Praying For Leaders

I know many Christians pray for our leaders. Scripture is clear that we should obey them, honor them, pray for them.

Here in the US, we have lots of leaders: the President, our Federal legislators, our Governor, our state legislators. But I wonder, in all this, do our judges get lost in the shuffle?

As it happens, what takes place in our courts matters a great deal to the direction of our country.

I don’t know how many people were aware that this past Saturday there was a Prayer March in Washington DC, sponsored by Franklin Graham.

Here’s the thank you video that came out yesterday:

These are people praying for our nation in a way that I would have liked to do as well.

In truth, praying for our nation starts with repentance. We cannot continue in our sins and expect God to ignore them and shower His blessings on us, regardless.

My blogger friend, InsanityBytes, wrote a really good post today about sin and how the recognition of our sin actually makes all the pieces of the puzzle fit together. I highly recommend “What Are Conservatives Conserving?”

I’ve written about sin on this blog before, and I’ve had discussions with people who think it’s “abusive” to tell children that they are sinners.

Well, it would be if all we said is, You’re a sinner and you’ll do horrible things all during your life and then you’ll die. That would be cruel.

Our culture takes the “everyone gets a trophy” approach: we are all wonderful, good people who just have the misfortune to have bad things happen which causes us to do bad things in return. But we’re actually, really good.

That way of thinking has so many problems. First, if people are good, how did the bad things enter into the world and make our systems bad and our actions bad? In other words, the people who actually have a problem of evil is not Christians. It’s the irreligious who think humans are good.

The Bible clearly teaches where evil comes from, how it is something passed down from Adam, and something that actually has a solution. It’s not mysterious or unclear. Because of our sin, we need a Savior.

That’s the message that America needs to hear. The whole package, including, and actually starting with, the sin part. Because if people do not recognize the sin problem, they likely won’t recognize the Savior part. I mean, who needs a Savior if you’re not lost or drowning or buffeted beyond your ability to endure?

But lost people know they need to be found, drowning people know they need to be pulled to shore, buffeted people need someone who will rescue them.

As it happens, this Prayer March was an important part of our nation turning back to God. Some 50,000 people gathered to recognize our need for God, starting with repentance, and including prayer for our leaders.

I just hope we all include our judges and the debates tonight and the voting for both national and federal offices. If we Christians don’t care, if we don’t come before God and ask Him to act on our behalf, why would we think our nation will change in a positive way?

There’s a verse in Proverbs that says, “The king’s heart is like channels of water in the hand of the LORD. / He turns it wherever He wishes (21:1).

May we unite to pray that God will turn the reigns of our US government into the path of righteousness through our elected officials and appointed judges.

BTW, Vice President Pence spoke at the Prayer March. You can see the whole of the march here, and his remarks are right at the beginning (about the 1 minute mark until the 5 minute mark or so):

Behind The Mess, Evil

Where did evil come from? In this unprecedented year of trouble, the question about evil seems quite practical, not theoretical or philosophical.

Biblical Christianity has a clear, concise, and practical answer.

Solomon spelled out the answer in the book of Proverbs. In the first chapter, he personified Wisdom, and it is Wisdom that gives the answers to the question of evil.

“Because I called and you refused,
I stretched out my hand and no one paid attention;
And you neglected all my counsel
And did not want my reproof;
I will also laugh at your calamity;
I will mock when your dread comes,
When your dread comes like a storm
And your calamity comes like a whirlwind,
When distress and anguish come upon you.

“Then they will call on me, but I will not answer;
They will seek me diligently but they will not find me,
Because they hated knowledge
And did not choose the fear of the LORD.

“They would not accept my counsel,
They spurned all my reproof.

“So they shall eat of the fruit of their own way
And be satiated with their own devices.

“For the waywardness of the naive will kill them,
And the complacency of fools will destroy them.

“But he who listens to me shall live securely
And will be at ease from the dread of evil.” (Prov. 1:24-33)

In a nutshell, humankind hated God’s way, so He gave us over to our own way.

So many miss this point. Our good and loving God delegated to us the care of the rest of creation, and He told us what we needed to know to be successful.

Instead of embracing God’s way, we hated His way, thought we could figure out a way around it, and decided we knew better than He.

Simply put, that’s evil. There is no better way than the perfect way. Our embracing something less than perfect drags us further and further from God and from His plan for us. If it weren’t for His intervention, we would have no hope.

