Eight Reasons to Believe that God Exists

 

 

                         (Monroe County)

 A long, long time ago Bill Craig (aka William Lane Craig) was one of my campus pastors at Northern Illinois University, where I did my undergraduate degree in philosophy. I wrote a song for Bill and Jan and sang it in their wedding. 

We were always talking about our faith, the existence of God, apologetics, metaethics, philosophical anthropology, and much more. It all got inside me, and has never left, as it has been tended and watered and nurtured over the decades.

Here is Bill's essay in Philosophy Today, where he gives eight reasons to believe God exists ("Does God Exist?"). Read the essay for the reasoning. 

They are:

1. God is the best explanation for why anything at all exists.
2. God is the best explanation of the origin of the universe.
3. God is the best explanation of the applicability of mathematics to the physical world.
4. God is the best explanation of the fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life.
5. God is the best explanation of intentional states of consciousness.
6. God is the best explanation of objective moral values and duties.
7. The very possibility of God’s existence implies that God exists.
8. God can be personally known and experienced.

(If #7 confuses you, it's the modal version of the Ontological Argument for God's Existence.)

The Gifts (Manifestations) of the Spirit - Craig Keener

 Coming October 13.

By Craig Keener and Daniel Kolenda.

Spiritual Formation and Transformation

Tree, in my backyard

Spiritual formation is the ongoing process of Christ forming himself in our heart (spirit); the ever-increasing heart-morphing into Christlikeness. Galatians 4:19 is a key verse here. It reads: 

My dear children, 

for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth 

until Christ is formed in you...

I like how Renovare's Life With God Bible expresses the meaning of this verse and the nature of spiritual formation.

"A hallmark verse for spiritual formation, Gal. 4:19 provides an image of the process of growth for Christians. In this picture it is Christ who is growing in us, rather than we who are growing in Christ. Christ is formed in us by the power of the Holy Spirit as we respond to his ever-present grace in our lives. This occurs in daily, ordinary life as we "practice the presence of God" in our work, our play, our relationships, and all of life. By the Spirit in our hearts we cry out to God "Abba! Father!" (Gal. 4:6) many times throughout the course of a day, acknowledging who we are and whose we are. Christ is also formed in us as we present ourselves as living sacrifices to him through the Spiritual Disciplines, which, far from being the binding legalism Paul condemns in this letter, are the loving response of disciples to God's grace.

Steadily, gradually, Christ looms larger and larger within us. We find ourselves thinking, feeling, believing, serving, and living more like him. Not only are we becoming more like Jesus; we are becoming more human, more ourselves.

The work of spiritual formation is the subject of this letter [Galatians]. That the Galatians were submitting again to a yoke of slavery - the opposite of spiritual formation - prompted Paul to couch his communication in the vocabulary of freedom. Spiritual formation and freedom have a dynamic relationship. Curtail one, and the other is stifled. Grow in one, and the other flourishes. Five dimensions of spiritual formation emerge from the text as a result of Paul's emphasis on freedom. These are seismic shifts in the core of his being as Christ is formed in him, in the Galatians, and in us." 

The locus of spiritual formation and spiritual transformation is the human heart. See Dallas Willard's essay "Spiritual Formation: What It Is, and How It Is Done." 

Willard writes: "Spiritual formation in the tradition of Jesus Christ is the process of transformation of the inmost dimension of the human being, the heart, which is the same as the spirit or will. It is being formed (really, transformed) in such a way that its natural expression comes to be the deeds of Christ done in the power of Christ."

This means that one's heart is formed, or morphed, into Christlikeness (Gal. 4:19). Spiritual formation, Jesus-style, is not about asking "what would Jesus do?" and then trying hard to be like Jesus and do the things he did. If a person had the heart of Jesus, the results would be, inexorably, the kind of interior and exterior life Jesus had. With the "interior" being ontologically prior to the "exterior." As Willard says, "Christlikeness is established in the very depths of our being." This is about "change of the inner person, where what we do originates."

