This is the third of six posts regarding TULIP. If you are not familar with that acronym, Wikipedia has a number of articles on the subject. This one is probably the most succinct and provides links to the counter positions of Arminians.
3) Limited Atonement
This is the one that turns everyone off from Calvinism. Everyone. And that is odd, because both Calvinists and Arminians believe in a Limited Atonement. Calvinists believe it is limited when God decides only to die for those He sovereignly elects, and Arminians decide it is limited when men sovereignly decide not to accept the benefits of Christ's death for themselves.
Calvinists teach that Christ did not die for every man, but only for every man whom the Father gave to Him.
Arminians universally find this point unscriptural and offensive. I know. I was one, and I still have never found an Arminian who can accept the idea that Christ did not die for everyone. The scriptures that say, "everyone," are so clear that they consider any other interpretation reprehensible.
John 3:14-18 - "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God."
2 Cor 5:14-15 - "For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died; and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again."
1 Timothy 2:3-6 - For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time."
1 Timothy 4:10 - "For to this end we both labor and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of those who believe."
Titus 2:11 (ESV) - "For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people."
1 John 2:2 - "And He [Christ] Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world."
These verses are powerful.
Against them, the Calvinists array a barrage of verses of their own. I will quote only my favorite.
John 10: 11 "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12 The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. 13 The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.
14 "I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— 15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep. 16 I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.
...
25 Jesus answered, "I did tell you, but you do not believe. The works I do in my Father's name testify about me, 26 but you do not believe because you are not my sheep. 27 My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand.
The bottom line is that the Lamb knows the names of the sheep that are written in His Book of Life.
But, again, the Calvinists have one huge thing wrong. They are thinking about God sovereignly and semi-randomly selecting the weak of this world to be saved as if His focus were upon masses of humanity. Their statement is not false, but it is insufficient.
Jesus is thinking of His Father and His bride when He is dying on that cross.
Eph 5:25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her
Heb 12:2 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
The Son dies for His bride; specifically; purposefully.
When, in Israel, the lamb was sacrificed to atone for the sins of the past year, God could have accepted the blood of that lamb as atonement for the sins of everyone on earth. He didn't. That lamb that was killed in Jerusalem was killed for the sins of Israel. The rest of the world died without that blood to cleanse them before God.
Israel was God's bride pictured on earth, just as that lamb was God's Lamb pictured on earth.
The Calvinists are wrong because they focus on people in time, and on God's sovereign plan to not atone for some. That is clearly not taught in scripture. There is never the sentence, "I will not die for you."
The Arminians are wrong because they focus on people in time, and on God's submission to their free will. They have Christ dying in doubt as to who would be saved by His sacrifice.
Christ died for His bride. Period. He knew whom she would be, and every name of every member in her. He laid His life down for her in particular, and not for just anyone. His death was not intended for men in time, but for His bride whom He knew perfectly before He ever put on the likeness of sinful flesh. And He knew their names, because they are written the Book of Life of the Lamb.
When He died, it was not to make possible her salvation, but to redeem her. The blood of that Lamb is powerful, and it is handled as a precious gift.
Heb 9:12 He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, thus obtaining [b] eternal redemption.
The difference between obtaining a possibility of eternal redemption and the actuality of it is huge. Christ secured the redemption of His bride - absolutely.
Could anyone have been redeemed by that blood? Yes. Of course. Either way, He knew those by name for whom He died, and He spent His blood for them. He spent His blood for her.
But maybe He died to give a chance to those who had no chance, whose names were not in that book? I cannot grasp my Lord's blood shed for those who will never profit by it, but I cannot fight over this one. If the atonement was only limited by the coldness of faith among men, the difference is moot. We agree together that His blood was precious, and that is the third point of EMPTOR.
Precious Blood
His blood cleansed all that which it touched, and we are made clean by His sacrifice. All those whom He has redeemed are made holy enough and pure enough to know and be with Him. He is greatly satisfied with His work.
Plenus EMPTOR
06 November, 2006
05 November, 2006
Predestination: TULIP - Unconditional Election
This is the second of six posts regarding TULIP. If you are not familar with that acronym, Wikipedia has a number of articles on the subject. This one is probably the most succinct and provides links to the counter positions of Arminians.
2) Unconditional Election
Here the Calvinists and Arminians part ways, and the Arminians usually take a bit of an undeserved beating. Calvinists usually treat Arminians as if they were Open Theists, but many of the staunch opposers of Open Theism are Arminians. Arminians don't believe that God is surprised by the actions of men, nor that He is unsure of the outcome of His creation.
Both see God looking into a future over which He is the Master. They acknowledge that God knows the future perfectly, and that He knows all who will be saved. They agree that God elects before time begins. They differ over the whether the election is conditional or not.
Calvinists portray God contemplating the entirety of time, and observing that some people will be strong and beautiful, and that others will be weak and helpless. God, they observe, chooses the weak and helpless. They see God choosing from amongst the billions of souls who will live on His earth a relative few, but absolutely a great company. He chooses some fraction of those whom He will create, and decides to love them. The rest, the average Calvinist believes, He either chooses to hate or to watch until they willfully earn His hatred, depending upon the interpretation of a couple of key passages.
Arminians believe in conditional election. They believe God lives as much in the future as the past, so it is well within Him to elect those whom He knows will believe in Him when the time comes. He loves every man equally, and desires all to be saved, but He is unable to influence them all to believe in the Son. This willing inability of God's is established in point 4, so I am not going to dwell on it here. The point is that God does choose whom He will save, but His choice is based effectively on whether they will subsequently choose Him. If He could, He would choose everyone, but He cannot.
Codepoke believes that God foreknows and foreordains, but that this is not the most significant point. Both Calvinists and Arminians focus upon man's salvation, when salvation was not even at issue when God was making these decisions.
When God was contemplating the creation of a thing called "a physical universe," there was only the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They were One, and yet they always had each other. They lived by perfect Love, and their Food was to know each Other. They were not deciding to create billions of people, but to create a single bride for God the Son. They were deciding to create an ezer kenegdo - a one outside of and facing Themself, suitable to Themself, equally yoked. The bride would not be equal, but she would be equally yoked with the Son.
God purposed in Himself a mystery.
Eph 3:9 and to make plain to everyone the administration of this mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God, who created all things.
This mystery was hidden in God for ages, but Paul was charged with making it known. And this hidden mystery was all about an eventually betrothal between Christ and His church.
Eph 5: 25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing [b] her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.
Eph 5: 31 "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." 32 This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.
God purposed for Christ to somehow leave the Godhead, and to be united to His wife. This He did when He came to earth.
Now, I am going to tell you that I cannot picture God leaving anything about this process to chance. Nothing. God knew everything about this bride before They did anything to bring that purpose to fruit.
God did not elect a billion people to salvation. He elected a single bride. But he didn't stop there. He chose in Christ those portions of His Life that would be made into that bride. Just as Eve was made from a specific part of Adam, the bride was chosen from specific parts of Christ. God knew, before He ever considered creating people, how many living spirits would go into the perfect bride. He knew the color of her eyes, and everything else about her, because He knew every cell in her body by name.
Then, and only then, God decided to create a universe, and a galaxy, and a solar system, and a world, and a species of man, and every individual who would eventually carry a piece of that bride around in her heart. And He knew each of us by name.
Eph 1:11 In him we were also chosen, [e] having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will,
Rev 13:8 All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast—all whose names have not been written in the Lamb's book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world.
Rev 17:8 The beast, which you saw, once was, now is not, and will come up out of the Abyss and go to its destruction. The inhabitants of the earth whose names have not been written in the book of life from the creation of the world will be astonished when they see the beast, because it once was, now is not, and yet will come.
2 Tim 1:9 who has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time,
The bride is not amorphous. The names of all those who make her up are known to God, and written in His Book of Life before the beginning.
In point 3 we will talk about what saves those who make up His bride, and in point 4 how they obtain that salvation. Here we talk only about whether God elected these people, and how.
Arminians and Calvinists both agree that God elected these people. They disagree about how He did it. I side with the Calvinists on the point that He elected them without consideration to anything they might do (for example, foreknowing their believing or not believing in Him.) I step away from the Calvinists, though, when they talk about Him electing from a vast sea of people who would be born.
God elected the members of the bride. He called them by name, before He even considered making a world to put them in. Their living spirits were marked off in Christ and named from before the beginning. When time began, and God created the physical realm, the men and women that He created were all empty, living souls, in need of living spirits. They were empty humans, needing and waiting to be filled with that piece of Christ God had marked off for them.
Only they didn't know that!
That's why it's called a great mystery. God's eternal purpose was hidden from men, and not even fully revealed by Christ when He was here. Jesus fulfilled that purpose, but He did so without fully explaining it. Paul was given that calling.
Unconditional Election falls vastly short of describing what God truly did. I would like to replace the term with, "Mysterious Purpose."
Yes, we were chosen by name in Christ before the foundations of the world were laid, but not in a simple "you're a sheep - you're a goat," kind of a way. We were all blessed parts of a bride chosen in Christ for God's own good and glory. We were named and known for His good purpose in a way that no man could have guessed, but in a way that was finally revealed in the church.
This Mysterious Purpose is all about the Godhead. And God is satisfied with His purchase.
Plenus EMPTOR
2) Unconditional Election
Here the Calvinists and Arminians part ways, and the Arminians usually take a bit of an undeserved beating. Calvinists usually treat Arminians as if they were Open Theists, but many of the staunch opposers of Open Theism are Arminians. Arminians don't believe that God is surprised by the actions of men, nor that He is unsure of the outcome of His creation.
Both see God looking into a future over which He is the Master. They acknowledge that God knows the future perfectly, and that He knows all who will be saved. They agree that God elects before time begins. They differ over the whether the election is conditional or not.
Calvinists portray God contemplating the entirety of time, and observing that some people will be strong and beautiful, and that others will be weak and helpless. God, they observe, chooses the weak and helpless. They see God choosing from amongst the billions of souls who will live on His earth a relative few, but absolutely a great company. He chooses some fraction of those whom He will create, and decides to love them. The rest, the average Calvinist believes, He either chooses to hate or to watch until they willfully earn His hatred, depending upon the interpretation of a couple of key passages.
Arminians believe in conditional election. They believe God lives as much in the future as the past, so it is well within Him to elect those whom He knows will believe in Him when the time comes. He loves every man equally, and desires all to be saved, but He is unable to influence them all to believe in the Son. This willing inability of God's is established in point 4, so I am not going to dwell on it here. The point is that God does choose whom He will save, but His choice is based effectively on whether they will subsequently choose Him. If He could, He would choose everyone, but He cannot.
Codepoke believes that God foreknows and foreordains, but that this is not the most significant point. Both Calvinists and Arminians focus upon man's salvation, when salvation was not even at issue when God was making these decisions.
When God was contemplating the creation of a thing called "a physical universe," there was only the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They were One, and yet they always had each other. They lived by perfect Love, and their Food was to know each Other. They were not deciding to create billions of people, but to create a single bride for God the Son. They were deciding to create an ezer kenegdo - a one outside of and facing Themself, suitable to Themself, equally yoked. The bride would not be equal, but she would be equally yoked with the Son.
God purposed in Himself a mystery.
Eph 3:9 and to make plain to everyone the administration of this mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God, who created all things.
This mystery was hidden in God for ages, but Paul was charged with making it known. And this hidden mystery was all about an eventually betrothal between Christ and His church.
Eph 5: 25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing [b] her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.
Eph 5: 31 "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." 32 This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.
God purposed for Christ to somehow leave the Godhead, and to be united to His wife. This He did when He came to earth.
Now, I am going to tell you that I cannot picture God leaving anything about this process to chance. Nothing. God knew everything about this bride before They did anything to bring that purpose to fruit.
God did not elect a billion people to salvation. He elected a single bride. But he didn't stop there. He chose in Christ those portions of His Life that would be made into that bride. Just as Eve was made from a specific part of Adam, the bride was chosen from specific parts of Christ. God knew, before He ever considered creating people, how many living spirits would go into the perfect bride. He knew the color of her eyes, and everything else about her, because He knew every cell in her body by name.
Then, and only then, God decided to create a universe, and a galaxy, and a solar system, and a world, and a species of man, and every individual who would eventually carry a piece of that bride around in her heart. And He knew each of us by name.
Eph 1:11 In him we were also chosen, [e] having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will,
Rev 13:8 All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast—all whose names have not been written in the Lamb's book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world.
Rev 17:8 The beast, which you saw, once was, now is not, and will come up out of the Abyss and go to its destruction. The inhabitants of the earth whose names have not been written in the book of life from the creation of the world will be astonished when they see the beast, because it once was, now is not, and yet will come.
2 Tim 1:9 who has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time,
The bride is not amorphous. The names of all those who make her up are known to God, and written in His Book of Life before the beginning.
In point 3 we will talk about what saves those who make up His bride, and in point 4 how they obtain that salvation. Here we talk only about whether God elected these people, and how.
Arminians and Calvinists both agree that God elected these people. They disagree about how He did it. I side with the Calvinists on the point that He elected them without consideration to anything they might do (for example, foreknowing their believing or not believing in Him.) I step away from the Calvinists, though, when they talk about Him electing from a vast sea of people who would be born.
God elected the members of the bride. He called them by name, before He even considered making a world to put them in. Their living spirits were marked off in Christ and named from before the beginning. When time began, and God created the physical realm, the men and women that He created were all empty, living souls, in need of living spirits. They were empty humans, needing and waiting to be filled with that piece of Christ God had marked off for them.
Only they didn't know that!
That's why it's called a great mystery. God's eternal purpose was hidden from men, and not even fully revealed by Christ when He was here. Jesus fulfilled that purpose, but He did so without fully explaining it. Paul was given that calling.
Unconditional Election falls vastly short of describing what God truly did. I would like to replace the term with, "Mysterious Purpose."
Yes, we were chosen by name in Christ before the foundations of the world were laid, but not in a simple "you're a sheep - you're a goat," kind of a way. We were all blessed parts of a bride chosen in Christ for God's own good and glory. We were named and known for His good purpose in a way that no man could have guessed, but in a way that was finally revealed in the church.
This Mysterious Purpose is all about the Godhead. And God is satisfied with His purchase.
Plenus EMPTOR
04 November, 2006
Predestination: TULIP - Total Depravity
This is the first of six posts regarding TULIP. If you are not familar with that acronym, Wikipedia has a number of articles on the subject. This one is probably the most succinct and provides links to the counter positions of Arminians.
