Grottenberg the Elder

“Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.” (JOHN 1:29b)

Those are, of course, the words of John the Baptist, and he is referring to Jesus the Christ. The people who heard John say that would have recognized the allusion to animal sacrifice and the concept of atoning blood. Twenty-first-century people, though … Well, John’s declaration leaves most of us scratching our heads.

In a blog post like this one, I haven’t room to even begin to properly discuss the institution of temple sacrifice. But let me try to explain in very simplified—perhaps overly simplified—terms. To the Hebrew people—and to other ancient peoples—the idea of sacrifice as something that could take away sin was both deeply spiritual and very commonplace.

As I said, I’m oversimplifying. But in a nutshell, the belief was that an individual could somehow place his or her sins upon a living animal—quite often a lamb—and then offer it for sacrifice. When the animal died, the sins died with it, and therefore the person who brought the sacrifice was free of the bondage of sin—at least, for a while.

Now, that brings us back to Jesus being the “Lamb of God” who would bear humanity’s sins and take them to the cross. By dying as a sacrifice to God, Jesus assumed our punishment and made us holy in the eyes of God. Again, an oversimplification, but that has been—more or less—the prevailing doctrine through most of Christian history.

However, I have to admit that this idea has always made me uncomfortable. And maybe it’s supposed to! Trouble is—to the vast majority of modern folk—the idea of “substitutionary atonement” is not merely nonsensical, but actually offensive!

At this point, it has to be said that most of Jesus’ contemporaries also found the idea offensive. Sacrificing an animal was one thing, but human sacrifice was strictly forbidden (and was viewed with horror by Jews and Romans alike). That’s what the apostle Paul is getting at when he writes: “we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles” (1 Cor. 1:23).

And it is a horrifying idea, is it not? For one thing, it appears unjust. After all, where is the justice in requiring Christ—who was guilty of nothing—to bear the punishment we deserve? How could it really help, anyway? And how could a just God accept such an unjust sacrifice? Critics have a point when they say this reduces Christ to a sort of cosmic whipping boy.

I wonder: is it possible to re-examine these ancient conceptions? To see them in a way that applies a different meaning to the Biblical ideas of sin and sacrifice? In what way is Jesus a lamb? In what sense does he “take away the sins of the world?”

Hmmm … that’s another huge discussion. I think the best thing I can do here is tell you a story. It’s a true story—and it is suffused with lessons about grace. At least, I think it is. So here’s the story …

When I pastored a church in Kamloops, I came to know a woman who was a former heroin addict. I still hear from her occasionally.

I’ll call her Susan. She did all kinds of unpleasant and ugly things to get money to support her habit. By her own account, she worked for a while as a prostitute in Vancouver’s infamous Downtown Eastside. A few times, she made some half-hearted efforts to get clean—but without success. Susan now says part of her problem was that she really didn’t see any good reason for quitting.

That is, not until her baby girl was born. Then it quickly became clear that Susan’s drug use had caused great damage to the tiny child. The baby looked normal enough, but she screamed and cried all the time, and she was very sick most of the time. When Susan saw this, it broke her heart. She had not realized that she would love this little girl so much, and she was appalled by what she herself had done.

Then social workers from the government came and took the baby away, because they realized that Susan was unable to care for her. They placed the child in foster care. But Susan wanted her baby back. And so, for the first time in her life, she had a compelling reason for straightening herself out. She went into a special treatment centre for women with drug problems, and worked very hard to get well. After that, she joined a support group and made some tremendous positive changes in her life.

To make a long story short, after Susan had been drug-free for about a year, her child was returned to her. That was over 20 years ago now, and Susan has managed to stay away from drugs throughout all that time. Her little girl is now a fine young woman. Susan turned out to be a very good mother.

If you were to ask her what made the difference for her—what finally made her want to turn her life around—Susan would tell you it was the sight of her newborn baby in severe distress. In that moment, she found out what love feels like—and also saw how terrible her addiction (her “sin,” if you like) truly was. And her love for her child was what finally propelled her into rehab.

In a very real sense, it seems to me, Susan’s daughter became as Christ to her. She literally bore her mother’s sin, and—ultimately—she took it away.

I believe the sight of Jesus upon the cross can be like that. If we love him, we cannot help but be profoundly affected by his violent, painful death. When we consider that the One who was sent to demonstrate God’s love for humanity ended up being killed by human hatred and fear, does it not make us realize how desperately we need to change? When we hear the phrase, “Jesus died for our sins,” we may interpret it as being—at the very least—an example of God trying to get our attention.

“Look at me!” we may imagine Jesus saying. “All of your human history has been about war and suffering and injustice. Now it’s come to this. Here I am, hanging on the cross. This is what your hatred and selfishness has led to, for countless millions of innocent victims. When will you stop hating?”

Such an interpretation has been favoured by more than a few theologians over the centuries (including Peter Abelard). Some have called it the “Moral Influence Theory” of atonement.*

Of course, this presumes that we truly do love Jesus! For only if we love him will his suffering move us to change our own behaviour, or to labour for a better world.

Fortunately, Christ’s love is available freely to anyone who will accept it—and that, my friends, is why the good news really is good news! May we never cease proclaiming it—for it remains a story our world needs desperately to hear.

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* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_influence_theory_of_atonement

 

As I write this, Hurricane Harvey appears to be fading at last—but not before wreaking hundreds of billions of dollars worth of damage, causing at least 40 deaths and displacing tens of thousands in Texas, Louisiana and throughout the Caribbean.

As I write this, 24 people have been reported killed in a building collapse in Mumbai; a man in his 20s is dead after a daylight shooting in a Toronto shopping mall; a 32-year-old husband and father has finally died after being struck in the head by a softball during a charity slo-pitch tournament in Courtenay, British Columbia two weeks ago.

As I write this, North America’s opioid crisis goes on claiming hundreds of lives every week, the State of Nevada contemplates using Fentanyl as an execution drug, and—years after the Cold War ended—we face a fresh nuclear threat from North Korea.

What is our world coming to?

Or, to ask a more uncomfortable question: “Why does our good God allow evil things to happen?” Things like murder and terrorism and earthquakes and cancer. Motor vehicle accidents. Misfortune both random and designed. Tragedies you’d think the Lord would want to prevent.

So, why doesn’t he?

Why doesn’t he stop suicide bombers, mass murderers, and drunk drivers? Why doesn’t he “rend the heavens and come down?” (to ask the prophet Isaiah’s question).

