What you believe pt 5

It was a few years ago, back when I had the discipline of reading through the Bible once per year, and I was in the book of Romans. I had read through about 20 times by then, and had reached that point you get to when you repeat something over and over and you often find your mind wandering. It's like driving somewhere and realizing you were on automatic and being amazed that you did not crash because you can't remember actually doing the driving? I get that way sometimes when reading - I can read an entire couple of pages before I realize that I wasn't paying attention. (Sometimes I have to read to myself out loud now to keep my mind in one place, my mind wanders around so much).

Anyway, I reached the third chapter of Romans one day, and the phrase from v26 jumped out at me: "so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus". It was like a spotlight had suddenly shown down on the page and I realized that I had just read something momentous. All of us evangelicals are familiar with many verses in Romans - there are many good verses about salvation that we learn for evangelism and teach kids in sunday school and other church clubs (1:16, 3:23, 5:8, 6:23 and others come to mind) but I had never noticed this one nor had I ever heard it preached on. What was this "just and the justifier"? It's actually a marker for the place where God's seemingly irreconcilable attributes come together. How so? Let's look at it and hopefully you will agree with me that this is amazing.

Remember that we established that there is a problem philosophically with the seeming conflict between God's love/mercy and his holiness/justice. The problem is this: If you have a judge, and he looks down at the person who, say, murdered your family in cold blood or some other heinous crime, and says "I'm feeling like I should be nice today so you are free to go", you would undoubtedly cry out that the judge was not doing his job. If you were to ask "why did you just let this guy go away without any penalty" and he were to answer "I just want to show love to everybody" you would question the qualifications of the judge. However you felt about "loving everybody", the inescapable fact is that this judge was not doing his job of restraining evil. Now think of a world filled with evil deeds and injustices, and look at the judge of the universe. If (as is made clear earlier in Romans) all people are guilty of sin and therefore deserving of hell, a just God has a problem. If He choses to 'forgive' the sins of some and does not punish them, then He is open to charges of injustice. The universalist (those who believe that everyone is going to heaven) has the same problem. If God looks down at evildoers and says "oh gosh, it's okay, come on up here and we'll call it even" then He is not just, and he is an evil judge because he excuses or tolerates evil.

On the other hand, if God looks down and sees the whole world given to evil and just closes up heaven and says "sorry guys! I guess you are all going to hell. My hands are tied because I am a holy, righteous judge", then we might be tempted to question his love. There is the dilemma. How to reconcile "God is Love" with "I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me"?? If God justifies sinners, He would be unjust. If He punishes all sinners, He is unloving. Now we get to Romans 3:26. Let's look at the context: vs23-26 "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed; for the demonstration, I say, of His righteousness at the present time, so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus."

There is a progression in these verses. The way that we are justified actually demonstrates the righteousness of God, rather than causing Him to look unrighteous. Once there is sin, a just judge must punish it. How to get rid of it? Sin will not go away. And there is nowhere to put it - even if another person agrees to take the punishment for you, he is also a sinner and has his own guilt to die for. It's like the pink spot in "The Cat in the Hat Comes Back". They just sweep it from place to place but that only makes the situation worse. Well, the next part is the gospel. vs 8:3-4a say "For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us...". God provided a sinless substitute, hence the "lamb of God", to be sacrificed as a fitting substitute in our place to take the full wrath of God on evil for us that we might be with him in holiness forever. Really God Himself looked down, saw that we could not be redeemed by our own efforts, came and lived a human life without sin, and offered Himself up to pay for our sins against Him. Remember that the definition of "just" that I previously used: "every sin must be paid for, period." Several things must be true for a righteous substitute:

1. Must be sinless himself (or he will have his own punishment)
2. Must be like us (a moral, sentient being - you could not have a rock sacrificed for you, for instance)
3. Must be willing. It would be evil to just grab some innocent person and kill him for your sins. (If Jesus went unwillingly like in J.C.S. it would be divine child abuse rather than a righteous sacrifice).
   

