God And Reconciliation

One of the things that’s hard for people to grasp is our unworthiness to be in relationship with God. God pretty much needs to spell it out because most of us compare ourselves to, well, us. So we look at our lives, our behavior, our attitudes, and it’s pretty easy to find someone who is doing life in a way that we can look down on. So if we start to feel bad about ourselves, we simply say, Well, at least I’m not as bad as ____. You fill in the blank.

Pretty much everyone can fill in the blank with somebody. Even the worst people we can think of. Hitler. He likely would have said, Well, at least I’m not a Jew. Though he actually did have Jewish blood. The point was, he had people he looked down on, people he said he was better than. Never mind that he was vile for doing so. In his mind, he could sort of congratulate himself for being better. And in his case, being under the influence of the ideas about a Superman race, Hitler likely thought he was better than most people on the planet.

I suspect most people, most tyrants even, do the same: they think they are better than some person, some group, and therefore, doing just fine, thank you very much.

God doesn’t measure us that way. He looks at our nature which causes Him to turn away. He doesn’t hold up some list of Do This and determine who is better at obeying then the others. He doesn’t grade on the curve. It’s pretty categorical: humans have sin in their DNA. All humans. All are therefore separated from God.

That would be the end of the story except for one thing. God loves us. Mysteriously. Surprisingly. Unearned. Without justification.

But God demonstrates His own love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)

So the story’s not ended. There is still hope. The only thing necessary on our part is to accept God’s free gift of grace and righteousness in Christ Jesus. Because Jesus doesn’t have a sin nature and He will clothe us with His nature, if we let Him. Then we will be in Christ.

Anyone not in Christ still has the same ol’ problem: measuring himself against others of like kind, ranking himself above some other poor soul, and finding solace that he’s therefore doing just fine. But slavery to sin is not fine. Paying the penalty of sin is not fine. Living apart from God is not fine.

These are all things that God offers to change.

Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only this, but we also exult in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation. (Romans 5:9-11; emphasis mine)

If we’ve received the reconciliation. God doesn’t force us to accept his free gift.

Those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ. (Romans 5:17b; emphasis mine)

Just like revelation, God initiates reconciliation. He makes it available, but without violating His sovereignty, He puts His free gift out there for us to receive or to reject. No one is condemned for the stuff we do. Only for thinking we don’t need Jesus as our Savior.

For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. (John 3:17-18)

The part of the equation I don’t understand is why someone would not accurately assess the problem and/or accept a free gift. I mean, nothing has changed from the time God told Adam he would die if he ate of the forbidden tree. He ate, and he condemned to death the entire human race along with him. People have died ever since. I don’t think evolution even has an explanation for death, though I could be wrong about that.

Evolution doesn’t have an answer for how intelligence came from non-intelligence, how life came from non-life, how moral beings sprang from amoral beings. Does it postulate a theory about how death comes from life?

God gives a clear explanation: death is a consequence, but it doesn’t have to be a final one. God made a way of escape, a way out of the endless cycle of sin and death. A way to reconcile us to Himself.

God And Revelation

I know this thought is not particularly profound, but I am struck by the necessity of, the utter dependence on, the helplessness which we have without the revelation of God—His character, His purpose, and His plan.

There really is no way we can reason ourselves to God. We might have a sense of intuition that opens us up to God’s existence, but that inner tug would not actually bring us any closer to God. In truth, God has to be the initiator if we are to have a relationship with Him. The lesser can’t move toward the greater.

Think about it this way: does a puppy pick out an owner or does a human pick the puppy he wants for a pet? Does the child choose his parent, even in cases of adoption? Does an individual choose his ethnicity? None of those happens because the lesser is not in charge, even to the point of knowing what life will be like in relationship to a particular owner or parent or ethnic group.

Rather, the greater chooses the lesser, or defines him.