There are at least a couple of time-honoured answers to questions like those. One of them appeals to the sovereignty of God—saying, in effect: “God is in charge. When suffering and misfortune come into our lives, it is not accidental. And since God is good, even our severest suffering must be—somehow—for a good purpose.”

Honestly, I do not like that answer very much. Because I find it impossible to believe that the God I know would deliberately cause suffering—especially the suffering of innocent children.

Another traditional answer appeals to the concept of free will. God gave people free will, and they chose evil instead of good. I like that answer better. I find it more agreeable. I would rather pin the blame for evil on the will of human agents.

But, however much I prefer that answer, I have to acknowledge that it creates a big problem. And it has to do with the aforementioned sovereignty of God. Because, inescapably, it leads us to the conclusion that human beings can circumvent God’s will. This calls into question the whole idea that God is in control of absolutely everything.

God knows everything that happens—and he knows everything that will happen … right? That’s what we believe … isn’t it?

Certainly, that is the view of “classical Christianity.” But how can there be such a thing as “free will” if the future is already written out like a screenplay? If we’re just actors on a stage—playing out a predetermined script—then we really don’t have any free will at all … do we?

Let’s back up a bit. Why is free will important, anyway? A theologian named Alvin Plantinga has stated the case better than I ever could:

A world containing creatures who are significantly free (and freely perform more good than evil actions) is more valuable, all else being equal, than a world containing no free creatures at all. Now God can create free creatures, but He can’t cause or determine them to do only what is right. For if He does so, then they aren’t significantly free after all; they do not do what is right freely. To create creatures capable of moral good, therefore, He must create creatures capable of moral evil; and He can’t give these creatures the freedom to perform evil and at the same time prevent them from doing so.¹

In other words, without free will, we’d just be robots, carrying out our programmed behaviour. And if that is not what we are—if we are not robots, or characters in some kind of divine novel—then that must mean that the future is not predetermined. But if the future is not predetermined, how can it be known by God?

One proposed solution to this problem is known as “Open Theism.”

Open Theism is, to be sure, controversial. It holds that God does not and cannot know in advance the future choices that his free creatures will make. Or, to put it another way, open theists claim that—while God can know in advance what he has planned to do, he cannot know what his free creatures will choose to do. In other words, the future is a blank page. It really is open—and not available to foreknowledge, even on the part of God.

Wait! Is this not heresy? How can we say that God doesn’t know the future? That’s like saying that God can change his mind!

Hmmm. Consider the story recorded in 2 Kings 20:1-6. Through an inspired prophet, the Lord tells King Hezekiah that he will not recover from his illness. God says that Hezekiah’s days are numbered: “Set your house in order” is God’s message to the king.

But Hezekiah pleads with the Lord. And what happens? The Lord reverses his stated intention!

“I have heard your prayer,” God says. “I have seen your tears; indeed, I will heal you … I will add fifteen years to your life.”

That’s quite a reversal. And it’s not the only example in Scripture of God apparently changing his mind. There are many. One of them is from the 26th chapter of the Book of Jeremiah, where the Lord tells Jeremiah to warn Israel that they should repent, saying: “I may change my mind about the disaster that I intend to bring on them because of their evil doings” (v. 3).

Okay. So God changes his mind, sometimes. So what?

Here’s what! If God can change his mind about certain things, it must mean that the future is not absolutely fixed. Or at least, there are some aspects of the future that are not absolutely fixed.

Not only that, but it suggests that at least some things—certain outcomes—truly are in human hands. What’s more, it means that prayer really does have a purpose. It actually can have an effect. Prayer changes things.

Gregory Boyd has written a book about open theism. It’s called God of the Possible. And in it, he says this:

Open theists … maintain that God can and does predetermine and foreknow whatever he wants to about the future. Indeed, God is so confident in his sovereignty [that] he does not need to micromanage everything. He could if he wanted to, but this would demean his sovereignty. So he chooses to leave some of the future open to possibilities, allowing them to be resolved by the decisions of free agents.²

Now, I’m not saying that I’ve completely bought into the “Open Theism” school of thought. I don’t believe it provides all the answers to all our questions about good and evil. And I’m certainly not saying that our prayers always bring about the kind of changes we desire.

In John 12:27, we hear Jesus ask a rhetorical question: “What should I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’?”

Immediately, he answers his own question: “No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour.”

That sounds like Jesus thought everything was fixed—that his fate was sealed. And maybe it was. But even he must have thought that maybe—just maybe—there was a possibility of changing the outcome. Because later—in Gethsemane—this was his earnest prayer: “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done” (Luke 22:42).

So what can we make of all this?

Here’s what I think. However we may try to wrap our heads around the paradox of suffering in a world made by a good Creator, it seems clear—from Scripture and from our own experience—that human agency makes a tremendous difference.

Whether it’s the prophet Isaiah bringing God’s message to the king, or Jesus bowing to his Father’s will—or you and I choosing to do the right thing, even when that costs us—what we do upon this earth matters! Our actions matter. Our prayers are never futile. God chooses to work through us—to combat evil, to do justice, to make real the compassion of Jesus.

As a very wise six-year-old once said, “Jesus does things in the world because we do them. So we better do good things.”

Amen. Let’s do them!

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¹Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1974), 30.

²Gregory A. Boyd, God of the Possible (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2000), 31.

What was Jesus of Nazareth like as a child? Luke the gospel-writer offers us one fleeting glimpse:

Now every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival. When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. Assuming that he was in the group of travellers, they went a day’s journey. Then they started to look for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, ‘Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.’ He said to them, ‘Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?’ But they did not understand what he said to them. Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart.

And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favour. (LUKE 2:41-52, NRSV)

What a smart-aleck kid!  Still, these few verses are precious, because they are the only record of the childhood of Jesus in the canon of Scripture. And they paint a picture of a very human adolescent boy—precocious, but solidly human.

Luke seems determined to portray Jesus as one whose humanity cannot be disputed. And this emphasis is apparent from the very beginning. In his account of Jesus’ birth, Luke is careful to frame events within the context of time and place. As he recounts the details of the journey of Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem, he tells us (Luke 2:1-7):

• that a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered;
• that this took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria;
• that Joseph went to Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David; and
• that Mary gave birth to Jesus in a barn and laid him in a feed-trough.

