God Isn't In the Driver's Seat (or, If Evolution Is True, What Do We Do With God?)

 

            I sort of believe in the theory of evolution like I sort of believe in the theory of gravity. Think about it. That means evolution is not up for discussion. But while the theory of gravity bores me, unless I’m falling, the theory of evolution fascinates me.

 

            Here’s why. I went to Toronto District Christian High, in Woodbridge, as a teen. Unlike many Christian schools, at Toronto Christian we were taught about evolution. We were taught, in fact, that evolution was how God probably created the universe. This is called theistic evolution.

 

            However, there was a single exception. Humans. According to my teachers humans were sinless special creations God made in his image a few thousand years ago. We were not part of the animal kingdom. We did not evolve. 

            This was pretty much the line I was taught at seminary, too. After seminary, I spent a year of graduate study digging deeper, comparing the Bible’s several creation stories to similar older creation stories like the Babylonian Enuma Elish, a creation and flood story told by ancient Israel’s neighbors. I learned that the stories in the Bible seemed to be very intentional, shabbat-night-live satiric commentaries on the more ancient creation stories of Israel’s neighbours. 

 

            Since then, studying human evolution has become a hobby. And one of the reasons I finally left my previous denomination was because I couldn’t, finally, pretend to play along with my denomination’s official view that the Genesis myths were actually real history.

 

            More recently, scientists have unraveled the human genome and the DNA within it. Doing so not only allows us to find relatives several generations removed through sites like 23andme’s DNA kits, but unravelling the human genome has helped us find criminals by the DNA they leave behind, and now even cure some diseases rooted in genetic problems. Within that genome, we’ve also discovered the deep evolutionary roots of humankind that ties us to the rest of the animal kingdom. We humans evolved from other earlier hominids, as have the Great Apes and yes, even monkeys. We are also related to other branches of the homo species, like Neanderthals and Denosivans—both now extinct. 

 

            But why am I telling you all this? Because as I’ve studied cosmic and biological evolution, I’ve begun to ask myself, more and more, “so what role does God play in all this?” If everything evolved, and if science can describe that evolutionary process without needing a God, then what use is God?

 

            And this is what I came up with. It is tentative. It is the best I can do. And I am very, very open to better ideas.

 

            Imagine a car. The car loosely represents the cosmos. And imagine God. God can relate to the car in several ways. For example, perhaps God is the driver.

 

            That is, God gets behind the wheel. God has the key, turns the ignition, and gets the car going. God as driver is in complete control. God chooses the destination. He’s the driver, after all. God steers the car around every corner. In fact, God even built the car he drives—he’s a cosmic Henry Ford. This is how most conservative Christians think of God—he’s completely in charge of the whole cosmos—starting it, directing it, and so on. It’s why, when someone dies or they get a new job, such Christians will say things like, “well, it was God’s will. That’s God’s plan.”

 

            Prayer, then, could be imagined as us asking the driver, God, to steer the car in a certain way, and get us to places we want to go. But God is the driver. God might listen to us, as passengers, but God might not. God is completely in charge of our journeys. Nothing is up to us. In its most extreme of the Calvinist versions of this line of thought, God’s mind is never changed by prayer. God has already decided everything ahead of time. This is called predestination—God decides everything about the destination and our drive there. Humans don’t really have a choice. No free will.

 

            But many Christians (and people of other faiths) disagree. For example, some Christians imagine that God is not much like a driver, but more like a passenger in a self-driving car, a next-generation Tesla, say, that he (usually) invented and built. In this case, God provides the blueprint, gets things going, comes along for the ride, but doesn’t personally steer the car himself. This is called deism.

 

            Deists have their own favourite analogy. Imagine finding a watch in a field. You pick it up. You wind it up. And the watch ticks and tocks. It keeps time. Perfectly. 

 

            If you found such a watch, you would have to presume that it was made by someone. Watches don’t just appear, by accident, as it were. So, if you found a watch, you would have to believe that there was a skilled watchmaker who designed and manufactured it. 

 

            Well, when deists look about the cosmos what they see is something even more wonderfully and fearfully made than that watch. The planets in their circuits, our blood coursing through veins, and all the laws of nature suggested to these ancients that, as with the watch, the cosmos must have a designer and a manufacturer. But once a big bang sets it off, the cosmos runs by itself. God is inventor, creator, but once God is done, God lets the whole mess run itself. Deism. 

 

            I’m more inclined to a deist God than to a driver God who predestines everything. My problem with deism, however, is that modern theories actually can pretty much explain everything—the big bang, the appearance of life, evolution. The physical world doesn’t need an inventor or watchmaker to be properly explained. Which is why Richard Dawkins wrote a book about evolution called, ironically, The Blind Watchmaker. 

