Just in time for Hallowe'en, an Ipsos poll sponsored by the Associated Press reveals that a third of us believe in ghosts.
For the sake of comparison, the poll points out that the 34 percent who believe in ghosts is comparable to the proportion of people who like baseball (36 percent), the number who think it was a good idea to invade Iraq (37 percent), and the number who think President Bush is doing a good job (31 percent).
There is nothing to suggest that these are the same people.
People are capable of believing many things, many of which make no sense at all. I've observed that often, people tend to recite things they've heard other people say, without giving the matter any serious thought.
I'd like to see a poll of the number of people who believe "Everything happens for a reason."
I hear it frequently, and often from people who clearly haven't thought about what they're saying. But, they've heard it from other people, sometimes from preachers who base their belief in a thoroughgoing doctrine of predestination that assumes: (1) God is the ultimate cause of everything that happens, and (2) God wouldn't do anything without a good reason.
Thus, they have little trouble approaching everything from an inconvenient flat tire to the murder of a child to a deadly hurricane with the explanation "Everything happens for a reason."
Hogwash.
The Bible is hardly finished declaring that God created all things (twice, actually, in Genesis 1-2) before it underscores a core reality of creation: humans are given free will to make choices for good or for bad.
Otherwise, we would be so many spiritual robots, doing and good and praising God because that's all our programming allows.
The only "reason" for many things that happen is that people make choices, not because of a lurking divine purpose.
I firmly believe that God can work with us to bring something good from even the most troublesome of times (Romans 8:28), but that tenet does not require us to assume that God caused the tragedy just so something good could come from it.
Asserting the "everything happens for a reason" serves mainly to absolve ourselves of responsibility by laying the consequences for our actions at the feet of God, claiming there's a divine purpose for everything.
If people would stop to think about what they're saying, rather than just parroting the folk religion they've heard on the street, I suspect we'd hear fewer people claiming that "everything happens for a reason."
You might as well believe in ghosts.
[The photo is from "ghostresearch.org."]
24 comments:
I'm glad that you're capable of informing us of God's plan. Thanks.
Amen, brother. One thing I've learned is if you argue that bad things happen so God can bring more good out of them, you're essentially saying that God needs evil to do more good - that He can't do as much good unless there is evil. Plus, if you say God causes everything, then you have to blame Him for the existence of sin and evil. If you do that, is God really God? I think not; at the least He's not the God of the Bible who claims to be holy and just.
If God "blueprints" everything, it means He punishes people for sinning who had no choice in the matter. I'd like to hear someone argue that God would be just in doing that. If that's what happened, shouldn't He punish Himself? Also, if that's the case, should we punish people for theft, murder, child abuse, etc.? I mean, if they don't have a choice to do right or wrong, in our legal systems we don't punish them. (We might send them to a psych ward - but not to prison or the electric chair!)
Further, if God blueprinted everything, it means that God created some people for the express purpose of sending them to hell, and that doesn't seem to mesh with Scriptures like John 3:16-17, et al.
I don't have a real answer how we resolve the tension between God's sovereignty and omniscience and man's free will, but there is one thing I can affirm without hesitation: both God and man play active roles in salvation. I don't see any other way to understand the Scriptures that tell us we must have faith, call upon the name of the Lord, etc. to be saved and that if WE don't, WE condemn ourselves. Think, too, about the 10 Commandments. Why would God command us to do things if He controls whether we do them or not? If He controls our actions down the minutest detail, He is malicious to make us responsible for our actions and punishing us for doing wrong. If we have no control in our actions, He should hold Himself responsible, and clearly that is not what He does.
I think Calvinist position is untenable and incoherent. Incidentally, I think Arminianism is as well, but I believe both views have some truth to them. How about we go with Bible-ism and see the whole picture? How about we align ourselves with the One Who knows rather than a man who thinks he knows (Calvin, Arminius, etc.). I want to be called a God-ist who believes in Bible-ism.
Today I believe three things
1) The Coen Brothers conversation with Cormac McCarthy in Current Time Magazine has things in perspective when it almost biblically talks about how green bananas can help you prioritize
2)The First Chapter of the book of James gets it about right
3)FBC Madison, Alabama is gonna ordain a woman, Mary Jo Gessner on Sunday. I don't know what effect it will have on where they send their CP money or how much of it they send or what it means for Robeson County Baptist Association as discussed in other forums
4) I just noticed and I believe the option of having follow up comments sent to an email account is a good thing; great tracking device. I will notify my fundamentalist friend John Killian blog as I go there next cause he has had a rough couple weeks here in Alabama
And a poem, from Cormac McCarthy at the end of his Texas Trilogy in the ballpark of green bananas as a signifier.
