The Anchor

 What to hold onto in the storm? Storms in life take various forms. Right now the human world is shifting. Uprisings are shaking governments into doing what was previously unthinkable, shaking the support offered previously from other governments. What do you hold onto as the foundations under foot shift and shake? Religious thinking and loyalties shift too. One moment everyone is claiming to be aligned to one way of thinking. Then suddenly the centre of mass of thinking moves to another viewpoint, even an opposing one. Holding fast to a viewpoint you actually believe in is what matters. But it needs to be truly reliable. This is why Jesus Christ came. He brought a set of teachings which would be steadfast like a ship’s anchor in a storm. This steadfastness is because they are fully grounded in truth. The God who sent him has the full picture, and gave him wisdom and teachings that would stand the test of time, and remain a solid rock in any storm. To show how steadfast and true his testimony is, Jesus took it all the way to death on the cross, and God brought him out the other side of death by resurrecting him, so now he is light for us all, especially when we believe it. This leads us to the sort of truth that frees us to live upright lives even in the storms, if we learn to hold on tight to the teachings he brought with him. God gives grace to those who hold in tight, no matter what life throws at us. 

Christ

 Long before there was ever a flesh and blood Jesus Christ there was the word God spoke of him. God gave voice to this Christ. A man would enter the world as a tiny cell like the cell that we each start as, and would be what none of the divine son of God before him had managed to be, a truly just and kind defender of the weak and helpless. The power of the word of his existence would be a power behind all Nature, the power of his name, all that God was pleased that he be. The Christ: The one chosen out of all that is divine to be God’s anointed one, yet a truly human man in flesh and blood. Into the world he was sent by God, to be its true light. God sent him to die for you, for me, to deal with our wrong doing. Then after that death on a cross, God raised him from the dead to live as His anointed, the Christ, forever. God has made him our Lord, our true master in the fullest sense, which is what we need. Not only master but High Priest to make holy those of us who believe and mediate between us and the God who sent him. This God is the Father in heaven: The Creator. Jesus is so much like Him in character and righteous ways, with wisdom from Him by which to save those of us who believe. This is to result in humans who live forever with God and this His Son. 

God’s Forgiveness

 Remembering Forgiveness: From the Blood of Atonement to the Witness of the Holy Spirit

The difference between the Old and New Covenants

ChatGTP prompted by Stephen D Green, November 2026 

There is something remarkable about the Day of Atonement in the Old Testament, particularly when we consider what the High Priest experienced as he entered the Holy of Holies.

Once a year, and only once a year, the High Priest entered this most sacred place. He entered carrying the blood of sacrifice, which he sprinkled before and upon the mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant.

He was the only person permitted to enter. The people remained outside.

The ceremony was repeated year after year. The blood of sacrifice was brought into God's presence again and again. The annual observance was a reminder that sin remained an issue requiring atonement.

Hebrews 10:3 makes this particularly clear:

"But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year."

The sacrifices were never intended to be the final answer. They pointed towards something greater.

The High Priest and the repeated sacrifice

Imagine the High Priest entering the Holy of Holies year after year. If traces of previous ceremonies remained visible on the sacred furnishings, he might have seen evidence of earlier sacrifices.

Whether or not this was physically the case, the spiritual significance is striking.

Another year had passed. Another sacrifice was necessary. The previous sacrifices had not finally dealt with sin.

The writer of Hebrews explains why:

"For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins." (Hebrews 10:4)

The repeated sacrifices demonstrated their own limitations. They could provide ceremonial atonement, but they could not accomplish the ultimate redemption that humanity needed.

The New Covenant: A different kind of remembrance

With the coming of Jesus, something fundamentally different happened.

Jesus offered Himself once for all.

Hebrews 10:12 says:

"But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God."

The contrast is extraordinary.

The High Priest repeatedly entered the Holy of Holies because another sacrifice was required. Jesus offered Himself once, and His work was complete.

Hebrews 10:14 continues:

"For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified."

The Christian therefore lives with a different kind of remembrance.

Rather than repeatedly remembering sins that require another sacrifice, the believer remembers the sacrifice that has already secured forgiveness.

God's promise in Hebrews 10:17 is:

"And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more."

This is not an invitation to forget the seriousness of sin. Christians still need repentance, confession and a continuing desire to live faithfully. But they do not need another sacrifice to secure what Christ has already accomplished.

The Holy Spirit: The inward witness of forgiveness

There is another remarkable difference between the two covenants.

Under the Old Covenant, the evidence of atonement was associated with an external ceremony. The High Priest entered the sanctuary and performed the prescribed ritual.

Under the New Covenant, the Holy Spirit makes the reality of God's saving work known within the believer.

Jesus promised His disciples:

"But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost ... he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you." (John 14:26)

Paul writes in Romans 8:16:

"The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God."

For many Christians, there is a particular moment when forgiveness first becomes a personal reality. It might be the moment of conversion, the experience of receiving the Holy Spirit, or the realisation that the burden of past sin has been lifted.

