Worship As Fellowship

"...I am like a green olive tree in the house of God; I trust in the lovingkindness of God forever and ever. I will give You thanks forever, because You have done it. And I will wait on your name, for it is good, in the presence of Your godly ones.   Psalm 52:8-9  NASB

Psalm 52 is a study in contrasts. It begins looking at the evil person (as summarized in v. 7) and ends looking at the faithful, godly one. The boasts of the two are contrasted, as is their desire, their faith, and the reaction they get from God. A remarkable feature of the godly one is that he gets to hang out in the presence of God with other godly ones and worship. Worship as fellowship, imagine that!

Worship is fellowship with God

The faithful one is cast as a green olive tree in the house of God. That would seem a rather passive symbol, but there's much to recommend it. It is green, which means it is full of vitality. It is a tree, so its place is its place of abiding--trees don't come and go--it dwells in God's presence. It is an olive tree which means its fruitfulness provides oil which produces both sustenance and light.

An olive tree planted in the Temple grounds is in the happy situation of dwelling in the light of God. There it flourishes as a result of hanging out in the presence of God. It has abundant life flowing within and productive life blossoming and ripening without. It is alive as live can be, resting in the lovingkindness of God, but is there any action? 

Yes, there is--praising. "I will give you thanks" (as in the NASB above) would probably be bettered rendered as "I will praise you" (as in the NIV). The Hebrew word underlying the English translation comes from a root which means "casting" or "throwing" and which came to be used figuratively of the act of praising. In worship we cast our thanks, we cast our wonder, and we cast our submission to or upon God. 

When the faithful one is fellowshipping with God, planted like a tree in his presence, that one showers God with love and gratitude. Not a surprising response, given the wonder of who God is, it could hardly be helped. To fellowship with God is to break out in praise. Maybe we could jump to the conclusion and say by extension: to truly worship is to fellowship with God.

Worship is fellowship with God's people

That green tree planted in the temple of God is not alone. Others are present as well, godly people looking to God. Praise can be done alone, but is not something reserved for solitude. As for the individual, so too for the group: faithful people in the presence of God can hardly keep from breaking forth in praise. To truly worship in congress is to fellowship with God and man.

I think our fellowship with one another is missing something without genuine worship being part of our shared experience. Not all of our fellowship has to be centered around worship, but it is a dynamic that is healthy for us as individuals and as a body. Together, we are the temple of God. Worship is our fellowship.

Omnipresence and Omniscience Entail Omnitemporality

If it is true that God is both omnipresent and omniscient, then he must also be omnitemporal.

Omnipresence requires that each point in creation (or space, if you'd like) is accessible to God with equal facility. More to the point, everywhere is actually always before God, though God himself is not circumscribed by creation or in any way actually "in" it. God is transcendent and immutable, so for every point in creation God is what he is at once without variation or locus.

Everywhere in space is in a state of fluctuation from the quantum level up. Nothing is static, everything is in motion and changing. To be omnipresent and unchanging, God has to be the same everywhere despite that constant fluctuation. Change, itself a time construct, is experienced with time relative to motion (which we know thanks to Einstein). As a result, I am led to the conclusion that God must be omnitemporal if he is omnipresent.

Omniscience requires that everything that can be known is known by God. If, in any instant, God is unaware, or ignorant of some knowable thing, he would cease to be omniscient. Omniscience, it would seem, precludes discovery. If that is so, it follows that God knows all that he has known or will ever know at once, or at least at once upon any decision to act.

Knowledge grows with the passage of time. Not in the sense that new facts come to light as time goes on, but that new facts, correlated with time passing, come into being. There is constantly, in every instant, something new to know. The result, I think, is that God could not be perfect in knowledge if his knowledge was dependent upon time. Therefore (by definition alone), God must be omnitemporal if he is omniscient.

Therefore, omnitemporality is entailed in omnipresence and omniscience. We can't have one without without the others. To that end, God's omnitemporality could be understood to be that such that every instant in time is before God at once. God is not "in" time nor subject to it, but rather is transcendent to time and unfettered by it, and he knows its entirety from start to finish.

Why Neither Molinism nor Determinism Can Be True

"Because they have forsaken Me and have made this an alien place and have burned sacrifices in it to other gods, that neither they nor their forefathers nor the kings of Judah had ever known, and because they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent and have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, a thing which I never commanded or spoke of, nor did it ever enter My mind"    Jeremiah 19:4-5   NASB

Molinism and Theological Determinism suffer from the same scriptural and fatal flaw, in my mind. Either regimen has to say something about how God thinks that he doesn't say of himself. We don't know, nor can we know how God thinks. We have what he tells us about himself, and that is it.

In the passage above, God tells us something about how he thinks, namely that the brutal, idolatrous infanticide practiced by apostate Jews was something that never entered his cogitations. It was not something that found it's way into his thinking nor something that arose because of his thinking. This was solely existent because of the agency of the Jews in question. God had no prior involvement, as it were.

This conclusion depends, to a degree, upon how one reads this text, there is some ambiguity in it. The general context of the passage is God's decrial through Jeremiah of a sin incomprehensibly out of place given Israel's history and God's word to them. As I see it, the extension in thought (v. 5) intended to be communicated by the author was something along the line of: "I did not command such a thing be done, I never spoke of such a thing, nor has such a thing ever even entered my mind." In other words, the antecedent of the understood "it" in that last phrase is the horrific act of infanticide, not the act of commanding or speaking.

