How the Christian Story Makes Sense for God
Answering Points of Concern
The Christian story at first makes a certain kind of sense. Perhaps God is loving, and perhaps he prepares humanity for his kingdom and redeems us from sin through the life and sacrifice of Jesus. However, a number of other incongruities and issues lurk in the background that might prevent full acceptance. Why does God care about what happens to one species on this speck of a planet, given what we know about the size and history of the universe? Why is the Christian story the “right” one, when there are so many other options and models out there? Why does God even need to go through all these steps anyway … why can’t he just say all sin is forgiven without all the drama, and how would Jesus’s death help with this anyway? This is not an exhaustive list, but if we look at these questions in a different light we can see the way the pattern comes together.
Let’s take a first set of objections, those concerning our anthropocentric, or human point of view. We can start with size concerns, with humans a few meters tall walking on a pale blue dot in the vastness of the universe. Why should we assume our concerns matter as we regard other potential life on billions of other planets in our galaxy, multiplied by hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe? The numbers are even larger as we shrink to the Planck constant and the concerns of the infinitesimal, quantum realm. Throw in the multiverses of other physics theories and we have a circumstantial impression that our individual and planetary stories are one of an uncountable many. How could the Christian story, indeed any religious story short of nihilism, compete with this?
We do have to make a few concessions to this picture. We don’t know what is going on completely. There may be civilizations gestating and dying at 10^-15 meters, or on 10^15 other planets, multiplied by however many multiverses are out there. We do, however, need to recognize what a miracle humanity is in the first place. I’m not talking about standard evolution vs. creation debates … perhaps there’s an argument for some kind of assistance to evolutionary processes, but for present purposes I’m assuming an unchallenged evolution. Rather, I wish to focus on the miracle of consciousness.
I’ve earlier argued that consciousness cannot be explained any other way except by direct reference to God. However, even independent of this, why should we assume naturalism gives any insight into itself? Natural processes may happen spontaneously, but why would they also be self-aware? Why should consciousness have awareness of the properties generating it? It’s circular. In this light, arguably something above nature is required, and thus the God / man relationship finds itself more likely to be fundamental.
These riddles are part of larger philosophy of mind concerns, but until a naturalism is proposed that makes sense, we should not give much weight to physical aesthetics such as large numbers of planets and civilizations. If God by some miracle has to give consciousness in the first place, then these civilizations may just be made up of automatons and robots. “Life” does not equal consciousness … how would we describe potential “thoughts” of bacteria on this planet? Thus, I see no reason to abandon anthropocentrism as very important to God. If humans need an everyday miracle to have consciousness in the first place, then our religions are important too.
Once we recognize this, we then can focus on what religion offers when telling God’s story. It is at first glance difficult to discern between the many different religions around the world. One leader says X and another Y … how is the outside observer able to tell who is right? Given this confusion, we might avoid dispensational models, where God or a prophet arbitrarily pronounces new rules, and take a more evolutionary approach. Perhaps instead of a static set of rules and doctrines a religion just evolves over time. However, how does one know whether this evolution is what God wants?
A good starting point with this quandary is to recognize the morality and seeming categorial imperative we find ourselves under, along with is/ought issues with how the world does not meet expectations. Naturalism offers some scope for explanation, but since consciousness itself arguably requires divine action, it is an easy leap to regard morality and our sense of how the world should be as coming from God. The trick though is determining what is “right” and what is “wrong”.
It is easy at this point to fall into a Manichean viewpoint, with strictly good and bad paths where only one answer is correct. Indeed, there is a legitimate word of caution here in that we should not presume to know what God is doing in every religion in his divine plan. People may be following him as best they can in circumstances that can, and God may just be leading them to know him through culturally relevant contexts. We should not, however, go fully postmodern and say everything is relative and that there are no absolutes. We just live in a complex universe.
With this caveat in mind, let us take our three guidelines (not too didactic, not too evolutionary, and morality/utopian desires) and see what we can work with. We can strike out the first set of cases, where God does little, as in Deism. The cases are already under suspicion for being too evolutionary, and they go against our utopian desires since we do not seem to find ourselves in paradise already, however defined. There are larger problem of evil discussions here that shouldn’t be minimized, but we can move forward leaning on our three guidelines.
If God interacts with the world, what then is his goal? A utopia of some kind is most likely. This has the advantage of paralleling our is/ought desires, even if, as in the Abrahamic religions, this paradise comes at the end of time. Given the gulf between the way the world is and how it ought to be, and if we believe that God will not leave things “broken”, we should move forward assuming future improvements. The next task is to find what religion’s story best matches these improvements.
There are many utopias out there, and each seem to have different answers to many different problems. We have states of realization such as the moksha of Hinduism and the nirvana of Buddhism, along with a variety of afterlives from Ancient Egypt to those of Abrahamic faiths. We could argue about the merits of various utopias and the merits of each, but nothing prevents someone from saying that one utopia could just be merged into another. Perhaps the beatific vision of God is something which parallels the states of Eastern religions?
