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Computer Viruses, Religion, and the Cross

2/28/1996

There was an article in a recent Colgate Maroon News written by a student whose computer had been disabled by a computer virus. That did it! I had been thinking about buying an antivirus program for my computer for some time but kept putting it off. My computer is now virus protected.

It may be news to some that computers can get viruses, but it is true. Computer viruses are programs created by computer hackers up to no good. They can do a great deal of damage. If you import files from other computers via computer disks or over the Internet, your computer is susceptible. Computer viruses are much like biological viruses. Their main activity is replication. If not stopped they will take over their host.

Fortunately, computers can be inoculated pretty much as people can. When a person is inoculated they are given a vaccine which contains dead or weakened versions of the virus. This on the surface does not seem logical. You save people from a viral disease by injecting them with the virus? But it works. The vaccine enables the person to develop an immunity to the disease. What is true for computers and biological life can also be true of spiritual life, sometimes in not so good ways. It has been remarked that some people have just enough religion to keep them from getting the real thing. They have been "inoculated." No doubt, this is true.

There can also be good spiritual inoculations. Mark Heim has suggested that the cross might be viewed as something like a vaccine. He writes: "It may even appear to run counter to the natural wisdom of those it can help, for inoculation is done with the very agent which is causing sickness and death...It is a shock to our system, even as it works through our system and restores it to health. It cannot save without conversion."

May we all be inoculated with that vaccine.

©1996 C. David Hess

The Resurrection and the Big Bang

2/15/1996

This week’s column is about the resurrection of Christ and the Big Bang. This seems appropriate because both have received a great deal of recent attention.

It is not unusual for someone to tell me that they find it difficult to believe that Christ actually arose from the dead. They may go on to say something about their having a scientific outlook and thus it’s difficult to take this story of the resurrection just on faith.

I usually agree that this story of Jesus’ resurrection is pretty unbelievable. In our experience dead people just don’t rise. I go on to say that after I examine all the evidence for the resurrection, I find it even harder to not believe it. A leap of faith is still necessary, but it is not an unreasonable leap.

I usually go on to say that faith is equally necessary in science. Take the Big Bang theory for example. This is the theory that all the present universe was contained in a tiny speck about 15 billion years ago. The speck was so small that it had no measurable height or width. Talk about unbelievable! Of course, the cosmologist would agree that on the surface it does seem pretty hard to believe but not after you start examining the evidence. The evidence we have gathered so far (and the scientists just found some more) makes this the most reasonable theory about the beginning of the universe. Of course, the scientist would also agree that this cannot be absolutely proven. A leap of faith is still necessary, but it is the most reasonable leap we can make.

The Resurrection of Christ and the Big Bang theory are both pretty unbelievable, but also, given the evidence, pretty reasonable. Why don’t you take a look at the evidence? Maybe you too can believe.

©C. David Hess

Resurrection: Metaphor or Event?

2/8/1996

In discussing the Resurrection as event, not just metaphor, this past Sunday I quoted Steven Weinberg’s book, Dreams of a Final Theory. Weinberg, recipient of the Nobel prize for physics in 1979, can best be described as an agnostic leaning toward atheism. The quotation is worth further circulation. Here is a portion of it:

Religious liberals are in one sense even farther in spirit from scientists than are fundamentalists and other religious conservatives. At least the conservatives like the scientists tell you that they believe in what they believe because it is true, rather than because it makes them good or happy...

Wolfgang Pauli was once asked whether he thought that a particularly ill-conceived physics paper was wrong. He replied that such a description would be too kind---the paper was not even wrong. I happen to think that the religious conservatives are wrong in what they believe, but at least they have not forgotten what it means really to believe something. The religious liberals seem to me to be not even wrong.

One often hears that theology is not the important thing about religion---the important thing is how it helps us to live. Very strange, that the existence and nature of God and grace and sin and heaven and hell are not important! I would guess that people do not find the theology of their own supposed religion important because they cannot bring themselves to admit that they do not believe any of it. But through out history and in many parts of the world today people have believed in one theology or another, and for them it has been very important.

Such people were the early Christians. Their attitude was: Call us liars if you must, but don’t patronize us with talk of metaphor (I Corinthians 15:14-15).

©C. David Hess

A "Bloody" Religion

2/1/1996

Christianity is a bloody religion. We regularly drink Jesus’ blood, "shed for many for the forgiveness of sins." Last Sunday our soloist sang: "God leads His dear children along. Some thro’ the waters, some thro’ the flood, Some thro’ the fire, but all thro’ the blood..."