 

            Well, as you can see, if you don’t need God to create the cosmos and just come along for the drive, and if you don’t need God as the creator and driver either, there isn’t much room left for God. So, some Christians—liberal ones, for the most part, have begun to think of God not as the driver, not as a quiet passenger who just set things in motion, but as a backseat driver.

 

            You see, while science can explain a lot, some people don’t think science can explain morality, our human notions about what is right and wrong. And so, these Christians turn God into a backseat driver who is always telling us what is right and wrong, what direction to take our lives, which pedestrians and hazards to watch out for. This is a nagging God, a pushy God, a “you better get this right,” God. A liberal works-righteousness God who seems, always, to be saying, “Be better. Do more. Divest. Rally. Protest.” This God speaks to us insistently, mostly through theologians and denominational executives and pressure groups who are sure they know exactly what God wants when it comes to a whole list of contemporary issues. And while I often agree with these people, I don’t like the tone, and I don’t like the imagined God behind this tone, very much.

 

            None of these pictures of God ring true for me. Is there another possibility? I think there is. Perhaps God, in some wild but mysterious way offers guidance when we, alone in the car by ourselves, or together with each other as a community, seek that guidance. That is, instead of nagging us, perhaps God is more like Google Maps or the Waze app. Except those kinds of maps are too directive, too sure. So maybe God is more like the author of an old-fashioned paper map. We can unfold it and turn to it for direction, but we need to read it carefully, parse its options, interpret it, and rely on the corroborating (or not) advice of fellow passengers. Only when we turn to God “The Paper Map,” for direction do we receive it—in part and imperfectly. 

 

            But where might God provide such guidance, in real life? Well, I’d say that scripture is where we often—if not always!—find it; and in the cumulative wisdom we’ve built up about scripture as a community, over thousands of years. Scripture, and our reflection on it, is the divine roadmap we have for arriving (“perhaps,” says John Caputo. “We hope,” I add.) at our desired destination.

 

            I’m not saying that scripture is dictated by God, or that it is authoritative (so we better listen to it, or else!), or even that it is divinely inspired. But overall, scripture—including the scriptures of other religions and the Testament we received from the Jewish people—scriptures do represent thousands of years of deep listening on the part of humans to a mysterious divine wisdom that seems to permeate the cosmos and sometimes our own deepest selves, as well. God whispers, sometimes we hear, some of those who heard tried to write it down.

 

We argue about how to understand scripture, we question some of its odd suggestions that belong to another place and time, but overall, in scripture and in the communities that listen to it we are nudged along. In scripture we may find God gently, kindly, offering direction when we seek it, encouraging us to live full lives that benefit each other and help us find our place in the cosmos.

 

            Scripture in this sense is a lamp that prevents our feet from stumbling when all is otherwise dark (Psalm 119:105). Keep in mind that when scripture is described as a light, it isn’t talking about a modern flashlight or streetlight that reveals all. It is a flickering, uncovered olive-oil lamp with a sputtering wick that threatens to go out at any minute, and gives just enough light so that we don’t trip over what would otherwise be obvious rocks and chasms in the path. 

 

            Scripture is this sort of provisional and delicate divine gift. But gifts, to be true gifts, must be given unconditionally. There is no expectation of a return, no nagging about thank-you cards, no obligation to give something of equal or greater value back. If we were given a gift conditional on how we responded to it, it would be merely a financial transaction, a debt to be repaid, rather than a gift. We’d have to interpret it correctly, or else. But no. As a favorite writer of mine once put it: There is nothing you have to do, there is nothing you have to do, and there is nothing you have to do.

 

            The gift of scripture, written by humans, is an invitation, really, to explore meaning and purpose beyond our everyday matter-of-fact experiences. Science, and theories like evolution, explain a lot—everything, really. And yet, for such a world as this, we also have this one thing more, this ancient gift, this old map, for why and how to live a life—not just for survival, but for the love of all things bright and beautiful.

Is the Bible the Word of God? What Could that Mean?

I wish I had known my grandfather—my Opa—better.

He was a taciturn man, not given to much speech. My favorite memory of him is from Sunday mornings, after church. The whole clan—six kids, their spouses, and me, the oldest grandson, sitting on the floor—all of us would gather in Opa and Oma’s front room. It was only opened on Sundays. Opa would sit in the corner throne, his Morris Chair, and listen to his family talk religion and politics. Everyone played to him—everyone was looking for his nod and cryptic, “Ja, zo ist it.” But he never said much himself.

