Secret Women's Business

I was listening to an hour of worship music on a Christian radio station while driving this morning. OK, to be honest, I didn’t listen for nearly that long. By song four I turned off the radio and directed the following indignant words to the invisible songwriters: “Oh my goodness, what PLANET are you people from?” All four songs were of the “how I feel about God” genre. Of the “I feel deep love for God” genre. “I only care about you” was the line that tipped me over the edge. I actually care about a lot of things other than my relationship with God. I care about my family. I care about my friends. I care about my health, my job, my hobbies. I care about injustice, about kids in detention, about the millions of displaced people suffering from persecution and conflict. (It is refugee Sunday today, hence this is dominant in my stream of consciousness). I believe God cares about these things too. Jesus noted the most important commandments are to love God and love your neighbou...

Imagine for a moment that you were able to convince a group of people that the earth is really flat, and that the only logical explanation for the sun rising and setting is that a god pulls a sun chariot across the sky each day. If you can convince them of that, then theism for them is an immutable fact. Should anyone try to argue that there really are no gods, they would simply point to the sky. “Don’t be ridiculous, of course there is a god! Just look at the sun! How else can such a thing be explained?” But imagine someone new comes along, and manages to convince these "flat earthers" by careful argument and evidence that the earth is really a spinning sphere, and that this phenomenon alone can explain the apparent rising and setting of the sun. Once persuaded, this might shake their faith in the sun god, and they would no doubt review their theology. It is not in itself a death knell to theism or religious faith, but it does disturb a particular construct of faith. ...