Hi Christy,
Indeed I agree, everyone ultimately has their own path to walk, their own issues to work through and ultimately - it is up to the individuals to sort their own issues out. Having a community through such experiences is so helpful. In a way, it is strangely this community here on BioLogos that has been a significant contributing factor to me being “okay” through this crisis of faith. I met with my pastor but he came at it in a way that, hmm, was biblically circular and sadly not all that helpful (great guy n all but, yeah). I feel at times I mightn’t express how appreciative I am of being able to sound board my thoughts/struggles/questions here - but I really am. Thank you everyone.
I’ve reflected a bit on
It’s a bit like (really clunky comparison here) when people say ‘you don’t want money you want to be happy’ - some people say ‘well, yeah - but money increases my options to be happy’ (not saying I agree just using the analogy).
I feel like, honestly, I’ve gone a tad numb to the concept of love from God - I feel my mind and soul even being able to access that concept is in a room behind the door of these questions. If these questions remain, I can’t even go into the room properly to experience that love. Maybe I can look through a small, obscured window dimly (do I wait for someone to make a reference to Corinthians now, lol) but not go into the room. I feel like the key to the room is something of an answer to these questions. Just something, not the whole bang lot - although that is what I want. I covet these answers deeply, but hasn’t God put eternity in the hearts of men so that’s a good thing, “so that some might reach out to him” referencing Acts 17. I’m reaching plenty but ain’t feeling a great deal, maybe a bit (definitely remember that special moment for me re that song “Faces” outlined up thread).
I guess the hope to know God and trust him - to walk with him is why I’ve been so avidly pursuing all this - cause I don’t want there to be a block between God and I. Yet these issue are one massive block. A stumbling block I just can’t climb over or properly get around and which has come to the point now where it can not be bypassed. Like I said
I feel people might say in response to this (I always pre-empt answers, for better or worse, it’s just me)
“we can still experience God without having all the answers” … somehow though, the weight of these issues - about the character of this God being spoken of - a God who would be so okay with the kind of things I’m trying to describe, that is the issue for me. Another clunky analogy is that it feels like trying to have a relationship with a parent about who you strongly disagree how they have done certain things. True deep closeness is really hard in that scenario. And on a personal and not so conceptual level, God has let me down in differing ways over time and the sting of that and the lack of answers to prayers about it - those things actually hurt. I suppose I’d suppressed a lot of that for some time but those experiences have coalesced somewhat here (but I’m still able to hold them separately, don’t want people getting all “your own personal experiences are effecting how you’re seeing things” on me - no - I mean I can’t just totally ignore that to be humble - but it’s more than that and I find such reductionist excuse talk - crab walking away from the actual facts of the matter at hand talk - frustrating. Sorry, venting again. The ventor (I won’t start rhyming about my labor, about not being sure, no longer being able to adore, feeling poor and sore and wading through the midst of lore with candour … but I could).
Sometimes I wonder if I’m articulating myself well enough in all this - articulation has never really been my strongest gifting and I probably write more in an effort to over compensate (which can end up being counter productive I know, again - sorry moderators who have to at least try to read everything). I kind of feel only a few have grabbed the issues I raise by the horns and seen or understood it from my perspective, I don’t know - that said, a lot of people have related to some of the general sentiments expressing but I’m starting to think “Am I like the only one who thinks these things or something?”.
I think you’re right here and in your response to me that it does come down to trust. I get it, and I’ve felt betrayed at times too… at this point I’m not sure how much of it is directed specifically at God, or how much is at those who have portrayed God in a narrow and anti-intellectual manner, priming me to hold expectations of God that were too limited in culture and time. But it’s not always possible to parse that out. Either way, it is understandable to feel the way you do, and it makes sense that feeling betrayed would cause you to ask big, difficult questions… questions that probably would not have come up or been entertained like this beforehand, which makes it feel very jarring.
Or rather, why are we currently held in bondage by physical laws and material constraints if it were possible to be in a place or state where we were not quite so much at the mercy of such things?
As I’ve thought about and replied to your post, I feel like a lot of issues have come up - some new thoughts that I feel it would be really interesting to hear people’s responses to.