I am partial to creation-positive afterlives, where we aren’t overcoming existing experiences so much as transforming them into something better, as Christianity works toward the new creation. However, let’s not dwell too much on the ideal utopia. We see the signpost saying we should head in a certain direction, but at this stage it is hard to know the twists and turns ahead to get to our final destination. We don’t know every tradeoff, and we won’t know what the perfect balance between competing factors God will choose. However, what we can do though is look around at where we are and see what we need to fix before we move forward. What must God do before we continue on our journey?
With the caveat that there are many schools of thought across world religion, and that every interpretation is unique, Christianity has a strong case for the best story because of its answer to one particular problem which God must address. Again, readers may object that religion X has a solid tradition or that Y is not a concern because of a certain school or prophet. Perhaps… Yet Christianity overcomes a problem which any religion desiring utopia must address in an arguably unique way. This is the problem of sin.
The central issue with sin is that we do not do what God wants. If God wants utopia, and we do not do what is necessary, how can we reach it? Further, how can God permit people into this utopia if not fit for it? He has to avenge those who were wronged, while also being merciful. This is a tricky maneuver to pull off, but I posit that, whatever we call it, substitutionary atonement is a clever way to address all concerns. Something is paying the debts that our transgressions deserve, and God is not arbitrarily letting them slide. Similar to deep magic governing Narnia, justice demands compensation of some sort, and if God is just he cannot ignore this. Yet, by having Jesus take the punishment in our place, humanity can move forward without worry.
There are difficulties with this picture. First, isn’t this fairly arbitrary? How does one guy suffering in one place and time somehow address the sins of the world? We must concede this in a certain sense … it is hard to pay apples with oranges, and one usually punishes the offending party and not third parties. Yet the crucifixion does cover the ranges of deprivation, and we might say for human sinners that the raw requirements of justice have been met. From God abandoning Jesus to the pain he endured, the extremes of punishment are present. Also, the arguable special status of Jesus as “Son of God”, “messiah”, and even part of God himself makes it more poignant. The higher Jesus’s status, the greater the sacrifice. Someone so exalted was substituted for the lowest of the low. What more might one provide?
A few notes should be given here on the nature of Jesus and his relationship to God … this complexity is a rough edge to be worked out. Other religions can have simple categories of “God” and “not God”, and the Trinity of “God in three persons” is something that seems to violate the image of one God and only one God ruling the world. Yet, without delving too much into other Christologies, this need not be fatal.
Since humanity is said to be in the image of God, perhaps Jesus is just more of this image, and in that sense we can say he is God. Words in a certain sense don’t mean much … we shouldn’t get bogged down on the philosophical essences of “God” and “man”, since the boundary is not fully clear to begin with. Perhaps there is just a slight difference in these essences, and they just function similarly in Jesus and a typical human. God could just decree one essence as “God” and another as “not God”.
Further, even if “God” and “man” have strong differences, and we don’t like the aesthetic combination, God can only do what he can. Decreeing his essence into another being and promoting substitutionary atonement may be the best card he can play. It is the most important thing that he can offer, since there is nothing higher. Thus, we just have to live with the difficulties.
After recognizing how Christianity helps with underpinnings of utopia, we can also take a step back and recognize how it offers a strong balance between the didactic and evolutionary extremes. It has its sacred text in a Bible which showing thousands of years of evolutionary compositional history. It has its series of founding didactic commandments from which believers can start from. However, it does not stay at this. It’s primary goal is to further the community of God working in light of the messiah in advancing his kingdom. Christianity is arguably less reliant on interpreting sacred laws to determine exact courses of action. It is less of working from God’s explicit commandments in the Torah/Talmud or Koran/Hadith … there is less focus on a Christian law. Rather, in light of a belief that the messiah came to inaugurate God’s kingdom, how do we act?
The Bible is not an exact guide to everything alas. No long-running religion will escape evolutionary questions of 2000 years entirely … witness the various debates on, for example, the New Testament’s stance on homosexuality and the role of women. Yet our challenge is to avoid imitating Pharisees blindly following the letter of some law. As Jesus did, we must use judgement and interpret with the goal of furthering God’s kingdom.
Many of these observations do not rise to the level of proof, and if one is inclined not to believe in God or believes strongly in other religions, one can poke holes. However, if open to it, we can using inductive reasoning to divine the divine plan. Consciousness is arguably a miracle in itself, and from this we can infer that anthropocentric concerns are important in the grand scheme of things. Through categorical imperatives, morality, and is/ought desires God manifests desires for future improvements. Through a didactic / evolutionary blend God pushes his creation forward. He must address the problem of sin, which would impede this utopia, which Christianity uniquely does through substitutionary atonement.
Through all this we can see how Christian story makes sense for God. If not true, God would have to implement something like it.
