Before we start, I must note that this may be an extensive post. It will be VERY long, and I encourage you to read the entire post, or simply skip over it. I say this because of the continuity of the logic in this post. In basic terms, you wont understand what is being said unless you read the post in its entirity... aka: dont skip around, cause you might get lost... and you may become lost anyways. Sound like fun?! Lets go...
In my life I have experienced many people who take religion to separate, unhealthy extremes. I have met Chritians throughout my life who I would define as "legalistic" in philosophy. When I say legalistic I mean they are too focused on the specific rules of Christianity without regard to the grace and freedom with have in Christ. Many of us have been hurt by Christians who seem to be so consumed with rules that they may forget to see their own downfalls until its too late. Thus many times people label Christians as hypocritical individuals. It is sad, but many times we think of "legalistic" Christians when we hear of christians being cast as hypocrits in the national news. Our perspective on Christianity becomes dark and gloomy, because we have this thought that Christians must be perfect.
The other side of this unhealthy extreme which I would like to talk about, is the growing amount of individuals who believe that all religions point to our true creator, and therefor we need to open our minds to accepting all religions on holding absolute truth. I try not to be stereotypical in my descriptions, but this is the persons who would argue that in many ways Christ was a great man, but nonetheless just a good moral teacher to help us see God; similar to that of Muhutma Ghandi, Muhummand, and others.
Which brings me to the question I intend to provide some sort of clearity to: Why believe in Christ only? If the Jews, Muslims, and Christians all serve the same God, why cant we find some moral ground to serve the same God? Let us focus on that question. We can come back to pantheistic world views later (i.e. Hindu, Buddhism, Greek philosophy), right now lets focus on Allah, God, Jehovah, Yahweh, the God that seems from the outside to be the same in Judaism, Islam, and Christianity.
And I know of no better way to answer this question than to look at a few pages from C.S. Lewis' "Mere Christianity." I foundationally believe this excerpt is one of the most powerful passeges of apologetics ever written, and my thought is "why re-write something as powerful as this." Keep in mind that this man writting this passage, Lewis, was an athiest for much if not most of his life. I will spare you the exciting details of C.S. Lewis for another time, but here is response to "Why Christ":
"God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on gas, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.
That is the key to history. Terrific energy is expended-civilisations are built up--excellent institutions devised; but each time something goes wrong. Some fatal flaw always brings the selfish and cruel people to the top and it all slides back into misery and ruin. In fact, the machine conks. It seems to start up all right and runs a few yards, and then it breaks down. They are trying to run it on the wrong juice. That is what Satan has done to us humans.
And what did God do? First of all He left us conscience, the sense of right and wrong: and all through history there have been people trying (some of them very hard) to obey it. None of them ever quite succeeded. Secondly, He sent the human race what I call good dreams: I mean those queer stories scattered all through the heathen religions about a god who dies and comes to life again and by his death, has somehow given new life to men. Thirdly, He selected one particular people and spent several centuries hammering into their heads the sort of God He was--that there was only one of Him and that He cared about right conduct. Those people were the Jews, and the Old Testament gives an account of the hammering process.
Then come the real shock. Among these Jews there suddenly turns up a man who goes about talking as if He was God. He claims to forgive sins. He says He has always existed. He says He is coming to judge the world at the end of time. Now let us get this clear. Among Pantheists, like the Hindus, anyone might say that he was a part of God, or one with God: there would be nothing very odd about it. But this man, since He was a Jew, could not mean that kind of God. God, in their language, meant the Being outside the world, who had made it and was infinitely different from anything else. And when you have grasped that, you will see that what this man said was, quite simply, the most shocking thing that has ever been uttered by human lips.
