A Christian Apologetic

Introduction

This note is a description of my search for God.  I’ve used the term “Pilgrim” in the title to underscore that it was, and still is, a pilgrimage – a search for truth concerning the God of the universe.  The appropriate definition is:

One who embarks on a quest for something conceived of as sacred.

It should be noted up front that I recognize that my story is perhaps quite different from yours.  I’m one of those people who are not very good at accepting things as important as God, eternity and his plan, on the basis of superficial information.  I’ve got to dig into it some, at least enough to satisfy my essential questions.  Perhaps to my detriment, I’m not one for whom blind faith comes easily.  (I feel quite guilty about that, actually).  If you like, I’ve got to build a mental model of the thing and have it make sense to me, have it fit what I know and what is attested by those who know a lot more about the subject than I ever will.

Having done that, I can say there is nothing particularly earthshaking in my version.  But I think you will find some insights along the way that are new to you, as they have been for me.  My hope is that there might be some encouragement for you here as you read about my stumbling progress toward this goal.  Every human being is born with an innate desire to find their God, and one way or another, they all do.

Some find their gods along the way that, for them, do the job, and so stop looking for the Divine – some enthusiastically so.  There are plenty of gods in their way, any one of which can ultimately anesthetize their yearning for the divine – drugs, money, their own success, knowledge, the flush of “good feeling” through doing things they or society think admirable, etc.    Lots of people, perhaps most, just stop at themselves.

There are also events of evil that cause some to declare their search meaningless.  Obviously, they say, there can be no God in a world where this evil can happen.  And, increasingly, there is the seduction of modernity with its science and its technology.  Some who are tightly intertwined in the modern world just lose interest in the quest when there’s so much other stuff to do and so much to experience and so much to be entertained by.

Actually, it’s quite amazing to me in this day and age that anyone living in the modern world can actually find God.  If the message of God is the signal, and the incessant sound of modern culture is the noise, the signal-to-noise ratio is at an all-time low.  It’s just so much easier to answer the next text or e-mail or Twitter message or to watch the next movie or TV show than it is to cultivate our spiritual lives.  There is such an anesthetic quality to the drug of modern connectedness and technology in general.  Marshall McLuhan said “The medium is the message” far ahead of the advent of current social media – he thought he was talking about TV.  \

Surprise!  The media we now have conveys messages that are quite empty but addictive, asking, even demanding, an increasing amount of our attention.   With social media, frighteningly, inanity is the message.   We just don’t have much to say that’s worth hearing.  But that doesn’t seem to cure anyone of their addiction to the medium.  Talk about seeds sewn “along the path”[1]!

There’s also, it seems to me, another dangerous component of modern culture (or just “modernity”), and that is a general presumption that Christianity (and for some, any religion) is passé, something people used to believe and follow, and unsophisticated people at that.  I think this is simply a lazy presumption that all religion is superstition born of ignorance of modern science and a refusal to see the promise of the human race to improve itself and its condition.  Please.

Perhaps these folks should at least read some history, say of the 20^th century, or the 19^th or 18^th, or…  Sadly, they don’t know enough history or have sufficient firsthand experience to see the failure of humanity to heal itself.  When you live in the prosperous West, it’s sometimes hard to see real life, particularly as it’s filtered through modern mass media.

So this note is also an appeal to disconnect, to pray for guidance and insight, to read the bible, and to study all that you can about who what, and why God is.  Please also read the “God is dead” folks too; the Dawkins and Hawkings and Russells and Nietzsches[2].  Then wrestle with what you’ve learned, and study and pray some more.  If you’re like me, I think you will see through their arguments as at best self-serving.

No one has the proof that God exists (though some have tried, like Aquinas[3]).  But no one has the proof that God doesn’t exist, either.  It’s not a testable hypothesis.  So, in the end, you must figure it out for yourself and make a choice.

And this particular choice is ultimate.  No other decision will have an impact on how you think about and live your life (the lives of those around you), let alone your destiny after death, than this one will.  Don’t let your choice be the lazy “There is no God.  That’s for ignorant, regressive people”.  Make sure it’s an actively determined one, either “There couldn’t be a God that lets this stuff happen”, or a hopeful, expectant, and thankful “My God!”

And please understand, you will be offered the opportunity[4],[5] to know God is there and choose him, even if you never pick up the Bible or step inside a church service. The Holy Spirit sees to that.

A parenthetical comment on eschatology.  Mine is not an exclusively “futurist” view, nor is it one that believes that all that Christ was sent to do has been accomplished.  Being in the middle, I’m known as an amillennialist.  Some of God’s work outlined in the Biblical prophecies (of Daniel, Christ, and John) have been accomplished; and some haven’t.

Finally, why do I bother to write this stuff down?  Well, first, if you’re reading it, as I’ve already mentioned, I hope it is helpful to you in your quest in some way.  One thing my story proves is that it doesn’t happen instantaneously for some of us (It’s taken me my whole life, and I’m not done yet.)

Second, I believe in the concept of the “examined life”.  For me, this means to inspect what I do, why I do it, and what I know in the context of my beliefs, and determine if my actions fit within what I aspire to, and if what I know is consistent with what I believe.  In this way, it’s quite similar to Socrates’ original concept.  It’s just that for me, my Christianity focuses it on something that’s actually useful and not just an academic or philosophical exercise.

Thirdly, writing something down helps focus an otherwise unfocused mind.  Finally, we Christians are commanded to be ready to give a defense for our hope[6], and this is a way for me to improve my readiness to do just that.

The Casualness of Youth

While there are exceptions, young folks aren’t particularly known for their commitment to deep issues.  Growing up, my family attended a protestant church regularly but was not religious.  I thought everybody attended church and everybody prayed to the same God in the same way.  I watched how they did it.  The denomination of this church (Congregational) was on the cerebral or “liberal” end of the protestant spectrum.  As a consequence, I learned the main rituals and some of the basic material, but the experience did not make a profound impact on me.   I only heard about God in cool tones, and only on Sunday, in that building.  Most of the messages were topical.  They didn’t teach the Bible, per se.   I thought that was normal.

Despite the casualness of the whole thing and the lack of a sense of urgency or importance placed on the message by the members of the church, I nevertheless felt drawn to the concept of God as perfection – all-powerful, all-knowing, omnipresent, perfect love.  I didn’t know enough then to know why I was drawn.  I knew about the Holy Spirit as a member of the Trinity, but I wasn’t sure what he did or what his purpose was.

Importantly at this stage, I wasn’t energized by the idea of belonging to God or worshipping him.  I can well remember becoming surly knowing that I had to go to the youth group meeting when all I wanted to do was hang out with my buddies.  I do, however, remember a sense of acknowledgement that God was indeed God.  Looking at how those around me lived, and listening to the messages on Sunday, I wasn’t exactly sure what I was supposed to do with that knowledge.  But I do remember a fairly deep (for a teenager) sense of commitment to the concept of being beholden to God the Creator.  I didn’t know what that meant, or how I should live my life, other than to try to be “good”.  I served in that church as the Youth Group President.

Family and Church

In college, I fell away from the church and from any awareness of God in my day-to-day life.  College was friends, study, fear of failing, and drinking on the weekends.   My main emotion during that time was fear of failure that would make me the subject of ridicule from my friends, and shame for my family.

Near the end of my college career, I met my wife.  We dated for about a year and were married while I still had a term left to finish.  She was from the same religious background (same denomination) as mine and so had had the same (lack of) exposure to solid Christian teaching.  Church was on Sunday morning, life was the rest of the time.

A couple of years after being married we had our first child, and three years later the second.  Of course, there is a difference in perspective between being the parent of a young family and that of being a live-for-the-moment college student.  By the time the kids were entering elementary school, both my wife and I felt the “right thing to do” was to join a church so that the kids would be taught the same things we had been.

Fortunately for us (and for me), the church we chose, despite being of the same denomination as our childhood churches, had a young, bright pastor who had an authentic passion for God and who was very skilled at exegesis and teaching.  We were in that church for six years and during that time I was able to build a foundation of faith that had been missing up to that point.  I began to really learn who Christ was, what he said, and why what he said was so revolutionary.  And these things began to set up in me, somewhat like a foundational layer of cement.  I began praying again (after a long absence).  I prayed that he take me back.  It’s worth noting, however, that I still had no conviction about what the Christian life looked like or how I should be living.  It may have been taught.  But in the context of that church, as with my childhood church, I just didn’t hear it.  I served in that church for a time as a Deacon, and from that brief experience, began to learn about serving – serving “the body”.

Seeds of Truth

But it’s indisputable that in that church I was fed truth and it took hold.  After another move, we once again ended up out of church for a period of time – perhaps two years.  During this time I was into listening to sermons on the TV or radio and discovered Charles Swindoll in Anaheim.  He was so gifted that I felt no loss of connection despite the fact I was listening to him from 150 miles away.  We even drove up there to hear him in person one Sunday (and ended up watching him on TV in one of his many satellite viewing venues.  That was my first exposure to the mega-church phenomenon.)

When we finally connected with a church in our new location (through my wife’s friendship with the pastor’s wife), it was one in the Baptist tradition.  Its pastor was nothing if not emotionally driven by his faith.  This was a new experience for both of us.  I had never heard challenges and imperatives in the pastor’s messages.  And these certainly stirred up questions in me that I had not had to answer before.  “What do you mean ‘share my faith’?”  I couldn’t imagine something so unnatural.  Because the church was small, I eventually began serving in its leadership group.

After that pastor departed, we had a couple of interim pastors step in, one of whom changed my faith life.  This guy was so in love with the Lord and, at the same time, so skilled at expressing himself and the gospel (no doubt due to his academic background and college teaching experience), that he single-handedly introduced me to the real Gospel and the real Jesus.  Some people just “get it”. (Perhaps a better way to say it is some people are just “gotten”.)   And this gentleman was one of those. He expressed himself, and the gospel’s love and compassion, in ways that opened my eyes and my heart to the real Jesus.  Up to this point I think I had been substantially role playing.  Now, however, I was beginning to fall in love with this God.  This was a turning point for me, as I look back now.

