"Shema, Yisrael..."
It's taken me a lot longer to get around to writing the follow-up post to "Thoughts on 'Biblical Epistemology'", than I thought it would. And at this point, I think I'm writing this more for my own sense of closure than any other reason. When I wrote the last post, I said that my motivation was to show bible-believing (aka Evangelical) Christians how the bible clearly shows that voluntaryism (free market anarchy) is the best political view to have. But now, I just want to put a stake in the ground where I stand-- which is far away from Evangelicals, and far away from atheists and agnostics.
For well over 20 years, probably almost since the time I started really thinking about God in earnest, I have felt a kind of split within my own mind, a seemingly irreconcilable conflict. On the one hand, I belonged to (was "nestled in", might be a better way of putting it) a community of Christians whose belief in God and in his chosen savior Jesus filled them with joy and hope. I loved to sing for over an hour every Sunday, and forget everything else, and bask in the sense of the wonder and beauty of God. We sang many songs that came from Jewish prophetic writings, like this one from Zechariah:
"The Lord your God is in your midst,
the Lord of Hosts who saves.
He will rejoice over you with joy.
He will renew you in his love,
He will rejoice over you, with shouts of joy."
Just remembering that song brings tears to my eyes, and there are so, so many others. My point? Just that I have been experiencing God's real presence when among Christians, all my life, and I still do.
On the other hand, I have always been a keen observer of nature, a lover of logic, an avid reader of scientific texts of all kinds. As I learned more and more about what scientists have discovered, and the process of developing scientific theories, I began to wonder more and more about all the "supernatural" things we read about in the bible. Looking back, I can't remember when I first thought there might be a conflict between modern scientific knowledge and the miraculous stories of the bible, but quite smoothly I think I developed two "buckets" or "compartments" for my mind: one for religion, and one for science. As long as I was enveloped fully in my Christian community, and had very limited exposure to people who didn't believe the stories of the bible were true, I was able to negotiate living in my "religious mind" when at church, and in my "scientific mind" when, well, studying science at school. The "two minds" pretty much left each other alone.
When I was about 24, the doctrinal system of Evangelical Christianity started to lose its integrity in my mind. I had the basic problem of "come on, how could a person walk on water, and why would God even give someone the ability to do that?" etc. etc. etc., but I also was starting to struggle with more abstract "theological" concepts, such as "one God, three persons". This struggle got very intense, with my desire for logical harmony and consistency warring against my "moral" sense that I should "just believe it". I was convinced, from hearing it over and over and over again, across the years, from all sorts of people, that to attempt to understand God was hubristic and perverse. Finally, that year, I just removed my need to understand-- by stopping my participation in the activities of Christians. This was the fall of 1995. For the next four years I attempted to define myself outside of Christianity, and failed.
In the fall of 1999, after a string of soul-shaking events, I gave up the struggle to understand-- by acknowledging that I needed to participate in Christian community, and accepting that "perfect" understanding was not a prerequisite for coming to church. However, I never regained the anthropomorphic understanding of God the Father that I had begun to shed in 1995, and in some ways I felt that I was "in the closet" theologically, and that I was a "liberal in Evangelical's clothing". But-- the crazy thing was, I had tried to go to "liberal" churches, during my wandering period, and it just didn't work for me! I wasn't really a "liberal"! Ack! What was I, anyway? Why couldn't I just play nice?
When it was pointed out to me, earlier this year, that governments are unable to exist without violating the most basic moral principles, I turned to the bible and then, realized that the answer had been there all along.
If you read the gospels of Jesus-- what he said, what he did, how he was killed, and how his followers continued on after him, and line it up against the Hebrew scriptures, you realize what he was really about. He preached the kingdom of God, which means, really, the reign of God. Jesus said a number of things that were confusing, about his relationship with "God" or with "the Father", but he really did not refer to himself as a king, at all, until his confrontation with Pilate! And he did not offer that answer on his own, but rather in answer to Pilate's direct question to him, "You are a king, then?" Pilate asked it that way, because he was not at all getting the sense, that Jesus was promoting himself as a king of any sort. Jesus' answer was, basically, "Yes, sort of, but not in a way that you can understand."
And now, to the point of this post! Jesus referred to his return, to his "coming in glory, on the clouds". We are told that he was "taken up to heaven", while his disciples watched. Jesus talked (a little) about the "end times", and about a "day of judgment", and of course, about eternal paradise and eternal torment. But why was he killed? I maintain that it was because of how he was upsetting the order of the day, by what he said and did, and by what just naturally seemed to happen to the people who gathered around him. And the people who killed him were the ones responsible for maintaining that order.
