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Sunday 17 November 2013

In Him All Things...

 
The typhoon which swept across the Philippines within the last couple of weeks have dominated the news headlines every day so far. Appeals have been sent out, aid of every kind are being delivered to these stricken islands from around the world. I actually saw one national newspaper carry the headline that an adequate amount of funds could be raised if every person in the UK donated just one pound ($1.60) which would add up to £62,008,000, of which £50,763,000 would come from England alone.

We Brits love to pride ourselves as being a nation of compassionate, generous donors. But according to an online table of the world's most generous national donors, the UK so far failed to make the top twelve. The most generous was Canada, followed by Spain. The much maligned Italians holds fifth position, ahead of Japan in eighth, China in ninth, the USA in tenth place. Even tiny Singapore holds eleventh place, ahead of France, in twelfth. But on the individual scale, there are generous people, there are also the mean, including the rich; in all - generous, tightfisted, and somewhere in between, along with the poor of both extremes, among those I guess, would like to give but are anxious of their financial resource to meet future expenses.

So we pat ourselves on the back on walk along smugly, believing that we have fulfilled the will of God by giving something, showing compassion to a nation which looks to all the world to have received judgement from the Almighty. After all, are we not a Christian country, with the Bible as the bedrock for our Constitution? Why; we most likely have sang that glorious hymn sometime in our lives, particularly at school, written by William Blake:  And did those feet in ancient times walk upon England's mountains green? Never in a million years would the Almighty dream of judging England in any way close to that inflicted on to the Philippines. Instead we are threatened with a possible dusting of snow this coming week, so the newspapers cries out on its pages. Of the sixty-plus years I lived in England, the media seems to forever fail to realise that it is normally cold during the Winter months! Yet any forthcoming news of snow and we feel that our lives will be disrupted - the dread of cars skidding on icy roads, vehicle engines stalling, getting stuck in endless traffic snarl-ups, delayed and cancelled trains, airports closed, thousands of flights cancelled, schools closed, valuable working hours lost...dear me, with the snow comes the Apocalypse, those last  few years of Tribulation prior to the end of the world. It makes me wonder what the Philippine people really think of us English. After all, typhoons are an accepted way of life to them, they are used to that sort of weather.

Lately I have read an article written by Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail newspaper accusing former Labour ministers such as former Home Secretary Jack Straw of hating the English, and the former politician accusing them of being violent nationalists who have used force to subjugate other nations. If Straw did make such an accusation, then he must have referred to the former British Empire, which did subjugate the indigenous inhabitants of foreign lands to submit to Colonial laws and governance - all in the name of being God's chosen nation with His Majesty being the head, and to him all must bow, both among the conquerors and the conquered. Along with England being the New Jerusalem of William Blake, the English were to be seen as the Master Race, a phenomenon arising from Charles Darwin's theory of Evolution, which makes out that the English had advanced in the evolutionary scale to a degree well beyond other nations, particularly among non-Caucasians.



As if being advanced in Evolution and being of the New Jerusalem was not enough, there was even an academic, crackpot professor Edward Hine who, in 1879 delivered a lecture in the London borough of Chelsea, that the English were descendants from the Jews of the Diaspora - the ten lost tribes which were exiled by the Assyrians around 700 BC. This theory, known as British Israelism, enforced the idea that England was indeed the promised land, and that the Empire was not only sanctioned by God but ordered by the Almighty. Here was a contradiction which would have posted a challenge to Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity. That is, the Bible and Darwinism are as much opposed to each other as being enemies. The Bible teaches supernatural Creationism in six literal nights and days. Evolution, on the other hand, insisted in the ultra-slow development of living organisms over millions of years. Surely both can't be right. And by 1879, Darwin's book On the Origin of Species, was already well known to the British public, having been published some twenty years earlier in 1859.

So here we have a nation which is the motherland of Darwinism, yet running concurrently with its Christian constitution for many decades to follow. Evolution offering its explanation for the Englishman's sense of national, cultural, and racial superiority while insisting that the truth of the Bible verifies his heritage of being one of God's people, and therefore holding special divine privileges, namely, the right to rule over others of different ethnic and racial origins. These two conflicting ideas had not exhausted themselves to nonexistence to the present day. Not many years ago, Richard Dawkins was spouting his atheism, his steadfast support for Darwin, and gaining rapid readership support for his book: The God Delusion. In turn, during preparation for the 2006 World Cup, England star player Wayne Rooney injured his ankle while playing at a qualifier game. His injury threatened to exclude him from the England squad, as a result, the chances of England lifting the trophy was practically eliminated. When the medical team announced Rooney's rapid recovery, the Sun newspaper had emblazoned on its front page: There is a God after all! This makes me believe that the normally self confident Englishman only believes in God when it suits him.

