The Reality of God

I have been utterly convinced by David Bentley Hart's book The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss (as anyone who has talked to me in the last little while likely knows). I've now read it three times. Hart's aim is to define the word "God" with the hope that it can help clarify both for theists and atheists what it is that they claim to believe or not believe in.

This book has become my main way into conversations with atheists at Kwantlen. Part of what makes it so effective for this task, I think, is that it is simply intellectually rigorous on a philosophical level. The aim is not to prove the scientific truth of the Bible (or any other religious text) but to talk philosophically rather than historically or scientifically. The result is that conversations with atheists can reach a higher level of sophistication and importance. The meaning of the word "God," Hart suggests, accounts for three essential and pervasive topics that pure materialist atheism has a very hard time dealing with: Being ("Why is the something rather than nothing?"), Consciousness ("How is it that I can perceive and know anything?"), and Bliss ("Why do we seek and enjoy the good, the true, and the beautiful?")

Interestingly, Hart's argument draws on numerous philosophical and religious traditions: it is not confined just to Christianity (though Christian thinkers are certainly not excluded, either). In Greek philosophy, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, Sikhism, Buddhism, and Christianity, Hart finds resources to define the word "God." God is not a being among other beings, and so cannot, in principle, be an object of science. God is not a being, but is rather Being itself, the source and ground of all that it. God is not merely "good" but God is goodness itself. Based on the subtitle of the book, we might define the word "God" as: infinite Being, infinite Consciousness, infinite Bliss.

What is wonderful about my conversations with atheists around campus is how this discussion opens onto my own particular faith, too. How God, the source of all that is, has become fully human, has come to dwell among his creatures and effect our salvation. Of course, questions about the Bible quickly arise, too: how can a God this abstract make himself known in the particular way that he is presented in the Christian scriptures? That is a question I will need to keep wrestling with. But I am completely convinced that nothing in this definition of "God" prevents God from personally communing with human beings in the way described in the Bible.

In fact, I think this definition of the word "God" is the only one that makes any philosophical sense. For if God were simply the greatest being among all beings, rather than the ground and source of all being itself, then the question could be legitimately asked "Who made God? What is the ground of God's being?" But if God is the ultimate, infinite, un-caused, and unconditioned source of all being, all consciousness, and all bliss, then such a question is unintelligible. This, truly, is the God who has come to us in Christ.

Mandatory Courses in Indigenous Studies?

Reading Kwantlen’s student paper The Runner today, I came across an interesting debate regarding the possibility of mandatory courses in indigenous studies. The Runner often has this feature: two columnists each have a short piece about a particular issue from a different perspective.

The writer in favour of adding mandatory indigenous studies courses suggested that it is a continuing form of oppression to exclude the history of indigenous peoples. Too long, he says, has the “settler” narrative of European immigrants dominated our approach to Canadian history, neglecting the culture and subsequent oppression of those indigenous communities who inhabited the land hundreds of years before the Europeans arrived. The university is a perfect place to explore this alternative and rather dark side of Canadian history. Recognizing the supreme importance of this story is an important step of reconciliation that moves past mere apology to concrete action.

On the other hand, the columnist against such mandatory courses basically wants to protect the freedom of the student to focus on what interests them and is important for their degree and/or career. He complains about the fact that Kwantlen has mandatory courses that are already frustrating enough, like arts students needing to take a hard science course that doesn’t really fall within the field of “philosophy” or “English” or other arts programs. By all means, he says, we should have courses on indigenous studies available, but it is a step too far to make them mandatory. “Let the people who are interested in that learn about it,” he writes. “Just don’t force it on the rest of us who are doing something else with our lives”.

What is a Christian response this debate? I won’t go so far as to try and provide a “middle way,” since I am far more sympathetic to the first position than the second. However, Christians probably should take a discerning third way that provides a strong foundation for the first position in God’s love for creation and for humanity. Two points can be made.

First of all, there is something to be said for following ones passions in study, as our second columnist points out. God has given individual people unique passions, gifts, and resources, and those passions need to be freed from too much constraint so that individuals can flourish in their God-given calling. However, Christianity does not allow those gifts to operate outside of community. The Christian community is also concerned with directing and shaping our love, desire, and energy towards God, people, and creation. Christians should have a hard time saying to each other “I’m doing something else with my life,” since our lives are not our own but belong to God’s kingdom of reconciliation and justice. This is not to say that the Christian community should absolutely dictate what an individual does with their life, but just to caution against an individualism that ignores all context of community and history. While we celebrate individuality, that celebration also means giving oneself to interest in and love of others. This might mean offering ourselves to learning about a subject that isn't really in our area of interest. In fact, through love, perhaps we do make it our interest. My individuality with all its gifts and uniqueness is tied up in celebrating that same individuality in others. 

