You can't reason your way to freedom because our freedom flows from God's authority.
The COVID episode was not just a wholesale attack on our liberty - stripping us of our agency - but an assault on God's will.
It was one of the darkest moments I've experienced. People thought they were being 'compassionate' and 'rational' when in fact it was the opposite operating in a panicked vacuum. Reason was the first casualty of the moral panic.
Excellent article and well stated. I personally have returned to a relationship with God after a miserable hiatus of some decades. I am seeing that atheists have had their run, and didn't do too well. We are spiritual creatures, and that is not going to change. When we separate ourselves from God, we don't fare well.
Thank you for a wonderful article. As someone who works as a secretary in multiple churches, I have witnessed many people entering the church by way of trauma, addiction, loss, etc., and how it has transformed people. I've also witnessed the congregations slow decline over many years but I am optimistic seeing new faces of lately. I work with a priest who people flock to, he is the most giving person I've met, giving of himself in service or whatever monies he has to others, he is the most serene person I know and will be 90 in a couple of months (I hope he has another 10 years but I know he will probably die on the altar long before we are ready for him to go).
thanks so much...much ponder as usual, and from comments. My current struggle relates to feeling at home and comfortable in established churches which have been taken over by the neo-marxist woke with their obsessions with racism, climate, etc etc even when cloaked, literally and figuratively, in tradition.....have driven many from the churches. Their failure to stand up for Christianity in education for example, has been notable. The loss to all children, maybe especially from non religious homes, of a knowledge of the Bible and the great canon of hymns and Christian music, in schools is surely a crime against our culture in which the churches have been largely complicit. Then there was covid......
Good points, Duncan. Church of England is not even really a church anymore, as far as I can tell...and the United Church seems pretty "woke" too. The church I have recently returned to is a Baptist church, very "diverse" (people from 40 different countries!) and very modern wrt music and technology usage but very traditional in its message and not even a little bit "woke." Not coincidentally, it is growing by leaps and bounds, full of young people (they are the hip rebels of their generation!)
There was actually a study done a few years back where they looked at churches with declining attendance versus those that were growing. Few were growing, but those that were had one thing in common: they were very conservative in their theology. People want to be challenged and they don't want their ministers/priests trying to "fit in" with the mainstream culture. Young people, especially, seem to thrive on the JBP admonition to "pick up your damn cross and bear it." I may write more on this in part 3!
If you have young children, get a children’s Bible and read it to them. I was amazed at how these stories resonated with our 3-4 year old. Now he reads it to himself. It certainly opened my eyes to the power of these simple stories.
The thing I love about the biblical stories is that they are simultaneously simple enough for a 3 year old to get something out of them and complicated enough for JBP to talk for 2 hours (about a story that's less than a page long) to a huge audience which is spellbound to the point you can hear a pin drop--and nobody wants it to end. It's no coincidence that these stories have stuck around for 2000+ years.
regret I'm 71 but my grand daughters are certainly getting proper Biblical education, though regrettably as far away as BC and Ireland! It is indeed so important, for our culture and learning right from wrong, even for non Christians. Largely lost in a couple of generations of socialist atheism in schools.
As for church Julie, my family had some Cof E, some traditional Baptist roots and I was brought up in Methodism, but schools basically Cof E. Bible reading and hymn every morning assembly, stand fast Catholics and Jews who had their own brief services. (In 1960s Essex I do not recall any other religions amongst my fellow pupils.) I regret I cannot tolerate modern churches with guitars and music groups and modern hymns with awful music and terrible writing....why use these when you have the whole revised Hymnal from Ralph Vaughan Williams, the great canon of western classical music and the English of Thomas Cranmer et al.......parts of the bedrock of our civilization. The modern hymn writer Graham Kendrick even featured in Letts' seminal '50 people who buggered up Britain"! Children are quite capable of absorbing, and being inspired by, quality music, poetry and prose but sadly most of the churches' leaderships for many years have believed dumbing down is the answer....added to woke leftism. Not sorry to be an old fogey fart and look forward to part 3!
