The Post-Christian World

As a layman, I'm often amused by the perennial Newsweek cover touting the death of Christianity. Hate to tell you guys, but Jesus already died once, and He came back.

But there are enough theologians who worry about the church slipping away into obscurity to make me at least consider the problem from a Christian perspective. There is evidence that young people today don't see the relevance of a traditional Christian framework. Because my faith blossomed during the Jesus People movement of the 1970s, I'm always pining for the simple days of my spiritual youth; coffee shops and homes were our churches then (few welcomed the long haired kids into church, although Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa, where I ended up, did, and grew.) We didn't see much relevance in the established church back then. Now, we are that established church.

I was pleased to have my request for an advanced copy of a new book that deals with the issue from a different perspective accepted by the publisher. The Jesus Paradigm, by David Alan Black, is said to challenge the idea that the church today is the permanent framework of Christianity. I'm looking forward to reading the book, and from reviews like those at Broadcast Depth it looks like it is a good read.

I suspect I'll have a different take on it than the reviewers to date because I love to challenge my presuppositions. I'll blog on it as I read it.

Religion and Science sittin' in a tree ...

I'm often asked how I can embrace science and my conservative brand of religion so readily when they seem at odds in so many ways. I have a fascination with things that seem to be in conflict but prove to be complimentary.

Heretofore, I had not found a good analogy for this dynamic of seeming opposites being so compatible. But a blog post at An Evangelical Dialog on Evolution provides one that really resonates, from his review of the book Christology and Science:

[Christology and Science states:]
"I would like to suggest an interpersonal metaphor that is rarely considered appropriate (if considered at all) for the interaction between the disciplines [of theology and science]. Is it possible that we might think of theology and science as lovers?"

On careful reflection, this analogy might be particularly apt for the relationship between two disciplines that are fumbling towards mutual understanding. Here’s what Shults says about the Lovers metaphor:

"It provides us with a way to make sense of our mutual fear and fascination. We fear existential encounters that we cannot control. This inability to control the other, which evokes trembling in the presence of the beloved, is ingredient to true love. The risk of losing control is part of the delightful experience that binds lovers together."

Because of our intimate relationship I can say there is no one more different than I than my wife. It might be that every woman is as far removed from me in perception, intuition and other traits I find abhorrently absent in myself. After 33 plus years of marriage I can say that the mystery remains, even as I have grown in knowledge of her. While in very real ways we feel we are "one" in the spiritual, communal sense, we remain very different from each other physically, emotionally and spiritually. Opposites, as they say, attract.

The lover analogy works for the relationship of science and religion on that level. The attempt to smooth it all down and synthesize a belief that fully embraces both disciplines often fails. Just as man cannot really become woman, science cannot become our religion. And neither can our religion become science. They should be considered together, differences noted and accepted, until our understanding grows.

St. Augustine and the School Board

St. Augustine of Hippo, who lived from November 13, 354 to August 28, 430, may have the answer to the evolution/creation "debate". In speaking of the creation account in Genesis, he wrote:

"In matters that are so obscure and far beyond our vision, we find in Holy Scripture passages which can be interpreted in very different ways without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such cases, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search for truth justly undermines our position, we too fall with it."

The wonderful blog for the BioLogos Foundation quotes this snippet from Augustine's "The Literal Interpretation of Genesis". From the blog article:

The problem of Genesis, according to Augustine, is not the authority of the text itself but how we should interpret it. The Church should not rush to ground itself on a single interpretation, as it has done in the past regarding Genesis. Doing so could prove disastrous, especially if that one intrepration cannot stand in light of modern scientific discoveries.

There's more here than just that snippet of course. I find it compelling that in a work titled "The Literal Interpretation of Genesis" St. Augustine posits a view that would brand him as a heretic in the eyes of many conservative Christians.

