Micah Redding - Transhumanism

The New God Argument and A New Apologetics

micah — Thu, 21 Jan 2016 05:33:22 +0000

Recently my friend Lincoln Cannon released the third version of his groundbreaking New God Argument. This argument is a philosophical justification for trust in God, laying the technical groundwork for a rational approach to religion and theology.

As a technical philosophical work, appreciating it requires overcoming some fairly big obstacles. Additionally, it’s an argument that was crafted within a Mormon context, with a cosmology and language unfamiliar to most religious people. This means that mainstream Christians will most likely have trouble seeing how it could relate to their faith and understanding of their religion.

Despite these obstacles, I believe that this argument represents a new kind of apologetics, an apologetics that ultimately has much more to offer the world than the apologetics that we have known. Beyond the argument’s own merits, the very approach it takes is a substantial reorientation from prior approaches.

First, it is based on the future, not the past.

Classical apologetics asks us to reason backwards to first causes, or original unmoved movers. This means that God is always conceived primarily in terms of that which is behind us. History is then seen as the flight from God, the never-ending descent from original perfection — and human life and civilization easily become portrayed as a meaningless effort doomed to failure.

As several generations of theologians have been telling us, this perspective is neither biblical nor wise. God should not be portrayed as being primarily in the past — just as religion should not be construed as a call to return to some earlier way of life (say, the 1950s, or the 1780s, or even the first century).

The biblical God is primarily a God of the future — a God whose most intense displays of power are yet to come. It is, after all, “kingdom come”, not “kingdom gone”.

It is time for our theology and our apologetics to reflect that.

Second, it is based on action, not mere assent.

In much of Christian culture, “faith” has become collapsed into something a lot like “intellectual assent”. This means that questions about the age of the earth, the geographic nature of Noah’s flood, and the taxonomy of Jonah’s fish, become portrayed as significant and viable concerns — concerns which could potentially have eternal consequences for the fate of your soul. Even when those particular issues aren’t being argued over, others usually are. In practice, this means that “faith” is agreeing with a particular set of assertions, and disagreeing with another set.

This state of affairs is a far cry from the biblical example of Abraham, whose faith consisted of heading off into the wilderness, leaving his homeland in pursuit of a future civilization that no one else could possibly foresee.

It is clear from the biblical record that Abraham was incredibly conflicted about all of this. He could never quite stick to the plan, and kept waffling on even the most minor of issues. Nevertheless, his persistence earned him the title “the father of faith” — not because of how he felt, or what he said or thought he believed — but because of the future his actions testified to.

I call this enacted trust, and it is the difference between the faith by which Abraham was justified, and the faith by which “even the demons believe, and tremble.”

Third, it connects our belief in humanity and our belief in God.

It is common in traditional apologetics to end up arguing in favor of a God who has no obvious interest in the human race. In this approach, apologetics creates an implicit divide between our interest in God and our interest in humanity.

This feeling is at the heart of secular humanism, which takes the division implied by traditional apologetics, and makes it explicit. In secular humanism, to believe in humanity is to disbelieve in God.

But this divide is deeply problematic for Christians. After all, Christians affirm that God created humans in his image, and then went even further and became human in the person of Jesus Christ. From the very beginning of the Jewish and Christian scriptures, God is incredibly invested in humanity, continually concerned with our lives, our society, and our progress. For Christians, there can ultimately be no great divide, because God has thrown in his lot with the human race.

In Christianity, to believe in God is to believe in humanity, and to believe in humanity is to believe in God. [tweet this]

Until our apologetics embrace this most Christian of understandings, our apologetics won’t be Christian at all.

The New Apologetics

I believe that our future as communities of faith will require reorienting the way we understand the connection between theology, faith, and action — and will demand a more Christian approach to the relationship between God and humanity.

This will effectively be a new apologetics, an apologetics much fuller and richer than the apologetics of the past, an apologetics which echoes Jesus’ call to invest all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

The New God Argument points us towards this new apologetics, taking the first step on a long and thrilling path of exploration. But although this may be the first step down that road, it won’t be the last. Exciting times lie ahead, and we can hardly do better than to heed the cry of C.S. Lewis: “Further up and further in!”

Transhumanism is a Mars Hill opportunity

micah — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 19:07:48 +0000

In Acts 17, the apostle Paul does something remarkable. He walks onstage at Mars Hill in Athens, the center of the philosophical tradition of the Greek world, and begins to talk about an unknown god.

