The Hoopla over Brit Hume’s Comment,
from a Christian Perspective
by Patrick Davis
Before starting on this comment I wanted to tell you of an interesting article that thoroughly covers the controversy here. The controversy is over Brit Hume’s comment that Tiger Woods would be better off if he turned to Christianity:
"I don't think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith. So my message to Tiger would be, 'Tiger, turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world.'"
From my perspective as a Christian, Brit’s comments do not seem to be controversial except that I do note that in giving news a reporter should strive towards fairness. But in this instance, Brit made the comment not as a reporter, but rather as a commentator as part of a panel discussion.
I suppose what strikes me as so odd is not the number, or the vitriol of those many other columnists (very well covered in the above link), but rather the sheer hypocrisy of our culture. Hillary, as much as I hate to admit it, was right about the 3 A.M. phone call. Obama, and his administration simply do not get it: the system is not working. Islam, not Christianity, has the violent history. It is the religion which says convert or die. It is the religion that murders cartoonists and rewards its most violent with promises of virgins.
Christianity in history has certainly had its faults; we find history full of Christians who have warped the good news to their own destructive ends. But the message of Christ has remained true to mankind, and the good news is still that Christ has come to redeem a lost world. To really believe that message is apparently too much for many in America, but it has always been too much for some. Rejection of Christ is nothing new, and that part of the gospel remains as fresh today as yesteryear: “But he that believeth not is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten of the Father.” (John 3:18) When society tries to have equivalence of Islam and Christianity, they are right in one respect but wrong in the main comparison.
Christians have remained meek, seeking to change the heart from decisions; it is Islam which carries the sword, and preaches destruction. It is Christianity which has brought forth the flower of mankind while Islam brings forth the thorns and thistles of mankind. There is no moral equivalence between the two; equivalence between them does lie in the fact that they are both closed systems, and preclude all others necessarily as being correct. Islam seeks to control the closing of that system by destroying those who do not believe; Christians are content to warn the world of immanent judgment.
Hinduism, if I understand it at all, would be quite comfortable with adding the God of the Bible to its ever-growing list of gods. It is our jealous God who forbids all others. It is our jealous God who tells us that He will one day judge the world, not for its many sins, but rather for its rejection of Himself. For Woods to depart from false worship to the worship of the living God would be dramatic and permanent improvement. And it seems to me, that for Brit to say so is a quite normal observation for a Christian to make. Even those who are not Christian should surely be able to see the normalness of his comment. Bully for Brit’s comment! May he find other sources to more fully express his faith in the future.
Christianity is the one great difference that has lead western civilization to the most successful and tolerant government of all time. America, contrary to what the president says, is exceptional. Denying the exceptionalism which Christianity has given us is the first mark of the great fool. Unfortunately, it seems to be a growing mark that separates liberals from conservatives.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
What is death?
In the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. (Genesis 2:15)
I have been a believer since the ripe old age of 19. Being 57 now, and schooled well in public school math, I am able to do simple subtraction and come up with 38 years of being a believer. Remarkable, isn’t it? How much public schools taught me. Forgive my cynicism—I am a public school teacher and live with the guilt of what is avoided in education. But this piece is not meant to be about public education, or the lack thereof, but it is meant to be a reflective piece on what death means. I have spent 2/3 of my life believing that we did indeed die when we (in Adam) partook of that fruit. But I do still wonder what it means, and the difficulty of understanding what it means may lie in the fact that we have never known what it means to live. That is, we never have the experience of living and walking and talking with God, so how can we possibly explain that which we have never known?
In Bible school, the professors taught me that death means separation from God. I think in a wholesome sense that is the best meaning, for who am I to argue with men that spend their lives in theology? I have often pondered the ramifications of death and what it means. At the least, I suspect that it must include a loss of the wholesome “rightness” that comes from our relationship with God. Perhaps an analogy will serve here to clarify what might have happened that fateful day when man first disobeyed God.
When our relationship with someone close is severed, such as a man and woman severing their relationship, or the loss of a loved one, we see some gleanings of what that separation from God might mean. When a man (and here I speak from a man’s point of view, naturally) loses the woman he fancies, he dwells on that loss. It fills his imagination, and in extreme circumstances, even the most minor corners of his thinking. Everything in the course of his ordinary day just serves to remind him of his loss of her. Even after the separation continues his loss may bring fresh remembrances and longings for lost companionship.
What if, in the beginning of the separation of God and man, it was still possible to remember that companionship? Indeed, possibly some men remembered it so well that they continued some of that relationship in their minds. Are there things which we study about that time that could give us hints about that being true? I think of the long life spans of man, 900 years or more, as being part of the radiance of the lost relationship with God. The Bible tells us of one man, Enoch, who missed companionship so sorely that he found it in an extraneous walk with God, who eventually took Enoch to be in companionship with him.
If I may extend the analogy a bit, perhaps it may help to think of those who we all know, the poor souls who seem never to be able to make it through the loss of a loved one. The presence of their beloved lost one so fills their minds that they never get over it; their minds are consumed with their loss so much that even their everyday life is spoiled. The normal grieving process becomes extended to years and even decades; their whole life is afflicted by their loss, and neurosis eclipses totally the joy of continued life.
Which is the point of my wondering. What if mankind has become so neurotic in their loss of fellowship to God that they have become “walking dead people”? What if we have so lost our remembrances of fellowship with God that we are nothing but walking zombies? Indeed Scripture seems to indicate that very fact, declaring over and over that we are dead in our trespasses and sins.
I am convinced that we do not even realize our zombie-like condition. One day, perhaps right after we are allowed to drink from His spring of living water, then and only then, will we realize just how dead we really were.
I have been a believer since the ripe old age of 19. Being 57 now, and schooled well in public school math, I am able to do simple subtraction and come up with 38 years of being a believer. Remarkable, isn’t it? How much public schools taught me. Forgive my cynicism—I am a public school teacher and live with the guilt of what is avoided in education. But this piece is not meant to be about public education, or the lack thereof, but it is meant to be a reflective piece on what death means. I have spent 2/3 of my life believing that we did indeed die when we (in Adam) partook of that fruit. But I do still wonder what it means, and the difficulty of understanding what it means may lie in the fact that we have never known what it means to live. That is, we never have the experience of living and walking and talking with God, so how can we possibly explain that which we have never known?
In Bible school, the professors taught me that death means separation from God. I think in a wholesome sense that is the best meaning, for who am I to argue with men that spend their lives in theology? I have often pondered the ramifications of death and what it means. At the least, I suspect that it must include a loss of the wholesome “rightness” that comes from our relationship with God. Perhaps an analogy will serve here to clarify what might have happened that fateful day when man first disobeyed God.
When our relationship with someone close is severed, such as a man and woman severing their relationship, or the loss of a loved one, we see some gleanings of what that separation from God might mean. When a man (and here I speak from a man’s point of view, naturally) loses the woman he fancies, he dwells on that loss. It fills his imagination, and in extreme circumstances, even the most minor corners of his thinking. Everything in the course of his ordinary day just serves to remind him of his loss of her. Even after the separation continues his loss may bring fresh remembrances and longings for lost companionship.
What if, in the beginning of the separation of God and man, it was still possible to remember that companionship? Indeed, possibly some men remembered it so well that they continued some of that relationship in their minds. Are there things which we study about that time that could give us hints about that being true? I think of the long life spans of man, 900 years or more, as being part of the radiance of the lost relationship with God. The Bible tells us of one man, Enoch, who missed companionship so sorely that he found it in an extraneous walk with God, who eventually took Enoch to be in companionship with him.
If I may extend the analogy a bit, perhaps it may help to think of those who we all know, the poor souls who seem never to be able to make it through the loss of a loved one. The presence of their beloved lost one so fills their minds that they never get over it; their minds are consumed with their loss so much that even their everyday life is spoiled. The normal grieving process becomes extended to years and even decades; their whole life is afflicted by their loss, and neurosis eclipses totally the joy of continued life.
Which is the point of my wondering. What if mankind has become so neurotic in their loss of fellowship to God that they have become “walking dead people”? What if we have so lost our remembrances of fellowship with God that we are nothing but walking zombies? Indeed Scripture seems to indicate that very fact, declaring over and over that we are dead in our trespasses and sins.
I am convinced that we do not even realize our zombie-like condition. One day, perhaps right after we are allowed to drink from His spring of living water, then and only then, will we realize just how dead we really were.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
The Raccoon
If you are skeptical of the existence of God, the slightest contemplation of the raccoon should not only tell you of the Creator, but also that He has a great sense of the comic.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Remembering the Fall
In these times, part of the world, mostly those who were locked within, are celebrating the destruction of the Berlin Wall. It is no accident that those who would do the locking up behind new walls are the ones who stay away from commemorating the destruction of the old.
But I was drawn to another Fall, one that is even more ignored by much of mankind to its eternal detriment. Man sinned and death resulted. Not even the most modern science of man has been able to undo the curse of God. Man is frail, and after almost a hundred years of “modern” medicine the life span of man is the same as it has always been. Moses, in Psalm 90, comments that 70 years hath the life of a man and 80 years if due to strength.
Today we realize that someone reaching 80 with good health to be as remarkable as it was in Benjamin Franklin’s day. Soon, with the kind help of our national government, we may look forward to living to 70—as long as we senior citizens do not impinge our poor health on the rest of the system.
It is abhorrent to me that society built on human dignity and rights would so cavalierly discard both that dignity and those rights. But may I add that I am not surprised? Disappointed but not surprised. You see, my religion teaches that men are intrinsically evil, unable even with utmost effort to effect salvation upon themselves. Even when we manage to create, in the words of Winston Churchill, the worst form of government ever devised by mankind, saving all others. The problems of our society are growing faster than we are able to reason our way toward morality and rationality—if indeed we are ever able to get there at all.
I used to call this the pull of evil and in my mind, fancied it as sort of a 20:1 ratio. That is for every problem attempted to be addressed and eradicated, twenty others would spring up to pull society down again. Sort of like Jason fighting the perennial soldiers that sprang from the earth. It seems to me that this is one of the rare points where I do find agreement between conservatives and liberals is in the decay of society. Neither group seems to have much hope for the redemption of mankind and see an ongoing, seemingly unstoppable, degradation of our society. They might disagree about the points of society’s fall, but both groups would not expect to see another generation of Americans grow old.
Which leads me to my point of these feeble comments: the redemption of mankind. Christ said that He would return, that his return would be visible and manifest to all. He also said that if He did not return mankind would destroy all. The elements themselves will be burned with fervent heat, He declares, and that does sound to me like a nuclear holocaust. He told us to not count Him slack concerning His promise, but also asked the rhetorical question if He would find any faith when He returned. It is to rescue us from the Fall that He came the first time; it seems that He is coming the second time to stop the total Fall of civilization itself.
That time, that day, will be like no other. Those who are waiting believing in God’s Son, and in his redemption will be made forever holy, separate unto Him, a cherished people. But life on earth will continue with a peace that knows not conflict, where swords will be beaten into plowshears, where a child who dies at 100 will be thought to be cursed.
Even so, come Lord Jesus.
But I was drawn to another Fall, one that is even more ignored by much of mankind to its eternal detriment. Man sinned and death resulted. Not even the most modern science of man has been able to undo the curse of God. Man is frail, and after almost a hundred years of “modern” medicine the life span of man is the same as it has always been. Moses, in Psalm 90, comments that 70 years hath the life of a man and 80 years if due to strength.
Today we realize that someone reaching 80 with good health to be as remarkable as it was in Benjamin Franklin’s day. Soon, with the kind help of our national government, we may look forward to living to 70—as long as we senior citizens do not impinge our poor health on the rest of the system.
It is abhorrent to me that society built on human dignity and rights would so cavalierly discard both that dignity and those rights. But may I add that I am not surprised? Disappointed but not surprised. You see, my religion teaches that men are intrinsically evil, unable even with utmost effort to effect salvation upon themselves. Even when we manage to create, in the words of Winston Churchill, the worst form of government ever devised by mankind, saving all others. The problems of our society are growing faster than we are able to reason our way toward morality and rationality—if indeed we are ever able to get there at all.
I used to call this the pull of evil and in my mind, fancied it as sort of a 20:1 ratio. That is for every problem attempted to be addressed and eradicated, twenty others would spring up to pull society down again. Sort of like Jason fighting the perennial soldiers that sprang from the earth. It seems to me that this is one of the rare points where I do find agreement between conservatives and liberals is in the decay of society. Neither group seems to have much hope for the redemption of mankind and see an ongoing, seemingly unstoppable, degradation of our society. They might disagree about the points of society’s fall, but both groups would not expect to see another generation of Americans grow old.
Which leads me to my point of these feeble comments: the redemption of mankind. Christ said that He would return, that his return would be visible and manifest to all. He also said that if He did not return mankind would destroy all. The elements themselves will be burned with fervent heat, He declares, and that does sound to me like a nuclear holocaust. He told us to not count Him slack concerning His promise, but also asked the rhetorical question if He would find any faith when He returned. It is to rescue us from the Fall that He came the first time; it seems that He is coming the second time to stop the total Fall of civilization itself.
That time, that day, will be like no other. Those who are waiting believing in God’s Son, and in his redemption will be made forever holy, separate unto Him, a cherished people. But life on earth will continue with a peace that knows not conflict, where swords will be beaten into plowshears, where a child who dies at 100 will be thought to be cursed.
Even so, come Lord Jesus.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
On Christian Unity
I was in church this morning with someone who mentioned that he had been raised Catholic, and before I realized it, we were in a quite interesting conversation speculating on whether the Catholics we personally knew really had faith in Christ. Such speculation is always incomplete, though at times fascinating, since who can know the heart except God alone? At any rate I came home thinking of one of the greatest statements of unity of all time was made by Paul the apostle: There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28) Of late I have been studying Revelation, and have pondered long on the “Roman prostitute” that is in league with the beasts and also hated by them. Long have I pondered of the meaning of the prostitute, and after 2,000 years of Bible scholars similar ponderings, I confess that I have nothing more to offer other than this weak observation: God will reveal His truth in time, and that time is almost upon us.
The unity of our faith is most precious. But the world unity and the unity which we will have under Christ’s hand seem to me to be very different. In the former, faiths are taught to give up ideals and principles of heritage and doctrine to bring a neutral harmony of mankind; in the latter, Christians are transformed into the correct beliefs of Sonship, and share that transformation eagerly and fluidly with one another for all of eternity. I see the march of many churches fighting to give up one Biblical doctrine after another in hopes of pursuing their elusive goal of harmony balanced with a tolerance that they seem to expect will make them more greatly respected (but, it seems to me, only makes them more despised, for in their efforts towards tolerance they give up their very character, and the one least respected is the one without character).
In our present world thus lies the difficulty; we are commanded to be one, yet find ourselves to be many. If we force ourselves to compromise and be the one, we find no character left to our message, and the world receives it as such. Do let me remind you that the world church will draw together in the last times, and they will proudly proclaim the false messiah. So part of the movement of our churches to unite must be seen as preparatory for the false world church. Our unity is nevertheless our strongest testimony of Christ. If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other (Galatians 5:16). And again the prayer of our Lord: May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. (John 17:23).
I figure my bottom line is to unite in Christ with my brothers present in this world, but is also to hold fast to the doctrines revealed in the Scriptures. In our present time, I admire Mr. Billy Graham for his steadfastness with core principles, yet his ability to reach across to others who accented different strands of the Christian faith.
Lastly, I would say make no mistake for God is not mocked. Whatever a man may sow, we are told, that shall he also reap. If your doctrine is one that splinters man from knowing God, you shall be judged of your false teaching. Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly (James 3:1). But we have this from the Word to comfort us: Abraham believed God and it was reckoned unto him as righteousness. If we are to be saved in these most perilous times, it will be because we believed God when He sent His Son to save us- not for correct or incorrect doctrine. The advantage of steering the correct course of truth is that we become much more free to emphasize the true gospel that can save all men.
If you are Catholic or Protestant or otherwise in the Christian faith, it is not what is false in your teaching that saves you—it is your faith in believing God only which shall save you. I believed God and it was reckoned unto me as righteousness. At that time, we shall become like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And I shall walk through eternity, not with Catholics or Protestants, but with men and women who are changed, just like me, into the very image of our Lord. What a marvelous time that will be! What unity we shall at last have!