Even if the antecedent of the understood "it" in that last phrase were to be seen to be referring to the action of God commanding or speaking (i.e., "nor did it ever enter my mind to command such, or speak of such"), there would still be an issue concerning God's decrees. If all is only as God decreed, as either Molinism or Calvinism would affirm, then the Israelites were, in effect, commanded (decreed) to burn their children from before time began and it did, in fact, enter God's mind to speak (decree) of it. His disclaimer through Jeremiah would be a disingenuous protest at best if Molinism or Calvinism were true--merely crocodile tears.

On either Theological Determinism or Molinism, my reading, which I think reflects what was the original intent, could not possibly be true. In both regimens, "it" would have had to enter God's mind before this world was actualized (which would actually be the case regardless of how one interprets that "it"). Therefore, for either system to be true, this passage would have to be false. The Word says, "let God be true and everyman a liar," so Molinism as well as Determinism must be tossed into the ash can, as far as I can see.

Worship: Sing in the Presence of God

The series so far: Pause, Repent, Arise, Inhale and with this article, Sing.

Praise the Lord. Praise the name of the Lord; praise him, you servants of the Lord, you who minister in the house of the Lord, in the courts of the house of our God. Praise the Lord, for the Lord is good; sing praise to his name, for that is pleasant.     Psalm 135:1-3  (NIV)

Self-consciousness can be the enemy of true worship. It is stirred naturally in the repentance phase as a consequence of the light of God, but it is not a condition the worshipper can stay in and proceed with worship. Our gaze must rise to look upon God thereafter. Worship is, after all, a God-conscious thing.

Some folk feel very self-consciousness in public, and if so, singing in a congregational setting (particularly if it is small) can be a non-starter. However, part of being a true worshipper, the kind that God seeks, is getting beyond ourselves, our nervousness and self-consciousness, to focus ourselves on God and sing. Even the self-conscious, self-admittedly bad singer, even the non-singer, will end up being a singer if they come into the presence of God to worship. When all is said and done, the likelihood is that the experience, if followed to it's ultimate conclusion, will have been found to have been exhilarating.

And there really is no way out of this, it is a biblical mandate. Within the Bible's book of songs (Psalms), there are 70 references (at least) either calling on believers to sing or referring to it as an appropriate response to God. There are several in the New Testament too, as well as the recording of incidences in which key figures sang before God. Jesus and the disciples sang hymns; Paul and Silas sang praise to God; angels sing around the throne of God; and people that have been welcomed into God's presence sing.

Let's be honest, it is not like singing should be that difficult for us. We sing at birthdays, we sing in the shower, we sing driving the car, we sing at ballgames, even drunks sing! But whereas we are never to be drunk, we are most certainly to sing!

"Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ."    Ephesians 5:18-20  (NIV)

Singing is just something the saved do--singing is part of being in the breath (Spirit) of God.

Now, there are two basic biblical varieties of singing in worship (with one variety having two further subcategories).  We sing with the mind and we sing with the Spirit (i.e. in tongues). Singing with the mind is further subdivided into songs that are already known, that is previously composed, and spontaneous songs (new) which are improvised. Every song sung in the Spirit (tongues) is a new song.

So, the worship of God is going to be a singing affair. Some of the songs sung will be planned, some will be spontaneous. Singing isn't the only aspect of worship, but there is no avoiding singing as part of worship. Singing in worship is not about us, it's about God--a vehicle through which God-consciousness can be expressed in the worshipping believer.

We'll be singing in the presence of God throughout eternity. The good news is that we can enter into that heavenly occupation now!

Worship: Take a Deep Breath

We have been looking into the subject of worship. The series so far: Pause, Repent, Arise, and with this post--Inhale.

“Build up, build up, prepare the road! Remove the obstacles out of the way of my people.” For this is what the high and exalted One says—he who lives forever, whose name is holy: “I live in a high and holy place, but also with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.     Isaiah 57:14-15  (NIV)

We instinctively hold our breath when something astonishing happens. Something which catches us by surprise, or hits us with shock tends to take our breath away. I remember the trips to the dump to get rid of the garbage while I was staying with my grandparents in northern Maine when I was a teenager. Even before we could tell otherwise, a sudden increase in flies was sufficient to tell us we were getting close. Then came the smell--youch, literally!

I would go into hibernation mode, breathing as little as possible, because the smell was so strong it was a shock to the system. You know what I did when we were finally clear of the dump? Whooosh, the biggest inhalation of fresh air I could take. That made it feel like all was well on planet earth once again. When we've gone from misery to joy it's time to inhale!

There is a refreshing for the soul that comes to one who's continued beyond the sin revealing light of God's presence. There is a breath that our soul can breathe and that is the breath of God. It is a spirit thing. Whether in Hebrew or Greek, the word translated "spirit", as in the text above (vs. 15), is the same as the word for breath. The text above tells us that a soul that is contrite is enlivened (revived) in breath (spirit) because of God's nearness. It is, in fact, God's nearness that causes the quickening.

I used to do a lot of spelunking when I was young. I don't like closed-in places so the challenge of meeting my fears gave the activity a certain allure. After you've spent a couple of hours mucking around in the dark, crawling on your knees and belly, doing contortions and squeezing through holes and cracks, you start getting a little anxious. When the decision is made to leave, you move with purpose!

Climbing out doesn't take near as long as slithering in. When you finally clear the entrance and can stand once more and see sky above you, let me tell you, you take it in with gusto. You suck all the air in around you for several cubic meters. All is good, you're truly alive, and your massive inhalation is your effort to get as much of that invigorating moment and experience in you as you possibly can.

