What if I don’t experience the God I’m supposed to believe in? (Zack Eswine, Author, Speaker, Pastor Founder “Sage Christianity”)

[Music] This presentation was recorded at English Libry, where regular public lectures are held to explore questions about the reality and relevance of Christianity. For more lectures, head to www.liberiideaslibrary.org, where more than 2,000 lectures and discussions are available to explore. Tonight, we have Zach, S.Y. coming all the way from the states from St. Louis, Missouri. I'm very excited to talk to you too. And we know there was a journey from Oxford, I was supposed to be able to open an hour, turn out to be four hours, so well done. Thank you very much. I feel like this would be a bucket list moment for me. Do you know this word bucket list? Something that you would dream, a place you would dream of being before you pass away on this side of things and standing here with you was such a dream for me. I know of you and your community through many friends and we feel very thankful to be here with you. I feel grateful to learn as well as hope to be of an encouragement to you. And so I'm a pastor in St. Louis. I've been serving the church there for 18 years and they very kindly allow us to come to the UK for one month each year. And we just say that we're coming and we serve wherever we can and we listen, we take notes and we learn. And so we feel grateful for that. I'd love to say a prayer and then talk about together what if I don't experience the God I believe in? And so let's say a prayer Lord, not all of us here know what to make of trying to put language together and speak to you. But each of us here has a longing for something that matters, something of significance that would be true and worthwhile, satisfying and good. We ask that you would hear our prayer spoken and unspoken and that you would draw near to us as we desire to be near to you. We ask that in your name, amen. There's so much to say about experience and so much to say about experiencing God and so much to say about why we don't experience God that we can't possibly speak to everything tonight. But I do want to think about a particular question about love and I'd like to think about love in ways that are much more ordinary than we're accustomed to thinking. And maybe there'll be some clues about experiencing God or what we might do or think or feel. If we aren't experiencing the God we believe in. I'd like to start with a quote from Alex O'Connor whom you may have heard of. He's a well-known influencer who has been a well-known atheist who recently would say he's more agnostic and would say he wishes Christianity was true. Though he can't believe it, he wish it were true. And I find him to be a very thoughtful conversation partner, though I've never had a conversation with him as I listen to him talking with others. I find him a very thoughtful, engaging person. And he was asked a question, what would it take to turn the dial? That's what it was. What would it take for him to believe in God in general, Jesus in particular? And he said this, quote, "I often hear people describe that they just suddenly feel the presence of love, that they just suddenly somehow recognize that they're unconditionally loved. I mean, obviously you know I spend time with friends and family. And I think, 'Oh, that's really nice. I feel like they love me.' But you hear this description, even just fleetingly, somebody feeling an unconditional love that's right vague. But I mean, I'm not asking for too much,' he says. I'm not asking to spell it out in the sky or anything. But something like that, I think, would be quite powerful, especially if it came at the end of a long reflection on the gospels, or I've been having a religious debate, or we've had this conversation. And if I left this room, and suddenly I just felt almost like I was high for a minute, inexplicably, and it was distinctly this feeling of like, 'I'm loved unconditionally by someone, or something,' that would be the kind of thing that I think would move the dial. He says just a bit earlier than that. He says, 'I think it's to be expected, but that if I were to be convinced to start following any religion or a person like Jesus, it's probably going to be experiential.' I think that's no less true for me than any other person. That's remarkable for a person who regularly engages ideas intellectually to say that at the end of the day, what would help him or change him, would be an experience of unconditional love with God. And he's expressing what it's like not to experience a God he doesn't believe in. But I think I have a real resonance with his talk. And I think many people who do believe in Jesus or believe in God, many people might have the same feeling. I wish I had an experience with God. I don't experience the God I believe in. To think about that together, I would like to look at three basic thoughts that from a Christian point of view, hinder our ability to have experience of God and His love. There are many more. The fallen world, the kinds of pain and sorrow and anxiety we can have are multiple. I'm a person of anxiety who's known depression. I have a melancholy temperament who can become afraid in ways that I can't fully explain. So there's a lot to say, but I'd like to begin in a strange place, perhaps. And I'd like to suggest that if we were wanting to look at why our experience with God is hindered or what might it take to have an experience of God's love, I would like to first think about language as a gift of God's unconditional love. Now again, I'm coming from a Christian point of view. I recognize there's a lot of assumptions underneath what I'm saying. I'm assuming God just by the statement. I recognize that. But language itself, and here's what I mean. There's a moment in the life of Jesus in which the gospel writers tell us he sent 72 people out to talk of him. These are his original students. And when those 72 students came back, they were jubilant. And they said, I'd be wild, be fluttle in thing. They said, Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name. Now that's a whole subject in itself. The assumption of the supernatural, the assumption that the supernatural isn't merely benevolent. But there's malevolence in the supernatural, all of those kinds of questions. But Jesus then says something fascinating, I think. I saw Satan. This is what Jesus says. I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Now what I'd like to point out isn't the question of Satan. It isn't the question of Jesus talking as if he's existed before time. But his language, I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. It's that part I want to look at. Why didn't Jesus say I saw Satan fall from heaven? Why did he say like lightning? Why the simile? Imagine how the simile makes a difference. He could have said, I I saw Satan fall like a feather from heaven. He could have said, "I saw Satan fall like a spring rain from heaven. I saw Satan fall like a blizzard snow from heaven. I saw Satan fall like a piece of hail from heaven. It's something, isn't it, that the, the simile, the