Unlike almost every other sermon in Acts, this one does not begin with the story of Israel, or a recitation of scripture. Instead, it begins with an account of Paul’s walk through the city, and all of the idols he had seen there.

Seeing all of these idols had cut to the core of Paul’s Jewish monotheistic heart. But he doesn’t chastise the crowd. Instead, he points out something he had noticed on his walk, an altar built to “an unknown god”.

For the Athenians, this altar was a sort of insurance. They worshipped hundreds of gods, and prided themselves on having their bases covered. So if there was a god that had slipped their notice — they wanted to make sure they covered that too.

So this is where Paul starts. He talks about the god they can only worship in ignorance, but which he can now help to reveal. And he proceeds to explain this god, and all of its characteristics and nature — using only quotations from their own philosophers.

For Paul, these pagan philosophers were not just accidentally correct. They had, even in their ignorance of the Jewish tradition, nevertheless correctly understood the nature of God. And this must mean that God had revealed himself to them—perhaps in subtle or even hidden ways, but nevertheless truly and authentically.

This remarkable attitude is characteristic of the early Christians and their unique belief that Christianity was universally applicable, that it had infinite reach, and that therefore, all truth was God’s truth. For them, Christ had fulfilled the partial and incomplete revelations of generations past, and as the one Messiah of the universal God, this wasn’t necessarily limited to the revelations the Jews had received.

Paul puts words around this in Romans 1, talking about how all of humanity has intuited the nature of God. Theologians call this concept “general revelation”, and it was an attitude that drove early Christian missions for hundreds of years.

Sometimes Christians discover the aftermath of these missions, and become concerned. For example, people periodically realize that Christmas trees are of pagan origin, and start to campaign against them.

But the pagan origin of Christmas trees is no secret conspiracy. Rather, it represents an early missionary attempt to take the goodness and truth in local pagan practices, and interpret them in the context of Christ and his mission.

Modern Christian practice is scattered through with relics from these kinds of past encounters with paganism. And what all of these encounters have in common is that they were resolved not by Christians stamping out local culture and practice, but by Christians recognizing the value and truth within them, and ultimately adopting them as their own.

This is the approach Paul models for us in Acts 17. Not watering down the truth, not diluting Christian ideas and teachings, but finding and drawing out all the truth God has scattered throughout the world. Where there are resonances with things we already believe, we illuminate them, where there are new things to be known, we embrace them. And in all of this, we claim the good, and leave behind the bad — recognizing that even in the darkest of places, God has not left himself without a light.

Today, we have a similar opportunity within the world of transhumanism. Transhumanism is usually understood to be a radically secular movement, advocating for controversial and problematic things.

But dig very far into the history and characteristics of transhumanism, and we discover a secular effort largely driven by the visions of Christianity, and by the disappointment in Christianity’s failure to live up to them.

Where Jesus proclaimed heal the sick, feed the hungry, raise the dead, Christians have sometimes been more content to follow the path of the Levite priest in the story of the Good Samaritan — and move to the other side of the road. Where Jesus taught his followers to pray your kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven, Christians have sometimes been more content to counsel abandoning interest in the earth altogether. Where the New Testament talks about Jesus as the beginning of a new humanity—no longer defined by nation, temple, or social class—Christians have sometimes been more content to argue in favor of the old humanity.

In contrast, transhumanists are often fueled (whether they are aware of it or not) by the echoes of ancient Christian visions of transcendence and transformation. Even the word “transhuman” itself appears to be of Christian origin, the result of generations of Christians struggling to express the Christian view of mankind.

What all of this means is that the modern transhumanist movement represents a Mars Hill opportunity. An opportunity to recognize truth in every place that God has deposited it, an opportunity to reconnect many of these secular aspirations with their true fullness and depth, and—perhaps most importantly—an opportunity to challenge ourselves to rediscover the full nature of what we believe and profess.

What’s up with the word Transhumanist?

micah — Tue, 03 Nov 2015 02:17:31 +0000

Many of you know that I’ve spent the last couple of years trying to support and grow the Christian Transhumanist Association, an organization devoted to creating a better relationship between religion and technology. I’ve talked before about what Christian Transhumanism is, and what it means, and what our organization is about. But a question that I get from a lot of people is: why the name?

“Transhumanist” sounds weird, maybe even scary. So why use it? Why not call ourselves futurists, or technologists, or some other less bothersome word?

