One of the most amazing things about God is that he loves us the way he does.  Some people hold a belief that he made us for worship; that he actually made us to adore him.  He has the power to have made us that way or any way that he wanted, but he chose to go a different route.  He made us with free will; to really have the ability to make our own choices.

He took a risk.  Love entails risk.  There is always the chance that those that are loved will not love back.  God knew this and still took the route that he did.  He is not the self centered ego maniac that some theological worldviews paint him out to be.  This is good news for those of us that want to reach out to the skeptics of this world.  We actually have something to say against all of their arguments about a loving God doing evil nasty things.

The bible paints a picture of a God that gets hurt when we forsake him.  The idea that God is impassable is just not presented in the bible.  Our choices cause him pain, regret, jealousy, anger, and sometimes joy.  The reformed believers do not fully accept this.  Some reject it outright.  They seem to do this out of a belief that it lessens God somehow.  They believe that those of us that believe the way I do are trying to make God in my image.  This is not so.

He made us in his image.  So what does that mean?  How could we be made in his image if he does not experience emotion since we are riddled with them, driven by them, and even ruined by them sometimes?

God created us like we are because he wanted true relationships with us.  That whole idea about worship and adoration is a side effect actually.  When someone comes to really know him through a real relationship, they are going to naturally worship and adore him because of who he is.  But we can’t know this until we enter into a love relationship with him.  It is intentional on our part.

Some see love as an emotion and in some sense it is.  But really it is the lasting quality, attribute or aspect, which God has for us or wants from us.  Love is something that we determine and decide we will do.  What we call love in the beginning relationship is really attraction, or even lust.  It then turns into desire and maybe grows into care.  But if it never turns into love, agape as Paul calls it, then it probably won’t last.  And if it does not, if we are to believe the evidence, then relationships don’t last.

Ask any person that you know that has been married forty or fifty years if it was all a bed of roses.  I know a few and for most it was not.  Some of them faced and went through things that cause us to wonder why or how they ever stayed together.  The answer is simple, they made a commitment, and they intentionally kept that commitment.  In our society today we not only do not always commit, even when we do we do not necessarily intend to keep it.

When we make marriage vows today, are we saying that we are going to love, honor and cherish or are we really saying we will love until the attraction is not as strong, honor as long as we receive more, and cherish until someone or something comes along that we are more attracted to.  Even the vows we say in a marriage ceremony show the intentionality of love.  We promise “to love” not that we necessarily “do love”.

My wife and I watched Fireproof last week.  I have been letting the movies concepts run through my head all week.  There was not a lot of great acting in it but the message was powerful.  The message was that love, and marriage, is intentional.  The couple had every stereotypical thing that is wrong in marriage going on but even if we are not all going though all that they were, we still need to get the message, the concept, in our heads and our hearts so that we can turn this crisis called divorce around.  This means we must be intentional.  And we really need Jesus to be our Lord.

We must, especially as people of the Kingdom of God, do what we said we would do.  Marriage is a covenant, which is the way God intended, and covenants are not to be broken.  No matter what.  God could have broken his covenant with us long ago and we would deserve it.  But he didn’t.  He even went so far as to send Jesus to die so that we could stay in covenant with him.  The cross was intentional.

If you are married, or intending to be, watch the movie Fireproof and read the book, The Love Dare, together.  I have read most of it and it is a valuable tool to help you keep any vows you have made.  Being, or becoming more, Christlike demands that you keep your promises.

“But above all, my brothers, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath, but let your “yes” be yes and your “no” be no, so that you may not fall under condemnation.” (Jas 5:12)

Intentional.  What does intentional love really look like?  It looks like a cross.  So let your yes be yes.  Be intentional in loving.  Especially in marriage, but also in everything else you do. 

Love you all

Tags: Belief, Bible, Christlike, Fireproof, Free will, God, jesus, joy, Kingdom, Love, Love Dare, Marriage, Relationships, skeptics

Jesus began his ministry in prayer and ended it in prayer.  He prayed in the mornings and He prayed in the evenings.  He spent days in prayer, and He prayed at all the crucial points in His life and ministry; at his baptism, at his transfiguration, at his death.  Jesus wanted to maintain the relationship He had with His Father.  And He knew that while He was here, prayer was the only means for this.

Does prayer matter?

Jesus believed it did.  He prayed about everything and he prayed all the time.  The Romans of the time prayed and kept charms for good luck but they didn’t really expect their prayers to do anything.  The Greeks derided prayer, weaving crude, ridiculous and sometimes obscene prayers into plays and theater to bring out laughter in their audience. But those stubborn Jews believed that they followed the supreme and loving God and that He did hear and answer their prayers.  Prayer matters because we need that communion with God.  It matters because without it, God will ultimately not be able to bring about His will in our lives.  The Bible is the place we go to understand and get a glimpse of the mind of God.  But prayer is where we get to know His heart.