1) Total Depravity
Calvinists hold that man is shot through with sin. They don't believe that man is as sinful as he can be, but that there is no part of him that is not sinful. He is so sinful that he cannot muster up a saving faith in Christ without God doing it for him. Man is truly dead in his sins, and like any dead man, he cannot help himself at all. Man cannot have the faith it takes to be saved.
Arminians also believe that man is dead in his sins, and that he cannot come to God without divine help.
Codepoke believes that man is dead in his sins, but that this is not the most significant point. Man died in the garden, the day he ate the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. He died, and was shot through with sin completely, so I agree with the Calvinists and Arminians on the point they make. I just believe that they miss the point that needs to be made.
Even before he ate that fruit, man was not alive.
1 Cor 15:45 So it is written: "The first Adam became a living being"; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit.
Adam had only a living soul, not a living spirit. He was supposed to take Life into himself, and did not.
Gen 2:9 The LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Had Adam eaten of that Tree, it would have made him alive as surely as eating of the other tree made him dead.
Gen 3:22 And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever."
The Life God talks about here is not clearly defined. We find that often in scripture, upon the first mention of a thing. It is more fully explained as the scripture goes on, though. Let me fast forward to the gospels.
John 1:4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all people.
John 4:14 but those who drink the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life."
John 6:33 For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world."
John 6:51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world."
John 6:53 Jesus said to them, "Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.
John 15:1 I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.
I see two things in the Garden of Eden. There is a Tree of Life, and there is Fruit on that Tree. Then I look at the rest of scripture, and I see Jesus as a Vine Tree, and Jesus as Bread. Jesus commands us to eat to gain eternal life, to eat Bread and to eat His Flesh.
If we look at the Garden of Eden as a one-dimensional experience for Adam and Eve, merely as a chance for them to not sin, then it is easy to overlook the other Tree. Adam's and Eve's experience was not a simple choice between "obey" and "disobey," though. They had to choose between "Life" and "Knowledge."
Knowledge, the serpent correctly told them, would make them like God. (Gen 3:22 And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil.) Life, though, would have made them one with God. (John 17:21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us ...)
The question is not whether man is totally depraved - he is - but whether he was ever even a little bit alive.
So, on the first point, the one on which the Calvinists and Arminians agree, I believe they have spoken far short of the truth.
So, while not completely disagreeing with Total Depravity, I have to say that I believe in Empty Humanity. Adam and Eve were empty vessels, waiting to be filled with either life or knowledge. They chose knowledge. That choice was a rebellion and a sin that led to their immediate spiritual death, and eventual physical death.
Now man needs not only to be filled, but also to be restored.
Christ has done this for us.
Plenus EMPTOR
1) Total Depravity
Calvinists hold that man is shot through with sin. They don't believe that man is as sinful as he can be, but that there is no part of him that is not sinful. He is so sinful that he cannot muster up a saving faith in Christ without God doing it for him. Man is truly dead in his sins, and like any dead man, he cannot help himself at all. Man cannot have the faith it takes to be saved.
Arminians also believe that man is dead in his sins, and that he cannot come to God without divine help.
Codepoke believes that man is dead in his sins, but that this is not the most significant point. Man died in the garden, the day he ate the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. He died, and was shot through with sin completely, so I agree with the Calvinists and Arminians on the point they make. I just believe that they miss the point that needs to be made.
Even before he ate that fruit, man was not alive.
1 Cor 15:45 So it is written: "The first Adam became a living being"; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit.
Adam had only a living soul, not a living spirit. He was supposed to take Life into himself, and did not.
Gen 2:9 The LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Had Adam eaten of that Tree, it would have made him alive as surely as eating of the other tree made him dead.
Gen 3:22 And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever."
The Life God talks about here is not clearly defined. We find that often in scripture, upon the first mention of a thing. It is more fully explained as the scripture goes on, though. Let me fast forward to the gospels.
John 1:4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all people.
John 4:14 but those who drink the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life."
John 6:33 For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world."
John 6:51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world."
John 6:53 Jesus said to them, "Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.
John 15:1 I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.
I see two things in the Garden of Eden. There is a Tree of Life, and there is Fruit on that Tree. Then I look at the rest of scripture, and I see Jesus as a Vine Tree, and Jesus as Bread. Jesus commands us to eat to gain eternal life, to eat Bread and to eat His Flesh.
If we look at the Garden of Eden as a one-dimensional experience for Adam and Eve, merely as a chance for them to not sin, then it is easy to overlook the other Tree. Adam's and Eve's experience was not a simple choice between "obey" and "disobey," though. They had to choose between "Life" and "Knowledge."
Knowledge, the serpent correctly told them, would make them like God. (Gen 3:22 And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil.) Life, though, would have made them one with God. (John 17:21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us ...)
The question is not whether man is totally depraved - he is - but whether he was ever even a little bit alive.
So, on the first point, the one on which the Calvinists and Arminians agree, I believe they have spoken far short of the truth.
So, while not completely disagreeing with Total Depravity, I have to say that I believe in Empty Humanity. Adam and Eve were empty vessels, waiting to be filled with either life or knowledge. They chose knowledge. That choice was a rebellion and a sin that led to their immediate spiritual death, and eventual physical death.
Now man needs not only to be filled, but also to be restored.
Christ has done this for us.
Plenus EMPTOR
Predestination: TULIP versus EMPTOR
What's the fun of looking at ancient and honored doctrines if you can't thumb your nose at them. :-)
The previous post is how I like to think of predestination. It is, admittedly, not a good format for discussion though. TULIP has proven, over the years, to be pretty effective in that right, so let's talk about TULIP for a little while.
If you are not familar with that acronym, Wikipedia has a number of articles on the subject. This one is probably the most succinct and provides links to the counter positions of Arminians.
I had intended to write one post comparing Calvinists and Arminians, identifying where I thought they were both wrong. Then I started writing. That one post would have been long, even by my standards.
Not only that, but I believe there is a missing point in both systems - *the* missing point, actually. So, I am going to write 6 posts on Plenus EMPTOR. Plenus means satisfied and emptor is supposed to mean "buyer." God is the satisfied buyer of our salvation.
So, some time tonight, I would imagine, I will post on Total Depravity, comparing it to the mysterious "E" in EMPTOR.
See you then. :-)
The previous post is how I like to think of predestination. It is, admittedly, not a good format for discussion though. TULIP has proven, over the years, to be pretty effective in that right, so let's talk about TULIP for a little while.
If you are not familar with that acronym, Wikipedia has a number of articles on the subject. This one is probably the most succinct and provides links to the counter positions of Arminians.
I had intended to write one post comparing Calvinists and Arminians, identifying where I thought they were both wrong. Then I started writing. That one post would have been long, even by my standards.
Not only that, but I believe there is a missing point in both systems - *the* missing point, actually. So, I am going to write 6 posts on Plenus EMPTOR. Plenus means satisfied and emptor is supposed to mean "buyer." God is the satisfied buyer of our salvation.
So, some time tonight, I would imagine, I will post on Total Depravity, comparing it to the mysterious "E" in EMPTOR.
See you then. :-)
02 November, 2006
Predestination: Codepoke Answers Everything
No, not how the omniscient God actually "does" predestination. :-)
Nor will I answer every objection to classic predestination I have heard over the past month or two on this site. I have loved those insights, and thank you all for taking the time to offer them to me. After hearing them all, I still believe that God knows whom He will save before he begins creation, but those comments have moved me nonetheless. I think my understanding of the human side of predestination is richer than it was two months ago, and I believe that I will continue to grow in that area.
So, I will "answer everything" about how Codepoke understands what God has revealed about predestination. Not quite as helpful or dramatic as untying the 1600 year knot that Augustine and Pelagius drew tight, but potentially more amusing. Certainly more possible.
This post will be all about the elephants.
Elephants were in the news this week. It seems that they have joined the short list of living things that understand what a mirror is. When an elephant sees herself in a mirror, she starts primping. The only other species to do this are apes, humans, and maybe dolphins.
When animals of all other species sees themselves in a mirror, they starts flirting or fighting, depending upon their mood and other things. Even a monkey will fail to realize that it is "monkey see/monkey do" -ing with itself. As smart as a chimp is, he will not grasp the fact that that other chimp is himself, and not "other" at all.
It takes some special wiring to "get" mirrors. Only 3 species are social enough to understand themselves in a mirror.
And a human being cannot "get" God.
When a human - any human - every human - all humans - without exception - looks at God, he sees himself.
When an elephant looks in a mirror, he gets that he is looking at himself. But if a chimp riding on the only elephant in Columbus were to look in a mirror, he could never get that he is looking at himself.
In the same way, when a man looks at a seed sprouting from the dirt, he sees his own work. When he sees the rain coming, he sees his own relief (or maybe the fruit of some offering he made to the rain gods last week.) When he looks at the stars, he sees a random universe that culminated in man! When he looks at a baby, he sees the fruit of his love, and when he looks at death, he sees an irresistible force coming after him.
No matter how hard man looks at the universe around him, he only sees himself. The universe is projecting God to him as hard as it can, but man assumes all that beauty is simply his own reflection.
Man really is more truly descended from the chimp than the elephant.
A Long Time Ago, Before Any Galaxy No Matter How Far Away
God is alone.
There is not yet a universe, nor a world, nor even a plan. There is only God, the infinite Father, Son and Holy Spirit. One God, and three Persons.
They is alone, and it is good, but evidently it could be better, because They decide They is going to find a bride for the Son.
They cannot go on a search for her, because They is the only thing there is.
They decide They is going to make a bride.
From what, though? From nothing?
No. That is not the way life works. Life brings forth abundantly, kind after its kind. A bride suitable for Him would have to be kind of Their kind.
But we have a story that explains how this happens. God showed how to find kind of one's kind, when there is only one to start with.
God created everything, and then Adam. Adam was alone, and it was not good. Adam could find no help suitable to him in all the creatures God had made for his pleasure and rule, but God was only waiting to show Adam something truly amazing.
God did not "create" Eve. He "built" her according to the Hebrew. He caused Adam to fall into a deep sleep (think, "death," here, not anaesthesia.) He killed Adam, and took from His wounded side a piece of human flesh and bone. That piece of humanity God carded, spun and knit into a suitable mate for Adam. And it was good.
God did not do this because it was the only way. They did it because it was the way that gave us the most insight into Their life, insight into the plan of God. Jesus, too, was killed, and from His wounded side came a mate suitable to Him.
Back To That Faraway Time Again, Before Adam
God knows what They will do. God knows that They will take a piece of Themself and card, spin and knit that piece into a mate suitable for the Son.
But this is not a process that God will leave to chance.
Every detail of that bride will be known, planned and complete before the first Word of creation is spoken. Before God has the first inclination to create, They has seen the end from the beginning, and They knows exactly how many living cells - souls, really - will make up the body of the Son, the bride. Before the word "Let..." is spoken, the flesh and bone that will be taken from the Son and built into His bride, is marked off in Christ.
Hence, Paul says, "He has chosen us in [Christ] before the foundation of the world."
And Now To the Doctrine
I am satisfied that this understanding of the things that happened before creation paves the way for a reconciliation of predestination, the Love of God, and the caprice of man.
+ Remember the elephant and the chimp?
The only thing that makes a man able to see God, is that Jesus Christ is ingrafted into his heart. Man cannot see God, but a Christian man does. The point I dodged at the beginning of this post is that the elephant always sees himself in the mirror. The chimp always sees himself in the mirror as some other chimp, but the elephant always sees himself.
It takes no effort or training for the elephant to see himself in the mirror. The elephant sees an elephant, raises his trunk, and says, "Hey, that's me!" It's not even a conclusion for him. It's just as plain as the nose on his face (so to speak.)
Even so the Christian.
When the Christian man sees the seed sprout from the earth, he sees divine creation and providence. He sees God's provision in the rain, His immense beauty in the stars, and His incredible imagination in the intricate glory of creation. The Christian man sees God's promise in every baby, and the scar on God's heel in every death.
And he is just like that elephant. You don't need to teach the Christian man to see God. He cannot not see Him. God is everywhere, and everywhere the Christian man looks, he sees His image. Once the spiritual connection is made, the man is a new creature forever. Old things are passed away. All things are become new. All things are become true.
And to see God is to love Him.
+ So, what do I say about man's free will? About his caprice?
Caprice is God's gift to the natural man. Much like that chimp, the natural man is brilliant, fun and creative. He is a loyal friend, and an exciting competitor. But he cannot see God, no matter how clearly the divine beauty is staring him in the face.
Free will is the highest to which a natural man can attain. And in the fall, that free will was perverted. Now, his free will turns against God. It's as if the chimp learned to hate all mirrors for some indecipherable reason. Man hates God, and his free will is radically turned against him. Caprice is not evil in itself. It is just natural. But when the natural man sees the image of God, anywhere in the world, his free will is as likely to try to destroy it as to admire it.
But even if the natural man did not hate God, still he would be blind to Him.
A piece of Christ was marked off and set aside before the foundation of the world to be born in you. And when it is placed in your heart, your blindness ends. You see God in everything. You see God, and you love Him. You soon repent your sins, and turn to be given to Him forever.
And you still have caprice!
But now, your caprice is spent in delighting God. He is visible to you now, and He is beautiful, and the new man in you reaches out to love Him - of your own free will. You are able to surprise Him, and that is what love is all about. Before He rewires you, you are blind to Him. Afterward, you not only see, but you see the Most Lovely One.
Is man a piano to be played by God? Hardly! The Christian man is a living, free spirit, healed of his blindness by the mercy of God, and freed to love the Most Lovely One.
If a Christian man were made of the same stuff as a non-Christian man, then his decision would be "the thing" that mattered. If there is no difference between a man and a Christian man, then free will and God's Sovereignty must be at odds. But because a man is made a new creature in Christ, and this new creature sees God, the man is more like the elephant than the chimp. As the elephant cannot mistake the image in the mirror for someone else, so the Christian man can no longer mistake divinity for anything but God. That piece of Christ marked off an eternity ago has been placed in the man, and nothing will ever be the same.
+ And what of those who will be damned? Does God not love them?
I love Matt 5:44-48 which says in part,
But I say unto you, "Love your enemies" ... that you may be the children of your Father which is in heaven for He makes His sun to rise on the evil ... and sends rain ... on the unjust ... Be therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
God loved Abraham and Abraham's children. We know that. But did God love the Edomites and the Philistines? According to this verse, yes He did. God loved them, but without ever forgetting that they were His enemies. God sent them rain and sunshine as tokens of His love. He did not starve them into submission, nor smite them with miracles, but neither did He preach them the gospel. God sent them rain and sunshine.
