Personal: Thanksgiving 2011

When Ginger, my late wife, was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2006, I began a series of email updates which were sent to a number of friends to keep them informed on Ginger's battle with cancer. After her passing in the Spring of 2010, I have continued to send out these updates, the focus shifting to a sort of journal of my own experience of loss and grief.

Today's post is an excerpt from one such email sent this week. I hope you find it useful as you think about thankfulness today!

~ Cliff

The Thanksgiving holiday is one of the better inventions of our American culture. Thanksgiving was Ginger’s favorite holiday. She loved to gather her family around one essential principle ... the power inherent in a thankful heart. Of course, gratitude is not the unique commodity of Thanksgiving Day, nor should it be. But this holiday does provide us with an opportunity to pause and consider its importance, and the dynamic capacities released through thankfulness.

Consider with me the transforming dynamic of thanksgiving. In the first century, opinions varied among believers over which foods were morally safe to eat, and which we should avoid. Paul often addressed this issue. Rather than being a matter of religious legislation, Paul set the matter into the realm of personal conscience. In one place (1 Timothy 4:3-4), he teaches that the key to eating otherwise verboten foods is thanksgiving. Thanksgiving, it seems, actually has the power to transform food, and make it acceptable to the eater! Questionable foods become beneficial foods by the application of thanksgiving! From this teaching comes the Christian habit of saying grace at our dinner tables.

But this principle also serves as an analogy for life: “nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving”. Nothing! Thanksgiving changes things! The Bible suggests that we can transform anxiety into peace with the application of thankfulness (Philippians 4:6-7). The way out of confusing and troubling circumstances is opened by thankfulness (Psalm 50:23). Thanksgiving can alter life’s bitter experiences, reshaping them into growth stimulants! Author Shauna Neiquist puts it this way: "When life is sweet, say thank you and celebrate. And when life is bitter, say thank you and grow."

My life has no shortage of opportunities to test this theory! I’m still trying to wrap my mind around what it means to be thankful for cancer. I won’t pretend that I’ve arrived at a place of offering thanks for Ginger’s passing. But I am reminded of the frequent references in the Bible to the discipline of thankfulness. It is sometimes placed into the category of sacrifice. Personal thanksgiving must at times be pushed through the steady resistance of our own sorrow, even anger. In such circumstances, thanksgiving is offered without full understanding; it is offered in faith, and in hope.

Recently, I was handed another occasion to test the operations of thankfulness! My account on a social internet site was hacked. I was able to shut down the account before serious damage was done. But nevertheless, I got a taste of I.D. theft. It is not pleasant. Aside from feeling personally violated, and having my reputation drug through the gutter, I was left feeling vulnerable on many fronts. I have since secured my computer, and my other online dealings against future attack, and this is a good thing. But I have also been forcibly, and permanently blocked from many friendships. My initial reaction was one of unbridled anger! I was livid! But as I have considered the net gains and losses from this experience, anger has given way to a strange and unexpected gratitude. Accepting our circumstances, even finding those elements for which we can offer thanks, is so much better than stubbornly resisting them. This experience has given me opportunity to reevaluate some of my personal goals and priorities, a process which has strangely given me a new sense of contentment; and a growing thankfulness for the services of an internet intruder.

As you gather with friends and family today, my wish is that your holiday will be filled with happy thoughts, great food, and closeness with your loved ones. But take a moment or two and review those circumstances in your life which naturally create sorrow, anger, or anxiety. Find a place for them in the kettle of gratitude. And watch as thankfulness works its transformative magic!

Human Evolution and Theology

It’s been over six months since my last entry on this blog. My apologies to the many who continue to check in here, only to find the well still dry! There are many reasons for my writing hiatus, most of them personal. But I hope to resume writing, and today I offer this summary of a recent Biologos article, together with a brief facebook exchange from yesterday.

My friend, Dennis Venema, is an Associate Professor of Biology at Trinity Western University in Langley, B.C., and a Senior Fellow of the Biologos Foundation. Yesterday, he posted a fascinating description of early human speciation at the Biologos site. Evolution doubters confused about microevolution versus macroevolution would do well just to read Venema’s opening paragraphs about how new species develop, and when they cross that invisible line demarcating a “new species”. Venema’s main thrust is how genetics is showing the way to a deeper understanding of how the very early Hominid species spread out across the globe, and how they interacted, and interbred. But Venema’s driving passion, much like my own, goes beyond elucidation of our distant past; he longs for the conversation which evangelical Christians must engage which is less about natural history, and more about its theological implications. Venema closes his article with this:

"Even as I stand amazed in what God has revealed to us about our origins through science, I know that this new information will be difficult for some within the evangelical community to accept. Moreover, it is almost certain that some Christian groups, unfortunately, will misrepresent this data to their constituents (whether intentionally or not), and thus spread confusion that hinders the needed theological conversation. Still, I have reason for hope: God has seen it fit to reveal this information to us, and that suggests that He believes the evangelical Christian community is ready for this conversation to happen. As [Biologos President] Darrel [Falk] mentioned at the end of his recent piece, we at BioLogos want to assist our evangelical sisters and brothers in this conversation in any way we can, in full confidence that it can be done in an edifying way ..."

