Science vs Religion (3)

Continuation from Science vs Religion (1) and Science vs Religion (2)

I firmly believe that when we do science with a humble heart, science will direct us towards God. When we see the magnificence and grandeur design of nature, along with its complexity yet ordered, we’ll bow down in awe to the genius creator of this universe. Scientists who have integrity and honesty, should follow where the evidence of science leads. The evidence with no doubt points out to the supernaturalistic explanations, such as the singularity points in the Big Bang, 2nd law of thermodynamics, any many others. It is more rational to believe that God is the creator of this singularity point along with a burst of massive energy and informations in our DNA, as compared to all the irrationally improbable theory that try to exaggerate beyond science. In my opinion, the problem with all the scientists is merely the mother of all sin: Pride. I find a coherence between the claim of scientism and the claim of Lucifer in Isaiah 14:12-15. Both are the claims of pride, Lucifer boasts its beauty and wants to be exalted more than his creator, whereas scientism boasts its discovery and wants to be exalted more than the creator of science itself. Science found the same thing (Big Bang Theory, Evolution Theory, etc), but what makes the difference is its interpretation. Those prideful scientists interpret them as their success and abandon God because they claim that they are able to explain everything and they don’t need God anymore for any explanation. In contrast, humble scientists interpret them as the fascinating and intriguing intelectual objects that makes them bow down in awe of its creator. When the Human Genome Project was finished, Bill Clinton in his speech said: “Today, we are learning the language in which God created life. We are gaining ever more awe for the complexity, the beauty, and the wonder of God’s most divine and sacred gift.” After that, the leader of the project, Francis S. Collins added: “It’s a happy day for the world. It is humbling for me, and awe-inspiring, to realize that we have caught the first glimpse of our own instruction book, previously known only to God”. Again, the sin of scientism falls on human pride and human rebellion against God.

In conclusion, the ’conflict’ between science and religion was not a conflict of truth. It was a conflict deep in human heart that either rebels against God or bow down to God. It is again a classical war between the mother of sin (Pride) versus the mother of virtue (Humility). God creates us with a scientific mind for us to be able to stand in awe of his creation. Science should not go beyond its boundary, as it is no longer science. Pride in science will only bring us to destruction, but humility in science will lead us to our creator.

“If Scientific equations are a form of poetry written by Nature’s creator, then scientific discovery is an act with spiritual overtones.” – C. N. Yang.

“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind” – Albert Einstein.

Science vs Religion (2)

continuation from Science vs Religion (1)

Science has also boast itself that it could explain how human beings comes to be, i.e. by means of evolution. However we have to remember that this is only a theory, i.e. theory of evolution, and not a law. Theory means that it is not proved yet, whereas law means that it stands firm with proofs. A shift from evolution as knowledge to evolution is a leap of faith. Either evolution theory is true or false, it speaks nothing about the nature of its creator. Let’s say that one day evolution gains a sophisticated proof, one should also ask the question of who creates this mechanism. Isn’t it very plausible that God creates the evolution mechanism to bring forth humans? If we find a watch in a desert, and later find out that this watch was produced by a factory operated by dozens of robots, we should also ponder out who created that robots. Whatever the coclusion of evolution is, it will points out to the first cause. But the evolution theory is now defective of evidence. Dr. Collin Patterson, author of the book Evolution and a lifelong macroevolutionist, once asks the geology staff at the Field Museum of Natural History this question: “Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing, any one thing that is true?” The answer was silence. When he asked the same question to the memberes of the Evolutionary Morphology Seminar at the University of Chicago, a very prestigious body of evolutionists, one person answers: “I do know one thing – it ought not to be taught in high school.”

Even further, all this time we have been taught half-truth in the high school. Science itself has admit that the miller experiment, Darwin’s tree of life, Haeckel’s embryos, the Archaeopteryx missing link, any may be even more, are altered and partly fabricated. There is even now the term “Haeckel’s sin” to point out his deception in the evolution theory. The analysis of these findings was made with a strong tendency towards naturalism or evolution. Innocent high school students are deceived to believe that the proof of evolution was ample, whereas the truth is the opposite. This in my opinion was a human pride that they are able to explain everything scientifically. As a scientist, there is a self-satisfaction when seeing that we have an explanation for what we observe, making the open question of the origin of species an open-ended question. I myself feels this sense of great satisfaction when I do scientific research and able to explain what is previously unknown to humans. This is indeed the task of all scientist, but coercing a theory that is totally lacking of evident was naive.

