None Good

As He was setting out on a journey, a man ran up, knelt down before Him, and asked Him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“Why do you call Me good?” Jesus asked him. “No one is good but One – God.”
-- Mark 10:17,18

Rather than eat up Bob’s space with an extended rehash of the obvious and leave myself looking egocentric, I decided to post it here.

I hope Petey doesn’t mind me stealing one of his favorite lines, but this is a One Cosmos one-off, you might say. One of the OC posters, Warren, commented on the “problem of evil” that seems to trouble so many who proclaim themselves to be atheist or agnostic. He said that the existence of evil and suffering in the world moved him toward God rather than away from Him.

Another poster, Erasmus, pulled a quote from Ray Ingles mini-Mein Kampf where Ray dismissed a God that would allow a volcano to erupt and burn up children in an orphanage. He says that God is to blame for all suffering (that is, He would be if He existed). Finally, the inimitable Slim Pickens noted that if he were to blame God for something it would be for creating Ray. Slim’s point is well taken in that, to paraphrase, Charleton Heston, “Evil is people!”

The atheist cannot deal with the righteousness of God or, consequently, the righteous requirements of God. Ray’s statement was indicative, saying, in essence, that it was not fair to rain on both the just and the unjust. Ray, of course, misses the actual point that rain would be a blessing rather than a curse, but we know what he means. God should bless good people and wipe out bad people.

The first and most obvious problem is the one reflected in the Lord’s koan-like response to the rich young ruler quoted above. God alone is good. All humanity is sinful and imperfect. Even the best of us do or have done wicked things. God does not have “bad aim” as Ray facetiously suggests. God is merciful to those of us who do wrong.

As far as disasters, diseases, “tragic” accidents, etc., those are the consequences of living in a fallen world. “In this world,” Jesus assured us, “you will have trouble.” But He goes on to reassure us, “Cheer up, though. I have overcome the world.” The present world, intended to be perfected under man’s dominion, was corrupted by the Fall. It is redeemed by the Last Adam’s obedience, though the full manifestation of that redemption is not yet seen.

Another problem is one cannot comprehend God’s reality if one assumes that when you are dead you are dead. This world is not enough. Certainly if this life is all there is, some relatively innocent people get the short end, while O.J. got by with murder for quite a while. If there is a God (and there is), then this life is not all, not by a long shot. If there is a God, He will even it up, so to speak. Consider a parable Jesus told in Luke 16:19-31 about a rich man and a poor beggar. They both died. The beggar went to paradise and the rich man went to hell, where he, not too surprisingly, began to complain about his accommodations. Abraham chided the man in hell, “Son, remember that during your life you received good things, just as Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted, while you are in agony.”

Atheists seem unable to comprehend their own sinfulness. Some make excuses for their bad actions. Other claim they are not bad at all – especially if they don’t hurt anyone else. It is this view of evil as something external to themselves that causes the “problem of evil” to drive them away from religion. On the other hand, those of us who recognize our sinfulness are, as Warren suggested, drawn closer to God in the face of suffering.

You might say, quite biblically, that there is suffering and evil in the world because there are people in the world. Sometimes we reap the consequences of our own evil, sometimes that of others. The atheist asserts that a perfect God would not make an imperfect world. Yet how does the atheist know the world is imperfect? How does he or she know what a perfect God would do? Clearly the atheist is adequate with his finite, inorganically-grown mindless brain to comprehend and judge an infinite Spiritual Being.

Me, I don’t think so much of myself, maybe because I have looked in the mirror, looked in the Mirror, and looked in my heart. I am willing to trust in and rely on the wisdom of God when I see evil, pain, and injustice.

Science and Serfdom: Thoughts on Hayek

I am thinking along a different track this morning, possibly because of the Obamessiah pulling the equivalent of an all-nighter for foreign affairs creds.

From one of the most important and influential books of the 20th century The Road to Serfdom by F. A. Hayek:

Possibly we have not yet given enough attention to one feature of intellectual development in Germany during the last hundred years which is now in an almost identical form making its appearance in the English-speaking countries: the scientists’ agitating for a “scientific” organization of society. The ideal of a society organized “through and through” from the top has in Germany been considerably furthered by the quite unique influence which her scientific and technological specialists were allowed to exercise on the formation of social and political opinions (p. 208)

Hayek goes on to speak of the “intolerance of reason” which is quite applicable to our nation today.

Have you ever wondered how the culture that produced Luther, Beethoven, Bach, Goethe, and Schiller could have produce Nietzsche and finally Hitler? For one thing, it was not the same culture in the end. Hayek suggests that Germany moved from “humanities” to “realities”, then reminds us in a footnote that Hobbes in Leviathan wanted the study of the classics suppressed because they instilled a “dangerous spirit of liberty”.

Collectivists agree: society needs to be better organized. People, as Bill Clinton once opined, just have too much freedom. Al Gore wants government to control how much energy you and I are allowed to use. (Al, I’m sure, gets an exemption with his carbon-credit scam.) Obama and the current Democrat leadership will not allow more drilling for oil to increase supply, but instead want Americans to surrender their freedom of movement for the greater good of decreased demand.

It makes me sick to even think of this. Civilization struggled up out of the collectivist, tribal mind-set largely through the wisdom and insight of the Judeo-Christian religious perspective. America, the epitome of individual rights and freedom, is the result of that struggle upward. We have been the City on the Hill, the light for the rest of the world for two centuries.

I guess I just don’t understand people who want power and control over the lives and choices of others. I would like for my children and grandchildren to make good choices rather than bad ones, but I recognize that we learn from our errors. Despite my vast wisdom and encyclopedic knowledge, I do not know everything. I am particularly limited when it comes to seeing the positive results that can arise in the long-term from what looks like a bad situation in the short-term. I don’t think I am the only one with this limitation. Thus I feel it is fair to question the concept that government has any right to limit my freedom beyond the basics of requiring me to recognize and respect the rights of other individuals. The f’ning government, i.e., the collective, has no rights whatsoever; rights belong only to individuals.

Just as it causes concern that a lightweight like Obama could potentially be President, so, too, we should be concerned when science is elevated beyond its correct role. Hayek – who was there when it happened – says that when the Nazis came to power, scholars and scientists readily accepted the movement and were supportive of the state in its efforts to limit freedom. The Nazis did purge the universities, but the professors they eliminated were mainly the ones in the social sciences critical of the new state -- except, of course, for those who were Jewish. The non-Jews among the natural sciences, where thinking is supposed to be most rigorous, were the least critical of the Nazi regime.

When I hear people like the current crop of “militant atheists” advocating for a better science curriculum in the schools at the expense of the classics and religion, I wonder what it is that will guide society in the future. I am all for giving children a solid education in math and science. Mathematics, in particular, is a language that as many as possible need to know as well as possible. But mathematics is not a sufficient basis for civilization, not even when combined with physics, biology and chemistry. What and how may be important, but they are useless – no, worse, they are dangerous without why.

Science and technology are useful servants. They should not be allowed to master us.