I posted a link to Venema’s article yesterday, and one of my facebook friends commented with several questions. My friend, Tim, is an unbeliever, and puzzles over how or why believers who understand our evolutionary past persist in efforts to reconcile “the biblical narrative from Genesis” with “what science has discovered.” Tim writes, “I just don't get this insane drive to keep believing something that is completely contradictory to the facts.” He goes on to quote Venema’s amazement “in what God has revealed to us about our origins through science.” Tim is incredulous, even infuriated, at such a statement. He writes, “God didn’t reveal anything. Man looked around observed tested and discovered. What God supposedly revealed about the natural world in Genesis is in short a fairy tale. Simply put when it comes to explaining how why things work the way they do or are the way they are its Science a whole whole lot and God zero.”

My answer to Tim’s concerns follows:

“A lot of really good questions, Tim. I'll try to answer succinctly, though each of your questions is worthy of an essay!

“People like Venema and myself make little attempt to align current understandings of natural history and science with the narrative of Genesis in the way you presume. (Some believers do, e.g. Hugh Ross, and his organization "Reasons to Believe" <www.reasons.org>.) Rather, Genesis appears to us to be an ancient text that provides a wealth of early theological insights within it's contemporary cosmological framework, but which contains little or no supernaturally supplied information about science, origins, or natural history.

“But what you are really asking is why maintain faith in any Biblical revelation in light of the Bible's lack of historical/scientific preciseness. I cannot presume to answer for Dennis, but I can tell you that for me, this is a choice that is rooted in my faith in the person of Jesus, who is called in the Bible the "Word of God", and as such is the ultimate expression of God, the ultimate divine revelation. And the Bible, in my opinion a substantially accurate source of history concurrent with its writing, tells us much about Jesus prospectively in the O.T., concurrently in the Gospels, and retrospectively in the rest of the N.T. When I couple together the things we are learning from science about origins, evolution, physics, etc. with what is revealed in Jesus and in the book about him, the results are exciting, refreshing, and captivating (you can read some of my observations on my blog, OutsideTheBox).

“Your question about "God revealing through science" is a fair question. There is a verse in Proverbs that says "It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings." That is, God's revelations in nature are concealed, below the surface, awaiting discovery. Science (which you may know was largely driven by theistic belief for much of it's history) is man uncovering the secrets of the Creator. The Biblical presumption is that all of nature is God revealing, and we call this "Natural Revelation".

“So your score card ("science a whole lot, God zero") presumes that God spoon feeds information to us, or that Christians believe that he does this. While some Christians may think that way, I assure you that Venema does not. Nor do I.”

Your comments are welcome ...

God: the Author of Chaos?

When I share my views about open theology (that God might not know details about the future) or about God’s noninterventionist ways (that God is mostly “hands-off” with respect to Creation, our individual lives, and the flow of human history), some believers get noticeably anxious! They worry about a world not tightly supervised by its God, a world which is not controlled, and micro-engineered by God. More than once have my views been characterized as deistic. But I am not deist. I believe in, and base my life hope in, a God who is personal, vitally interested in us, and highly purposeful! Nevertheless, it seems that, for some, conceiving of God as the “blessed controller” provides a level of comfort and security they are unwilling to give up. And they often wonder out loud how a universe ungoverned could ever accomplish the ends of a purposeful Creator.

I believe that science can help to solve this mystery! Throughout the natural order, we see a confluence of randomness with design and purpose and ultimate predictability that is fascinating to me; and which may be instructive as we seek to understand the ways of God. Three examples are chaos theory, quantum uncertainty, and evolutionary convergence. I’ve written on some of these in the past. Here I bring them together for your consideration.

