Epignosis

I know all about the Ring of Fire and the underlying science behind plate tectonics. The rational part of me can comprehend the cause-and-effect of the geological activity causing the earthquake which caused the tsunami.

But why? And deep down inside, I think I’m really asking “But why, God?”

Natural disasters of this scope affect us on so many levels: intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, and even physically. And we have different responses on all of those different levels.   Most of us are extremely fortunate to not have to be part of the physical reaction.  The pain, suffering and anguish of the people of Japan is more than abundantly clear, and it’s not even over yet. At the same time, some of us have friends, family or coworkers living in Japan and they are personally affected, even if they live hundreds of miles away.

Our minds get involved in the intellectual debates.  Were they prepared enough? Warned in time? Did people die needlessly? Are the reactors going to make it? If the earthquake had happened in the middle of the night how many more people would be dead? All these thoughts and more can race through our minds as we try to make sense of the data we have been presented with. And in some sense, we have more access to the data, especially photos and videos, than ever before. And we sit staring at the tv or computer, fascinated yet horrified at the raw physical destruction that took place.

Emotionally, I think it all depends on our connectedness to the events. The more removed we are from the situation, I think we are stuck with general feelings of despair and sorrow. When we have friends or family personally involved, we start to be more pulled into the emotional whirlpool that surrounds the catastrophe. Having lived in Japan for almost 18 years, and having many friends who still live there, I feel anguish in ways I didn’t think I would. We pray for all those involved, both friends and their families and coworkers. May you be a shining beacon of hope in that land of current sorrow.

And finally, we come to the spiritual side of things… We know that this is a corrupted fallen world. Bad things happen all the time. And God can still bring beauty out of the ashes. But why this? Why now? Why?

Sometimes I want to be angry with God about this situation, but I know that’s wrong. It’s just as inappropriate to say to God “Why did you allow this to happen?” as it is to say “Why did you cause this to happen?”  Our feeble human minds will never be able to comprehend how exactly God remains sovereign, we have been given free will, and in the middle of all of that, bad things happen to everyone. Do we understand? No. Do we need to understand in order to have faith and trust? Again, No.  Our minds struggle against the unknown things, but we must be content to leave it all in His hands.

Psalm 13 is a great reminder from David, the man after God’s own heart.

1 How long, LORD? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
2 How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?
3 Look on me and answer, LORD my God.
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,
4 and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”
and my foes will rejoice when I fall.
5 But I trust in your unfailing love;
my heart rejoices in your salvation.
6 I will sing the LORD’s praise,
for he has been good to me.

We pray, we help, we seek Gods will. And through all of our doubts, fears, pleas & struggles, we must have the faith to know that God is still God.

Recently in the Christian Blogsphere, there seems to be a lot of debate, conflict, disagreement, and downright nastiness. Yes, we’re all human and have those tendencies. But at what point in our growth as believers did we get to the point where we can no longer disagree on topics of ambiguous theology?

Ambiguous Theology, what exactly do I mean by that? I mean the thoughts, doctrines, beliefs we have that are minor points simply because we aren’t given a clear cut answer in scripture. Not really liking that phrase, but I couldn’t think of anything better for now.

Take for example, Hell. Do we really have a clear picture in scripture as to the exact nature of Hell, and what it means to both the believer and non-believer? Sure, there’s a lot of common rhetoric we use about it, but do we really know the exact details and every nuance of the reality as express by our beliefs?  Scripture is clear that there is a separation between the believer and non-believer. But beyond that, we have a few passages that try to give us an indication, but don’t give us a lot of details.  We aren’t given a play-by-play, but more of an overall concept. And that should be okay with us. But it doesn’t seem to cut it any longer…

On a similar note is the ever present debate between predetermination and free-will. We see that both perspectives are clearly portrayed in scripture (even though both extremes of the spectrum will argue that the opposing side is misinterpreting scripture), and at times those perspectives seem to be at odds with each other. How can we resolve that?  Typically the answer is to pick one or the other and yell loudly at anyone opposing your view.

But maybe we’re not supposed to “pick a side” but to be amazed at a God who is able to get, from our small human perspective, two opposing ideas to coexist simultaneously. I am convinced, as I’ve said before, that we’ve so analyzed, systematized and classified God that we’ve lost the sense of mystery and wonder of who He is.

