Category: Social Teaching

In Defence of Shabana Mahmood

Shabana Mahmood is, like Wes Streeting, a politician of courage, integrity and ability. She thinks deeply, engages wisely, and acts bravely. We need more men and women of faith like them engaged in debates like this if we are to think and act well particularly in matters of life and death.

The Justice Secretary, Shabana Mahmood is a Muslim. Her thinking about issues is therefore inevitably shaped by her faith. This means she should not express any opinions about public policy where there is a risk her faith has influenced her.

So runs the argument given voice in Sunday’s papers by Charlie Falconer, the former Lord Chancellor and vocal proponent of assisted dying. I describe it as an argument. This does not quite reflect Lord Falconer’s almost total failure to explain why Mahmood’s perspective is invalidated by having been influenced by her Islam. It is just assumed that it does.

This is wrong but typical. In the rest of this post I want to explain why arguments articulated on the basis of religious reflection are not only valid and helpful when making public policy but are among the best reasons to do or not do something.

  1. Religious reasons are deep and broad

First, reasons formulated upon the basis of a Christian, Islamic or Judaic faith (to pick the three faiths most influential in the UK) are both deep and broad. Where they overlap with one another they are exceptionally so. What I mean by this is that they are founded on millennia of reflection and reasoning about the most profound realities human beings face. In that sense they are deep.

Public policy issues such as assisted suicide, abortion, poverty relief, war and so on raise profound questions about who human beings are, the nature of their responsibility to one another, to posterity, to a Creator (if there is one). They rely on philosophical questions about the nature of compassion, coercion, consent, dignity, healing and care. Throughout human history almost all the reflection upon these issues has been done by and within faith traditions. To say that one’s views are informed by one’s faith is to say one stands in the line of deep, wise, rich and tested reasoning about the most profound realities.

More than this, where there is agreement between the Roman Catholic, Protestant and Islamic faiths (as in the case of assisted dying), one is struck by the breadth of the wisdom they embody. Together those faiths represent over 2/3 of the global populations. Crowds can, of course, be wrong. But if these faiths embody the wisdom of billions over millennia they are surely at least relevant to public policy questions.

Viewed from this perspective, not only are Mahmood’s religiously informed reasons valid one would have to be mad to disqualify them. Their wisdom is certainly more persuasive and relevant than poorly articulated conceptions of personal autonomy and healthcare economics.

2. Religious Reasons are Inevitable

Second, Lord Falconer’s implicit argument seems to imagine that there are reasons grounded in solid contemporary ethics and informed by (in his case) the Labour movement that are not religiously influenced. This is simply not true.

Falconer’s Labour movement, the values of personal autonomy, compassion and so forth that he supports, all arose in the context of a distinctively Judeo-Christian culture. Tom Holland has demonstrated at length how the values that we take for granted as progressive Westerners reflect deeply Christian convictions about the world and our place within it. This is particularly so for social-justice movements such as the Labour party. That is why Harold Wilson is reputed to have claimed that the Labour Party ‘owed more to Methodism than to Marx.’ In that sense Falconer knows neither his movement nor himself since both are a product or religiously grounded reasons.

The truth is that religious reasons are inescapable. Religious reflection built our society. The deepest intuitions we have are formed by convictions about the value of the individual, the dignity of life (and death), and a myriad other issues that are historically and philosophically contingent upon religious beliefs. All Mahmood is doing is reflecting that reality honestly.

3. Religious reasons are not coercive

Lord Falconer also suggests that for Mahmood to make arguments grounded in spiritual reflection is to impose her religious beliefs on everyone. This is both risible and offensive.

Mahmood is not seeking to coerce anyone to follow Islam. She is arguing about the law on assisted dying should be. If she succeeds (and I pray she does) there will be no more Muslims in England next Sunday than there are this. She is doing exactly what Lord Falconer is doing: making an argument that other people can agree with or not. Moreover, his intervention suggests she is doing so rather better than he is.

If secularists think religiously or spiritually informed reasons for doing or not doing something are wrong, they should explain why. Simply saying they are not admissible displays both fear and arrogance. Either Lord Falconer does not feel able to explain why Muslim, Christian or Jewish perspectives on the sanctity of life and the proper role of compassion are wrong, or (worse) he feels he should not have to do so because they are intrinsically invalid because those who hold them are not thinking hard enough or are not among the permitted class of decision makers. To be blunt, he will only allow a Muslim (or a Catholic) to participate in dialogue if they are willing first to disavow the wisdom and experience of their people. I suspect in this case that both are at play. The first is foolish, the second offensive.

Shabana Mahmood is, like Wes Streeting, a politician of courage, integrity and ability. She thinks deeply, engages wisely, and acts bravely. We need more men and women of faith like them engaged in debates like this if we are to think and act well particularly in matters of life and death.

