In the early Spring of 2025 a friend and I found ourselves sharing thoughts on what might be considered some of the deepest issues in faith, specifically Christian faith. I found my friend's questions and reflections to be personal, sharply-reasoned, yet universal. Perhaps you've had similar thoughts. With their permission, questions from my friend, my responses, and their replies to my responses are shared here. I suspect there will more installments. As always, this blog reflects only my personal convictions.
Questioner
Thank you for inviting me to tune in to the livestream from your church. I have a thought about your pastor’s livestream question on goodness...Isn't much of what makes something good simply our choice to see it as such? Perhaps not everything is overwhelmingly good, but there is always some goodness if we look hard enough. Goodness is also subjective. The phrase, "One man's trash is another man's treasure," comes to mind. So even things that are perceived as rotten to the core by some, may be perceived as salvageable and valuable to another.
Response to questioner
I’d expect no less philosophically difficult question from you, my friend!
As our pastor said in his talk, the likes of Plato and Augustine were wrestling with this issue centuries ago.
I think much of the issue is about vocabulary and language and the question of what things are arguably absolute and what things are relative, and how we can know the difference.
As you rightly point out, “good” can be very much a relative term. That’s how I think of it most of the time, just like your examples.
There is an interesting Bible passage relevant to this point, and it is a bit mysterious. It is in the gospel account attributed to Mark, chapter 10, starting at verse 17. The Message translation puts it:
“As Jesus went out into the street, a man came running up, greeted him with great reverence, and asked, ‘Good Teacher, what must I do to get eternal life?’
Jesus said, ‘Why are you calling me good? No one is good, only God.’”
The conversation then goes on to illuminate the ironic need to surrender in order to win, an idea we have discussed, and an idea central to the message of Christianity.
But, the point was that in this exchange, Jesus chose to illustrate the word “good’ as an absolute, not a relative, and an absolute defined by the character of the one God of the universe, a character not equaled by any other being. [Christian theology of the trinity, of course, holds that Christ, God, and God’s Spirit are co-equal and of one substance, so in essence Jesus’ question was rhetorical and he was pointing out that by calling Jesus “good” and Jesus saying that only God is truly “good”, the man was correct in calling Jesus “good”, affirming that he was the Messiah – God with us.]
So, of course you are right that “good” is generally a relative term, and I agree with that. My point here is that Jesus argued that ultimately the word “good” can be said to be reserved only as a description for the God of the universe, and by that absolute definition, no one else is good. I would agree that if the “good” standard is God, and his son when he was with us on earth in the flesh, nobody else is good. I’m sure not. Recognizing that I cannot live up to my own standards, let alone God’ standards, created the guilt problem that originally led me to accept in 1978 that Jesus had already paid for all my faults forever. When I accepted that, I became absolutely “good” in God’s eyes. That is the core message of Christianity. It is the message that God sees Jesus when he sees me.
It is interesting that I often have a similar discussion about the word “truth.” In many ways “truth” can be relative in that creative expressions in art and music can be said to be “true” and reflect “truth”, and I often apply that kind of definition of “true” to the many kinds of literature collected in the Bible. I have blogged about this because it is important to understand the ways that the words of the Bible can be understood as being true. In my blog post
https://jim-maher.blogspot.com/2021/12/words.html
I talk about being cautious in our understanding of the Bible, recognizing that its truth is very often in the sense that art or music is true. That is different from the way that mathematics are “true” and 2+2 absolutely equals 4. On the other hand, there are sections of biblical narrative that purport to be eyewitness accounts and are intended to be taken as true in an absolute way different from creative artistic expression. Thus, like the word “good”, the word “truth” can be both relative and absolute. As you can tell, I think it is important to think hard about relative and absolute for both words.
What do you think?
Questioner responds
As always, I appreciate your thoughtful response to my question. I'm sure it's just the scientist in me, but for every question to which I find a satisfying answer, twenty new questions arise. For a long time, my skepticism (which believers would more likely call pessimism), prevented me from exploring religion in a meaningful way. When I first reached out to you many months ago about it, I nearly quit my exploration early on, because there were so many points I didn't agree with, couldn't find an acceptable answer to, etc. I thought of you, whose skepticism I greatly admire, and realized your faith may not be so different from science in your eyes.
In science, we have far more questions than answers, often disagree as a community, discover our data and the subsequent interpretations were flawed, etc., but that doesn't mean we no longer believe in science... We accept with grace and humility that we know very little about science in the grand scheme of things, but that we shall remain faithful to it as a concept nonetheless. Our lack of understanding, frequent doubts, and mistakes don't hinder our trust in it as a field. Science is simply a foundation; each new discovery is a brick we add. Sometimes, the entire thing seems to collapse, but even when that occurs, the foundation is still standing, ready to be built upon again and again. I kept going with the idea that perhaps faith is similar, a foundation that many build their lives on. Sometimes all the bricks topple over, but the foundation remains, like science. I am glad I've kept going thus far.
Regarding your thoughts on what "good" truly means in the context of today, I think we are on the same wavelength as fellow writers. I'm sure more than one person has been annoyed at my fixation on semantics. I learned from a young age that words hold great power, both to hurt and to help, and that created a sense of responsibility to find the best word, whenever possible.
I appreciate the verse from Mark you shared. I can see how the interpretation by readers, and those in the story, could vary. The man may not even have been calling Jesus good... "Good Teacher" could be interpreted at least three ways:
The man is indeed calling Jesus both good and a teacher, with "good" not being an adjective of "teacher" here. They are independent. In this case, the man is expressing that he knows Jesus to be both good and a teacher.
The man is calling Jesus a "good teacher", with "good" being the adjective of teacher. In this case, the man is implying that Jesus is simply good at his job, teaching.
The man is calling Jesus a good teacher, a teacher of good. In the same way you would call someone a science teacher, math teacher, etc. In this case, the man may not be implying that Jesus IS good, but that he is a teacher OF good.
Your thoughts on truth really resonate with me, as I have had many of the same questions regarding the Bible. In science, we publish papers, groundbreaking ones, that turn out to be incorrect... We make discoveries that rock the field, that turn out to be incorrect. At the time, we view them as fact, because we have not yet looked at the problem through the correct lens and have not interpreted the data correctly. What if we have done the same thing with religious texts? What if our interpretations are yet to be correct and are only getting more off base as time progresses? What if elements of the Bible we interpret as fact are not and elements we interpret as analogies, hyperbole, etc. are indeed fact? I certainly agree that for nearly every word, both a relative and an absolute interpretation can be held.
As always, I never mean to inundate you with questions or offend. Just too curious for my own good.
One of the concepts with which I have struggled most, which probably won't come as a surprise, is the concept of God's role in human suffering. Particularly in the context of diseases that result in great pain and/or are ultimately fatal, I have struggled to understand why an all-powerful God would allow such an experience. What I most struggle with is what seems like contradictory claims about God on the topic. It's my understanding that God is all-powerful, meaning He has the ability to prevent or heal certain ailments, but as we both know, he doesn't do that. I struggle to understand why God would allow a young child to suffer and die of cancer. I've also frequently heard that we are each designed exactly as God intended and that God does not make mistakes. While I certainly don't believe God "gives" people cancer out of spite or punishment, if God's design of you includes multiple genetic mutations that make it certain you will get cancer... did he not have a hand in it? Could he not have prevented it? I struggle to understand why God's answer to some pleas for help is “no.” I also don't understand the concept of God giving someone an ailment in order for His light to shine through them. The story of the blind man in the Bible comes to mind…that he was born blind so that others will come to know Jesus through Him. This seems selfish on God's part. While some may not mind being blind, others find it immensely difficult to cope with their blindness. It seems selfish to bestow upon someone a disease, disability, or immense hardship simply so others may come to have faith.
People who often mean well will say things like “God wouldn't allow you to go through this trial if He did not know you could handle it” or, “it's all part of God's plan.” I feel those things are very easy to say when you are not the one suffering. Those phrases don't feel helpful when your pain and exhaustion cause you to cry every day. In summary, since my thoughts were probably a mess here, I don't understand what God's role in disease and suffering truly is. If He is all-powerful and everything is according to His plan, does He determine whether one gets sick and whether they are "healed"? If not, if He has no role in whether someone becomes ill, then everything we experience is NOT according to His plan, correct?
Response to questioner
My friend, you have restated, eloquently, among the very deepest questions that challenge any philosophy that is based on faith in one or more powerful deities – the problem of suffering, especially what I might call “innocent’ suffering. This is the kind of suffering experienced by animals and by those who inherited genetic disease predisposition, including the youngest or even unborn children
How can I have faith in, and love for, a God who apparently superintends a universe where there is at least one planet full of messes, obviously unfair suffering, and pain shared by so many living creatures, including us humans?
The great philosophers and apologists have devoted lifetimes to struggle toward some way to make sense of this paradox….and it is a paradox.
C.S. Lewis wrote a lengthy, thoughtful, complex, and dense book The Problem of Pain on this subject. I wish it were an easier read. Lewis was a university professor and his writing can be complex. What is unique about Lewis, like Tolkien, however, is that they both loved to write fantasy fiction that embodied some of their deep theology. In fact, as you may have read, it was challenges from Tolkien (a Roman Catholic and friend of Lewis) that formed a main impetus for Lewis to re-examine what had become his atheism, and return not just to a belief in God, but specifically to a belief in the Christian God. I honestly would have loved to have heard those conversations over pints of beer at the Oxford pub that my wife and I happened by last spring at a science conference.
Sometimes I think I most appreciate the way CS Lewis approached his thoughts about Christianity through my reading to my daughters of The Chronicles of Narnia, especially The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, where Lewis retells the ancient Christian story by analogy, with Aslan the lion showing us both Christ and God himself. I admit that Lewis’ story of the death of Aslan on the stone table, and Aslan’s resurrection with the help of tiny mice, touches me as deeply as the actual story of Jesus’ death and resurrection reported in the Bible.
I mention this because of its relation to the problem of understanding pain and struggle and imperfection in our world. Lewis’ famously writes about Aslan: Lucy asks, "Is He safe?" "Safe?" said Mr. Beaver. "Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you."
Mr. Tumnus later says, "He's wild, you know. Not a tame lion."
Lewis is speaking to our expectations of what God “should” be like, what we want him to be like, and what we think would be fair and just. Lewis is challenging the idea that we get to decide if God’s patterns in creation, and the way he relates to his creation, are fair and beautiful (and tame) enough to earn our faith. Your thoughtful note amounts to honestly saying that your perceptions of God’s patterns in creation, and the way he relates to his creation are NOT fair, and NOT beautiful enough to earn your faith. I get it. We don’t like a God who is not tame.
That is an incredibly honest position, and I respect it.
So what would I say?
I think of time and space and our tiny planet in this universe we inhabit (probably just one universe in a blindingly complex multi-dimensional multiverse) as the stage for an epic story, authored by God in a mysterious way where free will is a central attribute given to humans. This free will has resulted in catastrophe after catastrophe. No, I don’t blame inherited mutations on bad human free will choices, but I see all of the mess on this planet as part and parcel to a disaster playing out as part of the epic plot.
Sounds pessimistic, doesn’t it?
But there in the middle of this disaster has been placed a rescue story. THE one most fantastic rescue story
The whole plot of the whole epic story has been written for one reason: to point to this rescue story.
In fact, I believe our timeless God wrote the epic to be played out in time and space in order that the rescue story could be told. To me, this fallen world where children suffer innocently, and wars are fought selfishly, and pride grows ever greater in me is a story line written from the very beginning to set the stage for the rescue story.
In my view, our God is first and foremost the great rescuer.
I have argued that the peacefulness of the Garden of Eden was never intended to be the plot of this epic story. It was boring. God endowed us with free will knowing that our pride would trigger catastrophe after catastrophe. He knew full well before time began that what would unfold on this planet would involve unfairness and animals suffering and dying and children (and young women) crying in pain every day because of disease that is no fault of their own.
He knew where the mess and suffering would lead, yet he still set it all in motion.
He set it all in motion because in the plot there is something that is so unsurpassingly beautiful that awaits us all in the end.
The rescue story is so transcendently beautiful that it is capable of drowning out and even erasing all the screams, all the tears, all the anguish, all the suffering ever experienced –silencing it. Making it nothing.
We live in a story of disaster written because it sets the stage for a rescue that would make no sense without the full depths of this hopeless mess.
You thoughtfully quoted Jesus reminding his followers that human suffering (in the case of the blind man) is not always attributable to punishment for, or consequences of, human pride. Sometimes blindness is just part of this mess. Like germline chromosomal deletions.
I would offer that the greater insight about God’s relationship to his creation comes from two aspects reported in the Gospels in the Bible recording his time with us when he, effectively the author of the epic story, briefly wrote himself into the plot as Jesus.
The first aspect is that Jesus loved to heal people. The Gospels are filled with those stories as you well know. He was fully capable of healing and he loved to do it. Physical healing is a small taste of the real relationship healing Jesus ultimately came to accomplish. He still is capable of physical healing, which is why I pray for his physical healing in your life.
But the second, more powerful aspect of God’s relationship with his creation is seen in the Gospel of John, chapter 11, verse 35. Here Jesus is confronted with the anguish and suffering and pain of his friends Martha and Mary, and their whole village, at the death of their brother, Lazarus. Jesus did not prevent Lazarus’ death. We are told that Jesus, the author of the epic story himself written into its pages briefly, broke down and cried to see and experience the rawness of the mess of creation so poignantly displayed in the agony of these friends.
He cried.
He cried because of the suffering. He cried with the sufferers. He cried to experience the mess of his creation. He cried with us.
May I dare say it – my friend, when you are alone and frightened, hopeless, in pain in the dark, crying…
…Jesus is crying with you.
In those tears is a message to me that the terrible pain and sorrow and suffering of this messy world hurt God every bit as much as they hurt us. They represent the core of the necessary disaster that set the stage for the epic rescue, a rescue that is and will be so awesome as to drown out all memories of what came before.
God wrote the story outside of time, and I take solace and joy in believing that he has always known that it is such a wonderful, beautiful story...in the end. It always has been. The ending is so amazing that all else will drop away in insignificance. He would not have started time had he not known the beauty of its culmination.
