July 23, 2000
CHRISTIANITY FOR THE
OPEN-MINDED
Skeptics about the Christian
faith have played a useful role in the development of
Christian claims to have the truth. Skeptics forced the
early church to sharpen and develop its doctrine. In more
recent centuries skeptics have kept the Church honest
by engaging Christian thinking with developments in the
natural and social sciences. Serious skeptics have
sometimes been judged to be heretics by the Church;
persecuted to the point of their martyrdom; and then
later, when the Church came to its senses, rehabilitated
as saints.
Not all skeptics regarding the
Christian faith are helpful: some are simply silly in
their criticisms, others are mischievous or even
pernicious using a false skepticism to try to destroy the
faith of others. But I can't have these in mind when I
appeal for open-mindedness both in our critics and with
ourselves. I have in mind those who like Doubting Thomas
in the Fourth Gospel are open to believing but who are
not convinced and who lack the will, unless otherwise
persuaded, to make a faith commitment. These skeptics
tend to be sincere and humble and they help us who are
within the Christian fold to also stay sincere and
humble.
*****
At the beginning these two
thoughts: the greatest gift in all creation is the human
mind. We are because we think and we think because God
made us to think. Therefore, it follows that the
Christian faith can only be strengthened as Christians
engage their minds in all the channels through which the
intellect leads us. Reason is not the enemy of faith.
Mind and heart are companions on the way to the
Truth.
And then this balancing
observation: God is greater than the sum of all our
thoughts; God remains the infinite mystery behind our
creation and the One who transcends our mental
capabilities. Yes, we humans can know God, but as the
hymn by William Cowper titled "God Moves in a Mysterious
Way" puts our situation:
"Our unbelief is
sure to err
And scan God's
work in vain;
God is God's own
interpreter,
whose truth
shall be made plain."
*****
And now let's lay out some
other ground rules for our discussion on how both
believers and skeptics can deal with the human need
expressed in "Lord, I believe. Help Thou my
unbelief.":
First, all parties need have an
open mind. It's striking how often people who claim to be
open-minded are anything but open to new truth. Don't
write off extraordinary events such as the Resurrection
of Jesus on the presupposition that it's too strange to
be considered. Don't let your skepticism or prejudice
close the door on possibilities which initially seem
incredible to your infinite mind. In others words, don't
make the limits of your experience the limits of
reality.
Secondly, ask the big
questions. Life is a mysterious business and we cannot
casually let it pass us by without saying, "What's it all
about?" We cannot brush off the majestic universe with an
agnostic's shrug. We cannot look at human beings who
think, love, worship, feel guilty and appreciate beauty
without pausing to ask, "What kind of world can produce
that kind of creature?"
Nor can we turn our backs on the
most extraordinary person in history who made the most
extravagant claims, and simply consign Jesus to a list of
eccentrics to be ignored.
Third, correlate data. Just
like scientists correlate all data to come up with the
best theory, so spiritual inquirers need to correlate the
data they observe and embrace that position which best
fits the facts.
Finally, be prepared to be
committed. Christian faith involves not just the head,
but the heart. If you are intellectually persuaded, have
the courage to commit to moral and spiritual
obedience.
A Christian saint said: "By
doubting we are led to inquire, and by inquiry we
perceive the truth." Doubt and understanding sooner or
later embrace. So, doubters, take heart.
All seekers after truth deal
with a couple of universal issues.
One is: Can we prove the
Christian faith? Or for that matter, can we prove
anything!
A schoolboy once defined faith
as believing in something you know isn't true!
Nothing could be further from
the case. Wishful thinking just like wishful unthinking
is not what the Christian faith is about. The Christian
faith is embraced by millions primarily because it is
held to be true.
The verification of the claims
of faith need, however, to undergo the same ways of
scrutiny as any other kind of proving.
…the scientists must
consider all the possible evidence before them, and
seekers likewise must consider all the relevant evidence
for Christian belief. This will include evidence about
the origin of the universe and of the human race, plus
data from the whole range of our experience. And as the
scientist must explore all theories, so the Christian
seeker must explore all theories to account for what we
observe about the universe, human nature, our inner
selves. The Christian faith can confidently dialogue with
philosophy or with other great faiths.