Still, Opa was a wise man. For example, a few years after World War II, when fear of the USSR was high, he decided to leave the Netherlands and move overseas. His employer, Atlanta Paper, offered him a job as manager of their new factory in Johannesburg, South Africa. He thought long and hard about it, but in the end—on the advice of a wise friend—he decided to move to Canada instead, where he (eventually) found work as a hospital janitor. Opa believed something was wrong in South Africa, and he backed that up by choosing entry-wage poverty in Canada over status and power in South Africa.

Opa also didn’t write. I half-remembered getting a letter from him while I was in college. My aunts and uncles didn’t believe me. So a few years ago I went through all the mail I received in college, looking for that Holy Grail of a letter. I couldn’t find it. Maybe I lost the letter. But I think I just remembered what I wanted to believe. He never wrote me. I really wish I knew more about him than I do.

Which gets us to the theme of this blog post. Some Christians say, “The Bible is the Word of God.” But, as with my Opa, the written record is actually pretty sparse. Just 66 short books—some only-page-long letters—that we call the Bible.

As a result, just as my memories of Opa are fleeting and fragile, so is our knowledge of God. We wish we knew more. So we turn to the Bible. Christians say it is, “God’s Word.” We hope it will be chock full of good stuff about God. But there is less of that than you might think, even according to the Bible’s own account.

The Bible does suggest that a tiny bit of what is inside comes straight from God’s hand or spoken words. God, according to the story in Exodus, personally carved the Ten Commandments on tablets of stone. The Bible says the laws in Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy were dictated by God to Moses. And if Jesus was God—or even just very close to God—then his words—if they have been correctly recalled by New Testament writers many years later, are at the very least, very Godly words.

But most of the Bible does not claim to be God’s actual speech. Most of it is the musings, experiences, wisdom, mysterious encounters, and the stories of people who were pretty sure that God was mysteriously in touch with them. In other words, the Bible is full of second-hand reporting by ancient people who, after Moses, were in touch with God mostly through dreams and visions. In fact, the Jewish scholar Richard Eliot Friedman argues, in his excellent book The Disappearance of God: A Divine Mystery, that God purposely ended his personal encounters—they’re called theophanies—God ended his personal encounters with Jews to force them to grow up, spiritually and morally.

Of course, when Evangelicals and others say that the Bible is the Word of God, what they really mean is that everything in the Bible is inspired by God, and has God’s stamp of approval. But does it, really? And what would that mean? Just for example (and there are many), the stories of God sending plagues upon innocent children, and upon Israelites for having a disobedient king—is that really believable as the sort of stuff a loving God would do? Is the story of Genesis—written to look like a true story about the past—really what we call history? What about all the New Testament promises—even by Jesus himself—that he is coming back “soon,” to judge the living and the dead. Is 2000 years later still “soon?”

And this is the crux, really. How much of God is really in the Bible? Enough to call it the Word of God, instead of “words about God?” Is every word in the Bible really divinely inspired? And what would that mean, anyway, if they were? That every word was dictated to the writer by God? That seems unlikely, given that the Greek, for example, in some of the New Testament, is laughably bad compared to the Greek of classical Greece, or even compared to other parts of the New Testament.

Maybe rather than arguing about how much of the Bible is actually from God, it would be better to pay attention to how seriously the Bible itself expects us to take it. And probably the favorite image used in the Bible to describe itself is the image of lamp light.

How seriously should we take the Bible? Well, in Psalm 119:105 we read, "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” And perhaps with this very text in the back of his (or, less likely, her) mind, the author of 2 Peter 1:19-20 wrote, “so we have the prophetic message more fully confirmed. You will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.”

The standard Evangelical reading of such texts suggests that as light, scripture is glorious. As light, scripture banishes the dark. As light, it leaves humans without excuse when it comes to getting God right. There is, however, another and better way to read such texts.

Consider the Psalmist’s lamp. This is a lamp from the days when ancient Hebrew lights couldn’t match even our puny candles when it came to giving light. The lamp the Psalmist speaks of was dim, smoky, sputtering and fuelled by olive oil. Such lamps were a stopgap measure until daytime, and not a very good one at that. Enough light, perhaps, to put one foot before another on a path without breaking your neck, but not a light to see the scenery or wild animals or survive a strong wind. The Peter passage further suggests that the words of the prophets, by which is meant the Old Testament, are a stopgap sufficient—barely—but only until the “morning star,” rises—that is, until Jesus returns.