That makes me the ultimate optimist, perhaps.
I write this with all attempts at due respect for the unfair and inexplicable suffering you experience that I cannot imagine.
Yet I remind us both that God chose to write his rescue story ironically, because the rescue involved God’s own decision to willingly suffer in our place, once and for all, on the cross, unjustly, even meaninglessly, to erase all of the debts and imperfections of everything that has ever or will ever have lived. That rescue has now been accomplished in principle, but we experience just a hint of it on this side of eternity.
The real rescue is just on the other side waiting for us.
I would not doubt that you may have countless objections to my view and may even find that it is sadistic to justify a beautiful ending by creating such catastrophic and meaningless suffering by so many for so long. I have no convincing answer to such an objection.
I will leave you with another quote from Lewis before I go:
“Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
These emails are evidence that you have been well roused.
Questioner responds
In my search for God's role in disease and suffering, it also occurred to me that His allowing such things to occur or even ordaining them would not render Him unworthy of devotion in my eyes; it would not necessarily turn me away from faith. I could accept and understand His justification if I found it to be reasonable. In my eyes, God does not have to earn my devotion. I simply feel the devotion must be justified. As you pointed out, His justification for the suffering we experience may be that it will all be irrelevant to us in the end due to the reward being so great once our journey on earth is complete. If that's true, I suppose it's not dissimilar to how countless mothers feel after the discomfort of pregnancy and pain of childbirth. Even those who have miserable pregnancies followed by complicated, painful births, frequently express that the stress and memory of it all became so small and insignificant the moment they held their child for the first time.
In the case of children, mothers likely don't doubt that the journey will be worth it, even in the worst moments, because they know what they are receiving at its conclusion. They know they will receive something beautiful and tangible for their effort. Maybe we struggle to see the painful aspects of human life because we are not capable of truly understanding the reward, or as you put it, rescue, that occurs in the end. We hope and we speculate, but we don't truly understand. If that's true, it seems obvious why it is called "faith". One must trust that all will be well in the end. I'm reminded of the phrase, "Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end."
I am familiar with CS Lewis and know the titles of many of his works, but I have not read them myself. They certainly sound intriguing from your descriptions of them and from the excerpts you shared.
In regards to healing and the concept of miracles, I also don't believe that a physical cure, which would be an obvious miracle, should be our only definition of the word. Thinking back to our discussion on whether good is absolute, relative, or both, I think we have come to only perceive events as miracles if they are grand. It must be bigger and better than anything we could have imagined in order for us to consider it a miracle. To me, that is flawed and robs us of seeing the beauty and grace that fill our everyday lives. To me, meeting you was a miracle. Meeting other dear friends was a miracle. Ending up at this institution just a few months before diagnosis was a miracle. Being able to comfort a young child before their brain surgery by letting them touch my own scars was a miracle. So many stars had to align for each of those events to occur. Despite having a physical battle that seems to deliver a new horror daily, I am incapable of seeing my circumstances as unfortunate or unfair. I feel my life has been full of miracles, so even if, for argument's sake, we want to call the entire experience of cancer all bad, one bad apple does not spoil the barrel.
I have also wondered what Christianity's view on achieving eternal life is for people who will never have the opportunity to even learn about Jesus. I imagine this is a question everyone has. If the fabric of one's life never affords the opportunity to learn about Jesus and become a follower, how is possible that they may not be afforded eternal life, if God Himself controlled the circumstances of their life? If someone is raised in a different culture with a different religion, and they live an honest life in which they are a devoted parent, a faithful spouse, and a loyal friend, how is it possible that they may not be granted eternal life simply because Christianity was not the faith they chose? Given how many religions there are, it also seems statistically impossible (nearly) that one could pick the "right" one. So, how does one find the conviction to feel and say that they were lucky enough to find the one true path to salvation? Of course, I know the argument would be that it is not "luck", but again, why would God not ensure that all paths lead to Him? If above all, God is a rescuer, let's picture Him as a life raft. Stick with me. Let's say that life raft is the one and only one capable of rescuing us from the storm in the end. If every religion believes the same to be true for themselves, they also have their own life rafts. If that is true, each religion asserts that the life raft of every other religion has a hole in it. It will sink and a rescue will not be successful. How do we pick the one life raft (religion) that doesn't have a hole in it when they all appear to be similar. They make similar promises, preach similar principles, etc. By the time we would discover that we picked the wrong raft, it may be too late. Does God extend grace in those circumstances?
Response to questioner
My answer to your deep and appropriate question about how God’s rescue can extend to all of our planet, and all its creatures, and all human souls that will ever have lived, past, present, and future, is probably a different answer than you might hear from other Christians or Christian teachers. It doesn’t make me right or wrong, it means that there is a wide range of opinion on how God’s rescue works. Much of the range of opinion depends, unsurprisingly, on how we understand the concept that that Bible is inspired, and what it means to say that it is inspired.
I believe that God’s mercy, love, and patience with his creation vastly exceed anything we can imagine. I believe that all souls and beings, human, and animals to the extent that animals have self-awareness will meet Jesus Christ at their death and, whether they have met Jesus Christ in this life or not, they will meet him then and be enabled to understand the free rescue gift that he offers based on his death and resurrection. I don’t take literally Bible passages that tend to suggest that accepting Christ’s death and resurrection as payment for our imperfections must occur before death or else the deal is void.
The verse from St. Paul that is read at the end of every worship service at our church says:
“One man died for everyone. That puts everyone in the same boat. He included everyone in his death so that everyone could also be included in his life, a resurrection life, a far better life than people ever lived on their own.”
I can’t help but note the repetition of the word everyone in this translation. Jesus’ death and resurrection are sufficient to pay for the imperfections of all souls who will ever have lived. I believe his offer of grace is made evident to every soul that has ever lived, regardless of culture or timing (whether their life is before or after the actual life and death of Christ) and regardless of whether that soul heard the message here on this side of death and accepted it or not.
I choose to believe that all will ultimately be offered the opportunity to freely accept Jesus’ gift of rescue.
Some of us will recognize our savior at the moment of death, others will need to be introduced for the first time to him and the rescue he offers. Those who have not previously understood or accepted his gift will then have the choice. God’s grace is far deeper than we can imagine. His love and patience far beyond anything humans have experienced.
Our friend CS Lewis argues that even if my aspiration is true, there may still be some whose pride and self-satisfaction would make them miserable accepting the rescue offered by Jesus. Lewis believed that some souls will choose to go it alone in the next life. He didn’t believe in a hell based on torment, rather a hell of grey separation and boredom inhabited by souls disinterested in acknowledging a king of the universe and his offer of redemption. Of course, I have a hard time imagining those whose stubbornness would be that great, but Lewis felt that those with such a rebellious attitude would never enjoy heaven with Jesus anyway, and Jesus would not impose it on them.
I am not a “universalist” in that I don’t hold that all souls automatically end up forever with God in heaven at death. Rather, I believe that all souls will be given the opportunity to understand the free gift offered by Jesus, and the chance to accept it once and for all, either here on this side, or on the other side of death. It will be a free gift, offered not because we are good, but because he is good. The concept of free will – that each soul can and must decide for herself whether to accept, and that God will not force himself on anyone, appears the central concept in the epic story God has written for this planet in this universe.
Take some time to think about these ideas and let me know what you think.
Questioner responds
I have had some time to reflect on your response to my question on the extent of God's grace in the end. First, I will admit that I got a chill reading the quote from St. Paul due to the use of the word 'boat'. Maybe my boat analogy was not as crazy as I thought!
I found your explanation to be far kinder and more reasonable than simply saying, "All who were not believers at the time of death do not earn a spot in heaven," which seems to be the claim of many. I will admit that this left me with additional questions of the process. If one is given a choice after their death to join Jesus Christ for eternity, and they choose not to, are they allowed to leave without consequence? For example, if someone is raised to believe in a different God and, upon dying, still wishes to join "their" God rather than Jesus, what sort of ramifications would/could there be for that? I fully expect I am asking questions that are both overly specific and not widely discussed in most churches.
My tendency to ask such questions stems from having the stereotypical analytic mind of a scientist. Much of my hesitancy to believe in not just Jesus, but any god, stems from a series of what appear to be glaring mathematical improbabilities. For example, about 150,000 people die each day. If each of them meet Jesus upon their passing, this means each person is allotted approximately 0.0096 seconds to meet him, hear his message, and make a decision... This urges me to ask questions that would unfortunately come across flippant rather than genuine to most people of faith. In trying to solve the math problem, I have questions like:
Is it a one on one meeting? Groups would be more efficient, so how would that work? How long does he get to deliver his elevator pitch of eternity? Who's watching over everyone on earth while he's tending to the recently departed? Who is listening to prayers and orchestrating the events of our lives while he is occupied with other responsibilities. My understanding is that God is said to be omnipresent, which would explain how he could be in two places at once, but it doesn't explain the timing issue.
I realize the concept of time may not exist in heaven, so 0.0096 seconds for us is not the same for them, but I hope you can make sense of my thought process.
As my presentation on stubbornness nears, CS Lewis' thoughts gave me pause. I highly doubt the following statement will elicit any shock. I am a stubborn person. I do not bend in pursuit of my goals or in my desire to continue fighting. Though daily life is more painful and exhausting than I ever imagined possible, I will continue fighting, because my grit, like my humor, is the core of who I am. I am not willing to lay down my sword simply because the victor has already been decided. When my battle is over, I do not want anyone to say or feel I lost. I certainly did not.
I plan to make a point about this in my upcoming presentation. I am not a resilient person. I am a stubborn person. A resilient person always recovers... in order to continue. A stubborn person always continues... even when they know they cannot recover.
What may surprise you is that I too cannot imagine someone stubborn enough to go it alone in the next life. I have not a shred of desire to take up this fight in the next life. Once will have been more than enough. My stubbornness will die with me. I don't know who I will be without it, but it will not serve me beyond this life.
Response to questioner
Your response is thoughtful and made me smile, my friend.
I’ll begin by affirming your “boat” analogy was indeed remarkable in its echo of Paul’s statement. Paul, at least in The Message translation, emphasizes that he sees all people, regardless of their past religious or cultural tradition or view of God, as being equally separated from a relationship with the one true God. This separation has come through their moral failings and inconsistencies, despite their best intentions, and most of all through their pride in thinking, as we all do, that we know best and that self-determination is the best path. In the narrative playing out on this planet, a narrative authored by God but allowing free will of all of us, it is our pride that separates us from God, who seeks our love and our dependence on the rescue he has provided. As I’ve said before, your admirable stubbornness, which can be a unique asset, can also touch on pride when it translates into self-sufficiency, independence, and the sense that you (and I) are equipped to go it alone such that our moral imperfections are overlooked in the grand scheme. The Christian message is that our moral imperfections are never overlooked and they separate us from God, but that God has created a perfect rescue through Jesus Christ, who paid for every imperfection. All we need do is accept that payment.
There are Bible passages that suggest that in order to be rescued, we must learn about Jesus’ rescue and accept it before death. As you can tell from my prior answer, I find this view narrow-minded and inconsistent with God’s tremendous dual characteristics of justice and mercy.
You have actually answered your own thoughtful questions about timing and mathematical improbabilities. I view this life as the play, scripted to take place in time, by a playwright who exists outside of time, i.e., outside of the timeline of the play he has written. This “play” analogy breaks down somewhat in that God endowed the characters (us) with free will, and, initiating the play outside of time, he knew how the story would come out without needing to control us characters like puppets on strings. He knew the huge mess inherent in his plot, and the price of suffering, all pointing to his rescue and to an unspeakably happy ending. The God of the universe invented time and enjoys, I think, creating within it, just as does any artist who creates a play or music or a painting that implies a timeline. The artist is not trapped in that created timeline, no matter how lovely it is. She is beyond it. That’s why I will not be surprised to learn that our God has countless other creative projects in other times and media.
So, in my view, meeting God at death takes place supernaturally and outside of time, and personally, and intimately, as if each person had been God’s only creation, and Christ’s sacrifice being willing, even if you or I were the only character ever to have walked the stage. In that meeting, the reality of our need will be clear, and the reality of the one prescribed rescue will be clear, and our choice will be clear, if we have not chosen in this life. “All being in the same boat” will be clear.
I think CS Lewis believed that the principle of free will in his creatures is an overriding principle in God’s creation. This is because love only has meaning when it is volunteered as a free choice, and not coerced or programmed. For some reason, God created a world where he seeks the free love of his created beings, and he won’t force it, even as each character exits the stage.
Having said all that, my prayer for you is that you choose to submit your admirable stubbornness to the one who made you and has watched with deepest love as you navigate your path in this world. I believe his rich love and acceptance and payment for you are worth experiencing here and now. Not deferring to later. It is like a love affair worth initiating as soon as possible, lest any moment of the precious relationship be missed.
As to the character of the next life, much has been imagined about it. I don’t have any special insight. I love two ideas about it. One comes from an interesting Bible passage where Jesus is confronted by members of the Sadducee religious sect of Judaism who did not believe in resurrection and a life on the other side. In fact, the Jewish scriptures say next to nothing about the idea of heaven, and my Jewish friends don’t tend to talk about heaven in their theology.
In Mark’s Gospel, chapter 12, there is this story:
18 Then the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus with a question. 19 “Teacher,” they said, “Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. 20 Now there were seven brothers. The first one married and died without leaving any children. 21 The second one married the widow, but he also died, leaving no child. It was the same with the third. 22 In fact, none of the seven left any children. Last of all, the woman died too. 23 At the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?”
24 Jesus replied, “Are you not in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God? 25 When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. 26 Now about the dead rising—have you not read in the Book of Moses, in the account of the burning bush, how God said to him, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’ ? 27 He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. You are badly mistaken!”
This passage suggests to me that the next life will not be an extension of this life. It will be unsurpassingly more beautiful and interesting. I take that to mean, for example, that if I meet my beloved pet bunny in the next life (and I long to), my love for him, and the best of our experiences in this life, will be amplified in a timeless way that is unimaginably more beautiful than what I experienced in this life. Our love will be subsumed in my relationship with God. The same for my relationship with Laura.
And you won’t have any battle in the next life.
