Basic Christianity: Who is God?

Speaker 1: In this episode of Balancing the Christian Life, we talk about the existence of God . Welcome to Balancing the Christian Life. I'm Dr Kenny Embry. Join me as we discover how to be better Christians and people in the digital age. You believe in God. I know you do, or at least I know you think you do. Why listen to a Christian podcast if you don't believe in God? But do you know what that actually means? Lately, I've been thinking about really simple but complicated ideas about Christianity. They are what I consider the foundations of what it means to be a Christian, and the first one that I wanted to tackle was who is God? It's a three-word question that has really endless possibilities, but I think one of the things that we often struggle with is does he exist at all? That is the struggle of the atheists, that's for sure, and many agnostics. I think once you get past the idea of if there is a God at all , you have to start grappling with who is he? Is he good, is he bad, and how do you know? For this conversation, I decided to talk to a colleague of mine, tommy Humphreys. He's a college professor at St Leo University, which is a Catholic school. I realize he and I come from different faith traditions. I am a conservative Church of Christ member. I would be called anti by many, and that's fine with me, but I strongly believe that we have something to learn from everyone , including people who don't grow up the same way we do, and I'm willing to put that to the test. I vouch for Tommy. I know we have some theological differences. I know he believes in the Pope and I do not. What we talk about here is so fundamental to Christianity and so fundamental to both the way he thinks about God and the way I think about God. I think there's a lot of overlap. Some of the very best thinkers about Christianity include names like CS Lewis or RR Bruce or some of the great thinkers who have thought about some of the ramifications of what it means to be a Christian and how we do it very practically, and none of them are from the Church of Christ tradition. I want to learn from people who are great thinkers, and I think Tommy is one of those great thinkers, as well as just an excellent guy all around. I also knew the way that Tommy would go with this, and he ended up exactly where I thought he would. He believes that God is love. It's hard for me to argue with that, because I think he's right you can't talk about God without talking about love, and that's exactly where Tommy's about to take us. So, tommy, let's just start here. Do you believe in God? I do, I do as well. What is it exactly that we believe? Speaker 2: I mean, obviously it's meaningful to say there's a God, we believe in God, and often we think we're saying the same thing. Right to say there's a God, we believe in God, and often we think we're saying the same thing. So I suppose you know, one question or line of questions to ask would be something like what do we mean by God? That's right. Is the object of that belief the same thing? Right, but there's another way to open up the question. Maybe we don't mean the same thing by believe, right. Believe, I think, think, has at least two ends of the spectrum. Okay, one is the normal way that we use the word when we're speaking. It's a verb of knowing, it's a verb of thinking and it indicates, uh, a lower degree of certainty, right? And so it's like um, how hot is it outside? I don't know, but I believe it's over 90, right Because I'm sweating right. I just walked in, but then you know it's like well, we could test, that, we could go look at a thermometer and then I wouldn't say, man, I believe it's 92 degrees. I would say something like I'm certain it's 92 degrees, right? So belief might be how certain am I about a thing? And it would indicate less certainty, all right. So there's one way of asking a question to like a Christian, do you believe in God? And the answer is yes, but I'm not certain, right. But I'm thinking of it as the same order of knowledge as what's the temperature outside or how late is Home Depot open. Speaker 1: So basically you're looking at this as kind of a tenet of faith. That faith is kind of that idea of belief. Is that right? Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I mean faith and belief would simply be the same word, same thing yeah. But another sense of belief, and this is the explicitly Christian sense, and this, I think, is unique across all conversation partners that we might envision things that we call religion, things that we call philosophy, things that we call theology and their belief is not so much my way of knowing things and asking whether or not I'm certain, but it's God's way of knowing things right. And so theological faith, as a gift from God, as a virtue, means that I'm doing something related to human ways of knowledge. It's still my mind, but it's my mind acting on grace, it's my mind acting on God's knowledge, and an intermediary in there, or a dividing line, is revelation. Is God providing that knowledge to me? And so one way of asking the question do you believe in God? Is like do you have a hunch? How certain are you? When you list the order of things you know, two plus two is four. You're married, you're sitting here, it's hot outside. Where does God fit in that? And then another way of asking the question is something like do you think that you're thinking beyond your own human ability with something that God has given you? And of course, for Christians the answer to both questions is yes, and so we all have some degree of certainty, rational processes. I've worked it out and I can have a conversation about belief , faith, with any other human who's rational, and of course I cannot have that conversation with my dogs, because I can't have a rational conversation with my dogs. But human rationality would be the limiting factor of that conversation. But then the other way that we might use that word would be do I have some experience, something that tells me I am thinking in a transcendent way, in a way beyond what I normally could come up with, and you and I both have those experiences too. And so we would say something like do you believe in God? And respond yes, I'm thinking with the mind of God. God has revealed himself to me in a way that I would never figure that out on human reason. Second division we were making is like what do we mean by God? And I think a lot of times what we mean by God sort of corresponds to what we mean by believe. And so if we're asking that question entirely within the limits of human reason, then the object of that belief is more or less going to be some kind of propositional content that we could always talk about under human reason. It's going to look like do you believe two plus two equals four ? I do, in fact I know I'm certain. Well, do you believe two plus X equals four, and therefore X equals two? Well, some people start saying I'm not quite as certain about that one, but I do believe, right. And so we come up with the same questions, right? Do you believe that God exists? Yes, do you believe that God is omniscient? Right, and we go through these lists of traditional attributes of God. The answer to all those questions is yes. The resources for answering them very well might just be sophisticated human reason. But then the other way of asking the question is but is this personal? Have you had a revelatory encounter with God? And of course, that always radically changes your life. It gives you new abilities to think. But then, well then I may not be able to have a conversation with you if you've not had a similar experience. Speaker 1: Well, I definitely want to go down that rabbit hole in just a moment. I think one of the things that, especially as we come to terms with how we relate to the rest of the world, there are people who believe, like me and you, that there's somebody who's going to hold us to a standard that we will not hold ourselves to. In other words, that there