the Way?

The road less travelled

☰

A new(ish) website

November 28th, 2023 in About. Tags: , ,
Jesus in the temple

the Way? has been going for more than 12 years now. It’s been fun, and I hope helpful to the almost 400,000 people who have visited (about 100 a day on average).

I started the site to assist Christians who were looking to renew their understanding of their faith. As I interacted with these and some of my own friends, I found that the questions and the doubts were becoming deeper.

So I began to re-focus the Way? more specifically on faith deconstruction and reconstruction. And I felt some of the material on the church – how we could do church better in thetwenty-first century – was less relevant to people who were less sure they wanted to be a Christian, let alone attend church or even care about it.

Yet I still feel the state of the church is a major issue that desperately needs attention.

I needed a spin-off

If it’s good enough for movies and TV shows to have spin-offs that move in different directions to the original, why not me?

So I have started a new blog – Let’s overturn these tables – to focus on changing the church to fit our times. (Actually it is an old website that wasn’t really public, that I just used for my own reference, but I have now re-vamped it.) The name comes from a Bob Dylan song plus Jesus’ actions in the Jerusalem temple.

So I’ll be removing some material from the Way? so it can focus on faith reconstruction, and will also be blogging at Let’s overturn these tables.

Thanks for your interest in reading my blog. I hope you’ll continue at one site or the other …. or both!

We need less Bible study!

November 8th, 2023 in Bible. Tags: , , , ,
Bible study group

Did I catch your attention?

I hope so. But I am serious about this. I think this is important.

So, can we really have too much of the Word of God? How can the scriptures not be good for us? Read on to see how.

Bad image ….

I don’t know about you, but the words “Bible study” don’t give me a very attractive picture. I see a bunch of well-meaning Christians closeted away from normal life while they discuss words and doctrines. It’s not a good look. It sort of seems inward-looking. Perhaps that’s a little unfair, but that is the image I have.

This is in contrast to Jesus, who was dynamic, always on the move, challenging the religious authorities, standing up for the down-trodden and engaging with friend and foe alike. Of course he must have studied his scriptures, but his focus was outwards.

You might argue that appearances don’t matter. But if living as a Christian isn’t attractive, and seems a little detached and nerdy, then we Christians have a bad PR problem and may be deterring potential converts for no good reason..

But anyway, I think the problem is actually more substantial.

…. bad reality?

Jesus was big on his followers keeping to his teachings.

  • He said if we love him, we’ll keep his commands (John 14:15).
  • He told a little story of a son who said all the right things but didn’t deliver and another who spoke against obedience but ended up obeying anyway (Matthew 21:28-32). And it is clear it was action he approved of, not empty words.
  • He said “My mother and brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.” (Luke 8:21).
  • His parting command to his followers (Matthew 28:18-20) included making disciples and “teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you”.

His brother, James, was even more direct, saying God didn’t want those who merely heard the words of scripture, but those who obeyed (James 1:22). And the apostle Paul says that knowledge without love isn’t helpful (1 Corinthians 13:2).

So if we want to follow Jesus, study or knowledge aren’t the primary reason why we read the Bible. Acting on what we read is the objective. The Bible is the means, not the end.

This ought to be obvious – I think it is obvious. But churches that focus strongly on Bible knowledge and right doctrine (as they define it) sometimes seem to miss it. For them, right belief (as they see it), sometimes even on minor matters, is super important.

My experience over many years is that sermons tend to make people passive listeners at best and often passive without listening. Bible study groups can continue to refresh the church’s dogma without leading to participants focusing on action in response.

I think we can do better.

Bible obedience groups?

Why don’t we have Bible obedience groups? Put the focus less on knowledge and more on putting the teachings into practice.

A lot of the Bible’s teaching is very simple. Love God and love your neighbour. Forgive those who hurt us. Love our enemies. Care for those who are hurting or doing it tough. Believe in Jesus. Make disciples. (Matthew 22:36-40, Luke 17:3-4, Matthew 25:31-46, John 5:24, Matthew 28:18-20.)

It doesn’t take a lot of study to know and understand those teachings. The hard thing is doing them.

Perhaps we should focus on the things we do understand and worry later about the parts that are harder to understand and require deeper study?

How might we do this?

We have found it helpful to look at teachings like the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-12) and the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) and choose one virtue at a time to focus on. We read the passage, discuss what it means with an emphasis on how we might obey it, then set ourselves the “homework” of trying to focus on it in the coming week. Next week we share how we went, our successes, what we found difficult, and new perspectives we gained. We pray about our progress and generally give ourselves a second week to keep the focus. Then we move on to another virtue or command.

Other Bible passages that allow this sort of treatment (some of which we have tried) focus on prayer, sharing our faith, the armour of God (Ephesians 6:10-20), and Paul’s ethical teachings (e.g. Ephesians 4:17-32).

It is possible to go deeper in our responses, by focusing on the same virtue of 6 weeks or more, long enough to hopefully develop a new habit. Mark Scandrette runs “learning labs” for this purpose, and for those who can’t attend one of these, his books and handbooks are useful sources of inspiration and ideas.

Groups that attempt this approach need to be open, supportive and non-judgmental, recognising that we are all on a journey.

Let’s do it!

Let’s take thoughtful steps to learning to be doers of Jesus’ teachings and not just hearers or studiers.

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Image by wirestock on Freepik.

Making assumptions about the Bible?

October 18th, 2023 in Bible. Tags: , , , , , ,
Man reading Bible

The Bible is one of the most well-known books in the world and has a place in the culture of most people who would read this.

That means most of us, whether we believe in the Bible or not, have views about what it is and how it should be read before we actually come to read it.

But what if many of those assumptions are actually questionable?

Word of God?

Many Christians describe the Bible as the “Word of God” because they regard it is emanating from God in some way. Most believe this means God must have led the authors to write accurately, perhaps perfectly. It may have been written by individuals with their own language and culture, but it is essentially God’s book.

Critical non-believers tend to buy into the same narrative. If they can find an error or inconsistency in the Bible, they believe they have shown it CANNOT be God’s Word.

But must a religion’s scriptures be directly from God and perfect to be believed and followed?

Muslims believe the Quran was dictated by God to the prophet, and therefore perfect. Mormons believe the Book of Mormon was written by ancient prophets and revealed on golden plates. But the scriptures of other major religions are not necessarily considered to be directly from God.

Jewish scriptures

This question is so complex it merits a separate post (which I may write some day). Here is just the briefest summary.

The Jewish Tanakh (more or less the Old Testament of the Bible) appears to have been edited and revised over time and often contains different accounts and persectives on the same events and issues. Parts of the Tanakh and other writings such as the Midrash revise and apply the earlier teachings to later times. Authoritative rabbis were significant interpreters of the Torah and some of their writings are included in the Talmuds, which in some ways are more practically authoritative than the Torah.

So while the Torah is considered by many Jews to have been given directly to Moses by God, this communal reworking of traditions via the common Rabbinical practice of dialogue and debate, means that in practice the teachings of the Jewish scriptures were not set in stone. Rather, they can be seen as sources for argument and discussion.

Hindu and Buddhist scriptures

As far as I can tell, the Hindu and Buddhist scriptures are even further removed from the idea of a perfect code of doctrine and practice handed down from God, not least because Hinduism has hundreds of gods and Buddhism is agnostic about God. The Vedas, Upanishads, Puran and other writings (Hinduism) and the Tripitaka and the Mahayana Sutras (Buddhism) make no claim to divine authorship, but rather were written by ancient sages and scribes.

