I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world’s finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, of the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood that they’ve shed; and it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify what has happened.
Anyone who knows me well is more than aware that I love Tim Keller, the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City. The guy is just so humble, learned, and wise. No one currently living — and I mean no one — has more significantly impacted my faith and my understanding of what life is all about.
If I could force everyone I know to watch the following, I would. Alas, I can’t. Will you please watch? You’ll be very glad you did.
In the last post, I asked whether you, dear reader, might even want God to exist. And I tried to provide some reasons for maybe why that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. I’d like to shift gears a little bit and get philosophical.
According Boston College professor Peter Kreeft, the only truly formidable argument against God’s existence is the so-called “Problem of Evil.”[1] I’m going to spend at least the next post addressing it. But before we get into that, can we agree agree to put aside two common but unnecessary obstacles to thinking on this question?
1. Relativism. This is the idea that what is true for you isn’t necessarily what’s true for me. While helpful when arguing over vanilla versus chocolate, the idea is utter nonsense when you’re talking about whether a thing exists. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to say: “It may be true for you that the Sun is up there in sky, but it’s not true for me.” The Sun is either there or it isn’t. Same with God: He either exists or He doesn’t, whether we want Him to or not.
2. Science has disproved God’s existence. If God exists, He’s by definition outside the created order — and therefore not detectable via the Scientific Method. One would only find the idea palatable by bringing to the question an a priori assumption that He doesn’t exist. Which kinda makes intelligent conversation on the subject difficult.
[1] Peter Kreeft, A Shorter Summa (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 53.
Our Father in heaven, holy is Your name. May we utter it only in reverence
Continue to bring to earth the Kingdom You initiated that Easter morning so many years ago
May Your will be done here, as it is now and has ever been done in Heaven
Holy Spirit, this day, guide our steps that we may do the Father’s will
Give us that which will sustain our bodies, enough for today
We humbly ask that You forgive the evil we have done, just as we forgive all wrongs that have been done to us. No man, woman, or child owes us anything — we hereby release any and all such debts
We are a free online apologetics discussion group for Christians interested in deepening the imaginative and philosophical grounds for our faith. Our focus is primarily, though not exclusively, on the literary and philosophical works of C.S. Lewis, arguably the 20th century’s greatest defender of the Christian faith.
There are no prerequisites other than a love of reading and thinking.
We are set to begin our first session of 2020.
Here’s how it works:
Sign up in the comments section below, making sure to enter your name and email address. (You may also contact me via Facebook)
On Sunday, April 12th, 2020 (and going forward every Sunday), I will send out info on the week’s subject material — as well as a link to a video lecture
Starting on Wednesday, April 15th (and going forward on every Wednesday evening), we will gather from 7-8pm for group discussion via web conference
The plan right now is to continue meeting through early June, 2020
Week One will consist of a general overview. And Week Two will be on how we as humans create meaning from information. Both are setup material for C.S. Lewis’s treatment of love in his The Four Loves and Till We Have Faces.
If you want to get ahead of the reading, we will be starting in Week Three on The Four Loves. You might want to go ahead and purchase both books now, if you don’t already own them.
