Category: Faith

End times laziness

There’s a certain kind of intellectual laziness arising from end-times teaching. In the 80s, television preachers pleaded for people to repent because of the approaching end.

Things haven’t changed.

Yes, it will come one day, but His people must live like it is already here. They must take the time to take time. Patience for the waiting come alive. Grace is a big part of it. Grace and patience for others, faith that His hand is on His love objects.

At midnight December 31, 1999, the ball came down and the lights stayed on.

How is the God of the bible different from the other religions of antiquity?

You can learn about the Epic of Gilgamesh or the gods of animistic religions in the rest of the world. But why would the ancient texts of the bible be any different?
– God is universal, rather than everyone having their own deities. We are also all members of God’s family, brothers and sisters.
– God is invisible and incorporeal, not material, rather than wooden gods propped up on your shelf. The material world itself is not the only reality. God is beyond nature. He made nature and is not of it. The human belief in nature gods ended.
– God is moral and justice is in the future. Other gods prior to the God of the bible were capricious and amoral.
– God lets his children challenge and question. Humans can wrestle with God and question Him.
– God loves and wants to be loved.
– Humans are universally valuable because we are created in His image.
– Humans have universal rights.

Deaf and afraid

“Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: for the Lord hath spoken, I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me. The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib: but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider.”
– Isaiah 1:2-3

“When the great moment came and the Beasts spoke, he missed the
whole point; for a rather interesting reason. When the Lion had first
begun singing, long ago when it was still quite dark, he had realised
that the noise was a song. And he had disliked the song very much. It
made him think and feel things he did not want to think and feel. Then,
when the sun rose and he saw that the singer was a lion (“only a lion,”
as he said to himself) he tried his hardest to make believe that it
wasn’t singing and never had been singing — only roaring as any lion
might in a zoo in our own world. “Of course it can’t really have been
singing,” he thought, “I must have imagined it. I’ve been letting my
nerves get out of order. Who ever heard of a lion singing?” And the
longer and more beautiful the Lion sang, the harder Uncle Andrew
tried to make himself believe that he could hear nothing but roaring.
Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really
are is that you very often succeed. Uncle Andrew did. He soon did
hear nothing but roaring in Aslan’s song. Soon he couldn’t have heard
anything else even if he had wanted to. And when at last the Lion
spoke and said, “Narnia awake,” he didn’t hear any words: he heard
only a snarl. And when the Beasts spoke in answer, he heard only
barkings, growlings, bayings, and howlings. And when they laughed
— well, you can imagine. That was worse for Uncle Andrew than
anything that had happened yet. Such a horrid, bloodthirsty din of
hungry and angry brutes he had never heard in his life.”
– The Magician’s Nephew, C.S. Lewis

Lewis on politics and faith

So politics and faith:

“The earliest converts were converted by a single historical fact (the Resurrection) and a single theological doctrine (the Redemption) operating on a sense of sin which they already had — and sin, not against some new fancy-dress law produced as a novelty by a ‘great man,’ but against the old, platitudinous, universal moral law which they had been taught by their nurses and mothers. The ‘Gospels’ come later and were written not to make Christians but to edify Christians already made…

“Certainly we do not want men to allow their Christianity flow over into their political life, for the establishment of anything like a really just society would be a major disaster…

“The thing to do is to get a man at first to value social justice as a thing which the Enemy demands, and work him on to the stage at which he values Christianity because it may produce social justice.”

– The Screwtape Letters, 23

Hebrew Worldview in Scripture and Literalism, Pt. 1

Though I haven’t been to the Ark Encounter exhibit in Williamstown, Kentucky, I did once visit the Creation Museum here in El Cajon. It was part of a field trip of sorts while at my undergrad, Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego. I was there as a student reporter to document the PLNU science class’s visit. Students were scornful of the idea of the world being no more than 10,000 years old. At the time, I was still in that camp. But the mockery of the science students against the literalists, things like “I guess Jesus rode on a velociraptor,” was insulting to the believers.

