The god of liberal Christianity

In my last post, I wrote about what is probably the most difficult issue I have with my faith: The multiple voices in the Bible, and how we (conservative Christians in general) elevate certain passages to supreme status, and reinterpret all conflicting passages, effectively neutering them of their meaning. In particular, the voices of Jesus and Paul stand out in stark contrast, especially when asking the question "What must I do to be saved?".

In that post, I discussed this post by James McGrath over at the blog Exploring our Matrix. In it, he discusses this problem, stating that his transition to liberal Christianity is a result of just these types of problems. McGrath states:

My own Liberal Christian position is a result of struggling with these sorts of issues. It doesn't seem to me that there is a single voice in the Bible, and we can simply listen to it and do "what the Bible says"... And so whatever it means to be a Christian, it cannot mean "believing the Bible". Because part of the challenge of the Bible itself is that it presents us with conflicting voices, and in doing so forces us away from the easy path of simply picking texts and following them, making us instead recognize that we are part of a 2,000-year-old dialogue that requires us to figure out for ourselves what it means to be a Christian in our own particular time and context.

I tend to agree with McGrath, that the proof-text approach taken by fundamentalist Christianity doesn't do justice to the character of the Bible. Furthermore, I think that anyone that says "I just believe the Bible" doesn't read it very often. Or they don't read it and actually think about what it says. To those who say just that, I would ask (taking McGrath's example): When you read Matthew 28 and Luke 24, do you "believe" that the disciples first saw the resurrected Jesus in Jerusalem, or almost 70 miles away in Galilee?

For McGrath, the solution to the problem was liberal Christianity, the willingness to approach the Bible as one would any other historical document without any preconceived notion of inerrancy or divine inspiration. For liberal Christians, the Bible is seen as a record of man's experiences in interacting with God. It may seem that a similar destination is in store for me, but there is a problem with that: To me, it seems that it is much more likely that God simply does not exist, than for the god of liberal Christianity to be real.

If God does exist, and He is interested in communicating with us (As the Bible, read as a historical and divinely inspired document would suggest) than would He not act to communicate with humankind in some sort of transferable way? Would He not leave more of a mark than just the "experiences" of some people in history? To me it seems more likely that He isn't out there at all.

To be fair, it isn't quite true that the Bible is the only way God has provided for us to know Him. But the god of of liberal Christianity (to me) seems totally fuzzy and unknowable. I think that if these problems end up pushing me to something other than conservative Christianity, it will be to atheism (or more likely agnosticism) than to liberal Christianity.

About This Blog

About this blog

This is a blog about my faith. If you know me well, you know that I'm constantly asking questions. As a result, my "spiritual journey" hasn't exactly been smooth sailing. This blog is part of that journey. It is my conversation with no one in particular (at least not yet). In a very real way it is part of my conversation with God.

What is the purpose of this blog?

This blog started by functioning as my "mental clearing house". Any time an "issue" arises with my faith, my natural tendency is to think and dwell and chew it over until my metaphorical jaw hurts. I have found that even if I don't come to a positive conclusion, (and I usually do not) writing out the issue often allows me to move on. Clicking that "Publish Post" button is like flushing the toilet. I still use this blog in that way, but now I use it in other ways as well.

For a while, I wrote quite extensively on my experience coming to grips with the theory of evolution.  This was a story that I had written in many pieces, and it was good to get it all down in one place.  Lately, this blog has served as a place for me to organize my thoughts, and it has been helpful to have you, my "imaginary friends" to hash this stuff out with.

Who am I?

My name is Joe. I am a 30 year old male, with two kids under three years old. I work as a research scientist in a technology company. I work in the area of Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS), and my formal education includes an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering, and a master’s degree in materials science.  

I was raised in the very Dutch, very conservative, very Christian region of western Michigan. My parents were essentially Christian Reformed, and I grew up in a “Bible Church” that was basically Christian Reformed/Baptist in it’s theology. Growing up, I was taught that the earth is 6000-10,000 years old, and that the modern scientific description of the history of the universe was a false, deceptive idea, and was invented by Satan to help turn Christians into atheists.

I have retained many of the beliefs of my youth (albeit with many modifications): I go to a Baptist church and generally agree with most of the ideas expressed from the pulpit. However, I do believe that evolution (both animal and human) is undoubtedly the process by which we have come to be the way we are. I believe that God created us and the universe we live in, so I guess that makes me a theistic evolutionist, although I don’t really embrace the label. My switch from the young-earth beliefs of my youth to my current beliefs was a significant part of my spiritual journey, because it took me to the brink of atheism. The people in my church are mostly moderate Young Earth Creationists, so evolution is not generally accepted, but I have found that a vast majority of people (including some of the pastors) do not find my belief in a common ancestry troublesome. Actually, it doesn’t really come up much.

I have kept this blog semi-anonomous because it allows me to write in a very personal way, without worrying that someone who is only an acquaintance might wander upon it, and read something without knowing a lot about me. I’m not ashamed of any of this, but I can write more personally and transparently if I’m not worried about who might be watching.

Also, I've learned that anything that makes it into Google's "memory" can persist much longer than one might desire it to. Many years ago, as a geeky teenager, I posted a question to an online forum about some random geeky topic. When my name is "Googled", that post still shows up in the first page of results. How I wish I could give Google a lobotomy.

I don’t intend for my identity to be a secret to anyone who is sincerely interested in knowing more about me or what I write about. There are several people who know who I am and know about this blog, and that doesn’t bother me at all.  

If you have any questions, you can always email me.

Who are you?

When I write, I imagine that my audience is someone who is sincerely interested in the Truth. Someone who isn’t afraid to ask questions, and doesn’t accept things just because that’s what they’re told to believe. Someone who is willing to wrestle with their doubts, to admit them, address them, answer them, and move on. Someone who gains strength and faith and peace not by dismissing doubts or questions, but by looking them straight in the eye and seeing if they should be taken seriously.

