Dear Congregation of our Lord, Jesus Christ,
I have been reading a book called "The Reason for God....Belief in an Age of skepticism" by Timothy Keller. In this book he addresses the toughest issues people have with Christianity. "Science has disproved Christianity." "There can't be just ONE true religion." "How could a Good God Allow suffering?" “How can a loving God send people to Hell?" In Isaiah 45, God says "I bring prosperity and create disaster." How can we believe in such a God? If you have such questions, or know others who raise these kinds of questions, this is an excellent resource.
In this book, Rev. Keller refers to a study which showed that "80 percent of Americans agree with the statement 'an individual should arrive at his or her own religious beliefs independent of any church or synagogue." The author of this study concludes that "the most fundamental belief in American culture is that moral truth is relative to individual consciousness." In other words, whatever each individual decides is right for him or her is ACTUALLY right.
The author goes on to explain how modern science has a great deal in common with magical thinking, and how different that is from the way the ancient world understood reality. "In ancient times it was understood that there was a transcendent moral order outside the self, built into the fabric of the universe. If you violated that (moral order) there were consequences just as severe as if you violated physical reality by placing your hand in a fire."
In the ancient world, wisdom was all about discovering what that reality was, and then shaping your life to fit that reality. Wisdom was understood to be a matter of developing character. One tried to shape his or her desires to fit an unyielding reality.
The modern world has reversed this. "For magic and applied science alike, the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men." "We now seek to control and shape reality to fit our desires."
Have you noticed how often the idea is expressed that if you try hard enough, you can achieve anything you want? So if I try hard enough, I can be the next president. If I try hard enough I can be the next Michael Jordan or Cellist Yo Yo Mah. Nobody believes I can do that...at least you shouldn't. But we maintain the fiction that we can be whatever we want.
A fiction creates an imaginary world. We are adept in creating virtual realities. But just because I can make a computer game in which I can shoot a figure, and he jumps up two seconds later ready to fight again, does not mean that I can shoot someone with a real gun without hurting him or her!
The constant goal of applied science is to figure out how things work, and then to change how they work. If we don't like the way a certain plant or animal grows, we engineer it's DNA or give it a drug. If we don't like the way a certain food affects our bodies, well, there's a pill for that.
Increasingly, the assumption is that you can tinker with the moral universe in the same way. You can actually spend more money than you make. You can practice "safe sex" and there will be no consequences to sexual sin. You don't have to worry about getting pregnant...there is a pill for that. And if you do get pregnant, well, there is a procedure for that. People want to live in a Harry Potter world, where you can wave a magic wand, or say a few magic words, and reality changes!
Now don't get me wrong. I am not against science! I am against a magical approach to science, against "wishful thinking," which promotes the fiction that science eliminates consequences. The point is that science does not eliminate consequences. It simply discovers ways to change the consequences....and sometimes the cure is worse than the problem. A pill does not eliminate consequences....and so you have these commercials that tell us to ask our doctor if pill X is right for you, and by the way, there are a list of side-effects as long as your arm.
Now of course there is a different approach to science that is non-magical. This is more like the ancient world's approach. Let's figure out how things work, and adjust our behavior. Instead of taking pills, lets eat better. Guess what...we can't just figure out more and more clever ways refine fossil fuels...there are consequences. Guess what....you can't just borrow more money to pay your debts. The Harry Potter world is NOT REAL.
I had a conversation recently that illustrates my point. The folks that plow the snow for us here sent a front end loader around to move the big piles of snow out of the way.
I struck up a conversation with the operator...and I said to him, "Be careful...there is a big rock under the snow there." I was thinking..."Be careful, or you will damage your machinery." But he replied "If I move it, I will put it back."
There was a time when Truth was considered a fixed reality. There was a time when morality was considered a fixed absolute. They were thought of as fixed rocks that you plowed around. In much of our culture today, truths are selected like flourishes in a rock garden, decorative stones selected and placed to suit our tastes. And moral principles are mobile...."If I move it, I will put it back...if it suits me."
And astoundingly, God himself is treated that way. The Biblical view of God is of an immovable rock, against which we will smash ourselves to pieces if we do not accommodate ourselves to his presence. The modern view is "If I move him, I will put him back...if and when it suits me." I will remove him from my daily life. If tragedy strikes, I will rail against and unjust God. If a crisis hits, I will pray earnestly for deliverance. And then I will move him out of the way again when the urgency has passed.
God is not seen as the rock of our salvation. Instead, there are multiple deities whom they will place in the rock garden of their souls as strikes their fancy. Bishop Gene Robinson led off the pre-inauguration festivities with a prayer to "the god of multiple understandings." The god of multiple understandings? That is a fictional god. The fiction of our day is that all religions, or lack of religions, are equally good.
Frankly, author Keller I think, idealizes the ancient world a bit, when he credits it with a weightier view of God. I think there was a time between the time of Christ and about the 17th century when there was a weightier view of God in the Western world. But what we see now is really nothing new...it is just the old paganism. The Romans and the Greeks had a pantheon of gods. The cultures surrounding the ancient Israelites had many gods. That is why in Dueteronomy 5 it says, "Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is one," and "You shall have no other gods before me."
