This post is a continuation of my last one. This part discusses Christian responses to Japan's earthquake that I think we as Christians shouldn't give.
Free Will
Another influential response Christians have often given is the free-will argument. This argument has a certain dignity in the Christian tradition because of its long history, going back to the church fathers. Many people find this argument persuasive, and even philosophers who aren’t Christians, like Dr. Jitendra Mohanty (an atheist hindu philosopher) admits it’s a good answer to the problem.
Though this argument has a long history and many find it appealing, it also has a long line of Christian critics throughout history, starting with no less an authority than Augustine of Hippo. The Reformers, especially Martin Luther (an Augustinian monk) and John Calvin, were especially vitriolic against this argument. In a way, the Christian tradition is divided along Augustinian and non-Augustianian lines so there isn’t a true consensus on the issue. At the moment, the free will argument is enjoying considerable popularity. Nevertheless, I think it has some serious problems, and in my mind stands as an inadequate answer to the problem of evil and suffering.
The free will argument has several nuances, but if I were to apply it to the Japanese earthquake, it would go something like this:
Stating the Free Will Argument
In order to prevent the earthquake catastrophe God would have to either a) change the laws of plate techtonics so that they never occur wherever humans are, or b) Prevent humans from setting up shop on fault lines. Option a) would make geological science relative to the presence of humans, and would effectively undermine viewing the natural world as governed by predictable physical laws. In other words, for God to sustain a universe with no suffering, he would have to kiss science goodbye, resulting in a world without knowledge or predictability. Option b), preventing humans from setting up shop on fault lines, near volcanoes, etc, would involve God treating human beings as children and would effectively violate our freedom to act with meaningful choices. Since God has given us free will, he allows us to do what we want with it, including populate fault lines and do other foolish things and nasty stuff to one another.
The free will argument is also often buttressed with free will being necessary for virtue. God has given us the choice of doing good or evil: if he took away the freedom to choose act in evil ways or risky ways, that would rob the good choices we make of dignity. Virtue would be an automatic impulse, and we would be robots: without the choice to do wrong, the choice to do right loses its meaning. Love that is forced love is not truly love.
It’s kind of a thoughtful argument, isn’t it? Anyone who wants to object to the existence of evil, whether willful evil or natural evil like earthquake disasters, has answer the question: “What’s your alternative?” This inevitably leads us to conclude that for God to make an evil-free world, he would have to ditch this whole free will thing and natural law thing in some way, which we humans rather cherish. So take your pick: the present world with freedom, meaning, knowledge, and choice, or a coercive, neutral, irrational, compulsory world. Which would you pick? Anyways, the free will argument looks something like the above, although bear in mind the topic has been given much more ink and depth than how I have briefly put it.
Six Objections to the Free Will Argument
The first problem I see with the free will argument is that it argues that God in some way needs evil in order to have goodness in His world. I find this to be a pretty big challenge to the Christian concept of God, for God as creator of all things is independent of His creation. He is and has always been and always will be perfectly good and loving, and no creation of His can change that. But if the free will argument is valid, then God is not independent: He needs evil to exist, for without it, He could not create goodness.
Also, the bible says that God cannot do evil. (James 1:13) If evil is necessary for goodness, then how is God good? Does he need the devil in order for Him to be good? The free will argument argues that virtue and love are not genuine unless there is a genuine choice to the contrary. Consider what this implies for a God who is so good, choosing evil is not possible for Him. I find this argument leads to the conclusion that human love has more virtue than God’s, because unlike Him, we have the ability to choose evil.
Another objection to note is that this argument doesn’t show up in the bible anywhere. That itself doesn’t mean it’s wrong -lots of good and valid arguments about many things aren’t included in scripture. However, the bible does address this question, and it gives a consistent answer every time -never the free will argument.
I used to accept the free will argument, but it was always frustrating reading the book of Job which exhaustively discusses the problem of evil for 42 chapters, and never hints at anything remotely close to the free will argument. You can’t imagine the frustration involved in reading a holy book addressing this question all the time thinking my own answer to this question was better than God’s.
Job argues at one point; “The earth is given into the hand of the wicked; He (God) covers the faces of its judges, if it is not He, (who gives the earth over to evil) then who is it?” (Job 9:24) Why didn’t Job’s friends here tell Job that God has too much respect for free will to prevent evil? Here Job says God is the cause of evil, -if it isn’t God, who is? The notion that God is not causing Job’s suffering does not even register as an option in the book of Job. Unlike many contemporary apologists, the biblical authors insisted that God must be involved in suffering every step of the way, and no human choice is ever done without the supervision of the divine hand. “The plans of the heart belong to man, but the Lord directs his steps.” (Prov 16:9)
There is also the charge of inconsistency in Christians who use the free will argument. Two of the most popular devotional verses in the bible are Matt 6:26 and Romans 8:28 .“Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they?” and “We know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.”
Christians regularly find comfort in these verses whenever they go through trials and sufferings. We affirm that God knows what’s going on even if we don’t, and nothing is happening by chance, but for a purpose. Essentially, it is a reminder that everything that goes on is in God’s mind and hand. This theme is repeated in almost every book of the bible. Yet if we then reply to the suffering of Japan with “it’s just natural laws and free will, don’t blame the Lawmaker for this.” What are we doing? We are drawing attention to natural laws, we’re looking at effects and causes and drawing attention away from the willful, intelligent presence of God. We are making two mistakes: a) we are contradicting our own practice of what we tell ourselves when we suffer and b) Denying that God was aware of and involved in the earthquake in the present tense. Was He too busy counting sparrows to notice the Nuclear reactor meltdown?
Lastly, to argue that God values free will so highly that he will not intervene to stop it, no matter what is being chosen, seems to be a pretty bad ethical misjudgment. Just like the eco-terrorists who value animals above humans, so the free will argument makes a glaring mistake in placing free will at the pinnacle of a value scale. For the free will argument to work, free will has to be elevated to such a high value that what is chosen becomes subservient to the act of choice itself.
Consider applying this to the Darfur genocides: God values the free will of the Sudanese government and the Jenjaweed so much that He doesn’t see fit to intervene to prevent them from dismembering men, women and children with machetes because that would violate free will. “Nope” says God, “Free will is too valuable, I cannot prevent this genocide. Choice itself is too precious.”
The struggle to understand evil is based on this moral truth we all intuitively know: evil choices aren’t worth a rat’s ass! The very worthlessness of evil actions is what goads us into asking how such worthless, wasteful, wicked events could possibly be permitted in the first place. The existence of suffering violates our sense of a proper priority of what is good and valuable.
It is the Christian’s most Spiritual prayer to say; “Your kingdom come, your will be done.” Not our will be done, but God’s. Our own will, so ignorant and prone to make stupid, impulsive and selfish choices is exactly what we pray to have God curb, transform, and remove. We don’t want sinful choices because they are rock-bottom on the value scale.
So in a nutshell, the following criticisms are raised by the Augustinian/Calvinist side of the Christian tradition:
1. The free will argument demands that God needs evil, making God dependent on His creation.
2. The free will argument makes (chosen) human virtue greater than God’s (eternal) virtue.
3. This argument is nowhere advanced by God, his prophets, or apostles.
4. Is inconsistent with Christian devotional practice.
5. It denies sufferers the comfort of God’s presence, and avoids talking about what we do believe: that God is sovereignly directing all events.
6. The Free Will argument elevates choice itself to be the greatest good.
For the above reasons, I found I had to abandon the use of the free will argument.
