His Hand is on the Door

The Anomaly of Paul of Tarsus and the Nature of Faith and Reason…

April 6th, 2007

VS.

 

Happy Good Friday! How awesome it is to know that Christ died for us that we might fellowship with God and one another in spirit and in truth! I want to celebrate both momentous events by making it up to you that my writing has been scattered over the past few weeks. Yep, you guessed it, this one’s record-breaking long. No way around it. I figure you can print this up and chew on it over the weekend, and beyond.

My Newsweek arrived in the mail this week, and much to my delight contained a mini-”debate” by Rick Warren (Pastor of Saddleback Church and author of “The Purpose Driven Life”) and Sam Harris (”New Atheist” author of the books “The End of Faith” and “Letter to a Christian Nation”). You can read the whole transcript here. Here’s a hint - it’s quite long, so make sure you hit the “print” button (and then hit “cancel” if your print queue comes up) to bring up a single-page view, rather than scrolling through ten pages of the transcript.

Though the whole article was fascinating, I found one comment Sam Harris made particularly interesting, related to prayer:

“Let me respond to this notion of answered prayer, because this is a classic sampling error, to use a statistical phrase. We know that human beings have a terrible sense of probability. There are many things we believe that confirm our prejudices about the world, and we believe this only by noticing the confirmations, and not keeping track of the disconfirmations. You could prove to the satisfaction of every scientist that intercessory prayer works if you set up a simple experiment. Get a billion Christians to pray for a single amputee. Get them to pray that God regrow that missing limb. This happens to salamanders every day, presumably without prayer; this is within the capacity of God. [Warren is laughing.] I find it interesting that people of faith only tend to pray for conditions that are self-limiting.”

I, for one, find it fascinating the Sam Harris is looking for empirical proof that God is real and acts on our behalf. I find it ironic that the scientific proof that Sam is looking for is related to answered prayer. This is noteworthy to me, of course, because I happen to link the events of the first and second coming of Jesus to that very “experiment”. What he is asking for (a supernatural sign related to prayer) has already taken place, in a far more spectacular and historic manner than the regeneration of a limb. As fascinated as we are with God when we have the privilege of witnessing such a dramatic healing, what could be more astonishing than the ultimacy of answered prayer - the birth of the Messiah onto planet earth, as well as His return?

Science, of course, is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as “the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.” By its very nature, the limitations of the scientific method makes the study of “God” and the supernatural impossible and is self-limiting by its own stated goals. It is ironic to me that this is how Harris chooses to define the activity of prayer. Yet, science is frustrated because the transcendent God will not be reduced to a subject of the created. Man can only scientifically study God on His own terms, in the manner in which He has chosen to reveal Himself to us. Thus “theology” (the study of God) was meant to be the capstone of the sciences, or the banner of all of the scientific research being presently conducted as man empirically explores the creation as a means of discovering a small piece of what the creator is like.

Thus, a scientific mind such as Harris must begin with a set of pre-conceived premises that become self-fulfilling over time:

1. There is no scientific proof of God - thus there is a high probability that there is no God.

2. Theology must be separated from the scientific realm because of the high probability that there is no God.

3. The sciences, then, must be studied in a vacuum without any thought that there is a creator or divine initiator as the causative agent to these physical elements and rules of nature. There is no provable cause to natural and physical laws, thus we must presume that creation itself is the only cause of creation’s activity.

4. If God is either a causative agent or a real physical and natural entity within the natural order, than He must reveal himself in an observable way that is subject to provable facts.

5. Since God has not operated in a scientific manner according to my rules, than presupposition number 3 must therefore be true.

