The Bible has the best explanation of reality

What comes below are some random thoughts – to address this properly and fully is probably a book in and of itself, and I don't have all of my thoughts together on it yet. I tend to come back to most of my posts from time to time, to fine tune them. I will probably need whole new replacement parts for this one. But as they say, nothing ventured nothing gained, so “whatever” here goes:

There is something wonderful about “creation” and something terrible about it too. There is such beauty and such destruction. I will not repeat the well know arguments about design pointing to a creator, but I do want to say that “the evidential power of beauty” is not usually included in this argument, and it should be. There is a book by this tile, and it's worth reading. I do not by any means want to deemphasize any of the wonder of it all. If I appear to do so, it is only for the sake of brevity but see also “A trinity of revelation IV”– September 19th 2010.

So then there is such beauty, such wonder, but no matter which way you look at it there is something that is not quite right about the World we live in. Well actually this is British understatement (You can take the boy out of Britain, but you can't take Britain out of the boy). I mean consider nature red in tooth and claw. How come it's dog eat dog, and not cat love cat? Why is Murphy's law not “If anything can go right it will”? How come bad habits are easy to get into and hard to get out of, while good habits are hard to get into and easy to get out of? How come we blame others first and ourselves last? How come we minimize our own faults and maximize the other buddies? How come its so hard to say sorry and to take responsibility for our actions? How come we do the bad things we don't want to do, and don't do the good things we know we should? How come its so difficult to live up to even our own standards? How come its so hard to get ahead? Why is it that if you add a thimble full of fine old scotch to a barrel of sewage it remains sewage, but if you add a thimble of sewage to a barrel of fine old scotch, it becomes sewage?

The positive and the negative do not balance out. Hate begets hate, and hate destroys love. It's true that love can overcome hate, but how much more love does one have to exhibit to overcome it? How much fine old scotch does one have to add to a barrel of sewage before it becomes drinkable? You know it has to be less than so many parts per billion before you can't taste it! You may want to point to the principle of the survival of the fittest, the principle of natural selection. But describing a principle does not explain why it is, and survival of the fittest and love seem to be incompatible. Look at the drug cartels in Mexico, or the street gangs in most major cities in the States. Over and over the bad seems to trump the good. So why is this, and in light of it, how come anyone manages to get ahead at all?

So part of what I am saying, is that it is not a level playing field, there seems to be something diabolically wrong (negative) about reality. You could almost believe that there is some malevolent force behind it all, orchestrating the negative and undermining the positive. And yet, there also seems to be a force for good too that at times, against all odds and in spite of it all comes through. It's good material for conspiracy theorists! Actually I have one, it is this: Earth is the battle field for unseen forces in heavenly realms. On one side there is an enemy of our souls who is determined, subtle, who lies to us, who seems to know our weaknesses and uses them against us. This enemy (so the “theory” continues), has an agenda to kill and to steal and to destroy. Well you guessed it, it is not my conspiracy theory at all, it's the Bible's (see Ephesians 6:12ff; John 10:10). And if it is true (and it is), it explains the evil that is in a way no other “theory” does. By the way part of his strategy in the West is to spread the lie that He does not exist. In Africa on the other hand, he likes to display his raw power, ask those who have lived there!

But what about the other side, the question of how any of us manage to get ahead at all? Well continuing, with the Biblical explanation, there is One who is all powerful, who loves us, who for a season is at some level restraining the evil and who can be called upon to help. In many ways this raises more questions than it answers, but is this not the case with all knowledge? What I want to say here is that as He explains in what He calls His Word, He too has an agenda, a plan. It is to unite all things together in Himself (Ephesians 1:10). He has gone to extraordinary lengths to rescue those of us who choose to turn to Him, acknowledge our faults and our need of Him and then to put our trust in Him. He is waiting for us to ask Him to rescue us, but the reality of it is that we are stubborn and take forever to even come to the place where we are willing to admit that we need to be rescued, to discover how much we need Him. But He is patient and waits to be gracious to us (Isaiah 30:18). This thing called free will, our ability to choose, seem to be incredibly important to Him. So He allows us to choose to spend eternity with the Evil one if that is what we choose. As I say He has gone to incredible lengths (even death on a cross) to show us His love (Philippians 2:8; Romans 5:8). It is as if Christ spread wide His arms on the cross and declared “You will go to hell over (by going round) my dead body!” It should break our hearts, and it is a measure of the hardness of our hearts that so few respond.