There are a lot of factors at work here, and I won’t go into all of them (yet!), but one thing that draws me so strongly to this word is its poetry and its history.

In its very essence, the word invites us to engage with humanity, but also to reach beyond it. It suggests that humanism was right to focus on the glory and possibility of human life — but also that stopping there was stopping too soon.

“Transhumanism” is currently a mostly secular movement. But in this fundamental orientation, I think it finds more in common with Christianity than traditional humanism ever did — certainly more than secular humanism ever did.

Jesus opens his greatest commands with just such a call to the transcendent:

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength…and love your neighbor as yourself

In saying this, Jesus shows us what it means to be human. It is to connect outward to those around us, inward towards coherence, and upward towards God. As human beings, if we are unable to anchor ourselves in that which is beyond us, we lose something significant.

Throughout Christian history, this call toward transcendence has been fundamental. And so Christians have struggled over and over to express this idea in new ways—and sometimes—in new words.

Perhaps it was just this kind of confrontation with the limits of language that led Dante in 1320 to write:

Words may not tell of that transhuman change:
And therefore let the example serve, though weak,
For those whom grace hath better proof in store (The Divine Comedy, Paradiso, Canto 1)

…seemingly coining the word in the midst of one of history’s most significant works of religious literature.

This, of course, is not where things end. Other writers have worked with similar language to express these kinds of concepts. Theologian Paul Tillich expresses the core of Christian theology:

Here we have a profound doctrine of what I call a transcendent humanism, a humanism which says that Christ is the fulfillment of essential man, of the Adamic nature.

But perhaps most significantly, the language shows up in the work of Pierre Teilhard De Chardin. Chardin was a Jesuit priest, a paleontologist, and a mind-expanding theorist of the future. Some people credit him with foreseeing the internet, and discussing the possibility of accelerating technological progress leading up to a Singularity…in 1941.

In 1949, he explains what we mean by human freedom:

Liberty: that is to say, the chance offered to every man (by removing obstacles and placing the appropriate means at his disposal) of ‘trans-humanizing’ himself by developing his potentialities to the fullest extent.

And later, in contemplating whether humanity would ultimately vanish beneath the waves of time, as many philosophers and scientists were arguing, he uses the term trans-humanity to describe the spiritual vision that calls to us from beyond the boundaries of the world as we know it.

And this is where we rejoin the mainstream discussion of transhumanism. Because Chardin was good friends with a biologist named Julian Huxley; and in 1957, Huxley is credited with introducing the term transhumanism in its modern secular form:

The human species can, if it wishes, transcend itself —not just sporadically, an individual here in one way, an individual there in another way, but in its entirety, as humanity. We need a name for this new belief. Perhaps transhumanism will serve: man remaining man, but transcending himself, by realizing new possibilities of and for his human nature.

That, as they say, is history. A concept from deep within Christian history had passed over, through the language of a secular biologist, into a new area of culture. Later, secular futurists would pick up the term and run with it, creating the movement known as “transhumanism” today.

For us to use the word “transhumanist” is to reconnect with a set of aspirations and visions that began in the Christian tradition. And it is to simultaneously open the door to people looking for a way back to Christianity—which is what I want to talk about next.

What is Transhumanism? And why should Christians care?

micah — Fri, 27 Feb 2015 06:36:56 +0000

In the past year, a strange new idea called “transhumanism” has started to show up in documentaries, tv series, and blockbuster movies. It’s often coupled with stories of amazing new medical developments, like restoring hearing to the deaf, or sight to the blind. Sometimes it’s coupled with stories of scarier things, like robot invasions, or murderous artificial intelligences.

You might be wondering, what is transhumanism? What does it mean, and why should I care? Or maybe, why is Micah always talking about this?

At root, it’s actually pretty simple. Transhumanism is basically just the idea that we can make the world better. We’re not stuck with how things are; we actually have the power to change things, and to do things differently.

This means that when we face problems like Ebola or cancer, we don’t simply sit back and say this is how things have to be. Instead, we apply our God-given ingenuity to working out solutions.

And when we face issues like extreme poverty, we don’t simply accept that this is how things are. Instead, we work to help those in need, and work harder to eliminate the things that caused the need to begin with.

Whether facing disease, poverty, or hunger, whether encountering the wounded, sick, or dying — we don’t simply throw up our hands in defeat. Instead, we set out to address the problem; we set out to improve the world.

