Deeper Waters

By now, faithful readers of my blog know that I am single. They also know that I am always on the lookout for Mrs. Right. I would hope that they see me as someone of strong Christian character, despite my many flaws and failures. However, there are two things said about me that might surprise some.

#1: I am a gentleman

#2: I am a huge flirt.

Now some might wonder how these two go together. As I have pondered this idea though, the idea has occurred to me that only a gentleman can truly tastefully flirt and appreciate a lady’s beauty. Of course, I would say that it is easier to be a Christian and be a gentleman than a non-Christian and a gentleman. This is because we do have a basis for a morality on how we treat men and women and as I have argued in other places, for sexuality as well.

C.S. Lewis told us to think of the man who is craving what the world calls sex. (I prefer intercourse for the term.) Now, there is a proper way to strongly desire sex, and that is to see it as a gift of God reserved for marriage and the young man and woman will merely have to control their hormones while they wait. Lewis is not talking about that person. He is talking about the one who is an addict.

Lewis tells us that such a man is said to be wanting to find a woman. Lewis answers though that a woman is the last thing he wants to meet. He is looking for pleasure only and a female body is the apparatus by which he plans to get that pleasure. In other words, he does not want her. He wants her body only.

Only a gentleman then can truly appreciate the beauty that is the lady. The difference is as profound as the difference between looking at a telescope and looking through it. The man who sees the sex as the end misses out on the lady overall. The man who sees the lady as the goal though, gets the sex and the lady. He also realizes though, if he is a Christian, that her beauty is not the end. The pleasure she brings him and he brings her through the act of intercourse is not the highest good. Both of these are hints, and I’m quite sure, very enjoyable hints, of a greater reality, that to be found in the beauty and relationship of God.

This is why it’s truly gentlemanly to honor the lady’s body. It is not an object to be ravished. It is a treasure to be cherished. If you had a diamond for instance, what would you do with it? Use it as a toothpick? Scrape the gunk out of the sink with it? Or would you do something more like set it somewhere safe and treasure it always? You might even want to do so so that everyone who meets you can see the rare jewel you’ve got. (The analogy is not perfect of course. There are some beauties of the lady that are not meant to be displayed in public.)

This gives the gentleman the advantage in that by honoring the beauty of his lady, he is allowed to savor it all the more. Like watching a lovely sunrise, the gentleman when approaching the beauty takes in all that he sees, but does his best to be respectful realizing that he’s dealing with a rare jewel.

Unfortunately, this is too often disregarded. Too many men look at porn and then somehow think that they can respect a woman’s body. Can redemption and restoration be found? Yes. It is best to avoid it altogether though. As for married men, too many of them spend too much time having lingering glances at other women, not realizing their wives are most likely comparing themselves to those women and feeling less than adequate.

So my conclusion? Be a gentleman. A gentleman honors his lady while constantly pursuing her. Also men, pursuing does not end when she says “I do.” Pursuing takes place your whole life. You never cease to be the man letting your lady know exactly just how much you love her.

Remember biblically, you are the king of the castle. That part is said enough. Here’s what follows. Treat your lady like a queen. Do so. Be a gentleman.

The title seems self-evident, but as I look back on my own life, I wonder if I have really lived it as such, and probably a lot of other people have done such. In our lives, we want so much to avoid sin that it could be that we take an extreme that is just as sinful as that which we seek to avoid.

<> The Buddha saw that all suffering came from desire that was unmet. The way to avoid suffering then is to eliminate desire. Unfortunately, this seems to have the end result of killing the patient where the end goal is to reach a void where you cease to be known as Sunyata.

In some ways, we can admire what the Buddha intended. He’s right in some ways. Suffering does come from having our desires unmet in many cases. However, the Christian view is not that our desires are the problem. They are fallen. If anything, our desires are too weak.

There are many desires we do view as neutral though they can be indulged to a wrong proportion. The desire for food is good, but gluttony is not. The desire for drink is good, but even that needs moderation. It is good to desire entertainment, but not at the expense of avoiding work. I am tired in the evenings and desire sleep, but not to the extent that I sleep all day.

One of the most difficult ones though is sexual desire. A lot of couples have a hard time on a honeymoon because they’ve had the impression all their lives that their desire is somewhat negative. Wives need to know it’s okay to desire their husbands sexually and husbands their wives.

As a single guy, this is a hard one. When I see a beautiful lady, I need to realize that God made me to be attracted to her. He has just made the ultimate fulfillment of that attraction fit a specific time and place. Of course, there are improper ways of handling the desire, but why pray for it go away? That’s like praying that I cease to be a guy. I should just pray for self-control.

