Spiritual Instincts
The origin of our word ‘instinct’ comes originally from Latin. ‘In-’ meant ‘toward or in’ and ‘stinguere’ meant ‘to prick’. What is the source of these inner promptings? There is evidence that the existence of a hunger does mean that the object of that hunger is somewhere and does in some sense exist. Thus a baby has an instinct for milk and milk is available. A baby sea turtle hatches from an egg in the sand but it does not head for the protection of tall grass but instinctively moves towards the sea.
A Dutch zoologist tested whether newly hatched baby turkeys could recognize the silhouette of a bird of prey without being taught. He flew a series of cut-outs over the pens. If the silhouette had a long neck, such as a goose it was ignored but if it had a short neck, like a hawk, the baby turkeys screamed in alarm and ran for safety. All animal organisms have such instincts but where do they come from.
It has long been considered that instinctive animal behavior demonstrated the direct influence of God. Thus Aquinas (1265-1273) wrote,
“Although dumb animals do not know the future, yet an animal is moved by its natural instinct to something future, as though it foresaw the future. Because this instinct is planted in them by the Divine intellect that foresees the future.”
William Paley considered instincts to be a demonstration of the creator’s role as he could think of no other way to explain their presence. He described how moths and butterflies,
“. . . deposit their eggs in the precise substance, that of the cabbage for example, from which, not the butterfly herself, but the caterpillar which is to issue from her egg, draws its appropriate food. The butterfly cannot taste the cabbage – cabbage is no food for her; yet in the cabbage, not by chance, but studiously and electively, she lays her eggs . . .This choice, as appears to me, cannot in the butterfly proceed from instruction. She had no teacher in her butterfly state. She never knew her parent. I do not see, therefore, how knowledge acquired by experience, if it ever were such, could be transmitted from one generation to another. There is no opportunity either for instruction or imitation. The parent race is gone before the new brood is hatched.” (Paley 1813 p.306)
He concluded,
“Be it that those action of animals which we refer to as instinct are not gone about with any view of its consequences, but that they are attended in the animal with a present gratification, and are pursued for the sake of that gratification alone: what does all this prove, but that in the prospection, which must be somewhere, is not in the animal but in the creator.”
Lamark also considered the nature of instincts. He thought that changes in activity and behavior could be transmitted to the genetic makeup and so passed on.
Darwin gave a whole chapter to this subject in his ‘Origin of Species’, recognizing that it is a significant issue. He recognized “so wonderful an instinct as that of the hive-bee making its cells” and that “instinct impels the cuckoo to migrate and to lay her eggs in other birds' nests.” He added “It will be universally admitted that instincts are as important as corporeal structure for the welfare of each species.” He considered “No complex instinct can possibly be produced through natural selection, except by the slow and gradual accumulation of numerous, slight, yet profitable, variations.” He also recognized,
“Many instincts are so wonderful that their development will probably appear to the reader a difficulty sufficient to overthrow my whole theory.”
At first he considered that repeated habits might become so ingrained into a species makeup as to become an instinct. He later he moved away partially from this Lamarkian concept noting that many instinctive actions could not have originated as habits, preferring the idea of natural selection of individuals with useful habits.
There are problems with this view. Hymneoptera, a group of insects including bees, wasps and ants often live in well constructed societies where existence depends on an interdependence upon other members. Particularly troublesome for Darwin’s theory of natural selection is that the workers are often sterile and cannot pass on their instinctive behavior genetically.
A related question is why do humans ponder about why we are here, why are honesty, truthfulness, kindness and integrity so attractive to us and why do we feel guilty when our own standards of behavior fall. These moral values seem to be built into our own instincts. Is this the direct influence of God, is it genetic and if so how did these genes appear. Humans are unique in the animal kingdom to have these aesthetic values.
C.S.Lewis wrote in ‘Mere Christianity’ that our instincts about right and wrong are a clue to the meaning of the universe.
“Supposing you hear a cry for help from a man in danger. You will probably feel two desires—one a desire to give help (due to your herd instinct), the other a desire to keep out of danger (due to the instinct for self-preservation). But you will find inside you, in addition to these two impulses, a third thing which tells you that you ought to follow the impulse to help, and suppress the impulse to run away. Now this thing that judges between two instincts, that decides which should be encouraged, cannot itself be either of them. You might as well say that the sheet of music which tells you, at a given moment, to play one note on the piano and not another, is itself one of the notes on the keyboard. The Moral Law tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely the keys.”
What is it that stimulates people to think about the big questions of life? C. S. Lewis also famously said,
‘God whispers to us in our joys, speaks to us in our consciences and shouts at us in our pains, they are his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
It is true that when we receive bad news, such as a diagnosis of cancer, some people begin to ask ‘what is life all about? But in my experience as a cancer surgeon this is far less common than you would think. The evidence is that more teenagers puzzle about the big issues than any other group. It is surely no coincidence that this group are attracted to pop songs that air deep questions about relationships and purpose. Many pop songs scream about the anguish that deep uncertainties in life can cause.
Longing for Loving Relationships
This is possibly one of the deepest instincts in all people. This fascination with and longing for personal relationships undergird much of the pop music scene and plots for films. This is not surprising as it is a basic instinct in us all, we want close personal friendships and real relationships.
The group ‘A Great Big World’ summed up this longing in their famous song,
‘All I want is love.’
I've been looking in the wrong place
Couldn't see what I've always known
I was facing the wrong way
I missed it all, I missed it all
I don't care what they all say
Let me find my own way home
I don't care if my heart breaks
All I want is love.”
It’s a well known fact that children who are deprived of normal caring families, affectionate touch and affirmative words are usually not equipped to face life in a healthy way. They are stunted in their emotional development and crave attention all the time in quite destructive ways. When they reach adulthood, they are constantly on the look out for affirmation, affection and meaning. We all thrive in secure, loving relationships where there is also accountability. Surely this suggests that we were made for relationships, very few people enjoy prolonged loneliness or isolation.
