Tag: Faith

I Believe (An essay on science and faith)

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Atheism, Faith, Religion, Science

Author:  Skip Reith

Date:  9/26/2015

I Believe

I believe!  These two little words contain a lot of power.  These two little words are also misused, misunderstood, abused, and often ridiculed.  What do we mean when we say I believe?  That is what I will explore today.

Belief is that understanding a person has when they analyze and process all of the facts and information they have on a particular subject.  Belief can come from direct observation (I’ve been to New York so I believe it exists); or belief can come from indirect information – that is from an authority on the subject (I’ve never been to Tokyo, but I believe it exists because I have been told by maps and people who have been there that it exists).

One important note before I continue.  When I use the term authority here, I am not talking about some governmental organization.  I am talking about an expert on the subject whose knowledge, skill, and background gives them a special place in the hierarchy of understanding on the subject.  An authoritative source is one step up from an expert.  If the authoritative source is a person then that source not only is an expert, but that person also has a breadth and depth of knowledge around the main subject that allows them broad understanding on the subject.  If the source is not a person, then the source is complete and detailed.  For example, a professional astronomer with 30 years experience is an authority on astronomy.  The complete body of written papers and books on astronomy is an authoritative source on the subject.  In addition, an authority on the subject is one that other people agree and believe is an authority on the subject.  Is possible to think a person is an authority on a subject when they are actually not an expert and may have little knowledge in the subject.  (This technique is used all of the time by advertisers.  They get a famous person to promote their product.  Since people know the authority of the famous person’s specialty, they subconsciously assign authority to this other, advertised subject as well.)

Let’s look at belief in more detail.  Belief and knowledge are similar, but not identical.  Belief is your understanding of a situation, but you may not be able to prove that understanding to another.  Knowledge is a direct understanding of something that you can easily prove.  I know one plus one equals two and I can prove it in a number of ways, including demonstrating the summation with two pennies.  I know New York exists (or at least it did) because I was there.  I cannot prove its existence now because I am not there.  I can show evidence of my trip (pictures and souvenirs) but until I go back I can’t definitively prove its existence.  So, at the moment I believe that New York exists.  My belief in the existence of Tokyo is indirect.  My only proof is the maps and pictures I have seen of Tokyo.  If someone does not accept the authority of my proofs then they will not believe in Tokyo.

Science is the attempt to quantify beliefs and turn them into provable knowledge while authenticating the proofs.  The scientific method (described in my Observation – Applying the Scientific Method to Religion) is a disciplined approach to proving an understanding and turning belief into knowledge.  For example, I could apply the scientific method and fly to Tokyo and prove to myself that it exists, turning my belief into knowledge.

The problem with science is that it can only prove physical things.  It can prove the existence of matter and the existence of something called gravity, and so on.  It can dig out the understanding of how things function and explain the interactions of various objects.  Science also has beliefs, but to make it sound more important, scientists call those beliefs theories.  The scientific method attempts to prove that the theories are correct and to expand the understanding and details of those theories.

Science cannot prove strictly personal items.  It is not possible to weigh love, measure directly satisfaction, or count hate.  It is not even possible to directly analyze pain.  Scientists try to measure these strictly personal objects, but everything science does with these items is indirect.  For example, a doctor may ask you your pain level on a scale of 1 to 10, but that is a subjective measure and not an objective measure.  It is impossible for the doctor to measure directly your pain level.  The doctor cannot get a scale out and weigh your pain.  Even brain scans and EEG measurements do not measure pain they just measure physiological response to nerve stimulation.  Your awareness of pain is greater and more personal than the physiological response.

Consider, for example, love.  I know that I love my wife, son, step children, grandchild, dog, cats, and so on.  I cannot prove that love, except by my actions and that is just indirect.  No one could take out a ruler and measure my love.  Science cannot apply the scientific method to my love in such a way that others could know definitively my love.  Love is completely and utterly personal.

It is impossible for one person to know directly what another person feels.  Even if we could hook two people’s brains together, they still could not know each other’s feelings because our emotions, our response to external stimulations, our core being is determined by every experience we have had up to that point.  Since no two people follow the same path in life, no two people experience emotions the same way.  This puts love in the belief column.  Although I KNOW I love my family, I cannot prove it.  So ultimately, I can only say I believe in my love.

