In Search of God

Last week I intended to address what I believe to be the primary question of theology, “Who is god?” but I wasn’t able to. I was going to pick up with that theme this week, however, since it’s a rather hectic combination of the end of term at my school, the Christmas holidays and the attending end of the year chaos, I won’t be able to complete my post in time for my self-imposed Thursday deadline.

However, I don’t want to send you away empty-handed so I’ll share this with you. While I was running an errand, I was listening to the local broadcast of the BBC World Service in the van and tuned in ( a bit late) to a great interview with the Archbishop of Canterbury. The interviewer is John Humphreys and the program is called “In Search of God“. The gist of the program is simply this: crusty old journalist interviews heavy hitters of the big three monotheistic religions in an attempt to regain his lost faith in God. I thought it would be a good idea to listen to the interview and see what impact it might have on the thoughts that I’ve been trying to put together and write about here.

Technical note: it’s streaming media via RealPlayer, which I’m sure you have. I wish it were a podcast, but it isn’t.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to post for real next Thursday and perhaps after listening to this, I’ll have an even better post than I’d originally planned.

My Apologies

If you happen to be keeping up with my commitment to post once a week, then I owe you an apology.

It’s a long weekend here in the host country and I’m not in the office, which is where I usually post from. I accidentally left this week’s post on the office computer and since I won’t be in before next week…well, I don’t have a post this week.

I’ll make it up next time though…

Phillip Pullman’s (A)Theology

I will not see the film, The Golden Compass, nor will I read Phillip Pullman’s books upon which the movie is based…until the movie is available on DVD and I can borrow His Dark Materials from a library…perhaps sometime this summer when I’m back in the states on vacation.

I’m pretty sure that the film will be released here in the host country (possibly severely edited, possibly not) but my wife and I find it too hard to go the cinema now that we have four children aged 6 and under. As for the books…well, there are no good libraries here for us and I don’t think I care to the own books until I’ve read them. Nevertheless, I’ve taken some interest in the controversy that both the film and the books have stirred up. Consequently, I’ve spent this week visiting Pullman’s website and reading the interviews that he has linked there. Predictably, he has made some interesting comments in those interviews.

In one interview, Pullman is asked “Are you interested in theology?” and he responds in this way: “…yes, it’s an interesting question. The most important questions of all are the big religious ones: Is there a God? What is our purpose? And so on…” Today, that part of my brain which was processing this comment suddenly announced to the other parts of my brain, which were focused on getting a good cup of tea, that this is not actually the question that most people on the planet are asking. In fact, most people living today (as well as those who were living yesterday and the days before) do not ask the question “Is there a god?” but rather “Who is god?” (At least, that’s how I understand this.)

Yet, Pullman’s question remains: Is there a god? Of course, he’s thought about this a great deal and he has an answer ready should anyone ask. In the interviews linked to his website, the answer varies just a bit according to how the interviewer phrases the question. To one person who asked “Do you believe in God?” Pullman replied that he doesn’t see any “evidence for his existence”. However, confessing the limits of his own knowledge, Pullman conceded that god might very well exist. To another person who asked “Why do you hate God?” Pullman responded that he does not hate god but rather simply doesn’t believe he exists. In another interview, in answer to a separate question , Pullman offered that his “own belief is that God is dead”, which I guess is another way to say that God doesn’t exist.

Another comment from the interviews available at Pullman’s website which my brain has been processing this week goes like this:

“The Christian story gives us human beings a very important and prominent part. We are the ones who Jesus came to redeem from the consequences of sin, which our parents – you know. It is a very dramatic story and we are right at the heart of it, and a great deal depends on what we decide. This is an exciting position to be in, but unfortunately it doesn’t gel at all with the more convincing account that is given by Darwinian evolution – and the scientific account is far more persuasive intellectually. Far more persuasive.”

I’ve been wondering why it is that someone, who is as devoted to good story-telling as Pullman apparently is, finds a scientific answer to “the most important questions of all” more convincing than the highly dramatic Christian narrative? The answer seems to be that Darwinian evolution is more credible intellectually, yet Pullman, like all of us is much more than an intellect. One article I read described him in this way; “emotionally involved. He sits in the shed and makes it up and he weeps, yes, weeps copiously at the tragedies that unfold. He frightens himself and upsets himself and makes himself laugh.” Obviously, Pullman is a man with a heart as well as a brain.

So, I thought “Why would I prefer the scientific narrative over the Christian narrative?” I have an answer, but I confess that sharing it at this point would be unseemly. I’m afraid that in sharing it now, I would leave the impression that I was projecting my ideas onto Pullman, and I don’t want to do that. Generally, I disagree with the practice of attempting to psychoanalyze an author based on his works or even interviews about his work. While I certainly understand the temptation, I just don’t think I should do it.

Instead, let’s just leave off with the observation that, based on his comments in interviews, it’s easy to see how Pullman is a magnet for controversy.

NB: Last night while waiting for my son to finish at a friends birthday party, I sat in a restaurant reading an essay by CS Lewis. In it, I found him to be an unexpected admirer of what he called “the scientific outlook”, a story which is essentially the Darwinian story which Pullman says he finds so compelling. Leading into a dramatic summary of the scientific outlook, Lewis says,”Supposing this is a myth, is it not one of the finest myths which human imgination has yet produced?” I would reproduce the description except that it’s rather long. If you’re interested, you can read it in a collection of essays called, “The Weight of Glory” in the essay entitled “Is Theology Poetry“.

