Deeper Waters

I had a conversation with someone earlier today. We started discussing masculinity and femininity.  We somehow got to talk about Native American beliefs that some tribes would believe everything has spirits. I said my only problem with that is that they are polytheistic. I believe God does permeate the universe as it were. He is not the universe of course, but his presence is everywhere.

I then told them that we do see love everywhere. We’ve just mechanized it. Let us consider gravity for instance. What is gravity? It is simply attraction. We cannot explain why the heavenly bodies are attracted to one another, but they are. We look at all that happens and because we think we know the mechanistic reason for why it happens, that we understand it all.

This got into talk about sexuality and seeing it in nature and how we don’t see it because we have a naturalistic view of the world. The ancients had nouns as masculine and feminine. We tend to think they read their thoughts into the creation. What if they read them out of the creation though?

What if this was a world of life that they saw and so many things embodied to them the qualities of masculinity and femininity? What if we returned to the ancient name for outer space? They did not call it space. They called it the Heavens. Could we not say space is filled with the presence of God? Then why speak of it as lifeless? Whether you are here or on the moon or on Alpha Centuari, God is there.

Let us consider how much something is reduced though if you give just the mechanics. Consider again sexual intercourse. Now I am a virgin, but I would have no problem telling a young man how the system works. Suppose though that I had to explain it to a young man and this young man is not in puberty yet and he has no desire or interest in girls.

Suppose I describe the whole system to him and I do it without any emotion. I just describe the mechanics. There is no talk in there about feelings and desires. I just say “This is how the system works and when it does its purpose, there is a baby that is born later on.”

I can easily imagine such a kid looking at me when I’m done. I can picture that he’d say “But everyone make such a big deal about it. From the way you described it, I just don’t see what the appeal is.” For all I know, he might even think it sounded gross like a necessary evil. If I just described the mechanics also, who could blame him?

What did we leave out? It’s not enough to know the mechanics. You have to talk about passion and desire and pleasure. You have to talk about how these two people want this more than anything else at the time and they just can’t contain it. Only then can you really understand it. It has to be more than mechanics.

Are we treating the universe the same way? The universe is the way it is. Why? God made it that way for a reason. This is where Christianity and science do intersect. It’s not just about how it works. It’s about why it works and to what end it works. Take away a designer and you leave out those steps. There is no final cause, as Aristotle would say.

And is it any wonder some of us lose wonder? If this is all the universe is, why bother? What’s so amazing about the sunrise? We know it happens and how it happens. Ah! But why did God make it that way? Could we learn something about him from it? Could he be revealing his nature?

Yes. I believe the universe works according to laws. The sexual system has rules that are to be followed if the result is to come about, but let us not think these laws are all there is. They are the way they are for a reason and you will not see that reason if all you have is just the mechanics.

I’d like to suggest that we have a strange concept with normal. Normal is a word I think everyone throws around but we’re not sure what it means. I’m not set on a clear definition myself. It usually means that this is the way that it is supposed to be. I believe we also have a normal Christian experience in mind.

How many of us would really say we spend our lives desiring God? Do we really spend so much of every day pondering the nature of God? Do all we want to do is pray and study Scripture and read other books on the topic? Do we get excited every time we approach the Bible?

If you find a lack in those and you find it in you, you’re not alone. This is what I do, and I can’t say that the above would describe me.

Now here’s where the problem comes from.

The desire is an emotion and too often we think that if we don’t have the emotion, then there’s something wrong with our Christian life. It can leave us feeling miserable. Let me make a suggestion here. If you are in that boat, then I would suggest that the misery you feel is a sign of your devotion to God.

Beg your pardon?

If you were one who did not care one way or the other, you would not even notice any sort of lack in you and even if you did, you would not care. The misery could very well be the gift of God to you. On the other hand, if you have a great devotion and joy in your emotions, then you’re already there! It’s win/win!