Assessing the Christian Bible

So it isn’t inherently necessary for a religion’s scriptures to be inerrant writings handed down from on high. The question has to be assessed on its merits:

  • Does the Bible make this claim explicitly?
  • Do the contents of the Bible show that it could or couldn’t be without error and the very words of God?

I have given reasons elsewhere (In what way is the Bible a special book?) for believing that the Bible doesn’t make this claim and there is good internal evidence to reject it. Its inspiration appears to be more organic and less direct than that.

Anachronistic interpretation

We know the Bible is a collection of writings in three different languages by many different people over a period of almost a millennium. Most were Jews writing in a Jewish culture about Jewish religious beliefs. We read it in translation.

Yet despite this, it is all too easy to read it as if it was written in our time, culture and language. As a result, too often we misunderstand the genre of the writings and miss what the original authors were saying.

Science or folk tale?

The Old Testament contains many statements that can be interpreted as reporting scientific fact. The creation accounts in Genesis 1 & 2 and the worldwide flood later in Genesis are the most obvious examples. Others include a flat-earth geocentric cosmology, the description of insects as having four legs and giving the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter as 3 (when in reality it is pi = 3.1416 approx).

Sceptics can have fun mocking these inaccuracies and believers can try to defend their accuracy, but both miss the point. The ancient writers weren’t writing scientific texts, but were writing in the language and thought forms of their day to communicate what they regarded as theological truths. Doing otherwise would have made their message more difficult to understand – see Moses learns science.

History or pious story?

Narrative books in the Old Testament need not be historical to get their message across. The Israelites, like other ancient peoples, often told stories which taught ethics, or theology or national identity. They were passed down orally from generation to generation, and altered and embellished in the process. Sometimes the stories were broadly factual, sometimes not.

Books such as Ruth, Job, Jonah, Esther and Daniel tell a story about each of the people named, but it isn’t certain whether they were intended to be seen as historical or simply as stories that illustrate some religious or ethical truth. Quite likely the stories contain factual information about a real person mixed with legend.

Some Jews (and some Christians) have seen much of the Old Testament as non-historical while others have accepted its general historicity.

Before we make any decision about historicity and genre of these ancient texts, it is wise to consider how both ancient and modern Jews read them.

A set of rules to obey?

Modern western people are comfortable with instructions – how to take medicines, use computer apps or follow GPS directions. It is easy for us to see scriptures as instructions on what to believe and how to behave. And it is true that the Bible contains these – the Ten Commandments or some of Paul’s letters are like this.

But the Old Testament sometimes contains contradictory perspectives and teachings. Experts say that Jewish thought was comfortable with the idea that different viewpoints could be given for consideration and discussion.

We moderns can foolishly try to resolve the inconsistencies rather than try to see them as the ancient Jews did.

Totally truthful or totally worthless?

This is another one where believers and critics alike can use the same argument. Conservative Christians, apparently trying to scare fellow believers out of questioning the Bible, often argue that if we question any part of the Bible, we can no longer trust any of it. Sceptics sometimes use the same argument to draw the conclusion that nothing in the Bible can be trusted.

It’s an invalid argument on both sides. The Bible isn’t one book but many. It has many different authors, many different genres of writing and different purposes. Its contents were written at different times and into different situations. There are massive differences in language, culture, time and belief between the Old and New Testaments.

One book may be imaginative (e.g. Job or Revelation) while another may be quite historical (e.g. Acts). The Torah is foundational for a Jew, whereas it is “old covenant” for a Christian, for whom the gospels are foundational. The message of Ecclesiastes or Proverbs is very different to the message of Romans.

So the historical accurcay or truth of one book is not an indication of the same for another book. Each one stands or falls on its own merits

A Christian may believe the entire Bible is without error and all parts are equally useful in their faith. But it seems unwise to make that a starting assumption, but to look at the evidence – which suggests that not all books are equally historical accurate.

Unsophisticated?

I have heard sceptics dismiss the Old Testament as emanating from uneducated Bronze Age goat-herders. This probably works if you want to use scorn rather than logic. But the experts tell us that many of these writings are quite sophisticated in their ideas and expression.

  • The Genesis creation story stands out from contemporary accounts for its monotheism.
  • Job is a sophisticated discussion of the origin of evil.
  • The developing understanding of an ethical, loving, monotheistic God is markedly different from other cultures and writings of the period.
  • Luke, the writer of Luke’s Gospel and Acts was (according to historian Maurice Casey) “an outstanding historian by ancient standards”.
  • John’s Gospel is a sophisticated piece of writing in its ideas, expression, themes and structure.

Judging these writings by modern everyday standards is unwise if we want to do justice to the writers.

So can we trust the New Testament?

We answer this question in the same way. What is the purpose and genre of each book? And the answer is pretty clear for most of them.

Most scholars are now agreed the Gospels are the genre of ancient biography (generally known by the Greek term bios). This genre of writing has (in general) the following characteristics:

  • They were written about a particular person (generally someone inspirational to the writer), and named in the opening prologue or introduction. The text is framed to outline that person’s teachings and actions, and to provide an example to emulate.
  • The aim was to present the truth about the subject, albeit with the purpose of sharing how the writer finds the subject inspirational. Good biographers didn’t deliberately invent, but used sources they believed were reliable and based on eyewitnesses.

Thus it is foolish to apply conclusions we may draw about books like Job and Joshua to the gospels. They are quite a different genre and have much more significant claims to being historical.

Of course it remains for scholars, and eventually each of us, to decide whether we believe the gospels are accurate or not. Again we can see quite opposite views, with conservative Christians holding to complete accuracy and trying to explain every apparent anomaly, while sceptics seize on any anomaly to throw doubt on the whole.

It seems that ancient Jewish texts that were compiled from oral sources generally preserve the main information reliably while being less strict about some of the details. This seems to be true of the Biblical gospels.

There is enough history in the gospels to trust the poicture they present of Jesus and his teachings, even though there are still anomalies.

Better discussions, better conclusions

I suggest Christians and sceptics alike could form better conclusions if we all examined our asssumptions and took greater account of what the experts say. Discussions between believers and unbelievers could proceed from a much better basis.

What do YOU think?

Further reading

Photo by cottonbro studio.

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Faith is a journey

September 16th, 2023 in Deconstruction. Tags: , , , ,
Walking on a journey

Do you see Christian faith as something fixed to hold onto, or as a journey of change?

It is possible to see it in either way. For some, Christian faith was “was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people” (Jude 3) and we cannot depart from this without slipping into error.

But it is also possible to see life with Jesus as a journey of growth, perhaps like John Bunyan set out in The Pilgrim’s Progress.

I’m firmly in the second group. Here’s how I see it.

Revealed once and for all?

There are some good reasons to think our Christian belief is fixed and cannot vary. After all, the Bible is fixed, with no additions possible. The gospels give us the story of Jesus from the first eyewitnesses, so that is fixed also. And God doesn’t change, right? So he doesn’t get things wrong the first time and have to give updates like buggy Microsoft software.

But these reasons don’t stand up to scrutiny.

We learn things

As we gain knowledge, we occasionally have to re-assess what we believe God or the Bible are teaching us. There are many examples:

  • Scholars discover more accurate versions of the Biblical text, or more accurate translations based on better understanding of Greek and Hebrew, or changing word meanings in our culture.
  • Scientific discoveries can change the way we understand the text.
    • The Biblical worldview, especially early on, was of a flat earth with a “firmament” (basically a hard surface) above the sky keeping the waters above the earth from flooding us. While that view is understandable (it is how things may seem), we now know that the world isn’t like this.
    • For many Christians (including me) the theory of evolution shows that Genesis 1-3 cannot be simply interpreted literally, however we may see it.
    • Archaeology can both confirm or throw doubt on Biblical accounts. For example, the archaeology of Canaan in the period 1400 BCE to 1100 BCE confirms that the account in Joshua 13-24 is more historical than the account in Joshua 1-12.
  • Understanding the culture of first century Israel enhances, and sometimes changes, our understanding of Jesus’ ministry.