In the book “More Jesus, Less Religion” author Jack Felton talks about how he specializes in counseling men who struggle with sexual addiction. He talks about guys who come in and say “I was on the beach and I saw a pretty girl in a bathing suit and I responded.” (He means internally. Not going up and talking to her.) His answer is “Well of course he did!” After all, that’s how guys made healthy males and he’d have a lot more to worry about if he didn’t respond at all.

If anything though, our desires are too weak. We are far too easily pleased. We settle, as C.S. Lewis says, for making mudpies when God wants to give us a day at the beach. If anything, our desires are a clue. We are always wanting more and more and that endless desire can only be fully realized in God.

The goal then? Not to cease to be. The goal is TO BE. We are to be who we are meant to be in God finding all our desires ultimately pointing to him. This doesn’t mean you ignore the desires here. Those desires are clues to the desire of God. Jesus says he must be our bread and drink, our very sustenance. The imagery of marriage is used to explain his love. The imagery of parenthood to explain the fatherhood of God.

Dear Christian. Your desires are good. They are simply to be controlled, but then, that desire for holiness is a good thing as well is it not?

I was reading an article last night on how the Early Church Fathers used satire on their opponents and referred to them as antichrists and other such titles. Such language is actually common in the NT. It made me think that they made these statements because their Christian hope was their greatest joy in life and these people opposed that.

I thought about that some more this morning out of the blue.  Our preacher preached on John 19:28-42. His message was on what the death of Christ accomplished, but as I listened to the Scripture being read as the congregation including myself stood, I found an anger swelling inside of me over what was being said.

I don’t usually get emotional, but I remember hearing it today and thinking “No! This is pure evil!” Indeed, it is. We hear the story of the cross so often that I think we forget what really happened there. All within me said “He in no way deserved this!” I thought I had a proof of the resurrection then (Which I can argue for anyway) because surely, if anyone could conquer death, it had to be Jesus. Surely history would be all wrong if Jesus just remained dead.

It won’t convince a skeptic of course, but it should embolden us. When King Clovis, the first king of the Franks, was hearing about the crucifixion of Christ for the first time, he put his sword on his hilt saying that that wouldn’t have happened if he had been there. We can all be thankful that God allowed this to take place for our salvation, but if we had not known what was going on, how many of us would agree with Clovis? How many of us would get our weapons out and be ready to fight?

Such anger I think is good and necessary. We Christians don’t get angry enough. There are some things we should not get angry over, but there are some things we should. My sister was once a singer at a theme park. One day, a celebrity guest told her that she looked really good in her clothes, but she would look better if they were all off.

Imagine if it was your sister. How many of us would have immediately leaped forward ready to defend our sister’s honor? How many of us would do the same for our mother or for our loved ones? What docile mother would suddenly become a force to be reckoned with if her children were in danger?

My friends. We need to get angry. We need to look at the way the world is treating Christ. We’ve spent enough time being pretty and nice. Paul told us to put on armor and fight and we need to do that. This won’t be an easy fight. There will be injuries and our opponents don’t play nice.

It doesn’t matter. The cause is great and it’s worth fighting for.

I was reading an article by Francis Beckwith just now on moral relativism and he made a statement about how Americans tend to have a relativistic stance that assumes that we cannot know the truth even if it does exist. Beckwith is an excellent Christian apologist and I’d heard such a term before, but I really started to wonder about it.

Does truth exist outside of us, or does it only exist inside of us? Do we create truth or do we discover it? It seems that if we were to be the ones who were discovering truth, then that would mean that there existed truth outside of us. What would this truth consist of though? Is it a material reality or an immaterial reality?

Truth is a relationship between two things. If I have an idea that I am writing my blog and reality indicates that I am writing my blog, then the truth affirmed is that I am writing my blog. The idea in my mind corresponds to the activity in the real world, and thus is true.

Yet how do we differentiate between material things and describe their relationship? We speak of them being bigger or further apart or drawn to one another by magnetism. Of course, this is a small listing. The adjectives we use are adjectives that describe physical attributes, the only attributes that can exist in a materialistic world. All that exists must be that which is material. If anything immaterial exists, then materialism is refuted.

Yet, do we really believe truth exists? In his book “The Mind of God” Paul Davies gives an illustration. He suggests that we take two propositions. We will call the first one A and the  second one B, and we will have two scenarios. Both have A being “There is no absolute truth.” If B says in response “A is true”, then that is absolute. If it says “A is false” then there are absolute truths. In either case, absolute truth exists.

