5 posts tagged “god”

Today at the sojourn service, the sermon spoke to me somehow better and clearer than ever. I generally have had trouble following or drawing much from the teaching there, but this morning was different. Here are some notes I made, and thoughts I had while making them:

Romans 6:15-23
What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.

 I put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural selves. Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness. When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

We cannot "simply" believe. I've struggled with this lately -- seeing my faith produce works. While we are saved by God's grace alone, to live the same as we did under law demonstrates nothing of the faith that grace bore. "Even the demons believe...and shudder"

Freedom in grace is freedom to follow and serve the Father -- the new creation in us seeks above all the pleasure of its Creator.

Of course, we are inclined (especially today) to think of freedom wholly in terms of arbitrary or pathetic volition, a potency made actual every time one chooses a particular course of action out from a variety of other possibilities. And obviously, for finite intellects and wills, this is the minimal form that liberty must assume; but it is also, just as obviously, a form of subordination and confinement. All possible choices are external to the will that chooses; they shape it from without, defining it even before it has chosen. Moreover, these possibilities are exclusive of one another: one makes a possible course of action real by rendering other courses of action impossible. And, as we all know, one can choose foolishly, or maliciously, or with a divided will. Freedom, so understood, would consist in no more than a certain kind of largely vacuous and limited potentiality dependent upon other limited and limiting potentialities.
A higher understanding of human freedom, however, is inseparable from a definition of human nature. To be free is to be able to flourish as the kind of being one is, and so to attain the ontological good toward which one's nature is oriented; freedom is the unhindered realization of a complex nature in its proper end (natural and supernatural), and this is consummate liberty and happiness. The will that chooses poorly, then -- through ignorance, maleficence, or corrupt desire -- has not thereby become freer, but has further enslaved itself to those forces that prevent it from achieving its full expression. And it is this richer understanding of human freedom that provides us some analogy to the freedom of God. For God is infinite actuality, the source and end of all being, the eternally good, for whom mere arbitrary "choice" -- as among possibilities that somehow exceed his "present" actuality -- would be a deficiency, a limitation placed upon his infinite power to be God. His freedom is the impossibility of any force, pathos, or potentiality interrupting the perfection of his nature or hindering him in the realization of his own illimitable goodness, in himself and in his creatures. To be "capable" of evil -- to be able to do evil or to be affected by an encounter with it -- would in fact be an incapacity in God; and to require evil to bring about his good ends would make him less than the God he is. The object of God's will in his own infinite goodness, and it is an object perfectly realized, and so he is free. (David B. Hart, from The Doors of the Sea)

As fledglings in the divine nature, imputed in us by the law of God's grace, we no longer are mastered by the law of sin. We are no longer leashed by pride, the measure of our own glory, the limitations of our intellect and our physiology, the permeation of ennui, and the lust to dominate. We are no longer bound by that which has held us fast in sludge and mire, in listlessness, and has darkened our minds by the illusion of our own grandeur. Instead, we are freed to exult in One who is greater in every measure, who relieves us of aspirations which had hitherto been whetted upon our own dull luster, and could be gaged only by the reach of our libidos. Now we are freed to acknowledge the Other, God in Christ, whose glory is all and in all.

When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. Colossians 2:13-15

I have a new love in my life: Peter Kreeft. I've been listening recently to some free audio on his website. Several are fascinating, but it all began with this one. It's not that his arguments for God's existence are new. Rather, they are takes on what Christian philosophers have long said in the debate. But as of late, in especial regard to all the heavy blows various scientists and thinkers have tried to land on God, I think the soundness of these old arguments on Kreeft's lips ring quite clear. It's about 75 mins long, which isn't exactly brief, but I'd say about half an hour in, things really start rolling, and he articulates a few of the arguments in ways I've never heard, and powerfully. And interestingly, the question and answer session at the end is the best I've ever heard, with intelligent, relevant, and difficult questions. I'll let you decide for yourself what you think of his answeres to the direct questions.

Faith has been taking a difficult route for me lately. It's really hard to articulate what's going on with me. I suspect, however, that my understanding of my life, hope, and goals are very much oriented around myself, what makes me happy, what stimulates me and challenges me, what I think I should be doing. It's been a difficult transistion coming home, and I still feel very much in limbo about where I'm supposed to be or what I'm supposed to be doing. Furthermore, my trust in God to handle these issues has wavered, and as I've pondered these things, I'm realizing that the lack of trust is as much the struggle's source as it is the result. As a Christian, one bound to Christ, how is it that my life of faith should be oriented around my own desires, bound by the limits of my intellect? Am I not to entrust my life to God, the one who created me and everything else out of nothing? Is he not the very purpose for which I and everything else was created? The natural equation of Creation? Therefore, whose life am I living really, and whose desires am I to be centered on?

