mind we begin to see that the scath-
ing denunciations of religious leaders, which are quite a prominent
part of Jesus’ recorded sayings, belong only to the first part of the proc-
ess of love. Christ needed to use violent methods to crack the armour
of complacency. (And it is not always remembered that such attacks
did not invariably result in increased hostility. Some at least must have
had their spirits stabbed broad awake by such aggression, for we read
in Acts 6:7 that ‘a great company of the priests were obedient to the
faith’.) If therefore as Christians we feel obliged to use the reprimand,
the argumentum ad hominem, or even physical restraint, we must realize
all the time that such things are only a means to an end; by themselves
they are both incomplete and ineffectual. They can do no more than
provide the proper conditions for the constructive patient work of
love. The schoolmaster’s work of establishing discipline is only a prel-
ude to the positive self-giving task of real teaching. The policeman’s
arrest of the wrong-doer is only the prelude to the patient reformation
of character. Christ’s apparently merciless attacks upon complacency
were no more than the initial stage of the work of God’s Spirit upon
the personalities of the men behind the façade.

15. Some criticisms of Christianity, 2
A further apparently legitimate criticism which is sometimes lev-

elled against the Christian Faith is that it depends entirely upon an
old-fashioned conception of God and upon the assumption that this
little planet is the centre of the whole universe. Modern astronomy has
forced many to realize how frighteningly vast is the universe of which
we have some knowledge; and that, for all we know, there may be
countless other universes, at present beyond range of our means of ob-
servation. Many therefore find it inconceivable that the Mind behind
this bewildering creation could reveal the essence of his character in
a unique life lived on this almost negligible planet. We can sympathize
with this difficulty. It is a great deal more acute today than when the
psalmist meditated on the relative insignificance of man, and wrote,
‘When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and
the stars, which thou hast ordained: what is man, that thou art mindful
of him?’ (Psalm 8:3,4) —simply because man’s scientific knowledge
has been very greatly extended. But whatever mistakes the Christian
Church may have made in past ages of intolerance, surely no modern
Christian is concerned to maintain that the revelation of God given to
this planet which we inhabit is necessarily the only revelation God has
made in his whole universe! We simply do not know what creatures
may exist elsewhere, and therefore we cannot begin even to guess at
other kinds of revelation which the Creator may have given, or may
plan to give, in other parts of his apparently limitless creation. In spite
of the fragments of knowledge concerning the nature and size of the
universe which science is continually gathering, we need constantly to
remember that our primary concern is, whether we like it or not, with
the earth on which we live. It is what God has revealed to us which is
important to us, and surely our most pressing and most urgent prob-
lems are concerned with life on this planet. We are not God; the fact
that we ‘cannot imagine’ the Creator’s total purpose for the whole
universe proves nothing except the limitation of our own capacity to
comprehend. Further, although our minds are so made that they are
necessarily impressed by almost unthinkable size, by energies at which
the imagination boggles and by aeons of time which we cannot in any
real sense appreciate, there is no reason to suppose that outside the
human mind such things are of any great significance.
A further objection which is sometimes made to the Christian
Faith lies in its claim to uniqueness—that it is in Christ alone that
God has revealed his personality and character. The impartial observer
knows that Christianity is only one of the world’s religions, and that
for millions of people other faiths appear to suffice. Surely, it may be
argued, if there is only one God the object of worship in all religions
is the same, and it cannot greatly matter how that worship is given or
what means are used to regulate human life in accordance with the
divine purpose. Such criticism usually comes from those who know
very little about either Christianity or other religions. Obviously there
are certain basic goodnesses which are urged by any religious system,
and equally obviously any religion which is sincerely believed in will
have individual and social effects. The modern Christian, whatever fol-
lies the Church may have committed in the past, does not deny the
value of all true religion. Shafts of divine light, of truths not discover-
able by ‘scientific’ means, have broken through upon the human scene
through poets, philosophers and sages, as well as through the founders
of various religions. This fact no intelligent modern Christian would
minimize, but such fragments of revelation can, he believes, be only
secondary to the planned personal focusing of God in the man Jesus
Christ. Indeed the more seriously he takes his own faith, the less it
seems to him that its overwhelming significance has so far been rightly
appreciated. If, as the Christian believes, God has actually entered the
human scene then there is an inescapable uniqueness about Christian-
ity. If this is ‘the real thing’ then in a sense there can be no compromise
with anything less. This does not mean lack of sympathy with other
religions, but it does mean a determination that all men shall know the
fullest possible truth.
Another objection to the Christian Faith which is felt, if not ex-
pressed, by many intelligent people is that it appears to attract the im-
mature and seeks to perpetuate their immaturity. By insisting that men
‘become like little children’ and that they accept life at the hands of
their ‘heavenly Father’, Christ appears to be placing a premium upon
childishness and tacitly disapproving of men’s growth toward more
mature conceptions of the world. Now this objection needs careful and
honest answering. It is perfectly true that there is a divine simplicity
about Christ’s teaching which is more readily grasped by the uncom-
plicated than by those whose minds have become so ‘cultured,’ ‘con-
ditioned’ and ‘educated’ that they are blind to the prime conditions
of human life upon this planet. Therefore, Christ says in effect, if men
are to grasp the purpose of God they must begin again to learn as chil-
dren. Now it is inconceivable that the One who was God-become-man
should deprecate the pursuit of truth or despise human knowledge;
and it is equally unthinkable that he wished to inaugurate a movement
limited to members of low intelligence! Surely the force of his remarks
is that there must be a return to humility in the God-man relationship
before human knowledge and the acquisition of truth have any real
meaning. A moment’s reflection will show us that there is a fundamen-
tal difference in the mental attitude of the learned man whose faith is
in humanity and that of the learned man whose basic faith is in God as
Creator and in man as God’s creation. Jesus is concerned to establish
the fact that compared with the immensely complex wisdom of God
we are children, and that until we accept that fact with humility our
knowledge will either be a burden to us or may lead us further and
further from essential truth. It is true that some Christians are child-
ish, and that some remain in a state of arrested development. It is even
true that some Christians are finding in God a ‘father-substitute’ and
seeking to perpetuate their own dependent childhood. But that is not
true of the Personality of Christ or of any mature or effective Christian
from Paul onward. Nevertheless, I believe that Jesus was perfectly right
in insisting that compared with God we are dependent, incomplete and
liable to all the mistakes of childhood; that is one of the given facts of
the human situation, and the wise man recognizes its truth.
Another stumbling block of the Christian Faith which presents
itself in various forms to the modern scientific temper of mind is that
the truth of such faith is not susceptible to scientific ‘proof ’. I must
confess I often wonder what sort of proof the scientifically-minded are
asking Christians to produce. Let us freely admit that organised Chris-
tianity has made tragic and repeated mistakes. We could go further and
say that in some centuries and in some countries the Church has borne
only the slightest resemblance to the life and teaching of its Founder.
But if we look away from the failures and consider the effect on charac-
ter and personality of a genuine Christian faith, surely we are presented
with something very impressive. We have already mentioned the zeal
and vigour of the early Christians and the undoubted historical fact that
the direction and quality of people’s lives were dramatically changed in
New Testament days. But if we skip the centuries for the moment and
come to modern times, there is plenty of evidence of a similar faith
producing a similar effect. Within my own experience I know scores
of people to whom God has become a reality through their intelligent
acceptance of the Christian Faith, and who know experimentally that
the resources of God are available to sustain and invigorate human
spiritual life.
Now if, as I have suggested, Jesus Christ came to inaugurate a new
way of constructive living, it is obvious from what we know of human
nature and of the human situation generally that there will be a very
considerable pull back to easier, safer, and more comfortable ways of
living. The small-scale and large-scale failures of Christians down the
centuries—and they are many and grievous—are no indication at all as
to what the Christian Faith, honestly received in heart and mind, can
achieve. And it is quite unrealistic to judge the validity of the Christian
Faith by assuming that such European countries as Britain, France or
Germany are ‘Christian’. For various reasons, not least I think because
men and women of influence have failed to take the Christian revela-
tion seriously, the actual number of convinced and active Christians
is, even today, quite a small minority. If we are looking for ‘scientific
proof ’, then, of the truth of the Christian Faith, let us look at genuine
Christians and not at the actions of any nation which is only nominally
Christian, nor at any Church which has again and again acted in a spirit
completely contrary to that of its Founder.
But by far the most serious criticism comes from those who
would sincerely like to believe the truth of Christianity but find the
very nature of life itself appears to deny it. The idea of God as a loving
heavenly Father, who marks the fall of every sparrow, appears to break
down in the complex stresses, disasters, inhumanities and horrors of
modern life. There appears to be a certain winsome simplicity about
the Christian view of life which has to be reluctantly discarded when
we grow up and face both life and people as they are. I believe there are
many people to whom the teachings of Christ are true in the sense that
a vision or an ideal is true. It is with real regret that they see the vision
and ideal daily destroyed by man’s greed, inhumanity and fear. I believe
that such people are wrong. If they were to return to study the gospels
again, they would find no evading of the issues of human exploitation,
injustice and persecution, no avoidance of life’s inequalities, injustices,
evils and disasters. But I understand their unwilling discarding of the
Christian Faith—for the problem of human suffering and evil is with-
out any doubt, for most people, the greatest barrier to belief. And
while no one can hope to solve it satisfactorily and completely there are
several considerations which should be carefully examined, by which
I believe it is not impossible to see life fairly and squarely, and at the
same time to be an honest Christian. But for such considerations, we
must have at least two separate chapters.

