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Category: apologetics

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Published on 1 Comment on Either God dies or gods die

Adapted from this older post.

Deconversion is essential to the religious liberty of every man, woman and child.  We must deconvert from every god that man has imagined.   If humanity is to be free from the tyrannical rule of God: God must die.  This is the most basic claim of orthodox Christianity.

Christopher Hitchens often made the following kinds of remarks about religion's "permanent, unalterable dictatorship":

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f40TRJl5vvI]

An eternal North Korea is, he says, religion's idea of heaven.  But it's Hitchens' idea of hell (probably ours too!).

But which God is he imagining ruling over this kingdom of heaven?  He's imagining a greedy dictator, a cosmic leech, an almighty sink-hole of need.  Of course, if that were true, eternity would feel like a drain!  Our lives on earth would be bad enough.

This was the tyranny that Dan Barker laboured under - now president of the Freedom from Religion Foundation.  He speaks of his past in evangelical Christianity here:

I was a "doer of the word and not a hearer only." I went to a Christian college, majored in Religion/Philosophy, became ordained and served in a pastoral capacity in three California churches. I personally led many people to Jesus Christ, and encouraged many young people to consider full-time Christian service.

But one day he de-converted to find liberation from this Almighty Surveillance System:

"For my whole life there had been this giant eyeball looking at me, this god, this holy spirit, this church history, and this Bible. And not only everything I did but everything I thought was being judged: Was God pleased? I realized that that wasn't there anymore. It occurred to me, 'I own these thoughts. Nobody knows what I'm thinking right now. There's no fear of hell, no fear of judgment, I don't have to be right or wrong, I can just be me.'" (Source)

Once God was dead, Barker was free.  It was "exhilarating", he said.  You can imagine it was something of a Hallelujah moment.  The death of God always is!  Mischievously, I wonder whether Barker wishes such exultation could go on forever...

It's interesting that Barker had this revelation while out in the beauty of nature and looking up at the 'heavens'.  I mention his location because it's very similar to John Bunyan's de-conversion experience, three centuries earlier.

He too was labouring under the feeling that heaven was a spiritual North Korea.  He felt the "giant eyeball" very keenly and it was a heavy oppression.  But one day he also de-converted from his old religion...

"As I was passing in the field, and that too with some dashes on my conscience . . . suddenly this sentence fell upon my soul, "Thy righteousness is in heaven"; and, methought withal, I saw with the eyes of my soul Jesus Christ at God's right hand, there, I say, is my righteousness; so that wherever I was, or whatever I was a-doing, God could not say of me, He wants [lacks] my righteousness, for that was just before him. I also saw, moreover, that it was not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor yet my bad frame that made my righteousness worse; for my righteousness was Jesus Christ himself, the same yesterday and today for ever (Heb. 13:8)."

"Now did my chains fall from my legs indeed, I was loosed from my affliction and irons, my temptations also fled away, so that from that time, those dreadful scriptures of God left off to trouble me; now also went I home rejoicing for the grace and love of God."

Notice the exhilarating effect of the death of God!  When Bunyan grasps the implications of God the Lamb he finds instant freedom from religious afflictions and even from "those dreadful scriptures of God."  Even Bunyan's language mirrors the de-conversion experiences related so often on today's atheist websites.

I've met many an atheists on the internet - especially those from the kinds of religious environments that Bunyan experienced in the 17th century.  Countless times I've heard de-conversion stories about finding release from a greedy god, from judgementalism, from hypocrisy, from the guilt, shame and fear of their religious upbringing.  I feel their pain.  I also grew up in church.  I also laboured under the tyranny of an imagined god.  I also felt the eye-ball in the sky.  I also found release in de-conversion.

But there's two kinds of de-conversion.  There are two kinds of death-of-God experience.

Bunyan de-converts from a God-of-Demand and finds a God-Who-Is-Giver.  The death of God means, for Bunyan, looking to the cross.  There He sees the LORD Jesus giving Himself utterly - pouring out His life for the world.  There He sees that God is not greedy - God is Giver.  This is the vision that changes him.