Yet would truth really exist if minds did not exist? LEt us suppose that a scientist invented a trasnport machine and went to an alternate universe where there were no intelligent minds. When he’s there, do things suddenly become true? Let’s assume it was just like ours, except in this naturalistic universe, life never evolved. Does the statements he’s making about the distance of the Sun from the Earth become true when he says them, or does he find the distance and report it because it’s already true?

However, if this truth exists, then there must be a mind if truth is a relationship between two things, the thought and the world outside of the thought.  In order for this to be the case though, there has to be a mind always affirming all of these truths. Of course, the Christian has the answer. There exists truth because there exists the eternal mind of God that affirms all truths in all worlds.

Let us remember also who we are. We are followers of him who said he is the truth. If we are to be people of the truth who affirm the reality of the truth, we need to start living the truth.

I don’t remember what sparked it, but either talking about fear last night or this morning with someone put a thought in my head that I’ve been off and on playing with today. I doubt I am in the minority of writers when I say I often write from my own experience. I have had a lot going on lately and in many ways, it’s one of those times where I want 2 + 2 to = 4 again.

I find I could be in good company. I always get a comfort when I read about Paul who talked about fears within and about how he wanted to see his friends so that he would have less anxiety. I remember a professor of mine once said you could put the Pauline epistles in one hand and a book of abnormal psychology in the other and you’ll find Paul had a lot of his own struggles.

Yet I find the fears I face are those from within, and those are the worst kind. Now there could be external factors involved. There is one event in my life I am still dealing with that came up recently and there’s also my preparing to go to Seminary which leaves one with a whole host of doubts and questions, as well as the realization that a friend of mine who I’m quite close with is getting married before I.

Yet I find the worst fears are those of uncertainty. They involve looking at one’s life and just wondering about all the events that have happened and what the future holds. I also find something else in this. I find that if there is anything that is good at destroying pleasure and happiness, it is fear.

<> Think about it. Can you really enjoy anything when you are living in fear? Can you be happy and afraid at the same time? Pleasure and fear are incompatible. Pleasure involves a relaxation and a freedom from that which is negative. Fear is always negative. I don’t think caution is. Caution is good. Fear isn’t.

I believe fear also gets us to believe that which isn’t true, but it does start with something that is true. I have a fear of heights for instance and I can’t stand being on ladders. Now I can be up somewhat and have the thought, “If I fall, it will hurt.” I think it’s quite likely that that’s true. However, it then becomes “If you go any higher, you will fall.” Then it’s “Don’t stand where you are. This ladder’s gonna collapse.” Fear always likes to play out the worst-case scenario.

But why does it make things false? Simple. If we saw the truth, we would not have fear. If we saw the God who is in control of all things, we would have no fear. Fear then is the making of something into what it is not. In my own life for instance, I find I can have a sort of “Crisis of the Week” that will seem to have the whole fate of my personal universe involved, and the next week, it’s gone. It’s not answered or refuted. Just gone. I look back and find I was making a mountain out of a molehill and say “I’m glad I’ll never have to deal with that again.” Unfortunately, those words never seem to hold over time.

If only for a glimpse we could break free of fear, and I think a good way to do so is to get off of ourselves. How many of you would like to rush into a burning building? Some adventurous thrillseekers might but most of us would say “No thanks,” when we saw the reality of one. Now change the scenario. Someone you love is inside that building and you can save them. Will you rush in and help? The number has probably sizably increased.

Fear is often about what happens to us. When we get off of ourselves, our fears can vanish. It is amazing how many of our fears can vanish when we have a case of infatuation for instance. However, something else along the same lines that makes our fears vanish is worship. Worship draws us into the presence of God and the celebration of who he is. How can fear reside with that?

I’ll grant all my readers this. Worship is hard then. It’s hard to worship God when you feel like you’re at your wits end and you’re not sure if you can trust him. We are to praise him in all things. The Philippians 4 passage comes to mind at this point. We are to praise him in all things. Whatsoever has what fits in that list Paul mentions is what we are to think about.

Dear Christian. Be released from fear today and pray that I am. Remember that even the shepherd needs some help every now and then.

At the last point today, I decided I’d blog about perfectionism. This is something I struggle with greatly, and chances are, a large number of you Christians out there do as well. Now do we believe in the idea of Christian perfection. Yes we do. However, we also realize that in the here and now, we have not yet attained it, but beat ourselves up for not having done so.

In some ways, this desire is in all of us. Why does the child cry at the store? Simple. The world isn’t perfect. They’re not getting their toy or brother is hitting them or Mommy isn’t giving them the attention they want. This longing in us is a good thing. Unfortunately, we put it at a time where it doesn’t apply.