Jesus Christ fulfilled these things, allowed His life to be taken, and he was "displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood". Now we can turn to Him in faith and be saved, by accepting the gift of salvation given by God in his grace. In this way, he "demonstrate[s] His righteousness" and can be "just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus." This is very heavy. When I realized that this had been there all along and I had never really noticed it my jaw dropped. Wow. So, in a way, though others have chosen many different key verses for Romans, in my view the entire book rotates around 3:26. This is really foreshadowed in verse 17 where Paul is describing the gospel and says "For in it the righteousness of God is revealed". So, God can justify us without being unrighteous or unjust.

Anyway, when you see a paradox in scripture, especially where it concerns the nature of God, look closely and you will see the most amazing, dynamic truths ever. It's like an earthquake fault between two tectonic plates. Where they grind together you can get huge energy released or Mt. Everest. Look at the seeming contradictions and you will soar to heights unimaginable! Praise God!

What you believe pt 4

So, when constructing reality, the whole is often more than a simple sum of the pieces. Especially when the whole is infinite. When you get to the infinite, simple math does not always work the same way. What is half of infinity? Another way to put it: when we put God in a box, what ends up in the box is not God.

Human religions (including many variants calling themselves Christian) have wildly different constructs of who (or what) God is. I think that all of us to some degree look into our own hearts and minds and figure out what God must be like by (a) extending ourselves to a bigger size, saying "what would I be like if I were God" or (b) "what kind of God would I like there to be?" No wonder that there are so many different religions. As Christians, we would say that we believe that God solved that problem for us by revealing Himself. This revelation is not exhaustive or complete - our brains would explode trying to take it all in - but what has been revealed to us is true, even if we do not understand it all. One problem for us is that many of God's attributes seem to our minds to contradict each other, creating a philosophical problem, or paradox. Add to that the human desire to explain everything and our need to be "right" about everything, and there are an infinite number of arguments we can have with each other. Again, this is too huge of a subject for a mere blog, coming out as a stream of consciousness like this. Therefore I want to examine one small aspect of this question, which has been the theme of these posts - the idea of error by subtraction.

If we look at God's self-revelation in the scriptures, we see many attributes. Let's examine a few that we know about:

1. Beneficence: God is good.
2. God is love.
3. Holy: separate from sin, pure.
4. Just: every sin must be paid for, period.
5. Merciful.
6. Omnipresent & Omniscient: everywhere, all knowing
   
7. Omnipotent: all powerful.
8. Personal: has will and intelligence and personality
   

Even a casual reading of this short list opens up all sorts of problems for us. How to reconcile the existence of evil and suffering in the world if God is loving and all powerful and holy and good? How can you possibly reconcile justice and love? How can a loving God condemn people to eternal punishment? Not only do some of these attributes seem to be in direct contradiction to each other, some of them open up lines of thought that take us way out of our comfort zone.

What is man's response? Subtraction. But look how a few various subtractions work out in real life:

Eastern mysticism: Get rid of personal, and you also lose love. God becomes a force, or a pantheistic "everything around us" It is interesting that in many eastern religions with this philosophy, the problem of man becomes that he thinks he exists, which can be fixed by leaving behind our own personality and desires, meditating on nothing until we cease to exist (and reach Nirvana). If God is the great cosmic force and we only suffer because we have broken off and started wanting to live a real life, then a sort of spiritual suicide is the ugly result. Reality doesn't really exist.

Islam: The God of Islam is described as powerful and merciful, but I have been told that they do not describe (or think of him) as loving. He is just in the sense of hating evil but there is a capriciousness to it all - some bargaining (putting good on one side of the scale to balance the evil) and then just hoping that his favor comes to you. Islam is intensely legalistic, with most of its structure consisting of myriads of rules governing every element of daily life. I have read that the rules are as specific as which side to lay on when sleeping, how to correctly pick your nose, how to greet various types of people, which foot to use to first enter a house, etc.

The great american middle: I read an article that described the great american "mush god" who is a loving grandfather and friend. The one you pray to in public meetings who approves of all people, would never punish sin and who you would like to "have a beer with". He will let everyone into heaven (except Hitler and child-molesters of course) and his one other commandment is not to judge the moral habits of others. That leaves out a great many of God's attributes, especially holiness and justice. Really, though, it also leaves out goodness (though believers in that kind of god would argue that point) because it leaves no solution to the problem of evil in the world unless you also drop omnipotence or omniscience. In other words, he doesn't know everything or he can't fix everything.

