God and Nature Fall 2021
book excerpt
|
|
By Steve Robinson and Victoria Lim
Who Is God, Really? is a recently published conversational apologetic for a personal God. The conversation takes place over more than three years between two scientists—a chemist and physicist—who were once student and professor. It is not intended to be a formal defense of Christianity or a systematic theology (although such elements are present). Rather, it is designed to reveal what it might look like for someone who esteems science and reason to have a personal relationship with Jesus and follow him daily. Below is a small glance into this conversation. Who Is God, Really? is available at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B098JH79JV/.
Victoria: “All God asks of Christians is that we believe these things to be true…” Why is this so hard? Why doesn’t he give more “hints,” so to speak?
Steve: This is very difficult to put in words. I think if we completely understand a thing, it is nearly impossible to love it. The things I really love (my family, friends, students, etc.) require me to constantly drive my attention to them to attempt to gain a grasp of what they’re like. On the contrary, if someone hands me a pencil, I immediately appreciate what it does, but I don’t love it because it doesn’t require me to pursue it to understand it. The beauty of love is in that uncertainty, no? If you knew everything about your boyfriend you could possibly know, I believe he would become an unlovable robot to you. I also feel a tinge of this with science. I love it because of the unknown, but in the end, it must—by definition—be robotic as well. I love coming home from work to my family because, unlike the couch, I have no idea what they’re going to do/say/be like. It’s also nice that my family loves me back unlike my couch, but that feels less important to me. Now, if we accept these premises, God is like that but again multiplied by a gazillion. I feel as if I’m pursuing an infinite, inexplicable good thing that can never be fully known by me, which makes me want to keep pursuing and trying to know that thing. And if God regularly showed up in some “five senses” kind of way, he’d just be an awesome friend, or even worse, a pencil to be studied.
Victoria: I completely agree regarding knowing and loving. I enjoy the process of learning, molding, and growing with those I love and the topics I love to pursue. Something completely known and predictable doesn’t evoke feelings of love and respect. So I can understand how you make that connection (times a gazillion) to God. The thing is, going back to human scale, if my boyfriend went AWOL, I would probably eventually cease my love and care for him, because there would be no interchange of ideas, thoughts, anything. I think that a relationship built on love has to be dynamic and mutually involving. If there doesn’t seem to be any input from the other side, and the relationship feels one-sided, how can one be convinced that they’re in a loving relationship?
Steve: We believe that God has made himself evident in creation and reason. Given his other qualities—often revealed in us, such as a sense of morality—it stands that he should reveal himself and has, the events of which were recorded in the Bible. So, a Christian would say that God speaks to us today most explicitly through the Bible: a static and finite set of ideas about what he is like. In other words, it is mostly enough for me to examine the authenticity, consistency, and historicity of the Bible, accept it at face value, and then experience God through his interactions with biblical characters. (I say “mostly” because I do believe that I’ve had prayers answered, experienced supernatural things, and seen God work in the big picture in my life, but I get that there’s absolutely no way to convince anyone that those things really happened.) So, in one sense, God has revealed himself to me in a way (written word) that is much clearer than I can to him when I speak to him in prayer (because of my own ignorance and inadequacy with language).
Victoria: “…evident in creation and reason.” Is this like the idea of having to look for it to find it? How do you know what to look for? How do you know you’re not fooling yourself?
As for God speaking through the Bible, this is something else I’ve never understood. It seems that God was once so active in the world: wars, plagues, floods, and the time that Jesus was around. Why is the Bible now past tense/static/finite? I realize that you can apply concepts and see analogies in present-day scenarios, but why was the Bible from time x to time y? Will there ever be more to it?
“…ignorance and inadequacy with language.” Is this a common thing? Or, conversely, how common do you think it is for people to feel connected to God via prayer? On that note, can you define prayer? My understanding is that prayer is communication to God that can be in a variety of forms. But I don’t really understand what that means either. A common depiction is someone on their knees with clasped hands. Is that typical, and can something that isn’t this “movie view” of prayer still be a prayer?
Steve Robinson is a Professor of Physics at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, where he has worked since 2007. He received BS degrees in electrical and computer engineering at North Carolina State University before pursuing MS and PhD degrees at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he performed research in nanoelectronics. He is married with three children.
Victoria Lim lives in Southern California where she works as a technical writer for a software company. She obtained her BS degree from Belmont University with a double major in chemistry and mathematics. She completed her MS and PhD degrees in chemistry at the University of California, Irvine. Victoria’s PhD research focused on the development and application of molecular simulations for drug discovery.
