Is Religion Today Really Separate From Everything Else?

I was flipping through Flipboard on my phone today, and I came across an excerpt of an article from what sounds like an interesting book. The title of the book is ‘A God that Can Be Real: Spirituality, Science, and the Future of our Planet’ by Nancy Ellen Abrams. Being a PhD geoscientist who has wrestled with earth history (I believe that the earth is about 4.5 billion years old – more on that in a later post) and who believes in the Garden of Eden (don’t ask) I was intrigued by the title. I will order the book from Amazon later today after I go to the bank with my wife.

In the Flipboard article I came across this quote. Ms Abrams wrote:

“It is time to stop struggling with traditional views of God – struggling with each other as well as within our own minds. All the old views of God are demonstrably inadequate to our times. They perpetuate conflict or fail to inspire us enough to rise to the existential challenges of our complex world. That religion is today seen as separate from everything else is a sure sign that it is not about real lives but about an image that some people are trying to impose on a sprawling, unpredictable reality…The great religions were designed to comfort only a tiny subset of what happens in our lives today. Each of us has to deal not only with our extended family, our community, and the natural world, but also with thousands of strangers, languages, international news, entertainment, insidious advertising, and the entire internet.”

Based on the article this is a thoughtful woman who is coming from a background of atheism and physicalism willing to ask the hard questions about God, science, and the world. She is struggling with difficult, even mysterious, questions in an open and public way. She is obviously brilliant and is driven by a deep desire to understand her life in the context of an increasingly broken, chaotic, and dangerous world. I can’t wait to read what she has learned.

Based on the quote she does not see religion as capable of dealing with these issues in a meaningful way. Here is my perspective – religion is the only way to deal with “our extended family, our community…thousands of strangers, international news, entertainment, insidious advertising, and the entire internet.” And here is why. Yes, this is a complex world but human nature has not changed at all in the last 100 millennia or so. We still need to be accepted and valued, we still struggle with a fear of rejection, we still seek our ultimate value in the things that seek to destroy us, our families, our culture, and our world – money, power, fame, accomplishments, and all the addictions that go along with these things like sex, drug, alcohol, and food addictions. In the Old Testament God calls these idols, and they are just as real and deadly today as they were 5,000 years ago. We still reject those who reject us, sometimes with cataclysmic results. These are the issues that need to be dealt with first in the human heart before we can deal with family, community, and the thousands of strangers she mentions. We have to decide to give up the right to ourselves, put other people’s interests ahead of our own, and, I would say, love God with all of our hearts, souls, minds, and strength and love our neighbors as ourselves (the most important commandment in the Judeo-Christian tradition). Note that we are called to love three entities: God, our neighbor (who is just about everyone), and ourselves (in a healthy way). Here is where ‘religion’ comes in: as the world shows us, we cannot do this in our power. Not even close. I cannot love my neighbor, let alone my enemy as Jesus commands, if I am filled with self-rejection, anger, and bitterness as most of us in the world are today. I cannot overcome the darkness in my own heart in my power; I cannot resurrect myself. We need something beyond ourselves if we are to have any hope at all. That something is God. God is real, present, powerful, and His power is available to His children who use it to release His Kingdom. Often His children are men, women, and children who are desperate, who have reached the end of their strength, who have been so rejected and crushed down that they are willing to try anything to just survive. And when they find God, and by that I mean Jesus, they find the peace and hope that allows them to stand against whatever life throws at them. I know, because I have been there. Jesus is real and His hope is real. And if we are to survive as a species, in my opinion, we have no alternative.

But in a western world that is increasingly dominated by the philosophy of physicalism, the position that only physical things exist, there can be no conversation about God, or even, perish the thought, the Holy Spirit. Because according to physicalism these ‘things’ do not exist. Kudos to Ms. Abrams. She seems to be willing to challenge this paradigm. And even if we find ourselves in different places on these issues, I believe that we can learn from each other.