With these details, Luke anchors Jesus firmly in Israel’s history, and provides important markers of his humanity. He didn’t just drop down out of the sky, but entered the world as all of us do. Luke’s Jesus begins life in surroundings that are grubby, poor, and ordinary, with two very human parents. We must never forget this.

Too often, too many of us speak and act as if we believe that baby Jesus in the manger was already perfectly and omnisciently divine—as if his heavenly origin and destiny meant that he was incapable of being anything else but the perfect person.

But look:  if we assume that Jesus had no formation—that he was without the common human experiences of facing limitations, of going through adolescence, of learning—then we imply that he was not human, but superhuman. In other words, someone who was not really one of us.

When we imagine Jesus as a young man—when we try to fill in those “lost years” before he began his ministry at about age 30—what do we imagine? Do we ever allow him to have doubts? Or argue with his parents? Or experience peer pressure? Or sibling rivalry? Can we imagine him being tempted to lie, or manipulate, or lash out in anger? Can we imagine him, in other words, behaving as we do?

If not, what do we make of the Christian church’s insistence that Jesus was “fully human” and “fully divine” (or “true God and true man,” as an old Catechism puts it)?

A few years ago, in a Confirmation class I was running, a bright teenager pointed out something which should have been obvious—but wasn’t (at least, not to me). She argued that if Jesus was really and truly human—really and truly “like us”—then he must have been capable of making mistakes. As she pointed out: “When you say, ‘I’m only human’—isn’t that what you mean?”

To be human is to be fallible. Being human means not knowing some things. But if Jesus is all that the Church claims him to be—if he was “God incarnate”—how could he be fallible, or ignorant, or limited?

I asked my teenaged friend that question. And she replied, “I guess it’s one of those paradoxes, isn’t it?”

I guess it is. Her point is well taken. If Jesus of Nazareth was a real human being, he would have been as much like us—and as much unlike us—as any other human being. The carpenter’s son would have known the ups and downs of growth and learning, of working out what it means to be human, of how to be in relationship with others. Like all the rest of us, Jesus must have had growing pains. As Luke tells us: “Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favour.”

He “increased in wisdom and in years.” In other words, he matured. He grew. During the 30 or so years between his birth and his public ministry, Jesus did not spend his time “running on the spot” like some kind of perfect, spiritual athlete, waiting for the race to begin. No. He spent his time growing up. That was an essential part of the incarnation—of true God becoming truly human.

Do I understand the how of that? Of course not. But faith, it seems to me, is not so much about understanding as it is about embracing mystery. If we ignore the essential humanity of Jesus, we will overlook the profound mystery of the incarnation of God—and we will miss what someone has called “the wonderful brotherliness of Christ.”

The brotherliness of Christ.  I think most of us—even in the church—have missed that! Why? I think it’s because the church has not properly celebrated our Lord’s humanity. It’s as if we’ve forgotten that in Jesus, humanity and divinity are intertwined—or “reconciled.” Intertwined. Reconciled. Atoned. Words that point to the mystery of the divine and human Jesus. Today my advice to you is: hold on to the mystery!  Better yet, let the mystery hold on to you.

Whatever you do—for goodness sake, don’t let go of the hand of the human Jesus!  For only as we grasp the human hand do we feel the grasp of the divine hand; and only in the divine grasp do we discover our own true humanity.

I guess that is another one of those paradoxes.

 

 

Summertime in Canada is special. Special in a way you can understand only if you’ve grown up here, I think. For one thing, the water isn’t frozen. Depending on where you live, you may have a lake nearby—or at least a river to float on. Or, if you live on one of the coasts, the great ocean is at your doorstep.

You can have a lot of fun on, in, or under the water. Maybe you like to swim. Maybe you enjoy water-skiing. Perhaps you even have the courage and coordination to catch a mighty wave and surf it. You may dive from a cliff and plunge into the water far below. You might even go scuba-diving, and explore the world beneath the waves. Or maybe, like me, you feel safest in a boat.

Of course, sometimes—even in a boat—you don’t feel all that safe.

In chapter 14 of his gospel (vv. 22-33), Matthew tells a story about a boat. It begins with Jesus sending his disciples off in one. They’ve already had a most eventful day. First, they received the shocking news of John the Baptist’s death in Herod’s prison. Then they found themselves surrounded by a huge crowd, inundated with urgent pleas and requests for healing. Finally, at the evening meal, they watched in amazement as Jesus stretched five loaves and two fish to feed an immense multitude: “5,000 men” plus women and children (so, perhaps as many as 15,000 people).

Yes, they’d been busy. Yet Jesus had come there looking for solitude in which to collect his thoughts and mourn for his cousin John. And now he intends to do exactly that. So he sends his disciples across the lake, telling them to go on ahead to the other side.

“You go on ahead. I’ll catch up with you later.”

They did what he said, but there must have been questions running through their minds. Exactly how and when was Jesus going to catch up with them? It’s not like he could send them a text message, after all. Plus, it was getting late—and they were the ones in the boat!

Yes. They are the ones in the boat. Crowded together in a small craft, in the dark on the lake, in the middle of a storm, they are desperately struggling to stay afloat. Then, as they are being tossed about by the waves, in the early hours of the morning, the disciples see Jesus … walking on the water towards them.

Now, like I said before, human beings can do some extraordinary things on the water. But you can’t walk on water, can you? Your body weight and the law of gravity make that a physical impossibility. We know this.

The disciples surely knew this, as well. No wonder they thought they were seeing a ghost. People can’t walk on water! Except … here comes Jesus, catching up with them, just like he said.

In scripture, God is the One who commands the sea and calms the storm. God is the One who walks on water. Psalm 77 recalls the awesome power of God as he led the Israelites through the parted sea: “When the waters saw you, O God, when the waters saw you, they were afraid; the very deep trembled … Your way was through the sea, your path, through the mighty waters; yet your footprints were unseen” (PS. 77:16, 19).

“Take heart, it is I,” Jesus says. “Do not be afraid.”

On this storm-tossed night on the Sea of Galilee—amidst the chaos of the deep, turbulent waters—the very power of God is revealed in Jesus. Suddenly, the disciples find themselves in the divine presence, experiencing all of its awe and wonder.

But the story doesn’t end there. Peter asks if he can walk on water, too—and Jesus encourages him to try!

So Peter steps out onto the waves. He actually makes some progress—but then Peter loses his nerve. As he plunges down into the water, he cries out, “Lord, save me!”

