"words cannot express God"

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. (Matthew 7:7-8 NKJV)

I understand the thrust of the sentiment "words cannot express God". The related set of beloved and trite sayings includes: a picture is worth more than a thousand words, we currently see through a glass darkly, mysterious ways, etc. And just as nobody knows me completely, e.g. the actual breadth and depth of my thoughts and motivations, still fewer could claim the same for God. While we in our finiteness are yet unpredictable, God is beyond us in every way. So God is inescapably unknown and more holy and mysterious than we can comprehend.

However, there is a definite "flip side" to this coin in Christianity, and to say or act otherwise is excessive.

• For all the failure of words to express God, He has selected words and spoken to humanity, about Himself and other topics (including minute details of temple architecture), time after time. To be sure, Yahweh (YHWH, "I am") is clear about how He cannot and shall not be literally portrayed as anything lesser than a simply-infinite unity (hence, no idols), but He does use a range of metaphors like father and king and so forth. The metaphors are by definition fallible; God chose them anyway as expressions of Himself.
• Christianity obviously professes that one of God's forms, that of a human, lived on Earth and went by the name Jesus ("Yeshua" depending on whether you suffer from hyper-pretension). Why would God do this, if He was trying to maintain an "image" of being remote and exalted and unknowable? Moreover, why would Jesus have then spent so much time teaching, offering up so many words to reveal secrets that are "hidden from the wise"? We can hardly expect the Creator Lord of the universe to be more forthcoming with expressive words.

It's true that words cannot express God, His ways are not our ways, and we need no longer settle for a mediator to make contact with Him. Don't extrapolate those truths to mean that the deepest wells of Christian faith and knowledge are somehow nonverbal, or that its essence consists of tingly goosebumps during protracted prayer sessions. As God is there and not silent (hmm, sounds like a book title), we His followers shouldn't disengage from reality nor remain silent about Him.

avoiding politics through politics

Don't expect much discussion about politics by me. Not as long as 1) the topic is often focused on the tedious and trivial and temporary, 2) other websites cover it from as many angles as anyone could want, 3) the primary value of arguments about it appears to be recreational "full-contact debate" rather than successful attempts to influence opinions. (The third issue also sometimes applies to arguments about apologetics...)

I'm not even momentarily breaking political silence in order to comment on anything specific. I just wanted to mention that I've noticed that those writers who state that they wish to depoliticize Christianity more often than not are vocal about politics - as if the way to stop linking Christianity to explicit political causes is to link it to different political causes than usual.

Don't misunderstand. I'm definitely not arguing that Christians need to withdraw entirely from the realm of politics (given that we're blessed with the privilege of accomplishing so much good through democracy, it'd border on foolish to not participate). Nor am I arguing that Christians shouldn't civilly discuss how and when to apply their deepest beliefs to politics. Nor (and I want to ensure this is clear above all else) am I expressing a political "side".

I'm simply perplexed by an observed combination of unabashed politicking and complaints about Christianity being too "political". Doesn't the one seriously undercut the other?

"How do you explain this?"

The title question is what someone often asks after calling attention to an event that appears to contradict one of the responder's beliefs. Its implied meaning is "If you can't fit this actual occurrence into your perspective convincingly, why do you continue to think that your foundational assumptions are right?"

However, this line of argument generally isn't persuasive...for any side. Since nobody can cause the event in question to recur nor investigate it more exhaustively after-the-fact, nobody should expect to have the event be perfectly explained...by anyone. Hence, events of this type fall partially or completely into the realm of the unknown. And the way that someone explains or understands the unknown is just his or her own preexisting assumptions.

1. "Horrible event X happened. But you say that your god is good. How do you explain this, Christian?" One of the rather standard Christian stances is that an omniscient God is to some degree unknowable (well, "unfathomable") in His thoughts and actions in relation to the "big picture" of the whole of creation in time. So the true, full morality and/or purpose of an event is unknown to all but God. Therefore, all that we can honestly say about how we explain a specific event is that we continue to believe that God is good (or bad, or nonexistent, etc.).

2. "We prayed earnestly on behalf of X's health, and a few days later the sickness is almost gone. But you say that based on the evidence of the universe, God must be either nonexistent, morally ambiguous, or even evil. How do you explain this, atheist?" An atheist might retort that a specific regression of illness is impossible to analyze completely, and in any case medical knowledge isn't absolutely complete. So the true, full physical cause of an event is unknown. Therefore, all that we can honestly say is that we continue to believe that a god wasn't involved (or that He was, etc.).

The upshot is that people can usually find sufficient "wriggle room" within any evidence to support what they already believe. They answer "How do you explain this?" with "I can't examine the evidence as much as I would like, to remove all doubt; nevertheless, I still assume _______."

color me baffled by...

...Christians who are stridently vocal about avoiding "legalistic", "ritualistic", "systematic" Christian practices and express their iconoclastic impulses through...the usage of very old, very traditional, rituals.

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism

Color me behind-the-times, but somewhere in the Web commentary about USA Today's American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) I learned about a cogent label and description of the religious (i.e. "spiritual") beliefs held by many people in the U.S.: Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. "Moralistic" refers to the common-sense notion that people should be good and nice, and to the assumption that good people will experience a good afterlife. "Therapeutic" refers to the purpose of spirituality, which is enabling people to live better and more pleasant lives, through learning to love oneself and others enough to carry out constructive, beneficial actions like forgiveness. "Deism" refers to the perceived remoteness and intangibility of the Creator God, whom people acknowledge and beseech from time to time but mostly isn't involved in one's life. The actual perspectives of people I've met are so well captured by this set of ideas that it hurts.