My other favorite snippet about the next life is from CS Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia. I would love to have it read at my memorial service someday (along with my favorite poignant passage from Richard Adams’ epilogue of Watership Down that I have shared before).
The Narnia extract:
"Oh, Aslan," said Lucy. "Will you tell us how to get into your country from our world?"
"I shall be telling you all the time," said Aslan. "But I will not tell you how long or short the way will be; only that it lies across a river. But do not fear that, for I am the great Bridge Builder."
C.S. Lewis (1952)
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Ch. 14 : The Beginning of the End of the World
Thanks for your thoughts on stubborn vs. resilient. May you, in your admirable stubbornness, find meaning in a different kind of surrender.
What do you think?
Questioner responds
Your first point about stubbornness being intertwined with pride, self-sufficiency, etc. is actually exactly what I teach regarding stubbornness…It is not a personality trait in and of itself, but a tight cluster of intense self-reliance, self-efficacy, problem solving, conscientiousness, and stress management. In my search for what causes one to become so stubborn, to the extent that they cannot accept help and cannot listen to seemingly reasonable arguments to change their position, I settled on control. Control is a basic human need, and seeing as adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and certain other forms of childhood adversity tend to create a stubborn adult, it seems obvious that stubbornness is simply an attempt to regain a sense of control that was lost. As you pointed out, it often works to our detriment, but we hang onto it because we have convinced ourselves it is essential for our survival. If it IS essential for survival, my stance on letting go of it in whatever may be after this makes even more sense.
I have no doubt there's a correlation between stubbornness and faith... stubborn people struggle to accept any form of help, much less the type of "payment" you describe. Full disclosure, and I say this with the utmost respect and not with intent to offend, I was raised to believe people who believe in God do so because they are not strong enough to rely on themselves. I was taught that they cling to their religion and its fantastical promise of beauty and eternal life out fear and denial; fear for what is or isn't after death and denial that this world is just a screwed-up place without a plan. The latter, I discovered some time ago, is called absurdism (key points below).
Tenets of absurdism:
•the universe is irrational and meaningless
•trying to find meaning leads to conflict with the universe
•humans are unable to find meaning because it doesn’t exist
•Absurdism doesn’t tell people the meaning of life, it states that there is no meaning.
•Absurdism empowers individuals to create their own meaning.
One needs not to believe in religion to see absurdism as an awful, ugly concept... In another life, I think would have enjoyed a career in philosophy. The theory of absurdism would have made for a very interesting thesis topic, but I digress.
My point in bringing up my previously held belief on why people cling to religion is that it has gone through an evolution. Initially, I subscribed to the belief that religiousness equated to weakness and denial. As I learned more, and maybe developed a little more empathy, my perspective changed to, "So what if they cling to a belief in a higher being? So what if they cling to the belief that life has a deeper meaning and a deeper origin? Life is hard for us all. If those beliefs help them get through the day, who am I to judge?" As I'm sure you will agree, there is a difference in non-judgment and acceptance. We can choose not to judge others, without truly accepting them. We can choose to not judge someone for their way of life, but that does not mean we accept them. That was the next evolution in my belief on religion; I shall not judge others for choosing to live a life of faith, but I don't accept it as ideal or their beliefs as truth. I am now in a new phase of the evolution, in which I am asking myself, "What if it IS truth...?"
Attempting to get back on track on with our earlier points, I sincerely appreciate your explanation of free will. This was a question I had early on in my current stage of evolution. I wondered why a god, who deeply desires the love, devotion, and acceptance of his creations, wouldn't just make that a factory setting that can't be changed. Why on earth (literally) would he create people with the ability to ignore him, doubt him, and make decisions against his wishes? It then occurred to me, exactly as you described, that the love and devotion we give him would not be meaningful if we had no choice in it. If we came preprogrammed with it, the love would be robotic, not remarkable. My conclusion was that perhaps god simply instills in us all the capacity to love him in the way he wishes, but only once we have chosen it.
Your passage from The Chronicles of Naria is beautiful. The song Bridge Over Troubled Waters by Simon & Garfunkel instantly came to mind... It has been one of my favorite songs since childhood. As I mentioned before, nearly all songs can be interpreted as worship songs if you're listening with an intentional ear. I know the lyrics by heart, but I will go listen to it again and listen for something new this time.
Response to questioner:
I really appreciated two aspects of this latest exchange.
The first is an appreciation of absurdism (which I had not studied during my undergrad explorations of philosophy). I had studied the works of JP Sarte on existentialism (in French, believe it or not, back in those days), and I do see similarities between the principles of existentialism and those of absurdism. I also recognize how these notions contrast sharply with elements of the anthropic principle (i.e. the philosophy that we do recognize actual regularity and coherence and reproducibility in the physical properties of this universe only because this is the kind of universe that is necessary for the evolution of complex life capable of recognizing such coherent properties). Other universes lacking such properties would not be observable because they would not engender the development of self-aware observers. To me these all fit into the general concept of imagining the creative playwright choosing the properties of the stage for the story.
The second is your very honest and helpful disclosure of your personal “stages of evolution of perceptions of religion” (with Christianity, as an example). Your progression clearly shows the growth in your own independent thinking, through life experiences and perhaps through meeting people who challenge stereotypes.
If we limit our conversation to Christianity for a moment, the fact is that there is a bell curve of those who would call themselves Christians, and a wide range of motivations and understandings of faith. That is why stereotypes easily emerge, but are risky. I would like to think that our dialog in these emails has really been unpacking some stereotypes and introducing the idea that there is a place for Christian faith in the life of the intellectual scientist skeptic (i.e. you and me).
If your evolution of perceptions of Christianity is approaching this point, that is true progress, for which I am thankful (to God), and a tribute to your intellectual honesty.
Under the bell curve of self-proclaimed Christians are many who qualify for the stereotypical description you learned from wise parents and professors – religious people who seek to escape their sense of weakness and lack of agency and so wishfully turn to mythology and cling to the hope for something better someday, without any need to apply reason or logic or skepticism or discernment. Also under the curve are the many self-described Christians (I was once one of these) who missed the message that trying to earn God’s love through our behavior is hopeless because we inevitably fail. These folks live a life of “religion” based on effort and attempts at goodness to earn favor, hoping that their goodness might outweigh their badness just enough that some judgment scale is slightly tipped in their favor on an imagined judgment day. These folks missed the memo of Christianity that only zero badness is consistent with God, no matter how much goodness is piled on the other side of the scale. Then there are plenty of Christians uninterested in being self-critical, and who are too quick to believe that the Bible is a textbook (which it is not) rather than a scrapbook. Under the bell curve are other self-described Christians who want to believe that the United States is a Christian nation, that the earth is 10,000 years old, and that we should exploit natural resources, not steward them. It’s a big bell curve and there is plenty of unpleasant stuff under there…because it is made up of people and their messes and their pride and the stories we all tell ourselves to justify ourselves.
Hopefully this dialog is introducing you to others under the bell curve who don’t fit the stereotypes –people like CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien and Francis Collins (former NIH director) who were (or are) intellectuals and skeptics like yourself. They are also hiding under the bell curve and hopefully challenge the stereotypes that you properly detected in your first evolutionary phase.
I love that your second phase was a kind of indifferent acceptance without angry or annoyed judgement. That was a step of maturity.
I love even more the hint of your third phase, perhaps enabled by our conversational efforts to peel back stereotypes about faith, allowing for that key crucial question that you posed:
"What if it IS truth...?"
You will have to decide for yourself. Jesus will not force himself upon you, for exactly the reasons you clarified in your own wise words below. I am here to tell you that Christianity is the one truth. I believe that faith in Jesus Christ has changed my life because it has freed me from my tendency to guilt and shame for my constant failures. These failures are real but have been paid for. Already. I have been rescued. My aspirations for goodness now have nothing to do with earning anything, they are reflections of gratitude and an instinct to imitate the one who paid for me…and to share that sense of freedom with friends like you.
I’m also here to tell you that there is a reason that the music you love is often music that tells (or echoes) the story of redemption – the central Christian plot twist.
God made you to be stubborn. Without that trait I’m convinced we would not be having these email exchanges because I doubt you would have survived your epic health struggles. He loves you just the way you are. There is nothing you could do to be loved more by him. He died for you.
I perceive that your next evolutionary stage of Christian perception is in sight. Insofar as this intriguing dialog helps to clear away obstacles and unpack stereotypes, keep asking and challenging.
Questioner responds
I will respond in more detail tomorrow, but wanted to address your comment on hoping these emails have been helpful in my exploration. There are not words to express how much they have helped me. It has been a safe space to ask any and all questions without fear you will interpret them as intentionally obtuse or offensive. Thank you. I would say I owe you a debt I cannot repay, but I chuckle hearing what I imagine would be your returning quip; "Your debt has already been paid."
Response to questioner
As you can tell, my friend, these are some of my favorite topics for intellectual pursuit, and they rival my science, my music, and my family, for my attention. I believe that one of the reasons I’m here (just like one of the reasons you’re here) is to engage in dialogs like this with friends like you on such important topics as faith.
As I’ve often mentioned in my blog, I find that faith (and questions about it) are actually urgent and pressing subjects just below the surface for many (most?) advanced students I’ve met over the years. We’ve chosen you because you are a curious group. Too few take the time and extend the trust to formulate such coherent and honest questions and doubts as you have been sharing.
Happy to continue as you like.
(and yes, it has already been paid)
Questioner responds
I will write tomorrow with questions and thoughts regarding the patriarchal structure of many religions. I suspect there will be more stereotypes to unpack, as well as a reiteration that people's beliefs and practices exist on a bell curve! Your bell curve explanation was most helpful. You are spot on in suggesting much of what I understood of Christianity was learned from stereotypes or interaction with only a narrow section of the bell curve. For now, some additional thoughts...
Pertaining to my previous comments on the evolution of my beliefs about why people choose to live a life of faith, I left out one important thought. At some point between moving past the assumption that people choose faith simply because they are too weak to tackle life alone and the acceptance of whatever helps them get through the day, the following occurred to me. Even if, for argument's sake, we say a person chooses religion solely because they admit they cannot make it through life alone, is that really so terrible? In that case, I realized what I had previously considered to be a cardinal flaw in them was no more than a lack of pride... Hardly a fault at all, much less one worthy of castigating them for or questioning their intelligence...
Many of my misunderstandings about Christianity have their roots in my interactions with the Christians I knew growing up. I moved to a very small town of the Bible Belt in high school. Southern Baptism was the only acceptable practice of faith there. Having lived in a large, diverse city until that point, I attended an elementary school that was accepting of all religions and cultures. As you can imagine, my nonchalant disclosure of being an atheist did not earn me many friends in my new hometown. I did not say it to be rude or hurtful, but when asked by a peer which church in town I would be attending, I simply stated that I didn't go to church. When pressed on whether I believed in God, I said, "No, but I know lots of people do." That was enough to be ousted by many peers and even teachers. It didn't bother me much, nor does it now upon reflection. Kids follow the example of their parents, and even with parents who do not model unkind behavior, kids often have to learn for themselves that their words can be hurtful or inappropriate.
That being said, the "brand" of Christianity I witnessed living there turned me away entirely. Christianity seemed to be nothing more than a guise for unkind, often reprehensible behavior. The people who preached the loudest also sinned the loudest. This led to me associate Christianity and religion as a whole with hypocrisy.
I also stayed far away from religion because of the darkness it has been associated with time and time again. The sad reality is that any position of power provides an opportunity to abuse that power and harm others. The Catholic Church is infamous for such abuse of power... Islam is infamous for its terrible treatment of women (at least in countries that are predominantly Muslim). I stayed away from religion, because I said to myself, "Why would I ever want to be associated with something so terrible? Why would I endorse an entity that does not protect the innocent, does not value me as a woman, etc.?"
Only in the last couple of years have I come to acknowledge that it is not their faith that makes people hypocritical or harmful. Humans behave poorly because they are humans. I had to take inventory of the entities I DO support, and what did I find? Abuses of power, unkind behavior, and hypocrisy. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study was one of the worst cases of medical racism and abuse in history. Yet, I still support medical research. Andrew Wakefield's intentionally fraudulent publications on a link between vaccines and autism have caused ripples in public trust and the care of young kids that I doubt we will ever see the end of. Yet, I still support medical research. Lance Armstrong all but killed the sport of road cycling entirely. Not simply because he used performance enhancing drugs and lied about it, but because of the reputations and livelihoods he intentionally ruined in order to keep his secret. In fact, cycling has long been one of the "dirtiest" sports there is, recording more doping violations than nearly every other sport. Yet, I still proudly call myself a cyclist. So much so that I'd write an essay about it... The number of doping scandals in track and field are too numerous to name. Yet, I proudly support the sport and it's what I most look forward to watching every Olympics. My point is, if I were to abandon every sport, profession, or religion associated with rottenness, I would have nothing left. Not even myself... because I am certainly not perfect. I have not made mistakes the magnitude of those mentioned above, but I am not without glaring faults of my own.
I don't doubt your speculation that many other curious graduate students have similar questions about faith and how it can co-exist with the beliefs they hold in science. I'm sure many, maybe even most, could articulate their questions and thought processes much better than I have in these emails. Surely all they lack is a trusted person to share them with. I am lucky to have found that in you.
Your ever so slightly less stubborn friend,
Response to questioner
Time for a brief response to pre-empt your next missive (to which I look forward) about historical (and modern) misogyny in world religions like Christianity. A great topic for discussion and you are right…the bell curve will be right there in my comments.
What you wrote yesterday floored me in its clarity of thought, from top to bottom. Your recognition that the failings of people are universal and contaminate even the most beautiful and purposeful human endeavors is exactly right, and beautifully stated, with some great examples. I don’t read many books, but just finished the new book Doctored by Charles Piller (Science magazine reporter) about the truly shocking streak of scientific misconduct involving dozens of labs in the history of Alzheimer’s Disease research. The implications for wasted money and time and the temptation to short-cuts and carelessness is stunning. Don’t get me started. It reminds me of my scientific mission in my responsible conduct of research course lectures hopefully admonishing impressionable students to exemplary science and data stewardship to prevent these disasters with self-discipline, and habits that thwart misconduct. But who am I kidding? It is as you imply, if humans are involved, so is temptation, selfishness, pride, laziness, all the mess that is part of the bigger mess when free will meets opportunity. In any case, you nailed it in your recognition that it is the people that ruin our worthy and honorable endeavors.