Then Jesus stretches out his hand and rescues him, saying, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”

In one of the NOOMA videos that came out a few years ago,* Rob Bell talks about this story—and he asks the question: “Who does Peter doubt?”

 

 

 

Who is it that Peter doubts? Does he doubt Jesus?

No. Peter doubts himself. He’d been in that boat with the others, watching the Lord approach. There was no question about Jesus’ ability to walk on water.

Well, a good disciple wants to do what he sees his rabbi doing. So Peter gives it a try. And he makes quite a few bold strides before he looks around and thinks: “Holy swordfish! What am I doing here?”

This is impossible. I can’t walk on water!

When he begins to doubt, he begins to sink. As Rob Bell has pointed out, it not Jesus, but himself, that Peter doubts.

Here’s another question. What if—in this story—the choppy sea is an allegory for sin?

Yeah. Sin. We post-modern people—we don’t much like that old-fashioned word, “sin.” And yet it’s merely a descriptor for the mess we’re in. We don’t want to use that word—or hear that word, “sin”—even while North Korea aims nuclear missiles at Guam, and hatred devastates lives in Charlottesville, Virginia. Even as teen suicide rates climb in our own country, and infants starve in another.

At its deepest level, though, sin is not merely “stuff we do wrong.” Sin is what confronts, condemns, and judges us. Sin makes us condemn and judge ourselves. Sin causes us to doubt ourselves. It tells us we are weak, inadequate, stupid, helpless, and evil. It’s the reason why we throw up our hands in despair because we think we can’t do anything.

Doubt—especially self-doubt—obscures from our eyes the image of God in ourselves. Self-doubt keeps us from believing that we are able to do God’s will—or even capable of making a difference. It keeps us from trusting that God’s power resides in us. Doubt makes us think we cannot walk on water.

Doubt causes us to replace the Spirit’s freedom with a rigid structure of religious and moral laws. The apostle Paul tells us that “one believes with the heart and so is justified” (ROM. 10:10), but we cling to legalisms and precedents, unwilling to act without detailed instructions and firm assurances. Convinced of our own depravity, we depend upon rules and regulations to guide us, and to guarantee our correctness (which we mistake for righteousness).

And so we pass by the wounded stranger in the ditch because we must not defile ourselves with his blood. We permit a neighbour to suffer rather than violate the Sabbath. Thus we fail—as Samaritans and as saviours.

The rules say human beings cannot walk on water. Jesus, however, tells us different. And we want to believe him—this One who has strolled out to meet us on the lake. So we step out of the boat. We start off well, but the wind and the waves draw our attention away from our Lord. That’s when we remember the rules … and the rules try to drown us!

They don’t even have to be religious rules. They can be rules of our own creation—or made by society, science, culture, or the world of business. They may be rules inscribed upon our psyche by life experience. But they are not always grounded in truth. Rules like:

“You can’t trust anybody.”

“Nice guys finish last.”

“Cancer always wins.”

“Addiction always wins.” (I need a drink, a smoke, a needle, in order to deal with life.)

“People never change.”

“I always get the short end of the stick.”

“Nobody could ever really love me.”

None of that stuff is true. It just feels like it is, sometimes. The truth is: we are the Body of Christ. When we forget that truth, we begin to sink.

When, in Matthew’s gospel, we read about Peter stepping out of that boat and starting to walk upon the waves, it’s not just another example of him being impulsive. No. By including this story, Matthew is making a statement. He’s telling us that the divine power revealed in the Nazarene is not confined to God. God wants to share that power with those who follow Jesus.

The witness of Scripture—and, hopefully, our personal experience, also—tells us this: the power of God can sort out the chaos of our lives. Our stormy ups and downs—the demons of disappointment, setback, injustice and evil—all of these can be overcome.

We may feel weak, broken and vulnerable. The dangers we face may be quite real. But the divine power revealed in Jesus is always available for us to draw upon. By tapping into that power, we can do more than we ever thought possible. And if we flounder, help is swiftly available … beyond doubt, that is the promise of God.

_____________________

 

 

 

 

 

* NOOMA 008 (“Dust”) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kM3qHBAekhg&t=6s

Not long ago, I was listening to Michael Enwright’s CBC Radio program The Sunday Edition.¹ Enwright and two palliative-care doctors were discussing how end-of-life care in Canada is changing in response to the recent legalization of euthanasia—often referred to now as “physician-assisted death.”

Some doctors favour it. Others don’t, of course. One of Enwright’s guests said that, among her colleagues, many did not want the authority to euthanize a patient—yet still wanted the right to be able to choose assisted death for themselves!

This is the crux of the matter, isn’t it?

I suspect most Canadians are sympathetic toward individuals who—facing extreme physical torment—plead for the release of death. But that doesn’t mean we covet the role of executioner. Even doctors, generally, are reluctant to pull the trigger. Or at least, they don’t want to make the decision.

But who should make the decision?

Who lives? Who dies? How much suffering is too much? And whose suffering are we talking about? How certain are we that, from here on in, euthanasia will be visited only upon competent and consenting adults?

A while back, British atheist Richard Dawkins found himself at the centre of a firestorm for comments he made on social media. In response to a question on his Twitter feed, Dawkins had stated his opinion that a fetus with Down Syndrome ought to be aborted—and that, in fact, it would be “immoral” to do otherwise.²

He later blamed Twitter’s 144-word limitation for the uproar, saying that he didn’t have enough space to completely explain his viewpoint. Fair enough. Still, I did not find his blunt remark on Twitter at all surprising.

As an evolutionary biologist, Dawkins is passionately committed to the theory of natural selection proposed by Charles Darwin over a century ago. You’ve heard it. We all have. A species evolves as its defective or less-adaptable members die off. This natural process leads to the improvement of the species, as only the best specimens live long enough to pass on their genes to future generations. Often, the theory is boiled down to a naked proposition: “Only the strong survive.” The weak do not.

Well, that’s a simple statement of fact, as observed in the natural world. And if your focus is solely upon the physical robustness of an organism—and its desirability as a carrier of genetic material—then you would of course conclude that “the law of the jungle” is an all-round good thing. Natural selection is the hog-butcher’s friend.

Yet many religious believers—and perhaps most especially evangelical Christians—are uncomfortable with the whole idea. And not always because of a refusal to accept the theory of evolution or to examine the evidence supporting it. No.