In my last post, I tried to point to a concept given by Paul in Romans 1, which is that God can be understood by "what has been made". The comments made on the post all said, in one form or another, that knowledge about nature should be "subject to" or "guided by" the knowledge we have from the bible. In the weeks since I wrote that post, I have thought it over, and I realized that the distinction between "general revelation" and "special revelation" is a red herring.
"Historical" or "orthodox" Christianity takes as a bedrock presupposition that there are two worlds, one "seen" and one "unseen". (It is found in the very first sentence of the Nicene Creed: "We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty; maker of heaven and earth; of all that is seen and unseen.") It underpins so many doctrines and beliefs, that it is almost unthinkable to question it. But I don't question it-- I simply deny it. And, I also refuse to accept the label of "atheist" or "unbeliever". I am a steadfast follower of Jesus. I strive to follow in his steps, and to proclaim the kingdom of God, which is here, and is here now. It has always been here, and now! Jesus' uniqueness is that he was the first to realize this fact, and to refuse, unflinchingly, to refrain from acting on the realization.
Anyway, what happened, very early on in the history of Christianity, is that after Jesus kept not returning... and not returning... and not returning... the question of an actual "kingdom" was pushed neatly and comfortably into the future, to "the end of time", when Jesus would return, as king over all things, and all people (most especially, all the ones who had refused, up to this point, to acknowledge his lordship) would suddenly submit to his kingship. And the persnickety Jews, who never could get over their insistence on an actual king to rule over them righteously, were hit so hard in their homeland during the late 1st and early 2nd centuries A.D., that they ceased being a distraction from the new community of (mostly Greco-Roman) "Christians" who were more concerned with preparing people's souls for the "life to come", after death.
I don't believe in two worlds, a "physical" one where "matter" exists, and can be seen and tested, and a "spiritual" one, where "spirits" exist, and where people "go" when they die. And I don't think the Jews really believed in two worlds either, until a few centuries before Jesus, when they began to be exposed heavily to Greek philosophy, in which a dualistic view figured importantly. I even think that Jesus himself was limited in the way he could express his revelations to those around him, by the dualistic views that held sway among the pious Jews of his day.
There. I've said it. I fully realize that many people do not think it is possible to be a follower of Jesus and not believe in two separate worlds, but I say that it is possible, because I don't believe in two separate worlds, and I am a follower, and a lover, of Jesus. People may assert with very strong emotions that a Jesus who didn't do "miraculous" things, is a weak and powerless and pallid and despicable Jesus. And that people who believe in such a Jesus think that he was "only" a moral teacher, and that such a Jesus is utterly unable to save us from anything. They may assert these things, but that doesn't make them true.
"Hear O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is One."
For well over 20 years, probably almost since the time I started really thinking about God in earnest, I have felt a kind of split within my own mind, a seemingly irreconcilable conflict. On the one hand, I belonged to (was "nestled in", might be a better way of putting it) a community of Christians whose belief in God and in his chosen savior Jesus filled them with joy and hope. I loved to sing for over an hour every Sunday, and forget everything else, and bask in the sense of the wonder and beauty of God. We sang many songs that came from Jewish prophetic writings, like this one from Zechariah:
"The Lord your God is in your midst,
the Lord of Hosts who saves.
He will rejoice over you with joy.
He will renew you in his love,
He will rejoice over you, with shouts of joy."
Just remembering that song brings tears to my eyes, and there are so, so many others. My point? Just that I have been experiencing God's real presence when among Christians, all my life, and I still do.
On the other hand, I have always been a keen observer of nature, a lover of logic, an avid reader of scientific texts of all kinds. As I learned more and more about what scientists have discovered, and the process of developing scientific theories, I began to wonder more and more about all the "supernatural" things we read about in the bible. Looking back, I can't remember when I first thought there might be a conflict between modern scientific knowledge and the miraculous stories of the bible, but quite smoothly I think I developed two "buckets" or "compartments" for my mind: one for religion, and one for science. As long as I was enveloped fully in my Christian community, and had very limited exposure to people who didn't believe the stories of the bible were true, I was able to negotiate living in my "religious mind" when at church, and in my "scientific mind" when, well, studying science at school. The "two minds" pretty much left each other alone.
When I was about 24, the doctrinal system of Evangelical Christianity started to lose its integrity in my mind. I had the basic problem of "come on, how could a person walk on water, and why would God even give someone the ability to do that?" etc. etc. etc., but I also was starting to struggle with more abstract "theological" concepts, such as "one God, three persons". This struggle got very intense, with my desire for logical harmony and consistency warring against my "moral" sense that I should "just believe it". I was convinced, from hearing it over and over and over again, across the years, from all sorts of people, that to attempt to understand God was hubristic and perverse. Finally, that year, I just removed my need to understand-- by stopping my participation in the activities of Christians. This was the fall of 1995. For the next four years I attempted to define myself outside of Christianity, and failed.
