(This is the third of eight posts in which I’ll answers questions that come up often in our church.)

(This question is obviously much more than merely an intellectual problem. The words 'suffering' and 'pain' hardly grasp the realities they speak of. So I offer the following thoughts as woefully inadequate reflections on a much deeper problem.)

To put it in simple terms we can understand, when God created the world he had two options: (1) Create a world where creatures did not have an opportunity to rebel against him. If he chose this option, then the world might be tragedy-less, but human beings would be more like robots than actual people. Most importantly, love would not have been a real possibility in the relationship between God and humanity, and between humans and one another. (2) Create a world where creatures did have an opportunity to rebel against him. In choosing this option, he opened the door to the possibility of evil, suffering, and death entering his world, but he also kept open the door of love and authentic relationship.

So either you have a world of love with suffering, or a world with neither suffering nor love. And the whole purpose of creation was for our Triune God to share Divine Love, to invite other creatures into this dynamic interplay of life and love. Basically, it goes against God’s nature to avoid love, even though love is always inherently risky.

Another important biblical teaching is that there are beings in this world – evil spirits, if you want to call them something – that work against God’s purposes by leading humankind into personal and corporate rebellion. One of the main purposes of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection was to defeat these powers of evil that enslave human beings and cause both 'natural' evils (earthquakes, tsunamis, etc) and personal evils (murder, pollution).

This brings us to what the Bible considers to be the more crucial question: What is God doing to overcome the problem created by sin and death entering the world (that is, evil and suffering)? From the very beginning, God has been working to overcome the sin problem begun in Adam. He has done this by calling together a community of people committed to worshiping, obeying, and trusting him alone. Through this community God seeks to show the world what life is like when God is honored as God, draw all people back into relationship with him, and to put the world back together again. We believe Jesus stands at the center of this plan as God taking upon Godself the world’s evil and overcoming it. Once gain, it is now through the church that God seeks to continue this mission. So in a very real way, we are God’s answer to the problem of evil and suffering.
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(This is the second of eight posts in which I’ll answers questions that come up often in our church.)

Yesterday I argued that no one – neither believers nor atheists – can be absolutely certain about God’s existence. Yet we (Christians) believe that God is here and that he is not silent. Here are a few reasons why:

Design – When we consider the brilliant and complex design of our world, we believe it makes most sense to believe in an intelligent designer. (FYI, this is different from the specific position in modern scientific debates called “Intelligent Design”.)

First cause / Final explanation – If you continually ask the question Why? or How? of our world, eventually you must answer either ‘God’ or ‘That’s just the way things are.’ We think it probable that God is the first cause, rather than mere chance.

Moral conviction – While it is certainly true that morality differs among different cultures, there is always some sort of moral expectations among human beings. Something is seen as right (or commendable) and something is seen as wrong (or punishable). We think that ‘moral law’ implies a ‘moral lawgiver’ (even if we don’t think those terms best describe God or what God asks of us).

Spirituality – Throughout history, the majority of human persons and societies have sought some form of spiritual or transcendent experience. Either 99% of human beings are stupid and/or deceived (and/or not 'scientific' enough to believe that science can and must explain everything), or there is some reality beyond us that calls out to us.

Beauty and goodness – Much is made of the problem of evil and suffering, but we think that the opposite question is equally powerful and problematic for those who deny God’s existence: Why is there so much beauty and goodness in the world? How do you explain the way we feel when we stand on top of a mountain, or what we experience in authentic friendship or romance, or when people selflessly sacrifice on others’ behalf? Of course there are many possible explanations, but once again, we think the one with God in it seems most likely.

Jesus’ resurrection – Most importantly, we believe that Jesus was raised from the dead, and this would not be possible if God didn’t exist. God raised Jesus from the dead, which validates this story about God as the true story about God. The story of Jesus’ resurrection is unexplainable apart from the reality of God. (I realize there are many who deny the resurrection and thus consider this point null and void, but I simply disagree. If anyone wants to know why feel free to ask, and I'll try to eventually present a case (though it might be a while).)

