Building A Spiritual House Using the Tools of Theology

If you were to decide that you wanted to be a carpenter, you would, hopefully, go find an experienced carpenter, and ask to be apprenticed under them.  We can assume that carpenter would teach you the basics of carpentry i.e. hammer, nails, saws, measuring tapes and so on.  At some point you would become proficient enough for that carpenter to send you to build a house.  Suppose he does just that and gives you squares and levels to go do so.  If those tools are misaligned, it is easy to see how the house you would build wouldn't be plumb, square, or level.  Who would be to blame for this situation?  It would be easy to blame either the apprentice or the master, or even the tools themselves.  As any good carpenter knows though, it is best to pin it on the electrician.  Aside from that, it is often said that it is the poor carpenter that blames his tools.  This is very true.  It is easy to check the accuracy of any layout tool, and possible, in most cases to correct or at least account for these discrepancies.  

But one of the key aspects of being a carpenter is to learn to sense when something is wrong.  “That wall just looks out of plumb, let’s check it.”  “Something’s not right here, grab a different square.”  For the true carpenter, there is not only an ability to build things, but an appreciation for a thing done well.  There is, in essence, a love of the build.  I have seen this in all aspects of carpentry, not just in finish carpentry.  In industrial scaffolding, for example, there is great pride in the building of a structure a hundred feet tall that will support and protect the work and lives of countless other crafts.  There is even greater pride in doing it cleanly, quickly, and safely.  There is beauty in a well-framed soffit, or a perfectly curved wall.  These things are not easy, but they are worth doing, and worth doing well. 

And so, if the house is not built properly, the fault really goes back to both carpenters—in the master for not instilling the value of good carpentry in the apprentice, and in the apprentice for not cultivating his craft. 

Our lives of faith are much the same.  There are many out there who, through no fault of their own, have grown up with very bad theology and bad understandings of God and the Bible.  Their situation is much to be lamented.  Those that taught them poorly are very much at fault for not teaching a better, more holistic understanding of faith.  But the blame does not stop there.  The carpenter cannot blame the tools he was given if he has failed to cultivate a love for the craft which would enable him to sense when something is wrong.  Like the carpenter who investigates a situation which doesn't feel right, we need to cultivate a love for God that enables us to sense when something we have been taught isn't quite right or is often just plain wrong.  Unfortunately what often happens is that people find their spiritual house out of square, and rather than investigating it and determining where it went wrong, and how to make it right, they assume that the whole of faith is wrong and chuck it altogether. 

We are often faced with questions that challenge or contradict our faith.  When we find those questions, it is worth asking, “Is my understanding of the Christian faith to blame for this—is there some place where I have really misunderstood what Christianity is all (or partially) about?”  But rather than checking our tools, that is, our theology, we assume that our theology is in order, continue to build the house out of square, out of plumb, and out of level, and then are surprised when it comes crashing down around us.

Even mediocre theology can answer a lot of questions that arise in our faith journey.  Good theology can answer a lot of questions.  Bad theology can answer all questions, until it stops, at which point we find that it never really answered any.  A good theology is one that listens to the voice of the Bible along with the voices of the saints throughout history, and what we find is that it answers our questions in such a way that our world grows larger, not smaller, and yet allows for the continued questioning and searching that we were in fact designed for.

Couple of random thoughts

God does not baptize our way of life.  It is precisely our way of life and the consequences thereof that God washes away.

There is no need whatsoever for a Christian to be concerned about national security.  Your nation is truly unassailable.  No force on earth or in heaven could ever jeopardize the security of its borders.  Even should Hell itself release all its fury, your nation will stand.  It is crucial to remember that your nation is first and foremost the kingdom of God, and that is where your citizenship truly lies.

Something to keep in mind.

We fail to realize just how deeply the practice of slavery and degradation of women are built into our psyche.  Bending another to our will is the most natural thing in the world.  It is evolutionary.  It is the most powerful rising to the top.  In the same vein, so is the degradation and subjugation of women.  Men are stronger and can force women to do what the man wills.  The Bible was written in and to a world where these values were in full force.  We, on the other hand, are enjoying 2,000 years of fruit of the kingdom of God, which has sought to end both of these.  So the question remains, why didn’t God simply make a law that men are to treat women as equals?

