"Foolishness in the Heat"
It's not enough to merely believe in God.
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, September 8, 2002
Text: Psalm 14:1-7
Marial and I pulled out of Tim Horton's in the lovely village of Cheticamp in Cape Breton where Bruno, one of our singers, was born. The coffee shop was the last icon of civilization before one enters the highland parts of Cape Breton.
I must confess I entered this for the first time in my life with a great sense of anticipation and expectation. At university, I had many friends who were from Cape Breton and they told me that their "province" of Cape Breton is the most beautiful part of Canada and that I was all the poorer because I hadn't spent time seeing it.
So with that introduction in mind, we pulled out of Cheticamp on a Sunday morning as the fog was lifting off the ocean and we headed north. What a magnificent sight was before us: vistas that were indescribable, panoramas that were as broad as anything that I had ever seen in my life. While my mind went back to when I was, as a young man, visiting our family farm in Galashiels in Scotland (and there were many similarities to the terrain and the topography and even the flora and fauna) I must admit that Cape Breton is even more spectacular and more grand than anything I had seen as a boy.
I was so taken aback by the grandeur of what I saw, and the enormity of it, that for a few moments Marial and I just pulled over to the side of the road and looked down into a deep gorge and saw above us the beautiful blue sky as the fog and the mist evaporated. My mind went to the psalmist who said that "the Heavens declare the glory of the Lord." Somewhere else the psalmist wrote: "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof." I could not help but be overcome by such beauty and, on a Sunday morning, to be so overwhelmed by what God had created, still unspoilt, still pristine, still clean and beautiful.
I also understand, though, why the psalmist at times talks in negative terms about those who doubt that God is the creator of this beautiful and glorious world. In our passage this morning, which is repeated again even more clearly, In Psalm 53, the psalmist makes a very profound statement. He says:
"A fool has said in his heart: 'There is no God!'"
For the psalmist, you see, the denial of God is foolishness. It is a sign of a lack of wisdom and insight and perspective, so much so that the great Scottish philosopher David Hume once said that all science ultimately points to the existence of one author; that there is a mind, that there is an intelligence, that there is a power behind this universe, and all science is a study of that which has been created by this one mind, this one author, this one source.
Now, some philosophers disagreed with Hume. They didn't buy into what is known as the teleological argument for the existence of God. In other words, the argument from design: that there must be an author to have designed this glorious world. Wittgenstein, for example, said that all really is chaos, that in fact Creation has no design to it, that everything is in a state of flux and that there is no order to things.
But I would agree with Hume and not with Wittgenstein; for it seems to me that if you argue his case then nothing can be relied upon; nothing is in fact reliable; everything must be chaotic. We all know that there are certain things on which we can rely; certain things in nature that are laws that we can follow; and while chaos theory has certainly come into the ascendancy in the last few years, the fact is that there is some order within the universe. But Christians even, and all theists, must be careful not to take this too far, to try in a sense to make a definitive argument by the use of logic.
This was brought home to me a couple of days later, after I had left Cheticamp and we had driven around the Cabot Trail and had returned to the beautiful village of Baddeck. It was evening and the sun was starting to set over the Baddeck harbour. The fishing boats and the tour boats were starting to come in after a long day on the water. It was a glorious sight on one of the most beautiful evenings of the summer.
Marial and I left our room and went down to the dock to watch the boats come in. It was sunny and beautiful and clear. All of a sudden a little car drove up and out of this car came the most immense dog I have ever seen in my life. How the dog ever got in the car I'll never know and he sort of sprung out into many different ways. He was a huge, Newfoundland dog. As this dog started to bound along towards the boats and the nets of fish his owner cried out his name to get him to come back: "Fogo!" he said, "Fogo, come back!"
"What a name for a Newfoundland dog!" I thought. I could never forget Fogo.
This glorious beast started to tear along past all folks, along the jetty, and started to head towards me. As Fogo got nearer and nearer, the pungent smell of a dog that had been covered in seaweed and fish started to get closer. He made this great and delightful lunge towards me - out of affection, I might add - and drooled all over my pants, and got very frisky and fresh.
I said: "Go away, Fogo! Go away!"
Fogo went along and started to bug the fishermen and look in the fish baskets and see what he could get. In fact, he caused such a stir down there that it was one of the most memorable moments of my whole tour of Cape Breton. The only person who, I might add, was willing to forgive Fogo for his excesses was, of course, Marial, who would forgive any dog almost anything, I think.
