Category: General Christian Teachings

I won’t deny it. I thoroughly enjoy Halloween. I always did as a kid and my favorite outfit was to go out as a ninja. Then, I got the joy when I got older of seeing the kids and I think giving the kids who visited our house candy was more enjoyable than going out and getting it myself. (And now in my own place, my roommate and I have had no visitors and I happened to pick up these Reeses’s Cups and I love peanut butter so much coincidentally and well, now what are we going to do with all those Reeses’s Cups? Decisions, decisions….)

Today, I still dress up some. For me today, it involved wearing my Smallville T-Shirt and my Superman hat due to my love of Clark Kent in the series. Pretending is such a great joy at times and I think too many people kill their imagination when they get older and find it harder to enjoy wonder in the world. Yes. There is a great joy in pretending to be someone you are not.

Wait. Did I just describe what kids do one day a year or what Christians tend to do everyday and especially at church?

This is the kind of idea I wrote about once before from a Casting Crowns song about a Stained-Glass Masquerade. Somehow, we are mostly perfectionists in the church. We think that we have to be perfect and I think that in part comes from a pop Christian worldview. Everyone wants to be seen as holy and righteous and that involves always being in a certain attitude.

Christianity is not about having a certain attitude though. Christianity is about being in a right relationship to God through Jesus Christ and it doesn’t matter how you feel about it or not. Let me say this to people who may be doubting their salvation as an example. Whether or not you feel saved has zip to do with whether you are saved or not.

When was the last time you really heard someone talk about a sin they were struggling with at church? Probably the same as the last time I recall. How many of you all can immediately think though of a sin that you are struggling with? That’s what I thought. I find that so incredible about the internet. I’ll have people come to me who are struggling with problems for help, and I doubt they’ll tell anyone in their church about them. I’m of the same nature though. I’ll tell others problems that I would never dare tell the church and some of those include my internet family.

It seems we’re all watching ourselves and trying to make sure we don’t have a flaw. Why? None of us are perfect. We all know that. Somehow though, we want everyone else to know otherwise. Are we interested in truth then or are we simply interested in a perception whether it is true or not? I think that’s a question we all need to answer.

I’m also one that’s just as guilty. Why is that? I don’t know either. For me, I don’t naturally trust people and this situation makes it all the more difficult. What’s to be done? I’m not sure. We’re all going to need to reach out. Maybe if we showed our wounds a little bit more, we could get them healed and maybe it will start with those in leadership in the church being the first to reveal their weaknesses and struggles. I hoped to do this some with my post I wrote on Obama, socialism, and my story. It was a hard post, but I thought it would help and I hope it did.

Are we going to make this Halloween constant because we can all agree, it’s no treat and we’re certainly playing a trick.

I wrote last night about having God be the end of what we do. As I thought about it after I wrote the blog, I realized that there was a lot left out that needed to be said. I desire to correct that tonight in considering a verse of Scripture I’ve found to be one that I need to take into mind. 1 Cor. 10:31 has been a favorite verse for awhile for me and oddly, one I don’t see Christians citing as one of their favorites. The text reads as follows:

So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.

This is interesting in that Paul is talking about righteousness in the face of the question of meat offered to idols. Notice what actions he’s not talking about though. He’s not talking about prayer. He’s not talking about Scripture study. He’s not talking about evangelism. He’s not talking about fasting.

He’s talking about the day to day activity of eating and drinking.

What he means then is what is said in the last part, whatever you do, do it for the glory of God. The problem with us as Christians though is we tend to look at it as only referring to the “spiritual” activities. Have we not considered so much more is to the glory of God? You can surf the net to God’s glory. You can enjoy a movie or TV program or sporting event. You can hang out with friends. You can be dating. You can be making love to your spouse. All of these can be to the glory of God.

Let’s take the realm of science as an example. Louis Pasteur said “Science brings men nearer to God,” and “The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the creator.” I’m not a scientist, but I can understand what he’s saying. When I see something about DNA or go look at a picture of Olympus Mons on Mars, I’m just moved. Something in me screams at the awesome grandeur of what I am seeing.

The old scientists saw their science as doing that. They believed that the universe was created by a rational creator and therefore, his creation would be rational. If they studied it, they could learn more about him, and that is what they desired to do. Of course, not all of them were like this, but a striking number in the past were. 