But thanks be to our loving, good God who knows exactly what we need, we have a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ who has brought us out of darkness into His marvelous light.

Later in the book of Proverbs, Solomon says

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom,
And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. (Prov. 9:10)

God is entwined in it all—the beginning of wisdom, our response to wisdom, the reproof when we ignore wisdom, the consequences for hating wisdom. And the point of wisdom is to lead us to the fear of the Lord.

It’s self-fulfilling. The more we fear the Lord, the more we fear the Lord.

But “fear” doesn’t mean get all terrified, though that’s a part of it. The Hebrew word is yir’ah, and it’s various meanings are these:

I. fear, terror, fearing

A. fear, terror
B. awesome or terrifying thing (object causing fear)
C. fear (of God), respect, reverence, piety
D. revered

It is use C that applies here—fear, respect, reverence, and devotion. These are the heart attitudes, applied to our relationship with God, that yield wisdom.

Today there are a lot of ideas about God—he’s our buddy, he’s our Sugar Daddy, he’s an it or a she or an unknown, he’s nonexistent. All these are ways of neglecting wisdom’s counsel. We think we can ignore God or deny Him or treat Him with disrespect and still reap the benefits of His kindness and mercy. We don’t realize how much we pay for the existence of evil.

All the sin and sickness and death that plague the world and everything in it, is a direct result of turning our back on God instead of fearing Him.

Evil is here because of how humankind treats God. If we don’t love Him with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength (the first commandment), then how can we think we’ll be able to love our neighbors as ourselves (the second commandment)?

In short, evil is not something rightly dropped at God’s doorstep. He created a perfect world, and it is we who let Him down, not He who bungled the oversight of what He made.

My guess is, the same pride that said we could bypass the requirements God laid down, also is the reason we don’t want to admit evil exists in us and on earth, because of us. But that’s the truth—the Biblical answer to the question of evil.

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This post is an adaptation of one that appeared here in January, 2015</span

There’s All Kinds Of Ways Of Sinning

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Sin goes to the core of human nature, but the actual sins we commit, look drastically different from those of someone else. To the point that we might be tempted to think, I don’t want to be with all the bad people, so I’m camping out here where all the good people like me hang out. If the place we’re talking about is church, we’ve missed the point.

Church is not a place filled with good people. Rather, it’s filled with forgiven people, and we’re all in process, trying to learn how to become like our Father who adopted us into His family.

We should have special affinity for our brothers and sisters in the family of God, but not because they are good people, not because I think I’m one of the good people.

As people saved by grace, Christians should, in fact, live by grace, too. That’s what Paul says in Colossians:

Therefore as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude. (2:6-7)

I find it interesting that thanksgiving is an element of living in grace, but that’s not connected to the main point here. Rather, I think it’s really important to recognize God’s forgiveness. But the problem there, is this: to thank God for His forgiveness, we must also admit our sin and ask for forgiveness.

And if we think we are in the happy group of good people, it’s hard to admit we may have a life that looks different from the guy in prison. But we are both sinners, and we both can be saved by grace.

Our spiritual well-being is dependent upon God, not on the way we pretty up our lives to make us look good. I don’t think we need to turn every sin into a public confession, either, but we should definitely tell God and then thank Him for His forgiveness.

I’ll give you an example. I mentioned here a week or so ago that I’ve been struggling to stay on task. I finally realized that I was giving in to my own personal desires just as surely as if I was doing drugs or watching porn or whatever. Every time I say, I understand what you want me to do, God, but I don’t really want to do that, so I’ll do this other thing, I’m sinning.

No, I haven’t killed anyone or hated anyone or gossiped or got drunk. My sin, though, simply looks different. It is nevertheless, me saying no to God and going my own way.In other words, I am taking the reigns of my life and being my own boss. I’m essentially saying to God that I’ll get around to His agenda when I’m good and ready. Because what I do depends on what I feel like doing.

So, no, my sin won’t look like someone else’s.

But sin, it is.

Like all sin, it is saying no to God, even if I’m saying, Not now, or, Later.

Too often we think of sin as us hurting other people, and certainly there is an element of that. In fact, the consequences of sin can vary greatly, depending on the way we work out our sin.

For instance, Jesus said that to hate someone was as sinful as committing murder. But a murder has immediate and widespread consequences that hatred does not have. Sure, when you hate someone, you might ruin their lives. You might even ruin your own. But not necessarily. On the other hand, if you murder someone, they are dead.

