God’s Big Dilemma[1]

          Christians describe a God who wants to share His “heavenly home” with others.  He wants to share the joy that He experiences; and apparently He wants to share this with human beings for all eternity.  In this entry, I want to describe how, if there is such a God[2], He faces a huge dilemma.  This dilemma ties in directly with the issue of free will that I am so fond of talking about.

          God has free will.  Regardless of what you think about human free will or human determinism, if there is a God worth calling a God, He has to have complete freedom of the will.  He can decide to do anything He wants – there are no restrictions to what He can decide to do.  Further, He can carry out those decisions due to a little feature called omnipotence.  As a result, we struggle to describe some aspects of God’s character.  Words like “want” or “desires” have a different meaning when nothing can stand in your way.

          At some “point in time” however, God was enjoying His ultimate freedom and His ultimate power and thought “I would like to share this with others.”  So, He made man with the plan of sharing fully in God’s joy – sharing fully in heaven.

          Here’s the big dilemma:  God’s joy is entirely intertwined with His “omni-“ characteristics and His complete freedom.  In order for man to share in God’s joy, man has to be made like God.  John says “…when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” [I Jn 3:2b]  This does not mean that man becomes God.  In fact, the Christian doctrine on this is very clear – man is always distinct from God.  Man is still man, but in heaven he is transformed so that he can experience the joy that God experiences.  But in heaven, what will be man’s characteristics?  I contend that heaven cannot be heaven – it cannot be the full sharing in God’s joy – unless we have the character of God.  And that means that man – faulty man – gets to have the big keys to the kingdom.  Man gets to have complete freedom and he gets to have complete power.  Do you see the problem here?

          The problem with any human being having complete freedom and complete power is that, with one mistake, that human can end everything, including God.  One tiny moment of indiscretion and everything ends with no chance of recovery.  Just consider the danger that God puts Himself in by bringing mere human beings into full fellowship with Him in heaven.

          It is true that, on earth, man can really mess things up.  But there is a significant limit to what man can do, by design.  Maybe, eventually, man will have developed a weapon big enough to blow up the whole earth.  And that will be the end of man.  But not for eternity.  Man can only destroy the physical; and even the ability to destroy the physical is fairly limited.  We cannot kill souls – we can only kill bodies.  And once we destroy ourselves, that is the end of our destroying.  As human beings, we can get frustrated or angry or depressed and we do stupid things.  One person might put their fist through wall.  But imagine if everyone carried with them a little button that released all of the nuclear warheads all at once.  In a fit of frustration or anger or depression, someone would hit that button and…boom.

          But heaven presents that problem in spades.  We’re not just given a button that controls nuclear warheads.  Full freedom and full power means that we could hurt not only ourselves and our fellow man, but hurt God as well.  We could end it all for all of eternity, and there would be no fixing of it.  In the material, finite world, there is a limit.  Death, despite all of the awful things it means, is also the ultimate in “safety limits.”  We, as human beings, can go no further than death.  Our influence extends no further than the finite universe.  But in heaven, our influence extends forever.  A single mistake.  A single mistake…means the end of it all for everyone, with no recourse of recovery.  It’s over.  Love, joy, peace…they end.

          I thought about this from a personal perspective.  Would I want to have the full freedom and full power that God has?  Would I want to have the possibility hanging over my head that in a brief moment of something less than perfection, I would be the one to bring it all to an end?  Is heaven worth that risk? 

          What this means from God’s perspective is that He cannot afford to make one little mistake in who He lets in to heaven.  I mean, if He allows in one person who isn’t completely, wholly, and permanently transformed to a perfect state, He runs the risk of this danger – the danger of complete annihilation.  He cannot take that risk.  So, here is the dilemma God faces:  He wants the companionship of human beings – He wants to be able to interact with humans in a manner that they experience the same joy that He experiences; but to do so He must risk it all, including Himself.  If He makes a mistake and lets in even one wrong person…it’s over.

          That’s God’s dilemma.

          This is why we can’t be involved in figuring out who gets into heaven or how they get into heaven.  We would mess it all up.  We’d let in the really good people that we know.  We’d grade on a curve and take the top 10% or 20%, and then let our good friend in even though they were only at 21%.  We look at heaven as a nice honor for a life well-lived.  A nice gift from God for trying to please Him in some way.  But it is not that.  Heaven is a gift, for sure, but it is first and foremost a gift for God.  It is a final act of creation – creation that started “long ago.”  And it is the most dangerous place in the universe for human beings and human nature.  Without a transformation of our nature – a transformation that only God can ensure is complete – we should not hope for heaven.  Heaven, populated by human beings – even really really really good human beings – would be hell in no time.  And then what will be left?

          In the first creation, there were apparently angels who rebelled.  Satan is described as a “fallen angel.”  But human beings, the Bible teaches, will be made higher than the angels.  The fall of angels was the most disastrous event in the universe.  It led to evil.  It led to the fall of man.  It led to the death of every human being.  It led to Jesus dying on a cross.  But the fall of angels would pale in comparison to a second fall of man.  It just can’t happen.

