I was in Church today. And it was in a hall where the chairs needed to be put away afterwards.
Most people stood around chatting while three people worked hard putting them away.
One was an able-bodied woman.
One was a man with Parkinsons.
One was 96 years old.
I find this compellingly complex.
Here we have a room of at least 60 people, 50 of which would have no trouble putting chairs away. Only one of those fifty helps.
Two people who find it tougher pitch in.
I think here we have found something amazing. We have found three people who have truly decided to live out their faith. They will claim to have found the truth I am looking for, and those three people I would be inclined to believe.
But here are some problems I have with religion:
1. Would I be a Muslim if I was bought up in a Muslim country? Does that not make my belief or unbelief in a supposedly Christian country determined and therefore a kind of fake?
2. Religion causes war. Why?
3. God must be very arrogant and in love with himself to think we should worship him when he has given us a bit of a rubbish world, with Earthquakes and stuff, mustn't he?
If you believe you have a response to any of these problems please relay it in the comments. Thanks.
13 comments:
1. Not necessarily. It it written that those who truly seek God will find him. Your faith because you were brought up a Christian may well be fake. It is often said that God doesn't have grand children.
2. Religion doesn't cause war. People do. Wars occur because we have freedom of choice, sometimes people choose more land than they need. and sometimes war is necessary to rid the world of an unjust power.
3. Why shouldn't God give us earthquakes? The Bible tells us that we are unholy and unrighteous. I think its incredibly gracious of him not to wipe the earth out of existence this second, and in fact keeps on giving us more time, and allowing us sinners to exist. Earthquakes and other natural disasters are nothing compared to what we deserve.
My responses to those 3 generic questions
Your first response is good. Your second is iffy. And your last is flawed, in my view,
Earthquakes kill people. Generally including babies and young children. As in your first response you verify that the choice is individual, it strikes me that these children who probably know not what the concept of sin is have not had the time to find and seek God.
God has given these people what they don't deserve, hasn't he?
1. Yes you probably would be. I don't agree that determined=fake. Wasn't Jesus the most pre-determined of all? I think the idea that being pre-determined is fake comes from the liberal tradition (which fails to acknowledge itself as a tradition); the 'Enlightenment' search for ultimate truth.
2. Religions fuel wars; nation-states (the false body of Christ) cause wars. Read William Cavanaugh, 'The Theopolitical Imagination'
3. Beaver in the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe: 'Safe? Of course he's not safe. But he's good.'
The bible tells us that "there are none who are righteous, no, not one"
Who are we, the unholy, to tell the Holy God what to do with his creation? He can do whatever he wants to with it. Because of our sin, he has no obligation to give us even our next breath. That is how serious human rebellion is.
David,
Good in what way? Morally good or good at what he does?
Ian,
I think you have often told God what to do with his creation. You have asked God to change your life, to make it better and to change other people's, I'm sure.
I never said babies were righteous, but have they had time to become unrighteous? And what if the Bible is wrong anyway, for is Jesus not righteous?
For God to be God, God must be in love with God. God is perfect and the only one who is perfect, therefore God is the only true object of true love. Everything else in our understanding must be subject to this.
I think that true love is not expressed to the self, for true love would surely be for someone else.
I also don't think that everything else in our understanding should be subject to that. Else I don't understand your point.
For God to be sovereign (which God is) then God must love God. God cannot be divided against God or hold anything to be higher or more worthy of love. Everything must always be subject to the sovereignty of God. To not submit to the sovereignty of God is to seek to undermine God and elevate ourselves into a God-like state. In doing that we are loving ourselves more than anything else, more than God. To put ourselves before God is clearly wrong.
Sovereign:
absolute and independent authority.
It seems religions that submit to God are simply dictatorships.
It seems to me that just jonah is taking his understanding of sovereignty from the nation-state, or, to use the words of St. Paul, from a 'worldly' understanding.
Is it not possible that in the Christian tradition, sovereignty means something radically and completely different to the world's understanding? Is that not the whole purpose of Christianity, to reconfigure the world in the direction of love for the other, most of all for the enemy?
Sovereignty of the 'self-love' kind can only lead to hate for and derision of the enemy.