God himself, Father, Son and Spirit are three persons in one Being, each perfectly in tune with the other and bringing glory to the whole Person. God was in a close loving relationship before the world was created and he made us ‘in his image’ for relationships too. He designed us to be born into families, where love and nurture could easily flourish whatever the external pressures. He made men and women equal partners in marriage, with their different roles so we could reflect the perfect relationship that already exists in the Godhead.
In the Bible a central theme is that God longs to have a personal relationship with each of us. Not to be in this relationship with him will be disastrous. At the final judgment Jesus will say even to some religious leaders,
“Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me you evil doers.” Matthew 7:23
This relationship is meant to be close and personal. Paul prayed for all Christians that their relationship with God would be like that of a child with their father,
“I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. Ephesians 1:17
Paul emphasized that it was such a close relationship that he wanted for himself more than anything else in the world,
“I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost everything.” Philippians 3:8
Is it surprising then that many people are first attracted to Christ because they have an instinctive longing to be loved? However, as in any relationship we should always look through the veneer of attraction to check that the potential partner is all that they seem to be. The God revealed by Jesus Christ will pass every such investigation.
"Show Me the Way" is a song written by Dennis DeYoung and sung by ‘Styx’. It peaked at No. 3 on the pop singles chart in 1991 and demonstrates a longing for such a real relationship. It also stresses the need for a way, a belief system that can withstand investigation. A faith in people and their systems is liable to fail because of human frailty, but still the longing for something more remains.
“Every night I say a prayer
In the hopes that there's a Heaven
And everyday I'm more confused
As the saints turn into sinners
All the heroes and legends
I knew as a child have fallen to idols of clay
And I feel this empty place inside
So afraid that I've lost my faith
Show me the way, show me the way
Take me tonight to the river
And wash my illusions away
Please show me the way
And as I slowly drift to sleep
For a moment dreams are sacred
I close my eyes and know that there's peace
In a world so filled with hatred
That I wake up each morning and turn on the news
To find we've so far to go
And I keep on hoping for a sign
So afraid I just won't know
Show me the way, show me the way
Bring me tonight to the mountain
And take my confusion away
And show me the way
And if I see a light, should I believe
Tell me how will I know
Show me the way, show me the way
Take me tonight to the river
And wash my illusions away
Show me the way, show me the way
Give me the strength and the courage
To believe that I'll get there someday
And please show me the way
Every night I say a prayer
In the hopes that there's a Heaven.”
Another song-writer, Peter Townshend, was a deep thinker who wrote many lyrics for the English rock band, ‘The Who.’ In his song ‘The Seeker’ he describes a person who is looking for an answer to life, though he clearly is unsure about where this may be found.
“I've looked under chairs
I've looked under tables
I've tried to find the key
To fifty million fables
They call me The Seeker
I've been searching low and high
I won't get to get what I'm after
Till the day I die
I asked Bobby Dylan
I asked The Beatles
I asked Timothy Leary
But he couldn't help me either
They call me The Seeker
I've been searching low and high
I won't get to get what I'm after
Till the day I die
People tend to hate me
'Cause I never smile
As I ransack their homes
They want to shake my hand
Focusing on nowhere
Investigating miles
I'm a seeker
I'm a really desperate man
I won't get to get what I'm after
Till the day I die
I learned how to raise my voice in anger
Yeah, but look at my face, ain't this a smile?
I'm happy when life's good
And when it's bad I cry
I've got values but I don't know how or why
I'm looking for me
You're looking for you
We're looking in at other
And we don't know what to do
They call me The Seeker
I've been searching low and high
I won't get to get what I'm after
Till the day I die
I won't get to get what I'm after
Till the day I die.”
Why is it that songs such as these resonate with the feelings of so many people?
There was a popular television show called ‘The X files’ in which two FBI agents, Fox Mulder, the believer, and Dana Scully, the skeptic, investigate strange and unexplained happenings, whilst hidden forces try to impede their efforts. In the introduction of most episodes, this phrase comes up,
“The truth is out there.”
This concept does resonate with something in our instincts. We feel there are answers, if only we knew where to look and were inclined to do so.
The majority of people who become Christians have such instinctive longings although their interest may be aroused intellectual questions. This longing to be in a personal relationship is surely a God-given instinct.
An innate dislike of hypocrisy and unfairness
There has been a remarkable growth in the number of Christians in Islamic Iran. The majority of these conversions were triggered by a deep abhorrence of the activities of the Muslim hierarchy; the bullying, arrests and executions are instinctively ‘not right’. Ramin Parsa was a devout Muslim student in Iran but his unfair arrest and beating by the religious police began a search for something better than the rules of Islam. It was the instincts within him that led him to be critical of what he was offered. He then was attracted to the very different person and claims of Jesus, and became a Christian.
Just as animals have instinctive behaviour built into their makeup, so it seems that all humans have moral and spiritual values built into us. Could this be part of what the Bible means when it says that,
“God created us in his own image, in the image of God he created him.” Genesis 1:27
These spiritual instincts reveal themselves in various other ways.
The Sense of Good and Evil
One of the greatest difficulties many modern people have is finding a unity between their instincts on right and wrong and modern ways of thinking. This is the consequence of our conditioning. Modern philosophies have killed off God and consequently have removed the concept of sin. However it cannot remove the subjective reality of sin. This is engrained into our instincts.
Using functional magnetic imaging, strong feelings of guilt is associated with activity in the right fronto-orbital cortex and in the paracingulate dorsomedial prefrontal cortex.1 These were different to other sites activated by other emotions. Guilt is somehow built into our make-up.
