The modern Christian life
Introduction
One metric we can use to find evidence for Christianity is by looking at the lives of modern Christians. Specifically, we want to find outcomes and patterns that are distinct to Christians when compared to non-Christians. Naturally, each believer (in any religion) subjectively concludes these patterns exist. Outside of that belief system, however, these patterns are only persuasive if they can be observed objectively.
There are two broad categories of effects I will be examining. One is God’s interventions: God’s actions that influence or even override the natural course of events in our world, such as miraculous healing. The other is God’s guidance: God’s imparting of knowledge or wisdom beyond what a person ordinarily has available to them.
God’s interventions
Healing
Just based on my own observations, this must be by far the biggest category of intervention that people ask for. I suspect if you ask a Christian for an example of a miracle, the most common theme will be healing. It’s a large topic, so let’s break it into smaller topics.
Pain and depression
Many answered prayers for healing are for issues of two kinds. One is pain management; for example a chronic knee problem. The other is depression. Why am I lumping the two of these together? Because they are both quite susceptible to the placebo effect. From this article about anti-depressants:
Yes, the drugs are effective, in that they lift depression in most patients. But that benefit is hardly more than what patients get when they, unknowingly and as part of a study, take a dummy pill—a placebo. As more and more scientists who study depression and the drugs that treat it are concluding, that suggests that antidepressants are basically expensive Tic Tacs.
Similarly here, pain reduction also benefits from the placebo effect. It is effective even when people know they are getting a placebo! In this quote, “open-label” means the patients know the drugs are placebos:
The results showed that, one, open-label placebos work. Seventy percent of those who took them showed at least a 50-point reduction in symptom severity (graded on a scale of 500) compared to 54 percent of those in the no-treatment control arm who experienced a 50-point drop. Around 30 percent of those on open-label placebos reported an even larger 150-point reduction, compared to 12 percent just in the no-treatment group.
And in the US, weirdly, the placebo effect for pain medication is apparently getting stronger.
It is important to understand that the placebo effect is not just about the pill. The ritual surrounding it is important too: a doctor in a white coat prescribing the medication is all part of the association in the mind of the patient that strengthens the expectation that there will be an effect.
Given how strong the placebo effect is for these types of situations, it should be no surprise that in these situations many believers experience healing. There is the expectation that something should happen, because of the believer’s faith. Like consulting with a doctor in an office, there are the additional expectations that come from the setting. It is not hard to see how a believer in a church service, with a pastor praying, worship music playing, in a crowd of other believers, has a powerful expectation that something should happen.
The placebo effect is an innocent side effect of our complicated minds, but then there are faith healers who deliberately play on these expectations for financial gain. There are well known tricks like leg lengthening that faith healers use to take advantage of people, backing up fraudulent claims of power. They use tricks that magicians use, except that their audiences are not told it is an act. In fact, there have been various debunkings of these operations, as in this one by a professional magician who in his show actually emulates a faith healing service. (I watched the show on Netflix discussed in that link, and it is wild. Everyone knows it is a magic show, but someone that didn’t may well be convinced of his supernatural knowledge and ability to heal. It is not reverent and drops a couple F-bombs, but it is worth watching in my opinion.)
Is it possible that real healings are taking place, at least in some of these situations? Possibly. But there is no objective measure that can be made. Science has no way to tell how much pain a person is experiencing. The same is true for mental states like depression and anxiety. Given that the only yardstick is the self-reported subjective experience of the person healed, and that the placebo effect is so strong in these cases, this category of healing provides little evidence.
Cancer
Another category that comes up a lot is cancer. This is no surprise, given that as science understands more and more about this disease, more people are diagnosed with some form of it. (And our increased industrialization probably plays a part too.) Unfortunately, this category holds little evidential weight for me. Allow me to explain why.
The first reason is that cancer is an ongoing battle of the body with its own processes that have gone out of control. This battle goes up and down, and sometimes it even results in spontaneous remission. Granted, the typical outcome is the sufferer, without treatment, loses the battle in the end.
But the reality is that most people who are afflicted with cancer get treatment. This is the second big reason. People do indeed get sick with cancer and are healed, but rather than credit the treatment they are getting, they attribute it to God. It could be the case, but the fact of the treatment taking place means that we cannot definitely trace the healing back to God, given that the whole point of the treatment is to bring about healing.
