"We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.” Thorton Wilder
"My conversion as an undergraduate was founded on a conviction that the Christian faith made intellectual sense of the world, of history, and of personal experience." Ian Hutchinson, Professor and Chair of Nuclear Science and Engineering, MIT
Dear non-Christian:
Here are a couple things you need to think about:
1) We (Christians) have problems. The problem of evil is not going away anytime soon. We are divided, with extremely intelligent, thoughtful Christians on both sides of the fence, on a number of issues. There are evolutionary dead-ends. Many, if not most "Christians" do not reflect the Spirit they claim to hold. The Universe is unfathomably large. We really, really thought Jesus would be back by now. We really are having trouble praying the cure of an amputee. Have you checked out the cruelty of the insect world lately? Have you tried to think about the Flood story lately? Oh boy.
2) You have much, much bigger problems. There is one thing that I have learned from my experiences at Harvard, and my interactions with people involved in my field outside of Harvard, for the past four years. There are a lot of very, very smart people in this world, that are very, very thoughtless about the most important things. Timothy Keller helps crystallize the following point which is worth thinking about. Immanuel Kant in his "Critique of Pure Reason" says something along the lines that every thoughtful, educated person needs to ask three primary questions: How do we know we know, How do we know right and wrong, and what do we live for? If Kant is right, and these have been more or less the big three questions any philosophy 101 class will discuss, then the Atheist position is totally untenable. Here is why:
1) How do we know we know? Here is the crux of the Atheist problem, that guys like Dennett, and Dawkins, and B. Russell could and will never be able to answer. Simply, a materialist, as Keller points out, "has no reason to trust reason". You cannot claim that we are an accidental collection of molecules, and then claim that the random, accidental interactions these chemicals have in your neo-cortex produce meaningful things we call feelings, like love, and the sense of justice, and form faculties that we call reason, and rationality, and come together and reflect truth. You cannot use reason and rationality to prove to me that you and I are nothing but an evolutionary accident. And beyond this, you really cannot claim that reason and rationality cannot actually reflect truth, because, of course, all our life experiences testify to just that. That is a big problem for a thoughtful atheist. You can say to me you are an atheist. Sure. But you cannot use rationality or reason, the very things you claim are products of random, meaningless molecules that have been formed from blinded, unguided processes. That is totally nonsensical, and, of course, any thoughtful atheist should understand this. The brightest and most honest secular atheists like the late Richard Rorty and Alex Rosenberg, understand and admit this, to both their credits.
2) Right and Wrong? Have you ever seen a one-year old look at you and you know that he knows what is right and wrong? Morality has been an ace up the theist sleeve for quite some time. The field of evolutionary psychology, a field fully devoted to answer this question, has been entrenched in corporal hand-waving. As the current top US physician-scientist Frances Collins will tell you, there is no explanation for humans sense of right and wrong outside the imago dei, as a reflection of our Creator. But this is hardly the point. Evolutionary psychology could one day present incontrovertible evidence that morality evolved through the evolutionary step-up to humankind, and that would hardly matter. What matters is if materialists believe our sense of morality is just a product of accidental chemical mixing, then the result of morality is meaningless. Rape is neither right nor wrong. Genocide is neither right nor wrong. Yet, of course, everyone would agree that these are not right, and most people would object if their neighbors were being raped, or their cities were being wiped out. Yet, from the materialist point of view, it cannot be meaningful. Thus, any sense of justice or good or bad is meaningless . How random chemicals are making us feel can of course only be meaningless. Yet, again, we know better. Any atheist that gets out of bed in the morning and lives with or protects any state or standard of morality is living a total life of contradiction, and one totally void of any integrity. Again, some of the brightest atheists will admit to this, speaking to their honesty but also to what I would understand as a considerable challenge.
3) What are we living for? My atheist friend, why get out of bed? The earth rotates around its axis because of physics. A bug crawls because it is programmed to. You love your kids, you miss your mother, you love your wife, you put your arm around a hurting neighbor, you fight for freedom -- because you are programmed to do so. The random assortment of the molecules that begin to exist at the big bang program you to do all these things. All these things -- no less love -- is totally meaningless.