In Washington, the Managing Editor of what is probably the city’s most prestigious political weekly was such a post-modernist thinker. Martha (not her real name) regarded all constructions of good and evil as social structures without any absolute force. So she thought that although the Jewish holocaust looked pretty ghastly from a Jewish perspective, for those committed to an Arian theory it looked like the way to go. She considered that morality depended on your point of view, whether you are talking about the tribal conflicts in Rwanda or other more recent conflicts such as those in Ukraine or the Middle East. She felt you could construct concepts of evil and good out of the social matrix of where you live.
At this time Martha got to know Mark and Connie Dever. Mark is the senior pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church. They invited her to come to a Bible Study in their home. She noted that they handled the text well and because she was interested in words and texts she went along. However she did not agree with what was said, considering it mostly to be a load of ‘poppycock’. She did not know much about the Bible so she went along and learned all the ‘stuff about Jesus’from the gospel of Mark, even though she did not believe it. It was just an interesting handling of the texts as far as she was concerned.
Martha was then sent on an assignment to PNG (Papua New Guinea) for political reasons. Just as she was about to leave she came across the story of a priest who had been arrested for paedophilia. He was about to return home for retirement after spending thirty five years in PNG. It transpired that he had sodomised no fewer than two hundred children over those thirty five years. She could not stop thinking about this man and the possible consequences of his actions. She thought about all the relationships his behaviour would touch. What would happen to those children when they grew up? How many of them would become abusers themselves? Would they ever be able to have happy marriages? These issues grabbed her.
When she returned to Washington she discussed it all with Mark Dever. Mark’s response was to ask,
“Martha, was it wicked?”
Martha replied,
“Come on Mark, we all know that the vast majority of child abusers were themselves abused as children. This sort of thing gets passed on, doesn’t it? They are as much victims as victimisers.”
Mark smiled,
“True enough. That’s what the Bible says too. Sin is social as well as personal. ‘Sins of the fathers will be visited upon the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me.’ There are few private sins. That is not the issue. The issue is, ‘Was it wicked?’”
Martha could not get away from this question. When she bumped into Mark on the street he would say,
“Hi Martha, ‘Was it wicked?’”
When she went to the Bible study she would be greeted with,
“Hi Martha. Welcome. ‘Was it wicked?’
Every time Mark saw her he asked,
“Was it wicked?”
Martha could not sleep. Her instincts and her philosophy were in conflict. She would wake up in the middle of the night and would hear Mark’s voice saying,
“Was it wicked?”
Then one night she woke up in the middle of the night. She couldn’t sleep. She was sweating by the side of her bed as she wrestled with the same question. Then she concluded,
“This was wicked. This was wicked. This was very wicked.”
Then it dawned on her,
“Maybe I’m wicked too.”
Martha’s gut instincts had overcome her way of thinking. Within three weeks she had become a Christian. It now all made sense, her instincts and rational thinking were united. Now she is one of the most able communicators of the gospel in Washington. It all makes sense.
No-one asks for pardon till they know they are guilty. No-one asks for life until they are under the sentence of death. You don’t ask for forgiveness until you know you are wicked. Nothing will satisfy the void in peoples’ lives until they realise they are devoid of God.2
The existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre thought that life had no meaning and any values must be your own. But when the violent struggle for independence in Algeria took place he became outspoken against the immorality of many barbarous acts of the rebels. His instincts of morality and justice conflicted with his intellectual theories. He did not write any substantial books after this event.
Moral Values
The appreciation of good and evil is but one example of the fact that moral values are a fundamental aspect of every human life. All people have an inbuilt moral compass regardless of their background. Honesty, integrity and love are appreciated by all, whilst lying, stealing and killing are hated when I am the victim. We all consider these things to be wrong.
The big question is where these instincts come from. Clearly they are stronger or weaker depending on a persons’ background and environment, but they are always there in some form. Some have claimed that these are just products of our upbringing, what our mother taught us so that the family can exist harmoniously. Such people have to say that conscience is just a matter of upbringing.
The Bible however, whilst acknowledging the importance of family training, insists that there is a God-given basis for these values, that these values are discovered and not invented. The Bible teaches that God will use the values that we judge others by, as the standard by which he will judge us.
“You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you arte condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things.” Romans 2:1
Non-religious people may not have written rules to govern all aspects of behaviour but they still distinguish right from wrong using God-given consciences.
“Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law . . . they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness.” Romans 2:14-15
To accept the importance of these values yet to deny the presence of God is irrational. Nietzsche derided such people as “odious windbags of progressive optimism, who think it is possible to have Christian morality without Christian faith.” In “Twilight of the Idols” he wrote,
“They are rid of the Christian God, and now believe all the more firmly that they must cling to Christian morality . . . when one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality from under one’s feet.”
This pressure to leave God out of our thinking is very dangerous for ours or any society. Dostoevsky wrote in ‘The Brothers Karamozov’,
“Is there no God? Then everything is permitted.”
These values are a reminder that we will all face God’s judgment and this judgment will be fair. Our great problem is that we already know the natural verdict. Religious or not, none of us meet he righteous standards of God.
I had a patient who had advanced liver secondaries from a colon cancer. She asked for euthanasia. I replied that ‘we don’t do that’ but we went on to discuss the troublesome symptoms and changed her medication appropriately. I then said to her,
“I wonder if there is a reason why God is keeping you alive. Do you think you have got everything ready?”
“Oh, I think so, I have tidied all the cupboards at home.”
I could only smile at such a trite response to a serious question.
“Yes, but on a deeper level, are you sure you are ready to meet God or aren’t you sure about these things?”
“Oh! I think I’m ready, I’ve never done anyone any harm.”
Here was this lady about to meet her maker and she wasn’t ready. Fortunately our hospital has Gideon Bibles in the bedside lockers so I asked if I could show her a few things.
