Something that I have put a lot of recent thought into is how the culture we are a part of affects the way we view scripture and just God in general. And in American culture, I think we tend to take God out of a lot of things that He very well may be a part of. I’ve been thinking about how the Enlightenment, and just science in general, has shaped the way we as a society view God.
A lot of people, myself included, like to talk about how America was founded by Christians on Christian ideals. And that’s true, to a certain extent. But many of the founding fathers, like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, were what are called deists. Deists viewed God as sort of a clockmaker: He created the world and then left it alone to run by itself and pretty much ignored it. See, America was founded during what was called the Enlightenment, which is when a lot of people started to turn away from God because of things they discovered about science. And that’s still the mindset that a lot of people have today. People think you can’t believe in both God and science. And to a certain extent, I think this viewpoint exists among Christians as well.
The other day, we were having a conversation with a Ghanaian man, one of the people with our ministry. He was talking about some tsunami that recently hit Kenya, and how he believes all tsunamis are created by demons. Of course we were like no way, there are many proven scientific reasons why tsunamis form. But it got me thinking. Just because there are scientific reasons why something happens doesn’t mean that there is not something spiritual at work there. All of the natural systems that supposedly just exist were originally created by God. He knows these systems better than anybody, so who’s to say that He doesn’t meddle with them to get something to happen that He wants. And He can do it completely within the bounds of whatever natural system it is.
In the book I just finished reading, Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes (I highly recommend it, it’s a good read), the author gave an example of when he was a missionary in Indonesia. The church was having a meeting in which they were trying to make a big decision. As they were praying about the decision, a big crack of thunder went off outside, and all the Indonesians just got up and started leaving as though everything was decided. And the missionary was confused because he didn’t think that they had come to a decision. He just was thinking it was a regular old thunderstorm.
The thing is, it was just a regular old thunderstorm, but God used that thunderstorm to speak to these people in a way they would understand. I’m sure most Christians would say they believe that God can do supernatural things, because He is supernatural. But he also created the natural world, and who are we to say that God cannot use those natural systems for His purposes. And most Christians would say that they believe in both God and science, that they actually work together. And they’d be right. But, people don’t actually believe that God is really still involved in science. They still create this separation in their minds between God and science because that’s what the culture teaches them. We need to stop treating science and God like they are two separate entities. God created science, and God put His divine attributes within His creation (Romans 1:20). So God and science are actually one.
But somehow, the more we discover about science, the less we believe in God. Because the more we understand the way things work, the more we think we can do it all on our own. We think that, since we understand God’s creation, we don’t need God anymore. We think maybe people used to need God. Before modern medicine, people needed to trust God to heal them, but now we can heal ourselves.
And this sort of mindset, I think, is very dangerous to have. But most American Christians have it without even realizing it. Something that this book mentions a lot is that the things about our culture that go without being said are the most dangerous ones. Because the things that go without being said, like the thunder example, are very different in other cultures and in the cultures that the Bible was originally written for. They didn’t even have to talk about whether or not the thunderstorm was God speaking to them. They all just knew. It had probably happened to them before many times in similar ways.
As I kind of mentioned in my last blog, I think that Ghana is heading in the direction of America. Ghana is probably one of the more developed countries in this part of the world, and as they become more developed, they become more and more influenced by Western culture. They already have been influenced by Western Christianity (read my previous blog), and now they are being influenced by the Western Enlightenment.
God has recently been challenging me to trust Him more. And not just on a deep level like we often talk about in the church, but on a very basic and simple level. To trust Him with my literal life. Because He is literally the reason why I can breathe. The reason why I can walk. The reason why I can think. I can trust God with my life because He is the one who provides everything. And by everything, I mean everything.
I want to challenge you to start trusting God more, and trusting yourself less. God often wants us to give things up to Him, just so that He can give us an even better version of what we gave up. And He does this so that we know we can trust Him. If we give everything up to Him, then there’s no way we can say that we earned anything because of what we did. Because everything that we have, we only have because He provided it for us.
“Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 16:25).
Love,
Ethan
