Faith, God and all that jazz

I have been meaning to write this post for quite some time now, a couple of months I guess, following a few conversations with a couple of people.

I guess I will start off with where I stand. I consider myself a Christian. Certainly I have all the obvious trappings: I go to church every Sunday, read the bible daily, go to a bible study with people from church most weeks, try to pray. I try to live my life, make decisions, from a Christian worldview. I try to be open to discussing my beliefs, ‘faith’ if you will, with others, as this is interesting, worthwhile and indeed a vital part of a Christian life (I Peter 3:15, Mark 16:15).

However, I do find it difficult to explain, and I think this largely comes down to not having a very clear idea in my own mind. On that note I would like to post a few questions, and list (my interpretations of) some people’s answers to them so far. I also include my own in some cases.

I would be interested to hear your thoughts (different answers to the questions, comments on the existing answers) and discuss further, either here or — better — in person. I have been particularly frustrated over these things over the last two or three months, and have found it difficult to talk to people, so this is an attempt to get some of my thoughts out in the hope of being able discuss them further. This is mainly aimed at Christians, but extends to anyone.

What is faith?

• Blind belief, in the absence of evidence — obviously, I find this an unsatisfactory definition. There needs to be some way to discriminate between things in which you should have faith and things in which you should not.
• Belief that something is a certain way, or that something will happen, based on past experience and testimony (direct or indirect) of people whom I trust. ‘Faith’ then is very closely related to ‘trust’, perhaps even the same thing. This is my current working definition, but some people I have talked to find it unsatisfactory. I do not really understand why; apparently it is insufficient in some way?

What is the basis of Christian faith?

• The Bible — this requires first an argument for the historical accuracy of the bible, and then trust in the people whose witness is recorded in it (for example in the gospels). This is difficult due to the lack of a personal relationship, so it becomes a rather indirect thing.
• Other people’s testimony — friends, family. Again this comes down to accepting what people say based on personal trust in them, which in turn comes from knowing them, observing their words and actions and judging their trustworthiness from that.
• Supernatural experience — some sort of experience beyond the usual which provokes or confirms a belief in the God conceived by Christianity and described in the Bible. Some people certainly describe such an experience, to greater or lesser extent, or even it being a regular thing.

How does God talk to you?

• The written word of the Bible is God talking to you — but, it is hardly personal then.
• While reading the Bible — how?
• Through other people — He sends people to say things to you, and so what they say is in a sense God talking to you. But then, how does He tell them what to say?
• Just talking directly to you — again, how? What does this mean, how is it experienced?

How do you know that God is talking to you, and how do you know what He is saying?

• You hear distinct words
• It is more of a general feeling of some sort — but then how do you know that it is from God?
• A ‘prompting’, you just think of doing something — but we often think of doing things. How is this ‘prompt’ different? ‘Prompting’ is a vague term. Perhaps this is the same as or similar to the previous answer.

What does it mean to ‘believe’?

• A belief is a theorem (in the sense used in mathematics). That is, a statement is ‘believed’ if it there is a proof for it. I know that Peirce’s law holds in classical logic because I can write a proof using only the axioms of that logic, so I can say “I believe that Peirce’s law holds in classical logic”. Nothing can be believed beyond what can be proven, so belief is limited to the formalisms of mathematics. This does not include any of the sciences, as even physics is just a matter of attempting to find a consistent model which fits observed phenomena; no proof is possible as physical laws are only guesses which happen to match reality in a few observations.
• A belief is a working assumption. I ‘believe’ that the sun will rise tomorrow insofar as I assume it will based on past experience, and so I base my decisions and plans on that assumption. Beliefs then are not certain, cannot be proven, but are necessary for decision-making and, well, life.

Note that the first and last questions are of definition, so it is more a matter of how you choose to define faith and belief than any intrinsic reality. Consistent and agreed-upon definitions are, however, vital to any meaningful communication.

