The second question to ask as you read the Bible is, How would my life change if I embraced what it is saying? Resistance may come because the answer would be uncomfortable. I had a remarkable experience of seeing how a problem in life led to a rejection of the Bible’s invitation. It was while I was an undergraduate. I was studying for a liberal arts degree. A number of high school friends and I found ourselves in the same university. Over a number of months I shared with my friend books giving evidence and arguments to support Christianity’s truth claims, especially about Jesus. My friend was studying science with a view to doing medicine. After some six months, he shared that be believed that Jesus was the Son of God and had risen from the dead. I was thrilled and said how wonderful that he was now a Christian. But no, he said, he wasn’t. He explained to me that if he became a Christian, God might want him to give up his pursuit of medicine and become a missionary. (To this day I am not sure why he thought that.) For him, the problem was a possible change in his life’s direction.
The book that understands me calls upon me to change. Some things cannot be seen without a change in position. For a time I lived in Cambridge in England. Nearby is Ely Cathedral. The cathedral is over a thousand years old and dominates the landscape, so much so it is locally referred to as “the ship of the fens.” Looking from the outside it can seem dull in color. But step inside on a sunny day and the cathedral is full of beautiful light and the stained glass windows are alive. A change of position makes all the difference. My friend was not prepared to step inside.48
And Yet Questions Persist
Over the years I have found many answers to my questions in the Bible’s pages. That does not mean, however, that questions do not persist. The fact of evil in our world continues to perplex me, especially where children are involved. That’s where the AFL box comes into play. AFL stands for Awaiting Further Light.49
For many years, I had this question in my AFL box: Why is the universe so big if, according to the Bible, the earth is where the action is to be found? After all, Christians claim that God became incarnate (i.e. human without ceasing to be God) on this planet which is part of only one solar system which in turn is part of only one galaxy, the Milky Way, which itself is an estimated 100 million light years across. One scientist captured the point well: “It’s rather humbling,” says Caitlin Casey. “Astronomy has taught us that we’re not the centre of the Universe, we’re not even at the centre of our Solar System or at the centre of our galaxy.”50
After teaching philosophy for a number of years, I came up with one possible answer. There are different kinds of value. Truth is an intellectual value. Goodness is a moral value. Beauty is an aesthetic value. Perhaps when the Bible relates how God describes the various aspects of creation as a “good,” there is an aesthetic dimension to the idea. In other words, God enjoys the beauty of the vast universe of which our planet is a tiny part. After all, I enjoy the beauty of the images of outer space I see, so why not God who is a person too?
Some years later, I found myself leading a seminar at Monash University in Australia with John Polkinghorne, who is both a scientist and a theologian by training. For years he was a professor of mathematical physics at the University of Cambridge. He answered the question in a different but complementary way. He argued that the minerals that make up the human body were forged in the stars and that without a universe the size that we conjecture it to be, human beings would not be here. I now had two answers to my questions whereas for a number of years I had none.
So don’t be surprised if you have questions. Don’t be surprised that some questions may take years before a satisfactory answer comes. Don’t be surprised if some questions are not answered at all. The fact is that the Book that understands me does not cover every imaginable topic. It tells us as much. Here is what Moses told Israel back in the day. The setting is a plain just outside the land of promise: Moses is preaching and here is the climax (Deuteronomy 29:29): “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.” There are two categories on view: secret things and revealed things. Moreover, the revealed things have to do with the practice of life for which we need law, which in the context means guidance or instruction. Of course, there is a place for theory formation and speculation. I have a theory as to why an all good, all wise and all powerful God has allowed evil to intrude into creation. The fact of the matter is that the Bible is non-postulation on this and many other subjects. It offers no theories as to the essences of things. The interest of Scripture is relation: my relation to God, my relation to you and my relation to nature.