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Curious

September 11, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Church on the Move

Church on the MOVE – Curious
Sycamore Creek Church
September 9, 2012
Tom Arthur
Mark 9:17-27 

Peace, Friends!

In March, 2009 NASA held a contest to name the rover that was going to Mars.  On May 27, 2009 the winning name was announced: Curiosity.  This name was originally submitted by Clara Ma, a sixth-grader fromKansas.  In her essay suggesting the name she said, “Curiosity is the passion that drives us through our everyday lives. We have become explorers and scientists with our need to ask questions and to wonder.”

On November 26, 2011 the Mars Science Laboratory launched fromCape Canaveralon an Atlas V rocket.  Eight months later on August 5, 2012 Curiosity Rover landed on Mars.  Here is what curiosity looks like:

 

 

Today we begin a new series called Church on the MOVE. Sycamore Creek Church isn’t a static church.  We’re on the move.  We’re going to Mars and back!  And this series will explore the culture of that move in three words: curious, creative, and compassionate.  These three words are the jet propulsion that moves us forward, reaching out to new people and growing.  Today we begin with the first word: curious. 

  1. Curious: Eager to know or learn something

When you look up the word “curious” in a dictionary you will find variations on two meanings.  The first meaning for “curious” is “eager to know or learn something.”  The NASA scientists were eager to know or learn something about Mars.  The initial proposals for Curiosity came in April 2004, eight years before Curiosity landed on Mars.  That’s a pretty intense eagerness to learn that sustained them over that time period.  And while there were certainly some answers over time, the journey of Curiosity was marked more by questions than answers.

When we think about faith, many of us tend to fall into a kind of rut: we think we must have it all figured out before we make a decision to launch on the journey of following Jesus.  But that’s rarely if ever how it works.  Rather the journey is launched because of curiosity about God.

When I was in college I went through a faith crisis, I wanted certainty about my faith, but what I found was uncertainty.  I let my faith go, and what I found was that when I no longer believed, I was no more certain.  What I had when I believed was uncertainty with hope and meaning.  What I had when I didn’t believe was uncertainty with hopelessness and meaninglessness.  So I made a conscious decision to believe even though I wasn’t certain.

Lately I’ve been talking to someone about coming to church.  This person thinks they have to get their life together and have everything figured out before they start the journey.  But if we wait for our curiosity to be satisfied, we’ll never go anywhere.  It’s the curiosity that propels us forward.  We’ll never get every question answered.  As one friend of mine recently posted on her Facebook status: “I had lots of questions I just couldn’t answer today so I found the answers in a cup of Death by Chocolate smothered in chocolate sauce!”

Here’s the good news: we don’t have to have it all figured out to follow Jesus.  One of my favorite stories in the Old Testament tells about a man who found himself in a similar situation.

Mark 9:17-27 NRSV
Someone from the crowd answered [Jesus], “Teacher, I brought you my son; he has a spirit that makes him unable to speak;  and whenever it seizes him, it dashes him down; and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid; and I asked your disciples to cast it out, but they could not do so.”  He answered them, “You faithless generation, how much longer must I be among you? How much longer must I put up with you? Bring him to me.”  And they brought the boy to him. When the spirit saw him, immediately it convulsed the boy, and he fell on the ground and rolled about, foaming at the mouth.  Jesus asked the father, “How long has this been happening to him?” And he said, “From childhood.  It has often cast him into the fire and into the water, to destroy him; but if you are able to do anything, have pity on us and help us.”  Jesus said to him, “If you are able!– All things can be done for the one who believes.”  Immediately the father of the child cried out, “I believe; help my unbelief!”  When Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, “You spirit that keeps this boy from speaking and hearing, I command you, come out of him, and never enter him again!”  After crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out, and the boy was like a corpse, so that most of them said, “He is dead.”  But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he was able to stand.

Here’s the main point of this sermon: Following Jesus is a mixture of belief and unbelief.

Or as the father said, “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24).  And here’s the greatest part of this story to me: Jesus doesn’t cast him out.  He receives this man’s honesty and curiosity and he heals his son!  Thank you, God!

