Further Thoughts on the Problem of Good

I've had exactly a week since my Enterprise-Record article, "The Problem of Good" appeared, and I'd like to offer a few thoughts in response to my critics.

First of all, I am thankful for those (admittedly few) who responded. I am convinced that solid Christian thought (although my article was really simply "theistic") has nothing to hide, and therefore gains much, from honest engagement. Admittedly, many self-proclaimed religious "thinkers" are embarrassments. On the other hand, judging from some atheists, they have not cornered the market! So my hope is that this open exchange of ideas will prove fruitful.

I should also say something I couldn't include in my 700ish-word ER article: I am convinced that science provides excellent means for us to understand the complex realities of nature. Particularly, Darwin's theory--and subsequent neo-Darwinian evolution--have much to offer. I am thankful to be in serious intellectual interchange over his theories through the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences and Metanexus Institute. I realize that Darwin's theory will continue to produce profound insights, as well as questions, for theists. For what it's worth, in my reading, Darwin himself appears not to have taken his theory toward atheism, but remained something of a deist. In any event, I was highlighting the contradiction that some atheistic scientists find themselves in (namely, that they have no ground for good within their systems of thought).

And this brings me to a central item that has missed the attention of my critics: In the article, I am quoting atheists. Dawkins, Geller, and Weinberg provide the ideas. It is not Augustine, Pascal, and Tillich. In a blog apparently populated by Dawkins's disciples, they pointed to his argument in "The God Delusion" on good. Dawkins does in fact present a kinder, gentler atheism in that book, but without serious philosophical reasoning for his bold assertions. For all his stylistic brilliance, Dawkins most often resorts to name-calling, inuendo, and bullying. (That's probably why the book has sold so well--it fits our zeitgeist.) I find it hard to take him seriously. In philosophy, one cannot put this book in the same work by atheists such as Diderort, D'Allembert, Hume, Nietzsche, Marx, or Russell. Instead, I chose to quote him from the earlier, "River Out of Eden" because he was much more thorough and honest there.

Tanya Heinrich's thoughtful reply, in the previous post, seeks to solve the problem of good by saying essentially that there is no such thing as good. It is a way out of the dilemma. I'm struck that this is so unsatisfying intellectually and ultimately circular. I can say that poetry does not exist, and that it's simply black and white on a page. But where does that leave me? Without the beauty of Shakespeare's or Eliot's words. She does offer that contemporary thinkers--she references Quammen--are seeking to build a new system (which of course has been a project for the past 200 years or so). They haven't convinced me yet that there is a sufficient reason to posit the non-existence of good, meaning, beauty to match the related non-existence of God.

Ms. Henrich's thoughtfulness does escape her when she closes the argument by writing, "There are those who believe that religion and science can co-exist. I am not one of these people. Religion is a crutch that was contrived to control and manipulate people and used in most despicable ways." This is an example of the lack of serious thinking that atheists so often apply to "religion." Can she really be serious that all religion was contrived to manipulate people? The assertion is so broad as to be either easily falsified (select one religious tradition that was not contrived to manipulate--easy) or as to have no actual explanatory power.

There is much more to say, but in this post, I'll close in with this: I am seeking to take atheists seriously by looking at the import of their words. When I do, I see that they come to incredible roadblocks in their theories. Christian theologians have been much more honest about their aporias for centuries, and it's time for the New Atheists not only to know their sparring partners better, but to engage in a higher degree of intellectual rigor.

Response to my article, "The Problem of God"

Dear Rev. Cootsona,

Thank you for your article in the Enterprise Record of March 1, 2008. It prompted this response from me:

The problem of ‘good’ is not insoluble for this atheist. Here’s how I do explain it. Good and evil are simply human contrived words--each being opposed to one another; either word is not a word that describes or fits into the natural world. Evil is a religious word. Better descriptors can be used to describe wasteful destruction, harm, pain, etc, but ‘evil’ connotates a satan or devil. There is no satan or devil.

By contrast, ‘good’ is a word that does not fit in a naturally evolving system of life on the planet. Life evolves in a manner that allows it to be in a constant state of change or flux. How exciting and marvelous is that to know! This makes me want to live forever; there is STILL so much to discover in the natural world. It is all so fabulously interesting! Pitiless indifference but absolutely fascinating nonetheless. I do fully agree with Richard Dawkins.

You might enjoy reading The Reluctant Mr. Darwin, by David Quammen. It gives wonderful insights into the complexities of Darwin’s discoveries of life evolving on the planet.

Humans are a part of the world, not separate from it. We are still animals despite the best efforts to deny this fact. We are certainly unusual animals and in the end may have a history on this planet that is so short (think geologic time) that we will almost be immeasurable, except for the dramatic influences we’ve had on other living systems. It seems that the more we have used technology to improve our lives, the quicker we’ve moved towards eradicating ourselves with the growth of our numbers (heading towards 7 billion and still expanding exponentially), exploiting natural resources, causing species extinctions, altering natural systems, etc.

This atheist finds herself satisfied with the same joy and appreciation of life as any other person might. In fact, I would say, more so, because I hold no falsehoods, belief in mythology or superstitions; nor do I deceive myself or waste time with prayers and activities that do not advance knowledge of the reality of life itself. I do not have to be ‘forgiven’ as I lead a life of consciousness that takes responsibility for my own actions.

There are those who believe that religion and science can co-exist. I am not one of these people. Religion is a crutch that was contrived to control and manipulate people and used in most despicable ways. The fact that religion continues today reminds me that humanity continues to evolve with all the rest of life, but I for one, feel free -- truly free.

Sincerely,
Tanya M. Henrich

The Atheists' Problem of Good

(This essay appeared in Chico's Enterprise-Record over the weekend. I figured that posting it might create some additional public dialogue... for the good.)

The existence of good—and the related realities of meaning, purpose, and beauty—present together an almost insoluble problem for the atheist.

And I didn’t actually have to formulate the problem of good on my own. Prominent atheists have already taken on that task for me. Consider the words of Richard Dawkins, Oxford scientist, and bestselling author of The God Delusion: “In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”

That’s a reasonably bleak portrayal of the universe, and, since we’re part of that universe, of our lives as well. It does, however, correspond perfectly with a basic conviction from Philosophy 101—“nothing comes from nothing.” Start with a purely physical system without any Creator, and all you have is brute fact. If the universe is simply a physical system, then why should something non-physical like good, meaning, purpose, or beauty arise? It cannot. Margaret Geller, formerly an astronomer at Harvard and now with the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, believes that it is pointless to mention purpose in the universe: “Why should it have a point? What point? It’s just a physical system, what point is there?” And, given certain implied metaphysics, she’s right.

There will no be point and no good without something from outside infuses the system with these qualities. The words I’m typing right now have no meaning, no potential goodness or beauty, without the context that words can lead to sentences and thoughts. In the Western cultural tradition, of course, that meaning and goodness have come not from something, but from Someone—a Creator who imbues the physical system with non-physical qualities in the act of creation.

But, of course, the West is gradually moving away from its mooring in creation by a good, meaningful, purposeful, and beautiful Creator. Stephen Weinberg, the Nobel-winning physicist and atheistic scientist, stated this problem very pointedly. As we increase in scientific knowledge, our ability to comprehend its meaning has decreased. “The more the universe seems comprehensible,” Weinberg assets, “the more it also seems pointless.”

Pointless indeed. And why is this not a greater debate with the so-called New Atheism? My doctorate, and subsequent research, engages the dialogue between science and religion. And my very calling as a pastor often evokes the challenge, “How can you believe in a good, almighty God when there’s so much suffering in the world?” Put simply, I am often confronted by the problem of evil.

And there is a problem of evil, to be sure. It remains the greatest argument against belief in God according to no less voice than the great medieval philosopher of religion, Thomas Aquinas. So I agree with Thomas and with the atheists. Nonetheless, when we look not at some abstracted Omnipotence, but at the God revealed in Jesus of Nazareth—a God of suffering, creative, and beautiful love—it begins to look quite different.

That topic, however, is not the focus here. Instead, I am offering a counter-question to the atheists. You show me a world without a Creator, then you also need to provide grounds for the existence of goodness in this world. How do you intend to answer the problem of good in a world without God?

Generally, the response is a bald assertion of human creation—that we supply the qualities lacking in a world devoid of God. Weinberg, when interviewed on his comment about the “pointless” universe, makes this offer: “There is a point that we can give the universe by the way we live, by loving each other, by discovering things about nature, by creating works of art… faced with this unloving, impersonal universe, we make a little island of warmth and love, and science and art, for ourselves—that’s not an entirely despicable a role for us to play.” I find myself sympathetic to his conviction, but I do hear the thud of an unfounded leap of blind faith.

Certainly, from the mouths of atheists, it sounds like the problem of good is insoluble indeed. And I believe it is… without an act of faith. The question is this: Will this faith be reasonable or not?

