The Offence of Lent

Rev. Dr. Michael J Nel D.Th.

February 2013

Lent confronts us with what St. Paul speaks of as the offense of the Gospel as well as its folly (1 Cor. 1:18).  This foolishness and offense of the Gospel has largely been lost.  Intuitively we know that there is something different about Lent and Good Friday. Interestingly, we have not truly reflected upon on the reasons for our discomfort but it is clear that there is something about this season of the Church Year that makes us uneasy.  We want to leap over Lent and Good Friday to Easter Sunday.  Everyone likes a celebration. The celebration of Easter with its bunnies and chocolates provides an excuse to avoid the offense of lent.

The reason, I believe, for our discomfort with Lent and Good Friday concerns our knowledge and understanding of God. This understanding has been shaped by natural theologies from the past. The traditional view of God was that God was an all powerful Deity. A God who is, from the “beginning,” before the world was made and above and apart from creation. All this God has to do is to speak and what is spoken comes into being. God is understood to be the first cause of all creation, a God who creates out of nothing (ex nihilo). God was the answer to all questions about creation.  With God in charge, it is believed that the world has a purpose and is moving, under God’s guidance, to fulfilling God’s purpose. God is pictured as all-powerful and transcendent. This is the God of Creationists and those putting forward the idea of Intelligent Design.  For them God has to be all-powerful in order to support their belief or to topple from the throne by unbelief.

This God has been co-opted by those in power to justify their actions.  By claiming this God to be on their side, allowed those in power to maintain the loyalty of their followers.  This is the God of civil religion. Civil religion rallies the people with slogans such as “God with us” and cynically puts on their coins “In God we trust.” This God of civil religion invoked as a buttress that undergirds the claims and actions of those in power in their oppression of all those who oppose them. To question such leaders is then to question God. In the past this was the God who was believed to support the “divine right of kings” to rule.  This understanding has now surfaced in the claims of leaders in dictatorships, democracies and among religions extremists.

Something changed a hundred and fifty plus years ago, to be precise in 1859 with the publication of Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species.” This change is what Daniel C. Dennett describes as Darwin’s very “dangerous idea.” Since that moment Christians have been caught in a dilemma. This dilemma a significant section of the conservative churches vigorously deny and oppose. Meanwhile the majority of the mainline churches largely pay lip service to and ignore. What changed as a result of Darwin’s dangerous idea?  What changed was a tectonic shift in the understanding of God and creation. The traditional way of understanding that relationship which was rooted in a natural theology lost its validity. God was no longer needed to understand the universe, not only its beginning but is ongoing evolution.

What was so dangerous about Darwin’s theory of evolution?  At the heart of Darwin’s theory is the process he referred to as natural selection. Natural selection brings about changes through a process referred to as the “survival of the fittest.” Unfortunately this is often misunderstood as being about physical strength.  In this popular understanding it meant those who “survive” are those who have the ability and strength to survive.  However, this popular notion is wrong and not what Darwin meant.  For him the survival of the fittest referred to those who survived through successful reproduction. Nature now had its own process for shaping its future.  God was no longer needed as an explanation. Nature takes care of itself by having its future determined by those in a species who can successfully reproduce themselves. This meant that nature had its own creation process that made God redundant.

With the all powerful God now redundant is there a place for theology? Biologist Richard Dawkins and others believe that there is no longer any place for any religion.  Darwin’s dangerous idea has invalidated all the claims made about God in religions. God has been dethroned.  This was the basis of the debates sponsored by the British Broadcasting Corporation and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation between Richard Dawkins and Tony Blair the former Prime Minister of England.  Unfortunately Blair was no match for Dawkins and his claims concerning the redundancy of religion. The world no longer needed an all powerful God who creates, nature is quite capable of taking care of itself.

This position of Dawkins’ and others like psychologist Steven Pinker and the socio-biologist        E. O. Wilson has been vigorously opposed by Creationist and those who promote Intelligent Design.  Their defense is of God who is all powerful Creator and who created all things. Unfortunately this defense of God is a failure.  They have failed to appreciate that there is no longer a place for an all powerful God as an explanation for creation.  While the scientific materialists like Dawkins are actively promoting the dethroning of such an all-powerful God the Creationists are actively trying to enthrone this all powerful God again.  More problematic is that the Creationists are caught in a bind, which is also a problem for scientific materialists, in that all their efforts to enthrone this God again are focused on some distant past. They fail to appreciate that creation is not a once off event but is an ongoing process. 

This clash of the two realities has major implications.  In his book Conscilience, E.O. Wilson describes how he had a conversion in the Southern Baptist Church when he was 16. He read three times through the Bible. It was when he went to university that he discovered that there was another reality, other than the one his Southern Baptist Church was teaching which was very critical of Darwin’s theory.  This other reality provided a far more adequate and better explanation about nature than that provided by his church. This new reality to which he was exposed did not require “belief” in Creationism and submission to the church’s authority in defining what is really real. This discovery led him to become an atheist.

The fear of sending a child to university is often framed by parents as a place where they will lose their faith.  This comment implies that it is the universities who are fault.  From Wilson’s experience the problem was not with the university but with their church and the clergy who promoted an understanding of reality that could not and still cannot, stand examination. But this is not just a problem for those from these Fundamentalist churches. The mainline churches are also part of the problem since very few clergy have struggled with these two competing realities and as a result the students from their parishes are also ill equipped to deal with questions about religion and science, about God.