There is also the awkward and tragic situation when an apparent healing reverses course. I distinctly remember an event like this. Our pastor had an announcement about a rising star in Christian music who had started at our church. His wife had been diagnosed with cancer, especially tragic given they were still in their early twenties. But when the doctors opened her up, they found no trace. God had healed her! There was much rejoicing and giving of praise among the crowd. There was none when not more than a month or two later, our pastor announced that the young wife had passed away. The cancer had not disappeared after all. It is that moment that is distinct to me, the sense of shock and disbelief, wondering why God would allow this, given that the healing had brought such glory to His name. We (and surely many others) believed that He could and did heal this person, yet that faith apparently didn’t matter. And then, I imagine like many others, I simply stopped thinking about it. God's ways are not our ways, so no point in dwelling on it. I’m dwelling on these ideas now, though.
The blind shall remain blind
Once the two categories above are removed, there is not much left. What we don’t see are healings of conditions that humankind has no idea how to cure and that can be objectively observed. We have no idea how to cure blindness and the condition can be objectively observed. The same for paraplegia, amputation, multiple sclerosis, and so many other conditions. Consider that in 2015 there were an estimated 2.3 billion Christians in the world. Over the past few decades, how many people under treatment in the medical system must this group have prayed for? It is surely an astronomical number, yet have you ever heard of a blind person regaining sight, a paralyzed person walking again, an amputee regrowing a limb, or any other incurable, observable condition being cured? I haven’t. But given the number of people being prayed for, this should be happening all the time. This idea is not a new one, and I actually encountered it years ago, and immediately wrote it off. I reasoned that there was no way someone could make such a claim. How do we know God hasn’t healed any paraplegics? But this is Must Be True thinking, shifting the burden of proof. The reality is that unless someone produces examples, there is no reason to believe it is happening. And when I say examples, I mean verifiable examples attested to by medical professionals.
A typical line of rationalization is that mainstream media wouldn’t cover such things. This is Must Be True thinking and is simply untrue. Both science and journalism would be very interested in such developments. Journalists are perpetually looking for news to grab the attention of their readers. Could you imagine how big a story it would be for someone who is paralyzed to suddenly walk one day? And scientists investigate just about everything they can. There have been several studies on prayer, and this meta-study looks at them. Some show some improvement, some none, and some actually show a negative effect. That meta-study summarizes the problems with trying to measure such an effect, and notes that none of the studies are for the dramatic types of conditions I am considering here. The important points here are that science is indeed willing to consider the possibilities of prayer, it hasn’t been able to come to a consensus, and it certainly hasn’t seen the blind see or the lame walk.
Personally, I have seen believers around me suffer without healing. The person whose spine is deteriorating and has a morphine pump in his body to cope with the pain. Another person who hobbles around on crutches due to an accident in his youth. The person who had an epileptic seizure in the middle of a church service while the pastor was preaching about the power of God. The people, more than one, that suffer from significant mental illness like manic depression and delusions. The person in the Bible study I was leading who committed suicide.
The unfortunate reality is that there is little evidence of divine healing. The examples that people typically point to have an equally viable explanation that do not involve divine intervention. In the situations where divine intervention would be the only plausible explanation, healing just doesn’t happen.
Provision
““For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? “Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? “And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life? “And why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. “But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you? You of little faith!” (Matthew 6:25–30, NASB95)
This passage exemplifies the idea that God will provide for the essential physical needs of His followers. But we run into similar problems as with healing.
True unless not
The elephant in the room here is that not all believers have their needs met. We might be able to tell ourselves such an idea in first world countries, but around the world there are many believers that are starving and barely sheltered. And the truth is that even in first world countries, this is happening too.
Now I’m certain that I can find a dozen explanations by Christian apologists of why this is the case, and why this does not contradict that verse. However, you can read the full passage in context and see that there are no limitations, not to mention the various broad statements the NT makes about prayer in general.
The body of Christ
The NT contains the idea that the believers are the body of Christ, that the believers as a whole will do the things that Jesus did as an individual man, just on a greater scale. To me, there is an unintended irony to this concept. The body of believers is indeed doing the best it can to do the work of God. But they attribute it all to God, pointing to these things as evidence of God’s providence. It is like the scene in the Wizard of Oz where the adventurers see behind the curtain and realize it is just a man creating an elaborate illusion. The difference in the church is that behind the curtain are other believers also in awe of the Wizard, none of them realizing they collectively are creating the illusion.
