Basic Christianity: Who is God?

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In this episode of Balancing the Christian Life, we talk about the existence of God.

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Welcome to Balancing the Christian Life.

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I'm Dr Kenny Embry.

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Join me as we discover how to be better Christians and people in the digital age.

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You believe in God.

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I know you do, or at least I know you think you do.

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Why listen to a Christian podcast if you don't believe in God?

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But do you know what that actually means?

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Lately, I've been thinking about really simple but complicated ideas about Christianity.

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They are what I consider the foundations of what it means to be a Christian, and the first one that I wanted to tackle was who is God?

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It's a three-word question that has really endless possibilities, but I think one of the things that we often struggle with is does he exist at all?

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That is the struggle of the atheists, that's for sure, and many agnostics.

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I think once you get past the idea of if there is a God at all, you have to start grappling with who is he?

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Is he good, is he bad, and how do you know?

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For this conversation, I decided to talk to a colleague of mine, tommy Humphreys.

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He's a college professor at St Leo University, which is a Catholic school.

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I realize he and I come from different faith traditions.

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I am a conservative Church of Christ member.

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I would be called anti by many, and that's fine with me, but I strongly believe that we have something to learn from everyone, including people who don't grow up the same way we do, and I'm willing to put that to the test.

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I vouch for Tommy.

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I know we have some theological differences.

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I know he believes in the Pope and I do not.

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What we talk about here is so fundamental to Christianity and so fundamental to both the way he thinks about God and the way I think about God.

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I think there's a lot of overlap.

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Some of the very best thinkers about Christianity include names like CS Lewis or RR Bruce or some of the great thinkers who have thought about some of the ramifications of what it means to be a Christian and how we do it very practically, and none of them are from the Church of Christ tradition.

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I want to learn from people who are great thinkers, and I think Tommy is one of those great thinkers, as well as just an excellent guy all around.

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I also knew the way that Tommy would go with this, and he ended up exactly where I thought he would.

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He believes that God is love.

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It's hard for me to argue with that, because I think he's right you can't talk about God without talking about love, and that's exactly where Tommy's about to take us.

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So, tommy, let's just start here.

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Do you believe in God?

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I do, I do as well.

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What is it exactly that we believe?

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I mean, obviously it's meaningful to say there's a God, we believe in God, and often we think we're saying the same thing.

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Right to say there's a God, we believe in God, and often we think we're saying the same thing.

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So I suppose you know, one question or line of questions to ask would be something like what do we mean by God?

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That's right.

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Is the object of that belief the same thing?

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Right, but there's another way to open up the question.

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Maybe we don't mean the same thing by believe, right.

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Believe, I think, think, has at least two ends of the spectrum.

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Okay, one is the normal way that we use the word when we're speaking.

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It's a verb of knowing, it's a verb of thinking and it indicates, uh, a lower degree of certainty, right?

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And so it's like um, how hot is it outside?

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I don't know, but I believe it's over 90, right Because I'm sweating right.

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I just walked in, but then you know it's like well, we could test, that, we could go look at a thermometer and then I wouldn't say, man, I believe it's 92 degrees.

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I would say something like I'm certain it's 92 degrees, right?

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So belief might be how certain am I about a thing?

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And it would indicate less certainty, all right.

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So there's one way of asking a question to like a Christian, do you believe in God?

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And the answer is yes, but I'm not certain, right.

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But I'm thinking of it as the same order of knowledge as what's the temperature outside or how late is Home Depot open.

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So basically you're looking at this as kind of a tenet of faith.

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That faith is kind of that idea of belief.

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Is that right?

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Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I mean faith and belief would simply be the same word, same thing yeah.

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But another sense of belief, and this is the explicitly Christian sense, and this, I think, is unique across all conversation partners that we might envision things that we call religion, things that we call philosophy, things that we call theology and their belief is not so much my way of knowing things and asking whether or not I'm certain, but it's God's way of knowing things right.

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And so theological faith, as a gift from God, as a virtue, means that I'm doing something related to human ways of knowledge.

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It's still my mind, but it's my mind acting on grace, it's my mind acting on God's knowledge, and an intermediary in there, or a dividing line, is revelation.

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Is God providing that knowledge to me?

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And so one way of asking the question do you believe in God?

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Is like do you have a hunch?

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How certain are you?

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When you list the order of things you know, two plus two is four.

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You're married, you're sitting here, it's hot outside.

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Where does God fit in that?

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And then another way of asking the question is something like do you think that you're thinking beyond your own human ability with something that God has given you?

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And of course, for Christians the answer to both questions is yes, and so we all have some degree of certainty, rational processes.

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I've worked it out and I can have a conversation about belief, faith, with any other human who's rational, and of course I cannot have that conversation with my dogs, because I can't have a rational conversation with my dogs.

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But human rationality would be the limiting factor of that conversation.

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But then the other way that we might use that word would be do I have some experience, something that tells me I am thinking in a transcendent way, in a way beyond what I normally could come up with, and you and I both have those experiences too.