In the fall of 1999, after a string of soul-shaking events, I gave up the struggle to understand-- by acknowledging that I needed to participate in Christian community, and accepting that "perfect" understanding was not a prerequisite for coming to church. However, I never regained the anthropomorphic understanding of God the Father that I had begun to shed in 1995, and in some ways I felt that I was "in the closet" theologically, and that I was a "liberal in Evangelical's clothing". But-- the crazy thing was, I had tried to go to "liberal" churches, during my wandering period, and it just didn't work for me! I wasn't really a "liberal"! Ack! What was I, anyway? Why couldn't I just play nice?
When it was pointed out to me, earlier this year, that governments are unable to exist without violating the most basic moral principles, I turned to the bible and then, realized that the answer had been there all along.
If you read the gospels of Jesus-- what he said, what he did, how he was killed, and how his followers continued on after him, and line it up against the Hebrew scriptures, you realize what he was really about. He preached the kingdom of God, which means, really, the reign of God. Jesus said a number of things that were confusing, about his relationship with "God" or with "the Father", but he really did not refer to himself as a king, at all, until his confrontation with Pilate! And he did not offer that answer on his own, but rather in answer to Pilate's direct question to him, "You are a king, then?" Pilate asked it that way, because he was not at all getting the sense, that Jesus was promoting himself as a king of any sort. Jesus' answer was, basically, "Yes, sort of, but not in a way that you can understand."
And now, to the point of this post! Jesus referred to his return, to his "coming in glory, on the clouds". We are told that he was "taken up to heaven", while his disciples watched. Jesus talked (a little) about the "end times", and about a "day of judgment", and of course, about eternal paradise and eternal torment. But why was he killed? I maintain that it was because of how he was upsetting the order of the day, by what he said and did, and by what just naturally seemed to happen to the people who gathered around him. And the people who killed him were the ones responsible for maintaining that order.
In my last post, I tried to point to a concept given by Paul in Romans 1, which is that God can be understood by "what has been made". The comments made on the post all said, in one form or another, that knowledge about nature should be "subject to" or "guided by" the knowledge we have from the bible. In the weeks since I wrote that post, I have thought it over, and I realized that the distinction between "general revelation" and "special revelation" is a red herring.
"Historical" or "orthodox" Christianity takes as a bedrock presupposition that there are two worlds, one "seen" and one "unseen". (It is found in the very first sentence of the Nicene Creed: "We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty; maker of heaven and earth; of all that is seen and unseen.") It underpins so many doctrines and beliefs, that it is almost unthinkable to question it. But I don't question it-- I simply deny it. And, I also refuse to accept the label of "atheist" or "unbeliever". I am a steadfast follower of Jesus. I strive to follow in his steps, and to proclaim the kingdom of God, which is here, and is here now. It has always been here, and now! Jesus' uniqueness is that he was the first to realize this fact, and to refuse, unflinchingly, to refrain from acting on the realization.
Anyway, what happened, very early on in the history of Christianity, is that after Jesus kept not returning... and not returning... and not returning... the question of an actual "kingdom" was pushed neatly and comfortably into the future, to "the end of time", when Jesus would return, as king over all things, and all people (most especially, all the ones who had refused, up to this point, to acknowledge his lordship) would suddenly submit to his kingship. And the persnickety Jews, who never could get over their insistence on an actual king to rule over them righteously, were hit so hard in their homeland during the late 1st and early 2nd centuries A.D., that they ceased being a distraction from the new community of (mostly Greco-Roman) "Christians" who were more concerned with preparing people's souls for the "life to come", after death.
I don't believe in two worlds, a "physical" one where "matter" exists, and can be seen and tested, and a "spiritual" one, where "spirits" exist, and where people "go" when they die. And I don't think the Jews really believed in two worlds either, until a few centuries before Jesus, when they began to be exposed heavily to Greek philosophy, in which a dualistic view figured importantly. I even think that Jesus himself was limited in the way he could express his revelations to those around him, by the dualistic views that held sway among the pious Jews of his day.
There. I've said it. I fully realize that many people do not think it is possible to be a follower of Jesus and not believe in two separate worlds, but I say that it is possible, because I don't believe in two separate worlds, and I am a follower, and a lover, of Jesus. People may assert with very strong emotions that a Jesus who didn't do "miraculous" things, is a weak and powerless and pallid and despicable Jesus. And that people who believe in such a Jesus think that he was "only" a moral teacher, and that such a Jesus is utterly unable to save us from anything. They may assert these things, but that doesn't make them true.
"Hear O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is One."
Labels: bible, Christianity, dualism, Evangelical, Jesus, Judaism, science, supernatural
posted by Joel GL at 9:34 PM
7 comments
