More On the Godless Universe

The following is a response to a friend of mine who asked me to elaborate on my statements concerning a Christian universe being a better prospect than a Godless one. I hesitated in posting it here, but at the end of the day I think there are things here that should be put in the public forum.

“How would respond to an atheist who believes their life to have more of a point after they gave up belief? Or would you even respond?”

Well, on the one hand my response would be tempered by my relationship with the person in question. There are people I can speak openly with and there are those with whom I must be gentle because I value their friendship. Not just shutting up to get along but some worldviews are so alien from one another that they have to treat each other carefully. Were I to encounter the argument on paper and set about to write a response, my response would go something like this:

                If we were capable of imagining that we had no preconceived notions of Christ, humanity, the world, etc. and were given a choice between a universe where we could live a finite life in as much pleasure as we wish or a universe in which we had the opportunity for eternal life bathed in truth and love and some discomfort, I’d imagine most people would choose the latter. The new atheist has made a similar comparison and concluded otherwise. I believe the reason for this is that they have compared the ugliest Christianity to the sun shiniest Atheism. You’ll note sometimes that an atheist will make a case for a specific Christianity before knocking it down (straw man). I had a friend once that was a Calvinist street preacher before becoming an atheist. When I expressed an interest in pursuing God in the most original context possible (Orthodoxy) before rejecting Him completely, my friend made it his mission to convince me that Calvin’s Christianity is the only possibly true Christianity. Think about that for a minute.

                The atheistic universe is one in which the Universe started one day and will eventually entropy into non-existence. In the intervening time it develops some interesting things, like humanity, that could be appreciated for a while by things like humanity and when either disappears there is no longer anything to appreciate or anything to appreciate it. It’s like the poem Ozymandias, except there won’t even be anyone to appreciate the irony. It might as well have not existed. I am reminded of a description of that time in a Doctor Who episode where “the furnaces were burning and humanity screaming into the night”. Damn God for not existing.

                The Christian universe is one in which the Universe was started and will eventually be sanctified in a final state of perfection. We were created to crown it and we are co-working with the Creator to sanctify it. Even at the end of Time we will continue infinitely into the ever deepening wisdom and love of an infinite God. In Orthodoxy, we even have the hope that all will eventually be saved, even if it is an EXTREMELY cautious hope.

                This is nowhere near an argument for the existence of God. It could just be that bad. It is only a demonstration of how one model is preferable to the other. The new atheist feels that we are free to work out our morality divorced from that of our primitive ancestors. The problem is that a morality based in the fickle and ever changing landscape of popular culture is a morality that is fickle and ever changing. Right now, those who experience same sex attraction are experiencing a certain level of social benefit but I would wager money that the tides of ideologies will change and they will suffer terribly. Remember how the serpent promised us we would be gods and brought us lower than we began. There is something to be said for having your stake (cross?) anchored in something eternal.

                There is only one good reason to believe that an atheistic universe is better than a Christian one and that is that in an atheistic universe there is no answering for anything. Choice and Freedom are maximized. They also mean nothing. 

Of Christ and the Guardians

Jesus is the same as Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. Except that He isn’t. To say that Christ is the same as Santa is to say that He is the same type of thing as Santa. What type of thing is the Easter Bunny? The Easter Bunny and company are myths and stories that fulfill, at least in the expression of their popular portrayals, specific sociological and psychological niches within the context of the culture in which they are found. Presumably, one could explain “why” the bunny and “why” the jolly fat man. It is outside of the scope of this article but the movie, Rise of the Guardians, comes to mind as an excellent example of this. The characters serve as representatives and defenders of certain things (hope, wonder, etc.).

If one makes the claim that Christ is no more than a myth, one must explain the myth. If Christianity is a made up religion, we must be able to explain the context of the fiction. Under what circumstance was it necessary to create Christ? I would posit(from my own experience in the faith) that if Christianity was invented, it was invented behind a brothel as a man lay in his own vomit and other men passed him by paying no heed. It was founded when every desire was met, every thirst quenched, and every hunger was sated. The moment it was birthed into the world was the precise moment the inventor looked inside and saw a twisted soul and was filled with nothing but self-loathing. If Christianity was not revealed to us by the God-Man, it was hatched in the mind of the most wretched of humanity come face to face with itself. In our lowest state, we conceived it’s opposite.

