Deeper Waters

This is a very hard blog for me to write. I know you’re not seeing this now and you won’t for awhile, but you also know why this would be hard for me. Today, we saw one of those two days we thought would never happen happen. Now, we await the other one. If the situations were reversed, maybe you’d be wondering also. Yet today, I had a unique happiness for you. I truly am happy for you my friend and you’ve motivated me to search further and the fun at the reception gave for a little while some release from the funk I’ve been in lately as well as a new philosophical insight. I thank you for that.

I’m sure you remember how we met, but I want to say it again, especially so we can have a record here in my blog. I had just started coming to your church and I liked it and I wanted to join. When I came down, you stood next to me. I didn’t even know who you were then but over time, I did come to know you.

Don’t you remember it? Of course you do. The Mormons came to our church that night and you saw me with a couple of other church officials battle it out. You saw me and realized that you could do more. You’d heard me talk about apologetics before, but you didn’t understand my love of it. You did then. You’ve come to learn a lot since then.

We’d be on the PALtalk program also and there, we’d debate Jehovah’s Witnesses. Didn’t we have some fun times together? We got caught up in a lot of messes, but hey, we had fun. Remember ordering our copies of the NWT and the joy we had in going through them.

Remember our watching the Matrix also? We love that series so much. You and I still do the greeting between Seraph and Neo every time we meet. I wouldn’t dream of missing it. We can finish each other’s thoughts so easily. You’ve always been there with me, and I treasure that.

I’m glad you’ve found someone, but we’ve seen each other make bad mistakes in romance too. Heck. We could blackmail each other and I said as much Friday night when I toasted you. We would never dare dream of doing so. Have someone pay me all they want. It is not worth it to blackmail a friend of mine. It’s not that we did anything immoral, but we made some embarrassing choices.

We used to go everywhere to meet women. You know we spent every Sunday afternoon together after church. We’d go to the Sonic and we’d say it was so I could get ice cream and you could get what you got, but we both knew that we were going there to check out women.

Remember when that church didn’t want me to teach on cults because I hadn’t taken a course? You got so angry. I wasn’t there to see it as I’d left rather upset, but I hear the pastor was upset with you because you were so angry. It takes guts to stand up to a pastor, but you did it for me. I appreciate that.

You were there when I preached several of my sermons. In fact, many times when I preached at my college, you supplied the music. We never got tired of you singing the cartoon song. That’s why tonight during the reception, I asked the DJ to play it for you. I know you cheered when that happened. I know you too well.

You took me on a motorcycle ride one time and I loved it. We had great rides in my car of course where we would sing along to the radio and we had more worship than at a church service. I never sang at church really, but I had no hesitancy around you. Your real love though was to travel by motorcycle.

And those motorcycles sent you to motorcycle school where you learned how to build them. I called you most every Sunday night. Some nights I got busy, but it was always great to get in touch with you. I remember you telling me about meeting this girl and lo and behold, today you married her.

Maybe you saw me some during the service and reception. My getting teary-eyed wasn’t faked. It was one of the most emotional times of my life, but I am thrilled for you. In some ways, it’s hard for me to say that, but I really am. I’m sure you understand. You’re my best friend after all.

Yes. You really are. I have a lot of friends everywhere. I can get on my computer and talk to friends. I can go to work and talk to friends. I can meet old friends from high school and college. You’re the different one though for some reason. I don’t know why, but it’s like our spirits have knitted in that strange way that make me see a lot of you in myself and see someone I can trust.

My other friends are great of course. I wouldn’t trade them for the world. You’re unique though. Someday, I’m going to walk down that aisle also and I want you to be there as well. I want you to be able to celebrate my joy as I have celebrated yours. I’m incredibly thankful that I’ve got to be a part of your life. It took a lot of me to come here to this place to do that, but there was no question of whether I would or not. You’re my friend. You wanted me to be a groomsman in your wedding, and that takes precedence over anything else. Had even Seminary called wanting to meet with me, I would have told them they’d have to wait. My friend needed me.

