A helper comparable to him I: Understanding the times

“The sons of Issachar understood the times, and knew what Israel ought to do” (Genesis 2:17; 1 Chronicles 12:32). The perceived teaching of the Bible on the relationship between men and women is a huge red flag to our culture. But there is a lot of misunderstanding about how to understand the Bible. Not every admonition is for all times and all circumstances. Do we insist, for example, that women wear hats in church (1 Corinthians 11:10)? Do we in the West kiss the brethren in public (Romans 16:6)? It would be very misunderstood! Some will insist on it because, by the slippery slope argument, if you let one thing go, you will eventually let everything go! But we are to love the Lord with all our mind, and we surely need to distinguish between moral and cultural commands. Moral commands don't change, cultural ones might.

In Bible times women were not educated. And rather than taking Paul's rule that women not be allowed to teach (1 Timothy 2:12) as  applicable at all times in all cultures, we need to see the principle behind the command. And it is surly the same as that behind the command not to promote a novice (1 Timothy 3:6). With women not being educated,  Paul's rule was simply common sense!

A comparison with slavery can be informative. In fact a strong case can be made that the Bible does not condemn slavery. Slaves, for example, are commanded to submit to their masters, even when they are harsh (1 Peter 2:18). Does this mean God approves slavery or harsh treatment? It is a mistake to see something as God's perfect will just because it's in Scripture. I mean Judas went out and hung himself (Matthew 27:5)!  And Jesus was way ahead of the culture in His dealing with women (i.e. John 4:9).

Paul tells us that in Christ there is neither male nor female, Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free (Galatians 2:28). And I think of this verse as containing the seeds of both the abolition of slavery, and the emancipation of women. In many ways “Kingdom come on earth” (Matthew 6:10) is revolutionary, and Jesus attitude to women was all of that. But heaven's means of “Kingdom come” is not violent. It reforms things, rather than tears them down. I like to think of William Wilberforce's life long battle for the abolition of slavery in Britain's Parliament, as his working from the Biblical command to love justice and do kindness (Micah 6:8). The same principle was surely needed to be at work a hundred years ago in the movement to give women the right to vote. When things are not done in a Kingdom way however, they inevitably finish up going too far. It's the old swing of the pendulum, and I see over and over, those who were formally oppressed finishing up as oppressors.

Father, if we are to bring the Kingdom to earth, we must operate out of Kingdom principles and attitudes. When we see that something needs to change there is a strong tendency to go too far, throwing the baby out with the bath water. It is not true, as some would have it, that masculinity is toxic in and of its self.  And when we tear things down, what replaces them can be as bad as, or worse than what needed to be changed.  Help us Lord to operate with wisdom, love, justice and courage,  in a world gone mad, in Jesus Name Amen

If you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but

.... if, by the Spirit, you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live (Romans 8:13). This New Testament principle is the equivalent of  “in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die” (Genesis 2:17).   It seems to me that much of the church has lost the fear of the Lord (1 Peter 2:17).  It is true that God is love, God is kind, God is longsuffering and salvation is a free gift, it cannot be earned.  However God is not an enabler, and Paul can talk about both the goodness and the severity of God. In particular “on those who fell, severity; but toward you, goodness, if you continue in His goodness. Otherwise you also will be cut off” (Romans 11:22)

Jesus speaks into the title verse when He says to His disciples “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me” (Matthew 16:24). But what is this denying ourselves, putting to death the misdeeds of the body, and crucifying the sinful nature with its passions and desires (Galatians 5:24)?  Paul speaks about it as our being living sacrifices, and about no longer living for ourselves, but for Him who died for us and rose again. This is what it means to be a new creation  (Romans 12:1; 2 Corinthians 5:15, 17).  If it sounds intense or unreasonable look at what it cost and remember You are not your own  you were bought at a price with the precious blood of Christ, and look at the rewards “you will live” (1 Cor 6:19, 20; Romans 8:13; 1Pet. 1:19 ). You see there can be no resurrection without a death, and we cannot be truly free while we are still under the domination of the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Jesus essentially tells us that the one who sins is addicted to sin, on the other hand if the Son shall set you free, you will be free indeed (John 8:34, 36).

Notice that is is both by the Spirit,  and you who are to put death the deeds and the desires of the sinful nature. We cannot compel the sinful nature to die, but we can cooperate with the Spirit as He does it with us. Until we do this we are not truly free. Even so it is a process, and I still find myself praying “Lord help me to do my part in putting to death the deeds and the desires of the sinful nature!” Paul admonishes us “Take heed to yourselves and to the doctrine. Continue in them, for in doing this you will save both yourself and those who hear you” (1Timothy 4:16).

