Archive for category Christians
Lent Week 1: Prayer
Posted by Tsunami.No.Ai in Christians, Churches/Organized Religion, Prayer, Sin and Salvation on March 6, 2009
So after not updating this site in nearly a year I am now going to write an article nonchalantly and act as if nothing at all is amiss.
Ever since I decided to once again participate in orthodox lent people have been bugging me to start blogging again. In particular, one minister from Mitchell. I messaged him this morning with an offer. I had two ideas for writing this week. One on prayer and one on scripture reading. Laying down these offers on the virtual canvas between us I slammed my hand down and declared “You shall choose!” To which my office mates looked at me funny and told me to sit back down. But I still got the answer I wanted from Mr. minister.
Probably the biggest fear I had about this lent was prayer. No, I didn’t fret over what I would be eating or how much studying I would do or how much church I would attend. The fear I had was actually praying to the power that created the universe and who has the final say over my salvation.
Perhaps a little background is in order. As many of you know, I am originally from a Church of Christ background. This is a big deal here because one of the few things that particular denomination does not do is teach you how to pray. A large section of my life was spent in CoC and I never knew how to pray. Oh, I’m not saying I didn’t pray, I just had no idea how. You see, most protestant denominations (especially restoration movement ones) are big into praying “from the heart.” It certainly sounds good and in truth that is what we should be aiming for at all times: to have our hearts constantly praying. But what it translated to in practice was no one really seeming to know how to pray except through impromptu.
Let me say that I have no problem with impromptu prayer as such. Meaning, I don’t have a problem with a random prayer to god welling up and coming out in honesty. What I do have a problem with is two fold. I have a problem with prayer that is planned for, for a group for instance, and the leader of the prayer gets up and makes it up as he goes. I also have a problem with prescribing this method of prayer to laymen at large for private prayer.
I am sure most of us have been in a congregation where it came time to pray and the leader got up and said something like this:
God, I just also lift up soandso to you, Lord, I just join all of us in asking, Father that you would just love us and Lord, we love you. Lord, and Lord, just pray over us, Lord, and Lord, bless us Lord. We don’t deserve your Love Lord. And Lord, thank you for Jesus Lord, because Jesus is Lord, Lord. Lord Jesus, Lord, you are Lord Lord Lord Jesus Lord Jesus Lord Jesus Lord Lord Lord. Amen.
OK, maybe that’s a little over the top, but I’m sure you can relate at some level. What is it about this prayer that is wrong? Well.. none of it really. It may genuinely be a prayer from the heart to God. My question though is this. We are in front of the god all mighty, maker of heaven and earth and everything in between and speaking for your congregation or group you say that. Imagine you saying that to a king on earth. Or perhaps imagine you saying that in front of a stadium of people you do not know. Would you be embarrassed? Would you perhaps want a chance to prepare your prayer first?
So there’s my nitpick section. Prayers lead by a designated person should be thought out for the group and not impromptu on the spot. Why you ask? Why should they? Why can not a man get up in front of his church family and open his heart to god? My answer is two fold. One, doing it impromptu means there is either undue pressure on the speaker to say the right things or no pressure at all to say anything significant. These are our petitions to the Lord. They should be handled with care. Second, impromptu without any knowledge of the structure of how to pray gives the impression that that’s how everyone should do it. Just open up and let loose to god.
There is where my big problem came from. My idea of how to pray was just let loose. Tell god how I feel and what I want. “Talk to Jesus as a friend,” I was told growing up. Yes, I know, god loves us all. However, we are also called to have fear of god. To know his power and glory. Years of laying in bed at night saying “Dear lord, please help with this and please do this for me. Oh, and let me have this. And please make so and so do this. In Jesus name, amen” was getting nothing done other than me treating god as though he were some advise column at best and salesman at worst. Years of treating god like a chum, like a pal, had slowly degraded him in my mind to something even lower than myself. I had relegated him to my co-pilot, the guy I turn to when trouble hits and who I ignore the rest of the time.