The unity of our faith is most precious. But the world unity and the unity which we will have under Christ’s hand seem to me to be very different. In the former, faiths are taught to give up ideals and principles of heritage and doctrine to bring a neutral harmony of mankind; in the latter, Christians are transformed into the correct beliefs of Sonship, and share that transformation eagerly and fluidly with one another for all of eternity. I see the march of many churches fighting to give up one Biblical doctrine after another in hopes of pursuing their elusive goal of harmony balanced with a tolerance that they seem to expect will make them more greatly respected (but, it seems to me, only makes them more despised, for in their efforts towards tolerance they give up their very character, and the one least respected is the one without character).
In our present world thus lies the difficulty; we are commanded to be one, yet find ourselves to be many. If we force ourselves to compromise and be the one, we find no character left to our message, and the world receives it as such. Do let me remind you that the world church will draw together in the last times, and they will proudly proclaim the false messiah. So part of the movement of our churches to unite must be seen as preparatory for the false world church. Our unity is nevertheless our strongest testimony of Christ. If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other (Galatians 5:16). And again the prayer of our Lord: May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. (John 17:23).
I figure my bottom line is to unite in Christ with my brothers present in this world, but is also to hold fast to the doctrines revealed in the Scriptures. In our present time, I admire Mr. Billy Graham for his steadfastness with core principles, yet his ability to reach across to others who accented different strands of the Christian faith.
Lastly, I would say make no mistake for God is not mocked. Whatever a man may sow, we are told, that shall he also reap. If your doctrine is one that splinters man from knowing God, you shall be judged of your false teaching. Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly (James 3:1). But we have this from the Word to comfort us: Abraham believed God and it was reckoned unto him as righteousness. If we are to be saved in these most perilous times, it will be because we believed God when He sent His Son to save us- not for correct or incorrect doctrine. The advantage of steering the correct course of truth is that we become much more free to emphasize the true gospel that can save all men.
If you are Catholic or Protestant or otherwise in the Christian faith, it is not what is false in your teaching that saves you—it is your faith in believing God only which shall save you. I believed God and it was reckoned unto me as righteousness. At that time, we shall become like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And I shall walk through eternity, not with Catholics or Protestants, but with men and women who are changed, just like me, into the very image of our Lord. What a marvelous time that will be! What unity we shall at last have!
Saturday, October 10, 2009
The Day that Death Dies
Death is the antithesis of life. In Revelation, God tells us that “Death and Hades will be thrown into the lake of fire.” In the third chapter of Genesis the fall of mankind takes place when woman and man both disobey God. God banishes them from the Garden of Eden, and will not allow mankind to escape the penalty of death until the Supreme Sacrifice is made, and time is given to all man to believe their God. Then we are told to look forward to a time on earth when the wolf shall lie down with the lamb, where the child will play next to the adder and suffer no harm, and where “none” shall be told of the Lord, for all mankind, from the least to the greatest, shall know him. Swords will be beaten into plowshears as a time of peace unbeknown to man shall abide on him. The “child” who dies at age one hundred shall be thought to be accursed, since the lifespan of even sinful man shall be extended dramatically.
When well-meaning but thoughtless people say about the death of their loved ones, “Oh, it is just the natural life cycle, and I know that, but I have a hard time with it anyway,” I cringe at their statement even while I try to offer sympathy. The sympathy is easy because there is so much empathy in each of us about the subject of death. Death shadows us all until it at last conquers. We empathize deeply with others losing their grandparents, or their parents because the same has happened to us. But it is only when we come to terms with the gospel of God that we see death is the enemy, the antithesis of what life should be.
There is nothing “natural” about death. The natural state was before the Fall, when man was in harmony with God. The unnatural state is to have to watch older generations diminish and die as they lose control of their bodies. So the position of the Christian should always be to utterly reject this awful penalty of death, for it is a curse, and it is for a specified duration, and it is to one day be lifted.
In our debate on health care, I wonder if it is we Christians who are causing much of the problem. It is our nature, the nature of life, to perceive death as the “last enemy.” Hence we reject utterly the offers of a peaceful assisted suicide, or any giving in to what is now inevitable: the march of death sweeping over mankind. Hence, we tend to support the “heroic” measures that Obama is against because we have such value in life itself.
“For the Lord Himself will come down from heaven, and the dead in Christ shall rise first. After that, we who are alive and are left will be caught up together with them to meet the Lord in the air.” Death will be no more for we shall be with the Lord forever!
When well-meaning but thoughtless people say about the death of their loved ones, “Oh, it is just the natural life cycle, and I know that, but I have a hard time with it anyway,” I cringe at their statement even while I try to offer sympathy. The sympathy is easy because there is so much empathy in each of us about the subject of death. Death shadows us all until it at last conquers. We empathize deeply with others losing their grandparents, or their parents because the same has happened to us. But it is only when we come to terms with the gospel of God that we see death is the enemy, the antithesis of what life should be.
There is nothing “natural” about death. The natural state was before the Fall, when man was in harmony with God. The unnatural state is to have to watch older generations diminish and die as they lose control of their bodies. So the position of the Christian should always be to utterly reject this awful penalty of death, for it is a curse, and it is for a specified duration, and it is to one day be lifted.
In our debate on health care, I wonder if it is we Christians who are causing much of the problem. It is our nature, the nature of life, to perceive death as the “last enemy.” Hence we reject utterly the offers of a peaceful assisted suicide, or any giving in to what is now inevitable: the march of death sweeping over mankind. Hence, we tend to support the “heroic” measures that Obama is against because we have such value in life itself.
“For the Lord Himself will come down from heaven, and the dead in Christ shall rise first. After that, we who are alive and are left will be caught up together with them to meet the Lord in the air.” Death will be no more for we shall be with the Lord forever!
Saturday, September 12, 2009
The pearls
I have often stumbled over the precious gems of life in my pursuit of the cheap and shiny.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Reflections on The Abolition of Man
In reading The Abolition of Man, I found myself thinking in a new way. I have observed that this often happens with Lewis, who is a master at taking things of an ordinary sort and putting them in quite a fresh perspective.
Lewis talks extensively, and I confess, somewhat boringly, about his Tao. His Tao as best I can conceive, is an unassailable perspective or philosophy which is the kernel of who man is, or should I say, should be. I have always found The Abolition of Man to be more remote and abstract than it should be, and have found his arguments persuasive while not heroic, and certainly not central to the way I might want to present the rationale of Christ. Until I read him this time.
What I find so different in this time perusing through the book was, of course, my own reflection. The power of the best writers is not found in their ability to persuade us to their cause, but rather to cause us to begin persuasion of ourselves in trying to fit that piece in our philosophy which has not quite fit before, but now, because of the great writer, seems a bit more abhorrent than it ever was before. In rethinking this little bit that does not fit, the thinker may find himself trying to refine his own sense of philosophy, of decency by twitching a little this way, or by tinkering with a little thought that way. Frustrated at his efforts he perseveres, annoyed that no matter how he twists or bends his thoughts, it does not fit; in the end he is forced to throw out the whole bit and start over. Of course this is the result of and the power of great writers.
What is it that I threw out? Not so much I would warrant, just that I saw where Lewis was coming from. He was presenting the very bad arguments that I myself have had from my Father’s generation when they told us of the sixties’ generation that we should do this or that. “Go pick up your rifle and give your life cheerily for your country. Live your life virtuously. Be brave and be truthful. Your country needs your body and it is your duty to go to war.” All of these maxims my generation questioned. I also questioned them, and found many of the older generation unable to voice why I should do this or that. What is it, I would reasonably ask, that makes me want to die for my country, or be a hero, or even truthful, for that matter?
My father, not being a Christian, and not being a philosopher either, could never articulate the reason why we should do this or that over another, perhaps more preferable course. It was not until I encountered Christ that I began to see that most of what he had been teaching me, was part of Lewis’s Tao. That is, it was the underpinnings to the why of life, and it was largely left out by my father’s generation. His generation subscribed to a plethora of dictums that largely came from Christianity.
I realized this fact very soon after my receiving Christ, but as hard as I tried to articulate it to my Dad, it never seemed to soak in. I do not think it soaked in for a lot of his generation—my Father did not believe himself until near the end of his life. I find it ironic in thinking about his generation, a segment of heroic men and woman who became much bigger than themselves and gave us the greatest gift—our continued freedom. The irony is, of course, they knew not whom they served.
In thinking about it today, I could extend a metaphor of a great generation handing us the greatest engine of civilization of all time. They had given us the greatest and most powerful diesel engine by one of the great American generations, but they forgot to tell us about the fuel to run the engine. We of the sixties frustrated them to no end with our questions of why; they could only see their marvelous diesel engine of civilization and could not understand our questions. What we should have been talking about was, of course, the fuel. Neither generation was finding The Christ, the master of both generations, and the diesel fuel on which the greatest engine runs.
Lewis talks extensively, and I confess, somewhat boringly, about his Tao. His Tao as best I can conceive, is an unassailable perspective or philosophy which is the kernel of who man is, or should I say, should be. I have always found The Abolition of Man to be more remote and abstract than it should be, and have found his arguments persuasive while not heroic, and certainly not central to the way I might want to present the rationale of Christ. Until I read him this time.
What I find so different in this time perusing through the book was, of course, my own reflection. The power of the best writers is not found in their ability to persuade us to their cause, but rather to cause us to begin persuasion of ourselves in trying to fit that piece in our philosophy which has not quite fit before, but now, because of the great writer, seems a bit more abhorrent than it ever was before. In rethinking this little bit that does not fit, the thinker may find himself trying to refine his own sense of philosophy, of decency by twitching a little this way, or by tinkering with a little thought that way. Frustrated at his efforts he perseveres, annoyed that no matter how he twists or bends his thoughts, it does not fit; in the end he is forced to throw out the whole bit and start over. Of course this is the result of and the power of great writers.
What is it that I threw out? Not so much I would warrant, just that I saw where Lewis was coming from. He was presenting the very bad arguments that I myself have had from my Father’s generation when they told us of the sixties’ generation that we should do this or that. “Go pick up your rifle and give your life cheerily for your country. Live your life virtuously. Be brave and be truthful. Your country needs your body and it is your duty to go to war.” All of these maxims my generation questioned. I also questioned them, and found many of the older generation unable to voice why I should do this or that. What is it, I would reasonably ask, that makes me want to die for my country, or be a hero, or even truthful, for that matter?
My father, not being a Christian, and not being a philosopher either, could never articulate the reason why we should do this or that over another, perhaps more preferable course. It was not until I encountered Christ that I began to see that most of what he had been teaching me, was part of Lewis’s Tao. That is, it was the underpinnings to the why of life, and it was largely left out by my father’s generation. His generation subscribed to a plethora of dictums that largely came from Christianity.
I realized this fact very soon after my receiving Christ, but as hard as I tried to articulate it to my Dad, it never seemed to soak in. I do not think it soaked in for a lot of his generation—my Father did not believe himself until near the end of his life. I find it ironic in thinking about his generation, a segment of heroic men and woman who became much bigger than themselves and gave us the greatest gift—our continued freedom. The irony is, of course, they knew not whom they served.
In thinking about it today, I could extend a metaphor of a great generation handing us the greatest engine of civilization of all time. They had given us the greatest and most powerful diesel engine by one of the great American generations, but they forgot to tell us about the fuel to run the engine. We of the sixties frustrated them to no end with our questions of why; they could only see their marvelous diesel engine of civilization and could not understand our questions. What we should have been talking about was, of course, the fuel. Neither generation was finding The Christ, the master of both generations, and the diesel fuel on which the greatest engine runs.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
An Analogy of Time
As a child I remember learning to fly a kite. There was something very empowering to me to finally successfully launch a kite, and watch it bob and weave in the wind. I remember trying to see how high I could get the kite, sometimes tying two or three rolls of string together, until the kite became just a speck in the sky that could hardly be seen.
I remember when using a new ball of string I had to be very careful. I could let the string run through my fingers as the ball unraveled at my feet, but if I was not careful I would not see that I was at the end and the kite would soar off into the sky, not to be recovered.
An apt analogy for today, I think. The string of time is running through our fingers in a steady stream. But the string of this age is about to run out, and the only connection to that string is the time of great judgment that is coming on the world. Fortunately for earth and mankind, that roll of string is also connected to a time on earth when peace will rule, when our swords will be turned in plow shears, when the wolf will lie down with the lamb.
I can feel the string of time whizzing through my fingers now. The end of the string will be upon us before we know it. As the seconds go by, waiting for the end, I would ask: are you ready?
Abraham believed God and it was credited to him for righteousness. Patrick also believed God, and it was also credited to him for righteousness. God so loved the world that whosoever believeth. . .
I remember when using a new ball of string I had to be very careful. I could let the string run through my fingers as the ball unraveled at my feet, but if I was not careful I would not see that I was at the end and the kite would soar off into the sky, not to be recovered.
An apt analogy for today, I think. The string of time is running through our fingers in a steady stream. But the string of this age is about to run out, and the only connection to that string is the time of great judgment that is coming on the world. Fortunately for earth and mankind, that roll of string is also connected to a time on earth when peace will rule, when our swords will be turned in plow shears, when the wolf will lie down with the lamb.
I can feel the string of time whizzing through my fingers now. The end of the string will be upon us before we know it. As the seconds go by, waiting for the end, I would ask: are you ready?
Abraham believed God and it was credited to him for righteousness. Patrick also believed God, and it was also credited to him for righteousness. God so loved the world that whosoever believeth. . .
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Truth
Truth never shares its pedestal.
Jesus said, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me."
Simple logic. Jesus was one of three people. First we could suppose him a liar, bent on the worst evil and deceiving the world. He built a deception in his whole life that would unalterably change the world to accomadate a lie.
Don't like this Jesus? Good, because neither do I. Second, we could suppose Jesus to be crazy, a maniacal man bent on his destruction and the destruction of his people. He did what he did out of some mental disease and was unable to help himself. Indeed, not only did he end on the cross, he has followers by the thousands who have irrationally followed his madness.
I don't think that works too well either. Third we have the Jesus who was who he said he was. The Son of God come to redeem a lost world. As Lewis so aptly points out we are not ever, in strict logic, left with the idea that Jesus is merely a nice man.
Would that the world was better trained in simple logic! What do they teach them in schools these days? (Oops, that would be me!)
Jesus said, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me."
Simple logic. Jesus was one of three people. First we could suppose him a liar, bent on the worst evil and deceiving the world. He built a deception in his whole life that would unalterably change the world to accomadate a lie.
Don't like this Jesus? Good, because neither do I. Second, we could suppose Jesus to be crazy, a maniacal man bent on his destruction and the destruction of his people. He did what he did out of some mental disease and was unable to help himself. Indeed, not only did he end on the cross, he has followers by the thousands who have irrationally followed his madness.
I don't think that works too well either. Third we have the Jesus who was who he said he was. The Son of God come to redeem a lost world. As Lewis so aptly points out we are not ever, in strict logic, left with the idea that Jesus is merely a nice man.
Would that the world was better trained in simple logic! What do they teach them in schools these days? (Oops, that would be me!)
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Romans One and Two
Concluding Thoughts
Key verses:
Romans 1:32 and Romans 2:1 (NIV)
Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you who pass judgment do the same things.
Just a few brief thoughts to note hear. Verse 32 tells us plainly not to 1) do the sorts of things previously listed (including homosexuality) and 2) to definitely not give approval of those who practice them. But verse 1 tells us plainly that we are completely unfit to judge others without condemning ourselves because we do the same things.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus plainly sets a bar so high that it is impossible that we should reach it; rather it is only faith which can save us. Jude further tells us that “we are to snatch others from the fire and save them; to others show mercy, mixed with fear—hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh.”
The walk of the believer then is most assuredly a narrow one. He is called to stand against sin, condemning it completely, shunning it and denouncing it as sin. At the same time he is called to stand with the sinner, being merciful and humble, hoping by any means that the sinner might recognize that he too is naught but a beggar in need of grace.
Key verses:
Romans 1:32 and Romans 2:1 (NIV)
Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you who pass judgment do the same things.
Just a few brief thoughts to note hear. Verse 32 tells us plainly not to 1) do the sorts of things previously listed (including homosexuality) and 2) to definitely not give approval of those who practice them. But verse 1 tells us plainly that we are completely unfit to judge others without condemning ourselves because we do the same things.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus plainly sets a bar so high that it is impossible that we should reach it; rather it is only faith which can save us. Jude further tells us that “we are to snatch others from the fire and save them; to others show mercy, mixed with fear—hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh.”
