MICHAEL NOVAK

What are we to say about a human condition in which “Nature red in tooth and claw” rears up on its massive hindquarters, and hurls a 30-foot wall of water against the lowlands of eleven of the poorest and most populous nations on earth, including some playgrounds of the rich of Europe and America, and crushes, chokes, and twists away the lives of going past 150,000 human beings?

Truly, the continuing presence of evil in the world—perhaps most acutely when this evil is manifested in unconscious Nature, out of its own laws and processes—is a great scandal to loving, believing Christians. It is truly hard for them to understand how a kind and gracious Providence can allow such terrible things to happen to human beings. To so many scores of thousands of human beings. On such a vast scale.In some ways, it is easier to understand how individual human beings can do horribly evil deeds. At least one can point to their free will. Struggling to find plausible reasons, one recalls one’s own irrationalities and sins, murders one has read of in the local papers, etc.

It is true that some evils are so unspeakable and unimaginable that they defy all attempted comparisons to anything in anyone’s previous experience—the Holocaust, for example. How can a good God possibly allow that horror to happen to (in a twofold sense) his own people? But even these we attribute to human agency, however monstrous. Whereas the dead that have suffered from a naked act of Nature seem somehow to have been stricken by God’s own unmediated action.

What can biblically informed believers reply to those who, contemplating the massive destruction and death in today’s Asia, blame their God (a God in Whom those who do the blaming do not believe)?

Confronted with this demand—confronted with it, actually, quite often in my lifetime—I think first of this: Since those who ask it do not believe in God, the question is not what it seems to be. The real point of the question is to get me to groan inwardly by agreeing that the one who thinks he is my superior is correct, after all. The real point is to get me to deny the reality of God.

The point is even a little more complex. My taunter does not want me to deny the reality of God on the ground that the assertion of that reality is absurd. Actually, my taunter holds that everything, at bottom, is absurd. My taunter really wants to show me that I am like him; and that I too am driven to join him in recognizing the absurd at the bottom of all things. He wants to prove that he has been smarter all along, and to watch me have to surrender as he has surrendered. He has given up his faith in reason all the way down, and he wants me to do the same.

My second thought is as follows. The Bible warns us often of the confrontation with the absurd that each of us who believes in the goodness of the Lord must face, and more than once in our lives. We see all the time in the Bible that the just are made to suffer, while the unjust live and laugh in plenty, heaping ridicule on the just. We read of the horrid, unfathomable afflictions that God piles up on his faithful servant, Job. Job refuses to say that in doing these things to him God is acting justly or kindly; Job knows his own pain, and he refuses to lie. He refuses to “prettify” God, or to cut God down to human standards. He knows that God is no sentimental liberal.

And if Job is the type of “the suffering servant,” whose sufferings cannot be explained by his own deeds, and whose sufferings are on the face of it horribly and inexcusably unjust, so also is the Son of God, Jesus Christ, the sinless One, who in forewarning his apostles of the sufferings he will endure on the cross alludes to Job more than once.

Who’s Judging Whom?

Stand before the cross. Look at the body of this suffering servant of God. Look, perhaps, with eyes opened by Mel Gibson’s all but unendurable The Passion. If this is what God did to His own Son— His own being, with Whom He is one—then what hope is there that we will be treated “nicely”? The God who does this is not “the God of niceness.” His scale of grandeur is far different from ours. One has no sense of Him whatever if one does not feel inner trembling and vast distance.

He is not a God made in our image. We are made as (very poor) images of Him—images chiefly in the sense that we experience insight and judgment, decision and love, and that we too have responsibilities.

This is the God who made the vastness of the Alps and the Rockies and the Andes; who knows the silence of jungles no human has yet penetrated; who made all the galaxies beyond our ken; who gave to Mozart and Beethoven and Shakespeare and Milton and Dante and legions of others great talents; who infused life into the eyes of every newborn, and love into the hearts of all lovers; and imagined, created, and expressed love for all the things that He made. He made all the powers of storms, and all the immense force of earthquakes, and the roiling and tumultuous churning of the oceans. He imagined all the beautiful melodies we have ever heard, and more that we have not.

God is God.

God is our Judge.

We are not His judge.