I had two experiences in my leadership capacity there that taught me a lot about people.  The first was our search for a new pastor, and the subsequent split of the church that occurred shortly after we selected the new pastor.  In this experience, drawn out over a period of months, I saw both this new pastor, and a large number of our members, place their own interests high above the unity of the body.  I mean screaming, crying outbursts that tore the unity to shreds amongst our people.  It was one valuable lesson in self-interest Vs God-interest.

The second experience was a Matthew 18 disagreement between two (actually three) members with somewhat less emotional baggage, but with essentially the same outcome, and for the same reason.  Self-interest and desire for their personal idea of justice trumped all appeals for unity within the body as a sacrificial offering.

These experiences taught me something valuable about churches and their frailty, but more about people who identify themselves as “Christians”.  They may say they believe something, but they weren’t ready to live it.  We are indeed quite frail.  Saying you’re a Christian (while probably even believing it), and living as one are, as I learned, often two entirely different things.[7]

Sense of Commitment

In this church (much as in my previous two churches) quite apart from the depth of my commitment to Christ, I felt a duty to serve.  I think this is interesting for a couple of reasons.  First, it represents a bit of a cautionary tale.  I served these initial churches in various capacities (led the Youth Group, a Deacon, and a member and President of the Church Board), while at the same time not being totally committed to Christ.  This is not a condemnation of those churches.  Churches solicit those willing to serve and these didn’t delve too deeply into my spiritual commitment.  But this, of course, isn’t how the church was intended to be led.  (I appreciate my current church for challenging the statements of faith of all those who “feel called” to serve.) It helps no one to have those in leadership be weak in their commitment.

Secondly, in retrospect, it just wasn’t like me to seek out responsibilities.  This was foreign to me at best.  But I did nonetheless.  Looking back on it now, I believe I was being persistently nudged (“called” is such a misunderstood and misused term) to stretch myself, both for His sake and for mine.  This has become a key life lesson for me.  When you feel this tugging to do or serve or give, and you know it isn’t something you would do naturally, the correct answer is always yes.  I’m not talking about external tugging from persistent people.  I mean that “still, small voice” nudging you.  In God’s system, he provides you opportunities to grow in him – to be more like him, through these experiences. Take them.

But the main point I want to convey here is that at this point I still wasn’t committed to Christ in the sense of being anxious to do whatever he might ask me to do.  I was still reserved, still far more comfortable standing aside that standing up.  (To this day, I’m still like that.  That’s my personality.  But at least today I know there is far less I wouldn’t do if he asked.  Each day that list shrinks.  For some, perhaps most, it’s a process not an event.)  The corollary point, though, should be encouraging:  God doesn’t need much to work with to begin the process of conforming you into himself.  You just need to be capable of taking one step at a time.  He knows what he’s doing.  He does this kind of thing “for a living”.

Glory and Physics

Somewhere along the way I began asking myself some fundamental questions.  One of the key questions that had always bothered me was the absolutism of the Calvinist “TULIP” dogma[8].  (Don’t ask me how I came to be aware of TULIP and be bothered by it – I just don’t recall.)  Particularly troublesome to me was one of their favorite verses:

Romans 8:28-30 (ESV)
And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.  For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.  And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.

The issue for me, of course, was “predestined” – the age-old determinism Vs. free will argument.  I wasn’t ready to believe that God had worked everything out absolutely in advance – who’s redeemed and who’s not – before they were born.   I’m still not.  (More on this subject here…)

The reason I judge our interpretation of this passage to be in error is the understanding I came to (much later) of the reason for our existence.  It was John Piper who through his exuberance, joyfulness and insight taught me that we were created for just one purpose — God’s glory[9].   Once my ego adjusted to the shock, so much began to make sense.  The Bible restates this truth in one way or another over 350 times.  (When the Bible gives a truth once, it is to be noted; twice or more and you know it’s extremely important.  When it’s repeated throughout nearly every book of the Bible, you know you’re being given something absolutely crucial.)  Isaiah, for example, says:

Isa 43:6-7 Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.”

This truth is foundational — axiomatic.  It forces one to ask: how is it, exactly, that God is glorified by watching people carry out his preordained decisions, like a population of preprogrammed robots?  I concluded that he isn’t.

I hope this point “rings true” to you.  If not, perhaps a different perspective – God’s – may help.  Consider if you will the natural condition of man; his selfishness and pridefulness born of an ego determined to retain control and advantage for himself.  Now imagine if just one of those people who you, as their creator, love dearly responds to your subtle, barely perceptible invitation to resist their own nature and place you first in his thinking and actions, placing his own interests second.  How would you feel about that person, about his sacrifice of himself for you?  Of course, he wouldn’t succeed in doing this all the time – self-interest is, after all, his nature, just as you intended when you made him[10].  But periodically he succeeds and places you above himself.  Wouldn’t you feel edified by his action – perhaps even glorified?[11]

So, returning to predestination, I began looking for an explanation.  I think what the Calvinists (and, for that matter, perhaps Isaiah) misunderstood is that God is not part of his creation, and therefore is not subject to its time.  He operates outside of our time dimension.  There is a difference between directing an outcome to happen at some point in time, and simply observing an outcome occur at its point in time from a position outside of our time dimension.  The difference is who caused the outcome.

I believe what Isaiah was saying is that God knew from the beginning what the outcome for each of us was going to be (i.e. “foreknew”) since, being outside of our time he could see all of time. The writer may have confused this foreknowing with fore-ordaining, since he likely lacked this out-of-time understanding.  He knew God was the creator.  And he knew God knew future outcomes.  So it would only make sense that God created these future outcomes.  I don’t think so (more below…).  Count me as an Armenian.  I hold that not only does God not specify our decisions, he is glorified when we decide of our own free will to love and serve him. [12]

But there is another possible interpretation of this Romans text.  Notice that the sequence of God’s actions is: foreknew; predestined; called; justified; glorified.  It could be talking about the same population – the same set of people — throughout.  So perhaps the meaning of “foreknew” here is somehow exclusive to those that he saw would choose him, rather than all people.  The Greek word here is “προγινώσκω”, from which we get “prognosis” or “prognosticate”.  Its definition[13] is “to know beforehand, that is, foresee:—foreknow”.   The key question then becomes: What does it mean for God to “know” a person?  Must there be a relationship established between the person and God for God to be said to “know” that person?  Perhaps.  In Matthew Christ is recorded as saying:

Mt 7:21-23 (ESV)
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.  On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

Textually at least, the case can be made that the Romans statement is talking throughout of those that will have chosen God, and thus are known by God, rather than saying God selected them in advance.

We need to return for a moment to God’s purpose in creating us – his glory – and its implications.  I have come to a somewhat non-traditional and some would say heretical view that God’s plan from the beginning was to create us as imperfect.  The traditional Christian view is that God intended people to be holy and righteous and joyous in our earthly Eden, and we were, according to the tradition, until Adam screwed it all up and in so doing corrupted the perfection of creation.  In this view God was blind-sided by Adam.  It’s all Adam’s fault (or perhaps Eve, or the Serpent, if you wish).

That’s not giving God much credit, is it?  Or perhaps it’s giving Adam too much.  I think it’s quite clear that God knew exactly what Eve and Adam would do and why, and that only worship and service from an imperfect people, who would have to consciously resist their natural tendencies, would be glorifying to him.  I’ve used the analogy before of a boss in an office full of “yes men”.  Only a very weak, insecure boss staffs his company with a bunch of sycophants endlessly praising him. I believe that his glorification from us comes from our voluntary sacrifice of our sinful natures in order to worship and serve him.

I guess this is controversial because people don’t want to think of God creating imperfection.  Reread Genesis 3.  God didn’t force Eve to take the fruit, nor did the serpent.  She independently decided the fruit was “good” and should be “taken”.  Either way you look at it, that’s what God did.  At the end of the day, it makes no difference; we’re imperfect, we’re in a state of “missing the mark” of God’s perfection and need his help to overcome that fatal condition.  Please don’t misunderstand.  I’m not trying to escape sin-guilt here.  I just think we should give God credit for knowing exactly what he was doing at the moment of creation.

Study, Reflection and Conviction

My little toe-dip into physics (of which I am still so hugely ignorant) led to a more general urge to know God.  My questions were not only about scripture and theology.  They were also about the nature of God, the nature (physics) of his creation, and how his plan manifests itself in our everyday lives.

So I began to read books professing to explain this characteristic or that text or this aspect of the gospel or that.  And I must say there are so many outstanding, God-loving, gifted writers and thinkers out there that I could literally study them until I breathed my last and still not scratch the surface.  Knowledge isn’t the end-all.  But, for me, it became a necessary step.

Looking back, I started out reading the “pop” Christian books of their day.  I’ve already mentioned Swindoll, whom I read intently, in addition to listening to his broadcasts.  Then there was Rick Warren and the whole “Purpose Driven” brand.  I also enjoyed Henry Blackaby’s “Experiencing God” material.  All of these helped build on the foundation as they all emphasized different aspects of the Christian message and associated prescriptions for the Christian life.

Later, as a result of hearing him in person, I got into John Piper’s works.  On the biblical scale of milk-to-solid food, Piper, for me, was steak – filet mignon even.  I can remember how defensive and dismissive of his insights I was before hearing him.  But I am so thankful that his message was so excellently crafted, and so passionately presented (and at times so blunt) that it demanded attention, and forced me to reconcile his “Christian Hedonism” with what I thought being a nice, dutiful Christian was supposed to look like.

