The story has been spun in multiple directions by various blogs and periodicals, so, wanting to get to the truth of the matter, I paid to retrieve the article from behind the subscription paywall. The research seems sound, albeit very short-term-oriented. Its implications are not so simple.

Every responsible psychological research report, including this one, expresses cautions regarding conclusions to be drawn. Correlational studies in particular have to be interpreted with care. Even experimental (non-correlational) studies like this one can be confounded by unexamined variables and by experimenters’ assumptions. These researchers’ beliefs about religion are telegraphed in the introductory section of their report:

Available evidence and theory suggest that a converging suite of intuitive cognitive processes facilitate and support belief in supernatural agents, which is a central aspect of religious beliefs worldwide. These processes include intuitions about teleology, mind-body dualism, psychological immortality, and mind perception.

There’s something important missing from this list. It’s indicative of something lacking in psychological research, in Christianity itself, or both. I’ll come back to that in a moment.

Other publications’ reactions have been interesting.  In an ironic reversal, Time Magazine published a more responsible summary than two prestigious science periodicals, which seem to hint that the research shows faith is irrational. When I looked at Nature.com, which darkly asked, “Is rationality the enemy of religion?” I thought I was going to find the same thing there again. Early paragraphs supported that expectation, but I was pleased to see in it a note of sensibility later on:

Almost all of the questions in Gervais and Norenzayan’s study related to religion as a literalist folk tradition — an aspect of lifestyle. This is how it manifests in most cultures, but that barely touches on religion as articulated by its leading intellectuals: for Christianity, say, philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas, David Hume, Immanuel Kant and George Berkeley. The idea that the beliefs of those individuals would have vanished had they been more analytical is, if nothing else, amusing.

Someone had thought through what’s certainly missing from the UBC research analysis, and from a host of other reports: there are forms of belief that could well be supported, not undermined, by rational thinking. (I will be speaking specifically of Christian religious belief from this point forward.)

The UBC research team missed that possibility, but I don’t hold them entirely to blame. When I was in psych grad school I would have been astounded to hear Thomas Aquinas or Bishop Berkeley mentioned in the hallway. To hear them brought up in the classroom would probably have shocked me so badly, it might have landed me in a different kind of psychological institution altogether. (I’m a little shocked today to see Kant and Hume included among Christianity’s leading intellectuals, but that’s another matter.)

At the risk of overgeneralizing, psychologists know what previous research has shown them, and not much else. In a research paper in grad school I tried to make reference to a credible source of information not based in published social research; and goodness sakes, you’d have thought I’d quoted from Grimm’s Fairy Tales. The professor was Not Pleased.

Anyway, I’m actually perfectly willing to accept that previous studies have shown that religion is mostly intuitive. I think for many (most?) Christians it really is mostly intuitive, and for many it’s strictly a cultural thing. As long as large proportions of Christians’ religion is like that, that’s exactly how it will appear under psychologists’ nomothetic research lens. It will look as if it’s mostly intuitive or cultural.

But that doesn’t mean Christianity is only intuitive or cultural, or that it has no strong rational component. I think it likely shows instead that for many believers, the rational side of their faith may not have been adequately equipped and supplied. Here’s what I mean. When some people read Richard Dawkins it engages their rational faculties and they have doubts about their beliefs. When I read Richard Dawkins it engages my rational faculties and my beliefs are strengthened. The difference is that I’ve done a bit of study and I know how sophomoric his arguments are. (That’s actually too easy of an example, but at least it’s a fairly familiar one.)

If many Christians’ belief is mostly intuitive, that doesn’t make it wrong, and it doesn’t make necessarily make it weak. It does make it needlessly vulnerable.

And that reveals what I take to be the real message of this research for Christians: not that the faith is wrong—the research could not demonstrate that even if it were—but that for many of us, our faith could stand a much stronger rational component. We need to study more, test ourselves intellectually more, think more. Leaders—pastors and teachers in particular—need to challenge their classes and congregations more. We need to love our God with all our minds.

As it says in Nature, “Gervais and Norenzayan’s findings should help to combat religion as an indolent obstacle to better explanations of the natural world. But it can’t really engage with the rich tradition of religious thought.”

That’s good rational thinking.

Thank God for the life and leadership of this man, who greatly sinned, was greatly redeemed, and greatly showed the way.

• Demonstrate that there are non-religious reasons to reject same-sex “marriage,” and
• Answer the question, “If rejecting SSM isn’t all about religion, then why are SSM’s opponents so overwhelmingly members of conservative religions?”

This post will focus on one further answer to that question. It has to do with children.

Religious people give birth to significantly more children than non-religious. We see this in both Europe and in America. Peter Berger extends that finding worldwide. Philip Jenkins sees the birth rate as tied directly to the religiosity of a society.

The best (not the only, but the most crucial) non-religious reasons for rejecting SSM have everything to do with children. The most compelling reasons to accept SSM have nothing to do with children. SSM advocates say, “we can raise children, too!” but this is a defense raised against an objection to SSM; I have never heard it raised as a positive reason for why this world needs SSM. Some same-sex couples, it is said, could probably do a better job with children than some man-woman couples. I’m sure that’s true, but still no one would seriously suggest SSM is being advanced as a way to help build our next generation of children.

Rather, SSM is being advanced as a solution to the economic, social, legal, and emotional needs of the couple. If SSM is a civil rights issue, as its proponents want it to be, then it is about adults’ civil rights, not newborns’. Children are not the point. They are an afterthought. Again, there are exceptions: some couples want to unite in order to be able to legally adopt children. Still the vast majority of SSM reasoning has to do with the two people who want to pair with each other legally.

I’m drifting here towards an argument against SSM. It would be easy follow the fork in the path that goes that direction, but I will resist doing that, for that’s not my purpose here. What I’m  trying to do is to explain why there’s such a sharp religious divide between proponents and opponents of SSM, even though the reasons to oppose SSM and support real marriage are not all religious.

So here’s my thesis: religious persons are much more likely to care for the next generation than non-religious persons. Therefore we are more likely to support an institution that places the next generation at its very heart, than to support one whose purpose is the personal (economic, legal, etc.) satisfaction of the institution’s members.

When I married my wife, we had a love that could not be contained within our union alone. It overflowed into the lives of our children, whose very lives were the result of our loving union. Marriage is for that kind of overflowing love, love that is not just for each other. Same-sex “marriage” is not marriage in that sense. Its focus is on the two selves. Translated, that means it’s self-focused. In real marriage the couple’s love naturally (often unexpectedly!) overflows and pours out into others.