Lots of questions, but perhaps the answer is more simple than I've thought it would be over these last several silent months. Interestinly, yesterday's sermon held a few poignant & challenging quotes that spoke to this very issue of trust, which I'll be wrestling with for a while, I think. 

"A real Christian is an odd number anyway. He feels supreme love for One whom he has never seen, talks familiarly everyday to someone he cannot see, expects to go to heaven on the virtue of another, empties himself in order to be full, admits he is wrong in order to be declared right, goes down in order to get up, is strongest when he is weakest, richest when he is poorest, and happiest when he feels worst. He dies so he can live, forsaken in order to have, gives away so he can keep, sees the invisible, hears the inaudible, and knows that which passes knowledge." -- A.W. Tozer, The Root of the Righteous

"Uncompromising trust in the love of God inspires us to thank God for the spiritual darkness that envelops us, for the loss of income, for the nagging arthritis that is so painful, and to pray from the heart, 'Abba, into your hands I entrust my body, mind, and spirit and this entire day -- morning, afternoon, evening, and night. Whatever you want of me, I want of me, falling into you and trusting in you in the midst of my life. Into your heart I entrust my heart, feeble, distracted, insecure, uncertain. Abba, unto you I abandon myself in Jesus our Lord, Amen.'" Brennan Manning, Ruthless Trust

