Restless Wonderer

Readers of the Bible might be forgiven for thinking that Israel was at the centre of history in the centuries before Christ, but in reality for most of their history the people of Israel were under the dominance of other great powers.   Only in the time of David and Solomon (around 100 years before Christ) did Israel make its mark on the world stage.   Before that, Egypt was the mega-power and other local enemies, including the arch-enemy, the Philistines, continually threatened the tribes descended from Jacob.   After Solomon the united tribes fractured into two kingdoms and their power was gradually eroded in the face of the growing power of kingdoms to the northeast – first the Syrians (or Arameans), then the Assyrians and lastly the Chaldeans (or neo-Babylonians).   Eventually the two kingdoms of the people of Israel fell – the northern kingdom to Assyria in 722 BC and the southern kingdom of Judah to Babylon in 586BC.   From a purely historical perspective, Israel was insig

So far in this series I have written about God’s ‘writing’ in creation (biologically through DNA and morally through the conscience) and in providence (His foreseeing of our lives).   We have seen that God created the cosmos and that He continues to be actively involved in its unfolding story.   The question this raises is how we can recognise where He is at work and how we can know what He is like.   The answer is that God has revealed Himself to us.   The great religions of the world can be broadly categorised into two types.   The religions of East and South Asia can be described as ‘mystical’ – they originated in the reflections of individuals on the nature of human existence and ultimate reality.   In China Confucius and Laozi and in India the Buddha and various Hindu sages developed theories about the basic problem with human existence and its solution through reason or meditation.   Their philosophies often display considerable uncertainty about the precise nature of ultimate

In our home group this week one of the younger members asked the question: “Does God decide everything that is going to happen to us?”   He had been wondering since a Christian friend had said that he didn’t need to worry about the future because God had it all planned out for him.   The question isn’t a new one, but it certainly is important.   Do we have real choices, is ‘free will’ a reality, or is everything already determined?   This question isn’t just one for Christian theology, within which there is a rich tradition of debate about how divine sovereignty and human responsibility can coexist.   It is also hotly debated in the realms of philosophy and neuroscience, with a significant number of neuroscientists suggesting that we live in a deterministic world – our actions are merely the result of chemical and electrical processes in our brains – and the majority of philosophers insisting that free will must exist.   This debate isn’t far removed from questions about whether our

At the root of the mysteries of the human body lies an amazing chemical called DNA.   It is the stuff genes are made of, its sequence coding for the protein building blocks of our bodies.   DNA itself is composed of four molecules called nucleotides and the sequence these appear in determines which protein is built.   In other words, there is a sequence in the DNA which codes for a specific protein sequence.   This microscopic assembly line is truly amazing and it parallels our experience of human communication.   DNA is like a language, with nucleotides combining to code for proteins, which represent a pattern for complex organs and systems, just as letters combine in a written language to code for words, which represent ideas which can be realised in the physical world.   At the basis of life, then, is information which is intelligible and useful.   Of course, this information is only useful if the apparatus in the cell that is necessary for producing proteins is also present and t