Mar
23

The Power of Illustration

The bible and its authors use some wildly vivid imagery to illustrate how the spiritual and physical worlds are in fact mushed together. Physical actions have spiritual repercussions and I’d go so far as to say the opposite is true as well. For those of us who have less than spectacular imaginations, I found this picture floating around on the interweb that helped me understand some scripture better (or at least more graphically).

And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh. -Ezekiel 11:19

Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. -Romans 13:14

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. -Galatians 2:20

Mar
22

The Challenge of Perspective

John Calvin is a name that should be recognized and a person who should be investigated if you have any stake at all in your relationship with Christ. This is not to say that the sixteenth-century European was super-human, but he certainly was a hero who fought for the supremacy of Christ over everything else. Through his writing, preaching and daily life, he did all things with the purpose of making God shine as brightly as He deserved. In a time where Church tradition and authority often trumped the very Word of God revealed in the Bible, his understandings sharply contrasted the universal church.

While being careful to not lift him up in sinful idolatry, it would be wise to take advantage of Calvin’s writings which stem from a whole-life devotion to Christ and a Spirit-led conviction of scripture. As it’s true for most of our Church fathers, Calvin has put in the hard work so that we, as members of the church, can benefit from them. Reading about what Calvin has to say about Jesus and what our relationship with Him should look like is similar to reading what Tiger Woods has to say about golf and what our swing should look like.

More important to analyze than what this man wrote or did in his life is the heart which drove his actions. This heart screamed that God must be held as the most important thing in our lives, and everything else we live for must point to that belief. This is a radical, radical notion for us today just as it was in the 1500s when it called for a fundamental change in perspective to shift God into the authoritative position that the earthly church had slowly established itself into. Today, however, the challenge is not with elevation of the church, but of the self. And if you’re wondering, this is not directed towards non-believers– just as Calvin’s charge to bring God to his rightful place in our priorities wasn’t either.

Calvin looked the members of the church in the eyes and said, “[Your] zeal for heavenly life [is] a zeal which keeps a man entirely devoted to himself, and does not, even by one expression, arouse him to sanctify the name of God.”

This isn’t just some crazy cult-creating idea that came out of some wild acid trip that Calvin had. This isn’t a new idea that revolutionizes the way we once thought about the world. This perspective of where God should be in our list of priorities lies in Scripture, and is simply an understanding of the very nature of God and the Universe. It’s not a just a fabrication of facts; it’s the unearthing of natural truth.

Let me explain what I mean.

God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.” Exodus 3:14

God calls himself I AM. This is distinctly different from, “I WAS,” or, “I WILL BE,” or even, “I AM FOR NOW.” The way that God reveals his nature to Moses is one that implies eternal existence. God did not start being, nor will he ever stop being. Take a minute to think about this– chew on it and start digesting it. It’s not something that should be glanced over and believed without some serious contemplation.

How does this affect us? First, it shows one of the biggest differences between God and us (there are quite a few). When we first meet people and exchange names, we don’t have the ability to truthfully say, “Hey, you can just call me I AM.” As we sit here reading in the flesh that clings to our bones, we are not eternal– we had a beginning and we will have an end. And here in lies the resulting conclusion that God is eternal and we are not.

Second, this shows how Calvin’s emphasis on making God supreme in all aspects of our lives actually makes sense. Consider this: I had a beta fish named Erwin. Erwin was a beautiful little fish that swam gracefully through the little flower vase that it called home in our apartment.  Now imagine that I made Erwin the center of my life; I would wake up to take care of Erwin, I would write all of my blogs about Erwin, I would eat food to stay alive so that I could be with Erwin, I would read books about Japanese Beta fish so that I could understand Erwin better, I would take swimming lessons so that I could relate to Erwin better, etc. etc. Erwin lived about 2 months (barely) and died.

How silly it would be to make a fish with the lifespan of 2 months the center of my life. If this were true, why is it so much harder to understand that it’s equally silly to make a human with the average lifespan of 77.5-80 years the center of my life?

