From the VCC Newsletter on 9/24: The Rise of the Religion of Nones

“The religion of none” is a fastly growing faith in America. A quick browse of the internet will reveal numerous studies that point to a rise in the number of people in the US, Canada, and other western societies who claim “None” under religious affiliation. The assumption of most polling organizations is that faith is in trouble and secularism is on the rise. I don’t agree. Today I am encountering more people with a pagan worldview than a secular one. Typically those who abandon Christianity are not believing in nothing, they are trading organized religion for superstition (disorganized religion). If you look at these studies carefully people have not stopped believing in the supernatural world; they have traded faith for a faith of their own convenience, with their emotions (or sometimes their own reasoning) as the final arbiter of truth. This “cafeteria spirituality” is free to believe Jesus is the Son of God, yet doubts the Bible that teaches that he is. They can redefine morality to fit cultural acceptance, thus making many Christian values essentially immoral while embracing behaviors that have been viewed as perversions for millennia by every culture in history.  The absence of Christianity (or any organized religion) does not lead to atheism or agnosticism; it leads to superstition.

Some would argue the transition in American religion from Christianity to “none” is a  new invention and that superstition is hanging on because of Christianity. Yet if we observe China as an example, we see a different story.  China has been committed to atheism as the official position of the Chinese Communist Party since 1921 (the party itself being the only official political party of China since 1949). They have had more than 69 years of freedom from religion, and yet most people are not actually atheists, despite their documentation. In the 1980’s, when I was teaching conversational English to Chinese students at Texas Tech University, I found that my most ardent communist students were not actually atheist, despite their insistence, but rather the most superstitious people I had ever met. From lucky numbers to being haunted by ancestors, these Western educated, hardcore Mao Communists were not actually atheist or even agnostic. They had fallen into patterns of believing a hodgepodge of unconnected spiritual ideas. Fast forward to my trips to China in 2006-2007, I encountered this same superstition. Even now in 2018, among the Chinese students in America, this same superstitious outlook prevails.   Instead it has been nurtured in the hands of atheism.

My point is this: the primary exodus from the Christian church is mostly about two things. The first is the rejection of the Church and the Bible as an authority. The second is a lack of critical thinking coupled with insistence on dogmas that are not specifically biblical but philosophical and theological when it comes to topics like science, politics, and social issues.   I hope you will join me as we look at a world reverting to superstition and secularism, and how we can engage this world in meaningful dialogue, especially with those who have left the church.

Is God Really All-loving & All-powerful?

As a pastor I regularly get questions that go something like, If God is all powerful why doesn’t het stop disasters or make this happen or that happen. Or is it that there is no all-powerful God, so even if he does love us he can’t do anything about it. I heard it again in a television interview recently. The investigative journalist  asked a pastor about a disaster and said, is it that God is not all powerful or that he just doesn’t care enough to stop the disaster from happening.  When the pastor became frustrated with the question I heard people chime-in to say that of course he was frustrated because it proves there isn’t an all-powerful, all-loving God, but the question isn’t a question at all, at least not an honest question, because it begins with a proposition. The proposition is that either there is an all-powerful, all-loving God or there is suffering, but we know there is suffering so there cannot be an all-powerful, all-loving God.

This kind of propositional statement is worded in such a manner that you must give the interrogator the answer they demand. Let’s be honest, Christians have used this kind of             questioning in numerous evangelism programs and apologetic material. Its makes people angry because they are pushed into a philosophical dead end with no means to defend themselves. It is dishonest and it turns people off. Yet this model persists. I suppose it will continue as long as people are out to win arguments rather than pursue truth. 

