How can a text 'prove' (in the modernist sense of that word) anything? The answer is unequivocably _no_. But that doesn't hinder the fact that the Spirit speaks through the Word (Bible) to reveal God.
The bible clearly tells us that God is real. For example in Genesis it tells us that God created all Creation and even through out the old testament it shows us that God is everpresent in the lives of his people. When he was protecting his people while leading them out of Egypt, providing pillars of fire and parting the Red Sea so they could cross. Also in Exodus 40:34 "Then a cloud cpovered the Tent of Meeting, and the glory or the Lord filled the tabernacle." One more in Job when he has his diolog with Satan and then with Job. God is very much proved in the Bible.
You are assuming that the reader accepts the bible as an authority. There is no proof there, but rather a truth claim. I know that lots of texts from other religions say God is real as well, they also make other claims. But claims aren't proofs.
Creation proving a Creator - well if you start with the fact that your bias caused you to call it creation then you have your answer. Unfortunately not everyone shares your bias (although I do). I guess what I am mostly driving at is that proofs are of a certain mode of thinking, very modernist (a la Encyclopedists). We have taken on a modernist way of thinking and developed a system of apologetics that depends on our assumptions. As cultures merge in our brave new world we realize that less and less people come to the table with the same assumptions and worse more come with a distrust of the modernist methodologies. It is at that point that we either dispair at the crisis of epistomology or we rejoice seeing the gospel with a new relevance as the lived meta-narrative of our community. So creation only proves that creation exists, what we postulate about the nature of that somethings genesis is a matter of faith.
However, I would concede that God proves God's existance. Anyone who has had the veil pulled back to the reality of God is no longer in a position to deny the existance of God. Other than that God is seen through creation, scripture, acts of love, etc. but only when the observer/hearer mediates (understands) the experience in a way that includes the assumption of God from the beginning.
I agree, however, just because someone doesn't come to the table with that in mind, or they don't see it that way doesn't mean it isn't truth. By what your saying I can be walking with afriend down a sidewalk getting ready to cross the street...when I put my hand on my friends shoulder and say don't cross yet...here comes a semi truck. Now what if my friend says I don't believe in Semi-trucks or I don't interperate that moving object coming my way as dangerous. Do I just sit back and allow my friend to walk across the street or do i show him the existance of the truck? Or just call it an assumption???
"For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities- his eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made (CREATION), so that men are without excuse." Romans 1:20
Therefore, creation causing us to be without excuse of God's existance, and scriptre reminding us of God being clearly being seen. Two very clear proofs of God's existance. Unless ofcorse you don't believe it or think that this reasoning is my assumtion, then I take it all beack and there is no accountability or responsibility on the part of the sinner to make a step towards opening their eyes to what is true!
To address your first response. The truth is irrelevant. That is the issue, truth is only really effective when it is accepted and applied. Now I get that the "truth" is relevant, extremely so. But the guy who truly refuses to not believe in the semi is going to walk in front of it no matter what we say. Unless he can somehow begin to see truth from the vantage of the ones that know about the truck. That is where the mistake is made - we are convinced we can just assert our version of the "truth" enough instead of showing folks. This is why the Spirit and the Word are married in the scriptures.
The second response requires a bit more exegetical work. I would agree with that scripture, but not in that it affirms a proof (as in the scientific meaning of that term). You can't read that passage and have someone go, "oh yeah, I was so stupid." (Unless the Spirit has already prepared them for that conclusion of course). But Paul is affirming the truth that within each of us who truly searches the truth is there. Didn't many of us feel that way on conversion, like "why didn't I get this before?" But the problem is that most people really want the truth, and that includes many Christians who hide behind a narrow worldview refusing to allow the truth of the word to change them instead insisting on using the word (bible) to support their "safe" propositions.
To the main question, No. To all the other forms of it, No. Faith and reason should never be divorced from one another, but the arena of verifiable proof isn't where we are walking here. There are reasons to believe, good reasons, but where my heart is determines what I see as a good reason, thus our diverse denomi-nationalism. God wants me to be prosperous. God deserves our praise. God loved me when no one else did. All betraying our own heart in the matter - preoccupation with our own situation; awe, reverence; appreciation. None of which are proof.