poetic bit, isn't supplement mental? It actually changes the meaning, informs the meaning. It's actually a way of reasoning with us. I saw Satan fall like lightning. This would mean his students would need caution. It would be something like they come back and say, "We've seen your power over demons and they're hooping and hollering with jubilation." And Jesus is saying, "Careful." I saw Satan fall like lightning. What is lightning? Jagged electricity. How would you put it? Deceptive illumination. Dangerous light. I saw Satan fall like jagged electricity. Dangerous light. Be thankful, Jesus says to his students that your names are written in the book of light. It's this language that I'm curious about. See us Lewis in his essay on the language of religion. He says there are three kinds of language, scientific, ordinary, and poetic. He says we need all three. Scientific is the language of precision. I'm very thankful, my third child has a peanut allergy. And we hope for precision with the Epipen. And those who used language to create the Epipen were precise. Precision, we need it. Ordinary language, Jesus wept. It took us four hours to get to Oxford when it should have only taken an hour and a half. Ordinary language. See us Lewis says that as necessary as both of those kinds of language are, neither can neither one can give us the experience of a thing. Only poetic talk can give us the experience of a thing. We're talking now about experiencing God and not experiencing God. And we're now hinting at something about language and the kind of language that functions for experience and the kind of language that does not. It's limited in its capacity to aid experience. And we're saying that scientific language, ordinary language, and poetic speech are all necessary, but only one of them has the resources to provide, facilitate, experience. I think of it this way as a professor of a seminary and a student from Africa coming to St. Louis, Missouri for the very first time and it's October, November. And the student from Africa has the warmest clothes they have on. We call it toboggan or a beanie or a hat and a coat. And what you want to say is that this is only October, November, January's coming, but this dear person has never experienced that. So you try scientific language. I'll use it in Fahrenheit. Sorry Jack. It's a Jack L. Interpret for me. It's a you can interpret for me. But. That's right. That's it. Right. That's it. So the ordinary language for our dear African friend, it's going to get colder. It's going to get very, very cold. Doesn't communicate the experience of the thing. If you say it's going to get down to three degrees Fahrenheit with a wind chill of minus nine. That makes no sense. There's no ability to make meaning of that language, even though I'm telling the truth and being precise. And so I must say something like this. Here's my attempt. Right. When the cold wind with its frozen air and frosted snow begins to blur down upon you, your entire body will shiver and shake like when you've had the worst of fever. Your breath will turn into white smoke. Your hair on your skin will rise up and bumps will intrude all over you. On the most frozen of days, the hairs within your nose will harden and crack. You'll be like a man with a pack of wolves bearing down upon him, who grabs a broken tree branch from the ground and tries to hide behind it. You'll need something thicker and sturdier than that if you hope to keep the teeth marks off you. One way of trying to get the experience of a thing, poetic speech functions that way. Think about this, how we know this from experience ourselves. In the country that I come from, there's Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. African American, outrageously standing for rights, dignity, for people of color. And he had a famous speech. And you could imagine if he stood up on that speech that day and he said, "I have a plan. I have a strategy." But what did he say for those of you who don't know? I have a dream. I feel the difference, don't you? There's something about language of imagination that enables us to have experience. I think it's interesting along these lines, among the many examples we could look at in the Bible itself. I'll just choose one. It's in Luke chapter 1, the historian Luke. He's in the first verses 3 to 5. He's writing to a person called Theophilus. And he says this, "It seemed good to me having followed all things closely for some time past to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus. And then Luke tells us why he's writing. That you may have certainty about the things which you've been taught. So Luke is writing to this person to let that person have certainty about his questions regarding Christianity. Now when I hear that someone wants me to be certain of my faith, I think I'm expecting a certain kind of language. From the environment that I've come from, I would expect some type of logical deduction. But listen to what Luke says, I'm writing that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught. In the days of Herod, King of Judea, there was a priest named Zachariah of the division of Abidja, and he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. He wants me to be certain of the faith. So he begins to tell me a story. There was a man. There was a woman. Her name was Elizabeth. It's a true story, as Luke believes it and tells it to us. But it's a story nonetheless, narrative talk for our certainty. There's something about poetic speech that has to do with experience. If you were to say, ask a philosopher or a theologian, who is God? They will use words like omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence and corporality. But if you ask Jesus, who is God? He'll say things like this. God is like a shepherd. God is like a woman searching for a coin. God is like a father. God is like a gardener. God is like a door, bread, light. God is like a woman baking bread. God in his kingdom is like a seed that grows into a thriving tree of shade and fruit. God is like a fisherman gathering fish with nets. God is like a bridegroom inviting you to a wedding feast. God is like an owner of a vineyard who gives good work more and more than fair pay. in his kingdom, we're like a mother hen, gathering her chicks. God is like an immigrant. God is like one without food. God is like one without clothes. God is like one who's in jail, one who's sick. God is like a property owner. God is like a good king. God is like a skilled doctor. God is like water. God is like a feeder of birds, a caretaker of flowers. God is like a businessman, settling accounts. God is like a good and fair judge. God is like a landowner whose workers revolted and killed his messengers, including his son. God is like a lost treasure in a field that will give you more joy than anything you possess. God is like a king with an army, bringing judgment. All metaphor, similarly, poetic description of God. If I say God is omnipotent, all powerful, God can be meaningful. But if I say God is like an eagle underneath whose wings you are held, something happens. It's the function