When it comes to God, He is so transcendent, it’s hard to imagine that a human would ever come up with the idea of God—perfect, all powerful, present everywhere, unchangeable, infinite, knowing everything, and more. I mean, the human experience is sort of the opposite: fallible, temporal, moral, limited, without power, fickle, and more.

Sure, there are some qualities of God that we humans also have, in a limited capacity—things like love and forgiveness and kindness and wisdom—so it’s foreseeable that someone who wanted to invent a god would give him those traits. But who would conceive of something we humans don’t have? And not just humans, but which no creature in existence has.

Yes, it’s possible for imagination to take us to that which we have never experienced, such as unicorns (though we know what creatures with horns look like) or vampires (though we know what fangs are, what blood is) or hobbits (though hairy feet are not so different from hairy faces). But making something up and understanding that it is imaginary is something completely different from making something up and saying that is real.

Beyond God’s obvious qualities, there are the mystifying aspects of His nature such the trinity. God is one, and yet He is three. Who would make up such a difficult concept? Jesus is a man and Jesus is God. How would we ever conjure up such an impossibility?

Where would we get the idea that God breathed His life into humans and that sets us apart from all other created things? Where would we get the idea that God’s Spirit breathed inspiration into the written word, so that it is the work of individual people but also the exact word of God? How would anyone come up with the idea that justice and mercy are compatible qualities God exhibits?

Furthermore, who would invent sin? Why would anyone purposefully doom the entire human race? And then conceive of a rescue plan that cost only God?

I could go on. The point is, what the Bible tells us about God—His person, His working in the world, His long range objectives—is a bit outlandish and beyond the realm of human thinking. Except for revelation. God needed to tell us what He’s like. And He has.

Faith In Christ Is Falsifiable

“Falsifiable” seems to be a scientific argumentation tool to sort out what is or isn’t true, what does or doesn’t exist. One definition states it this way:

Unfalsifiability (also known as: untestability) Description: Confidently asserting that a theory or hypothesis is true or false even though the theory or hypothesis cannot possibly be contradicted by an observation or the outcome of any physical experiment, usually without strong evidence or good reasons.

The way it works is like this:

A statement, hypothesis, or theory has falsifiability (or is said to be falsifiable) if one can conceive an empirical observation or experiment which could refute it, that is, show it to be false. For example, the claim “all swans are white” is falsifiable since it could be refuted by observing a single swan that is not white. (Wikipedia)

I’ve encountered a number of atheists who use this tool against Christian arguments in support of the existence of God. In truth, the supernatural does not pretend to be “scientific,” so it ought not be held to the standard of scientific investigation, but that fact seems to escape those who pull the “falsifiable” card every now and them.

However, it dawned on me the other day that falsifiability can serve Christianity as much as it can the atheist position.

The first thing I noted was that this claim of Scripture—the wages of sin is death—is clearly falsifiable. If someone could be identified as without sin who also did not die, then the Biblical principle would be proved to be false. But the opposite is true. While the statement is falsifiable, all people sin and all people die.

So Christianity is true in its assessment of humankind’s problem.

In addition, we know that Christ’s resurrection was falsifiable: all anyone every, at any point in history, had to do to disprove the resurrection was to reveal a body or a tomb containing a body. Since that never happened, the truth of Christ’s resurrection must be affirmed.

In a quirky sort of reversal, falsifiability can also prove what saving faith looks like, I think.

Any number of current atheists claim that they were once Christians. But the claim of Christianity is that saving faith continues:

yet He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach—if indeed you continue in the faith firmly established and steadfast, and not moved away from the hope of the gospel (Col. 1:22-23a)

That statement would be false if one example of a person who continued in the hope of the gospel and was not saved, could be found.

Of course who does or doesn’t have saving faith isn’t for us to determine, so maybe the idea breaks down there, but it seems to me that the possibility exists and yet has no evidence to support it, which should prove the statement to be true: only those who continue in the faith are saved.

Of course there’s always the question about the prodigal. Since Jesus told the story of the son leaving his father, making a royal hash of his life, coming to his senses and returning home with the intention of taking a servant’s position, only to be met by his father and treated like the son he was—since Jesus told that story, it seems pretty clear that prodigals are real, and welcome.