The remarkable thing at the center of Christianity is that God so loved the world (all of us failing messes) that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him will not die, but have everlasting life. I bet you recognize that Bible quote. It is amazing because it doesn’t say that God so loved the worthy and honorable endeavors and goals that he committed suicide as a rescue for them. No, his sacrifice was for us messes, the very ones that have contaminated and destroyed the purity of science and faith and sports. He didn’t offer himself to redeem the worthy concepts, his sacrifice was for what you well term the rottenness. Thus, your insight about rottenness (what is called total depravity in theology) allows us to recognize the unfathomable nature of God’s love.
In fact, it is this aesthetic of the hero dying for the villain that most attracts me to faith in Christianity. It’s not so much historical evidence or biblical mandates or examples of worthy people – it is this upside down ethic that attracts me at the very depth of my soul. It’s something I feel like I was made to long for. It is nothing like any other religion.
And that brings me to my second reaction to the brilliance of your note yesterday. In just a few sentences you made it perfectly clear how your views and response to a deeply toxic brand of Christianity had created a HUGE obstacle to ever being able to hear and feel and experience a different understanding of Christian faith. It makes me SO sad to think of the damage that is done when any of us knowingly or unknowingly creates obstacles that separate a seeking, curious person from God by creating scars that may never heal. I wish I could apologize for those that left those scars on you. I wish there were a Hippocratic mandate to at least “do no harm” among self-proclaimed Christians, but there isn’t. Your experience is all too common. Many of the people with whom I worship and serve tell similar stories and describe paths that involve rediscovery of a kind of relationship with God they had never imagined because of the toxicity of performance-based religion and sheer hypocrisy. I say this, mind you, as a hypocrite too, of course. Yes, you were exposed to a toxic brand of so-called Christianity that lives under that bell curve, masquerading as truth and purity, but accomplishing pretty much the opposite of what we see in the life of Jesus and what we read about in the letters of Paul (also mind you, I have issues with some of Paul’s words, as I imagine we’ll discuss very soon).
So your disclosures about toxic Christianity explain a very great deal to me about who you are, and why. My hope is that this dialog is helping to unpack the core truths of Christianity from the toxic cultures and rottenness that we have managed to superimpose. The beauty and uniqueness of the rescue story deserve to shine through, and I want to help you see and experience them. In fact, the pastor of our church grew up in toxic performance-based Christianity so his teaching often aims right at disarming that damage by explaining the real “gospel’, i.e., good news. It is the main theme of his current teaching series about the letter of Paul to the church at Galatia – not letting performance-based pseudo Christianity be confused for the genuine faith.
For some reason it is on my heart today, as I close this response to your disclosures of past damage, and your wise and kind description of an evolutionary stage where you recognized that dependence on faith may be evidence of humility overcoming pride, to explain explicitly the simplicity of accepting what Jesus did for you, thereby becoming a Christian. It really is as simple as a heartfelt prayer of surrender.
Lord, for all my life I have sought to be stubbornly independent, even in my suffering. I confess that I have a core of pride and yes, even rottenness. I confess now that I really do need you, that I carry a debt and a burden of imperfection and I can’t pay for it. I need you. I want to know you as you know me. Thank you for Jesus and for his death and suffering for me. Thank you for his rescue. Thank you for pursuing me with your gift. I accept it as payment for this suffering and struggling soul. I long to serve you now and know you forever on the other side.
Questioner responds
Thank you for taking time out of what was obviously a busy day to respond to my thoughts. I apologize for some of the typos in it and a late reply this evening. The stormy weather gave some peace throughout the day. I have always loved storms. The bigger the better. Hard rain, loud crackles of thunder, and heavy winds. They have always been soothing to me. Every night, I have my Alexa device play thunderstorm sounds or sounds of waves crashing in the ocean. I have often wondered if the reason I feel so at peace hearing storms is because I have always been in a storm myself. When the rain falls hard and the "boom" echoes far, it feels like I am not alone. It feels like having a friend to cry with or vent to...
What I most appreciated about your previous email was your acknowledgment that we are all flawed. We are all hypocritical. Even Christians. One of my many frustrations with the Christianity I observed growing up, and still now, is the tendency for Christians to assert that a person who did something terrible wasn't a "true Christian". For example, when someone who claims to be a Christian gets caught stealing, lying, harming another person, etc., many Christians will say, "They're not a Christian! Even if they say they are, they're not. A true Christian would never do that." This stance bothers me immensely, because how can you ever learn from the mistakes of your community and avoid them if you refuse to even acknowledge them? The scientists who commit grave misconduct are still scientists. They have a PhD just like you; they are no less of a scientist than you. They made a terrible mistake and acted in ways that certainly don't reflect your values as a scientist or those of the scientific community as a whole, but that does not mean they are not still a scientist. Commitment to a belief or system only when it is in the right does nothing for the believer or the system. Commitment only means something when you are in it for all its ugliness too... It only means something if you take accountability for the mistakes made in its name and vow to do better. This is why I find the claim that a Christian who sins a certain way is not a true Christian to be a form of denial. It also insinuates that true Christians are a perfect bunch, which not only isn't true but likely creates yet another barrier for curious people. If your impression is that people who make big mistakes can't be real Christians, you might write off the possibility that you could ever be one.
I can also understand why the specifics of the sacrifice are so meaningful to you. A hero sacrificing themself for a villain is not a story we hear often, if ever. Though I don't want to speak for you, I can speculate as to why that particular aspect of Christianity appeals so much to you... You are a hopeful person. You are a believer of God, but you are also a believer of your fellow humans. God's message that he did not sacrifice himself for the honorable and righteous but the ordinary or even rotten too, suggests, to me at least, that he did so because he believed in every villain's ability to become a hero, should they choose the right path. Perhaps that is a belief you also hold; all people can change for the better and be the hero in someone's story, even if they have been a villain in others' stories...
Okay, I don't quite have it in me to bring up my next questions tonight, but I will try to do so tomorrow. Thank you as always for your brilliant thoughts.
And a final note ahead of tomorrow's thoughts. I wanted to say a heartfelt thank you for answering all my questions thus far. I will never run out of them, so at any time, please do not feel if you don't wish to answer any more. There are several reasons I've chosen to ask you all these questions and not a peer. My primary reason for not asking such questions to someone my age is that feel it would be irresponsible. Best case scenario, they may give me answers that aren't necessarily correct or complete, through no fault of their own. I would not expect anyone to have the same level of wisdom and knowledge regarding faith that someone a few decades their senior would. Worst case scenario, I find it entirely possible that my continuous questioning and arguments on the core aspects of their beliefs, though well-intentioned, may sway them negatively in their faith. I may ask questions they have not started thinking about themselves, and not being able to find those answers may turn them away from a god they had previously trusted and needed. We talked about faith being like a brick house, a home. I do not go demoing other people's homes for the sake of my own curiosity. I chose your house because I can see that it is sturdy. I know my constant winds and prodding at its bricks will not make it topple.
Response to questioner
Just a note that your concern for not wanting to challenge, question, or probe too deeply into the faith of a younger person is thoughtful, but I would not be concerned about it. The Bible teaches that iron sharpens iron (Proverbs 27:17), and this means that if Christianity is what it claims to be (the one ultimate truth) it must be able to stand up to challenges of logic and experience and science and other world views. Thinking about those challenges to Christian faith is important and not to be avoided.
I often meet families whose goal seems to be to protect their Christian children from being confronted by other claims of truth. Such children end up in home schooling, or in Christian schools, and then in Christian colleges where one goal seems to be to meet and marry (as early as possible) a like-minded Christian mate in order to create a Christian nest to raise more similarly-insulated and isolated Christian children.
I was raised in a mainline Episcopal (Anglican) tradition by a loving, church-going family. Though I memorized all the prayers and went through all the motions of baptism and confirmation and service in the congregation, I never understood the central message that Jesus died for me, not as some tragic accident of Roman history, but intentionally to rescue me. I didn’t hear that message clearly until I was a Junior in high school and it totally changed me when I accepted Jesus and his gift as real choices in my life.
When I first had this experience I was introduced to a culture that lacked skepticism and I was told to read the Bible as an infallible textbook, not a complex scrapbook of different kinds of literature with different purposes, and that evolution was an incorrect theory and I would need to set aside that part of science.
When I did my undergrad and PhD at UW–Madison I am so glad that while I continued to study the Bible, I also studied world history, biblical criticism, the history of science, and I was surrounded by students who were smarter than me, wiser than me, nicer than me, less judgmental and hypocritical than me, and who were not Christians. This disavowed me of the mistaken notion that Christians are better. We are not. The difference is that we are forgiven. This, and countless conversations with non-Christians and challenges to theology forced me to ask how my world view could compete in the marketplace of ideas that one encounters at a major public university. Frankly, that’s why I’m not a fan of the insulation and isolation of Christian schools. They can propagate a “we’re better than those evil non-Christians” mentality because the students are simply never confronted with knowing and appreciating, and loving, non-Christian friends. These experiences are, frankly, the purpose of a liberal education, in my opinion.
All that is to say that if you have similar conversations to this with other beloved Christian friends will not be a threat to their faith. Their brick houses actually are strengthened, like our own muscles, by challenges and provocations to rethink what are essentials of the Christian faith and what is unhelpful cultural baggage.
In fact, over the years since my conversion to faith in Jesus, the details of my belief and theology have changed. This has come both by reading the Bible closely and reading about the Bible closely. The changes have come also from life experiences and from listening to other theologies in order to distil the essential differences. They have comes from studying the life of Galileo, who taught us that God reveals truth about himself at least as much by what we see and measure in the universe, not just by what has been collected as writings in the Bible. I’ve come to be more thoughtful about how to understand the Bible, and which parts are and are not relevant and applicable to my life. I’ve come to see women and LGBTIQ+ people as fully eligible for all aspects of faith and rescue without needing to change or be changed, other than whatever changes God brings about in their lives.
So don’t hesitate to bring any earth-shattering and faith-shaking questions to your Christian peers. They may very well provide better, more thoughtful, and more relevant insights than me. The difference is that they will be the insights of a peer, not of a father (or grandfather?) figure. The other difference is that I am at a life stage where it is easier for me to make time for correspondence. Your peers are, like you, super busy learning to be amazing scientists.
You are welcome to my time and answers to your questions. That is a major part of what I’m here for. It is, however, worth always keeping in mind the distinction between an enjoyable tennis match of fascinating ideas vs. a process of actually getting closer to a sense of what is really true for you, and whether that personal truth is changing in light of the correspondence. I really sense that it is, and I am thankful for that. Your questions are also refreshing in provoking adjustments in my own world view, and a review of what is essential and what is cultural about my own evolving faith.
And as for your assessment that my attraction to God’s rescue story lies in me being a hopeful person, that is a kind thing to say. On reflection, I think my affinity for the rescue story is really based on my attraction to stories of redemption. These redemption stories come in many forms. Rescuing my pet bunny from a lonely life in a dark garage with minimal care or attention and a perpetually filthy cage, and treating him to more than a decade of pampering and love and care and physical bonding until his dying evening was a kind of redemption story. During the construction of our church, a volunteer offered to teach unskilled helpers to tile a commercial kitchen floor. Despite many hours of work, it didn’t go well and the result was not acceptable. The volunteer leader was embarrassed and humiliated. It would be expensive and difficult to redo the project to make the tile floor acceptable. Those of us in leadership discussed what to do. Rather than leave the story as one of failure and humiliation, we decided that all of the leadership team, professional architect and builder’s representatives, and the original volunteers would come together on a weekend to completely remove the floor, hundreds of tiles with mortar and grout already hardened on them, and manually chip away all those adhesives to reclaim the tiles. We all then got on our hands and knees and learned from the volunteer how to do commercial kitchen floor tiling, and we all together redid the job. It came out very well, and the confidence and satisfaction of the volunteer leader were restored. In fact, the result was better than had the problem not occurred in the first place. Every time I walk through that kitchen I think of that redemption story. I love redemption stories like that.
God wrote just such a story in this world. The redemption of fallen humanity is a better story than had humanity never fallen.
Questioner responds
Please forgive what won't be an articulate email here. I really appreciate your view on education and the often insular nature of faith. I had the opportunity to go to a boarding school for the blind as a kid. Ultimately, I decided against it as I didn't think I’d learn anything about the world if I only surrounded myself with other people who shared my experience. Your points about education remind me of that.
On tennis match vs. actually learning and making progress towards something, I would not continue to ask questions if I didn't feel my view was changing. I think there are just a few more key topics I need to understand better before I would feel convicted enough to accept the gift. To be fair, I am someone who never commits to anything until I feel I can fully understand it, justify it, and explain the concepts in my own words.
- I have trouble understanding the role of women in Christianity. It seems the most common view is that they are around to serve their husband, raise kids, be quiet, and not hold positions of leadership. I don't know how much of that view is based on scripture and how much is based on bell curve beliefs. I also don't understand how churches and Christianity determine certain acts are sinful or wrong if the Bible actually says nothing about such things. Christianity seems to be very vocal about reproductive rights and issues of children. I hear lots of condemnation for abortion, IVF, surrogacy, etc. but none of those were even around in Jesus' time. I think people are entitled to their opinions and not all of one's opinions have to be rooted in their faith. Someone can dislike a behavior without there being concrete biblical support of their opinion. It is just sometimes hard to tell what is personal belief and what is belief of the religion as a whole, especially if the church (like the Catholic Church for example) has an official statement on it.
- I have trouble understanding what Christianity's view on the LGBTQIA+ community is. Christians tend to be very vocal about it. I did read your blog post from many years ago about it, but thought I would still ask because I know one's insights change over several decades. I do agree with your take on even if it's not a lifestyle you understand or feel is perfect, you can still love the person and support them. I would only say that trying to change someone or convince them they need to be changed in that context could be hurtful. But that is also very different from the extremes of conversion therapy, being ousted by your family and the church, etc. My reason for asking is that I want to be part of something that loves and supports people of all backgrounds.