The guy in Live sees his daughter and the sunset and believes. Jane Goodall sees contrasts and similarities in the behavior of humans and chimpanzees and has a reason to believe. You read Romans 1:20 and have a reason to believe. I don't equate the level of validity within each of these claims, but proof is very subjective across disciplines and time.
The Bible, or any other ancient sacred text, never sets out to prove the existence of God. It is presupposed. That type of writing did not appear en masse until the after enlightenment, after the birth of modernity. The world is not, in large part, concerned with proof. Look at other faiths - how many of their scholars are writing propositional papers on why they are right?
We are consumed with proof and evidence and truth, but we have to acknowledge the boundaries of each before we start tossing the terms around. We have to be aware, thoughtful, and meticulous about how we are presenting them in the context of our faith.
By the way, if you google "does God exist" you get around 662,000 articles; "does Allah exist", 514; "does yahweh exist", 17, 10 of which are repeats; "does Brahman exist", 1. As you move further away from Western culture and into places with a very pre-modern way of life, you lose the necessity of proof. Just FYI.
Ok...however, so we question everything over here in the US. And we are the bad guy? You are going to bat for a person who puts their faith in a god that doesn't exist? However, they are weighed in comparison to my God who does exist clearly as stated in scripture! Proud to be in my Western culture and quesiton truth than believe a lie!
Actually I don't think the US questions enough. At least not in the church, which seems to adapt a modern epistomology to a pre-modern belief based on absolute authority. The reason I say that is that most modern apologists can only operate from their presumptions about God. That isn't at all the charity of true modern reasoning that starts from no presumptions. But then again that is the problem with post-modernity, which to me is just modernity taken to its logical end. I think all of these paradigms are flawed when it comes to God. But they are not flawed when it comes to answering your question, let me demonstrate:
pre-modern answer: yes, because the Church tells me the bible is authoritative. modern: no, because the bible is a book amongst many which make similar claims. post-modern: maybe, depending on the mediation in the community of the bible.
pre-modern comes to the right conclusion (IMO) for the wrong reason. modern comes to the wrong conclusion because it can really do nothing else. post-modern at least gives us the potential of reaching the right conclusion and maybe for the right reason but it is still too much of a crap shoot for the modernists.
My point is that most modern Christian apologists are trying to start from the bible as the authority and entrench their idea. They aren't trying to test and see if this is true or not. And this breeds all kinds of horrid theology.
You continue with your presupositions on other peoples presupositions- there seems to be something quite ironic there? As your presupositions today will be ridiculed in years to come by someone else's great idea to come up with "THE ALTERNATIVE WAY" to do church in a rebelion to the way their parents approached religion and therefore experienced themselves. There are a lo tof answers floating around here which are a mile long an inch deep. TO which I push aside cultural methods of reasoning and push through this crap mound of theological babble and shine the light on Paul when faced with an opportunity to prove that another God existed...one that Paul made known in Acts 17:23-25 "Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars' hill, and said, You men of Athens, I preceive that in all things you are too superstitious. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an alter with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore you ignorantly worship, him declare I to you. God that made the world and all things therin (Paul using creation to prove there is a Creator), seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth.(Did you catch that fellas? SEEING that he is Lord of heaven and earth? Is Paul making presupositions? Is Paul not setting out to prove that there is a known God...Steve? Or was that after the Enlightenment age? Give me a break!) dwells not in temples made with hands. Neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing, SEEING he gives to all life, and breath, and all things. (Paul once again using created things to point to a Creator!)
Actually that passage is one of the more brilliant pieces in scripture. But it doesn't really serve your point that well Joe. And if you study even the primitive Church you will see that there is no real good old fashioned approach to religion to rebel from, but rather collections of Christians trying to find the best way to understand this phenomenon of Jesus that they had experienced. What strikes me most about my primite church studies is that there is a wonderful diversity and yet a unity at the same time. Sure there is wackiness that happens both in the heretical groups and in response to these groups. But I digress.