Tonight, you’re celebrating. I ask that you remember me always though. I’ll be willing to do anything I can to help you out in anyway. You really are my best bud. I can’t seem to say that enough. Bad news for you of course. You even get stuck with me for all eternity. We can spend it looking back.

As I write, those times come back I remember your Dad being in the hospital and you didn’t want to see him alone. Who got up at 4 in the morning to go with you? That’s right. You and I left and we listened on the way to the radio and heard the Christian talk show talking about pet peeves at 6 A.M.

Our pet peeve was people that are cheerful at 6 A.M. We talked about Greg Koukl saying that until his first cup of coffee in the morning, he’s an atheist. We mentioned we were working our way up to orthodoxy. By around 8 A.M., we were probably Jehovah’s Witnesses as we worked our way up. I was there with you though, and there was no question of if I would. My mother found you and I later that day back at my place sleeping at 4 in the afternoon or so. I only know because she told me. We were tired, but it was worth it.

Remember going to the Gondolier restaurant that time and putting our hands on the glass that drove the lady cleaning the windows crazy? Fun times indeed. It’s those little times that are sticking out.  They’re the ones I will always remember. We had a lot of adventures together. We watched both Monk and Smallville as well. I remember we’d cheer when the ladies showed up during the credits.

You’ve seen me at my darkest hours also. You know the secrets I have in my life, but for some reason you like me anyway. I know you’re on your honeymoon now, but I have no doubt if you got a message for instance that something had happened here, and may God forbid that it does, and I was in the hospital, you’d be back immediately. You’re that kind of a friend.

Today is June 16th, 2007 as I write this. I’m thinking about you. I’m happy for you and sad for myself both, but I want you to know that you rock. I want you to know that I will always treasure our friendship that we share and I pray that marriage doesn’t change that. You and I should be friends for a long time.

You spoke about how you don’t deserve so many things you have last night. I looked at you as you said that and thought that I don’t deserve a friend like you. I don’t know why God blessed me so much, but he did. I couldn’t have asked for a better friend to stay with me through it all.

I think you’re awesome. I want you to have a permanent reminder in this blog as well as for the world to know that you, my friend, mean the world to me. May God bless you greatly.

A friend of mine had a saying once he got from somewhere on “Go Play.” Some people might think that isn’t a serious way of looking at life. The truth is that I think this is the best way of looking at life. I think too often we have made so many things work that we can no longer enjoy them.

Let us go back to the original creation account. Before God created, there was him in a relationshp of love within the Trinity itself. What was going on? Pleasure. Endless pleasure. It is the pleasure that we are invited to join into one day. There was not a necessity on God to create. God does not have to create. He chooses to create. He does not cease to be God by not creating.

Instead, play was going on first. Play is far more serious than work. Work is often done as an obligation in order to meet another goal. Play is done as its own goal. Play is done simply because it is play. Work is often done in our world in order to later enjoy a pleasure. We work so we can pay the bills so that we can have the time for pleasure later on.

The difference comes when our work becomes our pleasure. When we enjoy what we do. It is not done as obligation any more. I believe this also happens when it becomes an adventure. If we take it as something that we have to do rather than something we want to do, we cease to enjoy it.

I was at a wedding rehearsal tonight for a friend where I saw an example of this. I heard someone saying that they didn’t want to get married because it was hard work. The exact opposite is true. Marriage is not so much hard work as it is hard play. It is play because it is done totally out of desire and not done out of obligation.

In fact, we watched the flower girl and the ringbearer playing then and I saw they were acting more like a married couple than any would think. One could easily look at them walking down the aisle 20 years later. They were playing, but that playing is the kind of playing that naturally leads to love.

Indeed, all such love is really play at heart. It is reckless. We often think we should take marriage in a “serious” way. Let us not do that at all! Let us treat something like marriage recklessly! Why? Because this is love and love is not to be safe. Love is risky and dangerous for love is play and is willing to do what it can for its pleasure.

Let us take small things seriously, but let us not take major things seriously for we will cease to enjoy them. One might wonder why we should do this? Will we cease to treat marriage and other such things with respect? The only people who would really say such things though are those who have never seen anyone at play.

