At its best, the turn of the "millennium" will, like any other birthday, be an opportunity to take stock of where we have come and consider seriously the direction we are going. But there is nothing exclusively millennial about that.
Of course, as a human race, we will do well to reflect on the heights and depths of human achievement over the past 2000 years. As a church, we should, as always, be asking ourselves about the fulfilment of the task our Lord has given us during the age of grace - before his coming in glory at the culmination of all things.
In 1875, William Ernest Henley wrote the poem, Invictus. Picture him, born 1849, the eldest in a family of six children, son of a financially-struggling book-seller. At the age of twelve, he was diagnosed with tubercular arthritis. By the time he was eighteen, his left leg was amputated below the knee - the normal (but often fatal) Victorian cure for the condition. Later he spent some twenty months in hospital under the care of Joseph Lister. These experiences came together to make him disillusioned with life, yet asserting positive faith in himself.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.
We need to understand the poem in the light of Henley's harrowing hospital experiences. And yet, for the poet - and for others who have admired it - it presents a picture of humanity separated from the reality and presence of God (in spite of "whatever gods may be"), responsible only to oneself and pursuing with courage and determination one's own path in life.
We certainly have a measure of admiration for Henley's human fortitude. But there is something seriously askew and absent from his understanding of human existence. We need to "go back to the drawing-board."
We don't have time today to consider the fashionable doctrine of evolution. Nor is it productive to debate the time and manner in which creation has taken place. However, it is vitally important to our understanding of the truth about human life that we are not the product of chance mutations but of the creative design and purpose of God.
In Genesis 1.26, God says, "And now we will make human beings; they will be like us and resemble us…" More literally, these human beings were to be in the image and likeness of God. This doesn't mean that God is like us, but that in basic and essential ways we are unlike the animals and like God.
One of the problems of modern thinking is that the major focus has been on physical likenesses to various animals. I recall spending a day at Taronga Zoo, Sydney. The antics of the chimpanzees were both amusing and fascinating. The sign declared them to be our "closest relatives" - and there was something almost believable about that. But, watching them for a while - and later on film - I became more and more impressed with how "un-human" they are. Our emotions weren't present. Our reflective thought was absent. There was nothing to correspond with our conscious identity and moral choice.
No, it is a rather major matter that we are created in the image of God. For one thing, it means that we are able to recognise and respond to the divine mind expressed in creation. All that we call "science" depends on orderliness and purpose - even for scientists who don't acknowledge God. But God intends above all that we respond, not simply to the creation, but to the Creator - "so that [we] would look for him, and perhaps find him as [we] felt about for him" (Acts 17.27a), as Paul put it to the Athenian philosophers. In Eden there were no barriers to knowing God - including to a growing understanding of God's revealed character and purpose.
Being in the image of the Creator also meant creativity. We don't, of course, create ex nihilo - out of nothing - as God does. But we do have a drive to create. The mud nests of the fairy martens are amazing, so are the dams built by the beavers. Yet nothing compares with the creative diversity for which we strive.
Within and through this creative diversity, our lives were meant to express the moral character of the God who is completely good. We were made to be good by genuine and conscious choice.
A major issue for us is that we are made with responsibility. In Gen. 1.26b, "They will have power over the fish, the birds, and all animals, domestic and wild, large and small." The Psalmist puts it like this,
Too often we have thought of "dominion" (as the KJV puts it) in terms of freedom to do what we like. We need to see it in terms of responsible oversight. As a human race we have not done as well as we should. Yet there remains within us a concern (not shared by all) to replace ugliness with beauty, to protect endangered species, to use yet conserve the resources available to us… Even where we have abandoned the notion of moral accountability to God, we still retain this sense of responsibility for this world and the creatures about us.
We have tended to look at Genesis 2 as quaintly anthropomorphic - a very human view of God creating. But it is an affirmation that God created, rather than a description of how he created. In the committal of a funeral service we still affirm the physical truth that "You were made from soil, and you will become soil again" (Gen. 3.19b) - words from the Lord's judgment on the disobedient pair near the end of chapter 3.
A small boy had just come home from Sunday School. "Mummy," he said, "is it true that we come from the dust?"
"Yes, Johnny," she said. "That’s true."
"And is it true that when we die we go back to dust?"
"Yes, Johnny. That’s true," she said, wondering what was coming next.
He thought for a moment. "Well, Mummy, I was looking under my bed this morning, and I think someone is either coming or going."
In trying to solve the question of just which of Adam's ribs the Lord took to make Eve, we miss the whole point that humanity consists of male and female together. In too much of human history we have failed to appreciate that the dignity of humanity is in fact the dignity of male and female together - called together to responsible oversight over creation.
We are told, "That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united with his wife, and they become one" (v. 24). Why is that? Because there is a sense of incompleteness alone which can only be fulfilled together.
We began with reference to William Ernest Henley and his poem, Invictus -
For all of us, life is more of a struggle than the Creator ever intended it to be - and for Henley more than most. But we need to go back to the drawing-board! There is a God. There is a gate and a way that lead to life. There is punishment for sin, but there is a Redeemer - Jesus our Lord!
Quoting from Psalm 8, the writer to the Hebrews states, "We do not, however, see human beings ruling over all things now. But we do see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, so that through God's grace he should die for everyone. We see him now crowned with glory and honour because of the death he suffered" (Heb. 2.8b-9).
In him we see perfect humanity, and, through his redemption, the only hope for our own broken and imperfect humanity. Let us continually put our trust in him.
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