Yet, you know better than that, right? Beauty lasts, movies touch, paintings move, books make you think, seeing an old friend ignites the heart, and, most importantly, your reason and perceptions do lead you to truth, you do have a sense of right and wrong, and you do long for something that you don't have.
Some of the smartest thinkers in the world, even the California cathouse-loving Hawking, makes the biggest intellectual mistake a person can make. The law of physics can explain, or will one day be able to explain, everything that is material in this big, big universe. But only if an eternal intelligent and loving Creator created the law of physics, and spoke everything (of course, not in the sense that we understand "spoke") material into reality, does the universe and the crown jewel of evolution - you - make sense. To simply say it is because of physics misses what any thoughtful person needs to consider, and, of course, ironically, violates one of the most fundamental laws of physics (cause and effect).
The older I get, the more I understand how utterly thoughtless and sloppy atheism actually is. And the more I understand how Jesus Christ -- with all the problems we Christians have, most of which I suspect is because of our nature to tie our interpretations into God's reality, and this multiplied by the messiness of humanity -- is the only thinking person's answer. God calls us -- almost begs us at times -- to reason with Him. To use our minds, our reason, to think it all through. The late Carl Sagan, who was described by Issac Asimov as one of the only two people he ever met that (he felt) was intellectually superior to him, once told R.C. Sproul that we now know what happened nanoseconds after the big bang. When Sproul pressed him about what happened right before that, Sagan's answer was essentially he was not interested in answering that. Not interested? While Sagan called Atheism "stupid", a lifetime of inquiry seemingly never led him to answer the big three questions that Kant and philosophers have put forward. Metastatic pancreatic cancer is a horrible thing. Watching a loved one die from ALS is a horrible thing. Not allowing your mind ponder these big three questions is catastrophic.
Simply put, the atheist lives a life void of meaning and integrity, and wakes up in the morning and goes to sleep at night living in total contradiction, in a sort of schizophrenic cloud of ignorance.
Thoughtfulness and honesty always and only lead to Jesus Christ, whom the law of physics and the law of love was created through.
Sunday, March 4, 2012
Sunday, January 1, 2012
Being Faithful to Scripture, the Incarnation, our Trinitarian God, and ourselves
When Jesus came to earth over 2000 years ago God chose to live through our perspective -- the crown jewel of evolutionary processes -- to share His perspective. It is not insignificant that the Apostle Paul had the clearest ideas of what the Incarnation actually meant. 2000 years later, and countless heresies later, we are still fumbling the meaning of God's Word in text (Scripture), in flesh (Jesus) and in Fellowship (what we call the Trinity):
1) Scripture. Peter Enns, who stresses the Incarnational view of Scripture, writes, "In fact, the very nature of “inspiration” means that God’s word must be fully clothed in the human speech of the time. Any other sort of Bible is actually inconceivable. When God speaks, he necessarily and willingly condescends to the human level. He did this with Jesus, and we should not be surprised if the Bible reflects the same divine pattern of communication."
This, to me, is the most reasonable light to view Scripture in. Many over the years have held this view, and it is one that beautifully pulls Paul's understanding of the human Jesus (especially outlined in Philippians) and the meaning of the Christmas and Easter miracles.
