Text: 1 Cor 15:1-11
Alice in Wonderland laughed and said to the White Queen “One can’t believe impossible things”. The Queen observed that Alice simply lacked discipline and practice, boasting that she sometimes believed “as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” This begs the question: Does the church encourage you and I to believe impossible things? And then to feel guilty if we can’t? I think this is a problem for many thinking Christians – perhaps most obviously with the resurrection of Christ.
Paul explained his understanding of the Christian message that, “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day.” (15:3-4) Paul then gives a long list of appearances of the risen Christ: to Peter, then to the 12 apostles and then “He appeared to more than 500 brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died.” And “last of all to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles because I persecuted the Church of God.” (11:7-9).
Obviously, Paul believed that Christ could be seen. Paul was trying to be rational and cited the evidence of many people including himself. He did not add, though possibly worth noting, that many died as martyrs for their Christian faith. Maybe it was a more credulous age? Maybe unexplained things were more common?
Now what do we do with this? Most of us consider ourselves educated, rational people, inhabiting the 21st century. My close friend Shayleen used to chide me that I believed in Jewish fairy tales, and I suppose believing in the risen Christ amounts to an impossible thing or less charitably a fairy tale.
In the Context of Science
Sometimes it feels strange to be a Christian and to live in two worlds. One of science and reason; one of faith and meaning. We tend to see reality through a ‘scientific lens’. Indeed, science has delivered, by improving our lives in amazing ways. This includes the technology we carry around, such as a smart phone. My car uses an inbuilt computer with GPS to tell me where ever I am (useful when I get lost in Gungahlin!). There are advances too numerous to mention. I think of medical science and I want my GP to be rational, to offer me evidence-based treatment and with appropriate medication ? in fact be a good scientist-practitioner.
But science tends to be reductive, to what we can see and understand in terms of cause and effect. A mathematical proof is clear and a hypothesis can be tested and retested. But the ‘common sense’ version of this closes off anything unusual and whatever does not fit in the ‘scientific model’.
This may seem ‘water-proof’ but science on both the macro and micro doesn’t fit this neat model. For example, on a cosmological scale equations breakdown in black holes and the Big Bang is an astonishing contradiction of everything we can observe. At the quantum realm, imagine subatomic particles are balls on a billiard table. Some will spontaneously disappear and reappear somewhere else. And there is uncertainty about what it is possible to know at this level. You can’t know both the momentum and the position of a billiard ball, which makes it hard to play the game. (Heisenburg’s Uncertainty Principle)
How does religion fit into this? The answer is easy, it doesn’t. Good science doesn’t pretend to offer answers to questions of meaning: Why do we exist? What is the purpose of human life? Equally, it has difficulties with ethical questions such as those deriving from stem cell research. And there are obvious important questions beyond the scope of science: did Jesus rise from the dead? Is there eternal life? The point I would make is that for such questions the response of both believer and unbeliever is a matter of faith ? for the simple reason that nobody really knows.
Why believe?
I think I must be a follower of the philosopher Descartes, my natural tendency is to doubt everything. Then I can walk through a supermarket of ideas and beliefs and choose what is most attractive to me. For example, I do not believe that the argument for God is intellectually compelling. I can accept both atheism and belief in God because both have a strong case. I have great sympathy for the agnostic position that there is not enough evidence to make a choice, maybe that is the most rational of responses and certainly a position most of my friends seem to hold. Also, I think that a person can follow the example of Christ, be a Christian but not believe all the ‘impossible things’ in the Apostles Creed. But I prefer to believe something.
Also I think that there is a world of difference between lazy believing and having convictions on the other side of doubt.
At Wesley I enjoyed a very public debate through a number of sermons with the Rev’d Rob Henderson. He is an articulate and theologically informed liberal. It is great being in the Uniting Church because it provides a home for a great variety of beliefs and supports a respectful dialogue. It is in that spirit that I offer this sermon.
Two points:
- I think it is rational to believe in something ‘outside the box’ of rationality.
- It is essential to have a sense of the sacred or the enchanted to gain a sense of meaning in life.
Rational?
I think it is reasonable to believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ. Something created the church, and the effect of Christianity on our culture. I can’t think of anyone or anything that has been more influential.
Consider a pebble dropped in a lake with ripples going in every direction. Drop a brick in the same lake and the result is small waves. This is cause and effect. I ask what could have caused such waves to change two thousand years of Western civilization?
The resurrection of Jesus Christ was like a meteor hit a large lake. And we are still feeling the results. Cause and effect? It is easier to believe that a miracle happened – with our faith as the result!
Sacred?
No one questions the rationality of the agnostic or atheist. And I hope it is clear that I don’t either. But I’ve always believed that hyper rationalism acts like a ‘paint-stripper’. Gone is the enchantment, the mystery, and ultimately the depth in living.
The origin of the word religion is religio ‘to bind things together’. It makes connections beyond the obvious. Les Murray, arguably one of the finest poets Australia has produced, was a devout Catholic and his poem Poetry and Religion is a classic. The opening lines are “Religions are poems. They concert our daylight and dreaming mind, our emotions, instinct, breath and native gesture into the only whole thinking: poetry.” And later “God is the poetry caught in any religion, caught, not imprisoned.”
The skills of the scientist are close to useless in the writing of a poem, creating a novel, composing music, and painting a picture. What matters is creativity and a sense of beauty.
When I choose to believe, and it is a choice. I believe that the depth of Christian belief as a sense of the sacred to my life as lived. I see people in terms of eternity, I see social justice in terms of God’s order, and behind any suffering I can sense the goodness of God.
Dr Bruce A Stevens (PhD Boston University) was ordained in the Anglican Church and has served as a supply minister at GUC. He is a clinical and forensic psychologist. He had the Wicking Chair of Ageing and Practical Theology at CSU 2014-19.