Randomness-Providence

What one person sees as providence, another sees as randomness.

Two different people with two different backgrounds of experiences can look at the exact same data and draw opposite conclusions; and they can do that consistently. It may be results from experiments designed to test a hypothesis or it may be interpreting life happenings -- one person will see a pattern, or a potential for one, as evidence of an superior intelligence and designer, and the other will deny that there even a remote possibility. One will see the divine providence of God; the other will see randomness without indication of any outside deity whatsoever. One already know that there was a God behind it all; one already knew that there was no such thing. They have one thing in common -- both found a confirmation of what they had already known to be true before any new observations were made.

In the first three chapters of Romans, Paul describes three major humanistic efforts for people getting "beyond" themselves and what a mess each one had become. First, he describes those who substitute the created for the Creator; they refuse to see who is behind the creation, and they glorify natural things that they can understand. Paul said they refuse to believe the obvious evidence for the Creator in the universe and make their own gods from whatever is physically available to them. Second, Paul says that the intellectualism of man will fail. Third, Paul addresses the Jews and they do the same things that they legalistically condemn others for doing. Every human effort falls short, and the only way out of the sinful mess is through Jesus Christ.

Romans 1:18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, (19) since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. (20) For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities -- his eternal power and divine nature -- have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. (21) For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. (22) Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools.

Is the problem just that these people described in these verses couldn't recognize God in the ingenious intricacies of nature, but they could have been convinced of a Creator God if someone would have only pointed these wonders out to them? Just show them the function of an eye; just tell them about a 6000 year old earth with ready-made geological strata that look billions of years old; just show them the delicate balance of nature and how fragile our existence is. Then, surely, they will say, "Oh! I didn't know that. There must be a God behind all of this." Surely if they were to know of the condemnation that awaits them, they would repent and see God as the Creator. Just tell them -- and be ready to add more church pews. Just tell them -- and read the judgment and wrath act to them -- they'll repent then!

No, the passages in Romans tell us that these people have been through this process; they have the data in front of them; and they still do not believe. They can see the things in nature that point to God, and they say that it is all random. They have been presented all the evidence -- the same evidence that Paul said pointed to the divine nature of God -- and draw a completely different conclusion -- let's worship a bird instead, or a graven image, or maybe even the highest form of the natural realm -- the glory and pride of human intelligence. Creator, providence, divine nature -- it's all been seen and evaluated and rejected as valid evidence for anything created because everything is random. What Paul is saying is that just because you give them more and more arguments about the same thing -- "here, let me show you more about God's handiwork in the universe" -- the more they will reject what you say, because their mind has already been made up. Their published view is the reverse -- the universe is okay; handiwork is random; and therefore God doesn't exist. But the reality is that unbelievers start their so-called objective investigations with the premise that God doesn't exist -- just like believers start with the premise that God does exist.

But, there's a problem here. Christians and church organizations think the battle is against science and evolution and Darwin because when Christian young people learn about these things, many of them doubt their traditional beliefs and many abandon the faith. The church has called prey to an illusion of the enemy, and the church has left behind the armor of the Lord and is fighting it's own shadow with water balloons and toothpicks while the real enemy is behind us eating our lunch.

Go ahead and tell them about the water residue sediments on top of mountains; tell them about six 24 hour days; tell them about anything that Christians have convinced themselves that points to God. It doesn't matter to unbelievers -- they look at the same data that show the hand of God to a believer and they say, "Random." So, what do we do? Instead of getting smarter, we get louder with the same thing. And we find that all that does is to generate more resistance and counter-movement. So, what is there to do? Will they be convinced by more arguments? More experiments? More data? Louder talk? Debates? Laws? Condemnation? More of the same, and same of the more? If we were working in science and if something wasn't producing definitive data that showed anything of a conclusive nature, and we had to keep repeating the same experiments over and over, we would look for a different approach to the problem. Should believers do that here?

The Tale of Two Turfs (an A-slop fable)

There once was a baseball team, and they played their games in a big, fancy, domed stadium with all the latest projection and video electronics and Internet broadcast -- everything you could ask or imagine. There were signs around that said, "Put on the whole armor of the baseball suit -- the cap of winning games, the catcher's vest of good sportsmanship, the belt of the rulebook, feet covered with endorsed Nike's knowing when to run, the shield of being the best there is, holding the bat of the home run spirit, and the ball of team power." What a team! Each player worked together in a coordinated way so that the team was without defeat -- until the internal competition broke out. "I'm better than you are." "My bat is shaped like a long tongue and your's isn't." "I could strike you out anytime I wanted to." "Not likely -- you don't even have on the right colored jersey." "Oh, yeah? Well, you can just go ....... " So the team built many dugouts, so that each team subgroup could operate out of their own interpretations of the game. Many times the subgroups wouldn't operate as a team, but individual subgroups went and tried to play baseball games using only their group. It didn't go so well. They just couldn't stand the idea of putting the big team back together, so they blamed each other for the problems. No one took care of the stadium, so entropy took its toll and the stadium began to collapse. People left the stands and went to another game. The field was covered with garbage and litter that had been thrown around. The place was in a shambles.