“I would like that,” she replied.
The first thing she needed to be clear about was that when we die we will face judgement. I wondered about using the passage in 2 Thessalonians 1:8-10 but decided that the wording was too aggressive for this lady so we looked up Hebrews 9:27,
“. . . man is destined to die once and after that to face judgement.”
The great attraction of using this verse is that the adjoining verses both talk about Jesus died to “take away the sins of many people.”
I illustrated this by placing a book on my open hand, and explained that this represented my sin, which acts as a barrier between God and myself. My religion, which was illustrated by my fingers actively moving under the book cannot help get rid of the barrier. She seemed to understand this so we went on to talk about sin and to show that no-one is naturally good enough for God. Her claim about ‘not doing anybody any harm’ was both untrue and certainly inadequate. So we looked up Romans 3:11.
“There is no-one righteous, not even one; there is no-one who understands, no-one who seeks God.”
She then agreed that being right with God was never something she had bothered about at all. We also looked up Isaiah 59:2,
“But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden your face from you, so that he will not hear.”
As we talked she began to understand her problem.
“How can I get right with God?” she asked.
Sitting on her bed we talked about the Lord Jesus. We talked about his death on that cross and how he died to take away the consequences of our sin and to enable us to be right with God. We then turned to 1 Peter 2:24.
“He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.”
As we talked it all seemed so clear to her, the Holy Spirit was convicting her of sin and righteousness and judgement in a non-aggressive way. She then said,
“I need to be forgiven by Jesus. Will you pray for me now?”
At this point the nurses sitting at the adjacent nurses station jumped up and pulled the screens round even though they give hardly any privacy. They must have been listening. I prayed thanking God for what he had done for us on the cross, and asking that, just as he had promised, he would put her name in the ‘Book of Life’, forgive her sin and give her his Spirit. She was very grateful. I left her with a list of the verses we had looked up as well as two more on assurance,
“Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” John 1:12
“I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has passed over from death to life.” John 5:24
The Lord gave her great joy that continued. Her husband phoned me up the next morning.
“Are you the doctor who spoke to my wife yesterday?”
“Yes,” I replied rather hesitantly as I didn’t know what was coming.
“We are not a religious family in any way, but I would like to thank you for spending the time with her. She has such peace. Would you mind explaining to me what you said to her?”
He phoned me at home a few days later at the weekend and came for tea. I was interested to see that somehow he had obtained a large unused Gideon Bible, Authorised Version, which had the words, ‘Headmistress’ printed in bold type on the outside. We went over the gospel in a very similar way. He wasn’t ready to commit himself but I gave him a copy of ‘Cure for Life’ and said he could phone at any time.
His wife moved to the local hospice where I visited her on one occasion. She was holding firmly onto her Saviour even though she was sleepier from the drugs. We looked at Romans 8:1 which is another great verse on assurance.
“Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because . . . ”
To make this simpler to understand, I wrote her name on a piece of paper and placed it inside the Bible and said:
“Let this Bible represent the Lord Jesus and this piece of paper with your name on it represent you. Because you are now ‘in Christ’ when you meet God he will not see your sins at all, he will see that you are in Christ and have ‘his righteousness’. Furthermore Jesus is now in heaven and because you are in Christ he will take you to be with him there.”
The nurses told me that she later asked them to read her the whole chapter of Romans 8. About two weeks later I had a phone call from her husband to say that she had just died. Apparently one of the last things she said to her husband was to ask him to become a Christian and made him promise to “go to the doctor’s church”. He did faithfully come and he later attended a Basics course when he also committed himself to Christ.
There is without doubt something in our make-up that makes verses from the Bible come alive and highly pertinent to us. The writer of the book of Hebrews emphasised this,
“For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any two-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” Hebrews 4:12
The sense of truth
This is a fascinating instinct. If we have developed by random chemical processes out of ‘primordial soup’ it is very hard to derive an absolute view of truth. Some existential philosophers now talk of ‘your own truth’, as if truth is purely subjective. I asked a group of hospital consultants how they would define truth. They had a problem answering but then one suggested,
“Truth must be defined as consensus.”
This is clearly inadequate as that would mean that powerful people, such as the Hitlers of this world, could manipulate public opinion and so alter truth. Instinctively most people recognise that there must be an absolute perspective of truth. Medicine is dependent on finding the pathological cause of a problem in order to affect the optimal treatment. In law, the judge’s first task is to determine the truth of propositions.
Plato (428-328 BC) recognised that truth must be related to an abstract ‘ideal’. The natural world we perceive through our senses of seeing, hearing, touching, smelling reveals only a reflection of this Ideal Truth. Today truth can be defined as a concept compatible with what God knows. Consequently in any research we are seeking to discover something about the truth. This usually involves using a dialectical process. In this a theory is proposed, the thesis, which is then tested against an alternative idea, the antithesis and out of this conflict a new thesis comes forwards. It is by this process that we come towards discovering the ‘true truth’ that our instincts tell us is out there.
We are rational beings and consequently any true discoveries cannot be opposed to the truth about why we are on this earth. Galileo had this problem when his discovery of evidence that the sun and not the earth is the centre of the solar system set him on a course that the theologians of that day disapproved of. He said,
“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason and intellect has intended us to forego their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.”3
The search for truth has resulted in many people finding Christ. It is no coincidence that the word ‘truth’ comes fifty times in John’s gospel alone.
Dr Hugh Ross, the eminent astronomer and scientist, was born in Montreal and raised in Vancouver, Canada. His parents were morally upright but non-religious. Their neighbours could also be described as non-religious. He did not know any Christians or serious followers of any other religion whilst growing up.
