Hi all, I'm a deep thinker and shallow writer who doesn't expect to ever get published. All I want is to show people some of the riches I have found in God and His Word, so that He can bless others too.
I've been working on a series of these little complaints letters - and yes, I know how much of a debt I owe to CS Lewis for showing doctrine and apologetics could be funny. Becaue I'm an Aussie, my spelling and grammar and many of my examples come from there, but I hope you can understand my accent
From the Office of Seraph Marcel,
Celestial Complaints Department
Dear Christian God,
Why do You refuse to let us prove Your existence scientifically? You complain people are so blinded by their sin and guilt that their eyes don’t see You and their ears don’t hear You. But then You make Yourself invisible to scientific investigation, the one objective and rigorous method humans have to establish truth irrespective of human bias or preference. What does it say about you when you don’t want analytical and logical people to follow you?
Yours sincerely, an agnostic astrophysicist.
Dear Mr Astrophysicist,
What on earth are you talking about? Our Lord’s existence, authority and glory have always been provable by the scientific method. What hasn’t been possible lately is to find any scientists with the courage to investigate for themselves, because in this field, the experimenter also has to be the lab rat.
It is true that you will never detect the Lord Almighty with your scopes and diodes, but science doesn’t need any of these tools to be trustworthy. Science’s credibility comes from the way observations are recorded, shared and re-tested, not how expensive the machine making the observation is. If you want to test ‘Does the Christian God really exist?’, you only need to follow three steps to prove or disprove Him through science (ignoring the fact that an angel is writing to you from heaven, and so receipt of this letter should really settle the matter anyway!):
(1) Research your test subject to find a hypothesis. If you are trying to make contact with the God of the Bible, how does the Bible say this can happen? Try Romans 10:9 for an example.
(2) Run the test – try and make contact, and record what you discover.
(3) Share the test method and results – so others can try the same experiment if it worked, or identify your errors if it didn’t work.
Our Lord loved this kind of scientific proof so much that He inspired a scientist to write two whole books of the New Testament. In his first book, St Luke the Physician details all the ways Jesus Christ proved His own divinity on earth, but then he fills the Acts of the Apostles with all the ways ordinary humans like ourselves were able to demonstrate, discover, and scientifically prove to each other that Jesus is the Lord of heaven and earth.
And he is mindful of all the rules of the scientific method in his writings, reporting the manner of each proclamation, and all the objectively visible outcomes, for others to critique, explore, and hopefully repeat in their own hearts. He records when someone had heard part of the truth and come close to but not fully into God’s kingdom, and when people who gave every external appearance of knowing and following Christ really did not believe at all. But he also records how many people’s hearts were dramatically changed in exactly the way Jesus and the Scriptures had predicted they would. No matter who is doing the preaching, and who is doing the listening, if the gospel is declared with faith and received in faith, God is revealed to another researcher, and another, and another.
Now some will say, ‘But God is invisible, and we don’t know if any of these people actually made contact with the divine or with a figment of their own imagination’. That was a problem the early church faced too, when enemies tried to infiltrate them, and they found the objective proof in the fruit of the Spirit. If the ‘converted’ investigator acts no differently to an atheist who believes there is nothing after death, then the most they have received is a dead faith, the self-interested spirituality of a Pharisee or a cult leader. But if their attitude does change, if they start shunning bad habits and daring to show a selfless concern for the people around them, then you have seen objective, tangible evidence far more compelling than a blue stain on a litmus paper. You have seen the exact set of indicators the Bible told you to expect if the experiment was a success.
(I admit, you will probably see some converts who do change their ways and some who don’t; that doesn’t negate the scientific proof. Like any population study, you need a large sample group to make any reliable conclusion. Don’t look at one individual, but look at an entire church – even better, form a control group of a hundred atheists and see if there is anything on earth that could motivate them to try and follow God’s law the way the majority of Christians at least try to. What could you give an atheist to persuade them to stop chasing after money and sex and power and luxury? If the Spirit is not real, then what possible earthly force or motive could be inspiring Christians to serve and obey, especially when heaven isn’t even earned or lost by their effort levels? That’s how even science will show you God).
So what’s stopping you, Mr Astrophysicist? You know where and how to find God, so why are you so afraid to know the truth? There’s nothing unscientific about performing an experiment on your own body; Nobel Prize winner Barry Marshall drank a beaker of gastritis bacteria to prove that gastritis gave people stomach ulcers (typical Australian way of solving a problem). But why are all you scientists less afraid of contracting stomach ulcers than contracting salvation?
In truth, you’re not afraid you won’t find God; you’re afraid of what you would have to do if you did meet Him. You come from a field of science that doesn’t directly impact many people. Spotting a new star, measuring a horse-shoe nebula, these things might bring you fame and money and respect, but none of them will ever force you to live differently. None of these discoveries will ever talk back to you and say, ‘Because I am real, you need to change and change now’. But what if the speck in your galactic map is not a stationary star, but a hurtling meteor on a crash course with earth in a matter of weeks, even days? The one who sees it and warns others might be terrified of its impact, but they will be a hero to many; the one who suspects destruction is approaching and ignores the possibility will have the blood of billions on their hands.
And that meteor is God and His judgement, Mr Astrophysicist. You can see Him coming and prepare for it, or you can bury your head in the sand and lose it. What you cannot do is blame the meteor for not giving you enough warning that it was coming your way.