Amazingly, the stunning thing about our God is this - He humbled Himself to come to us, in the natural realm, in a tangible, physical way. He then proved that He was God, according to the four gospel accounts (particularly in John’s gospel). Then, they killed Him by crucifying Him, as Peter spoke in Acts 2. This is Sam Harris’ fatal flaw - his complete disconnect with the reality of human nature. If God actually performed the scientific “proof” that he was looking for, he would not rejoice and believe. He would become even more angry, for now he would have to deal with the “dominoes” that would then collapse around him as “proof A” began to move to “consequence B”. In other words:

1. If “A” (Jesus is real, alive, and the Son of the Living God) is true;

2. Than “B” (all that He spoke) is also true;

3. Than “C” (man’s necessary response) is then required. Immediately.

The issue of faith is related to the issue of “C”. Faith is not (as Harris and others like him incorrectly reason) about the blind acceptance of men to the premises about the truth of God in the absence of God. Because they assume their premises about the absence of God to be true, they then presume that men believe things about God in a vacuum. They refuse to believe in a vacuum. Again, ironically, this is not even the true definition of faith. Faith is the decision men make when God reveals Himself to them. Abraham was considered “righteous” by God because of his faith - not in a vacuum or absence of the supernatural, but because the supernatural, transcendent God revealed Himself (and His city) to Abraham and Abraham changed his whole life direction as a consequence. It’s not about whether there is a God or not - it’s about what we do with who He is and what He said when He acts.

Again, the faulty premise that Harris and other atheists work from is that faith is a man-initiated act that provokes a sovereign response. The absence of the empirical proof of God’s response to man’s initiative (belief) is subsequent proof that there is not, in fact, a God at all. Again, all that Harris has proven is that God will not respond to Harris’ desire to establish the ground rules. According to Paul, in Eph. 2:8-9, man is saved in part through faith - but not a faith initiated by his own belief in God. It is through grace that men are saved, by faith, that none may boast. God is the initiator and man can at best only respond or react - but the reach of God towards men is only and always in God’s hands. The Holy Spirit is always acting in such a manner that all men would be drawn to the Father - again, Paul reveals that men in fact always respond to the initiative of God. It’s just that, in Rom. 1:18-32, that response is, most of the time, to suppress the truth in unrighteousness. “Salvation belongs to our God,” the saints sing in the book of Revelation; yet He leaves the choice to receive that constant invitation into our hands. If we say “yes,” to the invitation by grace, He will respond to our cry of faith and credit that tender response as a righteous one.

Harris, and all men, cannot escape the God that is real and the God that acts. They can suppress Him, they can reason Him away, but they cannot escape Him. He did not give them the choice. For He is not a God limited to scientific proof of His existence, rather, He is forceful in His pursuit of all men that they might be saved and come into the knowledge of the truth (1 Tim. 2:4). Thus we come to the “anomaly”, the Apostle Paul himself, formerly Saul of Tarsus. While many of the great apologists, including C.S. Lewis, have noted that Jesus Himself - particularly what He said about Himself - constitute the best apologetic for the truth of the nature and identity of the man, I tend to look to Paul.

Strange, isn’t it? In looking to Paul rather than the gospel narratives, I find the same thing that Lewis noted about Jesus - yet presented in a more paradoxical and forceful manner. Lewis noted that, if Jesus died (and historically, we know this to be true), than we must weigh the claims He made about Himself that led to His death. He is either Lord, as He claimed; or He is a lunatic, or He is a liar. There are no other options to assign to the Man. Of course, the problem we run into with skeptics is what the gospel writers themselves said about their goal - as John wrote, “That we may believe…” was the stated purpose of these evangelists. In the minds of the skeptics, their work is already suspect - since they cannot be trusted as historical documents. For all they know, these men fabricated these stories to justify their claims about a man they thought to be the Messiah.

Of course, the idea that they would then have to have pulled of the most elaborate and skilled hoax in history would be enough to dismiss their skepticism. Rather than go that route, I love that the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts introduces us to the most unlikely character in the entire new movement - Saul of Tarsus. While the motives of the original apostles could come under doubt and suspicion, what did Saul have to gain from his conversion? There is no answer for such a transformation. In fact, he did not gain, but for quite some time lost everything in the exchange - credibility amongst his own people and doubt and fear by the community he looked to join. There are no rational reasons for a man the skeptics call a “religious genius” to have converted at all in the absence of God. His life story speaks to the same options as Jesus Himself presented - either what Paul said was true or he was the most deluded, insane man who ever lived. For he surely didn’t gain that much (by his own admission, in 1 Cor. 15:19) comparatively to the prestige, honor, wealth, and fame he was heading for within the Jewish community.