Piper’s insight provided, for me, a second breakthrough.  With his explanation of how a perfect God could only aspire to more perfection (i.e. more of himself), the fog around so many longstanding questions was lifted, from our need for Christ’s sacrifice to the purpose of suffering.  In grappling with this idea, I found it essential to abandon the God-as-benevolent-but-sometimes-absent-minded-grandfather image.  Thinking of him in that way had made me put human personality onto him, and then misinterpret his aspiration for perfection as some kind of cheap selfishness.  It was far better for me to simply admit I had (and have) no concept of the nature of perfection – something that can “speak” a universe into existence, with its mind-numbing complexity and fine-tuning of its many different properties, processes, and forces.  (One of the toughest things for me to ‘get’ remains that God is “other”.  He’s not like us in any way[14].  Thinking of him in human terms slowed down my ability to love and “understand” him by a couple of decades.)

What I Believe, and Why

The cosmos is consistent with a Creator, and essential for us, the created, to exist.

Perhaps because I was trained as an engineer, I was drawn into the whole science-of-creation area.  Initially, I did this because I was embarrassed by my lack of ability to respond to challenges to the biblical stories of creation and the flood.  Most people (well, at least most secularists) snicker whenever you address this subject, and dismiss it as a kind of pseudo-science.  Those that do, do so either out of ignorance, or outright prejudice.  The study of the science of creation simply represents the analysis of the physics and biology of the universe to assess if they are consistent, or inconsistent, with having been created by a Creator.

In this area the author who has been most helpful to me, and one that I recommend to you, is Gerald L. Schroeder.  Mr. Schroeder is PhD in physics from MIT, with a strong interest in and understanding of molecular biology.  He’s also a scholar of the early Jewish thinkers responsible for the Talmud and other early rabbinical writings including those of the spiritual sect known as the Kabalists.  Schroeder’s insights into molecular biology have been particularly important for me, as it is an area in which I had absolutely no prior knowledge.

Schroeder presents three principle arguments for the universe being the creation of God the creator.  First, he (and many others in the last 25 years) argues that the universe is “fine-tuned” through its physical properties to result in sentient life.  Second, he examines the history of life (from the fossil record) and the nearly miraculous processes in life itself and concludes that these are statistically impossible without external assistance.  And, third, to substantiate the case for God being this outside influencer, he reexamines the text of the Torah, along with rabbinical sources, to see what more they have to say about creation.

To explore Schroeder’s insights and their impact, please have a look at this.

Why does God allow innocent suffering?

Perhaps the most severe indictment brought against the notion of an all-powerful, loving God is the presence of suffering by innocents – in particular suffering brought about by nature, those evils inflicted by other people are also a stumbling block to some.  In thinking about this issue my challenge as one of those believers in an all-powerful, just and loving God is to reconcile these characteristics of God with undeserved and apparently random suffering – suffering apparently without justification in the sufferer, and therefore an injustice.  This is the topic in philosophy known as theodicy.  Of course, no one has the answer.  The best we can do is to propose explanations that seem to fit with most of our understanding.

To begin, it’s clear that nature is subject to apparently random events that lead to suffering or death, from earthquakes to hurricanes to car accidents to disease to a host of other events in which their victims are innocent.  We’re surrounded by these events on a daily basis.  And it is our near universal reaction that such events violate fairness – that they’re unjust.

Christians and most people of faith, understandably, really struggle with this. Some, including the disciples, thought that there must be personal cause.  Upon encountering the man born blind, the disciples asked who had sinned, the man or his parents?

John 9:3-5 (ESV)
Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.  We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work.  As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

Apparently, the man had suffered in blindness his whole life just so that Jesus could then heal him, which he did at Siloam, and by so doing further asserted his authority and the authority of his message.  The more interesting statement is the one following the explanation, that “We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day”.  It’s certainly true that Jesus commissioned his disciples to go out and work miracles – healing the sick, raising the dead, etc. – and they did (Acts 5:14-26).  But if this is simply a direct message to his followers, it doesn’t help us much with the broader question.

No, the broader question is why God allows innocent people to suffer and die if he has the ability to prevent or at least cure it.  Again, here I’m not so concerned with man-caused suffering.  Much has already been written about the moral and theological implications of the holocaust and Rwanda and the Russian holocaust and their current incarnations in Somalia and Sudan and Nigeria.  We’re almost calloused to the point of numbness by genocides.  The evil in men is well documented, even if you don’t attribute it to a fallen Adam.  History is full of it.

No, here I’m concerned with cancer, with earthquakes, droughts causing starvation, accidents and the like – where man is either not involved or had no intention to cause suffering and death.  Where is God in these?  A different but equivalent question is: “If God exists and is all powerful and loves us, why didn’t he create a world where we don’t have to suffer?”  This one is easy.  A world in which its people experience no suffering, or perhaps even hardship, born of the world itself is a world whose people don’t “need” and therefore would not seek a God. (A common objection to the notion of God by atheists is that the only reason people believe in him is as a story to explain things they don’t yet understand – like suffering.  Fair enough.  That’s the way I would have set it up.  Ask yourself: if you wanted to create a people whom you could love and who would love you in return, don’t you think it would be a good idea to first give them some unmet needs that caused them to look for you?)  The God of the Bible, we’re told[25], is one who desires a relationship with us, who created us for his glory.  Obviously the people of a perfect cocoon world would not be prompted to seek their creator, would live and eventually die apart from him, and in so doing would miss the most glorious gift of eternal, unspeakable love.  To me, that doesn’t seem like a good trade.

Whenever we see an irreconcilable contradiction like this, it is pretty clear that our vision, or our judgment of it, is somehow compromised so that the truth remains hidden from us.  How could we be compromised?  We say that something is wrong here because our innate sense of fairness, justice, and goodness says that innocence should not be punished with suffering or premature death.   This is the normal human reaction.  (Only defective humans, e.g. psychopaths, don’t see it this way.)  The tools we have to use to reconcile it are our human logic and reason.  And these universally fail (at least I haven’t found a satisfying answer out there).  So if both are true (God’s omnipotence, justice, and love, and that innocents suffer), then we’re not analyzing it in terms that can give us a satisfactory answer.  How might God see it that allows both to be true?

Since I am most troubled by long-term, perhaps lifelong suffering, let’s focus on that.  When we’re talking about this kind of long-term condition, at least with the present state of medicine, we’re generally not talking about unbearable pain.  Pain these days can be controlled.  (Certainly, it’s possible there are some who so suffer away from the availability of modern medicine.  But these would be the rare exceptions.  And, of course, many of us get up each day over long periods of time with a certain amount of pain that most would classify as normal, or at least not punitive.)  We’re generally talking about a disability, so that the victim’s capacity for normal living is reduced, sometimes dramatically, perhaps associated with some level of persistent pain or discomfort.  How does God “justify” this?

I remember the first time I became aware of Jesus’ statement concerning what it took to become his disciple (Lk 14:26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.  Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.”).  I thought:  “This doesn’t sound like a loving statement — not according to how I think about such things.  What am I missing?”

Today I understand this statement as the admonition to prize or value Jesus/God above all else.  It’s a simple value judgment.  Compared to him, anything else we might love or value, in God’s scheme of things, is incidental.  To make sure we get the point, Jesus uses the people in our lives we most love and are most devoted to, and he caps it off with “even his” (our) “own life”. To follow Him, we must value Him more than ourselves – more than our own life.  This is the person we are supposed to be.

So now let’s reframe the issue from the point of view of one who obeys Christ and therefore loves him in this way or, as Paul put it, “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” (Ph 1:22).  If a person with this perspective were to become the suffering victim, how would he react?  Would he “curse God and die”, as Job was encouraged to do?  Would he wonder incredulously why horrible things happened to innocent people?

Certainly, there have been notable cases where people under intense suffering or grief have lost their faith.  Many believing Jews who somehow survived Auschwitz or other camps abandoned their faith.  But other people didn’t, for example, Corrie ten Boom.  The grief experienced from the sickness and death of his wife famously shook C. S. Lewis’s faith for a time, before it was restored even stronger.  But what of Job?  What of all the people we have known who have endured horrible disease or a lifetime of handicap or the loss of a child whose faith has not been extinguished?

What I take from all of this is that if we were to experience, or even just understand, who God really is, our view of this life, even in the extreme of a lifelong physical handicap or months or years of physical distress and suffering (as Paul endured), would be not only vastly different, but would express something much more akin to worship than despair or rage.  This is not to minimize the enormity of chronic human suffering.  I recently had the opportunity to tour a Nazi holding camp in the Czech Republic called Terezin and to hear a description of the routine horrors that were carried out there and to see firsthand where they happened.   You can still feel the utter horror hanging over that place. Entering the cells/”dorm” rooms that held those poor, abandoned people, you can still cut it with a knife.  I have serious doubts, had I been one of the 120 people forced to spend the 40 degree night standing up packed together in a 10’X10’ concrete cell, being defecated and urinated on by my neighbors, before being led out at 4:30 in the morning, given one of my two pieces of bread for the day and being herded to another 14 hour day of work…I seriously doubt that I would have been able to preserve my love for God and not turn on him in anger[26].  Can you imagine the depth of the love of God of those who did preserve that love under those circumstances?  I want that for myself.

A particularly difficult issue in theodicy is the suffering of children.  This is the problem Dostoyevsky explored in “The Brothers Karamazov”.  I see many suffering infants as a volunteer in the NICU of a local hospital.  Many of these have temporary conditions that they will grow out of, such as those brought on by being premature or being born addicted to drugs from the mother.  Some, however, are more devastating and point to a life of if not suffering in the sense of pain, then at least an existence that could not possibly be mistaken for normal.  The difficulty with infants is that they are not God-aware.  Therefore any argument for a redemptive or faith-building byproduct of their suffering is ruled out, for as long as they are children.  Is it possible that their suffering is an opportunity for those around them to love and serve God through the love and care they devote to the child?  Perhaps if those close to the child don’t believe in God, the condition of the child causes them to seek (and then find) Him.  These are the only explanations I can see that are consistent with God’s purpose for us.