This is why I try and pre-empt answers usually, I actually had the thought “someone might reply about us having the Holy Spirit now” but didn’t put that in. I mean primarily canonical revelation but I suppose in this context - any clear revelation from any source or by any means that is from God about the fact we evolved. I’m not aware of God preparing mankind in anyway for this in the 1700s or even early 1800s before Darwin took his trip on the Beagle. Are you?
I’m not sure if your logic is suggesting God does somehow prepare the world by the Holy Spirit stirring in the church before certain big issues unfold in the world? I’d disagree if so … pointing to issues like Copernicus’ musings, or Darwin’s or of bacteria being spread on hands by doctors that treat the dead then the living or shouting out how the many untold horrors we’re going on behind closed doors committed by priests in more modern times?
Maybe you were just taking the opportunity to point a basic Christian fact about us having the Holy Spirit who guides us into all truth? I’m not really sure why you made the comment about the Holy Spirit and revelation.
The points above about information that God could reveal but didn’t, ppainfully (horribly) demonstrate the very uncomfortable truth that God apparently is most of the time non interventionist when it comes to getting involved in ways that would save many.
Which leads into your next point
If a teacher (God in this case) has special knowledge that could save countless many and could teach that to his pupil (humans collectively, in this scenario) but decides to hold back because he doesn’t want to be the one who
What does that show? As I’ve thought about to the logic in your point - it sadly has made me realise even more how disappointed in this God I am. If he is the kind of God who would stand by and just watch, as now fallen Adam collectively tries to solve the problems he faces … (suppressing anger) … what kind of God is that?
To try and demonstrate my point clearer - let’s say we know of a vet, a prestigious vet who has won many awards. He has a 12yo son. Would we not, if we heard that the 12yo son had deducted that, by virtue of his father not answering clearly questions about his sick dog, that he was being pushed to perform an operation on the dog himself and so tried to operate on his very unwell dog and killed him in the process - all the time while having the father in the house (maybe moving between rooms, perhaps popping out to the shops but otherwise mostly being in the house and certainly knowing what was going on). What would we as a community do to that father?? In our compassionate modern times we’d put him in prison and still feed him three times a day … but wind the clock back a few hundred years and his punishment would be far worse. Or would it? Perhaps it wouldn’t because people actually believed he wasn’t doing the wrong thing and speak of the son (gruff voice) “it was only his puppy, he needs to grow up and be strong and stop being a child. He actually almost did it - if he blocked the aorta and made an incision here instead of here little Nero would’ve made it. Perhaps on his next puppy or the next one he’ll do it. Gee I love watching him figure things out”. Meanwhile the son is traumatised, rocking back and forth in the corner and hates his father and will never touch or interact with another dog or animal - or even human for that matter, in the same way again.
The logic of what you are saying to my mind - and I’m all about logic especially here - is more siding with the community that would say to the child “you need to grow up and stop crying” rather than outright anger and disgust at the father who would let his son try and figure it out himself because he
I know that’s not what you meant or what you intended to convey but when comments are made like that, with no effort being made to understand the person and their intentions and where they were coming from - you get responses like this. I feel somewhat like that about your reply to me - like you haven’t taken the time to really understand where I’m coming from and just picked out a few points to disagree with me about. Maybe I’m wrong on that.
