Roger Ebert Reviews a Tragedy: His Search for God

Roger Ebert is probably the best-known of film critics. His column in the Chicago Sun-Times and subsequent television shows were checked consistently by movie buffs to see whether a film would be worthy of their time and money. However, I think the saddest review I've read by Ebert is his review of his own search to make sense of God.

Photo courtesy Roger Ebert

In a column he wrote a couple of years ago, Ebert recounts:

"When I was in first or second grade and had just been introduced by the nuns to the concept of a limitless God, I lay awake at night driving myself nuts by repeating over and over, But how could God have no beginning? And how could he have no end? And then I thought of all the stars in the sky: But how could there be a last one? Wouldn't there always have to be one more? Many years later I know the answer to the second question, but I still don't know the answer to the first one."

Ebert loved his religion classes as a child because they would talk about hypotheticals of what counts as sin, how a person is culpable for sins they committed (or didn't know they committed), and all the ramifications of the various scenarios. This approach was to teach Ebert "theoretical thinking and applied reasoning, and was excellent training."  He writes that at about nine or ten "I no longer lost any sleep over the questions of God and infinity. I understood they could have no answers. At some point the reality of God was no longer present in my mind… Over the high school years, my belief in the likelihood of a God continued to lessen."

Now, although reticent to label himself an atheist or an agnostic, Ebert completely dismisses the idea of "any God who has personally spoken to anyone or issued instructions to men." He writes:

"I'm still struggling with the question of how anything could have no beginning and no end. These days I'm fascinated by it from the point of view of science. I cannot know everything, but I approach matters in terms of what I do and can know. Science is not 'secular.' It is a process of honest investigation."

Tomorrow I will answer Ebert's question on God, but I want to note a couple of observations today.  First, Ebert's story highlights a very real need for teaching apologetics in the church, and beginning to do so very early. Many Christians and even many pastors today think that focusing on apologetic arguments are a lot of head knowledge when what people really need is teaching Jesus and how to live today.  But look at Ebert's story.  His favorite time learning was when he and his classmates were discussing implications of God and sin, and this was in grade school!  It wasn't too lofty a subject for them, it stimulated them and made them want to know more, so much so that they'd lay on the grass after school and talk about it. Imagine your kids hanging with their friends during play time discussing theological concepts and wrestling with their implications.

Secondly, the lack of knowledge in apologetics by Ebert's teachers and parents were his ultimate undoing.  When asking his favorite nun about the dilemma of God having no beginning, she replied "that is just something you have to believe. Pray for faith."  As you can imagine, it was an unsatisfying. Ebert would then say "I lay awake wondering how I could pray for faith to a God I could not believe in without faith." Let me just say that this nun, who I don't doubt had the best of intentions, had a wrong understanding of faith and reinforced in the mind of an inquiring youngster that belief in God is irrational and unworthy of those who wish to think.  Perhaps if she was better trained in some of the great Catholic theologians like Thomas Aquinas her answer would have been correct.

Ebert's parents also were no help.  He says that during his high school years he never discussed his waning belief in God with them, but that makes me wonder if they ever discussed religion at all. As an elementary school boy with big questions about the world, Ebert went to his school teachers. If religion was a comfortable topic of conversation at home, surely he would have asked his parents also.

We as parents and teachers need to learn the answers to these questions and talk about them with our kids. And we need to start earlier rather than later. Elementary school kids have a wonder about the world and how it works, and we should be offering them the greatest truths to stimulate that wonder. Don't simply rely on the kids' Sunday School teaching to inform them about God.  The Sunday School teacher may not know the answer, or may offer the wrong answer. You need to know these answers yourself, so you can pass them along. Otherwise, our kids will think that belief in the God of all reason falls outside of reason, and therefore is irrelevant. And that breaks my heart.

Arguing against Mixing Sexes in Locker Rooms

A couple of weeks ago, the Massachusetts Department of Education put in place new rules for all elementary and secondary public education institutions, instructing schools on how to comply with the state's gender identity law. (You can read the actual guidelines here.) As Joe Carter pointed out, the identifying factor in determining gender is left to the student him or herself. He then writes "Any teen boy can claim, with a wink to his peers and a straight face to his educators, that he has decided to identify as a female and will then have unlimited access to the girls' restroom and locker rooms." I posted the story on my Facebook page and got some immediate responses   The discussion I had with one person is below. Read on and I will make some comments at the end.

Lenny: I wouldn't subject my teenage daughter to be forced into the same locker room with a student showing male genitalia. Why should a hundred girls be made uncomfortable for the comfort of one confused boy?

RG: As opposed to forcing a transgendered person to be uncomfortable within a locker room where they don't belong? I think we all should teach our kids to understand and respect the human body as opposed to fear it or be made uncomfortable by it.