Don Richardson has a wonderful exposition of Paul in Athens in his excellent book, "Eternity in Their Hearts." He's an evangelical missionary with some wonderful insights into Micronesian primitive cultures (you might remember the book Peace Child?). Anyway, Paul wasn't proving he was simply naming what they had already experienced (not directly but through their shared story (history)). In fact Paul was very culturally aware, not to mention very well educated. He knew the story about that Unknown God and how this God delivered their city when all the other idols failed. They had no concept of Jesus or YHWH tied to it. This is an act of Christian appropriation and replacement. Paul simply made it easy for the people of Athens to see that God was already a part of their story and this opened the door for so much more. So of course Paul is going to appeal to creation, because this God of Paul's is core to everything. And only a Creator could supplant a pantheon of gods.
But here is the other issue. I am suggesting that there is another way. Modernity and the Enlightenment did not happen out of rebellion, but because the old epistomologies were corrupt and they were being used to perpetuate ignorance. The 'truth' was not setting people free. So a new epistomology arose to takes its place. But the reaction was, IMO, directed against the wrong thing. When we read those Enlightenment thinkers who are highly critical of the Church (Nietzsche is the one I am most familiar with) it is a very specific cultural perpective they are most upset with. Paul is quite removed from this, but we are not. So much as we want to read Paul in a Pauline context we are forever looking at it through 21st century lenses. These lenses colour everything we do. To believe anything else is to romanticise your own peculiar view of history.
Maybe we should back up a bit and ask some more basic questions. A good one is "how do you know Jesus?" That gets us out of the realm of trying to make biblical texts do things they were never intended to do.
You seem to like to make things way too difficult. You seem to have all of this knowledge "which Paul warns that it puffs up" but I probably have missused that scripture as well since I have no clue what the Bible really says...go take a nap and when you wake up raise your hand and volunteer to teach the third graders at your church and force yourself to get back to the basics.
Believe me, I'm loving it...I just backed you in a corner and the bell just rang...(ding) round 3~! You make a good throw down...but man you are wordy! So how do you explain to a third grader that God exists?
I don't explain to a third grader that God exists, I live my life in light of Christ's presence in me and let my actions speak for themselves. Christianity is always best caught not taught because it is a matter of the heart not the head.
But for those of us who do believe I think we really need to get our heads into gear as well, especially when it comes to this trying to intellectually proving God exists crap.
It's funny, Joe - You've made a devil of us for questioning the structure of the modern church and its methods, but questions (and experience) are the way we arrive at evidence, proof, and how we apply them to the way that we live. Note, I didn't say truth.
I would venture to say that, unless extremely jaded by religious or anti-religious parents, most third graders don't need an explanation of the existence of God. They want to know what he's like (what my dad is like), what he does in his spare time (does my dad want to be around me when he comes home from work?), whether or no he likes soccer (Joe, do you like soccer?), and if he loves his kids as much as their parents do? If I'm explaining God to a third grader - I need to shut up and listen, and it better be my third grader who learned everything he knows about how good and loving and breath-takingly amazing God is from watching his dad. And that's a tall order, but if we are not up for that, then we are wasting our time on this blog, and at work, and at pretty much everything else we're doing.
It's funny, Joe - You've made a devil of us for questioning the structure of the modern church and its methods, but questions (and experience) are the way we arrive at evidence, proof, and how we apply them to the way that we live. Note, I didn't say truth.
I would venture to say that, unless extremely jaded by religious or anti-religious parents, most third graders don't need an explanation of the existence of God. They want to know what he's like (what my dad is like), what he does in his spare time (does my dad want to be around me when he comes home from work?), whether or no he likes soccer (Joe, do you like soccer?), and if he loves his kids as much as their parents do? If I'm explaining God to a third grader - I need to shut up and listen, and it better be my third grader who learned everything he knows about how good and loving and breath-takingly amazing God is from watching his dad. And that's a tall order, but if we are not up for that, then we are wasting our time on this blog, and at work, and at pretty much everything else we're doing.