The Holy Spirit teaches us new things

Jesus promised that God’s Spirit would lead his followers into truth (John 16:13) and it is an ongoing process (“whatever he hears he will speak”). So there are new things we may need to know.

We have seen this in the two thousand year history of the church. Time and time again, the church, or part of it, has gone off track or needed new inspiration, and new ideas have come to the fore, for example:

  • the early church councils
  • monasticism, especially St Francis
  • the Reformation and the Anabaptists
  • the modern missionary movement
  • Pentecostalism and the charismatic renewal
  • the Salvation Army and the recognition of community welfare and justice.

If the church had refused to change at these important times, we wouldn’t be where we are today. To determine to remain static stifles the Spirit.

Does God never change?

Any good teacher or parent knows there are appropriate times and ways to teach certain information, and other times and methods that are inappropriate. An understanding of a person’s situation is crucial in communicating effectively with them.

So how could God be any different?

We should expect that God will have truths, or aspects of truth, that are inappropriate, unhelpful or less relevant at some times, but important at others. We can see this in the scriptures, where the moral law revealed in the Old Testament was external, based on actions. But in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus revealed a “higher law”, based on love and internal attitudes that went beyond external actions.

My life as a journey of faith

My life illustrates this. My understanding of Christian doctrine, the church and the Bible have all developed over half a century, and (I hope) are still developing. Thankfully, I am not the opinionated but somewhat ignorant person I was when I was twenty. (It isn’t for me to judge how much I have “improved”, doubtless others who know me will have varying opinions! 🙂 )

I have written up my thought and life journeys:

  • Eighty years in the making – how I came to believe in Jesus, why I continue to try to follow him 6 decades later, and how my beliefs have changed along the way.
  • Church and me – my experience of church, how I’ve tried to serve God and people through the church, and some of the lessons I’ve learned.
  • How I learned to love the Bible in a new way. This is a new page, where I tell the story of how a “good Presbyterian laddie” (as my first Minister described me) gradually came to see the Bible in a whole new way.

I hope this encourages you to be on a journey of discovery too. I’d be interested to hear your story.

Photo by Sharefaith.

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First Nations: how did we get to here?

August 28th, 2023 in Changing the world. Tags: , , , ,

My previous post (Is God woke?) led to me being asked some questions about First Nations people in Australia, and whether they deserve any special consideration by Government or white people generally.

I think we can only understand, and respond to, the present situation if we have considered the history of First Nations peoples and new settlers. So here is my understanding of how we got from there to here. (I have tried to be accurate here, but have had to simplify and in parts this is a personal perspective.)

All this is in the context of a referendum in about 2 months time which will ask the Australian people to agree to establishing a First Nations “Voice” to Parliament, an advisory body which will give First Nations people greater opportunity to seek justice and a better future through Government policy.

First Nations people before colonisation

The ancestors of the Aboriginal people arrived in Australia something like 60,000 years ago. By the time European settlers arrived in 1788, they were grouped into hundreds of nations, clans and languages. They lived a simple life governed by complex lore passed on by song, story and dance, and defining all aspects of life – behaviour, care of country, kinship and community. It was passed on and overseen by elders.

I would say their culture was built on respect – for country, for elders and for their lore or traditions. Unlike Europeans, they didn’t think the land belonged to them to use, or exploit, as they wished. Rather they were part of their country and stewards of it. So they moved around their country depending on the season and what food was available at the time. By carefully selecting what foods to eat and how much to take before moving on, their practices were sustainable.

The impact of European colonisation

The establishment of a penal colony in Sydney in 1788 had severely detrimental effects on the life of those clans in the vicinity, and eventually effected all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

  • They lost their country as European settlement expanded without respect for them, and saw their country destroyed as the colonists, cleared land, built towns and cities, and killed native animals. Many First Nations people were forced off their own country to live on another clans’ country.
  • Many clans virtually wiped out by diseases like smallpox (to which they had no natural immunity).
  • Many individuals and families were killed by settlers, either because the First Nations people resisted the invasion of their country, or simply to eliminate them. Hundreds of massacre sites have now been identified.
  • Population numbers were drastically reduced. Those that remained lost their culture along with their land – traditional ceremonies, lifestyle and food sources were no longer possible – and in some cases they lost cultural memory because elders were unable to pass on lore.
  • They experienced iscrimination, racism and treatment as “savages”, which tended to push them to the margins and sometimes led to them being effectively slaves.
  • When Aboriginal people worked for Europeans, they were grossly underpaid, further worsening the gap between black and white.
  • When clan family life disintegrated for many people, many children were removed from families, perhaps out of genuine concern for the child, but often with the aim of eliminating Aboriginal genetics and making the children effectively “white”.

Until the middle of the 20th century, white Australians treated First Nations people paternalistically and discriminately. They weren’t even counted in the Census until 1967.

First Nations people today

Several pathways were theoretically open to First nations people:

  • They could try to retain as much of their traditional culture and life as possible. This might have been the default, but was more or less impossible due to the immense disruption to their land and culture. The result is that many remote Aboriginal communities have neither traditional sources of food, life and meaning nor white Australian property, income and respect.
  • They could leave their culture behind and assimilate into white Australian life. Many do this, so that outsiders might not be aware of their heritage.
  • Some First Nations people, perhaps more gifted or with more opportunity, have tried to retain identity while living within white society. However this was a difficult and slow journey – e.g. the first Aboriginal person to complete a University course graduated only in only 1959. Even today indigenous people are under-represented in Government, higher education, the media and senior management.

The outcomes for First Nations people have been poor (to say the least) in many areas: life expectancy, child mortality, early childhood education, progress in school, educational status, and employment. They are over-represented in substance abuse statistics, in the criminal justice system and in the number of children in out of home care. I believe these are all symptoms of cultural disfunction and loss of meaning and hope.

It is these latter statistics that form the basis of views that First Nations people shouldn’t receive special treatment and welfare, and need rather to “lift their game”.

Responses to Aboriginal disadvantage

A referendum in 1967 enabled First Nations people to be counted as part of Australia’s population and the Australian Government could make laws for them (previously it was all handled by the states, which led to inconsistency and discriminatory policies). Since then, the Australian Government has tried to address Aboriginal disadvantage. Since 2008 the Government has set specific “closing the gap” targets.

First Nations people receive higher per capita levels of Government support, though the exact amount has been argued over. It is clear that this support isn’t effectively closing the gap. Indigenous disadvantage remains, and in some cases is getting worse.There are two very different responses to this:

  1. First Nations people and advocates urge the government to consult more with indigenous people and spend more wisely. In the past white Australia has stolen their land, their wages, their children and their lives, it is argued, and we have a moral obligation to reverse the effects of this.
  2. Critics argue that too much has been wasted. Minority groups shouldn’t receive special treatment. Indigenous people have to simply work harder, sort out their substance and family abuse problems and get on with life like everyone else. Leave history behind.

The Voice to Parliament

In 2015, the Australian Government set up an extensive consultation process culminating in a First Nations National Constitutional Convention which produced a statement of how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islands peoples wanted to be recognised in the Australian Constitution. This statement was called the Uluru Statement from the Heart, because it was, symbolically, the result of a meeting near Uluru in the centre of Australia.