Response to questioner
Hi.
I am very glad that you brought these next two deep questions, because they have become very important, they divide the bell curve of those of us who describe ourselves as Christians, and the discussion illustrates the crucial need to understand what are central vs. peripheral issues to faith. The issues have become huge obstacles for those honestly seeking to understand the core message of Christian faith, vs. the cultural trappings. I count you among those wise seekers.
I think the bell curve concept really is a concept of different perceptions of what is central vs. peripheral to being a Christian, with fringe views at both extremes and a fat middle of believers who have mixed feelings, don’t care, or would rather focus on what we share in common than what separates us.
Example. My daughters are in the mid-30s and were raised in the evangelical faith tradition that Laura and I adopted after both being raised in mainline Protestant traditions (Anglican for me, Lutheran for Laura). The very largest obstacle to our kids remaining interested in organized Christianity, especially the brand of organized Christianity practiced by their parents, is the disgust our daughters feel for the kinds of things they see in social media postings by people we consider to be our church friends. This has driven them from much of any interest in evangelical Christianity (a descriptive term that really just originally meant the brand Christianity that feels it has a positive message worth spreading). Our girls have trouble with the bell curve and trouble believing that we could have friends based on areas of agreement without our disagreements (typically on politics, science, biblical interpretation) permanently alienating us from such friends. Laura and I have found that our job is to find common ground in the core agreement on God’s great rescue story in Jesus, and focus deep and shared effort there, rather than being distracted by the many opinions that may separate us from other Christian believers. Life under the bell curve.
1. Women in Christianity. You are absolutely correct that both Catholic and protestant churches have a history of suppressing women. The same is true, by the way, at least in America, for suppressing people of color. At the root of this is difference of opinion about how to understand the Bible – textbook, or 20+ century-old scrapbook of insights into God’s character and story, written in different forms of literature for different purposes, many of which don’t apply to us. For example, significant portions of the Old Testament (the Jewish Bible) are devoted to prescribing conduct for the Jewish priestly class (irrelevant to us), and to ceremonies underpinning animal sacrifice to symbolize the need for someone or something to pay for sin. As Christians understand that our sins have now been paid for (“atoned for”) once and for all through Jesus’ death and resurrection, those passages are interesting but not binding on us. What about the New Testament, and the letters of St. Paul to the early churches after Jesus’ death? These letters are a mixed bag. On one hand, Paul was the greatest interpreter of Jesus for the whole Roman world, extending the message of the rescue beyond Judaism where it was born, to everyone. None of us who are gentiles (not Jewish by birth) would have learned the Christian message except for Paul’s sense of calling to explain its universality. So Paul is a hero.
That said, Paul was a product of his culture 20+ centuries ago, and it is ignorant to apply blindly that cultural context to our context. We have to do serious thinking about what Paul may have meant in his writings, and I think (an opinion that separates me from others under the bell curve) that we must simply ignore some of Paul’s teachings that are not relevant, or that are culturally inappropriate today, or that are ignorant. Does that mean that I don’t think the Bible is worth studying? No. I advocate that the Bible is worth studying carefully because it is a beautiful and complex collection of documents. It is the best way of understanding God’s rescue, but it is not a trivial source of information.
This whole topic is, as you know, treated in one of my recent posts where I use the issue of women in the church to catalyze a clarification of how I have come to think that we are meant to understand the Bible. That post is:
https://jim-maher.blogspot.com/2021/12/words.html
To cut to the chase, St. Paul wrote two key things that affect perceptions of women in Christian churches. Under the bell curve, some have latched onto one verse, some to the other.
The first is a sublime and poetic verse from Paul’s letter to the church at Galatia. This statement was revolutionary and completely counter-cultural at its time (and it still is, actually). It is aspirational and freeing and I cling to it:
The Message translation of the original Greek is:
Gal 3:28-29
In Christ's family there can be no division into Jew and non-Jew, slave and
free, male and female. Among us you are all equal. That is, we are all in a
common relationship with Jesus Christ.
This verse wins the day in my book. The church should be equally represented in leadership and congregation by men and women and all classes of society.
Period.
But this same Paul was also trapped, somewhat understandably, in the culture of his day, despite his willingness to write revolutionary things as above. In a different, perhaps annoyed setting, Paul writes to his mentee, Timothy, and leaves this extremely unhelpful quote that has enabled gender suppression for 20+ centuries (again The Message translation):
1Tim 2:12
I don't let women take over and tell the men what to do. They should study to be quiet and obedient along with everyone else. Adam was made first, then Eve; woman was deceived first-our pioneer in sin!-with Adam right on her heels. On the other hand, her childbearing brought about salvation, reversing Eve. But this salvation only comes to those who continue in faith, love, and holiness, gathering it all into maturity. You can depend on this.
I find this an unhelpful reference to what I presume was a local issue, emphasized unhelpfully by Paul from a context we don’t understand, and gladly generalized and made universal by most of the Christian church for generations, not to mention other quotes about hair styles and clothing (that we all ignore).
Thus, as you have pointed out about the rottenness of human nature, Christians under the bell curve of belief have latched onto Bible verses that support cultural trends they like, ignoring other verses. The problem is misunderstanding and misusing a complex scrapbook (the Bible) on culturally-changing matters, while losing sight of the central rescue story that must always take precedence.
In fact, I am sad to say that it wasn’t until last year that careful study of this issue led my own church to fully endorse the equality of women in all areas of leadership within the church. In 2024! And, I am sad to say, the decision was so uncomfortable for some, that they chose to worship elsewhere, in settings where different Bible verses are emphasized over others.
Thus, the major features that distinguish Christian sub-populations under the bell curve are, in my opinion, all based on different understandings of how the Bible is inspired, what it means to say that the Bible is inspired, and whether or not we admit to ourselves that we inevitably must pick and choose what passages do and do not apply to us.
I believe that men and women are equal in God’s eyes, equally flawed, equally in need of rescue, equally capable of humble service and leadership in Christian churches, equally vulnerable to stumbling and hypocrisy, equally gifted for all kinds of roles. 20+ centuries of science and cultural advancement make it crucial not to apply literal biblical quotations to this issue. We must do our homework before deciding what are the core principles.
And we must NEVER allow this peripheral issue create an obstacle to the understanding the central rescue story of Christianity.
Thus, because of the bell curve there is no one view of women in Christianity. There are many views. I personally think many of them are dead wrong, but I can still love and collaborate with those who disagree, as we address tasks that focus on the core message of the faith.
2. I love that you have scoured my blog thoroughly enough to recognize that in 1996 (29 years ago!!) I posted this reflection for a curious family member:
http://jim-maher.blogspot.com/1996/06/answering-question-about-homosexuality.html
It was my attempt to catalog everything I could find in the Bible about homosexual conduct, emphasizing that there is very little there. As you point out accurately, one would never guess this based on the shrill political discourse under the Christian bell curve. The same goes for all aspects of LGBTIQ+ life. Very little in the Bible, very much in modern political discourse. This is actually a pathetic diversion so that the modern message of Christianity seems mostly about limiting the behavior of a few rather than explaining the rescue story needed by literally everyone. A big section of the bell curve has essentially hidden and subverted the key message by creating hateful and distracting obstacles.
You are right about many things. The recognition of transgender characteristics, though ancient and intrinsic to a fraction of humanity, much like homosexuality, is not a topic given much of any recognition in the Bible. Intersex genitalia, gene variants in hormones and hormone receptors, different brain chemistries, DNA binding variation by the SRY protein, sequence variations at countless gene loci affecting behavior, chromosomal ploidy differences…not material to be expected in an ancient scrapbook.
In my lectures in the graduate school molecular genetics course on yeast (S. cerevisiae) sex determination (BTW, there are two sexes, a and α) I emphasize the beautiful molecular circuitry that determines yeast gender, and how the circuitry allows gender switching. I try to make the point that sex determination in a “simple” eukaryotic fungus is beautiful and complex, so we should not be surprised that sexual identify may be far more complex in H. sapiens !
This begs the question of whether non-binary humans are “broken” or “defective” or “diseased”, or whether these molecular variants should be understood as part of a normal continuum of humanity. Even if some variants can be thought of as based on molecular “defects”, are all defects meant to be shunned until corrected?
So, yes, my opinion has changed since 1996. I do not believe the few Bible passages discussing homosexuality apply to what we mean by modern same-sex relationships. Same-sex relationships in the ancient world were often associated with competing religions, and/or with abusive and controlling dynamics far from psychological health. The BTIQ+ letters are pretty much not addressed in the Bible. So what if in the creation myth in the Book of Genesis, God is described as creating a male and a female first? To me this does not mean that non-binary existence is forbidden.
My nephew is a married gay pastor in an Evangelical Lutheran church. So that’s under the bell curve too.
I will say that there are healthy principles that may apply to straight as well as LGBTIQ+ people, and these principles are around long-term committed relationships rather than promiscuity. The history of gay life in America has historically been in the closet, and this glorified (or depended on?) promiscuity and multiple partners without long-term commitment. This was a key factor in the AIDs epidemic (as an aside…I love playing in the band for the Broadway musical Rent and I once blogged about why: https://jim-maher.blogspot.com/2014/07/rent.html)
So, I will clarify my personal opinion. God loves single and binary and non-binary and LGBTIQ+ people. Our intrinsic tendencies to sin (fall short of our self-expectations, let alone God’s expectations) are identical. Their biology and their emotional trauma and their gifts and potential are all the same as for you and me. We all need Jesus. The Church needs committed LGBTIQ+ people in ministry and service and leadership. For those who have partners and have put their trust in Jesus, I would love to see them choose marriage, committing to each other for life, rather than suffering the emotional damage of promiscuity. The passages on homosexuality I listed in 1996 remain, and the possible responses I proposed in 1996 remain, but my understanding has changed. LGBTIQ+ people are part of the normal spectrum of humanity who need Jesus, and who, having found Jesus, should be part of Christian church culture and leadership being no more broken than any of us.
I do need to note that among both straight and LGBTIQ+ people there is plenty of emotional and mental pathology that needs healing. Is it possible that some sexual and gender characteristics are symptoms of inner damage and/or self-medication that could be treated by counseling and modern medical therapy? Sure. That’s just as true for straight people as for LGBTIQ+ people. The latter don’t have a monopoly on brokenness.
And totally missing from this discussion is the important and beautiful category of single people, who God loves just as much, who are not incomplete, and who are susceptible to sin and in need of rescue no more or less than the rest.
The pastor of our church will be starting a short series of teachings on tough questions, and I have no doubt that these issues of sexuality will be among them. My own church has its bell curve. I suspect I will disagree with a certain amount of the teaching I will hear, and I suspect most of the disagreement will come from my perspectives as a molecular biologist, and my view of the Bible as a scrapbook, not a textbook.
Regardless of what I hear, I will keep worshipping and serving with my friends, putting focus on my gratitude for what Jesus did for me.
Now that was a much longer pair of answers than your clear and cogent questions. I started it last night and finished this AM. I promise future responses won’t be so burdensome 😊.
Take some time to digest it. Let me know what you think.
Questioner responds
Please never apologize for long emails. They make me smile and I am grateful for them. Please forgive me for another short email. Your email deserves a lot more than I can write tonight, but I really appreciate it. I had the same thoughts and conclusions regarding Paul. I assumed he was not terrible but that his words were certainly a product of his time or a particular experience. Lots of instances of this in the Bible (certain views and punishments that were acceptable then but obviously aren't now.) society can easily disagree with some punishments and views of the Bible that are outdated. (There are nearly 30 "crimes" in the Bible punishable by death). I think there is a tendency to interpret certain passages as literal and still applicable when one does not understand the person or act they are judging, how times have changed, etc.
I appreciate your points about science, yeast, etc. in the context of what was obviously not discovered or discussed back in the day. Above all, when we make new discoveries, if one has faith, I feel there is an obligation to interpret the data with love and not with the intention to bolster an unkind view of your neighbor. I feel if the entire world had made more of an effort to do so regarding the LGBTIQ+ community, they would never have fallen into the lives of pain and promiscuity you brought up. At least not to the extent that resulted in the AIDS epidemic, many suicides, hate crimes, etc. As you pointed out, straight people fall into the terribly damaging lifestyle of promiscuity too, but I believe it struck the LGBTIQ+ community so much harder because they were pariahs. They had no rights and their way of life was even a crime (and still is in many countries, punishable by death). I can see how it would foster the following thought process:
If society won't accept me at my best, why should I care about being my best? If society will not accept me wanting to marry someone of the same sex, why bother? if society says I am unworthy and going to hell no matter what I do, why bother?
The discrimination they faced in healthcare surely contributed to the epidemic too. They were not educated on the dangers of multiple partners, not treated with dignity once they became ill, etc. but I digress. My point is that I agree the best scenario for all genders, sexualities, etc. in the context of relationships is to find your person, one person, and commit. Until then, commit to yourself and your growth as a single person.
…And in the absence of a more in depth explanation of my next question, I will sum it up in a few short lines:
Does God truly forgive ALL sins? Is eternity truly possible for ALL? To forgive the small things seems fair enough, but regardless of remorse, it seems unfair that someone who takes an innocent life out of malice should be afforded eternity. It does not seem fair that the departed soul of a young child would inhabit the same space as the departed soul of the person who took their life...
Response to questioner
I will answer your question.
Yes.
Through acceptance of Jesus’ death and resurrection in our place, God forgives all sins, past, present, future, forever. Moreover, there is nothing we can do to lose this forgiveness because the analogy for this unique kind of forgiveness is an irreversible adoption: upon accepting the free gift of Jesus’ death in our place, we are adopted – we are seen by God as he sees his own son, Jesus. Perfectly loved and as if we are perfect. Indeed, we become perfect in God’s eyes. Our present and future conduct is defined as clean, and our past conduct erased, all because of the mighty power of the one perfect life sacrificed for us.
No, it is not fair at all.
Under the bell curve of Christian belief, especially for my Catholic friends (and plenty of evangelicals too), there are gradations of sin. Imperfections carry different scores and might require different degrees of penance (hence Catholic priests will prescribe different degrees of cleansing activities after Catholic confession).
