I came across this article this morning about television personality Jon Stewart who says he is not religious but wishes he had faith. He was born into a Jewish family, but says about our human existence:

“I think that’s my biggest problem is, it’s like, I know that there’s probably a gap between, like, we are here by divine intervention, or we’re just like bathroom mold that got luckier than other bathroom mold. Like, I’m sure there’s probably a middle ground there.

OK. That’s a somewhat thoughtful opinion and funny way of expressing it. He would like to have faith, but has a problem with what he calls specificity.

“I wish I could  get it… you know what it is for me, I think? It’s the specificity that messes me up.”

“Because, if you were to say to me, ‘There’s a spirit in the universe, and it carries a thing,’ but it’s more like, ‘And he was 33 years old and a carpenter,’ and I’m like, all right…?”

Again–a good question, and what Stewart is wrestling with is what the theologians call “the scandal of particularity”. In other words, most people are okay with the idea of a Divine Being–The Force be With You from Star Wars or “the Universe”. Either pantheism: God is all things or Panentheism: All things are in God. Either way the transcendence of the Divine is an acceptable concept and is at the core of Buddhism and Islam. What both Buddhism and Islam and liberals like Jon Stewart find abhorrent or at least inconceivable (excuse the pun) is that this transcendent Divinity should condescend to assume a human form and take his place within space and time in human history in a backwater village in Galilee during the reign of Caesar Augustus.

I get it. This is called the incarnation and theologians call it the “scandal of particularity”

What I would like to say to Jon Stewart is–“You’re a smart guy. Think it through. For anything to be real it has to become particular. For any idea or theory to become real it has to become particular. Chopin may have had a lovely tune running through his head, but he had to pick up a particular pen with particular fingers and put notes on a particular piece of paper on a particular desk then another particular musician had to  sit at a particular piano and hit particular keys with other particular fingers so the notes would be heard by another set of particular ears connected to a particular brain…

You see my point. Anything and everything–to be real (and not just an idea, a theory or a thought) must become particular, and this process is always akin to the human process of conception, gestation, giving birth, nurturing, rearing, educating and forming a child into an adult.

So God too, becomes real to us through the action of the Incarnation of his Son as a real historical person: Jesus of Nazareth.

One might then ask, “Would God not exist, therefore, if the Son had never become incarnate” I have further thoughts on that, but this is only a blog post and I have a busy day ahead of me!