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God's Presence


Lerk

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For various reasons -- mostly family related -- I'm semi-closeted, "making an effort" in order to avoid uncomfortable discussions -- so I show up for church on Sunday morning. I use the opportunity during the sermon to read. (I've just started "The God Delusion!") Since I am using the Nook app on my phone, nobody knows that it I'm not following the sermon in my Bible.

 

But I can't help hearing the sermon to some extent and seeing the slides. This morning's sermon was about "God's Presence." It was pretty much what you would expect.

 

How can we know that God not only exists but is near us? Some families just returned from a road trip out West, and having posted a number of beautiful pictures on Facebook, well, there's evidence right there, is there not? (Spoiler: No, actually that's evidence of 4.5 billion years of geology.) Preacher's point was that the fact that we perceive this as beauty is evidence of God.

 

And then there are the things that make us happy: Look at that cute baby! Wow, that ice cream sure tastes good! I love my children and grandchildren so much! Surely the fact that God has given us these wonderful things is evidence of his presence, his nearness! (Please ignore the circular reasoning!)

 

But that's not enough to convince a person, so what about this? You got to eat this morning! That's right, the fact that your needs are met is evidence that God is near.

 

But lest you be going through a rough time and are having a hard time appreciating all of the wonderful things in your life, please listen to this. Preacher suggests that if we wanted to, we could all make a list of the problems we're having right now. The aches and pains, the fact for some audience members that they're out of work, or that a loved one is sick or has recently died. And if we were so inclined, we could all make lists and compare them. By doing so, we might find out just who among us has it the very worst! But even after having done that, we still have blessings, don't we?! So you see, we still know that God is near!

 

Yes, that was the lesson. He's usually a pretty good preacher with some decently deep thoughts, but this lesson was as shallow as it could be. To boil it down, he's suggesting that we can have confidence in God's presence if we learn to exercise cognitive bias! If we learn to count the hits and ignore the misses, we'll have more faith!

 

That's it! Aren't you thrilled to know how easy it is to believe?

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