Tag: God
1 What Do You Say to Your Kids About Dinosaurs and the Bible?
Question: ‘Dad, did God make dinosaurs too?’
Answer: ‘God made everything.’
Question: ‘Well, why doesn’t it say in the bible that God made dinosaurs with everything else?’
Answer: ‘Go brush your teeth.’
Whenever the family and I go someplace like the National Zoo or the Natural History Museum, I have a little game (read: annoying habit) of embarrassing my wife. Looking at the skeletons of dinosaurs, say, or an evolutionary chart in the ape house I’ll loudly say something like: ‘Of course, if you actually believe in that Darwin nonsense’ or ‘Naturally, it’s all a conspiracy by liberal humanists.’
It only adds to my wife’s embarrassment (read: irritation) when my mock pronouncements are actually met with ‘Amens’ from overhearing bystanders. I admit I’m always a bit surprised by them too. I can only imagine what sort of experience a zoo must be to those who don’t believe in the underlying premise behind every cage and exhibit. It must be a maze of lies and misinformation to such people, begging the even more problematic question of why, if evolution etc isn’t true, God has created a world seemingly designed to mislead us.
My boys have started trying to juxtapose dinosaurs (which they love) with God (whom they love). I take a less sarcastic angle with them and try to make sure I don’t say more than the bible tries to say.
Creation is our worship theme for the coming weekend and its got me thinking of those people I always run into at zoos and museums. And I’m wondering where you fall on this topic?
Do you think the Genesis account is literally true? Do you think its something else? How many creationists are out there actually?
On a related note, here’s NPR’s story about an evolutionary themed Dr Pepper ad that’s provoked complaints from Christians.
1 Some Wise Pastoral Counsel
This comes from a good friend of many years. He recently received some sound advice from a friend, advice I think that’s on target for just about all of us. Disregard my friend’s cheap shot about my cynicism.
Hey Jason–I know you don’t check your fb emails all that regularly, but I wanted to share something very interesting…that if you can put your cold-hearted cyncism to the side–you might appreciate. I have been on this spiritual journey as of late…having children and being married has caused me to really reflect even more so that I normally do. I even went to a fellow minister to get some guidance and counsel because not having a dad, especially not a Christian father, and even though I counsel families–I’m not very good at taking my own advice. I write all of that to say that in meeting with my friend–he pointed out that I am approval/performance driven (ouch) I can be critical and non-accepting of people because I am critical and non-accepting of me. So…your blogs have really hit a nerve because, though doctrine is important, I am learning to love–to rest in Him.
Sounds easy, but difficult to understand that I am ok with me…that love and grace can be uncondtional from God and I, in turn, can share that same unconditional love and grace with others. That when I see my sin…it isn’t for me to be condemned, but to draw me to the holy, merciful, loving, gracious God… to cry out to God and thank Him, praise Him, adore Him, worship Him. To submit to His grace is counterintuitve to me…but I think a lot of Christians struggle with this.
1 Why Do We Think Christianity Is About Belief?
Just when did we define/reduce Christianity to ideas and beliefs? Why is it we frame our faith in terms of rationality and intellect? Isn’t it about love and desire instead? Our language for the faith of Christ so seldom resembles Christ’s own language.
Stop and consider how today most Christian congregations put the sermon (the rational exposition of scripture) at the center of their worship. Consider how we send our children to something called Sunday School. Reflect how often we describe Christianity in terms of its utility: what it can do for me. Reflect on how we want to explain the sacraments and think of them ‘as symbols.’
When I was a student in seminary my wife taught at a school for children with autism. Sometime during the course of a year, while I was deep in my study of theology, Ali pointed out, rather pointedly, how we tend to define Christianity and construct worship in a way that excludes people like her students from ever being considered complete Christians.
That is, she meant, we make Christianity a rational, thinking endeavor. Her students couldn’t do that.
But they could love. They could love God and desire Christ’s presentation of the Kingdom.
We tend define the essence of Christianity with a summary of doctrines, and we tend to think doctrine and beliefs come first and then these beliefs find expression in our love and worship.
But that ordering doesn’t jibe with scripture and it doesn’t jibe with the history.