Barker de-converts from a God-of-Demand and finds, what?  Only other powers.  Selfish powers.  Uncaring powers.  What lies 'at bottom' in this universe in the atheist vision?  'Blind, pitiless indifference' if you ask Dawkins.  Barker is de-converted towards powers that will only judge and crush us in the end.

His exhilaration can only be short-lived.  He's only traded one tyranny for another.  But with Jesus, the death of God is our salvation.  And it might just make you want to sing "Worthy is the Lamb who was slain." (Revelation 5:12).  That's the song of heaven - because heaven is a celebration of the grace, not the greed, of God.

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Published on 21 Comments on We’ve all got our circularities

I believe the Bible is the word of God because in it God speaks.  This is not an unfortunate circularity.  At the end of the day nothing could convince me it's God's word except that God speaks.  You could tell me it's great history, it's logically coherent and displays incredible internal consistency as a library of books over many centuries.  Great, I believe all those things.  But that doesn't make it God's word.  The only thing that could authenticate the Bible as God's word is if God personally speaks through it.  And at that stage I'm essentially saying that it's God's word because it's God's word.

Or to shift that argument to christology, I believe that Jesus is the Radiance of the Father's glory because in Him I've met the glorious Father.  Yet this Father is met only in the face of the Son.  In other words, I know that Jesus is Lord because I see in Him the kind of Lord that only Jesus reveals.  There is a self-authenticating majesty to Jesus such that I say, along with Lord Byron, "If God's not like Jesus, He ought to be."  Jesus is the kind of God that I believe in - the kind of God that Jesus uniquely reveals.  He's IT.  And I know He's IT because, well, look at Him!  Jesus is Lord because Jesus is Lord.

At this point you'll note how inter-related these two circularities are.  And also the integral role of the Spirit in both.  He brings us God's written word with divine authority, illuminating Christ so that, in Him, we might see and know the Father.

Now "circular arguments" get a bad name.  For one thing it sounds like buying into them will trap you.  Actually, if you find yourself in the right Circle, you'll finally be free.  The Circle of Father, Son and Spirit doesn't limit you.  No these ultimate realities (because they really are ultimate) enable you to move out into the world all the wiser for knowing their Lordship.  With the Spirit-breathed word, and the Lens of the Father's Son... then you can really get somewhere.  From this knowledge you'll find all sorts of other things illuminated by God's Light.

But still, people will cry foul.  "You can't reason in a circle" people will say.  But hang on, we all employ circular reasoning whenever we make claims about ultimate reality.  Didn't your mum ever justify her pronouncements with "Because I'm the mummy"?

It's inevitable that your ultimate ground of authentication must authenticate itself, or it isn't ultimate.

Now this plays out in all sorts of areas.  But think, for instance, of the naturalist assumption that the "natural" realm is best placed to judge any hypothetical "further realm".  If a "further realm" exists, they say, it must play by the rules of naturalism.  This, of course, radically limits the kinds of realms the naturalist would be willing to admit and means that the gods they consider can only be superbeings within the world.

Now the naturalist cannot establish such a priority via naturalism.  It is, by definition, beyond the ability of the natural sciences to pronounce on the existence of realms beyond their scope.  Yet naturalists assume that the "natural" realm is all there is, was, or ever shall be.

Naturalism, they say, is the best explanation of ultimate reality because other explanations fail naturalistic tests.  Or, to put it most simply, naturalism is true (or our best bet) because naturalism says so.

Now let's be clear - belief in naturalism is not a groundless leap of faith.  It's a faith commitment that springs from compelling evidence (true faith always does).  The evidence is this: trusting our own powers of perception and reasoning has produced great success in the natural sciences.  I.e. it works, it explains things, when we move out into the world on its basis things make sense.

But,

1) The Christian does not deny the explanatory power of the naturalistic sciences.  The Christian believes that such sciences have sprung from a broader Christian world-view and rejoice in the fruits of the gospel here.  Christians simply deny that such knowledge is the only or surest knowledge.