It makes me pause and think about the meaning of the word "literal". I recently had a cousin quote a bumper-sticker to me: "God said it, I believe it, and that settles it." Well, yeah. But I feel a need to understand exactly what God is saying. Did Jesus want his followers to literally pluck out their eyeballs (Matthew 5:9), or cut off their hand (Matthew 5:29-30), if those body parts offended them? Is the Psalmist's description of God having wings like an eagle to envelop him mean our God is really a giant omnipresent bird (Psalm 91:2-4)?

Genesis has both internal evidences, such as the sun and moon being created on the fourth day, long after mornings and evenings have been introduced, and inconsistencies (such as the different creation account in Genesis 2). I believe it is inspired, God-breathed scripture, designed to be understood on its own merits and for its own reasons.

The gospel is amazingly simple. You are separated from God, but God has provided a way for you to restore communion with Him. Its a message designed by the most powerful to appeal to the least powerful. The range of human intelligence from imbecile to genius is very small compared to the gap between the smartest human and God Himself. We would expect our God to provide a way to fit the Gospel to each person's needs. The fact that the most powerful intellects and most mentally challenged people can find a common faith points to the universality of the Gospel message.

For those of us who like to exercise our gray matter, theology holds special promise. Its not for everyone, but thinking Christians should not shy away from investigating controversies with an open mind, inquiring of God for truth, and synthesizing a theology that accommodates both science and faith. It is what I think Paul meant when he said we work out our salvation with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12b-13). We need not resort to bumper stickers if we don't want to; God obviously loves all His children, even those that want to probe, question and understand deeper things.

Gay Marriage

As a conservative Christian, I believe that marriage is a sacred union for Christians, ordained by God to bring husband and wife into closer communion with Him. It provides a preview of our voluntary relationship with God through His Son, Jesus, and is the single most important human relationship we will have. While God's default relationship to us is as parent to child, our voluntary relationship through His Son is closer to a marriage (albeit unequal and forever to remain that way).

But I recognize that marriage is not a sacrament to non-Christians. Still, a monogamous relationship between husband and wife does provide benefits to the society as a whole. A committed relationship is the best environment for the rearing of children. The devoted couple is more stable generally, working in concert for the security of their family, and less apt to cause cost to society through crime, social services, and public health issues. So I am happy to see non-believers marry, even though I can't help but think they are missing the most important, and deepest, part of the union.

Our culture recognizes some of these benefits, and extends certain privileges to married couples. If they have children, income taxes are reduced. Even without children, the more stable family enjoys lower tax rates and higher deductions, laws to simplify inheritance, ownership of property, etc. We like marriage. Even for non-believers.

The question before us is how to deal with the request from gay couples to enter into marriage, taking advantage of the privileges society confers on the married.

Our faith response may be different than our response for the culture at large. I would not favor a Christian marrying someone from another faith, but I would not want the culture to outlaw it. While a Christian marrying someone of another faith doesn't get the full benefit of marriage-as-sacrament, the culture does better with them married.

California has a proposition to reverse a State Supreme Court ruling that led to gay marriages. My federalist tendencies have always led me to support a legislature's right to establish the laws, not the courts. But in California, the legislature has twice passed gay marriage legislation only to see it vetoed by the governor. My federalist leanings are less offended in this case.

It will be interesting to see how the state's population votes on this issue. Its been a number of years since the people passed the marriage proposition that the State Supreme Court struck down, and I suspect more Californians will join with me in voting no on Prop. 8.

A "No" vote on the proposition will allow the gay couples who have entered into marriage remain married, and will allow gay couples to marry in the future. My position is not a popular one in conservative Christian circles.

But we have to consider the purpose of civil marriage. The benefits that flow to the culture include less promiscuous behavior and therefore lowered public health costs, an elimination of a discriminatory tax law that doesn't recognize the lowered costs couples (even gay couples) bring society and more stable and better defined voluntary relationships between partners.

Theistic Evolution and the Problem of Pain

Mike at Clashing Culture asks this of his readers:

So, I ask, who would be the loving God of Theistic Evolution. Conceptually, any God involved in evolution wouldn’t be a loving God who gave his only son for our salvation, but a God who either is distant as in the deist conception, or actively cruel and capricious. Considering the damage that Man, presumed to be the highest achievement of Theistic Evolution has wreaked on our environment, I would think that the near God of the Abrahamic religions could have found a better way.