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And so we would say something like do you believe in God?

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And respond yes, I'm thinking with the mind of God.

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God has revealed himself to me in a way that I would never figure that out on human reason.

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Second division we were making is like what do we mean by God?

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And I think a lot of times what we mean by God sort of corresponds to what we mean by believe.

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And so if we're asking that question entirely within the limits of human reason, then the object of that belief is more or less going to be some kind of propositional content that we could always talk about under human reason.

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It's going to look like do you believe two plus two equals four?

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I do, in fact I know I'm certain.

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Well, do you believe two plus X equals four, and therefore X equals two?

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Well, some people start saying I'm not quite as certain about that one, but I do believe, right.

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And so we come up with the same questions, right?

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Do you believe that God exists?

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Yes, do you believe that God is omniscient?

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Right, and we go through these lists of traditional attributes of God.

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The answer to all those questions is yes.

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The resources for answering them very well might just be sophisticated human reason.

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But then the other way of asking the question is but is this personal?

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Have you had a revelatory encounter with God?

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And of course, that always radically changes your life.

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It gives you new abilities to think.

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But then, well then I may not be able to have a conversation with you if you've not had a similar experience.

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Well, I definitely want to go down that rabbit hole in just a moment.

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I think one of the things that, especially as we come to terms with how we relate to the rest of the world, there are people who believe, like me and you, that there's somebody who's going to hold us to a standard that we will not hold ourselves to.

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In other words, that there is something that we would call good and that God is the greatest good that there is, and there's that perfect standard that if you're acting like a numbskull, you know you're acting like a numbskull because you're not acting as good as God.

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Would you see what I'm saying?

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Yeah, so I think to me, and it kind of goes back to that idea of Hebrews 11, where he says in order to please God, you must first believe that he is and that he is rewarded of those who diligently seek him.

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So I guess the simplest way that I think about this question is do you believe in the fact of God, that, whether you want to believe that there's an old gray-haired dude in the sky, that, whether or not you want him to be there, he is there and you believe?

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that he's there.

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You see what I'm saying yeah, yeah, no, I mean certainly I do, and certainly any number of other people do.

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I mean, this is something that I think you don't even need.

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Christianity, for you don't need revelation, you don't need scripture, you don't need an encounter with Christ.

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I mean Socrates, plato and Aristotle, all of whom famously agree and disagree with each other and Socrates is a teacher of Plato directly and Plato is a teacher of Aristotle directly.

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Like these men knew each other as elder and younger, they all accept that there must be this fundamentally good, divine thing.

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It's a real question about whether thing is the right word, or being is the right word, or whether he's so good that he's just beyond any of those terms as well.

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But yeah, I think that's perfectly natural and makes sense within human reason.

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And, frankly, if you're constructing a picture of the world and the universe in which there's not something like that or someone like that, then I really think you have a flawed understanding of yourself and the world.

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I mean, I don't see how you can make a consistent picture of the world simply as a rational being.

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Yeah, no, I completely agree.

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But you know as well as I do, there are people who consider themselves atheists and they will actively argue against this being.

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Yeah.

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And so there again, you know two broad, or maybe three broad now, parts of the conversation.

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One, an atheist could be saying, in all honesty, I've never experienced the God you've experienced.

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Right, it's not that way, and I have to be open to.

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Well, maybe you and God have a different relationship than I do with God, right, I mean, that's a possibility that exists.

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But then, within that limits of human rationality, it may be that when I say I believe in God, I think it's credible, I think that it's reasonable, right to believe in a God who's all-powerful.

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You and I are constructing power in very different ways, and so when you think of this God just your definition of what the object of belief is you're thinking of a God who exercises power in terms of violence or power over, and I'm thinking of a God who exercises power fundamentally in terms of love.

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Right, I'm thinking of the God who creates out of love and you're thinking of the God who destroys out of hate.

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Well, again, we just don't have the same meaning of the word God there, and often I think the case is, if we could clarify those bits entirely within human reason, we'd find that the atheist and the theist are saying remarkably similar things.

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Oh, I completely agree with that.

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I think one of our problems and you've kind of already addressed this is that we are limited to the relationships that we have with the people that we know and suddenly this idea of who God is looks a lot like the people that we know.

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Right, because that's the only frame of reference we have.

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Right, and we recognize that our friends and the people that we know all have limits and you're trying to take basically a limited understanding of the people around you and I think most of us unintentionally give the same limits to God because that's all we have a frame of reference for.

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You see what I'm saying.

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Yeah, Now can we go back to the Hebrews.

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Sure.

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You were saying there's like an end of faith or a goal of faith.

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Yeah, can you articulate that again?

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Well, sure, if you go back to Hebrews 11, where he says that he goes through what we call the Hall of Fame of Faith, here are all these people like Abraham, who was given a lot of promises and basically did not live long enough to see any of them fulfilled.

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What he says there is these people all died in faith.

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And then during that he talks about, he says I want to say in like verse six or seven in order to please God, you must first believe that he is and that he was your warder of those who diligently seek him.

