During this symposium, we have talked about hard science; we have talked about soft science. I guess it is up to me to talk about another kind of science, one that might be described as the truffle of science–hard on the outside but soft and sweet on the inside–the study of God, or theology and its bearing on the on the question of humanness.

With this in mind, the biblical passage that I have chosen for reflection is from the first chapter of the book of Genesis, the Bible’s first words,

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was without form and void, and the Spirit of God moved over the face of the deep. ¹

The Spirit of God moved over the face of the deep. One French version translates this phrase as "the breath of God agitated the surface of the water." ² Martin Luther wrote, "the Spirit of God floated on the water." ³ Yet another way of translating this phrase is, "the Spirit of God brooded over the face of the deep." I, personally like this last translation; I like that word, brooded. Through this anthropomorphic description of God’s state of mind at the time of creation, we immediately see that we have something in common with God. God is doing something we do–God is brooding. Reflecting on this connection we have with God is particularly appropriate during this symposium. We have been listening and talking to brooders. We have been listening and talking to people who have looked up to the sky and wondered, how did that come to be? How did this little blue-green planet end up floating around that bright, hot star? Another brooder asked, what caused that blue-green planet to turn blue-green? Why is there life here, how did it come about? This caused yet other brooders to wonder: How did that green become humanity, and how did that humanity develop consciousness, social groups, and finally, the ability to think about how all this came to be in the first place? It is in the nature of humankind, a part of humanness, to brood over the face of the deep that is our past, our present, and our future.

While brooding over past, present and future has also been a concern of religious leaders, the church itself has not had a good track record in its dealings with brooders; especially if their brooding caused them to stray from the church’s teachings on certain subjects. When people began asking too many questions, the church interpreted questioning as an attack on its authority over human life and thought. Yet human brooding was, and is irrepressible. Eventually, due to the challenges of some very astute brooders, the church itself was forced to do some brooding of its own. Copernicus challenged the church’s view of the earth and the cosmos. Darwin challenged the church’s view of Creation. Modern Biotechnology challenges the church’s view of family, lineage and perhaps even what it really means to be human in this day. Indeed, it also challenges the church’s view on what evolutionary direction that we as a species take.

During the last century the Christian Faith has risen to the challenge. It has not been silent. It has not just let things happen. I will reflect on three of the challenges that the Bible, as the book of the Christian Faith, has faced during the last hundred and thirty years, and how the Faith has risen to those challenges in a positive, helpful way.

Honest, religious people in an effort to remain true to the faith in the midst of the challenges have been reflecting on the specifics of the current state of human knowledge. One thing that they have discovered is that a kind of fundamentalist approach to religion that puts everything in a box, closes it and says, "Forget it, don’t think about it" fails.

Growing up, I was confronted with this failure. I had a quasi-evangelical upbringing. I remember going to a bible study on the first book of Genesis. At the time I was also studying dinosaurs at school. During one Bible class I posed the following question, "You’ve got ‘God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was without form and void.’ And then come the sun, and some plants. So, where are the dinosaurs? If they were created with the other animals why aren’t the around today?" In response, the Bible teacher had us write "the age of dinosaurs" in between verses 1 and 2 of chapter one–between the verse that reads, "God created the heavens and the earth" and the next one, "and the earth was without form and void." What followed was a long convoluted explanation about how the age of dinosaurs and the ice age fit exactly into that little blank space between verses 1 and 2. It all made sense to him, and, at the time, to me as well. He was an adult after all. But is it not as likely that the dinosaurs and the ice age are simply not in the story at all? Perhaps they were never meant to be a part of the story? Aside from the fact that no one knew about dinosaurs or ice ages at the time, was the story ever meant to be the sum total of human knowledge on the history of creation? Was it really meant to be hard science?

Another time that this last question came into particular focus for me was in a conversation I had with a friend of mine who was a geologist. His economic survival depended on him finding oil. Unfortunately, the seven days of creation really did not help him to find oil; however, evolutionary theory did. Lots of it! I once asked him how he reconciled the knowledge he uses to make a living, with that imparted by his faith; that is, the seven day creation story. "Well," he said, "from Monday to Saturday I believe in evolution, and on Sunday I believe in the seven day creation story." I, personally, found his answer disturbing. It was a way of coping, I suppose. But was it helpful? Was it really honest? Did not this kind of thinking force you to live in two different worlds? Should not the faith have something to say about one’s vocation? Should not the faith have something to do with one’s life from Monday to Saturday?

