He Shall Be Their Peace

Now muster your troops, O daughter of troops;

siege is laid against us;

with a rod they strike the judge of Israel

on the cheek.

But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah

who are too little to be among the clans of Judah,

from you shall come forth for me

one who is to be ruler in Israel,

whose coming forth is from of old,

from ancient days.

Therefore he shall give them up until the time

when she who is in labor has given birth;

then the rest of his brothers shall return

to the people of Israel.

And he shall stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the LORD,

in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God.

And they shall dwell secure, for now he shall be great

to the ends of the earth.

And he shall be their peace.

- Micah 5:1-5 ESV, emphasis added

Heaping Up Empty Phrases

In times past, the church would gather on Sunday and go through a liturgy during her worship services. There would be recitation of previously-written prayers and creeds and things like that as a form of directed worship to God. Nowadays such things are almost unheard of. The average church-goer finds those types of services to be repulsive, unhelpful, unedifying, legalistic, ritualistic, soulless...you get the idea. They aren't entirely without precedent; in the past, those kinds of services and recitations and repetitions did become mere ritual without any kind of genuine affection for God or any real edification of the church body.

In fact, Jesus Himself speaks to this kind of thing in Matthew 6:7: "When you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words." Now, that last phrase shows he's specifically talking about drawing prayers out for long lengths of time. But if those repeated phrases really are soulless and unedifying, if they are being said for the mere ritual of it, then they are empty phrases.

Does that mean, however, that we must never, ever pray previously written prayers? Can we never say any phrases we have previously used? Can we never quote anyone? Of course not. That would logically lead to the conclusion that we could never recite Scripture in prayer, and I'm sure we don't want to get to that conclusion.

The real issue is the heart.

What is the reason you recite those words? Is it because ritual saves? Is it because that's what you learned in your childhood? Is it because it's "just what you do"? Those are all bad reasons.

What if you recited those prayers or phrases because you actually meant them? What if they spoke to your heart and expressed what you meant to express in better words than you could come up with, or perhaps with the best words possible? What if those words were exactly what you wanted to say, previously stated by someone else? Can we quote God's words in our prayers when they express so clearly and fully what we want to say?

I'd answer, "Why not? Just so long as you actually mean those words from your mind and your heart."

Personally, I have a few phrases I like to use in my prayers sometimes. For example:

Our Father in Heaven. You may recognize this as the beginning of the Lord's Prayer. In my opinion, it perfectly expresses just who we are talking to in very few words. God is our Father. This means he has authority over us. But it also expresses his loving kindness for us, the love that the perfect Father has for his children. It also states that he is in heaven. He is our Heavenly Father. Why not start a prayer with this phrase? It's beautiful, isn't it?

Forgive me, for I have sinned. In the Catholic tradition of confession, I believe they are supposed to start their confession with this petition, then tell their sins to the priest. But if you ask me, it's a great way to end a confession in a prayer. You're asking for forgiveness. You have sinned. You are a sinner. It pretty much sums it up, doesn't it? And if you're a writer like me, you like to finish off with a good summary. There's nothing theologically unsound about the phrase. In fact, there's a Biblical quote similar to this: "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!" (Luke 18:13).

(I may add that that verse comes from the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector. The tax collector speaks these words and feels the weight of his sin so much that he can't even bear to look up to God when asking for mercy. Saying that phrase brings that image to mind and reminds me of how I should feel about my sin. It seems to me, then, that the exact quote from the Bible itself would be better than the phrase I started with.)

In Jesus' name. This is a common one. It's also a commonly misunderstood one. Let me address them:

1. No, not tacking this on the end of your prayer is not like sending an envelope without a stamp.
2. No, God will not be obligated to grant your wish if you do tack this to the end of your prayer.

Here's the verse that this phrase originates from: "Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it" (John 14:13-14). What Jesus really meant, however, is that whatever you ask according to the will of God will be granted (1 John 5:14-15). I end my prayers with this because it's a way to remind myself what I really need to be praying for. It's causes me to look back and ask, "Do I really think that what I have prayed about is what Jesus would want?" It's sobering.

For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Yes, I know that the Lord's Prayer doesn't actually end with this phrase. I know that it's actually a quote from 1 Chronicles 29:11. But what better way to end a prayer? I see absolutely no reason not to finish a prayer with this verse. It puts God in his place and me in mine. In fact, I'll quote the full verse from the ESV, because it's different from the commonly-quoted phrase and the whole verse is quite amazing:

Yours, O LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O LORD, and you are exalted as head above all.

Powerful, right?

Now, I'm not trying to tell you you must recite particular phrases in your prayers. I'm not trying to set a precedent or anything. I just know that my generation is dead-set against anything that may even remotely be thought of as "ritual." And like I previously said, that's not without good reason. But if there is real beauty in the phrases, and if the heart is moved to worship from them, or if one really means the words said, why not say them? One must obviously be careful that they don't become mere ritual, of course, and perhaps one would need to avoid them because they are inclined to such practices. But if you aren't, why not?

Drilling Prayer Into My Brain

I'm not sure exactly what day it was, but recently I realized something horrible: lately, I've been spending time learning about God without spending time with God himself. I have not been thinking about the relationship aspect of the Christian walk. The head knowledge is extremely important, but its end is to bring the heart closer to God.

But what was missing? I had been reading my Bible daily. I had been listening to good Christian teaching on a regular basis. I had even recently started reading a daily devotional on the Internet. I had started slowly studying 1 Thessalonians. I'm still doing those now, and those are all very good things I ought to continue in, but...something was missing.

So what's missing from that list? I'll give you a few hints.

This past week, Renewing Your Mind, a radio show I listen to daily, had a theme to its teaching. Monday's episode featured R.C. Sproul reading his children's book titled The Barber Who Wanted To Pray, which tells the true story of how Martin Luther's barber, Master Peter, asked him how to pray, and Luther taught him his personal method. The next two broadcasts were about God's providence and why we should pray, even knowing that God already knows what we'll ask for and has his plans. Thursday he taught how to pray, and the week concluded with an explanation on The Lord's Prayer. Along with all that, the chapter that we were reading in Wayne Grudem's book Christian Beliefs for Christianity 101 is titled "What Is Prayer?

In all this, I realized that God in his providence was trying to get something into my head. But what?

You get three guesses as to what it was. No, it wasn't the proper method of engaging in presuppositional apologetics. And no, it wasn't the Aristotelian rationale behind the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation (though I did learn about that this week, though that's a completely unrelated blog post I may write in the future).

Never mind, I'll just tell you. It's prayer. Come on, people.

That's right, that same old thing I still seem to have a problem with. Despite my desire to be as theologically sound as possible, despite my desire to lead my children to Jesus, my personal prayer life has been all but non-existent. And as any good (or average like myself) theologian could tell you, a lack of prayer is a serious hindrance to one's relationship with Christ and any semblance of Christian growth, both of which are essential aspects of the Christian walk.

In reality, I realized I needed to get back into the habit of praying on Monday while listening to the audiobook about Martin Luther and Master Peter. It was only on Thursday when I saw that this week's chapter of Grudem's book was about prayer that I noticed God's providence in the mix.

So I pretty much devoured every teaching on prayer that I heard this week. Despite that, though, it wasn't until Friday that I started trying to get back into the habit of daily prayer. Ever the lazy sinner, right?

As I wrote previously, it's a personal help to me to write down my prayers. It helps me focus and stay on track. I also decided to incorporate themes from my daily Bible reading and my devotional into my prayers. It's a way to meditate and really absorb the things I learn.

Last time I wrote about prayer, I made this boisterous declaration that I was done being prayerless. Now, I stand convicted of not even slightly living up to what I said. So rather than make some sweeping declaration, I think the best way to end this is with a prayer.

Lord, teach me to pray. Teach me to pray daily, without ceasing. Let me be a praying man, my family a praying family, and your church a praying church. Amen.

Elections and Morality

As you are most likely aware, the elections are coming up very soon. I don't know about you, but I'm personally looking forward to not being onslaughted by "this Republican is evil incarnate" or "this Democrat is a lying psychopath" and general bull like that (though I wouldn't doubt that some of those statements are true in a few cases). Most of what we've heard from the presidential candidates in particular is about the economy, jobs, and money. I'm pretty sure very few people actually know how to solve that problem, or that they even really care about the economy itself; most of them probably see "fixing the economy" as "getting more money in my own pockets, to hell with everyone else." But I digress. And I don't want to minimize the importance of building a better economy and getting people back to work.

I keep asking myself this question, however: why aren't we hearing more about plain old morality? I'm not talking about a difference between capitalism and socialism or food stamps and independence or something. No, I'm talking about plain old right and wrong.

I don't know how to fix the economy. I'm not an economist. But I do know that when child-slaughter is even an issue on the table, you have a serious moral problem in your country. After a lot of consideration about who I should vote for and why, I think that abortion is probably the most important issue I'll be voting on, primarily because the choice is clear: it shouldn't happen.