Tim Keller, the influential pastor and writer from Manhattan, suggests religious people have more babies because of the Sacrifice Factor and the Hope Factor. Congruent with that, the highly respected sociologist Peter Berger offers this:

I will venture a hypothesis. Religion has always given its adherents a sense of living in a meaningful universe. This protects individuals from what sociologists call anomie—a condition of disorder and meaninglessness. Religion, by the same token, gives a strong sense of identity and confidence in the future. More than anything else that human beings may do, the willingness of becoming a parent requires a good measure of confidence in the future. Mind you, this is not an argument for the truth of religion….

I am not sure whether this function of religion works in the same way in the Abrahamic traditions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) as in the religions to the east of the Muslim world, notably Hinduism and Buddhism. It probably does. For a believing Jew, Christian or Muslim, the future of the world, his own future, and that of his children lies in the hands of a compassionate God. Every mother, of any faith or of no faith at all, will get up in the night to comfort a crying child. She may not speak. Her presence and her holding the child may be enough comfort. If she does speak, it is likely to be some variation of saying “everything is all right” or “everything will be all right”. This may well be true at the moment. In a purely secular perspective, these formulas are finally not true. The mother, the child, and everyone and everything they care about are fated to perish. Religious faith gives a cosmic validation to the mother’s comforting words. It is no accident that the most famous lines of Julian of Norwich, that elusive medieval mystic, are reminiscent of a lullaby: “And all will be well. And all will be well. And every manner of thing will be well”.

Given our contrasting views of children and child-raising, is it any wonder that religious people have different views on marriage than non-religious people?

(Because of changes at the Daily Press I was expecting it to be behind a paywall, but it wasn’t, or at least not for me this morning.)

This has been a series with a mixed purpose. I had been wanting to summarize the story of history viewed through the lens of its most crucial events. I ended up doing it with a small group at church, so I’ve been writing with a curriculum purpose in mind. At the same time this series has also been just plain old blogging. The result has been an odd blend of the planned and the unplanned, the systematic and the spontaneous. I think someday soon I will work it into shape for use as a real curriculum.

The other purpose I’ve had for this has been to teach worldview. I haven’t used that word, but this has genuinely been a worldview series. One definition of worldview is that it is our answer to questions like, What is reality at its root? Where do we come from? What are we here for? What’s our purpose? What’s our essential problem? What is its solution? Where are we going?

In ten segments I have tried to answer those kinds of questions. The contrast between this view of reality and other views should be obvious, I hope, even without including a study of those other views. To recapitulate the topics:

The first was creation. (Please get the links from the page I linked above. Each topic has multiple pages, too complicated to link here.) God made the world out of nothing but his own creative power. He did not use some “nothing” to do it, by the way. Hawking, Mlodinow, and Krauss might think that a useful “nothing” is a useful idea for explaining origins, but it’s not, for a useful nothing is a something whose origins remain unexplained.

What about the explanation for God’s origin? Here’s the difference: if there is a God, then God is an eternal being without origin. If there is a useful “nothing” that created our universe, there is no reason to think that it is the kind of thing that has no origin. So on a theoretical level, the question is answered already in God’s case, but not in the other.

The second was the creation of humans in God’s image. We came from dust, but that is not all we are. We are “star-stuff,” as Sagan put it, but even that is not all we are. We are more than material beings; we have the imprint of a knowing, loving, rational, spiritual God upon us. Thus we have infinite worth, and thus we also have the ability to do more than what dust and stars can do: we can think, love, feel, decide. We ourselves exist on the edge of the supernatural.

The third was the Fall. In our original creation we were also innocent, but we turned away from that, which meant turning away from God, his life, his empowerment to do right. It meant going it alone, and experiencing the curse of that. It meant spiritual and physical death.

The fourth was the calling of God’s people. This was one of the topics for which my title “turning point” was a poor fit, for it has not been a simple, single hinge point in history, but an ongoing thing since the beginning. God began calling his people back to him right from the start, inviting them into relationship with him, and showing them the way to live.

The fifth was God’s ongoing self-revelation. God has been making himself known from the beginning, through nature, through his acts in history, and through his inspired Word, now collected in the form of our Bible. His revelation has been progressive, not an instant information dump.

The sixth was the incarnation of Jesus Christ. God came in the flesh as a human, affirming humanity while also confirming our need for God in view of our sin.

The seventh was the crucifixion of Christ. In this one great redemptive act of sacrifice (the words I use are inadequate) our God, in Christ, paid the penalty for our sins on our behalf.

The eighth was Christ’s resurrection. He conquered not only sin but also death!

The ninth was the coming of the Holy Spirit. God has come to be with his people in the person of the Holy Spirit, who brings us the power and the direction to understand God’s self-revelation and the calling he continues to place upon each of us; and to be the loving presence of God in and among us.

The tenth is the coming return of Jesus Christ. Our Lord will wrap up history with his return; he will judge the living and the dead; he will remove all sin, destruction and death from earth in his final victory, and he will rule forever.

What I mean is that marriage has its own enduring nature or essence. I know many would disagree with me on that. Where you stand on that one question, though, will largely determine where you stand on SSM. Is there, or is there not, something—some nature or essence, that makes marriage what it is? Or is “marriage” up for grabs? If the former, then the SSM advocate carries an exceptionally strong burden of proof, to show that majority of cultures through history have gotten marriage wrong by making it about male and female. If the latter, then marriage can be whatever it is at the moment, and there’s no good reason to oppose SSM.

In this series I have been explaining that not all opposition to SSM is religious in nature. I could hardly forget while doing so that these non-religious arguments somehow seem to keep being proposed by people of faith. One has to wonder, if the non-religious arguments are that great, the why are the people on our side so overwhelmingly religious?

I think there might be a very good sociocultural answer to that question, and I intend to propose it in a moment, after I first clarify who I am talking about here and who I am not. On both sides of this issue there are some who have taken their stance only because “that’s what my kind of people think about this.” Make no mistake: support for gay “marriage” has a lot to do with aligning with one’s social group. So does opposition to it. I’m not talking about that kind of support or opposition, but about that which is well informed and thought through.

Some of us who have thought about it think marriage is what it is, and that social movements don’t change that. Girgis, George, and Anderson have developed a strong case for the enduring identity of marriage on natural, not religious, grounds. Others think precisely the opposite: that social currents are exactly the right place to look for the definition of marriage.

Is this not a religious difference after all, however? Could it even be that religious people are fooling ourselves and trying to do the same with others? We have our biblical reasons to oppose SSM, after all, which we know won’t be allowed into legislation or into the courts. Maybe we’ve manufactured some handy-dandy non-biblical reasons to take into battle in their stead. There’s a hint of truth in that. We do have biblical reasons that we can’t deploy in the legal fight. We do bring natural-law reasons instead, as that theory suggests. All of that’s irrelevant, though. The question is, what about the reasons? How do they hold up under challenge? If they’re strong, it doesn’t matter where they came from.