I’m beginning to think that Pullman is actually Lewis’ alter ego from an alternate universe.

How Theology Matters

For the past week, I’ve been thinking about the question: “What good is theology?” I started thinking about it after skimming this post by Michael Spencer. Later, when I had the time, I went back and read what he said more closely and began to think about a similar (yet rhetorical) question that he posed: “How does theology matter….” particularly to Christians?

I think one way to understand how theology matters is to look at some specific theological positions (opinions, beliefs, etc) and examine their impact. Attempting to answer the question in this manner runs the risk of being perceived as overly pragmatic. By that I mean that some might get the impression that so long as the impact is positive (an admittedly subjective term) the theological position in question is acceptable, without regard for whether or not it is Biblical and / or true. This is not what I think, but I’ll follow this tact and take the chance of being misunderstood.

Before looking at the impact of specific theological positions, I want to take a moment to explain what I mean when I use the word “theology”. Theology is one of those words that get a lot of use within certain communities where people assume that they’re talking about the same thing but they really aren’t. For example, “theology” to some is an academic term used to speak about a particular kind of study, perhaps even a course or program of study. For others, “theology” is whatever opinions / beliefs that a person has about God and / or religion. Recently, I read one blogger who seems to use the word “theology” to speak about a particular way of living one’s life. For the sake of clarity, I think it’s important for me to state up front that I’ll be using “theology” in the academic sense…unless I decide to use it in the sense of an opinion because doing so serves my purpose.

Let’s start out by looking at the Pharisees. The theology of the Pharisee articulated an understanding of God as one who loved Jews and hated Gentiles. They characterized God as favoring the ritually clean over the ritually unclean. they also saw God as one who materially and physically rewarded righteousness while inflicting poverty and illness upon the wicked. To put in the KJV vernacular, they considered God a “respecter of persons”. Jesus apparently thought that the Pharisees’ theology mattered enough to address it in both His actions and His speech. To counter their erroneous theology, Jesus touched the unclean, ate with sinners and took on the religious establishment’s misuse of the temple. He also characterized the impact of the Pharisees’ theology as tying “heavy burdens and laying them on they people” while they were not interested in bearing the same burdens themselves. Jesus also said that the Pharisees on one occasion “condemned the innocent” and characterized converts to their religious views as “twice the son of hell that you are.” The theology of the Pharisees mattered because it left people who followed them burdened, condemned and cursed.

Christians do the same thing to each other today with our ill-conceived theology. A contemporary example of a poor conception of God and its impact on Christians can be found in the book, “The Power of a Praying Parent” by Stormie Omartian. One anecdote in the book tells of her teenage son’s survival of a horrible car accident which she credits to her diligent prayers for his safety which began at his birth. Ok. The problem comes when she says;

“Of course, Satan can do a lot of damage if we don’t teach our children God’s ways and God’s Word and help them to respect God’s laws, and if we don’t discipline them, guide them, and help them learn to make godly choices. The Bible tells us, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it”. When we don’t do these things, our children can fall into rebellion and make choices that take them out from under the umbrella of God’s protection. Prayer and proper instruction in the ways and words of God will make sure that does not happen…”

While it is entirely possible for a parent to do all of the things stated and still have children who “fall into rebellion”, you don’t get that impression from her. Instead, she leaves the clear impression that God protects those children whose parents do these right things and pray for them. Conversely, it sounds like God won’t protect those children whose parent don’t do these things. Doesn’t it sound a bit like the Pharisees’ belief that God afflicts the religiously deficient and the wicked, while He favors the pious?  So, what happens if the child of the devout parent turns “bad”? Is the fault with the parental training? With the parental prayers?  To be completely fair, Omartian makes a statement in her book that she doesn’t mean to say that failure to pray “against” specific evils in her childrens’ lives will result in God not protecting them. Yet, this is precisely what she seems to indicate repeatedly. God comes across as a meticulous micro-manager whose hands are tied until we say a prayer. Until we do our children are vulnerable. Consequently, when we fail to pray, we are culpable when bad things happen to our children and ourselves. Again, the impact of the theology behind these teachings is Christians who are “harassed and helpless”.

Despite how it might seem, theology does have a positive impact on Christians. Predictably, the best illustration of this is Jesus who fully manifested the character of God when He lived among us. In the miracles of Jesus we see that God is powerful. In His choice of companions, we see that God is welcoming. In the teaching of Jesus we see that God is wise. Through the parables we learn that God is both loving and just. Jesus unburdened those who trusted Him. Their guilt was erased and their shame was taken away. As it was when He lived in a body, so it is today when He lives through His Body, the church…at least, when the Church is at her best. It’s easy to see why Michael Spence advocates a Christocentric theology.

Theology is necessarily limited. Some aspects of God are knowable through nature. Other aspects are only knowable by revelation. Eternity will be spent experiencing other aspects of God’s character which are not knowable by mortals as we are now. Yet, despite our limited ability to comprehend God, theology is important because what we believe about His character affects how we relate to His creation, particularly His “new creations”, our fellow Christians.