There is one God, one Truth, one moral universe. There is only one reality. All other virtual realities are figments our of imagination.
If we commit adultery, steal, lie, hurt people, or are filled with jealousy and greed......we can make it legal, but we can't make it right. We might get everyone to agree that our immoral behavior is perfectly acceptable, but we will not escape the consequences.
"Woe to him who quarrels with his Maker,
to him who is but a potsherd among the potsherds on the ground.
Does the clay say to the potter,
'What are you making?' " Isaiah 45:9
Similarly, just because we no longer have "blue laws" imposing penalties for breaking the Sabbath, that doesn't mean we can ignore the command to come and worship without consequences.
And just because we live in a world where people choose their religions, it doesn't mean that there are no consequences to worshipping false gods.
Through the prophet Isaiah, God said "I am the LORD, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God." And people say things like "I can't believe in a God who allows so much suffering..." as if their declaration actually makes God cease to exist. Now that is magical thinking at its worst. I say the magic words..."I can't believe in God" and poof......God is no longer of any consequence. Really?
Now here is a tremendous irony. The same people who believe that they can control and dictate the consequences of their behavior often do not believe in miracles. I heard it on TV recently in a show called “Eleventh Hour.” The main character, a scientist, is puzzled by the way a little boy suddenly get better. And he says...."It can't be a miracle...there is no such thing." In all fairness to the show, it should be noted that his FBI sidekick entertains the idea that maybe there are such things a miracles.
Many a modern skeptic reads the story of Moses and the burning bush and says... “Hogwash! Can't be true. Everybody knows that if you put fire to a bush, it will burn only so long. The consequence of putting fire to a bush is that it turns to ashes and the fire goes out. No way can you escape that consequence!”
“And no,” the skeptics say, “Jesus could not have walked on the water. We all know the consequences of stepping out onto a lake...you are going down. No, Jesus could not have raised anyone from the dead. No, Jesus could not have arisen from the dead himself. We all know the consequences of dying.....dead is dead, and you can't escape the consequence of mortality. Didn't happen.” So they say.
What's the difference between belief in magic, or wishful thinking, and belief in a miracle? Belief in magic is the belief that I have the power to control cause and effect, that I control the consequences of reality. This creed is expressed by Jiminy Cricket in the Disney’s animation of Pinocchio. (An interesting note in passing.... “Jiminy Cricket” is sanitized swear word.) This worldly remake of Jesus Christ sings a hymn to “fate,” that begins: "When you wish upon a star, makes no difference who you are. Anything your heart desires will come to you." This is a belief in magic.
A belief in a miracle is that God has the power to control cause and effect, that he controls the consequences of reality.
As I said, what an irony. Some people believe that they can control the consequences of the moral universe. But at the same time, many insist that God cannot possibly control the consequences of the world he created.
Reality, of course, does not change on our say so, or our wishes. And the God of the universe does not cease to exist because we prefer to be in the god business ourselves. No one is going to drive God out of business! In Exodus 3, Moses asked, "Who shall I say has sent me?" And the answer is, "Tell them ‘I am’ has sent you.” Whether we like it or not, God exists. Whether I like the way God is running the universe or not is in the last analysis irrelevant. He's in charge, and I better deal with it.
I may not like the fact that some foods I like are not good for me, and that some foods I do not like are good for me. Too bad. Deal with it. I may not like the fact that jumping out of a plane without a parachute is bad for my health. I wish, in fact, that I could fly. Too bad. If someone says, "I can't believe in a world where roads get icy and dangerous and I have to slow down...I'm going to drive as I please." What is your advice? In effect, some say, "If I get drunk, I can't drive safely. But I don't want the world to be that way. I am going to drink and drive. My wanting it to be safe will make it so." To such people we say, "Get real."
So too, we may not like the way God defines right and wrong, good and bad, vice and virtue. But our wanting sin to have no consequences will not make it so. We need to get real.
And whether we like it or not, reality is that only God can change the relationship between cause and effect.
And that is why there is only one way of salvation. That is why Jesus said, "I am” ...notice the echo of the Exodus story.... “I am.....the way, the truth, and the life.” (John 14:6 ...emphasis added)
He does not say, "I am a way, one version of the truth, one of many paths to life."
He says “I am THE way, THE truth, and THE life." (John 14:6 emphasis added)
Why? Because only he is the Son of God. And only God can control the consequences of the universe he has created. The wages of sin is death. That is the consequence. You sin, you die. You die, you face God's judgment.
Grace is a miracle. "The wages of sin is death....but...and this is the miracle.... “the gift of God is eternal life in our Lord Jesus Christ." (Romans 6:23) Only God can help us escape the consequences sin. Only God can forgive sin.
As one songwriter puts it, "It took a miracle to put the stars in place; It took a miracle to hang the world in space. But when he saved my soul, cleansed and made me whole, it took a miracle of love and grace!" (John W. Peterson)
“Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved.” (Acts 16:31) Now that’s a miracle, a miracle of Grace! Pastor Joe Veltman
