A Christian Worldview: How Did We Get Here? Part II

As established in the first post in this seriest, seeing life through Jesus eyes entails seeing the world and the life in it as created by God. None of us is an accident of chance (not even the lowly amoeba is); instead, all life is the result of God actively creating life at some point in the past and then ceasing thereafter from creating life. Furthermore, this perspective is one that actually comports with reality, whereas any viewpoint excluding the existence of a creator and relying upon random chance and processes that could be active today does not.

That, however, leaves us with the questions of why life is what it is and why humans are what they are. What of suffering, and death, and evil? What kind of Creator must we have when there is such misery in the creation that creator has made? The texts of Genesis 3:14-24 and Romans 1:18-32 yield an answer, which is really quite robust and needs to be braided into any Christian worldview.

Simply put, the reason that conditions are what they are is that God is angry. The word used to describe God’s attitude toward life, particularly human life (Romans 1) is wrath [Koine: orge]. Literally, the word refers to a swelling up, figuratively it refers to the state of being teeming in opposition. In other words, the wrath (orge) God feels towards humanity moves him to stand up and fight against them. That might seem a quaint idea to modern sensibilities, but it is biblical and it lines up with reality!

But why is God so wrathful? According to Romans 1, it is because mankind has endeavored, from the beginning, to marginalize and dismiss God in order to do whatever they have wanted to do. Whether we look at the story of Adam and Eve, or at the generations leading up to Noah, or at those who built a tower in opposition to God’s right to rule over and judge us, or anything since, the biblical history of mankind is played on one note: resistance to God. His counterpoint is wrath.

In this day and age, is that an idea that has any merit, any truth value to it? Look for yourself. Are people willful while they put their Creator on a bookshelf or ignore that Creator altogether? Does dismissing or neglecting the Creator allow them to pursue whatever course of action they see fit? Do they project upon God what they want him to be or what conveniences their willful agenda? That certainly jibes with my observations.

Even good people, the very best people, don’t take God seriously.

If they're not projecting their wishes and excuses upon God in one way, then they're dismissing and neglecting him on another. No one in the natural is truly unselfish or unwillful or God-seeking, and it has always been so.

God’s reaction to such was to pull the plug. Pull the plug on perfection, pull the plug on life, pull the plug on health, pull the plug on relationship, and leave us to our own devices since that’s what we wanted. The plug pulled, God removed himself from our realtime perception of him and left humankind to themselves, given over to a mind without God in it. As a result humankind lives flawed lives in a flawed world until death comes and each faces ultimate judgment.

Philosophers worry about theodicy, the justification of a perfectly good God given all the suffering and death here on earth. It’s not a thing a person looking at the world through Jesus eyes needs to worry about, for the fault lies not in God, but in humankind. The question is not how can God be all-good in the midst of so much evil, but why, since God is only good, it’s not a whole lot worse! At some point in time, given God's perfections, it will have to be.

So we wonder, “How did we get here?” and we see the Bible has an answer. In the beginning, God made everything, including life, and then he rested. He made humans in his image with divine-like powers of will, choice, creativity, etc. and placed them in a perfectly made world. But humans, in their god-like abilities, opted to trust their own judgment and do their own will rather than God’s. They rebelled and triggered the judgment of a perfectly just God.

Death and all the misery, weakness and suffering that comes with it is the price humans pay in the here and now for wanting God as he truly is out of the picture. Not only in themselves was the penalty inflicted but also upon the world around them God made for them. As it was for Adam and Eve, so it is for the rest of us. We have been given over to ourselves, separated from God, and the result is a depraved mind in a world broken beyond repair, leading to death.

But there is an antidote. God has a plan for fallen humankind, lost in isolation, brokenness and death--a redemptive plan. If we turn from our rebellion, from our rejection of God, and embrace him in our lives and living, he will welcome us into fellowship with himself and give us his very own breath so we can live in soundness of mind and fellowship with him now and forever. This is the message of Christ, this is what his death and resurrection secured for all who repent and accept the gospel.

A Christian worldview perceives that we are not accidents of chance but the creations of purpose--the purpose of God. A Christian worldview sees everything as a creation made by God but broken by sin, wrecked by death, and thankfully, redeemed in Christ. A Christian worldview sees that God has put us in this broken place so we would see the folly of our rebellion, repent, and put our trust in him.

A Christian worldview sees God in the face of Christ and realizes he is the only way out of the here we've gotten into.

