Friday, April 3, 2020
In the Picture?
TRUTH is that which corresponds to reality as it is perceived by GOD.
The preceding sentence is probably the most accurate definition of truth ever devised. Notice that the definition is carefully worded so as to put the final measure of truth in God’s hands, not ours.
Saint Anselm defined God as “that Being than whom no greater can be conceived.” This was the opening of his “ontological argument” for God’s existence. The argument from BEING. Basically, the argument is that God exists NECESSARILY, both as a concept AND as a Reality. For if HE didn’t exist, neither could, or would, anything else!
It follows quite easily that since God’s existence is the only way reality can be accounted for, then His VIEW of reality is the only way TRUTH can be rightly defined.
Since our corporate “fall” in the Garden of Eden, we, Adam and Eve’s offspring, have been engaged in the vain attempt to turn truth into a subjective animal. A amorphous chimera that can be molded and nuanced to suit us and our subjective experience. Together with our primordial parents, we swallowed the lie, “You shall be as gods.” Satan followed that promise up with the qualifier: “knowing good and evil.” But what he really meant was that we could REDEFINE right and wrong according to our corporate whim.
For fallen human beings, created in God’s image, yet saddled with a sinful nature that rebels against Him, we are actually FAR from truly “knowing good and evil.” Oh, we THINK we know what they are. We might even come close sometimes. But guess what? The history of our race proves quite clearly that our “god”-like knowledge of right and wrong is way out of kilter.
Lets take COVID-19 as a present-day example.
Pretty much our entire planet is agreeing right now that this new virus is an unqualified EVIL. It is immobilizing and terrorizing whole populations. It is killing many of our loved ones. It is closing down thousands of businesses. It is separating families. It is a source of misinformation and confusion, much of it on a global scale.
But, if Anselm is right, if God must be, and truth is reality as HE sees it...
Then we must ask ourselves, “What is the truth about the coronavirus as God perceives it?”
When Indiana’s governor gave a speech about the measures our state was taking to combat and accommodate the present crisis, he closed the address by citing his hope and plea for the people of faith in our state to continue their important work of reaching out to struggling and hurting people. He saw this as a way to keep up our morale and our hope for a better tomorrow.
I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised, but on youtube, the comments following the governor’s speech included a bunch of criticisms that chastised him for mentioning “people of faith” along with the heroic health care workers and first responders who were facing the crisis with “real” help, and not that religious nonsense (or words to that effect).
It seems that we really DO prefer to define truth, even good and evil, with God out of the picture, even though He, and no other, is the source of all being, and the arbiter of all truth, and the only true KNOWER of what is good, and hence, what is evil.
There are times in the Bible narrative, when God takes definite, concrete steps to “shake things up,” and get folks’ attention. I recall one story of how the Philistines captured the Ark of the Covenant from the Israelites and hauled it off to display it triumphantly in one of their pagan temples. God shook things up by making their idol Dagon topple over and break apart, then sending a plague of tumors and an infestation of rats!
The Philistines did all they could, humanly speaking, to solve this problem in a manner that left the Hebrew God out of the picture. Their solutions failed miserably. So they finally sent the Ark back to Israel in a cart pulled by two milk cows who had just calved, while keeping the calves away from the mothers. The cows pulled the cart straight back to Israel, proving to the Philistine leaders that God really HAD caused the plague and the infestation. “Scientific” proof!
Pestilence, plague, natural disaster, fire falling from heaven, whatever tragic situation humans have faced or will face in the future, can we not stop playing the pointless game of facing the crisis with God out of the picture? The truth is that He’s in it. He could not NOT be in it. His being makes all other reality possible. And only He perceives the crisis as it TRULY is.
Read your Bible and you’ll get a clue of the many ways God has USED seemingly evil things in the past to bring about enormous GOOD. Natural evils as well as human evils, nothing is beyond God’s ability to sovereignly sanctify it. Even evil men nailing His only Son to the cross.
