There are a large number of denominations of churches today that
have a mutual recognition of each other as Christian. I will call this
group of churches “Pauline Christianity” because the basis of their mutual
recognition is an agreement that the teachings of the apostle Paul are
the essence of Christianity. The words of Paul are unusually clear
so that when these words are put first, a harmony of belief becomes possible.
Paul’s message as succinct as possible is this: Our eternal destiny
depends on a relationship with God, but that relationship is impossible
because of sin. So God came to the earth in the man Jesus of Nazareth
so that by the merit of his death and resurrection alone we can repent
of our sins we can make a living relationship with Him, efficacious for
our eternal salvation.
There is however a superficial understanding of “Pauline Christianity”
making it appear ridiculous in the extreme, which goes something like this.
God designed and created man to worship him, so he condemns us to eternal
damnation and suffering when we sin against Him. God gives reprieve
only if we obey the teachings of Paul by accepting salvation through
Jesus Christ. So God gives us this irresistible choice between eternal
bliss in heaven and eternal suffering based simply on whether we believe
in his son Jesus, so only the most foolish attitude of rebellion
stands in the way our salvation.
Before explaining what I believe to be the real message of Christianity
we must first thoroughly explain the why the superficial explanation is
so absurd. First of all the idea of a god that would create beings
for the purpose of worshipping him does not inspire worship. The
god described above sounds just like the worst tyrants in human history,
insanely paranoid about the recognition of his own power and worth.
Even his gesture of magnanimity in offering reprieve to anyone who believes
in his son sounds like the self aggrandizing whim of a tyrant. Second,
assuming the above impression is mistaken and that God is not insane but
truly a loving creator as the Christians claims him to be, why would he
send people to eternal suffering. As a punishment, eternal suffering
makes no sense at all. The purpose of punishment is to modify behavior,
so eternal suffering certainly doesn’t qualify. Is it to satisfy
justice? If so, it would seem to be a justice completely beyond human
comprehension. Justice as people have always understood it, is about
balancing ones actions with the proper consequences. What could any
man do in the few short years of his existence on earth, that justice would
require that to balanced with an eternity of suffering? To make matters
worse, we are not even talking about eternal suffering being deserved by
the worse that man can do, but even the least evil. How does justice
require a man, acknowledged by every man who ever met him to be a good
person, to suffer eternally just to balance a single evil thought he had.
Third, if we assume that somehow this second problem could be resolved,
then what possible difference could believing in Jesus make? If it
is a free gift as Christians claim then why would a loving God hesitate
to distribute it to everyone. Why would the gift be restricted only
to those who have been cowed by the threats of hellfire into doing whatever
the evangelical Christians told them to do? Finally the whole thing
reeks of what we might call intellectual blackmail. It is telling
us that we have to believe or else suffer the direst of consequences.
In fact, that seems to be the only sensible explanation for eternal suffering.
Only a threat of such horrible proportions might make people submit to
the Christian belief system.
It is hard to see how anyone with any degree of intellectual integrity
could fall for what seems like such an obvious attempt at intellectual
blackmail. But the fact of the matter is, that many very intelligent
people with great integrity have joined the ranks of Pauline Christianity.
This is because there is a powerful life changing message in words of Paul
which is nothing like the superficial one above. One of the reasons
it is so difficult to see the real message of Christianity behind this
superficial one is that many in the ranks of “Pauline Christianity” like
this heavy handed approach to evangelism and they lack the intellectual
sophistication to see the difference themselves.
The key to understanding what is wrong with the superficial version
is in the statement of Paul that, salvation cannot come to us by anything
we do. We cannot work our way to God, we cannot think our way to
God, we cannot feel our way to God, and there is no knowledge we can know
or belief that we can believe that will get us past the barrier of sin.
You see, the real message of Christianity is an anti-religious one.
It declares in one sweep that all those religions that seek to bring you
into harmony with God by telling you what to do, to think, to feel or to
believe, are all a deception and a waste of time. Sin and ulterior
motive contaminates everything we do and so none of it can get us closer
to God. The real message of Paul is not something to grasp intellectually,
it is something that must be experienced. There is a point where
people realize that they are seriously flawed because they cannot even
do what they truly understand is right. We cannot even live up to
our own standards. We often come to realize that all our knowledge
and understanding of ourselves and the world doesn’t help us to live up
to our ideals. That is when we begin to grasp the real meaning of
Paul’s message.