It’s not as simple though, as opening up an article and assessing its arguments. The best arguments for man-woman marriage depend lean heavily on the supposition that there is something that marriage is, and that its nature, its essence, isn’t up for a vote. That supposition is no longer widely shared. Many of us take it that we can mold the meaning of marriage to suit the temper of the age.

Many of us, in fact, take it that we can mold the meaning of almost anything to suit ourselves. Is there an enduring essence of maleness and femaleness, or, as some now maintain, does each person have the option to choose (pardon me, but I can’t avoid saying it this way) his or her own gender? Is there an enduring essence of humanness, or are we (as again some hold to be true) of pretty much the same sort of thing as the animals? Are we on our evolutionary way toward becoming something else? The questions can be multiplied. Interestingly, answers to all of them seem to line up along a religious divide.

Herein, I suspect, lies the reason for the religious divide which exists even for non-religious arguments. Though I have done no social research on the question, still I am suspicious that this is what separates the parties: believers in God are far more likely than non-believers to hold that certain things have their own enduring nature, essence, or definition. Thus we are far more likely to hold that marriage, gender, and human nature have stable and lasting meanings.

That’s my theory. Supposing I am correct, why might that be so? I can think of at least three reasons.

1. Pride of progress, or, chronological chauvinism. Non-believers are more likely than believers to think that every new generation is wiser than every earlier one. This is, unfortunately, a silly conceit associated with the fallacy of thinking that all knowledge is scientific knowledge. Obviously scientific knowledge is increasing day by day. Does that mean wisdom is, too? Or literary expertise, or musical creativity and virtuosity? Obviously not. These have virtually nothing to do with science. Neither does marriage. Why would we assume we are any smarter than the ancients (read: anyone born before 1960) concerning the nature of marriage?

Believers are more likely than non-believers to recognize that fallacy for what it is. We are therefore less likely to fall for the fallacies of scientism (“science is all there is of knowledge”) and chronological snobbery (“our age knows more about everything”).

2. The sexual revolution. The children of the 60s—and their children—are running the country. The message of the 60s has been that whatever consenting adults decide to do is just fine. Though there both biblically- and non-biblically based arguments against this foolishness, Bible-believers have at least been more motivated than non-believers to give them proper respect—in theory at least, if not always in practice.

3. Evolutionary theories of origins. Darwinian evolution is an all-encompassing theory, covering every aspect of organisms’ physical and behavioral characteristics. It is furthermore—and crucially—a theory of change, of things that are always on their way to becoming something else. Of course evolution can accommodate and explain stasis in populations, but still for all that it remains a theory of change. Today’s humanness is a snapshot along the road of history, so why shouldn’t today’s marriage be the same?

If I’m right, then a theory of marriage such as Girgis, George, and Anderson’s, arguing as it does on the basis of what marriage is, faces uphill sledding among non-believers. Why believe that anything is what it is, or at least that it is so in its essence?

I am hoping my estimable friends Holopupenko and G. Rodrigues will fill in some gaps for me here. They are better equipped than I to show, for example, that these differences pre-date Christianity by hundreds of years. Can a man step in the same river twice? Is he still the same man if he does? Was Heraclitus correct to think change is the only reality? Or was Plato closer to the mark with his eternal forms? They know more than I do about what a nature is or might be, too.

Regardless of that, though, I hope you see that these are not necessarily religious questions. Religious belief can inform them, certainly, but questions like these can also be asked and answered independently of such belief. I refer you again to the paper by Girgis et al. Granted that its arguments are more readily received by those inclined to accept that there could actually be something that marriage actually is, that doesn’t mean others need not pay them any attention. Perhaps their force is adequate to cause someone to believe that for the first time.

I think there’s more that could be said about this, but I’m exploring and proposing ideas here, not trying to work out a final disquisition on them, so I’ll leave it at this. What do you think?

Randy Everist is a frequent co-participant in the Christian Apologetics Alliance. His blog at Possible Worlds expresses his deep interest in theology and philosophy, as witnessed by his current critique of skeptic Michael Shermer (very effective), two recent posts on the Resurrection, a Brief Objection with respect to the Problem of Evil, and an offering on Beliefs, Free Will, and God.

He covers much the same ground that interests me, and he does it well, which means that if you have my blog bookmarked, you should have his, too. (And vice versa, I hope some readers of his blog will think!)

Stephen McAndrew is also a Christian Apologetics Alliance participant. He’s the author of Why It Doesn’t Matter What You Believe If It’s NotTrue, and he blogs at the intriguingly titled Songs of a Semi-Free Man. Not a frequent blogger, he is nevertheless thoughtful, as in his recent writings on truth, trust, and society. The blog entry he listed as one of his favorites for last year was simply titled Good. “Why do we care if we are good?” he asks. “Why do we act as if there is some standard of good to be met?… What does all of this tell us?”

Who said religion couldn’t be a polite topic of conversation? So asks Julio Ibanez at A Civil Discussion, who describes himself,

I am an armchair Christian apologist who is in no way qualified to be hosting such a discussion. However, given the toxicity of the political climate in which we live, I feel I have no choice but to speak up and initiate an alternate dialogue, one born of mutual respect and hopefully lacking in enmity.

I think he accomplishes that admirably.

I really wish it were easier to work past the Google Translate issues at the Finnish blog “Faith, Reason, and Philosophy.” As far as I can follow it, it looks superb. I know some readers of this blog live in Finland (I spent a couple marvelous weeks there in 1980–what a beautiful country!), so I’m definitely going to recommend it to you. Others ought to at least give it a try.

Timothy Gray Muse, former Top Gun F-14 pilot, now a pastor in Mississippi, writes of All Things Reformed, a strong pastoral mix of biblical foundations and cultural awareness.

Vicky blogs For Love of the Journey… “and the One who walks with me in it.” Her offerings are biblically rich and consistently connected to real-life situations.

And last but most definitely not least, for all the book lovers among us, Books On Trial From a Christian Perspective. The blogger, Becca-ellen, has an eclectic reading list, and sound insights on the books she reviews.

Disclaimer: I got a free book for telling you about this. Well, not really–it’s the same one you can get for the same price: The Godhood of God, by A.W. Pink.

It’s a great deal either way.

The piece is called “A universe without a purpose,” and it’s subtitled, “New revelations in science have shown what a strange and remarkable universe we live in.” There’s enough right there work with: if Krauss is going to tell us that scientific revelations show the universe has no purpose, he’s crazy. What science could tell us, possibly, is that as far as science knows, it’s possible the universe has no purpose—with emphasis on as far as science knows and possible. Science doesn’t know everything.