Some of my posts can tend to be negative. This is because, as I said above, a major purpose of this blog is to acknowledge my doubts and move on. I don’t intend for these posts to spread doubt, but if I discuss something here it is because I think it is worth discussing. I’m reminded of a quote by Os Guinness:

We ourselves are called in question if we have no answer to doubt. If we constantly doubt what we believe and always believe-yet-doubt, we will be in danger of undermining our personal integrity, if not our stability. But if ours is an examined faith, we should be unafraid to doubt. If doubt is eventually justified, we were believing what clearly was not worth believing. But if doubt is answered, our faith grows stronger still. It knows God more certainly, and it can enjoy God more deeply. Faith is not doubt-free, but there is a genuine assurance of faith that is truly beyond a shadow of doubt. -Os Guinness, in God in the Dark: The Assurance of Faith Beyond a Shadow of Doubt  [pp.14]

Choosing to Believe

In my previous post, I talked about belief, and how our actions reveal what we truly believe.  One question that was left unanswered, however, is one posed by Richard Dawkins, among others:

Believing is not something you can decide to do as a matter of policy.  At least, it is not something I can decide to do as an act of will.  I can decide to go to church and I can decide to recite the Nicene Creed, and I can decide to swear on a stack of bibles that I believe every word inside them.  But none of that can make me actually believe it if I don't.  Pascal's Wager could only ever be an argument for feigning belief in God.  And the God that you claim to believe in had better not be of the omniscient kind or he'd see through the deception. [The God Delusion, p.104]

Dawkins makes a good point, one that  I struggled with it for a long time.  I didn't believe, and I knew it.  I really wanted to believe, but couldn't.  What advice would you give someone in this situation?  

For some, the issue really is that they don't want to believe.  For Dawkins, I suspect that he poses the question not out of a genuine desire to believe, but to simply point out that it is truly ridiculous to ask someone to "just believe".  He's right.  We can't just decide to change our beliefs. 

Like my last post, Dallas Willard's book, Renovation of the Heart can shed some light on this (at least it did for me).  Willard agrees with Dawkins:

We do not choose to believe (or not).  Our beliefs and feelings cannot be changed by choice.  We cannot just choose to have different beliefs and feelings...

But Willard continues:

 ...but we do have some liberty to take in different ideas and think about things in different ways. We can choose to take in the Word of God and when we do that beliefs and feelings will be steadily pulled in a Godly direction.

So if Dallas Willard is correct, (and I think he is) then we are not able, in the current moment, to change our beliefs by simply choosing to do so.  But this does not mean that belief is completely out of our control.  Our choices today can (and do) influence the things we believe tomorrow.  So if we choose to read and absorb the Bible and think in ways that will, over time, cause our beliefs to change.

Dawkins was correct when he wrote that:

I can decide to go to church and I can decide to recite the Nicene Creed...

True, he could decide to do that.  But he doesn't.  And of course, he doesn't believe.  I'm not saying that going to church or reciting a creed will help someone believe in God.  I am only saying (mostly from experience) that if one decides that he is going to live like God exists, his life will include things like going to church and reading the Bible.  And these activities, sincerely pursued, will slowly change his beliefs.

So we are responsible for our beliefs, but not in a direct way.  This has great implications for how we present the Gospel.  In Willards words:

One of the worst mistakes that can be made in practical ministry is to think that people can choose to believe and can feel differently.  Following that, we will mistakenly try to generate faith by going through the will, possibly trying to move the will by playing on emotion.  Rather, the will must be moved by insight into truth and reality.  Such insight will evoke emotion, appropriate to a new set of the will.  That is the order of real inward change.

My pastor frequently says things like: 

You're too busy to read your Bible? Well, you see, we make time for the things that are important to us.  So make time to read your Bible.

Is it just me, or does that not make sense at all?  How does that change whether I find it important to read my Bible?  And if what he says is true, I will not begin to read my Bible until I find it relevant to my life.  My will can do nothing (over the long run) to change my habits.  My Bible reading will come through a change in my inner character, which will in turn change my priorities.

 In the same way, no amount of willpower will enable me to believe something that I do not see adequate evidence for.  True belief will come through experience of the truth of God's existence.

Believe? Sounds pretty simple...

When I was dealing with the whole atheism thing, one of the things that always bugged me was the concept of belief.  We're always told (and we tell others) that we just need to "believe in Jesus" and we will inherit eternal life.  In the words of D.L. Moody:

Have faith in God! Take Him at His word! Believe what He says!

Is it really that simple?  What if someone really doesn't believe?  Richard Dawkins makes this point by asking the question: 

What if I don't believe? How can I just start believing something that I don't believe? Does God want a bunch of fakers?”  [a paraphrase from The God Delusion]

 Stephen Weinberg, in Dreams of a Final Theory says the same thing, but much more eloquently:

The decision to believe or not is not entirely in our hands. I might be happier if I thought I were descended from the emperors of China, but no effort of will on my part can make me believe it, any more than I can will my heart to stop beating.

So is belief something we have control over, or are we at it's mercy?  Does our will have any control over our beliefs, or are our beliefs completely inaccessible to us, as Dawkins would have us believe?

And what is faith?  Is that the same as belief? Can you have faith and not belief?  Belief and not faith? 

A second aspect to this problem is less semantic and more theological.  Ever since I started reading my Bible seriously, I have been struck by the differences between Jesus and Paul - Especially when they start talking about salvation.  Paul, of course, says over and over again that faith (or belief) alone is what saves us whereas Jesus repeatedly emphasizes that we will be judged based on how we lived our lives. Now, neither Jesus or Paul are completely on one end of the spectrum, and this disparity is not new; it is one of the main causes of the Protestant-Catholic divide.  But I am continually shocked by the efforts my fellow Christians will make to neuter Jesus' words in an effort to reconcile them with Paul's statements on salvation.  