is something that we would call good and that God is the greatest good that there is, and there's that perfect standard that if you're acting like a numbskull, you know you're acting like a numbskull because you're not acting as good as God . Would you see what I'm saying? Yeah, so I think to me, and it kind of goes back to that idea of Hebrews 11, where he says in order to please God, you must first believe that he is and that he is rewarded of those who diligently seek him. So I guess the simplest way that I think about this question is do you believe in the fact of God, that, whether you want to believe that there's an old gray-haired dude in the sky, that, whether or not you want him to be there, he is there and you believe? Speaker 2: that he's there. You see what I'm saying yeah, yeah, no, I mean certainly I do, and certainly any number of other people do. I mean, this is something that I think you don't even need. Christianity, for you don't need revelation, you don't need scripture, you don't need an encounter with Christ. I mean Socrates, plato and Aristotle, all of whom famously agree and disagree with each other and Socrates is a teacher of Plato directly and Plato is a teacher of Aristotle directly. Like these men knew each other as elder and younger, they all accept that there must be this fundamentally good, divine thing . It's a real question about whether thing is the right word, or being is the right word, or whether he's so good that he's just beyond any of those terms as well. But yeah, I think that's perfectly natural and makes sense within human reason. And, frankly, if you're constructing a picture of the world and the universe in which there's not something like that or someone like that, then I really think you have a flawed understanding of yourself and the world. I mean, I don't see how you can make a consistent picture of the world simply as a rational being. Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I completely agree. But you know as well as I do, there are people who consider themselves atheists and they will actively argue against this being. Speaker 2: Yeah. And so there again, you know two broad, or maybe three broad now, parts of the conversation. One, an atheist could be saying , in all honesty, I've never experienced the God you've experienced. Right, it's not that way, and I have to be open to. Well, maybe you and God have a different relationship than I do with God, right, I mean, that's a possibility that exists. But then, within that limits of human rationality, it may be that when I say I believe in God , I think it's credible, I think that it's reasonable, right to believe in a God who's all-powerful. You and I are constructing power in very different ways, and so when you think of this God just your definition of what the object of belief is you're thinking of a God who exercises power in terms of violence or power over, and I'm thinking of a God who exercises power fundamentally in terms of love. Right, I'm thinking of the God who creates out of love and you're thinking of the God who destroys out of hate. Well, again, we just don't have the same meaning of the word God there, and often I think the case is, if we could clarify those bits entirely within human reason, we'd find that the atheist and the theist are saying remarkably similar things . Speaker 1: Oh, I completely agree with that. I think one of our problems and you've kind of already addressed this is that we are limited to the relationships that we have with the people that we know and suddenly this idea of who God is looks a lot like the people that we know. Right, because that's the only frame of reference we have. Right, and we recognize that our friends and the people that we know all have limits and you're trying to take basically a limited understanding of the people around you and I think most of us unintentionally give the same limits to God because that's all we have a frame of reference for. You see what I'm saying. Speaker 2: Yeah, Now can we go back to the Hebrews. Speaker 1: Sure. Speaker 2: You were saying there's like an end of faith or a goal of faith. Yeah, can you articulate that again? Speaker 1: Well, sure, if you go back to Hebrews 11, where he says that he goes through what we call the Hall of Fame of Faith, here are all these people like Abraham, who was given a lot of promises and basically did not live long enough to see any of them fulfilled. What he says there is these people all died in faith. And then during that he talks about, he says I want to say in like verse six or seven in order to please God, you must first believe that he is and that he was your warder of those who diligently seek him. And the argument that I have with that is that first part is something that there is a God, that you believe that he is. Because if you can argue God out of existence, then you're not pleasing to God. And I think and you might agree with this, you might disagree with this, this you might disagree with this You're also not being very intellectually honest, because if you don't believe that there is an eternal creator, you recognize that we all somehow get along and we have a moral sense. And where did that moral sense come from? And again, if we were going to be talking about CS Lewis, one of the things I would say is. He would argue that that moral sense really almost has to come from God. Speaker 2: Absolutely. Yeah, cs Lewis is a great dialogue partner on these and there are lots of these arguments about well, they kind of fundamentally come to a point thinking of CS Lewis with like you could either begin with an all-good God, you could begin with an all-evil God, or you could begin with equally evil and equally good, and the only way to explain any good in the world is if there's fundamentally good, because if it were fundamentally evil, evil would never allow good to come about. Right, and if there were equal evil and good, then you would be stuck in a similar way, right, like there would be no sense that good overcomes or no reason to prefer one to the other. So the fact that we do have a preference for the good suggests that the good must be fundamental. Yeah, I was thinking about why you want such a faith, why Abraham wants that kind of relationship with God and why God wants that relationship with Abraham, if we could speak that way. Speaker 1: No, I think that makes a lot of sense. Speaker 2: I think that's the better question, quite frankly, yeah and I think the answer to that question has to be that belief, faith in the Christian sense, is the beginning of something, not the end. And I mean this is all over the New Testament, I'm thinking of Paul often. Faith, hope and love, right, and this is a sequence, this is an order. And so let's pause and ask a question. Sure, why would belief be the beginning of something, or of what is at the beginning? What is the end result of knowledge? Now, the end result of knowledge in that first sense of faith, like just I'm less than certain, is usually I want to seek a higher degree of certainty, right, I'm not sure if I drop something how fast it will fall. Let me drop it a bunch of times and count and see how fast it falls. And now I drop it a bunch of times and count and see how fast it falls, and now I'm more certain. I have a theory and right, we can, we can move along those lines, but the point of knowledge of a person is open to a lot more than how fast do you fall when I drop you? Right? Yeah, the the point of knowledge with a person opens to love. Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree with that. Speaker 2: The reason to know not another thing, but another one right Not just simply to think of objects of knowledge, but subjects of knowledge is that my knowledge allows me to love. Now, what is it that suspense that's holding out right? Well, I don't know God perfectly yet, but God gives me enough knowledge in the theological sense, enough faith that I can begin to love him. Love begets its own kind of knowledge, and it's a deeper sense of knowledge than just the introductory, I see you, right kind of knowledge. And so I think we hit the cycle . I think what Hebrews is pointing towards is yeah, in this life there's a kind of suspense where I realize one I'm not the determiner of this whole relationship, at best I'm one part of it. I'm not the determiner of this whole relationship, at best I'm one part of it. And then I realize, actually, if I'm comparing my part to God's part, I'm the small part of it, right? Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, and so. Speaker 2: I'm not in control of this. So, yeah, there's a sense I've got to step out, I've got to trust, I've got to open, and I'm also opening myself to all the vulnerabilities. This is exactly like when we met our wives, you know. Like hey, I kind of like you. Speaker 1: Would you tell me your name, right? Speaker 2: Like there's a lot of stepping out. The stepping out that we're doing is both a stepping out in lack of knowledge please fulfill my knowledge and a stepping out in love, At least at the beginning of. I think you might be one whom I can love. Let me know more about you that I might love you more, and now that I love you, I also know you more in ways that I did not know you before. Now in this life, the reality is we die before we have what we are told is going to be the fuller relationship with God. We die short of resurrection. We die short of seeing God face to face. We have momentary glimpses of him, we have experiences, but we know that they're not yet it right. Eyes not seen, ears not heard. We're headed somewhere else where it's going to be a better, more solid knowledge and love, and so I think this is what Hebrews call him Paul, traditionally, or not Paul, if we think that it doesn't look like that. Speaker 1: Oh, I don't think it's Paul. Yeah, I don't think it's Paul Sure. Speaker 2: This is what Hebrews is pointing out too. All of these fathers in faith have had enough knowledge of God to know there's no one else worthy of your love. Speaker 1: You know that you mentioned marriage. I mean, the fact of the matter is, you make a commitment before you understand the commitment and I think one of the things and this is my own opinion I think God gave us marriage in such a way that it illustrates his relationship to us. He could have given us any number of ways to procreate, but what he makes us do is to commit to one person, ideally commit to one person for life, not understanding them completely, but in sickness and in health, really in everything that's good and in everything that's bad, and you don't know what the good parts are going to be and you don't know what the bad parts are going to be. But you're in and before you have all the information, are you going to do this or not, which sounds a lot like Christianity. Before you get into this, are you going to do this or not? Before you know everything about this, are you in or are you out? Speaker 2: Does that make sense? Yeah, Are you in enough to figure it out Now? I mean, there's some preconditions to that, right? You have to know enough to reasonably commit to something, right, I mean you don't just marry the first woman you meet on the street, right? Well, she said no, hey, more things alike between us. Yeah, there also there's a precondition on that, which is something like self-possession right. Before I can say I do, I have to know the I right. I mean I have to be in charge of myself enough that right now I can say yes and meaningfully commit to the arc of what I don't know is coming for the next half of my life. That's a pretty radical commitment. Right To say I'm in self-possession enough today that I can commit the rest of me to this relationship. Speaker 1: But here's what I like about this, tommy. I promise this is true and you know it's true. You have had doubts during your marriage. 100%, yeah. And again, this, in my opinion, relates very nicely to this idea of do you have doubts about the existence of God? Do you have doubts about God? Right, and I think that's quite frankly, and I don't know if you'll agree with me on this if you don't have doubts about God, I don't know that you're doing it right. Speaker 2: No, I agree with you 100%. And there's this book by. It was Pope Benedict XVI, but before he was pope he wrote the book as Cardinal Ratzinger Introduction to Christianity and it opens kind of counterintuitively with stories about doubt. But the point he makes is that what unites the atheist and the theist is doubt. But the point he makes is that what unites the atheist and the theist is doubt. There's actually no perfectly certain atheist or any perfectly certain atheist is a low-order thinker, in the same way that any perfectly certain Christian is a low-order thinker. You're not being honest with yourself, right? Because, as we were talking about before, like the universe that you understand, if the universe is simply that which you understand, if you are the definer of the universe, right, you are the center of the universe. Like, that universe falls apart for sure on day two, if not a minute two. Right, right, right, right. So at some point you have to say I don't have it figured out. And then what you're actually saying is I'm an atheist means I'm committed to this tradition of thinking, I'm committed to this philosophy that we do have it all explained within human resources and we don't need God to explain it. Or I hate Christianity because look at the horrible things they've done and come up with a list of of abuses and and and war crimes, I mean, like, like everything you can imagine. Okay, um, uh, the other, the other thing, and my wife, um, does not appreciate the story as much as I do, uh, so I'll caveat it with maybe, uh, maybe this is a conversation between the two guys, but, um, when we were doing our marriage preparation, uh, one of the sets of questions was something like doing our marriage preparation, one of the sets of questions was something like are you able to commit? Right? And I know what they're asking about is are you under duress? You know, are you marrying this woman just because she's got money and you don't, or you know , and well, those are bad reasons to get married, right? That can't be the sum total of it. Yeah, okay, go ahead. But I was also thinking a lot about this question of like. Actually, I don't think I'm in charge of myself right now to commit myself to every unknown, like I realize this commitment is huge, and so the questions were worded are you able to do this, or how certain are you? And I marked a number of them as well. It's a delicate question. I'm not actually ready to commit, or if the question is simply can I, on my own resources, do it right? All right. So this comes up. My wife is horribly embarrassed and, like I can't believe that you would express some doubt in getting married. You know the answer to the question is supposed to be yes. So the priest is asking us hey, what's up with this? And I said, father, this is an incredible commitment, I could not do it alone. And the question anticipated can I commit to marriage on my own? And my answer is no, but I'm not committing to marriage on my efforts alone. I'm committing to marriage as exactly as you say, a pattern that God has set up and something I think God is blessing and God's going to provide graces that I don't have yet, right, like I'm not married yet, and so I have this full faith that God will provide . I got no idea how that's going to look, what the joys and the difficulties are going to be, absolutely, in all honesty, I doubt I have struggles. I think everybody does. You got to be honest about that . You also have to be honest about the point you were making earlier that for Christians, this is not something we're doing alone. And in fact, let's go back and think about Genesis. One does not envision the possibility of human existence apart from a male and female who is fertile and multiplies what's created in the image of