Taken from The Doors of the Sea by David Bentley Hart

III.
We are inclined (especially today) to think of freedom wholly in terms of arbitrary or pathetic volition, a potency made actual every time one chooses a particular course of action out from a variety of other possibilities. And obviously, for finite intellects and wills, this is the minimal form that liberty must assume; but it is also, just as obviously, a form of subordination and confinement. All possible choices are external to the will that chooses; they shape it from without, defining it even before it has chosen. Moreover, these possibilities are exclusive of one another: one makes a possible course of action real by rendering other courses of action impossible. And, as we all know, one can choose foolishly, or maliciously, or with a divided will. Freedom, so understood, would consist in no more than a certain kind of largely vacuous and limited potentiality dependent upon other limited and limiting potentialities.
A higher understanding of human freedom, however, is inseparable from a definition of human nature. To be free is to be able to flourish as the kind of being one is, and so to attain the ontological good toward which one's nature is oriented; freedom is the unhindered realization of a complex nature in its proper end (natural and supernatural), and this is consummate liberty and happiness. The will that chooses poorly, then -- through ignorance, maleficence, or corrupt desire -- has not thereby become freer, but has further enslaved itself to those forces that prevent it from achieving its full expression. And it is this richer understanding of human freedom that provides us some analogy to the freedom of God. For God is infinite actuality, the source and end of all being, the eternally good, for whom mere arbitrary "choice" -- as among possibilities that some how exceed his "present actuality -- would be a deficiency, a limitation placed upon his infinite power to be God. His freedom is th impossibility of any force, pathos, or potentiality interrupting the perfection of his nature or hindering him in the realization of his own illimitable goodness, in himself and in his creatures. To be "capable" of evil -- to be able to do evil or to be affected by an encounter with it -- would in fact be an incapacity in God; and to require evil to bring about his good ends would make him less the God he is. The object of God's will is his own infinite goodness, and it is an object perfectly realized, and so he is free.
This is a claim not only doctrinal but blatantly metaphysical, but this is no cause for tentativeness. Not only are the speculative concerns of developed Christian philosophy already substantially present in the Hellenistic metaphysical motifs and assumptions that permeate the New Testament (deny these though some might), but classical Christian metaphysics, as elaborated from the patristic through the high medieval periods, is a logically necessary consequence of the gospel. both insofar as it unfolds the inevitable ontological implications of of Christian doctrines concerning the Trinity and creation ex nihilo; and insofar also as Christianity's evangelical vocation requires believers to be able to articulate the inherent rationality of their faith. And high among Christian tradition's most venerable and most indispensable metaphysical commitments is the definition of evil as a steresis agathou or privatio boni, a privation of the good, a purely parasitic corruption of created reality, possessing no essence or nature of its own. "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all" (1 John 1:5); and as he is the source of all things, the fountainhead of being, everything that exists partakes of his goodness and is therefore, in its essence, entirely good.
Evil is born of the will; it consists not in some other separate thing standing alongside the things of creation, but is only a shadow, a turning of the hearts and minds of rational creatures away from the light of God back toward the nothingness from which all things are called. This is not to say that evil is then somehow illusory; it is only to say that evil, rather than being a discrete substance, is instead a kind of ontological wasting disease. Born of nothingness, seated in the rational will that unites material and spiritual creation, it breeds a contagion of nothingness throughout the created order. Death works its ruin in all things, all minds are darkened, all desires are invaded by selfishness, weakness, rapacity, and the libido dominadi -- the lust to dominate -- and thus tend away from the beauty of God indwelling his creatures and toward the deformity of nonbeing. To say otherwise would involve either denying God's transcendence (by suggesting he is not the source of all being) or denying his goodness (by suggesting that good and evil alike participate in the being that flows from him, and that his nature must therefore be beyond the distinction between them).
Hence evil can have no proper role to play in God's determination of himself or purpose for his creatures, even if by economy God can bring good from evil; it can in no way supply any imagined deficiency in God's or creation's goodness; it has no "contribution" to make. Being infinitely sufficient in himself, God has no need of a passage through sin and death to manifest his glory and his creatures, or to join them perfectly to himself, or to elevate their minds to the highest possible vision of the riches of his nature. This is why it is misleading even to say ... that the drama of fall and redemption will make the final state of things more glorious than it might otherwise have been. There is a precedent for such a view in Catholic tradition, admittedly -- even Aquinas seems perhaps to grant that it might be so -- but the idea is incoherent. It would entail the conclusion either that there are certain ends that God can accomplish in his creatures only by way of evil (which grants evil substance and makes God its cause) or that God chooses to reward transgression with greater blessing as a demonstration of his sovereignty (which means that he is unjust or that his righteousness is divided against itself or that his original prohibition of sin was a kind of lie; and perhaps also means that evil is something real that he confronts and to which he reacts like a finite subject). No less metaphysically confused -- though immeasurably more disconcerting -- is the suggestion ... that God requires suffering and death to reveal certain of his attributes, which is false for much the same reasons. (And, surely, one should really say that it is precisely sin, suffering, and death that blind us to God's true nature.)
Intimately associated with the doctrine of the privatio boni is the equally necessary doctrine of divine apatheia or impassibility, the teaching that God is, in his nature, impervious to any external force of change -- any pathos or affect -- and is free of all reactive or changing emotions. This teaching has never, it must be stressed, denied the full reality of Christ's suffering on the cross: inasmuch there is but one Person or hypostasis in Christ, God the Word has experienced pain and death in their fullest depth. The teaching merely affirms two logically necessary truths. First, that susceptibility to suffering (which is a limitation, not a capacity) is a natural property of Christ's humanity, not his divinity, which fact does not in any fashion endanger the unity of Christ (since it is not one's "nature" that is the subject of any experience, but one's person, and so logically it is indeed the divine Word who suffered). And, second, that the experience of the cross does not alter or "improve" or "add" to the infinite God: he did not need to learn to love us, and suffering and death are privations of reality, not "new realities" of which God needs to be "apprised."
Some theologians ... have wished at times to reject apatheia as an alien import from Greek metaphysics. But it is not, I would assert, a negotiable doctrine: the very rationality of the gospel requires it. This is not to ignore the anxiety that the word "impassibility" can occasion; for some, it seems to suggest a God who is "unfeeling" (in the colloquial sense) and therefore "uncaring." And obviously it is difficult for us to avoid imagining God in terms of finite psychological subjectivity, and so thinking of him as someone who "experiences" a reality set over against him, and therefore knows things by way of contrasts and limits. When we allow this habit of thought to become something like an intellectual conviction, however, we become guilty of both an infantile anthropomorphism and a philosophical catachresis. This is especially true when we think of God as requiring "passions" to love us, as loving us "responsively," as indeed "needing" us. No doubt such language gives us a sense of our own significance, and certainly it accords with our own experiences of love; but it also effectively denies the transcendence of God and the plenitude of his charity. In fact, it dissembles the very nature of love; for love is not -- in its inmost essence -- a reaction. In God, who is its transcendent origin and end, it is the one infinite and changeless act of being that meas all else actual, and is purely positive, sufficient in itself, and without any need of contrariety to be fully vital and creative. As Trinity, god always already possesses the fullness of charity in himself -- difference and regard, feasting and fellowship, perfect delight and perfect rest -- and has no need of any external  pathos to waken or fecundate his love. We are not necessary to him: he is not nourished by our sacrifices or ennobled by our virtues, any more than he is diminished by our sins and sufferings. This is a truth that may not aggrandize us, but it does, more wonderfully, glorify us: for it means that, though he had no need of us, still he loved us when we were not [lovable]. And this is why love, in its divine depth, is apatheia.
The failure to embrace the idea of divine impassibility becomes especially disastrous for Christians when it causes them to think of the crucifixion as an event in the genesis of God's personality, a trial through which he passed as our fellow sufferer so that he could achieve in himself the perfection of self-abandoning love.  At its most vulgar, this way of thinking implies that God took our suffering into himself as something that changed or enlarged his knowledge of us, and it implies also that on the cross he had to learn the extent of our suffering: now, perhaps, he understands what we must endure. This is simply nonsense. It is a logical absurdity simultaneously to assert that God is the source of all that is and that God can "become" something more or other than he previously was. To suggest that God becomes the God he is by suffering passions, according to encounters with other tragic realities (even if he creates those realities), is to trade in mythology, to preach a finite God, one who is no doubt a "supreme being" but not the source of all being. And if God's love were in any sense shaped by sin, suffering, and death, then sin, suffering, and death would always be in some sense features of who he is. This not only means that evil would be a distinct reality over against God, and God's love something inherently deficient and reactive; it also means that evil would be somehow a part of God, and that goodness would require evil to be good. Such a God could not be love, even if in some sense he should prove to be "loving." Nor would he be the [source of] good as such, nor being as such. He, like us, would be a synthesis of death and life.