The Bible tells a different story. Any imperfection and all imperfection are equally grievous evidence to God of our fallen character.
No point system.
As we noted in a recent text, “we’re all in the same boat.” Yes, that means the ‘innocent’ child as well has her abusive murderer.
Jesus made this point in multiple ways in his teachings. One example parable (story) is found in Luke’s gospel account, chapter 40:
Jesus said: "Two
men were in debt to a banker. One owed five hundred silver pieces, the other
fifty. Neither of them could pay up, and so the banker canceled both debts.
Which of the two would be more grateful?"
Simon answered, "I suppose the one who was forgiven the most."
"That's right," said Jesus.
In a second example, in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 20, Jesus explains that God’s sense of fairness and justice is beyond our reasoning:
Jesus said: “God's kingdom is like an estate manager who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. They agreed on a wage of a dollar a day, and went to work. "Later, about nine o'clock, the manager saw some other men hanging around the town square unemployed. He told them to go to work in his vineyard and he would pay them a fair wage. They went.
"He did the same thing at noon, and again at three o'clock. At five
o'clock he went back and found still others standing around. He said, 'Why are
you standing around all day doing nothing?'
"They said, 'Because no one hired us.'
"He told them to go to work in his vineyard.
"When the day's work was over, the owner of the vineyard instructed his
foreman, 'Call the workers in and pay them their wages. Start with the last
hired and go on to the first.'
"Those hired at five o'clock came up and were each given a dollar. When
those who were hired first saw that, they assumed they would get far more. But
they got the same, each of them one dollar. Taking the dollar, they groused
angrily to the manager, 'These last workers put in only one easy hour, and you
just made them equal to us, who slaved all day under a scorching sun.'
"He replied to the one speaking for the rest, 'Friend, I haven't been unfair. We agreed on the wage of a dollar, didn't we? So take it and go. I decided to give to the one who came last the same as you. Can't I do what I want with my own money? Are you going to get stingy because I am generous?'
Finally (at least for this short email) there is important Bible teaching in the letter attributed to James. (As an aside, Martin Luther, the great Protestant reformer, believed that different Bible books have different degrees of merit and were differently inspired and differently accurate, and he wasn’t such a fan of the book of James for various reasons. I’ve written about this in my blog post on “words.”)
Nonetheless, James writes (Message translation):
You do well when you complete the Royal Rule of the Scriptures: "Love others as you love yourself." But if you play up to these so-called important people, you go against the Rule and stand convicted by it. You can't pick and choose in these things, specializing in keeping one or two things in God's law and ignoring others. The same God who said, "Don't commit adultery," also said, "Don't murder." If you don't commit adultery but go ahead and murder, do you think your non-adultery will cancel out your murder? No, you're a murderer, period.
A different translation of the same passage is even more plain and simple to understand:
“For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.”
Thus, in Christian teaching based on these passages, sins don’t come in shades of grey – they are all black because they all simply represent imperfection, the ultimate obstacle to enjoying a restored relationship with God.
The central plot twist irony is that God himself offers to pay for our imperfection, no matter how flagrant or minor.
And God’s sense of ‘fairness’ seems to be God’s business as the playwright, not ours to judge as the characters endowed with free will.
Happy to hear your thoughts on my answer when your time allows.
Questioner responds
I'm not sure my stubbornness warrants any praise or admiration at this point, but your words are kind nonetheless.
The concept that a murderer receives eternity is a hard pill to swallow. God may not grade sins, but as humans, we obviously do. The laws we govern ourselves by reflect that. One who commits murder does not receive the prison sentence as someone who steals a car. A person who steals a car inflicts far less pain than the person who takes an innocent life...
In trying to understand, I somewhat recognize my own double standard of God. On one hand, I stated that I did not think it fair at all for a good person to go to hell, simply because they worshipped a different god on earth. My view being that God MUST extend forgiveness in that circumstance or he would not be an all forgiving, kind God. At the same time, I am demanding he MUST condemn a murderer to hell, or he would not be a righteous, kind God. I suppose it is not entirely fair to bestow upon God MY opinions of how and who he should punish or forgive. If it were place, I would be the savior of him, not the other way around.
If all sins are forgiven, it does make me question what reason anyone has to NOT commit terrible acts. If God is willing to wash away all crimes against ourselves, others, and Him, what reason does one really have for living an upstanding life. I can speculate that part of your answer will draw a comparison between wanting to please, respect, and honor someone who you know loves you deeply and who you love in return. Your daughters, even if there would be no repercussions, would likely not intentionally do something to hurt you or disappoint you, because they love you and know you love them. Since God is said to be a father figure, I can understand that this would be reason enough to do the right thing when nobody is watching (though I know the other point may be that God is always watching). I suspect another aspect of your answer may be that if God went around condemning people to hell for a wide range of sins, the desire to be a "Christian" or call yourself a believer would be based on fear, something that is not the foundation of any healthy relationship.
If God does not want devotion out of fear, where does the phrase, "A God fearing man/woman" come from, and what does it mean? It is always said in a praising manner.
If all can be forgiven and all can be granted eternity, where does the whole concept of a judgement day come from? I often here Christians say they're not concerned about judging or people and not bothered that someone did not get caught or punished appropriately for their crime on earth, the insinuation being that God will hand down a heftier punishment after death (e.g., hell).
I mostly struggle to accept that someone who did not suffer any consequences for a terrible crime on earth would still not suffer a consequence after death... in particular, I am referring to people who do grave harm to others and never get caught. They live long, healthy lives, untouched by disease, the law, etc. There is no justice for the victim of their crime, and it feels as though the victim would not receive any justice in death either. They would, in fact, inhabit the same sacred space for eternity... How can a god who loves a child of His, a child who devoted their entire life to Him, offer a place to a lifelong nonbeliever who killed that devoted child?
Response to questioner
So, you are now asking the kinds of questions that continue to justify calling this thread “deep.” Plenty of important theology, and you have already made clear that you have great insights of your own about the answers.
In order.
First. No. God is not ‘fair’ in human terms. It’s a little bit like the statement by CS Lewis that Aslan the lion, the Jesus character in The Chronicles of Narnia, is not a tame Lion. The parables I shared this morning teach over and over that God’s benevolence is illogical and incomprehensible to us.
It is important to remember that God’s character is one of benevolence but also of justice. Every shortcoming deserves punishment, and every sin must be paid for. This requirement for justice is very much the central teaching of the Old Testament. Somebody has to pay for wrongs…maybe the blood of innocent animals…maybe the perpetrator herself…but someone has to pay. God is just and doesn’t just turn a blind eye.
The Christian message is that someone did pay…it just wasn’t the perpetrator, nor the blood of a sacrificed animal.
Jesus paid.
So yes, we are confronted by a God who may not measure up to our sense of justice. I totally agree.
Second. Great question! Why shouldn’t Christians revel in their eternal forgiveness and just bask in the pleasures of sin with a perpetual get-out-of-jail-free card to show? This was/is such an important theological question that Paul taught on the subject in several of his letters to new churches full of new, confused Christians. Paul’s most cogent comments are in the 6th chapter of his letter to the church at Rome. Forgive the slightly longer text quote, but it addresses the question directly.
“ So what do we do? Keep on sinning so God can keep on forgiving? I should hope not! If we've left the country where sin is sovereign, how can we still live in our old house there? Or didn't you realize we packed up and left there for good? That is what happened in baptism. When we went under the water, we left the old country of sin behind; when we came up out of the water, we entered into the new country of grace-a new life in a new land!
That's what baptism into the life of Jesus means. When we are lowered into the
water, it is like the burial of Jesus; when we are raised up out of the water,
it is like the resurrection of Jesus. Each of us is raised into a light-filled
world by our Father so that we can see where we're going in our new
grace-sovereign country.
Could it be any clearer? Our old way of life was nailed to the cross with
Christ, a decisive end to that sin-miserable life-no longer at sin's every beck
and call! What we believe is this: If we get included in Christ's
sin-conquering death, we also get included in his life-saving resurrection. We
know that when Jesus was raised from the dead it was a signal of the end of
death-as-the-end. Never again will death have the last word. When Jesus died,
he took sin down with him, but alive he brings God down to us. From now on,
think of it this way: Sin speaks a dead language that means nothing to you; God
speaks your mother tongue, and you hang on every word. You are dead to sin and
alive to God. That's what Jesus did.”
And just let me clarify that Paul is not saying that one must be baptized to accept Jesus’ gift. He is remarking on the significance of the symbolism of baptism for those who choose to be baptized after they believe.
Your analogy of my daughters relating to me in love, not with contempt, is a beautiful way to express the answer as well. With that said, all Christians constantly struggle with remembering that (as Paul says) we have a new address. We tend to keep heading to that old house and (as Paul remarks elsewhere) insist on putting on our old clothes and forgetting that we are new people. We continue to stumble and we find ever more elegant ways to demonstrate hypocrisy. I find that the Christian life is one of gratitude, attempts at self-discipline, prayers for God’s spirit to influence my behavior, and then lots more gratitude for undeserved forgiveness.
Third. I find the concept embodied in the archaic expression “God-fearing” to be unhelpful. It tends to promote the mistaken Christian world view based on earning and punishment for failing, and the concept that our behavior determines our eternal destiny.
I do not believe that our behavior determines our eternal destiny.
I believe that what determines our eternal destiny when we meet God will be our relationship with him as defined by whether we accept that Jesus paid for us, and that our only merit before God is our dependence on what Jesus did. As we have discussed, I choose to believe that, in his benevolence, God will allow every soul to understand the availability of this gift of substitution, whether they met Jesus on this side or death or not. To me that means that we can imagine a “judgement” day in the sense that all of our lifetime of thoughts and actions matter to God, but/and that we are given the opportunity to exchange them all for the perfect goodness and sacrifice of Jesus. Whatever “judgement” day is, it need not be a fearful time. In my own mind I imagine falling down in tears, seeing and knowing all my life’s failings revealed, and then being able to say “I come confidently to live forever with you, God, not because of, or in spite of, any of this, but simply because I choose to accept that Jesus paid for all of it.”
You may be familiar with the remarkable anecdote (which actually happened to be in my morning devotional Bible reading today) when Jesus and two thieves were dying side-by-side on three crosses on Good Friday. One of the two criminals, while dying in agony, expresses recognition of Jesus as savior. Jesus responds with a phrase that implies that the criminal’s faith, even at that moment, was sufficient for eternal forgiveness. I guess, if pressed, I’d say that within a few hours the other (unrepentant) criminal was meeting God and understanding the magnitude of Jesus’ offer and being given a chance to choose it.
Not fair if we insist on personal accountability and personal punishment (your sense of justice, and mine).
Totally fair if we understand that God insists on accountability and justice and punishment, but he takes it on himself as an unimaginable act of love.
And because there aren’t shades of grey in sin, the most horrific and violent and sadistic acts of evil of the serial murder are no worse than my selfish and proud excuses for not serving others.
To sum up. Becoming a Christian is ultimately about surrender to the God who is the great bridge builder. The width and strength of that bridge, and its availability to every soul is not comprehensible to our scientific minds.
I think that is what is meant by surrender, and part of the meaning of the word ‘faith.’
Eager, as always, for your thoughts.
Questioner responds
Thank you as always. I found the letter Paul wrote that you shared to be very helpful, as was your explanation that we tend to fall into old, unhealthy habits (same house, same clothes). I also love the song "You Matter to Me" by Sara.
Do you think it's possible that God encourages us
not to judge others, grade their sins, dole out personal justice, etc. because
he believes the following to be true:
- For all our goodness, our judgment is unavoidably driven by the hurt we experience at the hands of others and by the hurt we see inflicted on the innocent. We act out of emotion and a false sense of justice when we seek judgment and vengeance. For as much as we strive to "love our neighbor", we do not love our neighbors as our children. We cannot love our neighbors unconditionally the way we often love our children unconditionally. And on that note, many parents DO defend their children who are convicted of crimes like murder. They do not stop loving them. Perhaps that love, though incomprehensible, is closer to God's love than the way we love our non-blood neighbors.
- God knows what a terrible mental and spiritual burden "justice" and judgment are for people. Was the forgiveness and payment he extended to us with his sacrifice not just a gift of forgiveness and payment for our sins but also a gift of absolving us of the requirement to grade and forgive the multitude of sins he knew we would all continue to commit?
One additional question on the concept of all being offered forgiveness and eternity if we accept God for all he is (whether in this life or after death), what is to stop someone from seeing the alternative of hell presented to them upon their death and just saying the words God wants to hear? People with antisocial personality disorder for example can be incredibly skilled manipulators... charming on the surface, affable, and capable of mimicking the necessary human emotions to hide their lack of them. What would stop such a person from convincing God upon death that they accept him and are sorry for what they've done in order to gain eternal life? This obviously stirs up additional questions. On one hand, I would say God would be most aware of the manipulation tactics of such a person and therefore could not be "duped". I would also question why God would allow such a disorder to manifest in a person. Anyhow, I will morph into a full-blown armchair psychologist with any further speculations on personality disorders, so I'll refrain. In summary, what prevents God from being tricked by an unkind nonbeliever?
A final thought on the topic of God being all powerful in this context: I have always thought what makes god all powerful and the "final decision maker" if you will, was his ability to make final judgments, send others to hell, etc. I'm sure most of that is due to the Christianity I witnessed growing up. I think I am starting to understand that what makes God all powerful and special is not his ability to ruin, but his ability to forgive... even the worst of us.
Response to questioner
It is certainly true that Jesus taught that judging others is a mistake. There are plenty of his teachings on this subject. A classic is a quotation attributed to Jesus in the New Testament Gospel of Matthew (The Message) version:
“Don't pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults- unless, of course, you want the same treatment. That critical spirit has a way of boomeranging. It's easy to see a smudge on your neighbor's face and be oblivious to the ugly sneer on your own. Do you have the nerve to say, 'Let me wash your face for you,' when your own face is distorted by contempt? It's this whole traveling road-show mentality all over again, playing a holier-than-thou part instead of just living your part. Wipe that ugly sneer off your own face, and you might be fit to offer a washcloth to your neighbor.”
