Why are you a Christian?
I've sometimes wondered what I would say if I was asked that. There are so many self-righteous, self-serving people calling themselves Christians who have made it look bad, that people now mockingly ask if anything good can come from being one. “Damn your superior attitudes and damn your tyrannical God,” they say.
It's a journey that has made my convictions what they are thus far. When I was taught about God I felt I was glad there was a higher power watching over me and my loved ones, that we weren't prey to random chance. I was glad that death was not the end, that we would see the people we lost in a place called Heaven. I was also frightened. Frightened of being left out of those promises. Above all I was frightened of Hell. These are only a few of the motives I possessed. However I guess you can say I'm biased. I do not want to disbelieve in God for fear of death and the erasing of myself from existence.
So why Christianity over all the other religions? I guess it started out that it's just what I was taught, but also that I believed it to be a religion of love, which I saw my family as a model of. But though you could say I took an irrational leap of faith, it was not always to be like that, especially after I read The Case For Christ by Lee Strobel. A one-time atheist, he described in his book how through various searching he discovered how historically possible it was for Jesus to have lived, worked miracles, and even rise from the dead. Only then did I begin to think Christianity was not the fantasy my rationality constantly denied.
Reading the Bible, however, I was always—and still am—presented with challenges. I thought he was a God of love, but then by his will lots of seemingly innocent people were killed. I want to be myself, but sometimes being myself just doesn't cut it when mirroring Christ in my life, as his followers are called to do. The Apostles describe conflicts and their answers so simply, but when I put down my Bible, and face life again, things become once more hopelessly complicated. Followers of Christ are supposed to have this Holy Spirit, but when I reflect on the way I've acted sometimes, I doubt I have anything like it. Sometimes I doubt I even belong to Christ. When I compare my life to the lives of his disciples, even though they had challenges, I feel like a hopeless wreck of a confused person.
So what's the answer? To throw out the parts of the Bible that disagree with us and keep only the stuff we like? That's the selfish way. That's the cowardly way. How do we avoid lies if we ourselves hang on to truth-insensitive assertions? And when I say truth, I don't mean what someone somewhere irrationally decided was truth. When I say truth, I mean getting to know the personage supposedly behind these writings for what he is, and uncovering the facts without imposing our clever but fallacy-ridden interpretations on them.
The key is coming to grips with the truth while at the same time uncovering it. We must seek to model Christ in our lives always no matter how much we fail. We must realize the sovereignty of his choices. We must realize how knowledgeable to this planet's situation he is. We must humble ourselves to the place of disciple, and stop trying to be the master. And we must be patient—with ourselves and, especially, with one another.
Thursday, August 14, 2014
Sunday, May 22, 2011
The How and Why of Evil
In my first article post, I explained how the Creator of the universe had to be a good God, and how something cannot come from nothing. But the question was inevitable: if He is completely a God of goodness, and if everything that exists came from Him, how is it something like Evil came into being? And another thing: how is it a good God can allow bad things to happen?
The issue known as the ‘problem of Evil’ has long been talked about by Christian intellectuals, and I have heard more than one good conclusion on it. For a while the first part of the issue had me really baffled, but there is an answer, as there is to all truths. Here I’ll share with you my current take on the subject, and hopefully it will make sense of the problem if you are unsure about it.
First, I’m going to talk about the origin of evil. Prior to any conclusions, it is important to define what evil is. Most make the mistake of thinking it is an independent entity, the equal opposite of good: the dark side that counters the light, or the mysterious nothing that counters the something. But if this were true, there would have to be a God higher than both whose law defined why one was right and the other was wrong, and you’d have the same difficulty defining evil under this “greater God” that you did with the first.
In fact, as Christians believe, evil is not an entity, but a state: an aberration, a rebellion against good, something that was once right but has been put out of whack. Says the author J.R.R. Tolkien through his character Elrond, from his famous book trilogy The Lord of the Rings: “For nothing is evil in the beginning. Even Sauron [the main villain of the story] was not so.” Evil came about because what was once good rebelled against God, because it wanted to be God itself. This rebellion is what we call sin. We call it wrong because it is not right. It is a direction, which leads away from God rather than toward His perfection.
