The past couple of books I have read have brought up the same questions. What can we know and how can we know it? In no way to do I feel qualified or well read enough as to enter into a debate on that subject, but it has me thinking nonetheless. In the fall of 2005 I took a philosophy class at a California community college. I listened for an entire semester as my teacher tried to explain to me why it unreasonable to believe in God. In speaking of the origin of the matter, he argued that it is more likely that matter just appeared, than that a supreme being created it. I remember leaving that semester with two questions. Why do those who claim to not believe in God talk about him so much and what does that say about them/him (I won’t attempt to answer that here)? Also, if indeed our minds can’t grasp the idea of something arriving out of nothing, why is it more logical to believe in the big bang or matter just appearing? Isn’t it pretty apparent that something outside of our understanding must have happened to get us to this point. If that is the case, why is reason even a part of the discussion of God?
In no way am I stating here that I believe I can prove the existence of God. That is not my point. At best, only through an individual’s experience with God or attempting to walk in his ways might one feel compelled to believe for sure that there is a God. I am not here to enter that debate. My point is to ask, is there really a more compelling or reasonable option? One could decide that there is nothing worth believing in. But what good is that?
Lately I’ve been feeling betrayed by reason. I’m not saying that we should become illogical. But reason is a tricky thing. It can protect us from believing wrong or harmful things, but maybe it can also stop us from believing the right things.
Maybe, in this sense, reason is for those who are content. Maybe reason is for those who have stopped dreaming. Maybe reason is for those who have lost creativity, imagination and hope.
In his book “Surprised by Hope”, NT Wright lays out two world views that are prevalent today. The first is what he calls the “Myth of Progress”. Progess says that with advances in science, technology, and education mankind is progressing towards peace and prosperity. This viewpoint popped up around the time of the enlightenment. The problem with progress is that it isn’t happening. The world is still full of evil. Where is the fruit of this “progress”? If studying history has taught us anything it is that mankind fails to learn from its mistakes and is extremely harmful to itself. There is a saying “If you always do what you always did, you always get what you always got.” My pastor Matt says that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting to get a different result.
The second prevalent view is a rebirth of Gnosticism. Gnosticism says that the world we live in is evil. Physical matter is evil and our souls are to escape our imperfect bodies, created by an imperfect God. This attitude has crept into the church. Which views the physical world to be temporary and our souls to be eternal. The problem with this view is that it makes people numb to the problems of today. It leads you to believe nothing really matters.
NT Wright says there is yet a third view, however, offered in the New Testament. “The resurrection of Jesus offers itself, to the student of history or science no less than to the Christian or the theologian, not as an odd event within the world as it is, but as the utterly characteristic, prototypical, and foundational event within the world as it has begun to be. It is not an absurd event within the old world but the symbol and starting point of the new world.”
In Wright’s view, the resurrection opened us to new possibilities. Man is not climbing his way into the light (progress, gnosticism), nor is God pulling man’s soul out of the dark into the light (Christian Gnosticism). In his view, God has begun in Jesus coming down into the dark, enabling us now to live the life of the future (resurrection, spirit). The life of the kingdom. Just as it has begun in the resurrection of Christ so to it will continue in the resurrection of the dead. At that point the new Jerusalem will come down, uniting heaven and earth in a “lasting embrace”.
Now logic would tell us this is just wishful thinking. For certainly no one can be raised from the dead. But maybe more important than what we can know or how we can know it is how do our believes impact us. How do they change they way we live? The choices we make? Maybe it’s better to be a fool who believes there is hope than a genius who wallows in there “reality”. I’m not creating my own reality here, but entering into the reality that God’s claims is possible.
Maybe reason is swallowed up in love. As God said through prophet Isaiah. “Come now, let us reason together,” says the LORD. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.” This statement would have seemed like complete nonsense. How is possible that our sins are going to “white as snow.” But that is what the God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob is like. He intervenes into our reality and changes our paradigms.
Maybe this is a God worth worshipping. As A.W. Tozer once said of the trinity “Let reason kneel in reverence on the outside”
Maybe this is a God worth believing in. A God who is so completely different than anything else presented to us that he is precisely what we need.
May we never be confined by the limits of our understanding. May we never let go of hope for the sake of reason. May we become the kind of people who change the world, not describe it. May we anticipate the marriage of heaven and earth, all the while preparing for the ceremony.