These men saw their exploring the natural world as giving glory to God and the more they found, the more they found him glorious. They wanted knowledge, true, but not just knowledge. They wanted that knowledge to be a light to guide them to truth. As a theologian, I can confess that the more wonder I find out about the concept of God, the more I am amazed. He’s so much greater than the concept I had when I was a young boy in Sunday School.

Consider the arts also. Many musicians wrote great pieces of music in praise to Jesus Christ. They wanted to make good music of course, but they wanted that music to be a testimony to the one that they loved. (Or rather, that they love.) When the applause came, the composers wanted it directed more to the grand composer of the symphony of life than to them.

In Religulous, Bill Maher asks a priest outside the Vatican what Christ would think of a huge building like that. Maher needs to realize this is the same one who described a majestic temple. There was a day and age when churches were designed to be places of holiness. You went in and were dwarfed immediately by what you saw and you had an idea of the holy then. The place was not big for the sake of being big. It was big because it was to show how big God is. It’s majesty and grandeur was to put the person who entered into the mindset of worship in realizing who he is and who the God he serves is. 

Other artwork has been done for the glory of God. How many paintings and statues have been done in order to bring praise to the creator? Indeed, Christ never did write music or books or poetry or paint or do sculptures, but he’s impacted the arts more than any other person in that now, so many works are done about him. I would even argue that many of our modern superheroes to an extent are made to reflect Christ and I argue that they truly are superheroes only when they reflect Christ.

There are countless fields I could go into, but I think you get the point. Chances are, you know your field a lot better than I do. Whatever it is, do it for the glory of God. Be the best at it that you can be for his glory. If you’re a lawyer, be the best one you can be. If you’re a builder, build to his glory. If you’re a doctor, model the great physician. If you’re a teacher, model the great teacher. If you’re a chef, cook as if you were serving that meal to Christ.

Whatsoever you do, do it to his glory. Pray I’ll do the same.

Tonight, I’m in my philosophy class and we’re talking about Plotinus. Now in the midst of this, I have a few hundred ideas going on in my head and at any time, I can often think up a problem and say “That’s one I haven’t resolved yet” and think on it. I was thinking about one such as our professor talked about how Plotinus believed in a “One” that was unknowable through rationality ultimately and you really couldn’t say anything about it. (Which is something you can say about it. Those kinds of things are always difficult.)

How is the One known? It is known through mystical experience. Philosophy is seen as a way to get you closer to that experience. Plotinus did have this experience a few times in his life. It would not be wise of us to deny such. The question we could ask though is, “Can that experience tell us about reality external to it?” That’s not my topic tonight however.

Instead, my mind was ticking on to another thought. The church today is fascinated with experiences. It’s understandable. If someone talks about an angel visiting them everyone thinks “Wow. It’d be really cool if one visited me.” Of course, some people then will take any event and interpret it as an angelic encounter and then there’s another story going on. Now I believe in angels and I’m not saying they don’t visit us at all. I’m saying though we can breed experiences simply because we long to have these experiences that others are having.

I wonder then how many of us are making the experience the end goal. Experience should never be that though. Think about the other experiences you have. Why are some of you reading this blog? I hope it’s an experience on a quest for knowledge. You are reading this blog hopefully because you think I have some knowledge and you want to partake of that.

Let’s suppose you are having a meal as you read this blog. Why? You are doing that for the sake of nourishment. It seems that when you focus on eating though simply for pleasure, which isn’t the main end for which eating was established, then you get gluttony. This is an important point. There are accidental ends that go along with intended ends. The final cause of eating is to receive nourishment. That food often tastes good is not necessary to its nourishing you. It is what we call an “accident.”

One of the best examples of this though is in sex. (Some of you already knew I’d go there.) I’ve come to a conclusion in my thinking about the topic. (And dreaming and hoping and longing and, well, you get the picture.) It seems that when we say that we want sex, many of us I don’t think are saying we want simply an experience.

What is sexual intercourse after all? It is the joining of two bodies. Note that! You need another body. This is something that can’t be done alone. That body is the body of a person. It is part of who they are. I said earlier that if you used the food just for pleasure and made that the final end, it’d be gluttony. You do that with sex and it becomes lust.