I read something recently that helps make sense of all this.  In his book, Renovation of the Heart, Dallas Willard discusses what it means for a Christian to "believe":

Gandhi, who had looked closely at Christianity as practiced around him in Great Britain, remarked that if only Christians would live according to their belief in the teachings of Jesus, "we all would become Christians."  We know what he meant, and he was right in that.  But the dismaying truth is that the Christians were living according to their "belief" in the teachings of Jesus.  They didn't believe them!

Moreover, knowing the "right answers" - knowing which ones they are, being able to identify them - does not mean we believe them. To believe them, like believing anything else, means that we are set to act as if they (the right answers) are true and that we will do so in appropriate circumstances.  And acting as if the right answers are true means, in turn, that we intend to obey the example and teachings of Jesus the Anointed.  What else would we intend if we believed he is who his people through the ages have declared him to be?

Perhaps the hardest thing for sincere Christians to come to grips with is the level of real unbelief in their own life:  The unformulated skepticism about Jesus that permeates all dimensions of their being and undermines what efforts they do make toward Christlikeness.

The idea that you can trust Christ and not intend to obey him is an illusion generated by the prevalence of an unbelieving "Christian culture."  In fact, you can no more trust Jesus and not intend to obey him than you could trust you doctor and your auto mechanic and not intend to follow their advice.  If you don't intend to follow their advice, you simply don't trust them.  Period.  (Of course in this case you might well have good reason.)

  

I find that this helps greatly with the questions I pose above.  What is belief?  Belief is that which we are set to act upon.  In other words, we believe something is true if we act as if its true.

This helps answer the second question:  Who was right? Jesus or Paul?  Well, of course, both are right:

In Acts 16, when Paul and Silas were asked by their jailer "What must I do to be saved?" they replied:  "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved."  

This "belief" does not mean that the jailer should state that certain things are true about Jesus; that Jesus died for his sins, or say a special prayer, or even say that he is following Jesus with his life.  For the jailer (and likewise, us) to believe means that the jailer really believes; and real belief will necessarily lead to doing the things that Jesus told us to do.  If he doesn't go obey Jesus, he did not believe.

Likewise, In Matthew 25, Jesus tells the parable of the sheep and the goats, and describes how, in the end times, people will be separated based on their actions: "[The wicked] will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life." (Matt. 10:46)  These actions are simply the kinds of things someone would naturally do if they believe.  We will be judged by our actions because our actions are a direct and necessary result of belief, (understood correctly).  

Unfortunately, this doesn't help answer the question:  What must I do to believe?  Richard Dawkins' question is still valid:  "What if I don't believe?"  

I think the answer to that question must have something to do with "faith".  But that is another post.

8. Dealing with Atheism, continued...

Dealing with Atheism, continued...

This is the eighth in a series of posts describing my transition from young earth creationist to theistic evolutionist. In the first post, I described how Alan Roxburgh's 5-phase description of paradigm change describes this transition well, and I have been using his framework to shape this discussion. See the introduction for a list of all the posts in this series.

This is a continuation of the previous post. In the last few posts, I described how the religion of my youth had taught me that science was the enemy of faith. I was taught to believe that evolution was an evil idea invented by Satan to lead people into atheism. It was beginning to look like they were right. I had discovered the overwhelming evidence for the truth of evolution, and was terrified of the implications. If evolution was true, then my faith in God must be a silly case of wishful thinking.

The fourth phase in Roxburgh's description of paradigm change is that of transition. The first part of my transition phase involved dealing with atheist arguments that had caused my faith to diminish to a tiny ember. In my last post, I discussed two of the main ideas that helped me deal with atheism. In this post I'll discuss what I see to be the main flaw in atheist Richard Dawkins' view of God, and then deal with a problem I mentioned in a previous post about the lack of evidence for God's action in the world.

3. Dawkins' picture of “god” is naturalistic, not supernatural

One thing that strikes me as I read Dawkins' anti-religious writings is that Dawkins seems to be completely stuck with a picture of a god that is totally within nature. I didn't notice it in my first reading of The God Delusion, but it becomes more obvious to me every time I read or hear him speak. This was an important element of my transition; I deliberately approached subjects that I had a one-sided knowledge of and balanced out my familiarity with both sides of each argument.

As I said; Dawkins's view of god seems to be that of a god who is within nature. This is important, because almost every one of his scientific arguments against the existence of God assumes a god that is within nature. It is easy to see why: a God outside of nature is not within the purview of science.

Take this quote from Dawkins in this debate with Alister McGrath; notice how he constantly invokes the “probability” of God's existence:

"When you say god didn't come into existence but was always there, I find that not really very helpful because suppose I go back to my problem of explaining the eye; it would be no kind of answer to say "oh, well the eye was always there", it would still be something that requires explanation in the sense that anything statistically improbable does. So I don't think you can't get away with it with an eye, and I don't really see why you can get away with it with God." [21:14]

And just a few minutes later:

“Everybody agrees intuitively that the eye is far too improbable to have suddenly jumped into existence, and I want to say the same about God, and you don't and I don't understand why not...”

An eternal, supernatural God doesn't make sense to Dawkins, because for him, everything must be explained naturally. This can be seen by his insistence on comparing God with an eye: He requires the same kind of (scientific) explanation for God that he requires for an eye. He sums up this belief quite succinctly when he states:

“Any entity, any being, capable of designing a universe, or an eye, or a knee, would have to be the kind of entity which would be statistically improbable in the same kind of way as the eye is.” (emphasis mine)

This is a classic case of begging the question:

1) It's very improbable for natural causes to give rise to a being capable of creating the universe.
2) Therefore, God does not exist.

Dawkins' implicit assumption is that any god must exist within nature. He then bases the rest of his argument on this assumption. This is circular reasoning and complete nonsense. The Christian God exists outside of nature, and therefore it is nonsense to speak of the probability of His existence. The god that Dawkins argues against has nothing in common with the Christian God.

