Too Busy

I'm constantly amazed by how much my role as a parent can illuminate my relationship with God.

This morning as I left for work, I peeked my head in my 2 year old daughter's room to say goodbye. After wishing her a great day, I asked if she would give me a hug.

"No, Daddy. I'm busy with this toy." She turned her head away and focused on the toy in her lap.

I was crushed. I told her goodbye and headed toward the door.

I was reminded of all the times I'm too busy with whatever I'm doing to spend a few minutes alone with God. How many times have I said the exact same thing to God: "No Daddy. I'm too busy with that project in the back yard." Or "No, Daddy. There's a really good TV show on in three minutes." I wonder if, in those times, God feels something like I felt this morning.

Although my daughter and I see each other throughout the day, and we interact and experience life together, it is the special moments (like my goodbye hug) that I really look forward to the most. I'm sure the same is true of our heavenly Father: Although He is with us throughout the day, and we experience our lives in His presence, it's the special moments (like our daily quiet time) where we really make a connection with Him. When I'm too busy to spend that time with Him, I bet it breaks His heart.

So I was feeling pretty low this morning. As I walked across the driveway to my car, I heard the front door open. It was my little girl.

"I'm sorry, Daddy." My heart leaped. I ran up to her and scooped her up in my arms. "I'm sorry for not giving you a hug, Daddy."

My broken heart was suddenly healed.

God, I'm sorry for skipping my quiet time with you last night (and so many other times). Please forgive me. I look forward to those times. Help me to remember that you look forward to them, too.

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.

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