Monday, March 28, 2011
Monday, March 21, 2011
Some Theological Reflections on Japan’s Earthquake part 1
In the midst of Japan’s national catastrophe, I find myself pulled in two directions: to speak, or not to speak. On the one hand, Jesus taught us that the proper response to suffering is to "mourn with those who mourn”. Suffering demands the response of compassion. In the midst of that, speaking alone can do more harm than good. Stories abound of suffering people who have been brought theories as a remedy to their pain, rather than comfort. Therefore, I’m inclined to keep practical and quiet.
Yet, suffering does raise the question of theory, especially in regards to God: where is He in the midst of suffering? There is also a large crowd of atheists in the blogosphere who have been very quick to point out that this earthquake is a very strong argument against the existence of God. This is a theoretical question, and needs a theoretical response. In way, we can say that we are theoretical creatures: when suffering happens, we plug those events into our network of understanding of how the world works. We need theory to make sense of our lives, and so we theorize rather intuitively. It's part of being human.
As one final excuse to write about this when I kinda feel rude doing so, I would like to confess that though bringing a big plate of theology to the disaster scene offends some, it also comforts some. In fact, in my own darkest hours of suffering (when I almost lost my wife several years ago) I found theology one of the greatest comforts available. God was the solid rock in my own personal tsunami. He is real, and what we think about Him does have a significant bearing on how we react to our suffering.
Addressing the Atheist
I have no particular atheist in mind here, but “atheists in general” have been quick to jump on this quake as a salient demonstration of the non-existence of God. Atheists as people have every right to raise this excellent objection. However, they do not have the right to raise it as atheists anymore than a man has a right to raise the question; “How may I relieve my menstrual cramps?” Atheism simply lacks the proper equipment to make sense of the question. Unfortunately, they have raised the question of evil so often that it is no longer apparent just how ridiculous atheism looks doing so.
For a Christian, human beings are made in the image of God, and the suffering of God’s image-bearers is a palpably bad thing. However, humans only have this value placed on them because of their relationship to God. If you remove God from the picture, humans lose their value. It is no understatement to say that no philosophy or worldview in the world gives human beings the honor and dignity that the bible does, and this high view of humanity is what generates the problem of human suffering. This worldview provides ample equipment to legitimately criticize any mistreatment of humans, and provides the framework necessary to ask questions about the justness of their suffering. The question of suffering is thus an explicitly Christian (or Jewish) question, for it is a question that is raised by our view of the world.
By contrast, atheism has no such resources. A bunch of hairless hominids decided to build a country near a major geological fault line -end of story. Suffering cannot be related to the dignity of humans, for theoretically, they have none. Suffering is the activity of nerves that send unpleasant signals to our brains when tissue is damaged, or social relations are terminated by death and disaster.
Other than the new atheists like Dawkins and Hitchens who resolutely avoid this question, this is plainly acknowledged by more responsible atheists themselves: Kai Nielsen and Jonathan Shook are good examples of intellectually honest atheists who have freely confessed their lack of ability to explain the existence or nature of what we call “good and evil”. Notice it’s not just the inability to explain its existence, they don’t even know what it is! This is why atheism looks ridiculous asking this question; if you have no idea what the subject under discussion is, how do you figure you have anything coherent to say about it?
Let me be careful to note that I am addressing atheism as theory: as theory, the question is incoherent coming from within atheism. However, the question is valid for atheists as people, for they are made in the image of God. Though their worldview doesn’t equip them to make any rational sense of the dignity of humans, they nevertheless know it, for God has put that knowledge in us all. This simply needs to be pointed out to them, because most atheists have a high regard for evidence.
Here it can be said that the strength of a theory depends on its ability to account for a wide array of evidence: in science, the more a theory can regularly account for the data, the better the theory is. This criteria can likewise be applied to philosophy, and here atheism is the philosophical equivalent of flat-earth science. It is unable to account for a massive array of data. The entire field of ethics is, en masse, unexplained. People and society cannot function without ethics: we need ethics in the workplace, in politics, in our hearts. Atheism thus remains ignorant about matters that pertain to almost every area of life. How much less then, does it have anything to say about suffering caused by earthquakes.
Addressing the Christians
Christians I’m afraid, haven’t always done the best job of addressing this question either, but at least we can claim that is it our question, and we have a right to ask and answer it: we are consistent in doing so. Let’s look at some of those answers, because some of the answers often given could use some internal criticism.
The "Natural Law" Answer
One answer I heard a few nights ago on the radio came from the influential Christian apologists and former US politician, Chuck Colson. Basically, he gave a Christianized version of the atheist answer: “Rational image-bearers of God built a country on a faultline, and God has commanded us to take account of the order of creation and act accordingly: in this case, we took a calculated risk. Now that choice has resulted in catastrophe, and our ethical response is compassion.” (My rough paraphrase) Colson is right as far as pointing out that the Christian worldview provides the rational grounding for the existence of earthquakes, but this seems to me to be avoiding the question of why a good God permits such suffering.
Basically, the answer to suffering is this: “The earthquake was caused by natural laws that God designed.” Sure. But we’re not questioning physical laws, the question is: “God being all-powerful, why would he deliberately create a universe with suffering?” or “Why doesn’t he intervene to prevent those laws from causing suffering?” Colson’s answer points to the mechanism of suffering, but fails to even address the nature or purpose of suffering. It is a non-answer, being roughly the same answer a thoughtful atheist gives: "natural laws caused this, let's get on with practical matters." The only difference is that for the Christian, God made those laws, whereas for the atheist, the laws just exist.
I have more to say about Christian answers to the problem of evil but due to length, I will save it for the next post.
Yet, suffering does raise the question of theory, especially in regards to God: where is He in the midst of suffering? There is also a large crowd of atheists in the blogosphere who have been very quick to point out that this earthquake is a very strong argument against the existence of God. This is a theoretical question, and needs a theoretical response. In way, we can say that we are theoretical creatures: when suffering happens, we plug those events into our network of understanding of how the world works. We need theory to make sense of our lives, and so we theorize rather intuitively. It's part of being human.
As one final excuse to write about this when I kinda feel rude doing so, I would like to confess that though bringing a big plate of theology to the disaster scene offends some, it also comforts some. In fact, in my own darkest hours of suffering (when I almost lost my wife several years ago) I found theology one of the greatest comforts available. God was the solid rock in my own personal tsunami. He is real, and what we think about Him does have a significant bearing on how we react to our suffering.
Addressing the Atheist
I have no particular atheist in mind here, but “atheists in general” have been quick to jump on this quake as a salient demonstration of the non-existence of God. Atheists as people have every right to raise this excellent objection. However, they do not have the right to raise it as atheists anymore than a man has a right to raise the question; “How may I relieve my menstrual cramps?” Atheism simply lacks the proper equipment to make sense of the question. Unfortunately, they have raised the question of evil so often that it is no longer apparent just how ridiculous atheism looks doing so.
For a Christian, human beings are made in the image of God, and the suffering of God’s image-bearers is a palpably bad thing. However, humans only have this value placed on them because of their relationship to God. If you remove God from the picture, humans lose their value. It is no understatement to say that no philosophy or worldview in the world gives human beings the honor and dignity that the bible does, and this high view of humanity is what generates the problem of human suffering. This worldview provides ample equipment to legitimately criticize any mistreatment of humans, and provides the framework necessary to ask questions about the justness of their suffering. The question of suffering is thus an explicitly Christian (or Jewish) question, for it is a question that is raised by our view of the world.