          That’s God’s dilemma.  Be careful what you wish for, o man.  Don’t think a minute that you would want to be the one with the keys to heaven.

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[1] Is it theologically correct to say that God has a dilemma?  No, not really – not without carefully defining your terms.  But I’ve written this whole thing from a very human perspective, using human terms to describe God, in order to more simply convey the idea here.  If I had to carefully define every term with respect to God and chase every rabbit trail of theology, I’d never be able to get my point across.  You’ll have to take this entry as something closer to an allegory.

[2] If you are certain that there is no such God, then the rest of this entry will not be of much use to you – you might as well skip it.

Not so crazy things Christians believe - #1

          Elsewhere I listed the top five crazy things Christians believe.  But not everything in Christianity, or even in religion in general, can be considered crazy[1].  In fact, there are some things that I view as obvious and, I think, receive general agreement by most human beings.  I think these more generally-accepted ideas or beliefs can be a good starting point for discussion.  Sometimes it helps to find some common ground when starting a discussion. 

Well, here’s the first of my “not so crazy things” that Christians believe:

#1 – Nobody’s perfect.

          I think I’ve only ever met one person in my life who seemed to seriously believe they were perfect[2].  Most people acknowledge that they make mistakes – some more readily acknowledge it than others.  Obviously, there are plenty of people who think they are better than everyone else around them, but that is different than considering yourself to be truly perfect. 

          Christians will generally phrase this concept as “All have sinned.”  That phrase comes directly from multiple places in the Bible, most notably in Paul’s letter to the Romans.  By the way, regardless of your belief system, you should read the book of Romans.  I know that there is a lot of skepticism out there about the Bible and many consider it mythology and so on.  But not the book of Romans.  Good luck finding anyone who has a serious argument that this book was not written by Paul in the AD 50s or so.  As well-preserved ancient writing goes, it is one of the best, so on that basis alone, you should read it.  It won’t take long.

          Anyway, back to the phrase “nobody’s perfect.”  I know that in this day and age, where few people want to acknowledge that there are any moral absolutes, some might start to argue that the idea of “perfect” is outdated.  Personally, in my experience as a human being among other human beings, I don’t think it really matters whether you use an absolute moral standard to judge perfection with respect to this general concept.  If you want to redefine a moral standard based on your own reason, personal experience, or whim of the moment, that is fine – the concept of “nobody’s perfect” still applies.  Maybe you feel differently, but I don’t know anyone who can even live up to their own standards 100% of the time.  I know I can’t.  Even something as simple as staying on a diet or not getting upset with other drivers or paying state sales tax on items ordered off of the internet…we all fail even at the things we say are important to us.  We fail to love the people we say we love.  I don’t mean we always fail.  But we are not perfect – not even when we get to establish the rules!

          I will take it a bit further:  we can’t become perfect, either.  By that I mean that regardless of how many self-help books we read, or how hard we train, or how much will-power we can muster, or how much Oprah we watch…we can maybe become a better person, but never perfect.  We’ll fail again.  We’ll make mistakes again.  And, again, we don’t even need to agree on any kind of moral standard for this statement to be true.  No matter how hard we try, we cannot become perfect.  I mean, even ignoring the fact that we can’t eliminate our past mistakes, we cannot make ourselves perfect going forwards for any reasonable period of time.  For an hour?  Sure, maybe – if we’re sleeping during that time!  For a day?  For a week?  I suppose we can all say facetiously “I was perfect once – for five minutes…”  But even that was in the past!

          The funny thing about the statement “nobody’s perfect” is that most of us get upset when someone tries to get into specifics.  We say “I know I’m not perfect”, but if someone tries to point out a fault, we get very upset.  We know that “theoretically” we are not perfect, but when it comes to the practical implementation of that concept, we often function and act as if we are perfect.  That’s just human nature.  “I know I’m not perfect, but I don’t have any faults!”

          Well, if it is true that we almost all agree about this general concept, it seems like it ought to be a central theme of any belief system that we might have.  Or, at the very least, our belief system shouldn’t contradict that general sentiment.  Not that there isn’t the possibility that we could all be wrong…although in this particular case, if we were all wrong, wouldn’t that just reinforce the truth that “nobody’s perfect”???  But it just seems to me that we’d be fighting against the overwhelming evidence of our personal experience.  A belief system that says:  “I will strive to, and must achieve, perfection” seems doomed from the start.

          Finally, to me, this issue illustrates the inadequacy of science to comprehensively address the human condition.  I am a scientist and I place a high value on science.  I just don’t think it addresses everything, nor is it designed to address everything.  I don’t think science can confirm for me that I am not perfect.  I don’t think science can tell me what, if anything, should be done about it.  That’s why, for me, science is not “all”.  We need more.  Whether there is more is another topic entirely.  But as faulty human beings, we need for there to be more.

          It may be that I have misread my fellow human beings.  Maybe everyone will not agree with my original statement above.  I would be interested to hear any dissenting thoughts on the matter.  But, barring a significant misread on my part, I feel that the imperfection of human beings may be a good place to start discussion, because it can be a point of common agreement among many disparate views.