When we come into God's presence, having paused, repented, and arisen, it's time to inhale for all we're worth! Breathe in the breath (Spirit) of God and take in the wonder and the presence of God deep into your soul. We find relief, release and the joy of our souls in the presence of the God who welcomes and accepts us. And as we breathe in, we realize,"now, this is life!"

It is astonishing to find ourselves in the presence of God, cleansed and accepted. Oh the grace that brings us welcomed into the king's chamber! In that place, God revives our soul's breath. He quickens our spirit. We know the joy of being alive with God, and that joy begins to spring up in a fountain of thankfulness and wonder.

So, in that place before God, having arisen, open your heart and soul and inhale. Take a deep breath. Breathe freely the breath of life that God so freely gives to revive your soul, and let the joy of the Lord rise up within you and spill out.

Worship: The Repentance Threshold

In the noted passage below, the prophet Isaiah finds himself in the very presence of God. His experience is an analog for what we've been discussing starting with the last post concerning worship, so let's look into it...

"In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.” At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.

“Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.” Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”     Isaiah 6:1-7  (NIV)

I said in my last article that we must stop everything we're doing and know that God is in order to worship. When we let this faith perspective predominate our thoughts and action, let it consume every other concern, we find ourselves becoming very aware of God's presence. As we recognize and acknowledge God's presence by faith, our awareness of him clarifies and the light and glory of God shines upon the heart and mind of the worshipper. The worshipper, in effect, "sees" God in a fashion analogous to Isaiah's.

In the light of God's presence, the worshipper "sees" God, but that light also shines revealingly on the worshipper. He or she becomes aware of God, but consequently also becomes aware of his or her own shortcomings, flaws, and sinfulness. The light of God reveals God, but also brings into stark contrast the darkness and shadows of the human soul. In that circumstance, Isaiah's cry was, "Woe is me!"

There is nothing that so reveals the heart as the mouth. Jesus said that every empty word that spills out of it was bound to be judged. In God's presence, the reality of this, I think, struck Isaiah where he stood and became his undoing. How could a man of unclean lips hope to survive in the presence of God, the "holy, holy, holy"?

Our response is much the same as we come into the presence of God in worship. We're not only God aware, but in the glaring light of his glory we are self-aware as well. Our every failing and fault is illumined and we're struck by how much we're truly at odds with God, unlike him and unworthy of him. Our hearts melt at the contrast. All that one can do in the face of such a crushing revelation is to decry one's unworthiness with remorse.

In God's presence, we see the absolute wonder of God but we also see by that light all that's ungodly about ourselves. Godly excitement turns into godly sorrow. It would be depressing if that was all the further it went. In the light of God Isaiah was undone, but not done, and neither are we though we may fall crumpled in his presence.

Our sorrow, our regret and remorse do not carry the day. Just as the angel told Isaiah, "Your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for," so do we have a token of assurance of redemption and reconciliation. Despite all that we are and all we are not, we're touched by the grace of God and remain in the light of God's presence just as Isaiah did. The awareness of sinfulness was not the cue to drop the staff and woosh away the sinner like a bad act in a vaudeville show.

There is in God's presence a grace that can deal with what ails us. A grace that can take the stains upon us and wash them away, and allow us to stay, welcomed and accepted in the very presence of God. The awareness of weakness, of failure, of sinfulness is never comfortable, particularly in the glaring light of God's goodness, but it is therapeutic. Instead of being swept under the carpet to fester, our sinfulness and weakness is brought out in the light, recanted, and then swept away.

When we pause to recognize God's presence, and by faith become absorbed in the reality of his existence, we will find not only the thrill of seeing God but the agony of seeing ourselves by his light. Our wonder turns into discomfort. That is no reason to avoid his presence, though that might seem easier or more preferable to the flesh. As wonder turns to discomfort, so discomfort turns into joy when we allow our transparence in his presence to be touched by his fire.

It is my conviction that we cannot grow apart from this experience, certainly not to the depths God would have us to. The experience of God's presence in worship changes us like the experience of God's presence changed Isaiah, so long as we are willing to step across the repentance threshold. So pause to recognize God, embrace the painful conviction that may well ensue, acknowledge the ruin of your waywardness, and God will cleanse you and leave you standing before him afterward, ready to be spoken to.

The Problem of Physical Evil

Why does an omnibenevolent, omnipotent God allow evil such latitude in our age? That God will judge such in a time to come, and cause it to cease thereafter forever is an answer, but it seems a marginal one at best to those living through this age. And to be honest, eternal judgment in the Lake of Fire for the evil done temporally seems only to exacerbate the problem, fighting evil with evil for all intents and purposes. Natural evil--catastrophes, pestilence, genetic abnormalities--seems capricious and only adds to the miserable mystery.

Physical evil certainly is a vexing problem. It rains (too much or too little) on the just and the unjust, earthquakes do not shake merely the morally shaky, tornadoes have been known to sweep through Bible-believing churches while the congregation was in the midst of worship and prayer, and pestilence, mutations and snakes strike apart from any discernment protocol. God may have pulled the plug on this creation because of sin, and let it slowly spiral down the drain, but on the surface, for those twisting in the vortex, it doesn't seem very just or loving. Who can make sense of it?