4. Divine Action: God as “The Great Delegator?”

In a previous post I mentioned one of the most significant challenges to my faith is the difficulty I experience in perceiving God's action in my life. This is a problem I still struggle with today, but McGrath provided me with some insights that help the situation considerably.

For instance, in the same interview I mention above, McGrath discusses this matter with Richard Dawkins. When discussing God's part in the September 11 terrorist attacks, McGrath states:

"Why didn't God just take the steering wheel [of the terrorist's plane] and change things? Well, that has been a constant issue down the ages as you well know. Christians understand God to have made the world in a certain way that is like a framework, but does not actually intervene. Of course the classic example of this the crucifixion. People were screaming at Jesus: 'If there is a God, why doesn't he just take you away from here?' That reminds us that we are dealing with a God that does not intervene directly in the world as we might hope." [47:40]

So God apparently prefers to delegate his action to creation itself; His activity in the world happens almost exclusively through natural causes. I didn't quite grasp this concept while I was initially dealing with the atheist proposition, but later it resonated with me because it fit perfectly with my experience. The concept of God as “The Great Delegator” sowed the seeds that eventually grew into an understanding of a God who is constantly creating through natural processes (evolution). This concept was simultaneously a defense against atheism and an introduction to the God who created evolution.

Unfortunately, this problem is not completely solved. A God who delegates His action to his creation can explain the lack of His obvious action in our world. But most Christians, including McGrath, claim that God does intervene in the world. In their discussion, McGrath states that if one child were spared in a devastating earthquake (while thousands of others perished) God could be seen as intervening to save the child. Dawkins points out the inconsistency of this position:

“What worries me is the inconsistency of what you just said when when I asked you whether God saved that one child... Sometimes you say that God doesn't intervene, (and you make a very eloquent case for why it would be a rather undignified thing to do as a God.) On the other hand you say He does intervene when He rescues one child from a earthquake.”

In a sense Dawkins is saying “Which one is it! Does he intervene or doesn't he?” I think Dawkins has a point here. Sure, God is free and able to intervene in one case and delegate in another, but for us to conveniently invoke God's intervention in this way is a pathetic case of theological cherry-picking. We really don't have a leg to stand on.

I think one possibility for obtaining a consistent picture of God's action centers around the extent of His involvement in the creation of natural laws. The word “design” has undesirable connotations in this context, but bear with me: What if God has so intricately designed the natural laws so as to bring about his purposes in both types of situations? What if God set up natural laws so as to save the child from the earthquake in what only seems like a miraculous way? This suggests a God in control of his creation in a completely different way; the laws of nature truly become the hand of God acting in our lives. It's hard for my finite mind to imagine, but I think this only amplifies the wonder of God and His creation.


So in conclusion: Atheistic ideas had dealt a serious blow to my faith, resulting in a seemingly perpetual state of doubt. With the help of the writings of people like Allister McGrath, I dealt with this problem by first realizing that both atheism and belief in God were faith positions. I decided to choose faith in God, regardless of my feelings about whether or not that faith was real. I saw that atheists like Richard Dawkins presupposed God's non-existence, and this could be seen in their main arguments for their position. Furthermore, my view of God was altered significantly with the observation that He seems to act almost exclusively through natural causes, and these causes could be so intricately designed so as to bring about events that are both mundane and incredible. This matched up well with my every-day experience. Finally, I was left with the resolution that my faith, whatever would become of it, would cease to be real unless it deliberately incorporated all the evidence from all credible sources.

In the next post, I'll continue discussing my transition phase by describing how I dealt with the remains of Young Earth Creationism that still lingered in the corners of my mind.

7. Dealing with Atheism

This is the seventh in a series of posts describing my transition from young earth creationist to theistic evolutionist. In the first post, I described how Alan Roxburgh's 5-phase description of paradigm change describes this transition well, and I have been using his framework to shape this discussion. See the introduction for a list of all the posts in this series.

Dealing with Atheism

As I described in the last few posts, disembedding from my YEC roots was pretty thorough. I had learned a lot about evolution, and was completely convinced of its veracity, despite being taught as a youth that it was an idea invented by the Devil. I believed in an old earth, and and old universe. I was frustrated and confused because I had been taught (and still believed) that Genesis clearly stated that the universe was created in six days.

I had adopted old earth creationism as a sort of stop-gap, but this also crumbled under the weight of new scientific knowledge and devastating atheistic ideas. Suggestions by atheist writers had been devastating to my faith, and I couldn't shake the thought that all my religious beliefs were just a sad case of wishful thinking. Was I just hanging on to God because I would loose my friends, marriage and parent's love?

In Roxbaugh's description of paradigm change, the fourth stage is "Transition". My transition stage involved dealing with four different things: atheism, young earth creationism, the people in my life, and the science-faith conflict. I'll describe how I dealt with each of these in separate posts. Each of these happened simultaneously, but I will discuss them sequentially to avoid total confusion.

Dealing with Atheism

As I mentioned in my previous post, atheist suggestions (particularly those coming from a scientific perspective) had a significant affect on my languishing faith. One of the most outspoken atheists is of course, Richard Dawkins. Young Earth Creationists do a terribly poor job at defending against Dawkins' attacks, resorting to their typical tactics: quote-mining, red herrings, and ignoring Dawkins' actual points. As a result, I was surprised when I encountered the writings of Allister McGrath.

Two of McGrath's books, Doubting and The Dawkins Delusion, were extremely helpful in dealing with atheism. McGrath approaches Dawkins intelligently from a scientific perspective, acknowledging the value that scientific inquiry and reason can have to the conversation.

An even greater help was a debate between McGrath and Dawkins, which can be seen here. Watching this for the first time was rather poignant for me; I was overcome with relief and hope as I watched McGrath engage in an actual conversation instead of the usual circus I had constantly seen from YECs.

I'm going to discuss several main ideas that were extremely helpful in dealing with atheism. Some of these come from McGrath's body of work as a whole, some are more general. I'll give references where I can.