My friend recently came to me with a number of difficult questions about God, justice, love, and mercy. A friend of his had undergone and continues to undergo humiliating degradation at the hands of Man's passions and so-called justice. In situations like those, we always have to wonder "Why?" but often to resounding silence. Often neither God nor anyone else offers a response. This question of why suffering is so abundant in the world when God is understood to be so loving and merciful is not one that is about to go away. Indeed, there is no definitive explanation of suffering. Anytime someone might try to write or fashion a reasoned explanation of pain and suffereing, these answers never quite hold up in the face of chronic suffering itself (read C.S. Lewis' The Problem of Pain back to back with his A Grief Observed for a perfect example of this juxtaposition).
And I'm no different. There are points I may find the existence of suffering reasonable, yet I cannot cope with it emotionally. At other times I may be able to resign my emotions to the presence of it, but I lack the reasoning to comprehend it. Bottom line, when I really face the issues of suffering and grief, there's no pat answer I can formulate that's going to always work. I have to accept my limited understanding and continue to trust what has already been proven to me and is continually proven to me in the midst of daily tribulation: that God is indeed loving and merciful, evidenced by the fact that he has given me his Spirit and has striven with me to renew my mind and life daily, helping me to overcome the things of life that have chained me -- whether addiction, obsession, insecurities or anxiety -- and to grow in me the desire to love more, to turn myself outward toward others in the graciousness he has shown me, rather than inward and toward bitterness. These things are a direct result of his activity in my life, and while this constant renewal does not remove me completely from the troubles of this life, I can't help thinking of the treacherous path I was on before he stepped in and gave me a new heart. Had I never received his Spirit, and were I left to my own passions and judgment, I know -- knowing me -- I'd be dead or worse.
So in approaching the topic of suffering in the world God intended for goodness and glory all along, I say up front that my response is not definitive, but merely how I make sense of the issue, though I am only one Christian in a history of billions of believers, many of whom have better addressed this than I ever could. So the dialog does not stop here in this entry. It should go on, with the questions still being raised and the answers still being wrestled with, consulting as we can Christian thinkers throughout the ages.
There are a few things I must first affirm if I'm going to make any sense of suffering in the world:
1. God made everything, and out of his Goodness, he made it good.
2. Humanity, part of that Creation, fell from that goodness and remains fallen.
3. But in fashioning humanity, God created humans in "his image", i.e. in many ways like God, including the facility to decide things. It was by this facility, this choice for evil instead of good, that humanity fell and remains fallen.
4. Because God is love (1 John 4) and loves what he has made, he desires Creation to be redeemed, including humanity (This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. 1 Timothy 2:3-4). In fact, even "the creation waits in eager expectation" for this redemption.

