Links

Some food for thought for the week...

-Wendy Gritter considers the question: Did God really say? There are few tactics more effective in Christian circles than accusing an opponent of "twisting Scripture." But who really benefits when we close off an issue from debate?

-Along similar lines, Misty Irons exposes the gulf between those who are seeking answers that apply to flesh-and-blood people that they care deeply about and those who are simply concerned about being right. Unsurprisingly, the latter seldom have much of value to contribute to the former.

-Craig Adams offers a good quote about the danger of certainty: "The man who is certain he is right is almost sure to be wrong; and he has the additional misfortune of inevitably remaining so. All our theories are fixed upon uncertain data, and all of them want alteration and support... The man who wishes to advance in knowledge should never of himself fix obstacles in the way."

-CLS shares some stories that poignantly illustrate how fear-based religion can become - and all too often is - a far greater curse on society than the "wicked gays" it so often scapegoats could ever be.

Infinite

I can sympathize with those who find Christianity impossible to believe. Even aside from the rampant hypocrisy one can find in nearly any church, there are philosophical problems like the existence of evil that many are unable to reconcile with the idea of a perfect and loving God. Not that anyone has a truly satisfactory explanation for the existence of evil, but whenever a church or denomination claims to have all the answers it understandably raises a lot of skepticism.

Not all stumbling blocks are equally troublesome, however. For my own part, I've never had a problem with the idea that God could simultaneously be three distinct persons yet one being, though I know that concept has caused some to reject the faith. To the contrary, I find it far more illogical to think that a God capable of creating the universe we experience around us could be fully understandable in human terms, as such individuals seem to require.

I do understand the skepticism that many people feel when a paradox is presented to them. Adherents of the "God said it, I believe it, that settles it" school of mindless faith have used their catchphrase to justify all manner of abusive and destructive behavior, and in the process have done more to discredit the Christian faith than any external enemy could ever have hoped to accomplish.

Furthermore, when we attempt to wrap our minds around things that are beyond our comprehension, it can become difficult to draw and maintain a clear line between paradox and irrationality. By opening the door to the possibility that two apparently contradictory things could both be equally true, we seemingly run the risk of embarking on a slippery slope into a realm where any nonsensical notion must be placed on equal footing with the most well established scientific fact.

But just as there's nothing inevitable (or even probable) about societal acceptance of gay couples leading to acceptance of pedophilia, bestiality and other unmentionable things (except in the lurid imaginations of some fundamentalists), so the acceptance of paradox as a valid way of broadening our ability to describe an indescribable Creator doesn't have to leave us at the mercy of demagogues and madmen.

When two groups of Christians come to irreconcilably opposed conclusions about the nature of God, with strong arguments based on scripture, tradition, reason and experience, it becomes reasonable to argue for the existence of a paradox. Predestination vs. free will, above time vs. within time, perfect goodness vs. the existence of evil - on issues of this sort we can never hope to know for certain what reality beyond our plane of existence really looks like. Yet just as the basic forces of the physical universe (gravity, electromagnetism, strong nuclear and weak nuclear) can only be reconciled if we allow for the existence of multiple dimensions beyond the four that we experience, so we can imagine that theological dilemmas that don't seem to add up now may fit together perfectly when viewed from a five (or ten or twenty six) dimensional perspective.

Regarding the idea of a triune God, consider how any of us would appear to a universe of two-dimensional beings who experienced depth the way we experience time (assuming, for just a moment, that we came up with a way to interact with their reality). A person intersecting their plane of existence would appear as one or more shapes; as we moved through their plane, our shape(s) (and their contents) would change in appearance without any explanation that our two-dimensional neighbors could conceptualize. Our arms, fingers, legs, head and torso might appear at times to be separate entities capable of moving independently and disappearing and reappearing at different times. We could even remove ourselves entirely from their universe and reinsert ourselves at a different point, seemingly without traveling the distance between our previous and new locations.

Consider, then, that a Creator would necessarily be many dimensions beyond us, and suddenly the paradox of the trinity seems like it must be a gross oversimplification of the ultimate reality of such a being. Such speculations are still fair targets for skepticism, since they cannot be empirically proven, but it stands to reason that we should be far more skeptical of any deity or higher power whose descriptions fail to transcend our own four-dimensional limitations.

Thought for the Week

The revolutions of the world have always been about one group trying to wrest power from another. The revolution Jesus launched, however, is far more radical, for it declares the quest for power over others to be as hopeless as it is sinful. Jesus' Kingdom revolts against this sinful quest for power over others, choosing instead to exercise power under others. It's a revolution of humble, self-sacrificial, loving service. It always looks like Jesus, dying on Calvary for the very people who crucified him.

-Gregory Boyd, The Myth of a Christian Religion

In other words, it doesn't look anything like this...

Links

A few articles of interest for your weekend perusal:

-What would Jesus do if invited to a gay wedding? Odds are this guy comes closer to the mark than Focus on the Family ever will.

-This sort of thing is why I maintain a healthy skepticism when it comes to global warming (and most other political issues). I remain open to following where the facts leads, but when an issue's primary proponents engage in alarmism, fearmongering and demonization of opponents (see also: the religious right's anti-gay crusades), it's usually a sign that their case isn't as strong as they insist that it is.

-Speaking of the religious right, David Schaengold illustrates why societal acceptance of homosexuality is not a slippery slope toward acceptance of pedophilia.