But out of this beauty came the unexpected; out of this glory came Fogo. Just when you think that everything is nice and calm and serene and has order to it, there is something in creation that sends us into an entirely different direction. It is unpredictable. It is chaotic. Not everything within creation can be understood or defined in an orderly way.
Now I understand why the psalmist says: "A fool has said in his heart there is no God." But you see, my friends, those in our society who say there is no God, I believe, are very few. If you look at most of the surveys that are done, 80 per cent of our people believe in God. Even pagans look for gods under every tree. Even psychology often looks for God in feelings or in people. All kind of things look for the presence of God and I think we live in a society that is in many ways very God-conscious.
But the psalmist is not addressing a philosophical argument about the existence of God and whether there is order in chaos; no the psalmist is talking about those who literally act as if there is no God. If you translate this passage more accurately it says: "A fool says in his heart: 'God is not here.'"
Now, there is a big difference between saying "there is no God" and "God is not here." It's a kind of atheism that doesn't necessarily say there is no God. It acts as if there is no God. It acts as if there is a God somewhere but this God is not here, active and alive among us. The writer in this particular psalm is concerned that the people of Israel are acting as if there is no God. Oh, they believe in God all right. They are good and they are faithful Jews. Of course they believe in God, but what has happened is that people aren't acting that way. They are devouring one another. They are killing one another. They are disobeying the laws of God because they are acting as if God is not here. This, my friends, is one of the great challenges of our time: that we live in a world that is not atheistic in the sense that it believes in the existence of a God, but very often, and that includes ourselves, we act as if there is no God.
So much so that the Apostle Paul in writing to the Romans, when quoting this particular passage, says all of us are guilty. Every one of us, to some extent, acts as if God is not here. We all, to some extent, are fools because we think that we live our lives as if God is not a part of them; or that God does not care for this world; or that God isn't involved. And when we act in such a way, we are fools.
Now I think that foolishness of what I call practical atheism is rampant within our world and in our society. I can see it, for example, in those who reduce the commandments of God, who reduce the call of God, the law of God, even the very love of God, to nothing more than simply being nice or not hurting anyone. That's what has happened to a lot of ethics these days. They have been reduced to those two things: Be nice and don't hurt anybody.
The only problem is that human nature and the world in which we live have far more profound evil within it and greater acts of violence, therefore, we need more ethics than: Be nice and don't hurt anybody.
Some years ago, I was invited to Dorchester penitentiary, a maximum-security prison in New Brunswick, to see an inmate. I was invited because he had applied for parole on the grounds that he had found God and that therefore he was a good citizen and was ready to be released into the public.
And so I went and I met this man with some fear and trepidation. I sat down and we talked about the faith and we talked about God and something very evident presented itself. This man was using God to justify his own release. In fact, he had no sense of being under the command or the call of God. He had no contrition for what he had done wrong. He had no sense that there was an absolute to which he was ultimately accountable. He had performed the most heinous crime years before and all he was concerned with was getting out, and all he had been concerned about beforehand was not getting caught. In his life practically, then, this was a man who was talking a lot about God but who, in his deep actions and in his heart, was acting as it God was not present.
My friends, we see that when we see the violence that we commit against one another. We may talk about God, but we commit acts of violence against other human beings and we do so as if we are not accountable to God for these things. We give God praise and glory with our lips, but practically do not think of what we are doing.
Very often, my friends, this is a result of pride, of acting as if God somehow is accountable to us, and our strength and our might and our goodness are greater than God's.
I heard a lovely story not long ago, of an encounter between a United States naval ship and the Canadian Coast Guard in 1995.
The Canadians sent a message to the United States ship and said: "Alert. Please turn 15° south to avoid a collision."
The Americans' response: "Negative. You turn 15° north to avoid a collision."
The Canadians replied: "Negative. Please immediately turn 15° south to avoid a collision."
"No," replied the Americans. "This is the United States Lincoln. We are the largest aircraft carrier in the Atlantic fleet. We have with us three destroyers and three frigates. You turn 15° north immediately to avoid a collision."
"Negative," said the Canadians, "We are a lighthouse. Do as you please."
Well, my friends, sometimes God is our lighthouse, and in our pride and in our arrogance we often are heading towards the cliffs of disaster. Often in our pride and in our power and in our might we think we can accomplish all manner of things, but when we do so without thinking about God and his commands, we are heading for ruination.
We do the same thing with our value systems. We set up our own values in life and we think that those values that we hold dear are the values and we act as if God is not here.
This past summer an acquaintance of mine who is an avowed atheist actually suggested that I read a document and it was titled: Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. written by a Mr. MacKay in the 1800s. I highly recommend it to you. In it, he recounts the story of something which many business people will know about. It was something that happened in the early 1600s known as Tulipomania - or tulip mania.