A book I've been reading recently helps me to understand all this a little better, and I'll be drawing from it in order to help me expand on these points.
1. In his book, Tokens of Trust, Rowan Williams makes a good attempt at understanding what it means to say God made everything good out of His goodness. Why has God created us and everything around us? What does he "get out of it?" Could he have insufficiently acted in the creation? (I quote Williams in red.)

God is the unique source of everything. Therefore, there is nothing God is forced to do. There is nothing alongside God, God is never one thing among others. So there can be no question of God having to do anything at all that he doesn't want to do. And because he cannot need anything, because he contains all reality eternally and by nature, the only thing that can 'motivate' his action is simply what he is -- the kind of God he is. What he does shows us what he is.
Put slightly differently, this means that God can't have a selfish agenda, because he can't want anything for himself except to be the way he is. So if the world exists because of his action, the only motivation for this that we can even begin to think of is sheer unselfish love. He wants to give what he is to what isn't him; he wants difference to appear, he wants an Other to receive his joy and delight. He isn't bored and in need of company. He isn't frustrated and in need of help.
I would add to this that God cannot create for need of power, for he is power. Having a world to govern doesn't make him "feel" powerful, because there was no need for him to govern anything to begin with. He governs us because he loves. Furthermore, God doesn't need love, for he is love. (again, 1 John 4th chapter) Williams goes on with this: Some modern thinkers have been very tempted by language that seems to suggest that God is in some way in need of having something else around in order to become more fully himself. And this is tempting because it can sound very chilly if we say that God doesn't 'need' us: surely, when we love and are loved, it matters to know that we are needed. But I think we must face a challenge here; we must get to grips with the idea that we don't 'contribute' anything to God, that God would have been the same God if we had never been created.
This is important because if we say otherwise, then we are trying to fashion God in our image, rather than the way it truly is (God made us in his image). For us to say that God depends on us would be undressing him of divinity, his 'godhood', to make him look and be exactly like us, which he is not. Rather, we are like him in some aspects -- aspects he chose in his love and joy to create us with. But he is always the Creator, and we the created.
The love that God shows in making the world, like the love he shows towards the world once it is created, has no shadow or shred of self-directed purpose in it; it is entirely and unreservedly given for our sake. It is not a concealed way for God to get something out of it for himself, because that would make nonsense of what we believe is God's eternal nature. God is, in simple terms, sublimely and eternally happy to be God, and the fact that this sublime eternal happiness overflows into the act of creation is itself a way of telling us tha tGod is to be trusted absolutely, that God has no private agenda.
It's very difficult for us to get our minds around the idea of unconditional love. This is probably because we so rarely see it being worked out by the humans we encounter. Although it's mostly foreign to us in the human realm, we nevertheless understand that it exists and is possible. God is the epitome of unconditional love. He doesn't owe us anything, and we haven't done anything to earn his love. He made us and He loves us; this is true even if the way we have become goes against his purposes for us. When a person decides to love God back and follow him, I believe they are merely accepting the role they were created to play; it's the most natural thing for them to do, even if their 'human nature' tells them otherwise. You see, our human nature has learned rebellion, so even when faced with what's in our best interest, we're likely to choose what's worse for us. This is evident in the way we eat too much sugar or salt, spend more money than we should, treat others poorly when we've no right to do so, etc. In fact, humans have participated in these forms of rebellion for so long that they have become the norm -- a destructive status quo -- so much so that lately we have to rebel against them to even try to start back on the right track.