We get stuck thinking that to belong we must first become the right kind of person and to become that kind of person we must first believe the right things.  But today I want to tell  you that you belong first because you are curious about Jesus, and in that belonging  you become the kind of person that Jesus calls us to become, and perhaps at the end of the day after belonging and becoming you begin to believe that Jesus is really who he says he is.

SycamoreCreekChurchis a mix of all kinds of curious people.  Do you know that on any given Sunday morning we’ve got people here who are atheists, agnostics, spiritual (but not religious), religious, and on and on and on.  I lead a small group that meets every first and third Thursday at a local pub called an Agnostic Pub Group.  We read books and ask questions and explore God together.  Usually I’m the only Christian in the group.

We are often afraid of this kind of uncertainty, asking questions, and even doubting.  But recent research done by the Fuller Youth Institute suggests that:

Suppression of doubt can sabotage a young person’s faith. Contrary to what many of us might believe, students who feel the most free to express doubt and discuss their personal problems actually exhibit more internal and external faith indicators in high school and college. Doubt in and of itself isn’t toxic. It’s unexpressed doubt that becomes toxic.

Following Jesus means trusting, but not necessarily being in total agreement of belief.  When Jesus called his disciples to follow him, they didn’t have it all figured out.  The Bible tells all kinds of stories about the disciples really getting it all wrong.  They were curious enough to follow Jesus, whether they got all their questions answered or not.

Psalm 25:4 says “Show me Your ways, O LORD; Teach me Your paths.”  Curiosity leads us to being eager to learn and know Jesus’ ways, and the faith and trust to follow is sometimes scary.  When I was learning to ski, I had to trust the instructor that the best way to get safely down the hill with these supper slippery boards strapped to the ends of my feet was to actually lean down the mountain rather than lean back up the mountain.  Lean down the mountain?  Isn’t that just going to make me go faster?  Well, no.  Leaning down the mountain when you ski lets the edges of your skis bite into the snow and slow down.  Leaning backwards keeps them up above the snow and speeds you up.  To learn the best path down the mountain, I had to trust the instructor over my fear of leaning down the mountain.  It makes total sense to me now, but in the beginning it was a mystery.

Maybe that’s why we call communion and baptism a sacrament.  “Sacrament” is Latin for “mystery.”  The sacraments of communion and baptism aren’t dependent upon us fully understanding what’s going on.  If participation was dependent upon us fully understanding it all, then none of us could partake.  We’d all have to simply sit in our seats, me included.  The conditions we put on participating in communion are a curiosity and desire to live at peace with God and with others.  Children are welcome to the communion table because they are often the most curious!  A couple of months ago I took Micah with me to a Saturday night worship service at another church.  They were serving communion so the two of us went up and received communion.  I told Micah that this was the body and blood of Jesus as we ate the bread dipped in the cup.  After we got back to our seats, Micah looked up at me and signed “more.”  Did he get what he was asking for?  Probably not, but perhaps deep in his spirit, in his curiosity was a desire to have more of Jesus.  A sacrament is a mystery, and Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3).

What questions do you have about God and following Jesus?  When you are curious about God and follow Jesus you become a little (and then a lot!) curious…  What do I mean by that?

  1. Curious: Strange; unusual

“Curious” has a second meaning: strange or unusual.  When you’re curious about God and you begin following Jesus you become a little (and sometimes a lot!) strange and unusual.  Unfortunately the church inAmericahas become too normal, dull, ordinary, and conventional.  According to George Barna, a researcher on trends in the American religious landscape, “Casual Christians represent 66% of the adult population of theU.S.”  Casual Christians are marked by “moderation in all things” vs. “extreme devotion to…God regardless of the worldly consequences.”  Let me give you an example: when it comes to divorce, those who identify as “born again” have “divorce [figures] statistically identical to that of non-born again adults: 32% versus 33%, respectively.”  Christians should be different, but in many ways we’re not.  Our curiosity or eagerness to learn and know should lead us to being curious or strange and unusual.

Here’s a surprise second main point of this message: Following Jesus is a countercultural movement that makes us odd. St.Peter says, “You are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people” (1 Peter 2:9 KJV).  I like that old King James language: “a peculiar people.”  When we follow Jesus we should be peculiar, countercultural, curious.  We should look and live differently than the rest of our neighbors, co-workers, family, and friends.