By contrast, atheism has no such resources. A bunch of hairless hominids decided to build a country near a major geological fault line -end of story. Suffering cannot be related to the dignity of humans, for theoretically, they have none. Suffering is the activity of nerves that send unpleasant signals to our brains when tissue is damaged, or social relations are terminated by death and disaster.
Other than the new atheists like Dawkins and Hitchens who resolutely avoid this question, this is plainly acknowledged by more responsible atheists themselves: Kai Nielsen and Jonathan Shook are good examples of intellectually honest atheists who have freely confessed their lack of ability to explain the existence or nature of what we call “good and evil”. Notice it’s not just the inability to explain its existence, they don’t even know what it is! This is why atheism looks ridiculous asking this question; if you have no idea what the subject under discussion is, how do you figure you have anything coherent to say about it?
Let me be careful to note that I am addressing atheism as theory: as theory, the question is incoherent coming from within atheism. However, the question is valid for atheists as people, for they are made in the image of God. Though their worldview doesn’t equip them to make any rational sense of the dignity of humans, they nevertheless know it, for God has put that knowledge in us all. This simply needs to be pointed out to them, because most atheists have a high regard for evidence.
Here it can be said that the strength of a theory depends on its ability to account for a wide array of evidence: in science, the more a theory can regularly account for the data, the better the theory is. This criteria can likewise be applied to philosophy, and here atheism is the philosophical equivalent of flat-earth science. It is unable to account for a massive array of data. The entire field of ethics is, en masse, unexplained. People and society cannot function without ethics: we need ethics in the workplace, in politics, in our hearts. Atheism thus remains ignorant about matters that pertain to almost every area of life. How much less then, does it have anything to say about suffering caused by earthquakes.
Addressing the Christians
Christians I’m afraid, haven’t always done the best job of addressing this question either, but at least we can claim that is it our question, and we have a right to ask and answer it: we are consistent in doing so. Let’s look at some of those answers, because some of the answers often given could use some internal criticism.
The "Natural Law" Answer
One answer I heard a few nights ago on the radio came from the influential Christian apologists and former US politician, Chuck Colson. Basically, he gave a Christianized version of the atheist answer: “Rational image-bearers of God built a country on a faultline, and God has commanded us to take account of the order of creation and act accordingly: in this case, we took a calculated risk. Now that choice has resulted in catastrophe, and our ethical response is compassion.” (My rough paraphrase) Colson is right as far as pointing out that the Christian worldview provides the rational grounding for the existence of earthquakes, but this seems to me to be avoiding the question of why a good God permits such suffering.
Basically, the answer to suffering is this: “The earthquake was caused by natural laws that God designed.” Sure. But we’re not questioning physical laws, the question is: “God being all-powerful, why would he deliberately create a universe with suffering?” or “Why doesn’t he intervene to prevent those laws from causing suffering?” Colson’s answer points to the mechanism of suffering, but fails to even address the nature or purpose of suffering. It is a non-answer, being roughly the same answer a thoughtful atheist gives: "natural laws caused this, let's get on with practical matters." The only difference is that for the Christian, God made those laws, whereas for the atheist, the laws just exist.
I have more to say about Christian answers to the problem of evil but due to length, I will save it for the next post.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Mom and Pop, Canadian Wine, and Free Trade
I came across an interesting factoid the other day, and decided it was worth writing down.
"Back in 1988, as the United States and Canada were in the final stages of negotiating their bilateral free trade agreement (the predecessor of the current NAFTA), Canada's wi
ne industry was adamantly opposed. Canadian winegrowers argued that the wine they grew in their country's cold climate could never compete with wine from warm and sunny California. But Prime minister Brian Mulroney (1984-93) went ahead and concluded the agreement. The winegrowers responded to this outcome by sending repeated study groups to France, and eventually came up with strains of grapes that were capable of producing high-quality wine while being hardy enough to withstand the Canadian cold. These are now used to make Icewine, a dessert wine that has established a certain presence for itself internationally. This is a good example of FTA-induced structural reform." (from "Japan Echo", 10, October 2009)
Since a good chunk of my readers are wine enthusiasts, I thought this tidbit of info was worth sharing, and brings home a political point I have been an advocate of for awhile that should strike near and dear to the hearts of wine-lovers."Back in 1988, as the United States and Canada were in the final stages of negotiating their bilateral free trade agreement (the predecessor of the current NAFTA), Canada's wi
ne industry was adamantly opposed. Canadian winegrowers argued that the wine they grew in their country's cold climate could never compete with wine from warm and sunny California. But Prime minister Brian Mulroney (1984-93) went ahead and concluded the agreement. The winegrowers responded to this outcome by sending repeated study groups to France, and eventually came up with strains of grapes that were capable of producing high-quality wine while being hardy enough to withstand the Canadian cold. These are now used to make Icewine, a dessert wine that has established a certain presence for itself internationally. This is a good example of FTA-induced structural reform." (from "Japan Echo", 10, October 2009)I would like to look at this information in the light of the plea I have heard that takes numerous forms, but looks something like this: "Those big multi-nationals are closing down the local mom and pop stores!" or "Buy local!"
I dislike this line of thinking because it is missing out alot of very important information. Taking the above info from the Japan Echo magazine, there are characters and their relationships to one another that weave a story together:
The Government
Canadian wineries
Canadian wine consumers
US Wineries
If we only look at the Canadian wineries and portray them as hard-working local mom-and-pop good guys and portray the government and the giant California wine industry as some ruthless money-grubbing machine, you end up with a way of thinking that looks something like the NDP party. (that's bad btw)
Why exclude the plea
of Canadian consumers? Until NAFTA came along, Canadian law demanded that Canadians put up with mediocre wine. Why are mom-and-pop winegrowers portrayed as the good guys here? To side strictly with mom and pop is to side against consumers, and to deprive the Canadian dinner table the opportunity of having a greater selection of wines with which to pair their bacon and maple syrup.Or consider the case of US wineries: here California wineries have one of the best products in the world. They have something that people are willing to pay for. Why should the wineries be denied the opportunity of providing their quality goods only to their local region? If they can produce it, and people are willing to pay for it, how is it fair to deny everyone above the 45th parallel line the opportunity to drink their wine?
Essentially the predecessor to NAFTA told mom and pop to suck it up and get in the ring -quit subjecting Canadians to mediocre wine.
Did mom and pop end up KO'd on the mat? This story doesn't give the details, but I'm sure some of the wineries tanked. Is this sad? I think if one's compassion makes you cry for failed businesses we need to re-think how much our hearts are dominating clear thinking -is it right to weep over the loss of a winery that couldn't produce a wine good enough to keep them in business? Some mom and pop wineries manned up and faced the challenge and improved the Canadian wine scene for all. This is laudable: should we not applaud hard work and ingenuity? On the flip side, is it good to create an economic environment where these kinds of efforts are stifled through an enforced absence of serious competition?
Fighting and competition is part of life in all aspects, from love, to war, to the job market, to economics, to spirituality. In the bible, competition is often presented as impetus for spiritual growth: "Outdo one another in showing honor" (Rom 12:10) The Corinthian churches were also exhorted to out-give the Macedonian churches as a matter of regional competitive generosity. (2 Cor 8) I simply mention this to demonstrate that competition isn't always bad: it's also a tool for good.
So kick back and enjoy a nice glass of wine to celebrate the sweet nectar of economic diversity, and don't feel bad that some businesses lose out. Business is a gamble, a chance at good income and a chance at financial loss. That's the way it ought to be.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Religion and Science Revisited
Well, it’s time for some fresh musings on this age-old issue. In fact, it’s more of a moldly issue but bear with me because some of this is new to me, and so it still captivates my interest like a freshly opened package of extra old premium cheddar.