Transhumanism is about working on these kinds of problems, problems that affect the world on a really large scale.

What’s amazing, of course, is that humans have been able to do so much already. Just in the last century, we’ve seen the widespread adoption of indoor plumbing and electricity. The impact of these things has been incredible, from dramatic reductions in disease, to the health benefits of refrigerated food.

The irony is that many people now act like things have always been this way; like we’ve always had electricity, plumbing, and indoor lights. In reality, of course, these technologies are barely two generations old. Not having had them is within memory of many people still alive.

This lack of historical awareness can blind us to the fact that things can be better, that there is still plenty of room to improve the lives of people at every level of society. That, in turn, can make us apathetic, leading us to surrender our role in making the world a better place. Or even worse — it can make us hostile towards those who are working to change things for the good.

But the reality is that the world has been radically transformed, over and over again, by the actions of people just like you and me. From fire and agriculture, to space travel and particle accelerators — we create new things, cultivate new life, and enable new ways of living, working, and playing. We explore and learn and discover, we imagine and build and invent.

We have always been transforming. That is who we are — that is what it means to be human.

And that means that we have the capability — and the responsibility — to make things better. We need to fight the impulse towards apathy, and embrace our responsibility as human beings. We need to realize how far we’ve come — and how far we still can go.

The future can be shaped. The world can be improved. Life isn’t static, change can happen.

We need to ask hard questions about the future. How can we solve the problems of global hunger? How will we deal with massive unemployment, if large parts of our economy become automated? What can we do to prevent the spread of biological weapons?

Rather than approaching these questions with pessimism or fear, we need to approach them as problems to be solved with ingenuity, passion, and hard work. We need to see the future, not as something terrifying, but as a chance for doing good, and an opportunity to improve the lives of billions of people.

That’s what transhumanism is about. Believing that we can change things. Recognizing that the world has transformed before — and will transform again. Thinking far enough ahead to see large-scale challenges, and larger-scale opportunities. Working towards making the world a better place for everyone.

At the moment, very few self-proclaimed transhumanists are Christian. This means that the people seemingly most invested in the future of the world — in considering its challenges, and contemplating opportunities to make it better — are mostly secular.

I'd like to change that. After all, Christianity is the religion that tells us we were made in the image of God, and charged with the care of all creation. Christianity is the religion whose prime directive is “love your neighbor as yourself”. Christianity is the religion which calls its followers to participate with God in the redemption, renewal, and reconciliation of the world. Christianity is the religion whose disciples were commanded to go out and heal the sick, feed the hungry, and bring life to the dead.

This is why I’m involved in helping to grow the Christian Transhumanist Association. We’re asking Christians to start thinking deeply about the challenges and opportunities of the future, and to start moving boldly and optimistically toward making the world a better place. We’re not suggesting a new idea, but an old one. We want Christians to wake up to what they claim to believe — and to connect more deeply with the heart and vision of their faith.

If you’re interested in taking on these kinds of challenging questions, being a part of this growing discussion, and working on ambitious ways to improve the world, we want your ideas and your vision. We'd love for you to join us.

Embodiment

micah — Mon, 25 Nov 2013 02:36:22 +0000

Lately, a lot of people have been talking about embodiment. From theologians and philosophers, to environmentalists and activists, there is a lot of concern with how we think of ourselves, and our relationship with the physical world.

René Descartes is often credited with (blamed for) sending Western culture down the road of Cartesian Dualism. In Cartesian Dualism, there is the mind and there is the body, and only ever-so-slightly shall they meet. In this worldview, we are essentially floating heads, trapped in physical bodies. The mind, the intellect, and the spirit matter — the body, the emotions, and the digestive tract do not.

But it’s not just Western scientists and logicians who hold this viewpoint. It’s also present in everything from blockbuster movies to new age spirituality. To use an expression popular in the new age movement, the question is

...whether we are physical beings having a spiritual experience, or spiritual beings having a physical experience…

— and the answer is always the latter.

We are in the midst of a reaction against this view. The view itself has been blamed for everything from the current obesity epidemic, to the environmental crises facing various parts of the world. If we think of ourselves primarily as minds, then why bother taking care of our bodies, and why bother taking care of the world?

In theology, the tide has been turning as well. Increasingly, theologians are intent on saying that we are not just minds or spirits, seeking some kind of enlightened escape to a nether world, but bodies and organisms, seeking transformation in this world.

