Suppose you painted a great painting and put it up in an art gallery for all to see, and then stood by your painting to hear what people might say about it. And standing there, you overhear things like, “Wow! what a great painting.” That would be nice, right? Except when you smile and say, “I painted that you know,” the viewers look at you and say, “Well, so what? It’s the painting that’s important, not the artist! Haven’t you read Keats?”

When old age shall this generation waste, 
        Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe 
    Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st, 
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” - that is all 
        Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

Well, perhaps. After all, the art remains when we are dead and gone. But still it might make you a bit angry, wouldn’t it? You would have a right to be acknowledged as the artist. But don’t think I’m talking about pride and ego here, although with human beings that may very well be why an artist would be upset. Ask the artist and he is likely to tell you it’s more than ego and pride; the artist is revealed in his work. How can you separate the two?

For since the creation of the world his invisible attributes - his eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, because they are understood through what has been made. So people are without excuse. (Rom 1:20)

They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creation rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. (Rom 1:25)

So Paul says it - you know the creator through his creation and to worship the thing that was made without acknowledging the maker is wrong. Yet, there are complaints…

If the creation reveals the nature of the creator, and there are things in the creation that are evil, what does that say about the creator? One of the age-old complaints goes something like, “If God is good and created all things, and has the power to control all things, then why is there evil in the world? Either God is not worthy to be worshiped, or He does not exist!” (There! Take that! You silly believers in God.)

But here’s the thing - to say there is evil in the world requires us to first define good and evil. The human-centered assumption (put simplistically) is that good is what makes man happy and evil is what makes man sad. Because man usually suffers in this life, because we face tribulation and discomfort, many will deny the truth of God. But Paul’s argument in Romans says, “You’ve got it all backwards.” Evil is not a creation of God; it is a result of man’s rejection of God:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of people who suppress the truth by their unrighteousness, because what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. (Rom 1:18-19)

I like this translation better than others because it uses “suppress” rather than the more generic “hold” to interpret the Greek word katecho. Our unrighteousness hides the truth about God.

Given that as a premise, the only way to remove all evil in the world would be to remove man from the world. Uh-oh. Ah, but the deniers will claim that since God made us this way (with a choice between good and evil) it’s still God’s fault. He could have made us differently. Sadly, even followers of Jesus can fall into this trap, struggling to understand why, why, why must there be such trouble and tribulation in this life. “If God loves me, why doesn’t He just ‘fix’ everything RIGHT NOW!” That’s a tough one (not really) and a lot of Christians find they can’t get a good answer and fumble about trying to explain things. I like the old catechism “I am here to know, love, and serve God so that I might be happy in the next life,” but it sounds a lot like a rationalization or excuse doesn’t it? Just put up with it so you get to heaven. I would like to suggest that maybe there is more going on here…

Ponder this for a moment: all of this babbling about what God could have done and should have done presumes to know the purpose of God’s creation, and that the purpose was somehow to make things good for us. That’s backwards. Get it? That attitude projects man’s desire onto God and demands that God live up to our expectations. We should instead assume that whatever is the nature of the creation is the very thing God wants revealed. So maybe man’s comfort is not the purpose of this creation, and maybe all this misunderstanding is because we don’t really know the Creator, have not understood His creation and what it reveals.

Back to where I started: You know the artist through His work. If true, then all these things that we complain about should not be covered up, rationalized, or excused, but should be considered part of God’s revelation of Himself. As part of His creation, we are part of His revelation. We express the aspects of God that we call “relationship” and “moral choice” and “creativity” and “love” and so on. The problems of the world are not that God created us wrong, but that we have not lived according to His purposes. We have sought our own way, not His way, and in so doing have got it wrong.

But that’s not the end of the story. The Gospel (in fact all of the Bible) reveals another attribute of God that is rarely acknowledged by the world. Although there is evil in the world, evil is not absolute nor is it permanent. The story of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus is the most dramatic demonstration we have of God’s power. The evil that men intended towards Jesus did not destroy God’s purpose, it led directly to it. God can allow evil, even though He does not desire it, because it is within His power to overcome any and all evil. The ability of God to overcome evil reveals His total power over His creation. Paradoxically, evil must be allowed in order to demonstrate its frailty. Had God not allowed the possibility of man’s error, there would always be the question, “Does God forbid evil because He cannot control it?” The answer to that question is provided in the resurrection of Jesus and in the regeneration of man through the Holy Spirit.