“But wait,” you’ll undoubtedly say. “That still doesn’t answer how wrongness can exist.” Of course, wrongness is a direction that points away from God, but it would have to be pointing toward something…and if God is the source of all that exists you cannot point to anything that did not come from Him, right?
Allow me, however, to give an illustration of what the essence of this wrongness is. Imagine a figure who had its parts rearranged, who had a hand where its head should be, a foot where its arm should be, its head where its foot should be, an ear where its nose should be, or an eye on its finger (please, try not to get sick!). You could say that all of this person’s parts were very much parts of him…and yet, would not the setup be totally wrong? So it is with evil: it is fragments of the good things of God assembled in ways that make something that is totally ugly, or “not right,” (1). These false combinations are not God, but they are very much something that He, with His eternally vast imagination, could think up, just as we could imagine a person with a setup as wrong as the one described above, (2).
And this leads to the second subject. If God is good and not evil, why is it He would even think up these bad combinations in the first place? Why does He let bad things happen or even exist in the world? If He is all-powerful, why did He allow the things He created to sin and cause all this wrongness in the first place?
Well think of it this way. If you were an author, how would you write a story? There has been a statement, and most writers agree on this, that what makes a good story is conflict. Now if you wrote a story, and made everything ok for the characters from start to finish, with no adventure to brave, no villains to battle, no struggles to overcome, would you not have a very boring story on your hands? But normally good stories come in this pattern: things start out good, then something goes wrong, a struggle ensues, until at last the evil is conquered and things are restored to being right again, in the best cases better than before. Each phase of the story is as important as the “happily-ever-after” at the end, which would not seem as meaningful if there was not first something to overcome to reach it. If there was no evil to overcome, the good found at the end would not seem so meaningful. There would be no need to be warmed if you were not first cold. No need to feel comforted if you do not first feel sadness. There would be no need of the princess for her prince if there were no dragon or evil sorcerer to imprison her. And there would be no great joy for the person who finds a friend if he were not a lonely person to begin with. You cannot be clothed if you do not know nakedness. You cannot have resolve if you do not first have a conflict.
At the end of Peter Jackson’s movie The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, based off the second book in Tolkien’s trilogy, the character Samwise Gamgee is able to find resolution despite the desperate situation he and his master Frodo Baggins have found themselves in because, as he explains, “There is some good in this world, and it is worth fighting for.” In the story of The Lord of the Rings, where darkness seems to hold dominion and evil to be supreme over the world, and possess the greater power, good appears small and hard to come by. But that’s what made it all the more precious. The greater the opposition, the more worth fighting for what is right becomes, the harder we hold on to it, and the greater is its triumph at the last.
That’s why God put evil in His Story: so that in triumphing over it He might show us His goodness and power, and be glorified in it. Like Him, we put conflict and forces of evil in our own stories to create opposition, not because we have “villainous sides” that must be given place to, but because battle and final victory is what makes a story worth telling. This is the reason for evil in God’s Story, and we can remember that when we go through hard times and wonder at His sovereignty.
I guess that’s about all I have to say. May have gotten a bit carried away, but I hope I’ve communicated the right points, and helped you toward finding answers on these issues. Here is an outline of the Christian message on the subject, in case you are confused: God has made all things in Creation. Everything He made was good and in order, until what was created desired to be God and sinned, throwing all Creation into disorder, causing evil as the result. And all this God ordained to show His glory, that He might triumph over evil at the last.
What is your say on the matter? Think carefully, and God bless you!
Romans 9:21, 22: “Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory…?”