What needs to remembered in such considerations is that, according to God's standard, it's not the other guy who is evil, it's us--all of us, every single one that has ever come into existence. By God's reckoning, any opposition to his will is evil, even merely eating a piece of fruit he did not want us to. We think we are innocent (so long as we have not overtly harmed another creature), but that is just not the way God sees it. The truth is that humans do as they please, they do without regard to God, they do in opposition to God, and thus they demonstrate that they are, in fact, evil.

That humans have what opportunity they do have to live in a dying world is an accommodation of the magnanimous grace of God. "Wait just a minute," you might be thinking, "we didn't ask to be born at all, let alone the way we are where we are." How is allowing some of us to be particularly evil, while letting all of us live in an environment consistently evil, grace? Well, I think that it demonstrates that God has not written off the human race.

Everything could have ended with the failure of the prototype (Adam and Eve). God could have wiped out everything at The Fall, and been justifiably done with it. Starting over again would not have been an option, because in granting a creature freewill, the same evil to which the prototype succumbed would have been in play for any built like them (in the image of God, that is). The truth is, only God can handle being like God: those that are merely like God, but not God, must live submitted to God in love and faith.

So, though God cannot allow evil to stand and so pulled the plug on this universe, in his love for what was made good, he patiently continues what seems to us the slow, inexorable unfolding of judgment, which is physical evil, because there is a possibility of redemption. Evil creatures, which rebelled in the darkness of ignorance, can be illumined and change their mind and heart about going their own way. If they can truly take to heart the necessity of submission to and agreement with God, he can recast and reset them in a new universe untainted by the fall of the originals.

So there really isn't a problem with physical evil, but there's still a bit more I'd like to talk about...

Evil and Freewill, Concurrence & Moral Sufficiency

There could be no evil whatsoever apart from the capacity of something in creation to oppose God. That opposition would have to be something initiated independently of God; that is, it could not be decreed or impelled by God. Something nominally opposed to God but actually decreed by him could only have the appearance of evil--in actuality, it would be the very will of God. There can be no evil, therefore, apart from freewill, and since there is evil in this world, this world is one which free will exists.

Yet, even though freewill is expressed in a way that is not determined by God (or it wouldn't be free), it is allowed by him and it's exercise sustained by him. It reflects his will for the way things should be, and without such concurrence, it wouldn't be. If that is so, how can the same difficulties which determinism suffers from in regard to the problem of evil not ultimately be true for freewill as well? If God, the omniscient and omnipotent, proceeds despite evil he could foresee or does not stop what is proceeding against his will, there would seem to be a problem with evil after all.

I don't think that is so two reasons. First, God is good, and making something in his image just could not be evil by any stretch of the imagination. Even among human beings, we consider it good to have a son or daughter, even though we know they will do things that are bad. The beauty of being made in God's image is an amazing thing, human beings are amazing creatures. That God would want to make us in his image, able to will as he does and love as he does, is a remarkable demonstration of benevolent grace and something that properly could only be said to be very good.

Second, evil isn't being allowed. It's only the perspective of the current regimen of time that makes it seems so. Death and entropy themselves are arguments against evil being allowed, revealing that God has pulled the plug on this fallen realm of fallen beings. Within our bubble of time we may think evil is allowed and that it's been going on forever, but from God's timeless perspective evil is being dealt with virtually immediately. In this realm's wake, after it's been flash-burned in a cosmic reboot, evil will be something not likely to be even vaguely remembered.

So evil exists because God made creatures in his image which had the power to will, freely, as he does. That was not an evil thing to do, only good, because God is only good, and so too would be those creatures made like him at the time of their creation. Only creatures made with this god-like capacity would be able to experience the full spectrum of God's goodness relationally. God is inherently good, and inherently relational (e.g. the Trinity), and so creating creatures who will as God wills, and love as God loves could be nothing but good.

Since evil can be so evil, however, one has to wonder if doing the good of creating such creatures was a sufficient moral cause for the omniscient God to create them. I think that it was, but that it will not demonstrate itself to be so in time, where those creatures continue in evil even as God does the good he can in regard to them. Only in eternity when freewill creatures have embraced that they have been made in his image, have submitted themselves to be in that image, and choose to abide in it in agreement with God, will those creatures be like Christ and live eternally free but in perfect harmony with God. That situation will be as good as good can possibly get!

That will result in unspeakable joy for God and those creatures so abiding in it, and I think it is more than a sufficient moral cause for allowing the potential of evil in making those creatures in the first place. Does that provide a sufficient moral cause for allowing evil in the meantime, or for having to contain it endlessly, idly, incapably in the age to come? Since God is good and omnipotent, could he not have accomplished his aims some other way without allowing evil? Probably not, but since God is good, I think we have to give him the benefit of the doubt regardless.

Of course that won't stop me from saying a bit more on the subject...

The Problem of Evil

Supposedly, Christianity has a problem explaining the existence of evil in the world given the existence of God, who is good. I don't see the problem at all, so let me do my best to explain why. Primarily, I think the bulk of the problem arises from not understanding what good and evil are. So, let me start there.

God is good, Jesus said uniquely so. God is good, and nothing but good, the very essence of what good is. Evil, on the other hand, is not a thing so much as it is a description. At best, it is understood negatively, by what it isn't. Simply put, evil is that which is not good, much in the same way that darkness can be defined as the absence of light. Light is the something, darkness is the privation of it. Evil is a privation of God, an incidence of something God is not in, so to speak.

In being good, then, God can have no part of himself that is not good, or not God, or else he would be a contradiction. In the creation account in Genesis, the word translated "good" has the general sense of beneficial, so I think we can say by extension that good is that which comports usefully with the beneficial purpose of God. Since God can have nothing in him or about him which is set at cross purposes against himself without being a contradiction, good is that which is in accord with the purpose and will of God and evil is that which which is opposed to God.

