Faith and First Principles

“Why are you a Christian?”

“Because I believe in God, and…”

“Yes, of course, but why do I believe in God?”

“Because I have faith.”

“But why?”

This is a conversation for which most Christians are woefully unprepared. Christians long to be known by their works (though for many of us this is just as challenging), but dread the moment when they must offer a clear, convincing argument for their beliefs. As such, we really ought to take a moment every now and again to consider how the conversation ought to go.

It is worth considering, first of all, that whenever anyone asks a question like, “Why are you a Christian?” they are not looking for answers that only beg more questions. At least, they shouldn’t be. A person who asks, “Why are you a Christian?” should really be looking for something more fundamental. They should be looking for first principles; they should be looking for an answer that is irreducible and axiomatic. Something observable and undeniable. The same is true in science, for anyone who asks, in a science classroom, a question like “What are we made of?” is not looking for a stopgap answer, but for an answer founded on first principles. Anyone genuinely searching for an answer may be satisfied, at first, with something as superficial as, “We are made of atoms,” but it is only a matter of time before they recognize the obvious next question, “But what are atoms made of?” And, of course, the answer that follows (atoms are made of protons, neutrons and electrons), leads to yet another question, and another. An infinite regression.

A first principle is what we are left with in those unique moments when the last question has been answered. It is something that demands no further questioning; and it is something that is surprisingly rare, especially in science.  As C.S. Lewis observed, “The laws of physics decree that when one billiards ball (A) sets another billiards ball (B) in motion, the momentum lost by A Exactly equals the momentum gained by B.  This is a Law. That is, this is the pattern to which the movement of the two billiards balls must conform. Provided, of course, that something sets ball A in motion. And here comes the snag. The law won’t set it in motion. It is usually a man with a cue who does that.” This is a question of first principles. When we say that something is a law, the law is not a first principle--the first principle is whatever lies behind the law. A first principle is are what is left when every question has been answered--something basic enough to be readily accepted by all. As far as the question, “What are we made of?” the truth is that the first principle remains very much unknown. The first few questions in the series can be answered, but the first principle still eludes us, if, indeed, there is a first principle to be found.

But the question “Why are you a Christian?” is infinitely more important than the question of matter (I would much rather be certain about Christianity than about atoms), and as such we really should be searching for first principles. The genuine seeker who asks “Why are you a Christian?” will only be satisfied for so long (if at all) with any non-absolute answer. “I am a Christian because I feel that it is true.” “I am a Christian because I believe in Jesus.” “I am a Christian because I know that God loves me.” These may be answers, and they may be, in part, true, but they are not the answer. They all lead to still more questions.

Often, the answers given by Christians are founded on faith. “I am a Christian because I have faith.” But faith is not a first principle. Faith cannot (at least, should not) exist on its own merits. It must be founded on something.

“Faith,” as is recited so often that it has become almost cliché, “is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Further, “…without faith it is impossible to please (God), for whoever would draw near to God must believe that He exists and rewards those who seek Him.”

Faith is lauded throughout scripture, and we are promised that our faith will be rewarded; consequently, one is often tempted to rely on faith, as if it stood alone at the core of Christianity; further, we come to suspect that true faith requires no foundation of evidence, or, worse, that evidence must be avoided, for it means that faith is no longer needed. But the truth is that faith, while wholly necessary, is not a first principle.  One cannot be a Christian without faith, but one cannot have faith without knowledge. Real faith must be founded upon something more tangible. Just because faith is “the conviction of things not seen” doesn’t mean that it is a thing with no basis. Faith isn’t a feeling, and real faith is certainly never blind. This is something that I think is often misunderstood, even among Christians. It is not a burning in the bosom or the result of a vision from a dream. When faith is founded purely on the ethereal it is more often than not a means of justifying one’s own needs and desires. One may claim to act in the name of faith, but the faith is only a manifestation of some deeper desire.

It is clear in the Bible that to have faith is not as easy as just believing in something without reason. If it was that simple, one could simply follow their own urges and claim faith as justification for almost anything (in fact, this is exactly what does happen far too often in our world). The Christian often bristles at the thought that one should need to offer evidence to support Christianity, as if that would somehow circumvent the requirement that one have faith. But faith must be founded on something! It cannot possibly exist without a foundation.

There are matters of fact and there are matters of faith, and they are rarely as separate as they may seem; more often than not it is the fact comes first, and faith is what results. The new Christian takes the final step of faith only after a foundation of fact has been laid. One may scour the scriptures for the great demonstrations of faith, but only rarely (if ever) does one find that faith is not preceded by some fact. Abraham was not acting on feelings or urges when he agreed to sacrifice his son—it was only after hearing, directly, the voice of God, and well after God had already provided him plenty of proof.  Moses did not venture into Egypt to face Pharoah on faith alone—he did so after God Himself spoke to him out of a burning bush. Even Paul, so often lauded for the great faith that allowed him to be persecuted and, in the end, martyred, believed as the result of a face to face meeting with the risen Christ, and though it may have manifested itself as physical blindness, there was nothing blind in Paul’s faith. If Paul was asked why he was a Christian he would not have said, “Because I have faith.” He would have proclaimed, boldly, the facts of what he saw and experienced.

