Matter matters

Christianity does not regard matter as evil; nor does it regard as most spiritual those who separate themselves farthest from the material world.

Siroj Sorajjakool is a lecturer in the Theology Department of Mission College, Muak Lek, Saraburi, Thailand.

If Socrates had been asked "What is matter?" he would very likely have replied, "Matter doesn't re ally matter."

Would Socrates have been right? Or does matter matter?

The history of humanity reveals a strange phenomenon. For some, reason people are unable to leave matter alone.

"What is matter?" is not merely a simple question but a deep philosophical and theological inquiry.

God made Adam and Eve from matter. And when they sinned He said, "This matter matters." God's statement works like a secret code in our minds, driving us in an unceasing search for the solution.

We know that we live in a material world. In fact, we ourselves are made of matter. And yet in the world of common sense we are never a part of it. We transcend it. But how can two substances made from the same element be different qualitatively? God knows. The problem is, we would like to know, too.

In attempting to answer the question of "What really matters?" Descartes separated mind from matter. David Hume was even more radical. With Hume, says Will Durant, came the expression "No matter, never mind." The great philosopher Kant, on the other hand, could not see how we can comprehend matter without God's given program in our mind.

In days of old the human race sought to manipulate matter through rites and rituals. Today we do so through scientific advancement, and remarkable is indeed an understatement in describing what people have accomplished. But when we observe how our manipulation has backfired through nuclear threat, the greenhouse effect, water pollution, air pollution, flood, etc.—our description of scientific advancement must also include the term disastrous.

Religions reject matter

Most interesting of all is the way in which religion as a whole relates to matter. It has a strong tendency toward rejecting matter in any form.

Buddhism, for example, postulates that four basic elements—earth, water, air, and fire—come together to form mankind. And happy are those who understand that they are just a composition of these four elements. When these elements are disassembled, then "I" ceases to be. Buddhism believes that love for matter results only in suffering. 2

Hinduism denies the reality of matter. To Hindu philosophy, matter is an illusion; the only real thing being the Brahman, who is the ultimate being.3

Some forms of Christianity see a tension between the spirit and the flesh, be tween the spiritual and the worldly. They tend to picture spiritual people as people of great restraint who spend lots of time in prayer and Bible study; whose thoughts and conversations revolve around the things of the spirit. These "ideal" Christians love nature only in its pure form (before it has gone into the hand of the manufacturer). They look forward to Christ's second advent, which they conceive of as taking them out of this world—for they love the people of the world, but despise the world itself and the things in it.

So Buddhists, Hindus, and many Christians determine a person's spirituality by the distance between that person and matter.

What is this matter? What is wrong with matter? In Thailand the Buddhists with whom I work often say, "Every religion teaches us to be good" and the goodness they have in mind is this non-material kind of goodness. To be good in the Buddhist worldview is to detach one self from matter and everything pertaining to it. One Thai student related the concept of goodness to Kosuke Koyama in this manner: "The idea of good in Thai culture can be portrayed as clothing washed, neatly ironed, and placed in a closed, undisturbed drawer. Don't wear it! It will get dirty! The clothing must stay 'detached' from the dirty world."4

Non-material goodness

I have found myself asking if Christianity teaches "nonmaterial goodness" as expressed by my Buddhist friends. Is the gospel's essence spirituality to the exclusion of material things? If so, then perhaps Buddhism is more profound, more consistent, more logical, more virtuous, than is Christianity. If this non-material spirituality is what we have been emphasizing as the uniqueness of Christianity, then Christianity is not so unique after all since even an atheistic existentialist like Heidegger aspired to such spirituality.5

Christians often define the word "flesh" to mean craving, desire, impurity, pleasure seeking, immorality, jealousy, selfishness, ambition, and so forth. But there is another side to the word "flesh," especially in the Pauline Epistles. Of Paul's use of "flesh," A. C. Thiselton writes: "It represents the desire to secure one's righteousness independently of God's grace in Christ by means of the law. Thus 'sarx for Paul is not rooted in sensuality but rather in religious rebellion in the form of self-righteousness.'"6

The Galatians desired to please God through circumcision, but, according to Paul, such attempts come from the flesh and not the Spirit (Gal. 6:13, 14). Furthermore, in Colossians we read Paul's attack on asceticism. Now we cannot categorize either circumcision or asceticism as impurity or immorality. Nevertheless, both are fleshly attempts at self-justification. So it is possible that the pursuit of spirituality of so-called good and spiritual Christians may be dictated by their flesh. God never intended the denial of matter that we witness among religions.