The walk of the believer then is most assuredly a narrow one. He is called to stand against sin, condemning it completely, shunning it and denouncing it as sin. At the same time he is called to stand with the sinner, being merciful and humble, hoping by any means that the sinner might recognize that he too is naught but a beggar in need of grace.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Romans One Part Two
The general theme of Romans is succinctly stated in the maxim: “The just shall live by faith.” Paul’s cogent argument that we are “without excuse” is powerfully built in the last half of Romans One. I shall try to demonstrate his persuasive points in these next few paragraphs.
First Paul establishes that “men are without excuse” by depicting the downward spiral of sin. First he tells us that “their thinking became futile.” It is futile thinking which marks the beginning of the trek away from God. How many ways are there for modern man to engage in “futile thinking”? I wonder about our movement into the worship of nature and its mythical balance. Today we are more worried about our carbon production than we are about being judged by an angry God. The former is largely imagined while the latter is a coming reality. We are engaged in futile thinking when we imagine ourselves as saviors of the earth--it is we ourselves who are in desperate need of a Savior.
If “futile thinking” is the first mark of the sinful man, the second mark is “darkened hearts”. I see a connection here. Futile thinking would frequently lead to darkened hearts. People become captured by their vain imaginings and those imaginings bring about a heart which is darkened. I look at the wonders of creation, having gazed at the beauties of the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone. They make me see the Creator, but those with darkened hearts and vain imaginings only see accident and happenstance. I cannot look at a tree without wondering about the one who created it, but those who vainly imagine darken their own hearts. Paul tells us that they are “without excuse” because the Creator is plainly seen, “being understood from what is made”. They think they are wise, yet they are but fools, worshipping created things rather than the Creator.
Sexual impurity is the next result. Fools who pretend they are responsible to no one begin to act toward one another without righteousness. The loss of any righteous stance leads the sinner to sexual impurity, and Paul lists the worst outcomes of sexual impurity: women lust toward other women, and men lust toward other men. Such behavior comes from those who “do not retain their knowledge of God”. (Please scroll down to see Marriage Compact, written several years ago).
Those who leave their knowledge of God so willfully spiral yet further into sin and disobedience by developing “depraved minds”. The rest of the chapter lists the marks of the depraved mind:
“29They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.” I count 21 ways that depravity is counted here.
I can quite imagine the righteous man, indeed it is my tendency too, to read this list and become incensed at the wickedness of mankind, thinking foolishly that it is “those others” who engage in sin. The next verse especially seems to make me want to establish myself as different, better than ‘those sinners’.
32Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
I find myself wondering about how other people have gone so far wrong, and in my suppositions I fall into Paul’s trap. Paul’s trap comes in the next verse, which is the first verse of the second chapter. When Bible scholars chopped the text up into chapters and verses they correctly saw verse one of chapter two as beginning a new thought; but it is also the summation of what Paul has been building. It is put there as a cold bucket of water to be tossed over the righteous head and awaken him to his dire need. I find myself a bit shocked in reading it, even after all these years of being a Christian, because it does point at my utter depravity.
1You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things.
I, then, am guilty of the same things, the sexual sins, the list of 21 sins, the wickedness of futile thinking and darkened hearts. I think of Jimmy Carter who famously spoke of the lust in his heart, and I think of Bill Clinton who never quite acknowledged the lust of his zipper. Together they are both condemned. Moreover I am condemned right along with them. Jesus makes this explicit in his Sermon on the Mount, but Paul makes us see the three fingers pointing back at ourselves when we point our accusatory fingers and say “j’accuse”. The gospel has been magnificently explained as one beggar telling another beggar where to get bread. I need to forever remember my own beggar status when I speak to others about unrighteous lifestyles. I definitely should not approve of such lifestyles, but if I lose sight of my utter wretchedness I risk losing not only my testimony, but also my very proper perspective. I am a sinner who is made righteous, and called to live by faith.
First Paul establishes that “men are without excuse” by depicting the downward spiral of sin. First he tells us that “their thinking became futile.” It is futile thinking which marks the beginning of the trek away from God. How many ways are there for modern man to engage in “futile thinking”? I wonder about our movement into the worship of nature and its mythical balance. Today we are more worried about our carbon production than we are about being judged by an angry God. The former is largely imagined while the latter is a coming reality. We are engaged in futile thinking when we imagine ourselves as saviors of the earth--it is we ourselves who are in desperate need of a Savior.
If “futile thinking” is the first mark of the sinful man, the second mark is “darkened hearts”. I see a connection here. Futile thinking would frequently lead to darkened hearts. People become captured by their vain imaginings and those imaginings bring about a heart which is darkened. I look at the wonders of creation, having gazed at the beauties of the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone. They make me see the Creator, but those with darkened hearts and vain imaginings only see accident and happenstance. I cannot look at a tree without wondering about the one who created it, but those who vainly imagine darken their own hearts. Paul tells us that they are “without excuse” because the Creator is plainly seen, “being understood from what is made”. They think they are wise, yet they are but fools, worshipping created things rather than the Creator.
Sexual impurity is the next result. Fools who pretend they are responsible to no one begin to act toward one another without righteousness. The loss of any righteous stance leads the sinner to sexual impurity, and Paul lists the worst outcomes of sexual impurity: women lust toward other women, and men lust toward other men. Such behavior comes from those who “do not retain their knowledge of God”. (Please scroll down to see Marriage Compact, written several years ago).
Those who leave their knowledge of God so willfully spiral yet further into sin and disobedience by developing “depraved minds”. The rest of the chapter lists the marks of the depraved mind:
“29They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.” I count 21 ways that depravity is counted here.
I can quite imagine the righteous man, indeed it is my tendency too, to read this list and become incensed at the wickedness of mankind, thinking foolishly that it is “those others” who engage in sin. The next verse especially seems to make me want to establish myself as different, better than ‘those sinners’.
32Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
I find myself wondering about how other people have gone so far wrong, and in my suppositions I fall into Paul’s trap. Paul’s trap comes in the next verse, which is the first verse of the second chapter. When Bible scholars chopped the text up into chapters and verses they correctly saw verse one of chapter two as beginning a new thought; but it is also the summation of what Paul has been building. It is put there as a cold bucket of water to be tossed over the righteous head and awaken him to his dire need. I find myself a bit shocked in reading it, even after all these years of being a Christian, because it does point at my utter depravity.
1You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things.
I, then, am guilty of the same things, the sexual sins, the list of 21 sins, the wickedness of futile thinking and darkened hearts. I think of Jimmy Carter who famously spoke of the lust in his heart, and I think of Bill Clinton who never quite acknowledged the lust of his zipper. Together they are both condemned. Moreover I am condemned right along with them. Jesus makes this explicit in his Sermon on the Mount, but Paul makes us see the three fingers pointing back at ourselves when we point our accusatory fingers and say “j’accuse”. The gospel has been magnificently explained as one beggar telling another beggar where to get bread. I need to forever remember my own beggar status when I speak to others about unrighteous lifestyles. I definitely should not approve of such lifestyles, but if I lose sight of my utter wretchedness I risk losing not only my testimony, but also my very proper perspective. I am a sinner who is made righteous, and called to live by faith.
Saturday, May 09, 2009
Romans One part one
Key verses:
18For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;
19Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.
20For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:
In Romans Paul starts out immediately letting me know that God includes more than His people, the Jews, in his grand designs. The key verses of the book are found in Romans 1:16 & 17.
16For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.
17For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.
Paul tries to succinctly state the broad theme of Romans by letting us know first that the very Power of God is illumined when the merest man partakes in belief. It is only faith which brings us imputed righteousness. My belief in God is the only thing that pleases Him; I receive that which was done on the cross with His Son, and that alone is what pleases God.
Hebrews tells us this also: But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. (Hebrews 11:6). Paul is restating this in Romans, or perhaps it was first, for if my memory serves Romans is the earlier book.
Now Paul begins to craft his arguments that all men are in the same fix: lost without Christ. His first argument is almost a trap to the righteous Jew, or to the righteous Christian. He begins with stating clearly that righteousness comes by faith but then moving to a great list of sins that are favored by those with a “depraved mind”.
Paul brilliantly marshals his arguments by plainly telling us that all men are without excuse:
19Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.
20For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.
In other words the natural mind is capable of and responsible for discerning the Creator through His creation. We should be able to look at a tree or a tall mountain and see the Creator behind them.
But men’s willfulness always corrupts them; though we do see God’s handiwork, and even His presence everywhere we have so darkened our understanding that we are incapable of seeing the Light of the World.
21Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
22Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,
23And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.
Idolatry is a chief manifestation of the wickedness of men- I wonder if we have really changed all that much this last several years. In the Old Testament the Israelites sacrificed their children to Molech by casting them into the fire; these times woman are counseled to sacrifice their unborn to the god of convenience. In former ancient times men worshipped the sun and feared it; today we have the religion of global warming that still fears angering the sun.
In our next passage to look at, Paul brilliantly captures the supposed righteous man by listing many more of the awful sins of the depraved mind. Stay tuned.
18For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;
19Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.
20For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:
In Romans Paul starts out immediately letting me know that God includes more than His people, the Jews, in his grand designs. The key verses of the book are found in Romans 1:16 & 17.
16For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.
17For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.
Paul tries to succinctly state the broad theme of Romans by letting us know first that the very Power of God is illumined when the merest man partakes in belief. It is only faith which brings us imputed righteousness. My belief in God is the only thing that pleases Him; I receive that which was done on the cross with His Son, and that alone is what pleases God.
Hebrews tells us this also: But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. (Hebrews 11:6). Paul is restating this in Romans, or perhaps it was first, for if my memory serves Romans is the earlier book.
Now Paul begins to craft his arguments that all men are in the same fix: lost without Christ. His first argument is almost a trap to the righteous Jew, or to the righteous Christian. He begins with stating clearly that righteousness comes by faith but then moving to a great list of sins that are favored by those with a “depraved mind”.
Paul brilliantly marshals his arguments by plainly telling us that all men are without excuse:
19Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.
20For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.
In other words the natural mind is capable of and responsible for discerning the Creator through His creation. We should be able to look at a tree or a tall mountain and see the Creator behind them.
But men’s willfulness always corrupts them; though we do see God’s handiwork, and even His presence everywhere we have so darkened our understanding that we are incapable of seeing the Light of the World.
21Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
22Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,
23And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.
Idolatry is a chief manifestation of the wickedness of men- I wonder if we have really changed all that much this last several years. In the Old Testament the Israelites sacrificed their children to Molech by casting them into the fire; these times woman are counseled to sacrifice their unborn to the god of convenience. In former ancient times men worshipped the sun and feared it; today we have the religion of global warming that still fears angering the sun.
In our next passage to look at, Paul brilliantly captures the supposed righteous man by listing many more of the awful sins of the depraved mind. Stay tuned.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
A Layman’s Look at Romans
For me, Romans is a most exciting book. I remember my college semester studying Romans but even before that, some 36 years ago, my wife and I attended young couples conference, and a man named Roger taught us about Romans. I recall some of his words as freshly as they were spoken still. He spoke to us of the old man that we are to put away and be renewed in the “new man” to which we are called. But as I recall those messages I do remember his summary of the earlier chapters, encapsulating great themes and arguments in single sentence summaries.
Even today, after reading through my Bible many hundreds of times, I find the words penned in Romans some of the most humbling and liberating for the wayward soul. It teaches the Christian of his relational place to Christ, from our humble, sinful, and lost beginnings to the exalted status that even the angels look on with amazement and wonder at what God has done.
I am undertaking to memorize key verses of each chapter, and have chosen those key verses from my own study, not from notes or another Bible study source. They are words chosen by me, the sole guidance I use is what God seems to speak to me as important. Romans, is, of course, a very coherent and strong argument to explain the complete and total loss of man’s righteousness apart from faith in Christ. It also gloriously explains to us what majesty that faith restores to us as the sons of God.
I intend to give the key verses of each chapter as I wind my way through this. My guide to “key” verses is my own, and I use only my sense of what is important, hopefully coupled with the conviction of the Holy Spirit. Though I enjoy checking commentaries out from time to time, it is again, my reliance on my common sense and the Holy Spirit which dominate my studies.
A final word on memorization. I have given myself through my life to much memorization (and sometimes I think- more forgetting!). I have found it a wonderful tool for getting familiar with the Word of God, but also for mediation and reflection, it is for me, an unparalleled tool. If by chance anyone ever bothers with reading this blog, please do accept my recommendation of committing this verses to your memory. I trust that God will enrich your life as He has mine.
Even today, after reading through my Bible many hundreds of times, I find the words penned in Romans some of the most humbling and liberating for the wayward soul. It teaches the Christian of his relational place to Christ, from our humble, sinful, and lost beginnings to the exalted status that even the angels look on with amazement and wonder at what God has done.
I am undertaking to memorize key verses of each chapter, and have chosen those key verses from my own study, not from notes or another Bible study source. They are words chosen by me, the sole guidance I use is what God seems to speak to me as important. Romans, is, of course, a very coherent and strong argument to explain the complete and total loss of man’s righteousness apart from faith in Christ. It also gloriously explains to us what majesty that faith restores to us as the sons of God.
I intend to give the key verses of each chapter as I wind my way through this. My guide to “key” verses is my own, and I use only my sense of what is important, hopefully coupled with the conviction of the Holy Spirit. Though I enjoy checking commentaries out from time to time, it is again, my reliance on my common sense and the Holy Spirit which dominate my studies.
A final word on memorization. I have given myself through my life to much memorization (and sometimes I think- more forgetting!). I have found it a wonderful tool for getting familiar with the Word of God, but also for mediation and reflection, it is for me, an unparalleled tool. If by chance anyone ever bothers with reading this blog, please do accept my recommendation of committing this verses to your memory. I trust that God will enrich your life as He has mine.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
A Flair for the Dramatic?
In the beginning there was the Word.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
In the beginning there was the Word.
In the end of all things God tells us in The Revelation that Christ meets the armies of Armageddon with a sword protruding from His mouth. His sword is invincible, and the vast armies of the world are instantly and completely defeated, apparently without one more casualty on the part of the saints who are standing behind him.
What is this sword that protrudes from the mouth? It is the awesome power of the Creator, fully exhibited in His Son; the power of God Himself in the spoken word. One word from Jesus and it all ends- all the thousands of years of man striving against his Creator, all the sin and willfulness meeting against a single word.
Consider for a moment the setting. All the armies of Europe, and all the armies of the east mass together in one valley. The eyes of the world are upon them. They threaten the continued existence of Israel. Then steps in the Creator, in all of His awesome power, at the last moment, at the very last possibility. With one word it all stops and amounts to exactly nothing.
Does God indeed have a flair for the dramatic?
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
In the beginning there was the Word.
In the end of all things God tells us in The Revelation that Christ meets the armies of Armageddon with a sword protruding from His mouth. His sword is invincible, and the vast armies of the world are instantly and completely defeated, apparently without one more casualty on the part of the saints who are standing behind him.
What is this sword that protrudes from the mouth? It is the awesome power of the Creator, fully exhibited in His Son; the power of God Himself in the spoken word. One word from Jesus and it all ends- all the thousands of years of man striving against his Creator, all the sin and willfulness meeting against a single word.
Consider for a moment the setting. All the armies of Europe, and all the armies of the east mass together in one valley. The eyes of the world are upon them. They threaten the continued existence of Israel. Then steps in the Creator, in all of His awesome power, at the last moment, at the very last possibility. With one word it all stops and amounts to exactly nothing.
Does God indeed have a flair for the dramatic?
Sunday, September 07, 2008
These Truths are Self Evident
What truths are self-evident? Today I read a sad story about a nine year old girl killed after she annulled her marriage to a forty-five year old man. She was killed as a matter of honor by her family.
I know not all the self-evident truths, but this I do know. Man is responsible to his Creator, who will hold us in judgment for all our deeds. Solomon told us to eat, drink, and be merry, but know that we will account to God for our lives. This country where the vile deed was done has politicians defending the practice, saying that it includes hundreds of years of tradition.
Of course, on its own, that is a fallacious argument, for tradition itself has no merit other than force of habit. Habits may be good or bad, but it is my own observation that most habits are bad and the ones which we would keep and abide by are so much harder to develop and maintain. Following tradition for tradition’s sake would mean that if we had opportunity we would crucify Christ yet again. Thinking about this analogy, I do not doubt that we would do exactly that if He offered us the chance. This time around, however, he is coming as the Lion of Judah, not the Lamb of God.