One generally does not begin believing in God by first believing in the parting of the red sea.  Rather, one first comes to believe in God, and only then obtains the faith that God worked that miracle. One does not first come to believe in the strange truth of the trinity and then accept Christianity; Christianity comes first, based on facts, and then one can come to faith that this profound mystery is true.  

Christianity really is based on facts first and then faith.  

Which leads us back, once again, to the initial question: What are the first principles of Christianity? What are the facts upon which the faith is founded?

There are two that seem to stand above the others: the fact of existence and the fact of sin.

I have spent too much of my own life in trying to prove things that ought to be taken on faith (obscure theological principles), and taking on faith things that really ought to be taken as fact (science and history). But it is a fact—no scientist would deny it (though the occasional philosopher might)—that we exist. It is a fact that there are, in fact, things in our universe and that somehow these things came to be, and though science has tried theory after theory, it is a thing with no absolute scientific explanation. That is the fact, and it is faith that leads me to believe that there is no scientific explanation to be found (just as it is faith that leads others to believe in the contrary). As Lewis explains: “…the laws of Nature explain everything except the source of events. But this is rather a formidable exception. The laws, in one sense, cover the whole of reality except—well, except that continuous cataract of real events which makes up the actual universe. They explain everything except what we should ordinarily call ‘everything’. The only thing they omit is—the whole universe.”

So, when someone asks, “Why do you believe in God?” I might begin here--with the fact of existence. Something that science still cannot explain, but which those who believe in God have understood for thousands of years.

Second, it is a fact that man, after coming to exist (see above), found, somewhere along the way, that something was terribly wrong. Man has always been defined most accurately by his imperfections. Is there a single historian who would deny that man is a broken, imperfect creature? The story of the growth of the Roman Empire is grand, but the story of its fall tells us far more about humanity.  Indeed, history offers no ambiguity as to the fact that man has been his own worst enemy for as long as he has been keeping records of his own failures. And it is a fact that evolution has failed time and again in ridding man of his weaknesses or curing society of its ills; we are neither better nor worse than we have always been.

It is a fact, as well, that both of these questions are resolved within the first pages of scripture, and with far more certainty than science or philosophy could ever hope to obtain.

So, when someone asks, “Why are you a Christian?” I might begin here--with the fact of sin, and the fact that Christianity has provided, not only the only clear explanation, but the only clear answer.

All of this, of course, demands greater exploration, and these are by no means the only facts to be found in Christianity, but the principle remains: Christian platitudes aside, faith is beautiful, but it is something that must stand upon a foundation. Every Christian should stop and ask themselves why they believe before attempting to explain it to others.

“Saul,” says the book of Acts, “increased all the more in strength, and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Christ.” Paul did not demand of his listeners that they must simply have faith. He understood that his faith had a reasonable basis. He understood that there were facts that could lead his listeners to faith, and that is a beautiful thing.

The Glory of Man

The Literature of the Heretics, pt. 7

“Probably the most daunting task that we face, as partly rational animals with adrenal glands that are too big and prefrontal lobes that are too small, is the contemplation of our own relative weight in the scheme of things. Our place in the cosmos is so unimaginably small that we cannot, with our miserly endowment of cranial matter, contemplate it for too long.” – Christopher Hitchens

“Of course, it could be argued that humans are more capable of, for example, suffering than other species. This could well be true, and we might legitimately give humans special status by virtue of it. But evolutionary continuity shows that there is no absolute distinction. Absolutist moral discrimination is devastatingly undermined by the fact of evolution.” – Richard Dawkins

“What is man that you are mindful of him?” asks King David in Psalm 8, “...and the son of man that you care for him?” These are questions that man has wrestled with for exactly as long as he’s existed as man. Where are we, as human beings, to be placed among the vast panoply of living creatures? Furthermore, who are we to even ask such questions as these?

It never ceases to surprise me that these sorts of questions can still incite such bitter disagreement; they are questions that prove almost endlessly divisive with certain audiences, and how they are answered reveals a great deal about a person’s preconceptions and prejudices.

I, for one, believe very strongly in the intrinsic glory of mankind. I believe, and not only because the Bible says so, that human beings hold a unique place, both among the creatures of the Earth, and in the universe at large. Man is the nothing less than the height of all creation; the apex of all that is and all that ever will be outside of heaven.

A small part of me can see why some would find this statement controversial (and, strangely, politically incorrect), but the rest of me understands that it is nothing more than the most natural belief in the world. It is a belief often (derisively) associated with faith, but it really is the very opposite of a statement taken on faith—it is the only conclusion backed up by tangible evidence. It is a thing that an innocent child, born into the world and not in any way predisposed to believe or not to believe in either science or religion, would automatically assume. An innocent could only look at the world and see the vast gulf between man and animal and it would take no measure of faith at all to assume that there was something unique about man. They would gaze into the heavens and they would find no evidence to suggest that the ground on which they stood was anything but the most remarkable place in the universe.

