Father Richard praises modern science for its emphasis on “practice” and openness to new questions and discoveries, which seems more like faith than the certainty embraced by many Christians.  

The common scientific method relies on hypothesis, experiment, trial, and error. We might call this “practice” or “practices”! Yes, much of science is limited to the materialistic level, but at least the method is more open-ended and sincere than that of the many religious people who do no living experiments with faith, hope, and love, but just hang on to quotes and doctrines.  

Under normal circumstances, most scientists are willing to move forward with some degree of not-knowing; in fact, this is what calls them forward and motivates them. Every new discovery is affirmed while openness to new evidence that would tweak or even change the previous “belief” is maintained. In contrast, many religious people insist upon complete “knowing” at the beginning and being certain every step of the way. It actually keeps them more “rational,” “fact-based,” and controlling than the scientists. This is the dead end of most fundamentalist religion, and why it cannot deal with thorny issues in any creative or compassionate way. Law reigns and discernment is unnecessary. 

The scientific mind has come up with what seem like beliefs: for example, explanations of dark matter, black holes, chaos theory, fractals (the part replicates the whole), string theory, dark energy, neutrinos (light inside of the entire universe even where it appears to be dark), and atomic theory itself. Scientists investigate and teach on things like electromagnetism, radioactivity, field theory, and various organisms such as viruses and bacteria before they can actually “prove” they exist. They know them first by their effects, or the evidence, and then work backward to verify their existence. 

Even though the entire world has been captivated by the strict cause-and-effect worldview of Newtonian physics for several centuries, such immediately verifiable physics has finally yielded to quantum physics. While it isn’t directly visible to the ordinary observer, it ends up explaining much more—without needing to throw out the other. True transcendence always includes! 

It feels as if there are some scientists of each age who are brilliant, seemingly “right,” but also tentative—which creates a practical humility that we often do not see in clergy and “true believers.” A great scientist builds on a perpetual “beginner’s mind.” Many scientists believe in the reality of things that are invisible, and thus the active reality of a “spiritual” world, more than do many believers. Thus, although they might be “materialists,” they actually have the material world defined with an openness to a “spirit” that they themselves often cannot understand. Is this not “faith”? 

Maybe this is all summed up in these words of Saint John Paul II: “Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each can draw the other into a wider world, a world in which both can flourish.” [1] So let’s walk forward with wide and rich sight! 

Friday – Tuesday – Five from our friend, John Chaffee

1.

“Joy is the simplest form of gratitude.“

– Karl Barth, Pastor-Theologian

Since I struggle with a scarcity mindset, I easily overlook things that I should be grateful for.  However, Thanksgiving is an annual celebration of gratitude that causes all of us to slow down for a moment.  It is no wonder that if we increase our gratitude, we thereby increase our joy. 

2.

“When a system is not dominated by anxiety, everyone is free to speak truthfully, everyone is free to listen curiously.“

– Chuck DeGroat, Therapist and Pastor

When a system (be it a family, workplace, faith community, or something larger) is dominated by anxiety, there are a few things to take note of… 

1. Specific questions are not allowed to be asked.
2. Truth speakers are considered troublemakers.
3. The system caters to the emotionally immature rather than telling them to shape up.
4. There is often an inner circle of people “in the know,” and that same group may not even have titles or formal roles.
5. Risk-taking is not valued or encouraged.
6. The system is prone to repeating habits/behaviors rather than imagining new ways of doing things.
7. The leadership may prefer short-term, symptomatic, and surface-level solutions to a deeper problem rather than long-term, effective ones.

3.

“Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,

I am He Whom thou seekest!

Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me.“

– The Hound of Heaven by Francis Thompson

These are the closing lines of the epic English poem, The Hound of Heaven.  It was written in response to Thompson’s own life failures and addictions while homeless in London in the 18th century.  It is a lovely poem highlighting God as “the Hound of Heaven,” who has our scent and is in a relentless pursuit/chase of us even as we run from the very Love we yearn for.

If you have time today, take a moment to read the poem (the blue link above will take you to it) as a devotional practice.

4.

“Christ reigns in order to save.“

– Origen, Early Church Father

While doing formal church work, I felt pressured to maintain a specific line in the sand.  A paycheck attached would be threatened if I said something that challenged a status quo or would eat me up inside if I did not say something that I felt necessary.  You may be reading this and not understand that struggle, but to others who have gotten a “peek behind the curtain” to the life of professional ministry, I know they resonate with this.

All that goes to say, Origen was correct in many ways.  He was an Early Church Father who was controversially deemed a heretic centuries after he passed away because many of his students took his teachings in directions that he may not have done himself.  His writings influenced the significant figures we still highly esteem today (especially the Cappadocian Fathers).

