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Mike,
I don't claim to 'detect' God in any direct manner, but I have been inspired throughout my life to see God as the vital 'player' in the natural world in bringing love, peace, and harmony to the world. I get frustrated though, when I see others who know better than to describe God as the direct designer of parasites and viruses who would know full well the impact of those designs on pain sensitive creatures. It boggles my mind that some people would actually beleive that God would purposely and willfully create torturous mechanisms to innocent babies and creatures who did nothing other than become born. Proposing the Original Sin as it is normally conceived does not abate these theological problems - especially when they visualize God creating these lifeforms as a means to impose some penalty for "Adam's sin". It makes God out to be a villain.
A much better, and by far the most Christian response, is that God is trying to save the world by bringing about the saving actions of his will into the world. These saving actions are moderated by other necessarily factors that restrain God's full intervention in the world (e.g., natural selection, consequences of free will decisions, etc). However, due to God's jurisprudence, these restrictions are eventually overcome which lead to a New Heavens and New Earth.
I don't believe I am saying anything new here. This is all Christian doctrine. That's not to say that other religions are not also effective at their explanations, it's just that I see great hope and satisfaction in the Christian explanation. It's one that I'm eager to offer as a satisfactory explanation to the world's problems and the natural selective world that we find ourselves within. In short, I've come to view Christian doctrine within the context of evolutionary theory, and cannot even imagine a successful Christian theology without evolutionary processes.
Warm regards, Harv |