God gave us a great gift. He gave us life. But to live
is to be responsible. No one can live for us. We have to do
it ourselves. This means there is a basic reality that if we don’t
do the right things, we will die. Even our parents can do only so
much for us and that is not just due to their limitations but also to the
fact that we are alive. Shall our parents breathe for us, or think
for us. Should they do so even if they could? Well the same
is true for our eternal spiritual life. If we don’t get what we need
to live, then we die. In the case of our spiritual existence, however,
we are eternal. So the death of the spirit is not an ending but an
eternal torment. We need a relationship with God, because He is the
source of spiritual life. Without Him we spiritually stagnate and
die. Sin makes that relationship impossible, because it makes us
false. It makes us so full of ourselves there is no longer any room
for God. Because of sin, when we think of God, it isn’t God we are
thinking of. It isn’t God that we believe in and it isn’t God that
we are talking to. We are so full of lies and wishful thinking that
we are lost in a fantastic delusion of our own making.
“All fall short of the glory of God.” “No one is righteous, not
even one.” The hopeless situation described above applies to everyone.
All the moral differences we see between us, from the mass murderer to
Mother Teresa are ultimately insignificant. They are an accidents
of birth and circumstance. There is no real essential difference
between us that makes one of us better than another. Thus the Christian
reminds himself when he says, “there but for the grace of God go I.”
We all have the spiritual disease called sin that breaks down our moral
fiber bit by bit until it is gone. It is like the law of gravity
when we have nothing to stand on. The farther we fall, the faster
we fall.
The good news of the Gospel is that there is a way to get past the
lies and the delusion to make a relationship with God, that is real.
The death and resurrection of Jesus, the Son of God was a real act of God.
By understanding what Jesus did and why, we can get past the wishful thinking
to the God that is real. It brings home to us in a double blow, how
much God loves us and how much our sin costs. Just knowing what Jesus
did opens the door to making a relationship with the real God. It
is not by knowing that we are saved but by what He did and what He continues
to do in the living relationship we have with Him. That is what so
many Christians have experienced in the words of Paul. That, by the
grace of God alone, they find themselves no longer falling under the relentless
acceleration of sin. They feel themselves to be in the hands of God.
It doesn’t change their moral situation instantaneously. A Christian
doesn’t suddenly become better than other people and may never, in his
life be better than most. But as I said before, all these moral differences
are insignificant anyway.
Most Christians believe that this path to God is the only one, and
that it is only available until the time of our death, because this is
what Paul and rest of the New Testament says. Whether this is absolutely
true or to what extent who can really say? All a Christian can really
say is that the grace of God has changed his life. It doesn’t make
him an expert on God, to say what God can or cannot do. But you can
hardly blame him for holding diligently to the one slender thread which
he has found in the words of Paul and the Bible. Christianity is
rigidly conservative because reliable knowledge is so scarce. People
have often tried to fill in the gaps of knowledge with logic and speculation,
but the result is usually that message of Paul and the source of real spiritual
life is lost. Like the rest of all that man does, the doctrines of
men are contaminated by all the lies and delusions of sin.
All this, of course, presupposes the existence of God. There
seems to be a nearly unbridgable gap between those who have experienced
God and those who have become convinced that that those who do are deluded.
Well suppose that there is no God and no eternal life, what then can we
conclude? Nothing. What are the consequences? Nothing.
If there is no God to dictate what is true or what is right and wrong,
then why should any of us accept the ideas of truth or of right and wrong
dictated by those who don’t believe in God. If we know nothing else,
pragmatism is as good a grasp of truth as any other means, and by pragmatism
alone if the beliefs of Christianity work for us then it is as true as
we can know. But there is one misunderstanding that atheists must
be disabused of. However many people may use the idea God in this
way, God is not simply a means by which some people can claim to be better
than others. The true Christian must know that he is a sinner just
like everyone else and that being saved says nothing about his own merit.
Salvation in the relationship with Jesus is about becoming less full of
oneself and more full of God. It is the opposite of self-righteousness.
The question remains, however, whether the idea of God is reasonable?
In other words, is it compatible with the generally recognizable spectrum
of human experiences. Because if it isn’t, then detractors would
be quite justified in accusing believers of participating in a delusion.
An honest assessment must admit that there are some things which make the
belief in God rather difficult. The two biggest problems may be identified
as the problem of evil and suffering and the scientific theory of evolution.