16. Problems of suffering and evil, 1
‘If there is a God of Love,’ people have asked and are still ask-
ing, ‘how can he allow so much suffering in his creation, how can he
permit natural disasters such as earthquakes, and how can we possibly
reconcile the existence of evil with the idea of an all-wise, all-powerful,
all-loving God?’ What are commonly called the ‘problem of evil’ and
the ‘problem of pain’ are inevitably the most serious problems which
face anyone of intelligence and sensibility.
Let it be said straightaway that no one knows anything like the full
explanation of, or the answer to, these problems. The most we can do
is first to break the problems down into what can partially be answered
and what cannot, and secondly, to suggest an attitude of mind which
can be honestly held without the necessity for denying the existence of
a God of Love. Anyone who writes on this, the hardest of all human
problems, must write with humility. For although he may himself have
experienced a little of the burden of human suffering, and although he
may have observed a very great deal more in other people’s lives, he
knows that there is no easy answer. If he has seen almost unbelievable
courage and endurance and, what is even more moving, an unshakable
conviction of the final goodness of God, he is bound to feel humble.
He knows that, although he may write about the problem, there are
countless thousands who could never write books but who in practice
have met and solved the problem in a way that no words, however wise,
could do.
Our first consideration should be to recognize that evil is inherent
in the risky gift of free will. Naturally it is possible for the Creator to
have made creatures who are invariably good, healthy, kind and virtu-
ous. But if they had no chance of being anything else, if in other words,
they had no free will, we can see, even with our limited intelligence,
that such a creation would be no more than a race of characterless ro-
bots. It is really no good quarrelling with the situation in which we find
ourselves, and quite plainly that situation includes the power to choose.
And it is obvious that this individual gift of being able to choose good
or evil affects a far wider area of human life than that of one individual
personality. The good that a man chooses to do, or the evil that a man
chooses to do, have both immediate and long-term effects, and exert
an influence, even spread an infection, of good or bad. Speaking gener-
ally, human life is so arranged that what we call ‘good’ produces hap-
piness, and what we call ‘evil’ produces misery and suffering. Thus a
good deal of human suffering can be directly traced to the evil choices
of human beings. Sometimes this is perfectly obvious and direct—a
violent and cruel husband plainly causes suffering, fear and misery to
his wife and children. Sometimes the evil is indirect—the greed for
money or power may make a businessman take decisions which bring
great suffering to hundreds of people personally unknown to him, or
the selfishness and greed of one generation may produce a bitter fruit
in the next.
If we knew all the facts, and the effects, both short-term and
long-term, of human selfishness and evil, a very large proportion of
mankind’s miseries could be explained. But of course this in no way
answers the questioner who asks, ‘Why doesn’t God stop evil and cruel
men from causing so much suffering?’ This is a very natural and un-
derstandable question, but how exactly could such intervention be ar-
ranged without interfering with the gift of personal choice? Are we to
imagine the possessor of a cruel tongue to be struck dumb, the writer
of irresponsible and harmful newspaper articles visited with writer’s
cramp or the cruel and vindictive husband to find himself completely
paralysed? Even if we limit God’s intervention to the reinforcement of
the voice of conscience, what can be done where conscience is disre-
garded or has been silenced through persistent suppression? The mo-
ment we begin to envisage such interventions, the whole structure of
human free will is destroyed. Again, may I repeat that we may not ap-
prove of this terrifying free will being given to men at all, but it is one
of those things which we are bound to accept. (It may be worth noting
here that the whole point of real Christianity lies not in interference
with the human power to choose but in producing a willing consent to
choose good rather than evil.)
The next problem which must be squarely faced is the appar-
ent flagrant injustice in the distribution of suffering. (I feel bound to
use the word ‘apparent’ because I do not believe in final injustice, as
I hope to show later.) Put in its crudest form the question is simply,
‘Why should the innocent suffer and the wicked get away with it?’ This
is one of the oldest questions in the world, far older of course than the
Old Testament book of Job, which makes some attempt to deal with it.
It is we that even within the limits of this little life men do sometimes
see virtue rewarded and wickedness punished. But unhappily for their
sense of justice, this is by no means invariably the case. To all appear-
ances the cruel men with hard faces have a much better time in this
world than the good, the sensitive and the responsible. Now here again
we come right up against the situation in which we find ourselves, and
which we must to some degree accept. There can be nothing wrong
with our desire for justice and there can be nothing but right in our
desire to see evil restrained and exploitation cease. But if we are ex-
pecting a world, and blaming God for not supplying such a world, in
which good is inevitably rewarded and evil automatically punished, we
are merely crying for the moon. We are not living in such a situation,
and indeed it is debatable whether adult virtue and courage could exist
at all in such a kindergarten atmosphere. This life is unjust, in this life
the innocent do suffer, and in this life hard conscienceless men do, to
all appearances, ‘get away with it’. These are hard facts and only to a
limited degree can we alter them.
Frankly, I do not know who started the idea that if men serve
God and live their lives to please him then he will protect them by
special intervention from pain, suffering, misfortune and the persecu-
tion of evil men. We need look no further than the recorded life of
Jesus Christ himself to see that even the most perfect human life does
not secure such divine protection. It seems to me that a great deal of
misunderstanding and mental suffering could be avoided if this er-
roneous idea were exposed and abandoned. How many people who
fall sick say, either openly or to themselves, ‘Why should this happen
to me?—I’ve always lived a decent life.’ There are even people who
feel that God has somehow broken his side of the bargain in allowing
illness or misfortune to come upon them. But what is the bargain? If
we regard the New Testament as our authority we shall find no such
arrangement being offered to those who open their lives to the living
Spirit of God. They are indeed guaranteed that nothing, not even the
bitterest persecution, the worst misfortune or the death of the body,
can do them any permanent harm or separate them from the love of
God. They are promised that no circumstance of earthly life can defeat
them in spirit and that the resources of God are always available for
them. Further, they have the assurance that the ultimate purposes of
God can never be defeated. But the idea that if a man pleases God then
God will especially shield him belongs to the dim twilight of religion
and not to Christianity at all.
But it helps enormously, indeed it makes a fundamental change in
our thinking, if we look upon the life we lead upon this small planet as
temporary, as only part of a whole, the quality and extent of which we
can only very dimly perceive. For the purposes of this life the Creator
has made certain conditions, but we have no reason to suppose that the
same conditions apply in the stages of life men live after the death of
the physical body. It is largely because modern man has lost the sense
of what we might call the background of eternity that he sees every-
thing from pleasure to pain in terms of this world only. Yet if he were
seriously to accept the attitude of mind which prevails throughout the
whole New Testament he might come to see that, although there are
many things which appear to deny the love and justice of God in this
life, he is quite literally in no position to judge the final issue. If he tries
to do so, he might quite easily be as foolish as a man attempting to de-
termine the pattern of a carpet from examination of a single thread, a
picture from a tube of paint, or a book from a box of assorted type. At
most he is only seeing the raw beginnings of something so enormous as
to stagger the imagination.
Naturally, it is easy to pour scorn upon the conviction common
to all true Christians that, as Paul put it, ‘the sufferings of this present
time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be re-
vealed in us.’ It can be called ‘pie in the sky,’ the ‘opium of the people’,
and doubtless it has been used as an anodyne for much preventable hu-
man suffering and exploitation. But the true Christian does not so use
this point of view; he uses it to stabilize his own thought. To my mind,
and I say this most seriously, it would be impossible to believe in a God
of love and justice if the horizon of man were limited to this life only.
But the Christian’s faith does not rest in the here-and-now, and even
at best he knows he is only seeing a little piece of the total picture. He
knows, to put it crudely, that God’s love, mercy and justice must be
infinitely greater than his own! Therefore, while he works on hopefully
and cheerfully in this imperfect stage of existence, he never expects
to find anything approaching the final working out of God’s purpose
within the confines of life on this planet. He lives in the incomplete, the
undeveloped, the inexplicable and the mysterious. He has enough light
to live by, but he never claims to know all the answers, and throughout
his life he is sustained by the conviction that he is moving toward the
complete, the perfect and the ultimate reality. He is destined for light
and enlightenment, for freedom from illusion, release from his present
blindness to reality and from the inevitable limitations of his physical
nature.
For many people natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods,
hurricanes, erupting volcanoes and all the other destructive forces of
nature produce an insuperable obstacle to faith in a loving God. There
is naturally no easy answer to explain such occurrences, but there are
some considerations which make the problem a shade less difficult. A
fertile valley in the United States of America was disastrously flooded,
not for the first time, a few months before this book was written. Nev-
ertheless, the commentator in the film showing scenes of this disaster
remarked that, although the area had been flooded again and again,
within a year or two of each catastrophe people would quickly for-
get and resettle in the same area. Similarly, people will live under the
shadow of a volcano which is known to erupt violently and unpredict-
ably from time to time. It may sound harsh to say so, but a certain pro-
portion of human life could be saved if areas known to be dangerous
for human habitation were avoided, or the proper steps to control the
forces of nature were taken where this is possible. Man is mistaken if
he thinks life upon this planet is automatically physically safe. But he
has been given powers of body and mind and qualities of forethought
and the ability to profit by experience. It would seem to be part of his
job to learn to control the enormous energies of nature. We still have
not the slightest idea why the situation should be as it is, but the black-
ness of what we call ‘natural disaster’ is made far darker than it really
is because of modern man’s obsession with physical death as the worst
evil. Moreover, he will persist in viewing disaster through human eyes.
It is only from the human point of view that the headline, 200 KILLED
BY EARTHQUAKE—5000 HOMELESS, is more distressing than, FARMER
KILLED BY LIGHTNING, WIDOW PROSTRATED BY GRIEF. The question,
‘How could a God of Love allow so many to be killed and to suffer?’
has really very little sense in it. We may need the impact of a large-
scale piece of human suffering before we are properly impressed, but
in the eyes of the sort of God whom Christians worship, the question
of number and size is neither impressive nor significant, impossible as
it may be for man to conceive the concern of God for the individual.
To imagine that God looks upon physical death as many men do, or to
think of him as impressed by numbers, violence or size, is simply to
think of God as a magnified man—a monstrously inadequate concep-
tion.
Now the man who has the attitude of mind which is rooted in
eternity is neither deceived by the illusive glamours of this world nor
unduly cast down by the unexplained suffering and the unsolved prob-
lems which confront him on all sides. This does not mean to say for one
moment that the true Christian regards his passing through this life as
a somewhat boring prelude to the glories that lie ahead. Indeed, as a
follower of Christ, and as one whose life is aligned with the purpose of
God, he is inevitably involved in the life of this world. He is committed
to do all within his power to heal the world’s injuries by active and out-
going love, and the personal cost to himself is probably high. He is not
less concerned than the materialist or the scientific humanist for the
welfare of men, but more so; for he has glimpsed something of man’s
value and potentiality in the eyes of God. But all the time he enjoys the
enormous advantage of knowing that even the most hideous suffering
exists only in this present state of affairs. He knows that death need be
neither a disaster nor an enemy. He never suffers from the frustration
of believing that this little world is any more than a visible beginning of
some incalculably vast plan of the Creator. In short, he is much more
likely to see life in proportion than the man who insists that life on this
planet sets the final boundary of human experience.
It is a great help in facing life to believe that the final answers, the
ultimate outcome, can never be settled in this particular phase of our
existence. Of course, to the man without faith this appears to be both
a piece of evasion of real issues in that it shelves difficult problems, and
a piece of wishful thinking in that it believes in the ultimate goodness
of God in some nebulous hereafter, even though the daily evidence of
life denies such goodness and love. It is probably quite impossible to
explain the Christian attitude to the thoroughgoing materialist, simply
because the major premise which makes the whole position tenable
and satisfactory is God, and the materialist denies such a person’s exist-
ence. But, speaking as one who did not arrive at his present convictions
without a good deal of questing and questioning, I would assure the
materialist that his position looks every bit as ridiculous and untenable
to the man who has some small knowledge of God as the Christian
position does to the materialist! The materialist appears to be speaking
and arguing not only in ignorance of a whole dimension but with a co-
lossal if unconscious arrogance. For he is really wanting to comprehend
the total scheme of things with the mind of the Creator. He appears
to forget that we are not yet ‘Old Boys’ who can talk on familiar terms
with the Headmaster! We are all very much still at school, and probably
very junior members of the school at that. Further, although we may
not be able to convince the materialist, the Christian does not adopt
his supra-mundane point of view wilfully, as a kind of escape from life’s
hard realities. On the contrary, once he finds himself aligned with the
vast and complex purpose of God the new point of view is born in him,
and to go back and hold earth-limited views of the problems of pain
and suffering appears as absurd as to believe that the world is flat. You
cannot deny a new dimension once you have experienced it.
But while the Christian believes that God is a wholly reliable
‘shelf ’ on which unsolved problems and difficulties may for the time
be safely deposited, he does not find himself in any way excused from
attempting to relieve suffering and pain and to play his part in rebuild-
ing the true order amid the chaos of earthly conditions. He is inspired
by the recorded example of God-become-man who, without arguing
about the ‘given-ness’ of the human situation, set about healing men’s
disorders in a most down-to-earth fashion. Yet the Christian is not
relying merely on a nineteen-hundred-year-old demonstration for his
day-to-day inspiration and reinforcement, but on a living contempo-
rary Spirit. He is no longer envisaging ‘God’ dwelling in unapproach-
able remoteness and making impossible demands of man whom he has
placed in a difficult and perplexing condition. The living God is allied
to man, is with him in the fray, not merely guiding and encouraging,
but striving and suffering and triumphing with him, in him and through
him. So that even though the centre of gravity of the Christian’s faith is
not really in this world at all, yet as far as this life is concerned God is
always his contemporary.
At any given moment in history there is bound to be a large
number of questions without any satisfactory answer. In the face of
this, a great many people adopt an attitude of non-committal agnosti-
cism. So long as their questions remain unanswered, they feel in no
way morally bound to cooperate with such good purpose as they can
discern. This is a characteristically modern attitude; for in past cen-
turies men had to take for granted the fact that a great many of their
hows and whys would certainly remain unanswered in their lifetime. Yet
this did not prevent them from acting boldly and resolutely along the
lines which they were convinced were right. But modern man, perhaps
a little intoxicated with his success in answering the hows of life, will
frequently not commit himself until his whys are answered—in fact,
until the Creator has taken him into his full confidence! Thus in deal-
ing with the real human problems, such as the relief of suffering, the
adjustment of personality, the release from fear and ignorance, the care
of the physically or mentally defective or of the aged and infirm, there
is nearly always a desperate shortage of living agents, and among their
small number the cosily non-committed agnostic is very rarely to be
found. I would suggest that since we are in a very junior position in the
universe, men might do better to set their hands and hearts to tasks
that cry out to be done, instead of posing everlasting whys before they
are willing to work to alleviate human suffering and needs.

