by Aaron Davis
Like I said earlier, if I’m partially or maybe even completely wrong on something, I’m okay with being wrong if what I propose is flawed but still becomes a catalyst for what is correct being birthed.
I Corinthians 3:5–9 (MSG)
Who do you think Paul is, anyway? Or Apollos, for that matter? Servants, both of us—servants who waited on you as you gradually learned to entrust your lives to our mutual Master. We each carried out our servant assignment. I planted the seed, Apollos watered the plants, but God made you grow. It’s not the one who plants or the one who waters who is at the center of this process but God, who makes things grow. Planting and watering are menial servant jobs at minimum wages. What makes them worth doing is the God we are serving. You happen to be God’s field in which we are working.
As I consider the diversity of readers who may ponder the content of this book, it seems logical that your individual life experiences, perspectives, and skepticisms will likely place each of you in a different position to consider what I am writing from a different perspective. One thing I am convinced of is that if you have ever questioned faith in God without resolve, questioned why the Bible says one thing and your experience appears to be so much different, or have even lost faith altogether, Quantum Christianity will give you additional perspectives from which to further consider the validity of what you have been taught or concluded in your own process.
May we all seek the truth for ourselves.
Part I
Is There More?
Discovering Quantum Theory
“Quantum theory is the theoretical basis of modern physics that explains the nature and behavior of matter and energy on the atomic and subatomic level.”1
CHAPTER ONE
Living in a Pain-Filled Paradigm
“As to the cause of the Universe, in context of expansion, that is left for the reader to insert, but our picture is incomplete without Him [God].”
—Edward Milne, astrophysicist and mathematician. Winner of the Royal Society’s Royal Medal, the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, and the Bruce Medal.
Relational dysfunction in our society has become more and more the norm. From government to the workplace, Wall Street to Skid Row, it’s as if the majority have become victim to what used to be the minority statistic. People hurting people, the overwhelming self-serving need to control, jealousy, hatred, pride, murder, rape, abuse, selfishness, cheating, official cover-ups, finger-pointing, and buck-passing, as people shift the focus, make excuses, and pass judgment on someone else. Relational dysfunction has left people with a pain-filled paradigm and a distrust for virtually anything outside of their realm of personal control.
Although, often packaged differently or hidden more effectively, I learned very young that Christians were equally as dysfunctional as any other demographic in the world. As is often quoted in one of the most common clichés but still resounds as a lesson that seems to hold true the more I get to know them, “People are people,” and in my experience, that is as true inside the walls of the church as it is outside of its walls.
I saw pastors who were adulterers; illicit drug users held positions in leadership; youth leaders were swinging with other couples in the church; child abusers and molesters attended church picnics. Some people could conveniently find a demon in every doorknob they touched. This was my church experience before I’d even reached the ripe old age of ten.
I began traveling and preaching at the age of fourteen. By twenty, I was a youth pastor, and today I still fill a pastoral role while traveling and speaking evangelistically around the world. I’ve spent my entire life in church, but admittedly have not always shared the common theological or philosophical perspectives of those with whom I was associating.
To say that my outlook on Christianity and Christians became jaded as an adolescent would be an understatement. I remember feeling confused by the inconsistencies I observed and rationalizing the best that my young mind could comprehend that most Christians I came in contact with were not what I perceived them to be. Naturally, I questioned “Why?”
LIES WE ALLOW
I can remember when one of the senior mothers in the church got up and described a “deliverance session” where the group was burning Dungeons and Dragons game characters (which at the time were the trending taboo in the church, along with the Smurfs cartoons and Ozzy Osbourne). I was appalled as this woman explained that when she and her group threw these Dungeons and Dragons characters—the plastic inanimate objects—into the fire that they stood up and danced around screaming as they burned. That was over thirty years ago now, and I can still remember frustratingly shaking my head at this nearly sixty-year-old woman. I was confident, even as an eight-year-old, that she was lying to all of us in an attempt to manipulatively keep us from playing the game through fear.
People are people, and that doesn’t exclude church people. But that revelation didn’t lessen once I became older or even a pastor. If anything, it gave me an even deeper perspective of how Miles Munroe explains it by saying, “Tradition is frozen success.” What I have found to be true about people in general is that “We exhibit ’masking’ behaviors and hide behind false facades in an effort to conceal our real identity. Usually it is because we are not sure how others are going to react to what they see behind the mask. We are afraid of the reaction of others because we are afraid of ourselves.”2
It’s a wonder that these early-life church experiences did not completely turn me off to Christianity like it did so many of my friends, who, in their teen and early adult years, disassociated with anything that resembled church in pursuit of a truth that actually made sense to them. Many grew tired of trying to differentiate between what they read in the Bible and how a teacher or pastor would make it far more complicated, restrictive, or manipulative than was obviously stated in the scripture.