Though his neighbourhood was poor, its public schools were outstanding and its libraries well equipped. By the age of seven he was reading physics books as fast as he could. By eight he had decided to make astronomy his career. In the next several years his study of the big bang convinced him that the universe had a beginning, and thus a Beginner. But, like the astronomers whose books he had read, he imagined that the Beginner must be distant and non-communicative.
His high school history studies disturbed him, for it was obvious that the peoples of the world tended to take their religions very seriously. Knowing that the European philosophers of the Enlightenment largely discounted religion, his initial response was to study their works. What he discovered, however, were inconsistencies, contradictions, evasions, and circular reasoning.
The obvious next step was to turn to the "holy" books themselves. If God the Creator had spoken through any of these books (and at first he thought He probably had not) his authorship would be obvious: the communication would be perfectly true. He reasoned that if men invent a religion, their teachings will reflect human error. But, if the Creator communicates, His message will be error free and just as consistent as the facts of nature. So, he used the facts of history and science to test each of the "holy" books.
Initially the task was easy. After only a few hours (in some cases less) of reading, he found one or more statements clearly at odds with the facts of history and of science. He also noted a writing style best described as esoteric and mysterious. This seemed inconsistent with the straightforward character of the Creator as implied by the facts of nature. His debunking task was easy until he dusted off a Bible that the Gideons had given him several years earlier as part of their distribution program in the public schools.
He found the Bible noticeably different. It was simple, direct, and specific. He was amazed at the quantity of historical and scientific (i.e., testable) material it included and at the detail of this material. The first page of the Bible caught his attention. Not only did its author correctly describe the major events in the creation of life on earth, but he placed those events in the scientifically correct order and properly identified the earth's initial conditions.
For the next year and a half he spent about an hour a day searching the Bible for scientific and historical inaccuracies. Finally he had to admit that it was error free and that this perfect accuracy could only come from the Creator Himself. He also recognised that the Bible stood alone in describing God and His dealings with man from a perspective that demanded more than just the physical dimensions of length, width, height, and time. Further, he had proven to himself, on the basis of predicted history and science, that the Bible was more reliable than many of the laws of physics. The only rational option was to trust the Bible's authority to the same degree as he trusted the laws of physics.
By this time he clearly understood that Jesus Christ was the Creator of the universe, that He had paid the price that only a sinless person could pay for all of our offenses against God, and that eternal life would be his if he would receive His pardon and give Him His rightful place of authority over a person’s life. He had understood enough Scripture to know, however, that this commitment cannot be a secret one. It has to be public, and that means letting our peers and professors and family know about it, but he feared the contempt and ridicule that surely would come. So, for several months he hesitated.
During those months he experienced a strange sense of confusion. For the first time in his life, his grades dropped and he had difficulty solving problems. He was discovering the meaning of Romans 1:21, which says that when a man rejects what he knows and understands to be true about God, his thinking becomes futile and his mind darkened. The eventual consequences spelled out in the succeeding verses chilled him.
Instinctively he knew what he had to do, but his pride prevented him doing what he knew to be right. However one evening he prayed and asked God to take away his resistance and make him a Christian. He prayed this way for six hours with no apparent answer. Finally, he realised that Jesus Christ will not force Himself upon anyone, even if asked. It was up to us to humble ourselves and invite Him in. And this is what he did at 1:06 in the morning. He then signed his name to the "decision statement" at the back of his Gideon Bible, acknowledging Jesus Christ as his Lord and Saviour.
Right away he sensed an assurance that God would never let him go, that he was His forever. His fears of ridicule from unbelievers subsided gradually, and day by day he began to learn how to share his discoveries about spiritual truth with fellow students and his faculty.
When the apostle John describes his friend, Jesus, he says about him,
“The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” John 1:14
In John’s gospel alone the word ‘truth’ comes fifty times. Jesus is passionate about truth. When describing himself as the way to God he says,
“I am the way and the truth and the life. No-one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6
God demands that we are all searchers after truth. David recognised this after his sordid affair with Bathsheba,
“Surely you desire truth in the inner parts.” Psalm 51:6
Jesus repeatedly talks of the evidence there is for his claims to be divine. Passages such as John 5:31-47, John 8:12-20 and John 10:24-33 make this very clear. The Bible makes it clear that we will be judged by God if we deliberately reject the truth about his son, the Lord Jesus. This is why Jesus can fairly say,
“There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; that very word which I spoke will condemn him at the last day.” John 12:48
The sense and need of purpose
There is much research that demonstrates that those who have a sense of purpose in life tend to live longer. Viktor Frankl suffered in a Nazi concentration camp. He recognised that those who had a purpose in live were much more likely to survive. A recent researcher, Patrick Hill of Carleton University in Canada has confirmed this,
“Our findings point to the fact that finding a direction for life, and setting overarching goals for what you want to achieve, can help you actually live longer, regardless of when you find your purpose. So the earlier someone comes to a direction for life, the earlier these protective effects may be able to occur.”
The instinct that our lives have purpose is ingrained into us. It was this instinct that led me to Christ. I had started as an undergraduate in Cambridge University and was really enjoying myself. I was loving the opportunity to play a lot of tennis, squash and hockey. I was making good friends. But I started to question “What is the point of it all?” This started a search for answers to the meaning of life. I was a slow starter as I did not want to be conned by religious people or ideas. However, I instinctively felt that there were answers out there and I became convinced by the evidence that Jesus was indeed the God-sent solution who could give me a purpose in life that could stand all the tests for validity.
David Hamilton was a member of the Ulster Volunteer Force in Northern Ireland who, in 1978, was eventually jailed for 11 years for a series of bombings and bank robberies. He admitted he initially had little interest in religion, preferring to smoke the pages of the Bible, rather than read them. He said,
'For me being a Protestant was being part of Ulster and nothing to do with religion, I had no interest in Christianity, I thought it must be the most boring life ever. You're not allowed to smoke or drink or chase women or do robberies, it seemed like no life at all. But every cell in prison has a Bible. I liked the Bible because when you've no cigarette papers you can smoke the pages of it. I often tell people I smoked Matthew, Mark, Luke and John before I got converted.'
