“Today is life – the only life we’re
sure of. Live it. Make the most of today.”
[Character on CSI-New York]
“The journey of life is always forward.
It’s OK to look back – but it is impossible to return to yesterday.”
[FSM]
Recently
I have been in a Book Club discussing Michio Kaku’s Physics of the Future (Anchor Books 2011) – dealing with “how science will
shape human destiny and our daily lives by the year 2100”. Alternatively it is fascinating, irritating,
frustrating and un-settling. Without any
doubt, advances in computers, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology,
medicine, energy, space travel and wealth [subjects covered in his book] will
be radically different.
At times
it is tempting to “ease” my angst about life as Kaku predicts by simply taking
comfort that at 82 years of age those challenges will not be mine. More frequently, however, the angst drives me
to wrestle with how one might discern ways to maintain the significant values
of civilization while adapting to those challenges. The changes he identifies will challenge
human-kind in every sphere of living: How we value life. How we value work. How
we value differences in human potential. How we posit truth and compassion and
love as essential for the good life.Simultaneously with reading Kaku’s book I’m reading The Eloquence of Grace – Joseph Sittler and the Preaching Life [Cascade Books] by James M. Childs Jr & Richard Lischer. This is a collection of transcribed sermons and speeches from the life of Joseph A. Sittler [1904-87] – “one of the most influential theologians of the 20th century” as well as the professor under whom I was privileged to study while in seminary. Sittler would have loved Kaku’s book! He welcomed the challenges brought by advances in every sphere. Welcomed them – and wrestled with them as he sought ways to involve them in the truths of faith.
In one
of Sittler’s presentations on “Christology” – in 1954! – he talks of how
quantum physics impacts our creeds.
1954! The Quantum theories were
still relatively new. Albert Einstein in 1921 and Werner Heisenberg in 1932 had
been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work on quantum fields – but
many were wrestling with how such discoveries would challenge even basic laws
such as gravity! Into that mix comes
Sittler, wrestling with how one might ascertain what changes Quantum physics
might require in the basic Creeds [Nicene, et al]. And this quote jumped out:
..when we in our day, inheritors
not only of the theology of the Reformation but also continuing inheritors of
critical biblical-historical studies, seek to administer the understanding of
the Reformers, we are compelled to see the Nicene Christology in a way they did
not and perhaps could not….Sixteenth-century veneration for Nicea has descended
to us as a twentieth-century frustration; the fourth-century settlement of
Christology so massively overlays the sixteenth as to make the sixteenth
stutter as it addresses the twentieth. It is not too much to say that our
theological tradition, whereby we gather up and contain in the theology of our
day both the fourth and the sixteenth centuries, constitutes as invitation to
theological hernia.[Underlining mine]
Confronted
with/by these challenges, many succumb to the temptation of wanting to deny
what is new. They would rather return to the “comfort” [false comfort to be
sure] of yesterday. Some will put forth “The
Bible says . . .” as if it could “un-do” what is new. As if one might still fancy a world that is
flat with “heaven” up there and “hell” down there. As if we didn’t know what we do about
gravity; about molecules; about carbon emissions; about human psych-sexual
development.
But
- we do know! And – we cannot go back!
God
– as identified and preached and taught – by almost every religion is the
Absolute, the Mighty One, the Supreme Being.
While the 21st century advances will challenge many of the
human-made statements or positions about that God – they do not challenge God.
Scriptures
– Holy Writings – of all religions have always been a living dynamic story
rather than a dead static construct. If
that were not true there would not be so many factions within the religions of
the world – factions which want to keep certain beliefs or standards or values
which other factions believe have changed.
None
of the challenges deny the value and importance of love in human
relationships. None of the challenges
deny or dis-prove the value of honesty and trust as essentials
for humans to live in community. While some
challenges do call into question some of the arguments that religious folks
have used to “prove” God – none of those challenges prohibit anyone from still
believing that her/his God is real!
That’s why it’s called faith.
I
remember times in raising our children [and I had the privilege of 22 years of
raising teen-agers!] when they would challenge certain rules. The hardest rules of maintain were often the
ones which came from my childhood experiences.
The temptation in the face of numerous “why’s” was to simply state –
“because I said so”. But as every parent
knows, such a parental approach can only be sustained for a very limited
time. Harder – yet, subsequently more
satisfying – was to engage the teen-ager in dialogue so as to mutually discern what
was the value and which was the external that had borne the value.
We
need to willingly engage in those dialogues.
At times it will be scary. At
times we will make mistakes. At times we
will need to move ahead on trust and faith in each other. That’s what it means to be human.