Most religions drop either Love/Goodness, Holiness/Justice or Omnipotence/Omniscience. These groups of attributes are especially hard to reconcile - sort of like parallel lines going off to infinity but never touching. Can they all be true?

My contention is that the God of Biblical Christianity is the point where all of these lines come together! I know that this is the stuff of a 24 volume tome of advanced theology, but I will try to touch the subject in my next blog. Stay tuned.

to be continued....

P.S. please drop me a line or make a comment if this is interesting or helpful to you as a reader. I would love questions as it will help me think better.

What you believe... pt 3

Looking back at the year before I became a believer I can see that I was developing a curiosity and hunger about spiritual things. One of the most moving things for me along these lines was the musical Jesus Christ Superstar. I loved the music, and I found the story very moving. My 7th grade music teacher had introduced me to it, and my mom and I used to listen to it a lot. Well, an interesting thing happened to me when I became a Christian.

Not too long after I was saved, the musical was going to be broadcast on HBO. My Christian girlfriend's family had HBO and I breathlessly told her about this neat musical that I was sure that she was going to love. She told me that she would watch it. When we met the day after I could hardly wait to hear how much she loved it. It was about Jesus, right? It was a moving story with lots of great songs. We would have something in common. Much to my dismay, she was non-committal. She did not want to dampen my enthusiasm, but it was clear to me that she really did not like it. I was really sort of crushed by this, but it was years later that I understood.

As I got to know the Jesus of the Bible on a personal level, to learn what He is like, I found that my reaction to the musical also changed. Parts of it got less interesting and finally even irritating. What changed? Just my understanding. Why did this picture not match the Person that I was coming to know? Because they left out something major.

As a Christian I understand that Jesus is the great God-Man. John 1:1-3,14 "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being...And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth". Not only is Jesus God in the flesh, he came specifically to die, and he was in control at all times, giving His life of His own accord and at His own terms. John 10:18a "No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again." In the musical, however, the main character, always hidden in the background, is fate. This 'Superstar' Jesus is a great guy who is caught in the web of fate - eventually stuck like a fly in a spider's web, reluctantly assenting to his overpowering Father's will. This is seen in what originally was my favorite song (and later my least favorite song) when Jesus finally gives in to his fate: "Lord, thy will is hard, but you hold every card; I will drink your cup of poison, nail me to your cross and break me - bleed me, beat me, kill me, take me now, before I change my mind." Yikes!

How did this get so backward? They included many of the actual events from the gospels in the show. Certainly they had the same cast of characters. But one very important thing got left out: the deity of Christ. In the musical, he was 'just some guy'. With that one omission, the ENTIRE store changed completely around backwards. Hundreds of pages could be written to talk about the ramifications of Jesus being God and the crucifixion (which I will not detail here). Take that away, and you get a different story, even though the events are the same.

But wait, you say, He did ask for the cup to be taken away at Gethsemane. Yes, He did. He was not surprised by the upcoming event, though, as was portrayed in the show. In actuality, for nearly three years he had been hinting and then openly predicting His torture and death by crucifixion. He declared His intention to go through with it numerous times, and He made it clear that this was the purpose for which He had come to Earth in the first place. So why did He pray this prayer? As He said, " the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." The horror of what He was going to go through was more than his body could take.

So, was Jesus afraid of the cross? That He was going to be beaten? Spit upon? Well, I doubt He was thrilled by it. Crucifixion is one of the nastier ways mankind has devised to kill each other. (one of many hundreds of nasty ways). Nevertheless, it is in the deity of Christ that you really understand what so horrified Him that his human body was sweating drops of blood from thinking about the upcoming day. Through the doctrine of the trinity we understand that there is one God in three persons: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. If we think about it, this gives answers to many philosophical questions that would otherwise go unanswered, like the origin of communications, love, etc. The Bible portrays the Father and Son having a loving relationship for all eternity: John 17:24 "Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world." Note that Jesus always addresses God as his Father, throughout the gospels, except in one place: "About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, 'Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?'—which means, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'". For a brief, three-hour eternity, our sins were placed on Jesus, who bore the punishment in three hours that would have taken us an eternity to pay. That the holy God would do this for us is mind-boggling. But imagine, at this point, what it meant to Him. An eternity of perfect, holy, loving, fellowship is interrupted. There is no fellowship, only wrath. God the Father turns his back on the Son in judgment. Note the pronouns in the gospel account. Jesus says "Father" many many times, then while bearing our sins, he switches from the term of endearment and relationship to a more generic appellation: "My God, my God". We can not now nor through all eternity ever understand the full import of what that was like. This was the depth of the love of God for us, and our reconciliation to God was paid for by the break in fellowship between members of the godhead.