And this was perfect love.
To say that God loves all men in the same way is difficult in light of God's dealings with everyone not born of Abraham. God loved Abraham differently even than He loved Terah, Abraham's own father. God called Abraham, and did not call Terah. God loved Terah, and God loved all those who were not Israel, but He loved them in rain and sunshine, not in Spirit.
I have said this before, but I will repeat it here. God warned Eve, when He cursed the serpent and the ground, that He was going to greatly increase both her sorrow and her conception. I believe that God knew all those whom He had marked off, predestined, in Christ before the foundation of the world. Had there been no fall, these predestined ones would have been born on earth, but no one else. There was a fall, though, and there were curses. Due to all this, God told Eve that He Himself would increase her sorrow and her conception.
God would allow those to be born who would never be able to see Him.
Does God love everyone? Yes, but not in the same way. God loves those He knew before creation with an everlasting love. The rest He loves as enemies, and in the last day He will say to them, "Depart from Me. I never knew you."
I understand that this seems unfair to us, but God does not seem to fear appearing unfair. He allowed the entire world to suffer without the knowledge of Him, and called Abraham alone. He understands their plight, and He says that it will be better for Tyre and Sidon than for those who heard the testimony directly from His mouth and rejected Him. But, though He understands their plight, He does not change it. God did not command the Jews to begin immediately to evangelize the world as soon as He gave them the Truth of the Law. Yes, I know that God commanded the Jews to spread the Truth, but He did not show any signs of remorse that they did not go. He did not repent the millions of souls whom He allowed to die without hearing the Truth once.
God sees things differently than we do.
God loves those who can see Him. In the same way that the elephant is more social than the chimp, and so he knows when he is looking at himself; the Christian man is spiritual, and knows when he is looking at God. When we look at God - and see Him - His heart is stirred toward us.
He sees those He marked off in Christ before the foundation of the earth, and He knows that He will place that marked off bit of Christ into all of His own - everyone one of them - every time. His heart is not hard toward the others. He loves them, but not in the way that He loves those He has known from before the first Word was spoken.
Ephesians 3:9-11 says:
And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world has been hid in God, Who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord:
God does not capriciously and randomly select some, and pass over others. He also does not look at us, and decide to love some of us and not love others. He predestines a bride, and all of us who will be in her. Then He creates a world in which to build her. And finally, He builds His Life into each of us, so that we can be knit together into that one body.
There is a mystery that was hid in God, and now it is being revealed by the church every day. This revelation was purposed by God before He created anything, and His purpose will not be denied. It will not be deflected. It will not be distracted. It is being performed perfectly according to how Jesus Christ has executed it.
Jesus never fails.
Nor will I answer every objection to classic predestination I have heard over the past month or two on this site. I have loved those insights, and thank you all for taking the time to offer them to me. After hearing them all, I still believe that God knows whom He will save before he begins creation, but those comments have moved me nonetheless. I think my understanding of the human side of predestination is richer than it was two months ago, and I believe that I will continue to grow in that area.
So, I will "answer everything" about how Codepoke understands what God has revealed about predestination. Not quite as helpful or dramatic as untying the 1600 year knot that Augustine and Pelagius drew tight, but potentially more amusing. Certainly more possible.
This post will be all about the elephants.
Elephants were in the news this week. It seems that they have joined the short list of living things that understand what a mirror is. When an elephant sees herself in a mirror, she starts primping. The only other species to do this are apes, humans, and maybe dolphins.
When animals of all other species sees themselves in a mirror, they starts flirting or fighting, depending upon their mood and other things. Even a monkey will fail to realize that it is "monkey see/monkey do" -ing with itself. As smart as a chimp is, he will not grasp the fact that that other chimp is himself, and not "other" at all.
It takes some special wiring to "get" mirrors. Only 3 species are social enough to understand themselves in a mirror.
And a human being cannot "get" God.
When a human - any human - every human - all humans - without exception - looks at God, he sees himself.
When an elephant looks in a mirror, he gets that he is looking at himself. But if a chimp riding on the only elephant in Columbus were to look in a mirror, he could never get that he is looking at himself.
In the same way, when a man looks at a seed sprouting from the dirt, he sees his own work. When he sees the rain coming, he sees his own relief (or maybe the fruit of some offering he made to the rain gods last week.) When he looks at the stars, he sees a random universe that culminated in man! When he looks at a baby, he sees the fruit of his love, and when he looks at death, he sees an irresistible force coming after him.
No matter how hard man looks at the universe around him, he only sees himself. The universe is projecting God to him as hard as it can, but man assumes all that beauty is simply his own reflection.
Man really is more truly descended from the chimp than the elephant.
A Long Time Ago, Before Any Galaxy No Matter How Far Away
God is alone.
There is not yet a universe, nor a world, nor even a plan. There is only God, the infinite Father, Son and Holy Spirit. One God, and three Persons.
They is alone, and it is good, but evidently it could be better, because They decide They is going to find a bride for the Son.
They cannot go on a search for her, because They is the only thing there is.
They decide They is going to make a bride.
From what, though? From nothing?
No. That is not the way life works. Life brings forth abundantly, kind after its kind. A bride suitable for Him would have to be kind of Their kind.
But we have a story that explains how this happens. God showed how to find kind of one's kind, when there is only one to start with.
God created everything, and then Adam. Adam was alone, and it was not good. Adam could find no help suitable to him in all the creatures God had made for his pleasure and rule, but God was only waiting to show Adam something truly amazing.
God did not "create" Eve. He "built" her according to the Hebrew. He caused Adam to fall into a deep sleep (think, "death," here, not anaesthesia.) He killed Adam, and took from His wounded side a piece of human flesh and bone. That piece of humanity God carded, spun and knit into a suitable mate for Adam. And it was good.
God did not do this because it was the only way. They did it because it was the way that gave us the most insight into Their life, insight into the plan of God. Jesus, too, was killed, and from His wounded side came a mate suitable to Him.
Back To That Faraway Time Again, Before Adam
God knows what They will do. God knows that They will take a piece of Themself and card, spin and knit that piece into a mate suitable for the Son.
But this is not a process that God will leave to chance.
Every detail of that bride will be known, planned and complete before the first Word of creation is spoken. Before God has the first inclination to create, They has seen the end from the beginning, and They knows exactly how many living cells - souls, really - will make up the body of the Son, the bride. Before the word "Let..." is spoken, the flesh and bone that will be taken from the Son and built into His bride, is marked off in Christ.
Hence, Paul says, "He has chosen us in [Christ] before the foundation of the world."
And Now To the Doctrine
I am satisfied that this understanding of the things that happened before creation paves the way for a reconciliation of predestination, the Love of God, and the caprice of man.
+ Remember the elephant and the chimp?
The only thing that makes a man able to see God, is that Jesus Christ is ingrafted into his heart. Man cannot see God, but a Christian man does. The point I dodged at the beginning of this post is that the elephant always sees himself in the mirror. The chimp always sees himself in the mirror as some other chimp, but the elephant always sees himself.
It takes no effort or training for the elephant to see himself in the mirror. The elephant sees an elephant, raises his trunk, and says, "Hey, that's me!" It's not even a conclusion for him. It's just as plain as the nose on his face (so to speak.)
Even so the Christian.
When the Christian man sees the seed sprout from the earth, he sees divine creation and providence. He sees God's provision in the rain, His immense beauty in the stars, and His incredible imagination in the intricate glory of creation. The Christian man sees God's promise in every baby, and the scar on God's heel in every death.
And he is just like that elephant. You don't need to teach the Christian man to see God. He cannot not see Him. God is everywhere, and everywhere the Christian man looks, he sees His image. Once the spiritual connection is made, the man is a new creature forever. Old things are passed away. All things are become new. All things are become true.
And to see God is to love Him.
+ So, what do I say about man's free will? About his caprice?
Caprice is God's gift to the natural man. Much like that chimp, the natural man is brilliant, fun and creative. He is a loyal friend, and an exciting competitor. But he cannot see God, no matter how clearly the divine beauty is staring him in the face.
Free will is the highest to which a natural man can attain. And in the fall, that free will was perverted. Now, his free will turns against God. It's as if the chimp learned to hate all mirrors for some indecipherable reason. Man hates God, and his free will is radically turned against him. Caprice is not evil in itself. It is just natural. But when the natural man sees the image of God, anywhere in the world, his free will is as likely to try to destroy it as to admire it.
But even if the natural man did not hate God, still he would be blind to Him.
A piece of Christ was marked off and set aside before the foundation of the world to be born in you. And when it is placed in your heart, your blindness ends. You see God in everything. You see God, and you love Him. You soon repent your sins, and turn to be given to Him forever.
And you still have caprice!
But now, your caprice is spent in delighting God. He is visible to you now, and He is beautiful, and the new man in you reaches out to love Him - of your own free will. You are able to surprise Him, and that is what love is all about. Before He rewires you, you are blind to Him. Afterward, you not only see, but you see the Most Lovely One.
Is man a piano to be played by God? Hardly! The Christian man is a living, free spirit, healed of his blindness by the mercy of God, and freed to love the Most Lovely One.
If a Christian man were made of the same stuff as a non-Christian man, then his decision would be "the thing" that mattered. If there is no difference between a man and a Christian man, then free will and God's Sovereignty must be at odds. But because a man is made a new creature in Christ, and this new creature sees God, the man is more like the elephant than the chimp. As the elephant cannot mistake the image in the mirror for someone else, so the Christian man can no longer mistake divinity for anything but God. That piece of Christ marked off an eternity ago has been placed in the man, and nothing will ever be the same.
+ And what of those who will be damned? Does God not love them?
I love Matt 5:44-48 which says in part,
But I say unto you, "Love your enemies" ... that you may be the children of your Father which is in heaven for He makes His sun to rise on the evil ... and sends rain ... on the unjust ... Be therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
God loved Abraham and Abraham's children. We know that. But did God love the Edomites and the Philistines? According to this verse, yes He did. God loved them, but without ever forgetting that they were His enemies. God sent them rain and sunshine as tokens of His love. He did not starve them into submission, nor smite them with miracles, but neither did He preach them the gospel. God sent them rain and sunshine.
And this was perfect love.
To say that God loves all men in the same way is difficult in light of God's dealings with everyone not born of Abraham. God loved Abraham differently even than He loved Terah, Abraham's own father. God called Abraham, and did not call Terah. God loved Terah, and God loved all those who were not Israel, but He loved them in rain and sunshine, not in Spirit.
I have said this before, but I will repeat it here. God warned Eve, when He cursed the serpent and the ground, that He was going to greatly increase both her sorrow and her conception. I believe that God knew all those whom He had marked off, predestined, in Christ before the foundation of the world. Had there been no fall, these predestined ones would have been born on earth, but no one else. There was a fall, though, and there were curses. Due to all this, God told Eve that He Himself would increase her sorrow and her conception.
God would allow those to be born who would never be able to see Him.
Does God love everyone? Yes, but not in the same way. God loves those He knew before creation with an everlasting love. The rest He loves as enemies, and in the last day He will say to them, "Depart from Me. I never knew you."
I understand that this seems unfair to us, but God does not seem to fear appearing unfair. He allowed the entire world to suffer without the knowledge of Him, and called Abraham alone. He understands their plight, and He says that it will be better for Tyre and Sidon than for those who heard the testimony directly from His mouth and rejected Him. But, though He understands their plight, He does not change it. God did not command the Jews to begin immediately to evangelize the world as soon as He gave them the Truth of the Law. Yes, I know that God commanded the Jews to spread the Truth, but He did not show any signs of remorse that they did not go. He did not repent the millions of souls whom He allowed to die without hearing the Truth once.
God sees things differently than we do.
God loves those who can see Him. In the same way that the elephant is more social than the chimp, and so he knows when he is looking at himself; the Christian man is spiritual, and knows when he is looking at God. When we look at God - and see Him - His heart is stirred toward us.
He sees those He marked off in Christ before the foundation of the earth, and He knows that He will place that marked off bit of Christ into all of His own - everyone one of them - every time. His heart is not hard toward the others. He loves them, but not in the way that He loves those He has known from before the first Word was spoken.
Ephesians 3:9-11 says:
And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world has been hid in God, Who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord:
God does not capriciously and randomly select some, and pass over others. He also does not look at us, and decide to love some of us and not love others. He predestines a bride, and all of us who will be in her. Then He creates a world in which to build her. And finally, He builds His Life into each of us, so that we can be knit together into that one body.
There is a mystery that was hid in God, and now it is being revealed by the church every day. This revelation was purposed by God before He created anything, and His purpose will not be denied. It will not be deflected. It will not be distracted. It is being performed perfectly according to how Jesus Christ has executed it.
Jesus never fails.
31 October, 2006
Predestination: Eph 1:b - The Revelation and the Inheritance
I have about a half hour to kill, and a blackberry. Our parking garage is jammed up all the way to the the fifth floor. But, things are moving, if ever so slowly, and there are little kids hoping the Great Pumpkin comes. So, I must not give up and go to a restaurant to wait it out. I must get home, and hand out the candy!
Hmmm, and my power brakes won't kick in until I build up some speed.
Charming.
I needed a leg workout anyway.
So, the question arises whether this was little predicament was predestined, or whether it is merely the outworking of a sinful world supported by the providence of God. Did God foreordain me to endure this parking jam before the world was created?
The largest objections to predestination in our little discussions have circled around the love of God, and the will of man. A predestinationist seems to assert that the love of God does not extend to those who are not elect. (Let's just agree to ignore those predestinationists who believe God created a group of reprobates for the pleasure of damning them. Nobody here thinks that.) If God knows that a person will eventually be damned, can He still love that person? What if the only reason a person is saved is because God gave special grace? Then God becomes the efficient cause of every damnation.
Could a loving God possibly withhold grace?
The predestinationist seems to say, "Yes, God has withheld grace." The rest seem to say that God has given His grace equally to all out of His equal love to all, but that some decline to receive it.
And then there is the argument from human nature. To recall Dostoesvsky's line of reasoning, man treasures above all other advantages, the right to capriciously choose even that which is to his own detriment. I could choose to drive all the way back up to the 5th floor right now if I wanted to (I am down to the second floor now) and I treasure that freedom. In exactly the same way, I could choose hell with a clear eye, and many do.
The argument continues that by honoring man with this ability, God gives man the highest degree of respect. And by rewarding man's choice of hell with eternal punishment, God affords his choice the ultimate dignity. God gives man a tremendous gift in free will, and exacts of him a tremendous price in honor of that gift.