This talk of our 'human nature' and our inclination toward rebellion (Christians call this sin or sometimes transgression) is the beginning of discussing points 2 and 4 above. But to be honest, while Christians sometimes use the phrase 'human nature' to describe our rebellion, I think the words are a little misleading. The fact is that God made us human, and God made us our of his goodness. Hence, to suggest that our nature as humans is sinful is a contradiction. We use the phrase 'human nature' simply to try and get at this cycle of rebellion, which we're born into and spend our lives repeating unless God steps in and we turn to him and away from the cycle. Sometimes Christians will use the phrase 'sin nature' or even 'the flesh' to better describe the forces inside us that edge us toward things that ultimately are no good for us, yet we desire them and choose to do them all the same. (I should say that eating too much sugar and salt are only illustrations of something much bigger and uglier; murder, rape, malice, etc. are more along the lines of what we think of as sin.)
But why are we subject to this cycle of rebellion? Why do we -- or how can we, even -- choose to do evil if God created us good out of His goodness? This is part of that recurrent question I mentioned at the beginning of this post. No matter how often and thoroughly we think through the issue, we'll never fully know why or how. With each repetition of the cycle, we're likely to find ourselves asking "Why?"
In his book, Williams puts it like this:
If the action of God is at the heart of everything, very object, every process, what does that imply about suffering and disaster, about cancers and tsunamis? We need to be clear from the start that we are not going to have an answer to this that allows us to sit back and stop worrying, as if we could say, in response to a tsunami or landslip, 'That's all perfectly straightforward and no one need have any doubts or misgivings.' If we got to such a stage, we would have become desensitized to the awful immediacy of pain and grief. We should be valuing human lives and human welfare less than we should. there's something about the very anguish of the questioning that illustrates just how seriously we have learned to take human pain -- and that seriousness is the best witness to the difference that faith makes. No one is dispensable, no one's suffering is insignificant [or] just a statistic.
So an explanation that even hinted that some lives were less important than others would be a betrayal of one of the basi insights of faith. But there are a few things that we can at least bear in mind before we decide that talking about God makes no sense at all in a world of terror and disaster. If God makes a world that is really different from him, a world of interaction and interconnection, this means a world that is capable of change. Different processes flow together, mesh together and make things happen. This is a world in which any event has what is practically an unmeasurable range of causes -- factors that have made it fall out this way rather than that. If these processes were all programmed never to collide with each other in new and changing ways, the world would just be a set of self-contained little clusters of collected phenomena, guaranteed not to change more than a certain amount.

It looks as though the very notion of a coherent universe implies that the processes of change won't always be smooth or gradual; there can be cataclysms, 'violent' moments when the interactions are explosive. At certain temperatures, earthquakes occur and volcanoes erupt; at certain temperatures, ice caps melt. If there were no human beings or other living things around, this would not be a problem. But part of the integrity -- the interconnectedness -- of the world is that its processes have brought life and intelligence into being. The world of natural processes also now includes beings who can think, plan and choose. It's a world in which human beings have freedom about where they choose to live -- and they may opt to live where volcanoes erupt.
Is God to make it impossible for people to live in such places? Or should he always step in with a warning or a miracle when it becomes too dangerous? How bad does it have to be before God steps in? When we get to this point, we may begin to have an inkling that there's something a bit strange about the questions. Would a world with a perpetual safety net really be a world at all, a place with its own integrity and regularity?

Does this mean that God makes a risky world? Clearly yes, as we see it; anything that is less than God is exposed to risk. And God takes the riskiness to an extreme point in making a world in which there will emerge creatures with minds and freedom. But if God were to say, 'I'll pour out on the world every aspect of my life and action except freedom,' that would be a holding back on God's part that suggest a rather unimpressive picture -- a picture of a God who refuses the challenge of real difference at its toughest level. God's purpose in creation is to  bestow as much of his being and life and joy as is possible -- and that includes pouring out his freedom, so that creatures like you and me can live. As the Bible says, creation comes to a sort of climax point when God makes something that reflects him more fully than anything else -- beings capable of choice and of love. This 'image and likeness' of God, as the Bible's first chapter puts it, is on a different level from rest of creation, though still absolutely part of it and its interconnections. And when this happens, the riskiness and uncertainty built into creation also reaches a new level. The threats to security are not only in natural processes but in human choices -- which may be simply stupid or actively hostile to God and to others.
If we were to put it a bit irreverently, the question is whether God is really serious about making a world; because if he is, he will put into it all that he possibly can of his own life without actually pulling it back into himself. So it is appropriate that in the universe there should be beings who show something of God's liberty, God's love, God's ability to make new things and to make relationships.

I really like that last point: that only free beings are capable of relationship. It's only when you and I together agree to it can it be relational and free. This is what Christians have always preached about God: that he isn't looking for mere automatons, robots who obey him because they are programmed to. Rather he seeks relationship with those he loves. In his love, he created us so that our love for him would also be voluntary and not coerced. This is difficult now more than ever given our fallenness, but the capacity for love is still present, and to take it one step further, it's because Christ has shown us that capacity in his life, death and resurrection. This is a crucial point to Christianity specifically, and something we'll have to come back to elaborate on. But for now, I pray this post sheds a little light.