So what happens then in all these ongoing debates? In these “majoring in the minors”?

For starters, we see the opposing views start to openly criticize their counterparts. Sometimes it starts small, and then grows exponentially.  With the immediacy of todays social media outlets, it’s almost instantaneous nowadays. Then it moves from criticizing to open hostility. Then it gets to the calls of “blasphemy” and “heresy”. *sigh* Whatever happened to the idea that we are all human and prone to mistakes. None of us are perfect. And by working together, we can edify, teach, learn, build up the body of Christ for the greater good of all of us.

But instead, all we see today is things like:

• “Farewell Rob Bell”
• “There’s nothing loving about preaching a false gospel. This breaks my heart.”
• “It is unspeakably sad when those called to be ministers of the Word distort the gospel and deceive the people of God with false doctrine.”

I understand that there needs to be guidance and correction, especially of someone who teaches something that may or may not be correct. But our calling as Christians is to love one another, exhort one another, and admonish one another. Do we decide today that person X said something that I don’t agree with so I must question his faith? Even if we look over the history of certain people and find that they don’t have the same concept of salvation, heaven & hell, etc, does that mean I publicly condemn them and pronounce them apostate? I truly believe that it saddens the heart of God when we do this. And we do nothing more than make a spectacle of ourselves to the world.

Because here’s the real question: How do you know that your self-righteous view is the right one?

We have so many things that we do not have clear directions/answers on in our spiritual walk with God. The scripture is not clear on many things, especially about things that many of us have deemed as important or crucial. We can work our best over time to wrestle with those questions and dilemmas and in time we can come to certain conclusions. But in the end we have no way to know for sure. Of course that doesn’t mean we don’t stop trying to understand. But if we are honest about it, we can look back over the history of the church from ancient times, and we can see all the places in the path from the time of Christ till today where the church has made drastic mistakes in it’s beliefs and practices. But you know what? They were just as self-righteous about the validity of their beliefs as well.

• The church of the middle ages strict beliefs in a salvation of works.
• The church of the 1600′s persecuting Galileo for teaching that the earth revolved around the sun.
• Calvin’s belief in infant baptism and opposition to believers baptism.
• Luther’s belief that baptism was salvific.

Am I saying that we should just drop our defenses and listen to any version of doctrine that we want? Absolutely NOT! But I do think that we need to be mindful of how judgemental we are when someone proposes something that is outside our comfort zone. Not necessarily because we need to listen to them. But the reality is that if someone as prominent as Rob Bell can ask some really tough questions and (probably) get some of the answers wrong, then what about all the other believers who are out there today asking those same questions but don’t have a forum to express their questions and doubts? Scott McKnight said this directly in one of his blog posts about the whole Love Wins blowup:

But I’ll tell you this:  Rob Bell is asking my students’ questions on that promo video and then, as you watch the video, he walks away. Rob and his people are artists, and you can read that walking away any way you want – but I’ll wait until I read that book for myself. I hope you do too.

People are asking more and more tough questions today. And more and more Christians are becoming unsatisfied with the same old answers every time because they realize that something just doesn’t sit right about the normal answer. Almost as if we’re missing the point somehow.

So do we go to our normal hangout and order the same thing each time? Do we instead go to the all-you-can-eat buffet and pick and choose only the things we really like, but ignore the things we don’t like? I really don’t know…  But I think that we need to be willing to question our own beliefs, and why we believe those things. We need to be willing to listen to people who say things we don’t agree with and potentially learn something good from them, and certainly be willing to not agree with the things that we don’t agree with.

So as I’m sitting stuck at a client site waiting for a harddrive to be cloned, I got to thinking…  I know, I know, a dangerous proposition sometimes…  

In as few words as possible, how would you sum up what it means to you to be a Christian?  What’s the most important quality to you?  It you had to put it in just a few words, what would those words be?  I know it can be difficult to summarize, but try it in 3 words or less.  And tell us why you answer that way.

Faith?  Hope?  Growth?  Belief?

For my non-Christian friends, I’d be curious as to what words you would use to describe Christians?  Religious?  Old-fashioned?  Tradition?