Feeling and Truth

I’ve been reading “Eerdman’s Handbook to the History of Christianity.” It’s a sort of Reader’s Digest condensed book of church history. I’m somewhere into the middle of the fall of the Roman empire now. I have been struck by the fact that even back to the first few centuries after Jesus walked the earth, various groups and factions have been splitting apart and fighting about some major issues and a plethora of minutia, some being of the exact same opinion but battling it out because of semantical disconnects. It’s a wonder that anyone would give Christianity any consideration at all as presented by the church throughout history. We’ve muddied the water with self-serving grabs for influence, power, and money from the beginning. Many, if not most, of our current day notables seem to be doing far more injury to the understanding of God and Jesus than good. Certainly the raving idiots on most of Christian television are by and large an insult to the intelligence of farm animals, let alone people. Even as a Christian myself, I often have to echo the bumper sticker Doug Pinnick displayed in concert (on one of his basses, if I recall correctly): “Jesus, save us from your followers.” And I know I have added to the problem with bigotry birthed from my own blind spots.

Some of the recent commentors have talked about doing good because it’s the right thing to do. I’m left with the question, what makes anything the right thing to do? Kate pointed out that some religion tells folks that killing infidels is the right thing to do. There are countless other less extreme examples that hit much closer to where we live. It seems to me that goodness and/or rightness has to be based in something. There has to be some reference point. It can’t be free floating. Unless you are willing to accept that everything is relative and exact opposites can be right depending on whatever. There are many great minds that argue in this direction.

I for one find this to degenerate into an intellectual dog chasing it’s tail. You can never pin it down. It may be that this is just a part of the human condition. But in Christianity I find a system that from my view is consistent with itself. As per my rant above, I am in no way saying that Christ-ians are consistent with themselves, but the system is with itself. This will probably stir up some ire, so I’ll prepare for the next salvo. But allow me to throw out a few things about my thinking to this point.

Most religious sales pitches, including those for Christianity, focus on felt needs. And as such, many can deliver some kind of balm to people in some kind of need. Community, relationship, and caring are vital parts of any life of faith. And few will ever care what you know until they know you care. Compassion is huge. And anyone who has paid even passing attention to the life of Jesus knows that he was all about it. But any thinking person has to admit that it’s possible to be passionate about something that is not true. Some will chase off after the nature of truth. I’m just going with the simple, straight forward definition: actual vs. fabrication, reality vs. fantasy.

It is difficult if not impossible to glean much truth out of the gobbley gook presented as the face of present day Christianity, or any other system for that matter. There are those who try to throw out the religious and supernatural altogether and place their faith in science. Just last week I caught a snippet of one of the Sunday morning political talk shows and a woman was commenting on the debate about teaching intelligent design in public schools – basically creationism without naming any creator. She said condescendingly, “we have enough trouble in our classrooms without teaching phony science.” Any junior high science student should be able to explain that the scientific method requires two elements: something must be observable and repeatable. Theories must be postulated and then proven. Since any theory of origins can be neither observed nor repeated, an appeal to the scientific method is laughably stupid. Come on people, what do you take us for? TV preachers?! We must observe the way things are, rather than some wildly speculative idea about what they may have been like, to even approach any reasonable support for any theory. Things like the fact that no two different species have ever been observed to be able to reproduce casts grave doubt in my mind about the possibility of evolution. And the entropy I observe in every single thing around me every day of my life tells me that things don’t get better when left alone over time, they always fall apart. (I have personally noted only one exception: dishes will eventually get dry even if you don’t dry them.) And we don’t often hear from the Christian scientists (I don’t mean the C.S. faith, I mean working scientists who are Christians), of whom there are many. Check out the Institute for Creation Research for a doorway into their world.

I could go on here, but my point is that one must live by faith. There is no choice. Our scientists that desperately want evolution to be true bluster on about science as if they are not selling a religion. Okay, so it’s not religion. Point me to one single experiment that shows observability and repeatability.

I was raised in a Christian tradition. It was easy for me to follow along as my family on both sides were believers for generations before me. But there comes a time in every person’s life, or at least there should, when one must ask the question, “is this actually true?” Some would say it doesn’t really matter, Jesus was a good guy and you can’t go wrong emulating his teachings. But the hard reality is that if Jesus wasn’t who he said he was, then he was not a good guy at all. He was a really bad guy. He was a seller of false hope and sent countless thousands on a path of hardship and martyrdom. C.S. Lewis points out that we really have only three choices concerning who Jesus was; either a liar, a lunatic, or the Lord of the universe. The man was way smarter than me. I can’t find a hole in that.

Speaking of C.S. Lewis, it’s unfortunate that the Christians who seem to catch the limelight and sell books and such become popular for the same capricious reasons anyone becomes popular. Our thinkers who really have something intelligent to say are largely ignored, even by most Christians. I often hear in the media about how closed minded and stupid Christians are. Maybe this is your opinion as well. I’ll entertain that after you expose yourself to one of the following:

Josh McDowell, a brilliant intellect, set out to disprove Christianity. In the process, he came to faith and became one of the leading apologists of our day. His “More Than a Carpenter” is written on a popular level and can be read in an hour or two. His two volume set “Evidence That Demands a Verdict” and “More Evidence That Demands a Verdict” is an omnibus of ideas. I mentioned Lewis, the only really famous one. Besides the “Chronicles of Narnia” he wrote some of the most compelling arguments re: Christ ever. Francis Schaeffer and J.P. Moreland will have you running for your thinking cap. A couple of others of note: Ravi Zacharias and Norm Geisler.

What these guys have to say makes sense to me. All the pieces fit. Does this mean living my life is easy? Read a few random entries of this blog and you will know that is not the case. If anything, my faith makes things a good bit messier in the short term. I don’t think you’ll hear that much – doesn’t sell well. But have I found some truth on which to base my life and destiny? You will have to find that out for yourself.