17. Problems of suffering and evil, 2
Some of the physical ‘evils’ in the world are plainly inimical to

human life and constitute a continual challenge to man’s vigilance and
ingenuity. Man had made enormous strides in discovering the causes
of disease, and is still fighting a long-drawn-out battle against such
things as the incredibly minute viruses, and the apparently arbitrary
cell-degeneration known as cancer. Of equal importance with these
discoveries is the increasing knowledge of the influence of the mind
upon the health or disease of the body. A vast amount of further experi-
ment and correlation of experience is needed in this field. Before long
more emphasis will be placed upon curing a disease by working from
the inside out, so to speak, that is, by paying far more attention to the
condition of the centre which controls the functioning of that organic
whole which we call the body. But again, though we may hope for many
significant answers to our hows, we have no answer at all to our whys.
Why, for example, should the virus of poliomyelitis exist at all? Or
why indeed should there be disease, not merely in human beings but
throughout the whole animal creation? Some of our forefathers were
apparently satisfied to believe that the whole army of bacteria, germs
and viruses which lie in wait to injure or destroy human life were the
direct consequence of the sin of Adam. Of course it is possible to con-
cede that the breaking of natural laws, as for instance those of health
and hygiene, can incur natural penalties, but surely it surpasses even
the most vivid imagination to suppose that one man’s disobedience to,
and defiance of, his Creator, could actually create deadly organisms and
viruses! Moreover, when it is known from the malformation of bone
structure of animals which existed a very long time before man ap-
peared on the earth that they also suffered from disease, the argument
falls flat on its face. We still have no clue whatever as to why what we
call ‘disease’ should exist at all.
To connect human disease with human sin is an easy and obvi-
ous, but to my mind, misleading thing to do. It is altogether too facile
an explanation and is contradicted by the evidence every day. We can
probably all think of people who live good and unselfish lives yet suf-
fer from disease. And we can also think of people who are thoroughly
self-centred who are full of energy and have not had a day’s illness in
their lives! Indeed it would appear that there is a monstrous unfairness
about the incidence of physical disease I am well aware that certain
kinds of functional disorder and even actual disease are being more and
more frequently alleviated and cured by increasing the health of the
human spirit, and I regard this as a most hopeful approach to the whole
question of healing. But that does not alter the fact that, as one looks
upon life dispassionately, those in robust health are for the most part
extroverts who feel no particular concern for the world around them,
while those who suffer from poor health and an assortment of diseases
are often sensitive, conscientious people who are doing what they can
to lessen the world’s sorrows.
Although we are quite in the dark about the why of human disease
and suffering, ordinary observation can show us that the result of their
occurrence is by no means necessarily evil. It is not in the sentimental
novel only that the self-centred husband has been shocked back into
responsibility, and even into a renewal of true love by the sickness of
his wife. Similarly the illness of a child can and does renew and deepen
the love between a husband and wife. And I can recall quite a number
of occasions when visiting men in hospital who had never previously
been ill in their lives, being told that such a forcible withdrawal from
life came to be regarded far more as a friend than as an enemy. ‘It gives
you a chance to think.’ ‘It makes me think about myself and what I’m
in this life for.’ ‘It’s made me think about God and pray to him for the
first time since I was a kid.’ ‘It’s opened my eyes to a new world—I
just didn’t realize that this sort of thing [that is, suffering and nursing
care], was going on all the time.’ ‘I didn’t know what human kindness
was till I came here [that is, into the hospital].’ These are only a few
typical remarks made to me in recent years, and they far outnumber
those of the self-pitying or embittered. What is even more impressive
and moving is the almost superhuman courage, hope and faith shown
by the human spirit when the body is attacked by pain and disease. I
am sure that disease is in itself evil, but I am left wondering how the
courage, love and compassion it evokes would be produced in a world
where everybody was perfectly healthy. Perhaps physical health is not
of such paramount importance as our modern geocentric materialist
would suppose.
This question of the physical evil in the world leads us naturally
on to the question of moral evil, which poses at least as difficult a ques-
tion, even though it is sometimes argued that they are but different
manifestations of the same thing. It is customary nowadays to look
upon evil as either the absence of good through ignorance or fear, or
else as something which manifests itself through maladjustment of per-
sonality. It is not considered to have any objective reality. I believe this
to be as fallacious a point of view as to look upon disease as the mere
absence of health. It is certainly true that the healthy body, controlled
by the healthy mind, will successfully resist all kinds of disease-pro-
ducing organisms. But this does not prove that the organisms do not
exist, for their objective existence can be demonstrated to anybody’s
satisfaction. I believe there is a valid parallel here. The fact that moral
evil is defeated by the spiritually healthy human being does not prove
the non-existence of moral evil.
We have unfortunately grown accustomed to the monstrous inhu-
manities and cruelties of our modern world. Shocked as we have been
by well attested stories of unspeakable tortures and degradation’s, by
the mass exterminations of the gas chamber, and by the living death
of such places as Belsen and Buchenwald, many people find it difficult
to react with proper indignation to contemporary cruelties such as
the Communist slave camps in Siberia, or the callous indifference of
most people to the plight of millions of refugees. It is as though human
sensibility has been dulled by repeated shocks, and has even come to
accept the most revolting barbarity as an inescapable part of the mod-
ern human scene. At the moment of writing this book, for example,
we know that the Communists hold as slave labourers in Siberia great
numbers of wretched human beings who are treated with deliberate
brutality. We know this; it has been reliably attested by several wit-
nesses who have had the courage and good fortune to escape. But it has
come to mean no more to us than, say, the fact that there are penguins
in the Antarctic. In time of war we may perhaps say that men revert to
the impulses of primitive savagery, and this may well be true. But no
savage, however primitive, can show the cold, calculated ruthlessness
of, for example, a Communist government. This is not a question of
going back to the fight for survival, to ‘nature red in tooth and claw’,
but the appearance of something infinitely more radical and sinister.
This is not ‘the growing pains of civilization’, but the premeditated use
of terror, degradation and vicious brutality.
How are we to begin to explain the existence of such evil? It is
not the case of a few maladjusted personalities exhibiting antisocial
tendencies; it is like some frightening moral infection which can basi-
cally affect thousands, if not millions, of people. But where does it come
from? Admittedly I have drawn attention to large-scale suffering, but
the question is just as difficult to answer when we come to the hatred,
lust, malice, greed, pride and selfishness which mar the national, social
and family life of our own country. It seems to me quite inadequate to
regard the qualities which spoil relationships as mere absence of good,
and for myself I am driven to the conclusion that there is such a thing
as evil which can infect and distort human personality just as certainly
as there are germs and viruses which attack and damage the physical
body.
It is clear, at least to me, that people who worship and love the
true God, and open their spirits to the active Spirit of Love, show to
a greater or less degree the presence of good within them. It does not
seem to me therefore unreasonable to suppose that those who worship
and love the wrong things create conditions whereby they are actuated,
and to some extent possessed, by ‘evil’. In fact, although it may sound
old-fashioned, I do not believe that we take the question of ‘evil’ seri-
ously enough in modern days, so that we are continually being disap-
pointed, shocked or horrified by its manifestations. Although I am very
far from subscribing to the doctrine of the total depravity of man, it
does seem to me to have been proved within my own lifetime that the
problem of human evil is not much affected by better education, bet-
ter housing, higher wages, holidays with pay, and the National Health
Service—desirable as all these things may be for other good reasons.
We need a much more realistic approach to the problem of human evil,
and I am perfectly certain that no really effective way of dealing with it
will be found apart from the rediscovery of true religion.
When we come to examine the life and teaching of Jesus Christ
we may at first be surprised to find how little explanation he gives of
the human situation. He does not argue about the existence of suffer-
ing or evil, still less does he seek ‘to justify God’s ways to man’. He does
not appear to waste time in arguing about the desirability or otherwise
of the human situation. He accepts it and he concentrates upon the
centre to which everything else, however important or impressive, is
merely peripheral. That centre is, of course, the human heart, or per-
haps we might be more particular and say that inner centre of human
personality, where the very springs of action are conceived. As we study
the admittedly incomplete records of that unique life, we shall see that
his particular genius lies in concentration upon what is really essential.
The deep fundamental problems of human life are really neither in-
tellectual nor technical; they are always in the last resort problems of
human relationship. It would seem that Jesus (regarding him for the
moment purely as a man of poetic insight) could quite easily disregard
the non-essentials, the mere trappings and scenery of human life. His
concern was with the quality of human living, and in his eyes aspects
of our human life, which appear to us of pressing importance, were of
little significance. It might indeed be fair to epitomize his whole atti-
tude in his own famous words ‘What shall it profit a man if he gain the
whole world and lose his own soul?’
Now this refusal to be influenced by non-essentials never meant
in Christ’s life an indifferent pietism. For although it is plain from his
life and teaching that he looked upon this life as a prelude to some-
thing infinitely more important, yet, where ever it was possible, he
restored health of mind and body. He was deeply moved by the strains
and distresses of men, by their hunger and thirst and weariness, and he
was roused to passionate indignation by the exploitation of the weak.
Indeed, he alone of all religious leaders of all time was bold enough to
state, as we saw above (see Matthew 25, verses 31 to the end), that love
of God must be expressed by love of man, even in his earthly and sor-
did distresses. For although Christianity is an incurably otherworldly
religion and speaks unhesitatingly of sharing the timeless Life of God, it
is also devastatingly practical and down to earth. It holds out the high-
est ideals and promises, and yet faces life with a downright and almost
frightening realism. If we regard Christ seriously as God-become-man
we shall find his reaction to the life around him extraordinarily illumi-
nating. Yet he offers no explanation of the origin of evil or of human sin
and suffering. No doubt he used the language of his own day it would
be difficult to know what else he could have done—but surely there
can be no doubt that behind such expressions as ‘Satan’, ‘the Evil One’,
‘the Prince of this world’, ‘Beelzebub’ and ‘the Devil’ there is recogni-
tion of the power of evil. His concern was not to explain how such a
power came into existence, but to defeat it. It seems probable that we
shall have to share this attitude and spend our energies not in discuss-
ing the origins of evil, but in defeating it, both in ourselves and in the
world around us.
Now I venture to suggest at this point that we need resources out-
side ourselves to defeat this evil. So long as we cling to the idea that we
live in a closed-world-system, the most we do is adjust and rearrange
existing forces. But if it is true that spiritual energies of constructive
good are really available in a dimension of which we know very little,
surely we are very foolish to ignore them. We should know by now
that ‘Satan cannot cast out Satan’, and that although force may restrain
evil it is powerless to transform it into good. We probably all know
from experience that the only quality which has patience and strength
enough to redeem either people or situations is the quality of outgoing
love, the very thing of which we are all so lamentably short. If, again,
we look at God-become-man we find that as a matter of course and of
habit he opened his personality to God not merely to be sure that he
was following the divine plan of action but to receive potent spiritual
reinforcement for the overcoming of evil. If this was necessary for him
we might sensibly conclude that it is even more necessary for us. And
yet how few, even alas among professing Christians, deliberately and of
set purpose draw upon the unseen spiritual resources of God? We are
so infected by the prevailing atmosphere of thought, which assumes
that nothing can enter our earthly lives from outside, that a great deal
of what the New Testament takes for granted does not strike us as re-
alistic or practical. Yet I would suggest that there are discoveries to be
made here which would prove far more revolutionary in the solving of
human problems than any purely physical marvels.