The statement calls for structural reforms, recognising the continuing sovereignty of Indigenous peoples and to address structural “powerlessness” that has led to severe disparities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. It calls for Voice, Treaty and Truth.”

Later this year, Australians will be asked to vote in a referendum to support, or not support, the required changes in the Constitution.

My personal response

I have several indigenous friends and acquaintances and I know this is very important to them. My response flows from my friendship and awareness.

1. The suffering of indigenous people is undeniable

They weren’t treated humanely and they really did lose everything at the hands of European colonists. For many years they weren’t given a fair go. Their culture is much less individualistic than western culture, making it harder to fit in with white culture. They have evolved to thrive on a simpler diet and they are more prone to suffer from western diseases and conditions.

2. This mistreatment has had lingering effects

This past isn’t just history; it has lingering effects in the present. Stolen wages condemned so many Aboriginal people to a poverty-stricken life with limited opportunity. Poor education opportunities reduced employment opportunities. Intergenerational trauma affects mental health and wellbeing. Social inequality makes it more difficult to participate in society.

3. White Australia has never really addressed this issue

Throwing money at indigenous people doesn’t solve the problem and hasn’t helped all that much. Legally (apparently) there are three ways to address an invasion:

  • The land was empty so you weren’t taking what belonged to someone else. But clearly the land wasn’t empty and the Mabo case demonstrated this legally.
  • The conquered people surrender. This never happened. Activists say (correctly) that sovereignty was never ceded.
  • The two sides can sign a treaty ending the fighting and outlining the terms of the peace. This happened in New Zealand, Canada and USA and elsewhere. Australia is one of the few colonised countries not to have a treaty with indigenous people.

I believe we need to make a treaty which addresses the current state of First Nations people, and get this process started in good faith by establishing the Voice to Parliament.

4. It’s the least we can do

Having taken away and destroyed so much, I believe white Austraolia has a moral obligation to give something back. And having paternalistically made decisions on behalf of First Nations peoples for more than two centuries, I believe we should give them the dignity of having a greater say in their future. Voice, Treaty, Truth is their request, made in humility and a spirit of reconciliation. Let’s give them that much at least!

5. What would Jesus do?

I think the Bible gives very clear principles that apply here:

  • We are to have empathy with those who have suffered (Romans 12:15).
  • We will be judged by how we treat those who are suffering (Matthew 25:31-46).
  • We should bear each other’s burdens (Galatians 6:2).
  • Good wishes must lead to helpful actions (James 2:16).
6. Response to the nay-sayers

Is this treating First Nations peoples differently to other groups?
Yes it is, and this is justified because we we have taken so much off them. All other Australian citizens (including me) are beneficiaries of their loss. They are in a unique position and deserve unique treatment.

Will this mean loss of land or other property or benefits for white people?
Even the Mabo decision, which was around land rights, hasn’t led to people losing land ownership – that is in fact specifically excluded. The Voice isn’t about land rights at all. This objection is designed to scare people but isn’t based on truth.

We have spent too much already.
The amount we have spent is a mere pittance compared to the value of the land we have stolen. But the Voice isn’t about more money, it is about recognising First Nations’ original sovereignty of the land, giving them a clear voice in laws that affect them and finally developing a treaty to tie everything together.

In summary

First Nations people are reaching out without anger, asking us to walk with them in undoing the sins of the past. I see no reason not to walk with them and love and justice demand that I do.

References

Yes

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Is God woke?

August 23rd, 2023 in Culture. Tags: , , , , ,
Wake up signs

Well the Barbie movie is out, with much fanfare. Most people seem to love it and think it’s fun. But a few are calling it feminist and “woke”.

It’s not the only thing that is being criticised as “woke” these days. Political correctness is woke. Black Lives Matter is woke. Feminism is woke.

These are all negative uses of the word. But originally (and still with many people) it had a positive connotation.

So should Christians be woke or anti-woke? Is God woke?

A little etymology

The idea of being “woke” seems to have originated with black American folk songer Leadbelly, who advised some black teenagers falsely accused of rape to “stay woke, keep their eyes open.”

Over the next decades the word gained other meanings and nuances.

  • ‘well-informed’ or ‘aware’,
  • black Americans gaining greater self awareness,
  • “alert to social or racial discrimination and injustice”,
  • “a progressive outlook on a host of issues as well as on race”,
  • in the Black Lives Matter Movement, “woke” included the meaning “awareness of police abuses”.

Thus “woke” gradually acquired a more specifically leftist or social justice meaning, especially in reaction to former president Donald Trump and his right wing supporters. And so to be “woke” could mean believing that the US was becoming anti-democratic, to be opposed to racism, sexism and white privilege, and to support minorities seen as being oppressed – blacks, the LGBTQI community, the poor, immigrants, etc.

Conservative and right wing politicians and media reacted to all this and turned the word into a pejorative sense. To be “woke” to them was to be anti-American, anti-capitalism, anti-conventional morality, anti-family and to support cancel culture and Marxism. Thus conservatives have opposed teaching on race, feminism, sexism and gender identity in schools and even universities, because these things are “woke”.

So is God woke?

Where does God stand on issues of race, inequality, gender and oppression?

The God of Christianity’s views can be found in the Bible, although sometimes we need to understand the context before we apply the teachings. Here are some Biblical teachings on these matters:

Jubilee

In the Old Testament, every 50th year was to be Jubilee. In the laws for this time, God showed he cared enough for the poor to ensure they didn’t become homeless and landless. Levitus 25:25-28:

“If one of your fellow Israelites becomes poor and sells some of their property ….. what was sold will remain in the possession of the buyer until the Year of Jubilee. It will be returned in the Jubilee, and they can then go back to their property.”

Caring for the poor

Another example of God caring for the poor and ensuring that they weren’t exploited. Levitus 25: 35-36:

“If any of your fellow Israelites become poor and are unable to support themselves among you, help them as you would a foreigner and stranger, so they can continue to live among you. Do not take interest or any profit from them ….”

Stopping long term indebtedness

The poor can easily get into cycles of indebtedness that they cannot escape from, but the Old Testament law aimed to stop this and allow the poor an opportunity to rebuild their lives. Deuteronomy 15:1-2:

“At the end of every seven years you must cancel debts. This is how it is to be done: Every creditor shall cancel any loan they have made to a fellow Israelite. They shall not require payment from anyone among their own people, because the Lord’s time for canceling debts has been proclaimed.”

Foreigners & refugees

People can easily be xenophobic and fearful of strangers, and unwilling to share their nations’ resources with those who enter their land looking for a new life. Exodus 22:21 & Deuteronomy 10:19:

“Do not mistreat an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in Egypt.”
“Therefore love the foreigner”

Advocacy

The prophets emphasised that behind these rules were principles of justice that God wanted us to be committed to. Isaiah 1:17:

“Learn to do right; seek justice.
    Defend the oppressed.
Take up the cause of the fatherless;
    plead the case of the widow.”

We can see that God is portrayed in the Old Testament as having an heart and a strong commitment to justice for the poor, the oppressed, the widowed and the alien living in Israel.

The same values in the New Testament

Not all Old Testament laws apply to non-Jews today, but Jesus and the apostles upheld this emphasis on justice and mercy.

In a parable (Matthew 25:31-46) Jesus commends those who care for the hungry, strangers, the sick and the imprisoned, and said:

“Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

Jesus condemned the religious people who were meticulous in their religious observance but negelected justice. Matthew 23:23:

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! …. you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness.”

And Jesus’ brother, James, said our care for those in need was an essential part of our faith. James 2:14-17:

“What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.”

It’s easiest to ignore ….

These teachings can shock us. Is God a socialist?

