I DON'T believe in God. To avoid any misunderstanding, this is merely a statement of fact. It is not, as sometimes is the case with non-believers, to infer that I inhabit a higher intellectual plane than believers. I have known too many very intelligent people with a profound belief in God ever to kid myself that religious belief is a mark of inferiority, writes DAVID ADAMS
If anything, I actually quite envy those who can believe in God. In fact, I have sometimes suspected a deficiency on my part in that regard. Throughout my childhood and into early adolescence, I occasionally made a real effort to accept as true all that was being claimed at church services and Sunday school, but could never manage it. This despite almost everyone else around me appearing not to have the same difficulty.
I do, however, believe in Jesus, although I should qualify that too. I can’t go along with the idea that he performed miracles or, as I’ve already made clear, what he had to say about God, or heaven and hell. I take a different position on eternal life. In my view, when you die, that is the end of it. All that can be said to survive of anyone after death are the genes that may be passed down through succeeding generations. However, leaving aside those few quibbles, I believe totally in the values that Jesus espoused. That is not to say I have ever succeeded in living up to them, but neither have I been under any illusion about how far short I have fallen of an ideal. In other words, I have always known the difference between “right” and “wrong”. I hold a concept of right and wrong that derives entirely from the teachings of and examples set by Jesus, and was passed down to me by my family, my church and, crucially, by the society to which I belong.
What Jesus had to say about how we should conduct ourselves and how we should treat others is in essence what we nowadays think of as civilised behaviour. It follows that if a society is to be deemed worthy of being called civilised, it must be underpinned by his values. Such a society does not have to acknowledge, or even realise, that its highest standards stem from the teachings of Jesus, or be Christian in any sense of that term: it is enough that it holds them.
Whether or not we communally, or as individuals, can always adhere to the values set by Jesus does not alter the fact that they are the benchmarks by which we judge every aspect of human behaviour: they are what we try to live up to. That we often stray far from basic Christian teaching is not a reflection on his standards, but a failure on our part, an indicator of human weakness. Self-evidently, it is possible to be a “good” person and not believe in God. However, it is not possible to be a good person without trying to live, however unconsciously, by the principles passed down to us by Jesus Christ. Let’s not kid ourselves that civilised behaviour comes naturally to us. It doesn’t: it has to be learned, and it has to be constantly policed. As any parent will testify, a young child must be taught not to go with its instincts: not to steal, lie and bully. There is a constant battle raging within all of us – or there should be – between what we know to be right, as laid down by Jesus, and where human nature would lead us. Most of what Jesus taught us runs completely counter to our natural instincts.
Kindness, tolerance, compassion, forgiveness, concern for others, protection of the weak, fairness, understanding, non-violence, and so on: Jesus not only talked of these things, he lived his life by them, and sacrificed himself rather than deviate from them. Before Jesus, strength and weakness were in effect the sole determinants of right and wrong. After him, we gradually began to move towards becoming civilised. Far more than our heightened intelligence, what we have learnt from him sets us apart from every other species.
When one looks around the world today, the sense is not just of humanity being far removed from the gospel of Jesus (this has, to varying degrees, always been the case), but of something much worse. It is as though we, in our arrogance, have determined that we no longer need his blueprint for humanity. It is as though we have decided we can forget about him and everything that he taught us – as if we are now advanced enough to dismantle it all and set new standards for ourselves. As we gallop forward at speed, sometimes one has a sense of us actually galloping backwards.
Jesus is without question the greatest person ever to have walked this Earth. His legacy is monumental beyond description.
We should never stop celebrating his birth, or ever forget precisely why we are celebrating it. If we do, it is at our peril.
Merry Christmas.