<> This kind of thinking does not allow us to make any mistakes and if we do, we make the worst one of beating ourselves up for it. If we were really good Christians, we would not make such mistakes. No one’s justifying committing a sin of course. However, when we commit them, it doesn’t do us good to endlessly beat ourselves up for them.

I think this also applies to our constant need for certainty. One reason I didn’t ask a girl out usually in High School was because I wasn’t certain about them. Geez. Who is? Unfortunately, I still find such a trait in me today. If absolute certainty over an issue doesn’t exist, then I am in anxiety over it. That 1% chance of being wrong is exaggerated to 100%.

What decision in life do we face with certainty? What man on his wedding day doesn’t have any case of cold feet? In fact, why would he have cold feet? Simple. He’s making an important decision. I don’t have anxiety about shopping at the grocery store because that’s not a major life event. I do about other decisions though that are major life events.

I also find this in the area of apologetics. Did I give the perfect answer? I think those of us in this field can fall into rough territory if we count our success by the number of converts we see. Christ, at the end of his earthly ministry, did not have a huge multitude following him. In fact, they were quite against him. Are we to say he was poor with his arguments? The synagogues ran Paul out. Was he poor with his? Felix told him that he was insane even!

Naturally, if our answers aren’t perfect, we will begin the comparison game. Who has the perfect answer? Well, it seems like everyone else does. However, if we were honest, we’d see they don’t even have what we have. Converts are actually few and far between in this field.

So what good do we do in apologetics? We do see converts of course, but we also deal with hard questions and remove any threat in them. Our answers are a blessing to those who are in the church. It has been a huge blessing to me when someone contacts me out of the blue and says something that is an encouragement to me based on something I’ve said.

What can I say on this? Don’t beat yourself up. Let the past go. Yeah. It’s hard. I wish I knew how to do it. In this, consider me a beggar telling other beggars where to get bread. I am merely a wounded soldier trying to help others with the same wounds.

I can understand in some ways someone doubting the resurrection. I can understand in some ways someone doubting miracles. Fair enough. These are questions that need to be answered and can be answered. However, there is one objection that I just don’t put up with. That is the objection that we generally observe that dead people stay dead.

This is where I get angry about the arguments against miracles. This kind of argument assumes that the ancients were stupid people. I would like to point out something obvious. From the beginning, we built tombs for the dead. Why did we do that? It’s this most amazing thing. Dead people stayed dead!

Where do we get off that people believed the resurrection because they were gullible back then? First off, they weren’t. Secondly, even gullible people have their limits. To believe that one ancient says to another “X just came back from the dead” and the other says, “Really?! Cool!” goes beyond reason.

In fact, we can see this with every argument against miracles that’s put forward. What case did the ancients not know about that we moderns do? Did the ancients not know that you can’t walk on water? Did they not know that virgins don’t give birth? Did they not know that food just doesn’t multiply instantaneously?

They knew what we know on these topics. That’s how they recognized miracles. No my friends. The ancients weren’t stupid.  They knew exactly what was unnatural and what was natural. Would that we moderns wouldn’t press our stupidity so often on the ancients.

In the Garden of Eden, the first seed of doubt is planted by Satan in saying “Has God not said?” The lie worked incredibly well back then. It’s worked so well that I believe it’s the main lie used today. Imagine how different our lives would be if we really believed the great truths of Scripture. If we knew God said them and that we could believe him, our lives would be radically altered.

I was pondering this today as I wrestled with some past sins. There are things in my past I’m ashamed of. As I say such, I realize that it is 99.9% likely that I am not alone and the same percentage could apply to you having the same problem. I find it amazing that the hardest person to forgive often is ourselves. I used to think it might be that we were taking our sin too seriously, and maybe in some way we are, but now I suggest that it is us taking ourselves too seriously.

I can look at someone who has the exact same sins as I do and say “Oh God can forgive you! Your slate will be wiped clean!” However, I turn and look at myself and say “Oh no. Your sins are too horrendous to be forgiven.” How do I know I question their forgiveness? Because I still dwell on them and repent of them over and over.

Why can’t we let it go? Why do I say we? Because again, I suspect you’re in the same boat. I just don’t think we realize how awesome this grace is. What would God have us to do? Change the past? We can’t do that.  What could we do to possibly earn his forgiveness in any way? All he tells us to do is to ask to be forgiven and we are forgiven. It’s that simple.

I think that’s a large part of the difficulty. We find it hard to believe that it could be that simple. We live with the mindset of “There’s gotta be a catch.” We will watch and say “Did I really repent of that?” Did we say the “sinner’s prayer” right? Were we baptized in the right way? Depending on how you view salvation, these questions can come to mind.

