Bishop Richard Writes
Bishop Richard writes…
So many issues in life focus around our senseof identity, meaning and purpose. And thereis plenty going on at the moment whichbrings all that into very sharp relief.
In the world of sport, whether you love orloathe the saturation coverage of the WorldCup, it is difficult to avoid the profound andpassionate identification of supporters withtheir particular national team. Whilst thetournament is running there seems to berelatively little comment on the underlyingand complex political framework withinwhich the World Cup is taking place. It maybe that people simply want a bit of light relieffrom the many deep and anxiety-producingpolitical issues we now face.
Many of those political issues also focusaround our sense of identity, meaning andpurpose, whether expressed through theinterminable debates over Brexit, convolutedimmigration policies, or the rise of nationalist,populist governments in many parts ofthe world - not least in America with the“America first” approach. It is sometimes saidwe divide into being “somewhere people”whose identity is clearly linked to a particularplace or “anywhere people” who are at easein many different contexts. I suspect most ofus are a bit of both in varying degrees.
Many ethical issues also contain big questionsabout human identity, meaning and purpose -ranging from the debates over the impact ofartificial intelligence and trans-humanism tothe long-running and deeply divisive questionof attitudes to human sexuality concerningwhich the current teaching document beingdeveloped in the Church of England has thetitle “Living in faith and love.”
Underlying all of these is our understandingof what it means to be human and our placein the world and the cosmos. Dr YuvalHarari, professor of history at the HebrewUniversity of Jerusalem, has written twobestselling books entitled Sapiens and HomoDeus. His basic approach is that any meaningwe might attribute to our human existence issimply a product of the human imagination. Asthe 21st century progresses, developments inthe biological sciences and computer sciencewill place more and more emphasis on thedevelopment of homo sapiens into what he callshomo deus via an upgrading through biological,cyborg and non-organic engineering. Howeverfanciful that might sound, it does present achallenge to those of the Christian faith whohave a very different understanding of humanidentity, meaning and purpose.
Bishop Michael Curry’s recent sermon forthe Royal wedding, which focused on thetransformative power of love, spoke in manyways of that Christian understanding. Inthe 17th century, the French philosopherDescartes famously said, “I think therefore Iam”. The Christian way of expressing the heartof human identity, meaning and purpose wouldbe to say “I love therefore I am”, or even better,“God loves me, therefore I am”. In short, weare created by Love, and for love, and it is thiswhich sits at the heart of the Christian view ofour identity, meaning and purpose.
Over the summer months, in the midst ofso many anxiety-inducing headlines, it is wellworth reflecting on and praying about howwe both articulate and live out that deep andrich Christian understanding of our identity,meaning, and purpose at every level of ourlives. As Jesus said of his disciples, “I have comethat they may have life, and may have it in all itsfullness”. Or, in the Bible’s most famous verse,“God so loved the world that he gave his onlySon, so that everyone who believes in him maynot perish, but have eternal life.”
+Richard Kingston