I believe in a God who kneels down to wash smelly feet.
you'll have to ask CS Lewis on that one.
spend this summer reading hauerwas, you'll sail through a theology degree then.
I also beleive in a God who washes smelly feet. That doesn't stop God loving God, nor does it make my view worldly. God is an absolute and independent authority. That doesn't make God bad. Perhaps the problem is more to do with the fact that we don't like being in submission. Perhaps we suffer from the tendancy to create God in our image rather being prepared to adjust ourselves in accordance with God.
I just came across this and it puts the point I was trying to make so much more eloquently and coherently.
The Goal of God's Love May Not Be What You Think It Is
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By John Piper October 14, 2000
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Do people go to the Grand Canyon to increase their self-esteem? Probably not. This is, at least, a hint that the deepest joys in life come not from savoring the self, but from seeing splendor. And in the end even the Grand Canyon will not do. We were made to enjoy God.
We are all bent to believe that we are central in the universe. How shall we be cured of this joy-destroying disease? Perhaps by hearing afresh how radically God-centered reality is according to the Bible.
Both the Old and New Testament tell us that God's loving us is a means to our glorifying him. "Christ became a servant ... in order that the nations might glorify God for his mercy" (Romans 15:8-9). God has been merciful to us so that we would magnify him. We see it again in the words, "In love [God] destined us to adoption ... to the praise of the glory of His grace" (Ephesians 1:4-6). In other words, the goal of God's loving us is that we might praise him. One more illustration from Psalm 86:12-13: "I will glorify your name forever. For your lovingkindness toward me is great." God's love is the ground. His glory is the goal.
This is shocking. The love of God is not God's making much of us, but God's saving us from self-centeredness so that we can enjoy making much of him forever. And our love to others is not our making much of them, but helping them to find satisfaction in making much of God. True love aims at satisfying people in the glory of God. Any love that terminates on man is eventually destructive. It does not lead people to the only lasting joy, namely, God. Love must be God-centered, or it is not true love; it leaves people without their final hope of joy.
Take the cross of Christ, for example. The death of Jesus Christ is the ultimate expression of divine love: "God demonstrates his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). Yet the Bible also says that the aim of the death of Christ was "to demonstrate [God's] righteousness, because in the forbearance of God he passed over the sins previously committed" (Romans 3:25). Passing over sins creates a huge problem for the righteousness of God. It makes him look like a judge who lets criminals go free without punishment. In other words, the mercy of God puts the justice of God in jeopardy.
So to vindicate his justice he does the unthinkable – he puts his Son to death as the substitute penalty for our sins. The cross makes it plain to everyone that God does not sweep evil under the rug of the universe. He punishes it in Jesus for those who believe.
But notice that this ultimately loving act has at the center of it the vindication of the righteousness of God. Good Friday love is God-glorifying love. God exalts God at the cross. If he didn't, he could not be just and rescue us from sin. But it is a mistake to say, "Well, if the aim was to rescue us, then we were the ultimate goal of the cross." No, we were rescued from sin in order that we might see and savor the glory of God. This is the ultimately loving aim of Christ's death. He did not die to make much of us, but to free us to enjoy making much of God forever.
It is profoundly wrong to turn the cross into a proof that self-esteem is the root of mental health. If I stand before the love of God and do not feel a healthy, satisfying, freeing joy unless I turn that love into an echo of my self-esteem, then I am like a man who stands before the Grand Canyon and feels no satisfying wonder until he translates the canyon into a case for his own significance. That is not the presence of mental health, but bondage to self.
The cure for this bondage is to see that God is the one being in the universe for whom self-exaltation is the most loving act. In exalting himself – Grand Canyon-like – he gets the glory and we get the joy. The greatest news in all the world is that there is no final conflict between my passion for joy and God's passion for his glory. The knot that ties these together is the truth that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. Jesus Christ died and rose again to forgive the treason of our souls, which have turned from savoring God to savoring self. In the cross of Christ, God rescues us from the house of mirrors and leads us out to the mountains and canyons of his majesty. Nothing satisfies us – or magnifies him – more.
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