Some people hold that science is the only way to obtain the truth, which is called scientism. Its implication was the undermining of religion, philosophy, as well as ethics. It is obvious that science could not tell whether murder is ethical or unethical, no scientific experiment can tell us. However, this scientism is incoherent and self-defeating. The claim of scientism itself is not a statement of science, and therefore could not be proved in the laboratory, hence it contradict itself. Science itself is not sufficient for humans to find the truth. We definitely need revelations to know the things that humans will never be able to attain by any means. John Lennox gives a vivid illustration on the relation between science and revelation. Science could only investigate what is in nature, but it could not answer the question of ultimate purpose. The ultimate purpose could only be known to us by revelation of God, i.e. if the creator reveal his purpose to his creation. If there is no God, there is no nature and creation, and there will be nothing for science to investigate. In fact science also requires faith, as science is based on logic and no scientific experiment can verify logic. Consequently, in order for science to be sound, it must keep the faith it has in reason, and correct reasoning logically depends upon the existence of a thinking entity (God). Scientism has placed science above God, despite the fact that God himselves is the prerequisite of science. What scientism do is just the same as cutting a branch on which science sit on. It is self-defeating.

Lastly, there is a classical question of whether miracles are scientifically impossible. If it is, then the reputation of the Bible full of miracle will be fallacious. Scientific mistrust of the Bible began with the Enlightenment belief that miracles cannot be reconciled to a modern, rational view of the world. Do science have the rights to scrutinize miracles just because it is scientifically impossible? Not at all. Alvin Plantinga draws an analogy: If we drop our car key, and only search for the key under the streetlight on the grounds, it is science. The key may fall in a darkened area that we could not search for. Hence, isn’t it irrational to claim that there is no dropped key just because we don’t find it under the streetlight? In the word of Francis S. Collins:

In my view, there is no conflict in being a rigorous scientist and a person who believes in a God who takes a personal interest in each one of us. Science’s domain is to explore nature. God’s domain is in the spiritual world, a realm not possible to explore with the tools and language of science.

Science is unable to answer the ultimate question such as the purpose of life, morality, etc. Now that we have known the domain, playground, and limitations of science, we may proceed to miracles. Miracles are defined by William Lane Craig as an event which is not producible by the natural causes that are operative at the time and place that the event occurs. It is not a violations of the laws of nature as defined by David Hume. It is merely an intervention by supernatural being into our natural realm. An apple that is not falling to the ground because we catch it was not a miracle, indeed it is intervention. C. S. Lewis beautifully concludes:

But if God comes to work miracles, He comes ’like a thief in the night’… If Nature brings forth miracles then doubtless it is as ’natural’ for her to do so when impregnated by the masculine force beyond her as it is for a woman to bear children to a man. In calling them miracles we do not mean that they are to bear children to a man. In calling them miracles we do not mean that they are contradictions or outrages; we mean that, left to her own resources, she could never produce them.

The laws of nature are not violated when miracles happens, it simply conceives the intervention power given to it. Now, we know that science did not disprove miracles. We should now go to the question of the purpose of miracles. I firmly believe that Jesus did miracles to give authenticity of himself as God. The logic is this: if he is God the creator of universe, then he is capable to rule the nature. The fact that Jesus is able to do miracles implies that He is the creator of universe.

Science vs Religion (1)

There is an emerging idea that science dethrones the belief in God. Even once when I was in a bookstore, I read a GP (General Paper) exercise book, which is one compulsory subject for A-Level in Singapore, which on one topic talks about the conflict between science and religion in this 20th century. It claims that science has taken the dignity of religion, by being able to explain sophisticated natural phenomenon which is before considered as God’s complexity in creation, from which comes the term “God of the gap”. This book, which is read by most students who attend Junior College in Singapore, hopes that religion will reallocate its position in society, i.e. to receive science as the truth instead of excluding itself from science. Not enough with this, we can generally see that most universities and colleges all over the world are secular (separating itself from religion), and even most people now think that science is incompatible with religion, or even worse: contradicting.

