Reweaving the Rainbow

Is evolution consistent with belief in a god that would be religiously meaningful?

That's a question that Eric MacDonald says theists cannot persuasively answer. Prompting his musings was the news that British broadcaster and naturalist David Attenborough - who now says he is an agnostic rather than an atheist - believes evolution is not incompatible with belief in God.

But MacDonald disagrees. He thinks the age-old quest to explain why an all-good and all-powerful God would allow pain to exist (often called theodicy by philosophers and theologians) has reached an insurmountable obstacle with the theory of evolution. As he explains it:

[Darwin] realised, over the years, more and more, that the theory he had discovered was simply inconsistent with the goodness of god, and duck and dive as they please, no one has suggested how to make evolution consistent with a god’s goodness.

But why should this be the case? Current evolutionary theories make four claims that are relevant to theodicy: (1) that life began and then evolved from a common ancestor some 4 billion years, give or take a few hundred million years; (2) that the evolution of lifeless chemical compounds into conscious, rational beings such as ourselves can be explained without reference to God; (3) that the processes by which evolution works (e.g., natural selection, survival of the fittest) have caused a great deal of animal and human suffering; and (4) that these pain-inducing evolutionary processes are a "feature" of evolution - the things that make it all work - rather than a "bug."

The first claim is neutral as to theism. For Christians, perhaps, it's a bit trickier, but most of the confusion surely revolves around the question whether the first 3 chapters of Genesis is a work of poetry and/or myth (albeit a true one, as St. Augustine believed) or a historical account of how God actually created the universe and life on earth. I am with St. Augustine on this, but I do find it interesting that the Genesis creation narratives affirm that life progressed from simpler to more complex species (plant life first, then fish, then birds and so on) finally culminating with human beings, who alone among lifeforms (so far as we know) are able even to ask the question, Where did we come from? This is pretty much what evolution says, too.

The second claim cannot be answered by science unless the god you have in mind is the sort of being who can be detected through the physical senses or, barring that, would have left behind some kind of physical proof of his existence. But so far no scientist has reported looking at a cell through a microscope and seeing a "Made by YHWH" label. Christians, of course, never expected they would. We don't call faith "the evidence of things not seen" for nothing (Hebrews 11:1; KJV). And since we know God is not a physical being, it's no surprise to us that he cannot be perceived the same way physical objects and forces are.

Having said that, the favored atheist explanation for the mystery of how non-living atoms can blindly turn themselves into conscious, rational beings such as ourselves - that it was all a matter of chance occurrences happening over billions and billions of years - actually explains very little. As G.K. Chesterton quipped:

For a man who does not believe in a miracle, a slow miracle would be just as incredible as a swift one. The Greek witch may have turned sailors to swine with a stroke of the wand. But to see a naval gentleman of our acquaintance looking a little more like a pig every day, till he ended up with four trotters and a curly tail would not in any way be more soothing. It might rather be more creepy and uncanny. The medieval wizard may have flown through the air from the top of a tower; but to see an old gentleman walking through the air in a leisurely and lounging manner, would still seem to call for some explanation.

And so it is with the evolutionary explanation of life.

The third and fourth claims of evolution are where the real problems of theodicy arise. But what's interesting is that we have always known both that suffering exists and that it plays an indispensable role in the cycle of life. As any Boy Scout can tell you, some animals kill and eat other animals. And in nature, as on most human farms, this is almost always a violent affair. The weaker animal bleeds, probably experiences pain, and then dies.

But more importantly for our purposes, the weaker animal also gets eaten. First by the stronger animal that killed him, and then by the scavengers, flies, bugs, worms, bacteria and sundry other lifeforms that feed off his carcass. And because of this, the weaker animal's sacrifice, those other lifeforms are able to survive.

Those who ascribe to a Disney-esque view of nature will find all this very troubling. But the prophets of old were under no such delusion. That's why Isaiah's vision of a world where lions eat straw and lie down with lambs in peace is one of a future hope, not an explanation of the world as it is today (though occasionally even now something very much like it happens). In short, Jews and Christians did not need Darwin to know that some animals survive because other animals suffer. Theodicy is thus a problem whether God created each lifeform individually over the course of 6 days or whether he did so through an evolutionary process that lasted billions of years. Either way, suffering is a fact of life. The question that must be answered by theists is whether this suffering can have any redemptive value.