Henri Nouwen on Compassion

As I prepare to serve with a mission team this week, I am reminded of a quote by the brilliant 20th century writer on Christian spirituality, Henri Nouwen. It goes like this: “Let us not underestimate how hard it is to be compassionate. Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to the place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken. But this is not our spontaneous response to suffering. What we desire most is to do away with suffering by fleeing from it or finding a quick cure for it. As busy, active, relevant ministers, we want to earn our bread by making a real contribution. This means first and foremost doing something to show that our presence makes a difference. And so we ignore our greatest gift, which is our ability to enter into solidarity with those who suffer. Those who can sit in silence with their fellowman, not knowing what to say but knowing that they should be there, can bring new life in a dying heart. Those who are not afraid to hold a hand in gratitude, to shed tears in grief and to let a sigh of distress arise straight from the heart can break through paralyzing boundaries and witness the birth of a new fellowship, the fellowship of the broken.”

A Brief Reflection on God's Beauty and Glory

In the biblical traditions—despite the variety of perspectives in its various books—there remains a remarkable unity about beauty. It is woven with God’s goodness and most importantly, the divine glory. Beauty does not stand alone and certainly never apart from God as its source.Thus, in the Scirptures, the centrality of God’s glory and the people of the covenant’s call to glorify God. To glorify God is to point to God’s own glory. Divine glory involves God’s very character of holiness, and holiness is first of all God’s otherness because the nature of deity is perfection. God’s holiness thus evokes our awe and praise. In Hebrew and Greek, God’s glory (kabod and doxa) also includes God’s beauty. The Reformation finds God’s glory throughout the deep grammar of Scripture as well as in specific biblical texts. For example, Isaiah 6:1-8 describes the prophet’s famous call; Isaiah finds himself in a divine throne room. YHWH’s presence evokes wonder and fear. Similarly, the Reformed understanding of worship builds on Isaiah 6 as it seeks to evoke God’s majesty and power. The worship service is designed to lead the congregation in glorifying the Lord. In other texts, such as Moses’ experience with YHWH in Exodus 40:34ff., God’s glory even includes a certain luminosity. So glory implies wonder and fear, and the human response to God in worship seeks to mirror this experience.

Lewis, Tolkien, and The Power of Friendship

2007 just ended, and as is my habit, I spent the Christmas and New Year's break reading about one of my mentors. Again it was C.S. Lewis, the eminent 20th medievalist, writer of accessible and popular theology, and--in this case--friend of J.R.R. Tolkien. Alan Jacobs's intellectual biography, "The Narnian," provided the text. I was reminded that, as a new year begins, flourishing as human beings really depends on the quality of our relationships. We don’t even realize our own particular talents until we let others in.

Though Lewis and Tolkien's relationship hit rocks--Tolkien had serious problems with Lewis's popularizing of theology, for example--when their friendship worked, it was powerful. Check out how Lewis influence Tolkien. The latter's The Lord of the Rings remains one of the enduring classic books of our time. In fact, a 1999 Amazon.com customers poll chose it as the greatest book, not just of a mere century, but of the millennium. In case you’ve missed the hype, this fantasy trilogy concerns the small-fry hobbit (a “halfing”), Frodo, and his friend, Sam, who set out to save their age from great evil by destroying the One Ring of Power, created by the evil Lord, Sauron, to enslave all beings. Tolkien began the mythology behind all these 1200+ pages in the foxholes of France as a soldier in World War I. As a professor of English literature (old English—Beowulf, that kind of thing), Tolkien was never a full-time writer, but he gradually and on-the-side created his own legendary world of elves, dwarves, wizards, and orcs. The entire process took almost four decades until the books began being published in 1954. Then another four decades later, the filmmaker and director, Peter Jackson, himself went on an eight-year odyssey to produce his cinematic trilogy. Completed in 2003, the final installment, The Return of the King, alone won an unprecedented eleven Academy Awards, including best picture and best director.

It's a fabulous story. But did you realize that the novel almost never got published in the first place? Tolkien constantly toiled over work. He frequently hit snags in creating his story. At one point, the wizard Gandalf plunges down the cavernous, dank, and dangerous Mines of Moria, and Tolkien didn’t know how to complete the narrative. He broke off writing for an entire year. During this time, he was reading his work to a small group of Oxford intellectual lights called the Inklings, which included Charles Williams (“C.W.” below) and C.S. Lewis (“C.S.L.”). Listen to the description of his struggles in a letter to his son, Christopher Tolkien, "I worked very hard at my chapter—it is very exhausting work; especially as the climax approaches and one has to keep the pitch up: no easy level will do; and there are all sorts of minor problems of plot and mechanism. I wrote and tore up and rewrote most of it a good many times; but I was rewarded this morning as both C.S.L. and C.W. thought it an admirable performance and the latest chapters the best so far."

These two Inklings, Lewis and Williams, provided constant support, and even goading, to Tolkien. His friend Lewis, however, received unique appreciation. In light of Tolkien’s frequent anxiety that anyone would actually enjoy his meandering mythology, he later described the distinctive influence of C.S. Lewis: "The unpayable debt that I owe to him was not 'influence' as it is ordinarily understood, but sheer encouragement. He was for long my only audience. Only from him did I ever get the idea that my 'stuff' could be more than a private hobby."

That phrase, a private hobby astounds me because that “hobby” became the Book of the Millennium! And the story behind the story is the power of friendship and how it motivates and enhances our lives. Friends, at their best, help us move forward. We, of course, are probably not secretly concocting the novel for the next 1000 years. Still we have to ask, How many “private hobbies” do we have, which are currently buried, but simply need a friend’s encouragement?

Parents Who No

I’ve been reworking my book that will be published by Doubleday in January 2009. It’s currently titled “The Power of No,” but that might change. In any event, the essential idea is that strategic No’s safeguard the great Yes’s of life in personal life, work, and relationships. No leads to Yes and thus health, integrity, and true success.

The chapter I’m polishing right is on Parents Who No. Here’s a conviction from that section.

The importance of No relates to a general conviction about parenting: it’s about working yourself out of a job—you’re actually not “raising kids,” but “raising adults.” You want to remember what they will become. I want my children to become honest, faithful, generous, loving, and honest. I want them to feel blessed by me and Laura. As we take in the Yes of what we seek our children to become when they’re mature, we can say No to wanting immature children forever. Put simply, we are called to create children that don’t depend on us for the rest of our lives.

Is that something worth No’ing?

Beauty is Certainly Not Just Skin Deep

Recently, I've reading scientists and theologians on their understandings of the nature of beauty. The similarities--or at least, complementarities--are striking. For this post, I'll just set two quotes side-by-side, first from the eighteenth century pastor and theologian, Jonathan Edwards, and then from the twentieth century scientist, Henri Poincaré:

"For as God is infinitely the greatest being, so he is allowed to be infinitely the most beautiful and excellent: and all the beauty to be found throughout the whole creation is but the reflection of the diffused beams of that Being who hath an infinite fullness of brightness and glory."

"The scientist does not study nature because it is useful to do so. He studies it because he takes pleasure in it; and he takes pleasure in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing and life would not be worth living…. I mean the intimate beauty which comes from the harmonious order of its parts and which a pure intelligence can grasp."

Faith, Works, and the Blades of the Scissors

I'm reading James 2:14-26, which starts with this provocative statement--which frankly challenges my Reformation conviction that we are saved by "faith alone": "What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you?"

As is often the case, I turn to C.S. Lewis, the 20th century Christian writer, who offered a winning analogy: He replies that it’s like asking which blades of a pair of scissors is more necessary. Or, to quote another great Christian writer, Martin Luther, who struggled mightily with the theology, saving faith always includes good works: "O it is a living, busy active mighty thing, this faith. It is impossible for it not to be doing good things incessantly. It does not ask whether good works are to be done, but before the question is asked, it has already done this, and is constantly doing them. Whoever does not do such works, however, is an unbeliever. He gropes and looks around for faith and good works, but knows neither what faith is nor what good works are. Yet he talks and talks, with many good words, about faith and good works."

Spending Some Time with St. Paul

I've been teaching the past five weeks on the Apostle Paul, especially focusing on Romans, Philippians, Galatians, and 1 & 2 Corinthians. I've struggled with any concluding remark that might do him some measure of justice.

Well, I failed at that task, but there is one aspect of his life that struck me--that he loved to be in "partnership (Greek, koinonia) in the gospel" (Philippians 1:5) with all kinds of people--Timothy, Lydia, Epaphroditus, Luke, etc., etc. As the great New Testament commentator, F.F Bruce, put it: Paul loved the "syn" prefix in Greek, which means "with" or "co." So Paul spoke of "co-workers" and "fellow-soldiers."

I wonder: Are we, as Christians in the United States--who prize our individualism--apt to do the same?

Following After Jesus

Sometimes other languages just say it better. When the outstanding 20th century theologian and Christian witness, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, wrote his famous book that we translate “The Cost of Discipleship,” he employed one simple word Nachfolge, which simply means “following after.” In other words, the German language title—and Bonhoeffer’s subsequent words—helped me to see that being a disciple is simply hearing Jesus’s voice and following after him. Following after Jesus… I’ve been pondering those unusual scenes in the Gospels—like Matthew 4—where the Simon and Andrew drop their fishing nets and hear Jesus call them to a new way. “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” So often the puzzle to me has been this: Why did it happen so quickly, and how could they possibly have made that kind of decision so abruptly? Though I suspect the character of Jesus had a lot to do with it, I now think I may be missing the central affirmation: They decided to follow after Jesus. That’s what it means to hear his call and to be his disciple. I’m not sure things have really changed much...