One part of the claim tends to slip past us unnoticed because we have heard it so often that we no longer see what it amounts to. I mean the claim to forgive sins: any sins. Now unless the speaker is God, this is really so preposterous as to be comic. We can all understand how a man forgives offences against himself. You tread on my toe and I forgive you, you steal my money and I forgive you. But what should we make of a man, himself unrobbed and untrodden on, who announced that he forgave you for treading on other men's toes and stealing other men's money? Asinine fatuity is the kindest description we should give of his conduct. Yet this is what Jesus did. He told people that their sins were forgiven, and never waited to consult all the other people whom their sins had undoubtedly injured. He unhesitatingly behaved as if He was the party chiefly concerned, the person chiefly offended in all offences. This makes sense only if He really was the God whose laws are broken and whose love is wounded in every sin. In the mouth of any speaker who is not God, these words would imply what I can only regard as a silliness and conceit unrivalled by any other character in history.
Yet (and this is the strange, significant thing) even His enemies, when they read the Gospels, do not usually get the impression of silliness and conceit. Still less so unprejudiced readers. Christ says that He is 'humble and meek' and we believe Him; not noticing that, if He were merely a man, humility and meekness are the very last characteristics we could attribute to some of His sayings.
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic-on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."
Thoughts, comments, questions?
*Points of Interest in Scripture:
"Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division." Luke 12:51
"Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it." Matthew 7:13-14
Hey Joe, I was glad to see a new post on here and I hope this is the beginning of an interactive truth quest we can all share on this blog. I will share what I wrote a few days ago just to juxtapose our two viewpoints, sorry folks for the length, and then I would love to make some comments on what you had to say. I hope that others will get involved as well... -Scott
ReplyDeleteIf we are truly dedicated to our journey for spiritual truth and truly
willing to rebel against the fear that prevents us from a higher
pursuit of it, we should do the world a favor and ask ourselves why it
is necessary that we encase and compact our capacity to communicate
with and to experience the divine presence in this universe within the
intellectual confines of the Christian religion. God exists
everywhere and can be experienced in His fullness without the
rigorous, legalist distortion that religion imposes on the simple,
pure, and most natural spiritual connection we have with Him.
We don’t need to reject Christianity as much as we need to move beyond
it, integrating the essence of its lessons, but leaving behind the
rational distortions of spiritual truth that restrict our spiritual
evolution. Moving beyond means letting go of the restrictive
paradigms and embracing that God’s nature is not Christian, but
dynamic, infinite, absolutely and universally indescribable Love.
Jesus is but one of many who have come to this planet with the same
loving message. We allow ourselves to constantly wrestle with the
meaning of His words (and those of others) as quoted by the Bible and
we over-intellectualize our spirituality at the expense of the
relationship with God that we already had when we were in the womb and
long before then. So desperate are we to understand God that we
forget it isn’t in our minds that we know Him.
Our thoughts, our ideas, and our interpretations corrode our spiritual
connection to the divine. Our words are relative, restrictive tools
that are only good enough to point us in the right direction.
Eventually, there comes a time in our spiritual journey when we must
accept the limitations of language and move beyond it. Ultimate Truth
cannot be adequately described with words because it exists beyond the
realm of our senses and reasoning minds, where words and concepts are
derived! Really take a moment to digest that….Can we intellectually
fathom a reality that is outside of space and time? Only your spirit
can reach God. So why do we focus so much on the words and not the
essence? Why can't we just shut up and love? The Bible has pointed
us in the right direction, but there IS something beyond the trees.
It is beyond all religions and it is their common source.
We should ask ourselves what implications it has on the world to claim
the universal divine power in the universe for our own; to claim He
has one name; to claim that there is only one book that contains his
Truth; to claim there is only one path to Him involving a specific set
of conditions that must be fulfilled, or else. Is the religion of
Jesus Christ eliminating human ignorance and bringing the world
together under the banner of love, or is it just another religion
driving a splintered wedge between the nations because of its arrogant
claim to the ownership of the one path to God?