Christians, of course, hope and believe that it can. At the heart of our faith is the suffering, bleeding Christ. His pain was real. But it was not meaningless: God was able to turn Christ's suffering into a supreme good. For our sake, God became the weaker animal, so to speak, and allowed us to kill him. And yet because of this sacrifice, we are now able to find the nourishment we need to survive. Hence the universal invitation, "Take, eat, this is my Body, which is given for you."

But Christ's sacrifice does not just save man. If Paul is to be believed, it will also, in some mysterious way, be the salvation of all creation:

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God.

We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words. And he who searches the hearts of men knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.

(Romans 8:18-28).

This, in a nutshell, is the Christian understanding of suffering. And the first - and perhaps most important - thing to understand about it is that it does not depend on any pretense that suffering is somehow illusory or unimportant. No: suffering is real, it is a basic fact of life, and it is an evil. God promises to help us in our suffering and to one day end it. He does not promise, however, that we will not suffer.

But that's not the end of it. What's new and exciting about the gospel is the hope that God can and will turn our suffering into good just as he did Christ's. And part of that hope is a willingness to see our own suffering as something that is not blind and meaningless - no matter how much it may seem so - but rather as something that can genuinely be sacrificial, and thus beneficial, to ourselves and one another. We have to learn, in other words, to see ourselves in some sense as the weaker animals of nature. Again, here the words of Paul are helpful and suggestive: "Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church" (Colossians 1:24). How our suffering can be united with Christ's and even complete it is a mystery. That it will do so, however, is an article of faith.

Of course, while our belief and hope that all suffering is indeed sacrificial may make our pain easier to bear, it won't make our suffering any less painful. "I thirst," said Christ on the cross. And then: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" If our own Lord could say those things without committing sin, then we can expect no better. His command, after all, was to take up our crosses and follow him. Yet this, too, is the gospel. And those who deny it - those who would promise you an easy answer or an easy way out - are not following the crucified Lord.

What Does the Bible Teach About Capitalism?

According to Rabbi Spero, the ancient Israelites were ahead of their time in their "ringing endorsement of capitalism as a moral endeavor." And in support of this seemingly anachronistic claim he cites Old Testament passages that praise hard work, prophets profit, and so on.

Of course, the Old Testament also condemns slavery, at least slavery of the children of Israel, and it forbids the mistreatment of strangers "for you [this is addressed to Israelites who formerly were enslaved in Israel] were aliens living in Egypt" (Exodus 22:21).  But the good rabbi does not cite that passage. He also does not cite that passages that prohibit taking "advantage of a widow or orphan" (Exodus 22:22). Or the Psalmist's blessing of the one who "executes justice for the oppressed; who gives food to the hungry. The LORD sets the prisoners free; the LORD opens the eyes of the blind. The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down; the LORD loves the righteous. The LORD watches over the sojourners, he upholds the widow and the fatherless; but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin" (Psalms 146:5-9).

These seemingly anti-capitalist themes would, of course, later take on particular importance in the teachings of Jesus, who began his ministry by proclaiming that the following prophecy of the ancient Jewish prophet Isaiah had been fulfilled in the ears of those listening:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.

(Luke 4:18-19).

I'm not sure I would call this an endorsement of capitalism, let alone a ringing one. The early Christians, for their part, did not seem to take it that way. Hence the following passage from Acts:

And with great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles' feet; and distribution was made to each as any had need.

(Acts 4:33-35). Indeed, this passage may well have been the inspiration for the Jewish political economist Karl Marx's famous dictum, "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." 

Which, of course, isn't to say that communism or Acts offers workable economic policies for society as a whole (as opposed to, say, the body of committed believers who make up the church). But it's hard for me to see how the communist ethic of sharing is any further from the Bible's vision of morality and community than the faceless, brutal, ruthless global capitalism of today.

(Image via XaliberDeathlock)

Is Homosexuality Genetic?

That is a question that Cynthia Nixon's claim to be gay by choice has sparked anew. I don't claim to have any special scientific expertize on the matter, but there's an interesting debate on the subject at First Things.  Stanton Jones - who opposes the gay and lesbian movement in both the church and the culture at large, as I noted last week - has an interesting post about conflicting studies of the sexual orientation of identical twins. Be sure to read the comments, including the one by Stephen Barr.

The gist of it is that one study found that, if a twin is gay, there is a 50% chance the other twin will be as well. Another study, however, found the probability to be just 10%.  Part of the difference may be explained by volunteer bias. It may also be explained by emerging scientific evidence that identical twins are not, in fact, genetically identical. But either way, the evidence to date suggests that neither nature nor nuture - both of which identical twins more or less tend to share in common - can fully explain why some people are gay and others are straight (or bi or asexual). 

