Another great article by The Onion, where once again religion gets a deserved amount of ridicule. Apparently, a Darwin-shaped wall stain has been found!
“Forgive me, O Charles, for ever doubting your Divine Evolution. After seeing this miracle of limestone pigmentation with my own eyes, my faith in empirical reasoning will never again be tested.”
Added Freiberg, “Behold the power and glory of the scientific method!”
“Salvation” is a story by Langston Hughes (1902 - 67) about a childhood experience he had. It’s a good example of how harmful it can be to hit children over the head with ‘overt religious behavior’. It reminded me of the documentary Jesus Camp, about which I had planned to write a bit more than just one other post and this one.
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Last Sunday, on of the pastors at my church, Eric Asp, preached about Ephesians 4. He read verse 28, which is on the subject of stealing, and linked this to the Dutch welfare system. A brave, and somewhat controversial statement, this caused a bit of a stir in the audience.
I’ve been thinking about the issue since then, and I’m torn between two points of view.
Do people change? Do they better themselves, and do they overcome their deeply flawed nature? According to Miss Marple, they don’t. And Miss Marple knows these kinds of things. See, Miss Marple is the main character in a series of crime novels by Agatha Christie, and she’s the coolest elderly spinster ever. Seemingly harmless, gentle, and slightly clueless, she’s really a shrewd observer of human nature. She uses her innocent appearance and her powers of intuition and insight to solve all manners of crime in her quaint, seemingly peaceful town.
Why did God create free will? Why does he allow us to ’sin’? And what is sin anyways? Is God perfect? Is he an entity, or more like a process? Does he even exist? And if so, could he prove it?
In a lengthy socratic dialogue by Raymond Smullyan, a mortal speaks with God on these issues and more. It offers some interesting views on free will and its implications. By the end it falls apart in my opinion, because it more explicitly enters the ‘Taoist domain’, but the journey to that point is insightful.
Here’s a short excerpt:
MORTAL: And therefore, O God, I pray thee, if thou hast one ounce of mercy for this thy suffering creature, absolve me of having to have free will!
GOD: You reject the greatest gift I have given thee?
MORTAL: How can you call that which was forced on me a gift? I have free will, but not of my own choice. I have never freely chosen to have free will. I have to have free will, whether I like it or not!
GOD: Why would you wish not to have free will?
MORTAL: Because free will means moral responsibility, and moral responsibility is more than I can bear!
GOD: Why do you find moral responsibility so unbearable?
MORTAL: Why? I honestly can’t analyze why; all I know is that I do.
GOD: All right, in that case suppose I absolve you from all moral responsibility but leave you still with free will. Will this be satisfactory?
MORTAL (after a pause): No, I am afraid not.
Growing up in Albania, much of our food didn’t reach us in the ‘conventional’ way. I remember a family from the nearby slums giving us one of their prized chickens. After my mother (with the help of a friendly neighbor) plucked the poulty and prepared it for dinner, we were all tasked with eating the little bit of tough meat of what turned out to be a tasteless scrawny, elderly chicken.
Waarom geloven mensen in God? Een tijdje geleden struikelde ik (in figuurlijke en ideologische zin) over een artikel dat in december 2005 door de krant ‘The Atlantic’ gepubliceerd was. De auteur, Paul Bloom, probeert een wetenschappelijke verklaring te geven voor religie en religieuze belevingen.
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(see also: www.christian-international-news.nl.)
“We give them food, clothes. We teach them to read, to write.” I waited for her to continue. She shrugged, as if there wasn’t anything more to say. I frowned, then said: “Well, what about God? Do you tell them about God?”
Somehow the notion of helping others without a ‘Christian agenda’ has become alien, both to Christians and non-Christians alike. Many Christians, in particular evangelicals, have a hard time seeing the purpose of charity without ’spreading the word’. Many non-Christians, on the other hand, have a hard time seeing Christian charity as something that can go without a Christian agenda. Why is that?
“Sometimes we tell them about God, but it’s not why we help them. We help them because, well, because they need it”
“But shouldn’t you tell them, so they can be saved? So they can accept Jesus as their savior?”, I said.
She tried not to wince.
Part of the problem is our tendency to confuse the goal with the means, as well as the simplistic idea that become a Christian is a single, life-changing moment, rather than a gradual progression. Conversion, in its most primitive sense, is seen as a goal. Like a virus, it has just enough complexity to spread itself, and ditches anything that doesn’t directly contribute to this growth. The resulting Christianity is weak and narrow-minded.
She looked away, around, trying to find the right words. “Of course we want them to ‘be saved’. But they must see the need, they must want it. Right now, what they need most is love and care. It is through this love, and through this care that we teach them of a loving, caring God. Not by preaching to them.”
Jesus himself acted primarily out of compassion. Why did he heal the sick, give sight to the blind, feed the hungry…and then implore the to keep quiet about it? It’s because Jesus’ motivation to do good was impulsive, part of his nature. It was not a means to fame, nor a way to strengthen and spread ‘his message’.
He just cared, and his actions reflected this.
(See also: Mat.14:14, Mark 1:41, Luke 7:12)
I have always thought that Christians would be reconciled by broadening their horizons, by going out to those who differed from themselves, by being open to non-believers, by carrying the preoccupations of those who were in difficulty and by being attentive to the poorest of the poor. - Brother Roger (founder of Taizé)