Jesus offers us no metaphysical proof of the effectiveness of prayer, but He not only prayed, He told the disciples on at least one occasion that they failed in their attempts to heal a boy because of a lack of prayer.  If we are going to believe Jesus then we must believe that prayer works and it matters.  Just not necessarily in the way we want at all times.  If we pray we may not get what we want, but oftentimes we get something we need.  Peter once prayed for food and got a lesson in racism, Paul asked for healing and received humility, we ask for relief and get patience.

Are prayers always answered?

No.  I know they are heard but that does not mean they are answered.  Jesus prayed that we would all be one as He and the Father were one yet we have over 34,000 distinct and identifiable denominations and sects of Christianity today.  Sometimes we ourselves hinder even the prayers that God would love to bring about. Unanswered prayer sometimes shows us a God that actually restrains himself due to the freedom he has granted us.  God respects our free will so much he allows things to play out naturally sometimes.  Even though when we are faced with some seriously dire situations we sometimes would like to give up that very freedom.

In God’s creation project, He built in this component that we call free will so that we could share in the maintenance and direction of the project.  He knew we could, and I think He knew we probably would; fail in our area of authority.  But He wanted free, loving relationships with us above all else.  And no matter how happy a five point Calvinist gets at the thought of God’s Omni-control, that just does not show us a loving God.  It shows us a puppet master instead.  God really wants relationships with real people not puppets.

Jesus taught us that prayer was necessary to maintain this relationship with our Father.  Prayer is ultimately only a method of communion with God and this is what Jesus modeled for us.  God desires a dynamic relationship with all of us and the only way that will occur is with consistent, persistent prayer. We pray to involve God in our lives.  Ministry, family, jobs, etc are all areas where we ask God to be there for us and to strengthen us.  But sometimes it has to be just about being with Him.  Our ministries are our calling but our callings came after the Fall.  Before that we had fellowship with God.  We were created for fellowship with God.  And since the Fall, prayer is the method of maintaining that fellowship.

Prayer involves an effort of will.  I must decide to do it and like anything else, doing it consistently will make it become a habit instead of a planned event, a joy instead of effort.  We must all pray and we must do it our way.  If I try to pray like Pastor or some of you I am only setting myself up for failure.  And while I believe it is good to start the day off and end the day talking to God it is not always that deep meaningful communion that I desire.  That has to happen when each of our hearts and our lifestyles dictate.

But it must happen.  Have you talked to your Father today?

Love you all

Tags: Bible, Calvin, Christ, communion with god, Father, Fellowship, Free will, greeks, Love, Prayer, Relationships, romans

Have you ever seen a display of skilled acrobatics?  The twisting, and the turning, and the bending, and the seeming ability to tie the human body into knots seem almost impossible to someone, like me, that on some mornings find it painful to tie my shoes.  The flexibility and the agility displayed looks painful and amazing at the same time.  It goes to show you that almost anything can be made to appear in ways that were not intended, like the human body. 

I read a couple of sites occasionally that are mostly made up of Calvinists.  I do it to stay informed and also because I have a need to test my beliefs to see if I am in error.  These people paint an amazing but troubling, picture of God.  One that makes Him so meticulous in His control, so omniscient He already knows what I am having for lunch on June 12^th 2011, so omnipotent that no one can even be presented as in opposition to His will, above and outside time and yet still able to relate to us in time, and so locked in rigidity that it seems even He is not free to do other than He has done.

It just doesn’t make sense. 

How do these conclusions allow for real free will?

How do these conclusions make anyone other than God responsible for evil?

How do these conclusions make sense of Gods own words describing His responses to prayer and repentance?

How do these conclusions allow or have room for the dynamic loving relationship He wants with us all?

I could go on and on with the questions.  But you probably see what I am talking about.  The answer to the how is that they have made up or coined so many phrases to describe their different justifications for everything, that it is like watching great acrobatics.  They know their argument well and twist, bend and toss it out in a way that even those who do not believe the way they do, fall prey to using the same terminology because of the agility of the argument. 

Some of the people that I know personally use the same words and don’t really know what they are implying. 

I read these other blogs and come away with my head swimming in amazement that so many can give an answer to my questions, yet really say nothing at all.  And they use many, many words to do it.  Maybe that is it.  I just don’t know as many words or how to say things in enough ways. 

I am a simple man.  Only a High school graduate.  But I am willing to dig.  But not willing to learn acrobatics or gymnastics to interpret the Bible.  While the display of acrobatics is amazing, it has to hurt.  Especially if you ever give up on the continual training needed to keep up the necessary flexibility. 