Read about the wrestlers in Ancient Greece. They took the wrestling very seriously and the young men were all to be trained in that. If you want a modern example, they are abundant. Watch what risks people will take for pleasure. Watch people who skydive. Think of people who risk death just for pleasure. They take such actions very seriously.

Indeed, if we do not take play in that way, then what is going on with professional sports? Our culture pays a lot to see people play and we value that play greatly. The player does not care so much about safety as he does enjoying the play. In fact, if he cares about safety, one can be sure that he will be a terrible player. The man who will never succeed at love is the one who is never willing to be dangerous in love.

Yes. Play is taken very seriously for play is closer to the nature of God than work is for play is eternal while work had a beginning. Play is to be reckless for it is its own pleasure and it cannot be enjoyed if one is constantly looking over one’s shoulder. Play is reckless abandon.

Thus, maybe we should see our lives as play as well. We are all involved not only in God’s story but God’s game as well. Life is too short to be constantly looking over our shoulder. If we see our lives as play, we can enjoy them more. If we see them as work, we believe we must do X. It is not a privilege. It is then a task. Life is a privilege though. It is a gift, and a gift is not a burden.

My friend has it right. We all need to Go Play. Life is too short to work. Let’s play.

Fans of Casting Crowns know that the group has a CD out called LifeSong. I don’t own that CD though. It’s not because I’m against Casting Crowns. I’m not. I think they’re a great group. I just don’t happen to buy a lot of music and even when I do, I don’t usually find the time to listen to it.

I am not a singer either, but I am a writer and I love a good story. I pondered this some today as I was doing some shopping. (Blog readers know I’m writing early. I’m heading on a trip to Florida tomorrow for a friend’s wedding and I have to be up early to catch my flight. If you don’t see a blog for a few days, that’s why.)

I wonder how often we actually consider our lives a story. I had to go get an eye exam today for example and get some new lenses for my glasses. I sat in the waiting room pondering my life as a story and it made me see things in a new perspective. The girl who walked in was more noticeable then and I paid attention to her name. I felt like I was on an episode of Monk where I needed to learn every detail about the world around me.

I also pondered the way the story is usually told. There are times I can seem to be the narrator of my own life where I am telling the story from my perspective. Then, there are times where I can imagine bringing in a third party and having that third party describe all that is going on.

Is such a story exciting? It certainly is. Our lives are not meant to be humdrum. We’re involved in the greatest adventure of all and we have a story to share. Our stories are part of the greatest story of all and all of these stories are interacting together to bring harmony. The parts that don’t seem to fit now I believe will fit beautifully from the perspective of eternity.

C.S. Lewis said there are no ordinary people. Let’s take that a step further. There are no ordinary actions or ordinary days either. Each thing you do whether private or public effects the story as a whole for each one changes you somehow at least and that changes the you that you present to the world.

With this in mind, we need to watch ourselves. We need to get control of our thought life but also to enjoy it at times. We need to realize also that our fellow man is indeed interesting. Unfortunately, we can see them as people that tend to just get in the way. Nope. They’re creatures that bear the image of God also.

This should also lead us to trust. The greatest authors of all present their heroes with trials and difficulties. However, pick your favorite work of fiction. When the hero reached a dangerous point or a tragedy occurred, did you chuck the book out the window and say “The author doesn’t know what he’s doing!” Obviously not, or else it wouldn’t be your favorite. No. You keep going because you trust the author. If he’s allowed something bad to happen, it is for a reason. It is a shame we don’t do that with the greatest author of all.

As you go through your future days, picture your life as a story and trust the one who holds the pen.

I told a friend I’d write on this a few days ago and I haven’t really got to do anything in-depth in pondering the question, but I like to write like this at times. It means that you get to journey along with me on my thought process and not just see my ideas but how I got there.

What I’m wanting to speak about is feelings in the Christian life. These seem to have a high place to many people and I would say, I sadly put them on a level that they should not be put on. Have we abandoned the Christian approach of reason though and decided to let feelings be the guide?

Why would we abandon reason though? It could be because the church dropped the intellectual foreground in the late 1800’s due to such events as liberalism coming in from Germany and the rise of the evolutionary theory. The church decided to make Jesus be the Jesus of faith then and who cares about the evidence? Naturally, not all did this, but anti-intellectualism began creeping in.