I have more to say about this but this is a good place to take a break. Please consider the love of God for us, and how if we leave out part of the truth about who Jesus was, the story loses its heart and just becomes an ironic tragedy or something, rather than the most profound love story ever. Oh the love of God!

to be continued...

What you believe... pt 2

There are two ways that I want to branch from the previous post. First I will move away from the concept of God to the concept of man (I will go back to God in the next posts).

Just as our concept of God will affect our lives, so will our concept of man. The main example would be the current theory of abiogenesis, or evolution - life evolving from non-life by pure chance. In this view, we are an accident. A chemical reaction. Determined. Without ultimate meaning or purpose. Animals. What comes from this view? A few things come right to mind:

• No morality. Any moral ideas we have are a "societal construct" and "arbitrary". Some may argue that right and wrong should be based on "happiness for the most people" (however you define happiness), or perhaps de Sade's version of Darwinism where the stronger deserves to oppress the weaker (in his case women). Or it can even mean:
• We don't even really make valid choices - it's all chemistry, after all. There are therefore no moral choices made. If person A kills person B, they are not guilty because of a mental problem, or maybe they just ate too many Twinkies (an actual murder defense used here in California), or probably it's their parents' fault.
• Many anthropologists love to point out the (probably faulty) statistic that we are closest genetically to Bonobo monkeys. If you have wondered why those monkeys in particular are so popular with anthropologists, I bet it's because they (according to the nature shows which constantly point this out) have sex constantly and casually with each other as part of their social intercourse (no pun intended). Since we are so 'close' them genetically, morality for us should be based on them! (Remember Psalm 115 "Those who make [idols] will become like them")
• Man becomes 'just another creature on the planet', no more important than some bug somewhere, so we can't farm, or build hospitals, or roads, or power plants, or houses, or drink water, etc., if it displaces any other insect or rodent. Why would we think that we deserve more than them?
• Since we have no meaning, there is no ultimate purpose to living. Cruelty, suicide, drug use - why not? Note that the most murderous regimes in human history (literally killing tens or even hundreds of millions just in the last century) called themselves "scientific" and usually "atheistic". They generally have had a specific hatred for biblical Christianity.

Romans 1:21-25 has some interesting verses about idolatry and its results:

"For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen."

We are always taught that these verses refer to statues and idols worshiped in pagan temples around the world, and I am sure that this is the primary context of the verses, as well as what the Apostle Paul was picturing in his mind as the Holy Spirit had him write these verses. From the first time I read this, however, what jumped out at me is how specifically this seems to describe the evolutionary theory. When we trace our family tree back to "an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures" we are turning away from God to an idol of the worst kind. Yes, it is silly to carve a statue and bow down to it in worship. But evolution has us worshiping cockroaches, bacteria and blind chance.

Now here is the great irony of it all: The more that we try to exalt ourselves by coming out from under God, the lower we end up putting ourselves. "I won't cower down under superstition and religion!" they yell. "We are the pinnacle of evolution!" "the sky is the limit!" "We will evolve into higher beings of light!" But what we get is: we are lower than bugs, we don't control our lives, we are animals, we are chemicals, we are just an accident in a meaningless universe. Whether we end up trying to have as much pleasure as possible in our few short years before we die, or whether we seek power over others, or just kill ourselves, it is interesting that taking God from the equation lowers people to nothing. Oh, sure, many would argue this point and use all sorts of fancy words, but in the end, after years and years of arguing about philosophy, modern man has gone postmodern and does not even believe in reality any more. "Professing to be wise, they became fools". God gives them over. Is that an active thing? I don't think it has to be. A sinful human heart is like a piece of meat. Without refrigeration it rots quickly. Without direction it wanders widely.

