Deep Nonsense

Most of us have heard of the wise monk who referred to something as "like the sound of one hand clapping". And most of us have thought, "Wow, that's really deep." Some of us have thought that only long enough to think, "Hey, wait ... that's nonsense." That's what I call "deep nonsense". We're captivated by it because it sounds really deep, really profound. It must be of genuine significance even if we can't quite put our finger on why. Or maybe we can and we're just enamored with it even if it isn't actually true.

I think we live with these kinds of things all the time. One obvious phrase might be "women's reproductive health". Oh, awesome, important. We're really for that. Really. That is, we're for it until you realize that the term is being used to indicate not merely "women's reproductive health", but "the trump card for life." That is, you either favor killing babies if a woman wants to because it's a matter of "women's reproductive health" or you are against killing babies and are, by default, opposed to "women's reproductive health". Now, wait! That doesn't make sense! That's not right! And a lot of us have bought into a pit of deep nonsense.

I recently exchanged emails with a couple of people over the Atonement. I claimed that Christ's blood was efficacious for the forgiveness of sin. They claimed that God was bigger than that. "God is powerful enough to forgive sin by His sheer will." Oh, yeah, that's certainly much bigger than my pitiful "atonement" clause. Surely an omnipotent God doesn't need a sacrifice to pay for sin. He's much bigger than that. It really does sound good, right, deep. But when you stop to think about it, you run into a problem. In order for God to forgive sin by an act of will, He would need to violate His justice. If Abraham was right and God is indeed "the Judge of all the earth", He would disqualify Himself from the position of Chief Justice by violating His own justice. He would, in fact, violate His own nature. And now we have a god who contradicts himself. Why shouldn't we have God's Word which contradicts itself (as some claim)? He does it to Himself.

The ramifications of this god would be that justice does not prevail. While we like the idea that grace and mercy prevail over justice, perhaps, it won't bode well for us if that's the case. You see, down deep at the base of the concept of morality is the concept of justice. There are things that are morally right and wrong and those morally wrong things must be dealt with justly or the basis for morality is shaken. Further, if God can override His own nature to set aside justice in favor of grace and mercy, why wouldn't He do so for everyone? Is He playing favorites? Well, I suppose that would be expected since He has already set aside justice. So why not fair play? Beyond that, if God can set aside justice for grace and mercy, why would He cruelly send His Son to die? I mean, that kind of torment just wasn't necessary, was it? So this god who sets aside justice for mercy and grace is, simultaneously, really, really mean. He tormented his own son for no good reason.

It begins to pile up after awhile. We've waded, I think, into some really deep nonsense. It sounded good and it seemed right, perhaps, but only a little bit of thought makes it a really big problem. Like "the sound of one hand clapping."

Go ahead. Think about it. I bet you can come up with a lot more "wisdom" that sounds so good as it rolls off the tongue but turns out to be really, really deep nonsense if you think it through. I think the world is full of that kind of stuff. Makes sense, I suppose. The "god of this world" is also "the father of lies". Why would we expect anything else?