As men and women with the faculty of reason, we find ourselves in a strange position - we are aware of our own sinfulness and yet at the same time we are aware of how we can attain hints of perfection from the Divine. It is this crossroads at which we find ourselves that I want to explore in this message - what I call 'In between Wonder and Wretchedness'. 

 

Medical experts examine the physiological aspects of man and instruct us how best to look after our physical bodies. God does the same with our spiritual bodies; that is, He starts to reshape us into true passengers of Christ - for the spiritual needs are, in the long run, greater than the physical needs (see Mark 2:1-12). The parts of us that hunger for God are, naturally, spiritual parts, yet some ask, if this hunger is a physiological anomaly why have we all got it? No, we must see sense and conclude that it is common in all of us because it is our true point of destiny - the place for which we were made. And if the transcendence of man into God is at one eternal point; then naturally anything given to things outside of Him is going to lead us astray. Our journey on earth is about learning who we are and why we are here, and if we are to be successful with both, we must go all out for the whole truth.

 

If the Divine inside of us were absent, we would be driven only by earthly things, disconsolate because of our true knowledge of the self. Pride, as all who are subsumed by it know, is the primary path to all other vices, for we have no alternative routes other than the one that leads back to the self. It is thus not at all surprising that apathy is the second most serious predicament, for there is no quality of the self that can save it. And we should expect nothing else; its causation is itself linked to a total disenchantment with the limitations of the self. 

 

Christianity is the only lasting answer to pride and apathy, for both will lead a man into ruins. We can come to know Christ but the sins that are in us will be gradually turned into better qualities. We will become like Christ while all the time exhibiting little hints of the badness that makes up men and women. Every man and woman, however good or bad, knows full well that they are capable of searching within their souls to discover the true pleasures of grace, humility, understanding, charity and kindness. The presently implacable faculty of understanding the divine is swept into your awareness by some wonderful act that belongs more to the angels than it does to men. 

 

As I said a moment ago, we are caught between two apparently divergent convictions; the conviction of wonder and the conviction of wretchedness - for both are true facts about us played out in the activity of nature. When we sense wonder, we sense the real state of badness within us - we see how far we have fallen short of God's glory. Christ died because we were helpless, because we could do nothing, by ourselves, to help our situation. He did not just die for our failures, but our successes too; for He knows that our biggest successes are liable to lead us into the arms of pride and contempt. 

 

You will get nowhere if you think yourself without sin. Christ died for our sins, but also for the best that is in us - our own efforts will never be enough; He is our only hope. There is no eternal hope outside of Christ; He teaches us all that we are going to need to know about ourselves, and about Him. He teaches us about His grace, and our weakness in sin; about His abounding love, about our parochial nature, and about His dying and our living. He also saves us from absolute self-understanding in times when it would surely be harmful, for if we really could know our true state it would, I suspect, at the wrong time be quite soul-destroying. 

 

But this point needs to be taken further - for in fact, I think if men knew their true psychological weaknesses they would be quite shocked at the many belief systems to which they are susceptible. They are told that there are no variables on ultimate truth and two minutes later you will see them espousing a plurality of religious convictions - after all, they cannot quite believe that so many millions of people can be wrong about something in which they seem to be united. There are enough wonders in the world to illuminate a man's mind if he so wishes, but equally, there is enough darkness, ambiguity and obfuscation to leave him quite spiritually lost. There is enough grace to turn hate into love; but equally there are enough excuses for men to stay distracted. That is why analysis of first instinctive things will never lead the way; real glorious destination must be distilled from the heart. We fall short of the glory of God but we have been offered a way to rise above that which enslaves us. 

 

All who call upon the name of Christ will find, as the days go by, that He has much to say to everyone. He reveals to us our true character at the right time and the methods for spiritual growth. He shows us that true enlightenment comes, not from our own philosophies, but from His. Our own methods of cognitive construction can sometimes lead us astray; they allow our bending the truth too often; and this, of course, leads to delusion - as nothing that is Divine should be distorted or compromised. 

 

There are no doubt many people - many of which I am sure we know - who are content to procrastinate; they are happy to put off Christianity until nearer the end of their lives. But this is not very wise thinking; for if Christ's claims are true then they are certainly true now and forever. We have seen that Christianity offers visions of new beginnings. Why then would anyone wish to ignore one of these visions on experiencing such a thing? If it becomes alien to us then everything else must be alien too; or at the very least, untrustworthy. Christianity does not simply want us to accede to Christ's teachings, it wants us to be like Him. The Creative Delusion that tells us to look out first for ourselves belies one vital truth. Christ loves us more than we love ourselves; therefore He is looking out for us far more than we are looking out for ourselves. We must not merely desire self-fulfilment, as some do, for the desire itself if it is left will sweep away into virtual nonentity; we must desire Christ and all that He can do in us.