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And the argument that I have with that is that first part is something that there is a God, that you believe that he is.

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Because if you can argue God out of existence, then you're not pleasing to God.

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And I think and you might agree with this, you might disagree with this, this you might disagree with this You're also not being very intellectually honest, because if you don't believe that there is an eternal creator, you recognize that we all somehow get along and we have a moral sense.

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And where did that moral sense come from?

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And again, if we were going to be talking about CS Lewis, one of the things I would say is.

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He would argue that that moral sense really almost has to come from God.

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Absolutely.

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Yeah, cs Lewis is a great dialogue partner on these and there are lots of these arguments about well, they kind of fundamentally come to a point thinking of CS Lewis with like you could either begin with an all-good God, you could begin with an all-evil God, or you could begin with equally evil and equally good, and the only way to explain any good in the world is if there's fundamentally good, because if it were fundamentally evil, evil would never allow good to come about.

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Right, and if there were equal evil and good, then you would be stuck in a similar way, right, like there would be no sense that good overcomes or no reason to prefer one to the other.

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So the fact that we do have a preference for the good suggests that the good must be fundamental.

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Yeah, I was thinking about why you want such a faith, why Abraham wants that kind of relationship with God and why God wants that relationship with Abraham, if we could speak that way.

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No, I think that makes a lot of sense.

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I think that's the better question, quite frankly, yeah and I think the answer to that question has to be that belief, faith in the Christian sense, is the beginning of something, not the end.

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And I mean this is all over the New Testament, I'm thinking of Paul often.

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Faith, hope and love, right, and this is a sequence, this is an order.

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And so let's pause and ask a question.

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Sure, why would belief be the beginning of something, or of what is at the beginning?

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What is the end result of knowledge?

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Now, the end result of knowledge in that first sense of faith, like just I'm less than certain, is usually I want to seek a higher degree of certainty, right, I'm not sure if I drop something how fast it will fall.

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Let me drop it a bunch of times and count and see how fast it falls.

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And now I drop it a bunch of times and count and see how fast it falls, and now I'm more certain.

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I have a theory and right, we can, we can move along those lines, but the point of knowledge of a person is open to a lot more than how fast do you fall when I drop you?

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Right?

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Yeah, the the point of knowledge with a person opens to love.

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Yeah, I agree with that.

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The reason to know not another thing, but another one right Not just simply to think of objects of knowledge, but subjects of knowledge is that my knowledge allows me to love.

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Now, what is it that suspense that's holding out right?

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Well, I don't know God perfectly yet, but God gives me enough knowledge in the theological sense, enough faith that I can begin to love him.

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Love begets its own kind of knowledge, and it's a deeper sense of knowledge than just the introductory, I see you, right kind of knowledge.

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And so I think we hit the cycle.

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I think what Hebrews is pointing towards is yeah, in this life there's a kind of suspense where I realize one I'm not the determiner of this whole relationship, at best I'm one part of it.

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I'm not the determiner of this whole relationship, at best I'm one part of it.

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And then I realize, actually, if I'm comparing my part to God's part, I'm the small part of it, right?

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Oh, yeah, and so.

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I'm not in control of this.

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So, yeah, there's a sense I've got to step out, I've got to trust, I've got to open, and I'm also opening myself to all the vulnerabilities.

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This is exactly like when we met our wives, you know.

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Like hey, I kind of like you.

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Would you tell me your name, right?

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Like there's a lot of stepping out.

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The stepping out that we're doing is both a stepping out in lack of knowledge please fulfill my knowledge and a stepping out in love, At least at the beginning of.

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I think you might be one whom I can love.

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Let me know more about you that I might love you more, and now that I love you, I also know you more in ways that I did not know you before.

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Now in this life, the reality is we die before we have what we are told is going to be the fuller relationship with God.

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We die short of resurrection.

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We die short of seeing God face to face.

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We have momentary glimpses of him, we have experiences, but we know that they're not yet it right.

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Eyes not seen, ears not heard.

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We're headed somewhere else where it's going to be a better, more solid knowledge and love, and so I think this is what Hebrews call him Paul, traditionally, or not Paul, if we think that it doesn't look like that.

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Oh, I don't think it's Paul.

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Yeah, I don't think it's Paul Sure.

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This is what Hebrews is pointing out too.

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All of these fathers in faith have had enough knowledge of God to know there's no one else worthy of your love.

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You know that you mentioned marriage.

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I mean, the fact of the matter is, you make a commitment before you understand the commitment and I think one of the things and this is my own opinion I think God gave us marriage in such a way that it illustrates his relationship to us.

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He could have given us any number of ways to procreate, but what he makes us do is to commit to one person, ideally commit to one person for life, not understanding them completely, but in sickness and in health, really in everything that's good and in everything that's bad, and you don't know what the good parts are going to be and you don't know what the bad parts are going to be.

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But you're in and before you have all the information, are you going to do this or not, which sounds a lot like Christianity.