Notes:
(1) The well-known author and theologian of the 20th century, C.S. Lewis, had something similar to say in his book Mere Christianity, and it was this that gave me the idea. Here is the illustration he used to explain the nature of morality: “Think of a piano. It has got two kinds of notes on it, the “right” ones and the “wrong” ones. Every single note is right at one time and wrong at another. The Moral Law…is something which makes a kind of tune (the tune we call goodness or right conduct)….” Thus, wrongness can be described as a composition of notes that do not work together to make the perfect tune that is God, but rather a painful discord of tuneless noise.
(2) Of course, I do not encourage you on this basis to redefine what you know to be right and wrong. By all means, if you have a strong sense of right and wrong do not throw it away. These points are meant to explain how evil can exist, not to explain what can and can’t be classified as good and evil. That is Morality, the subject of another discussion.)
The issue known as the ‘problem of Evil’ has long been talked about by Christian intellectuals, and I have heard more than one good conclusion on it. For a while the first part of the issue had me really baffled, but there is an answer, as there is to all truths. Here I’ll share with you my current take on the subject, and hopefully it will make sense of the problem if you are unsure about it.
First, I’m going to talk about the origin of evil. Prior to any conclusions, it is important to define what evil is. Most make the mistake of thinking it is an independent entity, the equal opposite of good: the dark side that counters the light, or the mysterious nothing that counters the something. But if this were true, there would have to be a God higher than both whose law defined why one was right and the other was wrong, and you’d have the same difficulty defining evil under this “greater God” that you did with the first.
In fact, as Christians believe, evil is not an entity, but a state: an aberration, a rebellion against good, something that was once right but has been put out of whack. Says the author J.R.R. Tolkien through his character Elrond, from his famous book trilogy The Lord of the Rings: “For nothing is evil in the beginning. Even Sauron [the main villain of the story] was not so.” Evil came about because what was once good rebelled against God, because it wanted to be God itself. This rebellion is what we call sin. We call it wrong because it is not right. It is a direction, which leads away from God rather than toward His perfection.
“But wait,” you’ll undoubtedly say. “That still doesn’t answer how wrongness can exist.” Of course, wrongness is a direction that points away from God, but it would have to be pointing toward something…and if God is the source of all that exists you cannot point to anything that did not come from Him, right?
Allow me, however, to give an illustration of what the essence of this wrongness is. Imagine a figure who had its parts rearranged, who had a hand where its head should be, a foot where its arm should be, its head where its foot should be, an ear where its nose should be, or an eye on its finger (please, try not to get sick!). You could say that all of this person’s parts were very much parts of him…and yet, would not the setup be totally wrong? So it is with evil: it is fragments of the good things of God assembled in ways that make something that is totally ugly, or “not right,” (1). These false combinations are not God, but they are very much something that He, with His eternally vast imagination, could think up, just as we could imagine a person with a setup as wrong as the one described above, (2).
And this leads to the second subject. If God is good and not evil, why is it He would even think up these bad combinations in the first place? Why does He let bad things happen or even exist in the world? If He is all-powerful, why did He allow the things He created to sin and cause all this wrongness in the first place?
Well think of it this way. If you were an author, how would you write a story? There has been a statement, and most writers agree on this, that what makes a good story is conflict. Now if you wrote a story, and made everything ok for the characters from start to finish, with no adventure to brave, no villains to battle, no struggles to overcome, would you not have a very boring story on your hands? But normally good stories come in this pattern: things start out good, then something goes wrong, a struggle ensues, until at last the evil is conquered and things are restored to being right again, in the best cases better than before. Each phase of the story is as important as the “happily-ever-after” at the end, which would not seem as meaningful if there was not first something to overcome to reach it. If there was no evil to overcome, the good found at the end would not seem so meaningful. There would be no need to be warmed if you were not first cold. No need to feel comforted if you do not first feel sadness. There would be no need of the princess for her prince if there were no dragon or evil sorcerer to imprison her. And there would be no great joy for the person who finds a friend if he were not a lonely person to begin with. You cannot be clothed if you do not know nakedness. You cannot have resolve if you do not first have a conflict.
