Deeper Waters

Readers of my blog know that I’m a diehard Smallville fan. Last night, I watched Season 1, Episode 11, Hug. I won’t really tell what the episode is about in case some haven’t seen it and because it’s my favorite episode in Season 1. I think those not familiar with the series can still see the beginning of this episode and discern some of what is going on. YouTube, fortunately, has the beginning.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=wdiTL89HXsU

This beginning always strikes me as interesting. Naturally, after the words “I’m going to Smallville”, the scene goes into the opening with the theme song of “Somebody Save Me.” I kind of like the way the villain is so nonchalant in what he’s doing. He knows what’s going to happen and when it does, he’s ready with his plans.

There’s something else I consider though. There’s one thing I really like about this theme song in conjunction with this episode. I like it in every episode, but it seems most poignant in this one. What we end is with this tycoon thinking that he’s going to go and have his way in this town and increase his business empire.

Fans though know what the villain doesn’t. Clark Kent is there. I can rest easy at the start of the show because I know that Clark will show up and the story might seem grim at times and maybe there will even be casualties, but I’m not afraid ultimately. I can get anxious and wonder what’s going on and wonder if the writers know what they’re doing, but I know the truth. Clark wins in the end.

This is something the villain definitely doesn’t. He may have a unique power, but he doesn’t realize that there’s a greater power working there. He doesn’t realize that he can’t go around doing what he’s doing and expecting that no one’s going to stop him. That power is there and it does stop him of course. The story ends happily. (And if you watch the episode, the last scene is quite humorous for Superman fans.)

Some of you have already drawn out the parallel by now and it’s one you and I need to learn in our own lives. I can sit down and watch my favorite show and while I get tense, no matter what happens, I know that in the end, the good guy is going to win. I may see suffering and casualties and losses, but it doesn’t bother me entirely. Sure. I grieved when Jonathan Kent died and still miss him, but I know even that has been used for good.

So easy to do for a TV show. So hard to do for real life.

And yet, it should be easier! Our God is bigger than Superman is. Our God is a better writer of a story than the Smallville writers are. Certainly, our God has far more capability than anyone does. Also, no other villain can begin to even have a chance in a fight against God. He has no kryptonite.

Why don’t I?

Because I’m me. I don’t think God’s got it all under control a lot of times. It’s easy to look at my world and get confused, especially in our day when we’re all jumbles of feelings. We’re so centered on ourselves that if the world isn’t going great for us, well God isn’t doing his job.

Newsflash: God’s job is not to make you happy. Your temporary happiness is not God’s concern. Oh you will have eternal happiness if you follow him, but he’s willing to allow some temporary misery if it will get you to that point. Why should this surprise us? Even Clark Kent has suffering and we don’t look and say “Ha! The writers are fools!” No. We see in this and any other show that the writers allow suffering for a good purpose.

What do I recommend then? We simply need to trust. We’re told to do so and we’re admonished when we don’t show proper faith in Christ. Trust in God is not an option for the Christian life. It’s a necessity. If I can trust my favorite show to turn out well when I don’t even know the authors, how much more can I trust reality to the best author of all?

I was chatting with a friend last night just discussing his plans for the future and getting to know him a bit. I consider some of the younger guys I meet in my life the little brothers I never had. I always want to be there for them as someone they can come to who will help them along the path and I’ve found an unusual respect from people I really don’t usually understand.

We got to discussing salvation and for all intents and purposes, I was thinking this guy already had everything taken care of there until he says “Well I’m not saved yet.”

I was stunned and I had to ask why. He said that he believed it all and that he’d prayed and that it just hadn’t happened yet, but that it would on God’s time.

I wanted to know how he knew he hadn’t been saved yet and he said that he would know it. When I asked how, he told me he just would. Eventually, he said the word “feel” at one point. He told me though to drop it around that point. I told him I would for tonight, but that that door was always open.

This really concerns me as I think about it. Our salvation is not determined by our feelings. If it was, I would have been in trouble a long time ago. I remember strong feelings when I got saved, but they didn’t last. You give things some time and they just go away. Feelings are like that. Good and bad ones both, a lesson I still need to realize, especially for bad ones.