God. Speaker 1: Man is created in the image. Speaker 2: Go ahead, Let us create man in our image, male and female. He made them. Yeah, you're right, right and so I mean I don't want to say you cannot read it, as I, as an individual, have made the image of God. Of course you are, but don't close yourself to what Genesis actually says, which is that we are made in the image of God and there's something about that human community, something about that marriage which, exactly as you said, is an icon of God, is the image of God and there's something about that human community, something about that marriage which, exactly as you said, is an icon of God, is the image of God and we have to be open to that right that I alone am not the perfect image of God and I, with Christine, my wife, am an image of God in a way that seems to be much more natural to Genesis. Genesis 2 makes the same argument right. Imagine if there were one human . It is not good to be alone. Imagine if you tried to be together with all of the rest of creation. None of those are a suitable helpmate right. That's why there's male and female. I think we're beat over the head with it in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 that there's something about community and, specifically, marriage, where we have to meditate on being the image of God. Speaker 1: Right, and in the Catholic tradition you would call that a sacrament. I would not Go ahead. Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think . So much of the metaphor of basically both marriage and family. I don't know about you, tommy. I got married for very different reasons than I stay married. I thought my wife was gorgeous, I thought we would have a great time and that, quite frankly, was the reason I got married. Sure, but my marriage is much different to me now and, quite frankly, I still enjoy the sexual part of my marriage. Right, glad I do, right, but. And I love my wife in a very different way, and it's not that I've jettisoned that part of it , it's that I understand her more and I appreciate her more and she's in some ways she is completely insane and in some ways she is a lot more insightful than I am and she makes me look like not an idiot than I am and she makes me look like not an idiot. So I mean, that's something that I appreciate and, quite frankly again, this is a religious discussion I became a Christian for very different reasons than I stay a Christian, because I think the reason I became a Christian was to escape hell. Speaker 2: But I don't stay a christian to escape hell, but I still want to, yeah I was going to make exactly the same point, that this is the dynamic we were talking about, about, uh, faith in the theological sense is open to love and and, uh, you have to have enough knowledge to start the relationship, and, and so we think of the beginning of faith. That's right, right, that's right. But then that faith, and especially if it doesn't include hope and love, it stagnates, it stops and then you fall out, right, and so the life of Christianity is exactly the life of marriage, and I mean this is all over scripture as well. The wedding feast of the lamb Christ is married to his bride, right? I mean, like, there you have it , old Testament, all over the place in the prophetic calls I love you, I will call you into the wilderness and my love will make you pure right. We're faithful to each other. All of that is so deeply laden within God's revelation of how we fit together. Yeah, it's beautiful, it makes sense, and I think you're exactly right. The chart that any man can, or the path that any man can chart in his relationship with his wife, is one of deepening and it never abandons the initial part . Of course I still find you wildly attractive. Of course I still like hanging out with you and holding hands, and all of those things hanging out with you and holding hands, and right at all of those things which were first impressions, beginning of love, those don't go away, right, they, they take on incredibly more significance. Of course, I still have fear of God in the sense of avoiding punishment, but I also don't want to let God down, but I also love God. But I also have a deeper and more abiding relationship with God which is fulfilling in a way that, again, I couldn't imagine . Or sometimes, you know, I think of it this way, like were you married on the day that you said I do yes, yes, yeah, somehow more married. Today we have to speak both as yeah, but the way I was married 20 years ago, 10 years ago, man, that's nothing like the way I'm married today, that's right, but it's still the same marriage and we have the same paradigm and I was Christian then and I'm Christian now, but much more deeply, so, much more better. Speaker 1: So You're taking this a lot deeper than I was anticipating. We would go, tommy oh. Speaker 2: I thought we were going to start with Moses at the burning bush. And who is God? Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I do want to get back to basically this idea of because you've already made allusion to it we have a lot of ideas about the characteristics of God. But we have a lot of ideas about the characteristics of God and I think one of the reasons, one of the things you've already said that makes a lot of sense to me, is we keep on trying to make God as small as we are and because of that, the ideas of the omnipresence of God , the omniscience of God, the omnipotence of God, those we kind of got in part and parcel with, basically, the tradition of God. Why do we think God is everywhere? Why do we think that he knows everything? Why do we think that he has all power? Could we not have a creator that has less than all knowledge , that has less than all power? Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean multiple lines of thought about that. I think I'd like to go back to the point in the conversation we were thinking about, like making God in my image versus me in God's image, or what is it that human reason wants? And human reason recognizes a need for things which transcend, recognizes that in fact, I am not the center of the universe. That's just not a satisfactory universe. Speaker 1: Wait a minute. Are you saying I'm not center of the universe? Speaker 2: I am saying you are not the center of the universe. Speaker 1: Your wife is. Speaker 2: Yeah. So one thing that we're doing when we're saying God is omnipotent is we're saying rationally, I realize, I want, I need, I've worked out there ought to be a thing which is transcendent, which is beyond what I am. I right, I'm not omnipotent, I am, and so God must be right. In other words, we're defining in reference to a thing we know and we're saying but it's not that, and we do this all the time. Right, we can't remember the word for this. You remember that thing, it's not this one, it's not that one. Right, we're kind of triangulating or walking our way back and forth, or sometimes think of it as a ratchet where you kind of turn a bit and go back a different, and so you're blocking in what it is. And for people following in the philosophical tradition, this is in the apophatic term or the alpha privatives. Right, god is not this, god is infinite. God is without boundary. Right, god is not this, god is infinite, god is without boundary. And there's a real question about are we limiting God by applying our concept of infinite , which is what we intend not to do? Right, there's a real question about how language works. Okay, so one reason that we will come up with a God who's omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, all of these things . Is that, effectively, what we're trying to say in language is there is a God and I'm not it and I know these things about me. I'm present in one place, so God's got to be different. God's got to be present in all places. That's helpful and meaningful and that you can find in all manners of rational thinkers, philosophers of every kind. Right, you don't even need a kind of religion, I think, to come