IS THERE ANYTHING DIFFERENT ABOUT BEING UNIQUE?

 IS THERE ANYTHING DIFFERENT ABOUT BEING UNIQUE?

We live on a unique planet which is part of a unique solar system which is part of a unique galaxy which is part of a unique universe. Our unique planet hosts 8.7 million unique animal species and 7.5 billion unique people. There are many other aspects to our earth’s uniqueness, but there is one outstandingly unique trait about our planet that makes it uniquely unique. 

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
Psalm 139:14

 

A UNIQUENESS LIKE NO OTHER

While we are all created unique; and, we are each unique together. We are each and uniquely created in the image of God which makes us each unique but also uniquely distinct from all other creatures and it also bonds us uniquely together. We are quite literally a human family of divine image bearers. 

What is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?
¶ Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.
You have given him dominion over the works of Your hands;
You have put all things under his feet.
Psalm 8:4-6

The image of God that we each bear is not just that we each uniquely reflect Him to the rest of creation, it’s not just that we represent Him, it’s not just that we uniquely share several of His attributes (creativity, planning, conceptual communication, altruistic compassion, a spiritual essence enabling prayer and revelation), it is a unique status. The imago dei (“image of God”) is a unique status that only human beings are privileged with from the moment of their conception. When some heavenly (angelic) creatures rebelled, their Creator had provided no means to help them to ever be redeemed. Angels do not share the same privileged status of those who bear the status of the imago dei — as we each uniquely do.

For surely it is not angels that He helps, but He helps the offspring of Abraham.
Therefore He had to be made like His brothers in every respect,
so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God,
to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because He Himself has
suffered when tempted, He is able to help those who are being tempted.
Hebrews 2:16-18

The day will come when time as we have known it will come to end. On that “last day” (John 6:39; 12:48) those among the imago dei family who have been redeemed by Christ by accepting His offer of grace, will be entrusted by the Almighty to judge those fallen heavenly creatures who had rebelled and wrought so much wickedness and evil in the world.

Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world?
And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases?
Do you not know that we are to judge angels?
How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life!
First Corinthians 6:2-3

 

OUR UNIQUENESS REQUIRED A UNIQUE SAVIOUR

As we enter into this Advent season we should reflect on the uniqueness of the Christ-child whose birth we celebrate each Christmas. It often crops up on the internet around Christmas time that Christians simply reinvented pagan myths of virgin-born saviours which may rock the fragile faith of newer Christians. But as Dr. Leon Morris points out in his commentary on the Gospel of Luke, no such myth has yet been found and certainly no ancient myth ever proposed that a virgin would conceive – let alone conceive a child supernaturally! Dr. Morris points out that there are several mythological accounts of ‘gods’ having relations with mortal women to sire a child – but this hardly could then be described as a virgin conceiving! Reflecting on Luke 1 and Matthew 1 we see that Jesus the Christ had a unique birth (Matt. 1:2-23, 25). It was also unique because it was prophesied (Isa. 7:14); accompanied by independent angelic visitations to Mary and her betrothed Joseph. Secondly, Christ bore and received unique divine titles (Isa. 9:6). Thirdly, Christ had a unique name – Jesus – that revealed His unique identity. Fourthly, He had a unique mission (to save people from the eternal consequences of their sin, Matt. 1:21) which He was aware of from a very early age (Luke 2:49). Fifthly, Jesus had a unique destiny to die an atoning death, rise from the dead, ascend by translation back to His heavenly throne, and will then sit in judgment of all people. And sixthly, Jesus the Christ made – and the offer still stands – to cleanse a person from the soul-stain of sin and mediate their adoption as a son or daughter of God the Father.

And there is salvation in no one else,
for there is no other name under heaven
given among men by which we must be saved.”
Acts 4:12

 

OUR UNIQUENESS MAKES US FAMILY

Loneliness has now reached epidemic proportions in many parts of the world. God’s solution to this has always been family. Our shared humanity should help us to appreciate that our nuclear family is designed by God to be a community of care, support and encouragement to each family member. But God has also designed us to be members of a local spiritual family called a church. It is in the community of the church that we grow together and learn how to care, support and encourage each other. And if my hunch about the growing pandemic of loneliness is close to being right this means that God’s concept of the family complemented by His establishment of the church family certainly makes our uniqueness as a community quite different and probably what most people are actually longing for.