The interesting thing about this is that neither you nor I nor anyone can bring this about. To think that one could do so is to diminish the transcendence of the transformation. I might think that I could, given enough time to practice, transform myself into Lebron James. Had I this belief, you would question whether or not I have seen Lebron James play basketball. Who Christ is so far surpasses us that our formation into Christlikeness can only be achieved by Christ himself,

(Willard's entire article is profound, deep, and insightful. See also Willard's "Spiritual Formation in Christ: A Perspective on What it is and How it Might be Done.")

It's Linda's Birthday!

 

 

 

Monday morning, August 3.

It's Linda's birthday!

I met Linda in 1970 at Northern Illinois University. We were part of the same campus ministry.

I was attracted, not only to her physical beauty, but to her heart, to her spirit. And, most importantly, to her unwavering love for Jesus.  

I thank God regularly for giving me Linda, my beautiful wife and life partner. 

She has a vast personal ministry to many people. 

She is a source of wisdom for constant callers. 

She is a compassionate God-seeker and prayer warrior. 

Linda has a fierce, loyal, unswerving faith in Jesus. 

She is a brilliant piano/vocal teacher, imparting more to her students than musical abilities.

She is a knowledgeable and skilled educator.

She has many gifts, and uses them for the glory of God. 

She is a phenomenal mother.

She is a passionate and creative grandmother!

She is a great support and strength to me. I could not do what God has called me to do without her. 

Her sense of humor really gets to me.

And, Linda is the perfect Wordle partner!

On August 11 we will celebrate fifty-three years of marriage! 

Thank you God, for giving Linda to me, and to so many others.

Happy birthday!

Morphing From Our Subhumanity to True Humanity

 

Often, when a person fails at something, they say "I'm only human." But from the Jesus POV, this is not true. If one were "only" human, truly human, then one would not morally or spiritually fail. People like N.T. Wright, Dallas Willard, and Thomas Merton all agree with this.

Wright points to that Sea of Galilee story, when Jesus walks on water and calls to Peter, "Come!" Peter comes, walks for a moment, then falls in. The falling-in is not because he is "only human," but because he is not human. The Jesus who becomes "fully man" (as well as "fully God") walks on water because he is just that. In Jesus we see mere humanity, true humanity. 

In his sermon "Dreaming of a White Easter," Wright says that, as dwellers in Christ, "we can really live without being greedy and snatching at power and using other people as objects in your quest for pleasure or prestige." Most of the world has no idea that this is possible. You might as well have snow at Easter. As one of the greatest early Christians put it: it’s ridiculous, and that’s why it’s true. Nobody would have made this stuff up." You and I are meant to be signs to the world who "show the full glory of what human life was meant to be, and to cut across the shallow lies that drag us down and make us, frankly, sub-human." Part of Christ being formed in us (Gal. 4:19) is that his full humanity becomes ours.

Dallas Willard, in "Spiritual Formation: What It Is, and How It Is Done," writes: "Spiritual formation in the tradition of Jesus Christ is the process of transformation of the inmost dimension of the human being, the heart, which is the same as spirit or will. It is being formed (really, transformed) in such a way that its natural expression comes to be the deeds of Christ done in the power of Christ." What does that look like? Willard refers to 1 Corinthians 13 and writes: "There is a real possibility of looking at I Corinthians 13, for example, and being able to see that the love that is portrayed there can actually come to occupy the human heart. People can really be like that--"Bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." People can be like that, not because they do such things, but because agape love has occupied them effectively as a result of their having learned how to receive it into the deepest part of their being." 

People can really be like that. To be like that is to be human. This is so huge I can hardly bear it. Arguing by via negativa, if this were not true, than things like 1 Corinthians 13 that speak of such transcendent love are carrots forever dangling before hungry rabbits. The famous "love chapter" then becomes either fiction, or merely descriptive of God, but inapplicable to us, the result being we are forever subhuman.

thomas Merton expresses his longing to transcend subhumanity and ascend to true humanity when he writes: "One cannot remain immobile where the political and aesthetic customs and potentialities are so conspicuous and compelling: one must take another step." These words defined Merton's "personal vocation," which is the vocation of us all; namely, to go beyond the vast limitations of our subhumanity. Merton writes:

"I must - in my writing, in my prayer, in my life - take this further step and go beyond my limitations and the limitations of thought, art and religion of our time. And this requires effort and suffering. I simply cannot sit down and accept my limitations - that is impossible. But I must take care most of all not to be content with merely fanciful transcendence - going beyond my limitations in thought and imagination only. It must be a real transcendence." (A Year With Thomas Merton, Kindle, 5057-5070)

I must be transformed into true humanity. I must transcend the limitations of subhumanity that result in impotent and impoverished living. Our world needs Jesus, and I am called to host his presence. Christ in us. That's the hope of glory. Amazingly, "we are partakers of the divine nature." (2 Peter 1)

"Mere humanity" abides like a branch in a Vine and does the kind of things Jesus did and even more. That is the promise and destiny of every real follower of Jesus.