On Thomas and the Worth of Proving God's Existence

I've been reading Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologiae with some worthy interlocutors, and we've come to Thomas's famous Five Ways in which he seeks to establish the rationality of God's existence. He asserts that, if follow what we know about creation, we can establish the existence of a Creator. He finds a biblical warrant for this endeavor in Paul's words from Romans 1.20, "Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made." Consequently, Thomas seeks to prove that God is the ultimate proper cause of change, the efficient causal series, generation, degrees of being, and order

Good enough, I suppose, although I won't go into the merits (or lacks) or these arguments in this post. But I wonder how important these proofs are. I tend to believe that proofs for God are never decisive for belief--we have faith in God for other reasons. Or to quote Pascal, "The heart has reasons that reason knows nothing of." They never in fact take us to the God who is really worthy of belief, but a First Cause, or a Governor of the Universe. Nonetheless, proofs for God do help us realize that faith is not irrational--or more strongly, that faith is not against reason. With the proper respect for their limitations, proofs of God's existence serve a useful, if not ultimate, function. So I guess that means I'll keep reading Thomas and his Summa.

Lewis's Final Letter

All right, just one more thought on CSL… Interestingly, I’ve also discovered some elements about C.S. Lewis that can only come through letters—an art that’s now lost in a world of email. I’ve found a Lewis that was astoundingly literate and could quote by memory Latin poetry (to those for whom it meant something). I’ve found someone who always crafted sparkling prose even in incidental writing. He carried deeply about great literature, and (now I’m thinking of a recent post) someone who didn’t think of life as rational without remainder. He knew the power of story.

We desperately need that sensitivity to good literature, style, and narrative among Christian writers today. I lament what appears as good writing from Church! And that brings me back to a lament for Lewis: When I arrived at the letters that marked the final weeks of his life, I glimpsed the signs of the end—a failing heart and even, at times, a bit less clarity in that amazingly brilliant mind. And yet I never got the sense that he resisted death or that its foreboding presence embittered him. In fact, his last letter, written the day before he died, he responded to a young reader, Philip Thompson, about latter’s interest in The Magician’s Nephew. “May I congratulate you on writing such a remarkably good letter; I certainly could not have written it at your age.”

J.R.R. Tolkien once remarked that the only reason The Lord of the Rings got published was Lewis’s “sheer encouragement.” And if there’s a magic about Lewis, it was certainly his ability to encourage others in their writing even when his life was coming to a close. The voice still speaks to me.

Walking with St. Clive, Part One

I surprised myself by pursuing one odd habit recently—reading the entire collected corpus of C. S. Lewis’s letters from 1950-1963. Besides noting my own idiosyncrasy, I also realized something in the process of reading these 1500 pages of epistles: I have walked with a mentor through significant events in his life and even with him to his death.

Through these words, I’ve seen him in a remarkable array of situations. To note just a few examples: he became increasingly well-known, perhaps even “famous” (although that definitely happened after he died) as The Chronicles of Narnia saw the light in the early ‘50s. I traveled with him through meeting, then marrying, and then experiencing the death of Joy Davidman. (And, by the way, his famous “crisis of faith” after Joy’s death seems overwrought—he wrote letters replying to various theological and philosophical queries within a couple of days.) And I read his final letter, written the day before he died—a reply to a young reader who had enjoyed Narnia.

Since there’s a fair amount of Lewis worship going on in Christian circles, I probably should add that what becomes clear from these letters the imperfections of Clive Staples Lewis—and that he clearly recognized his flaws. That fact has made the journey with him all the more remarkable. More on that in future posts…

How Doing Good is Good for Us

Here I am again at the University of Pennsylvania for the annual Metanexus Conference on science and religion. This morning I heard several presentations on the nature of altruism and volunteerism and why there are actually health benefits to do good for others. For example, among older adults in one study, mortality dropped by 44% with those who volunteered. In fact, Doug Oman, from U.C. Berkeley (Go Bears!) added this: statistical evidence indicates that, if we are connected to a religious institution, the benefits of volunteering on health are increased. Apparently, doing go for others (i.e., altruism) is actually good for us. It's even better if we do it for God.

What is "Transdisciplinarity"?

I’m currently at the Metanexus Conference at the University of Pennsylvania on “Transdisciplinarity and the Unity of Knowledge” (http://www.metanexus.net/conference2007). To be honest, it’s even exciting. Tonight, Eric Weislogel, Executive Director of Metanexus, began a role call of those present from the 43 countries present that are home to a “local society” (or a grant-funded science-religion dialogue group.) Large delegations stood from the United States (obviously), but also from Germany and (as I remember it) Romania. The most interesting to me was to hear that there are representatives from Tajikistan. By the way, I’m not entirely sure what “Transdisciplinarity” is, but I think it means that we’re looking for a third thing--a tertium quid, as it were--as scientists and theologians dialogue. More to come…

A Summary Statement on The Black Swan

I've been musing about Taleb's book the past few days (probably because a review is due soon for the periodical Books and Culture), and two key words have come to mind: humility and providence.

Now I've already posted about providence: that the concept of the Black Swan--and especially its randomness--may seem to collide directly with the Christian Church's commitment to God controls the world. If the pattern of history makes no sense, then is God really bringing any sense to it? But the doctrine of providence actually does not commit Christians to asserting that we understand history, only that God does. The famous statement from Paul that "God works all things together for good" (Romans 8:28) never goes on to describe how we see God's plan clearly unfold before us. And this brings me to humility. Taleb correctly points out that, in a world of management and scientific predictability, we are blind to the fact that we know so little about the highly improbable events that significantly affect our life and our world. Similarly humility before God's will is the call of the Christian Church. Or as the prophet Yogi Berra put it so well, "It is tough to make predictions, especially about the future."

Pascal, Asymmetric Outcomes, and My Next Decision

I return again to my reading of Taleb's The Black Swan and particulary to what appears to be a critical quotation: “Indeed the notion of asymmetric outcomes as the central idea of this book: I will never get to know the unknown since, by definition, it is unknown. However, I can always guess how it might affect me, and I should base my decisions around that." Taleb ties this to Blaise Pascal’s well-known wager, which he defines, “I do not know whether God exists, but I know that I have nothing to gain from being an atheist if he does not exist, whereas I have plenty to lose if he does. Hence, this justifies my belief in God.” And so he concludes: “In order to make a decision you need to focus on the consequences (which you can know) rather than on the probability (which you can’t know)."

Interesting, and I wonder what difference it makes to my quotidian life and particularly to my decisions. How would this guide me in deciding what to do next?

The Postmodern Paradox and The Black Swan

If understand it correctly, a standard argument goes like: Postmodernism declares that “nothing is absolute,” but since that statement constitutes an absolute, postmodernism is self-contradictory and therefore absurd. Postmodernism has therefore nothing to offer. I don’t actually think that’s what “postmodernism” says—as I read contemporary authors, they state in a much more limited way, that they simply can’t find any absolute statements that hold up and that the path to certainty is strewn with road-kill. So I strain out a slightly different insight: there is a latent inconsistency, the Postmodern Paradox, in our contemporary philosophical and cultural climate. We want a grand narrative, but distrust it. So our Big Story is that there is none.

You see, I’m as distrustful of totalizing concepts as the next guy. I can sniff them out even when the author protests against them. So what I take up here—with Nicholas Taleb’s The Black Swan to my right—is that his contention that we by nature create huge structures in order to assert certainty and predictability in a highly improbable world. He calls this tendency (among other things): PLATONICITY, “our tendency to mistake the map for the territory, to focus on pure and well-defined ‘forms,’ whether objects, like triangles, or social notions, like utopias… [etc.].” But we don’t live in the world of the Forms. (Actually Plato didn’t think we did either.) Taleb wants to open us to the possibility of the Black Swan, to events and realities we could never predict, but that constitute what is most definitive for our lives and our world. Who could have seen the stock market crash of 1987 or the planes of 9-11? In other words, Black Swans rule, in a world that can only countenance boring, predictable white swans.

So I come to the Postmodern Paradox: No sooner does a thinker like Taleb want to emphasize the fragmentary, the irrational, the postmodern—no sooner does he evoke an incredulity toward metanarratives—than some new meta-structure comes around the back door. The Black Swan constitutes his totalizing structure. (The definition is in the post below.) Taleb wants to eschew the certainty that we derive from perfect, platonic concepts. And yet, it comes around that famous one-sided Mobius strip. In an odd way, it seems, asserting unpredictability (against the common, pedestrian desire for the known and the repeated) offers Taleb some level of mastery over the world. And that, to be sure, is a paradox.

Breaking the Silence

My blog entries the past few months have been spotty. The only excuse is well-worn: Too many things to do, and too many pedestrians… Nonetheless, here’s my first contribution to altering that reality.

I’m thrilled to say that my article for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A), “The Church of the Last Stop” just appeared this week. In it, I offer five distinctives from Reformed theology that have guided our congregation, Bidwell Presbyterian Church, through a period of growth and renewal: the doctrines of Christ alone and of grace alone (that’s two), translating the contents of our faith into the vernacular, the church for the world (i.e., mission), and the sovereignty of God. The piece should be available on Geneva Press’s website, www.genevapress.com, but I haven’t seen it there yet. So send them harassing emails daily until the article appears.