He opens the piece,

The illusion of purpose and design is perhaps the most pervasive illusion about nature that science has to confront on a daily basis. Everywhere we look, it appears that the world was designed so that we could flourish.

Well it was. God did that. Does Krauss think science disproves that? I think he does. How does he come to that conclusion? If we’re supposed to find the answer to that question in this article, we’re in trouble—or else Krauss is. Now, I’ve written for newspapers, and I understand the space limits they impose. If he had said that it was hard to explain in so few words, I could accept that, and I could look elsewhere for his real explanation. He doesn’t do that, though. Instead he wastes valuable words on this kind of nonsense:

One by one, pillars of classical logic have fallen by the wayside as science progressed in the 20th century, from Einstein’s realization that measurements of space and time were not absolute but observer-dependent, to quantum mechanics, which not only put fundamental limits on what we can empirically know but also demonstrated that elementary particles and the atoms they form are doing a million seemingly impossible things at once.

Physics has indeed presented us with challenges: wave-particle duality, absolute limits to knowledge, cosmological mysteries of dark matter and dark energy, and as Krauss tells us,

Most surprising of all, combining the ideas of general relativity and quantum mechanics, we can understand how it is possible that the entire universe, matter, radiation and even space itself could arise spontaneously out of nothing, without explicit divine intervention. Quantum mechanics’ Heisenberg uncertainty principle expands what can possibly occur undetected in otherwise empty space. If gravity too is governed by quantum mechanics, then even whole new universes can spontaneously appear and disappear, which means our own universe may not be unique but instead part of a “multiverse.”

Pardon my bewilderment, but what does any of this have to do with “pillars of classical logic”? Classical logic has to do with the way we draw inferences from premises or evidence (which frequently supplies the material for our premises). Contemporary science still draws inferences from premises/evidence. It still relies on those classical pillars. If it didn’t, then evidences could lead to any conclusion whatsoever, without logical restraint. Krauss’s statement here betrays an astonishing ignorance concerning philosophy.

Not that he has no appreciation for it whatsoever, as he has explained in a more recent article. Still,

I, and most of the colleagues with whom I have discussed this matter, have found that philosophical speculations about physics and the nature of science are not particularly useful, and have had little or no impact upon progress in my field.

This is hilarious. His conclusion, the universe came from nothing, comes from his philosophical speculations about physics and the nature of science. Of course since he is a physicist he has the right to practice philosophy, just as (elsewhere in that article) he grants physicists the right to draw the right conclusions about the implications of quantum physics. Granted, physicists have a better grip than the rest of us on the issues raised by physics, but that doesn’t make them good philosophers. The best illustration for that is Krauss and “nothing.” For a universe to arise out of his kind of “nothing,” that “nothing” has to be the sort of nothing that accommodates Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. It has to be the kind of nothing in which laws of physics apply, and where the potential to create matter exists. Physical laws and potentialities are not nothing.

But Krauss will have (ahem) nothing of that. He sets it aside with,

When it comes to the real operational issues that govern our understanding of physical reality, ontological definitions of classical philosophers are, in my opinion, sterile. Moreover, arguments based on authority, be it Aristotle, or Leibniz, are irrelevant.

I’m not sure whether the “or” in “real or operational” is the “or” of an appositive or of an alternative. In other words, I don’t know if he means real issues = operational issues, or if he means either real issues or operational issues. If the former, then he’s playing philosopher again in a big way. (It’s not a real issue unless it’s an operational issue. Fiat reality, and those of you who disagree just shut up, would you? Not that I’m trying to act as an authority… see below.) If the latter, he’s still playing philosopher, but maybe not quite so egregiously. Anyway, he goes on,

In science, there are no authorities, and appeal to quotes from brilliant scholars who lived before we knew the Earth orbited the Sun, or that space can be curved, or that dark matter or dark energy exist do not generally inform our current understanding of nature. Empirical explorations ultimately change our understanding of which questions are important and fruitful and which are not.

Important or fruitful for what purpose? For empirical and scientific purposes, surely. He assumes that those categories are all that count. I suspect he’s making that assumption on his own authority, without even recognizing he’s doing so. In science, there are no authorities.

He meanders from there through some muddled thinking on theology and philosophy, and leads us to this defense of his “nothing:”

Instead, sticking firm to the classical ontological definition of nothing as “the absence of anything”—whatever this means—so essential to theological, and some subset of philosophical intransigence, strikes me as essentially sterile, backward, useless and annoying. If “something” is a physical quantity, to be determined by experiment, then so is ‘nothing’.

“Intransigence.” Hmmph. No authority-playing here, right? Wrong.

“If ‘something is a physical quantity, to be determined by experiment, then so is ‘nothing’.” Really? How does that follow? How? It boggles the mind! (Maybe the Walking Christian was right.)

Krauss closes that piece saying,

To those who wish to impose their definition of reality abstractly, independent of emerging empirical knowledge and the changing questions that go with it, and call that either philosophy or theology, I would say this: Please go on talking to each other, and let the rest of us get on with the goal of learning more about nature.

His mistake is obvious. He tells us that philosophical/theological definitions of “nothing” are unhelpful to the progress of science, and in that carefully delimited realm I’m sure he is correct. He says physicists have their definition of “nothing,” and it happens to be the sort of “nothing” that can produce something. In this he is also correct. This is all true as far as science knows. But he also says that the same “nothing” explains where all the somethings came from, while forgetting that this “nothing” demands explanation itself, for in the broad scheme of things it too is a “something.”

Back now to the LA Times article, where he writes,

Perhaps most remarkable of all, not only is it now plausible, in a scientific sense, that our universe came from nothing, if we ask what properties a universe created from nothing would have, it appears that these properties resemble precisely the universe we live in.

We know this because if a universe created from nothing didn’t have these properties, we wouldn’t be living in it, as he says elsewhere. It’s a neat little post hoc, circular-logic, anthropic trick. The prediction of what a universe-from-nothing would produce is made on the basis of what the universe (wherever it came from) actually did produce. Oh, and did he say “created”? How careless of him! It’s that pesky illusion of design creeping into his language, right here in the very article he’s writing to refute it.

Does all of this prove that our universe and the laws that govern it arose spontaneously without divine guidance or purpose? No, but it means it is possible.

And that possibility need not imply that our own lives are devoid of meaning. Instead of divine purpose, the meaning in our lives can arise from what we make of ourselves, from our relationships and our institutions, from the achievements of the human mind.

Imagining living in a universe without purpose may prepare us to better face reality head on. I cannot see that this is such a bad thing. Living in a strange and remarkable universe that is the way it is, independent of our desires and hopes, is far more satisfying for me than living in a fairy-tale universe invented to justify our existence.