We Christians in rich countries find it easier to ignore these teachings than to obey them. We have sophisticated ways to explain the passages away.

Dismissing a person who cares for racial or economic injustice as “woke” is a more extreme way of doing this. Too many Christians choose to follow ideologies that allow and encourage this. Even the imperative to offer faith and hope to others is sometimes used to negate these sayings, by calling them the “social gospel”.

Of course it is difficult if not impossible in our modern societies to live exactly as was commanded in the Old Testament, which was a very different culture, time and place. But no-one who calls themselves a follower of Jesus can totally ignore these strong teachings.

So is God woke?

It seems he is, at least according to the most common use of the word. It seems he really does care for the poor, the refugee, the person of a different race, the women (especially widows). It seems he really expects us to put care of others before personal gain.

It seems God expects us to be woke!

Photo: Jennifer Boyer on Flickr.

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What do the universe, human race, church and Bible have in common?

Is evolution God's way of doing things in this world?
August 3rd, 2023 in Bible, science. Tags: , , , , ,
Big bang timeline

Human knowledge has expanded enormously in the past century. (Not sure that wisdom has kept pace!) All aspects of life have been affected, and in many cases improved.

This knowledge explosion has had an impact on religious belief, including Christian belief. Some people see science as overthrowing religion. But more and more, Christians are finding insights in physics, history, archaeology and psychology that are giving them new understandings of their faith.

So what can we learn from science and history?

New ideas about the universe

It used to be that Christians (and Jews, and others) believed God created our world and the entire universe very quickly. For example, in Genesis God created the earth on the first day, then sorted it out on the next five. The sun and moon appeared on day 4, and apparently circled the earth. If we accept the traditional chronology, the earth is only 6 to 10 thousand years old.

But lots of scientific evidence eventually showed this wasn’t literally correct. The universe is much older, the earth circles the sun, there are many many other solar systems, suns and galaxies. And so on.

Eventually the big bang picture became accepted. An enormous surge of energy almost 14 billion years ago created the universe of space and time, which has been expanding ever since.

Galaxy

At first the temperature was incredibly hot and all matter was in small fundamental particles. But as time went on and the universe expanded, the temperature dropped and matter began to “clump” into larger particles, and then into dust clouds, stars and planets.

Our earth was formed about 4.5 billion years ago, so it is a lot older than we used to think, but has only been around for about a third of the time the universe has existed.

So the universe has been in a constant state of change and “growth”. Even now, 14 billion years after it began, stars are dying, new stars are forming, galaxies are colliding and it is hard to predict what will happen in the long run.

As a Christan, I believe God created, and I see nothing in all this that challenges that belief – in fact to me it reinforces it. But I have to believe he created it via the big bang (I can picture God saying “let there be light” and the big bang happened), and he was willing to see more than 9 billion years pass before the earth would form, and wait almost 14 billion years before human life appeared. It is almost as if the universe has a life of its own.

The evolution of life

The Genesis account pictures the first humans being created, apparently instantly, out of the dust on the sixth day of creation, with all the animals on land, sea and air on the fifth and sixth days. Human life is very different from animal life – only humans are made in God’s image.

But the biological sciences have given us a different and more challenging picture. The first life forms were microscopic organisms (microbes), about 3.7 billion years ago. Through the process of natural selection (where successful forms of life survive and breed more than others) life became more complex.

Very simple animals (probably sponges) appeared about 800 million years ago, the first mammals about 200 million years ago, the first apes about 25 million years ago, and the first humans about 2 million years ago. The first modern humans (homo sapiens) evolved from their early hominid predecessors about 250,000 years ago.

This evolutionary process blurs the distinction between humans and animals, something many Christians find hard to accept. But I believe the science is basically correct (though doubtless there will be some new insights in the future) – DNA in particular seems to settle the question.

The evolution of humans

So apparently God chose to create the human race “in his image” via evolution. He didn’t seem to be in a hurry. And he seemed to be OK about a process that is far from perfect, with evolutionary dead ends, and with predation.

Evolution has given earth’s life forms, especially humans, freedom to evolve without God necessarily controlling the process. (I believe he was clever enough to set up the big bang so humans would evolve.)

The changing church

The church is supposed to be God’s agent in the world. It too has changed constantly, but not always “onwards and upwards” in the same way as the universe and life have evolved. Rather, its progress seems to be more sporadic, with as many downs as ups.

But to its credit, it has generally adapted to the local environment, even if often far too slowly. It is as if there is a natural selection process operating here too. Churches which adapt tend to survive and thrive; churches which refuse to adapt tend to fossilise and diminish.

Church

Worldwide, the church is very flawed and inconsistent. It has supported morally corrupt governments but also stood heroically against corrupt regimes. It has abused children and women but also helped so many out of poverty and danger. It has supported slavery but also fought against slavery. It has hurt and helped.

I think if I were God, I wouldn’t want to trust my reputation on earth to such a flawed representative. And I’m sure he’s not happy with everything that is done in and by the church. But somehow he allows it to have it’s own autonomy, to a degree at least.

Shock! Horror! God seems to be able and willing to act through and be represented by an imperfect organisation!

The Bible

There are two quite different views out there about the Bible.

Conservative Christians have developed a doctrine, almost a dogma, that the Bible is literally God’s words written by humans, and so it is close to perfect in all that it teaches. Apparent anomalies, inconsistencies and mistakes mustn’t actually be faults. God’s ways are always perfect. It isn’t a view that is explicitly taught in the Bible itself but is based on interpretation.

The second view is that of scholars – historians, theologians, archaeologists, anthropologists and literary experts. They say the Bible is a product of its times and reflects priestly, royal and prophetic perspectives, and they sometimes say many different things. They say there is significant development in the way the Bible portrays God (from a violent tribal God to the loving God of Jesus) and its teachings on ethics.

How do we choose which of these views is correct?

Reading the Bible

Well the hard evidence from literary and historical studies and from archaeology points to the second view. Which makes many Christians feel deeply uncomfortable. They feel it is somehow demeaning to God and truth.

But if God used gradual and in a sense “hands off” processes to create the universe, produce human life and spread his message via the church, we shouldn’t be surprised that he might do the same with the Bible.

It would still be the scriptures, it would still be a key way that God reveals truth to us, but we would understand its nature differently and interpret it differently.

CS Lewis said this understanding is “the greatest revelation of God’s true nature”.

What if dogma about the Bible is keeping many Christians from reading the Bible rightly and from understanding God better?

Main graphic: Big bang timeline (Wikipedia). Galaxy graphic from Wikipedia. Evolution graphic by The PIX-JOCKEY on Flickr. Church photo by Wikimedia Commons. Bible-reading photo by Ben White on Unsplash.

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Is modern western Christianity too unspiritual?

July 17th, 2023 in Church. Tags: , , , , , , ,
Meditating

Do you feel close to God? Would you describe yourself as a spiritual person? Have you ever had a meaningful experience of God that has impacted you deeply?

I have to confess I must answer “no” to each of those questions. My faith is much more based on facts and ideas and knowledge.

But everyone is different. Some Christians do have spiritual experiences and encounters with God that change their lives, while others don’t.

Our experience of God, or lack of it, are important factors in our faith. And in how others perceive us. Let’s explore this idea a little.

Spiritual experiences & spiritual practices

God’s deep love

The tragic deaths of several family members, a history of abuse, violence and drugs, and time in prison, left Lisa “full of guilt, anger, pain, sorrow and frustration ….. broken and empty”. A chance meeting with a Christian woman led to her seek prayer for her past. The effect was dramatic.

“God set my heart on fire and his love, patience, kindness, grace and mercy poured into my life repairing all the damage that fear, guilt and being chained to my past behaviour had caused.”

