{"id":2598,"date":"2012-10-29T00:05:51","date_gmt":"2012-10-29T07:05:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/?p=2598"},"modified":"2012-10-28T23:15:53","modified_gmt":"2012-10-29T06:15:53","slug":"god-does-not-equal-mystery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2012\/10\/29\/god-does-not-equal-mystery\/","title":{"rendered":"God Does Not Equal Mystery"},"content":{"rendered":"

\tSome believe that the discovery of life elsewhere in the universe will create problems for religious people: Christians in particular. Sadly, those who believe it might upset some Christians are probably correct. What is also true, however, is that the reaction they expect from so many Christians comes as a consequence of the heretical beliefs held by far too many of them.<\/p>\n

\tBy the time of Christ, Greek philosophy had developed a deep distrust of matter and a corresponding love for the immaterial. Since this Greek philosophy bore a superficial resemblance to Christianity\u2019s concepts of the spiritual, the new Greek converts (who ultimately became the majority of believers) brought this philosophy with them into the new faith. <\/p>\n

\tThe natural realm thus became fundamentally separated from the \u201cspiritual\u201d realm in Christian thinking. What could be explained was \u201cmundane\u201d. What could not be explained was \u201cmystery\u201d. And if it was a \u201cmystery\u201d then it belonged to the realm of God. But if \u201cmystery\u201d is the definition of God, then the spiritual world must inevitably lose ground once science can explain what had previously been inexplicable. Removal of \u201cmystery\u201d automatically became the removal of deity. Increasingly it seemed that God was nowhere to be found.<\/p>\n

\tWhat has happened? Today, religion and religious thought are relegated to a no man\u2019s land of mysticism and subjectivism, a place where God is somehow less than real, with an existence only as people define Him. Whether expressed or not, God\u2019s reality and power have shrunk to become nothing more than \u201cGod helps those who help themselves.\u201d Not surprisingly, some Christians \u2014 perhaps most \u2014 have become terrified of science, fearing that the last few wisps of their faith will dissipate when the final mysteries are explained and understood. Modern science looks out at the universe and finds little if any room for God, so small has He shrunk in the minds of Christians. \t<\/p>\n

\tThe fundamental flaw \u2014 or heresy, if you will \u2014 has been the separation (and the acceptance of this separation) of the natural and supernatural by Christians. Modern Christianity has become almost deistic, thinking that those things we understand, those things we can do, those things that we can predict and those things that therefore are natural and ordinary, have nothing to do with God, except that he started it all up, sometime long ago. God is simply the clock winder and builder, but everything works by itself now.<\/p>\n

\tWhen the Bible speaks of God actively orchestrating the birth process, the weather, the feeding of animals, and all the rest, the tendency is to understand it as simply poetic metaphor rather than real. <\/p>\n

This is heresy.<\/p>\n

\tInstead, Christians should recognize that the concept of \u201cnatural\u201d in the sense of \u201cseparate from divine intervention\u201d is fallacious. That we can now understand how God accomplishes many of the wonders of this universe, that we can recognize how everything follows an orderly, repeatable, and predictable pattern, does NOT mean that God isn\u2019t involved. \t<\/p>\n

\tIt simply is not true that God is \u201cwholly Other\u201d and incomprehensible to human beings. Much of what God does we do<\/em> understand and can explain. Should this be a wonder to us? Why, when we are created in God’s image? Shouldn’t we in fact expect<\/em> to understand both him and the universe he made and runs? God does not equal mystery. Reduction in ignorance does not make God grow smaller.<\/p>\n

\tThe distinction so often made between \u201csupernatural\u201d and \u201cnatural\u201d is an artificial distinction that muddles reality. Instead, one could in fact say that everything<\/em> is supernatural. It is the natural \u2014 in the sense of a universe operating without God\u2019s direct, immediate intervention \u2014 that doesn\u2019t exist. Likewise, one could argue that there is no supernatural, everything is natural, because the existence and intervention of God is a constant–the utterly natural, ordinary way that the universe operates. Him being around and fiddling with his universe is no more out of the ordinary than me fiddling with my lawn, watering it, mowing it, and pulling weeds.<\/p>\n

So what if there is life elsewhere in the universe. It’s a big universe, created by a big God; he can do with it as he wills. Einstein said “God doesn’t play dice with the universe.” Neils Bohr responded, “Einstein, don’t tell God what to do.” <\/p>\n

\tFor many years, people looked at their world, and believed it to be flat, with edges over which they might fall. Now we know better. That we have modified our interpretation of the reality around us, does not speak ill of us. Scientists are not \u201creading into\u201d the universe something odd that wasn\u2019t really there. They rather simply recognize what was there all along.<\/p>\n

\tLikewise, when the Bible is reinterpreted, it is not an admission by the reinterpreters that there was something wrong with the text, nor does it mean that something is being \u201cread into\u201d it that is odd or wasn\u2019t there to begin with. It simply means that we recognize now what was there all along.<\/p>\n

\tIt is impossible to argue biblically one way or the other about life elsewhere in the universe. Too often, we make the mistake as Christians in imagining that the Bible must have all the answers to all the questions. It doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\tThe Bible is not a complete revelation to the human race. It is a sufficient revelation: that is, it gives us information about who God is and how to relate to him. It was never intended to tell us everything there is to know about everything. We\u2019re incredibly naive if we think that. The Bible is silent on the matter of life on other worlds, as silent as it is on exactly how to go about fixing the carburetor on my Honda. But just because the Bible doesn\u2019t talk about it, I do not doubt the existence of either my Honda or my twitchy carburetor.<\/p>\n

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Some believe that the discovery of life elsewhere in the universe will create problems for religious people: Christians in particular. Sadly, those who believe it might upset some Christians are probably correct. What is also true, however, is that the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[18,17,4,16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2598"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2598"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2600,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2598\/revisions\/2600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}