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is God’s power for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For the righteousness of God is revealed in the gospel from faith to faith, just as it is written, “The righteous by faith will live.” (Rom 1:16-17)

When we seek to know God, we must accept that our understanding must ultimately come through revelation. Our faith is sure when we realize that all of human life, even its pain, ultimately reveals God’s glory. The beautiful truth of God’s power to overcome evil gives us a basis for worship. It is a misunderstanding to think that we worship God in order to get something back from God, or that God demands worship because He is a petty tyrant. Worship of God is the natural reaction of man when man understands the revealed truth of God’s nature.

All these things spake Jesus unto the multitude in parables; and without a parable spake he not unto them: That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world. (Mat 13:34-35)

The book for this week is Science’s Blind Spot: The Unseen Religion of Scientific Naturalism by Cornelius G. Hunter. Hunter holds a Ph.D. in biophysics, is a proponent of intelligent design, and has written several books on the subject of evolution. His earlier books are based on some of the latest information on DNA and such, and may be a little difficult for us non-biologists to follow. But this latest book delves into an area that has been interesting to me for many years, namely, the history of ideas and philosophy underlying modern thinking. Why do we believe there is a conflict between science and religion?

It is usually taken for granted today that there is “empirical science” and then there is “dogmatic faith” with the former being more reliable than the latter. Science, we are told, is “fact” while religion is mere “belief without evidence.” Humph. Hunter’s point (and one I agree with totally) is that the current thinking is based on a historical blind spot combined with a lot of unchallenged a priori assumptions about the ultimate nature of reality. Interestingly, as Hunter shows, western science gets its start, not in a rejection of theology, but rather from theology. Surprised? It’s true. I figured that one out some years ago and have written about it from time to time, but Hunter goes into much more detail than I have been able to do on this blog. Consider this:

“Modern science is about four centuries old. The occasion of its birth was more of a change in thinking than a change in technology.” (p. 13)

“One important theological argument for naturalism is that it would be clumsy for God to intervene against nature. God create the universe, so it hardly seems fitting that he would need to intervene in it. A nonintervening God is a greater God.” (p. 20)

As Hunter explains, the 17^th and 18^th century naturalists believed that a perfect God would create a perfect world that would not need continuous intervention in order to work. Thus, knowledge of God could be obtained by studying nature, and, because God was not continuously changing things, we could discover consistent natural laws through empirical observation and reason alone. In other words, because God’s creation is perfect, we don’t need further revelation, or dogmatic adherence to tradition, only science, to understand God’s perfection. Western science gets its start with the ideas that 1) there is a God who created all things, 2) nature is comprehensible because it was designed by a rational being, and 3) the mechanisms that are the basis of physical laws will not suddenly change because of divine intervention (i.e., miracles). Without those assumptions, science can’t get started. If everything in the world moves about because of unseen spiritual influences, you might as well not bother trying to discover the mechanisms of nature. Get the picture?

So what happened? In short, scientists found out that the creation changes! This is the basis of the theory of evolution. Studying fossils, we find that there are species that once existed but no longer exist, and species that arose later and did not exist at an earlier time. Further more, there are parts of physical structures that don’t seem to have much usefulness, leading to the idea that they are a remnant of an evolutionary processes. It seems the divine creator didn’t get things right to begin with, and “it’s a mess out there.” This, of course, seems to deny the assumption of a “perfect creation by a perfect creator.” The result was the abandonment of the idea of a designed universe and eventually the idea of a designer. What many people seem to miss is what Hunter calls “Science’s Blind Spot.”

“But what is right when it comes to design? Is judging what is right in a design merely a scientific exercise?…The modern age has brought with it the requirement that God’s designs must be materially perfect. This was a consistent doctrine of the natural theologians, such as William Paley, and represents an important element of rationalism in modern theology. It seems self-evident to the rationalist that God would have had only material objects when designing the world. He certainly would not have intended a materially inefficient design. Today’s origins debate inherits these ideas…” (p. 107)

Stop and think about this (if you haven’t done so before) because IT IS VERY IMPORTANT. We were all indoctrinated into this “humanist-rationalist-materialist” premise from our earliest childhood without even realizing that it contains an assumption about God, man, and nature. Namely, the assumptions of materialism and an anthropocentric world view. In other words, “perfection” is considered to be whatever makes material life easy and good for man. (For some of us, like me, the indoctrination didn’t work…) However, all the arguments over origins, naturalism, materialism, etc., evaporate when you turn around your premises and look at things with a theocentric (God centered) view of things.

I’ll stop there with Hunter’s analysis because I want to go in a slightly different direction here. First, a little of my own, confused, background. I started out studying music composition but then switched and became a professional computer programmer. That is surprising to a lot of people because these two activities appear to have little in common. In some ways, music composition and computer programming are similar. Both require creating complex structures of interacting parts and an attention to small details within a large, abstract structure. But, beyond that similarity, they have very little in common.