• Murder is wrong.
• Abortion is murder.
• Thus, abortion is wrong.

And please, please don't give me that "You're a man, you don't have the right to talk about it" argument. In one way, you're right. I don't have a right to tell a woman what to do with her body. But that child is not your body. That child has its own body that is dependent on the mother's body for its life. If you decided you didn't want to have a child dependent on your body for its life, and there was a way to make that happen without killing it, then I'd be okay with that procedure. I might question your motives, and I may find it unnatural, but at least then the child lives, so big deal. As it stands, however, the only way to fix that "problem" is to kill the child, and that is wrong. It is a human being with a beating heart. It deserves to live.

Really, there are plenty of moral issues out there other than abortion. So why don't we ever hear about them? Why isn't what's right and what's wrong a genuine issue? Why don't we hear persuasive moral arguments rather than (mostly contrived) facts and figures about gas prices? Morality is not a matter of opinion, and anyone who says they believe it is will soon find their argument falling back on itself. Personally, I'd love to hear Romney and Obama discuss moral issues far more than I want to hear "this candidate is making stuff up" and "my job plan will fix everything."

That's just my question. For the record, I'm not going to be writing blog posts about which candidate to endorse. I think everyone who reads this already has his or her mind made up about that. But we should at least know why, more than just "everyone else is doing it" or "I want to piss my parents off."

Knowledge of God and Knowing God

Today at church, the music director stopped in between songs to talk about the knowledge of God. He talked about how important it is to know God. I was very happy about this because I believe it is something that isn't emphasized enough by the modern church. This post comes from my thoughts about what he said.

I should start by saying that what I'm about to talk about is a purely philosophical idea. I am not attempting to establish any kind of doctrine or claiming to make an absolutely unbreakable point. This is based on my opinion. If anyone can poke holes in my argument or demonstrate that I am wrong in any way, let those holes be poked and let me be shown wrong so that we all can grow.

My argument is that there are two kinds of knowledge of God: head knowledge and intimate knowledge. One can have at least some degree of head knowledge without intimate knowledge, but one cannot have true intimate knowledge without true head knowledge.

First off, I'll define the terms. Head knowledge is exactly what it sounds like: it is what we know about God. This includes his character, his works, his words, things distinguishing the Father from the Son and the Son from the Holy Spirit, etc. These are things we learn about God from the Bible, his revealed Word about himself. I actually hesitate to use the term "head knowledge" because I believe that term has such negative connotations in the church today, but I'll discuss that more later.

Intimate knowledge is the love of God, the passion and desire for God, the worship of God, the earnest desire to follow God and treat him as the Lord of one's life. This idea comes from several Biblical stories where a man "knows" his wife. The Bible uses this term as more than simply knowing things about her. This is talking about the deep intimacy of marriage. The Bible also talks about God "knowing" his church. This is obviously different from a man "knowing" his wife, but it's a similar idea; it is deep, true love.

Now, like I stated previously, I think you can have head knowledge without intimate knowledge, but not intimate knowledge without head knowledge. Note that I am not saying that purely head knowledge is a good thing; I'm only saying it is a possibility.

So, why can't we have intimate knowledge without head knowledge? Because intimate knowledge -- real, honest intimate knowledge -- requires that we know things about the person or thing we are intimately loving. If you are worshiping a God that you know nothing about from the Bible, a God who only comes from your ideas or your preferences, are you actually worshiping the God of the Bible? I would seriously question that you were. A God formed from your ideas or preferences is not the God of the Bible; he is the God of your ideas and preferences. In other words, he is the wrong God.

On the other hand, it is definitely possible to have at least mostly accurate head knowledge without any form of intimate knowledge of God. I say "mostly" because, in my opinion, truly accurate head knowledge necessitates worship of God. I would say the person with a lot of head knowledge and no desire to worship has come to the wrong conclusions about God. That's human nature. Right conclusions about God would mean acknowledging that we are sinful and fallen and God is absolutely good and holy. Man by nature does not want to do that.

So why am I even making this argument? Because I believe that everyone tends towards one of these extremes, and both are extremely dangerous. I think my personal bent is to seek head knowledge. This is probably because I have been on the other side, trying to worship a God I barely knew. Having had that experience and realizing its danger, I now tend to flee in the other direction. But there's a middle ground. We need both head and intimate knowledge of God.

For the past few decades the modern church's tendency has been to worship the God of our ideas rather than the God of the Bible. It would worship without really studying the Bible to know anything about the God it was trying to worship. The idea is that studying the Bible is different from spending time with God. "Head knowledge" is too academic, it's not intimate enough. "Stop studying the Bible and seek experiences and a word from the Lord." As if, when we read God's Word, we aren't in fact seeking words from the Lord. What sense does that make? If we are reading the very words of God, we are seeking his words! That is why we are reading the Bible: it is his Word! My opinion is that this is born out of a desire for spirituality on one's own terms, whether or not this is the conscious case.

Thankfully, in more recent times there has been an resurgence of interest in the actual God of the actual Bible and the study of his Word. But man is fallen. I worry that we'll start to fall towards the opposite extreme: head knowledge without intimate knowledge. Such knowledge makes one no different from secular professors of religion, who study the Bible like it is just another mythology. We cannot do that. But at the same time, we can't simply invent a God from our preferences or ideas or even our experiences.

In order to truly worship the God of the Bible, we need to read the Bible to know what God has said about himself. Nothing else can define God. We cannot define God. God must define himself, we must know what he has said about himself, and we must praise him in response.

Crazy Old Tubs

It is easy enough to remove the particular kinds of graft or bullying that go on under the present system: but as long as men are twisters or bullies they will find some new way of carrying on the old game under the new system. (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity p. 73)

When I read this sentence the other day, I thought it was a perfect insight into the world we live in today. However, I don't think C.S. Lewis peered into the future of America or was making any kind of prediction; all he was doing was observing the world exactly how it was and is. All throughout history humanity has acted as if outward morality and legislation is the most important, if not the only, thing we need to think about, and as if merely telling (or screaming at) people what to do will necessarily make everything okay.

We see that in the Pharisees of Jesus' day. These men were the most pious men in all of Jewish culture. They obeyed all the laws and had Scripture memorized. Their legislation was intense and demanding, and they followed it perfectly. But all of this was fully and completely focused on the outside.

Inwardly, they were extremely prideful in their piety and very judgmental of everyone who wasn't as good as them (in their eyes, everybody). They followed the letter of the law about as well as a person could, but not the spirit of it. They thought nothing of the mercy of God; in their eyes, they didn't need it. Jesus likened them to "whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness" (Matthew 23:27 ESV). Their laws did nothing to save them, and it did nothing to make them any better, even though in their eyes it did.

Things haven't changed much.

Nowadays you see people on both sides trying to legislate morality, thinking that fixing the system will fix society as a whole. Now, I'm all for the law following what is truly right, and I fully believe that our country needs a lot of legislative repair. But is that all we need? We see people on both sides screaming and spewing hatred and insults towards the other side for not being good, upstanding people like them, revealing the ugliness within themselves by doing so. We see people trying to make the law right, apparently believing that once the law is right, everyone will fall into place, obey it, and live with it.

It seems to me like the most important thing hasn't been addressed in the public square: the changing of hearts. As Lewis said, if people's hearts aren't changed, they will find ways to commit the same evils under a new system that they committed under the old. But if their hearts are changed, they will work towards this good system and eventually try to put it in place.

The only way to create true, lasting change is not to fix or replace the system. I agree our system needs to be fixed. But it will not be fixed in a lasting way unless the hearts of those living under that system are fixed first.

Learnings in America

Not too long ago I saw a political ad from someone whose name will not be mentioned here. That's not because I don't want to discredit him or her. It's because I honestly don't remember who it was or what position he or she was running for. All I know is that this person was running for a Washington position of some kind (I think). Apparently identity wasn't very important to me at the time, because I don't even remember what his or her gender or political affiliation were.

What I do remember, and what I'll be talking about in this post, is one promise relating to education in the future. This person promised to ensure that education would emphasize science, mathematics, and technology because that's the way of the future.

Now, I can agree with that much. I do believe that our children will need knowledge of science, mathematics, and technology because technology in particular will only increase in the future, barring some catastrophe that destroys it all and sends us back into Biblical times. However, I would agree with it more if I believed it wouldn't result in other things being less emphasized - or worse, excluded altogether - from our children's education.

I'm talking in particular about language, writing, and logic. These are the classes that teach people how to comprehend, how to think, and how to communicate.

What am I doing right now? I'm writing about an issue I believe in. I'm definitely not perfect at it, but still. Without the English classes I took in high school and college, I wouldn't be able to. If my parents and grandparents hadn't taught me how to read, I wouldn't be typing this up right now. And without logic and reason, how can we truly know and understand anything?