Steve...that is your presuposition and interpretation of my previous postings. Ha...if you feel like a devil well then thats another topic all together. Bro, I'm just throwing down as you guys are...I don't take this stuff personally as Frank suggested earlier...I think we work really ahrd on both sides to get across our points in why we believe in what we believe...that's all...nothing else, so don't make it personal (this is the last disclaimer I will make on this blog about not taking things personally...we are all adults, not in highschool, I can disagree with you and get frustrated but still respect you for not agreeing with me. I may give advice, I may give opinions, but while we may talk about third graders, let's not assume that we are third graders) You guys rock and I love discussing this stuff with you. I consider it pure ministry talking with you! Oh and Steve, as much as I agree with you about the whole third grader issue...third graders are wondering if God exists at that age! I experienced it many times as a Childrens Pastor and as for them basing their experience of God on their relationship with their father, I'm gonna let you in on a secret...most of them don't have earthly fathers and a good majority of them don't have Christian godly fathers if they are around...so now oyu have a third grader on your hands who can't believe that a heavenly father even exists since he has never even known his earthly father.
AS I believe that there are obvious elements out there that prove the exsitence of a Creator...not to mention the prophecies that Jesus went over on the road to Emmaeus: Beginning, then, with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted for them every passage of scripture which referred to him. Jesus using scripture to refer to himself! However, here is where we can end with this whole proving God discussion: The righteous will live by faith and faith is putting our hope in that which is unseen. Amen.
How can a text 'prove' (in the modernist sense of that word) anything? The answer is unequivocably _no_. But that doesn't hinder the fact that the Spirit speaks through the Word (Bible) to reveal God.
ReplyDeleteThe bible clearly tells us that God is real. For example in Genesis it tells us that God created all Creation and even through out the old testament it shows us that God is everpresent in the lives of his people. When he was protecting his people while leading them out of Egypt, providing pillars of fire and parting the Red Sea so they could cross. Also in Exodus 40:34 "Then a cloud cpovered the Tent of Meeting, and the glory or the Lord filled the tabernacle." One more in Job when he has his diolog with Satan and then with Job. God is very much proved in the Bible.
ReplyDeleteYou are assuming that the reader accepts the bible as an authority. There is no proof there, but rather a truth claim. I know that lots of texts from other religions say God is real as well, they also make other claims. But claims aren't proofs.
ReplyDeleteOne of Freedom,
ReplyDeleteGood to hear from you again. My question is: Does creation prove God's existence?
Way of the Pastor,
Joe
How you answer that question relates with how you answer the original quesiton: Does the Bible prove God's existence?
ReplyDeleteJoe
Creation proving a Creator - well if you start with the fact that your bias caused you to call it creation then you have your answer. Unfortunately not everyone shares your bias (although I do). I guess what I am mostly driving at is that proofs are of a certain mode of thinking, very modernist (a la Encyclopedists). We have taken on a modernist way of thinking and developed a system of apologetics that depends on our assumptions. As cultures merge in our brave new world we realize that less and less people come to the table with the same assumptions and worse more come with a distrust of the modernist methodologies. It is at that point that we either dispair at the crisis of epistomology or we rejoice seeing the gospel with a new relevance as the lived meta-narrative of our community. So creation only proves that creation exists, what we postulate about the nature of that somethings genesis is a matter of faith.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I would concede that God proves God's existance. Anyone who has had the veil pulled back to the reality of God is no longer in a position to deny the existance of God. Other than that God is seen through creation, scripture, acts of love, etc. but only when the observer/hearer mediates (understands) the experience in a way that includes the assumption of God from the beginning.
I agree, however, just because someone doesn't come to the table with that in mind, or they don't see it that way doesn't mean it isn't truth. By what your saying I can be walking with afriend down a sidewalk getting ready to cross the street...when I put my hand on my friends shoulder and say don't cross yet...here comes a semi truck. Now what if my friend says I don't believe in Semi-trucks or I don't interperate that moving object coming my way as dangerous. Do I just sit back and allow my friend to walk across the street or do i show him the existance of the truck? Or just call it an assumption???
