Religion or Relationship?

 I've seen many memes and posts say that the Christian faith isn't about religion, but relationship. I must vehemently disagree. Jesus never spoke against religion. In fact, he fulfilled His religious obligations. Instead, He spoke against empty, legalistic "religion" - itself a vain corruption of the religion God desires.

But to understand the difference, I think it helps to define what religion is. Religion is the organized, corporate, creative response of the community to God's grace. It embraces the love of Christ by reflecting it into the lives of others, especially those in need; and it remembers and proclaims God's story of salvation and our part within it.

Healthy religion is ordained by the Father, empowered by the Holy Spirit, and illuminated by Christ's grace. I pray that all humanity embraces God's invitation to *both* religion *and* relationship with Him.

As the Apostle James once said, "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world," (Jas. 1:27).

#Religion #Faith #Christianity #Jesus #Relationship

The Relationship Between Spirituality and Religion

Every once in a while, I hear someone make the assertion, "I'm not religious, I'm spiritual." I see where they're coming from. The statement is usually uttered by someone who is trying to demonstrate that their faith is a deep component of their personality, and not simply empty, outward tradition or mindless, repetitive action.

But for me, I think the concepts of religion and spirituality only take on meaning when understood together. I don't think a person can have one without the other. While spirituality is the inward change experienced through faith, religion is its outward expression. Both are human responses to God's action in the world (what we refer to as "revelation").

As a hospice chaplain, the analogy I immediately go to describes the difference between grief and mourning. Grief is the inward, emotional and psychological experience of loss. Mourning is its outward expression. Indeed, it's no accident that grief is almost always described as a spiritual experience and mourning usually includes religious ritual.

So when a person tells me, "i'm not religious, I'm spiritual," a number of questions immediately come to mind. If your faith and spirituality are indeed shaping your life and worldview, do they not find expression in every day actions? Do those actions include ritual or repeated expression? If not, do you really have faith or is what you are experiencing just intellectual assent, compartmentalized and far removed from other areas of life? Are you confusing knowledge (gnosis) with faith? Are you allowing your interactions, relationships, and actions (the substance of religion) to be transformed by faith? Can spirituality even be truly transformative without physical expression?

It isn't my intent to judge anyone's faith or spirituality, I just want us (me included) to take a deep look at our assertions and how they actually reflect our lives and practices. Words have different meanings for different people. When we make a claim (often with the implication that our opinion is superior), we should make sure that at most it can hold up to scrutiny, and at the very least, that we are talking about the same things.

#Spirituality #Religion #Faith

Further Thoughts on Faith and Science

After posting "Thoughts on Faith and Science," I received this response, which I thought was worthy of reflection and address:

"You and the article's author are talking about two different things. However, to your point:

'The third is my understanding of miracles. While I don't think it is necessary that most of the miraculous stories in the bible be literally true (and I am not denying their possibility or existence either), I do think that the basic understanding of the Incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ be true in order for Christian faith to maintain any coherence. These miraculous events, if actually breaking any physical laws, would be 'one-off' affairs, meaning they would be non-replicable (sic) and therefore untouchable to scientific investigation.'

This is what makes science and religion completely incompatible. Science encompasses all things and for something to lie outside the realm of science means that they are at odds on a fundamental level. Merely the existence of some supernatural being (and even there, in the very word supernatural, implies incompatibility with natural science) already defies the very idea of science, much less that this being could pass part of itself into an impossible child (for humans) who then subsequently dies and comes back to life with no outside intervention after a much-too-long period of time.

A miracle may be a miracle in the sense that it is impossible to explain by our current understanding or knowledge. This is fine and compatible with science. But if you step outside the realm of science - 'untouchable to scientific investigation' - then that is where you can no longer the idea of a miracle with science. Fundamentally.

You can argue that the incarnation was poetic and metaphorical, that the death was not a death but some coma that was misinterpreted as death, that the resurrection was a recovery from this coma (perhaps with outside aid, despite what the bible says), and I will buy every bit of it. That is completely compatible with science. But to say that it's a 'one-off' and 'untouchable to [science]' is not acceptable to science." - Mr. Chen, Posted on Facebook, September 11, 2015.

Below are my musings in response to the points of contention Mr. Chen brought up:

Thanks for your thoughts Mr. Chen! I apologize for the late reply as I've been pretty swamped with schoolwork recently.