No doubt many people will take umbrage with this idea, but consider the facts. It is people that are donating their money and resources. It is people that build and run churches, food kitchens, and orphanages. It is people that labor to bring food and supplies to those in need around the world, as well as lend their medical services. We can read inspirational stories about people like George Müller, but it is people that brought food to his orphanage, not a miraculous appearance of food like mana. I can’t find anything to point to that shows God directly providing for believers that does not trace back to the actions of humans.
I do not believe there is any conscious deception on the part of believers, but they do operate in ways that give support to the idea that God is doing the providing. Believers tend to remain anonymous in their giving so that, rather than the credit going to them, the credit goes to God. My pastor would not explicitly ask for money for outreaches or other needs, but would simply state that these were things the church was undertaking. The church body understood, of course, that it took money and resources to do these things, and various people would step up and provide. These ways of doing things all serve to enhance the illusion that God is mysteriously providing for His people, rather than the reality that the people are providing for themselves.
The eye of the beholder
Naturally, many people believe God is orchestrating events and opportunities to make all of this possible rather than being overtly involved. This continues the theme of attributing to God things we have no particular reason to believe He is responsible for. Consider a hypothetical Charlie Christian who applies to a job. He prays throughout the process of submitting his resume and doing interviews. He gets the job and praises God for giving it to him. He had previously applied to several other jobs that didn’t come through, and Charlie praises God for that too, because God was guiding him to the right job for him. But is there any evidence for this? If we asked the boss who hired Charlie, would the boss bear witness to God’s involvement? Did an angel appear to him? Did all resumes except Charlie’s vanish? Did he want to hire someone else but had an unexplainable, overpowering sense that he needed to hire Charlie? Regarding Charlie, was there some reason he shouldn’t get the job? Was he unqualified? Did he ask for a salary three times what would be typical? Let’s say that Arthur Atheist was also one of the applicants and was also given an offer for a second, identical position. Do you think there is literally anything we could point to related to the hiring process that would be different? The difference all resides in Charlie’s mind.
Many believers will look around at their fellow believers with this same sort of thinking. They will point to financially successful believers as evidence that God indeed blesses the faithful. The believers that are struggling to get by, especially for an extended time, well, that’s harder to explain. No one would say that these people have an inferior Christian walk (not in so many words, at least), but rather that God is teaching them, shaping them for some future purpose. The math is hard to get around, though. If being faithful leads to God’s material blessings, if not abundance, then at least sufficiency, but you are in fact struggling, what does that say about you?
Then when you consider the many wealthy people in the world that are definitely not faithful, to say the least, then the Christian has an even harder situation to explain. One common answer is that Satan is the ruler of this world and can bestow wealth and power on whom he chooses. Not necessarily in a direct way like Satan showing up with a bag of cash, but more than his system rewards those who are morally bankrupt. So we are left with both God and Satan being sources of material abundance. Even David in the Psalms is troubled by seeing wealthy but godless people living their lives apparently untroubled.
So what are we left with? It is indeed possible to construct a narrative where God is quietly intervening for the sake of providing for His people, it only holds up by being very selective about what events make it into that narrative. Further, that narrative only exists in the minds of the people looking for it.
The big picture
While there are various points above that could be dissected in greater detail, I don’t want to miss the big picture. The context of all of this is always the search for evidence of Christianity. Though people may have their arguments as to why such and such must be a certain way, at the end of the day, there is no evidence to be found by looking at God’s providence for His people. People are fulfilling their own expectations, either through their own collective resources and efforts, or by attributing ordinary events to God. Rather than providing evidence, the Christian worldview struggles to explain the realities we see around us.
Protection
There are various harmful experiences that can and do happen to people in this world, either through the actions of other people or through natural occurrences. Just like the previous topics, we would expect to see God’s intervention to protect those who pray to Him, but there is little to see in actuality.
Where the church body is able to simulate God’s providence through its own efforts, protection is a different matter. It is more like healing, where our own abilities are limited in many situations. And like healing, it is not hard to see a distinct lack of divine intervention. On the individual level, I’m sure everyone can think of tragedies and brutalities they have heard of, or perhaps experienced themselves. These are indeed troubling, but we can look at a broader view.