Then I went to the Pascha service at my Dad’s church (orthodox) last year. For the first time I saw a purely liturgical prayer. “Nonsense!” I thought, “Prayer like this has no soul behind it. They are just saying words on a page.” And so I left there thinking that impromptu was still the way to go, even if flawed. Then I read a book my dad gave me called “The way of the Pilgrim.” It is about a Russian man who wants to learn how to pray. He goes to his priest and asks him, “Father, how must I pray?” And he is told, “Pray the Jesus prayer until it flows from your heart unbidden.”
If you are asking yourself what the Jesus prayer is, it is this “Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” That’s it. He was told to pray this over and over until it became like breathing. The man did, and it changed his life. Every action he took from then on was exposed under the light of these words coming from his heart unceasingly. It was then, in that book that I discovered how to pray.
Prayers are not just petitions to god for ourselves. They are more. They are us speaking to the creator of all, who has power of life and death, who holds salvation in his hand. If we are to pray, we must hold that in mind. So with that in mind, I revisited the liturgical way of prayer. I realized they were not just words on a page. They were words of power written down by holy men who have prayed the same prayers for thousands of years. Praying those words was to commune with them in the presence of god. It was to understand what a holy petition was to god.
With that said, allow me to share two examples of this. The first are the Trisagion Prayers. These are said before private morning and evening prayers as well as various other prayers.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Glory to You, Christ our God, our hope, Glory to You!
Heavenly King, Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, present in all places and filling all things, Treasury of Goodness and Giver of life: come and abide in us. Cleanse us from every stain of sin and save our souls, O Gracious Lord.Holy God. Holy Mighty. Holy Immortal Have mercy on us.
Holy God. Holy Mighty. Holy Immortal Have mercy on us.
Holy God. Holy Mighty. Holy Immortal Have mercy on us.Glory to the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit, both now and forever and to the ages of ages. Amen
All Holy Trinity, have mercy on us. Lord, forgive our sins. Master, pardon our transgressions. Holy One, visit and heal our infirmities, for the glory of Your name.
Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.Glory to the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit, both now and forever and to the ages of ages. Amen
Our Father, Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For Yours is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, both now and forever and to the ages of ages. Amen.
And one more, the prayer of St. Ephraim
“O Lord and Master of my life, take from me the spirit of sloth, faint-heartedness, lust of power, and idle talk.”
“But grant rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to me, thy servant.”
“Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to see my own failings and not to judge my brother; for blessed art Thou unto the ages of age. Amen”
I do not have the time to explain the significance of these two examples. A book could be written on each. And that’s just the point. In these little petitions are the power of thousands of words.
And that is why I was scared. To say these words, even silently, while on your knees is powerful and moving. Perhaps most frightening, they are changing. Say them enough and they begin to stay with you all day. When you sin, when you fall, you can hear your own words come back to you, rebuking you and correcting you. You have no choice really but to change.
On the first day of Lent, it took me a good five minutes to work up the courage to actually do this. I stood there in an almost empty room, all alone, willing myself to kneel and say these kinds of words to god. It was so vastly different from what I was used to. It was like that time I was doing it for real for the first time, as though I was actually in front of god this time and beseeching his mercy for me being a screw up.
So in the end, it is changing me. Even though its only been 5 days, I can feel it. I have seen a more excellent way and I would ask that if you are doing Lent as well, even if you’re protestant (which I still am, technically) try praying like this. Reflect on what you are asking god and let it change you as well.
Depression, Suicide, and the Self-righteous
Posted by Tsunami.No.Ai in Christians, Misc. on January 30, 2008
About a month ago I was invited on facebook to join a group called Four guys, one destination, one mission: Suicide Prevention. The point of the group, obviously, is to prevent suicide. however, their methods seemed a little dubious to me. First of all, they are riding bikes across the continent to prove to those who are depressed that anything is possible. Second, they are trying to draw attention to the problem of suicide using this ride and the group. A noble cause you might say, but it seems to me that the people who made the group and also the people who joined and commented in it know next to nothing about what actual depression and suicidal thoughts are like. I wrote the person who sent me an invite to the group and stated these thoughts. They in turn asked me what I would say to a suicidal person. My response is the point of this post.
