aintsobad

Religion: Can We Know God? (23) Authority

   Remember this series is a series of witness encounters. Young people in my area ask me, "How do you know?" I am trying to answer.

   A corollary question to that of knowledge is the question, "Who am I (who are you, who is anyone) to say what is right and wrong in matters of religion, ethics, philosophy or anything else?" These two questions have to get some kind of sentient answers if any portion of our culture is to remain even nominally Christian.

   We can dismiss some commentators, regardless of the sanctimony of their offerings. Let me list a few.

   We shall not and should not listen to the fellow whose life/family/business practice/et al, is a mess. We shall not and should not take marriage advice from the fellow who has been married ten or eleven times. He is an expert on divorce, not marriage. He believes in weddings, not marriage. Perhaps he should save us all and buy a bakery next door to a florist.

   We shall not and should not take advice from someone with a clearly selfish agenda. If our adviser takes three offerings before he gets through his commercial to his actual advice, we see his real intentions. If we have to buy something to gain access to his site, we see his agenda. Single issue parties/individuals will betray their agenda early and often or ultimately and finally. Regardless, we should not spend too much time with them.

   Agendas come at us from other angles as well, and often reveal themselves, finally, in the form of "ulterior motives." For instance, the fellow who argues we should provide forgiveness to him for his theft while his other hand reaches for our other pocket exposes his "ulterior motive." He is not asking for forgiveness but access. We ought to forgive whenever we can, like God does, and forget the transgression so much as we can, in the same way God does. We are not required to go down the same path. The Apostle Paul lists at least two persons he surrenders to Satan for the sake of their souls. He means he will not allow them to stand in the sheepfold, pretending to be sheep, perhaps even wanting to be sheep, while their fangs take a frightful toll on the actual sheep.

   Cheap repentance should not result in meaningless forgiveness but, rather, with confrontational love. There are too many times our ineffectual arete (man made, and so fallible) forgiveness provides just enough emotional support to the sin sick person to help maintain them in their level of illness. 

   We might also say we are right to avoid even sincere advice that leads to self-destruction or to the harm of others. We should probably not have to say Timothy McVeigh erred when he detonated a truck bomb in front of a federal building in Oklahoma City. If we easily accept the question, "Who is to say what is right and what is wrong?" we have to blindly absolve Bundy, Stalin, Madoff, et al.

   Let me pause to reveal my ulterior motive or, at least, one might say, my hidden argument. These are obvious exceptions to the whole range of Authority. These are Straw Men, hastily set up and then easily kicked down to dust, so that they answer the posed question but without any deep thought. I put them forward because they are simply understood and explained. Each is as easily accepted. What are they worth as arguments or even tool for argument?

   Each one serves as the follow-up to the initial question. They are directive in nature. If the implied answer to the question "Who is to say..." is simply "No one, I guess..." we imply any idea is as good as any other idea. However, when we pose the follow-up questions, as if we are to ask, "Do you really take existence to be so nebulous as to be vacant of any objective right and wrong?" we introduce limits or boundaries to the equation. I scarcely need to say, the introduction of any limits or boundaries to the supposedly infinite expanse of antinomianism (lawlessness, or "instead of law") reshapes the proposed purpose. 

   We can then go on to say all cultures (of all tribes and tongues) develop some kind of ethics, if only by example or model, because in human cultures we invariably find someone who is both willing and able to sacrifice some personal luxury or autonomy for the greater good of the culture. When, therefore, we start to look for an answer to the vast initial question, we establish first that there are limits to what can be deemed ethical, by which we mean "acceptable because admirable."

Opinion s expressed here are mine alone.

Religion: Can We Know God? (22)-The Asymptotic Line

   When we try to make religion about faith rather than knowledge, we force potential believers to abandon their reason or our religious system. Poor, empty souls become like an asymptotic line, where the x-axis forever approaches the y-axis (think of curling loops) but never actually intersects the y-axis at any point. The would-be believer experiences alternating feelings (but only feelings) of affection, honest questioning and real desire but finally recoils, sighing melancholy, in distrust of the non-verifiable.

   If any meaningful portion of our culture will remain Christian (and, please, remember the Biblical power of the Remnant and the lengths to which God will go for the very, very few) it is necessary that we learn to answer certain questions actual persons ask. Alas, we will have to search for potential believers and then in-bed some small hint of seriousness in them. This is difficult to do in a society awash in vulgar superficiality.

