The church cops an awful lot of criticism and too often it comes from those on the inside. We have certain ideas of what the church should be and become disappointed when it doesn't measure up. Check out 'Is the Church That Bad' for a great discussion of why some of our expectations of what the church could/should be are misplaced, and why we should therefore be constructive and not just criticise.
Room to Breathe
Recently I have been involved in a conversation about conflicting theologies within Christianity. The issue that began the debate was around eschatology (end times), but what I want to concentrate on is not who was right, but the observation of the tendency of some to put others down for standing up for a view that was different from their own. Now I don't mind a good debate, but I'm kidding myself if I think we will end the debate with everyone agreeing with me, so maybe I need to cut them some slack? Such absolute statements were made as, "There is no biblical basis for that view!" which was followed by name calling of those associated with a certain stance. How can we be so arrogant that we cannot see that the views of other Christians are often simply from a different understanding of the text...and while I'm not saying we can interpret any passage as we like, we can at least honour the fact that those who have studied the Bible and come up with other views are good people wrestling with an all-of-life faith, just as we are. Maybe post-modernity can help us move from our arrogant position that we can know everything, to recapture the mystery of God and allow for some room to breathe when others hold varying views as we all wrestle to understand the glimpses of truth we are shown. I would not go anywhere near the other end of the spectrum and claim that all truth is unknowable, and there are certainly some things that I believe lie at the heart of what it means to be Christian, such as the literal bodily resurrection of Jesus, but for many other areas of our faith, let any claim to know truth come with the humility that our understanding is limited ('I know in part, but then I will know fully' - 1 Cor 13:12), and let us bring our views to the table in love. Afterall, Truth is best understood in a person (Jn 14:6)...and this Truth is also Love!
Is Faith a No Brainer?
I was having a discussion with a friend of mine earlier today about faith. He discussed how he had recently stopped and talked to street preachers and asked them genuine questions, but was frustrated that it always seemed to come down to the fact that (according to them) he just needed to have faith. He wanted intelligent answers but all he got was 'faith'...like it was some magical belief that involved the absence of thought. It seemed to be that any questions that required any intellect were dismissed and 'faith' was what was being suggested as a replacement. Unfortunately I've heard these sorts of sentiments expressed by Christians myself...at what point did Christianity stop being an intelligent religion? At what point did we decide that to believe in God involved the absence of any intelligent thought. True, rationalism can never fully get us to God, however, as I suggested to my friend, in my own experience it is only when my heart AND my mind were captivated that I could have faith.
In Matthew 9:2 Jesus was among the crowds and "Some men brought to him a paralyzed man, lying on a mat. When Jesus saw their faith..." These men didn't just blindly believe...they had heard about Jesus and what he was doing and that stirred for them the possibility that he could do this for their friend too! It wasn't the absence of thought - it was intelligent! They thought about what they heard and that stirred up faith in them.
Or try Matthew 6:30 "If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?" He criticises their faith showing them the intelligent and logical thought that should have lead to faith.
...not to mention "be transformed by the renewing of your minds" (Rom 12:2)!
So let's find out what it is we really believe and why, so that when someone asks intelligent questions we don't have to tell them to 'just have faith.' And let's realise that faith actually involves the use of our minds, not their absence. After all, it is our whole being, including our minds, that is made by God in his image!
In Response to: "An Easter re-think on miracles"
Australia's ABC News website recently published a column titled, "An Easter re-think on miracles." In it, Phil Dye provides a view that is all too common in our day. He outlines what he sees as the need for the church to let go of their claim that Jesus was raised from the dead and relegate it to a made up bit of fun like the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus. He claims that church leaders should lighten up, and that "only the Quakers have the vulnerability to view the resurrection as a matter of interpretation. It's a vulnerability the rest could well learn from." In this statement, Dye fails to realise how crucial the bodily resurrection of Jesus is to true Christianity...because the point of Jesus death and resurrection was not just so we could be forgiven of our sins, but so that Death, the enemy that has existed since the garden of Eden, was finally defeated. The New Testament tells us that Jesus resurrection was just the beginning of the process (1 Cor 15), meaning that God is actively beginning to restore his creation and Jesus' resurrection was a stake-in-the-ground moment that will eventually end up with the total annihilation of death. If you take away the real bodily resurrection of Jesus, you take away any defeat of death, and with it, the great Christian hope, that God is dealing with the evil that invaded this world so early on, and that it will one day be defeated. Without this hope, there doesn't seem to be much point to existence, let alone belief in God.