However, when he was later moved to Belfast Prison he began attending church services and started to believe.
'I began to look at my life and realised that God had spared my life on numerous occasions. Three times I'd been shot and twice I'd been blown up, one was my own bomb explosion. Another time, the IRA tried to shoot me when I was having a meal with my wife in a Chinese restaurant. Two IRA men came in with guns and I managed to escape through the kitchen and they fired two shots, but none hit me.’
'I realised God must be interested in me or he wouldn't have kept me alive.' 4
The need for relevance and a sense that his life had a purpose eventually led him to Christ. The final trigger occurred when he tore a page from the Bible to have a smoke. He glanced at the page and read a verse that he had heard about when he was younger,
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
This verse struck a chord in his conscience and he knew that he had to make a personal commitment to Christ. Straight after becoming a Christian David went out from his cell and told the first person he met, another convict,
“I’ve just become a Christian,” he said.
Immediately a skeptical response was thrown his way.
“Oh yes, and who did Cain marry then?”
David had no problem with this,
“Mrs. Cain, stupid!”
Our sense of the divine
Augustine of Hippo said in one of his prayers,
“The thought of him stirs him (man) so deeply that he cannot be content unless he praises you, because you made us for yourself and our hearts find no peace until they rest in you.”
The philosopher and mathematician, Blaise Pascal, argued that the human experience of emptiness and the yearning for something more is an indication that our essential need is to be fulfilled in something greater - a relationship with the God who made us. He famously quoted in his famous book ‘Pensees,’ published after his death in 1662,
“What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.” 5
Since then, the concept has taken on a life of its own and the phrase "God-shaped hole," has been frequently used.
Kenneth Samples, a Professor of Comparative Religion, has recently written,
“Scripture also reveals that as God’s special creation, individuals surely know, in the core of their being that there is a God to whom they are morally accountable. This inherent and intuitive sense of the divine explains humankind’s deep seated religious and moral impulse.”6
This sense of the divine has been present since the earliest records about mankind. There is evidence that animal sacrifice has been a part of nearly all cultures in history, from the Hebrews, Ancient Greeks and Ancient Romans to the Aztecs and the Yoruba. Sacrifices are mentioned in the holy books of the world’s major ancient religions.
The term ‘sacrifice’ derives from the Latin ‘sacrificium’, which is a combination of the words ‘sacer’, meaning something set apart from the secular or profane for the use of supernatural powers, and facere, meaning “to make.” Our word ‘sacred’ is derived from ‘Sacer’. Sacrifices originally were an attempt to appease God and make the participants holy and acceptable to God.
The first full account of sacrifices appears early in the book of Genesis where the sacrifices of Cain and Abel are described.
“Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil. In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord.. But Abel brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The Lord looked with favour on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favour.” Genesis 4:2-5
The phrase, "In the course of time," is a translation of the Hebrew word ‘yom’ which is usually translated ‘the day’. It suggests that the offering of sacrifices was a regular event and that God had told early man about this practice. This is implied in Genesis 3:21 where it says,
“The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.”
The clothing of skins with which God covered Adam and Eve had to have come from animals that were killed.
Why did the Lord look with favour on Abel's sacrifice and did not look with favour on Cain's offering? An animal sacrifice was certainly more costly to give than a few potatoes and involve a much larger investment of time and resources. It would have been a way of demonstrating how real a person’s faith was. This could suggest that Cain’s devotion to the Lord was only nominal. However there is almost certainly more to it than that. Sacrifices were to indicate the seriousness of sin and a valuable life was needed to appease a holy God who hates disobedience. Abel offered as a sacrifice "the firstborn of his flock" and throughout the Bible the importance of sacrificing an unblemished firstborn male is emphasised. This was probably understood by both Cain and Abel. Clearly an animal sacrifice could not actually take away the sins of humans. These sacrifices were symbolic pictures of passing the responsibility for sin to another who would pay the price. They looked forwards to the one final sacrifice when the Son of God would himself come and give His life so that anyone could be saved if they truly turn to Jesus and so enter God’s kingdom.
Noah offered sacrifices of clean animals on the top of Mount Ararat after the flood (Genesis 8:20). Perhaps this is why the practice of offering sacrifices is seen throughout nearly all peoples. Noah’s sons were Shem, who became the father of all the Semitic peoples, Ham, whose descendants populated Ethiopia, Egypt, Put, and Canaan amongst other areas. The other son was Japheth became father of the Indo-European peoples. All people seem to instinctively know that God is not pleased with the way they live and offer a sacrifice as a substitute for their sin.
A desire for eternal significance
A longing to be significant shows itself in many ways. It drives people to become important and famous but it also is related to our natural fear of death. It is not just that we leave family and friends behind, there is a natural fear about what happens next. The following quote from the Old Testament is true for all peoples. It describes an eternal perspective that God has put into the instincts of all people.
“He has set eternity in the hearts of men.” Ecclesiastes 3:11
The late Stephen Jay Gould who was an atheistic evolutionist, reckoned that humanity ‘must be a quirk of fate”7 and therefore has no real significance. This is one of the most profound differences between the two world views. If we are an ‘accident’, the product of godless chance, then innate feelings about our significance, a purpose and our feelings of right and wrong are completely artificial. But the Bible clearly teaches that we are special and that these instincts are real because we were created specially by God. We are the ‘apple of his eye,’8 and he longs to have a relationship with each of us. This instinct that we are special and loved by God has led many return to faith in their creator, the Lord Jesus.