18. The challenge to living
There is a tendency in most of us to avoid the crucial and painful

issues. This is perfectly obvious in the weak character who, in common
parlance, ‘takes the line of least resistance’. But even in characters
whom we should call ‘strong’, that is, in properly integrated, mature and
purposeful people, there is frequently a reluctance to decide upon rad-
ical spiritual issues. A well disciplined human character will seek with
determination the solution to a ‘scientific’ problem, or deal coura-
geously with the complexities of a political or ‘business’ situation; many
men are capable of exhibiting the highest qualities of courage and endur-
ance in the face of terrible physical handicaps and dangers. But it remains
comparatively rare for a man to be willing to fight the spiritual battle,
to put into practice the principle of outgoing love which is the heart of
Christianity. The moment we begin to come within range, as it were, of
the danger area, a great many people take refuge in what I can only call
‘cosy agnosticism’. For so long as a man can persuade himself that he may
honestly maintain an open mind about the identity and person of Jesus
Christ, he remains uncommitted to the real business of living. Since he has
no real standards he can be tolerant in isolation instead of becoming
embarrassingly involved. Since he is unenlisted in any supra-human
purpose, he is free to give or withhold himself as he chooses. Since he
owes loyalty to nothing but his own humanist ideals, he is under no per-
sonal obligation to touch or be touched by the evil he deplores. And since
he is responsible to no one, he need feel no particular guilt or failure
in avoiding battles in which he can observe a pitiful minority struggling
ineffectually. This attitude of noncommittal detachment is one of the
most crippling evils of our time. Of course, there are thousands of people
who, with the greatest moral courage, are coping with the sufferings,
evils and distresses of our common social life, but if we come to ex-
amine any of these human efforts to deal with human needs, there is almost
always a desperate shortage of dedicated men and women. ‘Dedicated’
is the operative word, for so long as people have no faith in any value or
purpose beyond the immediate human situation, there is nothing, in the
last analysis, to which they can be truly dedicated. People may be ‘nice’,
honest and kind within certain limits, but nothing is going to break the
cosiness of agnosticism except a resurgence of faith. It is absolutely
necessary for us to recapture the sense that this limited human life is
surrounded and interpenetrated by a timeless spiritual dimension. Christ
spoke unequivocally about ‘coming from’ the Father, and ‘going to’ the
Father. It was said of him that ‘he went about doing good and healing
all manner of sickness and disease among the people’. He claimed that
the work which he did, whether it was the healing of body, mind or
soul was the work of God himself. Yet at the same time he stated quite
definitely that his ‘Kingdom is not of this world’. In other words, while
he operated within the time-and-space situation, and neither despised
nor detached himself from actual human living, he lived in continual
awareness of what, for want of a better word, we call ‘eternity’.
We may think his free use in the parables of the ideas of rewards,
compensations and punishments in ‘the life to come’ somewhat crude.
We like to think that we do good for the sake of doing good and not for
any reward or through fear of any punishment. But if we take Christ se-
riously we cannot avoid the conclusion that our status in the next stage
of existence will be largely determined by our behaviour in this one. As
far as I know Christ nowhere suggests that we should be ‘good’, unself-
ish and loving merely because we shall thereby win a heavenly reward.
Nor does he suggest that we should avoid evil merely because we shall
otherwise suffer for it hereafter. He is simply concerned to state what
he clearly sees to be inevitable consequence; he is neither threatening
nor promising, but stating inescapable fact. His chief call therefore is
to what is usually rather misleadingly translated ‘repentance’, actually
to metanoia, which means a fundamental change of outlook, the ac-
ceptance of a quite different scale of values. The call to follow him, to
enlist in the service of his Kingdom, must sooner or later include this
revolution in thinking. It is really a call to freedom, freedom from the
preoccupation with self, and from the preoccupation with the values of
the closed-system of this world. It is as though he were showing men
something of their true dignity and destiny—he is revealing the fact
that they are all potentially, and may become actually, sons of God. He
exposes the play-acting (that is, the hypocrisies) of human living, its
lovelessness toward fellow men, and its blindness to the contemporary
presence and purpose of God. In effect, he calls men to a new pattern
of life, the way of self-giving love, which is not shaped by earthly cau-
tion and prudence, but guided by his own living Spirit. It is a call to
heroic and adventurous living, dangerous and exciting. For it is nothing
less than the following, in this present level of living, of the timeless
pattern which extends far beyond it. It cannot be contained by the old
forms and traditions, and, as he himself remarked, any attempt to put
the new wine into old wineskins would be disastrous.
Now it does seem to me that, in an age which has done and is
doing exciting things in almost every department of life, this call to a
new and true way of living should have a wide appeal. We have come
to equate the supernatural with the ‘spooky’ and the spiritual with
the nebulous. But suppose we ourselves are being called to a metanoia.
Suppose we are asked to believe that the dimension of ultimate real-
ity is only partially adumbrated by what we see happening in human
life? Can we not, on the authority of the historic visit, make at least a
leap of imagination and see our lives as a temporary indication in time
and space of something of far greater value and significance? Must we
be so geocentric in our thinking? Can we not see that it is only from
our point of view that this life looks like the whole? Could we not for
a moment forget to be ‘sensible’ and ‘scientific’ and believe that our
dreams, our longings and our intuitions, which can never be satisfied
in this life, are not vapours of wishful thinking, but quietly insistent
reminders of our true destiny?
Now although Christianity is an ‘otherworldly’ way of living in
that it derives its values, its power and ultimate purpose from a source
outside this planet, it is, as we have seen above, incurably earthly.
Therefore, we must not be surprised, if we embark on the course of
following the way of Christ, to find that we are at once challenged by
mundane difficulties. It is no good pretending that the way of freedom,
of true insight and of deep joy is some painless primrose path. If it
were so all men would unquestionably by now have become devoted
followers of Christ. The way of living which recognizes God as the
centre of life instead of the self, or the aggregate of selves which we call
humanity, does carry an endorsement of truth, but not without arous-
ing hostility both inside and outside ourselves. We do not realize the
depth of our former blindness, or the distortion of our previous values
until we begin to live by the Light of the world.
We are in fact called to a battle, a battle which is largely a matter
of holding tenaciously to what we inwardly know to be true in spite of
apparent contradiction. But however sharp the conflict may be, no one
who has seriously put his faith in Christ’s revelation ever wants to go
back to a blind and purposeless existence. The Christian holds a clue
to the meaning of life which is a pearl of very great price, and he will
never let it go. It is true that he is faced by problems of every kind, by
strains within and without himself, but he is no longer walking in dark-
ness, and he knows that he is not walking alone. At the best he sees life
and its purpose with such clarity that he is amazed that all men cannot
see and embrace the truth; but at the very worst, whatever life may in-
flict upon him, he knows himself to be indissolubly joined to the reality
which is God and he is in no doubt about the ultimate outcome. Fol-
lowing the way of real living may prove costly and difficult; but I know
from my own experience and from that of many others that it provides
increasingly a sense of satisfaction which is almost indefinable. Some-
thing very deep within us knows that we are in harmony with the real
pattern, the real purpose—we have begun to live as sons of God.
I see some clue to the spiritual satisfaction afforded by accept-
ance of the Christian Faith in what have now become established as
the psychological essentials of human living. For the distilled wisdom
of psychological schools of thought really amounts to this: that human
beings need above all love, security and significance. The personality
deprived of any of these three, especially during the formative years, is
inevitably bound to show signs of inner deprivation. To put it in plain
terms, everybody needs to love and be loved, everybody needs a rea-
sonable degree of security, and everybody needs to feel he holds a sig-
nificant place in human society. A great many human evils are directly
attributable to the fact that people have been or are deprived of these
basic requirements. Now the conscientious humanist society will do its
utmost to meet these psychological needs, but I believe that they must
also be recognized at a much deeper level, at the level of the naked and
lonely human spirit. Because many people live most of their lives in the
company of others, and indeed many cannot bear to be alone, these
deep needs are often concealed. But when circumstances force men,
possibly through tragedy, bereavement or personal suffering, to realize
their solitariness, a need far deeper than the basic psychological re-
quirements is, often poignantly, experienced. Man finds that he needs
both to love and be loved by God, not in any sentimental sense, but at
the centre of his being where pretence is impossible. He desperately
needs real security, not physical security, for life has probably taught
him that comparatively few can enjoy this, and in any case, sooner or
later, it is knocked from their grasp by the fact of death. He wants the
deep security of knowing that he is in fact a son of God, and that there
is nothing whatever which could possibly happen to him which can af-
fect the ultimate safety of that relationship. Spiritually, too, he deeply
needs to know that he is of value, that his little life is significant in the
vast eternal scheme of things. Properly understood, the Christian Faith
answers these needs at the deepest level. Countless men and women
have in their own darkness and solitariness found that there is ‘some-
one there’. In the God revealed by Christ they discover love, security
and significance of a quality inexpressible in words.
But there is no need to wait for life to strip us of our armour
and reveal us to ourselves in our solitariness. We need not wait till
the superficialities are destroyed before we make a determined plunge
beneath the surface to find the meaning and significance of life. God, I
repeat, is inescapably and at all times contemporary.