   Jesus spoke for hours with only occasional interruptions for music. He spent a great deal of time in fellowship, story telling to reconstruct His teachings. He approached His subjects meaningfully and His objects seriously. The presentation of transformative spiritual knowledge should not fall to the level of a summer replacement television sit-com. Modern Western worship experiences consistently fall below this level, bereft of ritual, absent traditional mores and devoid of anything higher than reconstructed pablum; easy to produce, soft to chew and rapidly flushed through the system.

   If any small portion of our culture is to remain authentically Christian, we will have to repeatedly answer well at least two questions. One is the question we look at in this series at aintsobad, the ever present question, "Can we know God?" The second is implied in the first, "Who are you (who is anyone?) to say what God is like, or who God is?"

   The atheists, the anti-theists, the agnostics, the unconcerned, ask these questions more often than believers. Believers tend to accept the presence of God (or the need for some value-added ethos) and act from there, often without any intrusion from reason. If the audience expects inanity, it should not recoil when the teacher shows himself a clown. 

   There are ways to offer remarkable insights even to the blind. 

Opinions expressed here are mine alone.

   

Religion/Philosophy: Can We Know God? (21) Friday Interlude to Update and Explain

   We shall shortly see a massive transfer of wealth from one segment of our culture to their peculiarly chosen beneficiaries. Persons who benefit from our free system, their own hard work and some good fortune, plan to hand over billions of dollars to various charities. Some of these charities will be so well funded they will actually not need to ask for more from anyone for a century.

   What is the moral philosophy undergirding this transfer of wealth? One fellow says his money, hundreds of millions, will got to a Gay and Lesbian Rights Task Force. He is free to make this distinction in his philanthropy. My point is this; wealth is power, wealth is about to be transfered and power with it and the power will last a long time.

   Now, who makes the moral decisions about who should have power/wealth? Fine and good to say we are redistributing billions to charity, wonderful to think our society will change the way it rations health care, child care and employment but who makes the choices about how the changes will take place? Granted, most of them will come out of group-think, so we will get redistribution of wealth by action of popular culture functioning as a committee of the whole.

   Hilarity may ensue.

   Or not.

   In olden times, which is any era before disco, mankind made use of philosophers who practiced a form of thought called "philosophy." Philosophers were persons who thought deeply, but broadly and fundamentally, about the nature of the human condition. Specialists were not eschewed but were not so highly prized as today, either. 

   Today there is so much available information that specialization is God. Specialists have a protocol in their specialty, whether that is medical, legal or church growth. Specialists follow their protocols in order to first avoid causing harm. They treat symptoms in their area of expertise in hopes the system improves as symptoms abate.

   There is less broad, fundamental, general thinking of a deep nature. One supposes there is just as much thinking, actually, but the culture pays less attention to the generalist, preferring the fellow who can show them how to catch technological lightning in a bottle for the purpose of poorly regulated capitalism.

   As a result, we live in a world that knows how to do a lot of "stuff" predictably but knows less and less about "why" to do this "stuff" and even less about "what might happen" if we keep repeating these behaviors. As one learned fellow said recently, "The economy is not going anywhere for a very long time and I don't know what we are going to do about it."

   There is a baleful tint to the weary loneliness of the specialists who brought us to the cusp of this melt-down. One could feel a deep sympathy for them if they had not killed the prospects of a generation and pushed us toward a formalized socialism we will be three generations breaking.

   So, I come to this screen, again and again, trying to say, there is a moral vacuum unfolding because we have lost the urge to think with deep, broad, fundamental strokes about the overall human condition. We have specialists to tell us we are not going anywhere and they do not know what to do about it because no one has ever seen this before but we lack any real moral leadership. By moral leadership, I mean the Golden Rule generalizations that remake human motivations to help individuals exercise control over their conscious lives.

   I try to point a way here. 

Opinions expressed here are mine alone.

Evangelism from Evangelist Rick Davis

   I have sat down to read, study and write this week. Instead, God has directed various friends and new acquaintances to me for conversations. Howard, Amanda, Rufus, Brian, Dalton, Hongo, a Boar, a dozen others. It is a week of conversations, some, I hope, leading ultimately to discipleships, including my own.

   The medical front has seen some progress this week as well. I saw yet another series of specialists on Monday. I am waiting on a call back from one today to set a date for a surgery that will relieve some of the pressure. It is not my intention to spend my time crying about the way things have gone. I am  going to submit to this very minor surgery to improve the quality of my life I have. 

   Please know that my life is very good. My intention is to come all the way back, so much as a fellow of nearly 57 can do. 

Religion: Can We Know God? (20)-Evidence(s)

   Please let me begin today with an illustrative story. 