Sadly though, these are things that already seem to be getting phased out in education, at least in my opinion. According to this data, 14% of American adults (that's 32 million) can't read. 19% of high school graduates can't read either. These are students coming out of an institution claiming to teach our children what they need to know to go out into the world. Apparently they're not actually doing their jobs.

Then there is college. Colleges used to be about getting an education. Colleges today still claim to teach people how to think. Unfortunately, they leave out the part where they actually teach people how to think like them. Most of them are nothing more than indoctrination schools and job training nowadays (job training isn't so bad though).

Then there is grad school. So many people are in grad school that shouldn't be. I read an article earlier this year written by a guy named Ed Dante. He's a writer who many students - college and grad school students - have paid to write their papers for them. He quoted some correspondence between him and a grad school business student in this article: "You did me business ethics propsal for me I need propsal got approved pls can you will write me paper?" "where u are can you get my messages? Please I pay a lot and dont have ao to faile I strated to get very worry." "thanx so much for uhelp ican going to graduate to now". With golden quotes like those coming from graduate school students, it's no wonder our society is heading down the can.

But are reading and writing skills really that important? They have been in virtually every job I've ever had, and those jobs had nothing to do with essays. From reading and comprehending instructions in e-mail to knowing how to find information and connections buried in paperwork and even acting as a scribe for a man who couldn't type due to a disability, I've had to know how to read, understand, comprehend, and write to survive and not get fired.

Also, and this is especially true for you Christians who read my blog, how can we expect our children to be able to comprehend their Bibles, to truly know Jesus, without the ability to read? Of course they learn from us, but eventually they'll be out on their own. We can teach them for about twenty years, but the remaining sixty or so they'll be out in the world, making their own choices. Without an ability to read the Bible, how can they discern truth from lies? What's preventing them from falling into deep and dark heresy, or some place that claims to be, but is not actually, a church?

In fact (and I'm back to including non-Christian folk in the discussion), without an ability to read, think, and comprehend truth, how can we expect the next generation to be any better than us? It's this blogger's opinion that the general inability to think in our society is at least part of the cause of most of the problems we face in society today. Rather than engage in rational discussion, people just angrily yell at one another, trying to be louder than the other guy. How can anything get done in a lasting way with that "method"?

So, yes, I agree that we need to teach our children science, math, and technology because that is the way of the future. We are surrounded by the kind of technology that Leonardo da Vinci (who was also an engineer as well as a painter and pretty much everything else that everyone else has ever been) could have only dreamed of. However, we also need to teach our children how to read and how to think as well rather than lessen or eliminate those essential abilities. We cannot expect the next generation to be any better than ours unless they can think, reason, and understand truth. So much of our culture is enveloped in ideas that make no logical sense whatsoever (i.e. relativism, the idea that truth can be true for one person but false for another at the same time) because people don't think them through. That lack of thinking can only lead to worse things in the future.

Some Thoughts on the End Times

Being that it is 2012, someone may wonder if this post is about the whole December 21, 2012 doomsday prophecy. I assure you that is not the case. That is based on pagan prophecies that have no basis in Scripture, so I don't buy it. Then again, maybe Christ will return that day. But as the Bible is silent on the issue, we shouldn't buy into sensationalistic prophecies. However, I will say this post is a bit of a ramble and rant. You have been warned.

Anyway, I've been thinking and studying a bit on the end times (which Sarrah once corrected me by saying "It's not the end, it's the beginning). Mainly, I've been looking into the differing viewpoints on how it will happen. I've come to the realization that how you look at eschatology (the study of the end) affects how you interpret the Bible as a whole, so I feel like its important, if for no other reason than to see the rest of Scripture correctly.

I think most people know of the most popular view: the church will be raptured off the earth, the world will undergo a seven-year tribulation period, then Jesus will return and establish his kingdom on earth. I'm not entirely certain how this became the most popular view, because it's fairly recent compared to other views.

Similar to that one is the view that the rapture will occur after the seven-year tribulation, or perhaps in the middle of it.

A different view, one that I've found to be pretty convincing, is a view called preterism. Preterists believe that most of the prophecies of Revelation have already taken place. Rather than taking place thousands of years after they were written, they happened soon after. In this view, these visions aren't about a seven-year tribulation that ushers in the end of our world and the beginning of a new one. They are about the judgment that came with the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 and, later, the fall of the Roman Empire. This view hinges on the belief that Revelation, rather than being written in the late 90s as is the popular belief, was written shortly before AD 70.

Someone who holds that point of view could have one of two different ideas of what the millennium of Revelation represents. Some people believe it to be a symbol of the time between Jesus' first and second comings. Others see it as a future era of peace after the church has successfully spread the gospel through the world and, essentially, made it a Christian world.

But this post isn't about arguing for or against a particular viewpoint. It's really just me thinking about them.

I don't know how often I read people saying "The end is nigh" on the Internet because of bad things happening around the world. Now, if the seven-year tribulation idea is true, I could see this as being possible given the current state of the world. The only problem with that, however, is that bad things have always happened around the world.

In that general vein, I hear the main argument against preterism being that the world doesn't seem to be getting any better. If anything, it looks worse and worse for the Christian cause every day. But does it have to be that our generation has to get better? Couldn't a few more generations go by while the world changes before it starts to get better? Doesn't the world change all the time? In my opinion, in order for the preterist view with the future era of peace to be true, a long time would have to pass between now and then. Why isn't that possible? Does our generation have to be the last one?

I guess that's the problem. Every generation since Jesus' ascension has thought the end was coming in its lifetime. So far, every generation has either been wrong or unproved yet. Who's to say it will be ours? It could be our children's. Or our grandchildren's. It could be several centuries from now. On the other hand, we don't know when Jesus will return. He very well could return tomorrow.

I guess my opinion is this: just because the world seems bad now doesn't mean the end is happening. Since Jesus' ascension, humanity has survived the Roman Empire, the dark ages, the corruption of the Roman Catholic church, the Crusades, two World Wars, political upheavals, and the fall of kingdoms and empires, and we're still here. Every generation in those times thought theirs was the last generation due to bad things happening. They were wrong. Nowadays, it seems like the main "evidence" most people present is that we have a socialist president, our economy sucks, our country is at war, we give abortions, and Islam is spreading. Three are purely focused on America (which, contrary to popular belief, is not the whole world). The other two have been going on for centuries. Times have been worse. Right now, the world is nowhere close to how bad it would have to be to honestly be called the worst tribulation in history.

Then there are the people who seem to think that if America ends, the world is coming to an end and Jesus will return any second. But in reality, if America ends, it does not necessarily mean the end is nigh. America is not the world. It is one country with a finite lifespan like every other great nation that has ever existed before now. That lifespan could be millennia. It could be a few years. Unless Jesus does return first, America will eventually fall. I hate to say that, but it's the natural course of life for human governments.

I don't know. I guess I've just been somewhat annoyed by a lot of weird end times "prophecies" and people being so sure that our generation will be the end. The point is that we don't know. We can't really know for sure when it will happen. Anything we can know about the end must be based on true, Biblical information and real, historical context.

The Treasury Had a Fake Coin

Yesterday I discovered (well, really more like witnessed) how someone, even when only using the Bible, can make some rather interesting mistakes. I also learned not to rely too heavily on man, although there are many very reliable men we can learn from. I also (re)learned the importance of context.

I've been going through The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, a giant book of about 500,000 cross references. I found myself in Genesis 1:2 (it's been slow going, but Lord willing I have the rest of my life to finish). That verse is as follows: "The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters" (ESV). Alongside the word "Spirit," there was a reference to Job 26:14:

Behold, these are but the outskirts of his ways,
and how small a whisper do we hear of him!
But the thunder of his power who can understand?

Do you see any reference to the Spirit in there? I didn't. I looked up a few words in the Srong's Concordance I had handy and found nothing in the original Hebrew. I finally wrote down that I had no idea why there was a reference to this verse here and speculated that maybe the reference to "whisper" had something to do with the Spirit, or how the Spirit has thundering power or something.

Knowing that The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge was based off of a commentary, I decided to find out which one. It turned out to be the Rev. Thomas Scott's Commentary on the Whole Bible. Surprisingly, however, I couldn't find it anywhere, at least not the Old Testament portion of it. I kept finding Matthew Henry's commentary though, and I finally decided to check it out. I skimmed through it to find the verse references in the section about Genesis 1:2-3 and I found a reference to this verse:

By his spirit he hath garnished the heavens; his hand hath formed the crooked serpent. (Job 26:13 KJV)

One verse earlier. One verse earlier. Had I only looked one verse earlier I probably would have caught it. The Treasury referred to Job 26:14. The real reference was probably supposed to be Job 26:13. I looked up the ESV version, which replaces the word "wind" for "spirit," but the Bible regularly refers to the Spirit as a wind, so I probably would have caught that reference too.

This is supposed to be a corrected version of this. But I can't really blame them. When you're trying to sell a product, do you really have time to go through 500,000 cross references?

