Not Knowing God's Purposes and Wondering If He Exists

In The Business World...
In my professional career, I have been in the position of management a few times. One of the responsibilities of such a position is to communicate decisions of upper management to my employees. Often when my directors communicate the decision to me, they also communicate some of the reasons for the decisions, some of which I am not to communicate any further down the chain. When I communicate the decisions, some are received with a positive attitude, and others are received with a negative one.

I have interacted with many different types of personalities in these situations. Primarily with the negative ones, people begin asking questions about the purposes for the decision in order to evaluate for themselves if the decision was the best possible to make given the circumstances. In many cases, the employee is satisfied with the purposes that I provide; however, there are times that is not the case. The employee believes that based on the purposes communicated to them, a better decision could have and should have been made. They often leave the meeting dissatisfied and with less trust in the members upper management.

Unless we are those who make all the final decisions, we all can identify with the employees provided with a decision and the chosen purposes. I feel comfortable with saying that no person has been fully in agreement with every decision made by every management team in their career. To fully make sense, we need the whole story, and that level of transparency is a rare, if not, non-existent luxury.

This scenario is not limited to the business world, though. Any hierarchical relationship where absolute transparency among the parties does not or cannot exist exhibits this issue. Every relationship from familial to clubs is affected. Today, I want to draw two analogs of this familiar scenario to address two challenges to the existence of God.

On-Demand Experiences

Last month philosopher and apologist Doug Groothuis posted a blog about background music in public. He's not a big fan of it. But this article got me thinking a bit about the reasoning behind such intrusive music.

It seems that background music is normally part of an "environment" or "experience" that is trying to be replicated. From being in Mexico (mexican restaurants complete with Mariachi Bands) to the fasion runway (hip clothing stores "runway" music blaring in the background), companies are trying to create "experiences" for people.

Our postmodern culture has a fascination with "experiences" and "experience" in general. Authenticity (or reality) does not occur to people in today's culture. The experiences that I'm talking about here are artificial and inauthentic (not the real thing). However, authenticity cannot be experienced as easily or frequently as these facades. Culture trades few experiences with the authentic for many experiences with the inauthentic. With constant bombardment of the inauthentic "experiences", we lose the ability to appreciate the authentic experience.

Going back to music in general, I've noticed that lately a lot of "artists" who really can not sing are popular. Many fans of music are familiar with AutoTune. It is a lovely piece of technology that allows sound engineers to "correct" the notes that vocalists sing if they are incorrect. Unfortunately, if used too much, it makes the singer sound quite robotic. This is a great example of the artificial replacing the authentic. Fantasy supplants reality in such a way that it is preferred over reality. As we get inundated with the artificial and fantastic, we gradually lose the ability to appreciate the authentic.

The same thing has happened to truth. People have tried to live in their own fantasies for so long, that they don't want to leave them. This comes from a very existential way of viewing life. "Life is what I make of it; live like there is no tomorrow. Prefer the inauthentic because you never know if you will have the chance to experience the authentic; and for that same reason, I don't need to worry about not being able to appreciate the authentic"

Whether we are talking about truth or culture, being constantly bombarded with inauthenticity has huge detriments. The the inability to appreciate the authentic (reality and truth) becomes us. When we no longer have the ability to appreciate truth when we see it, so we have little reason to accept it or live our lives by it. We will gradually lose the ability to discern between what was created by man and what was created by God. Not recognizing the difference leads to confusion about to who or what to credit. Also focusing on having these "on-demand experiences" encourages us to think existentially. If we only think about the "here and now", we do not contemplate the future or reflect on the past. If we are perpetually entertained with these "experiences" we have no reason to investigate the deep questions of life and reality. All we have is the current moment.

Now that I've dumped on these "experiences" quite a bit, let me talk about the benefits of them. Obviously, if we spent our entire lives only allowing for the truly authentic in everything, we would not be exposed to much of reality. These inauthentic experiences give us a taste (no pun intended) of the authentic. For those who are able to experience both, comparisons can be made and critiques offered to enhance the accuracy of the depictions for those who don't have the resources to enjoy certain authentic experiences.

Two of my favorite things are inauthenticities: ethnic foods and educational television. I don't have the opportunity to travel worldwide just to experience the culinary delights of the nations. Neither do I have the resources to investigate every discipline of science that grab my curiosity. However, local restaurants give me a taste of authentic foods, which makes me desire the authentic experience even more; and television (and the internet) give me the opportunity to "look" through the eyes of researchers to discover the beauty of creation. I can even learn to appreciate AutoTune...from a technical perspective, not artistic, of course. 

The most significant thing that I can think to tie all this together is "love". Culture has spent decades of time and billions of dollars promoting an inauthentic love. Many have been so persuaded that the inauthentic accurately reflects the authentic, that when they see the Authentic, the see no significance or even see it as wrong. For those of us who have experienced the authentic love of Christ, we need to be in the culture critiquing its inaccurate portrayal of love. We cannot isolate ourselves from culture (even the inauthentic parts), we must be in the middle of it. We must be familiar enough with the inauthentic and authentic to show those who live for the inauthentic why the truth and reality of Christ's love and His sacrifice for us are to be treasured above all. From that Christian perspective, the inauthentic may be enjoyed at the same time that we are guiding people back into a loving relationship with their Creator.

Experience and Reliability

Over the last several years I've come across a couple of "philosophies" when it comes to how a person's personal relationship to a belief affects their ability to represent it accurately. I have heard people state that if someone does not believe something, then they cannot accurately represent it. The "support" provided is that if they were familiar enough to represent it accurately (and in its most powerful form), the person would believe it. But then I've also heard many say that those who believe something cannot accurately represent it. The "support" provided is if someone believes something, they obviously want it to be true, so they will misrepresent a false belief in order to support its truth.

What's interesting is that I've heard both from a couple of the same people, but with regards to different topics: "You can't trust the disciples of Jesus to tell us the truth about him because they obviously wanted to believe he was God and the resurrection happened," and "You can't trust a Christian who used to be an atheist (or other worldview) to accurately represent atheism (or other worldview) because he does not want it to be true." The only identification of when to use which is, "whichever one supports my own view." But that is not a valid reason because of its subjective foundation. When I apply either critique is dependent totally on me, and I can change it whenever I please.