In sum, these two “light” texts, the first with its reference to an imperfect emergency light, and the second with reference to its weakness compared to the light of the Christ who will soon return (although he didn’t)—this juxtaposition certainly suggests that it is easy to claim far too much for the light of scripture, whether or not it is inspired by God in whole or part. The Bible is certainly not the sun in the daytime. It isn’t even a forty-watt bulb, or even a cellphone flashlight. The Bible describes its light as a flickering, as a barely-enough stopgap measure for knowing God.

Which gets me back to my grandfather. I wish I knew more about him. I wish I had taken the time when I was in college and seminary to visit him more often. I wish I had more personal letters from him.

But in the end, what really matters is the core that my Opa passed onto his kids, and also to me. His love for family. His moral core that led him, at great personal cost, to turn his back on a privileged life in South Africa. His love of learning and wisdom. His heart for justice and fairness. His courage as a participant in the anti-Nazi labour-union underground.

And so with the Bible. We could all wish for more God in it, more clarity, more assurance that this is actually all from God and all we need—wherever or however God is now. We might even assume, as I did about that non-existent letter from my grandfather, that there is a lot more of God in the collection of letters from the ancient past we call the Bible than there actually is.

But that’s not what the Bible says about itself. It is a flickering lamp. Enough to assure us we are beloved. Enough to inspire us to live for the same values that Jesus did. Enough for us to wonder and dream about a hopeful future on account of the stories of Jesus’ resurrection. Enough to remind us that the marginalized, the week, the poor, and the oppressed are God’s favorites. Not a lot to go on.

But a great core, and enough to absolutely transform our lives.

The Light of Scripture: As Light As All That?

        Recently, I’ve been reading Douglas John Hall’s The Cross in Our Context. It is a book about the Theology of the Cross, in contrast to the more common (and Calvinist) theologia gloriae. Along the way, Hall notes that theology of the cross handles God’s self-disclosure differently than the Theology of Glory. He writes, “God’s otherness, for Luther, is not to be found in God’s absolute distance from us but in God’s willed and costly proximity to us” (20f). This proximity is seen in Jesus’ incarnation, but especially in Jesus’ willing submission to death by way of the cross.

         Thinking about that, it seems to me that this divine proximity can also be seen in God’s embrace of frail human words, in scripture, as a key medium by which God makes him/herself known to us.

         God did not have to come to us via words, passed down from generation to generation, first by word of mouth and later on fragile animal skin or paper. God could have come in a more ostentatious manner that would have left less room for doubt. For example, God might have rearranged the stars to spell out “I am who I am,” in various languages. Or, God could have made sure that humans evolved some sort of universally shared sixth sense for communicating with the divine, so that our prayers might all and always be audibly answered with a reply.

         In fact, God sometimes turned to incredible and unmistakable displays of glory to make his point. Consider the pillars of fire by night or the glory of the Lord resting on Mount Sinai, for example. But what is interesting about those approaches is that they did little to turn Israel into a more righteous, more faithful people. In fact, it was especially when God drew close to Israel in all his glory that they chose idol calves to worship instead of God. Ironically, after the glory departed, what Israel had left (according to the story) were two stone tablets inscribed with words and a chastened angry prophet to explain them.

         Thus, instead of glorious theophanies, we now have the Bible. Not to the exclusion of other hints about God, perhaps, whether in nature, via intuition, or the testimony of the Spirit, which seem to work for some people, some of the time, at least. But mostly, the light we have from God, or about God, is to be found in scripture.

        

         Interestingly, scripture itself uses the analogy of light to describe itself (or the law, or the words of the prophets, as the case might be). I became aware of these texts in my seminary prolegomena course, where we wrestled with how to make the case for doctrines concerning scriptural inspiration or infallibility. So, for example, in Psalm 119:105 we read, "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” And perhaps with this very text in the back of his (or, less likely, her) mind, the author of 2 Peter 1:19-20 wrote, “so we have the prophetic message more fully confirmed. You will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.”

         The standard Evangelical reading of such texts suggest that as light, scripture is pretty glorious. As light, scripture banishes the dark. As light, it leaves humans without excuse when it comes to getting God right. There is, however, another way to read such texts, one more in keeping with a theology of the cross that sees God’s self-disclosure as one that embraces human finiteness, limitation, and weakness.

         Consider the Psalmist’s lamp, for example. This is a lamp from the days when ancient Hebrew lights barely matched our candles when it came to giving light or surviving a draft. The lamp the Psalmist speaks of was dim, smokey, and fueled by olive oil. It was a stopgap measure until daytime, and not a very good one at that. Enough light, perhaps, to put one foot before another on a path without breaking your neck, but not a light to see the scenery or wild animals or survive a strong wind. The Peter passage further suggests that the words of the prophets are a stopgap sufficient—barely—but only until the “morning star,” rises.