As to your interesting conjectures on why God discourages a judgmental attitude, I think both are reasonable and are consistent with his loving character. I particularly like your second idea. In fact, the transformation (the ‘moving to a new house in a new country with new clothes’ described by Paul) changes our entire attitude from fear, behavior management, pride, and the tendency to judge, to an attitude 100% saturated with gratitude and a sense of freedom. I find this in my life all the time (not that I never slip into my old clothes as a bad habit). Whereas I spent my teenage years bargaining with God, hoping that good behavior would be rewarded (my desired reward in those days was female companionship, by the way), the bargaining disappeared when I trusted in Jesus and saw that every good thing in my life, and the promise of an eternal loving and accepting relationship from my heavenly father, was 100% the result of what Jesus had done for me despite what I deserved. So yes, when we have been set free from behavior management, we tend not to focus on the behavior of others either (at least that should be a natural consequence). I find myself focusing on sharing what Jesus as done for me. Behavior is a symptom. Transformation is a more interesting goal.
When you see highly toxic and judgmental Christians, as you have, you may rightly ask how genuine is the transformation they have experienced, and/or how well they are studying Paul’s teaching about their new country, house, and clothes.
Now as to the possibility of duplicitousness before God when the offer of Jesus’s substitutionary death is explained, I agree with you that God is omniscient and will not be fooled by insincerity. The Old Testament book of 1 Samuel has a classic quote where God is said to have told Samuel (presumably supernaturally):
But God told Samuel, "Looks aren't everything. Don't be impressed with his looks and stature… God judges persons differently than humans do. Men and women look at the face; God looks into the heart."
Thus, I have no doubt that the truth will be laid bare in every respect at that time when we exit the stage and depart from the timeline.
CS Lewis might note that the soul bent on deception and uninterested in surrender to the great love of God would be unhappy living with God in heaven, and God would not compel such an eternal struggle for such a proud soul. Lewis imagines that there is a place of eternal separation for God, where he does not force a relationship on the proud soul. Rather than a place of fiery torment, Lewis imagined a place that would perhaps be worse, but would be in accord with the wishes of the proud soul – a place a grey boredom and repetition. A sort of eternal Ground Hog’s Day experience, consistent with the aspirations of the proud soul.
I personally find it difficult to imagine that a soul made fully aware of the truth of their life’s burden of sin and God’s offer of eternal companionship through Jesus’ gift would cling stubbornly to their prideful independence, but free will appears to be a fundamental principle on the stage, so it is imagined to still be operative in that transition to timelessness as each soul exits the stage into the wings where the playwright greets his created souls and reveals to them the dimensions of reality that he inhabits. That is when we will understand that we have been occupying a 2-dimensional static picture of a 3-dimensional place not constrained by time.
That does emphasize another point that we have touched on. It is my contention that Jesus’ substitutionary life, death, and resurrection is somehow offered to every soul that will ever have lived. That is a challenging idea, because I don’t know when babies develop souls, and we all know that developmentally damaged or genetically defective individuals may not be capable of what we see externally as independent and rational agency. What about them? They are on the opposite pole from those that concerned you – souls that might seek to deceive God. I am talking about souls too innocent to know anything in the sense that we think of knowing.
My sense of God’s unimaginable goodness is that he will communicate with those souls the offer of Jesus through mechanisms we cannot imagine. It may even be that for unborn souls and those emanating from brains so damaged or developmentally limited that the soul had never sinned through pride or selfishness at all, God’s offer of grace will still stand, and heaven with Jesus will be a natural offer.
Are those ideas helpful? Let me know your thoughts and more questions you find pressing and urgent, or even just curiosities. I can only promise my continued attempts at thoughtful answers.
Questioner responds
These ideas are helpful, as always. In fact, you answered one of my next questions towards the end of your email. Not all humans are capable of making the complex decision of accepting Jesus, in this life or the next. Some people never reach a point developmentally or psychologically, due to age or disability, that would enable rational thought on the matter. To me, this would fall under the same category as the person who did not accept Jesus in this life because they were never given the opportunity to even hear His name. That lack of opportunity would not be their fault.
As you pointed out, many people with disabilities/disorders are too innocent to have sinned at all. One obviously does not go driving under the influence if one cannot drive at all. One does not go taking the Lord's name in vain if one has no idea what a "Lord" even is. For some, the only life they will know is the comfort of their home with their caregivers. I do not say that with pity... To live a life in which the only thing achieved is the love and warmth of others is far from a meaningless, sad life. In those cases, I imagine God would, as you say, communicate with them in a way they can understand and potentially determine they never sinned at all.
In my attempt to understand what sins God would and wouldn't forgive, I also had to consider the real existence of a person who is both disabled AND harmful... "guilty by reason of insanity" or "not fit to stand trial" is how we usually phrase that. We recognize that not all sins (crimes) are committed with a sound mind. So, even if a person intentionally commits murder, if they were suffering from a severe mental illness and were not grounded in reality, that changes how we view their crime. They are guilty of the crime, but are they blameworthy? This is actually a fascinating debate in neuroscience, the concept of blameworthiness. A famous example is Charles Whitman, a young man who shot and killed nearly a dozen University of Texas students from the clock tower on campus. Upon autopsy, he was found to have a glioblastoma compressing his amygdala (a region associated with the emotions of fear, aggression, and anxiety). He was unaware of the tumor, but his diaries revealed many entries expressing his dismay at his suddenly erratic emotional state. He shared feeling sudden rushes of extreme anger and violence, intense sadness, etc. but could not understand what events could have precipitated those emotions. He was reported by others to have been a quiet, kind young man his entire life until several months prior to his crime. It is assumed that his drastic behavioral changes and act of violence was, at least in part, due to the tumor. So, was he guilty of the crime? Sure. But was he blameworthy? Grey area, at best. I tried to work out how God would handle forgiveness or eternity for such a person, and ultimately settled on your idea that the forgiveness does not have to be "fair" to be granted... whether the tumor had anything to do with it or not, he could still be forgiven by God. To summarize far too long of a thought process, I settled on your conviction that even if one DOES sin out of pride or selfishness, that does not bar them from forgiveness and eternity.
Response to questioner
Hi, my friend.
That is a fascinating case, and it points to the complexity of the human brain, both electrically and chemically. It also touches on the issue of personal responsibility, and what is meant by the idea of just consequences. I agree with your conclusions and think they are consistent with the theological themes in this thread so far.
You have previously used the analogy of a loving parent remaining committed to their child in a criminal trial, with a depth of love that does not depend on the facts of the case, or whether or not the child is guilty. That parental love is unconditional. There is nothing the child could do to gain more of that love, or to lose any of it. We always used words of this kind as we raised our daughters. We told them often that if they ever found themselves in trouble – even if it were terrible trouble (fill in the blank…unplanned pregnancy, killing someone due to inattentive driving, drug addiction) we wanted them to know they could always come to us and we would never judge them, but would help them– and love them. And in the criminal court analogy, the judge might well pronounce judgement of “guilty” on one of my daughters at the end of their trial, with a prescribed penalty that could be dire. In this analogy, Laura or I would step forward and one of us would take the penalty instead, taking the place of my daughter…and not just paying the price for this crime or misdeed, but paying for any and all penalties she will ever owe.
I think that kind of unconditional love touches on God’s depth of love even for a personal with a ‘criminal mind’. I long to believe that even at death God’s offer of mercy would be extended to that soul.
And here is where us scientists need to pause and reflect on the possibility that brain, mind, and soul are different things, and it is the soul that ultimately relates to God, communicating with him eternally. I have blogged about this idea in the past, raising the possibility that the soul is an emergent property of the physical mind…but the truth is, I have no idea what souls are! I just make the point that the soul need not be equivalent to the mind or the physical brain.
To conclude our shared affirmation (since I think we agree on the answer to your question), perhaps the best way to complete my response is using the story Jesus used when he was trying to convey the unconditionality (I love that word, even if I just made it up) of his love and willingness to forgive. The parable is in the Gospel attributed to Luke, chapter 15. You know it as the parable of the prodigal son.
Jesus said, "There was once a man who had two sons. The younger said to his father, 'Father, I want right now what's coming to me.'
"So the father divided the property between them. It wasn't long before
the younger son packed his bags and left for a distant country. There,
undisciplined and dissipated, he wasted everything he had. After he had gone
through all his money, there was a bad famine all through that country and he
began to hurt. He signed on with a citizen there who assigned him to his fields
to slop the pigs. He was so hungry he would have eaten the corncobs in the pig
slop, but no one would give him any.
"That brought him to his senses. He said, 'All those farmhands working for
my father sit down to three meals a day, and here I am starving to death. I'm
going back to my father. I'll say to him, Father, I've sinned against God, I've
sinned before you; I don't deserve to be called your son. Take me on as a hired
hand.' He got right up and went home to his father.
"When he was still a long way off, his father saw him. His heart pounding,
he ran out, embraced him, and kissed him. The son started his speech: 'Father,
I've sinned against God, I've sinned before you; I don't deserve to be called
your son ever again.'
"But the father wasn't listening. He was calling to the servants, 'Quick.
Bring a clean set of clothes and dress him. Put the family ring on his finger
and sandals on his feet. Then get a grain-fed heifer and roast it. We're going
to feast! We're going to have a wonderful time! My son is here-given up for
dead and now alive! Given up for lost and now found!' And they began to have a
wonderful time.
"All this time his older son was out in the field. When the day's work was
done he came in. As he approached the house, he heard the music and dancing.
Calling over one of the houseboys, he asked what was going on. He told him,
'Your brother came home. Your father has ordered a feast-barbecued
beef!-because he has him home safe and sound.'
"The older brother stalked off in an angry sulk and refused to join in.
His father came out and tried to talk to him, but he wouldn't listen. The son
said, 'Look how many years I've stayed here serving you, never giving you one
moment of grief, but have you ever thrown a party for me and my friends? Then
this son of yours who has thrown away your money on whores shows up and you go
all out with a feast!'
"His father said, 'Son, you don't understand. You're with me all the time,
and everything that is mine is yours-but this is a wonderful time, and we had
to celebrate. This brother of yours was dead, and he's alive! He was lost, and
he's found!'"
There are many details to notice in the story. Two always touch me. The first is that it is the father that comes running to the offending son, not the other way around. The second is that the father wasn’t even listening to the son’s apology as he celebrated his return.
Unconditional love and forgiveness.
Watching for your next fascinating discussion point and will try to respond tomorrow.
Questioner responds
A short note to say I had the exact same thought on a parent being willing to take the punishment for a crime committed by their child... I imagined that exact scenario of you being willing to pay the price for something one of your daughters did. It does not matter how grown a child is; they will always be their parents' baby. I imagined God feeling this way. Because we are all his children, regardless of what we do wrong, he will pay the price for it and still love us. When we are young, our parents protect us from undue punishment when we misstep. They say, "Do not condemn my kid for something I can correct at home. They can be taught. As a parent, I will teach them." Perhaps God sees every misstep as something he can correct at home, in his kingdom.
My next question pertains to mission trips. I will preface it by stating that I am certainly open to changing my mind and that much of my opinion is based on the Christianity I witnessed growing it.
What does Christianity truly say about the importance of mission trips? Growing up, my small town did tons of them. However, they never sat well with me, because they seemed, for lack of a better word, predatory.... The church in town took my peers to severely underprivileged areas of the world for them. All the trips seemed to go a bit like this:
- Sell lots of cookies, candy bars, solicit other donations, etc. to fund the trip.
- Travel to a country in Africa, specifically, a village with children who were mostly starving, had no opportunities to get an education, etc.
- Take pictures of yourself with the cute, smiling kids. You will be in $250 Nike sneakers, a $75 pair of Buckle jeans, and a $40 Aeropostale t-shirt. The combined total of which would feed an entire village for a year.
The reason this upset me so much is because it seemed very much like performative Christianity. The people made no attempt to learn the culture, language, or deep heartache of the local people. They simply showed up, informed everyone that Jesus loved them, handed them a Bible, and boarded their business class flight back to comfy southern America. I do not say any of this to sound bitter or accusatory, so I sincerely hope it doesn't come across that way. I am genuinely curious how your section of the bell curve views mission trips. The reason they have always seemed cruel to me is that the people on the receiving end are barely surviving. So, to convince them there is a God overseeing their hardship and allowing it to continue seemed terrible... even worse, it seemed like providing them with a false sense of hope. I had trouble shaking the image of a young child, newly introduced to Jesus and living in painful circumstances, praying each night to be rescued from their environment. Praying to be allowed to attend school. Praying for their country not to be torn apart by another war.
Knowing what I know now, if all you say of Jesus is true, I can see the reasoning for the trips being that faith is the only sustainable, guaranteed comfort and hope we can provide to people in those conditions. Water will only last so long. Donations will only last so long. The gift of a loving god in an inexhaustible resource. I can understand that thought process. I just hope there is more to it than that. I hope there is some additional effort to help ease their daily worries like building houses, building a water filter system, etc.
As always, all questions and comments are made with love and curiosity.
Response to questioner
OK- your note nailed this topic and was a LOL moment for me. It would be hilarious if it weren’t such a painfully accurate description of what are typically called “student ministries mission trips.”
Yes, this format is celebrated within evangelical slices of the bell curve of modern Christianity, especially in the conservative Bible belt version of Southern Baptist traditions, and I’ve seen it advocated, promoted, and glorified in many evangelical churches.
I have nothing to say to defend the practice, but I will at least devote a few lines to analyzing it.
I have to admit that the practice is motivated by good intentions, especially for those who adhere to a strict theology that the only chance to come to know Jesus and accept his gift of eternal forgiveness is before death. In this framework, it is incredibly urgent to explain this gospel message to everyone who has not heard it – arguably a more important task than providing sustenance, medical care, safety or anything else on the foundation of Maslov’s hierarchy of needs.
In that view, saving a soul from eternity in hell separated from God is a higher priority than anything else.
So the only positive things that can be said about these good intentions is that they seem consistent with this urgency theology…and they motivate lots of bake sales.
But.