Ironically, all religions preach inclusivity and unity, but the simple
act of claiming one path to truth is exclusive in nature, and this is
the source of the spiritual division in this world that is preventing
us from achieving spiritual evolution. Looking at the world we can
see that religion is the sum of the universal God experience plus the
social/cultural context in which that experience occurs. By universal
God experience, I mean the direct, mystic connection to God that
people of all times and places have naturally had access to. When you
became a Christian it wasn’t just because of convincing logical
arguments, but because you FELT God. You sensed Him before you gave
Him a name. The fact is that people all over the world and all
through time have felt God, and immediately their response has been to
apply their rational faculty towards attempting to understand and
explain it. We had our God experiences in the Christian context. As
we became aware of our connection to the divine we were handed a Bible
and surrounded by people willing to teach us a systematic method of
understanding what the hell is going on in this world. It is no
surprise that we became Christian, nor is it a surprise that those who
experience God in the context of other religious systems choose those.
Do we really believe that the devotees of most of the other religious
systems in the world are not connecting to the same God that we are?
This is such an important question! If the answer is yes, then it
means that all over the world people are experiencing the most
powerful, incomprehensible loving force in the universe, but since
there are so many different ways of explaining that force and that
experience, we continue to be divided by our ignorance. If your
answer is no, then you’ve probably not read Lao Tzu or other ancient
mystics attempting to describe their experiences with the Divine force
that they saw flowing though everything, before they had systematic
forms to explain it. Was this our God, our Christ, our Holy Spirit
they sensed? Yes, of course, because God exists outside of our
religious systems…and it is there that we must return. Our God is
their God, and their God is ours. This is all that matters.
If we really love our neighbors, if we know the love that is God, then
we must purify our beliefs of these human constructs, strip ourselves
down to our naked, spiritual core, because only there can the God
loving people of this world unite. We are reaching a point in time
when mankind will either evolve spiritually or destroy itself. Either
we will tear down the walls that divide us, or we will allow things to
continue on the current path towards their logical conclusion. What
divides us is an illusion. It is in our minds, and it is way out of
harmony with the unifying love that we all know as God.
Are we brave enough to live only in the purity of the Spirit and to
show God’s love without wrapping it in the religious package? Can we
shed what we think about God for what we feel about God, for what we
intuitively know about Him in our hearts? I humbly submit that this
is the only way that we can save the world from the entropy that grows
exponentially all around us in this truly unique time. We have to
learn to pray without words. We have to stop putting God in a box to
make Him easier for our intellectual minds to understand. Our
paradigms are rigid and stale, while God is dynamic and infinite.
Peace and Love.
"Most men can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth
if it would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they
have delighted in explaining to colleagues, have proudly taught to
others, and have woven thread by thread into the fabric of their
lives." Tolstoy
To comment on what you wrote, I believe that all religions are man's feeble attempt to point at the same God, and that all fall very short. I don't think any religion holds absolute truth and that is the problem, so we would equally disagree with anyone who believes that all religions hold truth.
ReplyDeleteI think it is actually self evident that all religions are attempting to serve the same God because we all have the same desire to find God that drives us to religion in the first place. The only difference is the set of labels and attributes we ascribe to God.
Now, the most important point I think I need to make here is that moving beyond Christianty is not moving beyond Christ. I think Christians tend to focus too much on who Christ was on Earth, rather than what Christ is - the human manifestation of Love. Christ's life was a symbolic representation of his essence which is pure love. That love is what I am talking about. That love flows through everthing, and it is accessible through Christ or anywhere else that you can experience it. Ive gotta go, hope this sparks some thoughtful discussion.
Just to be clear...the post "Why Christ" above was written by Eric Muller with some assistance from C.S. Lewis. I'm not sure if you were responding to what I wrote you through facebook earlier, or Eric's post above.
ReplyDeleteOk, I will agree that Christ is love, and that love can be felt in any number of different ways and places and situations. I think it is very important to try to understand who Christ was on earth, through the Gospels, because who He was on earth is exactly who he is. Christ's attributes (other than flesh) do not change from Earthly realm to the Spiritual realm. Who Christ was on Earth tells us who he is. What he did on earth shows us what his love is like. His death on the Cross, the most important thing he did on earth, show us the extraordinary and unimaginable love he has for his people.