Consider it this way. Are you using the experience of sex for the deeper knowledge of who the person is, or are you using sexual intercourse in order to come to a deeper appreciation of the other person? How you answer that question will be very revelatory about you. I’m not saying don’t enjoy the experience, but realize the purpose of the experience. Persons should not be used in that way.

What about the church? Are we really seeking knowledge of God or just an experience of him? Is God being used as a way to get to a divine experience? I’m not against having an experience if it happens like the beatific vision for instance. I’m simply wanting to make sure we have our priorities right. God won’t take anything seen as greater than him and that includes an experience.

There are three types of language that we use when speaking about God. By language, I don’t mean English, Spanish, French, etc. I mean rather the way we use the words that we say no matter what language they’re in. All of these were discussed in the Medieval period by Dons Scotus and Thomas Aquinas.

The first is univocal. Let us take the word love as an example. If I were to be seeing my family again at Christmas and I see my Mom and say “I love you Mom” and were then to see my Dad and say “I love you Dad”, it is not likely anyone would think that I mean something different by the word love in each case. I love my Mom and my Dad the same way.

On the other hand, in English, we know love can take on a number of other meanings which is really a deficit in the English language. I cannot say I love my friends the same way that I love my parents. I definitely cannot say I love my friends or parents the way I’d love a significant other of the opposite sex. I finally cannot say I love any of these the way I am to love God. When the same word is used and the meaning is differnt, then we have what is called equivocal language.

There is a third type and that is analogical language. There is a similarity but a difference. Scotus and Aquinas went back and forth on this, though not literally as they didn’t live at the same time exactly, but their writings show a discussion over the ideas. Scotus was worried that if our words don’t mean the same thing when describing God, then all God-language is meaningless, but Aquinas knew that there had to be some difference between us and God.

The answer is that the concepts that we speak of are univocal, but the application of them is analogical. We can speak of the wisdom of God for instance. Wisdom is meant univocally. It’s not something completely different for God than it is for us. However, when it comes to application, it’s analogical. We are wise finitely and God is infinite wisdom.

What does this have to do with the approach to God?

My prayer time for me is the last thing before I turn out the lights at night. I am finding it a more and more exciting time. I find this quite odd and some of you I’m sure can relate. Why is it that I enjoy that time so much, but I find it hard to come and do that which I enjoy so much? One would think it second nature. One would also think it easy to fall back to sleep when I wake up in the middle of the night just by coming to that place of joy again. Both times there seems to be a disconnect and I’m skeptical to it being a disconnect of the same nature each time.

Yet as I pray, I find the words of my prayer being totally inadequate and realize that the God I am addressing is far greater than I thought. We must realize this with Scripture also. It speaks in this language as well that if we took it literally many times, we would be in trouble. It would leave us with some false notions of God. The metaphor is there though to paint a symbol for us of a far more beautiful picture.

Take the passage about boldly approaching the throne of grace. We are told to do that. Consider this though. Do you literally come to a throne? Is God literally sitting on a throne? Is there a place where you go and then you are with God and in another place, God is not there? While I believe God’s presence can be made manifest in a certain area, I also hold to the omnipresence of God and believe that he is in all places.

Instead, I try to realize now that I am not so much coming to him as I am realizing where I already am. Reality clicks in and I realize that God is present and he has always been present. If only I would see him present more often. It would make struggles I have with sin be far more easier and would increase my dedication through long work hours or other forms of suffering.

The throne is to remind me of who he is. He is the king of the universe. He is the originator of the cosmos. He is the creator and sustainer of all life. He is the sovereign master who oversees it all. He is omnipotent. He reigns. I am told to approach the throne, but may I never lose sight of what is meant by that throne.

It could be frankly that sometimes, we have a hard time believing in and trusting God because we haven’t taken a good idea of who he is. We’ve made God so small today that we don’t really consider how awesome it is that such a being exists and what an impact that makes. If God can be taken away from one’s life and there is little or no change ultimately in the worldview, one has to wonder how much impact God was making before. Nietzsche got this right. Take away God and there are consequences and he made sure we knew what those were. 