People have noted there is widespread persecution of Christians in many places in the world, almost to the point of genocide. We can also never forget how God’s chosen people suffered in the Holocaust. Some people argue that God’s interventions are rare. Well, if there was ever a time to intervene, it was then.
Similar to before, people certainly have their explanations for why this has to be this way. But ultimately it is attempting to explain the apparent inaction of God. At best, it can only attempt to explain a lack of evidence, not provide evidence for Christianity.
Mundanities
There are many people that believe God is operating in many apparently small ways all the time. Helping find car keys, ensuring traffic lights are green, that sort of thing. Perhaps the most representative example of this is the idea that God helps people find parking spaces, so let’s examine that.
The appeal of the idea is not hard to see. People enjoy finding a good parking spot, and it is essentially impossible to prove or disprove that God had a hand in it. It is also a common, recurring situation. Thus, people are able to feel on an ongoing basis that God is touching their lives, if only in a small way.
But is it small? People assume that because the stakes are low, this event is a small thing for God to do. We should consider just what has to happen for that parking space to be available for Charlie Christian, though. God is not adding extra parking spaces, and He is not zapping away whatever car is in it. He has to interfere with the person whose car it is, either speeding up or slowing down their timetable, so that they leave just at the right time for it to be open for Charlie. Maybe they have to go to the bathroom all of a sudden, or maybe they can’t find their car keys. Or maybe God messes with their free will, making them want to stop and check out a book, or having a sudden desire to leave. None of the options sound good, but it is not just the car owner that God has to manipulate. It is also the other people that are looking for parking spaces, so that they don’t take the open space that was meant for Charlie. And this is all just for Charlie. There are likely to be other Christians looking for a space, too.
Almost certainly, none of this is happening. Just like believing that God had a hand in getting Charlie hired, this is an ordinary event whose supernatural significance is all in the mind of the believer. People are meant to park in parking lots, and finding a space, even a good space, happens to Christians and non-Christians alike. This is an example of confirmation bias, where people tend to recall the data that fits their beliefs. The person who believes the sports team they watch is more likely to win when that person wears their lucky red shirt does this too. They remember wearing their shirt and their team winning, and also their team losing when they forgot to wear the shirt. They gloss over the times that don’t fit their pattern though, like when they wore their shirt and their team lost.
Honestly, I don’t think it would be good if this was actually happening. When you consider the needs that are going unmet, like the people in wheelchairs or the people that are starving, what an insult it would be for God to not address those but to perform all the countless interventions it would take to free up parking spaces for the (presumably very many) Christians that are praying for them.
Theatrics
Finally, there are the interventions of God that are apparently just for show, like the manifestation of gold dust and feathers. Over the many years that I’ve been going to church, there always seems to be some new special effect I’ve heard about. It is almost like God has to keep His act fresh to keep His followers interested, the way some people portray it.
I don’t have a lot to say about this stuff, because, in terms of providing evidence, the Bible doesn’t mention any of these things. But I will note that these types of things are witnessed by the people that really want to see them. Also, these manifestations would be more of an insult than the parking spaces. If real, they would be a full wind-up slap in the face, because at least the parking spaces accomplish something useful, however small, rather than just making a group of people feel special.
Defenses
There are, of course, various explanations people use to explain why God doesn’t operate more openly. For completeness, I will touch on some of them. But let me stress that the burden of proof is still on Christianity. The best these arguments can achieve is explaining why there is no evidence to be seen. They do not provide proof.
There is a lot of overlap in this topic with the question of why God allows suffering. They all have to do with trying to understand the apparent inaction of God relative to the needs and wants of His followers.
Free will
The premise is that God doesn’t act broadly or frequently so as to preserve our free will. If God intervened to, for example, stop the Nazis, it would have rendered their free will meaningless. The underlying assumption is that free will is a good thing; otherwise we would be robots.
Who says that free will is desirable, at least in the sense of choosing evil over good? To make the game “fair”? Given that one purported outcome is eternal torment, who cares if it is fair? There is still a wide spectrum of choice left to a person even if all the evil choices are removed. Isn’t that what heaven is supposed to be, a place where people no longer sin?
