Sunday Faith Series: The Fundamental Error Of 'Creation Science'

When you combine bad theology and bad science, in an attempt to distil scientific truths from the Bible, you get the misguided entity that has come to be known as Creation Science. Creation Science gets both fundamental propositions wrong - and in doing so, it diminishes both the Bible and science.

The Bible is a Divinely inspired book that tells us who God is, who we are, how we should act, how much we are loved by Him, and how we can have salvation. There is no scientific commentary in the Bible (at all), because the Bible was written several millennia before the scientific methods first became formally established.

The scientific methods enable us to converge upon information and ideas on how to assess variable and diverse protocols, and bring them into exquisite theoretical descriptions. Science gives us facts about the physical substrate of our natural world. There is nothing in the domain of science that can tell us who we are in relation to God and His plan for us.

All that is to say, Christianity and science offer two different lenses through which to understand reality as best we can - and things get muddy when their domains are confused. To illustrate, suppose Jack and Jill visit the zoo. Jack is looking at the tigers, and Jill is looking at the elephants, and both are oblivious to each other's focus.

Jack: What a beautiful shade of orange those creatures have.

Jill: It isn't orange, that's the way the sun is shining on them - they are grey.

Jack: Nevertheless, I wouldn't want to be chased and eaten by one.

Jill: What do you mean? They are herbivorous, not carnivorous - they wouldn't eat you.

Jack: Of course they would; haven't you seen those sharp teeth?

Jill: I think you mean tusks.

Jack: Eh?

Now, you see, all the time that Jack and Jill are talking past each other about different animals, their conversation lacks proper utility. The same is true with the Bible and science - the conversations are similar to Jack and Jill's, except the subject matter is more intractable. There is no conflict between good theology and good science; the only conflict is when either (or both) of these tenets are distorted. The continual need for clarifications like this tells us that, alas, there is still plenty of work to be done to weed this nostrum of Creation Science out of Christianity.

Edit to add: Creation science is that familiar phenomenon used by people with a perverse agenda to make their deception sound more credible to pliable individuals – they take a valid word and insert a preceding word to make their deception sound like a credible field. Creation Science is a classic example of trying to make pseudo-science sound like a science. Social justice is a classic example of trying to turn divisive identity politics into a field that sounds progressive. Holistic medicine is a synonym for medicine that has not been verified properly in clinical trials, and so forth.

Sunday Faith Series: Two Observations About Suffering

 

Some sceptics say the world is too cruel and unjust and too full of suffering for there to be an all-loving God as Creator. I have two brief observations to make, which are somewhat whimsical, but only somewhat, as I think there are several grains of truth attached to them: 

1)     Those who have the above objection but still choose to have children (which is probably a great majority of them) clearly believe that the world is not too cruel and unjust and too full of suffering to bring children into. If they thought that, on balance, the world was good enough, purposeful enough and interesting enough to bring new life into the world, knowing this new life would be subjected to everything the world throws at them, they perhaps shouldn’t be so sure that God didn’t feel the same about creation as a whole. 

2)     Suppose you were offered the chance to push a button, after which you get 5 seconds of awful pain, misery and suffering, and then the rest of your life consists of a continuous state of blissful, heavenly joy and contentment. I think most people would push the button. Now, consider a life span of 80 years on earth, comprising the entirety of human experiences, both positive and negative, as a ratio to the timescale of eternal heavenly bliss with God for those who choose it. Even though 5 seconds is but a mere blip in an 80 year timescale, as a ratio, 5 seconds compared with 80 years is an astronomically higher ratio than 80 years of earth compared with eternal bliss in Heaven.

Those grains of truth are, I contend, both indicative and evocative. And, sure, I can already anticipate what some objections might be, as they ought to be considered. I’d say the primary challenge to number 1 would be; yes, but there are many other factors (both conscious and subconscious) that drive the desire to have children (biological, psychological emotional, selfish, socio-cultural), and couples may rationally choose to do so in spite of believing the world is not the creation of an all-loving God. To which, I say, true – but a) It still doesn’t stack up well alongside your contention that God shouldn’t have created such a world; and b) Some of the psychological, emotional, selfish and socio-cultural factors driving your desire to have children in spite of your view about God’s creation are likely to be some of the same factors driving your belief that it feels convenient in the short-term if those desires influence your argument against God being the Creator.