Glad

I am glad that I do not get sick very often. And even when I do it is generally not very bad really.
I am fortunate to have a good flat this year, with a bunch of pretty good guys really.
I am fortunate to have enough food to eat, access to the Internet, reliable electricity and running water.
I am glad to have met and come to know a little many people over the last few years.
I am glad to be part of a good church.
I am very grateful to my parents for bringing me up and caring for me, and for everything they have done for me over the years, the time they have spent with me and for me.
I am glad for the times friend have shown care for me, talking to me, asking how I am, doing things together, making time to see me.
I am fortunate to have a good job, even though it is frustrating at times, but doing what should be relatively interesting work with some intelligent people.
I owe all to God, Yahweh, who sent his Son to die for me, sinner that I am, that I might be forgiven and restored to relationship with Him. I still do not know how this works, but I am told that it is true and I must believe it. Without God’s grace I am hopeless. With it I must live for Him, somehow.

An atheist position on Christian proselytism

In this video, which I am reposting from a blog I came across, an American comedian named Penn Jillete discusses his view of Christian proselytism, following an encounter with a Christian at one of his shows. Penn seems to be fairly strongly atheist, but you may find what he has to say here surprising. Listen and see; let me know what you think.

Truth, faith, science and religion

I came across an interesting blog article recently, entitled Internet Arguments and the Search For Truth. It discusses the meaning of ‘faith’, and its relation to religion and science. The author has some interesting things to say about ideologues and debate, and I recommend reading it.

Whether science and religion can co-exist seems to be a common topic of disagreement and confusion, especially the divide manufactured between ‘Creationism’ and ‘Evolution’. Certainly it was a common theme to the questions people had to ask last year when the VUW Christian Union ran our Ask God in the Quad event here at Vic, and it has come up again this year.

Unfortunately some Christians have quite strong and loud beliefs along the lines of ‘God created the Earth in 6 (24 hour) days a few thousand years ago, this is the only possible way of interpreting the bible, and Evolution is an evil plot by Science to destroy people’s faith in God’. For their own part, their opponents often have equally fundamentalist views that Evolution conclusively disproves all religion, without even understanding very well what Evolution means.

I see no contradiction between science and Christianity. I am no biologist, and I cannot claim to have a terribly clear knowledge of exactly which of the claims grouped under the popular heading of ‘Evolution’ are generally accepted by the scientific community from what evidence. The closest I have come to studying evolution is the use of evolutionary computation techniques in AI (genetic algorithms, genetic programming, etc.), where they are a useful technique for optimisation and machine learning. My understanding is that there is a clear case from fossil records that there has been change with species throughout history, and a fairly clear case for speciation and common descent (at least to some extent), but there is no scientific consensus on how life came to exist in the first place. There seem to be a range of models for and hypotheses on abiogenesis, but no substantial evidence.

There are in fact quite a range of views within Christianity on the origins of life, based on different interpretations of the creation account given in Genesis. OriginScience.com gives one useful comparison of some of the views, from the perspective of a proponent of Old-Earth Creationism. TalkOrigins has a much shorter summary of some interpretations.

Christians have been thinking about these issues for quite a long time: Augustine of Hippo (a Christian theologian and philosopher who lived from 354 AD to 430 AD) had some interesting attitudes towards the interpretation of the Genesis account (as well as open-mindedness in general). He makes the excellent point:

In matters that are so obscure and far beyond our vision, we find in Holy Scripture passages which can be interpreted in very different ways without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such cases, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search for truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it.

Davis A. Young has written a good article about Augustine’s views that I recommend reading, both for non-Christians and Christians.

Student Leadership Conference

I spent the last week (Monday 12th November — Sunday 18th November) at SLC, the Student Leadership Conference run each summer by New Zealand’s Tertiary Students Christian Fellowship. It was a great opportunity to take some time out both to study the bible and to consider the application of it to life in general and on campus. We had a mixture of talks and discussions in various groups.

A large part of this year’s SLC was focused around the book of Nehemiah, an old-testament leader who led the Israelites in rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem after their return from exile in Babylon.

One thing that particularly stood out to me from the conference was the connection between the Old Testament and the New Testament.