I think of King David with this illustration, because he actually did murder a guy. He basically ordered a hit job, for one reason—he wanted to hide the fact that he was an adulterer. He slept with this guy’s wife and when she got pregnant, he tried a couple ways of covering his tracks that didn’t work. So he had the guy killed, and married his wife.

Later he repented. But the guy was still dead.

The thing that caught my attention, when David was confessing in one of the Psalms, he said, speaking to God,

Against You, You only, I have sinned
And done what is evil in Your sight,
So that You are justified when You speak
And blameless when You judge. (51:4)

Earlier he’d told Nathan the same thing when he confronted David about what he’d done.

All this to say, I think we too often see our sin as an offense against people. In our society, the central principle seems to be, Do no harm. So if our sin is a “victimless crime” in which no one else is hurt, we sort of have adopted the idea that it’s not so bad. Not really sin. It’s like the “little white lie” concept, as if the little lie is not really sin.

Maybe the little act of stealing, like pirating books or using images that aren’t ours, falls into this category. We tell ourselves things like, nobody cares, I’m sure they can afford it. That sort of thing.

The real issue is what James says in chapter 4 of his book: “Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin.” (v. 17)

To know the right thing to do and then choose to go our own way, not God’s right way, is sin. No matter how it might look to other people.

The Severity Of Sin

Some years ago a group of protesters I’ll call Occupiers because of their propensity to camp out for days in various places, sometimes waved signs before cameras to draw attention to their complaints. They weren’t speaking with one voice about much, but their early 99% signs and the choice of Wall Street as a starting place, tagged them as protesting corporate greed. Why, I began to wonder, weren’t they protesting the greed of the shoppers who pushed and shoved and cursed and pepper sprayed their way to “big savings” on Black Friday?

It’s all in the proportion, I suppose. As long as someone wasn’t bilking thousands of people out of their life savings, then their greed wasn’t alarming. In fact, their greed probably looked a lot like our greed, and our greed is “normal.”

After all, everyone wants the best buy they can get, right? If I have to elbow someone else for the last sale item on the shelf, then so be it. The fastest, most pointy-elbowed chick won the day, right? Shopper beware.

The thing is, the mentality is no different than the corporate exec raking in his millions in bonuses even as thousands of his employees end up jobless. The craftiest, business-wise guy won the day, right? Entrepreneur beware.

In truth, we tolerate greed, or pride, or gossip, or anger, or lying, or any number of sins just as long as they a) don’t hurt us directly; and b) don’t end up beyond some culturally acceptable line. We can hurl abuse at players of an opposing team, and maybe even throw a (plastic) cup of beer at him, but when someone beats up a fan of the opposing team and puts him in the hospital, that’s over the line. Some abuse is tolerable, too much is criminal.

The acceptable limits, I believe, exist because we are constantly comparing ourselves with ourselves. We start with an understanding that nobody’s perfect. So we’re all in the category of mess-ups, and it’s just a matter of finding our ranking—the lower the better. As long as I believe there are more people ranked above me than below me, I’m in good shape. I’m normal. Acceptable.

The normal part is true, the acceptable part, not so much. The real problem is we don’t have an understanding of how deadly sin is. How much exposure to anthrax is acceptable? How much cyanide is safe to ingest? We understand these to be lethal and do what we can to avoid or counteract them. Sin is lethal too, in small doses or large. There is no acceptable level of wolf’s bane, and there should be no acceptable level of sin.

We don’t think there are direct effects of sin, however. We understand that people die, and that’s a fact of life, no matter how good or bad a person has been. That should be our clue: nobody’s perfect, and everybody dies. Those are about the only categorical statements we can make about humans. Why is it we miss the fact that there’s an association between them? The Bible states it clearly: The wages of sin is death. Little sins, big sins, greed that hurts one or greed that hurts many—the wages are the same.

Which initially might not seem fair. I mean, if some people do their best to go along without hurting others, shouldn’t they get some credit for it? That’s like asking if someone who was only exposed to anthrax for a day should be considered better off than someone who was exposed for a month. Both are deadly.

But we don’t understand this deadly nature of sin. We don’t understand because we can’t grasp the offense sin is to Holiness.

Yet we’re offended at corporate greed. And I feel sure that people who were pepper sprayed at the mall were offended at the greedy shopper. Perhaps others were offended when they were pushed and shoved or cursed.

