Cosmic child abuse?

A common objection that I hear from non-believers when they first hear the gospel is that it is "cosmic child abuse." A good, loving, and just God would never sacrifice Christ, an innocent third party, instead of the people who deserve judgement. In addition, many people refuse to accept Christianity on the grounds that they themselves would never want to put their sins on Christ, or subject Him to that kind of punishment. They would rather bear the guilt on their own. Here is a quote from "The Cross of Christ" that explains that the cross is anything but cosmic child abuse.

We began by showing that God must "satisfy himself," responding to the realities of human rebellion in a way that is perfectly consonant with his character. This internal necessity is our fixed starting point. In consequence, it would be impossible for us sinners to remain eternally the sole objects of his holy love, since he cannot both punish and pardon us at the same time. Hence the second necessity, namely substitution. The only way for God's holy love to be satisfied is for his holiness to be directed in judgment upon his appointed substitute, in order that his love may be directed toward us in forgiveness. The substitute bears the penalty, that we sinners may receive the pardon. Who, then, is the substitute? Certainly not Christ, if he is seen as a third party. Any notion of penal substitution in which three independent actors play a role -- the guilty party, the punitive judge and the innocent victim-- is to be repudiated with the utmost vehemence. It would not only be unjust in itself but would also reflect a defective Christology. For Christ is not an independent third person, but the eternal Son of the Father, who is one with the Father in his essential being.

What we see, then, in the drama of the cross is not three actors but two, ourselves on the one hand and God on the other. Not God as he is in himself (the Father), but God nevertheless, God-made-man-in-Christ (the Son). Hence the importance of those New Testament passages that speak of the death of Christ as the death of God's Son: for example, "God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son" (John 3:16), "he... did not spare his own Son" (Romans 8:32), and "we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son" (Romans 5:10). For in giving his Son he was giving himself. This being so, it is the Judge himself who in holy love assumed the role of the innocent victim, for in and through the person of his Son he himself bore the penalty that he himself inflicted. As Dale put it, "The mysterious unity of the Father and the Son rendered it possible for God at once to endure and to inflict penal suffering." There is neither harsh injustice nor unprincipled love nor Christological heresy in that; there is only unfathomable mercy. For in order to save us in such a way as to satisfy himself, God through Christ substituted himself for us. Divine love triumphed over divine wrath by divine self-sacrifice. The cross was an act simultaneously of punishment and amnesty, severity and grace, justice and mercy.

Seen thus, the objections to a substitutionary atonement evaporate. There is nothing even remotely immoral here, since the substitute for the law-breakers is none other than the divine Lawmaker himself. There is no mechanical transaction either, since the self-sacrifice of love is the most personal of all actions. And what is achieved through the cross is no merely external change of legal status, since those who see God's love there and are united to Christ bye his Spirit become radically transformed in outlook and character.

A question on language and mathematics.

I've been thinking a bit about big words lately, and why they seem to be so common in theology, philosophy, and physics books. And at this point all my thinking has led to a question. I haven't found a good answer yet, so this blog post is going to have a very open ending. But it's an open ending that should make you think. If that bothers you, don't waste your time here and go read something else. If you have any comments or ideas then definitely post them.

When you read academic books, they often have to spend a significant fraction of their time just defining their terms. It's as if the dictionary definitions of common words have to be redefined depending on their context so that they precisely convey the meaning that the author wants. But even after the word is defined, the author will generally give some exceptions to the definition, or say something about how the definitions still don't completely fit the ideas.

The Cross of Christ by John Stott is one of my all time favorite theological works, mostly because it's the most life changing book that I've read that is also very academic. In this book, he devotes an entire chapter to what we mean by "self-substitution" in theology. There is another chapter devoted to defining the word "self-satisfaction." And in each of these chapters, Stott uses a massive diversity of quotations and words of his own in order to narrow down what he means. But each time he repeats himself and each time he quotes another author, he uses slightly different words that refine his ideas, and look at it from an ever-so-slightly different angle.