Let’s also note that you are not meant to be like everyone else. You do not think like everyone else. You do not do anything like everyone else most likely. I am an introvert. Am I to be seen as less spiritual because I am not outgoing? Is someone athletic less spiritual if they are not as intellectual as an A student? Are you less spiritual if you can’t sing like someone else?

Now, while we’re all different, there is one thing we have in common. This is what we should focus on. We are all sinners who have come to the cross. We are all striving for what Paul called perfection. I don’t know if we’ll reach it this side of eternity. I doubt it, but I’m not closing the door on that just yet.

I do know this though. I’m striving now and my guess is so are you. Let’s unite on what we have in common then. Let us picture the goal as the top of a mountain. You and I are climbing it as well as every other Christian. What are we going to do? Press ahead and ignore everyone else? Hardly.

Let’s reach hands across this mountain. We’re all in different spots on different sides trying to make it and we won’t make it alone. Some of us will stumble. Some of us will need to be pulled up by others. Some of us will be able to help others get past some areas better and they’ll help us get past others as well.

Let us jettison the idea of a normal Christian experience. God made us uniquely different. It is time we tried to be us and not someone else.

No. I am not going to give a full Christology here. I do not think that could ever be done. My point is not to tell about who Christ is per se, but to point out that we need to be gripped by who he is. We need to look at him with wonder and awe and realize that the calendar centers around this man for a reason.

Who was he? What did he do? Was he a cynic sage? Was he an eschatological zealot? Was he a speaker of Women’s Rights? Was he a magician? Was he a teacher of Eastern thought? Or, was he what the Bible claims? Was he the Son of God? He was something to be sure.

What do we do when we approach the gospels though? Do we turn to them and think “Ah. The Good Samaritan. Yep. I’ve heard this story before.”  Do we allow it to speak to us? Do we really hear it for the first time again ever? Have we reached the point where sadly, Christ has become ordinary?

Part of it could also be our Christology. We have become docetics in many ways. I do believe in the deity of Christ. It needs to be taught. We need to teach also though the humanity of Christ. If we don’t have a Jesus who is fully human, then we don’t have a Jesus that the gospels talk about.

A Muslim argument I’ve seen has been simply “How can God go to the bathroom?” We have to accept this. Jesus did that. Jesus did the things that we would think are gross and not worth talking about. When he took on our nature, he took on our nature entirely. There’s no indication he would not have to go to the restroom like the rest of us, wash like the rest of us, eat like the rest of us, etc.

Yet how did he live? Look at how he approached sinners. What made them like him when he was so condemning of sin? Look at how he approached the Pharisees. Why is it that the most learned people of the day could not handle this rabbi from a small town? Why was he such a threat that it ended with his crucifixion?

Why is it that this figure became a centerpiece so that while he never wrote music, more music has been about him than anyone else? He never painted, but how many paintings have been done because of him? He never wrote a book, but you can find volumes written about him.

Who was he?

Could we really create him even? I think the existence of even the idea of Jesus would require a miracle if it wasn’t a reality. There has never been a figure anywhere like Jesus unless it was one based on Jesus, such as Aslan in the Chronicles of Narnia. Even Lewis though would gladly admit that Christ is more gripping than Aslan.

Maybe we should open our Bibles and read him again as if we’ve never heard of him.

Jesus. Are we seeing him as he really is? Are we allowing ourselves to be in awe of him? Or, have we just made him ordinary?

I have an idea for a basic definition of morality. I haven’t worked it out entirely, so I’m open to modifications where need be. It seems quite accurate though. The question comes down to “What makes a thing moral?” This is the conclusion that I have come up with.

Morality is treating a thing as it is.

Aristotle, for instance, spoke of justice as treating equals equally and unequals unequally. What does that mean? It means to treat them as they are. I had a friend up last night who brought his wife and in discussing morality said “It’s moral if you treat your wife as a lady, which she is, and not as a dog, which she is not.”