19. The missing dimension
The longer we live the more life will reveal to us our inescapable
loneliness, insignificance and insecurity. No one can be said to be living
at all until he has realized and come to terms with the real and perma-
nent which transcends change and decay. A man without the sense of
reality underlying and extending far beyond present realities is, to any-
one who has even glimpsed the dimension of true living, a deficient and
pathetic figure. He may be brave, kindly and unselfish but he cannot
escape being a clueless cardboard figure in a meaningless, purposeless
world. I believe the time is coming when this geocentric conception
of the human predicament will seem foolish and inadequate. I believe
that as science discovers more of that unseen which ‘programs’ and
‘patterns’ the seen, it will become more and more clear that physical
death is not always a disaster and is never a finality.
I wonder why it should be thought unscientific to believe in the
dimension of God, in spiritual forces and spiritual realities which have
demonstrable effects upon people. An everyday example will show the
illogicality of such thinking. We are surrounded by such things as radio,
television, radar, X-rays, sunlight and the artificial lighting of our streets
and homes. All these things produce or are produced by vibrations of
various ‘wavelengths’ in what used to be called the ‘ether’. Now in
spite of the fact that the wavelength of any of the above-mentioned
phenomena can be accurately measured, and despite the fact that the
speed of these vibrations through the ‘ether’ is known, it has become
scientifically unfashionable to talk about ‘ether’ at all. These vibrations
occur in ‘space’, and ‘space’ has the ability to support or transmit vi-
brations of widely varying frequency. Indeed, the radio-telescope at
Jodrell Bank can detect ‘radio’ vibrations from exceedingly distant stars
whose light-vibrations cannot be received at all by any optical telescope
in the world. Yet we are told that this medium which transmits meas-
urable vibrations at a measurable speed has no objective existence; its
function is simply a property of space. All right, then. But if we can
swallow such a dictum of science without a murmur, why should the
values and realities of the spirit be held to be unreal and imaginary?
We might, for instance, suggest, in imitation of scientific terms, that
there are ‘vibrations’ of the human personality higher up the spectrum
than our scientific humanists will allow. We might go further and sug-
gest that these ‘vibrations’ are a property of the ‘spiritual dimension’
just as truly as the etheric vibrations are a property of ‘space’. And it is
really a poor argument to say that the existence and reality of the spir-
itual are purely subjective phenomena. For, after all, the result of every
scientific experiment is ultimately a subjective one, since it is human
beings who decide whether a theory is proved or not. There are mil-
lions of people today to whom the spiritual and supra-human are quite
satisfactorily ‘proved’.
The discovery of God, his purpose, the dimension of ‘eternity’
and all that follows from this experience seem to me to come along
certain lines. And these, which I now mention, are based upon actual
observed experience, although of course there must be many others.
(1) A man, for reasons that he certainly could not put into words,
is dissatisfied with the atmosphere of non-faith in which he has been
brought up. Unlike the noble souls who apparently find satisfaction in
pursuing purposes in the certain knowledge that the whole universe is
purposeless, he is oppressed with the futility of an ordinary human life.
For some reason or another, and very often because he has observed
the stability and satisfaction which a true religion has given to someone
else, he begins to seek with an open mind. For the first time he reads
and studies as an adult the documents of the New Testament. During
this period of study he ‘prays’ and attempts to open his whole per-
sonality to God, if indeed there be one. This is normally a fairly slow
process, but again and again I have observed such a man, or woman,
discover the livingness of God. Christ steps out of the ancient pages
and becomes an unseen but real contemporary person.
Now I would emphasize that in these conditions, which apply to
quite a number of the Christians whom I know, there have been no
outward pressure and no indoctrination. It is true that such Christians
may later ask for ‘instruction’, so that their knowledge of this new
truth may be deepened and widened. But in the first instance neither
guilt, fear nor the pressure of anybody else’s personality forced such
people into religious faith.
(2) There has been in my experience a small number of people
who came ‘to seek God’ almost in despair because they were defeated
by their own temperaments, desires or circumstances. To put it quite
bluntly, they saw themselves being pulled down by something either in-
side or outside themselves which they were growing less and less able to
resist. Such people turn to God as a kind of last resort. I know several
who found that the hitherto inexperienced God does in fact exist. They
received, in varying degrees, an experience of reconciliation, and to
some extent this may be explained purely in terms of internal psychol-
ogy. But what I personally find so remarkable about such happenings
is that men and women find in God a power greater than themselves,
which is demonstrably available in their situation. It is naturally very
easy for the clever and well adjusted to sneer at simple people ‘finding
Christ’, ‘knowing the saving power of Jesus’, and to forget that behind
the ‘corny’ expressions that may be used there lies a rather awe-inspir-
ing truth. For that which is theoretically unattainable is in fact attained:
human nature is changed both in direction and in disposition..
Because this is a genuine experience of some people, it is only too
easy for certain evangelists to assume that it is the right way for all. They
therefore concentrate all their energies upon inducing a sense of guilt,
and then presenting the message of salvation and forgiveness. Unfortu-
nately it is quite easy, especially among young people, to produce this
feeling of guilt. And once it has been produced sufficiently strongly, a
personality may be led in almost any direction—a truth which is well
known to Communist indoctrinators. But in practice, and as a result of
observation, the induction of guilt by methods of mass evangelism fre-
quently has one of two unfortunate results. First, after the experience
of having the feeling of guilt aroused and then tranquillized the man of
intelligence may come to see how he has been emotionally exploited.
I have known of men whose last state was thus much worse than their
first because, once having got over the humiliating experience, they
are thereafter suspicious of what true religion is trying to say. The
second unfortunate result, and again I know this from observation, is
that people may come to regard the guilt-forgiveness experience as the
high spot of the religious life. Indeed, it assumes such paramount im-
portance in their minds that anything else in the complex business of
living seems scarcely worth consideration. Consequently we find peo-
ple clinging to their experience of being ‘converted’, ‘saved’ or ‘born
again’, but quite obviously never allowing the revolutionary message of
true Christianity to penetrate their thinking or their feeling. Fascinated
by the wonder of their own ‘redemption’ they continue to live in a co-
coon of forgiveness and let the world go hang.
(3) There are people, people of intelligence and integrity, some of
whom at least have been nominal members of a church for many years,
upon whom the truth seems to break in quite sudden illumination.
This may happen through a study group, through a mission, through
the ordinary ministry of the Church, through the reading of a book,
or through personal conversation. The significance and relevance of
Christianity, which had previously been dulled or impotent, become
radiantly clear and strong. Words and phrases which were meaning-
less suddenly become alive and meaningful. Christianity is no longer
just a reasonable hypothesis, but the truth by which all other truths
are judged. God, vaguely believed in as a background power, becomes
alive, operating in and through the contemporary scene.
(4) Then there are a few people whom I know (and I wish with
all my heart that there were more), who have, apparently accidentally,
discovered the relevance of the Christian Faith to the work that they
have been trying to do for humanity’s sake. I can think of a probation
officer, a male nurse in a mental hospital, a hospital sister, a youth
worker, and some others who, over the years, discovered that they were
unconsciously (or perhaps intuitively is a better word) following the
way of outgoing love, which is the way of Christ. I have no wish to make
exaggerated claims, but I think I can fairly say that in all these cases the
sense of worthwhileness and purpose was deepened and strengthened
when the work was seen to be part of the ‘immemorial plan’. These
people also gained in their personal lives because God became to them
a living and active power instead of a vague possibility.
The above examples of a few people who have found God real and
contemporary, and who have thereby gained a sense of purpose which
far transcends this little life, are no more than a brief record of those
whom I have personally known. Obviously, such experience could be
multiplied by thousands, if not by millions, throughout the world. It
is an undeniable fact of human experience that contact can be made
with a reality beyond the visible realities. To me at least this is evidence
for the existence of God which simply cannot, in common fairness, be
lightly dismissed.
Now unfortunately for the scientifically-minded, God is not dis-
coverable or demonstrable by purely scientific means. But that really
proves nothing; it simply means that the wrong instruments are being
used for the job. God is discoverable in life, in human relationships,
in the everlasting battle between good and evil, even though he may be
conceived as transcending all these things. There is no discovery of the
truth of Christ’s teaching, no unanswerable inward endorsement of
it, without committing oneself to his way of life. We can observe with
detachment the failures of Christians and the virtues of non-Christians
as though life were a competition in goodness, but we can never know
for certain what life is really all about until we have honestly commit-
ted ourselves to the Christian way of living. The test lies in the doing,
and as Jesus himself once said (I translate freely from John 7:17): ‘If
any man wants to know whether this teaching comes from God or is
of purely human invention, he must set himself to follow the purpose
of God.’
Christianity is an invitation to true living, and its truth is endorsed
only by actual experience. When a man becomes a committed Chris-
tian he sooner or later sees the falsity, the illusions, and the limitations
of the humanist geocentric way of thinking. He becomes (sometimes
suddenly, but more often gradually) aware of a greatly enhanced mean-
ing in life and of a greatly heightened personal responsibility. Beneath
the surface of things as they seem to be, he can discern a kind of cosmic
conflict in which he is now personally and consciously involved. He has
ceased to be a spectator or a commentator and a certain small part of
the battlefield is his alone. Consequently he also becomes aware, as
probably never before, of the forces ranged against him. As in every
evolutionary process, including the growth of a normal human being,
there is a force which pulls upward, but there is also a force making for
relapse and regression. We must not be surprised to find a man whose
eyes have been opened to spiritual reality experiencing again and again
reactionary forces within himself. He is, I believe, being drawn to a
higher level of human living, a greater awareness, and a greater respon-
sibility. In the nature of things there will inevitably be a pull back to
the former, more comfortable, mode of non-committed thinking and
feeling.
In addition to this tendency within himself he will in all likelihood
be surrounded by many people who regard his new enlightenment as
moonshine and will exert a day-by-day pressure to bring him back into
line with ‘ordinary’ life. But there is a third factor of opposition which
I attempt to define with some hesitation. For it appears to me, on
comparing my own experience with that of many friends, that once
one has seriously enlisted on the side of God and his purpose some
considerable spiritual opposition is provoked and encountered. Quite
apart from one’s own tendency to regress and quite apart from the
atmosphere of non-faith in which many Christians have to live, the
Christian finds himself attacked by nameless spiritual forces. It is very
easy for the non-committed agnostic, or indeed for any non-Christian
to make light of an organized force of evil. But it is highly significant
to me to find that in every case of a person becoming a Christian, of
which I have personal knowledge, this sense of spiritual opposition
is experienced, and sometimes felt very keenly. If we may personify
the forces of evil for a moment, it would appear that ‘Satan,’ does not
bother to attack, for example, a university professor of philosophy, a
popular film star, a busy farmer, a telephone operator or a worker in
heavy industry, or anyone else, just so long as they are uncommitted
in the real spiritual battle. There is no particular point in producing
pressures of evil against a man or woman who moves harmlessly and
respectably with the normal currents of contemporary human living.
But should they once begin to embark on real living, to assist in the
building of the Kingdom of God, then the attack begins. We may read
Dr C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters superficially with amusement, but if
we are committed Christians, we know that the diabolical subtlety and
ingenuity are no mere literary fancies.
To my mind, we are driven, if we are honest, into an inescap-
able personal decision if we are determined to know the truth. God
remains unproved or a myth until we commit ourselves to the way of
Christ. The forces of evil, ‘the devil’, ‘Satan,’ and all such conceptions
remain as a laughable superstitious hangover until we seriously attempt
to lead Christian lives. I have therefore no hesitation in challenging any
agnostic who wants to test the truth of the Christian Faith. Let him
commit himself and before long he will know both the splendour of
the truth and the seriousness of the struggle.