But before I get to what my response was, I should add this. I’ve been putting off saying anything about this until today. Today I saw another group simliar to the first one. This one is on facebook as well and is called Love is the Movement. The point in this one is to tell people on the day before Valentine’s Day that they are loved. Thats a nice thought. Except the people who are actually depressed will see straight through this veiled attempt at others trying to make themselves feel better. It would seem to me that people don’t know the difference between “the blues” and actual depression. Actually depressed people don’t care what you think. They will see you for the tool you are if you decide to show them any kind of attention on one day and tell them parrot “I love you and think you are important”. Doing this on one day, to anyone, is meaningless and only serves to let those who don’t bother to understand depression to feel like they are doing something.
At any rate, here is my response to “well then what should people say to suicidal people if not the above?”:
hmm.. what to tell them indeed. Actually this is a pretty complex problem and not nearly as simple to try and work out with someone as the people in that group would like to think it its. Generally there are two types of people who contemplate and/or attempt suicide (of course each case is different). Ill try and tell you what I personally think about both of them here.
The first type is the most common, they are what I would like to label as impulsive suicidal people. These individuals are typically prone to talk about suicide as a way to get the attention of those around them. They are normally basing their decisions on irrational logic in their head. A good example would be someone who wants to kill themselves because their girlfriend broke up with them or they lost a lot of money. The problem they are fixated on is an extremely temporary issue i their lives but to them it is all encompassing and they cant see past it. What they are seeking is something or someone to either remove the problem from their lives or fixate them on something else. If and when they decide to attempt suicide their method is typically something non-lethal (or something reversible) such as trying to overdose on aspirin or cutting their wrists, or something else that takes some time to work. Its not actually an attempt to die so much as a cry out that they need someone to help them out.
A good plan of attack for helping these people is pretty straight forward. First you need to let them talk to you. Let them know that you are available to talk and that you will listen to them if need be. If they trust you enough they will probably end up spilling all the problem on you in the course of just a few conversations. The problem is one that is usually identifiable from the outset and you can then try to help them deal with that issue. Instead of telling them things will be better, try relating to them if possible. Get them to relate to you as well. share stories and experiences that are close to what they are now going through and show that in those cases eventually things did in fact get better. You have to let them work through the stages of grief on their own with you as someone holding their hand, not as someone dragging them to “acceptance” in one sitting. Eventually the problem will either be resolved or accepted and the person will be able to stand on their own again. In my experience working with people like this the response time from initial “I have a problem!” to them being stable again is about a month.
The second type of suicidal person is much more difficult to explain and treat. I would label these people as truly suicidal. You have to understand first that the decision to end their life is not about a single event, perhaps not even a series of events, its their whole being that they want to escape from. The depression that precedes suicide in these people is something that isn’t easily conveyed to others who tend to have a cheery disposition on life. The depression they are facing is something that is life long, or at least longer than a year and is all encompassing. The best way to describe what its like is this: imagine that someone’s personality is like a star. In most people they shine brightly and occasionally have their problems but all in all are happy people. In impulsive suicidal people they are like temporarily dim stars that just dont have enough fuel to keep going, or have something in their middle that makes it so they cant shine. If left alone those stars will go out. truly suicidal people are like black holes. Their personality has collapsed in on itself and begins sucking in everything around it. The person at the middle cant reach out to anyone else without feeling the need to pull them into their own despair and so they tend to shy away from previous social pleasures. Even if they try and touch someone else to let them know of their problem any positive influence is quickly sucked back into the depression and crushed with tremendous force. Its a shroud of blackness that is nearly impenetrable and that follows the person no matter where they go or what they do. It haunts them even in their happiest of moments so everything is twinged with black. truly suicidal people want to escape this blackness which emanates from within themselves and to do that they rationalize that if they remove the source (their own self) that the torment will end.
There is no clear way of dealing with this. If it was just clear cut then it wouldn’t be that much of a problem. We could just say “god has a plan” and they would feel gods love and feel better. But the problem is that these people are actually rational. All the inversion gives them time and opportunity to think about their situation. In their case, if they are on the verge of suicide and happen also to be religious, they have normally already concluded that god has abandoned them or at least allowed this to happen to them. They have prayed and prayed to god to give them peace which has not come for years and years. They will not take any advice about god from anyone without a dark smile that speaks volumes about how much they now trust god to deliver them. Also, to them, everything will not be alright no matter how much time you show them. Their life has been a constant blackness for years and its now all they know. Show them the happiest moment and they will still find the blackness hovering above it, waiting for them to be weak.