The Lion of Judah will severely judge misdeeds that happened to this nine year old girl. I think of the apostle Paul, belittled so often by our American culture. He said in perhaps the greatest equality statement of all time, that we are all part of one body, Jews or Gentiles, slave or free, male or female. Those cultures treating women as property shall not escape a harsher look. The Lord comes and with Him, so does judgment.
I know not all the self-evident truths, but this I do know. Man is responsible to his Creator, who will hold us in judgment for all our deeds. Solomon told us to eat, drink, and be merry, but know that we will account to God for our lives. This country where the vile deed was done has politicians defending the practice, saying that it includes hundreds of years of tradition.
Of course, on its own, that is a fallacious argument, for tradition itself has no merit other than force of habit. Habits may be good or bad, but it is my own observation that most habits are bad and the ones which we would keep and abide by are so much harder to develop and maintain. Following tradition for tradition’s sake would mean that if we had opportunity we would crucify Christ yet again. Thinking about this analogy, I do not doubt that we would do exactly that if He offered us the chance. This time around, however, he is coming as the Lion of Judah, not the Lamb of God.
The Lion of Judah will severely judge misdeeds that happened to this nine year old girl. I think of the apostle Paul, belittled so often by our American culture. He said in perhaps the greatest equality statement of all time, that we are all part of one body, Jews or Gentiles, slave or free, male or female. Those cultures treating women as property shall not escape a harsher look. The Lord comes and with Him, so does judgment.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Socialism in Action
Years ago I worked among the homeless in Skid Row. I recall that we served two different meals: one to the staff men who worked and lived with us, and one for the men who came to us directly from the street. The staff would get a better fare- a balanced meal (though I remember it very heavy on carbs!). The homeless would get a stew or beans with bread.
We got a new director who saw this discrepency and decided to do something about it. Standing before all the staff men, he announced that these differences would no longer be tolerated. Henceforth all men would be treated equally with regard to meals. It was a rousing speech and one of the few times I actually saw the staff men stand and cheer. Someone was here to put things right at last!
Imagine their disappointment the next day when they found their meals now consisted of the plainer fare- beans and bread or stew and bread. Yes, things were now the same, just as promised. How awful was the result!
So it is with me when politicians promise national health care for all. I always think of those poor gullible souls believing in their director. Government will apportion and deny health care in the most bizarre fashion. We will all become casualties of care!
We got a new director who saw this discrepency and decided to do something about it. Standing before all the staff men, he announced that these differences would no longer be tolerated. Henceforth all men would be treated equally with regard to meals. It was a rousing speech and one of the few times I actually saw the staff men stand and cheer. Someone was here to put things right at last!
Imagine their disappointment the next day when they found their meals now consisted of the plainer fare- beans and bread or stew and bread. Yes, things were now the same, just as promised. How awful was the result!
So it is with me when politicians promise national health care for all. I always think of those poor gullible souls believing in their director. Government will apportion and deny health care in the most bizarre fashion. We will all become casualties of care!
Sunday, March 23, 2008
History is yet to be told
There is a famous aphorism that history is always written by the victor. Imagine what history might read like had Hitler won his global conquest. Just maybe it would be a tad different than what we read today. Imagine reading a biography of Hitler’s archenemy, Churchill. Undoubtedly we would read of many vile and contemptible deeds done by this dastardly character.
It occurs to me that history, even as close as it is to culmination, has not yet been written. One of my private passions is the reading and understanding of history, but if my musing is correct, the real view of history, as told through the ultimate Victor, has yet to be written. I wonder how the stories of history will change when we see them through the hand of the Pattern-Maker.
It occurs to me that history, even as close as it is to culmination, has not yet been written. One of my private passions is the reading and understanding of history, but if my musing is correct, the real view of history, as told through the ultimate Victor, has yet to be written. I wonder how the stories of history will change when we see them through the hand of the Pattern-Maker.
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Random Recent Thoughts
He who carries the biggest baseball bat inevitably wants to swing at your head; if you really want to give government a bigger bat you should probably invest in a good helmet (government-approved, of course).
Overheard from church:
I work for DMV and am looking to the Lord’s return because I really want to see what he is going to do with the DMV.
There has never been a time in history where it has not been later than it ever has been before; nevertheless all the rehearsals of the Last Supper are culminating in the real event.
Overheard from church:
I work for DMV and am looking to the Lord’s return because I really want to see what he is going to do with the DMV.
There has never been a time in history where it has not been later than it ever has been before; nevertheless all the rehearsals of the Last Supper are culminating in the real event.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
What is Truth?
Reflections on Truth
Doesn’t the very word “truth” imply one-sidedness and bigotry? If there is a truth to be found, would it not necessarily divide people? That division would of necessity be in two camps: 1) those who believe and embrace the truth, and 2) the larger group of those who reject the truth.
Thinking over this, a probable outcome would be that the larger group would be divided into many further subsets.
Now suppose that there is one truth for knowing and coming to the Divine. Part of those rejecting the truth would inevitably twist portions of the truth for themselves, proclaiming that their new version is genuine. Inevitably there would be a falling out and new versions would result. Part of those rejecting would reject in total, asking what is truth?
That which I find amazing is the world about me seems to pretty much reflect this argument. In the United States it is not even considered polite anymore for someone to stand and say he has the truth. Perhaps that is what Jesus meant when he said I am not come to unite, I am come to divide, to set father against son, etc.
Oh, the sharp point of truth! Take care for upon it all of history has already divided, cleaving us neatly into our two groups. “I am come that ye may know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.”
Doesn’t the very word “truth” imply one-sidedness and bigotry? If there is a truth to be found, would it not necessarily divide people? That division would of necessity be in two camps: 1) those who believe and embrace the truth, and 2) the larger group of those who reject the truth.
Thinking over this, a probable outcome would be that the larger group would be divided into many further subsets.
Now suppose that there is one truth for knowing and coming to the Divine. Part of those rejecting the truth would inevitably twist portions of the truth for themselves, proclaiming that their new version is genuine. Inevitably there would be a falling out and new versions would result. Part of those rejecting would reject in total, asking what is truth?
That which I find amazing is the world about me seems to pretty much reflect this argument. In the United States it is not even considered polite anymore for someone to stand and say he has the truth. Perhaps that is what Jesus meant when he said I am not come to unite, I am come to divide, to set father against son, etc.
Oh, the sharp point of truth! Take care for upon it all of history has already divided, cleaving us neatly into our two groups. “I am come that ye may know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.”
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Howard Dean- prophet?
Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic Party, and theologian extraordinaire, states: “The Democratic Party believes . . . that there are no bars to heaven for anybody.”
Jesus, a theologian of no small note, states: “No one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.” He also said: “Whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.”
It is one thing to be tolerant of others who do not believe as they should; it is quite another to state that all will go to heaven. There is no support for this in the Bible, which plainly states: “But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”
Indeed Jesus spent most of his ministry (count and categorize his words if you will) warning the world of the way that it was going and the penalty thereof. The world is clearly on a path to mass destruction, and Jesus did not mince words about it. He frequently picked on the leaders of his day, calling them “hypocrites” and “vipers”.
There are of course only three logical assumptions from these contrary teachings. First Howard Dean is right and Jesus is wrong. Second Howard Dean is wrong and Jesus is right. Third, both Howard Dean and Jesus are wrong.
If the first assumption is right then all of mankind should be at the feet of Howard Dean rather than Jesus. If the second is right then all of mankind should reject Howard Dean’s statement as absurd, and should be at the feet of Jesus. If the third is right, solipsism reigns supreme, and there is no reason to be at the feet of anyone.
Choose which leader you will follow; but as for me and my house we will follow Jesus. And Jesus clearly taught that there are many bars, the chief of which shall be the rejection of God’s only son.
Jesus, a theologian of no small note, states: “No one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.” He also said: “Whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.”
It is one thing to be tolerant of others who do not believe as they should; it is quite another to state that all will go to heaven. There is no support for this in the Bible, which plainly states: “But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”
Indeed Jesus spent most of his ministry (count and categorize his words if you will) warning the world of the way that it was going and the penalty thereof. The world is clearly on a path to mass destruction, and Jesus did not mince words about it. He frequently picked on the leaders of his day, calling them “hypocrites” and “vipers”.
There are of course only three logical assumptions from these contrary teachings. First Howard Dean is right and Jesus is wrong. Second Howard Dean is wrong and Jesus is right. Third, both Howard Dean and Jesus are wrong.
If the first assumption is right then all of mankind should be at the feet of Howard Dean rather than Jesus. If the second is right then all of mankind should reject Howard Dean’s statement as absurd, and should be at the feet of Jesus. If the third is right, solipsism reigns supreme, and there is no reason to be at the feet of anyone.
Choose which leader you will follow; but as for me and my house we will follow Jesus. And Jesus clearly taught that there are many bars, the chief of which shall be the rejection of God’s only son.
Sunday, October 07, 2007
Uniforms in School
As a teacher I absolutely hate the way our society seems to want to shred individual dignity. Uniforms for school children was in its heyday about five years ago, and good school behavior was linked to getting kids all into the same blah white shirts. I enjoy seeing my children express their individuality with their shirts. One shirt I remember from this past month was worn by a boy and said, “Blame My Sister”. I think it is wonderful to stimulate creativity and individuality.
Today we have evolved to let the gangs own certain colors. It is now against most school laws for students to wear gang colors. Now may I ask what made them gang colors? Did gangs purchase the trademarks? Obviously not; what has happened is that schools have unwittingly handed gangs a major victory. Henceforth children will not be allowed to wear red or blue because they are the sole province of gangs. The gang leaders ought to send thank-you’s to all the foresighted educators who gave them this victory.
It sort of reminds me of the argument against guns. We have been told for sixty years that if we just make guns illegal, crime will disappear. So the battle is on; laws are constantly being fashioned to take guns out of the hands of lawful citizens, but those same laws are ignored by the lawless. What we have now is a society where only the police and criminals have guns- frankly we ought to be a little afraid of both elements. So are we moving to a society in which we will have no colors allowed- all of us becoming bleached-out-empty-human-shells devoid of all individuality?
In church this morning, our minister taught on the righteousness of Christ. I always think of the white robes of righteousness that Christ clothes us with in the end times. That is one uniform I can accept! And even beg for- because without it I am lost in my wickedness- as out of place as Dan Brown at the Second Coming. Willingly I will take the white robe of righteousness and cling to it most tightly, mindful of my need and His wonderful grace.
Today we have evolved to let the gangs own certain colors. It is now against most school laws for students to wear gang colors. Now may I ask what made them gang colors? Did gangs purchase the trademarks? Obviously not; what has happened is that schools have unwittingly handed gangs a major victory. Henceforth children will not be allowed to wear red or blue because they are the sole province of gangs. The gang leaders ought to send thank-you’s to all the foresighted educators who gave them this victory.
It sort of reminds me of the argument against guns. We have been told for sixty years that if we just make guns illegal, crime will disappear. So the battle is on; laws are constantly being fashioned to take guns out of the hands of lawful citizens, but those same laws are ignored by the lawless. What we have now is a society where only the police and criminals have guns- frankly we ought to be a little afraid of both elements. So are we moving to a society in which we will have no colors allowed- all of us becoming bleached-out-empty-human-shells devoid of all individuality?
In church this morning, our minister taught on the righteousness of Christ. I always think of the white robes of righteousness that Christ clothes us with in the end times. That is one uniform I can accept! And even beg for- because without it I am lost in my wickedness- as out of place as Dan Brown at the Second Coming. Willingly I will take the white robe of righteousness and cling to it most tightly, mindful of my need and His wonderful grace.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Awestruck- or thoughts from the morning sermon
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. Ephesians 1:3 NIV SB
Our job as Christians is to be awestruck, and sometimes I forget that. I had a rather marvelous conversion at the ripe old age of nineteen. I had learned much from my world and was very analytical for a nineteen year old. Somehow I had never connected much in my life to the numinous, though in early childhood I do have memories of dealing with spiritual issues on a childhood level (isn’t that the way Jesus commands us to come, as children?) in praying for sick animals and people.
Nonetheless it was a profound change in the way of appreciating the world about me that took place, and I had moments where I even feared for my sanity. Some might point out that that fear was righteously place (isn’t there another place in scripture that says the wisdom of God is as foolishness before men?). To see spiritual forces around me was both dismaying and exciting at the same time; dismaying because I saw them as unverifiable, exciting because I saw them as true.
My analytical nature soon tried to classify and present that remarkable discovery of truth to my immediate friends, none of whom were themselves believers. I tried through reason, to no avail, to present that which had so profoundly and dynamically changed my life.
I was more awestruck than many new believers, I think, because a deadness was creeping over my soul rather early with the modern American belief that what you see is what you get. Analytically that appealed to my nature, and the occasional friend I had who still went to church I would challenge on an analytical basis until I found that they appeared to have no rational reason why they believed, they appeared uncertain as to what they believed, and, in some cases, appeared to be believing out of fear of hell rather than conviction of reason.
After my conversion, apologetics appealed to my analytical nature, and I developed many strengths in arguing persuasively for Christ. In my thirty six years since then I have seen scores of people come to Christ, but I freely admit none have been persuaded through apologetics. I have come to see apologetics as merely the entrance argument to open the eyes of the willing skeptic so that the true testimony can take over.
I am convinced that people are not rational creatures. Has not one of the chief skeptics of the modern age, Bertrand Russell, said: “It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.” People can have a semblance of rationality which is always over-ridden by their emotional core. Hence the topic of this essay: being awestruck.
Ephesians points out that God has presently blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ. In my better moments I know this; there are days and sometimes weeks going by where I feel both close to and presently blessed by Christ. I am awestruck. If I am to convince my neighbor of the reality of unseen things, then I need to regularly affirm the way in which He makes me awestruck.
Note:
I think the best way to approach people is through what Christ does to us in our emotional department. This is exactly contrary to the Four Spiritual Laws, which always rated facts as the engine, faith as the coal car, and feeling as the caboose. I think that even Bill Bright was a bit taken with the American myth that what you see is what you get. In thinking this through though, I do wonder if perhaps it is a mark of our post modernism age that causes this shift to emotion. I do think modern man tends to say that facts are different things to different people and thus impossible to ascertain (relativism).
Our job as Christians is to be awestruck, and sometimes I forget that. I had a rather marvelous conversion at the ripe old age of nineteen. I had learned much from my world and was very analytical for a nineteen year old. Somehow I had never connected much in my life to the numinous, though in early childhood I do have memories of dealing with spiritual issues on a childhood level (isn’t that the way Jesus commands us to come, as children?) in praying for sick animals and people.
Nonetheless it was a profound change in the way of appreciating the world about me that took place, and I had moments where I even feared for my sanity. Some might point out that that fear was righteously place (isn’t there another place in scripture that says the wisdom of God is as foolishness before men?). To see spiritual forces around me was both dismaying and exciting at the same time; dismaying because I saw them as unverifiable, exciting because I saw them as true.
My analytical nature soon tried to classify and present that remarkable discovery of truth to my immediate friends, none of whom were themselves believers. I tried through reason, to no avail, to present that which had so profoundly and dynamically changed my life.
I was more awestruck than many new believers, I think, because a deadness was creeping over my soul rather early with the modern American belief that what you see is what you get. Analytically that appealed to my nature, and the occasional friend I had who still went to church I would challenge on an analytical basis until I found that they appeared to have no rational reason why they believed, they appeared uncertain as to what they believed, and, in some cases, appeared to be believing out of fear of hell rather than conviction of reason.
After my conversion, apologetics appealed to my analytical nature, and I developed many strengths in arguing persuasively for Christ. In my thirty six years since then I have seen scores of people come to Christ, but I freely admit none have been persuaded through apologetics. I have come to see apologetics as merely the entrance argument to open the eyes of the willing skeptic so that the true testimony can take over.
I am convinced that people are not rational creatures. Has not one of the chief skeptics of the modern age, Bertrand Russell, said: “It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.” People can have a semblance of rationality which is always over-ridden by their emotional core. Hence the topic of this essay: being awestruck.
Ephesians points out that God has presently blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ. In my better moments I know this; there are days and sometimes weeks going by where I feel both close to and presently blessed by Christ. I am awestruck. If I am to convince my neighbor of the reality of unseen things, then I need to regularly affirm the way in which He makes me awestruck.