The doctrine of creation teaches that God did not create the material world as an end in itself. He made the material world, as He made the Sabbath, for humanity. God made people with senses, and He intended that they should enjoy the material world through those senses. Feeling has its origin in God; so it is not wrong to say that God created human beings to live an abundant life and to enjoy their feelings. God did not create the material world merely as the means for people to practice self-denial and restraint.7

Of bodily joy Bonhoeffer wrote: "Within the natural life the joys of the body are reminders of the eternal joy which has been promised to men by God. If a man is deprived of the possibility of bodily joys through his body being used exclusively as a means to an end, this is an infringement of the original right of bodily life."8

Because it claims revelation as its source of knowledge, Christianity must stand radically apart from the natural religious phenomena in its interpretation of the world. Revelation says that God created matter. And because God created matter, matter matters. For this same reason sensation and feeling—direct results of the contact between man and the material world—matter.

"Christianity," says Koyama, "teaches attachment. 'So God attached himself to the world.' . . . The old equation of inevitability—attachment produces sorrow and detachment happiness—inevitably cripples the Christian concept of love."9

True Christianity values joy

I believe that the tendency of Christians to value non-material spirituality above joy, laughter, and pleasure (to deny self for salvific purpose, even though not done to the extent of the Buddhist) is to cloak a subjective expression of natural religion with a Christian garment. Many Christians have not allowed the doctrines of revelation and creation, which make Christianity radically different from natural religions, to check this tendency.

The unadulterated Christian worldview, based on the concepts of revelation and creation, allows human beings to see, to touch, to taste, to feel, to laugh, and to experience joy and sorrow, happiness and pain. Erasmus said it right: "The glory of God is a man who is fully alive."

When matter matters, we will care about the material and the emotional well-being of our neighbors as well as their spiritual and intellectual well-being. We care because the total man is made tangible through the material form. It is with this in mind that Elton Trueblood states: "Christianity is the most materialistic of all the world religions. It is not satisfied merely with the spiritual; it builds hospitals." 10

After a class lecture, a Buddhist student once said to me: "Having joy, although it may bring pain, is better than escaping from pain without experiencing joy."

The biblical concept of creation says that God saw His creation and said, "It is good."

1 W. Durant, The Story of Philosophy (New
York: Washington Square Press, 1961), p. 276.

2 S. P. de Silva, A Scientific Rationalization of
Buddhism (Colombo: Metro Printer, 1969), pp. 67-
71.

3 Stephen Neill, Christian Faith and Other Faiths
(Downers Grove, 111.: Inter-Varsity Press, 1984),
p. 94.

4 Kosuke Koyama, Water Buffalo Theology
(New York: Orbis Books, 1974), p. 84.

5 M. Chatterjee, The Existentialist Outlook
(Delhi: Orient Longman, 1973), p. 142.

6 A. C. Thiselton, Dictionary of New Testament
Theology, ed. Colin Brown (Grand Rapids: Zondervan,
1975), vol. 1, p. 680.

7 Contrast the Christian view with this Buddhist
approach: "When food is good, greed, which
is craving or attachment, will occur. When it is not
good, dissatisfaction or dislike will occur. We shall
be unable to prevent defilements if we have this
attitude." Cited in Koyama, p. 142.

8 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics, ed. Eberhard
Bethge (New York: Macmillan Pub. Co., Inc.,
1965), p. 157.

9 Koyama, p. 84.

10 D. Elton Trueblood, Philosophy of Religion
(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1957),
p. 171.


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Siroj Sorajjakool is a lecturer in the Theology Department of Mission College, Muak Lek, Saraburi, Thailand.

May 1991

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