In fact,

2) The Christian sees that naturalism is horrifically reductionistic and harmful when seeking to be applied beyond the natural sciences.  As the old saying goes, If all you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.  To treat human personhood and relationships, ethics and aesthetics, to say nothing of a relationship with God, as a mere interplay of matter and energy is to misunderstand these things greatly.  The explanatory power breaks down here in a catastrophic way.  And yet, these things - love, forgiveness, beauty, goodness etc - are the most precious realities in human existence.

In the discussion between Richard Dawkins and Rowan Williams the other day, Dawkins said he "believed" we would find naturalistic explanations for consciousness - explanations which we do not now possess.  That is a consistent faith position within his world-view.  Naturalism has produced the goods in many spheres of enquiry - he trusts that consciousness will be one more success story for the natural sciences.

Yet all the while an explanation for personal reality presents itself to Dawkins.  One which does not rule out science but underpins it.  And one which accounts for the priority of the personal which is the most blindingly obvious reality which we encounter moment by moment. Nothing else accounts for it like this accounts for it...

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was with God in the beginning.  Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.  In him was life, and that life was the light of men.  The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.   (John 1:1-4)

I honestly don't know why Dawkins - or anyone - can't see it.  How can there be darkness when the Light of Christ is so dazzlingly obvious?  But then I would say that.  I'm in the grip of the ultimate Circularity!

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Published on 4 Comments on We all have our creation stories [repost]

Brian Cox - dream-boat physicist, not craggy-faced actor - recently said this:

 Our civilization was built on the foundations of reason and rational thinking embodied in the scientific method, and our future depends on the widespread acceptance of science as THE ONLY WAY WE HAVE to meet many, if not all, of the great challenges we face. (here)

Well now.  Them there's fighting words.  Therefore, I thought it was time to repost this from two years ago (see how cutting edge CTT is?  Discussing Cox two years ago!)

......

Just watched this documentary on the Large Hadron Collider: "The Big Bang Machine." (BBC4) presented by Brian Cox.

[youtube=http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=kaRKpQ5QvUQ&feature=channel]

Here's an extract from around 4:20 - 7:20.

Physics is stuck and the only thing left to do is recreate the universe as it was a fraction of a second after the big bang.  That's what the LHC is designed to do.  To smash bits of matter together at energies  never before achieved so that we can stare at the face of creation...

So here's the aim - to stare at the face of creation.

And this is the means - to smash particles together.

Notice the disjunct between the stated aim and the means!   Cox excites us about the scientific quest promising us a 'face' to creation.  Of course "face" says communicative, conscious.  It says personality.  It's no wonder that Cox wants to reach for this kind of language because at bottom it's personal reality that we long to see.  But all Cox can give us is particles.  This is the trouble.

What do you say of a person who promises you a face but gives you only particles?

What do you say of an enterprise that can describe a face only in terms of its sub-atomic particles?

He continues...

...Every civilization has its own creation story.  The ancient Chinese, indian mystics and Christian theologians all place a divine creator at the heart of their creation stories.  Science too has an elaborate story that describes the universe's genesis.  It tells us how the fundamental constituents of the cosmos took on their form.  The difference with this story is that we can test it.  We can find out if its true by tearing matter apart and looking at the pieces.  All you need is a machine powerful enough to restage the first moments after creation...

This was the sentence that made me sit up and take notice: "Every civilization has its own creation story."  And Cox puts 'science' in there among Indian mystics and Christian theologians.  Ok good.  We're all telling stories about the world around us - scientists included.  But what does Cox say is the difference with science?  Answer: "we can test it."  Hmm.  How will science be tested?  Tearing apart matter and looking at the pieces.

Well now that's a very sensible test if you think that matter is what explains everything.  If you have a story about the world that says everything came about via material means then test matter.  Yes indeed that's testable.  But it's not the only thing that's testable.  What if your story about the world says 'Everything came about via the Word who was with God in the beginning and then became flesh and dwelt among us.'  Is that testable?  You betcha!  Every bit as much as the 'science' story.  It's just that you test this story in ways appropriate to its nature.

