Category Archives: Religion

Religion

Is God Silent? Why Belief in God Isn’t Obvious

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This month I’ve been editing the video lectures of a philosophy course in my day job, and I’ve gotten into discussions on God’s existence. There are a couple natural problems with knowing God. One is that he is a metaphysical being, who by nature transcends the senses. We cannot know and observe God the same way we would anything in the created world. He is beyond us. He is invisible and without form. We think of the Holy Spirit as a breath because we have few metaphors to go by. God as a being is hard to describe.

Because God is beyond us, because he is the creator and we the created, we have epistemic distance with him. There’s only so much we can know about him because we can’t comprehend him.

He is also a person, who may choose to go unseen. This is a simple point for any person. If our environment allows it, we can hide from each other. If our environment doesn’t allow it, we can choose to sit the corners of the room and not talk to each other. People are intelligent beings who choose to communicate or stay silent. Since God is not a force of nature but an eternal being, he could choose for his own reasons to remain unknown to his creation.

There are some who ask why God doesn’t make his presence obvious. Why are agnostics even given room to breathe? Wouldn’t it be better if we all knew there was a God and couldn’t doubt? Responding to this, some argue that God maintains a distance from us in order to allow for our free will. He wants us to love him freely, not under compulsion. I can understand the appeal of this argument; many people put a lot of stock in human free will, but does this argument fit with the world as the Bible describes it?

God created the first couple in a perfect garden and spoke to them personally. We don’t know what that looked like, but it seems to be as relational as two people talking—no distance maintained out of respect for the free will of the created. And Adam and Eve chose the knowledge of good and evil over the divine being they spoke to earlier that day.

Jesus said, “And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil” (John 3:19 ESV).

This turns the question of God’s self-revelation back to us. It isn’t that he hasn’t done enough to reach us; it’s that we are running away. We stop our ears. We shut our eyes. We actively “suppress the truth” that we were created by God for his glory.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.

(Romans 1:18–20 ESV)

It would be more correct to say that God isn’t holding back out of respect for our free will but that we love darkness.

Photo by Jordan Wozniak on Unsplash

Music, Religion

Memorial Day, Battle Hymn

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Today is Memorial Day. It was raining here today, so I couldn’t fly my flag. I’d better lose no (more) time in posting my virtual commemoration of the holiday. The video above was (oddly), compiled by a Canadian, using footage from some of our more patriotic movies and TV series, the kind they don’t do anymore.

The Memorial Day tradition goes back (according to Wikipedia, to a proclamation by John A. Logan, Commander in Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic (the Civil War veterans’ organization), declaring May 30, 1868 to be a day for placing flags on the graves of fallen soldiers. Decoration Day, it was called. (That was what my grandmother used to call it. The official name was changed in 1971, some time after her death.) However, the Veterans’ Administration credits the idea to a woman named Mary Ann Williams.

The hymn tune, “Battle Hymn of the Republic” is obscure in its origins. It seems to have risen in the camp meeting culture of the American south, and possibly echoes a Negro spiritual. The tune was picked up by the 2nd Infantry Battalion, Massachusetts Militia (the “Tiger Battalion”). They used the coincidence of one of their members being named John Brown to make up a song that teased him, when he was late to report for duty (apparently a frequent occurrence). They joked that this was excusable on the grounds that he was dead – all the papers said that John Brown (the abolitionist) had been hanged. Other units picked the song up without the teasing, as the conviction grew in the ranks that they were carrying on John Brown’s work.

Julia Ward Howe, the abolitionist, felt the lyrics were not worthy of the cause, and sat down to write a nobler version, which was first published in 1862 in the Atlantic Monthly. It is a stirring song, and I remember thrilling as I sang it as a member of the Waldorf College Choir in 1969.

A few years back I discussed the hymn with a scholarly friend whose field is American religion. He pointed out to me – and I should have been aware of this, but emotion dulls the sight – that the theology here is in fact rather bad. A political/moral cause is elevated to the level of the work of salvation. The fighting of a war is compared to Christ’s sacrifice for our sins.

Howe was in fact a progressive, my friend pointed out. She had left Calvinism to embrace Unitarianism. In the manner of progressive Christians, she downplayed the atonement for sin and focused on the creation of a more just society. She and her compatriots were the forerunners of today’s social justice warriors.

There has never been a nobler cause in human history than the abolition of slavery. It’s a supreme triumph of Christian civilization – one for which Christian civilization gets insufficient credit. But it wasn’t the same thing as Christ’s redemption.

Having conceded that, I still have to say I’ll always love the Battle Hymn of the Republic. It’s not a true Christian hymn, but it’s a very good earthly sentiment. I’ll put it up against secular sentiments from anybody’s culture you care to name.

