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Stephen Colbert vs. Ricky Gervais on God’s Existence

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I came across this clip form the Colbert show the other day, where he had Ricky Gervais on. Colbert brings up the topic of God’s existence and here’s how their debate went:

Gervais gets a rousing applause after saying this:

“If we take something like, any fiction, any holy book…and destroyed it. In a thousand years time it wouldn’t come back just as it was. If you took every science book, every fact, and destroyed them all, in a thousand years they’d all be back; ’cause all the same tests would be the same result.”

On the surface, there seems to be an undeniable logic at work in what Gervais is saying. Science is more “true” than any truth found in a holy book. Why? Because you can prove it over and over and over and over and over.

Colbert even seems persuaded by it. He has no rebuttal except to say, “That’s good. That’s really good.” (Or maybe he just got caught up in Gervais’ charming and alluring English accent!)

But as I thought about it some more, the logic ends up being rather hollow. The truth of a holy book, and more poignantly, the truth of someone considered holy, like Jesus, is not that it can be proved over and over. The opposite is actually at work.

For Christians, the truth of Jesus is that he shows us something we would never have thought to be true had we not encountered the truth in and through his singularly unique life. In him, we are brought face to face with something we couldn’t and wouldn’t have figured out on our own.

Our problem is not that we need to discover what can be proven by anyone at any time in any place. Our problem is that we need to be shown what we cannot know except through revelation. That’s what, as Christians, we say Scripture is all about.

It is revelation.

And that is ultimately what we believe is given most fully to us in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Here we are given the truest and most complete revelation of God and God’s good intentions for us. Of course, it’s not something that can be verified or predicted in a test tube with a Bunsen burner. But that’s precisely the point.

The best and truest things in life are often things that are not repeatable.

The fact that science is reproducible in every generation, while significant, isn’t all that exceptional. What is exceptional is a life that was lived so truthfully and so beautifully that death could not hold it down. And over the course of history, it is one that has proven to be one in a billion.

Which, seems to me, makes it all the more truthful.

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Fasting

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Matthew 6:16-18 (NIV)

“When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

Fasting is one of the more important spiritual disciplines that we practice today. As Christians, we believe abstaining in some significant way from food teaches us a lot about ourselves. in other words, fasting reveals to us how much our own peace depends upon the pleasures of eating, and we are reminded that we often use food to ease the discomforts caused by our unwise and fearful living attitudes – lack of self-worth, meaningless work, purposeless existence, or lack of rest or exercise. However, in ancient times fasting was more than simply refraining from food and learning about oneself. Therefore, what does it mean to fast? What is its purpose? How should it be done?

In the Bible, the word “fast” simply means to voluntarily abstain from food. However, the basic purpose of a fast was to demonstrate the humility and dependence upon God in times of sorrow or great pain. It may be the anguish of repentance, it could be the distress of impending danger, or perhaps a response in mourning when a friend or loved one is ill or dead.

Jesus is calling out the religious people as “hypocrites” because he knows that they are seeking the wrong reward by receiving esteem from other people. To be seen as a righteous or spiritual individual seeking and loving God. Does this mean that you must keep ALL fasting a secret? No. Jesus is not articulating or commanding that fasting must be done in private. What Jesus is saying is that it is wrong to fast for the purpose of impressing people. It’s not an issue of who knows about it or what they think of it, but what is the motivation for doing it.

The intentions of the heart belong to a man, but the answer of the tongue comes from the Lord. All a person’s ways seem right in his own opinion, but the Lord evaluates the motives.

Proverbs 16:1-2 (New English Translation)

  • Why do you think fasting along with prayer is so uncommon among Christians today? Why do you think it is common?
  • What’s the difference between abstaining and fasting?

 

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The Lord’s Prayer

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Matthew 6:5-13 (NIV)

“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.  But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

 “This, then, is how you should pray:

“‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
 your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
 Give us today our daily bread.
 And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
 And lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from the evil one.

Unfortunately, as Christians, “The Lord’s Prayer” often falls into the category of vain repetition for us. Therefore, we sometimes forget of the importance of the prayer and assume this Matthew passage is just about Jesus revealing the selfishness of the religious leaders of his day. Jesus does indeed exposes the self-righteous and self-centered practices of these religious leaders in this passage, but we need to be reminded of why Jesus also explains how we ought to pray.