For example, there is a scripture that says that a woman should be modest in what she wears, but in the church there were many girls who were never allowed to wear anything other than a dress down to their ankles. Every church was different, but this kind of “everything that is fun is sin” type of mentality was very present during this time.
I heard a friend jokingly say once that in his church they didn’t talk about sex with the youth because they were afraid it would lead to dancing—another one of the taboos that just seemed so ridiculous to so many of us. Needless to say, there was such a lack of balance. There was also an intense and an immense amount of manipulation projected from Christians as a whole seeking their own agendas. Many pretended to live vicariously through an imaginary character, and we convinced ourselves that was who we really were.
I, for one, protected that imaginary image by giving it the title Christian, living it loudly in front of people in hopes that they wouldn’t see through the façade. If the truth were revealed, I was not as polished as I had hoped or projected to be. And neither was anyone else.
As a result, nearly every Sunday and Wednesday night resulted in a guilt-ridden sprint to the altar at the end of the service to ask God to forgive me of all the sins I committed in the past few days. I prayed that no one found out about them so I didn’t suffer the judgment and excommunication that the last guy did when they found out that he had messed up.
I rationalized and made excuses as I pleaded my case with God about how what I did was not as bad as what the other guy did, and if He gave me another chance and didn’t expose my sin and embarrass me in front of everyone, I’d diligently attempt to never do it again. With tears and overt feelings of condemnation, I would return to my seat, hoping that God would give me another chance.
And this biweekly dance with God continued through my teen years and into my adult life.
I understand now that my view of God, my view of myself, and my view of Christians were so warped. I’ve transparently spoken with many who were raised in similar environments and experienced the same dysfunction that I did in the church, and the ironic thing is, in speaking w
ith them and remembering back, I realize that every Sunday the altars were full of people. I wasn’t the only one there—we all did it, every week. I believed that I was the only one in the group dealing with these feelings of separation and condemnation, but the truth of the matter is, each of them was there for the same reason I was.
We were terrified that God was mad at us and that if we didn’t get things right with Him, then part of His judgment would be everyone else finding out that we weren’t a “good Christian.” We were all pretending while failing miserably at it.
Similar experiences have molded the perspectives of people everywhere as it pertains to God. I’ve had deep conversations with rock stars, porn stars, actors, world-renowned tattoo artists, multimillionaires, some of the most influential pastors in the world, people who have lived a lifetime in the church, and people who have had a complete falling away of faith because of their experiences. What I have found as a resounding catalyst for most all of their current perspectives on God is how they perceive that He relates or related to them during a time of pain and how they processed that event.
Much like a guardrail placed in a curve where many have gone off the road, or lights and dropping boom gates erected at a railroad crossing where a car and train have collided, painful experiences have an astounding way of mandating that we put up safeguards to keep us from feeling that pain ever again. If you’ve had (repeated) failed friendships, you are likely less trusting and cautious when meeting new people. If you’ve been through a divorce or had a betrayal in love, it would not be uncommon for you to attempt to protect yourself in future love relationships by being quick to point out behavioral patterns that mirrored your ex’s before their betrayal.
These are emotional safeguards that happen instinctively to keep us from re-experiencing pain. Even the common phrase that so many of us have expressed, “Screw me once, shame on you. Screw me twice, shame on me,” is an example of this protective guardrail mentality.
With all of this considered, it’s no wonder that guardrails are constructed when someone experiences a terribly painful event and that crisis also causes him to question or lose their faith. The fallout cynicism as a result of concluding that God failed someone is often more life-altering than the event leading up to it. Anyone who experiences pain on this scale will do as much as he can to keep from ever experiencing pain like that again. And oftentimes, part of that self-preservation is distancing themselves from God and faith, if not a complete disassociation from Him.
These cynical perspectives and the resulting pain safeguards are what I often refer to as “pain-filled paradigms” or models and patterns of behavior and self-preservation following traumatic life events. And as we will see, these safeguards can have far-reaching effects.
THE PAIN EVOLUTION OF CHARLES DARWIN
After reading his story, I believe a pain-filled paradigm was a major contingency in the belief system of one of science’s greatest champions, the creator of the theory of evolution and author of On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin.
It wasn’t that Darwin did not believe that there was a God; as a matter of fact, he was admittedly conflicted. But like so many before and after him, he could not fathom how God could be who the Bible said He is, and tragedy still be such a prevailing reality in the world.
