Dear Dan Barker – II

What's it all about?

Frans Hals, Young Man with a Skull

Dear Mr. Barker,
    You will recall that we were discussing the chapter "Dear Theologian" in your book, the chapter that was written as though it were a letter from God addressed to theologians. In the first section of your "letter" you had raised certain objections to the argument from design, which we attempted to answer in our last blog post. In the next section, which we consider today, you went on to discuss the meaning and purpose of life. The thread of your argument was a little hard to follow, consisting as it did of one objection after another, but if we understand you correctly, the point you were trying to make is this: if human beings find meaning and purpose in life by submitting to the will of God, then how does God find meaning and purpose? Conversely, if God can exist happily without being created or submitting to someone else's will, then why cannot humans?
    We would begin by pointing out the obvious difficulty with this line of argument: it basically puts you, a finite human being, in the position of pcychoanalyzing the Deity, not that theologians haven't tried to do it themselves from time to time. Because God is infinite and eternal, all-knowing and all-wise, there are some things about Him that we can never hope to understand, and, frankly, some things that are just plain none of our business. For the most part what we know about God, about how He thinks and why He does certain things, is based solely on revelation; we only know what He Himself is pleased to tell us. Beyond that we must maintain a respectful silence, and not pretend to know more that we do.
    What the Bible does tell us, however, is that God is actively involved with His creation. In fact, in one sense the whole biblical narrative is the record how God has acted in human history. You are familiar, no doubt, with the doctrine of divine providence, as well as the plan of redemption. At one point in your argument you picture God as saying "I created the universe from quarks to galactic clusters, and it runs okay on its own . . . there is nothing in the universe for Me to do. It's boring up here" (p. 149). Yet that is not the way God would have put it. What the Bible actually says is that universe does not "run okay on its own." "By him all things consist" (Col. 1:17), and He is "upholding all things by the word of his power" (Heb. 1:3). "For in him we live, and move, and have our being" (Acts 17:28). While He may ordinarily use natural causes to govern His creation, that does not preclude the fact that He is the ultimate, controlling cause. Moreover, He indwells believers by His Spirit, hears and answers their prayers, and guides and protects them through life.
    You then raise some questions about the nature of God's love, and wonder how He can be omnipotent, and a God of love, and yet consign billions to hell. This, as you well know, is the classic problem of "theodicy," the justice of God in the permission of evil, and it is one of the most impenetrable mysteries of theology.
    However, if you think that there is some sort of contradiction here, consider this: what occasioned the paradox or anomaly is our own irrational, abusive and self-destructive behavior. Before we ask, "why did God permit sin?," we should first as the question, why do we commit it? After all, we have no one to blame for our predicament but ourselves. God did not force us to sin – we do it voluntarily.
    As for eternal punishment, let us ask ourselves these questions: Does God love human beings? Then how should He react when to those who harm are injure others, the people whom He loves? With benign indifference? If God is at all just, He must punish and destroy evil. He could have simply consigned the entire human race to hell and that would have been the end of it. But instead He chose to do something else: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, so that whoso believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." I know that this is a verse that you yourself have quoted many times in the past. But it means that God can both forgive sin and punish it at the same time. Is there a contradiction here in His character?
    You point out that any love that is motivated by fear of hell is no love at all, and you are quite correct in this. But you surely have heard of the new birth and how it changes a person's heart. The regenerate person is given a new heart so that he loves God freely and spontaneously. He loves God because of what Christ did for him. It is love responding to love. There is nothing forced or coerced about it.
    We also note that in the next section of your "letter" you objected to the idea of a substitutionary atonement. People should have to pay for their own sins, you say. First you complain that God is unloving because He sends sinners to hell; then you complain that He is unjust because He provided a substitute to take our penalty for us. Your suggested alternative is that God is just a made-up concept, which leaves us with neither justice nor redemption. You will forgive us if we appear to be less than enthused with the prospect.
    You may certainly pay for your own sins if you so desire; that is your prerogative. But as for us, we would rather avail ourselves of the grace and mercy freely offered us. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound!

No Salvation apart from Christ?

Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved."

            Acts 4:12; NKJV

 

Van Gogh, Weeping Woman

    In her best-selling book Beyond Belief religious scholar Elaine Pagels tells of a close friend of hers who was tragically killed in a car accident at age sixteen. Ms. Pagels was attending an evangelical church at the time, and was distressed to hear that since her friend was Jewish he was not born again, and hence was doomed to hell. "Distressed and disagreeing with their interpretation – and finding no room for discussion – I realized that I was no longer at home in their world and left that church" (Beyond Belief, p. 31).
    The story is tragic, and one can readily sympathize with Ms. Pagels. Unfortunately we cannot delude ourselves here, as terrible as the truth may seem. It would be nice to imagine that all well-meaning and sincere people go to heaven when they die. But so to imagine is to lose sight of the bigger picture. As we have seen, no human being meets God's standard of righteousness, and the this is because of the dark forces that are at work in every human heart. There are many different religions and philosophies in the world, each with many earnest and sincere followers. But we must face the fact that as human beings we simply do not measure up to God's standards, and this creates a problem – a huge problem.
    As we have also seen, the answer involves an atonement of some sort, but then this raises the further question as to who is qualified to provide the atonement. And that, in turn, raises yet another problem: the atonement has to be the substitution of one life for another. But in order for it to be a genuine substitution it has to be of equivalent value to the original. If I smash up your brand new Mercedes and offer you my beat-up old Ford in return, it is hardly a fair exchange. Sacrifices of animals were made in the ancient Jewish temple in Jerusalem, but the blood of a bull or a goat can never really be the substitute for the life of a human being. Something more is needed. It must be a human life for a human life.

Van Gogh, Man Reading the Bible

    Moreover, the person being sacrificed must be perfectly innocent himself. Trading the life of one condemned criminal for that of another condemned criminal hardly satisfies the demands of justice. They both deserve to die on their own accounts. The substitute has to be innocent in order to offer his life in exchange for that of the criminal. It is for these reasons that there is only one person who is qualified to fill the role, and the person is Jesus Christ. Because He is true man He can act as the representative of the human race; and because He is true God His death is of innocent value and sufficient to cover the sins of the entire human race if need be. Moreover, because He was perfectly sinless He did not have to die for His own sins, and thus was in a position to give His life as an atonement for others. Thus He was able to do what no purely human priest or animal sacrifice could possibly do, and that was to really and truly atone for our sins.
    This is why there is no salvation apart from Christ. From the very nature of the case He is the only one who is in a position to secure salvation for us. Far from being tyrannical, for God to send His only Son into this sin-cursed world to die for our sins was an extraordinary demonstration of mercy and kindness. The person who throws a life-preserver to a drowning man is not being a tyrant; he is trying to save the man's life.
    What makes Christianity unique among the world's religions is that it offers mankind a Savior. If you think that you are a righteous person, if you think that your own good works are sufficient to merit heaven when you die, then there are other religions for you. But if you are honest with yourself, and can see some of the evil that is ingrained within human nature, if you can see that you could never stand before a righteous and holy God on the basis of your own merit, then you need a Savior. Every other religion offers a way to heaven paved with the pretense of human goodness. Christianity offers sinners salvation through a Redeemer. Let every person judge for himself what truly meets the need.