We are accustomed to thinking of prayer as a good strategy for getting what we want. Often times praying calls up the imagery of a genie granting our dreams, desires, and needs, and we believe that invoking Jesus’ name would make our prayers true (“in Jesus’ name”). However, all prayer-including The Lord’s Prayer-is not for getting what we want, but rather for bending our wants towards what God wants.

The Danish philosopher and Christian thinker Soren Kierkegaard said it best, “The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.” In other words, prayer is an active process for us to bend our lives towards God in a way that is not of our natural inclination.

“[…]that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” Ephesians 3:17-19 (NIV)

  • How much is prayer a part of your interaction with others? How much do you think it should be?
  • How would we make prayer more central to our shared lives?
  • What are some ways that can help bend our lives to God through prayer?

 

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Be Perfect

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“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48 NIV)

At first glance, this simple verse seems to be calling us to be and do the impossible. As a result, we are left feeling confused and discouraged. Does Jesus really mean what we think he is saying here?

In modern English, the word “perfect” means “a status of the highest excellence” or “a product that is completely free from faults or defects”. Unfortunately, however, most Christians today have combine these two definitions of the word “perfect”, and we impose a modern understanding to this verse: “Do not sin”. In reality, Jesus (and Matthew) had a different understanding and intention for the word “‘perfect”. The Greek word in Matthew 5:48 is teleioi, which is translated to mean “complete”, “mature”, “fulfilled”, or “finished”.

The verse is not a command about achievements: having the perfect body or perfect teeth, gaining the perfect score in an exam or competition, or possessing a life free of sin. Those “perfections”, good as they are, are not the full picture. Rather, the verse is a reminder of who we really are and what we were made to be. In other words, we are to be made in full and complete likeness of Christ.

Christian growth is about reshaping all relationships and responsibilities to express the faithfulness and love of God that was made complete in the life and death of Jesus. In spite of this, our anger, insecurities, and complacency keep us from the interactions and services that help us to be made fully Christ-like.

“In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 2:5 NIV)

  • What are some ways for you to be more like Christ? Where are the places where you think you can be Christ-like?
  • As Christians, we say that God is complete because he is the Trinity. That is, the triune God is whole because it is a community of the Father, Son, and Spirit among each other. How can we, the community of faith, help each other to grow into more like Christ?
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Salt and Light

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Matthew 5:13-16 (NIV)

 “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

 “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.  In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.

As part of the Sermon on the Mount, this simple passage can be easily misread. Because we are prone to think of the Sermon on the Mount primarily in terms of law and command, it is very easy to hear Jesus in this passage telling us that we must be salt and light. Or we think Jesus is saying how we ought to be and why we should be salt and light. However, that’s not what’s going on here at all. What Jesus is saying is sheer declaration and promise: You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.

Why salt and light? What does it mean to be salt and light?

The importance of salt, especially in the ancient world was significant. In the first century, salt had many functions: preservative, flavor, medicine, and money. Therefore, Jesus knew the value of salt comes in its application on other things. In other words, Christians are called to exist for others.

The word “light” means “to illuminate” or “to make visible”. Jesus understood the functionality of light allowed people to see, which would otherwise not have been perceptible in the dark. That is to say, light allows people to recognize the causes of our actions and deeds.

However, we don’t always live up to Jesus’ pronouncement. We fall short and wonder how this truth and promise could possibly be true. The good news is we don’t have to work to achieve the label of “salt and light”. We already are.

“Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.” (Colossians 3:12-14 NIV)

  • Why is it important to know who we are? How does this inform us about how we live our lives?
  • What do you think Jesus meant about salt losing its flavor? How is it possible to become ‘unsalty’?
  • How can you be salt and light to the people around you?

 

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Epiphany Devotional

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John 1:14 NIV

“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

Epiphany, in some ways, is an “expansion” of Christmas. At Christmas we celebrate the birth of the Messiah, and in Epiphany we commemorate Jesus, God made flesh, being recognized by the world.  Basically, at Christmas God appears as man, and at Epiphany man appears before the world as God.

Epiphany is a season of unveiling and making known.  The word “epiphany” means “to show”, “to reveal”, “to make manifest”, or “to make known”. Therefore, we look at the many stories God has made himself known through Jesus: We follow the Magi guided by a star to worship Jesus. We hear the testimony  of the Father at Jesus’ baptism. We watch Jesus perform various signs and wonders: turn water into wine, heal the sick, and raise the dead. We walk up the mountain with Peter, James, and John, and witness the Transfiguration of Jesus.