As a consequence of this nature, it is possible for a thing to be both good and evil at the same time. A thing meant to thwart God most definitely comes from an evil intention on the part of the would-be thwarter, but in God's providence it may actually further his agenda of good. With that in mind, one might surmise that things which seem to us to be detrimental to life, to which our guts recoil, and which we see as nothing but evil are actually not evil from God's point of view. God intends such things for good or such are not from God who is only good.

And yet everything which exists, exists, ultimately, as a result of God's doing. Why would one who is only good, allow the existence of that which appears so obviously non-beneficial, so outrightly evil? Even if that could be written off as merely a momentary or passing appearance (to us) which served a larger good (from God's perspective), that wouldn't make those moments of evil less evil. So to me, such an explanation seems disingenuous.

What I mean is that evil is evil, even if just for an instant. If God is, then all instants are his, so why any evil whatsoever? God would not be the god who is good if there are flashes of evil in him, bits of momentary lapse where his "other side" is displayed, even if that is not his general character. No, it seems to me the existence of any evil whatsoever does not comport with the existence of an almighty god that is good; and yet, it is my unshakeable belief that the Sovereign Lord does exist and is nothing but good, and that evil exists here and now.

How can that be so? It must be that a good that God did, that was only good, must have given rise to evil. Having given rise to evil that which was made good by God, but which had become evil, has been allowed to remain so for the good that God continues to do in regard to it. So, present reality consists of the good that God, who is only good, continues to do while that which was created good, but is no longer so, continues to express it's evil.

Since evil, by definition, is that which is against God, that good that God did which became evil must have been able to act in a way that opposed God. The only way that would be possible would be for that something which God made good, but which became evil, to have had the ability to act freely, uncompelled, without necessity, as does God. Since God is good, there could be nothing evil about making something commensurate with God, but in doing so, the possibility of opposition, and therefore evil, would be intrinsic to that act.

What should begin to be clear from this discussion so far is that there could be no evil in a world in which God's will was the only one that determined things. If God determines everything that is and occurs, then evil could not possibly exist. For evil to exist within a deterministic framework, God himself would have to be evil. Since God is clearly not evil, and yet there is evil in this world, this world cannot be a deterministic one.

And there is more to delve into...


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Living Is a Gift from God

Since none of us has called ourselves or the space we live in into existence, our very existence, and any and every moment of our existence, is something that we receive from God. Life comes from his hands. If our lives at their most basic levels are what amounts to gifts from God, then everything that we hope will come our way in those lives gifted to us is a gift as well. The most fundamental description of our relationship to God, then, is that we are receivers of his gifts.

It is true that the nature of our present existence, even as given by God, makes some effort on our parts necessary in order to attain some level of and quality in life. We do eat by the "sweat of our brows" after all. But it seems to me that the necessity of earning at that level tends to makes us self-centered--we tend to think of living in terms of my effort, my reward, my ambitions, my desires. In the unending swirl of all that self-centeredness, one can forget (or even never awaken to) the fact that our very life, our very breath, is a gift from God.

According to the record of scripture, we only need to work so in order to get because of a curse imposed because of sin. Sin is in the world, sin is in us. If it was not for sin, however, we would not have death over our heads and we would not have to sweat to get our bread. Take sin out of the equation and we would have freely what God freely, liberally, gives us and it would be crystal clear that all was a gift from God.

This can be difficult for us to embrace. It is almost as if our sweating for our bread, the toil of scratching out a living separated from God all the while dying, plays a trick on us. Even if we happen to be aware of God's part in the big picture, we tend to project the concept of earning upon any blessing we could get from God. We think we have to earn whatever blessing we may be seeking from God, even as we have to earn to eat.

Even if we ask God for blessing we do so as earners, not as gift recipients. We seek his favor by making promises to him or by citing our rewardable behaviors. We try to find some valid reason for us to receive the reward we seek. Even if we haven't earned such a blessing in the past, we assure God we will do so in the future should he make that blessing ours.

All such boasting is antithetical to the purposes of God, and let's be clear, what that is, is boasting. Even more than that, it is living by the principles of the present darkness, it is living by sight. Sight, in effect,  says "give me what I deserve", but faith says "give me what you're willing to". Perhaps the greatest threshold faith must cross is getting over the boastful notions of humankind, borne of the reality of this present existence, that can only see life through the prism of getting what you've worked to gain.

Thankfully, God is willing to give us a lot without earning a bit. Most importantly, he is willing to give you what you could never earn by your efforts--everlasting life and standing in his eternal kingdom. All this is predicated upon us embracing, as a matter of faith, a new perspective which puts us in the mindset of receiving everything we receive from God as an undeserved gift. Living starts, really, when we see it as a gift from God.

What God Knew Before We Knew

God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit and knows exactly what is right.

In this "isness," God knew he wanted to make people like him-- spiritual, creative, willful, and relational-- to share his everlasting life with.

By his understanding he knew that such people could not be him, but could share being with him if they lived in trust of him. By his insight, he knew that they would not trust him before they would come to trust him by means of his help. He also knew that not trusting him would cause them to strike out on their own with the most disastrous results. In his righteousness he knew they could not share his everlasting being in a condition of faithless independence.

Nonetheless, he wanted to make people like him.