Umberto Eco meets Milan Kundera—that’s the vibe from The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, and that’s what I’ve been reading recently as I prepare a review for the periodical, Books and Culture. Here’s what Taleb asserts: “Our world is dominated by the extreme, the unknown, and the very improbable (improbable according to our current knowledge) [i.e., the Black Swan]—and all the while we spend our time engaged in small talk, focusing on the known, and the repeated.” That’s provocative for sure, especially because we like the predictable and the idea when we’re surprised that “we should have seen it coming.” The book so far also reads chaotic and in desperately in need on an editor. Gregg Easterbrook panned it in The New York Times Book Review, and I find the argument a bit flighty in spots. But I suppose that’s what we should expect from a book that asserts the unanticipated makes the biggest difference in life—a style that is unpredictable and jumpy.

I’ll have more to say as I indeed read more… What do you think? Have you read The Black Swan?

On Reading the Qur’an Straight Through

I just finishing reading the Qur’an straight through. It was an eye-opener—and a bit of a chore, really. Since there’s not a narrative structure, no suspense pulled me forward. Instead I was driven by (a) wanting to complete the goal of reading it seriatim in a about month, and (b) trying to understand what Muslims believe.

Having finished this book that’s revered by a billion people on this planet, I asked myself, what struck me personally? My notes are entirely impressionistic and perhaps idiosyncratic, but three themes hit me in the face. First of all, judgment—the pleasures of heaven, but particularly the horrors of Hell—seemed to appear on every page I turned. This theme is related to a second: That the Qur’an is God’s perfect speech given through his Apostle, Muhammad. It is the “glorious Qur’an” (Suran 85) and the “best of scriptures” (Surah 39). I couldn’t totally shake the less-than-reverent thought that this represents a sustained work of promoting the Cause. It certainly reinforces Muhammad’s position. E.g., “Obey God and his Apostle” (Surah 64). Finally—and this is a little more devout—I was moved by passages that describe God’s ultimate glory: “There is nothing in the heavens or the earth beyond the power of God.”

Technology, Lent, and the Good

In a recent post or two, I offered some caution about our use of technology in the U.S.

I still believe that we often use our techie toys to distract ourselves from hearing God's voice (and sometimes the internal voices of our need for God). For that reason, as Ash Wednesday--and thus Lent-- approach, I encourage the silencing of TV, cell phones, video games, iPods, and/or email for at least an hour/day and an entire day/week.

Nonetheless, I just spent the weekend with some entirely creative and intelligent grad students from U.C. Berkeley and Stanford who are using technology to serve developing nations: helping facilitate better polling, the discovery of clean water, and the dissemination of critical information critical. I want then to counterpoint my earlier concerns about technology with a plea that we, as a highly technological nation, use our expertise to bless others, especially to help them attain basic services that can truly be the difference between life and death.

Is there some redemption to be found in microchips, videocams, and SMS? I think so. And that's definitely good news.

Probability and God

I’ve been thinking about the probability of belief in God. Not for any random reason (as it were), but because of a class I taught last night on science and faith with special reference to Richard Dawkins’s book The God Delusion.

Dawkins makes the claim that God is “almost certainly” does not exist—that God’s existence is improbable. Naturally I don’t agree, and I’m tempted to say that scientific discoveries like the Anthropic Principle offer reasons that it’s likely God exists. And yet at the same time, I don’t want to fall prey to proving God’s existence through its probability. On the other hand, I’m convinced that we can see the fingerprints of God (older theologians, talked about God’s footprints) through the amazing intricacy and complexity of creation.

So what do you think? Is probability a good ground for belief or not?

The Wisdom of Pascal

I'm in the midst of working on a class where I use my book to interact with Richard Dawkins, and somehow I'm compelled to remember the insights of Blaise Pascal, the 17th century scientist who saw so poignantly the limitations of the growing scientific revolution. He knew that the profound insights of science can leave human beings desiccated of meaning and purpose. Science, and its servant reason, are good, but faith needs both habits or religious practices and most of all, God’s movement through the Holy Spirit, "There are three ways to believe: reason, habit, inspiration. Christianity, which alone has reason, does not admit as its true children those who believe without inspiration. It is not that it excludes reason and habit, quite the contrary, but we must open our mind to the proofs, confirm ourselves in it through habit, while offering ourselves through humiliations to inspiration, which alone can produce the real and salutary effect. Lest the Cross of Christ be made of none effect."

If we are to be fruitful in bringing together science and theology, let's not presume that science can prove theological truths. Instead we will do well to head Pascal’s words.

One More Thought: The New Atheists' Logical Error

Sometimes errors in argumentation are exceedingly simple. This is the case for Dawkins (and from what I'm told, Sam Harris).

It goes like this: The fact that some religious believers have childish and irrational belief does not prove that all believers do, nor does it prove that belief ispo facto is an unreasonable, or unreasoned, delusion.

A Note from MacWorld

I just returned from MacWorld, which was really cool. Amazing products to surround my iPods (a device I love) and programs to enhance my MacBook.

While there in SF's Mascone Center, I beheld something almost religious and certainly pseudo-salvific: several dozen people at a time were gazing on the glory of the new iPhone as it slowly twirled within a glass-enclosed pedestal.

I wondered whether technology, or its parent, science, can actually provide the salvation they promise. Richard Dawkins certainly believes so, and actually argues that religion has never actually delivered the goods.

But it doesn't take much to see that Dawkins appears to have succumbed to better marketing in presenting his case for a kinder, gentler science. The harsh realities of what we often call a "Darwinian," survival-of-the-fittest world have been softened in his latest installment. Instead so often we see science and technology proffering exactly the type of "self-delusion" and "wishful thinking" he deplores. We are led to believe that a technological or scientific insight will provide salvation. Sometimes they do provide healing, to be sure. But other times it takes just a few moments to perceive that they will appear as dated in a few years as 8-track tapes and floppy disks appear today.

And then we rush to the next product.

The Rationality of Dawkins's Optimistic Atheism

I’m preparing for a class I’m teaching on Richard Dawkins’s new bestseller “The God Delusion” in which this Oxford professor of evolution argues stridently that Darwin’s theory undermines the rationality of belief in God.

He seeks to demonstrate that a scientifically-informed atheism affirms life. In other word, it’s positive:
“As many atheists have said better than me, the knowledge that we have only one life should make it all the more positive. The atheist view is correspondingly life-affirming and life-enhancing, while at the same time never being tainted with self-delusion [read here: like a religious view], wishful thinking, or the whingering self-pity of those who feel that life owes them something.”

Does that work? In this entry, I’ll just set these words in contrast with another of his works, “River Out of Eden” where he reflects on the bus crash of some Catholic schoolchildren.

"If the universe were just electrons and selfish genes, meaningless tragedies like the crashing of a bus are exactly what we should expect, along with equally meaningless good fortune. Such a universe would be neither evil nor good in intention. It would manifest no intentions of any kind. In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
As the unhappy poet A. E. Housman put it:
For Nature, heartless, witless Nature
Will neither know nor care.
DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is. And we dance to its music."

Kierkegaard, Technology, and the Stars

An unusually gifted storyteller, the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, illustrates the fight between affluence and its accompanying technology against the ability to “view the stars.” Most philosophers can’t produce really winning parables like this, one that still resonates almost two hundred years after he told it. But Kierkegaard can, and that’s why he’s worth quoting at length.

"When the prosperous man on a dark but starlit night drives comfortably in his carriage and has the lanterns lighted, aye, then he is safe, he fears no difficulty, he carries his light with him and it is not dark close around him; but precisely because he has the lanterns lighted, and has a strong light close to him, precisely for this reason he cannot see the stars, for his lights obscure the starts, which the poor peasant driving without the lights can see gloriously in the dark but starry night. So those deceived ones live in the temporal existence: either, occupied with the necessities of life, they are too busy to avail themselves of the view, or in the prosperity and good days they have—as it were lanterns lighted and close about them—everything is so satisfactory, so pleasant, so comfortable, but the view is lacking, the prospect, the view of the stars."

We, or at least I, have become a person of brilliant, halogen lanterns, which too often obscure my view of the stars. I find myself in a thicket of technological devices multiplying around me, entertaining me, connecting me. And yet I wonder: What cricket sounds have I missed when I take a walk with and iPod strapped to me? Has my vision for the crow or the owl become diminished by the hours I stare into a computer screen? Underneath the neon lights, have I lost my view of the stars?

Michelangelo, the David, and God's Chipping Away

The story goes like this. An admirer asked Michelangelo how he sculpted the famous statue of David that now sits in the Accademia Gallery in Florence. How did he craft this masterpiece of form and beauty? Michelangelo’s offered this strikingly simple description: He first fixed his attention on the slab of raw marble. He studied it and then “chipped away all that wasn’t David.”

A precision of vision. He worked undistracted by all the extra material, peering through the unformed shape into what the figure it could become. Michelangelo knew David—his age, how he was positioned, the shape of his torso, and that beautiful curved left arm just below his chin. Through the amorphous mass of rock, a clear form sparkled in his imagination. The marble would only need chipping away. And so, gradually, tap by tap, David—or the Pièta, or Moses—emerged. The glory of Michelangelo’s sculpting was that he could see through the raw material, through all the chipping away, to its ultimate destiny. He created these beautiful forms through what he removed, through what he negated. Put simply, he created through what I've called the Power of No.