What requires faith is to take the opposite stance. The heretics go to great lengths to remind their readers that they (both author and reader alike) are nothing special; they are mere mammals communicating with other mammals. That they have evolved something like speech is nothing to be boastful about; it is simply what nature has accomplished. That they are able to sit in their studies behind their computer monitors and ponder the truth of their own existence is nothing at all to be boastful about. It is no different than a dolphin whistling a tune into the vast sea—well, different in degree, maybe, but certainly not in kind.

If ever one wants to truly rile a humanist, one need only tell them that there is something somehow important about their humanity. Christopher Hitchens calls it an “obvious” atrocity that the theist should believe in Himself as privileged among creation. He thinks it ignorant that we should believe there to be anything special about our planet. But why should anyone be so sensitive to humans being pleased by their humanity? Why should anyone treat it as if it were some great sin (if that word is appropriate) to believe in human uniqueness?

And this goes doubly so for those who believe that it is somehow in bad taste to indulge in a little “cosmic anthropocentrism”. Even at the risk of offending the undiscovered “other” beings on other worlds, perhaps in other galaxies (or other universes?), I have no problem stating emphatically that man is unique among the creatures just as the earth is unique among the planets. Man is unique among the creatures of the earth because he alone has stepped beyond reason and created art and mythology; the earth is unique among the planets because it has man (and cedar forests and rolling, lavender covered hills and a few other things that we have not yet found elsewhere).

Hitchens demonstrates a clear misunderstanding of history than when he says that, “We owe a huge debt to Galileo for emancipating us all from the stupid belief in an Earth-centered or man-centered (let alone God-centered) system. He quite literally taught us our place and allowed us to go on to make extraordinary advances in knowledge.” The truth is not nearly as dramatic as historians like to believe: Galileo did nothing more profound than provide evidence to confirm the existing theory that the earth revolved around the sun (something that would certainly have been determined within a few years even without him). Any impact beyond this is mere extrapolation by scientists and philosophers with agendas other than discovering truth.

The case of Galileo does present an interesting dilemma for the Christian, of course, and it really ought to be briefly dealt with, once and for all: The church (for reasons I have trouble fully understanding) once had a difficult time accepting the revelation that the Earth might revolve around another body. They thought it somehow harmful to the faith to discover that we were not a stationary body around which the universe rotated. This led, of course, to the famous Galileo incident, which the heretics bring up time and again, as if it somehow encompasses the absolute worst moment of the church’s history. Reading a humanist account of the “persecution” of Galileo (which consisted of a comfortable house arrest and a less-than-forceful denouncement) leads one to almost believe that the Crusades and Inquisition were summer picnics in comparison. Kill as many heretics as you want, but don’t touch the scientists. Nevertheless, it is worth admitting that the church was clearly in the wrong in the case of Galileo, but only because it is indicative of a greater problem: the church has long focused on things that really don’t matter. We should have had far more important things to think about than what some Italian astronomer was saying about the solar system, but we got bogged down by it and are still reeling from the effects today.

How could it possibly have hurt the church to learn that the sun is at the geographic center of our solar system? What do we lose when the Earth moves out of the center and we are made smaller and (seemingly) more insignificant in relation to the size of the universe?

Nothing at all is lost. In fact, much truth can be gained by this understanding. The church ought to have been wise enough to see the benefit of what Galileo was demonstrating: that we, the glory of God’s creation, are but atoms in relation to the universe. But we do not need to be great or geographically centered, for when we are made less, God is made more (John the Baptist was on to something with his beautiful statement, “He must increase and I must decrease”). The size of the universe makes it all the more remarkable that He should care anything at all for us.

So, on the cosmic level, we may not be at the center of things, but we remain unique and privileged. Telescope after telescope continue to be built to scan the heavens for planets outside of our solar system, and scores have been found already, the result being that we remain unique. Dead planet after dead planet is discovered and catalogued; we land rovers on dead planets in our own solar system that may have once been covered in water, and yet we remain unique, for water is not the thing that makes the earth unique. Man is.

I’ve heard countless accusations of “human arrogance” or “anthropocentrism”—but the reality is that there are really few things more beautiful than anthropocentrism. There are few things more comforting than the knowledge that we, the highest of creation (to say otherwise requires a particularly blind sort of faith) hold a special place in the universe. The sun may not revolve around the Earth, but there is nothing on the sun, nor on any other planet in our solar system, that has ever taken the time to understand this. Like it or not, we are the center of the solar system, and we are the center of the known universe.

How is the Christian to respond to this? To many, anthropocentrism is akin to pride, and that is what must be guarded against. The most perfect response comes, as it often does, in the Psalms, reflecting, not the small, human-centered universe that the heretic believes was taught by the early church, but a vast, awesome place:

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,

what is man that you are mindful of him,

and the son of man that you care for him?

Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings

And crowned him with glory and honor.

You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;

You have put all things under his feet,

All sheep and oxen,

And also the beasts of the field,

The birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,

Whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

O Lord, our Lord,

How majestic is your name in all the earth!

What is this but a perfect statement of a perfect paradox: the glory and the humility of man? Our true place in the universe can only ever be understood in our relationship with God; and because I believe in this, I have no problem reaffirming that science alone cannot capture the awe and splendor of creation. And that’s a pity.

The Evolution of Fallen Man

The Literature of the Heretics, pt. 6

“The human brain runs first-class simulation software. Our eyes don’t present to our brains a faithful photograph of what is out there, or an accurate movie of what is going on through time...I say all this just to demonstrate the formidable power of the brain’s simulation software. It is well capable of constructing ‘visions’ and ‘visitations’ of the most utmost veridical power. To simulate a ghost or an angel or a Virgin Mary would be child’s play to software of this sophistication.” – Richard Dawkins

“Religion is not provided to us by revelation, it doesn't come from the heavens, it doesn't come from the beyond, it doesn't come from the divine. It's man-made. And it shows. It shows very well - that religion is created, invented, imposed by a species half a chromosome away from the chimpanzee.” – Christopher Hitchens

First, I should mention a source of agreement I have with both Hitchens and Dawkins: we share at least one foundational premise when discussing humanity. We can all agree that humanity falls short of perfection, and that any human claiming otherwise has not thought to look at the world around him before making his claim. I, like the world I live on, am far from perfect; I sometimes mistakenly believe things that are lies, I sometimes tell lies myself, I am selfish, proud, angry, arrogant, etc. The one thing that allows me to live with these truths is the knowledge that everyone else is in the same boat.

Now, the difference (which is of immeasurably greater consequence than the agreement): I see these imperfections as a consequence of sin, while the heretics as genetic malformations brought on by incomplete evolutionary processes. Furthermore, they tend to believe the very idea of sin to be depraved (“What kind of ethical philosophy is it that condemns every child, even before it is born, to inherit the sin of a remote ancestor?”-Dawkins), while I would only go so far as to say that their evolutionary answer to be fundamentally wrong-headed.

I understand that these authors believe the evolutionary imperfections of man have led to all of the great evils of the world (in my last post I gave an example of Hitchens relating wars with the fact that we have not yet “evolved” into fully rational beings), and that religion is a mere symptom of our mind’s ability to play tricks on us (as Dawkins implies in the quote at the beginning of this post). That much is easy enough to understand, but it leads me to a bit of an impasse: I have reason to say that man is imperfect because I am aware of a standard of perfection. God. I am aware that I am fallen because I am aware of the heights to which I am called. The other side is not afforded such perspective. The heretic, though blessed with a common grace he may never understand, is aware that there is something wrong, yet he cannot possibly define it, as he believes in nothing that can be used in comparison. He thinks war and murder are wrong because he knows in his heart that life is valuable, but he cannot offer a convincing argument as to why. He believes we just need to evolve further, but evolve into what? Into Nietzsche’s “Übermensch”? A genetically pure, physically perfect superman? I know it is in bad taste to do so, but how can one avoid making comparisons here with Naziism when one speaks of the evolution of man? After all, would humanity really sit idly by and allow itself to progress naturally when we have the means to help nature along? Hitchens even comes dangerously close to a wholesale endorsement of Eugenics: “Sad though (abortion) is, it is probably less miserable an outcome than the vast number of deformed or idiot children who would otherwise have been born, or stillborn, or whose brief lives would have been a torment to themselves and others.” I have tried hard (and done a good job, I think) of keeping civil in my discourse so far, but how can one not be driven to anger at such a sentiment? It is a statement of pure evil. Evil in the truest, most objective sense of the word. And yet, that is how the heretic believes that the human species might one day evolve itself free from sin.

To put it bluntly: The facts show otherwise. History has capably demonstrated that we cannot simply “evolve” into perfection (not that such a being, to the heretics, can objectively exist). Even if we were to systematically abort all of the potentially weaker members of our species (something that I am not sure is not already happening to some extent), survival of the fittest will never successfully weed out the things that make us human, either for better or for worse. It will never rid us of our pride or selfishness just as it will never rid us of our love or our need to worship. We simply cannot transform ourselves into anything either more or less than human.

At least the heretics admit that we are not perfect; that our minds play tricks on us; that reason and logic cannot always be trusted.

...and yet, they seem perfectly willing to do just that.

Both Hitchens and Dawkins demonstrate an exceptional willingness to believe in their own exceptional logic, while simultaneously admitting that mankind has been “hoodwinked” for thousands of years and tricked into believing in religions. They do not seem to understand that they are, as we all are, looking at the world and seeing only those things that support what they hope to be true. It does not mean that their words are all lies (though they are not immune to lying, as I could easily point out); it means that they are selective and they apply the reasoning that best confirms previously-held beliefs. This is the fundamental undercurrent of all human thought that ever was or ever will be (including my own)—and it really ought to be stated aloud every now and then. None of us are free of bias; no author of an historical work can fully remove himself from his text; no debater can avoid making the evidence support him.

