Deeper Waters

I have finally finished the last HP book. I won’t tell anything about the ending rest assured, as I know that my readers who are fans of the series will not want me to spoil anything. However, as I was listening last night to my book on audio, I was struck with some ideas on the way the church is doing today.

Readers hopefully at least know that the story involves Harry Potter fighting the dark wizard Voldemort and in the final book, it all comes to a culmination as the battle will be decided in this one. I thought though as I listened that it seemed like everyone on the side of the good was there and ready.

One part involved one person normally seen as a jokester standing up and taking a cause. I immediately thought of a friend of mine who simply delights in making people laugh. (He’s an awesome friend too.) I thought, “If I was in Harry’s shoes, I’d also like to know that a guy like that was out there supporting me.”

Everyone is eager to help out. It doesn’t matter if they are young or if they are old. Their educational level doesn’t matter. On the other side, the ones for the darkness are also ready. As seriously as the good take their side, the evil ones in the series are just as serious and are willing to do anything in their cause.

Why would they do such things? Why do the stories have people on the side of the good willing to risk their very lives? Why are they so ready to die on the cause of what they believe to be good? What is it that propels these people to move to such actions on what seems to be a regular basis?

The answer is obvious. They know that there’s a war going on. Rowling has said that herself. This is a war and in the HP series, there are casualties. Real life has them as well. People do die in the cause. People do suffer in the cause. The good guys win, but it is unrealistic to say they do so without suffering.

Are we in any less of a war though? On the contrary, we are in more of a war. We are in one where not only physical lives are at stake, but eternal destinies. If only we could learn from the heroes of HP though and have our causes band together! If only we could realize that we all need to work together and do all that we can to win this battle.

Imagine what we could do if we would just be united. Oh there are differences as there are in the HP stories. Not everyone sees everything the same way. However, we all do see one thing the same way. We see that there is evil in the world and that we are to be salt and light and that is not to be taken lightly.

I am bothered by seeing many Christians who I wonder will have their contributions in Heaven be that they thoroughly argued against Calvinism/Arminianism or Preterism/Futurism or Old-Earth Creationism/Young-Earth Creationism. I have nothing against holding discussions on such topics, but they are not our focus and for too many people, they are.

What do we want a crown for in Heaven? Winning people away from Arminianism or winning people away from Islam? Convincing people that the Earth is old, or convincing people that Jesus is the risen Lord? Doing all that we can for the cause of Futurism, or doing all that we can for the cause of Christ?

The way we are going to do this is if we are united. While the books may have Harry Potter in the title, it would be a fool unfamiliar with the series who thought that Harry Potter actually fights alone. He never does. He fights with his friends by his side and they encourage and build each other up. While there are a number of main friends, there are a large number of people in the background cheering them on and standing up and saying “We are here and we are with you.”

Indeed, this is one time I do think real life needs to be like fantasy.

As we all know, and as this blog writer definitely knows, Pottermania has hit again. I have heard people everywhere talking about the last book. (Which I hope to finish tomorrow sometime) If you go to any public place and mention it nearly, you will most likely hear someone else talking about how much they love it.

I can go and talk to a co-worker and we’ll spend so much time just bouncing theories back and forth. Instant excitement is there and as excited as I was about the series beforehand, I get even more excited when I talk to someone else who is excited. That excitement is contagious!

Compare this though with our faith.

Our preacher this morning used the verse of “I was glad when they said unto me let us go to the House of the Lord.” Let’s be honest. How many of us are glad? How many of us usually just can’t wait to go into the doors of the church and enter into worship? How many of us talk theology within the church?

In fact, once we arrive, we are usually talking about anything else besides biblical topics. Now I don’t have any problem with discussing non-biblical topics. However, I find it sad that we can’t discuss them with as much zeal as we do any other topic that we could discuss?

I ponder if it could be our idea of holiness. We think that to treat the text seriously, we have to be in this somber mode where we are praying perchance and waiting for the heavens to open and just flood us with knowledge in some mystical experience that will open the text to us. Anything else just isn’t treating the text seriously.

I consider discussing though with my friends who have Pottermania as we look at events and lines in the text and try to draw out the meaning in them and how they relate to each other. We do so lightly and joke around as we toss around idea after idea and see what fits, but can there be any denial that we aren’t taking that text seriously?