We, on the other hand, are often not good at chipping away. We don’t tap away and reduce to craft what’s essence and crucial, but we add. Why? We live surrounded by a culture of almost countless possibilities. Paralyzed by choice, we can’t decide what to cut out. To commit means to say No to the overwhelming majority of these alluring possibilities. The options mock the hint of limits, and setting boundaries comes across as mere suggestions. Think of the World Wide Web with its four billion sites. Or the dozen or so types of Crest toothpaste. Remember when there were just the three channels of network TV. Now cable tenders hundreds of alternatives. Consider that it used to be coffee, black or with some combo of milk and sugar. Now you can order a two-percent decaf grande mocha, with or without “whipped.”

Our inability to choose has made us a nation of schedule obesity. Our bodies are overfull. And so too our schedules. They’re bursting with more than enough good things. We suffer from schedule obesity and goal obesity. Too many goals, too little time. It’s time for a steady diet of No.

It’s a struggle, and I know it. To maintain a healthy diet of No challenges me daily. I can be dazzled by all the glittering models for success that our culture parades before me. I intend to live for what really matters for me, but I fail. And so I want to move beyond good intentions to realizing all I can be. I want to succeed at what’s really important because, when I’m doing things with excellence, I find happiness. And I figure my Creator knows what that can look like, that God, the supreme Artist, sees our lives as works of art. And this is true artistry since we’re not simply blocks of marble for God to sculpt. Vincent Van Gogh once wrote his brother, Theo, about God’s amazing skill. “Christ… is more of an artist than the artists; he works in the living spirit and the living flesh; he makes human beings instead of statues.” You might even say that God’s chipping away becomes part of the healing of lives.

The Michelangelo story leads to some questions about sculpting our lives. Are our lives simply blocks of unchiseled marble? Is the “you”—and all you’re created to be—hidden in a formless life? Are you letting God, the Creator and Re-creator, transform your life, craft and mold you?

The Nature of True Success

I think about success frequently. I mean, I want to live an excellent life and therefore succeed at what's really important. And here's what I've found: Success is being on the right path. (Actually I learned that from Earl Palmer. the pastor during my college years.) Success isn't fame, fortune, and position (although those may be nice). Instead, success is being on the path that aligns with how God has created us. That's where true happiness and hope are found.

I just spent a week with poor farmers in Honduras, working alongside a team that provided a loan so that these folks could ultimiately pay back the loan, own their land, and, in the process, farm more effectively. Ultimately the goal is that they could break the cycle of poverty where they only make enough to pay the farmer who owns the land that they farm. During the week, I wondered what success meant to them. I know there are fewer options for their life. It’s not a choice between studying at Princeton or Berkeley. It’s not, “What kind of job do I want?” but it’s “I’m thankful that I found work.” Nevertheless, I’m convinced that being on the right path is still the way to success for them too--loving their family, working as a community, living in faith, hope, and love. It even made me wonder why we get so easily distracted by the shiny objects of fame, fortune, and position.

Today Show, Take Two

This year I was asked again to perform the yearly, live wedding for The Today Show. I got the call a week before and the confirmation four days prior to the event. It was a bit of a whirlwind tour, but oh, so fun. This year I was able to go with my wife, Laura—which was fabulous—and that leads me to the first of my two observations.

Laura and I attended the reception (at the Boat House in Central Park). The band (whose name I can’t recall) was amazing—a soul-infused funk machine. We couldn’t help but dance like fiends. Appropriate fiends, I’m sure. But I think the sight of a pastor, fully in love with his wife, grooving to a slamming rhythm was a little atypical. At one point during the reception, another guest came up to us and exclaimed, “I’ve just had a religious experience. Whatever church you’re a part of, I want to be there!” That was a great compliment—that somehow we embodied a joy and celebration of life, the kind that Jesus so often proclaimed. After all, he was frequently accused of being too much of a party animal. So that’s good. But it’s also sad that that kind of celebrating stands out as something unusual for Christians. Are we really so dour all the time in the eyes of the world?

Number two was a conversation directly after the wedding with Ann Curry who came up to Laura and me, under the scaffolding, on the way into the studio. After offering some praise for the wedding message, and especially its realism that could really help couples, this TV celebrity continued by telling us that the reason for going into media was to make a difference, to report stories that would be what I would call redemptive. The moment was powerful. I also realized that she wanted a blessing, wanted me, as a “man of the cloth,” to affirm that media people can do good in this world. And so they can. And so, in a way, I did by affirming that I appreciated her vision and would pray for her.

Katie Couric's Last Wedding

On September 16th last year, I performed a wedding on the Today Show. One year later I decided to reflect on the experience...

The introduction by Al Roker defined the moment as unusual. “The wedding will be presided over by the Reverend Greg Cootsona….” Until then, I had tried to ease my jangling nerves that it was just another nuptial in my pastoral life.

You see I wasn’t immediately convinced about performing a Today Show wedding. A friend and producer on the show (whose wedding I had performed in New York City) called, with “an unusual opportunity.” Not sensing Amway in my future, and bolstered by her assessment that I “would be perfect,” I pondered. And balked. But eventually, I accepted the assignment.

Two nights before my introduction by Al Roker, a driver met me at BWI’s baggage claim with a sign and (surprise!) bearing my name. This doesn’t happen often on my way to nuptials in Chico (although I could get used to it). Two days and two cars later, at the 5:15am call for the show (2:15 California time), a stretch limo transported me. As I entered the car, the driver phoned the show saying, “The Reverend is in the car.”

Now out of the car and walking toward the stage in front of the Cheasapeake Bay, I patted the tube of Recapit Cement safely in my pocket. The pressure of such a large audience squeezed out a strange neurosis: that the recently applied veneer on my front tooth covering a discoloration (itself a wedding honorarium from my dentist) would pop out in medias homily. I’m just not sure how I would have applied the bond in front of the TV audience, but such thoughts never occur to the neurotic.

Following the introduction, I walking on the runner set on smooshy grass and recalled the previous day and worries of an impending rainstorm (as a hurricane brewed to the south with Matt Lauer sent to the scene). That day of rehearsals, I had expected diffidence and attitude from the crew. Instead it was also fun and encouragement. On the stage for Trisha Yearwood’s concert following the wedding, I spied a gorgeous drum set (their petrified wood shells unearthed from the depths of Lake Michigan), and asked if I could take it for a ride. The crew encouraged me. After a brief solo, the soundman offered his assessment: “You might have missed your calling.” Perhaps not totally encouraging the day before the Big Event. Speaking of the sound man, the show’s attention to detail astounded me: The multiple camera men, sound techs, and general assistants making everything work flawlessly. That was change for me—I’m happy in church when the mic’s on. (Why can’t we have several professionals making sure the church’s sound works and the lights are on like The Today Show? That’s right. Congregations don’t gross half a billion dollars a year.)

The night before, I was eating pizza and drinking Cokes with the mostly 20something under-producers, pages, or whatever they were, and we discussed my former church, Fifth Avenue Presbyterian (which was in the midst of a scandal so it was pretty interesting). We sat out on the back porch of the Chesapeake Bay Beach Club (in Stevensville, Maryland, by the by), talking about life, about a homosexual brother, about faith, about the show the next day. Behind their words I saw the same ambitious eyes of youth that want to make a mark on the world and maybe to glimpse a bit of fame themselves.

Transported in the stretch limo, I arrived on the wedding set (that’s on odd combination of words) at 5:30 am. (Did I mention that that’s 2:30am California time?) As I walked in along a wooden ramp, I glimpsed some bright lights above the clubhouse. Katie Couric was already working with lights on and cameras rolling. Knowing that she had trained down from Manhattan the night before, it struck me as imminently tiring and a high price for fame.

But no one at the event would have ever know she was tired. Wearing her flip-flops on the set, cracking jokes with the wedding guests on commercial breaks. It was pretty charming. I finally met her for a brief moment, at the reception. Every moment she was mobbed by people, with barely a moment to herself. The price of fame, I suppose. And I asked her, “Could I do the fan-thing and take picture with you?” She was pulled away. And then a moment later, turned back to me, “I’m sorry. What did you ask me?” It was a moment of humanity. (And she hadn’t yet received my gift, a t-shirt from the church.) So I was sold.

Oh yes, how about the wedding? Once it started, the cameras disappeared. (Like a friend a produced prepped me: “Just imagine they’re video cams—you’ve seen those before.” Amazingly it worked.) Mark and Sarah were the most focused couple I’ve ever married. They had spent so many hours in front of the camera that they actually looked me in the eye as I talked of passion and commitment in the improvisations of marriage and jazz. Mark, this big, studly guy cried as he vowed his love, and Sarah serenely wiped his tears. (People, I’m told, were also crying from Times Square.)

Afterward, as I rode in the longest of four limos back to airport, I saw the moment fading fast. So I asked the driver to stop at a gas station and bought a San Pellegrino. I looked out from the convenience store and thought, “A stretch for me—that’s pretty cool.” With no more tricks up the sleeve, I begrudgingly headed toward the airport, and soon was in the United gates. I’d never waved goodbye to a limo before. Slowly I was slipping back into obscurity. Off to the plans for that weekend: Monterey Jazz Festival (the last one we attended with her mother before the latter suffered an acute stroke)—in my mind, a pretty sweet consolation prize.