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Before you get into this, are you going to do this or not?

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Before you know everything about this, are you in or are you out?

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Does that make sense?

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Yeah, Are you in enough to figure it out Now?

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I mean, there's some preconditions to that, right?

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You have to know enough to reasonably commit to something, right, I mean you don't just marry the first woman you meet on the street, right?

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Well, she said no, hey, more things alike between us.

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Yeah, there also there's a precondition on that, which is something like self-possession right.

00:20:23.181 --> 00:20:26.182
Before I can say I do, I have to know the I right.

00:20:26.182 --> 00:20:36.932
I mean I have to be in charge of myself enough that right now I can say yes and meaningfully commit to the arc of what I don't know is coming for the next half of my life.

00:20:36.932 --> 00:20:39.221
That's a pretty radical commitment.

00:20:39.221 --> 00:20:48.715
Right To say I'm in self-possession enough today that I can commit the rest of me to this relationship.

00:20:49.300 --> 00:20:50.943
But here's what I like about this, tommy.

00:20:50.943 --> 00:20:55.292
I promise this is true and you know it's true.

00:20:55.292 --> 00:20:58.828
You have had doubts during your marriage.

00:20:58.828 --> 00:20:59.980
100%, yeah.

00:20:59.980 --> 00:21:09.972
And again, this, in my opinion, relates very nicely to this idea of do you have doubts about the existence of God?

00:21:09.972 --> 00:21:11.974
Do you have doubts about God?

00:21:11.974 --> 00:21:21.707
Right, and I think that's quite frankly, and I don't know if you'll agree with me on this if you don't have doubts about God, I don't know that you're doing it right.

00:21:22.067 --> 00:21:23.788
No, I agree with you 100%.

00:21:23.788 --> 00:21:27.152
And there's this book by.

00:21:27.152 --> 00:21:39.672
It was Pope Benedict XVI, but before he was pope he wrote the book as Cardinal Ratzinger Introduction to Christianity and it opens kind of counterintuitively with stories about doubt.

00:21:39.672 --> 00:21:42.561
But the point he makes is that what unites the atheist and the theist is doubt.

00:21:42.561 --> 00:21:44.784
But the point he makes is that what unites the atheist and the theist is doubt.

00:21:44.784 --> 00:21:57.435
There's actually no perfectly certain atheist or any perfectly certain atheist is a low-order thinker, in the same way that any perfectly certain Christian is a low-order thinker.

00:21:57.455 --> 00:21:59.116
You're not being honest with yourself, right?

00:21:59.116 --> 00:22:12.186
Because, as we were talking about before, like the universe that you understand, if the universe is simply that which you understand, if you are the definer of the universe, right, you are the center of the universe.

00:22:12.186 --> 00:22:17.931
Like, that universe falls apart for sure on day two, if not a minute two.

00:22:17.931 --> 00:22:18.712
Right, right, right, right.

00:22:18.712 --> 00:22:21.910
So at some point you have to say I don't have it figured out.

00:22:21.910 --> 00:22:34.713
And then what you're actually saying is I'm an atheist means I'm committed to this tradition of thinking, I'm committed to this philosophy that we do have it all explained within human resources and we don't need God to explain it.

00:22:34.713 --> 00:22:43.727
Or I hate Christianity because look at the horrible things they've done and come up with a list of of abuses and and and war crimes, I mean, like, like everything you can imagine.

00:22:43.727 --> 00:23:07.696
Okay, um, uh, the other, the other thing, and my wife, um, does not appreciate the story as much as I do, uh, so I'll caveat it with maybe, uh, maybe this is a conversation between the two guys, but, um, when we were doing our marriage preparation, uh, one of the sets of questions was something like doing our marriage preparation, one of the sets of questions was something like are you able to commit?

00:23:07.696 --> 00:23:07.909
Right?

00:23:07.909 --> 00:23:10.634
And I know what they're asking about is are you under duress?

00:23:10.634 --> 00:23:17.508
You know, are you marrying this woman just because she's got money and you don't, or you know, and well, those are bad reasons to get married, right?

00:23:17.508 --> 00:23:18.821
That can't be the sum total of it.

00:23:18.821 --> 00:23:19.843
Yeah, okay, go ahead.

00:23:19.883 --> 00:23:23.387
But I was also thinking a lot about this question of like.

00:23:23.387 --> 00:23:38.492
Actually, I don't think I'm in charge of myself right now to commit myself to every unknown, like I realize this commitment is huge, and so the questions were worded are you able to do this, or how certain are you?

00:23:38.492 --> 00:23:41.446
And I marked a number of them as well.

00:23:41.446 --> 00:23:43.132
It's a delicate question.

00:23:43.132 --> 00:23:48.329
I'm not actually ready to commit, or if the question is simply can I, on my own resources, do it right?

00:23:48.329 --> 00:23:49.113
All right.

00:23:49.153 --> 00:23:49.755
So this comes up.

00:23:49.755 --> 00:23:55.432
My wife is horribly embarrassed and, like I can't believe that you would express some doubt in getting married.

