Author: jkwest44

Analogizing Faith vs Science

Imagine yourself standing on a field in the midst of a game as you stare down at a solid white line in the grass. The ball is at your feet, your teammates and opponents several yards away, and the crowd is completely behind you, waiting with bated breath to see what you will do next. Will you be the hero and lead your team to victory? Time is running out, your opponents are moving fast, you only have seconds to make the right move or it might be too late. What do you do?

The answer, of course depends on what game you are playing and where you are standing on the field. If you’re standing at your opponent’s goal in soccer with the ball at your feet, the correct answer is to kick the ball over the line and score the game winning goal. If you’ve fumbled the football to the back of the opponent’s end zone, you better not kick it past the line or they’ll get the ball back and kneel out the clock; pick the ball up, score the touchdown, be the hero. If you’re a left fielder reaching to pick up a fair ball while your opponent sprints for home, you better pick up the ball and make the throw to the plate. Given long enough, I could probably name a thousand possibilities that fit this bare bones scenario, but just a few will suffice to make the point. You can never know what to do next without knowing the game you are playing.

The ability to know and study the physical world (science) is like the ability to say that there really is a ball and there really is a line on the ground. You could do complex studies and deep analysis of the composition and weight and movement of the ball, and doing so might very well help you understand the best way to do what comes next; but if you simply hold onto the baseball or pick up the soccer ball or kick the football, you still lose the game.

Having faith is like knowing the rules of the game. It’s the type of knowledge that allows us to see any particular thing or action in the context of the game called life that we think we are playing. You have to know the meaning of the line and ball if you are to have any realistic hope of doing the right thing when you see them. Conversely, knowing the finer points of the rules and strategy of the game doesn’t guarantee victory – sometimes overthinking strategy makes it harder to simply score the goal/get a touchdown/throw the out.

This analogy of the relationship between science and faith implies at least three things:

1) To think of science and faith as opposites is to misunderstand the nature and role of each. Neither the particular items involved in a game nor the game itself have any meaning or make any sense without each other. And the contingent nature of human knowledge combine with the limitations of human rationality to guarantee that we never know for sure where the line is between the what (the concrete objects or actions we experience) and the why (the game we think we’re playing) of the world. Put differently, we can’t step back far enough to guarantee knowledge of what the game is nor can we zoom in close enough to figure out the game from perfectly understanding the building blocks of nature. But we also can’t play the game without some willingness to explore and understand the field in which the game of life takes place.

2) Treating faith and doubt like the difference between knowledge and ignorance is a categorical mistake. A better analogy is to ask if you see the world like a baseball, football, or soccer player. You could of course be wrong, but your error is not in what you see and experience as much as it is in the point of what you’re doing on the field. And to have faith or not isn’t nearly a yes or no question – it can take a lifetime of training to be any good at it even if you do understand the rules. Conversely, there isn’t much point in drawing lines between those who know the game and don’t because we can’t know enough about the game to know where a meaningful line would be. The choice is not one of deciding who is playing the ‘right’ game or playing ‘well enough’ – our choice is deciding whether or not to teach and learn from others the game we all think we’re playing.

3) To assume that we could ever act or think about the what (science) in distinction from the why (faith) is to misunderstand the nature of human life. There is no way to say what the world is without implications for how we understand what life is and is for. But there is no way to make a claim about what life is and is for without implying something about how we ought to view and understand the lived realities of the world. Thus, so many of our conversations pitting science against faith devolve into incoherent drivel. What we need more than anything else in this arena is the epistemic humility to see that neither faith nor science could mean what they mean without the presence of the other.

 

Raft or island

Is Jesus the only way to heaven? Before attempting an answer, we must ask a prior question. Is the life of God that was poured out and perfected upon the cross strong enough and deep enough to effect the salvation of the whole world? The former question is problematic if we cannot answer the latter with a certain and emphatic ‘Yes!’

To answer ‘no’ is to imply that we see Jesus as a life raft tossed into the ocean, which must be found and utilized by a drowning person. If that were the case, then I would have trouble blaming anyone for a desire to multiply the rafts so that more and more persons might find rest in their quest to stay afloat – and that is often how the more liberal voices come across when justifying alternative religions as paths to salvation. On the other side, more conservative voices that require the unique particularity of Jesus come across as cruel in their comfort with the notion that many will drown even if they never had fair access to the limited number of rafts available.

