Good in the Beginning

Shortly after the birth of one of my sons, we were visited at home by a medical

professional, checking on our general well-being. During the early days of

parenthood, family and friends want to bring gifts, to cuddle the newborn and offer

kind words to dampen the shock that the impact of being solely responsible for a

brand-new human. I have forgotten all but a few words of that visit, when the doctor

shared shared their opinion that all babies look like naked mole-rats!

The vast majority of people would see something precious and good in the face of a

baby (especially when they are sleeping!) and Celtic Christianity was no different.

Core goodness and the divine light of God were believed to be present in every

newborn child. It sounds true, it rings true, it feels true. However, much of Western

theology that has influenced the church is the idea that sin or wrongdoing affects

every part of human nature and effectively, that from birth we are totally depraved.

There seems to be a disconnect with reality. Just as the comment about the naked

mole-rat leads to a double-take, it is hard to arrange your mental furniture around the

idea that a baby is somehow marred from birth.

This is not to negate from the impact of wrongdoing in our world or the human

tendency towards selfishness and worse. However, framing human existence as

beginning from a kind of holy goodness means that we can be encouraged to aim

towards returning to being our true self.

At our gathering at Ocean Church recently, we were encouraged to find goodness in

an object we found and then consider what that spoke to our own goodness. For me,

this was a bit awkward. I am in my comfort zone when being self-depreciating and

my natural reaction is to deflect compliments. Perhaps this is my first challenge when

thinking about what I have to learn from Celtic Christianity. Life’s journey may involve

uncovering what was originally good, from the first breath and enabling the divine

light within us to be revealed more clearly, both to ourselves and to others.