This is why the concept of what is is so important. Are we going to treat the poor as they are? Are we going to treat the person who has been raped as they are? Are we going to treat the sinner as they are? Remember that each of these first is a person created in the image of God. It is then what they have had happen in life or what is done to them that comes into play.

This is also how I believe things happen in the Trinity. Each person of the Trinity treats each other person in the Trinity as they are. I believe that we can find our whole base of ethics in Trinitarian relationships. Trinitarian relationships are based first on who each person is. This is simply saying God has had an eternal relationship of love within himself.

This means we treat the world as it is also. We treat the planet as if it is our home for now. We treat our animals for the way they were meant to be treated. We don’t treat either of these as more or less. To love them too much would lead to pantheism. To love them too little I believe would lead to atheism.

Look at each thing in your life. What is it? Respond accordingly. Is the person near you a person? Then treat them as such. Of course, what they do will have some variance in that. You are justified in locking up a child molester for instance because he is a child molester and society needs to be protected. You are not justified in locking up someone who has not violated the law though.

Treating things as they are. It is the way of morality, and if it is moral, we should be doing it.

How many times have we heard something like this?

“When I was dating this guy, he was all sweet and charming and we got married and he is such a slob! His underwear is on the floor constantly and he leaves the dirty dishes in the sink? What happened to the man I married?

“She was so wonderful when we were dating, but I don’t see why she is such a nag all the time! She is just so finicky about every little thing! It’s driving me crazy!”

I think most couples have some kind of reality shock when they marry. Now granted, there are some behaviors that might change, but each person needs to realize that the key personality type of the person that they’ve married most likely has not changed and it is something that they will eventually get used to.

Tonight though, we need to talk about seeing our neighbor as he is. One mistake we often make in this area though is that we don’t get to see him as he is because we’re too busy thinking of him as we see him. We go to our neighbor with an idea of seeing him as we think he is and sometimes, that can cover us from seeing him as he is. (Also, by my neighbor, I do mean any other person.)

Why do you like the people that you like? Why do some of them drive you crazy? It is because of the way each person is. It has been said about family for instance, that our family members are people that chances are we could not stand if it weren’t for the fact that they are our family.

Do we really take time to see our neighbor as he is though? Or, do we instead see him as he is. Now granted, there are ways that we can work to change our neighbor, but are there some characteristics that we don’t always grasp? Do we know the reason why the neighbor does what he does? Even if it is wrong, we can get some insight into our neighbor and ourselves if we try to see where he is coming from.

Also, let us learn to see our neighbor as what he was meant to be. He was meant to be one who reflects God. I know many of my Calvinist friends will disagree, but I think it would benefit us greatly to see each person as someone Jesus Christ loves and died for and if we treat them as less, we demean the sacrifice of Christ.

Your neighbor is an important person. Some of them, you will spend eternity with. If you are going to spend eternity with them, ought you not to love them now since you will be doing so forever? You also don’t know who will or won’t repent and who has and hasn’t infallably. If that is the case, maybe you should just try to love everyone so you can be prepared for whoever you meet in eternity.

Your neighbor. May you see them as God sees them.

No one likes being deceived really. Now we don’t mind generally if it’s sneaking around a Christmas gift or a surprise party, but we tend to prefer the truth. We want people to tell us the truth and be honest with us. However, there is one person each of us deals with who has a tendency to lie to us. That person is ourselves.

If anyone lies to us the most, it is us. I often have to have my friends back me up constantly as I am one of the worst at this and if a recording could be made of the thoughts that go on in my head everyday, they would be absolutely stunned. Being in a new city closer to a new friend has helped a lot, but old habits die hard. Rest assured if this is you also, you are not alone.

Gary Habermas has recommended I get the book “Telling Yourself The Truth” by William Backus and Marie Chapman, so I pass the advice on to you as well. The truth in it has been said to be next to salvation, the most liberating truth you will ever hear. Most of what we go through in suffering is not brought about by what happens to us, but what we tell ourselves about what happens to us.