Chaos theory, originally explored as a mathematical phenomenon, has been observed and studied in a variety of fields from meteorology to economics to philosophy. Chaos theory tells us that very small, seemingly insignificant variations in initial conditions may result in enormous alterations to the long-range outcomes. The familiar example is that of the “butterfly effect”. A butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil can, according to chaos theory, set off a disturbance in air patterns which could ultimately cause a destructive hurricane to strike Texas, or Indonesia! Chaos theory deals with causes and effects that are, by some measures, completely unpredictable. But there are corollary principles to chaos theory, called fractals. Examples of fractals include the principle of “self-similarity”, and the “Lorenz attractor”. These principles bring a level of order and predictability even to chaotic systems. That is, while initially, effects may splay out in totally unpredictable and chaotic ways, on larger (or smaller) scales certain patterns emerge. And these patterns become predictable, and stable.

In Quantum mechanics, the principle of Uncertainty speaks of the utter unpredictability of the movements and behaviors of subatomic particles. And yet, while the physicist may be unable to predict how a given quark or other quantum particle will behave, when observed as a mass of collective particles, the sum of the behavior of such particles becomes predictable with a high degree of accuracy.

Biology bows to a similar pattern. The competing principles of contingency and convergence don’t actually compete at all. Both principles are operating throughout evolution. Contingency suggests that mutations and adaptations are unpredictable. Thus the evolutionary trajectory of similar organisms isolated geographically may vary widely even within similar biomes. And yet, convergence suggests that certain ultimate effects are quite predictable, as evolution will self-guide into preexisting, or developing ecological niches. Together, contingency and convergence are the opposing sides of the same coin. They tell us that God could create life just as he willed it by allowing it to move along paths that appear to be totally random. Simon Conway-Morris has theorized that the evolution of man, substantially as we have seen on this planet, was inevitable, and would occur on any planet given the same set of initial conditions, even though the paths might vary widely.

This pattern — this phenomenon of random, unpredictable movements and processes ultimately coalescing into long-range outcomes which are foreseeable — provides us with illustrations from nature: natural phenomena which mirror and typify spiritual phenomena. But might they be more than that? Might they suggest a continuity of patterns built into the structure of the cosmos that extend from discernible physical and biological laws to spiritual laws? Do they identify a divine rubric, God’s chosen M.O? I believe they do!

And if so, they suggest that the purposes of God can and will be accomplished through his Creation even as he restrains his hand.

Why Science Matters!

Frequently, certain friends seem troubled by my exploration of the sciences, and my willingness to accept evidence which at times runs contrary to earlier theological assumptions. A friend recently wrote to me expressing her concern over my interest in what she regards as “the religion of science.” Below is my response to this friend:

I do not share your view of science. You indicate that science is a religion unto itself, that is it merely "possible" for a scientist to believe the Bible, and that science (or what you call "worldly knowledge") is something that will eventually fade away.

I have a much higher view of science, and of its usefulness to faith, to understanding God, to understanding spiritual things, etc. Without question there are those who wrongly worship science, just as some worship sports, others worship cultural icons of Hollywood, and some (dare I say it?) worship the Bible. I know people who would define their entire relationship with God as a pouring over the Hebrew and Greek, searching out the minutia of the text for hidden clues about God, while they have little personal knowledge of or walk with the true "Word of God", Jesus. They have fallen into bibliolatry. But we have these two great sources (or channels, more accurately) of revelation: Special Revelation, and General Revelation. We learn about God in the pages of Scripture, the person of Jesus, and the illumination of the Holy Spirit; and we also learn about him by paying close attention to Creation, to the works of his hands. If indeed the heavens declare the glory of God, then we have a much fuller understanding of God's greatness, magnitude, and glory post-Hubble than before. The intricacies of the living cell are clueing us into the infinite wisdom and creative genius of God. Quantum mechanics is helping to dismantle the unhealthy notions of strict determinism ... that is, we now know the universe is not a static Newtonian predictable set of causes and effects; that helps to correct our theology! Paul tell us in Romans 1 that we can not only learn of God's existence in nature, but we can even learn about his attributes, perhaps even facets of his character. Knowing the Bible, and personally knowing Jesus, helps us to properly "read" the data from science. But it is equally true to say that science helps us to properly read the Bible. It did so in Galileo's day; it continues to do so today. Technically, of course, you are correct: all knowledge will fade away, including science, and including (in my view, at least) the Bible. But for now, science is an amazing tool for looking deeply into God, how he structured the cosmos, how he created the universe. These profound data give us clues to his purposes, and why he responds (or at times does not respond) as he does. The more I understand from science, the more I come back to the Scriptures and say "Aha ... now I understand that!"