You're right, my response was really more geared toward comments I had seen in the posting from which this article was taken, and not to the article itself. Another poster made a great summery of the article in his comment [posted on Facebook, above these], with which I generally agreed (especially in its application to political ideas).

I've had some time to reflect on your points and they made me realize that my statement that miraculous events are “untouchable to scientific investigation” isn't exactly true. They may not be repeatable in a lab, but they are subject to historical, anthropological, and archaeological investigation, which are still branches of science. I think, then, a reasonable conversation about events like the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus must rest on what we know about these areas.

However, I've also noticed that we're operating on a number of assumptions regarding natural science that we should probably take a look at. First, we are assuming God would need to break the laws of physics in order for these events to happen. This may very well be true, but I wonder if there are other theological interpretations where this isn't necessary. It seems to me that while the standard laws of physics would be largely deterministic in regards to what events are possible, the nature of many quantum events seem to be more probabilistic in nature. This opens some pretty fantastic possibilities for what would still be regarded as natural phenomena. Since I'm not an expert in these areas, these are just my musings as I read more about them, but I find their implications very intriguing for discussions about God or miracles.

I also question your statement that “science encompasses all things.” I would argue that science encompasses our reasonable inferences regarding subjects we can observe. To truly “encompass all things” we must have knowledge of every bit of information in the universe, and I don't think our species will ever make it to that point naturally. I'm not saying that it's impossible, but based on what I currently know, I think we will always have more to discover.

Perhaps the best analogous event to what we are talking about (and to which we can both agree actually happened) is the Big Bang. Again, I am not an expert in this field, so I may very well be off in my understanding of it. However, my understanding is that the current laws of physics break down in the moments immediately following and surrounding the singularity which signaled the beginning of the event. This could have multiple implications. If the laws of physics can break down once, why can they not do it again? One may very well call this event miraculous, for lack of a better term.

The problem is, many Christians are tempted to leave it at that, with a definition of miracles resting in ignorance rather than what we know. To me, the only relevant God is a revealed God. This means that the true importance of any miraculous (or otherwise unexplained) event rests entirely in revelation. For Christians, this revelation rests primarily in the Incarnation and in the experiences of those who wrote scripture. I think such revelations are naturally possible (without breaking any physical laws) since, much like other quantum events, the nature of the mind also appears to be less deterministic and more probabilistic.

Now, I recognize that allowing for the possibility of miracles does not necessarily mean their certainty. This is where I think historical, anthropological, and psychological study becomes important for their investigation. But the purpose of my response here isn't really to delve into their certainty (which would probably take a bunch more posts); it's mostly just to show the reasonableness of their possibility.

Finally, just to address the coma theory. While as possible as just about anything else, even that would be very unlikely. A man who had just been beaten severely, crucified, stabbed in the side, and left for dead in a cave with probably very little oxygen, and no food or water; would be just about as unlikely to get up, go on a walk and talk with people, as one who had actually been dead. Such an event would probably require Divine intervention. :D #science #religion #atheism #christianity #faith

Thoughts on Faith and Science

The paragraphs below consist of my response to an article in the New Yorker titled, “All Scientists Should Be Militant Atheists.” Actually, this is less a response to the article (which advocates for critical thinking, a position with which I heartily agree), and more a response to many of the comments after the article which seemed to defend the position that faith and science are incompatible (a position with which I heartily disagree).

There have been many mainstream and well respected scientists (including physicists) in the past century who have been religious and who still provided valuable and solid scientific insights, including Charles H. Townes (inventor of the laser), Kenneth R. Miller, Tom Mcleigh, Russel Stannard, etc .

I think perhaps the key is avoiding belief in a "god of the gaps," or a definition of God that is defined by what we don't know. Naturally, as scientific knowledge advances, such a god would inevitably retreat. It is this type of god Richard Dawkins argues against in his book, The God Delusion. Ironically, he uses the argument against the "god of the gaps" as an atheist argument, when Christian theologians (Henry Drummond, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, etc.) have argued against such a definition for centuries.