Our offense seems justified, though we push and shove too, though we cheat on our taxes or on our spouse or in a game of cards with our friends. We who are sinful find sin against us offensive. What, then, must a holy God feel when He is sinned against?

And there’s the real point. Every one of our sins is against Him. Sin after sin after sin. We may stay in the normal range, but think about the hateful attitudes, pride, envy, greed, lust that piles up in one person’s heart over a week, a year, a decade. Each of our sins is toxic. Not that God can be hurt by them but they are like water to His oil. They cannot mix.

On the other hand, sin is toxic to us, even in the smallest measure.

But God who loves us provided the antidote. More precisely, He provided the substitute. Physical death is still part of our experience until Christ returns, but because of His willingness to stand in my place, I am free from the permanent effects of sin if I put myself at His mercy and ask Him to rescue me.

God, because of Christ, has promised He will forgive those who confess their sins:

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9).

Does God’s forgiveness mean sin isn’t really such a big deal after all? Hardly. Sin is as toxic as ever, but God’s power is greater. Consequently, Christ, the Sinless One in Whom the fullness of Deity dwells, paid in our stead … if we confess, if we continue in the faith.

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).

This post is a revised version of one that first appeared here in November, 2011.

The Issue Of Identity

Setting aside the upheaval that the gender identity crisis has created, especially among the young, I realize we’ve been having an identity crisis of a different sort for years, even decades.

I don’t have the exact timeline, but at least for two decades according to one blog article I read, kids have been receiving participation trophies for involvement in youth sports. One article in the Baltimore Sun ties the proliferation of trophies to the push for self-esteem. “In the 1980s, self-esteem building became an educational priority really kicked off by the state of California.”

Apparently there is some debate about how healthy receiving these awards have been. I mean I read articles in the Washington Post and New York Times that discussed the subject, and the one above is reporting on a league that has decided not to give them out any more. Then there are bloggers defending Millennials who have been called The Participation Trophy Generation.

The argument seems to be entitlement and learning from not coming out on top versus low self-esteem.

All this has much more far-reaching affects than what anyone may have realized when they first came up with the idea that it would be cool to give all the kids a trophy—win or lose. For instance, some of this “everyone wins” thinking may explain why socialism seems appealing to a certain age demographic. But I have something even more serious in mind.

I wonder if there aren’t serious spiritual ramifications, not just from participation trophies, but from the entire self-esteem push. I wonder if we aren’t training kids to lie to themselves.

I’ve heard more than once, contestants on some “reality” TV game show, like Survivor—people who did something mean or really, really foolish that caused them to get kicked out of the game—say that no, they didn’t regret how they played; they were actually quite proud of themselves for their involvement. At the time, I was confused. I thought, You made such horrible mistakes and you don’t regret even one of them?

But now I’m thinking that’s what we are teaching our kids, and the adults who grew up with this self-esteem emphasis.

What’s also interesting is that teaching our kids to love themselves and that they all deserve a trophy for being on the team doesn’t seem to be producing happier people. Teen suicide hasn’t gone away. According to the CDC, teen suicide has increased in the US by 30% since the year 2000.

Mental Health America, in an undated article, reports,

Adolescent depression is increasing at an alarming rate. Recent surveys indicate that as many as one in five teens suffers from clinical depression.

Science Daily reported a year ago that “More than 1 in 20 US children and teens have anxiety or depression.” We’re talking kids aged 6-17. Six!

Off hand, I’d say, the push for higher self-esteem isn’t working. I mean, what I see is closer to people feeling bad about themselves but unable to deal with the cause because they’re supposed to be winners.

I realize that’s an oversimplification. Like any problem, it undoubtedly has multiple contributing factors. But I don’t think we should ignore the fact that we are living in a culture that tells kids they aren’t sinners, that they do deserve . . . pretty much whatever they want. The word deserve continues to be advertisers’ favorite, I think.

But here’s the truth about each and every one of us. We are made in the image of God, though marred by sin. Not the individual acts of sin we do—those are results, not causes. The sin that we inherited from Adam makes us wonderful image bearers who walk away from the One who created us. We are, in essence, kind of schizophrenic.

But for the grace of God.

He was not content to let us turn our backs on Him without putting into motion a rescue plan. A plan that declares how loved we are, how forgiven, how washed, how renewed, made alive.