Note to self: next time, if I find a discrepancy like this, look around. It may be a mistake.

Despair

There aren't many behaviors and actions that people in the world engage in that really shock me anymore. I'm only 23, so I'm sure I'll eventually eat those words, but right now I, like all early-mid-twenty-somethings, feel like I've seen the idea of there being nothing new under the sun thoroughly enough, even in just the past few years alone.

I think what does surprise me, however, is just what people are willing to accept and believe if it keeps them away from the God of Scripture.

There are, and have been, various philosophical systems throughout history. I believe the current, overarching system in America right now is post-modernism, which denies any kind of real truth and says that multiple contradictory things can be true at the same time. Philosophically, it's completely illogical, but that's not the point of this post.

Some of these systems lack God completely, which doesn't surprise me at all. Some of these systems' only logical conclusion is that there is no ultimate meaning to life. This is what is called a "philosophy of despair." That fact also doesn't surprise me.

What does surprise me is that adherents of those systems openly and honestly admit, and even embrace, that fact. They are perfectly content with the idea that, once they die, their existence ultimately means absolutely nothing. There is no ultimate meaning to it all. Everything is pointless.

But people are happy to embrace that idea so long as it means the God of Scripture doesn't exist. People would rather live like nothing matters than face the possibility of judgment from God. This being, of course, despite the fact that God has provided a substitute, a covenant of grace. They'd rather believe that nothing matters rather than live like everything matters.

Sometimes it baffles me just how far people are willing to run from God. But then again, since I'm a Calvinist, I probably shouldn't be surprised or baffled at all. It's just proof of total depravity, isn't it? It's proof that mankind is morally incapable of turning to God rather than from him. It's not that mankind physically can't. It's that "everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed" (John 3:20).

Sometimes people do crazy things.

Overwhelmed By Our Creator

Earlier this week I decided to try a new method of Bible study. It's not really "new" per say, since I've done it before, but it was with a tool I haven't tried out before called The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge.

The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge by R.A. Torrey is basically a big and detailed book of Biblical cross references, containing over 500,000 of them. The idea behind it is to let Scripture interpret Scripture and to see the Bible as one cohesive whole. My method is to read a chapter, then work through the cross references one-at-a-time for about an hour, maybe more, maybe less. If I can't finish the whole chapter, I continue the next day. And I benefited from our digital age in this; there is a Treasury eBook available on Amazon called the OSNOVA Study Bible. The free sample contains the Treasury through the entire Old Testament. The New Testament section, along with a book and the entire King James Version of the Bible (which is what the Treasury, written in the late 19th to early 20th century, is based off of), is only about five bucks. Without five Amazon bucks to spare, I downloaded an app with the KJV to use for now.

I started today in Genesis 1. I got a notebook and a pen for notetaking. I spent an hour studying. I read the first chapter, then set upon the cross references. I didn't get past Genesis 1:1. There were so many cross references and I took enough notes that it actually consumed the whole hour. But in that study I found myself overwhelmed by the power of our Creator God.

Throughout the Bible, God declares that he created the heavens, the earth, and everything in it. He uses this as proof of his power to help, to save, to rule, and even to judge. Our God created the entire universe! How minuscule are we in comparison?

Note: The following math is based on numbers from Wikipedia, and thus could be wrong. Plus, I am neither an astronomer nor a mathematician.

Let's think about this for a minute. We live here on earth. We stand about five or six feet tall on average. The planet, however, is about 25,000 miles around at the Equator. That's over 130,000,000 feet. That's about 26,000,000 times longer than we are tall.

Now let's look at the Sun. You've probably seen those little model Solar Systems with the Sun and the eight (nine) planets orbiting it. The Solar System looks nothing like that. The Sun actually comprises over 99% of the overall mass of the Solar System. It's about 109 times bigger than our planet. For those keeping count, that's about 2,725,000 miles or 14,170,000,000 feet. That's about 2,834,000,000 of us.

But wait, there's more! The Sun is actually dwarfed by a star known as VY Canis Majoris, which is about 1,420 times bigger than the Sun (or larger). That's about 154,780 times bigger than Earth. That's about 3,869,500,000 miles, or 20,121,400,000,000 feet, around. That's about 4,024,280,000,000 of us. There are not even close to that many people on Earth.

Then there's the entire universe, which is far bigger than that, so large that we don't even know how big it actually it is. From earth, we can observe about 46 billion light years, which is approximately 276,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles (give or take a zero), of it. That's not even taking into account how much of it we can't see, what we don't know about.

God is bigger than that. He created all of that. He knows every inch of that universe.

Overwhelmed yet?

For, But, and Therefore

While reading the books of the Bible written by Paul, I've noticed and learned something about Paul's writing that is very interesting, and I have to thank John Piper for pointing this out initially, as it helps a reader to understand a book more and to see it as a cohesive whole.

Paul uses certain words very often. Those words are "for," "but," and "therefore" (as well as their variations). The structure of one of his passages is usually along these lines:

• Statement
• "For..." (reason or example that the previous statement is true)
• "For..." (reason for the reason)
• "But now..." (change, typically the result of Christ's atoning work on the cross)
• "For..." (more reasons/examples)
• "Therefore..." (implications)

And most Pauline literature can be divided into several sections of the above.

That's a generalization, mind you, but looking for that pattern can really help a reader to understand that Paul's letters, rather than disjointed and all over the place, are usually long arguments that progress and flow and develop throughout the book. His "therefores" may even continue on to a new statement or a "for" statement.

Paul is a bit long-winded at times. This can make reading one of his letters seem daunting. But by reading slowly and carefully while keeping the connections of one statement to the other in mind, reading his letters becomes more enjoyable and he is easier to understand. Also, keeping context in mind is essential.

I hope this helps.

The Problem with Government

You're probably expecting some kind of political position post here, with supposedly Scriptural references to back it up. "Capitialism is awesome" or something. Well, you're right, sort of.

You see, I see a lot of arguments about the way government should be. You've got people arguing that what we need is less government. Let the people govern themselves. Then you've got people arguing we need more government to regulate the people. Both sides argue against the other side by pointing out "the human factor," the way that form of government can be corrupted by people. They then argue for their preferred form of government, conveniently leaving out the fact that humans also run that and corrupt it as well.

If you have small government, then you have people governing themselves. It's good to not have government intervention in every aspect of our lives. The problem, however, comes when people start deciding they can do whatever they want. They are free people, no one can tell them what to do! This leads to people doing bad things because there are no repercussions, no one to hold them accountable. People are corruptible. This is just what happens.

That, of course, is where laws and regulations come into play. We need those. The Bible says that the government is responsible for punishing wrongdoers and rewarding those who do good (1 Peter 2:13-14). Thus, the government is now bigger. But then it gets too big. It starts telling people how to spend their money. It tells people what their jobs will be, or how to live their lives. It forces people to surrender their hard-earned money, or to be defenseless. This is also just what happens.

The problem with each argument is that it selectively presumes on an inherent goodness in mankind. That is, man is evil in the other form of government, but good and right in whatever I prefer.

Here's the truth: mankind is inherently evil and corrupt. No matter which form of government you have, it will eventually be corrupted by people. We've seen it in the US. We've seen it in communist nations. The problem is the people.

What we need is something that changes hearts. What we need is a form of government run by a perfect, incorruptible, and absolutely good and just ruler. Can that be done by man's power? Has it ever been done by man's power? Historically, human institutions inevitably fail.

Our institutions, imperfect as they are, will not last. We need something that will. And in order for it to last forever, it needs to be perfect. It needs a perfect ruler who is perfectly good, who cares for his people perfectly. That doesn't sound like any mere human I know.

The Christianity I Know

Over the years I've seen a lot of opinions on, views of, and ideas about Christianity. More often than not, those ideas are misconceptions that don't even come close to the genuine article.

A few years ago, right after LOST finished its final season, I saw The Jimmy Kimmel Show. This particular episode focused on the series finale of LOST. I will never forget as Jimmy Kimmel attempted (and utterly failed) to explain Christianity. According to his view of Christianity, when you die, your good deeds are measured against your bad deeds. If the good outweighs the bad, you go to heaven. If the bad outweighs the good, you go to hell.

That is not the Christianity I know. The Christianity I know states that my good works are completely insufficient to get me to heaven. God is perfect. His standard is perfection. If I am not perfect, I am not good enough to get into heaven. Only through the grace of God and the atoning work of Jesus Christ can I get to heaven (Romans 3:21-30). That's not to say that good works are irrelevant; good works are the result and evidence of salvation (James 2:18). They are not what saves me. At the moment of salvation, my heart, soul, and mind are changed so I can do good works (Colossians 1:21-23, 3:1-17).

There are people who believe that the core of Christianity is charity and social work. That is not the Christianity I know. The Christianity I know is thoroughly God-centered. God and his gospel are central. That's not to say that we shouldn't engage in charity and social work and feeding the homeless. But that is not the point of Christianity.