         Ironically, in the same breath that the author of 2 Peter asserts that they have the prophetic word made more sure, the author is making a case for an immanent parousia, thus subtly undermining the “more sure” word, given that Christians are still waiting for that parousia 2,000 years later.

         In sum, the juxtaposition of these two “light,” texts, the first with its reference to an imperfect emergency light, and the second with reference to its weakness compared to the light of the Christ who will soon return—this juxtaposition certainly suggest that it is easy to claim too much for the light of scripture. Rather than use scripture as the basis for making triumphal claims about how most things really are, the better path is to see in scripture yet more evidence of God’s proximity to us as humans—a God who refuses to reveal to Moses or us his full glory, but writes us – or has others write to us – instead.

         Why? I’m not sure, although Hall’s claims for a theology of the cross are very suggestive. At a minimum, however, we might take a clue from Exodus 20:18f, where we find the people of Israel gathered in the light of God’s glory at the foot of Sinai. “When all the people witnessed the thunder and lightning, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking, they were afraid and trembled and stood at a distance, and said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, or we will die.”

         It seems that as far as humans are concerned, when it comes to life, lamplight is much safer than the glory of God.

Playing at Doctrine

  

          The study of doctrine has always been a pleasant preoccupation for me—one of my favorite things. There is no explaining it, really. Why do some people like getting their hands dirty gardening? Why do others spend hours scouring Kijiji.ca for bargains or Ancestry.com researching family roots? I don’t know. But I love reading about, thinking about, and sometimes even writing doctrine. It’s a hoot. Except for one thing.

          You see, other people, and even whole institutions (churches, usually) are also preoccupied with doctrine. Except that for them it doesn’t seem to be a fun thing so much as a weighty thing. Some take doctrine so seriously, in fact, that if you don’t agree with them they will argue with you. They might even send you nasty letters and emails, or publish articles denouncing your views, or even threaten to have you tossed out of the church. All of which seriously deflates the doctrinal imagination and takes the fun out of doing theology.

            Early in my ministry, for example, I was asked to give a talk about God’s creation to a lady’s society from a neighboring church. I broached the topic of cosmic and biological evolution. I had just spent a year of full-time graduate study, at seminary, exploring these topics and so I was eager to share what I had learned. However, a few days after my talk I received a letter from this society, signed by all of its members, warning me that if I didn’t repent of my evolutionary theology I was headed for hell. I had been having fun trying to fit the Biblical and Scientific pictures together; the women were so aghast with my musings that they made sure I was never invited to speak or preach in their church again.

            And that is the problem with doctrine. People take it far too seriously. One imagines that getting doctrines right about creation and or evolution, about infant or adult baptism, or about pre- or post- or a-millennialism—one imagines that if getting these doctrines right was important to God, he would have been a lot clearer about them in scripture than he actually was. Which brings up another doctrine, of course. Is scripture’s teaching about so much that we take so seriously divinely inspired, or is it a result of the limited knowledge of merely human writers—or both?

            The truth is, for the first millennium and a half of Christianity, when most followers of Jesus could neither read nor write, it was sufficient for Christians to know the basics of the story, memorize the Apostles' Creed and Lord’s Prayer, and do as your priest told you—especially when it came to the obligations of neighborly love. And theology? Doctrine? Well, that was the preserve of a tiny minority of scholars who carried on a lively debate about many things that never entered into the consciousness of most Christians.

            These days, a lot of scholars bemoan the fact that people are not reading anymore, and that the doctrines and teachings of the church are therefore beyond most folks’ understanding. As a result, Christians now tend to go to their churches not out of a deep intellectual commitment to its doctrines, but for community or out of habit or for some other reason. I’ve bemoaned this fact myself, in articles published in scholarly journals. I guess, in a perfect world, we’d all wish that everyone had a lot more knowledge and wisdom.

            But there is another, brighter, side to this coin. You see, when people are no longer preoccupied with theology or with making sure that everyone else toes their church’s doctrinal line in the sand, people are freed to focus on the main thing. The main thing isn’t assent to pages and pages of truths Christians in other traditions disagree with. No, the main thing is loving our neighbors. In fact, for most of us loving our neighbors is hard enough all by itself.

            Nevertheless, I have to admit that for the sheer joy of it, doctrine is still my playground. And for the times I mess up I expect God will just pick me up again, dust me off, and say something like, “That’s okay Johnny. Go and play some more.”