Religion

Conversions and reversions

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The Conversion of Saint Paul – painting by Spinello Aretino (Spinello di Luca Spinelli) (MET, 1975.1.11)

It is, I think, a function of my essential pessimism that I worry too much about celebrity conversions. Celebrity conversions, I’m sure, ought to be treated like any other conversions. Good news. Pray for them. But do not impute to them too much significance. In the parable of the sower, for instance (Matthew 13), only one seed out of four survives to bear fruit. And that, in my experience, is a pretty fair (possibly generous) rule of thumb.

The latest celebrity conversion I’ve been hearing about is the English actor, comedian, and media personality Russell Brand. I knew nothing about him before this news, aside from hearing his name and seeing his face online. He seems, according to Wikipedia, to have had a troubled life (imagine that – a comedian with a troubled life!), and has experienced drug abuse, sexual promiscuity, and dabbling in various religions. But now he’s been baptized, and he claims to truly believe.

I’m all for him. Less promising converts have proved out to be great blessings. John Newton, for instance, was a foul slaver, insufferable even to other foul slavers. But God took hold of him, and he ended as a minister and a powerful abolitionist. He left us with the hymn, “Amazing Grace.”

I’ve reminisced about the 1970s before, the heady times we called the Jesus Movement. They made a movie about the Jesus Movement not long ago, starring Kelsey Grammar. I couldn’t get excited about it, though, because my memories of that time suffer in retrospect. Of all the people I prayed and evangelized with in those days, only one or two (out of my own circle) have persevered in anything that looks to me like the same faith.

As a cultural phenomenon, the Jesus Movement seems to me almost a complete bust. No doubt it suffered from the biblical illiteracy and theological ignorance of a bunch of young people gushing about their “experience.” In the long run, my perception is that the Jesus Movement simply got swallowed up in the wave of subjectivity that is still washing the pilings out from under our civilization.

In my mind, the Jesus Movement was too cool, too popular for a season. Luke 17:20 says that the Kingdom of God does not come in ways that can be observed. Which means (as I see it) that it doesn’t come in any way that we see coming. Jesus Himself didn’t come as expected. The stone that the builders rejected becomes the cornerstone (Psalm 118:22). God loves to blindside us.

I’ve seen lots of celebrity (and other) conversions in my time. The most promising often fell short. The least promising sometimes amazed us. Russell Brand could go either way. It’s not up to me, and it’s not my place to judge.

The most remarkable celebrity conversion I’ve observed was the one I expected the least from. I remember reading about Charles Colson’s conversion back in 1973, while I was in college. I think I read about it in Time Magazine. Congressman Albert Quie, who came from my home area and to whom I have family connections, helped lead him to Christ. Colson said reading C. S. Lewis had influenced him greatly.

“Oh great,” I said at the time. “That’s just who we need on our team. Colson.”

Chuck Colson was one of the most hated men in America in those days. Beyond the general contempt being rained on President Nixon, there was special derision for Colson, “Nixon’s hatchet man,” the guy who’d said he’d run over his grandmother for political advantage. I remember a college teacher bringing it up in a class, and I cringed on behalf of all Lewis fans.

But what do you know? Colson rang true. He served his sentence. He devoted himself thereafter to self-sacrificial ministry. He always spoke honestly, and he cared for the lost and the least.

There were plenty of people who never stopped hating him, of course, and he acquired new enemies as he went on. But he was a blessing, and he walked the walk.

In other words, let’s pray for Brand and wait and see.

Religion

Sermon: ‘The Ruthless Love of Christ’

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I don’t preach very often, but I was invited to do so yesterday, at Faith Free Lutheran Church in Minneapolis. The sermon has been posted on YouTube, and can be viewed above. I fumbled the service itself a bit (the Prayer of the Day, which I couldn’t find, was actually in my suit coat pocket, mistakenly put away with other papers I thought I didn’t need. That’s how my efforts at efficiency generally work out.) But the sermon itself, I believe, went okay.

This is a sermon I’d delivered before, in a slightly different version, at the Free Lutheran Bible College chapel. I think it’s not entirely contemptible.

Bookselling, Music, Religion

Book plug: ‘Pain In the Belly,’ by Thomas E. Jacobson

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Last Saturday I ventured outside my comfort zone to make the perilous drive to downtown Minneapolis (one of the still unburned parts), to hear a lecture. The lecture was delivered at the Mindekirken, the Norwegian Memorial Church (there’s one in Chicago too), where they hold a Norwegian language service every Sunday. You’d think I’d go there all the time, but they’re not really my kind of Lutherans. However, they offer cultural and language programs too, and I lectured myself there once, at one of their regular lunchtime events.