Without a spirit-inspired affection for God, we can’t hope to see things – even little, common everyday things, much less chronic suffering – in the way He has designed us to see them.  He has designed us to be in constant communion with him, in a constant prayer/conversation with him, constantly expecting the next opportunity to serve him in joy.  Christ taught that the greatest commandment was to love God, and that the second was like it: that you love your neighbor as yourself (i.e. serve as God’s agent among people).  Until you and I have and express this love – one greater than that for ourselves – we can’t expect to see these troubling circumstances with eyes that can discern God’s love, justness, or purpose, either for us or for their victims.

But there is another aspect to suffering that should be mentioned, and that is the prayer it elicits – specifically petitionary prayer.  I have prayed for healing and relief from pain, and some of the things I prayed for happened, and some didn’t (at least that I could determine).  Those who would condemn God as either nonexistent, or perhaps less than omnipotent or less than loving, given the experience of some tragedy (like an Auschwitz, or a devastating earthquake or tsunami, or the AIDS epidemic), could not know of the prayers that were made and answered because of that tragedy.  Personally, I am (still) very uncomfortable praying for things or outcomes (though I know I should not be).  But you and I certainly have heard many reports of what would have to be classified as “miracles” by those who testify that it was the answer to prayer.  Answered prayer argues for God, not for his absence.  So is God engaged in intervening in the results of natural or man-made events when asked by those who love him?  I believe he is, and I believe he does.  But I also believe, of course, that God isn’t there to do our bidding.  Otherwise, we’d be the gods, and he just our agent.  He does, however, take opportunities to declare his glory through our circumstances.

In the end, my belief is that the purpose of suffering is to provide a catalyst to produce belief in, love of, and service to God, to his greater glory.  And, as with the babies discussed above, the person or persons led to these ends may not be the sufferer directly, but those closest to, and therefore compelled by, his condition.  The natural man might declare such an explanation “repulsive”, as Peter Berger does[27].  (He actually attacks the level of abstraction of the explanation as repulsive.)  If I’m wrong, he’s right, it is repulsive.  But it seems to me the justification – yes, the morality of the arrangement I’ve described, hinges entirely on the nature of eternity experienced within the perfection and unity of the Holy One.  What price is “repulsive” or immoral if that outcome is its byproduct?   Conversely, what degree of lifelong comfort, health, and peace would justify an eternity separated from that perfection and unity.  Nobody reading this can make that judgment since none of us knows what it’s like to exist in God in eternity.  My faith tells me it’s worth any price.  Any price.  Still, I can’t wait for the day when I can truly understand this most perplexing dimension of my relationship with my Creator.  As Paul said “to die is gain”.

The Kingdom of God

I became interested in understanding the Kingdom of God, and more specifically the “now” implementation of it, only recently.  The catalyst was my involvement with a charity we formed to serve the people of Southern Ethiopia.  As I learned more about third- (or “majority”) world development, I continued to bump into references to God’s Kingdom as the archetype for Christian development efforts among the poor.  The confusion for me was Christ’s declarations that the Kingdom had been established here, and was here now.  Yet, as we all know, the world is a pretty corrupt and unrighteous place.  Naturally, this raises questions that need answers.

The first words of Christ in Mark’s gospel are:

Mark 1:15 (ESV) and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

Jesus preached the Kingdom constantly throughout his ministry, as did his disciples following his crucifixion.  From this we can be assured that the Kingdom of God (/Heaven) is a paramount teaching of Christ.  He announced it as being here now – the fulfillment of the many promises of earlier prophets (see for example Daniel[28]).  Christ said that the Kingdom was “in the midst of you”[29] (other translations incorrectly render this “is within you”), but also said it was “not of this world”[30], and he said that it is the first thing you should seek.[31] But he never defines what it is.

In my understanding, the Kingdom of God has three realities.  The first reality was its presentation to the world in the person of Christ.  Through his preaching and miracles, he made available the power of God on earth, declaring the Kingdom in which he reined.  Then Jesus taught what we had to do to enter that Kingdom, and what our work there was to be so that following his departure we had a kind of roadmap.

The Kingdom Now

The second reality, then, is of the Kingdom “in the midst of you” following Christ’s inauguration of it, which includes all of us in the present – the Kingdom “on earth” as it were (“as it is in Heaven”).  This is the one that has caused the most confusion among people from the beginning, even among Christ’s disciples following his resurrection.[32]  I’m certainly one of those who don’t claim any special understanding.  But I base my belief on what the New Testament has to say about it, as well as what others more learned and more devout than me have concluded about it after much study and prayer.

How to Immigrate into the Kingdom

The first thing to note about the Kingdom after Christ (but before the “Day of the Lord”) is that it was ushered in by the provision and actions of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost.[33]  One way to understand what it is in the context of the world is to examine what it takes to enter it.  And here we confront the entire Christian gospel.  The Gospel of John is as good a place as any to hear the truth of this:

John 3:3-5 (ESV) Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?”  Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.“

John 3:16-21 (ESV) “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.  Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been carried out in God.”

Here we learn two requirements for entry: 1) One must be “born of water and the (Holy) Spirit, and 2) “whoever believes in him” (Christ, God’s “only Son”).  The first verse is, of course, the source of the phrase “born again” and states clearly that baptism by the Holy Spirit is a requirement for entry into the Kingdom.  In my understanding and experience, one cannot do anything pleasing to God in and of himself.  (The Bible characterizes such things as “filthy rags”[34].)  Jesus himself teaches this.[35]  The Holy Spirit must be the force that animates and enables you to take an action before that action is pleasing to God and in his will – a sweet offering, if you will.  The Holy Spirit must initially be asked to enter your life, and then subsequently be asked to control your life in order for your life to be in the will of God.

The second verse requires a little “unpacking”.  The first point to focus on is the word “believes” in John 3:16.  This word is the translation of the Greek pisteuō, whose definition is:

From G4102; to have faith (in, upon, or with respect to, a person or thing), that is, credit; by implication to entrust (especially one’s spiritual well being to Christ):—believe (-r), commit (to trust), put in trust with.

The English word “believe” is so inadequate to the intended sense of the word in this crucial verse.  For English speakers, “believe” is an intellectual condition – someone presents an argument and we say “Yes, I believe that”, or “No, I don’t believe that”.  We agree (or not) that the argument is true.  That is not what the verb pisteuō is communicating here.  The proper sense of the statement is that whoever puts his trust in and commits to him, shall not die, not just that the hearer agrees that Christ was in fact the Son of God.  I’m afraid that there are multitudes of self-identified “Christians” who have made this devastating mistake, and I blame pastors more interested in making their parishioners feel good than teaching them truth.  (Please correct somebody you love, perhaps when the next “John 3:16” sign is shown behind a goalpost during a televised football game.)

The second thing in this verse to notice is its last sentence: “But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been carried out in God.”  I think what he is saying here is that for those that have prayed for the Holy Spirit to take them over, that they will do things that demonstrate God in the world, as he intended, and that he will be glorified by these.

So we see (and I believe) that one has to have prayed for the Spirit to indwell them (baptism) and take over their lives, and that one has to entrust his life to Jesus Christ.  This is nothing more than the traditional Christian proposition, but one that, at the very least in my case, had been horribly misunderstood for decades, and I suspect has been similarly misunderstood by perhaps millions of others.

Perhaps an analogy will help sharpen the reason for this tragic misunderstanding.  If your doctor tells you that you have a life threatening condition requiring immediate surgery that itself could be potentially harmful or even fatal, you “believe” him, probably after getting a second or third opinion, in the sense that you agree with his diagnosis of your condition that requires prompt surgery.  But when you’re on the table being rolled into the operating room, you entrust yourself to him.  You’re committed to him and his capabilities.  He becomes the single person on whom your whole life depends.  This is the meaning of John 3:16; that you place Christ as the person to whom you cede control of your life and on whom you are totally dependent for that life.  For the true Christian, there is no higher priority in life than Christ.

The people that meet these “requirements” are the citizens of the Kingdom. (It’s unfortunate to me that the metaphor of “Kingdom” was used in the first place, although it certainly would have resonated with Christ’s hearers 2,000 years ago. The problem is that there are many negative stereotypes of despotic or crazy Kings ruling brutally that we see throughout history.  I would have preferred “God-dom” or “Lord-dom” or some other term with less baggage.)  That is, their “King”, the Lord of their lives, is God, and the way they live their lives reflects this.  So now we can ask:  “OK. What is it?”

How It Is Established

Jesus described the Kingdom in parables, and about this tactic he says:

Mark 4:10-12 (ESV) And when he was alone, those around him with the twelve asked him about the parables.  And he said to them, “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables, so that “they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven.”

This is strange. Jesus seems to be saying (quoting Is. 6:9-10) that he’s intentionally obscuring his truth from the people, but not from his disciples.  This teaching provides great insight.  For the disciples, he spelled everything out in plain language.  But he used parables in addressing the people so that they had to exercise their minds to discover the truth the stories contained.  In other words, those who were seeking the truth in listening to him would find it.  Those who weren’t seeking it wouldn’t find it.  And despite the fact that this event (Jesus preaching from a boat in Capernaum) occurred before he had sent the Holy Spirit to the people, the principle was and is still true.  You will never understand, let alone agree with, God’s truth until you sincerely strive to find it.[36]

In his most famous parable, that of the mustard seed, perhaps we get a vision of how Christ intended for his Kingdom to be manifested on earth.  In this parable (Mk 4:30-32[37]) the seed (that I believe is symbolically Christ) is sown and grows into a great bush or “tree”, sufficient to shelter birds in its shade.  But as we know the plant does not go immediately from seed to grown tree, but first to a few small branches which themselves grow branches and so on until ultimately, in its full dimension, it can shelter birds.  The parable seems to teach that the Kingdom is organic – that it grows and spreads until ultimately it houses in its shelter those who seek its sustenance – birds, representing those people seeking a righteous place to live.  At this point, Jesus hasn’t commissioned his disciples to “make disciples of all nations”[38], but this parable seems to set the stage for it and establish Jesus’ expectation for how his Church would spread and grow up.  The disciples (as the first branches) knew “the secret of the Kingdom of God”, and in their post-resurrection ministries were equipped to spread it and watch it grow.