Now many of us might not be at that point, but are we much better? Do we have the knowledge of who God is as a vibrant reality in our lives that shapes all we do, or does God just occupy one small little portion of our worldview? If you’re wondering if this blogger thinks he’s there yet, rest assured, he’s not. I speak to myself as much as I speak to all of you.

As an intellectual, I also realize a great danger that I face. When doing theology, while I should be intellectual, it is very easy to come to God as if I am a great master of knowledge approaching a subject for study. It is just the reverse. I should come to God realizing that I am a subject and I am approaching the great master. Humility needs to be a huge part of the approach to God.

Consider another case. What if I say I am now approaching him? I am now for me, but God has always been there. My ideas of time and space bind me so much that I cannot help but see them as I approach God. I find it so difficult to fathom a God who lives in an eternal now and is doing all things that he is doing at one moment and holds all knowledge about me at this time, past, present, and future.

Have you stopped to think lately how awesome he is?

If our prayers are nonchalant, maybe it could be because we don’t realize who we’re praying to. If our Christian life is not one that we are growing in grace and truth, maybe we don’t realize who our teacher is. If our Bibles aren’t teaching us truths, maybe we don’t realize who it is that is really the mind behind them.

And yes, I speak to myself as much as you. I need to improve as well.

I don’t know when your time is for prayer, but I hope you have one. Next time you go, consider to whom you are going.

Once again, I remind my readers that this is something to get your feet wet on the topic. I am allowing you to sample the truths of the faith in the hopes that you will go buy a full-course meal. The last time, I talked about the What of God and tonight, I would like to focus on the Who in Christian thought since I believe only Christian theism can explain all the facets of our world.

A number of readers might know already where I’m going specifically who are astute in theology. For one, there is a characteristic of God in Christian thought that I left out of the list yesterday as it is the focus today. I’m hoping some of you caught that as it is one of my favorite doctrines to discuss. The other clue I left was in the doctrine of the love of God.

For those wondering, I am referring to the doctrine of the Trinity. I believe if we want to know who God is, the answer is “Trinity.” This is something unlike the other religions of the world. Let us be clear at this point. This is a deep doctrine and one very hard for us to fathom and if you tell me that you can comprehend it, then the obvious truth is that you don’t have a clue.

The doctrine is that there is one God who exists in three persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Father is not the Son or Spirit. The Son is not the Father or Spirit. The Spirit is not the Father or Son. All three are distinct persons that eternally exist in a relationship outside of space and time. This explains the doctrine of love for God is love within himself in the relationship of the Trinity and humanity is created so they can be invited to join into that love.

In understanding the Father, we look to the Son. We are told that to see the Son is to see the Father. (John 14:9) This isn’t about modalism though. This is about showing Jesus as the image of the invisible God. (Colossians 1:15.) If you want to know what the nature of deity is like, look at Jesus, and if you have an idea that contradicts Jesus, then it is wrong. What is so beautiful is that our idea of what humanity is meant to be is in Jesus also. Jesus gives us the best of both worlds.

John 1:18 tells us that the Son has revealed the Father. The word used is interesting. It’s the very word that we get the word exegesis from. Exegesis is the process of studying a text and showing the meaning that is in that text. Jesus is, in essence, the one who exegetes the Father. We know the Father as he has spoken through his Word in Christ. (John 1:1.)

All of this though refers to Jesus in his deity. In his humanity, it is known that he had limitations. Philippians 2 indicates he took on some kind of limitation. I am not espousing a kenotic theory of course. I would say it is most likely that Jesus forsook the divine prerogative use of his deity. In essence, he played the game from a weaker position. 

Christ is the king who bends down to lift us all up high. As Peter Kreeft has said, “He stoops to conquer.” He comes down to man so he can bring us all up to God. In his becoming fully human, he enables us to become fully human. In taking on our death, he enables us to take on life. In assuming our sin, he enables us to assume his righteousness.

The Holy Spirit is one that is often hard to understand for us. Many of us not of a charismatic bent in fact can get defensive when the Holy Spirit is named. It has been said one message Pentecostals have taught all other denominations well is “Don’t forget the Holy Spirit!” I am not a charismatic, but I do believe that the rest of us do need to work on a doctrine of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit does a lot more than giving gifts to us. He is the comforter, the one who comes alongside us, and the one who intercedes on our behalf in prayer. (Romans 8:26-27) Jesus said that he would have the Holy Spirit here for us in his physical absence from Earth, and in fact said it would be better. We should be delighting in this person of the Trinity and seeking to know all that we can about him. 