Father of the fatherless and protector of widows is God in His holy habitation.
God settles the solitary in a home;
Psalm 68:5-6a 

Your pastor,

Andrew

Let me know what you think below in the comment section and feel free to share this someone who might benefit from this Pastor’s Desk.

WHO CARES?

 WHO CARES?

The world into which the Saviour of mankind entered as a baby was a very harsh place. Life was cheap. Might was right. The oppressed were abused and often mistreated by the Roman conquerors. Those expected to speak up for, and defend, the voiceless vulnerable — their religious leaders of the day — had become too easily corrupted in their pathetic attempts to win a crumb of their conqueror’s power. This corruption in the pursuit of financial gain and political leverage had blinded these supposed-to-be-shepherds to the true plight of those they should have served as guardians. Why on earth would God send His Son into our world at such a dark time?

¶ But when the time arrived that was set by God the Father, God sent His Son, born among us of a woman, born under the conditions of the law so that He might redeem those of us who have been kidnapped by the law.
Galatians 4:4 THE MESSAGE

WHERE IS THE GOD WHO CARES?

In what would have to be the greatest reply to the oft asked question – what has the all-powerful, all-good God done about evil and suffering in the world? – God the Eternal Father sent His Eternal Son into this world of evil and suffering as a zygote (the earliest stage of human development) as His answer. In one of Dr. F.W. Boreham’s essays on this topic he pointed out how often it has been throughout history that just at the darkest hours in human history, a baby has been sovereignly born who would grow into a courageous leader who would be a further divine reply to the question about what has done about evil and suffering in the world. The greatest example of this of course is the Christmas Child. At just the precise time of one of earth’s darkest hours, the Christ was born. Little wonder then that Dr. Boreham could say that God’s answer to the world’s problems is always a baby. And the baby that God the Father sent to the world was the One who created it and everything in it (Col. 1:17-18). Did He come reluctantly? Did He come in the same way that the mythological Greco-Roman members of the pantheon of gods would come feeling rather indifferent to the injustices besetting the world? Let the written Word of God be our answer-

When He saw the crowds, He had compassion for them,
because they were harassed and helpless,
like sheep without a shepherd.
Matthew 9:36

DOES JESUS?

Christ was moved with compassion for people. He felt their pain and saw their suffering. Did Jesus care? Asking this question sound utterly ridiculous even before I get the question mark! There is no doubt that Jesus cared. He demonstrated care for outcasts — such as lepers who shunned by society — but He didn’t care for them because they were a marginalised group or even because they were lepers. He cared for them because they were people created in the image of God. Jesus cared for the poor – but not because they were poor – but because they were people created in the image of God. Jesus cared for women – but not because they were women – but because they were people created in the image of God. And the same can be said of His care for those people with a different skin colour to His (which almost certainly was not ‘white’), or for those people of different ethnicity who could barely speak the language of the Hebrews without a tell-tale accent that brought scorn and even hatred among Israelites. He cared for these people despite these things because they too were created in the image of God. This reveals that Christ treated all people as sharing a common and unique bond: all people are created in the image of God and this common bond and shared privilege binds us each together as the ‘human race’ thus making all alternate adjectives of the word “race” superfluous and counter-productive to a biblical understanding of what it means to be human. Our initial question, who cares? is now forced to be adjusted to: Who should care? And the answer is immediately obvious. We should because we are the family of the divine image bearers. We are family.

For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,”
has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge
of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
Second Corinthians 4:6

 

BUT WHO CARES?

Those who know Christ! To worship is to adore, to behold, to praise, to reflect upon and reflect. Thus, we become like whatever we worship. When we reflect on Christ we marvel at His care for each individual in a crowd where each one probably thought that no-one saw them in the midst of a sea of faces – but Jesus did. They may have thought that when Jesus looked at the crowd He couldn’t have noticed them but He did. As they blended into the masses of people that often flocked to Christ they may have felt that non-one cared for them – but Jesus did. Consider how often Jesus spent time with one person: the woman at the well (John 4); Nicodemus the Scribe (John 3); the man at the Pool of Bethesda (John 5); the women condemned as an adulteress (John 8); the man born blind (John 9); Lazarus (John 11); and Pilate (John 19).  