Over time, I learned that the Bible not only faced this external challenge, but that there were also internal challenges, challenges presented by the text itself–there were obvious internal inconsistencies, and the problem of translation and interpretation.

By way of an example of an internal consistency, we go back to the first chapter of Genesis. If you compare chapter one with chapter two of Genesis, you discover two rather different creation stories. In the first creation story (Genesis 1:1-2:4a), plants are created, then animals followed by humans. In the second creation story (Genesis 2:4bff) humans are created before the animals. While it is a wonderful story–there is a playfulness about it; God makes an animal, hands it to Adam and says, "you name it,"–it does not fit with the first story. They are inconsistent.

As one studies the stories more closely, one begins to wonder about the weight we have been putting on language to support the stories. Most of us at this symposium speak at least one other language. And we all know that there are certain things that one can say in one language that make absolutely no sense in another. One of my favourites is the German expression, which literally translated is, "That is snow from yesterday." (Das ist Schnee von Gestern). Any English speaker would be hard pressed to guess at the meaning of the phrase. Yet there is an English expression, which captures the meaning perfectly and means nothing in German–"That’s water under the bridge." Suddenly, as English speakers we understand, it makes sense.

This sort of thing happens in the bible quite often. It is a problem of translation and interpretation. It forces one to ask the question, can English versions of the bible, can Estonian versions of the bible bear the weight of truth that we have put on the actual individual words, or the details? When we look at the language problem, we have to take the realisation seriously that every translation of the Bible is at the same time an interpretation.

The brooding over the biblical text and its challenges resulted in what theologian Ted Peters calls the Big Question,

"how can the Christian faith, first experienced and symbolically articulated in and ancient culture now long out-of-date, speak meaningfully to human existence today as we experience it amid a worldview dominated by natural science, secular self-understanding, and the world-wide cry for freedom?" ⁴

The question reflects the challenges we have discussed thus far. The first part of the question reflects the language problem. As the language of the bible is not spoken anywhere in the world right now, how do we meaningfully translate or interpret what the bible is saying so that it is meaningful to us today in our modern languages? What words we can use?

The second part of the question reflects the problem we saw between faith and vocation; that is, how can a worldview that was quite different from ours, speak to our worldview? We are considerably more advanced, in the sense that we know more, than people living 2000 plus years ago. And what we know works! Right! For what we need to do. And every time it does not work, we find something else that will help us work. So for now Darwinian Evolutionary Theory helps us find oil, and we can run our cars.

We also understand ourselves differently, socially from people living at the beginning of the first millennium of the Christian Era. For example, one of the concepts we talk about in the Christian Faith is the Kingdom of God. I do not think that when Matthew was writing Kingdom of God, he was thinking Constitutional Monarchy. Nor was he thinking Houses of Parliament or Rubber Stamp Governor General. He was thinking about something quite different. Matthew’s contemporaries also experienced their place in society differently. For example, we consider ourselves to be more and more equal, while class divisions were very real and seemingly insurmountable for Matthew’s first readers. We understand humanness differently from the way they understood it.

The Big Question summarises the challenges to the faith in the post-modern era. It sounds almost impossible to answer, doesn’t it? Thankfully we have found another way of looking at the Bible that might help us with the big question. At some point someone came up with the idea: perhaps rather than seeing scriptures as detailed histories, we should simply be thinking of them as stories (an idea that appears much more in line with the intention of many of the original biblical authors). What’s a story? A story is a collection of a series of events with a beginning, a middle and an ending, whose goal, in some cases, is to change a way of thinking, or to bring something to light. Stories have a spirit behind them. While there are stories with hard facts, they have a meaning that is deeper than just the words and facts of the story. Rather than simply describe, stories guide. They give us an insight into life, a philosophy by which we can do our work. With this new perspective, suddenly the stories of the Bible can have a role in our lives from Monday to Saturday. We have found a way of resolving the tension. We have found a way of dealing with the Big Question.

Stories, the meaning behind stories, change the way we view things. By way of example, I would like to share with you a couple of non-biblical stories that can change the way we look at things. The first story is a true one.