I was introduced to the following proverb the other day: “The object you are inquiring about will tell something about how it is known.” In other words, if you are wanting to know how the bacterial flagellum of a protozoa works, don’t go looking in a math textbook or the bible. If you want to know what Brie Cheese tastes like, don’t ask your fingers. If you want to know the meaning of life, don’t expect a microscope to give you a zen moment.
Science is only equipped to answer certain kinds of questions, and it can only give us a certain kind of knowledge. Moreover, this kind of knowledge has certain qualities and attributes that are unique, and scientific knowledge also lacks other kinds of qualities. A simple example is taste: science can never tell us what something tastes like, or smells like. That’s a different kind of knowledge to which science cannot speak much on.
One of the qualities of scientific knowledge that has befuddled me for awhile is the nature of scientific certainty. When I read web pages of dogmatic evolutionists touting the radical certainty with which we know the theory of evolution to be true, I expect to find evidence that supports that.
I look at “evidence” through the lens of a theologian or philosopher. Though this is nothing new, it has dawned on me to what extent philosophic evidence has certain qualities that are never going to be found in scientific knowledge. Philosophy and science have different descriptions of “certainty”, and it seems to me that I have been looking for a philosophic-type of certainty as I evaluate the evidence of scientific arguments. I find myself an evolutionary skeptic -having looked at a lot of evidence but yet being unconvinced. In the scientific literature I have read, I have come across frustrated scientists who accuse those who do not accept their evidence as having no other argument other than “personal incredulity”. In other words, I am being dishonest with the evidence and remaining an evolutionary skeptic is not a fault of the evidence, but my own stubborness. I take such accusations seriously, as I have my own slough of “you’re not being honest with clear evidence” with other issues and people. For me not to take such claims of “personal incredulity” would by hypocritical on my part.
The primary difference of quality between scientific and philosophical certainty is that the kind of certainty I am used to is an absolute certainty. To prove something philosophically, I regard as absolutely certain propositions which are impossible to deny. The most obvious one is the law of non-contradiction: It is impossible for A and not-A to be true. A car cannot be both red and not-red.
Further truths I think fit under this umbrella of absolutely certain absolutes because they are impossible to deny. I would also put the existence of a sovereign God under this umbrella. The bible argues for many things, but it never once attempts to prove the existence of God. Why? I think part of the reason is because a sovereign God is a necessary presupposition for the process of asking metaphysical questions. That is, the very process of inquiry assumes a sovereign God, and even must assume a sovereign God.
This was illustrated to me very powerfully once when I heard Ravi Zacharias (one of my favorite apologists) answering questions from a roomful of university students. One student boldly stood up and insisted that life had no meaning. Ravi replied; “you don’t believe that.” The student insisted he did. Ravi insisted he didn’t. The student repeated that he did. Ravi once again denied it. This was all quite comical to watch, but Ravi was right, on this principle: a person who stands up and asserts the meaninglessness of life is asserting by his actions that he finds his statements meaningful. In fact, he finds them so meaningful he’s willing to publicly proclaim them and commend such a belief in the meaninglessness of life to his fellow human-beings. This is ridiculous -if a person truly, sincerely believed in the meaninglessness of life, why would he venture into the meaningless discussion about meaning?
To state that all of life is meaningless undermines the very inquiry into what life means. I think we can reason soundly that if we are going to ask such questions, we are automatically assuming that life is meaningful: that is why we ask! Take the meaningfulness of life out which we already intuitively know, and you undermine all metaphysical inquiry.
Meaningfulness requires a sovereign Deity, for the search for meaning is a search for an objective meaning, and God is the only objective candidate for a universal source of meaning. That is, we search for a meaning beyond the taste of good cheese. Not just meaning for me, but true, objective meaning we can see, feel, discuss, and reason about. Just as our tongues search for savory or sweet food to satisfy ourselves with, so our souls search for objective truth outside of ourselves. By definition, objective meaning doesn’t come from within. However, the hunger for meaning does come from within. The thing is, you can’t be hungry for something you already have. A hungry person is in need for something external: so it is with the soul.
Most of us believe there is a reason why things are the way they are. Things just don't appear and disappear, we must and do presuppose that the universe is a rational and ordered place. This is why we ask and inquire, and is so fundamental to us as human beings that we named ourselves after this quality: homo sapiens sapiens; "wise wise man". This belief in the rationality of the world extents to more than just physical nature. Emotions and morals are rational as well. (with the exception of evil of course, but that's a topic for a different post.) If meaning is there, it didn't just appear: it's there because someone put it there. Again, a sovereign creator-deity is the only real candidate as far as I can tell. The unfortunately popular naturalist alternative, that the universe popped into being for no reason at all rubs contrary to the belief in a rationally ordered universe. Nothingness, disorder, and meaninglessness gives birth to something, order, and meaning? Someone's living by faith here, and I don't think it's me for once. :)
Coming back to the topic of science; science does not attempt to go about forming its knowledge the philosophical way. It does not analyse presuppositions, it looks for patterns of behaviour that fit with a theory. As such, scientific knowledge never has the kind of certainty that philosophical and religious presuppositions do. Since this is what certainty usually means to me, (as these are the kinds of questions I usually study and think about), I find the piling up of scientific evidence to be exciting, but rarely satisfying. I don’t understand the pompous touting of certainty by scientists about the theory of evolution, because science never arrives at absolutes. Upon reflection, I realize it never can.
On the note of peacemaking between science and religion, I see this as a point of clarity. Religious believers may indeed be scientifically ignorant, but I don’t think the accusation of “personal incredulity” is entirely fair. I think believers come to the table of science looking for the kind of knowledge they are used to -religious knowledge, which has certain qualities of certainty, certain methods of acquiring knowledge that science cannot provide. In fact, it’s not supposed to, because it’s a different kind of knowledge.
How do scientists come up with scientific certainty? I must be honest that I am coming at this question as a theoretical thinker rather than one from personal experience as a scientist, so I trust what I am about to say is taken with a grain of salt -I’m not taking myself to be speaking any ground-shattering truth here.
A scientific theory like evolution can never arrive at absolute certainty. You can pile up all the evidence you like, you can never say the theory has been “proven” in a sense that will satisfy a philosophical criteria of certainty. This is because of a law of reason: finite creatures cannot arrive at general conclusions from particular inquiries. Unless one is omniscient, no amount of brown deer will ever infallibly prove the proposition “all deer are brown”. Certainty mounts as more brown deer are found and no exceptions are found, but it seems to me that it can never arrive at an absolute certainty, because that is just impossible to know.
Visiting again the problem of “personal incredulity”, scientific theories do increase in certainty but never cross the threshold: they are always open to modification and further evidence. To deny this would be to turn science into religion. (Which I think some scientists do at times) Religious beliefs don’t have that quality: once a presupposition is reached through clear reason, it sits there unmoveable. They’re not something we can prove: they are the beliefs that make the process of inquiry and proof possible, and so sit with a greater quality of certainty than any science can ever arrive at. It’s not because believers are cocky evidence-ignorers. It’s that our focus of knowledge, knowledge of God, has different qualities to it than scientific knowledge does, and we are used to thinking in such categories of knowledge. In other words, science expects us to think in a different way than we are used to thinking, and this expectation is often not clearly laid out. At least, this idea seems to make sense of a lot of the “religion vs science” mud-slinging that goes on: people think in different ways without understanding or respecting the other’s criteria for “evidence.”