If you can’t trust your reason, where can you go? Only one place is left. Feelings. Today, we have a church culture that bases much on feelings. I want to scream every time I’m in the church and hear a preacher talk about how he wants someone in the church to do as they feel led. Why do we have committees to handle things if we really believe that God will do it all?

That is where the danger lies. Too often, we believe we can determine truth by our feelings, especially such things as “God’s will.” There needs to be a stronger guide. For one thing, we are great deceivers and most especially, great deceivers of ourselves. How many times have we worried about something and felt something about it and it turns out later we were entirely wrong?

Feelings can tell you about your perspective on something. They cannot tell you about the true perspective. If I am feeling depressed, then I am depressed. That does not mean I have an objective reason to be depressed. I could even be happy, but I would have no true basis for that happiness.

Imagine doing this with forgiveness and the love of God though? Actually, you don’t have to. Many of us probably do. Does God’s love for us ever change? I see no reason to think so. Yet how many of us think that at times, God doesn’t love us because we don’t feel it? Do we not often feel guilt for the past even though God has forgiven us? I wonder what that says of our view of God’s forgiveness if we keep asking him to forgive us of what he’s already forgiven us of. I wonder how that alters our view of his forgiveness.

Now what about God’s will? God’s will is to conform you to the likeness of Christ. That’s not a matter of feelings but of truth. Your feelings can tell you what you desire though and how you’re going on that path. I am in apologetics, for instance, because I have felt a strong desire and joy to do so since starting and I don’t see any reason for me not to be in such a field.

Are my feelings an accurate measure of if I’m in God’s will or not? No. In fact, our feelings can often control our reason when they take the forefront. The tail usually wags the dog. To let you in in my world, it starts with some negative feeling that must be analyzed and then that analysis produces “reasons” and then those “findings” are shown to be truths to lead on to other truths. Nothing in the external world has changed though. Just me. That should be enough to show how flimsy the approach is.

By the way, I am not in condemnation of good feelings. You can have good feelings in the worship of God. However, good feelings are not a go ahead from God nor are bad feelings a stay back. In fact, our emotions should not control our theology. Because we feel really good about something does not mean that it is right or good.

This should also tell us to avoid trumping one another with spirituality. When we meet a brother or sister in Christ we disagree with, we should not answer their arguments by pointing to our spiritual life or use statements like “Ask the Holy Spirit to tell you.” We should answer their arguments with arguments. We could be wrong in our beliefs, but the Holy Spirit is not to be used as a trump card.

Also, we need to learn about joy and happiness. I believe you can have these and have sorrow at the same time. I am sure of it because this has happened to me before. It is an experience I will not forget. We don’t always have to feel happy though to have true joy in our lives.

However, if we return to reason in the forefront, that means something else. More time in study and learning the truth, especially the Scriptures.

Now there’s a good place to find God’s will anyway.

I’ve been dealing on a forum with someone who has been saying some wrong things about some friends of mine. Now I’m very protective of my friends and I take things said against them very seriously. This one friend told me that evening though that I didn’t need to do so. This person I was defending them against wasn’t worth it.

It’s odd that we say that so often. When we enter a battle like this, we are not just fighting against something. We are fighting for something else. To fight against something is to automatically fight for another thing. We do not fight evil merely to defeat evil. We fight it so that good can prevail.

This is something important in the apologetics field also. We don’t just fight lies for the sake of fighting lies. We fight them for the sake of replacing them with truth. I have heard people say Christ is a crutch and be answered with, “Yeah. I need him to walk. If you kick him out, what will you give me to walk with?” We should keep that in mind. People do live by their worldviews. If we remove one worldview, we need to have the true one to replace it with.

And yet, as I was pulling in this evening, it occurred to me that I could take this idea up to a far more cosmic scale. All of these battles in apologetics that we participate in are mere skirmishes. The real battle has already been won. We are just the soldiers spreading the cause of the king.

However, why did Christ fight? Why did he choose to go to the cross? Did he go just to defeat evil? No. Fighting against implies fighting for something else. Christ when to the cross because he was fighting for the good. He went to win the ultimate battle of good and evil.