1. The faith of atheism

The main, over-arching problem with atheism, at least for me, is that it is just as much a matter of faith as is any religious faith. Evidence and reason are vital, of course, but at some point the usefulness of evidence and reason come to an end, and we are left with a choice. McGrath describes this in Doubting:

“[W]hen anyone starts making statements about the meaning of life, the existence of God or whether there is life after death, they are making statements of faith. You can't prove, either by rational argument or by scientific investigation, what life is all about. Whether you are Christian or atheist, you share the same problem.” Doubting, p.34

McGrath goes on to explain that doubt is not something that only Christians are vulnerable to: Atheists themselves are in the same situation. They doubt too.

It really came down to a choice: Would I have faith that God exists and wants a relationship with me, or would I choose to have faith that He does not exist? A third option, to continue to dwell in indecision, was also possible. But I had wallowed in indecision for so long. My soul was rotting away, and there wasn't much left.

At one point I read Phillip Yancey's book, Disappointment with God. While I wouldn't recommended it to anyone in a similar situation, it did make this point very clear to me. I had to choose. In his book, Yancey quotes Thomas Merton on the importance of this choice:

"How shall we begin to know who You are if we do not begin ourselves to be something of what You are?" asks Thomas Merton. "We receive enlightenment only in proportion as we give ourselves more and more completely to God by humble submission and love. We do not first see, then act: we act, then see. . . And that is why the man who waits to see clearly, before he will believe, never starts on the journey."

I definitely did not see clearly, and this is why I was finding it hard to act. God was not real to me, and previous efforts to change this had proven futile. But it was clear to me that I needed to make a choice, and act on that choice. At that time, this was all the farther I took this idea.

As of the moment I write this, I am still discovering what that all means, but I do know that Merton was right. He suggests that the more completely we give ourselves to God, the more real he will become to us. In a way, this is blatantly obvious. But it's also a strange way for God to convert new believers, isn't it? I think it shows just what kind of people with whom God wants a relationship. And it reveals a little bit of His character; he seems to want us to come to him on our own accord; He will not impress us or bully us into a relationship. In a way, He's kind of shy.

Note: I've discussed the subject of God's silence in a previous post.

2. Making sense of things

McGrath makes another suggestion that became quite important to me. He suggests that one of the basic goals of faith is to try to make the most sense of things; to try to explain our experiences and convictions in the most complete and internally consistent way possible.

This concept may sound strange, depending on ones religious background. It sure sounded foreign to me at first. I had been raised to be content with mysteries and unknowns, so burdening religious experience with the task of explaining “everything” sounded almost sacrilegious. But I think this is right at a very basic level. Deciding that God definitely doesn't exist would solve some of the problems I had been struggling with, but leaves others open and unsolved. (I do exist, after all...) Faith, (especially Christianity) attempts to answer more of these questions more consistently.

McGrath, (in his debate with Dawkins) when discussing whether faith is rational, says:

"Evidence takes us thus far, but then when it comes to deciding between a number of competing explanations, it is extremely difficult to have an evidence driven argument for those final stages. I believe faith is rational in the sense that it tries to make the best possible sense of things. But in the end it has to move beyond that, saying: Even though we believe this is the best way of making sense of things, we can't actually prove this is the case.” (at 4:58)

So an element of faith is the process of dealing with the evidence, and trying to make sense of it all. This appealed to me, since the religion I grew up with had completely ignored (intentionally or not) a lot of the evidence. I was at a point where any faith I chose to act upon must include (and integrate) all the evidence. ALL the evidence.

These are just a couple of the main ideas that helped me deal with atheism. In the next post I'll discuss two final ideas that helped increase my doubts about the faith of atheism, and enabled me to make a choice to pursue a faith that incorporates all the evidence.

6. Four Tough Problems

This is the sixth in a series of posts describing my transition from young earth creationist to theistic evolutionist. In the first post, I described how Alan Roxburgh's 5-phase description of paradigm change describes this transition well, and I have been using his framework to shape this discussion. See the introduction for a list of all the posts in this series.


Four Tough Problems

In the previous post I described how my faith lost the battle with science and atheism. The dichotomy had been set up and reinforced since I was a child: Either my faith is real, or evolution is real. I was taught evolution was evil, and when I discovered that it was probably true, my faith went up in smoke.

I'd like to mention a few of the most significant problems that I struggled with in this period of my transition.

The Anthropic Principle

In my first post on this disembedding phase, I described how a large part of my confidence in old earth creationism came from the incredible amount of fine tuning evident in the universe. As I described, this ended up being a significant chink in my armor.

The anthropic principle (when adopted by creationists) states that the properties of the universe appear to be fine-tuned by God to be perfectly suited to support life. This argument is actually quite stunning. There are hundreds of physical constants and properties that, if changed only slightly, would not allow life to exist. God custom made our universe for us! Case closed, right?

Not really. The ironic fact is that the anthropic principle is actually the most easily dismissed argument for God. It's really quite simple: With all the millions of galaxies, stars, and planets in the universe, if life is going to arise, it will happen on the planet with the right conditions, orbiting at the correct distance from its star, in the galaxy with the right conditions for life to arise. In short, we are here because the conditions are right for us to be here. As Stephen Hawking said in A Brief History of Time:

"Why is the universe the way we see it? The answer is simple: If it had been different, we would not be here."

The Demystification of the Universe

Scientific explanations can take the wonder out of God's creation. A sunset can loose some of its splendor when one learns that it is due to particles in the air. It's easy to see why science has become the enemy of many Christians: God seemingly has less to do when he is not painting sunsets. [Pardon my sarcasm]

In the 1600s, while Kepler was developing his laws of motion, the motion of the planets around the sun was explained by angels beating their wings in toward the sun. Today, we don't need to invoke spiritual beings to explain many of the phenomena we experience.