Which leads me to claim that, secondly, as Christians we ought to honor and celebrate the specificity of our place, our history. Christians in Canada live on land marked by a history of indigenous peoples. In order to own that history and the painful role that the church played in oppression we need to listen and pay attention to the past. God’s revelation in Jesus of Nazareth reveals a God concerned with specificity, with concrete place and location, with particular people and their particular stories. The incarnational task of the church is to enter into its own particular time and place informed and shaped by the way Jesus inhabited his time and place.

Now, is it the government’s job to make this encounter with indigenous history and culture’s mandatory? Is it up to the university (perhaps apt given that Kwantlen is named after a local indigenous nation)? I would probably support such moves since I think this history is very important for understanding the roots of our Canadian society and for enacting Christian reconciliation. But, in a society that has abandoned belief in the God of love, I would say that the second columnist is probably right: without God, it may be that this kind of individualism is all that is left. The Christian church needs to own and explore this history itself, not depend on other people or political structures to encourage it. Make use of those structures for the purposes of the kingdom, certainly. But don’t make the mistake of abdicating responsibility. Through Christ we have been given the gift/task of bringing reconciliation and shalom when and where we can. Whether or not others are interested in understanding the history and struggles of indigenous peoples, Christians as individuals and communities are called by the Spirit to understand how God’s reconciliation to the world in Christ can be enacted here and now. And for Christians in Canada, indigenous history and culture is crucial to that task.

The Spirituality of Learning

Today I am beginning a book discussion group on Neal Plantinga’s Engaging God’s World: A Christian Vision of Faith, Learning, and Living. Pretty much every student who goes through Calvin College (the CRC’s denominational school) reads this book as part of their first year of studies. A place like Kwantlen University, though, doesn't have any interest as an institution in thinking about the integration of faith and learning, so a small group of us here on campus have taken it on ourselves to think through these issues. How are education and learning, especially at a secular school like KPU, part of our Christian faith and our walk with God? In the introduction to the book Plantinga writes the following:

Thoughtful Christians know that if we obey the Bible’s great commandment to love God with our whole mind, as well as with everything else, then we will study the splendour of God’s creation in the hope of grasping part of the ingenuity and grace that form it. One way to love God is to know and love God’s work. Learning is therefore a spiritual calling: properly done, it attaches us to God. (xi)

What a simple and yet massively expansive vision! Part of the task of a Christian chaplaincy on a non-Christian campus is to open up this vision that brings together learning and the Christian faith in an intimate way. Chemistry, computer science, psychology, business, philosophy, or any number of other university disciplines can all be brought under the lordship of Christ. It is God's good world, given to us to explore and to know. Coming to know and love God's creation is part and parcel of coming to know and love God himself. 

But at a place like KPU that connection can be hard to make. Isn't university for getting a job and taking care of practical things in life? Christian faith is just for church, right? That is exactly the position that Plantinga and the best of the Christian tradition want to challenge. The Christian faith is all about the “practical things in life”. God in Christ has made a truly cosmic claim of lordship. And Christians, in both Christian and non-Christian educational settings, need to be attentive and open to how the Holy Spirit is making that Lordship known in the midst of a broken world.

So I’m looking forward to the discussion and the possibilities of how our Christian faith and practice can be made known on this campus! There is truly not one square inch, as Abraham Kuyper put it, over which Christ our Lord does not say “that is mine”. And a book group at Kwantlen is one small but important way to bear witness to that very truth. 

Elevator

I was able to talk with a lot of people today. Some were friends I had made last semester here at Kwantlen, while others were completely new. In fact, just as I was cleaning up from a Multi-Faith event I ran into a young man in the elevator who asked me about the Multi-Faith Centre (the name was on a sign I was holding). It turns out he is a Christian student deeply interested in the Christian spiritual life and Christian presence on the KPU campus. A spiritual friendship has begun.

And so, with some consistent relationships and some that seem to appear out of thin air, my work at Kwantlen presses on. I really felt like my chance encounter in the elevator was the work of the Holy Spirit, and I do believe it was, but as I reflect I notice that even those relatively stable friendships I have developed are also the work of the Spirit. It is surely exciting and invigorating to be confronted with a spiritual gift like a friendship in an elevator. But, as always, God reminds us that deep continuities are just as important and just as much his work as surprising eruptions in the midst of our lives.

So my prayer today is that I would continue to be attentive to both of these dimensions and see their ultimate unity: the unity of the work of the Spirit in both surprising and comfortable ways. 

Patience with Lawns and Posters

I’ve been doing lots of planning this week. There are plenty of new projects on the horizon: philosophy of religion discussion group, an on-campus Christian club, an open mic event, the Multi-Faith Centre festival in February, and a short talk at the CRC young adult retreat later this month. It’s all interesting and exciting stuff to plan for.