Why can’t we treat the Scripture with as much excitement? Notice the idea is not to decrease our zeal for other things. I think we should have zeal for all that is good and enjoyable and we shouldn’t punish ourselves for enjoying something. The idea is not to bring other things down. That would be an insult to Scripture really as we have to bring things down to the level of Scripture. We need to raise the Scriptures up in our eyes so that we see them for the treasure troves they are.

Maybe we could even do it without so much silly debate that turns people against each other. I love debate, but a lot of it is ridiculous. It amazes me what people will divide over. When I discuss theories on the Potter books with friends, we never divide into separate groups and go our own way. Each idea is there and open for consideration. We say some we can accept, some are just speculation but have some merit, and some we can see as wrong.

Why don’t we? Why don’t we work on seeing God as exciting? Why don’t we have times where we sit around and discuss the great truths of our faith? Pity us if we can do so with a human literary work, but we can’t do so with the Scriptures.

Where I work, we do sell the new Harry Potter book. (Readers of my blog know that I’m an avid fan of the series.) While watching today, I saw a child pick up a book, turn to the end, read it some, and then make some remark. I was stunned. Why would someone pick up the book and just read the end?

I can think of some ways I apply this to the faith as well. My first thought is with the atheists I meet who complain about the Problem of Evil. The complaint is always that there is no good reason why X would be allowed to happen. (If they see a good reason, it’s not really a problem any more.)

Yet we are not the authors of the story and we have no right to know how the story ends. I believe that would cheat us out of so much of life. I think of the question where asked if you could see your future, would you really want to? It’s tempting, yes, but would you really want to? Could it be you would live your life differently simply because you want to reach that “future?” (Yes. We could get into some interesting questions on time-travel theory here, but I think the point still stands.)

Imagine going to see a movie with a friend and each time during the movie your friend who has seen it says “Now right here, this guy…..” and “You need to watch this character” and “This character falls in love with that one” or “This one dies.” Honestly, would you want to go see a movie with such a person again? I assure you that our author is not that type either.

In essence, we are cheating if we read the end first. We are missing out on the joy of getting there. It would make no sense to go to a bookstore and buy any fictional work and just read the last few pages to see how it ends and then assume you understand the story. Even if you know what will happen to some characters somehow, getting there is a different story.

Now I can apply this to Christians. Too many Christians I fear spend way too much time on eschatology. (Study of the end times.) Now I do believe we should have some knowledge of this area. I have my stance in eschatology and I can defend it, but I am not dogmatic about it. I will gladly fellowship with people of a different view so long as it’s orthodox.

We cheat ourselves though if we spend our lives only studying the book of Revelation. We should study it and other books on the end times. However, if we study only them, we miss the real point. The real point is not knowing when it will end. The real point is knowing who is in charge in the end. When we study Revelation, for instance, we should keep the first words of the book in mind. “The Revelation of Jesus Christ.” If we study the book and come out with theories on eschatology, but we have no new truth about Jesus, our time was wasted.

Too many Christians are falling though for what Gary Demar calls in his book “Last Days Madness.” When a terrorist attack takes place in Israel, a new prophecy book is written. Within a decade, they will be sitting in the back storerooms of Christian bookstores as debunked. I don’t even bother buying books trying to interpret modern-day events.

Both views are missing something. The end is not the whole point. Getting there is as well. Yes. We Christians should look forward to Heaven, but that does not mean that we fail to enjoy our lives here on Earth. We should not be so focused on Heaven that we fail to bring it to Earth.

If you’re reading my blog earlier in the day, I’ll go on and say I’m writing early because I plan to be one of those people that’s at the bookstore at midnight to pick up book 7. Since I will be getting home late and since I do value my sleep, I have decided to go ahead and write the blog early.

Some people have asked me about this book. “Who do you think is going to die?” I don’t know. “How will this end?” I don’t know. There are several other questions that I won’t ask for the sake of those who haven’t read the book, yet when asked “Do you think you could be disappointed?” my answer has been “Absolutely not!

Let’s consider what we have so far without spoiling it.

We have a boy on an adventure where all is not natural.

We have him making friends.

We have him finding people that are scrupulous and some that are quite angelic.

We have him being unsure of who he can trust and who he can’t.

