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Archive for October, 2005
The Tools of Truth
Last night I spent a couple hours writing about the use of reason in searching for truth. In western philosophy reason is the great tool for finding and/or creating truth. Western philosophy has, to a great extent, ignored other tools such as the aesthetic. I think another tool in the search for moral truth that is very hard to comprehend is faith. Reason, the aesthetic, and faith are all tools used in the search for truth. There might be more that I haven't considered and if you think of any, please leave a comment.
Our society leans on reason. Some societies try and lose themselves in the aesthetic. Only an individual can find truth through faith. Faith cannot be given to the masses, but only found by an individual. A man of faith may glimmer in the eyes of a man searching for truth. The man of faith will glimmer as he reflects the truth he seeks and as the truth begins to infuse him. If you use reason to search for truth, you will not find it. If you use reason while you seek by faith your search will yield more quickly. If you care about morality, if right and wrong are important to you, please don't trust in reason alone and please do not discard it. Reason could not set me free from my moral weakness and imperfection. I decided to trust that God had provided an escape from the penalty of my immorality by faith. The Bible says that our immoral actions deserve punishment by death, but God provided the payment for us by allowing Jesus, the only morally perfect man, to die and pay that penalty. When we decided to accept that payment by faith in Jesus’ death and resurrection the truth becomes real and alive. In my life Jesus is the only hope I have found to live a moral and satisfied life. I have not abandoned reason, only let it be superseded. If you have any questions about faith or Jesus or God please post a comment.
A Trophy Wife
I was talking with a friend yesterday and this thought struck me. Has the church become a trophy wife? Is it more worried about looking pretty than having character and substance? This thought came from the passage of scripture (1 Peter 3 I believe) telling wives that their beauty should not come from braided hair or pretty jewelry, but from their character. That is a good principle for the church in America to consider today. Do we use pretty buildings and hip programs to attract people, or do we attract people with the substance of our lifestyle and involvement in the community?
Stop trying to make church appealing in a cultural manner. Please. Just for once try and make church draw me by showing me my spiritual need and the love that you offer. I don't care about powerpoint, three point sermons, the amperage of the worship band, or the latest and greatest “Christian” “self-help” book. I care about finding a place where I can find healing for my hurts, comfort for my loneliness and pain, and love in spite of my sin. Which of the last two sentences do you think Jesus cares more about? He died so we could experience true life. He suffered so that he could sympathize with our suffering. He preformed miracles through God’s strength so that we might know that we can trust in his strength.
The church is a spiritual institution. The church is not a physical, cultural, intellectual, emotional, or monetary institution so let’s stop treating it like it is any of those. It is a spiritual institution created to meet physical needs in order to show a desire to help with spiritual needs. It is a spiritual institution to teach us to govern our emotional, intellectual and financial lives with a supernatural focus. It is a spiritual institution that is above all culture in order to reach all cultures. In the church we need to focus on Christ and his teaching, the rest will follow.
Best Interests
Christ did not die to serve our self-interests. He died for us to save us, not to please our desires. Sometimes people say that God has our best interests in mind. He does, I believe, but not what I consider my best interests. He did not send his son to die so that Jesus could become my slave; Christ died so that I could become his servant and friend.
We call Jesus our King. A king can demand anything of his servants. We have no power to make demands of him. He has every right to ask anything of us, even to lay aside our deepest desires or give up our most precious posession for his sake, yet if we call him King our only response is to say “Yes, Lord.” Salvation was my greatest interest which Christ fulfilled for me. When I accepted that salvation I vowed to serve his interests.
We serve a loving God. He does not demand more than we can give, only everything we have to give. He does not ask of us to harm us, but to teach and discipline us. Even in giving up what we most dearly want, he can set us free from internal bondages. All my righteousness, all my desires, all my dreams are rubbish compared with knowing Christ.
“What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead”
-Phillipians 3:8-11
There is pain in submission sometimes, but the goal of obedience is much greater than the loss.