There can be a tendency to think of God as described in the Old Testament as judgmental and legalistic, while the God of the New Testament shows grace, love and forgiveness. This is not really true, however. God’s character remains constant: in the Old Testament as in the new he shows his grace time and time again.

Much of the OT, in fact, is about a cycle of Israel rebelling against God (often worshiping idols instead), God sending prophets to warn them, the prophets being largely ignored, and Israel finally losing God’s blessing and being conquered by their enemies (and often taken into exile and slavery). God then hears the prayers of the few remaining righteous, and grants grace to his people while they are still in rebellion. He then gathers them back to their land and himself, and they repent and turn back to him. They are then blessed and celebrate God’s blessing and provision. After a time, the cycle repeats.

The point here is that God restores his people undeservedly. While they are still in rebellion against him he sends leaders such as Nehemiah to bring them back to him, and blesses them generously.

This pattern is then fulfilled ultimately in Jesus, who is not so much a change in God’s actions towards his people but a final and perfect way of bringing them back to him. Jesus is not just a man like the earlier saviours and kings of Israel (although he is also a man), and does not turn away from and rebel against God as even Israel’s greatest king — Solomon — eventually did. Instead, Jesus lived a life in perfect obedience and service to God. He then once more went further than his predecessors in choosing to die to take the punishment deserved by everyone but him.

While I guess I knew all this already in a way, I certainly thought more about it and gained a better understanding.

On a less serious note, yomcat also got and then later lost a mullet. He looks rather unhappy, especially in the second photo.

Andy Shudall has also blogged about SLC, in case you want to read more.

Christian perspectives on alcohol

Last night, I went to All Saints Hataitai’s ‘to drink or not to drink — Christian perspectives on alcohol’ debate. I saw it mentioned on a couple of blogs (here and here), so decided to go and see what they had to say.

Personally, I do not drink alcohol, but that is mostly because I do not see the point — why acquire a taste for something that is expensive, when there are plenty of nicer and cheaper things to drink?

Anyway, it was interesting hearing two different perspectives, even if they did both come to pretty much the same conclusion (having a couple of drinks is fine, getting drunk is not). A couple of scripture mentioned were Romans 14 and John 2:1-12.

Ben Johnson-Frow (who does not drink) talked about how he used to drink excessively in his teens before he became a Christian, and so he decided to stop completely when he became a Christian, as he would otherwise be temped to drink too much. He also talked about the New Zealand culture of drinking to excess and binge-drinking, and that not drinking at all was partly a way of protesting against that.

Sam Harvey (who brought a bottle of beer up with him to drink while listening to Ben talk) talked about how excessive drinking has never been an issue for him, and he finds it useful to relate to people. He has written a bit about the topic on his blog.

For more discussion, I highly recommend Paul Windsor’s blog post from last year, including the comments. He asks “What is one single redeeming feature of alcohol consumption?”, and some interesting discussion ensues.

This debate was apparently part of a series All Saints are running on the first Sunday of every month, ‘wrestling with some of the big issues of life and seeing what God might have to say about them’. Next month (Sunday 7th October, 6:00 pm) is ‘Truth, Love, Tolerance’, which sounds interesting. I plan to go if I have time, and I recommend it.

TSCF conference 2007

This week I went to the annual TSCF (Tertiary Students’ Christian Fellowship) conference, this year in Waikanae. It was a great week, with about 100 students from universities around New Zealand attending. Andrew Lim (the pastor of Christ Sanctuary in Palmerston North) spoke in the mornings about I Thessalonians, and Dave Wells (from BCNZ) in the evenings about ‘True Witness’. There were also 5 streams of 3 seminars, though I was a bit disappointed with the stream I chose.

One thing that particularly stood out was the need to live a whole life for God. It is too easy for me to think of worship as something done at church (the Christian habit of calling singing at church ‘worship’ does not help this), rather than an attitude to apply to my whole life. Work (in which I would include study) is God-given. As such, I need to remember to do it as for God, to show an example to others and bring glory to God. Colossians 3:23 says ‘whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord, and not for men’. I have read this before, but I still do not really apply it; I still tend to keep God and the rest of my life separate.