I read in your tone almost disdain for science. That makes me sad. It is true that secularism has hijacked science to a large degree over the last 100 year or so. And, in my view, history reveals that we, the people of faith, are utterly responsible for that hijacking! Through the early centuries of the western scientific enterprise, the primary impetus of science, the motivation for scientific inquiry and study, was God! It was a bottom-line belief in a good and orderly God that gave rise to science, and that fueled its progress for hundreds of years. But when the early fundamentalists of 100 years ago (not all of them, to be sure), tied science (particularly evolution) to the attacks upon the Bible in the late 19th Century, believers abandoned science en masse. Secularists picked up the sciences and ran with them. And the Christian fundamentalist leaders began a century long campaign against science. "Don't trust it" they told us from their pulpits. "It is evil, filled with atheistic lies!" This fundamentalist mantra continues right down to the present day. When I read your comments about science, I fear you have bought into this polemic. I cannot agree with it at all. Not only do I learn about God, understand better his actions in my own life, through peering deeply into nature, but I want Christians everywhere to listen to what we are learning from science; yes, to learn to separate the wheat from the chaff; but to stop the travesty of a church turning its back upon the honest study of our Lord's ingenious and creative works, and deeding it over to atheists and secularist. Christians, of all people, should be the most interested in science. I find it a deplorable tragedy that so many are not, and that we continue to allow atheistic thinkers to set the agenda for science by simple default. Thank God for scientists who are outspoken believers! Thank God for Francis Collins! Thank God for Kenneth Miller! Thank God for Simon Conway-Morris! I thank God for dedicated followers of Jesus who are reassuming positions on the cutting edges of science, who are not denying obvious facts, but who are instead moving science in its proper (and only true) direction: toward God!

Christmas Day: "And the soul felt its worth"

"... he appeared, and the soul felt its worth ..."

This morning, as I prepared a pancake breakfast for my expanded Christmas morning family while listening to a Scott Simon interview of the The Puppini Sisters on NPR, I was struck by a lyric from their favorite Christmas carol. I’ve heard this lovely piece hundreds of times, sung it myself scores of times, but this morning the words fell upon my ears with fresh power: “'til he appeared and the soul felt its worth.”

The birth of Jesus, the song reminds us, forever raised mankind’s view of himself, lifting his lot from pining in sin and error to a thrilling hopefulness, to the dawning of a new and glorious morning. “ ... and the soul felt its worth.” By invading our material reality, and permeating earth with his transcendence, God forever ennobled life on this plane! By clothing himself in the flesh of humanity, God upped our stock, setting a new baseline value on what it means to be human! Nothing can impress upon the soul its eternal worth like the nativity scene, the humble babe housing infinity, the suffusion of man-flesh with unimaginable transcendent greatness.

The French wine merchant Adolphe Adam, and the English version translator John Sullivan Dwight merely assume this elevation of human dignity accompanying the divine visitation we commemorate on this day. David Bentley Hart builds the case methodically and potently in his brilliant work, Atheist Delusions. At the very core of what Hart calls the Christian Revolution is what he labels as nothing short of “the invention of the human.” As he traces the development of human worth through history, he argues cogently how effectively Jesus, the central figure in history, redefines what it means to be human. “ ... and the soul felt its worth.”

He also brings his readers face-to-face with the stark and terrifying prospect of a humankind delivered of its Christian influence. “If, as I have argued in these pages, the ‘human’ as we now understand it is the positive invention of Christianity, might it not be the case that a culture that has become truly post-Christian will also, ultimately, become posthuman?”

The chilling day when humanism has followed the path of a discarded Christmas, the day Hart sees looming on our horizon is not yet upon us. Nor is it inevitable. For now, the essential message of the Incarnation still rings clear. And Christians should boldly herald its powerful implications: Jesus appeared! “ ... and the soul felt its worth.” every soul! every color! every gender! every age! every ethnicity! every culture! the value of every person has been forever elevated by the event we know as Christmas. This revaluing of humanity is at the heart of the mega-joy implicit in Bethlehem’s child! This is the good news. It is this gospel that should be in our hearts, upon our lips, and lived out of our lives.

“ ... and the soul felt its worth.”

Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

By now, last month's surprise Hallelujah Chorus at the food court in a Welland, Ontario shopping mall has spread all over the internet. If you have not yet, you must view it! As I watched it today for the sixth or seventh time, finding my smiles yet irrepressible, and still wiping tears from my eyes, I wondered ...

The popular Antitheists of our day, and cultural icons like John Lennon, insist that the world will be a better place when all religion has been eradicated! Ah yes, “Imagine” with me a world forever cleansed of George Frideric Handel!