As you point out with painful accuracy, there are so many damaging and hypocritical and misplaced aspects of missions work in the kinds of settings you describe, typically serving impoverished people. We have to also admit that this kind of outreach has historically been a throw-back to colonial exploitation with complete disrespect (or even contempt) for the indigenous target culture. The activities have been characterized by a paternalistic and unsustainable strategy where dependence is the goal.
So, to flip the script and make this positive, let me tell you about other approaches under the Christian bell curve that exist to serve the underserved with different strategies. These approaches attempt to balance three fundamental directives in the Bible:
– that we must love God with all our heart soul, mind, and strength
–that we must love our neighbor as ourself
– that we must present the story of Jesus’ gift to the whole world and encourage people to become Christ-followers.
The balance is the thing.
In my personal theology where all will eventually hear and choose, the urgency is wrapped up more in loving people who have severe deprivation, as we would love ourselves. The urgency of sharing the message of Jesus’ sacrifice and love as soon as possible is so people can enjoy an understanding of that loving relationship and freedom from guilt now, whether they will have the choice later or not. My previous analogy explained this urgency as wanting to introduce someone now to the greatest lover they will ever know, lest they miss any moments in that perfect love affair.
Thus, in a different part of the bell curve, the goals are service and relationship building, not making us feel good about ourselves.
Let me share some (hopefully) refreshing real examples. These typify the kinds of outreach Laura and I support through our church.
-Supporting the training and work of indigenous Christians serving their own cultures in sustainable ways, rather than through ‘hit-and-run’ mission trips by wealthy Americans
-Promoting long-term education, the creation of sustainable economic standards, public health, and sources of sustainable food
-Respecting indigenous culture without indiscriminate westernizing
-Working with indigenous Christian leaders to start their own Christian churches in their own culture and language, translating the Bible as necessary
-Avoiding “evange-tourism” that is mostly designed to boost the ego of the short-term visitor
-Avoiding paternalism
-Providing both higher-technology western medical care but also training of indigenous people in modern medicine and inexpensive public health practices that save lives and enhance healthspan. For example, our church supports an entire hospital in west Africa staffed by African nationals who have been trained by western physicians and nurses. All patients are served free-of-charge or on an ability-pay basis. The hospital is in a Muslim country but is known and respected and welcomed as a Christian hospital. All patients, during their recovery, are gently presented with an age-appropriate introduction to the message of Jesus Christ.
-Just serving with no strings attached. One of our favorite examples is local service through our church designed to simply meet needs with zero Christian overtones. Church members annually provide thousands of pounds of food supplies and school supplies and clothing to Rochester public school students and families facing deprivation and need. Crucially, the aid is not identified as coming from our church or from Christians but is distributed discretely through the public school social workers who know which families are in need, or through the “free stores” available to needy students in each school. Equally importantly, the aid, especially at holiday times is typically provided discretely to the adults in the recipient family, preserving their dignity as they are enabled to give gifts and support to their own children in need without the sense that paternalistic ‘sponsors’ are responsible and deserve credit. Laura and I love the decision to hide the source of the giving in order to suppress any sense of quid pro quo. This is consistent with one of Jesus less popular teachings from the Gospel of Matthew:
“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.
“So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
I admire our church leadership for taking this principle to heart. In fact, the initial impact has been on the school social workers, who do know the full story, and become increasingly curious what kinds of people would be motivated to give selflessly in this way. This removes an obstacle to the social workers gaining interest in the beliefs of this congregation.
Our church also hosts a massive fall festival that is completely free of charge to everyone in the community, based on games, activities, free food, family-centered candy give-aways, music, and fun. It is hosted at our church for a full day each fall and something like 5,000 people have been coming each year. The church says nothing about Christianity or our worship services, distributes no literature, says nothing about Jesus Christ in any formal or programmed way. Our guests learn about our facilities, see the spaces where kids are served and where worship takes place, they may see a poster advertising a class about personal finance management or an upcoming concert by a national artist, but the goals are i) relationship building and ii) removing the kinds of obstacles that scarred you in the toxic Christian culture you experienced elsewhere under the bell curve.
Does our congregation support career missionaries, especially medical missionaries who train indigenous Christians to serve their communities? Yes.
Does our congregation organize some summer student missions trips? Yes, but less and less for all the reasons described above. More often the trips have a target project, such a construction of an element of community infrastructure.
Our slice of the Christian bell curve is slowly recognizing the hypocrisy and toxicity of unsustainable, self-centered, paternalistic ‘service’ and evangelism.
That doesn’t mean that the student mission trips you describe aren’t promoted elsewhere under the bell curve. This note was to broaden your view of what else is under there
By the way, I am certainly not trying to glorify one particular Christian congregation. Just providing examples.
Does that help?
Questioner responds
I somehow knew the cut-to-the-point 3-step mission trip itinerary would make you laugh. Your descriptions of how you and Laura and your church help others make me feel much better. In particular, I appreciate that much of it is done without anyone knowing you have done it. To me, that is what makes serving others meaningful, not posting on social media every time for praise from others. My generation is especially prone to doing this and it always feels exploitative to take a picture of a homeless person receiving a sandwich and then post the picture on social media, without their consent, to show others you are a good person. The last thing I would want if I were struggling to the extent that I was homeless would be for images of my hardship to be all over the internet. Again, I much prefer the forms of help you mentioned.
Okay, please forgive me if this question on eternity is a little redundant. In most descriptions of eternity/heaven, people describe everyone being whole again (or for the first time, if they never were). I know what people mean by this is that the wheelchair-bound will walk; the blind will see; the pain will be gone, etc. However, how much of this is wishful thinking and how much of this is presumably true? The scientist in me finds it hard to believe I will be physically restored. I feel whole as I am, so I wonder how much of the claims of being whole in heaven are actually based on society's view of disability... Even if we accept people with disabilities wholeheartedly, we still tend to see them as not quite whole. I have come across depictions of a soul going to heaven, in which the person is headed towards the sky, wheelchair broken and on its side on the ground. The symbolism obviously being that the person is whole and will not need the wheelchair in heaven. Sure, it's lovely to think of that person running around without pain or struggle, but the depiction just mentioned feels... insensitive. I am by no means easily offended, as you probably know by now, but canes, wheelchairs, hearing aids, guide dogs, etc. are not symbolic of struggle and misfortune. They are symbols of independence and opportunity.
Response to questioner
Hi.
I love this question, and its very personal and appropriate origin. I hope you don’t mind, but Laura and I discussed it at dinner last night. Your questions are worth sharing. I also love your personal disclosures. They are so enlightening.
My first answer is that “I don’t know.”
That’s honest – how can any of us on this side know about life after death? What I will say is that all attempts to contemplate what is beyond are, by nature, constrained by our imagination and our past experience and the fact that we are characters trapped on a timeline. Our brains are limited. So, at times like this, we turn to analogies that are, by definition, inadequate.
There are many analogies about heaven. I’ll share a couple of my own and then share a few from the Bible. They are all wholly inadequate to answer your question. The biblical texts from 20+ centuries ago used analogies available to the minds of the writers, just as we do.
I think eternity is simply unimaginably beautiful because it amounts to oneness with the most loving being, combined with timelessness. Even the deletion of the time dimension that traps us now is inconceivable to us, let along thoughts about physical bodies and interactions.
In my playwright/stage analogy, eternity is when the characters exit the scripted stage where the play was trapped in time, and meet the playwright backstage in his or her creative world of imagining and implementing other wonderful stories. We staged characters are swept back up into the imagination of the playwright, once again parts of his imagination and thoughts, outside of the time that dictated the prior staged drama.
In a heaven analogy I used with my younger daughter years ago when she asked about heaven (see my blog post, The Ant), I reminded my daughter of an experience we had visiting Oslo and walking across a vast flat world map that occupied an entire parking lot. It was large and totally flat and disorienting because the full map was beyond view. We discussed how a tiny ant would experience standing on that surface and trying to contemplate its meaning (an analogy with our current sense of reality as humans trapped in time on this planet). My response to one of her questions:
"I think it's even
more amazing than that." I said softly, and sat next to her, holding her
small hand. "If the ant couldn't even understand that it was walking
across a beautiful, colorful map of the world, it could never even try to understand
that the flat map was actually just a picture of something real that is much
bigger and more beautiful."
"Our whole world…"
"Yes."
"And we're like the ant."
"Yes."
My point to my daughter was that the ant’s two-dimensional experience of a map could not prepare it to imagine life on the actual earth that is depicted, inadequately, by that map. The ant’s imagination is not up to the task, nor is ours up to the task of imagining heaven.
Now to the biblical writers, who were similarly constrained by analogy in their descriptions of a state beyond description.
I previously shared Jesus’ answer about resurrection to the members of the skeptical Sadducee sect. There is a particularly lovely translation of Jesus’ answer that I share here, to convey how he challenged his listeners to get beyond preoccupation with the future status of our bodies.
This translation puts Jesus’ response in Mark 12:24 as:
“As it is with the angels now, all our ecstasies and intimacies will then be with God.”
I think that is a potent statement because of the implications of the translator’s words “ecstasies and intimacies.”
Our friend, St. Paul, also anticipated your question 20 centuries ago. Forgive this longer extract from the 15th chapter of his first letter to the church at Corinth:
“Some skeptic [I think he means you] is sure to ask, "Show me how resurrection works. Give me a diagram; draw me a picture. What does this 'resurrection body' look like?" If you look at this question closely, you realize how absurd it is. There are no diagrams for this kind of thing.
We do have a parallel experience in gardening. You plant a "dead" seed; soon there is a flourishing plant. There is no visual likeness between seed and plant. You could never guess what a tomato would look like by looking at a tomato seed. What we plant in the soil and what grows out of it don't look anything alike. The dead body that we bury in the ground and the resurrection body that comes from it will be dramatically different.
You will notice that the variety of bodies is stunning. Just as there are
different kinds of seeds, there are different kinds of bodies-humans, animals,
birds, fish-each unprecedented in its form. You get a hint at the diversity of
resurrection glory by looking at the diversity of bodies not only on earth but
in the skies-sun, moon, stars-all these varieties of beauty and brightness. And
we're only looking at pre-resurrection "seeds"-who can imagine what
the resurrection "plants" will be like!
This image of planting a dead seed and raising a live plant is a mere sketch at
best, but perhaps it will help in approaching the mystery of the resurrection
body – but only if you keep in mind that when we're raised, we're raised for
good, alive forever! The corpse that's planted is no beauty, but when it's
raised, it's glorious. Put in the ground weak, it comes up powerful. The seed
sown is natural; the seed grown is supernatural-same seed, same body, but what
a difference from when it goes down in physical mortality to when it is raised
up in spiritual immortality!
…but let me tell you something wonderful, a mystery I'll probably never fully understand. We're not all going to die-but we are all going to be changed. You hear a blast to end all blasts from a trumpet, and in the time that you look up and blink your eyes-it's over. On signal from that trumpet from heaven, the dead will be up and out of their graves, beyond the reach of death, never to die again. At the same moment and in the same way, we'll all be changed. In the resurrection scheme of things, this has to happen: everything perishable taken off the shelves and replaced by the imperishable, this mortal replaced by the immortal. Then the saying will come true:
Death swallowed by triumphant Life!
Who got the last word, oh, Death?
Oh, Death, who's afraid of you now?
It was sin that made death so frightening and law-code guilt that gave sin its
leverage, its destructive power. But now in a single victorious stroke of Life,
all three-sin, guilt, death-are gone, the gift of our Master, Jesus Christ.
Thank God!”
So even Paul likes analogies, just as we do. To be plain, he is saying that heaven is not a place where dirty, scuffed and damaged seeds get to live as fresh, washed, and polished seeds. It is a place where seeds live as beautiful plants that are absolutely nothing like seeds at all. Maybe his analogy is better than any of mine. It makes sense coming from a writer in agriculturally-based Roman society.
As you may recall, I worked with friends to create an entirely original dramatic musical video based on the universal aspiration for a heaven where we experience lost loved ones again. That’s the name of the 38-minute video – Again. It is linked here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3Czrow9-3k
The script and songs are built around three vignettes based on real people (and animals) in my life. I have to say that Charles Dickens probably also influenced me, I think. The first vignette imagines an aging couple briefly meeting their resurrected daughter who had died in a tragic accident as a toddler. The second vignette was inspired by my bunny, Kyle. The third was inspired by one of my best friends who lost her mother to cancer when my friend was only in her twenties. You are not obligated to listen to the piece, but I concluded it with a compilation of short Bible readings that provide other attempts at describing heaven:
“We dream that we would experience again every lost child, every beloved companion, and every lost parent. We dream that we would enjoy them again. When asked about this, Jesus responded amazingly. He responded about a transcendent again – an again far beyond our ability to imagine. Jesus responded that in that day, and in that time when there is no time, all of our intimacies and ecstasies will be with God. All of the joys that we can remember and imagine will one day be subsumed in knowing him – again.
For it is written: "I saw heaven and earth new-created. Gone the first heaven, gone the first earth, gone the sea...I heard a voice thunder from the throne "Look! Look! God has moved into the neighborhood, making his home with men and women! They're his people, he's their God.
Jesus said: I am, right now, resurrection and life. The one who believes in me, even though he or she dies, will live. And everyone who lives believing in me does not ultimately die at all. Do you believe this?
The wolf will romp with the lamb, the leopard will sleep with the baby goat, calf and lion will eat from the same trough.
"God will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death is gone for good – tears gone, crying gone, pain gone – all the first order of things…gone."
I chose to finish the narrative with those passages.
So you see, my take on heaven transcends our ability to contemplate bodily restoration or interpersonal interactions. It is infinitely more beautiful than anything we have experienced, yet I believe it doesn’t extinguish our most beloved experiences on this side.
If God’s character and personality and goodness are not inconceivable beyond our most joyful and ecstatic experiences on stage, he isn’t the God of the universe.
I think the single biggest obstacle to conceiving eternity is that it need not involve a time dimension. Maybe it can include episodes bound in time, but I don’t believe God is a being who lives in time. He created time as a tool for storytelling, but he only briefly chose to join us in that created dimension as Emanuel: God with us.
Too metaphysical? It’s the best I have been able to do and, believe me I have been working on analogies for many years.
Open, as always, to your thoughts and insights.
4.2025