Note:
I think the best way to approach people is through what Christ does to us in our emotional department. This is exactly contrary to the Four Spiritual Laws, which always rated facts as the engine, faith as the coal car, and feeling as the caboose. I think that even Bill Bright was a bit taken with the American myth that what you see is what you get. In thinking this through though, I do wonder if perhaps it is a mark of our post modernism age that causes this shift to emotion. I do think modern man tends to say that facts are different things to different people and thus impossible to ascertain (relativism).
Sunday, July 30, 2006
Israel The Hated Nation
Israel- The Hated Nation.
The end times are coming. Already a beautiful pastel of colors is being splashed across the world canvas to describe in vivid detail that which is appearing with the famed four horsemen. Iran swears on the destruction of Israel; their leader is only waiting for the appearance of the 12th Iman to signal its destruction. Meanwhile the “civilized” (yes, Iran, I do mean the slur) world (yes world I do mean the quotes) is appalled at Israel’s inappropriate response. I even read one commentator (a US birdbrain) who suggested that Israel contrived the whole situation, that they are using the two soldiers who were taken from Israeli soil as an excuse to bomb Lebanon. This birdbrain evidently is incapable of factoring in the thousands of bombs landing on Israel, driving many millions to leave their homes and their businesses to live for weeks in bomb shelters.
Why is it that the world does not understand that Moslems are being driven in their hatred not by themselves, but by another? This "other" defies all reasoning and peace proposals; only left are summurizations of destruction. I wish we were better than this, yet we are not.
It is precisely this other that has yet to be identified. Is it the 12th Iman? Or is it some future pope- which a Christian I have intermittent contact with suggests, and it has been suggested (by Protestants only obviously) for centuries? Much speculation has gone into the identity of this man, and all I can say is that the Bible promises that he will be revealed in due time.
Currently the US support of Israel is anemic at best. Bush and all of his zealous support for Israel is being derided by nearly half the country. This past week there were even attempts by some to oust Condi Rice by trying to pretend she was not in tune with what the administration. I do not think it worked but it is perhaps only a matter of time.
If there is one place that I do not support Bush it is in the Iraq war. I simply believe that over a long period of time people get the government that they deserve. The Iraqi people have been here for thousands of years; their government has not evolved beyond the basic bestial dictator model. Why? To me the answer is obvious: the people are so factionous that they cannot survive under any other model of government. Bush is attempting to bring democracy to this people and while I laud his attempts to do so, it seems to me that he so obviously is shortchanging our founders, namely Jefferson, Adams, and Monroe (both Christians and non Christians). It took thousands of years of thinking and reasoning for us to get to the point of responsibly handling democracy, even with this great slate of leaders we had. Even today, the D'Toqueville ascription of the great experiment still exists; we may well self ignite and destroy ourselves- such is the abomination of democracy (for further info ask France, who had everything and voted it away).
May I add one point? I do hope fervently that my analysis is wrong and that Bush is right. He certainly has a great goal- but one I do fear is doomed to failure. It does relate to my twenty year problem with neocons, but there are many other things about Bush that I do admire.
There is a ten nation confederation governing the world; it is not the ten nation confederation of Europe much ballyhooed by Lindsey and others in the seventies. It is instead the ten nation confederacy (the same confederacy I thought in the seventies to be much more likely to hold economic power- boy, did the Late Great Planet Earth miss that one!) holding virtually all the oil pools of the world (the US has much more oil, but it also has wacko environmentalists who have stopped its development these past thirty years).This is the same ten nation confederacy prophesied about in Daniel. May I point out that this confederacy has already blackmailed both France and Germany to its cause, to the embarrassment of its leaders?
All this has been foretold beforehand. It will become apparent as time unfolds. What exciting times to live in! To think that I may live to see the changing of the ages, the coming of our Christ.
Nevertheless, it needs to be said plainly that there is a coming time when those in the world will all appear to be against Israel. Iran will march against Israel, the tiny nation the size of greater Sacramento, and will send something towards Judea that should call all to flee. At that time Judea better look out; moreover the world better look for the coming of the Son. I suggest the skeptical do a reading of Jeremiah, particularly the 50th and the 51st chapter (please do read Jeremiah 51: 24).
Finally, it needs to be said that when I became a Christian in 1972, I was warned by a prescient godly man to watch Iraq and Iran. Why is it that 35 years later the world is watching Iraq and Iran?
Great explanation of Isreal by Charles Krauthammer here.
The end times are coming. Already a beautiful pastel of colors is being splashed across the world canvas to describe in vivid detail that which is appearing with the famed four horsemen. Iran swears on the destruction of Israel; their leader is only waiting for the appearance of the 12th Iman to signal its destruction. Meanwhile the “civilized” (yes, Iran, I do mean the slur) world (yes world I do mean the quotes) is appalled at Israel’s inappropriate response. I even read one commentator (a US birdbrain) who suggested that Israel contrived the whole situation, that they are using the two soldiers who were taken from Israeli soil as an excuse to bomb Lebanon. This birdbrain evidently is incapable of factoring in the thousands of bombs landing on Israel, driving many millions to leave their homes and their businesses to live for weeks in bomb shelters.
Why is it that the world does not understand that Moslems are being driven in their hatred not by themselves, but by another? This "other" defies all reasoning and peace proposals; only left are summurizations of destruction. I wish we were better than this, yet we are not.
It is precisely this other that has yet to be identified. Is it the 12th Iman? Or is it some future pope- which a Christian I have intermittent contact with suggests, and it has been suggested (by Protestants only obviously) for centuries? Much speculation has gone into the identity of this man, and all I can say is that the Bible promises that he will be revealed in due time.
Currently the US support of Israel is anemic at best. Bush and all of his zealous support for Israel is being derided by nearly half the country. This past week there were even attempts by some to oust Condi Rice by trying to pretend she was not in tune with what the administration. I do not think it worked but it is perhaps only a matter of time.
If there is one place that I do not support Bush it is in the Iraq war. I simply believe that over a long period of time people get the government that they deserve. The Iraqi people have been here for thousands of years; their government has not evolved beyond the basic bestial dictator model. Why? To me the answer is obvious: the people are so factionous that they cannot survive under any other model of government. Bush is attempting to bring democracy to this people and while I laud his attempts to do so, it seems to me that he so obviously is shortchanging our founders, namely Jefferson, Adams, and Monroe (both Christians and non Christians). It took thousands of years of thinking and reasoning for us to get to the point of responsibly handling democracy, even with this great slate of leaders we had. Even today, the D'Toqueville ascription of the great experiment still exists; we may well self ignite and destroy ourselves- such is the abomination of democracy (for further info ask France, who had everything and voted it away).
May I add one point? I do hope fervently that my analysis is wrong and that Bush is right. He certainly has a great goal- but one I do fear is doomed to failure. It does relate to my twenty year problem with neocons, but there are many other things about Bush that I do admire.
There is a ten nation confederation governing the world; it is not the ten nation confederation of Europe much ballyhooed by Lindsey and others in the seventies. It is instead the ten nation confederacy (the same confederacy I thought in the seventies to be much more likely to hold economic power- boy, did the Late Great Planet Earth miss that one!) holding virtually all the oil pools of the world (the US has much more oil, but it also has wacko environmentalists who have stopped its development these past thirty years).This is the same ten nation confederacy prophesied about in Daniel. May I point out that this confederacy has already blackmailed both France and Germany to its cause, to the embarrassment of its leaders?
All this has been foretold beforehand. It will become apparent as time unfolds. What exciting times to live in! To think that I may live to see the changing of the ages, the coming of our Christ.
Nevertheless, it needs to be said plainly that there is a coming time when those in the world will all appear to be against Israel. Iran will march against Israel, the tiny nation the size of greater Sacramento, and will send something towards Judea that should call all to flee. At that time Judea better look out; moreover the world better look for the coming of the Son. I suggest the skeptical do a reading of Jeremiah, particularly the 50th and the 51st chapter (please do read Jeremiah 51: 24).
Finally, it needs to be said that when I became a Christian in 1972, I was warned by a prescient godly man to watch Iraq and Iran. Why is it that 35 years later the world is watching Iraq and Iran?
Great explanation of Isreal by Charles Krauthammer here.
Saturday, July 15, 2006
The End Times?
I have waited since the age of 19 for these days! My coming to a knowledge of Christ took place under very dramatic circumstances (for me). I was about as agnostic as one could be; trained hard in biological theories, and so skeptical. I remember questioning so many people who went to church, asking them to defend their beliefs, most of whom admitted to a weak stupid sort of faith. However, two people, Mike and my future wife, talked to me, not about salvation, but rather about the end times. They talked to me at a college cafeteria table about Daniel and Revelation, telling me that the Bible spoke specifically about the “Last Days” before the coming of their Christ. I was so interested that I went home, found an old (and unread) Bible and proceeded to read The Revelation.
I at 53 remain the only person I know to have received Christ on the basis of having read The Revelation. I found it absolutely filled with stuff I did not understand (neither did my prof understand it later in Bible college), but it was filled with stuff that seemed to prick my spirit. But after reading it, I prayed perhaps for the first time as an adult that God, if He were real, would reveal Himself to me, and implicit in that prayer was the knowledge that I must follow Him if He were real.
Some thirty three years later I find my life so different than what I might have thought. But my purpose in saying this is that there was a special revelation among a very few revelations that I received in those first days. I know this is a personal anecdote, and as always, people should remain skeptical of it unless it is confirmed from outside sources. But I was so excited about the times that were coming upon us, and I queried the Lord as to when this may be, sure in my own mind that it was going to be the next month or the next year. The year was 1972. Instead what I got was a specific dream in which I saw myself as an “old man” seeing the coming of Christ. Needless to say for a young man to receive this kind of dream was sort of dismaying. God is coming, but how much better for a young man if it were right now? Young men do not wait well. Nevertheless my dream was that as an old man I would see the coming of Christ. I am now 53. Is that old? Replacing my father’s roof (I did this 20 years ago) certainly makes me feel old. My ankles and my back tell me I am not young anymore.
But what do world events tell us? Iran and Syria are launching a war against Israel. They both want the total destruction of Israel because of their religion. Israel is yet again in the fight for their very existence. Will they win again? Or is this the time prophesied from long ago:
When you see the abomination that causes desolation standing where it does not belong—let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let no one on the roof of his house go down or enter the house to take anything out. Let no one in the field go back to get his cloak. How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! Pray that this will not take place in winter, because those will be days of distress unequaled from the beginning, when God created the world, until now—and never to be equaled again. If the Lord had not cut short those days, no one would survive. But for the sake of the elect, whom he has chosen, he has shortened them.
Mark 13: 14-20
Sometime soon this is happening. Those in Judea who will heed will run. Is this day upon us in this time, or five years from now? I am not at all sure as I have no particular vision into the future, but I am sure that I am getting older.
When you see the abomination that causes desolation standing where it does not belong—let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let no one on the roof of his house go down or enter the house to take anything out. Let no one in the field go back to get his cloak. How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! Pray that this will not take place in winter, because those will be days of distress unequaled from the beginning, when God created the world, until now—and never to be equaled again. If the Lord had not cut short those days, no one would survive. But for the sake of the elect, whom he has chosen, he has shortened them.
Mark 13: 14-20
I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.
Mark 13:30
That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat.
2 Peter 3:12
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/07/the_war_comes_to_us.html
The War Comes to Us, by Robert Tracinski
Israel's Existence at Stake, by Charles Krauthammer
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/07/israels_existence_at_stake.html
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/07/a_tricky_battlefield_for_israe.html
A Tricky Battlefield for Israel and America
By David Ignatius
http://www.saneworks.us/Is-the-War-Against-Terror-Rational-article-131-1.htm
Is the War Against Terror Rational?
By Dick Morris
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/442luknw.asp?pg=2
The Rogues Strike Back Iran, Syria, Hamas, and Hezbollah vs. Israel. by Robert Satloff
Excited about End Times!
I at 53 remain the only person I know to have received Christ on the basis of having read The Revelation. I found it absolutely filled with stuff I did not understand (neither did my prof understand it later in Bible college), but it was filled with stuff that seemed to prick my spirit. But after reading it, I prayed perhaps for the first time as an adult that God, if He were real, would reveal Himself to me, and implicit in that prayer was the knowledge that I must follow Him if He were real.
Some thirty three years later I find my life so different than what I might have thought. But my purpose in saying this is that there was a special revelation among a very few revelations that I received in those first days. I know this is a personal anecdote, and as always, people should remain skeptical of it unless it is confirmed from outside sources. But I was so excited about the times that were coming upon us, and I queried the Lord as to when this may be, sure in my own mind that it was going to be the next month or the next year. The year was 1972. Instead what I got was a specific dream in which I saw myself as an “old man” seeing the coming of Christ. Needless to say for a young man to receive this kind of dream was sort of dismaying. God is coming, but how much better for a young man if it were right now? Young men do not wait well. Nevertheless my dream was that as an old man I would see the coming of Christ. I am now 53. Is that old? Replacing my father’s roof (I did this 20 years ago) certainly makes me feel old. My ankles and my back tell me I am not young anymore.
But what do world events tell us? Iran and Syria are launching a war against Israel. They both want the total destruction of Israel because of their religion. Israel is yet again in the fight for their very existence. Will they win again? Or is this the time prophesied from long ago:
When you see the abomination that causes desolation standing where it does not belong—let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let no one on the roof of his house go down or enter the house to take anything out. Let no one in the field go back to get his cloak. How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! Pray that this will not take place in winter, because those will be days of distress unequaled from the beginning, when God created the world, until now—and never to be equaled again. If the Lord had not cut short those days, no one would survive. But for the sake of the elect, whom he has chosen, he has shortened them.
Mark 13: 14-20
Sometime soon this is happening. Those in Judea who will heed will run. Is this day upon us in this time, or five years from now? I am not at all sure as I have no particular vision into the future, but I am sure that I am getting older.
When you see the abomination that causes desolation standing where it does not belong—let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let no one on the roof of his house go down or enter the house to take anything out. Let no one in the field go back to get his cloak. How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! Pray that this will not take place in winter, because those will be days of distress unequaled from the beginning, when God created the world, until now—and never to be equaled again. If the Lord had not cut short those days, no one would survive. But for the sake of the elect, whom he has chosen, he has shortened them.
Mark 13: 14-20
I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.
Mark 13:30
That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat.
2 Peter 3:12
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/07/the_war_comes_to_us.html
The War Comes to Us, by Robert Tracinski
Israel's Existence at Stake, by Charles Krauthammer
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/07/israels_existence_at_stake.html
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/07/a_tricky_battlefield_for_israe.html
A Tricky Battlefield for Israel and America
By David Ignatius
http://www.saneworks.us/Is-the-War-Against-Terror-Rational-article-131-1.htm
Is the War Against Terror Rational?
By Dick Morris
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/442luknw.asp?pg=2
The Rogues Strike Back Iran, Syria, Hamas, and Hezbollah vs. Israel. by Robert Satloff
Excited about End Times!
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
The Gathering Storm
I should think the storm over today’s emphasis on Canada’s arrest of 17 terrorist suspects should jar Americans. Though I agree with this article’s premise, I want to point out that we are asleep at the wheel again. Yet I doubt that Americans will ever see the danger as plainly as they should until too late. I ask the question: how many countries does it take to perpetuate a war? The answer is as it always has been: One. In 1981 Israel devastated the nuclear program of a new entry, Iraq, into the quagmire. Iraq, and Saddam Hussein, had promised forever to extinguish Israel, as has every one of the Arab states around Israel. I do wonder if the world even knows that, as I think it is one of the most underreported facts in all of history. Every Arab state is utterly dedicated to the demise of Israel, and they have repeatedly openly stated so. It surprised England to no end, those who had soon signed on to the Balfour Declaration, long before the advent of WW2. Churchill himself expressed amazement at the quantity of resistance to the new Jewish influence on the part of the Arabs.
Yet it fulfilled God’s exact prophecy. Israel was to be scattered, judged heavily, and then regathered for the End Time. Today we are told of an egoist in Iran who believes the time has come for a confrontation with Israel. He would develop nuclear weapons deeply underground, and is far enough away from Israel to not worry about a sufficient attack, nevermind the fact that Israel is politically in a position not to attack; the whole world is waiting to condemn them for any wrong action. He prophesies of a coming end time war in which Islam will forever conquer; I would submit that he is absolutely wrong. The war will come, but the Victor is Christ, and no other. Of such is the final conflict.