This is one reason I am very cautious about people saying they feel led. I see no basis in Scripture to give our feelings divine authority. Is it any wonder I see several people who feel like they’re terrible people when they’re good Christians and think that God is condemning them because they always feel guilty and ashamed.

The Christian view is that we are created in God’s image. We are people he loves even if we don’t feel his love or feel like he loves us. If we could but grasp for a moment that we are truly loved and truly forgiven, how much better off would we be? Just that one moment in time I think could change the rest of our lives.

Let’s also remember that in Christianity, you as an individual are good. It is the parts that do not reflect God that are not good. Sanctification is the process of God removing all that does not reflect him so that only that which is his reflection remains. In this way, you remain you and yet, you become a reflection of him that is pure.

Friends. We need to see God as he is, but we also need to see ourselves as we are. We will be with him for eternity and it can better help us if we really know who this is that will be with him for eternity. God created us the way he did for a reason. While I’m not for endless self-analysis, let’s be sure any analyzing we do of ourselves is rooted in the truth of who we are in Christ.

In our looking at taking things as they are, we must now turn to the world. Now I do believe the world is created good. When the Bible talks about the sins of the world, that’s not what I have in mind. I am simply talking about the natural created order. I am discussing what you see when you look outside your window everyday.

Some examples of how this would work are obvious. It would really help if you looked at the world with the belief that solid objects don’t naturally pass through solid objects. (I say that because theoretically, it is possible to stick your hand through something solid, but the atoms most likely won’t arrange themselves that way.) This will make it helpful when you walk across the street lest you think an automobile can pass right through you.

However, beyond that, are there other things we should be aware of? Yes. We need to realize that the way the Christian theist approaches the world should be different from the way the naturalistic atheist or the New Ager or Hindu approaches the world. We need to first off realize that the world exists.

That might seem surprising to some of you, but in Hindu beliefs, it is seen as a good thing to escape sense-experience and realize that you don’t need to be connected to this world. Hindu “saints”, for lack of a better term, are quite pleased, for instance, to be able to look at a woman and not have desire.

Most of us would think the view of reality as an illusion is untenable. We all hold some basic beliefs that we would be hard-pressed to prove. Unless you can do brain surgery, it might be difficult to prove that other people have minds. (And indeed, with some people today you have to wonder.) We cannot prove that the universe did not come into existence five minutes ago with false memories in our minds and false food in our stomachs, etc. Would anyone be crazy enough to believe such though? (Okay. Again, you have to wonder with some people.)

But do we in turn view it as an accident? Is the world a cosmic fluke? Here again, we must disagree. This should effect how we view the world. We do not view the world as an enemy then that we must dominate. It becomes an ally that we work together with. Creation is not our opponent. It is our friend.

It also becomes something to enjoy. G.K. Chesterton said he’d explain the problem of pain to the skeptic if they’d explain the problem of pleasure. If this world is really an accident, why is there so much good? Why do we have colors and food that tastes good and sexual reproduction as something enjoyable?

Then we come to the more New Age type who wants to protect Gaia. Now I am not for polluting the environment. I am against though, these people who fear that we are destroying our planet and many of the extremes they go to. If anyone should be an environmentalist, it is the Christian. However, we should be rational in our approach.

I don’t believe in global warming for instance. I think the case is exaggerated and based on a lack of understanding and limited data. That doesn’t mean though that I think we should shoot freon into the atmosphere regularly. I believe though that nature has great ways of maintaining itself.

The problem becomes when environmentalism is seen as the end of it all. We have to be out there to save the planet. I’m all for saving the world, but it’s the world of lost souls wandering around that concerns me more. I believe also that when we redeem those souls, they will care for the planet properly as well.

Remember Christian, we must live in this world. It is best that we see it as it is as well.