Lenny:  Why would a human being not belong in a locker room where he or she shares the exact same body parts as all the other occupants? it strikes me that this "discomfort" of which you speak has nothing at all to do with either biology or the actual fact that there are physical differences between males and females, and we should respect those differences enough to provide for proper privacy.

I note that you don't say that its the supposedly transgendered individual who needs to "understand and respect" his own body. No, all the OTHER kids in Massachusetts schools need to change. There is no way to justify such ignorance.

RG: So, first we have to ask ourselves 2 questions:

1. Do you believe there are a subset of the population that are transgendered? If not, then there is no need to discuss what Massachusetts has done here. However, since Mass understands the dynamics of an ever changing, growing and enlightened society, let's agree there are those kinds of people and move to question 2.

2. Do you think that someone should not be judged clearly on their anatomy? That they are not the sum of their parts? If you pardon the pun. And that is what Mass is trying to address and protect a class of citizens from laws that target them unfairly. That we as a society can look at someone and not say, you have a penis, you are a boy, end of story and rather look at the person who could not help how they are on the inside and force them to be a certain way because it makes the rest of us more comfortable. And yes, we should teach our children to be more understanding and respectful of people different than us and to not be ashamed of our bodies since it is about looking what is on the inside than the outside

Lenny:  No, we don't need to ask those questions first. The very first thing one should ask is "Why do we mandate restrooms and locker rooms to be separated by sex at all?" That's the central issue and that's the item that's being changed. Why don't we place large picture windows in locker rooms? Why should we have any kind of privacy by sex? Once you understand the reason for privacy at all, the rest of the argument can take on a clearer context.

RG: So forgetting all these scare tactics about regulation of such laws and getting to the heart of it, everyone should be allowed to enter areas (locker, bathroom, etc.) in accordance with their gender identity. Gender identity is evolving in such a way to not specifically be about anatomy. If you want to give me a reason why this isnt true or should only be limited to anatomy, please tell me.

Lenny:  Don't try to turn it around. YOU need to provide a reason why it SHOULDN'T be limited to anatomy. Anatomy is something solid. It can be tested scientifically and is instantly recognizable when seeing an unclothed body. That's what separate changing rooms are all about - so people of the opposite sex don't see your body. This is obvious. You're working really hard at trying to justify your position, but you keep talking about this like it's an abstract issue. These are real kids. If you want to wear pants or a dress doesn't matter when you're clothes are off, which is the situation in the locker rooms. Anatomy is all there is at that point.

RG: So then my previous comment holds true, why even discuss this decision when you still don't believe that someone could be born anatomically one way yet be different on the inside.

It is odd that you want to bring up things that can be scientifically validated when God cannot be and yet you believe that.

Lenny:  "Different on the inside" whether true or not, is not a factor in this discussion. I may or may not believe that a person could feel different about sports, or that they identify more as a cat than as a person. None of it has bearing on the question of whether students should be subjected to viewing the genitalia of another person of the opposite sex while simultaneously exposing themselves. It's a non-sequitor. It does not follow.

RG: (Provided link to a story of a supposedly transgendered eight year old boy who has feminine tendencies.)

Lenny:  Yeah, I'm actually familiar with that article. But nothing follows from it.

RG: Again, this is the typical metaphors, usually from religious people that goes against their doctrine. To compare someone who knows they were born into the wrong body to someone who likes dogs instead of cats or identifies with a sports team. REALLY? It is the same thing? And quit living in the middle, I may or may not, obviously you have an opinion that is driving your rationale. After looking at the evidence, while may not be definitive, I choose to believe that there is a subset of people born into the wrong bodies and for society to tell them, 'hey, sucks for you, use the right bathroom' is incredibly ignorant and disrespectful of people who are different than us. To say that a person is ONLY the sum of their physical appearances is sad. I choose to move on the side of empathy and teach my future kids the same thing rather than judge those transgendered people who have been picked on their whole lives to continue the discrimination into adulthood. I choose to be a better person, a more understanding person, after all, isn't that what your God says we should all be. If a female-to-male walked into my lockeroom or bathroom, I wouldn't run scared but embrace their strength.

I want the reader to notice a couple of things from this exchange. First, RG wanted to bait me into a discussion of whether transgenderism is a real condition or not. However, I wouldn't bite. It truly does not matter whether I think transgenderism is a medical condition, a psychological condition, or whether I'm for it or against it. I have good arguments for the problems with dealing with those who claim to be "born with the wrong body", but that's not the issue here. I wanted to address the insane idea that even if transgenderism is true, that means that that one person can ignore his or her physiology, even at the expense of the rest of the student body. No one's feelings matter except the one who the state of Massachusetts deems needs protecting. No one's privacy matters any more, because this political issue trumps everything else--and it's being applied to our children! Such a stance should offend any rational person.

