Featured Sponsors
Recently Posted
RSS This Blog-
Sunday, November 2, 2008Is Heaven Worth It?
“I don’t want anyone to suffer anymore. And if the suffering of little children is needed to complete the sum total of suffering required to pay for the truth, I don’t want that truth, and I declare in advance that all the truth in the world is not worth the price!” (Ivan Karamazov in The Brothers Karamazov)
HARD QUESTIONS
In The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan Karamazov levels a powerful charge against God. Ivan is an intellectual skeptic who sees a world full of suffering and injustice. Particularly offensive is the cruelty done to innocent children. What purpose can such evil possibly serve? Where is God in this mean old world? Ivan wants to know. After graphically recounting the horrors of a young girl mercilessly abused by her parents, Ivan concludes that whatever reason God may have had, the price is too high.To human sensibilities the existence of cruelty and suffering is a scandalous indictment against Omnipotence. It is what drove Einstein to reject the God of the Bible for “Spinoza’s God”—the non-personal principle of reason, harmony, and cosmic order. Throughout the centuries, the “problem of evil” has led countless others to conclude that God is negligent, impotent, or non-existent.
Consider media mogul Ted Turner.
Until the age of 15, Ted was a self-described Christian who attended Christian school, studied the Bible, prayed for one hour every day, and even planned on becoming a missionary. But that all changed after his younger sister succumbed to terminal lupus. Despite the prayers of family and friends for healing, Ted’s sister died after a painful five-year struggle. Unable to reconcile his sister’s death with his Christian faith, Turner turned his back on God. As one observer has noted, “It's not so much that Turner doesn't believe in God as he doesn't want to give God, who allowed his sister to be crushed by disease, the satisfaction of recognition.”
Ted Turner believes that if God exists, He is a detached, impersonal Governor who is aloof about human suffering—an un-God who may be all-powerful, but not all-good; and for that reason undeserving of recognition, much less human devotion.
Rabbi Harold Kushner, author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People, has a somewhat different view. Rabbi Kushner trusts in God’s infinite goodness, but the pervasive existence of human misery and injustice is evidence that He has little to no power over these things; otherwise, they wouldn’t be so rife and unmitigated. Like Ted Turner, Rabbi Kushner came to his belief after his own personal tragedy: the agonizing death of his teenage son.
The classic response to these positions goes something like this: A perfect God created a perfect world, which included, necessarily, free will and morally responsible agents. Thus, evil was not created by God, or the result of divine negligence or incompetence, but it was a consequence of choices made by moral agents in the unfettered exercise of their will.
That argument offers us a certain intellectual satisfaction. Still, there can be a lingering notion that it is little more than a rhetorical sleight-of-hand to cover embarrassment for a God who, in our lowest moments, seems an indifferent deity. Yes, there are times we need more than clever logic.
“CLAIRE”
Several years ago, some friends lost their 12-year-old daughter to cancer. During her last five years, “Claire” had been in and out of hospitals, receiving radiation treatments and chemotherapy for an inoperable brain tumor. Despite the impassioned prayers of family and friends, improvements in her condition were only temporary, necessitating frequent trips back to the hospital.As her condition deteriorated, the doctors decided that Claire should live out her remaining time at home. Her last days where far from peaceful. The pain from her cancer-ridden body was so intense that large doses of narcotics gave her little relief. Her parents became increasingly fervent in prayer, yet the pain was so intolerable that the only alternative for lasting relief was to sever her spinal nerve. Two weeks later Claire died.
We're all familiar with those "name it and claim it” verses of the Bible. But somehow the joy of those passages doesn't jump off the page in situations like Claire’s. Like the disciples who asked Jesus about the cause of the blind man’s blindness, we want to know what went wrong. Did we fail to pray hard enough? Did we not believe strong enough? Are our sins too great? Or do we conclude, as Ted Turner and Rabbi Kushner, that God is not all he’s cracked up to be.
Two months before her death, Claire made a decision to be baptized. But what should have been an occasion for rejoicing turned into turmoil for her family. You see, Claire’s church required baptism by immersion, no exceptions—an impossible requirement considering Claire's frail condition. In frustration her parents approached another church across town that agreed to baptize her in a less traditional fashion. The resulting ceremony was a moving testimony to hundreds of witnesses of this young girl's courage and commitment to the Lord.
LOOKING FOR MEANING
The apostle Paul’s afflictions, primarily his imprisonments, provided the opportunity for writings that would become the Magna Carta of the Christian faith. But perhaps more significantly, his trials were evidence of his sincerity and love, evidence that was essential to gain the credibility and acceptance of those he had previously persecuted.For Paul, it is clear how God used his adversity to advance the kingdom. But for Claire, God’s purpose is not as obvious. Perhaps He wanted to demonstrate the unshakeable quality of child-like faith to a world in desperate need of hope. Maybe He wanted to awaken a dying church out of its misplaced focus on legalism. Perhaps He sought to secure Claire’s place in his eternal family at an early age. Perhaps.