The best course of action with this situation is to just be a friend to them. This is more intense than the previous type where you merely had to listen, for this type you must be interactive with them for as along as it takes. You have to be prepared to be sucked into their despair with them to help guide them back out. You have to be able to sacrifice for them. Unfortunately, in today’s society, people would take one look at this and say that it wasn’t worth it to them. The amount of effort and the amount of immediate return is slim if any. The problem here is, either you can get sucked in as well, or you can give up half way in and leave them twice as bad off as they were because they will feel abandoned or betrayed. They need a guiding light as well as someone to lean on, someone they can trust completely so that they will follow.
Eventually they will open up and in the twisting nether of their reasoning you will have to find the one or many root causes of the depression and help them to overcome them. These root causes are generally not so simple as the previous type. While they may appear initially to be something like “my girlfriend left me” theres usually something more underneath it all like “i hate myself and push people away” or “why do i have no confidence?” You have to identify this first and then let them know thats what you think. You have to get them to question their own rationality behind connecting all the bad events in their life to their depression and ultimately to the conclusion that death is the only escape. Once you can get them to accept these root causes you can then help them try to overcome them with time.
Even if you can eventually pull them away from the edge of death, there is no solution to the depression, only degrees of it. If in the course of finding the root causes you find voids that need to be filled, you can help them fill them. But in the end that twinge will probably always hang there for them. If you can, try to get them to see a physician. Sometimes medicine is a good help to have as depression of this sort is commonly biological as well as psychological. You can get their family and other friends to help you. You don’t want to tell them everything that you have been told as that would betray their trust, but you can let them know that they need help and need it from those closest to them. If everything works out perfectly you can minimize the depression and maximize the contentment. The process will take years and be a constant battle all their life.
Anyway, the problem I have with the group you joined is that it seems like the same old thing again and again from young adults. They want to be helpful and don’t know how to be so they invent ways of pretending to help to make themselves feel like they are doing something. Suicide hot lines don’t work for truly suicidal people, neither do groups like this. I personally believe that if these people want to help the truly suicidal and depressed that they need to try and understand what kind of problems and torments plague those they are trying to help. We can all sit back and say well this and this would work on so and so, but really it doesn’t do anything but make those who use such lip service feel like they have contributed to the cause. If you want to save someone, you have to sacrifice part of yourself to that person. It takes nothing less to save a life.
I hope I answered your question…
Where Does This Ocean Go?
Posted by Tsunami.No.Ai in Christians, Nature of God, Religion on May 20, 2007
There is a reason I haven’t written in the past few months and its not the normal excuse of “I was busy.” The reason I didn’t write anything since February is because I have been spending that time thinking. You may, or may not, remember an article I linked to on here about a show I watched entitled “The Twelve Kingdoms.” Having just read the Code of the Samurai, a book that contained the code by which the warrior class of Japan lived for nearly four centuries, the show invigorated a sense of obligation in me to find out what life was really all about. I had my wanting to understand our purpose in the universe, if any, see what made us us, and what we could do to change it, if at all.
As such, I would like to think I began a small excursion towards “enlightenment” (or really it was more me deciding to stop acting like a jackass and find something more meaningful in my life). Part of this excursion was what has turned out to be a possible end to the logical progression that started several years ago.
As I have explained before, I think that logic is the best way to find truth in anything. You start with something monumental like “Jesus is lord” and break it down into its constituent parts. For this case you would start asking “What is lord?” and “Was Jesus a real person?”. Continuing the example, the latter branch breaks down further into “Was Jesus who he claimed?”, “How do we know?”, “Where the gospels accurate?”, “Why should we believe them?” and so on.
This logical journey started probably eight or so years ago when an event in my life shattered a fairly picturesque view of God and life in general. The details are not important, but what is important is that I lost my faith once almost entirely except for a tiny piece in me that wanted to hold on to a belief in a God. Subjective and insubstantial now that I look back on it, but really, thats all that there was. Since then I have been picking apart not only Christianity, but also the fundamental building blocks of most major religions: spirituality, morality, societal mores, an afterlife, etc.
