Rest and Reflect

“Yes, I have, of course, met this point before. It sounds superficially fair. But it presupposes that there is something in Christian theology to be ignorant about. The entire thrust of my position is that Christian theology is a non-subject. It is empty. Vacuous. Devoid of coherence or content. I imagine that McGrath would join me in expressing disbelief in fairies, astrology and Thor’s hammer. How would he respond if a fairyologist, astrologer or Viking accused him of ignorance of their respective subjects?

The only part of theology that could possibly demand my attention is the part that purports to demonstrate that God does exist. This part of theology I have, indeed, studied with considerable attention. And found it utterly wanting.

As for McGrath’s book, I read it with genuine curiosity to discover whether he had any argument to offer in favor of his theistic belief. The nearest I could find was his statement that you cannot disprove it. Well, that may be true, but it isn’t very impressive, is it?”

We cannot prove nor disprove God (or evolution for that matter) beyond a reasonable doubt based on the limited experience we have in our relatively short human existence. God and evolution work in a time scale many orders of magnitude larger than our human minds can comprehend. The evidence that we have merely allows us to extrapolate and draw conclusions through thoughtful reasoning.

But the truth about God or evolution does not depend on our proving it. Perhaps the far more important question is, if God exists (and one day that may become irrefutably clear), who is God? and is God worthy of worship?

Ultimately there is one truth. Either there is a God and we are accountable for what we have been given or there is no God and our accountability is only to ourselves and our fellows. There is no in between, it is one or the other. This is a question serious enough to merit our attention. And that is why the majority of us do consider the possibilities… though most only superficially.

Keep in mind however, that if we reject God based on the presupposed notion that he is evil, vengeful, exacting, severe, fundamentally bigoted because that is what we see in God’s professed followers, then we sorely miss the point that this (hypothetical) God is trying to make. That point is this – we are evil! And God’s claim is that God can fix that! Now could that be true?