up with that. Pure human reason can come up with that. Physics does this. Right, we describe things and we're like, yeah, this is the model, but it's just a model. That's not actually what it is. So models are helpful, but I've always got something going on, some analogy, some transcendent, some other. Another thing we're doing with that is not so much trying to deny there's a God I'm not it but I think we're trying to imagine what the life of perfection would be, and I'm not sure that we can get to that within human reason. In my own thoughts. I don't know where my theological conversation picks up and my philosophical conversation ends, but I think what we're aiming at ultimately, the Christian theological sense is, as John says in the first letter, god is love, and the heart of love is the ability to give yourself completely to another for the good, and so there's freedom and there's truth, and there's goodness and there's beauty. I mean all these things that we attempt to articulate the transcendentals in philosophy traditionally. So these are all ways of us trying to say what would perfect love look like. Perfect love would be everywhere . Perfect love can do anything. Perfect love knows the fullness of truth right, and so certainly from the theological perspective, I think we can come at it in that direction. All of these are ways to say what would perfect love be. It must be like that. Speaker 1: I think the other thing that you would say is that there's a very practical reality to this as well, which is, if God is going to be the Savior of everyone, he has to have some ability to get to know everyone, and if you limit God to just being able to get to know a few with relative shallowness, then what you worship has very little power absolutely, in fact. Speaker 2: Uh it, it's very hard for me to come up with a a notion of what worship would be if the object of worship is not the god who loves. Uh like, like what's why? Why worship? What is worship if God is simply power to destroy? That doesn't seem like worship, right, that just seems like common sense, because I don't want to get wiped off the face of the earth. Speaker 1: Yeah, but that's what idolatry looked like in, basically, the Babylonians and all those which is— and today still. Well, no, you're exactly right, and, quite frankly, I think we do that with God as well, which is we're going to make bargains with God as if he wanted anything from us. That's right that we are. You will have my allegiance if you will do this for me, and God never needed your allegiance to begin with. And it kind of goes back to another part of the conversation that we already had, which is we are not in an equal relationship with God, unlike every other relationship that you've had. The reason that you're in a good marriage is because your wife and you are still working at it and you've agreed that you're in a good relationship. Right, but that's not the way it is with God, because you don't get to negotiate that relationship. That relationship is dictated to you on the very best possible terms. You see what I'm saying. Speaker 2: Yes, the thing I want to add to that is that the very best possible terms include God invites me to be a partner with him. That's right, right and so it's not ultimately over and against my will. It's to the conversion of my will in love, so that I do want what God wants. God will always want what's best for me Right, and will always be what is best for me, but you don't know what's best for you. Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, and that's the. You talked about 1 John, where he says not that we loved God, but that God loved us, god starts the relationship. God starts the relationship, but he also perfects the relationship, because we keep on messing it up. Yes, you see what I'm saying. Yes, so I guess, going back to that idea of why do we have to believe that he's all powerfulpowerful and all-present and all, yeah, Sure, sure. Speaker 2: So like what would be lost if we had a God who was not all-powerful. Speaker 1: Who was limited? Speaker 2: yeah, yeah, there are lots of arguments that work like this. Imagine that there is a God who is partially powerful. Now imagine that there's a God who is fully powerful. Right, isn't the fully powerful God better? Speaker 1: Yes, and I want him to be better. But what if he's? Speaker 2: not. You mean what if? What if he's limited? Well, but you would have to mean what if being limited is better than being unlimited right, Because part of the definition of God is good, the perfect Right. And so you can always ask the question is it better to be all powerful or not? Speaker 1: And the answer, traditionally so, was of course God, who is all powerful, is better. Speaker 2: Is it better to be limited in your presence or present everywhere? Of course it's better to be present everywhere. Is it better to be in time or out of time? Of course it's better to be limited in your presence or present everywhere. Of course it's better to be present everywhere. Is it better to be in time or out of time? Of course it's better to be out of time. So all of those things are wrapped up with normal arguments about just what perfection was, and I can imagine a thing better than what you're imagining, and so I'm going to replace your imagination of God with my imagination of God. Right, I can just substitute the best. Speaker 1: I think one of the other things that I would say is I've gone to some lengths not to define God by his revealed message, by the Bible. But if you even take a cursory look at really any of the books of Bible I'm thinking specifically of Job, where Job has all these grievances against God and God's response is not well, here's what was going on. No, his response is where were you? And basically what he does is very. He just basically says he puts Job in his place and he says I'm sorry, but you're not a party to basically creating the world. That's my job. Speaker 2: That's right. Job does not get to define the truth, and he says that right. Speaker 1: Like his wife says, you know it's time for you to curse God right, like you've come to the end, and he says, no , I can't. Speaker 2: Why? Not? Because what Job is wrestling with is, but if I curse God, what Job is wrestling with is, but if I curse God, I've put myself in the position of defining the good here, and I think I mean I think we're kind of retelling or meditating again on the tree, the knowledge of good and evil, and the question for Job is something like Job don't you get to define the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Don't you get to be the determiner? of what is good and what is not. That's right and Job is like hey man, we've been down that road. It doesn't go very well for us. No, the last thing I'm going to do is say I planted that tree in my garden. I didn't, god put that tree in my garden and I have to be cognizant enough to realize that I'm at my limit. I don't understand what any of it's going to do, but I know if I jump in and say I do understand all of the implications, that'll be wrong. That's a sure way to get it messed up. Speaker 1: Yeah, although basically what you're arguing there is God gets to define what good is and we don't have that luxury, we just know what we want but God gets to define morality. Do you see what I'm saying? Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah simply an arbitrary set of rules, right. If it were all based on God's will, which is what arbitrary means, then I think a lot of problematic assumptions would come right. Could God have wanted it different? God could want anything, could he have made murder? Fine. But that, traditionally speaking , and certainly for me, is just a bad formulation of God's will, because it anticipates that God does not will the good. And we're saying but there's a necessary connection between the good and what God wants. There's a necessary connection between the perfect, the true right, all of these things. And so the fact that this is the moral law is not simply a reflection of God's will in the abstract of the truth of the situation, but it is in fact an expression of the truth. It is in fact an expression of beauty, it is in fact an expression of all of these things we've been discussing. And that means, then, that morality is not obedience to another will. Right? That would be a problematic understanding of marriage. I want to do this, my wife wants to do that. I'll just do what she wants, I'll obey. Now, in fact, the paradigm of marriage is that I want the same thing my wife wants. That's why we're both committed to the same struggle and that's why we can both come to each other and say, hey, I think you made a mistake, right, because I know your end goal is our good, a fruitful, productive relationship that draws us both closer to God and witnesses God's love to everyone else. I think you fell short of the mark and that's why both of us are willing to hear that conversation, right? Like, actually, yeah, I found myself not wanting, and acting on not wanting, the good. All right. Morality, then, is a loving union of wills. Morality is a conversion of me coming to want the same good that God wants for me, and that feels good when I'm mature, for the same reason that it feels good when my wife and I want the same thing, and it's good. Now, I'm always subject to my own limitations. I don't always understand the good, I don't always want the good. I can't always accomplish what I do understand and want. Yeah, I live in limitations, but okay, let's not make the mistake of thinking of morality as an arbitrary will of God, which is not also always connected to the truth and the goodness and the beautiful to the truth and the goodness and the beautiful. Speaker 1: But one of the things that I would argue with you on that is God gets to define also what is true and what is beautiful, because I think one of the things, the marriage that works is the marriage that's negotiated. But ultimately, if my wife decides to do the objectively wrong thing and I decide to do the objectively wrong thing, it's still bad. You see what I'm saying? Because god is the one who defines what good and bad is. You see what I'm saying? Speaker 2: yes, okay, yeah uh, could we also say god is the definition of what is good and bad? Speaker 1: yes, okay yes, that, yes, that's what I'm saying I'd be happier with that articulation. Yeah, yeah, okay, honestly, I thought we would just stick with . Do we know that God is and who God is? But I think really, what you're starting to talk about here is the character of God himself. It's not enough just to know that there is something in existence, but part of believing in God is also defining the character of God. Is that accurate? Speaker 2: you think yeah yeah, and coming into relationship. And I mean again the parallels, and we know we're on strong grounds theologically. The parallels, marriage Like many people know, there is a spouse out there. For me, right, there is someone with whom it can work. Speaker 1: I was 37 when I got married. I doubted that for a long time. Speaker 2: Were you also married in our 30s? I was at the age of Christ when I made my consent 33? Speaker 1: Yeah here we are, there you go. Speaker 2: Yeah, well, okay, there is this sense in which human reason can recognize there's a need for something right. I mean this we've been calling the transcendent or God or something right, where it's like there must be something more and that motivates us to go find the something more. Speaker 1: Yeah, I completely agree with that, and you talked about being in relationship with God. I think one of the things that I worry about with Christians is we have too much of a heaven focus, that we have too much of a focus of my life starts after I'm dead, and there's a concept in Christianity labeled the already, but not yet. And the argument that I would make is the most exciting part of heaven is the relationship, and you're already in that relationship. So the best part of heaven is already here, but you're not yet in heaven. And I think one of the things that I like about that conceptualization because I think partially one of the problems that we have is that we can idolize heaven. We can idolize rule keeping, we can idolize a lot of the things that in and of themselves, are good and great things for meditation. We can idolize the law and lose the relationship. You see what I'm saying, yep absolutely yeah. Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's well said. And there's also the temptation to make my local tradition, however big, that is an idol, and there's even I mean it sounds sacrilegious a temptation to make scripture an idol, right, and these are all ways that we sell short what the fundamental relationship with God is. Yeah, I think that's right. We also use the already not yet with marriage. I mean, this is what we were driving at. Wasn't I already married when I said I do, yes, but not yet in the way that I am now right. And we must have those old men in our life, like I remember Mr Manus, a carpentry teacher, who just said to me in my 20s when you finally get married, I hope you find a woman like mine. Right, and there's a certain sense in which these fathers in faith, the Christians before us, are saying when you finally settle down with God and enter that deep relationship, I hope you find my God, I hope you find this God that's bigger than anything you've ever imagined yet and fundamentally more deeper. And there's a sense in which we're saying about heaven when you finally get there, I hope it's the right one, I hope you've landed on the real heaven and you're already connected to it, but don't let your already connection so short. What else can happen? Don't try to be married in the way of, for us, your 30s, or most people, in the way of your 20s, for the rest of your life. Speaker 1: Yeah, I see what you're saying and I really do agree with this, because I think the woman that I idolized in concept was a very different woman than the real person I ended up marrying and the real woman's even more exciting. It's different than me, yeah, and the important parts of it are the parts that are different than me, because I could not conceptualize the parts of it, because it comes from me, and I guess one of the things that you're kind of addressing here is don't get enamored of your concept of heaven. Yeah, because you don't know enough yet to figure out what's good for you, much less what heaven is really like. Speaker 2: Yes, some of what you know is right and some of what you know is not right, and the process has to be clarifying your image of heaven. Speaker 1: And, to a certain extent, abandoning your idea of heaven. Speaker 2: That's absolutely right. Speaker 1: Because I think the best parts of my marriage I did not know I had to negotiate, I did not know I had to and just like that, the best parts of Christianity. I'll go out on a limb on this and say I don't really understand the best parts of Christianity Because, quite frankly, I keep on trying to make Christianity in my image and this is what Christ wants me to do, because this is how I interpret, this is what Christ wants me to do. Speaker 2: Right. Speaker 1: And if I would and this is the corniest line I've ever heard If I would just let go and let God, I would probably be a lot better off, right, right, I let go and let God was big in certain phases of my life . Speaker 2: The, the form that it has taken, uh, and, and I actually like burned it into a piece of wood to keep it in there is shut up and let God love you. Right? You're talking too much, tommy, right? Um, yeah, um, yeah, that's right, there's. There's that constant, that constant call to something deeper and more, and and that God. At the same time, we don't want to overextend ourselves and say , well, therefore, I can say nothing. Or on what grounds, then, am I saying Christianity is right? The grounds in which I'm saying Christianity is right are something