For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. (Col. 1:13-14)

We are the princess, saved by the knight in shining armor. We are the citizens of Metropolis rescued from destruction by the Superhero who saved the day. We are the servant girl pursued by Prince Charming.

The point is, our identity comes because of our relationship with God.

Some years ago I attended a Dodger baseball game with some friends, and our seats were one level up, right behind home plate. They were the very best seats. But I only sat there because my friends had company tickets. I was ushered into the primo section of the stadium, not because of my standing, not because I was someone special. I got there because of who I was with.

That’s an incomplete picture, to be sure, but spiritually speaking, I am not in relationship with God because of my merit. I’m in relationship with God because I am in Christ. I’m with Him.

And where is He? Seated “at the right hand of the Majesty on high. (Heb. 1:3)” And I’m with Him.

That’s actually a transforming identity. No longer dead in my trespasses and sins, but alive, living in freedom from sin and guilt and the Law.

Funny how I could never enjoy this identity if I didn’t first admit that I can’t get there on my own.

What Constitutes Sin?

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One of the tenets of Christianity that cause people to stumble, it seems, is the idea of sin. After all, according to the prevailing thought in our western culture, people are good. All of us. We might have an addiction or a mental illness or we might be coming out of a life of abuse. But none of that is our fault. Really, people only do bad things because we have been raised in a dysfunctional environment and have learned anti-social responses. If we simply teach and train a person what is beneficial for them and for society, we will eliminate the undesirable behavior. Like terrorism. And mass murders. And drug trafficking. And kidnapping. And fraud. And blackmail. And pornography.

Oh, wait. That last one has been moved out of society’s list of anti-social behaviors into the column of normal and … well, not “beneficial,” but at least “acceptable,” conduct.

I suppose, if the world lasts long enough, whatever a person wants to do, even if it does harm to others, will still be considered an expression of their self-hood, and therefore, acceptable. The point is, we are eliminating sin.

The Church ought to help here, but it seem we are emphasizing happiness over holiness, so we don’t talk much about sin. Sins are things that don’t make us happy. That keep us from our goals.

A six-year-old study by the Barna Group examined a women’s faith self-assessment, and discovered that most of those in the survey group reported spiritual fulfillment and an absence of anything the Bible identifies as sin. You know, things we once called “the seven deadly sins”: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride.

The Bible addresses all those things, but Jesus took the concept of sin a step farther in His Sermon On The Mount. He said that murder wasn’t just murder, but hatred or anger was also murder and just as deserving of punishment. Same with lustful or greedy thoughts. In other words, not just sinful actions deserve punishment, but sinful thoughts do, too.

So which of us is without sin?

But we’re like the guy speeding down the freeway at 85 MPH where the speed limit is posted at 70 MPH. He’s not worried about “getting caught” because everybody else on the road is going just as fast, or faster. If we’re all doing it, it must not be wrong, or at least it must not be a punishable offense, the reasoning goes.

God doesn’t work that way. He actually treats us like adults. He tells us what’s what and expects us to do the right thing. If we don’t, He may remind us, warn us, or let us suffer the natural consequences of our actions. But He doesn’t baby us. He also doesn’t spoil us. He doesn’t look the other way.

Because He doesn’t correct us immediately, a lot of people think God doesn’t care or that He must not have noticed our sin or that He doesn’t think it’s so bad. But no. Isaiah addressed this issue:

Why do you say, O Jacob, and assert, O Israel,
“My way is hidden from the LORD,
And the justice due me escapes the notice of my God”?
Do you not know? Have you not heard?
The Everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth
Does not become weary or tired.
His understanding is inscrutable. (40:27-28)

God knows and He understands exactly what we’re thinking.

In truth, God is gracious and gives us time to turn to Him. Another passage from Isaiah:

For the sake of My name I delay My wrath,
And for My praise I restrain it for you,
In order not to cut you off. (48:9)

In other words, He purposefully waits so that all who wish to come to Him, will have the opportunity.

In addition, He waits to bring judgment until the Church is complete. Think about it. It God had brought the world to an end 500 years ago, or 1000, a lot of believers would not have been born, let alone had the opportunity to come to God through Christ. No Billy Graham. No Martin Luther. No Jonathan Edwards.

How many of us would be missing from the banqueting table?

Among other metaphors, God compares the Church to a temple, whose cornerstone is Jesus Christ. But we are the “living stones” that go into the building. Think about that structure with all the missing stones if God didn’t wait patiently for us to come to Him.