By his understanding he knew that fallen people could never be fully trusting without the undergirding of knowing that their former rebellion was thoroughly purged and forgotten. By his foresight he knew that would mean coming to their world as one of them and laying himself completely on the line for them, removing for them any semblance of barrier or fear of punishment. He also knew that given his help there would be some who would respond to his effort with faith and some who would not. In his wisdom, he knew that those not willing to live trusting in him would have to be restrained eternally, kept from formulating oppositional intents and acting in faithless independence.

Nonetheless, he wanted to make people like him.

In his "isness," God knew he was spending eternity with people like him-- spiritual, trusting, creative, willful, and relational-- sharing with them his everlasting being.

So God went ahead and made people like him.

God In the Moment

As things are experienced in this universe, even for God, there really is only the now. The past isn't anymore and the future won't be until it is now. Foreknowledge doesn't blunt this, history doesn't diminish it. As God interacts with this realm, he is in that moment we call now. It's not that his now doesn't encompass more, or that in our now moment he doesn't know of past or future nows as he experiences it, but that his experience during that interface is in our now.

Our experience is similar to his except we experience nows as a chain of events. We recollect past moments and anticipate future ones while always in the moment. Life and reality happen in that instant. The difference between God and ourselves in this regard is that we have no ability to slip out of the confines of this moment, whereas he always is outside those confines. Even if he "drops" into those moments in order to interact with them, he still is equally present in all our moments (omnitemporal).

So as God interacts with creation in any moment, whether by some act of his hand or some revelation of his heart, God has a "momentary" experience. His response or reaction is momentary even though his being is not limited to that moment--it is the effect of "stepping into time." In that moment in creation it can be said that God was (for instance) disappointed, although it cannot truly be said that he was surprised. God's experience is real, rather than illusionary or anthropomorphized, but it is consequent to his interface with that which is time bound and free, not to his timeless being.

When God interacts with that which is in time, he acts according to the convention of time--he is in that moment. Those in time see it as occurring in that moment as part of time and God experiences that moment in time. That does not mean that God ceases to be omniscient nor supertemporal (eternal). It only means that anything in creation experiences that now moment, even if it is only dropping in from outside.

All This Talk About Vision

God speaks to people about what he will have them do. Today. He hasn't changed.

The experience of such would be called a vision, even if it wasn't something optically perceived. It seems funny to me, but everyone in the church world is all about vision these days, even if they are blatant cessationists (thanks for nothing Peter Drucker).

When a man or woman of God has an ambition or dream, ostensibly inspired by God in some way, they labor to put together all the pieces necessary to accomplish it. He or she puts up a target, and then pushes and pulls, moves and shakes, and out comes...

...a calf. These may (and I only say that by concession) not be our golden gods, but at the very least, they are our bronze serpents. The truth is that they are our Ishmaels.

The church world has so thoroughly embraced the strategic management techniques used in the world, that though the product resulting from this kind of vision may be accurately consumer-driven, it is about as far away from the model described in the manual as sand castles are from real ones. Since this kind of vision is the product of human imagination, in what way can it be said to be a vision from God? For that matter, would God even bother to give us a vision if the thing we were endeavoring to accomplish could be achieved by human ingenuity in the normal course of affairs? The results of these managerial efforts never produce Isaacs, and can never measure up to the model in the heavens.

When God does grant a vision to a person, it is not like he places an order with that person, or is commanding that one to accomplish the thing shown. The vision is a demonstration or a display, really a sneak preview, of what is coming to pass. He doesn't give us visions for us to figure out how to make it so, he gives us visions of what is he is bringing forth. Generally, they are beyond any possibility of us making them so anyhow, and they only come about by the most unusual and bizarre of circumstances.

Our efforts to produce the vision from God instead produce hardship. They result in Ishmaels which strive against all men. They result in the trashing of those who can't "keep up," the disdain of those less perceiving, and the exploitation of the blood-bought as if they were mere raw materials. They produce pride and division, and leave heritages of animosity. To hell with such visions!

By contrast, God's efforts to fulfill the vision he shared produce the joy of the Lord. They result in Isaacs, which are pleasant in their surprise, gentle to all, and demonstrate the peaceable fruits of righteousness. They do not trash, belittle, or otherwise relegate to trophy cases the blood-bought and beloved of God. They produce laughter and praise, and leave the sweet savor of heaven behind.

Perhaps it has something of a biblical precedent, all this talk of vision: it leaves a sour taste in my mouth!

Must God Cast His Pearl Before Swine?

“Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces."    Matthew 7:6 (NASB)

Does God know people? I mean know them, as in what truly motivates them, what their secret desires are, what is the likelihood they would do anything in a particular situation. I think he does, and does so with astonishing acumen (he is God after all). It is obvious he knows their histories, including every overt thing they have either said or did and every secret rumination of their hearts, but he also sees their entire life at once. I think it is beyond doubt that he would know how they would respond to efforts he would make to coax them, inspire them, persuade them, command them, or otherwise engage them.

If God is so thoroughly familiar with people as I've suggested, is he under any obligation to attempt to rescue those he knows would only rebuff his efforts? If Jesus has any thing to say on the subject, I think his answer would be a resounding "NO." Folks who would pay no never mind, are not guaranteed to get the opportunity. His instructions to his disciples above seem to bear out this principle.

If extra-biblical history yields any insight into the question, it too, I think, offers a resounding amen to the proposition. Vast swaths of human population have come and gone without ever hearing the Gospel. Of those that have, vast swaths ignore it outrightly or pay it nominal fealty at best. Hopefully, we all realize it is not the hearers of the Gospel that are saved, but those who believe it and follow Christ as a result. Given what we have seen with those who do hear the Gospel, there is nothing to suggest that even some of those folks that have not heard would have responded to Christ with faith had they heard.