like God is definitely love. I'm not wrong to say that I don't know yet fully what that means, and that's the same thing as saying how did you know your wife was the one? Well, I'm not wrong to say this is my wife. I'm not wrong to marry her right now. I would be wrong if I said I know exactly how that looks, right. Speaker 1: A buddy of mine talks about the difference between perfection and devotion. And what he argues is, christians often focus on perfection and we never meet, we never get there and we keep on beating ourselves up because we aren't perfect. And in the back of our minds we always know we're not going to be and we never will be. And in the back of our minds we always know we're not going to be and we never will be. And some of us look at grace as the spiritual whiteout that covers over the thing, our problems, and that's the wrong concept of what grace is. God is devoted to us as far as we are devoted to him, to us as far as we are devoted to him. And again, I think about this as a parent. Quite frankly, there's not much that my kids can do, that I won't look past as long as they come back home. When they come back home, I'm good. And when they recognize, yeah, you're going to have to clean that mess up, but we're good Well, because what? Speaker 2: you've always wanted as a father is what's good for your children. And there are many times in which you've known precisely what the good is and they haven't. They're still maturing, they're still coming to terms with that , they're confused. I mean, there are all these things and we are too right. I mean, like, I still chat with my dad every week and many times he's like yeah, that was dumb son, what did you like? What did you know? I did not want you to make that mistake. You did make the mistake. Let's move on. Yeah, there must be something like that. That that's. That's a very helpful way to conceive of God. That's what God says. I want what's good for you, only what's good for you, always what's good for you. Let's do that. And yeah, I think you're precisely right about grace. It cannot be whiteout. It has to be transformation, right. It cannot be God is denying that you got something wrong. God's lying or looking the other way, right? I mean, like that's a problematic conception of God. If that's how grace works, that's not a very helpful God. Right, I got a better image of God than that. No, the way grace works has to include. I am now no longer the one who is attached to that sin. I am now no longer the one who misunderstands. I am now better. I am more in the image of God. I am the one that God has made me to be after grace, not before . Speaker 1: Right? Well, I'll tell you what I mean . This is a conversation that is really just talking about the existence of God and really the belief in God, and you've kind of honed in more on that idea of belief, quite frankly, and you have absolutely painted a picture of God. I see that. But what it means to believe, I think basically means that there are a lot of things that you kind of have to sign on to before you believe in God. Am I characterizing this correctly? Speaker 2: Yes. Speaker 1: You're welcome to say no, Tommy. Speaker 2: Well, I mean, that's got to be right. There's rational content to it. There's something that you know . The expanse that I want to open up is that it still also has to make sense to say I believe in God, and by God I mean these three things that I know about God and God has given me to know about Him. And 10 years from now I will still believe in God, it will still be the same God. But now it's not those first three things, right. And so as long as belief doesn't get narrowed or static and simply defined as what belief looks like for a seven-year-old or what belief looks like for a 17-year-old or a 27-year-old, I'm happy with that, because then it's something like our daughter's seven, right? And so what does it mean for a seven-year-old to believe in God ? Well, we don't have to have a conversation about transitive properties of identity and the Trinity, right? That's not appropriate. That's not the way to express that faith. So she's still signing on to some propositional content. She's still accepting a certain amount of things, but as we would list them, those things would be different from what I hope they are when she's 17. Now there's also that sense of faith We've been saying you know faith, as knowledge has to be what allows for love, and so faith is fulfilled in love. Right, and I mean this is Paul again all over. Faith and law are then parallels, and law is also fulfilled in love. Because you need this action right, and so we can't. We also need to be sure that when we say, in order to believe , you have to sign on the dotted line for certain content, that that content is not simply intellectual, that that content is a way of life, right, and I mean Christ says I am the way, the truth and the life. To believe in me is eternal life. To have a relationship with Father and Spirit through the Son, of definition of that would be. If I'm asking what does it mean to have faith, then it's something like what would faith in your condition look like in an active life? How would faith play out in the life of love? And that's then how I would know do you have faith or do you not have faith. And so that would involve a conversation like you and I are having what's the content of that faith? Intellectually so, but it must also involve the other conversation, which is how am I leading my life? Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean, it reminds me of James. Faith without works is dead. Yeah, and I think that that makes a lot of sense to me Really. I mean, this is the conversation I wanted to have, which is about that existence of God. What did I miss when it comes to basically the idea of God? Speaker 2: Well, I mean, we spoke about the traditional, like all-powerful, omnipotent, all-knowing, omniscient and omnipresent, the all-powerful and all-knowing. We have to think in another round that knowledge is really a claim about truth, and there's this fundamentally incredible ability for us to speak the truth. Right, that's a novelty. It's not a given that a language can convey truth, right ? We gotta think about that. There are lots of problems of communication. In fact, like I have these ideas in my mind, you have these ideas. Speaker 1: How do? Speaker 2: we get them out? How do we know we're talking about the same thing? That's a mystery, that's a puzzle, and a lot of modern linguistic analysis and philosophy and people that read literature have seen the problem and many of them have actually been unable to come up with the answer. We have the answer, right. God is truth. God provides like. Truth is a foundation of the universe. We're made in the image of truth and we have this ability to speak a language. You got the Tower of Babel, you got Pentecost. You got you shall speak the truth. The name of the Lord shall be kept. Holy right. What a marvelous thing it is that God allows his name to be spoken in a language, that God creates a language which can somehow reference his name. All right. So when we're thinking about a God who is omniscient, I mean this has got to be read into the first commandment. This has got to be read in the Tower of Babel, this has got to be read in a Pentecost that you know God will give us the ability to speak the truth. You cannot proclaim that Christ is Savior apart from God inspiring you with the Holy Spirit and giving you the grace to speak that truth, to recognize it. Similarly, when we speak of God's power and again, I think this is a fundamental divide between a Christian and many Jewish understandings of God and any other understanding of God that that is not power as ability to do violence, it's power to love. Right that the ultimate power is love. And once we get on that line of thought, we're fundamentally connected to the Holy Spirit, right, the God who pours out his love into human hearts, as Paul says, the God