2) Incarnation and 3)Trinity. From the Oparadox http://theoparadox.blogspot.com/, Here is a reprint of pages 134 and 135 of A.A. Hodge's "Evangelical Theology: Lectures on Doctrine", grasping what the incarnation and the Trinity mean:
"There is one obvious respect in which the doctrines of the Trinity and of the Person of Christ agree, and one in which they no less obviously differ. They agree in that both alike utterly transcend all experience, all analogy, and all adequate grasp of human reason. But they differ in that, while the mystery of the Trinity is that one Spirit should exist eternally as three distinct Persons, the mystery of the person of Christ is that two distinct spirits should for evermore constitute but one Person. If you give due attention to the difficulties involved in each of these divinely revealed doctrines, you would be able a priori to anticipate all possible heresies which have been evolved in the course of history. All truth is catholic [i.e. universal or comprehensive]; it embraces many elements, wide horizons, and therefore involves endless difficulties and apparent inconsistencies. The mind of man seeks for unity, and tends prematurely to force a unity in the sphere of his imperfect knowledge by sacrificing one element of the truth or other to the rest. This is eminently true of all rationalists. They are clear and logical at the expense of being superficial and half-orbed. Heresy . . . means an act of choice, and hence division, the picking and choosing a part, instead of comprehensively embracing the whole of the truth. Almost all heresies are partial truths - true in what they affirm, but false in what they deny." (pp. 190-191).
I hold a high view of Scripture, believe that the facts of Christmas and Easter are absolutely historically secure (the last 100 years of archaeology has sealed the deal, so to speak), believe in the reality of Hell and eternal existence of what we call "souls", and hold to the Doctrine of the Trinity (our daughter is named Trinity, after all). I feel like I take God at His Word, although I feel like we have been gifted more historical evidence that Christians in the past (again, because of revelations modern sciences have afforded us). Lastly, I feel that the most faithful understanding of God's communications to us (Father, Son and Spirit) is by having the reality of our smallness and our finiteness transcend our understanding of His Word, His World, His Spirit, and our Savior. This isn't liberalism -- this is rational humility. This isn't pluralism -- God calls all to His table.
But beyond these Spiritual things, a greater understanding of the way God has and does communicate and relate to us should change our understanding and perspective of how we view everything in our life experiences. For instance, If our understanding of Him speaking the universe into existence and breathing life into humans and other animals continues to change, then we should not only be okay with that, we should both expect it and embrace it. If our understanding of what Jesus' limited atonement means to others whom have lived since the first human with God's Imago Dei, then we should embrace it. If our understanding of the possibility or likelihood of life on other planets (or in other universes) continues to change, then we need to embrace this. If our understanding of Jesus' limited atonement changes for us as we live in our generation of post-modernism, and our understanding on how God is speaking to us -- and others -- changes, we need to embrace it. In other words, if we don't continuously keep our ears to the ground, we will never understand how God is speaking to us in our special time on Earth. Jesus insisted those whom put their hand on the plow could not look back. Why are we always looking back to be informed, instead of looking around?
We can never be faithful to Scripture, the Incarnation and God's Essence if we are not faithful to our minds , body and spirit. Allowing God's communication to us as humans in our past is both relevant and critical to informing us on how He is communicating with us now. It wasn't just folks around Egypt and Mesopotamia that were exercising their calls to God through creation myths, flood myths and Savior myths. It was people all over the globe, people from the start of man to now that could not, and can not, scratch the itch of a Creator and a Law that is etched into their hearts. God was calling man to Christ before us. We can always know that God is calling us through Christ, to Christ. And we should know that He will continue to call men to Christ when we are long gone from this planet. Jesus was unrecognizable to some Jews whom had the words of the Prophets at their fingertips. Why?
Well, we know self-pride and rebellion, which have kept most from God through history, is a reason. But the other reason was Christ was not whom many Jews expected, because Christ spoke to the Jews differently then the God who Created them and led them on their sojourn had. But it is of course God and Christ that is immutable. Of course, the Jews that did understand this started a revolution -- led by Peter and Paul -- that has served as the ultimate vessel back to God -- Christianity.
As we make our proverbial sojourn in this vessel back to God, we must not miss how God is talking to us differently today. When we reflect on our smallness, and allow echoes of God speak to us, inform us, and lead us, we will find the message of God may be the same since the story of the garden of Eden was passed on to the Jews, but we are in dire straits of missing it if we don't understand the language is much, much different.
1) Scripture. Peter Enns, who stresses the Incarnational view of Scripture, writes, "In fact, the very nature of “inspiration” means that God’s word must be fully clothed in the human speech of the time. Any other sort of Bible is actually inconceivable. When God speaks, he necessarily and willingly condescends to the human level. He did this with Jesus, and we should not be surprised if the Bible reflects the same divine pattern of communication."