Hi Keith

Well I'm going to break into the discussion here. Your last email was 
helpful. I think if possible we should try and establish some sort of 
discussion rather than me just laying it all out on the table for you digest 
in one sitting. I'll try and address a couple of your questions now and we'll
see how it goes. Don't hold off from asking more questions. (I'm writing this
in G-mail because we both use it and I can save if needed.)

Here are the questions you asked:

1. Why should I believe in the Christian God rather than the other "gods" in religion
2. How can we know the Bible is inspired and preserved by God?
3. How is Christianity right over all other religions?
4. Can all other religions be proved false?
5. Why should we believe in a God at all?

I think perhaps the most basic question is the last one, so that's the one I'm going to break into first. Let me say that I think in 20th century American Christianity, and in the last 10-20 years especially, there has been a big push to defend the faith against those who would say its claims are historically unreliable. Hence you've surely seen the large number of books written in favor the the faith's historical reliability, and and have heard phrases like "A faith based on facts" that have sprung up everywhere. Now what I think gets misunderstood sometimes through such a push and the use of words like "facts" is that, ultimately, Christianity, like any religion, is a matter of faith, not facts like we understand scientific fact. While indeed Christianity is a reasonable religion and one needn't forfeit every bit of sense he has in order to trust in it's claims (like one need to in, say, Scientology), it is nevertheless a matter of faith and not of empirical or "provable" science.

Now, with that said, it's important also to note that Christianity points to via faith certain "proofs" that a Christian will "see" even if a non-Christian won't, simply because the non-Christian and the Christian don't see with the same eyes. So let's take a look at some of the basic beliefs the Christian faith supposes:
*God exists.
*His created the world, the universe, every existing thing we perceive or don't perceive.
*He is distinct from his creation: it hangs on him but he doesn't hang on it. In other words, were he to "remove his hand" creation would no longer exist. However, creation doesn't hold this power over God (this is in contrast to your pantheist -- or God is Everything -- friend. If God is Everything, that means that he can't exist without it.)
*He interacts with creation and has a purpose for it. In other words he "knows what's best" for it and helps guide it toward his own ends.
*Creation is at points "off-track" with God's purposes. Through arrogance, rebellion, ignorance, and the sin that these things bear, creation, and humanity in particular, have run amok apart from God's purposes.
*In spite of this, God continues to love and interact with creation, and in order to save it from itself, came to interact with it personally through the person of Jesus Christ, and through his death and resurrection we again have access to him that we had been denied on account of our sin.

These are basic tenets of the Christian faith. There are more of course, but I can use these to address at least a few of your questions.

First: God exists. How do Christians (and theists of any religion) know God exists, how do they "see" in ways non-believers can't? Well, again, knowing God exists is not really like knowing my computer exists. I know my computer exists via the senses: I see the computer screen; I feel the keyboard as I type; I hear the computer fan running and the new Radiohead album from the iTunes program; if I wanted to get really intimate with my computer I could even bend in close and start licking or smelling it. This is how I know my computer exists. However, how do you know my computer exists? Have you ever seen my computer? Ever touched it or heard the music from its speakers? Have you ever tasted or stuck your nose on it to smell it? (I really hope not.) Then how really do you know it exists? (Think about that for a minute before reading further; maybe you'll come up with someone I haven't.) Well, for a couple reasons:
1. I told you and you (for our present purposes) trust my testimony. I've given you no reason to think I'm a sick liar who would steer you wrong in an important matter like the existence of computers.
2. You experience the effect of my computer. In other words, right now you're reading an email that I typed on and sent from my very own computer. Therefore you trust that my computer does indeed exist.