With attendance and revenues down, some younger members of the team subgroups began to leave and go over to another stadium. Some subgroups decided to go over to the other stadium and win all the games and get back their previous attendance and revenue. After all, their own stadium has been so compromised by division and chaos that it was hard to even finish a game when playing there. So, they brought what they had left of a few torn uniforms and some splintered bats and went to play on the other people's field.

But, the game being played on that field was called football, and the ball was thrown or kicked and not hit with a bat. The baseball subgroups tried to hit the football with their bats. Some of the subgroups even cooperated with one another a little bit, since they now had a common enemy instead of themselves. The football would be tossed in the air and it was just random as to who caught it. The baseball team said the landing spot of the football was by design and providence; the football referees, however, always ruled "Random!" Someone would catch the football (and therefore the ball would touch the runner), and the baseball team would say, "He's out! He's out! We win!" The referee of the football game would say, "What game rules do you think you're playing by? In this game, that's a touchdown."

What has happened here?

The baseball team started with power of unity that overcame all opposition. But, once the god of human nature began to invade the team, the power of unity was broken up by division and chaos resulting from the operations of pride, selfishness, and competitiveness. The stadium showed the lack of energy as entropy built up. The baseball subgroups found it easier to change and play on a different field than to clean up the mess they had made in their own field. So, they abandoned their own game, their own stadium, their own turf, and their own playing tools that they had been once so empowered to use, and they went over to play a different game, within a different stadium, on someone else's turf, with different rules enforced by different referees, and using skills they were not as good at, and before a hostile crowd of witnesses. The baseball team has set itself up for failure because it cannot handle its own internal division and strife.

What would have made for a better ending?

What if the baseball team players were committed to working together in team harmony and unity out of respect for all that the team and stadium owner had done for them? What if they cared for one another the same as the owner had cared for them? What if they worked together so well that the team became so good that it just overcame everything. The attendance grew and the revenue and the stadium because everything was done in a spirit of unity in the bond of peace.

People from the football stadium would come over and watch the baseball team. "We recognize that everything at our football stadium is random, but over here there is purpose and design and direction for your game. We see the outcome of that difference in the way you treat and help one another. We see the difference in your relationship with one another in your dugout and in your groups and in your families. We see joy and gladness and quality of life. What do you baseball people have that we football people don't have? Do you have different rules?"

"Well, first of all we need to tell you about our owner. We have Mr. Divine Providence as an owner of our team, not Mr. Chance Randomness. We see Divine Providence in everything that happens in our stadium. Sometimes it's a matter of choice; sometimes its hard to tell the difference between owners. But we choose to believe in Divine Providence, which you don't do in that other stadium, but you are now bearing witness to the difference it makes in our team and in our lives."

"I like what I see. Tell me about Mr. Providence. Can you teach me to play baseball?"

"Sure. The real name of Mr. Providence is Jesus Christ. Let's start there."

What is the application of this fable to the church?

It's probably obvious that the baseball team is the universal church and the stadium is the heavens and the earth that God has given to the church. The power of the Holy Spirit works through the unity of the team to overcome evil with good. But humanistic elements creep in, and the team begins to show natural, fleshly behaviors, resulting in division, chaos, and loss of power. The church divides into denominations and non-denominations and non-non-denominations, etc. which bicker and separate. The power of the Holy Spirit is shattered as the unity in the body of Christ is shattered. It gets to a point where no subgroup has the power to do anything about it, and no one can return to unity with other groups, so they're stuck. It's easier to relocate the game than it is to rebirth the team. So the players abandon their own turf to play on someone else's. But football isn't a game they play well, so they are always taking the big hits.

So what are some choices for the church?

No.

[1] They can continue to be in denial that there is a problem and they can pretend that they are winning the football game, even while their own resources are being used up and their team is slipping away. "You shall not surely die."

[2] Each subgroup can continue to interpret the rule book in such a way that only they are correct and everyone else is either wrong or substandard as baseball players. Division is maintained.

