Resurrection

At the end of the Gospels, Jesus is reported to be dead and buried, following his crucifixion. Then, on a morning a few days later, witnesses arrive at an empty tomb. Jesus makes several appearances, reportedly showing himself to something like 500 people. Then, when all that is said and done, he starts flying upward, disappearing into the distant sky.

This return from the dead, never to die again, is a significant theme in Christianity. Christians refer to it as the resurrection. And, the promise of Christianity is that all people, or at least all Christians, will share in this same resurrection one day.

What is resurrected?

Some Christians emphasize a physical resurrection, and insist that the resurrection ascribed to by Christians must be a physical resurrection. However, I have three major doubts about a physical resurrection.

1) If Jesus was physically resurrected, and never again physically died, then to where did he ascend? From the story of the Tower of Babel, I have been taught to scoff at the idea that heaven is a physically reachable place. From the findings of astronomers , I have learned that there is not an observable heaven-like place out there in the universe. So, the question of where a physical, flying Jesus would have gone remains a mystery.

2) Growing up, I was taught that there was no sanctity to preserving my human form in anticipation of a physical resurrection. The Christian leaders I spoke to on the subject saw no fundamental issue with cremating a person and spreading his or her ashes in the constantly churning ocean. This destruction of a body makes the notion of a physical resurrection implausible.

3) Physically, most of me has died and recycled through the course of my life, and will continue to do so through the rest of it. If my physical body, as the organism it is today, is scheduled to be resurrected, then I could make the argument that these cells don't need to be involved in that process. Any cells that are coded to serve the same function would serve the purpose just as well. That being said, there is not any reason why god would not simply encode an entirely different life form's brain to perfectly resemble my consciousness, thus picking up my conscious existence right where I left off. This perception makes me wonder what value could be derived from a physical resurrection of my cells specifically.

Maybe the resurrection is not physical. Maybe it is strictly a spiritual experience. In that case, the physical resurrection of Jesus was nothing more than a depiction, or model, for the upcoming event that applies to us.

If that is the case, then what Christians are looking forward to is not to share in what happened to Jesus, but to experience something that was merely suggested by the experience of Jesus. I am not sure how the Christians I know would feel about that.

What is the resurrection?

I don't know the answer, so I'll keep asking.

Prayer

When an event occurs in the past, evidence is usually available. Diagnosticians will determine if identifying a cause is relevant to the current situation. If they determine that the root cause of the event is not relevant, they will not look into it, and they will admittedly move on without an explanation for the event's occurrence. If the root cause is relevant, they will investigate, test to produce more evidence, and hopefully diagnose the root cause accurately. Whether the root cause is ever identified or not has no bearing on whether the event was explainable or not. Also, considering the probability of error, the explanation given may not necessarily be accurate.

In other words, lack of an explanation does not equate to the event being unexplainable. Likewise, the certainty of the explanation given is in no way equal to the validity of that explanation.

The only answers to prayers I have ever heard about all have alternate explanations that can be derived from the evidence available from the event.

In other words, I have been unable to differentiate any answer god has given to prayer from the other potential causes for the event that followed the prayers.

The argument provided by some Christians in favor of believing god answers prayer goes something like this: A scientist producing accurate results in a lab is a trained and qualified expert of her field. Her senses are finely tuned to observe and find what she is looking for. Likewise, it is important that we thoroughly train spiritual sense to observe the work of god in and around our lives. Only then can we expect to differentiate his loving kindness from among all the other possible explanations.

This argue contains an important misrepresentation of the scientist, however. Revealing this distinction presents a significant contrast between the scientist and the believer. The scientistic, if she really is a qualified expert, has not trained herself to see what she is looking for, but has been trained to account for all of the available evidence, and to consider the explanation that best fits that evidence, whether or not she expected or desired that explanation.

Maybe god is answering prayers. I can not refute the claim that he is answering prayers for precisely the same reason that I cannot confirm that he is answering prayers. There is simply no evidence that can be objectively differentiated from other causes of the event.

So, in spite of evidence lending to a natural cause, and in the absence of any distinct evidence pointing to a supernatural cause, I must decide for myself whether or not to put my faith and confidence in god as the root cause of any event that follows a prayer.

God's Love

The attraction of the Gospel is that god loves you. He loves everyone. His love is immeasurably infinite. He will never leave you nor abandon you. When everyone else dies, or fails, or flees, god will be right there, loving you.

God is love.

I'm not kidding or being sarcastic. That is an attractive proposition, and particularly so for anyone struggling to love themselves, or struggling with the loss of love in any aspect of their lives.

There is one crux to all this love that stands out to me, though.