A further question is raised, and here I think I do plead guilty to a form of “personal incredulity” as regards the theory of evolution. I am skeptic, but not without good reason, and that reason is as follows. I look at the history of science, and I see the impact Newton’s physics had on Christianity. While Newton reigned, a curious heresy followed the church at every step: Deism. Deism is the belief that God started the world and just let it run, but he is not personally involved anymore.
Nowadays, Deism is rare. One may wonder what circumstances would give rise to someone considering becoming a Deist. It simply isn’t on most people’s radar. Prior to Einstein’s revolution though, the world was seen as a closed, rigid law-driven system. Evidence was piling up and piling up to buttress Newton’s physics. The more laws we discovered, the less room there appeared to be for God to maneuver His unseen providence, other than as the Great Cosmic Instigator.
Newton’s physics, and the reaction of Deism from the quarters of philosophy, challenged the church for centuries until science itself overturned Newton’s physics. In retrospect, my “personal incredulity” is an informed gun-shyness. I look back at the many people who had their faith dashed on Newton’s principles. What kind of people were they? Some were quite intelligent, and doubtless felt obligated to affirm the latest scientific findings. It turns out their faith was shipwrecked on bad science. So how do we know what good science is that we might not follow in the folly of the Deists? The only way to know personally is by a lot of scientific study. But who has time for this? I don’t think such study is a waste of time by any means -the more scientifically educated people out there, the better the world would be. It does remain true though that many scientific theories are theories “under construction”, and evolution is one of those which has been modified numerous times in the past century. Is evidence in support of it mounting? I’m still in the process of verifying that, so I’ll refrain from touting my ignorance here. It does seem to remain true though that if an object of knowledge is “under construction” it is only by a stretch of reasoning that it is obligatory for us to live in unfinished buildings.
I was introduced to the following proverb the other day: “The object you are inquiring about will tell something about how it is known.” In other words, if you are wanting to know how the bacterial flagellum of a protozoa works, don’t go looking in a math textbook or the bible. If you want to know what Brie Cheese tastes like, don’t ask your fingers. If you want to know the meaning of life, don’t expect a microscope to give you a zen moment.
Science is only equipped to answer certain kinds of questions, and it can only give us a certain kind of knowledge. Moreover, this kind of knowledge has certain qualities and attributes that are unique, and scientific knowledge also lacks other kinds of qualities. A simple example is taste: science can never tell us what something tastes like, or smells like. That’s a different kind of knowledge to which science cannot speak much on.
One of the qualities of scientific knowledge that has befuddled me for awhile is the nature of scientific certainty. When I read web pages of dogmatic evolutionists touting the radical certainty with which we know the theory of evolution to be true, I expect to find evidence that supports that.
I look at “evidence” through the lens of a theologian or philosopher. Though this is nothing new, it has dawned on me to what extent philosophic evidence has certain qualities that are never going to be found in scientific knowledge. Philosophy and science have different descriptions of “certainty”, and it seems to me that I have been looking for a philosophic-type of certainty as I evaluate the evidence of scientific arguments. I find myself an evolutionary skeptic -having looked at a lot of evidence but yet being unconvinced. In the scientific literature I have read, I have come across frustrated scientists who accuse those who do not accept their evidence as having no other argument other than “personal incredulity”. In other words, I am being dishonest with the evidence and remaining an evolutionary skeptic is not a fault of the evidence, but my own stubborness. I take such accusations seriously, as I have my own slough of “you’re not being honest with clear evidence” with other issues and people. For me not to take such claims of “personal incredulity” would by hypocritical on my part.
The primary difference of quality between scientific and philosophical certainty is that the kind of certainty I am used to is an absolute certainty. To prove something philosophically, I regard as absolutely certain propositions which are impossible to deny. The most obvious one is the law of non-contradiction: It is impossible for A and not-A to be true. A car cannot be both red and not-red.
Further truths I think fit under this umbrella of absolutely certain absolutes because they are impossible to deny. I would also put the existence of a sovereign God under this umbrella. The bible argues for many things, but it never once attempts to prove the existence of God. Why? I think part of the reason is because a sovereign God is a necessary presupposition for the process of asking metaphysical questions. That is, the very process of inquiry assumes a sovereign God, and even must assume a sovereign God.
This was illustrated to me very powerfully once when I heard Ravi Zacharias (one of my favorite apologists) answering questions from a roomful of university students. One student boldly stood up and insisted that life had no meaning. Ravi replied; “you don’t believe that.” The student insisted he did. Ravi insisted he didn’t. The student repeated that he did. Ravi once again denied it. This was all quite comical to watch, but Ravi was right, on this principle: a person who stands up and asserts the meaninglessness of life is asserting by his actions that he finds his statements meaningful. In fact, he finds them so meaningful he’s willing to publicly proclaim them and commend such a belief in the meaninglessness of life to his fellow human-beings. This is ridiculous -if a person truly, sincerely believed in the meaninglessness of life, why would he venture into the meaningless discussion about meaning?
To state that all of life is meaningless undermines the very inquiry into what life means. I think we can reason soundly that if we are going to ask such questions, we are automatically assuming that life is meaningful: that is why we ask! Take the meaningfulness of life out which we already intuitively know, and you undermine all metaphysical inquiry.
Meaningfulness requires a sovereign Deity, for the search for meaning is a search for an objective meaning, and God is the only objective candidate for a universal source of meaning. That is, we search for a meaning beyond the taste of good cheese. Not just meaning for me, but true, objective meaning we can see, feel, discuss, and reason about. Just as our tongues search for savory or sweet food to satisfy ourselves with, so our souls search for objective truth outside of ourselves. By definition, objective meaning doesn’t come from within. However, the hunger for meaning does come from within. The thing is, you can’t be hungry for something you already have. A hungry person is in need for something external: so it is with the soul.
Most of us believe there is a reason why things are the way they are. Things just don't appear and disappear, we must and do presuppose that the universe is a rational and ordered place. This is why we ask and inquire, and is so fundamental to us as human beings that we named ourselves after this quality: homo sapiens sapiens; "wise wise man". This belief in the rationality of the world extents to more than just physical nature. Emotions and morals are rational as well. (with the exception of evil of course, but that's a topic for a different post.) If meaning is there, it didn't just appear: it's there because someone put it there. Again, a sovereign creator-deity is the only real candidate as far as I can tell. The unfortunately popular naturalist alternative, that the universe popped into being for no reason at all rubs contrary to the belief in a rationally ordered universe. Nothingness, disorder, and meaninglessness gives birth to something, order, and meaning? Someone's living by faith here, and I don't think it's me for once. :)
Coming back to the topic of science; science does not attempt to go about forming its knowledge the philosophical way. It does not analyse presuppositions, it looks for patterns of behaviour that fit with a theory. As such, scientific knowledge never has the kind of certainty that philosophical and religious presuppositions do. Since this is what certainty usually means to me, (as these are the kinds of questions I usually study and think about), I find the piling up of scientific evidence to be exciting, but rarely satisfying. I don’t understand the pompous touting of certainty by scientists about the theory of evolution, because science never arrives at absolutes. Upon reflection, I realize it never can.
On the note of peacemaking between science and religion, I see this as a point of clarity. Religious believers may indeed be scientifically ignorant, but I don’t think the accusation of “personal incredulity” is entirely fair. I think believers come to the table of science looking for the kind of knowledge they are used to -religious knowledge, which has certain qualities of certainty, certain methods of acquiring knowledge that science cannot provide. In fact, it’s not supposed to, because it’s a different kind of knowledge.