My brother, during a brief sojourn with an Episcopalian church group, edited their newspaper, which he called “The Highly Parishable.” In that spirit: those three minutes and forty-five seconds of fame (and the days surrounding it) were certainly parishable fruit. One realization was, given the seven million or so who would view that day, I would preach to more in those minutes than I probably throughout my lifetime. But the fruit had been picked and was half eaten. My shelf had a few days more: two radio interviews on the Monday I returned. At one point a few weeks later, I was visiting a member in the hospital and someone in the next bed blurted out, “Weren’t you the guy on The Today Show?” It finally got to this: “I saw a little bit of your head in the picture of the wedding in US Magazine.”

Sarah and Mark have thankfully kept in touch as they entered post-TV life. Several months later would reveal that this was Katie’s last Today Show wedding. (Luckily, I grabbed a picture with her at the reception.) I’m doing hospital visitation, numerous church committee meetings, teaching and preaching, and yes, the occasional wedding without, of course, an introduction by Al Roker.

Memories of a Bleak Week in Manhattan

Here are a few notes I took on September 12, 2001. The only changes here are to make some of the fragments into full sentences and to clarify references that would be obscure to non-New Yorkers.

A group of families meeting in the Pierre Hotel to discuss 900-1000 employees missing, with nametags, “Scott Behrens looking for Jane Cananda…” A 30-year old woman found herself late for work to World Trade Center #2 coming to my church office in tears, “Everyone in my office is gone, and there’s no office. What do I do? How do I pray?” A church member on the phone in Chicago, doing business with a colleague in WTC 1, suddenly hears this: “There’s fire all around. I don’t know what’s happening. Here’s my home number, call my wife and tell her I love her.” Then the phone goes dead. I’ll never forget looking down 5th Avenue at 9:30am, in front of the Disney store, across from Fifth Avenue Presbyterian, as the World Trade Center smoked in the distance. Then at 10:15, only seeing smoke…
The scale of yesterday’s terrorist attack is immense. Reverberations throughout the city.

Some Ancient Wisdom on Relating Christian Faith & Science

"Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an unbeliever to hear a Christian, presumably giving meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics [like astronomy, physics, and biology]. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books and matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learned from experience in the light of reason?"
St. Augustine

Evolution and God? Yes

I've been encouraged (or was it goaded?) by my friend, John, to reflect on creation and evolution. Here's a short, slightly altered, excerpt from my book, "Creation and Last Things: At the Intersection of Theology and Science." It goes something like this...

Although I am more committed to the truth of creation by God than of evolution by natural selection, I am not compelled to choose between the two. In fact, the doctrine of creation makes two primary affirmations: we are created in God’s image, and the world is not fully consistent with God’s intentions. With this mind, there is ample room for scientific discovery. And we must avoid dictating the best way for God to create. Instead we should look concretely and openly at the evidence. As John Calvin wrote, "If we regard the Spirit of God as the sole fountain of truth, we shall neither reject the truth itself, nor despise it wherever it shall appear, unless we wish to dishonor the Spirit of God."

Overall, my church, the Presbyterian Church, does not see conflict between evolution and the doctrine that God created the natural world. Here the Presbyterians and the Roman Catholics agree. Surprisingly, what is true for the PC (U.S.A.) and the Vatican can be extended to the U.S. populace. A 1999 People for the American Way Foundation poll discovered that 68% of our country found no contradiction between evolution and the belief that God created us and guided human development.

Put simply, Christians believe God created us and our world and used evolution in that process. I find no scientific argument that disproves God’s creative act.

Henry Ford and the Politics of the Middle East

The current carnage in Lebanon is just one more instance of the amazingly violent dysfunction of the Middle East. It has spurred me not to comment directly, but to recall a more general connection between Henry Ford's mass production of his Model T 98 years ago and the politics of the Middle East. Could anyone then have realized the unintended consequences of this astounding triumph of American ingenuity?

The obvious connection is the increasing thirst over the past decades for oil. The internal combustion engine's ascendancy to the primary means for moving people and goods also means that entire economies have become dependent on fossil fuel for transportation. No one can reasonably deny the United States' need to secure oil reserves plays a major role in our ongoing interest in the Middle East. And conversely, oil-producing nations have enormous and disproportionate pull in international affairs as a result. It's so obvious I need not comment further.

The more subtle correlation is between Tin Lizzie and terrorists, who now have a ready-made, and certainly surreptious, means for delivering a bomb. The automobile becomes an explosive, driven unannounced to its destination, and wrecking immense havoc. Who could foresee the process set in motion way back in 1908?

"Pirates," Redemption, and Culture

I just checked my Google News and found that "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," has taken in $135.6 million, which is the highest gross of any film on its first weekend. I saw the film on Friday with a packed house in Incline Village, Nevada. It was certainly entertaining, and visually overwhelming, though not--I'm quick to add--as good as the first installment of "Pirates." The latter movie was a serendipity. I've pondered the themes of Pirates II to discern any deeper meaning, and redemption looms large, whether it's for cruel Davy Jones, or the generally upright Will Turner, or even the mischievous Captain Jack Sparrow. All these characters bear chains of one sort or another from which they want freedom so that they can live. And significantly, this one of the core theological images for the critical experience of the Christian life--that we're in a bind without hope or release, unless someone else intervenes. So maybe the U.S. senses this deep need.... Or maybe they just like the visual effects of Pirates II.... At this point, it's not easy for me to decide between the two options.

(Incidentally, I've extended these reflections through a post on the Thoughtful Christian blog: http://thethoughtfulchristian.blogspot.com.

A Time to Reflect

Thankfully, one of the earthly benefits of life as a Presbyterian pastor is four weeks of vacation and two of study leave every year. Well, I'm about to use a third of that bounty, hanging out with my family, swimming, reading, mountain biking, and pondering the inscrutable azure of Lake Tahoe. I will plunge deeper into Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics IV/3.1 as he continues to develop the missional church (without ever employing that word, of course) as it follows the God-Man Jesus Christ, who, as Prophet, is sent out by God. I'll also begin sketching a book that retells the history of Christianity focused on Christ and how we, as a Christian community, have responded or rejected Jesus' ministry and mission. I'm pretty sure I'll discover that Jesus has plenty of surprises for the people who call on his name.

Karl Barth and the "Missional" Church

My wife (an irreverent theologian, to be sure) asserts that "missional" is not an English word, but some theological babble that people noise about today. Yes, I admit that the word doesn't appear in my Webster's 10th edition, but contemporary writers are using it to describe the basic theological conviction that God sends the church into the prophetic task of witness and service. ("Missional" comes from the Latin missio, which means "to send.") More importantly, these writers are drawing us back to what Jesus directed us to do: To live for the benefit of others, not ourselves. Too often, the church is pathetic and not prophetic.

Thankfully, when I turned to Karl Barth (the greatest theologian of 20th century), I found all the theology I needed and nothing called "missional." Barth believed that in Jesus' role as Prophet, he sends his community into the world in service (Church Dogmatics IV/3.2).

I'll let the Swiss theologian Barth speak for himself (though translated, of course): "The Holy Spirit is the enlightening power of the living Lord Jesus Christ in which He confesses the community called by Him and His body, i.e., as His own earthly-historical form of existence, by entrusting to it the ministry of His prophetic Word...."

I'd let to know what you think of them Apfels.

Prayer and the Mathematics of Technology

6 June 2006, Metanexus Conference, University of Pennsylvania
This morning I led Protestant Prayer at the Metanexus Conference on science and religion. It was filmed by a crew whose director determined that this could be “the highest level academic conference in which prayer was actually on the agenda." That fact, in his estimation, made the prayer time worth digitally recording and presumably broadcasting. Ironically, it didn’t seem to make it worth attending since only about 1/30th of the conference attendees were there.
I need to be clear: I’m not complaining. Within the logic of faith, the number of human attenders didn’t matter, of course. For one thing, I was happy that there were enough pray-ers to join during in the intercessions so that my voice didn’t simply ricochet off the walls. It seemed like we even “had church” to some degree. I’m not complaining because it’s the audience of the One to whom we pray that ultimately matters.
That somehow brings me to reflect on technology and faith. The computations of technology (a child of science) and those of faith are quite different. Not at all impugning the motives of the film director (actually, his motives seemed quite commendable), I still know that the mathematics of technology is based on tangible numbers and the prestige of those in attendance. The mathematics of prayer is counted by the degree to which God enters. God + impressive crowds is no greater than God without anyone. It's that math which makes prayer imminently worthwhile.

More from Metanexus Conference on Religion & Science

5 June 2006, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
Today the science and religion conference will focus on contributions from European scholars. (It'll be interesting because it might help me put together a "study trip" to Italy... for entirely scholarly purposes, of course) Yesterday, we looked at the nature of the Intelligent Design (ID) movement from an impressive variety of perspectives. ID didn't fare very well, to be honest. One of the more powerful presentations came from Jeffrey Schloss at the evangelical school, Westmont College in Santa Barbara. As a biologist, he carefully noted the deficiencies of the ID paradigm from a scientific perspective, all the while critiquing it thoughtfully and charitably, never resorting to caricatures or truthiness (because I say it loudly, it has to be so). That combination, to my mind, represents Christian scholarship.