I tried in vain to think of a single cultural contribution that comes close to Handel’s Messiah which has been inspired by thoughts of a god-free cosmos. I could not think of anything that stirs the heart and soul. I did think of John Lennon’s ode to a world delivered of the joys and hopes of faith. Ah yes, Imagine! The words and music are, admittedly, mildly arousing. A bit mournful. Kind of like dry toast. Or old black and white photography. But still, I’ve sung along and (genuinely) tried to catch Lennon’s fervor (if indeed we could call it that). But listening to Lennon I have never felt the exhilaration, the sheer unquenchable joy flooding my whole being, mind and soul, which arise involuntarily during these five minutes of Handel in the Mall.

But I must admit to a faith-induced predilection to experience such a high! My atheist friends will no doubt find themselves yawning in boredom. And surely they can point me to works of art, music or visual arts, that stir their souls, that inspire them profoundly, that awaken deep emotions of joys rising to overwhelm their senses. I would love to hear about them!

Now I know that there is a certain sense of awe and excitement that is energized by our discoveries in physics and biology. I share those! They are wonderful. But, if I may be so bold to say so, they do not even fit into the same category with the sheer transcendent delight aroused by countless examples of faith-inspired art and literature.

Nevertheless, I am assured by those who seem to know, that the lot of mankind will be greatly improved when the vestiges of faith and religion are but fading memories. The Antitheists will no doubt breath a huge sigh of relief knowing that their lunch in the food court will never again be so rudely interrupted.

Testing the Eyesight of the New Atheists

There have been many worthy responses to the spate of New Atheist books which sold in the millions a few years back. (I have reviewed a few of these responses here, and here, and here.) But perhaps the most succinct response I've read recently was written by an atheist, the conservative social commentator, Anthony (A.M.) Daniels, aka Theodore Dalrymple. Below are a few excerpts from his regular City Journal (Fall, 2007) column, "Oh, to Be in England", entitled "What the New Atheists Don't See".

Few of us, especially as we grow older, are entirely comfortable with the idea that life is full of sound and fury but signifies nothing.

________________

...however many times philosophers say that it is up to us ourselves, and to no one else, to find the meaning of life, we continue to long for a transcendent purpose immanent in existence itself, independent of our own wills. To tell us that we should not feel this longing is a bit like telling someone in the first flush of love that the object of his affections is not worthy of them. The heart hath its reasons that reason knows not of.

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Reason can never be the absolute dictator of man’s mental or moral economy.

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For Dennett, to prove the biological origin of belief in God is to show its irrationality, to break its spell. But of course it is a necessary part of the argument that all possible human beliefs, including belief in evolution, must be explicable in precisely the same way; or else why single out religion for this treatment? Either we test ideas according to arguments in their favor, independent of their origins, thus making the argument from evolution irrelevant, or all possible beliefs come under the same suspicion of being only evolutionary adaptations—and thus biologically contingent rather than true or false. We find ourselves facing a version of the paradox of the Cretan liar: all beliefs, including this one, are the products of evolution, and all beliefs that are products of evolution cannot be known to be true.

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...how can reality have any moral quality without having an immanent or transcendent purpose?

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Harris tells us, for example, that “we must find our way to a time when faith, without evidence, disgraces anyone who would claim it. Given the present state of the world, there appears to be no other future worth wanting.” I am glad that I am old enough that I shall not see the future of reason as laid down by Harris; but I am puzzled by the status of the compulsion in the first sentence that I have quoted. Is Harris writing of a historical inevitability? Of a categorical imperative? Or is he merely making a legislative proposal? This is who-will-rid-me-of-this-troublesome-priest language, ambiguous no doubt, but not open to a generous interpretation.

It becomes even more sinister when considered in conjunction with the following sentences, quite possibly the most disgraceful that I have read in a book by a man posing as a rationalist: “The link between belief and behavior raises the stakes considerably. Some propositions are so dangerous that it may be ethical to kill people for believing them. This may seem an extraordinary claim, but it merely enunciates an ordinary fact about the world in which we live.”

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It is surely not news, except to someone so ignorant that he probably wouldn’t be interested in these books in the first place, that religious conflict has often been murderous and that religious people have committed hideous atrocities. But so have secularists and atheists, and though they have had less time to prove their mettle in this area, they have proved it amply. If religious belief is not synonymous with good behavior, neither is absence of belief, to put it mildly.

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The thinness of the new atheism is evident in its approach to our civilization, which until recently was religious to its core. To regret religion is, in fact, to regret our civilization and its monuments, its achievements, and its legacy.

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Read the full article, here, in which Dalrymple takes each of the popular New Atheist authors to task. No doubt Dalrymple could build a case for his own atheism which might be worthy of consideration. But, as others have noted, the case built by the popular authors (including Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennet, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris) is at times poorly constructed, and at times completely fatuous. Were they merely catching a wave of unsophisticated public sentiment, and thus scoring big in book sales? Or were they really giving it their best shot?