The problem atheists have is they mistake idols for God. So do many other people, probably all people. Sometimes they carry around an image of God with no biblical basis, a creation of recent history. Sometimes Gods from earlier cosmologists persist into the present, clung to despite them being unbelievable in the present day.
Fundamentalists seem to follow the same false Gods atheists reject. The moralising, mechanical, manipulative God, who designs the universe, deciding who is in and who is out, is false. There is not a shred of evidence for this God, in or out of Scripture; it is a figment of human imagination.
Of course it is hard having a God who cannot be described. Christians are dependent on the conversation between Scripture and the Universe as we understand it. Once we reject all images of God we are left with the stories in Scripture, of which the stories of Jesus are central. Scripture, like genes, is encoded. On the page, it is dead words. As we read it and ponder upon it, we find interactions with the world as we know it.
Different Churches make different interpretations of the same code. The idea of receptive ecumenism is that churches help each other identify flaws.
The challenge facing all the churches is they must once again learn to interpret scripture in conversation with our new understanding of the universe. How can we speak of God today?
Comments