I will be your child to hold
And you be me when I am old.
The world grows cold
The Heathen Rage
The Story's Told
Turn the Page
Deut. 4:35, 39; II Kings 5:15; 19:15; Isa. 37:16; Dan. 4:17; 5:18, 21; Hag. 2:22; Romans 9:12
That should be Romans 9:16.
Thanks to all for the comments, with the possible exception of the one that has nothing to do with this blog, connected only by the most tenuous words "I believe."
Debbie, thanks for pointing out some scriptures that assert (like many others) that God is King of the Universe. In my mind, that's still a far cry from making God responsible for all things that happen, however, other than in a very indirect manner.
I know this is something about which people of good will disagree.
I'm glad we have freedom to state our opinions, whether we were predestined to do so or not.
I realize that what the Bible says doesn't carry much weight in these here parts, but throughout the Bible we have examples where the same event is attributed to the one who perpetrated it as well as to God. This is the providence of God wherein He works through the deeds of men, even of wicked men, to accomplish His will.
So there must be some respect in which every thing that happens does happen for a reason. One of the best Biblical examples is the Assyrian invasion of Israel.
The king of Assyria boasted that he pulled that one off. God, through the prophet Isaiah (chapter 10), told the king of Assyria that He, not the king, pulled it off. He compared the king of Assyria to a saw in His own hand. Nonetheless, God judged the king because he voluntarily and wickedly did what he did.
Considering that God is the animating force in all life and movement, there is no way we can totally divorce him from anything that occurs. This is especially evident in the realm of what we call "natural forces." For while men (and perhaps animals) have some will of their own, the only will involved in the natural forces is the will of God.
The Scriptures everywhere ascribe all events of nature exclusively to the hand of God. As Jesus said, the Father,
"sends rain on the just and on the unjust."
So, for example, when a deluge befell the city of New Oreleans, wherein presumably both just and unjust men lived, it was a direct act of God. Unless we suppose that God does some things for no reason, then we must conclude that God did to that city what He did for some reason, whether we know what that reason was or not.
For the record, I am not a Calvinist and do not approach this subject from a predestinarian perspective. I approach it from the perspective that God acts in response to how we respond to Him and His word.
Mark Osgatharp
Wynne, Arkansas
For example,
Thanks for the comment, Mark. Enemy action as divine punishment is certainly replete in the Old Testament, though I'm not convinced that the Deuteronomistic covenant between God and Israel can be used as a model for all people and all times.
That same Old Testament, in Job 2:3, has God himself declaring that he allowed the accuser to attack Job "for no reason."
That text is worth some thought.
Before I get back to a previous comment, I'd like to make one here.
Everything happening for a reason does not mean God did it in and of itself. There seems to be some confusion in what I read.
"Cause and effect" rules here. Everything we do has consequences. In that regard, everything has a reason for being done.
But you can't say God did it for that reason alone. I think God knows ALL. That means, everything cause and effect, BEFORE it happens. He knows it all because He is God and is all-knowing. Knowing it all is not the same as causing it all. He caused us into existence, true. What we do is already known by God, true. However, to say God does it and not us is wrong, IMHO.
Tony:
My first two beliefs in my comment above have some merit, though it is true I didn't do much to justify their mention.
3 and 4 were what some call drive bys, and I will take more caution with items like that.
There is some merit in my dropping Cormac McCarthy's name. I hope you can make time to consider if nothing else, his passage in The Crossing Where there is this existential discussion about the faith of a priest versus the faith of a vagrant who lives under a suspended boulder.
I will come back to it later when I have refreshed myself with the passage.
In the meantime, consult the English Department at Campbell. McCarthy takes Job head on for the good of us all a recent reviewer in the Christian Century asserts.
Sfox
Tony,
You said,
"Enemy action as divine punishment is certainly replete in the Old Testament, though I'm not convinced that the Deuteronomistic covenant between God and Israel can be used as a model for all people and all times."
