Your life - steward or owner?

I’m in the process of reading a book on Bioethics which I’ve been asked to review for a Christian magazine.*  I thought I would just share one striking point he makes, and some of its corollaries.

The Bible describes a God who is always giving generously and sets forth human life as a precious  gift from God, of which we are stewards. The modern world, however, has rejected this concept of ‘stewardship’ in favour of ‘ownership’. Hence, we hear cries of ‘it’s my life, my body, I’ll do as I please with it’. Women, therefore, should be able to do as they choose with what is growing in their body, even to the point of full-term abortion. People should be able to choose when to end their lives. People can cut or harm their bodies in different ways. For Christians, however, the principle is ‘You are not your own, you were bought at a price.’ (1 Corinthians 6:19-20)

This writer suggests that the ‘ownership’ concept is dangerous for a number of reasons.

·         It encourages people to live lives of unrestraint and self-determination

·         It encourages a quest for absolute autonomy, with potential for cruel indifference to others especially the vulnerable

·         It engenders an insistence on ‘my rights’, again to the detriment of others

We are already seeing the out-working of this attitude in many areas of life, not just in decisions about the beginning and end of life. ‘Stewardship’ on the other hand

·         encourages people to be circumspect

·         encourages people to be mindful of the wishes of the Owner

·         encourages people to be careful with what God has entrusted to them

·         thinks about a fulfilment of duty and care to others

·         never returns a gift early or prematurely terminates stewardship

The author acknowledges that, in a post-Fall world, this stewardship can be hard and painful at times. But the giving, blessing God who bestows this gift of human life in the first place will also give grace to sustain us in the those difficulties. Abortion and euthanasia both imply that either that God’s judgment is defective and that we know better than he does when enough is enough, or that God does not exist altogether. So, by taking decisions about the beginning or end of life into our own hands, we not only abrogate a responsibility that does not belong to us but we also make God out to be either inept or uncaring.

One phrase which stood out for me was the author’s description of the ownership mentality as ‘predatory’ -  grabbing what is ‘mine’ at the expense of others – and there is a distinctly Darwinian ‘survival of the fittest’  tone to modern bioethics.  This is unsurprising, though tragic, in a post-Christian culture. But many Christians are in danger of unthinkingly swallowing this ideology too. We need to be very careful that this thinking with its outward veneer of ‘compassion’ and ‘dignity’ does not seep into our mindset and erode our faith and trust in God, our confidence in his  sovereignty and benevolence or allow it inflate our impressions of our own flawed judgment.

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* Bioethical Issues by Dr John Ling, Day One Publications, 2014

Is God on an ego trip? God's glory and our good.

'I am the LORD, that is my name. I will not give my glory to another...' Isaiah 42:8

When the Bible says that God does all things for his glory and commands us to glorify him,  doesn't that make God egotistical? How can God forbid pride and self-glorification in us, while at the same time being so consumed with seeking his own honour? How can that glory-seeking fit with a God being good and loving? These questions really troubled me as a young person. I once asked one of our church deacons about it in a question and answer session.Unhelpfully, I was just told it was sinful even to think such thoughts or ask such questions,, so I never spoke about it again. But just trying to suppress these sorts of questions doesn't help. I knew it was undermining my relationship with God. I wanted to love God, but struggled to love a God who seemed both egotistical and hypocritical. I didn't want to think of God that way, and I wanted someone to explain things to me so I could love and respect God wholeheartedly.
Thank God that his deals with our intellectual struggles more graciously than our fellow Christians often do! Patiently God led me through these difficulties to a point where I could reconcile God's glory with his goodness. As I am sure I am not the only person to have been troubled by these questions I thought I would share my thoughts here.
First, we need to think what is the essence of the character which God is commanding us to glorify? God's most fundamental characteristic, I would suggest, is goodness;He is the very embodiment or personification of goodness. He has other traits, like being powerful, all-knowing, etc but those traits are, I believe, subservient to this one central characteristic. What does that 'goodness' mean in more detail, however? It means a sacrificial, self-giving love for others, showing mercy, forgiving, being gentle, treating one's enemies with undeserved love and kindness, going after the prodigal - all the characteristics of God's essence revealed to us in human person of Jesus, the 'exact representation' of God's nature. (Col 1:15)
On the other hand, what of us when we are proud and self-glorifying? We are seeking attention for gifts that we did not bestow on ourselves, on behaviours that are at best flawed and sinful, we want to build ourselves up in people's opinions by denigrating others, and get things we want at other people's expense. In truth there is very little in us truly worthy of honour, yet we crave glory for our shabby little selves.
My first point is, then, that God's character is wholly deserving of glory whilst we, essentially, are trying to appropriate something we do not deserve and therefore God condemns this. But this still did not fully quell my fears. God's constant commands to glorify him still seemed egotistical. Then I realised that, by commanding us to glorify him and proclaim his glory, God was in a sense asking us to glorify goodness and spread the appreciation of goodness abroad. He knows that our highest good and greatest benefit are to be found in having the highest appreciation of goodness and living it out in our lives - I.e. we will be most blessed when we are emulating that sacrificial love, forgiveness, mercy, gentleness etc which I mentioned earlier. By commanding us to glorify him, God is therefore commanding us to be blessed! But the trouble is that the Fall left us with permanently twisted thinking that refuses to believe that our greatest good can be found in a life of self-forgetful service, and Satan continues to insinuate that God only cares about his own interest as he has been ever since his fateful conversation with Adam and Eve. However, experience shows that self-gratification yields a bitter harvest but the most self-less, God-centred people are the happiest too.
Our self-glorification is a destructive thing that tramples others down while it builds us up. God's glory is something organic that grows, builds up and blesses those who enter into it. There is room in it for everyone to be blessed. It causes goodness and joy to spring up wherever it goes. God guards his glory jealously, not because he is an ego maniac, but because his will not suffer goodness, his essential quality, to be devalued and, by implication, thst wickedness be honoured. He knows that he is unique and that there is no other source for goodness and blessing to be found. He knows that if he is devalued in our eyes we will go after fakes - empty shams. That will only harm and hurt us and therefore he commands us to keep himself and the qualities that make up his being at the centre of our mind and and hearts. In the Old Testament God taking away his glory from his people (as in the book of Ezekiel) was his ultimate sanction to try to bring his wayward people back and blessing is restored when the Glory moves back into the temple.
God's insistence on his glory and jealous protection of this is the flip side of his unrelenting love for us and his jealous commitment to our blessing. It represents his passion for spreading goodness to all corners of the earth and defeating wickedness wherever it lurks. That is certainly a God I feel able to praise with my whole heart!