This, to me, is the most reasonable light to view Scripture in. Many over the years have held this view, and it is one that beautifully pulls Paul's understanding of the human Jesus (especially outlined in Philippians) and the meaning of the Christmas and Easter miracles.
2) Incarnation and 3)Trinity. From the Oparadox http://theoparadox.blogspot.com/, Here is a reprint of pages 134 and 135 of A.A. Hodge's "Evangelical Theology: Lectures on Doctrine", grasping what the incarnation and the Trinity mean:
"There is one obvious respect in which the doctrines of the Trinity and of the Person of Christ agree, and one in which they no less obviously differ. They agree in that both alike utterly transcend all experience, all analogy, and all adequate grasp of human reason. But they differ in that, while the mystery of the Trinity is that one Spirit should exist eternally as three distinct Persons, the mystery of the person of Christ is that two distinct spirits should for evermore constitute but one Person. If you give due attention to the difficulties involved in each of these divinely revealed doctrines, you would be able a priori to anticipate all possible heresies which have been evolved in the course of history. All truth is catholic [i.e. universal or comprehensive]; it embraces many elements, wide horizons, and therefore involves endless difficulties and apparent inconsistencies. The mind of man seeks for unity, and tends prematurely to force a unity in the sphere of his imperfect knowledge by sacrificing one element of the truth or other to the rest. This is eminently true of all rationalists. They are clear and logical at the expense of being superficial and half-orbed. Heresy . . . means an act of choice, and hence division, the picking and choosing a part, instead of comprehensively embracing the whole of the truth. Almost all heresies are partial truths - true in what they affirm, but false in what they deny." (pp. 190-191).
I hold a high view of Scripture, believe that the facts of Christmas and Easter are absolutely historically secure (the last 100 years of archaeology has sealed the deal, so to speak), believe in the reality of Hell and eternal existence of what we call "souls", and hold to the Doctrine of the Trinity (our daughter is named Trinity, after all). I feel like I take God at His Word, although I feel like we have been gifted more historical evidence that Christians in the past (again, because of revelations modern sciences have afforded us). Lastly, I feel that the most faithful understanding of God's communications to us (Father, Son and Spirit) is by having the reality of our smallness and our finiteness transcend our understanding of His Word, His World, His Spirit, and our Savior. This isn't liberalism -- this is rational humility. This isn't pluralism -- God calls all to His table.
But beyond these Spiritual things, a greater understanding of the way God has and does communicate and relate to us should change our understanding and perspective of how we view everything in our life experiences. For instance, If our understanding of Him speaking the universe into existence and breathing life into humans and other animals continues to change, then we should not only be okay with that, we should both expect it and embrace it. If our understanding of what Jesus' limited atonement means to others whom have lived since the first human with God's Imago Dei, then we should embrace it. If our understanding of the possibility or likelihood of life on other planets (or in other universes) continues to change, then we need to embrace this. If our understanding of Jesus' limited atonement changes for us as we live in our generation of post-modernism, and our understanding on how God is speaking to us -- and others -- changes, we need to embrace it. In other words, if we don't continuously keep our ears to the ground, we will never understand how God is speaking to us in our special time on Earth. Jesus insisted those whom put their hand on the plow could not look back. Why are we always looking back to be informed, instead of looking around?
We can never be faithful to Scripture, the Incarnation and God's Essence if we are not faithful to our minds , body and spirit. Allowing God's communication to us as humans in our past is both relevant and critical to informing us on how He is communicating with us now. It wasn't just folks around Egypt and Mesopotamia that were exercising their calls to God through creation myths, flood myths and Savior myths. It was people all over the globe, people from the start of man to now that could not, and can not, scratch the itch of a Creator and a Law that is etched into their hearts. God was calling man to Christ before us. We can always know that God is calling us through Christ, to Christ. And we should know that He will continue to call men to Christ when we are long gone from this planet. Jesus was unrecognizable to some Jews whom had the words of the Prophets at their fingertips. Why?