Not that this means that sexual orientation is a choice for most people. Proponents of epigenetic theory, for example, argue that many human traits are the result of a dynamic interaction between genetics and environmental forces. In other words, the exact same genes may express themselves differently depending on a person's environment, including, presumably, the unique environment created when identical twins grow up together and, self-consciously or not, learn to assert their unique individuality.

This theory would go a long way toward explaining not only why identical twins do not always share the same sexual orientation, but also why they have distinct personalities and interests. It might also explain why some people can "choose" to be gay (or, presumably, straight), while others cannot. Perhaps the truth is that, given any particular genetic and environmental mix, sexual orientation may be experienced as either a choice or a command.

Is Obama at War against Religion?

That's what a number of a conservative Christians argue. And as exhibit A they cite the new HHS regulation requiring insurance companies to cover contraceptives, which some religious groups (including the Catholic Church) complain violates God's creative design for sexuality and, hence, their religious liberty.

I sympathize with their complaint. Because I read the First Amendment guarantee of the free exercise of religion broadly, I would have exempted not just churches themselves from the contraceptive mandate, as the Obama administration did, but all religious organizations, including religiously-controlled hospitals and universities.

But the fact remains that the government already requires religious organizations and religious people to provide material support for all sorts of causes and actions that they deem to be inconsistent with their faith.

To take an easy example, consider the Amish. As pacifists, they do not support the state's power to kill under any circumstance and therefore reject the legitimacy of both the police and the military. And yet all sorts of laws require the Amish to do everything from report certain crimes to the police (e.g., sexual crimes against children) to pay taxes in support of the police and military.

It's hard to argue those kinds of "Anti-Amish" laws are illegitimate. Analytically, however, there is no difference at all between them and the new Obamacare contraceptive mandate. The only thing that makes them different is that many more people object to the morality of birth control pills than they do state-controlled violence.

But our view of the First Amendment and its scope cannot be based on the popularity of the religious belief at issue. Either it protects all religious groups from all state interference, or it does not. And if not - as almost everyone agrees - then the only question is where the line should be drawn.

I agree that Obama drew the line a little too far to the left in this case. But that hardly makes him at "war" with Catholicism anymore than the vast majority of us who support both the police and state - and who recognize that such support must to some extent be compulsory - are at war with the Amish.

(Image via Gila Brand)

How Can Atheists Reject a Theology They Don't Understand?

 

That's the question I had after watching Robert Wright interview atheist cosmologist Lawrence Krauss about his new book, A Universe from Nothing. Krauss's thesis is that scientists are now discovering how it is that the universe literally could have come from nothing (as opposed to simply positing that that is what happened, as in earlier accounts of Big Bang theory).

Except it turns out that Krauss's "nothing" doesn't actually mean no "thing." Under his model, even if all the mass and energy of the universe literally came into existence from nothing (a model, as I pointed out before, that is entirely compatible with the Christian doctrine of creatio ex nihilo), our universe would not exist as it does unless its physical laws were already in existence when the Big Bang occurred. In short, Krauss's "nothing" includes the universe's physical laws, which, of course, are things, making his "nothing" something.

When Wright points out that this definition of "nothing" is not what philosophers and theologians have in mind when they say God created the universe out of nothing (starting at the 23:00 mark), Krauss counters that medieval theologians had only a "vague and undefined sense of what nothing is." By this, he evidentally means to suggest that theology needed science to teach it what "nothing" actually means.

But that's nonsense. Granting that people in the Middle Ages knew less about the laws of the universe than we do today, they certainly knew something about them. They knew, for example, that gravity exists. Thus they did not intentionally jump off church towers for the same reason we don't intentionally jump off skyscrapers unless we're trying to commit suicide. Why? Because they knew they'd fall to the ground and probably to their death. I'll go even further and argue that the medieval understanding of gravity was actually quite sophisticated (certainly more sophistocated than the average college graduate's today). Had it not been, then medieval architects could never have invented the flying buttresses that allowed them to build church towers of such great height that jumping off them would have resulted in their death.