Nick is a very bright musician who had been brought up in an atheist home. At university, where he studied Chinese and Philosophy, he used to ridicule the Christians. Then something happened that was later to lead to a profound change in his life. He wrote,
“As a final year undergraduate, content in my modern, right-thinking humanist worldview I went to bed. Within a few minutes and still awake I found myself in the presence of God. After just the briefest of meetings the presence receded and I again found myself wide awake but with a worldview that had just been smashed to pieces. Such Damascene conversions, like the Apostle Paul’s in the first century are unusual and deeply personal. Thankfully, only some of us are so antagonistic to Jesus and thick-skinned as to need such an obvious and personal kick up the metaphorical backside. Most Christians come to a living faith through natural means alone: an open mind and the rational appeal of the gospel.
I am not so naïve as to expect anyone to believe my story of the supernatural at face value, or think that it might have happened but not without scientific explanation. After all, it sounds rather absurd in our age does it not to say you met with the living God and that he spoke to you? With many years between then and now even I might be given to question its veracity; except that like an underwater earthquake it started a tsunami wave that is still running and which provides all the evidence I need to know it was for real.
A few days previously I had dominated the conversation amongst a group of friends where I had demolished the existence of God with my ‘proofs’, which were in fact just impressive sounding arguments of logic learned as a Philosophy student. A week later, the same group of friends found me strangely quiet when conversation returned to the subject again. Eventually being challenged to speak, I stated as simply as I could that I had changed my mind. I now knew that God existed although the details were well beyond my grasp. Do not underestimate the courage it takes for such a public admission and to lay yourself open to ridicule and incredulity – my friends who knew me did not as the look on their faces testified.
As for those details, in truth I knew that I had met with the Christian God but did nothing much about this revelation, and a fresh study of the Bible did not feature on my agenda. After having grown up at a time more traditional in its attitudes, and attended a school where we were familiarised with the Bible stories I thought I knew it already. And for a young man in his twenties in the vibrant sexual liberation of the 1970s the moral implications of the Bible would be uncomfortable. The clinching reason for lack of progress was that I had been told to keep looking, and I selfishly interpreted that as an excuse to prevaricate. And so life continued much as before except I now utterly rejected that the universe was the happy chance of blind, irrational forces happening to come together in an inexplicable harmony, and was quick to state it was deliberately crafted by an all-seeing, intelligent designer. Yet somehow I was not part of this.
By the late 1980s I had secured a good City trading job, was married to a wonderful lady with two thoroughly talented and captivating children, home was comfortable and two cars sat on the driveway. Worldly success was mine but inside there was a growing emptiness and disenchantment. What would make my life significant? Life struck me as a meaningless treadmill of days without direction. As colleagues sought solace in drink and outbound pursuits I continued to try and soberly make sense of things. It was now that a seeming coincidence of conversations about God over a couple of months made me angrily tell him to keep off my back, but he had other ideas.
Several years later I was referred to see a surgeon and needed an operation. I was somewhat apprehensive and the surgeon asked me,
“Do you have a faith that helps you at a time like this or aren’t you sure about these things?”
I briefly mentioned how I had been an atheist but had had this strange experience of God whilst a student, but that I was still unclear. He then simply said,
“Perhaps this will be an opportunity to think these things through.”
The operation went well and I got on well with the surgeon. However as he was discharging me he said,
“Would you like to come and join a small group of us who meet to read the Bible each week in my home?
Three weeks later I found myself quite unaccountably and inexplicably in a Bible study at the home of a Christian. Those there were people like me with lots of questions, some with impressive academic qualifications and positions of responsibility in their careers. Here was the opportunity to consider Jesus and his claim to be the God whom I had met. I found myself intellectually intrigued, but also challenged because the evidence in favour of Jesus being for real quickly overtook those against. Even the clever words of Richard Dawkins and his ilk could not prevail here.
At heart, the Christian truth is profoundly simple in that it starts and ends with a person, - Jesus. But the depths of this truth will keep the human mind occupied for a lifetime. When he says, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life’, he is saying he is the defining point of all things. He is the prime mover of the physical universe and all it contains and he is the only true premise of all rational argument about the reality of our lives. Like a visual illusion when you finally see it, the Christian gospel is so obviously right and true in every respect, describing the world and my life as it really is. Without Christ, the world remains an illusion and nothing that happens makes any sense or has any intrinsic value. No wonder that our young people, raised in a godless time, are so nihilistic.
Remember I was an affirmed atheist, but it is now my conviction that other atheists and humanists would come to say the same if they only stopped to let the Christ of the Bible speak to them too and to weigh the evidence with the same scale and measure they use for other matters. It is ironic that in order to deny God the atheist knows exactly who God is that is denied, and nurtures an irrational inner anger towards him when the object of their anger is supposed not to exist!. Furthermore the atheist always speaks with precious little knowledge or understanding of the Bible and its doctrine and so gives away an ignorance as blind as those beloved memes and forces of chaos. At last I now have an eternal significance”
The Necessity of Clear Thinking
Our instincts about eternity can help introduce us to Christ but the relationship will only grow as we learn more about him. Jesus warned people to think through what commitment to him entails and determine the cost of following him.
“Anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? Luke 14:27-28
We are emotional beings, but to have our lives controlled by our emotions and not our minds is a disaster. Our emotions alone would lead us to seek whatever satisfies our whims in the short term instead of doing what is right. David understood clearly that we have emotional hearts and logical minds – both must be under the authority of God’s will which is revealed in His Word.
“Test me, O Lord, and try me, examine my heart and my mind; for your love is ever before me, and I walk continually in your truth.” Psalm 26:2-3
The Lord told Jeremiah that both our wills and our thinking will be judged by God.
“I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind.” Jeremiah 17:10
Jesus himself, when summarising what the duty of man is, said,
“’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind,’ and ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’” Luke 10:27
Jesus is basing this response on the Shema of the Jewish Law part of which says,
“Love the Lord you God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” Deuteronomy 6:5
It is surely significant that the Lord Jesus clarifies where our true strength lies – in our thinking.
