Trump's Day of Prayer (Part 1)
In mid-March President of the USA Donald Trump called for a national day of prayer. By early April he was confident there was light at the end of the tunnel. Yet a BBC report dated 29th April states that "The United States alone has more than one million confirmed cases - four times as many as any other country". So what does this mean for religion? Was God able to answer but didn't? Was God unable to hear? Did God create the coronavirus? Should all this cause Christians to question their faith?
These sincere questions, asked respectfully by an long-term friend who is not a Christian, have had me thinking hard for several days. Rather than attempt a single answer which could get quite lengthy, I hope to explore this over a few shorter blogs.
I want to start by turning the whole thing inside out, on its head, and flipping it around!
Inside out: these are very important questions. The existence of suffering is something for which every religion and philosophy has to offer and explanation or a solution. Non-Christians often ask Christians these questions but difficult life experiences often prompt Christians to ask them too. What may surprise some people is that much of the Bible is taken up, one way or another, with the same questions. The Bible is very honest about the difficulties of human experience. It contains personal, national, international, and cosmic tragedies as well as fair catalogue of plagues, disasters, and wars. From the outside it appears that this might cause a Christian to question their faith but from the inside it is more like an opportunity to prove the resources which our faith offers for just such occasions.
On its head: These questions imagine one of two gods. The first is a god who actively created a killer virus and is now unwilling to listen to prayers for help - an evil North Korean dictator in the sky god. The other god might be willing to help but he is either asleep, deaf, or powerless. This is a weak god - indeed a god too weak to prevent the virus arising in the first place. Actually, these gods do not cause Christians to question their faith at all. We do not actually believe in either of those gods. Our God is neither a detached weakling - that’s the god of deism. Nor is He an evil dictator in the sky - that’s closer to our image of the devil, a powerful but evil angel who God has defeated and keeps on a tight chain. If you an atheist and that is this is how you imagine the god you don’t believe in, I fully concur! I don’t believe in that either.
Flipping it around: I think the kind of suffering we are observing should cause everyone to question their faith, worldview, or belief system on some level. For example, a materialistic outlook that says we are all here by chance has to face the fact that the virus also arose by chance. Ultimately, it is neither a good thing or a bad thing. Instead of looking up to a god who is either weak or evil to answer, we put human beings at the top, set our own happiness as the goal of life. Then we discover that we are often just like the way we imagine god - often too weak and ignorant to help, frequently creating things that damage lives and the world we live in and, sometimes, too evil to help. If these things raise questions about faith in God, do they not also raise questions about our faith in humanity?!
It is possible to ask equivalent questions of all beliefs and ways of living (for example pantheism, where bad things like viruses must accompany the good as ying accompanies yang; or karma, which is so attractive when things are going well but implies that you or your past incarnations are to blame when you suffer). The point I am trying to make is that because suffering is at the heart of the human predicament, an inescapable part of the context in which we all seek to live our lives, all tragic situations have the potential to cause us to question what we believe - Christian or other.
Trump's Day of Prayer (Part 2).
Inside out: these are very important questions. The existence of suffering is something for which every religion and philosophy has to offer and explanation or a solution. Non-Christians often ask Christians these questions but difficult life experiences often prompt Christians to ask them too. What may surprise some people is that much of the Bible is taken up, one way or another, with the same questions. The Bible is very honest about the difficulties of human experience. It contains personal, national, international, and cosmic tragedies as well as fair catalogue of plagues, disasters, and wars. From the outside it appears that this might cause a Christian to question their faith but from the inside it is more like an opportunity to prove the resources which our faith offers for just such occasions.
On its head: These questions imagine one of two gods. The first is a god who actively created a killer virus and is now unwilling to listen to prayers for help - an evil North Korean dictator in the sky god. The other god might be willing to help but he is either asleep, deaf, or powerless. This is a weak god - indeed a god too weak to prevent the virus arising in the first place. Actually, these gods do not cause Christians to question their faith at all. We do not actually believe in either of those gods. Our God is neither a detached weakling - that’s the god of deism. Nor is He an evil dictator in the sky - that’s closer to our image of the devil, a powerful but evil angel who God has defeated and keeps on a tight chain. If you an atheist and that is this is how you imagine the god you don’t believe in, I fully concur! I don’t believe in that either.
Flipping it around: I think the kind of suffering we are observing should cause everyone to question their faith, worldview, or belief system on some level. For example, a materialistic outlook that says we are all here by chance has to face the fact that the virus also arose by chance. Ultimately, it is neither a good thing or a bad thing. Instead of looking up to a god who is either weak or evil to answer, we put human beings at the top, set our own happiness as the goal of life. Then we discover that we are often just like the way we imagine god - often too weak and ignorant to help, frequently creating things that damage lives and the world we live in and, sometimes, too evil to help. If these things raise questions about faith in God, do they not also raise questions about our faith in humanity?!
It is possible to ask equivalent questions of all beliefs and ways of living (for example pantheism, where bad things like viruses must accompany the good as ying accompanies yang; or karma, which is so attractive when things are going well but implies that you or your past incarnations are to blame when you suffer). The point I am trying to make is that because suffering is at the heart of the human predicament, an inescapable part of the context in which we all seek to live our lives, all tragic situations have the potential to cause us to question what we believe - Christian or other.
Trump's Day of Prayer (Part 2).
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