How different would our lives be if our action’s focus shifted off of ourselves? Being a Christian and believing in Jesus does not automatically make God the center of your life, and Calvin saw that in the church during his time. Let’s bring it back to America, 2010. Is God just the means to an ends? Do we go to bible study just to fulfill some personal checklist? Do we go to prayer meeting just to make ourselves feel accomplished? Do we worship God in music just to get that happy “fluttery” feel? This is what it looks like when a Christian maintains the broken notion that their well-being and existence is eternally significant.

Sliding God into the position of prime importance isn’t easy. It goes against everything we’ve learned, everything we do, even the very way we think. But that’s the story of the gospel– it is truth which stands in radically sharp contrast to our broken nature. Calvin challenged people, out of a sincere love, to soften their hearts and give God the priority he deserves and demands in their lives. I hope to be able to do the same to you, so that God would be glorified as the purpose of our entire lives– not just the means to get by.

Mar
10

Dialogues of Disbelief

For the simple are killed by their turning away,
and the complacency of fools destroys them;
but whoever listens to me will dwell secure
and will be at ease, without dread of disaster.

- Proverbs 1:32-33

I’m finding discussions with people who have doubts about God very exciting and thrilling. I didn’t always feel this way  but I think that’s because I hadn’t explored the questions that others were raising. This left me feeling very unequipped to answer and usually ended with me running away with my tail between my legs. Needless to say, I was not as ease or secure.

Now, I’m not saying that I’ve figured out everything there is to know about God, the Bible, Jesus, and the Gospel. But as I compare conversations that I am able to have now (without fear, but excitement) with those of past, I’m thrilled to find that my pursuit of knowledge and understanding in the last year or so has not been in vain. Having shaky questions and doubts transformed into solid Truths I can stand on has lead me to  feel secure and at ease.

To anyone who is interested in this kind of thing, I thought I’d post a dialogue I had with a person yesterday. This wasn’t a conversation, but a general statement by them (on Facebook) and a response from me. Hopefully this is helpful to you somehow. Even if it just raises some questions and doubts of your own, I think it would be worth the read.

“We are told we have free will, but if we choose against him, we are punished forever.—- This is my problem with christianity.

Christianity sets up an unrealistic standard where simply being human is wrong. We are only bound to fail and this sets us up for the guilt, self-condemnation and can lead to depression because we cannot possibly transcend our humanity.

Examining humanity from a very different perspective and without the lenses of Christianity to blur the focus, I no longer have the black and white, wrong and right thinking that Christianity perpetuates. I embrace humanity for what it is and that is neither good nor bad…. See More

Good judgement comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgement. There is nothinng wrong with making bad choices and failure is part of life. Give yourself permission to fail because without failure you can’t learn from your mistakes.

i have a few problems with blindly following a religion:
Hell—why would God condemn us to hell for something as menial as lack of faith? If he is not infinitely more so loving then me, why would hell even exist? Any true loving being would never condemn his own children to everlasting torment, especially one that proclaims himself to having the very essence of forgiveness.

FREE WILL—It is also written that I was given free will with which to choose if I will go to hell or not. How can you possibly deem something free when you must fear consequences? That completely conflicts with the definition of free. If I were to hold a gun to your head and say “you have free will to not give me your wallet, but if you attempt to defy me I will kill you.” Does it really feel as if you have a choice in the matter? Of course not. Free means to give or receive something with out an expectation of return. The whole free will concept is self defeating. Call it Circumstantial Will, for that is what it truly is.

Despite this, I have still had the displeasure of debating with those Christians who accept hell as a rational and fair wrath of God. They defend Jehovah’s creation of hell with the opinion that those who are committed to hell go voluntary, as if it is a consequence rather then a punishment. That indeed, we as children of God, chose rather to be hell’s inmates then God’s disciples in heaven. It’s an interesting idea. However, you don’t have to hurt anyone to get into Hell. All it takes, according to Scripture, is knowing about Jesus and not accepting him as Savior. It doesn’t matter how virtuous you are, how much good you do, how happy an environment you create for others. Given this, the voluntary entry argument doesn’t make sense.”