The purpose ultimately was two-fold. One, I wanted to prove to myself that I was not just blindly following the supposed words of a prophet from two millennia ago whose existence may not even be real. And Two, I wanted to discover the true joy in finding God and maybe share it with others. The first part of this, to me anyway, was essential to the second. Proving God’s existence through logical argument should be possible if God exists as described within the Bible. To quote Galileo, “I do not believe that a God that gave use logic and reason would mean for us to forego their use.” What was essential to me was a picture built, not of stories and lose fitting feel-good messages, but a solid picture of something I could touch and explain.
The second part stems from the first. Over my few years of being on earth, I have discovered one thing: non-Christians who become christians tend to have a fuller and deeper faith then those who had grown up in the church. C.S. Lewis, Saint Augustine, Francis Schaffer, among others, all came from disbelieving backgrounds, sought out to disprove God and ended up finding him instead. Their journey netted them understanding, peace, and what I consider to be a more “real” relationship with God. As such, their writings spell out for the non-believer what our faith means and by extension can help those who would initially reject God outright gain a foothold in the path towards understanding. This is my main goal: to reach an understanding as best I can and then help share my spiritual journey with those who have spent their lives with the same scientific and philosophic backgrounds as myself and who categorically deny God. Maybe I can plant a seed of self-reflection.
But I digress. The end result seems to have netted some logical arguments that are at the root of the God question and other problems as well. I will cover these more in depth in future articles but I will share them with you here as well. If you would like to contribute your thoughts on these I seriously welcome any argument for or against. I currently believe these are indivisible, root arguments but I would like to be proven wrong ( I would hate to have the arrogance of saying “I found it!” when I’m only 23).
1) Q: Given that belief in God requires a certain leap in faith, how large of a leap must there be from total atheism to the start of a journey to God? (i.e.. To start becoming a christian, would you have to accept all of Jesus all at once, or is there something smaller that can be built upon?)
A: The smallest leap of faith required between atheism and the beginning of the belief in God is the belief that humans posses a soul, or something within them that is not material that without the body continues to be human.
2) Q: What is the fundamental difference between atheism and theism?
A: How a person from either persuasion views the concept of death and how they adjust their lives accordingly.
3) Q: Historical trends of relativism can, in part, explain a loosening of societal norms over the last half century and can be argued that they are contributing to a decay of social stability, but can something more concrete be at the root of these trends?
A: While it itself is a consequence of these trends, a fear or unwillingness to commit to anything philosophically solid (meaning it would force us to conform to something outside of ourselves) can be found at the root of nearly all growing social “ills”. (e.g.. divorce, sexual promiscuity, crime, etc)
These are the three big ones. I am sure there are others. I will probably be writing an article on each of these three and I would very much appreciate any and all feedback on them. If you have any insight you can comment here or send me an email at kami at falseblue.com.
Affirmation
Posted by Tsunami.No.Ai in Christians, Other Religions on October 9, 2006
There comes a point in everyone’s life when he or she just snaps and they stop caring about causes that before hand they had staked their life on. Take for example my conservativeness. Up until recently I fervently argued the points and the topics of the day with liberals. I used reason and facts to support my statements and usually at least got the other person to concede a little ground if not just call it a fair draw. But this process took hours, headaches, and above all, constant bombardment of arguing from the other-side. I then realized that no matter what, the irrationality and the ill founded arguments would never stop. I might win one person, but there would be no shortage of his friends to take his place. And so at some point in the last few months I just gave up trying.
I tell you this example for the simple reason that I feel the same kind of snap coming on when it comes to christianity. Everyday, from all sides, I am bombarded with criticism, direct and indirect, about my choice in religion. It doesn’t matter how much research and soul searching I have done in my life because, since I’m christian, I am an ignorant, brainless drone who is one of those people who is a stick in the mud. And from the other side as well I receive constant criticism for not being christian enough because i don’t attend church regularly or condemn all manners of immorality in a vocal and confrontational way. it doesn’t matter to which side i turn, I am just plan wrong.