5 Non-Religious Reasons to Oppose Euthanasia

In previous posts I have explained why Christian Social Teaching has always opposed something like euthanasia. In light of the Bill being presented to Parliament, however, here are five reasons to oppose it that are not founded upon spiritual convictions.

In previous posts I have explained why Christian Social Teaching has always opposed something like euthanasia. In light of the Bill being presented to Parliament, however, here are five reasons to oppose it that are not founded upon spiritual convictions.

Before proceeding further, I generally avoid all public political controversy. As a pastor my job is not to take sides between different political parties. In this case, however, the issue is recognised as one of conscience and not political allegiance. Moreover, given how many could die as a result of this Bill, I strongly urge people to do all they can to resist its implementation.

This is the content of my own letter to my MP. You can write to your MP by following this link.

Dear [MP],

I write concerning the Assisted Suicide Bill due to be before the House of Commons later this week. For the following reasons I urge you in the strongest possible terms to vote against this bill in any form:

  1. It places the aged, ill or vulnerable in an impossible and damaging position.
  2. All experience of euthanasia from elsewhere in the world demonstrates that the proposed safeguards and limitations rapidly come under pressure and are revised, almost inevitably to widen the scope of euthanasia.
  3. It fundamentally changes the nature of healthcare provision for all and, in particular, the relationship between a doctor and patient.
  4. It undermines the provision and funding of proper social care and particularly end-of-life care.
  5. Terminating the lives of the vulnerable, sick and elderly is intrinsically unethical, attacks the assumptions that have underpinned social care and the welfare state, and will have repercussions for the rest of society.

I briefly elaborate on each of these reasons below.

The Burden on the Vulnerable

The introduction of euthanasia for patients places an intolerable burden on them precisely at the point at which they are most in need of care and protection. The elderly and vulnerable often feel an acute sense of guilt or shame at the burden they perceive their care or situation to be placing on others. The pressure, intended or otherwise, to take a step to end their lives not because they truly want to but because they think it better for everyone else will be inevitable and powerful.

This is not a fanciful suggestion. Following the introduction of similar legislation in Oregon, 50% of people opting to end their lives cited the perceived burden upon others as a reason for their choice.[1] This is a terrible and invidious position for us to place those individuals in. Moreover, this position will be widely known and recognised. The physicians responsible for ending the patient’s life will therefore know that there is, in all likelihood, a 50% chance that they are doing it because they feel that they should in order to decrease the burden on others and not because they wish to end their own suffering.

Any lawyer can relate cases in which elderly people are placed either directly, or indirectly, under pressure to make transactions that are disadvantageous to themselves because they feel that it would lessen the burden on others or feel an inappropriate duty to do so. We have developed large legal frameworks to try and protect them precisely because we recognise that someone in that position is vulnerable to feeling under pressure to make such decisions even if that is not the intention of anyone else involved. Property transactions are reversible and the individual involved can be protected, to some extent at least, retrospectively. Euthanasia cannot be reversed. It is final. If even one person were to die because they felt under undue pressure to do so s then this Bill would be a disaster. In reality that situation cannot be avoided and the Bill should not pass.

Expanding Terms of Reference

Experiments with euthanasia in other comparable countries have shown that its safeguards and terms of reference are often rapidly and dramatically revised so as to expand the  scenarios in which it is available. For example:

  • In Oregon, the model proposed for the UK, the law was reinterpreted to apply to individuals who would otherwise live with medical treatment.[2] This includes illnesses such as diabetes.
  • In Canada euthanasia has been offered to people as an alternative to a new wheelchair ramp,[3] for those seeking help to live independently at home,[4] and even for otherwise healthy people suffering with depression or suicidal thoughts.[5]

Noone envisaged this being the situation when Oregon or Canada introduced euthanasia. This was not part of the intended outcome. But once euthanasia has been introduced as an acceptable method of treating certain conditions the pressure to expand its use to other situations has proved irresistible. There is no reason at all to believe that in some way the UK would prove to be different from others who have followed this path.

Change in the Nature of Healthcare Provision

The fundamental settlement that underpins healthcare provision in the modern West is the principle that doctors seek to heal their patients. The patients, by contrast, agree to submit to practices that in other situations would be intolerable (being cut open, ingesting unknown substances etc) because they know that the doctor will always act to promote their physical good. Euthanasia fundamentally undermines this relationship by introducing a layer of ambiguity into it. 

It is perfectly possible to imagine a scenario in which a particularly sick or depressed individual is not honest with his doctor for fear of the conversation it would open up. Or that it would change the nature of consultations to know that in some circumstances the person prescribing your medication would also administer drugs intending to kill you.