Five Core Beliefs of a Praying Life

 

(Linda, on a Lake Michigan beach)

(From my book Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God.)

Since 1981 my extended praying day has been Tuesday. On Tuesday afternoons I go alone to a quiet place, away from distractions, and talk with God about what we are thinking and doing together. Solitary praying is one-on-one, God and I, for several hours. As I meet with God, I carry certain core beliefs about God with me. They are...  

1. God exists. God is real. There is a God. God is. Without this, praying is an illusion. In the act of praying I am keeping company with the all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving, necessarily existent (everlasting; without beginning or end), personal agent who created and sustains all things. This is no small appointment I have! 

2. God is a personal being. God desires relationship. The Christian idea of God as a Trinity makes sense of God as essentially relational. God, in his being, is three relating Persons in One. God, as a Three-Personed Being, makes conceptual sense of the idea that God is love. Everlastingly, the Father has been loving the Son, the Son has been loving the Spirit, the Spirit has been loving the Father, and round and round in the Big Dance. To pray is to accept God’s invitation to the Big Dance. 

3. God made me. For what? For relationship with him. God desires relationship. He made me for such a partnership as this. When I pray, I am living in the heart of God’s desire for me. 

4. God knows me. In praying, God’s Spirit searches me out. God is aware of my deepest thoughts and inclinations, many of which are beyond me. God knows me better than I know myself. This would be devastating, were it not for the fact that… 

5. God loves me. God, in his essence, is love. Therefore, God cannot not-love. This is good news for me! As I put 4 and 5 together, I’m singing “Amazing Grace,” accompanied by tears of gratitude and joy. God desires me to love and know him in return. God has called me into a reciprocal relationship. Between God and me is a give-and-take.

Our Productivity Does Not Define Us

 

In my Spiritual Formation classes at Payne Seminary I tell my students that a main emphasis in my church is on helping our people understand their identity in Christ. The Pauline idea of "in Christ" is used, with variations, 180 times in his letters. One could argue that Paul's central idea is what it means to have Christ, the hope of glory, in you.

God spoke to one of my students about reclaiming their true identity, and to not allow this world's values to define them. This is important, since the core question of the spiritual life is "Who do I belong to?" 

Whose am I?

One of the false ways we are tempted to measure our identities is by our productivity. Henri Nouwen, in Spiritual Formation: Following the Movements of the Spirit, writes: 

"A life without a quiet center easily becomes delusional. When we cling to the results of our actions as our only way of self-identification, we become possessive, defensive, and dependent on false identities. In the solitude of prayer we slowly unmask the illusion of our dependencies and possessiveness, and discover in the center of our own self that we are not what we can control or conquer, but what is given to us from above to channel to others. In solitary prayer we become aware that our identity does not depend on what we have accomplished or possess, that our productivity does not define us, and that our worth is not the same as our usefulness." (P. 19)

I am in Christ. 

I am his "beloved" and he is mine. 

My worth is not the same as my usefulness, since I am God's child. 

My productivity, or lack thereof, does not define me. 

I am set free from the punishing, hierarchical honor-shame systems of my surrounding culture.

 

Do Not Let This World Interpret You

 

(Our grandson Levi created this capybara.)

The prescient, prophetic, praying follower of Jesus, Thomas Merton, wrote: "We have a vocation not to be disturbed by the turmoil and wreckage of the great fabric of illusions." (A Book of Hours, 56)

We have a vocation... 

A calling. We have a calling.

From God. God calls us.

... not to be disturbed...

To not be agitated.

This is about the heart. 

Washing machines have "agitators." They move back and forth, back and forth, with force. They are going nowhere. They make no forward progress.

