Tag: deism

on *not* knowing God through experience

~ dwc ~ Leave a comment

Christians believe God can be known. If we want to know what God is like, we aren’t left to seek mountain-top or chemically-induced experiences, wonderful as they may be. We don’t need to take a course in analytic philosophy, as intellectually satisfying as that could be.

We just behold Christ, and thus we know God.

Without this revelation, God will be misunderstood. Greatly.

Creation points us to a creator of some kind. But if all we use to know God is our experience, we’ll have a distorted, incomplete, and warped view of God.

What we experience as his sustaining of creation could be mistaken for Spinozan Pantheism
What we experience as his patient non-interference could mistakenly be taken to buttress rationalist Deism
What we experience as his dramatic occasional miracles could convince you that he is an Interventionist Butler. God On Demand.

Scripture weaves all these things together in a kind of theological God Temple. Omnipresence, Omniscience, Omnipotence (see Ps 139, the first 18 verses). And then it rips down that temple and re-builds it around the person of Crucified and risen Christ (see Colossians 1 or Hebrews 1).

Or as Luther said, Crux Sola Est Nostra Theologia
The Cross is our only Theology.

sovereign intervention

~ dwc ~ Leave a comment

I think I believe two seemingly contradictory concepts.

On the one hand, I believe that God has made the world in such a way as to respond to and use our actions, including our prayers. Despite our preferences for a God as predictable (and controllable) as a machine, equally and lawfully distributing oxygen, planets, miracles and tsunamis, God sometimes seems to act like an interventionist genie, conjured up by profiteering faith-healers and televangelists. How embarrassing.

On the other hand, I believe that God is by definition the kind of being who is unchanging, eternal, and thus God will do what God will do no matter what. Whether we forget or remember to pray, a little or a lot, as individuals or in global concert, praying for vague blessings or specifically for things we are certain that the God of Scripture would approve of, God sometimes seems totally OK with being perceived as Richard Dawkins’ blind watchmaker. How disappointing.

To reference a couple of book titles by Pete Greig, the articulate and wise international founder of 24-7 Prayer, God is both the God of the shocking miracles of Dirty Glory, and the shameful silence of God on Mute.

How then, should we pray to this kind of God? We could make at least two errors.

On the one hand, we could pray our foot-stomping, confidently contending, passionately persisting prayers, dripping with biblically shameful audacity for God to break in act like an interventionist deity, and all the while forget to leave God any room to have a different purpose or plan than us for that situation. Tragically, we could do serious damage to our faith or the faith of others – all simply because we had a view of God that was not large enough to allow God to be both responsive and sovereign.

On the other hand, we could pray safe tidy prayers that cover all theological contingencies, making our prayers little more than self-referential pontifications pointed at God reminding him – and us – that basically we should remember to trust in his machine-like sovereign faithfulness over all things; all the while failing to have the prophetic imagination that God may be willing and postured to act from eternity within time in what we can only call a ‘response’ to something we pray. Tragically, we could fail to see healing of relationships or withered hands, or the confrontation of unjust systems or personal sin – all just because we had a view of God that was too arrogantly sophisticated to allow that God frequently does his work on earth through humans.

So then.

Let us pray with that strange and holy cocktail of deep assurance in a very large and unimaginably sovereign Father reigning over all things, and childlike urgency that can ask with unassuming and open-hearted expectancy for good gifts from the same sovereign interventionist Father.

three postures about prayer

~ dwc ~ Leave a comment

It seems to me that there are three different postures one could take towards the activity of prayer.

One is an essentially negative posture. This posture rejects all prayer as useless and ineffective. This posture would fit most comfortably within a naturalistic worldview. “No being that hears prayer is either true or real. Ergo, prayer is pointless.” Interestingly, this posture also fits one particular type of theistic worldview: deism. Deism accepts a ‘first cause’ or ultimate being as true and real, but does not believe that this ‘god’ interacts with or intervenes within our world. Thus, again, prayer is wasted effort both the Naturalist and the Deist.

This negative posture has the appeal of being clean cut, tidy and simple. “I just don’t waste any time on that stuff.” But for me, naturalism and deism have always seemed closed minded, based on ultimate negative assumptions, and thus intellectually and spiritually unsatisfying. It also does not (indeed by definition it cannot) take seriously even one of countless stories of answered prayer. It is the quintessential example of a sweeping judgment. “Nope, it’s all B.S.”

Another (yes, at the other extreme) posture is essentially positive. This posture accepts basically prayer ‘works’ all the time. One might think that this posture is the ‘Christian’ or ‘religious’ one, but it really doesn’t sit comfortably at all within a worldview shaped by the Bible. This posture, unlike the Bible, cannot cope well with death, suffering, struggle, doubt, questions, and pain.

This positive posture is well-meaning, hopeful and at times inspirational, but can be harmful in setting up people for disappointment with life, with others, or themselves.

The posture that we will have if we are shaped by the Bible will be an essentially relational one. This posture sees prayer, not as a mechanism, but an act of relationship. And relationships are dynamic and living. Not easy or comfortable. The Bible contains a breathtaking spectrum of relational speech toward God. On the one hand, you have prayer that is so gushing and sappy it sounds almost romantic. On the other hand, you have prayer that sounds so hostile and critical toward God that it sounds atheistic to our ears. But to address God at all is to acknowledge the Great Reality behind, over, under, and active within our reality. In this sense, a relational posture can transcend the positive-negative distinction.

The Bible also transcends a hard natural/supernatural distinction. The same God who raises the dead is the same God who made the world regulated by natural laws and ‘holds all things together’. The God of miracles and resurrection is also the God of science and rationality. The Spirit who some times acts or speaks in powerful surprising ways is the same Spirit who most of the time acts or speaks through nature, law, conscience, reason, quantum mechanics and intuition.

Relational prayer, then, is not just about whether it ‘works’ or not. It’s simply what a person does in relationship to God. Whether frustrated shouts at God, passionate prayers of adoration to God, or humble sitting in the shame with God; we pray. Whether we say Wow, Help, Thanks (the more familiar ones) or Why or Sorry (the ones that balance the others out); we pray.