The Freedom of Being Wrong

Posted on August 17, 2024 by me

One of the few things that I am certain about–and I’ve said this many times before–is that I am at least partially wrong about much of what I think about God, life, and nearly everything. It’s part and parcel of having a limited capacity for knowledge about the unknowable, which should go without saying. I’m pretty sure which way is up, and that 2+2=4, and that God loves me unconditionally. And, I’m with Descartes in believing that I exist because I’m sitting here thinking about stuff. And I’m also pretty sure my cat exists because he insists on sitting on my keyboard when I’m trying to type. But the nature of the Trinity or what happens when we die? Those things I have beliefs about, but they’re less on the certainty scale.

Modernity is not fond of being wrong

Those of us who were raised in the post-enlightenment western world tend to see being wrong about anything as a big negative. Through many years of school we learn to cringe at the red checkmarks on our test papers. At least teachers don’t hit students with rulers any longer. It’s even more embarrassing to get an answer wrong in front of the class. Wrong is bad. Making mistakes is bad. When we make a mistake, we say, “I’m sorry.”

What’s up with this? We are all human, we all make mistakes, but we insist that it’s a bad thing and that somehow we should be better than human. Well, excuse me. As a dread pirate once said, “Get used to disappointment.”

And what’s with all the dire warnings about not making the same mistake twice, as if it’s a sure sign you’re doomed? Go ahead and make that mistake twice. In fact, make it five or six times, just to be sure. You’re no less of a person because you’re forgetful.

The Joy of Being Wrong

Have you ever thought about how many scientific experiments are done with the express intent of being wrong in order to rule something out? This is one example of how being wrong can be a good thing. We can learn a lot by being wrong–often more than we can by being right. The danger, of course, is when we put too much weight on our wrong conclusion. Then, when we discover we are wrong, all that is built on top of that conclusion comes crashing down. Not fun.

However, especially if we’re talking about theology (which I often am), it’s important to know where to rest our faith and where to give ourselves the permission to be wrong. This is the problem with much of conservative Christianity, which has built a foundation out of some debatable beliefs. Chances are you know of some churches–perhaps your own–who have some “untouchable” doctrines that not all Christians share. It’s okay to say, “we tend to think this or that,” but to claim that it’s the only way and those who don’t agree are heretics is another matter. To me, these are bright red flags indicating we should beware.

I have a lot of ideas about a lot of topics, and my ideas have changed over the years because as I have read and studied I have found that my old ideas just didn’t stand up to scrutiny. I will argue my new ideas just as firmly as I argued my old ideas, until I find new arguments that outweigh mine. That’s freedom and that’s growth, and there’s joy in growth. In order to grow, I had to have been wrong in the past, or at least that’s what I think now. It’s all an adventure. As humans, we’re free to grow, and that means we have the freedom to be wrong (and to learn from it).

Through it all, I am still certain of a few things that have remained unchanged since childhood, including that God loves me and that Jesus died for the sins of the world. And that chocolate is really good.

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God or Genie?

Posted on July 31, 2024 by me

“Phenomenal cosmic power–itty bitty living space.” You might remember this great line from Disney’s Aladdin. It seems to me that much of western Christianity sees God in this way: It speaks of an omnipotent God but creates such a tight theological box for him to exist in that you could carry him around in your pocket, just taking him out when you need him.

A primary way in which people keep God boxed in is through defining God’s attributes. For example, if we say that one of God’s attributes is that he is just, and we define just in a certain way, so our view of God is trapped by our definition of justice. All of a sudden, God is demanding human sacrifice because we’ve all offended God. So, God the Father sacrifices Jesus instead to save only an elect few of us, but justice still demands that the rest burn in a lake of fire. It’s like the God some people believe in says, “I’d really like to save all of you (it says so in the Bible), but I’m holy and just so unfortunately I can’t.” To me, this means sin and evil are only partially defeated. My God is much bigger than this.

Another way we box God in is by making up silly rules, like when we say that God can’t look on sin. First, we have to deal with the fact that Jesus is God and looked on plenty of sin. Second, the claim is that because God the Father can’t look on sin, on the cross the Father has to turn away from Jesus. Here we have the problem of our little belief splitting God in two. Not only does this limit our view of God, it’s just embarrassingly wrong. Third, the whole concept of God not being able to look upon sin has so many problems with how God watches over humanity that it’s just ridiculous. And this is only one of those bizarre little theologies we’ve come up with.

It’s time to take God out of the box

The western church is so full of bad little teachings, like original sin, total depravity, penal substitutionary atonement, double predestination, and all that end times nonsense that it’s no wonder that so many have lost sight of how big God really is. All most people can see are those theological boxes that represent God. The apostle Paul seemed to be working hard in his letters to keep cultural, ethnic, and theological boxes from forming, but unfortunately even some cultural and philosophical boxes formed in the East over time.