Others may believe that I do, in fact, love my family.  Others experience love themselves, and even though they do not have the same feelings towards my family as I do, they understand that those feelings exist.  Sometimes people may not understand why that particular feeling exists (“how is possible that people actually loved Hitler”), but they understand that there is such feelings.

What about stuff that many people may not experience directly?  What about, for example, spiritual experiences that many people may never encounter.  If something like love cannot be quantized or measured and therefore are not subject to the scientific method, something like spiritual experiences are even further removed from science.  If we cannot prove our love to another, when that other person also experiences love, how can we prove spirituality and religious belief to someone who has never undergone that experience?  It is at this point that ridicule and disbelief occur.

If a person cannot understand directly a spiritual belief of another and has no indirect proof, then that person is faced with a problem.  If the unbeliever (atheist) accepts that the other has had a spiritual experience, then that means the atheist is deficient in some manner.  Unless the atheist wants to admit this deficiency (which is rare) they then have to take the second path – trying to prove the other person’s beliefs are false.  Yet, spiritual experiences are not something you can measure.  It is not possible for the atheist to get out a scale and say “see your belief does not measure up!”  The attack on spiritual and religious knowledge must take different approaches.

One approach is the strawman approach.  In this approach, the atheist constructs a strawman; that is, they liken the religious belief to some other, more tangible belief, and then attack the strawman.  For example, someone could say that the belief in God is like the belief in Santa Claus.  Since we all know Santa Claus does not exist, it is obvious that God does not exist.  This argument fails on many dimensions.

Santa Claus is a belief children develop because they accepted their parents and adults as an authority on the subject.  The adults lied to the children (we hide that fact by calling it a fantasy or a story, but it is still a lie).  The children have no other source, so they accept the adult’s authority.  They believe in the existence of Santa Claus on authority of the lying adults.  Once the children grow old enough to perform an independent validation, they uncover the lie.  Their belief changes because they have new facts and data.

An atheist saying that belief in God is like a belief in Santa Claus is actually saying that belief in God is like a belief in a lie that some authority told you.  This may hold for children and extremely gullible people, but it does not hold for discerning, open minded adults who have directly experienced God.  In addition, the believer has additional proof of God that the believer in Santa Claus does not have.  There are corroborating historical documents that validate some of the religious writings.  There is the fact that millions of people have died for their belief – something that has not happened over the belief in Santa Claus.  More importantly, the belief in God is open to everyone, and everyone can run the religious experiment.  That is, each person has the opportunity to follow the authoritative sources on God and see the results for themselves.

The other approach an atheist can try to discredit a religious belief is to claim that science has never proved God exists and they only believe in science.  Before I get into what science can and cannot prove I have to address this belief in science.  Science has brought a lot of knowledge and understanding to the world.  Science has enabled a lot of engineering and technology that brings enhanced medicines, labor saving devices, and so on.  (It also enhanced war, pollution, oppression, and other ills, but we don’t need to go there for our current discussion.)  So, saying you believe in science seems reasonable.  The problem is most people have no idea what they are talking about or what they believe in when they say they believe in science.

First off, almost everything we call science these days is actually engineering.  Computers, cell phones, air planes, medicines, surgical procedures, cars, TVs, and on and on are all engineering feats.  For the most part, the science on these things is done behind closed doors and people never see the actual science.  Most people wouldn’t even know the scientific method if it hit them in the face.  So, what people are really saying when they say they believe in science is that they believe in the technology they have and they believe the authoritative sources that they are exposed to who proclaim the greatness of science.

Let’s look at those authoritative sources.  In most countries a major part of scientific research is funded by the government.  Research gets published in journals, but most people have never even seen a scientific journal, let alone read one.  Even though scientists publish, the publication is controlled by a review from scientific peers.  The government controls what scientists investigate through funding, and therefore control what scientists understand and believe.  I will point out that the government is controlled by politicians and bureaucrats not scientists or even people with a scientific background.