Christ acts in all of our lives different ways. We can feel and attempt to understand His love from those experiences with him in life. It is from Scripture though that we must base and begin our attempt to understand that love. In my opinion you might understate the importance of Christ's life on earth. Without His life and death on earth, no salvation occurs.
***Everyone feel free to post your thoughts. This conversation started on facebook with the article Scott Dinwiddie posted above in his comment and has shifted over to the R.O.A.R. blog. For any of you who thought this came out of nowhere.***
My apologies Eric...Joe and I have been discussing similar ideas so I thought your post must have been him without really checking.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you Joe that Christ's life on Earth tells us who he is, but people who lived before Christ, and those who have never heard the story of Christ, have still managed to figure out that God is love without too much difficulty. This is where our two philosophies really diverge and I think we could generate some interesting discussion on this. I do not believe that it is from Scripture that we must base and begin our attempt to understand God's love. Do you believe that without Scripture you cannot find a basis for God's love or begin to understand it? I think Scripture is one way, but not the only way. Christ's life on Earth is an important example of what love is, how love is expressed, in the material world, and by all means base your life on that.
ok, I don't believe that without Scripture we cannot find a basis for God's love or begin to understand it. In my personal experience I found God's love without an understanding of Scripture. So I would venture to say it is true that most of us find God's love before Scripture.
ReplyDeleteI think though that as a Christian, with the belief that Scripture is "God breathed", it is the best place to go to attempt to understand who God is and how his love works. I think that human beings are too immature to understand God's love and its unconditionality. As I wrote in my post below; our minds can trick us into believing that because we are broken and don't deserve God that Christ then ignores us and throws us off.
It is through Scripture that I can gain the understanding that Christ loves each of us, no matter what our sins, no matter what our mind is telling us, He will stick by us and give us every chance in the world to come to Him until the end. If it were up to my personal feelings and thoughts, I would probably not be a Christian for more than a week because I would get caught up in my own brokenness and sin and feel that Christ could never love a person like me.
Where, other than Scripture, or other people that have studied Scripture, can we learn that and learn it in a way that is more powerful than our own thoughts and feelings?
If love is universal couldn't people of all religions be experiencing the same love "Christians" do, but just have mis-interpreted the origin?
ReplyDeleteHey guys, I really appreciate the continued discussion and questions on this topic, let’s keep the discussion going. I will attempt to answer “anonymous’” comment soon, but first I would like to chime in on the discussion between Scott and Joe.
ReplyDeleteScott (by the way, ‘hey, and how ya doin’ man!), if I am hearing you right, you are in some fashion saying that “all major religions are equally valid and basically teach the same thing, and all religions believe in the same God.” At least I think that is what your saying, please correct me at any time if I’m confused.
You are also saying that the doctrinal differences between all major religions (Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Christianity) are pretty much superficial because they all believe in the same God. I also hear you saying (in defining God) that it is not based on any scripture but rather “God exists everywhere and can be experienced in His fullness without the rigorous, legalist distortion that religion imposes on the simple, pure, and most natural spiritual connection we have with Him.”
My problem with this position is in its inconsistency. It insists that doctrine (scripture) is unimportant, but at the same time assumes that doctrinal beliefs about the nature of God are at odds within all major faiths. Buddhism doesn’t even believe in a personable God. While Christianity, Islam, and Judaism all believe in a God who holds people accountable for their beliefs through life practice, and a God whose attributes can not be ALL reduced simply to love.
Perhaps the biggest hole I see in this point of view is that it insists that doctrines do not matter, yet, ironically that whole point is a doctrine in itself. The argument, if I am following it correctly, contradicts itself.