20. Re-presenting Christianity
I am sometimes inclined to think that what the Church of Eng-

land, at any rate, lacks more than anything else is a proper means of
disseminating information. (At the moment of writing, the urgency of
this matter is beginning to be recognized ‘at the top’ but it has been
urgent for at least two generations.) Its pressing task is quite simply to
tell people what the basic content of Christianity is, and to give them
some information of what the Christian Church is achieving in the
face of ignorance, fear, disease and sheer physical human need in many
parts of the world. Since 90 per cent of the people in this country are
never inside the churches, and since only a tiny fraction even of church
people regularly read any church literature, some means must be found
of propagating true Christianity. This, I think, must mean buying news-
paper and magazine space, making the fullest possible use of radio and
television opportunities, employing highly skilled professional journal-
ists, establishing information centres and providing literature ‘popular’
enough to be available in the secular bookshop and bookstall. In fact, I
believe we must seize every modern means of communication for re-
presenting Christianity.
Of course such dissemination of information can never be a
substitute for Christian living, for Christian witness to the truth and
Christian ways of coping with human situations. I do not mean that at
all; I am concerned only to point out the need for sheer elementary
information. Such a work requires a very great deal of money as well
as the highest gifts of imagination, insight and sympathy. But I remain
convinced that it must be done and should command urgent priority. I
have found that a prodigious ignorance about Christianity exists in all
classes of people, but I have not always seen this recognized in church
circles. Indeed I have often heard opinions expressed, at meetings of
clergy and others, which assume that the people of this country are
openly and defiantly rejecting the standards and claims of Christian
living. I am sure that this is an entirely false view. A few random con-
versations with ordinary non-church-going people in different parts of
the country quickly reveal that most people have only the haziest idea
of what the Christian Faith is all about. I am not sure that we are even
living in a ‘post-Christian’ era. It would be far more true to say that our
society is neopagan. For although it may well be that a certain brand of
Victorian piety was rejected during or soon after the First World War,
there has been no wholesale repudiation of the basic message of Christ.
I do not know whether there would be, but at least it seems to me of
the greatest importance that people should know, in terms which they
can understand, what it is they are being asked to accept or reject. The
stuffy materialism, the lack of purpose, the uncertainty about moral
values and the collapse of belief in anything beyond the tomb, are not
in themselves a rejection of Christianity so much as a cri de cœur the
truth of the Gospel.
Now although it is true that in a sense the task of the Church is
always the same, for it always means introducing something of the spir-
itual life of the contemporary God into a community, in another sense
its work must differ according to circumstances. When Christianity
began, the young Church sprang into urgent life in spite of the dark-
est and most discouraging circumstances. Our own circumstances may
look dark and discouraging enough for the rebirth of true Christianity,
but they differ almost in toto from those of the first century A.D. If
we read the New Testament documents we see that their background
is largely one of fear, cruelty, superstition, corruption and a callous
lack of consideration for human beings. The widest disparity between
rich and poor aroused no censorious voice; slavery, exploitation and
immorality of all kinds were commonplace, while a gang of more or
less discarded gods and a bevy of passé goddesses permeated the com-
mon life of the countries surrounding the eastern Mediterranean. The
only religion which maintained strict monotheism and upheld moral
standards, and which might have proved a friend and helper, became
a bitter foe. It is abundantly clear from the New Testament record of
Paul’s life that the Jewish religion, in which he himself was nurtured,
proved as implacable an enemy to the new Faith as paganism itself. In
those circumstances the early Christians called men from faith in false
gods to faith in the living God, from lives ridden by fear to a life lighted
by the love of God. They called men from multifarious sins to a life of
wholesome confidence, supported and reinforced by a God who actu-
ally pervaded their personalities. Perhaps above all they called men to
share the timeless life of God so that they could regard their present
lives as an almost infinitesimal part of an awe-inspiring and magnificent
whole. The call was a definite one; it was from darkness to light, from
fear to confidence.
The issue today in this country is nothing like so clear-cut. The
vast majority of people are not living evil or depraved lives. There is still
a public conscience of considerable strength ready to condemn greed,
exploitation and cruelty. There is still a great deal of willing self-giving
service which, when it is known, commands widespread admiration.
The ‘gods’ and ‘goddesses’ which rule the lives of many of our peo-
ple are not personified and cannot easily be denounced or dethroned.
The growth of ‘scientific’ knowledge, to which I have referred many
times, coupled with the increasing urbanization of our society, has de-
stroyed primitive fears of divine justice either before or after death.
Gross inequalities between rich and poor no longer exist, exploitation
in its obvious forms is rare, while the Welfare State has removed many
secular anxieties. Since the grosser sins are mostly avoided and apathy
is not considered wrong except in time of war, most people are not
oppressed with a sense of guilt or sin. It is a pagan world all right, but
it is a very different world from the cruel, lustful, callous, violent world
of two thousand years ago.
Somehow or another those of us who believe that Christianity
is good and relevant news for a bewildered generation have got to do
some hard thinking about our methods of re-presentation. For exam-
ple, there has never been a time when the value of human life has been
so highly regarded and when what are loosely called ‘human’ values are
the sole guiding principles for most people. This seems to me to offer a
very great opportunity for Christianity to make its unique claim for the
value of human beings. ‘People matter’ not simply because the nicest
people think so or because humanists say so, but because God focused
himself in a human being. Human values, instead of being variable and
uncertain because they are established by human beings themselves,
are revealed by God-become-man. The essence of Christian behaviour
is to treat people as people, all equally loved by the same Father, how-
ever much they may differ in talents or development. But we must go
far beyond mere humanism. It is not simply that the value of human
beings has been established by an act of God, but that a huge far-reach-
ing plan has been begun. The Kingdom of God, a Kingdom of inner
loyalty, which has neither its roots nor its culmination in this tempo-
rary life, has nevertheless been established as an historic fact upon this
planet. This Kingdom already exists, and its standards and methods of
working challenge the life of everyone. A new dignity, a new impor-
tance and a new responsibility, have all been brought into the life of
man. He can cooperate or he can refuse to cooperate with the patient
way of love. He may or may not be religious, but since ‘no man is an
island’ he cannot escape from the issue involved—he either helps or
hinders. The refusal to be committed and the attitude of indifference
can in fact never be neutral.
To re-establish this concept of the importance and responsibil-
ity of living means speaking with the utmost conviction and speaking
repeatedly. This is no time for offering people completely out of touch
with the Church a snippet of religious comfort or an isolated text from
the Bible in some obscure corner of the daily or Sunday newspaper. It
is no time for assuming on the radio, on television or in any other pub-
lic place that people have somehow carelessly lapsed from the Christian
way. It is no use blaming people for failing to reach moral standards when
many of them scarcely possess any definite standards at all. It is equally
useless to belabour people for not attending public worship when they
have only the sketchiest idea of what Christianity really means and even
less of what the Church stands for. The time has come for the Church
to restate boldly and unequivocally that the Way, the Truth and the
Life have all been revealed, that the Kingdom is here already and that
the battle in which there can be no neutrality is on. The bankruptcy of
humanism without God should be ruthlessly exposed and its disquiet-
ing similarity to godless Communism deliberately pointed out. The
added depth, the added dimension, which human life receives when
linked to the timeless Life of God, should be fearlessly proclaimed.
False gods do not exhibit their power or even their existence until the
living God is experienced. Sin and failure have no meaning until the
challenge of a new way of living is thrown down. Noncommittal agnos-
ticism is never seen as an avoidance of the responsibility of living so
long as the truth remains unknown. No man knows the strength of the
enemy until he has fully enlisted on one side or the other. People will
never take evil seriously nor ever see much need to tap the resources
of God until they join in with the costly redemptive purposes of love.
We cannot, of course, command success, but we can, at least,
present people with the truth as relevant, practical and rewarding in
our modern life. We proclaim not a myth but a historic fact, not an
idealistic pattern of behaviour, but an active, joyful way of living life.
We do not preach a stoic courage in the face of life’s ills and accidents,
but an acceptance of living from a heavenly Father whose final purpose
can never be defeated. Above all, we do not preach outworn pieties
reeking of superstition and medieval misunderstandings, but honest
contact with the living God. By sheer force of circumstance we are
beginning to recover the good sense shown by Paul and many of the
early Christians. We are beginning to see that this little world never
has offered and never can offer physical security. We are beginning to
see that the vast purpose of God can never be confined to individual
salvation or to the welfare of any particular race or nation, or even to
the necessarily restricted physical life of human beings on this planet.
Perhaps, not without wonder and awe, we can at last see how bold and
imaginative was the man Jesus when he called a few fishermen and oth-
ers to found a world-wide Kingdom!

