God-talk and Us

1 million dollars question:
Can we not talk about God in our quest for meaning and purpose in life?

2 cents answer:
Unfortunately it appears that there are, in fact, some who claim that both purpose and meaning of life should be discuss in isolation from theology or God-talk. But this cannot be done. Recent studies and re-evaluations on education systems, scientific findings, historical discoveries, bioethical issues, and economic stability involved the engagement of absolute truth, if not theology. But unfortunately, today’s trend is that most secularists try to engage into these areas with absolutes while denying its origin. It is like wanting to have a tree in the garden without its root. If that is the case, the tree will soon die out. We cannot promote unsubstantiated claims. It is as dangerous and irresponsible on our part in trying to give an unsubstantiated testimony in the court. The only testimony that is to be presented in any courtroom around the world is this: the Truth and nothing but the Truth.

The reality of Truth is never the main subject of philosophy but of theology. Paraphrasing French existentialist Jean-Paul Satre: “…to have any conception of absolute truth you have to has some point of reference that’s infinite. In other words, it would be foolish to ground the claim for absolute truth on any of us whose lives are very finite, very relative and very limited.”

The possibility to have certainty is only possible, given the divine revelation. If we are to come to know whether a claim is true or not, is when we weight our cognitive faculty onto revelation. Therefore, it infers that should there be any absolute truth at all, there has to be a starting point- a point where we were revealed to the Truth by the Truth. Only Truth able to reveals Truth. Falsehood cannot bear witness to Truth. Truth is reveal by a true God. Hence, without God, there is not any Truth for us to seek. Thus, there would not be any meaning and purpose worth our while. Therefore, to have meaning and purpose, we got to have Truth; and to have Truth, there got to be God; and to know anything about God, there has to be a study about Him. And to study about Him, we have to go into theology and God-talk. And since we are informed, first, through revelation and, then, good reason that we have a Creator, then we ought to build our lives base on the purpose that He has for us.

Recently, I attended a talk titled “Why study Theology?” at a local seminary in Singapore. The speaker started the talk by asking, “Why not?” Then he showed us a power point slide that states “It would seem odd, don’t you think, if [our seminary] offers no courses in theology or perhaps gives only token recognition by hang only one required course in theology.”

To me, that statement did not answer the question ‘Why study theology?’ It has not convinced me of the importance of the subject. Hanging the question in the air, the speaker carried on his presentation by introducing the different genre of courses offered by the seminary before extending into theological role of apologetics and its variegated domain. He then, concluded that studying theology is to study the faith that we hold so that we will not be sway away from orthodoxy. But I think theological study has more significance than that. This discipline is one that no philanthropy can be done without. I believed that theology surpasses any humanity sciences and constructive philosophies. It is fundamental in every discipline. The role of theology is obvious in every study. It is a necessary subject to every thinking person. Even atheist practices theology! Just that, their theology is bad. The same goes to every faith-believers, including ‘free-thinkers’. At a certain level of thoughts, people will struggle with theology- whether one is good or bad in it is another matter, but the point is everyone does theology whether we like it or not. Most often those who do it reluctantly will end up as atheist if not agnostic, while the better ones conclude with pantheism, deism and so forth. In this way, theological struggle is part of life and it determines one’s worldview.

Today’s discussion on jurisprudence, philanthropy, and socio-economic developed on a certain value systems of one’s worldview. The effectiveness and feasibility of each subject hangs their vitality in theology because, it is from theology, that values can be derived rationally. For eg. Whether certain economic ideology such as Socialism can be carried out or not depend on how good the theology (and its value system) that underlined the idea. As we know, Socialism presupposes atheism, an inadequate theological view, and with such bad theology, Socialism is doom to failure. Other economic system, which promotes better theological stand on issues such as self-interests, property ownership, stewardship and the appropriate role of government in distribution and jurisprudence, is more feasible and preferable.

We cannot abandon theology or God-talk and venture onto other disciplines without first getting our theology right. Neglecting it, is to repeat history, make no development and is best described as those who built their houses on sand; and when the rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against their houses, and they fell with great crashes (Matthew 7:26-27). We have seen crashes, such as the Great Depression, the 2 world wars, and recent terrorist attacks; these are historical embarrassments to humanity. These catastrophes brought about by people with bad theology if not those who neglected it. The question is when and how can we stop these crashes from happening again? There are ways to stop it, but definitely not by neglecting theology or God-talk, rather by advancing it. If we are to work for the betterment of humanity or carry on with our ‘talk about whether the universe has meaning and whether human life has purpose’ we must turn to nowhere other than theology and be founded on it. And thence, development of other subjects takes place. Realizing the importance of God’s role in human history, ancient Chinese wise man Sun Tzu put forth: How can those who scorn God revere men?” … We can’t.