When it comes to talking to atheists, agnostics, pagans, whatever, about religion, I try to do the one thing that i think 99% of christians out there would positively rather die than do: i talk to them about it. I try to do so in the most understanding way possible because I know that if I am to even dream of planting the tiniest seed of light in their mind the first thing i must show is an openness to listen to their arguments and their concerns. I have to come to them with an open book of not only my religion and its history and teachings, but also my personal life open so they can see that I am not being hypocritical when I try to explain behavior to them. In this state, I leave myself very vulnerable to attack. All I have to defend me is the logic of the arguments I am presenting. If thats not pressure in a conversation I don’t know what is. Yet what does it net me in the end?
Perhaps I have planted that seed in some people, but a vast majority of non-christians I talk to want nothing of the sort. They see any pro-religious rhetoric as propaganda spread by liars and the stupid to further their grasp on how people think. They see christians, and by extension, myself, as pushing their unwanted dogma down their throat. And so, even though I may have a few people who I can say I got to start thinking seriously about religion in general, and maybe one or two thinking about christianity, all the others have attacked me, dogmatically and personally. They may not mean to do it, but I still have to bear the brunt of the attack. I am chided as stupid, ignorant of the “facts” of history, brainwashed, one of “them”, etc. It has gotten to the point where I am reluctant to even pronounce my faith in any public forum before anyone knows me well enough to know that if i do pronounce it, I’m not just a “jesus freak.” Otherwise, any argument I put forward will instantly be shot down under the premise of other stupid christian.
On the other-side of the fence, when I try and goto christians to ask for help/guidance on the issue and maybe even try and persuade them to be not as insane towards the non-faith, I am equally abused. For instance, should i goto a fellow christian and say “I’m tried of being called a jesus freak. i have to wait in debates to declare my faith” I am met with “is jesus not good enough for you? you want to hide him!?”. If I goto church, “thats the guy who hangs out with those immoral types.” if i try to debate with them, “why cant you just believe the bible literally?” it doesn’t do me any good. Perhaps there is some truth in the belief among the non-faith that christians are insane little zealots. Unfortunately, everyday I am met with more and more evidence that that presumption is true. Its gotten to the point where I feel ostracized by my own people; partly because they don’t want me there, and partly because i feel ashamed of being a part of them.
How can I effectively tell an avowed atheist that I believe christ loves everyone when we have christians who want nothing to do with not just non-christians but christians from some other denomination? How can I say “Christianity is born of logic, reason, and learning” when a huge majority of the christian community rejects blatant evidence that the earth is older than 6000 years? How can I tell someone God cares about them when there are hundreds of christians waiting in line to cast the stone at one another?
and to be fair:
How can I tell christians not to hate atheists when all they spit is venom and hatred at the mention of jesus? How can I tell the faithful to take in a sinner who thinks that they are all nothing but mindless drones speaking rubbish about love and invisible friends in the sky? How can I take the atheist’s claim of “open mindedness” seriously when I mention religion and he shuts his ears automatically?
The answer to all of these questions is: I cant. I try very hard, have tried very hard and I am met from all sides with a distain the like of which would all go away if I simply wasn’t christian anymore. If I was a weak minded drone, I would have given it up completely by now. If I wanted to fit in, I would have fully joined one or the other side and just given up my independent thought and gone along with the flow. If i didn’t firmly believe that Christianity (true, first century, christianity) then I would have rejected it by this point. Yet here I am, sick of debating and arguing, but not past helping someone who actually wants to talk, from either side.
Do i think that I am better than both sides? I would by lying if i said i didn’t. I think I’ve reached a point where I can communicate effectively, perhaps not positively, with both sides. But I have only done so at the cost of my own reputation as a christian leader or an effective speaker among non-believers. I have also probably not been the best of christian role models or practitioners. Nor have I had the fun that comes with rejecting moral codes all together. So instead, Here i am writing a ranting article about my position in life.
Perhaps this article was more be venting that anything. Maybe it was a fishing scheme to see if someone out there empathizes with my position. Maybe i want someone to see me was some kind of martyr. I don’t know. What I do know is that regardless of why i wrote this and made it public, its what I believe and feel about my life and the two huge forces I am stuck between. If i could have it my way, it would all just vanish, but I am not that lucky.