People’s exposure to science first comes about in school.  The classes are taught by the teachers, who are managed by administrators, and the whole thing is controlled and regulated by the government.  A lot or research and enhanced scientific advances come from universities.  Universities get a major part of their funding either directly (through grants) or indirectly (through tuition) that is paid by the government.  Other sources of scientific information and “discovery” comes from governmental agencies like NASA, national science foundation, food and drug administration, US department of agriculture, the atomic energy commission and its various follow on agencies, the department of defense, environmental protection agency, national weather service, US geological survey, and on and on.

Some people are exposed to science through things like public television.  Public TV gets a majority of their funding from the government.  If you perform a review of a lot of “scientific” articles on public media you will find that a lot comes from some governmental source (like NASA). Non-governmental entities, like the Discovery Channel may present “scientific documentaries” but these are often sensationalized stories.  Interestingly enough, many of the critics of these documentaries are government funded agencies and government supported public media.

So, when a person says they believe in science, they are really saying that they believe in the government.  The government is controlled and run by politicians, and we all know that politicians lie, cheat, twist the truth, hide information, and do whatever they can to remain in power.  Since most people have no direct experience with science, then when an atheist says they believe in science what they are saying is that their belief is just like the belief in Santa Claus – it’s based on a lie.

As I have shown, science cannot prove or disprove love.  Science cannot measure anything that is personal.  Scientists cannot measure thoughts, feelings, ideas, responses, or any of thousands of deeply personal experiences.  Yet, we all know these are real.  Science cannot answer basic questions like why does the universe exist or what is the meaning of life?  While modern science has discovered a huge amount about the physical reality, there is way more to our existence than just the physical.

Science (as people define science, which are the physical and social sciences) cannot, and never will, be able to scientifically prove personal, internal experiences of people.  Science is limited.  So, when an atheist says they only believe in science, they are also saying that they do not believe in emotions, thoughts, ideals, creativity, art, spirituality, honor, or God.  That’s kind of a limited point of view.

When I say I believe in God, I am not saying that I believe that someone once told me God exists and I accept their authority on the subject.  I say I believe because I have personal knowledge that I have tested using the scientific method.  I have investigated life with and without God.  I have researched God, the authoritative writings, and talked with people who I feel are experts on the subject (both for and against).  I have weighed all of the evidence and data and I have found that the evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of believing that God exists.

I cannot prove God’s existence.  I cannot pull out a photograph of God or take out my telescope and show you God.  However, I have looked deep inside myself and have found God there, waiting for me.  I cannot force you to believe.  I can only say that if you run the experiment – that is, if you follow the teachings of an authoritative source on religion and God, then you too may experience God in a way similar to (but not exactly the same as) my experience.

I hope you do.  I hope that you run the experiment and prove to yourself the existence of God.  However, if you instead try to hide behind science and use science as a shield, you will find that the shield is very small indeed and not much protection against larger truths.

Faith, Science And Human Knowledge

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Faith, Science

Faith, Science And Human Knowledge

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it the elders obtained a good testimony. By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible. Heb 11:1-3

I often hear people say that science is based on reason and religion is based on faith. After reflecting on this for while I came to the conclusion that science and religion both have a faith component and a rational one.

First of all, let’s look at the thought process that goes on in science. The first thing we find in the making of any scientific theory is a hunch that something is true. This hunch may come from a number of sources. It may originate in the imagination of the scientist or a scientist may stumble on something by accident, which creates a curiosity. It may come through some tacit awareness, which is beyond explanation. We call this tacit awareness creativity or inspiration. Whatever it is, it is the motivation which moves the scientist to the next step of searching for evidence to  prove his hunch. When he obtains what he thinks is enough evidence; he is moved to publish his belief publicly. It is at this time that his hunch becomes a theory that the Bible calls faith. It is still a hunch, though, he now has somet evidence to support it. However, at this point the evidence is not enough to turn his hunch into fact.

In science, the hunch stage of an idea is called a hypothesis. In layman’s language, a hunch might be called an educated guess based on tacit knowledge, which would necessitate a strong element of faith. At this level of knowledge there may be  little, to no evidence to support the hunch or hypothesis, yet because of the scientists faith they continue on, looking for evidence. If they find enough evidence to support their hunch, then they will publish it for the scientific community to have their hypothesis tested. If the scientific community, through the scientific method, confirms  their belief, then the hypothesis is moved to the status of a theory.