And if we move to number 2, it may cross your mind that the primary objection to 2 actually seems like an ironic supporting statement of number 1. That is, the biggest challenge to number 2 seems to be that, even if you accept the proposition that the world is too cruel and unjust and too full of suffering, there is, at least, a great deal of goodness, purpose and interest that works alongside it. This shows me that they think life is sufficiently worth living that they would willingly allow their own children into the world to experience it. Once they do that, it becomes hard to accept that they really do believe that there is too much badness and suffering in the world for them to believe in God. If the world is sufficiently worth living in (in their view) that they'd happily bring new life into it, then it's not such a big step to accept that God feels the same about the world and all the lives in it. After all, life on earth is both hard and easy, it's both joyous and dreadful, it's both simple and complex, and it's both pleasing and frustrating - but it never fails to be interesting, exhilarating and enriching for those who want to throw themselves into the adventure. 

The Christian, of course, would add that those challenges and struggles are a necessary part of the journey of growth, progress and fulfilment, and therefore hold deep inherent value in the creation story – which is the same line of thinking that seems to make it worthwhile bringing new life into the world, in spite of those challenges and struggles.

Sunday Faith Series: God On Trial Again - Atheists’ Psychological Tricks

The only people who go on about religious faith more than believers are the unbelievers who seem utterly obsessed with convincing everyone else that God doesn’t exist. Of course, the arguments against Christianity have been so weak or so ill-conceived for so long that even the atheists themselves have probably lost confidence in them deep down. But they can’t let it lie, so they had to find a way to carry on dismissing Christianity while carrying the internal burden of not being persuaded by the strength of their arguments.

If you’re no longer persuaded by your own arguments, and you’re honest enough to not be in denial about how weak they are, and you want to carry on having the conversations, then you have two options: you can either come up with better arguments, or you can employ some psychological trickery to conceal the inadequacy of your position. The first one hasn’t happened – the arguments are ages old, and despite contemporary online atheist keyboard warriors speaking as though they have interesting and original contributions to make to the debate, the reality is, they are only rehashing old arguments that have long ago been shown to be deficient. This leaves the option of psychological trickery, which I’ve noticed is the approach most contemporary atheists have chosen, and it usually comes in one of two forms.

The first and the most squalid psychological trick is to simply dismiss anything to do with religious faith and the believers who have it as idiotic, thoughtless and without reason – thereby rendering it unworthy of any further consideration, and only deserving of mockery and hostility. That way, the atheist who employs this method gets to conceal all their own insufficiencies, intellectual defects, and personal ethical shortcomings, and erects the walls and places themselves captive in their own cognitive prison cell, never having to seriously engage with anything profound or meaningful.

The second kind of psychological trick is a level above the first, and does at least involve some superficial engagement, and even occasionally some thoughtful attempts to undermine Christianity - but it is to arraign God on the grounds that if He existed He would be morally inferior to the person condemning Him. Whether it’s God’s character in the Bible, the concept of hell, or the evil and suffering in the world, the psychological trick is to declare that He is consequently not worthy of praise and worship, but of moral judgement and condemnation, and therefore probably doesn’t exist.

Now, for the Christian, I do think there are elements to this line of thought that deserve honest consideration and deep contemplation, but it’s not like Christians haven’t been doing this for centuries, and it’s not like the atheists are coming up with anything new with this ‘God in the dock’ mentality. Dismiss God as cruel, tyrannical and unjust, and as being moral inferior to yourself, and you never have to engage with proper consideration regarding the profundity of the subject.

Besides, it just won’t do to write off God in this way, because the idea that He is unworthy or morally inferior to us doesn’t stack up. Some will tell us that the God in the Old Testament seems like a barbaric God. But yet in the New Testament we see God in the form of Jesus - as someone all-loving who takes our sins to the cross, and while suffering the most intense agony, asks God the Father for their forgiveness. That is not just a stupendous act of love and goodness, it is also a stupendous act of grace and mercy. The kind of God who did that for us, and who treated people as well as Jesus did (and encouraged everyone else to do the same) is clearly demonstrating the qualities of a God of supreme love and benevolence, in spite of some of the difficult things we experience in the Old Testament and in the hardships experienced in creation.

It would also be foolish to hold on to any idea that God somehow changes during the time from Old Testament to New. If we are to consider God under the terms He asks to be considered, then we must think only in terms of His being a perfect and good God. Therefore, understanding Him through the lens of the New Testament accounts of Jesus only increases the likelihood that those callow impressions of His being 'barbaric', 'genocidal' and 'maniacal' are examples of erroneous human-constructed conceptions of Him.