All science works by testing its object of study in accordance with its nature.  You don't do astronomy with a microscope - your means of testing is adapted to the thing tested.  So if you think it's all about matter, you study matter.  But if you think it's all about the Word then you study the Word.  Theology in this sense is completely scientific.  It is taking its Object of enquiry completely seriously and pursuing thorough investigation according the nature of the Word - ie it is listening obediently to Him.  That's good science.  And it's our only hope of actually seeing the Face that explains our world.  Particles won't get you to the Person - but the Person can help you explain particles...

Cox continues...

In the beginning there was nothing. No space, no time just endless nothing.  Then 13.7 billion years ago from nothing came everything.  The universe exploded into existence.  From that fireball of energy emerged the simplest building blocks of matter.  Finding experimental evidence of these fundamental entities has become the holy grail of physics.

Notice first that this creation story is just as miraculous as any other.  "From nothing came everything".  No explanations are given.  None ever could be.  This is the astonishing miracle at the heart of our modern creation story.  It is not the case that only primitive 'religion' believes in miracles.  The 'science' creation story is equally miraculous.

And again do you how science proceeds?  It proceeds like theology.  The scientific worldview says there must have been simple building blocks of matter that existed after the big bang.  Of course we've never observed these.  Nonetheless the worldview tells us they must have existed.  Therefore science seeks after evidence of what it believes to be true even without the evidence.  It has faith (an assurance of things hoped for (Heb 11:1f)) and from this faith it seeks understanding.  That is the scientific pursuit and it is no more or less a faith-based enterprise than theology.  And that's no bad thing, it's just the way things are.  It would just be nice if scientists came clean about it!

The point is this - don't let anyone tell you science is about matter not miracles or fact and not faith.  The truth is we all have our creation stories.

.

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Published on 7 Comments on Apologetics and “reluctant conversion”

I'm working on a talk whose title was given to me in advance: Liar, Lunatic or Lord.

It's the famous trilemma popularised by CS Lewis.

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to...."

It's brilliantly put and it highlights the absurdity of a mild reaction to Jesus.  The Son of  God splits the world.  Amen.

But just read on to the rationale that's informing Lewis's argument:

... Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God."  Mere Christianity

Does that strike you as odd?  "Drat and blast, I'm logically impelled to worship Christ as Lord!  I wish it were otherwise but I'm trapped by the logic of it."

Of course, that was Lewis's own testimony - "the most reluctant convert in all of England."

But Lewis was also brilliant at capturing the imagination - narrating Narnia then inviting us through the wardrobe.  Yet how often do we simply follow the approach of this passage in Mere Christianity?  "I know you won't want to admit Jesus as Lord, but here's the water-tight argument that will force your hand!"

If that's the note we strike - are we really communicating the kind of Lord that Jesus is?

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Published on 7 Comments on “A universe with a god would look very different to a universe without one.”

"A universe with a god would look very different to a universe without one.” Richard Dawkins.

It's one of the wisest things Dawkins has ever said. Believers and unbelievers alike should take heed.

Let's tease out some implications of it.

1) Dawkins clearly has a doctrine of "god" in mind as he makes the statement.  The flying spaghetti monster wouldn't affect the kind of universe we inhabit.  But Thor might.  Allah in a different way.  And the triune God, different again.  Therefore it's not a straight binary choice.

2)  I would look different depending on the existence of God or not.  Dawkins seems to imagine two states (a theistic and an atheistic universe) as alternatives lying before him.  And who is the great unmoved mover in this scenario?  Who is the neutral observer, the one enthroned above all worlds?  The scientist!  But no, Dawkins' thought experiment - if it takes the word "God" with any seriousness - is one in which everything must be re-imagined.  If I am a creature, made by the Father's Word, intended for life in communion with God, then everything changes for me.

3) I would look differently depending on the existence of God or not.  If I was a creature of the Word, and if the world  is a creature of the same Word, I would look through the lens of His Word.  I would see all things in relationship to Christ the Creator.  That would simply be good science if the Christian God existed.

But here's something strange...

4) Dawkins ridicules Christian scientists who do actually deliver a different vision of the universe to his own.  Yet how could they do otherwise, if "a universe with a god will look very different"?

Which only makes me think...