Who are the people you most admire?  They are most likely unique, peculiar, curious…They live their lives against the grain of culture.  They are countercultural.  Let me tell you about some of the people I want to be like when I grow up.

Jo Snedden is a woman of prayer.  Her life of prayer led her to finishing her basement so that her aging mother could live with her family.  After her mother died, her grandchildren were having a rough time so she and her husband took them in and raised them.  She would tell me that while being a grandparent she didn’t have the energy of her parenting years, she had a kind of wisdom that she didn’t have as a younger mom, especially when it came to nurturing faith in her grandchildren.  When I grow up I want to be peculiar, countercultural, and curious like Jo Snedden.

Hank Kuehl was a seventy-year-old retired shop teacher who volunteered with the youth of a church I worked at.  He would run full tilt playing capture the flag with the teenagers.  My wife was always afraid that he was going to stroke out or have a heart attack on a retreat!  Hank also was a Habitat for Humanity volunteer extraordinaire.  Some people have construction skills and some people have teaching skills, but Hank had both.  When one student, Walker, was going through confirmation, and was told he would be assigned a mentor, he asked if he could pick his mentor.  Guess who he wanted to have mentor him.  Hank!  When I am seventy I want to be the kind of peculiar, countercultural and curious kind of old geezer that fourteen-year-old boys ask for me to  be their mentor even when they weren’t told they could ask!

Dennis Myers is my mortgage broker in Petoskey who helped us buy our house (and refinance it several times) and his wife is Cindy.  Dennis has made a good living selling mortgages inNorthern Michigan.  He lives on Walloon Lake in one of the biggest and nicest houses I’ve ever been in.  There are a lot of rooms in the Myers house.  Dennis and Cindy both felt that God had given them a lot and they wanted to give back to others.  So over the course of several years they filled that house with adopted children.  They had one of their own and adopted 3 kids, one with special needs.  When I grow up I want to be peculiar, countercultural, and curious like Dennis and Cindy Myers.

Then there’s Charlie Robinson.  Charlie had a couple of kids of his own but felt compelled to be a foster parent for teenage boys.  Charlie had a rough background himself, getting into trouble as a teenager.  As he began to open his home to foster kids, he felt led to invite more.  Soon he was running out of room, so he built a “wing” on to his house.  He got a license to turn his home into an “institution” and every Sunday morning you could find him sitting in a pew with his wife, two kids, and about five teenage boys.  When I grow up I want to be the kind of person who brings hurting teenage boys to church with me so that we take up a whole row.  I want to be peculiar, countercultural, and curious like Charlie Robinson.

Let me tell you about Rachel and Juliet Serra.  Rachel and Juliet were teenagers in my youth group. When Rachel graduated from college, she wanted to spend a year with Mission Year, a missions organization that hosts college graduates to live in urban areas to minister to the needs of those in the neighborhood.  The only problem was that Rachel couldn’t afford to make it all happen.  So her younger sister, Juliet, decided to move in with her and work to help pay the bills.  When I “grow up” I want to be the kind of person who uses my time and money to support the missions work of my “family” members.  I want to be peculiar, curious, and countercultural like Rachel and Juliet Serra.

Lastly, when I grow up I want to be like David and Rebecca Arthur.  Even though we share a last name, we aren’t part of the same biological family.  Sarah and I met David and Rebecca because we were attending a historically black church while in seminary and David and Rebecca were the only other white people in the church.  They invited the church to their house one day, and we learned that they owned a very large house in the ghetto where they were building a Christian community that offered hospitality to women and children in transition.  David stayed home, raised the kids, and ran the house.  Rebecca worked ¾ time as a physical therapist.  They did this all on a ¾ time income!  They were able to be so generous because they lived simply.  When I grow up I want to live simply enough that I’m able to share what I have with others.  I want to be peculiar, countercultural, and curious like David and Rebecca.