Since Jesus also told the thief dying on the cross beside Him that the man would be with Him in paradise, the idea of “continuing” doesn’t seem to include any kind of time limit, like, you need to be at this for at least XXX number of days or years.

If fact, Jesus told a story about that too. An employer went out to hire day laborers, came back at various times, including the last hour of work. When he paid them, he gave all the same amount, the last as much as the first.

I have to admit, that used to bug me. I mean I was raised with the good old capitalist mindset that you got paid for your work. But God’s ways are higher than our ways. As it turns out, He’s not grading on our efforts. Rather, we who come to the cross of Christ, be it early or late, can claim reconciliation with God through His blood and our faith in what He’s done, not through our efforts.

If a person has that faith, he or she has that faith. It’s not a “I used to, but now I don’t” proposition. How could it be? God either accepted Christ’s sacrifice for sin, or He didn’t. We either believe the sacrifice paid for our sins, or we don’t.

The question is, I guess, can you change your mind? Well, that’s not falsifiable. Did you have saving faith and then give it up? There’s simply no evidence to verify that claim.

Saving Truth Blog Tour

I have the privilege of being part of the blog tour for the apologetics book Saving Truth by Abdu Murray which has been available for purchase now for one whole week. I’ve already written a number of posts based on what I was learning from the book. It’s a deep well. Hence, I’m happy to tell others about the book, to recommend it unequivocally.

Abdu Murray establishes his premise—that western culture has passed into a post-true era that essentially dismisses the question, “What is truth” in favor of the question, “What’s your opinion, based on your perceptions and feelings?”

In the opening chapters Murray does a masterful job explaining how this post-truth mindset brings on chaos and confusion. As a result, any number of “truth claims” clash. There’s no rational, logical, consistent way of looking at the world, at society. At one university campus, for example, an atheist received such a negative reaction, he was dis-invited to a particular event because he took a stand against Muslims. But at the same campus, violent protests prevented a conservative speaker from taking the podium.

I especially appreciated this perspective because I have repeatedly decried the inconsistencies that have taken hold of society. So on one hand the powers that be claim science and only science can be taught in school when addressing the origin of the universe. But on the other hand, those same powers say a person can determine his, her, its, gender identity, not based on the observable science at all but on what the individual feels like inside.

Abdu Murray sensitively addresses the issue of gender confusion in one of the chapters in Saving Truth entitled “Clarity about Sexuality, Gender, and Identity.” Interestingly, Murray expresses deep understanding for those in the throes of confusion, in part because of the identity upheaval he himself experienced as a Muslim who converted to Christianity.

Many of his remarks brought to mind Rosaria Butterfield who was an English professor steeped in feminism and the LGBT community, until she found Christ. As Murray expressed, Butterfield found the radical change from leaving one group and embracing a vastly different one, to be somewhat unsettling. I can well see why Abdu Murray’s remarks on this subject are full of compassion, while providing the clarity promised in the chapter title.

Clarity is precisely what this muddled post-truth society needs, and Murray includes other particular topics: science and faith, religious pluralism, human dignity, and freedom.

I found Murray’s remarks on the subject of freedom to be particularly enlightening. He explained that what the society based on personal perceptions and feelings is looking for is autonomy, not actual freedom. (See this post for a more complete discussion on the subject.) Autonomy, or self-rule, wants to throw off external authority in order to “have things my way.”

As I read the opening chapters of Saving Truth , I not only found clarity, but I began to wonder just what solution Murray could offer readers as we do our part to “save truth,” to reverse the trend, to restore the absolute in place of the chaos and confusion.

I’ll be honest, I should not have been looking for some human magic bullet that would sway our society away from the way of the world. I know better, but when I came to the end of the book, I felt humbled before the infinite Creator actually does know the end from the beginning and has not been caught off guard by the trends of our time.