One reason I don’t go there more often is that it’s an awful place to drive to. The conservative Center Of the American Experiment, based here in Minnesota, has documented the fact that our city planners have it as an explicit goal to make driving around here as inconvenient as possible – so we peasants will be compelled to use buses and the wonderful light rail they’re forcing us to pay for. I don’t think I’ve ever driven to the Mindekirken without getting turned around in some way – even with GPS.

Anyway, I arrived at last, only a few minutes late. I came in during the introduction, so I didn’t miss any of the lecture.

The lecturer was my online friend, Pastor Thomas E. Jacobson, who has recently had a book released. It boasts the surprising title, Pain In the Belly: The Haugean Witness In American Lutheranism. I’ve written about the Norwegian lay evangelist Hans Nielsen Hauge many times before in this space – just do a search in the box up above if you’re curious. We Haugeans (I still identify as a Haugean) have been called a sect, but we never separated from Lutheranism or denied its basic tenets. In Norway, the Haugeans in any parish tended to pool their money to build a “bedehus,” a prayer house. There, after having attended regular services in their local Lutheran churches, they could gather among themselves and hold “edification meetings” and other social and educational functions. Many bedehuser still exist in Norway, and continue to be used for something like their original purpose.

I haven’t read Tom’s book yet, but I thought I’d give it a plug here anyway. It focuses on the influence of the Haugeans on Lutheranism in the USA. The title comes from a comment made by a Haugean leader when the old Hauge Synod at last agreed to join a church merger. When told that a theologian in one of the more conservative groups entering new church body had said that he rejoiced that the Haugeans would now be “swallowed up” in mainstream Lutheranism, this man said he expected to cause them “a pain in the belly.”

Sadly (in my view), in the long run the new church body and its successors turned out to have a pretty iron digestion.

In any case, we sang a hymn that Hans Nielsen Hauge wrote in 1799, “With God in Grace I’m Dwelling.” He wrote it during one of his imprisonments for illegal lay preaching.  I looked for a video of somebody singing it, but as far as I can tell nobody has ever been bold enough to perform the hymn and leave a permanent record. So I’ll just transcribe a couple verses here. A common tune used for it is “Passion Chorale,” the one we use for “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded.”

With God in grace I’m dwelling, 
What harm can come to me  
From worldly pow’rs compelling  
My way thus closed to be?  
Though they in chains may bind me  
Inside this prison cell,  
Yet Christmas here can find me;  
Within my heart ʼtis well.
Our God has promised surely  
To free each seeking soul,  
Who walks in spirit purely  
With truth as way and goal.  
Whose heart the world’s deceiving  
Can never lead astray,  
Who, constantly believing,  
Will walk the Kingdom’s way.
God grant us now His power,  
And help us by His might  
To follow truth this hour,  
All guided by His light;  
And may we work together  
As one in mutual love,  
Forsaking self and gather  
At last in heav’n above.

(Translation: P. A. Sweegen, 1931)

Music, Religion, Writing

‘Now the Green Blade Riseth’, and a ‘writing’ update

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Above, the King’s College Choir with what I must confess is the only Easter hymn I really like. And it’s not one that’s commonly sung in the churches of my own religious body.

And even this one, lovely as it (it shares a melody with the Christmas hymn, “Sing We Now of Christmas”), doesn’t entirely satisfy me. What Easter merits is a good, rousing, triumphal hymn, something on the lines of “A Mighty Fortress” or “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing!” We do have triumphal Easter hymns – there’s “Up From the Grave He Arose!” and “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today!” But personally I find them kind of clunky. They don’t sing well, to my mind. I want one I can throw my head back and bellow, as I used to do at Christmas, before my singing voice gave out.

I should probably write a text myself, and see if somebody can come up with a melody.

Better yet would be if somebody wrote a rousing melody and I could put words to it.

It’s been 2,000 years. Somebody should have taken care of this by now.

Want a writing update? I’m not writing at all right now, in the strictest sense of the term. I’ve got my beta readers reading The Baldur Game, and I’m using the time for the necessary procedural stage of forgetting everything about it. So I can come back to it with my mental palate cleansed.

Therefore, I have turned to the business of book narration. Some generous friends have given me a decent microphone and other equipment, and I’ve carved out a makeshift studio space in my bedroom. I’m playing with the system – especially the Audacity recording software. I have a certain level of technophobia, not unusual, I suppose, in people of a certain age. Right now I’m just doing drills. Self-assigned exercises. The plan is that, once I’ve got The Baldur Game published, I can devote a chunk of time to getting The Year of the Warrior recorded, so I can release it on Audible. I was always considered a good copy reader when I was in radio. Maybe audio books will be my ticket to the big time.

It could happen.

