Sumry,Cntnts

Everyone has a basic view of life, developed in us by our experiences from our earliest years. Our decisions and actions are rooted in our particular life view, and our consciously held beliefs, religious, political or whatever, should express that view.

But if a person does not realise what his deep attitude is he can stumble or be led in directions he would not choose. And if he does not understand his stated beliefs in such a way that he can judge whether they actually express his life view, then those beliefs may be false and useless to him. It can be particularly difficult to examine religious beliefs to see whether they ring true for us since they are set for the most part in symbolic language.

In this book we look at the main Christian beliefs through the medium of languages such as that of psychology. We follow the stages of a person’s self-development throughout his life journey to see whether the Christian doctrines express what people actually feel and know about themselves in their world.

Chapter 2 THE BEGINNING OF THE SELF: CREATION

Every individual self exists from the gifts of others, and the line of those gifts, and all our life journeys, stretch back to the birth of the universe. Does the scientific understanding of that event deny Christian belief? If we examine how religious language is used we can see that it does not. The creation beliefs offered in Genesis, showing us man as the image of God, can then be seen as an apt and sublime way of expressing man as the product of evolution. When we look at what science suggests about the emergence of Homo sapiens, and about the earliest stages of an individual’s development, we can better appreciate the deep understanding of our human condition expressed in the Genesis account, and the subsequent doctrine, of the Fall of man.

Chapter 3 THE GROWING SELF: SALVATION

What does ‘Salvation’ mean? What are we saved from? The Genesis account of the Fall shows man in a state of absolute need, a need related to love and the lack of love. To understand ‘Salvation’ we should therefore examine what love is, what it does. Love grows, sustains and fulfils persons. Our salvation from our alienation and its inevitable effects would be to receive and accept the love that we need.

Salvation is love accepted with trust, as the Abraham story illustrates. The developmental psychologist Erik Ericson says that if a baby receives unconditional love he can develop a basic sense of trust, and therefore the quality of hope which is essential to human growth.

Love sets us free, as the story of Exodus shows us. But love, if it is to save, must be accepted and lived. That is the basis of the moral life, which we develop in stages from rules to love, from punishments to real consequences. The Ten Commandments stand at an early stage of mankind’s moral growth.

Chapter 4 THE TRUE SELF-IMAGE: THE INCARNATION

God pursues us with his saving love, but we are not saved until we can accept that we are loved, and therefore loveable. We need to gain our true self-image. Adolescence is a vital stage in this, when we can really begin to see ourselves as we are and grow as we should, or be persuaded that we are not valuable, and grow to harm others out of our own hurt.

Only if a person values and loves himself properly can he grow towards his full potential. But Christianity teaches that our potential is infinite, and that we need infinite love to see ourselves as we really are. We need to see ourselves as loveable in the eyes of someone who knows and loves us absolutely, and whose judgement is not distorted by any lack in themselves.

The Incarnation is the defining Christian doctrine. It tells us that in Jesus God became man so that in him we would see God’s love for us, and in him we would see ourselves as we really are. He is, and he shows us, our true self-image, and anyone who believes this is saved from the effects of being unable to love and value himself. Today we see him, and ourselves in him, through the Holy Spirit.

In Jesus we see ourselves as we truly are, and we know what it is to be truly human. To be fully human is to be as God is.

All Christian doctrines relate to the doctrine of the Trinity, revealed in the Incarnation. Beliefs about Mary are expressions about the Incarnation.

Chapter 5 THE SELF IN AND THROUGH OTHERS: TRINITY

From adolescence we should begin to see ourselves truly and have a proper self-esteem, but we need a lifetime of support if we are to grow in our true self-image. The adolescent may believe that independence is the ultimate state for the individual, but it is only the transition stage from the dependence of childhood to the adult stage of inter-dependence. The truly individual self exists only in and through relationships with others. This is the truth which lies at the heart of human experience – and at the heart of Christian belief – in the doctrine of the Trinity.

The most fundamental question is ‘What is man?’ and each religion expresses its answer in its beliefs about what God is. The Christian doctrine of the Trinity tells us that God is Persons having their being in and through love, and that this therefore is what man is meant to be. God is one; but not one being or one person. The oneness is the relatedness of the Persons, the love in the three Persons. This oneness does not diminish the Persons: it constitutes Them.

Marriage and family offer the relationships in which persons can grow, and they present the ultimate human image of the Trinity.

Chapter 6 THE SELF WITH AND FOR OTHERS: CHURCH

What is adult life? What does an adult do? An adult, having established an adequate self-image, is then able to develop himself mentally, emotionally and in his actions, and can help and teach others to do the same.

The doctrine of ‘Church’ reflects and illuminates this adult stage, even though the actual institution may not always have seemed to promote adult growth. From its very beginning at Pentecost, the tasks of adults in the Church have been seen as growth in knowledge, especially through the Scriptures, growth in feeling and expression through worship, prayer and ritual, and growth through action in the care of others.

The Church is many things, but essentially it is man growing in the Spirit of God, and helping others to grow in Him.

Chapter 7 AND BEYOND: THE SELF RELEASED

When we have reached adulthood, is that the end of the journey? No, there is still a vital stage to come in which we grow by loving and letting go. We have to learn to give up, whether gradually or suddenly, everything that we have had. The problem of why we suffer is the most difficult faced by any religion. Ultimately Christianity relates suffering to self-giving, and it depicts forgiveness as the hardest, and the greatest, form of letting go.

In this final stage we must move to a new and deeper faith in which we lose all our certainties, except that of death. In death we experience the real and total loss of the self, as Jesus did. In death we encounter the final stage of growth, because only there can we learn the Resurrection truth that we must give all we have and are, to find our true self.

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