I’ve often explained how I went to seminary nearly half-a-century ago looking for “answers.” But instead, was introduced to different “questions.” From which I have concluded, across the years of my adulthood, that the “answers” we get, with respect to what is most important in life, depend upon the “questions” we ask.
I was reminded of this back in February when I attended a so-called “debate” between a “scientist” and a “theologian.” The occasion was the annual “Darwin Week,” held here in Charleston. The “scientist” was a man, a prominent evolutionary biologist; the “theologian,” a woman substantially younger than he–both being professors in notable educational institutions in Chicago.
[cf. my February 27 blog posting, “Science and Religion”]
The so-called “debate” concerned the question: “Are Science and Religion Compatible?” The “scientist” arguing that they aren’t; the “theologian” arguing otherwise: if not compatible, at least complementary.
While she wasn’t dismissive of the “scientific method” of learning/knowing, he was dismissive of at least–according to his caricaturing–a particular kind of Christianity.
And at one point in their “talking past” one another, the “scientist”–self-described as a “Jewish atheist”–he asked his sparring partner, “Am I going to hell?”
Demonstrating remarkable obfuscation, she never “answered” his question. But the following Sunday, my pastor–the minister of Charleston’s historic Circular Congregational Church–he recounted the scenario I’m describing and announced that his response to the “scientist’s” question would have been “No.”
Which reminded me again–only a few days later–that the “answers” we get regarding such concerns depend upon the “questions” we ask.
As in this case, where the “question”–for me, at least–is: “Does all of life rest in a transcendent gracious presence?”
That is, at least, how “the Christian story”–in its many and varied implications–speaks of who God is.
Which, of course, is how I have learned to interpret the God of the Bible. From Psalm 139’s “Whither shall I go from Thy presence . . . for even the darkness is as light to Thee,” to Paul’s “Nothing, not even death, can separate us for that love who God is” (Romans 8), to Jesus’ “Lo I am with you always . . . .” in Matthew 28.
Unconditional acceptance, affirmation, the conferring of ultimate worth and value, an embracing love apart from whatever the circumstances–before, in and beyond this life; in the best or worst of times. Not because of who we are or aren’t, but because that is Who God is–at least when you read the Bible–at least the way I’ve learned to read the Bible.
Not that such a “belief” can–according to “scientific method”–be empirically derived. Such a conviction is a “premise” rather than a “conclusion,” more “gift” than anything one may obtain or arrive at.
Why, then, even the question: “Am I going to hell?”
If “hell” is the “absence of/from God,” but one doesn’t believe in God–at least a God whom the Bible defines as “being itself” (Exodus 3: 14)–what difference does it make?
Or as C. S. Lewis put it: “If an ungodly man were to go to heaven, he’d think he was in hell.”
When it comes to matters of ultimacy, the “answers” we get depend upon the “questions” we ask.