Conversations with God

Anna experienced God through clear instructions, visions and the gift of healing. This led to her meeting and following Jesus despite not intending to. Later, disappointment with God, life and marriage has led her to move away from Christian faith.

Her life is now full of uncertainty and maybes: “Maybe there is something divine out there, drawing me ever closer”. But, she says: “I still speak to God. God still speaks to me.”

Waves of bliss

Tony was meditating one day when he experienced “‘waves of Bliss'”‘ coming over me. They were really intense and felt like it was coming from outside of me and I remember a voice, repeating ‘All is One’, ‘All is One’ being repeated over and over again. I remember feeling a sense of oneness with everything and things seemed clear, and absolutely beautiful.”

Tony’s account makes no mention of God or religious belief. He reports the experience was positive but apparently it only happened once: “It was a very meaningful experience, very liberating and beautiful, I felt inspired, strong, full of life and in awe and I miss it.”

Meditation

Annika says “sometimes when things get rough, I just like to disconnect from everything and meditate. I meditate as a form to connect with the universe and also as a form to put my intentions out there, so it knows what I want and what I don’t want in life.”

Again, there is no mention of God or religious belief, nor of a blissful experience. Her meditation seems more of a practical habit, but nevertheless life-enhancing. She reports that via meditation “I’ve received things that I have been wanting, like more clarity in life and a better relationship with a loved one. I’ve also found joy in simple things in life again.”

Explanations?

Are all these experiences genuine contact with the divine? Or can they be explained psychologically?

If they are merely psychological, then it certainly isn’t abnormal psychology. Such experiences are too widespread, happen to people right across the psychological spectrum, and tend to have positive results in peoples lives.

But if they are genuine, they present a problem for religious believers at the same time as reinforcing their faith in the divine. For these experiences don’t seem to conform to any particular religious dogma.

Who has these experiences?

As these reports show, you don’t have to be religious to have these experiences or use some spiritual practices. Most world religions emphasise spiritual practices such as prayer, meditation and worship, and some adherents have deep spiritual experiences. But many non-religious also practice prayer or meditation and some have overwhelming spiritual experiences.

It turns out that a sizable proportion (anywhere from about 5% to 30%) of people in many countries (mostly in the western world) identify as “spiritual but not religious” or similar. Some believe in a God or higher power, some don’t. Many feel disenchanted with religion in general or the church in particular, and prefer the freedom of spirituality to the constraint of dogma.

Religion and spirituality

The focus of most religions is a set of beliefs and practices which a whole community assents to and practices together. Spirituality on the other hand is more individual and experiential, and generally focuses on a sense of personal peace and purpose.

Religious believers of course can be both religious and spiritual, but many are not.

Christianity has a long history of spiritual practices, or example:

  • the Desert fathers, the Monastics and mystics like Lady Julian of Norwich,
  • practices such as fasting, silence, meditation, ritual and liturgy, Bible memorisation, asceticism and simplicity, as well as prayer, Bible reading and worship,
  • the spiritual gifts given by the Holy Spirit, and emphasised by the Pentecostals.

However it seems that today, many Protestant churches have taken a “safer” path of services built around doctrinal teaching controlled by the clergy. Somehow the Holy Spirit, individual spiritual disciplines, the use of spiritual gifts and personal experience too often take a back seat.

In praise of diversity

Christians have many different experiences of, and perspectives on, their faith.

For some, faith is intellectual, in their heads; they love to discuss doctrine and learn about the original Greek. But for others faith is very experiential, in their hearts; they feel God close to them and love to worship him.

Some love ritual and a sense of awe about God that can be found in big cathedrals, while others much prefer to meet in small friendship groups.

Some just attend church out of habit, not expecting much, but nevertheless thinking it is better they be there.

The sad thing is ….

Sadly, we too often separate into denominations of “our kind of people”. All the doctrinal Christians get together in churches which emphasise preaching, and their worship can be sterile and perfunctory. Meanwhile the worshipers meet in a charismatic church, experience the Holy Spirit, but the teaching is often problematic.

We need each other! Paul’s analogy of the body (1 Corinthians 12) teaches us that.

I am very much a “head” sort of Christian. I rarely have any sense of God’s presence and “worship” is generally not meaningful to me. yet when I spent 6 years in a full-on Pentecostal church I learnt more than anywhere else, although I sometimes felt quite uncomfortable. But feeling uncomfortable shouldn’t stop us from observing, fellowshipping with and learning from Christians who are different to us.

In the end, it is the Holy Spirit who guides, empowers and equips us. If we don’t explicitly call on him for these things, our lives and our churches may be unremarkable and ineffective.

So our churches could benefit from incorporating spiritual practices and openness to the Spirit into services and groups. Singing, prayer, silence, reflection are not just preliminaries to the sermon, but possibly the most important part of the church service. After all, knowledge, even Bible knowledge, is of limited value if it remains theory and divorced from the Spirit of God.

And if we did this in our churches, individual Christians would have a model to take into our own lives and relate to God more deeply and call on the Spirit more earnestly.

Do we want to relate to our culture?

So many people in western post-christian cultures are “done” with church and religion. There are many reasons for this, but for some, it is because the church offers too little for their spirits. Yet many still seek spirituality in their lives and still respect Jesus.

If churches and individual christians honestly developed a more meaningful spirituality, we would have so much more to offer the “spiritual but not religious”, and would likely reduce the numbers leaving the church.

Instead of our faith seeming harsh and condemnatory (as it does to so many), God would be seen as more loving, welcoming and satisfying.

Instead of Christians appearing arrogant and having all the answers, we’d be humbler, pointing to the God who is beyond our understanding.

Instead of sometimes seeming to not care for this world because we believe we’re heading somewhere else, we’d be more in touch with the world, each other and ourselves, and the God who made us all.

I believe modern western Christianity is definitely too unspiritual!

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Photo by Natalie Bond.

Doubts, questions and answers

June 17th, 2023 in Deconstruction. Tags: , , , , ,
Doubt

This post is aimed at christians who have read arguments against christian belief and wonder if they can continue to believe.

Last post I reflected on the fact that more and more people are deconstructing their faith, or giving up faith altogether, because they don’t think Christianity has adequate answers to some important questions.

I think Christianity has better answers to some of the most fundamental questions about life, the universe and being human, and I presented these reasons in that post

But the difficult questions for christians remain (like Why does God allow so much evil? and Why does God keep himself hidden?), so here’s my response to them.

In this post ….

So much evil and suffering

It is all too familiar to us all that there is plenty of evil in the world, resulting in far too much suffering. Of course this is much good and much beauty, but we can’t help wondering why God didn’t make the balance more positive, and limit our ability to make others suffer.

So it is natural that we’ll wonder if there’s a good God at all.

I can see reasons why some level of suffering might be inevitable:

  • “If you love someone, set them free” the saying goes, and there’s truth in it. God could have created robots, but what would be the point? Just as a good parent wants their child to thrive, to grow to be a mature adult and to achieve their potential, so we can imagine God wanted to create free, autonomous beings. But with freedom comes responsibility and the possibility of irresponsibility and hurt. So much of the evil in the world comes from people (mostly those in power) misusing their freedom. It’s an inevitable consequence. But I doubt many of us would want to lose our freedom!
  • A physical world has so much beauty, but also so much danger. The mountain we love to look at can cause a deadly avalanche. The ocean that surfers love can be destructive. Some people thrive on the dangers. Physicality and danger go hand in hand.

Despite the evil and suffering, about 75% of all people are happy with life. So all things considered, the good seems to outweigh the bad.