My roommate loves this topic. Of course, it also has value from a past memory. The first time we met, he and his mother and I went to a pizzeria in my old town where we chatted about Christian apologetics and other such topics. I had recently done a debate on the Problem of Evil and so I elaborated on a theory of mine. I call it “The God Who Is There.” I get the name from Francis Schaeffer’s book “He Is There And He Is Not Silent.”

C.S. Lewis told us about how we can come to God with misconceptions of who he is. Now no doubt, all of us come with limitations in our knowledge of God. God alone has perfect knowledge of who God is. However, while our knowledge is limited, we need to be sure that it is true.

Now some of you might be saying, “I affirm all the essentials of the faith. I can quote the Nicene Creed and Chalcedonian Creed backwards! JWs don’t know what to do with me because I am such a strong defender of the deity of Christ and the Trinity. My view of God is correct.”

Not so fast.

I affirm all of those. Definitely. We believe in a God who is triune and we believe in a God who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ, the God-man. However, I do believe we often have misconceptions of God and those misconceptions will affect the way that we respond to him.

Consider the Problem of Evil. It seems to boil down to “A good God wouldn’t let this happen.” Really? You claim omniscience? The Bible is blunt about reality. Evil happens. You do not see denials of that in Scripture. What do you see? You see that God is not threatened by evil. He is sovereign over it.

For the person who wants to claim there is no good reason for X to happen, well that is what he has to show.  Do we Christians have to know the good reason? No. What if we don’t know it? Well they’ve proved we’re ignorant. Not much of a victory there though. Surprise surprise! We’re not omniscient! Thank you for demonstrating that!

If you are dealing with a God who does not know the end from the beginning and does not know how all possible roads could turn out, yeah, you could make the claim that he should do something about evil. However, we are not dealing with that God in Christianity. We are dealing with the God who knows all things, including good reasons to let evil happen though we don’t understand them.

How about your past sins? Which God do you believe in? Do you believe in the God who can forgive sins or the God who keeps a record of them? Guess  which one Scripture tells us is there. We see that and know it, but guess which God we usually end up believing. I don’t think I have to tell you. You already know.

Have you ever considered how awesome it would be if you (And I as well) could look at all the garbage in our past and realize “It’s done and forgiven. It will NEVER be used against me.” We serve a God who has done that! The problem is, we don’t usually believe he has. Why? Because we have a misconception about the God who is there and the untruth we’ve accepted about God causes us more suffering than we ought to have.

How about prayer? Do you approach prayer believing in a god who is more like the god in Islam? Is he far away and distant? Are you hoping you’re in the right positions and saying the right words so that you can earn his approval and so that he will actually hear you? Do you believe he really cares about you?

In fact, have you set conditions on your prayers before? Why? Because you don’t think God will do what you want him to do or ask him to do, so you settle in your prayers. Yet I see in Scripture that we are told to ask anything. Now we don’t ask for immoral things of course, but we should realize that God is big enough to do amazing things in our lives.

In fact, do we have the right perception of him in another way? Sometimes we think him too distant. Other times, we think of him as too weak. I think a lot of this has been with the idea of God as our best friend. I have recently written about this in a blog found here called “Buddy Jesus.”

Buddy Jesus

We have made him too approachable at times instead of forgetting what Habakkuk said. In Habakkuk 2:20 we hear “But the Lord is in his holy temple. Let all the Earth be silent before him.” We are told to boldly approach the throne of grace, but too often we treat that throne like it’s a seat at a country club and God is asking us to pull up a chair and chat.

Friends. I do believe in the grace of God of course. I do believe God cares about us greatly. Let’s never forget something though. God is king! We are to approach him with that in mind. This is the God who holds the universe in the palm of his hand. This is the God that if he drew in his breath, all life would perish. This is the God who could do away with you or I in a second.