I’m not trying to come across as intellectually arrogant or judgmental. We just must continue to work out our point of views in other ways, other questions, and other points. Perhaps we can each present arguments with more evidence, or workout differences in misinterpretations, or list other questions? Because essentially, if we want to continue to talk about this rationally, and logically, we have to have a different basis of discussion. I hope that doesn’t sound mean.
I would love to hear what else you are thinking about, and I would love to continue to post my point of view on some other things I have read in your comments. Again, I love the convos!
I know that no one has posted a response to my response yet, but I need to say this.... I hate being the guy who says something is wrong, yet posses no alternative to the problem. After reading my post again, I would like to say that my point is not to argue arrogantly, and come out swinging like a debater going to war. If that impression was received, I am very, very deeply sorry. Many people have done this, and I do not wanna be that guy. If you know me, I’m not that guy, and please let me know if I am. I want to be as much as an advocate for Christianity that I can be, without becoming that crazy guy who can’t lose.
ReplyDeleteOne of my reasons in expressing my “Christian” point and counter-point, is to somehow show that there is much to the Christian faith than what scratches the surface. In my life I believe that there is far more logical proof (spiritual, experiential, and evidential) of God and of Christ than there is proof for anything else. Other people believe differently, and that is great, and I hope we can search together for a logical answer.
I would actually like to address something very cool that Scott mentioned. He said:
“I agree with you Joe that Christ's life on Earth tells us who he is, but people who lived before Christ, and those who have never heard the story of Christ, have still managed to figure out that God is love without too much difficulty.”
That is so profound, and I whole heartedly agree with you Scott; and I have my own interesting “spin” on why that is:
How crazy is it that no matter where in the world you go, people have some sort of moral standard which breaches across cultures? How come murder is seen as wrong everywhere, regardless of religion? How is it that love, kindness, and justice are all seen as right, regardless of culture? It is like we have something similar within all of us. Almost as if we were created with these moral standards.
What makes more logical sense than that we were created with some sort of moral standard of right and wrong? And if we were created, then in one way or another we must have been created by a higher power.
Perhaps this is our common ground? Perhaps we are can agree at this belief of a God, and we can talk our way to some more specific evidence which points to who this God really is, and what we are in relationship to him?
Hi Eric, I think you come accross just fine in your criticism of my argument, and I think it is great to have a place to come together and analyze our thoughts like this, so please feel free to lay it down anytime you feel the call man.
ReplyDeleteI don't mean to say that all religions are equally valid...what I am saying is that all religions have created conditions on God's unconditional love.
I can see why you might think that saying that we should abandon religious doctrine to worship in spirit and truth is ironically a doctrine in itself, and I am so glad that you pointed this out because it gives me a chance to go right into the meat of my philosophy. If you don't understand this the first, or even the second or third try, it's okay because it took me about three years of contemplation on this to arrive at the still lowly, feeble understanding I have now. But I am going to try to do this. Read slowly for me...
We live in a world of opposites. Light is trapped in an eternal, dynamic struggle with dark. If we believe something soft exists, then something else must be hard. If we say that it is possible for something to be blue, to have 'blueness', it is logically necessary that it be possible for something to not be blue. The moment that we agree that something is black, we agree it is possible for something to not be. Here is the important part: God is different.
How could God be different? It has to do with language. The Taoists say that the moment you say the name of God, you are no longer referring to God. What they mean is that God trancends this world of things. Human beings have created rational constructs to describe and explain our material existence (words), but when we apply them to God we unintentionally limit God into becoming a rational construct himself. We agree that there is a God....we all experience this divine presence, so we say "God exists". However, in doing so we have already limited God by saying that he must either exist or not exist...............What!?
If this seems crazy it is because our minds are so conditioned by the language we use to label and define our reality that we can no longer think of what came before language, before description, before rational constructs.....before something could be one thing and not the other. The concept of "existence" is something we created to understand the world and also God, but He is not bound by this concept. He is not bound by any concept. To say He is loving is as if to say that He could possibly not be loving. He is beyond love...He created it. To say that He is just is also saying that He could possibly not be just...but He created justice! He is neither just nor unjust, loving nor unloving, good nor bad....He is God. We put labels on him to describe the ways we see and experience Him in our material world, but rational constructs can hardly even point to Him because they are dualistic in nature, while He is the unity of opposites, He is Great I AM...He is everything and nothing at the same time. If this is hard, maybe try asking yourself, "Why not?"