There are people who believe that it is the solemn duty of all Christians to defy oppressive governments, and sometimes even seem to believe the Constitution to be on par with the Bible. They believe Christianity to be a political movement. That is not the Christianity I know. The Christianity I know has only one authoritative document (okay, technically sixty-six, but they are all one cohesive whole): the Bible (2 Timothy 3:16-17). That's not to say the Constitution isn't a wonderful document. But everything must be beholden to the Bible, including the Constitution. Should they ever contradict, the Bible must take precedence.

That Bible also says that governments are put in place by God to punish evildoers and reward those who do good. They also must be beholden to the Bible. We are to submit to them except when to do so would disobey what the Bible says (1 Peter 2:13-17). The Apostles did not try to overthrow the Roman government, and they only defied it when it prohibited or prevented them from preaching the gospel (Acts 4:18-20). The preaching of the gospel, not political revolution, eventually resulted in Rome being ruled by a Christian emperor. Also, Jesus himself paid taxes to the government despite the fact that they used their money to do ungodly things (Matthew 17:24-27).

There are those who believe the whole of Christianity is to hate gay people and women (mainly meaning abortion, but other things as well). That is not the Christianity I know. The Christianity I know says that Christians, regardless of gender, are equal in Christ (Galatians 3:28). One is not better or worse than the other. They are just different from each other and complement each other. The Bible also does not condone murder (which is what abortion is). It also does not condone homosexuality (note that I did not say homosexuals, meaning people), because it goes against the order that God created (Rom. 1:26-27).

I once saw a picture of some people at Evergreen holding signs about sin and the judgment. I have no idea if they were also holding signs about salvation and grace, but I doubt it would have made a difference. Next to these sign holders sat two women, clearly a couple. One of them was holding a sign that said "I apologize for these 'Christians.'" The sign clearly implied that, because these people talked about sin and judgment, they were not Christians, because Christianity is a religion of peace, love, and tolerance. That is not the Christianity I know. The Christianity I know is above love, yes, but not in the way people think. That leads to my last point.

There are people who think that Christianity is hateful, intolerant, and oppressive and that Christians just want to make everyone do what they say. That is not the Christianity I know. The Christianity I know is not hateful. It is loving. It is loving enough to warn people about the fatal consequences of their actions.

Let's say someone was about to touch an electric fence charged with enough voltage to kill him. Would it be loving to let him touch it? Would it not be loving to say, "Don't touch that, it will kill you"? If he touched it and died, and people knew you could've stopped it but took no action, would you not be seen as heartless and unloving, or perhaps cowardly?

When we warn people of the judgment, it's not because we hate people. It's because we love them. It's because we don't want them to face the terrible judgment of a perfectly just judge. What is hateful about that?

Sadly, however, I think that a lot of Christians (so-called or genuine) have fallen into the trap of seeing these various misconceptions of Christianity as the real thing. I think it's because we've let things and people other than the Bible define Christianity to us. Christianity cannot ultimately be defined by politicians, theologians, bloggers, scientists, and especially the unbelieving world. The only one who can and does define Christianity is our triune God: Father, Son, and Spirit. And the only way we can know what Christianity truly is is through the Bible.

Olympianism

Having lived in Olympia for about two years now, I've met a lot of different kinds of people. I've met musicians and audio nerds. I've met computer geniuses. I've met theater folk (both actors and tech people). I've met caregivers and people who have them. Students, workers. Parents. Gay people, straight people, bisexual people. Alchemists (I'm not even kidding). Olympia is a very diverse place.

I think the most interesting thing about it is that, despite Olympia's characterization as a godless city (which I don't disagree with), most people here are actually very spiritual in some fashion. Interlaced with the list above, I've met pantheists, Buddhists, mystics, one Thelema adherent (I don't know what you call them), and even universalists.

The funny thing about it is that if you dare to make your Christian beliefs public (at least the part about how sin is bad), you may face a rather large backlash from it. People here do not like the God of the Bible, despite the fact that, in their minds, he doesn't exist. Despite the fact that, to them, everyone can have their own spiritual beliefs and that's okay.

So if they hate God, why all the searching for something outside themselves?

Why the idea that everything is god? If everything and everyone is god, is anyone or anything really god? Why does it even matter that everyone is god?

I saw a guy quote John 1:1 and take the idea of "The Word" to mean something along the lines of some spiritual law or philosophy that cannot be contradicted or something because "the Word was God." What about the whole context of John 1, which clearly shows the Word to be not only God, but also a person who came to earth to rescue people? Why even quote the Bible if you don't believe a vast majority of what it says? Wouldn't that be similar to me trying to make an argument for Christianity by quoting the Quran or the Upanishads?

And if Jesus really did claim to be God, but he wasn't, then how can we trust anything he says? Doesn't that put him in the same category as the psychopaths who falsely claim divinity to rule over other people as absolute dictators? Or, if he genuinely believed it, wouldn't that make him deluded to the point where, in our day, he would be in a mental hospital? Can we really consider him to be just a good teacher with the claims he made?

Everyone here is searching for something, and it seems like most of them believe there is some kind of god out there, be it nature or philosophy or something. I don't know if they seek for their own pleasure, or because they feel there is something greater than all this, or because they just want there to be something more than all this. But the point is that everyone here is searching. But for what? And why?

Worship Leaders

If you've ever gone to church, you've probably heard the term "Worship Leader." When you hear that, you probably think of the man or woman leading the music. Maybe you think of all the musicians. While the term "Worship Leader" certainly applies to these people (as they are leading an aspect of worship), they aren't the only people to whom the term applies.

When we think of "worship," particularly in a church setting, we most likely think of the music portion of the service. But is that all there is to worship? In fact, isn't the entire service - including the sermon, prayers, and all of that - one big worship service?

When the pastor is preaching, he is leading us to worship our God by teaching us about Him. Also, he himself is worshipping by obeying Jesus' command to preach the Gospel. The pastor is a worship leader.

Some churches have people who lead in prayer. Prayer is a form of worship. These people are worship leaders.

Some churches have "readers" whose specific job is to publicly read Scripture, which is also a form of worship. These people are worship leaders.

So why do we reserve the title of "worship leader" for the music leader? Why not call him exactly what he is: the music leader? (I've seen the title "Chief Musician" used in a few churches; I think that one just sounds cool.) Everyone else's title tells a person exactly what part of worship they lead. A pastor pastors. A reader reads. A musician plays music.

Just food for thought.

 

Ritualistic Traditionalism

As a young Reformed person, I often see a lot of people railing against church rituals and tradition - that is, "sticking to the old ways" in church services. A lot of the criticism I see are accusations that those who follow older church traditions are being Pharisaical and even disobeying Scripture. Then there is criticism from those who prefer tradition towards the non-traditional folks, claiming they are disrespectful, overly casual, outright liberal, and worldly.

So my question is this: are the accusations warranted?

In some cases they are. Some of the most liberal of "younger" churches preach a horribly watered-down theology, refuse any kind of ritual or tradition, and are even heretical. And some other churchgoers are so stuck in old ways that anything new frightens them and is instantly viewed as "from the devil." Is there a middle ground?

Let's go to Scripture.

And he said to them, "Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, "'This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.' You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men." (Mark 6:6-8)

Notice what Jesus is angry about. He's not saying "You Pharisees are too stuck in your old ways. Tradition is horrible and evil." He's saying "You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men." The point isn't that the Pharisees are a bunch of old-fashioned geezers stuck in the past. It's that they had replaced Scripture with traditionalism and ritualism and thought they were going to heaven for their works and traditions, thinking nothing of the fact that they can't get to heaven on their own unless God shows them mercy.

In the end, like everything, it's a heart and conscience issue.

I'm going to look at R.C. Sproul's church, St. Andrew's, since I've been reading and listening to Sproul a lot lately. They have Scripture readings, they sing old hymns, they use words like liturgy and chancel (as opposed to stage), they dress up nice for Sunday. and they even refer to the Bible as "Sacred Scripture." Is this because they think ritual and tradition are what make them right with God? Not at all. They just have a lot of respect for the Holy and sacred, as well as the history behind what they do. They know that Sunday service is about coming into the presence of the Holy God, and they want to be reverent. I say that, of course, assuming the general viewpoint of the congregation is along the lines of Sproul's viewpoint, as I have never attended St. Andrew's.

Now, we also need to remember that outward appearance means nothing if the heart isn't right. One can be the best dressed person on earth and have the most ugly heart. It would be far better to have a right heart, sanctified by God, and be dressed in rags. But does that mean we absolutely need to avoid such things as dressing nicely and such? So long as we aren't legalistic about it, I don't see a reason why. We also shouldn't be legalistic the other way - that is, we have to be contemporary and hip, we have to dress in street clothes, etc.

On the other side of the spectrum, I see no reason why we can't have such things as electric guitars in worship. The only reason the Bible says nothing about them is because electricity hadn't been harnessed as an energy source in Biblical times. The Bible also says nothing about pianos and organs as far as I'm aware.