At the end of Peter Jackson’s movie The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, based off the second book in Tolkien’s trilogy, the character Samwise Gamgee is able to find resolution despite the desperate situation he and his master Frodo Baggins have found themselves in because, as he explains, “There is some good in this world, and it is worth fighting for.” In the story of The Lord of the Rings, where darkness seems to hold dominion and evil to be supreme over the world, and possess the greater power, good appears small and hard to come by. But that’s what made it all the more precious. The greater the opposition, the more worth fighting for what is right becomes, the harder we hold on to it, and the greater is its triumph at the last.
That’s why God put evil in His Story: so that in triumphing over it He might show us His goodness and power, and be glorified in it. Like Him, we put conflict and forces of evil in our own stories to create opposition, not because we have “villainous sides” that must be given place to, but because battle and final victory is what makes a story worth telling. This is the reason for evil in God’s Story, and we can remember that when we go through hard times and wonder at His sovereignty.
I guess that’s about all I have to say. May have gotten a bit carried away, but I hope I’ve communicated the right points, and helped you toward finding answers on these issues. Here is an outline of the Christian message on the subject, in case you are confused: God has made all things in Creation. Everything He made was good and in order, until what was created desired to be God and sinned, throwing all Creation into disorder, causing evil as the result. And all this God ordained to show His glory, that He might triumph over evil at the last.
What is your say on the matter? Think carefully, and God bless you!
Romans 9:21, 22: “Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory…?”
Notes:
(1) The well-known author and theologian of the 20th century, C.S. Lewis, had something similar to say in his book Mere Christianity, and it was this that gave me the idea. Here is the illustration he used to explain the nature of morality: “Think of a piano. It has got two kinds of notes on it, the “right” ones and the “wrong” ones. Every single note is right at one time and wrong at another. The Moral Law…is something which makes a kind of tune (the tune we call goodness or right conduct)….” Thus, wrongness can be described as a composition of notes that do not work together to make the perfect tune that is God, but rather a painful discord of tuneless noise.
(2) Of course, I do not encourage you on this basis to redefine what you know to be right and wrong. By all means, if you have a strong sense of right and wrong do not throw it away. These points are meant to explain how evil can exist, not to explain what can and can’t be classified as good and evil. That is Morality, the subject of another discussion.)
Monday, August 30, 2010
Life: What is it?
(Scroll down and start from the first post if you haven't read the previous ones)
It’s strange how cultures can deny human value, and at the same time strive for life and survival. They teach in materialistic schools that human beings are merely animals, and that animals are merely an advanced composition of organic machinery. Then later they wonder why people have to hurt each other or treat others like junk pieces of hardware; and I wonder why the government doesn’t arrest us for murder every time we step on a cockroach. Yet this is the way it is, and none can provide a just explanation for these strange contradictions in the teachings of the modern world.
First I’m going to talk some about the value of life, and then I’ll say a few things about human (not insect) dignity.
Here’s where I’ll begin.
In an episode of the 2006 series of BBC’s sci-fi Doctor Who, the Doctor states that Life is nothing more than a ‘quirk of matter’ and ‘nature’s way of keeping meat fresh.’ And yet, the series continually conveys Life as something to be maintained and protected, because in every episode there is always a life, or many lives, at stake in the conflict, and the heroes are always working to preserve and defend them.
But what is the point in rescuing people or “saving the world,” if humans are just complex mechanisms of the right working pieces of matter? Why should people, if they are merely machines, be so important?
“Well,” you might answer. “It’s so that the advancement of society can continue.” Well what for, I ask? “So that we can better this planet.” For what? “So we can have a better world to live in.” But why?!
Because human beings have value, and deserve quality of living. Because Life is sacred, and needs to be cared for. Yet some of the people who demand security and human rights are the same people who deny human worth. Take abortion, for instance, or euthanasia: how can it be ok for some to die, but not ok for others? In the case of abortion, it is declared that embryo babies are not yet human, and therefore it is ok to kill them. But how can you prove 100% that embryos are not yet alive? If you can, then at what point do they become alive, and what is it that makes them so? If those people are unsure of the answer themselves, then perhaps it is wisest for them to stay on the safe side, and not to destroy without thought something that may be an unspeakable crime to destroy (even if it gets them money; for no amount of money is worth a human life).