Moreover, the impact on medical professionals would be incalculable. They would be required intentionally to terminate their patients’ lives, the exact opposite of the calling they initially undertook. It radically alters the nature of the doctor’s profession and will inevitably have profound impacts on the mental, spiritual and moral wellbeing of those involved. I have not seen any long-term studies done of the impact of altering policy on those responsible for carrying it out. How can it be right to put medical professionals in this position without any sense of how it will impact them?

It is grossly irresponsible to proceed with a Bill that could have these profound consequences.

Undermining the Provision of Palliative and Social Care

The proposed reforms would undermine the provision of end-of-life care and social care. As the Health Secretary has noted,[6] end-of-life care and social care are already badly underfunded and poorly managed. The effect of this is that many of those involved would feel a pressure to euthanasia because of the sense of burden they might be to a system already under pressure and because the care they are receiving is not itself of a high enough quality. Such a situation would be unacceptable.

We saw an example of individuals making the decision to sacrifice themselves because they felt a pressure to do so in order to reduce the burden upon healthcare systems during COVID. It has been well documented that many, including many with signs of early-stage cancer, refused to go to hospital or to GPs because of the sense that the services were under strain and it was their duty not to go. It is at least possible, if not likely, that many would feel the same given the state of end-of-life care and the well documented pressures it places on the healthcare system’s resources.

Moreover, the provision of a relatively cheap alternative to end-of-life care will almost inevitably become attractive if not for the individuals involved then for the culture implicit in the systems themselves. This is not to say that any particular person would choose to push people towards euthanasia instead of offering them expensive palliative or other care. It is, however, likely that that pressure would begin to be felt simply because of the financial and other factors implicit in the system.

Finally, on this point, the presence of euthanasia as a relatively inexpensive alternative to properly funded and reformed end-of-life care would significantly weaken the position of those arguing for that funding and reform.

Long Term Consequences for Society

Finally, euthanasia will have long-term and as yet unexplored consequences for society as a whole. Modern British society is founded upon an intuition that all lives are valuable and are worth preserving. That is why we have policies of redistributive taxation, welfare provision, and healthcare for all. There is a fundamental understanding that all people are worth caring for, even at our expense.

Euthanasia damages this understanding in the most fundamental way. It is founded upon a noble desire to help those who are suffering. Yet it does so by ending those lives we would otherwise consider priceless. It introduces the idea that at a certain point it is better off if someone’s life does not continue and that we have the right to end it. Such a position attacks the principles that underpin the rest of the society we have built. 

Viewed in this light the developments in Oregon and Canada are unsurprising. Once we have conceded that it is legitimate to end life in some circumstances, that assisted suicide is a proper tool for public policy, then why not deploy it in other situations. Almost inevitably the consequences of this shift will not be felt uniformly. They will be experienced most harshly by those from minorities, the poor and the vulnerable; changes like this always are.

For all of these reasons I strongly urge you not to support this Bill.

I am, of course, happy to talk about any of the issues raised in this letter.

Rev. Phil Fellows,Hersham Baptist Church, 
80 Vaux Crescent, Hersham, Surrey, KT124HD

[1] Oregon Health Authority, Public Health Division, Center for Health Statistics (2021) Death with Dignity Act, 2020 Data Summary, p12. See https://www.oregon.gov/oha/PH/PROVIDERPARTNERRESOURCES/EVALUATIONRESEARCH/DEATHWITHDIGNITYACT/Documents/year23.pdf

Accessed 19 Jan 2023.

[2] https://www.carenotkilling.org.uk/articles/six-months-redefined/

[3] https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/paralympian-trying-to-get-wheelchair-ramp-says-veterans-affairs-employee-offered-her-assisted-dying-1.6179325

[4] https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/chronically-ill-man-releases-audio-of-hospital-staff-offering-assisted-death-1.4038841

[5] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/vancouver-hospital-canada-assisted-suicide-maid-b2390914.html

[6] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/09/07/end-of-life-care-assisted-dying-health-secretary-streeting/

The Dignity of Life

All human life is sacred, given by God and should be cherished and protected.

All human life is sacred, given by God and should be cherished and protected.

This week I want to think about one of the most pressing, important and sensitive issues we can: the dignity, value and sanctity of human life.

Before I write another word, I want to acknowledge that this topic may bring up painful memories, experiences or ideas. In a blog I cannot possibly do justice to the pastoral or emotional issues that arise when we consider abortion, euthanasia, war, or any related issue. For that reason I want to ask for your patience and forgiveness for when I misstep or write clumsily. Above all, however, we must always remember that while it is vital that we speak and think with clarity and courage on these issues, Jesus came not to condemn but to restore and that there is always grace and forgiveness available to us in him.

[If you’re interested in some Bible passages that relate to these ideas, you can find them here]

  1. The Central Importance of Life

There is no more important issue in all human ethics – all moral questions – than the dignity and value of human life. It shapes and affects everything. Your view of this question changes your answer to every other question.