And let’s remember most importantly that Christ was fighting for us. What does that say about us then? It says that Christ considered us worth fighting for. For some reason, the God of the universe chose to come down and fight for pitiful little creatures like ourselves and suffer the worst agony that could be suffered just so he could show us he loved us.

Return the favor. Go out and fight for him.

Last night, I was up later than normal chatting with friends and surfing YouTube. I found some videos of Harry Potter while searching set to a Power Rangers theme with various figures in the books playing the parts of different rangers. I then found one of Harry Potter and Smallville together. To find Jonathan Kent talking about the Dark Lord returning was quite hilarious.

As I went about my day today, from time to time, these videos would pop into my mind and I would laugh. I find it easy to laugh at many things. I can hear the same joke over and over again and enjoy it. I can watch Veruca Salt go down the garbage chute endlessly in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and never get bored.

Have we ever thought about what the world would be like without laughter and humor? It’s really such a great gift when we take the time to consider it. Have we considered how amazing it is that we find some things funny and that we laugh at them? How would our lives be different if we could not?

Yet what is this laughter? What are we recognizing? Could it be the kind of place the world is? I look at those videos and think “Harry Potter and Power Rangers don’t really go together,” yet there they are. It doesn’t seem to fit, but in a way, it does, and it makes you laugh. It’s not natural, but at the same time, it seems completely natural.

There are some ways it’s just funny to play with reality. It’s funny because reality is funny and God gave us the gift of creativity. God gave us the gift to play with his creation and this includes other ideas from the creation. No doubt, people want to show off their video-making skills on YouTube with such videos, but they also want to make people laugh.

Why laugh though? To forget the world? I don’t think so. I think true laughter is that which lets you embrace the world. It might help you forget your own world that you’re blowing out of proportion at the time though. Laughing takes you out of yourself and I believe then, places you close to the divine.

There’s no doubt, the world is a funny place. Go look at the animal creation. God even tells Job to do that. Try to read his description of the ostrich and not laugh. Comedian Bill Cosby is highly regarded as a funny man with some people I talk to. Every time they agree he’s funny, I ask them to tell me a joke he’s told. Bill Cosby doesn’t tell jokes. He tells the truth, and it’s funny.

In fact, what we believe is pretty funny at times. G.K. Chesterton once said truth must be stranger than fiction for we have made fiction to suit ourselves. If the Christian account was not true, I do not think we could make it up. People who think such really don’t understand the story. We can picture the mystery religions speaking about dying and rising gods, but do we see any reason to think that they thought this happened at a point in the space-time history? They might look at that idea if we asked and say “What? A god permanently living here for a time and coming in the form of a baby? Are you crazy?”

Yet this is exactly what we say happened. In fact, I have been told that in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, they tell jokes on Easter Sunday to celebrate. Why? Because the resurrection was God’s big joke on Satan. It was the ultimate punchline. The one enthroned in Heaven did indeed laugh at that point.

And isn’t that where all laughter begins? Doesn’t it find its root in the heart of God? God laughs more than we do for God is never bored. It is only we humans are bored. I agree with Kreeft that boredom is a far more serious problem than modern man realizes today. We get bored and God doesn’t. If we are to reflect him, then we should eliminate boredom from our lives.

How to do that? Enjoy his gift. Laugh. Go read a joke book or some comics. Go on YouTube and watch some videos. Then again, if you want to laugh really loud, go look in the mirror sometime and really think about what a strange and odd creature that you are. Yet that strange and odd creature is one God delights in, and he laughs, not to mock, but out of joy.

I’ve recently seen the question posed as to whether I would kill a baby if God told me. I’ll go on and say that I answered the question, yes. Why? He’s God, and if he commands it, he must have a reason I don’t understand. However, while I saw several Christians give the same answer, I considered something else later on about that.

It’s amazing that many of us would stand up and say “Yes. I’d do that.” However, such commands while we hope may never happen are not what we have been commanded to do. Before we put up our bravado, I think we should look at the commands God has given us and see how we’re doing so far.

