Each Wednesday,     Tim Carson shares 
the wonderings of heart and mind and the inspirations and quandaries of the spirit. You are invited to wonder along with him through the telling of stories, reflections on faith and observations on the events that shape our lives.  

Tim Carson

 

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Wednesday Wonder
January 6, 2016

In a recent message I spoke of resilience and in relation to that talked about how in terms of faith the experience of war can cut two ways. On the one hand it can turn a person to the foundations they already have, causing them to be even more reliant on faith. On the other hand the opposite is often true. The old mythology that there are no atheists in foxholes is patently untrue; foxholes often create atheists.
 
I recently read a first-person story written by an infantryman who served in Iraq. He grew up a good Southern Baptist from Texas. The sledge hammer of doubt came crashing down as he listened to a chaplain deliver a devotional talk before his patrol headed out into a dangerous area "outside the wire." The chaplain said that thus far his company had remained safe because God was protecting them, that God had heard their prayers. That service man immediately knew something was wrong with theology.
 
He called his old youth minister back home and presented his dilemma - the concept of a God he could no longer believe in. The young youth minister had nothing helpful to share. Following his deployment the God dilemma stuck. He organized a community of secular folks who gather together to explore life, share togetherness and do good - all without the supernatural God dimension. How I wish I would have had the opportunity to talk with him at that critical juncture.
 
What I would not have said is that the chaplain was right - God was protecting some and because the right prayers were uttered and others perished because ... who knows why. I would have said that he had the right question and the chaplain was operating with the false assumptions that accompany classical theism, a model of God that failed died long ago. The soldier was right to reject that concept, model, and idea of God. What he didn't need to jettison was the entire notion of a sacred reality, but only the encumbrances of classical theism. Because he didn't know he had an option - no one told him so - he had to chuck the whole thing. He was forced to discard the entire notion because he had no alternative.
 
I think that is exactly what is happening in our broader culture. It is the primary cause of the dramatic rise of the "nones" (no religious affiliation), seculars, agnostics and a/theists in our society. That is the most rapidly growing demographic, religiously speaking. They certainly reject the assumptions of classical theism and with reason.
Where, I ask you, are they hearing an alternative to the model, concept, image, and idea of God derived from Greco-Roman thought? Where are they hearing an alternative to notions of God based on human attributes writ large, a kind of old man-Zeus-superhero in the sky?
 
In the main, seculars do not see this abandonment as a crisis. They see it as a relief. But people of faith, those who carry a faith of the heart that continues to reinterpret the traditions we have received, are more concerned. What is lost if it all is tossed overboard? Much, we usually say. But until we begin speaking of God in terms that don't require 21st people to assume a 1st century world view it's only going to get worse. And maybe it should. 
 

@Timothy Carson 2016

 

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