ReplyDeleteWay of the Pastor,
Joe
"For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities- his eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made (CREATION), so that men are without excuse." Romans 1:20
ReplyDeleteTherefore, creation causing us to be without excuse of God's existance, and scriptre reminding us of God being clearly being seen. Two very clear proofs of God's existance. Unless ofcorse you don't believe it or think that this reasoning is my assumtion, then I take it all beack and there is no accountability or responsibility on the part of the sinner to make a step towards opening their eyes to what is true!
Uprooting the bush that others beat around,
Joe
To address your first response. The truth is irrelevant. That is the issue, truth is only really effective when it is accepted and applied. Now I get that the "truth" is relevant, extremely so. But the guy who truly refuses to not believe in the semi is going to walk in front of it no matter what we say. Unless he can somehow begin to see truth from the vantage of the ones that know about the truck. That is where the mistake is made - we are convinced we can just assert our version of the "truth" enough instead of showing folks. This is why the Spirit and the Word are married in the scriptures.
ReplyDeleteThe second response requires a bit more exegetical work. I would agree with that scripture, but not in that it affirms a proof (as in the scientific meaning of that term). You can't read that passage and have someone go, "oh yeah, I was so stupid." (Unless the Spirit has already prepared them for that conclusion of course). But Paul is affirming the truth that within each of us who truly searches the truth is there. Didn't many of us feel that way on conversion, like "why didn't I get this before?" But the problem is that most people really want the truth, and that includes many Christians who hide behind a narrow worldview refusing to allow the truth of the word to change them instead insisting on using the word (bible) to support their "safe" propositions.
Frank
To the main question, No. To all the other forms of it, No. Faith and reason should never be divorced from one another, but the arena of verifiable proof isn't where we are walking here. There are reasons to believe, good reasons, but where my heart is determines what I see as a good reason, thus our diverse denomi-nationalism. God wants me to be prosperous. God deserves our praise. God loved me when no one else did. All betraying our own heart in the matter - preoccupation with our own situation; awe, reverence; appreciation. None of which are proof.
ReplyDeleteThe guy in Live sees his daughter and the sunset and believes. Jane Goodall sees contrasts and similarities in the behavior of humans and chimpanzees and has a reason to believe. You read Romans 1:20 and have a reason to believe. I don't equate the level of validity within each of these claims, but proof is very subjective across disciplines and time.
The Bible, or any other ancient sacred text, never sets out to prove the existence of God. It is presupposed. That type of writing did not appear en masse until the after enlightenment, after the birth of modernity. The world is not, in large part, concerned with proof. Look at other faiths - how many of their scholars are writing propositional papers on why they are right?
We are consumed with proof and evidence and truth, but we have to acknowledge the boundaries of each before we start tossing the terms around. We have to be aware, thoughtful, and meticulous about how we are presenting them in the context of our faith.
steve
By the way, if you google "does God exist" you get around 662,000 articles; "does Allah exist", 514; "does yahweh exist", 17, 10 of which are repeats; "does Brahman exist", 1. As you move further away from Western culture and into places with a very pre-modern way of life, you lose the necessity of proof. Just FYI.
ReplyDeleteOk...however, so we question everything over here in the US. And we are the bad guy? You are going to bat for a person who puts their faith in a god that doesn't exist? However, they are weighed in comparison to my God who does exist clearly as stated in scripture! Proud to be in my Western culture and quesiton truth than believe a lie!
ReplyDeleteJoe
Thank you for presenting yet more evidence that God exists...GOOGLE!
ReplyDeleteActually I don't think the US questions enough. At least not in the church, which seems to adapt a modern epistomology to a pre-modern belief based on absolute authority. The reason I say that is that most modern apologists can only operate from their presumptions about God. That isn't at all the charity of true modern reasoning that starts from no presumptions. But then again that is the problem with post-modernity, which to me is just modernity taken to its logical end. I think all of these paradigms are flawed when it comes to God. But they are not flawed when it comes to answering your question, let me demonstrate:
ReplyDeletepre-modern answer: yes, because the Church tells me the bible is authoritative.
modern: no, because the bible is a book amongst many which make similar claims.
post-modern: maybe, depending on the mediation in the community of the bible.
pre-modern comes to the right conclusion (IMO) for the wrong reason. modern comes to the wrong conclusion because it can really do nothing else. post-modern at least gives us the potential of reaching the right conclusion and maybe for the right reason but it is still too much of a crap shoot for the modernists.