Nevertheless, I don’t feel these thoughts explain enough. It still seems as if God could have done better.

I can’t help concluding that the existence of suffering and evil make it harder to believe in a good God, and the explanations don’t change that.

Why does God hide himself?

If God is all-powerful, he could show himself to all of us, couldn’t he? And if she is loving, she would want us to know her. So since a lot of people don’t believe in God, and a lot more haven’t ever seen or experienced him, he can’t really be there, can he?

I’m sure we’ve all wondered this, but on analysis, it isn’t really a strong argument. It assumes we know what God is wanting to do (show herself), and then criticise her for not doing it in a way that critics recognise. But maybe God has a different purpose and different approach?

For example, if God wants us to be autonomous and free acting, then he can’t overwhelm us. A schoolkid can’t act freely with the headmaster breathing down her neck, and driver can’t drive freely in the vicinity of a police radar trap. So maybe God leaves us free to become the people we choose to be, which is what he wants?

Christians believe that we will see God clearly one day, when this life is over. If so then God’s apparent hiddenness is only temporary.

Another problem with this argument is that many, many people believe God is quite apparent to them. They feel God’s presence, or see answers to prayer, or experience him help and guidance, and sometimes even hear him speak or see him in a vision. Perhaps part of the problem for some people is not having eyes to see?

So I feel we may wonder why God doesn’t make himself more obvious, but I don’t find it a reason to disbelieve.

Has science shown faith is silly?

Did God create the universe or was it just the big bang? Is the earth the centre of the universe or just a small planet orbiting an ordinary star in an ordinary galaxy? Did God form Adam out of the dust of the earth, or was it evolution? Are lightning strikes an angry God or just a discharge of static electricity?

Surely it’s obvious, so the argument goes, that the things we used to need God to explain have now all been explained by science? God has been reduced to a “God of the gaps”, explaining those few things we can’t explain yet by science. Christians have always opposed science, but now it’s clear their opposition is silly.

But it isn’t that simple. Christians didn’t always oppose science. Some of the best thinkers in the middle ages, and since then, were Christians (and Muslims).

It is true that some Christians today are still woefully uninformed and opposing some areas of science, especially evolutionary science. But it isn’t fair to judge a belief by what uninformed followers think, but based on the best thinkers. And there are many christians (and a growing number) who accept modern science (see for example The Faraday Institute and BioLogos).

A thoughtful Christian faith isn’t based on a God of the gaps, but on the best explanations that science has to offer. Then it asks, Is it more likely that such a situation arose because God created, or because there is no God? As I argued in my last post , I think this question points towards God in many cases.

Most of the “is it science or is it God?” questions we can ask can be answered: “Both!” – it seems quite reasonable that God could use the big bang to create the universe, evolution to create life, etc.

So Christian faith and science don’t need to be opposed.

Difficulties with the Bible

This issue relates only to the Christian faith (and to the Jewish faith too). The argument is that there are enough problems in the Bible to make it impossible to believe it. Problems include the unscientific creation account, significant historical doubts about the early books of the Bible, the portrayal of God in the Old Testament as angry, violent and judgmental, and apparent inconsistencies.

After a fair bit of study of this question, I think the criticisms fall in a range from reasonable to silly.

At the silly end are criticisms that don’t understand the Bible and the cultures of the people that wrote it. For example it is recorded in the Old Testament that the circumference of a round basin was 3 times its diameter. This isn’t an accurate estimate of pi, so some critics say this shows the Bible isn’t accurate. But the writers never set out to write a piece of 21st century scientific literature, and they wrote in the language and thought forms of the day.

But at the other end of the spectrum, some of the criticisms of the Bible, or of the beliefs people have about it, need to be answered.

  • Belief that the Genesis accounts of a 6 day creation and a worldwide flood are literally true, is contrary to the evidence, and criticisms of these views are reasonable. But many Christians have no problems believing these accounts aren’t literal history (or science) and still believing the core messages of the Bible.
  • There is very limited independent verification of much of the early history of Israel (e.g. Abraham, Joseph, Moses and Joshua) and some archaeological evidence against some parts (principally the conquest of Canaan by Joshua). This is a difficulty for Biblical literalists, and leads many Christians to believe the accounts are partly historical and partly legendary.
  • Some parts of the Old Testament portray God as angry and violent, commanding genocide – quite contrary to how God is revealed by Jesus. Again, this is a problem for Biblical literalists, but less of a problem for those Christians who believe the Bible is an unfolding revelation, showing how God gradually revealed truth to an originally pagan nation.

You can find hundreds of apparent Biblical inconsistencies on the web, some of them trivial or inaccurate, and some of them quite clear. But again, this is only a problem if we believe the Bible’s narratives must be totally historical and must be without any errors. But there is no inherent reason why God can’t teach via legend, and pious stories, nor that a holy book can’t have human weaknesses, and there is every evidence these are the case.

All of this suggests that the Bible isn’t a document written by God and accurate in every detail, but rather a human document inspired by God and achieving the purposes he had for it – which apparently wasn’t necessarily to be teaching accurate science and history, but rather that it shows how he has revealed himself through human history.

No evidence for God?

Critics of Christianity sometimes argue there is absolutely no evidence for God, and Christian belief is based only in irrational faith.

But it seems to me that there is much evidence for God, and this objection only stands by re-defining evidence to only include verified and repeatable scientific evidence. But if we allow the evidence of history and personal testimony (which would be accepted in court as evidence), this objection fails.

Bad behaviour by Christians and the church

There are plenty examples of this that you will be familiar with, so I don’t need to list anything here. I can only say two things about this problem:

  • I’m really sorry about all this stuff, especially if you have been hurt by it. I can understand why it would be a barrier to belief.
  • Belief in God is not the same as attending a church. We can believe in God, choose to follow Jesus while distancing ourselves from churches we don’t feel safe or comfortable in. We might even infer that God is more forgiving than we might expect, and that may encourage us or not.

So I can only hope that the problems you see here don’t keep you from God if you otherwise think he is there.

But wait, there’s more!

There are many other objections to Christian belief, but I don’t feel they amount to much (e.g. that God is somehow logically impossible, or arguments about orbiting teapots or the flying spaghetti monster), and certainly not harmful to belief. I’ll leave you to look them up if you’re interested.

Difficulties and deconstruction

Are these difficulties sufficient to shake your faith?

Do they justify beginning a process of faith deconstruction?

That is for you to determine. But my feeling is that some of these difficulties have led me to reconsider aspects of what I believe, but none of them justify no longer believing in Jesus.

The reason for this is clear. There are some significant reasons to doubt, but the reasons to believe are much stronger and more fundamental (i.e. they address fundamental issues of life, ethics, the universe, etc). The reasons to disbelieve create some difficulties, but giving up belief creates far more.

For me, the logical conclusion is to believe while remaining open to new understandings.

What about you?

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Main photo: Liza Summer. Second photo: Andres Ayrton.

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Done with religion, done with God?

May 30th, 2023 in Why believe?. Tags: , , ,

The number of people in English-speaking countries who say the have no religion has risen over the past few decades, with younger people being especially likely not to believe (see note 1 for some statistics).

According to this report, the most common stated reason for no longer being religious was intellectual – people came to the conclusion that their previous beliefs were unscientific, illogical or childish. (For other reasons, see note 2.)

I believe we don’t have to give up our faith for intellectual reasons, even if we choose to give up on the church. This post explains why.

It depends what you focus on

There are many reasons to believe in christianity, and many reasons to doubt or disbelieve.

It seems that many people are inclined to focus on what they want to be true, and so they tend to see the reasons that support their preference and miss the reasons that challenge their preference. This can be true for both believers and unbelievers.