Since I began my “working” life as a maintenance landscaper I’ve come to realize that projects take time. As a chaplain at KPU I find myself frustrated every now and then that I have to spend so much time emailing, planning, and thinking through the little details that go into events or meetings. And I remember a similar frustration when I was landscaping: it takes that long to mow that lawn?

But, I have now come at least to the realization (though not to the consistent experience) that it’s OK that things take time. Putting together a little ad for my philosophy of religion discussion group takes some effort. What text should I put on the poster? What images would be good? While impatience thinks this should take no more than 10 minutes, both reality and a persevering spirit offer a different approach. Take half an hour. Take a hour, if you need to.

It’s important and helpful to take the time needed to do good quality work. And the scriptures never tell us to “do as much as you can in as little time as possible”. Instead, “whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). And so in trust and with some frustration I’m allowing for the time to prepare and plan for good things, good projects. While I might wish to be deeply engaged in the lives of Kwantlen students at every minute of my time here, a patient heart allows for God to work through carefully mown lawns and thoughtfully designed posters.

God on Stage: Open Mic at Kwantlen

Tonight I'm hosting what I hope will be the first of many open mic events at Kwantlen. When I was a college student I loved playing music at open mics, so when I started thinking of fun community events to put on at Kwantlen this was an obvious choice for me. People of a wide variety of experience and skill all gather around and enjoy each other’s music, poetry, and art. Music achieves one of its many levels of greatness simply by grabbing a guitar from the closet and singing “blowing in the wind” to a crowd of classmates avoiding their homework.

At a chaplaincy meeting yesterday we went over the chaplain's job description and the very first line says something to the effect of “being a Christian presence on campus”. I think that events like this open mic is part of that Christian presence. It’s certainly not explicitly evangelistic (depending on how you interpret that term, little to none of what I do is), it’s not even overtly spiritual or “Multi-faith,” but I think it certainly is part of God’s activity here on campus. God is the creator of beauty, the creator of artistic expression, and so to celebrate that and give others a chance to share their art is part of God’s redemptive act in the world because that act is beautiful, is beauty itself.

So opening up a stage and microphone to anyone who wants to share their gifts and talents, whether they are honed to perfection or not, whether they identify with the Christian faith or not, is an opening, and window, into who God is: a God who is beauty, most abundantly in the person and life of Jesus Christ in whom we live and move and have our being. 

Among Atheists

It’s been a long time since my last blog post! No real excuse, but I've been fairly occupied by a Postmodern Philosophy and Religion discussion group that has been going on through November. It’s been an exciting and interesting set of conversations; a mix of students with different backgrounds and different assumptions. It’s been particularly interesting dialoguing with students who are rigorous atheists. Our dialogue has been respectful but not lacking in passion or debate, which makes for a really lively and (I think) fruitful discussion. The topics are wide-ranging: the existence and reality of God, politics, ethics, knowledge, personal development, and others. As I've learned from the Christian Reformed tradition, there isn't one sphere of life untouched by God, and so that means no sphere of life is off limits when discussing philosophy and religion.

It’s really helpful to rub shoulders in this way, with people who hold entirely different assumptions about the world. In these discussions I have tried to enter in with a willingness to be changed by the encounter. This doesn't mean I hold my beliefs lightly, ready to toss them out with a moments notice. Rather, it means that my beliefs are (hopefully) brought into a non-defensive dialogue with very different positions.

What I've been struck by as I've enjoyed these conversations is how compelled I am by the Christian vision of the world and the gospel. As I stumble over words trying to articulate the mystery of God I feel myself being drawn into that mystery. The materialist or atheist disagreements have done very little to shake that experience. I don’t feel as though I'm being defensive with the Christian faith. Even, and perhaps especially, when that faith is exposed to rigorous critique I have a deep experience of it being beautiful, somewhat terrifying, and utterly true (in a way that far exceeds mere propositional truth).

Whether or not it becomes so attractive to others is the work of the Holy Spirit. For myself, while I claim a certain limited competence in articulating the Christian faith I strive to allow my voice to be silenced in two ways: by others who want to express a deeply different opinion but also by the experience of the gospel itself, which challenges me more than any atheist position ever has. Rowan Williams has said it elegantly:

“The greatness of the great Christian saints lies in their readiness to be questioned, judged, stripped naked and left speechless by that which lies at the centre of their faith” (The Wound of Knowledge).

It is this sort of submission to the cross of Christ that I am attempting to live out on the Kwantlen campus, whether in a conversation with an atheist or a deeply committed Christian. Everything, even our own articulation of the Christian faith, is subject to the beauty of Christ. And Christian faith does not so much give us perfect knowledge of God as put us on our knees in awe, terror, worship, and love.