Fleeing to Mystery

Partly this is a follow up to Bobby's statement that "Sometimes our education can come between us and a meaningful experience with our greatest loves."

In the philosophy survey class that I inflict on unfortunate undergrads every semester, I put off talking about God until the last third of the semester. He never waits his turn however and pops up earlier as we look at issues like determinism, epistemology and ethics. But I work hard to defer as many questions as possible until we get to the final section of the class dealing with philosophy of Religion.

I put this section last so that we have time to build a sense of community in the class. By the 11th week of the semester or so, the students have hammered out a sense of trust with one another. They realize that they will not get pummeled by me for discussing their non-beliefs or beliefs in class.

We look at several traditional arguments for the existence of God. Specifically we cover the ontological, teleological, and the cosmological. We conclude with the cosmetological argument (the existence of God is definitively proven by the invention of women’s make-up—truly a glorious manifestation of His grace).

Then we look at the most powerful argument AGAINST the existence of God: the presence of evil and suffering.

It is here that I encounter the greatest sense of frustration from Christian students. Very quickly they want to emphasize that God’s ways are not our ways Is 55:8-9. While I don’t want to get into dueling scriptures with them, I do want to point out a few things:

1) in context it does say seek the Lord. While God is obviously busy at work with plans and approaches beyond our ken, this should be our last statement, not our first.

2) If we are commanded to love God with all our mind (Mark 12:30), then we should...you know, use it.

3) While we may be content to shrug off questions and trust in God, nonbelievers aren't. We should be prepared "to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you" (1 Peter 3:15).

After we negotiate these verses, many times students will argue that we should simply not question God at all. They then do what I call “fleeing to God’s mystery”. They state that we should not be asking God these types of questions. God does not answer to us, what does the flea have to say to the elephant, etc. Tomorrow we will finish this thread with a look at the legitimacy of asking God questions...