At this point we must admit we don't know. And even if we did, it would not attenuate our feelings of loss this side of eternity. So where do we go for comfort? How do we reconcile our lingering yearning for a world turned right side up.
THE DIVINE PREDICAMENT
If Paul’s hardships were necessary to win over beleaguered Christians skeptical of his motivations, what about God? What did He need to win the love of His created beings? Certainly He could have overwhelmed them with staggering displays of power. But He had already done that through the general revelation of creation. If that wasn’t enough, the chosen nation ofYet God’s blessings, frequent manifestations, and dramatic wonders had no lasting effect on
INEXHAUSTIBLE LOVE
At the heart of love is other-centeredness. From small acts of kindness to the laying down of life for another, love is lived out and authenticated through personal sacrifice. It is thus, in the Incarnation, we find the highest expression of divine love. For there we find a God who refused to exempt Himself from the stinging injustice of a world gone wrong. For a brief moment in history, God set aside His omnipotence to be the Son of Man—the Advocate who presents God to man and man to God.Making Himself as one of us, God invaded the world, not as sovereign king but as a helpless infant. Associating with the downcast and outcast and ministering to the least and the last, He was shunned by His brothers, rejected by His countrymen, convicted on phony charges, tried by an illegitimate assembly, sentenced to an unjust death, spat upon, beaten, cursed, scourged, nailed to a tree, and, crying out in anguish, killed in infamy with common criminals as the hand of his Father was withheld. If anyone knows, from first-hand experience, about injustice it is Him.
Because He walked in our shoes, He is the only deity who can understand our pain, sympathize with our suffering, and be patient with our questioning hearts. The Incarnation is the shocking and irrefutable display of inexhaustible Love.
We can join Ivan Karamazov in railing against God for this mean ol’ world, or we can consider the injustice He endured and wonder why He subjected himself to it. Could He have taken a less costly course to set the world right?
The short answer is yes. But only in a sin-scarred world can the infinite dimensions of God’s love be expressed through the nail-pierced hands of a risen Savior. Such is the love of Him who silently listens to all the charges Ivan makes against him; then, without a word, moves over to his accuser and kisses him.
...Comments? Post your thoughts here.
-
Tuesday, September 30, 2008What Cancer Taught Me About God
“To be commanded to love God at all, let alone in the darkness, is like being commanded to be well when we are sick, to sing for joy when we are dying of thirst, to run when our legs are broken.” (Frederick Buechner)
A while back I made mention of my bout with cancer as it related to a particular God encounter. Now, having two friends who are undergoing aggressive cancer therapies, I write a fuller account of that experience in hopes that it will encourage others in similar situations.
THE DIAGNOSIS
To say that my life has been richly blessed would be an understatement. I have had a fulfilling career, wonderful family, and enriching opportunities with gifts and abilities that have given me a rewarding sense of purpose and accomplishment—all which led to a lofty measure of self-sufficiency, until the winter of 2001.Angiosarcoma . . . Clinical trials . . . Quality of life . . . Quantity of life . . . were the sound bites steaming through my consciousness as I strained to focus on the oncologist’s words. After 10 days of diagnostic procedures, the biopsy results indicated that I had rare cancer. In the collective experience of the oncology group, there had been only three prior cases, with the longest survivor lasting less than one month. As I lay listless in the hospital bed, I silently gasped, “Why me, why now? Why?”
So began my test of faith.
THE LEAD-UP
Two months prior to my diagnosis, I had been praying the prayer of Jabez for God to “enlarge my territory.” My intention was to have a greater impact for the kingdom in my teaching ministry.At the time I was leading a church class in a four-week study on facing spiritual conflict. Halfway through the series, the initial symptoms of my illness surfaced. Mere coincidence? Although we are tempted to chafe at the suggestion of divinely orchestrated affliction, Scripture is full of such examples. For instance, the Apostle John tells us,
"As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, 'Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind. 'Neither this man nor his parents sinned,' said Jesus, 'but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.” (John 9:1-3)
Did I think God caused my illness? I didn’t know. Although John’s account indicates that the blind man’s affliction was not a judgment, Paul tells us, “When we are judged by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be condemned with the world” (1 Corinthians 11:32).
What I knew, intellectually, was that we inhabit a world in decay. From the beginning, our willful action against the Creator has caused us to be hurled ever deeper down the descending spiral of suffering, disease, death, and sorrow, where we and all creation groan for relief.
What I was about to learn, experientially, is that our weakest and most vulnerable condition is where we encounter God in fullest measure. To continue reading, click here.