Could this be why we don’t think about God as much as we should? I consider myself a theologian. I don’t think about him as much as I should. Why? Because I don’t think he holds us in awe anymore. We’ve reduced him. We’ve wanted to make God so personal that we’ve made him less than what he is. Friends. If he’s not the God of the Bible though, I want no part of him.

A good prayer I’ve found to pray sometimes is to say this when coming to God. “Lord, not as I see you, but as you are, may you be to me.” We too often approach God with preconceptions of what he’s like that we never get to meet the real him. The real God should leave us in awe of who he is and if we are not in awe of God, then maybe it’s time to ask ourselves the question.

“Am I really dealing with the God who is there?”

Are you?

I’ve decided to do yet another series. I’m reading a book called “Telling Each Other The Truth.” In talking with Gary Habermas over some problems of mine, he recommended I order the book “Telling Yourself The Truth.” The company sent the wrong book unfortunately, but I figured I’d read it and I am enjoying it.

It makes me think about how important truth is. Habermas has concluded from the books, and I agree, that what is more important is not what happens to us, but what we tell ourselves about what happened to us. I have referred to this before by saying that A’s don’t cause C’s.

A does not cause C

Yet we are to be people of the truth. We are to approach reality as it is. We are to affirm that which is true and deny that which is false. The Christian is the one that can embrace reality as a whole because he knows that in the end, all things work for good to them that love the Lord.

So, for a time, I will be dealing with this issue. We will be looking at how our beliefs line up with the world. I actually won’t discuss many of the beliefs directly, but simply give you signs on how you and I as well could be telling ourselves false beliefs and how these false beliefs will affect us.

Why? Because you will act on what you believe. If you have a false belief about something, you will have a hard time with reality. Now naturally, I don’t think any of us will develop perfect beliefs before eternity. We’re all still learning. I also don’t say we will know all things. Having false knowledge is different from having limited knowledge.

I hope it’s an exciting journey as we go along this ride. I hope especially that you and I both will learn something from it.

I’ve been thinking about friendship lately. I don’t have something definitively formulated out now. I’m just kind of thinking out loud with my keyboard. This has been on my mind a lot lately from when my roommate went back to see his family for Thanksgiving and I stayed here. The place was really empty. I managed just fine of course, but I was glad to see him back. Right now, he’s gone out to pick up some pizza.

It’s things like this that make you really think about friends. I think one of the most amazing things about them is that you choose them and they choose you. Friendship is mutual. You can say you are friends with someone, but if they do not say it in return, then you are not truly a friend with them.

Yet this relationship is entirely mutual. I find it amazing that I have a friend that I am now rooming with who lived in a totally different area, but yet we decided to transcend space as it were and come together and have this friendship consist of us being roommates. It’s really a new level of trust.

That’s also something new. We do have to trust each other more. The more a relationship grows, no matter what kind it is, the more trust is involved and the more must be given. We must trust each other to pay our half of the estate and take care of things when the other is away.

It also extends to other areas. I am hydrophobic as I’m sure I’ve said, while I believe my roommate at the pool is half-fish. I find more and more that I am probably getting closer to that point of facing my fears. What has been said by him to get me to that point? Absolutely nothing. It’s just been an attitude. That is the way it works. I see my friend and think more and more that this is something I can do too. Of course, it’ll take time, but other friends are confident it will happen.

I believe this is the amazing power of friendship. Slowly, I have seen myself becoming a more confident and capable person. I do not think I would be functioning as well as I am now if it wasn’t for having a good friend around. Of all the virtues, Aristotle and Aquinas both said that friendship was the one there was no golden mean for. You can never have enough.

And my friends know how I feel about them. I would do anything for them. They mean the world to me. I like that they don’t pressure me at all. They let me move at my own pace. They’re there when I need them, and I’m there when they need me. (I hope I am at least!) I want them to continue being with me when I celebrate my victories as I want to celebrate theirs. I hope to mourn with them in their sorrows as they mourn with me in mine.

There is just something incredible about being able to see one person and call them “Friend.”