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord,
are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.
For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
Second Corinthians 3:18`

Time and time again throughout the gospels we see Jesus taking time out for the individual – a woman with the issue of blood, the Syrophoenician woman with a demonise daughter, a blind man on the side of the road. Jesus’ care for people is a remarkable insight into the Father’s care for each member of His earthly family of divine image bearers. And just as Jesus conveyed the Father’s heart of care for each person, we too are called to also convey it (Luke 10:25-37).
 

 

Your pastor,

Andrew

Let me know what you think below in the comment section and feel free to share this someone who might benefit from this Pastor’s Desk.

CREATED TO BE CLOSE

Last Sunday I preached two-part message on Being Human. Since we each have some personal experience with this topic, you might think that dealing with this topic was completely unnecessary. But as I hope I was able to show last Sunday, being human is not as obvious as we might think. As I stated in Part 1 of the message, delivered in our morning service, how we understand this topic is not a matter of life or death – it’s a matter of how many lives will be lost and how many unnecessary deaths will occur! What may have surprised those there last Sunday was that the driving forces behind trying to answer the question What is a human being? is not the science – but two very different competing stories. What is so alarming is just how many followers of Christ are reading from the wrong script when it comes to understanding who we are and what life is really all about.

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
Psalm 1239:14

STORY #2, MATERIAL NATURALISM

We are not the random result of some uncaused cosmic accident. As obvious as this statement should be, it is the underlying foundation to the mythical story shaping our culture at the moment. The Material Naturalism Story says that there is nothing more to the universe than its material components which assembled accidentally in a completely unguided fashion. This story denies that any immaterial substance is even possible let alone exists in reality. Despite its appeal to science, this story is not grounded in science. This is born out by those in the biological sciences pointing out this story does not correspond to, or explain, reality. For example, Dr. Fazale Rana Ph.D., a biochemist, states the Material Naturalism’s evolutionary attempts to explain the universe and its diversity, fails to account for some crucially important pieces of life’s puzzle. He writes –

Currently, evolutionary biologists lack explanations for the key transitions in life’s history, including these-

• origin of life,
• origin of eukaryotic cells (see diagram below),
• origin of sexual reproduction,
• origin of body plans,
• origin of consciousness,
• and the origin of human exceptionalism.

To be certain, evolutionary biologists have proposed models to explain each of these transitions, but the models consistently fail to deliver, as a recent review article published by two prominent evolutionary biologists from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences illustrates.1

If you take a close look at the inner workings of this diagram of a eukaryotic cell, even you are untrained biol-chemically, you will notice the incredible complexity and elegance within this microscopic human cell. I only mention this biochemistry to show that despite Material Naturalism’s appeal to science, reason, and rationality, it is nether scientific nor rational. As bad as its lack of scientific credibility as an explanation for how life works is, worse still is its influence on how Material-Naturalists view the world – and especially human beings. In their view, a human being is only of value if they can communicate, contribute, consider their own consciousness, and have the ability to live and interact independently. Only when they can do these things should they be considered a human-person and thereby entitled to the usual protections which come with human rights. This is why Material Naturalists have no qualms about prematurely ending the life of an unborn child, or an elderly patient in a nursing home. 

“Peter Singer insists that the severely mentally incapacitated are candidates for euthanasia because they ‘were once persons’ but no longer. ‘Their lives have no intrinsic value….They are biologically alive, but not biographically.'”
Nancy Pearcey, ‘Love Thy Body’, 2018, p. 92,  citing, ‘Practical Ethics’ by Prof. Peter Singer, 2nd Ed., Cambridge University Press New York, 1993, 192

Fortunately, there is another story which corresponds far more accurately to the actual world in which we live.

    

STORY #1, THE BIBLICAL WORLDVIEW

American astrophysicist, Dr. Neil Tyson deGrasse, criticises Christianity because, in his mind, it seeks to make humans special. In his mind, human beings are no more special than any other collection of molecules in the universe. This Material-Naturalist view stands in stark contrast to the view of the world presented by the Bible. We should not write this sharp difference off to some ‘Science versus Religion’ misunderstanding. The Biblical worldview is not some weird and novel way of looking at the world. Rather, it is an accurate description of the way the world is, and a particularly accurate description of who human beings are and why we each share a common problem.