The reason why Stott repeats himself from different angles is quite obvious. The most important area to have a very accurate understanding is the cross and the work of Christ. Pascal claims that Christianity is the key that fits the lock of the human heart. God designed our hearts to fall in love with and depend on Him. If that is true, then the only way for us to be completely satisfied is by knowing God and the work of Christ the way it truly is. We need an accurate understanding of the shape of this key, because the better we know Christ the more we will naturally fall in love with Him.

However, language itself is limited. Diderot was right to a certain extent. There is a limitation to the precision that our words can describe concepts, and after reading through Stott's book, it does appear as though he is losing words to describe the wonder of the Cross. This shouldn't be surprising. The gospel is reality, and reality is nearly always very complex. In particular, the cross is a complex idea that should captivate us with wonder for eternity. But how are we to push past our barrier of language?

The curious difference between the way physicists and mathematicians communicate and the way philosophers and theologians communicate is their use of words and notation. Physicists and mathematicians use a very powerfully formulated system of shorthand notation (called variables) and well defined rules of logic that use the shorthand notation (called mathematics) to describe their concepts. On the other hand, theologians and philosophers stick with the dictionary definitions of words to represent basic ideas. They also use a well defined system of logic, but the system of logic is based on words rather than variables. So, physicists and mathematicians use a much more concise system called mathematics to represent their ideas and derive their theorems, while philosophersand theologians have historically used words and theorems that are expressed using language. Are there any other differences between language/reason and mathematics?

There is a distinct advantage of using mathematics over language, and the advantage is simply that mathematics is so much more concise. In a few dozen symbols, one can express all of Maxwell's equations in mathematics. Maxwell's equations completely determine all of electromagenetic theory and the nature of light, all in a few dozen symbols. I can't think of any equivalent statement in philosophy that can be expressed in such a shorthand notation, but at the same time completely determines an entire field of study.

So, why don't philosophers and theologians develop a type of mathematics for their fields? Would that be very beneficial? It definitely seems so at a first glance to me. It definitely seems that there would be fewer fallacies and more efficient work done in the humanities if they simply had their own type of mathematics.

On the other hand, I don't think it would offer any more precision to their ideas. And here's why. Any variable in mathematics or physics is always defined in terms of words. Therefore, it's only as good as the words behind it that specify what it means. The shape and mechanics of an electric field can be described completely by mathematics, but each of those variables in the mathematical expression (such as charge, force, distance, etc) must be defined in terms of dictionary words. Even if they weren't described in terms of words, the metaphysical meaning of the electric field may (or may not) extend beyond simply the movement of charges. If the electric field is a thing in itself, then we can only describe and define the nature of it in terms of words.

Okay, I have just two more comments. The first is more of a question. Why is it that we always have to go back to words? Why do we always need words to define variables in mathematics? Concepts in our minds are not words. We know that because you can have a concept in your mind and call it by whatever word you like. Our brains are not tied down to any specific words. So is there a way to get around that?

Finally, I hope that this blog post will help the physicists and philosophers have a greater appreciation of each other's work. I know so many people who become physicists just because they thrive in mathematics as a mode of communication, and so many people who become philosophers just because they thrive in language as a mode of communication, even though reason and logic are the fundamental roots that connect them both. But the physicist cannot ultimately do without words, and the philosopher may benefit from using a concise and systematic mode of communication like mathematics.

Perceiving Perspective.

I don't know why they had to choose ME for this job…. I am by no means a brilliant scientist. The department head didn't even respond the first time I sent him my CV. I was only taken on begrudgingly and then used, in the same way as one accepts an unwanted gift, not because it is useful, but only because a friend gave it that you do not wish to offend.

Well, actually, I do know why I was chosen. You must understand that the capacity to communicate in any form other than the language of mathematics and numbers is completely absent in my line of profession. Writing was never my forte either, but once it was discovered in our lab that I could put pen to paper, I was given all of the unwanted communication with the rest of the known world. But still…. I never signed on to be the bearer of bad news. I only progress in my career by pleasing people: telling them what they want to hear. Honesty doesn't get anyone anywhere.