Historically, it is irrefutable that religion gives birth to science. C.S. Lewis put it crisply, “Men became scientific because they expected law in nature and they expected law in nature because they believed in a lawgiver.” Most scientists from the 15th century to the 19th century were all theists, most of them Christians. Their belief in God, far from being a hindrance to their science, was often the main inspiration for it.  The conflict between science, like the one experienced by Copernicus, was merely the erronous interpretation of the Bible by churchmen at that time, for example the earth is interpreted to be flat as the Bible have the phrase ’the four corners of the earth’. Sooner or later it is realized that science bolsters and proves the truth of the revealed Word of God.

At first, science begin with the principle of causality, i.e. there is a cause for an event. Else no scientific phenomenon can be observed if there is no cause for that phenomenon. This traces back to prima causa, which is one of the classical argument for God. The new physics, such as quantum physics, discovered that in the microscopic or atomic world there is no cause in quantum world. This incorrect interpretation of the scientific discoveries is self-defeating in nature, i.e. you start by cause and find no cause. It is just like using pen to write an essay, then claim in the essay that there are no pen. The claim that modern science has been able to dethrone God was mere nonsense. We will see in modern science, more and more discoveries points out towards God.

After the advance of science, some scientists have been intrigued by the wonder of nature, which directs them to the creator of this natural wonder. For instance, there is a marvelous fine-tuning of the universe. Should there be a minuscule difference in one of the physical constants, universe and humans could not survive. This should points out to a wonderful design of our universe, which directs us further to the designer of the universe. Even further, a German physicist, Gerard L. Schroeder, have calculated the time required since the big bang up to now. It was ±16 billion years ago using the current time reference, but even more fascinating it was also equal to 7 days using the beginning of time reference. Even the details of each day strikes a chord with scientific explanation of the evolution of universe. The only Being who could count that 7 days was no doubt the one who stands in eternity, before and after the beginning of time he was there, and he was the God who creates the world. Now, we could only ponder about how terrific the accounts of creation written in the Bible is. We could also found that the earth was claimed to be round (Isaiah 40:22).

The law of thermodynamics also support a theistic worldview. 1st law of thermodynamics states that energy can be neither created nor destroyed. Another way to state this law is that ’the amount of actual energy in the universe remain constant’. It does not assert anything about the origin/source of the energy, but combined with the theory of Big Bang we know that at the beginning there is a burst of massive energy. Who creates that energy? Not enough, 2nd law of thermodynamics also states that the universe is heading towards disorder, which makes scientists throughout the ages wondered about the source of the first order. It also implies that the universe is not eternal, as the universe is running down. Even evolutionists had to admit that they could not explain the source of information that is present in creatures. It is barely impossible with the current knowledge (and maybe will never be conprehended) to understand the origin of information burst that directs the evolution (if evolution is true).

Science has found that in the beginning there is a source of energy, order, information that raises the question of who is the one creating them. Theists attributes this to God, whereas atheists attributes this to either some coincidence or they try to develop absurd theories. Albert Einstein once created a hypothetical constant to make the earth to be non-expanding, or in other words to avoid the beginning of the universe. Later he admitted that it was the biggest blunder in his life. Scientists should not escape from the real fact they discover just to make it looks like what they want. It is absurd. What they found is fact, which points out to the truth, and truth shall never be compensated. At last, the truth will always triumph.

We could see from all these arguments, that science originates from the belief in God and science points out the existence of God. Science does not contradict the Bible, but science proves that the scientific fact of the Bible was indeed true.