It was a powerful ending. Clarifying, just as the chapter titles promised.

Who should read this book? I wish people who are think all religions are basically the same would read it. I wish those confused about sexual identity—their own or someone else’s—would read it. I wish those uncertain about the origins of the universe or the place humans play in the scheme of things or ones struggling against authority would read this book.

I don’t know if any of those people who desperately need the book will pick it up. Are they looking to find the answer to Saving Truth?

Perhaps just as important, and perhaps more realistic would be for Christians who want to understand these issues better, who want to know what to say to the people in their world who struggle with these ideas, to read the book, even to study it with like-minded people. I’d go so far as to say, Christians who are engaged in our culture, who take our faith seriously, well benefit in innumerable ways from reading Saving Truth.

Deductive Reasoning

One thing that surfaces in almost all discussions I have with atheists is that they contrast faith and reason. Christians don’t, and logically the two should not be pitted against one another. Rather, the opposite of faith is unbelief.

Jesus identified “witnesses” to His identity as Messiah. In John 5 He named the following as witnesses: John the Baptist, the works that He did (such as feeding 5000 with a few loaves and fish, healing lepers, casting out demons, stopping a storm with a word, raising a dead man, and others), the Scriptures (specifically Moses’s writing), and the Father Himself.

The author of the book of Acts starts out by saying this about the resurrection of Christ: “To these [the apostles] He also presented Himself alive after His suffering, by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over a period of forty days and speaking of the things concerning the kingdom of God.”

I could go on, but the point should be clear: God never intended people to check their brains at the door and enter into some kind of “against all reason” state in order to believe. Quite the opposite. In fact, the first five books of the Bible are history. They include genealogies and place names and natural events and historical figures that would anchor the circumstances in time for the people who lived then.

And for those of us who were not alive at the time? How are we to know that these things really happened? There are a number of tools we can use: science (much to the dismay of those who embrace scientism, or a belief in only natural phenomenon—I’ll go into this in more depth in another post), archaeology, prophecy, the unity of Scripture.

The point is this: all history has been pieced together, and the events of the Bible are no different. Some things have not been verified by some extra-Biblical source, but some things, like the resurrection, which could have easily been demonstrated to be false, has no record of such—only accounts of witnesses.

The real problem is that some approach the Bible with a bias against the supernatural. That’s scientism, not science. Science would come to the issue with an open mind, not with an assumption that the supernatural does not exist.

And yet, time and again, “experts” who oppose the Bible admit that they simply do not entertain the possibility that what they cannot see does in fact exist.

The double irony is that those same people claim that the universe came from . . . they know not where or how. But definitely not from God.

This is where deductive reasoning comes in. When someone is piecing together evidence in order to determine the truth of a matter, all the facts are considered and the most reasonable explanation is the one left standing. In other words, by eliminating the things that are not possible or reasonable, the actually can be determined.

One article that addressed the issue of the reasonableness of the universe coming into being on its own includes this statement:

A system requiring such a high degree of order could never happen by chance. This follows from the fact that probability theory only applies to systems with a finite possibility of occurring at least once in the universe, and it would be inconceivable that 10(158) different trials could ever be made in our entire space-time universe.

Astro-physicists estimate that there are no more than 10(80) infinitesimal “particles” in the universe, and that the age of the universe in its present form is no greater than 1018 seconds (30 billion years). Assuming each particle can participate in a thousand billion (10 [12]) different events every second (this is impossibly high, of course), then the greatest number of events that could ever happen (or trials that could ever be made) in all the universe throughout its entire history is only 10(80) x 10(18) x 10(12), or 10(110) (most authorities would make this figure much lower, about 10[50]). Any event with a probability of less than one chance in 10(110), therefore, cannot occur. Its probability becomes zero, at least in our known universe. (“Probability and Order versus Evolution”)

The thing about numbers, they can be massaged and manipulated to say pretty much anything. But deductive reasoning is not so easily fooled. Does life come from non-life? I have never heard of that occurring. Do matter and energy come from nothing? That postulation doesn’t seem reasonable. Does intelligence come from non-thinking? That hardly seems possible—how could something lacking intelligence even conceive of intelligence, much less come up with a way to develop it. To think that the intelligence was a mere quirk, a mutation, is perhaps as great an improbability.