The Salvation Christ bought for us on the cross is intended to be a joy that offers hope to rescue the hopeless. But the atheist trickery is to turn it on its head and claim it to be immorally absolvent. Instead, they treat the cross as being morally repugnant, and as something that should elicit our disapproval, not our grateful response. At this point, the greatest act of love the world has ever seen, and the greatest evidence of God’s goodness that we have, is one of the main things being used against God.

 

Sunday Faith Series: Can You Do Good And Defy God?

 

Here's an intriguing thought experiment that's in my book The Ecstasy of a New Morality. If someone does a morally good act that is not part of God's will because it interferes with God's plan, is the act still good? Imagine a wise sage who lived around the time of Jesus' crucifixion. One day he has an epiphany that puts him years ahead of his contemporaries - he realises that the Roman civilisation is pretty barbaric, and he thinks he can do things to make it better. The next day he's walking along and he sees Christ getting whipped and beaten, about to go on the cross. Being a kind, decent and morally advanced sage, he steps in and tries to save Jesus from any more pain. After giving an epoch-changing talk of the barbaric nature of nailing human beings to crucifixes, the Romans see sense and the process is discontinued, and Jesus is not crucified.

Now, by any normal standards of morality, what our sage did could only be construed as good. He helped a relatively backward civilisation advance their morality, and tried to promote tolerance, respect and kindness over the more reactionary tribal barbarism of the day. But in saving the bruised and battered Jesus from death on the cross, what he also did was interfere with God's grand plan for the salvation of humankind.

I doubt that God, being omnipotent, would let any compromises occur that would impede the plan over which He has perfect control, but it does engender a quite interesting observation about an act that can be good on a human level yet thoroughly prohibitive in terms of God's will and His plan. Such an observation seems to confirm an important distinction between our will and God's will in terms of how our apprehension of morality reflects the goodness from which it emanates - rather like how the scent of a woodland is smelled by our being immersed in the forest.

Sunday Faith Series: Counterintuitive Christianity - When It's Like The Monty Hall Problem

 

You may have heard of the famous Monty Hall problem:

Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, "Do you want to pick door No. 2?" Is it to your advantage to switch your choice?

 

The answer is counterintuitive, but you actually have a better chance of winning by switching. The stick or switch scenario produces surprise and objection, with complaint from those who cannot see that switching increases one’s chances of winning (you can play here and see why switching is the best strategy). The main thing to understand about the Monty Hall problem is that it shows intuitive notions cannot always accept conditional probabilities very easily.

 

There are a lot of counterintuitive things about this world. We know from quantum mechanics and relativity that the very small and the very fast give us counterintuitive conditions that confound our expectations. We know that in the past a functional eye or a planetary system seemed too improbable to have evolved by nature's mathematical and physical laws. Furthermore, when one considers things like monotonic voting systems, 0.999 denoting a real number that can be shown to be 1, water being heavier in liquid form than in solid form due to the latter's reduction in density, or water vapour being lighter than air, our expectations seem confounded – particularly at a young age. The world is full of facts that confound our expectations.

 

We see the same thing in economics, when people frequently don’t understand at first glance why having safer cars causes more accidents, and why contraception actually increases unwanted pregnancies, and why stronger filtered cigarettes could lead to a higher incidence of lung cancer, and why lower percentage alcohol could result in more drunkenness, and why banning the transportation of animals for testing may well increase animal suffering, not reduce it.

 

I believe Christianity to be the world's most powerful and important truth, but it is quite a counterintuitive truth, which is a part of what St Paul is getting at when he says that no one can say "Jesus is Lord," except by the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:3).

 

When I was exploring the faith in my late teens and early twenties, I was struck by the apparent chicken and egg problem of belief: that one cannot know the truth of Christianity without a direct relationship with God through the Holy Spirit, but one doesn't have a direct relationship with God through the Holy Spirit except by knowing the truth of Christianity.

 

I would say that Christianity is the most counterintuitive truth with which we interface, not just because theology is the most complex subject in the world, but because the central essence of its grace is so outrageous and underserved that it can easily confound expectations, particularly for those who are primed to think of life in terms of a personal moral compass of meritocracy. Anyone who thinks morality is the be all and end all of human progress is going to find a faith based on a free gift of undeserved grace rather alien to the intuition.

 

By way of an analogy, Christianity is fairly similar to a riddle: that is, a riddle in prospect is often tricky, but in retrospect, once one understands how it is solved - it is obvious and transparent. Once one solves the riddle of Christianity and looks back in retrospect at their own journey of exploration (which can take weeks, months or years), one sees that part of the complexity was because consideration of the central essence of grace was absent from the riddle while it was still in prospect. Don't get me wrong, I am not comparing the Divine message to some sort of cryptic message He has set for us to solve – I use the term ‘riddle’ only with respect to how complex subjects seem at first obscure and counterintuitive, and clearer and more obvious once the logic trail induces clarity.