Meaning of Art-Game-Love-Fashion

When I see the allure of nature
I stare at the splendor of God’s creation
I realize these are just temporal beauty that will be ruined by humans
But when I stare at the new earth and heaven created by God, these are the eternal beauty

When I play a game
My heart is full of joy and I left aside my sorrow
I realize these are just temporal joy that will diminish after I stop playing
But when I play together with God, for eternity my heart will be overflowed by joy

When I see fashion design
My heart shivered with the combination of grandeur and charm of human’s attire
I realize these are just temporal grandeur and charm
But when I see the grandeur and charm of God’s robe, my heart will shiver for eternity

When I study science
I see the might and wonder of God the creator of universe
I realize science is limited and could not reveal all nature’s phenomenon
But when I’m together with God, he will reveal the secret

When I experience human’s love
My heart was relieved with its cordiality
I realize human’s love is limited and temporal
But when I experience God’s love, my heart will find its rest for eternity

When I see  a magnificent masterpiece
I am stunned for minutes
I realize it is just a temporal magnificence
But when I see God’s magnificent face, I will be stunned for eternity

Yeah, these feelings are a glance of something more grandeur, i.e. the feeling when we are together with God. I am ensured that he gives a glance of his grandeur so we can seek and desire him. This glance of feelings is derivatives of the real relationship with God.

Romans 1:20 “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”

Paul mentions that the evidence of creation is enough and each of us is of no excuse. Bertrand Russell was wrong when he make the statement that God did not give him enough evidence for him to believe.

Religion Diversity & Revelation

There is a tendency for religion diversity in this 21st century as compared to the middles ages. There are hundreds of religions and beliefs in the societies. There are 5 major religion, including Christianity. We have to note that majority did not determine which is true and which is false. Historical accounts showed this, that truth may emerge from minorities (e.g. reformed church movement in the middles ages is probably just founded by 2 person, Zwingli from Swiss and Martin Luther from Germany).

Why did I choose Christianity in the midst of these vast beliefs? Is it just affected by culture, family, societies that coerce or raise me in the Christian culture? If this is the case then my faith is groundless. Let us start a journey to find the truth in the midst of so many religion that claims the truth. For sure there will be only 1 that comes out to be true, as if religion A claims itself to be true then automatically it claims all other religions to be false. And if religion B claims itself to be true, automatically it will claim all other religion including A to be false. It is impossible that there are 2 religion/belief that is true, relativism is just a nonsense from those who is philosophically challenged.

God equips us with a weapon to distinct the right and the wrong, and that weapon is the law of logic (the law of identity, the law of secluded middle, the law of non-contradiction, and the law of rational inference). God creates humans to be logical and therefore God himself must be logical. God couldn’t be illogical as logic is his intrinsic nature. Look at the diagram below:

For an argument regarding natural and supernatural, you may want to read the previous post: Supernatural

First of all, humans are in the circle of natural plane. In the natural plane, humans can only argue with his logical basis that God exists, but he could not have knowledge about God as the knowledge of God lies in the supernatural plane. Creation could not have a perfect knowledge of its creator. Therefore, to have the knowledge about supernatural things or about God, God himself has to reveal that knowledge to human beings. This revealed truth is denoted as the red arrow (fully red).

This revealed truth asserts things human didn’t know such as the concept of sin, good, evil, the nature of God, God’s relation with human, why are there humans like now, etc. This is the authentic truth revealed by god. However there are also another arrows that claim themselves to be true (green arrow) besides the red arrow. These green arrow are the imperfect truth and  fabricated by humans. Maybe there are several arrows that contains truth (blending of red and green), but they are the absolute truth. This may happen as there are imitations from the absolute truth (red arrow) that will lead humans astray, for example: the creation of religion to gain political power, etc.

Red arrow are absolute truth, just like 5+5=10. Mixed arrow of green and red are the belief that contains truth, but still false just like 5+5=11. Truth could not be compensated. 1 false dot in the midst of truth will make the whole thing false.

In this world that claims to get many arrows of revelation from the supernatural plane, how do we distinct the truth from the false? Here is where the law of logic become a filter for every arrow that claims to be the absolute truth. If a religion claims to have the real absolute truth, then every aspect of it must be logical. The concept of predestination, free will, the redemption of sin, love, et c that is claimed by Christianity must be logical for Christianity to stand true. 1 small aspect will undermine the whole thing. Beliefs which contain contradiction on its teaching are not logical and therefore not the absolute truth. As an example, religion that claims that God is impersonal is illogical, as God must be personal for him to create the world along with all the personal human.

