Going Beyond the Argument

Last Sunday, our God Debate series presented “Going Beyond the Argument”. The series has attempted to frame the way we would like to address those who espouse the new atheism. We think that much of the dialogue so far has been missing the point.

For instance, take the current hot potato in the interface between religion and science, the issue of origins. For people of Christian faith who have committed themselves to Scriptural authority, the seemingly contrary explanations on origins remains perplexing. On the one hand, a Christian faith position does necessarily rule out any explanation which puts chance as the ruling mechanism of the universe. In place of chance, the Christian faith position asserts that the infinite-personal God is not only the first cause of the universe but its continuing cause, and that He is lovingly and wisely bringing all things towards their intended purpose. Randomness and chance are ruled out.

But on the other side, it is important for us who affirm the authority of Scripture to admit that the “how” of creation -- that is, how God has brought the universe into being -- is a question that we are still in the process of discovering. And science can help us here. It is vital for us who affirm the authority of the Scriptures to understand what we have in the creation accounts of Genesis 1-2; simply put, that these passage are not meant for scientific purpose. It is better to see these passages (we have two different creation stories in Genesis 1-2) as poetic tellings of of a theological perspective. The twin creation stories of Genesis 1-2 are meant to be a statement on God as first cause, on creation as ordered and intended for a purpose beyond itself, and on humanity’s place within the created order as God’s special focus. Genesis 1-2 speaks to the why more than the how.

It would be helpful for us to notice that creation theology is everywhere present in Scripture. I would suggest that Psalm 8 is just such a text:

When I look at the night sky and see the work of your fingers— the moon and the stars you set in place— what are mere mortals that you should think about them, human beings that you should care for them? [Psalm 8:3-4, NLT]

The question here is not one of how we arrived as we are, but what our essential identity is, and what our human purpose and destiny might be. The psalm goes on to assert humanity’s special place within the creation order, a statement that leads to further questions of course, but at least asserts that much. In this view, human beings are not merely the top of the food chain, but are instead creatures that are uniquely relatable to God.
Finally, creation should not be thought of in stagnant terms, as in the idea that God set the universe in motion and now stands by to nudge it once in a while. That view would be called a deist position, the idea that while God exists and is creator, he is not involved in the unfolding development of our universe. This is not the Biblical idea of creation.

Instead, the fuller idea of God as creator sees that the material world around is something he has not only called into being, but something he is still inherently present with, especially as he brings the universe forward into it destiny and purpose. Theologians call this the creatio continua, or continuing creation. It is fascinating to consider that in the resurrection of Jesus, we have the first of what the Scriptures call the new creation, the reality beyond what we now experience. While this current cultural moment finds us debating the how questions of the universe we live in, the Scriptures are focused elsewhere, on the new creation of transformed souls and renewed order of things.

Whatever our opinion or perspective on this issue, what we have tried to do through this series is push past the sound bites on either side, and to create the possibility of moving the discussion into a much more dialogical approach. We need a new kind of wisdom to navigate the questions, to humbly admit that we are capable of projecting ideas into the biblical text that are not supported there, and, on the other side, courageously challenge those uses of science that are more philosophical than evidential. Avoiding these two extremes while allowing Scripture and science to talk to each other is a far more positive and helpful approach. And it just may save some people from the needless false dichotomy that currently exists between religion and science.

The God Debate series concludes this weekend with a live discussion between Chris, Jeremy and Bob. We call this new event Deep Dive Live. We welcome your questions which you can submit live or by email to info@wkc.org. The action will take place Sunday at 9:29 and 11:11 am.

Bob

Listening

Last Sunday, we continued our series, The God Debate, with a talk on Science and Religion. Recent public assertions that the God hypothesis cannot be considered credible is a challenge we would like to engage. But the way we engage the question matters as much as the perspective we bring; we want to move past the sound bites that fly overhead, and present a stance that listens as well as shares our way of understanding.

Science (Latin: scientia) literally means knowledge. There was a time in classical culture when theology (the knowledge of God) was considered the “queen of the sciences” because it was the knowledge that ordered all other kinds of knowledge. In the popular imagination, that time has past it seems. But the question of how various kinds of knowledge relate to each other remains an important question, especially as science and religion seem to be at odds with each other.