Christians make several startling claims about the value of human life that change the nature of every other discussion profoundly.

We believe that human beings, both male and female, are created in the image of God. Pause there. That is the ethical point being made in the story of Eve being created from Adam; not that she is inferior to him or an afterthought. Rather that she is inseparable from him. Men and women together equally share in God’s image and his dignity.

We believe that every human being is, in the words of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, ‘unique and unrepeatable’. You matter as an individual. You are not a lego brick, interchangeable with a million others, whose only purpose is to make a bigger model. You are unique. God saw you in your mother’s womb, before you were born. He chose you. 

As Benedict XVI beautifully put it, while evolutionary theory may picture how God took the stuff of this world and shaped it into people, nevertheless ‘we are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary.’

We believe, therefore, that every human being has an inherent dignity and worth that does not depend upon others. Every life matters whether other people love it and cherish it or not. It is inherently worthy because every individual is known to God and loved by him. Every person is, to quote the Psalmist, ‘fearfully and wonderfully made’.

This means that a person’s value, dignity or worth does not increase or decrease as they age. It does not depend upon race or social class, upon intellectual ability or usefulness to a society. It does not diminish upon injury or disability.

This is one of the major problems Christianity has with ideologies or belief systems that make the individual’s worth and dignity contingent on their value to the rest of society. Communism, Fascism and other forms of totalitarianism are offences against the idea of the dignity and worth of the individual created in the image of God and of infinite value to him.

It is also one of the major problems with seeing people as a bundle of characteristics, each of which increase or decrease their significance. You are not worth more, you do not have greater dignity, if you are black or white, male or female, attracted to men or women. That kind of thinking leads inevitably and inexorably to the oppression of groups and divisions between people. 

All human lives are possessed of God-given value and rights from the moment they are conceived – when God knits them together in their mother’s womb and begins to plan the adventures he has for them – until the moment they die.

We do not, we dare not, violate that dignity in others or in ourselves. To do so is a crime against the person and, most profoundly, against the Creator whose image they bear.

All human life is sacred, given by God and should be cherished and protected.

  1. Ethical Implications

What then does this mean for our moral lives?

It means that to be a Christian is always to be pro-life. 

I am going to explain what I mean by that in a moment. Of course it is nuanced. But it is not negotiable.

The witness of the Christian church from its beginning today, in almost all places and at all times, is that to follow Christ means to be for life. 

That is why Jesus came for us. He came in order that we might have life, and life to the full, life that extends to the ends of the earth, to the depths of hell, and beyond the limits of time.

To be a Christian is to be pro-life because Jesus is radically pro-life.

This has implications that are uncomfortable to talk about in polite British society.

Because Christians believe in the dignity and value of every life, irrespective of age or gender or race or class, we should work to reduce and then eliminate abortion and oppose euthanasia.

Human dignity and worth do not start at a low level, increase until a point of maximal productivity in mid-life and then decline as we get older. Putting it as baldly as this might sound odd. But that is functionally how much contemporary ethical dialogue proceeds. It is common to come across the sentiment that the very young are inconvenient, unnecessary and it would be better all around if they weren’t born at all and there were fewer people. Or that the views of the old should be given less weight and less priority because they in some sense count for less than those of the young.

The creeds begin their narrative of Jesus’ life by recording that he was ‘conceived of the Holy Spirit’. The gospels speak of how John the Baptist leaped in his mother’s womb in celebration of the presence of Christ. That is a reflection of one of the great joys of expecting a baby – to feel him or her move while still within the womb.

Abortion is a direct attack on the weakest human lives. Intentionally ending the life of an unborn human being represents a rejection of the dignity and value of those seen only by God, loved by him, and yet treated as disposable by others.

Now I will concede immediately that these are profoundly painful issues and if anyone is struggling with this, I am happy to listen, to pray and, if needed, to extend God’s forgiveness. 

But we have to confront this painful reality. 

More than seventy million abortions occur throughout the world each year, significantly more than the whole population of the UK.

Every. Year.

This is almost as far from God’s desire and plan for us as it is possible to get.

We will think about the broader questions in a moment. But being pro-life does not mean only that we work for the elimination of abortion.

It means opposing the intentional taking of life in other situations.

Euthanasia is not compatible with Christianity. We do not have the right to take another’s life from them. Nor do we have the right to take our own lives.

Suicide, whether assisted by others or not, is a subject of extraordinary pain. Who truly knows the anguish and illness that afflicts someone who would take their own life, except God himself. 

We address these issues not to condemn those on whom we pray God has mercy and compassion but to protect and care for those who are in pain now.