Anyway, obviously you were trying to express how God can’t just give us all the answers and to get at the idea “what kind of people would we be then?” If he did. Indeed we’d be babies, foolish dependent and not growing up into our potential babies who have all our needs met. And God wants more for us as a human race than that. I get that - it’s a point worth making, sure. But any tone of ‘he lets us figure it out, whata guy, whata teacher - delights in our brains being used in the process’ leaves very much wide open someone being able to point out “well don’t mind the untold suffering on the other side of that equation in by God not intervening. The horrible deaths caused by stupid doctors who wouldn’t listen to nurses who’d cottonod on there was a connection between touching the dead and the living, the millions who died in unspeakable pain before penicillin was discovered (I recall the person who discovered it was Christian, which is great, but still - it was scientific method and not divine revelation that discovered it … all the while God knew about it but let us figure it out) etc”
Obviously I’m not a fan of the “he lets us use our brains rather than gives us all the answers” argument. It only goes so far before it falls off a cliff. Perhaps the underlying idea with this is how a parent will not give all the answers to their child but let them figure it out, smiling as they do. But that parent would also grab hold of their shoulder if they were about to walk out on a road or quickly rush in if they’re about to drink poison, or if the child were older and say drunk and wanted to drive in their car - that parent would do what is necessary to make sure they don’t get the keys even if it means getting punched in the face. If we look at human history though … we do not have a parent like this. We walk out onto the road, we get hit. If a starving orphan on the streets of London in the 1700s ate what was very clearly a badly infected bit of meat and later died - cold and alone, because of that, God didn’t intervene. The hope though - the biblical teaching is that that orphan, like poor Lazarus, is in heaven, comforted and loved. And so maybe there’s something in that - maybe there’s some horrible spiritual rule Satan has worked out with God (like he did in Job 1 - and I note here, seriously who is that guy that he can do that like he did in Job 1, to lead God’s thoughts and conclusions??! It’s annoying, and we can’t reverse them back. Talk about special privileges! Thankfully we have Jesus as advocate who can reverse Satan’s little schemes and plans [Luke 22:31-32] but still)
Anyway, back to my point (feel like Paul here) - maybe there is some horrible spiritual rule where the way things are as agreed between God and Satan Job 1 style is that God will not intervene and man will work things out themselves and that is why it is so vitally, unspeakably important why we love each other and why God so talks about this - because it is by this means and by means of becoming a man himself that he can express his love or else he is ‘breakin the rules’ of the game set up. I don’t know - obviously I’m spitballing ideas here - that one kind of makes sense to me - I guess there are all kinds of reasons we could point out as to why that mightn’t be best but then, there’d be a lot in that too (and it doesn’t really matter what us humans who experience the game - granted Jesus did too which is amazing - but it doesn’t matter what we, the clay think really, does it? [rhetorical question].
I don’t know though - when you throw evolution into that equation it all gets a bit too beyond the pale for me. Not really - I’m determined to try and work things out, to find truth - to find a frame for understanding the world that actually fits the picture but to quote Bono “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for”.
Evidently, God indeed is not like the information expending vending machine you describe Mervin. I think the above discussion touches on all kinds of themes about what God may or may not be like. In many ways, we don’t really know do we? We can think we know but when we consider all of human history and the various versions of God and gods that differ so much across time and place … it really has to make you wonder. If the Chinese had come to the same rough conclusions about God as the Europeans, that would be helpful. They haven’t. As didn’t, say the ancient Myans versus the ancient Australian Aboriginals.
Using Occam’s razor (and I’ll get to that @mitchellmckain - there’s some interesting things to unpack from what you say, I’ve been thinking about it) against all that … the conclusion is unsettling. The frame I was speaking about, the one for how we understand everything in the picture of humans and our history becomes more of a mirror
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
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Aye Laura. It would seem that the material is the only possible breeding ground for the sublime.
I wasn’t trying to be obtuse - or to dance around other claims of canon completeness of the biblical revelation now in hand. It was just an offhand, but completely simple and sincere conjecture that revelation should continue - and this could be coupled with the concurrent conviction that any new revelation will not be found to be at odds with existing scriptures properly understood.
Picking up on your last speculation first … I’m sorry to have to confess you aren’t entirely wrong about that. Your posts have been quite long, and I freely admit that I skimmed through them rather hastily - not looking for points to disagree with; but instead looking for any places where I fancied I might have some useful response. I’m sorry you found my response so inadequate - but I cannot apologize for its content because I was and remain sincere in all I said. Your counter-example of the prestigious vet who cuts his son loose on the poor family pet is rather heart-rending, and my heart would go out to anyone who only sees God through that kind of lens. The fact also remains that anybody who is always rescued from any mistakes they make is having their opportunity for growth aborted by a highly inferior teacher. There is a wide world of possibility between these two extremes (complete neglect or complete rescue), and I can appreciate and identify with the exasperation felt by those who see way too much terrible stuff happening and can’t help but see it as neglect. So I’m not pushing you or anybody toward simply shrugging this off as a “well - God must just be using this for a teaching moment for me” kind of a dismissal. While I may raise the possibility of some greater plan of God’s as an occasional suggestion, I’m usually pretty understanding of the need to just passionately shake one’s fist toward the heavens - and have and will have my own occasion for such questioning as well.
Whatever else you may think of the adequacy or lack thereof of my attentions to your questions, please know that my serious and sincere prayers are with you and for you, and there is no flippancy whatsoever intended in any of my responses here. If there was something above that I passed over and shouldn’t have, feel free to call my attention back to it.