How do scientists come up with scientific certainty? I must be honest that I am coming at this question as a theoretical thinker rather than one from personal experience as a scientist, so I trust what I am about to say is taken with a grain of salt -I’m not taking myself to be speaking any ground-shattering truth here.
A scientific theory like evolution can never arrive at absolute certainty. You can pile up all the evidence you like, you can never say the theory has been “proven” in a sense that will satisfy a philosophical criteria of certainty. This is because of a law of reason: finite creatures cannot arrive at general conclusions from particular inquiries. Unless one is omniscient, no amount of brown deer will ever infallibly prove the proposition “all deer are brown”. Certainty mounts as more brown deer are found and no exceptions are found, but it seems to me that it can never arrive at an absolute certainty, because that is just impossible to know.
Visiting again the problem of “personal incredulity”, scientific theories do increase in certainty but never cross the threshold: they are always open to modification and further evidence. To deny this would be to turn science into religion. (Which I think some scientists do at times) Religious beliefs don’t have that quality: once a presupposition is reached through clear reason, it sits there unmoveable. They’re not something we can prove: they are the beliefs that make the process of inquiry and proof possible, and so sit with a greater quality of certainty than any science can ever arrive at. It’s not because believers are cocky evidence-ignorers. It’s that our focus of knowledge, knowledge of God, has different qualities to it than scientific knowledge does, and we are used to thinking in such categories of knowledge. In other words, science expects us to think in a different way than we are used to thinking, and this expectation is often not clearly laid out. At least, this idea seems to make sense of a lot of the “religion vs science” mud-slinging that goes on: people think in different ways without understanding or respecting the other’s criteria for “evidence.”
A further question is raised, and here I think I do plead guilty to a form of “personal incredulity” as regards the theory of evolution. I am skeptic, but not without good reason, and that reason is as follows. I look at the history of science, and I see the impact Newton’s physics had on Christianity. While Newton reigned, a curious heresy followed the church at every step: Deism. Deism is the belief that God started the world and just let it run, but he is not personally involved anymore.
Nowadays, Deism is rare. One may wonder what circumstances would give rise to someone considering becoming a Deist. It simply isn’t on most people’s radar. Prior to Einstein’s revolution though, the world was seen as a closed, rigid law-driven system. Evidence was piling up and piling up to buttress Newton’s physics. The more laws we discovered, the less room there appeared to be for God to maneuver His unseen providence, other than as the Great Cosmic Instigator.
Newton’s physics, and the reaction of Deism from the quarters of philosophy, challenged the church for centuries until science itself overturned Newton’s physics. In retrospect, my “personal incredulity” is an informed gun-shyness. I look back at the many people who had their faith dashed on Newton’s principles. What kind of people were they? Some were quite intelligent, and doubtless felt obligated to affirm the latest scientific findings. It turns out their faith was shipwrecked on bad science. So how do we know what good science is that we might not follow in the folly of the Deists? The only way to know personally is by a lot of scientific study. But who has time for this? I don’t think such study is a waste of time by any means -the more scientifically educated people out there, the better the world would be. It does remain true though that many scientific theories are theories “under construction”, and evolution is one of those which has been modified numerous times in the past century. Is evidence in support of it mounting? I’m still in the process of verifying that, so I’ll refrain from touting my ignorance here. It does seem to remain true though that if an object of knowledge is “under construction” it is only by a stretch of reasoning that it is obligatory for us to live in unfinished buildings.
Monday, December 27, 2010
The Courage to Protest
This week I have had the opportunity to ponder the general ethos of fear and uncertainty that exists among groups of Christians. It seems to me that many believers are struggling with a sense of identity. There is a general sense that we are standing on a shaky foundation, and the rug is about to be (or already has been) pulled out from under our feet.
I believe there is a general sadness, frustration and even bitterness amongst Evangelicals and this is caused by the loss of a place of prominence and dignity in Western society. Christianity played a crucial role in forming our world and its institutions: the ivy league schools were all Christian institutions when they began, our governments drew their principles explicitly from the bible, etc. It still says in the Canadian charter of rights and freedoms that “Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the sovereignty of God and the rule of law.” Our country’s name “the dominion of Canada” was named after a parliamentarian was inspired by a bible verse: “He shall have dominion from sea to sea.” Few people know the entirety of our national anthem: we only sing the first verse at hockey games, but as the song progresses, it becomes more expressly Christian:
“Lord of the lands, beneath Thy bending skies/ o’er field and flood, where ‘ere our banner flies/ Thy people lift their hearts to thee/ their grateful voices raise/ may our dominion ever be a temple to Thy praise/ Thy will alone, let all enthrone/Lord of the lands, make Canada thine own/Lord of the lands, make Canada thine own.”
But surveying the contemporary scene, the dominant institution of the west is no longer the church, the university has left the nest of Christianity and bourne wings of its own, and the government...well, the government does what it does best, follow the meandering river of popular opinion. I think all of this, even if not expressly known by Christians in all detail helps explain the sense of alienation among Evangelicals. We birthed much of Western culture. Now we’re empty nesters, and are left staring at each other what to do next now that our children don’t seem interested in talking to us.
Evangelicals need not be so mopey or confused. After all, our theology tells us that it is not we who did anything. All good things are from God, if any good plants grew that bore tasty fruit, all the glory goes to Him, for “a man can receive nothing unless it is given to him from heaven.” We are sowers: we plant seeds, we water “but God causes the growth.” In a sense, our mopeyness is caused by forgetting our own confession of faith.
So what is an Evangelical? Contrary to popular usage, it is not synonymous with Fundamentalism. The term “Evangelical” first surfaced around the time of the Reformation, and it was a derisive term used to refer to Lutherans. In fact, the term “Lutheran” and “Evangelical” were synonymous. It is my conviction that herein lies a powerful inspiration to re-ground those feet that feel like they are floating in mid-air. Let us not forget that the Reformers had no social trophies that hung on their walls to inspire them. Nor did the Apostles for that matter. They had one thing: the word of God.
Evangelicalism is in my mind, a term that designates a certain group of Christians within the history of Protestantism that sees itself as the inheritors of the theology of the Reformation, specifically as regards our theology of knowledge. The Reformers had a mighty foe entrenched in their day: the Roman Catholic Hierarchy. More important than the doctrine of Justification by Faith alone was the prior conviction that “the church” had departed from the teaching of the apostles. To be “protestant” was to protest, to have a heartfelt objection to the way things are going in the world. That “protest” is so profoundly believed in, one is willing to lay their life down for that truth. The protest was that the word of God, not the pope, had true authority over what is to be believed and how life is to be lived. Evangelicalism is essentially a holiness movement: calling the church and the world to fidelity to Jesus Christ through the teachings of the prophets and apostles.
Again, looking at the contemporary scene, it’s easy to see why we feel so disenchanted; Catholics and Evangelicals aren’t killing each other anymore (except in Ireland) -they actually get along to a substantial degree. But we still disagree as to the locus of authority, our “protest” still stands and hasn’t changed in over 500 years.
With the enlightenment, the protestant movement faced a new foe, ironically one that it helped give birth to: autonomous reason. Just as Protestants deemed it morally obligatory to cut ties with Roman Catholic authority, so Secularists followed suit and “protested” to the Protestant locus of authority, the bible. In it’s place “the goddess reason” was enthroned.
Protestants did not face up to the Enlightenment challenge nearly as effectively as they did to Catholicism. Shortly after the Enlightenment, Evangelicalism experienced a significant split within its ranks, and “Liberal Protestantism” was born. I would still squarely find myself within the Evangelical tradition, and I find autonomous human reason to be just as objectionable as the Papacy, if not moreso.