We should note that the Bible never tries to prove God’s existence to us. The Bible simply assumes we’ll believe in some form or idea of god or gods, and it tells us a story of the One it claims to be the True God. It ignores the question, ‘Is there a God?’ in favor of the question, ‘What is God really like?’ The difference between our world and theirs is that we can believe in, for instance, the value and authority of democracy or individual autonomy (freedom), and yet separate these beliefs from any talk of 'God.' Biblically, these things simply are our gods, and we are all idolaters. In other words, from a biblical perspective, idolatry is much more interesting than atheism, because atheism is simply a disguised form of idolatry (since, once again, all people give allegiance to something, even if only themselves or their own human reason / opinions).
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(This is the first of eight posts in which I’ll answers questions that come up often in our church.)

We'll start with a question that seems foundational to many people: How do we know God exists? I'll offer my thoughts in two entries.

First we have to acknowledge that we don’t know for sure that God exists, any more than we know for sure that he doesn’t. Absolute certainty about whether God exists or not is impossible.

Some people might say God doesn’t exist because God’s existence can’t be proven “scientifically.” But if anything like what we mean by the word “God” does exist, there is no way science could answer the question one way or another. Others might say that God has to exist because we’ve experienced him; but there is no way to know for sure that our experience matches the reality we’re claiming is behind it.

It is impossible for us to find a place or perspective from which we can look down and determine God's existence either way. This would only be possible if God were below us, which would make him something other than God.

Instead of certainty, we are dealing with degrees of probability. Those who affirm and deny God’s existence are looking at the world, gathering information, and making an educated evaluation – a guess really – about the best explanation for what they see. Some think the world is best explained by the existence of a God. Others think the opposite. But neither position is inherently more logical, and both involve faith – a risky commitment we each have to make given our limited knowledge and perspective.

Within this, there are many reasons I think it more likely that God exists than that he doesn’t. I will post them tomorrow.
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Sorry I haven't been posting much at all. Life comes at you fast. As I mentioned in the last post, I'm in the middle of a seminar on "world religions" at Real Life called We Are Not Alone. Since I don't have much time to read or think about other stuff (like the books I recently promised to blog through) right now, what I post will probably have to do with world faiths and stuff. At the beginning of the seminar, I wanted to be honest and forthright about my assumptions coming in. There is much that I do not understand about this whole conversation, but like everyone else I have certain assumptions that I bring to the table. Here are some of the most important ones.

What can be known of God is best known by looking at Jesus. This is my way of affirming the uniqueness of Jesus as God's fullest and finalest revelation. Everyone looks at God from somewhere, even the people espousing the whole "all roads lead up the same mountain" (see the poem below). The funny thing about the poem below is that someone is assuming the position of the speaker / observer. And that person makes an implicit claim to know something about God that all the other "religions" miss. I make a similar claim, but I think the answer is not by acting as if we can step outside the historical faiths (which actually involves stepping into yet one more historical faith, this once going by various names: scientific, rationalism, enlightenment, modern, postmodern, etc), but by trusting in Jesus as the way God came to us.

Salvation is about more than what happens to individual humans after they die. First of all, salvation is God's plan for the entire universe. Salvation, for instance, is something creation (or "nature," if you subscribe to the new historical faith mentioned above) looks forward to and will participate in (Romans 8.19-21). Salvation is about all of God's creation being rescued from the disastrous effects of sin. So it is about more than just humans. Humans do nevertheless stand at the center of salvation. This is where the second part comes in; speaking of salvation in terms of humanity, it isn't just about "where we go when we die" (or, more precisely, when Jesus returns). That is certainly important, and I'd never want to deny that at all - like, at all! - but salvation is about freedom from the power of evil and sin and death right here and now. Please understand, I'm not trying to deny the importance of the future, but I am trying to remind us that asking whether a person is "saved" has as much to do with how free they are from sinful ways of thinking and living as it does where they'll go when they die. If anyone cares to ask me to elaborate, feel free and I'll try. (By the way, ARod, I haven't ignored your question; I'm just waiting until I can do it justice.)

