REDEFINING GOD

People do not take account of the Ten Commandments because they see that they have been superseded. The notion that marriage is for ever is now seen not even to be sensible. If people fall out of love or love someone else, why should they not simply desert the marriage? Especially if there are no children; even then, there are solutions which everybody accepts. And this is progress of a kind, for the days when millions had to continue in a marriage of misery are now a distant memory. There is no point in prolonging unhappiness, not even to satisfy the demands of religion.

Who now remembers the Sabbath and keeps it holy? That is many people's day for golf or shopping. Who labours six days? Who is so lucky as to have a job? Who honours his father and mother when so many have separated, even from their children? And what person does not covet his neighbour's possessions and hopes a lottery ticket will resolve it?

There are now no taboos against sex except that good sense prevail; and it is better so; the guilt that used to blight so many lives has been taken out. And society has worked a kind of miracle upon itself in discovering that old religious commandments and old laws are obsolete. But the downside has been the erosion of so many good things: decency, honesty, helping others, apologising for mistakes, authority. Who now apologises for mistakes? You might be sacked or liable in court. Who now has authority? Would youngsters at a rave stop and listen to the Archbishop if he went among them? No, for he would be out of place, almost out of time; out of their time, at least.

It is no use to appeal to the life of Jesus, for hardly anyone - not excluding many clergymen - believes in the virgin birth, the resurrection, and the ascension. We have grown too sophisticated to believe any of this now. Jesus had 46 chromosomes; so whose were the other 23, if not Joseph's, as the Bible admits, for his family tree is accepted? Is it really likely that they joined by any non natural method? Of course not. Nor does it matter.

At a time when people die and come to life again routinely, the resurrection has become a very small miracle indeed; no miracle at all, even. I met a man recently who had survived four death certificates. The ascension, always the most puzzling, for the manner of it is not described - even though the disciples were present - now seems a deliberate obscurity. As we now know, there is nowhere to ascend to.

It is little use, then, to demand a return to traditional Christian values when so much is unbelievable and so much else is obsolete.

The Bible has two Gods, the God of the Old Testament, a cantankerous person not above exterminating whole populations of the relatively innocent; and the God of the New, who - leaving aside Revelation - is hardly capable of cruelty in any form. It may be that we now need a third and that the absence of this has led to the decline in moral values. For if only we had a believable God, a God for our times, which takes account of the more advanced education of almost everyone - even though it is more apparent than real, for every paper qualification has been devalued under the pressure to have more of them and more money for academe to run itself - then perhaps there might be a moral revival. But a proposed return to traditional sources of morality, such as the Church provides, is unhelpful because it cannot work.

The best thing in established religion is the personality and teachings of Jesus - whatever these are - for no clergyman* seems quite sure. And yet, the death of Jesus seems no great event now, after so many other martyrdoms, often with suffering as great; yet without the benefit of supportive onlookers, still less, a heaven to go to afterwards. At least Jesus knew he was achieving something (even if he thought he had been forsaken - a mystery in itself, for, with his views, and the life-aim given him, how could he be?). What about the countless thousands of innocents who died, who knew it would make no difference and thought they were going nowhere?

It is, however, a fact that everyone has a god of a kind, whom he worships in his own way, even if it is only himself, his honour, his pleasure; his job, his family or, if he is a soldier, his unit or his country. It is the thing which, as a matter of observation, comes first in his life. We do not have the same god because it doesn't matter enough. In time of war, that might change: many more people would put the country first, before themselves or their families.

The values of society are passed on by peers, parents, television, churches, and schools. The recognition of the equality of worth of individuals has led to the loss of authority in all of these, except the peer group and the television. This equality has been enshrined in laws which protect the young from being compelled by force to certain acts rather than others. Here, perhaps, is the key. So long as children were held to be unequal adults, not yet competent in so many ways, their elders had the power to mould them in the ways they thought best. What parent now will punish a child? What teacher can afford to do so effectively by any of the well-tried methods? The child is subject to the values of the video, the street or the pusher, who does have the power, because these are unlikely to be prosecuted. We have given up our power over our children and it has been appropriated by those without the scruples to use it morally.