In short, without going into much depth, deductive reasoning says there has to be something or Someone who brought about the universe. It simply is not credible to believe it manufactured itself.

Light In A Dark Place—A Reprise

Particularly memorable for me is a scene in C. S. Lewis’s The Last Battle. A group of dwarfs have followed the band of Aslan-followers into a rundown shed.

Inside Lucy, Peter, and the other Aslan-followers find sunlight and growing things. It’s like Narnia of old. The dwarfs, however, huddle in a corner, afraid and wary.

The children try to coax the dwarfs out of the huddle they’re in with some fresh fruit. However, the dwarfs grouse and complain about the dark, about the smelly hay Lucy is trying to force on them. In the end, they remain blind to the beauty around them while the children who follow Aslan move further up and further in. The walls of the cottage are simply gone. All of Narnia, newer and better, is before them.

Whatever C. S. Lewis intended with that scene, I think it accurately portrays the difference between those of us whose spiritual eyes have been opened and those still blinded—by sin, and doubt, the world, riches, worries, the idol of self-effort, what have you.

The thing is, none of us can do a single thing to restore sight. We can plead with God to restore sight, but we can’t do it. Not for ourselves and not for anyone else.

So, do we pray for the blind and walk away?

Not if we take seriously what Jesus said.

You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden; nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven (Matt. 5:14-16).

It seems to me our job is to shine our light—not in a closet, but out in the open where people are looking.

I think that makes some of us uncomfortable. Maybe we mix up what Jesus said about praying in secret and giving in secret with doing good works. Our prayers and our alms-giving are not supposed to be done in a way that has people noticing what we’re doing.

But when you give to the poor, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving will be in secret; and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.

When you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full.

But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you (Matt. 6:3-6).

So prayer and giving—in secret. Good works—out in the open.

But there’s another key. When our good works get attention, they ought not earn us applause. Our good works should spur others to give God glory.

That’s the other part that makes us uncomfortable, I think. How do we get people to credit God, not us, for something we do for His kingdom?

The “ah, shucks, it wasn’t much” approach comes across as false humility and in the end belittles the good work and consequently the one receiving it and God who should receive the glory.

The Apostle Paul didn’t seem to have this problem. When he healed a lame man in Lystra, the people started calling him and Barnabas gods. Their response?

When the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard of it, they tore their robes and rushed out into the crowd, crying out and saying, “Men, why are you doing these things? We are also men of the same nature as you, and preach the gospel to you that you should turn from these vain things to a living God (Acts 14:14-15a, emphasis added).

Perhaps we get confused about who’s light we’re shining, and that’s why it feels uncomfortable to us to deflect praise to God.

If someone handed me the keys to someone else’s car, should I stand around hemming and hawing as if somehow to refuse to take the keys that don’t belong to me is an embarrassment? Why would it be embarrassing? They don’t belong to me. It’s just a straight, matter of fact. “Oh, perhaps you misunderstood,” I’d say. “Those keys aren’t mine. They belong to someone else.”

So with praise that belongs to God.

The source of the light in this dark world is God Himself which is why the praise should be His.

This article is a revised version of one that first appeared here in May, 2011.

Look, Mom, No Hands

This isn’t really a Mother’s Day post about my mom who has been deceased these past 16 years, but I’ll dedicate it to her. It’s actually a devotional meditation posted originally January 2011.

– – – – –

Kids love the spotlight. They run, jump, turn somersaults, dive into the pool, what have you, then rush back to the adults close by. “Did you see me, did you see?” they ask.

Inevitably their antics get braver and bolder. When I was growing up, one such bit of tomfoolery was to walk up the stairs on the piece of each step outside the railing.