[3] They can stay and continue to play on the football field under the illusion that if they yell loudly enough they will convince the football team in that football stadium to play baseball, instead.

Yes.

[1] They can return to their stadium and clean it up and start playing the game they were intended to play.

[2] They can play in unity and love for one another that their unity is a witness for the unity of the Son and the Father.

[3] By their changed lives, and by the changed behavior of the entire group -- in unity -- not divided, not chaotic -- others will see and change their minds about the validity of the Christian message. Once that change in life is desired by an unbeliever, Jesus can be shared without having to argue the message. The alternative doesn't work.

How does this apply to Randomness/Divine Providence (and expanded - to unbelievers and believers)?

It has been repeatedly shown by human psychologists (Jonathan Haidt, "The Righteous Mind") that people rarely change their minds because of intellectual, logical arguments alone. It is cognition vs. intuition; Haidt likens it to a rider and an elephant. The elephant is in charge of the direction and the rider's job is to justify with logic as to why the elephant went that way. People, including scientists, make moral decisions based more on intuition than cognition. Cognition's job is to justify what we already think we intuitively know, even though we might not always be able to defend logically why we think that way. Haidt says to convince someone else to make a moral change, you have to approach them through intuition -- through people relationships -- before they will listen to logical arguments. You can argue the logic all day long, and all it serves to do is further entrench the defenses around the intuitive decision they have already made. The Bible calls this the mind and the heart, with the heart being the seat of inner emotions. We like to think our mind is on control, but we are greatly controlled by the heart. When we first year of something or think of someone, our hearts have already sent a message to our minds before the first thought if formed -- it is positive or negative -- it is favorable or it is judgmental. And the mind takes it from there. Ann Graybiel at MIT has shown that memories are stored in the basal ganglia that become like "reflex thoughts." The first thing that comes to mind that then forms the environment for cognition. Our reason therefore starts in a sea of presuppositions from our past experiences, engrained in our minds.

Anyone who thinks their cerebral cortex is in total control of their decisions and evaluations and that they don't have preconceptions that influence, even dictate, their thinking is kidding themselves. Why else is it that people look at the same data and draw opposite conclusions, with each conclusion being the same as what they thought before? Scientists using an supposedly objective statistical evaluation of a hypothesis-driven scientific methodology have preconceptions about how the results will turn out -- especially if their preconceptions are intuition-driven. "I know those creationists are wrong, therefore ....." Are scientists who have opposite presuppositions any different? "I know God created the earth in 6x24hr days, therefore ...... No prejudice? No data selection at all? No elimination of "outliers?" Just straight objectivity leading to the truth and nothing but the truth? Let's get real!

So, how are Christians and theologians any different? Certainly there is a truth behind scripture just as there is a truth behind the natural universe, but the same bias of preconceptions affect interpretations of the scripture. And people have the hypocritical nerve to judge and condemn one another based on different interpretations which are already intuitively biased before the scripture is even studied. Many scientist unbelievers won't even listen to arguments from scripture because (1) they already "know" that what scriptures says doesn't exist, and (2) they see no compelling reason to respect the behavior and lifestyle of most Christians. And that identifies the problem.

Why do Christians leave their game and go over and battle the world of unbelievers on their own turf? Because it's easier than cleaning up the mess on their own turf -- the fractured, divided body of Christ. So Christians go onto the unbeliever's turf and try to play the intellectual game - arguing their case, trying to find fault with scientific experiments that seem to support evolution or Darwin or randomness -- trying to devise their own experiments that might show some result that might indicate otherwise. Who are we trying to convince other than people who already have their minds made up? And we try to approach the battle with intellectual arguments that mostly serve to offend unbelievers because many of the arguments are unreasonable and unsupported. And, in so doing, Christians leave behind a church in chaos that Christ established to illuminate light on the very answer to the problem -- the very thing that would communicate the value of faith to unbelievers. People change their moral minds because of intuitive input, and Christians cannot use that channel because the organized church today has totally messed it up.

So, representatives of a fractured church venture over to the world's turf and accomplish little to nothing, and they blame Satan or those atheists or quote Romans 1:18ff for their lack of progress. And they try to do battle over laws and textbooks and politics. And, more and more, they get rebuffed. What else should be expected?

Where is the turf of the church? What are the weapons of the church? How does the church overcome evil with good? What channel of communication would reach the world -- unbelievers -- atheists -- the young people in the church who are leaving? The answer is only too obvious; it's easy to say, but seems impossible for Christians to do.