 

I contend that in Christianity we are being asked to consider something more counterintuitively profound than anything else the world has ever known - that of outrageous Divine grace. It appears to be contrary to every metric we value: we study hard, we get our rewards with good exam results; we work hard, we get paid and possibly promotion; we strive for moral probity, and we become a good person; we commit a crime, we go to prison - the list goes on. The commonality with these metrics is that the rewards outputted are roughly commensurate with the efforts inputted. Christianity radically departs from this worldly perspective, offering an outrageous offer of grace that makes perfect sense from the inside but beggars belief from the outside (I have personal experience of both perspectives).

 

To be a Christian you have to suspend all thoughts of getting better on your own merits, and accept a free gift of grace as a framework for becoming that better person. To fully live we have to die to self; to gain in abundance we must sacrifice; when we suffer we are to consider it 'pure joy'; and to lead a church congregation involves serving humbly bottom up not top down. No wonder it seems strange from the outside.

Forgiving our enemies is another aspect of grace where the world is often off kilter with Christianity. Humanity has a voracious appetite for justice and righting wrongs - yet when something amazing happens, like a mother forgives her son's killer, and victims of war torture become reconciled with their torturers through a grace-abundant reconciliation, we get a little sense of what it's like when God's goodness is working inside people, and why millions of highly intelligent and educated and worldly people have accepted Christ as Lord based on the fact that He did the same thing as Creator Himself on the cross.

 

And there is perhaps no greater image of the continuativeness of Christianity than the Lord Jesus, Creator of the universe, washing the feet of His disciples. It's only when one accepts Him as Lord and Saviour that that action makes more sense. And that is probably because in discovering that our God came to serve, we uncover that other very counterintuitive thing about forgiving our enemies and those who have done us most harm.

 

Sunday Faith Series: Dawkins' Faulty Belief-O-Meter

In his 2006 book The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins produced his popularly received seven point scale – a 1-7 valuation of the strength of belief or disbelief in God. Here it is:

1.Strong Theist: I am 100% sure that there is a God

2.De-facto Theist: I cannot know for certain but I strongly believe in God and I live my life on the assumption that he is there.

3.Weak Theist: I am very uncertain, but I am inclined to believe in God.

4.Pure Agnostic: I don’t know about God’s existence or non-existence, so am undecided.

5.Weak Atheist: I do not know whether God exists but I’m inclined to be skeptical.

6.De-facto Atheist: I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable and I live my life under the assumption that he is not there.

7.Strong Atheist: I am 100% sure that there is no God.

In stating where on the scale he sits, Dawkins says “I count myself in category 6, but leaning towards 7. I am agnostic only to the extent that I am agnostic about fairies at the bottom of the garden.” In other words, Dawkins is fairly unequivocally an atheist with not much room for change. 

Alas, despite its popularity, Dawkins' 1-7 scale is so philosophically naïve it is all-but meaningless as an exercise. The main thing wrong with it is that as an indicator of strength of belief the model is entirely empty, because the strength of belief is inextricably linked to the quality of mental acuity put into that belief. In other words, anyone can tell you where his strength of belief sits on a made up scale of 1-7, but it is only worth taking seriously if he has a competent understanding of the subject and a good philosophical brain with which to reason.

Suppose someone calls themselves a 6 on Dawkins' scale, and when you ask them why they don't believe in God, they tell you that it's because they once asked Him to reveal Himself by writing 'God' in the sky with stars, and because He didn't, then that is grounds to not believe in Him. Obviously a relatively smart mind would simply object that that's a terrible reason to not believe God exists - in which case, calling your self a 6 on the scale means absolutely nothing to anyone with half a brain.

Theology and philosophy and probability theory are broad and complex subjects, and unless you are competent at all three, any high rating you give yourself on the atheistic part of the Dawkins scale is like calling yourself an excellent literary writer just because you happen to know a lot of words in the dictionary. Dawkins' attempt to construct a scalar model of belief and treat it as a unique metric for philosophical returns is about as narrow-minded and parochial as it gets. What the Dawkins model does is treat people as though they all see religious belief in the same way and with the same ability, and it treats the ‘God’ concept as though it is homogenous in thought structure, when it’s about the least homogenous concept around.