A Thought From Kierkegaard
Morality is character, character is that which is engraved; but the sand and the sea have no character and neither has abstract intelligence, for character is really inwardness. Immorality, as energy, is also character; but neither moral nor immoral is merely ambiguous, and ambiguity enters into life when the qualitative distinctions are weakened by a gnawing reflection.
-Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
Pretty interesting thought. "Morality is character, character is that which is engraved." What are you engraving in your life? Anything? Or are you content to be like shifting sand and sea which change too much to have character?
Can you leave it behind?
If I asked you what your most precious wish, dream, or desire was what would you say? What if God asked you to give that up, to consider it dead? Are you willing to leave whatever he says to behind? It is hard. It takes a lot of trust and a lot of pain to surrender the things you most dearly desire or care about. I think God is asking me to lay aside things I have always taken for granted. I’m praying that he would reaffirm his desire, if it is his desire. One of the authors of the new testament said he considered it, “all a loss compared to knowing Christ.” Loss can hurt, but it is worth what it costs if it is the price of following Jesus.
Random Poems
9/8/05
My life is but a shadow
That only shortly darkens your eyes.
It is a shadow,
A thing of no substance,
Known not for what it is composed of
But defined by what it lacks:
Light.
Yes I am but a passing darkness.
9/1/05
Where is the warrior you see?
I see only a boy.
Who do you call your saint,
When I feel only a wicked devil.
I admit that I am blind
And I know you see.
So I will close my eyes to myself.
2/2/05
What food can fill me
When my spirit hungers for you?
What tastes sweet
When my soul is bitter?
The sound of my breath
Is unworthy to be heard by you.
My tongue holds only evil.
If for all eternity
You allowed me only to abide by your gate
This would be too much for me,
A grace to noble for me.
How can I smile
When I have no respect for myself?
Where is my joy
When I have wandered from your Word?
It is in You.
It is in your character
Your Grace
Your Justice
Your Judgment
Your Mercy
In your Promise
Your Sovereignty
Your Faithfulness
Your Fatherhood
In You.
I am as nothing before you.
Sin Sucks
I hate sin. I hate that i sin, but the odd thing is that I hate sin in a wrong manner. I hate sin because it makes me dirty and I want to be clean. I want my righteousness to shine like a beacon so that people say "look what a good guy Nate is." I hate sin self-righteously. When I hate sin this way I stumble all the time. Sin becomes more powerful and sin-hate turns to self-hate.
When I hate sin for my sake it produces no strength to stop sinning. When I hate sin the way God hates sin, his power helps me when sin looks enticing. There are two things that help fight sin.
First I must love God more than I hate sin.
Second I must hate sin the way God hates sin.
Loving God produces the desire to be pure, to be holy as He is holy. It is not a self-righteousness you pursue; it is God's holiness and sanctification you pursue. Loving God entices you away from sin.
Hating sin the way God hates sin means not seeing sin as a danger to your reputation, it means seeing sin as shackles, slavery. That is all that I have time to write. I hope this gives you something to think about in your own life.
Justice before Grace
We speak often of Grace, and rightfully so, yet Justice is forgotten. We speak of Mercy, but what about the Law? Grace and mercy mean much to those who know they need it, but what about those who don’t understand their need? I don’t see a need for grace if I see no transgression or standard to transgress.
Grace is incomplete without justice. Without the law, mercy is meaningless.
In God’s law an adulterer or adulteress were to be stoned. Murderers also suffered the penalty of death. When Jesus said that anger in our hearts was equal to murder and that lust was as wicked as adultery he was also saying, in a sense, that they deserved equal punishment. There is a distinction though. Physical adultery merited physical death. Spiritual adultery harbored in our hearts and minds deserves spiritual death. If this is the standard of the lay, justice must make sure the penalty is enforced. Without justice the law is not to be feared.