The question is not, “Does God measure up to our (liberal, compassionate, self-deceived) standards?” The question is, “Will we learn—in silence and in awe at the far-beyond-human power of nature—how great, on a far different scale from ours, is God’s love?”

It would be the greatest and most obscene of illusions for a man, any man, to imagine that he has greater love for a child mangled in the oily, dark waters of the recent tsunami than the Creator of that child has. It would be like Ivan Karamazov being unable to forgive God so long as one single child anywhere went to bed at night crying in loneliness and in pain. Who is Karamazov to think that his own love for that child—a purely abstract, speculative, hard-case, counterexample love—is greater than that of the child’s Creator?

The tapestry on which God weaves human existence is not the tapestry within the framework of time that we experience. As we do not comprehend the power of nature (especially nowadays, when we live so far removed from it, so protected from it), even more we do not begin to comprehend the love and goodness of God.

The truth is, the sight and smell of awful human death is sometimes more than we can take. Perhaps we should feel confidence in the power of God’s love, but we do not see it. All we feel is the night. Our darkness is as keen as that of the unbeliever and the nihilist.

Yet in that darkness, we the believers alone (not the unbeliever or the nihilist) feel betrayed by One whom we love. We alone feel anguish because we cannot understand.

But it is not as if we had not often before bumped into the limits of our understanding, and recognized nonetheless that there are undeniable glimmerings of powers and presences we know not of. And, like Job, we refuse to deny the power of the goodness and light which we do see, their power to go out into the night in which we cannot now see.

It does seem that the Creator is not always kind, not even just, within the bounded space that we experience. It does seem that the Creator acts with undeniable cruelty. In our time, we have seen unimaginable suffering. Like Job, we cannot deny what we see.

Neither can we deny the Light, which is what makes the absurd seem absurd. Only in contrast to Light is the absurd absurd. Otherwise it is only a brute matter of fact.

No less than the unbeliever or the nihilist does the devout Jew or Christian inhabit the night. But only the believers continue in the silence to utter the unseeing yes of our love. The yesthat Ivan Karamazov cannot say in the night Alyosha does say.

Science and the Demands of Virtue

FATHER GREGORY JENSEN

Contrary to the popular understanding, the natural sciences are not morally neutral. Not only do the findings of science have moral implications, the actual work of scientific research presupposes that the researcher himself is a man of virtue.

Not only do the findings of science have moral implications, the actual work of scientific research presupposes that the researcher himself is a man of virtue. When scientific research is divorced from, or worse opposed to, the life of virtue it is not simply the research or the researcher that suffers but the whole human family.Take for example, the scandal surrounding the conduct of researchers at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at East Anglia University in the UK. Whether or not the recently revealed emails and computer programs from undermine the theory of anthropological global warning (AGW), it is clear that current public policy debate is based at least in part on the research of scientists of questionable virtue who sacrificed not only honesty and fair play but potentially the well being of us all in the service of their own political agenda.

All of this came to mind recently when a friend sent me a talk on the environment (Through Creation to the Creator) by the Orthodox theologian Metropolitan Kallistos Ware. Ware argues that all creation is “a symbol pointing beyond itself, a sacrament that embodies some deep secret at the heart of the universe.” Unlike the Gnosticism that hold sways in many areas of life (including scientific research) the Christian Church argues that the secret of creation is both knowable and known. Creation, Ware says, points beyond itself to “the Second Person of the Trinity, the Wisdom and Providence of God” Who is Himself both “the source and end” of all created being. Insofar as the Christian tradition has an environmental teaching at all it is this: Jesus Christ is the “all-embracing and unifying” Principal of creation.

At its best natural science research is a means of exploring and deepening our appreciation and gratitude to God for “the variety and particularity of creation—what St Paul calls the ‘glory’ of each thing (1 Cor 15:41).” But appreciation and gratitude are not the fruit of technical competence but an ascetical effort. We must learn to “love the world for itself.” According to Ware, we do this not simply for what the natural world can do for us but “in terms of its own consistency and integrity.” And again, at its best scientific research has a positive role to play here. This is what makes Climategate so tragic; once again science is being twisted to serve selfish ends.

