Is God Dead?: Paper-thin places

Ty B. Kerley

DMin

“Forrest, were you scared in Vietnam,” Jenny asked. “Yes. Well, I… I don’t know. Sometimes it would stop raining long enough for the stars to come out… and then it was nice. It was like just before the sun goes to bed down on the bayou. There was always a million sparkles on the water… like that mountain lake. It was so clear, Jenny, it looked like there were two skies one on top of the other. And then in the desert, when the sun comes up, I couldn’t tell where heaven stopped and the earth began. It’s so beautiful.”

What Forrest Gump was describing were “thin places” — places where his very soul was being fed by some unseen reality; some higher power. Perhaps, even the God of Christianity. So close.

I have previously mentioned the modern-day philosopher Charles Taylor asks the question: “Why was it virtually impossible not to believe in God in, say, 1500 while in the year 2000,” disbelief is commonplace? So, what changed?

Actually, a lot of things changed. But these things that have changed, as they relate to religion and belief in God, can be grouped into three broad categories: The first category is the natural world where in the year 1500, the natural world was seen as a grand and constant testimony to the design and purpose of God. Looking into the cosmos in the year 1500, there was no question who made the moon and stars, and who constantly kept the planets in perfect orbital motion.

However, the scientific revolution beginning in the 17th century, eventually gave people a scientific theory about how the moon and the stars came into being without the help of God. 

The second category is that society itself was understood to exist only as being grounded, or anchored, in something higher than just the actions of man. God, it seemed, was tightly interwoven into every aspect of society. Man on his own it was thought, could not have organized themselves into productive societies, and there were no questions about it, God’s hand actively held society together.

Modern man, on the other hand, considers society anchored and grounded in his own brilliance and industry, and that man alone is the master of his destiny. That mindset became especially entrenched as a result of the Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century. 

The third category of things that have changed since 1500 that impacted belief in God is that people, then, recognized that they lived in an enchanted world: a beautiful world where the soul is fed. These three lived categories, working together, pointed people living in the year 1500 inescapably toward God.

But the most significant of these three changes is that most all people today perceive themselves as living in a disenchanted world; untouched by spirits and demons — moral forces existing in the metaphysical realm.

The ancient Celts spoke of “thin places.” These serene places are described by author Tracy Balzer as places where the “line between the spirit world and the physical world are “tissue-paper thin.” These ancient Celts later converted to Christianity, and the reality of thin places followed along; only now they realize it was the God of Christianity who was “as near as one’s breath.”

But here is an interesting thing, this soul food has been freely given since time out of mind. It is there not just for Christians, but for all people through common grace. That is because, once again, human beings are dualistic creatures —  both a material body, and an immaterial mind, or soul. Christians hold that it is God who gently feeds the souls of His children as He whispers their names. Some listen, and some ignore. But all people who have experienced a thin place know what I am talking about.

This is the enchanted world that the modern world has grown deaf to; and that, mostly by choice. But ironically, most all people still recognize “thin places.” They seek them out. They chase hard after them. Their soul hungers for them. Just as the body hungers for food, so too the soul longs for thin places: a soul forever longing to go home.

Once again, the Darwinist has little to say. After all, thin places have nothing to do with “survival of the fittest.” If God is dead, or if He never existed, then what is the evolutionary benefit of thin places? It is no different than Mozart’s piano sonatas, they are beautiful to the soul but are of absolutely zero survival functionality.

What benefit are they to a soulless man? None! But, if God does exist, and if God is alive, then thin places truly do feed the souls of men, and it is God who is feeding us. Either way, whatever one believes, human beings have an undeniable spiritual constitution, and that spirit hungers.

Even still, you ask: what is the point? Why do we humans have these gifts? In 1961 John Kennedy, in his address before the Massachusetts Statehouse famously said; “to those whom much is given, much is required.” It just so happens that the phrase did not originate with Kennedy, rather this age-old saying originated from the pen of an ancient physician who once wrote those very words (Luke 12:48).

So, what is this requirement? What is this expectation placed upon mankind, and Whom is it that is doing the requiring?

Join us next week as we investigate the reason the human mind has the capacity to think of a maximally great Being that cannot be directly seen or heard. Until then, is God dead? What say you?

Gloria in excelsis Deo!

Ty B. Kerley, DMin., is an ordained minister who teaches Christian apologetics, and relief preaches in Southern Oklahoma. You can contact him at: dr.kerley@isGoddead.com.