It all began two weeks ago. One of the graduate students, a man who was possibly one of the brightest scientists (and knew it), barged into the office where my research professor and I were documenting the results from his last experiment. What followed was what we thought would be the greatest finding of the century.

There is life on Mercury.

Then we realized, no one would ever believe it. Which is why the project was entirely turned over to me. No one wanted to put their names behind such an unbelievable claim. The idea was to let me spread the word among the conspiracy theorists, the people who acted as if they knew more than anyone but really knew nothing at all, until it grabbed enough attention to be at least considered by the rest of the academic community. In this world, there is no way to completely disagree with the consensus of all scientists while keeping your job. Even if that wasn't the case, professors enjoy and bask in their status and fame. None of them would dream of being labelled a conspiracy theorist, or even worse: religious. For myself, I wasn't important enough to have the privilege of an objection.

The life that was discovered was human in appearance, and, unscientifically put, it was very beautiful. Or at least, they were thought to be beautiful on the first day that we discovered them. The creatures (for…. we cannot really give them the respect that we give to our own evolved species, however beautiful they may be) are tall, slender, with their heads held high and eyes gazing down upon each other. Through our instruments, we managed to discover beautiful cities and technology that we are still unable to completely ascertain. It is as yet unknown how they live seemingly without working.

That was the first days' discovery. Of course, no one will believe my story, so there is no point in trying to convince anyone. We did learn that no one has observed life on Mercury before because these creatures do not reflect light in the wavelengths visible to human eyes. They reflect light in the ultra-violet part of the spectrum, so ascribing a color to them doesn't make sense to our human minds. They can see each other perfectly well, of course, since their eyes can detect UV rays.

The next night we immediately set all of our UV telescopes to work scanning the surface of the planet and observing as much as we could of the people. But this time, what we saw was appalling. We had configured our telescopes to translate the ultra-violet light from the creature's bodies into white light that we could see, and what we saw can only be described as pure evil. Beautiful, terrible, consistent, premeditated evil.

In our world, we have (apparently) evolved in such a way that we can only survive is by working together. And therefore we do. Families, societies, governments, and business only succeed by cooperation. It appears that this was once the case among the creatures, but not any longer. As we observed on the first day, their technology has brought them to a state where they need not work any longer. The earthly problem of scarcity is nonexistent on Mercury. Or at least scarcity of food and pleasure, if they are stimulated by the same things that we are, which appears to be true. But, as a result, they need each other no longer for any purpose. And the result is terrible to behold.

On the streets, murder is everywhere, if they can get away with it. It seems like there was once some sort of law and order, but this has long turned to anarchy as the government became corrupt. There may be no need to have slaves for the pleasures that they provide, but removing scarcity hasn't removed the raw desire to have power and dominate. It's not a desire for sex, or food, or other people's property, for they have all the artificial pleasure stimulators they could desire. It's the intended evil that is the attraction: the malice, the pride, the desire to leave others destitute.

Families are nonexistent, in our sense of the word. Of course children are born by some mechanism (we aren't sure how yet), and survive by the same technology that allows everyone else to survive. But the older creatures consider the younger to be dirty, ignorant, and less valuable than themselves. There is plenty of sex and plenty of offspring, but there is not a father or mother to be found among them.

That was day two. It was a busy day. But day three brought even more challenges. This day, we discovered their library. It was found that education was free and wirelessly broadcasted to the whole population. We were able to tap into their signal and peruse so much knowledge that was far beyond our own.

But, we were observing the creatures, which meant we focused on what we could learn about the creatures through their library. In their psychology research, it appears that they have completely fathomed the complexity of their own brains. Their brains are not identical to our own, and we cannot assume that ours work in the same way. But at some point, it appears that their research on their minds came to a screeching halt just as it reached it's climax.

They discovered that they have no freedom to make choices. They are completely a product of their genes and circumstances and the electrons whizzing around in their individual networks of neurons. This definitely does not mean that they don't want to do everything they do. No one ever does something they don't want to do, even in our own society. The creatures want evil, and they find it.