Reason alone makes a crappy God, because it is like the idol-worship the 1st century Christians faced down in the emperor cult. Reason is essentially a mute idol that has no eyes nor ears, doesn’t see, hear, or care. Autonomous reason gives us no content for what constitutes knowledge, just a set of propositions. By contrast, an Evangelical’s knowledge comes from a personal and loving God, not a dead principle.
Many Evangelicals are characterized not just by uncertainty and confusion, but biblical illiteracy. They have forsaken their confession, their spirituality, and really need to be awakened to what it was that gave the church such power to wield such persuasive influence and form a culture as strong and admirable as the Western world.
We now live in a post-Christian world, and I am not suggesting we sit around and mope about the glory days, nor even try to re-create them. The work to be done is ultimately God’s, and the consequences of the church being faithful to it’s mission will be played out in God’s providence. But first, we must get the basics straight, and re-discover the joy and strength that comes from having a God that speaks truth and gives us knowledge which we can live by.
I believe there is a general sadness, frustration and even bitterness amongst Evangelicals and this is caused by the loss of a place of prominence and dignity in Western society. Christianity played a crucial role in forming our world and its institutions: the ivy league schools were all Christian institutions when they began, our governments drew their principles explicitly from the bible, etc. It still says in the Canadian charter of rights and freedoms that “Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the sovereignty of God and the rule of law.” Our country’s name “the dominion of Canada” was named after a parliamentarian was inspired by a bible verse: “He shall have dominion from sea to sea.” Few people know the entirety of our national anthem: we only sing the first verse at hockey games, but as the song progresses, it becomes more expressly Christian:
“Lord of the lands, beneath Thy bending skies/ o’er field and flood, where ‘ere our banner flies/ Thy people lift their hearts to thee/ their grateful voices raise/ may our dominion ever be a temple to Thy praise/ Thy will alone, let all enthrone/Lord of the lands, make Canada thine own/Lord of the lands, make Canada thine own.”
But surveying the contemporary scene, the dominant institution of the west is no longer the church, the university has left the nest of Christianity and bourne wings of its own, and the government...well, the government does what it does best, follow the meandering river of popular opinion. I think all of this, even if not expressly known by Christians in all detail helps explain the sense of alienation among Evangelicals. We birthed much of Western culture. Now we’re empty nesters, and are left staring at each other what to do next now that our children don’t seem interested in talking to us.
Evangelicals need not be so mopey or confused. After all, our theology tells us that it is not we who did anything. All good things are from God, if any good plants grew that bore tasty fruit, all the glory goes to Him, for “a man can receive nothing unless it is given to him from heaven.” We are sowers: we plant seeds, we water “but God causes the growth.” In a sense, our mopeyness is caused by forgetting our own confession of faith.
So what is an Evangelical? Contrary to popular usage, it is not synonymous with Fundamentalism. The term “Evangelical” first surfaced around the time of the Reformation, and it was a derisive term used to refer to Lutherans. In fact, the term “Lutheran” and “Evangelical” were synonymous. It is my conviction that herein lies a powerful inspiration to re-ground those feet that feel like they are floating in mid-air. Let us not forget that the Reformers had no social trophies that hung on their walls to inspire them. Nor did the Apostles for that matter. They had one thing: the word of God.
Evangelicalism is in my mind, a term that designates a certain group of Christians within the history of Protestantism that sees itself as the inheritors of the theology of the Reformation, specifically as regards our theology of knowledge. The Reformers had a mighty foe entrenched in their day: the Roman Catholic Hierarchy. More important than the doctrine of Justification by Faith alone was the prior conviction that “the church” had departed from the teaching of the apostles. To be “protestant” was to protest, to have a heartfelt objection to the way things are going in the world. That “protest” is so profoundly believed in, one is willing to lay their life down for that truth. The protest was that the word of God, not the pope, had true authority over what is to be believed and how life is to be lived. Evangelicalism is essentially a holiness movement: calling the church and the world to fidelity to Jesus Christ through the teachings of the prophets and apostles.
Again, looking at the contemporary scene, it’s easy to see why we feel so disenchanted; Catholics and Evangelicals aren’t killing each other anymore (except in Ireland) -they actually get along to a substantial degree. But we still disagree as to the locus of authority, our “protest” still stands and hasn’t changed in over 500 years.
With the enlightenment, the protestant movement faced a new foe, ironically one that it helped give birth to: autonomous reason. Just as Protestants deemed it morally obligatory to cut ties with Roman Catholic authority, so Secularists followed suit and “protested” to the Protestant locus of authority, the bible. In it’s place “the goddess reason” was enthroned.
Protestants did not face up to the Enlightenment challenge nearly as effectively as they did to Catholicism. Shortly after the Enlightenment, Evangelicalism experienced a significant split within its ranks, and “Liberal Protestantism” was born. I would still squarely find myself within the Evangelical tradition, and I find autonomous human reason to be just as objectionable as the Papacy, if not moreso.
Reason alone makes a crappy God, because it is like the idol-worship the 1st century Christians faced down in the emperor cult. Reason is essentially a mute idol that has no eyes nor ears, doesn’t see, hear, or care. Autonomous reason gives us no content for what constitutes knowledge, just a set of propositions. By contrast, an Evangelical’s knowledge comes from a personal and loving God, not a dead principle.
Many Evangelicals are characterized not just by uncertainty and confusion, but biblical illiteracy. They have forsaken their confession, their spirituality, and really need to be awakened to what it was that gave the church such power to wield such persuasive influence and form a culture as strong and admirable as the Western world.
We now live in a post-Christian world, and I am not suggesting we sit around and mope about the glory days, nor even try to re-create them. The work to be done is ultimately God’s, and the consequences of the church being faithful to it’s mission will be played out in God’s providence. But first, we must get the basics straight, and re-discover the joy and strength that comes from having a God that speaks truth and gives us knowledge which we can live by.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
The Law of Moustache
The Law of Moustache"Nice chest hair." My wife says to me. A rather unexpected comment, considering I'm wearing a collared shirt. I brush it off and resume my work. A few minutes later; "Nice chest hair." My wife rarely comments on my appearance, (which probably says something) and why she was picking that feature didn't make any sense to me. "Whatever" I mutter as I leave the room, pre-occupied in thought with household bills.
And then I see it. My two top buttons have been undone! Now this is the bona-fide truth: I have no memory of undoing my buttons: I'm rather diligent with my buttons in fact, and this particular shirt has extra buttons that I like keeping done up, so this struck me as a surprise. The collared shirt with the low buttons and tuft of chest hair sticking out raised my sleaze factor significantly and I winced at my appearance.
I know that I didn't unbutton my shirt. This has never happened before. There is only one factor that is different in my life this month, and that is the fact that I have decided to grow a handlebar moustache. Suddenly, it all makes sense. No rational person could ever choose to create the abbhorent sleazy moustache-and-chest hair look. As I discovered this morning, The fact is that moustaches repel buttons. Sleazy facial hair begets sleazy body hair, like begets like, it all makes sense now. No one deliberately designed the sleazy look, it just kinda happens to a guy when he fails to shave his upper lip.
Moustaches can be likened to evil. Evil is the great inscrutable mystery: it defies rational explanation. Try if you will to even define evil. The greatest philosophers through the centuries have noticed that evil can only be described in terms of privation of the good. That is, evil isn't anything, it's a distortion, a lack of what the good is. Evil is disorder, lawlessness, irrationality. Evil is that which is juxtaposed to all that is good, benevolent and orderly. If evil could be explained, it would disappear, for if evil could be explained that would be conceding that it submits to rational categories and may be harmonized with a logically ordered universe. But evil is disorder, it is the very evilness of evil that defies explanation.