The point is, delayed punishment for sin does not mean canceled punishment for sin.

Well, actually the debt of sin has been canceled by Jesus. But we must claim the free gift, and God waits for us to do that.

The fact is, He won’t wait forever. At some point a person who has chosen against God will die, and he simply will have run out of time to do an about-face. In addition, at some point God will bring this whole process to an end and say, Time to party, those who are My adopted children, those who make up the temple, those who have accepted the invite to the feast.

So what is sin? I guess the simplest way to understand it is, going my way instead of God’s. Going my way in my thoughts and my actions. Going my way in my desires and in my dreams.

The truth is we all sin, so we are all sinners. But the cool thing is, because of Jesus we who know Him, are sinners saved by grace. And that makes all the difference.

Faith And Hope In Christ

Today’s western culture believes humankind is good and advanced and capable. We can do whatever we put our minds to, be whoever we want to be. So much so, that there are countless preteens and teens becoming transgender individuals. They have decided, in the midst of the confusion of adolescence that they know what’s best for their lives, from that point on! As a result, they mutilate their bodies, condemn themselves to a lifetime of hormone treatment, walk away from the life they had and into the mindset of the opposite gender, as if it were their own. In other words, they are no longer from Venus. They are from Mars. Or vice versa.

The problem is, our thinking is not clear. When we are apart from Christ, we deceive ourselves. We say things like, Nobody’s perfect, though we also affirm, There is no sin nature.

Excuse me, but if there was no sin nature, wouldn’t at least one person down through history have managed to actually live without sin?

No, our muddled thinking says, because society messes us up. We’re good, but society isn’t. Which is just another one of those deceptions. I mean, how can people be good, but those same good people create a wicked society?

The problem today, first and foremost, is that we refuse to start where God starts: He is holy and we are not.

Well, we are not holy now. Before humankind fell by embracing this “We can be like God” approach, we were holy and pure and right before God. Now, not so much. One day, we who enjoy adoption as His children will again enjoy the sanctification God has in store for us.

But the “one day” all depends on whether or not we do an about-face. Essentially, we need to turn away from trusting our own understanding and turn to Jesus and the truth God has revealed about Himself and about salvation.

We need to resign as kings of the universe, which includes kings (or queens) of our own lives, and we need to enthrone God as the Lord of all.

Why would we do such a drastic transformation?

On an intellectual level, it makes sense:
God is all knowing; we are limited in what we know.
God is eternal; we are finite.
God is all powerful; we are weak.
God is good; we are largely out for ourselves.

There are many more, but the pattern should be clear.

On the practical level, we can see what trusting ourselves accomplishes. No, those who are separated from God are not miserable only and always. But even they can see that the not-holy state in which we live, has problems. There’s violence in the world and cruelty and greed and selfishness and pride and lying and sexual perversion and abuse. The world is not a place where anyone can find a “safe place” away from the offensive things that threaten us.

On the other hand, God promises His love and peace that extends beyond anything that we would normally expect. He gives hope and a place of refuge. He helps us make sense of the world; gives us a firm identity as His children, His heirs; gives us purpose. In other words, God answers the big philosophical questions of the human heart.

He fulfills instead of tearing down.

He is the hero we long for.

The answer to our, Why?

He is our hope made certain.

Our joy when all is lost.

He is the radiance of God’s glory, the exact representation of His nature. The word of His power upholds all things.

He is the bridge between the Father and we flawed image-bearers.

By His grace we are saved.

I see a lot more reason in trusting God who is perfect, who is over all, above all, greater than all, instead of trusting in the cloudy thinking of flawed humanity. But even that comes from Him:

Trust in the LORD with all your heart
And do not lean on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge Him,
And He will make your paths straight.
Do not be wise in your own eyes;
Fear the LORD and turn away from evil.
It will be healing to your body
And refreshment to your bones. (Proverbs 3:5-8)

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The Attractive And The Spectacular

Here in Southern California we have a lot of flowering trees, shrubs, and vines. Honestly, I don’t know the names of all of them. I grew up with a bush called oleander and learned that it’s leaves were poisonous. We also had a bougainvillea vine and I learned that it had sharp, and long, thorns. Now I can recognize a variety of trees such as plumeria, crepe myrtle, magnolia, and jacaranda.

I have to admit, I get pretty spoiled because it seems all year long there is color blooming all around us. However, when I went to Hawaii . . . Well, I was shocked that there were so many MORE flowering trees and shrubs there. I’d known the beauty of Southern California, but the beauty of Hawaii was so much greater than I had imagined.