Greg Koukl has said that people who are really emotional in their Christian lives are often really emotional in every other area as well. I’m not really an emotional person, unless it’s usually negative emotions. I would say my Christian walk is not filled with overwhelming desire often. I just do what I do.

Chances are, many of us are like that. We love Jesus, but our hearts are not often overwhelming as if we’re in some sort of love story. I actually think it’s quite possible to have a deep love for Jesus and not feel it simply because feelings move up and down. Our deep love should come before our feelings and if we get feelings, great. If not, oh well.

In fact, too often, I fear we have been chasing after feelings. I know I’m guilty of this when in a slump. I want it to end. I won’t leave you guessing on that. I want to be happy again. Instead, what one should do is merely experience. Realize that this is a part of life and as the ancient stoics would say “This too will pass.”

It will and it does and we look back on the experience and think “How silly I was then.” Of course, after that, we have the more insane thought of “I’m glad that’s over. I’ll never make that mistake again.” Heh. Give it a couple of months or so and you’ll be back in the exact same place.

I hope my friend comes around and he did tell me to pray for him. That I will definitely do. Of course, I should pray that I also learn the lesson I hope my friend does. I’d ask you to pray it for me also and maybe I need to pray it for you.

Today is the day of salvation, and it might not just be from sins.

I’m not sure how many of you out there might be like me, but I can relate to the idea in James about being tossed around by every wind. It’s not by doctrine for me. I doubt it’s what James had in mind, but for myself, it deals with feelings. We approach the idea of feelings differently than the ancients did. Our value system shifted from our society to ourselves sometime and now we judge things by how we feel.

I was talking about this with some friends last night. I had signed off, but then I signed back on because I thought something needed to be done. I needed to say something to someone and I wouldn’t rest until I did so, and so I signed on and after discussing with some friends, I did what I had to do.

I discussed some personal issues though that made me feel inadequate for the task. I’m one of those people that when I’m in a really good mood, I’m in a really good mood and I’m unstoppable. When I’m in a down one though, I’m lower than low. Everything that’s right will suddenly be wrong.

I was told today that we need to learn to simply experience feelings and not analyze them. It’s a good idea, but it is definitely hard in practice. Those of us with my personality type are very analytical and that analysis can just kill us. Usually when it’s self-analyzing, it’s never good.

Yet this is where our whole society seems to be going. A man will divorce his wife because he doesn’t feel love any more. A person will not hesitate to do wrong because they do not feel like it’s wrong. To quote the song that so epitomizes what is going on “It can’t be wrong when it feels so right.”

Yes. This can happen in the church also. This happens when we start giving our feelings divine authority from God. Unfortunately, Scripture has nothing in it about God revealing his will for us through our feelings. Isn’t that part of our individualized culture as well though? What is God’s will for MY life? We spend so much time asking about ourselves that we don’t ask about God.

It’s easy for us to become locked inside of ourselves today. Iron bars do not a prison make. This can happen with our feelings or with reliving the past. We can also become enchained to what other people tell us. Now we need to have encouragement from other people, but it doesn’t need to be total dependence. It needs to be interdependence.

And as you can guess, I’m just as guilty as anyone. I believe we have lost a key part of life due to the effects of secularism on our culture. We removed the image from King God and as Peter Kreeft says, replaced it with the image of King Kong. We need to get back to that. We need to get to who we are and who he is.

Then ultimately, we have to get to who we are in him. Only in him can we see who we really are and only in him can we be free.

Last night, a friend stopped me as I was getting ready to sign off. He wanted me to come to a chat where he was going to be discussing with some atheists. Apologetics isn’t his strong point so he asked me to come. I went and another friend of mine came and what I saw there concerned me.

I enjoy the discussion, but I believe we were talking with several youths and it made me sense the need of the youth. The questions started with asking if life has any meaning at all. There were several hints of moral relativism and the arguments were quite lacking. I think of the one who wouldn’t accept the existence of Jesus because secular sources at his time didn’t talk about him. (They did later of course, but such was common for the ancients.)