Yet for many of us, the view is hazy, and I will confess I am one such. We can picture Christ easily. Even with the Father, though we are not to image him, we seem to do so. We can picture someone as an Ancient of Days ruling the cosmos. When it comes to the Holy Spirit, we don’t usally know where to begin. It is often a cloud or a vapor of some sort.

One image I do think of is the Shekinah glory that filled the temple in 1 Kings. Of course, this does lead to the vapor or cloud image to an extent, but at least I can form some idea in my mind. The idea shows the great holiness of the Spirit as not even the priests could enter because of the sheer holiness. I also think this Shekinah was present in the person of Christ as he walked this Earth.

Do I have a full doctrine of the Holy Spirit yet? No. Sadly, I don’t think many of us Protestants do. Gordon Fee has written on the doctrine from a charismatic perspective in “God’s Enabling Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul.” It is an excellent work, but I would also like to see the doctrine gather interest in non-Pentecostal circles. Surely those of us from other denominations have our own insights as well and we must thank the Pentecostals for waking us up to the fact that there is a Holy Spirit. 

The Trinity is the foundation for all we believe and to know who God is, you need to know Trinity. The more you dive into the Trinity, the deeper I believe you enter into the rich life of God and appreciate his truth now. At this time, I am working on a research paper on a philosophical defense of the Trinity and reading St. Augustine’s “The Trinity.” I am finding it quite fascinating on many points.

For others wanting to go further, I recommend books such as “The Forgotten Trinity” by James White, “Knowing the Name of God” by Roderick Leupp, and of course, Augustine and other church fathers.

Once again for this blog, I want to have the disclaimer be clear. What I say is not meant to be extensive. If anything, I am wanting to tickle your appetite. I want you to get your feet wet and go swimming deeper into the ocean yourself. I suspect many of you could be like me and you like something you hold in your hand and what you read online is a supplement as it were to that. At this point, I have no books published that I can point to for your further consideration. That could change in the future, and I have been encouraged to go that way and it is something I think about, 

Yesterday, I discussed the “That” of God, and today, I’d like to discuss the “What”. Some of you might be wondering what the difference is between what and who. Let us suppose you described me in “what” terminology only. What would that include? It would include male, weight, height, body type, age, race, and other physical characteristics. What can tell you what someone can see if they see me walking down the street generally. 

If we get to the who, it is clear that the who does not change the what of my existence, but it gives you something deeper into my existence. The who will include things like “Loves philosophy and apologetics, tries to watch a Smallville every night, particularly shy around many people and not a socialite, loves the intellectual domain, willing to challenge someone at a game of Super Smash Brothers Brawl, etc.” 

Nothing changed with the what of my existence. Notice there are also better potentials for relationship if you know more about me. Let us suppose you are reading this blog and your only contact with me is through the internet. You could know me well. Suppose you talked with me there. You will know me better. Suppose though that you saw me in person. You’ll see sides of me that you can’t see through a computer. My parents know me in one way and they know me well. We all know though that our relationship with our parents is also different than that with our friends and so I could say my roommate, who is my closest friend as I’ve said, could very well know me better in some ways than they do.

Tonight though, we’re going to go into the what and this will include ideas that come from the doctrine of God. Largely, I’m wanting to jump off from Aquinas’s first argument with God as a being of pure actuality. What do I mean by that? Actuality is what something is. Potentially is what something could be. I am, in actuality, sitting. I have the potential to stand. I have just stood up, and now, I am sitting down again. (When you have a steel rod on your spine and your keyboard isn’t even waist high, typing hunched down is not pleasant.) Thus, I actualized a potential to become standing and then actualized potential again to sit. At this point, I again have the potential to stand, though I certainly choose not to at this point.

God is a being of pure actuality. He cannot change in any way. He cannot make progress or degress. If he had potential, then he would need an explanation just as much as the universe does. While Anselm may not have been right on the Ontological Argument, I believe he was accurate in that God is the greatest possible being that can be conceived.