Friend, this kind of strange, odd, countercultural, peculiar and curious living is already happening here atSycamoreCreekChurch.  We’re hospitable and we welcome anyone.  Come as you are.  We seek to live lives of spiritual discipline by seeking God daily in prayer & Bible reading.  We live a curious lifestyle by seeking to live pure and holy lives.  We’re peculiar with our money.  We live simply and give generously.  We’re curiously authentic.  We give a true account of ourselves.  We seek to be countercultural with our time.  We take time to rest and enjoy by practicing Sabbath and not just being concerned with producing, producing, producing.  And most of all we are a peculiar, countercultural, and curious community of love.  We love God with everything we’ve got, and we love our neighbors as ourselves.  Jesus said, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35).

SycamoreCreekChurchis a curious people:

  1. We’re curious to learn more about God;
  2. We’re countercultural when we follow Jesus.

So do you want to move with us?  Do you want to get into the current of the creek and go deep in God’s curious grace?  Here’s how you begin:  Connect with God and others in worship.  Grow in the character of Christ in a small group.  Serve the church, community and world with your time, talent, treasure, and testimony. Sycamore Creek Church is curious.  Will you be curious with us?

Questions for Small Groups

Each week we provide discussion questions for small groups that meet regularly to discuss the message for the week.  Want to find a small group to join?  Email Mark Aupperlee – m_aupperlee@hotmail.com.

  1. What is one (or two) question(s) you have about God?
  2. Read Mark 9:17-29.  When was a time you were filled with both belief and unbelief?
  3. How can we pray for your trust to follow Jesus?
  4. Who do you need to invite to join our small group that needs a place to be curious?

 

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Is the Brain Hardwired for God?

June 3, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Brain

I found this video intriguing.  I think he misses one option though: could there be “ruts” in evolution that inevitably lead biological beings to a brain that is hardwired for spirituality and God?  Perhaps that is part of God’s plan in creation.

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Questions 2.0 – Why Believe in God?

June 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Questions 2.0

Questions 2.0 – Why Believe in God?
Sycamore Creek Church
June 12, 2011
Tom Arthur
Psalm 19

Peace, Friends!

Blake asks a great question: Why believe in God?  It’s a question most of us find ourselves asking at some point or another.  I myself have asked this question and fallen on both sides of the answer fence at different times in my life, although for the vast majority of my life, I have claimed to believe in God.  I’m taking this question as a basic first question to Christianity about the existence of God.  Does God exist?  How do we know?  Another set of questions that would take another sermon (or several!) would be why believe in the Christian God or in Jesus as God’s Son.  I will not try to answer these questions today.  I will focus more directly on the question of God’s existence.

I’d like to explore this question from the perspective of Psalm 19.  So let’s take a look at this intriguing psalm.

Psalm 19 NRSV

The heavens are telling the glory of God;
and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours forth speech,
and night to night declares knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words;
their voice is not heard;
yet their voice goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world.

In the heavens he has set a tent for the sun,
which comes out like a bridegroom from his wedding canopy,
and like a strong man runs its course with joy.
Its rising is from the end of the heavens,
and its circuit to the end of them;
and nothing is hid from its heat.

The law of the LORD is perfect,
reviving the soul;
the decrees of the LORD are sure,
making wise the simple;
the precepts of the LORD are right,
rejoicing the heart;
the commandment of the LORD is clear,
enlightening the eyes;
the fear of the LORD is pure,
enduring forever;
the ordinances of the LORD are true
and righteous altogether.
More to be desired are they than gold,
even much fine gold;
sweeter also than honey,
and drippings of the honeycomb.

Moreover by them is your servant warned;
in keeping them there is great reward.
But who can detect their errors?
Clear me from hidden faults.
Keep back your servant also from the insolent;
do not let them have dominion over me.
Then I shall be blameless,
and innocent of great transgression.

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
be acceptable to you,
O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.

This is God’s teaching for us today.  Thank you, God!

The Moral Law

This psalm has two themes.  The first half has to do with creation and the second half has to do with morality.  I’d like to look at the second half first.  We read in verse seven:

The law of the LORD is perfect,
reviving the soul…
Psalm 19:7 NRSV

The psalm goes on to say quite a bit about this law of the Lord.  I think it points us to a kind of law that is present in all of us: a moral law.  I believe this moral law is one that we all live under and to at least some extent we all intuitively know or understand.