Religion

Holy Saturday: ‘There Is No Longer Any Prophet’

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The day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday is an odd, muted day. Between a sober Friday service, in which the Christ candle leaves the sanctuary, and a joyous Sunday service, which, if we could, we would pack with sunlight as dazzling as a Hallelujah, stands a Saturday that feels like any other end of the week. 

On that first Saturday before Easter, I doubt the disciples would find much comfort in the habits of the Sabbath. The light of the world was gone. “O God, why do you cast us off forever? Why does your anger smoke against the sheep of your pasture?” (Psalm 74:1) 

Joseph of Arimathea had put Jesus’s body in his tomb Friday night, and when he woke up on Saturday, he may have wondered how the sun was still allowed rise. How could anything carry on normally with Jesus of Nazareth in the grave? 

We do not see our signs; 
there is no longer any prophet, 
and there is none among us who knows how long. 
How long, O God, is the foe to scoff? 
Is the enemy to revile your name forever? (vv. 9-10) 

Holy Saturday is a good day to ask these questions and to consider the darkness that lingers, the dream that’s deferred, the disappointment that goes unresolved.  

Psalm 74 is a cry to God after the destruction of the temple. “The enemy has destroyed everything in the sanctuary!” (v. 4). That was in the 6th century B.C. Later, in A.D. 33, Jesus had left a similar hole in his disciples’ hearts. He had told the Jews, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up,” referring to his body, but no one understood at the time (John 2:19, 21). On that first Saturday, it felt as if the enemy had destroyed everything. 

We live in brighter days comparatively, but it’s still easy to ask the Lord whether he has cast us off when our own bodies fail us or when our communities are threatened. How long will enemies war against us and our neighbors? Does our current pain mean he has rejected us?  

War, crime, and countless inhumanities—no one knows how long they will last. But we do know who has broken them. “Yet God my King is from of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth” (v. 12). 

O God, let us see your salvation at work with the Easter sunrise and every sunrise thereafter. 

(Photo: Sebastian Molina fotografía via Unsplash)

Religion

The olive press

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Maundy Thursday – that’s the ancient name the church has given to the Thursday before Good Friday. “Maundy” comes from the Latin word “mandatum,” meaning “command.” That’s a reference to Jesus’ words from John 13:34, during the Last Supper: “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.” He’d already given the Golden Rule, to treat others the way we’d like them to treat us. This was a “new,” further commandment – to go beyond that rule (which is difficult enough) and love one another (I assume He means primarily other believers, though I’m sure it’s not limited to them), in the way that He has loved us – that is, all the way through suffering and death.

After the Last Supper, they went out to the Mount of Olives, a regular retreat of theirs, where Jesus prayed among the olive trees. The video above, from Our Daily Bread Ministries, explains some of the significance of that location, in relation to the events.

I knew a pastor once who insisted that when Jesus prayed that “this cup” might pass Him by, what He actually meant was that He was afraid His physical body would give out before He’d completed the work of suffering. That He was praying to stay alive until the job was done. The pastor didn’t like the idea, apparently, that Jesus could be afraid of mere physical pain.

That never made sense to me. I believe in the Incarnation – Jesus was true God and true Man. If He didn’t instinctively recoil from the prospect of excruciating suffering, it seems to me He wouldn’t be fully Man – which our creeds affirm that He was. We’re told He was subject to all kinds of temptations just as we are. I assume that one of those temptations must be the temptation to take the easy way out.

Have a blessed Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.

Religion, Writing

Nidaros Cathedral

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So, I’m working away at ‘The Baldur Game,’ which I think is going to be a pretty good book. Better than pretty good, to be honest. Not that I’m unprejudiced. But this one’s a genuine epic — broad canvas, big action, historical figures, battles and obsession. The Viking book I always wanted to write, I think.

So, above, a little video of a tour of Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim. This is where King (Saint) Olaf, a major character in this book, was buried. I believe his bones are still in there somewhere, but nobody’s sure exactly where (supposedly they were hidden to keep them from relic smashers during the Reformation).

I visited there once, briefly. It was part of a tour in connection with one of the cruises I lectured on. By good luck, they were doing a medieval fair in the Bishop’s Palace area that day. Fun to see.

According to my mother, my great-grandfather, her mother’s father, worked on the cathedral restoration in the 1880s. He came from a farm not far away.

Have a good weekend. My book is coming — possess your souls in patience.

Authors, Reading, Religion, Writing

Jordan Peterson and Andrew Klavan, on stories

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I watched this video discussion yesterday, and it had me ready to stand up and cheer. I don’t agree with either of these men entirely (though I respect both immensely), but the essence of their theme is exactly what I’ve had on my mind recently.

In Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis remarks that, although he was an atheist as a young man, he found — to his annoyance — that all the writers who really spoke to him believed in God. I think most of the real creativity in art today comes, to some extent, from our side. Some of the best artists don’t even know they’re on the Road yet, but they are.