I was raised without religion but in fits and starts over three-plus decades have reluctantly become a God-believer (thanks largely to a sense of wonder and an introduction to Pascal's water) and now a Christian (thanks to Christians in my life and a simple yet powerful reading of the Easter story one Easter Sunday on a camping trip that stayed with me through the years). One wonders where y'all are on your journey?
Another great article! I have always been a spiritual person, more so than religious. I believe in God and morals, truth, and compassion to others. I find many today do not believe and even hearing the word, "religion" gets their dander up. A friend of mine (who died 6 years ago) claimed he was an atheist and when the topic of religion came up he would say "there is no God so why do you believe there is one"? My response was, "you have no proof there isn't a God and I believe there is one so we will have to leave it at that". Again, my opinion is we are spiritual beings having a human being experience on Mother Earth.
Great comment thanks. It's been pointed out that ardent atheists also believe in miracles. Their miracles are just different. Why is there something rather than nothing? What was here before the Big Bang? Why does quantum entanglement work like it does?
Interestingly when one really understands science to its deepest levels you get back to miracles. People who really understand the frontiers of science come to the realization that science is incapable of explaining everything. “The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.” — Werner Heisenberg
I think everyone believes in miracles of one sort or another. Human beings springing into existence out of a Big Bang where there was once nothing is no more insane than believing in God.
I appreciate and love your response Chris. I think when atheists believe in miracles they mostly relay that to the effort of themselves and not from some higher power. I have had enough things happen over the years for me to continue to believe and have faith in God and because I believe in miracles too, I have a lovely banner on my desk that says "Miracles Happen".
I've little patience for those who say the Jesus of the Bible was "a good man", "a great teacher', but that the notion that He is God is nonsensical claptrap.
I love what C.S. Lewis had to say:
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
I absolutely agree. The only conflict is with those who have made science their religion--i.e. between religion and scientism (as opposed to science.) Those who see science as merely as a technique for learning about the physical world (like me) see no conflict.
I think it was Werner Heisenberg who said: "The first sip from the cup of science will turn you into an atheist, but when you drink down to the bottom you will find God waiting for you." Or something like that. To me it seems that the more we learn about the natural world, the harder it is to deny the existence of a Creator.
Good to know about that Heisenberg concept. I am not an pure scientist, but an applied scientist, so 'purity' has never been something I sought anyway, I am always about practical problem solving (using the tools of science), so I never once saw any contradiction.
Thank you, Pairodocs, for this article. You write that people seek connection TO God. The problem is the duality. Is your identity really you? Your self-centered perspective? As long as this false entity is maintained, there's suffering. More than having connection to God, who are you? The end to human misery is to understand oneself as consciousness (God, spirit, Tao). We are only this! The mind will be terrified because truth terminates the personal identity, so it fights hard. Reflection, contemplation, and meditation, by being empty and receptive, are the way to STOP it. And God IS the source of love (not self-serving love).
Yes, very good point but maybe beyond the scope of this article. When you get deeper into most religious traditions, the process of becoming one with God involves letting go of your personal ego consciousness (as Carl Jung would put it!)... which is a terrifying process. One might even say a death and a rebirth?
A beautifully written article. I wonder if it could be more inclusive of other religions or religious traditions? After all, humility and service to others is not restricted to Christianity or even to the Abrahamic traditions. You’re words lose many readers by being both Christocentric and Theocentric. Spirit and spirituality is much broader and inclusive.
A good point, Laurent, and a few years ago I would have agreed with you 100%--and I certainly still have nothing against people of other faiths. However, I'm starting to doubt that, as a culture, we can survive without at least a significant percentage of the population having a shared vision of how reality (and morality) is constituted. Since the West was built on Judeo-Christian values, the only way we are going to save it, I think, is to return in some fashion to those values. There are certain things (way beyond the scope of a Substack comment!) that are specifically Christian about the West and if we reject the source of those things we risk losing what made our civilization great. (We are already seeing this happen.) I think that is why Ayyan Hirsi-Ali chose Christianity rather than, for example, becoming a Buddhist or returning to her Muslim roots. She simply saw more truth in it.