I recall one especially who I had a strong heart for. This one said that either God doesn’t exist or if he does, he hates us all. I think that one is really taking it seriously. That one is looking at the issues of life and is coming to the conclusions. I do not think they are valid, but I am glad that he is at least thinking.

Yet such was his heart. It makes me realize why so many young people commit suicide. We have created a vacuum as it is and that vacuum is even in the church when we tend to reduce faith to feelings and pragmatism such that even one like myself at one point in time felt that same despair while in the church.

This is a huge problem and the church needs to deal with it but we aren’t. Too many of our young people are screaming that we are irrational and sadly, in many cases, they’re right. The church is often quite irrational. Please don’t misunderstand me. Christianity is not irrational. We can be though.

Yet they are hardly rational themselves. I think about the rational response squad which what I’ve seen of them hasn’t impressed me, but these are atheistic teenagers working together, and while I think their arguments are weak, they need to be answered and dealt with for they are souls.

Not only that, these youths we see today are the future of our nation? What will it mean when we have a nation with no respect for authority, no belief in a judgment to come, and no belief in absolute morality? What will it mean when postmodernism finally hits the highest offices and everything is a grab bag with no truth out there?

Yet if we do not do something, this is our future. This is where we are going. We are going to a world that is more and more hostile to our faith. Now while I agree some persecution could do us good, I would prefer that we have the good without the persecution simply because we’d all realize that our message is true.

Why? Our future is at stake and souls are dying. Do you need any more motivation? If so, think about this. Take your closest friend who you know is a non-Christian.

Now take your concept of Hell whether it be a burning furnace or not.

Your friend is in there.

No way out.

FOREVER!

Even if you believe that Hell doesn’t exist and God just destroys the wicked, then you still have something to think about. Your friend is gone forever.

Seriously, before you read any further, think about that. If you want to step away and come back later, that’s fine. This blog will still be here.  I’m even going to scroll way down before I continue in case you want to do that.

That is what you’re fighting for. That is a future. That is one soul. Now all of these souls are out there. If they win the day, it will only make our fight harder. If we win the day, then it will make evangelism far easier. Strength in numbers after all.

Friends. We need to do our jobs. We need to get cracking in evangelism. I love a good game, but this is the ultimate one and there is no reset button. Eternity is a long time to be wrong.

After church today, I went and joined my Sunday School group at our director’s house for lunch. It was a short meeting, but some of the guys invited me to join them for ultimate frisbee. For those who don’t know, I really have sports apathy. I don’t know a thing about sports hardly. I can watch Braves baseball, but that’s about it.

Well, I figured I’d go. I heard it was a bit wild though and there would probably be bloodshed, so I decided to stay out. Why? Well for those who don’t know, I have had scoliosis surgery so I have a steel rod on my spine and I don’t particularly want to risk anything happening to that.

So I walked around with my book in my hand and watched some of the other guys playing. For awhile, I felt like an outsider. All of the guys were out there playing and I was the only one with a Y chromosome that wasn’t on the field. It was as if this was a “guy thing” and I wasn’t participating.

Yet I thought about it some more of course. Who says that it’s the masculine thing to go out on a field and get dirty? I’m not saying it’s an unmasculine thing, but why can not the life of the mind be just as intellectual. These guys get rough and fight on the physical battleground. I do so on the intellectual. Is that not just as masculine?

I had to pause as I pondered that. A lot of our views on masculinity and femininity come from the culture. Women are told they must have a figure like X and weigh Y pounds and play with dolls and any number of things. Ladies. Don’t go to Cosmo or Glamour or any of these other magazines looking for true femininity. Still, tonight is for the guys.

We men are sadly seen in less than glamorous light in today’s society. We’re seen as ones who just belch and watch football and think about sex 24/7. We’re also supposed to be big and muscular and if you’re not, we’ll you’re just less than a guy. Unfortunately, that puts myself and a lot of other guys out.