An expression I learned upon my arrival at my parish in Ville St-Laurent is "Geben bringt segen." Giving brings blessings. While I had never heard it expressed that way, it was something I had always believed. It is also something that the Bible states clearly, every time you give you receive. The measure you use to give, Jesus says, is the measure by which you will receive, pressed down, shaken together and flowing over. ⁵

On beautiful summer days, I like to stand out in front of the church and greet the people as they come in. We have a regular customer who comes by to ask for change. One day he came by and asked, "Pastor! You gotta bus ticket to see my mother?" Internally, my first response was, "Why would I want to see your mother?" I laughed to myself. Afterwards I thought that the chuckle was worth a bus ticket, if nothing else was. No sooner had I given the man the ticket, than one of my older parishioners came up to me, shook my hand and said, "Guten Morgen, Herr Pastor. He shouldn’t get used to that idea." He nodded in the direction of the man who had just left.

"Excuse me?" I replied.

"He shouldn’t get used to the idea that you’re here to give him things." He answered.

"I appreciate what you’re saying," I said, "but I really believe that for everything that I’ve given, I always received in return and more than I ever would have imagined."

"Yeah, Yeah, Yeah…" he replied and went on into the church. Moments later, another parishioner came up the walk, he had not seen the guy standing there, he had not witnessed the transaction between the other parishioner and myself. This parishioner greeted me, "Guten Morgen, Herr Pastor," taking my hand. As he shook my hand, I felt something press against my palm. Then releasing my hand, he quickly entered the church. I looked down. He had left something in my hand better than a bus ticket–a newly minted 10 dollar coin. A $1.35 investment made a $10 return in moments. Giving brings blessing.

My second story is fictional, a Russian Tale. It seems that the Czar had taken some interest in the success of two farmers, Mikhail and Ivan. He sent his representative out to them to extend his congratulations and to reward them for their work. The Czar’s representative first approached Mikhail, "The Czar wants you to know that he is very impressed with your success, and as a reward will grant you anything you want."

Mikhail was overwhelmed by his good fortune, in his minds eye he saw himself surrounded by wealth beyond his wildest dreams, until he heard the representative say, "But."

"But you should know," the representative continued, "the Czar is even more impressed with the success of your neighbour Ivan, and has given me the authority to give Ivan double what you ask."

Mikhail thought about this for a while. "Sir," he said, "I know what I want, I want you to pluck out my right eye."

The representative was shocked by this request. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"You said that you promised to give Ivan double what I ask. If I ask you to take one of my eyes, then you must take both of Ivan’s eyes, so that he may not have any advantage over me."

We laugh at this story, but let us face it, there is a worldview out there like that, one that says, look out for number one make sure the other guy is worse off than you are.

These two stories represent different worldviews, other ways of looking at things. Which would you choose to embrace in your life? Which story holds meaning for you? Which story brings you hope? Which makes you depressed? Stories put pressure on us. Stories paint pictures of worldviews, of possibilities we never thought of before. Sure, stories are at times anecdotal, the truth they reveal is not always tangible–they don’t have tidiness of the empirical method. The truth that stories and collections of stories contain tends to build up over time. One begins to see patterns or trends. Along with the trends there is also sense of an inner witness to the stories. For example, you cannot prove that giving brings blessing. It was coincidental that the man gave me the ten dollars. Or is it? One has a feeling that there is more than coincidence operating here. Basing one’s worldview on a trend or the momentary wondering, "or is it?" is called faith.

Stories create a new worldview, they create an internal pressure that says, look at your world right now, and look at how it might, or can be. William Glasser calls this potential or preferred worldview our picture of a quality world–the world toward which we strive. ⁶ The disparity between where we are and where we want to be is what pressures us to change. It is that pressure we feel when we say, "Okay, I’m tired of living this way. Enough of this! I want this other worldview, and I want to start doing things in my life that will bring me to that new worldview. It will make my life more interesting, if nothing else, but hopefully it will be better." Stories touch us. There is something deep within us that resonates with stories and what they present.

Stories need to result in action. It is not enough that stories are told, but they should produce some sort of action in people’s lives. The pressure should get to a point where you want to do something. We have a big story called God–a history of God, if you like. It is not enough just to know this history; we have to do something with it. In the words of the apostle, James, "be doers of the word, and not merely hearers." ⁷

During an interview a contemporary monastic was asked why he never wore a cross. In response he stood up straight and tall, and stretched out his arms. This was his cross. His body formed the cross he wore. Whatever the cross means to Christians, if it means the sacrificial giving of self; if it means the embracing of all life; if it means xenophilia, the accepting of all strangers, as opposed to xenophobia, the fear of strangers; if it means the power of transformation–one of the themes of all the stories is that no matter how bad things get, they can be turned around–it means nothing unless it is lived out. The story only achieves its full potential when it is acted upon, when it is expressed through us. The stories of the Faith have to be lived.