So our medieval ancestors clearly knew something about the physical laws of the universe. And when we read medieval theologians such as Thomas Aquinas (b. 1225), it is clear that they believed God was the creator of everything, including the universe's physical laws. As Aquinas explains it in Contra Gentiles, Book II, Ch. 16:

Now, what has been said makes it clear that God brought things into being from no pre-existing subject, as from matter. For, if a thing is an effect produced by God, either something exists before it, or not. If not, our assertion stands, namely, that God produces some effect from nothing preexisting. If something exists before it, however, we must either go on to infinity, which is impossible in natural causes, as Aristotle proves in Metaphysics II, or we must arrive at a first being which presupposes no other. And this being can be none other than God Himself. For we proved in Book I that God is not the matter of any thing; nor, as we have shown, can there be anything other than God which is not made to be by Him.

According to Aquinas, then, there cannot be anything that is not made by God. And this does not simply mean that God created matter itself. It means both that he created its "form" (i.e., its shape and its properties, such whether it exists as a solid or liquid and whether it has a certain color, texture, etc.) and that, as the First Mover, he set it all into "motion" (Ch. 17). And modern scientists, of course, would say that the form and motion of matter cannot be understood apart from the physical laws of the universe, such as gravity, that govern it.

All of which is to say: When Aquinas said God created ex nihilo, he meant exactly that. Why Krauss doesn't know this is surprising since one of his stated goals is to show that science has somehow undermined theological accounts of creation.

So my question is this: How can you undermine a theology that you don't even understand?

Do Young Adults Need Church?

Many of them say no. According to Adam J. Copeland, writing in Christian Century (subscription required):

Within the metro area of Fargo, North Dakota, and Moorhead, Minnesota, are scores of vital mainline churches. So why are 45,000 young adults—close to a quarter of the entire population—not connected to any of them?

In economic terms, it's not a supply-side issue; there's simply no demand for church from the young adults. In my new call as developer of young adult ministry in the Fargo-Moorhead area, I've been meeting and talking with young adults in area pubs and coffee shops. After only a dozen conversations, it became clear that what many mainline churches here offer—the worship, the programs, the intergenerational community—fails to connect with many in their twenties and thirties. Perhaps this was predictable, but for me, a 28-year-old pastor called to work with other young adults, it's been a troubling discovery.

This certainly has been my experience. The vast majority of my friends - many of whom continue to identify as Christian, though others are more ambiguous and some are avowed atheists - do not regularly attend church and see little reason to do so except, perhaps, at Christmas or Easter. The funny thing is none of this is new. I remember being startled when I learned in divinity school, for example, that church attendance was much less common during colonial America before the so-called First Great Awakening than it is today. The same was true during much of the Middle Ages.

Copeland suggests one response to this phenomenon is to create ministries aimed at meeting those in their 20s and 30s where they are:

One essential aspect of this ministry is space for young people to address questions of faith, life and ethics in public settings. We've realized that our forums—and this is key—should not focus on delivering an "expert answer" from some theologically trained stranger. Instead, they must allow participants to listen to one another, to form friendships and to relax in the beauty of holy conversation.

I think that's exactly right. And it is, I suspect, pretty much what Jesus did when he ate and drank with "sinners." The hard part, of course, will be persuading anyone to move beyond that to embracing the (often costly) demands Jesus makes of us followers. That's a task that undoubtedly will require lots of theological translation.

What, for example, do we mean when we speak of "sin"?  Is it breaking some rule (which rule, incidentally, the average 20 year-old probably doesn't find valid anyway)? Is it injustice based on race, gender, etc. (a partial truth that has become stale and irrelevant for many young adults, at least as it's often articulated by mainline Protestant churches)?

Does it have something to do with all the longings, disappointments, anxieties, and confusions of daily life? Does it maybe even have something to do with the bullshit you may be forced to contend with at work? Finding a mate/partner? What about that feeling you get, sometimes, that everything and everyone is somehow, somewhat broken, incomplete, and in need of something new (though you can't ever say what that something is; a new car, perhaps? a new boyfriend? a new anti-depressant)?

(Image via Julian Attock)

Did Cynthia Nixon Really Choose to Be Gay?

 

Like most gay men I know, I never made a conscious choice to be gay. I just was. And to the extent choice was involved, mine was to deny I liked guys, date girls, and pray like hell for a cure that never came. But does that mean a person can never choose to be gay?

And by choose, I don't mean choose to engage in the kind of homosexual behavior that occurs in single-sex environments like prisons. I mean actively choose to desire sex with one gender rather than the other.

