One morning many years ago - I believe I was twelve - I listened to my minister talk to the congregation about the need to accept Jesus Christ as our savior. If we did, he said, we would have eternal life. If we didn't, we would be condemned to eternal damnation. That's a pretty easy choice, I thought.
But then I began to wonder about people who had never heard of Jesus. Or, if they did, maybe the story of Jesus was presented in a silly, unconvincing way. Or what if a child was told to believe something different? Maybe the child died before he had a chance to make up his own mind. What happened then? The minister seemed pretty clear. These people would spend eternity in hell, being tortured by the devil. This sermon came after hearing at Sunday School an hour before that "God is love."
I decided that the minister just could not be right. It was a little scary to reject something an adult was saying, particularly the minister. Then, there was that part about spending eternity in hell. That was about the worst possible thing I could imagine, although my immediate worry was asking a girl in my Sunday School class to the movies. Nevertheless, I decided I was going to reject traditional Christian doctrines about salvation and eternal life, and I have never changed my mind.
But then I began to have many other questions. If people don't go to hell because they don't believe in Jesus, does everyone go to heaven? What is the point of life on earth then? Why not just skip the suffering on earth and enjoy paradise from the beginning? What is God getting at? Of all the possibilities, I decided that life must be some kind of painful learning experience. If we had everything we wanted from the beginning - if life is all pleasure and no pain -- how would we develop "character"? This explanation wasn't entirely convincing but it seemed to be the best alternative.
This theology held together until I began to learn about the discoveries of science. The first problem with my theology was the age of the universe. The Big Bang occurred about 14 billion years ago, and the earth was formed about ten billion years later. It took another billion years for life to develop and man didn't come along until somewhere between 500,000 and 200,000 years ago. I began to wonder why God would go through all this trouble if the ultimate point of the universe is human life. Why not skip the billions of years of warm-up and go straight to the main act? I began to have the same questions about evolution. The logic of evolution means that humans developed through a random, undirected process, just as dinosaurs and jellyfish did. That would mean that man is not really created in the image of God, but he is simply a product of natural selection.
But a traditional omnipotent, omniscient God still had to exist, I thought. How could the universe exist without a supreme Creator? If there is such a God, then how do we make sense of the Big Bang and evolution? These questions nagged at me for many years. They are the most fundamental questions about the nature of our existence. Like all of us, I put them aside in order to get on with life, but they still bothered me. I felt a sense of discomfort that I could not understand the basic nature of my existence.
I began to read books about the creation of the universe and theories about the Big Bang, including books by Paul Davies, Stephen Hawking and others. I returned to some of the great philosophers and theologians that I had first learned about in college, including Aristotle, Aquinas, Spinoza, Hegel, Paul Tillich and many others. I read a fascinating book, A History of God, by Karen Armstrong. Armstrong argued that man continually revised his conception of God through history and that man made God is in his image, rather than the other way around. Eventually, I began to reconsider my conception of God. I realized that I had always accepted the conception of God that I was taught as a child and perhaps I was fundamentally wrong. Yet, I had a strong sense that I wanted the idea of God to be important in my life.
I began to think about the essential characteristics of God and how humans have always associated God with what seemed to me the most important to them. Primitive man thought of God has having power over nature and the ability to help them destroy enemies. Later, humans looked to God to explain the great mysteries of life, including what happens after death and how the universe was created. I concluded that modern man has the ability to rethink his conception of God and to associate God with a very different essential characteristic - the power to inspire us to be as perfect as we can be. Finally, when I felt that I worked through my own thoughts, I made a decision to write them down. Writing forces one's thinking to become more systematic and organized. Holes in logic that were not apparent become glaringly obvious. But I stuck with it and tried to work through all the questions that came to mind. The result is The Uncertain Believer: Reconciling God and Science.
But then I began to wonder about people who had never heard of Jesus. Or, if they did, maybe the story of Jesus was presented in a silly, unconvincing way. Or what if a child was told to believe something different? Maybe the child died before he had a chance to make up his own mind. What happened then? The minister seemed pretty clear. These people would spend eternity in hell, being tortured by the devil. This sermon came after hearing at Sunday School an hour before that "God is love."
I decided that the minister just could not be right. It was a little scary to reject something an adult was saying, particularly the minister. Then, there was that part about spending eternity in hell. That was about the worst possible thing I could imagine, although my immediate worry was asking a girl in my Sunday School class to the movies. Nevertheless, I decided I was going to reject traditional Christian doctrines about salvation and eternal life, and I have never changed my mind.
But then I began to have many other questions. If people don't go to hell because they don't believe in Jesus, does everyone go to heaven? What is the point of life on earth then? Why not just skip the suffering on earth and enjoy paradise from the beginning? What is God getting at? Of all the possibilities, I decided that life must be some kind of painful learning experience. If we had everything we wanted from the beginning - if life is all pleasure and no pain -- how would we develop "character"? This explanation wasn't entirely convincing but it seemed to be the best alternative.
This theology held together until I began to learn about the discoveries of science. The first problem with my theology was the age of the universe. The Big Bang occurred about 14 billion years ago, and the earth was formed about ten billion years later. It took another billion years for life to develop and man didn't come along until somewhere between 500,000 and 200,000 years ago. I began to wonder why God would go through all this trouble if the ultimate point of the universe is human life. Why not skip the billions of years of warm-up and go straight to the main act? I began to have the same questions about evolution. The logic of evolution means that humans developed through a random, undirected process, just as dinosaurs and jellyfish did. That would mean that man is not really created in the image of God, but he is simply a product of natural selection.
But a traditional omnipotent, omniscient God still had to exist, I thought. How could the universe exist without a supreme Creator? If there is such a God, then how do we make sense of the Big Bang and evolution? These questions nagged at me for many years. They are the most fundamental questions about the nature of our existence. Like all of us, I put them aside in order to get on with life, but they still bothered me. I felt a sense of discomfort that I could not understand the basic nature of my existence.
I began to read books about the creation of the universe and theories about the Big Bang, including books by Paul Davies, Stephen Hawking and others. I returned to some of the great philosophers and theologians that I had first learned about in college, including Aristotle, Aquinas, Spinoza, Hegel, Paul Tillich and many others. I read a fascinating book, A History of God, by Karen Armstrong. Armstrong argued that man continually revised his conception of God through history and that man made God is in his image, rather than the other way around. Eventually, I began to reconsider my conception of God. I realized that I had always accepted the conception of God that I was taught as a child and perhaps I was fundamentally wrong. Yet, I had a strong sense that I wanted the idea of God to be important in my life.
I began to think about the essential characteristics of God and how humans have always associated God with what seemed to me the most important to them. Primitive man thought of God has having power over nature and the ability to help them destroy enemies. Later, humans looked to God to explain the great mysteries of life, including what happens after death and how the universe was created. I concluded that modern man has the ability to rethink his conception of God and to associate God with a very different essential characteristic - the power to inspire us to be as perfect as we can be. Finally, when I felt that I worked through my own thoughts, I made a decision to write them down. Writing forces one's thinking to become more systematic and organized. Holes in logic that were not apparent become glaringly obvious. But I stuck with it and tried to work through all the questions that came to mind. The result is The Uncertain Believer: Reconciling God and Science.
© SterlingHouse Publisher, Inc. 2009