Our discomfort stems, I think, not from natural selection’s observation that “only the strong survive,” but rather from its insistence that this is what should happen. It is, after all, the antithesis of Christian mercy. Of the defective, diseased, and discarded ones to whom Jesus ministered, it is said that “he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (Matthew 9:36).

Carried into the sphere of public policy—which appears to be what Dawkins and others like him are advocating—natural selection inevitably morphs into the kind of nightmare embodied in Nazi Germany’s “euthanasia” program.

At the Nazi Party Conference in Nuremberg in 1929, Adolf Hitler said that “an average annual removal of 700,000-800,000 of the weakest of a million babies meant an increase in the power of the nation and not a weakening.” ³ Hitler was able to back up that statement by referring to the scientific arguments of Alfred Ploetz, the founder of German racial hygiene.

Applying the Darwinian theory of natural selection to human beings, Ploetz believed that an ideal society could be created through “human selection.” According to Ploetz’s utopian vision, government would examine the moral and intellectual capacity of citizens to decide who would be allowed to procreate. Disabled children would be aborted, while the sick and the weak would be “eliminated.” In other words, “Social Darwinism”—and Aktion T4.⁴

Thinking again about Richard Dawkins and his opinion of less-than-perfect human life, I reframe my previous questions: Who lives? Who dies? Who decides? And according to what criteria?

From its earliest beginnings, Christianity denounced infanticide as murder. In ancient Roman society, this was not the mainstream view. Roman law permitted citizens of the Empire to throw their unwanted babies away in desolate places, where exposure to the elements, dehydration, and starvation would claim their lives. Unless, that is, someone rescued them. History tells us that the Christians did exactly that. Venturing into these places of cruel and lonely death, followers of Jesus saved these babies, taking them into their homes and raising them as their own. ⁵

For the earliest Christians, every infant had worth. They viewed infanticide as the murder of a human being, not as a convenient way to rid society of excess females and perceived weaklings. To them, each child—whether male, female, perfect, or imperfect—was a person of infinite value, created in the image of God.

What the first-century church believed about infants is, I hope, believed of all human beings by the 21st-century church. We are all persons of infinite value, each of us bearing our Creator’s likeness. Let us, therefore, remain vigilant—and ready to speak out, lest ideology or expedience usurp mercy’s crown.

__________________________________

NOTES:

¹ http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thesundayedition/june-11-2017-the-sunday-edition-with-michael-enright-1.4150230

² http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-ouch-28879659

³ Völkischer Beobachter, Bavarian edition dated August 7, 1929. In: Enzyklopädie des Nationalsozialismus, edited by Wolfgang Benz, Hermann Graml and Hermann Weiß, Digitale Bibliothek, Vol. 25, p. 578, Directmedia, Berlin 1999

⁴ The code-name “T4” came from the street address of the euthanasia program’s coordinating office in Berlin: Tiergartenstrasse 4. For an excellent overview of this topic, visit the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s website: https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005200

⁵ This clip from a “Day of Discovery” broadcast explains the practice of “exposure” in ancient Rome: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKOZKWJGhWs&t=75s

 

UPDATE: INFO ABOUT ASSISTED DEATH https://www.dnaweekly.com/blog/complete-guide-euthanasia-where-how-when-legal/

 

 

TEXT: Matthew 13:31-33

The Kingdom of Heaven is like … a raspberry seed that someone planted in his garden. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it grows up … it takes over your entire yard!

I know about this. I have raspberry bushes in my garden—and every year they produce seemingly endless quantities of fruit. They’re not hard to grow. In fact, the real challenge lies in containing the raspberries. And I’m not talking about containing the fruit in jars.

No. I mean keeping the bushes from growing where we don’t want them to grow. That’s the challenge! Because raspberry plants keep popping up everywhere—in the vegetable garden, amongst the flowers, over the other side of the fence … even through cracks in the concrete sidewalk.

You don’t need the wisdom of Solomon in order to cultivate raspberries. Or even a green thumb. I mean, if you’re looking for a foolproof business, I think raspberry farming would be it! Raspberry bushes are incredibly tough. You actually don’t even have to bother planting the tiny seeds. You can just cut some branches and stick them in the ground; they will develop roots and grow. They produce an abundant summer harvest, and always seek to enlarge their territory. The only difficult thing is keeping up with their production.

In chapter 15 of Matthew’s gospel, Jesus tells a parable not about raspberries, but about mustard. But they are kind of similar plants, in a way. Not that mustard tastes very much like raspberry jam … But raspberries and mustard (at least, the kind of mustard Jesus had in mind) have some things in common. They both have tiny seeds. And they share the same robust energy.

The people listening to Jesus would have understood that the mustard plant is a weed that grows like a bush and spreads. We see it in Canada, too. We call it wild mustard. Wild mustard is an invasive weed. Left unchecked, it will entirely take over a field, choking out the other plants. And it will do that before you know it.

Think about that. Jesus is comparing the Kingdom of Heaven to a plant that constantly and inevitably (and vigorously) keeps on growing and spreading. Just like raspberry bushes. According to Jesus, that’s what the Kingdom of Heaven is like.

Or at least, that’s how it turns out in the end. Jesus’ point is that the beginnings of the Kingdom are tiny. The Kingdom of Heaven starts out small. It’s barely noticeable. But once the Kingdom takes root, it spreads everywhere. You can’t miss it. In fact, you and I are part of that growth—part of that Kingdom—even if nobody recognizes us for what we are. The most important thing, however, is that God knows what we are. Our heavenly Father recognizes us.

We might be small and insignificant today—but tomorrow we’ll be invasive weeds!

Okay. Maybe that’s not exactly what Jesus meant. But you get the picture, right? And even if you don’t, Jesus provides another illustration. He says that the Kingdom of Heaven is like yeast that a woman mixes with flour to make huge amounts of dough.

Now, in Jesus’ day, yeast did not come in convenient little foil packages. “Leaven” was a remnant of dough that was allowed to … well … rot! Or ferment. A fungus from the air—in other words, yeast—would settle on the dough and begin to work. This remnant was then used to leaven the next day’s batch—which it would quickly do, working its way throughout the entire lump of dough. If you don’t understand what’s going on, it looks like magic, because yeast isn’t just small—it’s microscopic! A single cell.

Mustard seeds and yeast. Two parables about small, insignificant things turning into great big things. But more than that, they are parables about how the Kingdom of Heaven takes over everything around it. The mustard takes over the field. The yeast takes over the bread. They are barely noticeable to begin with, but—over time—they change everything around them. That, Jesus says, is how the Kingdom of Heaven works.

