Welcome to an extra episode of "What do you mean God speaks."
I thought what will be helpful, now that we are 6 episodes in, plus 2 extra episodes, is a guide to what each episode is about, and more important, which point to remember from each.
Because, each episode is supposed to build on the previous episodes, which means later episodes will often assume that the listener will know about the key points in the previous episodes.
The larger plan for the series is actually to go through all the main story arcs of the Bible, from Creation, Fall, History of Israel, the prophets, Jesus Christ, the Church, the End Times and what they all mean. However, if you listened to the first bonus episode, "Paul Chung talks about the series," I point out that there are long-standing misunderstandings and confusions regarding Christian beliefs. And I don't mean some off-hand, minor confusions--I mean ones that frame the whole thing wrong.
Say, for example, you watch Shakespeare's famous tragedy, Hamlet, thinking that it's a romantic comedy between Hamlet and Ophelia. You'd soon be confused or even upset, because--spoiler alert!--Hamlet doesn't get together with Ophelia at all. Of course, you may say that even if we don't know the story beforehand, we'd realize that it's a tragedy when we watch the play... but, here's the question. What if we don't have a frame, a concept, of tragedy? What if, incredibly, the only framework we have in viewing any story is a romantic comedy, and then watch Hamlet? Well, then we'd need to be provided with the correct frame.
And that's what the first season, with twelve episodes planned, are trying to do regarding Christianity--present a corrective frame. Though I suppose much of what I'm pointing out can be applied to other religious or philosophical traditions.
So, on to the actual episode guide. You can take this is a introductory summary to each episode, or a review to jog your memories.
First episode: Why we need to stop trying to find God a job.
This is the starting point of the entire series; and because of it, was the hardest to set up. I worked with the material I wanted to present here for five months before separating it into four distinct episodes. That's why the first episode is also the one that'll be hardest and take the longest time to explain here. But, this episode sets the ground.
So, I was trying to address what I think is one of the most fundamental way we misunderstand the idea of God, and what it is to believe in God. Basically, how we answer the question, What do you mean by God, wrong.
Think of it as a problem of "pointing." So, in our range of experience, where can we point to, and say that that's God? Simply put, "where" is God? And the answer is varied. For some, God is this super-powerful fantastical entity, and so that's where God is--in fantastical, unexplainable, and impossible events, like miracles. For others, "God" is found only in some deeply subjective, personal experience, which often mean, "God" is just that--a feeling. For yet others, "God" is this hypothetical entity that made the universe-- "engineered it" is the dominant metaphor here--and so, we must find and "point to" the scientific clues of this engineering feat.
However, none of these actually fit the idea of God in Christianity. And that's a problem because this means whenever we talk about God, we don't really know what we're referring to--to what we're pointing. Or worse, we're pointing at the wrong thing! Then, it's guaranteed that the rest of the conversation would go astray!
For example, we can get stuck with hotly contested, yet dead-end questions based on each of these misunderstandings. Like whether this or that miraculous event was really as impossible and fantastical as it was claimed. Or why someone's deeply personal feeling can dare judge a society or another individual. Or, if there are valid scientific evidences for our world having been engineered, by some intelligent entity.
In all of these, what's happening is that we're pointing at the wrong things, when we're asked the question, "where is God?"
And the Christian answer to that question is, both "nowhere," and "everywhere." ( That's what theologians mean--btw--when they say God is transcendent, and immanent. ) And when an answer to a question is "both opposites at once," it's a good indication that we lack the right framework for thinking about it.
So, this episode presents two points to help navigate that answer. First is the analogy of the relationship between the author and the story. The author is both "nowhere" and "everywhere" in the story she tells; likewise, God is both "nowhere" and "everywhere" in the universe and its history. Second is that for those who are not theists, it would be easier to understand God as another word for "Reality." That's because how we think and relate to Reality is how Christians historically think and relate to God. Reality is always and everywhere what's immediately before us, and to which our thoughts and actions are measured.
But, for the full account, listen to the actual episode.
That leaves the episode with the final point to remember, which is that once what we're pointing to is clarified, we face the true question. Is Reality a what? or Who? Christians claim that God is Who. Not a what. And, the entire story of Christianity is how we came to that conclusion.