Science is commonly understood as a method of gaining knowledge. It begins with observation of the material world, notices patterns and tendencies, makes hypotheses about patterns, and tests those patterns by repeatable experiments. Experiment is “experience”, the way we encounter the repeatable ways the material universe behaves. We then move from the observable and repeatable nature of what we see and propose “scientific” laws. This is a method that has proven immensely helpful for understanding of our material world. The fatal move, we think, is when this methodology asserts that what is sees is all there is, that the eye is capable of complete knowing.

One way to understand the difference between scientific knowing and religious knowing is through the various capacities of our senses. In science, the eye is critical, the principle way to know reality: “seeing is believing”. In religious knowing, especially in the Judeo-Christian tradition, the ear is more important than the eye, not because the eye is distrusted, but because there is a personal reality that the eye cannot see. In the Biblical tradition, the universe we inhabit is not primarily material but personal, populated by persons whose reality is deeper than appearances. The first premise of reality is the infinite-personal God who speaks and listens and invites us into relationship with him. While we can know something about God through what we see, we can know much more about him through what we hear.

Psalm 19 provides an excellent meditation on this Biblical idea and I recommend reading it with the question of science and religion in mind. It begins, “the heavens declare the glory of God” (v.1) and goes on to say that there is a kind of “voice” that creation has: “day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge” (v.2). The perspective here is that creation itself speaks, and however dimly we hear it, there is a kind of speech that it makes to us. We must listen to understand reality.

But then this psalm makes a critical move that focuses our hearing onto a firmer and clearer kind of speech. The statement is definitive for a Biblical faith: “The law [or word] of the LORD is perfect, refreshing the soul” (v.7). What follows in this psalm are various descriptors of the words of God and the ways his words bring a kind of knowledge to us that our eye could simply not perceive. It is an affirmation of knowing that is personal and morally transformative because this knowledge of God is not dis-engaged observance but meant for personal and connected knowledge.

The psalmist ends this way: “May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer” (v.14). Knowledge in the Biblical tradition proposes is one that listens and learns to answer back, and that one becomes changed through the exercise. Again, this kind of knowledge is based on the ear, not the eye.

We want to say to those who put science over religion that while we have no quarrel with what science actually shows us about the material universe, it really has little to say about the mystery of persons who inhabit this universe, especially the personal God who speaks. We want to propose another kind of knowledge that is based in the ear and not in the eye.

This coming Sunday, we continue the God Debate series with a message entitles “Going Beyond the Argument”. We hope that you can join us at 9:29 or 11:11 am.

Bob

Faith and Reason

Perhaps you have heard about the recent advertising campaign for the “no God” option. The slogan, There’s probably is no God: now stop worrying and enjoy your life, has been displayed on public transit in the UK and now Canada. People have taken all kinds of positions on these ads, some welcoming the discussion, some wanting these questions to remain private and personal, and others seeing these messages as hateful or disrespectful. What do you think?

Last Sunday, we began our new series, The God Debate, with the intention of talking about this recent ferment in public theological conversation (a rare event to be sure). We want to respond to the assertions of notable atheists like Richard Dawkins who contend that religion has had far too privileged a position in our culture, and that there is a better, healthier, and more enlightened position: the “no God” option, and all that goes with it. In fact, writers like Dawkins see religion as a delusion, a mistaken and dangerous claim on knowledge. The debate really centers here: what counts as real knowledge? And how can anyone claim to know God?

The Biblical and Christian traditions carry within them the resources to enter such dialogue with profound intellectual depth. One of the best responses to the new atheism from a Christian perspective is Dinesh D’Souza’s best seller What’s So Great About Christianity. I highly recommend it for those who want to go deeper into the questions.

But what about faith? Is faith reasonable? Is faith knowledge? I want to suggest that while faith has its reasons, it is ultimately a way of knowing based on a more personal and engaged stance. Faith is the kind of knowing that comes through encounter and participation. God makes this possible in fact; through Jesus, he has immersed himself in our human story, living it from the inside. The invitation to us is to respond, to participate in the life that Jesus invites us to. One way of seeing Christian baptism is a personal immersion in the life of Jesus to the degree that we begin to know it from the inside. Faith, then, is the kind of knowledge that comes through direct involvement; it is the knowledge of personal participation.