The proposition also assumes a closed system of temporal existence, and that our current existence is the measure of all things, which in effect eliminates the idea of eternal life that exists on another (spiritual) plane. If life and its value can only be measured in terms of temporal experience than life is a disappointing, and not believing in God will not help you escape that, in fact you ought to despair. The hope of eternal life through Jesus Christ is not escape, it is about forgiveness for my sin, my part in making this mess, forgiving me for the hurt and pain I have afflicted on myself and others. The cross is God’s answer. The point of this short life (70 years or so) is the realization of the cost of sin, it is the recognition of what life looks like apart from the rule and reign of God. If you look around and you are content with what this life has to offer you will probably won’t like heaven. Because the reason that the kingdom of heaven is free from all of this pain, suffering, sickness, and disease is because God’s will is done perfectly there. There is no sin! That means not even my sin or yours. You see a world free of consequences, disease, storms, or pain is a world free of disobedience. It’s not that God cannot, or that God is hateful, or any of the above. We were cut off from eternal life as the just response to sin. Once we are born into this sinful world we spend our years determining learning the lessons of our sins and the sins of others. You may say that you aren’t hurting anyone, but you are wrong. We live collectively in the same world, and you’re sin and my sin are the pollution that we are all suffering. But this life is relatively short in comparison with eternity. On the other hand, if don’t have enough discipline to delay gratification until tomorrow then seventy years may seem like an eternity. But the original point is that the proposition presupposes a closed system without God, without eternal life, that is entirely evaluated on the immediate evaluation of this life. Such a proposition demands that if this life is less than what I want it to be than God doesn’t exist, and that is neither true, nor will it fix your problem. It may lead to defeat and make you the victim of circumstances. Or it may make you the captain of your destiny, but beware, if you are the captain, then you are also at fault when disaster befalls. Who will you blame then? Luck I suppose? I on the other hand have the constant reality check, that when pain and suffering come my way, that I have sinned, and that even if I did not commit the specific sin that has caused my suffering, I am not exempt from the fall out of sin in the world I live in. I am guilty. When the people I love suffer, I remember they live in a sinful world, and even if they didn’t do it, I did, my ancestors did, and so did other human beings, and if they lived long enough, they would certainly contribute enough to the sin in the world to explain not only their own suffering but someone else’s sin too.   It is not a sweet syrupy answer, it doesn’t comfort people when their children are suffering, or when they see a parent dying slowly of Alzheimer disease. That is why we need to work out our thoughts about things like this before we suffer through them. If I wait until then I will never be able to step back and be objective. I will be hurting and I will find no comfort in this. I know, I have suffered a great deal of loss in my life, but what I decided before-hand about God, life, suffering and sin is what got me through my suffering, and it was my eternal perspective that gave me the patience to endure. 

In like manner, the proposition that either there is an all-powerful, all-loving God or there is suffering, but we know there is suffering so there cannot be an all-powerful, all-loving God, is the misapplication of scientific method to realities of life. Science is powerful. I love science. I love to read magazines like Popular Science, I read about Quantum Physics on occasion, I like to study the science behind passive solar and alternative energies, and about space exploration. Still I know that science is the systematic study of what is observable. Science fails when it reaches the limits of its ability to observe. From there scientist begin to dabble in the philosophical disciplines based on the the observations they do have. Its not wrong, but it is limited because of the lack of empirical evidence.  But science does not produce wisdom. Science can inform philosophy and theology, and it can create new questions but it cannot address the issues of ethics, of the origin of life, etc. Darwin and Neo-Darwinism are philosophical concepts, based on limited observation. They also have scientific problems that the faithful overlook for the sake of the bigger ideology with the belief that eventually science will observe and “prove” that it to be scientific fact. The proposition that we began with, because we observe suffering there cannot be an all-powerful, all-loving God, concludes that my observations are all there is to the world. At best such a conclusion is naive. No scientist that I know honestly believe that we know everything there is to know about the world, or how it works. They have confidence, even a zeal that there is so much more to discover about our world and about life. They also know that somethings are beyond the reach of science. My observations about life and the application of those observations are of the philosophical school of wisdom. It is interesting to note that in our day and age of great scientific knowledge and discovery that there is very little wisdom, and maybe that is the real issue at hand . . .

The development of wisdom takes time, and intentional reflection. Wisdom does not fear pain or take extraordinary measures to avoid it, but wisdom embraces life, examines it, and makes application. In the process, it lessens the pain of folly, it guards against the folly of others, but in the end wisdom is gained through life, not by avoiding it, nor blaming others. It is that process that develops character and ultimately gives purpose to pain and suffering, and makes me stop blaming God for it.