What is a Theory? A theory is “a proposed explanation whose status is still conjecture and subject to experimentation in contrast to a well-established proposition that are regarded as reporting matters of actual fact”. One of the problems with the idea of a theory is that it is hard sometimes for many people to determine the difference between a theory, and a fact. The main difference is that a fact has a large degree of certitude and the theory still has a faith element in it, though less than the hypothesis.

¶Over the course of time if a theory maintains its integrity, it will then be referred as a law; e.g. the law of gravity or the law of thermodynamics.  However, some theories may never reach the level of law because of the number of pieces missing in its explanation of the facts, or the failure of scientists to be able to apply the scientific method to the theory. There are a number of theories that the scientific method cannot be applied to, such as Darwinian evolution, which has elements that must be accepted by faith and can never be proven or disproven by empirical evidence. One of these elements is whether or not evolution is directed by a force in or outside of nature, or it is completely undirected and random.

I think it quite self-evident that science, as in all disciplines of human knowledge, has a faith element in it that is very similar to a faith in God. When a person has a real faith in God, which is not inherited from family or culture, you will basically find very similar steps as we saw in science. We see a hunch or hypothesis that there is something more than nature. The hunch may come from pondering one’s thoughts or the incredible sense of awe that comes through observing the wonders of nature, or a tacit revelation which cannot be explained.

¶The next step is for a person to begin to search for God. Now, it is important to note that at this point the hunch is not what the Bible calls faith; it is still only a hunch. However, as the person begins to look for God and the evidence begins to grow, his hunch starts to grow into faith.  His tacit hunch enables him to see more and more of the evidence for God. In this, his hunch becomes the instrument or tool which aids him in his search for God.

¶Sometimes you must believe something in order to see it. For example, scientists believed there were atoms hundreds of years before they could prove their existence. If they rejected everything because they could not see it, they would have never looked for atoms. If they had not believed, they would have never found the atom.

When does a person’s hunch, become faith?  Just like the scientist, a hunch becomes faith when it is confirmed by evidence and when it is publicly published.  In Biblical Christianity this happens when a person confesses Christ publicly by being baptize or immersed into Christ (Gal 3:26, 27)[i]. As the  evidence grows, faith continues to move through the phases of a hypothesis, a theory and then in the certitude of law, which the Bible calls the law of the Spirit of life. This is simpler to the phases of a scientific belief, which is first a hunch, then a theory and then law.

If this is all true why do people believe that science is objective and faith is subjective? First let me point out that the categories of objective and subjective are somewhat artificial. It can be established that all human thought, including science has some subjective elements. The hard and fast difference between science and theology actually came out of the struggle between the philosophers and the natural philosophers. Natural philosophers, whom we now call scientists, wanted to separate themselves from the philosophers who sought the truth by reason alone (in their minds only). The natural philosophers (scientists) believed that the search for truth needed to be proven by observation and experimentation (outside their minds in nature). So, the die was  cast for the different ways of approaching truth. In the course  of time and because of the great successes of science, science won the day and philosophy had to take second place.

But what about theology?  Where does that fit in? Well, on the surface, it appears to be more akin to philosophy than science.  However, Christian theology actually is more akin to science for it has an authority outside of the human mind. That outside authority and source of information is the Scriptures, which the faith community accepts as authoritative.  Furthermore, the faith community has a set of facts that it can observe and use to develop hypotheses and theories. In theology like science, there is a community where these theories can also be published; where they can be questioned and verified. The different between theology and science is the set of facts they are examining. Science looks at the facts of nature and gives a naturalist interpretation of the facts. The theologian looks at scripture and also gives an interpretation. Both science and theology have rules, or laws, to govern their interpretation of the facts.  Science uses the scientific method and theology uses the laws of hermeneutics. Both have laws or principles to limit arbitrary and personal interpretations.

It is self-evident that faith is a key element in the pursuit of all human knowledge. I had a friend tell me he could not even eat his wife’s stew without faith. Not only is faith the beginning of all pursuits of knowledge, it is also the thing that keeps people motivated in their quest for knowledge; once on the road faith turns into hope. It may be the hope of a religious faith or the hope of discovering a new scientific truth, but when analyzed it is simply faith.