who will take out your stony heart and replace it with a fleshy heart. Right that will write his law within you in the prophetic tradition. Now we're talking about the Holy Spirit, right. We're having a reflection, on the one hand, on the truth of God, on Christ, and on the other hand, on the power of God, the love of God, on the Spirit. These are not opposed at all. The spirit, these are not opposed at all. But lo and behold, human rationality has always been searching for that thing which turns out to be the Trinity. Not a thing, but a three-person existence of love right, a communion of persons. And so well. No wonder I cannot fully find myself except in a sincere gift of self. No wonder I'm looking for the kind of knowledge that leads to love. No wonder marriage is like the perfect icon of God. The way to be in the image of God is to live in this fundamentally committed relationship of self-gift. Fundamentally committed relationship of self-gift. Well, I think we have to make that turn for sure, to see what Christians are talking about and , if we wanted to put it in an intellectual conversation, what Christians add to the conversation. Why should an atheist have a conversation with a Christian theologian? Well, because a Christian theologian can say yeah, man, it really is true. All you want is to love and to be loved, and that's because we're creating the image of the God who is love. You will not find yourself except paradoxically, in a sincere and full gift of yourself. Why is that? Because that's God's existence complete gift of self, father, son and Spirit. Speaker 1: I'll go ahead and tell you that what you're leading to is a really good conversation about love. That's not this conversation, but I think one of the things that I appreciate about as being a father. The most loving thing I can do is spank my kids, sometimes Sure , or tell my kids no, and love is not always permissive, as a matter of fact. Often it gives some pretty harsh realities. But that said, I mean love, and I knew you were going to go here, tommy, and it's one of the reasons I wanted to go over this with you. It all has to lead to love and and really, of all the things that we cannot, I think we can get so many things wrong when we focus on them. Heaven, I think, is one of the things that we can get wrong if we only focus on heaven. I think we can, we can, uh, righteousness I think we can get wrong if we only follow on, only focus on righteousness, if we only focus on relationship and if we only focus on love. I don't know that that's the, that's the wrong thing to do. Speaker 2: I? I've been thinking a lot about this and had a number of conversations. There's a he's a Catholic Bishop, Daniel Flores, in Brownsville, Texas, and we were speaking at length about these and some other things from a different direction. But he said you know, the real work of a theologian is to present a love which cannot be deconstructed, right, A love which is not just idolized, right. Speaker 1: Right. Speaker 2: And I think that's exactly what you're saying, right, right, and I think that's be self-interested, right, like I have a role in love, I want it to be there, but there's something about having any genuine, honest love which is like, yeah, I need another right Bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh, right, I need another one , like me, but different. And yeah, there's something unique about reflections on love which sort of self-contained will always get outside of themselves. Speaker 1: Yeah, again, it reminds me of 1 Corinthians, where he talks about faith, hope and love and the greatest of these, love. And really the argument that he's where that follows in that argument is you guys are bickering about who has the best spiritual gift, who has the greatest gift of miracles that you can prophesy, and all that stuff, and and he just, and again, it's it's the beauty of the pauline letters, which is you guys are numbskulls, yep, um , and if you don't recognize that love is the most important of these gifts, y'all are fighting, fighting about the wrong thing. Speaker 2: That's right. You're fighting the wrong fight , right? Yeah? The only fight worth fighting, at the end of the day, is what completely transforms me into that perfect lover of God. And the perfect lover of God turns out also to be the perfect lover of neighbor. And Paul says it so often that's what it's always been about. How have you forgotten this? It doesn't deny that it's important to have the really distinct conversations. What can I do on Sunday? What can I do on Saturday? Is this a way of loving my neighbor? Is this not a way of loving my neighbor? Those are all very important questions, but, yeah, they're all headed towards exactly the reality. You're saying that this life of I completely exist for another, and somehow, what looks like crucifixion to the rest of the world turns out to be the very means of saving the world and opening it to real life. Speaker 1: I end all of my podcasts with be good and do good, mm-hmm. What's good about believing in God? Speaker 2: It's? I mean, it's a tricky question. I don't mean just to pause for dramatic effect. I'm thinking this through in a way that we've been leading to what is good about believing in a different orientation to the entire rest of the world, much as we're fathers and we get to set order and build boundaries for our children and our families with these things? I need that too, right, I am not the definition of the world, and belief opens me to that. Belief also opens me to that possibility, that reality that the continual fall of falling in love is a building up right. Is it becoming better? Not an exhaustion. It's not the crush which wears me out and does not allow me to function in all the other aspects of my life, but it's actually that which is the center of my life, builds me up and gives everything more meaning than it possibly could have had before. Speaker 1: Tommy, we might have to talk some more. Speaker 2: I would love that. Speaker 1: Well, anyway, I want to thank you for this. This was excellent. Speaker 2: I appreciate the conversation with you as well. Speaker 1: The thing that I walked away with this conversation was that you cannot talk about the existence of God without also talking about the character of God. If you believe that he exists, then you have to start thinking about who he is and what he stands for. Our values as Christians revolve around who he is. The other thing that I really didn't think much about was how we often limit God by what we can conceptualize. In other words, sometimes unintentionally, we can try to make God too small because we are limited. I appreciate Tommy's perspective a lot and I promise you this is not going to be the only time I talk to Tommy Humphreys Again. I'm not sure that we will always come to the same conclusions, and that thrills me . I appreciate people who challenge my Christianity and make me think deeper about things that make me better. I really didn't do a proper introduction to who Tommy is. Like I said, he teaches theology at St Leo University, where I teach. I also know this about Tommy he is an EMT as well as somebody who teaches at the university and at graduation. When most of us are wearing mortarboards, he's wearing a cowboy hat. I love that about Tommy he is a redneck in the very best possible sense of the word. He is somebody that I have always appreciated because he is very down to earth and practical, both in the classroom and in his own Christianity. I really appreciate who he is and what he does. As for the good thing I'm thinking about, I'm excited for the Balancing the Christian Life conference that's going to be happening in about three weeks. If you have not signed up for it, please do. It's free, although there are a couple levels where you can financially contribute to help me defray some of the costs. I think there's some excellent content that's going to be had. So until next time, let's all be good and do good.