For Origen, the Gospel was always about the restoration of everyone and everything from all of time.  The wrath of God was more purgative than punitive, and the power of Christ to save utterly eclipses humanity’s ability to doom itself.  I believe that we have utterly shifted away from the Gospel of the Early Church because, with every generation of humanity, we all begin with disbelief that the Gospel could actually be that good until we relax and allow the Good News to disarm us, to let go the need to take vengeance and to acquiesce to being rescued.

5.

“Be a lamp, a lifeboat, a ladder. Help someone’s soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd.“

– Rumi, Sufi Poet

This is a classic quote that I have shared before.

It is a timeless and universal mantra that all of us could benefit from living out. 

Lyrics from the song.

Lyrics

Deconstructed these walls to find a business
Where the company line was the only way to get paid
We built a church on certainty that fears everything against it
Where the refugee suffers and the white man has it made

I won’t do it anymore it’s taken me too long to recover
I’ll go feed the sick and poor and try to help the world to recover

I sat myself in your pews every single week
And I gave you my money so you could tell me what to think
And I learned from a book that you had taken the heart out of
And that’s how I learned to make exclusion look like love.

I won’t do it anymore it’s taken me too long to recover
I’ll go feed the sick and poor and try to help the world to recover

Come, come as you are, take up your cross, and use it to build a wall
Reach across the aisle and fire your gun so you can keep them
Love, love how you want, if we approve, and you’ll be undefiled
Come, accept our gift, of salvation from sinners

I won’t do it anymore it’s taken me too long to recover
I’ll go feed the sick and poor and try to help the world to recover
I won’t do it anymore it’s taken me too long to recover
I’ll go feed the sick and poor and try to help the world to recover

Gonna take a while to wade through the fear and the hurt
But I think there’s a way for us to love and heal the world

Evolutionary Thinking

From the beginning of time until now, the entire creation, as we know, has been groaning in one great act of giving birth. —Romans 8:22 

Father Richard Rohr writes of an evolutionary faith informed by Scripture and a foundational trust in God’s never-ending love and creativity:  

In this passage, St. Paul seems to fully acknowledge evolution. It’s always seemed completely strange to me that there should be any resistance whatsoever to evolution or evolutionary thinking in Christian theology or practice. Christians should have been the first in line to recognize and cooperate with such a dynamic notion of God. But maybe many do not enjoy such a relational God—with all that implies—and have just met a “substance” they call God. A static notion of God makes everything else static too, including our very notions of spirituality, history, and religion.  

If our God is both incarnate and implanted, both Christ and Holy Spirit, then an unfolding inner dynamism in all creation is not only certain, but also moving in a positive direction. If not, we would have to question the very efficacy, salvation, hope, and victory that the Christian gospel so generously promises. Foundational hope demands a foundational belief in a world that is still and always unfolding.  

I believe that as “children of the resurrection” (Luke 20:36), we are both burdened and brightened by a cosmic and irrepressible hope—and we can never fully live up to it. We are both burdened and brightened with the gift of an optimism whose headwaters are neither rational, scientific, nor even provable to those who do not have it. Yet it ticks away from a deep place within us. [1] 

Evolutionary thinking is actually contemplative thinking, because it leaves the full field of the future in God’s hands. It’s a way of thinking that agrees to hold the present humbly, with what it only tentatively knows for sure. For me, that’s true faith, and it’s the heart of the matter, because we no longer need a totally predictable outcome. I know it’s very hard to exist in such an uncertain place and most of us aren’t practiced in it. The Christianity handed down to many of us didn’t define faith in that way; it was a very static notion of time and knowledge. We didn’t have to participate in the organic movement in our own soul, in the soul of our marriage, our family, or our community.  

The contemplative mind is an evolutionary mind, and I think it’s the mind of Christ. It allows the future to reveal itself, without present circumstances totally predicting it. We all need some degree of predictability, but in faith, I can live without certainty to some degree. Living in that tension, that in-between, could be called evolutionary thinking or it could be called trusting in deep time. I’m trusting there’s a deep river flowing. Even when not much is happening on the upper river, I still trust the deeper river. [2]  

Evidence for Things Not Seen

Faith provides evidence for things not seen. —Hebrews 11:1 

Richard Rohr describes how mystics and sincere seekers discover “evidence for things not seen”: 

The entire faith tradition insisted that there was indeed “evidence for things not seen,” and yet too often the common notion of faith had little to do with discerning the actual evidence available in the present, in the mind, memory, heart, soul, and in creation itself.  