Is this really the way it is? Let’s look at what Scripture says. When it speaks about a man in his household, it says he is t be the head and to love his wife and be willing to die for her.  He is to be the head of the household. None of those qualities above are mentioned. You can lead your household whether you’re the skinniest kid from your graduating class or Mr. Universe.

Of course, I’m not saying there’s anything unmasculine about such traits either. I’m simply saying that real masculinity lies not in the physical and your association with that, nor would I say it even lies in the intellectual and your association with that. I think you can find real men on both sides and some men are even on both sides entirely.

So tonight, I want our men to go out and find real masculinity. You won’t find it in the men’s magazines. I have nothing against exercise or building yourself up if you want to do that. Just don’t do so thinking it makes you more of a man. Real masculinity is found in reflecting the nature of God as you were meant to be. The man who does that is a real man.

A few days ago, I was reading 2 Kings 3. In this chapter, the king of Israel needs to defend himself against the king of Moab and he asks Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, and he also asks the king of Edom to help him out. Jehoshaphat insists that they go see a prophet for help from the Lord before the fight and so, they go to Elisha.

One verse in this strikes me. The kings of Israel were not noticed for being saints. Chances are, neither were the kings of Edom. Jehoshaphat was one of the righteous kings of Judah though, and when they go to Elisha, Elisha says “Were it not for the fact that I respect Jehoshaphat, I would not speak to you.”

Think about that. This was God’s representative on Earth and he is saying that he respects Jehoshaphat. What does that mean? Have we ever considered what it would mean to be the kind of man that God respects? The most awesome being of all could respect us!

We know there are such people. In Hebrews 11, the writer speaks about the righteous people and says that God is not ashamed to be called their God. What would it mean if God was though? What would it say about me if God would prefer that I do not say I am a follower of his if such is even possible as he wants me to speak the truth?

I really think we should pause and consider this awesome wonder. It is possible to be a man (Or woman) that God respects. It doesn’t mean God bows down to you or anything. It means he does honor you though in that you reflect his image well. Rest assured, God will get the glory in the end, but he also honors you.

Fame among men is fleeting. Fame at the foot of God isn’t. Abraham and Moses weren’t too popular in their time among the people. They are the celebrities of Heaven though. When people talk about who they want to see in Heaven, these two names will normally show up on the list.

What about you? How are you living? Are you bringing shame to Christ or glory? Does God respect you or not? Live your life so he will.

I hate to disappoint all of you eschatology buffs, but this is not about eschatology. You might draw some parallels to the beast in Revelation, but he is not my focus tonight. In fact, this wasn’t the topic I was going to write on tonight until I was hooking up TVs at work today while the original Sandlot movie was on and there was a little kid watching it asking me questions.

If you remember that movie, it’s about a bunch of small boys who have a little team that plays in a sandlot. However, if a ball goes over the fence, it’s gone and no one retrieves it. Why? The beast lives back there. He’s this former junkyard dog who eats children and no one returns alive. This kid was watching it and asked “Why don’t they show the beast?”

I answered that that wasn’t in the nature of the beast. If you saw the beast for what it was, you wouldn’t be afraid of it. After all, later in the movie, one kid does jump over the fence to retrieve a ball and face the beast. He makes it back over, but the beast pursues him.

What happens at the end of the chase? They come back to the sandlot. The kid jumps over the fence, but the beast runs right through it and the poor fence can’t take it. It collapses onto the dog while the other kids watch and see it lying there in pain. One of them then goes and sees it hurting and tries to lift up the fence. He can’t do it alone, so the kid who was being chased comes and they lift it up and the dog runs off as soon as it’s free.

The dog comes to the first kid who tried to help him then and we see a scene of the kid looking at the dog in the face wondering what will happen next. Then the dog starts licking the kid playfully and runs off. They meet its owner and all ends well. At the end of the story, the dog is a kind of mascot watching the kids play ball.

What was the truth? Was the dog really this monstrous beast that ate 120 kids? No. He might as well have been though. The kids were afraid so they didn’t see the beast as it really was. When they did though, they saw that it was nothing to be afraid of and was actually a friend.