It is easy for the undiscerning reader to be puzzled by reviews of Biblical history by historians claiming to be either impartial or merely skeptical. We place far too much weight in the words of those who declare themselves experts, who comb the scriptures for any apparent anachronism; who scour the linguist anomalies of the authors, seeking some slight oddity to which they can grab hold. It is easy to forget that when we are reading commentaries and criticism we are only reading the words of men just as error-prone and biased as we are, and they need to be accepted as such.

It is even easier, perhaps, to accept the word of the scientist, who is merely trying to pull back the veil of nature—what could be more objective than that? But the truth is very different. Science is not immune from bias; in fact, one could argue that science is more blatantly prone to bias than most professions, as a great portion of modern science lies in interpretation rather than empiricism, and a great majority of scientists believe that one of their tasks is to throw God (and believers in God) for a loop.

My point is simply this: Both Hitchens and Dawkins spend a tremendous amount of time and effort in assuring their readers that much of religion can be reduced to “trickery” of the brain, and yet both men admittedly worship at the altar (a phrase chosen particularly because both men would find it distasteful) of human reason, a thing (as I previously explained) that is very nearly a myth itself.

Now, what are we to do with these imperfections if we cannot simply breed it out of our species? What are we to do with sin if we cannot simply make ourselves into better people? The short answer is that we can do nothing at all, which makes it all the more fortunate that there is a God who can. Humanity is at its best when it is seeking after the God of the Bible (note that I did not write, “when it is seeking after religion”—the difference is crucial); sin is at its least when we are attempting to imitate Christ. The point of Christianity, no matter what the heretics might claim (over and over and over) is not to belittle us by pointing continually to our sin, but to free us of sin. The book of Romans states very explicitly that we were once slaves to sin but now we are free. We are already free; we do not have to wait to advance to our next evolutionary state; we do not have to wait until the universities learn how to better indoctrinate us or the government learns how to better control us. If we are in Christ we are free from sin.

That is my point.

The Misunderstood Word

The Literature of the Heretics, pt. 2

“To be fair, much of the Bible is not systematically evil but just plain weird, as you would expect of a chaotically cobbled-together anthology of disjointed documents, composed, revised, translated, distorted and ‘improved’ by hundreds of anonymous authors, editors and copyists, unknown to us and mostly unknown to each other, spanning nine centuries.” – Richard Dawkins

“...just like the Old Testament, the “New” one is also a work of crude carpentry, hammered together long after its purported events, and full of improvised attempts to make things come out right.” –Christopher Hitchens

If Dawkins and Hitchens are to be believed—a presumption that goes without saying for many of my readers—the greatest, most powerful tool to wield against the rising tide of Biblical indoctrination is nothing more complex than the reading of the Bible. The greatest threat to Christianity, so they imply, is that the Bible is actually read. Nothing could be more detrimental to the faith than that it be made to actually experience these poorly “cobbled-together”, poorly planned (Dawkins says of the Gospels that, “(those) that made it into the official canon were chosen, more or less arbitrarily, out of larger sample of at least a dozen including the Gospels of Thomas, Peter, Nicodemus, Philip, Bartholomew and Mary Magdalene,” which tells me that he has both never read any of these “alternative” gospels and that he has never bothered to understand the complexity and drama of canonization) scriptures.

Indeed, surely by reading the scriptures one could not possibly miss the terrible truth discovered by Hitchens: “It would be hard to find an easier proof that religion is man-made. There is, first, the monarchical growling about respect and fear, accompanied by a stern reminder of omnipotence and limitless revenge, of the sort with which a Babylonian or Assyrian emperor might have ordered the scribes to begin a proclamation. There is then a sharp reminder to keep working and only to relax when the absolutist says so. A few crisp legalistic reminders follow, one of which is commonly misrendered because the original Hebrew actually says “thou shalt do no murder.’” While I, personally, have been unable to find the proof of a man-made religion in these rambling points, certainly, by simply picking up the Bible, one could not possibly miss it. Could they?      

To be fair, one of the tragedies of Christian history is that for some centuries the church did at least appear to agree with this sentiment, and kept the scriptures out of the hands of the lay parishioners out of fear that they did not have the appropriate aptitude to understand them. Perhaps, the state of education and literacy being what they were, there was some truth to this, but their extreme dogmatism about it leads one to seriously doubt their faith in the Word of God.

The truth that seemed to escape the early Catholic Church as well as the modern skeptic, however, is that this weapon is more prone to backfiring than a child’s slingshot (personal experience). I do agree with both Dawkins and Hitchens that there is a remarkable (and perhaps even mystifying) diversity to the scriptures—an almost unimaginable roster of authors of every background, a multitude of styles, written over a tremendously long span of time. And yet, no classic of literature or survey of history stands up as perfectly under repeated readings.