A computer program is an automaton, mechanistic and precise. It is “binary” and either works or doesn’t. The microprocessor will gladly execute a meaningless series of instructions without complaint, and there is no moral or aesthetic decision involved. Or, as programmers say, “garbage in, garbage out.” In contrast, a musical composition “works” when it expresses something. It doesn’t have to follow any hard and fast rules, and composers often make up the rules of the composition as they go. As long as the result is internally consistent, and expresses what the composer desires, it is correct.

Let me put it another way…

A working computer program relies on precise expression of an algorithm. A piece of music relies on ambiguity to create a sense of motion. Both harmony and dissonance are required, and an important aspect of music is expressed as “varied repetition and repetitious variety.” The same is true of all art, including painting, photography, dance, drama, and poetry. The visual arts rely on shades of contrast of light and dark. Poetry relies on the ambiguity of words to create simile, metaphor, metonymy, and other figures of speech. Hyperbole and sarcasm are just as important as literal statements.

When I read the Bible I see that it is filled with poetics, not science. The teachings of Jesus are often in the form of parables, and also include puns, double entendre, hyperbole and sarcasm. If you try to read the words of Jesus in a strict, literal fashion, you will miss the meaning entirely.

And the disciples came, and said unto him, Why speakest thou unto them in parables? He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given. For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath. Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand. And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive: For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them. But blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear. (Mat 13:10-16)

Sayings such as these irritate many people. They can’t believe that a good God would hide something from them. Man’s ego is so arrogant that he thinks God must do things the way man wants, or God does not exist at all. At the very least, they say, the God of the Bible is not worthy of worship and they create a God more suitable to man. But God’s revelation is that the problem with man is man’s rebellious nature. The only way to correct the problem in man is to get us to stop rebelling and do it God’s way. He speaks in parables so that only those who truly seek Him and are willing to submit to His way will know Him.

The complaints against God in the modern world can be summed up with “God is not a very good humanist, engineer and scientist.” He didn’t create a world that makes everything nice and easy for us humans. But stop and consider what that might mean. If God’s creation is a revelation, then perhaps it is a “poetic” expression rather than a rational syllogism. Variation, conflict, ambiguity, etc., are the elements of drama. We should view the world we live in as an allegory, not a machine, and God as the consummate poet who uses dynamic mechanisms to express the totality of His being in a manner we can observe. So long, that is, as we have eyes to see and ears to hear. We must stop thinking in terms of the self and what we want God to be, and start thinking in terms of God and what He intends man to be. So, stop assuming you know how God should have constructed the universe and learn to read the poetry of His expression.

God saw all that he had made and it was very good! (Gen 1:31)

Hmmm… Is it good for you?  Is life Good?

Before you answer, stop and think about why you consider things good, and why you consider things evil. Hmmmm…..

Generally, (that is most of the time) our thoughts are based on interpretation of things from a “ME first” attitude, and, consequently, we categorize things as good or evil based on how it affects ME, or perhaps in terms of how it affects the other MEs in the world. The (so-called) GOOD LIFE is one of luxury, plenty, safety, pleasure, etc., etc., etc. Natural disasters that damage and destroy the things we created are considered bad. So, man says, God must be wrong. It isn’t all “very good” at all. Things happen that don’t suit the desires, attitudes, want-this-want-that goals of human existence.

On top of all that, the other MEs out there tend to be a problem as well! My desire and their desires don’t always synchronize into some harmonious mutual understanding and lovey-dovey, (why can’t we all get along) relationship. And from the standpoint of the ME, this is not good. But from the standpoint of THEM, it maybe is good. So, isn’t all value “relative” (as people like to say) and, therefore, after all, there really isn’t any good or bad in some absolute terms, only what you want and what I want, and what he wants, and what she wants, etc., etc., etc.

So, there you go. If what is good is defined only by the ME, without reference to some absolute, there is also no good, and no evil, just confusion and contention between multiple self-serving, independent beings. When considered in a totality, it’s all fake, and good and bad is just wishful thinking by bunches of randomly occurring molecular aggregates all banging each other in an attempt to insure self-survival and get the good life.

And so, people say God was wrong. It’s not all very good. Or, God doesn’t exist, because if He did exist He wouldn’t make a world where I don’t get what I WANT.