[i]  In Gal 3:26, 27 the apostle Paul speaks of faith and baptism as synonymous with one another. In Paul faith is born in an outward action and is more than a subjective thought.

Wrangling About Words

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Biblical doctrines, Faith, Salvation

Wrangling About Words

“The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Some have wandered away from these and turned to meaningless talk. They want to be teachers of the law, but they do not know what they are talking about or what they so confidently affirm” 1Tim 1:5-7

When I read material written by many evangelicals about salvation, my mind often goes into a tailspin. They talk about salvation by “faith alone”, yet the bible only uses that expression one time and  claims that it is not true (James 2:24). The Bible simply says that we are saved by faith.  Why add the “alone” to the equation?  I am sure that many people add alone to the equation because they believe it clarifies what the Bible teaches on salvation.  However, the question is does it clarify or does it just confuse the issue?

Before we dig deep into this expression “faith alone” I would like us to find the source of this expression and see if we can learn a possible reason for its introduction into the equation of evangelical salvation messages.  I think most historians would agree that it was Martin Luther the Protestant reformer who was the first to use this expression or at the very least popularized it.  If we go back and look at his reason, it may help us to understand its true meaning.

Luther lived in a time when the church had reached an absolute low. The clergy had run amok and the church had become nothing more than the handmaiden of the aristocracy.  It was using the fear of hell to oppress the people financially and politically. The atmosphere was one that you had to pay the church for your salvation by purchasing indulgences and absolution for your sins.  The church stood between the people; and God mediating salvation to the people.  In this environment, the idea of good works was reduced to buying your salvation from the Church.  This left the appearance that one could obligate God to save you, which of course is foolishness.  However, foolishness has been the norm for the masses.  What Luther wanted to do was break down everything that stood between the people and God and thus the emphasis on “faith alone”; no indulgences, absolutions or church, nothing but the faith of the individual, thus “faith alone”.

With this background information, we might ask has this concept of “faith alone” gone amok.  Well, the only way for us to answer that is to look at what the Scriptures say about faith.  As mentioned above, the bible only uses the expression “faith alone” one time and it teaches that true faith is never alone (James 2:24).  However, it does says that we are saved by grace through faith (Eph 2:8-10).  It also says that we are saved by faith apart from works, that is the works of the Law of Moses, or you could say the works of religion. In this, Luther was right when he said we are saved by “faith alone”. That is faith in Jesus apart from the works of religion.  However, some modern-day evangelicals take it much farther than Luther or the Bible.  They leave the impression that a person who believes in Jesus can do anything and live any way they wish and still be saved by a simple confession of faith uttered sometime in the past. Is this  what “faith alone” means or should we stick to the Bible and say that salvation is by Grace, through faith? Should we not try to define faith by what the Bible says about it?

I personally think that the expression by “faith alone” today is very confusing to the average person. Instead of clarifying, it confuses and darkens the true meaning of faith. In a real sense faith is never alone for by its very nature genuine faith produces the obedience of faith (Rom 1:5).  If there is no obedience, there is simply not a true faith.  The closest word we have to faith in English is the word trust.  If you trust God, it seems logical that you would trust that his will for your life is the optimal thing for you to do and humans usually do what’s best for them.  Therefore, if there is no obedience there is no true faith.  This would imply that true faith capsulate trust and obedience.

In much American religion, we see faith reduced to mental assent. By that I mean that one accepts intellectually that there is a God, a Christ, and that he died for your sins. However, this mental assent alone is the dead faith that James says that demons have, and he adds,“they shudder”.  Some have said that James talks about two kinds of faith, a living faith and a dead faith.  Actually he talks about three kinds of faith. The third kind is the faith of demons.  This faith creates fear in them to the point that they shudder.  Of course, their faith does not lead them to repentance because they hate God.  James infers that the faith of demons is greater than those who have a dead faith, which does not lead them to repentance and doing works of love.  At least  demons believe enough to be moved to fear. Of course, if I had a dead faith, I would like to believe that some metaphysical surgery could separate faith from works, so I could be saved by a dead faith. Maybe the expression “faith alone” accomplished this surgery in the mind of some.