And if it still isn't clear why, then to show the absurdity of making a faux homogenous model, let me alter the concept to something Dawkins will understand; let’s replace the word ‘God’ with ‘evolution’, and ask a bunch of people in the Bible-belt in America where they stand on the 1-7 scale. If the polls are anything to go by, no doubt many fundies in America will say they are a 6 to 7 when it comes to evolution. That is to say, they are as sceptical about the fact of evolution as Richard Dawkins is about God. What do you think Richard Dawkins would say to them when they told him that they were a 6 or 7 when it comes to evolution? He would make the same criticism of them that I have made of him. He’d say with full justification that their comprehension of evolution is so bereft that their gradation is rendered inadequate by such a defective and inept understanding of the object of study. 

When the signs are reversed, that is precisely what is wrong with Dawkins’ own gradation. And by the way, it does not matter that evolution is amenable to scientific study and God is not, because we are only talking about how well the subjects are understood, not the empirical tractability or the final conclusions. Dawkins states that he thinks God does not exist - but his strawman caricatures are so clumsy that most Christians do not believe in the god (small g) that Dawkins denies. This is the principal point of this message, one which makes a good rule of thumb for future reference with another Knight-ism I like to employ;

The God one accepts or denies is only likely to be as intellectually tenable as the intellectual tenability of the person holding those ideas. 
JK
 

Sunday Faith Series: Are We Alone In The Universe? 5 Questions On Alien Life

 

The two best known examples of a systematic attempt to evaluate the probabilities of finding alien life in the universe are the Fermi paradox and the Drake equation. They were set up a few decades ago, but were proffered to calibrate probabilities based only on modelling our galaxy (no further). Given the less sophisticated technology, they were largely speculative equations - assessing the rate of star formation, the number of stars with planets, and the number that are likely habitable. The trouble is, given that there are 100 billion stars in our galaxy alone, and around 100 billion galaxies, both the Fermi paradox and the Drake equation proved inadequate to the cause of assessing the fraction of planets with life, and the odds of life becoming intelligent, and even more so the odds that intelligent life becomes communicative.

A few years ago, the Breakthrough Listen project was launched, heightening our search for other life in the universe by searching planets that orbit the million stars closest to Earth and the hundred nearest galaxies. This was the biggest and most sophisticated search we've ever had, and has, for me, elicited 5 questions:

1) What are we likely to find out there?
Here's a hunch - we won't find anything. The universe existed for around 10 billion years before the earth began to form some 4.6 billion years ago, therefore if there is intelligent life on other planets much of it is likely to be a lot more advanced than we are as many of the planets we search will be older. While this comment makes a lot of assumptions about a similar evolutionary story (see below), if you imagine how much more advanced we'll be in just 500 years, consider how much more advanced a civilisation could be that had extra thousands or even millions of years to evolve.

2) Are we better of not finding each other?
If such life does exist, it would perhaps be advanced enough to have been able to find us by now. Perhaps they are watching us; perhaps they are so ultra-sophisticated that they have no need to communicate with us, rather like how we earthlings have no need to communicate with ant colonies. Or perhaps if they stumble upon us they might see us as enough of a potential threat to challenge their supremacy in time. In which case they might wipe us out, rather like how heads of empires used to have their armies wipe out groups of peasant radicals that saw themselves as revolutionaries and future over-throwers of the ruling elite.

Alternatively, perhaps alien life out there is less evolved than we are. In which case, mutatis mutandis, judging by the way that we earthlings have treated those who are less-capable and less-powerful than us, if there were such creatures in the universe that are less developed than us, it might be better for them if we never find them.

3) What might aliens look like?
This is an intriguing question. Presumably any other life in the universe would share the commonality of having evolved from carbon-based origins (silicon is unlikely). That is to say, given that science shows that regeneration occurs most optimally at moderate temperatures, and with an increased amount of chemical variability, carbon based life is much more probable than any other kind of base. One presumes creatures on other planets would have had a primordial soup of some kind - therefore one wonders if natural selection on their planet would produce anything like us. Given the fecundity of qualities like wings, eyesight, vocal expressions, a central nervous system, memory and the intelligence to find food and outcompete rival species - all of which are so fecund that they've evolve multiple times independently on our planet, one wonders whether evolution on other planets would select for those same qualities. If we did find life on other planets, It wouldn't be surprising to me to see them possessing many (if not all) of the above qualities.