God commands me not to worry. I’m doing terrible at that.

God commands me to trust him in all things. That’s a hard one.

The Ten Commandments? I’ve broken them all at least so far as Christ tells us to take them. What guy hasn’t lusted before?

Be devoted to prayer? Am I really?

Give to the poor? Can I be stingy?

Love my neighbor as myself? Am I too often thinking of myself?

Seek wisdom? Do I always seek it.

We could list many more commands.

The point is that we just don’t follow them like we should and I’ll be the first to confess that. I would say we should do whatever God commands us to do (Though let’s be sure it is him. There are too many who think God tells them to blow up abortion clinics and such.), but I think we could be too quick to say what we would do.

Peter boasted before Christ that he would never deny him. What happens? He denies him three times in the presence of Christ. Don’t you think there was some shame when he saw Christ afterwards? I think we should learn from that. A lot of us say we’d be willing to die for Christ, but before we say that, let’s access ourselves. I will simply say “I hope I would.” I really do hope that if push came to shove, I would, but I’m not going to come out with any bravado on my part just yet.

What can I learn from this then? What can you learn? We should do what God commands. At least, we should try. I fear we’ll fail too often, but before we speak out bravely, maybe we should remember that without him, we can’t even walk. Let’s not be prideful lest we fall.

My friend who I mentioned at the start of this blog last night read it and was surprised. He said that he wasn’t used to getting praises like that. I have this habit that I try to from time to time thank the important people in my life and if you can do so publicly, well that’s all the better then.

I told him then a saying that I understand to be from Martin Luther. It is that we should preach the gospel to each other every day. Now why should we do such a thing? It’s obvious why we preach it to the lost. They need to believe on the Lord Jesus and be saved. However, are we not saved already? Do we still need to hear the good news?

Picture this scenario. Imagine a husband and wife that have been married for years. They are fully capable of speaking and hearing, but they never tell each other that they love them. They go through all the motions that other families do, but they never say those words to each other.

Imagine also a son who never gets to hear his father tell him that he’s a man and who never hears the praises from his father. Imagine a daughter who never hears her mother telling her how beautiful she thinks she is. Imagine an employee who never hears from his employer what a great worker he thinks he is.

Let’s make this clearer. Let’s suppose that that married couple really do love each other. Let’s suppose that that father really is proud of his son and sees him as a man. Let’s suppose that that mother deeply loves her daughter and thinks she’s beautiful. Let’s suppose that that employer thinks his employee is a great worker.

The problem is, we’re not mind-readers. We can see actions, but those actions can be just motions after time. These things need to be said while we have the chance. We need to be in the habit of telling such things to people including the good news. We live in an age where communication is limited.

I enjoy hanging out with my friends, but unfortunately, it seems we spend too much time enjoying things instead of each other. Of course, there comes a time for the enjoyment of things together. I don’t think there’s any wrong in playing a game, watching a movie, or going to a sporting event. However, we don’t usually get to know each other.

Compare this to the pool that my place has. I can go out in it with a friend and we will talk about our lives some because there’s nothing else there to really distract us and we can focus on who we are and the other person is. I have learned more about some people from the pool than any other place.

This could be why the internet is so revealing. We often think it could be because we talk to people without the distraction of personal appearance. There could be something to that, but I wonder if it could be because there is really nothing to distract us on here and so we can be more open. Our age is the age of distraction. Kierkegaard once said that if he could recommend anything for the world today, it would be silence, for even if the Word of God was said, it would not be heard.

What better message could be given than the good news though? Yes. Tell people they’re true friends and that you value them. Tell them also the good news. We can so easily forget it. Our lives are sadly often busy with thinking about our own problems and situations so that the reminder of the God who is there is secondary. Imagine being reminded of that. “Remember always that Jesus loves you and died for you.”

We also need the gospel when we need encouragement. When we screw up and go to a friend in Christ, we need that friend to give us the gospel. When we’re down in the dumps, we need that friend to tell us the truth. Of course, this does not discount the place for listening. Good friends should listen also. When the time comes to speak, they should speak though.