In the words of Stephen Weinberg, in Dreams of a Final Theory:

"Once nature seemed inexplicable without a nymph in every brook and a dryad in every tree. Even as late as the nineteenth century the design of plants and animals was regarded as visible evidence of a creator... Today, for real mystery, one has to look to cosmology and elementary particle physics. For those who see no conflict between science and religion, the retreat of religion from the ground occupied by science is nearly complete."

Or, in the words of Stephen J. Gould:

“The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos.”

Every time I learned something new about the universe, my faith became smaller. This is predictable, for when science is painted as the enemy of faith, new and exciting information about our world is credited to Satan, and against God.

Belief & Wishful Thinking

This third issue is a little more personal. As I said in my last post, I had always struggled with my faith, it hadn't felt real to me since high school, and that seemed like ancient history. At one point, I remember sitting in a Sunday School class at my church where our pastor asked the question: “Why do you believe in God?” One by one, each and every person who answered said something equivalent to “I believe in God because I have a relationship with Him.” I had never had a relationship with God.

I was raised in a Bible church with a strong Calvinistic theology, so I was familiar with the teaching that God chooses those whom He wants to be his “elect”, i.e. whom He wants to save. This teaching says that no one is able to believe in Him unless God himself gives them the ability to believe. The thought had come to my mind many times: Is is possible that I am simply not elected by God? Does He simply not want me? Could belief be something that I am just not capable of? I surely wanted to believe, but was finding it harder and harder to do so. I repeatedly begged God to give me faith. When it didn't come, Weinberg's words in Dreams of a Final Theory rang loud and clear:

“The decision to believe or not is not entirely in our hands. I might be happier if I thought I were descended from the emperors of China, but no effort of will on my part can make me believe it, any more than I can will my heart to stop beating.”

Richard Dawkins echoed this thought in The God Delusion when discussing the claim by Christians that we just need to “Believe in Jesus” to be saved. He responded to this by saying “What if I don't believe? Does God want a bunch of fakers?” [a paraphrase]

It seemed like my faith came down to a simple case of wishful thinking. I had a lot to lose: Most of my good friends were from our church, and while I'm sure they would still love me as an atheist, it surely would ruin many relationships. My family would be devastated, and who knew if my marriage would survive. Not to mention the promise of life after death! I certainly had an abundance of reasons to continue “believing” even if I was a faker.

Weinberg captured this thought in the single most devastating passage of any I have read:

“Unlike science, religious experience can suggest a meaning for our lives, a part for us to play in a great cosmic drama of sin and redemption, and it holds out to us a promise of some continuation after death. For just these reasons, the lessons of religious experience seem to me indelibly marked with the stamp of wishful thinking.”

Divine Action

The final issue I'll discuss is the problem of divine action. Christianity teaches that God is intimately involved in our lives, from moment to moment. This is one of the reasons prayer is important, since it can affect the course of our lives.

My problem was that I did not see this action in the world. Do not get me wrong! I had (and have) been blessed in so many awesome ways; My wife is incredible and custom made for me, my closest friends are truly gifts from God, and my family was just starting to grow with the birth of my daughter. The problem was that I could usually see the cause and effect relationships that lead up to God's supposed action. The world looked as if God wasn't doing anything. Anything anyone claimed to be “of God” or an answer to prayer was easily explainable by its natural causes. This is okay, if God is said to act only through nature, but it seemed incompatible with a God who does specific things; a God who is intimately involved with our lives.



So, these are just a few of the issues and ideas I struggled with toward the end of my disembedding phase. By this point, young earth creationism was gone. My faith was all but gone. Disembedding was complete.

The next phase in Roxburgh's description of paradigm change is transition. In the next post, I'll discuss how I tried to make sense of everything I've discussed so far. First, I'll talk about what happened when I shared my struggle with those close to me, and then I'll share my experience as I tried to reconcile my faith and scientific knowledge.

5. A Bit of Light Reading

This is the fifth in a series of posts describing my transition from young earth creationist to theistic evolutionist. In the first post, I described how Alan Roxburgh's 5-phase description of paradigm change describes this transition well, and I have been using his framework to shape this discussion. See the introduction for a list of all the posts in this series.


A Bit of Light Reading

In the process of paradigm change, the third phase (according to Roxburgh) is disembedding. He describes this phase as:

"...when we begin to feel that the current system is insupportable and we begin to disconnect from it - like Dorothy [in The Wizard of Oz] being carried away from Kansas by a tornado."

As I described in the last post, my disembedding process began by shedding my long-held beliefs in a young universe/earth in favor of old earth creationism. This included extensive reading of Hugh Ross' books which left me with a significant interest in cosmology and theoretical physics. I began to read books on these subjects and was fascinated by this new window in to the world.

Bill Bryson's book A Short History of Nearly Everything really kicked things off for me. It was an incredible description of the unfolding of the universe, from the very beginning to this very moment. It gave me an appreciation for the process of science, and helped me understand not only what science says about the history and operation of the universe, but how we figured this stuff out. It helped to whet my appetite for more.

Stephen Hawking's The Universe in a Nutshell was next. I was awed by his description of the beginnings of the universe and the nature of time. Brain-bending concepts like supergravity, supersymmetry, p-branes and imaginary time were fun to tackle and I was surprised at Hawking's ability to explain these complex ideas so accessibly.

Richard Feynman and Ralph Leighton's Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! made me want to become a theoretical physicist. Its informal character stood in stark contrast to Hawking's books, but Feynman made the process of pursuing authentic knowledge seem so interesting and important. This, along with another book, Feynman's Rainbow, helped me understand that one can make profound advances in science without leaving ones desk.

I also read a bit more on evolution: Richard Dawkins' spectacularly written story, The Ancestor's Tale traces our ancestry from the present to the past, in an incredibly compelling survey of the theory of common descent. Also, Stephen J. Gould's essays in Evolution and Extinction were vital in understanding some of the nuances of natural selection, speciation and punctuated equilibrium.