Pointing out these kinds of things can cause folk who believe in the inclusivity of God's love and the universality of Christ's atonement (as I do) to be aghast. In my mind, some of these posit a sentimental notion of God's love that doesn't reflect the evidence of life in general nor the scriptures in particular. Just because God would rather see someone saved than lost, it cannot be inferred that he has an obligation to try to save that which cannot be saved. As for me, I think God knows what he's doing without my counsel or condemnation, and that everyone who would have been saved will have been saved when all is said and done.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that God has bound himself to giving each person, by some means, a personal opportunity to receive or reject Christ. If the result of people known to have actually had that opportunity produces, proportionally, so little fruit, how would the outcome of some extraordinary effort by God to reach them ex-gospel be significantly different? Without the Gospel they do as they want, oblivious and uncaring about God's desire. With the Gospel they do as they want, dismissive and uncaring about God's desire. Why think that there was some untapped potential among the unhearing masses that would have responded if it would have had the chance?

Who could fault God if he decided to bypass the rigamarole and cut to the chase? Could we trust him with that judgment? Rather than posit extra-biblical, feel-good notions about partial grace/partial revelation, or post-mortem grace, or universal enablement, or whatever (none of which have anything close to definitive statements in the scriptures to support them), why not say what we can say clearly and leave judgment in the hands of God? Rather than pretend to know how God graces or judges, leave it to God and say no more than he has said. Regardless, nothing justifies suggesting there is something other than the Gospel that saves.

As for me, I see no way in which God is obligated to cast his pearl before swine.

The Heirarchy of Importance

I remember hearing someplace along the line that the challenge of Christianity is keeping the main thing the main thing. It can't be all that easy to accomplish, given the history of Christianity (nor, for that matter, the present). Sadly, I'd have to admit even my present. Clarity and constancy seem ever elusive.

So what is the main thing anyhow?

The easy and obvious answer is Jesus. That's a true enough answer; indeed, the likelihood is that in the end he will pull all our chestnuts out of the fire--redeeming a flock that was often lost and roaming frequently, that rarely saw the forest for the trees, and that made a shamble of just about everything he entrusted to them. Though Christians may be in a truly sad state, Christians' joy is in their good shepherd who cannot fail. Jesus is the main thing.

In a heirarchy of importance from there, what would come next? I say it is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is what makes the things of God known to us, what convicts and draws us. The Holy Spirit is what births us in Christ. The Holy Spirit is he who guides us and leads us since Christ ascended. The Holy Spirit is our means of walking with God and truly doing his bidding. Apart from the Spirit we're aimless sinners.

After Christ and the Holy Spirit I would say the Bible comes next. Though we are people of the Book, Christianity is not primarily about facts and figures, equations and hypotheses, structures and forms. Christianity, at its heart, is experiential--about a living fellowship with God through his indwelling and empowering Spirit. Confessions, theology and theologians, generally, only cloud the issue. The Bible in and of itself is all that is doctrinally dependable, and that not so much in that it gives us the necessary body of knowledge to know, but in that it objectively tells us how to live in the Spirit by faith.

After these nothing else is really important of itself, for the first three encompass anything else that could be of import.

Time and What Matters

I've been talking a lot about time lately. It is real, and fleeting, and overall, a bane to human existence. It is what it is, and all the wishing and wanting, hemming and hawing, ruing and grousing won't do a thing to change it. Time marches on even though we can't keep step.

These thoughts cause me to consider the two great realities upon which all the rest of life hangs.

First, God is the only reality. Nothing else exists of itself. Everything else is a wisp, a flash and a curl of smoke in the mind of God. The universe seems grand and imposing, but it's just a puff (really, of nothing). The machinations and manipulations of countless generations of those made in the image of God vainly tempting to tame the worlds are but a vanishing midst.

Second, time relentlessly, only forges forward. No repeats, no going back, no changes or exchanges, every purchase is final. Time doesn't care about one's dreams, one's loves, one's opportunities, and certainly not about one's regrets. Everyday it puts everything in the round can file and presently stretches toward the next dawn.

Simple and elegant, remarkably profound. These truths consume every other concern and issue in life. As to how, and what this means to any of us, that also seems to me simple and straightforward. So I'll let you do the math.

Foreknowledge, Time and Omniscience

If God is outside of time, God can foreknow exhaustively on the basis of being omniscient and self-existent, without regard to decree whatsoever. The notion that God foreknows because he has foreordained becomes superfluous, completely unnecessary. Further consideration of it as the cause of foresight can be tossed aside because it is unexplanatory. Of course, that doesn't disprove that God decrees and that is why what is so, is so, but it does remove any necessity for that decree explaining foreknowledge.

If God were instead entwined somehow in time, if there were some sense in which he abided by it, then God could not be the Holy God and the future could not be said to truly exist (to be known). In that case, God would be subject to a quality of creation, not self-existent, and would, like creation, have to wait and see. There could only be the now and the record of the past in such a situation. Any premonition or prescience, even by God, could not be taken as fact so much as prognostication.

God, in fact, sees all at once without regard to and unlimited by time and space--timeless omniscience. This must be so, no matter how hard it may be for us to envision, if God is truly self-existent. That means that God sees all time references with equal facility. Since God is apart from time, I think Simple Foreknowledge is more than adequate to account for God's knowledge of all that is and will be.