Like a Child

Mark[39] and Luke (Lk 18:17) describe the scene where, after healing a blind man near Jericho, the crowds were pressing in on Jesus with their children who were held back by his disciples. Jesus rebukes the disciples and then says “…whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.” A casual reading of this statement would likely leave the reader (as it initially left me) with a warm fuzzy feeling about “receiving” the Kingdom as children, in their purity and innocence.  But it’s likely that isn’t what Jesus was teaching here, since we’re not pure or innocent, as Christ well knew.

Bruce Chilton[40] points out (p 83-85) that the term rendered “receive” is the Greek dechomai, which itself is likely a rendition of the Aramaic “teqep”, which can mean to passively receive, or it can mean to forcefully take.  Chilton argues for the later, based on Jesus’ likely use of it in Mt 11:12 and his unsympathetic characterization of children playing and squabbling in the marketplace in Mt 11:16-17 & Lk 7:32.  The image is one of normal, aggressive kids playing hard and taking forcefully what they want.  He concludes:

“Making the kingdom one’s sole object of interest, the way a child fixes on a toy or on a forbidden object, makes one pure enough to enter the kingdom…In Jesus’ conception the purity required by the kingdom is a purity of response, of being like children at rough play in grasping at the kingdom.”

I much prefer the image of natural children grabbing for themselves that which they prize.  It’s certainly a more honest characterization of children, and a far more forceful metaphor to describe what our response should be.

The upshot of most of Christ’s sayings regarding the Kingdom had to do with who was in it, not what it was.  So we can conclude that the key characteristics of it are:

1. The commitment, obedience and devotion to God of those who have pleaded for its entry through Christ Jesus and;
2. The nature and purpose of its King.

In religious terminology, the Kingdom “now” is the Church, meaning the collection of people who have committed themselves to live for Christ.  This is to distinguish it from the church – the collection, for example, of the people who happen to meet on Sunday mornings in your local church.  Sadly, these are two quite different sets of people, as Christ taught ³⁴.  Admittedly there’s some overlap in the two populations.  But as mentioned above, clearly there are millions of Americans (to pick on us) sitting in pews Sunday morning that are no closer to the Kingdom than your pagan neighbor with a beer in his hand, screaming at the NFL game on his TV Sunday morning .  Perhaps this is the source of some of the disdain with which modern society views the organized church today.

I mentioned earlier that I was drawn to the topic of the Kingdom of God by allusions to it by some Christian developers operating among the poor in the third world and elsewhere.  There is a long tradition in “liberal” Christianity of working to implement the Kingdom of God on earth through human devices and works.  These efforts took all manner of forms.  The premise of Cromwell’s representative government system in the United Kingdom was a vehicle by which the Kingdom could be implemented.  They thought that an organized mechanism for caring for the poor and disaffected would itself lead to a higher morality that would usher in a man-made Kingdom of God.  Later, the advent of the “Social Gospel” movement in America took hold in which the work of Christians was thought to be the missing ingredient that prevented the creation of the Kingdom on earth and with it, the social perfection of man.

The Social Gospel movement spawned missionary efforts sponsored by Western churches and church-supported organizations to support the poor in the majority world and, of course, “reach them for Christ”.  Over time, these efforts have in the main (though there are fairly recent notable exceptions) had the effect of destroying whatever God-given dignity these people may have had by converting them to aid-dependent serfs of our Western good intentions.

This isn’t to dismiss all Western missionary efforts – far from it.  Millions have been “reached for Christ” and of those many have converted from their previous beliefs, and of those many have prayed for Christ to be Lord of their lives, and entered the Kingdom.  However, to the extent that the original focus of some missions was to raise people from poverty, there are many more horror stories than stories of vibrant, self-supporting Christian communities left in their wake.[41]

The Kingdom “Not Yet”

The Bible is clear that ultimately, Christ will return to rule and establish his Kingdom on earth[42]^,[43].  This final judgment and the gathering of Christ’s Church to life in him eternally has had the effect of convincing some Christians that they need do nothing but wait – be pious, live righteously and be patient.  They see no point, despite the admonition of the gospels, in trying to advance the Kingdom on earth now.

This attitude, I’m afraid, has two tragic flaws.  First, it makes life meaningless, a kind of protracted waiting room.  Second, it is disobedient to God.  My belief, discussed above, is that our purpose here is to glorify God by serving as his agents on earth.  If we remain unengaged from this world, we disobey.  We won’t all work to “make disciples of all nations”[44], but service to God is not limited to missionaries.  It’s available on a nearly minute-by-minute basis throughout each of our lives.  Simple, everyday interactions with people are the fields in which God’s glory is ripe for harvest if we will just submit to him in joy and do.

But this brings me to what is for me (and probably for most Christians) the key challenge.  Perhaps it was best expressed by Paul:  Rom 7:18-20 (ESV)

For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.  For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.  Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

This is from the guy who saw the resurrected Christ face-to-face.  We’re taught to live obediently before God, to love him and love our neighbors.  We’re taught that we are empowered to do these things through the power of the Holy Spirit, sent by Christ.  But, while there are times when I find that power operative, there are other times when I don’t.  The sin in me, though forgiven, is still powerful.  It’s no wonder Christ alerted his disciples to the challenge: Mt 16:24 (ESV)

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me“.

There is an action of denying yourself and bearing your cross that is also demanded by the follower.  And in my limited experience, this is a continuous struggle in an ongoing war, not something won once for all in a decisive battle (at least not in this life).  It’s also true that Christians are and will be derided for their belief, perhaps even persecuted.  But it is this inner struggle that I believe Christ admonished us about – this tension between the Christian’s natural tendencies and his yearning to live in the Kingdom of righteousness, justice, peace and joy.  To the extent that the Spirit is not in total control, this tension is going to exist, and a continuous striving/desiring to reside there – to have the Spirit in total control of him — will be his normal state.

Unfortunately, this condition in my case has led to a kind of melancholy.  Not a depression, per se, but a sense of lack of fulfillment or longing.  And I’m left wondering if this is the normal state of things, or if something is wrong with me.  Paul implies to me that I’ve got a problem, in Romans:

Rom 14:17 (ESV) For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Whoever thus serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved by men.

This tells me that if I were in the Kingdom, there would be righteousness and I would have joy and peace in the Holy Spirit.  So since I don’t have joy and peace (at least a lot of the time), apparently I’m not there, at least during these times of funk.

I’ve seen it in others, so I know it exists, that it’s not just words in the Bible.  The pastor in my first California church hooked me up with the Gideons, which I joined for a time.  I didn’t last long.  We used to get together once or twice a month for a breakfast, and then on occasion would visit the VA hospital or some other such place, give a little testimony and deliver Bibles.  I didn’t last long with these guys because I was completely intimidated by their holiness.  If they weren’t actually holy, they sure talked a good game.   But I think they were.  You could see it in their faces – their countenance.  You could hear it in their conversations.  These guys were completely at peace.  And they were completely focused on Christ.  I wouldn’t call them “pious” in the sense of being outwardly religious or showy.  They were just plain men who were there residing in the Kingdom, contented in their situation, laughing or praying equally easily with each other.  And I never heard one cynical comment during my time with them.

I’m glad I had that experience.  But I can remember feeling so out of place, I nearly ran out of there my last meeting.  True holiness is a very intimidating thing to encounter.

The other place I saw it that stands out to me is in my relatives in Michigan.  I was only a kid then, but when I was around them, I knew they were different.  Now I would describe what they had as a kind of very deep and confident peace.  Then I couldn’t put my finger on it.  Maybe it was just the way they happened to be.  There were few conversations about concerns of the day.  Activities of the day, yes, but not concerns.  And when they prayed, especially my Uncle Paul, it was for me like listening in on a very personal conversation.  There was none of the current style of false piety or intercession on behalf of this group or that cause.  Just a quiet thanks and petition for real needs.

In “The Call”[45], Oz Guinness quotes Psychologist Ernest Becker’s description of Sǿren Kirkegard’s concept of a “knight of faith”:

This figure is the man who lives in faith, who has given over the meaning of his life to his Creator, and who lives centered on the energies of his Creator.  He accepts whatever happens in this visible dimension without complaint, lives his life as a duty, faces his death without a qualm.  No pettiness is so petty that it threatens his meanings; no task is too frightening to be beyond his courage.  He is fully in the world on its terms and wholly beyond the world in his trust in the invisible dimension.

This is an apt description of these people I knew.  I feel so inadequate in the presence even of their memory.  This is one of the areas I need to invest a lot more time and prayer on to see if I can identify what my problem is and ask for it to be corrected.

But there is another model of the Christian life that has and continues to have, a profound impact on me, and that is my wife. She and I don’t talk about religion, or faith, ever.  (That liberal protestant upbringing still exerts its strong influence.)  But in her life, I can see a glimpse of what the Kingdom on earth should look like.  She and I have, as described, been in the same churches over the years, heard all the same messages, and shared in many of the same conversations with friends and pastors.