You see, Darwin was not untouched himself by tragedy. In 1851, Charles and Emma Darwin’s daughter Annie died at the age of ten. History details that Darwin’s writings became darker after this tragedy in his own life. Of course, we know that Darwin went on to publish his book, On the Origin of Species, in 1859. Yet in 1860, he writes this paragraph in a letter to his friend, Asa Gray:
With respect to the theological view of the question; this is always painful to me.—I am bewildered.—I had no intention to write atheistically. But I own that I cannot see, as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidæ with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice. Not believing this, I see no necessity in the belief that the eye was expressly designed. On the other hand I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe and especially the nature of man, and to conclude that everything is the result of brute force. I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance. Not that this notion at all satisfies me. I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton.—Let each man hope and believe what he can.3
If you have ever experienced physical pain, you will immediately recognize that it is difficult to focus on anything else. Pain has a way of taking the focus and manipulating nearly every perception. Depending upon the severity of the pain, seeing beyond it is virtually impossible, and this is just addressing physical pain.
The pain paradigm does not change much, however, whether it is physical, psychological, or emotional. Each has a way of influencing how we perceive everything else in and after the season of the pain, and that process often dictates how we respond when we enter a scenario that parallels or reminds us of that season. I believe that this is why so many have such an emotion-filled response when the subject of God or church is brought up in their presence. That subject has a way of reminding some people of the most painful experiences of their lives.
How many times, in the midst of our pain, have we found ourselves attempting to make sense of it?
Did I bring this upon myself?
Why is this happening to me?
Did I do something so wrong that God is mad at me and punishing me?
Why did God allow this to happen?
Why are things so different in this world than how the Bible says they should be?
Why, when I prayed, did nothing happen?
Why does it seem that such injustice takes place in the world when God is supposed to be a just God?
I don’t know any thinking individual who has not thought some or all of these questions. How they processed these questions has often led to how they relate to God, if at all. Some, in order to not allow it to affect their faith, have simply chalked it up to unexplainable experiences, or justify it with the common cliché that “God is sovereign, His ways are not our ways, and sometimes He does things that we just will not understand.” Like the old hymn says, “We will understand it better by and by.”
While others, upon reading the Bible and finding their experience contradictory to who it says God is, find themselves left with a lack of faith because their experience is seemingly opposed to what the Bible says about God and His nature. This begs the answer to the obvious question in their minds: “If God is love like the Bible says, then why does He allow hateful things to happen in the world?”
Quite frankly, I understand both sides of that rationale and why it could put a huge question mark at the end of the faith process. The problem is, when viewed through lenses of pain, it is difficult to perceive the totality of the circumstances—or think outside of the influence of that pain—in order to completely process something so complex as “If God is . . . then why?” without having an emotional attachment to the answer, which influences how we process the question.
Even pastors find themselves shrugging at certain scenarios that simply make no sense from a biblical perspective. My conclusion is that not only is it possible that there is more than what is understood but probable! This enlightenment for me has been the beginnings of my understanding of what that more may look like and why.
DYSFUNCTIONAL PERSPECTIVES
Over the years, I cannot tell you how many atheists, agnostics, and Christians alike have come to me asking the hard questions, and in my limited wisdom, many times I have had to concede that I simply did not know the
answers. Yet, the Bible says if any lack wisdom, they should ask God who gives it freely, so I have found myself not asking why from the position of emotional uncertainty, but rather from a complex interpersonal and theological analysis, believing there must be more. I am not content to simply accept things as black and white when it is obvious to me that there simply must be many things falling under the explanation of shades of gray.
I recently saw a newspaper cartoon that depicted a middle-class family sitting around the dinner table, holding hands and saying grace. The caption bubble above the father’s head said, “Dear God, thank you for loving our children more than the starving children in Africa.” Initially, I was very agitated by what I saw, but within a few seconds, I realized it clearly depicted the position that many in the world have of God and how He relates to mankind.
I found myself looking through the pain-filled lenses of the artist and people like him who either don’t believe there is a God, or perhaps at one point did, but now, because of their experiences, they simply cannot comprehend how God fits into this confusing scenario. How can God love some children more than others?
THEOLOGY AND TRAGEDY
I heard it said once that people often rewrite their theology to accommodate their tragedy. Choice by choice, pain by pain, they become someone new—someone unrecognizable.
When we don’t fully know who we are and when we cannot see ourselves in the light of the truth, we remain bound to a false image . . . The things I do are vitally connected to my perception of who I am. I am building my reality (true or false) by everything I choose to believe is true—even if it is false. I am influencing my future, either consciously or unconsciously, by the choices I am making. Every choice brings with it another possibility. Every choice affects every outcome.4