And could a man who was nothing more than a piano key truly love God? If man falls in love with His God at the time and to the degree that God fingers his heart, is what man experiences love at all? Or merely the tinkling of a sounding piano? And could our love survive the revelation if we found out we were not its authors?
(I'm out of the garage, and onto real pavement now! Halloween may yet be saved.)
---
Time flies.
It is now almost 4 hours after the start of this post. 1.5 of those hours were spent getting from the office to home. There, I found that my son had decided to have mercy on the munchkins, and stayed home to hand out candy until I arrived to free him for an evening of rock climbing ... but he forgot to turn on the porch light. Chuckles. :-)
I handed out happiness to nothing but little kids tonight. It's wonderful to have gotten such a batch of pleasant little kids. Last year was a little rougher. I don't know why.
Dinner. A little discussion with the boy, and the dishes are done. My side work can wait until this is posted, and all is well with the world.
---
So, as I post Eph 1:b, you know the questions. How do you think this passage answers them? Was I fated to spend 45 minutes going from the 5th to the bottom floor of my parking garage tonight? Was I doomed to love the Lord and be thankful the experience? Or might I have resisted God's will, and been grumpy, bitter and damned?
Eph 1:6-13
To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved. In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace; Wherein he hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence; Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he hath purposed in himself: That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him: In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will: That we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ. In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise,
Hmmm, and my power brakes won't kick in until I build up some speed.
Charming.
I needed a leg workout anyway.
So, the question arises whether this was little predicament was predestined, or whether it is merely the outworking of a sinful world supported by the providence of God. Did God foreordain me to endure this parking jam before the world was created?
The largest objections to predestination in our little discussions have circled around the love of God, and the will of man. A predestinationist seems to assert that the love of God does not extend to those who are not elect. (Let's just agree to ignore those predestinationists who believe God created a group of reprobates for the pleasure of damning them. Nobody here thinks that.) If God knows that a person will eventually be damned, can He still love that person? What if the only reason a person is saved is because God gave special grace? Then God becomes the efficient cause of every damnation.
Could a loving God possibly withhold grace?
The predestinationist seems to say, "Yes, God has withheld grace." The rest seem to say that God has given His grace equally to all out of His equal love to all, but that some decline to receive it.
And then there is the argument from human nature. To recall Dostoesvsky's line of reasoning, man treasures above all other advantages, the right to capriciously choose even that which is to his own detriment. I could choose to drive all the way back up to the 5th floor right now if I wanted to (I am down to the second floor now) and I treasure that freedom. In exactly the same way, I could choose hell with a clear eye, and many do.
The argument continues that by honoring man with this ability, God gives man the highest degree of respect. And by rewarding man's choice of hell with eternal punishment, God affords his choice the ultimate dignity. God gives man a tremendous gift in free will, and exacts of him a tremendous price in honor of that gift.
And could a man who was nothing more than a piano key truly love God? If man falls in love with His God at the time and to the degree that God fingers his heart, is what man experiences love at all? Or merely the tinkling of a sounding piano? And could our love survive the revelation if we found out we were not its authors?
(I'm out of the garage, and onto real pavement now! Halloween may yet be saved.)
---
Time flies.
It is now almost 4 hours after the start of this post. 1.5 of those hours were spent getting from the office to home. There, I found that my son had decided to have mercy on the munchkins, and stayed home to hand out candy until I arrived to free him for an evening of rock climbing ... but he forgot to turn on the porch light. Chuckles. :-)
I handed out happiness to nothing but little kids tonight. It's wonderful to have gotten such a batch of pleasant little kids. Last year was a little rougher. I don't know why.
Dinner. A little discussion with the boy, and the dishes are done. My side work can wait until this is posted, and all is well with the world.
---
So, as I post Eph 1:b, you know the questions. How do you think this passage answers them? Was I fated to spend 45 minutes going from the 5th to the bottom floor of my parking garage tonight? Was I doomed to love the Lord and be thankful the experience? Or might I have resisted God's will, and been grumpy, bitter and damned?
Eph 1:6-13
To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved. In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace; Wherein he hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence; Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he hath purposed in himself: That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him: In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will: That we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ. In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise,
30 October, 2006
A Note to a Niece
Update: I completely forgot to come back and link to Blest, who made the necklaces! I meant to do so immediately, but .... :8(
---
I wrote a birthday note to my nieces, and thought you might get a kick out of seeing how I torment the youth in my life. I have anonymized it, in case you are wondering why I use the awkward, "your cousin," over and over.
--
Happy Birthday, (Niece)!
11 years old. I remember a little bit about being 11. My teacher was Mrs. Smith, and she was really different. She was always going 100 miles an hour, and she wanted to show us a dozen new things every day. The world was really exciting for her, and we used to like the fun things she did. Your mom probably remembers more about her than I do, but I bet she was probably a hippy at heart. Mostly, 6th grade, though, was the last grade before Junior High. :-)
Your cousin is 18 years old, and she is in college right now. I'm guessing that sounds like it is really old to you, and like it will be a lifetime before you are 18 years old and in college. To me, it sounds like the blink of an eye.
In my mind, I imagine you reading this silly little birthday letter, and right about here your eyes feel a little dry and you blink. When your eyes open, your hand is big enough to wrap around a baseball, and you are so well trained in English that you can see all the little punctuation errors I make in this letter. Suddenly, you are 18 years old, and you are away in a dorm room in college looking at the present your crazy, old uncle just sent you and reading this note.
It's funny for you, being in college.
You have a lot more friends, and they are better friends, but you don't have as much time to be with them. And a lot of what you do together is work.
You have more friends because the more adult a person becomes, the more they work to accept the people around them. Some of the kids that you didn't like back in grade school, you like now because you are more mature. Your cousin went to a movie the other night with her friends, but it was not just any movie. She went to a movie where her friend was acting. Kind of. Everyone knows the movie, so some of the kids dress up like the actors and actresses in the movie, and while the movie is showing on the screen, they stand up on the stage and act the movie out! So, you can watch the movie and you can watch your friends acting the movie at the same time. In grade school, that friend might have seemed wierd, but in college she's just a lot of fun.
Acting a movie like that sounds like a lot of fun to me! I was jealous.
Your friends are better, because they let you be different. When I was a kid, I used to get teased because I was a dork, and none of the kids would hang out with me. Now that I'm an adult, I get teased because I'm still a dork, but everyone hangs out with me anyway and we have fun. It's not like I suddenly became one of the cool kids. They just learned that dorks can be fun, too, and we talk and laugh a lot. Let's just say there wasn't much laughing with the other kids for us dorks when I was your age.
In college, you don't have as much time with the other kids, even though they are great friends, because you have so much to do. Grade school is an odd time, because you are learning harder and harder stuff, and for the littlest reasons. Learning how to count is pretty easy. But learning how to add is harder. Learning how to subtract is even harder. Then multiplying is really hard, and dividing (especially long division) is really hard to do right. And the only reason for learning that math is so you can learn harder math later!
Ah, but now that you have blinked, and you are in college you know why you are learning all that.
Your cousin is still not sure what she is going to be, but she is thinking about biology now. Biologists study living things. They are not doctors, who try to heal people and animals, but scientists who try to understand what kinds of things are alive, and how they succeed at life. So they study how many ants can live in one anthill if there are berries around, or how long a cell can live in your body if you eat nothing but peanut butter. It takes really hard math to figure out the answers to those questions, but it's OK, because she knows that she wants to do it. Now that you're in college, you know why you are working, too.
And it's really cool, because your college friends are all working as hard as you are, and a lot of the time they are learning the same stuff that you are. Back when you were in grade school, everyone was always learning the same thing, but it's not like that in college. Everyone wants to do something different, so everyone is learning something different. But, you are never learning anything alone. If you are taking biology, there are forty other kids learning it with you, and you get to work on biology together. You are allowed to help each other a lot, and it makes learning a lot more fun.
Some of your friends are taking biology with you, and some of them are taking math, but there's a lot more to take. Maybe you are taking literature. That's probably the most fun thing to take in college. I know it sounds boring, but it's not. In grade school, you had to learn where to put a comma in a sentence. (Or your, sentences, would be really hard, to read.) In college, you know all that, and now you are working on what you really mean to say when you are writing. Studying literature is studying what happens inside people's hearts and minds when good things and bad things happen to them.
I just read a book about a man who was so mean that he hurt all his friends, and lived his whole life alone. There was even a girl who wanted to fall in love with him, and he was so mean that he hurt her feelings and she never came back. But, the book was not about what happened. The book was about what he was thinking the whole time while he was being so mean. It was scary and cool, because so many of the things that he was thinking are things that I think too, but am afraid to admit. For 100 pages, I got to be someone that I am afraid to be, and that I don't even want to be. I got to feel what it is like to be a nasty person, and think about it. So, I got to learn some things that I do that are stupid, and hopefully, I learned not to do them as much.
If you are taking literature in college, you are learning what it's like to be a completely different kind of person than you are now.
But, you also get to do more fun stuff. Your cousin lives 600 miles away from me. I can't even tell you what she's doing any more, because I don't know, but she tells me that it's really exciting. Now that you are 18, bet you are doing some exciting things too.
You look away from this little letter, and you think about what you are going to do tonight, and you get a little smile on your face.
And you blink again.
And your hand won't wrap around a baseball any more. Suddenly, it's 2006 again, and you're not 18 any more. You have to go back to grade school again tomorrow, and learn all that boring stuff. But some day... Some day it will be just like the blink of an eye, and you will be on your way to having your own family, and your own kids to teach about life.
And then you'll be glad that you didn't hurry, and skip all the way to 18 years old in a blink. Really.
---
I hope you like your necklace. I know you look really, really pretty anyway, but I hope you're just a little prettier with it on.
I had a friend who makes jewelry for people all over the world make it for you. I tried to design it for you the best I could, and I hope I did alright. If not, forgive me, and know that I love you anyway.
Happy Birthday!
---
I wrote a birthday note to my nieces, and thought you might get a kick out of seeing how I torment the youth in my life. I have anonymized it, in case you are wondering why I use the awkward, "your cousin," over and over.
--
Happy Birthday, (Niece)!
11 years old. I remember a little bit about being 11. My teacher was Mrs. Smith, and she was really different. She was always going 100 miles an hour, and she wanted to show us a dozen new things every day. The world was really exciting for her, and we used to like the fun things she did. Your mom probably remembers more about her than I do, but I bet she was probably a hippy at heart. Mostly, 6th grade, though, was the last grade before Junior High. :-)
Your cousin is 18 years old, and she is in college right now. I'm guessing that sounds like it is really old to you, and like it will be a lifetime before you are 18 years old and in college. To me, it sounds like the blink of an eye.
In my mind, I imagine you reading this silly little birthday letter, and right about here your eyes feel a little dry and you blink. When your eyes open, your hand is big enough to wrap around a baseball, and you are so well trained in English that you can see all the little punctuation errors I make in this letter. Suddenly, you are 18 years old, and you are away in a dorm room in college looking at the present your crazy, old uncle just sent you and reading this note.
It's funny for you, being in college.
You have a lot more friends, and they are better friends, but you don't have as much time to be with them. And a lot of what you do together is work.
You have more friends because the more adult a person becomes, the more they work to accept the people around them. Some of the kids that you didn't like back in grade school, you like now because you are more mature. Your cousin went to a movie the other night with her friends, but it was not just any movie. She went to a movie where her friend was acting. Kind of. Everyone knows the movie, so some of the kids dress up like the actors and actresses in the movie, and while the movie is showing on the screen, they stand up on the stage and act the movie out! So, you can watch the movie and you can watch your friends acting the movie at the same time. In grade school, that friend might have seemed wierd, but in college she's just a lot of fun.
Acting a movie like that sounds like a lot of fun to me! I was jealous.
Your friends are better, because they let you be different. When I was a kid, I used to get teased because I was a dork, and none of the kids would hang out with me. Now that I'm an adult, I get teased because I'm still a dork, but everyone hangs out with me anyway and we have fun. It's not like I suddenly became one of the cool kids. They just learned that dorks can be fun, too, and we talk and laugh a lot. Let's just say there wasn't much laughing with the other kids for us dorks when I was your age.
In college, you don't have as much time with the other kids, even though they are great friends, because you have so much to do. Grade school is an odd time, because you are learning harder and harder stuff, and for the littlest reasons. Learning how to count is pretty easy. But learning how to add is harder. Learning how to subtract is even harder. Then multiplying is really hard, and dividing (especially long division) is really hard to do right. And the only reason for learning that math is so you can learn harder math later!
Ah, but now that you have blinked, and you are in college you know why you are learning all that.
Your cousin is still not sure what she is going to be, but she is thinking about biology now. Biologists study living things. They are not doctors, who try to heal people and animals, but scientists who try to understand what kinds of things are alive, and how they succeed at life. So they study how many ants can live in one anthill if there are berries around, or how long a cell can live in your body if you eat nothing but peanut butter. It takes really hard math to figure out the answers to those questions, but it's OK, because she knows that she wants to do it. Now that you're in college, you know why you are working, too.
And it's really cool, because your college friends are all working as hard as you are, and a lot of the time they are learning the same stuff that you are. Back when you were in grade school, everyone was always learning the same thing, but it's not like that in college. Everyone wants to do something different, so everyone is learning something different. But, you are never learning anything alone. If you are taking biology, there are forty other kids learning it with you, and you get to work on biology together. You are allowed to help each other a lot, and it makes learning a lot more fun.
Some of your friends are taking biology with you, and some of them are taking math, but there's a lot more to take. Maybe you are taking literature. That's probably the most fun thing to take in college. I know it sounds boring, but it's not. In grade school, you had to learn where to put a comma in a sentence. (Or your, sentences, would be really hard, to read.) In college, you know all that, and now you are working on what you really mean to say when you are writing. Studying literature is studying what happens inside people's hearts and minds when good things and bad things happen to them.
I just read a book about a man who was so mean that he hurt all his friends, and lived his whole life alone. There was even a girl who wanted to fall in love with him, and he was so mean that he hurt her feelings and she never came back. But, the book was not about what happened. The book was about what he was thinking the whole time while he was being so mean. It was scary and cool, because so many of the things that he was thinking are things that I think too, but am afraid to admit. For 100 pages, I got to be someone that I am afraid to be, and that I don't even want to be. I got to feel what it is like to be a nasty person, and think about it. So, I got to learn some things that I do that are stupid, and hopefully, I learned not to do them as much.
If you are taking literature in college, you are learning what it's like to be a completely different kind of person than you are now.