Do we really have to twist and turn and even tie ourselves into knots to understand God?  The love of God just does not seem to be that mysterious to me. 

Love you all

Tags: acrobatics, Belief, Bible, conclusions, Evil, flexibility, Free will, God, justifications, Personal, rigidity, terminology

Some people will find everything I said in my last post repulsive and heretical.  The very idea that I would try to limit God is intolerable and immediately calls into question my trust in the Bible.  I want to assure all that the Bible is first and foremost where I go to find wisdom and understanding. 

What I do not find particularly trustworthy is the traditions of man.  We all seem almost incapable of leaving our preconceived beliefs out of our discussions and interpretations.  That includes me.  But some will say, who are you to question the conclusions of the great theologians of the past such as Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, etc.  Even the most prestigious contemporary scholars such as Sproul, Piper, and McArthur hold to the view of absolute exhaustive foreknowledge.  Although that is not the terms they would use.  So who am I?

These theologians have concluded that God is so far above us and different from us that the views I am bringing to the discussions here are seen as simply trying to bring Him down to my level.  But ask yourself this. 

When God said let us create man in our own image, did we or did we not inherit emotions or states of mind such as wonder, surprise, excitement, awe, hope, optimism, and other positive human qualities? These good qualities had to come from God; we did not develop them ourselves. Therefore, what is so illogical about a God who also gives himself the luxury of experiencing awe, wonder, surprise and hope? Or is our God a being that has always been devoid of surprise, wonder, and exploration?  As naturally He would if He already saw everything.

In a view that holds to God having to react to our choices we see a God that loves and enters into a relationship with us.  In a view that holds to God being outside of time and far away and already knowing everything before it happens we actually place limits on God that the Bible just does not show us.

Taking the idea of absolute exhaustive foreknowledge at face value, let’s go farther back in time, even before any being in any world, or even in heaven, existed. Only God exists. God sees everything happening.

Can God do anything different than what God foresees happening?

Foreseeing everything that will happen, how can God choose to not create the angels and especially Lucifer?

So what is in control, time or God?  Prescience or God?

Do you see how a known future seems to force even God under its determining flow?

At this strong, absolutely knowable future level, then even God doesn’t have a choice in creating what He has foreseen. Does it really make sense for God to create all the pain? When you really think about it, in this scenario, how can we not argue over foreknowledge while the rest of the world wonders why we bother?  It must have been foreseen. 

Here, some of you may say, “that is just the mystery of salvation,” but when one confronts the true horror of unnecessary human suffering repeated billions of times through earth history, a God who knew it all along, even before Lucifer, becomes either despotic or controlled by time itself.

Do you see how in the theodicy problem, responsibility has to be placed on God if He knew exactly what was to happen?

Do you see how making God know the future absolutely makes God a slave to the stream of time as well?

All of this comes from the Greek deification of time itself, as Chronos, and making the gods and themselves dependent on Fate.  This is fatalism.  It is very similar to Calvinism, although you will never hear one admit it.  Richard Rice said the following in a book called The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God…

“If at creation God knew with absolute certainty that man would fall, He was not risking the moral harmony of the universe in making man: He was simply sacrificing it.” 

And that sacrifice is not the one shown to us in the Word of God.  Instead we see a different sacrifice because of the fall, the sacrifice of Himself. 

If God does truly, absolutely, foreknow all that is ever to happen, I simply cannot see that true free will is possible.  And the thought of having no free will would make me kiss Christianity good-bye.

In the classic science fiction series, Dune, the complete story is about a family who gain the power to predict the future, but discover that they are in fact creating the future.  Their prescience actually created and they are then trapped in their creations. The first in the line is Paul Atreides.  He seeks the power of prescience but, when he obtains it and has it long enough to realize the nature of it, he just wants to die.  But he can’t until it is the right time to die.  Which will be when he foresaw it. 

The last “god emperor” of Dune decides to breed people whose actions cannot be predicted so no one will ever gain this power again. The thing he ultimately craves is someone who will surprise him.

How else can God truly delight in us if not in our ability to “surprise” Him with our right choices?

Pro 12:22  …but those who act faithfully are his delight.

Jos 24:15  …choose this day whom you will serve, …

It seems Joshua believed, as I do, that we have a choice. 

Love you all

Tags: Aquinas, Augustine, Belief, Calvin, Calvinism, Creation, Discussion, Dune, Faith, foreknowledge, Free will, God, Interpretation, Knowledge, limits on god, Lucifer, McArthur, Paul Atreides, piper, Richard Rice, sproul, traditions