The Bible, in fact, seems to be only truly understood and appreciated under thorough investigation—the thorougher the better. Sure, we have all heard stories of the skeptic or the furious God-hater who, in a misguided effort to prove their hatred, took to the scriptures, only to find their faith (or, rather, lack of faith) shattered by sudden revelation. These stories exist (and they are not entirely uncommon), but I think that they prove a noteworthy and beautiful exception rather than the rule. I gladly accept these sudden conversions as works of miracle rather than logic.

But there are always miracles in the scriptures—some obvious and some hidden.

Here is one of the smaller, often missed miracles: Repeated readings of scripture yields the very opposite of doubt. Though logic might suggest that to look too closely at a single work of literature would inevitably make its flaws all the more glaring and its imperfections all the more noteworthy, the truth, at least in my experience (despite my background in literary criticism) and in the experience of countless others, is very much the opposite. Reading the Bible makes even the perceived “inaccuracies” melt away as the pieces of the larger narrative and the greater theology fall into place. Though the complexity of the book may, indeed, make a first reading (especially if unguided) somewhat disorienting and, in fact, somewhat strange, only a superficial examination of the scriptures or a severe prejudice could lead one to the conclusion that there is nothing remarkable about the continuity on display.    

Even a strong believer can be negatively stricken by skeptic who provides only lists of the Bible’s most “difficult” moments out of context (as both Hitchens and Dawkins do quite capably, effortlessly weaving their witty commentary with non-contextual passages of scriptures that seem to portray a vicious, selfish God). I readily admit that I cannot read the works of the skeptics without at least faint pangs of... doubt may be too strong a word, but it is something along those lines; maybe something more along the lines of disquiet. It is a feeling that, true to the intent, at first makes me want to recoil from scripture, but I know that this is the wrong reaction. Alas! It is only by looking into scripture—toward the Word of God—that I find the welcome cure.

There is a difference—and not a subtle difference—between the words of the Bible and the WORD of God. The skeptic may freely attack the former but is absolutely powerless over the latter. The first is a collection of letters forming words, words forming phrases, and phrases spelling out ideas, and as such, they may be taken, warped, misunderstood, and bastardized to the heart’s content. The words of the Bible is not the WORD of God that became flesh, that dwelt among us in Grace and Truth.

The WORD is not a mere collection of words. It has little to do with language; it is unaffected by arguments concerning grammar or syntax or morphology or any of the nonsense that I was forced to learn in college. The WORD is not a series of verses held fast by rote memorization and then repeated at Sunday School (though there is inestimable value to this practice, which I genuinely desire to pick up again myself). Knowing the words of the Bible is not knowing the WORD of God. One is tempted to be reminded of Satan himself, who quite ably used scripture to make his own evil point... but that argument seems out of place here—the example of Satan is not worthwhile when directed at those who pointedly do not believe in the existence of such a being. Far more applicable are the arguments of the heretics, who follow firmly in Satan’s footsteps, reading the words but entirely missing the WORD. It is precisely these of whom the Apostle Paul says: “For the WORD of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.’”

I understand that this concept might not be understood by some, and to the skeptic it will seem like nothing more than a logical fallacy. I can only respond by saying that this is how one often sounds when describing a miracle. The fact is that the WORD is not always the thing that a person is looking for. As I said before, there are some who have been reading the words of the Bible in hatred, and yet have suddenly found themselves reading the inexplicable WORD of God. For others, it is only after the words are studied and pored over and held up to the light of scrutiny that it is suddenly transformed into something living and active and sharp—but it is no less a miracle.

But, setting aside that crucial distinction for a moment:

No matter how one looks at scripture, there is power to it. The vehemence with which Hitchens, Dawkins, and the others in their camp attack it is a testament to its strength as well as its continued effects on every facet of our society. This is why I cannot help but feel something when I force myself to read their attacks on the Bible. The truth is, it’s remarkably difficult to read any subjective account of scriptures (whether positive or negative) and not be touched with a pang of something or other—of revelation or anger, hope or doubt. It is impossible, that is, to stand unaffected by scripture, which says something in and of itself. Especially when taken out of context, or given a healthy dose of spin, there is potency to scripture not found in Shakespeare or Dante or Homer, and perhaps it is because it stands as something to be lived by rather than read. Thus we cringe when the Israelites are directed to administer punishment to seemingly harmless minor criminals; thus we are encouraged when told of a God who loves and pursues His chosen ones, even when turned against at every turn; thus we treasure being reminded of God’s faithfulness in providing for His people; thus we treasure the hope of salvation; thus in love we pursue those who are perishing. 