That doesn't explain counterfactual knowledge, but that will have to wait until next time...

Lead With Sin

When Christians engage the educated and urbane evangelistically and/or apologetically, they often make a mistake of order, as I see it. They will engage the unbelieving on some issue they think will bear fruit, like the existence of God, the historicity of the resurrection, the founding of the church, etc.. More often than not, they end such entanglements having convinced their "opponents" of nothing more than that Christians are idiots who accept flimsy evidence, and who, with flawed conscience, follow an immoral figure as god.

It irks me beyond measure to see and hear the arrogance of this new class of atheists who seem everywhere at the moment, and who appear on the ascendancy culturally. They willingly engage Christians in debate along the manner limned above, and smugly toss away the challenge to their views--even though on the basis of sheer forensics, they've gotten their clocks cleaned. They're heroes to the young, brain-washed, and uninformed, who follow them like lemmings to their inevitable plunge into hell.

Why do these unbelieving, self-inflated blusterers seem bullet proof? I think that as long as the issue is God in general, or even Jesus Christ in particular, these blind guides and their rodent trains will continue to the precipice undaunted. They can be out debated and argued under the table until the cows come home, and it won't change a thing. A change of heart and mind is desperately needed, but it isn't going to come by arguing about things that are outside of themselves.

You see, change is wrapped up in the notion of repentance. Jesus has not come to call those who see no need for repentance but those who do. If any headway is to be made evangelistically with the growing horde of the educated, urbane, and unbelieving, the argument will have to be about man, not God. The man in them has to be humbled, shown that he is sinful, that he may be able to think a noble thought but lacks the self-control to live a noble life, that as a species he is tied up with the death of everything.

If something doesn't snap the pride of man, he marches unheeding into the fires of doom. An awakening must arise in each one, individually, deep inside. Something has to break the gaze upon self, so that the head can turn to see that the Redeemer is near. Christians have attempted to engage the unbelieving with every argument imaginable, and found their punches landing without impact. Perhaps it's time to lead with sin.

It is not like a logical, even a factual argument is going to bring anyone to salvation. That cannot happen apart from that unseen work of the Holy Spirit. Jesus did clue us into what the Holy Spirit is convicting people of, and it's not forensics. So, if one wants to flow with the Spirit, and see their witness have supernatural affect, the effort to concentrate on is to help the unbeliever realize he is a sinner. Apart from that he'll never be saved.

Good Musings

Jesus said that God alone is good, which is interesting on a number of levels, but ontologically, I find it a bit of a puzzle. Is God godly because he is good, or is good, good because it is descriptive of God. I cannot see that anything, ultimately, is capable of confining or circumscribing God. To say that God is what he is because he can be pinned down by a quality somehow doesn't make sense to me. I think he always spills over the container.

God is the ultimate being, perfect in every respect, completely self-sufficient. How can such a being be made "finite" by a mere description? I have no argument with Christ that God is good, that is absolutely true. The question is whether or not that is so because God is confined by the description and meets its parameters, or whether the word itself finds its definition in what it is describing. Good is good, in other words, insofar as it describes God.

The consideration is not mere semantical puffery, the Bible gives me some leeway to explore such a claim. Jesus said that God is unknowable apart from self-disclosure. And he also said that God is uniquely good. It seems to me, then, that God is also the only one who knows what is good, and does so on the basis of his self-knowledge.

Good, by this reckoning, is whatever God is, and whatever God is, is good. I think we waste time arguing with the uninformed that God is only good, when they cite what they consider is evil behavior (like the slaughter of the Canaanites). They don't know what good is and therefore are clueless as to what evil is. God is the measure of good, and by extension, anything that which is not aligned with God is not good: evil, simply, is the un-God. 

Some Thoughts on the Redeemability of God's Image

...the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.      Revelation 13:8

There are some things God cannot do. One of which is to make a duplicate of himself. To do so would not only violate his oneness, but it would make him a creature. How would the original and the duplicate be told apart? Therefore, even if God desired to make a creature with personal and relatable qualities commensurate with himself, that creature would not be him, could not be as his is, or do as he would do.

The repercussion, it seems to me, in making another being with God-like capacities of will, is that it would be inevitable, at some point, that the creature would chose a course of action not only independent of God, but also at cross purposes. In other words, the creation of the image of God necessitated the failure of the image according to the standard that is God himself. This failure, being one of inevitability, would not require a specific decree in order for it to occur. It would have been a foregone conclusion given the decision to create.

I find it interesting, perhaps telling, that the first test of conscience adherence to the standard was sufficient to prove the point. I have to wonder if God would not have foreseen the dilemma (he would have undoubtedly), and allowed the efforts of Satan in the Garden to expedite things. I do not think there is any necessity for an omniscient, omnipotent being to wait around for an inevitable occurrence. Certainly, no aspect of the Fall would have caught God by surprise!

If that failure had been made open-eyed, rapprochement would be impossible because there was no possibility to learn from error. What would fuel the reconciliation? If seeing God for who he actually is did not arrest the will to "do" other than God, what could stop a recurrence? At best, a reconciliation could only last until the next time wills diverged. This is similar to the situation with angels and it is unsustainable if God is to be God.

If that failure is made in ignorance, rapprochement would be possible because one could realize his error and agree that God's way is the only way. This is the situation with man. Mankind is redeemable because it is possible for him to awaken from his ignorance (with gracious assistance of course) and realize that harmony with God is the greatest and only good.