It all comes down to the heart and conscience. If Scripture doesn't forbid some form of worship or some instrument or ritual, and your conscience allows you to, and your heart is truly worshipful towards God, it's probably okay. If you cannot in good conscience follow or avoid a ritual that is neither forbidden nor required in Scripture, then follow or avoid it. Be discerning. Examine Scripture and your own heart. And don't condemn someone for their worship practices unless they really are disobeying Scripture. And still don't condemn them, condemn their practices and lead them back to Scripture.

DYF: Logical Positivism and Its Ghosts Today: Analogical Use of Language - My Thoughts

This chapter is the last chapter about the four principles of knowledge. Here we study the analogical use of language and its necessity in understanding God.

This chapter has a lot of historical information that I won't get into. The main point of it all is that there were theologians who, in trying to counter the ideas of pantheism (God is all things and all things are God), argued that God was absolutely and completely "other," totally separate from our universe. Indeed it's true that He is separate, but this caused a crisis: if God is completely separate, then we can't know or say anything about Him because there are no similarities between Him and us. There is nothing we can do to understand Him because He is absolutely different from His creation.

Well, Biblically, that's not true. In Genesis 1:26 we read that "God said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.'" We are made in the image of God! We can talk about God because there is similarity between us and Him. Indeed, there is some degree of similarity between God and His created order; as Sproul said in his teaching series Recovering the Beauty of the Arts: since God is the ultimate source of goodness, truth, and beauty, then everything good, true, and beautiful displays some aspect of the glory of God.

The idea of analogical language seems to have come from a man named Thomas Aquinas. He differentiated between univocal language (two uses of a word mean the exact same thing), equivocal language (two uses of a word mean two completely different things), and analogical language (two uses of a word are similar but not the exact same). Analogical language is a middle ground of sorts. When we say "This coffee smells good" and "God is good," we are being analogical. The coffee may smell good, but God is exceedingly better. But some of His goodness is reflected in the smell of that coffee. When we say "God is omnipotent (all-powerful)," we must draw an analogy because we have never seen omnipotence. But we can look at someone with power or at our own exertions of power and draw an inference of what omnipotence means.

This chapter didn't seem to be arguing so much for the use of analogical language in general so much as it was arguing for its use in describing and talking about God, but I can't see a Biblical warrant for not using such language. Actually, it seems completely necessary. And if we are talking about the God of the Bible, we already know that He is somewhat similar to His creation. I guess then we'd have to prove the validity of the Bible. But we'll get to that.

The Big Problem With Sin

Okay, so I've been seeing this really odd (read: completely false) doctrine about sin going around lately. Now, any doctrine about sin is going to be central to any form of Christian theology because the entirety of Christianity is centered on Jesus dying for the sins of His people. Why exactly did Jesus have to die for our sins? Our understanding of sin will influence our answer to this question.

The doctrine, or I suppose idea, about sin I've seen going around is basically that God's wrath is not on sinners but on sin itself. He hates sin because of what it does to us. People aren't punished because of their sin, they're punished by their sin, and that's why God hates sin.

So, what are the implications of this doctrine? Well, on one hand God is apparently so angry with sin He feels the need to take it out on people who are its apparent victims. Sin is some evil thing that God hates so much that people die in the wake of His trying to stop it. Just read the Old Testament. How many people die because of sin?

Either that or sin is not under God's sovereignty. In Acts 5 (New Testament, for those of you who disregard the Old), Ananias and Sapphira lied to God by saying they gave all of the money they earned when in reality they only gave some. What happened? They died. If God doesn't punish people for their sin, then we can only conclude that sin in its apparently mighty power killed them. It's either that or God killed them because He hates that sin punishes people. If you're confused, don't worry. So am I.

So if sin is just something that God hates because it's a bad thing that hurts people, why did Jesus have to die for it? Couldn't God have just said to us, "Hey, don't worry about it, that nasty old sin is just mean to you"? "You just made a mistake and sin punished you for it, but I'm gonna make it all better"? Or was sin just so powerful that Jesus had to go on the cross to take the punishment that mean old sin was going to give us? Did sin kill Jesus?

Let's think Biblically for a second. Isaiah 53:10 gives us the answer to this question: "Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him; he has put him to grief." Whose will was it that Jesus would die? God's will. Not only did God will it, but He is the one who crushed Him! Sin didn't kill Jesus, God did.

So the question then becomes this: "Why did God kill Jesus?" Was He just so angry at sin that He had to kill something? No. "The wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23). When we sin, we earn death. That's what a wage is, it's something we earn for what we do. But who do we earn it from? Sin? Satan? No, God. Romans 1:29-32 tells us that God has declared that those who sin deserve to die. Why would we deserve to die when we sin if God only hates sin because of what it does to us? Couldn't He declare that "Sin deserves to die" without having to kill sin's poor, helpless victims? Or is God so inept that He has to kill sinners because of what sin has done in order to stop it? (I have a hard time even writing that.)

Now of course sin deserves to die. The Bible tells us to kill our sin. And I'm certain God hates what sin does to us, how it separates us from Him. But is that ultimately why He hates sin?

No. God hates sin because He is a holy and just and good God. God's very nature demands justice in response to evil. He is offended by sin because it violates His perfect sense of justice and His created order. He can't even be in the presence of sin, lest those who sin die. Why else would God judge, not just sin, but the world itself and the people in it? The wages of sin is death, and God takes that very seriously. He takes it so seriously, in fact, that He sent Jesus to live a perfect life, killed Him in our place rather than kill us for our sin and, through a great mystery, exchanged our sin for His righteousness and perfection.

That leads to the next problem. Yes, God hates sin. But how does sin happen? We sin. We are the sinners. We are the objects of God's wrath. One proponent of the false doctrine of sin says that every time God's wrath is displayed, it is directed at sin, not at people. I wonder, then, how he would explain this:

Therefore, as the tongue of fire devours the stubble, and as dry grass sinks down in the flame, so their root will be as rottenness, and their blossom go up like dust; for they have rejected the law of the LORD of hosts, and have despised the word of the Holy One of Israel. Therefore the anger of the LORD was kindled against his people, and he stretched out his hand against them and struck them, and the mountains quaked; and their corpses were as refuse in the midst of the streets. For all this his anger has not turned away, and his hand is stretched out still. (Isaiah 5:24-25, emphasis added)

Notice here that God is clearly displaying His wrath, not just towards sin, but "his people." He is angry with people for their heinous sins, and He acts justly towards it.

Someone will probably say something about how, since that's the Old Testament, it doesn't apply to us. But does God change? Is God wrathful towards people in one era and then has no wrath in the next? Why then the final judgment? What needs to be judged if there's no wrath? What do you do with the fact that people are still going to hell? God is the one sending people to hell, not sin (Matthew 13:41-42, New Testament). Certainly it is because of sin that people are going to hell, but don't say that sin is so powerful that it sends people to hell and God has nothing to do with it.

People will probably accuse me of preaching law instead of grace or something like that. "Where's the love, man?" Well, I would say I am being loving by exposing this false and harmful teaching for what it is: wrong. People need to know the truth. For the Gospel to be taught correctly, people need to know that they deserve hell. God is, in fact, angry at sin and sinners. They need to know that God, knowing our helplessness, has given us a way to be saved and redeemed despite not deserving it: His Son, Jesus Christ. God loves sinners. It is very easy to both love and be angry with someone at the same time. Any marriage, any parent-child relationship will tell you that. People also need to know that, after being saved, they need to live like it, not to stay saved, but because they already are saved. If they refuse to live like saved people, then are they actually saved?

I'm tired of half-Gospels being preached all the time by mainstream Christianity. We need the real, full Gospel. People will not be saved otherwise. Jesus did not care about offending anyone or harming anyone's sensibilities. He taught the truth, the whole truth.

DYF: Hume's Critique of Causality and the Basic Reliability of Sense Perception - My Thoughts

Phew! That post title is a doozy!

Despite its long title, the chapter actually turned out to be a fairly simple one. As the title indicates, Sproul talks about David Hume's critique of causality and the basic reliability of sense perception. Although it originally sounded like it was going to be about two different topics, it was actually about two connected topics: the reliability of the five senses.

Hume made a critique about causality that, apparently like most arguments that philosophers made, wound up being very misunderstood. A lot of people held and still hold that Hume argued against causality in general, and believe that he disproved and demolished it. But actually, he didn't so much argue against causality as he did against sense perception.

Hume argued that, while effects do have causes, we cannot truly perceive those causes with our five senses. He said that we only see things and then make assumptions about them. We only assume that it's the rain that makes the grass wet. We only assume that someone punching a guy in the face broke the guy's nose. But our senses aren't truly reliable. They are severely limited and can't tell us what really caused what.