Fascinating

Human civilization is older than we thought. I love discoveries like this that shake up what we thought we knew and force us to rethink our assumptions.

Not everyone does, of course. It makes me wonder how the young-earth creationists will spin (or dismiss) this to keep the age of the universe within their 6,000-year time frame.

Even more noteworthy than the age of the ruins, to me at least, is how this discovery suggests that religious observance predates every other aspect of human civilization, rather than being its byproduct. Such evidence that spirituality is an innate human trait may not prove the existence (or nonexistence) of God, but it does allow for the possibility that we long for something beyond the world around us because there's something beyond this world to long for.

Boxed

Continuing on with the concept of apophatic theology (referenced here), it's not something I've studied much, but it makes a certain amount of sense. If God is the infinite being that Christians believe in, then any labels we apply to him (including this pronoun) cause us to create a mental construct that's necessarily finite and therefore not an accurate picture of God.

As soon as we say that God is good or loving or just, we've automatically limited God based on our own finite understanding of goodness, love or justice. Even if we don't intend to place God in a box, it is inevitable that we will do so given our inability to truly comprehend infinity. Thus the apophatic tradition of speaking of God only in negative terms: God is not evil, God is not imperfect, etc.

Ultimately such an approach has its limitations; the biblical authors used positive terms to describe God on many occasions, which suggests that there is merit in doing so at least some of the time. Furthermore, if God is as relational as he (or she, or they, or no pronoun at all if you prefer) appears to be in the Bible, then we hamper our ability to have a relationship with our Creator if we completely abandon the use of positive definitions to help us in our relating.

Thus we confront a paradox: we cannot accurately describe God using positive terms, yet at some point we need to. Unfortunately too many people are quick to dismiss the paradoxes of faith without recognizing that paradox is a necessary element of any effort to grasp that which lies beyond our comprehension. That's not to say that every apparent contradiction is a genuine paradox, but proper humility requires that we acknowledge that what appears to us to be an irresolvable contradiction may make perfect sense from a higher perspective.

Living in the tension between two conflicting truths can seem an impossibility at times: rely too heavily on positive terms to describe God, and before long God begins to look an awful lot like us, sharing our cultural biases, hating the people that we hate, endorsing the political causes we support and only loving those we view as 'sinners' conditionally. Move too far away from positive terms and God can quickly become an impersonal force in our minds, a distant power that we cannot relate to.

If there were a perfect balance that could be struck between the two extremes, no paradox would exist. But by living in the tension created by acknowledging both truths, we can self-correct as needed and continue to live in relationship with the God who defies all human definitions.

Snippets

Sometimes wisdom comes in small packages. If nothing else, a good quote can make people stop and think, and that alone can be worthwhile. Here are a few thought-provoking quotes I've come across in recent months...

"A golden rule: we must judge men, not by their opinions, but by what their opinions make of them." -Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

“To be nobody but yourself in a world that's doing its best to make you somebody else, is to fight the hardest battle you are ever going to fight. Never stop fighting.” -ee cummings

"A ship in harbor is safe, but that's not why ships are built." (fortune cookie)

"Sometimes I think Christianity is like an archeological dig, where you have to learn to differentiate between the real artifacts, the stuff that's covering it up, and the stuff that the locals make to sell to tourists." (source unknown - seen on Facebook)

"I'd rather have questions I can't answer than answers I can't question." (source unknown)

And finally, on a slightly less serious note, a counterprotest done right...

Evolution

I think that atheism and fundamentalist religion as we know them will last barely a geological eye-blink just a few hundred or a few thousand years more. Then we will begin to understand that we are spiritual beings and animals; that the universe is impersonal and love preceded it; that we believe and we doubt; that a particle may be in one place and in another place at the same time; and that love is a chemical reaction and a revelation. Above all, I hope that we will someday understand that apophatic paradox is the blessed, creative, and freeing nature of reality, not a "problem."...

I believe that someday the celebration of the spiritual/material paradox will break down what now seems to be a "Berlin Wall" between secularism and religion in a way that transcends the boundaries of the world's monastic communities and science labs and explodes into the realm of general knowledge, just as the once far-fetched idea of a round earth revolving around the sun exploded from the theory of one or two scientists, eventually to become general knowledge.

Meanwhile, speaking as a father, I know that my concern for my children was not what they believed about me, but how they behaved and how they treated their mother, their siblings, their home, and their schools. My concern was not whether my children believed the right things about school but whether they did their homework. My concern was not whether they believed the correct things about families, but whether they were polite to their mother.

-Frank Schaeffer, Patience With God, pgs. 180-181

(For more information on apophatic theology, click here. It makes a lot of sense when you think about it - or at least it does to me.)

Those that still see the world in black and white, "us vs. them" terms will no doubt regard the above statement as nonsense at best, and dangerous heresy to be stamped out at worst. For those who have progressed beyond a Stage Three faith, the above will likely elicit a fervent prayer of agreement that humanity can one day outgrow its pettiness (and survive long enough to see that day).

That's not to say that all Stage Five individuals would agree about what that future will look like or how we can get there, but with the understanding that there is no "them" comes the realization that even major differences of opinion need not be settled violently. I'm enough of a realist (or cynic, if you prefer) to doubt whether human nature is improvable, but I cling to hope - and to my celebration of paradox - all the same.