Note also that each of these doctrines of God could be a blog post in itself.

Aquinas started with simplicity. A lot of people are really stunned when I tell them that I believe God is simple. “But God is so hard to understand and he’s so awesome! How can you say he’s simple?” Please note when I say simple, I am not speaking of simple in relation to the human understanding of him. None of us can say we comprehend the nature of God. As has been said, we are fleas sitting on the back of an elephant. 

Simplicity means simply that God and his attributes are not separate things. God is what he has. He does not have truth but is truth. These are attributes that do not exist external to him. They are him. There is not this thing called goodness and this thing called goodness is conjoined to God. Instead, the case is that God is goodness. 

If God is pure actuality, then that would mean also that what he is, he is infinitely and/or completely. He cannot be more good. He cannot be more powerful. He cannot be more knowledgable or wise or loving, etc. Also important is to consider that with the nature of God, God is the only being whose very nature is to exist necessarily. If the Christian God is, and I believe he is of course, he is necessarily. (And there is a fine difference between that and the Ontological Argument.)

Let us also consider power. By power, it is meant that God can do all that can be done by power. I am not going to dare assert that God can make a square circle. A lot of you might be wondering about the classic question “Can God make a rock so big he can’t lift it?” The best answer I have ever heard on this came from Dr. Gary Habermas.

“No.”

It’s that simple. The question is involving a logical contradiction. 

What about omniscience? I take this to mean that God knows all true propositions. For my open theist friends, this also includes future propositions. God knows, for instance, who is going to win the election on November 4th. He knows it just as well as I know the fact that I am typing on my keyboard at this moment. He knows it all from an eternal now.

This brings us to God’s eternity. It means that God can act in time, but God is by nature outside of time. He does not grow old. He does not change. What God is doing, he is eternally doing. He is at this moment creating the world, bringing about the flood, destroying Sodom and Gomorrah, judging the world, and blessing the saints in their after-death. We experience these things temporally, but God is doing them all at once. Were he not, he would be temporal.

I also brought up his immutability, meaning that he cannot change. This follows since he has no potential. What God is, he always is. Personally, this is one of my favorite concepts I think of when I think of God. It makes me realize that with all the hectic nonsense I often have going on in my life, at the end of the day when I pray, which becomes a more exciting time as things go along, I realize that there is a foundation of all things that I can always rely on.

Of course, I would have to speak of the love of God in that God is eternally loving. When we get to the who of God, this will be explained in a far more in-depth way. Some of you are probably already thinking ahead and realizing just how that is going to be and what makes Christian theism unique in that. For now, it will simply suffice to say that God loves all that corresponds to his moral nature. I theorize, and again this is just theorizing at this point, that something is able to experience the love of God to the degree that they correspond to him morally. 

While it’s not often mentioned, I would like to mention the beauty of God. For many believers, and I should think it would be the case for all, one of the great desires of the after-death is to look into the face of Christ, to see him who is the image of the invisible God, and behold the great beauty that is inherent in his person. Beauty captivates many of us today and I sometimes find myself amazed when I think that with all the beauty I see here, it all is practically hideous in comparison to the source of its beauty.

God is also a God of justice, which is something that is not liked to hear by many of our skeptical friends today. We often want a God who will come and heal us when we are sick and take care of the problems in our life, but we don’t like it when God comes and judges the sin that we have in our lives. A lot of people don’t really like a God who acts like one. God is just though and just as much as he loves that which corresponds to his nature, he must judge that which directly contradicts his moral nature as well.

With all of this, we have a good idea of what God is. Who is God though? What is he like? For that, we will have to look at how he has revealed himself and especially in the person of Christ. That is for our next installment.

Last night, I said that we’d be discussing various topics on the doctrine of God. Note of course that nothing I say here will be exhaustive. If you want something in-depth on the topic, I recommend getting a good Systematic Theology. I have read both Geisler’s and Erickson’s and I can recommend both of them. What I plan to do is just touch on the surface. 

I was pondering this last night though and trying to decide of the distinctions in the doctrine of God. I have this in mind also because I am in constant debates online and one of them right now is on God’s revelation. The question of “Why hasn’t he made himself clear?” I find this to be an odd question though as some people will say that they can doubt his existence.