Science reveals that it’s possible there is no Creator God, he says; and to believe in God is to living in a “fairy-tale universe invented to justify our existence.” Really, now. Purpose and design are illusory, too. Where did those conclusions come from? From science reveals it’s possible there is no Creator God? If that’s what he thinks, then the pillars of logic have indeed been kicked out after all— from under one scientist, at least.

We know he was offensive. We know he bombed.

What I’ve been looking for on the web, and haven’t found, is why he was invited in the first place.

A statement from the organizers tells us,

At one of the plenary keynote sessions of the two organizations’ semi-annual conventions, Mr. Dan Savage had been invited to share with students the power of social media in today’s world as well as speak about the problem of bullying of gay youth, an issue all too familiar in many American schools.

So whom did they tap for this?

• The man who, while he had a bad case of the flu infiltrated Gary Bauer’s office and went around licking doorknobs and staplers hoping to make people sick.
• The man who set up a website (no, I won’t link to it) associating a hopeful presidential candidate with stuff that would make you sick just to read about it. (There’s a theme developing here.)
• The man who pled guilty to voter fraud.
• The man whose newspaper column deals in “sexoerotic diversity.” (No I won’t link to that, either.)
• More here

The same organizers’ statement linked above tells us his incredibly offensive and ignorant speech was “not what we had expected.”

What did they expect?!

The organizers apologized for his speech—”just 24 hours after praising the speech’s ‘level of thoughtfulness and deliberation,’” according to Breitbart.

Why did they invite him?

First and most succinctly, Savage’s historical revisionism is at odds with primary sources that enlighten the events of the past, such as these words penned by former slave Booker T. Washington in his celebrated book, Up From Slavery:

If no other consideration had convinced me of the value of a Christian life, the Christlike work which the Church of all denominations in America has done during the last thirty-five years for the elevation of the black man would have made me a Christian.

In concert with this, when one studies abolition movements, we find that most of the leading figures who made immense personal sacrifices for this cause were dedicated Christians acting in accordance with Biblical principles. These include William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson, Granville Sharp, Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, John Newton, James Ramsay, James Stephen, Elizabeth Heyrick, and many other Christians, whose selfless deeds are chronicled in academic texts like Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves.

[From Articles: What Dan Savage Doesn't Know about the Bible and Slavery]

Also, I wonder how many of the students applauding Savage would have preferred that their parents had followed his sexual ethic in full. (Maybe some of their parents did; I wonder how many of those students were glad about it.) As Mark Oppenheimer writes,

In Savage Love, his weekly column, he inveighs against the American obsession with strict fidelity. In its place he proposes a sensibility that we might call American Gay Male, after that community’s tolerance for pornography, fetishes and a variety of partnered arrangements, from strict monogamy to wide openness….

The view that we need a little less fidelity in marriages is dangerous for a gay-marriage advocate to hold. It feeds into the stereotype of gay men as compulsively promiscuous, and it gives ammunition to all the forces, religious and otherwise, who say that gay families will never be real families and that we had better stop them before they ruin what is left of marriage. But Savage says a more flexible attitude within marriage may be just what the straight community needs. Treating monogamy, rather than honesty or joy or humor, as the main indicator of a successful marriage gives people unrealistic expectations of themselves and their partners. And that, Savage says, destroys more families than it saves….

“The mistake that straight people made,” Savage told me, “was imposing the monogamous expectation on men. Men were never expected to be monogamous. Men had concubines, mistresses and access to prostitutes, until everybody decided marriage had to be egalitar­ian and fairsey.” In the feminist revolution, rather than extending to women “the same latitude and license and pressure-release valve that men had always enjoyed,” we extended to men the confines women had always endured. “And it’s been a disaster for marriage.”

What do you think, students? Wouldn’t life be better with both Dad and Mom running around?

I don’t think so.

And finally, this on pro-SSM “tolerance:”

Prepare for outrage.

We can learn to ignore the b***s*** in the Bible about gay people… we ignore b***s*** in the Bible about all sorts of things. The Bible is a radically pro-slavery document. … We ignore what the Bible says about slavery because the Bible got slavery wrong…. The Bible got the easiest moral question that humanity has ever faced wrong–slavery. What are the odds that the Bible got something as complicated as human sexuality wrong? 100%….There is no effort to amend state constitutions to stone women to death on their wedding night if they’re not virgins. At least not yet. We don’t know where the GOP is going these days….

It’s funny as someone who’s on the receiving end of beatings that are justified by the Bible, how pansy-a**ed some people react when pushed back. I apologize if I’ve hurt anyone’s feelings, but I have a right to defend myself, and to point out the hypocrisy of people who justify anti-gay bigotry by pointing to the Bible and insisting we must live by the code of Leviticus on this one issue and no other.

This is what respect looks like? This is what understanding looks like? NO.

Dan Savage doesn’t know how not-obvious the slavery issue was 2,000 years ago, and he doesn’t know what the Bible teaches about it. He doesn’t know what it was in history that has made the right answer obvious. He’s fully ignorant on this, but he pronounces on it anyway. Is that respect? Is that understanding? NO.

Dan Savage doesn’t know what the Bible teaches about “stoning women to death on their wedding night.” He’s fully ignorant on this. Is that respect? Is that understanding? NO.

Dan Savage doesn’t know what Leviticus teaches, or how it related to the culture of its day, or how it relates to today, or why Leviticus isn’t the only text from which Christians gain our understanding of human sexuality. He’s fully ignorant on it, and yet he pronounces on it anyway. Is that respect? Is that understanding? NO.

Dan Savage laughed at the people walking out the door, and called them names. He encouraged the rest of the people there to laugh at them. Is this how you demonstrate a message of anti-bullying? NO.

Dan Savage spoke of hypocrisy at the end of this segment. Is this how you demonstrate that? YES!

Caution: the language in the video is (obviously) no better than what I quoted above.

Follow-up: Savage apologized, admitting that his word choice [pansy-a**ed] “was insulting, it was name-calling, and it was wrong.”

Also:

In a blog post on Sunday, Savage wrote that his remark at a conference for the Journalism Education Association and the National Scholastic Press Association was “being spun as an attack on Christianity. Which is bullshhh… which is untrue.”

Really?

“I was not attacking the faith in which I was raised,” Savage wrote. “I was attacking the argument that gay people must be discriminated against — and anti-bullying programs that address anti-gay bullying should be blocked (or exceptions should be made for bullying ‘motivated by faith’) — because it says right there in the Bible that being gay is wrong.”

Ri-i-ght.

Homosexuals often insist that their sexual orientation can’t be separated from their identity, that it is their identity. That’s a sad message in many ways. It’s ironic, though in light of that, that someone like Dan Savage thinks he can separate out one part of Christian belief, jump all over it with jackbooted feet, and try to convince people he’s not attacking any of it at all. Ironic, and once again, a nice display of hypocrisy.