But real peace and, if I should add, self-worth, comes in believing who God really is. And one verse in the Bible kept coming back to me over the past week  Colossians 1:17, which reads:
He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

What a tremendous amount of truth contained in just a few words! All things hold together, which of course would include us as humans. Not only are involuntary body functions - such as breathing, sleeping, digestion, the nervous system, the heartbeat and the flow of the bloodstream are all sustained by God, but the very essence that actually we are a collection of tiny atoms, the essential building blocks of the entire Universe.



Here is the very mystery of life itself. If everything consist of atoms, then why is one mass sustains life while another is totally inanimate, such as a brick wall? A stone or lump of rock is as dead as it could be, but the same material can last for millennia. The human body is not only alive but is sustains itself and has the ability to repair itself when injured. Yet soon after it dies, it quickly decomposes. In turn, a chip broken off a china plate spoils and devalues its worth, and the dish will remain chipped forever, without self repair or decomposing. Yet between these two substances is the wood from trees. It is alive yet inanimate. There are species of tropical fig trees which, as it grows, wraps itself around a host tree and strangles it to death, then takes its place. But cut a chunk out of this menacing tree and the wood can be used for carving or construction, and the finished article would be no more animate than the mantelpiece on which it stands. What exactly is wood? It consists of living cells yet is it alive? Other than in texture, is a wooden artifact any more living than one carved out of marble? Then there is the well known Mickey Mouse arrangement of the three atoms; two of hydrogen and one of oxygen which makes up the water molecule which is so vital to all living things.




Yet, the hydrogen atom is the simplest atom of all elements. It consist of one electron whizzing in its orbit around a single proton as it nucleus, a microscopic star and planet system. But what makes it so remarkable sets the pattern for all atoms, regardless of the level of complexity, is the vast space between the nucleus and its orbiting electrons. This vast space between electron and nucleus could be the vital clue to Paul's statement in Colossians 1:17 - that every atom in the entire Universe is sustained by Jesus Christ, who is in turn, our Saviour, one of three Persons in the Divine Trinity, of which the life-sustaining water molecule makes such a good symbol. If the vast space within every atom of our bodies were to collapse, so that every electron actually touches the nucleus, then our bodies will be reduced to the size of a grain of sand! Therefore it can be said that even a hard lump of rock, such as granite or marble, is mostly empty space, yet remains as solid as God sustains it.

This is such a sobering truth, the science we have discovered by means of our magnificent brains, which we have through Him who created us to enjoy his love, his grace and his intimacy forever. And that is the real purpose why we are here - not as advanced in evolution to the extent that we can walk in arrogant pride, divide and conquer - but rather that we can know God our creator, life sustainer, our Saviour and revel in his love for the eternity to come. 

4 comments:

  1. Every night I look at our beautiful little can as she sits on our bed (an avid cat lover I am), I look into her little face with its beautiful eyes and say 'wonderfully made'. She has paw pads as soft and pink as a baby's skin which can walk on rough ground and still remain soft and pink, and I say 'It is a fool who says there is no God.'

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  2. Dear Frank,
    God's creation is so wondrous not only for its amazing design, but for the natural laws He put in place to sustain everything. His signature is in all from the smallest atom to the vastness of the universe, and it takes willful obstinacy and foolish pride to deny it. Thanks as always for the well-written and thought-provoking post.
    God bless,
    Laurie

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  3. Nearly all the laws of science were discovered as a result of the belief that God created the earth and made it function according to a specific set of laws. That belief led to the conviction that if we could understand his laws, we could better function in this world. In an effort to deny God, pseudo-scientists have distorted those very basic scientific laws to make their beliefs sound scientific. Unfortunately, it isn't just the British who ony believe in god when it suits their purposes.

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  4. This is a real barnstormer Frank! I must say without a word of a lie, that this is so well written, clear and hard hitting that I am waiting for you to better it; no doubt you will but this is a really good and well written post, not least because of the fascinating subject matter.

    The English/British to a certain degree developed ideas that came out of the fact that we are/were a conquering nation, but lest any high born British person (or any virulent flag waver or super patriot Brit) get too smug and superior about the British Empire, it had its beginning in piracy, or privateering which is just a nicer word for piracy! As long as Lizzie the 1st got her cut from the proceeds, she was happy to turn a blind eye to it all. And then of course the British eventually dominated the Slave Trade, interfered in Ireland, kickstarted the Industrial Revolution and carved up Africa at the end of the 19th century,all of course to make a relative few powerful and wealthy and in its trail sometimes creating chaos and rampant injustice, and then the seeds of racist and class ideology and notions of superior and inferior and the civilised and the savage and other such simple but heavily loaded notions.

    Then you talk about Englishmen being God's chosen and superior through evolution. Yes, a contradiction but something which I have also tried to understand too. The English, like many other groups, use what suits their superiority and discard anything which questions it. So Darwin and God are in some kind of unholy matrimony, justifying English conquest, domination and total superiority. Nonsense, but on such nonsense do whole empires turn. For a time anyway. The sun has set on the British Empire; do you think we should tell some of our fellow Brits?!

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