Father, thank You for free gift of salvation, and the assurance of it as I take heed and continue in the faith (1 Timothy 4:16 again). Somehow Lord we have failed to stress the importance of continuing in the faith. But the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 1:7). I cannot do it perfectly Lord,  for in many things we all fail (James 3:2). But thank You that If we confess our sins, You are faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9). Thank You too Lord that You who began a good work in us will keep right on working until the day of Jesus Christ in whose Name we pray Amen

A good God and the problem of suffering

“God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good.” Since both God and what He made are good (Luke 18:19; Genesis 1:31), then why suffering? The book of Job wrestles with this. Job is righteous, but his suffering is not for wrongdoing, as his friends would have it (Job 42:7). Certainly we reap what we sow, bad choices have bad consequences (Galatians 6:7). But not all  suffering is for our sin! When we suffer, we might think God is punishing us, or that He's unjust. Have you ever cried out “Why?” Many people who say they don't believe in God, nevertheless seem to be mad at Him.

I'm not sure what people mean when they say “there's a reason for everything!” It seems to imply God sends the bad, and that He has a reason for sending it. He gives a child cancer to teach him or her something?  That would be child abuse, and that's not the God of the Bible, nor the One I trust! We can suffer from our own, or other people's sin, but also because of seemingly random happenstances. The Bibles says that “God works all things together for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28). It's not that evil is good,  rather that God is at work for good, in the evil that He allows. It's not so much then, that everything happens for a reason, but rather that for disciples,  He uses what He allows for good.

The Bible is silent concerning any reason for earthquakes, tsunamis and the like. And as with Job, we are left to wrestle with the 'why' of our suffering. Life is not fair, nobody said it was! But the greatest injustice ever,  was the perfect Son of God crucified. To me, the bigger question is about how we deal with suffering?  On the day that I knew was going to be the most difficult in my life, the day I knew my wife was going to take the four children and leave, the Lord brought this verse to mind “Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame” (Hebrews 12:2). I felt I was being told suffering is a barrier the other side of which is joy, and if, like Jesus we endure it, there will be “joy in the morning” (Psalm 30:5).

In fact our response to suffering is something of a crossroads. You either go the way Job's wife suggested, and curse God (Job 2:9), or you wrestle through, and keep wrestling though until you get an answer that satisfies you (Genesis 32:26). And if you do it properly you will, like Job, find yourself being humbled, and acknowledging that you know nothing,  move from knowing about God, into having a personal, loving, intimate relationship with Him (Job 42:3b, 5). Nobody is saying it's easy!

Lord Jesus,  in the world we will have tribulation, but we are to rejoice, because You have overcome the World (John 16:33). Thank You Lord that with every trial or temptation, You provide a way to stand up under it (1 Corinthians 10:13). Thank You for Your invitation to come boldly to the throne of Grave to find mercy and grace to help in time of need  (Hebrews 4:16).  Thank You Lord that You not only suffered for us (1 Peter 3:18), You suffer with us,  in Your precious Name Amen

Answering life's big questions

The Bible does not set out to prove God, it simply states that He is (Genesis 1:1a). But in any case, we don't find God by reason. We only know persons, when they allow us into their lives. Please note, I'm not saying reason is not important. And if we are to love God with all our mind (Mark 12:30), then we need to be in the ongoing process of working through the many disconnect we find between our faith and reason. It can be helpful to read how other have done this.  Physicist John Polkinghorne (Quarks, chaos and Christianity) says “A big fundamental question like belief in God (or disbelief),  is not settled by a single argument. It's too complicated for that. What one has to do, is to consider lots of different issues and see whether or not the answer one gets adds up to a total picture that makes sense.”

Journalist Lee Strobel (The Case for a Creator) set out to disprove God. But instead, chronicling his journey from atheist to believer, he comments “when I opened my mind to the possibility of an explanation beyond naturalism, I found the design hypothesis most clearly accounted for the evidence of science. The ‘explanatory  power’ of the design hypothesis outstripped every other theory.”

There are many other fundamentals questions that knowing the mere existence of a designer, does not answer. Is He the God of the Bible; Can I know Him as a person;  Does He loves me;  Does life has meaning or purpose; Why is the world so messed up; Why is there such cruelty, cruelty that seems to be embedded in nature itself (i.e. nature red in tooth and claw); Is mankind is good,  or evil; How do relationships work; Why do they so easily go wrong; Why pursuing the things we want so badly, so often lead to disaster etc., etc.