Esolen wrote ten arguments in defense of marriage. I will not be able to fully defend them in the space available. I’m not sure I’ll even be able to begin to defend some of them in this space, because they call upon a certain sensibility that I cannot assume among my readers, and for which I cannot offer the full argument. He refers, for example, to Spenser’s Epithalamion, and draws from it the conclusion, “Here we have an understanding of marriage infinitely deeper than the meager expression of will we are now left with.” It’s a powerful argument, but it’s open to a brutish sort of “Oh, yeah, well, so what?” from those who think the wisdom of the past twenty years exceeds that of the ages. Much as I would like to be, I am in no position to try to talk anyone out of that mindset.

Full disclosure: I haven’t read the Epithalamion; but I have at least an openness to the idea of “understanding of marriage infinitely deeper….” I don’t hear much of the language of depth being spoken in this debate. So for reasons like that I’ll stick with a few of the more contemporaneously obvious points instead.

1, 2. Esolen spoke of how “the legalization of homosexual pseudogamy would enshrine the sexual revolution in law,” and how “it would enshrine in law the principle that sexual intercourse is a matter of personal fulfillment, with which the society has nothing to do.” Some see this as not such a bad thing. This is blindness.

The sexual chaos has touched every family in the nation. Who does not know at least one family whose children require an essay merely to describe who under their roof is related to whom, and how?

Some reckon up the losses from this revolution by percentages: of unwed mothers, of aborted pregnancies, of children growing up without a parent, usually the father. It will take artists of the most penetrating insight to reckon up the losses as they ought to be reckoned, in human misery.

5. It will “curtail opportunities for deep and emotionally fulfilling friendships between members of the same sex, opportunities that are already few and strained.”

Indeed, how many of us can understand the passion of friendship in David’s lament for Jonathan, or Gilgamesh’s lament for Enkidu, without coloring it with the suspicion of homosexuality? … Unless they are comfortable with the meaning, they will shy away from one another; the friendship will not deepen. Confess, reader: if you come upon two teenage boys in a pond skinny-dipping, it is the first thing you will think, and you will think it despite the fact that before bathing suits were invented, it was the only way two boys could ever be found swimming.

Many are the times my daughter has said at the dinner table, “I really like some girl or other at school … but not in that way!” It hurts to see how cautious she has had to be about her same-sex friendships. The innocence is gone. Every relationship is potentially sexual. This is deadly.

6. It leaves us with no grounds for opposing any form of consensual intercourse among adults.

In a word, all the good arguments for homosexual “marriage” are equally good arguments for any form of “marriage” among any adults whatsoever.

7. The legalization of homosexual pseudogamy seals us in a culture of divorce.

Divorce begins by undermining trust in marriage (and that is bad enough, given our plummeting birthrates) and ends by undermining trust altogether. We must retrace our steps; we must bring some semblance of justice back to divorce law.

But how can we do so while legalizing homosexual pseudogamy? Again, the principle for the legalization is that people have a right to “fulfill” themselves sexually. But some marriages are unhappy—or some people who are married come to think that it would be more “fulfilling” to leap the fence. How can we deny them this? Or how can we blame them? How can we penalize the breaker of a family, when his or her motives are those we have blessed in the case of the homosexual?

Finally, a most powerful consideration:

10. It spells disaster for children.

We will be visiting a crisis of identity upon every child in our society. That, in fact, is the intention of many homosexual activists, whose revenge upon the children who were once cruel or indifferent to them is to afflict other children with doubts, to make them endure the questions that they themselves endured.

All this is done under the guise of charity for the homosexual teenager, but true charity would refrain from plunging children into the trouble in the first place, and would instead offer an unambiguous expectation of heterosexuality. That would give many pubescent teens the wherewithal to shrug off the random doubt, rather than causing it to grow into a dreadful prognosis.

These are not “religious” arguments. They are human arguments.

This is not a battle of religion vs. secular sensibility. It’s a completely different kind of battle than that. I told you earlier that I would be aiming this series toward an end of explaining why it seems to be religion vs. non-religion, and when I get there I think you’ll understand what I mean.

The resurrection is attested to by multiple evidences, which Christians (who have studied it) generally consider be sufficient to allow us to say, “I know it happened.” (Knowledge, by the way, does not have to mean certainty, as in “There is absolutely no possibility I could be wrong;” but I won’t go into that now.) The return of Christ is attested to by multiple promises. That’s where faith comes in. Faith is not, as so many people have misconceived it, belief lacking evidence. It is belief that is based on knowledge, builds on knowledge, and extends out of knowledge.

Jesus Christ said he would return; Christians trust his word. Faith is a synonym for trust; thus the return of Christ is a matter of faith.

There is much confusion over this particular matter of faith, however: Jesus said it would be soon, and yet here we are a couple thousand years later and still waiting. Where is the promise of his coming?, you might ask. The apostles thought it would be in their lifetimes, but they died, and here we are centuries later, and everything is still cooking along just like it has been from the beginning.

That’s a good question, and I’m glad you asked. Be aware that you’re not the first, though: see 2 Peter 3:3,4. He goes on to explain (2 Peter 3:8-10a):

But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief…

“Like a thief” is a phrase used elsewhere in connection with Christ’s return. Based on those other usages, one of which we’ll see in a moment, we know it has nothing to do with dishonesty or robbery, but rather unannounced suddenness. The thief doesn’t tell you he’s going to break in tomorrow at 1:25 am. Likewise Jesus Christ will come without telling us exactly when.

But what about the New Testament being wrong about the time of his return? Jesus himself says, “This generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place;” but let’s look at the context (Matthew 24:32-43, ESV):

From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts out its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see all these things, you know that he is near, at the very gates. Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

“But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only. For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two men will be in the field; one will be taken and one left. Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken and one left. Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into.

The lesson of the fig tree seems to be that we need to watch and wait until we see the signs¹ that the time is near. Matthew 24:14 is especially instructive: the end will come only when the gospel of the kingdom has been preached to all the nations. That hasn’t happened yet, though it’s coming close to completion.

Another potentially confusing statement was the one Jesus made in Matthew 16:28, Mark 9:1, Luke 9:27:

Matt. 16:28 Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”

Mark 9:1 And he said to them, “Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power.”

Luke 9:27 But I tell you truly, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God.”

This was just before his transfiguration (Matthew 17:1-8), which is plausibly the fulfillment of that prediction in the form of a foretaste. One commentary (Jamiesson, Fausset, Brown) says,

The reference, beyond doubt, is to the firm establishment and victorious progress, in the lifetime of some then present, of that new kingdom of Christ, which was destined to work the greatest of all changes on this earth, and be the grand pledge of His final coming in glory.