Everything I have ever said about God has never said anything about God...because, it's impossible. Anything I have ever thought about God has not been about God because I can only think with words. Using words, something must be one thing or the other, there are no words to descibe being two opposite things, or everything, at the same time. Just ask physicists, who have discovered that matter can be two things at the same time, and have no idea how to explain it. We have to become aware of the distortion that thinking of God in terms of language, using words, really does to our understanding of Him. We have to recognize that we filter the world dualisticly, distinguishing between this and that, but there can be no dualistic understanding of God. Otherwise, what came before duality? How could God create good and evil if he were not beyond good and evil? How could good create love if he were not beyond love? The moment you say God is anything, you're not talking about God. WHOA.
Back to the issue of whether or not my philosophy of moving beyond religion is a religious doctrine itself, this again is a problem of words. What I am arguing for is a transcension of a language based foundation of belief in God, and yet in order for me to attempt to convey this idea to you I am forced to use language. I use the word transcension because it implies a unity of opposites, because I am not implying that we should choose any language based philosophy over any other, but only that we should forget words all together. My philosophy is not a doctrine or antidoctrine until I have to put it into words, and then of course, like any idea, it becomes either one thing, or the other. I have written way too much, I look forward to responding to other questions when I can...take care.
I wrote "good instead of God" at the end of the second to last paragraph, btw
ReplyDeletelol, i mean "good" instead of "God"....whew.
ReplyDeleteA Books-To-Read List:
ReplyDeleteRavi Zacharias- "Jesus Among Other Gods" and "Can Man Live Without God?" (anything by him, I guess)
Timothy George- "Is the Father of Jesus the God of Muhammad?" (Haven't read it, how lame am I for recommending things I haven't read!)
A.W. Tozer- The Attributes of God (Love it! Helps you understand how to "describe" God without minimizing His nature.)
Ok. You wanted discussion. Wellll..... I have some thoughts too!
1. Scott, you talk a lot about intellect. I think we have to remember 2 things: that our minds and their abilities are gifts from God and should be used to glorify Him; and that if the first is true, I wonder if it is impossible to "over-intellectualize" anything if we are seeking to glorify Him. If anything, as much as we think, God is beyond that (like you said later.) It's like somewhere in the NT when it says our strongest strength is weak compared to God's strength. You said, "Our thoughts, our ideas, and our interpretations corrode our spiritual connection to the divine." I would venture to say our SIN (sometimes communicated through thoughts and ideas) corrodes the spiritual connection.
2. The term "spiritual evolution" seems very self-focused. A follower of Christ can't believe that people must grow/evolve in order to exist because he/she believes their existence is from (and of) God. What is cool to me is that no matter how great we think we are and how much we think we can do on our own, God is the one who ultimately does the planting, the watering, and (through the Holy Spirit) the growing of our faith through so many ways we could never come up with on our own (reference Joe's dream.)
3. As much as the writers seem to be "hating on" the use of words and language, we have to remember that God uses language to reveal Himself. He chose to SPEAK. He did this audibly to people all the time in the OT and even NAMES himself, "Yahweh" and "I AM." You are right, though, that words do no justice for God. A.W. Tozer does a really great job discussing this in the first few chapters of "The Attributes of God."
4. The only way Christians could get off claiming their faith as absolute is because of Jesus. He did it first, and He is God. C.S. Lewis says we can't just believe Jesus was a good man. If we've studied Him, we must come to the conclusion that He is one of three things: Liar, Lunatic, or Lord. (Read "Mere Christianity.")