Disturbances halt forward progress. Disturbances interrupt the calling.

Jesus said, "Let not your hearts be agitated." 

ταράσσω,v  \{tar-as'-so}
1) to agitate, trouble (a thing, by the movement of its parts to and fro)  1a) to cause one inward commotion, take away his calmness of  mind, disturb his equanimity  1b) to disquiet, make restless  1c) to stir up  1d) to trouble  1d1) to strike one's spirit with fear and dread  1e) to render anxious or distressed  1f) to perplex the mind of one by suggesting scruples or doubts 

...by the turmoil...

Let not your hearts be agitated by the agitation. By the upheaval. By the irruptions. By the roiling waters.

Let not your hearts be arrested by the peace-thieves.

...by the wreckage...

Do not be captivated by the incessant effluence of cultural carnage. 

Put a compress on the bleeding media.

...the great fabric of illusions.

The systematic sham that is "the world."

With all its pretension and arrogance.

Do not let this world interpret you.

We have a calling from God to remain in Christ where agitation and turmoil are not to be found and the great fabric of systemic spell-casting is broken.

What Is 'Naturalism'?

 

I am not a philosophical, or metaphysical, naturalist.

What is 'naturalism'? Here's a helpful synopsis.

Roger Trigg defines it as the view that “reality is wholly accessible (at least in principle) to the natural sciences. Nothing ... can exist beyond their reach.”

[Alvin] Plantinga defines it as the view that “there is no God, and we human beings are insignificant parts of a giant cosmic machine that proceeds in majestic indifference to us, our hopes and aspirations, our needs and desires, our sense of fairness, or fittingness.”

We see this in Richard Dawkins’s vision of reality when he writes, “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”

We are the products of a “blind watchmaker.” (See Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker.)

As George Gaylord Simpson puts it, “Man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind.”

- From "Recovering the Person: The Crisis of Naturalism and the Theological Insights of Søren Kierkegaard and Karl Barth." Alan J. Torrance and Andrew B. Torrance

Living Jesus's Moral Life Requires Utter Dependence on the Power of God

                                                       (Kibera, in Nairobi. Kenya)

One aspect of New Testament ethics is that it is an ethic of love. The two greatest commandments, said Jesus, are to love God with all one's heart, soul, mind, and strength, and then to love one's neighbor as you love your own self. (Matthew 22:36-39) These commands involve the condition of one's heart, and are not mere matters of outward compliance. 

In the ethics of Jesus there is a special place for the poor. For example, in the parable of the invitation to the banquet the servant is commanded by his master to bring in the poor, crippled, blind, lame, the street people of first-century Israel. This is a way of demonstrating the agape love of God which is non-hierarchical and unconditional. 

Anyone who thinks following Jesus' love ethic is easy to do has wrongly identified comprehension with matters of the heart. This is far from easy, in our natural state. Many are those that understand, few are those that do.

R. Scott Smith writes:

"How are Christians to live this kind of ethic? They cannot live it out just by education and self-discipline. Instead, they can live it out only in utter dependence upon the indwelling power of the Spirit of Christ. Thus, the Holy Spirit is necessary for the moral life for a kingdom member, and this is where the virtues enter into our discussion. Indeed, the New Testament places a very strong emphasis on the virtues, with the goal of becoming like Jesus. Yet the virtues are not divorced from commands and principles. They work together, such that the moral life is not just doing the right thing or avoiding doing wrong. It is about becoming like Jesus, and that should issue forth in certain kinds of actions." (R. Scott Smith, In Search of Moral Knowledge: Overcoming the Fact-Value Dichotomy, Kindle Locations 314-319)

The virtue of love, as with all moral virtues of Jesus, fruit of the Spirit. "The Holy Spirit produces these virtues in Christians. Yes, there are things believers are to do to cultivate them, but the Holy Spirit is necessary for their realization." (Ib., Kindle Locations 322-323) These virtues represent our goal, which is becoming like Jesus in character.

The Spirit grows this fruit as we live like branches connected to Jesus the True Vine. One major way of connecting is by being a praying person. Praying is the intimate God-connection par excellence. A praying person is a fruit-bearing person, to include a loving and compassionate person.