My understanding of God ultimately derives from the Incarnation of Christ, in that His (or Its, for that matter) presence consubstantiates the physical cosmos. This means the presence of God exists in and all around the cosmos, even extending into nothingness (a God who doesn't exist being the same as That which does), both personal and impersonal. In this point of view, deriving better understandings of the natural world through science helps us better understand the workings of Creation. I find no contradiction with this in scripture, primarily for three reasons:

The first is that many of the miraculous stories found in the Bible are best understood poetically, prophetically, and allegorically. This isn't a new or heterodox position, as it was advanced by St. Clement of Alexandria as early as the second century. This means you don't have to believe in literal talking snakes in order to be a Christian. The creation story is best understood as a poetic myth describing the magnificence of God's creation, and the saga of Adam and Eve is best understood as a conflict which is played out in every human being's life, and not just a "first couple." Please understand, I do not use the word "myth" to mean "fable" or "falsehood", but rather "narrative truth communicated through symbolic means." I firmly believe that some truths cannot be communicated literally, and often story is the best way to transcend cultural and linguistic barriers.

The second is in my understanding regarding the nature of scripture itself. Many people confusingly call it the word of God, though this term is reserved in the New Testament only for Christ himself, and their theology often reflects an unintentional conflation of the two. Perhaps a better term for scripture should be "words about God." This means that all scripture, while I believe it is Divinely inspired, useful in a variety of contexts, and a reliable witness to God’s work in the world, is still humanity's response to the revelation of God rooted in the Incarnation. So of course there are textual variances, scribal mistakes, redactions and a variety of genres testifying to the very human need for creative communication (through the use of myth, poetry, song, parable, and symbol) beyond just the rote assertion of historical or scientific facts. This does not diminish the truth found in Christ (at least for the Christian).

The third is my understanding of miracles. While I don't think it is necessary that most of the miraculous stories in the bible be literally true, I do think that the basic understanding of the Incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ be true in order for Christian faith to maintain any coherence. These miraculous events, if actually breaking any physical laws, would be "one-off" affairs, meaning they would be non-replicable and therefore untouchable to scientific investigation. It may even be that they do not “break” physical laws, so much as their unique occurrence means they do not factor into the formulation of physical laws based on observable, repeatable phenomena.

This is where it becomes a matter of faith based on the testimony of the gospels. This should not be confused with "blind belief," which I define as intellectual assent for no reason. Instead, it should be defined as a radical, life-changing trust in Christ that is so essentially transforming to a person and community that they become the Body of Christ participating in the redeeming of the cosmos, today.

The above isn't necessarily meant to convert anyone to my point of view and it touches on a lot of elements that deserve a much more extensive treatment. It is simply meant to demonstrate that a rational, scientifically-minded human being can still exhibit faith in God.

 #science #religion #atheism #christianity #faith

Debate Review 1: Is There a God? - Rick Warren v. Sam Harris

Below are my reactions to the informal debate between Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church and the neuroscientist Sam Harris on Religion and Atheism, which was published back in 2007. This is intended to be the first review in a series of debates between prominent atheists and theists. The link to the debate is below:

Informal Debate on Religion and Atheism Between Rick Warren and Sam Harris, 2007 - via Newsweek

Bridges in the Debate for Mutual Understanding

Hmm, while an interesting debate, I think there are a few valuable take-aways for those reading. First, you'll often find religious debates revolve around the same issues without really moving forward.

For instance, in this debate Sam Harris opens up to an understanding of spirituality that is couched in reason. That's something that both sides should really explore further, as it seems like a great bridge.

Additionally, Rick makes some statements regarding wonder, order, beauty, etc. that would be helpful both when talking about our understanding of the universe, and in the Christian understanding of God. Another bridge.

The Inadequate Treatment of Miracles

However, a number of statements were made (particularly by Rick) that were either unhelpful, in my opinion, or were not unpacked sufficiently. For instance, he appealed to miracles as a reason for faith, but did not address Sam's statistical or cultural concerns surrounding the phenomenon.

It would be helpful if miracles were explained in their theological and phenomenological sense: If miracles are (or were) real, then they have been directed by the Deity. If they have been directed by the Deity, then they were performed within that particular cultural context (time, place, etc.) for a reason, presumably as part of some greater story. And, if they occurred for a particular place and time, then they are not repeatable.

This is relevant, as it makes them statistically undetectable and experimentally untestable, but not necessarily any less real. They simply move from the realm of the natural sciences to the realm of the social sciences. In this realm, their entire context must be taken into consideration, including the context of the witnesses.