Sts. Augustine, Teresa of Ávila, and John of the Cross all found that “unseen” evidence in the very nature of the soul and its inner workings, but we must admit this hasn’t been taught to or experienced by most Sunday Christians. Many formal believers found evidence in Scripture and dogmas that supported and affirmed their personal God encounter, but perhaps even more of them used Scripture and dogma to make their own experience unnecessary. Others like St. Francis, St. Bonaventure, Teilhard de Chardin, many poets, and everyday mystics found evidence in the natural world, in elements, seasons, animals, and all living things, but sadly they were often marginalized as mere “nature mystics” and placed outside the mainline tradition. This makes me think that we Christians never understood our core message of incarnation, must less its massive implications. This was despite St. Paul’s direct and clear message:  

What can be known about God is perfectly plain since God has made it plain. Ever since God created the world, God’s everlasting power and deity—however invisible—has been perfectly evident for the mind to see in the things that God has made (Romans 1:19–20). 

This generation has at its disposal a whole new type of evidence, display, and apparition that is proving Paul was correct. And this wonderful evidence is arising from the discoveries of the scientific mind! God comes into the world in always-surprising ways so that the sincere seeker will always find evidence. Is sincere seeking perhaps the real meaning of walking in faith?  

The search for truth, the search for authentic love, and the search for God are finally the same search. I would rather have “one who lays down one’s life for one’s friend” (John 15:13) by sincere seeking, demanding scholarship, and authentic service, than those who are on no search, do no mental or emotional work, and have no open heart for the world, but just want to personally “go to heaven.” We have coddled this individualistic non-Christianity for far too long, and with no encouragement from Jesus whatsoever.  

The very shape, possibility, and meaning of evidence is quickly broadening. Religious people would be wise to get on board. Frankly, I think it is what the Christian desert fathers and mothers, mystics and saints, meant by concrete spiritual “practices,” and what Eastern religions meant by “skillful means.” Such “doing” will give us the kind of evidence that cannot be denied. It moves us into the world of action and beyond the mind—to a place where we now “believe” because we know for ourselves.  

Learning from the Mystics: John of the Cross

Quote of the Week: “How gently and lovinglyyou wake in my heart,where in secret you dwell alone;and in your sweet breathing,filled with good and glory,how tenderly you swell my heart with love.”- Verse 4 of The Living Flame of Love Reflection:  The Living Flame of Love is a wonderful companion and sequel of sorts to the Dark Night of the Soul.  After one has gone through the ruthless elimination of idols and competing loves, there is nothing left but the sweet embrace of God. It is nothing more than a love poem to God in the vein of the Song of Songs (also known as the Song of Solomon) from the Bible.  There is something both sweet as well as scandalous about this poem.  In this original Spanish, it reads almost erotically.  The intimacy described is quite profound and touching.   This is in large part due to the intimacy with God that St. John of the Cross models for us. In the medieval ages, there were three stages of sanctification: illumination, purgation, and union (sometimes called perfection).  Illumination is the act of God shining on the human heart and conscience, awakening the person to the reality of the Spirit.  Purgation is the act of purging or burning away that which does not belong in the human heart, a purifying of one’s love.  Union, though, is the final stage.  It is understood as the marriage of the soul to and with God. Throughout church history, there have been many figures who wrote from this marriage perspective.  Many are “courting” God, fewer are “engaged/betrothed” to God, and fewer still are “married” to God. Some have called this final stage “Spiritual Marriage.”  The Living Flame of Love is a poem of a soul being united and married to God.  The brilliance of the poem is that the maturity of faith is not defined by perfection, morality, or doctrine.  Rather, the maturity of faith is completely defined by loving intimacy with God. In many ways, despite his difficult life, St. John of the Cross has stood as an example of divine intimacy despite the hardships of life, some imposed by life outside of the church and some imposed by life within the church. St. John of the Cross believed in this intimacy with God so much, that he couldn’t NOT want to write eloquent Spanish poetry about it… and it has been all to our benefit that he did. Prayer:  Oh Love That Will Not Let Us Go, enable us the tenacity as well as the vulnerability to be intimate with you.  Swell our hearts to ever greater love of you, and our neighbors as ourselves.  Help us not to distance ourselves from you and help us to instead long for your sweet embrace at every moment of every day, knowing that that same sweet embrace is already happening, if only we have the faith to trust that it is true.  In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen and amen.

Life Overview of St. John of the Cross:  Who Were They: Juan de Yepes y Alvarez, later known as Juan de la Cruz (John of the Cross) Where: Born in Fontiveros, Spain.  Died in Ubeda, Spain. When: June 24, 1542-December 14, 1591 Why He is Important: Understood as a prime example of scholasticism and spirituality. What Was Their Main Contribution: John of the Cross is most known for his commentary on his own poetry, of which the Dark Night of the Soul is one of a few main texts.  He was jailed and beaten by his religious superiors and escaped to only then write some of his most enduring work.  Click here for The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross.

