God?

One of the most puzzling statements that I run across fairly frequently is the claim that "the universe looks exactly like we would expect it to if there was no God" (or some near equivalent). This is a fascinating claim because it helps get to the heart of how people conceive of God. A whole truckload of assumptions about the nature of God and the physical world go into a claim like that, and I wonder to what extent those who would make that claim are aware of them.

Presumably what the claim means is that "the universe does not look designed" which in turn means "the universe does not appear to be crafted like a mechanism." A very mechanistic worldview is at work, assuming that any God worth his salt would design everything in creation, and that this creation should be morally and physically perfect (as determined by our perspective). The creativity and changing nature of the cosmos is something that strikes me as miraculous. While some people point to the way that genetic mutations over time create ingenious "solutions" to "problems" (its difficult to write about such things without anthropomorphizing them, so please forgive me if I fail to avoid it) and state that it shows there is no need for a designer, I am amazed that seemingly random occurrences produce such incredibly novel and sophisticated solutions. I am not claiming that what is really happening is that God is intervening in mutations all the time to influence evolutionary outcomes. Rather, I am just saying that there are regular occurrences in our universe that are quite simply astounding and almost miraculous.

Just because we can see that its "the way things work" suddenly means that there can be no room for God. I don't see why there need be any such rigid division between "natural" and "supernatural" or "regular" and "divine." Just because the universe functions in such a way that certain things happen normally does not entail that there is no God. To me, the fact that there is a universe at all is astounding (regardless of those who would like to play semantic games with words like "nothing" and use sleight of hand question begging to make claims like "nothing is inherently unstable" to explain why there exists anything at all). Because of this, the universe looks exactly like I would expect it if there was a God, particularly a God who values freedom, narrative, love, and creativity. It does not look like the universe that a mechanic God would create upon close inspection, but all that does is challenge certain conceptions about what we think God should be like.

At this point I can hear the objections of a Christopher Hitchens-type who would claim that I am just using the "infinitely elastic airbag" of faith to redefine God into something that evades what science has shown. I think there is a valid concern in this criticism, and I believe seriously that there need to be good reasons for holding to what I believe about God. I find them in the narrative of the Bible, and therefore I feel comfortable about affirming such a view of God. Its true that there are different things that one can accent and stress in the Bible that can lead to different views of God, but I also believe that no text is open to any potential meaning someone might want to apply to it and that I need to seriously ask myself if I am doing violence to the text in my interpretation. I honestly do not think that I am, and that it is a remarkable fact that the Bible has been so resilient in being able to inform the narratives of human lives throughout so many different periods of history. It is not infinitely elastic, but it is nimble enough and layered enough to reveal new treasures to different people in different places in different times.

Texts are windows, but they are also mirrors and sometimes the failure to find something in a text has as much to do with the one who is doing the looking as with the text itself. If we bring our own ideas of what a God should be and what is the only acceptable way for a God to behave we will find much that is lacking. But what is lacking is our idol, not God Himself. I realize that there is no way to completely escape from our own views and assumptions about God, but this is a challenge to myself and others to let God speak on God's terms, because when He does it is often in ways that challenge our assumptions, our theologies, and our own views of ourselves and others.

When I look at the universe I see God. Others do not. And maybe its because we're not looking for the same thing.