   A man stopped a fellow on the street to ask directions to a local store. The first man, the one who needed directions, was just able to make the other fellow understand where he wanted to go for they did not speak the same language. With increasingly wilder gesticulations the fellow who knew where he was and where he needed to go tried to convey his information to the first fellow. They parted ways a few minutes later with much information but no knowledge having been transferred for the desired location was not in easy sight and the one fellow who needed did not speak the language of the fellow who knew.

   So it is that Man may miscommunicate with God because the desired goal is not in easy sight and we do not speak the Language of the Way. In order to see even where we might wish to get we will have to learn the Way. The King of the Way puts forth evidences of the Road, Inns for Rest in the Journey and, when necessary, often gives a gentle (and sometimes not so gentle) push along the Way. There are even those times when He must seize us by the arm to guide us along His way, where we may or may not actually intend to go.

Opinions expressed here are mine alone.

Religion: Can We Know God? (19)-Evidence

   If we say God exists, and, if the apparent pronouncement is to be considered rational, then at some point some "evidence" for our faith statement must be offered. In this series I have tried to offer some "proofs" in the form of various knowledge based rebuttals for some standard argument against trust in God. 

   The "proofs" in the form of rebuttal to various incitements against God's existence presuppose the antagonist is serious about the matter to be discussed, which may not be true. If the antagonist is disinterested, questions about proof of God's existence may actually mean the questioner just does not see why faith in God might be helpful. If so, the conversation changes. The matter at hand is not whether or not God exists or whether or not the God who may or may not exist is discernible or whether or not the God who may or may not exist and who may or may not be discernible has any predisposition to love humankind.

   I have tried to say that God does exist, God is discernible and God does care to be intimately involved with humans. In addition, I have tried to offer Christian empathy for those who feel estranged from God and from the Christian community.

Some conversations with some folks ran awhile last night. Then, I discovered I cleverly let my phone run down to nothing, so I missed a number of calls and texts. I am returning them this morning in the order in which I missed them last evening. I will return to this site shortly to continue our discussion on evidence(s).

Religion: Can We Know God? (18)-Interlude to Restate Purpose

   If you join us somewhere in the middle of this discussion, welcome, and please tell me how you know it is the middle of the discussion. I do not know where we are in this discussion and I am the writer.

   People keep asking me questions or offering insights as they do join our little troupe. It has been a happy experience to have somewhere to send those who feel they should doubt God because they have never read or heard anyone offer an alternative explanation. 

   This adds to the discussion.

   I do need to say again where we started from and what we meant from the start. I insist that God exists, that God is discernible, that God loves the human race above all Creation, while God loves Creation as well. I do not think God needs my defense but I do think some people need to have a source they can read easily to argue these points from the Theistic standpoint. Yes, there are others who do the same and certainly do it well. The lucidity of other writers/speakers does not relieve my personal responsibility to present my arguments day to day.

   Please know that I spend time each day meeting with persons, young and old, who simply think a dismissive assertion about verifiability is sufficient reason to dismiss the extant, persistent, compassionate God for all time. Some segments of Western culture have already dismissed God to their own detriment and ultimately, I fear, to their demise. British culture once gave us Shakespeare and Wren, whereas now they export Hitchens and an increasingly empty Anglicanism. Their generational loss of faith in God is now their most oft repeated claim to superiority, even as their cultural island vanishes into a sea of superficiality.

   Simply put, we should not let it happen here.

   In addition, I should repeat that this is not a site wherein all I do is argue for religion in general, even Theistic religion. I hold that Christianity, the faith once delivered to the Fathers (as opposed to the modernistic, neo-liberal version which seems to have a perverse need to devalue Jesus and deform God) is the last necessary Word of God. Jesus, the Christ, enters human history to show us truths of God we could never find left to ourselves. Christianity offers a God who may be sensed in the Law but is incarnated in the flesh of the Christ. Christianity offers a religion of legal compassion to all men but without the additions of jihad and assassin. Christianity posits recognizable, personal survival after death rather than nihilistic absorption into some ephemeral cosmic force.

   So, there it is, a simple answer to what this is all about and why I allow it to occupy some of my writing time. I can never cover all this when I am in a conversation with one of my friendly, local unbelievers. It is helpful to have a place to point them for more thinking on the subject. I am sure I could use some help in cataloging topics to make certain arguments easier to find. Still, my primitive attempts at numbering the installments may help some. In truth, I trust God to take persons to what I put up when they need it. I know some of my peers use some of what they find here and that they point others to this site.

   For now, that is enough for me.

Opinions expressed here are mine alone.

Religion: Can We Know God? (17)-God and Man and the Evil Contradiction

   Evil is not the contradiction to Theism the A-Theists make it. The presence of evil in the world (via the human  heart) necessitates a Divine Presence. At the very least, the fact man recognizes evil as separate and apart from good insists on some Moral Authority.