Because the point is not for men to treat women as equals but for men to see women as equals.  

Who created God?

This from Christianitydisproved.com:


It is now up to the Christian to answer the question: Who created God? "Surely, nothing as complex and intricate as a supernatural intelligence can be the result of mere “chance.” Therefore, there must be a super-designer who designed God. But a super-designer [God 1] would require a super-super designer [God 2], and so on ad infinitum … If an orderly universe requires an explanation, the positing of a god does not provide it." (Smith 1989, p.150)
"The reply that God is self-caused (somehow) ... raises the rebuttal: If something can be self-caused, why can't the universe as a whole be the thing that is self-caused?" (Dennett 2006, p.242)

While there is no knockdown argument for or against the existence of God, this particular argument is from all sides, idiotic.  The universe consistently shows us that everything has a cause and effect.  At first glance this would lead to the conclusion/rebuttal above.  Whether or not god exists, both sides of the argument have to agree on at least one particular, namely that god is not part of the natural world the same way a tree is (or a star, or background radiation).  God is by definition supernatural.  This does not mean merely that god is natural plus, but that god does not exist in, nor is god defined by the universe which god created.  The assumption is poorly made here that however god's existence is defined, that existence somehow operates under the same "rules" as the natural universe.
Whether or  not god exists, the understanding of god is that god exists apart from the natural universe and exists outside of time in a way that we are unable to understand.  Words such as "forever" and "eternity" and "pre-existing" are used not because they are good definitions of the supernatural but because they are the closest we can come to understanding what being outside time means.  Most theists would agree that god exists before time.  But this is in itself a metaphor because the word "before" is temporal.  Again, this is the best way of understanding and communicating something that we only understand for fleeting moments.
The point is that whether you say, "If God is self-caused, then the universe could be as well," or, "The universe had to be created, therefore God had to be as well," you have merely committed a non sequitur.
This is of course no argument for the existence of God (though from nothing, nothing comes still is).  But many people are taken in by such foolish arguments.  What must be understood here is that if you make or believe this argument, you are in no way talking about God.  Anselm's definition of God is helpful here: God is "that than which nothing greater cane be conceived."
One more point to be made here:  99% of the time, atheism argues against bad theology, which is good in many respects, since curing bad theology would do the world good regardless.  But the statement, "God is self-caused" is misleading in a weak theology sort of way.  To say God is self-caused is to imply, however subtly, that God was not, then was.  This makes the same mistake mentioned before in that it encapsulates God within time.  It is acceptable to say such things only if we truly understanding that it is merely a simile in that it is like God is self-caused.  This is not remotely the worst theology against which atheism argues, but it is important here.

A more rational argument for atheism is needed.

I have to admit, I think a lot about atheism.  I read a fair amount of articles geared in that direction.  I look at news stories on the subject, listen to podcasts, watch speeches, and occasionally read books.  Okay fine.  The problem I have with them is that none of them (that I have seen) amount to anything more than a straw-man argument.  They argue, without fail, against not only weak theology, but extremely bad theology.  For anyone that considers themselves an atheist, they should stop listening to atheists that write books.  If you really want to make a "rational" decision, spend more time investigating what Christians (and, in all fairness, any religion) really believe.  A good way to do this would be to ask what Christians have historically believed.  By historical, I don't mean within the last hundred years or so, I mean start at the beginning and move towards the present.
This highlights two very important things.  1.  Every "rational argument" against faith has been discussed and shown flawed from a very early stage.  (google "church fathers" if you really want to investigate.) 2.  Much of what we in this day and age call, "Christian" is very far removed from what Christians have traditionally believed and practiced.
Along with these two there is the realization that though many of the surface characteristics and beliefs are similar, the underlying beliefs, understandings, and rationale are often very different.
There are many reasons to be an atheist, I suppose.  The intellectual garbage that is produced at the forefront of the movement doesn't even recognize good scholarship, let alone rational discussion and thought.  Do yourself a favor and take your life seriously enough to investigate what you are or are not believing.