What would it mean if we really believed we were forgiven? It would mean we were trusting God, but as I said yesterday, trusting God goes against our very nature. We are so fallen that we run from him every chance we get. We are more prone to believe the father of lies than the God of all truth.

God has said it. God has done it. We need to accept that. We need to move past our past and live in the present. There can be nothing that we can do to change the past. Now there might be times we need to go to other people and make up for some wrongs for them, but not to earn our forgiveness. We do so merely because it’s the right thing to do.

I wonder how awesome it would be for many of us if we had Christ appear to us today and say to us “I love you and you are forgiven.” Most of us would be on cloud nine for the rest of our lives after hearing that. The truth is though that he has said that! It’s no less him saying it because it’s contained in Scripture. Perchance we need to get into this book more and read about the awesome promises God has made to us.

Maybe then we can learn more to trust him. The more we see who he really is and not the way we think he is, the more we can see the good news. We are loved and we are forgiven. Welcome home Prodigal.

Where I work, we sell movies. One of the movies coming out tomorrow is the Pursuit of Happyness. I’ve never seen this one so I have no comment to make on this movie. However, I do wish to comment on another thought of mine. We in America live in a land where we are granted the right to the pursuit of happiness. However, I think deep down, we all have a fear of happiness.

What? We’re afraid to be happy? Why would we ever be afraid of such a thing? I think we are because we live in a very individualistic society. In our world, it’s every man for himself and we each live with our own independent worlds. Our worlds are built with such order and hopes and dreams that unfortunately, the castles we build in the sky can easily come crashing down.

I have this belief that when man fell, man not only fell from God. Man also fell away from his environment, he fell away from his fellow man, and he even fell away from himself. Man has been left to wander and he doesn’t really know who he is because his identity is to be rooted in God and he is estranged from him.

Man’s first sin was wanting to be God. We’ve never given up on that dream. Whenever we sin, we are ultimately saying that we want to be God. God is omniscient, but we will choose our way for life. He will not be the Lord of our lives. We will be the Lord of our lives.

What does this have to do with happiness? In order for us to be truly happy, we have to return to that place. We have to be living a life of full trust in God. That thought terrifies us though in many ways. We aren’t sure if God will keep his promises. We ask ourselves several “what if” questions. It is easier to worry than to rest in God.

Consider it though. If we did trust God, would we not be happy? Would we not realize that he does have our best interests at heart despite suffering? Would we not consider the joy of eternity? Would we not live each day in wonder and awe of what he is doing in the world and who he is especially?

Indeed, we would. However, to do that, we must give up our claims to deity, and that is something that we are very opt to not want to do.  We want to control our world, because we think it is safest when we do that. You’d think the years we’ve spent learning that it isn’t would teach us, but it doesn’t.

<> Today, I urge surrender. Get off the throne and see that God is the one on it. Let him be God and let you be you. Then, be happy.

I went to another church this morning since one of my former professors from Bible College was preaching. I thought he did a great job and the compliments I got from him and some other former studentes were highly encouraging to me. After the sermon, I heard him talking about how when something happens to a pastor’s wife, everyone gathers around the pastor and it’s great for the church because they get to shepherd the shepherd. He then said that it’s a shame that there’s not an easier way for that to happen.

I told him there was. The congregation needs to just do it. This got us to talking about this kind of situation. He told me that Tony Campolo once said something along the lines of “If you knew what I was thinking and what was going on in my mind this week, you wouldn’t come to hear me preach, and if I knew what was going on in your minds, I wouldn’t be preaching to you.”

I’m not a real fan of Tony Campolo, but when he’s right, he’s right. Friends. Your pastor has his own struggles as well. Unfortuantely, it’s too often that pastors and leaders are put on pedestals that they don’t belong on. It needs to be realized that going to Bible College or Seminary or being ordained does not immunize you from life’s difficulties.

When I was at the church today and heard some of the compliments, that was exactly what I needed. Those of us in ministry spend a lot of time giving of ourselves. You can’t give all the time and not receive back. We need that encouragement. It could be simple. It could just be stopping to ask them how they’re doing. It could be sending them a card thanking them for a good sermon.

Your pastor has struggles too. He’ll need you to be there for him at times. Please don’t put your pastor in a position he does not belong in. He can do a lot for you, but he is only human as well. Your pastor will bleed if you cut him and he has situations in his life that try his soul as well.

<> Yet imagine what a blessing you can be to your pastor if you just call him up simply to ask how he’s doing. How much he’d like it if you called him up and simply asked if he’d like to go out to dinner. Your pastor enjoys having fun just like everyone else does and needs a break from his study every now and then.

Today, keep this in mind. Encourage one another. It applies to your pastor as well.