So much of our usual way of thinking about knowledge or truth relates to our Greek intellectual tradition: the Greek word alethia suggests the truth is something that must be uncovered, the reality that lies deeper than appearances. While this is a helpful perspective, for the Greek mind truth had more to do with the world of things versus a world of persons. The Hebrews started their search for knowledge in a different place entirely, beginning as they did with the premise of God (Gen 1:1). So the Hebrew word emet (truth) is more like faithfulness, the quality of a dependable person. For the Hebrews, the possibility of human knowing is grounded in the personal creator-God; truth is grounded in the ultimate Someone we can know.

This means simply that our knowledge of God does not arrive through disengaged analysis, but as we respond to the life he offers. Let me give you a Biblical illustration of this. When Jesus first announced himself to Israel he was baptized by John. John had been prepared in a very special way to recognize Jesus as God’s Messiah, and he said gave witness of this understanding to those who were with him. And while all were intrigued with John’s statements, they did not know what John did, not at first. Their understanding of who Jesus was came through ordinary relational means, through the discovery of shared life.

Because of John’s testimony, two of John’s followers began to follow Jesus, as John 1:38-39 tells us:

Jesus looked around and saw them following. “What do you want?” he asked them.
They replied, “Rabbi” (which means “Teacher”), “where are you staying?”
“Come and see,” he said.

This is how we know God in Jesus. We enter into the life he offers us and try it out from the inside. “Come and see” is in invitation, an act of generous hospitality. Jesus says to us, “step into my life and find out who I am.” Millions of Jesus-followers have come to know him in precisely this way. They know God from the inside of the relationship.

This coming Sunday, we continue our God Debate series with a message on Religion and Science. We hope that you can join us at 9:29 or 11:11 am.

Bob

Different Way of Being

This past Sunday we concluded our vision series The Method and the Madness. We hope that you have appreciated our “thinking out loud” about what we are focusing on as a community. Airing out the background strategies and concepts at Westside is necessary because of the diversity and breadth of our community. When we take time to go through a process like these past few weeks, we have the chance to draw together in common purpose.

The three elements of this vision series were communication, community and compassion. My thought as we conclude this series is this: how do these three vital components intersect? What is it that acts as the animating core for the various pieces of our vision? After considering this over the past week I want to simply suggest that it is our intention to organize ourselves around the person of Jesus and the opportunity to make Him known in the culture that surrounds us. We want Jesus to be the center of what we say, how we relate, and what we do.

First, communication. Westside thinks through its communication strategy because first, there is something to be said (good news), and second, because there are resistances in our culture to the message we represent. So we try to find a starting point in the common life of our audience before we move towards what we call “the deep voice of Scripture”. We think that there are enough examples in Scripture for us to adopt this as our method of communication, especially in a culture that is post-biblical. This is simply our chosen strategic move, but at the heart of what you will hear us say each week is “take a look at Jesus -- who he is, how he lived, and what he has done for us”.

Second, community. We realize that the very idea of “church” brings with it concepts about religion that people easily trip over. The word religio (Latin) has literally to do with binding something; a religion is an idea that binds us to a worldview and a way of living. While religion can have its benefits, religion can also bind us to fear and dysfunction. We believe that Jesus showed a different way than the way of religion. At Westside, we want to take seriously the idea that we are bound to Jesus as the center and focus of our community, as the one around whom we form friendship and give support. For after all is said and done, we are not so much bound to an idea as to a person, the one who called us together. The great ideas of the Christian faith -- love, forgiveness, and change -- are relational ideas and they call us to be involved with God and with each other in redemptive ways.

And finally, compassion, the natural extension of our communication and community. This past Sunday we remembered the famous hymn from Philippians chapter 2:5-11:
Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

We have come to believe that Jesus-inspired compassion is the natural result of a message and a community that is focused on him. And this is because we recognize that Jesus is the gift of God’s overflowing and out-going love, a love we want to carry into our homes, work-places, and neighborhoods. But we want to think even further beyond those natural connecting points, consider the world we live in, and begin to move towards the change that can come when we decide to act with compassion.

So here is the essence of what we are saying: Jesus needs to be heard in what we say, how we get along with each other, and in the ways we choose to live in the world – and this ‘different way of being’ is something that needs to be lived out in the culture that surrounds us.

This coming Sunday, we begin a new series we are calling The God Debate, a discussion on the interface between classic Christian belief and what is often called “the new atheism”. We hope that you can join us at 9:29 or 11:11 am.

Bob