of the language. It's the language of experience. My, there was a young girl in our church, church, 4th or 5th grade. So that's like 12 years old. And she went away to a summer camp with our church. And she came back an atheist. And so that's not exactly what we were hoping for from our Christian point of view. And she came back and she said, science has made God irrelevant. And so she came lovely and courageous young girl asking to sit with me and with Jessica. She came to our house, Jessica baked chocolate chip cookies. And we thought about the question of science making God irrelevant. Now, how could we approach such a question? Well, I could approach it by some type of appeal to some kind of evidence, which could be important. Did you know there are scientists who are followers of Jesus, scientists who are believers in God? We could talk along those lines. I could address epistemological assumptions. Sciences made God irrelevant. And so we could talk about ways of knowing apart from science, like her enjoyment of chocolate chip cookies. And so when we asked her hinting in this direction, how do you know you like chocolate? She said, duh, everybody loves chocolate, you know? And we could press in on her epistemology of knowing chocolate. We could philosophically point out a self-refuting statement. Science has made God irrelevant. Refutes itself because no scientific method can make that claim. But instead, as we sat here, I noticed that she was covered with all kinds of wonderful fashion. And so I asked her about it. She was really excited about it. And she talked about Japanese fashion. And she told me all about what every bit of fashion meant to her. As she talked about her friends coming to her birthday party and whether she would invite a certain boy or not. And all of those things, right? And so at some point, I risked a question. And the question was this, do you think you might consider God kind of like a grandfather? He's lovable. He loves you and you love him. But he needs your help to use an iPad. It seems like he's not able to do things that you might need. She got quiet. She said, maybe. So I said, what if God loves chocolate? What if God's a baker of chocolate? What if God originated chocolate? What if God gave us the capacity to make all kinds of chocolate? Because he loves chocolate. I don't know. She said, I never thought about that. What if God is a fashion designer? I said, what if he loves color and patterns and designs? What if he loves fashion from all over the world, including Japanese fashion? What if God is the most expert in the universe on Japanese fashion with great delight and understanding? I've never thought about that. She said, what if God, I said, is a scientist who never gets tired or bored of observing everything that exists and delights in it and knows it and is able to talk to us about it? I don't know. She said, I'd never thought about these things. And now the whole conversation was open in a different way than it was before. Why is that? Because metaphor and simile engage imagination and feeling and memory. And now we're talking about something that has experience to it. It doesn't mean she would believe. It doesn't mean I proved anything. It's just the function of the language. This is what I'm wondering about for our first point tonight, if we have a point, our first hint. For those within a Christian framework, have you noticed that our theological creeds and statements remove poetic speech from them? I'm not critiquing that. I'm not against the precision of Christian creeds. I'm thankful for them. But the language of precision and ordinary speech cannot give the experience of a thing. If we have removed poetic talk, the capacity for simile and metaphor from our life, from a Christian point of view, it will be very difficult to experience the God we believe in. Why? Because God created language out of His love. He created scientific, ordinary and poetic speech. This is a Christian point of view. Out of His love, and that each kind of language that He created wherever you're from in the world has its own purpose. And He designed poetic talk to give you and me the experience of a thing. And so, when we begin to think about wanting an experience of His unconditional love in a very humble non-triple way, I'm trying to suggest right in front of us is the gift of His unconditional love of poetic talk. And poetic talk is His means among others of experiencing Him. I'll be curious to Q&A to talk about that. Second thought. Not only these languages, a gift of God's unconditional love, but the world, nature, creatures, plants, trees, rocks, mountains. If you were following Jesus, you would hear Him use language like I saw Satan fall like lightning and everything befuddling about that statement. But then you would also hear Him say to an oppressed minority within the brutality of the Roman Empire, who are anxious and wondering how it's possible that they are loved. Jesus would say to them, "Look at the flowers. Look at the birds." And like a sage of old, who has us look at ants or fields or rock badgers, Jesus would say, "He would reason with us on the basis of the bird, on the basis of the flower. He points to it and then reasons with us. If God loves flowers and loves birds, how much more does He love you?" Look at the sun, Jesus says. Look at the rain. Now He's going to reason with us. The sun and the rain give warmth and nourishment to the just and the unjust. On the basis of the sun and rain, Jesus makes His case for unconditional love for an enemy. He's talking as if the world all around Him has meaning, and that every physical, creaturely thing tells a story beyond itself. And that the sun and its warmth point to the sun. point us off of itself to another, and that the sun is a love token. The sun is a gift of love from the one who gave it. I understand this is a Christian point of view. This is how Jesus talks. And so when we feel anxious or afraid, crucifixions on the roadside for those early crowds listening to Jesus, He teaches them to pray, talk to God, and here's how you talk to Him. Our Father, He begins. It must be that His listeners had trouble with that, because Jesus immediately gives imagery. Don't suppose that God is like a Father who will give you a snake or a serpent, a scorpion when you need bread or an egg. And then He tells them about a friend at midnight, a friend who needs help and comes to your door at midnight. And that friend will help you because of your annoyance just to get you to go away. If a friend will do that out of annoyance, how much more the God who loves you will be a friend at midnight to you. Now, for those folks in the Roman Empire oppressed, beaten down, it would be very difficult to imagine calling a Father good. And yet what Jesus does is engage that imagination about the kind of Father He has in mind. And so when you walk through the Old Testament, and are many questions about it, the created world is regularly on display. Rock badgers and fish, deer and ants, all manner of creatures. And when Jesus teaches, He points us there to, what if part of