Live from Philadelphia on Science and Religion

4 June 2006, "Continuity and Change: Perspectives on Science and Religion" (Metanexus Conference)
This morning finds me not at 208 West First Street in Chico, but in Houston Hall on the University of Pennsylvania campus. (See this link.) Something like 300 participants from 30 countries (I'll get the exact numbers later) are meeting to hear lectures and to generally interact on topics in the dialogue of science and religion. Last night's best moment was a rousing and thoughtful talk by Robert Putnam of Harvard on "Social Capital." A true public intellectual, Putnam dynamically unfolded this notion which emphasizes not what we can save in a bank (economic capital), but what happens when we bond together, when we have dinner parties, when we attend worship, and when we know our neighbor's first name. Social capital, he asserted, is more important for our kids and thus our society than economic capital. (You can find some of these ideas in his book, "Bowling Alone.") Finally, he exhorted the audience of religious and scientific scholars, pastors, professors et al. to work on "bridging social capital," which brings together groups that aren't connected through "bonding social capital." I'd put it this way: it's what happens when people come from east and west, south and north and sit at the Kingdom of heaven.

Wait No Longer! The Complete Links to My Lectures on "The Da Vinci Code"

Just in time for the movie, here are the recordings from my four lectures, "The Da Vinci Code: Fact & Fiction."

* The character of biblical Gospels and Gnostic gospels.

* Constantine, the canon, and the Council of Nicea

* Married to Mary? and the role of women in early Christianity

* Why is "The Da Vinci Code" so popular?

Let me know what you think and where you think I'm off my rocker.
Greg

Brian McLaren Says it Well on "The Da Vinci Code"

In a recent interview with Sojourners Magazine, the pastor-author, Brian McLaren has some insights on what the phenomenon of "The Da Vinci Code." Here's an example.

Question: In light of The Da Vinci Code movie that is soon to be released, how do you hope churches will engage this story?

McLaren: I would like to see churches teach their people how to have intelligent dialogue that doesn't degenerate into argument. We have to teach people that the Holy Spirit works in the middle of conversation. We see it time and time again - Jesus enters into dialogue with people; Paul and Peter and the apostles enter into dialogue with people. We tend to think that the Holy Spirit can only work in the middle of a monologue where we are doing the speaking.

So if our churches can encourage people to, if you see someone reading the book or you know someone who's gone to the movie, say, "What do you think about Jesus and what do you think about this or that," and to ask questions instead of getting into arguments, that would be wonderful. The more we can keep conversations open and going the more chances we give the Holy Spirit to work. But too often people want to get into an argument right away. And, you know, Jesus has handled 2,000 years of questions, skepticism, and attacks, and he's gonna come through just fine. So we don't have to be worried.

Ultimately, The Da Vinci Code is telling us important things about the image of Jesus that is being portrayed by the dominant Christian voices. [Readers] don't find that satisfactory, genuine, or authentic, so they're looking for something that seems more real and authentic.

The American Idol of Mediocrity Done Well

Two things came together this morning.

First of all, I thought about last night's "American Idol" (a show that, yes, has hooked me) where the one true artist, Chris, was voted off the show. The remaining singers are telegenic in various ways, certainly entertaining, and somewhere above serviceable. And so I watch and am entertained. But the remaining three are not artists. So goes the wisdom of America's voting...

#2: I've been listening to the greatest (yes, arguably the greatest) pop songwriters of the past three decades, Steely Dan. This morning I was brought back to their masterpiece, Aja, which features exquisite lyrics, astonishing arrangement, and superb musicianship. I wondered why I'm hearing less of this as the 21st century marches on.

Then It struck me: American increasing idolizes mediocrity done well. That's essentially the logic of the franchise. We are the land of McDonalds and Gap--nothing exceptional, but "good enough," done consistently, and with enough hook to bring us back. We're a country that has produced (and now exported) Starbucks, a juggernaut that has managed to turn coffee (one of the finest beverages on the planet) into impossibly sweet, frothy drinks with simply the whiff of espresso. And, all too frequently, I find myself buying a cappuccino with the greeny mermaid on the cup.

So I realized that America idolizes mediocrity done well. We love a really good Everyman/Everywoman, but not someone exceptionally artistic or really exceptional in any way.

Something hit me last night on "American Idol": the "idols" (now that title's got to put fear into our hearts) went to Graceland. I began to think about that fact. If the "Idol' ballots had made the decision, Elvis never would have been a star. (I'm saying this without any particular love for Elvis.) Moreover, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker (of Steely Dan) never would have made their peerless recordings. We never would have heard the jazz greats, Steve Gadd (drums) and Wayne Shortter (sax), both soloing on "Aja" if it came down to who many textmessaged their votes on their Cingular phones. The same is probably true for the Beatles or U2. I could go on.

And finally, #3 (out of two): "The Da Vinci Code" strikes me as one more idol of mediocrity. Does it really deserve the title of the best selling book of all time? I'd be interested to know what you think.

What's So Intesting about "The Da Vinci Code"?

In researching "The Da Vinci Code," I picked up Elaine Pagels' "Beyond Belief" today, which offers an alternative reading of Christian origins. In the good, scholarly tradition of quoting oneself, I'd like to return to what I wrote about earlier in this blog.

Pagels, professor of religion at Princeton University (and let it be said, a verifiable scholar) writes in "The Gnostic Gospels" about the “light within.” "Dialogue of the Savior" 125.18-19 commands us to “Light the lamp within you." She continues, “They [the Gnostics] argued that only one’s own experience offers the ultimate criterion of truth, taking precedence over all secondhand testimony and tradition—even Gnostic tradition!”

Wow, our inner light beccomes the ultimate criterion for truth. In the final five pages her later work, "Beyond Belief," Pagels reveals why her alternative reading of early Christian history is important : she wants freedom to believe--or not to believe--a variety of things about Jesus. That she can find solace at New York City’s Church of the Heavenly Rest while refusing to confess the Apostles’ Creed is not exceptional. When she closes this book with a call to “spiritual discovery” based on Jesus’ words “seek, and you shall find,” I was left wondering if I had just read a passage from Kant’s famous 1784 exposition of the command “Know thyself!” Not that this call of the Enlightenment was entirely erroneous; it’s just that Pagels presents this freedom of belief as if it is new. And it definitely is not.

And so we come to something of the same old story. This time it's reinforced by a culture that's drunk from Immanuel Kant's draught for a couple of centuries and tells us to follow "our own heart" whatever anyone else says and whatever the cost. "The Da Vinci Code" also invites us to move away from the constrictions of Constantine and his Christian orthodoxy to find the insights of the great man, Jesus. It's fortunate, according to Dan Brown's characters, that Jesus wasn't divine because or else his words might trump our criteria of truth.

What it doesn't say is that it's not always that interesting to be bounded by the smallish circle of our own insights.

Gospel Truth and Poetic License

“More than eighty gospels were considered for the New Testament, and yet only a relative few were chosen for inclusion—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John among then,” the “scholar” Leigh Teabing tells Sophie Neveu in “The Da Vinci Code."

It’s hard to know where Teabing arrives at this number of “eighty” records or “gospels” concerning the life of Jesus of Nazareth. No one can find that many, not even if you include all the documents called “gospels” found near Nag Hammadi in Egypt (a treasure trove of Gnostic texts uncovered in 1945) or the scattering of other documents discovered in other locations. So we’ll just have to leave that to creative fiction.

What we do know about inclusion in the Bible is quite different. The renowned expert on the New Testament, Bruce Metzger (who truly is a scholar) concludes that only four documents survived the test of “canonicity”—what is legitimate as a record of Jesus’ life. (This can be found in his seminal book, “The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance.”) That test indeed includes three criteria:
• Orthodoxy: For example, Did these writings cohere with the Hebrew Scriptures? Many of the alternative gospels disparage Jewish practices and/or attempt to remove Jesus from his Jewish context.
• Apostolicity: Did they reflect teachings of Jesus’ earliest followers? The recently published so-called “Gospel of Judas” (which no one takes to be written by Judas) reflects the Gnostics desire to wed their writings to the name of one of Jesus’ followers, for example. Even if Luke wrote the Third Gospel, his authority derived from his association with Paul.
• Consensus among the churches: Were the writings used throughout the known world? Gnostic writings appear to have been used in only specific localities and within distinct communities.

The early Christian communities in the first four centuries applied this threefold test to the writings about Jesus and determined that only four Gospels—those of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—passed the test according to Metzger.

For Dan Brown to place seventy-some additional texts as potential candidates for the Bible can only be described as driving faster than his poetic license allows.

Assessing the Scholarship of "The Da Vinci Code"

Bart Ehrman, the noted University of North Carolina scholar of early Christianity, says it all: “Of the hundreds of professional New Testament scholars whom I personally know—people who study these texts [related to Jesus and the early Christians] for a living, and who are trained in the ancient languages necessary to do so—there is not a single one, to my knowledge, who finds the book to be historically credible.”