We have him making mistakes at times and these cost him.

We have people dying.

We have evil taking place and seeming to be on the rampage.

We have things going on that we don’t see the purpose of yet.

We have the boy suffering greatly for things that he is in no way responsible for.

We have concern about the future in how it will all turn out.

Yet those of us who are fans do not deny some things. We do not deny that JKR is a great author. We do not deny that she is an intelligent author. We do not deny that she is going to bring the story together. We also do not deny that we will like the way the story ends. We are also quite sure that when it’s shown how it ends we will look back and say “Why didn’t we see it before?”

Oh my. Have I just described the life of faith?

Look back over that list of events that have taken place. Do they not all bear a relation to the life of faith? Do we not live in a world where all is not natural, where evil seems to be on the rise, where it can be hard to know who to trust and not to trust, where we suffer for things we’re not responsible for, and where things happen that we do not understand?

If we are willing to say though that JKR knows what she is doing, then ought we not say the same thing for the greatest author of all? As brilliant as I think JKR is, she cannot hold a candle to the greatest storyteller of them all and we are the ones living that story out. We are the ones that are having the adventure.

Tonight, if you’re buying the new book, enjoy it, but then ask yourself if you’re going to enjoy the book that you are in and if you are going to say that you know you will not be disappointed with how it turns out. If you’re going to give JKR the trust that you give her in her work, will you not do the same with the creator?

I grew up in the video game generation and one game I bonded to immediately was Legend of Zelda. I wanted to be like Link in every way. Well now I’m older and I’ve got the new Twilight Princess game on the Gamecube. I’m playing it last night and get to an unusual boss section where this kind figure gets overcome by the evil of an item and turns into the boss. (And with Zelda bosses, as time goes by, they have to get both bigger and uglier.)

I was playing that and pondering that I sometimes wish life was like that. I wouldn’t mind waking up one day and being off on a great adventure to save the land and no matter what big monster comes my way, I know I can handle it. I was telling that to a friend of mine and he said something else. He said “I wish it was like Kingdom Hearts.” That’s a Playstation series. I know another friend who would wish it was like the game Chronotrigger, and one who would probably say like the story of LOTR.

All of these friends are male also.

I think that could be something in the guy’s soul. Now might it exist in the female soul as well? Yeah. But let’s be honest. When we go to the bookstore or the game store or the movie theater, there is often a striking difference between what the sexes buy and view in there.

Yes. I think we men like to have adventure in our lives. I could imagine some people hearing my thoughts and thinking “Why, you’d face death and danger at every single turn.” To which I’d answer, “The point?” I think most of us wouldn’t mind facing that. In fact, it’s something that makes us come alive. The more dangerous something is, the more a guy usually wants to do it.

I once worked at a grocery store and I had to push in buggies for a time. Now I’m a small guy and I couldn’t push in too many at once, but I had heart and speed and I could rush in and out and get them. Sometimes, I didn’t really want to. However, if it was storming and the rain was coming and the lightning was cracking, I wanted to be out there! It was an irresistible draw!

As I ponder it though, it could be that our lives are more like that than we realize. We may not fight big boss monsters, but do we not fight? We may not face death, but is there not some danger in all of our lives? Do we not wonder how many situations will turn out in our day to day living?

Which gets me to something I’ve always said in here. I do believe the adventure is there. I think the problem is we don’t open our eyes to see it. There are exciting events taking place and we are on the greatest quest of them all. Indeed, our quests are truly more real and exciting than Zelda, Kingdom Hearts, Chronotrigger, or even LOTR.

They’re better also for when we finish a game, we finish it and can say “Well done.” This game may not have the reset option, but it sure has a whole lot better than game over at the end of it.

I wish I could claim credit for this idea. I can’t. It came from talking to a friend of mine and I wish to expound on it. I’d like to thank this friend of mine though for being with me through a lot of hard times and being a companion by my side. At a point in my life when I was facing a sudden burst of fear and thought I’d have an anxiety attack like in the past, he was there. He’s a great guy and I’m pleased what I write is true of him.

But he was telling me about visiting someone’s house and how that person had passed away and how it was bittersweet. Then he said it occurred to him that those kinds of friends are friends forever if they’re Christians. The relationships aren’t temporary. They’re just put on hold for a time. As the song says, “Friends are friends forever, if the Lord’s the Lord of them.”