The Internal Coherence of the Universe

It is a fundamental opinion of scientists (not science itself) that every question in the universe can be answered.  Many scientists take this one step further and assume that all such questions will be answered.  Whether or not this is true is not truly the point, though I think on some level it may be true, at least within certain bounds.  But many scientists assume that if they can in fact explain everything, this will prove that there is no god.  To work under such a belief, you have to start from the perspective that, "there is no god."  It is important to note here that by god I mean any god, Judeo-Christian, Hindu, Pagan, Muslim, Deist, etc.
There is a broad but simple problem with this assertion.  If science has explained everything, what does that say about "god"?  It says nothing.  All it actually says is that the universe is internally coherent and the different pieces all work together.  There is an assumption made by some atheist scientists that if there is no need for god to fill in the gaps, then god must not exist.
This itself works off of an assumption about who god is.  It is to assume that god, whatever god is, is not competent enough to make an internally coherent universe, that there must be some point at which god says, "Magic! It works now, I couldn't figure out any other way to make this happen."  This is of course ridiculous, because if there is a god who is powerful enough to create everything that is, then it is a small leap to assume that god is intelligent enough to make it all work according to the laws of nature that god created.
On either side of the debate is the same faulty assumption--that we can conceive what the universe would look like if we were wrong about whether or not their is a god.  Theists have no idea what the universe would look like if there is no god, and Atheists would have no idea what the picture would be if there was a god.  Atheists say, in effect, "If there was a god that created the universe, this is what it would look like."  Theists, in their turn say, "If there was no god, then none of this could have happened."  Theists are on firmer ground on this point, since we do exist, and the universe could not be much different and still produce "us".  Along this line of Occam's razor, the situation leans hard to the Theist side.
An atheist would argue that if god existed, why would god not leave evidence that proved god's existence?  Why would there be such logical answers that do not involve god?  This is a valid question, but, for the Judeo-Christian worldview, this question has been answered thousands of years ago by seemingly ignorant nomads.  It has long been the bedrock of this worldview that God desires human beings to make a choice either for or against God--to love or not to love God.  To create a universe that had no alternative but to believe in God would be to withhold the true possibility of a choice.  It would be easy to argue that nomads had no concept of the knowledge we now possess, but to make such a statement assumes to much.  If God is god, then God would be intelligent enough to know that we would one day discover gravity, DNA, dark matter etc.
This is why fundamental internal coherence of the universe is critical to God's designs.  So for a scientist or other person to observe this coherence and to claim that this proves the non-existence of god is nonsense.
But there is an implied warning to theists in this as well.  It applies particularly to Christians and even more so to the "conservative" types.  The God-of-the-gaps principle that says that certain things will never be explained hangs its hat on a very loose peg.  It assumes that a supposedly omniscient and omnipotent God is incapable of creating a universe that is complete in all its details.  If something that contradicts your assumption is proven true, you have nothing left to base your faith on.  But, if we assume more rightly that we will keep making deeper and deeper discoveries into nature, we will find that this does not disprove the existence of God, but rather magnifies our understanding of God.
In the end, all an atheist can really say about God from science is, "The god in whom I believe could not possibly have created the universe in this way, therefore god must not exist."

Evil

You can quote statistics about how violence is down in schools over the course of history.  While that may be true, we need to notice that the character of the violence has changed dramatically.  Two people getting into an argument of some kind and one of them ending up shot is a very different kind (and in many ways a lesser form) of evil from the randomness of shooting up a classroom of kindergartners.  Perhaps we need to admit, at least on some level, that the Christians are right and that the real problem is within the human heart.  Laws will not fix the problem.  Law enforcement will not fix the problem.  Armies will not fix the problem.
Love is the most potent arrow to strike the heart.  In wounding it heals.  In tearing it makes whole.  In destroying it rebuilds.  There is only one who can fire such an arrow.
What we need to realize is that the darkness that repulses us in others is the same darkness that resides within us.  It is the darkness that refuses to welcome the light and chooses instead to become its own light, its own guide.  Such a light is darkness indeed!  If we recognize the darkness within ourselves, we can love when faced with the darkness of others.  This is the beginning of the solution.  The end is to step into the light that is light and chases all of our dark corners away.  It searches the house for every corner of darkness and removes it entirely.
God grant us light, love, and healing.  Give us all the humility to turn to you so that we may have our dark places brought to light so that we may live in your peace.  Amen.