00:23:55.432 --> 00:23:58.508
You know the answer to the question is supposed to be yes.

00:23:58.508 --> 00:24:01.502
So the priest is asking us hey, what's up with this?

00:24:01.502 --> 00:24:08.086
And I said, father, this is an incredible commitment, I could not do it alone.

00:24:09.221 --> 00:24:13.972
And the question anticipated can I commit to marriage on my own?

00:24:13.972 --> 00:24:19.090
And my answer is no, but I'm not committing to marriage on my efforts alone.

00:24:19.090 --> 00:24:35.128
I'm committing to marriage as exactly as you say, a pattern that God has set up and something I think God is blessing and God's going to provide graces that I don't have yet, right, like I'm not married yet, and so I have this full faith that God will provide.

00:24:35.128 --> 00:24:44.071
I got no idea how that's going to look, what the joys and the difficulties are going to be, absolutely, in all honesty, I doubt I have struggles.

00:24:44.071 --> 00:24:45.306
I think everybody does.

00:24:45.306 --> 00:24:46.926
You got to be honest about that.

00:24:46.926 --> 00:24:54.493
You also have to be honest about the point you were making earlier that for Christians, this is not something we're doing alone.

00:24:54.493 --> 00:24:59.844
And in fact, let's go back and think about Genesis.

00:24:59.844 --> 00:25:13.275
One does not envision the possibility of human existence apart from a male and female who is fertile and multiplies what's created in the image of God.

00:25:14.596 --> 00:25:15.997
Man is created in the image.

00:25:16.619 --> 00:25:23.344
Go ahead, Let us create man in our image, male and female.

00:25:23.344 --> 00:25:24.564
He made them.

00:25:24.723 --> 00:25:31.708
Yeah, you're right, right and so I mean I don't want to say you cannot read it, as I, as an individual, have made the image of God.

00:25:31.867 --> 00:26:03.611
Of course you are, but don't close yourself to what Genesis actually says, which is that we are made in the image of God and there's something about that human community, something about that marriage which, exactly as you said, is an icon of God, is the image of God and there's something about that human community, something about that marriage which, exactly as you said, is an icon of God, is the image of God and we have to be open to that right that I alone am not the perfect image of God and I, with Christine, my wife, am an image of God in a way that seems to be much more natural to Genesis.

00:26:03.651 --> 00:26:05.473
Genesis 2 makes the same argument right.

00:26:05.473 --> 00:26:07.467
Imagine if there were one human.

00:26:07.467 --> 00:26:09.686
It is not good to be alone.

00:26:09.686 --> 00:26:13.386
Imagine if you tried to be together with all of the rest of creation.

00:26:13.386 --> 00:26:16.749
None of those are a suitable helpmate right.

00:26:16.749 --> 00:26:19.788
That's why there's male and female.

00:26:19.788 --> 00:26:31.473
I think we're beat over the head with it in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 that there's something about community and, specifically, marriage, where we have to meditate on being the image of God.

00:26:31.614 --> 00:26:34.509
Right, and in the Catholic tradition you would call that a sacrament.

00:26:34.509 --> 00:26:35.815
I would not Go ahead.

00:26:35.815 --> 00:26:38.221
Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think.

00:26:38.221 --> 00:26:42.710
So much of the metaphor of basically both marriage and family.

00:26:42.710 --> 00:26:45.775
I don't know about you, tommy.

00:26:46.861 --> 00:26:49.931
I got married for very different reasons than I stay married.

00:26:49.931 --> 00:26:59.424
I thought my wife was gorgeous, I thought we would have a great time and that, quite frankly, was the reason I got married.

00:26:59.424 --> 00:27:05.929
Sure, but my marriage is much different to me now and, quite frankly, I still enjoy the sexual part of my marriage.

00:27:05.929 --> 00:27:07.857
Right, glad I do, right, but.

00:27:07.857 --> 00:27:35.143
And I love my wife in a very different way, and it's not that I've jettisoned that part of it, it's that I understand her more and I appreciate her more and she's in some ways she is completely insane and in some ways she is a lot more insightful than I am and she makes me look like not an idiot than I am and she makes me look like not an idiot.

00:27:35.143 --> 00:27:49.683
So I mean, that's something that I appreciate and, quite frankly again, this is a religious discussion I became a Christian for very different reasons than I stay a Christian, because I think the reason I became a Christian was to escape hell.

00:27:51.326 --> 00:28:12.756
But I don't stay a christian to escape hell, but I still want to, yeah I was going to make exactly the same point, that this is the dynamic we were talking about, about, uh, faith in the theological sense is open to love and and, uh, you have to have enough knowledge to start the relationship, and, and so we think of the beginning of faith.

00:28:12.756 --> 00:28:14.059
That's right, right, that's right.

00:28:14.059 --> 00:28:28.362
But then that faith, and especially if it doesn't include hope and love, it stagnates, it stops and then you fall out, right, and so the life of Christianity is exactly the life of marriage, and I mean this is all over scripture as well.