This is the way fear is for us. I went on a helicopter ride with my Dad Wednesday for his birthday. I’d never flown on one so I was quite nervous up until the point the chopper took off. I could feel my stomach turning and the anxiety creeping in and then something happened that destroyed all my fear.

The chopper took off.

Once I was flying, I saw that it was nothing and was able to enjoy myself. Why? Because I saw it as it was and not as I imagined it to be. Rest assured, your imagination can be a powerful tool for good or for evil. The point is not to eliminate emotion and imagination but to control them.

Peter Kreeft says we should view death this was where eventually, death is a lover. What was once a threat is gone. It is now what delivers us into the arms of Christ. Isn’t this what Paul says in quoting Hosea? He asks where the victory and sting of death is. They are gone! Why? We see death for what it is. Paul could look at it and say “To die is gain!” Who before Christ could really say that?

What’s the solution then? See the Beasts in your life for what it is. Yeah. Friends who knows me know I need to apply this myself. It’s something I’m working on. You pray for me that I can do so as I pray for you.

Together, we’ll overcome our beasts and maybe just like the kids in the sandlot, we’ll find in the end they were friends.

I was pondering this as I pulled into my place tonight. I am really a stoic person in many ways. I find that my emotions are unruly and often seem to control me, but yet, I also find that I can hide them well and I am not very expressive of my emotions. I’m not a psychologist. Maybe the two go together. I can’t say.

I am a low-key individual with my emotions, except perhaps for when close friends are around. At a time in my life when I was in love with a lady for instance, no one around me knew about it. When I lost that love, hardly anyone knew about that as well. Oh with sadness, they can sometimes tell something’s wrong, but I’m not the type to really talk about it.

What is my point in this? My point is that if I’m low-key, I’m probably not alone and I think this has some relevance to the Christian life. I think there are some Christians that are very expressive in their emotions. God bless them. Some of these are what we call I-type personalities that can stop everyone on the street and say “Do you know Jesus?”

My only concern is that too often, I think this has been taken to be the way Christianity is meant to be for everyone.  My position is that it isn’t. It’s also my position that my personality style is not the way for everyone as well. We are trying to draw people to a savior and not a personality type after all.

My concern is that our love for Jesus will often be based on our feelings. Friends. If our level is based on our feelings, I would have to conclude that I don’t have much love. However, I thought about asking my friends “Do you think I love Jesus?” and I really think most of them would say “Of course!”

I can often approach my faith quite numb. In fact, if anything, with my negative outlook, my feelings are usually negative until I reach the point where I just burst on a good friend who’s ready to hear it all, and might I say quite literally that I thank God that I have friends like that and I think we all need them.

There are times that I come to my computer here even and I am angry with God for some reason. I may be depressed over circumstances in my life and wondering where he is and why he’s letting them happen. What do I do? I serve. What more can I do? I have to learn to not give in to my feelings.

This is something hard for all of us, and I think especially many of us analytical types. When I get a feeling, I tend to have to analyze it to the core. This means one day, I can be on top of the world and unstoppable and everything’s going great, but then the next day “Woe is me. The world is all wrong.” What’s changed? One thing only. My perspective.

Our feelings serve to tell us about our emotional states. I don’t think they serve to tell us about the external world. Too often we do a sort of transference where we take our feelings and assume everyone else feels the same way about us. It’s easy to fall into this trap.

The stoics at this point would say to step back and look at reality. That’s not easy for a lot of us, but I think if we don’t do so, we will be caught by unruly emotions. We are to control our emotions and not vice-versa. Emotions must be subject to reason. We are not creatures of instinct after all.

Why do I write this tonight? So you can understand me? That’s got to be some of it. Also though, I suspect many of you are like this and wondering “Do I really love Jesus?” I’d say you do. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have to ask such a question. Dear friend. Please take comfort and realize that while you don’t understand it, God made you that personality type for a reason. Trust him.