Steven Weinberg's Dreams of a Final Theory blew my mind. Half-way through I was ready to pack my bags and head back to grad-school to become a particle physicist. I loved the idea that it might be possible to finally join the worlds of quantum physics (which I had studied in grad school) with cosmology (in which I was beginning to dip my toes) into one complete theory of everything.

Okay, I'm leaving something out. All this exploration of ideas that were previously deemed outright wrong across the board had brought me to the conclusion that I had been duped. The wool had been pulled over my eyes. I now saw that the universe was utterly ancient, and it was fascinating. This previously forbidden territory had opened up countless avenues of exploration, and each one I ventured down turned out to be more exciting and compelling than the next. But there was a profound and dire problem that I had yet to face: I had been taught that all of this was a lie; each exciting detail was in some way a deception perpetrated by Satan. Either the entire picture of the universe that had been painted for me was false in every detail, or my faith in God was a total sham. These two armies had become firmly entrenched in my mind, and it was only a matter of time before the battle would begin.

It didn't turn out to be much of a battle. My faith didn't put up much of a fight.

The first significant blow to my faith came from the final chapter of Weinberg's Dreams of a Final Theory entitled What About God?. In it, he discusses the implications of the search for a theory to describe everything on the existence of God; generally answering the question of whether the final theory will say anything about God, or even prove or disprove His existence. I'll discuss specific ideas in my next post, but I remember spending my lunch hour in the parking lot at my work, devastated by the feeling that my faith was gone. I remember talking myself through the steps that would be required to break the news to my friends and family. It wasn't pretty.

Well, feelings come and go, and apparently so does faith. I regained my composure, walked back into work, and proceeded to live my life. I continued to go to church with my wife, and existed in a state of denial for a while.

I should note that faith had never worked very well for me. I had never developed much of a relationship with God. My personal Bible reading and prayer time had always been boring and seemed pointless. It's easy to see why the battle was almost over before it began.

Curiosity made me pick up The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. [You should be hitting your forehead with your palm right about now...] Although Dawkins' tone was quite off-putting and condescending, I still got his message: I was raised by Christian parents, so I was a Christian. I want God to exist to make myself feel better about death. My faith is wishful thinking, nothing more.

At about the same time I read Bertrand Russell's Religion & Science and Michael Shermer's Why People Believe Weird Things. Both reinforced the conclusion I was quickly reaching: My faith was a sham. I was a fake. Faith had never worked for me because it wasn't true! I knew science was right, and Christianity was wrong. Evolution made sense; I saw it everywhere I looked. I was forced to choose between science and God. Science seemed so real. God seemed so fake.

In my next post, I'll finish describing the disembedding phase of my transition from YEC to evolutionist. I'll discuss a few of the specific problems that really bothered me in the reading I described above, especially those which became significant in the later phases of this transition.

Oh, Bother!

Prayer is a funny thing. Two days ago, as I was putting the first coat of sealer on my driveway, a thunderstorm approached from the west. I did not pray that I would be spared from the rain and the damage it would cause to my driveway; yet I watched as the lightning passed harmlessly to the south. I remember thanking God that he was good to me even when I didn't ask him.

Yesterday I put the last coat of sealer on my driveway. The rainstorm that threatened to hit had again passed to the south, so I decided to finish the job. This time I did pray that I would again be spared from any more rain. I finished the job and went to bed, thankful that the sky was still clear. At exactly midnight, I awoke to the sound of rain. This was not just normal rain, it was that hard, loud, violent rain that makes your gutters overflow. I ran out to the driveway and watched the driveway sealer run off my driveway and into my yard. "Great," I thought, "a ruined driveway and dead grass."

At 12:07 the rain had stopped, and I was back in bed. It was over that fast. A tiny rain storm had come to paint my driveway in ugly black and grey polka-dots and now it was gone. I felt like Eeyore with the raincloud following him around. Oh, bother.


If something had been broken in the storm, my insurance company would have called it "An act of God." What was up with God last night?


I've often wondered about prayer; it is such a strange and wonderful thing. A finite being with wants and desires communicating with an infinite being with its own wants and desires...

I've often wonder about those experiences in my life where I cry out to God for something in complete faith that He can do it (as complete as I've experienced, at least) and with pure motives (if that's possible) and for something that is intrinsically good... And that thing does not happen. (Disclaimer: My driveway prayer DOES NOT qualify)

Why would God say "NO"? The answers are almost endless:

God does not want that thing that you want.
That thing is not good for you.
That thing will make you sin in some way.
Not having that thing will help you grow in some way.
Not having that thing will help you teach someone else to not have that thing.
In the future you would regret having that thing.
That thing will not do for you what you think it will.

There are two verses from the Bible that are often used in reference to prayer; The first is about how our faith affects what we have power to do (presumably by prayer):

I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you." Matthew 17:20

This was Jesus speaking to the disciples in response to their inquiry about why they could not drive out a demon. Perhaps this is only true for the disciples. If it is true for us, the church is filled with people who have very little faith. I don't know of any mountains that have moved lately. Or could it be that someone with great faith would never ask for something like mountain relocation?

The second verse is said to be about why bad things happen to us:

28And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28

or, as some manuscripts say:

And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God ...

So whose good is it? Mine? Gods? I've always believed it meant something like: "God makes or allows all things to happen because it is good for His kingdom." The bad things that happen are good for God's kingdom, not for Joe's kingdom. Because I read this verse in this way, my Dad tells me that I don't trust God. Maybe so.

In any case, for some reason, God decided to send a mighty little seven-minute rain storm to ruin the sealer on my driveway. Didn't I have enough faith? Maybe. Was it for my good? Maybe. For his good? Maybe. Will I ever know? Probably not. But what does that mean for the role of Matthew 17:20 and Romans 8:28 in my life?

Oh, bother.