¶Someone might ask, “When is faith obeyed enough, to become a saving faith?” Likewise, you might as well ask, “When does a person believes sufficiently enough to have a saving faith?”  In the New Testimony it appears that faith was accepted by the body of Christ when a person was  led to confessing Christ and  was baptized (Acts 2:38, 22:16). The act of baptism was a public identification with Christ and his Church. If you were not identified with Christ you were not saved (Matt 10:32). This may be why baptism was done immediately in the New Testament when people believed on Christ. Note the examples of conversions in the book of Acts (Acts 2:36-38, Acts 8:9-13, Acts 8:26-40, Acts 9:1-19, Acts 16:29-34,Acts 16:13-15,Acts 19:1-8).

For the identifying marks of a true believe read the epistle of first John.  “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life (1 John 5:13).  John is the only New Testament writer that addresses the question of how a person can know if they are a true believer and he does not base it on the notion of assurance by “faith alone”. Rather John says it come from keeping the commandments of Christ and walking as he did (1Jn 2:3-6).

In Hebrews the eleventh chapter, the writer gets into what constitutes real faith.  He begins by saying, “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.”  However, in verse six he gives us some insight to what constitutes faith “And without faith, it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.”  In this Scripture, we see three ingredients of true faith. The first is mental acceptance, which is an intellectual belief in His existence. The second is a trust that he will reward you in the resurrection. In other words, you believe his promises as Abraham did (Rom 4). The finally ingredient is being earnest in seeking him and his will.  To be earnest is to be sincere and diligent in seeking and doing his will “Seek first His Kingdom”.  The Hebrew writer goes on in Chapter eleven to give a number of examples of what real faith looks like in actual man and woman. After reading the chapter you come away with the image that real faith is a dynamic force that moves men to action for God.  Read the chapters then look at our churches, filled with people with little or no real change or power in their lives, filled with emotions that are paraded as actual faith and yet few good works to support its claim.

However, the scripture says that it is impossible to please God without a true faith and that faith constitutes trust, the obedience of faith and a will that is seeking the heart of God.  To reduce faith to a one-time confession of intellectual beliefs or just a mental assent to some facts is to teach a false gospel that is not taught in the New Testament. Watch out for the “faith alone” doctrine.

How to Have Faith?

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Faith

How to Have Faith?

   I once had a young man tell me that he wished he could believe in God.  As I listened to him, I felt he was looking for a formula or method to create faith. Well, I wish I had a method, but I do not believe there is any scheme for creating faith. If you know of one please let me know.  Faith is a mystery. However, it is not a total mystery.

One thing I do know is that hope is the beginning of faith and without it, faith does not stand a chance. In essence, you must want to believe that there is a God along with all of the implications that come with such a faith, i.e. you must have a will to believe.

If I am right the place to begin for the atheist, or for that matter anyone who is seeking faith, would be to ask oneself “do I really hope that there is a God?” Now, if ones hope is real, it would seem that it would lead to an earnest and diligent search for the true God.  Anything less than this kind of search will never lead to the true God. One of the spiritual laws of the universe is that a half-hearted search will never find the real God.  Unfortunately, this means that most religious folks do not know the true God, for the majority has never searched out God with their whole heart.  The majority have inherited faith from their family or their culture. Now, in itself there is nothing wrong with inheriting your faith. One of the purposes of family is to pass along to the next generation the wisdom of their elders. However, second hand faith may not be good enough to whether the storms of life.

As said above, the true God only reveals himself to those that seek him intensely. A vital part of this seeking is an openness to obey him no matter what the cost. Many who seek him do not find him because they have something in their heart, or in their life that they are not willing to give up. They are like the very religious young man who asked Jesus about God; he was  content until he was told that he had to give up his wealth and follow Jesus. When Jesus told this man that he must sell everything and follow him, Jesus was simply trying to raise the young man’s self-awareness and help him to see the real problem with his faith; he loved his riches more than God.