21. Christ and the Church
If we can accept the divine entry of God into human history

through the man Jesus Christ, we cannot help accepting the unique
nature of the fellowship which he founded. For in a true sense it is an
extension of the actual visit, sustained by the living God. This explains
the extraordinary strength and resilience of the Christian Church, and
also why it is a mistake to regard it as a purely human organization of
those who happen to share the same religious views. Neither its own
failures or stupidities, nor the neglect or the persecution of the sur-
rounding world can ever destroy it. Sometimes outstandingly, but more
often imperfectly, men and women all over the world have allowed
something of the life, and therefore of the love, of God to invade their
own personalities. Individually they are expendable, but as the agency
of God they are indestructible. Maddening as this fact may be to the
atheistic humanist, both past and present history confirm it over and
over again.
For Jesus Christ himself began the vast project of establishing the
Kingdom of God upon earth by calling together a handful of men. Be-
fore his own departure from the visible human scene he entrusted to
these few the awe-inspiring task of telling the world about God and his
Kingdom. He promised them supranatural power, wisdom and love,
and The Acts of the Apostles shows how this close-knit fellowship set
out with joyful and hopeful audacity to build the Kingdom of Light in
the Stygian darkness of the pagan world. These early Christians were
held together by their common love for their Lord and his purpose,
by their worship and their prayer. Violent persecution, public torture,
social ostracism and dreadful forms of death could neither quench
the fire nor defeat the purpose of the young Church. The movement
proved unconquerable, and still proves unconquerable, because its un-
seen roots are in the eternal God.
Now it may seem a far cry indeed from that pristine, heroic fel-
lowship to the Christians of today, who are too often tied by tradition
and prejudice. Yet it remains true that wherever a church is sincerely
dedicated to the living God and committed to the pattern of outgo-
ing love, the same joyful certainty and the same paradox of vulnerable
indestructibility continue to be exhibited. When we have made all the
criticisms we can of those sections of the Church which are antiquated
and backward-looking, we still have to reckon with the real builders
of the Kingdom, who exist in every branch of the Christian Church.
Having worked with and lived with such people for many years, I am
ready to believe the truth of Paul’s startling statement that Christians
are ‘the Body of Christ’.
The work of the Christian Church in the dark, fear-ridden parts of
the world today is almost completely unknown to the ordinary man of
good will. But anyone who takes the trouble to study what the churches
are actually doing will see how they are proving to be the spearhead of
good against centuries-old fear, superstition and prejudice. I believe
the man of good will without much religious faith would be enor-
mously impressed if he could realize what is being done by the Chris-
tian churches in works of human compassion alone. The true lover
of humanity could not but feel deep sympathy with those Christians
who are impelled by the love of God to serve fear-ridden and disease-
stricken humanity in almost all parts of the world. But the man of good
will takes, as a rule, not much more than a passing glance at the existing
churches in this country. He sees readily enough the outmoded pie-
ties and the undoubted pettiness of some Church members. But if he
would penetrate further and seek the heart and soul of the whole mat-
ter, he would find in any true Christian fellowship that quality of com-
passionate love which is both inspired and sustained by the living God.
While it is true that the Christian Church has proved itself to be
the spearhead of light in primitive pagan darkness, and indeed is still
proving so today, its task in this country is not nearly so clear-cut. The
true Christian sees with painful clarity the need for a recovery of a
true religious faith, and many heroic efforts have been made, and are
being made, to communicate it. I have already suggested that one of
the Christian’s urgent tasks is the giving of essential information, and I
do not think that can be denied, but I am coming to believe more and
more that the right ‘way in’ in the prevailing atmosphere of today is to
stress the need for compassionate service.
For although I do not doubt that some have found a religious
faith in the mammoth evangelistic rallies which are held from time
to time, I find it impossible to believe that this is ever going to be the
way for a large-scale recovery of religious faith among ordinary peo-
ple. The Englishman is basically sensible and practical, and although
like anybody else he can be swept by superficial emotion for a time,
his life is actually governed by much deeper emotions and affections.
On the whole he is not ‘spiritual’ by nature at all, and unless ‘faith’ is
expressed in actions which he can see and appreciate he is not likely to
be convinced. Because of his unconscious but centuries-old impregna-
tion by Christian belief, he often knows instinctively what is genuinely
good and kind and unselfish, and on the whole he admires it. He may
be Pelagian, (The heresy of the monk Pelagius was that he considered
people to be fundamentally good rather than fundamentally evil.) but,
to be blunt, no argument in the world is ever going to persuade him
that a good man, however irreligious, goes to hell, or that a bad man,
however religious, goes to heaven!
It seems to me that the re-presentation of Christianity in today’s
situation might well begin with a re-emphasis of the teaching of Mat-
thew 25, verses 31 to the end, to which I have already referred. It
seems to me a most useful argumentum ad hominem with the strong-
est possible authority behind it. People have never been so aware of
the dire distress of other human beings, and in this parable—the only
recorded picture of the final judgment—we have an argument which
appeals alike to the basic kindliness and powerful sense of justice which
lie deep in the British character. For here we find the King categor-
ically stating that the way in which we treat people, consciously or
unconsciously, willingly or unwillingly, is the way in which we treat
him. Here, in the ultimate issue, is no airy-fairy religious notion but
downright practicality. If a man helps a fellow man in need he is to that
extent serving Christ. Inasmuch as he turns a blind eye or deaf ear to
human need he is failing to serve Christ the King. It is as simple and as
profound as that.
Of course the moment we can get people to take such teaching
seriously they find themselves confronted with their own prejudice,
intolerance and lack of outgoing love. Indeed, they may well become
aware that their real sin, as distinct from the ‘sins’ which they may or
may not have committed, is a failure to love, a refusal to be commit-
ted, a dislike of being involved. Valuable as human love is, something
is needed to deepen, enlarge and strengthen it. And here, I believe, is
the point where men can come into contact with the living God. I do
not mean merely that a man’s own insufficiency of love drives him back
upon the resources of God, although this is true, and such an experi-
ence has happened to many people. I mean that when a man whole-
heartedly commits himself to the way of love, compassion and service,
he finds that the pattern itself is surprisingly, and perhaps disconcert-
ingly, alive. For the living Christ is really quite easily discoverable and
no one recovers a true religious faith without a personal encounter
with him.
We have now to face an unpleasant fact. It would be delightful
indeed to imagine that all the nice, good, kind people would imme-
diately become wholehearted Christians if only they were properly to
grasp the true nature and purpose of the Christian Faith. I believe this
is true of a good many men and women of good will, who live in almost
complete ignorance of what Christianity is all about, and that is why I
have constantly stressed the need for Christian information. But there
is a challenge and a demand made by the living Christ that many peo-
ple would rather avoid. It is far easier to evade the moral responsibil-
ity which Christ may put upon a man, by criticizing the churches and
satisfying the conscience by doing deeds of kindness, than to declare
oneself boldly and unequivocally ready to serve the King. The unpleas-
ant truth must be stated: some people deliberately avoid anything that
may lead them to the divine encounter.
Further, it is significant that those who write of their experience
of true conversion to the Christian Faith always tell of a time of strug-
gle. Their struggle is not with an historic fact, not with a philosophy
of living, and not with any branch of the Church, but with the gently
persistent, inexorable claim of Jesus Christ. The very bitterness of their
attacks upon Christianity is later revealed to be only the measure of
their fight against the one ultimate authority, the Son of God. Some of
those whom we know to have had such experience (and there must be
many thousands of whom there is no record) have found this penetrat-
ing, challenging spirit through contact with a group of true Christians,
who were themselves probably quite unaware of issuing any challenge.
Others, who have taken the trouble to read and study, have found to
their alarm and discomfiture that what they thought was a safely distant
historical figure becomes disconcertingly alive and contemporary.
But for every one who makes contact with a living Christian fel-
lowship or studies the New Testament for himself there are thousands
who do neither. They know nothing of the historic origin of Christian-
ity, its present-day battles, or of the fundamental difference which the
presence of Christ makes to so many people. If the churches were seen
to be focal points of love and compassion, of understanding and serv-
ice, if their services were known to be meetings of worship for those
who are, or would like to be, agents of self-giving love, then at least
the nice, friendly people without faith would know ‘what religion is all
about’. They might or might not accept the challenge to Christian liv-
ing, but at least there would be the chance that the people of good will
without faith might join forces with the people of good will with faith,
to the very great spiritual benefit of all concerned.
Thus, I have come to believe that at the present time our best
chance of creating the conditions for a spiritual revival lies in the re-
peated stressing of Christian humanism. Humanism without religion
lacks depth, purpose and authority, but the humanism advocated by Je-
sus Christ seems to me peculiarly appropriate to our age. For even the
least intelligent of men are beginning to see that unless they love and
understand one another they will most certainly destroy one another.
If the true nature and function of the Christian Church were redis-
covered many might come to realize that only in the Kingdom of God,
which is the Kingdom of Love, is there hope and strength, and the only
possible security. For what ultimately matters is not religious exercises
per se but the way in which we behave toward other people, our will-
ingness or unwillingness to be involved in the vast purpose of love. The
Englishman may be suspicious of churchiness, of technical religious
terms, of rites and robes, of bells and smells, which seem to him irrel-
evant to the business of living. But he is by no means unmoved by the
needs of the handicapped and underprivileged, the homeless and the
helpless, when he is made aware of them. It seems to me therefore that
the most hopeful place in which to build a bridge between the worlds
of faith and unfaith is on the common ground of human compassion.
I have written in this book about two worlds of good will which
are known to me personally—the one whose compassion and love flow
out of its faith in God, and the other which produces actions of com-
passion and self-giving service with little or no articulate religious faith.
I am not for a moment suggesting that these are the only two worlds
which exist in our country today—there are vast fields of greed, stu-
pidity, selfishness and fear, which lie quite outside the categories under
consideration. No, what I am pleading for is that these two worlds,
which are at present largely strangers to each other, might become one
in spirit, a powerful army of true goodness and true love, following
the pattern and inspired by the Spirit of the contemporary God. On
the one hand the Church should welcome with open arms those who
are plainly exhibiting the fruits of the Spirit, however sketchy and ill
informed their ideas of the Christian Faith may be. On the other hand I
would like to see the men and women of good will but little faith mak-
ing a positive invasion of the churches, bringing with them their own
insights, refusing to be dismayed by what appears to be outdated and
irrelevant, and joining in what is the heart and soul of the matter, the
worship of the living God and the expression of his love and purpose
in everyday human life.