   The self-promoting A-Theistic argument that there are no Christian children or Moslem children or Buddhist children (though many moderns try to morph Eastern Mystical Religion into a meditative lifestyle, sans God, and so other than religion), only those born in the area where a certain religion is predominant is apparently meant to be a conversation ender. This is laughable. If one meets a Westerner converted to Islam, the a priori argument is rendered invalid. Reports of hundreds of thousands of Asian Moslems converting to Christianity at great personal risk is a conversation starter but not one the A-Theists can answer.

    In fact, any follow-up question seems to leave the leading A-Theists floundering. These are not always serious persons.

   For instance, modern A-Theists have the Devil's own time  describing evil, let alone defining evil. When one's argument starts with the notion that there is no morality, no purpose, no basis for ethics, the problem of good/evil becomes insuperable. Tellingly, the A-Theists do not offer any suggestions for personal life from their own artificial view of good/evil (How could they?). They only seek to attack Theism for its ancient, time proven assertions on the subject.

   When asked to interpret the problem of evil and human suffering, the A-Theist answer is to blame all human suffering on Theism, without any mitigation, though the answer the fellow gives is one he cannot possibly hold, if he is to remain consistent with his initial argument. He must then begin to add qualifiers to his argument, i.e., God (Theos) can only be good (exist) if God eliminates all suffering/evil, regardless of what good (mercy) might also be eliminated in the action, so long as this does not interfere with human free will.

   You see where we are going. God is now constrained to appear at noon, garbed in white, one hundred feet tall, suspended in mid-air, call us all by our full name and spit-curl our cow lick. She may do this only by permission and, in the absence of a cow-lick, should perform emergency Rogaine administration instead. 

   The A-Theist must either ignore the presence of evil/suffering or accept that evil/suffering is justifiable at some level. For the Christian Realist, the Passion of the Christ is the supreme example of evil/suffering and God's response to evil/suffering. God does not ignore human suffering/evil. The only practical antidote to human suffering/evil does not involve our joining hands around the global campfire to sing Kum-Bi-Yah.  God's universal, eternal answer to evil/suffering is to practice enormous, unmerited Self Sacrifice. The next time an A-Theist asks why it is God does not act against human evil/suffering be certain to advise him in this way: God's Son, God's Self, moved against human evil/suffering at great personal cost. Until you do the same, there is very little left to say.

Opinions expressed here are mine alone.

   

   

Religion: Can We Know God? (16)-God and Man, Continued, Day Three

   A-theists operate in various categories. There are, at least, A-Theists who simply do not feel inclined to believe in an omnipotent, omniscient, all-good personal God. Often, these formalized A-theists offer their feelings for facts. That is, they argue they are not poorer in any way  because they insist that nothing is sacred. They do not usually spend a great deal of time or energy in the proofs portion of research into the divine. What is unverifiable by ordinary means (though theists insist the presence of God is verifiable by acceptable means, sans prejudice) is simply of no interest.

   That is to say, many modern A-theists pontificate on matters they have not considered deeply, nor trained to consider, not found to fit their accepted faith system. Purely on the basis of personal desire the bulk of modern A-theism does away with God, so murdering morality and ethics with God.

   Then, there is a portion of modern A-theism that is actually Anti-theism. There are two branches, it seems to me, of Anti-Theists. 

   There are Anti-Theists who venally, irrationally opposed to any Prime Authority. We do not overstep when we look askance at these persons as if they are less than serious. Anti-theists who simply hate the idea of Authority or Accountability can be distinguished from other Anti-theists by the flimsy construct of their arguments. In fact, the radical, hateful Anti-theist seldom has much to say about God, philosophically or theologically. He will mostly point out the failure of religious persons to assimilate the merciful, compassionate conversation of God with Man. He can never see beyond the closest failed Theist.

   I will dispense with the usual acknowledgements about the moral lapses of Theists. Morality is an outgrowth of Religious Theism but morality is neither the Source of Religion nor its end. This is particularly true in Christianity wherein Jesus, the Exemplar, repeatedly champions persons remarkably ostracized by their culture on moral grounds.

   Simply put, the Anti-Theistic argument against God (actually centered on real or imagined moral lapses of Theists) flounders at the moment one actually finds even one Transformed Theist. A life changed from empty to admirable is the end of the Anti-Theistic screed applied to fallible God followers.

   Then, there are the Anti-Theists who wish to have Religious Theism replaced with non-Religious Theism. This is the Anti-Christ as the Instead of-Christ, not actively against in a nihilistic sense, but, instead, with intent to replace a Divine, Spiritual Theos with Some Other Theos. 