What has all this to do with Lent and Good Friday? I believe that it is precisely in the messages of Lent and Good Friday that Christians can address the claims put forward by scientific materialists. Lent refutes the belief that God must be understood as being all-powerful, the one who stands above and outside of creation.  The God of lent is one who come in humility and weakness and enters into creation. Being weak does not mean that God is powerless but God’s power is paradoxically revealed in divine love. It is precisely here that we find the offense of the Gospel and what many would see as foolishness. This is the antithesis of the position of the Creationists and scientific materialist who are arguing of a God of power. The God of the Bible is one who comes in weakness and humility; a God who according to St. Paul empties God’s self.  In the ongoing debate neither side can acknowledge a God who is humble and who comes in weakness. This God who is rejected, abused and crucified is an offense and foolishness. 

Scripture, on the other hand witnesses to a God who is vulnerable and offers God’s self for the salvation of the cosmos.   This contrasting picture of God is clearly seen in the meeting of Elijah and God at Horeb (1Kings 19:11-13 NRSV)

¹¹ He said, “Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.” Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; ¹² and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. ¹³ When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

God comes to Elijah not as the all powerful and Almighty One but in the still small voice. God comes not with chariots and fire but as a vulnerable infant in a manger. Perhaps the greatest irony is reflected in nativity plays in churches.  All the roles are played by children. Even Jesus is portrayed as a child, weak and vulnerable. The irony is that congregations choose those who are weak, small and insignificant to witness to the Gospel of God without realizing that their theological understanding of God is probably the exact opposite. The idea that God is humble and weak is utterly foolish and an offense to many. The God of the nativity plays is not the God over whom Creationists and scientific materialists are arguing.  This is the God of the Gospel, revealed in Jesus the Christ born in a manger. We find God walking with the broken and wounded. God touching the untouchable: lepers. A God mocked, abused, beaten, crucified, dead and buried in a borrowed grave.  This is the God of Lent and Good Friday.  This is God who participates in creation and allows the created to become co-creators. This is why the Church needs to rediscover Lent and Good Friday in order to be reawakened to the offense and foolishness of the Gospel. Furthermore, this is the Church’s response to those who believe that there is only one reality whether that of creationist or of the scientific materialist but is called to proclaim the reality of God who enters creation in humility and whose power is revealed in divine love. This is the God to whom scripture witnesses.

One of the implications of Darwin’s dangerous idea is that nature is cruel, chaotic, destructive and filled with death. Natural selection means that only some, namely those who are successful in reproduction, have a hope for the future.  Nature is not a Walt Disney show, but violent and filled with killing and death. Nature is chaotic since the process of natural selection leaves many wounded on the wayside.  As some scientific materialist have argued there is no right or wrong in nature, no good or bad, no ethics, natural selection is a process that just is. Consequently Darwinian theory cannot deal with the presence of pain and suffering. If some of the followers of Darwin cannot deal with the question of pain and suffering neither can the Creationists. If God is all powerful and almighty, and has created everything and is in charge, then why does God allow pain, suffering and death? Once again we turn to the witness of scripture. The God of Scripture is one who comes in humility and participates in the pain and suffering in the world, even sharing in death. It is not surprising then that this witness to God is perceived as an offense. Even in the Church we would much prefer to skip over Lent and Good Friday to Easter to avoid facing the offense of a God who in love dies for the whole cosmos.  This is not the God we desire. We seek a Godlike Zeus ruling with power over a pantheon of other gods, or the god like Thor who has a voice of thunder that shakes the world and makes it tremble.

Darwin brings us face to face with another dilemma. He struggled with the conundrum of altruism.  How could natural selection choose for altruism?  Altruism implies that there are some who are willing to offer themselves for others without the successful reproduction of their genes.  Darwin believed that the question of altruism could undermine his whole theory.  How is it possible for natural selection to select for a gene for altruism?  Darwin was not aware of the science of genetics. William Hamilton proposed a very simple formula to explain altruism which takes into account how the benefits outweigh the costs. This led to the concept of kin selection. His proposition is still held by many today. However, Hamilton’s most avid disciple E. O. Wilson, more recently rejected the work of Hamilton. The debate over altruism has reopened.

For Christians the message of Lent is one of an altruistic God.  God sacrifices God’ self for the cosmos.  This witness of the scripture confronts everyone with a conundrum.  The conundrum presents two contradictory images of God.  There is the God of power on the one side who is outside of creation and on the other side the God who empties God’s self and enters into creation. A God who gives up all pretences of power to walk with the powerless, the weak, the suffering, the poor. A God who is not removed from the world and is untouchable but one who enters the world and touches the lepers. This message of God is an offense and foolishness.  Just at Darwin struggled with the problem of altruism, so too does the Church. What does one do with an altruistic God? How is one to believe in a God who gives God’s self and there is nothing in it for God?

The message of Lent and Good Friday is as much of an offense today as it was 2000 years ago.  It will always remain an offense since the witness to God offends humankind to the core.  The God of Lent and Good Friday is not the God we want or desire.  Humankind honours strength not weakness. The God of civil religion has to be strong otherwise such a god is irrelevant.  A God of humility whose power is love is only appropriated when the God of power is abandoned.