Why doesn’t God reveal himself MORE to mankind? Does God even reveal himself to us today? As Christian, regardless of what we see or hear from today’s media, we believe that God indeed continues to reveal himself to us today. He does so through Scripture, the Word being preached, worship, Eucharist, and in community. More importantly, we believe God continues to make himself known through us. His people and his church. As the German theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, once wrote: “The church is the physical manifestation of Christ on earth.”

However, our fears, pride, and busy lives keep us from making God’s grace and love known to ourselves and to others.

Let us be reminded that the season of Epiphany begins with this challenge: “Be still and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10 NIV)

 

  • What are some ways we can make space for God to be known to us? To others?
  • What keeps you from making God’s grace and love known to people around you? Family, friends, coworkers, or your church community.
  • What are ways you can (as an individual) make God known to others? How as a community can we make God known to others?
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Practicing Presence: Seeing God through the Sunrise

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The chill of the morning wind rakes against your cheeks. You look out, but there isn’t much to see, only darkness. You almost don’t notice the sky turning from black to shades of dark blue, but then you start to make out the soft edges of the mountains and the trees pressed against the skyline. Your eyes are drawn to a point on the horizon where hues of red are starting to peek over. You stay fixated on the point as you witness a changing of the guard. The clouds are now painted with oranges and yellows, and the sky glows with splashes of color. As the haze gives way to the sun, the pastel colors are brushed from the sky and light fills the landscape.

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it, I see everything else.” – C.S. Lewis

1. God is how we see the world

One of the goals of Christian discipline is to see the world in the ways God sees it. There’s no doubt that we live in a broken world in need of restoration. Yet like the sunrise, God reveals beauty in the darkest places. It’s true that the light of the sunrise doesn’t penetrate every corner, just as we continue to live in a world where sin still holds power. But part of playing witness to the kingdom of Heaven is to reveal the loving and saving mercy of our God in places shrouded by shadow, even if we can’t fully eliminate the darkness. Like David Foster Wallace said in his 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon College, “The obvious and most important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.” It is difficult to see God in places marred by tragedy or in people who annoy us, but this is often when we need God’s presence the most.

 

2. God is always there, even when we don’t see him

When you watch the sunrise, you feel like you’re witnessing something amazing, especially when you’re surrounded by natural splendor. Your eyes tell you that you’re witnessing a once-in-a-lifetime event, and it actually feels like that until you realize that this phenomenon happens every day. This is a reminder that God is always doing new and amazing things in the world. Even when we don’t feel it, his presence is there, waiting for us. If we’re too busy, held by the distractions of our material world, we will miss it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there each and every day.

 

3. God’s presence is often found in the silence

I’ve noticed that one of the biggest reasons I prefer the sunrise over the sunset is the quiet reverence that accompanies sunrise viewings. Even though it’s entirely unnecessary, everyone whispers, and most people don’t even speak. Of course, the crowds are much smaller early in the morning, but I also think that the people willing to get up for it are ones who see the world with a greater sense of wonder. There’s an unspoken agreement to preserve the quiet awe in the atmosphere. When the sun rises, filling the air with light and warmth, there’s almost a palpable feeling that God’s presence is filling you from the inside out. As I’ve often discovered, when we are silent, listening, and drawn away from our busy schedules, this is when we hear the Spirit speaking to us.

 

4. It takes effort and desire

On a recent trip to Yosemite with folks from Christ Kaleidoscope, I tried to get everyone up for a sunrise. There was little urgency, and we definitely got out the door later than I had wanted. While rounding a corner on our way to Tunnel View, there was a brief moment when we could see between the mountains, catching a glimpse of the horizon. There were deep reds and oranges flooding the sky right above Half Dome. But by the time we reached our destination, it was too late.

It takes effort and desire to get up for the sunrise. Two of the best sunrises I’ve witnessed both required waking up around 4 A.M. in an unfamiliar time zone and driving almost two hours to wait in below freezing temperatures. There was certainly the temptation to slap the alarm off and say, “there’s always next time,” but my desire to see the sunrise emerged the victor. Similarly, seeing the world through God’s eyes and feeling his presence with us at all times requires discipline. We have to deny the desire to curl back into our beds and get out the door. However, in order to do so, we have to change our minds about what’s important to us. Through practices like reading scripture, praying, fasting, serving, and worshipping, we shape our desires and consequently, the outward actions of our lives. No, it doesn’t come easy. We have to be willing to deny convenience, comfort, and pleasure, push these things aside, and make space for God’s presence in our lives. But like getting up for the sunrise, it’s definitely worth it.