What she does is just live the Christian life, pure and simple – genuine, heart-felt caring, selfless service to others, and love of her neighbors.  She truly loves people and it shows.  Neither she nor I are natural evangelicals.  So she would never “share her faith” with someone else. (Where we come from it’s not done.)  But she doesn’t have to.  Her whole life is a testimony – every concerned question, every impulse and offer of help, every word of support or encouragement, every service to a friend in need is a billboard for Christ.  Every time I find myself on the wrong track, I’ve learned to be quiet and just watch and listen to her, my live-in role model.  I’m so lucky to have found her.

Calling and Mission

Calling

This subject is a natural successor to the previous one, both from a personal perspective, but also from the perspective of a pilgrim’s unfolding journey.  In general, it addresses the question: “So once I’m there, what am I supposed to do in the Kingdom?”  And from a personal perspective, it may hold answers to my feeling of a lack of wholeness yet in Christ.

Callings come in different flavors, depending on how the language is used.  The term, like most, has gone through a period of secularization that has perverted its original meaning.  To the extent people use it at all today, they often speak of their current job being their “calling”, if they really like that job.  And it’s true that God can call people to an otherwise secular job because he has Divine work to be done there that the called is particularly well-suited to do.  But this isn’t the thought process of the secular person making this claim.  To him it’s unattributed serendipity that he has fallen into a position in which he is fulfilled, challenged, effective, and highly thought of by his employer and coworkers.  In other words, it has nothing at all to do with God.

The proper meaning of “Calling” is that there is a “Caller” – God — who summons you to serve Him in some way.  This service is not always “work” or a job as we think of it today.  The Catholic Church, for example, defines love as a general vocation to which all its members are called.  In pre-reformation times, each Christian was also thought to be called by God into a particular life vocation.  With the reformation, the distinction between calling and job began to blur, ultimately giving way completely.  Today, more often than not, work is what you do to pay the bills, not a profession of yourself on God’s principles.

One of the oldest uses of the term, still in use today, refers to the bid extended to a pastor to lead a church.  The term is not exclusive to pastors but is used equally in speaking of ministers of all types, missionaries, or anyone else who senses the Caller placing on him a summons to perform some type of service for him.  Needless to say, since there is no written or audible invitation these days, it is quite easy to conflate what a person wants to do with what he supposes God has for him to do.  Guinness⁴⁴ quotes Oswald Chambers on this point as follows:

“Beware of anything that competes with loyalty to Jesus Christ.  The greatest competitor of devotion to Jesus is service for Him…The one aim of the call of God is the satisfaction of God, not a call to do something for him.”

Wouldn’t it be great if we could all have a “burning bush” or “road to Damascus” experience to clear up any confusion?

There are lots of self-inflicted side issues associated with true “calling” that can act to pervert it.  One thinks he should be talented or experienced in that to which he is called.  But lack of talent or experience cannot defeat readiness and devotion in God’s economy.  And once engaged, a simple adherence to spiritual disciplines can provide the necessary on-the-job instruction necessary to excel.  Dallas Willard[46] comments that spiritual discipline is:

“ nothing but an activity undertaken to bring us into more effective cooperation with Christ and his kingdom.”

One thinks that one is somehow “special” in having received a call by God, and may conclude that he is uniquely qualified to answer.  This is the kiss of death.  As soon as it’s about you and not God, he either terminates the mission or ensures its futility.  Envy of those in a similar position as yours but apparently more successful is an obvious cancer on, and destroyer of, your calling.  So comparisons, in which emotion is involved, should be rigorously avoided.[47]

For myself, I find the following definition of calling to contain its key characteristics:

Calling is the compulsion levied by God on the Christian to express God to the world through what he does and does humbly.

It is a compulsion if it’s from God.  God won’t obscure the matter.  You may not know exactly what, where, and how, but the insistence of it will be unmistakable.  The term “summons” has sometimes been used to describe a calling.  You know you’ve got to go/appear but what will happen to you, and what you’ll be able to do, remains a mystery until you make the appearance.  The action to be taken when there is to express God through what you do.  Perhaps as important is how you do it – the manner, the compassion, the integrity, and the quality of that which you do.  Note that the emphasis is on your actions – your “work”, if you will, but in fact what we’re talking about is your whole life as a window through which observers can catch a glimpse of the qualities of the Caller.  Francis of Assisi (it is believed) left us an admonition that essentially captures this idea:

“Preach the Gospel constantly and, if necessary, use words.”[48]

And the humility part probably goes without saying.  But pride and hubris is always a threat to calling, especially successful ones, and we’re only human.  Guinness’ book contains a chapter entitled “Audience of One” in which he uses this metaphor that promotes a focus in the work that can shield the worker from both the accolades and the criticisms of those who observe it.  Of course, the worker must accommodate the fact that s/he isn’t operating in a vacuum and must pay thoughtful attention to those offering correction and assistance.  And those folks might have been animated by the Spirit to make those offers, at God’s behest, and so need to be heard.

But the inescapable reality the metaphor captures is that there is only one “boss”, only one whose satisfaction is the object of the work.  So playing to or otherwise reacting (positively or negatively) to the human audience must always be tempered in favor of our response to the Caller.

For myself, I’m such a rookie at this.  I chalk up my lack of use throughout most of my life by God mainly to my “unavailability”.  To be called, one has to be ready and anxious for it, and to my great shame, I never asked until late.  Remember, in this “Christian” thing, I was a bit of a late bloomer.  I do not believe the service roles that I had in my churches were “callings”.  I believe they were opportunities created by God for me to enable me to grow.  But to my way of thinking, that’s a fundamentally different situation than being called precisely for the reason just given – I never asked for them.

Following my retirement, I did go through a period of asking what he wanted me to do and frankly didn’t hear anything directly.  However, two opportunities did arise to which I signed on after feeling what might be called a summons.  The first, already mentioned, is my volunteer work in a local hospital’s sick newborn ward (NICU).  I don’t do too much work for him there, other than I make it a point to pray for each little guy I care for that s/he heals, grows and finds and falls in love with Jesus.  I’ve had a couple of opportunities to talk about him with some nurses.  But in that very public and somewhat chaotic environment, those conversations are few and far between and are done in whispers.  (Wouldn’t want to offend anyone’s modern sensibilities, don’t you know.)

The second opportunity was a chance to help my daughter’s father-in-law (Joe), a local pastor, with a ministry he was called to in Ethiopia.  This opportunity felt much more like a true calling must feel.  I had zero experience with any such thing.  I had no talent for it (apparently).  Yet there it was along with the by-now familiar “nudging” feeling I had experienced with much earlier service opportunities.  I had asked for something, so I concluded this must be what he wanted me to do.  I couldn’t really call it a compulsion.  But by the same token, I couldn’t imagine not joining in, so what is that? Because in the beginning the “call” was to evangelize a reportedly unreached people group in southern Ethiopia, this particular call also qualified as a call to mission.

Mission

What is a mission?  Traditionally missions are Christian works in which people are sent to a location to serve and present the Gospel to that location’s people – preferably “unchurched” people.  In the United States, missions range from soup kitchens and care facilities in urban centers that minister to the homeless, to new churches started by “sending” churches in areas determined to be “underserved”, to Christian summer camps for underprivileged kids, to churches sending teams for a series of weekends to build or repair homes (usually nearby) for the poor, to nearly anything else done in the name of Christ for a set of people deemed to be in need of Him and perhaps in need of some help in overcoming some hardship.

Internationally, all the same forms apply, but historically there was a much more prominent emphasis on evangelization since there were many more people in distant, majority-world areas who likely had never heard the Gospel than it was perceived there were in the “Christian West”.  Generally speaking, I believe this remains the case, but the situation is rapidly changing.  For example, Christianity is now the majority religion on the continent of Africa (but not by much).

I mentioned above that originally our call was to evangelize some people in Ethiopia.  And initially, that’s what we went there to do on what is called a short-term mission trip.  And that’s what we did, breaking into pairs and going hut to hut in our rural area, teaching the Gospel through our local translator (actually two translations in some cases, depending on if the translator knew both English and the local dialect or whether he knew English and only the national Amharic language.   In this case, a second was needed to translate Amharic to the local dialect.)

However, in talking to the village leaders, while we found them accepting of us performing this evangelization, they wanted to talk about the material things they needed – clean water, electricity, a new road to their community center, fencing for their demonstration garden, etc., etc.  They also cautioned us not to just visit once and then move on.  They wanted to work with us for their betterment over time.  They had apparently seen teams come in, visit, perhaps do some one or two-day work, and then leave for good, and they wanted no more of that.

And we were anxious to comply.  We wanted to help make Christians and return there until that work had been exhausted.  What we were literally unprepared for, however, was the challenge of bringing the knowledge of Christ while helping that village to develop.  None of us had experience in how such a thing was done.  Initially, we put that integration of mission goals on hold while we concentrated on responding to the village’s top priority – the availability of clean water.

Mistake.  What I have subsequently learned, in part through some online courses and reading, and in part through conversations with others in this “business” is that your approach to evangelization and development must be tightly integrated, through all the phases of each, in order for God to be glorified in both.  Forty years ago, nobody knew how to do this or what would work.  Today, we have some very good models and resources[49] that can be, if not followed verbatim, at least adapted to the local situation.  Our mission (which became organizationally the charity Africa Water and Life – AWL for short) began to slowly develop such an integrated approach to our work.

Through my involvement with this work, I learned some very valuable lessons that I’ll try to recap briefly.  In my mind, these are mainly lessons about how the “Kingdom now” is meant to operate, though there are some secular lessons with perhaps as much impact and importance.