Conclusion
Many people of sensitivity and perception, whether they have a

religious faith or not, view with dismay the growing materialism of
this age. To anyone who is in the least alive to the contemporary God,
the general life of this country, despite many virtues, exhibits all the
symptoms of God-deficiency. For the present generation is, albeit un-
consciously, attempting to prove that man can live by bread alone. ‘The
good life’ is conceived almost entirely in terms of creature comforts, la-
bor-saving appliances, better clothes, better and longer holidays, more
money to spend and more leisure to enjoy. None of these things is
wrong in itself. But when they are assumed to satisfy every desire, am-
bition and aspiration of man, we are surely right to be alarmed at the
grip of materialism. For when possessions, pleasures and the thought
of physical security fill a man’s horizon, he ceases to ask himself such
basic questions as, ‘What am I?’ or ‘What am I here for?’ He may gain
the whole world but he will lose his own soul.
Now I do not believe there is any remedy for this suffocating
materialism except the recovery of a religious faith, and that means,
above all, the recovery of true, essential Christianity. For it is only when
it is plainly seen that the great purpose is the building of the universal
Kingdom of God, and that the object of human living is the develop-
ment of the human spirit, that the irrelevance of such things as material
success becomes apparent. Close contact with the living Spirit of the
living God, whether it be by conventional religious approach or not,
is the only thing that will reveal to us the lunatic topsy-turvydom of
many of our current values. Without the Christian revelation, without
a point of reference which lies beyond the present human situation,
I cannot myself see that any really cogent argument can be advanced
against materialism.
Man does not of course live by bread alone; he merely continues
his physical existence with some concomitant mental phenomena. It
is the authentic Word of God, the suprahuman truth which challenges
him and brings his spirit to life. Sooner or later, if men will only pursue
their thoughts far enough, they must see that life without a true faith
is quite literally a dead loss. At present the religious instinct, which I
believe to exist in every man, is being penetrated. All men naturally
worship someone or something, but in the commonly assumed ab-
sence of God, this worship is given almost wholly to such things as suc-
cess, sport, the heroes or heroines of the fantasy-world of the screen
or stage, or to the mysteries of science. Such a superstition as astrology
may flourish as a substitute-religion for the ignorant, while some fancy
version of an Eastern religion may attract the intellectual agnostic. But
perversions of the instinct to worship God do not in the long run res-
cue man either from his own solitariness or from the closed-system of
materialism. The way out, paradoxically enough, lies in no form of un-
committed escapism, but in a closer commitment to life. Christianity
shows the way of such closer commitment; it does not merely restore
a man’s faith in God but inevitably involves him in compassion and
service. This is both the strength and the difficulty about the Christian
way of life. Other methods may give ‘religious’ experiences, but only
Christianity insists that the life of the spirit must be expressed within
the terms of the present human predicament. That is why only Chris-
tianity can fully satisfy the desire to worship and the desire to serve. It
is demonstrably true that when men begin to love their neighbors as
themselves, to experience and to express compassion for those in all
kinds of human need, they become spiritually alive.
In Christ’s teaching enormous stress is laid upon the way in which
men and women treat one another, and the whole concept of a human
being is raised in value because he is declared to be a loved and valued
son of God. The relief of human suffering, of whatever kind, the libera-
tion of human beings from fear, ignorance and evil, the compassionate
use of human talents and personality—all these are shown to be of the
highest importance. For they are expressions of the divine purpose
as well as the means of developing the human spirit. But because we
are infected personally, nationally and internationally with the prideful
spirit of competitiveness, we have got our priorities hopelessly mixed,
and cannot see the truth. Most men admire compassion from a safe
distance, and applaud good works which do not involve them person-
ally. But willing compassionate involvement in dark and difficult human
problems stands very low in the list of most men’s plans and ambi-
tions. In our modern world we have come to accept it as commonplace
that the launching of a single small satellite should cost more than the
building and equipping of a modern hospital. We find it easier to be
fascinated by the possibilities of space travel than to be distressed by
the plight of millions of refugees living in misery on our own planet.
Real Christianity is good bread-and-butter stuff which nourishes men’s
souls by the worship of the true God and by the exercise of practical
compassion. But the fascination of modern technical advances in every
department of our physical life has made us like spoiled children who
long for candies and more candies, and have lost their stomach for
truly nourishing food.
At the risk of being repetitious, I must say once more that I be-
lieve that only a new grasp of Christian humanism can save us from the
subtle deteriorations of materialism. Good will, kindheartedness, self-
sacrifice and the willingness to serve are, of course, good, but they are
absorbed in the desert of material godlessness unless they are joined
to a supranatural purpose and reinforced by a supranatural power. And
this is exactly what the Christian Church should be. For any army of
men and women who are conscious, despite their own defects, of co-
operating with the Mind and Purpose which began, and will end, the
human scene, cannot be lightly dismissed as a crowd of ‘do-gooders’.
Whenever the Christian Church has in fact been such a dedicated
fellowship, it has often met with hostility, ridicule and persecution,
but it has never been disregarded. At this present time the Church is
taken very seriously in atheist-Communist countries, and hardly ever
looked upon as a mere hangover from a superstitious past. For the men
with hard faces, the men who lust for power and see their fellows as
no more than units in a machine, know intuitively that the Church is
the implacable champion of human liberty, of the truly human values
and the finest human aspirations. Recent history shows quite clearly
that when the conflict becomes acute in a totalitarian society it is the
Christian Church which alone can successfully stand up for human
liberty and conscience. It should be remembered that it was not the
well meaning agnostics who were able to defy Hitler but the Christian
churches. Today it is not the vague humanist who is regarded as the
enemy of Communism in, for example, Eastern Germany; it is the
Christian, who has standards and loyalties which are rooted in God.
I think something else should be said. If we were able to conduct
a survey of those human beings who are giving the most devoted serv-
ice to people in need, whether it is to the blind, the deaf and dumb,
the leper, the spastic or any other of our afflicted fellow human beings,
I am confident that we should find the Christians in the majority. I be-
lieve ordinary men and women would be amazed if they could see how
often, in the black spots of the world’s superstition, ignorance, dis-
ease and fear, the Christians were the first to arrive. There are, to my
knowledge, many thousands of dedicated Christian men and women
who are day after day mediating the love of God despite every difficulty
and discouragement.
Now in this country of traditional Christian values, a land which
may well lead the world in matters of justice and liberty, it is very easy
to underestimate the powers of evil. The issues are blurred and the
battle between good and evil is scarcely recognized by the majority of
people. We know nothing at first hand of the cruelty of dictatorship.
We rarely have to suffer much for our faith, if indeed we have one. But
how much longer this atmosphere of comfortable apathy is going to last
is anybody’s guess. Already we have a generation growing up without
moral standards, with no sense of purpose and with little, if any, con-
cern for the enormous human problems which are coming to light all
over the world. Mere ‘kindness’, ‘niceness’, ‘good will’ or ‘tolerance’
is never going to supply a dynamic for living, a cause for which to live
and die, or a purpose commanding a man’s total dedication. We who
are middle-aged may have jogged along, content with those liberal hu-
manist values left to us by preceding ages of faith. But nothing less than
the recovery of real Christianity, with its ineradicable emphasis upon
human compassion, and its inexorable insistence upon the transience
of this world and the reality of eternity, will ever put back into the disil-
lusioned the faith, hope, courage and gaiety which are the marks of a
human being cooperating with his Creator.
I believe it to be essential for us to recover the dimension of eter-
nity if we are to value this life properly and live it with sanity and cour-
age. The pieties of former ages cannot satisfy the modern mind. For
example, the conception of ‘eternity’ as merely endless æons of time
has given many people an idea of ‘Heaven’ which they have rejected
as absurd. But surely here the conception of another ‘dimension’ can
come to the aid of our thought. No thinking Christian today believes in
‘Heaven’ or ‘everlasting life’ as a mere extension of time-and-space ex-
istence, however purified and exalted! He believes that after the death
of the body there is a release from the time-and-space predicament
and a conscious sharing in the timeless Life of God, in which there are
probably various stages of enlightenment and knowledge. There may
be no words to describe such a timeless state, but that proves no more
than that its reality is beyond present human expression. Yet it remains
the unshakable conviction of Christians, from New Testament days un-
til today, that there is what must be called, for want of a better word, an
‘eternal’ order, an ‘eternal’ plan and an ‘eternal’ life. Compared with
these eternal verities the present human scene gives no more than a
hint of unimagined realities.
The trend of modern thought, with its concentration upon making
the most of this present life and the tacit assumption that death means
extinction, makes it particularly easy for people to disbelieve in, or to
ridicule, life after death. But historically, it is the conviction of unseen
realities which has given men and women invincible strength. There
might be some truth in the old gibe of pie-in-the-sky if we found all
Christians doing absolutely nothing to better the world, on the grounds
that they have Heaven to look forward to; and all the atheists work-
ing like mad to relieve every form of human distress, since this life is
all that we have! But that is obviously and demonstrably untrue, and
something very like the reverse is sometimes the case. It is those who
are in touch with the eternal order who make the most heroic and sus-
tained efforts to improve conditions for their fellows. It is those who
know God to be eternal who most satisfactorily prove that God is their
contemporary.

J.B. Phillips - God Our Contemporary

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

J.B. Phillips - God Our Contemporary

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

J.B. Phillips - God Our Contemporary

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

❋

God Our Contemporary

God Our Contemporary, copyright 1960 by J.B. Phillips.

2 • God Our Contemporary, contents

God Our Contemporary, forward • 5

The concern of this present book is chiefly the relationship of

God Our Contemporary, 1 • 9

14 • God Our Contemporary, 2

I have already mentioned the widespread ignorance on both sides

20 • God Our Contemporary, 3

The prevailing atmosphere among thinking men and women of

God Our Contemporary, 4 • 25

Let us be clear in our minds that there is a sharp difference be-

God Our Contemporary, 5 • 31

I believe I am right in saying that no primitive race or tribe has

36 • God Our Contemporary, 6

I believe a recovery of real religion to be essential to the well-

42 • God Our Contemporary, 7

The heart of all real religions is an affirmation that human life

48 • God Our Contemporary, 8

Although the moral standards and ethical judgments of this coun-

52 • God Our Contemporary, 9

I have sometimes heard people speak of the ‘inherent improb-

56 • God Our Contemporary, 10

The Resurrection of Jesus is plainly the crux of the Christian

60 • God Our Contemporary, 11

God Our Contemporary, 12 • 61

God Our Contemporary, 12 • 65

Now if we regard all real religions as attempts to get at a special

God Our Contemporary, 13 • 71

A great many criticisms of the Christian Faith, as has already been

76 • God Our Contemporary, 14

A further apparently legitimate criticism which is sometimes lev-

God Our Contemporary, 15 • 81

90 • God Our Contemporary, 16

Some of the physical ‘evils’ in the world are plainly inimical to

God Our Contemporary, 17 • 97

There is a tendency in most of us to avoid the crucial and painful

102 • God Our Contemporary, 18

God Our Contemporary, 19 • 109

I am sometimes inclined to think that what the Church of Eng-

114 • God Our Contemporary, 20

If we can accept the divine entry of God into human history

120 • God Our Contemporary, 21

Many people of sensitivity and perception, whether they have a

126 • God Our Contemporary, 22

You might also like