God’s saving plan is both “universal” and “particular.” That is to say, everything God does is designed to reach the whole world and all the people in it. He never acts just for this or that group. His plans are as big as the world he created. This is a scandal to some "religious" people who want God to care about only their group. That is also to say, however, that God (for reasons unknown to me) always goes about reaching all people by working in and through particular people (or groups of people). He chose one man out of all the tribes of the earth - Abraham - and promised to bring his blessing through that one family's seed. He remained committed to Israel as his people through whom he would bless the whole world. Etc. So it comes as no difficulty to me to believe that God would remain committed to one person or group as the means through which he will bring salvation to all (or as many as will have it). This is a scandal to many "secular" people, primarily because they fail to recognize that their commitment to universality is but yet another particularity among others.

That's enough for now. I have about five more, but I'll post them bit by bit. Any questions, reflections, or disagreements?

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I don’t know how many times I’ve heard someone say to me (or someone like me), 'You believe what you choose to believe, what you want to be true, what feels right to you.' I have mixed feelings about this accusation; I have seen that in many cases it is very true of Christians, but at the same time I can make a solid list of things I believe that I’d rather not believe (two examples: Jesus was fully God and fully man; followers of Jesus should always refrain from violence). Anyhow, MacIntyre calls this idea Emotivism: “the doctrine that all evaluative judgments and more specifically all moral judgments are nothing but expressions of preference, expressions of attitude or feeling, insofar as they are moral or evaluative in character.” In other words, we believe what we want to believe. In this chapter MacIntyre contests the claims of “Emotivism.”

He begins by acknowledging that moral language is used most often today in the world of debate. We argue moral positions because we cannot agree. Not only can we not agree, it often seems like even after debate we remain at an impasse, a stalemate, a point beyond which we can never move. Not only do we not agree, we cannot change each other’s minds, and therefore we most likely will not agree at any point in the future.

He brings up three common moral dilemmas: war, abortion, and equal access to health services. I will briefly discuss the first two. ( Read more )

Another project I’ve been working on is a reading summary of sorts. There are certain books I read that (a) I want others to benefit from, and (b) I want to absorb into my own thinking. On the latter, I tend to read kind of fast, so I miss a lot, and one of the best ways to make sure I understand what I’m reading is to describe it to someone else. There are many books with which I want to do this right now, but I’m starting with After Virtue by Alisdair MacIntyre. Many of the books I have read over the past few years quote him extensively, and he seems to be at the root of the emphasis on the narrative quality of life and truth and ethics, so I want to check him out for myself. I’ll proceed by summarizing the contents of the chapters, probably one by one. This first one is long, and I hope they are not all this long, but I don’t want to leave much out. Feel free to throw in your two cents, whether about what MacIntyre says, what I say about what he says, or what you want to say about what he says or what I say about what he says. (How’s that for redundancy!)

The opening of After Virtue (hereafter AV) has an apocalyptic feel to it; the title of the first chapter (“A Disquieting Suggestion”) subtly introduces part of M’s main contention: that we are at a crisis point in world history, a time in which something drastic has occurred that many of us fail to properly acknowledge. He begins with an analogy: Imagine that the world as we know it begins to fall apart at the seams. Some devastating catastrophe occurs, particularly within the field of natural sciences (biology, chemistry, etc), resulting in numerous environmental disasters. The world blames the scientific community for all but ruining the world, and thus unleashes its wrath on this sector of world population. Labs are bombed, scientists are slain, instruments are destroyed. Textbooks are outlawed and burned in fireplaces and bonfires all across the land as a symbol of our having been freed from this modern imperialistic intellectual thug. ( Read more )