Beginning with the latter question points to the possibility that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus reveals to the whole world that God has made an island in the midst of the ocean; an island big enough to give rest to all the world; an island with food and water to satisfy every need and shelter to protect from every storm. If that is the case, then arguing over what brand is printed on your life preserver necessarily points your answer in the wrong direction.

Perhaps some will refuse to leave the ocean, preferring the fight for survival to the fear of the unknown. But it remains much more faithful to the Christian story to understand that Jesus is not one small life raft in an ocean full of lost and drowning souls. We may think we are doing the world a service by trying to find more boats, whether inside traditional Christian understanding or not, but God in Christ by the power of the Spirit effects a wholly different plan to end our struggles in the ocean. As Jesus was raised upon the cross, so God has raised up the dry land to save us from our drowning and make possible a new life shared in harmony with all creation. Starting with that affirmation changes the meaning and possible outcomes of the former question entirely.

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To say that you need more than just the red letter words of scripture, is not to say that the way in which the voice of Jesus Christ vibrated the airwaves is unimportant, but that the effect of those vibrations, even if recorded perfectly, is just as open to misunderstanding as the reality of his crucifixion – the words he spoke are no more obvious or meaningful than the scars in his hands and side.

Where I’m From

I’m from the land of boxes and straight lines; 
with a place for everything and everything in its place.

I’m from a place of safety and love; 
accepted, empowered, embraced, sent forth.

I’m from a voice that shattered simplicity;
asking when, not if.

I’m from the place where the light broke through;
slowly at first, then quickly.

I’m from a world turned upside down so that I could find my place to stand;
it took becoming blind for me to finally see.

I’m from a world that grows with each passing day;
confronted by grace, challenged by sight, comforted by abundance.

I’m from the school where I learned everything on day one;
and then everything all over, each new day.

I’m from a place where love overcomes;
pushing boundaries, shattering expectations, creating more than my feeble mind can comprehend.

I’m from persons and peoples that I will never know fully;
but theirs are the stories that wrote me.

Where I’m from is who I want to be and where I hope to lead.

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Christian unity is found in difference, not uniformity. Uniformity is threatened by the outsider. The unity of shared mission requires the outsider – fulfilling our part of God’s mission is only possible when the different gifts of every child of God are united to make us more than we could be on our own.

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Baptism began as the Lord swept across the dark waters, was enacted as Christ entered the River Jordan and was perfected as Christ breathed his last upon the cross. The Eucharist began as God formed Adam and Eve from the dust of the earth, was enacted on the night in which Christ was handed over for our sake, and will be perfected when the one who testifies to these things says “Come!”

Forgiveness as an inherently communal act

The notion that I must forgive others or be condemned by God is inherently individualistic. The kingdom is based on presence or lack of relationship, not individual culpability and guilt. That there must be an I to do the forgiving is given within the context of relationship, but to focus on ‘me’ as though it could be defined and judged apart from ‘you’ is already to miss the point of the gospel.

To say that Christ gives ‘me’ forgiveness is in the same way to strip the relational aspect of forgiveness from the process of transformation. I can’t just ‘get’ forgiveness from sin – forgiveness is a change in my relationship with God, which cannot be defined in terms of what I deserve or get. Forgiveness is only definable in terms of mending or breaking relationship.

Forgiveness, in both directions, is an act of community before it is a choice by individuals. That churches often view forgiveness in the opposite direction both harms the offended, who already bears the greater share of the burden to forgive, and the offender, who is rarely taught the gift of vulnerability.

To think of forgiveness as an individual choice is like thinking of peace as a lack of fighting. Peace is not a lack of fighting – peace is the embodiment of God’s love in community. Forgiveness is not the absence of a grudge – forgiveness is the embodiment of God’s love in relationship.

To assume forgiveness is individual choice creates the space in which it is possible to justify both staying in an abusive relationship as a requirement of God’s call to forgive and choosing to let brokenness fester beneath the surface in the rush to pretend forgiveness has already been achieved. Both outcomes create deeper brokenness in the attempt to pretend that the hard work of healing relationship has already taken place.