 

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Sometimes Quiet is Violent

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The Hsu family has been listening to a lot of Twenty One Pilots lately. Little Kyrie’s favorite is Doubt and Carissa can’t choose between Semi-Automatic, Trees and The Judge. One of the great things about their music is that, not only is it catchy, but the lyrics also give you a lot to chew on. One that has stuck with me the past few months is the song Car Radio.

Checkout the song before reading on:

Tyler Joseph, vocalist and lyricist for Twenty One Pilots, said this about the song:

The verses are talking about a true story of me being late to class…and I forgot to lock my door and when I came back out everything had been gutted and stolen out my car. At the time financially I was not able to replace anything that was taken, the GPS, the radio, all my CD’s. When I get in the car my first reaction is to put the radio on and for a while I wasn’t able to do that and finding out that once I removed that piece of me I realised that sometimes music can act as a distraction and can get in the way of where your mind wants to go.”

It’s true that quiet can be violent. When there’s no sound to hide behind we get antsy because we dread the oncoming onslaught of silence. And so we click open a browser, turn on the car radio, swipe open our phones. We fill our lives with noise. And it is this immediate stream of stimulation that keeps us living in a constant state of distraction. And as Tyler puts it, “it can get in the way of where your mind wants to go.” Sometimes what we need is to take a long look at the ugly parts of us that, if ignored for too long, will deform us in ways we never intended. This is no easy thing to do.

It is why I love the line, “Faith is to be awake and to be awake is for us to think and for us to think is to be alive and I will try with every rhyme to come across like I am dying to let you know you need to try to think.”

We often equate noise with being alive, with being awake, where, really, the opposite is true. Noise is what allows us to sleep walk through life, “distracted from distraction by distraction” (T.S. Eliot). As one writer aptly observed, “We live in an age of continuous partial attention.” This is our default setting.

Faith, on the other hand, points to an attentiveness that believes there is more to life than what is determined by our default setting. And to see with the eyes of faith requires the space silence creates in order for us to think. As renowned priest, Henri Nouwen, so matter of factly stated, “Without silence and solitude it is impossible to live a spiritual life.” It is an impossibility because such a life is nourished and sustained by what can only be heard when we quiet all the voices that bombard us everyday. When, in silence, we try and hear the only voice that matters.

So maybe we should all get our car radios stolen. Or maybe we can simply try and keep them off.

Then we can “just” sit in silence.
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Conversation #2: Desires

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There was a saying popular among me and my closest high school friends whenever we did something outrageous. It was our universal explanation for the inexplicable. Accidentally suicide in Super Smash Bros.–”I do what I want!” Attempt a half-court shot in a 5-on-5 basketball game–“I do what I want!” Out of nowhere, punch a friend in the nuts–“I do what I want!”

This terribly self-indulgent, but terribly fun, practice came from a 2002 episode of South Park that I do not recommend watching. In it, Cartman goes on the talk show Maury, pretending to be an out-of-control teen in order to win a prize. In order of atrociousness: “I had sex without protection; it’s my hot body–I do what I want!” “I slaughtered five baby seals with my bare hands this morning–I do what I want!” “I digitally put Jabba the Hut back into the original Star Wars movie–I do what I want!”

The scenarios above seem outrageous, but if we take a step back and strip down our actions, “I do what I want” is at the base of almost everything we do. Even something as simple as choosing what to eat for breakfast can be boiled down to the question: “what do I want?” Is it convenience? McDonald’s. Is it health? Oatmeal. Is it time? Nothing. Is it pleasurable taste? Small children.

Lobster

(That was a joke.)

 

The question of desire is especially apparent when we find ourselves in the tension between immediate and future consequences. In most cases, the more immediate gratification wins the race. (How many of us have procrastinated and then severely regretted it at the end?) However, somewhere along the line of our lives, we’ve also been taught to play for delayed rewards. We do things that we don’t want to do because we want what comes later even more. The most familiar examples are studying and exercising. We don’t want to do these things, but we want the future benefits we think they will bring us. One way or another, we are still following the maxim, “I do what I want.”