I don't think it's a coincidence that the modern West is the freest, most prosperous culture that ever arose. I cover this in more detail in Part 1 of "in Defence of the Christians" if you care to read more. Cheers and thanks for the comment! Julie
Thank you, Julie, for taking the time to comment. Yes, I was late to this substack; just discovered you today and will look for Part 1. I’m less certain about the modern West as the freest that ever arose. I’ve been reading The Dawn of Everything by Graeber & Wengrow calling for us to reassess our view of pre-contact North American societies, as one example. They give many other example. Also, our prosperity is layered dramatically by our existing power bases.
I see you both are genuinely interested in dialogue by the degree of your engagement with all those posting. Congratulations on that!
Thank you for this article! . Something profound and beyond this world happens to my mind, heart and soul when I repent and surrender fr my ways of thinking and being and seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness. In time (sometimes instantly, other struggles to get His ways over mine have taken 40 yrs!) I am transformed fr uncertain to certain, overwhelmed to settled, calm, content and have hope and giddiness about life, selfish to considering others, holding grudges to forgiveness, fear to peace, insecure to secure that God is Sovereign and no matter what happens, He's got me and will walk w me. I confessed my need for a Saviour as a young child but to this day, I am amazed and fulfilled at being enabled by His grace to live out the abundant life God promises no matter the circumstances . This does not mean happy all the time, no stress, no difficulty but it does mean I can place my trust in Him daily and He will walk w me and teach me how to navigate whatever comes. Such an adventure and so not boring to walk by faith and not by sight. I don't know why I usually attempt self reliance first and then remember oh right, seek first His Kingdom, repent, seek Him, read or remember His Word and the transformation in my own heart and mind occurs again.
Psalm 86:11 Teach me your way, Lord, that I may rely on your faithfulness; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name.
Psalm 25: 4-5 Show me your ways, Lord, teach me your paths. Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior.
Yes, it's funny, isn't it? That in surrendering your own will to something higher you actually become free. And that the type of "freedom" our culture tries to sell us -- the freedom to do whatever you want, to create your own values and even your own "identity" -- is actually a type of slavery which makes people miserable.
Beautifully written Julie. (Sorry Chris, but I know you are not the psychiatrist.) I had long ago rejected organized religion mainly because it was force fed to us as children and my natural rebelliousness kicked in on religion pretty early. I remember Kevin MacMichael asking questions in our Sunday School class that were unanswerable. I loved it, but didn’t have his brain. He and I and some others were eventually expelled from the class. Neville Gilfoy(now sadly deceased) was also there, but he did not seem so rebellious at the time. When I re-encountered him later in life he turned out to be a ton of fun. Unlike Kevin, who was a brilliant musician who died way too young, I lived long enough to suffer through c19. At first, I was angry with the cowardly public health officials and politicians for stealing our freedoms and trying to force useless/dangerous shots on us, but now I see that they were all subject to the fear campaign, as were most people. Now I see the undermining of our civilization was due to the mad scientists funded by Fauci & co to bioengineer deadly bio weapons from viruses that would not otherwise bother most humans. Perhaps retreat into spirituality and religion is our only hope now, since we can’t put the spikes back into the bats. Clearly Judeo-Christian values created our “free” world and we need to sustain and reinvigorate those values as best we can. Thank you both for your stirling efforts in this regard.
Amen, and again I say Amen -I don’t even remotely know all the answers but for me John 1: says it all -and led and supported me in a life of nursing when my youngest child started school.
You can't reason your way to freedom because our freedom flows from God's authority.
The COVID episode was not just a wholesale attack on our liberty - stripping us of our agency - but an assault on God's will.
It was one of the darkest moments I've experienced. People thought they were being 'compassionate' and 'rational' when in fact it was the opposite operating in a panicked vacuum. Reason was the first casualty of the moral panic.
God. Use him or lose him.