The Great Divide
Posted by Tsunami.No.Ai in Christians, Creation and Science, Nature of God on April 1, 2006
The war isn’t going to end anytime soon. I think thats become apparent in the last series of articles that I’ve posted over the last few months. Science and religion seem to be at odds with one another despite however much I wish they weren’t. So far in this series, I have been focusing on the evangelical Christians and the fundamentalist Christians and their steps that have kept the virtual divide not only open, but widening in their wake. I have not said much about the other side of the fence though. That is, I haven’t made any strides to talk about how science as a community is helping to keep this divide between itself and religion open and widening. So in this last article focusing on science for a while, Id like to present something more personal as I find myself more and more on the science side of the chasm that separates us.
I am often asked by people of both camps what my true beliefs are. I can firmly say that I have no idea. It is true I was raised a Christian but not as an evangelical one. That is, I wasn’t brought up with God and spirituality permeating every facet of my life. To me, God was simply there, just like air is there, just like the sun is there. It was one of those facts that just seemed to be without forcing itself into matters that had nothing to to with church. And so, without the constraint of religion interjecting itself into anything other than my spiritual life, I was free to study science as much as I wanted without finding myself at odds with my creator.
In fact, as the more I learned about creation and the universe as a whole, as well as how it all worked, I began to appreciate more and more how God had crafted such a universe that would give rise to us. I began to understand something fundamental that separates my form of Christianity from the evangelical fundamentalists. That fact I found out is probably the definition that divides Christians into two major camps, which I will get to in a bit. I realized that God did not create the universe because he loved us. He created the universe and then he loved us. In other words, he did not create the universe for our meager little species on some backwater planet, rather, the universe was created and we came alone, whether by natural phenomena or not, and God decided to show us love. Our species on a no name planet out back of nowhere received love from the creator of the universe.
This fact forces me at least to view Christianity’s creation standpoint from one of two camps. Those who think we are special, and those who think we aren’t special. To those who think we are, it frames their whole worldview, from their politics to their social life. To those who think humanity is special see their religion as the specialists of the special. In other words, they see Christianity (or islam or whatever) as the people who are chosen from the special people and therefore are above everyone else. This does not mean they are egotistical; though some undoubtedly are, but rather that they have some obligation to show everyone else how humanity is special and that we should all just know that we are the chosen of creation. The other side of this are those of us who see humanity as nothing special in terms of nature, but rather we are special only because God love us out of all of creation. I believe, as I think others do, that creation came first and that we came about in some manner God ordained but were not necessarily thought of before it all started. Therefore, we may have just been an after thought and God decided that maybe we could truly love him. I don’t know if thats a fact or not, but it would make us more humble if it were. Humility is the fact that governs these camps. One has humility because they are told to, the other just has it.
So how does this tie in with science? To me, the connection seems simple, science, by and large, is much like the second group I mentioned. They believe that humanity is nothing special, but not because of anything theological, simply because they can see how everything works and empirically deduce that if it happened here, why not somewhere else? That is to say, why should earth be the only planet out of countless trillions of planets with life on it? It is this empirical method that sets them apart from the first group I mentioned: the evangelicals. Evangelicals seem to like everything told to them, where as scientists want to find everything out. This difference is the second source of the divide, only between not just Christians.
Give a true scientist a bucket of water and they will want to know what its made of, why does the water spin differently than the bucket if you spin the two, why does water behave that way, why why why? Scientists are fixed to a scheme of solving problems through observation. And on their side of the fence this is their source of the divide, though to be truthful, it’s of no fault of their own. Scientists want to measure and test. You by definition cannot measure or test god. Therefore God is not part of science. This does not mean scientists to not believe in god, some do, but it does mean God does not factor into experiments or theories. Why should he? If humans announced they could test God or measure him, how arrogant would we be? We would be admitting level with omnipotence. Scientists will admit their true goal in life is simply to describe how the world around us works. They do not postulate on why the universe is here or what our purpose in life is. They leave that to philosophy.