It is not as though they have no conscience or notion of morality. They do have a morality, and some of them take pride in "doing the right thing". They will refuse to do the worst actions performed by the others, and avoid murder of those who not in their way if they can. They form groups and societies and look down upon the other creatures, and occasionally wage war upon them, destroying man, woman, and child. We thought these may be the hope of their society, but then it was found that their goodness was only superficial. Within their own ranks, they lie, compete, and even kill each other to achieve the ranking positions. Officially, murder is justified if the creature is over a certain age and their death is expedient.

Not much else remains to be said from what we learned of them that day. Our research continued, just verifying what we had observed before. The whole atmosphere in our lab was changed as we, day after day, observed a society more evil than any we could have imagined ourselves.

The next day, we discovered what we thought at first was a comet coming unusually close to earth that was not forecasted in our astronomical models. Then, using our ultraviolet scopes, we were horrified to discover that one of the creatures was on her way towards earth. We haven't the least idea what she will do when she arrives, but none of us expect anything good. There is no reason to think that they may conquer us. Their technology removes the problem of scarcity, but no military strength has been found.

The question of what to do remains up to us. The creature has no free will. But does that matter? By it's nature, it cannot do anything but pure evil, and will certainly follow its nature when it arrives.

Okay, I've had my fun. I''m a rubbish fiction writer. I wish I was better. But everyone has to start at some point. And there is a point to the fiction. It is setting up a scene to demonstrate a moral point. One of the most common viewpoints about God that I've heard is, if we are better than most people, or if we do more good than bad things in our lives, then we will get into heaven. After all, isn't God love? Isn't He fair? How could a good God really send people to hell?

This is where the analogy with the creatures from mercury is valuable. They would have been from a society where a certain level of "goodness" is the norm. As they compare themselves against each other, the better ones may have thought, "hey, I'm a good person. I haven't killed any children. Only the people that annoyed me. And I'm definitely better than 90% of my neighbors." Now take one of those creatures and plop it in our society. I don't think that any one of us who believes in morality would let them off if they behaved that way in our world.

Now consider, still hypothetically, that there was another society looking down on our own in the same way that we were looking down at Mercury. Except this society that observes us really is good in comparison to us. Divorce is unheard of. Fathers sacrifice themselves in love for their children and wives, and no one would dream of aborting a baby because it is convenient. No one lies, no one looks at another with pride, lovers are faithful, children share their toys and love their parents, and people choose to give to the poor instead of having to be coerced by some government to do good. Do you think that they would let any one of us off for the things that we have done? In their eyes, would it not be better if we were wiped away from the universe as the giant puss hole that we are?

That is the way that God looks at us. Except He isn't just some more moral society. He is the inventor of the good. He IS love. In light of the analogy, those words should now be terrifying rather than a comfort to us. The God of the universe who invented love, pleasure, and every good thing there is, is also aware of us, of you, and of me, and of all of our deeds. The reason why we think that God should let us off is because we've grown up in a fallen world. We don't know any different. We don't know what good is really like.

By the way, recall the world that was better than us and observed us. Now, assume they were much much better than us, but still less than perfect. Then imagine another society that observed them, except this society was so close to perfect that they were shocked at the evil doings of the former society. They would have reason to think that the former society was evil as well, and probably would come to the same conclusions as we did about the creatures from Mercury. The point is that, if there is morality, no one who is not perfect ought to escape judgement. (Notice that it's a calculus-ish limit-to-infinity form of argument).

"You who are of purer eyes than to see evil

and cannot look at wrong."

-Habakkuk 1:13a

There is a standard of perfection that is defined by God, and any society that falls short of that standard should be condemned. To our ears that sounds really ridiculous, because we are so used to admiring the "better" ones in our society, and thinking that we will get into heaven if we are good enough.

So, the answer to the question of how can a good God send humans to hell is that we haven't properly understood just how good God is, or how evil each one of our sins are. I hope the story helps you understand the former. I tried to put a little bit of the latter into preamble of the story, but it really deserves it's own blog post.