experiencing the love of God is not only recognizing poetic talk, but recognizing Him in His creatures. That's how a Christian would look at it. So that when I see a tree, I see more than the tree. We would step back and say this way, it would be very difficult to have an experience of God's unconditional love if it's been a long time since I've seen a tree. That's difficult here in this beautiful place. But if I've only seen memes of trees, memes of rivers, and I haven't heard and felt and seen actual ones, it will be difficult to experience this God. If you take the premise that the dirt in the ground and the river, the flower and the bird, the sun and the rain are gifts of His love, I was sitting with a man who went to Bible College and he led Bible studies. He was in church. He was deconstructing his faith, which is to say that he had barriers between Him and Jesus that were troubling to Him. He was trying to remove them, but he said he didn't think he believes in God anymore. I knew Him, and I knew Him to be a landscaper, love to be outside. And so I asked him this question, may I tell you a little story from my life and may I ask you a question? He said, sure. I said, the story from my life might feel strange at first, but trust me, it's connected. He said, okay, kind of like this lecture right now in this moment. Trust me, it's connected. In my group, there was a Russian cosmonaut, famously went into space and said he didn't see God. Now there's lots of debate about that since. Lots of study has been done on that, whether that person actually said or believed it, or if it was propaganda from an atheistic government. That's a whole discussion in itself, but there is no God. I'm in space. I don't see God. I said to my friend, in my mind, that atheist statement is very similar to what Christians do and think. He said, what do you mean? I said this. That cosmonaut is looking out at space and saying, I see no evidence. And what that means is the cosmonaut does not include his eyes that can see something called sight and the language which makes meaning of sight. The science we know of sight, he doesn't consider that evidence. His lungs are working, his body is functioning, but that is not evidence. The stars that he sees, the space itself is not evidence. He's removed everything in the physical world and said, I don't see God. I said, I think Christians do this sometimes too. I said, it's sort of like this. We remove the physical world and then we go try to find God. So maybe I go to the book, the Bible, and I try to find a verse in there and I try to squeeze out of it what I can. Some experience, God, and bypassing everything in my body and the flowers, the sun, the rain, no longer seeing any of it. I don't have the experience that I wanted. Now I close the book and say, where is God? So I said, now my question. Right outside our window, I see flowers that happen to be spring. Do you know the names of the flowers? Daffodils, he said, I said, I said, what if God loves daffodils? What if he loves soil? What if he loves and understands the physics around all of it? And when you go out and put your hand in the dirt and tend the daffodil, the joy that you have is his joy. He is sharing with you his enjoyment of the daffodil. And when you experience it, you're experiencing something of him, his delight. What if every time you went outside, you're experiencing something of God? The daffodil isn't God, but the daffodil was created by God and delighted in, and that when you tend it, you're expressing something that God who created you loves. He said, I wish that could be true. That would change things. Again, we have a lot more conversation to do at that point. But what's happening there? We're now re-engaging and embodied life in which our physical world isn't bypassed by God and removed in order to see God, but the physical world is a gift of the love of God, unconditionally given, without merit, without transaction. This is the question. And that's somehow seeing the sun again and putting my hand in the dirt again and having back into my language, poetic speech, I am being given the means of experience again. The aid to experience, as a follower of Jesus, we would want to say, a God given out of His love means of experience, that the means of experiencing God include poetry and a flower. And this is by His great delight. And so if we remove the poetry and the flower, we're removing means He's given to experience Him. A final thought. I'll just call it this. Another reason we may, from a Christian point of view, struggle to experience the God we believe in, particularly the God's love, is because we've tamed Jesus. We've tamed Jesus. I'll try to say it this way. I'll just pick two small things. One, the phrase that Jesus says, God so love the world. God so love the world, that He gave us only to God and Son, the whoever believes in Him will not. parish could have everlasting life. God's love the world. People who have been in Christian circles for a long time say, "Yes, yes, of course, but do let us move on to meet." But we forget there is no one in the history of the world who talks like that. God so loved the world. You would not have heard the Old Testament 4 runner of this is the steadfast love of God. You wouldn't hear the gods of Egypt like raw. You would not hear people say, "Ross so loved the world." Bale so loved the world. Now, with those gods and goddesses they were provincial and you could be immoral. You could have no concern for morality at all. You could be a liar and a cheat, but as long as you do the transaction for the God, that God, if they will, will help you. You would not say in the first century, "Ahh, Zeus so loves the world." Poseidon has so loved me. Unconditionally, Poseidon has loved me. Without merit, without transaction, bringing nothing that I have, Poseidon loves. Nothing like that. When Jesus stood up and said, "God so loved the world," it was a shock. It is a shock in the history of ideas. It's a shock to those who were Jewish because they did have a notion of God's love. But they expected someone to say, "God so loved Israel." So for Jesus to say, "God so loved the world," including these Romans, Samaritans. That was hard for them. And if you were a Roman and you hear, "God so loved the world," it's almost difficult to make sense of it. We wouldn't have thought of Caesar as loving us, nor would we have thought of the gods as loving us unconditionally. When we hear a phrase like this, we think it's basic or obvious. But it is not obvious in the history of the world, nor in many nations today. And it is far from basic. Listen to Rodney Stark, one of many, many, many examples of other than Christian scholars who talk about this. Rodney Stark and his rise of Christianity said it this way, "The simple phrase, "For God so loved the world would have puzzled and educated pagan." And the notion that the gods care how we treat one another would have been dismissed as patently absurd. In the pagan viewpoint, there was nothing new in the Jewish or Christian teachings that God makes behavioral demands upon humans. The