The flu is closer at hand than ever before…
But it’s still okay to make jokes about it, right?

Den danske fysiker, Holger Bech Nielsen, har fremlagt en teori om, at en slags “gud”, der kender fremtiden, forhindrer CERN-eksperimentet i Schweiz, fordi han ikke er interesseret i, at vi skal finde elementarpartikler. Det er dog ikke den rigtige Gud, sådan som vi kender ham, for selv om han kan lave mirakler, så er ham her helt sikkert ikke nær så moralsk, forklarer han.

Kilde: http://www.dr.dk/Nyheder/Kultur/2009/11/20/173500.htm

De er skøre de videnskabsmænd (sagde adventistpræsten).

To much annoyance I’ve been singing “Hello, hello” to Serina lately. This is where it comes from…

‘A little bit of disciplined historical imagination is all it takes to blow away enormous piles of so-called historical criticism.’

~ N. T. Wright, “Surprised by Hope” (when arguing that the disciples did not make up the resurrection of Christ).

I taught my girlfriend this word yesterday, and she thought it was the cutest thing ever. Today, she has called me “earthling” numerous times.

“I did not see it at the time, but now I have the privilege of perspective. Whatever happened, it had to happen the way it did. It was God’s plan, and He works everything together for good.”

The preacher who asked us to rip our prayers said a similar thing yesterday as she was reflecting on her inability to have children. Perhaps I missed the point, but she seemed to be claiming that God had suppressed her desire for children because He had greater things in mind for her. Perhaps so.

But this kind of theological reasoning still worries me. It seems we will do everything to preserve the idea that God always gets his will even when the most horrendous and fearful things take place. When my father died, people said two different things to me. ‘It’s never easy to understand at the time,’ some would say, and I immediately picked up the implied suggestion that we would understand it later. Others, however, said something I consider much more comforting, even today, ‘It’s meaningless. It’s totally pointless, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.’ Amen.

The first caring person might have said what he said after having carefully thought about the problem of evil. ‘Surely, there must be a reason for all of this while the fact remains that we cannot see it now.’ The second explanation was way more pastoral, way more empathic. The person didn’t claim to have some kind of special insight about how these things work and made no inference that God willingly killed my Dad to bring about greater things.

The years have passed. Today, I’m a theology student. One might suggest that God killed my Dad to boost the spiritual journey that eventually led me here. The very idea is just appaling. So God killed one pastor in order to shape a new one? This does not comfort at all, it only brings about fear. I certainly hope I’m not going to stand in God’s way of achieving something, because then he might just kill me off. We have thus turned God into some kind of extremely utilitarian deity. “The ends justify the means” only works within boundaries. If a girl is raped and bodily dismembered, would you say it’s okay if it’s simply for “the greater good”?

There are other problems as well. What about the other people who suffered the loss of my father? Perhaps someone else would’ve had greater faith if he had lived? Who knows what might have happened? Even if God knows, we should never claim to have such divine insights. We should stay away from such speculative interpretations of our past or hypothetical present. Our pastors should stop claiming that God intentionally brings about disasters to produce good outcomes. I think it’s more likely that God unwillingly permits disasters and then intervenes to make the most of it. Sometimes, things turn out good in spite of the disaster.

It’s interesting, really, how far we’re willing to go to defend the lie that the will of God always happens. The very nature of sin should tell us that it doesn’t. The existence of the Devil implies that God’s will is not taking place. The prayer “your will be done” proves that it’s not something we should take for granted. So why are we going such great lengths to say that it does? I suspect the Devil is prompting us to blame God for everything.

I’m annoyed with the “common theology” of prayer. One preacher after another seems to be dropping this bomb repeatedly. I’ve heard it from three different preachers now. There might be some truth in it, I guess. Yet, I’m annoyed.

One preacher put it like this: Jesus says that you can ask the mountain to move, and it will move. But what he really wants you to realize is that you should move your mountain from here, the place where you are, to there, the place where God is. You should put yourself aside because prayer is not about you, but about God.

I’ve been told that another preacher said something like this: Why do you pray? Do you really think that you can change God’s mind? He knows everything in advance, and he is in control of everything, so do you really believe that your prayer would make any difference? No, prayer doesn’t work on God, it only works on your own way of thinking.

This evening I encountered yet another preacher who had a few ideas about prayer. After having told the story of Hannah (1 Samuel 1) and how she kept praying until God granted her a son, the preacher told us to lay our deepest desires aside. She literally told us to write them on a piece of paper and rip them into pieces. ‘What is more important, what you desire or the desire for God?’ Apparently, these two things can’t co-exists. (I disagree.)

I don’t know what’s driving these pastors to discourage authentic human prayers, but it really seems to me that that is exactly what they’re doing. Consciously or not, they’re giving people a false and lethal impression that God doesn’t want to listen to their prayers if they concern themselves. I wonder why such preaching has become trendy. Part of it is probably the fine idea that we ought to be more humble and less ego-centred. Nobody would question that. But I also detect a loss of hope. I know how easy it is to give up on praying. For years, I did not see any point in praying for God to do anything. Think about it, can we really change God’s mind?

From the authors of the Bible we get a unanimous “yes, we can”. God is a person, and he has a sequential, humanlike experience of his Creation, including the prayers we offer. That means that your prayers adds to his experience of you in the present. I don’t know why or how this is possible, but that’s how God is described in the Bible. That’s how God has chosen to relate to his creatures. I really wish our pastors would make a turn and come back to that simple truth.

Where are all the preachers that ought to assure us that we may relate to God in authentic personal relationships without limits. It belongs in the past of pious carefulness to say that we should be careful to pray right. The Bible does not try to restrict human experience and conform worship in this sense. I do not believe in a God who asks me to rip my innermost prayers apart. I believe in a God who listens to them like the caring Father God that I know he is.

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