C.S. Lewis, one of the great Christian writers of the 20th century, wrote a little book titled Mere Christianity in which he attempted to defend the basic Christian beliefs that are common among Christians of all stripes.  He begins this book with a discussion of the moral law:

Every one has heard people quarrelling. Sometimes it sounds funny and sometimes it sounds merely unpleasant; but however it sounds, I believe we can learn something very important from listening to the kind of things they say. They say things like this: ‘How’d you like it if anyone did the same thing to you?’—’That’s my seat, I was there first’—’Leave him alone, he isn’t doing you any harm’—’Why should you shove in first?’ —’Give me a bit of your orange, I gave you a bit of mine’— ‘Come on, you promised.’ People say things like that every day, educated people as well as uneducated, and children as well as grown-ups.

Now what interests me about all these remarks is that the man who makes them is not merely saying that the other man’s behaviour does not happen to please him. He is appealing to some kind of standard of behaviour which he expects the other man to know about. And the other man very seldom replies ‘To hell with your standard.’ Nearly always he tries to make out that what he has been doing does not really go against the standard, or that if it does there is some special excuse. He pretends there is some special reason in this particular case why the person who took the seat first should not keep it, or that things were quite different when he was given the bit of orange, or that something has turned up which lets him off keeping his promise. It looks, in fact, very much as if both parties had in mind some kind of Law or Rule of fair play or decent behaviour or morality or whatever you like to call it, about which they really agreed. And they have. If they had not, they might, of course, fight like animals, but they could not quarrel in the human sense of the word. Quarrelling means trying to show that the other man is in the wrong. And there would be no sense in trying to do that unless you and he had some sort of agreement as to what Right and Wrong are; just as there would be no sense in saying that a footballer had committed a foul unless there was some agreement about the rules of football.

Lewis does a great job of making difficult concepts easy to understand.  He takes this idea of the moral law and gives us some footholds and handholds so we can easily grasp hold.  The question he is driving at is this: if there is a moral law, where did it come from?  The answer he suggests is that if there is a moral law, there must be a moral law giver.

The Moral Law & Absolute Truth

I think that sometimes we get tripped up at this point about the moral law because we quickly run into the question of absolute truth.  Truth seems so tricky.  How can we nail down truth so that it is the same thing all the time in all places for all people?  Usually we describe absolute truth as rules that govern what we should do and not do, but I don’t think that’s what Lewis is driving at here.

Consider the rule: Do not tell a lie.  This seems a pretty basic moral rule or truth.  It seems like it should hold up no matter who we’re talking about, where they live, or when they live.  Don’t tell a lie.  But immediately we are confronted with difficult situations where telling a lie seems the right thing to do.  Take Corrie Ten Boom for an example.

Corrie was a Dutch Christian living during WWII in the Netherlands.  When Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands, Corrie and her family hid as many Jews as they could to save their lives.  They often had to lie to the Nazis to save Jews.  It is a lie that I hope each of us would make if we were in similar circumstances.

Here’s the rub: lying is wrong.  Yes, but in a broken and sinful world, sometimes we are confronted with a situation in which there are no right answers.  All our options (and always keep in mind that there are more than just two options in every situation) are less than perfect and we must choose the one that is the least bad.  I think this complication points to something that is behind each rule: a principle.

What is the principle behind the rule to not lie?  It is the principle of loving your neighbor by treating them the way that you would want to be treated.  In the circumstances that Corrie found herself in, this principle of love was at odds with the rule of truth telling.  Corrie’s Christianity demanded that she take the principle seriously while ignoring the letter of the law in the rule.

Jesus himself points to a kind of hierarchy in God’s law.  When arguing with the Pharisees he says:

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others.
Matthew 23:23-24 NRSV

Notice the underlined portion.  There are some moral laws that are weightier than others.  Here the Pharisees were following the letter of the law of tithing even when it came to their herbs and spices, but ignoring the more important aspects of the law of treating people mercifully, justly, and faithfully.