I’ve seen the same on a smaller scale lately. The crepe myrtle trees that are currently blooming are laden with flowers this year. They come in a variety of colors, but the most common are a reddish purple and a soft pink. On my daily walk there’s a cluster of four or five of those pink tress in full bloom. They always take my breath away.

Unless I’m driving along a street lined with trees covered with the vibrant reddish purple blossoms. Then, when an occasional tree sporting pink flowers pops up, it seems kind of washed out. A little plain.

The truth is, it’s easy to become enamored with what is attractive. To be satisfied. To think we have the best. Until we see the spectacular.

That’s the way I think Jesus is.

It’s easy to think humans are good, that we’re creative and intelligent and wonderfully made. Because we are. We even do amazingly wonderful things, sacrificial things at times. Kind things. Generous things.

But when we look to Jesus, we see the unblemished Lamb of God, the One who is blameless and pure. Who isn’t kind and generous some of the time, who doesn’t love until things get hard. He’s consistently kind and nothing can separate the believer from His love.

The point is, His splendor next to our attractive actually shows us who we are. We are precisely what the Bible describes—a marred image of our Creator. Marred. Whereas Jesus is spotless.

I suppose in our contemporary culture we have developed selective thinking, or maybe biased reasoning. It seems as if the secular mind only sees what is good in humankind, then 1) ignores what is ugly and 2) assumes nothing could be better.

So humankind is good and all the problems are a result of disease or society or (more common these days) religion. Never man or woman. No, this person or that caused a fatal car accident because he has the disease of alcohol. This other person abused and killed her children because she was caught up in a religion. And the guys who shoot kids in schools? They would apparently never harm anyone if we didn’t have such easy access to guns.

Please understand, I’m not saying that there is no truth in these ideas. But what is missing is the fact that humans sin. We sin against one another, and, more egregiously, against God.

Not Jesus. When we stack up our very best and measure it against the perfect Son of God, we don’t show as well. We need to keep our gaze fixed on Him so that we can see ourselves as we actually are. And so we can see Him in all of His glory.

Sin And The Human Brain

A number of years ago I heard a comment that goes against common understanding—sin distorts Mankind’s thinking.

Most people agree that nobody’s perfect, but by this they mean, nobody lives a morally upright life all the time; nobody avoids making mistakes. The one thing that most people do NOT mean is that their thinking is flawed.

Rather, I suspect most people believe mankind’s ability to reason has become sharper over time, that we are out from under superstition and have honed deductive reasoning, can study evidence and make inferences more accurately than those who first lived on earth.

But why should that be true? If we believe the Bible, we know a few things about the earth before and after sin progressively took hold (some of these things became evident after the flood).

1. Before – animals were not carnivorous (Gen. 1:30). After – even Man became carnivorous.

2. Before – animals were at peace with each other and with Man. After – “The fear of you and the terror of you will be on every beast of the earth and on every bird of the sky; with everything that creeps on the ground, and all the fish of the sea, into your hand they are given” (Gen. 9:2).

3. Before – the ground yielded fruit abundantly. After – the ground was cursed and needed to be cultivated by the sweat of Man’s brow.

4. Before – Man was destined to life. After – Man was destined to death.

5. Before – Man apparently had the capacity to communicate with the animals. After – animals only communicated with Man when God opened their mouths (see Balaam’s donkey).

6. Before – an “expanse” divided waters, some above, some below–apparently creating another layer of our atmosphere and providing protection from the molten lava at the earth’s core. After – the “floodgates of the sky” opened and “the fountains of the great deep burst open.”

7. Before – Man lived for centuries. After – once the atmospheric protection was removed, his life span became much shorter.

8. Before – Man communed in person with God. After – Man hid from God.

9. Before – Adam and Eve were a perfect fit, naked and unashamed. After – they hurled accusations at one another.

10. Before – Man spoke a common language. After – God confused Men’s language and scattered them.

I could go on, but I think I’ve said enough for the purpose of this post. To sum up, sin changed the world, the heavens, the way Mankind relates to creation, to God, to others. Why would we think Man alone is untouched by the effects of sin? We know his life span was affected, so why not other aspects of his life, such as his ability to comprehend the supernatural or to reason clearly?