5) Dawkins has not entered into his own thought-experiment for even a minute.  Has he really considered the revolution involved in actually reconceiving Self and World and God according to the Christian vision?  Of course not.  To do so would mean repenting of his position as all-seeing Arbiter.  Or in other words:

"Unless you change and become like little children you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."  (Matthew 18:3)

 

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Published on 1 Comment on Jesus is God-sized. God is Jesus-shaped. [repost]

When preaching on John 1:1-2 (audio here), my last two points were this:

Jesus is God-sized

and

God is Jesus-shaped

I wonder whether much of our evangelism is aimed at persuading people of point number one.  And I wonder whether that emphasis, if divorced from the second point, is quite dangerous.

Here's what I mean - when we tell an unbeliever that Jesus is God, this is what they hear:  "You know the god of the pub discussion - the distant, arm-chair deity, uninvolved and uncaring?  Actually Jesus is that guy!"

"Oh" says the unbeliever.  "Because Jesus looks quite different to that."

"Yeah, I know" we say.  "But you need to look past all that stuff.  Deep down he's really 'the god you've always believed in' All that other stuff is just Jesus' human nature.  Yeah, that's like window-dressing.  Deep down he's The Big Guy."

And what's the result?  Well how many Christian testimonies run something like this...

"I have always believed in some kind of god.  And then I met Jesus.  And the preacher told me that Jesus is the god-I-always-believed-in.  So now I've added faith in Jesus to my bedrock belief in a deity."

Do you see what's happened here?  Some supposed natural knowledge of God is determining a person's view of Christ and determining it from the outset.

It should be the other way around.  Knowledge of Jesus should revolutionize our view of God. We should tell people not only that Jesus is God-sized, we should tell them that God is entirely Jesus-shaped.  Let's introduce them to the God they didn't know.  Let's offer them the Christ-like God.

As Archbishop Michael Ramsey once said (riffing on 1 John 1:5): "God is Christlike, and in Him there is no unchristlikeness at all."

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Published on 21 Comments on Help with sermons please

I've got four sermons at the start of February answering the following questions:

How can a loving God not accept everyone?

Does God even exist?

If there is a God, why does he allow suffering?

Aren't all religions basically the same?

What should my passages be?

What should I say?

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Published on 6 Comments on Christians make the best atheists

Wonderful article by Alastair Roberts on Atheism and Christianity.  Every paragraph's a winner, how about this to whet your appetite:

The target of much atheist protest is the god that secures all meaning and makes sense of the world, the religion that serves as a crutch and underwrites the social order, the faith that inures one to truth and reality and gives birth to dulling and enslaving illusion. This is the god in whom they don’t believe. They might be surprised to find that Christians stand alongside them in attacking this deity: we don’t believe in that god either.

Read the whole thing here.

And Happy New Year!

 

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Published on 2 Comments on “Isn’t it petty for God to reward ‘faith’ and send ‘unbelievers’ to hell?”

A common question.  How to respond?

Well let's think about the assumptions underlying the question.  If I'm detecting them rightly they go something like this:  Faith is an attribute which 'believers' rustle up and which God accepts as payment for heaven.  Having accepted the "faith" token from the righteous, God then rewards them with a whole "preferred customers package" of benefits (eternal life, forgiveness, feeling's of love and purpose, etc).  Meanwhile, God finds 'unbelievers' lacking in this attribute called faith and so consigns them to this other place called hell.

So the question then comes, How can that be right?  And of course, if that's what "God", "faith" and "eternal life"mean, then it isn't right - it's an absurd and capricious set-up which every Christian should repudiate.  Thankfully, it's nothing like the gospel.

The gospel is this: God gives us His Son by the Spirit.  Christ is Himself eternal life (1 John 5:20).  To receive the gift of Christ is what we call faith (John 1:12).  To refuse Christ is to resist the Spirit.  And it is also, by the very nature of the case, to refuse eternal life.  

Therefore God does not sit back and then reward an attribute called "faith" which sinners bring to the table.  God actively offers Christ to sinners.  As Christ says,

Whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the LORD, but he who fails to find me injures himself; all who hate me love death.  (Proverbs 8:35-36)

 

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