You could argue that human worth is in the mind, and only a fully-functioning mind is worth anything. But what do you mean by ‘the mind?’ The brain is a neat thing, but it too is only a machine when viewed alone. There has to be something more, something beyond what a purely physical interpretation can offer. To complete a human being, you need the soul as well as the body and mind, the spiritual as well as the physical. (*Extra: Eastern religions do exactly the opposite as materialistic views, stating instead that the spiritual is everything, and that the physical world is only an illusion. And yet they, like other people, do the best they can to take care of their bodies and preserve their lives. If the physical world is nothing, then does that mean it doesn’t matter if you suffer from pain, or die? What’s wrong with killing someone if the body is just an illusion? Here we come to the same conclusion as the other approach, and see that there is little difference between this view and the other.)
Now, in common materialistic standards, which deny anything spiritual can exist, humans don’t have souls. But I can’t see anything logical in such a view. If a materialist (atheist, or whatever) asked me how I could sincerely believe that there is a spiritual part of a human being, what would I say?
I would ask him this: “Suppose I had a gun, and I leveled it at you and pulled the trigger with a bang, shooting you dead. Would it matter?” After all, in a materialistic view humans are just soulless machines, so if we follow that logic there would be little difference between shooting a man and shooting a laptop. What does it matter? I don’t think a materialist could answer that question.
Would you care if somebody came and shot you?
The truth is, it does matter: because it is wrong to murder, because you, and all humans whether developed or undeveloped, have real value; we have souls (and who can prove embryos don’t as well?); we have real worth. Why? Because we were made after the fashion, in the image of, a personal, loving Being, and we are not mere “quirks” of matter. We think; we feel; we love; we hate; and we rightly take pride in that. No computer, no mere machine could ever amount to what we are.
And we have dignity. To say a few words on the second subject, we as humans realize that somehow we are set apart from plants and beasts. You say you haven’t? Well, did dogs build Washington D.C.? Or cows invent cars and airplanes? I don’t think so. Humans are capable of so much more than monkeys, I think you will find, looking at the history of our race. The general argument for that is that the “lower species” just haven’t ‘evolved’ yet. But if humanity is something that can be achieved through physical development, then doesn’t that leave out the spiritual side and bring us once again to a mechanical level? I don’t have all the answers, but I do know this: that there is a reason we don’t squash people like we do bugs. And in addition I, as a human, refuse to be labeled an ape. Human dignity is cast into the waste bin when equated with that of rodents and gorillas. We were made in God’s image, not King Kong’s.
Life is something more than special, and to belittle it is to belittle the very existence of humanity. A culture should think hard about the cost of life before choosing a materialistic direction. If you are a materialist, then I ask you to explain what your basis for human worth is.
Well, that’s all for now. I hope this post has given you something to think about. If it has, let me know what you’re take on subject is.
God bless you!
Genesis 1:26-28 ‘Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth."
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”’
Psalm 139: 13, 14 ‘For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.’
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
“Is it rational to believe in God” you ask?
Many people have said, and are saying, that to believe in something like an all-powerful “God” is simply absurd. “The God of the Christian Faith is no more a reality than the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus,” I learned one atheist had said, for he saw no rationality in the concept, and had been given no reason to believe there was anything like a rational basis. Being a devout Christian, I felt very rankled at hearing his statement, but if I was to confront that atheist myself, you might ask, then what would I say?
Before I make my reply, I want to clarify that as a seeker of truth, my goal isn’t simply to win arguments or fight the fight, but to find out the real answers to the matters I am confronted with, and communicate them. Also, I want to make clear that when I talk about God I’m not talking about some icon or mascot of a religion: I am talking about a being that could in fact be there, present in reality, and this is the object of my defense.