I was pleased this week in our FBH (Sunday School to most of you) to hear that Francis Chan used a downward escalator to describe our moral condition. I have used that metaphor for years also since I believe it is a wonderful description of just where we live. If we stand still, our old sin nature is always sinking. We need to look up and climb even to stay even. Without looking up at God the escalator is a very quick downhill ride, where even the best of us can barely stay even in his own strength. (If you don't believe this, try Benjamin Franklin's experiment of making a chart of moral virtues and try to get rid of all moral failings - like laziness, bad temper, overeating, etc - be sure to pick the bad habit that has plagued you for your whole life and just decide that you won't do it any more - see how long that lasts.)

What we believe about ourselves is very important indeed!

...to be continued

What you believe determines who you are

Back in the 80's a visiting missionary to Chad spoke at our church, and his sermon was about "how big is your God?". As a new Christian, I was initially offended - I knew that none of the Almighty God's attributes were dependent on our opinions - just as when I was previously an atheist I rejected the idea that reality was subjective. I had always hated the "it's okay if it's true for you" sentiment, which seemed unscientific and, well, just brain dead. Frankly, the question asked in the sermon seemed silly to me. I have slowly come to see, however, how profound his statements were.

Ps 115:4-8 says of idols (things we set up to worship):
Their idols are silver and gold,
The work of man's hands.
They have mouths, but they cannot speak;
They have eyes, but they cannot see;
They have ears, but they cannot hear;
They have noses, but they cannot smell;
They have hands, but they cannot feel;
They have feet, but they cannot walk;
They cannot make a sound with their throat.
Those who make them will become like them,
Everyone who trusts in them.

It's a two-way street. We create "comfortable" gods or versions of God that we then worship. Then, we become like the gods that we create. The problem is that this is fantasy, and only really works if there is no actual, real God out there. But God is real, He has actual attributes that He has told us about, and we make up things about Him at our own peril. We can't hurt Him with our lies, but Ps 115:8 says that we hurt ourselves. How? Here are a few examples:

• If our God is not omnipotent and good, we end up fearful. Why stick your neck out if you can't really depend on His goodness, or if you think that He is not able to help. Heb 11:6 "And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him." 1 Jn 4:17-18 "By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love."
• 9-11 certainly put the lie to the assertion that "theology is unimportant, as long as you believe in God". The theology of those 19 misguided men was the direct cause of the terrorist attack. They believed that God would be pleased by the murder of tens of thousands of innocents. Theology is unimportant?? Hah! John 16:2:b "...an hour is coming for everyone who kills you to think that he is offering service to God."
• In many eastern religions the socioeconomic and health status of individuals is earned in previous lives. Therefore, the caste systems and the huge amounts of misery in many countries is institutionalized. Not only is there very little attempt to relieve human suffering in some places, it is actually seen as a good thing. If you alleviate the suffering of a sick or poor person or elevate him to a different caste level, you actually can keep them from paying their karmic debt and guarantee more suffering in future lives! James 1:27 "Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world."
• If God does not hate and judge sin, we feel no need to improve or even to control our personal behavior. Hebrews 9:27b "...it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment"
• If God does not love us, we will not have any particular reason to love others. John 3:16 "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life." 1 John 4:19 "We love, because He first loved us."
• If your God is stingy and mean, you will not contribute money or resources to the needs of others (Matt 25:14-30 parable of the talents)
• If God is not personal and/or so different from us there is no possible connection, we will not seek to understand or know Him and we will wander in our own thoughts. Genesis 1:26 "Then God said, 'Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness'". Jeremiah 31:34 "They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,' for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them," declares the LORD, "for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more."
  

to be continued...

Here it is.

Don't expect lots of "I'm tired today" types of posts. That's what really bores me about Facebook. Do people really think that everybody wants to know if your big toe is itchy today? :-) I expect that I will talk about politics and religion, mostly. I think that how people work together and what their meaning in life is are too great to leave to the "we don't talk about these things because it makes people mad" attitude. That concept drives me bonkers. Seriously, have people become so shallow that it is the very things that affect so many people and shape the destiny of a person, a country, a planet, are things that we must never talk about?? Imagine if the founding fathers of this country had had that attitude. We would certainly not be the country that we are. And why are agnostics so proud of not knowing anything, anyway? Shouldn't they be the most diligent searchers after truth, since they "admit" they don't know? There should be a 12 step group for that: "Hello, I'm Sam and I am an agnostic". "Hi Sam!" :-)