I can offer many pragmatic arguments against assisted suicide from my time as a lawyer, times when I have seen people take major decisions because of perceived pressure or depression about their worth to others. We protect them against the effects of those decisions because we recognise that they are not thinking clearly. 

Or the fact that the vast majority of those who attempt suicide and survive (between 90 and 95%) do not end up killing themselves. To quote the New England Journal of Medicine, this suggests that ‘many suicidal crises… including attempts that were expected to be lethal’ are actually of a ‘temporary nature and fleeting’. In other words, the evidence we have suggests that the majority of people who try to kill themselves regret it and, if they survive the attempt, do not try again.1

The idea of a settled suicidal wish, for the vast majority of cases, is just not true. And it is a profound and awful tragedy when, instead of working to make that person’s life better, society colludes in ending it.

Yet these are not the most basic arguments. Most fundamentally, euthanasia is wrong because this is a person made in God’s image and neither we nor they have the right to end their life.

All human life is sacred, given by God and should be cherished and protected.

We could go on to talk of other examples of affronts to human dignity such as war, capital punishment, poverty, discrimination and so on. We will return to these ideas later in this series.

  1. Putting It Into Practice

What should we do about this? How should it affect the way we behave?

As Voters

As voters, there is realistically no mainstream option among political parties for those who want to work to eliminate abortion.

However, we can campaign on and ask candidates for their plans to reduce the conditions that make abortions attractive.

In the UK, this takes the form of policies such as removing the limit on child benefit, to build more homes, to increase access to adoption services. Each of these might have a measurable effect on the demand for abortion.

We can write to MPs and campaign on the issue of Euthanasia when it comes up. The same applies if the nation is being taken into an unjust war.

As a Church

As a church we should continue to promote a culture that embraces life. That means being clear that caring for the elderly is a priority for us, within our church community and beyond.

It means welcoming children and supporting families with babies. This means going beyond Sundays to the work that we do with midwives, health-care visitors, toddler groups and so on. 

As Individuals

As individuals, the most important thing we can do is to pray.

Beyond that, however, let us challenge ourselves: do we see all people as created in the image and likeness of God? Do my actions and interactions with others reflect this belief?

What about the people who bother us at work, at home, or at school? Do we care for them as made in God’s image? 

All human life is sacred, given by God and should be cherished and protected.

  1. Matthew Miller and David Hemenway, ‘Guns and Suicide in the United States’, N Engl J Med 359.10 (2008) < https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp0805923#:~:text=The%20temporary%20nature%20and%20fleeting,on%20to%20die%20by%20suicide. > ↩︎

God is Love

God is love. He gives love to us. We give it away to others. 
A guest post from the inestimable Heather Fellows.

Here’s a guest post from the inestimable Heather Fellows.

God is love.  He gives love to us.  We give it away to others.   

I want to share some of the ideas I was meditating on when I went away on my retreat a few weeks ago. I have drawn particularly on Pope Benedict XVI’s first encyclical, God is Love. You can find a copy for free online if you want to read it.

Introduction

Christianity has been transforming societies across the world for the past 2,000 years. The positive impact of the Church cannot be overstated: guided by the teachings of Jesus, Christianity has touched virtually every part of life. Over the centuries, the Church has founded schools, hospitals and orphanages. Christians have campaigned for prison reform, better housing and an end to the slave trade; they have helped to establish a huge number of charities to support the poor, the underprivileged, prisoners and their families, the homeless and those seeking justice. Churches run marriage courses, thousands of parent-and-toddler groups and provide support for the bereaved. The people of this church make sacrifices day in and day out for the good of others. 

Research in the UK in 2015 for the Cinnamon Network calculated that the time given by churches and faith groups to their communities through social action was worth more than £3bn a year.[1]  I imagine that figure is much higher now, if only through inflation.

And that is staggering, isn’t it?  So, what has, and what continues to motivate the Church to reach out in these kinds of ways day after day, century after century? 

Love. 

Love is at the heart of it all.  Jesus says that God is, Himself, love.  He defines what love is.  And Jesus ultimately demonstrated what this love looks like by laying down his life for us on the cross. 

Today I want to spend a little time dwelling on the love of God.  What does it mean to us and for us? And what is its impact upon us?

I’m not going to quote long bits of the Bible here. But if you want to dig into where this comes from, you can look at 1 John 4: 7-16 and Mark 12: 28-31.

God is Love

When looking at the subject of love, we must begin with God himself.  Only after that can we begin to think about what love means for us. 

What does it mean to say that God loves us?

We love, John tells us, because God first loved us.  God is the source of love.

We all need to be loved.  We know that if a child is deprived of love when they are an infant, it has huge implications for their life.  It leads to attachment problems, anxiety, insecurity and many other things. 

So perhaps it should come as no surprise to us that the Bible and especially the New Testament, is laced with references to love.  We need it like we need air to breath and water to drink and food to eat.  And so God, in his great mercy, came down to earth, to meet our greatest need. 