As I've written before on many occassions, I consider Moralistic Therapeutic Deism to be incomplete rather than starkly wrong (although parts of it unmistakably are). God is holy, and it would be great if people followed His lead, so Christianity has its moralistic side. God is overflowing with the power and desire to mend people, so Christianity has its therapeutic side. God is mysterious and perfect in His actions and plans, so Christianity has its deist side. However, it's also true that righteousness is by faith and grace, no person nor the universe itself will be completely restored until the End, and the Spirit who is God's own person is as close and intimate as anyone wishes.

I'd also note that Moralistic Therapeutic Deism isn't necessarily Christian. When God and morality are sufficiently vague, doctrinal distinctions are quite pointless (and impossible). For some, mushy doctrine is part of the allure.

A sampling of the past entries that pertain to the topic:

• cultural accomodation through appeasement
• middling morality
• just be yourself
• all you need is love
• pursuit of happiness
• why a Holy God?

looking for a new spiritual experience?

No, I don't mean trying out incense or chants. I'd be far more impressed if you try fasting (responsibly, following guidelines).

wholes in Christian thought

My increasing belief is that the best intellectual approach for Christianity is a collection of wholes. Controversy and infighting partially result from a failure to appreciate these wholes. To elaborate:

• Faith. Wherever people profess beliefs, other people who think similarly but differently might choose to respond indirectly (i.e. creatively/laterally) with the "pragmatic parry". The pragmatic parry consists of refusing to raise or attack a point of contention, and instead insisting that endless debate over ideas and "semantics" is pointless on principle because actions and attitudes are what affect reality (it's possible to view the history of philosophy as a series of cycles of returning its subject matter to relevance). Among Christians, the pragmatic parry expresses a reaction to established theology, especially the excessively academic kind that seems to spin round and round on conceptual definitions and ignores issues in the surrounding society. The Christian's pragmatic parry to all doctrines is "Faith is what you do and are; the Pharisees of the Gospels were laser-focused on mapping out the parameters of the Law and its various prohibitions but our Lord's focus was on the inner condition of hearts, exemplified by overflowing love to all people". And this assertion is clearly biblical! The danger is treating this as a justification for overlooking the whole of faith. For faith is right belief translated into right actions. Consider the epistle of James, and the Lord's teaching that a man's actions (and speech) flow out of his heart - in modern language, follow the evidence. Only right belief will consistently produce right actions, and of course right actions are fruitless if we haven't been born again as new creations who are sons of God, known personally by Him. Whole Christian faith assumes a whole "model" of human actions: people ascertain or know what reality is, then they respond to this understanding. This is neither "do whatever you want if your spirit is pure" nor "results are infinitely more valuable than intentions". As others have said, since human relationships experience love as both affection/intimacy and generous gestures, to understand saving faith as a relationship is to also require both.
  
• Interpretation. It's hard to overstate the importance of sacred texts such as the Bible. Thus, the questions that naturally arise from reading it are also of great importance. How trustworthy is it, and in what sense is it of divine authorship? What is the intent and style of the human writers? What is it communicating, and where can this content be reapplied to contemporary concerns? Moreover, who answers these interpretative questions and on what (whose) authority? Christian history bursts (not always proudly) with distinct answers to the aforementioned questions. Aside from the well-known guideline of interpreting the Bible as a contextual whole rather than ripping out isolated verses, viewing interpretation as a whole involves the now-somewhat-trite observation that any occurrence of Bible reading or study, like all communication, involves multiple "participants" such as the writer, the writer's (historical, social) context, the actual text, the translator, the reader, the reader's context, past interpretations and commentaries, numerous biases, etc., etc. It's far, far overreaching to claim that each occurrence of Bible reading "creates" a new Bible, yet it's also plainly ridiculous to claim that the writers of a centuries-old text aren't separated from the present readers of the text by gaps in thought. For one thing, language itself is continually changing - this fact doesn't at all invalidate Bible translations but it does warn Christians of the need to bridge that gap through good (intense) scholarship. A whole view of interpretation negates the false dilemma that either the writer or text is all-powerful - "the Bible speaks for itself for God did not stutter" - or the reader is all-powerful - "the Bible contains nothing more than what the reader or Spirit-mediated revelation brings to it". Communication is admittedly imperfect but it still works well enough. The Lord commented that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. Can't the Church comprehend and communicate the meaning of this sentence to an audience that doesn't know about camels or needles?
  
• Grace. Unbalanced notions about grace in Christianity bedevil too many, and judging by the letters in the Bible this temptation has been present since early on ("Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?" wrote Paul to Rome). Just as faith is more than right personal beliefs/doctrines, grace is more than the assurance that sins don't and won't separate the devoted from God. Grace is freely offered, but Christians exhibit coarse misunderstanding when they take this to mean that it's free. Perhaps it's more accurate to state that grace doesn't cost anything "up-front". As anyone will repeat, nobody earns grace, by first definitions. However, grace is applied through faith, the whole faith previously explained. The Lord never promised that grace alone would save everyone (look up the metaphor of the wide and narrow gates and compare the quantity of people for each). He forgave sins everywhere He went, but in addition He instructed the forgiven to stop sinning and in His discourses He set up changed-heart rules stricter than the Law! The whole perspective on grace is not merely "God excuses every sin" and not merely "Christians must never sin again after conversion, once they know better". The deeper someone's awareness of sin, the clearer someone's perception of grace, which is God's merciful response. Such a person will find it almost literally unthinkable to repeat a confessed and forgiven sin (although he or she may in fact stumble later due to not dwelling and relying fully enough on God). After being reminded that sin is reprehensible yet rooted deep within, the very preciousness of grace will deter the sinner from treating it cheaply. People cannot presume that they in their sin can please God apart from His loving grace; why would they presume to "stretch" this grace any further and thereby displease their merciful savior?