Now, back up a minute here. This whole idea of things being good or evil only works, can only be thought of as important, if we first assign some value to human existence. Get it? We believe we ought to have good (and not evil) because we consider our existence highly valuable. In other words, if a being has no value, it makes no matter at all if good things or bad things happen to it. (Yep.)  No? Well, is it evil if a rock gets smashed and broken into thousands of little pieces of gravel? Huh? If it’s just an ordinary rock, no one would care. If it is some special kind of rock (like a precious jewel) we would probably be upset, but only because we place considerable value on some rocks and not others. OK? No?

Here’s the thing: moral relativism (which is very popular today) is accepted by a bunch of people because they THINK it makes it possible for everyone to get the good life. But it doesn’t work. How can there be good when good is defined in a multitude of ways, from a multitude of perspectives? There cannot, will-not, not-ever-be such a thing. And so we are truly stuck here. The whole idea of the good life only makes sense if there is some reason to assign importance and value to human life. And that requires something greater than ourselves to declare it good. Now do you get it?

When you start with relativistic, humanistic, materialism as an a priori premise, any conclusions you draw concerning the value of human life must of necessity be self-serving and arbitrary. We can claim that murder is wrong because we don’t want to get killed by someone else. But we can equally claim that human life has no more value than a rock and be rational and justified in doing so. Arguendo, both the rock and the man are mere accumulation of matter, arising as a result of random events, and neither has any claim to priority of value. Jumping to the punch line - in an amoral universe, nothing has intrinsic value and the universe does nothing to insure life will continue. It doesn’t care if you live or die, and (more importantly) it doesn’t care if you destroy everyone else to suit your own desires. That’s bad, isn’t it?

On the other hand, if you start with an a priori premise that there is a Creator superior to his creation, you can then assume as a corollary that the Creator has declared human life valuable. We can begin with an absolute statement that “life has value” and derive actual moral principles as a consequence. Murder is evil because it destroys something declared valuable by a being greater than ourselves. Natural disasters are uh.. disastrous precisely because they wreck havoc on something that is intrinsically good. Preservation of life in the form of laws against murder and mayhem is good for the same reason. Morality is no longer a matter of choice, but imperative, and the idea of a good life is a well-defined possibility, not just an arbitrary, wishful thinking, self-serving attitude.

So, wind it back to where we started. You can only have the good life when you start with the idea that there is something about creation that is good and valuable. Unless God declares it good, there is no good. Human life has value because God created it, declared it good, and gave it purpose. QED (as they say).

But there’s the rub (as the saying goes). The good life is only the life that fits the design and purpose of its CREATOR (that would be God) and not the self-serving purposes of the CREATED thing (that would be us). So, I ask you again - is life good?

God considers human life so valuable, with so much potential for good, that He was willing to go to extraordinary lengths to salvage man. (Hint: that’s what the Bible is about - God redeeming His creation that has gone wrong because of the stupidity of man.) We, of course, don’t always get the point that we need salvation. We tend to think God should have just done things OUR way from the beginning. Of course, as brilliantly explained above, that’s not possible because there are a multitude of infinitudes of possible human ideas about just what God should have done to make things good. Turn it around, fellow fools. We don’t have the good life because we are not living the life God intended for us. Something has gone wrong, and it’s not God that is the problem. God is the solution to our problem and trying to get rid of God so we can have the good life is just plain stupid and irrational.

The Good News of the Christian message is that God is seeking to correct what went wrong and to redeem that which has lost its value before it must be destroyed (salt that has lost its savor is just thrown away). The solution God has is to regenerate man through the infusion of a new life which then replaces the old, degenerate life.

“So then from now on we acknowledge no one from an outward human point of view. Even though we have known Christ from such a human point of view, now we do not know him in that way any longer. So then, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; what is old has passed away.  Look, what is new has come! And all these things are from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and who has given us the ministry of reconciliation. In other words, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting people’s trespasses against them, and he has given us the message of reconciliation.” (2Co 5:16-19)

On this day (which happens to be Easter) we remember and celebrate that reconciliation that God provided for us. It is a time to reflect, worship and be grateful that at least we now have a chance at the good life. Not some self-serving, get-it-all-for-me life. God didn’t do it that way, you see? God laid down the most precious thing He had so that we might have a chance. That’s God’s idea of good - sacrifice for the needs of others. So, here’s a thought, maybe the good life is not pleasant, nice things for me, but, rather, the service of good for the benefit of others. Hmmm…. What do you think?

Human life can have value, and be a good life, but only when we recognize our total dependence on the one who created life and declared it very good. That is the “metaphor” I choose to live by. And I have found it to be true in actuality, and a very good thing to have life, indeed.