The first revelation I was presented is that Western relief, aid, and mission organizations have done an exceptional job at converting normally functioning human beings, wherever they’ve operated, into dependent serfs of the aid industry.  And it is an industry employing hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people working busily each day.  Certainly, they started out with good intentions – “helping” the poor, bringing the Gospel, and alleviating suffering.  The central problem was (and is) that the aid was in food or money and was a handout.  In a true relief situation, where some natural or other catastrophe has occurred impairing the people’s ability to survive, such a work is appropriate.  But in a non-relief situation, in a situation in which the standard of living is simply low, the result of aid handouts is dependence.  The result of dependence is low self-esteem and reinforced hopelessness of ever escaping the dependence leading to a total corruption of the humanity God created.  The result is the same whether the person lives in a rural village in Southern Ethiopia, or any city or town in the US.  Do it once – it’s aid.  Do it repeatedly and you teach a whole people that they’re incapable, hopeless, dependent on (white) others, and less than human in a very profound way.  This situation has been clearly laid out with respect to Africa in “Dead Aid”[50] and the aforementioned “When Helping Hurts”⁴⁰

And lest you think this effect is limited to the direct recipients, think again.  People at all levels of a culture whose majority population is corrupted by handouts will themselves be similarly corrupted.  This cause-and-effect is so clear to us, having worked in Ethiopia for over ten years that it is indisputable, and became a key foundational principle of our evolving approach.

Needless to say, this outcome isn’t what Christ had in mind when he commanded the rich young man to sell his stuff and give it to the poor[51].  (In point of fact, Christ never used such challenges as remedies for poverty per se, but only as examples of the extent to which the hearer’s priority had to be following Him.) In fact, he taught that “You will always have the poor with you, and whenever you want, you can do good for them.”  While he doesn’t specify what “good” he meant, he sure didn’t teach handouts.  What He Himself did was preach the good news to them.[52]  He knew what came first!

There’s a second effect of this corruption and it shows up in those observing the recipients.  I’ve got friends who are convinced that people who respond to repeated aid by developing character flaws are themselves at fault and to be condemned.  We’ve all seen the sensational stories of Cadillac-driving welfare “queens” and may have ourselves reacted with a “tsk, tsk”.  What nobody seems to understand is that if she’s in the US, she is probably at least second-generation dependent, maybe third or fourth.  She grew up being taught how to work the system to her advantage.  That’s what people who don’t believe they’re worth anything, have no other opportunities, and have never known anything but dependence, do – game the system to maximize the advantage to them.  The same happens in the majority world.  It’s human nature.

So on the one hand, we corrupt beyond recognition the image of God present in each of his creations, and on the other, we instill animas toward these recipients in those who find it easy to ignore the “Love thy neighbor” command – all in the name of our pop-culture-glorified “compassion”.

What we’ve learned is that individual and community development needs to start, be sustained by, and ultimately complete successfully through a continuous focus on Christ Jesus.  If people, no matter their material wealth, are to have wholeness and fulfillment, they need Christ on which it is built.  If they are to treat their neighbors with respect and caring, they need Christ as the basis of it.  If they are to resolve the inevitable disputes that arise in the world and seek just outcomes, they need Christ as their foundation.

What the successful practitioners of community development among the world’s poor will tell you is that the poor lack a “worldview” necessary to lift themselves above their poverty.  What they mean, I believe, is that the poor have no hope, no hopeful expectation of ever being able to improve themselves to escape the relentless tyranny of day-to-day survival.  It’s always been that way, it was that way for their parents and grandparents, and there are no signs of it changing.  So, perhaps most importantly, if people are to experience the joy of belonging to God that leads to hopeful expectations for the future, they first need Christ, the “Author of life” (Acts 3:15).

This latter point is the key one.  90% of poverty is mental (or perhaps “perceptual”).  Until a man believes he can (and should) create a better life for himself and his family, he won’t.  And he won’t believe it until he has fully accepted two key understandings:

• That he is a unique and special creation in Christ, created by God to express God’s glory through his work, his love and his worship.
• That he has the tools available to him to prosper and to have life “abundantly”[53].

Our AWL mission was about serving the poor to convey both these understandings.  We migrated from short-term, door-to-door evangelism to a proven process of viral church planting.  Through this process people, over a period of three years, are discipled by local Christians to learn God’s intention for how they should live, and for Who, which they then transmit and spread.  This knowledge, again, is the key to changing a person’s worldview.

We also established ministries that provide assistance in establishing the second point.  Our initial focus was clean water. Clean, available water for the rural poor enables a family to both prevent devastating water-borne diseases and to free children to attend school and mom to pursue her work instead of spending hours traveling to fetch clean water kilometers away from their homes.  Through a Christian development partner, we started a number of “Self Help Groups”, teams of 20 who meet weekly initially as a savings club.  As the group’s “kitty” builds up[54], members can take loans for special needs, and then repay those loans over time.  Not only do such groups build self-esteem and hope, they create a kind of organic caring community in which its members minister, if you will, to other members.  Members learn both the discipline of saving and of loan repayment, but also experience the care of the other members when the need for a loan, or difficulty in making payments, is caused by hardships in their lives.  When group members are taught the principles of biblical living, worldviews are changed.

We also experimented with supporting scholarships for both men and women to a vocational school operated by one of our Christian partners, designed to equip its students with skills that can lead to a lifetime of productive work.  And we experimented with some capital loans to people interested in operating their own businesses, but lacking the resources or credit standing to acquire the necessary equipment to get started.  Here, as with the other initiatives, the object isn’t as much the creation of the means of prosperity as it is the opportunity to teach and reinforce the principles of Christian living that transform the way people think about their lot in life.  As it happens, responsibility and integrity in your dealings with others is as important in your business as it is in your dealings with your family, your neighbors or your church.

Having spent quite some time working in and thinking about this approach to poverty alleviation Vs. the traditional model extant in our own US and other welfare models, I am absolutely convinced that secular welfare is a devastating plague on our society, as it is wherever it is deployed.  In its appeal to our natural compassion and sensitivities, it has all the hallmarks of a grand deception by Satan[55], the “deceiver of the whole world” (Rev 12:9).  I don’t know this as a fact, obviously.  But in its overwhelming destructiveness, appeal to society’s conscience, and deceptive subtlety, it certainly has his fingerprints all over it.

There are many additional dimensions of mission all of which if done properly can glorify God.  We found, for example, that our interactions with our local Ethiopian partners are opportunities for ministry through support, encouragement, and, when necessary, correction.  These are all committed Christians.  But we all carry the baggage of our worldly culture and our previous experiences.  Then there are our stateside supporters.  We represent to them an opportunity to serve God and to be edified by their service or support. (It’s a truly joyful thing that he doesn’t tire of creating opportunities for his people to do so, as I have experienced.)

I mentioned in the discussion of the Kingdom of God that I became interested in it as a concept through hearing about it as a worldview model for the majority world poor.  And that it is.  But as we saw, it’s not a promised land for non-believers or casual, Sunday-only believers.  To be transformed one must first commit to and entrust himself completely to Christ.  Then, and only then, can he participate in the multiple blessings of the Kingdom in his personal life and, by extension, his bread-winning life and the full range of his relationships.  We must be careful to make sure that in any mission to the poor, we’re mindful of this priority.  We can’t let it take second place and expect transformation.  It’s true that some material improvement or some marginal social reform successes could be achieved with the wrong priorities.  But to see transformation in a person, or indeed in his whole community, there must be a Transformer.  Without him, we’re only railing against the wind.  That’s my takeaway.

Conclusion

This completes the summary of my evolution as a Christian – so far, at least, and the key beliefs that undergird my faith.  As I hope I’ve conveyed, for me “becoming a Christian” is a lifelong process.  I guess if I enter a period of stagnation, I’ll know something is wrong.  But as my understanding does grow and change, I intend to record it here for the same reasons I did it the first time.

What I find truly exhilarating about my experience, be it ever so mundane, is the ground it has covered.  I was an intensely angry, self-absorbed, and isolated kid, particularly in High School, with a violent temper.  I was mad at everyone and everything that I judged to be preventing me from being what I wanted to be – all the usual teenage gods like smart, popular, talented, attractive, etc.  And yet the Holy Spirit, without being asked by me (at least that I can remember), began a process of reeling me in.  I didn’t take medication, I didn’t receive therapy or even counseling, and yet I was healed from as dark an attitude and view of life and the world as probably most young folks ever experience.  The early healing allowed me to function in society and continue to gradually experience more and more opportunities to know more about and grow closer to God.  He is truly good and I am so very grateful.

What’s embarrassing is the amount of time it’s taken me just to get this far.  When you read people like Sǿren Kierkegaard, C.S. Lewis, Oz Guinness, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Oswald Chambers, or G.K. Chesterton you’re in awe of their depth of holiness.  How is it, I wonder, that some are in such tight communion with the Lord and have such profound insight?  No doubt their “calling” has been to articulate in words God’s characteristics and will.  Meanwhile, here I am, bumbling along still striving to just understand what amounts to the basics.  Kind of depressing.

No matter.  I’m full of joy and thankfulness to him that I am where I am instead of where I could have been, left on my own.

To recap the main points I’ve tried to emphasize:

• Becoming a Christian is a process, not an event.
• God doesn’t need much to work with, but you must seek after Him.
• God, through the Holy Spirit, guides you if you do seek Him and provides opportunities for you to grow in Him throughout this process. These should be taken. If you don’t sincerely want to find Him, you won’t.
• God made creation for His glory including, most prominently, us (and possibly other God-aware folks in some far-flung corner of the Universe).
• The evidence for there being a Creator/Designer of the Universe and its life is compelling.
• The Bible contains God’s truth which can be clearly discerned if you seek it earnestly.
• Because God seeks a relationship with His people, His creation forces us to look to Him for help in difficult and sometimes painful situations and ask for His mercy and love. Without the need to look for Him, there would be no finding Him, and without finding Him, there would be no possibility of eternal, unspeakable joy.
• Christ is the author and King of the Kingdom of Heaven. The requirements for entry are stiff but the value is beyond worldly measures of worth.
• Not many will turn themselves over to God completely and thus enter the Kingdom of Heaven, either here or in the hereafter.
• A calling is felt as a compulsion to serve God in a particular vocation and is quite distinct from the jobs most people find themselves in today.
• A mission is an attempt to preach the good news to and serve disadvantaged people for God’s glory. There are right ways and many wrong ways to do this work.  Transformational mission requires a Transformer.