It is helpful to look at both sides of the question and recognise the things that both support and undermine my belief. In this post we’ll look at the reasons our christian faith can be strong even when we have doubts, and in the next post we’ll check out how we might deal with some of the challenges.

Can you believe these conclusions?

There are a number of facts and experiences that we will find difficult to explain unless there is a God who cares for people. These facts build on each other to show why we can reasonably keep on believing.

1. Can you believe in an autonomous universe?

Galaxy

If there’s no God then how can we explain the existance of our amazing universe?

Can you believe all this vast array of galaxies and stars, all this energy, the amazing extent of space and time, all appeared out of nothing and for no reason?

Likewise it is hard to believe that it has always existed, for if it started an infinite time ago, everything that could ever happen would have happened long before now.

Furthermore, the universe is held together by physical laws that will only work if a bunch of physical values (like the size and charge on fundamental particles, the value of the various fundamental forces, and so on) are within extremely fine ranges. Physicists have estimated that the probability of this happening by random chance is infinitessimal.

The only scientific explanation for this improbability – that there may be very many universes, and we are just the “lucky” one – doesn’t really change anything for me, because such a remarkable “multiverse” seems just as unlikely as our remarkable universe.

1. So these facts point to a creator God who made the universe for a purpose.

2. Can you believe people are purely physical?

If there’s no God, the world and everything in it must be purely physical, because what is there in atoms and energy to create anything else?

But it is hard to believe human beings are purely physical, and most people can’t really live as if that were true.

No free will?

For if we are purely physical, then there is nothing going on in our brains, and nothing controlling our brains, except physical processes. And we know how physical processes work, according to quite strict laws. Chemical processes and electrical signals work according to laws, and there is nothing else in there. Any choice we make is determined by those physical processes.

So without God, it is hard to see how anyone can choose anything except what those physical processes determine, for they are us, there’s nothing more.

Can you believe that? I can’t, because it doesn’t accord with our experience.

And it is self-contradictory, because the conclusion that there is no God would be determined by those processes rather than by the truth.

No logic?

What’s more, if our brain processes are determined by physics, then it is hard to see how we can reliably think logically. Our attempt at logical reasoning will be at the mercy of physical processes which know nothing about logic. And if that was so, how could we could believe our own brains?

No right & wrong?

Also, human society requires that we all can live together in peace most of the time, otherwise each group or tribe would be dysfunctional and would easily fall prey to other groups. So our societies evolve ethical values and laws which aim to keep everything working efficiently and peacefully. Such values don’t need to be objectively “right”, they just need to work.

But the strange thing is, most of us can’t help think some of these values are really objectively true. Most of us strongly feel that killing or torturing babies, grandmas, and most likely anyone, is repugnant and really wrong. And if we don’t think that, we’d probably be considered a psychopath.

So most of us naturally recoil from the idea that there’s no true right and wrong. But if there’s no God, what can make moral values and laws actually true?

People must be more than physical

So if we believe humans really do have free will, the ability to reason and the ability to make truly moral choices, and because a purely physical world doesn’t allow for freewill, reason and ethics, it is inconsistent to stop believing in God and trying to live as if he or she isn’t there.

2. So the creator God seems to have wanted human beings to evolve to have genuine autonomy and choice, know right and wrong, and be able to think logically.

3. The things that happen to people

Some people have amazing experiences which seem to come from beyond this physical world:

  • people pray and ask God for healing, and while often they don’t receive what they ask for, sometimes they do, in ways that medical science cannot explain;
  • some people seem to experience God speaking to them or appearing to them in a vision, and this often changes their lives dramatically;
  • others have an overwhelming experience of the divine, where they feel love and peace and a sense of awe, and this too has strong and beneficial effects in their lives;
  • and without any fanfare or anything dramatic, millions of people experience what seems to them to be God guiding them, comforting them, changing their lives and lifting them out of negativity and hurtful emotions and experiences.

It would be easy to dismiss these experiences as being evidence of weak minds and fanciful thinking, but studies show that most people who have these experiences have good mental health.

Can you believe that every one of these apparent experiences of God is a result of imagination or an unhealthy mind? Surely there are too many healings which defy medical expectations? Too many people’s lives are changed in positive ways?

So although I’ve never had an experience that was obviously more than “natural”, and although I’m sure many of these experiences can be explained in other ways, I cannot make myself discount them all or explain every last one of them away. You too may be led to believe that God is the source of many of these.

3. So it seems that the personal creator God really cares for us and wants to interact with us.

(The evil and suffering in the world throws doubt on this conclusion. I’ll address this in the next post.)

4. I can’t dismiss Jesus

Jesus was arguably the most influential person who ever lived. The originator of the world’s biggest religion. An inspiration to so many people who have set up hospitals, aged care facilities, schools and aid and development programs. (And yes, some have killed and done evil in his name, but they clearly weren’t following his teachings.)

He challenged the status quo, healed, gave respect to those who were disrespected by their society (women, lepers, tax collectors, prostitutes) and inspired people with his ethical teachings. He hated hypocrisy, stood against the prevailing power structures, but loved and mixed with the common people, who loved him in return.

And when he was executed, his followers said they had seen him alive again, and this belief motivated them to set out to change the world. Which they did.

The historians generally affirm that the stories we have about him are based on history, and I cannot believe otherwise.

It is hard to believe he lied or was totally mistaken about who he said he was – God’s agent on earth. We can’t easily dismiss his teachings and say all the stories about him are false.

We can be strengthened in this conclusion by the fact that the God all this evidence points to looks quite consistent with the God Jesus taught us about.

I am further encouraged in this belief by the fact that Jesus is the person I would choose to follow. Compassionate to those who are struggling, tough on those who oppress, strong on justice and love, and with a clear vision of the world he wants to see.

4. So it seems that the loving creator God really did reveal himself to us through Jesus, so we wouldn’t have to die wondering.

The evidence leads us

So the evidence takes us on a journey that points me to the God of Jesus:

  1. Facts point to a creator God who made the universe for a purpose.
  2. The creator God seems to have wanted human beings to evolve to have genuine autonomy and choice, know right and wrong, and be able to think logically.
  3. The personal creator God really cares for us and wants to interact with us.
  4. The loving creator God really did reveal himself to us through Jesus, so we wouldn’t have to die wondering.

So if you are having doubts, if you wonder if you can keep on the faith journey, I encourage you to ponder, and pray about, the alternative. To consider the evidential difficulties of moving away from belief in God.

We can’t always have certainty about what we believe, but we CAN choose the most likely.

Difficulties and doubts

This evidence counters many of the doubts. The doubts remain, but they can be seen in a different light.

Check out my next post to see how I assess them.

Note 1:

  • Andy Tix says that in the US, those with no religion went from  5% in 1972 to 29% in 2022.
  • The Guardian reports that for those under 40 in Britain, almost 40% more have no religion than those who are Christians. Wikipedia says more than half Britons have no religion, although some of these still believe in a God or higher power.
  • Australian Census data shows about 40% now have no religion, up from 22% only a decade ago.

Note 2:

The main problems were:

  • Intellectual (52%)
  • Unwillingness to be part of an organisation that traumatised people, e.g. LGBTQI people (22%)
  • Personal adversity that didn’t fit with their beliefs (15%)
  • Social – they didn’t fit in with a religious community (11%)

Main graphic adapted from Ethan Wilkinson and Brady Knoll. Other graphics: Andromeda galaxy (NASA), woman with fruit (Pexels), silhouette against night sky (Bryce Bradford via Compfight cc) and Jesus’ feet (unknown).

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