Fifty years ago, when the culture could still,  at some level,  be described as Christian, the sitcoms had life lessons that reflected, Biblical values and Biblical wisdom. Today the basic lesson the sitcoms teach,  is that jumping in and out of bed at the drop of hat is normal,  and there are no real consequences to doing so. These are two huge lies (Galatians 6:7).  And one of the reasons for Jordon Peterson's  incredible popularity (12 Rules for Life), is that he is, at least partially, filling the vacuum left from the lack of teaching Biblical values and wisdom. He tells, for example, that the room goes quiet when he suggests we need to take responsibility for our lives. Who would have known, fifty years ago,  that that would be a life changing revelation today?

Perhaps the aspect of life that has suffered the most from the retreat from Biblical values and Biblical wisdom, is relationships. Paul summoning up his admonition to couples says “let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband” (Ephesians 5:31). Here is not the place to go into exposition, but consider how far we have come from the ideal where, in intimate relationships, we confess our faults one to another,  and pray for one another in order that we may be healed (James 5:16a).  

Fifty years ago, the need for the church to teach these things was not as dire as it is today. The cry today is not is it true, but is it relevant?  Well, what do you think, Jesus came to heal the broken hearted (Luke 4:18)?

Creation: The puzzle of a finely tuned, and ordered universe

Many do not know that Science was started by the church, which also ran the first Universities. Believing in God, it made sense to study creation systematically, looking for laws that described how the universe operated. But if everything that is, is the result of a chaotic, undirected explosion, there's absolutely no reason to expect order. And order, and the fine tuning of the universe, are a puzzle for atheistic science.

The term “fine-tuning” is used to characterize sensitive dependences on the values of certain constants that appear in physical laws in physics, biology etc. In terms of it being a puzzle,  Stephen Hawking (A Brief History of Time) noted, "The laws of science, as we know them at present, contain many fundamental numbers, like the size of the electric charge of the electron and the ratio of the masses of the proton and the electron. ... The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life.” From Wikipedia “The occurrence of life in the universe is very sensitive to the values of certain fundamental physical constants and that the observed values are, for some reason, improbable.”

Improbable is something of an understatement.  In particular probabilities that reflect one chance in 10 to the power of 120 for a fine tuned universe to occur, are thrown around. That number is over 10 to the power of 39  times more than the estimated number of particles in the visible universe. By comparison, the complete works of Shakespeare coming out of an explosion at the print factory, is likely (please use this with gentleness and humility)!

An online quote from Richard Dawkins reads  “The more statistically improbable a thing is, the less we can believe that it happened by blind chance. Superficially the obvious alternative to blind chance is an Intelligent Designer.” In other words it looks designed, but it can't be, because it would contradict the presuppositions of naturalism.  It's a circular argument of course! Did I mention resistance to change? In what looks to me like desperate attempt to double down on naturalism, the theory of the multiverse has been proposed. It's a kind of survival of the fittest among a myriad of invisible, and scientifically unverifiable parallel universes.

What I am saying, is that to claim that order and fine tuning come out of an undirected and uncontrolled explosion (the Big Bang or whatever) makes no sense. And the fact that there is order and fine tuning is surely evidence for what is being called Intelligent Design (ID).  ID is an evidence-based scientific theory about life's origins. Of course, the internet, calls it pseudoscience (not real Science). But order in the universe is far from the only evidence for ID. In particular the Discovery Institute, which advocates it,  has many convincing things to share. For example Stephen Myer's 'Signature in the cell' argues for ID from DNA. He and Michael Behe (Irreducible Complexity),  have many interesting related videos on YouTube.

Father, You tell us that to those who have, more will be given. But to those who have not, even what they have will be taken away. In fact You send strong delusion to those who do not love the truth (2 Thessalonians 2:10).  There are many I love who are deceived, and who don't seem to want to hear the truth. I pray for them Lord, and for myself for boldness and humility, and that my very life would speak truth,  in Jesus Name Amen

God created, God made (Genesis 1:1, 6)

The Hebrew word bârâ (created),  is used in the Bible only in connection with the activity of God. It indicates something completely new coming into existence.  As we now know, the heavens and the earth (every material thing) had a beginning, before that there was nothing.  Thus “God created the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1),  can only mean He created all that exists out of nothing. On the other hand He “made” the sun, moon and the stars (verse 16).  What then is the difference, between 'created' and 'made?' An illustration comes to mind. They say that Sir Christopher Wren built St. Paul's cathedral in London,  England. But he did not physically built it, rather that he designed, commissioned and facilitated the building of it. Likewise 'God made,' as distinct from 'God created' allows for an understanding that the particulars of the formation of the sun, moon and stars was not necessarily hands on, so to speak. Psalm 90:2 speaks of the earth being formed. In other words the text allows for an understanding that the formation of the sun, moon and stars, involved what we would call natural processes.