In the New Testament there are repeated reminders to think clearly. Naturally our corrupted minds are biased and selfish.
“Since they did not think it worth while to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind.” Romans 1:28
This is very profound. It is saying that the foundation for clear thinking is the acknowledgment that God is the root of everything. This applies to our understanding of science as well as morality.
The importance of this foundation of our mind-set is again emphasised later in the book of Romans.
“Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace; the sinful mind is hostile to God.” Romans 8:5-7
The person who has not bent their knee to the Lord will think very differently to the person who has committed themselves to God. Christians have a new perspective- we look forwards to being with our Lord in heaven.
“Their mind is on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven.” Philippians 3:19-20
One of the great challenges of life is to train ourselves to think as God thinks. There is an unspiritual mind (Colossians 2:18) even amongst those who claim to be Christians. God’s people should have different ambitions and are to think very differently to those who are strangers to God,
“Since then you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.” Colossians 3:1-3
“Have this mind in you that was in Christ Jesus . . .” Philippians 2:5 (NKJV)
The Difference between Emotions, Emotionalism and Instincts
A Christian festival in England was held in a massive hall. It began with loud rock music that almost immediately the audience became heavily involved with. They stood, clapped in time with the very rhythmic music and many shut their eyes and lifted their hands in praise and swayed in time with the loud drums. It was just like a pop festival with a Christian agenda. The ‘worship leader’ used very emotional language, encouraging the audience to ‘tune into God’. People were encouraged to dance. This very energetic rhythmic session lasted nearly three quarters of an hour. Then there was a speaker who was also very lively and humorous. He told some stories about how God had changed some people’s lives and then asked the audience if they would like to have a similar experience of the power of God in their lives and if they did to ask God into their lives. A good number of people went forwards.
This was an extreme example of the use of psychological techniques to soften up an audience. Rhythmic dancing with loud music has been used by many groups as a means of brain washing. This is an example of emotionalism.
After an evangelistic service in a church the minister asked everybody to close their eyes and pray about their relationship with God. He then asked that those who wanted to ask Jesus into their lives to put their hand up whilst the rest prayed. However someone at the back kept their eyes open! No-one put their hands up. After a while the minister started to say,
‘Thank you.’
‘God bless you’
“Thank you’
The minister continued to be make such comments even though no hands went up. He was milking the crowd by giving the impression that many were turning to Christ. People always find it easier to follow a crowd.
We had a youth evangelist lead a children’s mission in our town The marquee was packed with children who were mainly between 5 and 11. At the end of the week the evangelist asked those children who wanted to follow Jesus to stand up. At first one or two stood. The evangelist continued speaking and more stood. After a few minutes had passed all the children in the marquee was standing. This was another emotional trick used to manipulate listeners.
Such dishonest emotional tricks may manipulate people but they are not the way that Jesus or his apostles behaved. They did have open air sermons which were very challenging. They did ask for decisions but it was clear that to do so was costly. Peter gave his first sermon at Pentecost in the open air in Jerusalem and three thousand made commitments to Christ. This sermon was just seven weeks after the execution of Jesus at the instigation of the Jewish authorities. In this sermon their instincts of justice and fairness were challenged as the facts about Jesus were presented. There can be no doubt that the authorities and their spies would have taken note of who was involved and who went forwards for baptism. It would have been a very emotional time but the decisions made we based on evidence.
After making this decision that they would turn back to God and His Son, the Lord Jesus, the new Christians demonstrated their new mind-set by attending Bible classes everyday in the temple. The new Spirit in them caused them to want to know more about the bible and what the Christ taught.
Sometimes emotions distort people's thinking, so they do things that are not right. Emotions can be confusing, uncertain, even dangerous if acted on without thinking clearly.
We do have God-given instincts that can help people to face up to the need to open the door to God’s influence. It is right and proper to appeal to these instincts, they are one way that the Lord wakes us up to reality. But they are only a door to reality which must be clearly understood by exercising the mind. To remain a ‘feelings-led’ Christian is to remain very immature and indifferent to the eternal truths God has given us in his word. We must not be mindless Christians. When Jesus appeared to his disciples in the upper room they were startled and frightened. But Jesus moved on from this experience to feed their minds.
“This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms. Then he opened their minds so that they could understand the Scriptures.” Luke 24:45
Is this not the key? An interest in having a relationship with God usually involves one of our instincts and may well be associated with an emotional feeling. We should encourage people to progress to thinking as God thinks, by using our minds to understand the Word of God. Without this progression to having the mind of Christ, people will inevitably fall away as other experiences are thrown their way. It is significant that the long term results of the Billy Graham campaigns, which were some of the best evangelistic missions, has shown that only about 4% of those who ‘go forward’ keep living for Christ for the rest of their lives. We must all move on from basic instincts to having the mind of Christ.
BVP
1 Ullrich Wagnes, Karim N’Diaye, Thomas Ethofer, Patrick Vuilleumier, ‘Guilt-Specific Processing in the Prefrontal Cortex, Cereb Cortex (1022)21 (11): 2461-2470
2 This account was taken from a talk by Don Carson to the Christian Medical Fellowship annual student conference in February 2003
3 Galileo, letter to the Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany Galileo, 1615
4 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1293033/Former-Ulster-fighter-David-Hamilton-abandons-life-violence-finding-God.html#ixzz4a6dHBaOh
5 Blaise Pascal, Pensées VII(425)
6 Kenneth R Samples, ‘God among Sages’, BakerBooks, Grand Rapids, 2017 p.214
7 Stephen Jay Gould, Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History (New York, Norton 1989) p.291
8 Psalm 17:8, Zechariah 2:8, Deuteronomy 32:10