There is also a contradiction in that so many of the things people believe God is doing actually involve Him messing with our free will, like the examples above of getting a job and finding a parking space. When people pray for someone to be saved, exactly what do they think they are asking God to do?
This free will argument is not found in the Bible. To the contrary, we have numerous examples of God interfering with free will, including where He outright hardens Pharaoh’s heart so that he makes particular choices. I heard someone in an academic debate use a hypothetical example of the Nazis putting Jews in the gas chamber but God miraculously saving them as just the kind of thing that God won’t do, because it would rob the Nazis’ actions of all meaning. First, the Bible is clear that intention is as bad as action. Further, the Bible has an example of essentially this very situation, where Daniel and his friends are thrown into a furnace by their enemies but survive!
Law and order
This argument comes from a similar place, but rather than free will being the focus, it is that God has created a universe that is based on order and rules. If He intervened every time people wanted something, especially if what they wanted would override the normal rules, then the universe would become a place of unpredictable chaos.
This is an argument of extremes. God intervening to save people from an instance of drought because they asked for His help would not require then that all the rules of meteorology be thrown out the window. The exception would prove the rule, not destroy it.
Most everything about the rebuttal to the previous point applies here as well. This idea is not to be found in the Bible either. Rather, we have, for example, God withholding or sending rain as He sees fit, as well as stopping the Sun for a day. Biblically, God can and does override the laws of nature as He sees fit.
Undermines faith
Here is another idea not found in the Bible: If God operates too spectacularly, it will have the effect of undermining free will. In other words, if God makes it too obvious that He exists, then it will no longer be a fair choice.
Some of what I said about free will applies here. Who says the game has to be fair? If God desires everyone to be saved, and revealing Himself through spectacular action would make it easier for people to make that choice, why not do it?
Like the previous points, this argument is not found in the Bible, and the Bible actually demonstrates the opposite. From the perspective of free will, the Israelites saw God’s power manifested dramatically, and still made contrary choices. And then there is the fact itself that God did, numerous times, perform spectacular acts in the Bible. It explicitly states that these were to make Himself known:
““You shall speak all that I command you, and your brother Aaron shall speak to Pharaoh that he let the sons of Israel go out of his land. “But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart that I may multiply My signs and My wonders in the land of Egypt. “When Pharaoh does not listen to you, then I will lay My hand on Egypt and bring out My hosts, My people the sons of Israel, from the land of Egypt by great judgments. “The Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD, when I stretch out My hand on Egypt and bring out the sons of Israel from their midst.”” (Exodus 7:2–5, NASB95)
In the NT, Jesus stated that the things he did were to demonstrate his authority. This whole idea of God maintaining plausible deniability is inconsistent with the Bible.
The time is past
The last idea I will touch on is the idea that we no longer need God’s interventions because we now have the Bible. Those miracles were for the sake of spreading God’s message, not for the sake of the benefits they had to us. Now that we have the Bible, further miracles are not needed. God is not a genie to be called upon to fix the problems of this world. It is the next that matters.
This, too, is not in the Bible. There is indeed a passage that mentions the end of the gifts of the Spirit. But that end comes about when believers see Jesus face to face. In any case, that is all a red herring. Without even considering those gifts, there are many passages about the power of prayer and faith. They are unqualified, and without a time limit. There is no indication that faith would someday not be able to move mountains.
What sets this apart
This whole first section has been about finding some evidence that God actually intervenes in our world. There are certainly many things that people believe God is doing, but precious little that anyone can point at to justify those beliefs.
If that belief is supposed to be sufficient evidence, what about other religions that also believe that God is working on their behalf? Mormons believe God is doing miracles for them. Muslims believe also. Buddhists also believe in miracles. There is simply no point in trying to draw up a comprehensive list, because nearly every religion believes that God is operating on their behalf. Belief itself proves nothing, other than that fact that people very much want to believe.
God’s guidance
The second part of the article deals with the idea that God reveals information and provides guidance to believers. This is a much harder concept to make conclusive statements about than God’s interventions. We can know whether or not God has healed someone of paralysis by direct observation. We cannot observe, however, God imparting information to someone. We can only infer the truth of this by the effect this information has on that person.
Changed lives
Many Christians will tell you how God has changed their lives, saying only God could have produced the kinds of changes they have experienced. I am not disputing that some people have, in fact, changed. What I will dispute is that only God could have done it, and further, only their specific concept of God.