Yet it fulfilled God’s exact prophecy. Israel was to be scattered, judged heavily, and then regathered for the End Time. Today we are told of an egoist in Iran who believes the time has come for a confrontation with Israel. He would develop nuclear weapons deeply underground, and is far enough away from Israel to not worry about a sufficient attack, nevermind the fact that Israel is politically in a position not to attack; the whole world is waiting to condemn them for any wrong action. He prophesies of a coming end time war in which Islam will forever conquer; I would submit that he is absolutely wrong. The war will come, but the Victor is Christ, and no other. Of such is the final conflict.
Saturday, June 03, 2006
History and the Pull of Losers
History and the Pull of the Losers
I am afraid I have been reading for too much history lately. Today in my reading of Churchill, I learned how Joseph Kennedy supported Hitler until late in his career (at least as late as 1939). One of Joseph’s comments incited Churchill to an answer, in years which he was trying to bite his tongue. Of course there were many others during this period who supported Hitler, including Lindbergh and the “never say enough appeasement” Neville Chamberlain. All of which is to say nothing I suppose. But I have been fascinated with the way history has acted towards losers. May I point out that we elected the son of one, JFK, president?
I just read a great piece from Jimmy Carter, and it reminded me of all the reasons I respect him, as well as the all the reasons why he must remain a loser. You see though I have a great problem with Jimmy Carter, he loves the Lord, the same Lord which I love. I do not doubt that love for an instant, and I commend him for all of his forthright efforts to eradicate disease and help Africa to become better. I look forward to spending eternity with him, where I have no doubt whatsoever that we will stand shoulder to shoulder working in the labors which our Lord will give us.
BUT, as for the present world, he and I must have a very different view. In his article he correctly attributes the beginning of the great movement of Christians to the Republican Party to 1979. He has noticed that that is the year in which conservatives seemingly forever captured the heart and soul of the Southern Baptist Conference. I became a Christian in 1972, and at that time, I saw about an equal number of Democrats and Republicans in the church. He laments; I celebrate. Most Christian organizations have a history of being eaten by the world views that they are supposed to challenge. Consider the Methodists and the Presbyterians, and their early history with the United States. They were at one time considered the radicals, hated by their peer organizations, and yet today are the very staid churches which excite the least comment, let alone change to Jesus Christ. My own viewpoint is that the longer the church exists, the less chance it has to shine for Jesus. I thanked God for the Southern Baptists, although I am not one, that they fought the trend of history, and that they shined brightly for the One that they are called to represent.
The problem, as I see it, is that we are coming upon the time when the Greatest Deceiver of all time will live on the face of the earth. Pericles, Churchill, nor anyone else will convince the world of his evil until it is almost too late. At that moment, if I understand scripture aright, the Lord himself will rescue us from self-destruction. I do think, in large measure, the philosophy of Jimmy Carter will be put forever to rest. There is much enviable in that philosophy, its earnest efforts to help the needy notwithstanding, yet it must remain an ungrown fruit, destined to fall off the branch long before ripening, starved in its infancy, in the face of the Truth. It is based forever in humanitarianism without God.
I am sorry that Jimmy Carter does not see that; yet I pray that he will live to see the coming of our Lord, and the usher of the New Age.
Just so you know, at the age of 18, I registered non-partisan and in the intervening years I have remained forever so. Neither party have I ever endorsed, and I lament for the country that is told there are two answers for every problem, exactly two answers, only two answers, one good and one evil. I think such a system, though I know not a better one, has created much mischief in our pursuit of righteousness.
I am afraid I have been reading for too much history lately. Today in my reading of Churchill, I learned how Joseph Kennedy supported Hitler until late in his career (at least as late as 1939). One of Joseph’s comments incited Churchill to an answer, in years which he was trying to bite his tongue. Of course there were many others during this period who supported Hitler, including Lindbergh and the “never say enough appeasement” Neville Chamberlain. All of which is to say nothing I suppose. But I have been fascinated with the way history has acted towards losers. May I point out that we elected the son of one, JFK, president?
I just read a great piece from Jimmy Carter, and it reminded me of all the reasons I respect him, as well as the all the reasons why he must remain a loser. You see though I have a great problem with Jimmy Carter, he loves the Lord, the same Lord which I love. I do not doubt that love for an instant, and I commend him for all of his forthright efforts to eradicate disease and help Africa to become better. I look forward to spending eternity with him, where I have no doubt whatsoever that we will stand shoulder to shoulder working in the labors which our Lord will give us.
BUT, as for the present world, he and I must have a very different view. In his article he correctly attributes the beginning of the great movement of Christians to the Republican Party to 1979. He has noticed that that is the year in which conservatives seemingly forever captured the heart and soul of the Southern Baptist Conference. I became a Christian in 1972, and at that time, I saw about an equal number of Democrats and Republicans in the church. He laments; I celebrate. Most Christian organizations have a history of being eaten by the world views that they are supposed to challenge. Consider the Methodists and the Presbyterians, and their early history with the United States. They were at one time considered the radicals, hated by their peer organizations, and yet today are the very staid churches which excite the least comment, let alone change to Jesus Christ. My own viewpoint is that the longer the church exists, the less chance it has to shine for Jesus. I thanked God for the Southern Baptists, although I am not one, that they fought the trend of history, and that they shined brightly for the One that they are called to represent.
The problem, as I see it, is that we are coming upon the time when the Greatest Deceiver of all time will live on the face of the earth. Pericles, Churchill, nor anyone else will convince the world of his evil until it is almost too late. At that moment, if I understand scripture aright, the Lord himself will rescue us from self-destruction. I do think, in large measure, the philosophy of Jimmy Carter will be put forever to rest. There is much enviable in that philosophy, its earnest efforts to help the needy notwithstanding, yet it must remain an ungrown fruit, destined to fall off the branch long before ripening, starved in its infancy, in the face of the Truth. It is based forever in humanitarianism without God.
I am sorry that Jimmy Carter does not see that; yet I pray that he will live to see the coming of our Lord, and the usher of the New Age.
Just so you know, at the age of 18, I registered non-partisan and in the intervening years I have remained forever so. Neither party have I ever endorsed, and I lament for the country that is told there are two answers for every problem, exactly two answers, only two answers, one good and one evil. I think such a system, though I know not a better one, has created much mischief in our pursuit of righteousness.
Sunday, May 21, 2006
Iluvator and Evil
Then Iluvatar spoke, and he said: ‘Mighty are the Ainur, and mightiest among them is Melkor; but that he may know, and all the Ainur, that I am Iluvatar, those things that ye have sung, I will show them forth, that ye may see what ye have done. And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.’
I took the above passage from The Simarillian, by JRR Tolkien, to write about the present confusion over God’s reigning on earth. Biblically speaking, we are at or near the period in which Lucifer is cast to earth and is furious, knowing that his time is coming to an end. We humans tend to see the need for order and coherence in our world; instead we see disorder and confusion. Why, we cogently ask, is there not a seemly pattern to our world- why is it all the time invaded by evil, dominated by evil, and we often see humans doing what humans ought not to do- furthering the cause of evil? Tolkien believed strongly in the power of the myth to teach reality. His works greatly reflected his strong religious beliefs and the above passage shows his clarity of understanding of our present plight.
Evil is here, apparently ruling and reigning. But even while evil is having its day, the goodness and power of God are going to pattern that evil into good. There is nothing that Lucifer does which, in the nanosecond God says to stop, shall not instantly cease. Nevertheless God allows evil to have much sway, and herein fits the doctrine of original sin. But even the instance of original sin is under the providence and dominion of God; he has all, the least jot and the tittle shall not happen without God’s having allowed it.
Lewis does this same theme great justice when he gives us the character of Aslan. When Aslan is absent from Narnia, evil reigns (or thinks it does). The White Witch even reasons that if she can kill Edmund there would only be three to fulfill the prophecy, and then she reasons that Aslan himself may go. I find it intriguing that never for an instant does she feel that evil can stand against good; it is her fervent and fruitless hope that Aslan may leave Narnia.
Tolkien and Lewis of course met regularly and often agreed that myths are an excellent means to explain reality. Their works which differ so much in literary style both harmonize on this one theme. Descartes famously said I think therefore I am- a statement I think is a sound basis of modern western thought. But if perhaps I might be allowed to play with such a great statement, let me change it a bit: I feel right and wrong therefore there is good and evil.
I am not trying to be philosophical here. Rather I am trying to argue from backwards design. Isn’t it obvious that we have been made to see good and evil, however poorly, and isn’t that a sound reason for our Creator? Why should we feel right and wrong at all if it were not true that there is both good and evil? The day is coming when our Melkor’s reign shall end, when our Aslan will assume command and “begin setting things aright”. Our God is but reigning at present in a distant sense, an absent Aslan, but the day is soon coming when he will reign in visible physical form.
I think therein is the confusion of many over the presence of evil. Evil cannot live with good- so the poor reasoning goes- therefore there is no good, or if there is good it is too weak to overcome evil. They could not be more wrong. The good which they only imperfectly see at the best of times is a lot bigger and a lot stronger than anything imagined. What of a goodness, shown to us with the mythical charms of Tolkien and Lewis, that is capable of folding evil into a greater pattern of good? Good food for thought.
I took the above passage from The Simarillian, by JRR Tolkien, to write about the present confusion over God’s reigning on earth. Biblically speaking, we are at or near the period in which Lucifer is cast to earth and is furious, knowing that his time is coming to an end. We humans tend to see the need for order and coherence in our world; instead we see disorder and confusion. Why, we cogently ask, is there not a seemly pattern to our world- why is it all the time invaded by evil, dominated by evil, and we often see humans doing what humans ought not to do- furthering the cause of evil? Tolkien believed strongly in the power of the myth to teach reality. His works greatly reflected his strong religious beliefs and the above passage shows his clarity of understanding of our present plight.
Evil is here, apparently ruling and reigning. But even while evil is having its day, the goodness and power of God are going to pattern that evil into good. There is nothing that Lucifer does which, in the nanosecond God says to stop, shall not instantly cease. Nevertheless God allows evil to have much sway, and herein fits the doctrine of original sin. But even the instance of original sin is under the providence and dominion of God; he has all, the least jot and the tittle shall not happen without God’s having allowed it.
Lewis does this same theme great justice when he gives us the character of Aslan. When Aslan is absent from Narnia, evil reigns (or thinks it does). The White Witch even reasons that if she can kill Edmund there would only be three to fulfill the prophecy, and then she reasons that Aslan himself may go. I find it intriguing that never for an instant does she feel that evil can stand against good; it is her fervent and fruitless hope that Aslan may leave Narnia.
Tolkien and Lewis of course met regularly and often agreed that myths are an excellent means to explain reality. Their works which differ so much in literary style both harmonize on this one theme. Descartes famously said I think therefore I am- a statement I think is a sound basis of modern western thought. But if perhaps I might be allowed to play with such a great statement, let me change it a bit: I feel right and wrong therefore there is good and evil.
I am not trying to be philosophical here. Rather I am trying to argue from backwards design. Isn’t it obvious that we have been made to see good and evil, however poorly, and isn’t that a sound reason for our Creator? Why should we feel right and wrong at all if it were not true that there is both good and evil? The day is coming when our Melkor’s reign shall end, when our Aslan will assume command and “begin setting things aright”. Our God is but reigning at present in a distant sense, an absent Aslan, but the day is soon coming when he will reign in visible physical form.
I think therein is the confusion of many over the presence of evil. Evil cannot live with good- so the poor reasoning goes- therefore there is no good, or if there is good it is too weak to overcome evil. They could not be more wrong. The good which they only imperfectly see at the best of times is a lot bigger and a lot stronger than anything imagined. What of a goodness, shown to us with the mythical charms of Tolkien and Lewis, that is capable of folding evil into a greater pattern of good? Good food for thought.
Saturday, May 06, 2006
Magician's Nephew
In the Magician’s Nephew, C.S. Lewis likens the singing of a song to the creation of the world. In his book Lewis has Polly listening to the song and sometimes catching a glimmer of the connection to the creation going on around her eyes. Of course Lewis was not the first author to do that; Tolkien did it earlier- and perhaps Milton was the earliest of all, but there is still something special about the idea of a beautiful song meshing somehow with the creation of the world.
Today I realized the song from time to time happens to believers. Perhaps the song is but dim, and perhaps we do not hear the right notes, but it is still our majestic song; it marches along as surely as the drumbeat of time plays its cadence to the unfolding of history. All does happen as our Creator has foreordained, and somehow even the discordant notes that do not seem to fit the song entirely mesh into the song planned from before the beginning of time.
Tolkien deals with the discordant notes through his evil character Melkor; on a much simpler level Lewis deals with evil with the “accidental” presence of Jadis. Neither evil character realizes that the creator of their respective worlds has a larger plan capable of turning even their evil into something fine. Milton does the same thing with his chapter on Lucifer. To me as a believer I find these comforting notes from these great authors playing a beautiful melody for me. Isn’t it comforting to know that even the evil in our world somehow is fitting into God’s melody?
In my later years I find the apprehension of evil growing somewhat. I read Mein Kampf and studied Hitler’s pitiful plans which grew so wildly successful only to be put aside by another man named Churchill, raised up for just such a time as this, who spent a whole decade apprehending and preparing for the evil of Hitler despite his own Britain thinking he was bonkers. During that dark decade of Churchill’s fall and Hitler’s rise, a Lady Astor took a party of appeasers to Stalin. Stalin asked about Churchill. The Lady Astor said now the power was now Chamberlain. “What about Churchill,” Stalin asked? “Oh, he’s finished!” proclaimed Lady Astor.
Fortunately for the free world she could not have been more wrong. Were it not for the prescience of Churchill, we might find ourselves in a much darker world today. Somehow all the brutality and loss of life fit into the plan of God. Even the wicked man must have his day. He shall not prevail; neither shall the purpose of the Creator be frustrated in the least.
If I am right in my reckoning, and the time is upon us (see previous post), the man of sin is now living among us, with his false christs and prophets. A time of evil is coming upon us such as the world has never seen, nor will ever see again. It is comforting for me to know that in view of my apprehension of evil that Polly is right all the time- the song is being sung as it should be and all will unfold in the planned manner.
Today I realized the song from time to time happens to believers. Perhaps the song is but dim, and perhaps we do not hear the right notes, but it is still our majestic song; it marches along as surely as the drumbeat of time plays its cadence to the unfolding of history. All does happen as our Creator has foreordained, and somehow even the discordant notes that do not seem to fit the song entirely mesh into the song planned from before the beginning of time.
Tolkien deals with the discordant notes through his evil character Melkor; on a much simpler level Lewis deals with evil with the “accidental” presence of Jadis. Neither evil character realizes that the creator of their respective worlds has a larger plan capable of turning even their evil into something fine. Milton does the same thing with his chapter on Lucifer. To me as a believer I find these comforting notes from these great authors playing a beautiful melody for me. Isn’t it comforting to know that even the evil in our world somehow is fitting into God’s melody?
In my later years I find the apprehension of evil growing somewhat. I read Mein Kampf and studied Hitler’s pitiful plans which grew so wildly successful only to be put aside by another man named Churchill, raised up for just such a time as this, who spent a whole decade apprehending and preparing for the evil of Hitler despite his own Britain thinking he was bonkers. During that dark decade of Churchill’s fall and Hitler’s rise, a Lady Astor took a party of appeasers to Stalin. Stalin asked about Churchill. The Lady Astor said now the power was now Chamberlain. “What about Churchill,” Stalin asked? “Oh, he’s finished!” proclaimed Lady Astor.
Fortunately for the free world she could not have been more wrong. Were it not for the prescience of Churchill, we might find ourselves in a much darker world today. Somehow all the brutality and loss of life fit into the plan of God. Even the wicked man must have his day. He shall not prevail; neither shall the purpose of the Creator be frustrated in the least.
If I am right in my reckoning, and the time is upon us (see previous post), the man of sin is now living among us, with his false christs and prophets. A time of evil is coming upon us such as the world has never seen, nor will ever see again. It is comforting for me to know that in view of my apprehension of evil that Polly is right all the time- the song is being sung as it should be and all will unfold in the planned manner.
