Wednesday, 26 August 2015

Miracles and Irrelevance



A miracle is most commonly defined as something happening that defies or breaks natural law. It's when something science says can't happen, does happen. What else could it be but a miracle? An intervention by a force superior of the laws of gravity, or entropy, or medicine. A break in the pattern of established knowledge or understanding. Something we can't explain.

Science, however, is full of things that it cannot explain. Its usual response is to say, "that's very interesting. We don't know the answer now, but one day we will." (Not a response allowed to the religious, who are expected to be able to answer literally any question that is put to them, on pain of revealing themselves to be fools and con men if they can't).

The reason nothing can happen that violates natural law is that natural law is made up of whatever actually does happens. If you have a law that says that what goes up must come down, and something goes up and doesn't come down, you have not violated natural law. What you have done is shown that that law needs to be rethought, revised, to take into account this new fact, this new occurrence. And natural law is perfectly able to do that. New information is built into the idea of science. Is there room for new information in your religion? Because, I've got to tell you, new information is coming at us pretty relentlessly.

It's one thing to say that scripture contains all that is necessary for salvation, to use Christian terms. It is another thing to say it must shut out all future facts, scholarship, experience, understanding, and social movements. Christians must respond to the world, interact with the world, yes, even learn from the world. That is because we must live in the world. Scripture must not be sealed off from life, a seamless web that must be forever protected, or a particular culturally-determined view of which, must be walled off from things like feminism and evolution. The Bible is not at war with life as much as you think.

The strength of science is its flexibility, it's openness. It can change and shift direction and absorb new events and new information and generate and respond to new ideas, all while still maintaining its integrity as science. Can religion? Can your religion? Are we locked in a once-and-for-all, full stop, hermetically sealed, self-contained system dropped on the world from outer space? Once an opinion of it is formed, must it simply be repeated over and over again endlessly and without nuance because that's what faith is? Which of those as described, science or religion, is more alive, more relevant?

It is not enough to simply repeat religious views over and over. Repetition is not faith. Being secure enough to reach out, branch out, to take in and turn over, even accept, modern issues, to dance a new dance because it is still you who are dancing, still your feet, your heart, your faithful self. Being faithful to dancing doesn't mean never learning new moves, or new music; we don't have to always and only dance to klezmer or panpipes. But we do have to dance. As faithful people we are not allowed to sit them all out. Try dancing to feminism, rather than sulking in a chair against a wall at the stupid music kids listen to today. Listen, the world is playing that tune, Evolution, again. Step out and take a twirl. The faith of the dance interacts with the music of social progress. Yes, you love your dance partner. Yes, it is heart pounding exercise. Yes it should be done joyfully. Be flexible, limber. Don't just stand there like you are up to your knees in gravel. Live, in the world as it is now, not as it was two thousand years ago. Faith is timeless, but belief in Noah's arc need not be. Jesus is for me, but I am me in this world, not AD 33.

The Bible is just the written down part of Christianity, and if all we needed was the part written down 2,000 years ago, then we would not have churches and denominations and theologians and priests and services/liturgy, music, sermons, communion, or the lived-in-this-world personal experiences of individuals relating to each other.

The difference between a novel and a play is that a play is alive. A novel happens inside you, in your head. A play outside you, in the world. Every performance of a play is different. Every actor brings something to the same script. Settings can change, costumes, techniques, scenery, machinery, - at one time females roles were played by men - classics are still performed, modern works are added. But if scripture is a novel, religion is a play. A play is acted on, acted out, in real time, by different generations. We have know Hamlet, but we neither present it nor experience it the way it was in Shakespeare's day. It is next to impossible to recreate that first performance, as interesting as trying to is.

I know you think the Bible is special because it was written by God but in truth it is Hamlet written by committee. Based on history, written by genius, expressed with poetry and plot and inspiration, insight, the Spirit; it attracts the most brilliant to it and is known even to the smallest in our culture. It has been studied for centuries. People devote their lives to understanding it. The Bible contains what is sufficient for Christian salvation. It is not the key to biological research or space travel. It is what brings God closer to Christians. But if the conversation ended in AD 100, no wonder some find it boring and irrelevant.


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