Sproul's argument for the basic reliability of our senses is a lot simpler than I expected. He says, along with Immanuel Kant, that if our senses are unreliable, we can't know anything. If our senses aren't reliable, all of science falls apart because science is about making observations. He doesn't argue that our senses are infallible; they can certainly deceive us. But he argues that they are basically reliable. They must be because they are the only window we have to the physical world. We have to rely on them. Hume is correct in that our senses are limited in what they can perceive. But they are not unreliable.

This is Biblical as well. Sproul cites 2 Peter 1:16-18 as Biblical evidence for the reliability of eyewitness testimony:

For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased," we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain.

Notice the wording Peter uses here. "We did not follow cleverly devised myths...we were eyewitnesses of his majesty...we ourselves heard this very voice borne for heaven...we were with him on the mountain." Peter is arguing that he heard and saw the glory of Christ with his own eyes and ears, and that was proof to him that this whole Jesus thing wasn't some kind of crazy made-up story. If his senses were unreliable, then this would mean absolutely nothing. But clearly this has to hold weight for us Christians, because otherwise this passage of Scripture means nothing to us.

So our senses aren't perfect, nor are they absolutely transcendent. But they are reliable. They need to be. We need them to be. Otherwise, how can we know anything about the world around us? How could prophets and apostles know what God spoke to them? How can we know a God who gave us a book through which He communicates with us? If our senses are unreliable, how can we understand this book? How could the apostles and prophets hear God and know what He said? If our senses are unreliable, we couldn't understand the Bible. The apostles and prophets could not have understood God properly. But if our senses are reliable, then we can understand. We can "taste and see that the LORD is good" (Psalm 34:8).

God Knows What We Need

Observations From My Study (Mark 11:25-30)

Earlier this week I wrote about cross references and their usefulness for correctly interpreting Scripture. Today I've got a short Bible study built on the usage of cross references that was a real eye-opener to me on how important prayer really is.

Let's take a look at today's passage:

As they passed by in the morning, they saw the fig tree withered away to its roots. And Peter remembered and said to him, "Rabbi, look! The fig tree that you cursed has withered." And Jesus answered them, "Have faith in God. Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, 'Be taken up and thrown into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses." (Mark 11:25-30)

So this passage is about faith in God and faith through prayer. We are to be faithful in our prayers, knowing that God hears and answers. The main point that I'm trying to make is based off of a cross reference in verse 24 to Matthew 6:8: "[Y]our Father knows what you need before you ask him." Now, think about that. God, the Almighty, the Lord of the Universe, knows what we, the church, need before we even ask. That doesn't mean we shouldn't ask; it means we should, and we should rest assured that God knows what we need and will provide.

God doesn't always answer "Yes." Sometimes we pray for something that is not what God wills. Sometimes God answers "Yes" but it takes time or He answers in a manner we don't expect. The point is that God knows what we need and will always provide that for us, because He knows what we need. He made us! And it's important to remember that there's a difference between what we need and what we think we need. God knows what we truly need, and He will always, always provide.

DYF: The Law of Causality - My Thoughts

This chapter introduces the reader to the law of causality, the idea of causes and effects.

Now, before I continue, I have an apology to make. A few posts ago I defined the law of causality as simply everything having a cause. As it turns out, however, that definition is wrong, and I'm sorry I misinformed you. What this law really states is that "Every effect has a cause." This is important, and I'll get to that in a minute. Once again Sproul's basis for this seems to be Aristotle, though I suppose Aristotle is probably a good basis to work off of what it comes to logic, seeing as he defined it.

One very important facet of this idea is that it's true by definition. An effect, by definition, is caused by something; it always has a cause, something or someone that caused it to be. Likewise, a cause, by definition, is something or someone that brings something about. A cause literally causes something, it always results in an effect of some kind. So every effect has a cause, and every cause has an effect. Neither can exist without the other.

Now, the reason this is important is because it gives us a reason why we don't need to say what caused God to exist unless we can define God as an "effect" of something. If God is eternal, then He has always existed, and thus nothing could have caused Him to come into being, thus He is not an effect. How can He be eternal if something brought Him into existence? If that were the case, then whatever brought God into existence is the truly eternal thing, and God is no longer the everlasting God (and thus, not God). So logically, the Biblical account of God's existence - that is, that He has always existed - seems to be a totally valid option.

This law has been historically misunderstood by some people trying to argue that it doesn't exist, or is otherwise not necessary. John Stuart Mill in particular made the same error I did when he argued against it; he believed the law of causality stated that everything had to have a cause. The problem with that, he argued, is that it leads to a never-ending cycle of causes. If something caused the universe to come into being, what caused that something to exist? Then, what caused that something that caused that something to exist? One could continue that cycle for eternity. But since that's not what the law states, one doesn't have to do that. Logic allows for some eternal something or someone.

This leaves open one question, at least in my mind. There are those who argue, or have argued, that the universe has simply always existed. Nothing caused it; it has just always been. So far as I can tell, this law by itself allows for such a thing. But Biblically, that's not what happened. God created the universe. So how does one argue for an eternal God instead? I know this question is answered later in the book, so I look forward to finding out.

DYF: Contradiction, Paradox, and Mystery - My Thoughts

This chapter turned out to be much easier to grasp than the last one, probably because rather than trying to argue a point, the author was merely defining a few terms: contradiction, paradox, and mystery. It's a pretty simple distinction to make, honestly, and an important one.

According to Sproul, the first two words, contradiction and paradox, are commonly used interchangeably. This, he says, is a mistake, as they mean two different things. While our contemporary definition shows them as synonyms, Sproul argues that this is only resulted from general misuse of the terms. He gives the correct, historical definitions for this chapter.

Contradiction

A contradiction is a logical error, something that simply does not make sense and cannot be understood to be meaningful because of its absurdity. This is like saying that the iPad I'm typing both is and isn't an iPad. It's either one or the other; it can't be both. We can't understand how it can possibly be both an iPad and not an iPad at the same time because that's a contradiction. It can't be resolved at all.

Paradox

A paradox is something that, while seeming to be a contradiction at first glance, really isn't a contradiction at all. The best paradox I can think of is one that Sproul uses himself in this chapter: the doctrine of the Trinity.

The doctrine of the Trinity holds that God is one God yet three persons. He is both one and three. That sounds like a contradiction, right? Well, on closer inspection we discover it's not. God is one in essence but three in person. He is one in one way and three in a completely different way. This is not a contradiction at all, only a paradox.

Mystery

Finally, there is mystery. A mystery is simply something that is logical, but is not known at the time. It may be that it can't be known or fully understood; God is an infinite being, and we as finite beings can never fully understand Him. However, it may be that a mystery can be known with further investigation and study. Either way, it's something that makes logical sense. That differentiates it from a contradiction, which cannot be known or understood because it makes no logical sense.

So, contradiction, paradox, and mystery. All of them are important things for us to understand if we wish to logically discuss the Gospel, or anything in general. At least Sproul says so. I'm not far into the book, so we haven't got to the part about defending the Gospel yet. I look forward to that.

Cross References

I've given suggestions on Bible study tools in the past. I've also talked about how there are many tools for the layman and how the Bible was not written only for "professional Christians" but for the entire church. But today I'm going to talk about the one man-made Bible study tool I would recommend to everyone.

Due to my general lack of blog post creativity, you probably already know what I'm talking about: cross references!

You may have seen them before in your Bible. You know all those little letters in the middle of words in the Bible verses? If you see them, you may also see those letters with verse numbers next to them. Here's a picture uploaded by St. Luke's Lutheran Church to demonstrate:

Well, those are a handy reference system given to help you out. What this reference system is doing is pointing the reader to other verses with similarities to the verse being read. In the above case, we see that in verse 16 (indicated by the number in bold), the phrase "God so loved" (indicated by the letter "p" next to the verse reference and in the verse itself) is being cross references with Romans 5:8, Ephesians 2:4, 2 Thessalonians 2:16, and 1 John 3:1 and 4:9-10. Let's look up those verses to see what they have to do with the phrase "God so loved."

Romans 5:8: "But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

Ephesians 2:4: "But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us"

2 Thessalonians 2:16: "Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace,"

1 John 3:1: "See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him."

1 John 4:9-10: "In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins."

For some of them (like Ephesians 2:4), the reader may need to read a few more verses (like Ephesians 2:5) to get the picture. But you see what I mean.

So why do I recommend this? Because Scripture is Scripture's best interpreter. We can find common themes through the Bible, we can figure out what is meant by a verse more precisely. And it's available in most regular Bibles (i.e. not study Bibles, though some study Bibles have them too). It's extremely useful and very edifying, if you ask me.

The Bible is God's Word. We should know what it says about itself - that is, what God has to say about it.

Demanding Lord and Delivering Savior

Quotes from Old, Dead Dudes (3/23/2012)

The following quote is from Jim Elliot, a missionary to Ecuador who was martyred by the Waodani Indians in 1956. This quote is taken from a journal entry where he is commenting on the beginning of Jude.