Paul said that we don’t mourn like those who have no hope. Indeed, we do mourn. In fact, it is entirely proper for us to mourn. The Christian life is not one where you try perpetually to live on Cloud Nine. There are ups an downs for everyone and the loss of a friend is a great down.

I thought about this further and how our actions are affecting everyone we encounter. Each action is building that person up into either a most wondrous creature for all eternity, or a most vile creature for all eternity. Every action then is imbued with meaning. There are no useless actions.

This is also a good motivation to share the gospel with your friends. If you care about your friends, you want them to be with you don’t you? What kind of friend are you if you don’t want to be friends forever with a friend? The only way you can do that as a Christian is to be sure that your friends are Christians as well.

In view of this, should we not still cherish our friends? Should we not rejoice that we get to be friends forever with them? That Christian friend that you care so much about? It will never end. You get to spend forever with them and you get to know them better as time goes by.

Let’s also remember that Heaven doesn’t destroy good things here. It perfects them. You will have perfect friendship with that friend. Isn’t that good news?

I was at my Bible Study tonight with some friends. We’d had a really great and biblical discussion and it was time to close in prayer. Our little circle gathered all of our prayer requests together and then we all listened as our originator prayed. As he prayed though, I was struck with a reality.

I remember telling someone one night in my effort to preach the gospel to him, that his prayers were heard. I had a thought as if something almost magical was taking place at that moment. We were communicating with the most awesome being of all and if Christianity is true, we are being heard.

I wonder if maybe that’s why we can be so lackluster in prayer. Do we really think that God is hearing us? Do we really know who this God is that we are praying to and what he has done in the past and is doing now? Is he really such an overwhelming influence in our lives that we live our days in awe?

I’ll go on and confess that I’m not at that point yet. It seems we make prayer so that it is difficult to do. Maybe we do expect too much. Emotions aren’t the strong point of all of us, but there should be some feeling of awe. When we pray, are we merely saying vain words, or are we really believing that our prayers are heard?

This is one of the great dangers of our lives. Our lives can become ritualized. We read the Bible simply because we’re Christians and that’s what we do. We pray because we’re Christians and that’s what we do. It’s the reason we go to church or help out people in need. How many of us have helped out someone in need and been annoyed at doing it but thought, “Well, I’m a Christian so I gotta do it.”

That’s probably one of our greatest dangers. We don’t really get to live the excitement of the Christian life. Oh we can sit down and watch a movie we’ve seen several times before and say “I love this movie!” or we can listen to a song we’ve heard several times before and say “I love this song!”, but dare we read a passage of Scripture we’ve read before?

I would point the finger again at a loss of wonder. Movies can hold us in wonder. Music can hold us in wonder. Prayer and Scripture don’t. Might I posit a culprit for this? (Of course I might. It’s my blog and I can do what I want.) I would say that the culprit in all of these is holiness.

I’m not talking about biblical holiness. I’m talking about our conception of holiness. Somehow when we say “Holy Bible”, we enter this austere mode where we think we have to be reverentially silent and control our emotions and think only the holiest of thoughts and not laugh or enjoy ourselves. Somehow, our society has equated holiness with boring.

Don’t believe it? Go watch a movie based on a book of Scripture sometime. Everyone in them seems to speak in a monotone all the time. You don’t see smiles. You see just people walking around as if they’re all in a sour mood and trying to be better than everyone else. I hate to say it, but biblical movies usually are boring.

Yet here’s something to consider. Spirituality is considered exciting. Be it the sentimentalism of “Touched by an Angel” or the New Age of Sylvia Browne. Things that are “spiritual” have an air of excitement and danger to them. Why else do we have so many TV shows and movies with those kinds of themes?

Why are those exciting? Probably because we give them an air of surprise and excitement. You’re talking to a psychic! Anything could happen! They’re in touch with the other side! Here’s what I’m wondering. If talking to dead uncle Fred is exciting, why isn’t talking to the God of all creation exciting?

My solution? Restore that wonder. If you want to laugh while reading Scripture some, do so. Celebrate your emotions when studying. Be honest in your prayers and realize who you’re speaking to. One of the best prayers I know of is the one of Dwight L. Moody after a long day of ministry prayed “Lord, I’m tired. Good night.”