We live in an age where this is needed. More often, we need to remind the people who matter that they do. We can send a card or an email or make a phone call or go see them in person. Either way, remind them of the truth and most importantly, of the truth of Christ.

“It just seems like a stretch.” That’s what a good friend of mine said to me last night about my saying the rock was Christ in my blog. (For the record, and this friend knows who he is as no one else said this, I think you rock dude! Keep up the great work for Christ!) Now he liked my blog pretty much as is but he told me we only have one verse on this.

My response was that in all honesty, one verse is enough. The rock was Christ was not a doctrine Paul thought he needed to emphasize often but at this point, he did think that that was necessary. However, while that was the reason given, I was diagnosing another reason why it seemed like a stretch.

My friend and I and most likely you as well all suffer from the same calamity. We all still live with overtones of naturalism. This was something C.S. Lewis spoke of in saying that we are under the spell of naturalism and if we know our fairy tales, enchantments can only be broken with stronger enchantments and it will take a strong one to undo the spell of naturalism. I believe only Christ’s truth can break that spell.

In naturalism, there are no final causes. Nothing is made for something beyond itself. All of the universe simply is. There is nothing beyond it. There is no higher power. Each thing that you see is the end itself. There are no metaphors in the universe. You might draw analogies to events in your own life, but there is no intention behind any such. As Richard Dawkins says, “DNA neither knows nor cares, and we dance to its music.”

We have lived so long with that being the worldview of society now that it has caused us all to see things that way. We cannot see anything as a symbol easily any more. The idea is so unusual to us. This could be the reason so many of us can have a hard time with poetry and why so many of us are losing interest in reading and instead prefer TV.

Seeing a symbol requires deep thinking and we’re just not prepared to think deep like that. We look at a tree and we so rarely look at it and see anything but a tree. Many of you are probably wondering what could there be of spiritual significance in a tree. Never mind that Paul pointed to the growth of nature when preaching to the people in Lystra about the God who is there.

This worldview also makes us look to ourselves more often. In our world, we are the measure of all things. Maybe this is why we as Christians can often seem to put feelings on such a high rung. We reach the point where we think our feelings are even divine commands and can tell us truth about the external world. Our emotions override our reason.

Of course, if there is no supernatural revelation of truth, then why can’t we be the measure of all things? Why can’t we follow the doctrine of Protagoras and say that man is the measure of all things? We have no reason not to. Either truth exists outside of us in the mind of God or we are the creators of the truth.

Instead, we should be looking at the world expecting to find the supernatural. It is a shame that we so often seem to ask “Where are you God?” instead of asking “Where are you not?” When tragedy strikes Job, he does not doubt that his creator is there. When tragedy strikes us, we do. What makes the difference? The worldview we live under.

If we believe our faith, we should believe God is omnipresent and is all around us. Instead, we make it seem that we have to strain to find him. Could it be because we think that to find the scientific explanation of something takes away the wonder of it? Science can explain the parting of the Red Sea. Big deal. The miracle is when it happened.

An explanation of something should not decrease our wonder of it. Because we know how lightning strikes and the ancients didn’t, it doesn’t mean we should be less amazed. The same goes with knowing what something is. Because we know that the sun is a large mix of substances burning at a high temperature doesn’t mean we should hold it in less amazement. As Peter Kreeft says, it is a shame we are not even tempted any more to worship the sun and the stars. What he means is that we no longer have wonder. It is the same as when he says he pities the man who is not tempted to lust. Lust is wrong but if you are not even tempted to lust, it means the beauty of the lady has lost desire.

This could be why we are also so prone to forget the supernatural. I’ll go on and confess this. I am not a prayer warrior. I find prayer incredibly difficult. My mind is constantly moving in a thousand directions and this is also because of so many overtones from pop Christianity I think that teaches us to listen for the voice of God, a concept I don’t believe in, so much that we no longer know how to really pray.

We need to learn how to live as Christians and that starts with the big belief that there is a God who is there and could intrude on us at any minute. However, we should welcome such an intrusion. We would be amazed if the president was to knock on our door one morning. Should we not be just as amazed with the thought that God could burst in on our lives?