My point is that most modern Christian apologists are trying to start from the bible as the authority and entrench their idea. They aren't trying to test and see if this is true or not. And this breeds all kinds of horrid theology.
You continue with your presupositions on other peoples presupositions- there seems to be something quite ironic there? As your presupositions today will be ridiculed in years to come by someone else's great idea to come up with "THE ALTERNATIVE WAY" to do church in a rebelion to the way their parents approached religion and therefore experienced themselves. There are a lo tof answers floating around here which are a mile long an inch deep. TO which I push aside cultural methods of reasoning and push through this crap mound of theological babble and shine the light on Paul when faced with an opportunity to prove that another God existed...one that Paul made known in Acts 17:23-25 "Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars' hill, and said, You men of Athens, I preceive that in all things you are too superstitious. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an alter with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore you ignorantly worship, him declare I to you. God that made the world and all things therin (Paul using creation to prove there is a Creator), seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth.(Did you catch that fellas? SEEING that he is Lord of heaven and earth? Is Paul making presupositions? Is Paul not setting out to prove that there is a known God...Steve? Or was that after the Enlightenment age? Give me a break!) dwells not in temples made with hands. Neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing, SEEING he gives to all life, and breath, and all things. (Paul once again using created things to point to a Creator!)
ReplyDeleteWay of the Pastor,
Joe
Actually that passage is one of the more brilliant pieces in scripture. But it doesn't really serve your point that well Joe. And if you study even the primitive Church you will see that there is no real good old fashioned approach to religion to rebel from, but rather collections of Christians trying to find the best way to understand this phenomenon of Jesus that they had experienced. What strikes me most about my primite church studies is that there is a wonderful diversity and yet a unity at the same time. Sure there is wackiness that happens both in the heretical groups and in response to these groups. But I digress.
ReplyDeleteDon Richardson has a wonderful exposition of Paul in Athens in his excellent book, "Eternity in Their Hearts." He's an evangelical missionary with some wonderful insights into Micronesian primitive cultures (you might remember the book Peace Child?). Anyway, Paul wasn't proving he was simply naming what they had already experienced (not directly but through their shared story (history)). In fact Paul was very culturally aware, not to mention very well educated. He knew the story about that Unknown God and how this God delivered their city when all the other idols failed. They had no concept of Jesus or YHWH tied to it. This is an act of Christian appropriation and replacement. Paul simply made it easy for the people of Athens to see that God was already a part of their story and this opened the door for so much more. So of course Paul is going to appeal to creation, because this God of Paul's is core to everything. And only a Creator could supplant a pantheon of gods.
But here is the other issue. I am suggesting that there is another way. Modernity and the Enlightenment did not happen out of rebellion, but because the old epistomologies were corrupt and they were being used to perpetuate ignorance. The 'truth' was not setting people free. So a new epistomology arose to takes its place. But the reaction was, IMO, directed against the wrong thing. When we read those Enlightenment thinkers who are highly critical of the Church (Nietzsche is the one I am most familiar with) it is a very specific cultural perpective they are most upset with. Paul is quite removed from this, but we are not. So much as we want to read Paul in a Pauline context we are forever looking at it through 21st century lenses. These lenses colour everything we do. To believe anything else is to romanticise your own peculiar view of history.
Maybe we should back up a bit and ask some more basic questions. A good one is "how do you know Jesus?" That gets us out of the realm of trying to make biblical texts do things they were never intended to do.
peace,
Frank
One of Freedom!
You seem to like to make things way too difficult. You seem to have all of this knowledge "which Paul warns that it puffs up" but I probably have missused that scripture as well since I have no clue what the Bible really says...go take a nap and when you wake up raise your hand and volunteer to teach the third graders at your church and force yourself to get back to the basics.