This turn has not been driven by some kind of intellectual fad, but by the logic of the disciplines themselves, by the resurgence of historical research, and the renewal of interest in ancient Judaism — which saw human beings as holistic organisms, not as imprisoned minds.

It goes without saying that the same kind of turn has been happening in science, which every day discovers new ways in which our brains are incredibly physical things, embodied in an incredibly physical world. The view that we are beings driven only by the conscious intellect is wearing increasingly thin.

I’ve been aware of this conversation since I was 13, and by the age of 15, had completely moved to the non-Cartesian side of the tracks. But the truth is always more complex than a dualistic conflict, and non-Cartesians should recognize that more than anyone. For the benefit of my Neo-Platonist friends, who feel slighted in this conversation, I may explore some of those complexities later.

But for now, let me summarize what I think is so important about embodiment, and what I think Cartesians and Platonists miss.

Embodiment means relationship. To be embodied is to be in relationship with both sentient and non-sentient things, to be forced to negotiate with both our friends and our hunger pains. To recognize our embodiment is to recognize the important of other entities, the significance of other concerns and other needs. It is fundamentally the embrace of negotiation, persuasion, and cooperation, instead of force and violence. It is the opposite of solipsism.

Whatever kinds of forms we may take in the future, whatever kinds of beings we may become, embodiment will always be important, because to be embodied is to relate to that which is outside ourselves.

Three strains of religious transhumanism

micah — Tue, 29 Oct 2013 22:52:57 +0000

I think that there are three strains of religious and spiritual transhumanism.

The first seeks to understand and commit more deeply to its own religious heritage, and in doing so, discovers a call to creation, cultivation of life, and self-transcendence. This definitely applies to me.

The second one seeks to grapple with metaphysics and cosmology, and in discovering transhumanism, finds a new and vibrant way to engage with the deepest of philosophical and spiritual problems. This applies to me as well.

The third one finds it difficult to believe the traditional claims of religion. But rather than abandoning those claims, it finds in them a plan for action. If the sick are not healed, we will work to heal the sick. If the dead are not raised, we will work to raise the dead. If the kingdom is not coming, we will work to bring the kingdom.

In my darker moments, when I suspect that all of my thought and reason and philosophy is mistaken — worse, that rationality itself is a sort of delusion — this last thought is what holds me together. Beyond modernism and postmodernism and epistemology upon epistemology, there is action, and action is the ultimate meaning of faith — the daring commitment to step out into the nothingness and begin to build.

Regardless of which strain you may lean towards, they are all necessary, needed, valuable, and welcome.

Philosophical Foundations for Understanding AI

micah — Fri, 23 Aug 2013 04:37:40 +0000

These are my thoughts in response to this question:

Would a dominant pantheistic or pagan cultural tradition have prepared the West better for the reality of intelligent machines?

The way I tend to approach things is by looking through the lens of violence. In my estimation, the first century Roman Empire had nearly reached the ultimate level of control over human resources, using the tools of slavery and war and violent domination better than any previous organization in history.

But this was a dead end. My tendency is to think that their very success at utilizing the tools of violent power undermined their ability to develop science and technology.

In order to get past this log-jam, society would need to develop a sort of individualism, a sense that individual human life was so valuable, it really shouldn’t be sacrificed to the needs of the collective. Most societies have valued the needs of the collective highly enough to justify the killing of innocent people, if that was considered best for society. Humanity needed a sense that individual human life was so valuable, that society really shouldn’t be making those kind of trade-offs.

This, in my estimation, is the philosophical core of science. Science does away with communal truth, with things being accepted as fact for the sake of society. Instead, in embracing universal verifiability, it elevates the value of individual perception to the most advanced degree possible. Truth is not something determined by the intellectuals or the elites, it’s something determined through tests — a system that is inherently designed to allow any individual to play the role of truth-finder.

So the way I see things, in order for science and technology to take off, the value placed on individual human life had to increase dramatically. In order for this to happen, the Roman Empire as it was had to fall, and a society inspired by new philosophies had to rise.

Fortunately, Christianity played that role. In its quite checkered history, it created a crisis in Rome’s existence, and ultimately allowed for the somewhat graceful collapse of the empire, and the rise of a society inspired by a new set of ideas.