Yours sincerely,
Seraph Marcel, Celestial Complaints Department
I've been working on a series of these little complaints letters - and yes, I know how much of a debt I owe to CS Lewis for showing doctrine and apologetics could be funny. Becaue I'm an Aussie, my spelling and grammar and many of my examples come from there, but I hope you can understand my accent
From the Office of Seraph Marcel,
Celestial Complaints Department
Dear Christian God,
Why do You refuse to let us prove Your existence scientifically? You complain people are so blinded by their sin and guilt that their eyes don’t see You and their ears don’t hear You. But then You make Yourself invisible to scientific investigation, the one objective and rigorous method humans have to establish truth irrespective of human bias or preference. What does it say about you when you don’t want analytical and logical people to follow you?
Yours sincerely, an agnostic astrophysicist.
Dear Mr Astrophysicist,
What on earth are you talking about? Our Lord’s existence, authority and glory have always been provable by the scientific method. What hasn’t been possible lately is to find any scientists with the courage to investigate for themselves, because in this field, the experimenter also has to be the lab rat.
It is true that you will never detect the Lord Almighty with your scopes and diodes, but science doesn’t need any of these tools to be trustworthy. Science’s credibility comes from the way observations are recorded, shared and re-tested, not how expensive the machine making the observation is. If you want to test ‘Does the Christian God really exist?’, you only need to follow three steps to prove or disprove Him through science (ignoring the fact that an angel is writing to you from heaven, and so receipt of this letter should really settle the matter anyway!):
(1) Research your test subject to find a hypothesis. If you are trying to make contact with the God of the Bible, how does the Bible say this can happen? Try Romans 10:9 for an example.
(2) Run the test – try and make contact, and record what you discover.
(3) Share the test method and results – so others can try the same experiment if it worked, or identify your errors if it didn’t work.
Our Lord loved this kind of scientific proof so much that He inspired a scientist to write two whole books of the New Testament. In his first book, St Luke the Physician details all the ways Jesus Christ proved His own divinity on earth, but then he fills the Acts of the Apostles with all the ways ordinary humans like ourselves were able to demonstrate, discover, and scientifically prove to each other that Jesus is the Lord of heaven and earth.
And he is mindful of all the rules of the scientific method in his writings, reporting the manner of each proclamation, and all the objectively visible outcomes, for others to critique, explore, and hopefully repeat in their own hearts. He records when someone had heard part of the truth and come close to but not fully into God’s kingdom, and when people who gave every external appearance of knowing and following Christ really did not believe at all. But he also records how many people’s hearts were dramatically changed in exactly the way Jesus and the Scriptures had predicted they would. No matter who is doing the preaching, and who is doing the listening, if the gospel is declared with faith and received in faith, God is revealed to another researcher, and another, and another.
Now some will say, ‘But God is invisible, and we don’t know if any of these people actually made contact with the divine or with a figment of their own imagination’. That was a problem the early church faced too, when enemies tried to infiltrate them, and they found the objective proof in the fruit of the Spirit. If the ‘converted’ investigator acts no differently to an atheist who believes there is nothing after death, then the most they have received is a dead faith, the self-interested spirituality of a Pharisee or a cult leader. But if their attitude does change, if they start shunning bad habits and daring to show a selfless concern for the people around them, then you have seen objective, tangible evidence far more compelling than a blue stain on a litmus paper. You have seen the exact set of indicators the Bible told you to expect if the experiment was a success.
(I admit, you will probably see some converts who do change their ways and some who don’t; that doesn’t negate the scientific proof. Like any population study, you need a large sample group to make any reliable conclusion. Don’t look at one individual, but look at an entire church – even better, form a control group of a hundred atheists and see if there is anything on earth that could motivate them to try and follow God’s law the way the majority of Christians at least try to. What could you give an atheist to persuade them to stop chasing after money and sex and power and luxury? If the Spirit is not real, then what possible earthly force or motive could be inspiring Christians to serve and obey, especially when heaven isn’t even earned or lost by their effort levels? That’s how even science will show you God).
So what’s stopping you, Mr Astrophysicist? You know where and how to find God, so why are you so afraid to know the truth? There’s nothing unscientific about performing an experiment on your own body; Nobel Prize winner Barry Marshall drank a beaker of gastritis bacteria to prove that gastritis gave people stomach ulcers (typical Australian way of solving a problem). But why are all you scientists less afraid of contracting stomach ulcers than contracting salvation?
In truth, you’re not afraid you won’t find God; you’re afraid of what you would have to do if you did meet Him. You come from a field of science that doesn’t directly impact many people. Spotting a new star, measuring a horse-shoe nebula, these things might bring you fame and money and respect, but none of them will ever force you to live differently. None of these discoveries will ever talk back to you and say, ‘Because I am real, you need to change and change now’. But what if the speck in your galactic map is not a stationary star, but a hurtling meteor on a crash course with earth in a matter of weeks, even days? The one who sees it and warns others might be terrified of its impact, but they will be a hero to many; the one who suspects destruction is approaching and ignores the possibility will have the blood of billions on their hands.
And that meteor is God and His judgement, Mr Astrophysicist. You can see Him coming and prepare for it, or you can bury your head in the sand and lose it. What you cannot do is blame the meteor for not giving you enough warning that it was coming your way.
Yours sincerely,
Seraph Marcel, Celestial Complaints Department