So you think that when God abolished the Old Testament and ratified the New that He put creation on automatic pilot? If not, I fail to see how your comment materially effects my point.
You said,
"That same Old Testament, in Job 2:3, has God himself declaring that he allowed the accuser to attack Job 'for no reason.'"
So you think God had no reason for allowing Satan to attack Job? I don't see that at all. What I see is that Satan had no reason to attack Job.
But God certainly had a reason to allow him to do it, because God doesn't do anything for "no reason."
Mark Osgatharp
Wynne, Arkansas
Just stumbling around the Web, I tripped over some scientifically inadequate polls on whether "everything happens for a reason." Probably really about the song by that name, and
with more than 4,000 votes, Lets Sing It got a lopsided majority in favor. With just 68 votes, Survey Central got the same general result, as did Toluna, with just 21 votes.
Frustrated, I pored through the Cambridge Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. There I learned that subscription in some form to that belief is a key measure of whether any of us exhibit religious thinking.
Thus I returned one of Tony's points:
We should think carefully indeed about this belief to which we variously subscribe.
Taken literally enough, it means that a few months before my 17th birthday, God for some reason killed my Grandmother Ruth Hinnant by having her car hit by a locomotive when she was only a few hundred yards short of completing an overwhelmingly important visit with me and with my then three-year-old sister.
No, I do not believe God assassinated my grandmother.
Nor have I ever seriously entertained the idea that her death was in retribution for some sin of mine that I have yet to apprehend. That, it seems to me, is the cruelest of preachments.
Oh, I'm a Presbyterian.
Even amid my church's predestination doctrine, I strongly suspect that there was on that fall afternoon, when the pears in my grandfather's orchard were ripe and the sun bright, a chance conjunction between her rush to the farm and the off-schedule passage of a locomotive.
What was left was for me and others to respond according to our faith, however shaken and overwhelmed by the flood of grief.
GWF3,
You said,
"Taken literally enough, it means that a few months before my 17th birthday, God for some reason killed my Grandmother Ruth Hinnant by having her car hit by a locomotive when she was only a few hundred yards short of completing an overwhelmingly important visit with me and with my then three-year-old sister. No, I do not believe God assassinated my grandmother."
The word "assassinated" carries a negative connotation so I would never say that God assassinated your grandmother. However, the Scriptures everywhere represent God as being is charge of whether we live or die, so to say that God providentially used a train wreck to take your grandmother's life is very consistent with the way Scripture presents the matter of life and death.
You said,
"Nor have I ever seriously entertained the idea that her death was in retribution for some sin of mine that I have yet to apprehend."
God took the life of David's child, not as a punishment to the child, but as a punishment on David. So it is certainly not out of character with God to take one man's life as a punishment to another.
That aside, there could be any number of reasons why thy Lord takes a life when and how He decides, none of which are necessarily evident to us. Our inability to comprehend why God acts, does not change the fact of it nor negate the fact that He has a reason for all His actions.
Mark Osgatharp
Wynne, Arkansas
Tony: I just do not believe that God is inactive either in our lives nor in the world. I believe there are too many passages, more than I have given here that override that thought. I do believe in Divine Sovereignty and that it is not in conflict with human freedom.
Mark: Just because some would disagree on this matter does not mean that the Bible means nothing to them. That I find is untrue. They may interpret it differently than you and I, but the Bible is important in these parts. To say that they do not believe the Bible is not only a manipulative, brow beating statement, but it is wrong to say this to Christians who are our brothers and sisters in Christ. With your view, you should realize this.
I also believe that the Bible teaches the Christian does not have to fear God as in being afraid, nor to suffer judgment from God through some death or other way. We must realize who we are in Christ and the wrath of God was taken by Christ at the Cross. Anything God does is for our good, not our harm and we no longer have to worry about the wrath of God. It was paid for by Christ.
Debbie,
You said,
"Just because some would disagree on this matter does not mean that the Bible means nothing to them."
I don't think that the Bible means nothing to a man because he disagrees with me in some interpretation of it.
I happen to be well familiar with the "moderate" Baptist mentality which is, after all is said and done, if they don't agree with what the Bible says they reserve the right to retain their contrary opinion. That is why they reject the concept of Biblical inerrancy - they think that sometimes the Bible writers just plain out erred.
This is "moderate" Baptist territory and that is why I made the comment about the Bible not carrying much weight in these parts.