Don’t read that as some kind of idealization of the post-renaissance West. Far from it. But the scales did tip, just enough to allow for science to take root. And science was built by increasing the value placed on individual human life.

So now we’re facing a future in which machine intelligences will increasingly play a role. And many people have felt, or will feel, as if this is a challenge to the value of human life.

The question is, would a different set of philosophies have prepared us better for this future?

Would pantheism, with its sense that consciousness is in all things, have given us better mental tools for understanding machine intelligence? Would paganism, with its sense that spirits might possess anything, have given us better ways of talking about non-human intelligent agents?

I don’t know. But I suspect that those philosophies might not have given us the necessary valuation of human life, early enough in history, to have gotten us to this point.

That doesn’t mean those philosophies should be downplayed. In fact, if the West gave us the primary tools to reach this level of technological development, perhaps the East will give us the tools to navigate the oncoming technological changes. Perhaps the philosophical East and West are like two batteries powering technological society, and we have reached the point where the primary power source will flip.

In any case, I’d be happy to see some of these changes. The philosophy of the West may have provided the needed individualism to kick off modern science, but its assumption of a deep Cartesian divide between mind and body went overboard. Even Christian and Jewish source documents would have found this troubling.

Reclaiming a more earthy, holistic, and fluid understanding of consciousness will be advantageous both now and in the oncoming future. And it will ultimately put us in better alignment with both Eastern and Western philosophical traditions.

Interested in Christian Transhumanism?

micah — Sun, 07 Jul 2013 20:16:42 +0000

Transhumanism is the ethical use of technology to extend human ability, and to improve the human condition.

Transhumanism holds that we should not be limited by the way things are, or by the way they have been in the past; that we should not resign ourselves to a world with extreme poverty, malnutrition, and disease — but that we can and should work to overcome these and all other obstacles to improving human life.

Christian Transhumanism holds that this viewpoint arises naturally from our scriptural and spiritual heritage — that the biblical view of humanity is one in which we live out the likeness and image of God by creating new things and bringing new life into the world — that in the pattern of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, we continually venture out on faith to build new futures in the wilderness.

Christian Transhumanism holds that this understanding of human identity was embodied in the life of Jesus, who transformed our vision of the boundaries of human life, and self-sacrificially opened up new possibilities for the future of the human race.

We believe that it is crucial that Christians come to know and embrace this vision of humanity, so that we may expand our imagination, and engage proactively in building the future. We believe that we should not be content with simply reacting to things as they happen, but should be actively involved in shaping and growing new possibilities in the world. We believe that the provocative biblical understanding of humanity is a powerful vision and a gift that should be shared.

For all of these reasons, we think that it is time for Christian Transhumanists to step forward and invite others to join with us in imagining, expressing, and working towards our best dreams for the world and the future.

If any of this resonates with you, let's continue the discussion:

Interested in Christian Transhumanism?

A Better Apocalypse

micah — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 04:57:10 +0000

On May 21, 2011, I was sitting in a steel-roofed building as a powerful storm pounded down outside.

This is the day that Harold Camping had said the world would end.

After decades of bible study, he had become so convinced of this that he gathered thousands of followers, many of whom sacrificed possessions, jobs, and (in some cases) homes, to spread the message via billboards and radio across the country that this was humanity’s last chance — this was history’s last call.

And as we sat there with the building shaking beneath the storm, some of us joked, and maybe some of us were a bit nervous, about whether there might be something to it after all.

But of course, the world didn’t end. And the next day came, and Harold Camping went back to his studies, and his followers went back to their homes and their jobs and their bills, and to trying to make sense of living in a world that stubbornly refused to quit.

This isn’t the first time something like this has happened. The history of the West is in some ways the history of Christianity, and the history of Christianity, according to Albert Schweitzer, is the history of the delay of the Parousia, the continual disappointment of apocalyptic hopes, the failure of apocalyptic expectations.

Over and over, charismatic prophets and preachers have led their people into the wilderness to await the end. And over and over, they have been disappointed and disillusioned.

But what’s remarkable about all of these prophesied apocalypses is how profoundly non-historical they are.

What I mean is that they do not arise from social, or economic, political, or ecological issues. They do not arise from human choice or action. They draw a firm line, and declare that here history ends, and something else begins, that here everything you’ve known and worked for gets discarded, and here, something else takes its place. The line is so firm that nothing carries over, nothing is preserved.