This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 

Our sin separated us from God and this was a big problem.  From that point on mankind has been restless.

I think we can sense that in the world around us, can’t we?  People are always seeking and searching for something and yet there is a sense that it is always slightly out of reach.  And God’s answer to the problem is love. 

Love looks like God himself taking the form of a man and coming to the earth to live and die in our place, bearing the weight of our sin upon his shoulders and paying the price we can never pay, so that we might be united in love with him.

God loves man with a personal, elective love.  He chooses Israel and loves her, but precisely with a view to healing the whole human race.  God gives her the Torah, the Law, opening Israel’s eyes to man’s true nature, his sin, and showing her the path leading to true life.  And man, through a life of fidelity to the one God, comes to experience himself loved by God, and discovers joy and truth and righteousness – a joy in God that becomes his essential happiness:

“Who do I have in heaven but you?  And there is nothing upon earth that I desire besides you…for me it is good to be near God” (Psalm 73).  

How beautifully the Psalmist captures the heart of one who has come to know something of the depths of God’s love.  There is nothing that matters more.

Our society is obsessed with love, but there is something distinct, something unique about God’s love.  If you know your Greek, you might know that the most commonly used word for love in the New Testament is agape.  This is the kind of love demonstrated by Jesus.  It is a kind of love whose concern is not primarily for oneself, but for the other.  The kind of love we often seek is more of an eros love.  This kind of love is a desperate, and hungry longing that desires to be filled for its own sake.  It says, I need something and you can give it to me.  But what God does is to intervene in man’s search for love in order to purify and perfect it.  He unites our eros desire with his agape selfless love and creates something beautiful and powerful. 

Jesus sums this up so well in Luke 17:33 when he said, “Whoever tries to keep their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life will preserve it.”  The essence of love and life itself is found in giving it away, just as Jesus himself so perfectly modelled.

But as well as there being a hunger in each of us to be loved, so too God loves.  God’s own eros desire for man, his passionate love for us, is also totally agape, totally self-giving.  God’s love is unmerited, we have done nothing to deserve it, in fact we rather deserve death for turning our backs on our Creator.  But God loves us with a passionate and forgiving love.  So great is God’s love for man that by becoming man he follows man even into death, and so reconciles justice and love.  The Song of Songs describes God’s relationship with man and man’s relationship to God.  It is a love poem and pretty erotic in places:

I belong to my beloved, and his desire is for me: (Song 7:10)

The essence of biblical faith is that man can indeed come into union with God.  Our search for peace has a true destination. 

In Jesus we see that it is God himself who goes in search of the lost sheep – the lover in search of his beloved, culminating in his death on the cross – giving himself in order to save man – love in its most radical form. 

When we take Communion we remember that Jesus has given his body and blood as the new food from heaven. 

Before Jesus, the Jews understood that God’s Word was man’s real food – the Old Testament says that man cannot live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.  But this same ‘Word’, the word become flesh as John puts it, now truly becomes food for us as love in the person of Jesus. 

When we take Communion, we enter into the very dynamic of Jesus’s self-giving.    And in taking this meal in communion with each otherwe remember that union with Christ is also union with all those to whom he gives himself.  I cannot possess Jesus just for myself.  We become one body with Christ, together.  And so we see how the love of God and the love of our neighbour are now truly united.  Communion includes the reality of both being loved and loving others in return. 

But this love doesn’t stop there.  As we accept and receive it, as we receive Jesus into our lives, God’s love is poured into us, saturating our hearts and minds and transforming us from the inside out into the very likeness of Christ.  God’s love fuels and enables our Christian life.

In Romans 5:5 it says: “… God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”

It’s the fulfilment of Jesus’ promise in John 7: 37: “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.”   If we want our lives to be characterised by love, then we need Gods love first. 

There is one God who is the source of all that exists, and we need to come and drink from him if we are to know love and life as he intended. 

Jesus himself tells us that the focus of our lives should be love.  When Jesus is asked which is the most important commandment, he answers by uniting into a single precept the commandments to love God and love your neighbour.  The two are intertwined.  And this echoes the passage we read in 1 John; we cannot truly love others, without first experiencing the love of the Father.   It is a response to the gift of love with which God has drawn near to us. 

That same love which prompted Jesus to lay down his life for us, God’s love, has been given to us if we have received Jesus into our lives. 

And so as we have considered something of the nature of God’s love for us, we must now look at what it means for us.  Because the very nature of God’s love is that it was designed to be given away, to impact the ones to whom it was given, to impact us. 

And how does his love impact our lives? 

We know from the well-known parable of the Good Samaritan told by Jesus that our neighbour is everyone and anyone.   Love for others should absolutely characterise the church family and it is the place where no-one should go without.  But loving our neighbour is a much wider calling.  It is a call to love everyone we meet. 