4) What if we miss life by arriving at the wrong time?
I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone ask this question - but it is worth considering, particularly after the news that Kepler, NASA space telescope, has discovered a planet in the Milky Way similar to Earth. NASA said the Earth-like planet, named Kepler 452b, orbits a star similar to Earth's sun over the course of 385 days, and is located 1,400 light-years away from Earth.

The reason I mention our timing is that even if we do find a planet habitable for life, we have to catch it at the right period of its cosmological evolution. Kepler 452b is 6 billion years old, making it roughly 1.5 billion years older than earth - and it is getting rather hot apparently - just as our own planet will be in several billion years’ time. Given what I said above about how biological evolution selects for fecund qualities and traits that increase the odds of genetic propagation, that 6 billion year period may well have engendered a reasonably high level of intelligent life, only to be gradually discontinued as Kepler 452b gets hotter and hotter, meaning that by the time we discovered it all trace of intelligent life has gone the same way as the evaporated oceans.

5) What are the ramifications for Christians?
Finally, a question I pondered a few years ago is whether or not the discovery of alien life on other planets might affect our religious faith. The first point of note is that in my experience atheists are bound to find a way to elicit the wrong accusations on this one. That is to say, when broaching the question of whether we are alone in the universe or whether there is life elsewhere, one ought to be mindful, first off, of the way that either answer (‘yes’ and ‘no’) is used by the atheists (rather dishonestly and disingenuously, as it happens) against Christianity. They say that if we are the only life in the whole universe then that must prove that our being here is merely the result of the sheerest fluke. If, however, there are other planets which contain life of some kind that must prove that we are not the special creation that the Bible claims we are. Both contentions are, of course, equally spurious - but it is easy to see how atheists like to have it all their own way. 

So what if we did find sophisticated life on another planet, then, complete with language, intelligence and complex multivariate societies like we have on earth - how would that affect our faith? I think it's a very good question. Suppose they had evolved no concept of God, and had had no incarnation, death on the cross, and resurrection in their history at all - how might you respond to that as a Christian? Could it simply mean that they are another branch of God's creation that do not require the same kind of salvation we do, or perhaps (highly questionably) no act of salvation at all? Or might the absence of God on their planet lead us to wonder if our own religions are simply human inventions? Or, alternatively, might we stick to our faith and accept that there are things we don't understand, and accept perhaps God has not yet chosen to reveal Himself to that planet? After all, sophisticated God-fearing aliens that arrived on our planet 20,000 years ago might think the same about earth.

Personally, my faith is built on so much by way of experience, evidence, cognitive consideration and emotional conviction that I don't think the discovery of a completely God-less civilisation on another planet would shake my faith very much. Of course, the first reaction might be for us to wonder if their being bereft of the good news constitutes an urgent need for us to go share it with them (as per Matthew 28:19-20). But that in itself brings another interesting hypothetical question: is telling the good news to a planet full of people currently unapprised of Jesus actually good news for them or is it bad news? For one presumes that if they had no knowledge of God, they could have no knowledge of sin and their need for salvation. Are they better off remaining ignorant so they are not indicted for their lack of accepting Jesus as their saviour? Would telling them be a bit like taking a deadly pandemic to their planet and then trying to provide them with the cure? Or would not telling them be like leaving them to a pandemic they already have and refusing to take them a cure?

The problem St Paul tells us in Romans 3:11 is that on earth “there is no one who understands, and no one who seeks God”, so imagine how much more this would be the case on a planet that had never even evolved the concept of God. Or might it be the case that just as God has clearly revealed Himself in the natural world (Romans 1:20) and has set eternity in the hearts of all people (Ecclesiastes 3:11), that there is no such thing in the universe as being wholly unapprised of God?

This blog post has been much more about questions than answers. I am of the view that sometimes questions are more interesting than answers - so hopefully they are questions that got you pondering with interest.

Sunday Faith Series: An Interesting Observation About Adam & Eve

Humans are culturally primed to take responsibility for their own misdemeanours. If Celia in Liverpool is caught speeding, we wouldn't expect Carol in Newcastle to get sent the speeding fine. If Jack in Bristol assaults someone in a nightclub, it would be unfair if the judge gave Tom in Manchester a prison sentence. The story of Adam and Eve, then, even when one takes it as a myth intended to convey powerful truths about humankind (as I believe we are meant to take it), is an interesting illustration of what it means to be humans under sin.

Taken literally, it would be a silly story; one man sins, and because of that original sin the imputation falls on everyone who lives. That's even more unfair than my illustration of Carol in Newcastle getting the speeding fine for Celia's offence. It's more like Carol in Newcastle getting the speeding fine for someone who was caught speeding before she was even born.