For this reason, I can’t simply ignore the attacks I see continually being made on the scriptures. I must have a response—but I must be careful that it is the right response. If I am touched by pangs of doubt I must respond by facing them head on. I can respond, as the creators of these arguments surely hope, by fleeing from the scripture, allowing the seeds to take root in a purposeful ignorance, willingly living with a deeply-rooted seed of doubt, or (perhaps worse yet), I can retreat to a selective reading of scripture, believing that my faith might be restored by simply acknowledge only those bits and pieces of neutered verse that make me feel good and are easily understood. Or I might, as Thomas Jefferson, quite literally take scissors to the Bible, trimming away those bits and pieces that I find difficult to digest, simply acknowledging that I have not yet learned to chew properly.

But I choose not to take these courses: I choose, instead, the course that feels far less natural; far less intuitive: I accept this subtle pang of doubt and take it into my study of the WORD. It is no accident—and certainly no self-delusion—that those most enthralled with God’s word; those most enamored by its beauty and its divine origins; are those who have most thoroughly familiarized themselves with its intricacies; who have not shied away from those pieces that seem difficult or counter-intuitive. The truly faithful are those who are the least surprised, the least shocked by those who would seek to pit scripture against scripture; who are never fearful of those who have only read the words of the Bible but never known or sought after the WORD of God.

The skeptics have focused the wrath of their reasoning—for they are far too reliant on the unreliable human mind—on an old, stale, unmoving tome of stories and poems—as stagnant in corporeality as Aristotle—and surely find it an odd thing that The Bible should assert itself to be living and active. They cannot understand how anything so ancient and unmoving could be considered as swift or sharp as a sword. They cannot understand that the Word is not a collection of chapters and verses, it is God choosing to speak through such human things as chapters and verses.

One cannot possible expect a humanist to understand that the Bible is a human thing—a collection of chapters and verses—but the WORD is God speaking through this same human thing. Yes, it may seem like a terrible logic trick, to say that there is something hidden and invisible in scripture that only the Christian can see (it is quite circular, isn’t it?), but all I can say is that this is how it appears to be. The Christian sees scripture differently than the humanist; and yet, that is the miracle of the incarnation—that is the mystery of it. Just as God injected Himself directly into human history, so also can He inject Himself into the stubbornness of the human soul. That is certainly one of His greatest miracles.

The Literature of the Heretics

Part 1

It is impossible to understand, let alone face, an enemy that one has ignored.

The difficulty faced by many Christians today, who seem as bold as ever in standing up to the heresy of skeptics is that they have never actually bothered to listen to the skeptic. This is as general a truth as they come: the Christian is far more likely to be found reading the words of those with whom they generally agree than of those who oppose them. We tend to flock, like swallows to Capistrano, to the words and arguments that reinforce the ideas we already hold.

I don’t say this because I think that it is a generally bad thing. After all, the famous heretics of today must have become famous because their heresies are powerful; they have demonstrated an ability to shake the faith of their readers. And though I would never say that there is anything for the Christian to fear from skeptical literature—really, I believe that it is the other way around: an atheist ought to be extraordinarily careful about what he reads if he is to guard his faith—I can nevertheless understand those who do fear it, who are afraid—deathly afraid—that by so much as cracking the spine of The Origin of the Species they might be ingesting the poison of doubt—a slow-acting, bitter concoction that will lead to the death of faith. So we close our minds to the ideas of the heretics.

For some these fears are well-founded: the heretics who create literature are very good at preying on the fears of weak believers, and the power of their words are only increased by their certainty. They state things as facts; they make every point as if one would be a superstitious fool to disagree; just as the humanist scientist knows that, if he is to disprove faith, he need only confidently state that he has already done so.

What I have discovered, though, is that one blessedly reaches a point in their faith where the confidence of the heretic is no longer sufficient ammunition to be led astray. While the weak and the new—those Paul admonishes for craving spiritual milk rather than solid food—might find ample reason to abandon their faith when faced with well-written heresy (and should therefore seek only edifying words), the mature believer need not fall prey to such false fear. Eventually one can explore the literature of the heretics freely, to understand them in order to reach the steady hand of the gospel into a non-believing world.

It was in this spirit that I spent several years seeking the truth about science, only to find that our progress in science has provided neither an implicit denial of God, nor explicit evidence against His role in our lives. Science, I learned, is perfectly harmless, once one gets past the scientist’s assertions that he stands on the cusp of destroying God once and for all. I can say with confidence that there is nothing to this because I have sought the truth for myself.

Now I have begun down the same path in exploring the literature of the unbelievers. There are certain pieces of literature that, if the assertions of the skeptics are to be believed, amount to an almost absolute destruction of the faith; modern documents that prove, once and for all, that God has no place in our lives or our world. There are men who are as much prophets and priests of the secular world as have ever been found in Christendom.

My next several posts will be spent in addressing some of the claims made in two of the most popular of these works: Christopher Hitchens’ God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything and Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion. Hitchens, who died in 2011 and now understands the tragedy of his life’s work, was as famous for his wit as for his humanism; he appears to have been likeable as a person, but incendiary as an opponent to religion. Dawkins, on the other hand, takes a more scientific approach to speak against faith, having written numerous books on the evidence of natural selection in addition to cataloguing the social evils of religion.