…the historians ask
questions about events and the endless historical studies
have examined and often challenged claims about the life
and death of Jesus. The Jesus of history is,
understandably, far removed from modern comprehension but
we know with assurance the main outlines of his
teachings, travels, healings, who were his friends and
enemies, his unjust trial and persecution, and his
painful death. In fact, we know a great deal more about
the biography of Jesus of Nazareth than, for example,
William Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon. Shakespeare is
arguably the more important cultural figure of Europe of
the last 500 years and yet we know little about him. We
know Shakespeare through his works. We, finally, know
Jesus through his works.
…the philosopher inquires
if ideas and suppositions make sense? Are there
contradictions to what I know and experience. Believers
as all the time ask "Does the Christian faith make
sense?" And we are stirred to do so often just because of
our dialogue with skeptics.
…the artist, poet, writer,
dancer investigates insightful and inspired truth in the
great human adventure to claim a sense of the Truth in
our aesthetic experience. The Christian faith embraces
these arts and their insights and in fact has been the
primary motivation for them in the West.
…in personal relationships,
we ask "Can I trust so and so?" Is that person genuine?
Is he or she the kind of person he or she professes to
be?" So we can ask the same questions of
Christ.
…and finally we know that
we cannot truly get to know other people in depth without
real commitment to them, neither can we have final
verification about Jesus till we commit ourselves to him
in an act of faith, albeit a rational act based on good
evidence.
******
Another and related great issue
is: Chance or Design?
Two facts constantly face each
of us: the fact of the universe and the fact of our own
existence. The Christian faith, like every alternative
and sometimes complementary school of thinking, addresses
these two universal and fundamental facts.
Our faith argues that the
universe is the creation of an infinite, personal God?
Others assert that the universe is the product of
impersonal energy, plus time, plus chance. Both theories
need to be subjected to the tests of evidence, logic and
personal experience.
The Christian faith pays high
regard to the fact that in the midst of what might seem
like an impersonal and mechanistic universe, we have
mind, personality and self-consciousness. Also there is a
mysterious thing called beauty and we apprehend it. Like
our hymns today the Christian traces mind, personality,
self-awareness, beauty and morality to a personal
Creator. We do not hold that matter explains matter; we
see the forces and influences of the non-material, the
spiritual and the mysterious at work in the universe and
in our lives.
The Christian experience finds
that we creatures are inexorably linked to something
mysterious and ultimate: We human beings reflect, think,
feel. We have guilt feelings, make amends, and try to do
better. We grow indignant over cruelty, angry over
injustice, praise good, and abhor evil. We look for
meaning and desire to trace meaning to the
ultimate.
The leading literary and
intellectual voice of my college years was Albert Camus,
the French existentialist novelist whose works like "The
Plague" and "The Stranger" were in every student's
reading and which asserted there was no meaning to life.
Yet Camus, like his older colleague, the philosopher Jean
Paul-Sartre, was a passionate opponent of French
colonialism in his native Algeria. Both men, while any
ultimate truth and meaning, were willing to stake their
very lives on opposing what they discerned as
imperialistic injustice. Where did their passion, their
sense of justice, their courage come from?
Sartre died an atheist but the
younger man, Camus, at the time of his untimely death in
an automobile accident was undergoing preparation for
baptism from the pastor of the American Church in
Paris!
We humans experience a powerful
sense of oughtness and we look for meaning behind the
evil we experience and the pain and suffering which
scrambles the search for human happiness. We trace these
powerful moral urges to a morally perfect God, who has
made us to be restless until we rest in Him; and who in
giving Himself to us in Christ on the cross gives us not
prepositions to answer the problem of evil and suffering
but who identifies himself with us and bears the worse
that any human might bear and in experiencing it assures
us of the ultimate defeat of all that is life
denying.
Faith in that God is the
Christian response to evil because faith in Christ gives
us a victory which overcomes the problem of evil by
confining its rage within our trust and hope in a good
God and by recognising the limits of our finite minds.
Saint Paul counseled us: NOW WE SEE IN A MIRROR DIMLY,
BUT THEN FACE TO FACE. NOW I KNOW IN PART, THEN I SHALL
UNDERSTAND FULLY. (1 Cor l3:l2).