Well, in return to the atheistic arguments, I am going to ask this one big, mind-boggling question that has confused many non-Christian intellectuals over the centuries, and it’s this: How did this universe we live in come into being?
“What!?!” you might exclaim. “Why should I be thinking about this? I’m not a philosopher! Leave this stuff to the geeks in the ivory towers! I don’t have time to waste on such brain-pressing subjects, I need to get on with my life.”
I have couple things to say about that. Firstly, if you think about it, everyone is a philosopher, because everyone asks the big question “why;” it would be strange if there was a person who never did once in their entire life. Secondly, if you want to understand your life, and live it more the way you would like to, you first have to understand the world you live in. And the first step into understanding anything correctly, is to find out where it came from: to go to its root. That’s why I pose this question.
The most popular theory outside of the Christian explanation of where the universe came from is the Big Bang, in the theory of Evolution. As this theory explains, in the beginning there was absolutely nothing until there came a tremendous explosion, and as a product of that the universe just came into existence.
But when we say everything started with nothing, it means nothing: zero, nil, zilch, not even space or time, less nothing, or what we normally think of it as. So how can you support the Big Bang theory? You’d have to believe, beyond all rational reasoning, that something came from nothing.
Personally, I find it easier to believe that something came from something, than that something came from nothing. This is my first point.
Point 1: The universe, and everything in it, had to have come from something.
“But wait,” you might argue. “If the universe came from something, then where did that something come from? Another something. And that something had to come from another something, which had to come from another something, which came from another something, etc..” I see your point: it could go on endlessly.
But what if that something which the universe came from was an eternal something? That would solve the problem, because being self-sufficient it would need nothing to back it up.
Point 2: The universe had to have come from something eternal. (Take a break before moving on if your mind needs a rest.)
Now, have you ever seen the Star Wars series? Most of you probably have. If you remember, the universe of story introduced an eternal essence known as The Force as the basis for all that exists, in the fashion of eastern Pantheistic beliefs. The Force is portrayed as an impersonal entity that governs everything, and special individuals known as Jedi are called to employ its power (for good or for evil). Is The Force our answer? It’s certainly something, and it’s eternal, so why not?
Well I don’t know if you noticed the same, but ever since I was a kid I thought Jedi were like the coolest warriors ever but there was one thing about them that always bugged me. They are always taught to let go of their emotions, to throw aside human nature and strive to become detached and emotionless, to become like their all-powerful Force governor, pressing toward the impersonal. But if you lose everything that makes you human, then where can you place those things? Is the ability to love, or to have fun, a flaw that needs to be gotten rid of? I think you and I can both agree this is absurd.
So if love, hate, happiness, anger, and all the like aren’t just defects in the natural order of things, then they had to have had a proper origin. I repeat, something cannot come from nothing. This impersonal Force cannot have begotten something personal. Thus this eternal something we are talking about cannot be The Force: it had to be something personal: it had to be a conscious being, a Person.
Point 3: The universe had to have come from something personal.
“That’s all very well,” you say. “But how can we know anything of the nature of this eternal, personal being?”
Someone, I forget exactly who (Francis Schaeffer mentions him a few times in his books; Baudelaire was the name referred to), once said, “If there is a God, He is the Devil.” But if the creator of all things existing was the Devil, then how is it anything good exists? (You could reverse that and ask if a good God would allow evil to exist, but keep listening.)
Deep down, everyone knows that there is such a thing as right and wrong, and that what is right is more admirable than what is wrong. But if this eternal, personal being was the Devil, then why do what is right anyway? If Good is the flaw, a losing cause, then why not just join the cause of Evil, the winning team, to become more like our creator? Yet if in a story the bad-guys win, we think of it as such a bummer! There is a reason why Right is right. And there is a reason why Wrong is not right. Wrong is the flaw, I think we can agree, and since the original had to be flawless, this eternal, personal being had to be GOOD.