Sunday, April 23, 2006
This Train is Bound for Glory
This train is bound for glory. One of these days we are going to hear ‘all abroad’ and ‘last call. The question is when is that day going to come? My father, who is a skeptic, says that the world has been saying that Christ is coming forever, and it never seems to happen. I patiently point out that never ever before has Israel been regathered. When we see the fig tree got tender and put forth leaves, (Israel regathering) Jesus says that this generation shall not pass away until they see the coming of the Son of Man. What exactly does that mean? Bible scholars have variously defined a generation as being forty to seventy years. Moses himself defines it in Psalm 90. Moses, you remember, lived to be a hundred and twenty years old, with his strength and vigor not abated. Yet he himself said that a man lived to be seventy years, eighty if due to strength.
So doing a little math we can confidently assert that the time is upon us. The Balfour Declaration set aside Palestine for the horribly mistreated Jews, and the Jews flooded back to their homeland. The year was 1948 when Israel declared itself a nation. Add seventy years to 1948, and you get 2018. Remember that we cannot get exact here; rather Jesus said specifically that that generation would not pass away until they saw the coming of man. I do find it interesting though to see that Iran is supposed to be five to seven years from developing nuclear bombs, and the present leader has sworn to destroy Israel.
Now I have observed that Jerusalem was not part of the original regathering, and it was not until 1967 that Israel conquered Jerusalem and began occupying it. So it may be permissible to add seventy years to 1967, but I do think not. Jesus’ parable was simply put forth: when you see the fig tree beginning to bud. That would indicate 1948 as the more reliable starting point.
But this is not all the evidence. It might interest you to know that early Bible writers were all convinced that the world itself was to last 6000 years until the coming of Christ. Over 1900 years ago, writers wrote convincingly of this, repeatedly stating that the coming of Christ was going to signal the coming of the last age- the age of Christ reigning on earth.
I love my father. If I loved him less, I might have rejoined his last statement with Peter’s talking about the scoffers who said, “Where is the promise of his coming?” I do not like putting my father down, and I am not sure he would get it anyway. Skeptics seem to have a veil over their eyes, but in my father’s case it is a veil partly torn away. I do hope for its full tearing.
This train is bound for glory. The next line says: Don't ride nothin' but the righteous and the holy. The time is upon us. Let us not neglect well doing; neither let us be timid in our warnings. Jesus Christ is coming and until he does there is still room for more!
So doing a little math we can confidently assert that the time is upon us. The Balfour Declaration set aside Palestine for the horribly mistreated Jews, and the Jews flooded back to their homeland. The year was 1948 when Israel declared itself a nation. Add seventy years to 1948, and you get 2018. Remember that we cannot get exact here; rather Jesus said specifically that that generation would not pass away until they saw the coming of man. I do find it interesting though to see that Iran is supposed to be five to seven years from developing nuclear bombs, and the present leader has sworn to destroy Israel.
Now I have observed that Jerusalem was not part of the original regathering, and it was not until 1967 that Israel conquered Jerusalem and began occupying it. So it may be permissible to add seventy years to 1967, but I do think not. Jesus’ parable was simply put forth: when you see the fig tree beginning to bud. That would indicate 1948 as the more reliable starting point.
But this is not all the evidence. It might interest you to know that early Bible writers were all convinced that the world itself was to last 6000 years until the coming of Christ. Over 1900 years ago, writers wrote convincingly of this, repeatedly stating that the coming of Christ was going to signal the coming of the last age- the age of Christ reigning on earth.
I love my father. If I loved him less, I might have rejoined his last statement with Peter’s talking about the scoffers who said, “Where is the promise of his coming?” I do not like putting my father down, and I am not sure he would get it anyway. Skeptics seem to have a veil over their eyes, but in my father’s case it is a veil partly torn away. I do hope for its full tearing.
This train is bound for glory. The next line says: Don't ride nothin' but the righteous and the holy. The time is upon us. Let us not neglect well doing; neither let us be timid in our warnings. Jesus Christ is coming and until he does there is still room for more!
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Groundhog Day
I would like to write again about Groundhog Day. I have been watching it this evening once again (actually I told my wife tonight that I thought someone could never watch Groundhog Day once) The meaning of a man is in his courting of his love, which he wishes to be eternal, but which is not, is probably what makes this a guy film, and that may explain why I keep returning to it. I am not sure about that analysis at all- but you tell me why I am so fascinated with it. It does refer to time change which is an awesome attraction to humans, but it's main theme is trying just once to get it right and you cannot. Of course the film eventually has its star getting it right, but in real life, in our hearts, we know that we could never do that.
“What would you do if you were stuck in one place, and every day was exactly the same, and nothing you did mattered?” asks Bill Murray. That has to be the quintessential question for modern man. What poignant words to express our lives apart from their meaning that our Lord gave us? Aren’t we all dunderheads, repeating over and over again the same stupid things that make up our inane days? What if we could but live the day again (and again)?
I just came off of a wonderful day with children. I am a fourth grade teacher who gives children an extra hour before school to learn web page building. Many of the children who are coming this year have younger siblings who come along; voila! I am a babysitter too. This morning I happened to feel especially exuberant (that does happen to an older fellow less and less often), and played with the younger children, lifting them into the air and letting them down suddenly. They swamped me and begged for more; that is the problem always with young ones- they have so much more energy than I do. Of course I do remember running out of energy with my young nephews when I was a mere twenty. What chance do I have now?
But still during that day I had things wrong which I thought, which I wished I could think differently about. I had things I might have said better, or compliment that I might have expressed to put my peers at ease. Wouldn’t it be nice to relive the day so that I could get those things right? Wrong!
If I had all of eternity to relive a day, I could not live it perfectly no matter how hard I tried. This is the meaning of what Calvin calls total depravity. Though he defines it in a way that I could never ever agree with, I do believe in my own definition of total depravity. Man can never ever be right in the total sense. At the best he can be right only erratically- most of the time even at the best of times I would get only a B minus. Most of the time I, of course, cruise in the “less than B minus category.” In the eyes of God we are inept, and less than the perfect which he desired us to be. We can never ever reach the standards which Christ has dared us to live in: “Be thou perfect, as even the Son of Man is perfect.”
Yes, I am aware that the word perfect might have been better translated, or at least as accurately translated, complete. But, in my opinion, that begs the question. We cannot in any sense be complete. We are stuck with being incomplete, just vestiges of what we should be, specters of what God has called us to be. That is total depravity. It does not mean, as Calvin insists, that there is nothing good in us. Rather it means that we can never ever be finally good; rather we are condemned to our random goodness (and general badness) - and that only when we are at our best. That is total, complete depravity. We are irredeemably lost apart from the grace of Christ.
But let me talk about what it does not mean; and what we as Christians give the short shrift to our testimony about Christ because of our insistence on a poor doctrine. I think this is one of the dangers of Calvinism, and I want to explain why it does go way too far. It does not mean that a mother’s love for her child is evil. It does not mean that a brother cannot express love to his brother in a good way. It certainly does not mean that a friend cannot give the greatest goodness in giving his life for his friend. “Greater love hath no man than this, that he should give his life for his friend.” Was Paul a liar in saying this? Nay, let it never be said! Rather let us assume that there is something in man, created in the image of God, which reflects the creator who made us, however dimly.
I am aware of Lewis and The Great Divorce. In that very great book, Lewis does us a great service by letting us know about how selfish a mother’s love might become; still in its conception and common practice who would ever say it is an evil thing? That a good thing might become utterly defiled Lewis poignantly shows- what he is not attempting to show is that there might be a good thing that is done in man apart from God’s doing it. Are we to believe that every man who gives his life for his friend, every mother who loves her child, and every brother who shows brotherly love is only showing what God empowers them to show? I think not.
Rather the holistic view of depravity is one that I believe. Man, created in the image of God, is able to feebly replicate the goodness of his God in good deeds, but he is never able to share in the goodness of God because of sin. That sin has forever sold him to evil, which must always predominant apart from the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Let us not then look forward to living one day over and over again forever; let us do look forward to a day without end which we will live forever at the feet of Christ.
“What would you do if you were stuck in one place, and every day was exactly the same, and nothing you did mattered?” asks Bill Murray. That has to be the quintessential question for modern man. What poignant words to express our lives apart from their meaning that our Lord gave us? Aren’t we all dunderheads, repeating over and over again the same stupid things that make up our inane days? What if we could but live the day again (and again)?
I just came off of a wonderful day with children. I am a fourth grade teacher who gives children an extra hour before school to learn web page building. Many of the children who are coming this year have younger siblings who come along; voila! I am a babysitter too. This morning I happened to feel especially exuberant (that does happen to an older fellow less and less often), and played with the younger children, lifting them into the air and letting them down suddenly. They swamped me and begged for more; that is the problem always with young ones- they have so much more energy than I do. Of course I do remember running out of energy with my young nephews when I was a mere twenty. What chance do I have now?
But still during that day I had things wrong which I thought, which I wished I could think differently about. I had things I might have said better, or compliment that I might have expressed to put my peers at ease. Wouldn’t it be nice to relive the day so that I could get those things right? Wrong!
If I had all of eternity to relive a day, I could not live it perfectly no matter how hard I tried. This is the meaning of what Calvin calls total depravity. Though he defines it in a way that I could never ever agree with, I do believe in my own definition of total depravity. Man can never ever be right in the total sense. At the best he can be right only erratically- most of the time even at the best of times I would get only a B minus. Most of the time I, of course, cruise in the “less than B minus category.” In the eyes of God we are inept, and less than the perfect which he desired us to be. We can never ever reach the standards which Christ has dared us to live in: “Be thou perfect, as even the Son of Man is perfect.”
Yes, I am aware that the word perfect might have been better translated, or at least as accurately translated, complete. But, in my opinion, that begs the question. We cannot in any sense be complete. We are stuck with being incomplete, just vestiges of what we should be, specters of what God has called us to be. That is total depravity. It does not mean, as Calvin insists, that there is nothing good in us. Rather it means that we can never ever be finally good; rather we are condemned to our random goodness (and general badness) - and that only when we are at our best. That is total, complete depravity. We are irredeemably lost apart from the grace of Christ.
But let me talk about what it does not mean; and what we as Christians give the short shrift to our testimony about Christ because of our insistence on a poor doctrine. I think this is one of the dangers of Calvinism, and I want to explain why it does go way too far. It does not mean that a mother’s love for her child is evil. It does not mean that a brother cannot express love to his brother in a good way. It certainly does not mean that a friend cannot give the greatest goodness in giving his life for his friend. “Greater love hath no man than this, that he should give his life for his friend.” Was Paul a liar in saying this? Nay, let it never be said! Rather let us assume that there is something in man, created in the image of God, which reflects the creator who made us, however dimly.
I am aware of Lewis and The Great Divorce. In that very great book, Lewis does us a great service by letting us know about how selfish a mother’s love might become; still in its conception and common practice who would ever say it is an evil thing? That a good thing might become utterly defiled Lewis poignantly shows- what he is not attempting to show is that there might be a good thing that is done in man apart from God’s doing it. Are we to believe that every man who gives his life for his friend, every mother who loves her child, and every brother who shows brotherly love is only showing what God empowers them to show? I think not.
Rather the holistic view of depravity is one that I believe. Man, created in the image of God, is able to feebly replicate the goodness of his God in good deeds, but he is never able to share in the goodness of God because of sin. That sin has forever sold him to evil, which must always predominant apart from the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Let us not then look forward to living one day over and over again forever; let us do look forward to a day without end which we will live forever at the feet of Christ.
Monday, March 20, 2006
Marriage Charter
I was playing with the words of our declaration and my strong feelings for marriage. I think it is one of the Biblical pillars and not only because our Lord uses it so often to describe our relationship with him. What do you think of my fighting words?
Marriage Charter
To our esteemed President, the Supreme Court and the Honorable Congress of the United States:
Be it known to you:
We the people hold marriage to be an unalienable right emanating from our Creator. No state organization or court may define marriage any other way other than that which has been handed down to us from our forefathers through the religions of the Jew and the Christian. We do not wish to oppress any nor uplift any in our assertion of this unalienable right; rather we wish to succinctly state that which is obvious from the historical record: marriage is an institution rendered by our Creator and is therefore inviolate. It can not be altered from its basic definition of a man and a woman enjoining for the purpose of living their lives before society.
Further,
Since we hold this right to be unalienable, we do not recognize the right of the state to alter or subtract from it in any way. We do advise you therefore of our concern on the part of some to redefine marriage. We consider such altering as tampering with that over which you have no recognized power. Respectfully we ask that you do recognize the sacrament of marriage as such a right. Governments are instituted among men to secure those unalienable rights, and when governments begin to stray, it is the duty and solemn obligation of the governed to revoke their consent of governance. Be it known to you that we will treat any usurpation of the sacrament of marriage with the utmost suspicion and will hold such usurpation in the lowest regard.
Citizens sign here:
Marriage Charter
To our esteemed President, the Supreme Court and the Honorable Congress of the United States:
Be it known to you:
We the people hold marriage to be an unalienable right emanating from our Creator. No state organization or court may define marriage any other way other than that which has been handed down to us from our forefathers through the religions of the Jew and the Christian. We do not wish to oppress any nor uplift any in our assertion of this unalienable right; rather we wish to succinctly state that which is obvious from the historical record: marriage is an institution rendered by our Creator and is therefore inviolate. It can not be altered from its basic definition of a man and a woman enjoining for the purpose of living their lives before society.
Further,
Since we hold this right to be unalienable, we do not recognize the right of the state to alter or subtract from it in any way. We do advise you therefore of our concern on the part of some to redefine marriage. We consider such altering as tampering with that over which you have no recognized power. Respectfully we ask that you do recognize the sacrament of marriage as such a right. Governments are instituted among men to secure those unalienable rights, and when governments begin to stray, it is the duty and solemn obligation of the governed to revoke their consent of governance. Be it known to you that we will treat any usurpation of the sacrament of marriage with the utmost suspicion and will hold such usurpation in the lowest regard.
Citizens sign here:
Saturday, March 04, 2006
Emotion and Rationality
I read with interest a doctoral work by Dr. Bahnsen last night on what I would term self deception. The work very scripturally analyzes the facet of human self-deception. The article is probably too lengthy for general interest, but if you like the link is here. At any rate, one of the intriguing contradictions of the modern day world and our apostle Paul is where in Romans One, Paul says that all know God, having seen him clearly in nature.
I believe Paul. The scripture is very plain and couldn’t be clearer. But there is a huge problem; men deny knowing God by the millions, and other millions claim to know him but have made up a false god whom they worship. How can this apparent contradiction be explained?
In thinking about it last night in bed (that is where I have all my really good ideas) I thought that it might be best explained by postulating that man is an emotional creature. He is not a rational creature. In my lifetime, very few times do I manage to bring people away from their beliefs by arguing for rationality—people are far too emotional to give much credence to rationality. The recent riots by Moslems over cartoons are a good illustration of people working from the basis of emotion rather than reason, but our history is replete with many hundreds of examples of emotion ruling us rather than reason. The ripple of high emotion governing our acts as an American people after 9/11 is but one ripple in a never ending tide of human emotion.
Rationality seems to be an unlikely end for mankind; witness the emotion throbbing through the greenhouse effect debate. But more than just an abstract debate, emotion pervades our daily actions. Most of what we say and do is based first in emotion—the smile I have at work for someone I genuinely like is different from my “being nice” smile I reserve for those I do not like. I suspect that the unwritten communication of those smiles do transfer to the recipients in spite of my desires. But that is a discussion for another paper--that of the strength of nonverbal communication. I do think that nonverbal communication is strongly underestimated.
But the point is that we are emotional first and rational second. We decide we like or dislike, and then build our rationality around those likes and dislikes. Dr. Bahnsen’s paper kept coming back to one very good analogy. Let me repeat the gist of that analogy here. Johnny is a child at school who has been caught stealing. The teacher has caught Johnny, the kids have implicated Johnny in stealing, and even the principal has caught Johnny. Well and good, except for the fact that Johnny’s mother does not believe her son would do such a thing. Her perpetuated mythical son becomes stronger than the real son that she knows she has.
Let me even carry the analogy a bit further. Johnny’s mother is missing money from her purse. This is not the first time it has happened. Johnny’s mother rationalizes the missing money saying that she must have forgotten that she had spent it somewhere. In no place in her mind does she allow herself to face the obvious: Johnny is stealing her money. She carefully builds an artificial environment that precludes that one fact that in her deepest recesses she knows is true. She carefully nurtures the myth of her angelic son.
