Since the 1940s Canada has witnessed a significant decline in the number of people who attend religious institutions. Specifically, it is young people who are pulling farther away from traditional religious behaviours.

What has led us to question our faith? And should we be concerned by this disillusionment?

For the next three issues of The Uniter, Rev. Jack Duckworth will argue the case for Christianity, coinciding with a number of dialogues he is holding here at the university.

In response, a variety of guest and regular Uniter writers will try to show the wide ranging and passionate opinions that arise when questions of faith are brought to the table.

We want to know how you feel about the social implications of religion. Are we losing something integral to our culture by pulling away? Do we need God? E-mail your ideas to [email protected].

I’m Christian: like me or dislike me, but talk to me ‘cause I’m listening

Rev. Jack Duckworth

Amalia Slobogian’s ideas in last week’s Uniter: that doubt is humbling, that our intellect must be engaged and that we must ask the big questions, are all immensely important. Christians are well advised to hear her argument. Mindless, biased ideals endanger our personal understanding of Jesus, faith and Scripture.

However Christian faith recognizes that Jesus came to destroy religion. The Gospels record the authorities’ repeated efforts to control Jesus through religious legal arguments. They failed. Screw-ups in today’s church occur because the church makes the same mistake. Jesus offers freedom from such confinement and replaces it with a responsible, loving, grace-based relationship with Him. Allegory on the other hand, generally illustrates the facts, and centuries of scholarly scrutiny demonstrate there is a great deal of authentic truth throughout the Bible. Regardless, God’s people still screw up and this is why we need God.

Slobogian is correct. When a narrow view of faith in Christ pretentiously asserts one can confine God to a neat package like me + God = good times, this attitude compares to the empty vacuum of non-belief. So the question arises, how can we know God? The answer, in part, comes out of fact, faith and feeling.

The facts include knowing that God loves you (1 John 2:5), forgives you (Acts 13:38) and invites you to belong to him (1 Pet 2:9). We come to terms with this through an act of faith that confesses and believes in what God has done (Rom 10:9-10).

This journey is derailed because we break away from God. Christian communities can limit God to their bias, and, like atheism, offer a spiritual vacuum and diminish hope. So what direction can we take? Our response is to have faith in Jesus Christ because he took the initiative to fully open the door to God (John 14:6, Acts 4:12 and 10:43). The feeling or experience of God becomes real as we allow His Holy Spirit to dwell within us (Acts 8:15-17). Does this sound hokey?

Think further. God is not an imaginary friend. Intellectual skepticism and the Bible both reject this idea (Jer. 9:23-24 and 2 Cor. 10:5). Instead, let’s look outside our personal limited capacity and begin a spiritual journey towards a living knowledge of God – on his terms. These terms begin with his personal love, forgiveness and a living sense of presence in us. He initiates this connection. “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me (Rev 3:20).” The invitation stands.

Like it, dislike it, but think about it. The living God is neither a fable nor ours to contrive and confine. An active, inquiring mind can reach outside itself to discover the need for God. The invitation stands.

Rev. Jack Duckworth is the pastor of First Presbyterian Church Winnipeg and is available as volunteer chaplain at the U of W Thursdays from 12 to 3:30 p.m. He will be conducting a series of dialogues on Christianity during the free period from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. for the next two Wednesdays, Feb. 4 and Feb. 11. Look for posters in the university indicating the room in which these lectures will be held.

 

“ How does one navigate a text that was written in a culture more than 2000 years ago?

Sourcing the Bible doesn’t make it truth

Joe Kornelsen

When defending the merits and importance of Christianity it is almost always from the Bible that evidence is given. Thus we must determine the veracity of the material to come to any conclusion on the subject of Christianity.

The Catholic Bible, from which the Protestant Bible was later derived, was first canonized not by Jesus nor by his most passionate apostle, Paul, but by a council of bishops at the end of the fourth century AD. This is a disturbing starting point. It could be argued that divine intervention played a role in the decision, but this can only be trusted about as far as one can trust that the Medici family became popes due to religious merit rather than their desire to extend their power.

But if we assume that this canon would be acceptable to Jesus, how do we trust the content? Theological development over 1500 years has been based off of notoriously poor translations like the Latin Vulgate and the English King James Bible. The culmination of this theology is what learned pastors preach to their congregations who lack the time to investigate every nuance of the Bible themselves.

But individuals do study the bible. And in the 21st century Bible translations are far better than they ever have been. But how does one navigate a text that was written in a culture more than 2000 years ago? It is impossible to find words and concepts that transcend such different cultures. As a simple example consider the concept ‘hunger.’ Now consider it as if you were in famine-wracked Ethiopia. Can the language of the considerably more complex doctrines of Christianity overcome the cultural differences between present day Canada and first century Judea? I doubt it.

So how does the average person find his way around a post-reformation world where religion is regularly considered a personal experience? Christianity today puts a lot of emphasis on one-on-one prayer with God. We’ll have to do some self-reflection.

There are about a billion Christians in the world. Thus there are about five billion non-Christians. Presumably many of these people have heard about Christianity yet have not converted to the faith. To these people Christianity doesn’t make sense.

The argument often goes that without religion we would not have morality – this may be true. I feel that I have a fairly strong sense of what is right and wrong, but I also grew up in the church; I can’t claim the two are independent. But if 20 years of church gave me morality, it did not give me the ability to rationalize the existence of the Christian God over any other god. I believe that if the stakes are heaven or hell it is only just that God created not only me but also all non-Christians in order to make sense. If I cannot choose a religion rationally, then what other means do I have?

God or gods may very well exist, but at best we can only have faith. If God provides a person with a mind that reasons yet puts himself beyond reason, then religion is merely a gamble and according to my morality that doesn’t seem just.

Joe Kornelsen is a beat reporter for The Uniter and is atheist, agnostic, or moderate Christian depending on the time of day.

Published in Volume 63, Number 18 of The Uniter (January 29, 2009)