John Lennox gives an elegant analogy about the role of revelation. Aunt Matilda made a cake. We could investigate the structure, ingredient, properties, etc of that particular cake. However we will never know why Aunt Matilda made that cake, just like we could not know why the world is created. We could only know if aunt Matilda reveals why she made that cake. Next Aunt Matilda states that she made the cake for her son’s birthday. Definitely we could not receive this statement as true without any tests. We should find out whether aunt Matilda really have a son an whether the date of birthday are true. If these 2 facts are false, we could reject the false revelation from aunt Matilda. But if these 2 facts are true, then we can accept the revelation from aunt Matilda and receive her assertion. This is the role of logic to tests revelations.

With this reflections, we are invited to evaluate every aspects of our belief. With the religion that we embrace, we put all of our hope. Out faith on our embraced religion worths more than gold. Gold was tested with fire for its purity. In the same way, if out faith is really pure after facing through the fire of logic, it will ensure us further about the purity and truth of our faith. However if that faith is totally burned to ashes, and we put our hope on ashes, isn’t that futile?

These have come so that your faith–of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire–may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. (1 Peter 1:7)

And I found out that Christianity is the real true revealed truth according the logic God has given.

Knowledge of a person

I could see 2 knowledge of a person:

1. Outer knowledge, i.e. what is known about some facts of that person. For instance: birth date, hobby, his school, body height, weight, etc. Simply: studying the facts/biography of that person.
2. Inner knowledge, i.e. what is known about feelings, souls, and that person itself. This inner knowledge could only be obtained by meeting of communication with that person himself. This knowledge is transferred from heart to heart, and could be different to each person.

Outer knowledge won’t arouse us to find out about inner knowledge.

On the other hand, inner knowledge will arouse us to find out more about the outer knowledge.

No matter how much we learn about outer knowledge, we could not obtain inner knowledge.

For example:
I would like to know more about Albert Einstein. What I can do is to buy his biography, books he published, testimony about him, his letters, etc. With this I shall obtain outer knowledge regarding Einstein. However, still I won’t know about the heart and feeling of Einstein that is covered in inner knowledge.

Let’s say one day I met einstein face to face (whatever the way is). When I’ve obtained outer knowledge about him, I’ll be very happy to meet him directly. If I haven’t read outer knowledge about him, I’ll start to know him and surprised to know that he is so genious in science. Moreover, I’ll know that he is so loving and caring for others. All of this will encourage me to know mroe about him, both outer and inner knowledge.

Inner knowledge is more superior to outer knowledge, as inner knowledge (a genuine one) will cover both.

This is a result of my observation of so many people who acknowledge that they know about the same person, but apparently only the outer knowledge. In this case that person is Jesus Christ. Many people read books regarding Christ (whether theology of philosophy), Bible, etc but only obtain outer knowledge. The motivation to obtain only outer knowledge is a fraud, i.e. only to enrich knowledge.

If someone have an inner knowledge about Jesus Christ, we can see his life will change. He’ll make Christ his idol as He is the perfect man. He’s going to mimic Christ’s personal life. Moreover, he’ll try to find out the outer knowledge about Christ with the right motivation, i.e. finding information about his idol.

I remember a story about someone who’s truly having an inner knowledge in Christ, more or less as follows:

One day in a church, 3 people is having a chit-chat. The first person asks the other 2 to play bible trivia with him. He asks: “Who is the name of  Jesus’ twelve disciples?” The second person answers instantaneously. He asks again: “In which town was Jesus born?” The second person think a bit, then answer it. Once again the first person asks: “Where was Jesus baptized?” The second person tries to remembers it for some time, then answers it precisely. Then the first person and the second person discuss about others things such as predestination, creation, prophecies as well. After they finish, they’re kind of surprised why the third person does not say a word like he knows nothing about what they discuss. They asks to the third person: “What do you know about Jesus?”. The third person answers them: “I don’t know where Jesus was born, I don’t know where he was baptized, I also don’t know about prophecies and creation accounts in the Bible. Yeah, I haven’t read them. I just repented last month. What I know about Jesus is only that He is such a person that totally changes my life. Previously I like to be drunk, cruel to my wifes and children, dishonor my parents, and many other things. Now my life has changed, even my wife and children has started to believe in Christ because they see a remarkable change in my life. My parents has started to change, and I’m putting great efforts to bring them to Christ. Yeah, I experience Jesus in my life… He is astonishing. This is the only thing I know about Jesus.”