You said,
"I also believe that the Bible teaches the Christian does not have to fear God as in being afraid, nor to suffer judgment from God through some death or other way."
The Bible teaches no such thing. The Scriptures, Old and New Testament, are replete with warnings of God's judgement and chastisement on His people. We have examples in the New Testament of God making Christians sick and evil killing them over their sins.
That does not, however, mean that every time a Christian suffers some calamity, sickness or death that it is punishment from God. It does mean that whatever we experience is from the hand of God, for whatever purpose He is working in our lives.
Mark Osgatharp
Wynne, Arkansas
Mark: For you to say this tells me that you have no Biblical concept of what all Christ did for us on the cross. I find this sad, even while you accuse others of not knowing or caring what the Bible says. This is not the post for it, but I will tell you that this is exactly what the Bible teaches.
The ones who should be afraid of God are those without Christ. Not Christians.
Debbie,
You said,
"The ones who should be afraid of God are those without Christ. Not Christians."
You are simply wrong. The Bible teaches God's children to fear Him.
A child of God need not fear eternal damnation, for that fate is reserved for the unregenerate. But there are many chastisements God can, and will, heap on His children when they are disobedient.
I know this because the Bible teaches it. I know this because I have experienced it as a child of God.
Mark Osgatharp
Wynne, Arkansas
I disagree Mark. The word fear means something entirely different than you are conveying. The scripture was not written in English originally and cannot be translated by our definitions. I won't take up any more time in this thread, but your theology while common is not what I see the Bible teaching when reading the Bible as a whole book. Also we are under the New Covenant as Christians, not the Old or the Old and the New.
Debbie,
You said,
"The word fear means something entirely different than you are conveying."
No it doesn't. The word fear, as used throughout the Scripture, means to be afraid, just like it does in modern English. All you have to do is read it in context and you will see.
"It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God."
Mark Osgatharp
Wynne, Arkansas
McCarthy, however, seems to stop just short of extreme existential nihilism, not quite embracing the totality of the “Nothingness” nihilism proffers. In The Crossing, McCarthy suggests rather an overarching existential view of reality and of God. In McCarthy’s novels, God seems to be a given that all characters more or less acknowledge, but He continually turns up as being unknowable and distant. Such a notion of God could be termed agnostic—that is, “not knowing”—and “not knowing” as a form of “knowing”—that is, pronouncing the truth statement that “God is not knowable”—is almost indistinguishable from its atheist cousin, either stance lending itself well to existential nihilism, if not quite crossing the mark in all its particulars. If we are to find our purpose in McCarthy’s novels—if indeed there is one—it seems not to be bound up in God, who is distant and unknowable. Marty Priola, webmaster of the official McCarthy website, expresses a complementary sentiment:
Mortimer Adler said that the existence of God could be proved logically, but that the existence of a good God was where the leap of faith came in. I agree with that. And I think McCarthy might too. His characters seem to presuppose the existence of God, but then they wonder an awful lot about His nature. (Priola, 9th post)
In his sweeping summary of McCarthy’s fiction, Jarrett’s final paragraph concludes with these parting words:
. . . What belief that can be registered in McCarthy’s fiction is first a belief in the significance of the choice of linguistic style and a belief that fictional and human identities are both not fixed but derive from choice. Second, McCarthy’s fiction expresses a belief—a highly qualified belief—in narrative as a replacement for the older verities of divine narrative. If knowledge of the darkness of the world and the self is a perilous knowledge, what knowledge we can have must be expressed in the form of narrative: “All is telling.” Beyond their considerable range of language and style, McCarthy’s narratives gain their power largely through the intensity of this belief in narrative and narrative alone. (153)
The above comes from the googled site http://www.mrrena.com/misc/cormac.shtml
It is worth your time to google up entering Cormac McCarthy and the Nature of God if that will help you get their faster.
The segment about the Priest and the Vagrant in the Crossing is in the second Chapter about page 120 or 147. The chapter starts with roughly this sentence:
"Doomed enterprises forever divide us into the then and the now."
Do find the recent interview of McCarthy and the Coen Brothers in Time.
Deb. YOu especially may like his novels.
Sfox
Romans 8:13-17
For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. 14 For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. 15 For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, "Abba! Father!" 16 The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, then heirs- heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.
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