The first of these is not just a philosophical argument about the logical
contradictions between the various established propositions about the existence
and nature of God and the reality of suffering and evil. It is a
common experience of many believers whose faith is broken or severely shaken
by tragedy. Philosophical arguments are nothing compared to this.
Among the worst such tragedies is the death of a child. There is
no denying that belief in a good and loving God is very difficult when
one is faced with such an experience. There is little or nothing
that the “experts” (like clergy) can say to help either. There is
only the observation that a repudiation of faith doesn’t really make us
feel any better and in fact the opposite seems to be the case. All
I can really say to this most difficult of problems is this; Our
perspective on the tragic events of our lives changes with time and when
the time we are dealing with is an eternity, what seems so devastating
today may not amount to much in the long run. Well, it quite possible
to present the philosophical counter-argument but it doesn’t really do
justice to the real problem, so I think it is a waste of time.
That leaves the second problem: the theory of evolution.
Evolution is not just a theory. It is an easily documented and verifiable
process that occurs in the biological world. The real problem is
what people think it means to philosophy and religion. Many people
see no conflict, but so many do find it difficult to reconcile it with
their beliefs about God, that I find efforts to dismiss the conflict to
be somewhat arrogant. The fact is that the majority of believers
in God find it easier to deny the truth of evolution than to resolve the
conflict. I find it difficult to fault their priorities, because
I can understand that their faith like my own far outweighs some scientific
theory in importance. But I am also a scientist, and my mind cannot
rest with so simple a solution as denial. I believe that the conflict
arises because s of misconceptions on both sides.
We already have an abundance of evidence that the process by which
species generate variation is very intentional and is a carefully restricted
process. Yet a recent PBS presentation of evolution still represents
it as accidental and random. People made the ridiculous comment that
“the only thing going for the AIDS virus is that it copies itself so poorly.”
That is plainly stupid. The technique by which this virus generates
variation is obviously an extremely sophisticated technique for survival.
There is nothing accidental about it. What difference does this misconception
make? It suggests that the whole theory of evolution is nothing more
than the fact that all living things have the capacity for creativity and
learning on a chemical level. The medium and the speed at which it
occurs may be different but it seems to be the same basic process as what
we usually call creativity and learning.
Christians have an image they get from the description of creation
in Genesis, where God creates by His spoken word and where he forms man
out of the clay of the earth. But Genesis was never meant to be anything
like a scientific text. I don’t think it was ever meant to be a detailed
“how to” description of God’s creative technique. I seriously doubt
if it would bother most Christians if addition of details were given (provide
their truth could be established) like (using idle speculation) God’s words
actually being instructions to his angels, or like the clay out of which
he formed man was actually living matter. I can’t really believe
that Christians really think they know how God created things. I
think they are simply careful in guarding the one authoritative source
of knowledge which they have, the Bible.
So what is it about the theory of evolution that is so disturbing to
so many Christians? Well, the theory doesn’t show the role of God
in the creation of the species and by implication suggests that He doesn’t
have a role. This is a fundamental reason, but actually there is
a much more important reason. Many of the ideas rejected by Christianity
are for historical and very pragmatic reasons. In the case of evolution,
it is a fact that early in the 20th century, the theory of evolution became
popular among Christian scholars in the seminaries, and thus among the
clergy. The confidence in the reasoning powers of man was at an all
time high. The confidence in the veracity of the bible fell to its
lowest. Paul’s message became lost. Well throughout Christian
history, whenever the doctrines of man, whether it be the early heresies,
the medieval Catholic church, or a scientific theory, interfere with the
fundamental message of Salvation, Christians will rise up, against the
clergy if they have to, to bring Christianity back to that important truth.
Well once the historical reason is understood, we can go back to the other
one. I think the theory of evolution doesn’t show the role of God
because it is like the sped up motion photography of a plant with
all the action of the human caretakers left out. Living things are
capable of creativity and learning but they don’t live in a vacuum.
The environment with all its teachers, parents, shepherds, breeders, and
farmers is an inseparable part of the creative process in living things.
Christians will all testify to the active everyday involvement of God in
their own lives. I see no way that the facts of evolution can exclude
from the creation of the species the active involvement of the God described
by Christians in these testimonies. Therefore the belief in God as
the creator of all things remains perfectly reasonable. Whether the
majority of Christianity will ever accept the theory of evolution in any
form is another matter upon which I have no comment.