Many, if not all, religions can point to examples of their followers that have changed. The most dramatic changes tend to be by the people in the worst circumstances. Some people are raised in bad situations with no good role models or opportunities. It should be no surprise that, for example, a gang member can become a very different person once exposed to a different way of living, especially when it is coupled with spiritual beliefs. But, since this happens in many religions, is this proof that all of them are true?
Further, people also change apart from religion. Some troubled youths change because of the structure of organized sports or martial arts. Some young adults change when they have kids, for the sake of being a good parent. Some people change because of a near-death experience.
Change is not proof of Christianity, because change is not unique to Christianity.
Revelation
Christians will often claim guidance imparted from God, but, as far as I’ve seen, it never involves something not already known to the believer. For example, people may pray about which house to buy, but it involves asking about houses they have seen. People do not pray and, before searching, receive guidance like “Buy the house on 1234 Main St.” Consider another situation. Christians are frequently reminded about the importance of reaching out to those around them, so it should be no surprise when they see a neighbor and feel a general sense that this person may need something. Indeed, there are likely very few people that, when asked, have literally nothing in their life that could be better, so it is no surprise when that Christian talks to the neighbor and finds out that there is something they could help with or pray for. But it would very much be a surprise if God told that Christian beforehand “Your neighbor’s name is John Smith, and you should give them $89 to replace their dead car battery.” Or how about “Tell your neighbor they should go to the doctor because they have an undiagnosed brain tumor in their occipital lobe.”
Many Christians, I imagine, would immediately reject these examples as unreasonable, because “that isn’t how it works.” But that is the crux of the question: why not? If God knows all things and communicates to those that pray to Him, why doesn’t it work this way? It certainly would be evidence for Christianity being true if it did. As with all of this, there may well be arguments to be made why it can’t work that way, but ultimately it means there is no evidence to be found here.
To be sure, there are people who do indeed claim that God reveals knowledge to them. And sometimes what they say comes to pass. And sometimes it doesn’t, and then it looks very much like they were just making their own best guesses rather than hearing from God.
The Lord told me
The prior point is part of the larger picture of God giving direction to Christians. I cannot tell you how many times I have heard the magic phrase “The Lord told me…” invoked to justify some decision or action. I have also many times seen the outcome be something that turned out to be a waste of time, or even an outright negative experience. There are some standard Christian responses to this happening. “I got ahead of the Lord.” “I leaned on my own understanding.” “We may never know why the Lord had me do that.” Ultimately, Christians become very good at rationalization, no matter the situation.
Karen was a person in our church circle who became a missionary to the Philippines. She was a few years older than our average, and she was able to largely get by in the Philippines on her retirement payments from teaching. In the last few years of her ministry, Pete and I became her stateside support, receiving her mail and giving her a place to stay when she would come home a few weeks in the summer. On one of those visits, we had been discussing with her the situation that was waiting for her back in the Philippines. It really seemed to us that the doors were closing there and there was little to go back to. At one point, in a conversation I was not a part of, Pete told Karen that he had been praying about it, and he was confident the Lord told him her work was done there and she should not go back. But Karen countered that the Lord had told her the exact opposite, and it was just Pete worrying. So she went back. She contracted dengue fever a couple of weeks later, and rapidly declined and died, alone and unconscious in a hospital on the other side of the world.
There are two big points I want to make about that. The first is how Christians can rationalize just about anything. Literally any possible outcome for Karen a Christian could spin to fit their worldview:
If Karen had not gone back and instead found a way to serve here, then that would indicate she had leaned on her own understanding when she thought she had to go back, but now was correctly hearing the Lord.
If she had not gone back and instead settled into a comfortable retirement, then her work was done and the Lord would be rewarding her for her obedience.
If she had not gone back and struggled to get by here, then maybe she had missed what the Lord had been trying to tell her and she should have gone back after all.
If she had gone back and all the doors closed, to the point where she ended up coming back anyway, then she would have been leaning on her own understanding when she went back. It would then continue into one of the options above.
If she had gone back and found a way to keep that mission going, or perhaps found a new one, then obviously she had correctly understood what the Lord had told her and she was being obedient.