Well, we know self-pride and rebellion, which have kept most from God through history, is a reason. But the other reason was Christ was not whom many Jews expected, because Christ spoke to the Jews differently then the God who Created them and led them on their sojourn had. But it is of course God and Christ that is immutable. Of course, the Jews that did understand this started a revolution -- led by Peter and Paul -- that has served as the ultimate vessel back to God -- Christianity.
As we make our proverbial sojourn in this vessel back to God, we must not miss how God is talking to us differently today. When we reflect on our smallness, and allow echoes of God speak to us, inform us, and lead us, we will find the message of God may be the same since the story of the garden of Eden was passed on to the Jews, but we are in dire straits of missing it if we don't understand the language is much, much different.
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Jesus Christ, the testable.
"Come to me, all who are tired from carrying heavy loads, and I will give you rest. (Matthew 11:28, italics mine).
"Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him." (Psalm 38:4).
"You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart." (Jeremiah 29:13).
A friend of mine received one of the most painstaking pieces of news a scientist could get this week. "Did you hear?" he asked as he came running over. "We got scooped!"
Getting "scooped" by another laboratory is bad news. Simply meaning, another group published their study before you got the chance to. For my friend, it means his ability to get a professorship is mitigated. It will probably take another year or two for him now. For scientists, funding and viability are at risk when you get scooped. It's awful.
But there is a silver lining to getting scooped. It means another laboratory, in a completely independent set of experiments, have produced very similar data to yours and have thus made similar conclusions. For other scientists not involved in that work, this bodes very well for the fidelity of the data. In other words, the data is probably true if two labs independently of each other have come to the same conclusions.
The truth of God's word makes it clear Jesus offers the same corroboration. Man's history has been full of faithful saints, showing the evidence of Jesus Christ through their changed hearts and lives. Taste and see. Come to me. Pursue me. Trust me.
There is something about the character of God -- and the character of humans -- that provokes God to only bring those to eternal rest with Him that have sought Him. God restrains from writing "I AM" in the sky for all to see. God restrains from removing lies from the lips of men, poverty from the hands of children, evil from the existence of the world. Whatever the reasons are, God still allows man to find Him if they desire. The whole existential purpose of the universe rests on this fact. It is only those that seek Him that will find Him.
And thus, Jesus Christ is testable. When we call on the name of the Lord, when we seek Him with all our hearts, He shows Himself. Forget Mathematics. Newtonian Physics. Darwinian Evolution. This is the ultimate law of the Universe.
And here we stand, on a planet in a universe that offers most of us just enough days to have the chance to seek Him if we choose. Moses sought God, and found Jesus Christ. David sought God, and found Jesus Christ. Ancient people, emerging as bipedalists from our ancestors, had the chance to find Jesus Christ and test Him. People today, with the full revelation of Jesus Christ present in every Western Hemisphere Hilton Hotel nightstand drawer, have the same chance to seek Christ and test Him.
There are two laboratories in the world that now can link a particular enzyme with a signaling receptor in human cells. This hypothesis has been tested, and found to be true. This is considered corroboration in the scientific realm.
There are millions upon millions of people that have sought God and found Him in the person of Jesus Christ, over the past couple hundred thousand years. This is corroboration in the Spiritual realm. God is forever faithful and immutable. He offers us the same chance always to test Jesus Christ. Matthew records Jesus promising "Ask and you shall receive." "Seek, and you shall find."
This is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Creator of the Universe calls out to us and has provided us with the miracle of physical life, and the miracle of cause and effect. He is the first Cause, but He has given us all freedom to respond or to hide in selfishness and lust. To test Him, or to succumb to distraction and our survival of the fittest mind.
There is no more pathetic excuse than one we often hear as evangelists. Where is the proof? Why doesn't God just appear to me and then I will believe? How can i believe in a God who I cannot see, cannot communicate with, cannot test to see if He exists?