And you don’t need to look inside only to see that. Look around you, past the evil and turmoil of the modern world, and at this planet we live on. There is not only good out there, but beauty as well. We, as humans, consider some things to be beautiful: an attractive woman, a splendid mountain/ocean panorama, or a tiny, delicate field flower. Evil cannot produce any love for such things.
And neither could chaos or chance, as Evolution suggests. If you’ve studied Science, you can see how amazingly everything in the world, from the workings of the human body to the simplest laws of nature and physics, work together with such incredible unity, in such a beautiful way, as to create this living, working system we know and admire as our world. Art cannot exist without first an artist (a painting can’t paint itself!), and only an artist of infinite mastery could have devised such an unimaginably complex and wonderful system as our universe.
Point 4: The universe had to have been created by something good, a lover of beauty and Right, an artist.
SO…still think it’s irrational for us Christians to believe in God? Maybe you should reread this post :-)
And now, putting these four points together, we therefore come to the conclusion: The universe had to have been created by an eternal, personal, artistic, loving, being. Sound a bit like the God of the Bible?
This is why we Christians can so strongly believe in an all-powerful, eternal, artistic, loving God, who is present, watching us, and teaching us through His amazing works. These issues are the ones I would pose to that atheist, or any other non-Christian, when they question our faith, and would ask them what their answer to the origin of the universe is.
I understand if I’ve overwhelmed you by now, but if you’re still reading at this point then I’m glad to know that at least someone is interested in the thoughts I am sharing. If you have more questions to add, please share them. (I can guess you might be asking if this god is really the same God as in the Bible, and if the Bible is really true. That’s a whole field of questions in itself, but I hope to confront that in a later post.) You can e-mail me at <bagheryan.stephen@gmail.com>.
Whew! I’ve spent all afternoon on this post. I think need to take a breather! Anyway, thanks for listening.
God bless you!
Before I make my reply, I want to clarify that as a seeker of truth, my goal isn’t simply to win arguments or fight the fight, but to find out the real answers to the matters I am confronted with, and communicate them. Also, I want to make clear that when I talk about God I’m not talking about some icon or mascot of a religion: I am talking about a being that could in fact be there, present in reality, and this is the object of my defense.
Well, in return to the atheistic arguments, I am going to ask this one big, mind-boggling question that has confused many non-Christian intellectuals over the centuries, and it’s this: How did this universe we live in come into being?
“What!?!” you might exclaim. “Why should I be thinking about this? I’m not a philosopher! Leave this stuff to the geeks in the ivory towers! I don’t have time to waste on such brain-pressing subjects, I need to get on with my life.”
I have couple things to say about that. Firstly, if you think about it, everyone is a philosopher, because everyone asks the big question “why;” it would be strange if there was a person who never did once in their entire life. Secondly, if you want to understand your life, and live it more the way you would like to, you first have to understand the world you live in. And the first step into understanding anything correctly, is to find out where it came from: to go to its root. That’s why I pose this question.
The most popular theory outside of the Christian explanation of where the universe came from is the Big Bang, in the theory of Evolution. As this theory explains, in the beginning there was absolutely nothing until there came a tremendous explosion, and as a product of that the universe just came into existence.
But when we say everything started with nothing, it means nothing: zero, nil, zilch, not even space or time, less nothing, or what we normally think of it as. So how can you support the Big Bang theory? You’d have to believe, beyond all rational reasoning, that something came from nothing.
Personally, I find it easier to believe that something came from something, than that something came from nothing. This is my first point.
Point 1: The universe, and everything in it, had to have come from something.
“But wait,” you might argue. “If the universe came from something, then where did that something come from? Another something. And that something had to come from another something, which had to come from another something, which came from another something, etc..” I see your point: it could go on endlessly.
But what if that something which the universe came from was an eternal something? That would solve the problem, because being self-sufficient it would need nothing to back it up.
Point 2: The universe had to have come from something eternal. (Take a break before moving on if your mind needs a rest.)