But, you also get to do more fun stuff. Your cousin lives 600 miles away from me. I can't even tell you what she's doing any more, because I don't know, but she tells me that it's really exciting. Now that you are 18, bet you are doing some exciting things too.
You look away from this little letter, and you think about what you are going to do tonight, and you get a little smile on your face.
And you blink again.
And your hand won't wrap around a baseball any more. Suddenly, it's 2006 again, and you're not 18 any more. You have to go back to grade school again tomorrow, and learn all that boring stuff. But some day... Some day it will be just like the blink of an eye, and you will be on your way to having your own family, and your own kids to teach about life.
And then you'll be glad that you didn't hurry, and skip all the way to 18 years old in a blink. Really.
---
I hope you like your necklace. I know you look really, really pretty anyway, but I hope you're just a little prettier with it on.
I had a friend who makes jewelry for people all over the world make it for you. I tried to design it for you the best I could, and I hope I did alright. If not, forgive me, and know that I love you anyway.
Happy Birthday!
29 October, 2006
Presbuteras: Junia
If anyone would like to participate in a thorough discussion of whether Junia was an apostle, one is going on now at Better Bibles Blog.
After 3 posts, Suzanne has pretty much finished the initial look at whether Junia was a woman. I cannot begin to predict the level of detail to which she will drive, but it's all good stuff so far. She has found and posted a quote from men who quote the only ancient to identify Junia as a man.
Given Suzanne's level of scholarship, and the training of the regular commenters over there, and my lack of both, I will probably be silent for a good while, but I've learned a lot already.
Junia, the Apostle: Part 1
Junia, the Apostle: Part 2
Junia, the Apostle: Part 3
After 3 posts, Suzanne has pretty much finished the initial look at whether Junia was a woman. I cannot begin to predict the level of detail to which she will drive, but it's all good stuff so far. She has found and posted a quote from men who quote the only ancient to identify Junia as a man.
Given Suzanne's level of scholarship, and the training of the regular commenters over there, and my lack of both, I will probably be silent for a good while, but I've learned a lot already.
Junia, the Apostle: Part 1
Junia, the Apostle: Part 2
Junia, the Apostle: Part 3
28 October, 2006
Engaging God: Hearing from your kids
My daughter is in college now. It's a good thing. I'm happy (aside from the occasional day when everything seems to pile in on me - well you know) and I'm happy that she is kicking butt on her new challenges.
It's funny, though. It is just exactly like the cartoons all say it will be. I only hear from her when she needs something.
Her needs are commendable. They are light, and she is flexible about them. She is frugal without being miserly toward herself, and I applaud her. I even love to hear that she needs something that I can provide. It is my joy to bring her joy.
The other day, though, I got a call from her. I braced myself. I always fear that something awful has happened, and that she needs something terrible, and that I won't be able help her. I never know what she might need, but I fear it anyway.
She was going to a movie.
She called me along the way. Just to chat. It was one of the high points of my month.
And so it is with our Father.
We can pray to Him for no better reason than to be with Him. And when we do, we can be assured that we have given Him great cause for joy. He rejoices when one sheep returns to Him, and He rejoices every single time we come back to Him. He loves us, and He loves to hear our voices.
The plural in that last sentence is more than significant to me. That plural is actually the subject of this post. Consider that it is our voices that He loves to hear. Not my voice and your voice spratley, but our voices joined together. Consider that when we gather, we have the opportunity to do more than sing, listen and learn. We have the opportunity to share our love, our passion.
When a tennis bud and I meet, we dispense with discussion of the weather and the kids in moments. Soon we are talking about Federer (who won Madrid handily, btw,) injuries, and points we wish someone had been watching. Nobody has to make us talk about tennis! Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.
How much does that experience remind you of your last trip to church?
Is it a testimony to lukewarmness that we don't talk of Him incessantly from the moment we hit the church doors? Or is it a testimony to our low training?
With better training, would we talk of Him more? Would we talk to Him more?
Yes!
If I say that we should talk to God without requesting anything of Him, what do you think of saying?
Praise, right? We think of praising Him for what He has done for us. The wonders of the world around us. The beautiful provision He has made for us every day of our lives. The constant care He takes of us. The way that He came and suffered to save us. The fact that we are redeemed because of all He did.
Amen. This is a good thing.
But what if I say we should talk to God without mentioning ourselves at all, not as needy, and not even as blessed. What would you think of saying then?
Have you ever been taught to pray without mentioning yourself? I hadn't. My experience is not universal. If I have learned anything in this year of blogging, it is that everyone has learned something different in their pursuit of God. :-) I went 20 years as a Christian without ever having heard anyone mention such a thing. Now, I cannot imagine living without it.
Once, for a few years, I was in a group that regularly prayed together without ever mentioning themselves. It was food in the desert, and manna in the wilderness. For a few minutes the world faded away, and the taste of heaven was everywhere.
My little girl called the other night, and nothing else mattered.
I suspect our Father feels a lot the same.
It's funny, though. It is just exactly like the cartoons all say it will be. I only hear from her when she needs something.
Her needs are commendable. They are light, and she is flexible about them. She is frugal without being miserly toward herself, and I applaud her. I even love to hear that she needs something that I can provide. It is my joy to bring her joy.
The other day, though, I got a call from her. I braced myself. I always fear that something awful has happened, and that she needs something terrible, and that I won't be able help her. I never know what she might need, but I fear it anyway.
She was going to a movie.
She called me along the way. Just to chat. It was one of the high points of my month.
And so it is with our Father.
We can pray to Him for no better reason than to be with Him. And when we do, we can be assured that we have given Him great cause for joy. He rejoices when one sheep returns to Him, and He rejoices every single time we come back to Him. He loves us, and He loves to hear our voices.
The plural in that last sentence is more than significant to me. That plural is actually the subject of this post. Consider that it is our voices that He loves to hear. Not my voice and your voice spratley, but our voices joined together. Consider that when we gather, we have the opportunity to do more than sing, listen and learn. We have the opportunity to share our love, our passion.
When a tennis bud and I meet, we dispense with discussion of the weather and the kids in moments. Soon we are talking about Federer (who won Madrid handily, btw,) injuries, and points we wish someone had been watching. Nobody has to make us talk about tennis! Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.
How much does that experience remind you of your last trip to church?
Is it a testimony to lukewarmness that we don't talk of Him incessantly from the moment we hit the church doors? Or is it a testimony to our low training?
With better training, would we talk of Him more? Would we talk to Him more?
Yes!
If I say that we should talk to God without requesting anything of Him, what do you think of saying?
Praise, right? We think of praising Him for what He has done for us. The wonders of the world around us. The beautiful provision He has made for us every day of our lives. The constant care He takes of us. The way that He came and suffered to save us. The fact that we are redeemed because of all He did.
Amen. This is a good thing.
But what if I say we should talk to God without mentioning ourselves at all, not as needy, and not even as blessed. What would you think of saying then?
Have you ever been taught to pray without mentioning yourself? I hadn't. My experience is not universal. If I have learned anything in this year of blogging, it is that everyone has learned something different in their pursuit of God. :-) I went 20 years as a Christian without ever having heard anyone mention such a thing. Now, I cannot imagine living without it.
Once, for a few years, I was in a group that regularly prayed together without ever mentioning themselves. It was food in the desert, and manna in the wilderness. For a few minutes the world faded away, and the taste of heaven was everywhere.
My little girl called the other night, and nothing else mattered.
I suspect our Father feels a lot the same.
27 October, 2006
Touching Base
So much going on. :-)
I know I have been late posting for weeks now. It's worse than that. I have had at least 8 posts just rot and die in the mind during those weeks. I hate that. Ideas should not just be allowed to shrivel up in loneliness.
In fact, I am only writing now because I jogged three miles in the rain to make it to the repair shop to pick up my car, and they are not here yet. Grrrr. I want to give them my $2k, and get on with my day. But, at least I have my Crackberry to keep me company, which is a lot like having all of you out here standing in the rain with me. :-)
And that $2k is tied in with me not writing, too. I am approaching a deadline on the bit of sidework that will pay for a major portion of this car repair, so I have been trying shoehorn 15 more hours into my week while getting 1/2 hour more sleep each day. Hey! It's a plan, not a promise.
And it is "feast" time at work. I had been deadly bored for months, but I fixed that. All of my suggestions were taken at once. I now literally have 5 projects to do. 2 I can back-burner, but the other three all come due at once. I love this stuff. Nothing makes me feel like going to work like the certainty of failure (in small doses.) I love to prove reality wrong.
Anyway, I still love you all. Probably in a month or so, I will be trying to wear ya'll down with 30 pagers again, but until then I'll just keep up with the short thoughts.
We will get back to Eph 1.
I know I have been late posting for weeks now. It's worse than that. I have had at least 8 posts just rot and die in the mind during those weeks. I hate that. Ideas should not just be allowed to shrivel up in loneliness.
In fact, I am only writing now because I jogged three miles in the rain to make it to the repair shop to pick up my car, and they are not here yet. Grrrr. I want to give them my $2k, and get on with my day. But, at least I have my Crackberry to keep me company, which is a lot like having all of you out here standing in the rain with me. :-)
And that $2k is tied in with me not writing, too. I am approaching a deadline on the bit of sidework that will pay for a major portion of this car repair, so I have been trying shoehorn 15 more hours into my week while getting 1/2 hour more sleep each day. Hey! It's a plan, not a promise.
And it is "feast" time at work. I had been deadly bored for months, but I fixed that. All of my suggestions were taken at once. I now literally have 5 projects to do. 2 I can back-burner, but the other three all come due at once. I love this stuff. Nothing makes me feel like going to work like the certainty of failure (in small doses.) I love to prove reality wrong.
Anyway, I still love you all. Probably in a month or so, I will be trying to wear ya'll down with 30 pagers again, but until then I'll just keep up with the short thoughts.
We will get back to Eph 1.
23 October, 2006
Predestination: Capricious Conclusion
I am listening to Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground on tape.
Evidently, this was his breakout novel, if you can call it that, and the thoughts he introduces here underpin the rest of his writings. I'm enjoying the book enough that I will probably go ahead and listen to Crime and Punishment.
The protagonist has an immense amount of fun with his depressing and negative view of life, so I am loving it. I have spent the first couple hours of the book with a huge smile on my face. I don't know whether that's appropriate, but there you have it.
Our cave-dwelling, bureaucratic, emotional writer (I don't know why the book appeals to me. :-) goes on at length before he seems to arrive at the keystone of his argument. He begins to rail against predestinationists - scientific predestinationists, but all the same - and their understanding of man as a creature that seeks his own best good. He talks of advantage, and how men are always supposed to be seeking their own best advantage. He thinks that is all well and good, but that they leave the best advantage of all out of their calculations.
In assuming that man wants peace, wealth, and freedom, the scientists become unable to predict a real man's behavior. The man will often do that which is not to his own advantage, and no scientist can explain why. They are able to prove with certainty that every man always does what he perceives to be to his best advantage. And, yes, they can prove it with mathematical precision, but they can only prove it using math. A man is not a "math," and they cannot explain, much less predict, what a whole man will do in real life.
"Twice two makes four," he says (and I lifted the phrase in my previous post because it's really cool) is simply not true of a man. If it were true, it were no sense to bother being a man. A man is but a ledger entry if, "twice two makes four," can explain him. There has to be something more.
(Those of you who may know Dostoevsky inside and out, please forgive me. All this is from one listen, one third of the way through, to my first of his books. I cannot reference anything but memory to see if I'm portraying him even reasonably close to rightly. Much less do I know whether he undoes everything he says in part 1 before he closes part 3. Part 1 was just fascinating enough to give it a post.)
Dostoevsky finds his answer in, "caprice."
Man finds his greatest advantage sometimes in the simple exercise of caprice. Man wants to be able to go his own way even more than he wants to go the best way. It is for freedom that he was set free (I believe the verse allusion to be mine, not the author's,) and he will run freely, whatever the cost. He will spite even himself, if in so doing he might distance himself from twice two is four. The conscious exercise of caprice is so great an advantage, in and of itself, as to often overrule all the advantages of being right.
What think ye?
Does predestination require deterministic fatalism? (Am I just living out a script, and have no control over the outcome?)
Is caprice a great advantage? (Is the exercise of free will more beneficial than doing good for others?)
Is caprice an outcome of the fall? (If I were not a fallen man, would I always do the right thing, even if it were predictable?)
Evidently, this was his breakout novel, if you can call it that, and the thoughts he introduces here underpin the rest of his writings. I'm enjoying the book enough that I will probably go ahead and listen to Crime and Punishment.
The protagonist has an immense amount of fun with his depressing and negative view of life, so I am loving it. I have spent the first couple hours of the book with a huge smile on my face. I don't know whether that's appropriate, but there you have it.
Our cave-dwelling, bureaucratic, emotional writer (I don't know why the book appeals to me. :-) goes on at length before he seems to arrive at the keystone of his argument. He begins to rail against predestinationists - scientific predestinationists, but all the same - and their understanding of man as a creature that seeks his own best good. He talks of advantage, and how men are always supposed to be seeking their own best advantage. He thinks that is all well and good, but that they leave the best advantage of all out of their calculations.
In assuming that man wants peace, wealth, and freedom, the scientists become unable to predict a real man's behavior. The man will often do that which is not to his own advantage, and no scientist can explain why. They are able to prove with certainty that every man always does what he perceives to be to his best advantage. And, yes, they can prove it with mathematical precision, but they can only prove it using math. A man is not a "math," and they cannot explain, much less predict, what a whole man will do in real life.
"Twice two makes four," he says (and I lifted the phrase in my previous post because it's really cool) is simply not true of a man. If it were true, it were no sense to bother being a man. A man is but a ledger entry if, "twice two makes four," can explain him. There has to be something more.
(Those of you who may know Dostoevsky inside and out, please forgive me. All this is from one listen, one third of the way through, to my first of his books. I cannot reference anything but memory to see if I'm portraying him even reasonably close to rightly. Much less do I know whether he undoes everything he says in part 1 before he closes part 3. Part 1 was just fascinating enough to give it a post.)
Dostoevsky finds his answer in, "caprice."
Man finds his greatest advantage sometimes in the simple exercise of caprice. Man wants to be able to go his own way even more than he wants to go the best way. It is for freedom that he was set free (I believe the verse allusion to be mine, not the author's,) and he will run freely, whatever the cost. He will spite even himself, if in so doing he might distance himself from twice two is four. The conscious exercise of caprice is so great an advantage, in and of itself, as to often overrule all the advantages of being right.