People are reached through their intuitive reasoning, not cognitive reasoning. Intuitive reasoning is driven by emotional memory of past experiences that form our preconceptions, which are our first cognitive thoughts. These old engrams are slow to change because they are deeply buried in our consciousness. They will not be argued out. They will change when they are replaced by newer and better intuitive memories. Change is be observing and experiencing human relationships. Arguing about Jesus is a lot easier than living like Jesus. The church is good at the first, but it continues to fail miserably at the second.

Until the church lives like Jesus and demonstrates what that looks like in the community of believers, all the gum-beating about a creator, about a God of the universe, about being saved from sin, about divine providence will continue to sound like resounding gongs and clanging cymbals.

Recently there was a public debate between someone arguing for the validity of the Christian view of God and someone arguing that there is no God. It was generally concluded that the Christian won the debate over the atheist, because the right things were countered and answered and the right points were made for which the atheist had insufficient answer. But that was from a technical perspective. The facial expressions of the audience began to visibly change, however, when the rhetoric from the New Atheism thinking began to be spouted -- blaming Christians for child abuse, abortion bombings, wars, suffering of the poor and oppressed -- just about everything that could be put under a category of "evil." The "tone" of the debate shifted. Why does nonsense like this even gain traction? Why don't objective people say, "The church doesn't do that. The church is about good things. I don't believe in a God, but even I know that." Because the church is failing in overcoming evil with good. The church is too busy infighting and splitting into factions that are trying to overcome one another. As a result, the church has little to say that fits into communication channels reaching the intuitive reasoning of people -- people's hearts -- that would convince them to change their attitudes about the church or about Jesus. New Atheism uses the intuitive reasoning channel against the church more effectively than the church can use it for good. New Atheists are more united in purpose than is the Lord's church.

Randomness or divine providence? Show me your providence by showing me how a divine relationship affects the relationships you have one for another. Can't do that? Too busy fighting and dividing and competing? Looks like randomness to me.

What would a church living in the relationship modeled by Jesus Christ look like? It would be a group of people who are living in a manner and behavior that is different from the world, and the outcome is so much better that what the world has, the world comes and asks. They are reached by the intuitive reasoning by seeing relationship.

[1] The church would live in a relationship of unity. Jesus prayed "May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me." (John 17:23). Vote with your feet. Vote with you pocketbook. Christians have acted more like immature, independent, revolutionaries than slaved of Jesus Christ under submission to an omnipotent God. Members say, "If we don't get this, we'll leave and go somewhere else." Leadership says, "Go ahead. You'll be happier somewhere else." There have been many surveys, written or videoed, when people on the street have been randomly asked if they thing Christians are unified or divided. Even more than overwhelmingly, the world says Christians are divided and infighting. If Christians don't know what unity is or when they might have reached it, maybe they could consult with the world.

[2] The church would live in peace and forgiveness. Jesus left His peace, not the peace that the world has (John 14:27). In the peace of Christ, Christians would forgive one another as God through Christ has forgiven them. Christians would reconcile differences as God reconciled us to him through Christ. The world would see relationships in the church and say, "You guys really handle your conflicts well; you get along and stay productive and united. Your conflicts sure turn out a lot better than ours do. How do you do that?"

[3] The church would live in the love of Christ toward one another. Jesus said, "A new command I give you. Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." (John 13:34-35).

What is "the church" that the world sees -- politicians, atheists, the "unchurched," unbelievers, agnostics, humanists, people of religions other than Christianity, people that are "just too busy," etc. The witness they receive is from the universal church -- every institution that calls itself "Christian" -- Catholic, Protestant, non denominational, Independent, large, small, mega, or mini -- all of them together. It doesn't matter what one group thinks of another; we are talking about what the world observes as the church, as the believers in Christ -- which is all the groups. So, when we speak of "the church" in this setting, we are referring to the church as the world sees it. (How does God view the church -- the way the world sees the church or the way the church wants to see itself? Doesn't the way the church views itself, with 1000 different parts each claiming they are the true church, seems like an excuse to justify division?)

If the world were to make an evaluation of the universal church in certain key areas, how might that go?

On the scale of response in the following areas, what number from 0 (poorest) to 10 (best) would you select?

What's the point? If the average of the answers to the first 11 questions were taken as the answer to the last question, what type of credibility in the eyes of unbelievers would the church have to even "weigh in" on the question of randomness vs. providence? Until the universal church proves itself to be a living example of the outcome of God's divine providence, the church will have little credibility as a witness in this area (and many other areas, as well).