 

I am not sure it always follows that if one knows God he will automatically love Him. I think a man must realise the changes that are occurring within before he can appreciate the true awesome nature of God. We cannot properly offer ourselves up to anything which is not, at the same time, having an impact upon our inner-self. Most of the modern atheist celebrities - Messrs Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennet, Harris, Stenger etc - claim that there is an absence of evidence - but do they indeed know what they would do if evidence came their way? Would they prostrate themselves before the Divine figure? We cannot be sure, for they have spent their lives rejecting evidence, ascribing supernatural wonders to imaginative phenomena. But upon rejecting this, what do they really know about themselves? They have rejected the very thing which they are going to have to imbibe in order for prostration to occur; and this is barely imaginable to their vexed souls and hardened hearts. Their calls for 'lack of evidence' are really claims of a hard heart. We, as fallen creatures, should be grateful for all God has done for us in revealing His Son, not criticising Him for not showing Himself. He has shown Himself to those whom He has made ready to receive Him. There are those who know their real state and those who do not; for so very often we first see the truth when we are starting to realise the true nature of the self. 

 

Since the vast majority of the earth is not God, it is available to be made into a god by those for whom the temptation is hard to resist. Man was created to know God and to serve Him. Servility, in the modern age, has evoked all sorts of unpleasant connotations and opprobrious thoughts; after all, has not servitude given rise and opportunity to many evil kings and dictators? Yes it certainly has, but serving man is very different to serving God. We must never be reticent towards such a proposal; we know that pride is so powerful a tool that it forces men, even through the call of God, to choose self-worship over Divine worship. 

 

Christianity comes to dispel the myth propagated by the existential philosophers that man can achieve greatness by himself. And the better we know ourselves, the more we shall realise this. There are, of course, instincts of mortification prompted not by nature's ills, but by the gradual surrendering of the self - and these instincts are the ones that can achieve for us blessedness; for the rumours that we are creatures in need of salvation, become more than just rumours every time we think about the various causes, ulterior motives, and unspoken feelings behind each and every action. Our very best actions never were enough; it was God's grace that made the actions in the first place; every one, left to itself with the removal of His grace, would be darkened by clouds of pride, envy, resentment, frustration, and self-admiration, all of which belong to the sinful parts of man. The instincts of grace are grace because they are instincts. 

 

We look for truth and find our own sin; we look for contentment and find that it belongs somewhere else, not through ourselves but through Christ; thus if reason is dependable we should trust our conclusions about ourselves. Even the times when we have conflicts in our psychology and emotions, even in our philosophy - it is through those conflicts that we discover realities of the self. Christ is the true solution, and inner-conflicts lead us to very direct truths about ourselves and our need for God. 

 

There are two big myths regarding mankind. The first, propagated by the ancient Greek philosophers, is that we should look to self-examination for cerebral tranquillity. The second, propagated much later in the Enlightenment period, is that we should look to the ways of the world for peaceable states of mind; in other words, the world has all the things to tell us the what is going to be, necessary for cerebral tranquillity. Both are colossal lies of the worst kind; if they are taken alone they bring about frustration and stark realisations - causing stoicism, fear of truth, and indifference. If they are combined in formulation of a modern philosophical mindset (and often they are) they lead to one of the world's worst states of mind - the frustrated, narcissistic intellectual. They are, of course, in the minority - they are far outnumbered by the quotidian majority; but the quotidian majority - indifferent as they are to most things outside of their purview - are not influencing much of the philosophical, scientific, political and cultural zeitgeists. 

 

The inner-conflicts between the self's desire to find truth and reason and its propensity for inner-comfort zones has made those who wanted personal earthly harmony fall into two camps. The first and worst kind are those whose propensities for Self-Worship and Creative Delusion turn them into unreachable self-appointed demi-gods - suspending rational enquiry to become fiends. The second kind are those who do everything in accordance with the ordered world they see around them, by searching for patterns that best suit their own lives. Both kinds will be led to all sorts of places, but very rarely to the truth; for the real falsity of their situation is apparent by their outward discontent. 

 

Reason can be suspended but it cannot be reconstituted; thus if you try to create realities that suit your personal comfort zones, you must start by leaving reason behind, for reason will always tell you to search for what is true. This has, of course, been observed through the political process; thus for hundreds of years (particularly in the West) we have seen improved constitutions, improved laws (mostly) and improved conventions (mostly). They are improved, not because we were obedient to personal feelings but because we were obedient to reason. One might argue that these things took rather too long, after all - ethnic oppression, racism, slave labour, etc, were still ubiquitous 150 years ago (and still are in some countries) - in which case, it goes to show that reason itself very often requires sound convictions and huge determination to pick up full pace. 

 

I do not wish for you to think that this 'reasoning' we are discussing requires tremendous intellect; it is not so. Reason will remain alive in every single one of us, so long as we are subordinate to it and not to wishful instincts and personal feelings. Reason has much to say to us; if we want to know the origins of our pride, vanity, selfishness, insecurities, Self-Worship and Creative Delusion, we need look no further than our shocking history of the ego, which has brought about the debasement of God's Heavenly impartations - impartations such as love, grace, humility, charity and honour - all of which have been perverted by man. It is for this reason that many of God's wonderful qualities are scarcely recognisable in their modern form; for almost anything that comes into nature must, it seems, be subjected to nature's (or more precisely, man's) debasing proclivities. 

 

We have seen earlier the big contradictory paradox of distraction; it is entered for the purposes of comfort and left with greater discomfort; it is the thing which stops our thinking about Christ. Diversion, being one of the Devil's biggest tools, does not even produce boredom - which would, at the very least, drive us towards striving for something more substantial. If a man complains that life is tough - he should try devoting his time to self-examination - then he will see both the hardest and easiest things in life - the need for God.