Thank you Mervin, I feel a bit for you moderators having to read so much! I can totally understand where you’re coming from you having described it. I shouldn’t have been so touchy.
I will really try and make it a point not to write as much in my replies now - only my next summary part on this thread will be another long one (I might have some ‘medium’ sized posts still haha).
Yes, the spectrum between being rescued and growing from mistakes is an interesting concept. It’d be an interesting exercise to comb through the Bible with that theme in mind. Certainly, God is slow to anger and quick to love and this would come into it. I suppose I just need to accept the painful and somewhat confusing idea that God has all kinds of knowledge that would and could have helped the human race that he hasn’t shared but left us to discover. It’s an interesting whole area to think about.
Anyhow, appreciate your thoughtful reply and apologise for you having to take the time out to have to write it. Your time in important. There I guess are a lot of emotions for me around all this - maybe I’m a little more sensitive than I might be otherwise - but I’ll lighten up!
Thank you for your prayers also.
Write as much as you need or want to. Just because I may not painstakingly pore over every word does not mean that others here aren’t (or that I won’t come back and do more of that at a later time). But that said, it is good to be aware of a general principle that most ordinary people, most of the time, (mods included) do have finite attention spans after which eyes begin to glaze over. Yet people also occasionally revisit posts later out of renewed interest or opportunity. And in my case it is usually a pleasure - not a chore. As volunteers here, we moderators are usually here because we enjoy this sort of thing. So I don’t see it so much as an obligatory compulsion. And I’m pretty sure I speak for most if not all the others in saying so. Thanks for continuing to share your thoughts with us. And if you were in a competition to write the longest tomes around here, I don’t think you’re in blue ribbon territory yet.
I’m laughing, that was hilarious - to think that other people write posts even longer than my longest ones My goodness. Ahh, that was a good laugh. I’m intrigued by who these fellow tome makers are. Nonetheless, I am aware I’ve got to tone down the tomes
I have to admit, I usually skip or just scan posts that extent more that a page on my iPad. I figure long posts are more interested in publishing than conversation, plus it makes it hard to respond to 10 points.
@MarkD already noted the closest competition. @gbob, which one of your initial posts do you think was longest? Not poking fun. Think of this as an opportunity to “resurrect” one of your old threads.
Poke fun. I don’t care. I don’t know which one was. after writing a post, I just don’t like to have 10 different people ask me about 10 different issues I didn’t cover. lol
I think my shortest was ‘question for Accommodationalists’ but my memory might be wrong. Did chemo yesterday and things are fuzzy.
You’re easy to like, regardless; hope I didn’t hurt your feelings. I agree with what others have said about the length of post which is most conducive to conversation. Your problem is you know so damned much. But aside from post length I do find your writing style nicely conversational.
Thank you Mark. My friends and family both teased and disliked on occasion, that everywhere I went I had my nose in some science book or other. I remember the book I got most of the teasing for was for reading the 1300 or so page tome Gravitation, by Misner, Thorne and Wheeler, on General Relativity while at church, while at my kids baseball games and while on the couch at home.
I know, seems like we both have the habit then of pre-empting what certain more standard answers and comment on them in advance - I’m going to try and ‘cut down’ on this if I keep posting on here haha. Can totally understand how people seeing a tome to wade through is not a joyous thing lol
So I’ve been encouraged by the last few light hearted posts that have poked good fun at the issue of tome craft (writing ridiculously long posts). I unfortunately have “the tome making bug” and am going to try and force myself not to write a long post here.
[I just cut out an analogy reference - I’m on track.]
I was going to write up another huge post summarising my thoughts/reflections/analysis on all the key ideas I pulled out through this thread, about the issue of how God could have used evolution … but I now plan to chunk the posts. Idea by idea.
Here’s my first attempt - I presume/hope my others will get better:
Starting a brief analytical summary:
Why did God use evolution as his means of creation when it necessitates death, which would seem to contrast against his character as presented in Scripture?
Key idea: analysis 2a. Death is not inherently a bad thing and was necessarily built into creation. The death that came into the world through sin that the Bible speaks of is a spiritual death, which is different from physical death
Time to wheel in the use of good old dot points:
“Death is not inherently a bad thing”. This indeed does change up a paradigm of understanding in Christian thought, that death is not the enemy. What is the ‘enemy’ then? Only Satan? Only our sinful inclinations?