And Jesus had a particular heart for the poor and the least in society. This is what he said in Matthew 25:31-36:

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

Jesus identifies himself with the least. 

The love of God and love of others are inextricably bound together. He is the stranger, the prisoner, the who is hungry and naked. 

Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me. (Matt. 25:40)

In the least in society, Jesus tells us, we will find him.  And we know that in Jesus we find God. 

God is, of course, everywhere and we all bear his image, but Jesus says when we show love to the least, we are especially loving him.   God’s love is taking a hold in our hearts, we are beginning to love with a God-like love in response to his love for us.  And in doing so our own appreciation of God’s love for us grows.

When Gods radical, self-giving love is poured into our hearts, something happens.  If you are a Christian here today, perhaps you can identify with this.  As we receive God’s love, we find ourselves feeling a love for others that we cannot explain and didn’t previously experience.  Sure, was a nice enough person before I was a Christian and I was, mostly, hopefully, kind to my friends and polite to people I met.   But God’s love goes far beyond niceties.  God’s love extends to the poor and the stranger and the outcast. 

Putting Love Into Action

First, let’s ask God to help each of us to know more deeply and fully his love for us. 

Why not spend some time this week chewing over some of the verses we have looked at today? 

God loves you so much.  His desire is for you.  Do you know that?  If you aren’t a Christian, perhaps you are hearing this for this first time.  Perhaps this speaks to you and there is a deep desire in your heart to be loved.  Then God’s word to you today is this ‘I love you so much that I gave my only son for you, so that by believing in me you might not perish but have eternal life.’  Come to me, he says. 

And second, if you have received Jesus into your life, then do you know that his transforming love has been poured into your heart by the Holy Spirit?  Perhaps you have experienced hurt and your heart has grown a little cold.  Ask God to reveal his love afresh to you today, invite him to pour his love afresh on you, to warm your heart. 

Finally, Jesus’ s love for us was never meant to be kept to ourselves, but to be given away.  In fact it only truly finds completeness as it is given away.  Why not ask God to open our eyes to the people around us to know how we can love them today?

Who are your neighbours?  Who is at the school gates or in the office?  Where are the poor near you?  I once prayed a prayer asking God to show me the poor in Hersham and he did just that, which is another story.  It was a ‘take me deeper than my feet could ever wander moment’.  It’s a powerful prayer to pray.  But in seeking to love others, God has moved powerfully in my own heart too.

Who needs to know God’s love this week?  We could do worse than just ask that question each day. 

With all those we encounter in everyday life, we are called to reflect God’s love by seeking to see them as Jesus does, attending to their practical needs, but also keeping in need their deepest need of all, for Jesus himself.

God is love.  He gives love to us.  We give it away to others.  

[1] Cinnamon Faith Action Audit, May 2015, p.4; Louise Ridley, ‘Could The Staggering £3bn Social Contribution Of Religious Groups Be The Antidote To Austerity Cuts?’, HuffPost, 20 May 2015 <https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/05/20/church-groups-community-social-contribution-tories_n_7321288.html> [Accessed 17 May 2024]

Christian Social Ethics 1: Christians and the Environment

How do Christians think about the ethics and politics of the environment? By caring for and using creation with love for one another and respect for God.

Christians should care for and use creation with love for one another and respect for God.

Introduction

Often when we come to talk about ethics- how we should behave or treat one another- we focus on the very personal (such as how should I treat the neighbour I don’t get on with?).

For the next few weeks, however, I want to take a step back and think about how the Bible and the Church speak to the big questions we face.1

The Church has a long and beautiful history of thinking and teaching about how we should view social issues – how we should think about the environment, about the value and dignity of life, about care for the poor or work or the family. These are big questions that we need to learn to think about from God’s perspective and then to act, pray or vote in accordance with what we believe to be in accordance with the way God views the issue rather than the tradition, prejudices or perspectives we inherit or absorb from others. 

Before we start, I want to give a health warning.

Christian social teaching does not fit neatly into our political categories. Sometimes it might sound left-ish, sometimes right-ish. It sits in the middle or, more precisely, embraces and challenges them both.

My aim is not to tell you how to vote or anything like it. Rather I want to suggest the types of questions we should be asking of our politicians and proposing some of the values we can use to evaluate their answers.

More profoundly, however, questions of creation care, race or care for the poor are not just political, they are deeply personal. One of the most important principles in Christian social teaching is that solutions should always be as local and personal as possible – we are first of all asking not “what should the government do?” but “what can I do?”

This week I want to think about how the Bible and the Church help us to understand how we should relate to it and, in particular, what it means for us to be stewards of creation.

  1. The Heart of Christian Teaching

How things go wrong

Human attitudes to Creation go wrong in two ways.