You know, that should be encouraging to us. Because sometimes it seems like our efforts to bring about God’s Kingdom are not all that effective. Jesus, however, tells us that the Kingdom starts out small like a mustard seed—but then it turns into a giant tree that shelters and nurtures life around it.

By the way, that’s hyperbole. Jesus knew full well that mustard does not actually grow into a tree. If that happened, it would be … a miracle (or just a daily occurrence in the Kingdom of Heaven; God can do amazing things with even our tiniest efforts).

Scott Hoezee is a well-known preacher and author. He’s also the Director of the Center for Excellence in Preaching at Calvin Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Not long ago—on the seminary’s website—he wrote this:

… as bearers of God’s kingdom, we keep plugging away at activities which may look silly or meaningless to the world but which we believe contain the very seed of a new creation. We keep coming to church and singing our old hymns, reciting our old formulas and creeds. All of us who preach keep cracking open an ancient book called the Bible, looking to find within it truths that are anything-but ancient. We keep gathering at sick beds and death beds and whisper our prayers for the Spirit of the resurrection to be with us in life and in death. We keep drizzling water onto squirming infants and popping cubes of white bread into our mouths in the earnest faith that through the Spirit baptism and communion don’t just mean something, they mean everything.

And we keep working for Jesus in this mixed-up, backward world of ours. We quietly carry out our jobs and raise our kids and tend our marriages in the belief that God has designs for all those things and it’s our job to follow them. We keep pointing people to an old rugged cross, having the boldness to suggest that the man who died on that cross is now the Lord of the galaxies.*

Did you hear that, you tired disciples? What you do matters. Not just what you do on Sunday morning, but what you do at work, or behind the wheel of your car, or at the grocery check-out, or anyplace else you turn up through the rest of the week—it all matters! More than that, it makes an incredible difference. If Jesus can say that the Kingdom of Heaven takes over this world through little things like mustard seeds and yeast, then the Kingdom of Heaven is surely taking over this world through you, as well! Even your small corner of the world is being transformed because of what God is doing in and through you.

No, it won’t be easy. Raspberry bushes are covered with thorns.

Yes, you may encounter resistance—or (maybe worse) apathy.

Yes, it may often seem like you’re just spinning your wheels, getting nowhere.

But in these parables, Jesus tells us different. He says that the Kingdom of Heaven is coming through things that appear unimportant and ineffectual … and perhaps even irrelevant. So, don’t give up!

Keep planting those mustard seeds. Remembering that God sees what is done in secret, keep hiding that yeast in the bread. Continue sowing seeds of kindness and mercy. Keep doing what is just and right, even if you meet opposition. Because—although you may not see the fruit of it—Jesus promises that this is how the Kingdom comes.

*http://cep.calvinseminary.edu/sermon-starters/proper-12a/?type=the_lectionary_gospel

 

TEXT: Romans 8:12-25

We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves … (Romans 8:22-23)

This Tuesday past, Iris and I celebrated 36 years of marriage. Thirty-six years. As I reflect on that, I recall how different we both were, way back then. In many ways, we were completely unlike the persons we are today.

On July 18, 1981—in the eyes of the law—we became a married couple. But in reality, each of us was still very much an isolated individual. This new thing we were creating—this unity of husband and wife—remained a work in progress. And there would be many years of accommodation and adjustment—and groaning—ahead of us, as this new thing began to take shape. It would be a long journey, with our destination always seemingly just beyond the horizon. I suspect most veteran married couples would report a similar experience.

Reflecting on that journey, I recall a day—some 10 years into it—when I sat with Iris in a delivery room, witnessing the birth of our only son. It was not a quiet process. There was much groaning and crying out (not all of it from Iris) as this struggle of creation unfolded.

Some wise person once said, “Groaning is the soundtrack of creation.” As the apostle Paul put it, “We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now” (Rom. 8:22).

To anyone who’s given birth—or witnessed a birth—Paul’s metaphor packs quite a punch. The work of creation can be not only difficult, but also frightening. At the very least, it is always hard labour—and sometimes it is brutal. No wonder it produces groaning.

This groaning takes place in a gap—the gap between what we are doing and what we hope to do. In the gap between what is and what is yet to be—in the gap between creation as God intends and wills it and the reality of here and now—we labour, and we groan.

In chapter eight of his Letter to the Romans, the apostle Paul writes about this gap, and this groaning. He  urges us to embrace optimism and hope—even while living in a world that rarely delivers what God has promised.

“Life in the gap.” Or, as Paul calls it, “life in the Spirit.” His entire ministry was—in a way—about bridging this gap.

Paul believed that—in Jesus—he had seen the fulfillment of creation. He also believed—fervently—that this fulfillment was not only within reach, but soon to become a concrete reality. He wrote, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us” (Rom. 8:18).

Even so, Paul realized that those who read his words were still living with injustice, war, poverty, persecution, and pain. He saw future glory even as he felt present suffering. Paul exhorted the Roman Christians to “live in the Spirit,” looking toward the glory that lies just beyond the gap. That is “life in the Spirit,” according to Paul.

Life in the Spirit is a life defined by supreme confidence—confidence that, through Christ, we have already been freed from those things that would increase our suffering.

Life in the Spirit is a life devoid of hatred and violence, filled instead with love and reconciliation. Life in the Spirit, according to Paul, is about living not in quiet desperation, but in glad—and groaning—exertion.

“Living in the gap” is not easy. Even though we may from time to time catch a glimpse of our glorious destination, we still live here—in a world that is not yet fully glorified.

As for Paul, his eyes had seen the glory of the risen Christ! And his conviction and faith and excitement must have been contagious, filling the hearts and minds of those in the churches he planted.

Yet, the inglorious world lay just outside the door of each house church. Every time the fellowship meal ended and people returned to their everyday lives, they were confronted by some harsh realities. Especially for those outside the ruling class, Roman society did not much resemble heaven’s kingdom.

Jesus told parables about the world to come. Paul wrote about adoption into God’s family and “waiting with eager longing” and hoping for what we do not see. Such words were meant to encourage first-century believers—but they are also encouraging words for today, because Christians are still living in the gap.

Many of us know the reality of God’s love, having experienced it in our lives. Many of us have witnessed it in grand acts of compassion—and beheld it in small but grace-filled acts of kindness. We rejoice when goodness triumphs, and we celebrate when sick ones return to health. These are clear signs that the Kingdom of Heaven has indeed come near.