The bloodiness of our religion is off putting to some. At a recent controversial conference, "Re-Imagining...God, Community, the Church," Delores Williams, a professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York, told the group, "I don’t think we need a theory of atonement at all. I don’t think we need folks hanging on crosses and blood dripping and weird stuff."

I believe a response to Dr. Williams’ comment by Betty Evans Streett in a recent issue of The Christian Century was right on:

I can’t imagine how Delores Williams, a speaker at the Re-Imagining conference, doesn’t see the need for a bleeding God. My husband and I live on a river bank and last week we watched ten baby mallard ducks follow their mom to the water and swim away. The next day a small child with a stick hit one of the babies on the head and apparently caused internal bleeding. Daily we see scenes of bloody bodies in Bosnia and Rwanda. Every day, kids shoot people for kicks. Almost every day, I lacerate someone’s character with my tongue. Blood is everywhere.

Atonement goes both ways. I would not need, wouldn’t even find interesting, a God who didn’t share my human nature by suffering, bleeding and dying. And who couldn’t, or didn’t demonstrate love’s absolute ascendance over the evil of this world through the power of the resurrection.

As a T. S. Eliot character said, "I’ve gotta use words when I talk to you." God has to use blood.

©C. David Hess

"Sick" Humor

2/1/1996

There was an interesting article in the magazine section of the Sunday New York Times some time ago. Its headline read: "Defiantly Incorrect; Cartoonist John Callahan makes fun of the blind, the crippled, people without arms or hearing. How does he get away with it?"

Some samples of his humor:

Geraldo Rivera on his knees saying his bedtime prayers, "Thank you, God, for all the tragedy, wretchedness and perversion in the world."

A man saying, "Call me a gimp, call me a cripple, call me paralyzed for life, but just don't call me something that I'm not."

A cartoon called "The Alzheimer Hoedown," depicted confused couples at a square dance. They were wandering around scratching their heads unable to follow the instructions to "return to the girl that you just left."

How does he get away with such humor? You begin to understand when you find out Callahan himself is paralyzed.

His cartoons have produced a lot of angry responses, but not from the handicapped and the diseased. They have most often expressed appreciation.

Here is an example of the truth of Conrad Hyer's words: "...humor...may ...express a certain heroic defiance in the face of life's most crushing defeats, an unquenchable nobility of spirit that refuses to permit a given fate or oppressor to have the last word---to be absolute. The human spirit has not been utterly vanquished. The will to live and the determination to continue the struggle, or the faith that the struggle will be continued, has not been finally conquered. Where there is humor there is still hope" (emphasis is mine).

I believe we find echoes of this too in Hebrews 12:2: "...Jesus who, for the sake of the joy that lay ahead of him, endured the cross, making light of its disgrace..."

©C. David Hess

Kids

2/1/1996

I saw the controversial movie, "Kids," Friday night. It is a disturbing look at the lives of some kids in New York City. Roger Ebert says about two leading characters, what would be true of many of the others as well, "...neither has any interests, any curiosity, any values, any frame of reference, beyond immediate animal gratification."

The movie was released as unrated. It is filled with graphic sex (but little nudity) and crude language. I believe that Roger Ebert is right in saying that there are kids who should not see it and some that should (with their parents). No parent should take their teen without first going and previewing it themselves.

The story centers on Telly (whose primary goal in life is "de-virginizing" young girls); his best friend, Casper; and Jenny (who is searching for Telly to tell him that he has infected her with the AIDS virus). Ebert says about Telly: "...life has given him noting that interests him, except for sex, drugs and skateboards. His life is a kind of hell."

Two scenes in the movie really struck me. In one an old cab driver shares with Jenny his grandmother's advice on how to be happy---"Don't think." In the second, Casper, in a drunken state, wakes up with a start after having had sex with Jenny (who due to drugs was completely oblivious) and asks, "Jesus Christ, what happened?" Appropriately, these are the last words spoken in the movie.

I fear that there are many, not just kids, who go through life endlessly seeking diversion, ever avoiding serious thought about life and its meaning (fearful that it has none?). I fear that at the end of their lives they will ask bewilderedly with Casper, "Jesus Christ, what happened?"

©C. David Hess

Computer Viruses, Religion, and the Cross

The Resurrection and the Big Bang

Resurrection: Metaphor or Event?

A "Bloody" Religion

"Sick" Humor

Kids

Parsonally Speaking

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