Health care professionals, first responders, philanthropists, good neighbors--all of these can be symbols of hope for those caught up in a terrifying viral crisis like we’re facing right now.
But, as we thank them for their efforts, let’s trace the hope we feel back to its ultimate SOURCE.
Crises like this are one of God’s ways of making us keep Him in the picture.
MNA
4/3/2020
Trained as a music teacher in Philadelphia, I directed music and worship in several churches for over 20 years. My family and I settled in northern Indiana where until recently I worked in the truck building industry. My goal in writing is to cheer the heart, challenge the soul, and glorify Jesus Christ, my Lord and Redeemer.
Thursday, April 2, 2020
Whose Glory?
One of my favorite "modern" movies (produced after the year 1960) is the Spielberg film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Not only is it a great father-son story about alienation and reconciliation between Indy and his dad Henry, it's also a story that suggests tension within a number of deep theological issues.
Holy grail-lore expert Prof. Henry Jones is missing from a privately financed hunt for the cup of Christ. Archaeologist-adventurer Indiana Jones hurries to Venice, Italy in order to find his missing father. Suddenly, unidentified assassins begin attacking him, thinking that, like his dad, Indy is seeking the holy grail. They are members of a secret band of soldiers sworn to safeguard the secret of the grail's whereabouts with their lives.
During this action-packed story, two key confrontations stand out. First is the meeting of the chief of the secret band with Indy, where the chief asks him: "Why do you seek the cup of Christ? Is it for His glory...or for yours?" Indy assures the man that all he wants is to find and rescue his father. Informed of the location where Henry is being held, Jones continues his quest to free him.
Later, after rescuing his dad, the two of them are on the run to evade the Nazis who pursue them. At a crossroads--one leading back to Venice, the other to Berlin--Henry insists that they go to Berlin to retrieve his grail diary, in which there are clues that will safely guide them to find the grail. Indiana strongly objects to venturing into the Nazi stronghold, but Henry counters: "The quest for the grail isn't archaeology. It's a race against evil." It seems that the Germans also want the cup of Christ to help them capture the world.
Fanciful grail legends aside, one must admit that the stakes are even higher than world domination, when it comes to deciding WHOSE glory each of us is seeking, whatever our personal "quest" may be. When Henry Jones suddenly slaps his son in the face after Indy, in frustration, uses "Jesus Christ" as a curse, and tells him, "That's for blasphemy!", he suggests a world and life view that includes an overpowering belief in God. Henry's quest for the grail is not for his own glory. He has something much greater and higher in mind. He is on a divine mission.
I believe that a compelling reason so many are doing all they can to avoid God, Christ, and the church, in our day, is that they find it impossible to live with the idea of an all-powerful Being who designed and created and sustains this universe for HIS glory and not for OURS.
Even worse than those who flat-out deny God's reality are those who vainly attempt to re-define who He is. This includes folks in so many of our churches who pick and choose among the Lord's biblical attributes to cobble together a Frankenstein-like deity of their own liking. A tame, toothless God they can live with. A God who lets humans "fulfill their own destiny" or "just follow their hearts." A grandfatherly semi-supreme Being who doesn't really judge anyone for his or her sins.
Asking myself, "Will this glorify God...or myself?" in regard to what I am thinking, doing, saying, seeking, is probably the most important question I could possibly ponder. And the one I'm least likely to ask. Why? Because the remaining sin within me is resting too comfortably. Because I deplore confrontations (especially with myself!). And, honestly, because I am normally too insulated against the glories of God's creation that shout, scream and sing about the glorious Being HE truly is!
The Apostle Paul wrote to his son in the faith, young Timothy: "I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith." He claimed that a crown of life was awaiting him in glory. Heaven is where God's people will graciously be permitted to share in the glory that is Christ's. But for now, we are on a divine quest. A quest for HIS glory. Like Henry Jones told his son, "It's a race against evil!" To focus on heavenly glory, I must confront and kill the evil WITHIN.
