The system will wind down. The battery will go flat. We who have been here will be seen no longer; nor will our descendants. Planet earth, the solar system, the cosmos happened. They have their day and they are no more. Many come to this conclusion about human destiny. Like everything else it is no more than one thing after another. There is nothing more to be said.
So we try to envisage what the biological future of mankind may be. Will there be a superman, superwoman or epicene type of person? Will traditional patterns governing human behaviour be superseded by some more rational code? We do after all know so much more about the human condition. It’s hardly surprising that those old categories of thought seem outworn. Better to look upon the human story as a plant that has so far grown strong but has yet to blossom. And the nature of that blossom is not yet apparent. At best we are on the way to being human.
No, says the Christian. We are involved in a contest between good and evil, between right and wrong. From this standpoint human history with all its crime, follies and misfortunes as Gibbon made plain is a story played out against unchanging features of a created order, just as we play our parts while we are on this planet against a background where two plus two equals four.
In a Christian perspective good and evil are intrinsic, not incidental aspects of being human. Human nature is the same now as it was in the days of the stone age artists who decorated their caves with animal figures. Man is not immortal but his mortality points to something enduring that he may or may not aspire to.
There is no black and white choice. Faith does not resist progress. It does not idolise the society that existed before the wheel was invented or fire was discovered. It is not in hock to nostalgia. But it is does impose constraints on pell-mell progress and a blind pursuit of something called that.
In other words, to be a Christian is not to reject what is ill understood in favour of what is only too clearly a wish-list. ‘On Christ the solid rock I stand’ is a good slogan but it must not be allowed to approve ill-judged amendments to examples of good design.
EARLS BARTON HERITAGE
Earl’s Barton church is famed for its Anglo-Saxon heritage, particularly its tower. It nowadays houses an active congregation. One of their innovations is B1BS, a first baby support group for families with a first child born during the pandemic. It meets every Tuesday afternoon. It has now developed into a B1BS and BOBS group, with older children welcomed. Alpha is part of the church programme. Jenny Ingram is the Vicar.
RECYCLED ROMAN REMAINS
If building materials are any gauge, St Albans cathedral goes back to Roman times. Materials were salvaged (with permission) from the Roman city of Verulamium to maintain and repair the abbey church.
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