gods have always demanded sacrifice and worship. Nor was there anything new in the idea that God will respond to human desires, that the gods can be induced to exchange services for sacrifices. But the idea that God loves those who love Him was entirely new. Moreover, the corollary that because God loves humanity, Christians may not please God unless they love one another was something entirely new. Perhaps even more revolutionary was the principle that Christian love and charity must extend beyond the boundaries of family and tribe, and must even extend beyond the Christian community. There's a lot to say here. But Jesus, when we forget how bewilderingly strange his talk and his person, we become bored with things that are hardly boring. And we lose our capacity for experiencing the love of God. From a Christian point of view, it's embodied in this person, Jesus. But at minimum, if we can't go that far, this kind of talk is distinctive. And those in the Roman world, many of them saw the distinction and were drawn to it. One final thought about Taim in Jesus, the earliest Christians just say wild things. They say that this world was created by God through Jesus, that everything visible and invisible is held together by Jesus. Swiled. Which means for then, if Pluto is a planet, it is held together right now. By the word of Jesus's power. It stays in place by gravity, according to the will of Jesus. If he were to say, "Drop it would." This is the way the early Christians talk. I'm saying, "Taming Jesus, domesticating Jesus, why would we have an experience of ravishing, unconditional, untransacted, unleveraged, unmerited love? How could we have an experience with the Taim Jesus?" So this is my thoughts for you tonight. A few things right in front of us. Language, creation, Jesus. And I really would be helped to have conversation. There are multiple other things that we could say. But this is where our conversation is tonight. I'll pause there. Yeah. I will have a privilege of asking first question. Give me myself, Timelage. Because I was thinking, Zach, as you were talking about these things. And especially with your first point about language and kind of describing, saying we have these three groupings of language, scientific, ordinary, and then poetic language. And as you sort of outlined it, I thought, "Oh, yeah, that makes so much sense." And that's very clear and simple and kind of obvious. And also the fact that poetic language is the one that can pull us into experience and feeling it ourselves. But then I just thought, if that is so obvious, why do you have to remind us that? Or what is it about maybe even our time or our generation that needs reminding of something so fundamental in many ways? Yeah, that's such a good question. Thank you. So why do we need reminded of the good function of poetic speech? There's a lot to say. And I suppose there'd be folks here who have thought about this more than I or from your field of expertise could talk about it. But I'm thinking about a sculpture in Cambridge. And it was created by an atheist. It's a working clock. And it's the chronophage. And it's like a locus or a grasshopper. It's a maceated. It's jagged edge. It's metal. And it's chewing every second of our life. And then it has a Bible verse down there from 1 John. And man and his desires are passing away. But the truth is the sculptor cut the verse in half. The student of Jesus actually said, and a man and with his desires are passing away. But those who do the will of the Lord will abide forever. And I think there are two views of time going on there. And we're in this clock eaten time. In that sculpture, it's all metal, jagged edges, everything is lost. There's no human faces. There's no geography. There's no sun, no flowers. There's no seasons. There's no age. There's no colors. It's just seconds being eaten. And so I wonder if we're in that kind of view of productivity that I'm already behind. And I got to produce. And production doesn't include relationships, people, seasons. And to encounter poetry feels slow. Poetic speech slows us down. It's not a bullet point. We can't get it the first time or the metaphor requires thought, reflection. And the sages do this because the former they're teaching is part of the teaching itself. They're wanting to teach us slow. sturdy relational ways, and so they give us forms that require it. And so, but we're in a cultural moment of STEM. Do you have that language here? STEM? Yeah, okay. Size technology, engineering, mathematics. Because of wonderful technologies and the speed of technology that can make our lives more productive. And so things like a poem hardly feel relevant. But the problem with that is that the means of the wonders of science and technology and engineering and mathematics, from a Christian point of view, I'd say the wonderful gifts, those aren't to us. They don't have the means within them in themselves to give us the experience of law. They point us in those directions, but the means are found in these other places, or alongside STEM in these other places. And so I wonder if that's part of it. It slows us down. It seems small. It doesn't seem productive because of the way we're defining production and speed. And so we need help remembering it. I don't know, that's a thought. Others would have more to add, you know. That's a hopeful thought. Okay, let's see, open up to questions. Right. Wonderful. So, when people experience things, if you're rising poetry about it, you would be interpreting it and forming thoughts about it. But what if your poetic illumination of your experiences are deceptive? Yes, that's such a wonderful question. An insightful and perceptive. We've said that poetic speech gives us the experience of the thing. But we've not yet said if that thing is good. So it begs another question and you've asked it. C.S. Lewis, I'll draw upon him again. I'll start with imagination and reason. And I'll use something my wife Jessica would do. I learned this from her as a student of C.S. Lewis. If Jessica were here, she would write on a board. If we had it, she would write the words, "We are God's Quakerwagers, true or false." And a lot of us would be stumped because we can't make meaning of the word Quakerwager. It's only until we know that a Quakerwager is a Mary and ette or a puppet. Now suddenly we can reason true or false. It's intriguing, isn't it? Until we can make meaning. Till we can imagine meaning, we can't yet reason. And so Lewis's point is that imagination isn't a luxury and it's not supplemental, but it's essential to reason. Once we've imagined, now we can reason and now we must ask. And this is where this precision comes into play. The language of precision. Are we God's puppets, true or false? And now we're imagining God as a puppet master. And with that image in front of us, we're now reasoning about it. We're going to seek to bring precision, yes or no, or to what degree. And so I think you're right on. And I think C.S. Lewis gives us a lot of help there. And this is why he so helpfully said that the, you know, scientific language and ordinary language