I remember, too, learning to ride a bike. For some time I had training wheels, but eventually those came off, and I was on my own. The initial fear I felt when the safety wheels were no longer in place soon gave way to confidence.

And one day there came a time when I could balance well enough that I could take my hands off the handlebars.

“Look, Mom, no hands.”

For some reason, Mom wasn’t as thrilled as I was over this new development. She knew what I didn’t — that even a small pebble in the road could upset the balance I enjoyed, and consequently upset the bike, and me along with it.

I suffered a bike accident or two in my day. One was on gravel and tore up my elbow and knee. Another gave me a concussion and landed me in the doctor’s office (so they told me).

Funny thing, I wasn’t so quick to relinquish the handlebars any more. In fact, I was more inclined to grip tight. When I was ignorant of the dangers, I showed off my perceived independence from the mechanism that kept me moving forward. But when I learned of them, through the hard knocks of accidents, I began to cling tightly.

So it is in our spiritual lives, I think. In our spiritual immaturity we may think we can manage on our own: Depend on God … for everything? Why would I do that? He’s given me a brain. Doesn’t He expect me to use it?

Well, yes, but He also delights in being involved with His children, in giving and loving beyond our expectations. And He knows our weaknesses. He knows what tares can do to wheat.

He warns us and woos us and reaches out His hands, inviting us to take hold and hang on, to cling and never let go. And we do. For a time. But then we start feeling comfortable and self-assured. I can do this, we think, and we loosen our grip, maybe even let go, just for a second. “Look, Dad, I’m on my own.”

It’s a sure recipe for disaster, except for God’s sustaining love.

The steps of a man are established by the LORD,
And He delights in his way.
When he falls, he will not be hurled headlong,
Because the LORD is the One who holds his hand.
– Ps 37:23-24

I might not cling to Him as He wants me to, I might be prone to wander. But God isn’t show-boating or feeling the need for independence. He’s looking after His children, even we who need to learn our lessons the hard way.

Daniel, Head Magician—A Reprise

When the first Harry Potter book came out, it quickly became embroiled in controversy largely generated by Christians who were opposed to a book about magic written for children. I understand the thinking. It’s not my intention to rehash the issue, but I can’t help but make a comparison: Harry with Daniel.

Yes, I’m referring to the Daniel-in-the-lions’-den Daniel. First, both were teens. Well, Harry was only eleven when the books started, but he grew up before the eyes of his adoring public. Daniel was a teen at the beginning of his true story and became an old man by the end.

Second, both lived as aliens and strangers. Harry was a gifted, powerful wizard living with people who hated and feared him because of it. Daniel lived with people who had captured him and held him as a slave.

Third, and this is really the point of this post, they were both gifted in magic. Harry’s magic, of course, is pretend. He could learn how to mix potions, wave his wand just so, incant spells, fly his broom—things which are make-believe. Daniel learned, too—the language and literature of the Chaldeans. Did that include their astrology, necromancy, sorcery? Hard to say.

We know he interpreted dreams, starting with the one Nebuchadnezzar wouldn’t describe. But he had already earned a spot as one of the “magicians, the conjurers, the sorcerers and the Chaldeans” marked for death, because it appeared no one could do what the king demanded.

And Daniel’s reward when he did actually give the king the dream and its interpretation? He was promoted. Among other duties, he became chief of the magicians (see for example Dan. 4:9).

Think about that for a moment. He not only lived among those people who worshiped idols, but now he was head of those who used the dark arts to guide their king in his decisions. Talk about being in the culture!

But Daniel and his three friends early in their captivity made up their minds that they would not defile themselves. At issue in those days was what they were to eat. Seemingly, Daniel knew the Mosaic Law, and he intended to abide by it.

We know years later he was still maintaining a regular prayer life, one that was not secret. He lived, as he intended, in communion with God.

And yet his job was chief of the magicians.