Discerning what is weightier in any given situation is not always easy and is best done in a broad and diverse community, and let me be clear that I am certainly not advocating a kind of situational relativism where anything goes.  I think that there will be a day when our character and our actions will all be judged.  The point I’m trying to make is that there is a moral law that points to a moral law giver, and even though sometimes that moral law is a little tricky to discern, it is still there pointing to the moral law giver, or God.

The law of the LORD is perfect,
reviving the soul…
Psalm 19:7 NRSV

Creation

Now we move on to the first half of Psalm 19 which speaks of creation.  We read:

The heavens are telling the glory of God;
and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.
Psalm 19:1 NRSV

Immediately when we begin talking about creation the question comes up about how to navigate through the relationship between science and faith.  Are they opposed to one another or is there a way that they work in harmony with one another?

Whenever one begins talking about science and faith, it’s not very long before the name Galileo comes up.  Galileo argued that the sun was at the center of our system and not the earth.  Famously the church stood against him.  He was put on house arrest and forced to recant.  He did so (with his fingers crossed behind his back!).

Interestingly enough, one of the key verses in this debate came from this psalm.  We read:

Its [the sun’s] rising is from the end of the heavens,
and its circuit to the end of them;
Psalm 19:6 NRSV

When you look up in the sky, you see the sun move from one side of the earth to the other.  It seems pretty obvious that the sun moves and the earth doesn’t. But what is obvious always has to do with where one stands, as Galileo so clearly saw through his new instrument, the telescope.

Can we ever get past Galileo?  I hope so.  Galileo, we were wrong.  Please accept our apology.  Forgive us for our arrogance.

I think when most of us read Psalm 19 today, we see it as a kind of poetic language.  Our faith in God isn’t shaken by the idea that what verse six literally says isn’t true.  Interestingly enough, the Catholic church has come around to this perspective too.  Pope John Paul II said, “Galileo sensed in his scientific research the presence of the Creator who, stirring in the depths of his spirit, stimulated him, anticipating and assisting his intuitions.”  Amen.

I read a book several years ago titled, Galileo’s Daughter.  Her name was Maria Celeste and she was a nun.  I learned while reading this book that Galileo was a Christian!  He wasn’t always the most faithful Christian, but he remained a Christian even amidst this controversy with the church.  Apparently Galileo didn’t have a hard time integrating this new scientific knowledge with his faith.  He said, “I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”  I suspect most of us today could relate to that claim.

Evolution

The question of evolution also often comes up in these kinds of conversations about science and faith.  Is evolution incompatible with a belief in God?  While the church may not have been on the progressive edge back in Galileo’s day, the Catholic church has responded to this question of evolution in a much more proactive way.  Again, Pope John Paul II said of evolution, “New findings lead us toward the recognition of evolution as more than a hypothesis.”  If the pope doesn’t see an essential conflict between faith and evolution, perhaps we shouldn’t either.

It’s not just religious leaders who see a harmony between science and faith.  Many scientists do too.  One of those is Francis Collins.  Collins is a first rate scientist.  He was the director of the Human Genome project which sequenced the 25,000-30,000 genes in human DNA and is the current National Institute of Health director by way of a unanimous vote in Congress.  Collins is also a Christian.  He has recently written a book titled The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief.  In this book he makes a well thought out plea for Christians to see science and faith as compatible.  He says, “It is time to call a truce in the escalating war between science and spirit. The war was never really necessary….Science is not threatened by God; it is enhanced. God is most certainly not threatened by science.”  Amen.

I have personally never had a hard time connecting science with my faith.  I wonder if this wasn’t because growing up even though I went to public schools, I had several science teachers in Jr. High and High School who also believed in God.  I saw science and faith integrated together on a regular basis.  I continue to see it today even in our church.  We have several scientists who are members or regularly attend our church.  One of the most well known is Mark Aupperlee who preaches often.  Mark is a breast cancer researcher at MSU.  Mark is married to Jana who is also a scientist.  She is a professor of psychology at MSU.  Then there’s Kathie Brooks who is in the Microbiology and Molecular Genetics department at MSU.  I read some about her research on her faculty page the other day, and I didn’t understand any of it!  We’ve also got two high school science teachers: Chrissy Hager (Leslie High School) and Ben Shoemaker (Mason High School).  Several people in our church are involved with the science of medicine.  Amanda Shoemaker is a doctor, and Bob and Martha Trout, Teresa Miller, Deb Hager, and Deb Ray are all involved in nursing or tech work in hospitals.  You don’t have to look to the big guns of Francis Collins to see scientists who are also people of faith.  Just look right here in our own church.

