God

Evangelicals and the Problem of Free Will

~ If You Want My Opinion ~ Leave a comment

Having been raised as a Southern Baptist, I was taught from a very early age that the Bible is God’s holy word, that it is infallible, and that it presents humanity with essentially a road map of how to live on earth and how to ensure one’s soul goes to be with God in heaven for all eternity after life on earth is over.  The central truth of the Bible is the work of God’s only son, Jesus, on the cross.  The only source of salvation and forgiveness of sins is through his death and resurrection.  This is still the basic creed of all Christian evangelicals, not just Baptists.  As the Christian fundamentalist movement swept through the South in the 1970s, the dogma became more emphatic, especially the concept of the Bible being inerrant.  I can remember pastors only half-joking when they stood in their pulpits, held the Bible up over their heads, and said, “I believe every word of this book.  Even when it says ‘genuine leather’ on the cover, I believe it!”

Evangelicals believe that God loves his creation and that he also has desires, the strongest of which is for humanity to return his love.  Humans express this love by obeying God’s commandments.  But, above all, humans demonstrate their devotion to God by believing that Jesus is his only son and that accepting his sacrificial death as atonement for their natural sinful state miraculously repairs the fallen relationship with God (Adam, Eve, rotten fruit, etc.).  Again, for evangelicals this part of the plan is crucial.  It is only the cleansing power of the blood of Jesus that can bring God and humanity together, which not only empowers humans to obey God’s commandments but also grants their souls an eternity with Jesus, who is actually God in human form just to complicate matters further.  The alternative is rejecting God and facing an eternity in hell — complete separation from God with a whole lot of torture, anguish, teeth gnashing, ill-tempered serpents, and the like.  God wants humans to love him, and by its very definition, love is something that has to be voluntary.  God doesn’t force humans to love him, which wouldn’t be genuine love.  Humans have the freedom to either love God or reject him, another key component of the whole arrangement.

Another part of the Baptist training was embracing the perfect nature of God.  The Bible is infallible because it is inspired, if not ghost authored, by God himself.  God is omnipotent and omniscient — there is nothing God cannot do, although he certainly elects not to do plenty of things.  All options are open to him.  He knows everything that has ever happened and will happen, past and future.  In fact, everything that happens ultimately conforms to God’s will.  So even the most mortal sins committed by humanity, although contrary to God’s wishes, eventually fold into the greater plan of God for the universe.  God’s will is unavoidable.  When I was growing up, it would have been inconceivable that there could be anything that God didn’t already know.  The evidence for this concept for evangelicals is found in the Bible in Jeremiah 1:5. “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”  Putting aside the fact that this verse refers specifically to the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah, my fellow Baptists cited this verse as proof that God knows individuals, and individual souls, before they are conceived and born.  Remember, time is irrelevant for God. Past, present, and future are all in his command.

Now we come to the problem that is free will.  As stated earlier, evangelicals adhere to the principle that God loves humanity and wants his love returned.  John 3:16 is probably the most important verse in the entire Bible to evangelicals: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”  People are given the option to believe that Jesus is God’s son and that his sacrifice is the source of their salvation and relationship with God. However, it is painfully obvious that millions, if not billions, of people do not accept Jesus as their savior and therefore miss the salvation boat altogether.  Which brings us to the troubling question about the true personality of God.  If indeed God knows everything, and if he is not constrained by time, and if he knows all that is going to happen, then it reasonably follows that he knows which individuals will return his love and which ones will reject him, before they are even born.  Given this premise, it follows that the God who can do anything actually chooses to allow people to be born even though he knows they will ultimately reject him and thus be cursed to an eternity in hell.  Is this lais·sez-faire approach the only means by which God can secure the love of humanity?  Do billions of people have to be cast into hell to gather a minority of people who will love God, accept his gift of salvation, and share eternity with him?