Therefore, it is important for us to consider how desire motivates our actions. Living in a world that is constantly vying for our desires, we need to carefully examine our habitual actions. We shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking private actions like watching pornography or indulging in sweets aren’t a big deal. They have the devastating ability to enslave us to gratifying our immediate desires.

Desires is a subject especially relevant for those of us who are fasting through Lent. As often happens, “who’s going to know?” or “what’s the big deal?” pop into my head during this season. However, when they have, it’s helped to ask myself, “what is it that I really want?” This is why I think it’s a great practice to physically write down the desires that we wish were more central to our lives. Going back to the lookbook and seeing the words “to affirm one another” “to pray more,” “to be more present in the community” is more than just a reminder. It is one of our first lines of defense against a world that is constantly bombarding our attention with advertisements, both overt and subliminal. It is a billboard of the ways the Holy Spirit is working in us. It is a prayer that says, “God, make it so that when ‘I do what I want,’ it is what you want, too.”

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Desiring the Kingdom (Part 2)

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Last week we briefly considered the critical side of James K. A. Smith’s thesis in Desiring the Kingdom, and I tried to tease out some of the differences between his view and ones many Christians have. To review, he accuses several versions of Christian education/formation as too “heady” and intellectualist; they treat human beings like brain receptacles that you merely drop information into. In this chapter, Smith fleshes out his alternative: that we are embodied creatures and that we are liturgical creatures. The explanation of those terms will be given in what follows.

Those of you who were fortunate enough to attend the Youth retreat that Hamilton spoke at a couple years back will recognize an example that James K. A. Smith gives. He asks of the reader: “What letter is to the left of F on a keyboard?” What usually happens is that people will reach out their hands (in standard typing position) and press down on their left middle finger. The interesting part is in how we learn/internalize this information, which is implicit in how we recall that information.

This is a knowledge that is located moreso in our fingers than our minds; a knowledge that is drilled into us from countless hours of mindless repetition. But we don’t need to consciously recall that knowledge to finish our emails. We type just fine without having the idea “the letter D is next to F on the keyboard” at the forefront of our minds. This is a kind of know-how that constitutes a small part of our usually unconscious understanding of the world. And this know-how is not taught through textbooks or memorization, but through bodily practices that have become habit to us.

That’s all simple enough; after all, we believe in the formative power of practicing piano scales. That in order to be great at any skill, whether its music or sports, repeated drills are not only helpful, but vitally necessary training for our bodies to perform the relevant actions well.

But if this is so obvious, why do we not apply the same logic to Christianity? Consider the sermon in Protestant churches nowadays. These 45 minute to an hour and a half beasts easily take up more than half of the Sunday worship service in many of the churches I’ve visited. Why the disproportionate emphasis on ideas and doctrines, when forming people to be good at something requires training in the body, as well as the mind?

James K. A. Smith argues that this is the “heady” intellectualism that has seeped into Protestant Christianity from the rationalists of old. Descartes famously thought that we were primarily “thinking things”, able to establish our existence merely by thinking about it. Throughout the years, this distorted way of viewing the human person has taken many forms, settling most recently in Christian circles as that of “believing animals”. We are what we believe, so you better believe its worth spending an hour making sure what we believe is correct via sermon. Small groups and fellowships reflect a similar understanding, where through messages, readings, and discussions only the mind and ideas are given fair treatment, while the body is left untouched.

But there is so much more to us than our minds. God created us as embodied, incarnate creatures that cannot help but to take on habits, and let those habits carve our paths in the world. As Smith says in several of his talks,

It’s not just a matter of how you think through the issues, its much more about how are you habituated to respond to different situations… Where if you are going to do the right thing, it’s not enough to have acquired the knowledge of the relevant moral rules and intellectually process the decisions I ought to make. In fact, a lot of what I do in a given day is not the outcome of rational conscious deliberation. It’s driven by this adapted unconscious, that orients my stance towards the world.

This habituation of our unconscious is hardly neutral. For, as we will talk about next time, there is a story explaining and animating the set of habits we keep. Habits pointing us towards some version of the good life, getting at what we desire as good, true, and beautiful. And since we know that our minds are not the whole picture, we can better attend to the formation the world and the church are putting us through; the stories that seep into our bones whether we are aware of it or not.