That's exactly what Cynthia Nixon says she did. And the interesting thing is science may be on her side, at least when it comes to women. As Tracey Clark-Flory explains:

More than a decade ago, social psychologist Roy Baumeister proposed the idea of female “erotic plasticity.” In a paper on the subject, he explained that men tend to have rigid sexual preferences that “generally remain the same for the rest of the man’s life.” Women, on the other hand, “are more likely to switch back and forth,” he wrote.

Since then, Baumeister's theory of fluid female sexuality has found support in reseach showing that, while viewing sexual stimuli, most men have a strong genital response to either males or females, while lesbians tend to have a relatively weak arousal preference for females and straight women exhibit on average no preference at all. That could mean women are by nature more sexually fluid. On the other hand, it could just mean women aren't all that into porn and therefore don't respond to it sexually one way or the other. What do you think?

What Does the Religious Left Get Right?

Last week, inspired by Thomas B. Edsall’s series in the NYT, I put forward my take on what the fundamentalists get right. But what about religious liberals? What do they get right?

Here are three suggestions:

1.  Religious liberals see more clearly than conservatives that faith without works is dead (James 2:17). This insight is demonstrated in many ways, but above all in the concern of liberals for the poor, the sick, the dispossesed (including the many of victims of capitalism’s “creative destruction”), and historically marginalized groups such as African Americans, immigrants, women and gays. At the same time, liberals correctly insist that effectively helping these groups will frequently require structural changes to society, including the church.

2. Religious liberals have made peace with science and therefore don’t waste time on the misguided and oftentimes embarrassing efforts of fundamentalists to promote the teaching of creationism in public schools or to deny the challenges modern biblical criticism poses to our faith. Of course, liberals sometimes go to the opposite extreme and mistake whatever the current state of scientific knowledge happens to be for Truth. Consider, for example, that until the Big Bang theory gained acceptance in 1950s and 60s, most scientists denied the universe had a beginning in time, a truth that orthodox Christians had always accepted despite its lack of scientific support.

But the basic attitude of liberals here is correct: Christians have nothing to fear from science. Science, after all, is nothing more than humanity’s attempt to understand the natural world in which we live. And since God created both nature and reason, science can never finally contradict the teachings of our faith. It may seem to do so for a while, but sooner or later we will find either (1) that the science was wrong or incomplete (as with the Big Bang) or (2) that somewhere along the way our theology went off track (cf. Matthew 15:9: “But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men”).

3. Religious liberals take a much more sensible approach to such vexing questions as whether other religions contain truth or their adherents can/will go to heaven. Here we must tread carefully, but, at their best, liberals remind us that the gospel is not the (very bad!) news that God has completely ignored everyone in history except the chosen few Jews and then Gentiles who were lucky enough to have heard of Christ.  

On the contrary, the gospel is the incredibly surprising and yet wonderful news that the One whom all people in all times have been seeking and feeling after (Acts 17:27) - the God whom we had at our best always been worshipping, in some way or another, though without full understanding (John 4:22) - has now revealed himself to us in the fullest, most definitive of ways possible here on earth: (1) by actually becoming one of us, living with us as a flesh-and-blood human being, teaching us what it means to love, and then showing us by dying at our own hands, yet forgiving us and then rising again, and (2) by sending his Holy Spirit to live within us so that all that's broken about us and our communities can be fixed and our communion with God and one another restored.

(Image of Joey Velasco's "Hapag ng Pag-Asa" via Resty S. Odon)

What Does The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Teach Us About the Bible?

 

That's the question Sarah Sentilles explores in her review of the movie based on the popular novel:

The plot revolves around a missing girl and the serial killer believed to have murdered her who uses the Bible like a handbook. He takes passages from Leviticus—21:9 for example: The daughter of any priest, if she profanes herself by playing the harlot, she profanes her father. She shall be burned with fire—and enacts them on women’s bodies. On Jewish women’s bodies....

Passages like these should render biblical literalism impossible. Their existence illuminates that literalists always engage in selective literalism, choosing the passages that support the arguments they want to make. And what is the rubric for selective literalism other than convenience and the maintenance of oppressive power relationships? When faced with such verses—or even passages about keeping kosher or not being around women who are menstruating—many a literalist will argue something like “that was then and this is now,” while in the very next breath (I’m talking to you, Rick Santorum, and you, Michele Bachmann) they’ll insist that homosexuality is an abomination or that women should submit to their husbands. Why? Because it’s in the Bible.

I sympathize with Sentilles' views, but I think she is confused about the meaning of biblical literalism. The Bible is a collection of many different books and literary genres. The gospels, for example, are biographies of Jesus' life that purport to describe historical facts. The book of Psalms, on the other hand, is a collection of 150 religiously-themed poems.