ReplyDeleteSimplistically Yours,
Joe
Joe, you are taking this way too personally. You wanted to have a theological throw down or not?
ReplyDeleteBelieve me, I'm loving it...I just backed you in a corner and the bell just rang...(ding) round 3~! You make a good throw down...but man you are wordy!
ReplyDeleteSo how do you explain to a third grader that God exists?
Eye of the Tiger,
Joe
I think I missed something.
ReplyDeleteI don't explain to a third grader that God exists, I live my life in light of Christ's presence in me and let my actions speak for themselves. Christianity is always best caught not taught because it is a matter of the heart not the head.
But for those of us who do believe I think we really need to get our heads into gear as well, especially when it comes to this trying to intellectually proving God exists crap.
Frank
It's funny, Joe - You've made a devil of us for questioning the structure of the modern church and its methods, but questions (and experience) are the way we arrive at evidence, proof, and how we apply them to the way that we live. Note, I didn't say truth.
ReplyDeleteI would venture to say that, unless extremely jaded by religious or anti-religious parents, most third graders don't need an explanation of the existence of God. They want to know what he's like (what my dad is like), what he does in his spare time (does my dad want to be around me when he comes home from work?), whether or no he likes soccer (Joe, do you like soccer?), and if he loves his kids as much as their parents do? If I'm explaining God to a third grader - I need to shut up and listen, and it better be my third grader who learned everything he knows about how good and loving and breath-takingly amazing God is from watching his dad. And that's a tall order, but if we are not up for that, then we are wasting our time on this blog, and at work, and at pretty much everything else we're doing.
It's funny, Joe - You've made a devil of us for questioning the structure of the modern church and its methods, but questions (and experience) are the way we arrive at evidence, proof, and how we apply them to the way that we live. Note, I didn't say truth.
ReplyDeleteI would venture to say that, unless extremely jaded by religious or anti-religious parents, most third graders don't need an explanation of the existence of God. They want to know what he's like (what my dad is like), what he does in his spare time (does my dad want to be around me when he comes home from work?), whether or no he likes soccer (Joe, do you like soccer?), and if he loves his kids as much as their parents do? If I'm explaining God to a third grader - I need to shut up and listen, and it better be my third grader who learned everything he knows about how good and loving and breath-takingly amazing God is from watching his dad. And that's a tall order, but if we are not up for that, then we are wasting our time on this blog, and at work, and at pretty much everything else we're doing.
Steve...that is your presuposition and interpretation of my previous postings. Ha...if you feel like a devil well then thats another topic all together. Bro, I'm just throwing down as you guys are...I don't take this stuff personally as Frank suggested earlier...I think we work really ahrd on both sides to get across our points in why we believe in what we believe...that's all...nothing else, so don't make it personal (this is the last disclaimer I will make on this blog about not taking things personally...we are all adults, not in highschool, I can disagree with you and get frustrated but still respect you for not agreeing with me. I may give advice, I may give opinions, but while we may talk about third graders, let's not assume that we are third graders) You guys rock and I love discussing this stuff with you. I consider it pure ministry talking with you! Oh and Steve, as much as I agree with you about the whole third grader issue...third graders are wondering if God exists at that age! I experienced it many times as a Childrens Pastor and as for them basing their experience of God on their relationship with their father, I'm gonna let you in on a secret...most of them don't have earthly fathers and a good majority of them don't have Christian godly fathers if they are around...so now oyu have a third grader on your hands who can't believe that a heavenly father even exists since he has never even known his earthly father.
ReplyDeleteI did the 3rd grade twice,
Joe
AS I believe that there are obvious elements out there that prove the exsitence of a Creator...not to mention the prophecies that Jesus went over on the road to Emmaeus: Beginning, then, with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted for them every passage of scripture which referred to him. Jesus using scripture to refer to himself! However, here is where we can end with this whole proving God discussion: The righteous will live by faith and faith is putting our hope in that which is unseen. Amen.
ReplyDeleteWay of the Pastor,
Joe