Certain men in the group to whom Jude wrote had turned the grace of God into loose living, denying the only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. This was written for my day: For today I hear of men preaching that grace means freedom to live unrestrained lives apart from any standard of moral purity, declaring "we are not under law, we are under grace." Grace turned into ἀσέλγεια ["licentiousness"]! Combined with this is the twentieth-century heresy that Christ is Savior only by right, Lord by "option" of the "believer." This denial of the only Master and Lord, preach[es] only half of His person, declaring only partially the truth as it is in Jesus Christ[.] [The gospel] must be preached with the full apprehension of who He is, the demanding Lord as well as the delivering Savior. . . . Denial of the lordship of the Lord. That is disobedience which in any way makes pliable the requirement of God, for it makes God not God.

Source: MacArthur, John F. Slave. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2010. Print.

- Posted from my blog, Worshiping a Sovereign Lord

 

DYF: The Law of Noncontradiction - My Thoughts

In this chapter, Dr. Sproul begins to talk about the law of noncontradiction, one of the logical rules that must be in place before we can know something. The most important idea is probably the idea of absolute vs. relative truth.

The primary argument for the law of noncontradiction in this chapter is that, without it, we have no way of knowing what is true or false, right or wrong (the moral relativists will love that). In Christianity in particular, without the law of noncontradiction, the entire Bible would be useless to us. If God commands us to do something, we can't disregard it. In the same way, if God commands us not to do something, we can't just go out and do it. That's a Biblical given. But, if the law of noncontradiction didn't exist, who's to say these are absolute commands? How do we know what God's commands are? How do we even know what He is like? Can Jesus have died and not died at the same time? When the Bible says He rose from the grave, could He have not risen from the grave? So we see the law of noncontradiction's necessity to our faith.

Now, the law of contradiction doesn't prove Christianity. All it does is give us a concept of how to think, how to view the world. It gives us a framework for understanding the universe. It's the law that states that I can't be both Sarrah's husband and not be her husband at the same time. To be both would be a clear contradiction. But without the law of noncontradiction, who's to say I can't do that? Or God can't not be God, or not fulfill His attributes. He is an absolute God and a God of absolutes.

This chapter also talks about the problems with relativism (believing something to be true or right for some people and not for others). Sproul also points out that one cannot be a consistent relativist, believing that all truth is relative. For one thing, the idea that all truth is relative (meaning there are no absolutes) is itself an absolute, and the whole idea behind relativism is that it denies absolutes. For it to not be an absolute, one would have to say that only some things are relative, which would mean that some other things are absolute. You see the dilemma? I suppose one could say that there are some relatives and some absolutes. But the fact remains that there are absolutes in our world.

This is also the law that allows us to make certain observations. Sproul gives the example of the phrase "All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore Socrates is mortal." Logic allows us to add this up and see this to be true. This kind of idea could be applied to a lot of things, like "Heights scare me; the Space Needle is very tall; therefore going on the Space Needle would scare me."

Sproul points out that logic in general wasn't invented by man. When he talks about Aristotle's ideas about logic, he is careful to point out that "Aristotle didn't invent logic; rather he defined it. He argued that logic is a necessary tool for human thinking and communication, as well as a means for us to comprehend the rational structure of the universe." Aristotle did, in fact, affirm the law of noncontradiction in his writing Metaphysics, saying that it is "impossible that contrary attributes should belong at the same time to the same subject" (IV.3.8). The reason it is important to note that Aristotle didn't invent logic is because, back in those times (and still today even), there are those that argued that Greek philosophy and what they called "Aristotelian logic" should never be used in conjunction with Christianity. At the time the use of such things was commonly intended to try to prove heresy, and of course it should never be used for that. But why can't logic be used to prove Christianity? Is our faith irrational? Is it based on a blind leap of faith? Some Christians would actually say so. But doesn't the Bible tell us that the one who says there is no God is a fool? (Psalm 14:1, 53:1) Wouldn't the fool be more apt to follow the "irrational" idea that there is a God? By saying Christianity is inherently irrational, we are calling all of the church a bunch of fools! But, Biblically, it is the non-Christians who are foolish, not the Christians.

All in all, this chapter had a lot to absorb. I had to think and re-think about it to grasp it, and that fact means I may not be able to simply write about each chapter every day. There are still three more laws to cover, and this I understand, this one I've always agreed with. So I may be a bit slower in continuing to write about this book, but I'll get it done.

DYF: Introducing the Four Principles - My Thoughts

Now Dr. Sproul introduces what he calls "the four principles of knowledge." What he basically argues is that these four principles are assumed in Scripture, so they are essential to knowledge.

The key seems to be that these four principles need to be shown valid. According to Sproul, the most formidable atheist thinkers have historically argued that at least one of these principles is invalid. Sproul states that if we can show these principles to be valid and essential to knowledge, the atheist will be hard pressed to argue against God without contradicting them, thus falling into irrationality. How can an argument be rational if it denies something required for knowledge of something?

The four principles are:

1. The law of noncontradiction (A cannot be both A and not-A at the same time)
2. The law of causalty (everything has a cause)
3. The basic reliability of sense perception (our senses, while they can deceive us, are generally reliable), and
4. The analogical use of language (while God is separate from us and divine, our human language can make analogies that say meaningful things about Him)

Confused? I am too. The law of contradiction I definitely agree with; I definitely know absolutes exist in this world. Same with the basic reliability of sense perception, although I wonder how this will fit in if God generally can't be seen or heard. It probably has something to do with the eyewitness accounts of the writers of Scripture.

I think the one I'm most interested in is the law of causality. I've heard the argument that everything has a cause many times before. Many Christians say that the universe can't have created itself. But lately I've wondered about a possible atheist counter-argument: what created God? And then if we say He's just always existed (which I wholeheartedly believe), aren't we seemingly contradicting ourselves since there is something (someone) with no cause for existence? I know Sproul talks about this later, so I'm really looking forward to the answer.

Analogical use of language needs some explanation. According to Sproul, there are many thinkers, theologians, and philosophers who have argued that, since God is separate and divine, our human language cannot begin to comprehend Him, so it's impossible to have any meaningful discussion about Him. To that I say "Poppycock," but I don't have a logical reason for saying that. So I'm curious as to Sproul's counter to the argument.

I'm really glad each of these has it's own chapter, because I really need some explanation of these concepts.

DYF: Apologetics and Saving Faith - My Thoughts

Chapter 2 of Defending Your Faith continues along the lines of the purpose of apologetics, specifically laying out its role in leading people to salvation.

As stated in the previous post, apologetics by itself has no ability to save people. However, as Dr. Sproul lays out in this chapter, it does have a role in leading people down the road to salvation.

What's the difference, you ask? As Sproul states:

The thinkers of the sixteenth century distinguished among several actual nuances or levels or elements of faith that together comprise saving faith. The three main levels of faith, they said, were notitia (sometimes called the notei), assensus, and fiducia.

This idea of different levels of faith could also be illustrated by the people in the parable of the sower. A man sows seed (the Word of God). That seed falls on four places: the path, where birds snatch it up; rocky soil, where a plant with a shallow root instantly sprouts but is scorched; among thorns, which choke the plant that tries to grow; and in good soil, where it produces much fruit.

Notitia

Notitia basically means a knowledge of something. This knowledge, while it can lead to saving faith, doesn't always do so. This could be the guy who studies Christianity out of an academic interest, but doesn't really believe any of what he's researching to be true. Maybe there's a god of some kind, this man might say, but certainly not this God.

This man can be represented by the path. The path is a person with a hard heart that Satan snatches the Word out of before it can grow.

Assensus

Assensus is an assent to the truth. This person believes the Word he has heard to be true, but doesn't necessarily respond with saving faith and trust. You can't have this level of faith without the first one, but you can have it without the third one.

In the parable, this could be represented by either the shallow or the thorny soil. The shallow soil is someone who hears the Word and seems to accept it with joy, but falls away from the faith after some kind of trial. The thorny soil is someone who hears and seems to accept, but is caught up in worldly things and ultimately proves unsaved.

I knew a guy who told me he believed in the Christian God and Satan, but wasn't a follower of either. He would fall into this category as well.

Fiducia

Lastly, we have fiducia. Fiducia is personal trust and reliance. It's the response of loving God after hearing the Word (notitia) and accepting it to be true (assensus). Essentially, this is the response of saving faith to the Gospel that comes by the work of the Holy Spirit. and you can't have it without the first two levels of faith.

The good soil represents this person. This person hears the Gospel, accepts, is renewed, and produces fruit.

The task of apologetics is to produce the first two levels of faith, hearing and accepting the Word of God to be true. But it must be noted that the third level of faith - trust, reliance, submission - cannot be brought out by apologetics unless the Holy Spirit changes a person's heart and mind.

In the end, I suppose that's similar to all preaching. Human effort can cause someone to hear the Word, and even lead them to believe it to be true. But only the Holy Spirit can bring them to real, saving faith.