I was about to start making comments like ‘God obviously intended worms and mosquitos (someone mentioned worms and Adam walking around earlier) to get killed when he created them
I then realised that such comments would be operating from a YEC mindset. An EC (Evolutionary Creation, is that the right lingo?) view obviously bypasses such considerations - understanding that all life that has ever lived on earth has died, over billions of years.
From this understanding it is not only worms and mosquitoes that die pre-fall but everything - tiny bacterium to the ancient Diprotodons (giant wombats) that used to roam around Australia, to our ape ancestors and everything in between.
Death is so thoroughly built into an EC view that God saying “and he saw what he made and it was good” has to be included.
My questions and thoughts thus extend out - well, if this is the case - surely not only death but also the pain and suffering of animals and our early ancestors is included in this package deal
Connected to this, I feel we can’t gloss over the idea that horrible diseases would have also been part of this - diseases and parasites such as the ones that burrow into living creatures eyes etc. Such parasites have understandably represented a major barrier to David Attenborough and others believing in a loving God
Are such things part of God’s “good” creation?
What does that say about God if so?
How did the fall actually effect things in all this?
PAUSE
These are incredibly hard questions and I’m still processing … but off the bat there’d be some things to say:
A creature dying from the worst kind of parasite - say one that takes several months to finally do them in, may well be comparative to the kind of pain and suffering we are meant to experience in hell, applying a traditional fire and brimstone view of hell.
Maybe if hell’s pain is a 12/10, this pain might be a 7/10, comparatively (the worst parasites burrowing into the central nervous system and creating unspeakable pain and suffering)
The pain caused by being in hell is meant to be only reserved for humans (and fallen angels) and certainly not for animals.
Yet animals can suffer awfully too without having committed any moral wrong. That’s a little odd and a little disturbing
If we believe in a literal Adam, then we understand that after he ‘spiritually’ died - as far as we know he didn’t experience any really torturous pain in his life time, sure he had to work the ground and such and would no doubt have had many a cold night but I’d say probably nothing above a 3, maybe a 4, on the pain and suffering scale we’re using was his lot
Barring the idea that Adam then actually went to hell to suffer at 12/10 pain (which even within an old traditional view … I don’t think he did?) - in the above points we have demonstrated that someone who ‘spiritually dies’ can experience less pain and suffering than an animal who has committed no sin
Where is the sense of justice and balance in that?
Is ‘spiritually’ dying just being cut off from God? Like how now we have 5 senses - say we also had a ‘God sense’ pre fall that evaporated post fall … is that state of being is death?
That theoretical state sounds very sad - and I can see how that would be death in a way, sure … not at all wanting to minimise the sadness of that. But … um, at least we don’t suffer like poor old Larry the Diprodon who lived millions of years ago … the one who died after months of pain and suffering from a nervous system based parasite (… feels weird and … not quite wrong but not quite right to have said that … hmm (questioning hesitant tone) mean no offence or similar God).
On this and so many other levels, the idea that death was around long before Adam existed, in my view, falls apart in so many ways if we want to be biblically consistent. It’s like oil and water. They don’t really mix, I mean if we stir real hard they kinda do but then, not really.
I’m going to force myself to stop there. I even cut out two whole other paragraphs just then. I’m smashing the brakes down against my inclination to “keep on a going” and fighting that tome making bug
Even so, this post is still looong but hopefully not tome’ish, borderline maybe? Still a generally palpable length, hopefully? In the spirit of the recent banter I’m open to feedback (hushed seriousness: and it’d probably help me lol)
(Also @Mervin_Bitikofer - the word “tome”
is definitely my favourite right now … there’s an intoxicating funniness to it )
PS there’s no specific reason I put an Orangutan there … it’s just a random Orangutan that I’d thought be funny
You know I did that a lot when I first started posting on forums. That’s the difference between a one-shot stand-alone essay where you rarely get a second chance to reply to your reader. By letting a conversation play out, you can actually communicate more effectively by responding to the question your discussant actually has in mind.
My goodness. Ahh, that was a good laugh. I’m intrigued by who these fellow tome makers are. Nonetheless, I am aware I’ve got to tone down the tomes
)