First episode really is crucial--it sets the ground for the entire series--and really, what we mean by "God" whenever that word comes up.
Second episode: Why we need to aim higher than tolerance.
So, the first episode sets the ground of the series regarding its content --the idea of God; the second episode sets the ground for its approach--why we do this series.
Now, the series is for the skeptics who want to understand religion, and the Christians who have questions about their own beliefs, and everyone in between.
What that means though is that it's aiming to reach two seemingly opposite kind of people. People who disbelieve religion in general. And people who are Christians. People who would very clearly and thoroughly disagree with each other.
But, the kind of people this series is addressing should share in common a very particular mindset--a mindset that I'm afraid is becoming increasingly rare these days.
The first part of the episode describes that mindset; wanting to understand and communicate with those they disagree with. This requires something beyond tolerance. Hope, faith, perseverance, love.
But, it also requires knowing the task at hand, which is that understanding views you disagree with, sometimes is not a simple thing. Not when it's the issue of having entirely different worldviews. For this, you need something like a translation. Someone who's comfortable with both worldviews and describe some ideas in a way that is more comprehensible with those with completely different set of beliefs.
Now, here's an extra tip--a commentary--on this point. If you want to translate your ideas or beliefs to those with different worldviews, you need to do the following. You need to first understand the other worldview. But, also, you need to break down your own beliefs, your worldview, then build them back, from the grounds up. Now, how you build them back up is also key; first, it needs to still be that worldview--but it's rebuilt in the way with the wording and ideas that will settle in that other worldview.
That's what this series is trying to do. That's what this episode is trying to explain.
Third episode: Why Christmas starts from despair
The biggest reason for this episode, frankly speaking, was the timing. It was Christmas. But, the episode also does a few things that will set up for the future episodes.
The first is to retell the beginning of the Gospel, that is, the story of Jesus Christ, in terms of a continuation of a larger story. There's a tendency to have a disastrously out-of-context telling of the story of Christ, which can sound like God, telling people that they're bunch of no-good sinners, and thus has to send His Son.
But, that's not quite right. The actual story is not where God has to tell people that they're sinners--they find that they are, after ignoring God warning them about it for so long. What's the difference?
Well, say, someone came by and berated you for say, parking in a wrong spot, and curse you saying, "You're gonna die from a disease!" That's completely different from someone coming by and saying, "we have a pandemic raing right now, and you're telling people the pandemic's a hoax; you don't take any health precaution, and you work with vulnerable people; you'll soon cause you or those around you to be deathly ill." That's when you're being warned.
That's the background story of Christmas. People were warned by God. But, they ignored it--which was doubly inexcusable, because they called themselves the people of God. Then what God warned them struck. That's the story of Sin.
Yet, God still sent His Son to them, to rescue them. That's the hope of Christmas.
The key idea for the third episode is that we need to understand the larger story to understand many of the ideas and messages in Christianity. And that's what the later seasons of this series will cover.
Fourth episode: God, Science, the Universe, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster
The fourth episode continues from the first episode, exploring what we mean by God, but in the context of science and religion.
Whenever we think of God in this context, there is a tendency to view the issue this way. On the one side, there is the universe, which is governed by the Laws of Nature. On the other side, there is this entity, "God," with fantastical powers that engineered our world. And the question that's often asked is, do we need to believe this super intelligent entity exists in order to understand how our universe came to be? Or is the Laws of Nature that science discover enough? And sometimes in this discussion, "God" comes out only a little better, more "mainline" than the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
However, the first episode should have already hinted that we're starting off on a wrong foot. If by God, we mean 'Reality,' as the first episode suggests, let's substitute the word 'God' with 'Reality' in the question I just mentioned. Do we need to believe that there is Reality, in order to understand how the universe came to be? And the answer is... well, yes. But, a better answer is, that isn't the appropriate question.
For this episode specifically though, I introduce the idea of the Logos. It is the idea, which is the very root of science itself; that there is a rational principle, underlying how everything happens, and how everything comes to be--and we can learn and describe this principle. That the universe is governed by Laws, and science can discover them.