Let me take a tangent for a moment.  Students, don’t think that to be a good Christian you have to become a pastor or missionary or work in a church.  We need faithful Christians who are also scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and the like.  Don’t be afraid to go into these fields of study because you think your faith will have to be put on the back burner.  Talk to any of the people I just mentioned and you will most likely find a story about how science has strengthened their faith and vice versa.

God and Suffering

One of the big obstacles to belief in God is always the question of suffering.  We read about this in Psalm 19:

Keep me from deliberate sins!
Don’t let them control me.
Then I will be free of guilt
and innocent of great sin.
Psalm 19:13 NLT

When we deliberately sin, we usually hurt others.  Sometimes that hurt is more subtle than at other times.  There is, of course, also suffering caused by creation itself.  Sometimes this earth is a very harsh place to live.  What are we to make of suffering and a belief in God?  Shouldn’t a good and all powerful God have been able to make a world in which suffering didn’t exist?  We’re going to deal with this question more fully in the next series, Why?  But let me touch on it briefly for a moment here.

The primary response to the question of suffering is free will.  Because God has given us free will, or the freedom to choose to follow God or to not follow God, to follow the moral law or not, all of us have at one time or another done harm to others.  But couldn’t God have created a world where free will exists but suffering doesn’t?  C.S. Lewis is again instructive:

If you choose to say “God can give a creature free will and at the same time withhold free will from it,” you have not succeeded in saying anything about God; meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prefix to them the two other words “God can.”  Nonsense remains nonsense, even when we talk about God.
C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

Lewis points to a logical incompatibility toward the belief that free will can also be required to always do the right thing.  If it was required to do the right thing, then it would no longer be free will.

Suffering happens to everyone.  Jesus himself says, “For [God] gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and on the unjust, too” (Matthew 5:45 NLT).  For me the difficulty with suffering comes down to one thing: hope.  If you take God out of the equation, there is no hope amidst suffering.

Hope

Psalm 19 speaks to this kind of hope in the very last verse.  We read:

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
be acceptable to you,
O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.
Psalm 19:14 NRSV

There are three kinds of hope that a belief in God provides: hope for a better life, hope for a better world, and hope for something better than death.

Hope for a Better Life

When we believe in God, we are given hope that we can become better people.  We can grow in character, virtue, and love.  No, belief doesn’t lead to instantaneous perfection.  It’s not like you become a perfect person when you believe in God.  But belief in God leads to particular attitudes and actions that nurture growth in all who believe.  Yes, we still fall down.  Yes, we still sin. Yes, we still mess up on the moral law, but as John Wesley says, “Sin remains but it does not reign.”  Belief in God provides hope that I can be better person.

Hope for a Better World

Of course, if there is hope that each of us can be a better person, then because the world is made up of individuals there is also hope that this world can be a better world.  I look at groups like Habitat for Humanity whose mission is a world without shacks.  To that end they have built over 400,000 homes worldwide.  Or look at UMCOR (United Methodist Committee on Relief).  UMCOR raised over $40,000,000 for Haiti in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake.  There’s also our own mission work with Dr. Mir in Nicaragua where two teams a year go to run medical clinics.  Each of these is motivated by a belief in God that leads us to hope and act for a better world.

Hope for Something Better than Death

Last of all is death.  Death seems so, well, final.  In some ways it is.  It is good for all of us to occasionally be reminded of our mortality.  What is the number one cause of death?  Birth.  We will all die.