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[1] I use the word “crazy” because it is a fun word, not because it is the best word in this context.  To me, things that are “crazy” are things that are surprising, unexpected, unlikely, shocking, and/or hard to believe.  Miracles would fit into that category, but so would most of the predictions made by quantum physics.

[2] And they were quite obviously wrong!

Put Your Ideas to the Test - #2 - Experimenting with God (!)

          In my previous entry on this topic, I tried to motivate the desire to “test things out” or “conduct an experiment.”  That’s all well and good in the natural world.  The entire field of science is built on that concept.  But now, I’d like to step out into the deep deep deep end.  What about testing things in the spiritual, or non-material, realm?

          Well…this is going to take a lot of explaining first!  I just want to set up a few things in this entry.

          First, although I just suggested that we might consider “testing the spiritual”, I’m not considering here the things that you see on television about searching for ghosts and so on.  Why is it that non-material ghosts seem to have to produce fully-material electromagnetic waves everywhere they go???  I am highly skeptical of all that sort of thing and I have no real interest in it.  In fact, I feel that it clouds the issue.  With so much foolishness, it’s hard to find the truth and, in fact, hard to believe that there really is any truth to be found there.  So, I want to distance anything I say from that whole realm of craziness as much as possible.

          No, all I care about is performing experiments about the existence of God.  Actually, even the phrase “existence of God” is too generic.  I want to get even more specific than that.  But I have to stop here again and make another point.

          You can’t test God in a randomized, double-blind experiment.  You can’t even do a simple repeat “test”.  It’s the same reason that you can’t trust political opinion polls about which candidate someone will vote for.  How do I know you can’t trust them?  Because I’ve been asked to do some of those polls and – guess what? – I lied.  I lied.  I exercised my freewill as an obstinate human being who doesn’t like being called in the middle of trying to write up a blog entry and being asked about my opinions for a poll that is a waste of time to begin with (in my opinion).  So, I don’t take them seriously.  They can’t make me take it seriously.  Why?  Because I have free will (hah!).

          The point is, if God has any of the qualities that a God should have, then He has free will.[1]  If we don’t place any other requirements on God, then we face the same problem that pollsters face when they ask human beings questions:  God could lie too.  Or He could play hard to get.  He could hide Himself behind blind chance.  There’s just no way to pin God down and do a study on Him.  We’d have to get His consent first, and His willingness to play along and play fair, and even then, how could we be sure He was playing fair?  We just can’t control Him.  So, no, I can’t see any way of testing a general concept of God through any type of experimental means.  That is not what I’m talking about here either.

          We will have to get down to a very specific “God” and a very specific situation to have any chance of testing.  Even then, the rules for this evaluation are going to have to be very carefully spelled out.  But I just want to define the general concept right now and get into the details in the future.

          The specific “God” I am talking about is Jesus.  As I pointed out in my “Top Five Crazy Things” entry, Christians make a couple of claims that are relevant here:  1) Jesus is God and 2) Jesus is still alive today and active in people’s lives.  Further, I’m talking about Jesus as described in the Bible.  I am being very specific because we can only test very specific things.  We cannot test God in general, but we might have some chance of testing – or evaluating[2] – specific aspects of a very specific kind of God.  That is what I am talking about.

          I said all that to say this:  in the Bible, it is recorded that Jesus said the following:

"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.”  [Matt 7:7-8]

And also

“Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.”  [Rev 3:20]

          There is a lot to these statements, and we will have to analyze them in detail and make sure we understand them fully before we can go much further.  But for the moment I want you to entertain this one thought:  is it possible to evaluate whether these statements are true or not?  We certainly can’t test to figure out if a lying God exists, but can we test to see if a man, claiming to be God, who made the claims above in the past and still intends to live up to these claims even now, today…can we test to see if such a God as that exists?  From an experimental design perspective, the major advantage of adding Christian beliefs to the statements above is that if Jesus is still alive today, then we don’t have to try to figure out how to test if this statement was valid at some point in the past – that would be nearly impossible to do – we just have to figure out if this statement is valid right now.

          It’s not going to be easy to figure this out.  But I would suggest that, at the very least, it is worth some effort on our part to try to figure it out.  Maybe we can’t figure out a way to test this claim, but ignoring the possibility hardly seems like the smart thing to do.  OK, well, I can’t resist the possibility, and since this is my blog, I get to dive in.

Be careful though – best to think everything through in detail before knocking on the lion’s door!

Next Entry on this Topic

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[1] I’m not talking about a mindless “Force” that has no will.  Actually, such a force, assuming it follows some kind of rules, would probably actually be testable using scientific methods.  And, in fact, such forces have been identified by science…gravity…electromagnetic force…strong and weak nuclear forces…

[2] It is very unfortunate that the English word “test” has different meanings.  A better word would actually be “taste”, but that would probably seem odd without a lot of explanation.  I’ll save that for the future.