Evangelicals who adopt this paradigm are faced with a God who is at once all-loving while also being extremely negligent of the majority of those he apparently loves.  In the case of humanity’s free will, God is obviously electing not to impose his omnipotence and letting humanity chart its eternal course.  Is this a situation where God is simply choosing not to know something?  Keeping secrets from himself?  If we think about this for more than a minute or two, we must come to terms with a God who is “writing off” a significant portion of the population as damned, when he could have easily spared them an eternity of torment by not allowing them to be born in the first place.  As a father, I would do anything within my power to prevent my son from committing suicide, especially if I could ensure that he had a bright future.  What kind of father would I be if I didn’t attempt to intervene?  Given the same circumstances, most fathers would do the same.  If parents could know, without a shadow of a doubt, that they were going to conceive a child who would suffer horrific pain for an entire lifetime, would they elect to have such a child just for the sake of starting a family?  Are we more compassionate than God?  Free will doesn’t seem like such a valuable gift when we consider the stakes.  If this is God’s plan for getting the love he wants, what does this really tell us about God?  Something’s missing here.  It’s a problem.

God is a Gambler. Who Knew? (Part 1)

~ If You Want My Opinion ~ Leave a comment

For ten years, I taught a freshman course covering the first half of world history as an adjunct instructor at a small public liberal arts college.  I knew that a good portion of my students had been raised in Protestant homes, and most were probably very active in their home churches.  Because so much of early world history ends up being a class in comparative religions, I thought it only fair to give my students the following disclaimer on the first day of class: “I am the college teacher your preacher warned you about.”  I knew that much of what I was going to cover about the origins of the world’s major religions, including Christianity, was going to be met with some resistance.  A few students probably thought I was an agent of Satan.  Having come out of a fundamentalist Christian background (Southern Baptist), I could certainly sympathize with that position.

What I thought would be particularly helpful was to spend quality time talking about a book from the Old Testament in the Bible, the work that is raised to the level of idolatry by so many pastors and their congregants.  By looking at the book as both a work of literature and as holy scripture, I attempted to help them see some basic tenants of their faith from a different angle than what they were exposed to in church.  I hoped to offer a bit more historical context too, helping my students understand the genesis of three of the world’s religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  The book I chose is my favorite of the wisdom literature from the Biblical Hebrew tradition and one that I think is most representative of that tradition.  This book does such a good job of exploring the complexity of the human condition, especially as it is impacted by faith.  The book I selected was Job.

The major reason that Job is such a good book to teach to students who are familiar with Bible stories from church is because it presents all kinds of challenges to the traditional image of God and the accepted nature of God’s relationship to humanity.  Here we have the story the takes off with a discussion between God and Satan about a man named Job.  God is obviously very proud of Job, who seems to be the model of human creation.  In a little chat with Satan, God says, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.”  Of course, this is taken as a direct challenge to God’s adversary, Satan, who claims that Job is such a swell guy only because God is taking very good care of him.  After all, Job is wealthy, has a large family, and performs purification rituals for his family even when he knows of nothing they have done wrong.  He is described as the greatest man among all the people of the region.

So Satan decides to make a little bet with God, just to prove God wrong.  Satan presents God with this challenge concerning Job’s welfare: “Stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face.”  And how does the creator of all the universe, including Job but also Satan and his minions, respond to this challenge?  Does God dismiss it as petty?  Does God make clear to Satan that God doesn’t need to prove anything to anyone?  Well, no.  Essentially God’s response to Satan is, “Oh yea?  Is that what you think?  Fine then!  You’re on!!”  In verse twelve of the Book of Job, we read:  “The Lord said to Satan, ‘Very well, then, everything he has is in your power, but on the man himself do not lay a finger.’”  The deck may be stacked in God’s favor, but still, God apparently likes to play the game!  Who knew?  And, the events that unfold after this exchange between God and Satan present us with a view of the deity that is both unexpected and just a tad disconcerting.

For Me, It Is About Hope.

~ If You Want My Opinion ~ Leave a comment

The focus of Easter for so many Christians is resurrection, atonement, and eternal life.  “Jesus is alive; therefore, I can live forever.”  I don’t know that I can embrace that concept in literal terms anymore, but I do still hold on to hope.  I don’t know what God is or if there is any existence for me after death.  I don’t know if there is anything supernatural to believe in at all.  But I do hold out hope that there is something more to me than body and consciousness; that there is some connection between me and the rest of the universe; that there is some force or intelligence that somehow brings all life together.  I may not know what to believe, but in some ways, I do hope there is something to believe in.