non-metaphysical stephen

As of my count, today (2 Jan.) is the 9th day of Christmas. So there are still (counting today) four days left in the Christmas season.

The season is so odd to me. We spend so much time and energy preparing for it (during Advent), that once the season actually arrives, I’m not clear what we’re supposed to do. And then it gets interrupted by New Year’s (which for the church is the first Sunday of Advent, so it’s not our holiday)–and by football (which I don’t watch, but I know a lot of folks do).

It seems like we spend half the season recovering from Christmas Day, and the last part recovering from New Year’s. And all in all, the season is over so quickly, I’m never sure it really existed. Was there any spiritual growth occurring? Was there any spiritual ANYTHING occurring? If there was, it may be in spite of the season, not because of it.

There has to be a better way to celebrate the 12 days of the Christmas season! How can we make it more substantial?

Today I was driving to my parent’s house, and I got lost — 60 mile detour….

I fear this resembles my spiritual life of late….

The thing I’ve been having trouble with lately is realizing that there is no contradiction between the Cosmic God and the Personal God.

It’s not a problem for God to keep his eye on 6 billion individuals and 13.5+billion light-years of space. It’s only a problem to my limited mind.

…the electron and the pulsar.

As I wrestle with the vastness of the universe (Pascal’s abyss) and what that means about our place in it, this thought has become part of my statement of faith. For a God who can follow the electron in its path is surely able to notice us here on tiny planet….

Ezekiel 16.49:

Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.

Pride, excess, prosperity, but no charity.

How many of us does that describe?

Promises, Promises | Christianity Today

I’ve known about The Political Illusion but didn’t know much about what he says in it until it showed up in my Google Search results a few days back. Tonight I found this discussion of the book from Christianity Today, a magazine I generally have very little in common with other than being a Christian and living “today.” (The article is by Chuck Colson, with whom I also have very little in common. The fact that he wrote this piece almost makes me suspicious of how he’s using Ellul, who had some harsh things to say about conservative Christians.)

From the article, it seems that Ellul focuses on the problem of relying on government for everything. Although I’m critical of all the accusations of socialism (mostly because I feel that the free market is screwing people over and that something needs to change), I recognize that we can’t simply turn everything over to the government. This idea is one I’ve believed for a while, but I must admit that I’ve been reluctant to give any credence to the paranoiacs on the right.

I’m trying to keep my critical distance with all the policy debates going on, and hearing this idea from someone I trust intellectually (Ellul) helps. The church needs to take a stand for human rights, needs to stand up for the people who are getting squeezed by the capitalist system. But how to do this without simply leaving everything up to the government.

I’m convinced that an unregulated free market will continue to be a bad thing. But I don’t want the theocrats getting into office either. So what’s the option for the church to follow that can set an example of how to fix the system without relying more and more on the government?

Thanks to the numerous shows on television about the Universe, I’m having to face some problems with my conception of God. As I realize just how big and incomprehensible the universe is, its harder for me to understand how God can both see all things and yet pay attention to us as individuals. The Cosmic God and the Personal God seem harder to reconcile within the same Person.

Yet, I recall C.S. Lewis pointing out (in God in the Dock) that the church has always known this–that the standard astronomy text for most of European history (Ptolemy’s Almagest) points out that the earth is no bigger than a point in comparison with the rest of the cosmos. And I recall Pascal’s confession that the recent discoveries about the size of the universe can be terrifying for those who believe in God.

So it’s not a new problem, and it’s not insurmountable.

What I need to do is to rethink my notions of God to include the vastness of time and space. Rather than let the problem of infinity become a problem, I need to change my notions of God to incorporate what we now know to be plainly true about the size of creation. I guess I’ve been keeping God in too small a box–well, any box would be too small.

How do I reconcile this much vaster God with the personal God who dwells among us? Recently I’ve been turning more to Christ Jesus: the one whose life testifies to me about God. It’s not enough for me to have conceptions of God as omniscient, omnipresent, etc. I need to remember that my faith is not built on definitions but on the historical example of Christ. My faith in God has to stem from my faith in what God has done here on earth, among the Hebrews, among the disciples, among all the saints, and most especially through the person of Jesus.

May the God who watches the pulsars and quasars give me the faith and the wisdom to understand his presence here in our midst.

Through Christ our LORD,

Amen.