Yet, according to the Gospel of John, this Logos, is God--God "speaking" things into being in Genesis. What that means is that it's wrong to think of God on the one side, and the Laws of Nature on the opposite side; what science discover as Laws, is what Christianity has understood from its very beginning, as the Logos of God.
And there's some reason to pay some attention to the Christian idea because... if our reason can understand the principle that structures all of Reality, and if our language can describe it, then that means Reality, in an important way, is like a language--a speech. Echoing the Christian view of God "speaking" everything into being.
Whether this will justify a full belief in God who responds in personal ways, is yet another question--a question that might not even be relevant to science!
Fifth episode: Which is the "real" Christianity?
The unspoken purpose of this episode is to respond pre-emptively to one question that's going to come sooner or later. The way you explain Christian beliefs are not how some other Christians would explain them. How do we know what you're talking about is the real deal?
Of course, there is that larger question that Christians disagree with each other about many things about what a Christian is supposed to believe. And it becomes confusing when some Christians say one thing and some others say another.
This episode is trying to give some framework to organize all this.
There is a related question it wants to address beforehand though, which is what makes someone a "real" Christian. And the simple answer is if the core of what defines you, is the teachings, the life, the Cross, and the resurrection of Christ, then you are a Christian. And because of that, every Christian is in the process of becoming more Christ-like in character. However, it's hard to figure out who's fake and who's real, because everyone starts out at a different point. Some real Christians may be starting out as a much more hellish character than fake ones with Christian masks. Also, the progress is not linear--there will be detours and stumbles.
This question comes first, because there's a parallel to what makes a position or a set of beliefs, Christian.
Every Christian position, no matter how different from each other, shares a common set of beliefs, which are listed in the Creeds, and the key narrative arcs in the Bible, and the teachings of Jesus. These aren't merely common beliefs though; they are "Core" beliefs.
Now, core beliefs, such as "God created all things," or "Jesus saved us from our sins," define how we relate to God, to the world, to each other--to Reality. But, they are always encased, or fleshed out, by more concrete understanding of what these mean. And the differences people see in the different or even opposing Christian positions are the differences in how each Christian encased or fleshed out a core belief, or even a related set of core beliefs.
Now, this idea of "core" beliefs is probably what makes this episode difficult. I'm hoping I did explain them well enough, but I will probably re-edit the episode later.
Anyway, how the Christians understand or articulate their core beliefs are always changing. And this is just like how Christian individual is being made more like Christ gradually--or failing, if one's fake. These understanding is still in the millenia-long process of being made real. And just like the differences between Christian individuals' spiritual journey, how we encase the core beliefs, like what it means for God to create the world, or say, a particular ethical position the Church takes, can in different stage of its journey to God--and some may have longer journey ahead of them.
But, as long as the core is the same, they are all "Christianities." Better or for worse.
Bonus episode: This is how the Nation dies, a News reaction.
You can understand this as an expansion to the second episode. Basically, the second episode argued that we need to aim higher than tolerance, for understanding, and the hard work of making ourselves understood. Then, comes this episode where I'm reacting to an event that proved that pretty much the opposite came true in the U.S.
This is also an episode where I actually lost my temper. I hope you can't really tell though, or if you can, it's only because you're comparing it to how I am in other episodes.
Now, as result of losing my temper, I was more willing to use hyperboles to describe what's going on in two or three occasions--by that, I mean obvious exaggerations to make a point... that people nowadays think that those who disagree with them secretly eat babies or are neo-Nazis... except what's scary, now that I think about it is that these exaggerations may not be so obvious anymore.
What I wasn't exaggerating though is when I said, this is the death-blow to America as a democratic nation.
That's because I see what happened with the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol as a... heart attack. It's been coming for a while. The heart that sustained it has been dying, and the insurrection merely showed that enough of it died to cause the heart failure.
And what it needs is not healing; it needs to resuscitation, or decades from now, it'll be too late, and the U.S. as a nation, and as a democracy, will be stone cold dead.