4b. I do, however, understand the question about people coming to know God in places where the Gospel of Christ is not preached and their place in the world in the face of a loving God. Interesting, isn't it? Looking forward to that post E-rock!
5.Scott said, "You sensed Him before you gave
Him a name." This reminded me of Sunday when our pastor (Midtown Vineyard Community Church) said, "I think children can sense the power and presence of the Holy Spirit." Have you ever noticed that children are drawn toward loving people? And, (this is going to sound strange to some readers!), some even cry and draw back in fear for what seems like no logical reasons? I think they can sense spiritual things we are too pre-occupied to notice. Sounds a little Twilight Zone-ish. Sorry! Just remember to pray for the little ones around you, ok?!
6. "It is no surprise that we became Christian, nor is it a surprise that those who experience God in the context of other religious systems choose those." Let's not forget that in many areas of the world, people do not "choose" religion. It is chosen for them.
7. "Most men can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth
if it would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they
have delighted in explaining to colleagues, have proudly taught to
others, and have woven thread by thread into the fabric of their
lives." Tolstoy... interesting. Not any Christian would say this, but I think we come across several "chuck holes" (not "falsities) in our translation of the Bible, and I don't know why that it is. (For example, there's plenty of verses that John Calvin can use to support his theology and plenty John Wesley could use to back up his, even though they contradict each other.) I think a lot of what you're saying, Scott, is "Two sides, One coin: One man describes one side, another describes the other. It's still a coin." I think this is true, so long as we still recognize it's a coin, so long as we still recognize the truth of the Gospel of Christ.
7. Finally, I've heard a lot of talk about "love." I'd like to see a post defining love. It seems there might be some discrepancies between one definition and another. ;)
Morgan Wood
I agree with you Scott that God is beyond words. There is not a single word, or combination of words, in the human vocabulary (all languages) that can accurately describe God. So we should forget describing God with words and just…well….do what?
ReplyDeleteMy question is, how is it possible to think about God or talk about God without words? Even our thoughts, when we don’t say anything aloud, are in a specific language. When we look at a tree, our brain says “tree.” When we see a bird in the sky our brain says, “bird.” So how can we think about God without words?
To me this plays out like this. Correct me if I am wrong. If I cannot think about God, or talk about God, I must not be able to know God or have any relationship with Him at all. Therefore, my life cannot be changed by God so why should I attempt to live my life any certain way?
This now gives me the freedom to live however I please, say whatever I please, and do whatever I please. If it is of no use to use language to even ATTEMPT to define God and His will for us, we are now free to do anything we want, and essentially still be in the good graces of “God.”
This thought process to me immediately negates Christ, the Bible, Heaven and Hell. There is no use for any of this. If we cannot use words to think about God and discern His will for our lives, we cannot navigate our physical and spiritual lives in a way that leads to eternal life in the presence of God.
I think it is of the utmost importance to think about God using our words. It is the only means we have of intelligently thinking about God. I believe the words of the Christians that came before us give us a starting point for how to think about God (I address this in my post “A Thought on Theology” above). It is human nature to try and define everything in relation to our human experience, it is how we were created. We can’t believe in God without attempting to define him…even when we fall short.
You say that it is impossible to call God “good” without the possibility of him being “bad.” Why does God himself have to be regarded with the possibility of being both good and bad? Can we not say that God is “good” therefore, something ELSE must be “bad”? I think it is true that if something is “blue” we have to have something else that is not blue so that blue can be defined as indeed blue. I don’t think this has to apply to God. God can be good, and his goodness can be in direct contrast to our badness, or Satan’s badness. I don’t think it means that we have to give God the possibility of being bad.
To be honest, this seems like a cop out to me. If I cannot think of God, who came before thought and language, I cannot discern His will for me. Therefore I cannot attempt to live within His will. So I don’t need to try. I’m free to live as I please without the possibility of falling on the wrong side of God’s judgement. Do you see where I am coming from here?
"So we should forget describing God with words and just…well….do what?"