00:28:28.362 --> 00:28:31.646
The wedding feast of the lamb Christ is married to his bride, right?

00:28:31.646 --> 00:28:39.810
I mean, like, there you have it, old Testament, all over the place in the prophetic calls I love you, I will call you into the wilderness and my love will make you pure right.

00:28:39.810 --> 00:28:42.548
We're faithful to each other.

00:28:42.548 --> 00:28:49.634
All of that is so deeply laden within God's revelation of how we fit together.

00:28:49.634 --> 00:28:54.548
Yeah, it's beautiful, it makes sense, and I think you're exactly right.

00:28:54.881 --> 00:29:05.275
The chart that any man can, or the path that any man can chart in his relationship with his wife, is one of deepening and it never abandons the initial part.

00:29:05.395 --> 00:29:07.221
Of course I still find you wildly attractive.

00:29:07.221 --> 00:29:20.048
Of course I still like hanging out with you and holding hands, and all of those things hanging out with you and holding hands, and right at all of those things which were first impressions, beginning of love, those don't go away, right, they, they take on incredibly more significance.

00:29:20.048 --> 00:29:28.650
Of course, I still have fear of God in the sense of avoiding punishment, but I also don't want to let God down, but I also love God.

00:29:28.650 --> 00:29:35.902
But I also have a deeper and more abiding relationship with God which is fulfilling in a way that, again, I couldn't imagine.

00:29:35.902 --> 00:29:50.171
Or sometimes, you know, I think of it this way, like were you married on the day that you said I do yes, yes, yeah, somehow more married.

00:29:50.171 --> 00:30:11.071
Today we have to speak both as yeah, but the way I was married 20 years ago, 10 years ago, man, that's nothing like the way I'm married today, that's right, but it's still the same marriage and we have the same paradigm and I was Christian then and I'm Christian now, but much more deeply, so, much more better.

00:30:11.132 --> 00:30:14.667
So You're taking this a lot deeper than I was anticipating.

00:30:14.667 --> 00:30:15.641
We would go, tommy oh.

00:30:15.942 --> 00:30:18.295
I thought we were going to start with Moses at the burning bush.

00:30:18.295 --> 00:30:19.099
And who is God?

00:30:20.263 --> 00:30:32.289
I mean, yeah, I do want to get back to basically this idea of because you've already made allusion to it we have a lot of ideas about the characteristics of God.

00:30:32.289 --> 00:30:58.404
But we have a lot of ideas about the characteristics of God and I think one of the reasons, one of the things you've already said that makes a lot of sense to me, is we keep on trying to make God as small as we are and because of that, the ideas of the omnipresence of God, the omniscience of God, the omnipotence of God, those we kind of got in part and parcel with, basically, the tradition of God.

00:30:58.404 --> 00:31:01.171
Why do we think God is everywhere?

00:31:01.171 --> 00:31:04.241
Why do we think that he knows everything?

00:31:04.241 --> 00:31:07.925
Why do we think that he has all power?

00:31:07.925 --> 00:31:15.355
Could we not have a creator that has less than all knowledge, that has less than all power?

00:31:16.056 --> 00:31:19.910
Yeah, I mean multiple lines of thought about that.

00:31:19.910 --> 00:31:33.365
I think I'd like to go back to the point in the conversation we were thinking about, like making God in my image versus me in God's image, or what is it that human reason wants?

00:31:33.365 --> 00:31:44.482
And human reason recognizes a need for things which transcend, recognizes that in fact, I am not the center of the universe.

00:31:44.482 --> 00:31:46.512
That's just not a satisfactory universe.

00:31:46.534 --> 00:31:47.036
Wait a minute.

00:31:47.036 --> 00:31:48.460
Are you saying I'm not center of the universe?

00:31:48.480 --> 00:31:51.123
I am saying you are not the center of the universe.

00:31:51.583 --> 00:31:52.483
Your wife is.

00:31:53.064 --> 00:31:54.105
Yeah.

00:31:56.126 --> 00:32:11.064
So one thing that we're doing when we're saying God is omnipotent is we're saying rationally, I realize, I want, I need, I've worked out there ought to be a thing which is transcendent, which is beyond what I am.

00:32:11.064 --> 00:32:15.032
I right, I'm not omnipotent, I am, and so God must be right.

00:32:15.032 --> 00:32:24.346
In other words, we're defining in reference to a thing we know and we're saying but it's not that, and we do this all the time.

00:32:24.346 --> 00:32:26.105
Right, we can't remember the word for this.

00:32:26.105 --> 00:32:28.280
You remember that thing, it's not this one, it's not that one.

00:32:28.280 --> 00:32:38.776
Right, we're kind of triangulating or walking our way back and forth, or sometimes think of it as a ratchet where you kind of turn a bit and go back a different, and so you're blocking in what it is.

00:32:38.776 --> 00:32:48.214
And for people following in the philosophical tradition, this is in the apophatic term or the alpha privatives.