Yet, every day we wake up to news about war and rumors of war, about violence in homes and communities, about soul-crushing poverty in every country, about injustice and persecution, corruption and cruelty. Everywhere we look, it seems, the inherent dignity of every human being is under attack.

As Paul reminded the Christians in ancient Rome, so he reminds us, here and now: our hope is not based on what we can see. Christian hope is based on the confidence and assurance that the risen Christ is present in the world, bringing the Kingdom of Heaven into being. In other words, Jesus is closing the gap.

Through his Spirit, God is even now building a bridge between what is and what is to come. This has been the work of God from the beginning of creation. Living as Christians—living in the gap—means joining in this work. As children of God, we are expected to pitch in and help.

How do we do that? The way we can pitch in—the way we can join in this work—is by living a life in the Spirit. And we absolutely cannot live that way by ignoring the gap. No.

Jesus calls us to stride boldly into the gap—working for justice, standing for peace, feeding the hungry, weeping with those who weep and rejoicing with those who rejoice … all the while striving and straining and groaning.

“Striving and straining and groaning.” If you are a serious disciple of Jesus, you know a thing or two about that. You know about the importance of hard work. You know about hope—and you also know what change looks like. Sometimes it makes you smile. Sometimes it makes you groan.

Groaning is the soundtrack of creation. It’s the sound of the gap closing. It’s the sound of the Spirit overcoming resistance. Life in the Spirit strains and groans to close the gap. It is a good, honest groaning. And it heralds what will be.

Life in the Spirit bridges the gap between the agony of labour and the joy of holding the newborn.  Ultimately, life in the Spirit leads us to a place where we can look back upon our long journey with a sense of satisfaction and gratitude.

As Christians, we are called to be gap closers. We are called to span the distance between what should be and what is. We are called to strain, and heave, and work, and hoist—all in order to close that gap. And when we groan in the doing, we sing in harmony with the soundtrack of creation.

So, friends, let’s stay true in the struggle—groaning if we need to, but faithful to the task. And never doubt this: the gap is closing. Thanks be to God.

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death (ROMANS 8:1-2).

On a road called Edmonton Trail in the City of Calgary, Alberta, there is displayed an atheist billboard. It’s looking kind of tattered and shabby these days, but it’s still there. I guess the atheists have run out of money for its upkeep. If you’re headed north toward McKnight Boulevard, it’s off to your left, on 35th Avenue, just past “Barbecues Galore.” It has a large picture of a pleasant-looking young woman (whose name appears to be “Jenn”) who tells us that “Praying won’t help; doing will!”

All on its own, that is a questionable statement—although it does contain a molecule of truth: if all we do is pray—without ever backing our words up with actions—then our prayers will lack the kind of power they could have.

However, there’s another statement on that billboard—and it’s a familiar atheist catch-phrase: “Without God, we’re all good.”

“Without God, we’re all good.” Atheists say this, glibly—like they think it’s a self-evident fact; as if anyone who hears it will immediately and unquestioningly accept it. But they are naïve. Or maybe they just think the rest of us are. Because it’s easy to mock that statement. All you’d have to do is replace the picture on that sign. Instead of that pleasant-looking, smiling young woman …

Suppose you replaced her with a photograph of Adolf Hitler? Or Joseph Stalin? Or a child-murderer like Clifford Olson or John Wayne Gacy? Or a serial-killer and rapist like Ted Bundy or Paul Bernardo?

Picture it. A ten-foot-high portrait of Charles Manson, looking thrilled with himself, and grinning broadly as he informs us: “Without God, we’re all good.” Obviously, that is not true. And anyone who puts a slogan like that on a billboard for all to see … Well, I have to think they’re just not very …“bright.”

With God or without him, we are not “all good.”

Now, I don’t think I’m in quite the same league as Charles Manson or Hitler, but I am a sinner. And so I would never dare attach my own likeness—or my name—to any claim of “goodness.”

As it says in the First Letter of John, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8).

Even with God, we are not “all good.”

However, with God, we are also “not condemned.” The apostle Paul expands upon this theme in chapter eight of his Letter to the Romans. Since we have died and risen with Christ, he says, we have therefore been transformed; we are “new creations.”

Earlier in that same letter, Paul explains how God demonstrated his love for us: “While we were still sinners,” he writes, “Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8).

This kind of amazing forgiveness and love is called grace. It was given to us when we did not deserve it.

Of course, we don’t deserve it now, either. Nor will we ever deserve it. But the good news is: that doesn’t matter. Grace means that God has forgotten about my past sin … so I should forget about it, also.

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death” (Rom. 8:1-2). Grace means that forgiveness and reconciliation with God have come—not based upon what we have or have not done—but rather, based entirely upon who God is.

Philip Yancey—in his book, What’s So Amazing About Grace?—tells a story about the great British academic, novelist, and theologian C.S. Lewis.

During a British conference on comparative religions, experts from around the world debated what, if any, belief was unique to the Christian faith. They began eliminating possibilities. Incarnation? Other religions had different versions of gods appearing in human form. Resurrection? Again, other religions had accounts of return from death. The debate went on for some time until C.S. Lewis wandered into the room. “What’s the rumpus about?” he asked, and heard in reply that his colleagues were discussing Christianity’s unique contribution among world religions. Lewis responded, “Oh, that’s easy. It’s grace.”

After some discussion, the conferees had to agree. The notion of God’s love coming to us free of charge, no strings attached, seems to go against every instinct of humanity. The Buddhist eight-fold path, the Hindu doctrine of karma, the Jewish covenant, and the Muslim code of law—each of these offers a way to earn approval. Only Christianity dares to make God’s love unconditional.

Aware of our inbuilt resistance to grace, Jesus talked about it often. He described a world suffused with God’s grace: where the sun shines on people good and bad; where birds gather seeds gratis, neither plowing nor harvesting to earn them; where untended wildflowers burst into bloom on the rocky hillsides. Like a visitor from a foreign country who notices what the natives overlook, Jesus saw grace everywhere.

[Philip Yancey, What’s So Amazing About Grace? (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1997), 45.]

Christianity alone makes this assertion: that salvation is offered to undeserving human beings without cost or condition. Indeed, Christianity asserts that grace cannot be earned; it comes—exclusively—as a free gift.

However, this gift of grace must be accepted. It is delivered postage paid, not C.O.D.—but you still have to sign for the package. You have to agree to receive it.