Can anyone fill me in on how Theistic Evolutionists reconcile nature with Nature’s God?

I see an objection and an assumption in the above statement.

First, the objection: a belief in Theistic Evolution is incompatible with the idea of a loving God because evolution relies on the life and death of millions of living things to reach the point we are at now. But it comes close to being a category error, because the problem of life's hardship, of living only to die and knowing it, or of what CS Lewis called the "Problem of Pain", exists no matter what you think of the origins of life. It is, at best, a redundancy, and not an obstacle to the Christian considering the mechanism of our creation (evolution or creation).

Many Christians will explain Pain by citing the Fall of Man, when one man's rebellion against God introduced sin into the world and changed God's creation forever (Ro 5:12). But even that explanation doesn't provide an answer to the question: why would a loving God allow millions and millions of animals and humans to live in a struggle for survival and die horrible, pain-filled deaths because of Adam's rebellion? Pointing to an origin for Pain, no matter how reasonable it seems, doesn't explain why a loving God allows it.

There are explanations in theology; the one I like most centers on free will, and the necessity of God's apparent "hand's off" attitude to enable man to freely choose God. But those explanations, and if they stand or fall in the questioner's mind, is not dependent on whether God created the heavens and the earth in 7 days, or used natural processes without divine intervention. Either way, it seems inefficient, and somewhat cruel, for God to use millions and millions of deaths to allow me to choose Him.

And that brings us to the assumption I see. Its easy to miss because our point of view is always as a temporal living being concerned with temporal things.

Who said suffering and death are bad things?

Well, me, for one. I don't like pain in the least. I don't want to die. But God evidently has a different opinion. While the ruler in Matthew 9:18 was certain his daughter was dead, Jesus answered authoritatively, before seeing her, that she was only asleep. And the mourners also thought her dead; they laugh in scorn at Jesus' statement in Mt 9:24. But she walked out of the room with Jesus.

Jesus didn't know this girl, and from the story, we can't tell if He had any emotional investment in her life or death.

In the case of Lazarus, we find Jesus again referring to death as "sleep", convincing enough that his disciples mistook the term for regular slumber (Jo 11:11 - 13). Upon arriving on the scene, Jesus weeps at his friend's death, even though He, of all people, knows what is about to happen. John 11:35 - 38 shows Jesus in emotional pain, grieving over the loss of his friend. Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, not because he missed him personally, but because it was necessary to convince the skeptics to follow Him (i.e., for the Glory of God).

In these two examples we see death as being simply "sleep" to God, yet in one instance Jesus is emotionally pained by the loss. He weeps.

From our vantage point, suffering and death are bad things, but they may not be so to God. A quick analogy every parent will recognize: when my grandsons, just 18 months apart, were taken in for vaccinations, my daughter knew the purpose and meaning of the shots they were about to receive. Matthew, the oldest at 20 months, was horrified at the pain caused to his little brother. Clinging to his mother, he pointed at the nurse and said "Bad!", then crumbled back into the embrace, only to turn and look again at the nurse, reach out and point and say "bad!" again.

Matthew, we know the feeling.

My mother wrote a poem about my father's long descent into dementia and eventual death, requiring years of her full time attention and care, and here is a part pertinent to our conversation today:

I couldn’t live without him.
I know as I drink this bitter cup,
The long goodbye was for me
So that I could give him up.

Wrestling with the Problem of Pain is common to all Christians, regardless of their beliefs on the origins, and evolution is no more brutal a process than any other our theologies have proposed. They all require a loving God to allow pain and death to occur for some reason.

This explanation will do nothing for the atheist or agnostic who objects to the idea of God because of the Problem of Pain. But that problem exists above and beyond the smaller controversy of evolution vs. creation. The Problem of Pain exists in the struggle for all of us to work out our own salvation and understand the nature of God.