Now, have you ever seen the Star Wars series? Most of you probably have. If you remember, the universe of story introduced an eternal essence known as The Force as the basis for all that exists, in the fashion of eastern Pantheistic beliefs. The Force is portrayed as an impersonal entity that governs everything, and special individuals known as Jedi are called to employ its power (for good or for evil). Is The Force our answer? It’s certainly something, and it’s eternal, so why not?
Well I don’t know if you noticed the same, but ever since I was a kid I thought Jedi were like the coolest warriors ever but there was one thing about them that always bugged me. They are always taught to let go of their emotions, to throw aside human nature and strive to become detached and emotionless, to become like their all-powerful Force governor, pressing toward the impersonal. But if you lose everything that makes you human, then where can you place those things? Is the ability to love, or to have fun, a flaw that needs to be gotten rid of? I think you and I can both agree this is absurd.
So if love, hate, happiness, anger, and all the like aren’t just defects in the natural order of things, then they had to have had a proper origin. I repeat, something cannot come from nothing. This impersonal Force cannot have begotten something personal. Thus this eternal something we are talking about cannot be The Force: it had to be something personal: it had to be a conscious being, a Person.
Point 3: The universe had to have come from something personal.
“That’s all very well,” you say. “But how can we know anything of the nature of this eternal, personal being?”
Someone, I forget exactly who (Francis Schaeffer mentions him a few times in his books; Baudelaire was the name referred to), once said, “If there is a God, He is the Devil.” But if the creator of all things existing was the Devil, then how is it anything good exists? (You could reverse that and ask if a good God would allow evil to exist, but keep listening.)
Deep down, everyone knows that there is such a thing as right and wrong, and that what is right is more admirable than what is wrong. But if this eternal, personal being was the Devil, then why do what is right anyway? If Good is the flaw, a losing cause, then why not just join the cause of Evil, the winning team, to become more like our creator? Yet if in a story the bad-guys win, we think of it as such a bummer! There is a reason why Right is right. And there is a reason why Wrong is not right. Wrong is the flaw, I think we can agree, and since the original had to be flawless, this eternal, personal being had to be GOOD.
And you don’t need to look inside only to see that. Look around you, past the evil and turmoil of the modern world, and at this planet we live on. There is not only good out there, but beauty as well. We, as humans, consider some things to be beautiful: an attractive woman, a splendid mountain/ocean panorama, or a tiny, delicate field flower. Evil cannot produce any love for such things.
And neither could chaos or chance, as Evolution suggests. If you’ve studied Science, you can see how amazingly everything in the world, from the workings of the human body to the simplest laws of nature and physics, work together with such incredible unity, in such a beautiful way, as to create this living, working system we know and admire as our world. Art cannot exist without first an artist (a painting can’t paint itself!), and only an artist of infinite mastery could have devised such an unimaginably complex and wonderful system as our universe.
Point 4: The universe had to have been created by something good, a lover of beauty and Right, an artist.
SO…still think it’s irrational for us Christians to believe in God? Maybe you should reread this post :-)
And now, putting these four points together, we therefore come to the conclusion: The universe had to have been created by an eternal, personal, artistic, loving, being. Sound a bit like the God of the Bible?
This is why we Christians can so strongly believe in an all-powerful, eternal, artistic, loving God, who is present, watching us, and teaching us through His amazing works. These issues are the ones I would pose to that atheist, or any other non-Christian, when they question our faith, and would ask them what their answer to the origin of the universe is.
I understand if I’ve overwhelmed you by now, but if you’re still reading at this point then I’m glad to know that at least someone is interested in the thoughts I am sharing. If you have more questions to add, please share them. (I can guess you might be asking if this god is really the same God as in the Bible, and if the Bible is really true. That’s a whole field of questions in itself, but I hope to confront that in a later post.) You can e-mail me at <bagheryan.stephen@gmail.com>.
Whew! I’ve spent all afternoon on this post. I think need to take a breather! Anyway, thanks for listening.
God bless you!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)