You, and I, can. Millions who will spend an eternity of joy with Jesus Christ have. Those who want to trade their selfishness with meaning and their aging and dying bodies with eternal vessels of hope and love, can do what man since the beginning could do. With an extension of the finger, we can touch the hole in Jesus' hand and be overwhelmed, speechless, seeing truth for once in our lives. And pull back and join St. Thomas, and the millions of humans that have re-discovered their identities, and discovered for the first time the purpose of life, in emphatic declaration of the truth of the Universe. "My Lord and My God"!
"Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him." (Psalm 38:4).
A friend of mine received one of the most painstaking pieces of news a scientist could get this week. "Did you hear?" he asked as he came running over. "We got scooped!"
Getting "scooped" by another laboratory is bad news. Simply meaning, another group published their study before you got the chance to. For my friend, it means his ability to get a professorship is mitigated. It will probably take another year or two for him now. For scientists, funding and viability are at risk when you get scooped. It's awful.
But there is a silver lining to getting scooped. It means another laboratory, in a completely independent set of experiments, have produced very similar data to yours and have thus made similar conclusions. For other scientists not involved in that work, this bodes very well for the fidelity of the data. In other words, the data is probably true if two labs independently of each other have come to the same conclusions.
The truth of God's word makes it clear Jesus offers the same corroboration. Man's history has been full of faithful saints, showing the evidence of Jesus Christ through their changed hearts and lives. Taste and see. Come to me. Pursue me. Trust me.
There is something about the character of God -- and the character of humans -- that provokes God to only bring those to eternal rest with Him that have sought Him. God restrains from writing "I AM" in the sky for all to see. God restrains from removing lies from the lips of men, poverty from the hands of children, evil from the existence of the world. Whatever the reasons are, God still allows man to find Him if they desire. The whole existential purpose of the universe rests on this fact. It is only those that seek Him that will find Him.
And thus, Jesus Christ is testable. When we call on the name of the Lord, when we seek Him with all our hearts, He shows Himself. Forget Mathematics. Newtonian Physics. Darwinian Evolution. This is the ultimate law of the Universe.
And here we stand, on a planet in a universe that offers most of us just enough days to have the chance to seek Him if we choose. Moses sought God, and found Jesus Christ. David sought God, and found Jesus Christ. Ancient people, emerging as bipedalists from our ancestors, had the chance to find Jesus Christ and test Him. People today, with the full revelation of Jesus Christ present in every Western Hemisphere Hilton Hotel nightstand drawer, have the same chance to seek Christ and test Him.
There are two laboratories in the world that now can link a particular enzyme with a signaling receptor in human cells. This hypothesis has been tested, and found to be true. This is considered corroboration in the scientific realm.
There are millions upon millions of people that have sought God and found Him in the person of Jesus Christ, over the past couple hundred thousand years. This is corroboration in the Spiritual realm. God is forever faithful and immutable. He offers us the same chance always to test Jesus Christ. Matthew records Jesus promising "Ask and you shall receive." "Seek, and you shall find."
This is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Creator of the Universe calls out to us and has provided us with the miracle of physical life, and the miracle of cause and effect. He is the first Cause, but He has given us all freedom to respond or to hide in selfishness and lust. To test Him, or to succumb to distraction and our survival of the fittest mind.
There is no more pathetic excuse than one we often hear as evangelists. Where is the proof? Why doesn't God just appear to me and then I will believe? How can i believe in a God who I cannot see, cannot communicate with, cannot test to see if He exists?
You, and I, can. Millions who will spend an eternity of joy with Jesus Christ have. Those who want to trade their selfishness with meaning and their aging and dying bodies with eternal vessels of hope and love, can do what man since the beginning could do. With an extension of the finger, we can touch the hole in Jesus' hand and be overwhelmed, speechless, seeing truth for once in our lives. And pull back and join St. Thomas, and the millions of humans that have re-discovered their identities, and discovered for the first time the purpose of life, in emphatic declaration of the truth of the Universe. "My Lord and My God"!
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