Tulipomania swept Holland and eventually swept England and France and people so fell in love with the tulip flower that it became a currency. Forty tulip bulbs were so coveted that they were worth 4,100 florins. Now, 4,100 florins was the equivalent of a carriage and two horses and complete harness. That was equivalent of 120 sheep or 32 tons of grain. I mean, these tulips were worth an enormous amount. This currency of the tulips became such a fad that people would sell their homes, their investments, to purchase tulips.
There were conferences that talked about how you could invest in tulips and buy the best and the brightest. Dinners were held where people paid thousands of florins to attend, to see these tulips in the middle of a table adorning the grandeur and splendour of a dinner.
Things got so out of hand that governments started to adopt tulips as a standard of currency and barter. This Tulipomania so swept people up that they got caught in it and sold nearly everything that they had in order that they could get more tulips.
Now, my friend handed me this with a wry smile on his face. He said: "I will let you interpret how the modern investor does the same thing."
My friends, tulip mania exists today in many different ways. We invest in all manner of things that have little or no value. We invest in things that we think are going to give us security or power, comfort; but those things - just as happened with the tulips when people all of a sudden realized that they weren't of any value at all, and a few dukes and earls decided that they were tired of tulips and would buy daffodils instead, and all of a sudden the market just collapsed and everybody was left with thousand and thousands of tulip bulbs that were worth nothing - so often that happens in life when we do not set our values right and straight, when we act like fools, as if there is no God.
One of the beauties about following God is that God gives us values that are greater than that, the values of humanity, the values of compassion of care, of generosity, of thoughtfulness, peace, kindness and of justice. You see, my friends, there are many ways in which we get carried away when we act as if God is not here.
So what should the Christian say in response to this? Do we argue, then, for the existence of God and appeal to people through pure reason to understand that God exists?
Well, such arguments are all very well and good but in fact all they really do is validate a pre-existent faith. They do not actually create faith at all. As Immanuel Kant once said: "There are three things that we cannot prove: God, faith and immortality." No matter how much we try to present evidence, it only validates, or affirms, or explains the faith that we have. Faith is something that is born in not only the heart but also in the understanding that God has revealed himself; that God's grace and love and will for humanity have a purpose and have a sign. Every Christmas we use a word. It is a word to describe Jesus Christ. It is the word Emmanuel and it means "God with us."
The fool, you see, says in his heart, "God is not here." The Christian says "God is here." We see God in Jesus Christ. That means at times we need to look inside our own hearts, to look inside our own souls and examine whether we truly are following God because sometimes we are the ones who stand in the way of God's grace reaching us.
There is the story of a man who was having problems with dizziness. Because of this dizziness he had gone to his doctor but the doctor could find no reason for it. He couldn't sleep at night. He was anxious. His blood pressure went up. He began to drink and was full of anxiety. His whole life was one of desperation. So great was his anxiety over these daily spells of really serious dizziness that he decided that he was actually going to prepare for his own imminent death.
He went to his haberdasher and said: "I want you now to outfit me for my coffin. I know I am going to die because of these dizzy spells, and I want to look good."
The haberdasher said: "Fine. What would you like?"
He said: "I would like a suit, a waistcoat and shoes."
They covered everything and finally they came to the shirt. The haberdasher came to him for his shirt and he said: "You need a size 16½" neck."
The man said: "Don't be ridiculous. I always wear a 15" neck."
The haberdasher said: "Sir, if you continue to do this you are going to have a lot of dizzy spells and problems."
Sometimes we need to look at ourselves in the light of Christ. Over the next few weeks, we are going to be looking at one of the things that I have been most excited about - an eight week series on following Jesus Christ today. Not that we are fools - maybe for Christ, yes - but that we follow the path of wisdom and see the radical way in which Jesus Christ makes a claim on our lives and how we understand God in the light of following Christ today.
When Marial and I had finished going through the highlands we turned into a little place called Cape North. Cape North has only three buildings in it. It has a church. It has a restaurant. And it has a liquor store. That Sunday morning people were just coming out of the church. I watched them come out and I asked myself a question. This day, who has gained the greatest insight into God - ourselves, seeing the beauty and the gorgeous splendour of the highlands, or those who were coming out of church having worshipped with one another and having heard the word of God? I think it was they who gained the insight, not so much me.
"For the fool said in his heart: 'There is no God' or 'God isn't here.'" The Christian says: "God is in Christ. Let us follow him and listen." Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.