You presume to know god's will? You may ignore God, but how can you lose what sustains the manifest world and is your very being?
Excellent article and well stated. I personally have returned to a relationship with God after a miserable hiatus of some decades. I am seeing that atheists have had their run, and didn't do too well. We are spiritual creatures, and that is not going to change. When we separate ourselves from God, we don't fare well.
Acts 4:12; "Salvation is found in no one else, for there in no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved."
Thank you for a wonderful article. As someone who works as a secretary in multiple churches, I have witnessed many people entering the church by way of trauma, addiction, loss, etc., and how it has transformed people. I've also witnessed the congregations slow decline over many years but I am optimistic seeing new faces of lately. I work with a priest who people flock to, he is the most giving person I've met, giving of himself in service or whatever monies he has to others, he is the most serene person I know and will be 90 in a couple of months (I hope he has another 10 years but I know he will probably die on the altar long before we are ready for him to go).
thanks so much...much ponder as usual, and from comments. My current struggle relates to feeling at home and comfortable in established churches which have been taken over by the neo-marxist woke with their obsessions with racism, climate, etc etc even when cloaked, literally and figuratively, in tradition.....have driven many from the churches. Their failure to stand up for Christianity in education for example, has been notable. The loss to all children, maybe especially from non religious homes, of a knowledge of the Bible and the great canon of hymns and Christian music, in schools is surely a crime against our culture in which the churches have been largely complicit. Then there was covid......
Good points, Duncan. Church of England is not even really a church anymore, as far as I can tell...and the United Church seems pretty "woke" too. The church I have recently returned to is a Baptist church, very "diverse" (people from 40 different countries!) and very modern wrt music and technology usage but very traditional in its message and not even a little bit "woke." Not coincidentally, it is growing by leaps and bounds, full of young people (they are the hip rebels of their generation!)
There was actually a study done a few years back where they looked at churches with declining attendance versus those that were growing. Few were growing, but those that were had one thing in common: they were very conservative in their theology. People want to be challenged and they don't want their ministers/priests trying to "fit in" with the mainstream culture. Young people, especially, seem to thrive on the JBP admonition to "pick up your damn cross and bear it." I may write more on this in part 3!
If you have young children, get a children’s Bible and read it to them. I was amazed at how these stories resonated with our 3-4 year old. Now he reads it to himself. It certainly opened my eyes to the power of these simple stories.
The thing I love about the biblical stories is that they are simultaneously simple enough for a 3 year old to get something out of them and complicated enough for JBP to talk for 2 hours (about a story that's less than a page long) to a huge audience which is spellbound to the point you can hear a pin drop--and nobody wants it to end. It's no coincidence that these stories have stuck around for 2000+ years.
regret I'm 71 but my grand daughters are certainly getting proper Biblical education, though regrettably as far away as BC and Ireland! It is indeed so important, for our culture and learning right from wrong, even for non Christians. Largely lost in a couple of generations of socialist atheism in schools.
As for church Julie, my family had some Cof E, some traditional Baptist roots and I was brought up in Methodism, but schools basically Cof E. Bible reading and hymn every morning assembly, stand fast Catholics and Jews who had their own brief services. (In 1960s Essex I do not recall any other religions amongst my fellow pupils.) I regret I cannot tolerate modern churches with guitars and music groups and modern hymns with awful music and terrible writing....why use these when you have the whole revised Hymnal from Ralph Vaughan Williams, the great canon of western classical music and the English of Thomas Cranmer et al.......parts of the bedrock of our civilization. The modern hymn writer Graham Kendrick even featured in Letts' seminal '50 people who buggered up Britain"! Children are quite capable of absorbing, and being inspired by, quality music, poetry and prose but sadly most of the churches' leaderships for many years have believed dumbing down is the answer....added to woke leftism. Not sorry to be an old fogey fart and look forward to part 3!