Don’t “read” the Bible, but let the Bible reads you.

When we “read” the Bible, we make the Bible as the object. But when the Bible reads us, we are the object, i.e. we are renewed, convicted, strengthened, blessed, and made perfect by Christ, the author of the Bible.

God’s “cruelty” in the Old Testament

When we read the Bible on the old testament, often we find that God is eliminating people. Seems like the God in the old testament and the new testament is just too different. For instance, in the town of Sodom and Gomorrah:

Then the LORD rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah—from the LORD out of the heavens. Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, including all those living in the cities—and also the vegetation in the land. (Genesis 19:24-25)

How about the people of Egypt punished by God with such a devastating calamities as well as sinking their soldiers in the red sea?

And the Egyptians will know that I am the LORD when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring the Israelites out of it. (Exodus 7:5)

How about the Amalekites?

So Joshua overcame the Amalekite army with the sword. Then the LORD said to Moses, “Write this on a scroll as something to be remembered and make sure that Joshua hears it, because I will completely blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.” (Exodus 17:13-14)

How about murdering of Israelites themselves like Moses command?

So he stood at the entrance to the camp and said, “Whoever is for the LORD, come to me.” And all the Levites rallied to him. Then he said to them, “This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor. ‘ ” (Exodus 32:26-27)

which is caused by the golden calf the Israelites build when Moses isn’t around:

Moses saw that the people were running wild and that Aaron had let them get out of control and so become a laughingstock to their enemies. (Exodus 32:25)

How about the order of God to slash off completely the people of Sihon?

The LORD said to me, “See, I have begun to deliver Sihon and his country over to you. Now begin to conquer and possess his land.” When Sihon and all his army came out to meet us in battle at Jahaz, the LORD our God delivered him over to us and we struck him down, together with his sons and his whole army. At that time we took all his towns and completely destroyed them—men, women and children. We left no survivors. But the livestock and the plunder from the towns we had captured we carried off for ourselves. (Deuteronomy 2:31-35)

but this is caused by the king of Sihon that disallowed the Israelites to pass through their city, and:

“Let us pass through your country. We will stay on the main road; we will not turn aside to the right or to the left.  Sell us food to eat and water to drink for their price in silver. Only let us pass through on foot (Deuteronomy 27-28)

God’s command to kill?

and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. (Deuteronomy 7:2)

and so on…

For the town of Sodom and Gomorrah, when we see through the previous chapter, we know that these 2 towns are really immoral, sinning heavily, and live unrighteous in the eyes of God. But we know from the conversation between Abraham with God that even if 10 righteous man exists in that town, then God won’t destroy that town:

Then Abraham approached him and said: “Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? (Genesis 18:23)

Then he said, “May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak just once more. What if only ten can be found there?” He answered, “For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it.” (Genesis 18:32)

We have to realize that the town destroyed by God is because all (completely) people in that town is guilty and unrighteous. None of them could stand rigteous representing their community. This is really apparent when we see that God forbade the Israelites to destroy the Amorites:

In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure. (Genesis 15:!6)

There are still a bunch of righteous people over there, and God didn’t want to destroy that place yet as God love them and they may save some people in that town. It is proved that it could stand up to 4 generations before that town is totally unrighteous. God never kill the righteous. But why did he keep eliminating the unrighteous people? This could be caused by:

• In order that other nations may know that God is with Israelites, and God of Israelites is the only one true God.

And the Egyptians will know that I am the LORD when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring the Israelites out of it. (Exodus 7:5)

Hence other nations may come and worship the true God. When other nations come to Him, He will receive them with joy just like what Rahab did.