A response:

I have been wrestling with many of the questions that you’re raising. They’re great questions and in my studying, I’ve found some of the answers.

I think the first thing you touch on is the condition of humanity. Whether or not you agree, Christianity believes that the condition of man is broken– a result of sin entering the world through Adam and Eve. Now, I’m sure you’ve heard this before, but it only makes sense when we can understand the relationship between man and God. Man was not created and designed to operate in isolation without God. We were created to be with God and to worship God to increase his glory, as it says in Isaiah 43:6-7… See More

With this in mind, “choosing against him” is like choosing against water. Our bodies need it and are designed to use it and to live off of it. It’s no surprise that Jesus refers to himself as living water in John 4. That’s where the notion that denying Him in life is like denying water as you run a marathon– it will absolutely suck and you will die.

You also touch upon good and bad and conclude that there is no good or bad in the judgment of humanity. This is also a rehash of the assertion that there is nothing that is true, and nothing that is false. There are no absolutes in truth. Now I don’t know what this implies philosophically, but I know what it implies logically… which is a fallacy. Now I know this can’t be how you really feel because if you did, there would be no reason to argue over anything, since there is no absolute truth to what you’re arguing. On some level, you must agree that placing a shotgun to a child’s head and blasting away is “bad.” Rape is bad. Genocide is bad. It cannot be neutral to murder an innocent person.

Now I know you agree in the existence of “good” because you use the idea in your next assertion that, “Good judgment comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgment. There is nothing wrong with making bad choices and failure is part of life. Give yourself permission to fail because without failure you can’t learn from your mistakes.”

I agree with all of this but I would challenge you to open your eyes to another truth– experience can also come from good judgment, not just bad. This is the principle of Wisdom– either you can heed the warning of wise people to make a good judgment, or you can ignore it to make a bad judgment, suffer, then learn from it. The crux of Christianity is your last statement about giving ourselves permission to fail. We MUST give ourselves permission to fail and understand that we have failed in order to receive and understand the restoration that God offers to us. Like C.S. Lewis says, “who will take medicine unless he knows he is in the grip of disease?” No one, including you, will need Jesus UNLESS they understand that they have failed where Jesus has succeeded.

I love discussing this stuff because I believe that God is real and in his realness, he makes sense. I mean think about it… if God actually wants to be in a relationship with us (which is what Christianity believes), then He must interact with us through reason and logic, since this is how man relates. When we honestly ask questions with open hearts for answers, God replies and satisfies our desire for understanding.

Here’s my last response to your thoughts on free will. It’s a complicated topic that many theologians spend their entire lives trying to fully understand. At the core of your question is a lack of understanding (or experience) that Christians like myself do not choose to run AWAY from Hell, but run TO Jesus. This is not a lose-lose situation like you have drawn where you either lose $100 from your wallet or die, depending on your decision. It’s a free will situation where you can GAIN $1,000,000,000 or die.

Mar
08

Defending Your Faith

I just finished the book Defending Your Faith by R.C. Sproul which is a crash course in apologetics (the intellectual defense of God, the bible and Christianity). I spent a lot of time believing that God was real and that the Bible was true and basing these truths in my life to my feelings about them. I found, in time, that although this may be enough for me, it’s not the most relateable answer for someone questioning my faith. When someone asks you how you know that God is the actual creator of the universe, or how you know that Jesus actually came to die as a substitutionary atonement for your sins, they want more than the answer that I was always caught giving: “I know it because I just feel it. I just… know it.”

This is a cop-out answer and I urge any believing Christian to do their homework to be able to answer intelligibly, not ignorantly. God makes sense and his relationship with man, biblically, is one of reason and understanding. If the biblical doctrine that God wants to enter into a relationship with man is true, then the way that God interacts with man cannot be above reason and logic, which is the way that man relates. What I’m trying to say is that God makes sense through logic and words to explain himself to people, so there’s no excuse for us to not be able to do so as well.