Dye also says, "The contradiction between our contemporary focus on logical world understanding, and the Christian insistence that not only did Jesus rise from the dead, but was a virgin birth, divided loaves and changed water to wine is surely too much for the rational human mind to seriously contemplate." In this, Dye also greatly misses the point. To believe in miracles is not to believe that science is a waste of time, or to say that we don't understand that dead bodies don't usually get back up again...but it is to acknowledge that something amazing and 'out of the ordinary' happened, because if it wasn't a miracle then it was nothing! And if it was nothing, then the faith may as well be flushed down the toilet, and we still have no answer to death.
The rationalism that invaded our world with the enlightenment and modernity has brought a great many wonderful discoveries and scientific endeavour, however it has also lead us right back to what was the original sin in the garden of Eden...that we would be gods (Gen 3). Claiming that rationalist thought means that we can do away with miracles is to claim that we can know everything...and who knows everything? God! But in a culture where rationalism is viewed so highly, have we simply stopped believing in the God of creation and started believing that we ourselves are gods?
Another of Dye's thoughts is that "In 2009, as the number of practicing Christians in the western world declines, surely our relationship with God need no longer hinge on the 'in for a penny, in for a pound' acceptance of miracles?" My only response to this is who wants to believe in a God who cannot do anything more than we can? What is the point of believing in a God if he has no power to act on our behalf? We obviously can't make things better ourselves, no matter how much the politicians would like us to believe they could.
"In our society that is controlled more by its access to wealth than lack of it, we are more likely to be persuaded by feet on the ground logic than legendary miracles" Jesus himself warned us that this view would always sit alongside wealth. He told us that it is harder for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle! (Luke 18:25) Why? Because you can only have one god..and if money is it then there is no room for the real one! In poorer countries, they understand their need for God a whole lot more simply because they aren't wealthy, but this doesn't mean that their logic is invalid, but simply that they don't have their money getting in the way and fooling them into believing that wealth is the answer to all of life's problems. The richest countries in the world still have enormous issues that just seem to be getting worse!
I don't blame Phil for having these views...they are simply a product of our time in the western world. But perhaps the core issue is not that miracles are illogical, but that believing in miracles, believing in Jesus and who he said he was, and believing that he really did die and raise to life demands much more than simply choosing to believe a different sort of logic. It demands an entire worldview shift that takes us out of the centre of the meaning of life, and that is not a place that most westerners are happy to go. It requires a worldview that is support by, but not controlled by money. And it demands a worldview that admits we are not God, that we cannot know everything, and that we cannot get ourselves out of our own mess, but that God has chosen to act on our behalf.
So no, Phil, it is not that we will not stop believing in miracles...it is that we cannot! Without them we are forced into being gods ourselves...and frankly, I don't have enough faith to think that I can save myself from anything - but God can, and he has...through his death and literal resurrection...and I pray you will come to understand that you were also in his thoughts when he came and hammered the first nail in death's coffin.
A great book store
Just thought I'd pass on a great book store website that I found recently through friends at college. The Book Depository is a UK site that offers free postage to anywhere in the world...that's right FREE! I have ordered three books from them so far and the longest I have had to wait has been 5 days...for free postage! Not bad...and one of the books that would have cost me $92 in NZ only cost me NZ$54 after conversion. Even ordering from Amazon would have ended up at around NZ$80...and this has been the same sort of price difference for every book I have looked at. I've been buying Texts for College, but they sell everything. So if you are buying a book, check it out and save yourself money. www.bookdepository.co.uk
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