That experience can become a spiritual reference point throughout life.

The important thing is not necessarily to reproduce the feelings of that original moment, but to retain an awareness of the reality it represented.

The Holy Spirit continually bears witness to our relationship with God and reminds us of the words and promises of Christ.

The danger of forgetting forgiveness

There is a particular danger in the Christian life: forgetting that we have been forgiven.

Peter writes in 2 Peter 1:9 about someone who has become spiritually short-sighted, even to the point of forgetting that they have been cleansed from their former sins.

This is a striking observation.

A Christian can gradually begin to live as though their past sins remain an unresolved debt. They can lose sight of the completeness of Christ's sacrifice and begin to approach God as though they must somehow earn forgiveness again.

There is a difference between remembering that we need to repent when we sin and forgetting that Christ's sacrifice has already established the basis of our forgiveness.

The first is an essential part of Christian discipleship. The second can undermine our assurance and our understanding of grace.

Perhaps this is one reason why the continuing ministry of the Holy Spirit is so important. He helps keep alive within us the reality of what Christ has accomplished.

[Ed. The Lord’s Prayer does tell the believer to regularly ask for forgiveness, and to forgive others in order to be forgiven by God.]

Communion: A visible reminder of an invisible reality

There is, however, something else to consider.

Under the Old Covenant, the High Priest had visible evidence of the sacrificial blood. Under the New Covenant, we do not have physical blood sprinkled in an earthly sanctuary to look at.

Christ's sacrifice took place once in history. Its saving effectiveness continues for ever.

This helps us appreciate the importance of Communion, or the Lord's Supper.

Jesus said:

"This do in remembrance of me." (Luke 22:19)

Paul explains:

"For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord's death till he come." (1 Corinthians 11:26)

Communion provides a tangible, shared reminder of an invisible but permanent spiritual reality.

We see the bread and the cup. We remember the body and blood of Christ. We proclaim His death and anticipate His return.

Communion does not require Christ to be sacrificed again. Hebrews 10 makes the finality of His sacrifice abundantly clear.

Different Christian traditions understand the precise nature of Christ's presence in Communion differently, but the central importance of remembering His sacrifice is shared across the Christian faith.

It helps prevent the death of Christ from becoming merely a distant historical fact.

From repeated sacrifice to perpetual assurance

Perhaps the most profound contrast between the two covenants can be expressed in this way:

Under the Old Covenant, the High Priest repeatedly entered the Holy of Holies carrying blood, while the people awaited the completion of the ceremony.

Under the New Covenant, every believer has access to God through the blood of Jesus Christ.

Hebrews 10:19 declares:

"Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus."

The Christian does not need another sacrifice. The Christian needs to remember the sacrifice already made.

The Holy Spirit bears witness inwardly. Communion provides an outward reminder. Scripture continually reinforces the promise.

These things work together to sustain an awareness of forgiveness.

The Christian life should not be one of repeatedly trying to obtain forgiveness that has already been secured. It should be one of living in the continuing reality of God's grace.

The sacrifice belongs to history; its saving efficacy belongs to eternity.

The High Priest returned year after year. Jesus offered Himself once.

The Old Covenant repeatedly remembered sins requiring atonement. The New Covenant remembers Christ's sacrifice and celebrates forgiveness accomplished.

And perhaps one of the greatest spiritual dangers is simply forgetting that we have been forgiven.

Forgetting forgiveness is a pitfall. Remembering Christ is a way of living.

Intellectual Maturity

 Materialism, Lived Reality and the Need for Intellectual Maturity

ChatGPT, prompted by Stephen D Green, November 2026 

Has Western civilisation become so impressed with its scientific achievements that it has mistaken one way of understanding reality for reality itself?

Consider some ordinary expressions we use.

A computer has a gremlin in it. A car doesn't want to start. A curtain has a mind of its own. A towel has other ideas. A river fights us. A door refuses to open.

These are familiar, spontaneous expressions. We use them without embarrassment, and we expect other people to understand immediately what we mean.

There is something rather remarkable about this. We live in a culture heavily influenced by scientific materialism, which tells us that inanimate things are simply arrangements of matter governed by physical laws. Yet we repeatedly describe our encounters with them in terms of apparent will, intention, resistance and personality.

We don't seem particularly troubled by the contradiction.

Perhaps we should be more interested in it.

An observation that refuses to go away

People routinely attribute apparent independent will to inanimate things. They do so confidently, spontaneously and in the expectation that their fellow human beings will recognise the experience.

This is more than an isolated linguistic curiosity. It is a widespread feature of human experience, reinforced through everyday social interaction.

Of course, describing a curtain as having a mind does not prove that it possesses one. But neither does calling the experience anthropomorphism fully explain away the phenomenon.

We should distinguish between explaining the physical behaviour of an object and explaining why human beings so consistently experience and describe that behaviour in terms of apparent agency.

The possibility that inanimate things possess some form of spiritual nature or presence is not established by these observations. But it is a question worth keeping open.