******
The Christian story maintains
that the evidence about our oughtness is grounded in
historical fact and not in wishful thinking; we state
that God has entered history, often and in diverse ways
and persons, but supremely and uniquely through his
perfect creature, Jesus of Nazareth.
Could a perfect person ever
exist? Skepticism refutes the claims of and about Jesus
on the argument that a uniquely perfect, or moral, or
insightful person could not exist. But I find the
uniqueness of Jesus no more problematical than the
uniqueness of our entire human race, or for that matter
the uniqueness of each one of us.
As best we know there is no
precedent in the universe for human life; likewise, there
is no precedent for the perfect human, Jesus the Christ.
Jesus is just as miraculous, no less and no more so, than
is human life. Does it not follow that a personal God
would want to identify with our unique humanity and would
choose to do so through a unique person who could
reaffirm and confirm who we were created to be and who we
are yet becoming, the perfect sons and daughters of God.
The historicity of God and what
God did in Jesus hinges above all on the claim that God
raised Jesus from the dead. The assertion that the tomb
was empty seems uncontested; what is contested is how, or
what happened to the body. The skeptics' explanations
boil down to a claim of fraud: either the disciples
stole the body or the enemies of Jesus stole it. And also
there is the swoon theory that Jesus went into a swoon or
coma and actually did not die and then fled to an island
or mountain somewhere to live happily ever
after.
Or there is the unique Gospel
claim that God acted to raise Jesus from the dead, as a
confirmation of all he had done in Jesus up to his death
and as a sign to all humanity that the grave was not the
future of each of us. The post Resurrection experiences
of Jesus are not like some ethereal sightings of Elvis
but encounters with a living Jesus who though pure Spirit
was equally personal, recognizable and inspirational to
all whom he approached.
The historical claim that Jesus
has been raised to be the ever living Christ gets no
where unless reinforced with a personal experience. As
the song says: YOU ASK ME HOW I KNOW HE LIVES. HE LIVES
WITHIN MY HEART. At that point subjective personal
experience and objective historical reality coincide and
one is gloriously convinced, or one is left entirely cold
and in the dark.
The first disciples were
gloriously convinced and even Doubting Thomas had a
personal encounter with the Living Christ and
believed.
******
While personal death is a threat
which most defer as long as one can, all humans
experience the need for a way out of the limits of their
present living long before the confines of the grave
press upon us. Every person seeks meaning and a way to
reconcile the disappointments of human performance with
our higher yearnings. The human condition is incomplete;
we Christians call it being in a state of sin or
separation from God our Creator and Father.
What God has done through Jesus
the Christ is give us the way out of our predicaments and
the way back to God. Through Jesus, God wills to restore
us to our original and perfect condition; the promise
delivered in Jesus is that we can start living anew and
now, we can taste heaven now, we can build an earthly
Kingdom in anticipation of the Heavenly Kingdom. The
Christian faith is no pie in the sky by and by, but a
present, existential, and dynamic invitation to live life
fully beginning now in a relationship with Christ and
God.
The Christian faith invites
trust in Jesus as the fullest manifestation of deity with
us. Trusting Jesus is not foolish or irrational. For
faith in Jesus is based on solid evidence from history,
the scriptures, human aspiration, and experience. And
while his teachings are compelling and his character
entrancing, the more compelling and winsome power of
Jesus is his continuing ability to authenticate himself
as truly real in the life of the believer.
And Jesus validates our trust in
him by becoming our new friend to help us live not
according to the ways of passion, worldliness, and
egotism, but according to the will of God. It's the
commitment of faith and discipleship which protects the
Christian from morally destructive forces without and
within us and which enables us to go on from strength to
strength along the way of Christ.
The call of discipleship is to
live more and more with God at our controls so that we
overcome reservations, defeat regret with joy, and
experience the glorious blessing of our lives moving
meaningfully with God. Sooner or later we all can have
the experience and the blessing of knowing that our
reason is on course with the mind of God and that our
hearts are in tune with the divine heartbeat.
Pastor Gene
Preston
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