Paul surrendered all of this for a life spent “as a fool“; or, as he continued in 2 Cor. 11:23-28, “in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequently, in deaths often. From the Jews five times,” he testified, “I received forty stripes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods; once I was stoned; three times I was shipwrecked; and a night and a day I have been in the deep; in journeys often, in perils of waters, in perils of my own countrymen, in perils of the Gentiles (in other words, everyone hated him)…” Paul went on to describe more of the worst punishments a man could endure - and for what? He truly believed that the risen Christ had appeared to Him, that God Himself had commissioned Him, and that the Spirit had taken him up into the third heaven and gave him visions and revelations. According to what he suffered related to these beliefs, either they were true or he was a madman. No man could endure these things over many years and be that skilled a liar - and, as Paul makes clear, there was nothing to gain from lying.

Where Jesus left us three choices (Lord, lunatic, or liar), Paul served by removing one of those three. Only two are left. Both men were either true in what they said or absolutely and irrevocably insane. Yet for Paul, there was no choice in the matter. God had intervened by grace and had apprehended Him. The God who acts spared him from the course he was fervently taking (in the name of God) and redirected him miraculously and incredibly into a life spent on the receiving end of the punishment he began his career administering to others. Did the same men who “fabricated” the account of Jesus’ resurrection also “fabricate” the life of Paul? Or did the risen Lord actually appear to the man, and redirect his life and mission?

We who spend our lives “wasted” in the place of prayer know the answer - and it is found in greater measure than any limb returning to health. We do not believe in a vacuum. We do not have faith in the place of unknowing or a strange hope devoid of evidence. We have a testimony, and the reality of a life transformed, and the life of God stirring and boiling within us, a jealous Holy Spirit who speaks and convicts and comforts. We have desires for Godly things, a yearning for righteousness that was wholly foreign to us years ago. We have an ache within us, a groaning that cannot be produced within the heart of sinful men, a longing suppressed and ignored by intellectuals who are afraid to deal with the consequences of responding to the daily invitation of God to repent, and believe, and live.

Paul defined this “knowing” in 2 Cor. 5:1-8 as follows: “For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven, if indeed, having been clothed, we shall not be found naked. For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life. Now He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who also has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. So we are always confident, knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord. For we walk by faith (responding to the work of the Spirit), not by sight (responding to the circumstances of life). We are confident, yes, well pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord.

We do not believe in a vacuum. We do not have to prove that we speak to “the God who wasn’t there”. Faith is the substance - the living proof of the reality of God contained within the transformed life who was blind but now sees in part - of things hoped for. We hope for the fullness to come, but that which comes to us now in part gives us great confidence in our future, and great trust in the daily leadership of God that has not failed - despite the protests of atheists who use the existence of evil, corruption, and death as a proof of the absence of life, light, and truth. Faith is the evidence of things not seen - the invisible supernatural that touches and enlivens a cold, dead heart into deep affection and longing. We do not believe in a vacuum of unknowing. We have substance and evidence for our hope. I do not press on, this Good Friday, in the vain groping and grasping for some kind of evidence that would serve as a lifeline to continue on in prayer and fasting.

I press on with great confidence that wisdom will be justified by her children, and that the sum total of my life and its meaning will be measured according to the evaluation of a just but tender judge. For what Sam Harris can never come to grips with in his vain search for meaning is that morality cannot empirically be the substance of an evolutionary process, and that decency cannot form out of the morass and mire of animalistic urges and instincts. For if God is a myth, as he hopes to someday prove, than he will also prove subsequently that there is no further need for selflessness, sacrifice, and charity. There can be, in the absence of the Risen Christ, only the survival of the fittest, and a relegation of the “unfit” to extinction.

In light of what I know to be true, I then echo the words of Paul in 2 Cor. 11:9 - “Therefore we make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well pleasing to Him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad. Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord (related to the aforementioned judgment seat), we persuade men…”

This I pray, for Sam Harris, and the many like him - that they might come humbly by grace to the beginning of wisdom, delivered from their vain knowledge, into the fear of the Risen Christ, that in the terror of His judgment, they might repent and be rooted and established in the love of God and the patience of Christ Jesus. Amen.

David Sliker

Good Friday, April 6th, 2007

 

Entry Filed under: bible, current events, end times