Well, believers in God take a similar approach I think. For one, they encounter people they trust who say they've had an encounter with God, who relay the things he's done in their lives and the promises he's made to us, and who invite the would-be believers to join in the experience. If the would-be believers dare, then they too begin to share in the experience because they were willing to trust someone's testimony. Every religion starts out this way. It's how Christianity began: the apostles related their experiences with Christ to the people around them, those people believed, and thus joined in the the discussion, the banquet, the dance (all attempts to describe what life in the community of faith is like).
Secondly, you often hear theists (or believers in a God) talk about how they experience God's effect. You feel the autumn wind in your hair, catch a glimpse of a landscape from atop a mountain, examine the changing of seasons or how life strives, you feel pity and compassion for those who suffer, experience the unwarranted kindness of a total stranger, receive mercy from a friend you've betrayed, experience joy and heartache, sense the sublime, or you witness justice being put into action before your eyes. These are all "effects" that believers may attribute to God. Furthermore, in Christian philosophy there's a line of thought known as "First Things" or "First Cause", which is a position anyone defending his religion against the likes of the "new atheists" will always be working from. The idea is that everything we see, hear, feel, touch, taste, and smell around us are the result of something greater. The universe, the Milky Way, our solar system, our world, our history, even our ability to think and feel, are all the result of God, or the First Cause. Science tells us that the universe had a beginning (and is not eternal as they thought for the first half of the 20th century) and may someday come to an end. This notion of First or Uncaused Cause is our wrestling with the questions that arise when we think about why all "this" is here. Not only what we perceive via the five senses, but also the things we sense to be good and true and judge humanity by: justice, goodness, love, mercy, etc. Furthermore, it's the assertion that humans are more than just a bundle of nerves, that there's a purpose to living beyond survival and pleasure, that these things we value, though we never quite accomplish them, derive from a Source of original goodness, that there's something behind our imperfect notions of Perfection, a Source of perfection, even as we never fully grasp it or understand it, due to our own finiteness. (this last bit about perfection gets into something called the Ontological Argument.)

Now neither of these two "proofs" are proof of God exactly. Rather, they're evidence of God. If you've been accused of a crime, people may bring evidence to the trial in order to try and prove you are guilty or innocent. The evidence sways the jury and judge one way or another, but to actually prove anything, i.e. become absolutely certain beyond the shadow of a doubt that the crime can be laid upon you, well, that doesn't happen as often as we think. Rather, we seek evidence, and if the evidence is strong enough, we conclude that you committed the crime. Faith in God is similar. You can look at and weigh the evidence, but God cannot and will not be proved. Think of the apostles, who claimed to have seen with their own eyes and gone through the excruciating growth of having known Jesus personally; their lives were completely altered ever afterwards; they shaped their entire lives around these things they had come to believe; most of them even were put to death because of it. Now to me, this makes a pretty strong case for their stories. But many people even in their own day didn't believe their words. For them the evidence just wasn't strong enough, or perhaps they weren't even considering the evidence. Maybe they simply wrote the apostles right off as nut job jews or scam artists. This point is that God was leaves every one us of the option of deciding for ourselves.
I said a few sentences back "God cannot and will not be proved." Why not? Well, he cannot be proved because he is outside our realms of science. We can't put him under a microscope or observe him the way we observe the growth of a tree. If he's the Creator and distinct from his creation, then he can't be measured the way we measure the creation. Now I venture to say he will not be proved because God wants a willing faithful. Hebrews 11:6 states: "And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him." Just as you needn't see my computer for yourself to believe it exists, so God knows you can accomplish belief in him without his appearing to him yourself to cast out ever doubtful shadow in your mind. Furthermore, Jesus says in John 20, "'Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.'" I think in order to prepare us to meet him as he really is, God requires a faith that is not bound by the senses, because ultimately (in the end) our encounter with him will not be through the senses but through something else I can't yet define.

Now at this point I'm getting into Christian thought. It's hard not to do because I'm a Christian and that's how I've grown to think. ;) But the evidences for God I laid out above aren't necessarily Christian ideas. They are ideas that have been and are accepted and used by many God-based faiths. Not only Theists (God interacts with the creation) but also Deists (God doesn't interact). The whole First Cause notion was actually first propounded by Aristotle, who lived long before Christianity, but whose thought many Christians have agreed with over the centuries, adapting it to a more Christian understanding. To get to the Christian God we have to go a little deeper, which we will do but not tonight. It's simply too late and this is getting simply too long. I hope it's helped though. To know God one must trust he exists, and that requires a faith that regular means of observation do not provide. God has given us as humans more than just our senses to perceive, and I think he wants us to make use of what he's given us.

Again, write me with anything you want to discuss. I think there are a good many good books written by good thinkers out there that explain much better what I've attempted here, but I've just given it to you as I understand it. (books that might interest you: The Science of God by Alister McGrath; Confessions of St. Augustine [great ancient autobiography of journey into faith - I recommend the Rex Warner translation or the Penguin Classics version.]; Can Man Live Without God by Ravi Zacharias.) If you don't mind, I'd like to post this mail to my blog. I think other people out there, some who read my blog, might be interested in this discussion.

I pray you're well
Derek