A few years back, I was speaking to two friends and told them I didn’t know what to think about Genesis and the Flood. To them, saying I didn’t know was occasion for them to say they would pray for me.

This time, I was insulted.

But the question was about the inerrancy of the Bible story. I admit, I don’t know about many things in the Bible. But that issue opened a can of worms for other problems with a literal view. But the Flood story is such a major part of the Old Testament and the Bible as a whole, that the question of it as an actual event demands an answer.

So I am now thinking about the way the ancient Hebrews saw the Universe. This graphic from the University of Oregon’s Cosmology class can be found in various other versions.

Looking at the graphic above, I believe the scientist view. When a new Earth creationist quotes those scriptures referencing “windows and doors of heaven,” “storehouses and fountains of the great deep,” “waters above the firmament,” “foundations of the deep,” “foundations of the Earth,” or “foundations of heaven,” they tend to think of it some form of poetry, but those lines reference the literal Hebrew cosmology.

The Flood was a local event. Not a worldwide cataclysm. The ark’s size finally works under that interpretation. I have no problem with Cain’s wife being a unrelated woman from a tribe not spoken of in the Bible; I no longer have to defend the idea that incest between Adam’s family was necessary for propagation of the species.

So, it doesn’t bother me if the Earth is 4.5 billion years old and the universe 14 billion. I want to talk more about literalism, a critical matter.

Continue reading “Hebrew Worldview in Scripture and Literalism, Pt. 1”

That I not wail

“Mad and violent; bitterness mistook for frolic, I fought my way by literature and wit.” -Lewis.

O my soul, say you will not wail.
Though I pierce Him every day,
Say the sky will not break,
That there be no longer a shiver up my spine,
His feet brass burned in a furnace,
His voice rushing water,
The seven stars in His right hand.

The sword of His mouth sharper than any two edged sword,
Piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit.

The sun will shine in His strength.
Do not look upon me,
Just let me ascend.

The Biggest Questions

Paschal wrote that the Jew and Christian have the same faith, that of the heart (Pensées). We both know of God through faith. Oftentimes, I hear from the pulpit that the Jew relies on law for salvation. They are depicted as the Pharisees, but not all were Pharisees. Having listened to and read Jewish theology, I see their belief in Malachi: to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God. Is the New Testament reading an addition or clarification?

Abraham believed and it was accounted to him for righteousness.

There is also the supreme bet, which diversion can withhold from, that God is over God is not. If you wager that He is and He turns out to be, you’ve gained the world. If you wager that He is and it turns out that He is not, you have lost nothing. However, if you make the absolute assertion that He is not and He is, then you have truly lost.

Lewis: “(In youth) My judgment…was not so good; but I had all the facts. But as Xerxes wept…not one of that great multitude would be alive a hundred years afterwards.”

Bet on His existence.

On Symbolism

Some think to end the discussion about scripture saying it is symbolic and that we can’t know what it ultimately means.

Lewis wrote that you cannot know that a text is symbolic unless you have independent access to the thing and can compare it with the representation–especially if we are talking about a transcendent, objective reality to which the story is solely referring.

Much of scripture is difficult but can be taken for face value. The idea of hidden meaning in the text is easy to make, the original, which, again, we do not have not access to, being “corrupt.”

Perhaps some “skimmers” arm themselves with these arguments, but a serious look is necessary to reckon with the text. Accounting for the New Testament or Old Testament milieus should be part of the effort in understanding the background of the chosen fines. But I question the initial choice of say NT Wright’s historical scholarship before reading as a “child.” That’s how I grew up. I let the lines tell me instead of putting scholarship over top. First start with the simple things, the meaning of what the writer or character means to the most simple of readers, the child.

Layer on the accouterments later, but remember the first impressions.

From the outposts

Out here on the edge of the internet, we see accouterments of what our culture is. All of us sending dispatches, present-day Kiplings and Twains.

We have overcome the old and started new. Euro festivals become praise in nondescript white-walled buildings, a core that is our culture.