Consider human lay. If we are driving too fast and see the lights of a policeman our stomachs turn over and we are afraid of the penalty we know we deserve. We accept that we are under the law and its penalty. The policeman, because he has been instituted by the law, has the authority to hand down punishment. We do not question our wrongdoing or his authority to hand out punishment when we know the law and know that we have transgressed it. Yet what of the times we see the policeman’s lights and we can see nothing that we have done wrong? We are bewildered. The policeman gives us a ticket for something we didn’t know was illegal. We become angry. We are angry at the policeman for punishing us for something we didn’t know was wrong, we reject this stupid, silly law, and we are angry at society for not teaching us the law. We are angry with everyone but ourselves, yet we are still guilty. We did not educate ourselves to the law. Even though we didn’t know the law, we are still worthy of the policeman’s punishment, still under his authority.
When we know the law we blame ourselves for transgression. When we face justice without knowing the law we blame everyone else. If we know the law we fear justice. If we don’t know the law we despise justice.
The world needs to hear God’s law so that they understand that the penalty of their transgressions fall upon themselves. They need to understand his justice in order to desire his grace.
The Bride of Christ
The Church as an institution has become almost loathsome to me. The only fond feelings I have when I think of church are the thoughts of people. Ironically we all say, “Yes, yes. Of course the church is the people,” but we are satisfied with leaving the church in a state where it is totally repulsive to people, both Christian and otherwise. Church is the people, but many people want no part of it.
From Ephesians chapter five I have gained this metaphor of marriage. Why am I bringing up marriage? One of the illustrations that God uses throughout the New Testament is that the church is the bride of Christ. By better understanding the way he instituted marriage we can better understand our role as his bride. Here is the passage:
22Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
25Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26to make her holy, cleansing[b] her by the washing with water through the word, 27and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church— 30for we are members of his body. 31″For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”[c] 32This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. (Ephesians 5:22-33 NIV)
From this passage I have come to see my future role as a husband differently. The responsibility for husbands is very great. Wives must submit to their husband as the head, yet, as the head, the husband must care for his wife as if she were his own body. My job is to love my wife so much that I give up myself in order to make her more holy and beautiful. I see a good husband as a good gardener and a wife as a beautiful plant. Usually the plant is self sufficient, but it is my duty to make sure that the flower gets the water and sunlight it needs to grow. I have to make sure it is sheltered in bad weather so that its beauty is preserved. My job is to make my wife more beautiful. Where did I come up with this image? From the way Christ treated the church in this passage of scripture.
Jesus gave everything for his bride. What have we done with what he has given us? Have we closed our bloom to hide it from the world, to selfishly keep its beauty focused inward on itself? Are we constantly more beautiful because of what Christ is doing among us and through us? Or have we become something else?
Let us consider my wife as a flower again. Every time you repot a plant, the plant goes through a shock. You have to make sure the change will be worth that initial pain. Will moving the plant give it more room to grow, more sun and water to consume? The same is true with my wife in a sense. If I wanted to move to a different city I would have to consider (a) will this change open up new opportunities for my wife, (b) will it be a better place to find what she needs, and (c) is the overall change worth the adjustment we will have to go through? This is where the metaphor breaks down. A plant has no way to resist the gardener’s plan; a wife can refuse the will of her husband. This is part of the reason that scripture says that wives should be submissive to their husbands. If, as a husband, I love my wife as Christ loves his bride, submitting to my will should be easier. If I love my wife as Christ loves the church my wife will know I am seeking her benefit. Surely my wife will not want to leave her friends behind to move to a new city but if she trusts me and moves to the new city things will ultimately get better than they were before. But maybe she will not look towards the end result and will refuse to move simply because she doesn’t want to go through the pain. By her refusal she will be stealing from herself. She will be stealing from herself a chance to become better, to thrive. Like a plant in too small a pot, she will slowly be stifled, but by her own will. Her beauty will become stagnant.
These two metaphors are for us as a church. As it is with a human bride, so it is with the bride of Christ. We either submit to his will no matter what the pain as we trust in his foresight and judgment or we are slowly stifled by our selfish inwardness. The question that faces each of us as individuals and ultimately as the body of Christ is whether we need a new pot for our flower or new home for the church. Christ has told us he has gone to heaven to prepare a place for us. Are we preparing ourselves for him? Are we preparing ourselves as a bride prepares for her husband? Are we submissive to his will?