And then there is the last option, the one that happened. It is very hard to make sense of it, but some people have found a way by speculating that in those handful of days in the hospital she touched lives, planting seeds that would perhaps lead to people getting saved. As far as I know, this is indeed complete speculation, with zero evidence to support it. I don’t think she was conscious much at all, in fact. But Must Be True thinking says there surely there was a reason why this happened, so something like this must have occurred. This hypothetical outcome is then used to make peace with the situation.
There may be other options I missed, but hopefully what I have is sufficient to make my point. It is hard to claim as evidence for Christianity the idea that the Lord speaks to people when, no matter what the outcome is, Christians can and do work backwards to construct a narrative that fits. The reason I wrote out those scenarios is to underscore that anything that happens counts as evidence to the Christian. It is like a magician that asks you to pick a card, claiming they can tell you what it is. If they name it correctly, then they can plausibly claim to be a skilled magician. If they do not, but the magician then argues that this too somehow demonstrates their skill, well, they may convince themselves, but it won’t carry any weight to an objective observer. There is simply no way to examine a hypothesis if every possible outcome can be construed as supporting it.
I said there were two big points, and here is the other one. We have two people, both believing they heard from the Lord, but hearing exactly opposite messages. How do we ever know if we are really hearing from the Lord then? Which messages are the real ones? One pastor suggested to me that the things we don’t want to do are the things that are coming from the Lord. So a desire for hamburgers would not be of the Lord, but a feeling that I should volunteer time for a ministry would be. Christians often speak of the “still small voice” that guides them when they really listen for it. I should first point out that in the story this is taken from, that of Samuel the prophet as a child, Samuel had no problem hearing God’s voice. He didn’t understand where it was coming from, but he heard it audibly and clearly. Nonetheless, in Christian jargon, that phrase has come to represent thoughts and feelings that are in them but not of them. Critically, they don’t occur as a result of deliberate thought, but rather they arise outside of that, when a person stops thinking and listens for them. The problem is that Christians seem to not recognize that non-Christians also experience this, but label the experiences differently: gut instincts, flashes of inspiration, and pangs of conscience. That last one is particularly important. Christians are not the only people that wrestle with what they want to do versus what they know they should (or not) do. They are also not the only people that have a nagging feeling that their deliberate thinking can’t quite explain. There is really no evidence to be drawn from any of this, because, aside from labels, the Christian “still small voice” is indistinguishable from the ordinary human experience. The only real difference is that the Christian attributes it to God.
So we have the problem that hearing from the Lord is not always reliable, as Pete and Karen demonstrate. They couldn’t both be right. That implies we need something more than just belief to build faith on. Particularly in terms of convincing a non-believer, we need something more, because a Christian’s belief, no matter how deep, is not evidence that will persuade them. In fact, the Bible says that we should be prepared to give an account for our faith. In other words, can we explain why we believe? This is the thought process that Pete went through over a period of time, and eventually he shared his question with me. As I will get to next, I was going through my own thought process as well.
Wisdom
If God is guiding those that believe in and pray to Him, then a consequence should be that we observe more wisdom in those believers than non-believers. A neutral observer should be able to weigh the actions and words of believers against non-believers and see more wisdom in the believers. Indeed, the Bible says that Christians should be “shrewd as serpents”, speaking frequently of wisdom and discernment.
But how would a neutral observer objectively evaluate wisdom? The only practical way would be to evaluate outcomes. A pattern of wisdom should overall result in outcomes that are more beneficial than the outcomes of less wisdom. For example, presumably most everyone would agree that gambling is not a wise way to establish financial stability. God would not be telling people to take their rent money and go to Vegas to multiply it. For another example, we could look at health. The Bible says nothing about sugar, but God would know how bad it is for us, so God would not tell people that if you enjoy it, it’s healthy, so eat as much sugar as you want. This too would not be wise.
These are purposely obvious examples. Let’s consider something more subtle. There are various insights that humanity has had over its history. But God didn’t reveal these things; humans had to find them out on their own. For example, it was less than 200 years ago that someone realized that handwashing was important to prevent diseases from spreading in maternity wards. And even then, it didn’t catch on. It took some more time before we really understood about germs. There are many things that we didn’t know were harmful to us until we figured it out ourselves. I’m sure one could make some argument about God having good reason for us to work this all out on our own. Perhaps, but on the other hand, nothing about this situation then is a point in favor of God and Christianity. We are again left to explain God’s inaction rather than seeing evidence of His action.