As one of a scientific mindset, I have no problem separating God from science because God does not factor into gravity, or air, or temperature. God is not a natural being, if he was, he wouldn’t be god. So I can see the scientist’s argument where “leave to Caesar what is Caesar’s” or “leave to God what is God’s.” God only factors into why were are here and where we are going. To say otherwise just doesn’t make sense. But I can see the point the evangelicals make too. They say science is atheistic and hostile to religion. To some extent, they are right. Science is at its basest level, skepticism. God is untestable so he’s also unverifiable. It’s hard to convince a skeptic to believe in something inherently unprovable. Despite what the bible says, you still must have faith in God to believe the bible. Faith in the unknowable disturbs scientists.
But scientists could use some yelling at from those of us in the middle. Just as I yell at the young earth creationists all the time, I should really spend more time yelling at the scientists and those of the scientific mind set like myself. But the major difference between the yellings at is the fact that to move creationists to the center you only need to get them to think analytically and not accept everything at face value. On the other hand to move a scientist to the middle require to get them to give up just a shred of analytical thought, something even I have a lot of problems doing. As analytical people we tend to miss the forest for the trees. Science gets bogged down in the details and sometimes misses the overall picture, especially when its not related specifically to science. It’s like looking at the old cliche of the pocket watch in the desert. The scientist would take the watch apart, see how it worked, note how the pieces were made and what from, try to find out when the watch was made, etc etc. He becomes so engrossed with finding these things out; I think he misses the bigger picture. He doesn’t once stop to think, who made it and why is it out in the desert? And if he does, the could use the old cop out, “well thats for the philosophers to debate.” That’s true, but for the person of the scientist I don’t think its good enough. Not to sound like an evangelist, but as a person, are you letting your lab coat dictate your personal beliefs in the spiritual? Just because they are untestable does not mean they do not hold merit. Some scientists have tried to evade the issue altogether by suggestion religion and spirituality are somehow biological. Maybe, but spirituality is not a natural phenomenon, at least in my mind, and should at least be given some credit. Because of our spirituality and our ability to envision something so much bigger than ourselves such as god, we identify ourselves are separate from the animals. I know there are other reasons scientists would say we see ourselves separate, but you have to admit, spirituality is something we can definitely point to as “human.”
Scientists may see things the way those of us in the middle ground see things, as far as how humanity is nothing special. However they either cant, or wont ask the important questions that are personally applicable to them. Its all well and good you know how the first cells might have formed from folding proteins, but will that help your personal life? Its great you know the universe is expanding, but will that help you in death? So many scientific friends I know are afraid of death because they believe in no god. But not because they are afraid of hell, they are afraid of mortality being the finality of existence. They are scared of not existing and all that entails: a missed opportunity to make a mark on civilization. In some ways this view of spirituality not pertaining to them or not being intelligent thought is the key to why they help split society.
Their side of the divide is to look down on those who use faith too much. Granted some of us use faith where faith is necessary, but we don’t use it to facilitate every aspect of our lives simply because we are told something by a preacher. Unfortunately, a vast majority of Christians are like the evangelicals. As a result they fuel the stereotype of Christians being anti-intelligent bible thumpers. Science looks down on them because they don’t use any thought at all for their worldview. Science on the other hand perpetuates its own stereotype of being ivory tower people who refuse to look at anything other then facts and trying to discredit religion (even though they don’t directly) by scoffing at those who are in religion. And in-between there are those of us who look at both sides and shake our heads. Science discriminates against religion because they don’t like faith-based assumptions. Religion discriminates science by making claims that go beyond the scope of what religion teaches (i.e.. creation science). As a result, both camps refuse to talk to each other and have taken to throwing mud. So many souls and so many minds could be saved here if they just got along.
In the end, there’s not a whole lot I, nor probably any one person, can do about it. Science people will continue to hate Christians because of the lot that tries to wedge the two apart. Christians will continue to hate scientists because science wants to be skeptical of everything, including god. In the end, I don’t think either side is “right” but if I had to pick one thats more right than the other, id pick the scientists simply because I’m sure there is a way to prove God through logic at least, not necessarily experimentation. The evangelicals only offer canned arguments and irrationality. But I think, really, that if the two sides at least agreed to disagree on a few little issues than both would benefit monumentally from each other. That’s just my opinion though.