Before the spies lay down for the night, she went up on the roof  and said to them, “I know that the LORD has given this land to you and that a great fear of you has fallen on us, so that all who live in this country are melting in fear because of you. We have heard how the LORD dried up the water of the Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to Sihon and Og, the two kings of the Amorites east of the Jordan, whom you completely destroyed. (Joshua 2:8-10)

But Joshua spared Rahab the prostitute, with her family and all who belonged to her, because she hid the men Joshua had sent as spies to Jericho—and she lives among the Israelites to this day. (Joshua 6:25)

These people eliminated by God are the people who know the true God already but still reject to come to Him.

• God eliminate the community of unrighteous people because of His love towards humans.
  Love?

Imagine what’s going to happen if this community is not eliminated by God: they will breed to the next and next generations, where their offspring will be raised in such a wicked community and therefore they will grow up as unrighteous people. If this chain is not stopped, many more souls will be lost.

Isn’t it rational that God’s heart is moved when thinking about this? But remember that God eliminate only the community where 100% (not 99.99%) of the people are unrighteous (Genesis 15:16) where there are no hope for them. Even they should have heard about the almighty God that gives victories to Israelites, but still they neglect the true God and worship their own idol.

Children could be saved, as they haven’t been polluted with sin from that unrighteous community. Children is a symbol of pureness of Heaven’s inhabitant. When David’s child passed away, he said:

But now that he is dead, why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I will go to him, but he will not return to me. (2 Samuel 12:23)

When a child haven’t reached the age of accountability, they’ll go the kingdom of God:

And your little ones, who, you said, would come into strange hands, your children, who now have no knowledge of good or evil, they will go into that land, and to them I will give it and it will be theirs. (Deuteronomy 1:39)

Yeah, God will do the best for His beloved creation.

In the new testament, no more we see this things because God has sent His own son to die, substituting our sins. This gospel have been shouted to almost every corner of the world and almost in every community exists righteous man and hope. Jesus come to bring hope to each man in this world.

With respect to several things discussed here, then we should change this post’s title:

God’s “cruelty” in the Old Testament

God’s mercy in the Old Testament

Faith versus Ratio

Lots of people made these 2 things (faith and ratio) into something that contradicts each other. Whenever we have faith in something then we throw out our ratio. When we use our ratio then our faith fades. Is this true that faith is a blind faith without any rational basis? Is rational faith an oxymoron?

Imagine we have a severe disease and surgery needs to be performed. This surgery is quite difficult to be performed and a lot of specialists have failed in doing it. What are we going to do? As we want to survive and healed, we research about this disease and try to find the best doctor in this field. At last we manage to find an information about a doctor who is very famous on performing the surgery for this disease. He guarantees that the result will be 100% successful even though other doctors could not guarantee anything at all. Some of our friends have gotten this disease and give testimony about this doctor. With all this information, we approach the doctor.

Similarly when we are going to find the true God, we need to find out which God is able to cure our disease (which is sin). Through arguments that supports and testimonies from people who have been recovered, we can use our ratio when we choose the doctor that will recover us. This is the role of ratio, i.e. to choose God who is rational, logical, true, illumine our mind, heals, and changes life.

The next stop, we determine this doctor to be the one who will perform the surgery on us. When we get an initial treatment that may inflict pain on us, we should have faith that this is for our own goodness. When the doctor does an anaesthetic before the surgery, we put faith completely with whatever the doctor is going to do during the surgery.

In the same case, after we have chosen the true God with our ratio, we should put our faith completely on this God to perform the surgery on us (changing our life) and to heal our sins. Maybe sometimes we don’t know the reason about several things that happen to us (let’s say suffering), unanswered prayer, etc. but we put our faith and believe that everything is for our own good and God has his own timing. This is because the knowledge and wisdom of God is far greater than us, so there must be several things we don’t understand. If we understand all things about everything, then “God” is not God. Similarly with the knowledge and experience of the doctor (on the previous analogy) about that disease is much superior than us. This is the role of faith, i.e. to surrender ourselves completely.