The Parable of Creation

And the disciples came and said to Him, “Why do You speak to them in parables?” Jesus answered them, “To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been granted. For whoever has, to him more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has shall be taken away from him. Therefore I speak to them in parables; because while seeing they do not see, and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. In their case the prophecy of Isaiah is being fulfilled, which says,

‘You will keep on hearing, but will not understand;
You will keep on seeing, but will not perceive;
For the heart of this people has become dull,
With their ears they scarcely hear,
And they have closed their eyes,
Otherwise they would see with their eyes,
Hear with their ears,
And understand with their heart and return,
And I would heal them.’

But blessed are your eyes, because they see; and your ears, because they hear.
Matthew 13:10-16 NASB

par·a·ble [par-uh-buhl]: a short fictitious story designed to illustrate or teach some truth, religious principle, or moral lesson.

Origin: 1275–1325; Middle English parabil  < Late Latin parabola  comparison, parable, word < Greek parabolḗ  comparison, equivalent to para- side by side + bolḗ  a throwing

Synonyms: allegory, homily, apologue.
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2013.

When Jesus explained to his disciples the reason he taught in parables, he was not giving them instructions to follow in order to achieve effective pedagogy. Just the opposite, in fact: parables, as used by Jesus, were meant to be equivocal in order to give an out to those not willing to learn. Some would consider that deceptive, I consider that brilliant, and far more to the point--effective to the purpose Jesus was aiming to achieve.

Two classes of audience would hear the parable and both would perceive it differently. The same words, the same syntax, the same context, and yet those in one part of the audience were meant to understand one thing, and those in the other part something else. This was not due to flaws in communication, nor glitches in reception, it was by design and it worked perfectly.

Jesus' use of parables was meant to filter out those with faith. Those listeners with the faith perspective Jesus desired, would hear the parable, and with some added elucidation, understand the divine truth contained therein. Those without the faith perspective Jesus desired would hear the parable and not see divine truth at all. Advertisers today attempt to do something similar in public media by using their craft to target a more specific audience within a broader one.

I see the creation as a parable spoken by God. One not communicated in words capable of being reduced to ink on a page, but one assembled in subatomic particles and fields and perceived as reality. Like the parables of Jesus, it is not produced so as to garner the same perception in one group that sees it as it does in another. Either group looks at the same phenomena, the same facts, sees the same interactions, and uses the same mathematical language to describe it, but they see a different underlying message.

For those with the faith perspective God desires, it's divine message is all too clear. For those without that perspective, they see no divine message at all. Someone might protest that that is deceptive. If it is (and I don't think that is the case), it is no more deceptive than Jesus teaching by parables. God knows what makes for everlasting life and is well within his rights to filter for that amongst the creatures he's made in his image. The problem involved is with the hearers and seers, not with the communicator.

And let's be clear here: this phenomenon is not a mere accident, the foibles of communication, nor simply a trick. There is an "otherwise" at play in this that the unhearing consciously act according to. There are consequences to seeing or hearing with a faith perspective, repercussions that are just too repulsive to abide in their judgment. So they close their eyes, and stop their ears, and guard their hearts against the parable of creation.

The Emptiness of Depravity

I believe the scriptures teach the total depravity of natural man (see this, this, and this, e.g.). Human beings, left to their own devices, would not seek after God nor do good. It's not that efforts along that line cannot be nor are not made by humans; it is that those efforts can only end up being idolatrous on the one hand, or productive of a "righteousness" that at best is merely self-congratulatory on the other. If man is to know God or God's way, it will take God revealing it rather than mankind discovering or enacting it--God alone is good.

Which brings us to the practical core of depravity. Depravity is not defined so much by what is in us as it is by what is lacking. Depravity is emptiness, a lack of something necessary if one were to be other than depraved. When Adam and Eve sinned and they (and the offspring "in their loins") fell into depravity, what they fell into was a separation from God. Sin broke their oneness with God--it de-Spirited us, if you will.

Under such a view, our inability exists not so much in an absolute incapacity, but in that God is not sharing himself with us. In the natural, we are still creatures with a spirit (capacity) even though we are without the inspiration of the Spirit (ability). Depravity is what comes out of us when God is not rubbing off on us, so to speak.  Such an inability is not so intrinsic to our nature that it would continue if God came near, any more than idle iron filings remain so if a magnet is passed near. There is no need to posit that a person would be unable to respond to God without first being reengineered.