The Bible Knowledge commentary adds this concerning Mark 9:1:

Several interpretations have been suggested for the meaning of the kingdom of God come with power: (a) Jesus’ transfiguration, (b) Jesus’ resurrection and Ascension, (c) the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost (Acts 2:1-4) and the spread of Christianity by the early church, (d) the destruction of Jerusalem by Rome in A.D. 70, and (e) the second coming of Jesus Christ.

The first of these is the most reasonable view in this context. The specific time reference in the following account of Jesus’ transfiguration (Mark 9:2a) indicates that Mark understood a definite connection between Jesus’ prediction (v. 1) and this event. Jesus’ transfiguration was a striking preview and guarantee of His future coming in glory (cf. 2 Peter 1:16-19).

This is certainly the most problematic prediction in the New Testament, but it has to be understood in context. Recall that the same Matthew who recorded this prophecy also said that the end would not come until all nations had heard the gospel of the kingdom. That makes it hard to press the case that Jesus could have meant nothing other than his physical return in glory.

Additionally, it seems likely that the apostles expected some time to pass before Jesus’ return. One does not get the sense that they sat on a rooftop waiting for aliens riding on a comet to pick them up any minute, or even for Jesus himself to come pick them up any minute. Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians rebuked church members who had adopted the false belief that “Jesus is coming back any day so nothing we do now really matters.” The gospels, the Acts, the letters and the Revelation seem to have been written with at least a few coming generations in mind.

There are of course several “thief in the night” references sprinkled throughout Jesus’ teachings and elsewhere. I learned an important lesson about these when my friend Steve and I were working at the Interlochen Music Camp in Michigan in 1977. While we were there, Steve’s brother was tragically killed in a plane crash (it was over Lake Michigan, if I remember correctly). There at Interlochen we got connected with Arthur Katterjohn, who had written a book opposing the pre-tribulation rapture view.² then what about the teaching that Christ could come any second now, without warning?” Steve said simply, and quietly, “He came for my brother without any warning.”

We will each meet Christ individually, or maybe we will be alive when he comes for all. Some of us are looking forward to that meeting with great expectation. Others think it’s a joke or a fraud. Others don’t want it to be true. Jesus said we should expect that difference of belief. He also said it would be great joy for those who are prepared, but unimaginable sorrow for those who have neglected or rejected him.

Which are you?

A) How would writing prayers to God via email change praying compared to silent or audible prayers?

B) Suppose for Jesus ministry he remained in heaven but controlled a human body via an avatar. How would this change the gospel?

Continuing the series I started a while back on audio answers to email questions, here’s my response:

I’m calling this the AnswerCast series. Please let me know of any questions you have that I might be able to respond to through a podcast.

(I’ve found two other sources using the “answercast” name. They’re in different fields so we’re not competing, and they don’t appear to have registered the name. If someone really does own the name please let me know and I’ll adjust immediately.)

Undoubtedly there is a deep religious divide between SSM supporters and opponents, which makes it tempting to conclude that we who oppose SSM have nothing to offer for our position except religious reasoning. Thus Otto Telick in a comment on this blog wrote,

There are no secular humanist organizations campaigning against gay rights. None. Only religious organizations are doing this, and they present no actual evidence to support their position, only appeals to history, popular position, and discrimination justified by religious scripture…. Now, can you actually dispute that with any real truth? Can you demonstrate that you are dealing on anything other than a religious level?

And also,

I explained that a law prohibiting gay couples from having the same rights and status as hetero couples has no justification other than religious dogma or discriminatory social attitudes…. With only a religious basis for banning gay marriage, a law to that effect is essentially establishing that religion as law, and that violates the First Amendment….

A charge like this calls for a dual response, which I will provide in four separate blog posts. In the first three I will establish that there are many non-religious reasons to support man-woman marriage (sometimes termed “conjugal marriage”). I intend to correct the factual error expressed in opinions like Otto Telick’s, by showing that religious belief is not the only basis for supporting man-woman marriage, while of course placing those non-religious reasons on the table so we can discuss them.

Having done that, the next step will be to explain why the above-mentioned religious divide exists. Surely there must be a reason for it, and if it’s not a religious reason, then what is it? Could it be that non-religious arguments against SSM are window-dressing, and it’s all a matter of religious belief after all? Could these secular arguments in fact be disingenuous cover-ups, subterfuges to get our religious beliefs enshrined in law?

I will call on three different documents in my first three posts in this series. I will try to keep these posts as brief as I can, as is fitting to a blog. I will rely on you to look to the sources for a fuller treatment of these topics.

Monte Neil Stewart, writing in Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy (PDF; thank you, Alex Dawson), looks at the competing “packages” of legal facts brought forth in support of both sides of this debate. Note first of all that there are indeed legal facts—findings admitted into legislative and judicial opinions—in opposition to SSM. That bit of information alone should settle the question of whether there are non-religious reasons in favor of that position. Stewart lists six such facts in favor of man-woman marriage (see pp. 321f; I am condensing his points here).

1. To secure the right of a child to know and be raised by her biological parents.
2. To maximize the private welfare provided to children conceived by passionate, heterosexual coupling.
3. To provide children with the optimal environment for growing up, which (in spite of claims to the contrary) is empirically known to be, all other things being equal, that in which they are raised by their biological parents.
4. To provide an effective bridge across the male-female divide.
5. To transform a male into husband-father and a female into wife-mother, statuses that are particularly beneficial to society.
6. To provide a socially endorsed context for adult intimacy.

To these he also adds the justification of marriage as “a partnership of two loving equals who choose to commit themselves to each other,” a means to recognize, celebrate and endorse “love and friendship, security for adults and their children, economic protection, and public affirmation of commitment.” This happens to be (see pp. 329f) the primary way in which SSM proponents define marriage. Stewart argues that man-woman marriage includes this value but transcends it (p.336):

The man-woman marriage proponents’ broad description encompasses a wider range of marriage-produced social goods than the genderless marriage proponents’ much moore narrow description. The same holds true relative to marriage’s purposes, practices, formative powers, and interactions with other social institutions…. “Marriage is seen [in the narrow view] primarily as a private relationship between two people, the primary purpose of which is to satisfy the adults who enter it. Marriage is about the the couple. If children arise from the union, that may be nice, but marriage and children are not really connected.”

Stewart goes on to say,

Acceptance of the broad description requires rejection of two salient aspects of the narrow description of marriage. First it requires rejecting the notion that marriage is no more than what the narrow model describes…. [It] also requires rejecting the idea that children are not the “sine qua non of civil marriage.” … The broad description portrays marriage as primarily a child-protective and child-centered institution, with most of the institution’s social goods pertaining to the quality of child-rearing. Conversely, the narrow model describes an adult-centered “partnership entered into for its own sake, which lasts only as long as both partners are satisfied with the rewards (mostly intimacy and love) that they get from it.”