Both of these books, I readily admit, I have read in their entirety. And, I can say without hesitation, I am no closer to abandoning my faith than I was when I began the first pages.

I am not, of course, the sort of reader either of these men had in mind when they wrote their books. In almost any persuasive work there is the understanding that the arguments will be the most effective against the undecided or the fence-straddlers. A polemic against Christianity is far more likely to mollify those who already share the belief than to sway those who are already Christians; these books, like the pleadings of politicians, are meant for those who take the middle-ground. Their arguments will far more readily persuade those who already had lingering doubts than those who have faced and conquered their doubt.

Of course, Hitchens considered the difficulty somewhat differently: "Of course, dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads are immune to argument, their resistance built up over years of childhood indoctrination using methods that took centuries to mature (whether by evolution or design)." He is forgetting, of course, of those "dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads" who were converted later in life rather than indoctrinated in their youth--a remarkably bountiful school of individuals almost too numerous in my own church to count, but never mind that little fact.

There remains little expectation, either by Dawkins or Hitchens, that a person like me (a faith-head of the indoctrinated type) would likely be made an atheist by reading their books. They might hold out hope that by some miracle (if it is appropriate to use such a word in this context) I might stumble in my faith, but the odds are certainly against them in this, and they know it. After all, they don’t believe, as I do, that there is a Holy Spirit or a God who is able to change even the hardest of hearts. They know that there is very little chance that a person like me, who actively opposes their offensive, will be convinced to abandon them. I believe, however, that there is a force powerful enough to prick the conscience of even the most ardent opponent to faith, and that we are but tools of this force. This is why I will persevere in speaking out.

Now, about these books:

I have to admit, first off, that while both books thoroughly engaged me through the first several chapters, by the time I finished either of them I was no longer avidly consuming every word or making detailed notes on every argument. I was no longer finding cause to highlight select passages on every page or even to stop and consider my own responses to the arguments presented. I became, in fact, almost disinterested.

The reason for this wasn’t exhaustion—I admit that I had geared up for a fight when I sat down with these books, and I was more than ready to be challenged. Eager to be challenged, even. It was not that I found the arguments presented by Hitchens or Dawkins to be horribly off-target and unwarranted; on the contrary! The truth is that, more often than not, I agreed with them.

I think that both Dawkins and Hitchens would be horrified to learn that I, a proud Christian who believes in conquering the world for the gospel of Jesus Christ, find myself in common, if not frequent, agreement with these anti-religion screeds, despite the utter disparity between my life’s mission and theirs, despite the fervor with which they denounce my beliefs or the reams of paper I would happily use in demonstrating the futility and hopelessness of theirs.

 “Yes,” I said emphatically, more often than not as I read of some tragedy or another perpetrated in the name of religion. “Yes,” I could say without hesitation, “there have been many shameful things done by those who claim to be religious. Yes, these are things that should be both understood and spoken out against.”

The joyful truth is this: these books spend chapter after chapter detailing the horrors of religion, and as they did so I could happily agree, because I recognized the one thing that eluded the authors: they were hardly ever writing about my religion. Dawkins titled his book The God Delusion, and Hitchens, God is Not Great, and in both cases I found many, many mentions of many, many gods, but I found hardly any mention of my God. They only rarely touched on the things I believe, the positions I hold, the relationships that are central to my life. Hitchens affirms that religion poisons everything, and yet he seems to have taken very little notice of what I believe. Both men have penned scathing critiques of religion—and many of their attacks are not entirely dissimilar from those of Christ Himself, who thoroughly lambasted the religious zealots of his day, or of the Apostle Paul, who fought fervently against the early church becoming a slave to religiosity. Dawkins and Hitchens might wince at the comparison, but there is truly something eerily similar about their arguments and those of the very Christ they deny.

I won’t attempt to defend religion here. Where would be the point in that? I won’t defend the horrors of the suicide bombers of Islam, the Temple Prostitutes or Caste system of Hinduism, or even the cultural evils of many Christian denominations today. I’ll proudly stand by the humanists in condemning the cult of Westboro and the bombing of abortion clinics and I will proudly denounce a so-called Christian openly acting against the Word of God. Some things are simply indefensible. I will only defend the God of the Bible, who is as wholly separate from these things as good is from evil.

The points of agreement I find with these men may be evident and surprising, but our disagreements remain far more important—carrying, as they do, the weight of eternity. And while I agree with many of their points—and I would encourage all believers to become familiar with these points and to never hesitate in voicing their agreement—I do not excuse their intentions. These men may not understand the God that I worship, they may not even believe in Him, but their efforts are nevertheless to destroy Him (a paradox, to be sure, but what is life without paradox?). They may not have ever understood the Bible, but they still seek to build a society that has no need for it.

I will spend the next several posts offering my counter-argument to these books, for they represent nothing less than an opposition to God, and that alone makes them worth my attention. I only hope that I am able to demonstrate that, though they have learned much about religion, they seem to know almost nothing at all about Jesus; and that is the true tragedy.