And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. (Hebrew 11:6, NIV)

This is rational faith, i.e. faith and ratio that is intertwined together.

Faith without ratio is like someone who choose a random choice in a multiple choice question, with the faith that the answer he randomly chooses is correct. There is a possibility for it to be true, but of course there is a possibility for it to be wrong.

Ratio without faith is like someone who choose a random choice in a multiple choice question (with some thinking), but at last he did not choose because he’s lacking of faith that the answer is true (no faith = no deeds).

Faith with ratio is like someone who choose a random choice in a multiple choice question (with some thinking), and choose the answer with certainty (faith with deeds).

Why are there suffering (3) ?

When someone is facing a persecution/suffers, people often comforts him/her by saying that there is a good thing behind all of it. Maybe that suffering may change him into someone with a better character, be more mature, and independent. Yeah, suffering is able to bring a lesson for us.

But what about other suffering which is more “severe”? There’s plenty of starving people in Africa, or how about someone who spends his/her entire life in poverty? Where is God in each of these suffering? Is God presents over there and feels the suffering too?

When we look after someone in hospital, listen to our friends who face a problem, isn’t it true that our presence there is much more important than what we say or give? Similarly in the midst of the world’s suffering, people needs God’s presence over there.

He that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet’s reward; and he that receiveth a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man’s reward. And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward. (Matthew 10:40, 42, KJV version)

This is also one of our job to be present and gives helps to those in need, that the presence of God may be truly felt there. We often see the suffering in the world and asks why, whereas it is often forgotten that beside these sufferings there are a lot of love too, which is a form of God’s presence there.

Yeah, God is present there, but but he did more than that: he felt it himself. I could not imaging having a God that did not know the sufferings in this world. John R.W. Stott put it like this:

“I could never myself believe in God, it it were not for the cross… In the world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it?”

What he means here is Jesus who died on the cross, feeling both physical and mental suffering for the purpose of redeeming the humans.

I myself could not imagine whenever I suffer, my god then says: “That’s your fault! This is because you don’t obey my command, so you should suffer!!” Or a god who say: “You suffer? Yeah, that was my will and it was the best for you, even though I have not felt it myself =).” But Jesus is different, because at our time of suffering, He is beside us to strengthen, comfort, support us. We could also share the problem to Him, as He has gone through the toughest form of suffering and gains victory. Remember that He himself was inflicted a great mockery and injuries on the cross. Isn’t this too wonderful? God’s answer in the midst of suffering is not a mere explanation because that was not the main thing people need when they suffer. God answers their shout with himself, i.e. through his presence and emphatic heart that calms the soul.

But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. (Isaiah 53:5, NIV)

Lessons from Zeno Paradox

Achilles is going to have a race with a turtle. He is very sure of his victory, therefore when the race starts he let the turtle to run first for 5 minutes. Afterwards he’s going to catch up with him. 5 minutes has passed… Achilles starts to run and attempt to go to the turtle’s place now. However when he arrives at that place, the turtle have made another few steps, hence Achilles need to go to that place now. He run to that particular place, but once again the turtle have made another few steps from its place just now. Therefore Achilles have to catch up with it to its new place now. What the turtle need to do is to keep going forward and what Achilles can do is just to get near to its place (very near indeed) but he could not surpass the turtle. At the end the turtle won.

Moral of the story:
Do not limit yourself as you are your own limit.

A sprinter is going to have a 100 m race. He sees the racetrack he is attempting. To finish this race he has to go to the midpoint of that track (50 m), after that he’ll run again to the next midpoint (25 m). He’ll then be nearer to the finish line and reach another midpoint (12.5 m). Further he go to the next midpoint (6.25 m) and he almost finish this race. He keeps going to the next and next midpoint, but he never reaches the finish line because the remaining distance divided by 2 every time will never reach zero (0 m). Yeah, to reach the finish he need infinity time, but in this universe there is no such thing as infinity therefore he’ll never be able to reach the finish line.

Moral of the story:
When you do something half-heartedly, you’ll never reach the goal. But if from the beginning the sprinter is thinking to reach the finish line and not the midpoint, then he’ll surely reach the finish line.