Secondly, you'll notice that RG never even attempted to answer my question of why we segregate bathrooms and locker rooms at all. Why? Because as soon as he does, his entire case falls apart. He cannot answer the question an he knows it. He uses all kinds of emotionally charged words ("understand and respect the human body as opposed to fear it," "move on there side of empathy," "scare tactics," etc.) but those are the only points of his argument. He cannot appeal to science (a tactic he usually takes when discussing whether or not God exists) because the science is pretty clear. These people have twenty three pairs of chromosomes and the last one is either XX or XY.

No, science doesn't matter, morality doesn't matter, and common sense has flown out the window when it comes to issues like transgendersim. All that matters to folks like this is to advance a particular agenda, and everyone else be damned. There truly is no logic to it. It is political correctness on steroids and I would hope that by focusing our arguments on the problem at hand more people can see how crazy our laws are becoming.

Tackling the Issue of Homosexuality

I've recently completed broadcasting a four part series on homosexuality and the controversies surrounding it. How do we reach out to both homosexuals and the public at large in a loving yet convincing way? Christians need to do more work in this area.  Listen to all four parts to learn more about effectively arguing for the Christian position on this topic.

• Tackling the Issue of Homosexuality (Part 1)
• Tackling the Issue of Homosexuality (Part 2)
• Tackling the Issue of Homosexuality (Part 3)
• Tackling the Issue of Homosexuality (Part 4)

To get all the latest episodes of the podcast, you can either subscribe via RSS or visit our iTunes page

Atheism and Claims about All of Reality

How broad is the claim of atheism? Pretty broad. Atheism is defined as a worldview that makes certain definitive claims, the most notable being that God does not exists. But in order to make such a claim, one must have an almost infinite knowledge himself. For even deists, who hold that God created the universe and then basically let it play out under its own steam are still people who do not doubt God's existence. To say that God doesn't even exist in this sense strikes me as claiming much more than one could ever prove.

In his book A World of Difference, Kenneth Samples offers this anecdote. After attending a debate on the question "Does God Exist?", Ken had the opportunity to meet and talk with the atheist supporting the negative position. Here's his recount of the exchange:

I approached the atheist and shook his hand, thanking him for his efforts. Then I asked if it were correct to define atheism as the claim that "no god or gods are real" or that "no god or gods actually exist."

After some quibbling about the exact meaning of certain terms, the atheist essentially agreed that these two statements accurately reflected his position. I then asked, "If atheism asserts that 'no god is real' or that 'no god actually exists,' then isn't it making a universal claim about 'all reality' and 'all existence'?"

"In other words, as a point of logic,' doesn't the atheist, for his claim to be real, have to know all about reality and existence to rightly exclude any and every god. For example, to claim with any validity that there are no entities of a particular type (gods) in a given circle or set (reality), doesn't a person need a complete, comprehensive knowledge of that circle or set (reality)?’

I concluded my remarks by asserting that the atheist position could be valid only if atheists could justify their implicit claim to have a comprehensive knowledge of all reality and/or all existence. This position of seeming omniscience is, of course, beyond the capacity of any human being.

The atheist responded by saying that an incoherent god could not exist regardless of humanity's limited knowledge.

"That may well be true," I replied, "but then in order to maintain one's atheism a person must bear the burden of showing that every conceivable concept of God, is actually incoherent. This feat seems beyond the atheist's capacity."

Samples, Kenneth Richard. A World of Difference:  Putting Christian Truth-Claims to the Worldview Test. (Grand Rapids, MI:Baker Books, 2007).40.

Why Study Theology?

Do you remember dating your first love? Usually such early dates include miniature golfing or perhaps a meal and a movie, followed by long walks home and telephone conversations in between.  Why is that? Because when you are developing a relationship with someone, you want to get to know them better; you want to know who they are and what interests them.  As the relationship grows, you start to care about what they care about.

Similarly, we study theology to get to know God better, to develop a deeper relationship with him and to understand what it is He cares about so we can care about those things, too.

Theology will help us love God more fully

• We study theology to help answer Jesus’ question of “Who do people say that I am?”
• We all have opinions about God, so we are all “practicing theologians.” Therefore the study of theology simply helps us to form right beliefs about questions and opinions we are already forming.
• A systematic study of God will help us know Him more accurately and therefore more intimately.
• Romans 12:1-2 commands us to present ourselves as a sacrifice and to renew our minds to discern the perfect will of God.

Theology will help us know ourselves better

• Theology helps us to see ourselves more clearly in relation to God. Our sin nature tends to weaken our view of sin and diminish our understanding of holiness.  Good theology helps to restore that balance.
• In Romans 12:3, Paul admonishes the believers to engage their minds, writing: “For I say, through the grace given to me, to everyone who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith.” Thinking soberly includes analysis of what God has revealed.

Theology will help us mature in our Christian walk

• “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” (2 Tim 3:16)