Values have to be taught and some of the teaching involves redirection and punishment of various kinds. Some children may never need the very power we no longer possess, but many do and, seeing that it does not exist, will go their own way and the way of their peers, even if it is mindless, brutal, selfish, and ultimately ruinous, both to themselves and others.

Where today are role models of decency? Gascoigne's success will result not only in many of the young copying his hairstyle but his lifestyle too, down to tears and tantrums; and, almost inevitably, for he is a child as ill-equipped for fame as George Best, his success on the field will be matched by failure everywhere else.

The problem of the moral vacuum can only be resolved by having decent role models, people the young can follow. Who now has a good word for politicians? The very word has become, after almost a full Cabinet has resigned in ignominy, a defamation. And yet, so many have not resigned when they should, after the Scott Report; and further, by its ambiguity, the very report itself, from a leading judge, casts doubt on his own integrity. Then there were the prevarications of leading judges over unsafe convictions which went on for years. Can our law be trusted no longer?

Beside these and the infidelities of priests, bishops, and vicars, those of the royals are minor.

Where, among the great and the good, is there any good?

And is it any wonder that the values of ordinary people are on the slide when they see them flouted by so many of their elders and betters?

When leading civil servants and a Cabinet Minister can be seen to be lying in court under oath, is there any hope that our courts now will have anything else? And when so few, now, have any belief in the God of the oath, is it any wonder that they tell what lies best suit them?

If society is to recover the values it has lost: honour, decency, truthfulness, promise-keeping, helpfulness etc, those at the top who transgress must be made an example of, so that the value is seen to matter; parents and teachers must again have the power to take firm action effectively to redirect recalcitrants; adults in the street should not be afraid to intervene, which they are now, with ``a cuff on the ear'', the well-tried, immediate, and effective deterrent to the seeds of wrongdoing in the community.

But this educated society now needs more than that. An intellectually rigorous, redefined God. One that is of our time and which every thinking person really can worship. What does the average churchgoer think to himself when he sings praises to God? Is it the Old Testament God of retribution or the New Testament God of love? I do not think, for most, it is the first; nor can many praise the second, when there is so much routine misery and death in the world that seems to defy all attempts at resolution.

We need a new God and calls to take us back to an early version, abandoned sensibly by so many, in the face of so many failed efforts by clergymen to have it otherwise, are misguided. We have to go forward, not backwards. The inescapable fact is that we are going forward, for it is unavoidable. The issue is: will the old God still do? I think not, for he has not been much good in recent decades. Nobody really believes in him now; maybe nobody should. It follows then that a new god is what we need.

What kind? Not a god that is presumed to have the power to intervene when millions are killed meaninglessly. Not a creator god which we are supposed to worship because he made the world and gave us the gift of life; because, for too many, it does not seem much of a gift; an alarming number give it up voluntarily. Did a being do this to us? What for? Is not the sense of ``other'' some have just an illusion, that is really part of themselves? A god which is a higher power? Maybe, if the power comes from what we all ought to believe are supervenient values.

When you get right down to it, it is mainly a question of values - if only we all believed in them - and the rigorous justification of them, a matter of philosophy. The trouble with our society is that there are too many people in it, multiplying by the year, who do not give a damn about anyone but themselves and cannot avoid abusing even themselves, which costs everybody in ways far beyond the monetary. Decency is all we need. Respect for respectable persons; the honest tramp and the innocent deranged, among them. The power to inculcate and demand it is what must be provided.

The greatest mystery is that there is anything at all; and the purpose of life - which contains the power of its own destruction - is its own preservation. How wonderful that there is anything and that there is life. How awful it would be if we all blew it and there was no life again. Yet Steven Hawking tells us that the universe could not be more finely balanced. Maybe that is the scale of the problem. We ignore the self-destructive forces within us at our peril, not merely in this age. Catastrophe** is never far off.

We should try to return to the well-tested values of old, but we must do so in a new way, which does not offend the intellect, which is believable, and can be productive of the love and respect we need to have for it.

q.*Gilleasbuig is not sure; in a recent sermon at St Giles'. **I am thinking of Catastrophe Theory, a mathematical theory, which predicates disasters after finely balanced systems experience minute continual alterations.

n.William Scott taught maths and philosophy, served on a national committee, and is now a writer, living in Bute. He often attends St Giles', where the intellect is not offended.