See, people focus on the insurrection and the violence, and those who incited it. All that was terrible, yes. But, the real problem is what made this incitement possible in the first place. There is no basic trust nor willingness to dialogue, let alone work with, among people who have different views. They're divided so sharply into camps that they are now willing to assume that everything the other side says that doesn't align with what they believe are just lies--or stupidity, or ignorance. And in contrast, they are willing to believe everything their side says, no matter how far-fetched it seems. And it becomes a viscious circle, because those who present the news or views or ideas are now pushed to repeat things that only strengthen the old prejudices. Because those sell.
Ok, so, when someone shares some outrageous thing that this or that figure did, the first thing I think is, can that be true? Can someone do something that bad? Then, I check other sources--multiple sources. And I make sure to include ones that'd be more sympathetic to that character. Then I tentatively come to a conclusion. This... apparently is rare nowadays.
And this is why conspiracy theorists, and yes, Trump, were successful in inciting the insurrection. Anything they said was simply believed, and everything else was simply dismissed as lies.
And I find, reading news articles from a number of different sources, that there's still some dangerously naive views. First is that with the new president, things will heal. But again the true problem is not what the president Trump and politicians who supported them did. It's that Americans enabled them to do it. And while most of them may now condemn the insurrection itself, and claim to abhor the violence, whether they still believe the very words that incited this insurrection, is still neatly divided into partisan lines. And it's naive to think that the next generation of leaders won't use this to their advantage to climb up the ranks. And I mean leaders from both sides.
Which leads to the second naive view that this is the problem for the Republicans, or Trump-supporters. It's naive to think that this kind of blind partisanship is limited to just one segment of the population. And what's more, even if that naive view is true, things like this escalates. If one side is willing to blindly follow its ideology to its extremes, and disbelieve everything the other side says, the other side is pushed to do the same too.
And if you think I am a Republican or a Trump-supporter because I said this, that's just a sign of how blindly polarized people are becoming. I am a Canadian. And I usually vote Liberal. Last time, I voted Green.
And so for me the question isn't whether the U.S. will heal. It's whether its heart will be resuscitated in time. And I don't know how long it's got, unless people change.
But, with things polarized as it is, the only path forward, I am afraid, is literally following Jesus' words to "love your enemies." And when churches in the U.S. find that hard to do...
On to the...
Sixth episode: Always remember this when speaking about God. A.K.A. There is a caveat to everything we say about God.
This episode is a continuation from the point made in the fifth episode, that Christian beliefs and positions are always in the process toward greater understanding.
And there's another reason why this is true. Everything we say about God--or about Reality, the Infinite--is limited. Not wrong, nor pointless, but limited. That's the idea that not only Christian, but thinkers and mystics all over the world pointed out since the ancient times.
I listed Daoism and compared it to the Exodus passage in the episode. But, I could've used excerpts from Hindu Upanishads, or Buddhist texts. I had multiple translations of Dao De Jing available though--and more to the point, in English and in Korean, so I used that.
The key idea here is that everything we say of God, is an analogy. God is "like" the author of the story; Reality (Logos) is "like" a speech, God is "like" the Father. These analogies fall short, but, they are the "best" available to us.
This includes, by the way, even descriptions like God is Infinite, or Absolute, mainly because we can't quite conceptualize--except in pure abstractions, like mathematics--actual Infinities, or Absolutes. God is "like" that the idea of the Infinite in mathematics, but how exactly, we can't truly conceive it.
And we always use analogies when a better language is unavailable to us. For example, if we don't know the maths behind general theory of relativity, we say spacetime is "like a fabric." There's more to it than the analogy, but it's the best available.
The next key idea is that while some of the analogies we use come from reasoning about God, most come from experiencing what God does in one's life. When Moses first meets God, God's name was "I am that I am," and "I will be that I will be," to which God added, "and I will be with you."
After God rescues the Israelites, Moses receives more names. Merciful, gracious, faithful, loving, forgiving sins, but judging the guilty. These are still all analogies though, because these traits are still human traits. But, they are true in that when Moses tries to describe this God who went with him, to describe this--to use the term from episode one--Reality who responded and behaved in a certain way when he went to rescue the Israelites, these human traits are the best, even if insufficient, words he can come up with.
So, these are what the episodes were about. The next episodes will continue to build on what we covered here.
And on that note, join me for the next episode, "Why God is not a god."
... Why is a bonus episode longer than a full episode?