I imagine these were people like the Egyptian sorcerers who matched miracles with Moses and Aaron for a short time. In other words, they had real power—just not God’s power.

And Daniel was their chief.

I find that incredible! Today many Christians run from reading about pretend magic, and Daniel was put in charge of real magicians, people who knew how to read the heavens.

Sure, some of what they did was undoubtedly a scam. I suspect that’s why Nebuchadnezzar came up with his impossible request: they were to first tell him what he dreamed, and only then interpret it. I imagine he was fed up with what he had detected to be party-line interpretations. He wanted to know what the dream actually meant, not whatever flattery those fakes might come up with.

But later if they were all fakes, all the time, and Daniel was their chief, why wouldn’t he simply clean house and get good, honest Jews in their place, men like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego whom he could trust? He could have turned the magicians’ arm of the government into a Christian uh, a department run by believers in the One True God.

Of course, Daniel might have been the only person God gifted with the power of divination among the Jewish exiles. But what did he think of the pagan diviners? That they were illegitimate? That they were tapping into the power of the evil one? That they were just one more evidence of the sinfulness of the nation in which he was forced to live? Did he respect them? Or did he squelch them as often as he could?

They owed him their lives because they were due to be executed, but that fact didn’t stop the from coming up with a scheme to get Daniel killed. Clearly, there was no love lost on their part.

Why all this speculation?

I think Christians today in the Western world tend to run scared when it comes to evil. I know I have. I’ve been places where offerings were made to idols, and I sensed evil in a way that freaked me out. But I think that plays into Satan’s hand. The truth is, he is not stronger than God—that would be He who resides in the heart of every Christian. Why are we running scared? it should be Satan running scared when he sees us advancing on our knees.

This post is an edited version of one that appeared here in May, 2012.

The Lord Is In His Holy Temple—A Reprise

Habakkuk had it right when he wrote, “The Lord is in His holy temple.” That statement stood in contrast to the idols of wood, overlaid with silver and gold that the people of Israel were guilty of worshiping.

What profit is the idol when its maker has carved it,
Or an image, a teacher of falsehood?
For its maker trusts in his own handiwork
When he fashions speechless idols. (Hab. 2:18)

I find it interesting that the idol is without profit, yet it is the teacher of falsehood. In other words, it cannot answer prayer; it cannot save, but it is fully capable of deceiving. The idol, a product of a craftsman’s talent and skill, induces him to believe in himself.

“Believe in yourself” is the current mantra of Western civilization. It’s an acceptable theme in children’s literature, one that is sure to garner little opposition. Who would tell someone else to doubt himself?

Well, essentially God does.

The heart is more deceitful than all else
And is desperately sick;
Who can understand it? (Jer. 17:9)

If the heart is more deceitful than all else, why would a person want to look within for his source of strength, why would he trust in himself rather than in God? He wouldn’t. So trusting himself over God is tantamount to calling God a liar.

To get to that point, of course, a person also must put himself up as God’s judge. This person, in his vast wisdom and knowledge, can make the determination whether or not God is right to say the heart is more deceitful than all else. How ironic! A deceitful heart, deciding whether or not hearts are deceitful.

Sadly, our culture is training us to abandon reason, abandon authoritative truth and moral absolutes in order to believe whatever we wish to believe.

Enter God’s word.

But the LORD is in His holy temple.
Let all the earth be silent before Him. (Hab. 2:20)

A person who believes in himself will still one day meet his Maker face to face, and what is he going to say? I did it my way? I followed my dream?

Yes, God will say, you believed in the wooden idol you carved out for yourself, your own speechless handiwork. And how is that working out for you?

This post is repeat of one that appeared here in May, 2012.

God Is Not Benevolent

One of the “faults” atheists find with God, and apparently some professing Christians share this thinking, is that He shows Himself in the Old Testament to be wrathful. The first conversation I had with someone about this subject made me think we simply were not defining “wrathful” in the same way. She, I believed, meant that God was quick to anger, that he “flew off the handle” easily, and that He was capricious about when and why He “lost it.” I knew He wasn’t any of that.