One of the first places to start, and the last place that R.C. Sproul touches in his book, is the defense of the Bible and it’s authenticity. If you can establish that the bible is authentic and legitimate then you also open the door to the fact that the bible’s claims are authentic and legitimate.

Sure, the bible makes claims to authenticate itself as the word of God that is “breathed out,” by God himself (2 Timothy 3:16), but this shouldn’t be the only answer you give. What you’re saying if you do, in essence, is that “The Bible and it’s claims are true because it says it’s true.” This circular reasoning to illogical and silly. A legitimate defense would require a more external source of authenticity.

Jumping to the idea that the Bible as a book is completely true and it’s claims are correct is quite a big leap. A person aspiring to answer whether or not this is true may start with a more basic question: “Do I have reason to believe that the Bible is even a historic text that accurately portrays events in history?”

To answer this, it’s important to look at what we define as other historic texts. The works of Plato, Herodotus, Aristotle, Sophocles, and Homer are all considered historic texts. We study and analyze them and do not question their authenticity as works produced by “great minds” and thinkers of the ancient world. Here’s something that not everyone knows:

Author: First Written: Time between original and first manuscript copies: Number of original manuscript copies:
Plato 427-347 B.C. 1,200 years 7
Herodotus 480-425 B.C. 1,300 years 8
Aristotle 384-322 B.C. 1,400 years 49
Sophocles 496-406 B.C. 1,400 years 193
Homer 900 B.C. 500 years 643
New Testament 50-100A.D. Less Than 100 years 5,600

Taken from here.

The numbers  speak boldly for themselves. Note that with the exception of Homer, we don’t have copies of the original manuscripts of the other authors until 1,000+ years after they were written! During that time period, we have only 7 copies of Plato’s work, 8 of Herodotus’, etc.

We didn’t even touch on the authenticity of Shakespeare’s work which today stands more legitimately than the bible as a historic text. But here’s another little known fact about his work: “Many people are unaware that there are no surviving manuscripts of any of William Shakespeare’s 37 plays (written in the 1600′s), and scholars have been forced to fill some gaps in his works,” says this commentator.

The New Testament is a different case. Within 100 years of the original writing we have 5,600 copies of the original work found all over Europe and Western Asia.

“We must remember that the Bible was hand-copied for hundreds of years before the invention of the first printing press. Nevertheless, the text is exceedingly well preserved. Again, I pondered this — of the approximately 20,000 lines that make up the entire New Testament, only 40 lines are in question. These 40 lines represent one quarter of one percent of the entire text and do not in any way affect the teaching and doctrine of the New Testament. I again compared this with Homer’s Iliad. Of the approximately 15,600 lines that make up Homer’s classic, 764 lines are in question. These 764 lines represent over 5% of the entire text, and yet nobody seems to question the general integrity of that ancient work. “

I found this fascinating and quite comforting. Although this is by no means the complete and exhaustive reason for believing in the authenticity of the bible, or the wholeness of an apologetic stance on the claims of the bible, it’s a step in that direction. Hopefully this is able to give you more reason to believe in the bible besides just a feeling. Although this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, relating to God by pure feeling can isolate you from being able to share the Gospel with others. This, my friends, is a bad thing.

Regardless of being able to communicate the Christian belief to others, having external evidence in defense of God’s existence sure is encouraging in our crazy full-life devotion to Him.

Mar
08

Incongruity

“They attacked those villages and killed well over 300 people, mostly women, children and the aged,” Mr. Yenlong said. “They killed them unprovoked. Innocent people were massacred.”

I read this article in the NYTimes today that highlighted the fighting between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria. I think news reports like these should be read often to sober us from the intoxication of American comfort. It’s hard, and a “downer,” but also the cost to maintain a correct perspective of the world that we live in.

I know this doesn’t really fluff your pillows but I did manage to find some humor in reading it. More than the content of the article, I found the ads that surrounded such a devastating article to be quite out of place.

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