It is still possible that their occurrence is bogus, but it must be recognized as possible that their occurrence isn't. Honestly, when placed in the study of social sciences, even their non-occurrence may mean something theologically relevant.

The Value of Mythic and Poetic Language in Scripture

The problem is that both sides attempt to argue from a natural sciences standpoint. And in this realm, Rick Warren is severely disadvantaged. There are many faithful Christians who believe that Genesis (esp. ch. 1-11) is primarily mythic poetry, that while borrowing from similar tales in other cultures, is still transformed to say something real and true about the relationship between God, humanity and Creation.

It is helpful here to note, that when I use the word "myth," I do not mean the popular understanding of the word as a story that's made up. Instead, myths are generally structured stories which often call on a variety of sources and often are transmitted orally before being written down. Such stories often convey a deeper human truth. It makes sense to me that if God has revealed Himself to humanity through the stories in scripture, then he would use the cultural tools available to both reach as wide an audience as possible and maintain relevance over a long period of time. These tools would include poetry, wisdom sayings, songs, mythic stories, biographies, etc. I see no reason why He would be constrained to modern notions regarding scientific or historic accuracy, as these things have not been a major concern for humanity during most of its history.

But Rick doesn't acknowledge this. He simply says he believes in the literal reading of Genesis and doesn't back that claim up in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary.

The Differences Between Faith, Belief, and Dogma

Additionally, Sam seems to understand faith as the opposite of reason, and faith and dogma as equivalent. He questions why God would allow someone, born within a tradition, to be punished for believing that tradition. Rick doesn't challenge him on this, but I will. I would argue that dogma is defined as an immovable position which disregards any subsequent discovery or fact. Faith, on the other hand is much more malleable.

In fact, faith even maintains room for doubt! If you notice, almost every major "hero" of the faith in the OT has doubts at some time or another (Job, Moses, Gideon, Elijah, Jonah, the writers of half the Psalms, etc.). In each case, God never punishes the doubter. Instead, the doubter comes out stronger for the experience.

For the person born in their own tradition, they are not judged because they don't believe in Jesus (especially if they have never encountered Him). They are judged according to how they faithfully adhered to their understanding of goodness. Scripture tells us that every human being betrays that understanding eventually, and that makes our reconciliation with God (through Christ) most necessary.

Faith is better defined then, not as belief in defiance of reason, but instead as trust founded on reason, experience, and revelation. One may question their beliefs continuously, and still remain faithful. In fact, whenever new situations, knowledge, or experiences arise, it makes sense to question our assumptions. And this is absolutely OK, and I would argue, is a sign of wisdom. However, I have still found reason to have faith, and because of this, I will do my best to be faithful.

My Further Thoughts on These Issues

Note: To give a bit of background on my opinion. I am a Christian, and I believe in the God whose attributes include transcendence, imminence, and goodness. I believe God is, and has been, active in the cosmos. And I believe in objective truth. However, I also understand that truth and fact are often different things.

There is allegorical truth, poetic truth, wisdom-truth, ethical truth, etc. But in the realm of fact, there is scientific and historical fact. I do believe truth needs to be informed and understood in terms of scientific and historical fact, but I do not believe that truth needs to rest entirely within the realm of fact.

In my own study, I have come to the conclusion that the bodily resurrection of Jesus fits into the realm of historical and scientific fact, and therefore the theological truths I arrive at are anchored in this. This is rooted in my understanding that the gospel accounts are for the most part reliable, at least in regards to his teaching, miracles, death, and resurrection (a complete analysis of this viewpoint would require its own post). And as a result of this conclusion, my theology rests along the same lines as the rest of orthodox Christianity. However, this does not mean EVERY story in the bible can be treated in the same way, or that every story should be treated as literally, historically accurate.

I think that in order to tell the difference, we use experiential, structural (to the scriptural passage), traditional (contextual), and reasonable (scientific, historical, philosophical) methods to arrive at our conclusions. Because we arrive at different conclusions, theological debate becomes a worthwhile exercise. However, I also believe that such differences of interpretation are not grounds for discrimination or hate, as Jesus' teaching makes clear.

The problem with the above debate is that neither side really devotes sufficient energy to using these methods to arrive at truth. In my final analysis I think Sam did better and "won" the debate. However, even his arguments were insufficient to turn me away from my conclusions. I do not think that this is due to an "unreasonable" attitude on my part.