This might sound like a shock to you, but I think you can doubt the obvious.

We owe a lot to Rene Descartes. Unfortunately, it’s not good. There’s a reason his work, “A Discourse of Method,” is included as one of the books that screwed up the world. (The list comes from Benjamin Wiker’s book “10 Books that Screwed Up The World And Five Others That Didn’t Help.” My roommate gave me that book for my birthday and I consider it a very important book everyone should read.)

Descartes gave us the idea of doubting everything to find what was true and if it could be doubted, then it wouldn’t be clung to. His end was that he couldn’t doubt he was doubting so he based everything on “I think, therefore I am.” (What happens when you’re asleep or unconscious and not thinking?) Great. Now the idea of what we can rely on is based all on our subjective experience starting with us. 

Descartes even had doubt of the existence of the material world. Now I would say the existence of the material world is obvious and I think most of you would also. There are people who will say they doubt it. What do you say? This is the kind of place where one of my professors says “Well if they doubt reality, it’s best to just go out for pizza then because if reality won’t convince them, what will?”

To me, the existence of God is obvious. In fact, this is the way it is for most of the world. Most people now and throughout history have believed that this world isn’t all that there is. They have been theists of some sort. Now someone might say “They haven’t been Christians though have they?” To this, I must answer, “No, they haven’t.”

As if that was ever the point….

No one is saying by the idea that God’s existence is obvious that that means everyone has always known that the Triune God has or will reveal himself in Jesus Christ. (Will for those B.C. people) What is being said is that people have believed that there is something more than what they see with their own eyes.

The question then is, what are they doing with this idea? Are they willing to follow the idea and seek for the truth instead of settling for worldviews they might hold and realize that they are false? Could it be that there are many people out there who haven’t yet got to hear the gospel but realize the worldview around them is false and are crying out for something real? I believe that those who are such will get the gospel be it by a missionary or some supernatural means. If not, it could be many will arrive in glory one day and look in the face of Christ and say “It was you I was seeking all along was it?”

Of course, I question how many of them that can be so I definitely fully endorse missionary action to bring the gospel to as many people as possible. 

This is the first question that must be answered though in our  discussions. THAT God is. I’m not even going into the nature of the God that is there. It could be Plato’s demiurge that was a finite god now for all I care. The only point to establish is that there is something out there beyond us. What that something is, as who will come later, is a question for another blog.

I think it was Aristotle who told us the three most important things to do in telling a story. You need to begin at the beginning, continue through the middle, and finish at the end. That works well for stories. It also works well for arguments. I mentioned in last night’s blog debating someone who was dealing with dbout and what I tried to do was to go to the beginning. 

What is that beginning? Who is God? It’s amazing that we leap into so many thorny issues in relation to moralityand how God relates to that without deciding who he is. Consider if we were discussing the Problem of Evil. If we have a finite godism concept, then the problem of evil makes sense. Of course, it also becomes a real problem then as we can’t really be sure if God will overcome it in the end. If we have the Christian God, it’s not so much a problem as it is a mystery. Let’s suppose we have good reason to believe God has revealed himself in Christ, which we do. If we grant that, then we have to say, “Why evil?” It doesn’t destroy our faith then, but just presents a mystery. (Naturally, for those who don’t believe God has revealed himself in Christ, it counts as a problem.)

Our concept of God changes everything. Take the issue I was discussing with someone, the doctrine of Hell. If we’re going to look at this doctrine, we have to realize that it will be looked at from a Christian framework. It’s saying “Even if I grant everything else in your system, can you really say that Hell is a proper doctrine to believe in?”

Please note how that is worded. When I talk about Hell, I want to be sure that I give no one the impression that I like the doctrine of Hell. I don’t. Dwight L. Moody once said that if anyone ever preaches on Hell, there’d better be tears in his eyes. I’m not sure if I am at that point yet, but I certainly hope I am someday.

I was on an internet chat program one day when a friend contacted me. Our troops had just slain the sons of Saddam Hussein. My friend was pleased that we’d finally eliminated those two evil men. I had to say “You know, I’m glad that they’re not going to be around to inflict pain on anyone else, but I’m also sorrowful because I know two more people have entered Hell and there’s no escape.”