Hillsong’s Joel Houston Clarifies Evolution Views After Sparking Debate With Worship Song ‘So Will I’

By Jeannie Ortega Law, Christian Post Reporter Friday, June 29, 2018

With one of Hillsong United’s latest hits, “So Will I (100 Billion X),” at the center of a creation versus evolution debate, worship leader Joel Houston is setting the record straight on where he stands.

“So Will I (100 Billion X)” is a song off of the album, There Is More, recorded live at ‪the Hillsong Worship and Creative Conference in Sydney, Australia. Houston was recently asked on Twitter why the song mentions evolution.

The lyrics in question are: “And as You speak/A hundred billion creatures catch Your breath/Evolving in pursuit of what You said.”

Houston, who is the eldest son of Hillsong Church’s founders as well as lead musician in the worship band Hillsong United and worship leader of Hillsong Church in New York City, responded by saying:

“Evolution is undeniable—created by God as a reflective means of displaying nature’s pattern of renewal in pursuance of God’s Word—an ode to the nature of the creative God it reflects—and only ever in part—not the SOURCE! Science and faith aren’t at odds. God created the Big-Bang.”

His response sparked a Twitter debate on evolution versus creation and drew some backlash. In back-and-forth exchanges with various Twitter users, Houston went on to offer some context to his earlier tweet.

He wrote: “Context—things evolve, they change and adapt, I DON’T believe in evolution as a theory of SOURCE, I believe it’s merely a pattern of nature—created by God, reflecting Nature’s desire for renewal, survival, new life—something-SomeONE—Like God.”

He also said: “I think what gets lost, strangely enough, is that in any case, The Word, comes before any kind of Big Bang.. ‘let there be light’!! BOOM!! And there WAS!!! 

When asked if he believes in the “Big Bang theory” or “literal 6 day creation,” Houston said, “It means I believe God created everything and His Word cane first..”

He further clarified his beliefs on whether man evolved from an ape, saying, “i believe God created humanity out of the dust.. and breathed his breath/Spirit into us..”

The popular worship leader admitted that when writing the song, the band was “aware of the implications ‘evolving’ would serve as a conflicting adjective for some” but said they still felt “it was worth it—if just a foolish desire to enlarge our thinking of a God who was-is-&-is to come, making all things new, ‘from-Him, through-Him, To-Him.'” 

He explained that God is “way bigger than we think,” and regardless of one’s theological or scientific beliefs, He “is undiminished by our limitations.”

“If God’s creative process was an easy working week, or finely crafted over six-ages of millennia, does it make Him any more or less God?” Houston posed. “Or us any more or less created in His image? Either way, it was an unfathomably wonderful six-day process, however you think to see it.”

He added, “The way I see it—the NATURE of a fallen-world evolves in-decay BECAUSE of our best attempts to adapt to a—’survival of the fittest’ kind of existence—yet God, fully reveals His NATURE in-and-through JESUS, who embodied ours, and showed us a DIFFERENT way. Spirit & Flesh.”

The millennial worshiper went on to break down the structure of the song to help critics understand the development of the lyrics. He maintained they couldn’t sing of or understand God’s promises (in second verse) without the premise of the first verse (God of Creation). “Nor can we fully comprehend the reconciling power of the third-verse (God of SALVATION), without the tension in the middle.”

“The entire premise of ‘So Will I’, is the redemptive, creative, authority & power of God’s Word. That at the end of the day, all our best theories, ideas, dogmas & best attempts at understanding, will ultimately surrender to the ‘Word at the beginning,'” he concluded.

Read Forget Evolution vs Creation, There Are (At Least) 6 Different Views, Evangelical Biophysicist Explains 

In an interview on TBN earlier this month, Hillsong Church Senior Pastor Brian Houston shared that all of Hillsong’s music is reviewed by theologians.

The pastor revealed they’ve been “more intentional” about vetting their songs in the last decade.

“We do put more effort into the theology of our songs than we ever have before for that very reason (of being able to reach into the hearts of people around the world),” he said. “So we have people specifically who, every single song has to fit through a system of being tested by theologians.

“There’s often a lot of grind, hopefully in a positive way, between the songwriter and getting it to a point where we feel like it’s not going to be too easily misrepresented.”

He noted that they usually do not throw a song out but they work on it until it’s theologically sound. Otherwise, if they release a song “that’s going to be misunderstood or theologically weak, believe me, we hear about it.”