Assessing the Phenomenon of "The Da Vinci Code"

Why has this book sold more copies than another other publication ever save the Bible? This question is swirling around my head as I peer into the facts behind the fiction and as I prepare for the release of this story in movie-form. (And let me say, there isn’t much serious scholarship contained in it. But more on that later…) As much as I’d like to find some new conspiracy plot behind its popularity, the first realization is a challenge to the church: This book proposes to describe true spirituality, and many in the listening world does not believe the Christian Church is telling the truth about God.

As "Narnia" Hits our DVD Players...

Note: Since the DVD of “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” has just appeared, it seemed worthwhile to post a response to Adam Gopnik’s “Prisoner of Narnia,” which appeared in The New Yorker on the 21st of November last year. (See www.newyorker.com/critics/content/articles/051121crat_atlarge. Incidentally, I sent this to the editor, but it didn't make it to print.) Gopnik himself was anticipating the release of "Narnia" in the theatres. In re-reading my response, I see that my style is a bit more contentious than usual. Nonetheless, I’m still committed to my criticisms—and more importantly, to the wider discussion of what C.S. Lewis is up to in writing Narnia. So here it is….

Presumably, it would have been easier (and shorter) for Adam Gopnik to offer the following summary: “I enjoy C.S. Lewis’s literary scholarship and imagination. I reject his religious commitment, and my judgment of his work mirrors exactly these preferences.”

This succinct account might have saved the reader enough time to examine an excerpt from Gopnik’s new children’s book, "The King in the Window," and then to discern whether his fiction offers cures for the ailments he diagnoses in Lewis’s "Chronicles of Narnia." It might also have prevented The New Yorker from tarnishing its reputation as a gold-standard for fact-checking. For example, Gopnik credits another novel to Lewis’s corpus, "The Screwtape Letters" (which instead is a series of articles first printed in an English religious newspaper) and erroneously calls his final book, "A Grief Portrayed" (instead of "A Grief Observed").

I would like to have assumed that Gopnik’s factual errors represent the veneer and not the wood itself. Unfortunately, when Gopnik continues to call Lewis’s "Narnia" books “allegories,” I wonder if he’s simply being hard-headed or doesn’t understand the difference between John Bunyan’s Christian in the Slough of Despond and Lewis’s Aslan dying at the Stone Table. Allegories have a one-to-one correspondence between the character, place, etc. and the thing allegorized. Certainly, Aslan functions as a Redeemer for Narnia, but Aslan does not equal Jesus in the Gospels. For example, there is no birth scene, Aslan never preaches anything like a Sermon on the Mount, he dies for just one individual instead of the whole world, and there’s no crucifixion. If it’s an allegory, Lewis missed crucial details. It’s probably better to agree with Lewis’s own numerous statements—along with his friend, Tolkien—that their books are not allegories.

In fact, an antipathy to allegory formed a common bond between these two authors. Gopnik writes, “Tolkien hated the Narnia books… because he hated to see an imagination constrained by the allegorical impulse” Close, but perhaps only as close as the connection between Mark Twain’s “lightning” and “lightning bug.” Tolkien did find his friend’s books, like "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe," incomplete in their mythological rendering of a secondary world, or to use Tolkien’s term, “sub-creation.” Why, after all, does Father Christmas appear in the midst of "Lion"? Any sensitive reader of Lewis can find agreement there. But Tolkien didn’t disdain these books because they were allegories. He disparaged their being hastily written and therefore inconsistent in creating an alternative world.

There’s much more to say, but I will note only two additional problems with Gopnik’s article:
1. He depends uncritically on A.N. Wilson’s spectacular, yet highly flawed, biography (and Wilson’s own reliance on the spectacular, yet highly flawed, psychology of Freud).
2. He names the faith of Lewis “an Anglican creed,” thereby misrepresenting Lewis’s ecumenical and orthodox “mere Christianity.

Lest anyone think that I find nothing redeeming here, I would hasten to add that Gopnik’s article possess both flashes of insight and stylistic beauty. He writes, for example, that after the death of Lewis’s wife, “his faith becomes less joblike and more Job-like…. Lewis ended up in a state of uncertain personal faith that seems to the unbeliever comfortingly like doubt.” And, yes, Lewis is certainly not perfect: Narnia does contain some racist (and misogynist) overtones.

With so much talent, it’s concerning that Gopnik’s misprision of Lewis prevented him from writing something much better. Consider this sentence: “It seemed like an odd kind of conversion to other people, and it still does.” An attentive editor would write in the margin, “Which people? Please support this criticism with specifics.” But no one apparently has. Nor has Gopnik bothered to provide support for his disbelief that anyone as intelligent as Lewis could find the Christian faith intellectually compelling. (I will refrain from trotting out the plentiful examples of intelligent Christians, but they do exist, alongside the scores of obtuse believers and non-believers alike.) Accordingly, Gopnik asserts that for Lewis, faith was “a cell of his own invention.” To make that kind of claim, Gopnik would have to omit the important historical fact that, before his conversion, Lewis’s work was heavy-handed and dreary. Only after his conversion does his scholarly and popular work express imagination and creativity.

There is more to say, but I’ll close with this: Lewis and Tolkien felt that fairy tales were too substantial to be consigned only to children. Gopnik’s article leads me to wonder whether literature is too important to be left to literary critics.

On Excellence, Naomi Wolf

Excellence, to me, is the state of grace that can descend only when one tunes out all the world’s clamor, listens to an inward voice one recognizes as wiser than one’s own, and transcribes without fear.

Say No with conviction but humanity.

Becoming Dr. No--that's the most common fear I hear as I describe the Power of No. Following some elaborate explanation of the incredible wonders of No, I pause and glimpse a perplexed look on someone’s face. With a little coaxing, the anxiety gradually surfaces:

“I don’t like saying No.”
“Can you tell me why?”
“Well, No is so negative. And I like to be positive.”
“Yes, that’s interesting. I mean, I like to be positive too. But don’t you realize that that little word No provides for health, integrity, and true success, that our No’s guard our Yes’s, that… huh, what did you say again?”
“Won’t saying No make me into a negative person?”
“No. Do you have another question?”

Actually that is not how I respond because the question is legitimate and one that skulks around the Power of No. Let’s face it: No is not most people’s favorite word. Actually, it’s not my choice for Word of the Year either. And really it shouldn’t be. If we like to declare No abundantly, we ought to be nervous. I for one don’t want anyone to become “Dr. No” as a result of applying the Power of No.

The solution is realizing that No cannot stand alone. It must be surrounded by affirming more vital and strategic values or commitments. If a healthy relationship between No and Yes is in place, then we can remember why we say No and simultaneously declare No to the debilitating force of guilt in our life. No’s must be spoken to things of lesser value to protect greater values. When we’ve clarified our values and taken time to be quiet to stay on track, then we know the difference between what’s demanding our attention and what’s truly vital and strategic. Let me explain a little further.

On the one hand, there’re tasks almost every day that require our attention and that also require response—for example, when child breaks an arm, or you realize it’s the 20th of the month and the Visa bill’s due tomorrow. Those crises happen. But there are also those demands that bark for attention, but are neither vital nor strategic, yet they tempt us by their urgency. Telephone calls, instant messages, and email—as three examples—can plow through everything in their path. They seem urgent, but how many emails selling discounted Prozac and Viagra do you need to respond to? We can even get seduced by the clarity of direction they present. Or we’re motivated by moving from crisis to crisis and never arriving at more fundamental tasks. Finally, on the other hand (was that the third hand?), there is a category of activities that possess no intrinsic urgency. Nevertheless, this third type is strategic and vital: financial planning, building new skills in your job, finishing a book on The Power of No, making sure you take that mountain bike ride. These activities will never get done without the Power of No. If you skipped the chapter on true success, that’s concerned with defining this third type of activity.

The management guru, Stephen Covey, offers this insight about No and how important things central: "Keep in mind that you are always saying 'no' to something. If it isn’t to the apparent, urgent things in life, it is probably to the more fundamental, highly important things. Even when the urgent is good, the good can keep you from the best, keep you from your unique contribution, if you let it."

In other words, an unrestrained Yes to urgent demands = a No to the important. These “fundamental, highly important things” create the center of who you are, of what you want to accomplish, and of the kind of relationships you want.
So know why you say No and you won’t have to respond to every demand. That way you can say No and not become Dr. No. Saying No doesn’t make you a negative person if it’s meant to protect a Yes or two.

With these values in place, I admit that it can still be difficult to say No. I’ve discovered this simple rule of thumb:
Say No with conviction but humanity.
Without conviction, it sounds like you don’t mean it.
Without humanity, it’s simply negativity.

By “conviction” I mean that very few people like No. But realize this: In not saying No, you’re really saying No to a more important Yes. (Clear, aren’t I?) You can’t enact every Yes that comes along. “Your Yes only means something if you also say No.” And then there’s humanity—being sure to engage the request personally. Just because you’re protecting deeper commitments and values through your No doesn’t imply that you have to say, “I am thankful that, at this point, I shall declare a No to this less strategic—but highly demanding—request. Do you really think it’s important? Hah! I have more vital activities then this gangly, adolescent demand. Be gone with you!” If you declare No like this or if you simply like saying No too much, you’re probably not follow the guideline of humanity.