The phrase natural processes is descriptive, and Scientist have a fascinating description of the formation of the moon. But can natural processes explain everything? From the internet “Naturalism is the philosophical belief that everything arises from natural properties and causes, and supernatural or spiritual explanations are excluded or discounted.” In other words in the eyes of much modern Science the answer to my question is “yes.” But does this reflect reality?

The current most widely accepted description of the beginning of the universe is the 'Big Bang.' From the internet “The Big Bang hypothesis states that all current and past matter in the Universe came into existence at the same time, roughly 13.8 billion years ago. At that time, all matter was compacted into a very small ball with infinite density and intense heat called a Singularity. The Singularity suddenly began expanding, and the universe as we know it began.” Two questions, where did the singularity come from, and in terms of the scientific principle of cause and effect, what caused the Big Bang?

A beginning to the universe requires a beginner, someone or something external to the universe, that starts the whole thing. The universe cannot cause itself. To deny this is to imply that nothing created everything that is out of nothing. When challenged about such things, those who dismiss the possibility or an external causal agent say something like “We don't know the natural cause yet, but we are sure we will eventually!” The word 'belief” in the statement that defines Naturalism, is both correct and interesting. It cannot be proved, and together with atheism, is every much a faith position, as belief in God.

Actually, Naturalism is one of an uncountable number of world views,  lenses through which we seek to interpret the world. There are mathematical theorems (Gödel's incompleteness theorems) that essentially imply that a world view can only be held by faith.  Since this is the case, we need to ask which world views most closely reflect reality.

Father,  there are many questions to ask. And my thesis, and the thesis of this book, is that Biblical World views corresponds most closely to reality.  Help us to examine this with an open mind Lord, and help us to live lives that prompt others to want to examine it too, in Jesus Name Amen

Doubtful disputes: “God called the light Day

and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day” (Genesis 1:5).  My heart is heavy this morning as I write, and I feel God's heart is also heavy too, at the way Christians have argued over how to interpret this chapter, and particularly over the interpretation of the word “yom” (day). Accusations have basically flown back and forth, with one faction essentially accusing another of compromising liberalism,  another of putting stumbling blocks in the way of the world coming to believe the Bible.   

Actually there at least three views. Firstly, that of the young earth creationists who hold that the days spoken of in the enumeration of days (first day, second day etc.) are literal twenty four hour periods. There is no doubt that the One who created everything out of nothing could have done it this way. Young earth creationists affirm that He did.  On the other hand old age creationists interpret 'day' allegorically as an age, quoting “A day with the Lord is as a thousand years” (2 Peter 3:8). In a variation of this, Hugh Ross (The Genesis Question) tells that the Hebrew word 'yom' in addition to being a twenty four hour day is also daylight in 1:5, and it is the whole  creation “week” in Genesis 2:4 (see NKJV). It is also variously translated as time, always,  a life time etc.  Ross concludes that 'age' is therefore a literal translation of 'yom'. Theistic evolution is third view of Genesis 1. It contends that whatever parts of of evolution are true, are simply the way God created things.  One variation,  has the days representing the stages of Stephen Jay Gould's “Punctuated Equilibrium.”

The differences stem largely from different methods of interpretation of these difficult to understand ancient texts. And we still have much to learn about interpretation. One thing we need to realize, is that while these texts were written for us, they were not written to us (Romans 15:4). In particular, they needed to be understood by a pre-scientific culture with a totally different world views to ours. There is also the question of literary genre here (how we classify literature into history, poetry etc.). The genre here is surely unique!

I personally know sincere Bible believing lovers of God, in each of the above camps. Furthermore they all subscribe to the essentials outlined in the meditation 'In Essentials Unity, In Non-Essentials Liberty, In All Things Charity' given earlier. Surly in light of the substantial agreement in essentials,  this is not an issue over which to declare war. There are many difficulties, and we need to give each other grace to disagree and still be in fellowship. Indeed Paul admonishes us to receive one another (as fellow believers),  but not to doubtful disputes. And they are doubtful when they produce more heat than light!  I am not saying the issues are not important. Paul admonishes each one to be fully convinced, but we are not to judge, or to show contempt for our fellow believers.  Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies  (Romans 14:1-10; 1 Corinthians 8:1).

Father,  forgive us for those times we have been more interested in proving that we are right, than maintaining the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (Ephesians 4:3). It's our unity that shows the world that You sent Jesus (John 17:23).  Help us here Lord, in His precious we pray Name Amen