How are we supposed to take the Adam and Eve story then? I have a rule about reading scripture - I think it all has to be read through the lens of the grace of Christ on the cross. Every book and every chapter is bound to be read anaemically unless understood in relation to God's awesome grace - even the difficult parts. With that in mind, here's a suggested way to view the Adam and Eve story. We know from our present day lens of understanding psychology, biology and neuroscience just how inevitable it is that people will make a mess of things in life. Our heredity, or psychological damage, our emotional weaknesses and the other numerous human shortfalls are now understood to be key components in how we screw up. Or to put it another way, the world is full of things that are bound to make us fall.

In contrast, the scene set for Adam & Eve is a paradisiacal backdrop, where we're told none of these earthly afflictions would have been a danger to them. They had no insecurities, no other people to damage them or bring out the worst in them. But yet even in paradise, susceptible to none of these faults, they were disobedient - they chose 'self' over choosing God - the primary sin that leads to all other sinning.

Perhaps the primary message the story is conveying is that if paradisiacal Adam and Eve can slip up under their conditions, it shows just how hopeless our attempts are at avoiding sin. If even the two safest people ended up sinning, it is quite unsurprising that relatively unsafe people like us were always going to sin. But with that comes the realisation of how the grace lens is brought to bear on our affliction. We are all so naturally screwed by ourselves that the only possibility antidote for us is the same antidote for paradisiacal Adam and Eve - the love and grace of God, given to us through the death and resurrection of Christ as a free gift that we had no chance of earning.

Sunday Faith Series: Christianity - Genius or Madness?

There are two common binary considerations associated with Christianity - one is: Is it true or false? - and the other is: Is it good or evil? I prefer to frame it a different way by asking; Is it genius or madness? If it is madness, it is probably false and evil too, whereas if it is genius, it is probably good and true. Hang on, I hear you object - why can't it be a work of genius in its moral proclamations, but not in the least bit true when it comes to its claims of Jesus' divinity?

It's a fair question. Telling us to love our neighbour as ourselves, and to be charitable, compassionate, kind and morally excellent is hardly wisdom that could not have been thought up by an excellent human. But as C.S Lewis reminds us in his 'Lord, liar or lunatic' trilemma, Jesus made claims to have co-equality with God, so as long as we accept that the scriptures are an accurate portrayal* then Christ couldn't have been thoroughly excellent if He either a) told so many lies about being God, or b) was under so many false misapprehensions.

Christianity is based on the proposition that Christ is God in human flesh - not a mere man. Therefore, to consider Christianity as true or false, or good or evil, means to consider it in terms of genius or madness. If God loves us, and can see that by ourselves we are all pretty wretched, ego-stroking, status-mongering, selfish creatures, then there may be a certain genius to the creation story - one that even the world's greatest human genius probably wouldn't have the imagination or audacity to think up.

Consider the story. Thanks to His penchant for autonomy and volition, God creates a world full of humans, and gives us the freedom to be ourselves. In being human, we learn, we grow, we slip, we fall, we have joy and gladness and pain and hardship - the whole rich tapestry of experience. Yet constrained by the limitations of being human, God knows that the only way we can reach the destiny for which we were created is to have help - rather like a teacher helps a pupil, or a parent helps their child. God's cosmic story is that He would be born into this world in a backwater village in ancient Palestine, live as we live, suffer immense pain and torture, die under the most horrific circumstances and then demonstrate through the resurrection that bodily death is not the end.

It sounds a strange way to bring justice to the creation story - and I remember it certainly sounded positively bizarre before I became a Christian. But a God who helps us to salvation and to renewal by nailing all our sins to the cross, and inviting us into His kingdom with love and grace, may just be demonstrating the work of a Divine genius - the work of such genius, in fact, that no group of people would be crazy enough to make it all up and proclaim it as the pivot around which the rest of existence revolves.

Surely an ordinary man or a woman, even if they were a genius, wouldn't have thought of such a peculiar thing - it makes for strange consideration at a human level. Why couldn't God have just forgiven us without needing to come down to earth and suffer as a man? Perhaps He could have chosen that method - but the idea of a God who loves us enough to put Himself in our shoes, live all the earthly hardships that we live, and suffer grief, pain, humiliation loss and death for us might just be so something so ingenious that ordinary humans would never entertain it.