It bears repeating, I think, for believers and non-believers:  If God exists then everything we do and think that isn’t for Him is wrong.  However well-meaning the cause, however seemingly compassionate and caring, if it’s purpose is not to glorify God, it not only has no significance, it’s taken time away from the significant things.  While this is more than a little intimidating it’s also freeing and exhilarating when you think about having just one “person” to satisfy (Guinness’ “Audience of One”).  How does one do this?  Well, you don’t…all the time.  See Paul’s lament cited earlier (Rom 7:18-20).  But you strive to be in constant communion, in constant conversation with Him.  Of course, this is easier said than done, particularly with all the modern distractions discussed at the outset.  I like to take a little run around a nearby reservoir which I call my “prog” – my prayer jog.  I can’t even stay in constant communion for the less than one hour it takes to complete the thing, let alone all day, all week, or all year.  But the striving is itself a glorification of him, I believe.  And this, I believe, is the Christian condition – striving and failing and striving and failing again.  What a gift it will be when there is no more failing.

Truth is absolute (contrary to the claims of all the cultural and theological relativists).

Postlude

Most of what I’ve had to say here has been based on the learning I’ve done — book knowledge if you will.  Learning is important, of course, especially if you’re built like me – more rational than emotional, more objective than subjective.  But firsthand experience is perhaps the best teacher.

Above I mentioned my first trip to Ethiopia in which pairs of us, with our translator, moved hut to hut sharing the Gospel story with those who were gracious enough to let us in.

In the last hut I visited that day, we met with the wife of the house while her husband was still away working a field some distance away.  We had gone through the Gospel message with her and asked her what she thought about Jesus, given the story, and she politely deferred any decision until she had had a chance to discuss it with her husband.  After we had waited for him as long as we thought we could, we decided to pray for her and her family before leaving.

It’s a strange sensation to pray, pause for the translation, continue to pause for the second (local dialect) translation, and then continue praying.  My partner gave this prayer, a wonderful list of blessings on his and her house, and a petition that she and her husband would find Jesus, and some petition for a health condition her husband had.  Toward the end of the prayer, I was praying separately for God to love and lead the woman as we stood in her stick hut in a circle holding hands, eyes closed, and I remember praying his love on her.

What happened next changed me.  While stammering along on the subject of loving on this woman I was jolted, as if suddenly plugged into some outlet, causing my eyes to pop wide open staring directly at the women across the circle.  I then very clearly “heard” a voice say: “You think that’s love?  Check this out!”  What I then experienced wasn’t like anything I had experienced.  It felt like a flow of high energy radiating down through me and out to those with whom I held hands, and I sensed that it traversed the circle of people to the woman. It wasn’t painful.  But it was extremely intense.  And I’m sure I actually experienced the feeling of it flowing.  And I sensed that it was vast, overwhelming, overpowering.   It broke me down.  And every time I thought about it afterward or tried to describe it to someone, it broke me down.

To this day I am convinced that I experienced God’s pure love that day.  If I was a more emotional person and this kind of thing had happened to me before, I would be much more skeptical.  But this whole experience was so not me – so beyond what I could even imagine that I have to conclude it was authentic, not psychosomatic, and it was God.

Why he chose to let me feel it I don’t know – maybe because He knows I’m a reserved guy, a book learner, maybe because He wanted me to know prayers are heard and answered, and maybe because He just wanted to show me that I was on the right path.  I don’t know.

What I do “know” now though, is that he’s real.  Before, I had faith.  Now I know it’s all true.

[1] Mt 13:4 (ESV) And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them.

[2] Please be advised first, however, that these people hate God, or at least they hate the concept of a Divine Creator.  Who knows what their particular prejudice is?  It may be as mundane as the typical human ego rebelling against a higher authority to which it is accountable.  Perhaps, though, it is something more sinister.  Whatever, you’re advised to prepare yourself for their vitriol in advance, despite its delivery usually being packaged in a kind of intellectual velvet.

[3] Summa Theologica

[4] John. 16:8 (ESV) And when he comes, he (the Holy Spirit) will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment:

[5] Rom 1:20 (ESV) For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.

[6] 1 Pt 3:15 always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you;

[7] John 15:8 (ESV) By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.

[8]  Total Depravity (also known as Total Inability and Original Sin)
   Unconditional Election (you don’t choose, you’re chosen)
   Limited Atonement (also known as Particular Atonement – some are saved, not all)
   Irresistible Grace (if your chosen, you can’t resist or undo it.)
   Perseverance of the Saints (also known as Once Saved Always Saved)

[9] John Piper, “Desiring God”, “God’s Passion for His Glory”

[10] For Bible literalists I am not saying Adam did not literally eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in Eden.  What I’m saying is that God’s plan was to create a self-serving, “stiff necked” people who would find him and, having overcome themselves (with the aid of the Holy Spirit), would love and serve him, resulting in his glorification.

[11] I once had the opportunity to present a Sunday message to my church shortly after I had begun to understand God’s passion for his glory.  I likened the situation to a parent of an otherwise unruly child when that child would occasionally quietly climb into his exasperated parent’s lap and just snuggle.  All of us parents can relate to the emotion of that interlude of pure love.

[12] A possibly helpful reference is “Time and Eternity” by William Lane Craig.

[13] Strong’s Hebrew and Greek Dictionary

[14] Is 55:8-9 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

[15] Martin Rees, “Just Six Numbers”

[16] Dr. Michael Turner, University of Chicago/Fermilab

[17] Richard Dawkins, reader in Zoology, Oxford University.  Author of “The God Delusion”.

[18] Martin Rees, “Before the Beginning” presents a typical case for the multiverse argument.

[19] Physicists and cosmologists will continue to invent new theories that obviate the need for a Creator.  I think it’s important to understand that this doesn’t necessarily mean they are committed atheists seeking to do violence to God or faith in God (though certainly some of them are).  Their life’s work is to expand our knowledge of the physical universe.  The singularity of the Big Bang presents an impenetrable barrier to their ability to do so.  So it’s quite natural that they invent theories that either eliminate it, or otherwise explain it away.

[20] Gerald L. Schroeder, “The Science of God”, p137

[21]  Schroeder, in “The Science of God”, p41, has a great quote regarding the debate between secularist and believing scientists applicable to use of the Bible in illuminating the subject: “Render unto science that which is science’s: a proven method for investigating our universe.  But render unto the Bible the search for purpose and the poetry that describes the purpose.”

[22] Gerald L. Schroeder, “God According to God”, p105-116

[23] Prv 2:1-6 (ESV) My son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you, making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding; yes, if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding, if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God.  For the Lord gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding;

[24] In Craig’s “Time and Eternity”, he makes essentially the same point regarding the practice of humanizing God in the Bible (p248): “In the same way, given the explicit teaching of Scripture that God does foreknow the future, the passages which portray God as ignorant or inquiring are probably just anthropomorphisms characteristic of the genre narrative.”

[25] Jer 24:7 (ESV) I will give them a heart to know that I am the Lord, and they shall be my people and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart.

[26] Huge Ross makes the case in “Beyond the Cosmos” (p176-178) that this type of evil in man so far exceeds what would be expected from a survival-motivated species, that it argues for the existence of the very evil described in the Bible, represented by the figure of Satan, as its special cause, and therefore acts to support the veracity of the Bible and by extension the Biblical God, not diminish it.

[27] Peter Berger, “Questions of Faith”, p34

[28] Dan 7:14 (ESV) And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.

[29] Luke 17:20-21 (ESV) Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, he answered them, “The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed, nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.”

[30] John 18:36 (ESV) Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.”

[31] Mt 6:33 (ESV) But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

[32] Acts 1:6 (ESV) So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?”

[33] Acts 1:7-8 (ESV) ⁷He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. ⁸But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

[34] Is 64:6 (KJV) But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.

[35] Mat 7:22-23 (ESV) On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

 

[36] Mt 7:7-8 (ESV) “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.
For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.

[37] Mk 4:30-32 (ESV) And he said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown on the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”

[38] Mt 28:19-20 (ESV) Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

[39] M`k 10:15 (ESV) Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.”

[40] Bruce Chilton, “Pure Kingdom – Jesus’ Vision of God”

[41] Steve Corbett & Brian Fikkert, “When Helping Hurts – How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor and Yourself”

[42] Acts 1:10-11 (ESV) And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, and said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”

[43] Rev 22:3-5 (ESV) No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.  And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.

[44] Mt 28:19 (ESV) Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,

[45] Oz Guinness, “The Call – Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life”.  I can’t recommend this book highly enough.

[46] Dallas Willard, “The Spirit of the Disciplines”

[47] It is perfectly reasonable, however, to engage in a rational inspection of how another goes about his business in seeking improvement in how you do yours.  This approach has been enshrined in business for years under the headings “Best Practices”, or “Competitive Analysis”.  Seeking to do a better job is not the problem.

[48] I think maybe Francis knew a woman like my wife.

[49] Yamamori, Myers, Bediako, Reed ed., “Serving with the Poor in Africa – Cases in Holistic Ministry”

[50] Dambisa Moyu, “Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa”

[51] Mt19:21 (ESV) Jesus said to him, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”

[52] Mt 11:5 (ESV) the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.

[53] John 10:10 (ESV) The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

[54] These groups are actually organized into a hierarchy of groups.  The “kitties” of the upper levels of these groups can get quite substantial and be used, with group approval, to fund large community-level projects, such as new schools, etc.  The amount of their resources also makes these groups a potent political force for improvement and societal reform.

[55] John 8:44 (ESV) … When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.