I don’t think it’s a stretch to believe that Mankind, with all the knowledge available to us, understands less about the world today than Adam did. Oh, sure, we know facts (and many of those prove to be incorrect at some later date), but we are reasoning ourselves away from God, not to Him.

Take a look, for example, at the poll at Mike Duran’s site about science and Scripture. I find it interesting that a majority of those participating did not want to stand up and say God’s Word trumps Man’s observation and reasoning (which is what science is).

It was, as a matter of fact, Man’s observation and reasoning—well, woman’s, actually—that started the Fall in the first place: “When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.” (emphasis mine)

God had said … but she saw, and she went with her own observations and conclusions. In that respect, things haven’t changed so much over time.

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This post is an undated version of one that appeared here in August 2012.

Who Needs A Savior?

John MacArthur, president of the Master’s Seminary here in SoCal, has begun airing a series of sermons on his radio program, Grace to You, about parenting. He’s said more than once in these early broadcasts that parents’ number one job is to help their children understand they are sinners. OK, that seems wrong.

Until I reflect on my own experience as a young child, trying to reason my way out of being part of the all in “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” I didn’t want that to be descriptive of me! I figured, if I could just think of one person in the Bible who had not sinned (besides Jesus, because I understood He was God), then maybe I could be like that person. I hadn’t really dealt with what any sins I’d committed up to that point, made me.

So, yes, in my own experience, I needed convincing that I am indeed a sinner.

But why is that important?

Without an understanding of my situation—that I am a sinner, separated from God, destined for hell—I won’t comprehend my need for a Savior. Why would someone who is not drowning need to be pulled from the pool? Why would someone without a heart problem need a heart transplant? Why would someone not incapacitated by debt need debt relief?

Simply put, only those who recognize their problem will also recognize they need an answer to that problem.

To be honest, this great cultural shift we have experienced in the postmodern and post-truth era has harmed the gospel more than we may realize. People now a days have argued with me that no, we are not sinners. Never mind the clear evidence. Never mind that we have not stopped saying, “Nobody’s perfect.” Never mind that the logical deduction from the simple Biblical statement, “The wages of sin is death,” can only be that we are all sinners, because we all die.

But believing the lie that humankind is actually good, not sinful, not in need of a rescue plan, the idea of a Savior seems old-fashioned, out of date, unnecessary, quaint.

I’ll admit, I don’t like it, but I think MacArthur is right. Children, and adults, need to be convinced they are sinners.

Sadly, some people consider telling a child about hell to be a form of child abuse. After all, they might have nightmares, they might not be able to fall asleep at night, they might begin to worry and fear the future.

Well, children can also get nightmares, have a hard time falling asleep, and worry or fear the future, if we tell them they will be going to school when they turn six. In other words, just because something they must face may have unpleasant consequences, we should not pretend it doesn’t exist, that it won’t happen. School happens to kids in one form or another. We would not be helping a child by saying, don’t be anxious about school, don’t stay awake at night thinking about it, put it out of your mind because school is a non-issue—it’s somebody’s idea of a sick joke, and they should be prosecuted for child abuse if they told you anything else.

The good parent does not withhold information about hard things. They prepare their child for them instead. They pass along the secrets that will make their school experience a plesant and productive one. And they walk through the difficulties with them.

Why would a parent do less when it comes to their children’s eternal destiny? “Let’s not talk about it” is not an answer to the need of a child’s heart.

Am I a sinner? Do sinners suffer death as a result? Can I escape this fate?

I remember one night crying. I was sick and I had begun to think about death. My mom came to my bedside, wanting to comfort me. Why are you crying, she wanted to know. Because I don’t want to die. Oh, Becky, she said, you’re not going to die.How relieved I was! Until I realized she was referring to me dying from my present illness. But I meant, I don’t want to die, ever! The comfort I felt moments before was snatched from me. I didn’t have an answer to my problem.

Who needs a Savior? The better question is, who doesn’t? Who won’t face death? Who isn’t a slave to sin? Who has hope for eternal life without a Savior?

Nobody, no one, none of us.

So are we doing children any favors by withholding the truth and in the process withholding the hope that having a Savior brings?

I think not. The sooner we realize the situation of our eternal souls, the better, I think. Hard as it sounds, we simply cannot get to grace without first coming face to face with our need for grace. We cannot accpt God’s forgiveness until we realize we need to be forgiven.

We all need a Savior, and I think telling a child they are just like the rest of us, is a good thing.