I can hold out to you the greatest gift in the world—but if you never accept it, it is never yours. If you cannot admit that you need grace, you can never receive it; indeed, you will never understand that you need it. C. S. Lewis said that this is the “catch” of grace.

Quoting the psalmist (Ps. 14:3), the apostle Paul famously said: “There is no one who is righteous, not even one” (Romans 3:10). That quotation, I think, makes clear what Jesus meant when he said: “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:31-32).

Is any one of us without need of a physician?

Grace means that God’s love and forgiveness come to us free and without cost. It is a gift offered to each and every one of us. All we have to do is accept it.

Have you taken that step? If not … what are you waiting for?

The Pharisees and their scribes were complaining … saying, ‘Why do you eat and drink with tax-collectors and sinners?’ Jesus answered, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance.’ (Luke 5:30-32)

The above passage from Luke’s Gospel is from the conversion story of Levi the tax collector (versions of which appear in all three synoptics). Most often, it is commented upon as follows: “A self-righteous man does not recognize his need for salvation, but an admitted sinner does.” That’s true enough, I suppose. And here’s where we might expect the apostle Paul to chime in: “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

Jesus, however—in this passage, at least—is much less inclusive. Avoiding any debate about predestination or human nature, he frames his mission statement succinctly: “I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”  Later on—after embracing yet another despised Roman collaborator (named Zacchaeus)—Jesus would elaborate: “For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10). In other words, not those considered the “best” people, but those regarded as the worst.

Continue reading “Jesus is for Losers”

For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God (1 Cor. 1:18).

Very recently—because his name came up in something I was reading—I found myself contemplating (what I consider to be) the tragic figure of Bart Ehrman. For those of you who don’t recognize his name, Bart Denton Ehrman is a highly-regarded scholar whose work focuses on textual criticism of the New Testament, questions about the historical Jesus, and the development of early Christianity. He has written or edited some 30 or so books, including five New York Times bestsellers.

Why do I consider him a tragic figure? Because—although he was once a kind of leading light in Christian circles—Ehrman ultimately rejected Christianity altogether.

Ehrman began his career with impeccably evangelical credentials (he is an alumnus of both the Moody Bible Institute and Wheaton College). Then he earned both an M.Div. and a Ph.D. at Princeton Seminary. Sometime after that, the wheels came off his Christian faith. As Ehrman explained it in 2008:

About nine or ten years ago I came to realize that I simply no longer believed the Christian message. A large part of my movement away from the faith was driven by my concern for suffering. I simply no longer could hold to the view—which I took to be essential to Christian faith—that God was active in the world, that he answered prayer, that he intervened on behalf of his faithful, that he brought salvation in the past and that in the future … he would set to rights all that was wrong … We live in a world in which a child dies every five seconds of starvation. Every five seconds. Every minute there are twenty-five people who die because they do not have clean water to drink. Every hour 700 people die of malaria. Where is God in all this? We live in a world in which earthquakes in the Himalayas kill 50,000 people and leave 3 million without shelter in the face of oncoming winter. We live in a world where a hurricane destroys New Orleans. Where a tsunami kills 300,000 people in one fell swoop. Where millions of children are born with horrible birth defects. And where is God? To say that he eventually will make right all that is wrong seems to me, now, to be pure wishful thinking. ¹

Yes. The problem of pain. “Theodical angst,” as someone has called it. How can a good God allow evil and suffering in the world? That’s a legitimate question which, sooner or later, confronts every person of faith. And it’s one for which I, at least, have never found a satisfying answer, over more than 20 years of pastoral ministry. Bad things do happen to good people. And in the face of misfortune, I am often left wondering—along with Bart Ehrman—“Where is God in all this?”

Like I said, I’ve never found a satisfying answer. Yet I still believe in God and in God’s goodness. And as I ponder the reason for that, I refer back to my reflections in some of my earlier posts. ²

Essentially, I believe because my own previous direct experiences of the Divine compel me to do so. God has shown up in my life in ways that are both profound and—for me—utterly convincing. I simply do not any longer have the option of doubt—at least not when it comes to the existence of a personal God. It occurs to me that what I possess in this regard is not really faith; it is concrete certainty.

Statements like I’ve just made drive skeptics crazy. And it’s easy to understand why. Such statements are completely unverifiable. Encounters with God experienced by an individual—and then later reported by the same individual—cannot be proven by the scientific method. They fall into the realm of “subjective reality.” From the inside, they appear absolutely concrete—but from the outside … Well, they just sound crazy. And when it comes to the “problem of pain,” they don’t really offer much insight. But perhaps this is where faith comes in: I am certain of God’s existence; I have faith in his goodness, based on my subjective experience of him.

Trouble is, the vast majority of people—including most professing Christians—never have anything like this kind of convincing subjective experience. Clearly, Bart Ehrman never had one. Left with only the tools of scholarship—logic, textual criticism, and the cold rationality of critical thinking—he found himself unable to remain in the company of those who enthusiastically claim for themselves Paul’s epithet: “We are fools for Christ” (1 Cor. 4:10). Ehrman’s “agnosticism leaning toward atheism” is not a surprising thing. He could hardly have arrived at a different conclusion. I get that.

Even so, I continue to be amazed by the fact that—even in our secular scientific age—so many of us continue to profess some kind of religious faith. Not that long ago, a survey by Carleton University and the Association for Canadian Studies found 30% of Canadians polled agreed with the statement “I know God really exists and I have no doubts.”³ That’s way more than I would have guessed!

And in the United States—according to another recent survey—only about 3 percent of Americans describe themselves as “atheist.”⁴

What does all this mean? I’m not sure. Studies like these rarely ask people what kind of God they do or do not believe in. But it seems clear that—even if organized religion is on its way out—God refuses to leave us.

Whatever sort of faith … or certainty … or doubt we may have … it looks like the Almighty is in this for the long haul.

_________________________

NOTES

¹ http://www.beliefnet.com/columnists/blogalogue/2008/04/why-suffering-is-gods-problem.html

² https://garygrottenberg.wordpress.com/2017/05/28/richard-dawkins-and-the-god-helmet-predestination-reconsidered/

https://garygrottenberg.wordpress.com/2017/06/26/not-far-from-the-kingdom-of-god-albert-einsteins-religion/

³ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreligion_in_Canada

⁴ http://www.norc.org/PDFs/GSS%20Reports/GSS_Religion_2014.pdf