Within each of us lies a longing that hopes for something better than death.  It is a longing that death would not be the end of life.  Belief in God provides hope that there is some good and meaningful existence after death.  Once again we turn back to C.S. Lewis who said,

Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists.  A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food.  A duckling want to swim: well, there is such a thing as water.  Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex.  If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

I think we can see this longing in another psalm, Psalm 84:

I long, yes, I faint with longing,
to enter the courts of the LORD.
With my whole being, body and soul,
I will shout joyfully to the living God.
Psalm 84:2 NLT

Our longing for God is there, Lewis says, because the object of our longing, God, exists to fulfill that longing.

Faith & Uncertainty

At the end of this message, I’m not sure I’d say that I’ve presented evidence for belief in God.  I think I’d say that I’ve tried to present reasons why I believe in God, but even amidst these reasons it has been my own experience that I can never come to a place where I am totally certain about belief in God.  Belief requires faith. Paul says, “We walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7 NRSV).

Let me go back to Blake’s question: Why believe in God?  The tricky part of this equation for me has always been that unbelief also requires faith!  I have found no more certainty on the other side of the fence.  Whether you believe that God exists or you believe that God does not exist (or even if you’re not sure), all of these positions require faith.  Uncertainty never goes away.

So perhaps at the end of this message, Blake, you were hoping that I would have presented enough hard core evidence to wipe away all your uncertainties.  I doubt (no pun intended) that I have done that or that I ever could do that.  What I hope to have done is given you some of the reasons why I believe:

I look at the moral law and I think there must be a moral law giver.

I look at our world and even the scientific language and knowledge we use to describe it, and I see the fingerprints of a creator.

I look at suffering, and I see that belief in God offers three hopes:

Hope that I can become a better person,

Hope that this world can become a better world;

Hope that there is something better than death.

The decision is before you.  You can choose to believe or not to believe.  Both require faith.  Which one will you choose?

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Why Believe in God

June 6, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Questions 2.0What questions do you have about God? In this series well be exploring several questions that many people ask: Is God a Warrior (Memorial Day)?  Why Believe in God?  Is God a Man (Father’s Day)?  What is Baptism (Baptism Sunday)?  And we’ll end with a Q&A with Pastor Tom.   Join us for worship and bring your questions with you!

Here’s the question for this coming Sunday.  Thanks Blake!

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February Newsletter – I Believe

February 19, 2011 By Leave a Comment

What do you believe?  While driving in my car, I occasionally hear a show on the radio called This I Believe.  Individuals—some famous, some average Joes like you and me— present short essays about what they believe.  The topics range from politics to economics to religion and spirituality.  I often found these presentations very provocative.  I don’t always agree, but it is well worth the time to listen to what someone else believes.  It informs, challenges, sharpens, and at times even corrects my own beliefs.

A similar conversation has been going on for over 2000 years among Christians.  Christians have been talking with one another about what they believe about God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, community, salvation and more.  Sometimes the conversation has been quite heated.  Other times most everyone agreed.  The conversation continues today.

In the same way that it was helpful for me to listen to the thoughts of people on This I Believe, so has it been helpful for me to listen to the thoughts of a wide variety of Christians, both present and in the past, discuss what they believe.  Listening to that conversation has informed, challenged, sharpened, and at times even corrected my own beliefs about God.  I’m a better Christian because of taking time to listen to other Christians.

Coming up in March, we’ll be exploring just such a conversation.  It’s a conversation with the first Apostles, Jesus’ closest followers, and what has become known as The Apostles’ Creed.  Picking up The Apostles’ Creed is kind of like picking up someone’s diary.  You’re reading about how they see the world.  The difference is that The Apostles’ Creed isn’t any one person’s diary; it’s the church’s diary.

When we join in reading, studying, and having a conversation with The Apostles’ Creed, you’re joining in a conversation with Christians over 2000 years.  In the end, you may not agree with every one of them, but you will likely be informed, challenged, sharpened, and even at times corrected in your beliefs about God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, community, salvation, and more.  You will be a better Christian having taken the time to enter into the conversation.

So take a moment now and join the conversation by reflecting below on The Apostles’ Creed.  Then come worship with us in March!

Peace,
Tom

The Apostles’ Creed

I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.
He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit
and born of the Virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again.
He ascended into heaven,
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic* Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting.

Amen.

* “catholic” means “universal” and refers to the universal Christian church all across the world including Roman Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants.

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