But the continent has its own transformation: European cathedrals become apartments and Amazon shipping hubs.

Here or there. Are things changing for the better or?

I’ve already expressed my recognition of the goods of British healthcare. In conservative circles there is criticism of socialism, but not much investigation of “good” socialism. Clearly there’s a gulf between Venezuela/Cuba and Sweden/U.K?

This deserves more exposition.

Little wooden cross

In Israel, I felt at home. But recently I have been thinking of social media and the stars thereon. Christ becomes smaller every day, and more and more ordinary. At least that’s what I think. But when I look for help, He is there. It takes faith to believe that.

This small man executed in some first century backwater. Armies have moved and every knee has bowed. Every tongue confesses day after day. God is alive despite statements to the contrary.

On Finishing Books

Finally got back to finishing two books tonight.

The first was from Joseph Prince on Psalm 119 called The Prayer of Protection: Living Fearlessly in Dangerous Times. It’s more than a verse-by-verse, offering anecdotes as well as comments on the Hebrew. It’s *not* a scholarly work by any means, but it was uplifting.

The other was Brain Energy: A Revolutionary Breakthrough in Understanding Mental Health–and Improving Treatment for Anxiety, Depression, OCD, PTSD, and More. Christopher Palmer advocates research on the cells’ mitochondrial factories as intensely involved in the metabolic processes. He suggests that along with contemporary treatments (drugs, therapy), metabolic regimens, diet, exercise, and social and personal changes should form a rounded-out set of treatments for everything from depression to manic depression to schizophrenia to substance abuse. He closes with a request for readers to take up arms to promote his findings and beliefs.

It’s easy to be cynical when reviewing books like this last one because there’s always someone trying to say they’ve found the true secret to mental health. But I commend him for making mention in the closing chapters that his discoveries are not to be taken in isolation, but as one among a group of tried and tested methods as well.

Evolution and the Spirit

Lewis wrote in passing, in a few places, about evolution. He didn’t seem to see it as a problem when viewed against the biblical narrative.

In my nondenominational upbringing, being “spirit-filled” is a statement that one has experienced supernatural gifts in one’s life. We also believe the Bible to be inerrant and infallible.

So taken together, does the “spirit” require a 7-day / 7000-year creation?

I’m interested in the feeling or perception that the bible is literal in that way. Can you oppose the “spirit” and be wrong? Clearly, emotion can be misleading. There are various other questions that arise from this conundrum. Can we judge other churches that are not “in the spirit”? Can mere guidance in life be possible? Can we get guidance on things such as a certain political contest? Continue reading “Evolution and the Spirit”

The Omissions

There’s much to be said about what we have not done. Isn’t it that we repent every day and need grace to repent again. Day after day we realize how much we have not done. Aren’t we just hypocrites who must see more clearly our iniquities before we attain heaven?

Guilt is a heavy burden. Only what we do not see can help us with what we do not remember. We need to realize the farthest is East from West. Self is a killer.

The enemy reminds us only of what we have done and only what we were. That is all he has.

Reflection of Heaven in Revelation

Luke 11:20 “But if I with the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is come upon you.”

It’s already here with us. Of all the books in the New Testament, Revelation is dense and metaphorical. As a kid, I knew Hal Lindsey’s Late Great Planet Earth. It was on my grandparents’ shelf.

Reinterpreting the scripture is every generation’s, but the idea of the Kingdom of Heaven (and if I will conflate the two, the Kingdom of God) is a steady constant. We are destined for perfection in a perfect place of splendor and love.

Each preacher, pastor, evangelist may interpret–and spin–differently. Their individual ideas can provoke thought of differing types and degrees. We must keep our eyes on the prize.

This is not to say that every relater of the Revelation should be listened to. We must test the spirits.

But we should not fear. That is my struggle.

The pleasant streets we will walk on.
The pains of ours are gone.
The light will shine on and in.
The farthest from us is sin.
Here and there as one,
We are walking in the Son.