I was raised without religion but in fits and starts over three-plus decades have reluctantly become a God-believer (thanks largely to a sense of wonder and an introduction to Pascal's water) and now a Christian (thanks to Christians in my life and a simple yet powerful reading of the Easter story one Easter Sunday on a camping trip that stayed with me through the years). One wonders where y'all are on your journey?
*Pascal's wager
Another great article! I have always been a spiritual person, more so than religious. I believe in God and morals, truth, and compassion to others. I find many today do not believe and even hearing the word, "religion" gets their dander up. A friend of mine (who died 6 years ago) claimed he was an atheist and when the topic of religion came up he would say "there is no God so why do you believe there is one"? My response was, "you have no proof there isn't a God and I believe there is one so we will have to leave it at that". Again, my opinion is we are spiritual beings having a human being experience on Mother Earth.
Great comment thanks. It's been pointed out that ardent atheists also believe in miracles. Their miracles are just different. Why is there something rather than nothing? What was here before the Big Bang? Why does quantum entanglement work like it does?
Interestingly when one really understands science to its deepest levels you get back to miracles. People who really understand the frontiers of science come to the realization that science is incapable of explaining everything. “The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.” — Werner Heisenberg
I think everyone believes in miracles of one sort or another. Human beings springing into existence out of a Big Bang where there was once nothing is no more insane than believing in God.
-Chris
and I just noticed Julie already answered a different comment above similarly, with the same quote. We've been married too long!!
:) :) :)
I appreciate and love your response Chris. I think when atheists believe in miracles they mostly relay that to the effort of themselves and not from some higher power. I have had enough things happen over the years for me to continue to believe and have faith in God and because I believe in miracles too, I have a lovely banner on my desk that says "Miracles Happen".
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for this.
Thank you for this, great read.
I've little patience for those who say the Jesus of the Bible was "a good man", "a great teacher', but that the notion that He is God is nonsensical claptrap.
I love what C.S. Lewis had to say:
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
Very interesting I was not aware of that from CS Lewis.
-Chris
Good article. I don't see why there is any conflict between being a believer in God and being a scientist.
I absolutely agree. The only conflict is with those who have made science their religion--i.e. between religion and scientism (as opposed to science.) Those who see science as merely as a technique for learning about the physical world (like me) see no conflict.
I think it was Werner Heisenberg who said: "The first sip from the cup of science will turn you into an atheist, but when you drink down to the bottom you will find God waiting for you." Or something like that. To me it seems that the more we learn about the natural world, the harder it is to deny the existence of a Creator.
Good to know about that Heisenberg concept. I am not an pure scientist, but an applied scientist, so 'purity' has never been something I sought anyway, I am always about practical problem solving (using the tools of science), so I never once saw any contradiction.
Thank you, Pairodocs, for this article. You write that people seek connection TO God. The problem is the duality. Is your identity really you? Your self-centered perspective? As long as this false entity is maintained, there's suffering. More than having connection to God, who are you? The end to human misery is to understand oneself as consciousness (God, spirit, Tao). We are only this! The mind will be terrified because truth terminates the personal identity, so it fights hard. Reflection, contemplation, and meditation, by being empty and receptive, are the way to STOP it. And God IS the source of love (not self-serving love).
Yes, very good point but maybe beyond the scope of this article. When you get deeper into most religious traditions, the process of becoming one with God involves letting go of your personal ego consciousness (as Carl Jung would put it!)... which is a terrifying process. One might even say a death and a rebirth?
What if God was considered as a verb rather than a noun?
To be or not to be that is the question.
https://baldmichael.substack.com/p/to-be-or-not-to-be-the-question-of?utm_source=publication-search
A beautifully written article. I wonder if it could be more inclusive of other religions or religious traditions? After all, humility and service to others is not restricted to Christianity or even to the Abrahamic traditions. You’re words lose many readers by being both Christocentric and Theocentric. Spirit and spirituality is much broader and inclusive.