So He works with those who are willing to follow Biblical principles (even some those who do not acknowledge Him), and as I say, He is even at this moment at some level restraining the evil. Things would be much worse if He were not. He will not always do so, and He tells us there is coming a time (before the very end) when the One who is currently restraining things will be taken out of the equation (see 2 Thessalonians 2:7 and context). He delays because He is not willing that any should perish, but that all should find life in Him (John 3:16; 10:10).

So the Biblical explanation for the current imbalance of good and evil is that we are in a war to the death with the enemy of our souls, but there is a force for good that with His help can and will in the end overcome even the greatest evil, and will in the end triumph. He has given us glimpses of this. Most of the great advances were instigated by those who love Him. The abolition of slavery followed the Wesley revival in England, the Universities were started by the Church. Modern Science began because Christians believing in a God of order, reasoned that it made sense to study creation in an orderly and systematic way. Modern Science began this way but did not continue this way. But if it all came by chance (as many are now saying), we would expect chaos. If it all came by chance why would we expect what is, to be governed by laws in the first place? If it has all evolved from chaos, why would we even spend time and energy looking for laws that speak of order?

I don't want to get into a big debate here into the variegated many sided debates over faith/science, evolution/creation. I have argued earlier that all world views are positions of faith (June/July 2010). What I want to say here is that any theory that automatically excludes a pre-existing primary cause of all that is, is first and foremost unscientific, and secondly is it not unbiased (as it claims to be). The one basic presupposition of Science upon which we all agree is the uniformity of cause and effect, that is every effect has a cause. You cannot (or rather you must not) talk about the uniformity of cause and effect and then simply throw the principle out when it comes to origins. There basically are only two possibilities: Either some pre-existent primary cause created everything that is out of nothing, or “nothing” created everything that is out of nothing. Neither view is unbiased. The first view postulates some form of god, and the second postulates “not God” (see the faith of the atheist July 2010). Both positions are positions of faith, neither position is provable in Scientific terms. To claim that the second view is Scientific and the first is not, is simply nonsense! You may not like it, you may not understand it, you may not want to believe it, it may contradict your faith position (especially if you are an atheist), but the most logical explanation of the fact that there is something there, and that it had a beginning, is that there is a pre-existing first cause. To say this another way, someone or something was there in the beginning.

We can call this pre-existent primary cause “God,” or “the Force,” and so far in my argument, either is equally logical. But we must not, in seeking the best explanation of reality, stop there. We need to take into account what Francis Schaeffer calls “the mannishness of man”. Suppose for openers we go with “a Force,” (as opposed to the full fledged Judea o Christian God). We need to ask, is the Force personal or impersonal, does the Force have personality or not? If we go with the impersonal, then we need to explain how on earth that which is impersonal “gave birth” to the personal (humankind). Of course we can deny that man is personal, and many do, but it's part of our problem, part of what ails us, for we do not know who we are. We can ask many similar questions of “The Force” is he (it) moral, intelligent, creative, and if not, how come mankind is moral, intelligent and creative etc.. etc. If it is the Force, what is his or its attributes, and would it not make a lot of sense for reality to somehow reflected some of these attributes?