This analogy is so commonplace among teachers that if I were to share it, it would be thought too obvious. Anyone who has been teaching sees the pattern of overly defensive parents refusing to deal with real problems exhibited in their children. My point is that in real life the problem is not limited to parents defending their children, which we would all understand to be a normal even if deplorable reaction. I would submit that it is in virtually everything we do.
Spiritually all know God without even being told, but all of us are like Johnny’s mother. We find ways to deny and rationalize that which we do not want to face. Some of us see the evil and wickedness and tragedy of the world and construct a paradigm for ourselves. Surely a good God would not allow such a world to exist, we reason, therefore such a God does not exist. All the while we are fooling ourselves, for we know God exists. He just does not conform to our definitions. He seldom does because he is God. It is our emotion which dictates our rationality when we deny God.
All of the above discussion was started from Bob’s blog, which is an excellent place to investigate.
Monday, February 27, 2006
The Unsung Death
The denials of our society are profound and almost limitless. I suppose that such denials are indeed the only way that man can not deal with his sin. I have news for you; this is not the way it is supposed to be. We are not to be haunted by the specter of death in our very young and our very old. God had another original plan for us and it did not include death. What a lament it is that the world should shrug off the death of millions of our forefathers.
Shortly before my grandmother of 89 passed away, I was visiting and caring for her. I started wondering about what life was like for someone so old so I asked her. (Those who know me are not surprised by my bizarre wonderings which always do seem to surface.)
“Grandmother,” I asked, “what does it feel like to be 89? I mean you have been both 17 and 89. How is it different to get old?”
Grandmother understood me very well, and deliberated for a few seconds—but only a few. She replied, “Pat, I feel exactly the same as I did when I was 17.”
We went on to chat about it for a few moments, and the whole while I was considering her remark. If she is correct, then the whole of our spirit must spend all of our lives denying death. What an awful thing it would be to have a 17 year old spirit locked in a decaying 89 year old body! The eternal is locked with the bosom of the fragile crystal of the human body. Perhaps that explains why hope springs eternal. Hope, after all, is a part of the consciousness unique to humans; how ready we are to hope even in the face of brokenness.
Of course when God told Adam not to eat of the fruit, He said in the day that you eat of it you shall die. There is another death unseen and unsung that has taken place within us; the death of our very soul. What is it that becomes our soul? It is that which seems to separate us from the animals, for it is said that God breathed into man and he became a living soul. If I may be permitted to extend the metaphor, it is the holy breath of God which made us unique. It is our disobedience which brought us death, which in its first context must mean the death of our very breath of our Creator.
We know from later scripture that death is really a separation from God, a transfer of deed of our souls to Lucifer who would own us forever except for the ransom of the Son. Our society denies this penalty of death, attempting to reduce us to mere animals without consciousness or responsibility. But our spirits rail against this, shouting to our bodies that there is more, so much more.
Right now I am enjoying a powerful storm blowing through my city. It speaks of God, just as much as does the serene green pasture with the blossoming trees. God who spoke to Elijah in the still wind sent his Son as a Babe that the world might be reconciled to Him. But the same God is capable of speaking to us in the awesomeness of the storm; in the return of Jesus, if I am not all out of my reckoning, that will be a major gale, a world-wide Katrina if you will. All of nature does declare the glory of God. A denial of death is ultimately a denial of God. How wonderful it is that we who were dead were made alive again in Christ Jesus. Oh death where is thy sting? Oh death where is thy victory?
Shortly before my grandmother of 89 passed away, I was visiting and caring for her. I started wondering about what life was like for someone so old so I asked her. (Those who know me are not surprised by my bizarre wonderings which always do seem to surface.)
“Grandmother,” I asked, “what does it feel like to be 89? I mean you have been both 17 and 89. How is it different to get old?”
Grandmother understood me very well, and deliberated for a few seconds—but only a few. She replied, “Pat, I feel exactly the same as I did when I was 17.”
We went on to chat about it for a few moments, and the whole while I was considering her remark. If she is correct, then the whole of our spirit must spend all of our lives denying death. What an awful thing it would be to have a 17 year old spirit locked in a decaying 89 year old body! The eternal is locked with the bosom of the fragile crystal of the human body. Perhaps that explains why hope springs eternal. Hope, after all, is a part of the consciousness unique to humans; how ready we are to hope even in the face of brokenness.
Of course when God told Adam not to eat of the fruit, He said in the day that you eat of it you shall die. There is another death unseen and unsung that has taken place within us; the death of our very soul. What is it that becomes our soul? It is that which seems to separate us from the animals, for it is said that God breathed into man and he became a living soul. If I may be permitted to extend the metaphor, it is the holy breath of God which made us unique. It is our disobedience which brought us death, which in its first context must mean the death of our very breath of our Creator.
We know from later scripture that death is really a separation from God, a transfer of deed of our souls to Lucifer who would own us forever except for the ransom of the Son. Our society denies this penalty of death, attempting to reduce us to mere animals without consciousness or responsibility. But our spirits rail against this, shouting to our bodies that there is more, so much more.
Right now I am enjoying a powerful storm blowing through my city. It speaks of God, just as much as does the serene green pasture with the blossoming trees. God who spoke to Elijah in the still wind sent his Son as a Babe that the world might be reconciled to Him. But the same God is capable of speaking to us in the awesomeness of the storm; in the return of Jesus, if I am not all out of my reckoning, that will be a major gale, a world-wide Katrina if you will. All of nature does declare the glory of God. A denial of death is ultimately a denial of God. How wonderful it is that we who were dead were made alive again in Christ Jesus. Oh death where is thy sting? Oh death where is thy victory?
Thursday, February 16, 2006
The Case against Evolution (Part 2)
The Case against Evolution (Part 2)
I hardly know where to start. The subject is huge, the distortions are legion, and many times the arguments are suspect. Evolution has been postulated at least primitively from the time of Aristotle, who noticed the progression of the simple to the complex organisms. Indeed the Bible seems to give some attention to differentiation of species and seems to delineate it in the story of the creation.
But first let me start where I left off in the first part. There is a fundamental difference that cannot be explained away between creation and evolution. Particularly this contradiction becomes more severe to those who choose to interpret the Bible literally. The Bible clearly gives creation happening approximately 6 thousand years ago; neo-Darwinists postulate an earth five billion years old.
In my first part we learned how the creationists have gotten the 6 thousand year figure. In this paper, I do not want to bog down in trying to understand the dating systems of evolution; rather let me say as an outside observer, that the dating systems used by evolutionists have seemed to expand as they realized their need for more time. I might further observe that the dating systems, as I primitively understand them, frequently have to do with things like molecular decay rates. For instance, scientists drill down in polar regions into the ice, measure the carbon dioxide, and then calculate the rate of decay, or the rate of loss, and attempt to measure age in that fashion. Carbon 14 dating works in a similar fashion, though I think it no longer is the darling of dating that it once was.
I speak in the fashion of a layman, and since my arguments reflect my considerable ignorance, I only wish to point out the obvious. The evolutionist assumes uniform decay of ages past, and assumes like conditions to present. His assumptions are as big as the intelligent design arguments. No one can see or speak of what it was like from about 3,000 BC, as the earliest written records of man date from about that time. No one can be sure of origins of man or of the uniformity of dating assumptions, but to hear the evolutionist speak, one would never know that.
It has always seemed to me to be a strange thing for man to take so long to figure it out. I am speaking of the current view that neo-Darwinists have of modern man being around for a million years or so. What did modern man do—sit and twiddle their fingers (when not making cave paintings of dinosaurs and men fighting) around their campfire at night? I am being facetious here. It does seem strange to me that men would take so long to write, speak and build. We ought to see ancient civilization ruins going back hundreds of thousands of years, but where are they? The ancient Greeks glorious civilizations should be repeated a score of times if modern man has been around so long.
It seems to me also obvious that creationists believe in a God who creates things with the appearance of age. When He created the stars, did man have to wait the light years necessary for the light to reach the earth? Or did he create the stars, light on the earth and all? Did God create Adam as a baby or a man? It seems evident that God created frequently things with the appearance of age, and should not be something difficult for the believer to appreciate.
Which brings us to the point of which I am on firmer ground. Evolution in Darwin’s time thought the earth was about one million years old; today the same theory recognizes the need for five billion years. Why the change? The fundamental assumption of evolution is that natural selection and beneficial mutations work together to produce variation and new species. As scientists have seen the rarity of the beneficial mutation, and the lack of species changing from one to another in the fossil record, they have realized that they need much more time for the impossible to happen.
Am I the only one who recognizes the unlikelihood of this happening? No, indeed, many mathematicians in the 60s said the same thing. Let me quote just a couple from the fine work of Pamela Winnick in her A Jealous God. “We have. . . wondered how it appeared extremely unlikely a priori that in the short span of one billion years, due to successive random mutations, all the wonderful things we see now could have appeared,” observed Stanislaw M. Ulsam of Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory.” (p. 122 Winnick)““We believe that there is a considerable gap in the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution, and we believe this gap to be of such a nature that it cannot be bridged with the current conception of biology,” said Marcel-Paul Schutzenberger, and internationally renowned mathematician from the University of Paris and a member of the French Academy of Sciences.” (p. 122, Winnick) Evolutionists historically did not have the same acceptance as scientists and there was a time when this “soft” science was not accepted among the hard sciences such as mathematics and chemistry.
At any rate, evolutionists quickly found out that they did not have enough time for variation to happen and they have been expanding the evolutionary time span ever since then. Stephen Jay Gould, an avowed believer in evolution, and a famous one at that, believed that he saw something the neo-Darwinists did not. His group was “. . . postulating their own theory of “punctuated equilibrium” which holds that evolution progresses in leaps and bounds, often responding to natural calamities that wipe out all those who can’t adapt.” (p. 166 Winnick) Gould went on to announce that neo-Darwinism was “effectively dead”. Gould saw little bursts of evolution happening very rapidly, perhaps because of changes in environment, or for other unspecified reasons. In other words, little miracles made evolution happen. Gould was very angry during his lifetime when creationists seized on his words, but his words do cause huge gaps to open in evolutionary argument. The creationist may reasonably ask whether it is better to believe in lots of little miracles or in one big one.
Darwin cannot be right if he cannot show billions of years to the earth; moreover he cannot be right if he cannot demonstrate one species changing to another. Survival of the strong has been easily demonstrated by Darwinists. What is not demonstratable is the movement of one species to another. The variety of species, with their wonderful differentiation, speaks of a necessary sharp intercession of a creator; I believe that we find that explanation clearly enunciated in the Bible. For 150 years men have speculated about this myth. It is time to collapse the myth and move on. I close with a poignant quote from one good book (if you are looking for a simple treatise on the history and the subject). “Accepting Darwin’s explanation is a little like believing that a piston rod will make a car run a little bit, and then, if you connect it to a crank shaft, it will run a little bit better. Finally, when all the parts are in place, it will get thirty miles to the gallon.” (p. 213, Bethell)
Bibliography
Bethell, Tom, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science, Regnery Publishing, Inc. 2005
Winnick, Pamela R., A Jealous God, Nelson Current, 2005
I hardly know where to start. The subject is huge, the distortions are legion, and many times the arguments are suspect. Evolution has been postulated at least primitively from the time of Aristotle, who noticed the progression of the simple to the complex organisms. Indeed the Bible seems to give some attention to differentiation of species and seems to delineate it in the story of the creation.
But first let me start where I left off in the first part. There is a fundamental difference that cannot be explained away between creation and evolution. Particularly this contradiction becomes more severe to those who choose to interpret the Bible literally. The Bible clearly gives creation happening approximately 6 thousand years ago; neo-Darwinists postulate an earth five billion years old.
In my first part we learned how the creationists have gotten the 6 thousand year figure. In this paper, I do not want to bog down in trying to understand the dating systems of evolution; rather let me say as an outside observer, that the dating systems used by evolutionists have seemed to expand as they realized their need for more time. I might further observe that the dating systems, as I primitively understand them, frequently have to do with things like molecular decay rates. For instance, scientists drill down in polar regions into the ice, measure the carbon dioxide, and then calculate the rate of decay, or the rate of loss, and attempt to measure age in that fashion. Carbon 14 dating works in a similar fashion, though I think it no longer is the darling of dating that it once was.
I speak in the fashion of a layman, and since my arguments reflect my considerable ignorance, I only wish to point out the obvious. The evolutionist assumes uniform decay of ages past, and assumes like conditions to present. His assumptions are as big as the intelligent design arguments. No one can see or speak of what it was like from about 3,000 BC, as the earliest written records of man date from about that time. No one can be sure of origins of man or of the uniformity of dating assumptions, but to hear the evolutionist speak, one would never know that.
It has always seemed to me to be a strange thing for man to take so long to figure it out. I am speaking of the current view that neo-Darwinists have of modern man being around for a million years or so. What did modern man do—sit and twiddle their fingers (when not making cave paintings of dinosaurs and men fighting) around their campfire at night? I am being facetious here. It does seem strange to me that men would take so long to write, speak and build. We ought to see ancient civilization ruins going back hundreds of thousands of years, but where are they? The ancient Greeks glorious civilizations should be repeated a score of times if modern man has been around so long.
It seems to me also obvious that creationists believe in a God who creates things with the appearance of age. When He created the stars, did man have to wait the light years necessary for the light to reach the earth? Or did he create the stars, light on the earth and all? Did God create Adam as a baby or a man? It seems evident that God created frequently things with the appearance of age, and should not be something difficult for the believer to appreciate.
Which brings us to the point of which I am on firmer ground. Evolution in Darwin’s time thought the earth was about one million years old; today the same theory recognizes the need for five billion years. Why the change? The fundamental assumption of evolution is that natural selection and beneficial mutations work together to produce variation and new species. As scientists have seen the rarity of the beneficial mutation, and the lack of species changing from one to another in the fossil record, they have realized that they need much more time for the impossible to happen.
Am I the only one who recognizes the unlikelihood of this happening? No, indeed, many mathematicians in the 60s said the same thing. Let me quote just a couple from the fine work of Pamela Winnick in her A Jealous God. “We have. . . wondered how it appeared extremely unlikely a priori that in the short span of one billion years, due to successive random mutations, all the wonderful things we see now could have appeared,” observed Stanislaw M. Ulsam of Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory.” (p. 122 Winnick)““We believe that there is a considerable gap in the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution, and we believe this gap to be of such a nature that it cannot be bridged with the current conception of biology,” said Marcel-Paul Schutzenberger, and internationally renowned mathematician from the University of Paris and a member of the French Academy of Sciences.” (p. 122, Winnick) Evolutionists historically did not have the same acceptance as scientists and there was a time when this “soft” science was not accepted among the hard sciences such as mathematics and chemistry.
At any rate, evolutionists quickly found out that they did not have enough time for variation to happen and they have been expanding the evolutionary time span ever since then. Stephen Jay Gould, an avowed believer in evolution, and a famous one at that, believed that he saw something the neo-Darwinists did not. His group was “. . . postulating their own theory of “punctuated equilibrium” which holds that evolution progresses in leaps and bounds, often responding to natural calamities that wipe out all those who can’t adapt.” (p. 166 Winnick) Gould went on to announce that neo-Darwinism was “effectively dead”. Gould saw little bursts of evolution happening very rapidly, perhaps because of changes in environment, or for other unspecified reasons. In other words, little miracles made evolution happen. Gould was very angry during his lifetime when creationists seized on his words, but his words do cause huge gaps to open in evolutionary argument. The creationist may reasonably ask whether it is better to believe in lots of little miracles or in one big one.
Darwin cannot be right if he cannot show billions of years to the earth; moreover he cannot be right if he cannot demonstrate one species changing to another. Survival of the strong has been easily demonstrated by Darwinists. What is not demonstratable is the movement of one species to another. The variety of species, with their wonderful differentiation, speaks of a necessary sharp intercession of a creator; I believe that we find that explanation clearly enunciated in the Bible. For 150 years men have speculated about this myth. It is time to collapse the myth and move on. I close with a poignant quote from one good book (if you are looking for a simple treatise on the history and the subject). “Accepting Darwin’s explanation is a little like believing that a piston rod will make a car run a little bit, and then, if you connect it to a crank shaft, it will run a little bit better. Finally, when all the parts are in place, it will get thirty miles to the gallon.” (p. 213, Bethell)
Bibliography
Bethell, Tom, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science, Regnery Publishing, Inc. 2005
Winnick, Pamela R., A Jealous God, Nelson Current, 2005
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