The church, or believers within the church, can work on all kinds of ideas and proposals that seem, to them, to be academic, analytic, intellectual, logical, foundational, and therefore true that answer questions regarding the material, physical, natural universe that will be rejected by unbelievers before believers even begin to speak. Why? Because it is all aimed at the cognitive reasoning level and not at the intuitive reasoning level of thinking. The intuition level, as "measured" above, is not consistent with the intellectual presentation. Why else would unbelievers so frequently apply the term "hypocrite" to Christians.

"I'd rather see a sermon than hear one, any day." "Show me something first, and then maybe I'll listen to you."

Until the universal church that Jesus prayed for in John 17 gets it together in love, peace, and unity so that the world can see what living in Jesus looks like, the church will have _______ (compromised, little, no [choose one]) credibility to the world.

Given the above, what should the church be doing?

[1] Realize that unity comes from a choice, and unity among all the factions of the body of Christ must be given a higher priority than competitiveness. Also realize that unity as a goal in itself produces uniformity; real unity is of the Spirit when the Lord Jesus Christ is first -- in action, not just in lip service. If anyone doesn't understand what that means, ask an unbeliever for a definition.

[2] Educate Christians, starting with pastors, elders, and church leaders, with enough information about science and the natural realm so they can recognize that all the evidence for evolution, 13.7 billion year universe, big bang, randomness, the human brain and "God-spots" or anything else are simply data from the natural creation that do not threatened, but in fact are compatible with, a belief in a creator God. The data usually aren't the problem; the person's interpretation is where the bias of preconceptions come in. Unbelievers are in a box they have made for themselves. There is a limit to what they can accept as even existing -- it has to be observable and testable by the scientific method.

That's fine as far as it goes, but Christians have a wider bandwidth of revelation. So, let the church show in its corporate life how much difference that additional bandwidth of information makes, with an outcome that communicates through the intuitive reasoning channel. This is the only way to validate the position of believers.

[3] Christians need to stop taking their little twigs of scientific data, that are used to support conclusions about a 6x24hour day creation as well as other old traditional Sunday school stories, and going over to the unbeliever's scientific turf and trying to battle the unbelievers when they have 99.9% of the valid, testable, experimental data to work with. This is not a winnable battle, because it is not the turf the church is supposed to fight on. The church is supposed to invade the world's turf while wearing the armor of God (and notice there is one armor, not a 1000 replicas), and not when carrying a file of weak scientific data of questionable validity. All this does is bring further reproach on the body of Christ and to discredit the intellectual honesty of the education within the church that is given to its young people. These young people will eventually find out the difference, and many will question their faith because their faith has been linked to old interpretations that represent tradition much more than to truth. These traditional interpretations are embedded within the intuitive reasoning neuronal circuitry of their basal ganglia and when these old beliefs get challenged and uprooted, the new ones to replace them may not involve faith.

[4] Believers within the church need to get their spiritual vision attuned to the right battle, the right battlefield location, and the real enemy. The enemy is not science; it is not scientists; it is not atheists; it is not public education; it is not evolution; it is not an "old earth." In the verses describing the armor of God (Eph. 6:10-18) Paul said, "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms." So our battle to overcome evil with good (Rom. 12:21) is not against "flesh and blood" monkeys (as in "evolved from"); it is not against the people who say "monkeys"; it isn't even against the people who say "monkey, yes--God, no." The battle we fight does not involved leading "The Crusades" against the tyranny of science and evolution and marching over to the turf of the world with our human-fashioned weapons. One spiritual battle is within ourselves -- the tendency to react to humanism with responses of more humanistic approaches that do not bring glory to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

[5] Pastors and church leaders need to not only allow, but actively recruit and support, the involvement of credible scientists, who are believers and committed to Jesus, to help instruct their congregational members in connecting scientific data and biblical interpretation. Christians need to understand that the truth is not served by bending interpretations or selecting data to make some scientific findings fit with some narrow biblical interpretation. The biblical understanding of many Christians is images from years ago when they were putting animal stickers on a page representing the 6th 24 hour day of the week of creation in 4004 BC -- just like their children do now.

[6] Unity reflects divine providence; division reflects randomness. A church composed of body parts that all point to Jesus in such an overwhelming way that their individual differences are molded into complementary strengths testified to divine providence and design. A church composed of body parts that say all the only way to Jesus is through them and no other part, who compete between themselves for attention and resources, and who functionally place themselves in higher importance than the Lord Jesus, while hypocritically claiming otherwise, has every appearance of chaos and randomness.

Which image of God does the world receive --one of divine providence or one of randomness?