I had a birthday yesterday, one of quite a few I have had so not a big deal. Getting older (wiser? or simply eccentricities coming to ‘maturity’?) and carrying faith is so interesting. I guess one can double down on faith and keep it ever so simple or learn to live with some loose ends and face some doubts head on. Doubling down on faith can ignore the ‘that does not really connect but my faith is certain’ and ignore the discrepancies such as God is love, God can save whoever, God will punish a great number without an end in hell-fire. That takes strong faith, but dare I say it, for me it simply does not hang together.
Many Christian beliefs are founded, not simply, on Scripture but on how Scripture has been interpreted, or maybe even more strongly put, I have my beliefs and use Scripture to back up my beliefs. I have long since been unable to substantiate from Scripture the idea of burning for all eternity in hell; likewise that God punished Jesus in our place on the cross. ‘Christian beliefs’ cover a very wide spectrum; ‘Scriptural beliefs’ probably also cover a bit of a spectrum and that spectrum is narrowed down through the narrative that finds its centre in Jesus. [Maybe I hear a little concern there with the implications of such statements on Scripture… but our faith is in Jesus to whom Scripture bears witness.]
Doubts? They come. Is there a God? Now that is a big question! Living at this time by the Mediterranean and having had a number of guests who have used the pleasant water to swim in, how could there not be a God… but that same Mediterranean has seen around 3000 die in it per annum who were escaping horrendous situations. That raises a big question. If there is a God who is defined by love and could save those people but does not do so, does God exist? I am pushed to conclude that ‘god’ does not exist.
My faith that there is a ‘God’ is rooted in the trustworthy historical record we find within Scripture, and is centred on the resurrection of Jesus. Paul of Tarsus coming to faith in Jesus is remarkable. A Hebrew of Hebrews, zealous for the God of Israel to the extent that he persecuted the (Jewish) church – those renegade Jews who dared to believe a crucified Person was the Messiah was a mockery of the God he knew and tantamount to blasphemy. The only other option of such a proclamation was that the God he knew was going to be, in measure, ‘redefined’.
With Paul, and the many other Jewish converts, I find that the only credible belief is that they 100% believed they had encountered the risen Jesus. Crucified in weakness, but risen. The resurrection – the body could not be produced for the claim was not that Jesus was alive – that could have been made though would have had little traction among Jews. I find the only option is that they believed Jesus was raised from the dead by the God their ancestors had worshipped, and were willing to face death as a result of their beliefs.
I am sure there could be explanations for miracles, for dramatic personal experiences that do not resort to a God explanation. They are not proof that God exists, but important testimonies (‘God added his testimony by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit’). My faith is not founded on those aspects, but founded on good first-hand historical testimony. I find no other reasonable explanation for the spread of faith in Jesus over those first centuries, the spread of a message that God in Jesus is revealed as one who is humble and a servant to one and all. Not a message likely to succeed in a religious world where the gods are above and beyond us, untouched by our pain.
I think we have to drop the idea that God could save one and all. The cross is like a rope thrown into the sea to rescue whoever grabs it. No-one who is rescued is going to say ‘look I responded so that means I saved myself’. Salvation is from God and invites our response to be effective, otherwise the grace of God will be in vain.
Power. Some have placed this attribute at the centre of who God is. Power can be limited (yes I will suggest God’s power is limited) by one of two ways. An inability. I am unable to do certain things as I do not have the power / strength to do so. Or I am unable to do certain things as my character limits me. And I say that cautiously as I am imperfect. Let’s make the human perfect and unchangeable in character, with endless patience. Such a perfect human as a parent could not beat their child continuously. To argue they have the power to do that is to miss the point – their power is limited by their character.
God’s power is limited by God’s character. God’s power is also limited in that he has allowed human autonomy. The Mediterranean crises is not a ‘if there is a God’ but ‘if there is a humanity’. Now there is a humanity, but is there a humanity in the image of God? A humanity that can say ‘if you have seen me you have seen the Father’?
That seems to me to be the God dream, the apostolic vision, the potential that we work toward. Painful along the way as there is a falling short.