00:32:48.214 --> 00:32:51.288
Right, god is not this, god is infinite.

00:32:51.288 --> 00:32:52.566
God is without boundary.

00:32:52.566 --> 00:32:55.583
Right, god is not this, god is infinite, god is without boundary.

00:32:55.583 --> 00:33:01.315
And there's a real question about are we limiting God by applying our concept of infinite, which is what we intend not to do?

00:33:01.315 --> 00:33:03.685
Right, there's a real question about how language works.

00:33:03.705 --> 00:33:09.971
Okay, so one reason that we will come up with a God who's omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, all of these things.

00:33:09.971 --> 00:33:17.528
Is that, effectively, what we're trying to say in language is there is a God and I'm not it and I know these things about me.

00:33:17.528 --> 00:33:20.182
I'm present in one place, so God's got to be different.

00:33:20.182 --> 00:33:21.768
God's got to be present in all places.

00:33:21.768 --> 00:33:31.748
That's helpful and meaningful and that you can find in all manners of rational thinkers, philosophers of every kind.

00:33:31.748 --> 00:33:37.915
Right, you don't even need a kind of religion, I think, to come up with that.

00:33:37.915 --> 00:33:39.846
Pure human reason can come up with that.

00:33:39.846 --> 00:33:40.855
Physics does this.

00:33:40.855 --> 00:33:46.313
Right, we describe things and we're like, yeah, this is the model, but it's just a model.

00:33:46.313 --> 00:33:48.407
That's not actually what it is.

00:33:48.407 --> 00:33:54.633
So models are helpful, but I've always got something going on, some analogy, some transcendent, some other.

00:33:55.700 --> 00:34:21.782
Another thing we're doing with that is not so much trying to deny there's a God I'm not it but I think we're trying to imagine what the life of perfection would be, and I'm not sure that we can get to that within human reason.

00:34:21.782 --> 00:34:23.184
In my own thoughts.

00:34:23.184 --> 00:34:58.023
I don't know where my theological conversation picks up and my philosophical conversation ends, but I think what we're aiming at ultimately, the Christian theological sense is, as John says in the first letter, god is love, and the heart of love is the ability to give yourself completely to another for the good, and so there's freedom and there's truth, and there's goodness and there's beauty.

00:34:58.023 --> 00:35:03.103
I mean all these things that we attempt to articulate the transcendentals in philosophy traditionally.

00:35:03.103 --> 00:35:07.900
So these are all ways of us trying to say what would perfect love look like.

00:35:08.402 --> 00:35:09.485
Perfect love would be everywhere.

00:35:09.485 --> 00:35:11.650
Perfect love can do anything.

00:35:11.650 --> 00:35:21.713
Perfect love knows the fullness of truth right, and so certainly from the theological perspective, I think we can come at it in that direction.

00:35:21.713 --> 00:35:26.612
All of these are ways to say what would perfect love be.

00:35:26.612 --> 00:35:28.525
It must be like that.

00:35:29.780 --> 00:35:56.871
I think the other thing that you would say is that there's a very practical reality to this as well, which is, if God is going to be the Savior of everyone, he has to have some ability to get to know everyone, and if you limit God to just being able to get to know a few with relative shallowness, then what you worship has very little power absolutely, in fact.

00:35:57.172 --> 00:36:07.721
Uh it, it's very hard for me to come up with a a notion of what worship would be if the object of worship is not the god who loves.

00:36:07.721 --> 00:36:10.947
Uh like, like what's why?

00:36:10.947 --> 00:36:12.068
Why worship?

00:36:12.068 --> 00:36:16.514
What is worship if God is simply power to destroy?

00:36:16.514 --> 00:36:24.990
That doesn't seem like worship, right, that just seems like common sense, because I don't want to get wiped off the face of the earth.

00:36:25.099 --> 00:36:31.414
Yeah, but that's what idolatry looked like in, basically, the Babylonians and all those which is— and today still.

00:36:31.414 --> 00:36:39.648
Well, no, you're exactly right, and, quite frankly, I think we do that with God as well, which is we're going to make bargains with God as if he wanted anything from us.

00:36:39.648 --> 00:36:41.302
That's right that we are.

00:36:41.302 --> 00:36:48.802
You will have my allegiance if you will do this for me, and God never needed your allegiance to begin with.

00:36:48.802 --> 00:37:05.420
And it kind of goes back to another part of the conversation that we already had, which is we are not in an equal relationship with God, unlike every other relationship that you've had.

00:37:05.420 --> 00:37:13.302
The reason that you're in a good marriage is because your wife and you are still working at it and you've agreed that you're in a good relationship.

00:37:13.302 --> 00:37:19.130
Right, but that's not the way it is with God, because you don't get to negotiate that relationship.

00:37:19.130 --> 00:37:22.873
That relationship is dictated to you on the very best possible terms.

00:37:22.873 --> 00:37:23.755
You see what I'm saying.

00:37:24.056 --> 00:37:32.023
Yes, the thing I want to add to that is that the very best possible terms include God invites me to be a partner with him.