C.S. Lewis reminds us of the danger here when he observes that, “Each new power won by man is a power over man as well.” While our scientific advances have made us stronger in some ways, they have made us weaker in others. While not without copious benefits, science represents a real and substantial risk for both our relationship to creation and to ourselves. Giving in, Lewis points out, means that we no longer seek to “conform the soul to reality” through “knowledge, self-discipline and virtue.” As with magic in an earlier age, modern science tempts us to “subdue reality to the wishes of men.”

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Faith, Thought |

DAVID POPENOE

A discussion of the most common misinformation about marriage.

1. Marriage benefits men much more than women.

Contrary to earlier and widely publicized reports, recent research finds men and women to benefit about equally from marriage, although in different ways. Both men and women live longer, happier, healthier and wealthier lives when they are married. Husbands typically gain greater health benefits while wives gain greater financial advantages.¹

2. Having children typically brings a married couple closer together and increases marital happiness.

Many studies have shown that the arrival of the first baby commonly has the effect of pushing the mother and father farther apart, and bringing stress to the marriage. However, couples with children have a slightly lower rate of divorce than childless couples.²

3. The keys to long-term marital success are good luck and romantic love.

Rather than luck and love, the most common reasons couples give for their long-term marital success are commitment and companionship. They define their marriage as a creation that has taken hard work, dedication and commitment (to each other and to the institution of marriage). The happiest couples are friends who share lives and are compatible in interests and values.³

4. The more educated a woman becomes, the lower are her chances of getting married.

A recent study based on marriage rates in the mid-1990s concluded that today’s women college graduates are more likely to marry than their non-college peers, despite their older age at first marriage. This is a change from the past, when women with more education were less likely to marry.⁴

5. Couples who live together before marriage, and are thus able to test how well suited they are for each other, have more satisfying and longer-lasting marriages than couples who do not.

Many studies have found that those who live together before marriage have less satisfying marriages and a considerably higher chance of eventually breaking up. One reason is that people who cohabit may be more skittish of commitment and more likely to call it quits when problems arise. But in addition, the very act of living together may lead to attitudes that make happy marriages more difficult. The findings of one recent study, for example, suggest “there may be less motivation for cohabiting partners to develop their conflict resolution and support skills.” (One important exception: cohabiting couples who are already planning to marry each other in the near future have just as good a chance at staying together as couples who don’t live together before marriage).⁵

Read the whole article here……………..

By Joshua A. Goldberg|Christian Post Reporter

Nick Allen reports:

The former US vice-presidential candidate argued that a humble spirit could help leaders to get more answers on issues such as health care, energy and national security.

In a video released Friday by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, the 2008 Republican candidate for vice president, said it was important for leaders to recognise they don’t have all the answers.

Mrs Palin said: “No one person has all the right answers. It takes a united nation, and it does take godly counsel, and it takes prayer and answers to prayer - and a collective humble heart of a nation seeking God’s hand of protection and his blessings of prosperity.

“I think if we can get back to that, our country will be a safer, more prosperous and healthier nation.”

The former Alaska governor referred to an Abraham Lincoln proclamation that declared a day of national humiliation, fasting, and prayer.

She said the United States has been “touched by God” because the nation’s early leaders dedicated the country to God.

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November 19th, 2009 Posted in News |

`The Evangelical Alliance’

We must challenge and care for Christian young people growing up in a culture of consumerism – that was the message to Christian leaders at the Evangelical Alliance council.

The Alliance revealed the results of a survey – taken of 800 young people at Soul Survivor ’s ‘Momentum’ event for students and 20-somethings – as part of an Alliance council symposium on ‘The 18-30s Mission: a Missing Generation?’

According to the survey, young adults are most attracted to a church by the resources it provides to support their own personal faith. Relevant preaching was ranked as the characteristic that would most attract them to church, followed by excellent worship and with people they can relate to coming third. The least attractive characteristics were the church being mission-orientated or a safe place to invite friends.

Only one-third of the under 30s said they see themselves as leaders in their church.

Soul Survivor leader Mike Pilavachi, addressing the council, said a culture of consumerism, individualism and entitlement has “eaten into the psyche of 20-somethings.”