I believe the truth is that the majority of people actually hope there is no God, at least, not the God, which Jesus spoke about.  However, to justify their ineptness toward this force, they reduce it to something that they can manage, like the God of the Deist or a God that resembles Santa Claus, thus we have religion. In this, religion is unbelief in the form of belief.  Others simply ignore this force and suppress their awareness of it into the recesses of their minds. There it remains until they are forced to think about it because of some unpleasant experience like sickness, death or by the prodding of some babbling seer, which they quickly dismiss as a fanatic.

Then there are the so-called atheists, who are somewhat more honest than the above. These folks cannot play the game of the religious man or the indifferent man; they must justify their rebellion and unbelief by denying the very existence of God. They then can claim reason itself, for their unbelief. Some actually believe that reason alone forces them not to believe in God. In this clever move, they deny any personal responsibility for their unbelief, which is a new twist to the “devil made me do it” excuse. Right, it is no longer the devil; it is now reason. However, in reality, they are like the others, in that they seldom understand the real reason for their indifference and in their case, unbelief. They fail to see that their reason is the handmaiden of their will and it is their will, which hinders faith. Every counselor who works with addicts knows that the will controls reason. It is a myth of the Enlightenment that men can know something by reason alone. I guess they could if they wanted to but the truth is they don’t want to and they do not want to know, that they do not want to know. In this, we see the truth of what the seer says, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9)

All of this would suggest that honesty along with hope would be a key ingredient in one’s search for God, not so much honesty about the existence of God, but honest about oneself and your own search and journey. In this, you must face your authentic self before you can face the true God. The real question is not, does God exist, but rather the question is; why do you not want to do God’s will?

It would seem that the way to faith is to start hoping that there is a God and start living as if there is one. Stop arguing with God and start listening. Ask God to change your will, not your mind, for it not your mind that is hindering faith. The reason you cannot wrap your head around God is because He is either too big or your head is too small.  If it were purely a mind problem, there would be no intelligent believers and there would be no smart addicts.  Therefore, the beginning place of faith is not to question God, but to question yourself. God is not on trial nor is his existence.  No, it is you who is on trial and the question is, “will you find your authentic self”? This is not an easy task for creatures who are prone to believe lies and illusions. Good luck on your journey, it is not easy or comfortable.

 

God Man or Monkey Man

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Faith

God Man or Monkey Man

If you had a choice of living with a man who believed he was god or a man who believed he is a monkey, which one would you choose?   My best bet would be, that you would choose the one that believed he is a god. He surely would have better table manners and a higher sense of morality than a monkey.  Of course, you can house train a monkey if you had the time and patients, but I do not know if you can house train a man who believes he is a monkey.

It seems that it could be quite boring to live with a monkey or a man who believed he is one.  Though monkeys can be cute and sometimes  very intelligent,  they don’t talk very much.  Some monkeys probably even believe they are human, like some men who believe they are well-developed monkeys.  Now a monkey that is intelligent enough to think he is human may be easier to live with than a man who believed he is a monkey.

Of course, monkeys do not know that they are monkeys. In fact, a monkey may be easier to live with than a man who believes he is a monkey.  Unlike men, monkeys do not talk back. This would allow a human that believed he is a god to continue to believe he is a god. A talking monkey might even convince you that you are a monkey and not a god. In fact, a lot of men who believe they are monkeys spend an inordinate amount of time trying to teach other men; they are monkeys.  If a monkey had a super  intelligence, you may be able to speak to him of simple science and even teach  him some technology.  However, do not expect him to talk to you about metaphysical things. They are, you know, a one-dimensional creature, somewhat like men who believe they are monkeys.

On the other hand, it might be scary to live with someone who believed he is a god.  He might  want you to live and talk like him.  He might even demand that you stop living like a monkey and stop walking on all fours.  Of course, if you lived with the man, who though he is a monkey, you would be the god, at least to him.  You could lower the bar so you and the monkey man could feel comfortable with any standard, even that of a monkey (something many in our culture have done).

I have often wondered what it would be like to live with a god.  It surly would take courage.   The older I get, the more I marvel at the courage and the faith of the apostles of Jesus. You may not believe that Jesus was God, but I believe the honest person would have to concede, if a god ever came to earth, he would live and speak like Jesus. How would you handle the invitation of Jesus, “come follow me”?  Would you have responded with the courage of faith or cowardly indifference? I guess it all depends on whether you believe you are a monkey or a god.