It is not measurable. It is not detectable. It's effects cannot be differentiated from any other definable and measurable causes.

It is a fair and honest question I ask when I ask: How do I know that god loves me?

…

If I appeal to something in the Bible, I am appealing to events that occurred long before I existed. While that is attractive to some, it leaves me curious above the present tense of the statement that god loves me today.

And, even if I appeal to events that are described in the Bible; namely the Gospel story of Jesus dying on his cross for the sins of the world, which includes me, I am left with an uncertainty about my role in any of that. I can confirm the historical consistency of the story until I am blue in the face, and apologists seek to do exactly that. However, what no one can measure or confirm is whether or not Jesus' life or death was in any way associated with me.

The concept of faith dictates that the inability to actually measure any of the claims made by Christianity actually somehow confirms the legitimacy of such claims. In other words, while we can be historically confident that Jesus existed, it is strictly a matter of faith that Jesus had any concept of me, and that his death had anything at all to do with me.

Okay. For those who choose to take ancient claims of supernatural phenomenon at face value, I fully understand this line of reasoning. However, from my point of view, that is like saying that the warning label on herbal remedies that their claims have not been officially confirmed is actually a promotion that such claims must be true and accurate.

The counter-argument against observation and measurement I've often heard involves the wind. I can't see the wind, and I can't capture it in a little bottle. However, that is where the comparison ends for me, mainly because I can measure the wind, reproduce the wind, and different the affects of the wind from the effects of other causes.

God's love is not like the wind. I can't see it, and I can't capture it. But, I also can't measure it or differentiate its effects from other possible causes.

So, I'm still left asking: How do I know that god loves me?

I'm not saying he doesn't love me. I'm not denying any claim made by Christianity on this subject. After all, I cannot measure god's love, so I can neither confirm nor deny its existence. 

I'm just saying it is easy to make claims that cannot be measured, confirmed nor refuted. Its easy precisely because it is inconsequential whether I am right or wrong about this, as no one who is alive to make or present measurements of these claims can actually make such measurements.

So, I am left with an uncertainty that cannot be resolved. 

God's love is best compared to herbal remedies whose claims have not been officially confirmed or refuted. Their claims must be true on no other premise than that they were claimed.

It is up to me whether I want to believe those claims or not.

The Gospel

This is the Gospel in a nutshell:
1. God instituted a legal system that condemns all humans.
2. God submitted Jesus Christ as the only mechanism of salvation from this condemnation.

In 2 Peter 3:9, the author writes, "The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is long-suffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance."

I want to emphasize that one line that reads: "not willing that any should perish." God doesn't want anyone to be condemned. At least, that is what I understand that line to mean.

I believe this is true about god. I believe he does not want anyone to be condemned.

The paradox is this: If god does not want anyone to be condemned, then instituting a legal system by which they are condemned is a contradiction. If he did not want anyone to be condemned, they why institute the system that condemns people?

This is not a new issue. The problem of evil is closely tied to this paradox, because the problem of evil runs up against similar logic. I can most simply express the problem by asking: If god can and wants to do something, why doesn't he do it? If he can't do something, then he is not all-powerful.

Any legal system between us and god, such as the legal system described in the Bible that leaves all humans condemned on arrival, must be god's doing. Because god is the all-powerful one in the relationship, the assumption must be that if anything happens in the relationship, he either made it happen or allowed it to happen.

So, if there is a system that makes us separate from god, I recognize god as all-powerful and thus able to nullify the system if he so chooses. Since the Bible tells me that he does not want the result of the system, then I believe it is legitimate to ask why he instituted it in the first place, and why he has not nullified it.

An answer to this question seems to point at Jesus. This answer results in logic like this:
1. God originally instituted the system for reasons I don't understand.
2. God changed his mind, but he did not want to nullify the law he already instituted.
3. God also did not want the inevitable results of the system.

Therefore, god fulfilled his own legal system in place of all mankind instead of nullifying it, thereby liberating everyone from the consequences of that legal system that he instituted in the first place.

So, in short, I must conclude that the good news, or Gospel, is that god saved us from himself.

I appreciate that.

Can I Believe What I Believe and Still Be A Christian?

This blog is my attempt to put words to the many things I believe. I have titled this blog with the question, "Can I be a Christian?" because I have, for most of my life, taken criticism from various Christians just for hinting at the things I believe.

Now is my chance to come out of the closet of faith I have lived in for much of my life. I am excited to attempt to articulate my beliefs in hopes of better understanding them, and possibly better understanding my place in the Christian communities in which I actively participate.

The following blog posts represent my beliefs: