God Isn't Getting Smaller

Recently I hosted a series called Towards Belief. This was an interesting experience for a whole lot of reasons, but the thing I really liked about it was that people were engaging with big issues. Forget everything else. If I was to summarise my reason for being involved, that would be it. The world we live in is a world of fast paced world, full of distractions (I'm as guilty of this as anyone- I'm often, not consistently but often one of those 1 in 5 people who checks their phone every 10 minutes).

But there we were every Tuesday night at my church talking about BIG issues. Big issues of Faith, God, The Bible, Science and everything else.

One Tuesday night, someone raised the issue of modern medicine and how it interacts with Christian faith. They told a personal story about a prominent church leader they knew. This leader had an unsuccessful course of chemotherapy, after which he started getting prayed for and his condition has since improved. This raised the question of whether it is unfaithful to automatically go to the doctor first and to the prayer healing team second. You might be thinking: Why not just pray anyway- whether in the car on the way to the doctors, beforehand or both? This is really a secondary question and the details on this aren't actually that important. The bigger thrust behind the question - and other surrounding discussion in our group- was best illustrated by that particular question and that particular story, but the bigger thrust was wondering whether we've lost faith in God and let ourselves lose touch with God because of our modern technologies, medicines and amenities. 

We sometimes think that if we pray for something and it happens, then God was at work. But if we go to a doctor and the doctor prescribes some medicine and something happens, then the doctor and "medicine" was at work (and by implication God wasn't at work in that situation).

But this all neglects the simple and profound truth that God is God over everything.

The God of Christian faith is a God who both sustains and transcends the entire universe. He is also everywhere- with you as you read this. He's in Los Angeles. He's here with me as I type this out. If he does exist, then he is the God of everything. He's the God of the Bible and he's simultaneously God over the book of nature. He is the God who raised Jesus from the dead almost 2,000 years ago, from the Roman cross to the throne. And he's also the God who gave us science and modern medicine. There can't be any real contradictions in what is true, because all truth is God's truth.

You might respond to this by asking: What about all the people who deny God and justify their denial using science and modern medicine? It is true that many people look at our advancing knowledge and no longer see a need for God. But why, as Christians, should we hold ourselves captive to this faulty false dichotomy and facilitate its continued prominence? According to the Christian view, that view is merely a false understanding of God leading to a denial of his very existence. God isn't getting any smaller.


(Written Oct 2013)

Naturalism, Questioned.

1. If Naturalism is true, then every event that ever occurs in the universe is a product of, and can in theory be explained by reference to, natural laws and natural forces.

2. Universally across human cultures, in all places and times, people have reported the existence of events that seem to contravene the natural order and have reported experiences that seem to connect them with something beyond the bare, natural state of affairs.

3. If any of these events did contravene the natural order or if any of those experiences did connect someone with anything beyond the bare, natural state of affairs then naturalism is false.

4. It is likely that at least one of these events did contravene natural laws and/or that at least one of the experiences did connect them with something beyond the bare, natural state of affairs.

5. Therefore, it is likely that naturalism is false.

The key premise here is clearly number 4. The whole question is really about whether or not premise 4 is true. The other premises really just exist to explain the situation and provide a sequential framework for making this argument to question naturalism. The basic, undeveloped, intuitive idea on which the step by step argument is based, is this: It seems more likely that some miracles actually happened than it is to say that all of them didn't. 

The appendix to this argument would be to list some of the examples of events that have been considered to be miracles and religious experiences.  Craig Keener's book Miracles is one very comprehensive example of this.