I’ve said several times before that I was heavily into the gaming industry. I still enjoy it, but not as much as I used to. However, I have been thinking about the concept of parties in games. Now some might be mistaking this word’s meaning like I did the first time I saw it used this way, which was when reading about forming a party in Ultima 3.

I was thinking about the party that one can usually think about where you sing “Happy Birthday” or some other celebration of that sort. The party in this case refers to a group of individuals united in the cause of an adventure. The party would have to work together to survive.

What does this have to do with the faith? I think, everything. We as Christians are relational in nature and we know that all people are to a degree as we are made in the image of the God who is relational in himself. This doesn’t mean everyone is a socialite. I am an introvert definitely and I prefer being alone, but we all need company. Aristotle valued friendship highly for a reason.

There is no place in Christianity for Lone Ranger Christians. No one is to fight this battle alone. Oh you might fight some battles by yourself partially, but you are never fighting alone. In fact, even if it is supposedly just you, there are people engaged in prayer all around you that are working with you.

This is also what is going on in Hebrews. Hebrews 11 lists a Hall of Fame of heroes of the faith. All of these were people that the readers would look up to. The writer then takes us on in Hebrews 12 to say that we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses. Who are those witnesses? The very heroes that he was just mentioning.

We never stand alone then. I will say though that when we are in teams, we do need to learn to work together. In apologetics, I don’t touch science usually. If I have to, I will, but there are others more suited to that. I belong to an apologetics organization around here that specializes in science. It’s fine with me. They know I specialize in theology and philosophy and it makes a beautiful marriage.

If you try to master everything, it will only put a huge burden on you. I believe you should have the basics at least in other areas, but choose one that you really want to emphasize in and go for that. There are some people that I will never reach their skill level in their area, but it’s fine. We build each other up. Where I am lacking, they step in. Where they are lacking, I step in.

My main point though? You’re never alone. You are with the party and you are on the cause. You are out there to spread the truth to the world. Why not work with your teammates? Why not build each other up and follow all the “one another” passages in the epistles?

It will make reaching your goal easier, and a lot more enjoyable.

Two teens were arrested today in Ausrtalia for murder. The shocking aspect of this story though is that these girls did this murder as an experiment. They were wanting to see if they would feel guilty if they murdered someone. In describing the act, they said that murdering this other girl “felt right.”

The only kind of responses I’ve received from the moral relativists is that this kind of thing happens. No. This kind of thing does not happen. A happening is more like a rain shower one day. The rain comes and the rain goes. What are we to say? Well, it’s life. People get murdered. No big deal.

Murder has existed before, but I think these girls have managed to show the bankruptcy of moral relativism. If all morality is to be reduced to feelings and then these feelings don’t say murder is wrong, well, we can’t really say murder is wrong. I have a friend who said that if you even question that you would feel bad about murdering someone, you should probably seek some treatment. He’s entirely right.

This is the bankruptcy of our world today. We have reached the point of what J. Budziszewski speaks about. We have to teach people the things they really know first. Why? Because some people have such little moral sense as to not even realize that murder is wrong and that human life is not to be treated that way.

Murder does evoke feelings in us, but friends, we don’t need those feelings to know that murder is wrong. We all know it is and I would like to see someone come forward who is ready to defend murder. (One wonders how quickly that person would defend murder if they knew a mafia hit man had their spouse or child or even themselves in their sights.)

The problem also is that you can logically wind up at this point from moral relativism. I see it as a perfect outworking even. On the other hand, someone take the saying of “Love God” and “Love your neighbor” and tell me how you wind up at murdering your neighbor.

Now someone will point to the Crusades or the Inquisition. Not good enough though. You need to tell me how you logically arrive at the Crusades or Inquisition from the teachings of Christ. You don’t. You get there when those teachings are misused. This is not to say I’m a pacifist, but I don’t believe all the wars involved are what we’d call “Just Wars.”

Friends. These two teenage girls could have lived near you. There could be more in your area. What are we to do? We need to return to morality. Some things are right. Some things are wrong. How many more need to die before we realize the consequences of moral relativism?