Christian Democrats in the United States
Conceptual Issues - Science and ReligionEven if the daily mechanics of our clockwork reality exhibit regular behaviors that we call laws, for some reason it is not difficult for most people to imagine that the clockwork was set in motion, even if from outside time, by a creator that we do not claim to fathom, who may continue to exercise a mysterious and boundless will at times within that creation. As for the details, we don't think God or the devil is trying to trick us with dinosaur skeletons or carbon dating formulas. We choose not to debate the literality of the Bible or be drawn into false debates to "prove" the existence of God within limited conceptual systems. God laid forth a world before us, and though we should not allow ourselves to be mesmerized by it, we should learn to appreciate it at every level, but we must let love temper our curiosity.
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Thursday, December 25, 2008
4:10 PM
Christmas in winter is a wonderful time to celebrate, because the birth of Jesus gives us hope that evil and death, cold and darkness will not triumph over our souls.
But if rigorous scientific inquiry suggests that the appearance of the star and Lord's birth occurred in the summer time, then why are we as common Christians not entitled to know the same wisdom as the three magi from the east?
"I will pray to the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, that he may be with you forever, the Spirit of truth, whom the world can't receive; for it doesn't see him, neither knows him. You know him, for he lives with you, and will be in you." -John 14:16-17
How do we know truth? Is it only what we say to ourselves over and over, or read over and over, even in the Bible? No:
"In praying, don't use vain repetitions, as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard for their much speaking." -Matthew 6:7
In the sense of philosophical or logical symbol truth, we can only reduce "truth" to circular statements of identity, which refer to the statement where you started, or with references to other symbols, which mean something other than where you started. In that sense we can only judge "truth" by whether a statement agrees with or contradicts a set of assumptions.
Postmodernist thought argues that because of our human inability to verbalize or conceptualize it with a limited set of symbols, therefore there is no universal truth. But that assertion is limited by the set of symbols, so it cannot be true.
So what is truth?
Truth is a spirit, a living force that we allow to thrive in our minds. Are you capable of inviting the Spirit of Truth to live in you, and to allow it to challenge the things that you think and hear and say?
"However when he, the Spirit of truth, has come, he will guide you into all truth, for he will not speak from himself; but whatever he hears, he will speak. He will declare to you things that are coming." -John 16:13
Keep in mind that even our monthly calendar is only an invention of the Roman state, which was forced upon the world well after Christ's first mission. There is nothing inherent in the world which dictates the numbers of days and names of months. These are abstractions which prove useful but which exist only in our minds.
How many things do you depend on that are only ideas, but do not have any existence in reality other than what we make of them?
Have you challenged yourself to allow the spirit of truth to question all of your beliefs, to see which ones are left?
Or are you scared that when you do so, that you will no longer believe in God and Christ? If you are scared of this, then I challenge you, that you never really believed it was true in the first place.
Perhaps your idea of God is in fact only a construction, an assumption to make the world more intelligible and less scary. However, even if that is true, about ideas of God being invented, false or wrong, it does not mean that God does not exist in an objective sense.
The spirit of truth has kindly destroyed all of my old selves, occasionally left me struggling to believe even in my own existence, but in the end has by its own presence, a "difficult ally," convinced me that God is not just an idea, not just an abstraction that we lay upon the world in order to make it understandable. The spirit of truth leaves me with the belief that in fact God is real, a personified presence within his own creation, a watcher for the most part though occasionally a mover, and that he gave us his son, whose life we took but could not take, to save us from extinction and damnation.
The spirit of truth leaves me solid in that belief - whether Jesus was born in the summertime or the winter makes no difference.
Unfortunately I am not one of the blessed who can believe without seeing and understand without hearing; the good Lord had to whack me on the head with signs that I cannot explain any other way - and I still refused to accept the reality for many years, because it was too far out of reach of my puny brain. By accepting the spirit of truth, I came to realize the importance of what I saw, clouds in the shape of the Son, singing, in an ornate tunic, perfect and still like a sculpture, and inexplicable.
Merry Christmas. Keep the faith.
Christmas in July?
If Christ really was born in the harvest season, then shouldn't we acknowledge that when celebrating Christmas?Christmas in winter is a wonderful time to celebrate, because the birth of Jesus gives us hope that evil and death, cold and darkness will not triumph over our souls.
But if rigorous scientific inquiry suggests that the appearance of the star and Lord's birth occurred in the summer time, then why are we as common Christians not entitled to know the same wisdom as the three magi from the east?
"I will pray to the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, that he may be with you forever, the Spirit of truth, whom the world can't receive; for it doesn't see him, neither knows him. You know him, for he lives with you, and will be in you." -John 14:16-17
How do we know truth? Is it only what we say to ourselves over and over, or read over and over, even in the Bible? No:
"In praying, don't use vain repetitions, as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard for their much speaking." -Matthew 6:7
In the sense of philosophical or logical symbol truth, we can only reduce "truth" to circular statements of identity, which refer to the statement where you started, or with references to other symbols, which mean something other than where you started. In that sense we can only judge "truth" by whether a statement agrees with or contradicts a set of assumptions.
Postmodernist thought argues that because of our human inability to verbalize or conceptualize it with a limited set of symbols, therefore there is no universal truth. But that assertion is limited by the set of symbols, so it cannot be true.
So what is truth?
Truth is a spirit, a living force that we allow to thrive in our minds. Are you capable of inviting the Spirit of Truth to live in you, and to allow it to challenge the things that you think and hear and say?
"However when he, the Spirit of truth, has come, he will guide you into all truth, for he will not speak from himself; but whatever he hears, he will speak. He will declare to you things that are coming." -John 16:13
Keep in mind that even our monthly calendar is only an invention of the Roman state, which was forced upon the world well after Christ's first mission. There is nothing inherent in the world which dictates the numbers of days and names of months. These are abstractions which prove useful but which exist only in our minds.
How many things do you depend on that are only ideas, but do not have any existence in reality other than what we make of them?
Have you challenged yourself to allow the spirit of truth to question all of your beliefs, to see which ones are left?
Or are you scared that when you do so, that you will no longer believe in God and Christ? If you are scared of this, then I challenge you, that you never really believed it was true in the first place.
Perhaps your idea of God is in fact only a construction, an assumption to make the world more intelligible and less scary. However, even if that is true, about ideas of God being invented, false or wrong, it does not mean that God does not exist in an objective sense.
The spirit of truth has kindly destroyed all of my old selves, occasionally left me struggling to believe even in my own existence, but in the end has by its own presence, a "difficult ally," convinced me that God is not just an idea, not just an abstraction that we lay upon the world in order to make it understandable. The spirit of truth leaves me with the belief that in fact God is real, a personified presence within his own creation, a watcher for the most part though occasionally a mover, and that he gave us his son, whose life we took but could not take, to save us from extinction and damnation.
The spirit of truth leaves me solid in that belief - whether Jesus was born in the summertime or the winter makes no difference.
Unfortunately I am not one of the blessed who can believe without seeing and understand without hearing; the good Lord had to whack me on the head with signs that I cannot explain any other way - and I still refused to accept the reality for many years, because it was too far out of reach of my puny brain. By accepting the spirit of truth, I came to realize the importance of what I saw, clouds in the shape of the Son, singing, in an ornate tunic, perfect and still like a sculpture, and inexplicable.
Merry Christmas. Keep the faith.
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