Some doubt Christianity because of its strict moral law. However, recently I have noticed how fluid that moral law can be. For instance there seems to be an increase in Christians who are becoming more comfortable with homosexuality. I never thought that something that was once a black and white issue could in such a short time be something perfectly acceptable. Granted mainstream Christianity still condemns homosexuality, but it just makes me ponder about how quickly religious thoughts can change on a subject. So for me the strict moral law isn’t a cause of doubt. For me its more how quickly religion can evolve and change over time and how tied religious thought is to the culture of the day. Makes me wonder what was going on during Jesus’ time.
Here are some things I ran across that started this mental meandering:
For me, definitely the more fluid it becomes, the more my doubts are assuaged. Because the strict rules seem to be so fluid anyway from denomination to denomination, the more acceptance I see across the board, the more comfortable I am in my faith. If people allow for more things to simply be a matter of disagreement about theology, the more I feel like this is something I can be a part of. When it becomes more strident, I tend to feel on the outside.
This is an argument I’ve gotten in with several Christians when arguing about where morals come from. Most of them don’t want to admit that Christianity’s morals have changed again and again.
That is why I became so disenchanted with evangelicalism, because, at least in the forms I have been exposed to, it works very hard to reject evolution of religion, both denying it happens and working against letting it happen. The very fact that Christianity is tied to the culture of the day is decried as a critical failure of Christians to reject the surrounding culture. The religion then becomes divisive, between believer and unbeliever, but also between conservative evangelical and any other Christian group. I like your vision of Christianity a lot better.
To play “Jesus-advocate” (as I often have to do as a Christian agnostic) maybe this fluidity is necessary for an ever changing culture. But the underlying truths are still there. For me, it is very hard for me to put myself into the shoes of the first Christians, let alone the even earlier Jewish culture. Maybe the homosexuality addressed in the Bible is completely different than that of today. Maybe it’s not God changing the rules, but His interaction and guidance for an ever changing people that is changing to the times. However, I agree with Mike that this fluidity in the moral law does destroy (if not make weaker) the argument that the moral law requires a law giver (God).
Ever read the book the language of God? In it a Christian scientist looks at many of the constants in the universe that simply exist the way they do, like the strong nuclear force and gravity. He examines the effects of slight changes in many of them and finds that if any of them were off ever so slightly than life could not exist. He examines enough of them so that is seems nearly impossible for this to just have happened.
a doubter as well.
Kevin,
I haven’t yet read “The Language of God”. Just to be clear, are you referring to Francis Collins’ book? Did he go into universal constants like gravity and such as evidence for God? I would have thought that he would have stuck to his specialty (genomics) or something close like genetic evidence for evolution. I’ve been meaning to look more into the cosmological and teleological arguments. I have heard some Christian physicist/cosmologist being hesitant in using these arguments for the existence of God, for fear that it will have the same fate as YEC, OEC, and ID. For instance before evolutionary theory and the molecular genetics, the life appeared very narrowly designed to fill all the different niches of earth. However, now with our current understanding, this design can be explained naturally. The same may hold for the cosmological constants. I heard it once said, “Cosmology just hasn’t had its Darwin yet.”
The book is by Francis Collins, he sites other scientists who specialize in those fields. He probably does discuss genomics for evidence, but I did not read that part.
“If the rate of expansion one second after the BIg Bang had been smaller by even one part in 100 thousand million million, the universe would have recollapsed before it ever reached its present size” Stephan Hawking, Brief History, 138
This is one of them.
The book is by Francis Collins, he sites other scientists who specialize in those fields. He probably does discuss genomics for evidence, but I did not read that part.
“If the rate of expansion one second after the BIg Bang had been smaller by even one part in 100 thousand million million, the universe would have recollapsed before it ever reached its present size” Stephan Hawking, Brief History, 138
This is one of them.