{"id":3703,"date":"2015-09-16T07:30:57","date_gmt":"2015-09-16T11:30:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/freelancechristianity\/?p=3703"},"modified":"2015-09-16T07:30:57","modified_gmt":"2015-09-16T11:30:57","slug":"where-is-the-gardener","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/freelancechristianity\/where-is-the-gardener\/","title":{"rendered":"Where is the Gardener?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

<\/p>\n

\"2011-03-22-the-unseen-gardener\"<\/a>Once upon a time two explorers came upon a clearing in the jungle. In the clearing were growing many flowers and many weeds. One explorer says, \u201cSome gardener must tend this plot.\u201d The other disagrees, \u201cThere is no gardener.\u201d So they pitch their tents and set a watch. No gardener is ever seen. \u201cBut perhaps he is an invisible gardener.\u201d So they set up a barbed-wire fence. They electrify it. They patrol with bloodhounds. (For they remember how H. G. Wells\u2019s The Invisible Man could be both smelt and touched though he could not be seen.) But no shrieks ever suggest that some intruder has received a shock. No movements of the wire ever betray an invisible climber. The bloodhounds never give cry.<\/p>\n

Yet still the believer is not convinced. \u201cBut there is a gardener, invisible, intangible, insensitive to electric shocks, a gardener who has no scent and makes no sound, a gardener who comes secretly to look after the garden which he loves.\u201d At last the Skeptic despairs, \u2018but what remains of your original assertion? \"bb8c4889389c165a36d352b8fde1d068[1]\"<\/a>Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all?\u201d<\/p>\n

This story, or \u201cparable,\u201d was offered at the beginning of an academic symposium by British philosopher Anthony Flew over a half century ago as a way to get people to thinking about their beliefs and the evidence that supposedly counts for or against those beliefs. The Believer in the story seems bound and determined to believe that there is a gardener that takes care of the flowers in the clearing, even in the face of no supporting factual evidence. The Skeptic is only willing to believe in the gardener along with the Believer if shown relevant evidence. \u201cI agree that there are flowers and that there are weeds here, but there are many possible explanations for this in addition to your gardener hypothesis,\u201d the Skeptic might say. \u201cLet\u2019s test<\/b> your hypothesis.\u201d When it turns out that the Believer doesn\u2019t need<\/b> evidence to support his belief, the Skeptic knows that the conversation has come to an end. For what can be said to a person who insists on believing something even when there is no supporting evidence or, worse, even when there is strong evidence contrary to the belief? <\/b><\/p>\n

The symposium at which Anthony Flew provided this parable was entitled \u201cTheology and Falsification\u201d\u2014in short, what is the relationship between belief in God and evidence that might count for or against such belief? The plot with flowers and weeds is an image of the world we live in, a world that contains both beautiful and ugly things. How to account for the beautiful and the ugly, the good and the bad, existing side-by-side in every corner at every level of our reality? The Believer says \u201cGod (the gardener) is responsible for the beautiful things,\u201d \"responsibility-1\"<\/a>and the Skeptic challenges \u201cbut why would a God interested in creating beautiful and good things allow these ugly and evil things to continue existing?\u201d In other words, \u201cWho is responsible?\u201d<\/p>\n

The Psalms in the daily lectionary this week have focused on the \u201cWho is responsible?\u2019 theme. If you ever want to get bummed out, to wonder what on earth God is up to, drop in to any Psalm in the 50 to 60 range and experience the silence and absence of God along with the Psalmist. In virtually every one of these Psalms, something has gone wrong and the Psalmist is looking for answers.<\/p>\n

\"57843571_640\"<\/a>My best friend betrayed me\u2014what are you going to do about it?<\/b><\/p>\n

Wicked people are prospering\u2014what are you going to do about it?<\/b><\/p>\n

My life is not working out the way I want it to\u2014what are you going to do about it?<\/b><\/p>\n

People I know are sick and need healing\u2014what are you going to do about it?<\/b><\/p>\n

Someone I love has been treated unfairly\u2014what are you going to do about it?<\/b><\/p>\n

Most of these Psalms end with an \u201cI will worship and praise you anyways\u201d sort of final verse, but they don\u2019t sound particularly sincere. T\"flannery<\/a>hroughout these Psalms is an energy and anger that reminds me of Ruby Turpin in Flannery O\u2019Connor\u2019s short story \u201cRevelation\u201d who, when her expectations concerning God have been disappointed one too many times, shakes her fist at the sky and shouts \u201cWHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE??<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a place that everyone who believes in the goodness of God will eventually arrive. And it\u2019s all a matter of disappointed expectations. If God is God, why is this happening? If I can\u2019t depend on God to be there when expected, to set things right when I don\u2019t approve of them, to punish the wicked and reward the just, what\u2019s the point of believing? As the skeptic asks the believer in frustration, what\u2019s the difference between a God who cannot be detected, understood, explained or relied upon and no God at all.<\/p>\n

These questions are the gateway to what one of my students in a colloquium focused on these issues this past semester told me the course had challenged her to develop: a more nuanced and interesting faith. <\/b>There is abundant evidence that runs counter to the relatively simplistic divine model that many of us were taught to believe in, the model of a problem solving, prayer answering God who can be manipulated into acting by the proper procedures and pious intentions. A more nuanced and interesting faith, a faith that gets the believer out of the nursery of faith and into the arena of encounter with something far more challenging and disturbing, is a faith that neither ignores contrary evidence nor gives up on belief at the first sign of trouble. <\/b>\"index\"<\/a>The question is, do I want to believe in a God I can\u2019t predict or control, a God who refuses to behave in the manner I would prefer? As Thomas Cahill asks in The Gifts of the Jews<\/i>,<\/p>\n

Can we open ourselves to the God who cannot be understood, who is beyond all our amulets and scheming, the God who rains on picnics, the God who allows human beings to be inhuman, who has sentenced all of us to die?<\/b><\/p>\n

Opening up to that sort of God requires both guts and a willingness to continually readjust and retool. But it is certainly interesting.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once upon a time two explorers came upon a clearing in the jungle. In the clearing were growing many flowers and many weeds. One explorer says, \u201cSome gardener must tend this plot.\u201d The other disagrees, \u201cThere is no gardener.\u201d So they pitch their tents and set a watch. No gardener is ever seen. \u201cBut perhaps […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2938,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9,11,14,19,21,27,35,40,59,61,73,77,94,96],"tags":[130,169,221,223,242,369,392,469,471],"class_list":["post-3703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atheism-2","category-belief","category-bible","category-books","category-certainty","category-christianity","category-doubt","category-faith","category-god","category-justice","category-literature","category-philosophy","category-prayer","category-teaching","category-theology","tag-atheism","tag-christianity","tag-faith","tag-flannery-oconnor","tag-god","tag-old-testament","tag-prayer","tag-theology","tag-thomas-cahill"],"yoast_head":"\nWhere is the Gardener?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"As my grandmother often asked, who is responsible for 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