In reality, God has never fit inside of your box, or in your pocket, or even in your church or your denomination. It’s just that for some of you, that’s all that you can see because you’ve never been shown the bigger God that is outside of all that. It’s time to get rid of your genie-like view of God who lives in a little space and grants you wishes when you need them and find the God who defies your definitions and exceeds your expectations.

Unlimited power, unlimited living space.

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Unevangelical?

Posted on July 23, 2024 by me

Some of you might have wondered about my use of the word “unevangelical” in the subtitle of my soon-to-be published book. Others haven’t thought about it until this moment. In any event, I thought I’d develop the term just a bit.

To start with, I made up the word. I could have said something like non-evangelical, but that sounded too boring, and besides, I like making up my own words. Plus, I think “unevangelical” kind of catches your attention just a bit, and makes you wonder, “what?”

What an Evangelical Is

Basically, unevangelical means just what it implies: It is whatever is not evangelical. So, we should explore that for a moment. Most of you, whether you consider yourself an evangelical or not, have some kind of mental picture of what evangelicalism is. It could be a mega-church, a small pop-up church meeting in a school gymnasium, it could look like people carrying Bibles, people singing praise choruses with words projected on a screen, and lately, your picture of evangelicalism could look like Christian Nationalists with flags flying over their pickup trucks.

In reality, evangelism is something underneath all of that. Now the term evangelical has existed for years–Martin Luther used it to refer to his movement. My church growing up was called Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church, but it didn’t mean today’s sort of evangelical. Today’s evangelicals, in my understanding, out of the more fundamentalist style churches in the 1970s as a number of leaders like Jerry Fallwell and others saw the potential of merging Christianity with a political movement to reform the USA into their vision of a Christian nation.

Hallmarks of evangelicalism include a literal reading of the Bible (a very subjective literal reading); a belief in the inerrancy of the Bible (a topic for another time); a rejection of creeds in favor of “what we believe” statements; various social positions like being anti-abortion, anti-gay rights, and more often than not some form of male superiority. There is generally a belief that baptism is only for adult believers. Many evangelicals also believe in a literal rapture. Another aspect of evangelicalism that I noticed as I was growing up was the tendency to quote Bible verses regardless of context rather than reading complete Bible passages.

Unevangelical

Now, there are many who still consider themselves to be evangelical who have abandoned many of the hallmarks I listed above, and that’s fine. It’s just a word. For me, I can say that I never was really an evangelical at heart, although I was part of the evangelical world for many years. I always believed in infant baptism, I held to the early church creeds, and so on. In writing my book, I went back in time, as it were, to the early church and tried to bypass Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, and Descartes to the best of my abilities to attempt to come away with a broader understanding of the whole of Christianity.

As I explain in the book, it’s pretty near impossible to escape Descartes and modernism, so what I have ended up with is a modern look at my own wonderings and how they tie in with the wonderings of the early Christians. Thus, unevangelical.

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The Joy of Wonder

Posted on July 22, 2024 by me

One of the sins of evangelicalism is that it has canceled the joy of wonder in so many people. As children, we are born with an innate sense of wonder as we learn about the world around us. Unfortunately, religion has a way of stuffing that wonder into a box. As Carl Sagan wrote in Pale Blue Dot, “How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, ‘This is better than we thought!'” No, science is usually seen as a threat to the flat earth, the earth-centered universe, or the seven-day creation, as is archeology. Instead of the joy of wonder, there is a fear that knowledge can threaten our faith.

To me, this all comes down to a belief in a small god–a wizard of Oz sort who is afraid of someone tearing back the curtain to reveal the truth. It is no wonder that so many people refuse to believe in such a god. I refuse to believe in one myself.

You Need A Bigger God

Do you really think the creator of the universe is afraid of scientists discovering some secret about how he cheated in his creation, or that perhaps God never guessed that science would ever discover dinosaur bones? Do you think God would really think we’d never notice that there were a few contradictions in the Bible accounts? Does God worry about how much knowledge some humans are amassing?

I really think that many Christians are afraid that their God is inferior to “the world,” so they, too, live in fear with that same feeling of inferiority. One of the ways this comes out is in super-religiosity, like fundamentalism and Christian Nationalism. It’s putting faith in earthly power rather than in God, who is perceived to be inferior to man’s power.

Now consider this: Do you really think God wants his followers to be totally clueless about creation–the expanding universe, the human genome, and so on–while the rest of the world figures it out?

Recovering the Joy Of Wonder

I believe in a God who is bigger than science, and politics, and religion, populism. I believe in a God who isn’t afraid of man’s knowledge (or lack of it). I love science, and logic, and reason. My faith in God isn’t hindered by discussions about who really wrote the Gospel of John (I personally still believe John did), or the various changes made to the Septuagint from the original languages. My faith doesn’t rise or fall on a literal reading of Genesis. I believe in a huge God, and all knowledge to me is a source of wonder as I believe it all leads to a wonder-ful God.

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