I say that because it is true. Hell should never be a doctrine that brings us delight. Too many Christians give the impression that when the fires of Hell are burning some of their enemies, they want to be right over them roasting marshmallows. I believe we can delight in justice and truth, but the suffering of others, not really. I also don’t think we can say it brings delight to God that people are in Hell, but that’s their choice.

And yes, we will look more at this thorny issue at a later date.

However, if you’re going to discuss Hell, you have to start again with God which is what we too often don’t do. Our arguments usually begin in a rather silly way when you think about it. Consider the Problem of Evil. An atheist would say “Well, if I was God, I could find a much better way to do X.” Oh? Really? You mean there’s no chance that if you suddenly stepped outside of time and had omniscience that you might just think that God has the right idea?

“Well, I wouldn’t like to suffer like that, so surely God wouldn’t allow that.”

It is quite frankly tiring to hear such things. It has been said that many people do wish to serve God, but only as advisors. When I come to the Problem of Evil, I have to look and consider “God knows the end from the beginning. Who am I, this finite being of limited intelligence bound by time to tell him he’s doing it wrong?” That doesn’t mean I don’t think we can’t make our requests known to God or even our complaints, but I do think it means we shouldn’t expect the master of the universe to change everything around just to make us happy.

What’s our concept of God? Maybe it’s time we looked at that. It could make many of the other issues much more understandable.

Last night, I was up later than I should be discussing, or more like debating, with someone who was having some doubts about his Christian faith. It hinged around Calvinism. Now I am not a Calvinist, but I have many brothers and sisters in Christ who are. It brought to mind though something we must all remember when we approach God.

First off, none of us knows God entirely. We all have some wrong beliefs about God. We should seek to get rid of as many of them as we can, but in our finite capacities, it’s highly likely that any of us this side of eternity will have fully correct knowledge of God. Even though we are limited even, it’s doubtful that all the knowledge we have will be correct.

There is a great danger though in saying “Well, if that’s the way God is, I could never worship him.” The danger is that that’s the only God you have! Is it really rational to say, “I don’t like the concept of God in Christianity, so I will become a naturalist instead.”? It’s hardly valid to say God doesn’t exist just because you don’t like something about him.

We have to get past this notion that truth is what we like. There are some things I don’t like about Christianity. In fact, it’s probably a good thing because Christianity is not an easy religion. When I see a beautiful lady, I don’t like the command of Christianity that says that sexual intercourse is to be reserved for marriage. It would be so nice to write that off.

When I realize that I have to go to work the next day, I may often have this great urge to call in sick and take sick pay. Unfortunately, there’s this command against lying. I don’t like the command. In fact, at the time, I like the idea of breaking the command. I do it though because I know that the command is the true path to happiness.

So what of God? One has to ask himself, and we should all ask ourselves indeed, “Am I really seeking for the God who is there or am I seeking for the God who I want to be there?” In our day and age, it’s liked to have a god who is there to take away all your troubles but then goes back to his own little corner of the world and lets you go out and have your fun. Many people today do not like the thought of a God who acts like one, which includes such minor details as judging evil. (Well, we don’t usually mind judging someone who’s done evil to us! Just leave us alone thanks!)

God is unlikely to change for you and frankly, why should he? It seems we are so self-centered today that we think it appropriate for God to meet our standards, but we don’t think anything about changing ourselves to meet his. As I told this person yesterday who was talking about Hell as well, it does not surprise me that some people go to Hell. What should be surprising to us is that not all people go to Hell. He could send us all there and who could say he was wrong to do so?

When we think about God, and I believe our highest good is to contemplate the nature of God, are we wanting to see him as he is. Are we willing to give up some of our beliefs about him if we find them to be inaccurate of our view of who he is? If you are a Calvinist, are you willing to forsake it if you find it to be false? If you are an Arminian, are you willing to forsake it if you find it to be false? I’m not saying to not have a position, but I’m saying to be open in your position always. 

We are warned against making images of God. Our danger today is not often physical images but mental ones that do not reflect him. Are you making sure you’re doing what you can to avoid false ideas of God so you can worship him as he is? He won’t change for you, but hopefully, you’ll be willing to change for him.