"The old grey donkey, Eeyore stood by himself in a thistly corner of the Forest, his front feet well apart, his head on one side, and thought about things. Sometimes he thought sadly to himself, "Why?" and sometimes he thought, "Wherefore?" and sometimes he thought, "Inasmuch as which?" and sometimes he didn't quite know what he was thinking about." -A. A. Milne in The Pooh Book of Quotations

A line in the blacktop

I tend to experience the most clarity in thought while doing mundane tasks, like mowing the grass or shoveling snow. I think the responsibility of controlling my body tends to distract my thoughts, so when I have an activity to participate in that does not require thought, my brain goes wild.

Anyway, last night as I was sealing our driveway, I began to think about the "story of my faith", which has been a roller coaster with more downs than ups. I feel like I am constantly bouncing between doubt and hope, ignorance and peace.

I think I can put every point of my faith experience on a continuum between atheism and peace, having experienced everything from one end of that continuum to the other:

(Please excuse the geekyness of this visual, I think you'll understand why I include it in just a bit.)

I left the right end of this line blank, because I'm convinced that there exists a state of faith that I have not experienced, something beyond peace.

At any point in time I can pretty much put myself somewhere on this line. Most days I hover somewhere around hope. Sometimes this is an intense hope for the future; hope that some day God will change me, make me into someone who isn't always asking questions or doubting or wondering about this or that...

Sometimes this is a more pure kind of hope, hope for eternity. Hope for the day when all questions will be answered, not because I "figured it out" but because God is the answer...

Sometimes I briefly dip into something which might be called peace. Often I have a hard time differentiating between peace and ignorance; I don't know that I have ever experienced the former without the latter.

In any case, I often wonder what is "out there" that I am missing. What would a faith that is "true", or "right", or "real" look like?

So, as I filled the cracks in our aging driveway with black goop, I was reminded of an exchange in the book I just finished reading, A New Kind of Christian, by Brian McLaren.

In it, Neo, the sort of "postmodern guru" of the story, is explaining something to Dan, who describes the exchange:

[Neo] knelt down on the path, cleared away some fallen leaves, and drew a line in the dust. I stooped down next to him.

"This might help you. Very often,” he explained, “debates in the church occur on this level. There are all kinds of positions on an issue, along this line, with the most extreme positions being here and here.”

I offered a couple of examples: “OK. So Catholics are over here and Protestants over there. Calvinists are over here, and Arminians are over there. And charismatics are here and anticharismatics over there. And we could do the same on the issues of pacifism, inerrancy of the Bible, women in leadership, how the church should seek homosexuals, and—”

“Exactly,” he interrupted. “Now, almost all debate in the church takes place on this line. The issue is where the right point on the line is. So people pick and defend their points. Each person’s point becomes the point in his or her mind. Here’s what I’m suggesting: What if the point defending approach is, pardon the pun, pointless? In other words, what if the position God wants us to take isn’t on that line at all but somewhere up here?” He was moving his hand in a small circle, palm down, about a foot above the line he had drawn in the dust.

“So you’re saying,” I replied, “that we have to transcend the normal level of discourse. that makes sense to me. I mean, Jesus did that sort of thing all the time. Like with the woman at the well in John 4. The big debate is over where people should worship, on this mountain or on that mountain. Jesus doesn’t choose one point or the other; he says that the answer is on this higher level, that what God wants is for us to worship him in spirit and truth, wherever we are. Both mountains are good places to worship, so in that way both sides are right. But where you worship isn’t the point at all, so in that way both sides are wrong.”

While I trowelled more patch on the driveway I began to wonder if that "real faith" that seems to elude me is not on my line at all, but somewhere "up here"? (Imagine me waving my hand over a line I have scratched in my driveway patch) Could it be possible to have a faith that includes some of most of the elements on my line? A faith where peace, hope, and doubt can coexist? A faith where I can have peace without the requirement of ignorance?

Maybe that is possible. Maybe it is not. But if it is, it is worth pursuing.

God told me to do it

This morning I read Genesis 22. This is one of those parts of the Bible (especially the Old Testament) that terrify me; make me scared of the God I worship.

Here, God commands Abraham to kill his son:

Then God said, "Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about." Genesis 22:2

Abraham, full of faith in his God, obeys:

When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. Genesis 22:9-10

Luckily, God stops Abraham at the last moment, as if to say "Just kidding! Good, job, you were actually going to do that, weren't you!"

But the angel of the LORD called out to him from heaven, "Abraham! Abraham!""Here I am," he replied."Do not lay a hand on the boy," he said. "Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son." Genesis 22:11-12

What are we supposed to think of this? Would I be able to obey God in this way? I think Abraham is lucky that God was speaking to him in actual audible words. How can you say no when God's voice is booming through the air, commanding you do do something, even if that thing is absolutely horrible?

Today, we are not so lucky. Today we have the Holy Spirit, (which of course wasn't available to Abraham) who is a little more subtle in His communication. The Holy Spirit seems to speak to us mainly though our circumstances, the Bible, and of course through voices in our heads. But this raises lots of questions:

How would I know if God was telling me to kill my son? What if a little voice in my head started telling me to kill my son? Should I obey? If someone I know told me they were going to kill their child because God told them to do it, should I consider them a "pillar of faith" or a psycho?

Is God going to ask me to do something or believe something that is completely insane? What if he asks me to believe the universe is younger than some trees that are still alive today?

Might Satan communicate with us in much the same ways? It seems likely that killing a child might be something he might really enjoy watching me carry out. He might also enjoy the confusion and doubt that comes from holding to a "scientific" belief that is not supported by any evidence.

Isn't it against the nature of God to command us to sin? I know the sixth commandment wasn't given to Moses until a few hundred years later, but does that make murder okay in Abraham's day? I doubt it. Of course, God surely knew Abraham would not have to go through with His command, but this does not change Abraham's perception of the event.

Is God this cruel? Was this just a really extreme test for Abraham, because he was really important? A kind of "stress test" to put Abraham through before he built a nation on him?

I could write questions all day.