Nonetheless, let’s assume there is some good reason why we have to work it all out ourselves. What does not have a good reason is for wise people to reject the knowledge that we have acquired. Maybe there is good reason for God to not tell us about the effects of sugar, but now that we have figured it out, He certainly would not be telling people things that went against that. That would not be wisdom, but foolishness. If believers were promoting the idea of eating as much sugar as you want, that sugar was not bad, that would definitely indicate they weren’t hearing from God at all.
I had never really thought this through as explicitly as I’ve laid it out here, but over the years I did feel a mixture of surprise and annoyance that so many of my Christian peers rejected things like climate change. I just chalked it up to politics being unavoidable, even in church. But in the past few years, I have not been able to sweep this away so easily. Humanity has had some critical insights over the past few decades, arrived at by collective analysis of objective data, but too many times, it is Christians, particularly the evangelicals, that reject them. We are irreparably wrecking the climate of our planet, decimating certain species of plants and animals as a result, and putting our own survival at risk. We are polluting our air and water. And the reason the evangelicals reject the reality of this is because they predominantly align with the Republican party. The Republicans used abortion, more than anything, to draw the support of evangelicals. But then the evangelicals started adopting all the positions of the Republicans. And unfortunately, so much of what drives that party is wealth. The only reason they fight against climate change and environmental considerations is because large corporations, and therefore shareholders, would generate less profits. The financial industry nearly tanked our economy, but they fight against regulating that industry for the same reason, profits. Republicans paint poor people as lazy and entitled, because the ultra-rich wish to avoid giving up any of their money. Rather, they wish to pointlessly accumulate more money than they could ever use while most everyone else struggles to get by. The Bible teaches that the love of money is a very bad thing, and the love of money is what drives all of this. I had a growing problem with the fact that the evangelicals apparently did not see this, instead taking stances that were detrimental to our nation and world. This is very much not wisdom.
Still, I had not at this point concluded anything other than I needed to find a new type of church. But that meant I needed to figure out what I could live with. I need to separate what was essential to Christianity and what was just church culture. I was somewhat in limbo at this point, because I wasn’t quite sure how to figure that out. It was in the midst of this that Pete started approaching me with his questions, and I started doing a bit of research to try to answer them.
And then the pandemic hit and Trump went into overdrive. I had already been appalled at the Christian support of Trump, someone who is about as far from Christianity as one can get. But now Trump was saying things for the sake of staying in power that were so harmful that surely the Christians would see it. When so much was at stake, in a more immediate way than climate change, surely Christians would discern what was real and important. But it was the opposite. They would turn out to be some of the most rabid supporters of some of the most foolish ideas ever to stain our civilization. Covid is no worse than the flu. Covid numbers are fake. Masks are harmful. Vaccines are harmful. Other medicines are what really works. (I suspect that some people will have more of a problem with this last paragraph than anything I’ve written in these articles about Jesus and the Bible. That should be a sign of how twisted priorities have become.)
This was more than just a lack of wisdom but rampant foolishness. If these people were willing to believe all this, what did it say then that they believed Christianity? I realized I didn’t just need to find another church, I needed to establish what about Christianity was true. Answering that would then indicate what kind of church I belonged in. Pete’s questions and mine had come together at this point, and I began my research in earnest.
Conclusion
This article examined many different ways that Christians believe God operates in the modern world. Healing, providence, guidance, revelation, and more. Unfortunately, not one of these areas turned up anything beyond that belief. Christians believe all these things are happening because they want it to be true, but everything they point at has a straightforward explanation. The things that would have no explanation, like a blind person regaining sight, are not to be found.
I will say that Pete and I both prayed many times throughout this for God to show us something that would demonstrate the truth of Christianity. We had no specific thing we were looking for, relying on God to know what would be effective. But I can say that, for me, it wouldn’t have taken something huge. If someone had called me up and said that the Lord had told them to call because Pete and I were looking for evidence that Christianity was true, that would have been enough I think. But like I said earlier, this kind of thing just doesn’t happen.
There are no more lines of research for me to follow. All that is left is for me to draw my final conclusions about all of this, which I will do in my next (and final) article.
Comments
Post a Comment