Also, remember the truth about what it is you believe and who it is you believe. We look at holiness as a punishment today. We need to change that and look at holiness as exciting. Holiness is not meant to keep us from having a good time. It is meant to make sure we have a good time.

Why don’t we? Let’s remember our prayers are heard. Let’s be holy. Really holy.

When it comes to thinking about Jesus as I’ve said, I wanted to find a good place to begin. What better place can there be though than to begin with the fact that Jesus exists? The fact that anything exists should hold us in wonder. We can look at the world and say “All of this might not have been.”

A question that has often been asked to atheists by theists, and I think it is a good question. Why is there anything rather than nothing at all? We could look and ask not just why are we here, but why is anything here? It is nonsense to say all of this came from nothing, yet there amazingly some atheists do hold to this position.

Let’s start with the root of existence. All that is I believe is that which reflects God. What about evil? Evil really isn’t. Evil is an absence and an absence is not a positive existence. It’s showing a lack. It is like saying the empty portion in a glass exists. It just doesn’t really fit.

Christ though is the one who has already existed. Of course, all three persons of the Trinity have existed for all eternity, but Christ is our revelation so that we could know what God is like. Before we know what Christ is like tonight. We need to realize simply that Christ is.

I find this so incredible. Let us think about this one who was from the very beginning and in the bosom of the Father.  And what does John say about this one? This very one who was from all time walked among us! We saw him! We touched him! We heard his voice! He was entirely real! He lived like one of us!

Do we really pause to think about this? This God who revealed himself dwelt among us! When the ancients read John 1:14, they were stunned. How could the Word, which has the divine nature entirely, become flesh? How could that which was God from the beginning live on Earth?

Yet this is what happen! This Christ who eternally existed came and lived above us. Why? He wants us to experience existence as he does. He loves us. He wants to show us his utter delight in us. He wants us to have the most real existence of all. An existence where we reflect him in every way.

And this only starts, because he exists. Let us pause and keep in mind this great wonder. God exists and existence is good.

A friend of mine and I were discussing last night (And an awesome Christian friend he is!) what I had written in my blog last night. He reminded me that it was an interesting idea, but is there anything to back it yet? That will take more thinking, but he also wasn’t sure how to apply it to his life. I thought as I went to bed that thought came to me. I had thought of the application, but in my excitement with a new theory, I lost track of recording it.

As a man thinks in his heart, so shall he be. What we eventually download into our thought life effects who we are. Consider the child who grows up abused. He is constantly told he is no good and constantly shown that. What happens eventually? He will sadly most often believe it.

What does this mean? It means that if we are to change our actions, we need to change our thoughts. We will act based on what we believe is true. If I believe that car heading down the street will hurt me if it hits me, I will not be likely to cross the street in front of it. If I believed I was a magical being and the car would pass through me, I would probably go ahead and cross.

I believe this has sadly happened to a lot of ladies for instance. I meet a number who I think are quite beautiful and I’m stunned as they look at themselves and don’t think they are. I ponder that probably many guys could relate to that. It seems the things most obvious about other people to us are the things they miss. (My friends are hoping I follow my own advice here.)

This is why we preach the gospel and encourage one another. The more people are told such things, the more they will be overwhelmed by the evidence and have to accept it. How different the church would be if it would learn to encourage its own instead of being the organization that shoots its own wounded.

How else can we apply this? Let’s consider the case of a young man struggling with lust. (And what young man hasn’t, this writer included) What can we tell him to get his thought life under control? Tell him not to think about sexual intercourse or girls? What will that result be? You go on and try it. Try for the next ten minutes not to think about a pink elephant. It won’t work.

Cold showers and such? Those are only temporary solutions. I’m not against getting a porn blocker or something, but the problem is not just with the external world. It’s with the internal world. The young man needs to have his heart changed to a proper attitude about women.

I will not forget one thing that did help me in my learning to deal with and control desire. It was being in love. It took true love to take care of the false love. It’s the same in any situation. Truth is the best way to deal with falsehood. When I was in love, being lustful was just unthinkable.