Let me come at this from a different angle. Many have problems with the concept of God as Trinity (Three in One – God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit – One God, three hypostasis - as the creeds have it). They don't understand it! I have to admit that is is difficult to comprehend. But if God is God would He not be difficult for finite man to understand? I have blogged this in more detail (July/August 2010), but roughly it occurred to me one day that if God is Trinity (unity in diversity) then we would expect to see reflections of Him in creation, and we do. What exists is matter residing in space and time. Each of these is itself trinity: matter is liquid solid and gas, space has three dimensions and time is past present and future. These are pale reflections of Trinity, they are not Trinity themselves. Matter is not God (clearly). But the pinnacle of creation is mankind (we can debate this too, and many do), and so we can expect that mankind is the best reflection of Trinity. And He is, in that he is body soul and spirit. Only man (the Bile tells us) is created in the image of Trinity. Man is what I call true trinity (with lower case t). Just as Trinity is not three separate independent aspects of the Godhead, so body soul and spirit are not thee separate independent aspect of mankind, there are intricate interconnections between them. So for example we need to study Psycho-Somatic (soul - body) illnesses, that is our Psychological health affects our physical health and vice versa. In my early blogs I have also argued that we are spiritual beings and when we try to live our lives without that aspect we are impoverished. There is much to say here!

There is one objection I feel I must address. It is the objection that there has been more evil committed in the name of religion than any thing else. And it is true, so how does this reality fit into what I have been saying? Again the Biblical explanation is that religion is part of the battle field, and that where God is at work Satan is at work too. That is how war works is it not? Where the enemy attacks you counter attack right? And religion can be and often is used as a cloak to mask who we really are, and what are our real intentions. It was, after all the religious who crucified Christ. Not every one who names the name of Christ is Christian. I can go to the garage every day but that does not make me a car. The parable of the wheat and the weeds shows not only that there are true and false believers, but that God's intention is to separate them at the end of the age (Matthew 13:24ff). On top of this the Church is intended to be a hospital for the sin sick. I have a potential post entitled “I won't go to that hospital, there are just too many sick people there.” Do we criticize a hospital for admitting the sick? Well I think you get the point. It is surely to the credit of the Church (hospital) that it is willing to admit so many sin sick people!

The Bible further explains this by saying that “Many are called, but few are chosen” (Matthew 20:16). He chooses us when we choose to surrender and to follow Him. The default is that many of us (even in the church) are trying to choose not to choose. But there is no fence, and the choice not to choose is in and of itself a choice. So the default is to “let her slide by'” (as we say here in Newfoundland). In the body of the book that is coming I have a section entitle “Radical but not fanatical”, or to put this in the language of 12 step programms “Half measures profited us nothing.” Too many of us have just enough religion to make us (and everybody else) miserable! The first part of the great commandment is that we are to love the Lord with all that we are and have (Mark 12:30). When we are lukewarm, it makes Him want to puke (Revelation 3:16)! Perhaps we are all deserving of this rebuke at times!

As I said above there is material here for a book, but I want to conclude this post with one last aspect of the reality we see in the mannishness of man, and that is his duplicity. This is part of Creation being both wonderful and terrible. What I am saying is that there is something noble about mankind, and there is something devious and depraved about him (I am aware that some Christians acknowledge only the latter, but this I believe is wrong!). Mankind is noble because he is made in the image of God, and we catch glimpses of this nobility in the Terry Fox's and the Mother Theresa's, the Gandhi’s and the Erin Brockovich's of this world. Yes there is a nobility (at times), but there is also a depravity. We see this in the Stalin's, in the Hitlers of this World, in the Pol Pot's, in religious fanatics, in the religious leaders who crucified Christ. The Biblical explanation of this, is that while man is created in the image of God and so noble, that image is marred by the fall. Roughly speaking the fall describes the universal phenomenon among us that we have all chosen and all choose to act in accordance with what we know is wrong. These wrong choices have consequences and change our nature. And because of this God changed the nature of reality, and He did this in order that the consequences would point us back to Him (Genesis 3, see also “For you sake I cursed the earth” August 2010).

So then the reality is that there is something noble about mankind but there is also something depraved about him. If we are honest, we see this in ourselves too. Not seeing it is part of our duplicity. We certainly see it in others, and as I said last day "What are the odds." We see it, but how do we explain it?

There is so much more to be said, but my point is in the title of the post: The Bible has the best explanation of reality of what is, of the way things work, and of the dilemma of our duplicity. Fortunately the Bible also has points to the way of rescue, of salvation. For God so loved the World that He send His one and only Son, so that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have fulness of life in the here and now, and in the hereafter, life everlasting.