Some dusty, fancy-sounding terms:
Ekklesia.
This is the Greek word for Church. What’s it mean? ‘Called out assembly.’
Who we are first and foremost is a People called from the larger population as an assembly of worship (love).
Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi.
This is Latin phrase theologians use. It means the ‘rule of prayer, the rule of law/belief.’ This phrase is a summary way of saying that our worship determines our beliefs. Our worship precedes our beliefs. What we think and believe about God flows from, not to, our love God. In other words, the invitation to worship is a better beginning point than a street-corner tract.
Orthodoxy.
Most often this word gets used to distinguish right beliefs from wrong ones but that’s not actually what the word means. Orthodoxy means ‘right praise.’ So when we distinguish heretics from everyone else what’s really at stake isn’t beliefs or thoughts but our worshipping God wrongly.
Our beliefs flow out of our love of God. Beliefs are what we discover through worshipping God. Beliefs are our reflections on the God we’ve come to love. And any one can come to love.
We are creatures made to love. To desire God and God’s Kingdom.
0 Tamed Cynic Featured in Patheos’ Open-Source Theological Conversation
Here’s a post I wrote for Tony Jones featured in Patheos’ Open-Source Theological Conversation, in which ‘Progressive’ bloggers respond to Tony Jones’ challenge to write something- anything- about God.
0 What the Gospels are NOT About
What the Gospels Are NOT About
To say the Gospels aim at telling a story from beginning to end with a single, primary ‘point’ is also to argue that there things the Gospels are not (primarily, least) about.
I’m reading NT Wright’s new book, How God Became King, in which Wright argues that for most of its history Western Christianity has missed the plot and point the Gospels writers intended to convey in their story. The story the Gospels tell, Wright says, is one in which God in Christ becomes King of Earth as in Heaven. This is why the Gospels give so much space to Jesus’ Kingdom teaching. Ascension then is less denouement than climax.
But if this is what the Gospels are about then the Gospels are not about other, commonly assumed things:
Going to Heaven
The Gospels tell a story not where people go to heaven when they die but where God’s people pray for the Kingdom of Heaven to be brought to Earth.
Jesus’ Ethical Teachings
The Gospels do not tell a story of Jesus the Teacher whose career was upended by those who didn’t like what he had to say. Jesus was not, as we like to think today, a 1st century Jewish analogue to the Buddha or Ben Franklin. Jesus wasn’t offering a teaching as we think of it, as a set of ideals or precepts. Jesus’ teachings were a part of his Kingdom announcement: that through him a whole new world was drawing near.
Jesus, the Moral Exemplar
In the same way the Gospels do not tell teachings, the Gospels do not tell a story primarily about a Jesus whose perfect holiness, faith and love show us how we should live and be. If this were the story the Gospels tell then they’re failures, Wright says, because none of us can possibly hope to live according to his exceedingly perfect example. The Gospels cannot be reduced to Jesus showing us how its done.
Jesus, the Perfect Sacrifice
This is the most difficult assumption to undo because the notion of Jesus dying for our sin is the single most common definition of what Christians mean by ‘gospel.’ But if the Gospels aim to tell the same story that Paul tells then they fail because it’s not at all obvious the Gospels are trying to tell a story of Jesus, the victim without blemish, dying as a sacrifice for our sin.
Proving Jesus’ Divinity
Many assume that the purpose of the Gospels was to prove Jesus’ divinity. The Gospels though don’t try to prove his divinity, they simply presuppose it. Getting back to what Wright sees as the Gospels primary story, the Gospels’ understanding of Jesus’ divinity is wrapped up with the Kingdom Jesus ushers in to our world.
2 Are We Better Off Without God?
For the past decade atheist fundamentalists like Richard Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens have been answering that question with an emphatic, poorly-informed, orchestrated-for-the-media ‘No.’
According these New Atheists (self-proclaimed ‘Brights’) religion is bad for us, leading to ignorance, subservience and conflict. Of course, those charges are not without merit and while they have ample historical evidence to draw from it’s curious how they refuse to level the same charges against a different straw man, say ‘the state.’ There’s ample evidence there too.