Who Is God, Really? is a recently published conversational apologetic for a personal God. The conversation takes place over more than three years between two scientists—a chemist and physicist—who were once student and professor. It is not intended to be a formal defense of Christianity or a systematic theology (although such elements are present). Rather, it is designed to reveal what it might look like for someone who esteems science and reason to have a personal relationship with Jesus and follow him daily. Below is a small glance into this conversation. Who Is God, Really? is available at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B098JH79JV/.
Victoria: “All God asks of Christians is that we believe these things to be true…” Why is this so hard? Why doesn’t he give more “hints,” so to speak?
Steve: This is very difficult to put in words. I think if we completely understand a thing, it is nearly impossible to love it. The things I really love (my family, friends, students, etc.) require me to constantly drive my attention to them to attempt to gain a grasp of what they’re like. On the contrary, if someone hands me a pencil, I immediately appreciate what it does, but I don’t love it because it doesn’t require me to pursue it to understand it. The beauty of love is in that uncertainty, no? If you knew everything about your boyfriend you could possibly know, I believe he would become an unlovable robot to you. I also feel a tinge of this with science. I love it because of the unknown, but in the end, it must—by definition—be robotic as well. I love coming home from work to my family because, unlike the couch, I have no idea what they’re going to do/say/be like. It’s also nice that my family loves me back unlike my couch, but that feels less important to me. Now, if we accept these premises, God is like that but again multiplied by a gazillion. I feel as if I’m pursuing an infinite, inexplicable good thing that can never be fully known by me, which makes me want to keep pursuing and trying to know that thing. And if God regularly showed up in some “five senses” kind of way, he’d just be an awesome friend, or even worse, a pencil to be studied.
Victoria: I completely agree regarding knowing and loving. I enjoy the process of learning, molding, and growing with those I love and the topics I love to pursue. Something completely known and predictable doesn’t evoke feelings of love and respect. So I can understand how you make that connection (times a gazillion) to God. The thing is, going back to human scale, if my boyfriend went AWOL, I would probably eventually cease my love and care for him, because there would be no interchange of ideas, thoughts, anything. I think that a relationship built on love has to be dynamic and mutually involving. If there doesn’t seem to be any input from the other side, and the relationship feels one-sided, how can one be convinced that they’re in a loving relationship?
Steve: We believe that God has made himself evident in creation and reason. Given his other qualities—often revealed in us, such as a sense of morality—it stands that he should reveal himself and has, the events of which were recorded in the Bible. So, a Christian would say that God speaks to us today most explicitly through the Bible: a static and finite set of ideas about what he is like. In other words, it is mostly enough for me to examine the authenticity, consistency, and historicity of the Bible, accept it at face value, and then experience God through his interactions with biblical characters. (I say “mostly” because I do believe that I’ve had prayers answered, experienced supernatural things, and seen God work in the big picture in my life, but I get that there’s absolutely no way to convince anyone that those things really happened.) So, in one sense, God has revealed himself to me in a way (written word) that is much clearer than I can to him when I speak to him in prayer (because of my own ignorance and inadequacy with language).
Victoria: “…evident in creation and reason.” Is this like the idea of having to look for it to find it? How do you know what to look for? How do you know you’re not fooling yourself?
As for God speaking through the Bible, this is something else I’ve never understood. It seems that God was once so active in the world: wars, plagues, floods, and the time that Jesus was around. Why is the Bible now past tense/static/finite? I realize that you can apply concepts and see analogies in present-day scenarios, but why was the Bible from time x to time y? Will there ever be more to it?
“…ignorance and inadequacy with language.” Is this a common thing? Or, conversely, how common do you think it is for people to feel connected to God via prayer? On that note, can you define prayer? My understanding is that prayer is communication to God that can be in a variety of forms. But I don’t really understand what that means either. A common depiction is someone on their knees with clasped hands. Is that typical, and can something that isn’t this “movie view” of prayer still be a prayer?
Steve Robinson is a Professor of Physics at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, where he has worked since 2007. He received BS degrees in electrical and computer engineering at North Carolina State University before pursuing MS and PhD degrees at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he performed research in nanoelectronics. He is married with three children.
Victoria Lim lives in Southern California where she works as a technical writer for a software company. She obtained her BS degree from Belmont University with a double major in chemistry and mathematics. She completed her MS and PhD degrees in chemistry at the University of California, Irvine. Victoria’s PhD research focused on the development and application of molecular simulations for drug discovery.