An Apologetic starting point

Not so great

"Stop regarding man in whose nostrils is breath, for of what account is he?"

Isaiah 2.22

We have had a series in our evening service called, "I can't believe because". I have been looking at 3 topics - I can't believe because...

• ...God doesn't make sense
• ...of suffering
• ...you can't prove it

As I have been considering each one, I have been struck by a crucial starting point - namely how significant we are compared to God. In the whole debate about the existence of God and our experience of this world, we must deal with this question and I think that it is a potential point of agreement between the Christian and the sceptic. Namely that, once we entertain the possibility of God's existence, it seems to me that he must be infinitely greater than we are and that we could have no logical expectation that he would take notice or care for us. (I am not saying that he doesn't care for us, but that we wouldn't expect that he would)

The Psalmist says, "What is man that you are mindful of him" - with all of our discoveries about the vast scale of the universe, we should be more aware of this than ever. One illogicality of our present culture and intellectual world is that we seem to be more convinced of our significance than ever - and that causes some problems when it comes to thinking about God and us.

As I was playing around with this idea, it started to have a bigger impact on my understanding of the questions above. It doesn't conclusively deal with them, but it does change their character.

So, God doesn't make sense, but suddenly I realise that it is illogical to think that he would. This is not to say that God would contradict himself, but that complete answers to some (indeed any) questions might simply be beyond my capability. I might be able to apprehend something of the answer without completely comprehending it.

With suffering and a God of love, it struck me that we assume that God should love us, but we don't wonder at the fact that he would even notice us, let alone make it his business to care for us in any way at all. This doesn't solve the problem, because God has chosen to love us and we can analyse that, but I think that it should cause us to pause in our expectations of what that would look like. Once are expectations are realistic, we will marvel more at what he has done.

With proof, one of our stumbling blocks is often that we think that God should prove himself to us and so we get cross when we feel that he isn't giving us the proof we need or require. But this reverses what we have accepted at the beginning, because it puts us in the middle of the universe and God needing to meet our needs.

I think that this expectation that God owes us anything might be illogical, more seriously it is blasphemous.

If you want to hear more of the talks (including a really good one by our Assistant Minister) three of them are available here from this Sunday: I can't believe... talks