Apparently I was wrong about her definition. She meant that God was wrong for punishing the unrighteous.

There are indeed those in the world who think God errors because He judges sin. His wrath, then, isn’t acceptable in any form. There simply isn’t room for a god who doesn’t bend his will toward making life better for the universe. Only if he did so, in this view, would he be a benevolent god.

And clearly, so these thinkers say, the God of the Old Testament is not benevolent.

I agree with this conclusion. The God of the Old Testament, who happens to be the same as the God of the New Testament, is not benevolent by those standards. The Oxford English Dictionary defines benevolent as “well meaning and kindly.” Ah, but as C. S. Lewis reminds us, God is good, not simply well meaning and kindly.

God does not “mean well” in the sense that He’s hoping for the best and trying to help and aiming for what’s good. NO! God is good, does good, brings about good. But good is defined on His terms.

I can say it would be good for me to sell my book for a million dollars. But my understanding of good is limited and finite. I don’t know if a million dollars would make me happy or angry at people who I perceive as trying to leech off me once I got some cash. I don’t know if a million dollars would change my perspective so much that I’d stop doing things of value like writing blog posts and doing freelance editing. I don’t know if a million dollars would make me more prideful, self-centered, and egotistical that I’d lose all my friends. And most importantly, I don’t know if a million dollars would become my idol, if I would worship it in God’s place.

God knows these things, however, and may, for my benefit here and now, in this life, prevent me from getting a million dollars. I also have no doubt that God could give me a million dollars if that were truly for my good—if it would bring me closer to Him, cause me to serve Him more truly, make me conform more closely to the image of His Son. What’s a million dollars to the Owner of the cosmos?

But He withholds what would harm His people in the same way that a good parent doesn’t give a three-year-old candy for breakfast just because she asks. God knows better than we do what is truly good.

God Himself is good, so we can conclude that His judgment is good as well. When He says, the wages of sin is death, that’s not an arbitrary judgment—that’s the testimony of an all knowing Creator. Much the way that a policeman might point to a sign and say, this is a handicap parking zone; you’ll get a ticket if you park here, God has made plain what disobeying His righteous standards will cost.

Someone who didn’t know what the handicap parking sign meant would be grateful that the policeman told him. They wouldn’t rail against him because he didn’t tear the sign down and let them park in the specially marked spot, and they certainly wouldn’t ignore the warning and park there right under the watchful eye of the policeman.

But that’s what many people want of God—that He would ignore justice for them. Of course, few want Him to ignore justice for those they consider enemies, but they reserve their idea of His benevolence based on how He treats them.

Jesus told an interesting story about a man who thought much as these people do. He owed a debt so great he could never manage to pay it back in his life time–the equivalent would be millions of dollars. His creditor said all the man owned would have to be sold and he himself would go into servitude until he paid his debt. The man begged for more time. The creditor had compassion on him but instead of giving him more time to pay, which was really an impossibility, he forgave him the entire debt.

The man left and immediately ran into a fellow worker who owed him the equivalent of about ten thousand dollars. The man grabbed his co-worker and demanded that he pay up or he’d have to sell everything he owned and go into servitude himself until the debt was paid. The co-worker begged for more time, but the man refused.

A bunch of other workers saw what happened and told the man’s creditor. And this is how the story ends:

Then his master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. (Matt 18:32-34)

Was the creditor in the wrong because he didn’t treat the man in a benevolent way? Of course not. He had in fact canceled the man’s debt. It was the man himself who wasn’t benevolent, who didn’t understand what receiving a gift of forgiveness actually meant.

So, no, God is not benevolent in the way the people of today want Him to be. He doesn’t tear up the ticket we deserve. Rather, He paid it for us. The point isn’t to get us off so we can go pile up more debt. The point is to change our status from debtor, to adopted child; it is to give us an inheritance far richer than any we can imagine.

This post is an edited version of one that appeared here in June, 2013.