Now, according to an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, a group of cross-disciplinary scholars are attempting to shift the debate. Rather than asking ‘Does God exist?’ they’re trying to apply evolutionary theory to answer the question ‘Is it helpful to believe God exists?’ In other words, might there be a good produced by religious belief that would explain how faith evolved as a component to our worldview? Does belief in God lead to stronger or more peaceable societies? Does religion foster stability in families thereby perpetuating the race?
Some of the experiments performed by these scholars yield interesting, if unsurprising and inconclusive results. For example, one study found that the belief that ‘God is watching over you’ tends to make people more generous with their money. Another study suggests religious people may treat strangers more fairly.
All this is good, I think, if it means the debate about God’s existence can shift from the cartoonish broadsides of people like Richard Dawkins.
On the other hand, reading the article in the Chronicle, I can’t help but think what an incredibly modern, American premise lays behind the study. What’s really important here, now, isn’t whether God actually exists or whether what people of faith believe is actually, you know, true. Instead all that matters is religion’s utility. Does it make us happier more productive members of society? In this sense God’s no different than the 3-in-1 kitchen tools I see hawked on television at 3 am.
As interesting as the studies may be, I can’t help thinking, to my chagrin, that even if he’s a jack#$%, at least Richard Dawkins knows the stakes in the debate; that faith matters matter.
0 Tony Jones’ God-Talk Dare
Last week Tony Jones diagnosed liberal/progressive Christians with a god-talk problem. They simply can’t talk unabashedly or robustly about God, Tony says and I suspect rightly. Liberals are savvy and comfortable with the disciplines of deconstruction: womanist theology, liberation theology etc. I wonder how much this comfort has to do with the fact that such deconstruction is welcomed by and practiced in the secular academy; therefore, liberal Christians don’t have to be singled out as, you know, Christian. Liberals can talk about Jesus too; after all, Jesus was a historical person whose teachings can be applied to political issues and whose suffering and compassion we can relate to (we presume).
But God, Tony argues, is a different matter. Liberal Christians just can’t bring themselves to utter a ‘Father (gender exclusive language) we just’ prayer. Liberal Christians can’t say ‘God just laid it on my heart to…’
In some ways, talking about God eludes the safe strictures of a focus bent more towards critique or historicity. There’s really no need to talk about God then, unless one believes in him.
Tony coupled his diagnosis with a dare of sorts. For liberal/progressive Christians to write something- anything- about God (not Jesus) before high noon, 8.15.
While I’d want to wriggle out of the liberal/progressive modifier, especially as it applies to theology, I suppose my membership in the United Methodist Church puts me, professionally if not theologically, puts me in that camp.
So, here’s a few thoughts about God and that most worn-out of debates: creation.
Creationism isn’t in the Past-Tense
One of the things that really irritates me in the juvenile debates about God’s role in creation is the extent to which it relegates creation to an historical happening.
I don’t particularly care whether my sons learn in school that God created the world in seven days or whether God created the world through unseen forces. I’m not particularly worried that one perspective or another diminishes God’s role in creation because I hope by the time my sons take biology they will already know that ours isn’t just a God who created, ours is a God who creates.
When we profess in the Creed that God is the Creator of heaven and earth and a few beats later when we confess that we believe in the Holy Spirit, we’re testifying that God’s creative powers don’t stop or cease to exist after Adam names a cow a ‘cow.’
By professing that God is Trinity we’re identifying God as the Holy Spirit too, the Spirit Jesus promises to send his people after he’s left them. This the same Spirit that takes a faithless idiot like Peter and turns him into a fearless preacher of the Gospel. It’s the same Spirit that upends a tyrant like Saul and makes him Paul. It’s the same Spirit that Jesus breathes on to his disciples; the same Spirit that, reversing the Babel story in Genesis, gives birth to a community- the Church- that transcends every linguistic and cultural barrier.
It’s no exaggeration to say that, for Christians, every believer is a new creation, every church is a new creation and every place of reconciliation from Selma, Alabama to Soweto, South Africa is a new creation.
Why argue about evolution?
By calling God the Creator and by naming God as Trinity, Christians don’t just believe God created once upon a time.
Christians believe God creates. Now. Today. When Christians say Jesus saves, we’re really saying God creates anew.
In us.