First we can have too high a view of nature. At its most extreme this takes the form of a paganism that worships nature as a God. More often in the modern world this distortion tends to place care for the environment as the highest good, above the welfare of human beings or anything else. 

This attitude can tend to lead to a knee-jerk hostility to development or scientific progress. In its more extreme forms it explicitly prioritises ideas or policy solutions that are anti- human for the sake of being pro-environment.

All of these distortions here at their heart the error of valuing creation too highly – of making the created world on the same or higher level as its Creator.

In the opposite direction we can have too low a view of the natural world. Here creation is not worshipped but despised. Its value is found solely in its usefulness to humanity rather than being worthy of love and care for its own sake. It is significant and worthy of care only if, and to the extent that, we can use it to make our lives more pleasurable.

This attitude can lead to an uncritical consumerism and expansion, seeing the natural world as a resource to be exploited for human convenience or luxury. 

These distortions have at their heart too high a view of humanity-as separate from, and lord of, creation and too dismissive a view of the created world itself.

The Christian Perspective

All Christian approaches to creation begin from the idea that God made the world and it is good. It is valuable not because it is useful to us but because God made it and he loves it. It is intrinsically good.

Yet the fact that the world is created also means that it is not God. The environment, the natural world, is not the ultimate end or good – it is something that was made by God and it exists to serve him.

God made human beings as part of that creation, formed from within it. In the beautiful picture of Genesis 2, God takes the stuff he has made and uses that stuff to make people. We aren’t separate from nature or the environment; we came from it. 

And yet we are also different from it. Humans are set apart from the rest of Creation. They are, in a sense, higher than all of the other things he has made. He sets them apart as made in his image. He breathes his life into them.

Pausing there, isn’t it amusing how accurate the poetry of Scripture captures who human beings are?  At once the dust of the earth and yet also bearing the print of heaven.

Creation is given to humanity to use. Human life is of greater value than anything else in the world. In that sense it serves them. Yet they are given it to use as stewards, nurturing it, caring for it and bringing it to a sustainable life. We don’t own the created world-it has been entrusted to us and, while we are entitled to use and develop it, we will have to account to its the Owner for how we do so.

  1. The Implications of the Teaching for Ethical Judgments

What does this mean for us as we think about how we shall treat the world?

We should be willing to use the world around us to sustain and develop human life. It is good to do so. Part of the foundations of modern science was the Christian insight that the world is not God and therefore we can experiment on it. There is a hierarchy in creation in which human beings are at the top, with the privileges and responsibilities that implies.

However,  we should always be suspicious of behaviour or policies that become exploitative or unnecessarily exploitative. We should be careful to avoid destructive behaviour, particularly where it is driven not by need but by greed, for the desire for “more” that can never fully be satisfied.

    So how do we apply this as voters, as churches and as individuals?

    As Voters

    When Christians are thinking about creation care and environmental issues as they consider who to vote for, or how to lobby, they should be asking these sorts of questions:

    • How will this party or person’s policies affect the natural world? This is a bigger question than just setting targets etc. It involves a wisdom judgement about what is actually prudent or workable.
    • What is the human cost of these policies? Is it justifiable given that human lives are the highest priority?

    As a Church

    As a church we should be asking how we can care for our environment. That is everything from not being unnecessarily wasteful to considering whether together we can care for the natural world of our village or locality in some way. It is part of good stewardship and it is also a good witness to Jesus.

    As Individuals

    Finally as individuals we can take steps in our own lives to be good stewards. It is tempting to get caught up shouting, posting or campaigning about things that are remote and ultimately need other people to take action for us. But what about nurturing and managing a garden? Or litter picking on your road? Or trying to walk instead of driving?

    These aren’t the exciting or fashionable things to do but they are all acts of faith and obedience, caring for the Creation and carrying out God’s command.

    A Prayer

    Here’s a prayer to get you started this week:

    God our Father and Creator, 

    Your glory is expressed in the light of the stars, the roar of ocean waves, and the majesty of mountains. You have created a home for us in the goodness of the earth and have provided for us through its resources. Give us a right and proper attitude in our relationship with creation. Give us wisdom to build a culture that reverences nature and its resources, that preserves it for the sake of future generations, and that prioritises the good of all in what we make and how we consume. May we reach out to you, our Creator, through a right relationship with your creation. May wonder and discovery lead to innovation that glorifies you, reverence for the dignity of human life, and respect for goodness of the earth that you have made. 

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

    1. These ideas are found throughout the Christian Tradition. For these articles, however, I’ve found the materials published by Ascension Press on Catholic Social Teaching (these ideas as they have developed in a Catholic context) very helpful. The prayers are taken directly from their course entitled Connected: Catholic Social Teaching for This Generation. ↩︎