-
Friday, September 5, 2008Social Policy and Moral Clarity
Probably each of us has had an experience that awakened our conscience to an evil or injustice—an experience that forever changed the way we looked at the world and ourselves—a moment of moral clarity that made us reflect, “I was blind, but now I see.”
As a young boy growing up in the rural South, water fountains labeled “White” and “Colored” were as normal to me as men and women restrooms. So when my grandmother took me to Woolworth one day, what caught my eye was not the separate lunch counter for “Colored”; it wasn’t even the fact that the “Colored” counter was located on a mezzanine just below the one for whites—which was a social statement, in and of itself. No, what was out of place was the “white” man sitting among all of those black people.
“Grandma, what is that white man doing there,” I asked.
Grandma quickly surveyed the lower counter and then turned back in a whisper, “Oh, he only looks white. He’s just very, very light, son.”
Somehow her answer failed to satisfy my young mind. I stole another look at the mezzanine to study the man. But try as hard as I could, the man was not “colored,” he was white. Noticing my confusion, Grandma leaned in to explain how differences in skin pigmentation can make one appear white.
For the next half hour, between sips on my cherry Coke, I glanced down at the mezzanine. It didn’t help that there were customers in our section darker than the man below. I was puzzled.
That is not to say I didn’t have prejudices of my own; I certainly did, well into my high school years. But the lunch at Woolworth was my first awareness that there was something much deeper than skin color here. In the following years, my conscience was scraped each time I returned to that scene. Nevertheless, it would be much later before another experience would bring me full-face with the evil underlying my faulty thinking. Continue reading here.
Post your thoughts and comments here.
-
Saturday, August 2, 2008Darwinianity
For the past six years, pastor-turned-evangelist Rev. Michael Dowd has been going from pulpit to pulpit preaching the gospel—no, not the good news of our salvation through Jesus Christ, but of our liberation and empowerment through Charles Darwin.How’s that? The good Reverend explains:
“[Darwin gives us] a far more empirical way of talking about human nature than through stories like the original sin.”
As the New York Times's Yudhijit Bhattacharjee writes, “It explains our frailties, our addictions, our infidelities and other moral deficiencies as byproducts of adaptation over billions of years. And that, [Dowd] says, has a potentially liberating effect: never mind guilt; once we understand our sinful ways, we can get past them and play a conscious role in the evolution of humanity.”
Consider Bob Miller, an octogenarian whose string of infidelities, decades ago, led to a divorce, just as he was ascending the corporate ladder. For years Miller struggled to understand his behavior and the forces behind it. Then, a Dowd crusade came to Miller’s church.
There, the Reverend “explained” the evolutionary origin human behavior, and “Eureka!”: Miller realized that the culprit for his failures was not a fallen nature, but elevated testosterone, brought on by his corporate success.
With the burden of guilt gone, Miller reflects: “I think the physical change in my body was so strong that it completely overpowered any moral teachings and religious beliefs I had.”
There you have it--the science is in! It is not from the heart that evil thoughts, murder, adultery, and sexual immorality come; it’s from a physical law working on our chemistry. Feeling better now?
Now Michael Dowd is hawking his new book Thank God for Evolution with “Facts are God’s native tongue.” That’s a good catchphrase! Indeed, facts are God’s native tongue; facts like:
- Darwinian evolution has never been observed or reproduced even in micro-organisms whose explosive rates of replication would guarantee its validity.
- Based on a random, unguided process, Darwinian evolution has no predictive power. Consequently, Darwinian evolution has not contributed to a single technological or medical advance since it was conjectured 150 years ago.
- Information, like that found in DNA, is empirically known to originate only from intelligent causes.
- There has been insufficient time for the simplest gene, much less the simplest organism, to develop from an unintelligent process, even given all the necessary chemical ingredients.
- And then there's the fact of entropy, the universal law of physics that causes systems to go from bad to worse, unless affected by a rational application of energy.
But somehow I doubt that you’ll find those facts in Thank God for Evolution. Some you will find, according to the author, are “many of the core doctrines central to Christianity—sin, salvation, the kingdom of God, heaven and hell, Jesus as God's way, truth, and life,” unpacked in “an undeniably this-world realistic—way.”
Dowd represents this, pictorially, with a logo on the van he and his wife use in their “outreach.” It shows two fish kissing: one labeled “Jesus” and the other, “Darwin.”
Dowd calls his theological perspective “creatheistic.”
Would that be “cre-atheistic?” That seems right, considering his wife, whom he describes as his “mission partner," is an atheist.
What do you think of Darwinianity? Post your comments here.
-
Tuesday, July 29, 2008A World without Truth...
...is "No Country for Old Men." Or from Kant to Chigurh in two easy steps.
Post your comments here.