It’s no surprise then, if those who have been influenced by this outlook, even when they didn’t leave their homes or jobs behind, have often found themselves losing interest in art, in science, in technology, in the ongoing struggle of the human race.

After all, if God doesn’t care about these things, why should we?

I’m convinced that this is a contributing factor to the growth of secularism in our world. If the most intensely religious people find themselves no longer interested in the life of the human race, then it will be the secular who will inherit the earth.

But there is another form of apocalyptic outlook, one that draws from a much deeper source than that practiced by Harold Camping and those like him; one that grew organically from the worldview of the ancient Jews.

The Jews believed that their God was intimately involved in the created order, and as such, his attributes — things like truth, justice, and freedom — became the primary factors in human history. They were always rising, always advancing, always moving forward, like an incoming tide rising up on the shoreline of the world.

But they believed this could be resisted. Like a tide or a flood, you could build barricades and barriers and walls to hold the water back. Empires could arise, Emperors could come to power, to kill and enslave thousands and tens of thousands, to the point where their power seemed not only inevitable but unstoppable.

But the Jewish outlook said that this could not last forever. A time would come when the rising force and weight of justice would finally overwhelm the emperors and empires, sweeping over them and bringing them down with a mighty crash.

This was the apocalyptic moment, the turning point in history, and the more intensely the power structures had resisted the force of justice, the more cataclysmic would be their ultimate undoing.

They saw this happening in their primal narrative, the Exodus. The Jews had been slaves in Egypt, crying out for relief from their oppression, and Pharoah had set his entire might and power against them, to ensure that their cries for freedom and independence were not achieved.

And for a while, the Jewish cause seemed hopeless, and futile, and foolish. But as the Exodus story tells it, even the power of the almighty Pharoah ultimately fell beneath the rising tide of freedom.

This story became projected out on the world, the lens through which they saw the Babylonian Empire, the Roman Empire, and every other violent and brutal regime in history. The prophets would rise up, and use what the scholars call apocalyptic language — just as we use poetic language in our songs to highlight the dramatic significance of small romantic events, they used poetic language to highlight the incredible human significance of these moments in history. And so they spoke of the stars falling from the heavens, the sun refusing to give its light, the moon going dark, the rivers running red — calling back to the Exodus story, to the plagues on Egypt — to let their hearers know that although these empires seemed unstoppable, that ultimately this was just another Pharoah, just another Egypt, that would not have the final world.

And so the Jews didn’t see one apocalypse at the end of history, but many scattered throughout it — everywhere that good and evil met in conflict, and good, sometimes through prolonged and painful struggle, succeeded, this was a moment when the truth broke through, when the nature of reality was revealed, freedom flowed forth, and the arc of the universe could be seen.

And far from drawing them out of the world, this apocalyptic viewpoint drew them more deeply into it. If truth and justice and freedom were always rising, then one could have the courage to take a stand even when it seemed hopeless, (and tell the truth, even in a world of darkness), knowing that your efforts were never wasted, that your struggle was not in vain.

But they also saw the profound significance of human action. Because history was not predestined, but was incredibly contingent — every crisis needed a small group of people to become a channel, a small hole in the wall, through which freedom and justice could begin to pour.

And so, drawing from this powerful outlook on the world, the Jewish people stood for a level of human dignity and significance unprecedented in ancient times.

But this isn’t just something that happened in ancient history. It’s something that has had an impact much closer to home, in recent American history, in the person of Dr Martin Luther King jr.

Martin Luther King grew up in an environment saturated with the language and viewpoint of the Jewish prophets. And so, when he began to envision and call into being a better future, he drew upon their words and their outlook to highlight the incredible significance of that moment in history, the importance of individuals choosing to stand on the side of freedom, and the profound consequences of ignoring the voices of the oppressed:

The arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice

And far from drawing people out of the world with his prophecies of a better day, his words drew people more deeply into engagement with their world and their moment in history.

As spiritually-oriented people, I think one of the most significant things we have to offer is a better way of looking at the future. And we have choices — choices in how we talk about it, choices in how we portray it.

One of those choices is an apocalyptic outlook that, throughout history, has led to disappointment and disillusionment and despair.

Another of those choices is an apocalyptic outlook that draws from the deepest parts of our religious heritage, and which for thousands of years, has inspired people to some of the most profound acts of honesty, courage, and love, the world has ever known.

The argument for basic theism

micah — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 07:00:33 +0000