“What that mitigates against completely is commitment to community,” he said, explaining that 20-somethings are always in a futile search for perfection, are afraid of going into the real world and show a great deal of pain in ministry times.

“We’ve got to help them,” he said. “We’ve got to love them, we’ve got to listen to them, but also we’ve got to find ways of gently, lovingly but definitely challenging some of the things that come from a culture of consumerism, individualism and entitlement.”

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REX MURPHY

What was once venerated is now, in many ways, dismissed and even despised.

What was once venerated is now, in many ways, dismissed and even despised.Matthew Arnold, the great Victorian poet, marked the turning moment. He had early intimations of “the way we live now,” a way largely evacuated of its Christian allegiances, certainly — in the public sphere — evacuated of the regard and respect that the profession of Christianity once automatically evoked.

“The Sea of Faith/ Was once, too, at the full,” he wrote, before going on in lines of immense power to record:

But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Arnold was more than a bit of a prophet. Blasted by the great cold winds of secularism and scientism, faith in the old sense, faith in Christianity in once or so-called Christian countries, is not only in decline and defensive. Faith is, at the public level, being actively pushed away, visited with dismissive scorn. At the same time, ideas, attitudes and “positions” that have never been seen under the rubric of faith increasingly seek the protections of “sanctified” belief.

What else to make of a human-rights ruling (no, not from one of our own restless engines of pseudo equity) from the European Court this week. According to this ruling, the crucifixes that hang in most Italian classrooms violate religious and educational freedoms. Yes, the cross in the Catholic country violates religious and educational freedoms. Is Dan Brown on the European Court?

A case was brought before this noble court (we know it’s noble because it bears the banner of human rights) by a Finnish-born woman, an atheist, who complained that her children — in Italian classrooms, mind you — were “exposed” to crucifixes. Crucifixes in Italy — who would have guessed? It’s like going to Newfoundland and complaining about wharves.

The court said this imposition might “disturb” children who weren’t Christian and, to ward off a wave of trauma, ordered Italy to remove the crucifixes from its schools.

A case could be made that, whenever you hear of an action by a human-rights tribunal of any kind, you should mark it down that — quite likely — they are busy circumscribing the real rights or dignity of the various branches of Christianity, with a particular focus on Catholicism.

In this case, the European Court of Human Rights — in response to one complaint, from one atheist — told an entire country that has been the centre of world Christianity for 2,000 years to get rid of its most revered and cardinal symbol. It’s the same old story: In the name of official tolerance, mandated intolerance.

At least the Italian authorities mustered something of an appropriate response to this insolent busybodyness. One government minister, Roberto Calderoli, loosed this volley: “The European court has trodden on our rights, our culture, our history, our traditions and our values.” Another minister noted that preventing the crucifix from being displayed is “an act of violence against the deep-seated feelings of the Italian people and all persons of goodwill.”

Meantime, in the country of Matthew Arnold’s birth, another judge was busy passing an Alice in Wonderland verdict. This case arose from a wrongful-dismissal claim by a man of intense Green passions who said he was fired because of his global warming beliefs. The judge ruled that “a belief in man-made climate change … is capable, if genuinely held, of being a philosophical belief” for the purpose of the Employment Equality (Religion and Belief) Regulations.

And a 2,000-year-old religion is banned from manifesting its most precious symbol in front of the eyes of trauma-prone atheists. Lord, have mercy on us.

So there you have it: Global warming is a philosophical belief and, if you “genuinely” believe it, has the status of a religion. And will be zealously protected by some courts when an actual religious symbol is objected to by someone who “genuinely” does not believe in any religion.

I have no idea what this “genuinely” believing something has to do with the actual belief in question. Some people genuinely believe the details of An Inconvenient Truth. Is the Al Gore sermon now protected as an “article of faith”? A PowerPoint version of the Mosaic tablets?

I have long thought that the “ism” in environmentalism was a very worrisome suffix. All “isms” are thought-blockers, flags of ardent belief, signals more of passionate intensity than mature judgment.

Well, now it’s official. Global warmingism has court-warranted standing as a religion. And a 2,000-year-old religion is banned from manifesting its most precious symbol in front of the eyes of trauma-prone atheists. Lord, have mercy on us. Please.

Is everything sacred — except religion?