   For American secularists, for instance, the Instead of God has included Revolution, Abolition, Education and Science. Historically, the first two were, Revolution and Abolition, were couched in theological terms. Hymns of revolution and Civil War still echo down through the centuries.

   Revolution includes the principles of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. American society can still be regarded as a revolutionary society. Our history, our culture, our failures, our triumphs, all co-exist in the continuing American struggle to extend its revolutionary promise to all persons within its sphere. This is more difficult than anywhere else in the world because our civil liberties and living standards render us less and less homogeneous. 

   Abolition is antebellum but did not occur with the Emancipation Proclamation or Lee's surrender. Jackie Robinson has as much to do with Abolition as Abraham Lincoln. Abolition includes Civil Rights, voting laws, poll taxes, Affirmative Action and military service. The language of Abolition is religious, appealing to God's authority and power even in its Enlightenment pronouncements.

   The latter explanations for an Instead of God Theism replace God with Education or Science. The advantages of both the terms, Education and Science, are many.

    No one can actually argue against Education. Everyone wants a good education. Those who get a good education and many who do not still demand a good education for succeeding generations. What is left undefined is just what is a good education.

   I posit this thought; a good education enables a person to think appropriately in real terms. Education, then, cannot be values-absent or even values-neutral. 

   There are growing concerns about "Science." Recent revelations of inaccurate data presentations in climate change, for instance, make people question the impartiality of the hard Science presenters. This should not startle anyone. Scientists are human, with all the attendant frailties. Fallen scientists, like fallen preachers of other doctrines, are only proof that humans are human.

   The real problem for all Mankind comes when Education becomes God or when Science announces its own deification. The "Scientist" cannot have it both ways. He is either an impartial, disinterested specialist capable to gather data or he is a fiery advocate able to provoke on any and all subjects. If he is an Advocate/Evangelist, he enters the realm of rhetoric/logic and philosophy. He cannot order Aristotle around as he can his lab assistants. 

   Science cannot demand a place on the Throne when it cannot keep its discoveries in appropriate reality to comfort and heal the world. Successful grant applications are not Holy Writ.

   Instead of God-Theists search in vain for a life purpose after the End of God. Education disappoints and Science puffs itself up over all aspects of human life, not just Religion. Knowledge, rich or poor, usually arrogates its possessor. Is this why the Apostle Paul told Christians to "...work out their own salvation with fear and trembling...?"

   Please note the Instead of Theists do not argue they are right or wrong. They cannot make such an argument for they must first banish simple morality to have a place at all. When one examines the place they make, it is one based on limited human insight and lavish human emotion. What the Instead of Theist thinks or feels or is regarded as acceptable for a "thinking person" becomes fiat law. 

   Really, is Modern, Secular A-Theism, in any of its incarnations, any kind of improvement over ancient Theism? I do not argue the modern A-Theist in any  of his forms is the same as Religion. He is certainly not the same as Christ. In fact, at his most noble, the modern, secular A-Theist is much less than the Christ, upon whom he depends for his freedom, for provision, for discovery in the complexity  of Creation and for any meager moral authority he may allow. The A-theist, then, is an ignoble ingrate, who revels in a free society but would not extend that freedom to the masses. 

Opinions expressed here are mine alone.

   

Starbucks Church, Redivivus

   Brief interruption in the series on Knowing God. Coming right back.

   Last night, after I was released, I kept a previously arranged dinner appointment with Dalton, Brian and George. They are part of our new Starbucks Church effort. Dalton has been visiting with me there for some time and has asked good questions about God and life. He recently brought in Brian and George.

   These are young men in their twenties. Last night was Dalton's birthday. We met at Piranha's sushi bar in Ft. Worth for a couple of hours together. The young men were full of life and questions/assertions about various matters. Dalton and Brian came to Big Church in Brock on Sunday morning and took in the formal worship for the first time. I was most delighted and excited to see them come to our larger group setting on Sunday morning. They are the first of the Starbucks Church here to come to the formal meeting place.

   Mostly, I am grateful to God that some young men take the time to give me company and information. In addition, they ask very meaningful questions about God, the Christ and the Church, and offer their insights. We are truly in a world awash with God.

Writer's Note: I think it is a huge waste for pastor's to spend their time managing the office instead of penetrating the culture around them. Long time readers of aintsobad will remember the Starbucks Church in my last town, as well as my argument for adopting a coffee shop or hangout wherever you are to meet people. I have been lead pastor of some growing/large churches. I know there is a certain amount of administration you have to do. If it is all we are, we are not much, are we?

Opinions expressed here are mine alone.