The spirit behind these stories speaks to us. In the case of the Creation Story from Genesis, which is probably borrowed from another culture older than Genesis itself, there is a change in understanding from that of its original form, which can speak to us today. This new understanding is seeing ourselves as being made in the image of God. In the original story humans were simply puppets of the gods, playthings. What biblical storytellers wanted to emphasise was that from the perspective of the Faith we are not just slaves, we are not God’s puppets. God created us in God’s image, and who we are most basically, most deeply, has something in common with the personality of God. That is the idea behind the story of Genesis. Those words, "Let us create humankind in our image" are important, they are the key to the story.

Another way of looking at the spirit of this story is to say that the best of human traits reflect God’s image, God’s personality. Humorists, wishing to comment negatively on human weakness and base behaviour have turned this phrase around, God has created us in his image, and we have returned the favour–we have created God in our image. But there is a positive sense to this expression, in that God possesses all the best traits of humankind, because God put all those best traits in us. The story seems to be meant to change the way we see ourselves.

Genesis tells us that we bear the image of God; that we are created in the image of God. The sum total of what it truly means to be human is inside of us. Humanness is already inside of us. Imagine how different your life would be if you were to look in the mirror tonight and say, "There’s God." Imagine how differently you would behave, if when you go home, you were to look at your neighbour, and say, "There’s God." Imagine what a change there would be, what a world this would be.

The best of what it means to be human resides in every human being. The problem is expressing that which is in us. If we say that God is inside us, then God is not only in our heart, but God is in our hands. There are two ways of being in the world–we can approach life with an open hand or a closed hand. In the moment that we open our hands, in the moment that we reach out and touch someone (bring them a glass of water, or as Jesus said, talk to them in prison, clothe and feed them), the moment we see God in another person and relate to that person in that way, we are bringing God into that life and that person is bringing God into our life. Do you want to know where free will is? Look at your hand. To open your hand, or to close your hand is a free will decision. Not only is that a free will decision, but that is a worldview. A worldview that is open or a worldview that is closed, that is our decision. A worldview that is more human informed by God’s story, or a worldview that withdraws from the human, a worldview that gives into the darkness.

The Big Question, how does a faith articulated in an ancient world speak to us today seems to be partly answered by this alternative way of looking at stories. The Bible, as a collection of stories, speaks to our post-modern world through the spirit behind the stories. Perhaps we could rewrite, reinterpret the Christian Story in these words: The Word, the Story, came into the world; and the Word, the Story, that created the world, the Word, the Story, that is imprinted on us as God’s image, did not come to bring darkness. It came to bring light into the darkness. That is the spirit behind the story, and it brings us to the brink of a decision. Do we want to be bearers of darkness, or bearers of light?

¹ Genesis 1:1. New Revised Standard Version Bible (Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America, 1989). return to text

² "… le souffle de Dieu agitait la surface de l’eau." "Genèse," La Sainte Bible (Pierrefitte, France: Alliance Biblique Universelle, 1987), 1:2. return to text

³ "… der Geist Gottes schwebte auf dem Wasser." Das Erste Buch Mose, Die Bibel (Stuttgart: Würtembergische Bibelantalt, n.d.), 1:2. return to text

⁴ Ted Peters, God–the World’s Future : Systematic Theology for a Postmodern Era (Minneapolis; Fortress Press,1992), p. 5. return to text

⁵ Luke 6:38. return to text

⁶ "Choice Theory explains that the reason we perceive much of reality so differently from others has to do with another important world, unique to each of us, called the quality world. This small personal world which each person starts to create in his or her memory shortly after birth and continues to create and re-create throughout life, is made up of a small group of specific pictures that portray, more than anything else we know, the best ways to satisfy one or more of our basic needs.

What these pictures portray falls into three categories: (1) the people we most want to be with, (2) the things we most want to own or experience, and (3) the ideas or systems of belief that govern much of our behaviour." William Glasser, Choice Theory : A New Psychology of Personal Freedom (New York: Harper Collins, 1998), p. 44ff. return to text

⁷ James 1:22. New Revised Standard Version … return to text

Norman Hennig: Sermon: The Story and the Spirit