What think ye?
Does predestination require deterministic fatalism? (Am I just living out a script, and have no control over the outcome?)
Is caprice a great advantage? (Is the exercise of free will more beneficial than doing good for others?)
Is caprice an outcome of the fall? (If I were not a fallen man, would I always do the right thing, even if it were predictable?)
22 October, 2006
Bible Study: Thou hast the Words of Life - John 6:56
Jesus said that His Words were Spirit and Life
In one way, that's a declaration like twice two is four. In another, it's as inscrutable as quantum physics.
This is a sentence on which we can bank our lives. It is a solid rock, on which an eternal kingdom can be founded. It is a simple peace to which we can give ourselves forever. Jesus said that He is Rest to the weary, so we come to Him, and find peace for our fractured souls.
But, what is Spirit, really? And what is Life?
Minutes before saying these words, Jesus said that true work is believing. He said that it was by eating His Flesh and drinking His Blood - taking Him into us - that we are taken into Him. He was uttering nonsense. And now He is making audible words, sound travelling through the air, to be life its very self. Of course, I learned with a little study that the Greek, "rhema," doesn't mean, "words," so much as the things the words embody. "Logos," is for words that verbalize ideas, while, "rhema," represents things. Jesus' words stood in place of things, things like Spirit and Life.
That doesn't help anything, though. The question of what Life and Spirit are remains.
The ancients postulated an ascending order of life, based of self-awareness. A plant knew more about itself than a rock, because the plant could grow toward the sun. An insect knew more about itself than a plant, because it could both seek food, and avoid becoming food. An animal could play, and a human could reason. More importantly, a human seeks opportunity for love, both to give and receive. This sets man at the pinnacle of earth's order of life.
So, what is that sets God above man in the order of life?
We are like God twice over, in that we are made in His image and we have the knowledge of good and evil. And yet, neither of those things elevates us to His level. There must be something else. He created the universe, and created us. That's surely something, but it's not the thing. A dog might look at me, and be amazed that I can move a car, but it's not my power that makes him and me different. It's the creative, engineering mind of the human that separates us.
What is the thing that separates us from God?
It's in His Name.
I AM that I AM.
It's that God has the power to BE.
God wishes to eat? He IS Food. He wishes to rest? He IS the Sabbath. The IS the Blessed One, the Captain, the Water, the Truth, the Creator, the true Friend. God never needs to look outside of Himself. He IS everything He could need in order to attain His every Holy Desire.
So, when Jesus says that His Words are Spirit and Life, He is talking about something of shocking intensity!
He told us that we can eat His Flesh and His Blood, and be grafted into Him. He told us that His Words are Spirit and Life, and that when we believe them we come alive as He is alive. Jesus told us how to come alive in Him. We need only believe to become part of I AM that I AM.
That which God is, in and of Himself, He desires to make us. He desires for us to abide in Him, and to be as He IS.
---
As I wrote this, children were playing right beside me. In a little lawn of long unmown grass, a mixed herd of 3-8 year olds ran back and forth. I could throw a brick from one end of this lawn to the other - left handed - on one foot. It's a teeny, green postage stamp on this massive globe of ours, and at one side it sloped downward a little bit. Three of the kids ran to the bottom of the slope, giggling and nattering the whole way.
One little toe-headed kid was still at the top of this incline, and watching the others and their adventure.
Suddenly, he announced to his brother that, "I'm going to run down there!"
That shout of joy filled my heart. The other kids had already gone first, but that didn't matter. This was his adventure, and he was grabbing it with both hands. In just a couple brief decades, the whole world will lay open before this little boy, but at this moment the grass was greenest on the other side of that lawn. His world was no bigger than his experience, but he was about to experience a new piece of lawn, and he was going to do it with all his heart.
Wow, it's cool to be alive.
---
Daddy. Jesus. Thank you for Your Words of Life written and given to us.
I'm going to run up there!
------------------------
I tried to upload a picture and failed. It would have been great, though. Picture by Avalore
In one way, that's a declaration like twice two is four. In another, it's as inscrutable as quantum physics.
This is a sentence on which we can bank our lives. It is a solid rock, on which an eternal kingdom can be founded. It is a simple peace to which we can give ourselves forever. Jesus said that He is Rest to the weary, so we come to Him, and find peace for our fractured souls.
But, what is Spirit, really? And what is Life?
Minutes before saying these words, Jesus said that true work is believing. He said that it was by eating His Flesh and drinking His Blood - taking Him into us - that we are taken into Him. He was uttering nonsense. And now He is making audible words, sound travelling through the air, to be life its very self. Of course, I learned with a little study that the Greek, "rhema," doesn't mean, "words," so much as the things the words embody. "Logos," is for words that verbalize ideas, while, "rhema," represents things. Jesus' words stood in place of things, things like Spirit and Life.
That doesn't help anything, though. The question of what Life and Spirit are remains.
The ancients postulated an ascending order of life, based of self-awareness. A plant knew more about itself than a rock, because the plant could grow toward the sun. An insect knew more about itself than a plant, because it could both seek food, and avoid becoming food. An animal could play, and a human could reason. More importantly, a human seeks opportunity for love, both to give and receive. This sets man at the pinnacle of earth's order of life.
So, what is that sets God above man in the order of life?
We are like God twice over, in that we are made in His image and we have the knowledge of good and evil. And yet, neither of those things elevates us to His level. There must be something else. He created the universe, and created us. That's surely something, but it's not the thing. A dog might look at me, and be amazed that I can move a car, but it's not my power that makes him and me different. It's the creative, engineering mind of the human that separates us.
What is the thing that separates us from God?
It's in His Name.
I AM that I AM.
It's that God has the power to BE.
God wishes to eat? He IS Food. He wishes to rest? He IS the Sabbath. The IS the Blessed One, the Captain, the Water, the Truth, the Creator, the true Friend. God never needs to look outside of Himself. He IS everything He could need in order to attain His every Holy Desire.
So, when Jesus says that His Words are Spirit and Life, He is talking about something of shocking intensity!
He told us that we can eat His Flesh and His Blood, and be grafted into Him. He told us that His Words are Spirit and Life, and that when we believe them we come alive as He is alive. Jesus told us how to come alive in Him. We need only believe to become part of I AM that I AM.
That which God is, in and of Himself, He desires to make us. He desires for us to abide in Him, and to be as He IS.
---
As I wrote this, children were playing right beside me. In a little lawn of long unmown grass, a mixed herd of 3-8 year olds ran back and forth. I could throw a brick from one end of this lawn to the other - left handed - on one foot. It's a teeny, green postage stamp on this massive globe of ours, and at one side it sloped downward a little bit. Three of the kids ran to the bottom of the slope, giggling and nattering the whole way.
One little toe-headed kid was still at the top of this incline, and watching the others and their adventure.
Suddenly, he announced to his brother that, "I'm going to run down there!"
That shout of joy filled my heart. The other kids had already gone first, but that didn't matter. This was his adventure, and he was grabbing it with both hands. In just a couple brief decades, the whole world will lay open before this little boy, but at this moment the grass was greenest on the other side of that lawn. His world was no bigger than his experience, but he was about to experience a new piece of lawn, and he was going to do it with all his heart.
Wow, it's cool to be alive.
---
Daddy. Jesus. Thank you for Your Words of Life written and given to us.
I'm going to run up there!
------------------------
I tried to upload a picture and failed. It would have been great, though. Picture by Avalore
16 October, 2006
Predestination: Something I don't like
Let's try an experiment.
I have put out there things that I figured ya'll didn't like, and I was basically right. Now, let's try putting something out there that I don't like, and see whether any of you agrees with me? Let's just say that I will spare you any doubt about why I don't like these statements. ;-)
From, to be told: Know your Story - Shape your Future by Dan Allender (FWIW, so far I give this book 2 stars. It has lots of potential, but fails to deliver on most its promises.),
... Evil malignantly grows from the freedom we possess to love or not love. Love would be meaningless if we didn't also have the option to not love.
If love is coerced, it is at best obedience that fears reprisal and at worst insincere manipulation to gain what the object of our love can give us. But genuine love arises in the complex interplay of desire and gratitude. I want and God gives. He gives so far beyond what I need that I am caught in the swirl of mouth-open awe and stunned gratitude. We write best when, in loving God and being loved by Him, we are thrown into the space of awe and gratitude.
The bolded sentences make my skin crawl.
Dr. Allender here is attempting to protect any of his readers who might be tempted to wander off into predestination. He is talking about God, and how he relates to us, and in throwing out the baby, he manages to throw out most of her siblings, too. But, at least he wastes the bathwater.
Love would be meaningless if we didn't also have the option to not love.
Find me a verse in scripture that says this. It ain't there, because it ain't true. This gets thrown around like it's gospel, but it's just common sense, like, "everyone knows if you sail too far you'll fall off the edge of the world."
Do you know anyone who has been abused by their parents? If you do, then you know that one of the most terrible things about helping the abused is that they love the one who abused them. They are confused by their own feelings, because they want, need, and love their worst enemy.
Do you know anyone who was not abused by their parents? Do you think they deserve commendation for loving them?
You are born with a love for your parents that you almost cannot break. I've seen it broken a time or two, but that's it. It is a love that is compelled by the accident of birth, and forced upon an innocent child before it is ever able to choose to love or not love. This coerced love is surely not meaningless. And we won't even talk about the "choice" a mother makes to love her newborn babe.
The first occurance of the word "love" in the scripture refers to the love of a parent for a child.
This love is compelled by simple genetics and hormones. There's no "choice" to this love. And yet it is strong enough and meaningful enough for God to use it as one of the strongest metaphors in His repertoire to explain His love.
If ... IF ... my love for Him is without choice, how is that less just, less true, less meaningful than my love for my mother and father?
If love is coerced....
So, just how is a baby coerced into loving his mother? It must be the crassest form of manipulation.
That baby has to listen to her voice for long months as his only lullaby in the womb. He has to come to know her every habit and gesture and rhythm as she moves throughout her day. Then, when he is born (the first time) he is forced to find his only nourishment at her breasts. What a cold-hearted thing for a selfish woman to do to an innocent babe. He was never even given a chance at a fair choice!
Why do we have to assume that our spiritual birth must be any different from our physical one? Why does it have to be free-will or coercion? Why is it not the most natural thing on earth for us to love our heavenly Father from the first moment we feel His warmth?
... it is at best obedience that fears reprisal and at worst insincere manipulation to gain what the object of our love can give us
Exactly wrong.
Coerced love is neither of those things. The coerced love of an infant can only be a purely dependent love. Such love cannot rise to the level of manipulation.
The love of free will, on the other hand, must resist the urge to be manipulative. If we "choose" God, do we do so because we fear reprisal? Do we choose Him because want to gain heaven? I say not, but how often are we told to "sell" Him this way? How often are we encouraged to sell the benefits of giving our hearts to Jesus?
If love is not coerced, then it is almost certainly the result of an obedience that fears reprisal and is an exercise of manipulation that seeks to gain what God can give us.
Finally, Dr. Allender encourages us to find a space of awe and gratitude.
I find awe and that gratitude when I consider how powerfully He wooed me. I am amazed when I learn how irresistible His Love is, and thankful when I learn that He knows how irresistible He is.
Prov 30: 18 & 19
There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not: The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid.
Those are mere shadows of the way of our God with His people.
I have put out there things that I figured ya'll didn't like, and I was basically right. Now, let's try putting something out there that I don't like, and see whether any of you agrees with me? Let's just say that I will spare you any doubt about why I don't like these statements. ;-)
From, to be told: Know your Story - Shape your Future by Dan Allender (FWIW, so far I give this book 2 stars. It has lots of potential, but fails to deliver on most its promises.),
... Evil malignantly grows from the freedom we possess to love or not love. Love would be meaningless if we didn't also have the option to not love.
If love is coerced, it is at best obedience that fears reprisal and at worst insincere manipulation to gain what the object of our love can give us. But genuine love arises in the complex interplay of desire and gratitude. I want and God gives. He gives so far beyond what I need that I am caught in the swirl of mouth-open awe and stunned gratitude. We write best when, in loving God and being loved by Him, we are thrown into the space of awe and gratitude.
The bolded sentences make my skin crawl.
Dr. Allender here is attempting to protect any of his readers who might be tempted to wander off into predestination. He is talking about God, and how he relates to us, and in throwing out the baby, he manages to throw out most of her siblings, too. But, at least he wastes the bathwater.
Love would be meaningless if we didn't also have the option to not love.
Find me a verse in scripture that says this. It ain't there, because it ain't true. This gets thrown around like it's gospel, but it's just common sense, like, "everyone knows if you sail too far you'll fall off the edge of the world."
Do you know anyone who has been abused by their parents? If you do, then you know that one of the most terrible things about helping the abused is that they love the one who abused them. They are confused by their own feelings, because they want, need, and love their worst enemy.
Do you know anyone who was not abused by their parents? Do you think they deserve commendation for loving them?
You are born with a love for your parents that you almost cannot break. I've seen it broken a time or two, but that's it. It is a love that is compelled by the accident of birth, and forced upon an innocent child before it is ever able to choose to love or not love. This coerced love is surely not meaningless. And we won't even talk about the "choice" a mother makes to love her newborn babe.
The first occurance of the word "love" in the scripture refers to the love of a parent for a child.
This love is compelled by simple genetics and hormones. There's no "choice" to this love. And yet it is strong enough and meaningful enough for God to use it as one of the strongest metaphors in His repertoire to explain His love.
If ... IF ... my love for Him is without choice, how is that less just, less true, less meaningful than my love for my mother and father?
If love is coerced....
So, just how is a baby coerced into loving his mother? It must be the crassest form of manipulation.
That baby has to listen to her voice for long months as his only lullaby in the womb. He has to come to know her every habit and gesture and rhythm as she moves throughout her day. Then, when he is born (the first time) he is forced to find his only nourishment at her breasts. What a cold-hearted thing for a selfish woman to do to an innocent babe. He was never even given a chance at a fair choice!
Why do we have to assume that our spiritual birth must be any different from our physical one? Why does it have to be free-will or coercion? Why is it not the most natural thing on earth for us to love our heavenly Father from the first moment we feel His warmth?
... it is at best obedience that fears reprisal and at worst insincere manipulation to gain what the object of our love can give us
Exactly wrong.
Coerced love is neither of those things. The coerced love of an infant can only be a purely dependent love. Such love cannot rise to the level of manipulation.