00:37:32.023 --> 00:37:35.065
That's right, right and so it's not ultimately over and against my will.

00:37:35.065 --> 00:37:39.148
It's to the conversion of my will in love, so that I do want what God wants.

00:37:39.148 --> 00:37:47.036
God will always want what's best for me Right, and will always be what is best for me, but you don't know what's best for you.

00:37:47.056 --> 00:37:47.436
That's right.

00:37:47.436 --> 00:37:49.282
Yeah, and that's the.

00:37:49.282 --> 00:37:57.646
You talked about 1 John, where he says not that we loved God, but that God loved us, god starts the relationship.

00:37:57.646 --> 00:38:02.730
God starts the relationship, but he also perfects the relationship, because we keep on messing it up.

00:38:02.730 --> 00:38:04.032
Yes, you see what I'm saying.

00:38:04.032 --> 00:38:14.195
Yes, so I guess, going back to that idea of why do we have to believe that he's all powerfulpowerful and all-present and all, yeah, Sure, sure.

00:38:14.661 --> 00:38:18.030
So like what would be lost if we had a God who was not all-powerful.

00:38:18.050 --> 00:38:18.610
Who was limited?

00:38:18.670 --> 00:38:22.248
yeah, yeah, there are lots of arguments that work like this.

00:38:22.248 --> 00:38:27.271
Imagine that there is a God who is partially powerful.

00:38:27.271 --> 00:38:31.728
Now imagine that there's a God who is fully powerful.

00:38:31.728 --> 00:38:36.070
Right, isn't the fully powerful God better?

00:38:37.460 --> 00:38:39.065
Yes, and I want him to be better.

00:38:39.065 --> 00:38:39.829
But what if he's?

00:38:39.889 --> 00:38:40.108
not.

00:38:40.108 --> 00:38:42.065
You mean what if?

00:38:42.065 --> 00:38:44.829
What if he's limited?

00:38:44.829 --> 00:38:57.059
Well, but you would have to mean what if being limited is better than being unlimited right, Because part of the definition of God is good, the perfect Right.

00:38:57.059 --> 00:39:01.512
And so you can always ask the question is it better to be all powerful or not?

00:39:04.001 --> 00:39:08.132
And the answer, traditionally so, was of course God, who is all powerful, is better.

00:39:08.559 --> 00:39:11.871
Is it better to be limited in your presence or present everywhere?

00:39:11.871 --> 00:39:12.588
Of course it's better to be present everywhere.

00:39:12.588 --> 00:39:12.791
Is it better to be in time or out of time?

00:39:12.791 --> 00:39:13.684
Of course it's better to be limited in your presence or present everywhere.

00:39:13.684 --> 00:39:14.056
Of course it's better to be present everywhere.

00:39:14.056 --> 00:39:16.367
Is it better to be in time or out of time?

00:39:16.367 --> 00:39:18.199
Of course it's better to be out of time.

00:39:18.199 --> 00:39:34.119
So all of those things are wrapped up with normal arguments about just what perfection was, and I can imagine a thing better than what you're imagining, and so I'm going to replace your imagination of God with my imagination of God.

00:39:34.119 --> 00:39:36.847
Right, I can just substitute the best.

00:39:38.210 --> 00:39:46.411
I think one of the other things that I would say is I've gone to some lengths not to define God by his revealed message, by the Bible.

00:39:46.411 --> 00:39:59.940
But if you even take a cursory look at really any of the books of Bible I'm thinking specifically of Job, where Job has all these grievances against God and God's response is not well, here's what was going on.

00:39:59.940 --> 00:40:02.628
No, his response is where were you?

00:40:02.628 --> 00:40:04.853
And basically what he does is very.

00:40:04.853 --> 00:40:14.726
He just basically says he puts Job in his place and he says I'm sorry, but you're not a party to basically creating the world.

00:40:14.726 --> 00:40:15.541
That's my job.

00:40:15.561 --> 00:40:15.882
That's right.

00:40:15.882 --> 00:40:19.150
Job does not get to define the truth, and he says that right.

00:40:19.271 --> 00:40:25.963
Like his wife says, you know it's time for you to curse God right, like you've come to the end, and he says, no, I can't.

00:40:26.344 --> 00:40:26.565
Why?

00:40:26.565 --> 00:40:26.985
Not?

00:40:26.985 --> 00:40:51.523
Because what Job is wrestling with is, but if I curse God, what Job is wrestling with is, but if I curse God, I've put myself in the position of defining the good here, and I think I mean I think we're kind of retelling or meditating again on the tree, the knowledge of good and evil, and the question for Job is something like Job don't you get to define the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?

00:40:51.523 --> 00:40:53.047
Don't you get to be the determiner?

00:40:53.447 --> 00:40:55.391
of what is good and what is not.

00:40:55.391 --> 00:40:58.630
That's right and Job is like hey man, we've been down that road.

00:40:58.630 --> 00:41:00.547

Basic Christianity: Who is God?

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