I am hesitant to write at this point because my head is so full and I can’t quite discern all the strands in my thinking. Some of these ideas, thoughts and beliefs intersect with each other, some have reached conclusions but overall I am not satisfied that I have found the conclusion that I am reaching for. That is why it has been some time since I wrote anything in the Blog. I have become mentally constipated. So here comes the big one.
It’s about the desire to see the crisis we face in the Western World turned around. I’m looking for answers. I don’t think the breakdown of the family, the rise of depression, suicide and all the rest is the beginning of a new stage in humanity. I don’t think disintegration is the brave new future. I’m afraid I tend to agree with the Evolutionary Psychologists about that one.
In the earlier half of April I had the privilege of traveling to a conference in Brisbane. The conference was entitled “A crisis of meaning, challenges facing science and religion in the 21st century”. It was deeply encouraging to hear people speak of the caliber of Dr Peter Vardy from London, Reverend Dr. Eamonn Conway from Ireland, Dr Bernadette Tobin from Sydney and Reverend Dr Mark Worthing from Adelaide. Googling any of these names will reveal the depth and commitment each of these individuals have to each of their fields. The audience comprised of largely religious educators from around Australia who listened to the overall message – we alienate the public when we oversimplify or force scripture to fit our own agendas when it comes to science. Each speaker was an expert in their field and duly had a deep knowledge of scripture and also of science and maintained their faith by looking at the essential message of scripture – not in the certainty of a scientific position, but rather in the openness to a huge universe that we haven’t at this point entirely understood. The fact is, it would seem the deeper we look the more we discover that it’s a little more incomprehensible than we initially thought.
In the same way this could be said of religion.
What is clear in scripture is that there is a loving God who calls us into community with Himself and with each other. This seemed to be the uniting aspect of all presenters in the conference. There were many aspects to the conference that delved outside this front and that needs to be said and hoped that it is understood that you will gather there is much left unsaid.
The other message that I believed was communicated in the conference was that we live in a society undergoing a crisis of meaning. It is not so much science or religion that is in crisis, as the society that is a recipient of both, and that is perhaps what the title of the conference was implying. Science or religion does not make the meaning, but the participant. They are not some monolithic unchanging institution but the sum total of the practitioner and the participant – in many cases the same person. When people believe that it is the impersonal religion or science that is the meaning maker they fail to recognize that either institution is transient and always changing.
When we make our beliefs about either institution our bedrock we find we are sliding down the slope of doubt and subsequently, insecurity, soon to be taken down into the sea where we are tossed about by the waves of many doctrines. When we exchanged knowledge for wisdom we fell.
Now I have to make a point here where it will appear that I am going to to contradict myself by saying that I believe the scriptures in where they say that God is unchanging. (Please note: the scriptures are not the religion – the interface between the human race, God and the guidance of scripture, that expression I think is religion) If you examine His dealings with us from generation to generation you will see that it is us who change. His love never changes. Even those figures who are leader amongst us, look at their lives. Look at each figure who has emerged over the two thousand years since Christ and find me one who has consistently been faultless. You can love and treat as a hero any number of these figures only to find that there is always someone who has a dislike for a certain aspect of their character, from Augustine to Bonhoeffer. No one person has ever had all the answers. They were part of the process.
Science and religion are not fixed. So you will not find the best expression of science and religion. Some I suspect are more accurate to the truth than others, but oft times it is only later that we find out which is which. Many of Einstein’s theories were proved well outside his life time. There are times we look back at decisions made by the church that seemed right at the time, only to cringe at how far off we were. So in our attempt to find security in the institution of science or religion we are on no rock of security, because it is always changing.
Knowledge is the quest for certainty, wisdom is the quest for relationship. We live in a time of crisis because we have turned to our own devices. Certain that God is not there on the basis of the certainty of science, or perhaps the hope He wasn’t there because - we pulled back the curtains to find the place where God should have been, empty. The Romans made that very mistake. Upon sacking Jerusalem and looting the temples the Romans thought the Jews piteous because they had no god. He was not present. They were quite right, He wasn’t there, but in their arrogance they made the fatal error of thinking the absence of what they were looking for was nowhere to be found, it simply was not in existence. We do this every day. We decide and outline for God His parameters for existence because we’ve worked it all out, and because He won’t be a good God and stay where told Him He should, He therefore is not there. We need to be very careful about where our certainties lie.
Don’t get me wrong though. There are certainties. And where there are not, I fall back on Occam’s razor. Google it. I believe that Jesus is an historical figure. I mean what I say. I take the New Testament at face value. I treat it like any document, I do my best to read as much as I can in it and about it and I am satisfied that it is a meticulous document. I trust what is written there. There are many reasons for this, archeology and theology being the main ones. But there is another. It stands the test of everyday living. I am yet to find one instruction by Jesus to be faulty. Reading carefully what He says, when applied, it works. And here’s the thing. It is applied only in practice. It is not an intellectual exercise. It works itself out in my daily living. As I apply it I realize the depth of it’s truth. The teaching of Christ are absolutely rock solid. Seriously, read them. Forget everything you think you know about Christians and read what He says. Put it into practice. Look at what He does, and when you do you will find it difficult to criticize Him. Find fault with what He does, go ahead and try.
Now my point. Christ does not call us to a set of ideals. You will notice they are surprisingly hard to find and follow when you decide to write a list of do’s and don’t. He calls us to Himself. If He is dead, then fine, make up your own rules. If He did resurrect then His call to follow Him is quite literally that. A call to follow Him.
There is a crisis in contemporary society, I suspect, because we put our faith in institutions and ideals. The latest and greatest that will save us, save our society and save our world. The call is to follow Him and allow Him to direct us to what needs doing. We like to choose because we have become like God, knowing good and evil. This is knowledge. We should put this aside and choose to follow Him, to rest with Him to choose His way, the way of obedience. This is wisdom. Putting anything before this as an answer is to turn it into idol. I suspect this is why religion and science have let us down.