Let us suppose that we take a Muslim in the Middle East who is Anti-Semitic and wants to destroy Israel and has nothing but hate for the Jews. What is the way to change that? To love a Jew. I would say that the best one for him to start with is Christ. It has been said the only way to stop terrorism is to convert Muslims to Jesus Christ. I agree wholeheartedly. We can contain the threat some, but the only way to end it is to change the heart and that is conversion.

And this is the way to change our hearts ultimately. We must think of that which is true. What is more true than the one who said he is the truth? If it is true that as a man thinks in his heart, so shall he be, then the more that we do think like Christ, the more like him we shall be.

Of course, this doesn’t negate that we follow the other commands of encouraging and preaching the gospel to one another, but for our own selves, we can gain more by thinking on Christ. Being in love can provide one happiness because one loses one’s self in another in constant thought about the other. So should it be with the one we are devoted to. Ironically, the more we lose ourselves in him, the more we find ourselves. What we really lose is not ourselves. He keeps us and takes all that isn’t us.

Ben Witherington ends his blogs saying “Think on these things.” It’s a good ending. I’d end this one saying “Think on this Christ.”

I was walking to our pool tonight and started thinking. Ah. But what to think about? Well, I’m walking, so why not think about actions? Now this is still an idea I’m chewing on, but I’d like to go on and get a lot of it out here. Perchance more will come to me as I continue to write my blog.

There are different types of actions. I think of walking first off. I walk to the pool. Where, the pool does not receive the action of my walking. I do. I am the one acting and in an odd way, the object of my walking. My goal of course, is the pool, but it is all happening to me. Now maybe some English majors might want to correct me and if so, very well.

Some have an object in their very nature and can only apply to the one doing the action. I think about the saying “I sleep.” I can put an adverb to that action of sleeping. I sleep soundly. However, if I am the one doing it, I can be the only one receive the action. I do not need to describe another object.

Some are automatic in their object. I think of words like hallucinate and dream. I do not hallucinate what is real. If it is really there, then it is not a hallucination. I can see a hallucination and it seems real, but I cannot hallucinate something that is really there before me. I cannot dream anything other than a dream either. (And I mean dream in the sense of what one does when asleep and not have a deep desire.)

Then I thought about words like love and hate and desire. They automatically imply an object. If I say, “I love” that is rather incomplete. Love automatically has an object that is receiving the action.  Hate and desire is the same way. There is something receiving the action. The same goes for thinking.

I got to thinking about God’s thoughts then. My view is that God gets no new thoughts. God knows all that can possibly be known for all time. New ideas do not enter the mind of God. That would kind of go against omniscience. God is the eternal knower and he knows all truths eternally.

Now let’s imagine that God thinks about the highest thing he can think about. Well that would be himself. Let us suppose that he thought of himself. Could God have a perfect thought of himself? Of course! That would mean though that God is incapable of thinking a less than perfect thought of himself.

Could he have a thought of himself that’s as real as he is? Yes. For if he couldn’t, then God is limited in his thinking and his viewing of himself. God would not be able to even know himself. If God could not know himself, then there would be knowledge outside of God and if knowledge resides in a mind, we must know where this knowledge is.

So God eternally has this thought of himself and this thought cannot be less than himself. That would mean that the thought would have to be an exact representation of himself. However, for the thought to be an exact representation of himself, it would have to eternally exist an eternally exist in reality.

With that, we can say we have the Son. The exact representation of the Father in reality.

Now someone is saying “Alright, then why aren’t there 1,000 Sons? Why just one? The answer is simple. If this is an exact representation, then what difference would there be in another one? They would all have the same properties of being the eternal thought of God and would not differ then. If there is no difference, then they are the same. We avoid Unitarianism because God is thinking and that thinking is producing something. There is the thinker and then the thought.

Now these two eternally exist. There is a deep love then that is just as real. It is so real it is personal, for how could love between the two persons be less than personal? With that, we could say we have the Holy Spirit. In essence, the Son eternally reflects the Father and the Holy Spirit is the love between them.

Thus, God is capable of knowing for each person knows things other than themselves. They know each other. Could this be also how we are capable of knowing things other than ourselves? We can know other because each person of the Trinity can know other? Were Unitarianism true, we might be capable of only receiving actions directed to ourselves.

Now this is all just thinking out loud at this point and I want to do some more pondering on this line of thought, but I think it has some merit. I hope the reader thinks such as well.