are necessary. But by themselves, we don't have the resources we fully need. Poetic speech rounds that about. So it could be if we were in a different context, with an assumption that people loved poetic speech and valued it, we would need to emphasize from the other angle to your point. We need to say, but let's not forget about scientific language. To make sure that the thing we're experiencing is a noble thing to experience. Yeah. Yeah. Luke, so I was saying you were talking about how poetic, poetic wording draws here into the experience. So a non-Christian just have that same experience. What a great question. I think partially yes. Oh, that's right. The one, the wonderful question was, if poetic speech is a God-given means of experience, could a non-Christian person, a person is not a Christian, experience things of God. Is that an accurate way? Yeah. And then like, well, I'm just curious, like, does that mean they're just experiencing it? I'm not just not aware. And then the follow-up question was, does that mean they're experiencing it and they're not aware? So to answer that, I'm thinking about the Apostle Paul, such a good question. It's in Acts chapter 14, the Apostle Paul and maybe Barnabas are preaching. It's at least Paul. Yes, Paul and another. There's been a healing and the people are sacrificing to their gods. They believe that Paul and his traveling companion are Zeus and Hermes. They're just drawing upon their cultural artifacts and stories to make sense of what they're seeing. And when Paul speaks to them, he says, the God who created the heavens and the sea, the land and the sea, this God has given you witness. It's this word that we get martyr from, martyr, witness. And then he says, you've had rainy seasons, you've had good crops, you've had gladness of heart. These are signs of the God that I want to tell you about. And so what he's doing there is he's acknowledging their experience of gladness of soul is legitimate and good in the created world. But they don't know its source. And so he wants to declare to them the giver of this gladness of soul, the giver of this joy. And so certainly in that case, there's a legitimate experience of God's world and a derivative good of the things of God, the way he intended. But they don't yet, because even if they don't acknowledge him, this is a Christian point of view, even if they don't acknowledge him, they're still creatures in his world. And so they experience that, but they don't know its source. They don't know where it comes from. And so that end case, that's what Paul is doing there. He's wanting to tell them where this gladness of soul comes from. This is why theologians, Christian theologians, will have something called common grace, where any human person can experience the good things of God to some measure and even express good things of God to some measure so that, so maybe a final thought here is that there's a professor named Holly Ordway. And she tells of how she came to become a Christian from being an atheist. She's a teacher of literature. And she realized over time that all of her favorite poems and stories were written by Christians through the centuries. And she began to wonder, why is that? So she began to pursue these poems and stories, beginning to look at them differently, wondering about the faith that's behind those poems and stories and looking at it. So she experienced joy, the good sorrow, the longing for justice, like all the good from those poems, she didn't know where it came from. And she went to learn that way. That's a good question. Those are my first thoughts at it, you know. So we had a question on the chat. The question is what about a person who's by nature more prosaic as opposed to poetic? How is it that such a person could cultivate or grow in, experiencing the wonder? Awaken in the sense of wonder. GK Chesterton can be of help here maybe. When GK Chesterton described the imagination, he said, the imagination is learning to see again what's there, to see what's in front of us. If I had the quotes in front of me, it would be enjoyable because he's an eloquent person with it. He's witty. But to see what's in front of us. And so when he talks about invention, mechanisms, technology, science, he says he wants to make clear that he's not against those things. What is against is no one, no one, no one, no one's seeing those things with wonder. And so one of his famous quotes is like this. He says, "A child, I see, I'm going to summarize it." But it's like children don't need fairy tales. This is what he says. Children don't need fairy tales. A child of four, you know, and a child of say seven or eight. The child who's seven or eight needs to be told that when Tommy opened the door, there was a dragon on the other side. The child of seven or eight needs to be told about the dragon in order to see the door again. But the child of four does not need the dragon. They're just amazed that Tommy opened the door. And they'll look at a door open again and again and again. And so the first thing is for a person who is more prose-oriented or maybe mathematical or is to see again the wonder right in front of them that our imagination has shrunk. We no longer see the wonder that a door can open and be created and closed. We're bored with it. We've forgotten. And so a help right where your strengths are with the prose. Even scientific language, from a Christian point of view, is to recognize it's enchanted. It's magical. I'm risking language. It's a gift of love. Scientific language is a gift of God's love. And so even to see the scientific language again or for the first time from that vantage point is a beginning. And of course the second thing is finding a friend who loves poetry and stretching yourself in that direction and having someone help you see and learn the value of it. But you can start with what's right in front of you and where your strengths are. The question is how do we keep the balance between creed and experience, the necessity of creeds for truth, and the help or the important guide that a creed is for our experience, something like that? Yeah. Yes, I think that's very similar from another way from the question we were looking at earlier about poetry. I believe it's the reason CS Lewis is very clear to keep all three kinds of language together that I can have an experience of the thing but be untethered. I could have an experience of love for something that I ought not love. I can have a fondness or a good hope with something devilish. And so I need the scientific language, the precision, a creedal language that helps me in that experience. And it goes the other way. I can be clear, credibly, and have no living experience of what I say or what I believe. I think James is probably helpful for us here in his little New Testament book where he is writing to Christians who are fragmented and scattered in the Roman world. And he's calling them to the teachings of Jesus. And when he calls them to wisdom, he says, "Let he who is wise among you show it." Show it. I would think he would say, "Let he who is wise articulate sound sentences