Our Captain, King Jesus, is coming again, perhaps sooner than we imagine. He will be leading his armies into the true "Last Crusade" to deliver his people and crush their enemies. When He comes, will he find you "seeking HIS glory...or YOURS?"
MNA
4/2/2020
Holy grail-lore expert Prof. Henry Jones is missing from a privately financed hunt for the cup of Christ. Archaeologist-adventurer Indiana Jones hurries to Venice, Italy in order to find his missing father. Suddenly, unidentified assassins begin attacking him, thinking that, like his dad, Indy is seeking the holy grail. They are members of a secret band of soldiers sworn to safeguard the secret of the grail's whereabouts with their lives.
During this action-packed story, two key confrontations stand out. First is the meeting of the chief of the secret band with Indy, where the chief asks him: "Why do you seek the cup of Christ? Is it for His glory...or for yours?" Indy assures the man that all he wants is to find and rescue his father. Informed of the location where Henry is being held, Jones continues his quest to free him.
Later, after rescuing his dad, the two of them are on the run to evade the Nazis who pursue them. At a crossroads--one leading back to Venice, the other to Berlin--Henry insists that they go to Berlin to retrieve his grail diary, in which there are clues that will safely guide them to find the grail. Indiana strongly objects to venturing into the Nazi stronghold, but Henry counters: "The quest for the grail isn't archaeology. It's a race against evil." It seems that the Germans also want the cup of Christ to help them capture the world.
Fanciful grail legends aside, one must admit that the stakes are even higher than world domination, when it comes to deciding WHOSE glory each of us is seeking, whatever our personal "quest" may be. When Henry Jones suddenly slaps his son in the face after Indy, in frustration, uses "Jesus Christ" as a curse, and tells him, "That's for blasphemy!", he suggests a world and life view that includes an overpowering belief in God. Henry's quest for the grail is not for his own glory. He has something much greater and higher in mind. He is on a divine mission.
I believe that a compelling reason so many are doing all they can to avoid God, Christ, and the church, in our day, is that they find it impossible to live with the idea of an all-powerful Being who designed and created and sustains this universe for HIS glory and not for OURS.
Even worse than those who flat-out deny God's reality are those who vainly attempt to re-define who He is. This includes folks in so many of our churches who pick and choose among the Lord's biblical attributes to cobble together a Frankenstein-like deity of their own liking. A tame, toothless God they can live with. A God who lets humans "fulfill their own destiny" or "just follow their hearts." A grandfatherly semi-supreme Being who doesn't really judge anyone for his or her sins.
Asking myself, "Will this glorify God...or myself?" in regard to what I am thinking, doing, saying, seeking, is probably the most important question I could possibly ponder. And the one I'm least likely to ask. Why? Because the remaining sin within me is resting too comfortably. Because I deplore confrontations (especially with myself!). And, honestly, because I am normally too insulated against the glories of God's creation that shout, scream and sing about the glorious Being HE truly is!
The Apostle Paul wrote to his son in the faith, young Timothy: "I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith." He claimed that a crown of life was awaiting him in glory. Heaven is where God's people will graciously be permitted to share in the glory that is Christ's. But for now, we are on a divine quest. A quest for HIS glory. Like Henry Jones told his son, "It's a race against evil!" To focus on heavenly glory, I must confront and kill the evil WITHIN.
Our Captain, King Jesus, is coming again, perhaps sooner than we imagine. He will be leading his armies into the true "Last Crusade" to deliver his people and crush their enemies. When He comes, will he find you "seeking HIS glory...or YOURS?"
MNA
4/2/2020
Trained as a music teacher in Philadelphia, I directed music and worship in several churches for over 20 years. My family and I settled in northern Indiana where until recently I worked in the truck building industry. My goal in writing is to cheer the heart, challenge the soul, and glorify Jesus Christ, my Lord and Redeemer.
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