A good point, Laurent, and a few years ago I would have agreed with you 100%--and I certainly still have nothing against people of other faiths. However, I'm starting to doubt that, as a culture, we can survive without at least a significant percentage of the population having a shared vision of how reality (and morality) is constituted. Since the West was built on Judeo-Christian values, the only way we are going to save it, I think, is to return in some fashion to those values. There are certain things (way beyond the scope of a Substack comment!) that are specifically Christian about the West and if we reject the source of those things we risk losing what made our civilization great. (We are already seeing this happen.) I think that is why Ayyan Hirsi-Ali chose Christianity rather than, for example, becoming a Buddhist or returning to her Muslim roots. She simply saw more truth in it.
I don't think it's a coincidence that the modern West is the freest, most prosperous culture that ever arose. I cover this in more detail in Part 1 of "in Defence of the Christians" if you care to read more. Cheers and thanks for the comment! Julie
Thank you, Julie, for taking the time to comment. Yes, I was late to this substack; just discovered you today and will look for Part 1. I’m less certain about the modern West as the freest that ever arose. I’ve been reading The Dawn of Everything by Graeber & Wengrow calling for us to reassess our view of pre-contact North American societies, as one example. They give many other example. Also, our prosperity is layered dramatically by our existing power bases.
I see you both are genuinely interested in dialogue by the degree of your engagement with all those posting. Congratulations on that!
Thank you for this article! . Something profound and beyond this world happens to my mind, heart and soul when I repent and surrender fr my ways of thinking and being and seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness. In time (sometimes instantly, other struggles to get His ways over mine have taken 40 yrs!) I am transformed fr uncertain to certain, overwhelmed to settled, calm, content and have hope and giddiness about life, selfish to considering others, holding grudges to forgiveness, fear to peace, insecure to secure that God is Sovereign and no matter what happens, He's got me and will walk w me. I confessed my need for a Saviour as a young child but to this day, I am amazed and fulfilled at being enabled by His grace to live out the abundant life God promises no matter the circumstances . This does not mean happy all the time, no stress, no difficulty but it does mean I can place my trust in Him daily and He will walk w me and teach me how to navigate whatever comes. Such an adventure and so not boring to walk by faith and not by sight. I don't know why I usually attempt self reliance first and then remember oh right, seek first His Kingdom, repent, seek Him, read or remember His Word and the transformation in my own heart and mind occurs again.
Psalm 86:11 Teach me your way, Lord, that I may rely on your faithfulness; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name.
Psalm 25: 4-5 Show me your ways, Lord, teach me your paths. Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior.
Yes, it's funny, isn't it? That in surrendering your own will to something higher you actually become free. And that the type of "freedom" our culture tries to sell us -- the freedom to do whatever you want, to create your own values and even your own "identity" -- is actually a type of slavery which makes people miserable.
Beautifully written Julie. (Sorry Chris, but I know you are not the psychiatrist.) I had long ago rejected organized religion mainly because it was force fed to us as children and my natural rebelliousness kicked in on religion pretty early. I remember Kevin MacMichael asking questions in our Sunday School class that were unanswerable. I loved it, but didn’t have his brain. He and I and some others were eventually expelled from the class. Neville Gilfoy(now sadly deceased) was also there, but he did not seem so rebellious at the time. When I re-encountered him later in life he turned out to be a ton of fun. Unlike Kevin, who was a brilliant musician who died way too young, I lived long enough to suffer through c19. At first, I was angry with the cowardly public health officials and politicians for stealing our freedoms and trying to force useless/dangerous shots on us, but now I see that they were all subject to the fear campaign, as were most people. Now I see the undermining of our civilization was due to the mad scientists funded by Fauci & co to bioengineer deadly bio weapons from viruses that would not otherwise bother most humans. Perhaps retreat into spirituality and religion is our only hope now, since we can’t put the spikes back into the bats. Clearly Judeo-Christian values created our “free” world and we need to sustain and reinvigorate those values as best we can. Thank you both for your stirling efforts in this regard.
Amen, and again I say Amen -I don’t even remotely know all the answers but for me John 1: says it all -and led and supported me in a life of nursing when my youngest child started school.
Great article, well reasoned and articulate. Thanks!