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

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

The Humble Way

No robe of purple
To swathe his shoulders,
No crown of gold & gems
To wreathe his head,
Our king rode lowly in
Upon a plain she-ass’s foal
While a tide of prideful clamor surged
About the sand adorning filthy feet.

No brutish claws or jaws
To slay his enemies,
No mane, no muscled mien
Primed by forays in the fields,
Our lion of Judah’s tribe, meek
As a prey, soon would feel the flint
Now poised by highest priests to slay
Him whose blood their soiled souls
Alone could cleanse.

No shields or spears
Laid up in hoard for conquest,
No martial gear or strategies
To launch his empire’s age,
Our captain stripped himself down
To the covering of a slave-towel
Pantomiming how he stooped
From the height no rocket could reach.

No more miracles
To signify his source,
No more parables
To mystify or make plain,
Our teacher bowed to a loathsome place
Of no self-respecting man, to cleanse
Naked, filthy, sinful feet, then walked
Up a hill like a hollow skull
To wash and save us all.

MNA
8/11/19

Dying & Undying Love

Ready to stay and serve,

Ready to travel and tell,

Willing to cramp the curve,

Willing to spoil the spell…

Offering deeps to droves,

Offering blood to bound,

Giving my pulse to prove,

Giving my sense to sound…

Touching a whore with hope,

Touching a crook with care,

Helping the crying cope,

Seeking the sick to spare…

Shedding my wares to Want,

Bleeding my time to Tried,

Sparing my strength to Can’t,

Sharing his grace to guide…

Speaking soft to sinner,

Singing sinew for saint,

Whispering wait to wandering,

Blowing a force for faint…

Promising rest to rebels,

Promising fire to frauds,

Risking a stone for stumbles,

Betting a game for gods…

Carrying wood for Weary,

Donating gold for dross,

Peering through beacons bleary,

Crowned on a bleeding cross…

Willing to waste and wait,

Willing to love and lose,

Ready to rise and renovate,

Charity’s charge to choose!

MNA

1/5/2019

Friendly Fire

Wandering too close to danger,
to charging currents skirling up,
reeling skyward through the murk
past kites and flocks and Boeing busses,
odor of ozone in their wake...

I defy the winds and wariness
that seek to drive me back to safety--
to the shelter of my hall of mirrors
where all I sense is under control.

Daring the death darts flashing past
as if they fly at my command:
celestial surges coruscating
in ingenious fractal forms,
I feel warmed by bolting flames
that once lapped up Carmelite waters,
wood, stones and sacrifice...

For I trust the Genesis, the Just One,
the Generator of all photons, forces,
phenomena that threaten things physical
with the holy hazard of unapproachable light.


MNA
4/5/2018

Choices

Jonathan Edwards famously defined the will as "the mind choosing."

I look at our culture, our media, our supermarkets, our institutions, our churches, and what do I see?

Choices.

Am I the only one who gets mind freeze when confronted by the continual endless parade of choices that passes before our eyes?

More and better choices are a GOOD thing, right? They're what our Free Enterprise System is all about! I mean, what did people do before they could choose between 200+ varieties of ice cream?

Sometimes I imagine what a mind from Jonathan Edwards' generation would make of this century's unlimited access to streaming online videos 24 hours a day from the convenience of your laptop/cell phone/tablet/game system/(insert latest tech-wonder here).

Would such a mind be paralyzed? Or just choose at random?

I guess what I'm wondering amounts to: at what point does the multiplex of choices exceed rational thought?

Am I just being a Puritan-esque kill-joy here? To be considering the dark side of endless choices?

Or is the expanding universe of options training our wills to choose mindlessly? Or even worse, to choose un-spiritually?

For one thing, evaluating each of a multitude of choices takes more time. Lots more.

Just think of the the hours and hours you and I have wasted channel-surfing or sifting through the websites that pop up when we Google?

Older guys like I can recall the time when a trip to the movie theater or drive-in involved a single screen with one or two features preceded by a Bugs Bunny or Mickey Mouse cartoon. Now it's a mega-plex of choices that leaves you wondering if you are missing a better choice in the neighboring theater.

Time is a limited commodity. More choices mean lengthier decision-making, taking up more time.

Yes, there are people who revel in endless choices, who are always hankering after something new, who have every flavor at Baskin Robbins on their bucket list.

But I want to suggest that there's something reassuring to meet a person who's content with the tried and true, content with one or two favorite channels, doesn't lose sleep wondering what he's missing out on by settling on one breakfast cereal, or one well-worn pair of shoes...

A person like that usually has time to spare, time to ponder and meditate, time to spend with a friend who's hurting, time to turn some pages of a time-honored Book.

Time to spend with the Author.

The will is "the mind choosing." You and I can choose wisely...

If we take the time.


MNA
3/23/2018

Wonder in Capernaum

A crumbling roof above the preacher’s head...
A stirring in his soul...
A male quartet lowering a sick man’s bed
Down through their desperate hole...
No obstacle barred the way
To their plea for aid that day.
And faith in Jesus led them to their goal.

The Son of Man assured the palsied soul
He now was reconciled
To a holy God, his spirit now made whole--
A cleansed, forgiven child...
And to prove Christ had that power,
Freed the man that very hour
From the scourge by which his body lay defiled.

And criticisms crumbled like that roof
As, healed, the man strode out,
His bed-mat carried off as living proof--
No margin left for doubt...
For visible was the sign
Fit to change any skeptic’s mind...
And to give the crowd a Savior to cheer about!

based on Mark 2:1-12
MNA
3/4/2018