You may object that that kind of reasoning could justify all sorts of nonsensical ideas about God. We could just as easily envisage a God who became a five dimensional object, or a God who juggled 100 balls with one hand for a year - the imaginative possibilities are endless.  But hold on, the alternatives may be endless, but they do not have the same gravitas as the real accounts of Christianity. It takes something quite remarkable to change the whole course of human history in the way that Christianity did, and to inspire such a multitude of creative excellence - theology, apologetics, literature, poetry, art, music, architecture, and so on. And let us also not forget the numerous martyrs that died for their faith by standing up to oppressive authorities and refusing to renounce their beliefs. This Christian faith is no ordinary thing. I have no inclination towards false dichotomies or faulty trilemmas - but it seems to me that such an extraordinary thing is either the work of a Divine genius or else it is utter madness.

I won't deny that the idea of an infinitely good God seeing everything we do and knowing our thoughts and our intentions better than we do sounds very much like madness. I also won't deny that the idea of Heaven being a gift earned for us by Jesus on the cross also sounds a bit like madness too. The first one sounds a bit like madness because it involves God as some kind of surveillance camera in the sky from whose attention we can never escape. And the second one sounds a bit like madness because it means that our bad deeds are not quantifiable in terms of desert - so a genocidal dictator and a nice lady volunteering in a charity shop can both be with Jesus in paradise by accepting God's free gift.

But once we conflate the two 'mad' ideas, we see them both in a more enriching way, as two complementary sides to the same golden coin. So much so that even our day-to-day sins - like uncharity, a bad temper and selfishness are up for continual re-examination when we have a relationship with God. But on the other hand, our continual efforts to improve and be better people are part of the grace-centred relationship with God too. So while God sees everything we do, and knows our thoughts and our intentions inside out, He views us not as reproachable sinners but as forgiven sinners. He sees us as sharing in the victory that Christ's free gift won for us on the cross. 

* Not everyone accepts this claim, of course - but given that faith in God involves faith in the accurate propagation of His word, it's a bit of a moot objection.

Sunday Faith Series: Can You Lose Your Salvation?

 

A long-standing question debated in Christianity is whether someone, once saved, can ever lose their salvation? I feel fairly convinced that the answer is no, we can’t lose our salvation. Here’s why. I believe that the power of having the Holy Spirit gives us a certainty of a relationship with God from which, once we know it, we can never go back. In other words, if you have accepted Jesus as your Lord and saviour, and as a consequence you have the Holy Spirit (Acts 16:31; Ephesians1:13–14, Ephesians 2:8–9) the Holy Spirit will never leave or forsake you, and you will not be able to be anything other than a Christian. A Christian is someone who has accepted that they have been saved by the free gift of grace; they are now a ‘new creation’ (2 Corinthians 5:17). We cannot be separated from God’s love once we are saved (Romans 8:38–39), nor can we be taken from God’s hand (John 10:28–29), and in Christ we are kept from falling (Jude 24–25).

The Bible, coupled with my own experience, seems fairly clear to me that we cannot lose our salvation. But yet I’m sure many of us know people who used to call themselves ‘Christian’ but who have walked away from the faith, and claim to no longer believe. If I’m right that a Christian cannot lose their salvation, then this leaves only two possibilities:

1) They were never a Christian in the first place

2) They still are a Christian and haven’t really walked away

On the first group, St. John seems to confirm this is true for some people, when in 1 John 2:19 he says of dubious believers “They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us”. That’s about as comprehensive as it gets. And I think we see this quite a lot in the modern era regarding those who have walked away. It’s quite possible, it seems, to claim to be a Christian, to be active in church, to say some of the things Christians say, and act out a faith that resembles belief in Christ, but yet not be a Christian ‘new creation’ who accepts Jesus as his Lord and Saviour.

On the second group, it is also possible, I think, that many people who seem to have walked away from the faith were, and are, actually Christians, who are going through a tough time in their faith, and will return to the fold when the time is right. Of course, it should go without saying, that I’m making no personal judgements on either group – only God knows their heart. But I think the likelihood that we cannot lose our salvation leaves us Christians with two important considerations. One is how much we should rejoice in the fact that God has guaranteed our salvation, based on His grace and love for us, and that that guarantee is a perfect springboard from which we can go on to fulfil our potential in Him. And the second is that, when we meet people who appear to have fallen away from the faith, whichever of the two above groups they are in, there is plenty for us to do in being good witnesses. If they never did know Christ, then we have the opportunity to help them see how amazing it is to be in a relationship with Him. And if they do know Christ, but have temporarily stumbled, then we have an opportunity to help them get back on their feet in their walk with God. Either way, I’m fairly sure that nobody has ever been a Christian and then lost their salvation.