The Biblical worldview is in perfect concordance with science. This includes: the Universe had a beginning of all space, energy, time and matter; life appeared on earth over progressive stages; large-bodied life appeared suddenly and without transition (“Day 5”, “the Cambrian Explosion”); mankind appeared fairly recently in the Universe’s history (Creation Day 6). But only the Biblical worldview gives us an explanation for the human condition, and an explanation for why humans are capable of supererogatory acts (self-sacrificing for the weak), yet also the most heinous evil. This is because we are all created in the image of God, yet fallen into sin. 

Being created in the image of God gives every human being a very special status. As the founders of the American Constitution wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and are endowed with certain inalienable rights. This means that all human life – from the womb to the tomb – is sacred. Our humanity is not determined by our size, level of development, environment, or, dependency (S.L.E.D.). This is why it has been Christians, envisioned with a Biblical worldview, who have helped the most vulnerable in society by establishing hospitals and medical clinics, schools and universities, aid and relief agencies, orphanages, and hostels.

“In the ancient world, Christians were distinctive for their humanitarian efforts – taking care of babies and slaves, of widows and orphans, of the sick and elderly, of the unwanted and abandoned.”
Nancy Pearcey, ‘Love Thy Body', 2018, p. 81

HOW THESE COMPETING STORIES AFFECT OUR VIEWS OF VALUE, RIGHTS, GENDER, & SEXUALITY

In the Material-Naturalist worldview, some human beings are not ‘human persons’ and are therefore not deserving of human rights (which is a concept they borrow from the Biblical worldview story). In the Materialist’s worldview, personhood is an immaterial reality – even though the Materialist denies anything immaterial exists! This is why gender becomes very confusing for the Materialist. In the Biblical worldview, our Creator has designed a correspondence between our material biological sex and our gender. For Materialist, sexuality is nothing more than a physical encounter. For the Christian, sex is a sacred bonding between a man and a woman who have covenanted their lives together whereby they lovingly celebrate their union in a complementary physical union which has the potential to procreate life. Thus, sex involves emotional blending, intellectual merging, as well as the ultimate physical intimacy two people can experience.

This is why the Genesis account describes the sexual union of a man to his wife as becoming ‘one flesh’ (Gen. 2:24) and the Apostle Paul stated that when a man and a woman united sexually that they became ‘one body’ (1Cor. 6:16). We now know that our Creator has designed that when a man has sex, his body is designed to release a hormone called vasopressin which has a remarkable effect upon the male brain –

“The irony is that science is constantly uncovering new evidence of the profound interconnection between body and person. Pick up any recent book on sexuality and you will read about the role played by hormones such as oxytocin and vasopressin. Scientists first learned about oxytocin because of its role in childbirth and breastfeeding. The chemical is released when a mother nurses her baby, and it stimulates an instinct for caring and nurturing. It is often called the attachment hormone…

Consequently, the desire to attach to the other person when we have sex is not only an emotion but also part of our chemistry. Oxytocin has been shown to create a sense of trust…

The same is true for men. The main neurochemical responsible for the male response in intimate sexual contact is vasopressin. It is structurally similar to oxytocin and has a similar emotional effect. Scientists believe it stimulates bonding with a woman and with offspring. Vasopressin has been dubbed the monogamy molecule.”
Nancy Pearcey, “Love Thy Body“, 2018 p.127  

Once again, science confirms what God’s Word reveals: there is something sacred about our bodies and our sexuality. While Materialism pretends that there is nothing special, particularly intimate, or sacred about sexuality, the litter of hurt, broken, lonely, depressed lives can no longer endorse the pretence. Instead, these shattered souls bear testimony to the truth of God’s Word that we are indeed created to be uniquely close to someone – and ultimately this One is God Himself. 

POSTSCRIPT: WELCOMING REFUGEES

Over the next few months we expect to see increasing numbers of ‘refugees’ – those people who have been hurt and broken by a culture gone mad – seek sanctuary with our church. I pray that you’ll join with me in welcoming these precious ones into our healing community.  

Pastor Andrew