It is erroneous, says Stewart, for SSM advocates to claim that the narrow model accurately defines what marriage is in Western culture. It doesn’t fit the facts. Perhaps there are trends heading in that direction but (p. 341), “the question of fact is ‘What is marriage?,’ not ‘What will it be in twenty years?’”

And we must recognize that marriage is either man-woman or else genderless. There can be no such thing as man-woman marriage co-existing with same-sex marriage; for (p. 319),

once the judiciary or legislature adopts “the union of any two persons” as the legal definition of civil marriage, that conception becomes the sole definitional basis for the only law-sanctioned marriage any couple can enter…. Therefore, legally sanctioned genderless marriage, rather than peacefully coexisting with the contemporary man-woman marriage institution, actually displaces and replaces it.

Thus marriage cannot continue to have as part of its meaning the six points mentioned above, if SSM is made legal. Those social goods will be stripped out of marriage, with no other home in which to thrive, no conceivable institution to pick them up and carry them forward. The social consequences of this would be fearsome.

Stewart has more to say in response to objections to these arguments: what about childless man-woman marriages, for example and “what’s the harm, anyway?.” But I have said enough for now, and my purpose has not been to re-argue his case. Rather I have been trying to make it clear that SSM opponents have a case of our own, with no reference to legally excluded religious rationales. I will present more arguments of like nature in the next two posts in this series, after which I will address the question, “but aren’t these all really religious reasons after all?”

A couple nights ago I was listening to Saint-Säens’ Third Symphony, the Organ Symphony. As a trombonist I fell in love with this music in college: it’s loud and brassy in all the right places, but it also calls on the trombone for one of the sweetest soft melodies in all classical music. I’ve heard this symphony often. I know what’s coming next, all the way through it. There will be no surprises in it for me ever again, except (I hope) the kind of new discovery that comes from catching some inner part I’ve never noticed before.

What’s your favorite song or composition? I’m hoping you can think of something longer and stronger than the typical rock, pop, or country songs, because the longer and better the piece is, the more likely it will illustrate what I’m saying here. Pat Metheny’s First Circle is a great jazz example.

Whatever your favorites might be,

• Have you ever noticed how time stops during great music—even as it flows onward?
• Have you ever felt the conflict of discord in it?¹
• Have you ever felt the anticipation of your favorite part coming up soon? There’s desire there, a strong wanting, yet you know it’s right that it take its time coming. Even the wanting is good.
• Have you ever felt the satisfaction of the music reaching its goal in the end?

These are all part of the universal experience of music. And they happen while everything is exactly the way it should be. Amazing, isn’t it: perfection can include discord, anticipation, conflict, and resolution! These are the very things that keep interest alive in the life that’s familiar to us.

Further, we might wonder whether there will be any challenge and any personal growth in heaven. I think there will be. The Bible says there will be no more sin there, and no more crying. It does not say there will be no more trying. I’m speculating of course, but I won’t be at all surprised if musicians make mistakes there. To have trouble with a difficult passage is not sin. Some of my favorite hours on earth have been spent struggling my way through a tough passage to play it better than before. These struggles have been good, not bad.

Not all of those struggles, by the way, have been about getting the notes right. I’ve tried many times to play Bach’s Cello Suite in D Minor. It lays fairly well on the trombone (not like it does on the cello, but close enough for a trombonist’s purposes). The notes are not the problem. I can get through them easily enough (or I could when I was practicing more often). But there’s music in there to which I’ve never attained. Bach’s genius is beyond me. It might just take forever to get to it. Nevertheless, trying to reach it has always been terribly satisfying. It’s always been a labor of love and delight, even as far as I have been from the goal. I think I could be that way for a long, long, long time.

What will heaven be like? I still don’t know. But the lesson of music assures me that perfection really can include conflict, anticipation, dissonance, resolution, challenge, even failure, and continuing growth. Knowing that such things are possible in the midst of perfection, I am sure the way they will manifest in heaven will be deeper, richer, more involving and interesting than we can imagine.

It won’t be boring there.

Also at First Things: Evangel

We’re great C.S. Lewis fans at our house. You should have seen my daughter’s eyes light up yesterday when I showed her two books she didn’t know we owned: Narrative Poems and Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold. That’s why I’m glad William O’Flaherty has developed the C.S. Lewis Minute blog and podcast. He’s serious about “minute.” Though he has a series of longer “essay chats,” his podcasts run exactly one minute long. Still he finds time to do justice to his subject. It’s a great addition to your podcast subscriptions.

*****

What’s most interesting to me about the Christian Apologetics and Intelligence Ministry is the things it finds across the world and across the Internet. In just the past couple of weeks its two writers have covered (or linked to) the problem of evil, mythology and deception, approaches to truth, an apparently Rosicrucian “American Stonehenge” I’d never heard of with ten decidedly non-biblical commandments inscribed on it, a takedown of a recently popularized false conception of God in the Old Testament, and even how to learn from theological liberals. Its variety makes this site stand out from other apologetics blogs.

*****

A Little Space is an attractive-looking, thoughtful, and often poetic blog that’s aimed very specifically toward a female audience. I’m not in the best position to review it, obviously, but its teachings are sound, and I found this more than a little intriguing. I need to compress it for the sake of space here, but you’ll get the gist:

If you choose to train to become a homemaker… And especially if you do all of this because of biblical precedent and precept…

Expect some stones to fly in your direction.

You are different -you are counter-cultural -you are purposeful -

And you’re a threat.

Yes, you! You are a hard-core feminist’s worst nightmare -you are chock-full of potential -you are beautiful -you are industrious -you are intelligent… and you’ve chosen to pour that -every ounce of it -not a drop left -not a stone left unturned -into your family.

Strong language there. Strong and true.

*****

I wish the R3bel Theologian had something posted on his “About” page. I think it’s authored by one Bennett S., but maybe by multiple writers. I’m not sure why the name R3bel was chosen. There’s a hint given on this video, which the blogger says “epitomizes what this blog is about.” It’s about rising above “religious things,” “playing a game with God,” and pursuing God hard, right now. He’s not posting real often, but what he has to say is worth reading.

*****

Mark McGee is a martial arts instructor who writes about Faith and Self-Defense. Lately he’s been posting on what’s wrong with Scientology–a bold move, that, if you know anything about how Scientology responds to its critics! He’s on part 5 of that study, and simultaneously on part 22 of “Can I Trust the Bible?” He goes deep. It’s a great place for real study