accurately." And of course, James is doing that very thing, articulating sound sentences accurately. But on that basis, he says, "Let him show his wisdom." And then he contrasts wisdom from above, from wisdom from below. And wisdom from above is pure, peaceable, open to reason, impartial, gentle. What I'm getting at is sometimes we want to expand how we imagine creedal language. We have the precise creedal language of our theological tradition. We also have a creedal language teaching regarding how wisdom from above is shown. And so that I am, if I am wise, if I am sound and balanced, I will experience and express openness to reason. So if I'm having the experience of being closed to reason, I need this clear teaching that calls me again to open. If I find myself partial, I'm closed to reason and I'm partial to certain ethnicity or tribe or I will only listen to something as true if it comes from someone I already agree with. I need to hear this and I experience that. I need to hear the clear teaching, wisdom from above is impartial. I hope you hear me saying, "You're right on." I think you're right where we want to be. We need each of these kinds of language and this is a gift of God's love to give them to us so that we have strength in our steadiness and our experience, but we're delivered from having steadiness without experience. The question is, what helps me personally connect with God through language? Well, one of those things is of learned to give thanks for poetry as a pastor, some a Christian pastor, I've learned over the years, I love for reading fiction and poetry and song and painting. It helps me. I wonder if this can be understood. It helps me read the scripture. I think of the Bible as scripture. It helps me read the Bible because the Bible is so full of poetry and story. My theological training at its best, I had professors from this bundle of relationships which introduced me to what I'm talking about. I would have thought beforehand that reading poems and story was a waste of time. It was non-theological and of course that was my earnestness and my zeal, but I just didn't know. It hadn't occurred to me that so much of the Bible I'm reading is God speaking through poetry and riddle and parable and story and narrative, but I needed help. So I suppose how I'm answering this question is, I've needed help. I've needed a community of God's people who grounded me into creed, creedal, nature of things, but then helped me see how it was I even know what these creedal beliefs are and that's so much of that comes through the story and a poem. And then I've needed to lean into that against my own feeling for a while to trust that reading a poem, "Batter my heart or three person God" or reading a poem by another of the Christian person who's reflecting honestly about life that is no waste of time. It's actually an act of neighbor love, an act of listening to a neighbor, and then an act of imagining with the neighbor so that I could then hopefully reason with the neighbor. But even if I never got to reason with the neighbor, the enjoyment of the language is in its own right good before the Lord. So I've needed people in time to help me grow in that way. How can we differentiate between or should we differentiate between maybe those experiences that were experiencing out in creation? How do we know, like, is every experience, I'm experiencing out there that is this experience of consolation and experience gone? Yeah, such a wonderful question. How would we, how can we differentiate our experiences in creation? And others in this room would have wonderful thoughts about that, but I'll give it a try. A place to begin for a Christian person or a person considering Christianity would be to let the experiences of creation in the Bible lead you. So you could start there. So for example, if if I see a tree by a stream, and I recognize its beauty and I experience something of it, I know from the Bible itself, from the the Psalmist who looked at a tree by a stream and then gave his time. It was no waste of time to observe it, meditate on it, create artistry around it. And now we have a song, you know, that we sing together and a poem that we pray together. If if if I see a vine and branches, I already know that I, the that are the Jesus himself in the fullness of his humanity, meditated on vine and branches mold over it. I'm speaking about mysteries, but and then artistically set that in front of us. I'm a vine. You are branches. So every time I see vines and branches and I have a, it could be I would not generally have an experience of vine and branches. I would if I was on a mountain vista, but not a vine and a branch. But now I see a vine and a branch because of how Jesus saw it. And I know I can enter into that. So one place to begin for someone coming from a Christian point of view, who might be nervous is, is as you read the Bible now, just begin to notice every time the creation is mentioned. It is, it is, it's just everywhere and let that lead you. And so if if God, you know, we're not going to have snow right now. But the next time we see snow and I enjoy the glow of it and I play in it. I also know that it's, it pictures what, what's called forgiveness. Because the, the Bible says though our sins were read as scarlet, they will be made white as snow. And I see snow in that light. And so there's a place to begin. If I feel nervous in my conscience, I have a tender conscience or a scrupulous conscience and I wonder about it. There's a place to begin. We can go look at ants and rock badgers. We can think about the giant creatures in the sea. There's just a lot, the sun, the moon, the rain, you know, there's a lot that we get to a saver, observe and relish and think about. I suppose as, I'm a second aspect of that would be, I suppose where does the experience lead us? From, from a Christian point of view, it would lead us to see, oh, I'm in God's world. God created this and called it good and that goodness persists. And when I see it, it's, it's a sign of him bearing witness of him. And if it leads me to recognize myself in his world as his creature, praising him, marveling that how, how as a creator of all these things, he would even think about us, but he does. And it moves us toward this kind of character of, of, of response of worship or all or longing or curiosity about God. And then thirdly, for those who are followers of Jesus, how, how all of this is held together by the word of his power, the delight of God through, through Jesus to hold all of this together in his power and delight. And we just respond to him that way. There's a lot more to say, but those are some beginnings. Yes. You're asking for someone like Alex O'Connor, from whom I would learn a lot, as I'm learning from you. For someone like that, how would we, how would we know that we're not just fabricating an experience? And isn't it, wouldn't it be that someone who's not a Christian needs something more than we can explain? Is something like that? Okay. Yes. So I want to say in the first place, what I've said tonight in itself, wouldn't be enough for me. And