Knowing the genre of the text you are reading is critical to interpreting it. When, for example, the Psalmist says to God, "you knit me together in my mother's womb" (139:13), we are free to read that metaphorically because we know Psalms is a book a poetry and not, for example, a medical textbook that purports to describe how fetuses develop in utero.

We have no such freedom when it comes to passages like Leviticus 21:9. The ancient Israelites believed - rightly or wrongly - that the daughters of priests who engaged in fornication deserved special punishment because of their relatively prominent position in society. The Israelite legal code, parts of which are recorded in the book of Leviticus, reflects this belief. And when it says those who violate this precept should be burned to death, it means that literally. Perpetrators are burned to death. In the same way, when a modern criminal statute says that a person who is found guilty of violating it shall be sentenced to between 1 year and 5 years of imprisonment, it means precisely that. A sentence of 2 days - or 20 years - is not permitted

It's all very cold and calculating, and there's nothing metaphorical about it. Indeed, Sentilles' attempt to read passages like Leviticus 21:9 in a non-literal manner will not only do nothing to alleviate the suffering those passages have caused over the centuries. It may cause those of us who do accept the authority of Scripture to downplay and perhaps even forget the very real harm the Bible is capable of causing (especially in the wrong hands).

Which is why I suspect what Sentilles really means is that we should acknowledge the inherent brutality of these parts of Jewish law and question whether God actually authored them. If so, that's a project no less an authority than Jesus wholeheartedly endorsed. Like the prophets before him, he had strong words to say against those who "teach[] for doctrines the commandments of men" (Matthew 15:9). He did not hesitate to denounce certain aspects of Jewish law for containing errors that violate the will of God (Mark 10:5). He publicly flouted the laws against working on the Sabbath, famously observing that God made the day of rest for the benefit of man and not the other way around (Mark 2:27). And when a crowd had gathered to stone a woman to death for committing adultery - a punishment required by Jewish law - he invited those who had not sinned to cast the first stone. When no one did so, he told the woman, "Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more" (John 8:11).

The only possible conclusion to draw is that Jesus did not consider Jewish law to be an accurate guide to the will of God. And if he didn't, we need not do so either.

Will Life in Heaven Be Boring and Pointless?

That's more-or-less the claim Paula Kirby makes:

In the state of permanent, perfect bliss that is the very definition of heaven, ‘making a difference’ is ruled out. If the difference made an improvement, the previous state could not have been perfect. If it made things worse, the result would not be perfect. In heaven, neither is possible. Even being reunited with loved ones could not add one jot to their bliss or yours, for heaven would be, by definition, a state that could not be improved on.

Just consider for a moment the hellish pointlessness of heaven. At least in our real existence our actions have an effect, for better or worse, and it is therefore worth trying to get them right. In an eternal life where we can have no effect whatsoever, we might as well be dead.

Where to begin? How about with Kirby's definition of heaven as "perfect bliss." That may be the popular view portrayed in Hollywood films and championed by some philosophers. But it's not the view presented in Scripture. One of the most frequent images of heaven in the New Testament is of a wedding feast, in which the marriage of Christ and his bride the church is consummated and celebrated (see, e.g., Matthew 22:1-14, Ephesians 5:21-32, Revelation 19-20). It's a warm and inviting image that speaks to our universal longing for joy, celebration, and even drama.

But it also captures the sense in which the entire Christian faith is about restoring a relationship of reciprocal love between God and humanity and among human beings. Christians believe it will be that reciprocal love - and not some sort of heavenly Prozac-induced "bliss" - that will characterize our life in the world to come. And reciprocal love, by definition, means people making differences in the lives of one another. It means giving and receiving. It means sharing meals and experiences and moments of awe and joy. It means getting to know a person intimately and being intimately known by that person.

So Kirby is wrong. Our actions in heaven will indeed have effects. The only thing that will change is that those effects will no longer have any capacity to hurt or harm. Indeed, in heaven, we will longer even have a desire to hurt or harm others. For then we will finally love with the same purity of heart that characterizes God's love for us.

Such, at least, is the promise of the gospel. It's a fairly tall order, I'll admit. But it's also a beautiful vision of what our lives may become if we open ourselves up to God and his redeeming love. And if the many almost unthinkably beautiful things of this world are any indication, then I expect God will be able to deliver on this promise.

(Image via Paula Norman)