ReplyDeleteLOVE! Describe Him with your ACTIONS.
"So how can we think about God without words?"
You can't and that’s the point. Words are only good for creating a map, but reading a map is not the same as walking across the territory it represents. Now that we have read the map, we have what we need to walk safely on the territory it represents. When we say that God knows our hearts what do we mean? When we say “open the eyes of my heart God, I want to see you” what are we saying? Is it not that we see God with our Spirit and not our mind? Isn’t that where our spiritual connection exists…on a level that has nothing to do with your thoughts, ideas, beliefs, or anything other than your spiritual energy?
"[Then] I must not be able to know God or have any relationship with Him at all. Therefore, my life cannot be changed by God so why should I attempt to live my life any certain way?"
Here is an exemplary case of how we have confused the map with the territory. There is no condition that must be fulfilled for us to have a relationship with God, or for God to work in our lives. The more we embrace love in life, the closer to God we will feel. If thinking about God has led us to an understanding that God exists outside the reach of our thoughts, then great, I will agree with you that our thoughts have served a critical role in bringing us to that understanding. But now that we know that God is outside the reach of our thoughts, where do we go from here?
A Christian mystic I like said, ""You could not do better than to go where it is dark, that is, unconsciousness." Again, I agree that our thoughts have served an important role in our coming to understand God, but we have reached a point when they are serving an important role in keeping us from understanding Him further....I’m talking about a spiritual understanding, not a rational one...and this is what Jesus meant when He said that a time is coming when men will worship in Spirit and Truth. To answer your question Joe, the reason you should attempt to live your life in a certain way is because it is through love that God is revealed in this world, and when we act out of love not only do we find peace and joy for ourselves, but we develop an almost divine influence because everything in this world benefits from love. Only when you love do you know God...only then do you have a relationship. I agree with you that humans are not capable of loving unconditionally, but even in the simplest loving act more of God is revealed than you will find in the most well written rational description of God. The reason Christianity is not more contagious, and its message is rejected, is because it puts words before actions. When you have love in action there is no reason to rationalize. If everyone who believes in God would just shut up and show love a new age would emerge on Earth.
“You say that it is impossible to call God “good” without the possibility of him being “bad.” Why does God himself have to be regarded with the possibility of being both good and bad? Can we not say that God is “good” therefore, something ELSE must be “bad””
What I am saying is that when we say God is good and something else is bad, we limit God by saying that the creator of all things exists WITHIN the rational construct of good vs bad, which is a product of a world He created. You are placing Him within His creation, which is fine, but does He not also exist outside of it? Outside of good and evil?
Can you think of an object that simultaneously possesses a quality of infinite lightness and also infinite darkness? Of course not, this is a purely irrational idea. But guess what, ultimately so is God. 'Good' and 'bad' are maps, words used to symbolically express the degree to which something in this world benefits us. That’s it. So yeah God always benefits us, but before there was anything to receive his love he existed (and still does) on level that was not good, bad, dark, light, soft, hard, or any other concept. If you filter God through your mind, through your rational understanding, I agree that the best description would be that God is good, that God is love, that God is righteous, etc. I use the word “filter” because that’s what your mind is, and this is why our understanding of God is ultimately limited by it. The way our minds work, we look at the territory through the filter of our map (our words!), and consequently the map distorts our perception of the territory. Instead of using the map as our guide, it becomes our reality altogether.
“f I cannot think of God, who came before thought and language, I cannot discern His will for me. Therefore I cannot attempt to live within His will. So I don’t need to try. I’m free to live as I please without the possibility of falling on the wrong side of God’s judgement.”
You don’t need to try to rationally discern God’s will…you need to seek love in all things and it will naturally flow through you. You don’t have to attempt to live within His will, it will live within you when you love, and it won't when you don't. You are free to live as you please, but there are things that bring you closer to God and things that don’t, and which do you think will bring you true peace and joy? That right there is Christ’s message in as many words as you will ever need. Forget all the rest!