I’ve heard many theories from the modern atheist concerning the mysterious origins of my faith. Some are as simplistic as asserting that we are afraid of death and others are as absurd as asserting that it was invented to control the populace. The first fails in its scope and the second contradicts any serious study of the faith. But neither of these is as surprising as the assertion by New Atheism that a godless universe is an inherently good thing. Now, free from our archaic superstitions, we can finally reach our full potential. One of the several arguments that come to mind against this is that a godless universe is a universe that is inherently meaningless.

Vast ages of human beings have lived their lives with no meaning. That’s not just numbers. Billions upon billions of individual souls have looked upon the stars, looked upon their hands and could not contemplate that neither had any inherent value or meaning. Each of them had blessings in their lives and knew instinctively that SOMETHING had to be thanked for it. Each of them knew hardship, despair and suffering and cast their eyes to the sky in agony. In a godless universe, they were all mere chemical reactions. No amount of posturing and appeals to emotion can soften that. In fact, there is nothing to soften. It is not that one day we will die and be nothing. It’s that we already are nothing. Or, in a logical formula:

1.       Value is an assigned attribute

2.       Assigned attributes cease when there is no longer anyone to maintain them

3.       Value ceases when there is no longer anyone to maintain it

All of this is to illustrate the difference between Christ and the Guardians. The most striking difference is that Hope exists outside of the Easter Bunny and Wonder exists outside of Father Christmas. They are merely avatars of an already existing reality. Christ, if He is an avatar at all, must be an avatar of that which cannot be without Him; Eternal Life, intrinsic purpose and value, redemption, etc. Christianity has Christ Crucified at the center of the Universe because that is the only place He can logically exist.

Mediocrity

It’s been a long time. I have drifted into mediocrity. My prayer rule and my fasting are nothing to be proud of and my church attendance suffers similarly. I am, thank God, somewhat keeping my confessions up. I am a failure.

When I was growing up, I actually believed that I would change the world. I not only believed that I had the potential to save the world, I thought I would actually do it. In some sense, it was even my duty. I’m sure there is some unflattering word to describe that state of mind, but I would certainly not say it came from a place of arrogance or pride. I think it was naiveté. When the world is simple, the solutions are simple. World peace? No problem. Hunger? I got this. Disease? Please. Maybe I was just an overly optimistic child, or a by-product of my generation, coming to know the world after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War.

Where am I now? Well it should be obvious to the casual observer that I have not saved the world. As it turns out, I am one of billions of teaming masses of human beings that have ever existed and will never enter a history book. I work a job I enjoy, but in the grand scheme of things it has little effect beyond feeding my family (and thank God it does that). I am the faceless nobody you will pass in the grocery store and never have a second thought about. I will never be a doctor, a teacher, the President, a diplomat, a priest, an adventurer, an astronaut, or time traveler. I will likely never save a life. I will likely never even marginally affect that of a stranger. I am average.

At one time, as an evangelical, I even felt a “calling” to preach. I now lump this period of my life into the same category as my desire to go into politics. It was dreaming. I like dreams. I daydream quite often. In daydreams I create scenarios in which I can be something I’m not. I can be someone who “matters” or “makes a difference”. I can even be someone chosen by God for a special purpose. But I am not called to anything special anymore than the guy I saw holding the cardboard sign at the intersection. In fact, I am probably far less worthy of being called to some special purpose than he is. Through him, people are earning their crowns. Through me, people are receiving a quality service (mostly). Small miracles, right?

I and others I know struggle with this “calling” thing quite a bit. I think maybe it is because we feel guilty for wanting to be religious leaders. There are perks and stigmas attached to the vocation that immediately illicit suspicion. I do not want to be seen as a person who wants to wear the cassock so I can be respected among men; therefore I assign that guilt to God and remove it from myself. I cannot be accused of being an attention seeker if God has dragged me, kicking and screaming, to the altar table for ordination. It’s not my fault. I didn’t ask to be special. Of course, that has little to do with our real relationship with God and a lot to do with how we wish to be perceived by other people. We are engaging in the action in order to not appear to be engaging in the action. Some of us catch ourselves and reject it all together. We drive against the desire to serve because of the never ending circle of second guessing and guilt. Yet, even now I am writing this with the silly dream that my acceptance of my inevitable mediocrity somehow indicates some virtue that God will use to call me to a higher purpose, even though I have received no such promise.

So, should I ask God to make me content to be no one of significance, or should I ask Him to place opportunities at my feet that I will most assuredly fail at? Just some of the questions I struggle with these days.