I, and it wouldn't be enough for you, I would recommend. There's more to say. But I started here because, because I, I suppose I'm pushing a little bit on the idea that because I can explain it, it's now dismissed. And what I'm wanting to say is, what if the things, what is an explanation? It's responding to something I've observed and learned about. And anything a, a, a, a, a, a, Wendell Berry is an American farmer. He said, uh, explanations are more like buckets than wells. So there's a, there can be an assumption. I'm not now talking about Alex or Connor. There can be an assumption that because I've named something, it's explained. What I'm suggesting is, what if that isn't the case? What if we've barely explained? What if our explanations are more shallow than we know? What if the language that's right in front of us, um, is a, is a gift? And so that's one area where I'm loving to dialogue about, uh, and then I'd like to say, yes, we need, uh, I'm a follower of Jesus, I believe in the supernatural. What I'm saying is language is a supernatural gift. The creation, the natural world is a supernatural act. It, it is enchanted. It, it, it, uh, uh, originates from something beyond nature. And so from that viewpoint, um, uh, the physical world and language, for example, aren't moving from down up. But I am talking about top down the, the, the giver of these things, uh, and then I would want to continue on to say to invite someone, you're absolutely right. Uh, I think it'll be difficult to have an experience of, of unconditional love from this God, apart from language, the natural world, uh, an untamed Jesus. I think that'll be more difficult. The God is God and can certainly do that. So ask him. That's what I'd say. Ask begin to set this prayer before the God you don't believe in, but the longing for unconditional love that you have and ask him. And I think, uh, that is different from raw, uh, scholars in these areas help us here, other than Christian scholars that the experience of the sun is still not an experience of unconditional love. Non-transacted, unmerited, uh, love. Whereas the love we're talking about is and, and then having to ask or in an invitation to ask for it, is a, is a recognition or an invitation to consider that we're talking about a relationship. That at the end of the day and all of our talk, we really are talking about love. And if If there is unconditional love, that means there is an unconditional lover. And at some point, I will need to relate to that unconditional lover. And so I'd want to say, ask, what would it be like to begin saying, "I long for unconditional love. I long for this experience from you. I don't know if you're real, but I ask, would you show me? What would it be like to begin to do that? I don't know what will happen. But at that point, now we're talking about whether it's top down or down up, we're talking about a relationship with a being. And at the end of the day, that's the Christian point of view. It's a relationship with a being. There's so much more I'd want to hear and listen. But those are initial thoughts about where in a conversation, I might go, but I'd want to hear more to know where I might have a blind spot or I'm not listening well or something. Yes, as best I understand someone like Alex O'Connor, I think this is part of what he's grappling with, the person of Jesus at the end of the day is a compelling figure. And someone like Alex O'Connor will say, "He used to dismiss him. He was easily dismissable, mockable. He doesn't see it that way anymore. Jesus is not so easily dismissed." And that's sort of where I was going. At the end of the day, ultimately, we're going to talk about a person. Unconditional love is a person, as a personal longing rather than an impersonal one. It's different than an energy. And so this person of Jesus ultimately is who we're grappling with. And that brings up important questions, you know, like the other questions surface, the reliability of the accounts that we have of Jesus, things like this. But I think you're, I'm with you. I think ultimately it's a person that we're talking about. I was talking with someone after our church service. We have many folks who come to our church or our Christians. They're delightful people, curious, open, thoughtful, engaging, knowledgeable, helping me learn and grow, asking really good questions. And this person was talking about epistemology and then his historicity and philosophy. And much more knowledgeable, I should say, much more adept in those fears than I am. So I conceded that, you know, to him. And I said what I know, you know, I, but I ended up talking about Luke Ferry. I'm an American trying to pronounce a Frenchman's name. Luke LUC F E R R Y, I think, Ferry. In his little book, he's an atheist philosopher, his little book, a short history of Western, of the Western world or Western ideas or something like this. And in that book, he basically makes a wonderful case for Christianity. And he, he comes down to Buddhism and Christianity. And then he says he's tempted to believe Christianity. And he says why? And it's because of love. But of all the history of ideas, the distinctive teaching of love in the Christian gospel. And he calls it a wisdom of love. And he says we all need a wisdom of love. And this is the story that tempts me most to believe it. And then in three pages, after all those pages, he dismisses his and offers his own philosophy. But I shared that with this person. And I said, I think, I think this philosopher's on to something. I think let's keep talking about epistemological, historical questions. They really matter that the end of the day, I believe we're going to end up talking about love. Because even if you believe, wouldn't it be awful to believe in a God that wasn't lovely? Or relational? And so the belief itself ultimately is moving us toward the demonstration of something greater. Which now I'm just quoting Paul. I'm not saying that to this dear person, faith, hope, and love and the greatest of these as love. So what we're going to believe in is ultimately a person. A person is the truth. I'm a child talking about mysteries as a I'm a I'm a perspiterian. We got lots of creeds. I'm like a conf--you know, lots of things. But ultimately, as Augustine the North African said that ultimately, every teaching of Scripture of the Bible takes us to double love. This is what Jesus taught. Love forgot out of heart. Mine in soul and strength and out of that love, love for our neighbor, including our enemy. And that's a distinctive teaching in the history of the world. And so ultimately we're to in a non-tripe way if the time was right, not as a deflection, but as part of the engagement to say, what would be like to ask God? The person may not be ready to do that. That's okay. Maybe I introduced that idea too soon. But eventually at some point all of our reasoning, if there's any truth to Jesus is, all of our reasoning is going to lead there to a conversation. And so, yes, Jesus is at the heart. He's this stumbling block. He's the cornerstone. He is from a Christian point of view. (gentle music)