Yes. We do need a spell. We need the spell of the truth cast on us and realize that we do live in a world of wonder. To reach Narnia, one doesn’t have to open the closet of the wardrobe. One merely has to open their front door.

He spoke about Moses striking the rock for the children of Israel. He seemed somewhat surprised. Why would God not let Moses into the Promised Land because of hitting a rock? It just seems a bit unfair. I could understand how such a question could arise and I spoke to him (Whose identity is kept secret) afterwards to give a quick thought on it, but it was only a quick one and I have had more time to ponder it.

My first thought immediately was of what Paul says about that rock in 1 Cor. 10. Paul says that they all drank from the rock and that rock was Christ. In other words then, what Moses did was to strike Christ, the very Messiah of Israel. Once we understand that, we can begin to understand the gravity of the act.

Now someone might say, “Ah. But this is a metaphor! How can we blame Moses for not understanding a metaphor?” Indeed, Moses might not have understood it. However, there is one thing he would have definitely understood. He would have understood the command to speak to the rock. The words are clear and they are clearly disobeyed.

What we must realize is that God is revealing himself and he takes that very seriously, even though it is in metaphor. While the metaphor is not the same as the message that it conveys or an object is not the same as that which it represents, it is still to be taken in a serious manner be it a holy or unholy metaphor.

So when we see Noah being told that because of the rainbow, he can be sure that God will never flood the world again, we must also realize that while the rainbow is not the same as the promise, we dare not disrespect the rainbow and doubt God whenever we do see that reminder.

Do we not see the same with other metaphors in the Bible? Indeed. We see that the ark of the covenant is to be the representation of God in the Israelite camp. When Uzzah touches the ark, he is struck dead immediately. When the ark is placed in the temple of Dagon, the idol of Dagon falls before it every morning. This is the metaphor, and it must be treated seriously.

Idols are a metaphor as well. The idol was a representation of a pagan god. Not even the representations were to be treated seriously by the Israelites due to their constant facing of polytheism and their constant giving into it. Of course, Paul knew what we knew and no doubt many others knew. Those idols are not anything at all. There is only one God so there is no other god to represent.

Many of the practices we cannot understand today in the OT are these same practices to remind people of God’s holiness. Why not wear clothing of mixed fabrics for instance? Why? Because God is totally pure so all in the Israelite camp was to be totally pure. Mixed fabrics are not pure.

This shows up in the NT also. Jesus tells us to eat and drink and do so in remembrance of him. Paul tells us though that some have taken of the Lord’s Supper in an unworthy manner and as a result, some have died. The supper was not to be disgraced as it is a representation of God.

The further we take this though, we see that we should have known this all along. All of creation is a metaphor of him on some level. All of it reveals him. It is not in propositions though so it must be understood analogically, which is ironically, the only way Aquinas and others have said that we can speak of God.

All things must be treated as they are then. If we treat sex as less than it is, we have disgraced a metaphor for the Trinity and the love of God. If we do no treat humanity well, we have treated badly the image of God. We are told to live lives where the truth speaks well of us. Would that we spoke well of it as well.

Perchance this is the answer to environmentalism as well? Please understand that I am not what would be considered an environmentalists. I do not believe in global warming and I do not believe in a lot of environmental nonsense that I see today. However, I believe the Earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.

Maybe if I and the rest of us recognized that, we would treat it the way it deserves. We do not treat it as the modern pantheists and new agers do and see it as God or my mother. However, we must treat it as a creation of God and realize that he made it the way that he made it for a reason and we should do what we can to maintain that design.

The same should be done of everything for though something is a metaphor, there is always a literal truth behind it. We do not discount the parables of Christ because they are parables. We recognize the literal truth behind them and woe to us if we memorize a parable and study the form and the syntax, but never look at the literal truth of it. We might as well study Shakespeare by counting how many letters Hamlet has.

Thus, the bottom line becomes that truth is to be taken seriously. In the end, isn’t this what we are to do? Are we not the followers of the one who claimed that he is the truth? Are we not to test everything and hold to what is good? (True) Are we not to be walking in the truth?

No. The metaphor is serious indeed. We dare not strike the rock for that rock is Christ. We dare not miss the truth, for he is the truth.