The love of free will, on the other hand, must resist the urge to be manipulative. If we "choose" God, do we do so because we fear reprisal? Do we choose Him because want to gain heaven? I say not, but how often are we told to "sell" Him this way? How often are we encouraged to sell the benefits of giving our hearts to Jesus?
If love is not coerced, then it is almost certainly the result of an obedience that fears reprisal and is an exercise of manipulation that seeks to gain what God can give us.
Finally, Dr. Allender encourages us to find a space of awe and gratitude.
I find awe and that gratitude when I consider how powerfully He wooed me. I am amazed when I learn how irresistible His Love is, and thankful when I learn that He knows how irresistible He is.
Prov 30: 18 & 19
There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not: The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid.
Those are mere shadows of the way of our God with His people.
Powerful Stuff on Modelling
The Campaign for Real Beauty has put a video out there that shows, not just the before and after of a girl modelling makeup, but how they take her there. It's a must see. No wonder our images of beauty are so distorted.
Every Westerner should know what he or she is looking at when looking at one of these women.
HT: The Boar's Head Tavern
Every Westerner should know what he or she is looking at when looking at one of these women.
HT: The Boar's Head Tavern
14 October, 2006
Engaging God: Eating His Flesh and Drinking His Blood
I'm sorry to be so long away from the site. It's no sin, of course, but it is unpleasant. I have had at least 3 posts go stale and die on the mind, while I have been too busy to do much typing at all.
Especially after posting such an emotional piece, I hate to create the appearance that there might actually be something wrong by staying gone so long.
There's nothing up that being a parent, a son, and a dude in need of money cannot explain. (I am also doing a programming side-job upgrading an application I wrote back in '98. That's pretty cool, BTW. To be called back to maintain a piece of software I wrote 600 miles and 8 years away, and that is still going strong is always a pleasure.)
Thanks for checking in.
---
So, I have been "teaching" a bible study on Thursday nights, lately.
Here's how it goes. Last Thursday I suggested a verse for everyone,
John 6:56
He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.
On Sunday, I gave everyone a half-sheet of paper reminding them of the outline of the process of studying a verse that I laid out back in July. It's a dozen or so steps to looking at a verse from numerous directions to try to open your mind to things it might mean. We all have established hamster trails in our heads, and anything that opens our mind to new thoughts is a good thing.
So, on Thursday everyone showed up for bible study. Seven of us, actually, which is a nice number. Of the seven, six had done some studying before getting there, and that's a really nice number. Nobody did anything much in the way of studying, including me, but everyone had looked at the verse and some references and a couple commentaries.
I actually looked at every single commentary this time around, because there was so little of value in any of them. When I was done doing that, I still felt like I was going to the meeting woefully underprepared.
When I do this, I am doing something very similar to what I do out here. I am hoping to stir a new thought, and learn something. I'm hoping that between the seven of us, we can find something new and inspiring about the eternal Lord.
For the first 10 minutes, I made everyone stop and just come up with questions about the verse. That was helpful, though not terribly rich. Then we prayed, and started looking at what everyone had found. It's a good group, so there's no problem getting people to talk. 4 of us went right away. The pastor is part of the group, so he works to make sure he doesn't over-function, so he went fifth. Eventually, everyone had shared.
All together, we basically came up with:
Jesus telling a crowd of complete strangers that they had to drink His Blood to be saved was shocking. Jews had never tasted blood, and never would. God would cut them off. So, for Him to say that was almost intentionally rude. He was not going to win friends and influence people.
This was not a foreshadowing of communion. Communion, rather, was a picture of this. Eating and drinking of Christ is the reality, and the Lord's Table is the picture and remembrance of that reality.
Eating and drinking ties back to John 6:29:
Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.
In that part of the incident, Jesus is talking about Himself being the Manna of God, and He directly ties believing and eating the Bread from heaven. So, eating and drinking of Christ is believing that which He has done, and that which He says He has done.
That's cool, because when we pray we pray believing. When we read, we read believing. And when we work, we work believing in Him.
And when we believe, we are eating and drinking. We are taking God's divine Life into ourselves. We are, by believing, bringing the essence of the eternal God into our own beings. But, when we eat and drink of Him, John 6:56 says that we are taken into Him. We abide in Him when we eat of Him.
So, believing creates a cycle. We take God into ourselves and we place ourselves into God. He is built into us, and we are ingrafted into Him.
That was cool, and that was past the commentaries. And that's the goal. We come prepared with all the data that we can find, but then as the Spirit opens things up, we move past our preparations, and we find Him.
Thank the Lord, though, He was not done yet.
Our youngest brother pointed out that eating was the very first thing. Right there in the garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were supposed to eat, from the very first day. We remember that they were commanded not to eat of one tree, but we need to remember that they were also commanded to eat of all the other trees! And especially of One Tree!
From there we talked about eating, and how we need to do it just to survive.
Then I remembered the Passover lamb in Exodus 12. There is a special way that lamb was to be eaten, and it was a picture of how Christ is to be eaten. Among the really cool things is that the stranger is allowed to eat exactly as the native person, so long as he is cleaned by circumcision. The lamb must all be eaten under one roof - no leftovers are to be taken away. And no bone of the lamb should be broken. The lamb must be roasted, too.
So, we learned that there was a special way to eat the Lamb. Had I been a little more careful, I might have remembered that there was a special way the Lamb must be prepared, but a sister had found that eating makes it all the way to the Revelation. In Rev 2, 3, and 22 we find eating, and even that there are 12 fruits to eat.
So the revelation of eating and drinking starts at the beginning, and is expanded and deepened all the way to the end of the world.
Praise the Lord.
---
If I had "taught" that bible study, it would not have been anywhere near so rich. Two of the six or so really cool things in that class were mine, but one of them would never have happened without building on what another brother brought.
We need each other to find the Lord.
Especially after posting such an emotional piece, I hate to create the appearance that there might actually be something wrong by staying gone so long.
There's nothing up that being a parent, a son, and a dude in need of money cannot explain. (I am also doing a programming side-job upgrading an application I wrote back in '98. That's pretty cool, BTW. To be called back to maintain a piece of software I wrote 600 miles and 8 years away, and that is still going strong is always a pleasure.)
Thanks for checking in.
---
So, I have been "teaching" a bible study on Thursday nights, lately.
Here's how it goes. Last Thursday I suggested a verse for everyone,
John 6:56
He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.
On Sunday, I gave everyone a half-sheet of paper reminding them of the outline of the process of studying a verse that I laid out back in July. It's a dozen or so steps to looking at a verse from numerous directions to try to open your mind to things it might mean. We all have established hamster trails in our heads, and anything that opens our mind to new thoughts is a good thing.
So, on Thursday everyone showed up for bible study. Seven of us, actually, which is a nice number. Of the seven, six had done some studying before getting there, and that's a really nice number. Nobody did anything much in the way of studying, including me, but everyone had looked at the verse and some references and a couple commentaries.
I actually looked at every single commentary this time around, because there was so little of value in any of them. When I was done doing that, I still felt like I was going to the meeting woefully underprepared.
When I do this, I am doing something very similar to what I do out here. I am hoping to stir a new thought, and learn something. I'm hoping that between the seven of us, we can find something new and inspiring about the eternal Lord.
For the first 10 minutes, I made everyone stop and just come up with questions about the verse. That was helpful, though not terribly rich. Then we prayed, and started looking at what everyone had found. It's a good group, so there's no problem getting people to talk. 4 of us went right away. The pastor is part of the group, so he works to make sure he doesn't over-function, so he went fifth. Eventually, everyone had shared.
All together, we basically came up with:
Jesus telling a crowd of complete strangers that they had to drink His Blood to be saved was shocking. Jews had never tasted blood, and never would. God would cut them off. So, for Him to say that was almost intentionally rude. He was not going to win friends and influence people.
This was not a foreshadowing of communion. Communion, rather, was a picture of this. Eating and drinking of Christ is the reality, and the Lord's Table is the picture and remembrance of that reality.
Eating and drinking ties back to John 6:29:
Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.
In that part of the incident, Jesus is talking about Himself being the Manna of God, and He directly ties believing and eating the Bread from heaven. So, eating and drinking of Christ is believing that which He has done, and that which He says He has done.
That's cool, because when we pray we pray believing. When we read, we read believing. And when we work, we work believing in Him.
And when we believe, we are eating and drinking. We are taking God's divine Life into ourselves. We are, by believing, bringing the essence of the eternal God into our own beings. But, when we eat and drink of Him, John 6:56 says that we are taken into Him. We abide in Him when we eat of Him.
So, believing creates a cycle. We take God into ourselves and we place ourselves into God. He is built into us, and we are ingrafted into Him.
That was cool, and that was past the commentaries. And that's the goal. We come prepared with all the data that we can find, but then as the Spirit opens things up, we move past our preparations, and we find Him.
Thank the Lord, though, He was not done yet.
Our youngest brother pointed out that eating was the very first thing. Right there in the garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were supposed to eat, from the very first day. We remember that they were commanded not to eat of one tree, but we need to remember that they were also commanded to eat of all the other trees! And especially of One Tree!
From there we talked about eating, and how we need to do it just to survive.
Then I remembered the Passover lamb in Exodus 12. There is a special way that lamb was to be eaten, and it was a picture of how Christ is to be eaten. Among the really cool things is that the stranger is allowed to eat exactly as the native person, so long as he is cleaned by circumcision. The lamb must all be eaten under one roof - no leftovers are to be taken away. And no bone of the lamb should be broken. The lamb must be roasted, too.
So, we learned that there was a special way to eat the Lamb. Had I been a little more careful, I might have remembered that there was a special way the Lamb must be prepared, but a sister had found that eating makes it all the way to the Revelation. In Rev 2, 3, and 22 we find eating, and even that there are 12 fruits to eat.
So the revelation of eating and drinking starts at the beginning, and is expanded and deepened all the way to the end of the world.
Praise the Lord.
---
If I had "taught" that bible study, it would not have been anywhere near so rich. Two of the six or so really cool things in that class were mine, but one of them would never have happened without building on what another brother brought.
We need each other to find the Lord.
11 October, 2006
08 October, 2006
Predestination: Grieving versus Depression versus Predestination
The world is a big, scary place to go. Bills and money, illness and injury, grief and mourning all await the adventurer through life. I don't know anyone who really wants to go there alone.
Be the world is more than that.
The world is also beautiful fall days, moonbathed nights, work worth doing. It's the joy of eating when you're hungry, resting when you're tired, and sprinting when life overflows from your heart. I don't know anyone who really wants to go there alone, either.
I know I don't.
Life was never meant to be lived alone.
Facing every day life without a wife is a gray experience. It's not black, but it's not color either. Some days it's a nice sepia, but I grieve the color anyway. I grieve the intimate company.
Still, marriage is asked to fill the gap of loneliness too completely. A good wife could restore a lot of that which is broken in my life, but not everything. There are areas of a man's life that a wife cannot touch, and they are hurting too. To fill those areas needs a church, and not just a congregation. To fill those areas needs a brotherhood banded together and pulling somewhere with all our combined might. A brotherhood must do what men do when they're grunting with heartfelt strain.
(And that, BTW, is the source of the whining about the church being feminized. The problem is not sissy songs, but emasculating leaders. When a pastor thrusts his fingers into every man's work, he is the one doing the emasculating, not women and not songs. And then these pastors complain that the other men won't step up and do something.)
These griefs are there every morning when I wake, and they attend me until I close my eyes, after which they meet me in my dreams. I'm writing this because today they are especially stout, but even at their best they never sleep.
Even the thrill-seekingest teenage boy knows that a day of extreme roller coasters alone is wasted. Life is a beautiful thing, filled with thrills and joys, but if you cannot even enjoy amusement alone, how so the rest of it? I'm living it alone.
So I grieve.
So I am in trouble with Christians.
Phil 4:4 & 8
Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice. ...
Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.
Depression is alternately called a disease or a sin. If you are taking the "steps" to cure it, then it's a disease. But, if you are "wallowing" in it, then it's a sin. And in this way, that which is almost too much for me to bear is made by well-meaning brothers and sisters into a blockage between me and my God, too. In one swift motion, my grief is transformed into a distrust of God, into a filth before Him, into a thing of which I must repent before I can come peacefully into His presence.
But how to I repent of hurting?
Do they think I weep for the pleasure of it? Maybe I do this because it's what I've always dreamt of of doing with a beautiful Saturday afternoon? Or maybe that I'm just too lazy to "get over it." Pity parties are usually called sin, and always shameful. Weeping is usually sin, and usually shameful.
I protest.
Grief, though it last for years, is honest.
I "get out." I "have fun." I have goals, and I strive for them, and achieve them. I live. I'm active in my church.
And I grieve.
I grieve for a mate, and I grieve for brothers. Neither alone would end my grieving. I accept the providence of God, and I praise Him for the many mercies He bestows on me during this time. I am blessed and covered by the One Who loves me more than a brother or a wife. I rejoice, too, in those gifts. But even as I rejoice, I rejoice alone, and a joy unshared is only half a joy. I'm standing in line for that roller coaster of a lifetime, and it just isn't what it was meant to be.
And then caring people need to fix me.
As if things weren't bad enough.
How, praytell, do they hope to fix pain? They tell me that my brain chemistry is altered, and that I no longer am seeing the world as it really is. I no longer see the bright side, because I've "got the depression." They counsel me to open my eyes wider, and to see all the things God has done. They promise me I'll snap out of it if I do. And if I don't snap out of it, then they tell me to go to a doctor. He has drugs that will restore my brain chemistry so that I can see the bright side of a well-digger's bottom!
Not this child. If I have to look at a well-digger's bottom, I want it to be dark, thank you very much.
There is a place and a wisdom in chemical therapy. I praise the Lord that He has provided it, but some fine objective observers assure me that I am not there yet.
And I still grieve. And I have for years.
And saints still try to fix me.
If the scripture counsels a brother to fix those who mourn, I have not seen it. I have seen a that brother should comfort those who mourn, and that he should weep with those who weep, but not that he should correct him. There's a place for wise counsel and caring comfort, but much that I've heard is best placed in intimate relationship to that well-digger's bottom.
You can't go too wrong weeping with those who weep - and stopping there.
This is all woven together with my search for a new understanding of predestination.
I'm sure the many ways grief and predestination might relate to each other are pretty obvious. My grief is known to God. Is it predestined? A large cause of it is my own fault and my own sin. Predestined? If I could make such massive mistakes in my life, what might I do next? Throw away my salvation? Is that possible, or not? Do I trust myself with my salvation if I might lose it? (No, I don't. You could sell tickets to my meltdown right now if I really believed my salvation were in my hands.) But, if I took up my salvation, then what is to stop me from laying it down? But where is the glory to God if my salvation is just handed to me, and I have no part in it? (That's not a question I have, but one that others ask of me.)