Moustaches are like that. They are a privation of good fashion sense, a violation of the laws of aesthetics, a senseless affront to beauty. Hence, they repel buttons and turn respectable gentlemen into perverted-looking sleazebags.
Moustaches are an evil that has chosen to bypass the female gender and afflict only males. However more depraved the world may be due to the presence of moustaches, it pales in comparison to another greater evil that afflicts only men: prostate cancer. This is why I have chosen to bear the Mo this month: to bear this unsightly burden as a reminder to the world that we men face a far greater peril than unsightly facial hair.
In Canada, 4,300 men will die of Prostate Cancer this year. For this reason, men all over the world are growing moustaches this month of "Movember" to proclaim the plight of our fellow men with oversized and diseased prostate glands.
The good news is that prostate cancer is preventable, and relative to a few other cancers, actually has a high survival rate. Possibly for this reason, it is often deemed an insignificant disease. Nevertheless, it still afflicts 1 in 6 men, and 24,600 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer this year alone, not including undiagnosed cases due to an unwillingness on many men's part to get regular check-ups. The worst part is, like the moustache, prostate cancer death is preventable. I encourage you, if you have enjoyed this blog post, found it informative, or at least gave you a smile, please consider donating to Prostate Cancer Canada. http://www.prostatecancer.ca/ Every cent counts. Research must continue, prevention must take place, and awareness needs to be raised. None of this can take place without adequate funding. Last year Canadian "Mo bros" raised $7.8 million for Prostate Cancer Canada. Let's keep up this generous tradition.
Even if prostate cancer isn't a visible, in-your-face evil, the moustache is, and the sooner we rid the earth of this disease, the sooner we can get around to enjoying our Novembers moustache-free.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Miraculous Maturity
I have floated around a number of denominations and churches throughout my brief Christian walk ('bout 12 years now), and no group of Christians have struck me to be quite as incomprehensible as the “miracle chaser” group. Some of you may not have met these kind of people yet, but there is a distinct Christian sub-culture out there that is kind of like...well, miracle potheads. They can't stop thinking about miracles, and spend 99% of their extra-curricular time looking for the latest miracle revival service, or trying to figure out where the Holy Spirit is going to show up in some out-of-this world way. It can pretty stupid sometimes. Well no, that's not entirely accurate. It can get really stupid. I've seen people pick up glitter off the floor thinking God has just turned some of the dust of the room into gold. Others have gotten into such a miracle-buzz that they think catching a bus has been a miraculous intervention of the Lord. They're not joking either: it's not some off-the cuff comment about their inability to manage their time, they actually think God came down from heaven and miraculously caused the bus to come by when it wasn't scheduled to.This group has puzzled me for awhile, and not a few times I have attempted to appreciate this movement from the inside. However, try as I might, I could not get into the “swing of things” by working myself up into a miracle-frenzy. There is a temperament disconnect there: obviously this movement isn't exactly friendly to those who enjoy reflection and asking philosophical questions. More than just temperament though, I couldn't in good conscience label as “miraculous” every day events that seem entirely natural, nor could I find in the bible any support for the notion that miracles are the meat and potatoes of the Christian's thought life and good works.
But what seemed so unap
pealing and patently false to me nevertheless holds great appeal for many others. For many years now, I could offer no explanation for why so many people jump headlong into this movement. To that extent, I have actually had alot of doubt about my rejection of the movement: it defies rational explanation. Could it be that God really is obsessed with performing random miraculous events to make people believe in him, and I should follow suit? I feel almost embarrassed admitting that this movement has held some sort of sway on my mind, but anyone who has attended these bizarre revival-healing-miracle get-togethers probably understands what I'm talking about. The sheer social energy of these meetings and the charismatic magnetism and rhetorical skill of some of the public leaders of the movement really has a force that wants to draw you in.Is there a rational explanation beyond “social energy”? The group dynamic can be easily explained: you see it all the time at sports arenas, political rallies, and mass public protests. It makes sense that such group dynamics would show up in religious meetings as well. But what sway does it have for an individual?
A sermon I heard a few weeks ago helped me explain this. A few facts first.
Western culture is generally Naturalistic in its view of reality. Religion is seen as something private, and the public realm is the realm of “neutral” cause and effect. The workplace is governed by economic laws, the government by legislation and party politics, our physical world is governed by scientific law. If you want to believe in God, in miracles, in something beyond what you see and can measure, do it at home please.
Christians, insofar as they are Christians at all, do not find themselves driven exclusively by economic, scientific, and political realities. They are driven by religious ones, and to the extent that they see themselves as followers of Christ is the extent to which they will want to follow Christ out in public. We want God in our work, in our political views, in our science. More than any other name, God is referred to in the bible as “Lord”. The most important Christian confession ever penned, the Apostle's creed, begins with the hearty affirmation: “I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.” To keep Yahweh hidden away at home is a violation of the central tenets of the faith we confess.
Christians believe in a supernatural world. The universe didn't pop into being out of no
thing by no one for no purpose at all. It has a Creator, this Creator is good, and He governs the universe for a purpose towards an end. Nevertheless, there is a social alienation we Christians experience in a society where we are welcome to believe whatever we want, but we are expected to behave publicly within certain generally accepted naturalistic parameters.I think the miracle-chaser movement largely grows out of a response to this alienation. It is not just mass groups getting together in a miracle-loving frenzy. It is private, genuine believers struggling to come to terms with how their supernatural faith is to be expressed in a naturalistic society. To the extent that a Christian feels pressure to live in a naturalistic world is the extent to which he will experience doubt over whether his faith in a Supernatural God is true. He needs objective confirmation that the world is not as the Naturalists say it is.
Herein I think lies a plausible explanation. It is one thing to experience a genuine miracle, or several. It is quite another to actively hunt for them, and to get oneself into miracle-hunting thought habits. But if one's faith is weak, and the pressure from naturalism is constant, I suppose it seems “reasonable” to feed oneself spiritually with a constant diet of miraculous occurrences. Bus arrivals become miraculous, dust bunnies become gold, frenzied emotions become a supernatural encounter with God. They need to, or else faith cannot survive.
In my 12-something years of following Jesus, I believe my faith has moved from baby-stage to something more mature. Not finished, but deeper, more well-rounded, informed and more consistent in its expression. (Though still wanting in many ways in all of the above) In retrospect, miracle-hunting is an expression of a baby faith, a faith under pressure, struggling to learn to walk. Eventually, a Christian needs to give up their baby faith and move onto maturity. This is a struggle: learning to walk is very, very hard in my experience. While miracles give us a glimpse of proof that the world is not as the Naturalists say it is, miracles alone cannot bring us out of the struggle with naturalistic doubts. One of the pieces of a mature faith is knowing why naturalism is false, knowing why “God the Father Almighty” is the only God and only Reality we are to acknowledge in our hearts and minds. It is not a raw display of God's power that brings us to maturity, it is truth that brings maturity to faith. “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.” (Jn 17:17)
One caveat: this is not to say that maturity is just a matter of book-learning and sorting through competing worldview arguments. Part of learning the truth is doing the truth. God gives us commands, and we are to practice them, and grow towards excellence in obedience to them. If all of our exposure to the truth of the Word is merely theoretical, we will find ourselves with the same emaciated faith of the miracle-hunters.
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