The compartmentalisation of materialism

I suspect something interesting happens in the minds of many people.

They accept materialism intellectually, through education, scientific culture and prevailing social expectations. But they do not necessarily experience the world in materialist terms.

Their lived reality remains richer and more complicated.

They experience places as having a presence, nature as having a character, and sometimes inanimate things as exhibiting apparent wilfulness. They may even feel uneasy in a supposedly haunted house while consciously insisting that ghosts cannot exist.

They accommodate this contradiction by compartmentalising materialism, not their lived reality.

This is an important distinction.

Materialism is something they can use, particularly when dealing with practical, scientific and technological matters. But it does not necessarily displace their deeper experience of existence.

Perhaps Western culture has mistaken the widespread acceptance of materialist science for the widespread acceptance of materialism as a complete philosophy of reality.

These are very different things.

Materialism must account for itself

Materialism has enjoyed centuries of extraordinary development. The scientific revolution, the Enlightenment and subsequent advances in physics, biology, medicine and engineering have given it immense intellectual authority.

Its achievements are undeniable and have transformed human life.

But there is a danger in confusing explanatory success with completeness.

Materialism is not simply science. It is also a philosophical position about the fundamental nature of reality.

Science investigates the world. Metaphysical materialism makes a broader claim about what the world ultimately consists of.

The latter should be subjected to the same critical scrutiny as spiritual and religious interpretations.

Too often, when observations appear inconsistent with materialist assumptions, they are quickly classified as psychological projection, cognitive bias, anthropomorphism or superstition.

These explanations may sometimes be correct. But if they are invoked automatically, without investigating the observations and their wider significance, materialism becomes a self-protecting worldview.

It effectively gives itself a blank cheque.

India and the alternative intellectual inheritance

India provides an interesting contrast.

For centuries, Indian philosophical traditions have explored consciousness, spiritual presence, the relationship between the individual and the universe, and the fundamental nature of existence.

The Vedas, Upanishads, Vedanta, Samkhya and other traditions represent substantial bodies of intellectual inquiry.

They are not interchangeable, nor are their conclusions necessarily correct. India also has a history of sceptical and materialist philosophy.

But the important point is that spiritual interpretations of existence have retained intellectual and cultural legitimacy.

A person need not regard spiritual explanations as an embarrassing departure from rational respectability.

This offers the West an opportunity for self-examination.

Why has it become so confident in its materialist inheritance? What historical circumstances produced that confidence? And have those circumstances encouraged an intellectual bias against certain aspects of lived experience?

Perhaps the West needs to become more aware of its own philosophical conditioning.

The artist's limited palette

I find an analogy with painting particularly useful.

An artist may choose to work with a limited palette. They might use only a few colours, or work almost entirely in monochrome. They may achieve extraordinary results.

But a mature artist recognises that the colours they have chosen not to use still exist.

They do not confuse their palette with the full spectrum of colour.

Materialism should adopt the same intellectual humility.

It is an extraordinarily effective palette for investigating physical phenomena. Its methods have delivered remarkable results. But it should recognise that other approaches may reveal dimensions of existence that its chosen methods do not readily accommodate.

The answer is not to abandon materialism, but to augment it.

We need a much more developed intellectual culture that takes subjective experience seriously, investigates consciousness, recognises the importance of relationships and interconnectedness, and remains open to alternative metaphysical possibilities.

This need not undermine scientific rigour. It could represent a more mature application of it.

From intellectual sophistication to meta-awareness maturity

Western civilisation has spent centuries becoming extraordinarily sophisticated within its materialist framework.

Perhaps its next development should be to acquire the maturity to examine that framework itself.

This is what I would call meta-awareness maturity.

It means recognising that our dominant worldview has a history, that its assumptions are culturally reinforced, and that its explanatory successes do not establish its completeness.

It means being as critical of our own philosophical inheritance as we are of the beliefs of other cultures.

It also means recognising that lived experience is not something that must first obtain permission from an established theory before it can be taken seriously.

A civilisation should be able to distinguish between what it knows, what it assumes and what it has yet to understand.

The real monster

This brings me to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

The real monster, in an important sense, is not the creature but Dr Frankenstein himself.

The creature is the consequence of extraordinary technical achievement without corresponding wisdom and responsibility.

Frankenstein's failing is not his curiosity or his scientific ability. It is his arrogance, his failure to appreciate the implications of what he has created, and his unwillingness to take responsibility for the consequences.

There is a parallel here with materialism.

Scientific and technological achievement is wonderful. But the ability to explain, manipulate and transform the physical world does not automatically confer a complete understanding of existence.

Knowledge needs wisdom. Technical competence needs philosophical humility.

Materialism has earned its place at the table through its achievements. But it should not assume that it owns the table.

The next intellectual advance may not be another revolution in what we know, but a revolution in our awareness of how we come to know it.

We should not mistake the sophistication of our model for the completeness of our understanding of reality.