Hence, this series.
I am at a loss for words to tell everyone that I am not trying to convince you all to plant TULIPs in your hearts, but you are still here, so I will try.
You have all dealt with Calvinists before (whether you all consider me a Calvinist I'm not sure yet,) and you are defensive. I understand that. They/we have a world-wide reputation for intractability. I have been there, and been that. I repent in absentia to all those saints with whom I argued, but never heard.
I will post again on Eph 1 here shortly. If it leaks through that I have beliefs on the subject, please don't assume that this means that I am not listening.
Right now, today, where I am, the thought that God is more than "just hoping" good things for me is a lifeline. That He planned these gray days into my life, and that He ordained them for my good, is a salvation in itself. To suddenly find a God Who has delegated my fate into my hands seems a terrifying thing. So, when I ask everyone with what comfort Paul intends to bless the Ephesians, I am asking what comfort I should find in God if His eternal purpose is not what I thought it was. How should I get up in the morning if I know God has entrusted my fate into the hands of a moron who has already failed Him for 42 years?
I am asking these things for all the reasons I have repeated so many times in the last couple weeks. I am asking because everyone else believes I'm wrong, and that makes an impression on me. I am also asking, though, because trusting God for that which He has not promised is foolish, and I want to be wise. I want my decisions to be made with the correct facts about God before my eyes. If I trust too much to God's sovereignty, I want to know about it.
Facts change decisions, and decisions matter, because decisions lead to works. Right decisions lead to right works, and right works carry weight. Don't imagine that because I believe that God predestines, I believe I am fated and therefore need not work. On the contrary, I believe that I am fated to work, privileged to labor, and that one of the first labors is to find out what the work is.
So, here I am searching.
And that is the difference between grieving and depression.
Be the world is more than that.
The world is also beautiful fall days, moonbathed nights, work worth doing. It's the joy of eating when you're hungry, resting when you're tired, and sprinting when life overflows from your heart. I don't know anyone who really wants to go there alone, either.
I know I don't.
Life was never meant to be lived alone.
Facing every day life without a wife is a gray experience. It's not black, but it's not color either. Some days it's a nice sepia, but I grieve the color anyway. I grieve the intimate company.
Still, marriage is asked to fill the gap of loneliness too completely. A good wife could restore a lot of that which is broken in my life, but not everything. There are areas of a man's life that a wife cannot touch, and they are hurting too. To fill those areas needs a church, and not just a congregation. To fill those areas needs a brotherhood banded together and pulling somewhere with all our combined might. A brotherhood must do what men do when they're grunting with heartfelt strain.
(And that, BTW, is the source of the whining about the church being feminized. The problem is not sissy songs, but emasculating leaders. When a pastor thrusts his fingers into every man's work, he is the one doing the emasculating, not women and not songs. And then these pastors complain that the other men won't step up and do something.)
These griefs are there every morning when I wake, and they attend me until I close my eyes, after which they meet me in my dreams. I'm writing this because today they are especially stout, but even at their best they never sleep.
Even the thrill-seekingest teenage boy knows that a day of extreme roller coasters alone is wasted. Life is a beautiful thing, filled with thrills and joys, but if you cannot even enjoy amusement alone, how so the rest of it? I'm living it alone.
So I grieve.
So I am in trouble with Christians.
Phil 4:4 & 8
Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice. ...
Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.
Depression is alternately called a disease or a sin. If you are taking the "steps" to cure it, then it's a disease. But, if you are "wallowing" in it, then it's a sin. And in this way, that which is almost too much for me to bear is made by well-meaning brothers and sisters into a blockage between me and my God, too. In one swift motion, my grief is transformed into a distrust of God, into a filth before Him, into a thing of which I must repent before I can come peacefully into His presence.
But how to I repent of hurting?
Do they think I weep for the pleasure of it? Maybe I do this because it's what I've always dreamt of of doing with a beautiful Saturday afternoon? Or maybe that I'm just too lazy to "get over it." Pity parties are usually called sin, and always shameful. Weeping is usually sin, and usually shameful.
I protest.
Grief, though it last for years, is honest.
I "get out." I "have fun." I have goals, and I strive for them, and achieve them. I live. I'm active in my church.
And I grieve.
I grieve for a mate, and I grieve for brothers. Neither alone would end my grieving. I accept the providence of God, and I praise Him for the many mercies He bestows on me during this time. I am blessed and covered by the One Who loves me more than a brother or a wife. I rejoice, too, in those gifts. But even as I rejoice, I rejoice alone, and a joy unshared is only half a joy. I'm standing in line for that roller coaster of a lifetime, and it just isn't what it was meant to be.
And then caring people need to fix me.
As if things weren't bad enough.
How, praytell, do they hope to fix pain? They tell me that my brain chemistry is altered, and that I no longer am seeing the world as it really is. I no longer see the bright side, because I've "got the depression." They counsel me to open my eyes wider, and to see all the things God has done. They promise me I'll snap out of it if I do. And if I don't snap out of it, then they tell me to go to a doctor. He has drugs that will restore my brain chemistry so that I can see the bright side of a well-digger's bottom!
Not this child. If I have to look at a well-digger's bottom, I want it to be dark, thank you very much.
There is a place and a wisdom in chemical therapy. I praise the Lord that He has provided it, but some fine objective observers assure me that I am not there yet.
And I still grieve. And I have for years.
And saints still try to fix me.
If the scripture counsels a brother to fix those who mourn, I have not seen it. I have seen a that brother should comfort those who mourn, and that he should weep with those who weep, but not that he should correct him. There's a place for wise counsel and caring comfort, but much that I've heard is best placed in intimate relationship to that well-digger's bottom.
You can't go too wrong weeping with those who weep - and stopping there.
This is all woven together with my search for a new understanding of predestination.
I'm sure the many ways grief and predestination might relate to each other are pretty obvious. My grief is known to God. Is it predestined? A large cause of it is my own fault and my own sin. Predestined? If I could make such massive mistakes in my life, what might I do next? Throw away my salvation? Is that possible, or not? Do I trust myself with my salvation if I might lose it? (No, I don't. You could sell tickets to my meltdown right now if I really believed my salvation were in my hands.) But, if I took up my salvation, then what is to stop me from laying it down? But where is the glory to God if my salvation is just handed to me, and I have no part in it? (That's not a question I have, but one that others ask of me.)
Hence, this series.
I am at a loss for words to tell everyone that I am not trying to convince you all to plant TULIPs in your hearts, but you are still here, so I will try.
You have all dealt with Calvinists before (whether you all consider me a Calvinist I'm not sure yet,) and you are defensive. I understand that. They/we have a world-wide reputation for intractability. I have been there, and been that. I repent in absentia to all those saints with whom I argued, but never heard.
I will post again on Eph 1 here shortly. If it leaks through that I have beliefs on the subject, please don't assume that this means that I am not listening.
Right now, today, where I am, the thought that God is more than "just hoping" good things for me is a lifeline. That He planned these gray days into my life, and that He ordained them for my good, is a salvation in itself. To suddenly find a God Who has delegated my fate into my hands seems a terrifying thing. So, when I ask everyone with what comfort Paul intends to bless the Ephesians, I am asking what comfort I should find in God if His eternal purpose is not what I thought it was. How should I get up in the morning if I know God has entrusted my fate into the hands of a moron who has already failed Him for 42 years?
I am asking these things for all the reasons I have repeated so many times in the last couple weeks. I am asking because everyone else believes I'm wrong, and that makes an impression on me. I am also asking, though, because trusting God for that which He has not promised is foolish, and I want to be wise. I want my decisions to be made with the correct facts about God before my eyes. If I trust too much to God's sovereignty, I want to know about it.
Facts change decisions, and decisions matter, because decisions lead to works. Right decisions lead to right works, and right works carry weight. Don't imagine that because I believe that God predestines, I believe I am fated and therefore need not work. On the contrary, I believe that I am fated to work, privileged to labor, and that one of the first labors is to find out what the work is.
So, here I am searching.
And that is the difference between grieving and depression.
07 October, 2006
Life: Not today, my boy. :-)
In a subtle attempt to gain Alpha-male status, my son left me a physics problem that he could not solve.
He is taking AP Physics as a senior in high school, so it's college freshman level stuff. This problem required that I discover the coefficient of dynamic fiction if a 5 kg block falling straight down could drag a 10 kg block 1 m in 1.2 seconds. The best part, of course, is that the problem had stumped my lad.
Why let a little 25 year hiatus slow me down?
I had to go all the way back to page 13 to get one formula I needed, and I had to review the example problems about 5 times each, but that's not the point. The point is that I not only solved it, I solved it with book rigour. :-) I confessed to him that it took me the better part of an hour, and that I made 2 false starts (for which the errant paperwork was somehow lost) but he still had ample opportunity to call me nasty names.
And THAT is what a father lives for. :-)
He is taking AP Physics as a senior in high school, so it's college freshman level stuff. This problem required that I discover the coefficient of dynamic fiction if a 5 kg block falling straight down could drag a 10 kg block 1 m in 1.2 seconds. The best part, of course, is that the problem had stumped my lad.
Why let a little 25 year hiatus slow me down?
I had to go all the way back to page 13 to get one formula I needed, and I had to review the example problems about 5 times each, but that's not the point. The point is that I not only solved it, I solved it with book rigour. :-) I confessed to him that it took me the better part of an hour, and that I made 2 false starts (for which the errant paperwork was somehow lost) but he still had ample opportunity to call me nasty names.
And THAT is what a father lives for. :-)
05 October, 2006
Predestination - Sidebar: Does God Sovereignly Self-Limit His Sovereignty?
Weekend Fisher said:
TULIP makes Eph1 about us and about how sovereignty affects us, instead of about Christ and how God exercised his sovereignty by laying it aside in Christ.
...to which Oloryn commented:
I'll give that a big Amen! My sense of Calvinistic theology has long been that it won't let God be sovereign over His own Sovereignty. He's required to stay 'up there' and hang on to His Sovereignty for dear life, lest if He ever fail to exercise his Sovereignty in full measure, He somehow become less than God.
I questioned whether the idea exists in Eph 1, and Oloryn posited that it was a tie-in from other passages.
I am really curious about this line of reasoning, so how's about we go here for a while? I held to this belief back in '82, but not since then. So, I have to ask for help. Can ya'll fill the comments section with references that indicate or require that God has sovereignly limited His own sovereignty?
Thanks!
(I'm still under pretty stout time strictures, so I may not be back for a while - but I'll be back!)
TULIP makes Eph1 about us and about how sovereignty affects us, instead of about Christ and how God exercised his sovereignty by laying it aside in Christ.
...to which Oloryn commented:
I'll give that a big Amen! My sense of Calvinistic theology has long been that it won't let God be sovereign over His own Sovereignty. He's required to stay 'up there' and hang on to His Sovereignty for dear life, lest if He ever fail to exercise his Sovereignty in full measure, He somehow become less than God.
I questioned whether the idea exists in Eph 1, and Oloryn posited that it was a tie-in from other passages.
I am really curious about this line of reasoning, so how's about we go here for a while? I held to this belief back in '82, but not since then. So, I have to ask for help. Can ya'll fill the comments section with references that indicate or require that God has sovereignly limited His own sovereignty?
Thanks!
(I'm still under pretty stout time strictures, so I may not be back for a while - but I'll be back!)
01 October, 2006
Predestination: What could we mean?
Each of you is free to respond to this post as you will. I will enjoy hearing all your thoughts, I'm sure. But, let me tell you what I will specifically be hoping to hear.
I hope to hear what you feel like this passage means. What do you picture in your mind when you read this?
Starting in 1986 or so I quit reading the bible for about 4 years. I plain and simple put it down. I could no longer read a single passage of scripture without the din of arguments and counter arguments playing in my head like duelling auctioneers. The auctioneer championing "my" arguments was always the loudest, but I knew better than to trust to volume. So, every time I opened the scripture I heard a loud voice yelling things I figured were wrong, and a louder voice yelling things I hoped were right. When I read a passage like the one below, I heard cross-references shooting from ear to ear, threatening to rob my sanity if I erred to the right or the left - and crippling the little sanity I could claim with each proof-text.
In other words, my head was a lot like a blog conversation.
I don't like to go there any more.
So, I would rather focus on meaning and purpose.
Whatever else may be true of this passage, it is the words of a dear, brilliant, divinely inspired brother to a beautiful, loving, challenged group of the Lord's people. It is Paul's reminder and encouragement of something that he wanted to embellish on when he could be with them (or that he had already told them, but I think this was actually written for the church at Laodicea.)
What I want to hear is what Paul wanted those brothers and sisters to remember when he said, "predestined." What comfort did he want to well up from within them? With what encouragement did he want to impel them forward? What strength did he want them to draw from the picture he paints?
In verses 4 and 5 Paul encourages the saints directly with predestination. Verses 3 and 6 are related to the idea.
What is he saying?
Eph 1:1-6
Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the saints which are at Ephesus, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace be to you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.
I hope to hear what you feel like this passage means. What do you picture in your mind when you read this?
Starting in 1986 or so I quit reading the bible for about 4 years. I plain and simple put it down. I could no longer read a single passage of scripture without the din of arguments and counter arguments playing in my head like duelling auctioneers. The auctioneer championing "my" arguments was always the loudest, but I knew better than to trust to volume. So, every time I opened the scripture I heard a loud voice yelling things I figured were wrong, and a louder voice yelling things I hoped were right. When I read a passage like the one below, I heard cross-references shooting from ear to ear, threatening to rob my sanity if I erred to the right or the left - and crippling the little sanity I could claim with each proof-text.
In other words, my head was a lot like a blog conversation.
I don't like to go there any more.
So, I would rather focus on meaning and purpose.
Whatever else may be true of this passage, it is the words of a dear, brilliant, divinely inspired brother to a beautiful, loving, challenged group of the Lord's people. It is Paul's reminder and encouragement of something that he wanted to embellish on when he could be with them (or that he had already told them, but I think this was actually written for the church at Laodicea.)
What I want to hear is what Paul wanted those brothers and sisters to remember when he said, "predestined." What comfort did he want to well up from within them? With what encouragement did he want to impel them forward? What strength did he want them to draw from the picture he paints?
In verses 4 and 5 Paul encourages the saints directly with predestination. Verses 3 and 6 are related to the idea.
What is he saying?
Eph 1:1-6
Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the saints which are at Ephesus, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace be to you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
